Edward B. Johnson, who as an anonymous C.I.A. agent in 1980 helped rescue six American diplomats during the Iran hostage crisis by casting them as a Hollywood crew scouting a Mideast location — an audacious escape that itself became grist for an Oscar-winning movie — died on Aug. 27 at his home in Fairfax, Va. He was 81.
The cause was complications of pneumonia, his son Harold said.
Documents detailing the Iran rescue were declassified by the Central Intelligence Agency in 1997, and another agent, Antonio J. Mendez, who had masterminded the scheme and recruited Mr. Johnson, wrote a book about the episode, “The Master of Disguise: My Secret Life in the C.I.A.” (1999).
The caper became the basis of “Argo,” a film directed by and starring Ben Affleck (as Mr. Mendez), which won the 2013 Academy Award for best picture.
Mr. Mendez died in 2019 without ever revealing his colleague’s name. Mr. Johnson was identified in the book only by his cover name, Julio, and wasn’t referenced in the film at all. And even at C.I.A. headquarters in Langley, Va., in a painting depicting the two agents forging visas for the diplomats, Mr. Johnson remained faceless, seen from behind.
Not until a year ago, in the season finale of “The Langley Files,” an official agency podcast, was Mr. Johnson’s pivotal role revealed publicly.
In a statement released by the agency, his family honored him as “a name that whispered through the corridors of intelligence.”
Mr. Johnson was a Sorbonne-educated linguist and expert at extracting informers, turncoats, undercover agents and other C.I.A. assets from the Soviet bloc during the Cold War. He had been assigned to the Office of Technical Services in Europe when Mr. Mendez enlisted him to help in the Iran rescue after militant Iranian students seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran on Nov. 4, 1979, and took 52 diplomats hostage.
Six American consular officials escaped and found refuge in the home of Kenneth D. Taylor, the Canadian ambassador. The challenge was how to evacuate the six from Iran covertly.
One State Department scheme was for them to bicycle out of the city masquerading as teachers, but that idea was scrapped. American and Canadian officials then settled on the dicey moviemaking plot.
In Hollywood, Mr. Mendez recruited a makeup and special effects artist, John Chambers, to supply the “film crew” with a rough script for a science-fiction film, titled “Argo,” that had been scrubbed years earlier. (In Greek mythology, Argo was the ship Jason and the Argonauts sailed in to rescue the Golden Fleece from the dragon holding it captive in the sacred garden.)
The two C.I.A. agents and the consular officials would pretend that they worked for “Studio Six,” an invented entity; Mr. Chambers even rented an office for it on Sunset Boulevard. He also provided filmmaking gear and disguises to make the diplomats look like Hollywood heavyweights. One man wore a silk shirt, unbuttoned down the front, and a gold chain and medallion.
“These are rookies,” Mr. Johnson recalled in an oral history. “They were people who were not trained to to lie to authorities. They weren’t trained to be clandestine, elusive.”
The escapade, which became known as “the Canadian Caper,” began on Friday, Jan. 25, 1980, when Mr. Mendez and Mr. Johnson, carrying Canadian passports and fake studio documents, arrived at Mehrabad International Airport in Tehran. On his way out Mr. Johnson managed cunningly to swipe some blank exit forms.
But the day took an inauspicious turn when, navigating with a local map, the agents wound up at the Swedish Embassy, directly across from the besieged American compound, instead of at the Canadian Mission. Improbably, though, an Iranian student demonstrator wandered over, gave them directions and hailed a taxi, refusing a tip.
“I have to thank the Iranians for being the beacon who got us to the right place,” Mr. Johnson later said.
Their performance was convincing. On Monday, Jan. 28, the American diplomats left in Canadian Mission vans instead of taxis so that they would remain together as a group. Assuming that the Iranians were monitoring their communications, the Canadians cabled Ottawa to say that they were providing security for the “film crew” because conditions in Tehran were unstable.
At the airport, Mr. Johnson played chaperone, tipping the porters as he escorted the Americans through customs on their way to boarding a Swissair flight to Zurich. After a final security pat-down and a mechanical glitch that briefly delayed the takeoff, the two agents and the diplomats were in the air and heading home.
“The biggest thing I think we did was to convince them that you can, you can do it — as simple as that,” Mr. Johnson said of the diplomats.
He recalled being stunned as he boarded the plane and saw that it was coincidentally named Aargau, after a Swiss canton, or state.
“What the hell?” he said. “We went in the plane, sat down, and after a bit — I forget when — I picked up The Herald Tribune and did the crossword puzzle. And one of the clues was Jason’s companions — Jason and the Argonauts.”
Mr. Mendez’s memoir and an article he wrote in Wired magazine in 2007 with Chris Terrio inspired the movie “Argo” — art imitating life imitating art. The hostages who had been seized at the U.S. Embassy were not released until Jan. 20, 1981, minutes after the inauguration of President Ronald Reagan.
Both agents received the C.I.A.’s Intelligence Star, its second-highest award. Mr. Johnson retired from the agency in 1995, worked as a government contractor and, his family said, explored his passion for photography.
Edward Bernard Johnson was born on July 29, 1943, in Brooklyn. His father, Edward, was an accountant. His mother, Mary (Cassidy) Johnson was a teacher.
He grew up in Huntington Station, N.Y., on Long Island, and graduated from St. Dominic High School in nearby Oyster Bay in 1961. He received a bachelor’s degree in French language from Assumption College (now University) in Worcester, Mass. He learned Spanish, he said, growing up with Cuban and Puerto Rican friends.
Mr. Johnson served in the Army, taught English in Saudi Arabia, earned a master’s in French civilization from the University of Paris and applied to the C.I.A.
In addition to his son Harold, he is survived by his wife, Aileen (Heal) Johnson, whom he married in 1973; three other sons, Geoffrey, Craig and Christopher; a daughter, Sheelagh Anthony; and nine grandchildren.
Mr. Johnson had preferred to remain anonymous for four decades until his family persuaded him to go public in the C.I.A. podcast.
“Even as the world celebrated his heroism, he remained a ghost, a figure shrouded in anonymity,” his family said in their statement. “For decades, his identity was a closely guarded secret. It was only in the twilight of his life that he finally emerged from the shadows, a legend in his own right.”
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