‘Argo’ spy created ruse to smuggle US envoys out of Iran during hostage crisis
Tony Mendez, who has died aged 78, was a master of forgery and disguise for the CIA. Using techniques from magicians, movie makeup artists and even the television show Mission: Impossible, he changed one person into another, transforming agents into characters with backstories, costumes and documents that helped them evade detection and avoid capture in foreign countries.
His greatest triumph hinged on a bogus scifi film, a sham production office in Los Angeles and a fake location-scouting expedition to Iran. Disguising himself as an Irish film-maker, Mendez successfully smuggled six
State Department employees out of Tehran during the
1979-81 Iran hostage crisis, passing them off as a Canadian movie crew in a daring mission that formed the basis of the Oscar-winning movie Argo.
A painter of landscapes and outdoor scenes, Mendez was working as a draughtsman when he was recruited by the CIA in 1965, and ran an art studio after he retired. ‘‘I’ve always considered myself to be an artist first,’’ he said, looking back on his career, ‘‘and for 25 years I was a pretty good spy.’’
After stints in Laos, India and the Soviet Union, he was the CIA’s chief of disguise when the US embassy in Tehran was seized by a militant student group on November 4, 1979. Sixty-six Americans, including six CIA officers, were taken hostage, while six other US diplomats evaded capture and took shelter in the homes of two Canadian diplomats.
In the 444 days that followed, the hostage crisis drew unflagging news coverage, crippled Jimmy Carter’s presidency and resulted in the deaths of eight service members during a failed rescue mission in the Iranian desert. Mendez completed his rescue on January 28, 1980, but it took a further year before the last 52 hostages were released, on the day of Ronald Reagan’s inauguration.
The idea for the ‘‘Canadian caper’’, as it came to be known, was born out of desperation. After an earlier plan was rejected by the White House, efforts shifted to rescuing the six Canadian ‘‘house guests’’, as the US diplomats were euphemistically called. Their existence was kept hidden from the public in an effort to protect them from the Iranians.
It was decided to get them out by air – but how? Schemes centred on teachers, crop inspectors and oil technicians all seemed flawed. So Mendez decided to ‘‘reverse the rules and create a distraction’’. ‘‘A cover should be bland, as uninteresting as possible, so the casual observer, or the not-so-casual immigration official, doesn’t probe too deeply,’’ he wrote in a 1999 memoir, Master of Disguise. His solution, the film gambit, was the opposite of bland.
Mendez called his friend John Chambers, a makeup artist who had won an honorary Oscar for his work on Planet of the Apes, gave Spock his pointy ears and had assisted the CIA on old assignments. With another makeup artist, Bob Sidell, who later worked on E.T., they opened a production office in Los Angeles; created business cards for their fictional company; and developed backstories and career histories for the six escapees.
Mendez and Chambers named their purported sci-fi film Argo, for the raunchy punchline to a knock-knock joke and in a sly nod to the mythical ship that Jason used to retrieve the Golden Fleece. Advertisements in Variety and the Hollywood Reporter promoted the film as a ‘‘cosmic conflagration’’.
With a Canadian passport in hand, Mendez flew to Tehran under the name Kevin Costa Harkins. He spent a few days preparing the six diplomats, teaching them their new identities – including as a cameraman and set designer – and preparing them for potential interrogations at the airport.
Before dawn on January 28, they headed to Tehran Mehrabad International Airport for an early Swissair flight to Zurich. After being delayed for an hour because of a mechanical problem, the flight took off and cleared Iranian airspace, leading Mendez to celebrate by ordering a bloody mary and delivering a toast: ‘‘We’re home free.’’
The diplomats returned to a heroes’ welcome in the US. Mendez met Carter in the Oval Office and received the Intelligence Star, one of the CIA’s highest honours. But his and the CIA’s role in the rescue operation was concealed until 1997, when Mendez was honoured as one of 50 ‘‘trailblazers’’ who shaped the agency’s first 50 years.
Antonio Joseph Mendez was born in Eureka, Nevada, to a mixed-heritage family (Italian, Mexican, Welsh) that he later credited with helping him blend in around the world. He was an illustrator at Martin Marietta, drawing parts for an intercontinental ballistic missile, when he saw a helpwanted ad in a newspaper: ‘‘Artists to Work Overseas – US Navy Civilians’’. Consumed by wanderlust, he went to the interview and was handed a CIA recruitment guide.
Mendez retired in 1990 with a rank equivalent to that of a two-star general. Survivors include his second wife, Jonna, a fellow CIA chief of disguise; two children from his first marriage, and one from his second. –
‘‘I’ve always considered myself to be an artist first, and for 25 years I was a pretty good spy.’’