Argo: How the CIA and Hollywood Pulled Off the Most Audacious Rescue in History Part 5

For the next ninety hours, this initiative was the only one to be entertained within the U.S. government as a means to deal with the hostage crisis. As chief of disguise I quickly a.s.sembled a team of experts to vet the idea. I called on Tim and several members of my disguise branch, as well as one officer from the doc.u.ments branch. I wanted both seasoned officers and young people, an eclectic mix of ideas that I always preferred when tackling a problem.

"If we can't come up with an operational time line in forty-five minutes, we're going to forget this idea," I said.

Forty minutes later we had the bones of an operational plan. I called Hal, chief of the Near East Division, Iran, on the secure phone and told him I had an idea. I knew Hal well, as he and I had worked together in Tehran to exfiltrate the Iranian agent RAPTOR. The two of us had established a good rapport during and after that operation and I considered him a friend, which would come in handy in the days ahead.

"Come!" he said.

I walked into his office at headquarters thirty minutes later, alone. He got up from his desk to tell me we were going to see Bob McGhee, the deputy chief of the Near East Division. McGhee then picked up the phone and called John McMahon, the deputy director of the CIA. McMahon was in McGhee's office a few minutes later.

"What do you need?" McMahon asked.

"Immediate access to the shah," I said.

"We don't know who's talking to him," he said. "We know who isn't. Can you build it backward?" he asked.

What he meant was, could we carry out our plan without initially engaging with the shah? I told him yes, we could.

"We will need everything we have on him, however-all the records, all the photographs, everything we could possibly learn about what he looks like. Scars, tattoos, blemishes-anything that would be subject to scrutiny in an adverse autopsy."

It was at this moment, oddly enough, that McMahon took a call from Texas billionaire H. Ross Perot in McGhee's office. Perot had exfiltrated two of his employees early in the Iranian revolution with the help of a team of former army commandos. The commandos had infiltrated Iran, then used an overland "black" route to smuggle the employees out of the country and into Turkey. We stood to the side and (covertly) listened. We could hear Perot's scratchy voice across the room without any amplification. "What's the holdup?" he was asking. "Is it red tape? If that's it, I can try and help you out and get things moving. Is it money? I can help you out there too till you get your finances flowing."

McMahon thanked Perot for his call and told him he would call him back if he needed something. He put the phone down and came back across the room to our little group.

"Tell me what you need, Tony," he said, "and I'll make it happen."

Sat.u.r.day morning I went down to the DDI vault, which belonged to the Deputy Directorate for Intelligence, the a.n.a.lytical arm of the CIA, along with two of my best disguise and doc.u.ments officers. Mountains of papers, photographs, journals, and files surrounded us. We combed through the paperwork, looking for anything that would help us on this reverse engineering project.

By noon we were ready to move to the next phase, to organize a "cattle call," an invitation to a select group of Agency officers to audition for our starring role. We needed high-level authority to go to the Office of Security's badge office and review the photos of all CIA employees. When we contacted those who seemed a suitable match, all but one were willing to come in on the weekend and work with us.

For those next ninety hours we worked nonstop, sleeping on the floor using our balledup jackets as pillows. Our Hollywood consultant, a makeup great I'll call "Jerome Calloway," had flown in from LA on Sunday and worked right alongside us. That episode is an amazing story in itself, but the upshot was that by the time we were finished we had not one but two deceptions ready to go.

Unfortunately, by Friday, the president decided against using our plan because he didn't want to appear to be backing down to the Iranians-a decision, I am told, he would later regret. In light of this, our master consultant returned to Hollywood, but I would be calling on him again for another favor in a couple of weeks.

With the end of November came the frustrating realization that while we were making incremental progress toward reestablis.h.i.+ng our intelligence capability in Iran, as well as helping to plan a rescue mission, fifty-three American diplomats were still being held hostage. It was a hard fact to swallow, but if anything, it only made us redouble our efforts. There was plenty of work to do, and with other hot spots and ongoing clandestine operations grabbing our attention, we were being tasked with all that much more. Then, in the midst of this activity came a memorandum from the State Department marked URGENT. Surprisingly, not all the Americans working at the emba.s.sy in Tehran had been captured. Somehow, a group of six, who had been working at the consulate and at another building, had managed to escape and make their way into the hostile streets of Tehran. For the moment they seemed to be safe, but the Iranians were closing in, and there was a chance they could be discovered at any moment.

