Navy Times, a weekly newspaper published by the Gannett company, quoted several veteran sailors as speculating the transmission could have come from a heckler widely known among sailors in the region by the ethnically insulting term "the Filipino Monkey."
The newspaper, which serves the Navy community, said U.S. sailors have heard the prankster — possibly more than one person — transmitting "insults and jabbering vile epithets" on unencrypted frequencies during by the Navy in the Gulf.
Which doesn't diminish what the Iranians did. Indeed, the comments apparently reflected what the purported third party observer saw the Iranians doing. And his first thought was that the Iranians were playing at ramming an American ship.
