Headscratchers / HUNT the TRUTH

• There were plenty of soldier's that survived the Battle of Mombasa, including Buck's squad. How could Chief be the only survivor?
  • Only survivor Ben knows of, declassified. ONI is confirmed to have not told the whole truth about what happened in Mombasa. The Portal is still classified. Petra was one of the few civilians allowed to know about the Ark.
• Just what was ONI thinking when they decided to use the Chief's real early life and identity as the first part of their fictional backstory? They were just asking for something like this to happen.
  • They probably thought they could control Giraud. Like Petra says he's not a huge reporter and this would make his career so they probably thought "we'll make him jump through all of our hoops and he'll be famous and we'll have our clean hero." They probably thought he'd just interview the guy they provided and then that would be that.
    • Even if Ben had just done what ONI wanted him to other civilians would have spotted the inconsistencies.
  • As it turns out, at least some of the sloppiness was deliberately done by ONI as part of their plan to preemptively discredit certain uncomfortable truths about the Spartan-IIs.