Author, Event Coordinator here at the library. And thank you thank you for joining us for this evenings program. Um, some quick notes if you havent already. Books are being sold by our bookselling partner, snug books right outside. Theyll be available for purchase now or after the program and tickets are still available. Ali velshi joining us in on may 9th. Go to Pratt Library dot org to find out more and reserve your tickets and now for tonights program tonight im to welcome jonna mendez to Pratt Library to discuss her new book in true face a womans in the cia unmasked. In it, she talks about her cia career as a contract wife performing secretarial secretarial duties for the cia as a convenience to her. A young officer stationed in europe and true face recounts not only the drama of mendezs high stakes work how the savvy operator parlayed her everyday woman appeal into incredible subterfuge, but also the grit and good fortune it took for her to navigate a misogynistic world. This is the story of an incredible spy and what it took to it. Jonna mendez is a former chief of disguise with over 25 years of experience as a cia officer working in moscow and other sensitive areas with. Her late husband, tony mendez. She is the bestselling coauthor of argo, the moscow rules and spy. The Washington Post called the book engaging and enlightening and true face is an important addition to the canon of nonfiction books about an institution encrusted in myths created by movies. Novels, hostile intelligence services, and occasionally the itself. Publisher, Publishers Weekly says that mendez details her fascinating career in this gripping memoir, an entertaining and enlightening into the opaque world of spycraft. And in curtiss review of in true face, they wrote fans of true espionage will enjoy mendezs steer stories of a formative era in intelligence history. It is my great pleasure. Welcome jonna mendez to the stage. Thank you. May get organized just for a. I brought my book just in case. I wanted to read a chapter you. Good evening. I wasnt sure if anyone would come. I ive been watching baltimore on my tv all as everyone has and just now got caught up on whats what happening there. Its its quite a day. Its a memorable day. Im looking for the clicker. Wheres the clicker at . We do this every time i speak. Im an im an idiot when it comes to to things technical. Anyway so im going to talk to you about my book called in true face. Did that make any sense . Thank you. To any of you. Did you understand what it was when . You just saw it. In true face. Because thats the cia. Speak for underscore for for women is without makeup. Thats your true face. You know when you wake up in the morning, thats your true face. If you came to see me in my disguise lab, thats where we began. It also means take it away. Take it away. Any scaffolding and presenting as the real person that you are. I was never sure when i named that that it was going to translate. So i said, i just tell you how wrote the book and why i wrote the book. And then a little bit about the cia, which is probably why you came to see to begin with. I wrote the book during covid my had passed two years previously. My dog had passed about six months previously and it was just me during. I did about six Jigsaw Puzzles myself and i photographed them and sent them to my friends. They said, please stop. No mass. And then i thought, well, ill just ill write a memoir. And thats what this book set out to be was my memoir of my life and my at the cia. Now, i knew the cia was going to have their way with it. Once i sent it to them because they do some editing. They do some reviewing. They take some stuff out that is still classified. Stuff that i might not realize is still classified. But overall, didnt they didnt remove most of any story in there. What you might find for trading if you get the book and read it is its a little sketchy about where i am. There are a lot of cities that they didnt me talking about being in city. Thats okay with me. But for instance, i had my run in with mother teresa. You can probably make a good guess where i was. I should have been for her. I would have i would have done differently. Okay so this is the memoir and as im writing it, i discovered that i couldnt just tell my story, my of a woman in the cia. Its not a standalone. There were lots of women in the cia in various in various roles and we all had issues theres that theres a new times journalist whos written about the cia for years and he didnt ever really like the agency. He was very critical of the agency and so we in turn were a little critical of him. We didnt like him very much either. His name was tim weiner. It turns out while i was away, tim wrote the review of this book for the washington. It was a big review, was like half a page. And i was in california when i heard that, oh my god, there was a review. And tim wrote it and i thought, well, you know, thats my book. And hes not going to like. Just want to go on record is saying he loves this book. He was so effusive it was embarrassing. I have completely changed my of that man. I feel like a hypocrite but what can i do. Yeah it was just it was amazing. And thats what first time i got a sense that this book might actually have some legs and i think that it does. So thats the prelude to this talk. The picture on the screen you will see is when i was 19. I was living in wichita, kansas. I was going Wichita State university when my best friend went off to germany to marry an american second lieutenant. I think thats the lowest level of military officer. Dumb that you thats where you start. Thats thats it. Thats beginning. So she went to marry this military fellow and wanted me to come to germany to be in her wedding, to be her matron of honor while growing up in wichita, kansas. Id been trying to figure out how i was going to since i was about six, and i knew. I wanted to leave. I just couldnt ever make the plan. Jl and there it was. Go to germany be in sherrys wedding. And i did that. So this is the picture kind of, i dont know, id been there maybe a. I dont know who this young man was, but i know he was introducing me to german beer with it with a ceramic top, you know, and im sorry i like to take that cigaret out of my hand, but i cannot. I came from the land, 3. 