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

by Antonio Mendez

  “Who the heck is that?” everyone wondered.

  The voice, they would learn, belonged to Lee Schatz, a lanky northwesterner with a handlebar mustache and a mischievous grin, who was an agricultural attaché working for the Department of Agriculture. Schatz worked in a commercial building about a block and a half down the street from the embassy.

  Originally from northern Idaho, Schatz had joined the U.S. Department of Agriculture after obtaining his master’s in agricultural economics from the University of Idaho in 1974. He spent the next several years working at the department in D.C., until in the spring of 1978 he got his first overseas posting to New Delhi. He enjoyed the work, which allowed him to travel. It was supposed to be a two-year posting, but after spending just three months in the country he was offered a post in Tehran, where he’d be in charge of the office. He was only thirty-one years old at the time and the opportunity seemed too good to pass up. Iran had a huge agricultural market for U.S. goods, and he would be right in the thick of it. As with the other Americans, by the time he arrived, however, the country was in the middle of its political spiral. It had gotten so bad that the minister of agriculture refused to allow him to travel outside Tehran to do inspections because he couldn’t guarantee his safety.

  As the agricultural attaché, Schatz usually attended the morning meeting in the chancery. Then, on his way back, he would play a game with one of his secretaries, telling her he had “forgotten” the mail so she could go over and get it and visit with some of her friends.

  On November 4, as he was on his way back from the embassy to his office just down the street, he was forced to wait as a huge demonstration passed by in front of the embassy’s main gate. His office was on the second floor, overlooking the embassy’s motor pool. After telling his secretary to go get the mail, he sat down at his desk and was surprised a few minutes later when he happened to look up and see her running back across the street toward the building. Then he saw why: a virtual tsunami of Iranians was pouring over the walls and through the gate of the embassy. The assault had just begun.

  Alerted now, he stood by the window and watched. He had a small lunch-box radio with him, which immediately began to fill up with the frantic conversations of the day. Soon he heard Al Golacinski shouting, “Recall! Recall! All marines to Post One!”

  He was amazed by the coordination of the attack. He noticed how some of the militants would stop at strategic points where they could relay commands to one another in the absence of any radios or communication devices. He also noticed how, rather than being just a spontaneous rush toward the chancery, various groups broke off right away and headed in what appeared to be prearranged directions. He picked up his radio and reported what he saw. Everyone at the embassy had been assigned code names, and his was Palm Tree.

  At one point he paused to take lunch orders for his staff and sent his driver out to pick up the food. Later, while they were eating, Cecilia Lithander, a consular officer from the Swedish embassy upstairs, came in and told him the State Department was on the line and was trying to contact him.

  Before going, he told his staff to tell anyone who came looking for him that they had seen him leave. Then he wished them all good luck and walked out the door.

  Upstairs on the phone, the State Department asked for a running commentary on the assault. The Swedish embassy was on the fourth floor, and with a pair of binoculars he could see just about everything. He stayed on the phone late into the evening. By that time a crowd of nearly a million people had gathered in front of the embassy, clogging the road and sidewalks. The mood seemed festive, like a carnival. There were families, kids. People were chanting and cheering while vendors were milling through the crowd selling steamed beets.

  Back in Anders’s apartment, the group was getting antsy. Anders and Joe were trying to call the various apartments to see if anyone else had gotten out, when the line suddenly went dead. To make matters worse, the radio net was almost totally dominated by voices speaking Farsi. Palm Tree had long since disappeared. Then, a little after four thirty in the afternoon, they heard the remaining Americans holding out in the vault surrender. They were now on their own.

  Near seven o’clock, Lorraine’s Iranian husband showed up with some food, and everyone had dinner. Lorraine offered to take them all over to her place, but the Americans declined, not wanting to put her and her husband at further risk. (As it turned out, her husband would later be executed by the revolutionary government for something unrelated to the Americans.)

