People Magazine Interview
CIA’s Former Chief of Disguise Reveals Spy Secrets: ‘People Who Knew Me Well Will Be Shocked’ (Exclusive)
By Dawn Klavon | Published on February 21, 2024 05:00PM ESTWhen Jonna Mendez, then the CIA’s chief of disguise, was asked to brief President George H.W. Bush on the agency’s new mask technology in the early 1990s, she wanted to make a powerful impression to secure more funding.
“It’s expensive to make these masks,” says Mendez, 78.
Meeting Bush in the Oval Office disguised as a Latina woman with black curly hair, she described the extraordinary results her team achieved to evade Russia’s KGB. Bush curiously glanced to her side, perhaps looking for a briefcase holding the new disguise. She told him she was wearing it.
“He said, ‘Hold on, don’t take it off yet.’ Then he got up and took a closer look,” she recalls. “He said, ‘Okay, do it.’ ”
Like a Mission: Impossible character, Mendez slowly peeled off a remarkably lifelike mask, revealing her true face: blue eyes, fair skin and short, dark blonde hair. When she held up the disguise that duped everyone in the room, Bush and his advisers seemed dazzled.
“There was no question about it: He was entertained,” says Jonna Mendez (disguised to brief President George H.W. Bush in the early 1990s).