Argo: How the CIA and Hollywood Pulled Off the Most Audacious Rescue in History
Books / Paperback
Books › History › United States › 20th Century
ISBN: 0147509734 / Publisher: Penguin Books, February 2013
An account of the 1979 Iran hostage crisis recalls how six of the intended American hostages escaped from Iranian militants and were rescued by the co-author and his unlikely team of CIA agents and Hollywood insiders during a high-risk mission in Tehran conducted in the guise of a movie scouting expedition.
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The true account of a daring rescue that inspired the film ARGO, winner of the 2012 Academy Award for Best PictureOn 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.
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