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

by Antonio Mendez

  “I think it means he’s making a decision,” I replied.

  The chief of the office joined Al, Julio, and me in one of their offices. The chief paced back and forth, chewing on his cigar, running his fingers through his thinning hair, obviously nervous. Al, on the other hand, was very composed. I had a pretty good feeling about this operation and thought the president would be happy with it. The U.S. government didn’t have much else—not that we knew of, at least. I was calm, like the lull in the eye of a storm.

  The communicator walked the next message down the hall to us. We were in a knot in the middle of the office when he burst through the door. “It’s a go!” he exclaimed with a grin before even reaching us, a breach of operational etiquette that we were only too happy to forgive. A commo guy should never verbalize the contents of a message.

  The message had two lines: “The President of the United States approves your mission. Good luck.” I stared at it for a second taking that in. It’s not often that you get a personal message from the president on one of your missions. If there was ever a sign that we were about to embark on a high-stakes operation, here it was. The president—and if it went bad, the world—would be watching.

  Then I was out the door, driven to the Frankfurt airport by a colleague from graphics to catch my Lufthansa flight to Zurich. The president had thrown a slight monkey wrench into my tight schedule, but it looked like I would just make it.

  I arrived in Zurich around ten o’clock that night, and my connecting Swissair flight to Tehran was set to leave at one o’clock in the morning. The flight to Tehran was fairly full, as indicated by the number of people in the transit lounge. As it turned out, the Swissair flight was going to be the last one out of Zurich that evening.

  While I waited, I had a moment to reflect. Despite all the planning we had done, there was no way to be certain about a single thing in Iran. Many of the country’s official positions had been taken over by untrained thugs. In some ways this was a huge advantage for us, because they often didn’t know what they were supposed to be doing—in fact, you could sometimes even show them what needed to be done. On the other hand, this meant that we couldn’t expect the opposition to be acting rationally. In Moscow, for instance, if an officer was ever captured, he would usually be PNG’d. The Soviets would take a picture of the offending officer and publish it in the national newspaper, Izvestia, declaring him persona non grata, then kick him out of the country. I knew, however, that in Iran such civilities would be nonexistent. When I’d exfiltrated RAPTOR, the country had been dangerous but the mood different. Back then the U.S. embassy was still in one piece and Americans could come and go freely. Now, however, the entire country seemed united behind one purpose: directly engaging in revenge on America and the CIA. I was under no illusions as to what would happen to me or Julio if they found us out.

  I walked over to a large set of windows that looked out onto the tarmac. I stood there for a few seconds watching a 747 taxi past, when suddenly I became aware of my reflection in the glass. I was dressed in my Kevin Costa Harkins disguise and I noticed the absence of my wedding ring. Instinctively I felt for it, remembering my promise to Karen. Is this something I really want to do? I asked myself. Do I want to go back to Iran and risk the possibility that the revolutionaries are “expecting” me? I could feel my body trembling as I went through what we always called the “gut check.” The idea is that you make your operational plan as good as it can get, and when you get to the ninetieth percentile of confidence, you know you are ready. So the question was: Am I there? Am I at or above the ninetieth percentile? Lives were at stake—not just the houseguests’ but also Julio’s and my own. Beyond that, who knew what kind of retribution the militants would take against the hostages, or the Canadians, for that matter. Even though espionage operations always try to balance the use of clandestine resources against the risk of human lives, President Carter and his national security advisers had already made those calculations at the White House. For the moment, however, I would have to block out all that. My concerns were relatively simple. Could I get in and rescue the Americans safely?

  There was an unwritten rule at the CIA that gave the officer on the ground the option of aborting an operation when he or she believed it would fail. There was no shame in backing out. It was just another way of encouraging risk assessment at the last moment, and it had saved many lives.

  I stood there weighing my options. I opened the Argo portfolio and flipped through the résumés of the houseguests. One of the questions that had been put to me as a part of the interview process way back in 1965 when I had joined the CIA was: “What if you got in a situation where you just disappeared and nobody knew where you were?” My response was immediate: “Try to find me.” Even though I had never met these six Americans, I knew that, because it was in my power, I had to do whatever I could to help them, regardless of any reservations I had about my own safety. It was the same thing I would expect someone to do for me, and one of the reasons I had the confidence to put myself in harm’s way.

  And just like that, the momentary uncertainty I had been feeling about the mission passed, replaced by a kind of euphoria as the stress left my body. This was a good ops plan and we were ready, I thought. At that point I was committed to doing whatever I had to do to make it work.

  Just then, an announcement over the public address system said that the Swissair flight I was about to board had been canceled due to weather at Mehrabad Airport. Murphy’s law had struck.

  I made a sterile phone call—a call to a European number not registered with any phone company—to Julio to let him know. “I’m languishing in Zurich,” I said. We agreed to stick to Julio’s schedule the following day and enter Iran together—again, not perfect, though it’d have to do.

  After that I went out and hailed a taxi and went to a hotel, where I slept like a baby.

  The following afternoon, Julio arrived from Frankfurt and the two of us joined up in the departure lounge. Both of us had our game faces on, and together we boarded the flight to Tehran.

