De Niro, Damon: Spies, patriotism and politics

Chris Matthews Host of 'Hardball' • Profile

Robert De Niro and Matt Damon joined Chris Matthews on the "Hardball" College Tour at George Mason University in Virginia to talk about their new CIA thriller, “The Good Shepherd.” They also discussed spies, patriotism and politics.

CIA veteran Milton Bearden, who was a station chief with the CIA in Pakistan, Nigeria, Sudan and Germany also joined in the discussion.

This is a transcript of their conversation.

CHRIS MATTHEWS, "HARDBALL" HOST: You know, some newspaper reporters just said these college tours are part pep rally, part show business and part political program.

But thank you.  I know you don’t do a whole lot of this, Bob.  It’s so great to have you on.  And Matt, it’s so great.  When I think of the CIA, I think of you.  I think of you in “Meet the Parents” ...

ROBERT DE NIRO, ACTOR:  Yeah.

MATTHEWS:  Where a kid goes to meet his girlfriend’s parents and he meets a CIA agent as his father in law to be and you take him into the back basement somewhere - what is it about you and the CIA?  You seem to want to be one of these torturer scary guys.

DE NIRO:  That’s the character that we came up with when we were talking - Jay Roach, the director and Ben Stiller and I one day where I think I had the idea of, why not be a CIA guy and then the lie detector thing was another thing that I brought up.

MATTHEWS:  You’ve spent, I heard, a number of years trying to get this movie done.  That’s good.  What is it about the beginning of the CIA and its whole history that fascinates you? 

DE NIRO:  I mean, I’m a child of the Cold War, East versus West, KGB, CIA. All that stuff is intriguing and fascinating stuff, and it’s scary, too and it’s a great subject.  It’s intriguing and it’s a great subject.

MATTHEWS:  What do you think of the CIA?

DE NIRO:  I think they are hardworking people, very smart.

MATTHEWS:  They’re right near here, by the way.

DE NIRO:  Yeah, that’s what I heard. And dedicated and trying to do the right thing.

MATTHEWS:  Like?

DE NIRO:  Well, we have other things.  We all know what they are and I hope that they’ll be fixed.

MATTHEWS:  What do you think of the CIA - are they too ruthless, are they too incompetent?  What would you say there problem is right now? 

Are they too good or not good enough?

DE NIRO:  I don’t know.  Maybe you would ask (inaudible), so I’m not sure what they feel about (inaudible).  I’m not sure.

MATTHEWS:  Let’s talk about it as an actor.

DE NIRO:  Sure.

MATTHEWS:  You act.

DE NIRO:  Yes.

MATTHEWS:  Right.  You’re the best maybe.  Isn’t he the best?  I think he’s the best.

And he - agents and anybody here whose parents are CIA agents. 

There are probably a few spooking around here that we don’t know about. 

Nobody ever tells you their parents are in the CIA.  You have to lead a life that is 100 percent, 24-7 acting.  At the risk of your life.

DE NIRO:  Yeah.  I would say yeah, in certain circumstances I would say for real.

MATTHEWS:  Would you like to do that?

DE NIRO:  I don’t think so.

MATTHEWS:  You’d rather risk the critics.

DE NIRO:  Right.  Exactly.

MATTHEWS:  Let me ask you Matt about your character in this movie.  I just saw it last night.  I just got a DVD of it.  You are so much the guy who joins the CIA during the Second World War.  You want to serve your country but who is this guy who wants to be a CIA agent?  Who are you?

MATT DAMON, ACTOR:  Well, the character is like I think a lot of the people of that kind. They were kind of picked out of Skull and Bones at Yale...

MATTHEWS:  Elite guys.  Like you.

DAMON:  Yeah.

MATTHEWS:  Harvard, Yale.  You’re pretty much an elite guy.

DAMON:  Well, yeah.  Every once in a while we have to slum and play someone from Yale.  But - I had to say it.

MATTHEWS:  What’s his motivation?  Why does he want to go risk his life? You are married to Angelina Jolie and you’ve got no time for her which is kind of hard to believe.

DAMON:  That was actually the biggest problem I had with the script.

MATTHEWS:  Well, to use an old expression, you knocked her up, you had to get married and that was your reason to get married.  You didn’t really want to marry Angelina Jolie.

DAMON:  Right.

In the movie, I am already - there is another girl that I am courting and really care about and so the Angelina thing kind of happens out of nowhere.

MATTHEWS:  Do you think that was interesting casting to take Angelina Jolie as sort of a Stepford wife, unhappy wife in the ‘50s?

It’s amazing. 

