The Rest Is Classified - 162. Argo: How the CIA Made a Movie That Never Existed (Ep 3)

Episode Date: May 31, 2026

Tony Mendez has just landed in revolutionary Tehran. Now he must teach six terrified diplomats to be a Hollywood film crew… in 72 hours. Listen as David and Gordon reach the climax of their adventure into the true story behind Argo. ------------------- THE REST IS CLASSIFIED LIVE 2026 at The Rest Is Fest: Buy your tickets ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to see David and Gordon live on stage at London’s Southbank Centre on 4 September: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/whats-on/the-rest-is-classified-live/⁠⁠⁠⁠ ------------------- Sign-up for our free newsletter where producer Becki takes you behind the scenes of the show: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://mailchi.mp/goalhanger.com/tric-free-newsletter-sign⁠-up⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ------------------- Join the Declassified Club to go deeper into the world of espionage with exclusive Q&As, interviews with top intelligence insiders, regular livestreams, ad-free listening, early access to episodes and live show tickets, and weekly deep dives into original spy stories. Members also get curated reading lists, special book discounts, prize draws, and access to our private chat community. Just go to ⁠⁠therestisclassified.com⁠ or join on Apple Podcasts. ------------------- Get a 10% discount on business PCs, printers and accessories using the code TRIC10. Visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://HP.com/CLASSIFIED⁠⁠⁠⁠ for more information. T&C's apply. ------------------- Email: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[e-mail]⁠⁠⁠ Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@restisclassified⁠ Video Editor: Joe Pettit Social Producer: Emma Jackson Assistant Producer: Alfie Rowe Producer: Becki Hills Head of History: Dom Johnson Exec Producer: Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 at the rest is classified.com. CIA man Tony Mendez has just landed in revolutionary Tehran. Now he must teach six terrified diplomats to be a Hollywood film crew all in 72 hours. Well, welcome to the rest is classified. I'm Gordon Carrera. And I'm David McCloskey.

And David, last time we talked about the cover. Studio 6 productions on the old Columbia lot of Hollywood, the Argo screenplay with its fantastic Middle East sci-fi mythology, the concept art, full page ads in variety, alias passports and documents, and President Carter approving the operation. So now all is set for this great rescue in which the CIA play their own small role.

now as Tony Mendes arrives to help out the Canadians on their rescue of the Americans, bailing them out as ever. I know you might have something to say about that, but wait, it's the early morning of January 25th, 1980. Tony Mendes, who is, I have to say, quite a heroic CIA officer and his partner, Julio, also Ed, have just landed at the airport in Tehran, undercover as a production manager and associate producer for Studio 6 productions, ready to to scout locations for their new film project Argo. And this is the moment where the plan is going to come into action, isn't it, David? You know, before we get into the amazing weekend, it's really, it's a weekend in which Tony

Mendez and Ed Johnson are on the ground in Tehran to bring the diplomats out, I think we should acknowledge, we will acknowledge at the outset, and I'm not too proud to do this, that we are telling this story of this exfiltration, largely from the perspective of Tony Mendez, who's written a book about the exfiltration and the CIA, we are not trying to diminish the amazing role that the Canadians play. Oh, thank you. What's brought in the exfiltration. Thank you for that. I think that you actually, in your extremism, are minimizing, you're going too far to the other side and minimizing the CIA role. I'm attempting to be fact-based. To be balanced. And balanced, as usual, as usual, in describing the Canadian

contribution to this amazing, this amazing infiltration. So I just, I want to flag this for our Canadian listeners. You basically are just trying to not lose any Canadian listeners. That's basically, it's a mercenary move. Ben Affleck-like. And we will, we will talk about that on our, our bonus episode, in which Gordon will deliver a sort of Mussolini-style screen. Rant. Rant. Against the historical accuracy of the film and its denigration of Canada. Let's get to the exfiltration.

