Hostages portrayed in 'Argo' recall escape from Iran

Joe and Kathleen Stafford came to town in April with an interesting story to tell. Their story is so good that somebody should make a movie about it.

Turns out somebody did. That somebody is named Ben Affleck, and I’m told he’s an up-and-comer in the movie bidness. This particular film won three Academy Awards, including best picture.

Perhaps you recall the 2012 movie “Argo.” I enjoyed it, as did the Staffords, who lived the real-life version (somewhat less Hollywoody than the movie version but amazing nonetheless) of the film’s depiction of the elaborate ruse used to bring six Americans home after they avoided being taken hostage with their colleagues at the U.S. embassy in Tehran in November 1979.

The Staffords moved to Austin after he ended his distinguished foreign service career with a final tour of duty in Sudan, where, as charge d’affaires, he ran the office because there was no appointed ambassador in place at the time. Like many foreign service folks, Stafford, now 64, served in a variety of places in a variety of roles, including in Nigeria, Iraq, Gambia, Ivory Coast, Tunisia, Algeria, Mauritania, Kuwait, Egypt, Italy and Iran.

In Iraq his embassy title was “director of anti-corruption coordination.” Sounds like full-time work, doesn’t it? His résumé notes the job involved “travel in armored vehicles, use of helmets and flak jackets.”

The Staffords had no connection to Austin prior to moving here. They met in an art history class at UT (the other one, the one in Knoxville, Tenn., that stole the Real UT’s acronym).

Why’d the Staffords pick Austin? Apparently our town’s buzzworthiness extends to the diplomatic corps.

“We heard from foreign service friends and others that the San Antonio-Austin corridor is a good place to settle down,” Stafford said, “and we decided on Austin, with full respect for the wonderful place that San Antonio is.”

Once a diplomat, always a diplomat.

Neither had spent any time here prior to beginning to check it out in recent years as his retirement approached. Kathleen Stafford, 63, an artist (see her work at KathleenStafford.wordpress.com) said she likes the “energy” around here.

She saw “Argo” several years ago and liked it. Joe had not seen it until earlier this year. For those who don’t recall, the movie (of the “based on a true story” genre) depicts how a CIA operative concocts and executes a plan to get six Americans, who hid at Canadian Ambassador Ken Taylor’s home in Tehran from the time of the November 1979 takeover until January 1980, back to the U.S. by having them pretend they were a film crew in Iran to look at potential locations.

In the movie, Stafford is portrayed as a doubter whose confidence in the plan had to be nurtured. (Trivia: Joe is played by Scoot McNairy, a graduate of the Real UT.)

“Let me put it this way,” Joe said when I asked if he was as skeptical as portrayed in the film, “I think I asked a lot of questions about it. I don’t know if that says I’m a doubter, but I asked a lot of questions about how the plan was going to work.”

The Tehran posting was his first in the foreign service. Kathleen, not a career foreign service person, also worked at the U.S. Embassy there. Iran already was a tumultuous place, in the throes of conversion from years of rule by the U.S.-backed shah, when the Staffords arrived.

It was, Joe recalls, a “stimulating environment” for a newly minted foreign service worker.

The Staffords recall an embassy meeting to talk about local repercussions from the decision to let the shah come to the U.S. for medical care. The possibilities ranged from nothing to seizure of the embassy. Nobody anticipated the 444-day hostage ordeal the Staffords escaped by slipping out of the U.S. Embassy and hiding with the Canadians.

It was, of course, a harrowing experience, even if less harrowing than the movie depicted. Two dramatic scenes in the movie — the fake movie crew going through a Tehran bazaar area and high tension at the airport before being cleared by Iranian officials to board a commercial flight to Switzerland — never happened.

In the early days and hours of the ordeal, the Staffords thought it would blow over. They were wrong.

“I called my mother,” Kathleen said. “I said, ‘We’re OK and don’t worry about anything. I’ll call you in a few days.’ Of course I didn’t call back for three months.”

A circuitous route, including a brief stay with Brits, brought them to the Canadians’ safe haven.

“I think the feeling was at some point this is all going to end and we, our group of six, would be reunited with our colleagues who had been taken hostage and we will all depart Tehran together,” Joe said.

Kathleen joked about the ever-present possibility they’d wind up as hostages. “That’s exactly what I planned, and that’s the clothes I packed,” she said. “I packed clothes that I could sit in and be tied in a chair and be comfortable.”

The escape plan cooked up by the CIA’s Tony Mendez, fantastic though it was, was deemed more plausible than others, including trying to leave as agricultural or oil officials or teachers.

The movie crew plan, Kathleen said, “sounded off the wall, just crazy.”

“But on the other hand, nobody had had a haircut in three months, so these guys had turned from clean-cut diplomats into sort of shaggy-looking people,” she said.

In the end, the key was making the Americans comfortable in their roles. None knew anything about oil. Only one knew something about agriculture.

Iranian officials “could have asked three questions about any of these and I would have had no answer,” Kathleen said. “But the Hollywood scene had me as a graphic artist. I’m an artist. I could pull that off. Ask me to draw something, I’ll do it.”

Another among them had an education in English, so she became the script writer.

“And Joe was going to be a producer or director and he had a turtleneck,” she joked about her husband’s qualifications for his role in the ruse.

All went well when they were confronted by Iranian officials at the airport. “Fortunately there was no probing and probing and probing,” Joe recalled.

As Joe’s résumé shows, the experience did not scare him from foreign service in precarious postings.

“My feeling was this is an unusual first assignment, but it’s been interesting to say the least,” he said.

Your new neighbors still are settling in and figuring out what’s next. Now retired from the State Department, Joe wants to stay involved in international affairs and is open to academia and the private sector. His business card identifies him as an “international affairs professional.”

They are affairs best left to professionals.