THE MISTRESS OF DISGUISE

Jonna Mendez was responsible for helping CIA agents pass incognito while undercover or operating in dangerous parts of the world. Her real-life Mission: Impossible-style masks were so realistic they fooled spies, terrorists, drug dealers... and even the president

- Peter Sheridan

HEADS turned as the pretty Latina woman waltzed past White House security in the early 1990s. With her thick curly hair, full lips and fluttering eyelashes above a delicately turned nose, in a crisp camel blazer, a pearl necklace above the open collar of her chocolate brown floral dress, Jonna Mendez walked with authority into the Oval Office, trailing the head of the CIA.

Sitting beside President George HW Bush, she explained that she had come to demonstrate advanced new disguise techniques the CIA could use to evade Russian spies.

"We would convincingly disguise an officer, even create a clone of an officer - a twin!" she told the president. "We could change the officer's ethnicity or gender, or 'borrow' another person's identity if necessary."

Yet Bush seemed troubled that Mendez had brought no bags with her containing the new disguises. "I'm wearing it," said Mendez, and stood to reveal her true identity. "Hold on!" said Bush, formerly the CIA chief.

"Don't take it off yet." He circled Mendez, searching her face intently for signs of a false nose, or seam.

Defeated, he shrugged: "OK, do it."

In a scene that could have come straight from Tom Cruise and the Mission: Impossible movies that followed years later, Mendez pulled off her full-face mask, revealing her as a fair-skinned blue-eyed Caucasian with dark blonde hair, at least 15 years older than the young Hispanic girl who had entered the room minutes earlier.

"The president's face came alive," she says today. "His eyes were almost sparkling as he asked me questions.

"The masks were something that no one else, not even Hollywood, could do." Funding was approved to develop the new life-like masks, whose expressive facial mobility allowed CIA agents in Moscow, Havana and Iran to move freely without being tailed or arrested.