Original subtitles

In the world of spies, A cover story and an alias must be watertight.

This requires more than just convincing paperwork.

It's how you look, what you say,

The way you act, And it means staying in character no matter what.

This is the remarkable story Of how one man used inspiration from hollywood

To school six frightened diplomats In the art of being someone else,

And score a victory for the cia, In one of the darkest moments for american foreign policy.

Iran was in the grip of an islamic revolution.

Led by the shia cleric ayatollah khomeini, Anti-american demonstrators had taken

To the streets in their thousands.

Amid the chaos cia officer, tony mendez, Entered tehran on a covert mission.

To rescue a group of six american diplomats From almost certain death.

Among the group

Were u.S. Embassy officials mark and cora lijek.

Four decades on, The lijeks lead quiet lives In a quiet corner of washington state.

But back in the summer of 1979, This young married couple were looking for adventure.

I had completed my four years in the army And went to work for the foreign service.

I was asked to volunteer to go to tehran.

I agreed to help reopen the tourist visa unit.

I actually was very excited about it.

My parents had lived there for four years, And I'd visited twice before.

Tehran was very cosmopolitan.

Most of the women I saw were dressed in western clothing,

So it seemed like it'd be a fun place to go.

But the lijeks touched down To an iran in turmoil.

Well, I arrived after a very long and arduous flight.

The airport was chaotic.

Things were unstable and people were not calm.

I was met by somebody from the embassy, So that kind of got me past the worst of it.

But then we got in the van, And I noticed that the driver Just drove through all the red lights.

Washington d.C. Had no idea What was actually happening in tehran.

In January 1979, U.S. Ally shah mohammed reza pahlavi

Had been ousted from power by the ayatollah khomeini.

The white house was now friendless in the region, And completely in the dark

About the actions of the new regime.

U.S. President jimmy carter and the cia Had been slow to react to the escalating crisis.

The cia station in tehran At the time was minuscule,

With just one person basically keeping the store open

Bill daugherty arrived at the american embassy

In tehran in the immediate aftermath of the shah's ousting.

He was fresh out of cia training And thrown in at the deep end.

It was my first overseas assignment.

I didn't know anything about the country.

I didn't speak the language.

I didn't know anything about their culture.

I knew nothing about islam.

Bill daugherty's mission was to buildup A cia station that was operating with a skeleton crew.

He faced an uphill struggle To cultivate potential agents and informants.

For an iranian to be seen with an american Was not particularly appropriate.

That individual could go back And be called a spy and could lose his job

Or even be arrested or worse Just for being with an american government official.

The real concern I had was not making a mistake

And getting caught.

There could have been enormous consequences For being caught doing espionage work.

The american embassy in tehran Was a maze of buildings in a vast walled

Compound in the heart of the city.

On the second floor of the main building Was the cia station.

I was in my office writing cables From what I'd done the night before.

The demonstration was outside, And it was larger than usual.

But I was ignoring it.

I was told by people who had been there,

"don't worry about the demonstrations.

"they happen all the time," and so I didn't.

That morning no one inside the american embassy

Noticed the demonstration outside was near boiling point.

Hundreds of students were heading Towards the embassy building.

These seemed to be young people.

We didn't see any weapons.

There was concern, But the embassy was supposed to be a fortress.

On the other side of the embassy compound, Mark and cora lijek were oblivious

To the imminent danger.

We both were working in the visa section.

Yeah, okay.

Our building was not near the front, So maybe we didn't hear some of it.

We couldn't see what was going on.

We were quite a distance away.

But by now the students had begun To scale the embassy main gate and walls.

To avoid a bloodbath, Washington ordered the u.S. Marines

Guarding the compound to hold their fire.

We had been told time and time again That the embassy was a secure facility.

Even if the iranians came over the wall And tried to attack the embassy,

It was virtually impregnable.

I think it took them about 30 minutes to break into it.

The chief of station then told me to destroy the documents

That were in the vault in my office.

By 10.30 a.M., As daugherty began to shred anything

That could expose the nature of his work for the cia, A group of angry students broke

Into the main embassy building.

They seized everyone they could find To be paraded before the baying mob.

The iranian hostage crisis had begun.

They came in and they started Blind folding and tying hands.

