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For exclusive interviews, bonus episodes ad free listening, early access to series first look at live show tickets, a weekly newsletter and discounted books. Join the Declassified club@the restisclassified.com.
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Six Americans are hiding out as Canadians. Canadian house guests in Tehran. To get them out, the CIA will invent a Hollywood film studio that doesn't exist. Well, welcome to the Rest is classified. I'm Gordon Carrera.
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And I'm David McCloskey.
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And we are in the midst of the aftermath of the Iranian revolution. The US Embassy has been taken over. Hostages have been taken there, but six Americans have slipped out a side gate and have ended up sheltered inside the homes of two brave Canadian diplomats in Tehran. We left last time with Tony Mendez of the CIA's Office of Technical Service planning the idea of how he might be able to get them out from inside Iran. So, David, I guess we're back to the story of the CIA and the Canadians. Just to remind people, rescuing these six diplomats, this.
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A
This is going to go on for the entirety of the series, isn't it?
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B
It is, yeah.
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He won't relent. He won't relent. So plans, Gordon, what, what are, what's the plan here?
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B
There's lots of plans and they're.
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A
None of them are good. No, I think it's fair to say there are lots of plans.
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B
I could have come up with better plans than some of these plans to get them out.
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A
Do you think so? I don't know, Gordon.
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B
Thanks. Maybe. But there are a couple of ideas, and some of these are coming from the Canadians, I have to say, and some are coming from the State Department. The question is how you're going to get these people out. Because the point is they cannot be American diplomats. They've got to be someone else to get them out. And there's got to be a route to get them out as well.
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A
Right. And it also is worth. Just before we lay out the. The bad plans, it is worth saying that the challenge, the exfiltration challenge here is significant because there's a group, there's six people. They're between the ages of 25 and 54. They're diplomats. They're not intelligence officers. They have no experience working with alias documents and cover. They're not trained for this at all, period. So you have to think about the COVID problem from the standpoint of the humans that you have sitting at these homes in, you know, Canadian diplomatic residences across Tehran. And it's. It is a significant one.
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To see how HP helps businesses work securely and productively, visit hp.com classified the rest is classified. Listeners also benefit from 10% off HP business technology with code TRIC10 for adults with Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis symptoms, every choice matters. Tremphy offers self injection or intravenous infusion from the start, Tremphya is administered as injections under the skin or infusions through a vein every four weeks, followed by injections under the skin every four or eight weeks. If your doctor decides that you can self inject Tremphya, proper training is required. Tremphya is a prescription medicine used to treat adults with moderately to severely active Crohn's disease and adults with moderately to severely active ulcerative colitis. Serious allergic reactions, increased risk of infections or lower ability to fight them and liver problems may occur before treatment. Get checked for infections and tuberculosis. Tell your doctor if you have an infection, flu like symptoms or need a vaccine. Explore what's possible. Ask your doctor about tremphya today. Call 1-800-526-7736 to learn more or visit TR so first plan they could pretend to be unemployed American school teachers who'd come to Iran looking for work.
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B
That does I mean most of the English schools in Tehran had closed months earlier, so why would you be coming to a revolutionary country as an American school teacher looking for work? That does seem to me to be a bit of a stretch and you know, also relies on you being American where immediately they're going to go who? Who are you really? So I, I'm, I'm going to rule that one out. David what about the next one?
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Plan 2 from your new heroes. The Canadians have them pose as Canadian nutritionists inspecting crops, but Iran in January is relatively snowbound. Nobody's inspecting the crops in January and it probably wouldn't take long for somebody to ask this question. So That's. That's out. Plan three, use a cover as petroleum workers. But Iran's oil industry is on strike. Foreign workers are being expelled, not let in. So there'd be questions about how they had gotten into the country in the first place. Plan four, ride bicycles to the Turkish border. It's 300 miles in. Win through the mountains. They're all in, I guess, okay shape, but, you know, they haven't been training for this. One of them is a chain. Is a chain smoker. And as Mendes and his team are looking at these options, they think these are the kind of things that lead to someone being captured or killed.
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B
Yeah.
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And there's a. A passage in his. His memoir where Mendes explains why the COVID story matters so much. Because he says, just as important as who the person might be is his or her ability to carry off a new Persona and make it believable. So you want some investment in the part of the houseguests, in the new cover, something that they can work with and make their own.
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B
Yeah, you want a kind of commitment to your cover identity, rather than it just being one line that you're gonna try and use if a border guard confronts you. I guess that's the point that he's learning, is you want people to become almost like actors, invested in their part. I guess that's. That's the thing that Tony Mendes is. Is thinking about. And it's interesting. It's partly based. We talked last time he'd taken out this Agent Raptor earlier in. In 1979, and he's got this experience. And I think that's what's so significant about Mendes is he's. He's done it. He understands what it. What it's like when you are someone who. Who is not trained to stand at a border checkpoint and answer questions about a false identity, how hard that can be, and therefore how you need to be able to carry it off.
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A
We're actually not yet at the point where Mendez has landed on an answer for. For the COVID that they'll eventually use. But CIA has decided that the available options are probably not going to suffice. But one thing that they absolutely will need is documentation for the diplomats to leave. And there are different options for this. We talked about how even alias American documentation would probably be a bad idea. Yeah, they could all go out on different nationalities. But you think about how do you make it credible if they're talking to a border guard or someone in immigration control, that this person matches this passport? And if you have someone who. Let's say the passport says they're German and they don't speak German, and the immigration officer can speak a few words in German. You're. You're done. So this is another. This. I mean, Canadian angle here makes a lot of sense because they could. It's a North American English. They could all look Canadian. So from a cover standpoint, no matter what your sort of overall story is and how you backstop it, having Canadian passports in alias is something you're going to want no matter which plan you use. So Mendez flies to Ottawa in late December with his deputy, and he goes to meet a Canadian official that he calls Lon Delgado at the. At the U.S. embassy in Ottawa. And the reason for the trip is to. To get Canadian passports. And, Gordon, I sense you're going to jump in with some more commentary on Canadian high politics.
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Well, no, I just think it's really interesting because this is. It's not an easy thing to do, to give someone. Not. Because these are not fake passports. These are real.
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A
It's not a fake document. It's an alias passport.
