I waited outside, deciding to take a walk in order to avoid looking suspicious. It was still dark and I headed to the far end of the parking lot to watch the sunrise. It also helped to calm my nerves. By the time I returned to the terminal, taxis and vans were beginning to arrive, disgorging their passengers onto the sidewalk. I spotted RAPTOR and Hal getting out of a cab and casually walked over. I shook RAPTOR’s hand and flashed a warm smile, hoping the act would help to put him at ease. His hand was cool and moist and his grip lifeless. He forced a smile from behind the disguise. He looked to me like a man on his way to the gallows, and I began to worry he might fold before he even got to the check–in counter. I grabbed his bag and said good-bye to Hal, whose job would be to return to the safe site and wait for the call from Andrew.
We entered the terminal and approached customs, and I was pleased to see that RAPTOR’s disguise aroused not even the slightest bit of suspicion among the amateurish revolutionary customs agents who’d been told to look for wealthy Iranians trying to smuggle goods out of the country.
After the check–in counter, I stayed with RAPTOR as far as the immigration controls, where the Revolutionary Guard clerk stamped his passport and handed it back to him. It was now time to say good-bye, but as I once more shook his hand, I sensed that something was wrong. I saw that the haunted look had returned to his eyes, and so rather than leave, I decided to stick around the airport and wait until his flight had departed.
I was sitting in the waiting area twenty minutes later when I caught sight of Andrew through the glass partition. He was clearly agitated by something and he motioned me over. He explained that the Swissair flight had been called but there was no sign of RAPTOR anywhere. “I saw him enter the departure lounge,” Andrew said, “but after that he disappeared.”
My mind raced. Where could he be? I told Andrew to go back and board the flight; then I returned to the Swissair desk. I explained to the agent that I had a serious problem. “My uncle is boarding your flight to Zurich but I’m afraid that I forgot to give him his heart medication. Can you escort me through immigration so I can find him and make sure he knows how to take it? You see, he’s a very old man.”
The Swissair clerk nodded sympathetically and quickly escorted me through security and into the departure lounge, where he turned me loose.
I scanned the wide hall, looking for any sign of RAPTOR. He had to be here somewhere. My eyes fell on the door to the men’s bathroom.
My shoes echoed on the tile floor as I entered. The bathroom appeared to be empty, but I noticed that one of the stall doors was closed. I walked over.
“Mr. Kassim?” I whispered.
The stall door opened a crack and I saw one anxious eyeball glaring back at me.
“Come on, Mr. Kassim. You’ll miss your flight.”
The door opened further and I could see that RAPTOR was shocked to see me—both his eyes were now wide open like a startled animal’s.
“How did you get in here?” he stammered.
Without replying, I grabbed him by the elbow and hustled him out of the bathroom. As we hurried across the departure lounge and toward the gate, a few Revolutionary Guards gave us sideways glances but otherwise didn’t seem to care. RAPTOR had been paralyzed with fear but my sudden appearance had snapped him back.
Five minutes later I learned from the Swissair clerk that the flight was on its way to Zurich, and it was up to me to call Hal and let him know that RAPTOR had gotten out. That afternoon we received a return cable from Andrew stating that RAPTOR was safe. He also relayed a funny story. While they had been on the flight, RAPTOR had removed his fake mole and handed it to Andrew as a souvenir.
The RAPTOR operation was on my mind as I headed over to the State Department to find out about the status of the exfiltration plan to rescue the houseguests. The State Department memo had said they were planning on taking the lead, but I was concerned about their ability to pull it off. I knew there were several challenges to this case that might not seem important to the uninitiated. Infiltrating and exfiltrating people into and out of hostile areas is one of the most dangerous jobs in the spy business. It’s also one of the full-time concerns of OTS, which has worked on these kinds of operations since the OSS days. The “authentication” of operations officers and their agents by providing them with personal documentation and disguise, cover legends and supporting data, “pocket litter” and so forth, is a fundamental element in any clandestine operation. At OTS, personal documentation and disguise specialists, graphic artists, and other specialists spend hundreds of hours preparing materials, tailoring the cover legends, and coordinating the plan. If valuable human assets can no longer remain in place, then it is the official policy of the CIA to bring them in from the cold.
