It is one of the most remarkable stories in the CIA\u2019s history, and a long untold story of the 1979 Iran hostage crisis.<\/p>\n
The new movie Argo<\/em> tells a tale that has long been known to Iran hostage-crisis specialists as the “Canadian Caper,” but about which the details were not fully declassified until the late 1990s.<\/p>\n And although President Jimmy Carter is often accused of timidity and weakness in foreign policy, this very daring and risky plan went ahead with his full authorization and knowledge.<\/p>\n In the subsequent years he never made use of the whole thing for political gain, which some of today\u2019s politicians could learn from. Indeed, his restraint in discussing the matter is probably the main reason most of us never heard of all of this until now.<\/p>\n In order to understand the story, we first have to go back to Nov. 4, 1979, the day the U.S. embassy in Tehran was invaded by radical Iranian students. Many of the students wrongly assumed the building was the site of a new plot to depose their hero \u2013 the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini \u2013 from power, in a similar scheme to one the British and the CIA implemented in 1953 in order to depose another Iranian leader, Mohammed Mossadegh.<\/p>\n In 1979, it would be our innocent diplomats \u2013 initially 66 of them \u2013 who paid the price for this. Their job was to stamp passports and issue visas. But as hostages, they would become pawns in an internal power struggle within Iran, a handy political device for Khomeini as he sought “hate-figures” to unite the country behind him.<\/p>\n This is where the Argo<\/em> story really begins, a fascinating twist in an otherwise well-known tale. Six hostages managed to escape from the embassy compound in the confusion of the assault. Stranded in a city where anyone in any way associated with the Shah of Iran could be shot in the street, they were sheltered by Canadian Ambassador Kenneth Taylor and his colleague John Sheardown.<\/p>\n President Jimmy Carter then called in the State Department and the CIA to assist the Canadians in getting these six de facto<\/em> hostages out. But how to do it?<\/p>\n Should they smuggle the hostages over the border into Turkey, perhaps bribing Iranian guards to look the other way? Too risky, with a high chance of detection.<\/p>\n Should some sort of paramilitary extraction operation be launched? Again, far too risky, and it might get the hostages inside the embassy killed in retaliation.<\/p>\n The State Department wanted to portray the six Americans as teachers of English, but someone pointed out that all the English-teaching schools were closed. The Canadians wanted to pass the Americans off as Canadian nutritionists inspecting Iranian crops, but it was noted that they were unlikely to visit revolutionary Iran in the winter.<\/p>\n