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

by Antonio Mendez

  I was in my office later that day when Matt, deputy chief of OTS operations, came in. He was dropping by to check on our progress. Matt had seen my cable and so knew about the idea for the Hollywood location scouting party, but now it was time to make it a reality. “If anyone checks, we need the foundation to be there,” I said.

  “How are you going to make it happen?”

  The best kind of backstopped stories are those where you could go into the city or town where the person’s alias documents say he or she is from, then to the street and finally the house, where inside on the mantelpiece you would see a photo of the person alongside his or her supposed spouse or family. That was the level of backstopping I was proposing now.

  “Hollywood is a town that runs on image,” I said. “I want to get an office, get it staffed, do as much as we can.” Since the houseguests were going to be pretending to be members of a location scouting party, we would need to create a production company and a film for them to be working on. Since I knew the lay of the land, it only made sense that I would be the one to fly out there and get it done. I told him I planned to ask for an advance of funds from the budget and finance office for ten thousand dollars to cover our expenses.

  Matt thought about it for a second. He knew we were taking a chance because we hadn’t yet gotten consensus approval for the Hollywood option, but the risk was minimal compared to the payoff. If we ended up also using this cover to rescue the hostages down at the embassy, then laying the groundwork now seemed like the smart thing to do.

  His face brightened and he shook his head. “Only you could think of something like that,” he said. “I like it.”

  We then began discussing the logistics of the exfiltration. Up until this point I had yet to assign the team of officers who would be infiltrating Iran to link up with the houseguests. “Who’d you have in mind?” he asked.

  I think it’s safe to say that from the beginning I was convinced that I should lead the team. Technically, as the chief of the authentication branch, I was a manager and too senior to be out in the field. Further, by the nature of my job I knew too much about the inner workings of the CIA’s clandestine operations. If I was to be compromised, then that would be a huge security risk. Still, thanks to the fact that I had recently been in Iran, and due to the high-profile nature of this exfiltration, I think everyone was willing to accept the risks. With the lives of six Americans on the line, the direct involvement of the Canadian government, as well as pressure mounting on President Carter from every quarter, all of us knew that failure wouldn’t be an option.

  “Me, and somebody from documents,” I replied. “Maybe Julio.”

  “Julio” was a thirty-one-year-old documents officer stationed in Europe. In my mind, Julio was one of the most capable documents guys we had. He was a true “gray man” and could carry just about any persona you asked of him. When people think of spies, most think of Hollywood films in which the spy is always flamboyant and larger than life. In the real world of espionage, however, a spy has to be able to blend in. One thing I always say when it comes to the types of people the CIA looks for is that it’s not the guy who gets all the stares, but the one who, after you see him in line at the bank or after he passes through the checkout counter at the supermarket, you cannot remember what he looks like. Le Carré got that right. He could be tall, short, European, American, South American—whatever is required to get the job done, which is what Julio was like. Originally from the Midwest, Julio had studied at the Sorbonne and was a gifted linguist who spoke German, Spanish, Farsi, and French. It seemed that if you gave him the weekend to learn a new language he’d come back on Monday completely fluent. Besides this, Julio had participated in numerous exfiltrations, in which he had proven himself more than capable. During one such operation in the Middle East, he had picked up a high-profile terrorist who wanted to come over to our side. Julio had met him at a safe site and gotten him out onto a ferry, only to have the ferry turn around and return to the harbor. The boat’s propellers had gotten fouled on some trash, and Julio was forced to improvise. It’s easy to imagine how spooked the terrorist must have been as the ferry made its slow turn back to the docks. In those types of situations it can be incredibly difficult to get a person to go back through the whole process of trying to escape a second time, but Julio proved to be unflappable and got the terrorist out of the country the next day.

  Equally as important as this sort of unflappability, with this operation, was the great need to talk the talk. Inspiring confidence on the part of the houseguests was paramount; the whole thing would fall apart if even one of them didn’t believe in it. These were bright people, but many of those concerned with approving the operations plan did not believe that a group of six novices could organize and act cohesively. I believed I could convince them that our plan would work.

  “I think that’s a good choice,” Matt said.

  The following morning, on Thursday, January 10, I called Elaine in and told her to go over to budget and finance to ask for an advance of funds for ten thousand dollars in cash. Our B&F people were world-class bean counters who invented bureaucracy for fun. Ten thousand dollars was the maximum allowed. Anything more required the right hand of God. When Elaine came back with the money, I put it inside one of our concealment briefcases. I knew I would catch flak from B&F, but the money was going to be well spent. It was time to head out to Hollywood and create our production company.

  10

  STUDIO SIX

  I arrived in Los Angeles on Thursday evening, and after grabbing the rental car, headed off into the flickering circuit boards of the city streets. Normally when I came to LA I stayed at a small Hawaiian-themed motel in the Valley, near Calloway’s house in Burbank. I wouldn’t be meeting Jerome until the following morning, and with an evening to kill, I decided to take my time and enjoy the drive.

