162. Argo: How the CIA Made a Movie That Never Existed (Ep 3)

15:30David:Lunacy would be my reaction. I think lunacy. I mean, this is the bit that I still come back to as being fascinating. Because when you look at the story, there'd been all these other cover options. And I think some of them are still on the table potentially as fallbacks when these are presented. But even the Canadians, I think, had come up originally with the idea of them being a documentary film crew. And then it would be the CIA and Tony Mendez who go, no, no, no, no, Hollywood. I mean, there's something quite American about that, And CIA about that, dare I say. I think the Tony Mendez contribution really is to go, no, no, no, no, no.

16:10David:We're not going to underplay this. If you're going to do it, go big, go Hollywood. He's got the kind of variety ad of the film Argo and the concept art, all this crazy stuff, the spaceships, temples and alien gods, all this weird stuff. And I mean, you would think it's lunacy, wouldn't you? I mean, it is worth thinking about the logic of it, because I do think it's almost so lunatic that it's more plausible than trying to do something close to life. It gives you, you know, if you're going to create a cover story, go for it. That's the Tony Mendez theory, isn't it?

16:43Gordon:Oh, I think that's part of it. I also think that, let's say the Canadians come up with a documentary film crew as an idea first. That could actually, depending on the level of connection between the Canadian Secret Intelligence Service in Ottawa and whatever film production studios existed in Ottawa at the time, when you compare that to the connections that Mendez has in Hollywood, you could also say, well, look, that's a good idea that they're a film crew. we can backstop this much more effectively and much more quickly than you can so let us do that yeah i don't exactly know where the idea came from because that's gonna that is gonna that was in a conference room somewhere in ottawa or in in washington where people are throwing ideas around or in tony mendez's art studio or wherever but i could see that from the standpoint like the way a joint operation might work i could see them kicking ideas around and then the american saying well that's easier for us to do.

17:45Gordon:Let us do that piece of it. You handle with ROTS guys that we'll send up to Ottawa, a lot of the documents, like there's a division of labor here that obviously the film misses.

17:53David:But I still think it's fascinating because he does present to them in this house at this moment, the fact that there are other cover stories that the Canadians and the State Department have had, that they could be unemployed American school teachers or Canadian nutritionists, which I guess suggests that even some people back at headquarters in both countries knew that the Hollywood one might be a stretch but Mendez is still going to kind of push that one as the best option I can see why if you were one of those hostages or you know one of those diplomats you'd be thinking that's the crazy one I think in hindsight it does make more sense to go for the crazy option but I can absolutely see if you're in the room at that moment where someone is telling you you're working on this crazy sci-fi film.

18:40David:You'd go, oh, come on.

18:42Gordon:Nonetheless, he brings the other options. He brought supporting paperwork from Ottawa and backstopping for the alternative packages. So the agricultural survey and the school teachers. So they've got an option. I think Mendez goes in with full confidence that he will convince them that the Hollywood option is the right approach, but he doesn't want to, it seems he doesn't want to dictate that to them, which I think is, it is interesting. He wants, he wants them to feel bought in. So he pitches the Hollywood idea and then sends everybody into the dining room to discuss it among themselves. And in that dining room, they work it through.

19:26So Lee Schatz, the agricultural attache, basically says the nutritionist crop survey cover is

19:34Gordon:totally unconvincing. I mean, he's the ag attache after all, and he raises similar points that Mendez and the Canadians have already raised, which is that Iran is snowbound in January. This doesn't make a ton of sense. And again, same problem with the English school teachers. You know, the English schools in Tehran have been shuttered for months, so why are they turning up now to leave? apparently Cora Leitchek is one of the first to warm up to the Argo option. She likes movies. She can picture herself being a Hollywood screenwriter. Can't we all. Can't we all, you know, at some point. Twink and dream.

