Argo

The true account of a daring rescue that inspired the film ARGO, winner of the 2012 Academy Award for Best Picture

On November 4, 1979, Iranian militants stormed the American embassy in Tehran and captured dozens of American hostages, sparking a 444-day ordeal and a quake in global politics still reverberating today. But there is a little-known drama connected to the crisis: six Americans escaped. And a top-level CIA officer named Antonio Mendez devised an ingenious yet incredibly risky plan to rescue them before they were detected.

Disguising himself as a Hollywood producer, and supported by a cast of expert forgers, deep cover CIA operatives, foreign agents, and Hollywood special effects artists, Mendez traveled to Tehran under the guise of scouting locations for a fake science fiction film called Argo. While pretending to find the perfect film backdrops, Mendez and a colleague succeeded in contacting the escapees, and smuggling them out of Iran.

Antonio Mendez finally details the extraordinarily complex and dangerous operation he led more than three decades ago. A riveting story of secret identities and international intrigue, Argo is the gripping account of the history-making collusion between Hollywood and high-stakes espionage. 

“It’s a fast-paced, straight­forward, and gripping story full of drama and compelling characters….For history buffs and Affleck fans, ARGO the book, provides added insight into a wild, if not widely known, incident in the history of American foreign policy and the CIA.”
—Boston Globe
 
“Besides being a talented spy, Mendez is also a gifted storyteller…His latest book is a page turner…”
—Associated Press
 
“Fascinating story…This book is an exciting read.”—Deseret News
 
“ARGO is a mesmerizing book; a fast-paced, irresistible read that's equal parts politics, history and espionage.”
—Shelf Awareness
 
“This is an amazing and dramatic story of intrigue and deception set against the backdrop of
international tension.”
—Booklist
 
“Fresh and engaging…A solid choice for fans of thrillers and international intrigue.”
—Kirkus
 
“[A] fast-paced account of a 1979 rescue operation during the Iran hostage crisis of 1979–1981…
Details of this dangerous operation inject strong suspense and excitement into the closing chapters.”
—Publishers Weekly
 
“One of the most daring and courageous clandestine operations during my career involved efforts to rescue Americans taken hostage in Tehran after our embassy was seized on November 4, 1979. Six Americans managed to escape the U.S. compound and flee to the Canadian embassy, where they were hidden A very brave CIA officer, Tony Mendez, using commercial cover, entered Iran with false identities for the six and, using techniques that ought to remain secret so they can be used again, managed to get them out of Iran.”
—Robert M. Gates, former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency and former U.S. Secretary of Defense, in his book From the Shadows
 
“This is a fascinating story about how Tony Mendez and the CIA used a bit of technical expertise and a lot of daring and courage to rescue American hostages in Iran. Tony is emblematic of the extraordinary men and women of CIA. Most of their stories cannot be told—but fortunately, in ARGO, Tony has been able to lift the veil of secrecy—just a bit.”
—George J. Tenet, former director of Central Intelligence Agency
 
“James Bond’s Q comes to life. This gripping, true story of a white-knuckle operation by a little known part of the CIA reads like a thriller. Full of authentic detail and characters, of bravery and drama, it’s a must-read for all spy enthusiasts and CIA watchers.”
—Dame Stella Rimington, former general director, MI5, British Intelligence
 
“The CIA and Hollywood in cahoots, a painter turned spy, an impossible rescue mission with no guns and only one chance at success—ARGO has everything. This remarkable white-knuckle spy story is torn from the pages of real life, and will have you up past your bedtime to discover its thrilling endgame.” —Eric Blehm, author of Fearless
 
“Forget your spy novels, here’s how this stuff really works: Two secret agents quietly enter the enemy camp, unarmed but for their wit and experience. Hiding in plain sight, they rescue six virtual hostages under the eyes of their captors, a covert operation seemingly devised in Central Casting. Now their story can be told – and it makes for one hell of read.”
—Peter Earnest, retired CIA officer and Executive Director, International Spy Museum
 
