The Good Shepherd is a 2006 American spy film produced and directed by Robert De Niro and starring Matt Damon, Angelina Jolie, and De Niro, with an extensive supporting cast. Although it is a fictional film loosely based on real events of James Jesus Angleton, it is advertised as telling the untold story of the birth of counterintelligence in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The film was released on December 22, 2006, to mixed reviews. It grossed $100 million against an estimated $80 million production budget. Plot In 1961, senior CIA officer Edward Wilson receives a photograph and tape recording after the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion, and obtains a coded signal from "Cardinal.” Then the film flashes back to 1939. Attending Yale University, Edward is invited to join Skull and Bones. During his initiation, he reveals that he discovered but never read the suicide note left by his father, Thomas Wilson, an admiral who was to be named Secretary of the Navy until his loyalties were questioned. FBI agent Sam Murach recruits Edward to expose professor Dr. Fredericks as a Nazi spy, which leads to Fredericks' resignation. Edward dates a fellow Yale student he meets in the library named Laura, who is hearing impaired. As he's starting to fall for Laura, he meets Margaret “Clover” Russell, at a party in 1940. Clover, who is the sister of a fellow Skull and Bones brother, as well as the daughter of the Head of the Anti-Interventionist Committee America First Committee. General Bill Sullivan then offers Edward a post in London, which would later become one of the first branches of the OSS. Clover's brother John tells Edward that she is pregnant with Edward's child. Laura, reading their lips, leaves. Edward then marries Clover and accepts General Bill Sullivan’s offer. The offer which has him leaving his new wife Clover at home while he heads to London. There he finds Dr. Fredericks is actually a British intelligence operative who had recommended Edward for counter-espionage training. Special Operations Executive officer Arch Cummings informs Edward that Fredericks' indiscreet liaisons pose a security risk. Fredericks refuses to retire quietly and is killed. In post-war Berlin, Edward collaborates with Soviet counterpart "Ulysses". Learning his wife Clover is having an affair, Edward then sleeps with his interpreter Hanna Schiller. He then realizes she is a Soviet operative and Hanna is killed. After six years, Edward returns home