Argo: How the CIA and Hollywood Pulled Off the Most Audacious Rescue in History Part 21

"It's time we talked about your future in the film business," I said to Julio, my words wafting in the frosty night air. I explained that since the Argo cover story had worked so well, there was a real chance it would be used to infiltrate the Delta Force commandos into Tehran in the event of a rescue attempt. "They are going to want you to take some cla.s.ses in international finance."

"You think I can pull it off?" he asked me. He seemed younger for a second, saying it.

"My only doubt is what language you should do it in," I said.

A cold wind knifed through the parking lot and I s.h.i.+vered, suddenly realizing I no longer had my coat. "Let's get out of here," I said. "I'm freezing."

"Where's your coat?" Julio asked me.

"I lent it to Joe."

He laughed. "B&F is going to have your a.s.s for that one."

"Don't I know it. Come on," I said. We turned and walked toward a line of waiting taxis. It was time to get back to work.

16

AFTERMATH

None of the houseguests had given much thought as to what would happen after they got out of Iran. They probably a.s.sumed they would go back to their normal lives, but in Switzerland they would find out the truth. The State Department informed them that if news of their escape were to get out, there was a good chance the hostages could suffer reprisals. In addition, since there was the chance that the Argo cover story might be reused to help rescue the hostages, it would be important to keep the operational details of their rescue secret. So rather than being allowed to return home, they were going to be hidden away on a U.S. Air Force base in Florida until the fifty-three hostages were released. When they learned that they wouldn't even be able to call their families to let them know they were safe, they began to grumble. Of course, Lee being Lee, he asked if they could be sent to Fiji instead.

They spent the night at the mountain lodge, eating pizza, drinking beer, and being observed by the senior medical officer from the local emba.s.sy. They were told there was no precedent for a group of State Department staffers being held in captivity for such a long period of time. The State Department was eager to learn all it could so as to be better prepared to deal with the hostages once that situation was resolved. At some point they would be asked to take an air force stress test for air traffic controllers, the results of which determined that most of them were very "high strung." After being debriefed, they were told to hand over all of their alias doc.u.ments as well as the Argo material. However, several of them held on to their Studio Six business cards and still have them today.

Despite the State Department's best attempts to keep the escape of the six under wraps, it wouldn't take long for the whole world to know what had happened.

Jean Pelletier of Montreal's La Presse had been sitting on the story for over a month. When he found out on January 28 that the Canadian government was closing its emba.s.sy in Tehran, he concluded that the missing Americans must have gotten out. Since he'd originally agreed not to publish the story until after the danger had pa.s.sed, he felt that he'd more than fulfilled his part of the bargain. He called the Canadian emba.s.sy in Was.h.i.+ngton once again for confirmation and was told by officials there that they would prefer if he held off publis.h.i.+ng until after the entire crisis was over. Pelletier, however, claimed that his "instincts" were telling him that he had to publish it now. Worried that some other enterprising journalist would scoop him and pressured in part by his senior editors, he decided to finally run with it. The newspaper published the piece on the morning of January 29. Soon after, the story was picked up by radio and TV stations, and before lunch it was all over the world.

Now that the news was out, there was no longer any need to keep the houseguests in seclusion. Worried that the story might be connected to the Swiss government, which still had a functioning emba.s.sy in Tehran, State Department officials hastily loaded the houseguests into a van and drove them to Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany.

I was back in Frankfurt working on my after-action report when the news broke. Reports outlined how the Canadians had sheltered the six Americans for nearly three months before organizing their escape. No mention was made of the CIA, or Argo, which was just fine. The last thing the White House or headquarters needed was for the Iranians to know that the CIA had been conducting operations in Tehran, which would almost certainly have put the lives of the hostages in jeopardy. Eventually a vague reference would be made in a New York Times article, saying that the CIA had provided technical a.s.sistance, but for the next seventeen years the world would never know the truth about Argo.

