Argo: How the CIA and Hollywood Pulled Off the Most Audacious Rescue in History

by Antonio Mendez

  “Bring everything you’ve got,” I replied. “We might be able to use it all.”

  There was a knock at the door. I looked up to see Elaine poking her head around the corner. “They’re here,” she said. When she saw the puzzled look on my face, she took a drag off her cigarette and blew the smoke out into the vestibule. “The Christmas Door Decorating Committee from the art shop,” she explained. I looked at her without speaking. “I’ll just close the door and they can do this without any fuss,” she said, closing the door with a small clatter. I shook my head.

  I turned to Doris. “In the meantime, Doris, we don’t know yet what the disguise requirement will be, but I want to make sure that you and the disguise section are ready in case you are needed.”

  “Got it,” she said.

  “Okay,” I said, “this has just become the highest priority. So get your heads together and see what you can come up with.”

  8

  COVER STORY

  As the end of December neared, the houseguests’ initial calm was beginning to wane. They spent hours on end trying to combat the boredom, drinking too much, sleeping too much, and fantasizing about escape. After reading so many le Carré novels, Schatz had a good idea of how he could pull it off. In one scenario he wore “native dress” to blend in while he hiked over the border into Pakistan. In another he drove a car he’d stashed somewhere in the city up to the Turkish border. In a third, he was at the controls of a small speedboat racing across the Persian Gulf, the chaos of Iran disappearing behind him in a haze. The more he read, the more he fantasized.

  The others were getting antsy as well. By this time they had played Scrabble so much that they could recognize the individual tiles just by the wood grain on the backs of the pieces. After nearly two months they began to feel forgotten and wondered if anything was being done to rescue them.

  Their only source for news was to listen to the BBC in the morning. Mark had gotten into the habit of sleeping late and often missed the broadcast, so Anders would give him a recap. In an attempt to deflect anger away from the United States, on December 15 the shah, who was well enough to travel, had left the United States and gone to Panama. The militants, however, seemed not to care. In their minds it was the United States that was pulling the strings, not Panama. To make matters worse, on December 26 the Soviets had invaded Afghanistan, which only heightened tensions in the region. With the Soviet army fighting on Iran’s doorstep, the military options for attacking Iran became even more limited. In a strange twist, the White House suddenly found itself in the awkward position of having to do all it could to bring the hostages home while at the same time trying to counter Soviet aggressions in the region. In many ways, the invasion of Afghanistan became the initial spark that would eventually lead Iran and the United States back to the table. No one could foresee this, though. Iran had gone through a series of new foreign ministers, each more ineffective than the last. The will of the Revolutionary Council could not be questioned for any reason, and anyone seen to be negotiating with the United States was labeled a traitor. On top of this, the militants at the embassy continued to stoke the revolutionary hysteria sweeping the nation with their rhetoric and public displays of blindfolded Americans, all of them liars, all of them spies, all of them out to destroy the revolution.

  It’s no wonder, then, that on December 31, when the UN secretary-general, Kurt Waldheim, traveled to Iran in an attempt to ameliorate the crisis, he was nearly assaulted at the airport by angry crowds. And as if that wasn’t humiliating enough, later that afternoon he was rebuffed by the Revolutionary Council and unceremoniously sent home like a dog with its tail between its legs. A few days later he would meet with White House officials and recount what had happened. As President Carter wrote in Keeping Faith, Waldheim had tears in his eyes as he spoke about his visit, and believed that “he was lucky to be alive.”

  Christmas helped to break up the monotony for the houseguests, if only for a few days. To get in the spirit, Cora decided to bake Christmas cookies. The Sheardowns had a massive countertop and soon it was covered by all manner of iced cookies. Mark and Lee were helping to decorate when suddenly an Iranian secretary from the Canadian embassy showed up at the door, and they were forced to abandon their work. Taylor of course hadn’t told any of the Iranian staffers, and so none of them knew about the houseguests. When the secretary walked into the kitchen, Zena had to pretend that the cookies had been one of her projects. The secretary was impressed, saying she had always been curious about what Zena did while she was at home.

  One evening, when Roger Lucy was bringing the houseguests back from the Taylors’, Lee, Mark, and Bob stopped outside the garage. It had recently snowed and they couldn’t resist scooping some of the snow up in their hands and launching snowballs at a nearby streetlamp. They laughed like kids until it occurred to them what might happen if the streetlamp was damaged. No doubt it would result in a visit from the local komiteh. They immediately stopped horsing around and went back inside.

  For Christmas, John had somehow managed to buy a huge turkey from a farm outside of Tehran, and everyone pitched in to do their part. Lee took the lead in preparing the bird, along with a security guard from the Canadian embassy who was a former military cook. In true Galloping Gourmet fashion, they started drinking early. The turkey was so large that the roasting pan required two people to lift it out of the oven, one person on each side. Near the end of the roasting, as they took the bird out to see if it was done, one of them stumbled. The turkey slid out of the tipped pan and shot across the floor. The two of them looked at each other, then at the doors to the kitchen, then quickly picked it up and popped it back into the pan. When they were finished cleaning up, the two chefs raised a toast to having saved the meal. Later, Ambassador Taylor brought the Staffords over and everyone sat down to enjoy the meal, none the wiser.

