Our Man in New York - a review

Hear the words ‘America First’, ‘fake news’ and ‘agents of influence’, we would probably think of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign slogan, the pernicious spread of disinformation via traditional news outlets and social media, and Russian interference in the US presidential election. To Ian Fleming, these phrases would have meant one thing – the British campaign, led by William Stephenson, to bring the United States into the Second World. In his new book, Henry Hemming reveals the full story of MI6’s head of station in New York and his audacious campaign, which till now has only partially been told.  

By June 1940, Britain was in trouble. France had fallen to the German forces as thousands of allied soldiers were evacuated from the beaches of Dunkirk. Merchant shipping, carrying vital supplies to the country across the Atlantic, faced constant threat from U-boat attack, and a German invasion of Britain seemed imminent. Winston Churchill knew that Britain would not win the war without America’s help. President Roosevelt was sympathetic to the cause, but his hands were tied; America was officially neutral and its population heavily anti-interventionist. Britain somehow had to overcome public opinion and break down powerful lobby groups. One man, MI6’s agent in New York, recognised that it had to be done by any means necessary. 

William Stephenson, a Canadian businessman and unlikely-looking spymaster, having brought himself to the attention of ‘C’, the head of MI6, was appointed to run an influence campaign in America. The work began uncertainly, but soon Stephenson knew what he had to do and in time built up an organisation – eventually given the cover name ‘British Security Coordination’ – that occupied an entire floor of New York’s Rockefeller Center. 

Henry Hemming has trawled through the archives and examined recently declassified files to reveal the full extent of Stephenson’s racket. The organisation run by Stephenson began rumours to discredit individuals sympathetic to Germany, devised opinion polls so that the results would appear more favourable, fed propaganda (and entirely false) stories to newspapers and radio stations, infiltrated campaign groups, set honey-traps and faked plans that seemed to put the Nazi threat on America’s doorstep. Stephenson himself cultivated a friendship with people close to the president, most importantly William Donovan, who would head-up the forerunner to the CIA.

As personal assistant to the Director of the Naval Intelligence, Ian Fleming weaves in and out of the narrative. Fleming’s part in the creation of what would become the CIA can be overplayed, and though Fleming was a key player, Hemming duly sets the record straight.
Hemming has not forgotten the Bond connection either. One of the two kills that earn James Bond his double-O status takes place at the Rockefeller Center. It’s worth noting, too, that William Stephenson would often meet people at the St Regis Hotel; James Bond stays there in the novel of Live and Let Die (1954).

There’s room, too, for other individuals who in time would leave a mark on James Bond lore. Ivar Bryce, Fleming’s friend and financial backer of the early attempts to bring Bond to the big screen, used his South American expertise during his time with BSC to fake a map that was almost decisive in bringing America into the war. (Interestingly, the same map is described as genuine in Room 3603, an earlier account of William Stephenson and the BSC. It’s fascinating to consider that Ian Fleming wrote a foreword to a book that he knew was far from the full story, as had been claimed on the dustjacket.) Roald Dahl, responsible for the screenplays of You Only Live Twice and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, also worked for the BSC. I would like to have read more about Roald Dahl’s knack for digging out scandal that could be used to Britain’s advantage, as well the adventures he and Fleming enjoyed during their time together in New York and Washington away from the office, but perhaps that’s another story.

Our Man in New York is a fascinating read as thrilling as any work of fiction. There aren’t many history books that you’ll want to read in one sitting, but this is one of them. Henry Hemming has written a superb book that deserves a place on every Fleming aficionado’s bookshelf. 

Our Man in New York by Henry Hemming is published by Quercus in the UK and in the US (as Agents of Influence) by PublicAffairs.

Organisation heads talk about the pros and cons of association with James Bond

A view of Vauxhall Cross, SIS headquarters

Mention MI6 and Aston Martin to anyone, and chances are they'll immediately think of James Bond. The car manufacturer has been associated with Bond for over 50 years, starting in practical terms at least with Goldfinger, released in 1964 (the 1959 novel also features as Aston Martin). In contrast, MI6 has never claimed an official association with Ian Fleming's creation (although, interestingly, Peter Lamont reveals in his autobiography, The Man with the Golden Eye, that he gained access to MI6 headquarters at Vauxhall Cross in preparation to film the building for GoldenEye and subsequent films). However, any media article about the organisation, or statements made by its head or former officers, inevitably allude to the fictional super-spy, and the organisation is no doubt permanently inundated with applications from wannabe Bonds.

These relationships with James Bond were raised recently by the head of MI6 (or more properly SIS) and Aston Martin's director of global marketing in statements that were in some ways rather similar. While both acknowledged the benefits their association with James Bond has brought, they also alluded to negative aspects.