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B
It's a real document. Yeah, it's a real Canadian passport in which you are going to insert a fake identity and that is different from a fake passport. So it requires the Canadian government being willing to issue real passports to which fake identities of people who are going to pose as Canadians, you know, to be inserted. And it's so interesting because this again, requires a kind of sleight of hand from the Canadians because the Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister know about this and about this plan. But to get this approved, they've got to go through a special, what's called an order in council and have it waved through the cabinet, effectively. And they do this, it's really funny, they do it through a sleight of hand where at the end of a meeting with the cabinet, they just go, oh, yeah, we've got that other thing to go. Yeah, I think that's fine. No one's got any objections yet.
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A
Let's go.
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And so that way, the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary basically get this approved without having to tell the other people that they've just approved issuing a set of real fake Canadian passports to these six Americans who they're going to try and smuggle out. So it's about still keeping it very secret within Otter and within the government, which they do very well.
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A
And the Canadians do this without any. Any American pressure. They just. They just do it. So by the time Mendez shows up, he's kind of thinking he might have to negotiate with the Canadians over these passports. And when he's meeting with this officials, he calls Lon Delgado after Mendez explains what he needs. Delgado is like, I think we've already done that. So he, he shows Mendez the piece of paper that' got this seal on it. And you know, the order in council has already been passed through that closed session of Parliament. So they have the passports. And I think Bendez is pretty surprised by this. I think normally there's a bit more of a back and forth between intelligence services over these kind of documents. So the Americans have names, alias names that they've, and photos that they've got of the diplomats that they're going to use to make these real Canadian passports. They also get six more passports, backup secondary passports for redundancy because this, this gets to the nature of the detail oriented nature of the artist. Validators slash forgers and the document specialists inside the CIA's Office of Technical Service who are going to do this where, when, if that passport is being carried by one of the house guests out of Merabat Airport in Tehran. That passport can't look brand new. It has to look like there has to be a story behind and stamps and visas in that passport that match their cover story for the Persona that they have. And so you'd want backups in case you need to be flexible with the kind of documents and visas and stamps that you put inside it. So what Mendez doesn't have, so he's got documents or at least the beginnings of the, of the documents, he needs a cover story. Who are these people?
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B
Who are they?
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If there's six people walking out of Iran or bicycling out on a 300 mile mountain trail in the middle of winter, who are they and what are they doing in, in Iran? So Mendez comes back from this trip to Ottawa, he's got the passports and he is, he's back in his, his studio. Remember, Mendez is a painter, an artist by, by trading. And in his memoir Mendez describes it as this moment of alpha or this, he's in this kind of right brain, creative state and he's having a breakthrough and he's been turning over the COVID problem. And cover I, I think usually is designed to be boring. You don't want to attract attention. It obviously needs to fit with the person. But you don't want immigration officers, you don't want people in the airport. You don't want anybody to kind of turn their head and focus on you or your subject.
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Yeah, you'd normally want to be boring.
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A
Boring is Good.
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B
You want to be the insurance salesman. No offense to insurance salesmen out there, but you're the mean or the. That. Sorry. I feel really bad.
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A
Yeah, you should apologize. You should. That was. That was out.
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That was me. I didn't mean it like that. You know what I mean?
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But the house guests, they're not. They're not really boring. They're a big group. There's six of them. It's. It's going to be very hard for them to blend in. And they don't have a sort of logical or kind of a shared background that could be used to explain why they're all walking out of the airport together. Right. And so what, what do you do, Gordon, with this group of people? Do you have. Last time you. We start. We started off with you bashing a few of the ideas that had been ginned up. Where does Gordon Carrera's alpha, his creative flow take it?
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B
I don't know. I mean, you can't do the Gordievsky style boot of a car, which of course we've talked about in the past. You know, the Metrokin on a boat. I mean, the Straits of Hormuz, I guess in those days maybe were open, you know, And I kind of wonder about the good old days when you could just sail down the straight to Hormuz without being bombed. So I guess I might have thought about that, which is interesting because my head goes to smuggling them out, right? You know, on a boat or a car, rather than just walking them out of an airport using the fact of a different identity and a cover story. But obviously that is the preferred option here, and Mendes has done it.
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And I think the answer on the smuggling side is and why that, why he doesn't go down that road. Maybe two reasons, maybe three. The first one is I think it's logistically more complicated because you have to think about what compartment are they being smuggled out in. Is that a boater? Is that a car? It's six people. Do you need multiple vehicles? All of a sudden, the logistics train to accomplish that becomes complicated. So that's one reason. I think the second reason is if you're caught, you're dead. Yeah. And it's a mass. It's a massive flap. The third reason is that Mendez maybe is a bit of recency bias here, but it makes sense. Mendez has just successfully walked someone eight or so months earlier out of the airport. Yeah, the Raptor case.
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B
But I still find it bizarre that you don't go for a boring cover story. I get why the Nutritionists and the teachers and the oil workers don't work. But spoiler alert, as we know, he is going to turn to the craziest place you can imagine to give them a cover story, which is, if you like, flamboyant rather than low key. And I just find that a really surprising thing to do, I guess. But he goes to Hollywood.
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He does. He goes to Hollywood. I think not to be a Debbie Downer here, but one of the things that the film leans into very heavily is the flamboyancy, the insanity, the over the topness of the Hollywood side of this. I think the reason Mendez picks the Hollywood thing is because he knows that everybody knows a little something about Hollywood and about movies. And so all six of them will, in a very short period of time be able to get some veneer of a cover story together. Whereas boring insurance salesmen or being a
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nutritionist, you've got to learn about nutrition.
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There's going to be a technical, maybe depth required there. That wouldn't be as required on the Hollywood side. And there's the great line from John Goodman in the film where Ben Affleck's Ben Affleck, the Mendez character, says, can you train someone to pretend to be a director? And John Goodman says, you can train a rhesus monkey to be a director. You know, it's just, it's, it's so good. So, so Hollywood, Hollywood crews are typically international. So, you know, a group of Canadians coming in, headed in out of Iran wouldn't look strange. Of all the groups potentially going to Iran In January of 1980, there's a group of Hollywood eccentrics scouting desert locations in the middle of a revolution. It seems like something Hollywood types might, might do. No offense to our friends in Los Angeles. And so the COVID is kind of fun. It also gives again the idea that these house guests might need to lean into the COVID and make it their own. It makes it fun in a way that maybe being a petroleum engineer isn't. Although we're just, we're kind of just, we're bashing all kinds of occupations on, on the pod today, aren't we?