  For presents, Schatz bought everybody some worry beads and a Khomeini prayer rug. “I’m going to use mine as a doormat,” he said. Others suggested using it to train a puppy. In an ironic twist, the Iranian government had given the Sheardowns a tin of caviar as a Christmas gift, and everyone happily devoured it. Looking back, the houseguests remember the Christmas of ’79 with fondness, realizing correctly that they were incredibly lucky to be celebrating it at the Sheardowns’ and not trapped along with their colleagues at the U.S. embassy.

  The militants had promised the hostages at the embassy that they would be able to participate in some kind of Christmas celebration, complete with a service and a chance to go to confession. Instead what they got was a charade. In groups of threes and fours they were brought into a room filled with decorations. A Christmas tree with twinkling lights sat in the corner while tables had been stacked with Christmas goodies, some of them sent by Americans in care packages. Three American clergymen had been invited, and the hostages were filmed sitting on couches and singing “Silent Night” to the accompaniment of one of the clergymen on the piano. Of course, while this seemingly innocuous scene was playing itself out, a row of militants stood just off camera, twirling pistols and fondling rifles. Before entering the room, the hostages had been told that they were not allowed to talk.

  Recognizing the event for what it was, many of the hostages refused to speak to the ministers, whom they felt were traitors for helping the militants. A few were annoyed when one of the ministers, William Sloane Coffin of the United Church of Christ, suggested that the hostages should sing and hold hands with the Iranians as a sign of solidarity. For most of the hostages, the ceremony only reminded them of what they were missing: home. One hostage later described it as the moment he hit rock bottom.

  Still, the one positive thing to come out of the whole experience was that the clergy were able to convey to the hostages that the people back home cared, and cared a lot. All over America, special Christmas services were being held in honor of the hostages, while schoolchildren wrote Christmas cards and sent candy and cookies. For most of the hostages, who were not allowed to
receive mail, it was the first time they had ever heard about the public reaction back in the United States. And it lifted their spirits to know that there was a whole nation hoping and praying that they all made it home safe.

  By early January, I felt we were sufficiently ready to travel to Ottawa and present our case to the Canadians. Before going, however, I would need to head over to the Near East Division at headquarters and confer with them. The deputy chief, Eric Neff, had recently been to Ottawa, and I wanted to find out the best way to proceed with the Canadian government.

  Eric’s office, on the sixth floor of the headquarters building, was spacious by headquarters standards, with plenty of light coming in through tall windows that gave a panoramic view of the tops of the trees. These were the very same trees that had caused Allen Dulles to remark that our Langley compound was more like a “campus” than a government facility.

  As always, Eric was dressed in his somewhat excessively refined manner, with a polka dot tie, French cuffs, and custom-made boots. He stood in sharp contrast to the rest of the male CIA population, who sported Harris tweeds, button-down shirts, club ties, and cordovan wing tips, almost like a uniform. To Eric the dress code was always formal. The other guys in Eric’s division often complained about it, noting that if they were ever invited over to dinner at Eric’s house they would be required to wear their patent leather slippers. Eric and I had worked together on a project in South Asia when he was a CIA chief there, and I had nothing but admiration for his abilities. Sitting in on the meeting were Joe Missouri and Hal, the chief for Near East/Iran.

  Once the houseguests had become a top priority, Eric had traveled to Canada to make the CIA’s initial representation. While in Ottawa he’d been able to establish a unique back-channel method whereby we would be able to communicate through Ottawa to Ken Taylor in Tehran. It was very effective and in the coming month would become almost like our own private compartmented line. In my communications with Ken Taylor I would find a kindred spirit. He had performed admirably in sheltering the hostages and had been a valuable go–between for the State Department and the diplomats trapped at the foreign ministry. He appeared to be a quick study and had a knack for being able to keep a secret, qualities that would make him an asset on the ground for us in Tehran. One of the first things I would do would be to ask him what he thought about cover options for the houseguests.

  At this point, however, the key issue was documentation.

  “Can we ask the Canadians for the use of their passports?” I asked Eric, cutting to the chase.

  Eric said, somewhat defensively, that he had already raised the issue. “But you can do it again, if you wish,” he continued.

  I nodded and told him that I would. I indicated Joe, and mentioned that I would be taking him with me, then introduced the young officer to Eric and Hal. Joe was dressed more like a seedy professor than one of Eric’s officers in full dress mode, and he seemed hesitant, almost apologetic, when he shook Eric’s hand.

  Joe’s role in Ottawa would be to establish the continuity between the CIA and the Canadians, essentially setting up partnerships between his OTS colleagues and their mirror images in Ottawa. This would free me up to handle the more strategic negotiations with the Canadians, Tehran, and the U.S. government. Dealing with the State Department, the White House, and the senior levels of the CIA, working through Eric, was a daunting task. I would soon discover that the simplicity with which the Canadian government operated would make it a dream to work with by comparison.