“This true spy story has it all: guile, audacity, and bravery in a struggle with a fanatic and lethal enemy, a crucial role played by a loyal ally, and a marvelous conspiracy with Hollywood.”
—R. James Woolsey, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency
 
“Artist-spy Tony Mendez paints a dramatic portrait of unlikely collaborators—Hollywood, the CIA and Canada—allied in the common cause of freedom. Mendez fills Argo with the drama, pressure and tension of one of CIA’s most spectacular rescue operations. ARGO is proof that espionage reality is more riveting than spy fiction.”
—Robert Wallace, former director, CIA Office of Technical Service
 
“Tony Mendez is a spy’s spy. His work saved my neck on numerous occasions. I laugh quietly to myself when I watch Hollywood’s version of disguise technology in today’s spy movies—because Tony did it better. What he did in the Argo operation was spine-tingling espionage at its very best.”
—James M. Olson, former director of CIA Counterintelligence
 
“ARGO is a must read to understand how dangerous risks have been successfully managed by men and women like Tony Mendez operating in secrecy for our protection.”
—William H. Webster, former director, Central Intelligence and Federal Bureau of InvestigationAntonio Mendez served in the CIA for twenty-five years and is a highly decorated CIA officer, one of the top 50 officers in its first 50 years and a recipient of the Intelligence Star for Valor for the ARGO operation. The author of The Master of Disguise and Spy Dust, Mendez lives with his family in rural Washington County, Maryland.

Matt Baglio has worked for a variety of news organizations and magazines. Author ofthe bestselling The Rite: The Making of a Modern Exorcist, he divides his time between California and Italy.

ARGO

Also by Antonio J. Mendez

The Master of Disguise

Spy Dust

Also by Matt Baglio

The Rite: The Making of a Modern Exorcist

ARGO

VIKING

Published by the Penguin Group

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First published in 2012 by Viking Penguin,

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10   9   8   7   6   5   4   3   2   1

Copyright © Antonio J. Mendez and Matt Baglio, 2012

All rights reserved

All statements of fact, opinion, or analysis expressed are those of the authors and do not reflect the official positions or views of the CIA or any other U.S. Government agency. Nothing in the contents should be construed as asserting or implying U.S. Government authentication of information or Agency endorsement of the authors’ views. This material has been reviewed by the CIA to prevent the disclosure of classified information.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Mendez, Antonio J.

Argo : how the CIA and Hollywood pulled off the most audacious rescue in history / Antonio J. Mendez and Matt Baglio.

p. cm.

ISBN: 978-1-101-60120-4

1. Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979–1981.   2. United States. Central Intelligence Agency.   3. Canada—Foreign relations—Iran.   4 Iran—Foreign relations—Canada.   5. Mendez, Antonio J.   6. Diplomats—United States—History—20th century.   I. Baglio, Matt.   II. Title.

E183.8.I55M46 2012

955.05’42--dc23

2012014991

Printed in the United States of America

Set in ITC Galliard Std

Designed by Alissa Amell

No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

To Jonna

Some names have been changed to protect the privacy of the individuals involved.

INTRODUCTION

Late that Saturday afternoon I was painting in my studio. Outside, the sun was just beginning to fall behind the hills, casting a long dark shadow that covered the valley like a curtain. I liked the half-light in the room.

“Come Rain or Come Shine” poured from the radio. I often listened to music while I worked. It was almost as important to me as the light. I had installed a fine stereo system and if I painted late enough into Saturday night, I could catch Rob Bamberger’s Hot Jazz Saturday Night on NPR.

I had been painting since my early childhood, and was working as an artist when the CIA hired me in 1965. I still considered myself to be a painter first and a spy second. Painting had always been an outlet for the tensions that came with my job at the Agency. While there were occasional bureaucrats whose antics brought me to the point of wanting to throttle them, if I could get into my studio and pick up a brush then those pent–up hostilities would melt away.

