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operation itself, I advised the team.
By studying the debriefs of the agents and officers passing
period-
272 / ANTONIO J. MENDEZWITH MALCOLM MCCONNELL
ically through Mehrabad Airport, we determined that the
militants in control had not yet restored the level of efficiency
needed to make this type of positive check a threat. In fact, one
agent reported that as late as mid-December, the controls had
been so unprofessional that the yellow copies of the forms
hadn t been collected unless offered by the departing passen-
ger. However, we had no way of knowing how long these lax
conditions would prevail.
Besides choosing our exfiltration route, we had to fabricate
a feasible cover story and provide documentation for a party
of six Americans, male and female, ranging in age from twenty-
seven to fifty-four. Their real professional identities raised
other problems. As American Consul General, Bob Anders
was a well-known figure among Iranian officials. His deputies,
Joseph Stafford and Mark Lijek, were also quite familiar to a
broad cross-section of Iranians who had applied for visas to
America, and we suspected that our diplomats and their wives
were on a Kometeh wanted list, with their pictures hidden
under Mehrabad immigration counters.
Consulting with Hal, who had returned to Headquarters as
the Near East Division s Chief for Iran, I immediately learned
the DO s position on the cover and passport debates now under
way. Even though OTS had an ample selection of foreign
documents, none of the six house-guests had been trained in
the fundamental tradecraft necessary to put on a convincing
show at a rigorous immigration control. We can t have them
stammering their way through with some B-movie accent,
Hal said. Besides, he added, many Iranians spoke foreign lan-
guages, and someone might challenge the six to respond in
their native tongue. They just won t be able to sustain a
foreign cover story.
Well, I quipped, trying to break the tension, we can t
exactly make
THE MASTER OF DISGUISE / 273
them American missionaries who wandered into Iran by mis-
take in the middle of this crisis and now just want to go home.
Although everyone involved in OTS and the DO agreed that
building a cover around U.S. passports would draw undesir-
able attention to the subjects, the Agency had to keep that op-
tion open. Ironically, there had been a constant stream of
American journalists and well-intentioned humanitarians
passing through Tehran since the embassy takeover, but we
knew the Kometeh kept close tabs on those individuals. Allow-
ing our houseguests to retain their American identity was an
extremely risky proposition.
That left the Canadian option open. The six were hiding in
Canadian diplomatic residences and spoke North American
English, so constructing plausible cover legends around Cana-
dian citizenship was feasible. There was one small problem,
however: The government in Ottawa was constrained by laws
that prohibited foreigners from using Canadian passports for
any purpose. They were already challenging diplomatic con-
vention by giving our people sanctuary.
I don t think Ottawa is going to bend on this one, Hal
cautioned.
I m afraid you re right, I said.
However skeptical I actually felt, I recommended the use of
Canadian passports as the first choice. For the second option,
I suggested using some type of foreign passport, preferably
from Anglophone countries. We then plunged into a whirlwind
of impromptu meetings and heated arguments, with fatigue
and frustration raising stress levels. Anxiety reached an all-
time high when the militants occupying the embassy dis-
covered that two OTS-produced foreign travel documents had
not been shredded when the compound was overrun. These
papers had been issued to Agency officers assigned to the
embassy, and one of these
274 / ANTONIO J. MENDEZWITH MALCOLM MCCONNELL
officers was among the hostages. He was now subjected to
brutal interrogation.
Under Khomeini s influence, radical subordinates such as
the Ayatollah Mohammed Beheshti worked the mob at the
embassy into a frenzy of paranoia. They vowed to kill every
hostage if America attempted to free them by force. Finding
the alias documents only heightened the militants paranoia.
Foreign Minister Abolhassan Bani-Sadr deemed the American
embassy to be nothing but a spy nest& a vital spy center,
from which America had secretly ruled his country through
the corrupt puppet Shah for thirty-five years.
My team and our OTS superiors seized this moment to push
for Canadian alias passports through CIA s Near East Division
management. We then began an all-sources quest for inform-
ation on the types of individuals and groups currently using
Mehrabad Airport. As a fallback, the Near East Division was
developing sources for overland black exfiltration options,
hoping to establish contact with smugglers whose rat lines
followed safer, and less weather-dependent routes out of Iran.
One possible source was H. Ross Perot, the Texas billionaire,
who had used a land route to exfiltrate two of his employees
imprisoned early in the Iranian Revolution. Perot had already
offered his services to the Agency to rescue all the hostages.
What s the holdup? he d snapped in his usual peckish
manner. If it s red tape, I ll put up the money and you can
pay me back later.
We soon learned that the groups still traveling legally to Iran
included oil field technicians from companies based in Europe,
who flew in and out of Mehrabad almost daily. Individual re-
porters and television teams from all over the world covering
the hostage situation also frequented the airport. Surprisingly,
a number of bona fide curiosity-
THE MASTER OF DISGUISE / 275
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