Jarhead

A review by Sean Mathews
Staff Writer for the Daily O'Collegian

“Jarhead” stars Jake Gyllenhaal as Marine Private Anthony Swofford and is based on events taken from his book of the same name. “Jarhead” is a memoir of his experiences in the Marines during Operation Desert Shield and Desert Storm. The film also stars Peter Sarsgaard as his sniper partner private Troy, and Jamie Foxx as Staff Sgt. Sykes. Gyllenhaal gives an emotionally charged performance as Swofford, one of his best to date. Jamie Foxx, however, was the standout of the movie. Coming off the success of “Ray” and “Collateral,” Foxx proves once again that he is adept at performing in dramas.

“Jarhead” is directed by Sam Mendes of “American Beauty” fame. He presents “Jarhead” with a natural palette of colors and the landscapes portray the bleakness of middle eastern deserts. “Jarhead” is a visual movie, as much as can be for taking place in a desert.

The movie delivers an accurate look at the life inside the military. However, if you are looking for a movie comparable to “Black Hawk Down,” you will walk away disappointed. “Jarhead” focuses on the psychological side of the military and builds upon the mental state of the characters that are in Swofford’s squad. Wives leave husbands, girlfriends leave boyfriends, and the members of Swofford’s squad are stuck in the desert standing still in time while the United States moves on. Much of the movie revolves around how Swofford and his comrades handle and react to these facts of their lives.

The movie begins with Swofford at marine boot camp. Viewers who are war-movie buffs will instantly be reminded of “Full Metal Jacket.” This detracts from the movie, but the scenes are necessary as they represent the beginning of Swofford’s career and sets the movie’s tone.

The movie is full of anti-climaxes. This is not bad though. Swofford is a marine sniper, but Operation Desert Storm is fast-moving and the purpose of Swofford’s squad is outdated. This leads to moments of anticipation, desperation and ultimately letdown for Swofford and company. Audiences will be left waiting for something that just isn’t going to happen.

The plot of “Jarhead” leaves something to be desired. As it is based on memoirs, it seems that the most interesting events of the book have been plucked out and then squeezed into the movie. This does not always work and some scenes seem forced or out of place. As a result, the audience might be scratching their heads a lot or asking, “Why?”

The light-hearted tone of “Jarhead” makes up for the plot shortcomings and will leave audiences laughing for much of the movie. “Jarhead” is as much a comedy as it is a drama, and viewers will gain a realistic look at how soldiers use their time to relieve stress and boredom. These antics make for the most interesting moments of the movie.

Overall, “Jarhead” is probably one of the better war movies in the way of humanizing the soldiers within. Its lack of action is true to the book but might leave some viewers upset. The acting in “Jarhead” holds the movie together but the lack of a solid flowing plot hurts the movie. In the end, viewers are given a funny, thought-provoking film that builds up to an ending that doesn’t quite fulfill their thirst.

“Jarhead” is rated R for sexual content, language and violence.

Hollywood's dirty little secret

02/20/05 "The Age" - - It's the scripts that pay a high price when Hollywood goes into battle. Brian Courtis looks at one of the movie world’s murkier truths.

Well, we've known the rules. We've known them since Errol Flynn liberated Burma without any help from British, Australian or New Zealand forces. Churchill and a few Diggers may have been upset, but the fact is when it comes to Hollywood only the good guys win and, since we're playing with their toys, those good guys must inevitably be Americans. Never let the absurdities of history get in the way of a box-office blockbuster.

They really do not want to discuss this, of course, in Tinseltown. They still see only their heroes and our villains. And they continue to win everything alone. Remember Steven Spielberg's D-Day spectacular Saving Private Ryan? Someone simply forgot that 72,000 British and Canadian troops were also involved. And if Hollywood is to be believed, it was the Americans who captured the Enigma coding machine from a German submarine; never mind that the Brits were there and accomplished that six months before the Yanks entered the war.

Not everything has been quite so eagerly promoted. We hear less, for instance, about the effects of the powerful relationship that has grown over the years between the Pentagon and the Hollywood studios, a partnership that not only can save millions of dollars for filmmakers and produce fine recruiting propaganda for Washington, but can twist history and reality to produce the ultimate in international spin.

In Operation Hollywood, filmmaker Emilio Pacull follows up an investigative study by film industry journalist Dave Robb on the help producers have sought from the military over the years. Robb, who worked for Variety and The Hollywood Reporter, says he found himself obsessed with the minutiae of these negotiations with the boys with ships, tanks, materiel, information, bases, access to land, troops and some very real-looking fireworks.

His report, a page-by-page study of scripts submitted by the studios to the Pentagon, reveals an intriguing pattern of censorship and propaganda. For Hollywood, acceptance of this system means the difference between "full co-operation" and no co-operation. For the military, it involves maintaining an idealised image of the forces, their behaviour, their view of the world, the superiority of their form of patriotism, and for that matter, their reasons for going to war.

So why, they would argue, should the Pentagon spend its money on pacifism or promoting the darker side of the soldier's world? Why reward a Platoon when The Green Berets is what you're after?

Among those with an opinion in Operation Hollywood are Australian director Phil Noyce, Phil Strub from the US Department of Defence, historian Lawrence Suid and Joe Trento, author and president of the anti-war Public Education Centre. This, they all agree, is a world where lines, plots and nationalities are changed so that film producers can gain access to expensive military hardware.

In the 1995 James Bond movie Goldeneye, for example, the original script had a US Navy admiral betraying state secrets. This was changed to make the traitor a member of the French navy. After that the military's co-operation was forthcoming. Pacull and Robb takes us from the pedantry to the powerful in examining the changes to scripts. They list the producers and the movies that have fallen into line and show how the military's script editors work. Interestingly, it's not the censors who come under fire here quite so much as those co-operative, self-censoring filmmakers.

Still, as Robb says, in what has become ostensibly his campaign against this system, the long-term effect on generations of young Americans is an unknown. “How many of those killed in Iraq died because they joined up after they saw what was presented in a film?” How many have died as the result of unknown recruiting propaganda?

All a producer needs do for assistance, it seems, is submit five copies of his script to the Pentagon for approval, make whatever script changes the Pentagon suggests, film the script exactly as approved by the Pentagon and preview the finished product for Pentagon officials before it's shown to its broader audience. And, according to Robb, as he puts the boot firmly into Jerry Bruckheimer, Tom Goldberg (Stripes), John Woo and other producers and directors, many do this gladly. It is, he insists, Hollywood's dirtiest little secret.

Not that the big screen is alone. Among the early changes we hear about is a scene from an episode of the children's television series Lassie in which a light aircraft crashing in the woods concerned the Pentagon. A change to the script was called for. The military didn't want children, the subject of its future recruitment drives, to get the idea that the US Army produced faulty equipment.

Not surprisingly, Washington will back what it sees as the positive message every time. There is enthusiasm for such gung-ho films as The Longest Day, Top Gun or, believe it or not, Pearl Harbor. There is no point talking to them about Apocalypse Now, Platoon or Dr Strangelove. As for films about the wounded and traumatised victims of war, concentration camp horror, or civilian casualties ... well, that has nothing to do with them, does it? Use your imagination, however, and make a heroic star of yet another four-star general and you will be marching step-in-step with America's medal-winning movie buffs. And be rewarded for it.

There are other ways to win the day. It would be interesting, for example, to see how the Pentagon would react to the sentimental reflections on wartime that British television so enjoys. In the escapism of Foyle's War, for example, the message is one of sacrifice and understanding. Michael Kitchen's wise old police chief, Foyle, uses wisdom, patience and tolerance in an idyllic Sussex setting against petty crimes and sabotage. This, rather than some one-sided battlefield slaughter, shows us the old values we're fighting for.

Soldiers and civilians are generally given positive treatment; blimpish landowners, politicians and generals get short shrift. This week, in They Fought In The Fields, the sweet and splendid Sam (Honeysuckle Weeks) is on the farm with a troubled gang of land girls, while her boss is out sorting spies from prisoners of war. There are few fireworks, few toys from the boys, but a gal's still gotta do what a gal's gotta do.

Operation Hollywood, broadcast on Australia's, SBS 02/23/05 

Copyright © 2005. The Age Company Ltd.

 Harrison Ford may lead charge in Falluja movie

CNN.com

December 18, 2004

LOS ANGELES, California (Reuters) -- Producers at Universal Pictures are developing what would be Hollywood's first feature film about the war in Iraq, with actor Harrison Ford ready to portray a U.S. general in the movie, the studio said on Friday.

The combat drama would be based on the upcoming book "No True Glory," an account of the battle for Falluja by Bing West, a Marine veteran and former U.S. assistant defense secretary now covering the war as a foreign correspondent, a studio spokesman said.

A Universal-based production company, Double Features, recently optioned movie rights to the book, which will be adapted by West and his son, Owen, a veteran Marine rifleman. The book is due out in May from Bantam, a unit of the Random House publishing company.

Although Ford, 62, is "attached" to the project -- Hollywood parlance for a loose commitment to star in the film if it gets made -- he is not under contract, the studio said. And Universal has only given the go-ahead for development of a screenplay. No money has been earmarked for production yet.

Ford's best known roles include the swaggering "Star Wars" space hero Han Solo and the rugged adventurer Indiana Jones in the "Raiders of the Lost Ark" series.

In "No True Glory" he would play Maj. Gen. James Mattis, the U.S. Marine commander ordered to lead an assault on the Iraqi city of Falluja, an insurgent stronghold west of Baghdad, after four Americans contractors were killed and mutilated there by a mob in March 2004.

The offensive was halted the following month, and the Marines were withdrawn until U.S. forces renewed their assault on the Sunni Muslim city following the American presidential election in November.

While Ford would play a lead role in the film, the movie is envisioned as a broader look at the conflict in Falluja as a study of the connections between war and politics as seen through the eyes of the troops, their commanders and civilian leaders, Universal's spokesman said.

The Michael Moore documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11," which focused on U.S. conduct of the war in Iraq, was a major box office success, but "True Glory" would mark the first feature drama about the war.

Meanwhile, several Iraq war projects are being developed for TV, including a pilot series from "NYPD Blue" co-creator Steven Bochco titled "Over There" for the FX cable channel.

Movie dramas about U.S. military conflicts in progress have been unusual since World War Two, with big studios tending to shy away from subject matter perceived as controversial until years after the fact.

Such was the case with such memorable Vietnam War movies as "The Deer Hunter," "Apocalypse Now" and "Platoon."

"The Green Berets, starring John Wayne," was released at the height of the conflict in Indochina in 1968.

Robert Altman's "MASH," which came out two years later, was set in the Korean War but was widely seen as a commentary on Vietnam.

CIA enlists Hollywood for real-life action-adventure

Ex-Hollywood makeup artist recalls covert operation in Iran
By RICHARD LAKE
REVIEW-JOURNAL

November 2004

It was a Saturday morning 25 years ago, and Bob Sidell was between jobs. He had wrapped up a stint as the makeup artist on "The Waltons" and had yet to begin working on the blockbuster "E.T."

Then a strange thing happened. The CIA came looking for help.

When Iranian revolutionaries took dozens of people hostage at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran on Nov. 4, 1979, six State Department employees escaped. They took refuge in the Canadian Embassy, and they needed a way out.

Sidell, a Hollywood makeup artist with such projects as "Laugh-In" and "M*A*S*H" under his belt already, was on the short list of people to call for help.

"Are you busy?" the man on the phone asked Sidell, who was relaxing in his Southern California home.

And that is how a round-faced man who might look like Santa Claus if his beard were a little whiter got involved in one of the most unusual covert rescue missions in U.S. history.

"I am part of history," said Sidell, reflecting last week as he sat in the Las Vegas office of his makeup company, the California Cosmetics Corp. "It's a big-time thing."

