Was the Real James Bond a Spy?

 Was the Real James Bond a Spy? 

Well the evidence is not as strong as it is for two other Ian Fleming characters from Philadelphia - Cummins Catherwood, who was featured as Milton Krest in the short story The Hybred Rarity, or Henry Pleasants, 007-s frequent CIA sidekick Felix Leiter, as both were strongly affiliated with the CIA. Catherwood allowed his non-profit Catherwood Foundation to be used by the CIA to fund covert operations, as revealed by David Wise and Thomas Ross in their book The Invisible Government. 

Wise and Ross also reveal that former OSS officer Henry Pleasants, who debriefed Nazi General Reinhard Gehlen, also wrote classical and jazz music reviews for the Philadelphia Bulletin and New York Times, a background Fleming attributes to Felix Leiter in Live and Let Die when Leiter accompanies James Bond to a jazz club in Harlem. Pleasants later became the CIA Chief of Station in Bonn, Germany while continuing writing about music. 

And both men had connections to Fleming. One of the members of the Catherwood Fund board of directors was a friend of  Ian's brother Peter Fleming, and after thinking about it for a few moments, Pleasants told me that his wife Virginia, a former harpsacordist in the Philadelphia Orchestra, was in a small chamber music group in London with Fleming's sister, who played the cello. 

As for James Bond, the Curator of Birds at the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences and author of the book Birds of the West Indies, he attended Cambridge University, the school of spys, most notably the Cambridge Spy ring (Kim Philby et al.), and was a member of the Pitt Club, that Guy Burgess would also be a member of. 

Mrs. Bond, in on of her books about her husband - Far Afield in the Caribbean, mentions that in 1938 James Bond sailed on a tramp steamer with Somerset Maugham, a famous writer and important British spy who was sent to Russia in 1917 to prevent the Communist revolution, a mission that failed but emphasized his importance. 

Maugham, the author of numerous classic novels such as The Razors Edge, also wrote Ashenden, one of the earliest spy novels based on his own, personal experiences.

Did Maugham recruit Bond on that voyage? When I asked Bond about meeting Maugham, he said Maugham said he was on his way to Devil's Island, and didn't talk much. But I also noticed, on the book shelf next to the door of his apartment, was a complete works of first edition volumes of Somerset Maugham, so Bond must have read him, something he failed to do with any of Ian Fleming's books. 

I also recalled that during England's war with the Argentina over the Faulkland islands, a TV cliip showed British soldiers being briefed on the terrain they would expect when they landed, a briefing by the last Englishman who was on that beach - a birdwatcher. 

In 1948 Bond did sail with Catherwood on his yacht The Vigilant, visiting remote out island like Old Providence, where Morgan the Pirate's treasure was rumored to be burried. When I asked Bond about Catherwood, he didn't have anything nice to say. Bond described him as a imprudent millioinaire who made the voyage unbearable. But the Bond and Catherwood connection is set in stone aboard the Vigilant. 

Mrs. Bond  reports that during WWII Bond encountered a German on a mountain in Haiti, and though it important enough to report the fact to the FBI, but they then began investigating Bond, why was he there? 

Bond was also investigated by J. Edgar Hover's FBI after the Cambridge spy ring was uncovered, as all Americans who attended Cambridge were. 

And as Mrs. Bond recounts in her books, James Bond was at the Bay of Pigs a few weeks before the CIA backed anti-Castro brigade landed there. And he picked up some important intelligence information - that new roads had been constructed to that remote swamp. Did Bond convey that information to the CIA? 

In his new biography of James Bond, Jim Wright mentions my work and association with Bond, and questioning whether or not Bond was a spy, but he says that he could not obtain Cummins Catherwood's CIA file even though Catherwood's CIA credentials had been exposed, not only by Wise and Ross in The Invisible Government, but by Joseph Smith in his Portrait of a Cold Warrior as he used the Catherwood Foundation as a front for his CIA mission to the Phillipines. 

And of course, Kim Philby, the most important double agent of all time, reported in his book My Silent War, that when he was British Secret Intelligence Service liaison to the CIA, Frank Wisner explained to him how they were using private Foundations as a cover for their covert operations. 

So the answer to the question of whether the real James Bond was a spy must remain inconclusive, but maybe someday the records of the agency will reveal the truth. 

Billkelly3@gmail.com