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. um, some quick notes if you haven't already. books are 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 on may 9th. go to pratt library dot org to find out more and reserve your tickets and now for tonight's program tonight i'm to welcome jonna mendez to pratt library to discuss her new book in true face a woman's in the cia unmasked. in it, she talks about her cia career as a contract wife performing secretarial 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 spy and what it took to it. jonna mendez is a former chief of disguise with over 25 years of experience as a cia officer working in moscow and other sensitive areas with. her late husband, tony mendez. she is the bestselling coauthor of argo, the moscow rules and spy. the washington post called the book engaging and enlightening and true face is an important addition to the canon of nonfiction books about an institution encrusted in myths created by movies. novels, hostile intelligence services, and occasionally the itself. publisher, publishers weekly says that mendez details her fascinating career in this gripping memoir, an entertaining and enlightening into the opaque world of spycraft.

and in curtis's 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. welcome jonna mendez to the stage. thank you. may get organized just for a. i brought my book just in case. i wanted to read a chapter you. good evening. i wasn't sure if anyone would come. i i've been watching baltimore on my tv all as everyone has and just now got caught up on what's

what happening there. it's it's quite a day. it's a memorable day. i'm looking for the clicker. where's the clicker at? we do this every time i speak. i'm an i'm an idiot when it comes to to things technical. anyway so i'm going to talk to you about my book called in true face. did that make 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 underscore for for women is without makeup. that's your true face. you know when you wake up in the morning, that's your true 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

as the real person that you are. i was never sure when i named 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 to begin with. i wrote the book during covid my had passed two years previously. my dog had passed about six months previously and it was just me during. i did about six jigsaw puzzles myself and i photographed them and sent them to my friends. 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 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 still classified. but overall, 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 it is it's a little sketchy about where i am. there are a lot of cities that they didn't me talking about being in 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 should have been for her. i would have i would have done differently. okay so this is the memoir and as i'm writing it, i discovered that i couldn't just tell my story, my of a woman in the cia. it's not a standalone.

there were lots of women in the cia in various in various roles and we all had issues there's that there's a new times journalist who's written about the cia for years and he didn't ever really like 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 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 tim wrote it and i thought, well, you know, that's my book. and he's not going to like. just want to go on record is saying he loves this book.

he was so effusive it was embarrassing. i have completely changed my 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 actually 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, kansas. i was going wichita state university when my best friend went off to germany to marry an american second lieutenant. i think that's the lowest level of military officer. dumb that you that's where you start. that's that's it. that's 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 of honor while growing up in

wichita, kansas. i'd been trying to figure out how i was going to since i was about six, and i knew. i wanted to leave. i just couldn't ever make the plan. jl and there it was. go to germany be in sherry's wedding. and i did that. so this is the picture kind of, i don't know, i'd been there maybe a. i don't know who this young man was, but i know he was introducing me to german beer with it with a ceramic top, you know, and i'm sorry i like to take that cigaret out of my hand, but i cannot. i came from the land, 3.2 beer in when i was a teenager in wichita. you not drink enough beer to get a buzz going. you just couldn't consume that much beer and in germany. they would pour you a if you were seven years old. they didn't care at all. i turned 21 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 green, it was damp. it was luscious, it was hilly, it was trees, everything. the kansas not. so i thought i'd stay. now, my friend sherry and husband, they got a train. they went to. they went to italy on their honeymoon. and there i was just me from kansas drinking. so what i is, i got on a train and i went to frankfurt. frankfurt, germany, which is a big economic center in lots of banks. lots of banks. so in the train station, i found a phone booth with a phone book. i a big handful of deutschmarks and alphabetically started calling american banks just because i recognized the initially i wasn't necessarily thinking i want to work in a bank.

