Critic's Grade: C

Since the collapse of Communism,the biggest source of disinformation in the world has been movie reviewers.
The guys who gave us The Godfather decided to do the same for the CIA.The problem is that they knew something about the mob but not about the CIA.De Niro is ignorant of both the facts and the historical context of events depicted.
To give an example of context,Nathaniel Davis,the US Ambassador to Chile at the time of CIA Covert Action against Allende in Chile, wrote a book about his experiences.Ambassador Davis quoted me 70 times.
The Good Shepherd is based on the life of James Jesus Angleton,who is unfairly depicted as a mediocre,faceless bureocrat rather than the fiercely independent mad genius that he was.
Angleton got right the single most important issue in CIA (or journalism,or academia),the problem is not getting the facts,it is being able to understand them in real time.
Angleton was the only person in CIA to believe that 99% of what we needed to know could be obtained from overt sources.Acting on this belief he set up the Creative Department,his group of intelligence analysts operating as academics inside the Agency.Angleton was able to repeatedly prove that his analyst came up with better results than spies.
Angleton was in charge of counterintelligence against the USSR,was US Ambassador to Italy,monopolized CIA relations with Mossad,but his real forte was as an analyst.
For deNiro and Coppola to get things wrong is not surprising,but none of the major movie reviewers cought them in blatant errors.
Mat DAmon is spotted at Yale by a senior British INtelligence officer who is later murdered(by his own) because he is gay!Among the publicly known gay blades in British Intelligence were Donald McLean,Guy Burgess,and Anthony Blunt.While it was not an absolute requirement for British spies to be upper class twits and gay,it certainly did not seem to be a problem.
Robert deNiro,as OSS and CIA chief tells Damon that he does not want Catholics!The whole Covert Action branch was Catholic Anti-Communists from Eastern Europe and Latin America.
In the movie,the Bay of Pigs invasion against Cuba failed because of a KGB mata hari.In fact it failed because it had no support.
DeNiro got snowed by the Association of Former Intelligence Agents.
The Good Shepherd ends up as an attempt to revive the reputation of the CIA, and Angleton, as flawed but well intended.This in the context of the release of the CIA family jewels or list of illegal activities.It just happens that this list was first compiled by then CIA Director William Colby for the express purpose of discrediting and firing Angleton.
Within the Association of Former Intelligence Officers the firing of Angleton was like TRuman firing Douglas McCarthur.It was treason.Angleton thought Colby was a KGB mole.Colby came up with a list of all the illegal activities engaged in by Angleton and labeled it illegal CIA activities.By the way,the CIA release JUne 26,2007 contained no information that was not common knowledge in Washington in 1973.

All Reviews by Fred Landis
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