yeah. and like you said, i'm sure so many people, especially in the u.s., have similar experiences. no people with obesity who have struggled with obesity and related conditions. and i think that that's why all of this is so relevant and these weight drugs are so relevant and so i think we are just about out of time, but i am so appreciative your time today and it was so great to talk to you about this book so. thank you so much. you ask great questions and i admire your reporting for bloomberg. and i really enjoyed conversation.my name is sofia n,

author, event coordinator here at the library. and thank you. thank you for joining us for this evening's program. some quick notes, if you haven't already. books being sold by our bookselling partner, snug books right outside. they'll be available for purchase now or after the program and tickets are still available. ali velshi joining us in may on may 9th. go pratt library dot org to find out more and reserve your tickets and now for tonight's program. tonight i'm happy welcome jonna mendez to the pratt library to discuss her new book in true face a woman's life in the cia unmasked. in it, she talks about her cia career as a contract wife performing secretarial duties

for the cia as a convenience to her. a young officer stationed in europe and true face recounts not only the drama of mendez's high stakes work, how the savvy operator parlayed her everyday woman appeal into incredible subterfuge, but also the grit and good fortune it took for her to navigate a misogynistic world. this is the story of an incredible career and what it took to achieve it. jonna mendez is a former of disguise with over 25 years of experience as a cia working in moscow and other sensitive areas with her late husband, tony. she is the bestselling of argo, the moscow and spy dust, the washington post called the book engaging, enlightening. and true face is an addition to the canon of nonfiction books

about, an institution encrusted in created by movies, television, hostile intelligence services, and occasionally the agency itself. publisher. publishers weekly says that mendez details fascinating career in this gripping memoir, an entertaining and enlightening glimpse into the opaque of spycraft. and in kirkus review of in true face, they wrote fans of true espionage will enjoy mendez's steer stories of a formative era in intelligence history. it is my great pleasure to welcome jonna mendez to the stage. thank you. make it organized just for a

minute. i brought book just in case. i wanted to read a chapter to you. good evening. i wasn't sure if anyone would come. i mean, i've been watching baltimore on my tv all day as everyone has, and just now got caught up on what's what's happening there. it's it's quite a day. it's memorable day. i'm looking for the clicker. where's the clicker at. we do this every time i speak. i'm mean, i'm an idiot. it comes to things technical. anyway, so i'm going to talk to you about my book called in face. did that title any sense? thank you to any of you. did you understand what it was when you just saw it in true

face? because that's the cia speak for under. for women. for women is without makeup. that's your true face. you know, when you wake up in the morning, that's your face. if you came to see me in my disguise lab, that's where we began. it also means take it away. take it away. any scaffolding and presenting yourself as the real person you are. i was never when i named it that that it was going to translate. so i said, i just tell you how wrote the book and why i wrote the book. and then a little bit about the cia which is probably why you came to see this to begin with. i wrote the book during covid. my husband had passed two years previously. my dog had passed about six months previously, and it was just me during covid, i did about 26 jigsaw puzzles by

myself and i them and sent them to my friends and they said, please stop. no mass. and then i thought, well i'll just i'll write a memoir. and that's what this book set out to be was my memoir of my life and my career at the cia. now, i knew the cia was going to have their way with it. once i sent it to them because they do some editing. they do some reviewing, they take some stuff out that is still classified. stuff that i might not realize is classified. but overall, they didn't they didn't remove most of any story in there what you might find for trading if you get the book and read is it's a little sketchy about where i am. there are a lot of cities that they didn't want me talking about being in that city. that's okay with me. but for instance, i had my run

in with mother teresa. you can probably make a good guess where i was. i have been looking for her. i would have i would have done it differently. okay. so this is the memoir and then as i'm writing it, i discovered that i just tell my story, my story of. a woman in the cia. it's not a standalone story. there were lots of women in the cia in various capacities, in various roles and we all had. there's that there's a new york times journalist who's written about the cia for years, and he didn't ever really the agency. he was very critical of the agency. and so we, in turn, were a little critical of him. we didn't like him very much either. his name was tim weiner. it turns out while i was away.

