Argo review
By BRETT WARNKE
Antonio Mendez and Matt Baglio’s
new book, Argo: How the CIA and Hollywood Pulled off the Most
Audacious Rescue in History, Viking Press, $26.95
In the hopes of freeing hostages,
President Reagan infamously gave the green light for money to be raised from
the sale of illegal weapons to Iran and using the cash to conduct an
unconstitutional foreign policy of supporting contras in Nicaragua. The President told his advisors in private,
“Well, the American people will never forgive me if big, strong President
Reagan passed up a chance to free the hostages over this legal question.[1]” President Carter, too, felt the need to get
tough with Iran. He approved the bungled
Operation Desert Claw, a failed attempt to rescue hostages in the U.S. embassy who
Iran’s reactionary government held for 444 days. It was only after Carter’s 1980 defeat that
some of the hostages were released, six others escaped by another means.
That lesser known escape is the
subject of Antonio Mendez and Matt Baglio’s new book, Argo: How the CIA and Hollywood
Pulled Off the Most Audacious Rescue in History. The story is not a history of the
tumultuous policy disputes or a gripping political tale. For that better and more interesting book,
see David Crist’s excellent new book The
Twilight War: The Secret History of
America’s Thirty Year Conflict With Iran.
Mendez, a CIA agent and the author
of two other books, details an operation that tricks the Iranian government
into allowing a Hollywood team into the country as a kind of PR move. Mendez calls the plan an “elegant solution”
that the government—internationally reviled for kidnapping diplomats and
executing rivals—may have even welcomed.
Sadly, Mendez’s book I s a series of non-events and irrelevant technical
details. It is less la Carre’ and more I don’t
care. And for the larger questions
like how did the well-funded and extremely powerful CIA not see the Iranian revolution
coming? Mendez has “no easy
answer.” The dialogue and what we glean
from it is unmemorable and the reader is constantly introduced to scores of
characters—their backgrounds, features, favorite drinks—but never informed why
this information is pertinent or relevant to his story. At bottom, this book is an amazingly
interesting magazine article that has been huffed and puffed into book
form. A pithier version, say, in the
form of a movie, would be a better medium.
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