Legacy of the Operation

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 . Six American diplomats are about to walk through Tehran Airport, but with Canadian passports. Will they make it through? And how does the real Argo end? Well, welcome to the Rest is Classified. I'm Gordon Carrera. And I'm David McCloskey. And we are at the crucial moment of this story of these American diplomats who went into hiding, were bravely protected by the Canadians, and especially Canada's James Bond , Ken Taylor. Big shout out to the Canadian spies out there Before the CIA join the rescue effort with uh Tony Mendez coming up with this wild idea of turning them into a Hollywood scouting location crew and giving them these false documents. But it is the moment, isn't it, David? Uh early in the morning of Monday twenty-eighth of January nineteen eighty, when it 's all going to be put to the test. This is what it's all about. Make or break. Another episode of our Argo series, another opening with Gordon Carrera slobbering all over the Canadians. I at this point, I'm not even going to r to respond. You're not going to bother, are you? Good. It's it's early morning. Monday the twenty eighth of january, nineteen eighty , and we are just a few hours away from the Studio Six Film Cruise flig ht from Tehran to Zurich. Now, for those who have seen the film, we remember these tense, this tense sequence in which the Ben Affleck character is not sleeping that final night. He's kind of tossing and t turning and pacing the hotel room and deliberating on what to do. The real Tony Mendez in his memoir says that he slept like a baby because he was exhausted. And he went back to his hotel. He's at the Sheraton. He wakes up to his phone ringing at three in the morning. This is he this is planned. He had scheduled to have uh his driver call at at three. And it's it' its seems like a Mendez character trait, because when his flight actually originally he had been scheduled to come into Iran on a on a different flight from his partner Ed, and that flight had been cancelled out of Zurich due to weather. And he wound up finding a hotel out near the airport and apparently slept like a baby out there too. So Mendez is a good sleeper. The phone call is his ride to the airport. It's a Kiwi, a New Zealand diplomat who has brought the ambassador as Mercedes. So here again, we've got some love gorded inside the five eyes. We got the Kiwis , yeah, with the wheels, which is which is great. Shout out to the to the New Zealanders. Actually, all of the five eyes have been in on this. Because the Brits do, to be fair, shelter them at the start for a couple of days before it gets pretty hot for the Brits. Got the Americans, got the Canadians, got New Zealand, the Australians. We haven't got the Australians. We're the Australians. Where are the Australians in this? I'm sorry, if there isn't Australians who somehow played a role in this, please get in touch. But otherwise, we're nearly there. But anyway, here's the Kiwis with the with the driver . This episode is brought to you by HP. In intelligence work, it's rarely the obvious problem that causes failure. It's the overlooked detail or the flaw nobody quite solved. The kind of vulnerability intelligence serv ices look for. And running a business is the same. Especially when you're building or growing a team, it's the risks you can't see or don't understand. HP designs technology, so devices, collaboration tools and security work together as a single system, helping teams keep everything running smoothly at home, in the office, and out in the field. The protection is built in. Hardware level security working quietly in the back With a team of business advisors, HP helps businesses of all sizes find technology that fits their needs and budget. To see how HP helps businesses work securely and productively, visit HP.com forward slash classified. The rest is classified listeners also benefit from ten percent off HP business technology with code TRI When you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work, use Indeed Sponsor Jobs. It gives your job post the boost it needs to be seen and helps reach people with the right skills, certifications, and more. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit at nd.com slash podcast. That's indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for indeed sponsored jobs. Study and play. Come together on a Windows 11 PC. And for a limited time, college students get the best of both worlds. Get the Unreal College deal. Everything you need to study and play with select Windows 11 PCs. Eligible students get a year of Microsoft 365 premium and a year of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate with a custom color Xbox Wireless controller. Learn more at Windows.com/slash student offer. While supplies last ends June 30th. Terms at aka.ms slash college PC . The Kiwis have got the driver, Mendez throws his stuff together in less than fifteen minutes, and then Mendez and the Kiwi arrive. The plan is for them to arrive separately from the rest of the crew because he wants to Mendez wants to have a look and see how you know what the situation is at the airport prior to the the house guests arriving. So Bendez gets out of the car, walks into the terminal and takes up a a position. So he's he's the scout. The house guests are going to follow a few minutes later. Ed , his partner on the mission, will be escorting them in a van from the Canadian Embassy. So again, five eyes have got the have got the wheels. The terminal is empty. It's very I mean it's it's like for the boarding. Yeah, which is again slightly different from the film version, isn't it? Because it it it's actually sleepy at this time rather than bustling. Which I guess they must have pick ed as