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Tony Bendez and Ed Johnson have landed very early in the morning. and it is, it's cold. There's piles of dirty snow all over the runway. Because they've taken a flight from Zurich, many of the women who had not covered their hair in the flight go into the lavatory and dawn black jadores before they come out and and disembark. Mendez and Ed walk into the arrivals terminal. It's quiet.

It's very early in the morning. Now, one of the things they pick up are these yellow and white disembarkation form. There's stacks of these lying around on the table. And basically it is filled out upon entry. One copy is taken by the immigration officer. You have the other copy, and you need to show that on your way out of the country. Ed Johnson grabs a few of these off of a table to basically fabricate them for the houseguests. And it's a kind of clever sleight of hand, isn't it?

Because doesn't he do something like put a newspaper down on top and then just kind of grab them as he picks up the newspaper? It's that classic way of, you know, using distraction or using techniques to try and pick something up. It's kind of, it's an important move. Well, actually later they'll find, I think it might have been the Canadians already had a bunch of extras, but they didn't know that. So they pick up a bunch of extras. They get into line in immigration. There's, you know, plain clothes, revolutionary guards officers milling around the lounge, but they see much more interested in hassling returning Iranians than foreigners.

Now, remember, Mendez had been in Iran months earlier. exfiltrating another Iranian asset, Raptor, who I think actually, Raptor, I don't think, was his CIA code name. I think this was the name Mendez gave the asset in the book. But he calls him Raptor. And Mendez is in the back of his mind wondering if the Iranians have a bead on him because he's been there before. And so he's thinking that it's possible he could be snatched or pulled into secondary or whatnot when he arrives. This does not happen. officers don't pay any attention to them. They tear off those halves of the disembarkation form. They stamp the passport, wap them through. Mendez later learns, of course, the, you know,

the militants over at the embassy have been piecing together the files that have been taken from the chancery, from the station, in a bid to figure out who might have been a CIA asset, whether they have all of the Americans as hostages. Mendez will later figure out that the militants had found a document referencing the Raptor exfiltration in a safe, but his name wasn't on it, which makes sense. So he's in the clear. So he's in the clear. So Mendez and Ed go to the Sheraton, check in.

This is exactly where Western business people, a film crew, are going to stay in Tehran, drop off their bags, and then actually walk, instead of taking a taxi to the Canadian embassy, they walk to scout the city. But they get lost. They get lost. They get lost. Mendez has a tourist map. They're not going to have anything more complicated than that because, again, they're, you know,

they're a film crew. They stop at a rodion out of the street and ask him, you know, for directions. The man like Ed speaks German. And so he flags a taxi for them and points them, you know, toward the Canadian embassy, refuses payment and there's this kind of moment of, you know, fleeting moment of kind of humanity and hospitality interaction between these two Westerners and this random Iranian. So they arrive at the Canadian embassy a little bit before noon to see Gordon's personal hero, Canadian ambassador Taylor. I think we have to always refer to him as Ken Taylor,

Canada's James Bond. I mean, he's a slightly unlikely James Bond. It's worth people looking up pictures of him. He looks more like a kind of hangar-on from a 70s progressive rock band or a kind of sci-fi novelist, which maybe fits with the Argo thing. But he's cool. He's cool, I think. He's cool. He's definitely kind of, he's cool for an ambassador, I think. And he is the one who took the risk, you know, even before telling his government to take these guys in and who has been doing some kind of sneaky-beaky work for the CIA, both intelligence collection on what's at the old American embassy and, you know, potential safe houses for a team that might come in to do the rescue from there and sending material back. So he is the real deal. I think we should

say that. And he's wearing, I mean, he's wearing glasses. So he's got kind of thick glasses as well as this curly mop of hair, jeans and cowboy boots, which, again, not your normal ambassador. I picture everything as being jeans. So it's a proper Canadian tuxedo. So it's just all jeans with the cowboy boots. That's in my head. It's probably not what he was what he was actually wearing. But there we go. That'll take a little take a swing at Canadian fashion. So he also, this is also what makes him cool. He's got a fully stocked bar in his office. So Taylor sits down Mendez and Ed and explains that the embassy is in the process of closing. And his family will actually be leaving that afternoon. Five Canadian staff remain and they are all planning to

