Many Decades of the Condor

W.J. Astore

I recently rewatched “Three Days of the Condor” (1975) featuring Robert Redford and Faye Dunaway. It’s a smart and understated spy thriller that takes on the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the deadly games the agency plays in its pursuit of global dominance. In the aftermath of the Vietnam War and the backlash from Richard Nixon and Watergate, not to mention America’s role in overthrowing the Allende government in Chile in 1973, it became acceptable in Hollywood to make films that portrayed the U.S. government as sometimes less than noble in all its pursuits. Condor, the codename for Redford’s character, stumbles across a plot within the CIA to overthrow governments in the Middle East so that U.S. corporations could dominate the oil market, and for that he and his colleagues in the special branch where he works must die. The movie follows his efforts to stay alive among people who will execute their own for the greater good of The Company (the CIA).

At the end (spoiler alert), Redford goes to the New York Times as a whistleblower in an effort both to stay alive and to reveal the nefarious machinations of the CIA. A CIA senior official, played by Cliff Robertson, confronts Redford and asks him a question that is deadly in its implications: Will they print it? Redford is confident the newspaper will, but Robertson, in asking Redford how he can be sure that they will, reminds us that there’s no certainty the “liberal” New York Times will go against the wishes of the CIA.

Robert Redford and Cliff Robertson in “Three Days of the Condor”

This was on my mind today as news broke once again that the CIA is collecting “bulk data” on Americans without Congressional authorization and outside of normal oversight. Well, as some of my students used to say, if you’ve done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear from the diligent and honest agents of the CIA, right?

There’s a little scene in the movie where Condor laughs at the conceit of the CIA in referring to themselves as the intelligence “community.” A community of powerful and ultra-secretive intelligence agencies — I’m sure we have nothing to fear from such an Orwellian concoction.

Anyway, if you haven’t seen “Three Days of the Condor,” I recommend it. As a bonus, it has one of the most powerful yet understated romantic relationships caught on film, with Redford and Dunaway both superb in portraying two people on the edge who are desperately looking for connection.

48 thoughts on “Many Decades of the Condor”

  1. And let’s not forget (the brilliantly understated) Max von Sydow who explains to Condor what it is, what it was, and what it’s gonna be.
    And as for the CIA collecting “bulk data,” Edward Snowden’s exile from the land of the free and the home of the brave for shining a light on that process some years back continues. ButI’m old and I forget things. Which side are the bad guys?

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    1. Yes — love Max von Sydow’s character. Especially when he tells Redford how it will happen — what to look out for … why he’ll never be safe.

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  2. The final scene is crushing. CliffRobertson says something like ‘they won’t want us to ask, they’ll just want us to get it for them’.

    Willful ignorance and emotional avoidance is part of the Thanatos instinct-the death instinct-cutting one’s self off from a challenging world-view, a reconsideration, a mistake from days past that can’t be corrected and can only be accepted. Our failure is in denying the ugliness of the personal human experience, which institutions have told us we can avoid and we then attempt to hide from ourselves and even worse project onto others. But this failing offers the greatest opportunity for growth, the inspiration for change, the value of science to invalidate, democracy as something more than voting, a 4thEstate that isn’t traded on WallStreet, an education that does not end, something more akin to an objective and inclusive truth, however momentary-we have been led to surrender them all to entities that were erected to protect and nurture them for us, not weaponize them against us, which they have done; individualism, curiosity and innovation traded for knowledge, expertise and authority more often than not. Ours is not to ask, ours is to obey and let the man in the white coat or the snappy uniform with the empty smile and the dead eyes take the hit when it goes tits up, but they never own their fail and continue to lead us deeper into the abyss.

    The expert has nothing to learn, the perfect man no reason to change, the wise man no mistake to make, and the fool no success to pursue.

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    1. Yes — great point. Never mind the price — just get it.

      But his character was half right. Instead of getting oil for us, it’s more about keeping us safe, protecting the homeland, especially from another 9-11 event.

      All things are justified in keeping the homeland safe — torture, illegal surveillance, war crimes, wars, you name it. Anything can be spun as necessary for the defense of America.

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      1. America is my girl and I really wish the folks that brandish her symbols and invoke her name would stop treating her like a whore for their ego, agenda and/or pocketbook. It makes her look tawdry, easy, malleable and no one of principle appreciates those characteristics for long.