tim weiner wrote the review of this book for the washington. it was a big review, was like half a page. and i was in california when i heard that, oh my god, there was a review and wrote it. and i thought, you know, that's my book and he's not going to like it. just want to go on the record is saying he loves this book. he was so it was embarrassing. i have completely changed my opinion of that man. i feel like a hypocrite. but what can i do? yeah, it was just it was amazing. and that's what first time i got a sense that this book might have some legs and. i think that it does. so that's the prelude to this talk. the picture on the screen you will see is when i was 19, i was living in wichita. i was going to wichita state

university when my best friend off to germany to marry an american second lieutenant. i think that's the lowest level of military officer dumb that that's where you start that's that's it. that's the beginning. so she went to marry this military fellow and wanted me to come to germany to be in her wedding, to be her matron honor while growing up in wichita, kansas, i'd been trying to figure out how i was going to since i was six and i knew i wanted to leave. i just couldn't ever make the plan jell. and there it was go to germany, be in sherry's wedding and i did that. so this is picture just kind of i don't know. i'd been there maybe a week. i don't know who this man was, but i. he was introducing me to german beer it with a ceramic top, you know and i'm sorry. i like take that cigaret out of my hand, but i cannot.

i came from the land. 3.2 beer and when i was a teenager in wichita, could not drink enough beer to get a buzz going. you just couldn't consume that much beer and in germany. they would pour you beer if you were seven years old. they didn't care at all. i turned one in germany and it was just not big deal. not a bit. so. so i ended up in germany. i loved it, loved it, loved it. it was really green, it was damp, it was lush, it was hilly, it was trees everything the kansas was. so i thought i'd stay. now my friend sherry and her husband got a train. they went to. they went to italy on their honeymoon. and there i was just, me from kansas drinking beer. so what i did, i got on a train and i went to frankfurt. frankfurt, germany, which is a big economic center in europe.

lots of banks, lots of banks. so in the train station, i found a phone booth with a phone book. i got big handful of deutschmarks and alphabetically started calling american banks just because i recognized the names initially i wasn't necessarily i want to work in a bank. i was thinking an american company is going to be more likely to hire me. so first i called the american consulate and they said, dear, we don't do jobs, we do visas. you need a visa. we can help you out. but no, we don't do jobs. so that was the as i call bank of america. that was the bs. i said, i'm looking for a job. said, not here. no, we're not interested. i called what was the third one. started with a c can't remember. they said no, no. we have a job for you. and then i called chase manhattan bank in downtown

frankfurt, across the street from the opera house, and i said, i'm looking for a job. they said, oh, have you ever worked at a bank before? i said, no. they said, do you speak german? i no. i said, do you have a work permit which is required to work in germany? i, i don't. and they said, why don't you just come down and talk to us? and they hired me. they hired me. and that was my, my second ticket. the first one was getting to europe. second ticket was a where i could support myself and stay in europe. i, i was almost 20 when that happened. and so that was the beginning of a very interesting, a very interesting life, i might say. i working in the bank these men were coming in. americans, there was a group of them. every two weeks they'd be down in our lobby and i got to talking to them because if you're overseas for any length of time. you start of looking for

americans just to chat with. and i started dating one. his name was and a year and a half after i met him i married him and switched ireland which is the las vegas europe. you thought it's all mountains and cheese and those cows with the bells. but behind that facade. god, there was a very slick process. you could get married. everything translated, everything stamped. i do the ring and out the door, like in the morning, there's a line of people doing that. so. so john and i got married. here goes the clicker. it worked. these are my wedding photos. and no long white dress. no all the. all the acute trademark of an american wedding missing my little white mini dress is what i got maie in. and that volkswagen beetle,

which is brand new, we paid 1500 dollars for it that was our going away picture and off we went we went we went to italy as well. john kaser was a an interesting man. he had grown up in europe, his dad was a diplomat with state department. he spoke fabulous german. he ski he'd like a ski champion because he went to school in switzerland and that was part of their afternoon lessons skiing one day and tennis other. he was really good at both. so there i was a married lady and now i'm 20. the next that happened was we ended up going back home, what's called home leave. you have to check in to cia every once in a while. they don't want you out there for any long period of time. they're afraid you're going to go like native or in france or something. so every two years you would come back home. we went home on a ship. the ss united, the fastest, most

luxurious ship that was afloat at that time. and we went first class and everyone in first class is looking at us like, well, just a minute, you belong here. you're too young. you don't look rich enough. so john invented this, that he was this famous deejay from california. all these rich old people, they didn't know they didn't know, by the way, john did not dance. my new husband did not dance, but i did. so i the dance contest on the ship right here. this is my proof. took him home to wichita to meet my. those are my sisters. that's me. that's me. kind of in the middle. that's my dad's which he chicken fat. you can see perfect color and it's just, you know an idea there four sisters jennifer in the red shirt had escaped. she went to aspen. the other two were too young to