20:10Gordon:And you can see how it kind of, the realization begins to ripple through this crew of six diplomats that it makes a lot of sense, even if at sort of first blush, it's crazy. Mark Leitcheck later tells Mendez, it sounded like he kind of warms to the idea and says, it sounded to me like we were going to have one hell of a good time and I couldn't wait to get going. And you can imagine also why people would be excited to leave because they've got to be going stir crazy with boredom and a bit of paranoia and fear of being locked up. Lee Schatz is excited about it and figures he can wing it. There is one dissenter in the end, and that's Joe Stafford, who is skeptical about the plan.

20:57Gordon:And I think it's less because he thinks the Hollywood idea is crazy, although that might be part of it. I think it's more that he fears if they leave and something goes wrong, that there could be retaliation against the other American hostages who are being held, who are their co-workers and friends from the embassy. They know these people, which I think is a fair question. But with the Canadians getting ready to close the embassy and the kind of, again, the clock we've been talking about ticking, I think he's essentially eventually convinced over the course of this dinner table conversation that they need to do something.

21:42Gordon:So what's the best bad option?

21:45David:Yeah. And I find it interesting that Mendes has left the room for them to argue it out because he knows he's got to get them to buy into it. He doesn't come in and order them, you know, this is how we're going to do it. He lets them work it out themselves. I guess clearly there's a bit of tension there. Apparently, at one point,

22:03Gordon:Tony Mendez, who could sense this, the tension of the room as the house guests are working this through, he picks up two corks off a counter. Gives you some idea of how much they're drinking. There's already two corks in the midst of an operational discussion. And he apparently interlocks them between his thumbs and forefingers, kind of forming two D-shapes. And Mendez writes that he told them, let me show you how an operation like this works. Here's us and here are the bad guys. This is how we're going to get out of each other's way. And then he kind of does this sleight of hand, pulls his hands apart, and the quarks appear to pass through each other.

22:38Gordon:And I guess the point of this is to demonstrate that, you know, they're in good hands or something like that. But I love that after this, Stafford is still unconvinced. He's still a holdout. You want him to go all in. And, you know, he's like, no. So the group is kind of five to one in favor of the Argo cover. and obviously getting out. But Stafford eventually will later come around. Now, the next day -

23:05David:So Saturdays.

23:07Gordon:Saturday. Mendez is going to go with Ed over to the embassy, to the Canadian embassy, and work on some documents. We'll talk about that in a second. But the next day for the house guests is rehearsal, because they have to memorize their new identities and have some confidence that if they're questioned by an immigration officer, that they can explain what they're doing and who they are and where they've been, all these basic questions that someone might ask. So Bob Anders becomes Robert Baker. He's Irish-Canadian. He's from a small town outside Toronto. He's the locations manager. Got 22 years in the film business.

23:45Gordon:Mark Leitchek is Joseph Earl Harris. He's the transportation manager. The name and birthday come from Cora's actual father. His wife, Cora's actual father. So it's like a memory hook. So he'll remember the information under stress. Cora Leitchek is Teresa Harris, who's the screenwriter for Argo and is up on the Argo posters. Joe Stafford is Sam Collins, the associate producer. Kathy Stafford is Mary Collins, the art director. In real life, Kathy Stafford has an art school background. So it's covered that's close-ish to her actual lived experience. And Lee Schatz is Henry Collins, who is the cameraman.

24:22Gordon:Mendez gives him a cameraman's viewfinder for him to carry. And Mendez basically tells them, you know, here's how you should think about operating an alias. And he's referring to his own alias identity that he is using on this trip of Kevin Costa Harkins. And Mendez says, I wasn't pretending to be Kevin. I was Kevin. And he was me. Which I think is a fascinating kind of psychological insight into the way cover works.

24:51David:Yeah, it's like what you hear actors have to do, isn't it? You have to inhabit the personality. You're not just putting it on. You have to be that person and turn yourself into that. And I imagine it's something that some people can do and some people may find a little bit harder to do. But the problem is not just doing it, but doing it under pressure, doing it when you're getting interrogated by some revolutionary regard with your life on the line. I mean, that is really challenging, isn't it? But Mendez, I guess that is the advantage of having sent Mendez in is for precisely this kind of drilling of the team.

