FOX News quoted a former intelligence official as saying that CIA’s comprehensive, 10-week review was unable to replicate the “malfunction” that brought down the RQ-170 Sentinel drone in Iran.
The report supports Iran’s claims that the reconnaissance was cyberjacked by the army’s electronic warfare unit and eased to a safe landing while deep in Iranian territory on December 4.
Washington originally denied the loss of the drone before changing its story and insisting that contact was lost with the aircraft during a surveillance mission over neighboring Afghanistan.
“Investigators were focusing on how to prevent a repeat of the incident in the future, but without the hardware or the drone – Iran refused to return it – those efforts have been frustrated,” the report added.
US President Barack Obama finally broke his silence on the issue on December 12 and announced that Washington had asked Tehran to return the drone.
“We’ve asked for it back. We’ll see how the Iranians respond,” Obama said.
Iran, however, responded that the drone is now its “national asset” and had undertaken reverse engineering procedures on the US spy plane. Tehran said it had necessary technology to decode the captured US drone’s data and documents.
