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 Antonio J. Mendez
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Retired senior CIA official
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Former Chief of Disguise, CIA, Office of
Technical Services (OTS)
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Awarded Intelligence Star for Valor
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Named one of 50 "CIA Trailblazers" during
50th Anniversary of CIA
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Author of "Master of Disguise: My Secret
Life in the CIA"
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Co-author of "Spy Dust: Two Masters of
Disguise Reveal the Tools and Operations That Helped Win the Cold War"
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Accomplished artist
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Consultant to CBS-TV show "The Agency"
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Consultant to TV documentaries
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Board of Advisors, International Spy Museum
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Professor, Centre for Counterintelligence
and Security Studies
 Tony Mendez is a
retired CIA intelligence officer, an author and an artist. He lives with his
family and works in his studios and gallery on his forty acre farm in rural
Washington County Maryland. He is an award winning painter with an
international reputation. His first book,
The Master of Disguise; My Secret Life in the CIA , was
published by William Morrow in November 1999 on the tenth anniversary of the
Wall coming down in Berlin. Since that time he has been appearing on various
national media across the United States, while traveling and lecturing
regarding his CIA experiences. He has appeared on Dan Rather Evening News,
Charlie Rose, C-Span, CNN, Fox News Channel, Good Morning America, and Fresh
Air, to name a few. His presentation for the Smithsonian Associates in
Washington, DC was sold out to over 600 attendees.
Mendez was born in 1940 in Eureka,
Nevada where his ethnically diverse family dated back six generations to the
time before the gold rush. He moved to Colorado when he was fourteen. He
attended the University of Colorado and worked as a plumber and an
illustrator/tool designer for Martin Marietta where he was responsible for
designing electronic components for the Titan IIIC ICBM. In 1965 he was
recruited from Denver through a blind ad to work as an espionage artist for
the Technical Services Division of the Central Intelligence Agency in
Washington D.C. Twenty months later he and his family moved to the Far East
where they stayed for seven years while Mendez worked in the CIA's technical
operations in South and Southeast Asia.
 For
twenty-five years he worked under cover, often overseas, participating in
the shadow conflicts in some of the most important theaters of the Cold War.
His book chronicles many of these covert action and human intelligence
collection operations. He tells about the most exotic applications of his
specialty, making false documents and disguises for intelligence officers.
He held various positions of increasing responsibility moving up to Senior
Intelligence Service (SIS) executive rank over the course of his career.
While Chief of Disguise and later as Chief of the Graphics and
Authentication Division, he and his subordinates were responsible for
changing the identity and appearance of thousands of clandestine operatives,
allowing them to move securely about their business of spying. Nowhere was
this more difficult than on the streets of Moscow where they succeeded in
devising deception operations using disguise and illusion against the
overwhelming forces of the KGB. Equally harrowing were the hundreds of
rescue operations he and his comrades planned and executed to bring our
foreign agents and their families out of harm's way. In January 1980 Mendez
was awarded the Intelligence Star for Valor for single-handedly engineering
and conducting the rescue of six U.S. diplomats from Iran during the hostage
crisis. This rescue operation involved creating an ostensible Hollywood film
production company, complete with personnel, scripts, publicity and real
estate.
 By the time
Mendez retired in November 1990, the Cold War was over. He had been promoted
to SIS-2, the equivalent of a two star General in the military. He had
earned the CIA's Intelligence Medal of Merit as well as the Intelligence
Star and two Certificates of Distinction. In September 1997 on the fiftieth
anniversary of the CIA, he was one of fifty officers, chosen from the tens
of thousands who had worked at CIA over the years, awarded the Trailblazer
Medallion. Mendez was proud to be in the company of Richard Helms, Allen
Dulles and other luminaries in the Agency's history. As DCI George Tenet
wrote, "...the CIA Trailblazer Award recognizes and honors fifty CIA
officers who by their actions, example, or initiative have helped shape the
history of this Agency." In October 2000 Mendez was awarded the Order of the
Sphinx which is the Interallied Distinguished Service Cross for serving the
Allied cause for freedom behind enemy lines.
He has continued to act as a consultant
to the U.S. Intelligence Community and has published articles in their
journals. He is invited on a regular basis to act as a key note speaker for
the CIA and DIA training courses as well as participating in the
Distinguished Lecture Series of the Joint Intelligence College of the
Department of Defense. He also regularly addresses World Affairs Councils
and similar organizations across the United States. He and his wife Jonna
are consultants and on the Board of Advisors for the International Spy
Museum across "F" Street from the National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC
and are technical consultants on the CBS Television series "The Agency",
which began airing in September 2001.
Mendez
participated in a Discovery Channel documentary on the CIA which was aired
on 16 January 2000. Additionally the Discovery Channel aired a one hour show
entitled "The Master of Deception" on November 19, 2000. This program
chronicled the espionage exploits of Mendez and his wife, Jonna, who was
also Chief of Disguise and worked at CIA for twenty-seven years. The third
Discovery Channel one hour special on Mendez, "Escape from Iran", and a
documentary on AMC about the CIA Hollywood connection, aired in 2001. Mendez
and his wife Jonna completed another book entitled
Spy
Dust: Two Masters of Disguise Reveal the Tools and Operations That Helped
Win the Cold War
chronicling
their intelligence exploits in Moscow during the last years of the Cold War
and their budding romance which ended in marriage after Mendez retired in
1990.
After returning to painting full time in
1990, Mendez has had scores of exhibits in the U.S. and abroad, won many
prizes and is represented by several galleries around the United States. The
Washington DC Commission for the Arts recently purchased seven of his
paintings of Washington DC for their permanent collection.
Travels from Washington, DC area
Tony
Mendez Links
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