One of the first ones that they took away Was one of the marine security guards,

And I'll never forget the look on his face Because he didn't wanna surrender.

He wanted to fight.

Somebody claimed they smelt smoke, And that they were gonna burn the building down.

People started saying they heard footsteps on the roof.

The visa office was one of the few buildings In the compound with its own exit to the street.

It was kind of a decision point.

We should leave the building.

Everybody, come on let's go.

In all, 13 embassy workers made a break for it.

But, in the confusion they were forced to split up.

We were all supposed to go left.

Nobody was supposed to go right.

Those who turned right Fell into the hands of the iranian revolutionary guards.

We went the other way.

We went left.

We went toward the british, Which was what we were supposed to do.

The safety of the british embassy Was just over a mile away.

But the lijek's escape route Was blocked by angry demonstrators.

The situation was descending into chaos.

They were now attacking other embassies.

It was clear that this thing was getting pretty nasty.

Alone on the streets of a hostile city And with no specialist training,

The fugitive diplomats faced capture and even death.

Help would come from the most unlikely of sources.

In November 1979, In the wake of the fall of the u.S. Embassy in tehran,

53 americans had been taken hostage By islamic revolutionaries.

The ayatollah refused to negotiate with president carter,

And he ordered his men to interrogate All the american prisoners to root out cia spies.

Here was not an embassy.

It was a cia center.

This was a den of espionage Where they were plotting against the iranian people.

Cia officer bill daugherty Was now one of the hostages in the american embassy.

I was taken back to my office Still blind folded, still tied.

I could hear them breaking into safes All up and down the corridor, Basically looting the embassy.

There was a, not a student, But a professional interrogator.

Convinced of a cia plot to crush the revolution, The ayatollah had sent in his top interrogator

To break the will of the americans.

My strategy was what had been Thoroughly indoctrinated into me during my training.

I had a cover story to explain why I was in iran And what my job in the embassy was

As a political military affairs officer.

Most of it was true.

I didn't have to embellish it.

We would start after dinner, And we would go till sunrise, so 12, 13 hours,

And they worked very hard to break down my story.

On the streets of tehran, U.S. Consular officials mark and cora lijek,

And their fellow escapees from the embassy, Were in urgent need of sanctuary.

It's kinda frightening because we just worried Somebody would see us.

There weren't that many foreigners still in iran, And then I have dark hair.

I probably would've blended in a little better, But mark had kind of dirty blonde hair.

In desperation, the lijeks managed To make contact with america's Number two diplomat in the city,

The deputy chief of the american Mission in tehran, victor tomseth.

Tomseth had been across town At the iranian foreign ministry

When the u.S. Embassy had been overrun.

In those early days, The foreign ministry people were still helpful,

So he was allowed to use the phone, And, he, for whatever reason,

He kind of took responsibility for helping us.

Tomseth knew he would be monitored By iranian intelligence, So he decided to call the one person

With whom he could speak freely,

His friend, the embassy chef, sam sriweawnetr.

Victor, speak thai to me,

Because I think he cannot speak english Over there because all iranian could understand.

Tomseth had met sam when he'd worked in thailand, And had given sam a job cooking

For the embassy staff in tehran.

Now he asked him to risk his life To save the diplomats on the run.

Victor tomseth told me, "sam, I've got something new.

"I need your help.

"I need your help."

I said, "yes, anything, you tell me."

He said, "now, sam listen I got the americans.

"can you help them hide them someplace?"

I said, "yes, yes, I will do that."

I think its human to help.

That's what I think.

Some people need help you have to help them.

Under the cover of darkness, sam met the lijeks

And guided them to a safe house belonging to the embassy.

We ran into the house trying not to be seen.

They are scared.

I made the curtain close all the time.

A lot of our fears were Lessened because sam was there.

He was going to take care of us.

He could go out publicly.

He could buy food.

He could buy cigarettes whatever, So as long as we had sam, we had a chance.

Yet, all the time, The threat of capture was closing in.

We had the "tehran times".

They has pictures on the front page of the paper.

They were people in blindfolds.

It was immensely disturbing to me Because that could be us down the road.

I kept thinking, where's our president?

"what is our government doing?"

