Tony Mendez

Tony Mendez
Tony Mendez (left) with Jimmy Carter (right) after Canadian Caper.
Birth name	Antonio Joseph Mendez
Born	(1940-11-15) November 15, 1940 Eureka, Nevada[1][2]
Allegiance	United States of America
Service/branch	Central Intelligence Agency
Years of service	1963–1990
Rank	SIS-2
Unit	Graphics and Authentication Division
Battles/wars	Iran hostage crisis, Cold War
Awards	Intelligence Star (1980) CIA Trailblazer Award (1997) Order of the Sphinx (2000)

Antonio Joseph "Tony" Mendez (born November 15, 1940) is an American CIA technical operations officer, now retired, who specialized in support of clandestine and covert CIA operations. He has written three memoirs about his CIA experiences.

Mendez was decorated, and is now widely known, for his on-the-scene management of the "Canadian Caper" during the Iran hostage crisis, in which he exfiltrated six American diplomats from Iran in January 1980. They posed as a Canadian film crew, and as part of their cover, the diplomats carried passports issued by the Canadian government to document them as Canadian citizens.

After declassification of records, the full details of the operation were reported in a 2007 article by Joshuah Bearman in Wired magazine.^[3] This was loosely adapted for the screenplay and development of the 2012 Academy Award-winning film Argo, directed by Ben Affleck, who also starred as Mendez. Mendez also attended the 70th Golden Globe Awards to give a speech about the film, where it was nominated (and later won) for Best Motion Picture – Drama.^[4]

Early life and education

Mendez was born in Eureka, Nevada, in 1940 to John George Mendez (June 12, 1917, Atlantic, Iowa – October 24, 1943, Kimberly, Nevada)^[5][6] and Neva June Tognoni (October 23, 1919, Preston, Nevada - October 6, 1995, Chandler, Arizona),^[7][1][8] where he attended local schools. His father was of Mexican descent, and his mother had Italian, French, and Irish ancestry.^{[9][10][11][12][13]} Mendez was interviewed in Open Your Eyes magazine, and he explained that he never learned to speak Spanish, since his father died when he was quite young.^[14] "I think of myself as a person who grew up in the desert" he claimed, and saw no problem with Ben Affleck portraying him on screen.^[9][10] He moved with his family to Colorado as a teen. After graduating from high school, he went on to study at the University of Colorado.^[15]

Career

Mendez continued to work as an artist after college. He supported himself by working as an illustrator and tool designer for Martin Marietta.^[15]

In 1965 Mendez answered a blind advertisement for a graphic artist. He was hired by the Central Intelligence Agency in 1965, becoming an espionage artist for the Technical Services Division.^[13][15]

Mendez worked as a CIA officer in South Asia, Southeast Asia and the Middle East. His work in the agency frequently dealt with forging documents, creating disguises, and handling other graphical work related to espionage. He served in the CIA for 25 years. He was awarded the Intelligence Star on 12 March 1980.^[13][15]

Marriage and family

Mendez and his first wife, Karen, had three children, including a son, Ian who died in 2010, and sculptor Antonio Tobias Mendez. Karen Mendez died of cancer in 1986.^[16]

In the mid-1980s, Mendez worked with Jonna Goeser, also a CIA officer, on rebuilding the US security organization in the Soviet Union and later Russia. They married following Mendez's retirement in 1990, and had a son together.^[16]

Later years

Since retiring from the CIA in 1990, Mendez and his wife Jonna, herself a 27-year veteran of the CIA,^[15] have served on the Board of Directors for the International Spy Museum. He works full-time as an artist.

Mendez has written three non-fiction books:

• Master of Disguise: My Secret Life in the CIA (1999), memoir of his CIA experiences^[17]
• Spy Dust: Two Masters of Disguise Reveal the Tools and Operations that Helped Win the Cold War (2003), with Jonna Mendez and Bruce Henderson.
• Argo: How the CIA and Hollywood Pulled Off the Most Audacious Rescue in History (2012), with Matt Baglio, a more lengthy account of the Canadian Caper.

His first work was lauded in 2002 as one of three "landmark memoirs"^[17] by John Hollister Hedley, former Chairman of the CIA's Publications Review Board.^[18]

Mendez was interviewed by Errol Morris in the First Person TV series in the season one episode "The Little Gray Man."

He is played by Ben Affleck in the film Argo.

References

External links

Wikisource has original works written by or about: Antonio Joseph Mendez

• "Review of Master of Disguise", Studies in Intelligence v. 46 #1 (2002)
• A Classic Case of Deception Menedez on the background of the Canadian Caper, Studies in Intelligence Winter 1999-2000
• "Tony Mendez, clandestine CIA hero of Ben Affleck’s ‘Argo,’ reveals the real story behind film smash". The Washington Times. October 10, 2012.