David McCloskey

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So first plan, they could pretend to be unemployed American school teachers who'd come to Iran looking for work.

What about the next one?

Plan two from your new heroes, the Canadians, have them pose as Canadian nutritionists inspecting crops.

But Iran in January is relatively still bound.

Nobody's inspecting the crops in January.

And it probably wouldn't take long for somebody to ask this question.

So that's that's out.

Plan three, use a cover as petroleum workers, but Iran's oil industry is on strike.

Foreign workers are being expelled, not let in.

So there'd be questions about how they had gotten into the country in the first place.

Plan four, ride bicycles to the Turkish border.

It's 300 miles in winter through the mountains.

They're all...

in i guess okay shape but you know they haven't been training for this one of them is a chain is a chain smoker and as mendez and his team are looking at these options they think these are the kind of things that lead to someone being captured or killed yeah

And there's a passage in his memoir where Mendes explains why the cover story matters so much because he says, just as important as who the person might be is his or her ability to carry off a new persona and make it believable.

So you want some investment in the part of the house guests in the new cover, something that they can work with and make their own.

We're actually not yet at the point where Mendez has landed on an answer yet.

for the cover that they'll eventually use.

But CIA has decided that the available options are probably not going to suffice.