Spy Lie

by Robert Lopresti

I just saw the movie Argo and I feel like I should say something about it because I wrote about it several years before it was made.  Well, not exactly.  But I wrote a piece on Criminal Brief called A Real-Life Genuine Phony Hollywood Spy Story,which was about the bizarre true event that served as a basis for Argo.  If you aren't familiar with it here's the one-sentence synopsis: during the Iranian hostage crisis the CIA got six hostages out by pretending they were a Canadian film crew.

So here's my review: it's a good movie.  You'll like it.  But you'll like it better if you don't read my earlier piece first, because the more you know about what really happened the more likely you are to be annoyed by the parts the movie gins up.  Apparently a spy sneaking into an insane theocracy to slip out six civilians, knowing that a single mistake could get them all beheaded was not suspenseful enough for Hollywood without a few added gimmicks.  Sigh.

I blame it on Irving Thalberg.  I believe he was the producer in the 1930s who dictated that every movie had to end with a 99 yard dash for a touchdown.  Apparently Ben Affleck and friends decided that the ball wasn't quite far enough back for the climax so they had to libel the Carter administration (who apparently did not look quite bad enough in real life) and bring in a lot of machine guns.  Plus they invented an airline  pilot so oblivious to the world around him that he made those two clowns who flew a state or two past their destination a few years ago look like paragons of alertness.

Honestly what annoyed me most was not the lies they put in so much as the facts they left out to make room (or because they didn't fit the story they were telling).  Here are a few true incidents that did not make the movie (which remember, is both funny and suspenseful):

• The forgers put the wrong date on some of the passports, indicating that the carriers were travelers from the future. 
• The Canadian cabinet had to meet in secret to authorize false passports.  Then the authorities refused one to the CIA agent, because he had not been included in the vote.
• When the hero visited the Iranian consulate, he left his portfolio in the taxi cab.
• The CIA agents’ map of Tehran led them to the Swedish embassy instead of the Canadian one. 
• On the morning of the actual escape, our hero slept through his alarm. 

Wouldn't you think some of those items were worth including?  And then there was the equally suspenseful escape of the Canadian embassy staff which had to be perfectly timed, but didn't fit in with the phony scene the producers put in Argo.  Honestly, I liked the movie, but the more I think about it the more irritated I get.

And let me say that one reason I liked is that any flick which gives a juicy comic part to Alan Arkin does a service for mankind.  (And the fact that Arkin's character is a composite didn't bother me at all..)

Here's the irony, by the way.  I was at a songwriting group this week and  a woman had written a song about a real person.  I told her "you have to decide whether you're serving the person or the song."  In other words, she was cleaving too closely to the truth.  So call me a hypocrite, I guess.

Tangential episode: Speaking of the CIA, more than a decade ago I was at a dinner party and was seated near the new boyfriend of a woman I know.  I asked him what he did for a living and he said he was an engineer.  Well, practically everyone in my wife's family is an engineer so I asked what kind.  "Systems engineer," he said, and put so much unspeakable boredom into those two words that I changed the subject.

Later my friend told me that the guy was actually an analyst for the CIA.  And after he found out that I am a government documents librarian he was kind enough to send me a few books published by the CIA for my collection - nothing classified, I assure you.

Back when the CIA used to send a lot of paper documents to federal depository libraries like mine (now they don't because "everything is on the web," which it isn't but don't get me started on that), we used to receive pocket atlases of major cities in communist countries.  These  map books were highly prized because they were much more accurate and complete than maps of Peking and Moscow that you could actually buy there.  But nowhere on the entire publication would you find the publisher's name.  For some reason, people didn't wander around those cities carrying something that said CIA on it.  Go figure.

And go see the movie.  Just remember one thing that the film makes a point about: spies and movie moguls never let the truth get in the way of a good story.

A rose is a rose is a rose...

A friend who knows I'm a lover of great mysteries discovered a new-to-me novel and sent it for a non-holiday gift. The copy of David Morrell's THE SPY WHO CAME FOR CHRISTMAS is a delight as only the Rambo creator could write, but also interesting is the tidbit attributed to the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Espionage. It seems the explanation of the rose representing the spy profession links back to Greek mythology when the god of love offered a bribe of a rose to the god of silence in promise of keeping confidential overheard sins of other gods.

When a rose hangs from a ceiling, perhaps someone isn't simply drying flowers for romantic sentiments, but the conspirators dealing in a pact. When a discussion is held beneath a suspended rose, sub rose, the information is agreed by those involved to be kept secret. Perhaps it is as clandestine as two lovers meeting in seclusion. The ideas suggested to me intrigues the imagination.

That is, it did, until I noticed two long-stemmed roses hanging in the teenage bedroom of our home. Since most teenagers are by nature, secretive to "older" relatives, I may have stumbled upon a clue to those "meetings with the Bro's" that accompany the turn of the lock after they file inside the lair I am not often welcomed.

It's okay. I am old enough not to be slighted and feel young enough to remember when I though the same way about some of the older folks in my own life.

Thinking of the James Bond books where the spies led glamorous lives with clever inventions that saved the day, but were to be kept underwraps to the public, I understand.

While other girls were asking Santa for a Barbie dream house, I secretly coveted a spy camera. I still want one.

Spy characters are fun to read about and to write about, too. I like the idea of meetings held undercover with secret handshakes and traditional passwords. What fun we have as readers to live such adventures through a character's viewpoint without having to put ourselves on the line.

Roses hanging by a cord from a ceiling fan probably are dried remains of a lovely memory of prom date and nothing more. That doesn't keep my mind from creating scenarios where something much more interesting is happening behind locked doors with a roomful of bro's.