November 1979, Tran has changed beyond recognition.
Just yesterday, it was a modern city, the Paris of the East.
But now, it is consumed by the fire of the Islamic Revolution.
The old world has collapsed for good.
Iran’s longtime ruler Sha Muhammadza Palavi along with his family was forced to flee to the west in a hurry, running for his life.
At the same time, Ayatollah Kmeni returns to the country in triumph.
After 14 years in exile, he takes power into his own hands.
Now, new and harsh rules govern Iran.
The revolution doesn’t forgive the past.
The streets of Tyran are packed with people consumed by fanatical rage and hatred toward America.
To them, the USA is the great Satan that supported the Sha regime for years.
On November 4th, 1979, the situation explodes.
Thousands of religious fanatics and radical students flock to the walls of the American embassy.
They scale the fences, break down the gates, and swarm inside the diplomatic complex.
66 people are taken hostage.
The captives are blindfolded.
Their hands are tied and they are showed around by armed men.
The revolutionaries demand thunders across the entire planet.
Return the shot to us.
We must execute him publicly for all his crimes.
The situation is a stalemate.
At this moment, the shai is in a New York hospital and America cannot hand him over.
He ruled under the protection of the US and he was promised asylum.
President Jimmy Carter finds himself in a trap.
If he hands over the sha, he betrays an ally.
If he does not, the hostages will start being killed.
The whole world watches this drama unfold in a live broadcast with horror.
Every day brings new threats of executions and new footage of crowds burning flags.
It is a tragedy unfolding before the eyes of millions.
But amidst this chaos, there is one secret that absolutely no one suspects.
Not the Iranian authorities nor the global media.
At the very moment the mob fanatics was smashing through the front doors, six ambass staff members managed to do the impossible.
Under a heavy downpour, they quietly slipped out through the back door of the consular section.
With no belongings and no clear plan, they simply dissolved into the labyrinths of Terran streets.
They wandered the city for a while until they finally found rescue under the wing of Canadian diplomats.
Now these six are hiding in secret at the private residence of the Canadian ambassador Ken Taylor and his deputy John Shiridown.
And this is where the real nightmare begins.
These poor souls found themselves in a deadly trap.
There are locked within four walls, afraid to even step near a window.
Meanwhile, outside a real hunt is taking place.
Iranian patrols, the fanatical revolutionary guards are literally calming the city block by block.
There are searching for those who might have slipped away.
The situation hits up with every passing hours.
The revolutionaries have already begun reconstructing embassy documents destroyed by shredders, piecing together strips of paper by hand.
Sooner or later, they will realize that some staff members are missing.
If these six are discovered in the Canadians home, they won’t just be taken to prison.
The revolutionaries are consumed by a thirst for revenge.
A swift reckoning awaits the Americans.
A public trial and immediate execution as especially dangerous spice.
It is impossible to leave the country legally.
Marabat airport is under the strictest control.
A two sheet form system has been introduced there.
who fill out one upon entry and must hand over the other upon departure.
The escapes don’t have these forms.
They don’t have the correct visas and their faces will soon be on every street pole.
Any attempt to step out onto the street means certain death.
They would simply be torn apart on the spot.
Time is measured in days and the tension at CIA headquarters in Langley is reaching its breaking point.
A miracle is needed to get them out of this hell alive.
While the six Americans listen in terror to every Russell in Tran, an atmosphere of a red-hot behive reigns at Langley CIA headquarters.
Full combat readiness has been declared here.
The best minds in intelligence are struggling over one task.
How to get the people out of Iran? Options are suggested one after another, but they all sound like a death sentence.
Make them English teachers.
Absort.
All international schools are closed.
Agricultural inspectors suspicious the country is in a revolution, not a harvest.
Traditional spy logic has reached a dead end.
Any standard legend will be smashed to pieces.
At the very first interrogation by the fanatics.
And so at this critical moment, a man enters the stage who list resembles a secret agent.
His name is Tony Mandas.
And if you are waiting to see someone like James Bond or a top commando in camouflage here, you are very much mistaken.
Tony Mendes is not a man with a gun.
He is a man with a pencil and a brush.
He’s a professional illustrator.
His path to the CIA began not at an intelligence academy, but in the deserts of Nevada.
Tony was born in 1940 in the tiny town of Eureka.
A mix of Mexican, Italian, and French blood plowed in his veins.
