Yearly Archives: 2012

Tony Mendez: The Audacious Hero of ‘Argo’

Unsung Heroes

By Mallory Krause, Olivia Peros, and Lizzie Ruggieri

Tony Mendez is a former CIA agent who specialized in covert CIA operations for 25 years. Recently, his actions over three decades ago have propelled him to the status of hero to the general public.  The recent release of the 2012 movie Argo, starring Ben Affleck, tells the long-classified story of Mendez’s heroism.  Argo highlights his role in the Canadian caper operation during the Iran hostage crisis in 1979.  This operation involved successfully sneaking six American diplomats out of Iran by disguising them as a Canadian film crew.  Mendez was the mastermind behind this risky rescue.

Here is the backdrop to the heroic tale.  On November 4th, 1979, Iranian militants seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran, Iran.  Six American diplomats were working in a separate building on the embassy compound when they noticed Iranian students swarming over the wall.  They made a quick decision to flee into the streets of Tehran in search of refuge.  For the next six days they went from house to house, and finally sought the help of a Canadian ambassador.  For the next 79 days, the group hid in Canadian ambassador John Sheardown’s personal residence.  They lived in fear that the Iranians would somehow discover they had escaped, a discovery that would no doubt lead to their execution.

Working together, the Canadian and U.S. governments decided to smuggle the six out of the country using Canadian passports, but needed a plausible story and a plan to do so.  Thus, they enlisted Tony Mendez to develop a cover story, documents, and materials to change the fugitives’ appearances. Mendez came up with an elaborate scheme requiring that the six diplomats pose as a Hollywood science fiction film crew scouting movie locations in Tehran.  The plan was an enormous risk and if caught, Mendez would join the other six in the hands of the Iranians.

Despite the inherent dangers, Mendez entered Iran and implemented his plan to perfection. On January 27, 1980, the refugees, now traveling with their forged Canadian passports, boarded a flight for Sweden, and arrived there safely.  The full involvement of the CIA, and more specifically of Mendez, in the rescue was not made public until 1997 when Bill Clinton declassified secret documents. While Canada was publicly credited for the escape, Tony Mendez was but an anonymous ghost, not receiving any recognition for his valiant efforts in his incredible escape plot.

Mendez’s rescue plan was audacious and outrageous, yet he risked his own life to help the six American come home safely.  He devised a meticulous plan that many believed was reckless and doomed to failure, but Mendez stuck to it. Although luck had much to do with the plan’s success, the six Americans most likely would have died a violent death without Mendez’s relentless efforts and bravery. In our opinion, the fact that he accomplished this amazing feat and went home without acknowledgement from the public while continuing to work for the CIA is heroic in itself. For decades he was a transparent hero who did not need recognition or public fanfare.  To the Iranians, Mendez may be considered a villain, but to the American people and to the six lives he saved, he was a true and brave hero.

– – – – – – – – –

Mallory Krause, Olivia Peros, and Lizzie Ruggieri are undergraduate students at the University of Richmond.  They are enrolled in Scott Allison’s Social Psychology course and composed this essay as part of their course requirement.  

Doctors Without Borders: Heroes Who Heal Others

Unsung Heroes

By Scott T. Allison and George R. Goethals

The most heroic people are often those who do their selfless work anonymously. They seek neither credit nor publicity. Guided by humanitarian motives only, these heroes genuinely want to make the world a better place, and they don’t think twice about invisibly making great sacrifices – sometimes even giving their lives – to help save others.

Doctors Without Borders is an organization composed of such heroic people. In doing our research for this blog post, we tried our best to identify the names of the doctors and journalists who founded Doctors Without Borders back in 1971. There is no historical account that we could find. Moreover, there is no listing of the current group of physicians who work without pay, often at great risk, to treat others. All of these heroic individuals prefer to remain anonymous.

Doctors Without Borders is known throughout most of the world by its French name, Médecins Sans Frontières. The organization is composed of doctors worldwide who are committed to bringing quality medical care to people in crisis. Doctors Without Borders was founded on the humanitarian principles of medical ethics and impartiality. The organization is completely neutral and provides medical treatment to people regardless of their race, religion, or political affiliation. It never takes sides in armed conflicts and provides care on the basis of need alone.

“We find out where the conditions are the worst – the places where others are not going – and that’s where we want to be,” says Nicolas de Torrente, Executive Director of the group. Doctors Without Borders is currently active in more than 60 countries, helping people whose survival is threatened by violence, neglect, or catastrophe. The volunteer physicians face supreme challenges in treating maladies resulting from malnutrition, epidemics, natural disasters, armed conflict, or exclusions from health care.

