In a new film titled The Good Shepherd, billed by its producers as "the untold birth of the CIA," fictional names are used to mask historical characters - from the infamous mole, Kim Philby, to the controversial KGB defector, Anatoliy Golitsyn. You may wonder why this film was made, slow and confusing as it is, with its big-name actors led by Robert De Niro. Why produce a fictionalized cinematic version of Cold War espionage based "loosely," we are told, on the life of a former CIA counterintelligence chief, James Angleton? The man has been dead almost twenty years. He was fired from the CIA more than thirty years ago, his name dragged through the post-Watergate muck, his methods blamed for paralyzing U.S. intelligence, his insights denigrated as "paranoia," his successors eager to ignore him or bury his legacy in distortions and misrepresentations. Why make a film at this late hour about the origins of the CIA and its counterintelligence branch?
I suspect that someone had an itch, and making this movie, presenting it to the public, scratched the itch. The logic follows thus: Since the public today derives its political impressions from television, it is no great leap to suggest that the public acquires its "sense of history" from movies. Why read memoirs and detailed histories when you can imbibe "the essential stuff" straight from the big screen? From the point of view of the propagandist, why write a book for a million readers when you can produce a film that mesmerizes 100 million non-readers? It is a Chinese axiom that one picture is worth a thousand words. And yet, consider a thousand words, and let them be the right words, and one may go deeper than the surface of any picture.
Western Civilization was built on literacy, on books, on the written word as opposed to the picture (or the moving picture). Let the Mandarins sniff, as they may. The literature of the West has been mankind's ultimate mind-expansion system on which so much depends and continues to depend. A picture merely depicts the surface of a thing, hardly touching on what lies beneath. And in the case of motion pictures, a lie may be translated into a series of images; and images may be used to seduce the unwary. As Kenneth Minogue wrote in the November issue of The New Criterion, "Seduction is thus a central, indeed in certain respects, the central idea, in political life. It signifies a course of action deliberately designed by one or more interested agents to undermine and replace some established loyalty." It is not so surprising, therefore, that much of what we find on the big screen reflects unseen agencies and hidden agendas. Ask why such a cumbersome, confusing and dull piece of entertainment came into existence, and suddenly you've caught a glimpse of a process that regularly turns propaganda into entertainment - a process that sometimes fails, and sometimes succeeds.
The Good Shepherd advances themes familiar to the espionage-genre: that intimacy is problematic for those who keep dark secrets; that deception is a two-way street, and self-deception the inevitable lot of all deceivers; that enemy spies are people too; that nobody can be trusted in the end; that opposing sides are mirror images of one another; that espionage involves terrible sacrifices (as well as murder). Sadly, however, like so many depictions of the Cold War, The Good Shepherd falsifies its Cold War history. Whatever artistic merits may be found in this film, its historical sense affirms fiction and rejects reality, suggesting that CIA counterintelligence chief James Angleton (1954 - 1974) believed a false defector at the expense of a genuine defector; that Russia was never a real threat, and never could be a threat; that counterintelligence is a futile exercise, an unnecessary and wasteful game; and, finally, that human intelligence is intrinsically unreliable.
The post-Cold War unmasking of Russian double agents Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen in the top ranks of CIA and FBI, along with the hard lessons of 9/11, suggests that the film's depiction is misleading. The Good Shepherd notwithstanding, counterintelligence is indispensable to national security because Russia was always a threat, and continues a threat. Furthermore, Angleton's faith in the value of KGB defector Anatoliy Golitsyn was not misplaced. The Kremlin had a long-range strategy, as Golitsyn claimed, to reorganize their regime through a chaotic, KGB-managed collapse of the neo-Stalinist system. It might be said that those who anticipate an increase in their power through a world revolution are conceptually equipped and organized to play out a revolution on home ground. At this late hour we can already see that this collapse has enable Russia's military industry to acquire investment capital, machine tools and vital technologies from abroad for a renewed lease on life (in alliance with China). We can already see that from a position of assumed weakness and docility, energy-rich Russia has positioned itself for an economic counter-offensive against an indebted and energy-dependent America. It is now a matter of historical fact that through an unprecedented "provocation," the KGB openly took power in Russia under the pretext of a "war against Chechen terrorism," simultaneously justifying the elimination of Russia's free press and the Kremlin's re-acquisition of major industries. And all this came packaged with a ready-made alibi in the wake of 9/11. The proof of Angleton's vision, the proof that counterintelligence matters, the proof that Golitsyn was a prophet is found in his accuracy as a predictor of future events - with the biggest, most horrendous events still to come. Russia has continued to apply its age-old clandestine weapons to advance its tentacles of subversion, to accelerate its strategy of sabotage and "gray terror" to break up the Western alliance and cripple the U.S. government with a devastating endgame combination.
And which of our vaunted "strategists," our "good shepherds" of today, can see what is unfolding? The public seeks relief in entertainment, and the public gets a popularized dose of what the "experts" have been stewed in for years. Disinformation isn't a joke. It flows over us all, in a constant stream, seductive and plausible; reinforcing our misconceptions, building on them, fortifying them, until truths in plain view are no longer visible to the jaundiced eye. After this fashion the sheep are led astray, most certainly, as the shepherds were led astray beforehand. In terms of Russia's endgame, this conclusion is even more likely when we turn to the question of KGB/FSB defector Alexander Litvinenko's murder. As German police have verified, at least one of the assassins traveled from Russia through Germany to London (where Litvinenko was poisoned). But no arrests can be made, since the assassins now enjoy the protection of the Russian government.
The process of falsification and fictionalization now appends to Litvinenko's death. Stories are propelled into the media casting doubt on Litvinenko's credibility. Some have suggested he was working with al Qaeda. Others suggest he was directly involved with Islamic nuclear weapons (thus his death by radiation poisoning). But why would Litvinenko work for the destruction of the West when he so clearly, so desperately, struggled to find the means to warn the West about the KGB? And then, it was Litvinenko who claimed that al Qaeda's No. 2 man, Ayman al-Zawahiri, was a long-time KGB agent.
If they made a movie about Angleton, perhaps they will make a movie about Litvinenko. And then the poor man will be buried twice; once, in the normal manner, and again under a mountain of lies.
