Crazy-As-Hell CIA Plots That Would Make Good Movies

How the CIA Used a Fake Sci-Fi Flick to Rescue Americans From Tehran

Argo, the actor/director's Iran-hostage-crisis movie, is a taut and funny spy thriller. Loosely based on a 2007 Wired article by Joshuah Bearman, the film focuses on the rescue of six American diplomats who escaped the besieged embassy in Tehran and holed up in the Canadian ambassador's residence for nearly three months. The rescue mission, executed with tight cooperation between the US and Canadian government, was led by CIA officer/professional "identity transformer" Tony Mendez (played by Affleck) in early 1980.

The goal was to get the six Americans the hell out of hostile territory. The means to extraction were, literally, a bad movie: The CIA sets up a dummy production company with the help of two sympathetic Hollywood crewmen, starts fake production on a Star Wars knock-off/"sky god" epic called "Argo" (phony business cards, planting stories in the Hollywood press, the whole elaborate-black-op nine yards), and sends Mendez to meet with Iran's Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance for "location scouting. "The United States government has just sanctioned your science-fiction movie," an agency high-up (a cameo by the great Philip Baker Hall) reluctantly informs Mendez.

Yes, this is indeed a thing that American tax dollars paid for in real life.

www.wired.com...
www.cia.gov...

Sukarno "Happy Days" Film Plot

The scheme: The operation that inspired Argo wasn't even the craziest CIA scheme that involved a fake movie. In the mid-'60s, the CIA was no fan of Sukarno, the first president of Indonesia. The agency began production on a sex tape (titled "Happy Days") and naughty photos of a Sukarno lookalike getting it on with a Russian lover. Due to the agency's inability to track down a double who looked enough like a naked Sukarno, the plan never got beyond the stages of, shall we say, post-production. Regardless, Sukarno was overthrown in 1967 during Indonesia's transition to the "New Order," and replaced by general Suharto, a US-backed, genocidal military dictator who held on to power for more than three decades.

www.fas.org...



Spy Cats

The scheme: In the '60s, the CIA tried implanting small microphones into cats, which they would then send to spy on the Soviets. The project was dubbed "Acoustic Kitty." The first attempt at cat-espionage resulted in the animal getting crushed by a taxi near the Soviet embassy in Washington, just moments after the operation began. All other missions failed, as well, and the initiative was terminated in 1967. Here's a diagram of the secret project:

The runner-ups

1. The CIA's vaccine drive/DNA-gathering operation in Pakistan that helped confirm Osama bin Laden's whereabouts (an operation that really pissed off Doctors Without Borders, for good reason).

2. The poison toothpaste, concocted by a CIA chemist, meant for the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, the first democratically elected prime minister of the Republic of the Congo. (The idea was later vetoed, and Lumumba was murdered in a coup after barely three months in office.)

3. The CIA being permanently incapble of whacking Castro. You know the stories.

www.motherjones.com...

So a interesting list none the less. What would be some more? I'm thinking MK Ultra and all the craziness that pursued under that. Or CIA drug smuggling coc aine to fund their black op missions subsequently causing the crack epidemic

Looks like Ben Affleck just beat you to the punch...



Argo

A dramatization of the 1980 joint CIA-Canadian secret operation to extract six fugitive American diplomatic personnel out of revolutionary Iran.

reply to post by Drunkenparrot


That's what the whole article is inspired by.

First paragraph in the OP;

Argo, the actor/director's Iran-hostage-crisis movie, is a taut and funny spy thriller. Loosely based on a 2007 Wired article by Joshuah Bearman, the film focuses on the rescue of six American diplomats who escaped the besieged embassy in Tehran and holed up in the Canadian ambassador's residence for nearly three months. The rescue mission, executed with tight cooperation between the US and Canadian government, was led by CIA officer/professional "identity transformer" Tony Mendez (played by Affleck) in early 1980.

Originally posted by Trustfund
reply to post by Drunkenparrot

 

That's what the whole article is inspired by.

First paragraph in the OP;

Argo, the actor/director's Iran-hostage-crisis movie, is a taut and funny spy thriller. Loosely based on a 2007 Wired article by Joshuah Bearman, the film focuses on the rescue of six American diplomats who escaped the besieged embassy in Tehran and holed up in the Canadian ambassador's residence for nearly three months. The rescue mission, executed with tight cooperation between the US and Canadian government, was led by CIA officer/professional "identity transformer" Tony Mendez (played by Affleck) in early 1980.

My apologies, I somehow managed to miss that in the opening of your post.