i was thinking an american company is going to be more likely to me. so first i call 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 age i called of america. that was the bs. i said, i'm looking for a job. they said, not here. no, we're not interested. i. what was the third one started with a c can't remember. they said, no, no we, don't have a job for you. and then 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 said, no i said do. you have a work permit which is required to work in germany? i said, i don't. and they said, why 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. the second ticket was a job where i could support myself and stay in europe. i think i was almost 20 when that happened. and so that was the beginning of a very interesting a very life, i might say. i was in the bank these young 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 chat with. and i started dating one. his name was john and a year and a half after i met him i married him and switzer ireland which is the las vegas of europe. you thought it's all mountains and cheese and those cows. the bells. but behind that facade 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 so. so john and i got married. here goes the clicker. it. these are my wedding. no long white? no. all oh, the acute trademark of an american wedding are missing my little white mini dress is what i got married in. and that volkswagen beetle, which is brand new, we1500 dollars for it. that was our going away picture. and off we went. we went we went to italy as well. john kaser was an interesting man. he had up in europe. his dad was a diplomat with state department. he spoke fabulous german. he skied like a ski champion because he went to school in switzerland and. that was part of their afternoon

lessons skiing one day and tennis the 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 in france or something. so every two years you would come back home. we went home on a ship, the ss united states the fastest and most luxurious ship that was afloat at that. and we went first class and everyone in first class is looking at us like, well, just a minute, you don't belong. you're too young. you don't rich enough. so john invented this story that he was this deejay from california and all these rich old people, they didn't know. they didn't know.

and the way john did not dance, my new husband did not dance. but i did. so i won the dance contest on the ship right here. this is my proof. took home to wichita to meet my sisters. those are my sisters. that's me that's me kind of in the middle as that's my dad's truck, which he named chicken fat. you can see it's perfect color and it's just, you know, an idea there were four sisters, jennifer, in the red shirt had escaped. she went to aspen. the other two were too young to escape, but they we watching us closely. they already making a plan. i ended up working for the cia as contract wife, and it was this odd little catch. if you're overseas if you're married overseas, you can come aboard the cia they still do a security thing but it's not huge and they will give you secretarial duties.

so i started working at cia a secretary now have to tell you, i'm a very good secretary they kept promoting me and promoting me to the point where i was working for the director of the office. it was about a thousand people in that office that 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 that i was thinking about going and talking them about a job because i didn't think what i had was a job i really wasn't that much work. and my boss said, hold on, don't leave. we we do some photog graffiti courses here in the office and i know you really like photography. i did. i was an avid amateur. he said, take some of our

courses. so now i should have just tell you for a moment about this office i was working in. it was q of cia just like q and james bond. we were cia. q we were the technical arm, the intelligence community, not just cia, primarily cia. we were composed of physicists, chemists electrical and mechanical engineers, all kinds of people with really fine technical skills that you don't bump into very often. we could create or make almost if if it didn't exist. but our case officers needed it. we would invent whatever. it was for them. it was a fashion, a place to 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 of d.c. there's a little twin engine plane.

they've taken the doors off so you can see through the plane and there's a harness in there to sit in kind of swing. that was my harness and there was a headphone is my headphone. they gave me a 35 millimeter camera. this is all 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 to learn while riding in an airplane, swinging in the harness with it, with the headphones on it called airborne platforms. and it was a day that i'll never it was just really a wonderful afternoon. we had some geese over here flying with us. we're going over the chesapeake bay. i said, low, how low can we go? we were if i stuck my toe out. it would have been it would it would've been wet anyway.

i segway into a career in photography at the cia. i was no longer a secretary but i didn't go into the big. i went 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 assignment i'm taking some photos of some concealment devices we had made. we have to make instructions for 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 can go through any immigration in the in the world and 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 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 an 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 pocket. so everyone would know how successful they were. but this one had a camera in it. in addition, the ink. so while the pen would write an upper left hand corner, that smallest that the camera 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. ours was small, that it fit the camera that was inside the pen. and there was a piece film that's about that long. it's about eight inches long. and when i developed it, it would have 100 tiny black dots on it. and 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. so with this, this was one of our best tools during the cold war because we only gave it to our most our assets who the best access. so imagine today that someone walks into putin's office with a little notepad and his pen and he's talking to putin and he is writing down, okay, i 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 silent he made no noise. take a picture of the minutes of the meeting or the agenda for the meeting. what's going to. that's what we were after. one of the people at work used to disagree with me and say those weren't that great. we had cash.