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I know, I know, I'm sorry.
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And Mendez has deep connections in, in Hollywood to make this happen.
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B
The relationship between the CIA and Hollywood is fascinating, isn't it? Because it's got deep roots. I mean, Mendez personally has contacts in Hollywood, but also the CIA has long been working with it. I mean, I know that when you go back to the Second World War, you go back to propaganda films, you go back to, you Know, this is pre, I guess, CIA, oss, they were working on making propaganda films pushing anti Nazi messages. Early Cold War. There's that whole era of Hollywood as propaganda, which has got deep roots further back, but there's also an operational side as well, which is interesting.
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A
Yeah, this is the, the propaganda piece is its own, it's, it's honestly probably its own set of episodes because it's, it's such a fascinating thing. I was struck just in looking into this a bit that the Office of Strategic Service, the forerunner to the Agency, had film units that shot footage of the concentration camps after they were liberated. That was, it was actually used at Nuremberg. And 12 OSS officers died while filming combat to use those and filming for, for propaganda purposes. So there's a whole separate kind of thread there. But yeah, the, the propaganda connections are not what produces the Argo operation. This is much less about propaganda and much more about technical expertise. Because from the early 70s onwards, the CIA's Office of Technical Service, which is Mendez's crew, has started contracting with Hollywood makeup artists, special effects builders, prop designers, even stage magicians to solve operational problems that Langley can't crack on its own. And one of the central contractors is this guy named John Chambers, who again is played by John Goodman in the film. Mendez calls Chambers Jerome Calloway throughout his memoir because when Mendez was writing, Chambers had, had not yet passed. Chambers, sort of like Goodman in the film, is a larger than life character. In real life he's got his hair slicked back with a thick sheen of pomade on it. Mendez described him as looking more like a bouncer than a makeup artist. He wears white short sleeve shirts and black ties. He's got a big pinky ring. He drives a big yellow Pontiac. Very Hollywood, very Hollywood. And he and Mendez are thick as, as thieves. So Mendez first met Chambers in the early on the, on the set of a spy themed TV show. And Chambers had won an honorary Academy Award in 1969 for the makeup work on the original Planet of the Apes. Very good film, Very good film. While researching this, that the best makeup Oscar didn't exist until 1981. So up until that point, honorary awards were given out on a case by case basis. And because Planet of the Apes was such a, an amazing achievement in makeup, Jack Chambers got the honorary award. He, he invented the foam latex prosthetic techniques that were being used in pretty much every sci fi film of the 70s. He developed Mr. Spock's prosthetic ears for Star Trek.
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B
Now that is a big, that's A big one for me. I mean, Mr. Spock, but yeah. So he's, he's, he's a big. He's, he's a really interesting character and he's got this established record of working with the CIA.
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A
You were, you were about to skip by the other John Chambers fact, weren't you?
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B
Give me more. There's more.
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A
There is a claim that he also built the, the Bigfoot suit for the famous Patterson Giblin footage.
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B
Sorry, is that fake footage of a supposed Bigfoot, basically, or real footage of
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A
the actual Bigfoot, depending on your persuasion.
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B
Okay, maybe we should do an episode of Bigfoot.
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A
We should. So Chambers. So Chambers may have faked Bigfoot and he'll also play a role in staging a CIA rescue operation. So he's a. He's an interesting character. Back to Argo. So, CIA disguises. This is how tight the connection had become between the, the OTS crew and Hollywood is that CIA disguise officers are actually doing apprenticeships on Chambers film sets. And Chambers, in some cases is rotating into training exercises that the CIA is doing at the farm in Virginia, where on at least one occasion, he role played a fictional border guard. So he's, he's enmeshed and he and Mendez really, really like each other. So Chambers helps Mendez with all kinds of wild operations, including how to make prosthetics that make case officers appear to have aged 20 years overnight, to change their bone structure with dental appliances, to have a different gait, to walk differently. Chambers has this great line about disguise where he says the hardest part of the face to disguise is the earth. Nobody looks at ears, but they notice them when they're wrong. So this is a guy who I think like Mendez is a craftsman. You know, these are two, two craftsmen who just happen to end up in the middle of a spy story. So By January of 1980, Mendez is headed back to Ottawa for another trip. And this is a part, I mean, Gordon, I'll just nod here to the Canadian cooperation because there's a whole piece to the preparation for this exfil, that is deep connection between the CIA's Office of Technical Service and the Canadians over how to make these documents appear accurate for the X File, because again, I
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B
think, you know, the film kind of glosses over the extent to which it is the Canadians who are generating the documents and the kind of a lot of the detail of the identities for these Canadians because they're going to need more than just a passport. They're going to need credit cards, driving licenses, pocket litter, the kind of things you keep in your pocket. The Canadians are intrigued by Tony Mendes contact. Delgado is intrigued, isn't he, by the idea of this slightly crazy plan of doing a Hollywood scout scouting crew going out to Iran as being the COVID story. And it's kind of makes. Again, it kind of makes sense because Canada has, does do some filming, I don't think as much as it does now, but it has got its own domestic film industry, so it is plausible. So at this point the plan is starting to come back together between the Canadiens and Mendes.
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A
Well, I mean, to show how enmeshed the Canadians are in this. I mean, Mendes actually pitches the Canadians first on the Hollywood idea.
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B
They've got to buy into it. I mean, in that sense it really is a joint operation, I think. Think, isn't it?
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A
Rather.
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B
That's what I think when you read it. That's it. It is a joint operation rather than just a CIA operation. But anyway, let's keep going with this
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A
because my thoughts on Bigfoot, I will not. I will, I will offer. No, no comment. No comment. I actually don't, I don't believe in Bigfoot. Do you have a Bigfoot thing in the uk?
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B
Well, we got, we got, we got Nessie, got the Loch Ness monster. That's probably the closest thing.