depart on Monday, the 28th of January, which is the same day as the planned exfiltration. That is partly because they've been coming under more pressure and they've decided to close down. But also, I think there is the knowledge that this exfiltration, particularly if it goes wrong or if anything's discovered, it's going to point quite quickly back at the Canadians and they're going to be in a hell of a lot of trouble. So it probably makes more sense for them to be out if that happens and to have handed over diplomatic functions, I think they're going to hand them over to the Kiwis and others to do. So they are also getting ready to pack up. So the clock is really ticking on this. The film strongly insinuates that the Canadians had gotten like cold feet

about holding the diplomats, the house guests. And I don't, that's not true. I think that the Canadians, I mean, there were there were ticking clocks, right? The longer they're, the longer they're there, the more likely it is that they're discovered and then who knows what happens to the Canadian diplomats. Yeah, journalists have found out about this. So, yeah, there's, there are worries that they can't, they can't keep this going much longer. But suddenly, this is speeding up. It's speeding up. There had been a plan, though, originally, I think, that the Canadians might have just got, because the documents have already come in, that the Canadians might have just left themselves. And then the idea is, no, they're going to be

escorted out by Tony Mendes and that's going to be part of the plan. And that's why he's there now. But that, it does create a sense of pressure. As you said, we've basically got a weekend. We've got under three days for this all to happen. So first stop after the visit with Ambassador Taylor at the embassy is to head to John Sheardown's house up in North Tehran in the Shemmeran district that evening. It's in an affluent part of the city. Now remember, this is where four, of the houseguests are being housed. It's in an affluent part of the city. Kind of Tehran equivalent of Bel Air.

Does that mean anything to Brits, Gordon? A bell air reference. Fresh Prince of Bel Air. The Fresh Prince, yeah, exactly. So they're in the Bel Air of Tehran. The shear downs, though, are gone by now because the Canadian embassy is drawing down. And again, there's an operational reason. for this to the point you raised earlier, which is that if this exfiltration goes wrong,

the trail is going to lead back to the Sheardown House. And really, this is an important detail. We haven't talked about it yet. John Sheardown's a diplomat. His wife is not. His wife, Zena, is not. So the level of the personal risk that that family took shouldn't be downplayed. Brave Canadians.

Brave Canadians. And the consequences in particular for Zena Sheardown would have been very uncertain if they had actually been caught. So the Shear Downs are gone. By late January, though, there's a first secretary from the Canadian embassy named Roger Lucy, who was house-sitting for the Sheardowns. And he is at the house. The Staffords have come over from the tailors for the meeting. So you have all six of the house guests in the same room together to meet Mendez and Ed. Lee Shats, apparently the agricultural attache opens the door.

And he says that, so I guess Mendez and Ed have decided to wear trench coats. I mean, it's cold, but maybe they look exactly like CIA guys showing up on the doorstep to, you know, say hello. Mendez in his memoir wrote that he can still remember the face of Le Shats at the moment, who he writes, look like an overgrown kid full of mischief with a swooping mustache. overtaking everything else. So everyone comes to meet Mendez and Ed, they sit down in the Sherdown's living room. Mendez apparently doesn't actually say he works for the CIA, but presumably everyone knows. And then he starts to lay out the cover, the Hollywood cover. And what would you, if you had been playing Scrabble and drinking yourself into oblivion in a stressful, like

experience like this, what would your reaction be accorded to someone showing up from the CIA and telling you that you were going to be an associate producer as you were whisked out of Tehran. Lunacy would be my reaction, I think. Lunacy. I mean, this is the bit that I, you know, I still come back to as being fascinating. Because, you know, 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, no, no. I mean, there's something quite American about that. But you could, you know, and CIA about that, dare I say. I think the Tony Mendez contribution really is to go, no, no, no, no, 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? 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, you know, 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 going to, that is going to, that was in a conference room somewhere in Ottawa or 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 Americans saying, well, that's, that's easier for us to do. Let us do that piece of it. You handle with ROTS guys that we'll send up to office. a lot of the documents. Like there's a division of labor here that obviously the film misses.

