Tony Mendez, the CIA ‘Argo’ spy who smuggled US hostages out of Iran in daring mission, dies at 78
- Tony Mendez was the CIA’s chief of disguise when the US Embassy in Tehran was seized by a militant Iranian student group on November 4, 1979
A forgery artist and master of disguise for the CIA, Tony Mendez once transformed a black agent and an Asian diplomat into a pair of white business executives, using masks that gave them an uncanny resemblance to the movie stars Victor Mature and Rex Harrison.
On another occasion, he devised an oversize “jack-in-the-box” – a spring-loaded mannequin – that enabled a CIA source to sneak out of his car while a dummy popped up in his place.
Mendez, a 25-year veteran of the spy agency, was effectively in the business of geopolitical theatre. Pulling techniques from magicians, movie makeup artists and even the television show Mission: Impossible, he changed one person into another, transforming agents into characters with backstories, costumes and documents that helped them evade detection and avoid capture in foreign countries.
Appropriately for a man whose career seemed drawn from a Hollywood thriller, his greatest triumph hinged on a bogus sci-fi film, a sham production office in Los Angeles and a fake location-scouting expedition to Iran.
Disguising himself as an Irish filmmaker, Mendez successfully smuggled six State Department employees out of Tehran during the 1979-1981 Iran hostage crisis, passing them off as a Canadian movie crew in a daring mission that formed the basis of the Oscar-winning movie Argo (2012).
Mendez, who was portrayed by actor-director Ben Affleck in the film, was 78 when he died January 19 at an assisted-living centre in Frederick, Maryland.