Yemen's authority had with intent said that a crashed unmanned spy plane was Iranian while it new ahead of time that it belonged to the United States, WikiLeaks release of a US memo stated.
It also revealed that the US embassy in Sana'a informed President Saleh that the aircraft had been doing investigations near US naval vessels for offshore. Saleh didn't totally believe the US clarification but told the embassy he wouldn't make an issue of it, it said.
On March 29, 2007 official media reported that the Yemeni military had shot down an Iranian spy plane off the coast of Hadramawt, the memo said, adding that Yemen's officials had chosen instated to blame Iran.
It, further, said that Saleh decided he would benefit more from picturing Iran as the horrific man in this case.