  Eric, by his very nature, was overbearing. He wasn’t really sure how I would proceed, but he did try to exercise some of the privilege of his office. His instructions were a little stilted, but he meant well. For instance, when in response to my question about the passports he said he’d already raised the issue, he was a little miffed that I would bring it up, as though I was stepping on his toes. Eric was trying to figure out how to run an exfiltration, something he had never done before, and represent himself to Canada as an expert on the subject. He was also the channel between President Carter and Stansfield Turner, the director of central intelligence. It was like a tripod: the president, the DCI, and the Canadians. Eric’s job was to maintain a delicate balance between the policy makers and the clandestine elements in the field. I didn’t envy him.

  The winter sky was gray and there were traces of snow on the ground as our plane touched down in Ottawa. The city itself struck me as being a little dingy, but the parliament buildings gave a certain air of elegance to what was essentially a small town.

  We checked into the Lord Elgin Hotel, a stately, gothic pile of stones in the middle of Ottawa close to most government offices. It was decorated with photographs, paintings, and flower arrangements full of tulips, an incongruous contrast in the middle of the dark winter days of Canada.

  Just in case he needed a reminder that the life of a real spy was nothing like what we see in the movies, the airline had lost Joe’s luggage. And with only the clothes on his back, he was forced to borrow one of my ski sweaters, which he would wear for the next ten days while he remained in the Canadian capital. Strangely, it would not be the only article of clothing that I would lose on this operation.

  The following day, Joe and I headed over to the U.S. embassy for our first meeting with members of the CIA’s Canadian offices. The CIA chief in Ottawa, a tall, slim, middle-aged man, cheerfully went over the meetings they had set up for us that day.

  At the first meeting later that morning, Joe and I got right to the point. We sat down across the table from a slight but impeccably dressed middle-aged man. I’ll call him “Lon Delgado.” He clasped his hands together and looked me straight in the eye.

  “What can I do for you?” he asked.

  “We’re here, first of all, to thank you for all that Canada has done for America on this matter,” I replied. “Second, as you might guess, we’re here with our hat in hand, asking for more favors. And so we apologize for that. We feel fortunate that our relations, government to government, are so beneficial.”

  I paused, measuring my words. “What do you think the prospects would be for allowing us to use Canadian passports to provide cover for our six diplomats?” There it was, out in the open. The thing we wanted most and thought would be the hardest to negotiate. I realized that we were asking for the Canadians to make an exception to their own passport law. My research had told me that the only way to do this was by a special “order–in–council,” requiring the consent of Parliament.

  Mr. Delgado opened a file in front of him and extracted a piece of paper with a large red wax seal on it. He set it aside and softened his demeanor while he responded. “I think we’ve already done that,” he said.

  We were stunned. I tried to imagine what it would take for a representative of a foreign government to come to Washington and ask the U.S. Congress to pass an exception to our own passport law. It was no minor matter.

  What I didn’t know was that the Canadians had been working on the problem of the passports for quite some time. From the day that the houseguests had come under their care, I think the Canadians realized the logic of allowing them to use Canadian documentation. I would later learn that the order–in–council had been passed during a rump session of Parliament, when Flora MacDonald, working in concert with Prime Minister Joe Clark, had maneuvered the issue in such a way that it could be passed without debate. This was because only a few cabinet ministers knew anything about the houseguests to begin with and the need for secrecy was paramount.

  At that point I decided to press our luck, asking Delgado if we could have six spares for the six houseguests to give us a redundant capability for the operation, as well as two additional passports for use by CIA “escorts.” Lon agreed to get us an extra set for the houseguests, but rebuffed our latter request. The exception to the passport law had been made for refugees, not professional intelligence officers. “Sorry,” he said, “but you’ll have to get your own.”

  There is an understandin
g among intelligence services that there is no such thing as a “friendly” service. At this time in history Canada did not admit to even having a secret intelligence service. But this man was probably very close to representing that capability. And it certainly felt friendly. Mr. Delgado continued, “Do you have a list of names to be used for the passports?” he asked. “And by the way, we are going to need photographs as well.”

  Without hesitation Joe reached into his briefcase and brought out an envelope, the contents of which were the list of names that he had already prepared as aliases for the six. Accompanying each name was a passport-sized photograph. Along the vertical margin on each photo we had forged the alias names in the handwriting of each of the six houseguests. This was the way it should be in the Canadian passport.

  Mr. Delgado reviewed the material very quickly. He commented that the photographs looked good but that one of the names we’d chosen had a slightly Semitic sound to it—not a good idea in a Muslim nation. He thought we should fix it and Joe suggested a new name. Delgado nodded in the affirmative and Joe produced another clean photograph of Kathy Stafford, handing it to me. “You’re an artist-validator, Tony,” he said.

  Using a technique I’d learned from my early days in the bullpen, I positioned the photo on the corner of Delgado’s desk and signed Kathy’s new name in her handwriting.

  Joe and I left the meeting encouraged. The first phase of our plan was coming together with much less effort than we had ever imagined. We had a commitment for six Canadian passports for our subjects plus a set of duplicates, which would give us an option for a fallback plan if we needed it.