Ms. Mendez has been retired since 1993, but at 74 she is on the board of directors at the Spy Museum in Washington, D.C. She had a hand in its design and planning. If Chief of Disguises sounds a bit vague, it's not. She was in charge of creating fake physical personas for agents to help in their infiltration of spy or terrorist cells, or creating body doubles to throw the suspicious off and throw a wrench in tailing a CIA agent. When a agent wasn't in undercover guise they were called in "true face."
Ms. Mendez took part in undercover assignments, once posing as an Afro-American woman in red stilettos, a disguise she loved.
At the outset of Ms. Winkler's story we are introduced to Ms. Mendez who is sitting in the Oval Office with her boss, Robert Gates, the Director of the CIA, Brent Sowcroft, the national security adviser. and President H.W. Bush.
Ms. Mendez tries to get President Bush to guess what see might have in store for him as a surprise to what the tech people at the CIA are doing. President Bush gives Ms. Mendez a studied once over, even standing up and circling her, but can't come up with she might be talking about.
She ten peels the mask off her face, telling Ms. Winkler she was doing what Tom Cruise did in 'Mission Impossible' long before Tom Cruise did it.
You have to think her boss, Director Gates was in on the presentation, because Ms. Mendez has entered the Oval Office, sat with the president and now shows her true face, which I'd have to guess doesn't match her real id card, but instead perhaps the one she came in with. Deception indeed.
Much is otherwise revealed in Ms. Mendez's interview with Ms. Winkler.
Ms. Mendez had many overseas assignments. She tells us at the height of the Cold War the Russians had 50,000 KGB agents in Moscow. That is way beyond the home attendance at several Knick games.
Ms. Mendez points out several items of deception as she takes Ms. Winkler on a tour through the Spy Museum. Lipstick that is a camera; a period in a text that is really a microdot that will reveal many lines of text; a hollowed out brick to accommodate dead drops.
She and the agent who would become her husband, Tony Mendez, went to Hollywood to study makeup and disguises. Unrevealed is if she could have really made Robert De Niro look more youthful in the 'The Irishman' when he gets his truck fixed by Joe Pesci. Or, if she could have made him look Irish. Details
Mr. Mendez was played by Ben Affleck in the movie 'Argo,' based on the exfiltration of six hostages held in the U.S. embassy in Iraq in 1980. The rescuers pretended to be a Canadian film crew.
But the best part might be what hope she holds out for every conspiracy theorist about President Trump's relationship with the Russians.
In all her assignments, particularly in East Berlin, she would guarantee the East German secret police, the Stasi, had planted listening devices and cameras in any hotel room she was staying in. The same would be true in Moscow.
She doesn't know where Donald Trump stayed in Moscow when he visited there before becoming president, but she is 100% certain the room was bugged, and if The Donald did anything in that room he'd rather not let the world to see, there is a tape of it somewhere. Was The Donald naughty or nice?
A comforting thought for many.
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