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How the CIA and Hollywood Pulled off the Most Audacious Rescue in History

Viking
September 2012
On Sale: September 13, 2012
310 pages
ISBN: 0670026220
EAN: 9780670026227
Kindle: B007V65PLA
Hardcover / e-Book
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Matt Baglio, Antonio Mendez

Matt Baglio
Author Book List

The true, declassified account of CIA operative Tony Mendez's daring rescue of American hostages from Iran that inspired the critically-acclaimed film directed by and starring Ben Affleck, and co-starring John Goodman, Alan Arkin, and Bryan Cranston.

On 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 is a little-known drama
connected to the crisis: six Americans escaped. And a
top-level CIA officer named Antonio Mendez devised an
ingenious yet incredibly risky plan to rescue them before
they were detected.

Disguising himself as a Hollywood producer, and supported by a cast of expert forgers, deep cover CIA operatives, foreign agents, and Hollywood special effects artists, Mendez traveled to Tehran under the guise of scouting locations for a fake science fiction film called Argo. While pretending to find the perfect film backdrops, Mendez and a colleague succeeded in contacting the escapees, and smuggling them out of Iran.

Antonio Mendez finally details the extraordinarily complex
and dangerous operation he led more than three decades ago.
A riveting story of secret identities and international
intrigue, Argo is the gripping account of the history-making
collusion between Hollywood and high-stakes espionage.