escape, but they were watching us closely. they were already making a plan plan. i ended up working for the cia as contract wife. and it was this odd catch. if you're overseas if you're married overseas, you can come aboard the cia they still do a security thing. but not huge. and they will give you secretarial duties. so i started working at cia as a secretary. now i have to tell you, i'm a very good secretary. they kept promoting me and promoting me to the point i was working for the director, the office. it was about a thousand people in that office. i was working for the boss and i was bored out of my mind. this is in downtown dc and i could see the smithsonian castle building from my office and i mentioned to my boss i was thinking about going and talking

to them about a job because i didn't think what i had was a job job really wasn't that much work. and my boss said, hold on, don't leave. we are we do some photography courses in the office and i know really like photography and i did, i was an avid amateur photographer he said take some of our courses. so now i should have just tell you for a moment about this office that i was working in. it was the q of cia, just like q and james bond. we were cia hq, we were the technical arm of the intelligence community, not just cia, primarily cia. we were composed of physicists, chemists electrical and mechanical engineer, all kinds of people, really fine grained technical skills that you don't bump into very. we could create make almost

anything if it didn't exist, but our officers needed it. we would invent whatever it was for them. it was a fascinating place work. and i really liked it a lot. i took some of those photography courses the first photo course i at the cia, the very first one they sent me to a landing strip outside d.c. there's a little twin engine plane. they've the doors off so you can see through plane and there's a harness in to sit in and kind of swing it was my harness and was a headphone is my headphone they gave me a 35 millimeter camera. this is all film with the thousand millimeter, which is about that long. and when you put that on the camera body that that wants to move and stabilizing your lens in order to get a good crisp picture. that's what i was about. learn while riding in an swinging in the harness with it,

with the headphones on. it was called airborne platform mms and it was a day that i'll never forget. it was just really wonderful afternoon we some geese over here flying with we're going out over the chesapeake i said how low. how low we go we were if i stuck my toe out it would have been it would, it would have been wet anyway i segway into a career in photography at the cia. i was no longer secretary but i didn't go into the big jobs i in to the dark rooms because i was a woman. that's where they were just they were they were sure where i ought to be. and this picture is back in frankfort, a second assignment. i'm taking some of some concealment devices we had made. we have to make instructions, whoever is going to use them and. i'm taking the pictures for the instructions. this is how this is how you open this briefcase case that has a compartment so well hidden in it

that you go through any immigration in the in the world. they will never be able to find it. but if you had my pictures, you would know how to do it. so so working in photography at cia was nothing like what you might think the cameras, the commercial cameras. that that was not what we did this is a camera in the cia. it was this probably a new version of it. this was an ink and ink pen that had a you know, it was it was like one of those big, fat, juicy pens that cost $800 that really executives would like to have in their so everyone would know how successful they were. but one had a camera in it in to the ink. so while the pen would still write an upper left hand corner, that a cylinder that camera is inside of that cylinder. so you have to stay with me here. look at the pen in his hands and know that inside of the cylinder is a film cassette some of you

will remember kodak's little yellow and black film cassettes. ours was so that it fit inside the camera that was inside the pen. and there was a piece of film that's about that long. it's about eight inches long. and what developed it, it would have 100 tiny black dots on it. and each dot was a page of text eight and a half by 11. so you could take a lot of photos of a lot of documents with this. this was one of our best tools during the cold war because we gave it to our most our our assets. who had the access. so imagine today that someone walks into putin's office with little notepad and his pen and he's talking to putin and he is writing down, okay, i got that i'll call him, i'll do this. putin either picks up a phone looks away someone, comes in. our guy with the pen all he has

to do is hold the pen up over the document and with one touch sign made no noise take a picture of the minutes of the meeting or the agenda for the meeting. what's going happen? that's what we were after. one of the people at work used to disagree with me and say those pens weren't that great. we had cash, had all these satellite systems up there. we had pictures, everything. i said, yeah, but that's today all those satellite pictures. they're now, my pictures were tomorrow. what are they planning? are they going to do? what are they getting ready to do? i say this over and over. our purpose was to collect intelligence on the plans and intentions our enemies and get it back. washington, dc what they planning? what are they going to do? what is putin going to do? what's china going to do next? what's that north korean with