DE NIRO:  Well, we talked about it for - got (ph) the other couple of times.  She really liked it, she had some feeling about it and I knew that she would do something special with it and I had seen her in other things that I liked that I thought would be great to have and I was very happy.  I was more than happy.  She does a great job.

MATTHEWS:  Is that like when they have Charlize Theron who plays like the ugly killer and Grace Kelly plays the wife of the drunk in country?

DE NIRO:  Well, maybe.

MATTHEWS:  Let’s take a look at the movie.  Everybody here has seen it, by the way.  Let’s take a look at it:

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP OF "THE GOOD SHEPHERD")

DE NIRO:  ... to create a new foreign intelligence service.  One that would do in peace time what OSS did during the war.  Philip Pound will be heading the agency.  Richard Angel will be his exec and you will be taking Division C, special operations and report only to the director.  It would be doing it overseas, obviously.  Subversive operations, intelligence gathering and analysis and I would be interested in your thoughts about this, particularly your area of expertise, counterintelligence.

DAMON:  I’ll be glad to help in any way I can.

(END VIDEO CLIP OF "THE GOOD SHEPHERD")

MATTHEWS:  I’ll be glad to help.  How many times in the movie are you like then when the girl says would you like to stay and have sex with her another night and not be a spy and you go, "If you’d like me to."

So much of your character keeps saying, if you want me to I’ll take my clothes off - What is this guy about, this CIA spy?

DAMON:  I never thought of it that way.  No, I think he very much believes in what he is doing and he - the family life, that’s the sacrifice that he makes, that a lot of people make and when we met with family members of these people who were from the families of the CIA who were there from the beginning, they were very nice.  They shared some recollections and it was clear that it was a sacrifice made by the entire family.  They had not had a lot of time with their fathers who were off doing this and not telling them and - it’s hard to have intimacy in a family when you don’t know about the person and they’re not sharing it with you, they’re not telling you.

MATTHEWS:  That’s the personal piece and then there is the fact that you’re taking on - I think the movie is tough on the CIA.  I think it shows the patriotism of this guy, your character.  But it’s so tough on the institution.  They are ruthless.  They knock off - the nice people in the movie are getting killed all the time and they’re doing it like God.

Your guy says okay, we’ve got to do it, we’ve got to kill this person, we’ve got to kill that person.  It’s like a mob movie.

DE NIRO:  I mean, there is a certain - the secrecy in a mob movie like “The Godfather.”  There is of course an obvious similarity.  I was concerned that I didn’t want to make it like a shoot ‘em up type thing. 

People get killed just to - I wanted to give it some kind of credibility at least.  There is one shooting but the other killings which are - the other two are (inaudible).

MATTHEWS:  But they are so personal.  You really get to know these people and like them.  The old professor, the Nazi spy.  You really like these people and you just eliminate them right in front of you.

DE NIRO:  Well, you know, life goes on.

MATTHEWS:  No it doesn’t.  What do you think is - you think you’re going to get a hit from the CIA on this?

DE NIRO:  I don’t think so.  As an actor you always look at the motivation of the character from their point of view why they’re doing it.  They don’t think of themselves as doing anything other than what they believe they should do and the same as a director.  I do that with all the characters.

MATTHEWS:  Do you think they’re going to just take this hit, the CIA, and just live with it?

DE NIRO:  I think in fact it might be good.  People are opening up the CIA and I think it helps for relations with the people of America.  It’s not a bad thing.

MATTHEWS:  Is it a recruiting poster for the CIA?

DE NIRO:  Well, you never know.

MATTHEWS:  Which one is it?

DAMON:  Is it bad or is it a recruiting poster?

MATTHEWS:  I’m here to provoke interesting answers.  I don’t have an answer.  No, I think the movie is a great movie, but it’s tough.  It’s HARDBALL.  And that’s a good thing.

You’re great.  You’re talking much more than I thought you would.

DE NIRO:  Well, it’s easy to talk to you and everybody here in the student center.

MATTHEWS:  Do you think we need a CIA?

DE NIRO:  I think ultimately we do, yes.

MATTHEWS:  Okay. We’re very near the CIA here.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP OF "THE GOOD SHEPHERD")

UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  Margaret tells us that you’re going in the CIA.

DAMON:  My wife has a vivid imagination.  I’m a trade advisor.  Civil servant.

ANGELINA JOLIE, ACTRESS:  How dare you.

DAMON:  You are never to tell anybody what I do.

JOLIE:  How dare you.

DAMON:  You are never to tell anyone what it is that I do ...

JOLIE:  Those people are my friends.  I don’t have a lot of friends.

DAMON:  Never.  Do you understand me?  Never.