  Without a working phone, Anders decided to go upstairs to make some calls from his landlady’s phone. This made Mark even more nervous. A litany of potential scenarios played out in his head. It was rumored that the shah had had an extensive phone tapping operation going on, and nobody knew to what extent the Revolutionary Guard had co–opted it. Besides, were they really safe in Anders’s apartment? Most people in the neighborhood would probably know that an American lived in the building. Had somebody seen them enter and possibly called the militants? Mark had met a person working at the embassy who had lived in the apartment prior to Bob, so he knew that it had been in the embassy’s housing records for quite some time. He doubted the militants had had time to discover the housing records yet, but who could be certain?

  After one of his trips upstairs, Anders returned with some news. He’d been able to get through to Kathryn Koob, a forty-two-year-old devout Catholic who worked for the International Communication Agency (ICA), the branch of the Foreign Service concerned with cultural outreach. In Iran, she was the executive director of the Iran-America Society (IAS), a campuslike center with an auditorium, library, and classrooms located about two miles to the north of the U.S. embassy. Koob had explained to Anders that she and her deputy, Bill Royer, had been on the phone all day to the State Department, and if anyone wanted to they could come over and help to keep the line open. (If the line was dropped, there was no guarantee they could reestablish the connection to the State Department.)

  Delighted by the chance to connect with Koob, whom everyone called Kate, both the Lijeks and the Staffords agreed to go. At eleven p.m., Koob’s driver pulled up to Anders’s house in a tiny Citroën Deux Chevaux, and everyone piled in for the anxious twenty-minute trip across town. Anders had decided to stay behind and take the morning shift.

  On the morning of November 4, Koob had been in the middle of a staff meeting when an Iranian employee had interrupted to tell everybody that the embassy was under attack. Following the security protocol established by Golacinski, she didn’t call but instead waited by the phone. As late morning turned into afternoon, however, she began to get worried when no one bothered to contact her. Eventually, a little after one o’clock, she couldn’t wait any longer and called the general line. An Iranian voice came through the phone. “American embassy,” the voice said. She asked for the extension in the public affairs office. “Embassy occupied,” came the reply, followed by a click. Finally, after calling a different extension, she was able to reach somebody in the communications vault, who told her to call the State Department, which she did. She then spent the better part of the afternoon talking to the State Department on one line, while Royer stayed on the other line with the staffers in the vault, continuing to get updates.

  When the group got to the Iran-America Society a little before midnight, the Lijeks and Staffords took shifts manning the phones. They described their ordeal to State Department officials over and over. Anything to keep the line open.

  Mark remembers Joe inexplicably picking up another line at one point and calling the U.S. embassy to speak with one of the hostages. The voice on the other end of the line told him no one was available. “Well, are they being treated fairly?” Mark overheard Joe ask. The voice asked for his name. “My name is Joe Stafford,” he said, using his real name. Click. The person hung up. Mark shook his head in amazement.

  At one point during their time at the IAS they tried to get Koob and Royer to join the group and leave with them, bu
t Koob reasoned that, because they ran a cultural center, they should be safe.

  The Lijeks and Staffords left at six o’clock the following morning to avoid rush-hour traffic. Mark didn’t want to stay at his and Cora’s place because he felt their landlady was crazy. She was happy to take their American dollars but wouldn’t let them park their car in her compound for fear that somebody would attach a bomb to it and blow up the building. Koob’s driver just made a quick stop at the Lijeks’ apartment so Mark and Cora could get some clothes. Afterward they were all dropped off at the Staffords’, where they passed the morning getting cleaned up and taking a nap.

  Unbeknownst to the Americans, a major drama was now unfolding back at the IAS. Just hours after the couples’ departure, Koob and Royer had been back on the phones when a group of militants had arrived. An Iranian staffer was able to warn them, and Koob and Royer quickly walked out the back door and into one of the secretary’s cars. In a few minutes they were on the main road in front of the IAS heading for the nearby Goethe Institut, run by the Germans.

