A war of words: circulating forbidden literature behind the Iron Curtain

If James Bond, now in American hands, re-emerges refreshed as an agent of the CIA, then it will be a homecoming of sorts, given that his creator played a role in drawing up the blueprint for America’s first foreign intelligence service. In May 1941, Commander Ian Fleming sat down in Washington with Colonel William (‘Wild Bill’) Donovan to sketch out an agency modelled on British naval intelligence. Under Donovan’s stewardship, this became the Office of Strategic Services and, in 1947, the CIA.

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The two men got on well and were not afraid to try things that had not been tried before. Fleming’s experience at the admiralty, notably in the propaganda section he started with Sefton Delmer, foreshadowed Donovan’s Office of Scientific Research and Development which went on to concoct exploding lumps of coal (‘Black Joe’) for the north African landings, and female sex hormones to be injected into Hitler’s vegetables to make his moustache moult and his voice turn soprano.

Fleming’s fingerprints are also all over the CIA’s postwar dirty tricks campaign against Fidel Castro under the direction of Allen Dulles, a diligent Bond fan. He oversaw unsuccessful plans not only to invade the Bay of Pigs but to assassinate the Cuban leader with, variously, a booby-trapped cigar, a poisoned aqualung and, most ludicrous, a detonating conch for Castro to pick up when snorkelling.

Another CIA director and admirer of Wild Bill, whom he had served under, was Bill Casey, a ‘freelance buccaneer’ whose untempered appetite for covert action as personified by Agent 007 led to the succession of catastrophic misadventures that I witnessed when growing up in Cambodia and then Latin America.