Argo: How the CIA and Hollywood Pulled Off the Most Audacious Rescue in History Part 11

The last member of our team was Jack Kerry, our resident PhD chemist. Jack was new to the CIA and to OTS. His a.s.signment would be to support us in any research, development, and engineering (RD&E) requirement we might have-for instance, supplying us with a piece of technical equipment, or building one if it was needed. He was a gentle soul, extremely intelligent, intellectually curious, and very much an outdoorsman. His thinning hair, spa.r.s.e beard, and prematurely gray hair belied the fact that he was only thirty-five years old.

I closed the door after Jack entered. Elaine didn't even look up, just flicked her cigarette ash into the wastepaper basket next to her desk.

"Everyone remember that memo from State we received a little while ago?" I asked. They all nodded. "Well, it appears things just became a whole lot more urgent." I explained the situation with Pelletier, which got everyone's attention.

"Okay," I said. "Let's start with the basics."

Since the epiphany in my studio, I had been informally tasking team members with preliminary planning for the exfiltration, and now it was time to examine the results. Our first priority would be to establish the route by which we could get the houseguests out of the country. We always knew our best option was on a commerical flight out of Mehrabad Airport.

This meant our major area of concern would be how to get the houseguests through the airport's draconian immigration controls. Every country's airport procedures were different, and the best way to understand them was to send a probe in and out to collect data. Iran's controls had been put in place under the shah, but thanks to the revolution, there was no telling what to expect. Protocol could s.h.i.+ft from one day to the next. We were fortunate in one sense, however, since we already had a large collection of data on the customs and immigration controls at the airport thanks to the RAPTOR operation seven months before. In addition, we could augment our data collection by continuing to support the insertion of the advance team or running our own probes. Eventually a team of intelligence officers would need to make the final probe into Iran and meet up with the houseguests to a.s.sess their state of mind and ability to carry off the operation. Near East Division, meanwhile, would look into a potential black route for getting them out overland as a fallback, much like the one that Ross Perot had used to exfiltrate two of his employees a year earlier. At this stage, it was important not to rule anything out, and to have a fallback plan if necessary.

With that out of the way, we then turned to the problem of the cover, which posed a unique challenge. We had six American diplomats, male and female, varying in age from fifty-four to twenty-five. As far as we knew, none of them could speak a foreign language and none of them had any clandestine training. To make matters worse, because they worked in the consulate, which was heavily trafficked by Iranians, we suspected that their faces were probably pretty well known and that they might be on a watch list.

"We don't yet know what we are going to use for doc.u.ments or what their cover is going to be, but we are going to have to come up with some of those answers quickly," I said. "I'm going to have to interface with NE/Iran on this and get them on board with anything we're going to do."

I turned to Dan and Joe. "So what do you think, guys? What have you got?" It would be the job of the doc.u.ments branch to fabricate a realistic cover story for the houseguests to accompany their alias doc.u.ments. For this reason they often kept backstopped alias doc.u.ments on the shelf ready to use in a moment's notice. But depending on the subject, there are really only a few nationalities that would work at any given time, and until they started inventing new countries, we had to be incredibly careful about wasting them.

This problem had been highlighted when the militants at the emba.s.sy had ferreted out two altered doc.u.ments issued to two CIA officers captured at the emba.s.sy. Both of the doc.u.ments corresponded with friendly Western powers, and had almost created a diplomatic scandal. The defense minister for one of the countries in question just happened to be touring Langley when the news broke, and he asked pointedly how many more of these items the CIA had fabricated. "Just the one," he was told. "Like h.e.l.l," the minister had muttered. As a result we had to be incredibly selective about what kinds of doc.u.ments we used.

"How about one of the Nordic countries?" Dan responded.

"Okay," I said. "What are six people from northern Europe doing in Tehran?"

Joe piped in. "Do they all have to be from the same place? We could issue each of them a travel doc.u.ment from a different country and then have them line up at the airport as if they just happened to arrive all together."

