Gordon Carrera

And again, the Canadians.

So they're not just... This is what is such an interesting detail of the story.

And this only comes out many, many, many years later.

That not only is Kent Taylor responsible for rescuing or helping rescue these hostages, but he's also going to act effectively as a kind of station chief for the CIA because he's going to go out and do intelligence collection for the CIA.

He's going to go look at...

the embassy where the Americans are being held.

He's actually going to be scouting for locations where a rescue party to free those hostages could hold up when they come in.

He's going to be also sending messages back from when the CIA do manage to get some undercover agents in.

He's the one who's going to be sending back the messages.

It's a really unusual role

for a foreign ambassador to act as an intelligence collector for the US government.

I mean, I think pretty unique in many ways.

And again, you know, Canada bailing out the Americans, just saying.

And yet, in this case, sometimes you need allies.

Who'd have thought?

Sometimes.

Sometimes they help.

And we should say Eagle Claw is the rescue operation for the hostages, which we'll look at another time.

We're not going to get deep into those other hostages.

I mean, that does strike me as not the smartest thing because the Shah is still alive.