  Los Angeles held many mixed emotions for me. For one, I had a little bit of family history connected to the place. My parents had honeymooned in LA and my mom would always talk about their visit to Olvera Street. In addition, my grandfather Frank Gomez was one of the masons who’d built Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. He’d even carved his name into one of the theater’s cornerstones. This was before he’d changed his name to Mendez and moved with my father and uncle to Nevada.

  Beyond that, there was the allure of the cinema, which had meant so much to me as a kid growing up in a small dirt-poor town. Back then movies were more important to me than real life. In a pre-television environment and isolated as we were, the only escape mechanism I knew was to enter the Rex Theater on Saturday afternoons and watch a movie. The theater was located in tiny Caliente, Nevada, a town that had grown up around the railroad. In fact the tracks ran right down the town’s main street. Full of dime–a–dozen stores and bars, Caliente was dull in every way except for the Rex. The marquee was almost as large as the theater itself. In the dusty monochromatic high desert it looked like a palace to me. I was a huge fan of John Wayne and Alan Ladd and films like Rio Grande, Fort Apache, Red River, and The Blue Dahlia. I wondered why life couldn’t be more like the adventures on the screen. I marveled at the makeup and sets that Hollywood used. I watched the actors closely, mimicking them in the mirror when I returned home. I was hopelessly addicted to this visual world, and have remained so all my life.

  Then there was the feel of Los Angeles itself. The town had an undeniable energy about it—it was a place where time seemed to stand still in the vortex of rapturous imagination. If you looked closely, you could spot the signs of it all around you. In the landmarks along Sunset Strip and Hollywood Boulevard. In dive bars and back-alley clubs where the stars of the moment collided with those of the past. In the faces of the newly arrived, whose lives were full of earnest hope and promise, and in those whose dreams had come crashing down. I had traveled all over the world, but the city was like no other I had known. It was a place that twirled around you like a Russian ballerina, that caught you up in its spin and pulled you a
long until you found yourself wrapped in its spell.

  The decade of the 1970s had been a particularly important one for Hollywood. It was a time when an influx of youth was pushing the limits of realism and fantasy and breaking down the barriers that had been established in the early 1960s. Leading the way were a group of directors who made up what came to be known as New Hollywood: Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Stanley Kubrick, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, William Friedkin, Brian De Palma, and Roman Polanski, to name a few. These filmmakers didn’t just play with convention—they smashed it, making gritty, realistic films and science fiction opuses that starred then relatively unknown actors like Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Harvey Keitel, and Harrison Ford. The Godfather, Taxi Driver, Badlands, A Clockwork Orange, Chinatown, The Exorcist, Apocalypse Now, Star Wars, Jaws, Mean Streets, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and American Graffiti—these were just a few of the films that defined the decade.

  These directors and their works not only changed the culture of Hollywood, they also ushered in a whole new phenomenon: the blockbuster. Coppola’s The Godfather, Spielberg’s Jaws, and Lucas’s Star Wars would smash records at the box office and change the way movies were made for decades to come.

  It was a period in which anything seemed possible. In addition to spawning some of the most influential writers, directors, and producers to come along in a generation, it also ushered in an unprecedented wave of technological and artistic advancements, such as the creation of Industrial Light and Magic, which would push visual effects into the realm of the impossible.

  As I drove north from Hollywood Boulevard, I hoped we’d be able to tap into a little bit of this magic ourselves.

  I arrived at Calloway’s house at nine o’clock the following morning. Jerome answered the door and took me into the kitchen, where one of his associates was already waiting for us. I had called Calloway from Washington before coming out and asked him to bring in somebody who could help set up a company. “He needs to be someone you trust, and someone who is known around town,” I’d said. The person Calloway had chosen was veteran makeup artist Bob Sidell. A character in his own right, Sidell looked like a slightly smaller and less intense version of John Milius, the screenwriter for Apocalypse Now. Forty-two years old, balding, and with a bright, expressive smile, Sidell wore a neatly combed beard and thick gold-framed glasses. Calloway had known Sidell for nearly twenty years, the two having worked on several movies together, including the science fiction film for which Calloway had won an award. That morning Calloway had called Sidell and simply told him to come over for a cup of coffee. “I’ve got someone I want you to meet,” he’d said. Sidell was between jobs and happy for an excuse to see his old friend.

  Born in 1937 in Philadelphia, Sidell spent his early childhood in Detroit, before moving to Encino, California, where he joined the U.S. Navy right out of high school, being stationed on an antisubmarine destroyer based out of Hawaii.

