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

The true account of the 1979 rescue of six American hostages from IranOn November 4, 1979, Iranian militants stormed the American embassy in Tehran and captured dozens of American hostages, sparking a 444-day ordeal and a quake in global politics still reverberating today. But there's a little-known...

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Main Author: Mendez, Antonio
Other Authors: Baker, Dylan
Format: Audiobooks eAudiobook Downloads eAudiobook
Language:English
Published: Ashland : Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2012.
Edition:Unabridged.
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Summary:The true account of the 1979 rescue of six American hostages from IranOn November 4, 1979, Iranian militants stormed the American embassy in Tehran and captured dozens of American hostages, sparking a 444-day ordeal and a quake in global politics still reverberating today. But there's a little-known footnote to the crisis: six Americans escaped. And a midlevel agent named Antonio Mendez devised an ingenious yet incredibly risky plan to rescue them. Armed with foreign film visas, Mendez and an unlikely team of CIA agents and Hollywood insiders -- directors, producers, and actors -- traveled to Tehran under the guise of scouting locations for a fake film called Argo. While pretending to find the perfect scenery and backdrops, the team succeeded in contacting the escapees and smuggling them out of Iran without a single shot being fired. Antonio Mendez finally details the mind-bogglingly complex and dangerous operation he led more than three decades ago. A true story...
Item Description:Unabridged.
Physical Description:1 online resource (1 sound file)
Playing Time:09:28:00
Format:Requires OverDrive Media Console (file size: 136057 KB) or OverDrive Media Console (file size: 266336 KB).
ISBN:9781470832483
Author Notes:Antonio Joseph Mendez was born in Eureka, Nevada on November 15, 1940. He attended the University of Colorado at Boulder for one year before dropping out because he had no money. He worked on technical drawings of the wiring harnesses for missiles for Martin Marietta during the day and hired himself out at night as an artist, painting murals and other items on commission. He was hired by the Central Intelligence Agency in 1965 as a counterfeiter and forger.

He became a technical operations officer and was promoted to deputy chief of authentication in December 1979. He orchestrated the rescue of six American diplomats from Iran in January 1980. This mission became the basis of the 2012 Oscar winning movie Argo. Mendez spent 25 years undercover and retired in 1990.

He wrote several books including The Master of Disguise: My Secret Life in the CIA written with Malcolm McConnell, Spy Dust: Two Masters of Disguise Reveal the Tools and Operations That Helped Win the Cold War written with Jonna Mendez and Bruce Henderson, Argo: How the CIA and Hollywood Pulled Off the Most Audacious Rescue in History written with Matt Baglio, and The Moscow Rules: The Secret CIA Tactics That Helped America Win the Cold War written with Jonna Mendez. He died of Parkinson's disease on January 19, 2019 at the age of 78.

(Bowker Author Biography)

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