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, you know, the Canadians and the State Department had had, you know, 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, you'd go, oh, come on. Nonetheless, he brings the other options. He brought supporting paperwork from Ottawa and backstop. for the alternative packages. So the, you know, agricultural survey and the school teachers, all right? 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 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 group, they work it through. So Lee Shats, the agricultural attache basically says the nutritionist crop survey cover is 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, Coral Lecchek is one of the first to warm up to the Argo option. She likes movies. She can picture herself being a Hollywood screenwriter.

Call we all. Can't we all, you know, at some point. You know, 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 that sort of first blush, it's crazy. Mark Leichick 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

paranoia and fear of being locked up. Lee Shats 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. And I think it's less because he is, 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. So what's the best bad option? Yeah. And it's, I find it interesting that Mendez 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, Tony Mendez, who could sense this, the tension of the room is, as the host guests are working this, through, he picks up two corks off a counter, which gives you some idea of how much they're drinking. There's already, there's already two corks. And they're in the midst of an operational discussion.

And he apparently interlocks them between his thumbs and four fingers, 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 slight of hand, pulls his hands apart, and the corks appear to pass through each other. 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, it's kind of five to one in favor of the Argo cover and obviously getting out. But Stafford eventually will, will later come around. Now, the next day. So Saturday. 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. Mark Leichick is Joseph Earl Harris. It'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 Lecichick 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 Shats is Henry Collins, who is the cameraman. Mendes 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. 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. it harder to do. But the problem is not just doing it, but doing it under pressure, doing it when, when, you know, you're getting interrogated by some, you know, revolutionary guard with your, 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, 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. And Mendez writes that, you know, I was 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 no, which I think is a very, it's 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 God, 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 and that space, that's where you can make the operation succeed. So maybe there with the house guest role playing and Tony Mendes and Ed about to head to the Canadian embassy to work on some documents. Let's take a break. When you're a mid-sized business, you need every competitive advantage you can get.

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It's Saturday morning, the 26th of January. Antonio Mendez and Ed have got work to do at the Canadian Embassy while the diplomats are preparing their cover story, haven't they? The first thing Mendez does in the embassy is send it 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, you know, in this cable that he's writing up as cover, this Canadian film crew says, okay, you know, we'll probably leave the country then on Monday. 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 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 and the discussions, at least on the official story level, which then will justify using some embassy vehicles,

I think, are drivers to take them to the airport. 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 we'll at least drive them to the airport. 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.

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. 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.

and they'll work on the visas from the Canadian embassy when Bendez and Ed are on the ground in Tehran. 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. 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. Roger Lucia is the one who spots it. But it's also true that it is interesting. 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. Ed gets to work first on the disembarkation and the embarkation forms, that kind of 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 what he had pocketed those and kind of slipped them under his, under a newspaper when he had arrived at Maribat. 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 Marabad Airport. To make it look, again, like these houseguests had arrived a few days earlier, along with Mendez and Ed. 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 houseguess alias Canadian passports. Now, one of the things that Mendez writes, the worst thing I forger can do is to forge the signature of an immigration officer before arriving in the country, only discovered that the same. The same officer is on duty when you try to leave. 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, I'm sorry, when the artist validators are working on the documents, Gordon, because I believe I corrected you. Earlier in the series about calling them forgery. 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, 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 order 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 who remember are shuddering their embassy on Monday. This is Saturday. They're shuddering their embassy on Monday. They're destroying communications equipment, apparently with a sledgehammer. And it's making

an absolute ton of noise. You get this sense of the, 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, you know, sees Tony and Ed in the office and he, sits on the sofa and looks at them and talks them about making this artist validation, stroke forgery. And what I like is, 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. 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 Teller is this kind of marginal figure. He 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. Well, and as we discussed, you know, he's been playing something like a version of the CIA chiefestation for the CIA and for the Canadians over the course of the last few months. So he's, you know, 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, Ovala, is bringing these weathered antique Persian carpets in for the ambassador to consider buying a few before he leaves the country. And when Taylor is informed about this, you know, Mendez and Ed are working on the documents. He's like, oh, oh, right. You know, I forgot about that guy. And he still welcomes him in.