In the wake of Pelletier's article and subsequent news pieces, the outpouring of grat.i.tude by Americans toward the Canadian government was unprecedented. I remember landing at JFK on February 1 and picking up a copy of the New York Post, which had a ma.s.sive three-inch headline on the front page that read: "Thanks, Canada!" In diners and bars, Canadians were treated to backslaps and free drinks. Just about everywhere you looked there were maple leaf flags, signs, even billboards expressing America's grat.i.tude toward our neighbor to the north.

On January 30, the U.S. Congress pa.s.sed a resolution honoring Canada, while the following day President Carter called to personally thank Canada's prime minister, Joe Clark.

With the CIA's involvement a secret, the lion's share of the credit for the operation went to Ken Taylor. He became an overnight sensation and was nicknamed the "Scarlet Pimpernel" of diplomacy. After flying from Tehran to Copenhagen, he eventually arrived in Paris, where he was mobbed at Charles de Gaulle Airport by a horde of photographers and reporters. He would give a press conference the next day and follow that up with an eleven-month public relations tour that would take him to practically every major city in the United States and Canada. He would receive both Canada's and the United States' highest honors, including the Congressional Gold Medal (an award shared by the likes of the Dalai Lama and Pope John Paul II). Wherever he went he was always gracious in trying to defer credit onto others, but he clearly didn't shun the limelight. Of course Taylor was only doing what we wanted him to do, which was to deflect attention away from the United States and onto Canada. Even if he had wanted to, he couldn't have mentioned the CIA's role. And in a way, what he was doing was carrying off another cover story that s.h.i.+fted the blame away from America and onto Canada.

Among those in the know, however, the idea that Canada had acted alone became an opportunity to have a little fun. I later heard that, typical of the man, Jerome Calloway had taken out a full-page ad in the local Burbank newspaper that said: "Thanks, Canada-we needed that!"

As word of the rescue reached Iran, reactions there were predictable. At the foreign ministry, Bruce Laingen, Vic Tomseth, and Mike Howland were accused of somehow aiding and abetting the escape and had their telephone and telex privileges permanently taken away. Down at the U.S. emba.s.sy, meanwhile, it was reported that one of the militants had called the rescue "illegal." Though perhaps the most famous response came from Sadegh Ghotbzadeh, Iran's foreign minister, who said, "Sooner or later, here or anywhere in the world, Canada will pay for this violation of the sovereignty of Iran." Ghotbzadeh, as it turns out, would eventually be executed by the Iranian government, shot by a firing squad for suspicions of colluding with the West.

Now that the rescue was the worst-kept secret in the world, the houseguests were finally told they could go home. They spent a few more nights at the military base in Germany, then flew back to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware on an Executive 707 that belonged to the commander of NATO, dining on filet mignon and fresh pineapple flown in from Hawaii.

When they arrived at the State Department, they were met in the lobby by a cheering mob. One woman held up a sign that read, WE LOVE YOU BOB ANDERS, AND CANADA TOO! The atmosphere was electric. After hearing nothing but bad news about their colleagues trapped at the emba.s.sy, here at last was a chance to finally celebrate a victory. All their pentup emotions came pouring out: they clapped, whistled, waved signs, and cheered with abandon. When asked about it later, Lee described the moment as one of the few times he felt like crying in public.

Their next stop was at an auditorium in the State Department, where Bob Anders read a prepared statement, saying that due to the sensitivity of the situation, neither he nor any of the other houseguests could go into any details about their escape. When discussing their time at the Sheardowns', Bob said that the majority of their days had been spent playing Scrabble and following the news of the world. Eventually, each of them would be sent a deluxe Scrabble set and a letter from the president of Hasbro.

After the press conference, they would meet with Cyrus Vance, and then later with President Carter at the White House. For the houseguests, who had vilified Carter while discussing the stalemate of the hostage crisis at their nightly dinners with the Sheardowns, it was an awkward meeting. Some of them, like Mark, still felt that the president had mishandled the whole affair by allowing the shah to enter the United States without first doing more to protect the emba.s.sy. In the end, Carter's southern charm won them over and they left feeling that the president was genuinely concerned for the well-being of the hostages.

