Argo
How the CIA and Hollywood Pulled Off the Most Audacious Rescue in History
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Narrated by:
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Dylan Baker
About this listen
The true account of the 1979 rescue of six American hostages from Iran
On November 4, 1979, Iranian militants stormed the American embassy in Tehran and captured dozens of American hostages, sparking a 444-day ordeal and a quake in global politics still reverberating today. But there's a little-known footnote to the crisis: six Americans escaped. And a midlevel agent named Antonio Mendez devised an ingenious yet incredibly risky plan to rescue them.
Armed with foreign film visas, Mendez and an unlikely team of CIA agents and Hollywood insiders - directors, producers, actors - traveled to Tehran under the guise of scouting locations for a fake film called Argo. While pretending to find the perfect scenery and backdrops, the team succeeded in contacting the escapees and smuggling them out of Iran without a single shot being fired.
Antonio Mendez finally details the mind-bogglingly complex and dangerous operation he led more than three decades ago. A true story of secret identities and international intrigue, Argo is the gripping account of the history-making collusion between Hollywood and high-stakes espionage.
©2012 Antonio Mendez and Matt Baglio (P)2012 Penguin AudiobooksListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
“Fresh and engaging…A solid choice for fans of thrillers and international intrigue.”(Kirkus)
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“The CIA and Hollywood in cahoots, a painter turned spy, an impossible rescue mission with no guns and only one chance at success - Argo has everything. This remarkable white-knuckle spy story is torn from the pages of real life, and will have you up past your bedtime to discover its thrilling endgame.” (Eric Blehm, author of Fearless)
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An "inside the room" memoir from one of our most distinguished ambassadors who - in a career of service to the country - was sent to some of the most dangerous outposts of American diplomacy. From the wars in the Balkans to the brutality of North Korea to the endless war in Iraq, this is the real life of an American diplomat. Hill was on the front lines in the Balkans at the breakup of Yugoslavia.
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Fascinating
- By David on 01-26-15
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Breaking Cover
- My Secret Life in the CIA and What it Taught Me About What's Worth Fighting For
- By: Michele Rigby Assad
- Narrated by: Michele Rigby Assad
- Length: 8 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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The CIA is looking for walking contradictions. Recruiters seek people who can keep a secret, yet pull classified information out of others; who love their country, but are willing to leave it behind to head into dangerous places; who live double lives, but can be trusted with some of the nation's most sensitive tasks. Michele Rigby Assad was one of those people. As a CIA agent, Michele soon found that working undercover was an all-encompassing job. The threats were real. The mission was a perilous one. Trained as a counterterrorism expert, Michele spent over a decade in the agency.
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Deceptive title and sample.
- By Philip Yaghmai on 07-17-18
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The Reluctant Spy
- My Secret Life in the CIA's War on Terror
- By: John Kiriakou, Michael Ruby
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 7 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Long before the waterboarding controversy exploded in the media, one CIA agent had already gone public. In a groundbreaking 2007 interview with ABC News, John Kiriakou called waterboarding torture - but admitted that it probably worked. This book, at once a confessional, an adventure story, and a chronicle of Kiriakou's life in the CIA, stands as an important, eloquent piece of testimony from a committed American patriot.
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Fascinating Read about the CIA
- By Nancy on 05-13-10
By: John Kiriakou, and others
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Spies in the Family
- An American Spymaster, His Russian Crown Jewel, and the Friendship That Helped End the Cold War
- By: Eva Dillon
- Narrated by: Gabra Zackman
- Length: 8 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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In the summer of 1975, 17-year-old Eva Dillon's family was living in New Delhi when her father was exposed as a CIA spy. Eva had long believed that her father was a US State Department employee. She had no idea that he was handling the CIA's highest ranking double agent - Dmitri Fedorovich Polyakov, a Soviet general whose code name was TOPHAT. Dillon's father and Polyakov had a close friendship that went back years, to their first meeting in Burma in the mid-1960s.
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LOVED it!
