Argo: How the CIA and Hollywood Pulled Off the Most Audacious Rescue in History (29 page)

In addition, several credible people in the industry pitched him ideas and he even scheduled meetings. One writer wanted to know if he would be interested in producing a little-known Arthur Conan Doyle horror story titled “Lot No. 249,” about a college student who uses Egyptian magic to reanimate a mummy that ends up going on a murderous rampage. Sidell was so intrigued that he actually looked into purchasing the rights to the story from the Doyle estate, even though he knew full well that as soon as we got out of Iran, Studio Six would cease to exist.

It was like a lie that had taken on a life of its own, and now he was forced to go along for the ride. In Hollywood terms, it was the role of a lifetime, but he wasn’t sure for how long he could keep it up.

O
n Sunday night, Julio and I returned to the Sheardown house to go through a dress rehearsal. The houseguests had spent the previous day learning their covers and perfecting their disguises. Now came the moment of truth. Lucy had brought the Staffords over and everyone was waiting for us in the den. When we got there, I couldn’t believe my eyes. All of the houseguests had borrowed clothes, assembled some personal items, and completely restyled their appearance in order to fit their new roles. Mark had used some black eyeliner to darken his beard, while Lee fiddled confidently with the viewfinder hanging around his neck. “Call me Woody!” he said. He had decided that any Hollywood cameraman worth his salt would have a nickname, and Woody was his. Cora, meanwhile, had used some sponge rollers to curl her hair, which she normally wore straight. She’d also taken off
her glasses and used a lot more makeup than she was accustomed to. She flipped though the script absentmindedly. Our art director, Kathy, had pulled her long brunette hair up into a ponytail and put on a set of dark, thick-rimmed Truman Capote–esque glasses to go along with the Argo sketchbook. But the most surprising transformation came from Bob Anders, who had blow-dried his hair mod-style and donned tight pants and a blue shirt two sizes too small, unbuttoned down to his chest. To complete the ensemble, he wore a gold chain and medallion and threw a topcoat across his shoulders like a cape. “Check this out,” he said, sauntering self-importantly through the room. I found it hard not to smile.

The best thing about the show was the relaxed and easy way the houseguests had adopted their new personalities. As I’d hoped, they were having fun and didn’t seem the least bit worried about the trip through the airport the following day. Joe hadn’t really done anything to change himself, but by virtue of the rest of the crew, I felt we could get by.

In addition to their disguises, Roger Lucy had coached the houseguests on their accent to help them sound more Canadian. Cora gave me an example of the proper way a Canadian would say Toronto: “It’s
Toronna
, like
piranha
,” she said. Lucy joked that he told them to just say “eh?” a lot after every sentence and everything would be fine.

Then there were the maple leaf stickers, lapel pins, and luggage tags Joe Missouri and I had purchased in Ottawa to be used for final window dressing for our travelers. As anyone who’s traveled abroad knows, real Canadians do tend to plaster their bags with maple leafs so they won’t be mistaken for Americans.

After the dress rehearsal, Julio and I handed each of them their
freshly stamped documents and their round-trip airline tickets, which reflected the travel itinerary we’d concocted for them as well as the origin of their visas. These latter details were extremely important. One of the first things an immigration officer would be apt to ask is where their visa had been issued and what was the route of their travel. Joe Missouri had purchased the round-trip tickets in Toronto on the appropriate dates and we had removed the coupons from their tickets for the legs they would have traveled. To not know the details and the route of travel would be the quickest way to capture.

We also gave them some money, which would help them to feel slightly more normal under the circumstances.

Soon Taylor arrived at the house with a response from Canada to an earlier cable I had written that morning containing the final operations plan. He handed it over to me and smiled. The powers that be in Ottawa and Washington had signed off on our ops plan and we were good to go for the following morning. They closed their message on a upbeat note: “See you later, exfiltrator!”

