Argo: How the CIA and Hollywood Pulled Off the Most Audacious Rescue in History Part 18

The airport was peppered with all manner of tourist images of 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 b.u.m 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 ha.s.sling 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. emba.s.sy. By this time the militants had probably been able to put together most of the secret doc.u.ments that had been shredded during the a.s.sault. 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 pa.s.sports 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 doc.u.ment 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 a.s.sault, caught h.e.l.l for it. Later he would tell me that the militants had been extremely p.i.s.sed 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 a.s.sumed 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 pa.s.sed it back. It was still warm and actually quite good.

The route our taxi was navigating was lined with a mult.i.tude 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 ma.s.sive network of informers and domestic spies, and there was no telling who or what the Revolutionary Guard had coopted.

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 a.s.sumed it was present. Years of undercover work in Moscow had taught me that it's best to a.s.sume 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. emba.s.sy was right around the corner, and with some time to kill we decided to take a walk.

The walls of the emba.s.sy 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 emba.s.sy 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 emba.s.sy. 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 emba.s.sy 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 uptodate 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, "Canahduh." 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. emba.s.sy. 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 a.s.sumed 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 s.n.a.t.c.hed the map out of my hand and they pored over it. The Iranian pointed to a street north of the U.S. emba.s.sy.

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 pa.s.sing 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 emba.s.sy?

He held the pa.s.senger 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 ill.u.s.trate to two undercover CIA officers that Iranians were hospitable, caring people. It was 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 emba.s.sy, where we arrived a little before noon. Amba.s.sador 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 gla.s.ses 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 gla.s.s 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 gla.s.s-topped table.

We sat down and Taylor explained that they were just about ready to shut down the emba.s.sy 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 emba.s.sy 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.

The first thing we would need to do, I told him, was to meet with the houseguests and brief them on the various options for escape. This would also give me a chance to a.s.sess whether or not they'd be able to pull it off. We all agreed that the meeting should take place later that evening at John Sheardown's home. After that, we would need to get to work on the visas and doc.u.ments, which would most likely happen the following day. I had brought my kit of watercolors along with me, which I planned on using to put the final stamps into the pa.s.sports. Taylor retrieved the first set of bogus doc.u.ments along with the second pouch. This sealed pouch contained the second set of pa.s.sports and several of the other secondary doc.u.ments that we had included. Julio and I then examined the contents and were happy to see that everything had made it through. We showed the second set of pa.s.sports to Taylor, and he seemed quite pleased by their authenticity. In order to make them looked used, our OTS techs in Ottawa had stomped on them repeatedly and rubbed them into the floor.

When the meeting was finished, Taylor introduced us to Roger Lucy, who seemed like a capable and quiet leader. Lucy had already made several trips through Mehrabad on behalf of Taylor and had earned us a great amount of intelligence on the controls there. Next we were properly introduced to Claude, a Quebecois who was the emba.s.sy's chief of security. Claude had been given the nickname "Sledge" as a result of wielding a sledgehammer to destroy all but the most sensitive cryptographic and communications equipment at the Canadian emba.s.sy in preparation for their departure. It was a nickname that he would come to relish.

Before he left to see his family off, we asked Taylor's permission to send a cable to Was.h.i.+ngton through Ottawa, confirming our arrival and the plans to meet the houseguests later that night. I'll admit that it was gratifying that both Taylor and Lucy were excited by all the progress we'd made on the Argo cover story. They told me it had a sort of dash that they could both identify with. When I opened the portfolio and showed them the ad in Variety, they were both impressed. Some people have suggested that there was a kind of compet.i.tion between the CIA and Ottawa, but Taylor and I never saw it that way. This was a collegial cooperation from the beginning and I can say unequivocally that both of us had only one goal in mind: to get the six Americans safely out of Tehran.

The houseguests had been told by Lucy that they should expect some visitors. Of course he didn't tell them we were CIA-just that we were coming to help. In preparation for their escape, Taylor and Lucy had organized a set of luggage and extra clothes since the houseguests had neither. It would be awkward to have them enter the airport without any bags.

After we finished up at the Canadian emba.s.sy, Claude agreed to take us over to the Sheardowns', and Julio and I piled into the emba.s.sy's Mercedes. By the time we pulled out it was five o'clock and the streets were snarled with traffic. Claude took it in stride and used his horn liberally, a device he said it would be impossible to drive in the city without. Not much had changed since the last time I'd been to Tehran. Large sections of the city were still shut down. Under the shah, Tehran had been famous for its nightlife. All of that had vanished after the revolution, replaced by blacked-out storefronts, boardedup restaurants, and sandbagged bunkers manned by machine-gun-toting youths. The city was basically divided into north and south, with the more affluent residents living in the higher-elevated and cooler north, and the poor in the hot and overcrowded pan-flat south.

