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How Much of a Spy Was James Bond?
007InVT
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I feel that Fleming's Bond gets knocked for not being much of a spy and while there is truth to this, do we think that there are examples of good tradecraft in amongst it all?
I think so.
I think Bond does some nice intelligence and counterintelligence work particularly in Thunderball, From Russia, With Love, Property of a Lady, Casino Royale and On Her Majesty's Secrey Service.
I think so.
I think Bond does some nice intelligence and counterintelligence work particularly in Thunderball, From Russia, With Love, Property of a Lady, Casino Royale and On Her Majesty's Secrey Service.
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Comments
I remember the bedroom security techniques described in Dr.No as being quite revolutionary for their time and I'm sure there are many other examples of trade craft splattered across the novels.
That said, I've always thought of 007 as more of a 'secret agent' than a 'spy'.
Perhaps this is a bit of intellectual masturbation that I've dreamed up to differentiate Bond from the real deal that tend to inhabit the world's of Deighton and Le Carre. Both of whom litter their novels with the most detailed trade craft. As did the late, great Elleston Trevor (aka Adam Hall) with his delicious Quiller stories.
I think @Villiers53 makes a good point about perhaps distinguishing a 'secret agent' from a 'spy.'
Is Fleming's Bond really asked to spy that often? It seems to me anyway, that more often than not, he's being sent out on a mission which the goal of which isn't always (but sometimes is) intelligence gathering, but resolution. He's there to end or fix a problem.
There are exceptions, as noted by @007inVT, where Bond does good work in gathering intelligence in the course of the mission.
Is his effectiveness in getting results being questioned? I don't see how it could be. Whether he is being sent to gather more facts, or to simply end a problem, he's gotten the job done the majority of the time, against fantastic odds and opposition.
An agent, or secret agent, is the guy you sent in with an actual task, assignment, and/or goal to achieve. The dirty-work worker. You send a spy to snoop, an agent to kill. Bond is closest to a secret agent. He's sent in to both gather information, but also ultimately stop bad people and bad things.
Spies can be secret agents, and secret agents can be spies. I don't think we can strictly label someone like Bond. He's not strictly a handyman, but when the time comes, he has the right tools.
I haven't read all the books, but my take so far is that Bond is more of an agent than a spy. Even though he might be initially called upon to do intelligence gathering, it's usually anticipated that he'll need to use his skills as an agent at some point to stop the bad guys or keep something disasterous from happening.
In the Bond movieverse, I'd say he's pretty much an agent from start to finish as he does very little actual spying.
David Somerset in FRWL. Mark Hazard in TMWTGG.
You can always count on him.
Read the OP. Fleming, not Filming.
Right. Should have his own series
Bond also used the Mark Hazard cover name in the Daily Express comic strips that were original stories.
I personally classify Bond missions in four ways: search, destroy, both of the latter two, or protect.
An example of "search": Bond must find where the bombs are in Thunderball, or find out what happened to Strangways in Dr. No, or find Blofeld's whereabouts so he can be arrested in Majesty's. Involves answering basic questions about threats to the British government. Normally spirals into something larger or some other plot. Involves basic spywork to infiltrate the villain's network (Bond poses as a potential ship buyer in Thunderball, and as Hilary Bray in Majesty's) or discussing with people in the know (speaking with Domino in Thunderball, Jamaica governor in Dr. No, Draco in Majesty's).
All "search ops": Dr. No, THR (find security risks in Seychelles), Thunderball, OHMSS, Octopussy.
Examples of destroy: Bond must bankrupt Le Chiffre in Casino Royale, the assassination jobs of Scaramanga and Von Hammerstein. Generally wouldn't require spywork, but often does to get close and effectively sabotage the enemy. In CR, Bond is a Jamaican playboy, and in TMWTGG, he is Mark Hazard (ex-cop).
All "destroy ops": CR, FYEO, TMWTGG
Search and destroy combines both aspects of the former two. In LALD, even though not explicitly assigned, Bond must find out where the treasure is (and how he's carrying it over) before blowing up Mr. Big's network. In DAF, Bond must find out how the diamond pipeline works to get to close to the Spangs and disable it. Even in the smaller missions like Bond's Mexican job in GF or in FAVTAK, Bond must find out suppliers in the former and the GRU base in the latter before he can disable operations. Spywork is needed: Bond uses Solitaire and Tiffany as sources, and he poses as a buyer in GF and a smuggler in DAF.
All S&D ops: LALD, DAF, GF (main story and Mexican job), Risico, QOS (Cuban weapons), FAVTAK, Property of a Lady
Protect involves Bond protecting a British asset of some kind: he protects the Moonraker, Tania and the Spektor in FRWL, a Hungarian defector in FAVTAK, and the Russian defectors in TSWLM and TLD. Only MR has any spywork as Bond has to interview many key players about the murder and he uses Gala as a source into Drax's operations. The rest involve involve the spywork of disguise to try an smuggle key people, things out of the country.
