This weekend’s story of Iran shooting down a drone came with odd commentaries from the CIA and NATO, with officials claiming that they were “missing” a drone but that there were no indications Iran actually shot it down.

The CIA/NATO story was silly on the surface, as missing a drone and having someone say they shot it down seems like indication in and of itself, but now the Washington Post is reporting that the comments were a flat out lie.

Or “head fake,” if you will. Not content to call them liars just because they were caught in a lie, the official explanation is that the CIA was trying to trick Iran somehow by making false claims about the lost drone.

Which itself is pretty absurd, because in the context of stories about all the great US technology Iran can now access with the downed drone, the Iranian government could probably care less if Western newspapers are claiming they didn’t really shoot that drone down, and its unimaginable that it would change their strategy of recovery the drone. The more likely explanation is that the CIA and NATO were lying to the Western press in an attempt to save face with the Western public after losing an extremely expensive, top secret drone in a botched spying effort.