25:32David:Because they could have just sent them the documents and said, go on, try and get out. But it's his ability to kind of explain to them as someone who's done this before how to do it that really gives them an edge.

25:43Gordon:And Mendez writes that, you know, he's talking about cover. When you can fool a person into thinking you were someone else, it feels very powerful being the only one who is in the know, which I think is a very similar insight to the way case officers talk about conducting a surveillance detection route when they get black, when they know they're free of surveillance, this kind of almost godlike feeling where the opposition doesn't know that you're there. you know what's going on and they don't. And in that gap, in that space, that's where you can make the operation succeed. So maybe there with the houseguest role-playing and Tony Mendez and Ed about to head to the Canadian embassy to work on some documents.

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27:56David:Welcome back. It's Saturday morning, the 26th of January. And Tony Mendez and Ed have got work to do at the Canadian Embassy while the diplomats are preparing their cover story, haven't they?

28:10Gordon:The first thing Mendez does at the Embassy is send an updated ops plan and a situation report both to Ottawa and to Langley. He also sends a cable, which is a piece of total fiction for anyone who might read this later, saying that six Canadians from Studio Six Productions had called on the ambassador in Tehran, hoping that he could set up with a meeting with the Iranian Ministry of National Guidance to lease the local bazaar for Argo. And Taylor, because the security situation in Tehran is disintegrating and the Canadians are about to leave, basically advises Studio 6 to look elsewhere. And the Canadians, in this cable that he's writing up as cover, this Canadian film crew says, okay, we'll probably leave the country then on Monday.

29:00David:Which makes it out to be a bit of a failed trip, doesn't it? Because they've just arrived and they're just going to leave again. You'd think you'd have called and checked that out before. But it's interesting, isn't it? Because this cable is just to preserve the cover story for later, to keep it going if they can, about why there were a group of Canadian filmmakers in Tehran and why they left so quickly, I guess. But it's clever because it also, I guess, because it involves the embassy in the discussions, at least on the official story level, which then will justify using some embassy vehicles, I think, and drivers to take them to the airport.

29:36David:Because I guess you're claiming, well, these poor Canadian filmmakers, they've turned up. They can't do the location scouting that they wanted to, but will at least drive them to the airport.

29:46Gordon:Right, exactly. And so Mendez sends the cable out, and then he and Ed settle in to work on the documents. They do a lot of this from Ambassador Taylor's office. This is the most operationally critical piece of the whole thing, which is forging the Iranian visa stamps that the house guests will hand to the immigration officers. at the airport. This is going to show, because remember, those passports that they'll walk out on need to look like they walked in a few days earlier and need to be stamped appropriately. Here's the thing. There's a problem. Roger Lucy, the first secretary at the Canadian embassy who is now living at the Sheardown's house with the house guests, with four of them, had been responsible for picking up the diplomatic pouch at the airport, bringing that back into the embassy, and having a look at the documents.

30:47Gordon:And he sees that the OTS team that had fabricated these documents or these stamps in Ottawa had made a mistake. The Persian calendar begins on the 21st of March, not on the 1st of January. Lucy is a fluent Persian speaker, and he sees that the visas were mistakenly dated as having been issued in the future. Which is not a good thing. Which is not a good thing. Mendez and Ed had been aware of this before they'd gone into Tehran. And Mendez had basically said, Mendez got this news when he was in Frankfurt. He assures Lucy that they could address this with the second set, the contingency set of passports.

31:32Gordon:And they'll work on the visas from the Canadian embassy when Mendez and Ed are on the ground in Tehran.

31:38David:I mean, this is a pretty bad mistake from the OTS, the CIA OTS team, which is picked up, I should say, by a Canadian.

31:44Gordon:For those not watching on the video, Gordon's eyes lit up as soon as I got to this point in the outline where he could point out yet another Canadian contribution, which is true, which is true, Gordon. It is true.

