Argo: How the CIA and Hollywood Pulled Off the Most Audacious Rescue in History (15 page)

As expected, NESTOR’s disappearance had triggered an avalanche of activity on the part of the KGB and the local Special Branch (SB). Surveillance around Western embassies and border crossings increased dramatically, while the KGB and SB flooded the airport, bus depots, and railway stations with agents. In addition, newspapers across the country ran notices about a missing Soviet attaché, and included a good photo of NESTOR to help anyone identify him. Being a Moscow-trained case officer, NESTOR had been able to avoid pursuit by shaving his head and disguising himself as one of the locals. But in order to get him past the thick security network arrayed against us, we would have to be at the top of our game.

We were especially worried about the security controls at the airport. Because of the manhunt going on, the airlines were requiring that all passengers reconfirm their flight in person before leaving the country. Somehow we’d have to come up with a way to overcome this final obstacle. But we’d need to move fast. We had only three days until it was time to launch.

When it comes to exfiltrations, the uninitiated almost always think about “black options,” usually involving a nighttime helicopter pickup or a desperate border crossing in a car involving hidden compartments and an American spy smooth talking his way out of danger. The problem inherent in most of these scenarios is that if anything goes wrong, then there is no chance for plausible deniability. The American flag is going to be draped all over that helicopter or car if the plan falls apart. In certain situations, you have no
choice—the only options available are black and you take your chances.

In most situations, however, a quasi-legal departure on a commercial flight is usually the simplest and most effective means of getting an asset out of the country. Jacob would provide the disguise for NESTOR, while David and I would create two sets of alias documents for him to use.

As I sat down to look at the operational plan for NESTOR, I could see immediately that there was no shortage of ideas about what to do back at headquarters. Raymond had brought over a thick stack of cables, each offering a different opinion. It seemed that everyone was piling on, something I would come to call the “committee effect.”

Later, after a few days of twisting in the wind, Jacob came to a decision. He had been sleeping out at the safe site with NESTOR, prepping him for his disguise, and he knew the situation better than anyone. NESTOR was getting anxious, and as Jacob read through the cable traffic he shook his head in amazement. “Okay,” he said when he was finished. “Here is what we are going to do.” As I listened to Jacob lay it out, I realized I was learning a valuable lesson, one that I would take with me for the rest of my career: never preempt the man in the field. In this case Jacob knew that NESTOR spoke fluent German and could easily carry off the persona of a German businessman, headquarters reservations be damned. More important, since NESTOR was beginning to lose his nerve, Jacob informed us that he was going to take him through the airport “trunk to tail,” meaning that he was going to be physically present in the airport to run interference in case anything went wrong. It was a risky move as NESTOR might compromise Jacob, but it would
also allow him to address the problem of NESTOR’s having to physically reconfirm his reservation, since Jacob could do it for him.

Once the cover had been chosen, Jacob got to work on NESTOR’s disguise, transforming the short and stocky Russian into a distinguished German businessman. Using a camera that I had provided, he snapped a few photos in various poses and lighting setups, allowing David and me to put together a full complement of alias documents that would give the impression of a man at different stages of his life.

On the night of the exfiltration, my job was to watch from the rooftop departure lounge to see if Jacob and NESTOR had made it onto the plane. We had chosen a TWA flight that was set to depart at one in the morning. The flight was an hour late, however, and when it did finally arrive, the “smit”—a thick haze that hugs the ground composed of equal parts smoke and burning shit—was so dense that I could barely make out the silhouettes of the passengers as they made their way out onto the tarmac. When I didn’t see Jacob or NESTOR among the embarking passengers, I became nervous. I was to learn later that everything inside had gone according to plan until NESTOR had arrived at the customs counter, where a turbaned official had promptly taken his passport and disappeared into a small room. A few minutes later the official returned followed by a European who was actually one of NESTOR’s KGB colleagues. The two men stared at each other for a few long seconds before NESTOR, caught up in his persona, lit a Cuban cigar that Jacob had furnished him and exhaled a thick cloud of smoke in the direction of the KGB officer. The man continued to study NESTOR, but finally waved him through. The cigar had been the final piece that had fooled his ex–colleague.

A few minutes later I was able to see Jacob and NESTOR boarding the plane along with the remaining passengers.

When the plane finally took off for Athens a little before three in the morning, it fell to me to call Raymond and let him know that the operation had been a success. As I fumbled for a coin at the public pay phone, my body sagged from the heat and stress of the last three days. I had a sudden flash of panic that the phone wouldn’t work, something that would haunt me for many years. But after dialing I heard it ring and then the unmistakable click as Raymond picked up the other line. As per our prearranged code to indicate that NESTOR had gotten out, I asked, “Is Suzy there?”

Playing along, Raymond shouted, “No!” and slammed down the phone.

When I finally made it back to my hotel, I was exhausted but couldn’t sleep as the gravity of what we had accomplished sank in. Not only had we just pulled off one of the most important exfiltrations in the history of the Agency, but in my mind, we had also established a sort of framework by which all other exfiltrations would be run.