a time when it's gonna be I guess guards and everyone's gonna be tired or less alert rather than the kind of bustling peak moment of the day. The Swiss Air Counter is is staffed by a single agent. There are some revolutionary guards wandering around in green fatigues with rifles slung over their shoulders, but they're, you know, they look bored. Mendez confirms the situation, and then as a position by a set of windows where he'll be visible from the outside. So he can presumably signal that it's okay to drop off the house guests and ed. He has Mendez has the Argo portfolio with him, which has that binder of Studio Six material, the business cards, the concept art, and he's kind of looking through it nonchalantly, which is the signal. So the rest of the crew, the house guests, where are they? So they're gonna they're gonna come from the the sheardown residence. Roger Lucy , who had played the the interrogator during their role plays, has has spent that the morning trying to get the house guests up and moving. He's making pots of coffee. They obviously they're tents. Many of them haven't slept. Several are very hungover, apparently, from the previous night's farewell dinner, in which they consumed large quantities of Quantro . And Cora Laichek remembers walking down the hallway and seeing Lee Shatz making a mad dash in his underwear to vomit in the bathroom. So whether that's whether that's nerves or quantro, who could say ? It's always the way you want to start a big day and a big mission. This is already going to be putting up your quantum into the toilet. But yeah, I mean, as we talked about last time, they've been drinking, which is definitely a theme of this whole series. Now their their driver is an Iranian national who works for the Canadian Embassy and who has no idea who they are, who just he thinks they're a film crew that the Canadians have uh have, you know, in their hospitality given uh given a lift to the airport too. Um apparently the driver misses the correct turn for the Sheraton Hotel where they're going to pick up Ed. And Bob Anders has to remind him that they're supposed to pick someone up at the hotel, so he packtracks. They find Ed. He's been waiting in the Sheraton lobby, reading a newspaper. He sees the van pull up. And again, they have these two separate pickups so that Bendez can scout at the airport. The house guests, plus Ed, arrive at the airport. It's a little after 5 a.m. Inside the terminal, they see Mendez in position by the windows, flipping through the Argo portfolio. That's the signal, it's all clear. The house goes climb out of the van, so that's the six of them plus Ed . Approach a policeman standing outside the terminal entrance, hand over their IDs. Cop flips through them, he sees their tickets, waves everybody through, no problems . The house guests link up with Mendez at the Swissair check encounter. Mende Mendez writes that their eyes are ratcheted with tension and fatigue. Could also be the booze, but I I think the tension and fatigue also would would suffice. Because this is, you know, you're going through a immigration in Tehran with an alias passport is not something that these diplomats have have ever done. No. And I mean also you think that they've been ha you know, how how long has it been? It's been two months, more than two months that, they've been held, and they've not even been out very much since the seizure of the embassy and that moment. And so you can imagine the kind of overwhelming intensity of that moment, as well as the nerves and the fear, as as they realize, well, it's you know, one way or another, it's out or bust, basically, out or jail, or out or dead, maybe even. So but they've got to kind of get into their characters as well as uh hungover Hollywood guys. And on that front, Bob Anders is going method. Mendez sees him come in sashing through the doors.' Hes got a cigarette between his thumb and forefinger. And Mendez writes that he looked like a character out of a Fellini film. So he's he's loving it. Totally in character. He's probably having fun. Yeah. Now the the luggage that they have with them is is light and it's maybe too light for a Hollywood scouting party that's been that's flown around almost around the world at this point because in the cover they had come in from Asia. You think okay, around the world trip, you should have a lot of gear. The Canadians had improvised larger cases for them, the weights may be a little light. The Swiss air clerk, who Mendez and CI had already decided was not so officious. Clerk doesn't really notice. Boarding passes are stamped, bags go through. No problems. But the next bit is the hard bit, isn't it? Because it's passport control. That's Swiss Air. It's passport control, which I think is the one of the key checkpoints that's worrying them. And the plan here is for everybody to stay together. If anything goes wrong, Mendez, who is the production manager and also the CIA officer, wants to be able to step in with the Argo portfolio and and back up the cover. Lee Schatz, however, has some other ideas, or just blanks, because back in 1980, airline check-in had there were two lines: there's a smoking and a non-smoking. Out of habit, Lee Schatz jumps into the much shorter non-smoking line. I love that the the non-smoking line is the shorter one. Well, everyone else is in the smoking line. By the time the rest of the group has their boarding passes, Shatz has already gotten to the immigration control s. So he's ahead of the head of the group. Mendez is alarmed by this. Uh, he notices that the immigration window is being banned by a uniformed officer, which is, you know, he's a real official, he's not like an un trained thug z hands over his passport he's got that yellow disembarkation form as well which