- By SaraofDI on 11-06-17
By: Eva Dillon
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The Art of Betrayal
- The Secret History of MI6 - Life and Death in the British Secret Service
- By: Gordon Corera
- Narrated by: Graeme Malcolm
- Length: 17 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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From Berlin to the Congo, from Moscow to the back streets of London, these are the stories of the agents on the front lines of British intelligence. And the truth is often more remarkable than fiction.
MI6 has been cloaked in secrecy and shrouded in myth since it was created a hundred years ago. Our understanding of what it is to be a spy has been largely defined by the fictional worlds of Ian Fleming and John le Carré. Gordon Corera provides a unique and unprecedented insight into this secret world and the reality that lies behind the fiction.
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Good details but lacks thorough research
- By Unapologetic on 09-06-17
By: Gordon Corera
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Curveball
- Spies, Lies, and the Con Man Who Caused a War
- By: Bob Drogin
- Narrated by: Erik Singer
- Length: 6 hrs and 15 mins
- Abridged
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Curveball answers the crucial question of the Iraq war: How and why was America’s intelligence so catastrophically wrong? In this dramatic and explosive book, award-winning Los Angeles Times reporter Bob Drogin delivers a narrative that takes us to Europe, the Middle East, and deep inside the CIA to find the truth—the truth about the lies and self-deception that led us into a military and political nightmare.
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George W. Bush lied...
- By Jonathan Love on 11-21-14
By: Bob Drogin
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A Rope and a Prayer
- The Story of a Kidnapping
- By: David Rohde, Kristen Mulvihill
- Narrated by: David Rohde, Kristen Mulvihill
- Length: 10 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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The compelling and insightful account of a New York Times reporter's abduction by the Taliban and his wife's struggle to free him. Invited to an interview by a Taliban commander, New York Times reporter David Rohde and two Afghan colleagues were kidnapped in November 2008 and spirited to the tribal areas of Pakistan. For the next seven months, they lived in an alternate reality, ruled by jihadists, in which paranoia, conspiracy theories, and shifting alliances abounded.
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A History Lesson
- By Ed on 12-31-10
By: David Rohde, and others
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Agent 110
- An American Spymaster and the German Resistance in WWII
- By: Scott Miller
- Narrated by: Noah Michael Levine
- Length: 8 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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This is the secret and suspenseful account of how OSS spymaster Allen Dulles led a network of Germans conspiring to assassinate Hitler and negotiate surrender to bring about the end of World War II before the Soviet's advance. Agent 110 is Allen Dulles, a newly minted spy from an eminent family. Dulles met with and facilitated the plots of Germans who were trying to destroy the country's leadership.
By: Scott Miller
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Hunting Eichmann
- Chasing Down the World's Most Notorious Nazi
- By: Neal Bascomb
- Narrated by: Paul Hecht
- Length: 12 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Best-selling author Neal Bascomb has garnered critical acclaim for such riveting nonfiction as Higher and Red Mutiny. Based on extensive interviews and previously classified details, Hunting Eichmann is a compelling account of the relentless hunt for the nefarious Adolf Eichmann.
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A Fascinating Story of Eichmann's Capture
- By S. Perry on 03-15-09
By: Neal Bascomb
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The Kennedy Detail
- JFK's Secret Service Agents Break Their Silence
- By: Gerald Blaine, Lisa McCubbin
- Narrated by: Alan Sklar
- Length: 17 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Even today, almost five decades after John F. Kennedy was slain, the public continues to be captivated by the "Kennedy Curse" and new theories about what really happened on that fateful day in 1963. For nearly 50 years former Secret Service agent Clint Hill has lived with the unimaginable guilt of losing a president on his watch and has obeyed an honor code of silence, refusing to contribute to any books about the assassination. Until now.
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The Kennedy Detail
- By Jean on 12-18-10
By: Gerald Blaine, and others
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Left of Boom
- How a Young CIA Case Officer Penetrated the Taliban and Al-Qaeda
- By: Douglas Laux, Ralph Pezzullo
- Narrated by: Mike Dawson
- Length: 8 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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On September 11, 2001, Doug Laux was a freshman in college, on the path to becoming a doctor. But with the fall of the Twin Towers came a turning point in his life. After graduating, he joined the Central Intelligence Agency, determined to get himself to Afghanistan and into the center of the action. Through persistence and hard work, he was fast-tracked to a clandestine operations position overseas. Dropped into a remote region of Afghanistan, he received his baptism by fire.