We then retired to the dining room for what can only be described as a feast. Not wanting to leave anything behind for the Iranians, the houseguests had prepared a seven-course meal, complete with fine wine, champagne, coffee, and liqueurs. Ambassadors Munk, from Denmark, and Beeby joined us and the mood quickly grew festive. I reminded the houseguests not to drink too much as they would be facing a “hostile interrogation” by Lucy after dinner. I could see right away, however, that they had plans of their own. In fact the six had gotten together earlier and decided that in order to keep things as relaxed as possible, they were going
to leave on adrenaline. The house still had a sizable selection of liquor and the houseguests seemed intent on drinking it all.

As we ate, I regaled the guests with some of the lore of past operations in places known as “denied areas,” like Moscow, where the surveillance teams could sometimes number more than one hundred people. Julio joked that he would never again visit that country. Moscow had become an important proving ground for us, and many of the techniques we were utilizing on the Argo mission had at one point been tested out under the watchful eye of the KGB.

Everyone was curious about the idea behind Studio Six and I clued them in on the origin of the Argo knock-knock joke. It wasn’t long before we all raised our glasses and gave a hearty “Argo!” cheer. I then got serious for a moment and asked them not to publish any details of the rescue mission in order to protect our sources and methods, which are the lifeblood of our secret operations.

“After this is over you all are going to want to write a book,” I said. “Don’t do it. Julio and I need to stay in business.”

After dinner, everyone met back in the den for the mock interrogations. In order to make it as realistic as possible, Lucy wore large jackboots and an army fatigue jacket, and carried a swagger stick. He looked to me like something right out of
The Man Who Would Be King.

He moved slowly to the center of the room and took on the posture of an officious immigration officer. “Who’s first?” he barked.

The houseguests shifted in their seats. Taylor and I stood in the back of the room along with Julio, Beeby, and Munk.

Lee shot up and walked over to Lucy, who stared him down. “Your passport, please,” he said, affecting the accent of a Persian speaker speaking English. Lee handed over his documents, and Lucy flipped through them. “And where visa you get?” he asked.

Lee, who’d been playing it cool, suddenly went blank. “You know, funny thing…I don’t remember.”

Lucy jumped down his throat. “What you mean you not remember?” He got right in Lee’s face. “You big liar! You American spy!”

Taylor turned to me. “Is this really necessary?” he asked.

“Absolutely. The more they get into their roles the better off they’ll be tomorrow,” I said.

When Lee was finished, I turned to the group. “Listen,” I said. “We didn’t give you these cover stories for you not to learn them. Woody here just showed you how easy it is to trip up. You may get these questions and you may not. But if they come up you have to be comfortable answering them.”

While the interrogations continued, one of the two foreign ambassadors asked me to step into the dining room. He’d been in contact with Mike Howland, one of the three American diplomats at the foreign ministry along with Vic Tomseth and Bruce Laingen. He told me that Howland had confided in him that he was planning an escape. In fact Howland said he’d already been outside of the foreign ministry and was asking for a glass cutter and a gun. The ambassador asked me what I thought he should do. I told him it would be okay to give Howland a glass cutter but definitely not a gun. (As it turns out I’m not sure he gave him either, as Howland,
Laingen, and Tomseth would all remain in captivity at the Iranian foreign ministry for the duration of the hostage crisis.)

When the mock interrogations were over, Julio and I sat down with the houseguests one last time to go over the final arrangements. I had drawn a diagram of the airport and took them through the various phases of the plan so there would be no confusion. “It’s all about misdirection. We’re going to use the same tricks that a magician uses to fool his audience,” I said. The plan was to be as follows: I would arrive at the airport thirty minutes before everyone else, driven by Sewell, who would pick me up from the hotel at three a.m. Once I had arrived, I would recon the airport and confirm that our flight to Zurich was on time. At that point, if all went well, I would check my bag in through customs, then take my position inside the large windows to give an all-clear signal.

The houseguests, along with Julio, meanwhile, would be driven to the airport in the embassy van. When Julio spotted my signal, he would then lead the houseguests through customs and meet me at the check–in counter.