has been appropriately doctored and the immigration officer studies Schatz's passport and says is this your photo? Chad says, of course. You know, he's probably starting to freak out a little bit. Of course, it is a photo of him, but any question about the documents would be extremely alarming. Then the immigration officer leaves his post , disappears into a back room with the passport. And that that's gonna make you feel sick. That is the kind of moment where you think the the game is We're done. And it's the fact that the others are watching this, aren't they? Because they're in the different lines. So th they're not they're not together. And and if but if his cover goes and they're all together, it's going to be bad for all of them, isn't it? Mendez and the rest of the crew are just standing there staring. And I'm sure Mendez in his mind he's running through every contingency. Did they miss something somehow in the in the passport? Is the official looking for the magic white disembar kation. What what's he what's he want? And there's no other way out if this goes wrong. The airport's the only way out. Remember, Mendez had written up an escape and evasion plan, but even he acknowledged it was pure fiction. I mean the way for them to get out is on a commercial flight out of Maribat Airport. The officer, after a few moments, returns, comes back, and says to Lee Schatz, This doesn't look like you. And he shows Schatz the passport photo. The photo had been snapped several months earlier when Schatz had a larger bushier mustache, like a Yosemite Sam mustache that almost completely covered his his upper lip. He had since trimmed it back while he had been at the at the Sheirdown's house. And Sha Schatz uses his fingers to mimic a pair of scissors clipping the ends of his mustache. He says it's shorter now . And the immigration officer glances at the photo, looks at Schatz, and then stamps the passport. And Schatz disappears into the departure lounge. And I'm sure at that point Mendez, the rest of the house guests are like , okay, yeah, deep breath. Shats is through. The rest of them are not. The line's itching forward. Occasionally it's stalling as there's arguments that break out between passengers and some immigration officials. Several Iranians ahead of them are apparently trying to travel on false documents, and one woman is pulled into a back room when she refuses to cooperate. I guess this is revolutionary Iran, you've got people trying to escape the country. You know, maybe they were linked to the old regime or other things. So it is already a kind of tensor situation where they're not just looking for these f for for Americans, but they're looking for anyone who might be trying to escape on false documents. So interesting as well with with you know with chats, it's is is that there's no real disguise used in this, is there? I mean, not it I mean they they've slightly changed their appearance, but they are going effectively as the people they are just under different names, which I guess helps. But then it's ironic that Schatz is you know, trimming his mustache nearly kind of blows that rather than anything else. It's something he's done rather than a mistake in the kind of preparation The point on the the disguise or lack thereof is an important one because it it also paints a contrast with the film where in in the film those basket weavers are reconstructing photos, pictures of the diplomats that had been captured for the embassy. And it is true that the Iranians did have Weavers kind of stitching documents back together. The fiction that the that the film develops to ratchet up the tension at the airport is that they're piecing together photos of the diplomats, and then there's a clock ticking because will the Iranians actually figure out the face and the name of the people they're after and be able to match that face at the airport. And what the reality is is that the Iranians knew that there were some people missing, but they didn't know who they were. They didn't have photos of them. And so Mende z and Ed and the Canadians could have some assurances that even with the light disguise, they would be okay. They'd be okay. So that they don't have the full on prosthetics or anything like that. Cora Elijah, because they see this woman taken off though , is becoming concerned because she's read an article in the Tehran papers a few weeks earlier about a woman who had been caught smuggling money in her body cavities. And so she Cory Lij ack is thinking, well what if we're just randomly searched? You know, like what what happens then? So by the time they reach the counter, the immigration officer has mysteriously disappeared. Just gone. The group stands there for several minutes, doing nothing. That's tense, because you're just again, what's going on? We're just standing here. Are they on to us or they Yeah, where is the where? What's happening? After a few more minutes, they have their answer because the officer returns to his desk with a cup of tea that he has fixed for himself. Collects the passports, gives them their exit stamps, waves them through. He collects their yellow disembarkation forms. As he taps the edges of the stack down on the counter, one of them floats down to the floor. As they walk past, Bendez writes that he bent down and picked up the form, slipped it in with his papers, and later looking at it, he realizes it's Bob Anders' form. And so he's just walked off with the only physical record that a Robert Baker, tot al alias, was ever in Iran. And so they've made it through passport control, which is the hardest part, and they're at the gate. And then just as they sit down and get to the gate, you've got the final security check, you're in the kind of boarding room, you're getting ready