31:57David:Roger Lucia is the one who spots it. But it's also true that it is interesting that the fact you have to have the contingency of having a second set of passports and the fact that Tony Mendez is able to think, well, we have got a backup. It's that point, isn't it, of having redundancies and backups in case something like that goes wrong. And I think it's an interesting example about how important that's going to be, that kind of detail of preparation, because now they've got to get to work on it.

32:22Gordon:Ed gets to work first on the disembarkation and the embarkation forms, the two-part white and yellow cards that the Iranian government in January of 1980 is using, but they've actually inherited the same forms from the Shah's government. Ed completes the Persian and English annotations on about 20 of them. He's working from the wording on the genuine yellow sheets that he and Mendez, remember when he had pocketed those and kind of slipped them under a newspaper when he had arrived at Meribad. He works off of those forms. Mendez turns to the passports, and his job is to insert those Iranian visas and to set in the arrival stamp for Maribad Airport to make it look, again, like these houseguests had arrived a few days earlier along with Mendez and Ed.

33:14Gordon:The example that Mendez is working from on the arrival stamp is the impression in his and Ed's own passports from their entry the day before. So he wants to make it look similar. He works off of that. Mendez uses a sharpened stick. He describes it as similar to a manicure stick my wife would often use to kind of stipple in the dates on the forged arrival stamps in the houseguest's alias Canadian passports. Now, one of the things that Mendez writes, the worst thing a forger can do is to forge the signature of an immigration officer before arriving in the country, only discover for the same officers on duty when you try to leave.

33:56Gordon:Also bad is putting in a stamp that's no longer in use. And OTS and the Canadians, I presume, Gordon, have been monitoring the stamps kind of week by week through the late stages of the revolution, doing this specifically to prevent these kind of errors when they're forging documents. Or when the artist validators are working on the documents, Gordon, because I believe I corrected you earlier in the series about - Calling them forgers. It's not forgery. No, no, no. They're not criminals. Artist validators. Mendez places each stamp carefully in the passports. He's using a technique to make the impression look as if it's been done very hastily by a very bored immigration officer at the end of a shift.

34:45Gordon:which makes total sense when you think about it because if you stamp it and kind of make it look really clean, that's not the way most border guards, immigration officers are stamping these things. It is just, you know, next, next, next. So he makes it look similar to that. Now, down the hall, the Canadians, remember, are shuttering their embassy on Monday. This is Saturday. They're shuttering their embassy on Monday. They're destroying communications equipment, apparently with a sledgehammer. And it's making an absolute ton of noise.

35:18David:You get this sense that it's all coming to a head after so many months of waiting for these people. Suddenly, it's all going to matter what happens in the last few days. And Ken Taylor, James Bond, comes and sees Tony and Ed in the office. And he sits on the sofa and looks at them and talks to them about making this artist validation stroke forgery. And what I like is you get this sense that Ken Taylor and Mendez, you know, says that Taylor enjoyed being in the midst of this clandestine skullduggery. So you get the feeling that this is a guy who's really relishing, actually, his moment doing this and being part of this.

35:57David:And as we said, he's been doing kind of secret communications, all kinds of things. But it's that sense of like, this is it. The adrenaline is kicking in. I mean, this is one of the things that I do like. The truth of the story is a bit more exciting than the film where Kent Eller is this kind of marginal figure who just opens the door a few times. But here you get this sense of the ambassador really enjoying the fact that he's hosting a spy team.

36:19Gordon:And as we discussed, he's been playing something like a version of the CIA chief of station for the CIA and for the Canadians over the course of the last few months. So he's in the mix. Also, what he's up to, this reminds me so much of diplomats or intelligence officers overseas. When your tour is coming to an end, you've got to make sure you've got the appropriate souvenirs and goods purchased from the country. and in the middle of all this, Ken Taylor's secretary comes in and says, oh, excuse me, Mr. Ambassador, the rug merchant you've requested show up here, he's here. And this rug merchant, Awala, is bringing these weathered antique Persian carpets in for the ambassador to consider buying a few before he leaves the country.

37:09Gordon:And when Taylor is informed about this, Mendez and Ed are working on the documents. He's like, oh, oh, right. I forgot about that guy.