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A
No, I don't, I don't believe in, I don't believe in Bigfoot. I want to. Thanks for clarifying. I don't. So Mendez pitches the Canadians. Canadians kind of like the idea about the Hollywood cover. And Mendez starts to work on a plan and he actually in inside Ottawa Station, writes up in long hand on a yellow legal pad a 16 page OPS plan that gets cabled to Langley. And Mendez then flies back to Washington and has a meeting with higher ups inside the agency's near east division. Because again, Mendez works in the Office of Technical Service. The near east division has primacy for operations in Iran, so they need to be on board with this. And there is a little bit of consternation about Mendes having run this through the Canadians first, but seems to be forgiven because the plan is, if not a good one, as the film says, it's the best bad plan that the CIA has. Now the. The Hollywood cover also could potentially solve more than just the house guest problem because we talked about this in the last episode. The Pentagon is deep into planning a bigger rescue operation for the rest of the hostages who are being held at the embassy. This will become known as Operation Eagle Claw. The operation. The plans are not firmed up yet. By the time we're in January of 1980. The operation won't take place until April. And so the idea that there could be a pipeline of film scouts, a production company sending people to Iran, well, that could create some interesting possibilities to get more people throughout the spring into Tehran. And further, there's thought that a film production might be welcomed by the Iranians because it could help promote tourism. And, you know, President Carter has just frozen a bunch of Iranian assets. The. The Iranian regime is desperate for cash. You know, maybe a film shoot would help in that regard. So there's a thought that the Iranians might actually want to issue visas for film crews going in and out of Tehran. Interesting, though. Mendez says that even though bureaucratically it's starting, there's some traction. The Canadians like the idea. The near east division likes the idea. The Office of Technical Service where he's working, they like the idea. He's starting to wonder if this is maybe not such a good plan. He's expecting some pushback. He's not getting any. Has he overlooked something? But he seems to think in his gut that this is again, the best bad plan that they've got. That night, Mendez briefs his. His boss on the operational plan. Says that, you know, this is the team I want. This is another facet of the film that is incorrect, which is that it's just Mendes. He'll have a. A deputy who works with him. There's a whole team of artists, validators and documents people, and the Canadians, of course, Gordon, who are working, working with him. And on Thursday, the 10th of January, 1980, Mendez calls in his secretary and tells her to draw an advance of $10,000 cash from budget and Finance, which is the maximum allowed without higher approval. Mendez said that anything more than that required, quote, the right hand of God. And he puts the $10,000 cash inside a concealment briefcase and flies out to Hollywood.
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B
So with Tony Mendes heading to Hollywood, where we all should be going. Let's take a break. And we come back, we'll see how this bizarre, remarkable, slightly crazy plan unfolds. See you after the break. So welcome back. Tony Mendes, with his maybe preposterous crazy plan involving Hollywood, is heading out to California to try and see what he can do. And, I mean, it's interesting, isn't it? He's, he's, he's come up with this plan, but he's also still got to get the Hollywood people on side. But perhaps Hollywood people like a crazy story.
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A
Yeah, he's not going to get a lot of pushback on the idea. Spoiler alert from his from his friends in Hollywood. So, so Mendes flies out, stays at a small Hawaiian themed motel in Burbank near John Chambers home. And the next morning shows up at chambers home at 9 o'.
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B
Clock.
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A
So Chambers has someone with him at the house and Mendes had asked him to bring someone that he trusts. The guy is Bob Seidel. Alan Arin plays a composite of Sydal in the film. Sydel will be the, the third member of this trio constructing the COVID out in, out in LA. Seidel is 42 in 1979. He's also a veteran makeup artist. Chambers known him forever. He is balding, with a kind of neatly combed beard. He's got thick gold framed glasses. And he has made a career mostly at NBC working on variety shows. And what Seidel brings to the table is that he has got a gift for the logistics, the business of film production. Now Seidel has no idea who, who Mendez is and he's just been invited over by Chambers for a cup of coffee.
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B
Because I guess Chambers, I mean it sounds like Chambers has got to be pretty discreet about working with the CIA. Although it does sound like he may have told some of his friends. I mean, who can resist, you know, letting slip over, over a martini in Hollywood that yeah, I'm doing some stuff from the, for the CIA. But he's, he's pretty discreet, isn't it, about, about his work. But Mendez still gets a confidentiality agreement for them to sign. You've got to do that to impress on someone that this really is secret.
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A
Sure. Mendez is also aided by the fact that I think many Americans are furious about what's going on in Iran.
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B
About the hostages.
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A
Yeah, about the hostages.
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B
Very visible. The, the, the, the publicly known hostages. Yeah. Rather than our six. Yeah.
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A
And Sydel is one of them, apparently. Launches into an angry, you know, Mendes asks if Seidel has been watching the news about Iran and he says yes. And then launches into this kind of angry screed about how nothing's being done to bring the hostages back. And Mendes says, what if I was to tell you that not all of the diplomats are being held at the embassy? So Mendez lays out the, you know, the house guests and that explains that the job is, is to get them out. And then he pitches the Hollywood cover, which is that these house guests will be a film crew scouting a location for an upcoming movie. Seidel and Chambers love the idea. They love the idea.
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B
Of course they do.
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A
They want to know what, what Mendez needs them for. And he, Mendez spreads photos of the house guests across the table, he's got photocopies of their Canadian passports. Mendez says, well look, you know, one of them, Cora Liak, her alias name is Teresa Harris. And Mendez says, well, you know, somebody might, might call and try to verify that Teresa Harris is a real screenwriter. So in other words, he needs, he needs the COVID backstopped. He needs somebody to be able to answer the phone. And it sounds kind of simple, but then when you start to unpeel all the different layers, it becomes much more complicated. So I also think it's interesting. Remember, he's brought the money, he's brought $10,000 cash in his concealment briefcase. He actually has a support. Mendez has a support officer show up probably from LA station and deal with the cash because Mendez wants to make sure that all the accounting is right. So la Mendez, chambers and Sidell, the money handled, they start working. Mendez is going to need a production company and he's decided to name the production company Studio six after the six house guests in Tehran. And the first priority is office space. So Seidel says, okay, that's, that's easy. Hollywood production companies are constantly forming and dissolving and the rental market is built for short term leases. The mob, in fact the Mafia routinely, routinely launders money in this era through Hollywood by opening and closing production companies, sometimes weekly. There's been no shortage of office space. And it's not abnormal in 1980 for someone to just start a production company.
