My plan was to get my visa the following morning, on the twenty-third, before flying into Iran later the same evening. In the meantime, I had a lot to do and only a short amount of time to get it done.
I spent the morning of the twenty-second finalizing my alias documents package. OTS techs had been hard at work preparing my Kevin Costa Harkins alias even before I had arrived, but there were still a few details to work out, such as getting my photo taken. Since my cover was that of a European, I had to look the part. Back in the late seventies especially, there were several identifying traits that could peg you as an American just based on the style of clothes you wore. European shoes, for one, were very different. The importance of these subtle details could not be overstated. I had seen numerous case officers get tripped up despite having perfect documents because they were wearing obvious American brands. As any experienced covert officer knows, success is about paying attention to the little things. An OSS officer once told me that he’d kept alive in Italy behind enemy lines because he’d put a pebble in his shoe, which reminded him to limp since he needed an excuse for not being in the army.
For this reason, one of the first things I’d done in Frankfurt was go shopping. The city had a large department store called Kaufhof, which was like a German version of Macy’s. It may seem humorous to picture a spy trying on outfits in the men’s section of a department store, but that is exactly what I did. At the time, trench coats were in vogue, so I picked one up, along with a change of clothes and, of course, shoes. Beyond the style, I made sure that anything I bought was as drab as possible. Anything flashy would just draw attention to myself. Buying the clothes would also give me pocket litter, which would help to lend credibility to my disguise.
Later that afternoon, we received a FLASH cable from Ottawa. Our first batch of six Canadian passports had arrived in Tehran, but Roger Lucy had discovered a problem. Lucy had gone down to the airport to retrieve the pouch, which had been flown into the country on an Iraqi Airways flight. The Revolutionary Guards would sometimes intercept the pouches of Western embassies and as a result the courier carrying it had been instructed to physically hand it to Lucy. Lucy had been collecting the diplomatic mail for nearly ten months by this point and was well known at the airport. The pouch was handed off to him without incident; however, after he’d returned to the embassy and examined the passports he found a flaw. Somehow the handwritten Farsi fill–in on the Iranian visas showed a date of issue sometime in the future. Lucy had taught himself Farsi and realized immediately that the problem lay in the fact that the Persian calendar begins on March 21. This meant that the visas would have been issued to the houseguests after they supposedly had already entered the country. As to how this had happened, I could only think that the Farsi linguist assisting our team in Ottawa had misinterpreted the Farsi calendar. Taylor and Lucy were both concerned that the mistake would set back our departure by several days, something that would cause them a considerable headache, since they were planning on closing down their embassy almost immediately after we’d extracted the houseguests.
We fired a message back through Ottawa assuring Taylor that this was not a problem, since we could easily alter the mistake once we arrived in Tehran. In addition, these were the contingency passports, only to be used in the event that Julio and I couldn’t get into Iran. If that happened, then we would forward instructions to Taylor and Lucy so that they could correct the mistake themselves. However, if our insertion was successful, we would use the second set, which had yet to be imprinted with the operational visa.
By this time the Canadians were hastily closing up shop in Tehran and readying for the exfiltration of the houseguests, which was scheduled for Monday, January 28, the day of the Iranian national election. In preparation, Taylor had asked John and Zena Sheardown to return to Canada. For John Sheardown, who had really been the first person to welcome in the Americans, it was a very emotional farewell. The group gathered around the living room and John broke the news. As some of the houseguests would later explain, John wanted to tough it out until the end and felt like he was abandoning the houseguests, whom he had come to feel responsible for. The Sheardowns complained about having to leave, but in the end they had little choice. “I want to stay and finish the job,” he told them. The houseguests, for their part, encouraged the Canadians to go. They knew how much danger the Sheardowns had been in for harboring them and in some strange way they felt a sense of relief not to have to carry that burden anymore. Still, it was hard to say good-bye. As Bob Anders would later tell me, they felt as if their base of support and strength was being taken away.
After the Sheardowns had gone, the houseguests were on their own for a day or so, but felt nervous about what they might do if a person came to the door or the phone rang. At that point, Taylor gave Lucy the task of taking care of the six, and he left his place to move in with them. However, since Lucy was busy during the day helping Taylor at the embassy, a Canadian MP, known as Junior, was sent over to watch the house while Lucy was away.
The six Americans were a bit surprised by the Sheardowns’ hasty departure. But it also raised their suspicions that a plan might be in the works to get them out. Mark reasoned that since Zena didn’t have diplomatic immunity, it only made sense that she would leave before any sort of rescue operation was attempted. Earlier clues as to the possibility of their escape had come when Taylor had discussed the issue of whether they wanted to use Canadian or U.S. documentation. The mere fact that the question had been asked had indicated to the houseguests that a plan of some sort was being put together. However, since neither Sheardown nor Taylor had given them confirmation that someone was coming to get them out, they tried not to get their hopes up.
Back in Frankfurt, Julio and I spent the afternoon of January 22 going over our operations plan. For weeks OTS had been debriefing travelers and collecting up–to–the-minute intelligence on Iranian document controls at Mehrabad Airport.