When it came to the houseguests, I could see that this was going to be a tough nut to crack. RAPTOR had been a highly trained operative and still he had wilted under the pressure. With the six Americans we were basically dealing with untrained amateurs who were hiding out in a city seething with hatred for westerners. It would take all the resources we had to figure this one out.
The Department of State building at Twenty-third and C Street in downtown Washington, D.C., is massive. It was located just across the street from our own Foggy Bottom offices, so close in fact that sometimes we would eat lunch in their huge cafeteria.
The architecture of the State Department headquarters, both inside and out, was designed to be modern and sleek but had faded rather quickly into a series of bland rectangles with no character.
We were meeting with an undersecretary of state, a dignified woman who was very much in charge. She had a spacious office on the seventh floor. Present at the meeting, in addition to a young documents officer and myself, were two of her assistants, a member of CIA’s cover staff, and a CIA Near East Division case officer who thought he was running the meeting. The case officer began by describing how he would plan and execute the exfiltration of the six State Department diplomats.
The undersecretary brought him up short. “Excuse me,” she said, “but we haven’t yet assigned the responsibility to you. We understand you’re here to give advice, not to take charge. I assure you that since these are our diplomats, the department has the utmost concern with how we should comport ourselves in effecting their rescue.”
Our man sat down and one of the undersecretary’s aides took the floor. He described what they thought was the way to go about mounting such an operation. They seemed to favor a plan to bring out the six incrementally, effectively running three or more operations in tandem, not necessarily coming out through Tehran’s Mehrabad Airport. At this point I interrupted.
“Excuse me,” I began, “but my experience tells me that when we are managing a complex operation for more than one or two people, it’s best to consolidate your risk, put everyone together under an appropriate cover, and take the shortest and quickest route out. It’s one of the principles of guerrilla warfare: choose the time and place for action and overwhelm their senses.”
I looked around the room and saw that I had everybody’s attention.
“Exfiltrations are like abortions,” I said. “You don’t need one unless something’s gone wrong. If you need one, don’t try to do it yourself. We can give you a nice, clean job.”
The undersecretary looked at me, startled, obviously appalled. Then, with a wry smile, she said, “Well, you do have a way with words, Mr. Mendez. I think maybe we can get on with it, and with you, after all.”
I had begun honing my skills in exfiltration in the early 1970s. At the time, the Soviets were moving out into the third world and as a result we were getting more and more “walk-ins.” A walk–in is just that: a defector who shows up at a U.S. embassy or otherwise presents himself to an official American entity and either asks for asylum or has valuable information that he wants to share. Any good case officer needs to know how to handle a walk–in, as it’s the bread and butter of the spy business. Screw up a walk–in and you’re done—
simple as that.
So many Soviet personnel were going missing without a trace during this period that the KGB thought we must have been kidnapping them. In retaliation, there was even talk at the highest levels of the KGB about a program to kidnap American officials, but ultimately Yuri Andropov, the head of the KGB, nixed the idea.
My first exfiltration involved a high-level KGB officer code-named NESTOR, who was posted to a Soviet embassy in a densely populated capital of the Asian subcontinent. At the time, I was stationed in Okinawa and running the twenty-five-man graphics branch when a cable arrived marked IMMEDIATE, asking for an artist-validator. The cable had been sent by a CIA officer I’ll call “Jacob Jordan.” He and I had first worked together on a job in Hong Kong in 1968, when I’d been asked to help forge the travel documents for a top Chinese asset.
Jacob, a senior OTS disguise and documents officer for Asia, was already a legend when I started working with him. Despite being from the Midwest, Jacob had an appearance and demeanor more Savile Row than Sears Roebuck. He wore custom-made shoes and expensive suits and in every way affected the air of a British gentleman. In all the time I spent with him, I never once saw him break character. A gifted linguist, he spoke fluent Mandarin Chinese, Korean, and Japanese. After joining the CIA’s Technical Services Division (the precursor to OTS), Jacob’s first posting was to Shanghai in 1949. By the time China had fallen into the hands of the communist Red Army, he was considered the leading American expert on the region.