"The real problem," I said, "is that no one in headquarters believes that these people are going to be able to carry any foreign cover. They're not even sure they could carry false U.S. pa.s.sports."

In an earlier call with Hal, who after the RAPTOR operation had been promoted to the Near East Division's chief for Iran, the two of us had discussed the possibility of the houseguests' using foreign doc.u.ments for their cover story. Since none of the houseguests had even basic training in the tradecraft needed to carry off a foreign cover, he doubted it would work. "Besides," he had said, "almost everyone in Iran speaks a foreign language, and we can't risk that they might stumble upon somebody who could question them in their 'native' tongue."

"What is State saying?" asked Tim.

"Their idea is to have them be unemployed U.S. schoolteachers who had come to Iran looking for work," I said. "They could give us any of the doc.u.mentation we would need, but that would still make them U.S. citizens, which doesn't seem like the best idea to me."

"What about Canadian pa.s.sports?" Doris asked.

"That would make the most sense, but I don't know if they'll go for it. I'd like to pose the question while I am in Ottawa and see if they jump."

"When are you going?" Joe asked.

"I am scheduling it now," I said. "I want to get up there as soon as possible, and if we are going to ask them for Canadian doc.u.ments, we need to have done it yesterday." I had already decided that it would be Joe's job to come up with a cover legend for the six. Working in doc.u.ments did not mean that Joe was a forger. The forgers were the artist-validators who worked in the bullpen, a position I had held myself in the earliest days of my career. Doc.u.ments people were in charge of maintaining travel doc.u.ments and understanding the controls related to those doc.u.ments. They often traveled on probes to update their portfolios and knew what kinds of doc.u.ments would be needed by a person in order to carry off a certain cover.

"Joe, I want you with me. This may not be legal, and they may say no, but if they say yes, I want to be ready to move on it."

"What do we need to take with us?" Joe asked. Joe had already gone across the street to the State Department and requested current pa.s.sport photographs of the six houseguests. He had also collected current samples of their handwriting and had a.s.signed them alias names in advance. He had done all of this background work without knowing in which direction we were going to go with their doc.u.mentation. Be prepared. It was not just a Baden-Powell Boy Scout motto. It was the motto of the intelligence officer as well.

"Bring everything you've got," I replied. "We might be able to use it all."

There was a knock at the door. I looked up to see Elaine poking her head around the corner. "They're here," she said. When she saw the puzzled look on my face, she took a drag off her cigarette and blew the smoke out into the vestibule. "The Christmas Door Decorating Committee from the art shop," she explained. I looked at her without speaking. "I'll just close the door and they can do this without any fuss," she said, closing the door with a small clatter. I shook my head.

I turned to Doris. "In the meantime, Doris, we don't know yet what the disguise requirement will be, but I want to make sure that you and the disguise section are ready in case you are needed."

"Got it," she said.

"Okay," I said, "this has just become the highest priority. So get your heads together and see what you can come up with."

8

COVER STORY

As the end of December neared, the houseguests' initial calm was beginning to wane. They spent hours on end trying to combat the boredom, drinking too much, sleeping too much, and fantasizing about escape. After reading so many le Carre novels, Schatz had a good idea of how he could pull it off. In one scenario he wore "native dress" to blend in while he hiked over the border into Pakistan. In another he drove a car he'd stashed somewhere in the city up to the Turkish border. In a third, he was at the controls of a small speedboat racing across the Persian Gulf, the chaos of Iran disappearing behind him in a haze. The more he read, the more he fantasized.

The others were getting antsy as well. By this time they had played Scrabble so much that they could recognize the individual tiles just by the wood grain on the backs of the pieces. After nearly two months they began to feel forgotten and wondered if anything was being done to rescue them.

