Escape from Tehran

Damian Lewis: Spy Wars • Season 1 • Episode 5

About this episode

This is the story of eight filmmakers sent to Tehran to scout locations for a big budget, Hollywood-produced sci-fi fantasy film as depicted in the award-winning film Argo. In January 1980, two CIA agents and six employees of the US embassy in Iran arrived at Mehrabad Airport, Tehran with fake passports, papers and scripts. This is the remarkable story of how one man used inspiration from Hollywood to school six frightened diplomats in the art of ‘being someone else’, and score a victory for the CIA, in one of the darkest moments for American foreign policy.