He welcomes it. Obviously, he's not welcoming him while Mendez and into the same room as Benez 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's sledgehammering the commo equipment down the hallway. So the embassy is, it's, it's in total, 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 is dried up. And without the visa, of course, the rest of the package is worthless. and he looks around and sees that Ambassador Ken Taylor, 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. She presumes will have a lot of alcohol in it, pours two fingers into a highball glass, brings the bottle and the glass back to the space where he and Ed are, you know, working on the documents and sets them down at Ed is kind of reviewing the important.

coming in with this bottle of scotch. And he says, are you thirsty, Tony? And he says, you know, why not? You know, the whole house is being fueled by alcohol anyway. You know, the house guests are boozing over at the, over at the shear downs. 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 that the OTS chemists had specially formulated this kind of fluorescent ink. And the whiskey reactivates it. And Mendez is a... 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. They head back to the sheer-down 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, fide wine, and liqueurs? This sounds like

dinner at the Carrera House. Just another Tuesday night at the Carrera House. I mean, it does make you realize embassies, ambassadors, ambassadors' residents, were well-distance. stocked with booze, weren't they? Logically, you'd think, like, you know, the night before a big game, 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. Wouldn't being awfully hungover

impair your ability to answer questions from an immigration officer? Ah, but surely, if you're maintaining your cover as Hollywood, that is exactly what Hollywood produces and casting it, you know,

and, you know, location scouts were be like they would be going out and being hung over and looking a bit, you know, worse for wear, wouldn't they, rather looking perky? So I think it's perfect. The immigration officer would be, would be concerned if they weren't totally shattered and hung over. That's good. That's right, Gordon. So the group is joined, of course, by Ken Taylor and 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 Danians, 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 houseguess, of course, spent the day continuing to work on their identity isn't 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 houseguess. out of the house and they go through the, you know, the Grand Bazaar in Tehran and go around the city and they have a run-in with Iranian officials. This did not happen. Spoiler alert, didn't happen. I mean, it would have been mad to do that. Well, they would have, 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, was never going to happen. 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. Well, 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 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. And he gets into character, it's fair to say. He puts on 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 Houston film starring Sean Connery and Michael Cain. So he goes all in here and takes Lucy as playing the role of an inquisitive immigration officer. So he says, who's first? and Lee Shats, the agricultural attache volunteers, walks up to him, hands over his documents. And where visa you get,

this is Lucy, is using the accent of a Persian speaker attempting to speak English. And Shats apparently, maybe is 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 don't remember. And then Lucy goes nuts and gets right up in Lee's, you know, shats his face. He says, what you mean? Do you not remember? You big liar. You American spy. And then apparently Taylor turns to Bendes. And he's like, is this? Is this really necessary? Do we need to be doing this? 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. Vigli is Slavic. That would be with a really bad accent. I mean, there was always this one person. People at the BBC will know exactly I'm talking about. And she was about quite short, five-foot-tall, blonde woman who if the worst thing you could possibly do is smile or as she shouted at you to show your passport,

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 get 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 not going to, I'm going to take this seriously. 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. Did your hostile environment training prepare you for the rest of classified experience, Gordon? It prepared me for lots of things. 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. A bunch of soft journalists. 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. Mendez occasionally stops the action to coach. And of course, like your experience, you know, Mendez thinks this is, and he's probably right, this is necessary. Everyone needs to get into their roles and you just start to feel like they're in their roles.

They need to get some, you know, 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. 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 at the Declassified Club at the rest is classified.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. 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.