we had all these satellite systems up there. we had pictures of 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 and over our purpose was to collect intelligence on the plans and intentions of our enemies and get it back to washington dc. what are they planning? what are they going do? what is putin going to do what's china going to do next? what's that north korean with those those missiles and that nuclear? what are they planning? that's what they want to know. and these cameras one very, very good way to find out. now i didn't do just photography you don't just one thing in places and at cia you certainly so i spread out the systems i was working with i was training foreign assets.

and electronic encrypted electron communication in russia. 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 would have terrible, terrible time. it was so dangerous that we didn't meet face to face with them unless we absolutely had to. we did what's called in personal communication, and that's what the electronic communication was. you dial a shortwave radio in russia and you just hear this voice, just strings of numbers and you knew your time. you knew your day. you dial to the right and you'd hear groups of five numbers, a pause, groups of five numbers. they do it three times and, you'd write them down, and then then you would go find your walnut or, whatever you 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 them and you'd be able read your message. that was one of many. we communicated with our agents is very very secure now you're thinking so you communicated with dead rats. now did not we didn't communicate them, but we the sign says we used gutted rats. i would say that the taxidermists did taking 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 unfunny taxidermy rat. and we would hide kinds of things in them. money film developer for a secret writing system medicine for their kid they couldn't get in moscow whatever they needed whatever we needed you can get

lot of stuff in a dead rat. this this as they're doused with pepper sauce and that's wrong they were doused with tabasco sauce a good american product and we did that because while no one in the world will pick up knowingly pick up a dead rat, that's we chose them. an animal will dog would. a wolf would but once they had it in their mouth and that tabasco go went to work, they'd run off and wouldn't pick it up again. so my work became a traveling person and i was traveling around introducing people to some of the possibilities with photography, how to use that pen, how to use lot of other concealed things. i saw today just one of those things on facebook and it said the east germans have figured how to put a camera in a bra. so i'm looking because we already knew how to do that we did that more than once but i

decided today that the east german bras are prettier than than the bras that we used so i'm traveling around europe teaching people bringing stuff to them picking stuff from them and every once in a while stopping in a bar for some more that german beer this is not german beer. they had german beer in bar the never say never again. something that a lot of people might not. we were in an area that was trying to 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 strangulating russian embrace that we could not collect intelligence because they were everywhere and they almost succeeded in doing that.

but we up with some new tools that they never knew about. they know about them now. i just would love to hear them talking about the cia's use of, you know. we have a lot of things in this country that are unique to 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 so much we weren't interested in the magicians. we were interested in the magic builders, the people whose whose profession is to build dcep and and to create a illusions that you even stay tearing at them. 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 the man that built the process that allows him to do that. flying your eyes tell, you he

cannot be on wires everything you're looking for that. little arc of a swing. and then the none of that they took it all away. he's simply flying when saw him he flew into a plexiglass box on a big stage, which was a big box. it must have been 20 feet long. and 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 tap dancing on top of the box. and he's still flying in the box. and i mean, it was just it was it was wonderful to observe this. well, we wanted to build some deceptions and illusions of our. and so what we ended doing is we hired of these magic builders for the entirety of my career. we worked these people specifically against the kgb in

moscow, although we used so o their ideas, of their tools elsewhere. we started out tryg to me something called a jack in the box, a jib for surveillance purposes it was to be a pop up dummy. it'd be in the passenger. they trail you in cars. they're usually not next to you. they're never in 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 or party doll. you do have other names. we bought one. we two of our young engineers to buy it. they were so embarrassed we sent them back. buy six more later and they said they said later they said we will not go back to that store

but what we only wanted the top half and we tied that off and we got a briefcase and we put the doll the briefcase and we got two canisters of compressed gas kind of small on each side. and we closed it all up and there was a button and you push button and she's going to spring up. we sent it to eastern, a quiet and one of our wives took it for test drive and driving down the road and nobody's around and 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 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 when it happened. and we decided that was good. so we changed it around a little