Sidell, 67, who now lives in Summerlin, is not the only person with local ties involved in the once-secret rescue mission. The CIA man who led it, Antonio J. Mendez, was originally from Nevada.

Mendez, whom the CIA named one of its top 50 agents in history, was born in Eureka in 1940. He was the son of a miner and recounted stories of being raised poor in his 1999 book, "The Master of Disguise: My Secret Life in the CIA."

When the hostage crisis began, Mendez had recently been named to head the disguise, false documentation and counterterror division of the agency.

The 53 hostages were eventually released, 444 days after they were taken, but no one ever knew of the six State Department employees who secretly left through the back door. The CIA let Canada get the credit for the rescue until 1997, when details were released on the CIA's 50th anniversary.

Mendez and his colleagues cooked up a cover story they would use to get themselves in and to get the six hostages out: They would pose as movie producers scouting a location in Tehran.

"I said, `Let's do something outrageous,' " he said in a recent telephone interview from Maryland, where he now lives.

In his book, Mendez wrote: "Why not devise a cover so exotic that no one would ever imagine a sensible spy using it?"

For that, they needed experts.

He contacted John Chambers, the Academy Award-winning makeup artist who had worked on the first "Planet of the Apes" movie. Chambers had consulted the CIA before, according to Mendez.

But, in this case, Chambers needed help. He turned to his old "Planet of the Apes" colleague, Sidell.

"Are you busy?" he asked that Saturday morning when he called Sidell at home.

"Next thing you know," said Mendez, "I'm in Hollywood talking with Bob Sidell."

Sidell, who happened into the makeup business after serving in the Korean War in the U.S. Navy, said he was stunned when he heard what Mendez was proposing.

"When I got my chin up off the floor, I said `What can I do to help,' " recalled Sidell, who left Hollywood and moved part of the operation of his cosmetics business to Las Vegas about 10 years ago.

Sidell went about setting up a phony movie production company, Studio Six Production, named after the six escapees. He and his wife rented office space in Hollywood, ran advertisements in trade magazines for a phony science fiction movie, "Argo," and even took scripts in for movies they would never make.

They concocted elaborate "histories" for the six hostages in case they were questioned on their way out of the country. One would be a director, another a script writer, and so on.

Working with Canadian authorities, Mendez and another CIA agent traveled to Tehran in January 1980 to brief the six escapees on the plan.

It worked perfectly. The forged passports raised no eyebrows at the airport, and the "movie crew" safely landed in Zurich, and later, in the United States.

No one was allowed to know about it. Sidell said he didn't even tell his children until a few years ago.

Mendez got the six hostages out of Iran safely using the movie cover story. Sidell said he met four of them two years ago at the opening of a spy museum in Washington, D.C.

"It took that opening before it really hit me how important what we did was," he said. "I realized that if I die tomorrow, this is still here. ... I really have accomplished a legacy."

A documentary on the rescue mission is set to air this week on Canada's History Channel. The U.S. version is scheduled to air later this fall.

Find this article at:
http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2004/Nov-01-Mon-2004/news/25136066.html 

Face of the Military Changes Thanks to Hollywood Makeup Artist

With the varied role of US Special Forces, Hollywood makeup artist Bobbie Weiner has changed the camouflage makeup pallet. She takes her experience as makeup artist on "Titanic" and creates camo for Marines, Navy Forces and US Army.

For More Information:           
For Immediate Release
Brian Feldman, (954) 828-9755

2004.09.09

Hollywood F/X Makeup Artist Changes the Face of the Military
Camouflage Face Paint Now In Use With More Realistic Coloring

“Bloody Mary” Takes “Titanic” Makeup to the Battlefield

Hollywood F/X makeup artist Bobbie Weiner has changed the face of the military.

Under contract with the Department of Defense, Weiner is providing Special Forces troops with an improved camouflage face paint that has a broader color pallet that can be used to realistically blend with terrains and tactical situations.

Weiner is the special effects makeup consultant for the newly released “Behind Enemy Lines.” She also supplied the movie with the camouflage face paint, death makeup and her signature F/X frostbitten look that she developed for the mega hit movie “Titanic.”

Weiner, through her company Bobbie Weiner Enterprises, LLC, has been supplying the military with her brand of makeup for nearly five years. She has been cited by the Department of Defense with a gold medal for quality performance.

The waterproof, four-color compact contains olive green, black, mud brown and gray colors. An artic version of the kit is also available. The makeup is easily applied with the fingers, will not stain clothing and although it is ideal for use in fresh and salt water, it is easily removed with soap and water. Some camouflages now in use by the military require a solvent to be used to remove the camouflage. Bobbie Weiner camouflage is FDA approved and non-toxic. The waterproof compact has its own unbreakable mirror in the lid.

“For years the military has seen camouflage makeup as incidental, but as military tactics have evolved to more diversified landscapes and tactical situations, with the result for the need to use a broader color pallet to successfully blend in.,” said Weiner.


The camouflage is popular with hunters and outdoorsmen as well because it’s odorless, and long lasting

In addition to the obvious advantages of concealment, camouflage makeup gives soldiers a psychological boost because it makes them look fierce, preparing them for battle in the same way native people used war paint, said Barbara Ehrenreich, author of “Blood Rites: Origins of Hunting and the Passions of War,” in a recent edition of the “National Post.”

“Hollywood wants the real deal to realistically depict battlefield conditions, but our troops know what it takes to be stealthy as possible to survive--and they want the best to give them an edge in their life and death work,” said Weiner.

Weiner was responsible for making-up Titanic’s icicle-coved, blue-lipped actors floating in the water. She started her makeup business after a Titanic extra asked her to borrow some of her face paint so he could make himself up for a pro football game. She began to package and market her face paint to college and pro teams after the completion of filming of the movie.

“I was in San Diego and saw Marines and Navy Seals running around with camouflage face makeup, but it was lifeless and I thought I could do better,” she said. “When I asked them about the camouflage they complained that it caused rashes and was hard apply since it required heat and was difficult to remove. That’s when I knew I had the right product for them.” She said.

She’s known throughout Hollywood as “Bloody Mary” for her special effects makeup genius. In addition to Titanic she was the makeup artist for the TV show “Renegade,” and “Pumpkin Head II.” She is sought as a makeup consultant in film and TV commercials, including World Championship Wrestling and Home Box Office, and ESPN.

Hollywood to Give U.S. War Games "Razzmatazz"

Stefan Lovgren
for National Geographic News
May 2, 2003

A routine food distribution deep in the mountains of a foreign land suddenly goes awry when a local warlord shows up, demanding to take over security from the U.S. soldiers carrying out the operation.

As the aid convoy pulls into the camp, a stampede erupts. When a hungry refugee attempts to steal food off a truck, a militiaman kills him with a single gunshot. Now Capt. Young, the inexperienced U.S. commander in charge, must make a decision before the situation spins further out of control.

No, we're not in Afghanistan. This action unfolds on a movie screen in an inconspicuous office building in West Los Angeles. The film is called Power Hungry, and it's one of several virtual reality projects being developed for the US military by the Institute for Creative Technologies.

Seeking lifelike training scenarios, the U.S. military has turned to Hollywood. Above, the cast members of the virtual war-gaming film Power Hungry, developed by the Institute for Creative Technologies.

A training exercise follows the 15-minute movie in which game participants can ask questions of Capt. Young and the other characters by typing them into a computer. Advanced word recognition software allows the characters to respond to questions like, "What was your understanding of the mission?" A digital character, meanwhile, guides the review process.

Administered by the University of Southern California, ICT launched in 1999 with a five-year, U.S. $45 million grant from the United States Army. Its mission: To bring some Hollywood razzmatazz to Army war games and training exercises.

It's all part of the US military's mission to transform itself from the bloated behemoth of the Cold War era to a flexible fighting force suited to the kind of asymmetric warfare the Army has faced in, say, Afghanistan and Iraq.

"The Army wanted the entertainment industry to add creativity to their world," said Dick Lindheim, a former television producer and now the executive director of ICT. "They wanted the Hollywood magic."

Emotional Connection

A few years ago, the U.S. Army invited Lindheim, then in charge of the digital entertainment division at the Paramount Television Group, to design a war simulation exercise. In Lindheim's scenario, participants were asked to advise the National Security Council in a crisis situation involving a brutal drug lord taking over Mexico.

While some participants were given interactive media to use, others were given only pen and paper. "The ones with pen and paper soon got bored," said Lindheim. "Those with computers didn't want to leave the classroom."

The Army hired Lindheim to run ICT.

The institute is housed in an office laid out by Herman Zimmerman, a Star Trek production designer, and it employs an army of "techies" whose job it is to construct training scenarios that will deliver a visceral wallop.

The greatest challenge is to give the games a kind of realism that doesn't exist in the Army's own training. The focus is on story and character, something the Army never paid much attention to. Each soldier and each enemy in the game must have his own personality and character development.

"If you can make an emotional connection with your learning, the learning sticks," said Lindheim.

Artificial Intelligence

ICT has designed several computer games. In one, "Full Spectrum Warrior," players assume the role of a squad leader in a dangerous urban warfare situation. But it doesn't work like a regular video game. There is no "shoot" button, for example; players can only give orders. They also must obey the laws of physics and the rules of engagement.

In addition to using sophisticated modeling and graphics, many of the games incorporate artificial intelligence. The goal is to have a virtual human that can be easily reconfigured to play new roles in virtual worlds and carry on dialogue with human users.

In ICT's virtual reality theater, viewers find themselves driving an Army truck down a Bosnian country road. They soon arrive at a city square where a collision between a US Army vehicle and a civilian car has left a Bosnian child seriously injured.

Assuming the role of the commander, the trainee must now make difficult leadership decisions: Soothe the angry crowd that is forming around the child or move on to stem a military confrontation somewhere up the road?

Wearing a special helmet, the trainee can talk to the virtual characters onscreen, who are able to logically respond to almost any command in either synthetic voices or using recorded voice chips.

"The artificial intelligence component is critical because it varies the degree of difficulty depending on how the trainee is doing," said Randall Hill, deputy director of technology for ICT. "The game adjusts to the player."

The Army will retain all U.S. Government rights to any technologies developed by ICT. But the entertainment industry can also tap into new ICT technology and may, for example, be able to use virtual sets and more realistic actors that could obviate the need for live actors doing dangerous stunts.

Learning From Hollywood

In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, the Army even drew on its pool of Hollywood experts to come up with possible terrorism scenarios to help with training and preparedness.

The Army and Hollywood approach problem solving differently. Soldiers are taught to gather information needed to solve a problem and then devise a single solution. It's a very structured, careful and academic approach.

The Hollywood way, on the other hand, emphasizes people, character and story. "The question becomes, Where do we want to end up?" said Lindheim. "Let's back up and figure out how to get there."

Some Army officials argue that Hollywood's more creative approach to problem solving makes for better leadership training. "We can't always develop procedures ahead of time because sometimes there are many solutions to a problem," said Stanley Halpin, at the Army Research Institute at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. "We must learn to rely on men and women to make decisions as they go along."

A week into the Iraq war, the commander of the American ground forces, Lt. Gen. William Wallace, caused a stir when he told journalists that "the enemy we're fighting is different from the one we had war-gamed against."

In the future, thousands of troops worldwide may be able to participate together in live simulations devised by ICT. "When we first started this collaboration, the Army and the entertainment industry were highly suspicious of each other," said Lindheim. "That's now behind us."

Hollywood goes to war

By Peter Huck
September 16 2002

In a nondescript building on a quiet street near the Pacific Ocean last October, 30 screenwriters, directors and producers, drawn from the movie world's A-list, were called to a summit.

They were charged with a high moral purpose; to help combat terrorism during one of the worst crises in US history.