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B
Sounds like Soho these days, or round ultimately, if you go around there, how many kind of TV production companies, I'm not saying they're all funded by the mob, just to clarify, legally, just to
- [33:53]
A
clarify, is that, are they, are they cousins of the candy, the sweet shops off Oxford street that are money laundering fronts?
- [34:02]
B
No, I think these are real production companies, but people who have not engaged with TV and film production. Imagine that they're all really massive companies, but often they are one producer and an assistant and maybe, you know, one other person involved in development. Sometimes there can be two, three, four people. And that's how big a lot of the production companies are who are actually, you know, kind of coming up with the development of ideas and then the. They work with bigger companies and studios to make it work. So you're right, it is entirely plausible that this company exists.
- [34:31]
A
And it takes about an hour to find office space. So there's a location called Sunset Gower Studios. It's independent, but it's on the old Columbia Pictures lot and they've got space opening up the next Day, Gordon. And specifically these were offices that had recently been vacated by Michael Douglas, who had just finished producing the China Syndrome. So they've got three offices and a reception room. And Mendez says, great, if it was good enough for Michael Douglas, it's good enough for us. So on Saturday morning, Mendez, Chambers and Sidell drive down for a look at the office. Receptionist slides the words Studio six Productions onto a placard, slips it into a slot at the front door. There you go, you got your office space. The rest of the day they scrounge up furniture, typewriters call in favors to get the phone lines connected and they install. This is important, right, that the number doesn't look strange and that it's listed. So they install several working phone lines including. And they make sure that a few are listed in kind of key directories. Seidel will man the office and the phones for the duration of the operation because you, you need a real person to answer the phone if someone in, in Iran calls to check out what's going on at Studio 6. Seidel's wife, Andy is brought in to act as the, the production secretary. And Seidel basically tells her what they're up to and, and that she's going to be working starting Monday in the offices of Studio six Production. So by Sunday. Now keep. Mendez has been in Hollywood for like 48 hours at this point and he's
- [36:01]
B
already got a company.
- [36:02]
A
They've got the production company, they have an office, they have phones, they need a. They did a movie, Gordon, you need a movie, need a movie. What sort of film would you choose?
- [36:15]
B
Well, I have to say I would have been tempted maybe by a western, but they go for, I think my real choice, which is, I do like a bit of sci fi. Star wars has just come out, 1977 and which is the kind of a surprise hit as a kind of sci fi western, really set on Tatooine with those great desert sequences which were filmed, I think in Tunisia, weren't they? And has been this huge hit for George Lucas. So you can see why sci fi is in the air. You've had the Frank Herbert books, Dune as well, which have been a big hit, narrow, big in cinema, but again have this kind of exotic sci fi desert feel. That would be my choice. And it is their choice because I think it's absolutely the right one.
- [37:02]
A
I think you might be, there might be some kind of analytic bias going on here with you choosing choosing sci fi in the desert. Well, the same's true with, with the Dune. The Dune films, the recent films which are largely the, the desert scenes shot in, in Jordan near, near Wadi Rum. So this connection of sort of desert Middle east location and sci fi, there's, there's some grounding there from a film standpoint. And Chambers tells Mendez that he actually has come across a script he'd been pitched months earlier. And it is a script based on Roger Zelazny's 1967 Hugo winning science fiction novel, Lord of Light. Now the Hugos are the, the premier annual literary awards for sci fi and fantasy. So the novel's a big deal in the science fiction world. And a producer named Barry Geller had bought the rights and put together a serious attempt to actually get this novel adapted for the screen. Jack Kirby, who's a Marvel Comics legend, he was the co creator and illustrator of Captain America and the Fantastic Four, had been hired to do the concept art for this adaptation of Lord of Light. Barry Geller, the producer who bought the rights, had even envisioned a theme park based on the film in Aurora, Colorado, which is going to be called Science Fiction Land.
- [38:32]
B
He's getting a little bit ahead of himself. Thinking of a little ahead of yourself.
- [38:36]
A
I always, you know, Gordon, when I'm starting a novel, I always start with the theme park. What's the theme park?
- [38:43]
B
Damascus Station.
- [38:46]
A
Station. The theme park. I start with a theme park and then the story just kind of, just kind of gets built around it. And there's concept art of what the, the theme park would look like. And Barry Geller, when he was asked why it wasn't built, said it gives a whole bunch of reasons that he's basically like, it was going to cost a half billion dollars. It was just gonna, it was, it was insane. It had like levitating trains on magnets and stuff. You can find the, the art online. It's quite, it's quite amazing. Now the screenplay and the park had, unfortunately, all of the financing for this had collapsed when Geller's business partner was indicted for embezzlement. And so the screenplay, the concept drawings by Jack Kirby have basically been sitting on the shelf. And Chambers has copies of this at his, at his home and he, he hands the, the stuff to, to Mendez. And it's pretty. I would, I would. We gotta create a link to this in the show notes. Yeah, because I'm looking at it as a wild.
- [39:50]
B
I'm looking at something called Pavilions of Joy right now, which is kind of like, it's semi samurai, a slightly perhaps scantily clad woman, stroke robot, some other things with guns. I mean it's like, yeah, it's, it's unique, but kind of, I don't know, it's, it looks almost more like Japanese inspired than Middle east inspired. Inspired to me. But anyway, it'll do.
- [40:18]
A
It's geography, it's, it's geographically ambiguous, I would, I would say. And the, the slightly scantily clad woman. I, when I went deep in my researches on this, I discovered. No, these are so the big shape, the big kind of people in this pavilions of joy picture. Those are 10,000 foot statues.
- [40:39]
B
Oh, I see. Okay, okay, okay.
- [40:41]
A
And then beneath that is, this is the sort of the city.
- [40:44]
B
Oh, now that, now it makes sense. Now it makes perfect sense. I mean, should we try and summarize the plot of Lord of Light? I think, if so, perhaps briefly because
- [40:53]
A
I, I, no, no, I, So, so what's, what's really great fades us down. This is, this is where, yeah, exactly. Fade, fade to black. Is that I tried, I tried really, really hard to summarize the, the plot in a coherent way. And let me, I will attempt it and I will, I will try to do this punctually. Okay, so Lord of Light is set on a planet colonized by some remnants of Earth who, these people have found themselves on a strange planet surrounded by hostile indigenous races and had to kind of carve out a place for themselves or perish. To increase their chances of survival, the crew has used chemical treatments and electronics to mutate their minds and create enhanced self images or aspects that quote, strengthened their bodies and intensified their wills and extended the power of their desires into attributes capital A, which fell with a force like magic upon those against whom they were turned.