His father died when Tony was very young, and the boy grew up essentially on his own, drawing inspiration from the harsh desert landscapes.
He always considered himself just a desert guy who knew how to draw well.
After university in Colorado, he worked as an illustrator and tool designer for a major aerospace company.
But in 1965 his life changed abruptly.
He came across a strange advertisement in the newspaper graphic artist wanted.
Tony responded not even suspecting that his employer would be the central intelligence agency.
At the CIA they quickly realized that this guy was a natural talent.
Tony ended up in the office of technical services.
There he didn’t shoot at targets.
He studied the art of deception.
Over 25 years of service, he became the best of the best in the business of authentication.
His specialty was forging documents of any complexity and creating masks that were impossible to distinguish from a human face.
He worked throughout Asia and the Middle East, creating identities out of thin air.
For him, the passport of any country was just a canvas and an official signature was a brush stroke that he could repeat with his eyes closed.
By 1979, Tony headed the authentication branch.
He knew everything about escapes and the secret tax exfiltration of people, and it was he who realized that the big bosses in Langley didn’t see.
Mandis recognized that to save people from the most guarded, paranoid and fanatical country of that time, the traditional logic of special services was useless.
The Iranians are no fools.
They are looking for spies.
They are looking for diplomats.
They are looking for those trying to be invisible.
That means everything must be done exactly the opposite way.
Tony puts forward his main thesis.
To survive in this madness, you must come up with a lie so ridiculous, so loud and exotic that it would be impossible not to believe in it.
He decides to use the most powerful tool of disinformation in the world.
A tool before which any borders open, even if there is a revolution in the country.
He decides to send into the dan of fanatics not gay mice, but a bright, noisy, and absolutely crazy group from Hollywood.
Tony Mendes’s plan was simple and brilliant at the same time.
If he wants to hide something important, put it in the most visible place.
He’s going to turn terrified diplomats into movie producers who have come to Tyran to film a science fiction blockbuster.
And this insane fantasy of an artist is to become the only reality that will save their lives.
Tony Mandez lands in Los Angeles.
In his bag is $10,000 in cash.
This is the first portion of black money from the CIA budget intended to launch the greatest scam in Hollywood history.
Tony has exactly 4 days to turn a fantasy into a tangible business.
His main ally is an old friend, the legendary Hollywood makeup artist John Chambers.
John is a true patriot.
He has helped the CIA with disguises more than once and this time he is ready for anything.
Together they begin to act swiftly.
At the old Colombia studio, they find the ideal spot, an office space that Michael Douglas had just vacated after filming the China Syndrome.
They call their company Studio Six Productions.
The name is symbolic in honor of those six for whose sake this insane performance is being staged.
While ordinary studios spend weeks on bureaucracy, manders and chambers do everything in hours.
They grease the palms of the right people, install phone lines, and purchase furniture, paper clips, and even ashtrays.
By the fourth day, the office looks as if it has been operating for years.
Piles of papers lie on the tables, and the phones are ready to ring at any second.
Now, this empty shell needs content.
Mendes needs a script.
The timing is perfect.
The world has just lived through the Star Wars boom.
Everyone is obsessed with space, distant planets, and aliens.
Tony understands he needs something epic, eastern, and mythological.
The Iranians must believe that their exotic architecture and bizaars are the ideal setting for an intergalactic saga.
In a pile of rejected manuscripts, they find exactly what they need.
It is a script based on the science fiction novel Lord of Light.
It has everything: gods, technology, deserts, and mysticism.
Tony takes this project and completely remodels it for his specific task.
All that is left is a title, something short, bright, and memorable.
The title was born instantly, Argo.
Moreover, it was perfect for the legend.
In mythology, it was the ship on which Jason sailed to save the golden fleece from the dragon’s claws.
A perfect metaphor for the mission to save people from revolutionary tyran.
Tony personally draws the film’s logo.
Aggressive, stylish, and absolutely Hollywood.
But creating an office and coming up with a name is not enough.
Iranian intelligence is not made of amateurs.
If they suspect something is wrong, they will start checking the facts.
This means our goal must exist in reality.
Mandis takes an unprecedented step.
He buys added space in the most authoritative publications of the film industry.
Variety and the Hollywood Reporter.
These papers are read by the whole world.
Huge advertisements state.
Studio 6 Productions presents Argo, a cosmic conflration story by Terresa Harris.
