CLOAK & DAGGERThe Vexed Relationship Between James Bond and Real-World Intelligence Work
James Bond first appeared 70 years ago today, playing roulette at three o’clock in the morning, in former British naval intelligence officer Ian Fleming’s debut novel, “Casino Royale.” Fleming’s creation defines espionage in popular culture but, at the same time, he is disavowed by actual intelligence agency heads who insist that there is no resemblance between the dashing, debonair 007 and his rakish style and the stealthy, grinding, and unglamorous existence of real-world intelligence agents.
James Bond first appeared 70 years ago today, playing roulette at three o’clock in the morning, in former British naval intelligence officer Ian Fleming’s debut novel, “Casino Royale.”
Rejected by three US publishers, the book didn’t threaten bestseller lists until 1955 after a paperback edition was released. Yet, by the time of his death in 1964, Fleming had published 11 Bond novels (“The Man with the Golden Gun” was released posthumously) and sold 30 million copies—accelerated no doubt by the character’s screen breakthrough in 1962’s “Dr No.” Today, around half the world’s population has seen a Bond film, and Fleming’s creation defines espionage in popular culture.
At the same time, he is disavowed by actual intelligence agency heads. In 2019, for example, the Australian Security Intelligence Organization’s director-general, Mike Burgess, said: ‘You’ve got James Bond, Jason Bourne, you’ve got the Black Widow. I can tell you this world is nothing like that of the movies.’ Paul Symon, who headed the Australian Secret Intelligence Service from 2017 to 2022, told ASPI’s Graeme Dobell in 2020: ‘There’s so much wrong with the way [Bond] performs his function. He’s licensed to kill. We don’t give people a license to kill. He has, one would suggest, an ego, aspects of narcissism that wouldn’t fit comfortably with my people.’
The Bond association can hamper agencies’ efforts to recruit diverse staff, including women, for whom the character’s image is a significant negative. As Richard Moore, the head of the UK’s Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), tweeted in 2021: ‘#ForgetJamesBond’.
But Bond, Symon notes, is both ‘a blessing and a curse’. Agencies also associate with him. Colin McColl dubbed Bond ‘the best recruiting sergeant in the world’, and Alex Younger admitted that Bond was a ‘powerful brand’. Both are former MI6 chiefs.
In 2008, MI6’s website claimed that staff who joined the agency would ‘have moments when the gap [to Bond] narrows just a little and the certainty of a stimulating and rewarding career which, like Bond’s, will be in the service of their country’.
Or, as author Alan Judd notes, thanks to Bond’s reach, ‘MI6 officers … can go to the most remote and enclosed communities in the world and say, “I’m from British intelligence and I’d like you to help me”, and get a response. It’s not like saying, “I’m from Belgian intelligence”, and then having to explain.’