President carter's plan was to enforce Both economic and diplomatic pressure,

To force the ayatollah to release the american hostages.

It didn't work.

And inside the ransacked embassy The interrogations of american prisoners were intensifying.

He never got excited, never raised his voice.

The only reason I could tell That maybe he didn't quite like an answer

Or two that I might have given him was that He would sort of play with the revolver.

Of course, you can hear those cylinders go click, click.

I did not discount the possibility of an execution,

And I was certainly prepared psychologically, Mentally for that.

I thought about that every day.

Three days after The storming of the u.S. Embassy, Secreted in their safe house across town,

The lijeks began to realize there would be No swift solution to their ordeal.

It was clear that this thing was getting pretty nasty.

There was no government any longer for us to negotiate with Other than the ayatollah personally.

So clearly the situation was descending into chaos, And that made our predicament a lot worse.

It was pretty clear that our absence would be detected.

I mean it was impossible for it not to be detected.

It was only a matter of for how long.

By now iranian revolutionary guards Were examining embassy records

For evidence of u.S. Safe houses Where fugitive diplomats could be hiding.

Sam sriweawnetr sensed the mounting tension on the streets.

When I go shopping buy some food, A lot of thing I see are bad.

Sam actually got worried And thought somebody might be coming.

That I think really heightened our nervousness.

His fear you know was infectious.

I feel not safe for them and not safe for me either.

If they catch the five americans, they're gonna die.

If me, they catch me, I'm gonna be die.

We have to help them out, get out of here.

So the lijeks turn to the one western nation

Whose embassy was not in the ayatollah's crosshairs: Canada.

Zena sheradown's husband, Veteran diplomat john sheardown,

Was the canadian's chief immigration officer In tehran at the time.

He was the lijeks next port of call.

My husband said, "you are all welcome "to come and stay with us."

All you're thinking is, "are we gonna be able to "get them upstairs without being spotted by the

"revolutionary guards who are up and down the street?"

When we left I think sam took it almost as an insult,

Because we couldn't tell him where we were going For his protection as well as ours.

The lijeks made it out in the nick of time.

All the militants come two hours after that.

They come to my apartment, "where's the american, where's the american?"

With a gun pointed to me.

M16 points in my face.

Then I say, "no, I live here by myself.

"nobody here," I tell them that.

They keep looking around, but I clean up already.

After that, they left.

By now the ljieks and their fellow fugitives Had been smuggled from their embassy safe house

And driven to the sheardown's home.

The car I remember pulled into the garage, And then he rushed us inside the house.

We got some scotches and sodas Right away for everybody.

We all needed a stiff drink,

And we started to get to know each other.

The sherdowns figured they had The perfect cover to keep the americans diplomats safe.

I don't think they would suspect us.

Not the canadians they keep to themselves.

They wouldn't say boo to a goose.

They sent word back to ottawa, That the fugitive diplomats had arrived safely with them.

Gar pardy was cia liaison for the canadian foreign office.

The first reaction was, "god, we've got them, "and at least they're reasonably safe."

But then the realization that This could go on for some period of time.

It dawned on the canadian officials, The longer they hid their american colleagues,

The greater the chance of canada becoming embroiled In the wider conflict in the region.

The iranians themselves were probably starting To realize that there were some people

That were not accounted for in the 52, And they would be starting to sharpen

Their own investigation, if you like, Their own looking for the six.

And then what do you do at this point?

At the american embassy, Bill daugherty was under increasing pressure To give up key documents.

I got a lot of questions as to why I was in this office with this big vault.

The vault contained All the cia intelligence reports

Bill had been working on when the embassy had fallen, Names, dates, and places.

I kept telling them, "no, I can't open the vault."

Daugherty now believed the iranians Were unlikely to execute him until he'd opened the safe.

Frustrated by how long he had Withstood brutal interrogation,

The revolutionaries now upped the ante.

I wasn't necessarily under the belief That they would actually execute me right away.

But then they said, "well, we'll get the secretary "and bring her up here,"

And that's when there was decision time.

If he refused to open the safe now, The iranians made it clear they would execute his secretary.

Look there was nothing In that embassy worth dying for.

Not a thing.

I said, "okay, the combination's in my wallet."

I'd shredded all the documents.

