After actor Dominic West suggested that the next James Bond be transgender the commentariat have gone batshit arguing over whether this is a key moment in the struggle for trans rights or another sign that the entertainment industry is dominated by damn commie liberals with their Jewish gay-loving agenda. As per usual, it is neither.
Newly released documents in the JFK files have cast fresh light on the CIA’s plots to kill Fidel Castro. One interview with William Harvey – known as ‘America’s James Bond’, reveals that Robert Kennedy invoked 007 while trying to urge the Agency forward in its anti-Castro operations. William King Harvey joined the CIA after being […](Read more...)
The latest files to be released by the National Archives include one on Kinsgley Amis - the former novelist and critic who was knighted in 1990. Amis was a member of the Communist party while at Oxford university in June 1941, though he renounced Marxism in 1956-7. MI5's monitoring of Amis, which included intercepting letters, collecting news cuttings, keeping an eye on his mistress and talking to people who knew him, covered this same period but continued for another decade after Amis has publicly rejected communism.
Buster Crabb was a WW2 British Navy Frogman who in 1956 was recruited by MI6 to spy on Soviet ships docking in Portsmouth harbour during a goodwill visit. These files - some available here for the first time - detail the British government's interference in the inquest into Crabb's presumed death, their internal inquiry into what happened and their attempts to prevent the BBC making a documentary about the story.
The James Bond films, like the books on which they are based, have always pushed the boundaries of acceptable portraits of sex and violence. Documents from the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) show how for Thunderball they reviewed the script, recommending many changes if the film was to achieve the 'A' certificate that the producers wanted.
What connects JFK, Allen Dulles and the CIA's invasion at the Bay of Pigs to the movies Thunderball and Goldfinger? The answer is the relationship between the CIA and James Bond. In this episode we look at Fleming's decades-long relationship with American intelligence, from the OSS through to the CIA, and how Dulles' friendship with Fleming allowed the Agency to quietly improve their public image via the James Bond novels.
The CIA has had an interest in James Bond almost since its inception as a series of novels in the 1950s. The books were probably the first spy fiction to refer to the CIA by name and to depict them through the character of Felix Leiter. This led to a friendship between Ian Fleming and CIA bigwig Allen Dulles, who not only discussed with Fleming how the CIA were portrayed in the Bond novels but also sourced ideas from the books.
Adding to the British government departments who have provided assistance to the James Bond franchise, the now defunct Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) have released documents on the filming of a scene for Skyfall at their headquarters in Whitehall. The Foreign Office, the Ministry of Defence and MI6 themselves have all aided the Bond film series in one way or another over the decades, and though it only existed for 8 years the DECC can now be added to that illustrious list.