Meeting after their studio day jobs, the group talked into the small hours. Its brief was to devise plausible ways in which terrorists might launch new attacks against the US, a prospect that, in the paranoid aftermath of September 11, seemed chillingly possible.

The meetings took place at the Institute for Creative Technology, affiliated with the University of Southern California. Set up in 1999 with a $US50 million ($A92 million) budget provided by the US Army, it seeks to create advanced training simulators that will help the army shift from a Cold War mentality into a more flexible force, able to respond within 96 hours to complex missions - from civil wars to natural disasters.

But last September, war was on the nation's doorstep and, caught unawares, Washington was desperate for fresh ideas. Where better to look than the dream factory that has made billions from cinematic stories about fiendish villains, from Dr No on, intent on enslaving the world?

"After the attacks the army's top scientist, Dr Mike Andrews, who created the ICT, came to us and asked us to suggest what terrorists might do in the future," says Richard Lindheim, a former TV executive with NBC and Paramount who is the institute's executive director. Lindheim assembled a team, many of whom had won Academy Awards, responsible for the most popular action films and video games of the past decade.

Unusually for Hollywood, where everyone wants a credit, the participants chose to remain anonymous. Equally odd, they didn't want to be paid. Indeed, many of the group were thrilled because this was the first time they had been able to collaborate with their industry competitors. They continue to meet occasionally. They also agreed that their ideas would remain secret.

"Our worst nightmare was that we would suggest scenarios to terrorists," said Mr Lindheim. "There's been too much history of people copycatting ideas from TV and movies." Eventually, about 16 scenarios were dispatched to Washington.

Their value is uncertain. Lindheim says the Pentagon believes that some would be acted on, but it is clear that a beautiful friendship has emerged.

The Pentagon's tilt towards Hollywood after September 11 had been foreshadowed by a mutually beneficial relationship between movies and the military stretching back to the silent era, when 60 planes and 3500 men were loaned for the World War I epic Wings.

Since then, every major US conflict has been re-fought by Hollywood and, with the exception of a temporary frost provoked by anti-Vietnam war movies such as Apocalypse Now, Platoon, and The Deer Hunter , it has enjoyed a cosy relationship with the top brass. Moviemakers gain access to expensive weaponry for such Boys' Own fodder as Top Gun, Pearl Harbor and Black Hawk Down, while the military (which has film liaison offices in Los Angeles) basks in an heroic glow that buffs its image and boosts recruitment.

In one sense this love-fest continues. Last northern autumn the White House summoned studio executives to Washington to help raise America's morale. A flag-waving, three-minute montage of movie clips, The Spirit of America, duly emerged in local cinemas.

But on another level, Hollywood's cooperation with the military echoes World War II, when actors and directors donned uniforms. The Army Air Corps' first motion-picture unit made training and propaganda films, using actors including Ronald Reagan for voiceovers, and directors such as John Huston, John Ford, Frank Capra and William Wyler.

What intrigues Washington is Hollywood's ability to think outside the box. Military and scientific planners tend to be linear thinkers, identifying a goal and then working towards a solution. But Hollywood often works backwards, identifying a scene - say, how to follow the trajectory of a bomb from a Japanese plane into the deck of a US battleship in Pearl Harbor - and then working out how to make it happen.

The hunt is on to recruit hi-tech boffins. Last July, a virtual-reality expert at Disney's imagineering group quit to join the National Security Agency, the secretive spy agency.

"Under ordinary circumstances I would never have dreamed of leaving Disney," he told the Los Angeles Times, "but these aren't ordinary circumstances."

At the Institute for Creative Technology's futuristic offices (all faux metal surfaces, curved blonde-wood walls, and Starship Enterprise ambience, created by Star Trek designer Herman Zimmerman), 45 staff work with consultants, such as the designer Ron Cobb of Star Wars creatures fame and screenwriter John Milius, who wrote Apocalypse Now.

"It's a stimulating environment," said Lindheim. "In entertainment we get a lot of money to play in the sandbox and make mud pies. But you know it's a movie or a video game. Here we're doing something that can save lives. The biggest challenge is to be real. This isn't Spiderman. We can't use artistic license."

Using tools such as a virtual-reality theatre with a 150-degree screen, a monster SGI computer, and a 10.2 Dolby sound system, the institute seeks to create interactive games that reflect conceivable, 21st-century military challenges. It is at the forefront of work on artificial intelligence, and expects to create a virtual human, able to talk, express emotions and display body language, within five years.

In Full Spectrum Command, a war game run on a laptop computer, soldiers will interact with virtual characters in situations based on real events and tweaked by screenwriters to add emotional verisimilitude. A prototype is expected this month and a workable model by year's end.

Interest from military types, including those in Australia, is keen.

No doubt interest is also keen in the commercial game world. The institute controls all non-military use of its ideas, a potentially lucrative market that ranges from entertainment to medicine, education and law enforcement. . September 11 may have changed many things, but in Hollywood the bottom line is eternal.

-Peter Huck is a Los Angeles-based journalist.

This story was found at: http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/09/14/1031608342634.html

Military Experts Help Hollywood Get It Right

Thursday, May 30, 2002

By Marla Lehner

NEW YORK — Tom Clancy's The Sum of All Fears has been criticized as being too realistic — but realism is exactly what the filmmakers wanted.

In fact, moviemakers who create spy and military films rely on a host of government experts to ensure that everything from sets and uniforms to planes, protocol and plot are as realistic as possible.

"Paramount sent us the [Sum of All Fears] script and asked us to comment on the degree of realism," said Chase Brandon, the CIA's film liaison. "It certainly took some poetic license … But overall the script was a good read."

Brandon, who spent 25 years as a special operations officer in the CIA, worked with the film's director, Phil Alden Robinson, to hone the details of the script.

"Phil especially wanted to make this as realistic as he could while still having this based on a fiction piece," Brandon said, "I was struck by how realistic the premise was."

In answer to the question of whether audiences are ready to see such an authentic look at terrorism, Morgan Freeman, who co-stars in the film answered: "Yeah. This is a big country. We are courageous and we are not easily frightened, and this is just a blankety-blank movie."

And Ben Affleck, who plays CIA analyst Jack Ryan, told Fox News: "If you feel deeply affected or so traumatized that you don't necessarily want to see anything that has anything to do with terrorism ... I certainly would understand that."

However he added, "By the same token I'm really proud of the movie ... I think it's not just about terrorism but about recovering from disaster."

While the CIA opened up parts of its headquarters to set designers and actors, Brandon emphasized that government secrets aren't revealed to outsiders — no matter how famous they are.

"Ben sat at the desks that are occupied by the real Jack and Jill Ryan," said Brandon. "But he's not thumbing through desk drawers and looking through people's rolodexes."

The practice of calling on the government for expert advice started during the silent film era. The Department of Defense first aided filmmakers on the 1927 World War I drama Wings, according to Department of Defense film liaison Phillip Strub.

And the tradition continued from there. Films such as Black Hawk Down, Air Force One, The Right Stuff, and Behind Enemy Lines have all gotten cooperation from the appropriate branches of the military.

But even with all the expert advice, movies clearly stretch the truth for dramatic effect.

"Sometimes even in pictures we work on, the details are inaccurate, but it's a movie, it's fiction. We don't expect it to be totally accurate," said Strub. "If we were in charge, [the films would] probably be totally boring and no one would go see them."

As an example of a "wildly unrealistic" film moment Strub cites the Steven Seagal, Kurt Russell flick Executive Decision. In one scene a special forces team secretly boards a commercial airliner that has been taken over by terrorists.

"That whole notion of the aircraft through which they inserted a special forces team is totally unrealistic," Strub said. "It looks like a Stealth Fighter, which is unrealistic. But we thought, 'We'll accept that as artistic freedom as long as what they do once they get on the plane was realistic.'"

As for members of the military, they try not to be bothered by inaccuracies on the big screen.

"It's often a source of amusement and head-shaking," said Frederic Peterson, a former lieutenant colonel in the Marines. "It distracts from the credibility but not necessarily from the entertainment value.

"People who have been in the military notice the most minute details that would pass by the general public."

Among those details Peterson cites are a "smattering of ribbons" on uniforms that don't make sense, belt buckles swapped between branches of the military and silly haircuts.

"Some of these actors have the need to preserve their own Hollywood demeanor," he said. "Particularly Tom Cruise. He can't get a proper [military] haircut."

The degree of help the government gives filmmakers depends on several factors including the availability of personnel and equipment, according to Strub.

Sum of All Fears is mostly a CIA picture, but the Department of Defense helped out in a few key scenes, said Strub. "The Marines provided some helicopters for filming," he said. "And the Air Force allowed air-to-air filming of one of our airborne operations centers."

But while the military seems to go out of its way to help certain Hollywood films get it right, the CIA's Brandon emphasized that the government still has its own priorities in line.

"We're not here to make movies," he said. "We're here to keep the country safe so people can make movies, to guard the country's freedoms."

Hollywood, military meet at tech crossroads

By Marsha Walton
CNN Sci-Tech
2001.12.25

(CNN) --When people envision Hollywood, words like creative, flashy and cutting-edge likely come to mind. But when people think of the military, the reaction is probably the exact opposite: precise, controlled and traditional.

Yet when it comes to technology, these two worlds often merge.

Some of the same high-powered graphic techniques that bring dinosaurs to life in movies such as "Jurassic Park," or create the stunning waves in "The Perfect Storm" are adapted by the U.S. Department of Defense to train pilots and provide virtual reality training to Special Forces.

"The military and entertainment are the two customers that push Silicon Graphics the most. Each one of them are the ones that are never satisfied with 'good enough,'" said Greg Estes, vice president of marketing for SGI (Silicon Graphics).

Artists and computer experts have been pushing the envelope for more than 20 years for these seemingly strange bedfellows.

"Our first customer was NASA, our second customer was the Walt Disney Company," Estes said.

Estes said a lot of the flight-simulator technology now used to train military pilots was driven by early requirements from the entertainment industry.

Graphics help convey information

That training, plus aerial surveillance and weather forecasting, were among the displays at a recent forum on graphic technology and the digital battlefield, hosted by SGI in Washington, DC.

"You can absorb a lot more information in a graphic sense than you can in text, so visualization is important in all of this," said Arthur Money, former assistant secretary of Defense for Command and Control Communications. Money is now on the board of directors of SGI.

Money says putting markers on a wall map was about as high-tech as things got early in his military career.

Now, he says, "The information is collected from anywhere in the world, processed in another place, disseminated seamlessly so everybody has the same picture. So that to me is a revolution."

Some pilots who have trained on these high-tech simulators say the visualization of terrain and vegetation helped them out in the cockpit.

"I have war fighters coming back from a mission and basically saying, 'It's as if I had been there before,'" said Robert Mace of Anteon Corp.

"It is best to fight on familiar terrain, and we provide that in a three-dimensional format, so they can truly rehearse their mission before anybody is shooting at them," said Mace, a retired naval flight officer.

Anteon, a systems engineering company, works with the National Imagery and Mapping Agency to translate raw data into usable form for the Department of Defense.

Time crunch

While Hollywood has the luxury of time to tweak and adjust its imaginary twisters and triceratops, military strategists may have just hours or even minutes to make decisions.

That quick processing of information can be crucial for military weather forecasters. A correct forecast can be a crucial component in a battle, or in making a decision to fly or not to fly.

While meteorologists have used supercomputers for years to develop their forecasts, SGI says its technology helps translate the information into a form that pilots, navigators, or ground troops can almost immediately understand.

"Rather than just seeing reams of data and scrolling text, what you can do with our technology is take it and create a visual representation that is much more understandable, and more rapidly, for human perception," said John Burwell, director of government industries for SGI.

