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Hello. Hello and welcome to Spycast from the Secret Files of the International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C.

I'm Peter Ernest, the Executive Director of the Museum. I served for some

36 years in the Central Intelligence Agency, largely as what is called an operations officer

or a case officer.

Every month will be bringing you interesting talks

with visitors, with authors, with others who

have something to do with the world of intelligence

and espionage.

We are returning in this spy cast to the story of the Iranian hostage crisis, the crisis of

1979. You will recall that the rescue effort for six of the

hostages was led by Tony Mendez of the Central Intelligence Agency, CIA.

And in our last spycast, part two,

we interviewed Mark and Cora Lijek, who were two of the hostages who successfully escaped.

Part one, of course, was the interview with Tony Mendez himself.

Part two was the interview with Mark and Cora. And today we're privileged to have Mark and Cora and Tony present as we get into the van from the house where they'd been hiding and head towards the

airport in hopes of fleeing Tehran. So welcome to all of you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Tony when we ended the last part, Mark and Cora had described what it was like, staying

in that Their impression was in reflecting back on it that you didn't identify yourselves right up front.

And my sense would be you might have been sort of assessing the situation and seeing if you thought these people could carry an escape off?

Well, that might have been part of it. I think the idea for not identifying us right away was probably something that Ken Taylor had up his sleeve if you wanted to make it more of a

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