        The “good” news for a lot of people is that government has supplanted most concepts of God, which isn’t really my thing FWIW, so anything theG uses to achieve an end can be a model for some of the less responsible playground dwellers to justify doing to others, local, national, en masse or small scale.

        The series “Condor” was a decent watch with some thought-provoking moments-big business intersecting with government to start new and exciting failures for disinterested people, an outlaw hacker, a couple of religious zealots, a disgruntled MiraSorvino moving pieces around, JohnHurt as a moral relativist and Joubert as a female nymphomaniac, among other expected portrayals of what is probably more honest than the news we expect to be true.
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condor_(TV_series)

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      2. I continue to think it’s ALWAYS all about the oil. Or, as Congresswoman Ilhan Omar said, “It’s all about the benjamins, baby.” Lengthy but pithy and informative piece along those lines:

        https://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2022/02/11/americas-real-adversaries-are-its-european-and-other-allies-by-michael-hudson/

        And Three Days of the Condor was an outstanding film, woefully underrated. Redford, Dunaway, Robertson, and von Sydow at their collective best.

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        2. I think it’s always about the commodity, whatever is valuable today. Oil established itself long ago, but water (in Bolivia, IIRC) has been pursued in a non-dissimilar fashion [no guns and bombs, yet], salt in India with Ghandi and recently seeds for plants according to TheCorporation. Wind is naturally occurring, but uncleG put up billions for the wind turbines to harness it and essentially priced out collectives/communities while facilitating corporate capture and ownership.

          The information age has tossed everyone’s cookies a bit, it seems. It’s too easy to create and engage, so the ecosystem both consolidates opinion and dilutes value with noise. But this looks like the push for our most basic commodity from the most easily renewable resource…time and the human who has it. This is the trade that has occupied me for some years, theG scraping it’s cut as soon as I convert it to dollars then marketing convincing me I need something I won’t care about as soon as I have it.

          Time is the ultimate commodity, with all those little humans coming on every day, with a new mind ripe for writing and a fresh heart prone to trust.

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      3. While the bulk collection of American data is disconcerting, there are unfortunately scant details about it being released alongside Wyden and Heinrich’s warning. That’s because the CIA chose to keep the report about possible collections of Americans’ data classified. According to CNN, the CIA said it “must remain classified in full to protect sensitive tradecraft methods and operational sources.”

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  3. Speaking of many decades Bill, the Director of this movie Sydney Pollack died at 73 in 2008. And Robert Redford is now 85-years old! Time flies eh?

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      1. Consider his movie ALL IS LOST, 2013, now free with Prime. Fifty-one word script, a yacht, the Indian Ocean and Redford struggling to stay alive though with a surprisingly large wardrobe of fresh looking T-necks, sweaters, and other yachting wear as life gets bleaker and bleaker over eight days. BTW, loved CONDOR!

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        3. Our man Redford did look very GQ in a weathered, seasoned yachtman sort of way @ 77 facing certain death if not rescued. I heard 3 Sailboats made the ultimate sacrifice in the Films making…

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  4. @WJASTORE @DENISE DONALDSON
    The USA, 5% of the worlds population, accounts for about 25% of the world’s petroleum consumption, while producing only 6% of the world’s annual petroleum supply. I always found this fact just staggering!

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  5. actually the US pop is closer to only 4%, yet this collective minority consume 40% of the world’s combined resources, comestibles, and what would be considered ‘luxuries’ for most of the planet’s 7 and a half billion hoi polloi, but what americans would consider ‘essentials’. where is the obloquy or self-critiquing for this indecent level of consumption? it certainly won’t source from the dandified 1% who so gleefully profit from americans’ esurience, particularly the obscene consumption levels of their US military, CIA, FBI, HOMELAND INSECURITY, and other such dimwitted un-intelligence agencies.

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  6. Jeanie, and this amazing statistic about America’s consumption: The US makes up 4.6% of the world’s population, yet it consumes 80% of the world’s opioid prescriptions. That means Americans consume (83) pain killers for every one the average person worldwide takes. Holy cow!

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      2. hah! the wit-soaked wja rides onto the stage of tragi-comedy again! what would we devoted ‘bracing views’ readers do w/out your intermittent levity which drags us out of the algid tub of chronic desolation.

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    2. holy cow’s fetid shitola! is my reaction, dennis. tnx for the au-courant on US opioid addictions. i was clueless. is there a subauditum lesson there, or a screaming one?