Companies such as Alias/Wavefront that specialize in 3-D graphics for films, videos and interactive games are using those technologies to develop war games for the U.S. Army, the U. S. Navy, and the CIA. Programmers can combine photos and 2-D satellite images to create "walk-throughs" or "fly throughs" to preview a mission.

SGI's Greg Estes says the military and entertainment industry's symbiotic relationship keeps them both on the leading edge.

"The same super computers that are being used by the military to model weather, for instance, were used by Industrial Light & Magic to make the waves for "The Perfect Storm" and for "Pearl Harbor," he said.

Hollywood think-tank creating terror scenarios for Army

ROBERT JABLON, Associated Press Writer
Wednesday, October 10, 2001

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Some of the filmmakers who craft tales of violence and terrorism for Hollywood are helping the U.S. Army prepare for deadly reality.

A group of entertainment professionals has been hired to work up scenarios for possible future terrorist attacks.

The group was assembled through the Institute for Creative Technologies, a University of Southern California think tank that works on virtual training programs for the Army.

"In the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, the Army and USC's ICT have worked together to coordinate ongoing panel discussions with some of Hollywood's top talent," the center said in a statement Tuesday.

The group will brainstorm possible terrorist plots against American targets.

The Army declined to provide specifics about the work or to name members of the group. The trade paper Daily Variety said it included Steven E. De Souza, who co-wrote the 1988 hit "Die Hard," a movie about a Los Angeles office building commandeered by terrorists.

De Souza, through the Writers Guild of America, declined to answer questions.

The military has a long history of working with filmmakers, said Michael Macedonia, chief scientist for the Army's Simulation, Training and Instrumentation Command, based in Orlando, Fla.

"You're talking screenwriters and producers, that's one of the things that they're paid to do every day -- speculate," he said in a telephone interview.

"These are very brilliant, creative people. They can come up with fascinating insights very quickly."

And, he added, "They are some of the biggest patriots I've met."

The Army doesn't know if the terrorism scenarios will prove useful, because it normally takes "several months to over a year" for such projects to be completed, Macedonia said.

Some of those involved worked on earlier Army projects, he added.

The Institute for Creative Technologies was founded in 1999 with a $45 million Army grant. The research and development operation creates virtual reality and simulation technologies for training troops.

"Part of this program involves creating scenarios that soldiers might face in combat," USC said in a statement. "Terrorism is obviously something that Army personnel must confront."


URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2001/10/10/state1936EDT0121.DTL
©2004 Associated Press

CIA Goes Hollywood

A Classic Case of Deception

Antonio J. Mendez

Background: Exfiltration and the CIA

When briefing the CIA's Directorate of Operations (DO) or other components of the Intelligence Community (IC) about the Office of Technical Services' (OTS) exfiltration capability, I always made a point to remind them that "readiness" is the key. This is one of the full-time concerns of my former OTS office, the Graphics and Authentication Division (GAD).

In arranging for the escape of refugees and other people of potential intelligence value who are subject to political persecution and hostile pursuit, prior planning is not always possible because they show up at odd hours in out-of-the-way places. Current surveys and collection of up-to-date intelligence regarding travel controls and procedures are vital. OTS engages in this activity worldwide.

The readiness to move clandestine agents out of harm's way using quasi-legal methods is equally important. CIA's policy and practice are to bring its valuable human assets in from the cold when they can no longer remain in place. Sometimes this includes their families. Public Law 110 gives the IC the authority to resettle these people in the United States as US persons when the time comes and the quota allows.

OTS/GAD and its successor components have serviced these kinds of operations since OSS days. The "authentication" of operations officers and their agents by providing them with personal documentation and disguise, cover legends and supporting data, "pocket litter," and so forth is fundamental deception tradecraft in clandestine operations. Personal documentation and disguise specialists, graphic artists, and other graphics specialists spend hundreds of hours preparing the materials, tailoring the cover legends, and coordinating the plan.

Infiltrating and exfiltrating people into and out of hostile areas are the most perilous applications of this tradecraft. The mental attitude and demeanor of the subject is as important as the technical accuracy of the tradecraft items. Sometimes, technical operations officers actually lead the escapees through the checkpoints to ensure that their confidence does not falter at the crucial moment.

Operation in Iran: Going Public

The operational involvement of GAD officers in the exfiltration from Iran of six US State Department personnel on 28 January 1980 was a closely held secret until the CIA decided to reveal it as part of the Agency's 50th anniversary celebrations in 1997.

David Martin, the CBS News correspondent covering national security issues in Washington, DC, had the story early on, as did Mike Ruane of The Philadelphia Inquirer. The Canadian Broadcasting Company and Reader's Digest both have done serious pieces since the CIA opened the files on this important success story.

Jean Pelletier's book, Canadian Caper, published in 1980, mentions that Canada--whose diplomats in Tehran had hidden and cared for the six American "houseguests" after Iranian militants seized the US Embassy--had received CIA help in the form of forged entries in Canadian passports to enable Canadian Ambassador to Iran Kenneth Taylor to engineer the escape of the six from Iran. A brief passage in Hamilton Jordan's book, Crisis, alludes to CIA officers on the scene in Tehran. After he left office, former President Carter, in statements to the media, gave hints of even more credit due his administration for the only true operational success of the hostage crisis.

My recollections of the long national emergency--which began on 4 Nov-ember 1979 with the US Embassy takeover and ended with the release of the 52 hostages 1 on Inauguration Day in January 1981--encompass several major plans and operational actions focused on Iran that were supported by OTS. These included intelligence-gathering, deception options, the hostage rescue effort, secret negotiations with the Iranian Govern-ment; and exfiltrations of agents and the "Canadian six."

In those days, the atmosphere in CIA was one of full alert. OTS, like many Agency components, was buzzing with intense activity. There are numerous stories about technical and operational innovations resulting from the emergency-like environment; the rescue of the six is one of many such stories.

New Job, New Challenge

On 11 December 1979, about a month after the takeover of our Embassy in Tehran, I moved from my job as Chief, OTS, Disguise Section, to Chief, OTS, Authentication Branch. I had operational responsibility worldwide for disguise, false documentation, and forensic monitoring of questioned documents for counterterrorism or counterintelligence purposes.

I had already spent the first days of the crisis creating a deception operation designed to defuse the crisis. President Carter decided not to use this plan, however. He has since lamented that decision.

The requirement for dealing with the six State Department employees hiding under the care of the Canadian Embassy in Iran was one of many challenges I had to address on my first day on the new job. I immediately formed a small team to work on this problem.

The complexities were evident. We needed to find a way to rescue six Americans with no intelligence background, and we would have to coordinate a sensitive plan of action with another US Government department and with senior policymakers in the US and Canadian administrations. The stakes were high. A failed exfiltration operation would receive immediate worldwide attention and would seriously embarrass the US, its President, and the CIA. It would probably make life even more difficult for all American hostages in Iran. The Canadians also had a lot to lose; the safety of their people in Iran and security of their Embassy there would be at risk.

But we had maintained a very impressive record of success with operations of this type over many years.

Collecting Basic Data

We had recently moved one agent out of Iran through Tehran's Mehrabad Airport. As a result of this operation, we had a body of technical data on the airport controls and the competence and efficiency of the people operating them. The task of collecting and analyzing current document intelligence thus would be a matter of verifying fairly recent information and ensuring that it was up to date, rather than having to start from scratch.

We also were continuing to support the infiltration and exfiltration of a few intelligence officers and agents who were traveling in and out of Iran on intelligence-gathering and hostage-rescue planning operations. We could use these people as collection sources.

Major Potential Obstacles

We were most concerned about the exit controls at the airport. Long before the revolution, Iranian authorities had adopted a two-sheet embarkation/disembarkation form. This form was printed on carbonless paper and filled out by the traveler upon entry. The authorities retained a white sheet, and the traveler retained a yellow copy to present at the exit control point when departing. The clerk was supposed to match the two forms to verify that the traveler left before his visa expired. Many countries in the world have similar systems; few complete the verification process on the spot, if ever.

We hoped to determine whether the militants operating at Mehrabad were completing this kind of positive check before travelers cleared the airport. Earlier in 1979, the control personnel were unprofessional and did not collect the forms unless the departing traveler volunteered them. We had to determine whether this was still the case.

Another significant challenge we faced was to come up with a cover story and supporting documentation for a group of North American men and women. We debated three interconnected issues related to this aspect of our planning: the type and nationality of passports we should use, the kind of cover, and whether we should move the six out in a group or individually.

CIA management had strong opinions on these points, as did the State Department. And the Canadian Government would have to be drawn into the discussions at some point. Once it was, it too would also tend to take strong positions.

The Passport Question

The debate over passports began with the question of whether to use ordinary US passports, Canadian passports, or other foreign passports at our disposal. CIA managers were not comfortable with the idea of using foreign passports. They were concerned that persons who were not intelligence professionals could well prove unable to sustain a foreign cover story.

The Iranians, moreover, had embarrassed the US by finding a pair of OTS-produced foreign passports in the US Embassy that had been issued to two CIA officers posted in Tehran. One of these officers was among the hostages being held in the Embassy. The discovery of the passports was the topic of extensive media coverage in Iran and other countries.

Regarding Canadian passports, we initially doubted that Canada would be prepared to overlook its own passport laws. We also did not think Ottawa would be willing to put Canadian citizens and facilities in Iran in the increased danger they would face if the true purpose and American use of the passports were exposed.

Given these drawbacks and obstacles to the Canadian and other foreign passport options, it seemed that OTS would have to take on the task of building a cover for the use of US passports. But we feared that such an exercise would call unwanted attention to the six subjects and put them at greater risk.

On balance, our experience and judgment ultimately favored using Canadian passports, despite the risks. We decided to push for this option, but to concentrate first on devising cover for the six before making final recommendations on the type of passport to be used.

Quest for Information

We began an all-source quest for information on the types of groups traveling in and out of Mehrabad Airport. In the meantime, the DO's Near East (NE) Division was developing information on overland "black" exfiltration options, hoping to identify a smuggler's route or a "rat line" into Turkey. Texas billionaire H. Ross Perot had used such a plan to exfiltrate two of his employees early in the Iranian revolution. He had already offered support to the Agency for hostage rescue efforts.

We soon developed information which indicated that groups traveling legally to Iran included oilfield technicians from European-based companies, news teams of all nationalities covering the hostage situation, and all sorts of curiosity seekers and do-gooders from around the world. Many of these people were US citizens. None fit our purposes, given the profiles and patterns of these groups and the careful scrutiny and control applied to them by the Iranian security and immigration services. We believed it was important that professional intelligence officers make the final probe into Iran and meet personally with the six in order to assess their state of mind and their ability to carry out the operation.

Talks with the Canadians

We requested a meeting with senior NE managers to present our position and to review the options. We were also aware that the senior NE officer in charge of rescuing the six and conducting liaison with the Canadians on the crisis had already visited Ottawa, where his talks with officials in a Canadian government ministry had included the topic of Canadian passports. Our meeting with NE Division officers went fairly well, and they agreed in principle with our position.

Because the Canadians were understandably concerned with the mechanics of the exfiltration and how their passports would be used, we suggested that OTS get approval to go to Ottawa to explain these details. An OTS documents specialist, "Joe Missouri," and I arranged to depart for Ottawa immediately. We prepared passport photos and appropriate alias bio data for the six, which we would take with us to Ottawa in the hope that we could win the Canadians over. We had already directed many questions to Canadian Ambassador Taylor, and his replies had given us a good feeling about his penchant for clandestine planning.

