Byte Sized Biographies… Ambassador Kenneth Taylor and the Canadian Caper (Part Two)
Risking his own freedom, Canadian ambassador Kenneth Taylor upheld diplomatic decorum and the international rule of law in the face of a tyrannical and dangerous regime.
Less than three weeks later, the Ayatollah landed at Tehran’s Mehrabad Airport, the city greeting him with a crowd of over three million people. Khomeini’s political attitudes were made immediately clear. Any appointments by the shah were invalid, the result of an illegal government. Of Bakhtiar and others, Khomeini commented, “I will kick their teeth in, I decide on the government.” He also stated that although he would appoint his own Prime Minister, his long term intention was to construct a republic based on Islamic fundamentalism and sharia law. He routinely vilified the United States as, “The great Satan,” and mocked the Soviet Union as “The Lesser Satan.”
By October of 1979, the Shah of Iran was languishing in Mexico. After Egypt, he made stops in Morocco and the Bahamas before proceeding to Cuernavaca. His doctors advised that treatment in the US for an obviously seriously spreading lymphoma was crucial but the Carter administration was wary of admitting the Shah, not wishing to worsen relations with the new Iranian government.
The death of the shah in July, the Iraqi invasion of Iran in late September and the landslide victory of Ronald Reagan either sidetracked the hostage talks or prompted the Iranians to prolong the process.
Mendez hastily went to Los Angeles where he spent $10,000 renting an office, staffing it with enough bodies to make sure there was someone at the end of a phone in case the Iranians checked on the ruse. With a Hollywood contact, make-up man John Chambers, Mendez actually selected a film off the slush pile, an unproduced sci-fi fantasy called Lord of Light. It could certainly utilize the exotic locations but Mendez changed the title to something with more of a Middle-Eastern ring to it; Argo.
The CIA role in the Canadian Caper was declassified in 1997. Tony Mendez wrote about it extensively, initially in an-house CIA journal, and then then in his own books. The story remained under the radar until 2007 when Wired Magazine published an account of the Argo aspects of the rescue.
In the immediate aftermath of the Canadian Caper, Ken Taylor was given the plum assignment of Consul General in NY. But by 1984, despite both Canadian political parties encouraging to run for office, Taylor left the public sector to accept a key position with RJ Nabisco from a Canadian friend, Ross Johnson. This would place Taylor front and center for the wild leveraged buyout struggle over Nabisco, a struggle Johnson eventually and famously lost. Ken Taylor then started his own worldwide consulting firm that he operated for two decades and served as a chancellor at the University of Toronto. He died of cancer on October 15, 2015. Kenneth Taylor remains the only Canadian to receive the American Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian award the US government can bestow.