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I‘ve just read two earlier versions of the story told by the recent movie Argo. CIA agent Antonio Mendez and Matt Baglio’s 2012 book Argo is subtitled “How the CIA and Hollywood Pulled off the Most Audacious Rescue in History.” Jean Pelletier and Claude Adam’s 1981 book The Canadian Caper is subtitled “the inside story of the Canadian Rescue of Six American Diplomats Trapped in Iran.” The stark difference in these two perspectives brings to mind JFK’s adage that “victory has a thousand fathers but defeat is an orphan.”

In Argo, Mendez, who ultimately received clearance from the CIA to tell his story, focused on his use of tradecraft to exfiltrate the six American diplomats from Teheran. Together with his CIA staff, Mendez forged documents and crafted disguises for the Canadian Embassy’s “houseguests.” The CIA came up with the story that the houseguests were part of the Canadian production team for a sci-fi thriller “Argo” that was checking out Iran as a location for filming, but then decided to leave. Finally, Mendez recounted his visit to Teheran to prepare the houseguests and shepherd them through Mehrebad Airport.

The movie Argo did not explain why the Canadian government wanted the houseguests out of Teheran ASAP, but in the book Mendez made clear that a Canadian journalist, Jean Pelletier, had the story. The Canadian Government was able to convince Pelletier not to go to press immediately, but was concerned that, if Pelletier had the story, it would come out while the houseguests were still in Iran.

The Jean Pelletier who had the story but did not publish it was the same Jean Pelletier who co-authored The Canadian Caper. Pelletier knew the consequences of going into detail about the CIA’s involvement in the Canadian caper back in 1981, so he was very opaque. He did reveal that CIA agents met with External Affairs staff in Ottawa and participated in the crafting of false documents, in particular the entry visas into Iran to be used by the departing diplomats. He also revealed that there were CIA agents in Iran and especially at Mehrebad Airport when the diplomats left. Finally, he obliquely referred to the Argo cover story by recounting that the diplomats called themselves a delegation of business men and women from Canada.

Pelletier focused on the Canadian aspects of the story, in particular Ken Taylor and John Sheardown’s initiatives in Teheran to protect the houseguests, External Affairs Minister Flora MacDonald’s efforts to pressure the Americans to act quickly to exfiltrate the houseguests, and the attempts of the public servants in External Affairs who knew the story to suppress it.

Writing in the third person, Pelletier and Adams went on at considerable length about how Pelletier, acting on a hunch, pieced together the story; about how External Affairs, in particular Canadian Ambassador to the US Peter Towe, leaned on him to suppress it; about his discussions with his own editors when the diplomats were still in Iran about whether to publish; and finally about publishing his article as soon as the diplomats were safely out of Iran.

Put simply, these are two different perspectives on a story. They don’t necessarily contradict one another. If Pelletier and Adams had carte blanche to tell the complete story back in 1981, they might have revealed more about the CIA’s role, in particular that of Mendez. Given the nature of his work for the clandestine service, Mendez was not permitted to tell his story. It was only after his retirement and the passage of considerable time that he could. Even so, we are informed on the copyright page that the manuscript was vetted by the CIA to prevent disclosure of information that remained classified.

Ken Taylor got to tell his story immediately, and in a very public way, right after the events happened. He became a very rare creature, a celebrity diplomat. He traded on his celebrity in the US for quite some time, getting the plum post of Consul-General to New York, and, after leaving External Affairs, becoming a senior executive at RJR-Nabisco.

After retiring from the CIA in 1990, Mendez wrote two memoirs about his experiences, but it was Argo, published in 2012, that became the basis for the movie, and that brought Mendez a measure of fame.

I can understand why Taylor was incensed that the movie Argo understated his role. But I can also understand why Mendez wanted to tell his own story.

The essence of a partnership is that the partners work together to achieve an outcome no one of them could have achieved separately. The exfiltration of the six guests was a prototype of such an outcome. Still, each partner has his own perspective on the events and his own story to tell. The book and subsequent movie Argo came from Mendez’s perspective and told his story.

A narrative involves a set of real or fictive events. But a narrative also involves a narrator who relates those events. The Argo-Canadian Caper controversy is a classic illustration of how different narrators from different perspectives use the same events to tell different stories. As a student of narrative, I’m glad to hear Mendez’s new story, even if it leads to a repositioning and a rethinking of Pelletier’s and Taylor’s earlier stories.

The night before last, I watched the Conservatives one-two advertising punch during a Jays’ game: their Justin Trudeau attack ad as well as an Economic Action Plan ad, the latter being nothing more than taxpayer-supported political advertising.

