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

The CIA memoir that inspired the forthcoming Ben Affleck film - a true spy adventure with a twist of 1970s Hollywood

The declassified CIA story that inspired the new film from Ben Affleck and George Clooney.

Tehran, November 1979. Militant students stormed the American embassy and held sixty Americans captive for a gruelling 444 days. But until now the CIA has never revealed the twist to the Iran Hostage Crisis- six Americans escaped.

The escape plot was run by Antonio Mendez, head of the CIA’s extraction team and a master of disguise. Mendez came up with an idea so daring and potentially foolish that it seemed destined for Hollywood… and indeed it was. He invented a fake sci-fi film called ‘Argo’ (from the actual name of the CIA mission, a reference to Jason and the Argonauts). After announcing the production to the movie industry, Mendez put together a team of real 1970s Hollywood actors, directors and producers - along with covert CIA officers. They would travel to revolutionary Iran under a foreign film visa, and while ‘scouting locations’ throughout the country they would track down the six Americans who were hiding out. After giving them false identities as part of the film crew, they would spirit them back across the border.

One part ‘Ocean’s 11’ and another part ‘Black Hawk Down’, Mendez’s mind-bogglingly complicated and risky gamble paid off- each escapee was extracted without a shot being fired. Mendez is considered one of the greatest officers in CIA history. The story of this, his greatest mission, has never been told.