I thought, "oh, I'm really in trouble now."

Undeterred, the revolutionaries Brought in teams of carpet

Weavers to piece together the fragments of paperwork.

It was only a matter of time before they'd work out That bill was cia.

But that wasn't the only information The iranians would get from the paperwork.

For the six u.S. Fugitives Hiding at the home of a canadian embassy official,

The tension was about to ratchet to breaking point.

By January 1980, The iranian hostage crisis had escalated.

The ayatollah's carpet weavers had reassembled Thousands of pages of shredded cia documents,

Exposing the identities of u.S. Agents And their informants in tehran.

At the canadian embassy, roger lucy observed How this stoked the hatred toward america.

The atmosphere in the city Was getting more and more tense As the students pieced together

More gems from the not-very-well Shredded paperwork at the american embassy.

More and more iranians were getting arrested

Because they'd been mentioned in some american's memo.

Of course, that was almost a death sentence For people who got mentioned in these dispatches.

Trapped in the home of a canadian embassy official,

Mark and cora lijek, and their fellow u.S. Embassy workers, Were feeling the pressure.

We couldn't go out Because we just worried somebody would see us.

People would ring the doorbell.

We'd have to lock ourselves in the den.

Anything unusual, even the phone ringing, It was just, "who's that calling?"

Even if you tried to be rational, You can't totally get it out of your head.

We thought somebody might be coming, And we were afraid they might be coming any minute.

All we would try to do is survive, Survive from one day to the next.

We were on the alert.

Every time I heard a car stop in front, Especially at night,

I would get up and look to see who was out there.

I hardly slept, Probably awake for most of the time.

Eventually it does take a toll.

Yeah, I think, I was a bag of nerves.

How would it end?

On the 71st day of the hostage crisis The united nations security council

Proposed crippling economic sanctions against iran.

But the soviet union saw an opportunity To further weaken american influence in the region,

And vetoed the motion.

With no diplomatic solution in sight, The situation was becoming More dangerous by the day.

I felt abandoned.

I thought that there had to be some options.

That the u.S. Government,

A super power, has been humiliated by the ayatollah.

In ottawa, the canadian government Was becoming increasingly nervous Of hiding u.S. Fugitives,

And being dragged into an american crisis.

Suddenly the canadian press were counting the numbers.

The fact that there were more americans Within the american embassy than the 52 accounted for.

And the journalists were putting all of this together, And that's when the realization

Was we needed to do something fairly quickly for the six.

If the canadian media had worked out There were some western diplomats unaccounted for,

It was only a matter of time Before the iranian revolutionaries did the same.

There was that realization, "god, what do we do here?"

That's when the cia were called in, And things started to get,

I guess you might say, considerably more professional

When it came to the noble art of exfiltration.

To get the american diplomats out, The cia would have to send a man in,

A man with a very special skillset.

When it came to who should the cia go to In the operation to help these six americans

Who were hiding out in tehran, "how can we get them out?

"who is the expert?"

It was tony.

Tony mendez was the cia's exfiltration expert.

His specialty:

Rescuing clandestine agents and political refugees.

Tony knew how to Get people in and out of tough spots.

He'd done this many times before.

He knew the dangers.

He knew what needed to be done.

Over the course of his 14 year career, Mendez became the cia's undisputed

Master of forgery and disguise.

One of the things that tony brought to his work Was this idea of looking outside

The traditional areas of expertise.

So, he wasn't looking at defense contractors and scientists.

He was going to hollywood.

He was working on the sets of movies Learning the techniques.

Mendez applied his hollywood skills To clandestine trade craft.

He turned to costume designers and graphic artists

To provide agents with perfect props and disguises.

It transformed the agency's capabilities.

That was the beginning of making people in the cia Understand that disguise wasn't

Just a bad wig and a fake mustache.

This was the ability to actually turn somebody Into a completely different person.

He took disguise to another level.

But smuggling six terrified american diplomats Out of tehran would be his toughest mission yet.

His first job was, "how can we get them out?

"who are they let's come up with a story "for why they're in tehran."

He knew that at some point these people Were gonna have to go through airport security,

Customs, border controls, And they had no clandestine training.

So he was saying, "we need to create a scenario that they will believe in,

"that will get them to buy into it, "and give them the confidence to escape."