2 beer in when i was a teenager in wichita. You not drink enough beer to get a buzz going. You just couldnt consume that much beer and in germany. They would pour you a if you were seven years old. They didnt care at all. I turned 21 in germany and it was just not big deal not a bit. So so i ended up in germany. I loved it, loved it, loved it. It was green, it was damp. It was luscious, it was hilly, it was trees, everything. The kansas not. So i thought id stay. Now, my friend sherry and husband, they got a train. They went to. They went to italy on their honeymoon. And there i was just me from kansas drinking. So what i is, i got on a train and i went to frankfurt. Frankfurt, germany, which is a big Economic Center in lots of banks. Lots of banks. So in the train station, i found a phone booth with a phone book. I a big handful of deutschmarks and alphabetically started calling american banks just because i recognized the initially i wasnt necessarily thinking i want to work in a bank. I was thinking an American Company is going to be more likely to me. So first i call the american consulate and they said, dear, we dont do jobs we do visas, you need a visa, we can help you out. But no, we dont do jobs. So that was the age i called of america. That was the bs. I said, im looking for a job. They said, not here. No, were not interested. I. What was the third one started with a c cant remember. They said, no, no we, dont have a job for you. And then called Chase Manhattan Bank in downtown frankfurt, across the street from the opera house. And i said, im looking for a job. They said, oh have you ever worked at a bank before . I said, no. They said, do you speak german . I said, no i said do. You have a work permit which is required to work in germany . I said, i dont. And they said, why you just come down and talk to us . And they hired me, they hired me. And that was my my second ticket. The first one was getting to europe. The second ticket was a job where i could support myself and stay in europe. I think i was almost 20 when that happened. And so that was the beginning of a very interesting a very life, i might say. I was in the bank these young men were coming in. Americans there was a group of them. Every two weeks theyd be down in our lobby and i got to talking to them because if youre overseas for any length of time, you start of looking for americans just chat with. And i started dating one. His name was john and a year and a half after i met him i married him and switzer ireland which is the las vegas of europe. You thought its all mountains and cheese and those cows. The bells. But behind that facade there was a very slick process. You could get married everything translated, everything stamped. I do the ring and out the door, like in the morning theres a line of people doing so. So john and i got married. Here goes the clicker. It. These are my wedding. No long white . No. All oh, the acute trademark of an American Wedding are missing my little white mini dress is what i got married in. And that volkswagen beetle, which is brand new, we paid 1500 dollars for it. That was our going away picture. And off we went. We went we went to italy as well. John kaser was an interesting man. He had up in europe. His dad was a diplomat with state department. He spoke fabulous german. He skied like a ski champion because he went to school in switzerland and. That was part of their afternoon lessons skiing one day and tennis the other. He was really good at both. So there i was, a married lady and now im 20. The next that happened was we ended up going back home, whats called home leave. You have to check in to cia every once in a while. They dont want you out there for any long period of time. Theyre afraid youre going to go like native in france or something. So every two years you would come back home. We went home on a ship, the ss United States the fastest and most luxurious ship that was afloat at that. And we went first class and everyone in first class is looking at us like, well, just a minute, you dont belong. Youre too young. You dont rich enough. So john invented this story that he was this deejay from california and all these rich old people, they didnt know. They didnt know. And the way john did not dance, my new husband did not dance. But i did. So i won the dance contest on the ship right here. This is my proof. Took home to wichita to meet my sisters. Those are my sisters. Thats me thats me kind of in the middle as thats my dads truck, which he named chicken fat. You can see its perfect color and its just, you know, an idea there were four sisters, jennifer, in the red shirt had escaped. She went to aspen. The other two were too young to escape, but they were watching us closely. They already making a plan. I ended up working for the cia as contract wife, and it was this odd little catch. If youre overseas if youre married overseas, you can come aboard the cia they still do a security thing but its not huge and they will give you secretarial duties. So i started working at cia a secretary now have to tell you, im a very good secretary they kept promoting me and promoting me to the point where i was working for the director of the office. It was about a thousand people in that office that was working for the boss and i was bored out of my mind. This is in downtown dc and i could see the Smithsonian Castle building from my office and i mentioned to my boss that i was thinking about going and talking them about a job because i didnt think what i had was a job i really wasnt that much work. And my boss said, hold on, dont leave. We we do some photog graffiti courses here in the office and i know you really like photography. I did. I was an avid amateur. He said, take some of our courses. So now i should have just tell you for a moment about this office i was working in. It was q of cia just like q and james bond. We were cia. Q we were the technical arm, the intelligence community, not just cia, primarily cia. We were composed of physicists, chemists electrical and mechanical engineers, all kinds of people with really fine Technical Skills that you dont bump into very often. We could create or make almost if if it didnt exist. But our case officers needed it. We would invent whatever. It was for them. It was