4

NOWHERE TO RUN

The consulate had gone relatively unnoticed during the first minutes of the attack. Located on the northeast side of the U.S. emba.s.sy compound, the building's squat, two-story concrete structure had recently been renovated to handle the ma.s.sive influx of visa applicants. So many had come in the wake of the shah's departure that getting the building adequately staffed had been a challenge. On the morning of November 4, there were ten Americans, along with about twenty Iranian employees, working inside. Among the Americans were Consul General d.i.c.k Morefield, vice consuls Richard Queen and Don Cooke, consul officers Robert Anders and Bob Ode, as well as the building's only security officer, Marine Sergeant James Lopez, known among the staff as Jimmy. There were also two young married couples, Mark and Cora Lijek, and Joe and Kathy Stafford (an eleventh American, Gary Lee, would later join this group during the a.s.sault).

The Lijeks and Staffords were particularly close. Mark and Joe, both twenty-nine years old, had met the previous year in Was.h.i.+ngton while attending language school at the Foreign Service Inst.i.tute. Despite being nearly polar opposites, the two had become good friends. Mark's straight blond hair and boyish appearance was accentuated by a pair of large gla.s.ses that somehow made him appear even more youthful and innocent than he was. He was a guy you could talk to about anything, and he did like to talk. Joe, meanwhile, was the serious and quiet type. With a receding hairline and a neatly trimmed mustache, Joe was slightly shorter than his wife, and cultivated the look of an economics professor, complete with gla.s.ses, a sweater vest, and sport coat. The two friends had spent nearly seven hours a day together for six months and had gotten to know each other quite well. To Mark, who had a hard time figuring him out at first, Joe was a reserved, hardworking guy who would suddenly surprise you with his deadpan sense of humor. He liked pus.h.i.+ng Mark's b.u.t.tons, and it was only after the fact that Mark would realize Joe had just been pulling his leg.

Fortunately for Mark and Joe, Cora and Kathy had hit it off as well. They were all young, eager, and for the most part excited to be in Tehran, which was their first posting. (And in fact they were not alone-many of the diplomats working at the Tehran emba.s.sy had been drawn there specifically for the sense of excitement, and danger, that the posting offered.)

Mark had thought about joining the Foreign Service during his soph.o.m.ore year in high school when a friend had turned him on to the idea. Originally from Detroit but raised in Seattle, he headed east after high school to attend Georgetown University in Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., on a ROTC scholars.h.i.+p. After graduating in 1974, he spent the next four years in the army, two of them working as a speechwriter for a high-ranking general. He eventually made it into the Foreign Service in 1978. His first choice of posting had been South America, but then he'd gotten a call from a junior officer asking him to volunteer for Iran. He thought about it. The shah was still in power at that point and it seemed like it might be an adventure. He said yes.

Cora, a vivacious twenty-five-year-old Asian American, had also been excited when she heard the news. Her parents had lived in Iran for four years when she was nineteen and she had visited twice. She thought it was an exotic place. She hadn't been following the news and thought it was going to be a lot of fun to go back. By the time she'd landed at Mehrabad Airport, however, her opinion had changed significantly. By then the country was in the midst of the revolution and under the strict rule of Khomeini. Things had changed dramatically. The biggest difference for her was now seeing all the women in their black veils, or chadors. She remembered how before the revolution only a few women wore them, and even then they were always colorful, some with floral prints. Now everyone was covered head to toe in black.

Her friends.h.i.+p with Kathy had grown in Iran. Outgoing and sweet, with a small-town librarian's wholesomeness, Kathy, who was twenty-eight and nearly a head taller than Cora, had studied art in college and hoped to one day become an artist.

Like the Lijeks and Staffords, most of the staff at the consulate were recent replacements or acquisitions. Almost all of them had been in the country for less than four months. None of these Americans had been in Iran for the February 14 attack, but they'd all heard about it. When the shah had been allowed into the United States, everyone had been briefed on the new security measures and was told to keep a low profile. The consulate had been attacked by rocket-propelled grenades during the summer, but it had been fortified since then. The building's main entrance was from the street, but on the day of the attack Morefield had decided to close the consulate so some graffiti on the outside wall could be removed. Instead of the normal crush that morning, there were only about sixty Iranians who'd been permitted to keep their appointments.