In a speech to journalists at Vauxhall Cross earlier this month, the chief of SIS (known as 'C') Alex Younger described how James Bond helped create a powerful brand for SIS that gave the organisation, or at least its name, worldwide recognition. Younger also admitted that SIS requires a deep grasp of gadgets and employs a real-life Q.

But, he continued, James Bond also creates a false picture of the type of people who work for the organisation. There is no single characteristic that defines an SIS officer, whether that be an Oxbridge graduate or an expert in hand-to-hand combat, and James Bond types who are reckless, immoral, or prone to law-breaking need not apply.

Dan Balmer, director of global marketing at Aston Martin, also considered both the positive and negative aspects of an association with James Bond. He told Marketing Week last month that while the company remains open to the opportunities that an association with Bond brings, it relied too much on James Bond in the past. Its marketing, for instance, has tended to focus around the release of new Bond films, the result being that between films people stop talking about the cars and sales suffer.

Balmer spoke about how Aston Martin was planning to move beyond its perceived British and male core market (his comments about Bond hint at the fact that Bond naturally helps reinforce this perception), announcing that its marketing will now be designed to appeal to international audiences and female drivers.

In making their statements, both Alex Younger and Dan Balmer acknowledge the role, whether welcome or not, that James Bond plays in promoting their organisations and maintaining brand awareness. In memetic terms, the Bond films, to which Younger and Balmer alluded, are a highly successful vehicle for spreading ideas or memes about Aston Martin and SIS (even if inaccurate). However, the association between the organisations and Bond is so strong that the films aren't necessary to spread and reinforce those memes. The press and other media also do the job, but the association is so firmly fixed in people's minds, who wittingly or unwittingly pass it on to others, that it is practically self-replicating.

This means that, unfortunately for Alex Younger and Dan Balmer, it'll take a very long time – and the disappearance of Bond from the cultural environment – to change popular perceptions. Aston Martin and SIS will remain synonymous with Bond for a while longer yet.

How would James Bond vote in the EU referendum?

An article in The Times this week reported on a YouGov survey, which polled 1,700 adults about how they thought fictional characters would vote in the upcoming EU referendum. The results suggested that the respondents projected their own voting intentions on the characters. Thus, in the case of James Bond, those in the leave camp imagined Bond would vote for the UK to leave the EU, while those in the remain camp thought that he'd vote to stay in.

So, with this unclear picture in mind, just how would James Bond vote? Well, it depends which Bond we're talking about. The literary Bond might well vote for the UK to leave. After all, he's deeply patriotic and is quick to defend the county against any criticism.

For instance, in You Only Live Twice (or is that EU Only Live Twice? as one reader of the Times article put it), Bond is stung by Tiger Tanaka's accusations that England has thrown away a great empire, that Suez was a pitiful bungle, that successive governments have handed control to the unions, and that England is generally declining in fortune. Bond counters, somewhat lamely, that England isn't doing too badly and that it still beats people in sports and wins Nobel prizes.

Bond hears a similar case in 'The Hildebrand Rarity', when boorish American Milton Krest tells Bond that England is a diminishing asset in the world, though he responds simply that he thinks Krest's view oversimplified and naïve.

Evidently, Bond considers that the UK (or, rather, England) still has what it takes to stand on its own. On the other hand, with his Scottish ancestry, proudly claimed in The Man with the Golden Gun, Bond might ally himself with majority opinion in Scotland, which appears to favour a remain vote.

The film Bond might lean towards a leave vote ('So does England', says Bond in The Spy Who Loved Me in response to the Log Cabin Girl telling him that she needs him). But then again, today's Bond is not so much a lone wolf, as part of team that increasingly depends on intelligence and cooperation from different agencies. Bond might view Brexit as a threat to those arrangements. No more Monsieur Aubergine. 

That said, spy chiefs appear to be sanguine about the impact of leaving the EU, given that the EU has been less important in intelligence matters than the 'Five Eyes' alliance of the US, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the UK. Former MI6 chief David Dearlove has suggested that the cost to Britain in the case of Brexit would be low, while former CIA director Michael Hayden has said that the EU was not 'a natural contributor to national security'. These are opinions that one can imagine Bond sharing. But, as the Guardian's Ewen MacAskill suggests, the need for cooperation and intelligence-sharing across the EU is only likely to increase. 

So, if you want to know how to vote, don't ask Bond. He's as confused as the rest of us.  