What exactly are these challenges? Volunteers for the organization have been hit by stray bullets, stepped on mines, and caught epidemic diseases. Sometimes they are attacked or kidnapped for political reasons. In some countries afflicted by warfare, humanitarian aid organizations are judged to be assisting the enemy, especially if an aid mission has been set up exclusively for victims on one side of a conflict.

More than 40 years after being founded, Doctors Without Borders continues to save lives across the globe. Most recently, in Ethiopian refugee camps, volunteers for the organization appear to be turning the tide against severe famine and disease. “When Doctors Without Borders opened the Hilaweyn clinic in August, children were dying of malnutrition at the rate of more than one a day,” said a Voice of America news source. “Two months later, the clinic’s emergency coordinator Aria Danika said they treat 1,000 cases a day, and only one child has died in the past two weeks.”

In 1999, Doctors Without Borders won the Nobel Peace Prize. We can think of no more deserving group of people. In accepting the award, then-president Dr. James Orbinski thanked the Nobel committee for affirming Doctors Without Borders’ pledge “to remain committed to its core principles of volunteerism, impartiality and its belief that every person must be recognized in his or her humanity.”

Below is a youtube clip that describes the heroic work of Doctors Without Borders in greater detail.

The Wright Stuff: Wilbur and Orville’s Heroic First Flight

Science Heroes

By Scott T. Allison and George R. Goethals

One of the most significant milestones in the history of life on earth occurred several hundred million years ago when the first living organisms took flight with wings.  Initially there were insects, who ruled the skies for at least 100 million years.  Then about 220 millions years ago the first flying dinosaurs, called Pterosaurs, appeared.  Roughly 70 million years later, the Pterosaurs were either joined by, or turned into, slightly different kinds of feathered creatures called birds.

Although there have been many significant human milestones, one of the most groundbreaking (pardon the pun) occurred when the Wright brothers ushered in the age of human airflight in 1903.  Not surprisingly, it was the brothers’ observations of birds that helped them construct an aerodynamically sound flying machine.  Birds, they noted, changed the angle of the ends of their wings to allow their bodies to roll left or right.  Wilbur and Orville realized that this was also a good way for a flying machine to turn.  A pilot needed only to lean into a turn like a bird or a person riding a bicycle.

As fate would have it, the Wright brothers’ expertise in bicycles played a crucial role in their ability to solve a variety of conundrums associated with air flight.   In December of 1903, Orville and Wilbur Wright left their bike shop in Ohio to test their latest ideas about flying on the beaches of North Carolina’s Outer Banks.  The first historic flight occurred on the 17th of December, an icy cold and windy day at Kill Devil Hills.  Bad weather had been a persistent problem and the brothers began that day nearly ready to give up and try again the next year.

After two failed efforts to fly their machine that day, Orville Wright was able to take the Flyer for a 12-second, 127-foot-long sustained flight into a 27 mph wind.  Although he never went higher than 20 feet above the ground, this was the first successful, powered, piloted flight in history.  Minutes later, another flight piloted by Wilbur traveled 852 feet and lasted nearly a minute.  Heroes were made on that day, and the world was forever changed.

The brothers knew that they had to make several improvements before their machine could be considered a practical airplane.  In October of 1905, they flew an airplane almost 25 miles in 39 minutes. Wilbur and Orville Wright had at last invented the world’s first practical flying machine. They continued to set new records in distance and duration of flight in front of astonished crowds.  In 1911, they flew the first plane to cross the United States. This flight took 84 days and had to stop 70 times.  By the 1920s, people began to recognize the importance of honoring the Wright brothers’ heroism.  On March 2, 1927, President Calvin Coolidge established the Kill Devil Hill Monument National Memorial on the exact spot at which the historic first flight occurred.

In previous blog posts, we’ve documented the remarkable accomplishments of other scientists and inventors who devoted their lives to making the world a better place.  These notable individuals include Marie Curie, George Washington Carver, Florence Nightingale, Albert Einstein, and Mae Jemison, among others.  We add the Wright Brothers to this illustrious group.  The gift of flight has immeasurably improved the quality of countless lives.  People are now better connected through globalization, and the science of flight has put men on the moon.  We owe a debt of gratitude to the courage, genius, persistence of Wilbur and Orville, as well as to the many other early pioneers of aviation.

Below is a clip from NOVA’s tribute to the Wright Brothers on PBS.