In our discussions with Canadian officials, we learned that the Parliament in Ottawa had already approved the use of Canadian passports for non-citizens for humanitarian purposes. We immediately requested six spares for the six houseguests to give us a redundant capability for the operation. We also asked for two additional passports for use by CIA "escorts." The Canadians agreed to the spares, but they declined to give us two additional passports because Parliament had not approved the exception to their passport law to cover professional intelligence officers.

We had an opportunity while meeting with our Canadian ministry contact, "Lon DeGaldo," to display a bit of magic. He thought one of the proposed aliases had a slightly Semitic sound--not a good idea in a Muslim country. We quickly picked another name, and I forged a signature in the appropriate handwriting on the margin of a fresh set of passport photos. This trick was mostly showmanship, but it helped to establish our credentials as experts.

Next, we discussed cover legends. We explained the different points of view on group cover versus individual cover, the need to gather more information on travelers, and our intention to send an officer or officers into Tehran to do a final probe of the controls and to meet with the six houseguests.

This gave me an opportunity to try out an idea for a cover legend that had occurred to me the night before at home in Maryland while I was packing. Cover legends hold up best when their details closely follow the actual experience or background of the user. If possible, the cover should be sufficiently dull so that it does not pique undue interest. In this case, however, I believed we should try to devise a cover so exotic that no one would imagine it was being used for operational purposes.

Hollywood Consultation

In my former job as chief of the OTS Disguise Section, I had engaged the services of many consultants in the entertainment industry. Our makeup consultant, "Jerome Calloway,'' was a technical makeup expert who had received many awards. (He recently was awarded CIA's Intelligence Medal of Merit, one of the few non-staffers to be so honored.) His motivation for helping us was purely patriotic.

We had already involved Jerome in the hostage crisis. One week after the takeover, I had invited him to Washington to help prepare a deception option related to the crisis. He, the disguise team, and I had worked around the clock to complete this option in five days.

When we received orders to stand down on that undertaking, Jerome returned to California. Before leaving, he reaffirmed his desire to help in any way possible in the rescue of our diplomats. As soon as I checked into my hotel in Ottawa, I called Jerome at his home. He had no idea what I was working on. I simply said that I was in Ottawa and that I needed to know how many people would be in an advance party scouting a site for a film production.

Jerome replied that this would require about eight people, including a production manager, a cameraman, an art director, a transportation manager, a script consultant, an associate producer, a business manager, and a director. Their purpose would be to look at a shooting site from artistic, logistic, and financial points of view.

The associate producer represented the financial backers. The business manager concerned himself mainly with banking arrangements; even a 10-day shoot could require millions of dollars spent on the local economy. The transportation manager rented a variety of vehicles, ranging from limousines to transport the stars to heavy equipment required for constructing a set. The production manager made it all come together. The other team members were technicians who created the film footage from the words in the script.

Because movie-making is widely known as an unusual business, most people would not be surprised that a Hollywood production company would travel around the world looking for the right street or hillside to shoot a particular scene.

Cover Options

Recommending this kind of cover for most clandestine activities would be out of the question, but I sensed that it might be just right for this operation. I tried the idea on Lon, our ministry contact, and he was intrigued with it. Certainly it was not incompatible with the Canadian passport option. Film companies are typically made up of an international cast of characters. The Canadian motion picture industry was well established.

We discussed the motion-picture cover option as well as another idea or two. Lon too had thought about the problem of cover; he had an idea for a group of food economists who might be seen traveling to various places in the Third World. The State Department had already given us a suggestion about a group of unemployed school teachers looking for jobs in international schools around the world. We felt obliged to mention this idea, even though we were not too excited about it.

We adjourned our meeting and made arrangements for follow-up talks. We then sent a cable to CIA Headquarters outlining our accomplishments, including our discussions on cover options. This was the first time that we reported the movie idea.

Over the next week (it was now late December), I commuted between Ottawa and Washington. An OTS team began forming in Ottawa to prepare the documentation and disguise items for a Canadian pouch to Tehran. The GAD team at OTS continued to collect information on Iranian border controls. All worldwide messages on the subject were being sent and answered with the Flash indicator, CIA's highest precedence.

Senior CIA managers did not summarily reject the Hollywood option, recognizing that it could have advantages even beyond the problem of rescuing the six. The thinking was as follows:

The idea of using paramilitary means to rescue the hostages held at the US Embassy had seemed impossible, given Tehran's geographical location. The movie cover might enable us to approach the Iranian Ministry of National Guidance with a proposal to shoot a movie sequence in or near Tehran. The Ministry had been charged with countering negative publicity on Iran by promoting tourism. Tehran was also looking for ways to alleviate some of the cash-flow problems caused when the United States froze Iran's assets in the US. A motion picture production on Iranian soil could be an economic shot in the arm and would provide an ideal public relations tool to help counteract the adverse publicity stemming from the hostage situation.

A relative "moderate"--Abulhassan Bani-Sadr--was about to be elected President of Iran, and we judged it possible that he could be sold on these economic points and then might be able to gain agreement from the radical factions of the regime. If so, the cover for infiltrating the Delta Force (in preparation for a hostage rescue attempt at the Embassy) as a team of movie set construction workers and camera crews to prepare the set was a natural. We imagined that it might be possible to conceal weapons and other material in the motion picture equipment.

Forming a Film Company

One weekend in early January, between trips to Ottawa and planning sessions with NE Division, I made a quick visit to California. I brought along $10,000 in cash, the first of several black-bag deliveries of funds to set up our motion picture company. I arrived on Friday night and met with Jerome and one of his associates in a suite of production offices they had reserved for our purposes on the old Columbia Studio lot in Hollywood. I had invited a CIA contracts officer to the meeting to act as witness to the cash delivery and to follow up as bagman and auditor for the run of the operation. It would take two years to clear all accounts on these matters.

Our production company, "Studio Six Productions," was created in four days, including a weekend, in mid-January. Our offices had previously been occupied by Michael Douglas, who had just completed producing The China Syndrome.

Jerome and his associate were masters at working the Hollywood system. They had begun applying "grease" and calling in favors even before I arrived. Simple things such as the installation of telephones were supposed to take weeks, but we had everything we needed down to the paper clips by the fourth day.

We arranged for full-page ads in Variety and The Hollywood Reporter, the two trade papers most important to any business publicity campaign. We tried to keep Jerome's well-known name hidden, but the "trades" had their reporters hot on our trail, and the word was out that something big was brewing in the industry.

When the press discovered that Jerome was connected with this independent production company, interest mounted and more press play followed. Our efforts to keep Jerome's involvement secret actually added credibility to our putative film-making company. Hollywood, moreover, was an ideal place to create and dismantle a major cover entity overnight. The Mafia and many shady foreign investors were notorious for backing productions in Hollywood, where fortunes are frequently made and lost. It is also an ideal place to launder money.

Picking a Script

Once Studio Six Productions was set up, we tackled the problem of identifying an appropriate script. Jerome and I sat around his kitchen table discussing what the theme should be. Because Star Wars had made it big only recently, many science-fiction, fantasy, and superhero films were being produced. We decided we needed a script with "sci-fi," Middle Eastern, and mythological elements. Something about the glory of Islam would be nice, too. Jerome recalled a recent script that might serve our purpose, and he hauled it out of a pile of manuscripts submitted for his consideration.

Poster

This script fit our purpose beautifully, particularly because no uninitiated person could decipher its complicated story line. The script was based on an award-winning sci-fi novel. The producers had also envisioned building a huge set that would later become a major theme park. They had hired a famous comic-strip artist to prepare concepts for the sets. This gave us some good "eyewash" to add to a production portfolio.

We decided to repackage our borrowed script by decorating it with the appropriate logo and title markings. The only copy of the script we needed would be carried by me as a prop to be shown to the Iranians in my role as production manager--and only in the event we were questioned at the airport in Tehran.

Argo

Jerome and I then set about picking a name for our movie. We needed something catchy from Eastern culture or mythology. After several tries, we hit on it! During our 10-year association, he had proven to be a great story and joke teller. He once told a group of us a profane "knock-knock" joke, with the word "Argo" in the punch line.

This word became an in-house disguise-team recognition signal and battle cry. We used it to break the tension that often built up when we were working long hours under difficult circumstances preparing for an important operation. Jerome remembered this. He also recalled that the name stemmed from mythology. He looked up the definition of Argo and confirmed it as the name of the ship on which Jason and the Argonauts sailed to rescue the Golden Fleece from the many-headed dragon holding it captive in the sacred garden. Perfect! This precisely described the situation in Iran.

I quickly designed an "Argo" logo, which we used for full-page ads in the trades. The ads proclaimed that "Studio Six Productions Presents 'Argo'... A cosmic conflagration ... story by Teresa Harris." (Teresa Harris was the alias we selected for our story consultant; it would be used by one of the six awaiting our arrival in Tehran.)

Calling the Iranian Consulate

On my last day in California, I made our first business call from our studio offices to the Iranian Consulate in San Francisco, using my alias. I said I required a visa and instructions on procedures for obtaining permission to scout a shooting location in Tehran. My party of eight would be made up of six Canadians, a European, and a Latin American.

The Latin American would be an OTS authentication officer, "Julio," who was posted in Europe. His languages were Spanish, French, and Arabic, and he had considerable exfiltration experience. We had selected OTS-produced documentation for his cover legend as an associate producer representing our production company's ostensible South American backers. I would travel on an OTS-produced European passport.

The call to the Iranian Consulate was a washout. Officials there suggested that we apply at the nearest Iranian Consulate in our area. This was not surprising because many Iranian diplomats were carried over from the Shah's regime, and most were unsure of their current status and their visa-granting authorities.

I departed on the "red-eye special" that night with all the trappings of a Hollywood type, including matchbooks from the Brown Derby Restaurant, where Studio Six Productions held a farewell dinner for me.

Final Technical Preparations

Back in Washington, the various efforts being mounted against Iran were still going full tilt. Our operations plan for the rescue of the six was being implemented at the working levels of OTS and NE Division, but it had not yet been coordinated with or approved by policymakers.

My immediate task was to participate in the final technical preparations for our three cover options. I had collected several exemplars of supporting documentation for our production party that were to be reproduced by the OTS graphics specialists to pad the wallets of our party. The script had to be altered and a presentation portfolio prepared for our production manager.

Joe Missouri, the document specialist who had accompanied me on the initial trip to Ottawa, had remained behind at that time to negotiate for ancillary documentation to support the Canadian part of the legend. This had required special authorization from senior levels of the Canadian Government, which Missouri managed to obtain. This was quite an accomplishment for a young officer.

By this time, Joe had returned to Washington and taken charge of the Argo portfolio. Joe had always been an artist at the typewriter. He took the roles of various members of the production party and fleshed them out in the form of resumes. This clever ploy provided briefing papers for each subject that could be carried in the open in the production manager's portfolio. When completed, this portfolio had everything needed to sell even the most sophisticated investment banker on our movie.

A week after my return from California, the US and Canadian document and disguise packages were ready for the Canadian pouch. The OTS team in Ottawa had also been working on the Canadian documents, applying the finishing touches to the passports. We had 12 Canadian passports and 12 US passports, a redundant capability for both nationalities. The redundant documents were designed for final issuance by the Canadians in Tehran in case Julio or I failed to get in or did not show up at the Canadian Embassy after we arrived. Julio and I would complete the second set of passports in Tehran, giving us last-minute on-site flexibility.

A highly detailed set of instructions on the use of the documents and on the final briefing of the subjects had also been prepared for easy reference by non-experts. Airline tickets were enclosed showing around-the-world itineraries. Joe and I had found lapel pins and baggage stickers with a Canadian maple leaf design; these too were part of the kit.