My studio sat perched above the garage, up a steeply angled set of stairs. It was a large room with windows on three sides. The room had diagonal yellow pine floors covered with a variety of oriental carpets and was furnished with a huge white sofa and some antique pieces that my wife, Karen, had acquired for her interior design business. It was a comfortable space and, most important, it was mine. You needed permission, which I gave pretty freely, to enter. Friends and family knew, however, that when I was in the middle of a project, they should tread lightly.

I had built the studio as I had built the house. Upon returning from a posting overseas in 1974, Karen and I had decided it would be best to raise our three kids away from the grit and crime of Washington, D.C. We’d chosen a forty-acre plot of land in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, and after clearing a section of woods, I’d spent the better part of three summers constructing the main house while the family and I lived in a log cabin I had also built. The land had a long history. Antietam Battlefield was just up the road and every now and then we would find Civil War relics—buttons, bullets, breastplates—discarded among the leaves and fallen trees bordering our property.

The painting I was working on that afternoon had been triggered by a phrase associated with my job: “Wolf Rain.” It had the haunted sound of blue, dreary, dank weather, and spoke to the depths of the wooded landscape, just outside my window, on a winter’s night. It conveyed a kind of sorrow that I couldn’t explain, but felt that I could paint.

Working on “Wolf Rain” was one of those things you hope happens in your career as an artist—the painting just emerges from nowhere. Perhaps like a character who shoulders his way into a book to take over the narrative. The figure of the wolf was recognizable only by the eyes—it was a floating image in a rain-soaked forest, and you could sense the anguish in its gaze.

If my painting was going well, my brain would instantly go into “alpha” mode, the subjective, creative right-brain state where the breakthroughs happen. Einstein said that the definition of genius is not that you are smarter than everyone else, it’s that you’re ready to receive the inspiration. That was the definition of “alpha” for me. I would start the painting session by ridding myself of all the assholes at work and then leap to moments of clarity where I would find solutions to problems that I had never considered before. I would be ready to receive.

It was December 19, 1979, and there was much on my mind. Earlier in the week I had been given a memorandum from the U.S. State Department that contained some startling news. Six American diplomats had escaped from the militant-overrun U.S. embassy in Tehran and were hiding out at the residences of the Canadian ambassador, Ken Taylor, and his senior immigration officer, John Sheardown. The six appeared to be safe for the moment, but there was no guarantee they would remain so; in the wake of the embassy takeover, militants were combing the city looking for any American they could find. The six Americans had been in hiding for almost two months. How much longer could they hold out?

The news of their escape had come as a bit of a surprise to me. I had spent the previous month down at the CIA engrossed in the wider problem. On November 4, a group of Iranian militants had stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran and taken more than sixty-six Americans hostage. The militants accused the Americans of “spying” and trying to undermine the country’s nascent Islamic Revolution, all of this while the Iranian government, led by the Ayatollah Khomeini, lent its support.

At the time of the takeover, I was working as the chief of the CIA’s worldwide disguise operations in the Office of Technical Services (OTS). Over the course of my then fourteen-year career, I had conducted numerous clandestine operations in far-flung places, disguised agents and case officers, and helped to rescue defectors and refugees from behind the Iron Curtain.

In the immediate aftermath of the attack, my team and I had been working on preparing the disguises, false documents, and cover stories for the various aliases that any advance team would need in order to infiltrate Iran. Then, in the midst of these preparations, the memo from the State Department arrived.

As I applied a dark glaze across the underpainting of the canvas, it immediately transformed the mood of the work. The piercing eyes of the wolf suddenly came alive like two golden orbs. I stared, transfixed. The image had triggered something. The State Department appeared to be taking a wait-and-see approach with the six Americans, which I found to be problematic. I had recently been to Iran on a covert operation and I knew the dangers firsthand. At any moment they could be discovered. The city was full of eyes, watching, searching. If the six Americans had to run, where would they go? The crowds of thousands of people chanting outside the American embassy in Tehran each day gave no doubt that, if captured, the six would almost certainly be thrown in jail and perhaps even lined up in front of a firing squad. I had always told my team that there are two kinds of exfiltrations: those with hostile pursuit and those without. We couldn’t afford to wait until the six Americans were on the run. It would be almost impossible to get them out then.