The Heroism and Leadership of Fred Korematsu

Activist Heroes

Fred KorematsuBy Scott T. Allison and George R. Goethals

Heroes show leadership by taking steps to save or improve our lives.  A hero’s leadership can be direct, as when the leader interacts directly with followers, or it can be indirect, as when the leader’s works and deeds provide an example or model for others.  Two of the 20th century’s greatest indirect leaders were Rosa Parks and Fred Korematsu.  Parks became a civil rights hero when she refused to vacate her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama bus in 1955.  Korematsu’s indirect leadership is not as well known but is no less important.

Korematsu was an ordinary 22 year-old American living in Oakland, California, when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.  In the weeks that followed, Americans feared another Japanese attack on the west coast of the United States. Racial discrimination against Japanese-Americans, already a problem before Pearl Harbor, became intensified.  Korematsu was fired from his job as a welder in a shipyard, simply because of his ancestry.

Ten weeks after the attack, President Roosevelt issued Executive Order No. 9066, which required all people of Japanese ancestry along the entire Pacific coast, including all of California and most of Oregon and Washington, to leave their homes and report to internment camps.  At the time, most Americans supported Roosevelt’s decision.  Even the Los Angeles Times defended it:  “While it might cause injustice to a few to treat them all as potential enemies,” wrote the editor, “I cannot escape the conclusion… that such treatment… should be accorded to each and all of them while we are at war with their race.”

Most Japanese-Americans complied with Executive Order 9066 to demonstrate their loyalty to America and its laws.  But KorematsuKorematsu recognized the inherent injustice of the decree.  “I was just living my life, and that’s what I wanted to do,” he said in a 1987 interview.

Korematsu did not turn himself in to authorities.  Consequently, he was arrested, jailed, convicted of a felony, and sent to the Topaz internment camp in Utah.

While imprisoned at the camp, Korematsu appealed his conviction, arguing that his constitutional rights had been violated.  The court ruled against him.  In 1944 he appealed all the way to the Supreme Court, which upheld his conviction in a 6-3 decision, authored by Justice Hugo Black.  The Court ruled that Executive Order 9066, though constitutionally suspect, is justified during times of “emergency and peril”.

After the war, Korematsu waited nearly 40 years to clear his name.  In 1982 he obtained suppressed government documents indicating that the forced relocation of Americans to internment camps was motivated by racism, not military necessity.  With this evidence, the courts overturned Korematsu’s conviction.  In 1998, President Bill Clinton awarded Korematsu the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.  At the ceremony Clinton said, “In the long history of our country’s constant search for justice, some names of ordinary citizens stand for millions of souls €” Plessy, Brown, Parks.  To that distinguished list today we add the name of Fred Korematsu.”

Heroism can take time.  Leaders know when to stay the course, and heroic leaders such as Korematsu stay the course to its triumphant conclusion.  “It may take time to prove you’re right,” he said, “but you have to stick to it.”  In the face of injustice, he urged people “to protest, but not with violence, and don’t be afraid to speak up.  One person can make a difference, even if it takes forty years.”

– – – – – –

One of our readers suggested that we profile Fred Korematsu.  We welcome your suggestions as well.  Please send your ideas to Scott T. Allison (sallison@richmond.edu) or to George R. Goethals (ggoethal@richmond.edu).

Lisbeth Salander: The Underdog Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Fictional Heroes

By Scott T. Allison and George R. Goethals

One of the most powerful underdog stories in recent fiction is that of Lisbeth Salander, the main character in Stieg Larsson’s best-selling Millennium Series trilogy.  In several ways, Salander defies the classic hero prototype.  She is a female hero in a world dominated by male heroes, and she is described as small, young, and anorexic looking – hardly the look of a hero.  And as with Harry Potter, another slightly built fictional hero, people underestimate Salander and pay the dearest of consequences for their misjudgment.

The author, Stieg Larsson, was himself an underdog.  Larsson worked as a little-known journalist and photographer in Stockholm, Sweden.  A political activist, Larsson spent years writing the Millennium Series at home at night after work, with no one knowing about his pet project until 2004 when he finally sought a publisher.  Tragically, just before the novels were published, Larsson died of a heart attack at the age of 50.  He never lived to witness the remarkable success of his trilogy, which has sold more than 70 million copies worldwide and has spawned a highly successful movie franchise.

The lead character of Lisbeth Salander is Larsson’s crowning achievement as an author.  Few fictional characters carry more gripping emotional power.  As a child, Salander witnesses her father, named Zala, brutalize and cripple her mother.  Because Zala is important to Sweden’s central intelligence agency (SAPO), he is shielded from prosecution.  One day, after witnessing Zala savagely attack her mother once again, Salander dowses him in gasoline and sets him afire, causing massive lifetime scarring over most of his body.