Upstairs, Robert "Bob" Anders was in his office helping an older Iranian couple with their immigrant visas. On the tall side with bushy gray hair, Anders had the handsome looks of a Blevel actor and was always ready with a smile (in fact, he'd even once played a priest as an extra in the film The Exorcist). At fifty-four, he was considered a bit of an old hand as far as the other consular officers were concerned. The Milwaukee native had served as a messenger for the Seventh Army during World War II, where he was wounded in the hand during a mortar attack around the time of the Battle of the Bulge. Upon returning home after the war, he attended Georgetown University and graduated in 1950. After failing to pa.s.s the foreign language part of the Foreign Service exam, he bounced around doing a variety of odd jobs until he was able to get a second chance. He took a probationary appointment and served for a time in Burma and Manila. Marital troubles, however, forced him out of the service. After a divorce and several more years of wandering the economic highway, Anders made it back into the Foreign Service working in the pa.s.sport office as a GS5, the same level he'd started at more than twenty-five years earlier. A few years and several promotions later, he'd inquired about the chance to serve overseas once again. "How about Tehran?" they'd asked him. At that point the shah was still in power, and to Anders it seemed as good a place as any. But by the time he'd set out for the post, Khomeini had taken over, and by then it was too late to turn back.

News of the attack on November 4 reached the consulate when some female Iranian employees who'd gone to get cookies suddenly rushed back into the building. The exhusband of one of the women was a policeman at the gate and he'd told her to get back inside. As they were hurrying back, the mob was already entering the compound.

While she was reporting back to the others what she'd heard, Jimmy Lopez's radio suddenly squawked to life: "They are coming over the walls!"

It wasn't long before the militants had converged on the consulate. A group rushed to the building's back door and tried to smash it down. The door was made of bulletproof gla.s.s and was electronically sealed. It didn't budge. Lopez watched as the militants fanned out. The consulate's windows were protected by metal bars. Undeterred, the militants smashed through the gla.s.s and reached in, grabbing whatever they could off desks and out of file cabinets. Lopez hurried to the windows wielding his nightstick, trying to beat their arms back.

He heard Morefield shout, "Everyone upstairs!"

The staffers and Iranians quickly complied.

Bob Anders was still in his office on the second floor when Morefield hurriedly popped his head in and told him to quickly lock up. The Iranian couple Anders had been helping stood to leave, but Anders reminded the woman that she hadn't yet completed her immigrant visa application. He watched as she signed her name. Her hand shook the entire time.

Everyone huddled on the second floor and waited. Cora was rea.s.sured by the fact that none of the American staffers seemed overly worried, but she noted that the same couldn't be said for the Iranians, who kept their heads down and kept quiet. Like the other Americans, Cora had heard about the February 14 attack and thought it would all be over quickly. She sat down near a Filipina woman who was employed as a secretary, and to pa.s.s the time they struck up a conversation. As it turned out, the woman had been working at the emba.s.sy during the Valentine's Day attack, and recounted how several Iranians had been shot during that first a.s.sault. This immediately sobered Cora up.

As they waited, they heard footsteps racing across the roof, followed by a loud pounding. "They're trying to smash through the roof," Cora heard someone say.

Then the power was cut and the building was thrown into darkness. Some of the Iranians moaned, but for the most part everyone remained calm-something Cora found remarkable. A few minutes later, however, everyone straightened up when they heard gla.s.s breaking somewhere on the second floor. It sounded as if a window had just been shattered. Waiting in the hallway, Lopez raced to investigate. A bathroom on the second floor had a window that wasn't secured, so he headed there. Before entering, he pulled out his pistol, popped the spoon on a tear gas canister, and threw open the door. Inside, he found a lone Iranian climbing through the broken window. Seeing the marine, the militant quickly jumped back out through the opening and Lopez threw the canister out after him. He then popped the spoon on a second canister and tossed it into the bathroom, closing the door behind him. There was no way to lock the door, so he used some coat hangers from a nearby storage closet to wire it shut.

