I served in a lot of places: Manila, Oslo, Kingston, Rangoon. I'm interested in all of them, but Iran remains the most vivid in many ways, for obvious reasons. Things are different when you're on the run, in a dangerous situation. We didn't know what to do. Calling John Sheardown changed everything.

Years later, Alan Golacinski, the security officer of the embassy who was taken hostage and got out much later than we did, was running a course on terrorism at the Foreign Service Institute. He asked me: What are the lessons? I thought about it and said, "Wherever you go in the world, if you're going to be there awhile, be sure to make friends with the Canadians."

We created a fictional universe that would stand up to scrutiny under a magnifying glass. And it would play out on two different continents. It was a hustle, sure. But the legitimacy of Studio Six is what made it possible. I didn't feel bad for the people who believed it and sent us scripts, because the whole industry is a hustle. That's one of the reasons this cover story could work. Nobody questions anything in Hollywood. It means a great deal to me that I participated. Everyone wants to leave a mark someplace. We accomplished something that very few people ever get an opportunity to do.

We made a lot of decisions along the way—heading for the British embassy, sneaking into Bob Anders' apartment, going from house to house, and of course escaping through the airport—and we could have been compromised in any number of places.

The scariest moment was the last night we were on the run before we got to the Canadians. We had this overwhelming sensation that they were going to come for us that night. There was a komiteh guy in the neighborhood, and we worried he might have seen us arrive. We didn't sleep more than two hours. We left in such a panic we didn't even take all our clothes with us.

Heading into Iran, I was in the transit lounge in Zurich, alone, and I started wondering, do I really want to do this? I can remember thinking, this is not like mounting an operation in Russia. These guys are zealots. If you get caught, there's no telling what they'd do. It was a strange moment. But that always happens. You get the jitters. Then I thought about the planning, and things looked good, so I decided I was ready to move forward. After that rescue, the branch chief in the Near East Division said to me, "This is the only thing that's worked in our entire Iranian policy. Everything else we've tried has failed."

The embassy crisis was the first serious breach in diplomatic conduct since World War II. Until that time, embassies felt they could count on their host countries to solve problems. The Iranian militants—and the government—flouted the law, and it encouraged others to do the same. It was the first indication that the West was vulnerable.

We were perpetually worried. We could have been caught, labeled persona non grata, and asked to leave the country. We could have been thrown into the US embassy. Or worse. It was dimmer prospects for the Americans had they been caught. The thing I remember most is the conclusion. I was back at my residence, and Roger Lucy, my first secretary at the embassy, had been out at the airport, looking on from a distance as the Americans boarded the plane. The moment they got off the ground, he phonesd me. "The party's over," he said, "and the guests have gone home."

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