Their only source for news was to listen to the BBC in the morning. Mark had gotten into the habit of sleeping late and often missed the broadcast, so Anders would give him a recap. In an attempt to deflect anger away from the United States, on December 15 the shah, who was well enough to travel, had left the United States and gone to Panama. The militants, however, seemed not to care. In their minds it was the United States that was pulling the strings, not Panama. To make matters worse, on December 26 the Soviets had invaded Afghanistan, which only heightened tensions in the region. With the Soviet army fighting on Iran's doorstep, the military options for attacking Iran became even more limited. In a strange twist, the White House suddenly found itself in the awkward position of having to do all it could to bring the hostages home while at the same time trying to counter Soviet aggressions in the region. In many ways, the invasion of Afghanistan became the initial spark that would eventually lead Iran and the United States back to the table. No one could foresee this, though. Iran had gone through a series of new foreign ministers, each more ineffective than the last. The will of the Revolutionary Council could not be questioned for any reason, and anyone seen to be negotiating with the United States was labeled a traitor. On top of this, the militants at the emba.s.sy continued to stoke the revolutionary hysteria sweeping the nation with their rhetoric and public displays of blindfolded Americans, all of them liars, all of them spies, all of them out to destroy the revolution.

It's no wonder, then, that on December 31, when the UN secretary-general, Kurt Waldheim, traveled to Iran in an attempt to ameliorate the crisis, he was nearly a.s.saulted at the airport by angry crowds. And as if that wasn't humiliating enough, later that afternoon he was rebuffed by the Revolutionary Council and unceremoniously sent home like a dog with its tail between its legs. A few days later he would meet with White House officials and recount what had happened. As President Carter wrote in Keeping Faith, Waldheim had tears in his eyes as he spoke about his visit, and believed that "he was lucky to be alive."

Christmas helped to break up the monotony for the houseguests, if only for a few days. To get in the spirit, Cora decided to bake Christmas cookies. The Sheardowns had a ma.s.sive countertop and soon it was covered by all manner of iced cookies. Mark and Lee were helping to decorate when suddenly an Iranian secretary from the Canadian emba.s.sy showed up at the door, and they were forced to abandon their work. Taylor of course hadn't told any of the Iranian staffers, and so none of them knew about the houseguests. When the secretary walked into the kitchen, Zena had to pretend that the cookies had been one of her projects. The secretary was impressed, saying she had always been curious about what Zena did while she was at home.

One evening, when Roger Lucy was bringing the houseguests back from the Taylors', Lee, Mark, and Bob stopped outside the garage. It had recently snowed and they couldn't resist scooping some of the snow up in their hands and launching s...o...b..a.l.l.s at a nearby streetlamp. They laughed like kids until it occurred to them what might happen if the streetlamp was damaged. No doubt it would result in a visit from the local komiteh. They immediately stopped horsing around and went back inside.

For Christmas, John had somehow managed to buy a huge turkey from a farm outside of Tehran, and everyone pitched in to do their part. Lee took the lead in preparing the bird, along with a security guard from the Canadian emba.s.sy who was a former military cook. In true Galloping Gourmet fas.h.i.+on, they started drinking early. The turkey was so large that the roasting pan required two people to lift it out of the oven, one person on each side. Near the end of the roasting, as they took the bird out to see if it was done, one of them stumbled. The turkey slid out of the tipped pan and shot across the floor. The two of them looked at each other, then at the doors to the kitchen, then quickly picked it up and popped it back into the pan. When they were finished cleaning up, the two chefs raised a toast to having saved the meal. Later, Amba.s.sador Taylor brought the Staffords over and everyone sat down to enjoy the meal, none the wiser.

For presents, Schatz bought everybody some worry beads and a Khomeini prayer rug. "I'm going to use mine as a doormat," he said. Others suggested using it to train a puppy. In an ironic twist, the Iranian government had given the Sheardowns a tin of caviar as a Christmas gift, and everyone happily devoured it. Looking back, the houseguests remember the Christmas of '79 with fondness, realizing correctly that they were incredibly lucky to be celebrating it at the Sheardowns' and not trapped along with their colleagues at the U.S. emba.s.sy.

