During Iranian Hostage Crisis, were shredded documents reassembled by children?
Upvote:7
The movie Argo is loosely based on the Wired article How the CIA Used a Fake Sci-Fi Flick to Rescue Americans From Tehran By Joshuah Bearman April 24, 2007. Within the article the shredded documents are mentioned (emphasis mine):
As time passed, the threat of discovery was mounting. The militants had been combing embassy records and figuring out who was CIA. They had even hired teams of carpet weavers to successfully reassemble shredded documents. (The recovered papers would later be published by the Iranian government in a series of books called Documents From the US Espionage Den.) They might eventually figure out the true number of embassy staff, count heads, and come up short. Outside, the Revolutionary Guards had recently been making a show of force in Shemiran, menacing the streets where foreigners lived and coming very close to both hideouts. Once, the Americans had to dive away from the windows when a military helicopter buzzed the Sheardowns’ house. And everyone was spooked when an anonymous caller to the Taylor residence asked to speak with Joe and Kathy Stafford and then hung up.
So this aspect of the movie was sourced in the original article by Bearman.
Eventually the CIA even jumped in and tweeted about the movie, including the shredded documents (emphasis mine):
Real #Argo: Skilled carpet weavers did reconstruct shredded documents, but they didn’t reveal one of the Americans at the last moment.
Again, Skilled carpet weavers. No mention of sweat-shop children.
Documents from the U.S. Espionage Den can be found on the internet. A page from wikimedia illustrates the existence of the documents:
So we have conformation the documents were reassembled, though the only description of those performing the task is 'carpet workers'.
(I personally don't think the CIA would have resisted 'getting the dig in' during their tweet if they had any information that these workers were child laborers in a sweat-shop situation.)
Another version of these events is presented in the book Our Man in Tehran, by Canadian historian Robert Wright. It states that the documents were reassembled by student volunteers over several years:
Once the vault was surrendered, the students imposed a strict rule that it was not to be disturbed in any way. They then resolved to catalogue and reassemble all the shredded strips by hand. Teams of up to twenty volunteers, most of them high school students, worked for the next six years recombining the tangled contents of the shredders. In 1985 their work was complete: 2300 files (a total of 3000 pages) were published in 85 volumes.
This does hint at younger individuals performing the work, but again no documentation which supports the claim that these were 'sweat shop children' .
More post
- 📝 Has Matéo Maximoff's book Die Ursitory been translated to English?
- 📝 Did anyone face consequences (charges / court-martial) for the 1914 Christmas truce in WWI?
- 📝 How were the Burmese able to sack Ayutthaya when it was one of the wealthiest and most powerful cities in Asia at the time?
- 📝 Besides Mexico, who was considered as a potential ally of the Central Powers?
- 📝 Was the N.E.P. of Russia successful in terms of economics?
- 📝 What are the modern roles of brigadier generals and commodores?
- 📝 What was the contemporary popular opinion of the Anglo-Irish Treaty?
- 📝 Did Ali give his allegiance to the three first caliphs?
- 📝 Why didn't Caesar move against Sextus Pompey immediately after Munda?
- 📝 How would ancient Greeks have exercised?
- 📝 Which of Hitler's peers had no more education than him?
- 📝 How do present-day Austrians look back at the 1938 Anschluss?
- 📝 Why didn’t the Franco-Belgian accord of 1920 lead to extending the construction of the Maginot line along the Belgium-Netherlands border?
- 📝 What is the reason that not all roman emperors named a month after them?
- 📝 Was a medical ship sunk during the evacuation from Dunkirk?
- 📝 Are there historical instances of property rights not being respected/acknowledged between U.S. states, territories, and the federal government?
- 📝 What alphabet is this?
- 📝 Were cavalry used in the First World War?
- 📝 What was the penalty for disobeying flu safety regulations in the 1918 epidemic?
- 📝 Why weren't the New Territories ceded to the British instead of leased in 1898?
- 📝 Why was there a perceived high rate of AIDS infection among Haitians?
- 📝 Kissing in early Icelandic law
- 📝 What is the historical accuracy of birth of lord Sri Krishna
- 📝 Who said "one can be a powerful king with a very small sceptre"?
- 📝 How do functionalists explain the fact that Holocaust continued until the very end of the war?
- 📝 What was up with "Alicorn" in the 1920's and 30's
- 📝 What is the benefit of historical studies for the process of creating tactics and strategies in foreign policy?
- 📝 Did D&D and similar media actually increase interest in the occult?
- 📝 When did "&" stop being taught alongside the alphabet?
- 📝 Did Anza record exactly who came along on his expedition?
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 During Iranian Hostage Crisis, were shredded documents reassembled by children?
- 📝 During the 1930-40s - World War 2 - were children taught English in Nazi Germany?
- 📝 Why were ships-of-the line not supposed to open fire on frigates during fleet actions?
- 📝 What drugs were used in England during the High Middle Ages?
- 📝 Why were Navajo code talkers used during WW2?
- 📝 Were any Kings/Queens who were monarchs as children good rulers?
- 📝 Why were so many more Jewish men than Jewish women killed during the Holocaust?
- 📝 Why were there no internment camps for German-American citizens in USA during WW2?
- 📝 Were there U.S. weapon restrictions during 19th century?
- 📝 Were well-connected Germans able to park their sons in Norway during WWII?
- 📝 Why were Albanians the only nation in the Balkans who converted to Islam during the Ottoman occupation?
- 📝 How beneficial were war bonds to the US during WWII
- 📝 Were there any travel restrictions during the Black Death pandemic?
- 📝 Were there any high-ranking female soldiers during the Middle ages?
- 📝 Why were the Irish exempt from conscription during WWI?
- 📝 Is it true that US tracer rounds were red and VC green during Vietnam war?
- 📝 During World War 1, were any policies in place to handle large scale troop mutiny?
- 📝 Were Shakespeare's plays written for "high culture" or "entertain the bawdy masses" during his time?
- 📝 Were any drugs (except alcohol) forbidden during medieval or ancient times?
- 📝 In medieval Europe, were children born in an annulled marriage automatically illegitimate?
- 📝 How educated were the clergy during the Medieval period?
- 📝 How were the Bulgarians regarded by the Nazis during World War II?
- 📝 During World War I, why were church bells stopped until the war was over?
- 📝 Were there any war movies made during WW2 that were well regarded by front-line American soldiers?
- 📝 Why were schoolchildren in the USA taught virtually nothing about the Holocaust during the fifties and sixties?
- 📝 How could it be that 80% of townspeople were farmers during the Edo period in Japan?
- 📝 What were the individual soldiers motivated by during World War 1?
- 📝 How were the Venera Probe missions received/presented in the Western world during the space race?
- 📝 Were Roman marching songs still bawdy during principate/dominate?
- 📝 Were any works completely lost during the Nazi book burnings?