My son Ian walked into the studio. “What’s up?” he asked. He walked over to the painting and scrutinized it as only the seventeen-year-old son of the artist could. “Nice, Dad,” he pronounced, stepping back to get a better perspective. “But it needs more blue.” He’d barely noticed the eyes of the wolf.

“Get your butt out of here, Ian. I’ll be in for dinner in about thirty minutes. Tell your mom, will you?”

On the radio Ella broke into a rendition of “Just One of Those Things,” an early version, and I began to clean my brushes in the turpentine and put the caps back on the oil paints. My palette, which had built up over the years, resembled a bunch of brightly colored stalagmites sitting on an oval board with a thumbhole through it. At this point it was too heavy to pick up, but it contained fragments of every painting done in my studio.

As I put away my brushes, the initial stages of a plan began to emerge. Not only would we need to create new identities as well as disguises for the six Americans, but someone would have to infiltrate Iran, link up with them, and assess their ability to carry it off.

A million questions began running through my mind. How was I going to convince six innocent American diplomats who had no covert training that they could successfully escape from Iran? How was I going to create a cover story that would account for the presence of this group in a country caught up in the throes of a revolution? Despite having done dozens of “exfiltrations,” I could see that this was going to be one of my most challenging missions to date.

I turned off the radio and the lights and stood for a moment in the darkness, looking out the window and through the night to the glow of the chandelier in the greenhouse. Espionage is an instrument of statecraft, I mused. If conducted properly and professionally, there are international rules of engagement. In the case of the revolutionary government of Iran, however, the only rule was that there weren’t any.

1

WELCOME TO THE REVOLUTION

The call went out over the radio network a little after ten o’clock in the morning: “Recall! Recall! All marines to Post One!” The voice was that of Al Golacinski, the chief security officer of the U.S. embassy in Tehran. The date was November 4, 1979, and a large crowd of “militant students” had just broken through the front gates and was pouring into the compound.

The embassy was massive. It took up nearly twenty-seven acres and was surrounded by a high brick wall. Inside, there were dozens of buildings and warehouses, the ambassador’s residence, an athletic field, tennis courts, even a swimming pool. In addition, the compound was located right in the heart of downtown Tehran, and was bordered on all sides by some of the city’s most heavily trafficked streets. When you added it all up, it meant that the embassy was a security nightmare. Nearly a dozen U.S. Marines were stationed at the compound, but their job was mainly to provide internal protection.

For this reason, the security plan hatched by Golacinski called for all personnel to head toward the chancery, a large three-story building that had been fortified with window grills, blast shields, and time-coded locks. The second floor could be sealed off by a thick steel door, which would theoretically allow the Americans to hold out for several hours. Every embassy in the world is dependent on the host government to provide external security, and it was hoped that these precautions would give the Iranian government enough time to organize a response and send help.

The embassy had been attacked once before, nine months previously, on February 14, 1979, just one month after Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the shah of Iran, had fled the country. During that attack, a group of Marxist guerrillas had stormed the embassy in a hail of gunfire and held the staffers hostage for four hours.

At the time, Iran was a chaotic mess. The Ayatollah Khomeini had returned triumphantly from exile in Paris and the shah’s government had quickly collapsed. The army soon followed suit and in the vacuum the diverse factions who had banded together to oust the shah (leftists, nationalists, Soviet-sponsored communists, hard-line Islamicists) had splintered and were now fighting it out among each other. Armed men roamed the streets and revenge killings were rampant. Small gangs called komiteh (committees) sprang up across the country, carving out territories of control. Beholden to no one except whatever mullah they claimed allegiance to, these gangs amounted to little more than thugs, and began enforcing their own brand of revolutionary justice at the barrel of a gun. Amid this confusion, Khomeini and his inner circle had installed a provisional government to manage the country while the Assembly of Experts worked diligently behind the scenes to draft a new constitution.

