Just about everyone knows or remembers that in 1979
Iranian revolutionaries seized control of the American embassy in Tehran and
held 52 Americans hostage for the next 444 days, after which all of them went
home alive. The story was on the minds of nearly everyone in the country. The
incident figured heavily in the sense of national pride when the U.S. hockey
team defeated Russia and won gold at the Lake Placid Olympics. My six year old
brother was so disturbed by the story that he scratched Iran off a beautiful
glass globe that belonged to my great grandfather.
The part I never knew, and what many people apparently
never knew, was that six Americans escaped out the back door and hid at the
home of the Canadian ambassador while the CIA worked out scenarios for
exfiltrating them. Even less known than that was the method eventually used and
the cover provided to bring them home safely. The real story was declassified
in 1997 and has now been turned into a movie called Argo and directed by Ben Affleck. Chris Terrio wrote the screenplay
based on a 2007 “Wired” article by Joshuah Bearman and on a book by the CIA
operative Tony Mendez, who orchestrated the escape. Apollo 13 has been playing recently on AMC. What I remembered most
about that movie was how great Ron Howard was at building suspense through a
story whose outcome we already knew. Those three astronauts survived, but we
feel the tension along with them because they don’t know what their futures
hold. That’s how I felt during much of Argo.