The whole coast begins to talk about the film.
Journalists try to find out the details and the hype grows.
The lie grows meat on its bones.
Studio 6 now has real business cards, posters drawn by professional artists and a ready portfolio.
The legend became so dense that even real screenwriters believed in it.
Dozens of real scripts began arriving at the office, including a project from Steven Spielberg himself.
Now the trap is ready.
If tomorrow an Iranian official in Thran picks up the phone and calls Los Angeles at the number on the business card, a real secretary in a real office will answer him and confirm, “Yes, Studio 6 is indeed preparing for large scale filming in Iran.
” Now, Mandis can fly into the enemy’s layer.
The lie has become so plausible that it has turned into reality itself.
While work was buzzing in Hollywood on the image of Studio 6, Haril Chess game was unfolding in the diplomatic offices of Arawa and Washington.
Mandis understood without the official support of another state, the plan would collapse.
American passports in Iran were a stigma.
Now Canadian documents were acquired.
The Canadian government took an unprecedented, incredibly risky step.
In the strictest secrecy, the parliament in Ottawa approved the issuance of six genuine Canadian passports for foreign citizens.
This was a direct violation of the law.
But for the sake of saving lives, the Canadians decided to risk their reputation.
CIA document specialist Joe Msuri worked tirelessly.
He didn’t just have to print the books.
He had to create pocket leader, receipts, credit cards, driver’s licenses, everything an ordinary person carries in their wallet.
The Canadians even prepared a fake cable in which Ambassador Ken Taylor officially advised the filmmakers to leave Iran due to the unstable situation.
The lie was stitched through every level of government in both countries.
But even in the CIA’s ideal machine failures happened when the document package had already been sent to Tyran via Canadian diplomatic pouch, Langley suddenly realized a catastrophic mistake had been made.
The linguist translator preparing the Iranian visas got tangled in the Persian calendar.
He simply miscalculated the dates.
As a result, the passports for the six had visas with an issuance date that had not yet arrived.
They were issued in the future.
This was every agent’s nightmare.
If an Iranian border guard saw such a visa, that’s it.
It’s over.
The entire group would be arrested right at the passport control window.
Fixing it in Washington was no longer possible.
The documents were in a locked diplomatic pouch the size of a pillow case on their way to Tran.
Tony Mendes understood now his tool would be not only artistry but also razor and ink.
He would have to fix these dates right on the spot in the enemy slayer with only what he could hide in his luggage.
Tension reached its limit.
Final approval for the operation had to be given personally by US President Jimmy Carter.
In such matters, the president rarely contacts operative directly, but this case was exceptional.
Mandis received a succinct but heavy as lead note from the White House.
Good luck.
These two words meant only one thing.
There was no turning back.
If the plan failed, the US government would wash it hands of it.
Tony Mandez and his partner Julio, an experienced officer fluent in Farsy, flew to Tran via Europe.
And there are suitcases lay the scripts storyboards for the film Argo and those very advertising clippings from magazines.
This was their only weapon.
On January 25th, 1980 at 5:00 a.
m.
they landed at Marabat airport.
Tran met them with cold and an atmosphere of total madness.
The city was gripped by chaos.
The revolution had not yet settled.
At night, jeeps with revolutionary guards sped through the streets, firing machine guns at building windows for fun.
Conventions, international rules, no longer worked.
At any second, you could be stopped, searched, or simply shot.
Mendes and Julio settled into the Sheraton Hotel, trying to look like typical slightly arrogant Hollywood dealers.
Around them, the hostile city seized.
While somewhere on the other side of Tran, behind the closed curtains of the Canadian residents, six terrified people waited for their savior.
But Tony knew before meeting them he had to perform a small miracle with a pocketk knife and the spoiled passports.
On the evening of January 25th, Tony Mandis and Julio finally reach the home of Canadian diplomat John Sheerdown.
Six Americans have been hiding here for 86 days.
Imagine their estate 3 months within four walls in constant fear that at any moment the thumping of the revolutionary guards iron short boots will erupt behind the door.
They are exhausted.
Their nerves are at the breaking point.
For them, Mendes’s appearance is the last hope.
Tony gathered them in the living room and lays his cards on the table.
He does not talk about secret trials or helicopters.
He says, “We are flying out of here through the main airport and we are going to be a Hollywood film crew.
