M&C Interview: Retired CIA agent /author Milton Bearden talks The Good Shepherd

By Patrick Luce Mar 30, 2007, 15:30 GMT

In The Good Shepherd, Matt Damon delivers an unforgettably powerful performance as Edward Wilson, a man whose loyalty to his country compromises his commitment to everything else, including his wife, Clover (Angelina Jolie) and son Edward, Jr. (Eddie Redmayne). After being recruited to work for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) by General Sullivan (Robert De Niro) during WWII, Wilson goes on to become one of the founding operatives of ...more

The Good Shepherd chronicles the birth of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and is told through the eyes of Edward Wilson - a man whose loyalty to his country compromises his commitment to everything else.

The film has a cast of Hollywood heavyweights including Matt Damon, Angelina Jolie, Alec Baldwin, Robert De Niro, William Hurt, Timothy Hutton, and Joe Pesci. It was directed by De Niro, and arrives on DVD from Universal Studios Home Entertainment on April 3rd.

Milton Bearden

In The Good Shepherd, Matt Damon delivers an unforgettably powerful performance as Edward Wilson, a man whose loyalty to his country compromises his commitment to everything else, including his wife, Clover (Angelina Jolie) and son Edward, Jr. (Eddie Redmayne). After being recruited to work for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) by General Sullivan (Robert De Niro) during WWII, Wilson goes on to become one of the founding operatives of the CIA.

Enmeshed in a secret world of deception and murder, and locked into a brutal battle of wits with his Soviet counterpart, Wilson's dedication to his job and youthful idealism are slowly eroded by his growing suspicion of the people around him.

To make sure the film was as accurate as possible, De Niro and company sought help from CIA Technical Advisor and author Milton Bearden – who retired from the agency in 1994 after 30 years of service. During his time in the agency, Bearden rose through the ranks to become one of the CIA’s most senior officers.  He left the Agency as one of the most highly decorated operations officers in its Senior Service.

Since his retirement from the CIA, Bearden has written The Black Tulip: A Novel of War in Afghanistan (Random House 1998, 2002), and has been a frequent contributor to The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and The Wall Street Journal.  He has also contributed to Foreign Affairs and to a book about September 11, 2001: How Did This Happen? Terrorism and the New War, published by Public Affairs. 

He is also a consultant for CBS News and is co-author, with James Risen, of the award-winning The Main Enemy: The Inside Story of the CIA’s Final Showdown with the KGB - a non-fiction account of the end of the Cold War that was published by Random House in May 2003.   His work as a technical advisor included helping De Niro on the comedy Meet the Parents and the upcoming film Charlie Wilson’s War director Mike Nichols

M&C was recently given an opportunity to discuss The Good Shepherd with Bearden and his thoughts on the movie, his role on set, and how the film compares to what happens inside the real world of the CIA.

M&C: Could you tell us how you came to be involved in the project, and what made you want to be work on the film?

Bearden: My involvement in The Good Shepherd project began in the Spring of 1997, with the classic flair of an intelligence operation.  Bob DeNiro was discussing with his friend Richard Holbrooke (former U.S. ambassador to the U.N.) his interest in doing a movie on the real world of American intelligence, a film that that would take an audience to places they’d never been.  Holbrooke wrote my phone number on the back of a cocktail napkin – I had been his CIA chief when he was Ambassador to Germany in the early 90s – and DeNiro called me in New Hampshire a few days later. 

I had just finished my first novel, The Black Tulip, and was already taking my first steps into the literary/entertainment world. After a few meetings in New York and New Hampshire Bob and I set off on a research journey that carried us to the Moscow underground where DeNiro spent a huge amount of time with my old adversaries in the KGB, watching them, and getting to understand them perhaps better than anyone other than someone who had spent a lifetime going against them in a Cold War struggle. That ‘DeNiro research’ produced the terrific KGB character Ulysses in The Good Shepherd.  We later traveled to Pakistan and into Afghanistan to get a feel for those theaters of struggle.  DeNiro could literally smell the chapattis cooking and the cordite burning as he soaked up Kipling’s world.

