Birth of the spying game

THE untold story of the birth of the Central Intelligence Agency - viewed through the life of one man who believed in America and would sacrifice everything he loved to protect his country - is told in The Good Shepherd, an epic drama featuring an all- star cast under the direction of Robert De Niro.

Matt Damon plays Edward Wilson, a patriot who understands the value of secrecy - discretion and a commitment to honour have been embedded in him since his tragic and privileged childhood.

As an eager, sensitive student at Yale in 1939, he is recruited to join the secret Skull and Bones society, a tightly knit brotherhood that serves to develop future world leaders.

The idealistic young man is then recruited to work for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the precursor to the CIA, during the Second World War.

It is a decision that alters the course of his life and changes the geopolitical shape of our times as Wilson and his fellow secret group members create the most powerful covert agency in the world.

As one of the founders of the CIA, working in the heart of an organisation where duplicity is required and nothing is taken at face value, Wilson's idealism is steadily eroded by his growing suspicious nature, reflective of a world settling into the long paranoia of the Cold War.

As his methods are adopted as standard operating procedure, Wilson develops into one of the agency's veteran operatives, all the while combating his KGB counterpart in a global chess match.

But Wilson's steely dedication to his country comes at an ever-escalating price. Not even the growing concern of his wife, Margaret Clover' (Angelina Jolie) can divert Wilson from a path that will force him to sacrifice everything in dedication to his job.

Since the early 1990s, actor/director/ producer Robert De Niro has been researching the subject of what would become his second directorial effort following 1993's film A Bronx Tale.

However, he was not interested in directing the standard fare of a spy-game fantasy. He wanted to make a film that showcased the actual underpinnings of intelligence services and uncover how these largely anonymous men have controlled our world, at both personal and professional costs.

Framing his story with key events in the CIA's history - beginning the screenplay at the height of the OSS during the Second World War and closing the timeline with the CIA's failure to accomplish its crucial mission at the Bay of Pigs in 1961 - writer Joe Roth's script examined the lives of the men who formed our nation's modern-day intelligence service.

"I researched people who went into the early years of the CIA and where they came from," says Roth. "It was traditionally Yale and Skull and Bones." Almost exclusively, white male Ivy Leaguers of a patrician class - considered the best and the brightest that the US had to offer - ran the government arm.

The film boasts a strong supporting cast, with William Hurt playing CIA Director Philip Allen; De Niro as General Bill Sullivan, who helped to create America's first intelligence service; John Turturro as Wilson's Italian-American assistant, Ray Brocco; Alec Baldwin as an FBI agent who approaches Wilson about a job with the government; and Michael Gambon as a Yale professor.

Matt Damon met some of the families of the men who founded the CIA to better understand the impact that a career in the agency would have on someone's home life. "It's hard for relationships to last; it's a really high-pressure job," says Damon.

"Edward lives in a world where the stakes are high, and he can't afford to trust even the people closest to him."

The main victim of this never-ending secrecy is Wilson's wife, Margaret, his friend's sister, whom the 22-year-old marries after a passionate encounter results in her pregnancy at Desert Island, a Skull and Bones retreat.

"She is affected by all the negative things about this world," says Angelina Jolie. "She is married to it, and a victim of being around nothing honest, being shut out as a womanlimited as a woman of this time."