It wasn’t long before the provisional government had sent a ragtag group of men to kick the occupiers out, but the Valentine’s Day takeover would have important repercussions for the events to follow. For one, the U.S. embassy staff was drastically reduced (at full strength the embassy employed nearly a thousand people). Second, and perhaps even more important, it gave the impression that the Iranian government would honor its commitment to protect the embassy and the diplomats working inside.

After the Marxist guerrillas were evicted, the protection of the embassy was assigned to a group of komiteh, who took over one of the small buildings near the front of the compound and patrolled the grounds. It wasn’t until the summer that a more permanent security force was assigned to guard the embassy, but even by the most optimistic of assessments it was only token.

In light of the danger exposed by this first attack, one might ask why the embassy wasn’t simply closed down. For starters, Iran was just too important to the strategic interests of the United States. Not only did the country hold vast oil reserves, but for more than twenty-five years it had served as a staunch ally and buffer against the Soviet Union, which shared a sixteen-hundred-mile border with Iran. It was no secret that the Soviets desired a warm-water port and wished to increase their influence in the Persian Gulf. So rather than sever ties, the Carter administration began cautiously working with the provisional government and the U.S. embassy in Iran remained open for business.

It may seem odd today to think that Iran and the United States were once allies, but everything must be understood in terms of the Great Game waged between the Soviet Union and America.

In earlier times, the United States seemed content to observe Iran from the sidelines. Then known as Persia (it wouldn’t be named Iran until 1935), the country was like the knot in the center of a tug–of–war match between Russia and Great Britain—a role that Iran managed with great skill, playing one nation off the other. Then World War II happened and the geopolitics of the region were upended. Suddenly Moscow and London were allies, and in their quest to protect oil and overland shipping routes into Russia, they decided to jointly occupy the country. Worried that the Iranian monarch, Reza Shah, was leaning toward an alliance with Nazi Germany, the two nations had him deposed and installed his twenty-one-year-old son, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, to the throne.

After the war, the United States invested heavily in Iran, both economically and militarily. Stalin had only reluctantly withdrawn his troops from northern Iran in 1946, and the thinking in Washington was that he would use the slightest pretext to invade again. Just as concerning was the potential for the Soviets to undermine the shah’s government through clandestine means. Iran’s communist Tudeh Party was growing in power and openly supported the aims of Moscow.

As a result, it was with trepidation that America watched in 1951 as the shah’s power was slowly stripped away by an Iranian lawyer named Mohammed Mosaddeq. Mosaddeq had risen to prominence on the back of a campaign to nationalize the British-owned Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC), a popular move among Iranians who had long felt exploited by the British. Caught up in a wave of nationalism, Mosaddeq became a hero and was eventually nominated prime minister.

As one would expect, in response to the Iranians’ attempt to nationalize the AIOC, the British soon instigated what amounted to a boycott of Iranian oil, which sent the local economy into a tailspin. In the ensuing turmoil, the coalition that had supported Mosaddeq began to splinter.

Nobody in Washington believed that Mosaddeq was a communist, but concern began to mount when he aligned himself with the Tudeh Party. The final straw for the Eisenhower administration came when intelligence uncovered that the Soviets were about to give Mosaddeq twenty million dollars in aid.

In light of these threats, the White House ordered CIA director Allen Dulles to work with the British to overthrow Mosaddeq.

With the benefit of hindsight, it’s easy to say that the Eisenhower administration overreacted. However, in the heat of the Cold War, America’s leaders saw a very different world than the one that exists today. In it, the Soviets were on the march everywhere, installing puppet regimes in Eastern Europe and supporting uprisings in Italy, France, and Greece. It’s also important to remember that the United States was involved in a bloody war at the time in Korea, which Eisenhower had inherited from Truman. Iran could just as easily become another front.

In the spring of 1953, Kermit “Kim” Roosevelt, chief of the Near East Division of the CIA’s Directorate of Plans, was granted one million dollars and tasked with carrying out the operation to overthrow Mosaddeq, known as TPAJAX, or Operation AJAX.

