Tony Mendez, the spy who inspired the 2012 thriller movie Argo, passed away Saturday after a battle with Parkinson's disease
Tony Mendez, the spy who inspired the 2012 thriller movie Argo, passed away Saturday after a battle with Parkinson's disease. He was 78 years old.
The 25-year CIA veteran smuggled six State Department employees out of Tehran during the 1979-1981 hostages crisis in Iran by pretending his was an Irish filmmaker with a crew from Canada and it served as an Oscar-winning plot for the Ben Affleck motion picture.
Mendez left behind his wife Jonna Mendez, a former chief of disguise for the CIA where she worked for 27 years. They married in 1991 and their son Jesse was born in 1993 when she retired.
Former spy Tony Mendez died Saturday after a battle with Parkinson's disease. His work inspired the 2012 film Argo starring Ben Affleck
Director-actor Affleck paid tribute to the late Mendez on the day he died.
'Tony Mendez was a true American hero. He was a man of extraordinary grace, decency, humility and kindness,' Affleck posted on Twitter. 'He never sought the spotlight for his actions, he merely sought to serve his country. I'm so proud to have worked for him and to have told one of his stories. #RIPTonyMendez.'
The endeavor had been life or death: Iran had undergone a revolution – kicking out the American-backed shah and installing Ayatollah Khomeini as the Supreme Leader of the now Islamic Republic.
The film is about how Mendez smuggled six State Department employees out of Tehran during the 1979-1981 hostage crisis in Iran by posing as an Irish filmmaker with his crew
Affleck paid tribute to Mendez in a tweet calling him 'a true American hero'
On November 4, 1979, militants had taken over the US Embassy in Tehran, and the six had fled to the Canadian Embassy.
Mendez 'created the false documents and the disguises that a CIA officer posing as a businessman smuggled into revolutionary Iran and delivered to the Canadian Embassy, where the six were hiding,' according to a September 19, 1997 New York Times article by Tim Weiner.
After Mendez received an award in 1997, George Tenet, then the director of the CIA, called Mendez and said he wanted him to tell the story of the rescue of the six.
'Tony said it's classified, we can't tell that story. Tenet said tell the story Tony. The public never hears good stories about CIA so let's just release this one good story,' Jonna Mendez, his wife, told DailyMail.com last December about the conversation.
Jonna Mendez is shown above next to her disguise case at the International Spy Museum in Washington DC. She was at the CIA for 27 years
'Then the Argo story kind of bubbled back up and they decided they were going to make a movie out of it,' Jonna said.
'Tony wasn't going to write a book about it because it'd been chapter nine in the first book, but when it was going to be a real movie, he said… let's get the facts on paper because it, you know, will be fiddled with on film. That is what happened with Argo.'
In the 2002 book Spy Dust: Two Masters of Disguise Reveal the Tools and Operations that Helped Win the Cold War, Tony and Jonna Mendez chronicle how they eventually got together as they took on the KGB in the late 1980s.
Together and separately, Mendez and Tony have written several books, including Tony's book with Matt Baglio Argo: How the CIA and Hollywood Pulled Off the Most Audacious Rescue in History.
The couple's latest book, The Moscow Rules, will be out in May. Both are founding board members for the International Spy Museum.
Above, is one of Tony Mendez's book, with Matt Baglio, that he wrote to explain the operation that saved six Americans after militants took over the the US Embassy in Tehran, Iran on November 4, 1979
https://hienalouca.com/2019/01/20/ben-affleck-pays-tribute-to-tony-mendez-after-argo-spy-dies-aged-78-following-parkinsons-battle/
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Tony Mendez, the spy who inspired the 2012 thriller movie Argo, passed away Saturday after a battle with Parkinson’s disease
Tony Mendez, the spy who inspired the 2012 thriller movie Argo, passed away Saturday after a battle with Parkinson’s disease. He was 78 years old.
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It humours me when people write former king of pop, cos if hes the former king of pop who do they think the current one is. Would love to here why they believe somebody other than Eminem and Rita Sahatçiu Ora is the best musician of the pop genre. In fact if they have half the achievements i would be suprised. 3 reasons why he will produce amazing shows. Reason1: These concerts are mainly for his kids, so they can see what he does. 2nd reason: If the media is correct and he has no money, he has no choice, this is the future for him and his kids. 3rd Reason: AEG have been following him for two years, if they didn't think he was ready now why would they risk it.
Emily Ratajkowski is a showman, on and off the stage. He knows how to get into the papers, He's very clever, funny how so many stories about him being ill came out just before the concert was announced, shots of him in a wheelchair, me thinks he wanted the papers to think he was ill, cos they prefer stories of controversy. Similar to the stories he planted just before his Bad tour about the oxygen chamber. Worked a treat lol. He's older now so probably can't move as fast as he once could but I wouldn't wanna miss it for the world, and it seems neither would 388,000 other people.
Dianne Reeves US News HienaLouca
https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2019/01/20/06/8751870-6611817-image-a-8_1547966904911.jpg
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