- [41:51]
B
But that does sound like what the kinds of things some people in Silicon Valley are trying to do to themselves these days in terms of life hacking.
- [41:57]
A
It's ahead of its time. It's.
- [41:59]
B
Sorry, you've not finished. I thought you'd finished. But please, please give us more of the plot of Lord of Light because I'm really enjoying it.
- [42:07]
A
The crew has also developed a technology to transfer a person's soul electronically to a new body.
- [42:13]
B
Again, very Silicon Valley.
- [42:15]
A
Yeah. Yes, yeah, exactly. Well, this is what I mean. So we're ragging on this screenplay. I mean this, the novel won the Hugo. I mean this novel was a big deal in the sci fi world of, of the 1960s. So this, this reincarnation by mind transfer has created a race of potential immortals and allowed the former crew members to, to institute something like the Hindu caste system with themselves at the top. Eventually the crew use their now amazing powers to subjugate or destroy the native non human races whom they characterize as demons, while setting themselves up as gods in the eyes of the many generations of colonist progeny. Wow, I'm skipping over some parts.
- [42:56]
B
Please do.
- [42:56]
A
Okay. The protagonist. The protagonist Sam has developed the ability to manipulate electromagnetic forces. He's a renegade crewman who has rejected godhood. Gordon taking for himself essentially the role of Buddha. And Sam believes that this technology should be available to the masses and that reincarnation should not be controlled by the elite. It is basically Hinduism versus Buddhism in space.
- [43:21]
B
But it's also. I kind of. I'm actually having mocked it, I kind of think it's quite good because it's a bit like Sam, our protagonist. He is like fighting the Silicon Valley overlords who are trying to use AI to hack their own lives and upload the souls and create a caste system where they're at the top and dominating the rest of us. And Sam is like the everyman, you know, I'd like to think of him more like me, really. Kind of heroic.
- [43:46]
A
Yeah, you have many Sam. You have many Sam like qualities. Yeah.
- [43:49]
B
I'm going to suggest if the option is still out there for Lord of Light, you know, maybe. Maybe we could set up a little film production company. I think it might have some relevance
- [43:59]
A
in some of the interviews he's given since the Argo operation was declassified. Barry Geller, the producer who had the rights, was kind of pissed that they didn't buy it from him because they just. They essentially just kind of took it. I mean, so there's actually some, some IP theft at the center of this story.
- [44:14]
B
Okay, well, we'd option it properly, whoever owns the rights. Because I think, I think. Well, I think, I think there's a way of doing it anyway.
- [44:19]
A
That's right. Back to Tony Bentis.
- [44:21]
B
Yeah, back to Tony Bentis because I can see why he loves this because it's so nuts and so crazy that if you're trying to explain it to some Iranian border guard or cultural official, I mean, like they're going to go, yeah, kind of, whatever. Okay, good stuff, you crazy Hollywood guys.
- [44:41]
A
If only they'd had the helpful summary that I wrote, they could have explained it coherently.
- [44:44]
B
Yeah, thank you for that.
- [44:46]
A
So there is the. Maybe the impenetrability of the plot, which is an asset because it's hard to explain. There's also the setting and we talked about the. The desert, you know, kind of sci Fi connection. The screenplay is set in a Desert planet. Iran has deserts. The architecture in some of these drawings, domes, arches, kind of intricate geometry, kind of could be a Hollywood designer's idea of some place in the Middle East. There's even. There's a bazaar rendered in one of these drawings that kind of looks like the Grand Bazaar, the famous covered bazaar in Tehran. So it's sort of. It makes sense why, if you have this, you have this, this concept art, you have this script in hand, maybe, maybe Iran makes sense if you're trying to scout locations. Now, the title, Lord of Light, they think it's too on the nose, right? This is a country that's in the grip of religious revolution. They might also be changing the title for IP concerns later down the road. I'm just kind of guessing, like, maybe they're thinking if we, if we change the title and somehow this gets out, Barry Geller won't sue us for having stolen his script. And they go back and forth on some alternatives and Chambers suggests Argo. Now, Argo had been an office joke for a number of years. It was actually a knock, knock joke that Chambers used when he was working with the OTS team, with Mendez's team. And it went this way, Gordon. It was knock, knock.
- [46:17]
B
Who's that?
- [46:19]
A
Argo.
- [46:22]
B
Argo who?
- [46:23]
A
Argo yourself. Bleep gun, Becky, please. Because I want to listen to this with my. With my children. But that was so they would. They would use that knock, knock joke when they were working together to kind of blow off steam. And Chambers suggests Argo. They have a name for this film. So the film, the operation, is not Argo. The film is Argo. Mendes grabs a yellow legal pad, sketches the Studio 6 logo himself. It's a big red number 6 made out of film strips. Seidel and Chambers, as part of the COVID recommend they place an ad in the trades. So if Variety, the Hollywood Reporter, print that this project is happening, then it can, it can look like it's happening there. Can be sort of, you know, plausible. Yeah, it's plausible. They create a full page black background ad with a planet exploding in the center and asteroids spelling out the title. The tagline they come up with, which I think is great, is Argo a cosmic conflagration. Yeah, which was, you know, it would be a good subtitle for the rest is classified as well. On Monday morning, Chambers, Mendez, Seidel, they walk the ad down to the Hollywood Reporter and Variety to place it. It's going to run on Wednesday 16 January. The text inside the ad lists the director who's one of the Personas, alias Personas, six American diplomats, a producer, same thing. And a screenwriter credited as Teresa Harris, who in fact is Cora Leak, who is one of the house guests in Tehran. The phones, this is crazy. The phones at Studio 6 start ringing immediately because real Hollywood agents and screenwriters see the ad.
- [48:08]
B
See the ad?
- [48:10]
A
Yeah, like who's directing? You know, how do we get, how do we get involved? Interestingly, after the operation is over and the office has been shut down, 26 unsolicited screenplays will have arrived in the mail at the Studio 6 address.