bit. the second one that we fielded test drive it, it went up okay. it good. it was good. you were behind in a car. you just see silhouette 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 car dealership sometimes and you see those things waving so she's she's doing that and she it would have taken her a half an hour to get back so that wasn't it either and we ended up we two we took our idea to the magic builders and. it took them like a week and they did this incredible scissor mechanism that you hit the button, she's up, you hit the button, she's down. it's very light it's quite portable. you can put in 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 book how using that jib, that starts out in a birthday cake allowed our chief of station to get to one of the best agents we ever had and it was an it was an eventful evening. so they did all kinds of tiny things for us. they did some big things for us. this is my last summer. i was visiting one of them and he took my all to the five of me. okay, so the traveling things changed too, because i spent a summer in the subcontinent. they won't me say where you all know where the subcontinent is. i loved it out there and came back to washington and told them that i would like an out there. i would like to live and then i would travel from 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 career 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 to the guys, yeah, you can do this. and then you say well, now i want to go do that. so my first husband said, i don't know. anyway, i went out there, it was my this overseas tour was my assignment and my husband was my dependent. he accompanied they considered him a househusband, which is the worst term ever because, man, no man's got to walk around with that label on him. my my house husband, in fact, was a full staff officer disguised as a house husband. so so he was he was okay with it? this was a trip.

we were going up to peshawar, were worried that a russian member, when the russians were in afghanis and some of you were a little young, 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 how we get him out of the country. so we were exploring all the possibilities in that part of the world, which was really a pretty fun trip. and here's what we came up with. this is the solution. that problem, too. you had probably looks like a dolly that you'd find in any warehouse with a couple of cases of water could be coke cans, can be beer again, can be anything. it could be boxes of ibm paper. but we wanted clear bottles of a clear liquid. it's part of the illusion when. you look at it, you think, oh, see, that's water. it's a it's to be heavy.

she's going 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 of that load. but that's not what it is at all. it is a concealment device to 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. we had these in lots of embassies. there was a thing where depending in really authoritarian countries, if a local citizen came in who shouldn't be there, then they'd wait outside with guns. they'd wait for him to come out. they knew that he would come and they'd take him away. this is how we got people out of those kinds of situation actions. this was a good example of what the 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 say i couldn't show you

pictures. so here's a picture of a place i was i visited this country more than almost any other american could have. i was i was up there a loved it. they're 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 get 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 disguise. i didn't want to be the deputy and. then they made me chief a disguise. i want that either. i figured if stayed there long enough, they would have had me running the cia because they it was catnip. but 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 were kind of irritated because they all wanted to be promoted and i wasn't really working for a promotion then i kept getting promoted while was chief of

disguise. we were 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 very secret. it is no longer secret. so i can fold it into this conversation that we're going to have. we had always used hollywood stunt double masks like brad pitt. think what's his name, the guy that did argo, ben affleck. we had like the top half their face and maybe a beard and we could we could use those masks very 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 brad, it looked like brad pitt. now, if you wanted to have lunch with him, it look like brad pitt at all. so we were trying to get better. we were trying do something full face mask that moved that. you could stand up here on the

stage and i could breathe and you would not know that i had on a mask. now i know you're. 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, the basement of cia headquarters. it's turning green. it's of no use to anyone. so it also had to be fast and fast off. you had to be able to put it on in the dark in a in in a parking lot with no lights mirror. and then if somebody was after you, you had to be able to take it off, squish it down into 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 mean, i looked all so i went into my office director to show

him and he said, oh my god, this is just so good, so good, good. so we went and showed it to the director, the cia. he liked it and he said, we're going to take you to the white house. and i said, hold 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 it house when george h.w. bush was the president and i we e mask into his office, the names that's judge webster on the far right. the beige coat is, john sununu. the next one is bob gates. the next one is brant scowcroft. and of course, george h.w., i took to the president a folder

of pictures of him in because we had done stuff with him. he had been the director of the cia. i said, but oh, wait till you see what we've got now. and he's looking around my chair like for a bag. i said, i'm wearing . so i'm just going to just take it off and show it to you and said, don't take it off y. and he got up. it came over, he walked around. he's looking. he didn't even know he was looking for. he was just looking, couldn't see anything. sit back down. he okay, take it off. so i did that thing which by the way is called today tom cruise peale. i'm a modest woman. i'm not going to go after it. but they could another name and i'm holding it up to him. the hair, everything is just and it's light as a feather and it folds up into nothing. and i didn't it under my armpit, but and he really it and everybody in the room liked it.