to board. We all know that feeling. And then what's the worst, you know, announcement you can possibly get over the loud spe aker, flight has mechanical problems. I mean we've all heard it and been like, no. Um but you imagine what it's like for them because I I mean you must be so tense anyway as well as hungover. But that's just gonna compound it uh and compound the tension for them. Yeah, it's Murphy's law, isn't it? Everyone's of course anxious because what if the flight gets cancelled and then you have to come back and do this all again? Do it again. And the Canadian Embassy's closing. So do you do you try to delay that a few days? I you probably would have. I think that's probably not a huge factor, but I mean it's a piece of the puzzle. So they file back into the departure lounge. The problem it turns out is a faulty airspeed indicator, which is going to take about an hour to fix. They discuss switching over to a British Airways flight, but their bag's already checked on Swissair and switching means pulling the bags off, rechecking them. I think as the day goes on, the revolutionary guard presence is gonna pick up at the airport. Do you want to get out on this flight if you can? So they decide to wait it out. It's agonizing. Sun's coming up, dawn breaks, departure lounge is filling up. Now we have more Rev Guards circulating in the lounge. They're, you know, they they're sort of getting tired, Mendes Rights, over time of picking on or checking on Iranians. They're turning their attention to foreigners, addressing them in rough broken English or in German . Now, Joe Stafford, who's bored and nervous is is reading a Persian language newspaper. And yeah, that's they're like, okay, wait a minute, what emplo Canadian employee of Studio Six Productions can read can read Persian? And so Stafford and Mendez seem to realize this at the same time, and Stafford kind of slowly puts the paper down. There is then some awkwardness at the duty free shop . Where I love it. I'm sorry. They go to the duty free shop. I mean, they can't they can't wait for the booze, basically. The theme of this story. No, no, no. It's not it. Well, it is, yeah, it is a theme. It's not booze though, Gordon. Joe and Kathy Stafford have disappeared uh into the duty free shop for several minutes. They come out with a sealed bag and Joe comes up to Mendez and says, We would like you to have this as a token of our esteem. And it's a huge container of blue of Iranian beluga caviar, which is not shape. Mendez is kind of awkward. He understands the gesture , but it seems a little out of pattern to buy your production manager a huge container of caviar from a duty-free shop. I mean I guess you could say you're all together as a group and we want we wanted to buy this as a souvenir of our time in Iran. Anyhow, Mendez accepts. Then get the announcement that Swissair Flight three six three is ready to board, scramble onto the airport bus, it's gonna take them out to the plane, and as they're climbing the stairs, the airstair to get up to the plane, Bob Anders kind of knocks Mendez at the arm. He says, You guys think of everything . And Anders is pointing up at the side of the plane and painted in big red letters near the nose is the name of the canton in Switzerland where the actual aircraft is registered. I don't know e exactly how you pronounce this, but it looks like Argo. Argau. Argau . A A R G A U. Yeah. I mean that's wild as a coincidence, isn't it? It's an omen. It's an omen. So the plane rolls down the runway, it lifts off. Mendez is feeling euphoric. The wheels are up. They've still got a couple hours before they clear Iranian airspace. So you still do have to wait it out, grit it out a bit, because that plant could be asked to turn around. When the captain finally announces on the intercom that they've crossed into Turkish airspace, the cabin erupts into cheers, and it's n and it's not just the house guests. There's a bunch of other escaping Iranians on the flight who have presumably had their own, you know, tortured ordeals leaving the airport that morning. Although sadly none of them memori alized into Hollywood into into movies. You wonder what the stories are. None of them quite as crazy as this. Well gives you a sense of how ten se that airport would have been. And that is something the the film plays it up tremendously, which we'll talk about in our which Gordon will rant about in his his monologue on our declassified club episode. But the airport's a tense place and a high stakes place. I mean I I I should say I'd be I've flown out of Iran of out of that airport a couple of times and I remember the last time I went out I I mean it was friend friendlier times than now with Iran. But you're nervous when you go through it. You know, you until you leave, you just think, well, what if someone's gonna stop me and accuse me of being a spy and I'm suddenly gonna end up in an Iranian jail cell? And that was me as a journalist during friendly time. So I think until you've actually, you know, the plane is flying and out of Iranian airspace, I think that is only the moment you can breathe out. So what do you do when you get out of Iranian airspace? You wheel out the bar cart. Everyone has bloody Marys . Starts working on another bender. Mendez raises his glass. Argo, he says, We're home free. Maybe there, Gordon, let's take a break and when we come back , we'll see how the operation is not by any means over . Did you know about one in three people with plaxori asis may also develop psoriatic arthritis, which causes joint pain, stiffness, and swelling. Does this sound like you ? Listen to what it sounds like to be a million miles away Trimphya, Guselcomab, taken by injection, is a prescription medicine for adults with moderate to severe plaque