Historical Accuracy
Edward Wilson, the character played by Matt Damon, is based at least in part on James Jesus Angleton, the long-serving director of the CIA's counter-intelligence staff who also fell victim to intense paranoia during his career, and covert operations specialist Richard Bissell. Bill Sullivan, the character played by Robert De Niro, is based on William Stephenson and William Joseph Donovan. William Hurt's character Phillip Allen is likely based on former CIA Director Allen Dulles, while Lee Pace's character Richard Hayes shares some similarities, including a similar name, to Dulles' eventual successor Richard Helms.
High-ranking British operative turned Soviet mole, Arch Cummings, bears some similarities to Kim Philby (who fled to the USSR after being exposed. The character Yuri Modin shares similar characteristics to Soviet defector Anatoliy Golitsyn; the real Yuri Modin was a KGB officer who was the controller of the Cambridge Five spies in the UK. The character of Dr. Ibanez bears some similarities to Jacobo Arbenz.
Oscar-winning actor Joe Pesci appears in one scene as a Mafia boss ("Joseph Palmi") who, it is implied in the film, is a fictionalized composite of Santo Trafficante Jr. and Sam Giancana (in one scene it is mentioned that Castro has seized "three of casinos and thrown him out of Cuba." In fact, Castro did nationalize several casinos owned by both Chicago and Florida organized crime interests). The CIA recruited such mafiosi for multiple assassination attempts against Fidel Castro. The story thread, however, is not fully developed in the film.
In May, 2007, the Center for the Study of Intelligence, a history group with the CIA, held a round-table with a number of on-staff historians to discuss the film. The discussion was publicly released as an article; it covered the film's depiction of the OSS and CIA, the accuracy of the film's depiction of both the events and atmosphere of the period, and discussed factual details surrounding the actual persons on whom some of the film's characters were based. The general consensus was that although the film was meticulous in getting small details (especially artifacts) correct, the overall perception portrayed by the movie was seriously flawed. One of the historians said:
A film can take a strictly documentary approach .. If that's the standard, then anyone with historical sense is going to dislike the liberties The Good Shepherd takes. If one approaches the film as a work of art, one must still ask if there is truth in the story-telling. Does it convey the sense of the time: the atmosphere, the motivations, the tone, and the challenges? I think we all agree that the film fails that test as well. It fails because it inserts themes we know from our studies of the period were not there: the overarching economic interest, the WASP mafia dominance, the cynicism, the dark perspective.
The article also addressed inaccurate but enduring beliefs that Yale's famous secret society Skull and Bones was an incubator of the U.S. Intelligence Community.
Read more about this topic: The Good Shepherd (film)
Famous quotes containing the words historical and/or accuracy:
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“My attachment has neither the blindness of the beginning, nor the microscopic accuracy of the close of such liaisons.”
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