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| The six American diplomats arriving in the U.S. after CIA operative Tony Mendez exfiltrated them out of Iran (1980) |
On May 20, 2006, a small group of the Cleveland branch of the
Association Of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO) met with "Tony"
Mendez in Beachwood for a luncheon and lengthy account of his adventure in
Iran. We listened to him discuss the 1980 joint CIA-Canadian secret operation
where he ex-filtrated six fugitive American diplomatic personnel out of
revolutionary Iran.
Tony revealed a little-known fact during the Iranian hostage situation.
H. Ross Perot, the Texas billionaire we all got to know when he ran for
president, had used a secret land route to ex-filtrate two of his employees
imprisoned early on in the Iranian Revolution. While Tony Mendez was planning
how to get the Americans out of Iran, Perot contacted the CIA and offered his
services to help them rescue the hostages. "What's the holdup?", Ross
Perot snapped in his usual manner. "If it's red tape, I'll put up the
money and you can pay me back later!"
There were some Hollywood deviations from what really happened in the mission, but the CIA, in fact, did create a completely fictional Hollywood movie project that fooled Iranians and saved hostages. Mendez was a CIA disguise master who did use a sci-fi movie plot to free captives in Tehran in 1979. The movie "ARGO" accurately depicts how Tony and the CIA created a screenplay, printed business cards, and rented staff to occupy the nonexistent "Studio Six" in order to exfiltrate the American hostages successfully.
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I took copious amounts of notes as Tony gave us the details of his CIA operation at the small, semi-secret AFIO luncheon. Afterwards, he offered advice on writing my spy thriller series and told me to make it fun and to "enjoy the shadow wars." I brought a copy of his book with me and he then wrote a message to me inside it.
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| Tony Mendez...a true American hero |
Mendez told me that they spent weeks on deciding what type of
"cover" they would use, and ultimately decided on a Hollywood movie
project because most in the Middle East perceive Hollywood movie directors to
be a bit nuts, but are intrigued by them. That's why Mendez decided to use the
"Hollywood director/producer" role as his deep cover.
Tony Mendez and his CIA team performed the secret operation almost
perfectly while under the risk of instant death. To prepare and plan for the
mission, he flew to Canada dozens of times and visited Hollywood studios with his
Canadian CSIS entourage, as depicted in the movie. They set up a shop in
Hollywood with secretaries, etc., in case Iranians got suspicious and sent
their spies here in the US to check it out.
Tony said the movie ARGO depicted what really occurred quite well, with
several exceptions:
The movie suggested Tony was the only CIA officer involved in the
mission and he single-handedly organized and executed the plan. In reality,
there were two CIA officers with forgery and exfiltration skills involved.
The six diplomats never went to the market
to "scout a location"- they spent the entire 79 days inside the homes
of the Canadian embassy staff.
The dramatic moment with the airline ticket confusion at the counter and
guards calling “Studio Six” to verify the identities of the six never happened.
The Canadian’s had purchased the tickets and there were no problems at
checkpoints or at the airline counter. CIA officers had intentionally scheduled
an early flight when they knew airline officials would be sleepy and the
Revolutionary Guards would still be in bed.
The Iranian’s did work to reconstruct shredded documents but did not
identify one of the Americans at the last moment.
It was a thrilling movie and in reality, if Tony Mendez was caught the
Revolutionary Guards would have murdered him on the spot...and that's not
Hollywood fiction.
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