psoriasis who may benefit from taking injections or pills or phototherapy. And for adults with active psoriatic arthritis. Serious allergic reactions and increased risk of infections and liver problems may occur. Before treatment, your doctor should check you for infections and tuberculosis. Tell your doctor if you have an infection, flu-li skeymptoms, or if you need a vaccine . Imagine being a million miles away. Explore what's possible. Ask your doctor about Trim Faya. Tap this ad to learn more about Trymfaya including important safety information so David they are out they're out of Iranian airspace. Uh uh not quite as it happens in the movie, it's fair to say. You don't have chases down the runway. Where was the chase scene? Where's my chase scene? You promised me a chase scene. We'll we'll deal with that question, I think in our movie review, if review is the right word. Um because th there's quite a few things which happen in the film which which don't happen in real life and which are put in to kind of get the tension. But I think it what is important is the they're out of the country, out of Iran , but there are still things going on which are quite important, you know, which are going to lead to the long -term legacy of this operation. I mean, one thing, I think it's interesting, isn't it? Back at the Canadian Embassy, they are shutting up shop and they are smashing that commo equipment. And I love the fact that one of the last messages that the Canadians get through from Ottawa before they smash up their covert equipment is see you later, exfiltrator, which is my favourite , which must which is a bit of a kind of telling message, but that's the one sent to the to the brave Canadians for who finishing off the mission. But you know, but back in back in Tehran , they're shutting up shop, but the story isn't quite over, is it? No. The six Americans are out. They have descended from the plane in Zurich and joyfully stomped their feet on the tarmac. There's no one to meet them at the gate, which I think is great. They have to they have to go through Swiss immigration controls on their alias passports. It's fine, no issues. As they come into the parking lot, there's a group of US State Department officials that that suddenly approach, and they snag the house guests, push them into a waiting van and drive them off to a mountain lodge in the Alps, where they'll be fed pizza, given six packs of Heineken and informed that they they can't yet contact their families to say they're safe. Because again, you don't want retribution against the hostages in Tehran. And we should say that. It's important, isn't it? Is that the plan at this point was to try and keep the whole thing secret, wasn't it, effectively? And Mendez and Ed are left alone in the parking lot because they're not part of their job's done, right? They're not there to baby they don't need to to talk to the to the the diplomats. Mendez writes that he realized he was freezing and he didn't have his coat anymore. And Ed is like, where's your coat? And Mendez says, I lent it to Joe. So he so Joe heads off with his coat and i it's I think actually you wouldn't write it this way, obviously if Ben Affleck didn't in the film, but this is this is the the end of the operation for the CIT right there on you know in a parking lot in Zurich, but it's by no means the end of the story because how the story comes out and the pieces of it that are that are not shared for a long time is is actually part of the story itself because remember, the the cover, the pr the Studio 6 Argo production team cover, was at the time thought to be multi-use and could be helpful in a potential rescue of the other hosta ges. And so in particular, what Ed ends up doing is he goes and over the course of that spring takes classes in international finance and the entertainment industry so he could potentially more credibly play another associate an associate producer on another rescue of Americans out of Iran. So that operation of course comes to be known as Eagle Kala . Eagle Kalaw does not wind up using the Argo Studio Six cover, but in January of nineteen eighty nobody has any clue that that's how it's gonna go down. Yeah. So it's so interesting, isn't it? The plan is it is to to to eff ectively keep this whole operation hidden, keep what's happened hidden, and and and and wait until they can get the other hostages out at the very least, before even revealing that the the house guests are, you know, back in the United States, which must be weird for them because you think you've just, you know, you've just escaped. The first thing you want to do is call your family and you're being told not to do it. So it must be pretty frustrating. But word, we should say, has got back to the White House and Word is getting around, hasn't it? Because you know, back in Tehran, you know, the the Canadians, just before they shut up shop, have sent word of the mission' sucscess to Ottawa via cable. And so even by this stage, you know, the president knows about it. It's a big deal. It's amazing how quickly it becomes clear that the US government won't be able to keep the secret. The plan to do that, to keep the house guests secluded in Florida until the hostage crisis is resolved, lasts less than two days. Because on the twenty ninth of January, a Canadian journalist named Jean Pelletier, who's the Washington Bureau Chief for La Presse, writes that the six are out of Iran. Yeah. And we should say that he is the journalist who we discussed previously in one of the earlier episodes, who'd worked it out earlier, and he'd worked out by the fact that there was a discrepancy in the number of American diplomats and that the Canadians were kind of, you know, in the kind of political context, dropping hints that they