Edward B Johnson, the other CIA officer who pulled off the Argo rescue of US diplomats from Iran

He was left out of the Ben Affleck film because only his code-name ‘Julio’ was known – but the CIA identified him in a podcast last year

Edward B Johnson, who has died aged 81, was a CIA officer who was recently revealed to have taken part in the flamboyant 1980 rescue of US diplomats from Iran under the guise of a B-movie production, an operation later dramatised in the Oscar-winning film Argo (2012).
The six diplomats had escaped the storming of the American embassy in Tehran on November 4 1979 and had spent 79 days in hiding at the residence of the Canadian ambassador. The plan eventually cooked up, nicknamed the “Canadian caper”, was that they should emerge posing as a Canadian film crew, joined by Ed Johnson, an exfiltration specialist, and Tony Mendez, a CIA disguise expert, to scout Iranian locations for a cheap Star Wars knock-off with the working title Argo, and then leave by aeroplane under fake Canadian passports.
The Planet of the Apes make-up artist John Chambers tipped off Mendez about a long-binned script for a movie meant to promote a Middle Eastern-themed sci-fi theme-park ride, which already had concept art by the Marvel comic artist Jack Kirby.
The Hollywood version of the rescue depicted Mendez as a lone operative, although his 1999 memoir The Master of Disguise referred to a second CIA man, under the cover name “Julio”. But Johnson’s role was so heavily classified that even the commemorative painting of the pair at the CIA headquarters at Langley, Virginia, shows Mendez clearly but only the back of Johnson’s head (and even that the painter had to model on the back of another CIA agent’s head, for security).
The identity of “Julio” was eventually disclosed in 2023 in the CIA’s podcast The Langley Files, which described Johnson as “someone with years of experience in quietly getting people out of dangerous places”. He and Mendez had worked together at the CIA’s Office of Technical Services, essentially their gadget, makeup and forgery department.
When they landed in Tehran, Johnson impressed Mendez by deftly pilfering a stack of the yellow slips to be filled out by those entering and leaving Iran. But they ran into trouble when their inaccurate tourist’s map took them not to the Canadian embassy but to the Swedish one, which was directly opposite the American embassy where the remaining staff were being held hostage by the Revolutionary Guard.
Johnson recalled that “all the demonstrators were there [but] they were quiet because the camera trucks weren’t there… they were just chilling”. 
There was a nasty moment when a young Revolutionary Guard walked over to quiz Johnson and Mendez on what they were doing, but it turned out that he “had spent a year in Germany, was a student, so I spoke in German to him,” recalled Johnson, “and we chatted a bit.” The Iranian helpfully installed the CIA men in a taxi to the correct address, and even refused a tip.
Johnson and Mendez then drilled the hidden diplomats on how to pass for Hollywood players rather than State Department suits. “These are rookies. They were people who were not trained to lie to authorities. They weren’t trained to be clandestine,” recalled Johnson. “The biggest thing I think we did was to convince them that you can do it.”
When they finally boarded the Swissair flight out of Tehran, Johnson was spooked by a number of coincidences: the word ARGAU was painted on the aircraft, and one of the answers in that day’s Herald Tribune crossword was “Argonauts”. Johnson later joked: “I didn’t know that CIA was that good.”
Edward Bernard Johnson was born in Brooklyn on July 29 1943, and brought up on Huntington Station, Long Island. His mother was a primary school teacher and his father was an accountant. 
Ed was a natural linguist, and added French at university to the Spanish he had picked up from Cuban and Puerto Rican friends. Later he learnt Arabic in Saudia Arabia, then travelled in Jordan and Egypt, before being accepted into the CIA. He then had “considerable exfiltration experience” relating to the Soviet Union, according to Mendez.
While he was in Tehran the CIA took the unprecedented step of ringing his wife, who did not know where he was, to deliver the enigmatic and not reassuring message: “He’s out.”
For the “Canadian Caper” Johnson received the CIA’s Intelligence Star, its second-highest award for valour.
In 1973, he married Aileen Heal, who survives him with five children.
Edward B Johnson, born July 29 1943, died August 27 2024