Tony Mendez: the master of the CIA disguise whose breakaway in Iran inspired Ben Affleck's Argo

A falsification artist and disguise master for the CIA, Tony Mendez has already turned a black agent and an Asian diplomat into a pair of white corporate executives, using masks that give them a strange resemblance to movie stars. Victor Mature and Rex Harrison. On another occasion, he imagined an oversized jack-in-the-box – a spring dummy – that allowed a CIA source to sneak out of his car while a mannequin popped up in his place.

During his 25 years at the CIA, Mendez, who died at the age of 78, was actually working in the field of geopolitical theater. Shoot the techniques of magicians, movie makeup artists and even the TV show Impossible missionHe turned one person into another, turning agents into characters with stories, costumes, and documents that helped them escape detection and avoid being captured in foreign lands.

For a man whose career seemed drawn from a Hollywood thriller, his greatest triumph was based on a sci-fi sci-fi film, a fake production office in Los Angeles and a fake tracking expedition to Iran. Depicting himself as an Irish filmmaker, Mendez managed to smuggle six State Department employees during the hostage crisis between 1979 and 1981 by portraying them as a Canadian film crew on a mission. daring that served as the basis for the award-winning film. Argo in 2012.

Mendez, who leaves behind his wife and CIA member, Jonna Mendez, was described by Ben Affleck, who also directed the film.

A painter of impressionist landscapes and outdoor scenes, Mendez worked as a draftsman when he was recruited by the CIA in 1965 and ran an art studio after retirement. "I've always considered myself an artist first and foremost," he said one day, referring to his career, "and for 25 years I've been a very good spy."

After stays in Laos, India and the Soviet Union, he was the CIA disguise leader when the US Embbady in Tehran was seized by a group of Iranian student activists on November 4, 1979. The attack took place several months after the Islamic revolution had The country's leader, the Western-backed Shah, replaced it with the hard cleric Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

Sixty-six Americans, including six CIA officers, were taken hostage, while six other American diplomats managed to evade capture and took refuge in the homes of two Canadians, Ambbadador Ken Taylor and Ambbadador John Sheardown.

Over the next 444 days, the hostage crisis attracted uninterrupted coverage of the press, crippled Jimmy Carter's presidency, and resulted in the death of eight members of the armed forces during a failed rescue mission. the Iranian desert. Mendez completed his rescue operation on 28 January 1980, but it took another year for the last 52 hostages to be released on the day Ronald Reagan was inaugurated in 1981.

The idea of ​​"Canadian corsair", as the mission of Mendez called it, was born of despair. Specialist of "exfiltration", the art of dissuading people from getting hurt, Mendez first worked on a plan to free the American hostages by exchanging them for a double of the corpse of the Shah , treated for cancer in the United States. States.

This plan was stopped by the White House, according to a 2007 report wired Joshuah Bearman, a journalist, and when Mendez was promoted to head of the agency's Authentication Branch in December 1979, his efforts focused on rescuing the six Canadian "house guests," as American diplomats euphemistically called it. Their very existence has been hidden from the public in order to protect it from the Iranians.

A Canadian minister suggested that diplomats head to the Turkish border, possibly on a bicycle, but only a departure in the air seemed viable. Mendez just needed to settle on a story that would allow the escapees to board an airplane. Teacher-centered programs, crop inspectors and petroleum technicians all seemed flawed. Mendez therefore decided to "reverse the rules and create a distraction".

"A blanket must be soft, as uninteresting as possible, so that the casual observer, or the not-so-casual agent of immigration, does not explore too much," he said. he writes in a 1999 memoir, Master of disguise. His solution, the movie gambit, was the opposite of bland – an idea so daring, he thought, that Iran would never consider that it could be a "big deal". a false.

Mendez called his friend John Chambers, a makeup artist who had won an honorary Oscar for his work on Planet of the Apes (1968), gave Dr. Spock his sharp ears and helped the CIA in its ancient missions. With another makeup artist, Bob Sidell, who later worked on ANDThey opened a production office in Los Angeles; created business cards for their fictional company, Studio Six Productions; and developed stories and career stories for the six escapees.

Mendez and Chambers named their science fiction film project Argo, For the sizzling punchline to a toc-toc joke and sneaky wink at the mythological ship that Jason was using to retrieve the gold fleece. Ads in Variety and the Hollywood Reporter promoted the film as a "cosmic conflagration".

With a Canadian pbadport, Mendez traveled to Tehran on January 25, under the name of Kevin Costa Harkins. (He chose an Irish identity, he said later, because the Irish are "non-threatening" and "ubiquitous in the world.") Backed by a second CIA agent, Julio, he spent some days preparing the six diplomats, teaching them new identities – including as a cameraman and scenographer – and preparing them for potential interrogations at the airport.

Before dawn on January 28, they traveled to Tehran Mehrabad International Airport for an early flight from Swissair to Zurich. After being delayed for one hour due to a mechanical problem, the flight took off and freed up Iranian airspace, allowing Mendez to celebrate by ordering a Bloody Mary and toasting: " We are at home for free. "

Diplomats returned to the Heroes' Reception in the United States, where Canadian flags were flown in front of town halls and billboards that read "Thank you, Canada" appeared across the country. Mendez met Carter in the Oval Office and received the Intelligence Star, one of the CIA's highest honors. But his role and that of the CIA in the rescue operation were concealed until 1997, when Mendez was honored as one of the 50 "pioneers" who shaped the agency's first 50 years.

Mendez was born in Eureka, Nevada, in 1940, into a mixed heritage family (Italian, Mexican, Welsh) to whom he later helped to help him blend into the world. He was three years old when his father died as a result of an accident in a copper mine. his mother worked several jobs.

The family had little money, and Tony helped by digging bat guungs in caves, loading them onto a toy car and selling them to his Mormon neighbors as fertilizer, at a cost of $ 1 (0 £ 70) per bag. He sometimes dated his secret operations experience from an incident in which he presented himself as a girl to be able to access a school dance reserved for couples.

Mendez graduated from high school in Denver and, unable to cover tuition, left the University of Colorado after a year. He was an illustrator at Martin Marietta, drawing parts for an intercontinental ballistic missile, when he saw an advertisement for help in a newspaper called "Artists at Work Abroad – Civilians of the US Navy". Consumed by the desire to travel, he went to interview and was handed a CIA recruitment guide.

Mendez retired in 1990 with a rank equivalent to that of a two-star general. The master of disguise, his memoirs, served, with Bearman's article in wired, as a source material for ArgoWho won the Oscar for Best Picture in 2013. (This took some liberties with the facts, said Mendez, including adding a chase scene and writing two of her children.)

Mendez's first wife, Karen, died of lung cancer in 1986. In 1991, he married Jonna Hiestand, a clandestine photography expert, who was also head of the CIA disguise. He is survived by his sons, sisters, grandchildren and his son and daughter from his first marriage.

Mendez often said that makeup was one of the easiest aspects of developing a disguise. Behavioral tics must be adjusted, credible stories must be invented.

"There are occasions when you are about to put your name on the hotel's big book," he said. The Washington Post in 2000. "Reservations have been made for you [an] alias. You just flew 10 hours. There is this moment where you put the pen and you say to yourself, "Oh, my God, how am I calling?"

"Once in the underworld like this, all alone," he added, "is like going into another dimension. It's like being a time traveler. How are you coming back?

Antonio Joseph Mendez, born on November 15, 1940, died on January 19, 2019

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