It was around this time that I landed at JFK in New York. I'd flown over on a TWA flight from Frankfurt and had trouble getting them to refrigerate the huge tin of caviar that Joe Stafford had given me. The stewardess took one look at the tin and said, "Sir, that caviar is either Iranian or Russian. If it's Iranian, I am not refrigerating it until the hostages are released. If it's Russian, after they get out of Afghanistan and the Olympics are rescheduled, we would be glad to find room for it in our fridge." I looked at her with newfound admiration. I took all of my laundry out of my carryon bag and swaddled the tin in my American underwear.

Before hopping on my connecting flight, I called my family from JFK to let them know that I was going to be arriving on time.

I had an emotional reunion with my family at Dulles when Karen and the kids came to pick me up. Much was left unsaid, but I think all of them could tell that I was relieved to be home. Later that night, when Karen and I were going to bed, the two of us lapsed into a minute or two of silence. Eventually she turned to me. "You're a national hero," she said, and then, after a short pause, "but n.o.body will ever know."

About a week later, I went to Los Angeles with Hal and our wives to meet with Calloway and Sidell and their spouses. In the wake of the story being published, Studio Six had quietly faded away and it was time to express our grat.i.tude. Dave, the CIA officer I had handed the ten thousand dollars to in LA, had come down for the celebration with his wife as well. As we pulled into the parking lot at the Universal Studios Sheraton, we saw on the marquee the now familiar slogan THANKS, CANADA! and as we checked in we were given round metal Sheraton lapel b.u.t.tons emblazoned with the same expression. We each proudly pinned them to our lapels. Our "wrap" party, the Hollywood tradition celebrating the last day of filming, was being held secretly in the midst of the celebration of Canada's great rescue operation. A casual observer might have thought we were Canadians, from the way we were celebrating.

At the end of the evening I proposed one last toast. Standing at the end of the table and swaying only slightly, I raised my gla.s.s and uttered a word that few outside of our group would hear or understand. "Argo!"

On March 11, Stansfield Turner invited me to join him at the White House for his morning meeting with President Carter. I was told I had two and a half minutes with the president to tell him briefly the story of Argo and how we were able to pull it off. The only other person in the Oval Office was Zbigniew Brzezinski, the president's national security adviser. The president was on the phone when we entered the office, standing in his s.h.i.+rtsleeves poring over a memo. He was telling someone to change the word "hate" on the bottom of page two to "abhor." Cla.s.sic Jimmy Carter-all about the details. Turner introduced me to the president and he shook my hand, but looked perplexed as to who I might be or what I might have done. Turner attempted to clarify, but I was prompted to move through my story quickly while trying to keep the president on schedule. When it came time for the obligatory photo, the White House photographer came forward and snapped several frames. Admiral Turner immediately threw himself in front of the camera. "No, no," he said, "we can't show his face. He's undercover!" The president asked if it couldn't be just between the two of us. "Sure," I said. It would only take me seventeen years, but eventually I would be allowed to have the photo. Today it hangs in my library.

When I got back to Foggy Bottom, I went to Fred Graves's office and he immediately took me to see the director of OTS, Dave Brandwein. I tried to tell them about my meeting with President Carter, but they seemed uninterested. "Here," they said, "this is more important." They told me I had been promoted to GS15, the equivalent of a full-bird colonel in the U.S. Army.

After I walked out of South Building and went up to the third floor of Central Building to my office, I caught my secretary elbows deep in her safe drawer. "Guess what, Elaine?" I said. "I got promoted and I saw the president, but not in that order."

"Did you get my message?" she asked. "You're having dinner at the White House tonight. Call Jacques Dumas. You're supposed to be there at five o'clock."

