How accurately does the film Argo

(2012) depict reality of the Canadian

Caper?

Picture of Tony Mendez and Ken Taylor together with Ben Affleck who plays Tony
Mendez on the movie. <http://www.themasterofdisguise.com/photos-video#>

Erick Violand
IB Code: gbm680
History Internal Assessment 2017
Word Count: 2015
Erick Violand
#gbm680

Table of Contents:
Section 1: Identification and evaluation of sources…………………..3
Section 2:
Investigation……………………………………………………………….…4
Section 3:
Reflection……………………………………………………………………..8
Works
cited………………...………………………………………………………….9

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Section 1: Identification and Evaluation of sources.

This investigation will explore the question: How accurately does the film Argo

(2012) depict reality of the Canadian Caper? The focus time period of the

investigation will be from November 4, 1979 until January 27, 1980 to allow a full

analysis on the Canadian Caper.

The first source which will be evaluated in depth is Antonio J. Mendez’s book

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

History”, written in 2012. The origin of this source is valuable because Mendez was

one the actual people that held and carried out this operation to take out the six U.S

hostages. The book was written in 2012 and it’s valuable because it was written after

the movie “Argo” came out and was made to take a look at the actual event and how

it happened. A limitation that the book has is that the author wrote the book many

years after the actual Canadian Caper happened so somethings may not be as clear

to remember for the author as it was in 1979 and 1980.

The purpose of Mendez’s book is to retell and analyze the actual operation

held to take out the six US hostages that were hiding in the Canadian embassy

during the Iranian Hostage Crisis of 1979. Mendez’s being one of the main ones to

carry out the operation gives value to the origin of the book and also the value of the

source increases due to the fact that it is an actual firsthand information about the

structure and procedure the CIA uses, which serves as great information to

understand how the CIA worked at the time and how those procedures helped to

make the plan what it turned out to be, but the great amount of time that passed

since the event happened to when Mendez chose to write the book might have an

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effect on how exact are the events and stories that he tells. Even though the book is

not written by someone of the Canadian government, which would have helped on

having more information on the point of view of the Canadian team, the book still has

great value because it was written by one of the great masterminds and executers of

the mission.

The second source to be evaluated in depth is the movie “Argo” produced and

released in 2012. The movie was directed and starred by actor Ben Affleck. The

origin of the source is valuable because Affleck did research and get in character to

give a good representation of Tony Mendez. The film is also valuable because it

portrays and captures the culture and time period of the event vividly and with

exactitude. Some limitations the movie faces are that it has some preference

towards the US government even though it was Canada’s government and embassy

in Tehran, Iran who did most of the job. The movie gives more power to the US

government and that they carried out the event but still manage to portray the actual

Canadian Caper without many alterations to its reality.

Section 2: Investigation

The Canadian Caper, this was the name given to the undercover mission to take out

of the Canadian Embassy, in Tehran; Iran, the six US hostages that managed to

escape the takeover of the US Embassy on November 4, 1979. This mission was

part of the Iranian Hostage Crisis in which the 52 Americans were held hostage for

444 days. The six hostages that were able to escape to the Canadian Embassy were

part of a mission that faked the production of a movie in Iran and gave the six

hostages fake Canadian identities. The operation was held by Tony Mendez, who

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was a CIA official who travelled to Iran to help the hostages get out, and Ken Taylor,

who was the Canadian Ambassador of Iran at that time and carried out most of the

operation.

The movie Argo was released in 2012, produced and starred by Ben Affleck. The

movie tells the story from Tony Mendez’s point of view and how he carried out the

mission to rescue the six Americans in Tehran. The movie mostly leans towards the

American view of the event and less of a focus on the actual major help the six

hostages got from the Canadian ambassador Ken Taylor. Mendez states in an article

that “the book The Canadian Caper mentions that Canada had received CIA help in

the form of the forged entries in Canadian passports to enable Canadian

Ambassador to Iran Kenneth Taylor to engineer the escape of the six from Iran”.

(Mendez, 2). The movie does manage to give a real basic summary of the mission

though it just focuses more on making the drama and thriller than retelling the actual

event with exactitude.

Many things are different in the movie, one of the most important ones that the movie

did not portray was the fact that it was not only Tony Mendez who went to Tehran to

take out the six hostages. In reality it were two CIA officers with great exfiltration

skills that went to Tehran but the movie decides to just show one to give a bigger

importance to Mendez’s actions and his role on the mission, make it seem that the

mission depended a lot on him. Also the movie has many moments in the climax that

didn’t actually happen. In the movie things like the operation being called of the night

before, the boarding tickets not being confirmed and the six and Mendez being

called off for interrogation where things that never happened. As Mendez states “I

believed that we should try to devise a cover so exotic that no one would imagine it

was being used for operation purposes”, (Mendez, 4) the mission was so out of

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usual that it wasn’t even taken into consideration by the Iran airport officer for it to be

an undercover operation.