M&C: How much of Matt Damon’s character did you help the actor develop and how closely did you work with the other actors on the film?

Bearden: Once we had a script in hand some eight years later – Eric Roth’s the Good Shepherd – Bob had me spend time with the key actors, beginning with Matt Damon, explaining to them the world they’d find themselves in.  The yarn was not only the story of the origins of the CIA; it was the story of an America Incorporated, a country run by a select handful of Waspish young men.  

DeNiro also arranged for Damon to meet with some of the sons and daughters of the men who in reality made up the composite characters in our story.  The result was what you see in the film: a young man of great privilege and few doubts on a great mission.  We see Damon learning the basics of the spy trade from the very beginning of his days at Yale, and by the end of the film we see him fully engaged with the tradecraft of espionage and counterespionage as he deals with betrayal within his ranks and mortal threats against his family.

M&C: What were your responsibilities on the set of the film, how does your retired life as an author and film consultant compared to your days in the CIA?

Bearden: DeNiro involved me in everything, from working with Eric on minor script issues, to casting, to set decoration, and props. What I had done at CIA for 30 years was brought to bear on everything I did on the set.  The single, most striking difference between my CIA days and working on a movie set, though, is the ability to shoot a scene over and over again until you get it just right.  In my days in the clandestine services we had a different rule – get it right the first time or someone might get compromised and killed.

M&C: Do you feel The Good Shepherd is an actuate description about the “birth of the agency”? Were you pleased with the final product that ended up on the screen?

Bearden: When the film was finally done, I thought it was about as close to reality as we could get, bearing in mind that it was not intended as a documentary.  The fact-based metaphor is the vehicle of this yarn, and though some of the old hands of CIA might not have been as happy as I was with the end product, their problem was that they were looking for some sort of a recruiting film.

M&C: This is your second time working with screen legend Robert DeNiro. How was it different working with him in this film compared to the comedy? What were your duties on Meet the Parents compared to The Good Shepherd?

Bearden: Good Shepherd was the second film I had worked on with Bob, the first being Meet The Parents.  My role as consultant in that movie was less intense than Good Shepherd, but the single most memorably moment was when I was skiing in Colorado and received a call from Jay Roach, the director, who asked me to come up with some ideas to punch up the scenes in the house of Bob’s character. 

I suggested that a secret room in the basement might be fun.  “What would be in it?” Jay wanted to know.  “Some of his stuff from the old days – some pictures and souvenirs and odds and ends.” “What else?” Jay asked.  I thought for a minute.  “How about an old polygraph machine in a big Samsonite briefcase?” Jay took the idea and ran with it.  The result was the most hilarious, but absolutely real, polygraph scene ever filmed.

M&C: From your experience, is there a difference between DeNiro the actor and DeNiro the director?

Bearden: Are there differences between Bob DeNiro, the actor, and Bob DeNiro the director?  Sure.  I’ve watched DeNiro act and have been struck by the intensity and no-nonsense discipline he brings to his craft.  He applies all that in his role as director, but with an added degree of what I can only describe as elegance.

Yes, he had a dream cast of professionals in The Good Shepherd, but I was amazed at what he could bring out of them.  Ask any of them what they thought and you’d get the same observation.  Even the skeptical old-timers on the set came around to the belief that he was a natural for the other side of the camera.

M&C: You are currently working with director Mike Nichols on Charlie Wilson’s War. Are you handling the same sort of consultant work on this project?

Bearden: Right now I’m in the final stages of working with Mike Nichols on Charlie Wilson’s War, where I’m doing pretty much the same scope of work as on Good Shepherd.  Charlie is an altogether different product, but the approach for excellence is exactly the same.

Working with Mike Nichols, Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, and Phil Hoffman after working with Bob DeNiro, Matt Damon, Angie Jolie, and Bill Hurt might just be a little over the top for an old spy like me.  But I think I’ll stick with all this for awhile.  There is, indeed, a third act in an American life.

The Good Shepherd is now available for pre-order at Amazon.  As of yet, there is not a release date for the UK. Visit the DVD database for more information.