All "protect" ops: MR, FRWL, FAVTAK (defector), TSWLM, TLD, 007 in NY
You Only Live Twice was excluded because it is a bizarre mission that is purely diplomatic. Bond is no longer 007 so it seemed fit to exclude it.
I think in conclusion probably Bond could be described as an offensive counterintelligence operative, who sabotages the workings of Foreign Services and gangs and is allowed to kill these threatening operatives if necessary.
A low level cog in the diamond smuggling chain, Tiffany knows all about James Bond. Golden Gun I suppose it makes sense that Scaramanga would know Bond. Still haven't figured out why he'd own a wax figure of him. How does Anders know that Bond is double-o-7? In Spy and MR the main villain knows Bond. In Drax's case he is flattered that the British sent Bond to dig for clues.
They scaled back on the everyone knows him line in Dalton's era. I suppose in GE and the Brosnan films there was a scale back on everyone knows who Bond is.
I think DN and OHMSS we see investigator Bond. LTK I think we see a spy Bond as he infiltrates Sanchez's network and destroys from within.
Not necessarily. They wanted revenge for Dr. No
In the films it's very hard to put Bond's true profession down. In the Brosnan era, it seems he just makes contact with the villain under very light pretenses and is accepted into the villain's organisation in a way where he seems like a spy but not really a good one
Yup, exactly right; he's not supposed to be a spy.
I know this thread is about the literary Bond, but I said in the FYEO (movie) thread the other day that it's quite interesting in that film that, as far as I can recall, at no point in that film does anyone he meets properly not know that he's a British agent! No, I tell a lie; he pretends to be a novelist to Lisl for about two minutes, but I think she already knows he isn't anyway.
Great post! Very interesting.
We need to keep in mind, in the film especially but to a lesser extent in the novel that we only see a small glimpse of what Bond does. On a daily basis he probably trains and does a lot of desk work, reading and writing reports and so on. But even when in the field, who knows how much spying he does when he doesn't fight a Blofeld or a Goldfinger and saves the world.
Amis writes:
"Its inaccurate, of course, to describe James Bond as a spy, in the strict sense of one who steals or buys or smuggles the secrets of foreign Powers. The term does occur in the SMERSH file on him, but the Russian word shpion is often used very loosely. It can be applied to any undesirable not actually in an enemy uniform, from a political conspirator to an army deserter. Bond’s only proper secret-stealing exploit, the acquiring of a Soviet cipher-machine in From Russia, with Love is forced upon him as part of a Soviet plot. Neither he nor his superiors think of it as a normal assignment. Vivienne Michel, narrator of The Spy Who Loved Me, gave Bond a wrong label out of desire for euphony and simplicity, or perhaps minor paradox. The Medium-Grade Civil Servant Who Loved Me would have been more accurate as well as more acceptable to M.
"Bond’s claims to be considered a counter-spy, one who operates against the agents of unfriendly Powers, are rather more substantial. Le Chiffre (Casino Royale), Mr Big (Live and let Die), Goldfinger and Scaramanga (The Man with the Golden Gun) all dole out, or try to get hold of, money to be used illegally on behalf of the U.S.S.R. Other villains, however, notably Sir Hugo Drax (Moonraker), merely turn out to be Soviet agents as the plot thickens, and got Bond interested in them in the first place for reasons nothing to do with espionage, either counter- or plain."
The novel? Here's the letter he drafts -
Yeah, he kind of says that (although it's less 'I'm a spy' and more I suppose the task of tracking down Blofeld for 12 months that's irking him, although from what I remember there's more going on with Bond effectively having a sort of midlife crisis at this point in the novels anyway).
"But now he would attack the arm that held the whip and the gun. The business of espionage could be left to the white-collar boys. They could spy, and catch the spies. He would go after the threat behind the spies, the threat that made them spy."
This was how Fleming was setting Bond up for us.
I think too about Goldfinger (novel) as one of the examples of Bond seemingly doing any actual successful spying; he embeds himself in the criminal organization, obtains important information, and gets it out to his allies at a critical time.
This is a cool post for sure. Enjoyed it; I think if you had to assign YOLT, it would be "destroy"; Shatterhand is a national embarrassment to Japan and has to be dealt with... despite Bond no longer being a 00.
Reading the letter, it comes off that, although Bond refers to the chase of Blofeld as police work, it involves a fair deal of what we would consider spying: gathering intelligence about Blofeld and potentially a reborn SPECTRE, finding Blofeld's whereabouts, etc. Someone corrects me if I'm wrong.
Of course, colloquially the term is used interchangeably with secret agent and is labelled to Bond anyway...