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Too Censerord to be Enjoyable
- By Nathan on 08-26-16
By: Douglas Laux, and others
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Backstabbing for Beginners
- My Crash Course in International Diplomacy
- By: Michael Soussan
- Narrated by: Maxwell Hamilton
- Length: 14 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Soon to be a major motion picture starring Ben Kingsley and Theo James, the gripping true story of a young program coordinator at the United Nations who stumbles upon a conspiracy involving Iraq's oil reserves. "What made this episode in our collective history possible was not so much the lies we told one another, but the lies we told ourselves". Breaking a conspiracy of silence that had prevailed for years, Soussan sparked an unprecedented corruption probe into the Oil-for-Food program.
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Eye-opener history made entertaining
- By Shelly Dee on 12-20-16
By: Michael Soussan
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Drafted against her will to become a "Sparrow" - a trained seductress in the service, Russian intelligence officer Dominika Egorova is assigned to operate against Nathaniel Nash, a first-tour CIA officer who handles the CIA's most sensitive penetration of Russian intelligence. The two young intelligence officers, trained in their respective spy schools, collide in a charged atmosphere of tradecraft, deception, and inevitably, a forbidden spiral of carnal attraction that threatens their careers and the security of America's valuable mole in Moscow.
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Antonio Mendez and his future wife, Jonna, were CIA operatives working to spy on Moscow in the late 1970s, at one of the most dangerous moments in the Cold War. Soviets kept files on all foreigners, studied their patterns, tapped their phones, and even planted listening devices within the US embassy. In short, intelligence work was effectively impossible. The Soviet threat loomed larger than ever. The Moscow Rules tells the story of the intelligence breakthroughs that turned the odds in America's favor.
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What listeners say about Argo
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Tracie
- 07-16-19
Great story
This was a great story with great Americans! It was a little drawn out though.
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- M.W.
- 08-08-21
Great story, annoying narration
Narrator ruined this for me. Especially his use of fake accents and over pronunciation of the T and Ss in “houseguests”.
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- G-Diddy
- 04-29-19
Play it again, Sam
Although a familiar plot, ergo the Casablanca tag line, the book provides deeper understanding of the covert agencies of yesteryear. Very well read and an excellent companion to full fledged spy stories. A must ‘read!’
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- Tina
- 06-06-24
Fascinating
I really enjoyed this book and generally all the books by Tony Mendez that I’ve read so far.
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- Richard
- 05-07-13
Great Book
What did you love best about Argo?
If you remember the Iran crises this is a very telling story of what happen to some of the people in Iran at the time. No question this book is so superior to the movie which leaves out much and puts in too much.
It's a must listen.
Which scene was your favorite?
Getting through the Airport
If you could give Argo a new subtitle, what would it be?
Unsung hero's of the CIA
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- dave_iowa
- 10-15-17
better than fiction
So Good! why is this not how we learned history in school. loved the attention to detail. never boring.
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- Ray E Allen
- 11-08-23
First Rate Story.
Could not turn it off. I had first learned of the adventure by seeing the movie. Fantastic.
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- WHATALISTEN!
- 07-08-24
Better than the movie
But
So much detail almost too much detail however the incident required the detail and what happened behind the scenes for the relatively uneventful walk through the airport
They were simply prepared for a lot of contingencies that just didn’t occur
Also Carter was truly feckless but glad there was little commentary for or against just straight this is what went down
The entirety of the hostages were released when Reagan won cause they knew his rescue would not fail
Anyway
Excellent recitation of what happened and Mr Mendez role in it
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- Cindy
- 02-06-19
Amazing story!
Love this story - makes me want to be a spy! Just make sure you listen to it at 1.25x b/c I almost returned it due to the narrator.
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- Susan
- 02-07-17
Squad goals!
Too rarely do we get to hear about a government job done right, by people who care, and where caring and big, nutty thinking matters.
Here is that story. I knew the ending and was still happily transfixed.
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