those those missiles that nuclear, what are they planning, what they want to know and. these cameras were one very, very good way to find out. now, i didn't do just photography you don't do just one thing in most and at cia you certainly don't so i spread out the systems i was working i was training foreign assets in an electronic communication encrypted electronic communication in russia and this will come up again and again. it was so dangerous for the people working for us if they were caught, they could be killed. they probably would be killed. and their families have a terrible, terrible time. it was so dangerous that we didn't meet face to face with them unless we had to. we did what's called personal communications. that's what the encrypted electronic was. you dial a shortwave radio

anywhere in russia and you just hear this voice just strings of numbers and knew your time. you knew your day you dial to the right frequency and you'd hear groups of five numbers a pause, groups of five numbers. they do it three times and you drive down and then then you would go find your walnut or whatever had concealed your one time pad in. i like the walnut because it's gives a good sense of size and you take out your one time pad, you listen to the numbers in the radio. you transpose them and you'd be able to read your message. that was one of many ways. we communicated with our agents. it's very, very secure. now you're thinking so you communicated with dead rats. now we did. we didn't communicate with them, but we the sign says we used rats. i would say that the taxidermists had taken care of

the rats. that's how i would put it. they were very tidy. when we finished they had velcro on their on their stomachs. this is an unfinished taxidermy rat and we hide all kinds of things in them. money, film developer for. a secret writing system. i medicine for their kid that they couldn't in moscow. whatever they needed, whatever needed. you can get a lot of stuff in a dead rat. this this has doused with pepper sauce and that's wrong they were doused with tabasco a good american product. and we did that because no one in the world will pick up knowingly pick up a dead rat. that's why we chose them. an animal? well, a dog would a wolf would. but once they had it in their and that tabasco went to work, they'd run off howling and wouldn't pick it up again. so my work became a traveling person.

i was traveling around introducing people to some of the possibilities with photography, how use that pen, how to use a lot of other concealed things. i saw online today. just one of those things on facebook and it said the east germans have figured out how to put a camera in a bra so i'm looking we already knew how do that we did that more than once but i decided that the east german bras are prettier than than the american that we used. so i'm traveling around europe teaching people, bringing stuff to them, picking up stuff them. and every once in a while stopping in a bar for some more of that german beer. this is not german beer, but they had german beer in the bar. the never say never again bar something a lot of people might not realize. we were working in an area that

was trying to fool the kgb all the time. our biggest problem was in moscow and it was surveillance following us endlessly. their goal was just as just to shut us down to to get us in such a such a strangulation embrace that we could not collect because they were everywhere and they almost succeeded in doing that. but we came up with some new tools that never knew about they know about them now, i just would love to hear them talking about the cia's use of, you know, have a lot of things in this country that are unique. us, we have hollywood, which is we have the stage in new york city, and we have a group of people out in l.a., not the magicians much we weren't interested in the magicians. we were interested in the magic builders, the people whose whose profession is to deceptions and

to create illusions that you even staring at you cannot figure out what they're doing, how they're doing it. are they doing it. you see david copperfield fly overhead. i did. and i know man that built the process that allows to do that flying your eyes tell you he be on wires everything looking for that little arc of a swing and then none of that. they took it all away. he's simply flying. when i saw him, he flew into plexiglass box on a big stage. it was a big box. it must have been 20 feet long. and then he's flying around in the box, they bring out a lid and they put the lid on the box and then there were like six ladies in tap shoes and sequins, bikinis and their tap dancing on top of the box. and he's still flying in the

box. and i mean, it was just was it was wonderful to observe this. well, we wanted build some deceptions and illusions of our own. and so what we up doing is we hired some of these magic builders and for the entirety of my career we worked with these people specifically against the kgb in moscow, although we used some of their ideas, of their tools elsewhere. we started out trying to make caed a jack in the box, a jib for surveillance purposes. it was to be a pop up dummy. it'd in the passenger seat. they trail behind you in cars. they're usually not next to you. they're never front of you. so we knew we needed to to build something where our passenger could exit the car and, the dummy would pop up. it doesn't sound too hard well. here's how we went about it. we went to al's magic shop down

on 16th street in washington, dc, and we bought a sex doll. it's plastic. i didn't know our. party doll. you do have other names. we bought one. we said two of our young engineers to buy it there so embarrassed we sent them back to buy six more later and they said they said later they said we will go back to that store. but what we only wanted the top half and we we tied that off and we got a briefcase and we put the doll in the briefcase and we got two canisters of compressed kind of small on each side and we closed it all up and there was a button and you push the button and she's going to spring up. we sent it to eastern europe, a quiet place. one of our wives took it out for test drive and she's driving down the road and nobody's around coast is clear. and she hits the button.