And then he thought, "what about a hollywood location scouting party?"

Everybody knows a little bit of something about hollywood.

Tony mendez knew The more believable the cover story,

The easier it would be for the diplomats to stick to.

So, he set up a fake film production company.

Tony decided to name the company studio six productions.

The connection being the six americans who are hiding out.

Studio six needed a plausible film script, So he called an old hollywood contact,

Award-winning make-up artist john chambers.

At the time john had been given a script About a science fiction movie.

One of the locations was set in a bazaar In a middle easter country,

And tony thought, "you know, this could be perfect."

Mendez re-named the script "argo", And wrote articles for the hollywood trade press,

To give it the publicity of a genuine project.

Hollywood being a town of make believe, It wasn't long before they actually were sent scripts

From other producers and writers.

By mid-January 1980, Mendez's cover, studio six productions, was up and running.

If anyone checked, the company would appear legitimate.

Now tony mendez could enter iran using his alias, A location production scout

Looking for a middle eastern location For the hollywood blockbuster "argo".

It's actually a huge risk to him to go into tehran.

If he had been captured, He was convinced that he would be tortured and killed.

In tehran, mendez had no backup.

If his cover story was blown, there could be no rescue.

The ayatollah had tightened his grip on power, And there were few in iran the cia could trust.

Cia agents like bill daugherty Had been tortured to give up their contacts,

Who were then being systematically Rounded up and imprisoned or worse.

They named a woman that I had been seeing.

She was a senior administrator in the ministry of education.

There was nothing she could tell us That would harm their government, absolutely nothing,

And he said, "oh, we shot her."

He was so casual about it, And I was really pissed.

They took a plastic cord and tied my wrists together.

It literally cut off the blood flow to the hands,

And they waited, and the hands swelled up,

And the skin became very, very sensitive,

And then they laid them on the desk And hit it with a rubber hose.

It was a lot more painful than I would have imagined.

It was a kurd that did it.

That big beefy kurd,

And he took great pleasure in it.

And I wanna kill that son of a bitch to this day.

By the end of January 1980, Many washington politicos believed

The only way to resolve the hostage crisis Was to send in special forces.

What they didn't know Was that cia agent tony mendez Was already at the airport.

Tony's cover he's flying in As the location scouting manager.

He's in charge of this film production.

He's traveling under an alias.

Mendez knew as long as he could keep his cover,

Iranian security would have no reason to suspect he was cia.

What he didn't know was If the diplomats he was here to rescue,

Would be able to maintain their cover stories.

By this time, the lijeks and their fellow fugitives

Had been in hiding for 84 days, living on their nerves.

Tony needed to assess their state of mind.

This was incredibly important.

He was worried.

He didn't know if they would crack.

He didn't know if they'd already cracked.

The door opens, the americans are inside, And they're waiting for him.

Mendez had less than 36 hours To transform six diplomats Into a credible canadian film crew

And get them on a plane out of tehran.

I don't understand.

I was supposed to be the script writer for the movie.

I was the transportation coordinator.

We were given enough information to memorize That it would withstand cursory scrutiny,

But not so much that we'd be all paranoid About forgetting some detail.

And this is when he brings out All the things that he's been able to create

The script, the drawings, the business cards.

He'd brought a copy of the "hollywood reporter", With an ad for "argo".

He had people back in hollywood Who could be called if someone were going to check on us.

We had what he called, "pocket litter."

A key chain, other people's business cards That you'd met along the way.

Of course, the main thing we had was the canadian passports.

The canadian government Had supplied the american diplomats With genuine canadian passports.

Now the u.S. Diplomats had to become those people.

Tony lays out the plan, And he said, "okay, guys, you need to practice these roles.

"you need to learn these identities."

We weren't trained for that.

We weren't spies, and we didn't Have the benefit of that kind of experience.

But tony stressed that

All we had to do was follow instructions.

Most of the americans are on board Except for one, joe stafford.

The concern was, "we all need to be on the same page here.

"is joe on the same page?

Tehran was joe stafford's First foreign post with the u.S. State department.

Now, he was battling doubts as to whether He should play along with the cover story at all.

Joe stafford didn't wanna leave.

