Donald Trump reveals secret CIA ‘Ghost Murmur’ tool was ‘very important’ in rescuing airman trapped in Iran

Dan McDonald
Thu, 09 Apr 2026 00:27:24 +0000

President Donald Trump has claimed a classified CIA tool known as “Ghost Murmur” played a key role in locating a downed American pilot in Iran over the weekend.

"It was very important. The CIA was fantastic," Mr Trump said in an interview with The New York Post on Wednesday.

"Nobody even knows what it is. Nobody ever heard of it before," he added.

"Everybody's surprised. We have many other things that nobody has ever heard about. We have equipment the likes of which nobody has ever even thought about."

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The technology is said to enable the detection of human heartbeats from great distances.

According to two sources cited by the New York Post, the system was developed by Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works division and combines nitrogen-vacancy diamond sensors with artificial intelligence to filter background interference.

Thad Walker, a physics professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the system could theoretically involve a drone-mounted magnetometer array.

"Assuming the description of the technology is accurate, my best guess is that this is a drone-mounted NV center magnetometer, probably a magnetometer array," he speculated.

Prof Walker said: "It is essential to get the magnetometer close to the source... even mounted on a drone, it would be astounding to detect a heartbeat with NV centers at even a distance of 100 metres.

"At 100 metres, an adult heartbeat is not impossible to detect in a very magnetically quiet background with plenty of time to do advanced signal processing.

"However, the best NV magnetometers I have heard of would take days of signal averaging for an array of such detectors to reach the detection limit at a distance of 100 [metres]."

Mr Trump and CIA Director John Ratcliffe both referenced the technology during a White House briefing earlier this week.

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The President claimed the agency was able to locate the pilot from 40 miles away, though it remains unclear whether this referred directly to “Ghost Murmur”.

A source familiar with the operation told the newspaper that environmental conditions in Iran may have aided efforts to track down the airman.

The Iranian countryside was described as "about as clean an environment as you could ask for" due to low electromagnetic interference and minimal competing signals.

In January, President Donald Trump revealed a separate mysterious tool - dubbed the “Discombobulator” - was used in the dramatic capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro.

The weapon allegedly rendered enemy military equipment entirely inoperable as American helicopters descended on Caracas to apprehend Mr Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores.

An account attributed to a Venezuelan security guard loyal to the dictator paints a harrowing picture of the weapon's effects.

The unnamed witness described the moment American forces deployed the device: "Suddenly I felt like my head was exploding from the inside."

"We all started bleeding from the nose. Some were vomiting blood. We fell to the ground, unable to move," the guard recounted in testimony shared by White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt.

The soldier characterised the assault as a "massacre" and claimed he had "never seen anything like it".

He added: "We couldn't even stand up after that sonic weapon or whatever it was."