Yesterday I saw Justin Trudeau’s reply to the attack ad, and I consider it a good first step. Despite being titled “let’s put an end to attack ads,” it’s really a counter-attack ad. Using the words “we deserve better” to refer to the Conservative attack ads and ending “together, we can build a better country,” he’s putting forth his intention to set a higher standard in both political conduct and public policy than the Conservatives. By asserting that he’s “proud to be a teacher” and that “he’s a son, but also a father,” he’s beginning to tell his own story. He’s refusing to let the Conservatives define him, and tell their misleading version of his story.

Most importantly, he’s signaling that, unlike recent Liberal leaders, he’s willing to fight back. It’s essential that he send this message right at the outset of his leadership.

The YouTube count as of today, April 25, is promising. The Conservatives’ ad, which has been running for 10 days or so, has 258,000 views, but the Liberals’ ad, by only its second day has 202,000 views. It may well overtake the total for the Conservatives’ ad. Clearly there is a lot of interest in Trudeau, from both the Liberal faithful, who were waiting for this, and from citizens who want to check him out.

As I mentioned at the outset, the Conservatives have their positive story about the Harper government, which claims that it has delivered economic renewal, and their negative story, which claims that the Liberal (and, in the future, NDP) leadership combine ambition and incompetence.

The Liberals also need to develop their two sided narrative, with a powerful story of hope, determination, and gravitas attributed to Justin Trudeau, and a negative story about the failings of the Harper Government.

We saw the makings of the first part of this with the counter-attack ad. The Liberals should not – I emphasize not – put an end to their attack ads. If they want power, eventually they have to develop attack ads that delegitimize Stephen Harper. They should be watching his every word and every move, looking for inconsistency, hypocrisy, mendacity, and corruption. Political survival demands no less.

This is a maxim about negative campaigning that Jim Coutts, former Liberal party strategist and principal secretary to Pierre Trudeau, told my public management class decades ago. I quoted it in a blog post on March 12, 2011 in which I questioned then Liberal Party leader Michael Ignatieff’s unwillingness to respond to Conservative Party attack ads. Given that Ignatieff ended up in the dustbin of Canadian political history, I return to Coutts’s maxim in the hope that Pierre Trudeau’s son will listen to Coutts’s wisdom.

As 243,000 (and ever increasing) YouTube viewers and God knows how many television viewers know, the Conservatives have begun their attack ads on Justin Trudeau. Like their attack ads on former Liberal leaders Michael Ignatieff and Bob Rae, they are personal and they come with a narrative. They dredge up history (Rae’s record as NDP premier of Ontario) and public statements (Michael Ignatieff on US television) to demonstrate that the Liberal leader, while motivated by overarching ambition, lacks the competence to be Prime Minister. The narrative about Trudeau is that, while he has the political pedigree, he doesn’t have the experience, judgment, or gravitas to be prime minister. And the Conservatives have also set up an attack website, justinoverhishead.ca, to amplify their point.

As I discussed in my post about Ignatieff, this is a use of what I call the ironic political fable. It contrasts the achievement of personal ambition (Ignatieff, Rae, or Trudeau becoming prime minister) with the predicted deleterious consequences for Canada.

Why are the Conservatives so stridently attacking Trudeau? One might simply argue, because they can. The Trudeau attack story is ready-made and the Conservatives have the money needed to tell it.

But it goes deeper than that. First, the Conservatives are intending to create conflict within the Liberal Party between those who counsel ignoring the attacks and those who advise strong and swift retaliation.

Second, it is part and parcel of the Conservatives’ desire to reshape Canadian politics by destroying the Liberal Party so as to create a two-party system consisting of the Conservatives and the NDP. In Conservatives strategy, the Liberals are a centre-left party, so must be destroyed, so that the Conservatives can occupy the centre. The Conservative attack machine has virtually ignored NDP leader Thomas Mulcair, with only the occasional attack on his policies but nothing attacking him personally.

What should the Liberals do? If they do nothing, Justin Trudeau risks the same fate as Michael Ignatieff, having a disastrous story told by the Conservatives about him so convincingly that he has no capacity to tell his own story of hope and heroism.

Coutts’s point was that you don’t deny what your opponents claim as your weaknesses because that just perpetuates their story. Rather you attack your opponent’s leader with your own negative attack ads. Liberal pollster Mike Marzolini’s suggestion of trying to parry the Conservative attack ads with parody and satire has the unfortunate effect of perpetuating their story.