well, the first one, what happened was it, exploded in her car because. the compressed gas was so cold that it froze her plastic goodness and she shattered and the wife almost had a wreck so it's funny to tell it. it wasn't funny. it happened. and we decided that was no good. so we changed it around a little bit. the second one that we fielded test drive it, it went up okay. it looked it was good if you were behind in a car. you just see this of a figure. but what happened when you push the button for it to deflate it did this thing that those when you drive by a car dealership sometimes and you those things waving so she's she's doing that and she it would have taken her a half an hour to get back to so that wasn't it either we ended up we two we took our idea to

the magic builders and it took them like a week and just did this incredible scissor mechanism that you hit the button, she zap, you hit the button and down. it's very light it's quite portable. you can put it a briefcase. you can put it in a woman's purse. the last time i saw it was in a birthday cake. and that birthday cake is in a book. it's called the billion dollar spy by dan hoffman. and it's the opening chapter of his book how using that jib or that dummy it starts out in a birthday cake allowed. our chief of station to get to one of the best agents we had and i it was an it was an eventful evening. so they did all kinds of things for us. they some big things for us. this is last summer. i was visiting one of them and he took my picture all to the five of me. okay, so the traveling things

changed because i spent a summer the subcontinent, they won't let me say where you all know where the subcontinent is. i loved it out there and came back washington and told them that i would like an assignment out there. i would like to live there, and then i would travel from that place. and they said, well, there's no there's no photo job coming up. they said, there's a disguise job coming up. so here i am in the middle of my career i and i switched i switched my specialty. this is not a smart thing to do. you know, you build up all this knowledge and this experience and you've proved kind of to the guys, yeah, you can do this. and then you say, well, i want to go do that. so first husband said, i don't know. anyway i went out there. it was my assignment this overseas tour was my assignment

and my husband was my dependent. he accompanied me. they considered him a househusband, which the worst term ever, because no man, no man's got to walk around with that label on him. my, my house husband, in fact, was a full officer. disguise sized as a househusband. so. so he was he was okay with it. this was a trip we were going up to peshawar. we were worried that a russian member, when the russians were in afghanistan and some of you were a little young to remember that, but they were in afghanistan, we were afraid we were going to have a russian defector and we weren't sure what we would do with him, how we get him out of the country. so we we were exploring all the possibilities in that part of the which was really a pretty fun trip trip. and here's what we came with. this is the solution to that problem. to you, it probably looks a

dolly that you'd find in any warehouse with a couple of cases of water could be coke cans, can be beer again, could be anything. it could be boxes of ibm paper. but we wanted to clear bottles of clear liquid. it's part of the illusion when you look at it you think oh i see that's water it's a it's going to be heavy she's to when she's pushing this around she's going to have to kind of put some muscle because it's going to be heavy because that load but that's not what is at all it is a concealment device to put a russian defector in should he come across to us. and it's how we would get him out of our embassy. and then it became bigger, had these in lots of embassies. there was a thing where depending in really authority and countries, if a local citizen came in who shouldn't be there, they they'd wait outside with guns. they'd wait for him to come out.

they knew that he would come out and they'd take him away. and this is how we got people out of those kinds of situations. this was good example of what we'd give the magic builders a problem and they would give us a solution. so i told you that i don't talk about where i was, but they didn't. i couldn't show you pictures. so here's a picture of a place that i was i probably visited this country more than almost any other amerin have. i was i was up there a lot, loved it there flying kites. these little monks there were so cute. same place is a picture that i didn't buy. i always thought if i go back, i'll the hat. but now i don't go back. so part of what i was doing as chief of disguise, because when i came home, they made me first deputy a disguise i didn't want to be the deputy and. then they made me chief a

disguise. i didn't want that either. i figured if i had stayed there long enough, they would have had me running the cia because they it was catnip. the fact that i didn't care about being promoted, i'm just. i'm just kidding. i wouldn't have been doing that. but. but it was the men were kind of irritated because they all wanted to be promoted. and i wasn't really working for promotion and then i kept getting promoted while. i was chief of disguise. we working so hard on mask technology and for the first years that i was retired, we didn't talk about masks. it was still considered secret. it is no longer secret. so i can folded into this conversation that we're going to have. we had always used hollywood double masks like brad think what's his name, the guy that did argo ben affleck. we had like the top half of their face and maybe a beard. and we could we could use those