When you have worked in this business as long as I have, you come to realize that every airport, departure lounge, and gate has its own feel. Depending on what part of the world you are in, there are certain cultural and professional mores that come into play concerning how an airport runs. How organized is the staff? Are they literate, or well trained? Do they respond to threats or is it better to flatter them? Are bribes permissible? Is there a watch list? What are the things that customs agents might be looking for? What is the layout of the airport like? Over time it’s possible to develop a sixth sense on how to deal with certain situations. In India, for instance, if confronted by a customs agent about a missing document, you might act indignant and blame the other guy: “How should I know where that document is? It’s your form! The guy in New Delhi didn’t give it to me, so it’s your problem—not mine.” Such a ploy would never have worked, though, in the former Czechoslovakia, where border agents were feared for their iron efficiency during the Cold War.
Nine times out of ten, the immigration officers would be illiterate or poorly trained, while the customs agents were top-notch. In that case it would be wise to know the types of items that the customs agents were keying in on. Once, when I had flown into another city on the subcontinent for an exfiltration, I had placed copies of Playboy and Time in my suitcase where they were easily accessible, knowing that these would be obvious distractions. Sure enough, I was stopped, as I knew I would be, and when the first customs agent saw the Playboy magazine his eyebrows shot up. “Take it,” I said. The next agent frowned when he saw the Time magazine. That particular issue had a very negative article in it about the official religion of the country I was traveling to. “This is forbidden,” the second agent said. “It’s yours!” I responded. Then, without waiting for them to continue their search, I quickly closed my suitcase and moved on. I had several visa stamps and nearly ten thousand dollars in cash hidden in a secret compartment.
When it came to the controls at Tehran’s Mehrabad Airport, the biggest concern we had was with a two-shee
t disembarkation/embarkation form that went back to the repressive days of SAVAK. The form was printed on “no carbon required” (NCR) paper. Upon arrival, each person had to fill one out, at which point the immigration official would keep the white top sheet while the traveler retained the yellow copy. In theory, when the traveler then left the country, he or she would have to hand over the yellow sheet so the immigration official could then match it to the saved white one to see if there were any irregularities. Since we were planning on forging this yellow form, we would essentially be taking a risk. Due to the capricious nature of the komiteh men at the airport, there was no telling whether the immigration officials would take the time to compare our yellow forms with their nonexistent white counterparts.
In order to minimize this risk, we had been collecting as much intelligence as was humanly possible on the controls at Mehrabad to see if they were matching these forms.
There are basically two ways to collect information on airports. One is passive and the other is to send in a probe. An example of passive collection would be a traveler noting things he or she might see while just passing through; then, upon returning, he or she would fill out a detailed report. This act of collecting intelligence is fairly low risk, since the traveler is not really going beyond the usual procedures of travel. Early on in the hostage crisis we had sent an all-points cable asking for anyone transiting through Mehrabad to monitor the controls.
Once we had identified the gaps in our intelligence—the “known unknowns,” as you might say—we would move on to the second method, which is to send in a probe. In this case you are usually trying to test out a specific theory or concept.
By mid-January, the CIA had been able to place several officers into Tehran who were collecting intelligence on a variety of things, including Mehrabad. The most prominent of these officers was Bob, the old OSS operative who had been brought out of retirement to run the intelligence support for Eagle Claw. Bob was essentially one of our nonofficial cover men, or NOCs, and he had been tasked with reconnoitering the embassy and setting up a trucking company as part of Eagle Claw. The trucks were to be used to transport the Delta Force commandos to the U.S. embassy in Tehran as part of the final assault. Bob was a true professional who could speak several foreign languages and adopt just about any cover he needed. For this mission he was traveling on real documents from an Eastern European country, and so in no way could he be traced back to the CIA. For the purposes of our operation, Bob had become a huge asset as well. His job required that he frequently come and go, and he was often passing through our OTS office in Europe, reporting on what he had seen at the airport. Bob also had individuals working under him in Iran, who were busy collecting intelligence.
Beyond this, of course, the Canadians had also been a great help. Early on in the crisis, I had asked Ambassador Taylor to inform any of his personnel transiting through the airport to assist in our intelligence-gathering capabilities. On my trips to Ottawa, I had been able to debrief several of the Canadian MPs who had come through the airport, and the information the Canadians provided proved to be invaluable.
All of this intelligence painted a picture of the challenges that we would face in trying to get the houseguests out through Mehrabad. The first time I had gone through the airport to rescue RAPTOR, I had noted that the regular customs official had been replaced by a komiteh thug. By late January it appeared as though the Iranians were slowly getting their act together. Still, our best information was telling us that the Iranians were not matching up the white and yellow immigration forms at the airport. I hoped we would be able to get in and out with the houseguests before that changed.
On the morning of January 23, I drove with one of our female disguise officers to Bonn, to obtain my visa. I was in alias as Kevin and had brought with me the Argo portfolio, which I planned to use to wow the Iranian immigration officials. I had altered my appearance with a simple disguise and wore a green turtleneck and tweed blazer, which I would continue to wear throughout the operation.
