- "You're never gonna find any peace. Not until you find out who you really are."
- ―Robert Dewey's most famous quote upon being confronted by Jason Bourne[src]
Robert Dewey was the corrupt Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, serving under Director of National Intelligence Edwin Russell.
A long serving member of the agency, he was responsible for ordering the assassination Jason Bourne's father Richard Webb in 1999, which in turn succeeded in motivating Bourne to join Operation Treadstone. By 2016 he had ascended to the directorship after the arrest of Ezra Kramer, and developed a mass surveillance program dubbed Iron Hand in collaboration with billionaire Aaron Kalloor and social media giant Deep Dream. When Jason Bourne resurfaced, Dewey tried several times to have him murdered, and showed willingness to have members of his own agency killed if they opposed his agenda. Finally, his plans are thwarted due to Kallor revealing their partnership to general public, and he is killed by subordinate Heather Lee, Head of CIA Cyber Ops, after a confrontation with Bourne.
Dewey was the main antagonist in the 2016 action/thriller film Jason Bourne and arguably retroactively one of the main antagonists of the entire cinematographic franchise due to his actions behind the scenes impacting several plot points of previous films. He was portrayed by famous actor Tommy Lee Jones.
History[]
Background[]
In 1999, Dewey was serving as a Deputy Director in the CIA. He attempted to enlist David Webb into the newly created black operations program called Operation Treadstone, founded by Webb's father Richard. When Richard Webb prohibited his son from joining, Dewey had his personal assassin, dubbed the Asset kill Richard in Beirut, Lebanon, staging it as a terrorist attack. This motivated the younger Webb, then a Captain in the US Army Special Forces to join the program voluntarily.
After the events of The Bourne Ultimatum, when David (now going by the name Jason Bourne), exposed Operation Blackbriar, Dewey took over Ezra Kramer's position as CIA Director after his arrest. He viewed Bourne's leaks as a direct threat to national security, and harboured a level of personal resentment, as Blackbriar's exposure resulted in his trusted contact the Asset being captured and tortured in Syria for two years.
Sometime between 2004 and 2016, Dewey's focus moved away from the Beta program and human enhancement, and he instead began focusing on intelligence data gathering. He developed "Iron Hand", a CIA operation to engage in mass unwarranted surveillance of over 1.5 billion people with the reluctant assistance of social media company Deep Dream.
Jason Bourne[]
Dewey supervises the operations.
In 2016, Dewey and CIA Cyber-Ops Division Head Heather Lee were present when former CIA operative Nicky Parsons hacks into the agency's mainframe computer server to expose its black ops programs with the help of a hacktivist group led by Christian Dassault. In the light of this, Dewey ordered a manhunt for Parsons, under the belief that she had contacted Bourne for a meeting at a civil riot in Syntagma Square, Athens. When CIA teams failed to apprehend and kill them, Dewey planted the Asset to assassinate them both: In the outcome, after a vehicular chase across Athens, Parsons was shot dead but Bourne escaped with the keys to a safe deposit box with CIA files and a hard drive Parsons chucked at him before she was killed.
In the aftermath of the Greece incident the following day, Dewey - while in a meeting with Edwin Russell, the Director of National Intelligence, Lee walked in and as explained her plan to Dewey: Contact Bourne under the belief that she could persuade him back into the CIA as an agent. Dewey seemingly accepts with glee and Lee leaves the room. Dewey and his right-hand man Craig Jeffers are the only two who remain in the room, leaving them to discuss their true intentions.
Dewey meets Kallor at the café.
At a café, Dewey arranged a meeting with Aaron Kalloor, a public face of corporate social responsibility in an attempt to ally with him for a public debate about privacy rights, but secretly plans to use his enterprise Deep Dream as a mass-surveillance program for Iron Hand: After a negotiation, Kalloor reluctantly accepts before he leaves the café.
Meanwhile, Bourne locates Dassault in Berlin and uses his computer to decrypt Parsons' files, discovering that his father was involved in the creation of the Treadstone program. A malware program implanted by Lee in the files during Parsons' hacking allows the CIA to localise Bourne but the latter escapes to Dewey's team and incapacitates Dassault, who was attacking him. While Lee persuades Russell to allow her to contact Bourne in person to attempt to bring him back, Dewey secretly authorizes the Asset to eliminate her team as Bourne arranges a meeting with Malcolm Smith, a former Treadstone surveillance operative, at Paddington Plaza, London. Dewey menaces Smith through his ear piece to shut up but he reveals Bourne that his father had created the Treadstone program but actually attempted to prevent them to recruit Bourne himself. He adds in his things, saying that Dewey ordered the Asset to kill Richard and staged his death as a terrorist attack to persuade Bourne to join into the Treadstone program. After the confrontation, the Asset assassinates Smith while Bourne escapes and finds Lee, whom she isn't feeling comfortable with Dewey's methods and directs him to a technology convection called EXOCON at Las Vegas.
Dewey and Jeffers at the convention.
At the convection, Dewey is scheduled to attend the convention for a public debate on privacy rights with Kalloor which is the public face. He was secretly funded by Dewey who intends to carry out his true plan; use the Deep Dream for real-time worldwide massive surveillance systems alongside the reborn programs Treadstone, Outcome, Blackbriar and LARX, now collectively known as "Iron Hand". Suspecting that Kalloor will refuse to allow the CIA's access to Deep Dream, Dewey orders the Asset to take down Kalloor as well as Lee - whom he no longer trusts shortly after he deduces her conspiracy with Bourne. Unfortunately for Dewey, Bourne stops the assassination by blinding the Asset, although he shoots Kalloor regardless.
In the midst of the thwarted shooting, Jeffers insisted that Dewey escape in a vehicular escort, but Dewey chose to remain his ground on an upper floor. Bourne tracked him to his room and threatened him by pinning him against a wall: knowing that his agents were closing in, Dewey stalled for time with Bourne, distracting him through a speech about patriotism whilst attempting to deceive him in rejoining the agency.
Dewey's corpse.
Bourne avoids temptation and is about to execute Dewey when Jeffers suddenly intervenes and pulls a gun on Bourne; both men wound each other with a single gunfire, albeit Jeffers is killed whereas Bourne is injured. Dewey uses this distraction to reach for his SIG-Sauer P228 and point it at Bourne's head, preparing to kill him once and for all. Before he could pull the trigger, however, Lee intervenes and shoots Dewey in the neck, killing him as he fatally stumbles through the wall; thus saving Bourne in the process.
Bourne covers up Lee's involvement and would later go on to kill the Asset after hunting him down; finally avenging his father's murder and also putting an end to Dewey's autocracy for good. The following day, Russell becomes aware of what Dewey did and blames the issue on him for virtually jeopardizing the agency by compromising the Iron Hand program. Lee would ultimately take Dewey's place as the newly director of the CIA after Russell agrees at her urging; the two would indirectly carry out Dewey's legacy as they intend to hunt down Bourne should he refuse to comply with the agency.
Trivia[]
- Unlike many senior intelligence officials in the film series (including his predecessor Ezra Kramer), Dewey does not appear to have served in a branch of the United States military.
- Despite there being many senior CIA and US government officials (such as Alexander Conklin, Ward Abbott, Pamela Landy, Noah Vosen and Eric Byer) appearing throughout the franchise as adversaries to Bourne, it can be argued that Dewey is the most significant adversary as he is directly responsible for the death of his Richard Webb and Bourne joining of Operation Treadstone.