Tony Mendez

Antonio Joseph Mendez (November 15, 1940 – January 19, 2019) was an American technical operations officer for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), who specialized in support of clandestine and covert CIA operations. He wrote four memoirs about his CIA experiences.

Mendez was decorated, and is now widely known, for his on-the-scene management of the "Canadian Caper" during the Iran hostage crisis. He exfiltrated six American diplomats from Iran in January 1980 by arranging to have them pose as a Canadian film crew. As part of their cover, the diplomats carried passports issued by the Canadian government to document them as Canadian citizens.

After declassification of records, the full details of the operation were reported in a 2007 article by Joshuah Bearman in Wired magazine. This was loosely adapted for the screenplay and development of the 2012 Academy Award-winning film Argo, directed by Ben Affleck, who also starred as Mendez. Mendez attended the 70th Golden Globe Awards to give a speech about the film, where it was nominated for (and later won) Best Motion Picture – Drama.

Mendez was born in Eureka, Nevada, in 1940 to John George Mendez and Neva June Tognoni. He attended local public schools. His father was of Mexican descent, and his mother had Italian and French ancestry. In an interview by Open Your Eyes magazine, Mendez said that his father died when he was quite young. As he never really learned to speak Spanish and was cut off from his father's Mexican-American culture, he did not identify as Hispanic.

When Mendez was a teen, his family moved to Colorado. After graduating from Englewood high school, he studied art at the University of Colorado.

Mendez continued to work as an artist after college. He first worked as an illustrator and tool designer for Martin Marietta, a large aerospace firm. In 1965, Mendez answered a blind advertisement for a graphic artist. He was hired by the CIA and became an espionage artist for the Technical Services Division, where he specialized in identity document forgery and creating disguises. He worked as an officer in South Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East, and served in the CIA for 25 years.

In 1980, in what became known as the Canadian Caper, Mendez travelled to Iran to rescue six American diplomats who had taken refuge at the Canadian embassy, after the United States embassy was overrun in the disruption related to the overthrow of the government. Mendez was part of a strategy to exfiltrate the diplomats by passing them off as a Canadian film crew, having received passports and supporting documents from the Canadian Government to identify them as such. He was awarded the Intelligence Star on March 12, 1980, for his efforts in leading the rescue mission.

Mendez and his first wife, Karen, had three children together. Karen Mendez died of cancer in 1986. One son, Ian, died in 2010. Another son, Antonio Tobias Mendez, became a sculptor.