On August 12, a film called Rogue Agent had its U.S. release. It had previously carried the original title of my unpublished, 11,000-word magazine piece, which I’d kept back and adapted into the screenplay: “Chasing Agent Freegard.” It’s been a chase that has lasted 16 years—one that spanned a transition, for me, from journalism to deploying journalism in screenwriting and making movies.
It began in mid-2005. I’d left 60 Minutes after years of working on the Wednesday broadcast, and I’d had my first long piece published in Vanity Fair (“The Recruiters’ War,” about senior military recruiters hustling mentally and physically disqualified young men and women into the wartime services). I received an unexpected phone call from a producer in London named Lloyd Levin, who’d read the piece.