and from a from a managerial point of view, this is my program at cia and i need more money for my program because this is going to cost us a bunch of 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, i'm the first one out the door. and right behind me is the 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 she gives me this look, lady, are you messing with me. it took her ten years to send me the photograph. she was messing with me. and when she sent me the first time i saw this picture, she had airbrushed the mask and left part of my hand in with a finger

sticking out. so it looks like i'm to the president of the states like this. people come in my house and they say, that's a really interesting photograph of you. what were you to him? and i well, i can't talk about it. it's classified now. they know. they didn't know until now. this is colin powell coming into the office. we had worked with him operation storm, which supported his people. we had done a lot of stuff for him when he left. i told my boss, if he runs if he runs for something, anything, i will vote for him. what a man. and then the cold was over. it was done. we won. nobody knew what to do. tony and i, tony mendez, my husband. we went to the greenbrier to to celebrate. we were feeling really good that we had had just the tiniest the

tiniest part, an ending cold war. then they started the international spy museum. have any of you been anybody been to you been to the new one? there's another one. a new. yeah, well we on that museum for three years before it even opened with mr. mott cleveland. it's his museum. it's going, it's right now they've got 75 of the james bond cars on display in one room. it is stunning it's just i don't even like but it's just it's so beautiful so even today, even after tony is gone, i spend a lot of time with museum, talking to corporate groups, talking to school kids, actually i come up to they come up to university of maryland in the summer five times and talk to 1200 kids, 200 every 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 they're here. we went the oscars for argo so it's amazing there's absolutely that whole thing was just like being hit by lightning the odds of that are so slim. here's tony who was never, 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 where the story of argo was first written. it written as bait for hollywood. clooney took the bait. that's why the movie was made. then they said, come 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 of one world trade center. we're doing a wired video. that's my son, jesse. tony's son jesse. he had just done disguise the run out on the streets of manhattan at lunchtime with a film crew and. what that is is is it's it's this idea that you can change. you could 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 understand what you did. jesse came out of a out of it office in a suit and tie with doesn't walked kind of into this crowd and he did these things he pulled his tie off because it was velcroed to the back, rolled it out, put in his pocket, grabbed his shirt, pulled it straight down because it was velcroed in the back and it didn't have sleeves because i'd

cut him off the night before, reaches 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, out a beanie. i. he reached in a back pocket, guys out. he had his earphones on. he pulls them, 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 constructed. 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 see that he's got full sleeve tattoos that i put on him the night before and just his ugliest watch you ever saw. it's like it's huge. and so you've got this guy bopping down the street in his is ray-bans and his tats and and the kid in 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 a win win thing. that was jesse's moment. he became famous with all of his friends because of that. the book is dedicated, ruth bader ginsburg. this is her kennedy center. i was there for an opera. she was there. nina was there. my i was a guest of someone when i saw her, i started out you know, i'm i don't know how to do this. i got a little sequined purse get my phone. i'm getting it. and my friend said, john, no, no, they don't feel embarrassed or 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 i will tell you that, when she was going to kennedy center, you would go and you would take your seat, the opera house, they would dim the lights. everybody would be waiting for the music. and then the would come back up a little bit and everybody would turn and, here we come, ruth

bader ginsburg down center aisle with an usher on each arm. and i mean, she was just a little bitty woman. the whole opera house would stand up and cheer. she take her seat. they would dim the lights and then the music would start. i thought, what a glory way to to enjoy life. and this is for cia. this is ruth. this is louise, our first superstar woman was bill donovan's secretary. the cia first began and. that's the end of my talk. and i think we have time questions and we do. thank you. we've we've about 10 to 15 minutes for your question. if you could bring the to this mike, go to that mike over there. would be appreciate it. hi. hi, love.

