Mendez was decorated, and is now widely known, for his on-the-scene management of the "Canadian Caper" during the Iran hostage crisis.

He exfiltrated six American diplomats from Iran in January 1980 by arranging to have them pose as a Canadian film crew.

After declassification of records, the full details of the operation were reported in a 2007 article by Joshuah Bearman in Wired magazine.

[1] This was loosely adapted for the screenplay and development of the 2012 Academy Award-winning film Argo, directed by Ben Affleck, who also starred as Mendez.

Mendez attended the 70th Golden Globe Awards to give a speech about the film, where it was nominated for (and later won) Best Motion Picture – Drama.

He first worked as an illustrator and tool designer for Martin Marietta, a large aerospace firm.

He was hired by the CIA and became an espionage artist for the Technical Services Division,[10] where he specialized in identity document forgery and creating disguises.

[14] In the mid-1980s, Mendez worked with Jonna Hiestand Goeser, also a CIA officer, on rebuilding the U.S. security organization in the Soviet Union and later Russia.

Journalist Joshuah Bearman wrote a full article about this in the April 2007 issue of Wired magazine.