I called Jacques on the green phone, the secure line between our offices and headquarters, to ask him what was going on. "Oh, yeah," he said, "I put that part about having dinner at the White House to be sure you'd call me back. Actually, you're going to meet with Hamilton Jordan, White House chief of staff, at five o'clock."

My instructions were to go to the West Wing and meet Jordan in his office. I found my way back to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue for the second time that day. I was ushered into Jordan's office by his secretary, Eleanor, who informed me that "Ham" would be there shortly. Eventually the door opened and a smiling face came bobbing into the room. Hamilton Jordan shook my hand and we settled into a couple of chairs in his sitting area while he proceeded to tell me what he needed. Jordan wanted a disguise, the best disguise that we could build in a short time. He then explained why. He'd arranged a secret back-channel meeting with Sadegh Ghotbzadeh in Paris to discuss the release of the hostages. However, the slightest hint that Ghotbzadeh was meeting with Jordan would throw the whole thing out the window.

The following day, Eleanor escorted me to the White House bas.e.m.e.nt barbershop. It was still light out when we went downstairs. The shop was closed but Eleanor let me in. I was surprised to see that it looked just like every barbershop I have ever been in: two chairs, two mirrors, two sinks. She pulled the shades on the garden-level windows and turned on the lights. When Jordan arrived, I sat him in one of the chairs and used a custom-made wig, mustache, and pair of gla.s.ses to completely alter his appearance. When I was finished, I had transformed him from a brightly polished American bureaucrat into what he came to call his "sleazy Latin American businessman" look. I took the description as high praise.

Jordan's meeting had been part of a scenario worked out by two men, Christian Bourguet and Hector Villalon, two adventurers with access to Iran's secular government. Bourguet was a French lawyer involved in radical causes while Villalon was a businessman from Argentina, whom Carter would later describe as having the reputation of a "South American riverboat gambler." Both were old friends of Ghotbzadeh's and claimed they could open a direct line between Iran's secular leaders.h.i.+p and the White House. It was always a long shot, but Carter was desperate. Up until this point, there had been no direct talks on any level between the White House and Iran. So Carter sent Jordan and Hal Saunders to meet with the two men in Paris, and over the course of a few weeks they were able to hash out a plan that was said to have the support of both Ghotbzadeh and Iran's newly elected president, Abulha.s.san Bani-Sadr. The convoluted idea would involve a multistep process that started with the creation of a five-person UN commission that would listen to Iran's grievances. Eventually this commission would take control of the hostages after they had been transferred to a hospital in Tehran. Many thought the plan was nothing but a distraction. Ghotbzadeh was a natural schemer who talked a good game, but who in the end had little clout when it came to the hostages. When Khomeini refused to give the UN commission permission to meet with the hostages, the whole thing fell apart.

No one was more frustrated by this than President Carter. By early April it appeared as if diplomacy had run its course. On April 7 he expelled all Iranian diplomats from the United States and enacted unilateral trade sanctions against Iran. Then, five days later, at a meeting of his National Security Council, he announced that he was ready to launch Operation Eagle Claw.

From the beginning, my office had some grave reservations about the viability of Eagle Claw. By the winter of 1980, RAPTOR had settled into his new life in the West and had aligned himself with the intelligence community. As an Iranian ex-colonel, RAPTOR had intimate knowledge of the country's topography, including the geography of the area that Colonel Beckwith's men called Desert One. The plan, which had evolved slightly, called for eight helicopters to fly into Desert One from an American aircraft carrier in the Arabian Sea. There, they would link up with six C130 aircraft. The C130s would bring in Beckwith and his team of Delta Force commandos and Army Rangers, as well as large packets of fuel for the helicopters. After being refueled, the helicopters would then ferry the soldiers on to Desert Two, the second site outside of Tehran. From there they would launch their a.s.sault on the U.S. emba.s.sy. With his local knowledge, RAPTOR could see right away that there was a problem. The site picked for Desert One was on a smugglers' route used only at night, and he believed that the U.S. military had a good chance of being discovered if they tried to use it as a staging area. Reportedly, he warned the planners and Beckwith about this but was rebuffed.

