The CIA used Twitter to try to set the record straight on "Argo," once one of the spy agency's most clandestine operations that was made into an Academy Award-winning movie by Ben Affleck. The movie won the Oscar for best movie in 2012.
Affleck and "Argo" writers took creative license to ratchet up the drama around the secret rescue of six American diplomats from Tehran during the Iranian hostage crisis in 1979. The CIA on Friday took to Twitter to celebrate the 35th anniversary of one of its biggest successes and to point out what really happened in the "Argo" story,
according to Time.
"Today we tell you what's 'reel' vs. 'real,'" the CIA tweeted Friday before going on a fact-checking spree about what actually happened and what was invented for storytelling's sake," wrote Time's Nelson Feeney. "The differences mostly come down to simplified details (they didn't go the Canadian ambassador's house right away, multiple CIA agents went to Iran) and heightened drama (everything at the airport happened pretty smoothly, actually)."
In fact checking the film, CIA did tweet that they were big fans of the motion picture.
The Twitter posts revealed that the dramatic closing scene was pure Hollywood. While there was an hour-long mechanical delay to the flight, the escape went smoothly, the CIA reported, according its tweets and
The Hollywood Reporter. In fact, the CIA scheduled early morning flights to ensure the Iranian Revolutionary Guards checking for Americans at the Tehran airport would be asleep, so they would not be detained.
The CIA did tweet there were some things the movie got exactly right.
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