To protect Zala, unscrupulous elements within SAPO arrange for Salander to be judged incompetent, institutionalized, and abused by an evil psychiatrist named Teleborian.  Upon reaching adulthood, Salander is released from the hospital but is required to report to a guardian of the state, who is a friend of Zala’s.  The guardian eventually rapes Salander in a most brutal manner.  He is yet another man who has underestimated her.   Recognizing that police officials will not bring her rapist to justice, she exacts revenge by raping him herself and carving a full-body tattoo on him that reads, “I AM A SADISTIC PIG, A PERVERT, AND A RAPIST”.

For some fans of the Millennium Series, Salander’s violent vengeance on Zala and on her guardian precludes her from attaining the status of hero.  For others, Salander’s actions are heroic responses to a society that repeatedly abuses her (and other women) with impunity.  We’ll leave it to you to make the call.

Later in the trilogy there are other formidable men who also make the mistake of harming Salander and then underestimating her ability to inflict far greater harm on them.  These individuals include Zala, Teleborian, and others.  Salander’s aggression toward men is always in self-defense and arises from the fact that SAPO has doctors and law-enforcement in their back pocket.  In the end, Salander finds a way to out-wit SAPO and bring the responsible parties to justice.  And this is another key to Salander’s heroism:  She is extraordinarily intelligent and uses her cunning and her computer skills to stay one move ahead of her adversaries.

Lisbeth Salander is the ultimate underdog.  Her penchant for prevailing over men who have power over her, and who abuse that power, makes for a riveting story.  Although author Stieg Larsson is no longer with us, he has left a rich legacy in his writings of an unforgettable character whom you don’t ever want to cross in Lisbeth Salander.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

Dakota Meyer: The Hero Who Defied Orders to Save Lives

War Heroes

By Scott T. Allison and George R. Goethals

The war in Afghanistan is currently the longest war in U.S. history.  Americans have gotten used to very little good news coming out of that region of the world, but recently there was something to cheer about.  A U.S. Marine Corps veteran named Dakota Meyer performed a remarkable feat of heroism and received the Medal of Honor, the highest military decoration one can receive.  Meyer distinguished himself by demonstrating “conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his or her life above and beyond the call of duty while engaged in an action against an enemy of the United States.”

Here are the stirring details.  On September 8, 2009, Sergeant Meyer was serving his country in Afghanistan when he heard on his radio of a Taliban attack on a nearby village.  Members of his unit and a number of allied Afghan fighters were being bombarded by enemy fire.  He repeatedly asked his superiors for approval to assist those under attack, and he was repeatedly denied permission to do so.  It was simply too dangerous, and Meyer was heavily outnumbered.

Defying orders, Meyer headed into the besieged village. He first encountered several wounded allied Afghan fighters. He transported them to safety and then headed back into battle.  During the next several hours, Meyer entered the “kill zone” five times, rescuing 23 Afghans and 13 Americans.  He was under heavy enemy fire the entire time from a numerically superior foe.  Despite receiving shrapnel wounds to his arm, Meyer was able to kill at least eight Taliban while evacuating his fellow Marines to safety.

During one of his trips into the village, he stumbled across the bodies of four of his teammates killed by gunfire.  “I checked them all for a pulse. Their bodies were already stiff,” Meyer said.  Meyer made the decision to bring his friends back home. Bleeding from his shrapnel wound and still under fire, he carried their bodies back to a Humvee with the help of Afghan troops.

Meyer has said that he expected to die that day.  He also remains quite humble about his heroism, focusing instead on the guilt and pain of not being able to save the lives of the four men whose bodies he collected. “It’s hard getting recognized for the worst day of your life.  It’s a really tough thing,” Meyer said.  “There’s not a day — not a second — that goes by when I don’t think about what happened that day.  I didn’t just lose four [colleagues] that day; I lost four brothers.  I went in there to get those guys out alive, and I failed. So I think it’s more fitting to call me a failure than a hero.”

During the Medal of Honor ceremony, President Obama addressed Meyer’s obvious heartache. “Dakota, I know that you’ve grappled with the grief of that day; that you’ve said your efforts were somehow a failure because your teammates didn’t come home,” Obama said. “But as your commander-in-chief, and on behalf of everyone here today and all Americans, I want you to know it’s quite the opposite. You did your duty, above and beyond, and you kept the faith with the highest traditions of the Marine Corps that you love.  Because of your honor, 36 men are alive today.”

Below is a clip of the Medal of Honor being awarded to Dakota Meyer.