were doing something to help the Americans. He'd worked it out, and it had been agreed with his editor that they would hold the story until the hostages were safe. And you know, he'd been he'd he'd given the Canadian government his word that he wouldn't publish anything. And I think, you know, that's testament to a kind of responsible journalist who had had agreed to that. There's always pressure to get a scoop as a journalist, but there are times when you know they're a public safety or they're hostages situation where you do get asked, can you not report this or not yet, or can you hold it? And he had he'd held it until now. How would you have viewed his from a journalistic perspective, how would you have viewed the decision to run a story before they had gotten out? So I remember as a journalist, you would particularly people think you get censored and there's denoted and there's all this stuff about, you know, told that you can't report things. But the one time you do get R sometimes not to report something is when you have a hostage situation. And particularly in the early period normally of a hostage situation where you I would get a message uh or the BBC or someone will get a message saying this is a very sensitive moment. Uh we are trying to see if we can, for instance, negotiate a release or try to maybe there's a rescue mission going on, and publicity regarding that could endanger that person's life. And you'd be a pretty crazy journalist to kind of go, hey, I'd rather have a scoop, even if it endangers someone's life. So I think that is something which uh almost all responsible journalists would do, would, would, would sit on. But then there's always that moment. And I think we see it with this journalist as well, where he learns on the 28th of January that the Canadian embassy is closing, and obviously he knows that that was the way most likely that these diplomats, American diplomats, were being sheltered. So he works it out and calls he does what a journalist should do, which he calls the Canadian Embassy in Washington, you know, for confirmation. And he's told they would they would like him to still wait. Uh but at that point , he feels he's got the story. So I think he's done, I think, what most people would say would be the response, the correct thing, which is wait, but then you get to the point, and you can be frustrated if you're you know CIA because you'd like to have held it for longer. I think it would have been hard to hold it for much longer, if I'm being honest. But there were lots of other people who knew about it, lots of diplomats, lot of lot of officials, a lot of people in multiple countries. I think the st these stories don't stay secret for that long. So you know, he goes with the story and then with out within hours it's it's out, isn't it? What's so fascinating about the way the story breaks is that Belletier, the Canadian journalist, doesn't have the CIA angle, though. When the story comes out, it is it's a it's a Canada-centric, Canada-focused story about the the effort to to hide the house guests and to exfiltrate them. So you don't have, you know, you don't have any of the cover stuff, the Mendez side of it. The fake film crew, you know, the screenplay, John Ch ambers, all none of that is in the initial round of reporting that comes out on on the operation. And in fact all of that remains classified until 1997, when President Clinton declassifies many of the details around that around that operation. I it it is it's it it's interesting to go back and look at the video reels and the pictures, because in the in the States, in the days after that story breaks, Canada's pretty cool, Gordon. We got maple leaf flags flying on private homes, as billboards go up in Times Square that say thank you, Canada. Can you imagine that today? It's unimaginable today. It's unimaginable. It's absolutely unimaginable. The US House of Representatives passes a resolution thanking the Canadians and your hero, Ambassador Ken Taylor becomes an overnight celebrity. He's all over the place. He's awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 1981 by President Reagan in the Rose Garden, sharing company with the Dalai Lama and Pope John Paul II, which is uh you know, it's quite quite kind of esteemed company. And j John Chambers, the makeup artist, who had helped Mendez set up the cover in Hollywood, takes out a full page ad in his local Burbank newspaper that reads, Thanks, Canada. We needed that. And Mendez goes home to Maryland in like a good CIA band, doesn't tell anyone what he's done. At this point , Canada gets full credit. Okay. And I agree the CIA does get written out the story for good for for for for for for good reason. Um but I think in a sense what you then get uh it you then get it declassified as you said in nineteen ninety-seven and then eventually you'll get the film Argo made twenty twelve. In a way, what you get is a almost an overcorrection. So at that time, it's like this is a hundred percent Canada , and then the CIA bit gets revealed, and it's like it's a hundred percent CIA, when the reality is we know is somewhere more in between. But it's interesting, there's an interview with Jimmy Carter by none other than Piers Morgan, uh, which has comes out around the time of the Argo film coming out. And it's so interesting because Jimmy Carter goes, great film, but the true story is it was ninety percent, he says, ninety percent Canadian, which I think is a really i actually feels even a bit high for me. Even with my pro Canada hat on, ninety percent seems a little bit high. That is high that seems a little high. But it's like it i in a way it's a shame because the the point you make, which is that the CIA bit is classified and then it gets declassified and then people