Are the Liberals ready to launch attack ads on the Conservatives? Do they have the money? I recall that when Bob Rae was being attacked, they raised a special fund of several hundred thousand dollars for response, money which has yet to be spent. And they are attempting to raise more now for the same purpose.

Do they have the message? They could certainly attack Harper as having an ideologically conservative agenda, contrasting his May 2011 election-night statement that he would govern on behalf of all Canadians with his record since then. They could attack his omnibus bills and other perversions of parliamentary democracy. They could find clips of him smiling supportively with ministers whom he has later thrown from the bus. There is no shortage of material.

The NDP is quite pleased to see the Conservatives attacking the Liberals if it will help establish their role as permanent, rather than one-time, Official Opposition party. Just as the Conservatives have muted their broadcast attacks on the NDP, the NDP has silenced their broadcast (as opposed to parliamentary) attacks on the Conservatives.

Liberal attack ads would differentiate their party from the NDP. They would energize the Liberal base. They would put the Liberals in a position of leading the attack on Stephen Harper and constitute a bid for the support of the majority of Canadian voters who want something other than Stephen Harper.

Justin Trudeau must choose, and choose very soon, whether he wants to let the Conservatives tell his story, with all the predictable consequences that follow, or whether he will authorize a different narrative.

One of the long-standing business fables – particularly in the financial services sector – is that of bringing the prince of darkness to justice. By prince of darkness I mean the CEO, and usually entrepreneurial founder, of a financial services firm who is breaking the law: insider trading, fraud, or perhaps a Ponzi scheme. Justice is delivered by the government, usually the SEC acting in concert with the Justice Department and the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York. Justice may come about because the government’s own tripwires, such as its monitoring of stock trades, reveal criminality, or because some disgruntled employee of the prince of darkness, either voluntarily or under criminal prosecution himself, provides the information on which the government can build its case.

In terms of the four quadrant matrix for analyzing organizational narratives outlined in Governing Fables, this is a retributive one. Because this narrative takes place in the financial services sector, it is about the money. The prince of darkness forfeits his ill-gotten gains to the government, which uses the money to recoup at least some of the losses suffered by those who have been tricked or exploited. The prince of darkness is disgraced, is required to do prison time, and may have important privileges, such as trading on the stock exchange, withdrawn for the rest of his life.

One can think of several real-life narratives that follow this fable: those of Jeffrey Skilling, Conrad Black, Ivan Boesky, Michael Milken, and Bernard Madoff. There is also a classic fictional version, which is the movie Wall Street, with its prince of darkness protagonist, Gordon Gekko. Gekko, a role for which Michael Douglas won the Academy Award for best actor, is vital and charismatic. He can convince his employees to break the law on his behalf: his conversation in his limo with the ambitious neophyte trader Bud Fox is a classic example. Gekko is also effective at arguing – however cynically – that his market manipulations actually benefit society (“greed is good”). Gekko’s crime is insider trading, in particular encouraging his employees to find inside information which he can use for profitable trades.

As life imitates art, which itself reflects life, we are now watching the unfolding of the US Government’s case against Steven A. Cohen, CEO and 100 percent owner of the hedge fund SAC Capital Advisers. A number of Cohen’s employees have confessed to or are under indictment for trading on inside information and Cohen has already paid over $ 600 million in a preliminary out-of-court settlement (a fact curiously omitted from his Wikipedia entry). The big question that remains is whether Cohen’s employees will be willing and able to provide enough information to enable the government to indict and convict him.

Cohen, however, is no Gordon Gekko. He is notoriously private and most unlikely to make speeches extolling his values at shareholder meetings. Unlike Michael Douglas’s classic chiseled profile and flowing hair, Cohen is bald, bespectacled , and podgy-faced. His successive wives do not at all appear to be like Gekko’s trophy wife and mistresses.

If Cohen is not the charming and charismatic rogue of a Gordon Gekko, he is also not the progressive and socially enlightened plutocrat that Bill Gates freely chose to become, or that Michael Milken, as part of his restitution, was compelled to become. Cohen’s two all-consuming passions appear to be building an ever bigger mansion and enhancing his personal art collection. He contributed substantially to the Romney campaign, presumably seeing it as an investment in keeping his rate of taxation low.

Few tears will be shed for him if, in the pursuit of justice, the US government brings him down. My guess is that many people, on Wall Street and elsewhere, are cheering for this to happen. Another instantiation of the retributive fable awaits.