37:16David:And he still welcomes him in.

37:17Gordon:He welcomes him. Obviously, he's not welcoming him while Mendez into the same room as Mendez and Ed working on fake documents. But at some point, you've got the combination of Mendez and Ed working on these documents. The ambassador reviewing the wares of this Persian rug merchant. And then the guy is sledgehammering the camo equipment down the hallway. So the embassy is, it's total chaos. So Mendez, back to the documents, Mendez hits a problem when he switches over to backdating the visas because he opens up, he's got a special ink pad that he's going to use to create the Iranian visa stamp. And he sees that the ink has dried up.

38:06Gordon:And without the visa, of course, the rest of the package is worthless. And he looks around and sees that ambassador ken taylor has he sees the liquor cabinet which of course is fully stocked and he walks over he looks at the labels finds a single malt scotch he presumes will have a lot of alcohol in it pours two fingers into a highball glass brings the bottle in the glass back to the space where he and ed are you know working on the documents and sets them down and ed is kind of reviewing him coming in with this bottle of scotch. And he says, are you thirsty, Tony? And he says, you know, why not?

38:47Gordon:You know, the whole house being fueled by alcohol anyway. You know, the house guests are boozing over at the Sheardowns. Why don't we dive in? Mendez, though, of course, is not thirsty. He wants to use it as solvent for the dried ink. And the whiskey activates the OTS chemists had specially formulated this kind of fluorescent and ink, and the whiskey reactivates it. And Mendez is able to then complete the visas. Anyhow, by midday Saturday, the documents are done. The visas are dry. They're incinerating or shredding all of the supplies that they have brought in. Mendez and Ed leave the Canadian embassy with the six finished passports, the disembarkation forms, all in a concealment briefcase.

39:29Gordon:They head back to the Sheardown House, where the house guests, as we have discussed, have been spending the day learning their cover resumes and assembling disguises for a dress rehearsal that Mendez has scheduled for them. So, Sunday, the 27th of January, this is the night before the rescue. What better way, Gordon, to prepare yourself for an absolute nail-biter at the airport other than a seven-course farewell dinner with champagne, fied wine, and liqueurs? This sounds like...

40:00David:Dinner at the Carrera House.

40:01Gordon:Just another Tuesday night at the Carrera house.

40:03David:I mean, it does make you realize embassies, ambassadors, ambassadors, residents were well stocked with booze, weren't they? Logically, you'd think like, you know, the night before a big game, you know, you'd be dry. But I can see why they do it. I can see why they do it. I think I'd be with them.

40:18Gordon:Wouldn't being awfully hungover impair your ability to answer questions from an immigration officer?

40:26David:Ah, but surely if you're maintaining your cover as Hollywood, that is exactly what Hollywood produces and casting, you know, and, you know, location scouts would be like they would be going out and being hung over and looking a bit, you know, worse for wear, wouldn't they? Rather than looking perky. So I think it's perfect.

40:46Gordon:The immigration officer would be concerned if they weren't totally shattered and hungover. That's good. That's right, Gordon. So the group is joined, of course, by Ken Taylor, the Canadian ambassador, but also by the Danish and the New Zealand ambassadors. The Kiwis are there too, Gordon, and the Danes. It's like the Canadians and the Danes. It's a, you know, we just, what's happened, Gordon? How far, how far we've fallen. Yeah, wouldn't happen these days. So the house guests, of course, spent the day continuing to work on their identities and on their cover stories. I will say there is, for those who have seen the film, there is the iconic scene in which Mendez, played by Affleck, takes all of the house guests out of the house.

41:37Gordon:And they go through the Grand Bazaar in Tehran and go around the city and they have a run-in with Iranian officials. This did not happen.

41:47David:Spoiler alert, didn't happen. I mean, it would have been mad to do that.

41:50Gordon:Well, they would have been captured. There's no way that they would have taken them out and paraded them around Tehran. It just was never going to happen.