focus on that, means that it's quite hard to ever get a c a really sensible balanced view of the contribution. And maybe it's not something you should be rating in terms of percentages, because the point is it's a great allied effort, isn't it? I mean, that is part of the point of this story. Is rather than arguing about as I have been as you have as you every at the opening of every episode of the series, you have basically it makes me wonder if you're taking Canadian money, Gordon. Is that an accusation that I'm on the payroll of Canadian payroll? Yeah. Agent of influence for the Canadian Intelligence Service. You're right that it is perhaps not even an interesting question to say, well, what percent of the operation was the Canadians and what was the what was CIA? I think what's more interesting is looking at this as a case study in how a joint operation actually works, which when you have two services that are friendly with each other and there's some measure of trust and where there's shared national interest, you have a division of labor around what makes sense for each service to do. If you peel this whole thing back, you say, okay, well, what does each side bring to the table here? After the embassy is taken, the Canadians have the presence in Tehran. They have the diplomatic pouch that's going in and out that's so critical to this operation because it's the way you get in all of the forged documents, right? The disguise kits, all this kind of stuff, instead of having to smuggle them through some rat line, which would be complex and take a lot of time, or airdrop there to do something, you know, wild, you just since the Canadians can send them in. The US doesn't have that at at that point, because the embassy's gone. That's hugely valu able. You have properties, Canadian diplomatic properties around Tehran that you're hiding people in. You have an ambassador in Ken Taylor who is able to kind of ring lead this thing from the Canadian side and advocate for a rescue and exfiltration to kind of pound the table and make it happen. And then on the agency side, I think you have far more experience with exfiltrations, disguise, forgery, documents than the Canadians would have had. You have a real deep technical expertise inside OTS that Bendez and his team bring to this problem . And you have the the deep connection in Hollywood to establish the plausible cover. So when you add all of these things up , you get a great picture of how it actually makes a ton of sense for a really big service like the CIA and a smaller service like the Canadians to partner with one another. Because if we try to do something on our own and we bring a hundred units of something and the Canadians bring, you know, 30, when you put both of them together, and I'm not saying that was the percentage on this operation, I'm just saying conceptually the Canadians bring 30. When you put them both together Yeah, but it's also it may not be it might be those thirty units are vital units which make it possible. So it's the kind of I completely agree that actually this to me just shows the value of liaisons and partnerships. And you know, one country, you know, in five eyes or somewhere else can have access to a to a location, to an agent, you know, to a platform to be able to do something. And the other one may be able to to leverage that and the idea it's simply about size or experience. It's not as simple as that, is it, in the intelligence game. I think this is a really good example about uh about that. I mean there's some other things which I think are really in interesting um uh about it, you know, in terms of cover and trade craft aren't they could you do something like this today no no no because you couldn't you wouldn't be able I I would say at most global airports, there would be you'd have to w work under the presumption that there would be biometrics or biometric capabilities that would create a a an anomaly uh between the person standing there, their iris fingerprint, whatever it might be, and what the document says, the passport . So that's a major problem that would have would have created issues in this. Another one is the backstopping is much harder in an era where you can look at someone's social media presence and say, okay, well, you know, there's ways around this, but it's it's harder now because if Mendez was trying to do this today, he would have had to create a huge amount of kind of digital dust for these personas that would look credible if someone at Iran started to dig in. Well, Studio 6, what is that? Well, now there'd be a web presence. It wouldn't just be a f a couple ads, you know, in variety in the Hollywood Reporter and and a phone number that reaches an office on the old Columbia Productions lot. There would have to be a whole bunch of kind of digital trails that the Iran ians could walk down to make it seem credible and that's just more that's more challenging to build. Yeah. I mean on a simple level you'd you'd go, what well what's the LinkedIn profile or what's the social media profile for the for the for the production manager or for the screenwriter, what other things have they done? When was that profile set up? I remember someone, you know, from MI6, it was in the two thousands when they started to realize the old ways of cover didn't work. Because they they actually started to run tests and they re they looked at it and they said, The old ways we used to do a cover with a false passport, how long would that work against a genuinely curious and capable uh you know border guard, the equivalent of the border guards in the air port there, who had access to Google, you know, so the two thousands when Google is just starting. And the answer was it would take about a minute to unwind the old ways of cover, you