  They spent about an hour at the Goethe Institut, until they heard that the Iranians had left the IAS, so they returned and reestablished a connection with Washington. The German institute’s director had volunteered to shelter Koob and Royer indefinitely, but Koob had declined. An hour or so later, however, the militants returned to IAS, this time surrounding the building. Koob tried hiding in a women’s bathroom, but she was soon captured and taken to the embassy, along with Royer and an American secretary who had spent the first night hiding out at the Bijon apartments.

  The first person to hear about their capture was Vic Tomseth, who had been on the phone with Koob when the militants returned.

  Tomseth, along with Bruce Laingen and Mike Howland, were still at the foreign ministry trying to do everything they could to resolve the crisis. They were also aware that several Americans had gotten out and were on the loose in Tehran. Tomseth had called the consulate from the foreign ministry during the assault and given the staffers there the phone number where he and Laingen could be reached. In fact, one of the first calls that Joe Stafford had made from Anders’s apartment was to Tomseth. In the wake of Koob’s capture, Tomseth realized that something had to be done about the Lijeks, the Staffords, and Bob Anders. It was clear now that the Iranians were hunting down the Americans and it was only a matter of time before they located the five of them. Realizing that time was of the essence, he set to work on the problem immediately.

  Later that morning, the Lijeks and Staffords were startled by the sound of the telephone ringing, but happy when they heard Vic Tomseth’s voice on the other end. Tomseth had called the British chargé d’affaires and had some good news. The British had agreed to let the Americans stay at their residential compound known as Gholhak Gardens. A sense of relief washed over everyone. “They’ll be over to pick you up in an hour or so,” Tomseth explained. Because Anders still didn’t have a working phone, Mark used Joe’s lunch-box radio to let Anders know that a car would be coming over shortly to pick him up.

  Everyone packed what clothes they had and waited. When the scheduled pickup time came and went without any word from Tomseth or the British, the Lijeks and Staffords began to get nervous. Had something gone wrong? Were the militants on their way instead? Finally, at about five o’clock, Joe called the British embassy only to find out that they were in the midst of their own crisis. “They’re coming over the walls!” the chargé d’affaires exclaimed.

  The promised car finally arrived at six o’clock, and the Lijeks, along with Joe, were driven over to the residential compound. Kathy, meanwhile, went in a second car to pick up Anders. Anders had spent a fitful night within earshot of the cheering crowds outside the embassy. Normally a relaxed and easygoing type, he found his nerves were beginning to fray. When Mark had told him that a car would be coming to pick him up, he wondered whether it was a trap. Did Mark have a gun to his head? When he recognized one of his colleagues from the British embassy pull up, he understood immediately why Mark hadn’t told him over the radio who would be picking him up. Like the others, Anders was relieved to be moving to a place that was across town and away from the embassy.

  The drive was nerve-racking for everyone. The traffic was terrible and often the car moved along at a snail’s pace. Inexplicably, Mark was still wearing Anders’s neon yellow sweater, which suddenly felt like a bull’s–eye. At every traffic stop, he was conscious of the stares of the nearby motorists. Each minute made it a greater struggle to remain calm.

  Their arrival at the residential compound unleashed a flood of relief. The British were kind hosts, and offered them a house of their own, fed them a warm meal, even prepared cocktails. As a precaution they were told not to turn on any lights and if possible to stay away from the windows. They were also warned about the groundskeeper, who was a member of a local komiteh and an ardent supporter of the revolution. Despite these concerns, that night they slept soundly, for the first time feeling secure to be in the care of the British government.

  Lee Schatz, for his part, had spent the night in the Swedish embassy, using the Swedish flag as a blanket to keep warm. The morning of November 5 he had resumed his post at the window, watching and reporting. He’d had some difficulty getting a direct line to Washington, but by late morning he was able to tell them that a car had just pulled up to the embassy and dozens of rifles and machine guns were being unloaded from its trunk. To Schatz it appeared as if a second group was moving in to take over. He had no idea what their agenda was.

