“Bond. James Bond.”
With those three words, British author Ian Fleming introduced spy fiction’s most iconic secret agent, James Bond, Agent 007.
Few people know, however, that Fleming was also one of the original creators of television’s most popular 1960s spy series, The Man from UNCLE. Fewer still know that Fleming himself was an intelligence officer during WWII and played a key role in the establishment of America’s first spy agency, the Office of Strategic Services, or OSS.
Fleming joined the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserves during the last few months of peace in 1939 and was assigned to Naval Intelligence as the primary aide to its director, Rear Admiral John Godfrey. In that role Fleming liaised with other sections of British intelligence, including the Secret Intelligence Service (which Bond would later work for), and the Special Operations Executive (SOE) created by Prime Minister Winston Churchill to “set Europe ablaze.”
Surprisingly, Fleming, who had no previous espionage training, found himself a gifted intelligence “ideas man.” He brainstormed several famous wartime intelligence operations, such as Operation Mincemeat, a plot to use a corpse laden with secret documents to fool the Germans into believing the Allies intended to invade Greece when their target was actually Sicily. Postwar, the successful Operation Mincemeat became famous with the publication of the book, The Man Who Never Was.
Early in the war, Fleming was placed in charge of Operation Goldeneye, which involved establishing espionage and sabotage networks in Spain and Gibraltar should the fascist Spanish government decide to join the Nazis’ war effort. In 1942, he organized and directed 30 Assault Unit, a commando unit whose role was to seize German naval documents and other intelligence during lightening raids along the coast of mainland European.
Fleming underwent training—as an observer only—with the British SOE at a secret facility in Canada. Though not intended to be a field operative, he did surprisingly well. Toward the end of the training, Fleming was taken aside and told one of the instructors was a traitor and needed to be liquidated. Armed with a loaded revolver, Fleming arrived at the target’s hotel and crept up the stairs to his room.
And that was as far as he got.
The future author realized he just couldn’t kill a man in cold blood. He needn’t have worried; it was the last test of his training, and he failed. That failure, however, would eventually give birth to James Bond and his Double-O license to kill.
So, how did the creator of James Bond become involved in the creation of the OSS?
In 1941, months before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Fleming was sent to the U.S. to work temporarily with Sir William Stephenson, head of British intelligence activities in North America. Fleming came to know General William “Wild Bill” Donovan, a WWI hero and director of what was then called the Coordinator of Information.
While working with Stephenson, Fleming wrote a proposal for an all-inclusive American intelligence organization, including concepts of operation, and sections for intelligence collection, sabotage, special operations, research and analysis, and morale operations. That document became the first draft of the charter establishing the OSS (later the CIA), in return for which Donovan presented Fleming with a special gift pistol.
An OSS special ops team figured prominently in my WWII thriller, Codename: Parsifal. Unfortunately, neither James Bond nor his creator appear in my new WWII spy thriller, The Last Saboteur. But an OSS mission to sabotage the Nazi atom bomb project was the inspiration for the book’s plot and plays a pivotal role in its conclusion.