know, with just a bit of light Googling in those days. And that's even, you know, before you get to biometrics. So it this does feel like something from a different era. But but I I take your point, which is that there are new ways of doing this, aren't there? And you know, some of those are going to be secret of building cover and deepening cover and of creating whether it's companies or productions or backstories for people, which do make it possible, but I guess it's just harder, isn't it? It takes a lot more work than just some stamps and some passports. Right. And I d I still think that those those talents, this the kind of trade skills inside the CAA are still there in in many respects. It's just that it's harder um to to to manage cover now. I mean one one way that one thread out of this story that you can pull forward to the present is you know then there is still a group inside the CIA that's focused on disguise. You know, we call it getting programmed for a disguise. And the the techniques, disguises have come a long, long way from the 70s and 80s. But it's it's interesting the the way that the agency builds them today, the foundation for that, are still techniques and technology that come out of the entertainment industry in Hollywood. Out of Hollywood. Um so it's it's very similar to the way that the CIA absorbed techniques for prosthetics back when John Chambers and Tony Mendez were working together and you know, for like a disguise. You're getting programmed for this by sitting in a chair kind of inside a cage. There's an array of maybe 50 or 60 cameras around you. Shots get taken from all angles and all different kinds of lighting. And then all of that is fed into a program that recommends a new face based on those photos . And and so it and basically you can have you can have masks that are sort of like Mission Impossible that are just pull-on , but they're not particularly convincing because it's got a lot of gaps by the mouth and the eyes. It's thin, it's fragile. So it's not convincing if you're gonna sit in front of someone to talk. But there's another type of mask which is very similar to what an actor would wear in Hollywood if they were, you know, in a sci-fi mov ie, where it's like an additive process where they build pieces of silicone that essentially are adhered to your to your face. So you could have new chin, cheeks, forehead, neck, nose, dental appliances for new teeth, kind of puff out, puff out your mouth, all applied with a spirit gum, but then covered with a custom makeup. And all of that stuff is that's done inside the agency when there is still a need for a disguise, which is increasingly rare, but there are still operational reasons to do it, is very similar to what's done in Hollywood. So you still have that pipeline going between the agency's technical people and Hollywood that, you know, guys like John Chambers and Tony Mendez really built out in the seventies and eighties. So there's still that liaison. Because you sometimes hear about Hollywood liaison from CIA, which we often think about, and we talked about this right at the start, as being more about can you influence the screenwriting side of things and the plots and make them accurate or less accurate or things like that? But it's actually I f I find it so interesting that it's actually the the tradecraft side of things is is the other bit of that connection between Hollywood and the CIA and and which was there then with John Chambers and must be still there now. And you can imagine it in lots of ways with production design as well and and and and maybe it's going to get even more so with some of the things you can do with artificial intelligence, some of the things you're gonna create creating false identities or creating theatre is something that spy agencies do as well as Hollywood and Hollywood's got the money for it, frankly, and the experience. So why not tap into it? I was gonna end with a little coda about Tony Mendez, Gordon, but I'm afraid that you will then uh end on top of that with a rival coda about the Canadians. And I think your point on on theater uh is maybe the right place to end this story because it is it is also I think it's sort of this great irony there's this feedback loop of Hollywood feeding the agency and then also reflecting the agency back out into the world through through the medium of film. I think that might be the place to end it and tease it as we we prepare ourselves mentally, physically and spiritually for Gordon Carrera's demolition of the film Argo in our in our episode for declassified club members. Ben Affleck, if you're listening, please but well first of all please join the club. You still have to pay for membership, even if you're Ben Affleck, and then you can hear what I really think of Argo, as can everyone else if you join up at the declassified club at the rest is classified.com, where we're going to be talking a bit more about the film. And yeah, I think getting into not just the lack of realism of certain aspects of it. But I think the story around the film is is genuinely really interesting. And what's in there and what's not. And the reaction to the film, including yes, from Canada. So a chance to listen to that. You can also sign up for our newsletter, which is free to everybody. You don't need to be a club member, but you can do that at therestisclassified.com. But we hope you enjoyed the series and get that disguise on. And we'll see you next time. We'll see you next time. How many discounts does USAA Auto Insurance offer? Too many to say here. Multi-vehicle discount, safe driver discount, uh, new vehicle discount, storage discount, legacy. How many discounts will you stack up? Tap the banner or visit USAA.com/slash auto discounts. Restrictions apply.