I think I've related the circumstance we were in during the Persian Gulf War. You may recall there was a furious "SCUD hunt" going on during DESERT STORM with dozens of US Air Force tactical bombers scouring the Iraqi countryside looking for SCUD missile TELs (Transporter-Erector-Launchers) to destroy.
Every morning at the Pentagon, General Glosson would give the media a briefing on all the TELs that had been destroyed during the night, showing infra-red bomb-camera videos of vehicles going up in glorious explosions of light.
The only problem was: None of them--not one, not a single one--was actually a SCUD TEL. They were gasoline trucks.
And we briefed that to General Glosson. I was in the room. We showed him what a SCUD TEL looked like. We showed him what was being bombed. They were not the same vehicles, not at all, not even to the untrained eye. You can see for yourself: Google images for "SCUD TEL" and then for "gasoline truck."
Glosson: "But there are secondary explosions of the missile being detonated!"
Intel analysts: "A gasoline truck is also going to give you a secondary explosion."
And then, twenty minutes after we gave Glosson that briefing, he went right back out and held a press conference--showing the very same footage we had used--to claim more SCUD TELs were destroyed.
One of our civilian analysts was so disgusted that he resigned and moved back to his home in Oregon.
We know, though, the politics behind what Glosson was doing. The Iraqis had lobbed a couple of SCUDs into Israel, and the Israelis were boiling to strike back. But that would have broken the coalition of Muslim nations (particularly Saudi Arabia) who were providing bases to US forces. So Glosson was lying about SCUD hunt successes to keep the Israelis mollified.