- [48:23]
B
I feel really sorry for those people who had sent their screenplay thinking they might have a chance of. It's just ended up in the kind of rubbish bin at the CIA. So I mean, this has all happened incredibly quickly. I mean, Tony Mendez basically spends a weekend, doesn't he? Four days, something like that, a long weekend in LA and sets up the whole thing. Sets up the company comes up with the idea, gets the adverts placed and they're off. I find that extraordinary how quickly they've got the whole package together, including the screenplay, the drawings, the logo, the press placement, you know, a name. Everything is suddenly together within that really short period.
- [49:07]
A
But of course you need so much more. You've got the COVID you've got the backstopping in Hollywood. But this is the kind of, the non sexy part of this, I suppose. You need a lot of documents. Yeah, not just, not just the passports that you have from the Canadians. You need a load of documents. I mean, what documents would you need, Gordon?
- [49:32]
B
Well, as well as the passport, you need a. You either need a driving license or something else. You might need a credit card or a bank card. You also just need the stuff that you would carry around plausibly, which is, I don't know, a library card or if you're a screenwriter, you might have something from the Screenwriters Guild, I guess, your union membership. It's all those kind of things. You'd need little bits and pieces which, which are more than the one document. It's the pocket litter, isn't it? The pocket litter of, of, of that creates a plausible identity. And particularly for these group of people who are supposed to be. Have particular professions, you need all of that. All of that is, as I understand it, being developed in Canada. It's mainly being created by the Canadians using real Canadian documentation rather than by the Americans, isn't that right?
- [50:24]
A
It's a leading question, Gordon. I think, yes. Canadian identities, Canadian pocket litter, Canadian driver's licenses. Right. All of this Stuff is Canadian documentation.
- [50:36]
B
Again, the Canadians, not the CIA, are going to be the ones to deliver it through the diplomatic pouch, which I guess is an established way you can smuggle things into the country and hope that they're not seen or checked, because those are, the bags are carefully sealed.
- [50:51]
A
Well, they're not checked, but you have
- [50:52]
B
to be pretty confident of that if you're smuggling in fake identities, because if they were checked and you could see that, you know, fake identity documents are coming in, then you'd be looking for those people when they come out. So you've got to be very confident it's not being checked, haven't you? I always find diplomatic pouches fascinating because they're not pouches. A pouch makes it sound like it's a kind of large wallet or, or something like that. They're big bags, aren't they?
- [51:17]
A
Big bags. And in this case, in this case, it's a, the Canadian diplomatic pouches. I mean, it's literally a guy who takes the, A bag into the embassy, hand carries it and hand carries it the whole way. A Canadian citizen. So it's not. An, an Iranian national is not handling that bag at any point in its journey. So it's not going. And it's not, it's not X rayed, intercepted, searched, nothing like that. So all of that, you're right, it's being produced in this joint operation between the Canadians and the CIA in Ottawa and then sent by diplomatic pouch to Tehran. They disguise kits now, disguise full on. Transformational disguises don't play a role in this operation. So there's no prosthetics or anything like that. The Mendez did consider it, but none of them had any experience with prosthetics. And he felt like, you know, again, it's. If you're going through the airport and your ear falls off, it doesn't look good. People pay attention.
- [52:20]
B
Your mustache goes like that.
- [52:21]
A
Yeah, exactly. So, but they do have, they do have a version of kind of lighter, lighter disguise. So they, they send, you know, styling, gel makeup, kind of mod glasses with thicker rims, eyeliner, you know, typed instructions for each person on how they could modify their appearance. Because at this point, the agency, I think, is working under the presumption that the Iranians know that there are missing Americans. Maybe not exactly who is missing yet, but that there are missing Americans. And they might have photographs of these people. And so you want to modify your appearance slightly. They also send, you know, for example, I mean, if they're a film crew, well, you would need, you know, cameras Right. So they send prop kits, cinematographers, viewfinder, a schedule of the phony film shoot because Argo is commencing principal photography in March of 1980. And so there's going to be a schedule for how the film would be made. Studio 6 business cards, a copy of the screenplay, the Jack Kirby concept art, those sketches. You also need plane tickets. Mendez wants to do this on Swissair. There's a Tehran to Zurich flight. It's exactly the route that he used to exfiltrate Raptor early in the year. Switzerland, obviously a neutral country. The Swiss Air desk at Marabat International Airport historically had light scrutiny. This is one of the other things that I think Bendez talks about pretty extensively in his book that you don't see in the film is the CIA and potentially the Canadians having sent in kind of people who had a legitimate reason to go in and out of Meribad as kind of probes to figure out exactly how it was, sort of how it works. What documents do you need? How are they checked?
- [54:11]
B
Yeah, really important.
- [54:12]
A
That very up to date, nitty gritty detail is, is really, really important. The Canadian ambassador, so to Taylor's wife, had been booking and rebooking tickets across multiple dates so that whenever the green light for the operation came, they would have, they would have seats on a flight on that day. The film shows the Bryan Cranston character, Affleck's boss, in charge of the tickets. But the real tickets had been purchased in Tehran by the Canadian ambassador's wife. The secondary documents you talked about, Gordon, Canadian driver's licenses, apparently very difficult to maintain because again, you want that to be a real driver's license. Mendez had, had just had one of his guys spending over a week in Ottawa working out with the Canadians. How you get the, how you get the, the driver's licenses, you need, you need health cards, you need business cards, obviously in each house guest name. Right. That you mentioned, the Guild Union cards, you need those receipts, ticket stubs, dry cleaning slips. Like you need to look like you are coming from Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, Louisiana. And that in your wallet, in your belongings is the actual life of a person. Because you think that you don't travel with a bag that's totally empty of this stuff.
- [55:25]
B
Yeah. So once you've got all of that together, we're heading towards the end of January now, aren't we? Where effectively you've got this plan and then you've still got to get it signed off, haven't you? From the top. And I think the other bit that's so interesting is the idea that it's going to be two people, at least, who are going to go into Iran to do it. So this goes back to this really interesting point, that it's not just sending these documents into Iran and then saying to the team, you get out yourself, but that Mendez is going to go into Iran to walk them out because he's got the experience to know how to help them build the COVID and to talk through the COVID and to talk through the security at the airport to be able to do it properly. So that, I think, is the. One of the fascinating details of the operation. And he's not going alone, is he?