It took us about thirty minutes to clear the central part of the city, and when we finally made it to the Shemiran district, it was like being in a different universe. It reminded me a lot of places like Bel Air in Los Angeles, where the rich and powerful lived safely cloistered behind their walled compounds.

Since Ken had gone to the airport, Lucy had driven over to his place to pick up the Staffords, arriving at the Sheardowns' slightly before we did. As they waited inside, some of the houseguests had played a little game about what we might look like. I'll never forget the face of Lee Schatz as he opened the door. It was the face of an overgrown kid, full of mischief with a swooping mustache overtaking everything else. He took one look at us and said, "Trench coats! You guys are wearing trench coats?" He shook his head in dismay. It might have seemed cliched, but then again it fit with our cover. The others rushed forward to meet us, br.i.m.m.i.n.g with nervous excitement and antic.i.p.ation.

As I entered the house I was confronted by a bizarre sight. A fire burned merrily in the hearth and the houseguests had laid out hors d'oeuvres. The group seemed rested and eager, even fit. Bob Anders actually had a nice tan. Lucy went into the kitchen to mix us drinks and it wasn't long before we were sipping happily on our c.o.c.ktails and getting to know one another. If not for the roaming bands of murderous Revolutionary Guards and komiteh patrolling the streets outside, it felt just like any other dinner party I had been to in Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C.

When I felt that we'd sufficiently broken the ice, I stood up to brief them on the various cover stories. "Now, you guys have worked long enough in the government to know that we didn't get here without some questions," I said. "We've got three different options, each with their own pa.s.sports and supporting doc.u.ments. You will ultimately have to decide which one you like best, but Julio and I can certainly advise you."

I then laid down the different sets of pa.s.sports and went through the various cover stories-American teachers, Canadian nutritionists, Hollywood option. I explained that regardless of which option they chose, the plan was to leave through Mehrabad Airport on Monday morning.

The houseguests were obviously concerned about the security at the airport and wondered what might happen if they were stopped and taken into secondary, a form of interrogation reserved for those individuals deemed suspicious enough to warrant it. I could tell that Joe Stafford, of all the houseguests, was perhaps the most concerned. He struck me as being highly a.n.a.lytical, the kind of person who has trouble letting go in the moment. Since the success of any disguise is predicated on confidence, I hoped he would come around.

Lee pointed to the U.S. doc.u.ments. "Traveling though the airport as Americans seems like a pretty lame idea to me," he said. The others nodded, noting as I had that the English schools had been closed for many months. I could tell they were wrapping their heads around the whole concept of their escape, trying to take it all in. I felt this was a perfect time to present my case for Argo.

"I've managed a lot of these kinds of operations in the past," I said. "And I'm confident that the Hollywood option will work."

I opened the Studio Six portfolio and took out the issue of Variety, which had the Argo ad in it. I then handed Cora Lijek her Studio Six business card and indicated the ad. "'From a story by Teresa Harris'-that's you," I said. I picked up her Canadian alias pa.s.sport with her picture and handed it to her. Cora studied her photo and forged signature with obvious wonderment. Next I picked up the sketch pad and handed it to Kathy Stafford. "Here," I said. "We saw that you have a little art in your background and decided to make you the art director." I pa.s.sed out the remaining business cards, which indicated the various roles the other houseguests would be playing: Joe Stafford was an a.s.sociate producer; Mark Lijek was "Joseph Earl Harris," the transportation coordinator; Lee Schatz was "Henry W. Collins," the cameraman; and Bob Anders was "Robert Baker," the locations manager.

I explained that we had rented an office in Hollywood and that right now we had a staff of people manning the phones. "If anybody calls, they'll be told that Teresa Harris is with a location scouting team in the Middle East but will be back next week."

The six Americans stared at me for a long second, perhaps understanding for the first time the lengths to which we had gone to get them out, including setting up a fake movie production with offices staffed by real Hollywood insiders. This on top of all the hours spent by my team at Foggy Bottom working on perfecting their cover stories and doc.u.mentation to "prove" they were who they said they were.

Finally Mark spoke up. "It doesn't sound totally crazy," he said.

"What's the movie?" Anders asked.

I tried my best to explain, using the jargon that Calloway had coached me on. "It's like Buck Rogers in the desert," I said. "The story mixes Middle Eastern myths with s.p.a.ces.h.i.+ps and far-off worlds. Believe me when I say the Iranians won't be able to understand a word of it, which is great."

I could see they were still on the fence. "Whatever option you decide on," I said, "this has to be something you can see yourself doing, something you can believe in."

