A bombshell news report revealed for the first time the extent of Israel’s involvement in the rescue operation to extract the second downed airman stranded in Iran last weekend.

The CIA used Pegasus spyware, developed by the Israeli company NSO, to send fake WhatsApp and Signal messages to Iranian officials claiming that the crew member had been found in order to throw them off the trail.

While U.S. officials publicly said they had used deception in the campaign, they had never before revealed the use of Pegasus, the spyware that became controversial over its use by such countries as Saudi Arabia and India to repress dissent.

In a classic case of real life imitating science fiction, the report also revealed the use of an exquisitely high-tech system called “Ghost Murmur” that can detect a human heartbeat, previously too faint to be picked up by devices. That was how the U.S. Air Force member was located, hiding some 7,000 feet high in a mountain crevice.

The technology goes far beyond what anyone could have imagined.

When asked about it, President Donald Trump said, “It was very important. Nobody even knows what it is. Nobody ever heard of it before.”

“We have many other things that nobody has ever heard about,” he added, hinting at the possibility of yet more secret capabilities.

The U.S. “deployed both human assets and exquisite technologies that no other intelligence service in the world possesses to a daunting challenge, comparable to hunting for a single grain of sand in the middle of a desert,” CIA Director John Ratcliffe said, confirming Trump’s statement.

Israel’s role in the rescue mission extended beyond providing intelligence, including carrying out airstrikes to provide cover for the rescue operatives.