argo, i haven't read your book yet, but looking forward to it. how did you balance having to keep secrets and reporting with friendships? friendships were when you worked for the cia cia. and my first husband told me about that, but i had already said yes, his proposal. so there wasn't any wiggle room left. what happens over time is you have friends of the cia and, friends inside of the cia, and you find that without a real thought process, you start letting go of the outsiders, the friends home who who don't understand where you are or why you're traveling or what you're doing. and you're you're your cover story has to be so boring. that it's really boring. and nobody ever wanted nobody ever. my old friends never said, you know, what do you what exactly

do you do? they just knew i worked for the military at one point, and i for the government at another point. so you're original friends. start fading away. you make new friends inside the cia and everybody kind of gets it. and we don't talk about our jobs but. we understand that, you know, you could just suddenly gone for a week and be back and and nobody's going like, so where'd you go? although my first husband was he had we had 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 that kind of clangs behind you. and now all of your friends that are still working there in their and all of those little inside

jokes and all of the commonality, all of that now gone. and you are you are an outsider. and so you start separating from them and and you then then then you to confront either your original friends or your neighbors, never, never known what you anyway. and you to confess. and you have to it's awful. and that's one of the not so good things about for the cia is you have to you have to play that game but you must. so along that same line how your relationship with your family how did that change you can tell family is at your discretion. within the family you you can choose to tell people or not. my mother knew where i was, where i worked and she was worried the whole time. but she's very discreet.

woman my father, i told dad where i work and cautioned him to be careful with that information, but he could not careful with it. he to brag about his daughter 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 still 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. 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, 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 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 with 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 say. oh, god, you're going to fire me. i just. i thought it was lira better. but again. and after we retired, we had 60 minutes came to one of our art shows. the film crew and liz. we sent out 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 into that film crew before she ran into me. 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 me for about a year now, speaks to me. but we are. it'll never be best friends again because i lied to her all those years and she she was

english she was foreign. i mean, there was it's part of the deal. so there's so many, you know, tv and movies that center around spies. you mentioned mission impossible, killing eve, black panther, and i'm for you, which of those movies and tv shows and pop culture do you feel is most accurate to maybe your experience or someone else who knows experience? i love that question. i watched the americans really hard, liked someone clap. oh yeah, that was good. and the fbi guy next door. oh, my god, that was so right. the thing i like about the americans was and i bet it was movie. carrie keri russell is that her name, her disguise. 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 it was a new hairdo. he was brilliant. he was not just he was not just putting a wig. he was becoming the guy with that horrible and those little glasses. and he'd say, hello, martha i just i fell in love. that guy. oh, oh. funny story. i was walking through the spy museum and it's cubicles just like it is 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's going 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 and really studied it, wrote it. i wrote a really good review

because i did like it. and then i, joe weisberg, who was the creator and and we're on zoom and he's just saying, i really liked your review i said, thank you. i really liked your show. and he says to me, what's a painting on the wall behind you? because i'm in my office and it's a big painting. i said, oh, that's tony's last painting. i didn't tell you my husband was artist for his whole life. he was a artist. and joe weisberg, is that painting for sale? i said, no, it's mine. he said, could you make me a copy. i said, sure. it's called a g clay. i can have one made for you. he didn't even say, how much is it? he said, ship 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. i thought that show was. was the part about the you got these kids running and they

don't know what you're doing and and who are these people in the living room in the evening? we know these people. who are they? what are you doing? and that's just so real. and the fbi neighbor was priceless joe weisberg worked for the cia and he really got it. he understood it you know, where the where the hair where the trip wires are, where the where they where the danger. i thought it was well done. i delighted to watch that last chance. does anybody want to know if i ever almost got shot jonah? did you die. it's it's in the book. it's in the book. but mostly mostly people were not shooting at me except for three times. are the mission impossible disguised like wars are they? but there's a there's a very realistic but 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 corner and you have to make it move, you want to just be able to do that. there's a man that lives in california who did that in moscow. he it off and he put it under a rock and he got away. so i talked to him last year and i said. do you ever go back looking for it? he said, oh, no, no, no. he said, they built a high rise. he said, my mask is under a high rise in downtown moscow, there's a kgb museum where what call foreign finds when they when they get our whether it's disguise or electronics whatever they put americans spy stuff in the kgb museum just like in the museum 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, 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 jonna mendez as.