James Bond at the Intelligence and Security Committee

Intelligence chiefs at the ISC ('C' in the centre). Photo: The Guardian

When UK’s spy chiefs appeared before the parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee last week, it was inevitable that James Bond would be referenced in the extensive media coverage of the event. James Bond is a standard cultural touchstone for any espionage-related story, but allusions to Bond were especially relevant on this occasion, as Judy Dench’s M faces the same committee in Skyfall (2012). In the film, the committee was chaired by Gareth Mallory, played by Ralph Fiennes. His role in reality was taken by Sir Malcolm Rifkind MP.

A trawl through the coverage in British media brought up various James Bond references. The headline for a comment piece by Julian Huppert in The Guardian read, “Spy chiefs can give evidence without the sky falling in – so let's reform oversight,” an obvious reference to Skyfall. An editorial in same paper contrasted popular perceptions of spy work with reality by alluding to Bond villains, white cats, and steel-rimmed bowler hats. In a parliamentary sketch in The Daily Mail, Quentin Letts wrote of “a petite Miss Moneypenny, taking notes” behind Sir John Sawers, chief ('C') of MI6. A piece by Alex Stevenson in the online edition of Metro had the headline, “Spy chiefs grilled: James Bond’s bosses hit back hard,” and suggested that C's performance at the committee hearing was not as exciting as the portrayal we're used to in the Bond films. In the print edition of Metro, a cartoon by Robert Thompson showed a Blofeld-like character (of Donald Pleasence type) in a chair stroking a white cat. He says to an image of Bond on a TV screen, “Ah, Mr Bond, I've been expecting you.” “Yes, sorry there's a two minute time delay,” Bond replies, referring to the small transmission delay in the broadcast of the proceedings.

On BBC Radio 4, Eddie Mair, presenter of the PM programme began his broadcast with the words, “On Her Majesty's Not So Secret Service,” and the BBC's security correspondent, Frank Gardner introduced his report by saying, “It wasn't Skyfall.” Even before the committee met, the BBC was reaching for references to Skyfall in its reporting on the upcoming event. On Radio 4's Today programme, a segment by correspondent Gordon Corera used clips of M's scenes in front of the committee.

As for the appearance of the spy chiefs themselves, fact mirrored fiction as some of what the committee heard was not too dissimilar from what M tells the committee in Skyfall. In his opening remarks, Sir John Sawers said, “It is not like it was in the Cold War. There are not states out there, trying to destroy our Government and our way of life, but there are a very wide range of diverse threats that we face.” This could have been one of M’s lines. She tells the committee, “I'm frightened because our enemies are no longer known to us. They do not exist on a map. They're not nations, they're individuals. And look around you. Who do you fear? Can you see a face, a uniform, a flag? No. Our world is not more transparent now, it's more opaque. It's in the shadows.”

I was also reminded of M’s speech when Andrew Parker, Director General of MI5, told the committee, “The task that we are all paid to do is to keep the country safe. That is challenging and difficult work to do; and where the techniques we have are compromised, that makes our work even harder.” This echoes the appeal about operational matters that M makes: “So before you declare us irrelevant, ask yourselves, how safe do you feel?”

James Bond has long been something of a recruiting sergeant for the intelligence services (at least unofficially), but it was still remarkable to hear Sir John Sawers mention him: “I think the idea of sending an agent off into the field like James Bond and then he comes back two months later and reports... That does not work that way. Our people in the field will have constant communication with us through our stations or direct to head office. And they can communicate very rapidly.”

Ironically, far from being unrealistic, MI6 as portrayed in recent James Bond films has increasingly been working in a manner that Sir John Sawers would recognise. James Bond, particularly in the Daniel Craig era, is less a lone wolf sent out by M and relying on his wits and judgement (and some gadgets) to complete the mission, and is more part of a team which provides backup and feeds information and resources to Bond while in the field. M has also played a more active role, staying in regular contact with Bond and even going out into the field.

As I suggested in an earlier post, this in part reflects the fact that communication is much easier today than it was in the early days of the Bond films. As technology has evolved, the Bond films have naturally kept pace with it; Bond without a mobile phone is now unthinkable, and there is now no reason for Bond to stay incommunicado (except perhaps when held prisoner or in a situation where to attempting to communicate would be dangerous). A more active M also reflects the reality of accountability and oversight that Government (and society) demands of our intelligence services. The Bond films have moved, again probably without too much deliberation, with this trend. Besides, given his experience on the Intelligence and Security Committee, I expect the new M, Gareth Mallory, will be no different to his predecessor and will continue to direct, or be regularly updated on, Bond's next mission.

Returning to the media references to Bond, memes that emerged in the Sean Connery era – the Blofeld of You Only Live Twice, the white cat, Oddjob's hat – continue to endure. It is no surprise, too, that given its huge success, Skyfall has also provided elements that, a year after the film's release, have retained their cultural currency. M's appearance at the Intelligence and Security Committee is one element that is likely to be as enduring in cultural space.