Less than twenty-four hours after receiving Jacob’s cable, I found myself, along with a documents officer, “David,” holed up in a tiny vaultlike room in a Southwest Asian seaport. The two of us had flown into the country posing as tourists, and after checking into our hotel, had been picked up at a prearranged site by a local CIA officer, “Mac,” and driven through back alleys to this secure location. The site was in a commercial office building that was a front for nonofficial contacts. The building stood amid a sea of similar office buildings, so it was no problem for us to blend in with the myriad British and American businessmen who plied their trade in this busy port.
Once we were inside, Mac introduced us to two more local CIA officers, “Raymond” and “Jane,” who had been working around the clock for the past few days.
The whole reason for our being there had been set off twelve days earlier when NESTOR had walked out of the Soviet embassy and contacted a local CIA officer, telling him that he wished to defect. After confirming that NESTOR was indeed who he said he was, the CIA officer had given him instructions on how to get in touch, then promised to help organize his escape. NESTOR, meanwhile, had gone underground for several days before arriving at the prearranged rendezvous where Jacob was waiting.
If we could get him out of the country, NESTOR would be considered a huge catch. Not only was he an officer in the KGB’s First Chief Directorate, the part concerned with foreign espionage, but he was also a member of a group that the CIA had dubbed the “Junior KGB.” Under an alias, NESTOR had spent several years attending schools in England and the United States while posing as the son of Soviet officials legitimately stationed there—so he spoke fluent English with both a British and an American accent. After that, he had attended several KGB institutes in preparation for being stationed in Asia. As a result, not only could he provide invaluable intelligence on the KGB’s operations in Central and Southeast Asia, but as an added bonus he could also help identify other “juniors” who were being trained overseas.
As expected, NESTOR’s disappearance had triggered an avalanche of activity on the part of the KGB and the local Special Branch (SB). Surveillance around Western embassies and border crossings increased dramatically, while the KGB and SB flooded the airport, bus depots, and railway stations with agents. In addition, newspapers across the country ran notices about a missing Soviet attaché, and included a good photo of NESTOR to help anyone identify him. Being a Moscow-trained case officer, NESTOR had been able to avoid pursuit by shaving his head and disguising himself as one of the locals. But in order to get him past the thick security network arrayed against us, we would have to be at the top of our game.
We were especially worried about the security controls at the airport. Because of the manhunt going on, the airlines were requiring that all passengers reconfirm their flight in person before leaving the country. Somehow we’d have to come up with a way to overcome this final obstacle. But we’d need to move fast. We had only three days until it was time to launch.
When it comes to exfiltrations, the uninitiated almost always think about “black options,” usually involving a nighttime helicopter pickup or a desperate border crossing in a car involving hidden compartments and an American spy smooth talking his way out of danger. The problem inherent in most of these scenarios is that if anything goes wrong, then there is no chance for plausible deniability. The American flag is going to be draped all over that helicopter or car if the plan falls apart. In certain situations, you have no choice—the only options available are black and you take your chances.
In most situations, however, a quasi-legal departure on a commercial flight is usually the simplest and most effective means of getting an asset out of the country. Jacob would provide the disguise for NESTOR, while David and I would create two sets of alias documents for him to use.
As I sat down to look at the operational plan for NESTOR, I could see immediately that there was no shortage of ideas about what to do back at headquarters. Raymond had brought over a thick stack of cables, each offering a different opinion. It seemed that everyone was piling on, something I would come to call the “committee effect.”
Later, after a few days of twisting in the wind, Jacob came to a decision. He had been sleeping out at the safe site with NESTOR, prepping him for his disguise, and he knew the situation better than anyone. NESTOR was getting anxious, and as Jacob read through the cable traffic he shook his head in amazement. “Okay,” he said when he was finished. “Here is what we are going to do.” As I listened to Jacob lay it out, I realized I was learning a valuable lesson, one that I would take with me for the rest of my career: never preempt the man in the field. In this case Jacob knew that NESTOR spoke fluent German and could easily carry off the persona of a German businessman, headquarters reservations be damned. More important, since NESTOR was beginning to lose his nerve, Jacob informed us that he was going to take him through the airport “trunk to tail,” meaning that he was going to be physically present in the airport to run interference in case anything went wrong. It was a risky move as NESTOR might compromise Jacob, but it would also allow him to address the problem of NESTOR’s having to physically reconfirm his reservation, since Jacob could do it for him.