  Eventually Bob made it into the hair and makeup union thanks to some help from his wife’s uncle, who was a makeup artist. Back then, it was essentially the union that controlled the makeup artists and then farmed them out to the various productions around town. After a ten-week training program in which journeymen, including Calloway, volunteered their time to help with his training, he was certified and his name was put on the list. His first job was working on the movie Nevada Smith, starring Steve McQueen. Eventually he found a home at NBC working on several variety shows, including Laugh–In, and alongside stars like Dean Martin and Sammy Davis, Jr.

  Sidell was a talented makeup artist, but where he really excelled was logistics. He had a real gift for dealing with the minutiae of a task; Jerome knew his man well.

  “What’s up, Jerome?” Sidell asked as I took a seat. I could tell he had no idea who I was. Later I would find out that while a few of Calloway’s friends knew he had done some work for the CIA, Jerome had never discussed specifics with any of them.

  “Tony wants to talk with you about a project,” Calloway said. “But before we get into it you’re going to need to sign something.”

  I had brought along a confidentiality agreement, which I slid across the table in his direction. Sidell did a double take and looked at Calloway, who nodded.

  “Have you been watching the news?” I asked him, as he slid the signed form back to me.

  “Yeah, sure,” he said.

  “Then you know what’s going on in Iran?” I asked.

  He went on for a minute or two about how angry and frustrated he was by the situation over there, describing how wrong it was for the Iranians to be holding innocent Americans hostage inside the embassy.

  “What if I was to tell you that not all of our diplomats are being held at the embassy?” I said. That got his attention. I explained the situation of the houseguests, then finished, “And it’s my job to get them out.”

  I gave him a second to digest what I’d just said. Then I explained the problems we were having with the cover story, and the idea for having the houseguests be part of a movie crew. “We did all the research about what kinds of groups are moving into and out of the country, looking for the type of group we are dealing with. In my opinion, this option seems the most believable,” I explained.

  Sidell was immediately on board. “It’s a fantastic idea,” he said, “but what do you need me for?”

  “Bob, here’s what we are doing,” I said as I spread out some of the photos of the houseguests and their aliases. “Let’s say that somebody decides to check on one of the houseguests—say, Teresa Harris.” I held up a photocopy of Cora Lijek’s Canadian passport. “They have a variety of ways to do it—they can use the telephone, they can fax, they can actually come walking in through the door. And they may do all of that. What they have to find on this end of the question is Teresa Harris’s office. If anybody is checking on her, they need to know that she has an office.”

  Sidell nodded, picking up the photocopy of “Teresa Harris’s” Canadian passport and examining it closely.

  “What I need is someone here to tell them that she is away, on location, scouting a site for the movie. Filming is going to begin in March, so time is precious. She’ll be back in a week or so—whatever. Got it?”

  Sidell nodded again. He was going through the pile of copies of the rest of the houseguests’ passports.

  “It’ll work,” he said. “We’ll make sure that it works.”

  As we were talking, Dave from our contracts department showed up. Dave worked out of the CIA’s West Coast procurement office and was basically there to monitor the funds and make sure that Calloway and Sidell got whatever they needed. I’d had my secretary cable him before I left Washington to let him know that we’d be meeting at Calloway’s.

  “And Dave here is going to make sure you get everything you need,” I said. With that I handed Dave the briefcase with the ten thousand dollars, and he flipped it open and looked inside. After sitting across the room carefully counting out the hundred-dollar bills, he quickly signed a receipt for the briefcase and then handed it over to Sidell, who went through the same meticulous routine. This would save me the trouble of having to worry about the accounting side of things and also help me out with the B&F people. With that out of the way, Dave sat back and enjoyed the show while Calloway, Sidell, and I began discussing what we would need to do to set up our production company, which I had decided to call “Studio Six Productions,” after the six houseguests trapped in Iran.

  Our first priority was to get office space. Sidell explained that it shouldn’t be too hard because film companies were often created and disbanded overnight, and so the film business catered toward short-term leases. Calloway had told me on more than one occasion that there was a long history of the mafia laundering money in Hollywood by opening up and closing production companies overnight. It was a common pattern and a convenient way to wash funds. It was a very itinerant business; all you needed to do was get a story and some funds and you could always find
somebody to make a movie for you. The success of the movie or TV show was never a consideration, but occasionally the mafia would find themselves with a hit on their hands. Urban legend has it there was a wildly popular TV show that ran during the 1970s that came about this way. Calloway swore that the show was funded initially by the mob and nobody ever proved to me that he was wrong.

  They took turns making calls to see what they could find, and we’d hit pay dirt after only an hour or so.

  “Got it,” Sidell said, turning to us. “Sunset Gower Studios has some space opening up tomorrow.” Apparently, Michael Douglas had just finished producing The China Syndrome and we could have his offices. Sunset Gower was an independent studio located on the old Columbia Pictures lot, the home to such classics as Frank Capra’s Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. It seemed like prime Hollywood real estate, and the fact that Michael Douglas had been connected to it would only give our production company that much more cachet.

  “We’d get three offices and a reception room,” Sidell said.