ARGO by Antonio Mendez

ARGO: How the CIA and Hollywood Pulled Off the Most Audacious Rescue in History is the story of the freeing of six Americans from Iran after the American Embassy was overrun by Iranian students in 1979. It was made into a popular movie that just won the Oscar for best film. I have not seen it as I wanted to first read the book. It was a quick read and a riveting book, but most of it would not make a very interesting movie. The conceit that the CIA uses to free the Americans is that they are Canadians scouting locations for a Hollywood movie. They have few problems exiting the country when all is said and done, while I hear that the movie makes the whole process much more dramatic.

But it was still a fun book to read. The CIA agent involved exposes some of the "tradecraft" that allows them CIA to make false passports and fool the customs agents and others. The story of expatriating the Iranian they call RAPTOR is actually more harrowing one than the freeing of the Americans, and it sets up the difficulties in physical needs (costumes, fake passports, "pocket litter," etc.) as well as psychological requirements of the person being exfiltrated.

I remember the six Americans being rescued by the Canadians and the story being that they were given Canadian passports. The whole story was not released until 1997 and I read it at the time, but this book does a nice job of combining Iranian history, interesting CIA stories, and some human drama into a hard-to-put-down book. I got it from the library and read it on 2/23-2/24, 2013.