I just saw director Pablo Lorrain’s movie “No,” about the unexpectedly successful referendum campaign in Chile that unseated dictator Augusto Pinochet in 1988.

The movie focuses its attention on Rene Saavedra, a fictional young ad man, to whom it attributed many of the ads used by the “No” side. (They were the “No” side because the question asked was whether voters would agree to an eight year term as President for Pinochet.) The rules permitted a maximum of 15 minutes of national television advertising by both the yes and no sides in the month before the referendum.

Following the movie’s focus, most of the critical discussion has revolved around the use of American-style advertising tactics. Comparisons have been drawn to Madison Avenue and ‘Mad Men.” Ann Hornaday wrote in the Washington Post “Saavedra co-opts Madison Avenue ad strategies to create a down-with-dictatorship/up-with-people campaign.” Liam Lacey wrote in the Globe and Mail, “from a marketing perspective, [Saavedra] sees a chance to put his product over in the marketplace, and if that means selling regime change with a We Are the World-style charity video, why not?” Andrew O’Hehir, wrote in Salon, “ On one level ‘No’ is an inspiring tale of peaceful liberation, self-determination, and the fundamental clash between optimism and pessimism. On another, it’s a darker a more complex fable about the birth of the media age and the rise of the neoliberal consensus that conceived of all humanity as a market.” He concluded, “do you want to speak truth to power, and less the election? Or do you want to beat the dictator at his own game, and move Chile into the future. Because the road to the future is paved with focus groups and cheerful rainbow logos…”

I think this notion of “selling out to win” that has dominated the discussion is misguided. I suggest looking at the Si and No referendum campaigns from the narratological perspective I developed in Governing Fable, and have frequently applied in this blog.

Every successful political campaign must have a positive story about itself and a negative story about its opponent(s). For the Si campaign the positive story was about Pinochet bringing calm, stability, and prosperity to Chile. In its ads, Pinochet the military dictator is re-interpreted as a genial, avuncular, civilian paterfamilias of the nation. The Si campaign also had its attack ads, associating the No campaign with economic instability, Marxist ideology, and the suppression of traditional family values. A No victory raised the spectre of a return to the chaos of the Allende years.

The No side had its negative fable, and it was a compelling one: Pinochet’s history of military dictatorship, suppression of human rights and civil liberties, torture, and the disappearing of the junta’s opponents. This story was told quite compellingly in ads narrated by the mothers of the junta’s victims.

But the No side could not win without a positive fable.

Because the No side was an alliance of opposition parties, there was no one individual who could be presented as a protagonist whom the voters could see as preferable to Pinochet. Rather the No side had to present its positive fable as an idea – the idea of personal freedom in a democratic regime. It portrayed the idea of freedom by portraying the goal of freedom as the pursuit of happiness. Hence the upbeat slogan “happiness is coming,” the upbeat music, the pictures of people openly enjoying themselves. I don’t see this is evidence of “the neoliberal consensus that conceives of all of humanity as a market” but as a reasonable attempt to portray, to people who may have forgotten, what it means to live in a free society.

The movie, at the end, shows spots with Christopher Reeves, Jane Fonda, and Richard Dreyfuss (speaking in Spanish) endorsing the No. I don’t see this as Hollywood-ism, but rather as a message to Chileans to reject the insularity of the Pinochet era and embrace a wider world.

As the character of Rene was a composite, one can reasonably ask whether a more factual approach would have portrayed the proponents of the positive message in the No campaign as less adman-like than Rene. In his review, O’Hehir noted that No has provoked a controversy in Chile, in particular about whether the movie’s exclusive focus on the advertising campaigns ignored the broader political campaigns, in particular the No campaign’s ground-level political organizing and voter registration drive.

The movie suggested that, when the counting of the ballots began, the possibility of the Pinochet regime stealing the election arose, and then made the case that people knew Pinochet had been defeated only when other military leaders publicly affirmed the No side’s victory. People living in stable democracies take for granted that elections will be run fairly and this fairness extends to the critical activity of counting the vote. In so many countries this is not the case.

Finally, a word about production values. The movie was shot with U-matic video cameras that were in common use in the late 80s. This has the advantage of making the film and the clips culled from the image archives indistinguishable. But the movie has the appearance of what Lacey called “smeary desaturated music videos from decades ago.” I would have opted for something more aesthetically appealing, and maintained historical realism through the use of clothing styles, facial hair, and home furnishings.

No is definitely worth seeing because it applies to a critical moment in Chilean history an understanding of the importance of political communication, and shows how an underdog group was able to communicate effectively.