JOLIE:  What you do?  I don’t know what you do.  You leave at 5:00, you’re home at 10:00 seven days a week.  You don’t say a damned word to me.  I live with a ghost.  I don’t know what you do.

(END VIDEO CLIP "THE GOOD SHEPHERD")

MATTHEWS:  That scene with Matt, his wife getting ticked off with him because she dropped his cover.  Is that a scene that you’re familiar with in life?

MILTON BEARDEN, FORMER CIA STATION CHIEF:  I’ve answered this question before.  I usually say you really need to contact my ex-wife on that.

MATTHEWS:  Matt, your character has to walk around his whole life.  His kid doesn’t know what he does.  His wife is not supposed to know.  And all of his relatives think he is some dorky international business guy.  Meanwhile, he is fighting the reds every hour of his life.

DE NIRO:  Dry goods.

MATTHEWS:  What’s that like?

DAMON:  I imagine it’s pretty difficult.  I mean, from the people we talk to, it’s a big sacrifice these people make.

FREE VIDEO CIA officer: ‘Everybody loves blowback’ Dec. 18: Former CIA officer Milton Bearden joins actors Robert De Niro and Matt Damon on the George Mason University campus to talk about CIA history with “Hardball” host Chris Matthews. Hardball

MATTHEWS:  And when these guys come home at night, they don’t get any medals.  The country doesn’t give them a cheering section.  There is no pom-pom girls waving for them.  They risk their lives every day and they get what for it?  What was the motivation for you all those years?

BEARDEN:  I came in in 1964.  The CIA.  When it was a fairly easy thing to move in - Kennedy had put out a call to America’s young people —to campuses all over the place and we went off to do a thing that I think we understood and that was probably enough rather than to come home and get a pat on the back or a medal.  Take this character Anya, the pampered and beautiful daughter of a senator and she ends up married to some guy who is in dry goods at the trade department.  What is that?  Sure it’s tough.

MATTHEWS:  And then we got the CIA today that did interesting things like create the mujahideen in Afghanistan which became - the fighters of the Soviet occupation and then became al Qaeda.

BEARDEN:  No, come on.  Americans learn their history from the football coach around here?  What is that?

MATTHEWS:  You want to get...

BEARDEN:  The Soviets created...

MATTHEWS:  You want to get like this?

BEARDEN:  You want to get like this?

MATTHEWS:  You are like this now.  Let’s go.

BEARDEN:  OK.  Let’s go.  The Soviets, probably by invading the country, killing a million and a half people, wounding a million and a half, driving 5 million into exile might have had a little something to do with creating the people who rose up against them.  Jimmy Carter...

MATTHEWS:  But didn’t you give them Stingers and everything and arm them?

BEARDEN:  You bet we did.

MATTHEWS:  Didn’t we bring in the Arabs from all over the Arab world into Afghanistan to help build them up?

BEARDEN:  No, absolutely - let me make you a promise right here, right now.  You go find one single Arab that we brought in from the Arab world, trained and recruited and I will sit down on the show with you and about five minutes we’ll be asking him to get out of here.  Didn’t happen. That story for the media has always been just too good to check.

MATTHEWS:  So the CIA did not play a role in throwing the Soviets out of Afghanistan?

BEARDEN:  You bet we did and it was the right thing to do.

MATTHEWS:  Help me.

BEARDEN:  Help you what?

MATTHEWS:  What did we do?

BEARDEN:  We armed the Afghan people to resist the Soviet invasion.  End of story.

MATTHEWS:  And where did the people who came out of it who became the al Qaeda crowd come out of it?

BEARDEN:  The al Qaeda crowd came to a failed state which the United States of America, in all honesty, created by just walking away.

MATTHEWS:  So?

BEARDEN:  You go ahead in February 1989, you drive the Soviets out of Pakistan.  Great up to that point.  Within a few months the Austrians and the Hungarians had opened the border and the whole world was collapsing in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.

We walked away from Afghanistan and let the state fail.

MATTHEWS:  And then al Qaeda came up and...

BEARDEN:  And then al Qaeda came up.

MATTHEWS:  The Taliban, they grew out of it.

BEARDEN:  Well, the chaos came and the Taliban came to put some order to it.

MATTHEWS:  I’m looking for—what’s called blowback, right?

BEARDEN:  Everybody likes blowback.

MATTHEWS:  I love blowback.  It’s what happens with the unintended consequences of covert operations.

BEARDEN:  No, it’s what happens with the unintended consequences of every major policy thing you do.  Arming Stalin to fight the acute evil, the Third Reich, was a very good idea but it kept them going for another 30 years.

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