At that point, Morefield told everyone that he had just talked to Golacinski on the radio. The plan was for everyone to go out the back door and head over to the chancery as a group.

Mark looked out the window to see what was happening outside. The grounds were swarming with militants. A group of Iranians had smashed open the commissary door with some steel bars and had begun ransacking the place. Going out into that mess didn't seem like a good idea to him.

As soon as they reached the back door, Morefield came to the same conclusion. By this time there was a ring of nearly a thousand militants surrounding the chancery screaming and cheering, and he realized the plan wasn't going to work.

Doubling back, Morefield called the chancery and conferred with Ann Swift on the phone. She told him that someone had called the police, that help was on the way, and that everyone should sit tight and wait it out. Then Lopez got word on his radio that the militants had broken into the chancery. Since the consulate had a door that led out onto the street, at that point they realized their best option was to flee the compound, take their chances in the city streets, and try to make it to a friendly emba.s.sy.

Before leaving, Don Cooke smashed the visa plates with a steel bar so that they wouldn't fall into the Iranians' hands. Mark, who was in charge of the cas.h.i.+ering, debated taking all the money and stuffing it into his pockets as he locked up. In the end he decided against it. Much like everyone else, he was still under the a.s.sumption that they would all return in a few days and business would be back to usual. Several days later, when he was out on the streets and needed money, he would regret that decision.

The front entrance to the consulate opened onto a small side street far away from the chaos at the chancery. After unlocking the door, Richard Queen poked his head outside and was surprised to see that there were only a couple of Iranian police officers standing around. Other than that, the street was completely empty.

The plan was to let the Iranian visa applicants go first, then the Iranian employees, then the Americans. In order not to attract too much attention, Morefield suggested that the Americans split into two groups. Kim King, an American tourist who had overstayed his visa and had come to the consulate that day to get it sorted out, decided to head off on his own, and instantly disappeared.

Mark, Cora, Joe, Kathy, Bob Ode, and Lorraine, an American woman who had come to the consulate that day to get a visa for her Iranian husband, were all in the first group of Americans to leave. With them was an Iranian employee who said she could act as a guide to help them find the British emba.s.sy. Cora remembers that, as they left, for some reason one of the Iranian policemen checked everyone's bags.

As they started off, Ode went back to help a blind Iranian man who said he was waiting for somebody to pick him up. Seeing the first group heading off, Bob Anders hurried after them and caught up.

They walked for about fifteen minutes down one of the side streets toward the British emba.s.sy. It was raining pretty heavily and it wasn't long before they were completely soaked. Mark felt particularly conspicuous in the rain, wearing a three-piece suit without a raincoat. Cora and the Iranian woman had gotten out in front a little, and when they rounded a bend they were surprised to see that the British emba.s.sy was having its own problems. A huge crowd of demonstrators was out front, shouting and screaming and banging on the gates. The two women headed back to confer with the rest of the group. The British emba.s.sy was out. Where should they go now? As they discussed their options, they became increasingly aware that more and more Iranians were beginning to stare at them. The Iranian employee offered to take them to her house, but none of the Americans wanted to impose. Since Anders's apartment was the closest, he suggested they go there to get dry and wait it out. Everyone agreed; the Iranian employee said good-bye and melted into the streets.

After helping the blind man into a car, Ode had joined the second group of Americans, consisting of Morefield, Lopez, Gary Lee, Richard Queen, and Don Cooke. They couldn't have been more obvious. Unlike the first group, they'd decided to turn down a larger street that ran parallel to the emba.s.sy. They didn't get far before a crowd of Iranians began shadowing them, shouting, "CIA, CIA!" and "SAVAK!" Finally one of the policemen who had been checking bags outside the consulate ran up and fired his pistol into the air. "Stop!" he shouted. Morefield turned to him and explained that the building was empty and they could do with it whatever they wished. Soon an armed group of komiteh rushed to join the fracas, and they knew that was it. One of the militants grabbed him by the arm. "You are our hostage!" he said. Morefield was stunned. "Hostage for what?" he asked. It was the first inkling that this was more than just a simple demonstration. Much to their horror, they were declared prisoners and marched back to the emba.s.sy.