Unsung heroine handled secret messages during ‘Canadian Caper’
Mary O’Flaherty knew every secret of the “Canadian Caper,” the daring, cloak-and-dagger plan to smuggle six U.S. citizens to safety after the 1979 Iranian revolution.
As the communications officer for Canada’s embassy in Tehran, O’Flaherty was privy to the top secret messages between Ambassador Ken Taylor and the highest levels in Ottawa. She would have known the details of the bold CIA plan to sneak out the Canadians’ “house guests,” which was told — somewhat inaccurately — in the Oscar-winning film Argo.
But only O’Flaherty’s closest friends knew the key role she played in the story of intrigue that made headlines around the world. Even they didn’t know much.
“She was old school. Her lips were sealed,” said Heather Martin, a friend of 40 years and executor of O’Flaherty’s estate.
O’Flaherty died May 13 at age 92. Her obituary, published just this week, makes no mention of Iran or her top secret job as a diplomatic cryptographer.
To former diplomat Roger Lucy, O’Flaherty is “an unsung heroine.” O’Flaherty was one of the last four Canadians to leave Iran after the Americans escaped, along with Taylor, Lucy and a soldier, Warrant Officer Claude Gauthier. She was one of five Canadians to receive the Order of Canada for their actions.
“In this day of modern communication, it’s hard to understand her role. It seems pretty stone age,” Lucy said. “It’s a pretty arcane science. In fact, most of us weren’t even allowed to know what they were doing.”
In 1980, a communications officer would have been given a typed or written message to put through an optical scanner and enter into an encryption machine using a onetime use coding tape. The message would be sent from the secure communication room in the bowels of the embassy, either by telex or, if the telex line was down, by radio.
The process was laborious and communications officers were called upon around the clock and expected to be ready to work within 30 minutes, said John Kruithof, a retired communications officer and friend of O’Flaherty’s. Secrecy and discretion was paramount, he said.
Kruithof was working in Ottawa during the hostage crisis and knew the danger the Canadians were in. If word leaked that Americans were being sheltered, mobs would have almost certainly attacked Canadian embassy staff, he said.
“That’s what makes Mary a hero. She performed under extremely dangerous circumstances where you didn’t know, if something hit the fan, whether you’d survive the day or not.”
Lucy and O’Flaherty were at the embassy on Jan. 28, 1980 when the call came from Taylor that the Americans’ plane was “wheels up” and on its way to Switzerland. Gauthier smashed the encryption machine. The four remaining Canadians boarded a plane for Copenhagen.
Mary Catherine O’Flaherty was born in St. John’s, N.L., on Feb. 10, 1926. In 1951, she began work in communicationswith the Department of National Defence, then transferred to External Affairs in 1961. She never turned down a posting and also served in Islamabad, Canberra, New York, Moscow and Ottawa.
She never married. Neither her friends nor her closest living relative, a second cousin in St. John’s, know much of her background. She was already working as a communicator in New York when Kruithof replaced her at the start of his career in 1963.
“If you look at her picture you can almost see that she was an enigma,” Kruithof said. “That was Mary.”
Kathleen Stafford and her husband, Joseph, were among the six Americans saved by the Canadian Caper. Stafford said O’Flaherty gave her some of her clothes as part of the elaborate cover story for the escape, which included them being given false Canadian identities and passports. Stafford carried a suitcase stuffed with O’Flaherty’s clothes to the Tehran airport.
“We couldn’t just go to the airport empty-handed,” Stafford said. “She and the other Canadians contributed everything for us so we wouldn’t have anything American. It all had to be Canadian brands.”
O’Flaherty lived in Ottawa after her retirement. In recent years, she suffered from dementia and was living in a nursing home when she died. She was cremated and her ashes are to be interred in Newfoundland at a later date.