Former CIA agent 'shocked' agency details pilot rescue operation in Iran

TEMPE, Ariz. - Between the threats from the White House and the rescue of an airman, the CIA played a key role and a lot was revealed about how the intelligence agency accomplished the rescue.

What we know:

At a briefing on April 6, the president introduced the head of the CIA.

"He did a phenomenal job that night," Trump said. "He did something, I don't know if you want to talk about it. If you want, you can. I'm not going to talk about it."

What they're saying:

"I was shocked," said Tim Roemer, a former CIA agent.

The agency, whose reputation is built on secrets, revealed how they launched a deception operation to distract Iran so the U.S. could locate and return a pilot. During the briefing, Trump asked, "How many men did you say altogether, approximately? I’d love to keep that a secret."

"To protect sources and methods, CIA normally does not talk about the great work CIA does, so ultimately I was pretty shocked it came out so quickly," Roemer said.

The backstory:

Roemer was a CIA agent for 10 years, serving in the White House Situation Room with President Obama, and later served as Arizona’s Department of Homeland Security secretary under Gov. Doug Ducey. He worries the politics of winning the moment went too far.

"I think we see politicians wanting to spike the football and tell everything about a story without understanding there are ramifications to that being made public and our enemy understanding exactly how something was done," Roemer said.

Local perspective:

Many Iranian-born students from Arizona State University have been supportive of this war, but we wanted to get their reaction to the president’s threat to end civilization there. Many of them still have family and friends there.

"We’re starting to see hope," said Amir Danial Azimi, an Iranian-born ASU student.

Azimi was born in Iran and leads ASU’s Iranian Student Association. He remembers being a school kid in Tehran.

"They were forcing kids to chant every morning, to chant 'Death to America' and 'Death to Israel,'" Azimi said.

Dig deeper:

While he has been a supporter of the war, he expressed concern about Trump’s post threatening a whole civilization will die tonight.

"I think it’s just a threat to the Islamic Republic, but at the same time, he has to be a little more careful to the use of the words because civilization means the people and the regime," Azimi said.

Azimi said he is far more worried about his relatives' safety from the Iranian regime than he is of missiles from America.