The militants had promised the hostages at the emba.s.sy that they would be able to partic.i.p.ate in some kind of Christmas celebration, complete with a service and a chance to go to confession. Instead what they got was a charade. In groups of threes and fours they were brought into a room filled with decorations. A Christmas tree with twinkling lights sat in the corner while tables had been stacked with Christmas goodies, some of them sent by Americans in care packages. Three American clergymen had been invited, and the hostages were filmed sitting on couches and singing "Silent Night" to the accompaniment of one of the clergymen on the piano. Of course, while this seemingly innocuous scene was playing itself out, a row of militants stood just off camera, twirling pistols and fondling rifles. Before entering the room, the hostages had been told that they were not allowed to talk.

Recognizing the event for what it was, many of the hostages refused to speak to the ministers, whom they felt were traitors for helping the militants. A few were annoyed when one of the ministers, William Sloane Coffin of the United Church of Christ, suggested that the hostages should sing and hold hands with the Iranians as a sign of solidarity. For most of the hostages, the ceremony only reminded them of what they were missing: home. One hostage later described it as the moment he hit rock bottom.

Still, the one positive thing to come out of the whole experience was that the clergy were able to convey to the hostages that the people back home cared, and cared a lot. All over America, special Christmas services were being held in honor of the hostages, while schoolchildren wrote Christmas cards and sent candy and cookies. For most of the hostages, who were not allowed to receive mail, it was the first time they had ever heard about the public reaction back in the United States. And it lifted their spirits to know that there was a whole nation hoping and praying that they all made it home safe.

By early January, I felt we were sufficiently ready to travel to Ottawa and present our case to the Canadians. Before going, however, I would need to head over to the Near East Division at headquarters and confer with them. The deputy chief, Eric Neff, had recently been to Ottawa, and I wanted to find out the best way to proceed with the Canadian government.

Eric's office, on the sixth floor of the headquarters building, was s.p.a.cious by headquarters standards, with plenty of light coming in through tall windows that gave a panoramic view of the tops of the trees. These were the very same trees that had caused Allen Dulles to remark that our Langley compound was more like a "campus" than a government facility.

As always, Eric was dressed in his somewhat excessively refined manner, with a polka dot tie, French cuffs, and custom-made boots. He stood in sharp contrast to the rest of the male CIA population, who sported Harris tweeds, b.u.t.ton-down s.h.i.+rts, club ties, and cordovan wing tips, almost like a uniform. To Eric the dress code was always formal. The other guys in Eric's division often complained about it, noting that if they were ever invited over to dinner at Eric's house they would be required to wear their patent leather slippers. Eric and I had worked together on a project in South Asia when he was a CIA chief there, and I had nothing but admiration for his abilities. Sitting in on the meeting were Joe Missouri and Hal, the chief for Near East/Iran.

Once the houseguests had become a top priority, Eric had traveled to Canada to make the CIA's initial representation. While in Ottawa he'd been able to establish a unique back-channel method whereby we would be able to communicate through Ottawa to Ken Taylor in Tehran. It was very effective and in the coming month would become almost like our own private compartmented line. In my communications with Ken Taylor I would find a kindred spirit. He had performed admirably in sheltering the hostages and had been a valuable gobetween for the State Department and the diplomats trapped at the foreign ministry. He appeared to be a quick study and had a knack for being able to keep a secret, qualities that would make him an a.s.set on the ground for us in Tehran. One of the first things I would do would be to ask him what he thought about cover options for the houseguests.

At this point, however, the key issue was doc.u.mentation.

"Can we ask the Canadians for the use of their pa.s.sports?" I asked Eric, cutting to the chase.

Eric said, somewhat defensively, that he had already raised the issue. "But you can do it again, if you wish," he continued.