Ben Affleck film ‘Argo’ reveals CIA’s maddest mission in history

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London, October 29(ANI): Fictional Hollywood sci-fi film, Argo, which has been directed by Ben Affleck, was created as cover for Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) agent, Tony Mendez, who underwent one of the most dangerous missions in the history of CIA in the year 1979.

Ayatollah Khomeini had taken control of Iran a month earlier and the country was in violent turmoil during the period.

The U.S. embassy where staff had been taken hostage and held under appalling conditions, the movie crew casually informed stunned Revolutionary Guards they were there to scout locations for a new sci-fi epic.

More than a few Iranian officials must have rubbed their beards in wonder at this laid-back, drawling bunch of Hollywood poseurs pitching up in their capital without a care for the upheavals caused by the Revolution.

And it wasn’t true at all. The story of these six intrepid moviemakers is one of the most extraordinary cloak-and-dagger tales of the 20th century.

It remained classified until 1997, when the CIA decided it was finally time to crow about one of its greatest triumphs.

The Tehran operation, which became known as the Canadian Caper, has now been dramatised in a new film, Argo, which opens in UK cinemas next month, the Daily Mail reports,

The Iranian hostage crisis was one of America’s darkest hours, but Argo, starring Affleck and co-produced by George Clooney, relates how the U.S. pulled off an audacious rescue right from under the nose of its enemy.

A maverick CIA agent, Mendez, persuaded a desperate U.S. government that the best way of spiriting six trapped diplomats out of the most dangerous place on Earth was to turn the golden rule of espionage operations, ‘Don’t Attract Attention’ on its head.

Three months earlier, in November 1979, Iranian anti-American protesters had shocked the world by storming Tehran’s U.S. embassy and taking 52 Americans hostage, and they were to be held for the next 444 days.

But the mob that occupied the embassy overlooked a small group of diplomats, four men and two women, who were in the consulate building, and they managed to flee through the streets, eventually finding refuge with Canadian embassy staff. (ANI)