Feb 24, 2013, San Francisco

Former President Jimmy Carter appeared at a packed Herbst theater in San Francisco Sunday and spoke on several important issues including global health, human rights, and his critique of the use of drones. In response to an audience question, he said he hoped that the film Argo would win the Oscar for the best picture. Later that night, his wish came true and Argo won best picture at the academy awards.

Transciption

Question: “Mr. President, … before you came here, we were talking about your favorite for the Academy Awards best picture tonight, so there were a number of questions – let me try to roll them into one. There’s been a bit of controversy relating to the movie Argo over the role played by Canadian Ambassador Ken Taylor and his embassy staff versus that played by the CIA in shepherding six US diplomats to freedom during the ’79 hostage crisis. Can you shed some light on these events and are there any events that weren’t captured in the movie that you could share with us?”

“it’s a vivid wonderful film, not precisely factual, but I hope it gets the best picture award” ~ Former President Jimmy Carter

President Carter: “Well, I was on the Piers Morgan show and he’s here in California to report on the Oscar presentations tonight and that’s why he concentrated on this particular issue. As a matter fact, I was president when the hostages were taken in Iran, as most of you old enough would remember, and I was informed immediately that six of our hostages were not taken in the compound by the Iranians. They escaped they went to two or three other places, and for instance the British and some others wouldn’t take them in, so they finally wound up in the Canadian embassy … were where they were taken in. And the Canadians were in great potential trouble that because all of their diplomats could also have been taken hostage if they had been caught protecting Americans. And so Ken Taylor was the ambassador there, and Flora MacDonald was the foreign minister for Canada. I was faced with a very difficult position too, because I wanted to keep it absolutely sacred, and I finally worked out at an agreement between the CIA and the Canadians that the American hostages would escape using Canadian passports. But you can imagine the difficulty, legally speaking, for the Canadian Parliament to issue false passports, so to the entire parliament had to go into secret session – the only time they’ve ever done that in history, and they did and they voted to issue the six false passports and they kept it secret, so the false passports went over there and the hostages were permitted to leave.”

“The movie role, played by the American hero – he was only there for a day and a half. Ken Taylor and them were there through the whole thing and so when the Americans escaped, contrary to the very vivid end in the movie that brought me to the edge of my seat as well when I watched it, where this pickup truck outran a jet airplane taking off – I’m not criticizing Hollywood – but nobody ever knew that the six Americans had been in the Canadian embassy until they were safe in Switzerland. And my wife and I were invited to go to Queens College in Canada last fall to receive unread doctorate degrees, which we did, and so I watched Argo before I went because I knew that Ken Taylor and Flora MacDonald were going to be in the audience. They had also seen the film, and my judgment is that 90% of the credit for that heroic and brilliant move should have been with the Canadians, and the movie ignores practically any contribution by the Canadians. But aside from that, it’s a vivid wonderful film, not precisely factual, but I hope it gets the best picture award.”

“And you said one other thing. One other thing that hasn’t ever been … On a different basis, we had CIA agents going into Iran fairly often, and one time we had four CIA agents went in, and there was a very close relationship between Iran and Germany. Most of the Iranian leaders were educated in Germany, so we ordinarily used German passports. So these four Americans were leaving Iran and went through customs, and as they went through, one of then showed him his passport and he said okay go ahead and he walked about 20 feet and the customs agent said wait come back. I’ve been a customs agent here for 20 years, and I have never before seen a German passport with the an initial on it, they always spell out the full names, and here your name here is Arrow H. Shifter. He said, I don’t understand it, so the CIA agent thought very rapidly, and he said, well I can have to confess, when I was born my parents gave me the middle name of Hitler, and I have special permission to use the initial, so he said go on through… that hasn’t been told publicly before by the way.”

Report by James George