masks carefully because you couldn't get too close to them. they didn't really move, but they were effective. if if somebody is going by on a horse and it was supposed to be pitt, it looked like brad pitt. now, if you wanted to have lunch with him, it look like brad pitt at all. we said we were trying to get better. we were trying to something full face mask that moved that you could up here on this stage. and i could brief you and you would know that i had on a mask. now i know you're thinking she's going to take it off now, right? she's. and i wish that were true, but my mask it was in a cardboard box in the archives in the basement of cia headquarters. it's turning green. it's of no use to anyone anyone. so it also had to be fast on and fast off. you had to be able to put it on in the dark, in in in a parking lot with no lights, no. and then somebody was after you,

you had to be able to take it off, squish it down into nothing and put it in your armpit. these were the design requirements. it took us almost ten years to come up with the first one. the first one turned me into an african-american man. i looked pretty good. i gloves. i had a suit and tie. i, i looked all right. so i went into my office. director to show him and he said. oh, my god, this is just so good. good, so good. so we went and it to the director of the cia. he liked it and he said, we're going to take you to the white house. and i said, whoa, whoa, i can't walk into the white house pretending to be a man. i mean, this looks great. yes, but but secret service, give 30 seconds with me and they're going to arrest me. so i said, let's let's just make me another woman. and that's what we ended up doing. and we did take it to the white house, took it to the white

house when george h.w. bush was th presint. i wore the mask into office, the names that's webster on the far right. the beige coat is just sununu. the next one is bob gates. the next one is brant scowcroft. and of course, george h.w. i took to the a folder of pictures him in disguise because. we had done stuff with him. he had been director of the cia. i said, i'll wait till you see what we've got now. and he's looking around my like for a bag. i said, i'm wearing it. so i'm just going to, just take it off and show it to you. and he said don't take it off yet. and he got up. he came over, he walked. he's looking. he didn't even know what he was looking for. he was just looking. couldn't see anything. sit back down. he said okay. take it off. so i did that thing which by the

way is called today tom cruise peale. i'm a modest i'm not going to go after it, but it could have another name. and i'm holding it up to show him, the hair, everything. it's just and it's light as a feather and it falls up in nothing. and i didn't put it under armpit, but and he really liked it. and everybody in the room liked it. and from a from a managerial point of view is my program at cia and i need more money for my program because this is going to cost us a bunch money. but having the president give it a nod wasn't a bad marketing ploy so. so i'm the first one to leave. that's why i said on the right as as as we briefed people left. i'm the first one out the door and right behind me is white house photographer who took this picture. and she said, what was that? i said, what she said, what did you do?

i said, oh, i said, i can't talk about it. it's classified she gives me this look like lady, are you messing with me? it took her ten years to send me the photograph she was messing with me. and when she said me the time i saw this picture, she had airbrush the mask out and left part of my in with finger sticking out. so it looks like i'm talking to the president of the united states like people come in my and they say wow that's a really interesting photograph of you. what were you saying to him? and i say, well, i can't talk about it. it's now they know they didn't know until now. this is colin powell coming into the office. we had worked with operation desert storm, with supported his people. we had done a lot of stuff him when he left, i told my boss, if

he runs if he runs something, anything i will vote for him. what a man. and then the cold war was over. it was done. we won. nobody really knew what do tony i tony mendez, my husband. we went to the greenbrier to celebrate it. we were feeling really good that we had had just the tiniest the tiniest part in ending that cold war. then they started the international spy museum. have any of you been anybody been to have you been to the new one? there's another one. a new one? yeah. we worked on that museum for three years before it even opened with mr. mott cleveland. it's his museum. it's going gangbusters. it's right now. they've got 17 of the james bond on display in one room. it is stunning. it's just don't even like cars, but it's just it's so beautiful.

so even today, even after tony is gone. i spend a lot of time with talking to corporate groups, talking to school kids. actually, i come up to i come up to university of maryland in the summer five times and talk to 1200 kids, 200 at a time. they got to spend a week each group spends a week in washington, dc taking a look at their government. and i suggest that they consider their future careers while they're we went to the oscars for argo so it's amazing there's absolutely now things just like being hit by lightning the odds of happening are so slim. here's tony who was never ever ever going to tell that story. he had to tell the story and after he did that, he kind of liked it. we i was invited up to new york

