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Joshuah Bearman wrote a great story for Wired. He summarized it for me thusly:
LinkThe story is a CIA rescue mission during the Iran Hostage Crisis, when six American embassy staff escaped the compound and were on the lam in Tehran for months -- until the CIA rescued them by creating a fake Hollywood production company and pretended to be in Iran location scouting for a big-budget sci-fi epic. I swear, it's all true. The CIA even got an office for their fake production company at Sunset/Gower studios, had a script and concept art, and took out ads in Variety. There are many more strange digressions in detail, but I'll let you find out about them in the story.
Reader comment:
Luke says: In Errol Morris' First Person series, he did a documentary about the CIA agent responsible for the Sci-fi rescue. He talks about it in some detail. The episode is called "The Little Gray Man"