A dead silence hangs over the room.
Some look at him like he’s crazy.
” A script, story boards, a space saga.
It sounds like pure suicide.
Iran is flooded with fanatics who hate America and these guys suggesting they put on trendy clothes and walk through passport control with business cards from a non-existent studio.
One of the diplomats says flatly, “Are you serious? Is this your best plan?” Tony realizes right now his main task isn’t the documents, it’s their heads.
If they tremble with fear in front of a border guard, no fake passport will help.
Mandis begins to work like a subtle psychologist.
He needs to pull them out of the reality of fear and immerse them in the reality of the game.
To prove that any barrier is merely an illusion, Tony shows them an old trick.
He takes two sugar cubes and makes one disappear only for it to reappear elsewhere.
The pionage is like magic, he explains.
We simply make people look where we want them to.
He makes them laugh.
He makes them discuss the details of the Argo script.
The tension in the room begins to melt.
The most terrified guest has to be literally brought to his senses with some controller.
A couple of sips to loosen the tongue and bring color back to the face.
Tony gives them their instruction.
You don’t need to lie, you need to play a role.
Hollywood big shots aren’t afraid of customs.
They are arrogant and look down on everyone.
Be like that.
The next day, the masquerade begins.
Conservative dry embassy staff accustoms to Steve’s suits start turning into bohemians.
Tony hands out the clothes he brought from California.
The most incredible transformation happens to Bob Anders.
In order life, he’s a dignified console with Snow White hair, but Tony gives him a mod blow dry, makes him unbutton his blue silk shirt down to his chest, and hangs a massive gold chain with a medallion around his neck.
On top goes an expensive overcoat drapped over his shoulders like a cape.
Bob walks across the room with the swagger of a Hollywood dandy and the others gasp.
Before them stands a real producer.
They drill their new identities until exhaustion.
One is now a lighting technician, another is costume designer, another an assistant director.
In every pocket is a studio 6 business card and memorized legend about exactly which bazaar in Tan is best suited profiling an alien marketplace.
At the end of the preparation, Mandis puts them through hell.
He conducts a brutal training interrogation.
His partner Julio playing a malicious Iranian investigator screams at them, fires questions point blank, and tries to catch them in inconsistencies.
Where were you yesterday at 4? Who do you work for? Why is your visa like this? They must answer instantly, never breaking character.
By Sunday evening, they are ready.
The group of six down trodden poor souls has vanished.
In their place stands a noisy, bright, and slightly arrogant film crew for the movie Argo.
But Tony knows tomorrow morning at the airport there will be no room for error.
There will be only one chance.
Monday, January 28th, 3:00 a.
m.
In Tony Mendes’s dark hotel room, the phone suddenly rings.
It’s Richard from the embassy.
Tony jumps up in a cold sweat.
He has overslept.
His alarm was set for 2:15, but he didn’t hear it.
He has mere minutes to get ready.
Mendes’s plan relies on precise calculation.
He chose a 7:30 a.
m.
Swiss era flight.
Why so early? Tony understood the psychology.
At 5:00 a.
m.
Terrance Meabad airport is a sleepy and gloomy place.
The revolutionary guards and customs officers who had been on duty all night were already deathly tired and the morning shift hadn’t yet woken up and dialed their paranoia up to full power.
The calculation was simple.
A sleepy official is a lazy official.
He wouldn’t want to scrutinize every letter.
He’d just want you to vanish from his side as quickly as possible.
At 5:00 a.
m.
, the Hollywood crew and lords from the embassy van.
They look conspicuous.
Bright scarves, trendy hairstyles, holding folders with the Argo scripts.
To fully cement the legend, Mandis ordered that all suitcases be covered with Canadian maple leaf stickers.
It was a psychological shield.
We are one of you.
We are Canadians.
We have nothing to do with the occupied embassy.
They approach the passport control point.
Everyone’s heart is thumping so hard it seems sortable to the entire hall.
They must present the yellow forms, the very arrival cards that Tony and Julio had painstakingly forged at the residence, correcting the errors in the dates.
And then something happens that makes their blood run cold.
When one of the diplomats, Bob Anders, hands over his documents, his fake yellow form slips off the high counter and slowly glides to the floor behind the Iranian officer’s back.
A split-second pause.
The officer does not notice.
Tony, maintaining us cold composure, steps forward and while no one is looking, deafly snatches the paper.