The movie starts out with the takeover of the US embassy and the six escaping to

the Canadian embassy. Later the US is informed of the case and plans start being

made to see what they are going to do to take the hostages out. Mendez explains

this was what happened in reality, the US government was analyzing their plans to

see which one would result best and they ended up with the fake movie one. There’s

one part that Mendez’s states about the fake passports that were to be used “the

debate over the passports began with the question whether to use ordinary US

passports, Canadian passports, or other foreign passports at our disposal. CIA

managers were not comfortable with the idea of using foreign passports”, and this is

something that is not shown in the movie.

Also in reality Mendez and other US officials had several meetings with Canadian

managers and government officials to state the details of the cover up mission and

how it was to be carried out. The mission itself had a very long procedure of

meetings, brainstorming and decision making done by the US and Canada and most

of it was on US and Canadian territory itself, not over the phone from US to Iran how

the movie portrays Mendez doing. Mendez also talks about his plans and how

another CIA official named Julio was involved. The two where to fly to the location

with a delay of 24 hours between each, so if one got caught the other one would get

through.

“As soon as I got back from Bonn, I sent a Flash message to Washington and

Ottawa that I was ready… Thirty minutes later, however, I received another message

from Washington directing me to delay my departure because the President wanted

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to give final approval and was being briefed at the moment. After 30 minutes, I

received the presidential OK.” (Mendez, 10) There you can see how even the US

president delayed the mission to give the OK, something that was not shown in the

movie but it was changed to give more of a thrill feeling to the movie. Also in the

movie, the six and Mendez went to see the locations were they supposedly where

going to film the movie and it actually never happened and they stayed in the

Canadian Embassy the whole time.

In the film, the mission was called off the night before by the CIA team working on

the mission and the team still went through it and the tickets were approved and sent

to the Iranian airport system at the same time they were checking in and this was

just added to give the viewers a bigger and better climax. In the article “‘Argo’ Fact

vs Fiction: The CIA Weighs In” a tweet from the CIA twitter accounts states that “It

didn’t happen. An early flight was picked so airline officials would be sleepy &

Revolutionary Guards would still be in bed” and “The Canadians had already

purchased the tickets for the Americans. There were no issues at the counter.”

These two tweets show how flawlessly the operation really went and all the thrill and

excitement was added to the movie to provide a better climax.

The Argo mission or the Canadian Caper was a well elaborated, well planned and

smart undercover mission. It did have its risks at the moment of being conducted but

it was a great way to take out the six Americans out of Tehran. While being a very

unexpected cover up mission it had its long processes to reach what it was, it

needed lots of investigation, approvals and meetings for it to be set, it was a complex

process for it just to be a fake film production. The movie is not such an accurate

depiction of the actual event because besides showing more of USA’s government

point of view, it focused mostly on creating events on the script to make a bigger of a

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plot and climax instead of actually focusing on the big help Canada gave to the CIA

in order to make the mission work out. The movie focused mostly on creating a

greater description of events created for the moment where the mission was carried

out instead of describing vividly and accurately the long and complex process. To

conclude we could say that the movie is a great retelling of the Canadian Caper in

general but it’s not an accurate depiction of the details of the mission.

Section 3: Reflection
The analysis and investigation methods used in this IA have allowed me to

understand more about how complex and thorough is the investigation process that

historians have to go through while researching and analyzing a topic.

I can see the hard time historians may have of finding primary sources for what they

want to investigate. It was tough finding a book about my topic in the libraries and

stores where I live and so I had to recur to online books and pdfs to be able to have

primary sources for my research. Another challenge faced was analyzing my

sources and not providing a biased answer to the question because I liked the

movie. History many times present biased investigation and analysis and that

something historians may find tough to do while investigating. Also completing this

investigation has shown how important it is to find reliable sources in order to

conduct an accurate analysis and provide an accurate answer to the given question.

Collecting many sources is not as important as knowing which ones to analyze, while

conducting the investigation one must have in mind the reliability of the source, but

also its importance to the actual development of the question. This is a challenge

historians have when presented with many sources and have to pick the most

important ones so they don’t flood their research with irrelevant sources or data.

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Completing this research has given me the knowledge of the challenges historians

face while conducting research and answering a question and how tough it is to

collect important sources and analyze them in an unbiased way.

Works Cited
Han, Angie. ‘Argo’ Fact vs Fiction: The CIA Weighs In. Slash Film, November 11th,

2014. (http://www.slashfilm.com/argo-fact-vs-fiction-cia/) visited on May 1st, 2016.

Mendez, Antonio. “Argo: How the CIA and Hollywood Pulled Off the Most Audacious

Rescue in History”. New York, U.S.A. The Penguin Group, published in 2013.

Mendez, Antonio. A Classic Case of Deception. CIA Gov., Vol. 43 No 3.

(https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/kent-

csi/vol43no3/pdf/v43i3a01p.pdf) visited on May 1st, 2016.

Mendez, Antonio. “The Master of Disguise: My Secret Life in the CIA”. New

York,U.S.A. William and Morrow Company, published in 1999.

Pellietier, Jean; Adams, Claude. “The Canadian Caper”. Markham, Ontario. Paper

Jacks, published in 1982.