42:01David:And it's one of a few ways the film doesn't quite match the reality, which we will look at in our bonus episode for club members while we do a deeper dive on some of those things. But yes, in the real event of that last night as well, I think in the film, there is this questioning of the diplomats pretending to be a revolutionary guard, which is done, I think, by Ben Affleck in the film as Tony Mendez. But in reality, I think it's Roger Lucy, isn't it? The one who, one of the Canadian diplomats who, I guess, speaks Farsi as well, who offers to play a revolutionary guard interrogator and put them through their paces to see if those cover stories match up.

42:38David:And he gets into character, it's fair to say.

42:41Gordon:A bit too much. Military fatigues boots. He's got a swagger stick with him. Mendez says that he looked to be like something right out of The Man Who Would Be King, the John Huston film starring Sean Connery and Michael Caine. So he goes all in here and takes, Lucy is playing the role of an inquisitive immigration officer. So he says, who's first? And Lee Schatz, the agricultural attaché volunteers, walks up to him, hands over his documents. and where visa you get this is lucy is using the the accent of a persian speaker attempting to speak english and shatz apparently maybe as a sign of how much they'd been drinking or how little homework he had done he's like you know or maybe how obscure the question was shat says you know funny thing i i don't remember and then lucy goes nuts and gets right up and leaves you know lee shatz's face he says what you mean you not remember you big liar you american spy and then And apparently Taylor turns to Mendez and is like, is this really necessary?

43:44Gordon:Do we need to be doing this?

43:45David:And it does remind me, I had to do my hostile environment training when I was at the BBC. And one of the things they do is they put us through the paces of borders like this and make you get kind of mock interrogated. Normally it was someone pretending to be a kind of vaguely Slavic border guard.

44:01Gordon:Vaguely Slavic.

44:02David:That would be with a really bad accent. I mean, there was always this one person, people at the BBC will know exactly what I'm talking about. And she was about quite short, five foot tall, blonde woman who was, if the worst thing you could possibly do is smile as she shouted at you to show your passport or ask you where you're going from. Because if she sensed even the hint that you weren't taking it seriously, she would just get in your face and just scream at you. And then they would like, you know, to make you realize what it's like, they would kind of twist your arm behind your back and actually, you know, and by the end of it, you'd be like, okay, okay, I'm going to take this seriously.

44:43David:Like, this could happen to me for real. So I sympathize with those people who are like, do I really need to do this? Oh, no, you really need to do this.

44:50Gordon:Did your hostile environment training prepare you for the rest of this classified experience, Gordon? It prepared me for lots of things.

44:57David:We get kidnapped on it. You get kidnapped. You get, you know, hooded. You get kind of dogs, you know, barking at you, all that kind of stuff. It's the full thing by these former members like that woman who are former members of the special forces who love intimidating journalists. I mean, they just love it.

45:15Gordon:Bunch of soft, bunch of soft journalists.

45:18David:The fact they're getting paid, it's their job to knock around some journalists and scare them. So it's good. So, yeah, I sympathize with the diplomats in this case.

45:28Gordon:And Mendez occasionally stops the action to coach. And of course, like your experience, Mendez thinks this is, and he's probably right, this is necessary. Everyone needs to get into their roles. They need to start to feel like they're in their roles. They need to get some pressure, poke the cover identity a little bit and see if anyone cracks. Around 11 o 'clock, Mendez says, good night. And he and Ed go back to the Sheraton. and early the next morning, very early in fact, everybody is going to head to the airport and that is going to be the moment where they put the entire cover to test.

46:09David:Well that sounds like a moment to leave it with this question hanging. What is going to happen at the airport? Is their cover going to hold under that hostile interrogation and confrontation with those Iranian officials waiting for them as they try and make their dash for freedom. So David, if people want to hear that right now, of course they can. They don't have to wait because they can join the Declassified Club at therestisclassified.com and they'll also get access to the bonus episodes, a very interesting talk about Iran we had with a CIA officer who's worked Iran, joined doing Iran in the 80s.

46:47David:And of course there's also the bonus episode in which we dive deep into Argo and how realistic it is so do join up for that but otherwise we will see you next time we'll see you next time