The plan called for the use of propaganda and political action to undermine Mosaddeq’s support, but, as usual, things didn’t go according to plan. Mosaddeq had been warned of the countercoup and had some of the plotters arrested even before the operation could get under way. However, with the help of massive public demonstrations, many of them organized by Roosevelt, Mosaddeq was forced to resign and the shah was swept to power.

In terms of its Cold War strategy of containment, Washington considered the operation to be a massive foreign policy success, and Kermit Roosevelt was heralded as a hero. Upon meeting him, the shah famously said, “I owe my throne to God, my people, the army—and you!”

In the wake of the operation the shah quickly worked out an agreement with the oil giant AIOC, and Iran became a stable, pro-Western ally, providing the United States with a steady flow of oil as well as a series of listening posts along the Soviet-Iran border that allowed it to eavesdrop on Russian intercontinental ballistic missile launches.

Regardless of these strategic advantages, however, there is no denying that the 1953 countercoup had major consequences for the long-term relations between the United States and Iran.

Many opponents of Operation AJAX blamed the United States for acting selfishly to protect its own interests, to the detriment of Iran and its people. Ironically, as the historical record shows, the countercoup would not have succeeded if it hadn’t been for the support of a sizable faction of Iranians who’d also had much to gain by securing the shah’s power. However, the popular myth in 1979 among Iranians, ever distrustful of foreign intervention, was that the CIA had single-handedly ousted a democratic leader while imposing a tyrant in his place. While not entirely accurate, it painted a picture that many Iranians were eager to believe.

After returning to power, the shah aligned himself with the West and immediately set about trying to legitimize his reign. He ushered in a series of Westernized reforms and spent lavishly to create a well-trained and modern military. Both efforts would put him at odds with his people, who would later claim he had destroyed their traditional way of life and at the same time squandered the nation’s wealth in an attempt to appease Washington.

Over time he grew more and more autocratic, tamping down any form of dissent with the help of his brutal secret police known by the acronym SAVAK.

As tended to happen during the Great Game, however, successive American administrations decided to take the good with the bad and outwardly supported the shah, even while privately encouraging him to cut the systemic corruption of his regime and curb the abuses of SAVAK.

The shah seemed neither willing nor capable to do either.

With most avenues for political dissent gone, the masses had turned to the mullahs for support, and the clergy used their newfound power to denounce the shah as a tool of the West. The most outspoken of these critics was a cleric by the name of Ruhollah Khomeini. Born in 1902, Khomeini had made a name for himself among the religious community of Iran by authoring numerous tracts against Iran’s secular leadership, including the shah’s father, Reza. Then in 1961, he would take on the shah directly, decrying the shah’s pro-Western policies—specifically those enfranchising women and non-Muslims—as being antithetical to the true spirit of Islam. However, unknown even to his own followers, who believed he would support a moderate Islamic democracy once the shah had abdicated, Khomeini’s real aim was to create a government that was strictly beholden to Islamic law and was ruled unquestionably by him.

Too powerful to arrest or kill, Khomeini was exiled by the shah to Turkey in 1964 and then eventually to Najaf, in southern Iraq. From there the cleric would prove to be a resourceful political operator. For the next fourteen years he would continue to give sermons lambasting the evils of the shah and America, which were smuggled back into Iran and sold in the bazaars as cassette tapes.

By the fall of 1978, the country was on the brink of collapse. A succession of riots and strikes had led to violent clashes between the shah’s security forces and Khomeini’s supporters. After a series of last-ditch measures—including a military government—had failed to stem the tide, the shah was finally forced to leave Iran on January 16, 1979. In his wake he left a country teetering on the edge, and it would take only ten days for the remnants of his government and the army to fall apart.

While there had been many signs that the shah’s regime was on the verge of crumbling, the suddenness with which it happened caught the White House, as well as the intelligence community, completely off guard. Even as late as August of 1978, a National Intelligence Estimate famously reported that Iran was not in a “revolutionary or even a pre-revolutionary situation.” As to how we at the CIA and the White House could have been so wildly off the mark, there is no easy answer. The shah had maintained an iron