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Mission 8 - Tactical Considerations
Iran Hostage Rescue Mission Part 2

Hostage Rescue 101 | Facing the Iran Threat

Master of Disguise: Antonio
Antonio Joseph Mendez is a retired CIA intelligence officer, an author and an artist. He lives with his family and works in his studios and gallery on his forty-acre farm in rural Washington County Maryland. He is an award-winning painter with an international reputation.

His first book, The Master of Disguise; My Secret Life in the CIA, was published by William Morrow in November 1999 on the tenth anniversary of the Wall coming down in Berlin. Since that time he has been appearing on various national media across the United States, while traveling and lecturing regarding his CIA experiences. He has appeared on Dan Rather Evening News, Charlie Rose, C-Span, CNN, Fox News Channel, MSNBC, The Today Show, Good Morning America, The Early Show and Fresh Air, to name a few. His first presentation for the Smithsonian Associates in Washington, DC was sold out at over 600 attendees.

In September 2002 Mendez and his wife, Jonna, published another book entitled Spy Dust which chronicles their intelligence exploits in Moscow during the last years of the Cold War and their budding romance which ended in marriage after Mendez retired in 1990. Mendez and his wife Jonna also had an eight-city book tour, a book launch at the International Spy Museum and a sold out crowd at the Smithsonian Associates where they were taped for another C-SPAN appearance.

Mendez was born in 1940 in Eureka, Nevada where his ethnically diverse family dated back six generations to the time before the gold rush. He moved to Colorado when he was fourteen. He attended the University of Colorado and worked as a plumber and an illustrator/tool designer for Martin Marietta where he was responsible for designing electronic components for the Titan IIIC ICBM. In 1965 he was recruited from Denver through a blind ad to work as an espionage artist for the Technical Services Division of the Central Intelligence Agency in Washington D.C. Twenty months later he and his family moved to the Far East where they stayed for seven years while Mendez worked in the CIA's technical operations in South and Southeast Asia.

For twenty-five years he worked under cover, often overseas, participating in the shadow conflicts in some of the most important theaters of the Cold War. His books chronicle many of these covert action and human intelligence collection operations. He tells about the most exotic applications of his specialty, making false documents and disguises for intelligence officers. He held various positions of increasing responsibility moving up to Senior Intelligence Service (SIS) executive rank over the course of his career. While Chief of Disguise and later as Chief of the Graphics and Authentication Division, he and his subordinates were responsible for changing the identity and appearance of thousands of clandestine operatives, allowing them to move securely about their business of spying. Nowhere was this more difficult than on the streets of Moscow where they succeeded in devising deception operations using disguise and illusion against the overwhelming forces of the KGB. Equally harrowing were the hundreds of rescue operations he and his comrades planned and executed to bring our foreign agents and their families out of harm's way. In January 1980 Mendez was awarded the Intelligence Star for Valor for single-handedly engineering and conducting the rescue of six U.S. diplomats from Iran during the hostage crisis. This rescue operation involved creating an ostensible Hollywood film production company, complete with personnel, scripts, publicity and real estate.

By the time Mendez retired in November 1990, the Cold War was over. He had been promoted to SIS-2, the equivalent of a two star General in the military. He had earned the CIA's Intelligence Medal of Merit as well as the Intelligence Star and two Certificates of Distinction. In September 1997 on the fiftieth anniversary of the CIA, he was one of fifty officers, chosen from the tens of thousands who had worked at CIA over the years, awarded the Trailblazer Medallion. Mendez was proud to be in the company of Richard Helms, Allen Dulles and other luminaries in the Agency's history. As DCI George Tenet wrote, "...the CIA Trailblazer Award recognizes and honors fifty CIA officers who by their actions, example, or initiative have helped shape the history of this Agency." In October 2000 Mendez was awarded the Order of the Sphinx, which is the Interallied Distinguished Service Cross for serving the Allied cause for freedom behind enemy lines.

He has continued to act as a consultant to the U.S. Intelligence Community and has published articles in their journals. He is invited on a regular basis to act as a keynote speaker for the CIA and DIA training courses as well as participating in the Distinguished Lecture Series of the Joint Intelligence College of the Department of Defense. He also regularly addresses World Affairs Councils and similar organizations across the United States.

He and his wife Jonna are consultants and on the Board of Advisors for the International Spy Museum which opened in 2002 across "F" Street from the National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC and were technical consultants on a prime time series on CBS Television entitled "The Agency" which began airing in September 2001 and completed two seasons with excellent viewer response. They are currently developing and conducting a series of workshops for The International Spy Museum and are regularly invited there to speak to private and corporate meetings.

Mendez participated in a Discovery Channel documentary on the CIA, which was aired on 16 January 2000. Additionally the Discovery Channel aired a one-hour show entitled "The Master of Deception" on November 19, 2000. This program chronicled the espionage exploits of Mendez and his wife, Jonna, who was also Chief of Disguise and worked at CIA for twenty-seven years. The third Discovery Channel one-hour special on Mendez, "Escape from Iran" aired early in 2001, as did a documentary on AMC about the CIA Hollywood connection. Since then they have done several more documentaries including two for History Channel. In early 2004 they will be featured in the new PBS series "Innovation" in a one-hour show about spy craft. The November 2003 edition of National Geographic Magazine features Mendez in a two-page spread in an article about new surveillance technology.

Mendez is married and has four children ranging in ages from six to thirty-eight and two grand children. After returning to painting full time in 1990, Mendez has had scores of exhibits in the U.S. and abroad, won many prizes and is represented by several galleries around the United States. He was one of the top 200 artists in the 2003 "Arts for the Parks" international competition an honor he has earned before and in 1994 he was in the top 100. Recently, the Washington DC Commission for the Arts purchased seven of his paintings of Washington DC for their permanent collection.

Visit at Antonio Joseph Mendez's site at www.themasterofdisguise.com