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    3. In all seriousness, opioids were pushed by multi-billion-dollar corporations as “safe” and “non-addictive.” Also, Americans are propagandized daily, on TV and in magazines and elsewhere, that prescription drugs are our salvation. We live in the valley of the dolls, one might say.

      And of course we have plenty of pain in America. The pushers are playing on that pain.

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    4. Saw this today on America’s opioid crisis (from the New York Times):

      Drug overdoses now kill more than 100,000 Americans a year — more than vehicle crash and gun deaths combined.

      Sean Blake was among those who died. He overdosed at age 27 in Vermont, from a mix of alcohol and fentanyl, a synthetic opioid. He had struggled to find effective treatment for his addiction and other potential mental health problems, repeatedly relapsing.

      “I do love being sober,” Blake wrote in 2014, three years before his death. “It’s life that gets in the way.”

      Blake’s struggles reflect the combination of problems that have allowed the overdose crisis to fester. First, the supply of opioids surged. Second, Americans have insufficient access to treatment and other programs that can ease the worst damage of drugs.

      Experts have a concise, if crude, way to summarize this: If it’s easier to get high than to get treatment, people who are addicted will get high. The U.S. has effectively made it easy to get high and hard to get help.

      No other advanced nation is dealing with a comparable drug crisis. And over the past two years, it has worsened: Annual overdose deaths spiked 50 percent as fentanyl spread in illegal markets, more people turned to drugs during the pandemic, and treatment facilities and other services shut down.

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  7. The Condor movie was really good, I watch it whenever it shows up on TV. the ending reminds me of an episode of the Lou Grant Show. Ed Asner played a comedic Lou Grant on the Mary Tyler Moore Show but then transitioned the character to a dramatic TV series, with Lou Grant an editor at a major newspaper. In season 1, episode 20, as I recall, Lou gets information there may be a CIA plant at the newspaper to monitor what stories they cover and manipulate coverage. At the end of the episode, he says “who in this room can’t we trust ” as he looks around the newsroom at his colleagues.

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  8. “Do you believe the Condor really is an endangered species?” Would’ve preferred more of a Nerd akin to Snowden than the too “Sporty” Redford, but that’s splitting hairs in this Classic. Saw it when Stationed Overseas on Base Lajes “Vegas” Field Az. Portugal U.S.A.F.E… When I was in my Tech. School for Skycops @ Lackland A.F.B. ATC we always hung out with the Crypto. “Airheads” who went on to the Listening Posts of NSA. And.., a good friend from Ill. who was a Sky-cop at Whiteman A.F.B. SAC, but then switched to a Career in the CIA.

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    1. There is an interesting article on the internet Philip by a British author commenting on how this film was made. And the conjecture that the CIA actually had a heavy handed influence on aspects of the film…

      https://www.spyculture.com/cia-three-days-of-condor/

      “In February 1975 the director of conspiracy classic Three Days of the Condor Sidney Pollack invited Richard Helms, former head of the CIA, to visit the set while they were shooting in New York. Helms went along for a day and acted as a consultant to Robert Redford, as depicted in this infamous picture. Though Helms had left the Agency, three documents from the CIA’s open source monitoring of media coverage show they were keeping an eye on developments. Statements from former CIA chief lawyer John Rizzo suggest that they may have been directly involved in the production……”

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      1. “‘….they may have been directly involved in the production……’”

        So….if the CIA was involved in the production, would they have tried to show the organization in a better light? If that was the case, how bad is it really??

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        1. Not very, really. Rogue element grabs plan and employs mercenaries; missed target fights the good fight for days; head mercenary closes out rogue element when missed target isn’t the real problem; missed target tells the people or tries to do so.

          The bad guy isn’t CIA-they’re the thinkers and cover-up artists (when necessary) working for the for the citizens best interest, even if it’s ignorance.

          The bad guy is blind trust, IMO, something I read in MalcomGladwell’s “TalkingToStrangers”; most of us want to believe, especially if we are invested in a particular understanding or organization.

          CIA guys don’t think one of theirs will chase the cash or cause; mercenaries think everyone is in the building; woman believes the mail man has a package-the only one who isn’t trusting is Redford, which even though he’s an analyst (or whatever), he got good enough training from CIA to stay alive and force the conspiracy to end.

          This seems to be the standard for American/West spy movies that I have seen-it’s not the agency that’s bad but some self-serving person or group within it that either goes rogue or exceeds it’s authority, at which time someone from the agency or another US/West government entity shuts them down.