He felt we were abandoning the others,

And he made very little effort to really get into his role.

Mendez's extraction plan relied On everyone playing their parts convincingly.

And if the revolutionary guard Spotted a flaw in anyone's performance,

It was gonna be tony mendez in the firing line.

Tony goes in first.

There's a big thing that he has is trust your gut.

If he doesn't like it, they're gonna abort.

In the early morning, there were relatively Few revolutionary guards on duty at the airport.

He gives the signal.

Send in the six americans.

I was scared, you know, it was a scary thing.

But then there was tony, and he was smiling That meant everything was good, just proceed.

The six diplomats and tony joined The queue for passport control at tehran airport.

Crew member of studio six productions Heading home from a location scouting trip.

I was worried somebody might recognize us.

When you arrive at post, you have to submit A bunch of photographs to the foreign ministry.

Who knows where those photographs were.

They could be on the wall at the airport, And so that was a little bit concerning.

Butt, there's no help for it.

You just have to hope for the best.

The canadian passports were genuine.

But the rest of their documents were a problem.

Mendez had expertly forged the diplomats' exit visas.

The trouble was they were supposed to match A counterfoil entry visa at passport control,

A counterfoil that didn't exist.

The fellow was supposed to take The yellow visa paper out of our passports

And check for the matching copy in the files.

The guy took the papers,

But he didn't check anything.

Thank you.

One by one the american fugitives Cleared passport security.

Then in the departure lounge, They heard an announcement.

Their 7:30 a.M. Flight had been delayed

So at that point I'm freaking out.

The longer we're there the better the chance Of something going wrong.

The plane had a mechanical problem.

But that wasn't the only issue.

The revolutionary guards tony was hoping Weren't gonna be there are now making the rounds.

They're harassing people.

The americans begin to worry About whether or not this cover story is gonna hold up,

And tony becomes a little concerned That one them might crack.

By now, the tension Was taking its toll on joe stafford,

And he had stopped playing his part altogether.

Joe made no effort.

He was reading a farsi newspaper Before tony took it away from him.

He kept calling cora by her real name.

We were definitely worried That joe might give us away.

It was clear that joe was feeling Guilty about leaving.

He didn't want to leave tehran While these other americans were being held hostage.

If stafford blew their cover, The consequences for the group were dire.

But for a cia officer, they were likely to be fatal.

Everybody is nervous.

The mood is anxious.

Tony is looking at the scenario Through the lens of problems, solutions.

They just have to wait, And they just have to keep their cool.

Tony he inspired a lot of confidence.

He said, "just stay calm.

"we'll just hang here," so I was able to calm down.

After 30 minutes they announced That the plane was ready to be boarded.

Every step was another step closer.

At 8:30 a.M., on January 28, 1980, The lijek's plane finally left tehran for zurich.

85 days after they'd fled their besieged embassy, And accompanied by the cia master of disguise

Who'd orchestrated their escape, The american diplomats were at last on their way home.

We figured we finally were safe when they announced We were out of iranian airspace.

At that point we ordered some bloody mary's And toasted each other.

It was over.

Though it was over for the six, It wasn't yet over for the 52 american hostages

Still held at the u.S. Embassy.

A few months later, on April 24, 1980, A desperate president jimmy carter

Launched a military rescue attempt.

It ended in disaster in the desert.

Eight american servicemen were killed.

Several more were injured.

Bill daugherty and 51 of his fellow americans

Would remain in captivity in iran until January 20, 1981, A total of 444 days.

It was difficult knowing they were still there.

That was really difficult.

At the time, any involvement by the cia In the lijek's escape was kept secret,

To avoid reprisals against the remaining hostages.

One of the unique things about tony And the individuals like him who work in the cia,

Is they know that they will never get credit.

But full credit was given to the canadians For their heroic role in the escape.

Canadians invested a lot of effort In keeping us safe all those months.

It was a pretty big risk keeping us there.

Zena she was our protector From the outside world, The barrier between us and them.

I don't regret any of it.

What would we have felt like if they were caught?

I don't think I would have been able To live with that myself.

Only when cia files were declassified 17 years later could the truth be revealed.

How one man devised a plot Straight out of a hollywood movie,

To stage one of the boldest recuse missions In the agency's history.