Opinion: My private journey with Robert Redford and a film that never was

I met Bob because of a simple case of a machine gun.

In one of my first cases as a public defender in Miami, I was assigned a client who had what was described as a simple gun case. In investigating this case, I was led into a secret, illegal, covert war waged in our back yard against the government of Nicaragua.

What I discovered during my investigation became known as the Iran-Contra scandal, a dark world of covert actions, corruption and cocaine.

During my investigation, I was invited to give speeches around the country. After a speech in Los Angeles, I got a call from a Hollywood insider who asked me to give a briefing at the Sundance resort in Utah.

When I arrived at Sundance, I was directed to a mountain lodge. The inside of the house looked like a “Butch Cassidy” set. As I was looking out the kitchen window at the beautiful view, a lanky guy on a mountain bike came careening down the mountain.

There he was — Robert Redford, larger than life.

His first words were: “You’re coming for dinner, aren’t you?” Of course I was. It was at dinner that Bob unveiled his plan for me. He said: “I want to make a movie about what you’re doing, and I will protect you.”

He then went on to confide that he had teamed up in secret with Woodward and Bernstein a long time before anything was known about the Watergate scandal.

What an offer! I believed that I was being targeted by not just the CIA and FBI but the White House as well. Bob was offering to provide me cover for my investigations.

Standing in front of his view over the mountain ranges in the distance, he explained that life required commitment, and his commitment was to the Earth. One by one, he named the lands in the distance, detailing which movie allowed him to buy, which parcel. He owned them all.

As I laid out the story, he became increasingly intrigued and began to see it as a tale that needed to be told, a story of corruption and cover-up that led all the way to the White House.

Bob soon arranged meetings at Universal Studios, where the executives agreed to go along with Bob’s plan for his movie. He took an option out on my story and even considered playing me himself.

So for the next year, I would fly out to L.A. on weekends and hang out with Bob at his Malibu beach house. In between his surfing sets, we went over details of what was to be exposed. During the time I spent with him, I realized he had a deep understanding of politics. His views were nuanced yet pointed.

We spent evenings talking and exploring obscure political issues all over the world. His world views were those of a global activist who turned his beliefs into action.

Over the course of the year, he would be gone much of the time finishing the movie “Milagro Beanfield War.” He saw the film as his way of standing up for the underrepresented against greedy developers.

One of my favorite late-night discussions was the role of covert action in a democracy.

I had grown up watching “Three Days of the Condor,” and I offered Bob my impression of the CIA agent yelling to Redford in the final scene. In the scene, Redford hopes he is safe because he had just given the secrets over to The New York Times.

As he was seen leaving the newspaper, the CIA agent yelled: “How do you know they will print it?”

It was that uncertainty I felt all throughout my investigation. Bob totally got my sense that my investigation could blow up at any time. Yes, he got it.

In our year of conversations, he often probed my views on Cuba. I had been living in Miami for 20 years and saw firsthand the implications of our policy towards Cuba. Later, I found out he had been preparing to make the movie “Havana.”

In my experience, Robert Redford was a man of principles and integrity. It was an honor to know him.

Postscript: The movie Bob envisioned went through a number of iterations because the producers didn’t have an ending. This is because the story continued for years, with the White House doing its best to reframe the narrative. At the time, there was no neat Hollywood ending.

When Bob left to make “Havana,” the project stalled out and was never shot.

Fast-forward 30 years. I was sitting with producer Jack Bryan, who was making the documentary “Active Measures.”

I was being interviewed for my work linking Russian disinformation in the 2016 election. He asked casually what other covert operations I had investigated, and I mentioned the CIA contra scandal.

That was the beginning of a two-year project by Bryan, creating a seven-part podcast series titled “Lawyers, Guns and Money.” The podcast brings to life some of the outrageous portions of the saga.

Bob would have been proud.

John Mattes is a former investigative reporter and public policy litigator. As an investigative reporter for the former Fox 6 in San Diego, he earned five Emmys, a Golden Mike, an Edward R Murrow and 10 San Diego Press Club awards. A version of this essay first appeared on Facebook.