by wired.com. wired.com is the story of argo was first written it was written as bait for hollywood. george clooney took the bait. that's why the movie was made. then they said back, we'll do some more stuff. so i've done like four different videos up there with wired.com and they have gotten 23 million views. people really interested in spying. this is a picture one world trade center. we're doing wired video. that's my son jesse tony's son jesse. he had just done on the run out on the streets of manhattan at lunchtime with a film crew and. what that is is is it's it's idea that you can change you could use the crowd as part of your disguise you can literally walk down the street and just change while you're walking and the people behind they're going to lose you and they'll think

it's their fault they'll never understand what you did. jesse came out of a out of it office in a suit and tie. what doesn't else? what kind end to this crowd? and he did this things. he pulled his tie off because it was velcroed in the back, rolled it up, put in his pocket, grabbed his shirt, pulled it straight down because it was velcroed in the back and it have any sleeves because i'd cut off the night before reaches pocket pulled out one of those flimsy bags you get from the grocery put the shirt in the bag how did it go? he reached in another pocket, pulled out a beanie. he reached in a back pocket. guys out. he had his earphones on. he pulls them up puts them in. he's got his phone in his hand oh and now oh he had taken off his blazer. it was one of these and construct. so he rolled that up, put in the bag, pulled out another bag, put the first bag in the second bag

and now you can that he's got full sleeve tattoos that i put on him the night before and just his ugliest watch ever saw. it's like it's huge. and so you've got this guy bopping down the street and his beanie is ray-bans in his tats and his and the kid that in the suit and tie is gone. and no one blinked at what he was doing. and the film crew that we were showing this to so they could film it they couldn't film it because they lost him. they didn't know where he went. so it was it was it was kind of a win win thing. that was jesse's moment. he became famous with all of his friends because that the book is dedicated, ruth bader ginsburg. this is her kennedy center. i was there for an opera. she was there. nina totenberg was there. my i was a guest of someone when saw her, i started pulling out, you know, i'm i know how to do this. i got a little sequin purse in my phone. i'm getting it. and my friend said, no, no,

ferris, don't you'll embarrass her. don't do that. i said, okay well, i took her picture and. that's that's is that's as good as i could as i could get it. but will tell you that when she was going to kennedy, you would go you would take your seat. the opera house would dim the lights. everybody would be waiting for the music. and then the lights would come back up a little bit and everybody would turn. and here we come, ruth bader ginsburg down the center aisle with, an usher on each arm. and i mean, she was a little bitty woman, the whole opera house would stand up and cheer. she take her seat. they would deny it. and then the music would start. i thought, what a glorious way to to end your life. and this is for a cia gals. this is ruth. this is louise, our first superstar woman. she was bill secretary when the cia first began. and that's the end of my talk. and i think we have time for questions and we do.

thank you. we've about 10 to 15 minutes for your questions. if you could. the questions to this mike or to that mike over there, i'd be appreciate it. hi, love argo. i haven't read your book, but looking forward to it. how did you balance having to keep secrets and reporting with friendships? friendships were tricky when you worked for the cia. and my first husband told me about that, but i had already said yes to his proposal. so i any wiggle room left? what happens over time is you have friends outside of the cia and friends inside the cia, and you find that without a real

thought process, you letting go of the outside leaders, the friend is back home who who don't understand where you are why you're traveling or what you're doing and you're you're your cover story has to be so that it's really boring. nobody ever wanted nobody. my old friends never said, you know what? you what exactly do, you do. they just knew i for the military at point and i worked for the government another point so your original start fading away you make new friends inside the cia and everybody kind of gets it and we don't talk our jobs. but we understand that, you know, you could just suddenly be gone for a week and be back and and nobody's going like so you go although my first husband was he had we had a deal he had to bring back something to eat so he'd bring back a we'll have parmesan or a tray of baklava

or, you know, i could figure out where he was. so you have this family. this family is formed inside of the cia. but the joke on you, because eventually someday you will leave the cia. and when you do, there's this door they kind of clangs behind you. and now all of your friends that are still working there in, there, and all of those little inside jokes and all of the commonality, all that is now gone. and you you are an outsider and so you start separate from them and you then then then you have to confront either your original friends or your neighbors who've never, never known what you did anyway. and you have to confess and you have to. it's awful. and that's one of the not so good things about working for the cia is you have to you have to play that game. you must.