a fashion, a place to work. And i really liked it a lot. I took some of those photography courses the first photo course i at the cia, the very first one they sent me to a Landing Strip outside of d. C. Theres a little twin engine plane. Theyve taken the doors off so you can see through the plane and theres a harness in there to sit in kind of swing. That was my harness and there was a headphone is my headphone. They gave me a 35 millimeter camera. This is all with the thousand millimeter, which is about that long. And when you put that on the camera body, that that wants to move and stabilizing your lens in order to get a good, crisp picture. Thats what i was about to learn while riding in an airplane, swinging in the harness with it, with the headphones on it called airborne platforms. And it was a day that ill never it was just really a wonderful afternoon. We had some geese over here flying with us. Were going over the chesapeake bay. I said, low, how low can we go . We were if i stuck my toe out. It would have been it would it wouldve been wet anyway. I segway into a career in photography at the cia. I was no longer a secretary but i didnt go into the big. I went in to the dark rooms because i was a woman. Thats where they were just they were they were sure where i ought to be. And this picture is back in frankfort, a assignment im taking some photos of some concealment devices we had made. We have to make instructions for whoever is going to use them and. Im taking the pictures for the instructions. This is how this is how you open this briefcase case that has a compartment. So well hidden in it that you can go through any immigration in the in the world and they will never be able to find it. But if you had my pictures, you would know how to do it. So, so working in photography at cia was nothing like what you might think the cameras, the commercial cameras. That was not what we did. This is a camera in the cia. It was this probably a new version of. It this was an ink an ink pen that had a you know, it was it was like one of those big, fat, juicy pens that cost 800 that really executives would like to have in their pocket. So everyone would know how successful they were. But this one had a camera in it. In addition, the ink. So while the pen would write an upper left hand corner, that smallest that the camera inside of that cylinder. So you have to stay with me here. Look at the pen in his hands and know that inside of the cylinder is a film cassette. Some of you will remember kodaks little yellow and black film. Ours was small, that it fit the camera that was inside the pen. And there was a piece film thats about that long. Its about eight inches long. And when i developed it, it would have 100 tiny black dots on it. And dot was a page of text eight and a half by 11. So you could take a lot of photos of a lot of documents. So with this, this was one of our best tools during the cold war because we only gave it to our most our assets who the best access. So imagine today that someone walks into putins office with a little notepad and his pen and hes talking to putin and he is writing down, okay, i that ill call him ill do this putin either picks up a phone looks away someone comes in our guy with the pen all he has to do is hold the pen up over the document and with one touch silent he made no noise. Take a picture of the minutes of the meeting or the agenda for the meeting. Whats going to. Thats what we were after. One of the people at work used to disagree with me and say those werent that great. We had cash. We had all these satellite systems up there. We had pictures of everything i said, yeah, but thats today all those satellite pictures. Theyre now my pictures were tomorrow. What are they planning . Are they going to do . What are they getting ready to do . I say this and over our purpose was to collect intelligence on the plans and intentions of our enemies and get it back to washington dc. What are they planning . What are they going do . What is putin going to do whats china going to do next . Whats that north korean with those those missiles and that nuclear . What are they planning . Thats what they want to know. And these cameras one very, very good way to find out. Now i didnt do just photography you dont just one thing in places and at cia you certainly so i spread out the systems i was working with i was Training Foreign assets. And electronic encrypted electron communication in russia. This will come up again and again it was so dangerous for the people working for us if they were caught, they could be killed. They probably would be killed and their families would have terrible, terrible time. It was so dangerous that we didnt meet face to face with them unless we absolutely had to. We did whats called in personal communication, and thats what the electronic communication was. You dial a shortwave radio in russia and you just hear this voice, just strings of numbers and you knew your time. You knew your day. You dial to the right and youd hear groups of five numbers, a pause, groups of five numbers. They do it three times and, youd write them down, and then then you would go find your walnut or, whatever you had concealed your one time pad in. I like the walnut because its gives a good sense of size and you take out your one time pad, you listen to the numbers in the radio. You them and youd be able read your message. That was one of many. We communicated with our agents is very very secure now youre thinking so you communicated with dead rats. Now did not we didnt communicate them, but we the sign says we used gutted rats. I would say that the taxidermists did taking care of the rats. Thats how i would put it. They were very tidy when we finished they had velcro on their on their stomachs. This is an unfunny taxidermy rat. And we would hide kinds of things in them. Money film developer for a secret writing system medicine for their kid they couldnt get in moscow whatever they needed whatever we needed you can get lot of stuff in a dead rat. This this as theyre doused with pepper sauce and thats wrong they were doused with tabasco sauce a Good American product and we did that because while no one in the world will pick up knowingly pick up a dead rat, thats we chose them. An animal will dog would. A