As we approached the Iranian embassy in Bonn, I was a little concerned to see that the embassy of my ostensible country of origin was right across the street. If the Iranians chose to do so, it would be perfectly proper for them to send me back to my own embassy to get a letter of introduction before they would grant me a visa. If such a thing happened, it would be a real test of my ability to pull off my cover. I was dropped off down the block, then walked back to the entrance of the Iranian consular section.
The reception area was a large, dull room that contained a few straight wooden-backed chairs along with some Persian carpets strewn about on the floor. A row of clerestory windows ran along the upper portion of one of the walls but offered little in the way of natural light. Instead, the space was lit by a series of dim fluorescent bulbs that gave it a gloomy, almost foreboding quality, like something you might see in a Hitchcock movie. A half-dozen visa applicants were sitting in the chairs filling out applications, while a handful of young Revolutionary Guards in civilian clothes were standing around scrutinizing everyone with hard looks. It was only then that I realized that, stupidly, I had left the portfolio in the car when I was dropped off. I still had my alias passport and other personal identity documents, but I was furious with myself. Fuming, I sat down to fill out the forms and went to the clerk’s window to give them to the consular official. The disheveled clerk scrutinized me in the cocksure manner of a zealot convinced of his own superiority. I could tell he was eager to show me that he belonged to a komiteh and was suspicious of all westerners.
When people ask me what it is like to play an alias, I always tell them that it’s very similar to being a good liar. The trick is that you have to believe the lie and believe it so much that the lie becomes the truth. In other words, as I walked into the consulate as Kevin, I wasn’t pretending to be Kevin. I was Kevin, and he was me.
For me, there are two basic approaches to role playing: doing it by feel and doing it in a controlled manner. Normally I’m a bit of a control freak, but when it comes to role playing, I tend to be a wing–it kind of guy. But if you are not on edge when you are standing in front of an immigration officer and putting down your alias documents, then you’re not really ready. When you can fool a person into thinking you are someone else, it feels very powerful being the only one who is in the know.
“What’s the purpose of your visit?” the clerk asked me, scratching his beard.
“A business meeting with my associates at the Sheraton Hotel in Tehran,” I said in my best northern European accent. “They are flying in from Hong Kong tomorrow and are expecting me.”
“Why didn’t you get your visa in your home country?” he asked me, now seeming to be bored with the transaction and just going through the motions.
I explained how I’d been traveling through Germany when my boss had sent me a telex informing me of the meeting. I shrugged. “I didn’t have time to head home.”
The clerk thought about it and nodded twice. Twenty minutes later I was on my way out the door with a one-month Iranian visa stamped into my alias passport. I hadn’t even needed the Argo portfolio, but I had gotten lucky and I knew it.
Back in Frankfurt, Julio and I made final additions to the ops plan, the details of the visa acquisition, the plan for infiltration by Julio and me, and the escape and evasion (E&E) portion of the plan. This last part was a necessary component, although we all knew that if anything went wrong, the chances of executing an escape and evasion were practically nonexistent. The security at Mehrabad was overwhelming, and armed. There would be no chance to second-guess ourselves once we had committed to the departure. At that point the only way out of the airport would be on a flight.
We chose to fly out of Zurich because we wanted to arrive in Tehran on an early morning flight when the terminal at Mehrabad was quiet. We also wanted to fly on Swissair because of its reliable record. In addition, the Air France flight that we would document the houseguests as having arrived on landed at Mehr
abad at almost the same time as our own flight. This meant that the houseguests would have ostensibly gone through immigration on the same day as us. The signatures and ink colors of the immigration entries would be identical to those in our own passports, which would provide genuine exemplars for us to copy later.
When everything was set, we filed a FLASH cable that included our final operations plan, requesting permission to launch. It was standard procedure to request headquarters’ approval before proceeding.
While Julio and I waited, we were given a cryptic message by one of the local case officers that somebody wanted to meet with us. We took a walk down the hallway and into an empty office, where our contact Bob stood waiting. Having just returned from Tehran, he gave us some last-minute intelligence on the controls at Mehrabad. He then looked us up and down to make sure we were appropriately attired. Satisfied, he nodded and said, “You’ll do fine.” It may not seem like much, but this was high praise coming from a legend in the spy world who had once parachuted behind enemy lines during World War II to work with resistance groups. I took it as a good sign that our operation had just been given a blessing from one of the masters of our craft.
Within half an hour of sending our cable, a response had arrived from the director of central intelligence, saying: “Your mission is approved. Good Luck.” Spies are not ones to get overly dramatic, especially among their colleagues. I turned to Julio and the two of us locked eyes. There was nothing to be said. We were both professionals and knew the risks. He reached out his hand to shake mine. This was a bit out of character for him, and I smiled thinly. “See you in Tehran,” I said.
As per our plan, I would be the first to depart. As I headed out the door for the Frankfurt flughafen, Al, the deputy chief, came sprinting down the hall. “Hold up,” he said. “The president is making a finding.” He turned to me, looking slightly perplexed. “What does it mean?”
Argo: How the CIA and Hollywood Pulled Off the Most Audacious Rescue in History Page 19