A review of the US documents package on the night before we left for Ottawa to load the Canadian pouch revealed a possibly embarrassing problem. The Canadians were succeeding in getting backstopped Canadian documents. CIA's ability to obtain similar backstopped alias documents was too slow, and we had not been able to obtain internal CIA permission to acquire these for our subjects. The US document packages were going to be terribly outclassed by the Canadians. In fact, the only reason for sending US alias documents was to appease one of the policymaking levels participating in the operations planning. The plan was still not finally approved or coordinated in our own government.

If our Canadian counterparts took inventory of the documents when we loaded the pouch, we would look silly. This bothered us. As soon as we arrived at the US Embassy in Ottawa the next morning, we made the rounds there collecting business cards and other wallet stuffers to fill out our package.

As it turned out, the loading of the "bag" did not include a close examination of our respective document packages, so we avoided embarrassment. The subjects themselves would have the final vote when presented with the choice of two passports, three cover stories, and the option of moving out individually or together. Because my OTS colleague and I ultimately would make the presentation of the choices in Tehran, we could greatly influence the decision.

The Canadian pouch or bag turned out to be the size of a pillowcase, barely big enough for our exfiltration kit of documents and disguise materials. The Canadian couriers apparently had a much easier time than the typical US State Department courier, who usually accompanies several mailbag-sized pouches. The Canadian courier is only allowed one bag, and he keeps it with him at all times. Some of our extra disguise materials had to be left out of the bag to Tehran.

During this last trip to Ottawa, it became clear that the Canadians were losing patience with the Americans. We still had not obtained our government's final decision on our operations plan. They had made all sorts of concessions without hesitation. What was taking us so long to move? They insisted that final approval of all plans be accomplished as soon as possible. I promised to send that word back immediately.

Green Light

Back at the Embassy, I prepared a long cable outlining every detail of the operation as I envisioned it. This was precisely the kind of summary we would send in before launching an exfiltration from a foreign location. It was slightly irregular for me to send this from Ottawa as the plan that the Canadians and I wanted to be approved.

I caught hell for that cable when I returned to Washington, but then was told it was a fine piece of work. The plan received final approval within two days, and our materials were en route to Tehran.

Press Probes

A disturbing bit of information known to most of us involved in this operation had come to light weeks before. Certain members of the news media had figured out that the fuzzy information being provided to the press by our State Department spokesman in Washington regarding the exact number and identities of the hostages being held in the Embassy compound was a smokescreen designed to hide the fact that six diplomats were still at large in Tehran.

The Canadians were aware that the Washington correspondent of Montreal's La Presse had already called on the Canadian Ambassador in Washington to voice his suspicions. The Ambassador asked him to sit on the information until after the exfiltration, promising him an exclusive on the story from the Canadian Government.

Ambassador Taylor's wife, meanwhile, had received a cryptic phone call at their residence in Tehran. The caller did not identify himself, and he asked for one of the six by name. Two of the six were staying with the Taylors, and the call was for one of them, Joseph Stafford. The other four were staying in the residence of the Canadian Deputy Chief of Mission, John Sheardown. The Canadians saw their situation in Tehran becoming tenuous. They began making discreet arrangements to close down their Embassy before it too was overrun.

Moving to Europe

The next phase of the operation took place in Europe. The OTS shop there had been debriefing travelers, collecting data, and obtaining exemplars of the Iranian visas and entry cachets required for our up-to-date intelligence on Iranian document controls. Julio was gearing up his alias document package. My alias documentation was also being prepared there.

Julio and I planned to link up in Europe for our final launch into Tehran, tentatively set for 23 and 24 January. We intended to apply for Iranian visas separately in European cities. In case neither of us was successful, I had already arranged a fallback position. One of the CIA officers in Europe had an OTS-issued alias passport he used for operational meetings. Early in our data collection phase, we had instructed him to obtain an Iranian visa in this passport so we would have an exemplar. He got the visa. If necessary, I planned to borrow his alias and have a similar alias passport issued to me with a duplicate of his legally obtained visa.

Visa Applications

On Monday 21 January, Julio left for Geneva, Switzerland, on his alias passport to apply for an Iranian visa. I left Washington on the same day for Europe. I was traveling on my true-name US official documents, but I was hand-carrying the Studio Six portfolio and certain collateral materials to fill out our documents packages.

I arrived in Europe on the morning of 22 January, and Julio returned from his trip that afternoon with his Iranian visa. I still had to obtain a visa in my alias passport. I planned to drive to Bonn the next day and to apply there. I hoped the Iranians there would issue it in a few hours, as they had for Julio in Geneva.

We received a Flash message from Ottawa that afternoon. Our exfiltration kits had arrived in Tehran, but Ambassador Taylor and one of his aides had reviewed the materials and discovered a mistake! The handwritten Farsi fill-in on the Iranian visas showed a date of issue sometime in the future. The Farsi linguist assisting our team in Ottawa had misinterpreted the Farsi calendar.

We fired a message back through Ottawa assuring Taylor this was no problem. The OTS officers could easily alter the mistake when they arrived in Tehran. The fallacy in this was that the mistake was in the set of passports prepared for use by Taylor if we did not arrive for some reason. If this was the case, a follow-up message would be prepared with carefully worded instructions for Taylor on how to correct the mistake.

On Wednesday 23 January, one of the OTS officers and I went to Bonn. I had my alias documentation and the Studio Six portfolio. I had altered my appearance slightly with a simple disguise. I was also wearing a green turtleneck sweater, which I would continue to wear through the run of the operation.

As we approached the Iranian Embassy in Bonn, I noted that the Embassy of my ostensible country of origin was nearby. If the Iranians chose to do so, it would be perfectly proper for them to send me to my own Embassy for a letter of introduction before the visa was granted. I was dropped off down the block from the Iranian Embassy, and I walked back to the entrance to the consular section.

A half-dozen visa applicants were sitting in the reception area filling out applications. A handful of young Iranian "Revolutionary Guards" in civilian clothes were standing around scrutinizing everyone. It was then that I realized I had left the portfolio in the car when I was dropped off, but I had my alias passport and other personal identity documents. I filled out the forms and went to the clerk's window to give them to the consular official.

In response to the official's polite questions, I said, in my best accent, that the purpose of my visit to Tehran was to meet with business associates at the Sheraton Hotel in Tehran; they were flying in from Hong Kong today and were expecting me. I also said that I did not obtain a visa in my own country because I was in Germany on business when I received the telex about the meeting in Tehran. I received my visa in about 15 minutes.

Presidential OK

Our plan for entry into Iran was for me to leave that evening (23 January), and to arrive at Mehrabad Airport the next day at 5 a.m. Julio would follow the same itinerary 24 hours later. If anything happened to one of us en route, the other might still get through.

As soon as I got back from Bonn, I sent a Flash message to Washington and Ottawa that I was ready. I received approval to launch within the hour. Thirty minutes later, however, I received another message from Washington directing me to delay my departure because the President wanted to give final approval and was being briefed at that moment.

After 30 minutes, I received the presidential OK in a terse message which said, "President has just approved the Finding. You may proceed on your mission to Tehran. Good luck." In terms of approvals, this case was the ultimate cliffhanger.

Entering Tehran

Julio and I had an especially worthwhile chance meeting just before I left for the airport that evening. We had an opportunity to meet with another Agency officer who had been traveling in and out of Tehran in support of the hostage rescue operation. He would ultimately be responsible for creating the inside support mechanism. He had been in the "business" since serving with OSS and parachuting into Europe during World War II. He clearly was a master of the game, and gave us some useful insights about the situation at Mehrabad and in Tehran. This strengthened our confidence and gave us a better idea about how to behave.

Julio and I both arrived in Mehrabad at 5 a.m. on Friday 25 January. (I was a day late because of delays caused by bad weather.) Immigration controls were straightforward, and the disembarkation/embarkation form was still being used. The difference I noted this time from my previous experience with Mehrabad immigration authorities was that the officer was a professional in uniform instead of an untrained civilian irregular. The immigration officers had gone into hiding at the beginning of the revolution. It appeared that they had now come back to work.

At entry, unlike my last visit, customs and security personnel were not overly concerned about foreigners. Because of Iran's balance-of-payment problems, they were especially interested in Iranian citizens leaving with valuables like fine Persian rugs or gold. The economic situation had become worse in the last few months, and we could expect the exit controls to be tighter.

We took a taxi to the Sheraton Hotel and checked in. Our next step was to go to the Swissair office downtown to reconfirm eight airline reservations for Monday morning to Zurich. In an exfiltration operation, it is important to reconfirm your space on the airplane for the day you are supposed to leave. Because it is difficult to bring the subjects to the point where they have the courage to walk into the airport, if they then have to backtrack because their flight did not arrive or had mechanical problems, or their reservations were lost, it would be doubly hard for them to get up their nerve next time. We chose Swissair because of its record of efficient and reliable service.

The Swissair office was not open yet. From my earlier trip to Tehran, I knew that the US Embassy was a few blocks down the street and that the Canadian Embassy also was supposed to be nearby.

It seemed eerie approaching the US Embassy compound knowing that more than 50 Americans were being held inside, including CIA officers. The high walls were decorated with propaganda banners and posters celebrating the revolution. Although we knew our colleagues would experience some rough going during their captivity, we also knew there was nothing we could do to help at the time. We had to keep our attention on the task at hand.

Canadian Embassy

Julio and I began looking for the Canadian Embassy. Although our map showed it to be located directly across a narrow side street from the US Embassy, the building we found was the Swedish Embassy.

There was an Iranian guard at the entrance who did not understand our questions and was perplexed by our street map. Just then, a young Iranian came along. He spoke to the guard, apparently asking him who were these confused-looking Westerners. He then spoke to Julio in German. The fellow was polite and helpful. He wrote down an address in Farsi, hailed a taxi for us, and gave the address to the taxi driver, who took us a considerable way across town to the Canadian Embassy.

Ambassador Taylor, who had been expecting us to arrive sometime that morning, was waiting upstairs in his outer office. We did not immediately recognize him as the Ambassador. He was a tall, lean, rather young, pleasant individual dressed in Western jeans and a plaid shirt and wearing cowboy boots. He wore "mod" glasses and had a full salt-and-pepper Afro-style haircut. This improbable-looking diplomat greeted us warmly.

Ken introduced us to his secretary, Laverna, a small, elderly lady who was pleasant and cheerful. During a short meeting in Ken's office, he explained that most members of his staff already had quietly departed Tehran. There would be only five Canadians left after his family departed that afternoon. The remaining five, including himself, would depart on Monday 28 January for London shortly after the Swissair flight we hoped to board at 7:30 a.m. with the houseguests. Early on Monday, he planned to inform the Foreign Ministry by diplomatic letter that the Canadian Embassy would be closed temporarily.

We described briefly the things we needed to accomplish over the next few days, starting with a meeting with the houseguests so we could brief them on the plan and assess their ability to carry it off. We all agreed the meeting would occur at 5 p.m. at the suburban residence of John Sheardown, the Embassy's second officer, where four of the six houseguests had been hiding since November.

At this initial meeting with Ken, we learned that at least two more ambassadors in the local diplomatic corps and some of their staff also were involved in hiding and caring for the six. Ken and these other ambassadors were also visiting regularly with Bruce Laingen, the American chargé, who was under "house protection" in the Foreign Ministry. Laingen, another Embassy staff officer, and the Embassy security officer were to spend the entire crisis living in the rooms of the Foreign Ministry, where they had gone to protest the demonstrations at the gates of the US Embassy just as it was about to be overrun. Laingen was free to depart Iran any time, but he refused to abandon his colleagues.

We asked and received Ken's permission to send a message to Washington through Ottawa, confirming our arrival in Iran and informing everyone concerned that we planned to meet with the six that evening. We were also introduced to Roger Lucy, who was house-sitting with the four Americans staying at Sheardown's house. Roger spoke Farsi fluently; it was he who discovered our mistake on the visas.

