CIA's Jonna Mendez, Mistress of Disguise
In a new book, Mendez recalls an extraordinary career and tricks of the trade
THERE HAVE BEEN FEW GUESTS on the SpyTalk podcast as entertaining as Jonna Mendez, who rose from secretary to clandestine photography whiz to head of CIA Disguise. In the mid-1980s, moreover, Jonna was handed one of the spy agency’s toughest missions. Assigned to so-called Denied Area Operations, her job was to craft persusive disguises for CIA street operatives in places like Moscow, Havana and Soviet-controlled East Germany—home to the world’s toughest counterspies. She also became a master of CIA trickery like secret writing and methods for detecting phony letters sent by opposition spy services.
Upon her retirement in 1993, Jonna co-authored two books with her late husband, Tony, who had gained fame after his role in rescuing six American diplomats from Tehran was dramatized in the Academy Awards-winning 2012 thriller, Argo.
But this week, Jonna came on the SpyTalk podcast to talk about her own career in a new book, In True Face: A Woman's Life in the CIA, Unmasked. It was her second appearance on the show, which I hope you’ll agree Is every bit as entertaining as the first.
What a family...