E
very intelligence agency is ultimately judged on its ability to successfully rescue people and bring them out of harm’s way, which is essentially what an exfiltration is. The key to doing this is readiness, and in the wake of NESTOR, the CIA began looking at ways we could improve our capabilities. One of the main lessons I had learned is that exfiltrations are almost ninety percent logistics—just making sure everything is lined up as it needs to be. Anticipating each one of those logistical problems can really mean
the difference between success and failure. This need for readiness had already been highlighted in an earlier exfiltration involving Stalin’s daughter, Svetlana, who had decided to defect while on a trip to India in 1967. She had been married to a man from India, and when he died, she had brought his ashes back to the country. Normally when Soviet citizens traveled, they were required to leave their passports at the local embassy. But she had convinced the Russian official that she was going to be leaving early the following morning and asked to have her passport so she could go without having to wait. After he handed it over, similar to NESTOR, Svetlana then left the Soviet embassy and walked straight over to ours. This was at midnight and the case officer sent an immediate cable to Washington asking for guidance. The response from headquarters was something to the effect that if Stalin had had a daughter, she would never have married an Indian. The case officer was now on the spot. Here was the one walk–in that could define the rest of his career. If it really was Stalin’s daughter, then by morning the embassy was going to be surrounded and there’d be little chance of getting her out. Luckily, she had brought her documents along with her, which made things easier. Deciding that he couldn’t take the chance, the officer put her on a plane and flew her out of the country in the early hours of the morning, before a proper search could be organized. She eventually made it into the refugee channels in Europe. As it turned out, she was telling the truth.

This operation as well as NESTOR’s taught us that it would be in the best interest of the Agency to forward-deploy materials that would enhance our readiness. We began looking at probes and establishing prearranged routes for certain areas. One such route even included a border crossing on elephant back.

In order to tackle this concept of readiness, I came up with the idea of cross-training a select group of technical officers in various disciplines such as disguise and documents. It seems like a no–brainer now, but at the time it wasn’t the way we did things. Dubbed the “generalist program,” the idea was to create technical officers who could do things that were critical in the field and needed to be done quickly. Ideally, one officer could do the work of two specialists. In addition, a new position at headquarters would eventually be created, known as the special assistant to exfiltration, whose job it would be to keep tabs on all the CIA’s exfiltration cases active worldwide. This would give us the ability to marshal resources at a moment’s notice. When it came time for the next walk-in or exfiltration, we would be ready.

7

ASSEMBLING THE TEAM

Walking back to Foggy Bottom from our meeting with State, I realized that, much like the NESTOR case, there was no shortage of opinions when it came to the houseguests. Headquarters, Ottawa, and the State Department were all piling on. With the houseguests settled, however, it appeared as if we had some time to weigh our options. And then, just when I thought it couldn’t get any more complicated, I learned that a Canadian journalist in Washington was onto the story and was about to go public.

In mid-December, the Canadian embassy in Washington, D.C., got a call from a journalist asking for confirmation on a story he was writing. Was it true, he wanted to know, that the Canadian embassy in Tehran was housing a group of fugitive American diplomats? The reporter was Jean Pelletier, and he was the Washington correspondent for the Montreal-based newspaper
La Presse
. Early in the hostage crisis, Pelletier had begun to question the logic behind why the State Department was being so secretive about how
many Americans had been working at the embassy the day it was captured. The White House had yet to release an official list of names, or discuss details, which struck him as odd. He put himself in their shoes:
Why?
Then it hit him—had some Americans gotten out? Working his contacts at the U.S. State Department as well as at the Canadian embassy in Washington, he was able to eventually get confirmation to support his theory. For Pelletier it was the scoop of a lifetime, but he also had reservations. If the story were to be published prematurely, he realized, it could do more harm that good. Later in the afternoon his suspicions were confirmed when he got a call from the Canadian ambassador to the United States, Peter Towe, who asked him to sit on the story until the Americans had gotten out.

Pelletier agreed, but the fact that the story was beginning to leak made the Canadian government extremely apprehensive. What was to stop another journalist, one not as sympathetic, from writing a similar story? The last thing Canada needed was an international scandal involving its embassy in Tehran. The fact that the six Americans had gotten away did not bode well for them, as it might help to convince the militants that they had clandestine training—more “proof” that they were spies and not diplomats.

As word spread through Canadian diplomatic circles that a journalist was on to the secret of the houseguests, Ottawa began scrambling. In several cables back and forth to Iran, Ambassador Taylor was asked to give his opinion on possible scenarios to get the six out of Iran. Being that it was a small embassy, he often conferred with Roger Lucy, as he’d been a big help to Taylor during the evacuation of Canadian nationals from Iran the previous year. Most of the Canadians had been located in the Caspian region, so
Lucy had taken a driver and scouted along the Turkish and Russian borders, seeing if it was feasible to try to get them out overland. Ultimately they had decided to use a nearby airfield to fly them out instead.

The various ideas being floated for the houseguests ranged from driving them down to the Persian Gulf and getting them out on a ship to smuggling them out through a ratline and into Turkey. Both Taylor and Lucy felt that any scenario that involved driving overland was probably not going to work, as it would just increase the chances of getting caught if something went wrong.

When Canadian foreign minister Flora MacDonald heard the news, she was particularly alarmed. Something had to be done about the houseguests, and fast. At a meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Brussels on December 13, she cornered U.S. secretary of state Cyrus Vance and expressed her frustration that the United States was not doing enough. She then told him about Pelletier and the potential damage that could happen if the story of the houseguests ever became public. She was blunt and to the point, telling him that if nothing was done about the houseguests, she would put them on bicycles and have them ride for the Turkish border.

Informed by a colleague of the various catastrophes afoot, I realized we had to move fast. In the lead–up to the embassy takeover, gangs of komiteh had executed countless members of the shah’s former government as well as any perceived collaborators. There was little doubt in my mind what would happen to the six Americans if captured. I spread the word that there was going to be a meeting in my office. I knew each member of my team was hard at work on other projects and that what I was about to tell them was only going to add to their already busy workload, but they were
professionals and would give me everything they had no matter how much I asked from them.

T
he authentication branch had its offices on the third floor of Central Building at Foggy Bottom. As chief of the branch, I had an office suite located midway down the building’s main corridor. Stepping through the open doorway, you were in a spacious outer office with a desk for the branch secretary, a reception area, and a registry area where members of the branch would come to collect or send out the classified mail. More urgent or highly sensitive communications would be moved around by hand-carry.