so along that same line, how about your relationship with your family how did that change you can tell your family is at your discretion discretion within the family. you can choose to tell people or not. my mother knew where i was, where i worked, and she was the whole time. but she's very discreet. woman my father, i told my dad where i work and him to be careful with that information. but could not be careful with it. he wanted to brag his daughter, but and it was it was, you know, you can't undo it. and i talked to him a couple of times and i said, i'm working. i'm still and he's he's like, i'm in wichita what? somebody is going to come here? i said, maybe, i don't know. but some people could be put in danger in. danger if if where i work was

known. my dad never i, i wished i had not told him. it was just it was a bad decision on my part. but family was was like that didn't tell friends my best friend. it's in this book my best friend while was working was a british girl. so i had to have her investigated because. she was my best friend and she was fine. she was dealer in foreign currency and then she knew i had some crummy job. the military, she felt sorry for me. she worked for my bank chase manhattan, and she'd make these $10 million mistakes call me and. oh, god, you're going to fire me. i just. i thought it was lira better, but in. and then after we retired we had 60 minutes came to one of our art shows, the whole film crew and liz, we sent a notice to everyone saying the media will be at our show, proceed

accordingly. but liz didn't get the memo. she came down to surprise me and ran into that film crew before she ran into and they're like, well, what was it like having this good friend working for the cia all those years and she didn't speak to me for about a year now? she speaks to me. but we are it'll never be best friends again because i lied to her those years and she was she was english. she was foreign. i mean, there was it's part of the deal. so there's so many, you know, tv shows and movies that center around spies. you mentioned impossible killing eve black. and i'm curious for you, which of those movies and tv shows and pop culture do you feel is most accurate to maybe your cia experience or someone else who knows cia experience? i love that question. i watched americans really hard.

i liked someone clap. oh, yeah that was good. and the fbi guy next door. oh, my god, that so right. the thing i didn't about the americans was and i bet it was movie stars. carrie. carrie russell. is that her name? her disguises? they just kept changing her hair. she's so pretty she's just so pretty. and then now she's got brown hair, and and then the next week, she's got red hair. she's so pretty. it just was a new hairdo. but he was brilliant. he was not he was not just putting on a wig. he was becoming the guy with that horrible hairdo and those little glasses. and he'd say, hello, martha i just i fell in love with that guy. oh, funny story. i was walking through the spy museum and his cubicles like it was everywhere. and a voice came out said, who's watching the americans? and i said, i am. and they said, washington post

needs a review. it it's going to end like in three weeks. will you do the review. i said sure yeah. well i didn't realize that it had been on for what six years. i canceled my life. i binge watch the americans endlessly endlessly and really studied it, wrote it. i wrote a really good review because i did like it and then i met joe weisberg was the creator and and we're on a zoom and. he's just saying, i really liked your review. i said, thank i really liked your show. and he says to what's the painting on the wall behind? because i'm in my office and it's big painting. i said, oh, that's tony's last painting because i didn't tell you my was an artist for his whole life, was a good artist. and joe weisberg, is that painting for sale? i said, no, it's mine. he said, could you make me a copy? i sure it's called a g. clay. i can have one made for you. he didn't say.

how much is it? he said it to me. so it was $2,500. i never heard him. yeah. anyway, i'm selling art on the side. if anybody wants, sue me and i'll. i'll make you such a such a deal. a bargain. but i did. i thought that show was. was the part about the kids. you got these kids running around and they know what you're doing. and and who are these people in the living room in the evening? we don't know. these people. who are they? what are you doing? and that's just so real. and the fbi neighbor was price list. joe weisberg worked for the cia and he really got it he you know where the where the hair or the trip wires are where the where where the danger is. i thought it well done. i was delighted to. watch that last chance. does anybody want to know i ever almost got shot. jonah? digitized sets.

and the book? it's in the book, but mostly. mostly people not shooting at me, except for three times an hour. the mission impossible disguises like yours. are they? but there's. there's a very realistic. but they're not real. they're cgi and. i mean, it's brilliant. it's the effects that they can achieve on a screen would would spur us onward. but we really had these masks that that part of the idea of them fitting under your your armpit was, like if they come around a corner and you have to make a move, you to just be able to do that. there's a man that lives in california who did in moscow. he took it off and he put it under a rock and he got away. so i talked him last year and i said, did you ever go back looking for it? did he said, oh, no, no, no. he said, they built a high rise.

he said, my mask is a high rise in downtown moscow. there's a kgb museum. um, where what they call foreign finds when they, when they get our, whether it's disguise or electronics or whatever, they put american spy stuff in the kgb museum, just like in the museum in d.c., we have a lot of russian stuff. we have that we captured. then we start copying each other we look at their cameras and we go, oh, that's nice. but we would change it. we would, we would do that. and then we'll make one of those and then they'll capture that it goes back and forth. it's fun. please help me. thank john mendez.