  Later that afternoon it was decided that, for his own safety and perhaps that of the Swedes as well, he should leave. He was taken in the ambassador’s car over to the house of Cecilia Lithander, the Swedish consular officer who had first told him about the phone call. Her house was located in a tranquil neighborhood in northern Tehran, and when Schatz got there he couldn’t believe he was in the same city where the embassy attack had taken place. Later that evening he and Cecilia went out for a stroll to the local market. All in all, it was a nice evening.

  On the morning of Tuesday, November 6, the Americans at Gholhak Gardens awoke feeling better about their prospects. The grounds were nice, the house spacious, and knowing they had the protection of the British government gave them peace of mind. They had heard from an English diplomat that Prime Minister Bazargan had just resigned, and it was beginning to dawn on them that the crisis was likely going to escalate. Knowing they had found a relatively secure place to hide out, however, mollified their concerns. Of course, they were worried for their colleagues down at the embassy, but at this point word had yet to reach them about how poorly the hostages were being treated. Being diplomats, they assumed that the Iranian government would eventually figure things out and free the hostages. Beyond that, they realized there was little they could do. They made a hearty breakfast and settled in to what they hoped would be a tranquil existence amid the chaos that was unfolding around them.

  It didn’t last long. A little after noon, Tomseth called to tell them that they would have to move. As it turned out, their relaxing night had nearly been a disaster and they didn’t even know it. After the British embassy had been attacked, a second crowd had shown up at Gholhak Gardens. The guard told the crowd that everyone was down at the embassy so there was no one left to capture. It was simple luck that they believed him, and there was no guarantee they wouldn’t come back. And the British no longer felt they could keep the Americans safe. (Khomeini eventually ordered the attackers out of the British embassy.) Tomseth received a call from the British chargé d’affaires, who told him that the presence of the Americans was too dangerous for his own people and so they had to move.

  It was an immense letdown for everyone. After all their efforts, they were now back to square one. Tomseth hadn’t revealed to them that the crowd of Iranians had shown up at Gholhak Gardens the night before, so to the Americans it just felt like they were being kicked out.

  At the foreign ministry, meanwhile, thin
gs had gone from bad to worse for Laingen, Tomseth, and Howland, who in the wake of the Bazargan resignation felt less like guests and more and more like prisoners. With no living quarters in the ministry, the three spent their time cloistered in the building’s diplomatic reception area, a ballroomlike space filled with Czech chandeliers, Persian carpets, and easy chairs. They spent their time watching TV, listening to the radio, reading newspapers and magazines, and doing laundry, which they hung from the chandeliers to dry. Occasionally an Iranian servant would bring in tea. On the morning of November 6, they were told by the chief of protocol, Ali Shokouhian, an old-school Iranian diplomat who sympathized with the Americans’ plight, that they should be careful not to make too many local calls. Tomseth had suspected that their phone conversations were possibly being monitored from the beginning, and Shokouhian’s warning confirmed his suspicions. From now on they would have to be careful about whom they called, which would complicate things immensely for his communication with the escaped Americans.

  Tomseth, however, hit upon an ingenious solution. Thanks to a previous posting, Tomseth could speak Thai, a language he was pretty sure the Iranians wouldn’t be able to understand. It just so happened that Kathryn Koob’s cook, Somchai “Sam” Sriweawnetr, was a Thai national. Speaking in Thai, he called Sam and the two hatched a plan. Sam’s wife worked for John Graves, the embassy’s senior public affairs officer who had been captured in the early minutes of the assault. Graves’s house was in a relatively quiet part of northern Tehran, far from the embassy, and Sam thought it might be a good place for them to hide out. At the minimum, Tomseth reasoned, Sam and his wife would be there to help look after the fugitive Americans, which would be a big help.

  When the Lijeks, Staffords, and Bob Anders heard about this solution, they were far from thrilled. Once again they would be going back to a house belonging to an American embassy employee. To Mark, it seemed only logical that it wouldn’t be long before the militants started searching the houses of the Americans for fugitives or other contraband that could be used as evidence for spying. And yet they had no other choice but to go.