Ideally, in an operation of this kind, if anything went wrong, we would have a couple of cars waiting outside in case we needed to bug out in a hurry. We had no such backup—no backup plan at all, in fact. Once we got inside the airport and into the teeth of their security, there would be no chance to turn back.

All of the houseguests had been through the airport, but I wanted to make sure there were no surprises. Despite being almost like a chicken coop, the airport was pretty well organized, thanks in large part to the draconian controls instituted under the shah.
The first control point was just outside the main door: two national police officers checking passengers as they walked through. At this control only a picture ID was required. After this came the customs station. Unlike most Western airports, where people are allowed to take their bags unhindered right up to the airline counter, thanks to the fear of Iranians smuggling goods out of the country, there was a customs station almost immediately inside the front door. “After that we will proceed to the check–in counters,” I said. I didn’t envision we’d encounter a problem there. Immigration controls, however, were another matter. “Here is the choke point,” I said, pointing to the immigration desk on my diagram. I knew the houseguests still had some concerns about the disembarkation/embarkation forms, but I reassured them that the authorities hadn’t been matching up the white and yellow copies for months. “It’s much better to not have something than to include something you shouldn’t have,” I told them. “You can always bluff your way out if you are missing something. ‘How should I know where the white form is? It’s your form!’”

At midnight Julio and I finally said good-bye, and as we walked out the door the houseguests gave a hearty “Argo!” salute to see us off. I paused before leaving. “You guys are going to do great tomorrow,” I said, looking at each of their six faces. “Just remember to go with the flow and have fun and you’ll be fine.”

After Julio and I left, Lee and Joe stayed up drinking and talking. The scorched-earth policy had worked and by this time the only liquor left in the house was a bottle of Cointreau. Joe continued to stew about the plan and kept coming up with ways in which things could go wrong. He was concerned that because the Ministry of National Guidance was in charge of filming permits, they
were going to simply pull everybody off the plane and hold them until they could confirm that the Argo story was true. Lee countered by telling him that the flight would be full of foreigners, and that the ministry didn’t open until nine in the morning—an hour and a half after our flight was scheduled to leave. “There is no way they are going to pull us off that flight and hold us for two hours.” Joe then returned to the problem of the yellow and white forms. Lee shook his head, getting frustrated. The Cointreau was working on him and he knew he should get to bed. “The bottom line,” he said before turning in, “is that I am going to get on that plane tomorrow. I hope you decide to make the trip, but if you don’t want to come then that’s your choice. But if you do come, then don’t screw it up for me and the others.”

15

THE ESCAPE

The phone woke me at three o’clock the following morning.

“It’s me, Richard,” said the voice on the other end. “I’m down in the lobby.”

It was Richard Sewell, right on time. I showered and threw my few remaining things together and was down in the lobby in less than fifteen minutes. Sewell had come to pick me up in the ambassador’s Mercedes and drove carefully through the still sleeping town. The streets were dark and nearly deserted at that hour—both restful and alien—and by four thirty a.m. we had arrived at Mehrabad Airport.

Sewell parked the car and the two of us proceeded through the initial security checkpoint without a problem. As I’d expected, the airport was relatively empty. There were only a couple of passengers in the hall and several airport personnel were slumped over dozing at their desks. Only a few Revolutionary Guards leaned against the counters, looking lonely and bored. I knew by late morning the
scene would be completely different, with crowds of Iranians mobbing the controls and a larger force of Revolutionary Guards to keep them in line. This was one of the main reasons I’d picked this early departure time.

I breezed through customs without incident. Richard had gone his own way; we were not necessarily planning on meeting up again, unless a problem presented itself. Richard had in his possession a diplomatic ID card that pretty much gave him run of the airport. At this point he was going to check with his contact at British Airways in case we needed a fallback plan. I then went over to the airline counters, where the Swissair clerk confirmed that our plane would arrive on time at five a.m. I pulled out a magazine and browsed the headlines while hanging around to wait for Julio and the rest.