  13

  ON LOCATION IN IRAN

  Our plane touched down in Mehrabad at five o’clock in the morning on Friday, January 25. As we taxied on the tarmac, I could see that piles of ash-colored snow had been shoved to either side of the runway. Even at this early hour, the air hung heavy with the smoke from the wood fires burning throughout the city. As the engines shut down and the stairs were wheeled up to the aircraft, I could see a few of the passengers shifting nervously in their seats. I noticed that some of the women who were previously uncovered had donned black chadors, a reminder that we were about to enter into a world with its own rules. Other passengers stared straight ahead. I was certain the revolution had touched all their lives in some way. I watched an anxious man gnaw at his fingernails. What was he worried about? As we sat there the cabin was oddly quiet, so much so that when the door was finally opened I could hear the loud click of the lock. Then one by one, we all got to our feet.

  Julio and I disembarked in the frigid morning air and made our way into the terminal. There was not much to distinguish Mehrabad from a hundred other Middle Eastern airports, except, perhaps, for a hint of art deco in the balustrades mounted around its exterior. It was a low, sprawling, concrete box, and typically packed during the morning and afternoon hours.

  We quickly filled out our yellow and white disembarkation/embarkation forms, which were lying in stacks on nearby tables inside the arrivals lounge. Since it would be Julio’s job to fill out these forms for the houseguests later, he surreptitiously grabbed a few extra copies using a little sleight of hand. Walking up to the table, he set his newspaper, the Frankfurter Allgemeine, down on top of a stack of the forms. He then filled out one for himself, rearranged his hand luggage, and in one motion picked up his newspaper with the forms underneath. Folding the newspaper in half, he then stuffed it into his attaché case and was done.

  The airport was peppered with all manner of tourist images o
f smiling Iranians enjoying a winter vacation at one of the country’s mountain resorts. The Ministry of National Guidance had a tourist branch, which was doing its best to promote the country as a destination in order to bring in some money. The ads had sayings in English, French, German, and Farsi, all of them variations on typical tourist catchphrases such as “Enjoy Iran!” In one of the posters there was an Iranian movie star posing with his family with their ski outfits on. I thought about how incongruous the image was with the hostage crisis going on in the heart of Tehran. Julio seemed to have reached the same conclusion. “This place has gotten a bum rap,” he said with a wolfish grin.

  I shook my head in amazement. “Yeah, next time I’ll bring the family.”

  After filling out our forms, we took our place in the immigration line. I could see that there were several plainclothes Revolutionary Guards and komiteh members milling about the arrivals lounge, but they seemed more interested in hassling the returning Iranians, rather than bothering foreigners. The economic situation in the country had only gotten worse since I’d been there nine months earlier, and the Iranian authorities were concerned about people smuggling goods into and out of the country. This would probably mean that we could expect tougher exit controls as well. The immigration desk was no longer being manned by an untrained civilian irregular but by an official immigration officer in uniform. I hoped that my operation to rescue RAPTOR hadn’t left a paper trail down at the U.S. embassy. By this time the militants had probably been able to put together most of the secret documents that had been shredded during the assault. If anything had been left over from the RAPTOR operation, or if there was something linking it to me, then there was a chance they might have put my name on a watch list. As we approached the counter, however, the immigration official couldn’t have cared less about us. After tearing apart our white and yellow forms, he stamped our passports and waved us through without even giving us so much as a second glance. (As it turned out, I would learn later that the militants did find a secret document in Bruce Laingen’s safe that mentioned the exfiltration of RAPTOR. Luckily my name was not on the sheet, but Tom Ahern, the chief of station in Iran who had been captured during the assault, caught hell for it. Later he would tell me that the militants had been extremely pissed off when they learned that RAPTOR had escaped.)

  Breezing past customs, we hopped in a sputtering Opel Kadett taxi and headed over to the Sheraton, which was located on one of the main thoroughfares linking Mehrabad to downtown Tehran. Our taxi driver was a thin old man who wore a sweater vest under his jacket against the cold. He seemed happy to see us, and launched into a lengthy soliloquy, in English, on the beauties of Tehran. He assumed we were from America and asked if we were hungry. Without waiting for a reply, he broke off a large piece of unleavened bread he had with him up in the front seat and passed it back. It was still warm and actually quite good.

  The route our taxi was navigating was lined with a multitude of handmade signs espousing revolutionary slogans and anti-American propaganda—a reality that belied the innocence portrayed in the tourism posters. Moscow this wasn’t, but Julio and I would still have to stay on our toes. During the shah’s reign, SAVAK had maintained a massive network of informers and domestic spies, and there was no telling who or what the Revolutionary Guard had co–opted.

  The Sheraton in Tehran looked like it had been transplanted from Detroit. It was a typical modern high-rise monolith surrounded by a parking lot—just like every other Sheraton in the world.

  The hotel was popular with foreign businesspeople and travelers, so Julio and I fit right in as we entered the large lobby. A quick scan revealed no overt surveillance, but I assumed it was present. Years of undercover work in Moscow had taught me that it’s best to assume the other side is always watching, even when you can’t see them.