He hands it to the border guard with a smile of a confident producer.
The Iranian does not care at all.
He lazily thumbs the exit permitted stamp and gestures.
Proceed.
The legend worked perfectly.
They are already in the waiting lounge mere minutes until boarding.
The rescued Americans begin to relax slightly.
Someone even heads to the duty-free shop for souvenirs.
But suddenly, a voice booms over the airport’s PA system.
Attention.
Swiss era flight to Zurich is delayed due to technical reasons.
The world around them stands still.
Is this the end? Have the Iranians figured out who they are? Revolutionary guard patrols and camouflage begin pacing through the hall.
They look suspiciously at every passer by stopping some for interrogation.
Everyone in Mendes’s group feels like a target.
The Argo script in their hands now seems not like a path to freedom, but like evidence for which they will be shot.
An hour passes.
The longest hour of their lives.
The tension is so thick you could cut it with a knife.
Mandis forces everyone to stay put and keep their eyes down.
And then finally, the second call.
Boarding has begun.
They walk across the airfield toward the plane.
As Bob Anders begins to climb the stairs, he suddenly freezes.
He nudges Tony’s shoulder and points his finger at the nose of the jet.
There beneath the cockpit sits the inscription Hargo, the name of a Swiss region.
It seems like an incredible almost mystical coincidence.
The vessel that is meant to carry them out of hell bears the name of their fake movie.
“It’s a sign,” Bob whispers.
They take their seats and fasten their belts.
The engines roar.
The plane lifts off the ground and begins to gain altitude over snow covered terran.
The silence in the cabin is deathly.
No wonder to utter a single warn until the captain announces.
We have left terrainian airspace.
At that moment, a sigh of relief sweeps through the cabin, turning into a cry of joy.
They did it.
Mandis calls the flight attendant and orders Bloody Mary for everyone.
The danger is behind them.
The CIA artist has just finished his greatest masterpiece.
Six lives saved.
When the plane’s landing gear touched the runaway in Zurich, the masks were finally dropped.
The Hollywood crew ceased to exist.
As soon as they stepped onto the ramp, the six Americans who only yesterday had been sentenced to death literally collapsed to their knees and began kissing the Swiss concrete.
For them, this was the moment of a second birth.
And what about Mandas? While the rescue diplomats were being whisked away by State Department representatives, Tony and his partner Julio simply stood aside.
No cameras, no fanfares, no red carpets.
One of the rescued even forgot to return Tony’s overcoat, which he had land because it was cold in Zurich.
Mandis didn’t remind him his job was done.
The two CIA officers simply turned around and walked to the nearest airport restaurant to have a quiet lunch.
They became invisible once again.
March 1980, the Oval Office of the White House.
Tony Mand stands before President Carter.
He shows him everything that pulled an entire country.
The Argo logos, the fake passports, the advertisement clipping from magazines.
The president is stunned.
That same day, the CIA presents Tony with the intelligence star.
Once of the AY’s highest and most prestigious award, but there is no press at this ceremony, not even Mendes’s family.
As soon as the medal touched his palm, he was required to return it to its box.
The operation was so secret that the award went straight into a locked safe.
Tony couldn’t tell even his wife about it.
For the rest of the world, it remained the Canadian caper, a triumph of Ottawa’s diplomacy.
While the CIA’s role was erased from history for many years, the truth only came out 17 years later when the archives were declassified in 1997.
The world was shocked.
It turned out that behind the rescue of the Canadian six stood not a lucky chance but the brilliant special operation of an American artist.
Tony Manders proved to the entire intelligence community.
Sometimes the power of imagination, creativity, and a pure brazen lie can be more powerful than any weapon.
Where armies and special forces are powerless, one man with a pencil in his hands can prevail if he is brave enough to make the enemy believe in the cinema.
In 2012, Hollywood paid its debts to this story.
Ben Affleck directed the film Argo, where he played Mandis himself.
The film won an Oscar for best picture of the year, and Tony finally received his share of world fame.
But until the very end of his life, battling Parkinson’s disease, the real Tony Mandez remained that same humble desert guy.
He didn’t consider himself an action movie hero.
When asked about that mission, he would only shrug his shoulders and say that he had simply done his job well.
He passed away in 2019, leaving us a story of how art and cunning can defeat fanaticism and save lives.
And that was perhaps his best script.