With that, I instructed them to go into the dining room and discuss it among themselves. They also needed to figure out whether they wanted to leave as a group or individually.

Later, I would talk with the houseguests about how this discussion went. The group had gathered around the table and immediately launched into the pros and cons of the various plans. For Lee, who was an agricultural attache, the idea of nutritionists seemed like a nonstarter from the beginning, which wasn't high praise given his background. The others felt that the schoolteachers and nutritionists just didn't feel right. Cora pictured somebody stopping her and asking her a question about crops, and the thought worried her. She knew zero about agriculture and had no idea what she'd say. However, she knew a little something about Hollywood, just like everyone else. She pictured herself as a Hollywood screenwriter. All she would have to do would be to read the script and she would be good to go. The others began to come around as well. Mark realized that it made perfect sense that a person from Hollywood would be crazy enough to come to Iran in the middle of a revolution. Anders, for one, was instantly sold. He envisioned himself on the set of a film, rubbing elbows with Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty. It seemed like a role he was born to play. "It sounded like we were going to have one h.e.l.l of a good time, and I couldn't wait to get going," he later told me. Lee, for his part, knew almost nothing about operating a movie camera, but he imagined the adventurous life of a Hollywood cinematographer traveling all over the world. He had been to some exotic places himself and figured he could easily wing it. The biggest factor for all of them was that it was clearly the option with the most supporting doc.u.mentation, not to mention that there was an office actually staffed with people to back up the story.

In the end the only dissenter seemed to be Joe, who kept saying, "I just don't see it." Joe, it appears, was against all of the plans and instead wanted to remain in Iran. Mark knew Joe quite well by now, and he saw Joe's response as being more emotional than rational. To Mark, it appeared that he was feeling guilty at the prospect of escaping while their colleagues languished down at the emba.s.sy. "What if they retaliate against the hostages if we leave?" Joe asked everyone. It was a good point, and one that I had considered myself, but with Canada closing down their emba.s.sy and the Iranians getting closer and closer to discovering the fugitive Americans, there was really no other option but to leave. The other houseguests certainly felt that way. "Well, what do you want us to do-stay here? How is that going to help them?" Anders asked him. Joe then proposed that they go down to the U.S. emba.s.sy and try to reason with the militants. It might have been a n.o.ble gesture, but both Anders and Schatz were adamant. "You can forget about it," they said.

It was as they were debating Joe's plan that I decided to walk in and see how things were going. I could sense the electric tension in the room, so I decided to use some parlor magic. "Let me show you how an operation like this works," I said. I picked up two corks off a nearby counter, interlocking them between my thumbs and forefingers to form two D shapes. I had used this trick many times to ill.u.s.trate how to set up a deception operation. "Here's us and here are the bad guys," I said. "And this is how we are going to get out of each other's way." With a little sleight of hand I pulled my two hands apart and the corks appeared to move through each other. It was a simple trick, but the goal was to show them that they were involved with professionals in the art of deception. That everything had been thought of.

It must have worked, because after that they voted five to one in favor of using the Argo cover option and leaving as a group.

With that out of the way, the six gave Julio and me a tour of the house, which was truly palatial. While we were making our rounds, Chris Beeby, the New Zealand amba.s.sador, showed up along with his second secretary, Richard Sewell. Sewell would prove to be incredibly valuable over the coming days. He explained to me that he had a close contact down at Mehrabad who worked for British Airways, and Julio asked him if he would be willing to help us out by grabbing some more of the yellow and white disembarkation/embarkation forms. Sewell readily agreed and we set up a time to meet at the Canadian emba.s.sy the following day.

Before leaving, I sat down with the houseguests once again to go over their cover stories. I handed each of them the personal resume that Joe Missouri had created for them and told them to memorize them backward and forward. "If anyone stops you or ha.s.sles you in any way, just act confident and look them in the eye. Think about how someone from Hollywood would react. Remember, Julio and I will be right beside you, so if anything goes wrong let us do the talking."

The last thing I wanted to go over was their disguises. I had brought with me the materials that Doris had included and I spread them out on the table. Since thousands of Iranians had pa.s.sed through the consular section of the emba.s.sy, where the majority of the houseguests had worked, there was a chance that one of the Americans might be easily recognized.

I explained to them that the key to a good disguise was to identify the various salient features or qualities that make them who they are, and then alter those, rather than try to go overboard in one area. Often, it is the subtle things that give people away, such as the way they walk, or a particular mole. If this operation were taking place in Moscow, we would have had a whole crew of OTS disguise experts working with us. Instead, we would have to make do with what we had.

"Each of you is going to need to make yourself look a little flas.h.i.+er, a little more Hollywood," I said. I handed Schatz his viewfinder and gave Cora the script.