The history of Eagle Claw has now been written, and the world knows that the helicopters never made it to the U.S. emba.s.sy in Tehran. In fact, they never even made it to Desert Two. The problems began almost as soon as the mission got under way. When the C130s made it to Desert One, RAPTOR's prediction turned out to be true. Upon landing, Beckwith and his team immediately encountered several unknown vehicles racing through the area. Even worse, a firefight erupted. It turned out that one of the smugglers' trucks was carrying fuel, and when a soldier tried to knock it out with an ant.i.tank rocket the fireball lit up the desert sky for miles. It appeared as if one of the men in the truck had escaped and made it into a second truck, which then sped away. If that wasn't bad enough, as Beckwith was contemplating this new development, a large Mercedes bus carrying nearly forty Iranians swung into view, and the Army Rangers were forced to stop it at gunpoint. This put Beckwith on the horns of a major dilemma and forced him to divide his forces. So much for the element of surprise.

While this unfolded, the eight helicopters en route from the aircraft carrier were having their own problems. Two had mechanical failures and were forced to turn back, while a third made it to Desert One but became inoperable upon landing. Five helicopters weren't enough to complete the mission, and President Carter made the decision to abort. In the ensuing confusion, one of the helicopters collided with a C130 guns.h.i.+p full of fuel. Eight U.S. servicemen tragically lost their lives while several others were wounded. The remaining helicopters and C130s returned safely.

By almost any metric, the aftermath of the failed rescue was the lowest point for America during the 444-day Iranian hostage crisis. In his book Keeping Faith, Carter describes it as one of the worst days of his life.

A few days later, Cyrus Vance, who had been against Eagle Claw from the beginning, resigned as secretary of state.

In May of 1980, for our role in helping to rescue the six houseguests, Julio and I received the Intelligence Star, which was one of the CIA's highest honors. The medals and certificates were presented in the Agency's secure bubble, on a stage in front of a few hundred of our colleagues. Admiral Stansfield Turner did the honors. Since the operation had been a secret, my family was not allowed to attend the ceremony.

After a brief stay in Panama, the shah had moved on to Egypt, where he died on July 27. Strangely, this was more or less the exact scenario that Jerome and I had envisioned for our body double operation at the beginning of the crisis. With the shah now dead, Russian armies on the march in Afghanistan, and Iran tiring of the American embargo, Khomeini finally signaled his willingness to negotiate. The United States was also inadvertently helped in this matter by Iraq, which had invaded Iran in September of 1980. Needing American parts and ammunition for their weapons was just one more incentive to bring the Iranians to the table.

On January 21, 1981, the fifty-two remaining American hostages were finally released. Jimmy Carter flew to Germany to meet with them personally, but by this time the damage to his political career was irreversible. His failure to resolve the crisis caused him to be seen as a weak and ineffective leader, and Ronald Reagan had easily defeated him in the 1980 presidential election. Rubbing salt into the wound, the Iranians had chosen the date of Reagan's inauguration as the day they would hand over the hostages. In all, the hostages had spent almost fifteen months in captivity with the United States government unable to do anything to effect their release.

Obviously, diplomatic relations with the Iranian government ceased the day that the American emba.s.sy was overrun. But n.o.body could have predicted that more than thirty years later the United States and Iran would still have no formal contact. Iran, a country once considered our long-term friend and strategic ally, has now segued into a rogue state governed by Islamic fundamentalist zealots. During the hostage crisis, America was frustrated by its inability to negotiate with a regime that placed the ideals of theocratic bigotry before those of reason and the rule of international law. Unfortunately, not much has changed. Today, the United States and Iran are as far apart as they have ever been, while the population of Iran suffers under a corrupt and ineffective regime.