Once the cover had been chosen, Jacob got to work on NESTOR’s disguise, transforming the short and stocky Russian into a distinguished German businessman. Using a camera that I had provided, he snapped a few photos in various poses and lighting setups, allowing David and me to put together a full complement of alias documents that would give the impression of a man at different stages of his life.
On the night of the exfiltration, my job was to watch from the rooftop departure lounge to see if Jacob and NESTOR had made it onto the plane. We had chosen a TWA flight that was set to depart at one in the morning. The flight was an hour late, however, and when it did finally arrive, the “smit”—a thick haze that hugs the ground composed of equal parts smoke and burning shit—was so dense that I could barely make out the silhouettes of the passengers as they made their way out onto the tarmac. When I didn’t see Jacob or NESTOR among the embarking passengers, I became nervous. I was to learn later that everything inside had gone according to plan until NESTOR had arrived at the customs counter, where a turbaned official had promptly taken his passport and disappeared into a small room. A few minutes later the official returned followed by a European who was actually one of NESTOR’s KGB colleagues. The two men stared at each other for a few long seconds before NESTOR, caught up in his p
ersona, lit a Cuban cigar that Jacob had furnished him and exhaled a thick cloud of smoke in the direction of the KGB officer. The man continued to study NESTOR, but finally waved him through. The cigar had been the final piece that had fooled his ex–colleague.
A few minutes later I was able to see Jacob and NESTOR boarding the plane along with the remaining passengers.
When the plane finally took off for Athens a little before three in the morning, it fell to me to call Raymond and let him know that the operation had been a success. As I fumbled for a coin at the public pay phone, my body sagged from the heat and stress of the last three days. I had a sudden flash of panic that the phone wouldn’t work, something that would haunt me for many years. But after dialing I heard it ring and then the unmistakable click as Raymond picked up the other line. As per our prearranged code to indicate that NESTOR had gotten out, I asked, “Is Suzy there?”
Playing along, Raymond shouted, “No!” and slammed down the phone.
When I finally made it back to my hotel, I was exhausted but couldn’t sleep as the gravity of what we had accomplished sank in. Not only had we just pulled off one of the most important exfiltrations in the history of the Agency, but in my mind, we had also established a sort of framework by which all other exfiltrations would be run.
Every intelligence agency is ultimately judged on its ability to successfully rescue people and bring them out of harm’s way, which is essentially what an exfiltration is. The key to doing this is readiness, and in the wake of NESTOR, the CIA began looking at ways we could improve our capabilities. One of the main lessons I had learned is that exfiltrations are almost ninety percent logistics—just making sure everything is lined up as it needs to be. Anticipating each one of those logistical problems can really mean the difference between success and failure. This need for readiness had already been highlighted in an earlier exfiltration involving Stalin’s daughter, Svetlana, who had decided to defect while on a trip to India in 1967. She had been married to a man from India, and when he died, she had brought his ashes back to the country. Normally when Soviet citizens traveled, they were required to leave their passports at the local embassy. But she had convinced the Russian official that she was going to be leaving early the following morning and asked to have her passport so she could go without having to wait. After he handed it over, similar to NESTOR, Svetlana then left the Soviet embassy and walked straight over to ours. This was at midnight and the case officer sent an immediate cable to Washington asking for guidance. The response from headquarters was something to the effect that if Stalin had had a daughter, she would never have married an Indian. The case officer was now on the spot. Here was the one walk–in that could define the rest of his career. If it really was Stalin’s daughter, then by morning the embassy was going to be surrounded and there’d be little chance of getting her out. Luckily, she had brought her documents along with her, which made things easier. Deciding that he couldn’t take the chance, the officer put her on a plane and flew her out of the country in the early hours of the morning, before a proper search could be organized. She eventually made it into the refugee channels in Europe. As it turned out, she was telling the truth.
Argo: How the CIA and Hollywood Pulled Off the Most Audacious Rescue in History Page 11