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          1. What I meant was, if the CIA kept tabs on and influenced the production of the film so as to show the organization in a better light, and even at that, the organization comes out looking corrupt and homicidal, how bad must the CIA actually be?

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            1. How bad? In the book JFK AND THE UNSPEAKABLE: WHY HE DIED AND WHY IT MATTERS by James W. Douglas the following quotation describes the then president’s subsequent actions after learning that the CIA including Dulles and top CIA leaders running the Bay of Pigs had a contingency plan. That plan was to go ahead with the beach head attack even if JFK refused to used fighter/bombers from a US aircraft carrier and to do so in a manner that JFK considered ‘virtually treason’.
              Sorry for the length.

              “John Kennedy reacted to the CIA’s plotting with a vehemence that went unreported until after his death and has been little noted since then. In a 1966 New York Times feature article on the CIA, this statement by JFK appeared without further comment: “President Kennedy, as the enormity of the Bay of Pigs disaster came home to him, said to one of the highest officials of his Administration that he wanted ‘to splinter the C.I.A. in a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds.’”[56] Presidential adviser Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., said the president told him, while the Bay of Pigs battle was still going on, “It’s a hell of a way to learn things, but I have learned one thing from this business—that is, that we will have to deal with CIA . . . no one has dealt with CIA.”[57] In his short presidency, Kennedy began to take steps to deal with the CIA. He tried to redefine the CIA’s mandate and to reduce its power in his National
              Security Action Memoranda (NSAMs) 55 and 57, which took military-type operations out of the hands of the CIA. Kennedy’s NSAM 55 informed the Joint Chiefs of Staff that it was they (not the CIA) who were his principal military advisers in peacetime as well as wartime. Air Force Colonel L. Fletcher Prouty, who at the time was in charge of providing military support for the CIA’s clandestine operations, described the impact of NSAM 55 addressed to General Lyman Lemnitzer, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs: “I can’t overemphasize the shock—not simply the words—that procedure caused in Washington: to the Secretary of State, to the Secretary of Defense, and particularly to the Director of Central Intelligence. Because Allen Dulles, who was still the Director, had just lived through the shambles of the Bay of Pigs and now he finds out that what Kennedy does as a result of all this is to say that, ‘you, General Lemnitzer, are to be my Advisor’. In other words, I’m not going to depend on Allen Dulles and the CIA. Historians have glossed over that or don’t know about it.”[58]

              Douglass, James W.. JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters . Orbis Books. Kindle Edition.

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  9. I read Douglass’ book several years ago, Eric, and found it as fascinating as it is terrifying. If the CIA was that bad in the early ’60s, as JFK fatally discovered, how much worse was it by the time “Condor” came out, and now? I guess it would be in the “unimaginable” category.

    Btw, just in case you haven’t come across it, the L. Fletcher Prouty mentioned in the article you included also wrote a revelatory book about the CIA, “The Secret Team,” available at that merchant named after a river in South America.

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    1. Thanks Denise! I’ll check it out.

      BTW, Cyril Wecht, MD, JD recently published a book entitled: THE JFK ASSASSINATION DISSECTED: AN ANALYSIS BY FORENSIC PATHOLOGIST CYRIL WECHT. Just started reading it. So far pretty good.

      Early in the book he mentions one of my old pathology professors (Earl Rose). As a first year pathology resident the senior residents all warned us not to ask Earl questions about JFK, Dallas or Parkland. I was clueless and asked why. That’s when I found out he was the forensic pathologist at Parkland and was physically removed by federal agents with some threat involved from keeping the body of JFK from being removed from Parkland and Earl’s legitimate jurisdiction. Earl was a large man and had been known to similarly remove residents who asked such questions from his office.

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  10. A little off topic, but if you want to see another classic “CIA Film” check out 1973 “Scorpio” w/ Burt Lancaster my fave. Actor who I might add does his own Stunts, and they are amazing— even tho. he’s in his 60’s. during filming, and which I can really appreciate @ this pt. in my life. lol

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      1. Interesting Genre of Films. Another all time favorite “Marathon Man” all star Cast too: William Devane, Roy Scheider, Dustin Hoffman– Great book as well!

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    2. FWIW, when I was opting out “the news” from a Nexstar affiliate [this one NBC] last night, I found CapricornOne was starting. I don’t know as NASA would have an internal department for that sort of work, but SamWaterston’s final scene always gives me something for the head and the heart.

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