  After checking in, Julio and I went down to the Swissair office to reconfirm our airline reservations for our departure the following Monday. We were scheduled to depart for Zurich at seven thirty in the morning and I wanted to make sure there would be no surprises. If something was to go wrong and we were forced to abort, it would be nearly impossible to get the houseguests to go through the whole process of psyching themselves up to go back through the airport again. Making sure we had a seat on the plane was just basic tradecraft.

  When we arrived at the Swissair office, however, it was still closed. I knew from my previous trip that the U.S. embassy was right around the corner, and with some time to kill we decided to take a walk.

  The walls of the embassy were completely covered with signs and graffiti, all of them denouncing America, President Carter, and the shah. Here and there, the grim visage of Khomeini glared back at us from a placard or poster like some cartoon villain. At this hour, the streets were eerily quiet and as I stood there staring at the embassy it gave me a feeling of deep and yawning helplessness. I was so close and yet at the same time unable to do anything to free my fellow countrymen trapped inside. At the minimum, I could take note of what I’d seen and report back to the Eagle Claw planners, but it was little consolation.

  We continued down Roosevelt Avenue and onto a little side street nearby, where our tourist map told us we should be able to find the Canadian embassy. Instead of the red and white maple leaf banner of Canada, however, we found ourselves staring at the blue and yellow flag of Sweden. In fact we had arrived at the building where Lee Schatz had been working on the day of the embassy takeover.

  We huddled for a second, consulting our map. A solitary Iranian policeman stood on guard near the building’s entrance, his hands thrust into his pockets.

  “Why don’t we ask him,” I said with some volume, indicating the policeman. I was in character, going with the flow. Of course, the Department of Defense or OTS could have provided us with the most detailed and up–to–date map of Tehran available on the planet, but being caught with such an obvious piece of tradecraft would have immediately blown our cover. We were supposed to be from Hollywood, not Langley.

  Julio and I approached the guard, and after several attempts at communicating in German, Arabic, and even Spanish, Julio threw up his hands (even though Julio spoke Farsi, to do so could have aroused unnecessary suspicion). I held out our tourist map and jabbed at the maze of streets. “Canada,” I said. Then, even slower, “Can–ah–duh.” The guard only stared at me and blinked.

  While this was going on, a young Iranian wearing a faded green army jacket and jeans stood watching us from across the street. I had seen him out of the corner of my eye but tried not to let on that I knew he was there. To me he looked just like one of the “students” who had attacked the U.S. embassy. As we stood there figuring out what to do next, the young man crossed the street and approached. Ignoring us, he went straight up to the guard and the two had a heated exchange in Farsi. The man kept looking at us, then back to the guard, and I assumed he was asking the guard what we were doing there. He then turned to Julio and addressed him in crisp, unaccented German. Julio perked up and it wasn’t long before the two had fallen into a lively discussion. Julio snatched the map out of my hand and they pored over it. The Iranian pointed to a street north of the U.S. embassy.

  Julio thanked the Iranian, but the young man wasn’t finished. He borrowed a piece of paper from my notebook and wrote down the address. Then he flagged down a passing Mercedes taxi and handed the slip of paper to the driver. For a moment I wondered if it was some kind of trap. Had he just given the taxi driver the address to a local komiteh headquarters instead of to the Canadian embassy?

  He held the passenger door open for us to get in. Before doing so Julio attempted to hand him a few rumpled rial bills, but the man shook his head and made a little gesture as if to say, “Please, it was all my pleasure.” He put his hand on his heart and flashed a wide grin, revealing several gold teeth. I thought about the irony of this whole exchange. Here was a man going out of his way to illustrate to two undercover CIA officers that Iranians were hospitable, caring people. It w
as hard to reconcile this with the notion that less than a block away innocent American diplomats were being tortured and held against their will.

  The taxi then took us across town to the Canadian embassy, where we arrived a little before noon. Ambassador Taylor had been expecting us, and a burly Canadian MP, Claude Gauthier, took us up to meet with him in his outer office on the second floor. Taylor was charming and affable and his face lit up when he saw us. “Welcome to Tehran,” he said, his hand outstretched. He was wearing his mod-style glasses and had on a pair of jeans and cowboy boots. He was hardly the uptight government bureaucrat I was expecting. He introduced us to his secretary, a small elderly woman named Laverna, and then took us into his inner office.

  The office was sleek and very modern. There were glass cases full of books, framed photos, as well as a fully stocked bar. The floor was covered with several high-quality Persian rugs and a Canadian flag hung in the corner. The room’s most striking feature was Taylor’s desk, which wasn’t really a desk at all but a stylish round glass-topped table.

  We sat down and Taylor explained that they were just about ready to shut down the embassy in preparation for the coming exfiltration. In fact, later that afternoon he was going to see his family off at the airport. Only five Canadian staffers remained, and these would depart on Monday, January 28, just hours after the Swissair flight we hoped to board was scheduled to depart. He explained that he would send a diplomatic letter to the foreign ministry on Monday morning informing the Iranian government that the Canadian embassy would temporarily be closed. With that out of the way, he then asked us if there was anything he could do to help. I was struck by the casual and relaxed manner of the whole encounter.