Claude Gauthier was another member of Ken's staff. He was a burly French Canadian responsible for the Embassy's physical security. Claude earned the nickname of "Sledge" during these final days because he was destroying classified communications equipment with a 12-pound sledgehammer. Everyone at the Embassy was friendly and informal; they seemed amused by our business.

When it was time to go to meet the six, Julio and I left with Claude. Ken had left earlier to see his wife off at Mehrabad and to pick up the Staffords, the two houseguests who were staying with him. We all arrived at the Sheardown house at about the same time. The house was on the outskirts of town in a well-to-do neighborhood. It was palatial, with a high wall surrounding it.

Meeting the Six

The six houseguests rushed to meet us as we entered the house. They appeared in good spirits and were happy to see us. We spent the first few minutes getting acquainted. The six were two young married couples, Joseph and Kathleen Stafford and Mark and Cora Lijek, and two single men, Bob Anders and Lee Schatz. Anders, about 50, had been head of the consular section, and the two couples had worked for him. Schatz was a tall young man who was the agriculture attaché. Those from the Consulate had escaped out the back door to the street when the militants had been breaking in the front door. Schatz had had an office in a building across the street from the Embassy, and he had gone directly to the Swedish Embassy, where he hid for a week. The Swedish flag was his blanket.

I told them about the three cover stories that we were offering for their consideration. I also explained what had to be accomplished during the next two days and how we would proceed through the airport on Monday. There was considerable discussion about the mechanics of the controls and how we would respond if questioned about our presence in Tehran. Only one exhibited anxiety about the risks involved.

Finally, I instructed the six to go into the dining room to discuss among themselves whether they wanted to go to the airport in a group or individually and which cover story they preferred. I waited about 15 minutes and then walked in on them. They were debating the questions, and I distracted them by doing a bit of sleight-of-hand with two sugar cubes. I had used this trick many times to illustrate how to set up a deception operation and to overcome apparent obstacles. It helped to persuade reluctant subjects that they were involved with professionals in the art of deception. The six decided to go as a group, using the Studio Six cover.

The six showed us around the house, where four of them had passed nearly three months in a fair amount of comfort. The huge, well-furnished house had a kitchen with enough equipment for a modern restaurant. The Americans had spent a good bit of their time planning and cooking gourmet dinners for themselves and the few outsiders they saw. They also had become masters at the game of Scrabble.

As we were being shown around, one of the other ambassadors and his attaché, Richard, arrived. They had visited the houseguests more than once. They wanted to meet the CIA officers who had come to oversee the escape of the six people they had come to know well. Both these men were to prove helpful to us.

When it was time for Julio and me to go back to our hotel, Claude dropped us down the block from the hotel. He would pick us up the next morning to take us to the Canadian Embassy. On Saturday, we had to put the finishing touches on the Canadian passports and send our final plan of action to Ottawa and Washington for approval.

The Last Arrangements

The next two days passed swiftly. We spent most of Saturday filling in the passports with the appropriate entries, including the Iranian visas issued in Canada. The visa exemplar had been collected only recently for us by a Canadian friend in Ottawa. It was a better fit for the ostensible travel itinerary of the Studio Six team. Their cover legend and airline tickets showed them arriving in Tehran from Hong Kong at approximately the same hour that Julio and I had arrived from Zurich. Their flight had actually arrived on that day and time, and passengers disembarking would have been processed by the same immigration officers who had processed us. Consequently, the Iranian entry cachets stamped in our passports served as prime exemplars for those we entered in the passports of the six.

The worst thing that can happen when making false passport entries is to forge the signature of an immigration officer on an ostensible arrival cachet and then discover that this same individual is about to stamp you out of the country. He would know that he was not at work the day your passport says you arrived. You have to know how all these systems work.

The attaché, Richard, was dispatched to the airport to pick up a stack of the disembarkation/embarkation forms from an airline contact. Julio would complete the Farsi notations on enough of these, and each of the six would write in his or her false biographic information and sign in the new aliases. Again, the forms we had received and filled in on arrival were our models.

We spread out our forgery materials on a table in Ken Taylor's office. He spent most of his day making last-minute arrangements to close the Embassy, sitting nearby and listening to our banter about some fine point of making false documents, or consulting with us on some detail of the arrangements for the exfiltration. Claude was wielding his sledgehammer somewhere in the building and burning and shredding classified paper.

On Sunday morning, I completed a long cable outlining the operations plan, and the message was transmitted to Ottawa. One of the details in the plan explained that:

. . . the six Canadians from Studio Six had called on the local Canadian Ambassador hoping that they could arrange for an appointment with the Ministry of National Guidance to present their proposal to use the local market for 10 days of shooting "Argo". . . The Canadian Ambasssador has advised them to seek a location elsewhere if possible, but has offered one of the Embassy's vacant residences as guest quarters . . . They heeded his advice, and after looking around a few days, have decided to leave Iran . . .

This provided details that paralleled the true facts. It also gave us the option of bringing the six to the airport on Monday in an Embassy vehicle with an Embassy driver, thereby solving the problem of finding reliable transportation to the airport. Laverna then could also reconfirm the airline reservations, which would be a normal service performed for Canadian guests of the Embassy.

Amateur Actors

Everything was in good order by Sunday night 27 January, when we reconvened at the Sheardown house. The six houseguests were impressed with their documentation packages, and we were impressed with the transformation of their appearances and personalities. On Friday night, we had given each of them their cover legend as prepared by Joe Missouri in the Studio Six portfolio. We also had provided them with disguise materials and props that would help fill out their roles.

They had scrounged clothes from one another and restyled their images to look more "Hollywood." Each of them was having great fun playing their part and hamming it up. The most dramatic change was made by the rather distinguished and conservative Bob Anders. Now, his snow-white hair was a "mod" blow dry. He was wearing tight trousers with no pockets and a blue silk shirt unbuttoned down the front with his chest hair cradling a gold chain and medallion. With his topcoat resting across his shoulders like a cape, he strolled around the room with the flair of a Hollywood dandy.

The mental attitudes of the six were positive. We began briefing them on the details of their ostensible prior travel and arrival in Iran. They soon seemed to have grasped these details fairly well. We warned them that there was to be a hostile interrogation staged after dinner to test their ability to answer the questions under stress. Roger Lucy volunteered to be the interrogator.

Ken Taylor soon arrived with an answer from Ottawa to our cable. Apparently, the policymakers in Ottawa and Washington were pleased with our proposed plan of action. He said the last line of their cable was, "See you later, exfiltrator."

Shortly, two senior friendly-country ambassadors arrived--the same two who were mentioned above as having been actively involved in efforts to hide and help the six Americans. The six served a sumptuous seven-course dinner with fine wine, champagne, coffee, and liqueurs. I told them about Jerome and the Argo knock-knock joke. Everyone took up the Argo cry. I also told everyone that they would be tempted to sell the story to some publisher after the operation was over. I admonished them not to yield to temptation, because Julio and I needed to stay in business to help others in the future. They apparently took this advice seriously.

After dinner, Roger appeared in military fatigues, complete with hat, sunglasses, jackboots, and swagger stick. The interrogations began. The interrogations impressed some of the more overconfident members of the group with the importance of remembering the details of their cover stories and gave them a taste of what could be in store for them at the airport.

During the interrogations, one of the ambassadors asked me to step into another room. He told me that, during one of the visits the three ambassadors had made to the Foreign Ministry to meet with Bruce Laingen and his aides, the US Embassy security officer had pulled him aside to confide that he was planning his own escape. He had already made one trip outside the building, and he asked for a glass cutter. The ambassador asked my advice about the glass cutter and if he should also give him a gun. I said "yes" to the glass cutter but "no" to the gun. I thanked him for this information, and told him we would be back in touch on these topics if more information was required.

Before we left at midnight, we made final arrangements for getting to the airport. I would go 30 minutes ahead of the others with Richard, who would pick me up at the hotel at 3 a.m. We would confirm that all was normal at the airport and that Swissair was en route from Zurich. I would clear customs and check in at the airline counter, where I would wait so the others could see me as they entered the airport as a signal that all was in order. Julio would accompany them to the airport in the Embassy van and lead the way through customs.

Day of Departure

I was awakened in my dark hotel room the next morning by the telephone ringing next to my bed. It was Richard calling from the lobby. It was 3 a.m., and I should have been up at 2:15. My watch alarm had gone off, and I must have slept through it. I rushed to shower and dress, arriving in the lobby about 15 minutes later.

Mehrabad is like many Middle Eastern or South Asian airports. Although of fairly modern construction, the people who pass through as travelers or hang around to greet or see travelers off make an orderly transit impossible. This was another reason for choosing the 7:30 a.m. Swissair flight. If we arrived at the airport at 5 a.m., the chances were the airport would be less chaotic. Also, the officials manning the controls might still be sleepy, and most of the Revolutionary Guards would still be in their beds. This was the case that Monday morning, 28 January 1980.

As Smooth as Silk

Richard and I proceeded through the customs check to the Swissair counter. There were few other travelers, and the airport employees were still groggy. The Swissair clerk confirmed that the flight would arrive at 5 a.m. I stood at my prearranged spot to wait for the rest of our party. Richard went to find the manager of another airline, who was a useful friend to have at the airport. He had already provided the blank embarkation forms. We would have had to collect these ourselves on the way in and had, in fact, picked up several extras, but the manager had given us plenty to cover any mistakes when filling them out. It is rare to have an inside contact at an airport for an exfiltration.

Soon the others arrived, and Julio led the way through customs. The six had had difficulty putting together a decent collection of luggage and clothing. They appeared to be traveling a bit light for Hollywood types on an around-the-world trip. They seemed bright and eager, however, and they had plastered their luggage with the Canadian maple leaf stickers we had found in Ottawa.

After they had cleared customs and checked in at the airline counter, we all proceeded to the immigration/emigration checkpoint. Lee Schatz was so eager that he had gotten way ahead of us and was already clearing the checkpoint, with no apparent difficulty. The others began presenting their documents and the yellow embarkation forms. I waited for each to clear in case one got into trouble. I would get involved quickly as the production manager responsible for the well-being of his pre-production crew. I was armed with the Argo portfolio and would overwhelm anyone standing in the way with Hollywood talk. The Iranian official at the checkpoint could not have cared less. He stamped each of us out and collected the yellow forms. One yellow form floated off his counter and was some distance away on the floor. When no one was looking, I picked it up and stuck it among my papers. It was the form we had forged for Bob Anders.

We were in the departure lounge, and we still had to go through the final security check before we arrived at the waiting area by our gate. The six were wandering around in the gift shops like ordinary tourists. A few fatigues-clad Revolutionary Guards were scrutinizing everyone.

Richard appeared with the airline manager. They had been watching us clear the checkpoint. I shook hands with the manager, and he asked me why we had not booked his airline; he would have arranged for red-carpet treatment. I told him to stand by because we might still need his flight if Swissair had any problem. I noticed the two elderly ladies from the Canadian Embassy starting to arrive in the departure lounge for their flight. Ken Taylor and the men of the Embassy would leave later in the day after we had departed.

Last-Minute Delay

The Swissair flight was called for the first time, and we proceeded through the security check into the small glassed-in room by our gate. We were just a short bus ride from the aircraft. Then the PA system announced that the Swissair flight was delayed for departure because of mechanical problems! I reassured our party and walked back through the security checkpoint to find Richard and his friend.

The departure lounge was filling up. Several flights were arriving. I wondered whether I should switch to one of these if Swissair was to be delayed too long.

I found Richard and his friend. They had already spoken to Swissair and learned the mechanical problem was minor. We would not be delayed too long, perhaps an hour. We discussed the options of switching flights, but we decided that that would be too complicated and that it would call unnecessary attention to us. I returned to our gate and reported this to the others.