- [56:19]
A
He's not. And this guy's totally written out of the. Out of the film. But by late January, Mendez and his partner are in Frankfurt, Germany, doing final preparations. Now, his partner is a guy he calls Julio. In the book, Julio is actually a guy named Ed Johnson, who is a CIA linguist who had worked with Mendez on previous operations. And he's also got a lot of documents expertise. He is originally from the Midwest, but he'd studied at the Sorbonne in Paris. He speaks German, Spanish, Persian and French. Fairly valuable and very good with documents. And in Europe, both guys, we're going to go in, Ed slash, Julio and Tony, they're going to go get legal visas to Iran under their alias identities.
- [57:10]
B
Yeah, and we should say that actually Julio, his name is now public. And it's since been revealed, hasn't it? Because on the Shout out to the CIA Zone podcast. Everyone's got a podcast, David, even the agency.
- [57:21]
A
The Lagly files.
- [57:22]
B
Shout out to Walt, who presents it, who I know, but they actually talk to the guy or they hear from him on the podcast and name him for the first time, Julio has as Ed Johnson, a CIA. CIA linguist who'd worked with Mendez that's just come out in the last few years, that the true identity of this person who'd previously, as you said, been kind of written out of the story to some extent, and he. But he is going to be going in on the ground with Tony.
- [57:48]
A
So both guys get these legal visas to Iran under their alias identities. Again, you don't. You don't want to forge those if you. If. If you can help it. And so Mendes, on the morning of the 23rd of January, drives from Frankfurt to Bonnie with a disguise officer to obtain his own Iranian visa. Now, Mendez is going to use an alias of Kevin Costa Harkins, who is allegedly the Studio 6 production manager in charge of Argo. It is an alias that he has used before he's already got these documents. He's got the sort of identity of Kevin Costa Harkins, although now he'll be a production manager working on Argo. Harkins, the alias, has an apartment off Ghirardelli Square in San Francisco. Nice, lovely. Mendez doesn't say, but I think I'm reading between the lines a little bit here. But I think in reading the memoir, I think it's an Irish identity that
- [58:46]
B
is my guess because I guess less likely to be, I mean the Irish identity is, is, is, is one that's probably going to arouse less hostility than a lot of other European or Western identities, if you take it, you know, not in NATO. But it's interesting, isn't it, that people will still be quite careful about admitting what nationality they might have used falsely to go places because it can still cause a diplomatic row. I mean, it's caused it. When we've seen other countries use fake British identity, we've seen the Israelis, Mossad use it on operations and it tends to lead to a bit of upset. So, yeah, probably Irish, but we don't know for sure. And he uses a, a little bit of disguise, doesn't he, to get in little disguise?
- [59:27]
A
Yeah, green turtleneck, tweed blazer, clothing he'll wear throughout the operation. He's got the Argo portfolio, the screenplay, the sketches with him in case any Iranian consular officer pushes back. The clerk when he's getting the, the visa asks, you know, why are you doing this in Germany rather than in Ho? But Mendez basically says that, oh, my idiot boss sent this telex about a meeting in Tehran. I'm already on the road. And 20 minutes later he's got a one month Iranian visa stamped into the Kevin Costa Harkins passport. And presumably, although we don't hear about it in the memoir, Ed Johnson, known as Julio, does the same thing to get a legal visa to go into Iran. Now Mendez and Julio file a final flash cable for approval on 23 January 1980. Stansfield Turner, who's the director of the CIA at the time, replies very quickly, your mission is approved. Good luck. And per that plan, Mendez is going to depart first and then Ed will follow him. And the idea here is you don't want both guys to be together. You want to space it out. So you're arriving separately, but the weather conspires against them. Mendez's flight is canceled and so he and Ed are going to be on, on the same flight. And you know, Mendez, this is very interesting because Turner, the head of the CIA, has approved the, the mission. But as they're getting ready to go, they get word that the President, President Carter is actually going to weigh in and they should hold off as Carter makes a final decision.
- [61:08]
B
I mean, in the film this becomes a big thing, but actually the idea that this rises up to a kind of presidential decision, I guess it's because of the risks involved, particularly when you've got a hostage crisis with the known about hostages who are being held at the embassy receiving huge attention. I guess the political risks are quite real for President Carter because if he authorises an operation to get these people, who actually the Iranians maybe don't even know about out and it goes wrong and you then have Tony Mendez and Ed getting captured or, you know, these hostages being captured, that's politically disastrous, isn't it? And we do know how sensitive these are, these hostage situations are for politicians and, you know, particularly for Jimmy Carter. So I guess there is that risk that he's going to do it. But credit to Jimmy Carter, he backs them, he goes for it, doesn't he?
- [62:05]
A
He approves it. And the cable comes in. The President of the United States approves your mission. Good luck. And Mendez is, I think, struck that he has the personal message from the President, but he's out the door. It goes to Frankfurt airport. It's going to be on a Lufthansa flight to Zurich and from there to Tehran. Now he's sitting in the transit lounge in Zurich and Bendez is going through this kind of last minute gut check, trying to feel out if there's any reason he should abort the operation. And Kennedy is doing this almost last minute risk assessment and he, he writes that he has some momentary uncertainty because again, he's just been in Iran helping Xvill Raptor months earlier, so, and the embassy has been overrun. So in the back of his mind he's wondering, are the Iranians going to know that it's me and might they be waiting to nam me. But you know, he thinks it's a very unlikely. The moment of uncertainty passes and he, he writes, this was a good ops plan and we were ready. And he will have three days to take six American diplomats out of a country that is going wild with revolution.
- [63:14]
B
So there with Tony Mendes having his gut check, believing the plan is good, but heading really into enemy territory with not just the lives of those six hostages at risk, but also his own. As he and Ed head out there, let's stop and next time we'll see how this slightly crazy plan unfolds. Just a reminder of course, if you want to hear those episodes now, then you can by joining the declassified club@therealisclassified.com. you can also sign up for our free newsletter there and lots of other things, including bonus episodes with CIA officers who've worked Iran, as well as our more detailed take on the Argo film and what it gets right and wrong, particularly about our friends the Canadians. So do sign up at the club for that, but otherwise we will see you next time.
- [64:03]
A
We'll see you next time.