We were all a bit on edge. The roving guards continued their random interrogations of other travelers. We made small talk and tried not to attract any attention.

After a tense hour, the Swissair flight was called. Everyone was suddenly anxious and excited about the prospect of pulling it off.

Success

The bus trip was brief and as we started up the ramp to board the airplane, Bob Anders punched me in the arm and said, "You arranged for everything, didn't you?" He was pointing at the name lettered across the nose of the airplane. The name of our airplane was "Argau," a region in Switzerland. We took it a sign that everything would be all right. We waited until the plane took off and had cleared Iranian airspace before we could give the thumbs up and order Bloody Marys.

By lunchtime, Julio and I were sitting in the Zurich airport restaurant waiting for our connecting flight to Germany. Some of the six dropped down and kissed the tarmac of the Zurich runway after they came down the ramp. The other passengers viewed this as rather strange behavior.

US State Department representatives met us at the other side of Swiss immigration and customs. The six were whisked away in a van to a mountain lodge; Julio and I were left standing in the parking lot. I had loaned one of them my topcoat because it was chilly. It was US Government property; Julio and I had bought European-style clothing, topcoats, and shoes for our trip to Tehran. I never retrieved the topcoat, and later was admonished by our Budget and Fiscal people when I did my accounting. Just another typical TDY. All part of the job.

Publicity

A few days later, the story hit the streets in Montreal. I was still in Germany when the story came over the Armed Forces radio station. I arrived in New York two days later, and at the airport I picked up a copy of The New York Post with the headline, "Canada to the Rescue!"

When I boarded the flight in Germany, I was carrying a large tin of Iranian caviar that the Staffords had bought for me in the departure lounge in Mehrabad. I asked the stewardess if she would keep it cold for me. She said, "No, it is either Russian or Iranian, and we don't like either!" The Soviets had invaded Afghanistan in December, and President Carter had withdrawn from the Moscow Olympics.

Chapter 21 of the Pelletier book, The Canadian Caper, covered the impact of our success in Canada and the United States.

To the Embassy staff's heroism was added a typically Canadian touch of modesty. It was important, said Ken Taylor in an interview later, for the Americans to say thank you. . . . They did more than that. They went wild. It was the first good news after three months of national trauma. . . . The maple leaf [Canadian flag] was flown in Oklahoma City, in Livonia, Michigan, and in a hundred other American towns and cities. Billboards sprang up throughout the American countryside with giant letters that spelled Thank You, Canada. A major US bank bought a full-page ad in The New York Times to commemorate the Canadian deed.

Jerome took out an ad in his local Burbank paper which said, "Thanks, Canada, we needed that...."

Ken Taylor became an instant hero. He was described as "the Scarlet Pimpernel of diplomacy." He returned to Ottawa, covered in glory. Subsequently, he was involved in a whirlwind tour of appearances, some with the six. He was made an Officer of the Order of Canada, received a Congressional Medal from the United States, and was awarded several honorary degrees. He lived his cover all the way.

An ironic coda: by the time Studio Six folded several weeks after the rescue, we had received 26 scripts, including some potential moneymakers. One was from Steven Spielberg.

Meeting the President

On 12 March 1980, I accompanied the Director of Central Intelligence, Admiral Turner, to his morning meeting with President Carter and National Security Adviser Brzezinski. I was to have two and one-half minutes of the Admiral's meeting with the President. At first, the President seemed confused about what I had done. He apparently thought I was the "old hand" we had met the night before I went to Iran, who was still in Tehran at that point working on preparations for the military rescue operation.

I showed the President some of the cover materials used in the operation and told him the Argo/Argau story. Because of some indecision about whether the White House photographer should take my picture shaking hands with the President (I was then under cover), I had a total of nine minutes in the Oval Office. Later that day, I was promoted by the director of OTS. In May, Julio and I each received CIA's Intelligence Star award.

Reunion and Recognition

President Jimmy Carter expresses his appreciation to author for his key role in the exfiltration operation.

Later in May I invited the six to my farm for the weekend. Jerome flew in from Burbank to join us in a secret reunion. The next week, the six and Ken Taylor were honored guests at a game in Yankee Stadium, where they were cheered by 30,000 fans.

In September 1997, after I was selected as one of the CIA50 Trailblazers, Agency representatives asked me if I would agree to be interviewed by CBS Evening News about the rescue of the six. I agreed, and the public finally learned the true story of the hostage rescue operation.

Antonio J. Mendez served in the Directorate of Operations and the Directorate of Science and Technology.

NOTES

1 Originally, 66 US Embassy staffers were taken hostage on 4 November 1979. Two weeks later, most minority-group members and women were released, reducing the number to 53. Another hostage with multiple sclerosis was freed and flown home in mid-1980. The total then remained at 52 until all were released in January 1981.

The Unlikeliest of Heros

The Navy’s relationship with Hollywood goes back a long way. Through the years, dozens of films have glorified the Navy and its Sailors for one very clear reason: The sea service has been a breeding ground for heroes, and Hollywood knows that heroes sell tickets. It’s no surprise that retired Master Chief Boatswain’s Mate (DV) Carl Brashear is the subject of a new movie celebrating his accomplishments. The cast and crew of Brashear’s life story, “Navy Diver,” recently completed shooting in Long Beach, Calif.

For most Sailors in the fleet today, the name may not ring a bell, but it wasn’t too long ago that Brashear was one of the best-known enlisted Sailors in the Navy. Before retiring in 1979 after 32 years of service, Brashear had earned his place in history as the first black Navy Diver, and later as the first black Master Diver. While these are notable feats in themselves, it was his other accomplishments that lifted him from historic figure status to that of hero.

His most amazing accomplishment is that he achieved his Master Diver designation four years after losing his leg in an accident aboard USS Hoist (ARS 40) in 1966. During a salvage and recovery mission, Brashear’s left leg was smashed when a line parted, flinging a pipe across deck and into him. Even at that moment, Brashear’s first thought was to save a shipmate, whom he pushed out of the way just before being struck down himself.

Brashear had come a long way to even be aboard Hoist that terrible day.

Educated in small, segregated, rural Kentucky schools of the 1940s, Brashear left behind his roots and a future of plowing the soil for a life at sea in 1948. In those days, the military, like society, wasn’t exactly rolling out the red carpet for African Americans regardless of their dedication and hard work. In the post-war era, the main job title for black Sailors was still steward. It was a job with little opportunity for heroism to say the least.

“It was hard living for everyone in those days. The Navy was still segregated, there was no UCMJ. There just weren’t a lot of avenues open to us,” he said.

Somehow, his easy-going personality thrived in that environment, and just like he knew it would, his positive attitude paid off.

He claimed that there was never any doubt in his mind he would find a good career in the Navy, “I don’t know what it was, but doggone it, something just told me that it wasn’t going to always be like that. I had a notion it would get better.”

And it did get better. With a little help from some leaders who cared more about a man’s potential than his skin color, Brashear got out of the segregated barracks, out of the closed-loop career options and into a job as a boatswain’s mate, handling aircraft with a seaplane squadron in Key West, Fla. A few years later, he shocked his leaders by declaring he wanted to be a salvage diver.

By then there seemed to be no stopping the enthusiastic young petty officer. It took six years, and two attempts, before he graduated from second class diving school. Eighteen months later, he graduated from First Class Diver school some 15 years after first joining the Navy.

One year later, he was aboard Hoist, participating in a salvage operation when … .

After seven operations the doctors were finally forced to amputate Brashear’s leg four inches below the knee, but the unkindest cut of all came when he was told he could no longer dive.

After all that he’d accomplished, breaking down racial barriers and establishing himself as an authority in the diving community, it was unthinkable to Brashear that his life would be stolen by a medical discharge. So he made up his mind to beat the system once more in an effort to keep his job. He would prove to the Navy he was fit for duty, in a grueling battery of physical tests witnessed by disbelieving officers from the Bureau of Medicine.

“I had to do things that I had never seen underwater,” he once recalled. “After diving in every kind of rig imaginable and after swimming to depths I’d never been at before, I finally convinced them that I was still qualified,” he said.

Now-retired CDR Bruce Banks, who owns and runs the Diver’s Institute of Technology in Seattle, Wash., and serves as a technical advisor for the film, remembers Brashear from the Navy Dive and Salvage School in the early 1970s. “He and several other chiefs who were there at the time took me under their wing and showed me a lot of tricks of the trade and made a better diver of me” he said, a fitting tribute to a Sailor who is repeatedly described as a mentor, and inspiration to younger Sailors. “I met him about four years after he lost his leg,” said Banks. “At that time, he could do more pushups and out-run anybody at the dive school. He even boxed with only one leg!” Banks said.

It was that determination and raw, defiant courage that drew Academy Award-winning actor Cuba Gooding Jr., to play Brashear in the film.

“A lot of what I’ve experienced with this character is very emotional, and it’s been interesting to see him watch me go through the experiences all over again as his character,” he said.

The film traces Brashear’s life back to his humble childhood. In one scene, Gooding found that having the subject of his character actually on the set provided a unique inspiration to the role.

“In the scene where his father passes away, it got pretty emotional for me,” said Gooding. “I think I was more insecure about what he felt about me portraying him as a kid finding out the news than I was about performing the scene.”

If there was ever any doubt in Gooding’s mind, Carl Brashear was quick to brush it away. “God picked that man to play me,” he said. “That’s why it took so long to make this movie. God was waiting for Cuba to come around because he is the I-DEAL person for this movie. I really found a brotherly spirit with him, and I felt he had no trouble understanding just who Carl Brashear is.”

It seems nothing short of a miracle that the telling of his story ever came to fruition. The project, nearly 20 years in the making, dates back to his first contract for film rights in 1980, a year after his retirement. But with renewed interest and the addition of Gooding to the project, the story was reborn and promises to tell a remarkable tale while remaining true to Brashear’s life.

“They really didn’t put a lot of that Hollywood spin on it. True, they have to dramatize some of it, but it looks like it’s very, very close to my life,” he said.

In another scene that goes back to his childhood, Brashear was shocked with a trip back in time during a visit to the set where the crew recreated his old home on the farm.

“They built this old house from pictures I sent them of the old farm house down in Kentucky,” he said. “Right down to the newspaper we used for wallpaper. It certainly took me back,” he said.

“It’s funny reliving these experiences with him,” said Gooding, “because this really is his life. It’s what he experienced through most of his life, and it shows what a remarkable person he really is.”

He added that somehow, doing the film has helped him understand what makes Sailors different.

“Growing up, I saw the military as a secondary, or alternative career path,” Gooding said. “But the more I learn about the Navy and people like Carl, the more I see the real honor in it and what a truly noble profession it really is.” Actor Powers Boothe, who plays CDR Pullman, one of the leaders who saw the value in Brashear’s potential early in his career, embraced what he feels is an important message the film sends to Americans who often “forget what people like Brashear sacrifice to make this country what it is.” He added, “I’ve traveled all over the world, and every time I come home I realize this is the best ticket around.”

According to Brashear, he was doing what he always wanted to do, and it just worked out the way it did. “It takes some adjustment getting used to the attention,” he said laughing. “I’m just a down to earth guy.”

Maybe Carl Brashear is right. Maybe he’s not a hero. Maybe he was just doing his job. But even if at the very least, he was just doing his job the best way he knew how, that’s as much as any Sailor can ask of themselves. It may be that by allowing Hollywood to put his life on the silver screen, he brings more than just glory to his achievements, but rather offers a kind of ‘everyman’ tribute to the accomplishments of his shipmates - past, present and future.

Story by JO1 Rodney Furry, a San Diego based journalist assigned to All Hands
Photos by PH2 Aaron Ansarov, a San Diego based photographer assigned to All Hands