007, LHO and JFK - By Wm Kelly
In early 1954 Ian Fleming sat down at his typewriter in his
Jamaican beach house and began “Casino Royale,” a paperback spy thriller novel.
The former assistant to the chief of British Naval
Intelligence, dubbed his secret agent 007 - James Bond, who was licensed to
kill on behalf of her majesty’s secret service while having the cover job of an
import-export agent for Universal Export.
Writing a book a year, by 1957 he had a few novels under his
belt when he wrote what some considered his finest, “From Russia With Love,” about the theft of a Soviet cipher and the
defection of a young and beautiful Russian embassy clerk.
A few years later, Lee Harvey Oswald, just out of the US
Marine Corps, boarded a tramp steamer in New Orleans Europe on the first leg of a journey that
would take him behind the Iron Curtain as a “defector” to the Soviet
Union . The passport that Oswald turned over to the US Embassy in Moscow New Orleans
As expressed by his brother Robert (Lee – A Portrait of Lee, Coward-McCann, 1967, p. 74), “In November
(1955) he (Lee) went to work as a messenger and office boy for a shipping
company, Gerald F. Tujague, Inc. He made only $130 a month, but it must have
seemed like a lot of money to him, since it was his first full-time job. Mother
said he was generous with his money…Feeling prosperous, now that he had a
regular income, Lee bought other things, too. Mother said he paid $35 for a
coat for her, bought a bow and arrow set – and guy…I remember that gun…Lee really seemed to enjoy his work at Tujague’s for a while. He felt
more independent than ever before, and he liked the idea of working for a
shipping company. When he first told me about it, he was eager, animated and
genuinely enthusiastic. ‘We’re sending an order to Portugal Hong Kong ,
just this morning.’ It was a big adventure to him – as if all the company’s
ships were his and he could go to any of the places named on the order blanks
he carried from one desk to another. It made him feel important, just to be on
the fringes of something as exciting as foreign trade.”
Tujague later came back on the record as a leading member of
one of the Free Cuba Committees, and was reportedly on the board of directors
of a New Orleans bank that also included John Mecom, who employed George
DeMohrenschildt and sent him to Europe , which led to him
being debriefed by the CIA . So both Oswald
and DeMohrenschildt, although their lives wouldn’t entwine until years later,
were both employed by directors of the same bank, an indication they were both
working for the same economic interests years earlier.
Was there a reason for Oswald to list his occupation as
“import-export agent” on the passport he used to defect to Russia New
Orleans
Or was it some kind of inside joke, tongue in cheek
reference to James Bond’s occupation as an import-export agent for Universal
Export?
When Oswald was living in
A Warren Commission memorandum dated
“Goldfinger” wasn’t the first 007 novel that Oswald checked out, as the records show that he had previously taken out “Thunderball” on June 24 and “From Russia With Love” on August 22. Another 007 book “Moonraker” was also checked out on the same September 19th date as “Goldfinger,” both of which had the return date of 10/3/63 (Oct. 10).
For assassination investigators the problem with Oswald’s “Goldfinger” is that, according to the records of the New Orleans Library, the book was returned on
Oswald left New Orleans Mexico Dallas , Texas
Besides the Fleming novels, the other books on Oswald’s list – two dozen in all, are mainly non-fiction history, science fiction and biography, and deserve closer attention.
Of course if Lee Harvey Oswald was the real assassin of the President of the United States, these books would have been given a through going over and psychoanalysts would have given their interpretation of the assassin’s state of mind at the time, but since Oswald was a patsy, and framed for the crimes, just as he claimed, there has been no real attempt to even try to understand the psychological makeup of the patsy. If he had been the actual triggerman and assassin, then it would be a different story.
In any case, Oswald is one of the most thoroughly analyzed patsies in history, so we know a lot about him, much more than we know about the actual assassins. One of the things we know is that he read a lot, and we know what he read from the library records.
Oswald would probably be amused if he knew that Ian Fleming, the author of the 007 novels, was the European editor of the North American Newspaper Alliance (NANA), who reported on his defection to the Soviet Untion.
A correspondent for NANA, Priscialla Johnson, was one of the
first reporters to interview Oswald and write a newspaper article about him and
his defection, and thus Fleming was her ultimate editor. Oswald mentions this
news article and the others like it in a letter he wrote to then Secretary of
the Navy John Connally, a man he is later accused of shooting.
Of course Oswald should not have known that Fleming, the author of the 007 novels he was reading, was the editor of one of the newspaper articles he complained about as misrepresenting his true position and situation. Nonetheless, the accused assassin obviously took an interest in and read the fictional accounts of secret agent double-oh-seven, a genre of books that were also on the reading list attributed to President Kennedy.
Of course Oswald should not have known that Fleming, the author of the 007 novels he was reading, was the editor of one of the newspaper articles he complained about as misrepresenting his true position and situation. Nonetheless, the accused assassin obviously took an interest in and read the fictional accounts of secret agent double-oh-seven, a genre of books that were also on the reading list attributed to President Kennedy.
In fact, it has been popularly alleged that both President
Kennedy and Oswald, his alleged assassin, both read 007 novels on the night
before Kennedy was assassinated, although I find this hard to
substantiate.
Kennedy is certainly credited with helping to popularize
Fleming’s books and the 007 myth.
Kennedy had been familiar with James Bond and Ian Fleming since he had asked his friend and neighbor Oatsie Leiter to recommend some books to read while he was laid up in bed ill over some malady or other. Oatsie suggested he read a light-hearted 007 spy thriller written by her friend Ian Fleming.
Kennedy immediately caught the “inside joke” of 007’s CIA
sidekick being named Felix Leiter, obviously a not-so hidden reference to their
mutual friend Oatsie Leiter, the grand daughter of a civil war general and
governor of Alabama. She had served in the OSS Chicago CIA
headquarters. As mutual neighbors in both Newport Georgetown
The President’s wife, as well-read as her husband, and later a book editor and publisher, also took notice of Ian Fleming’s novels. Thought she may not have gotten the joke, she recommended Fleming’s books toCIA
director Alan Dulles. Dulles also enjoyed Fleming’s stories and tried to
cultivate a similar genre of CIA themed
literature that would do for the agency what Fleming’s books did for the
British spy agencies. Both E. Howard Hunt and David Attle Phillips wrote a number
of fictional pulp paperback novels that were similar to Fleming’s 007 stories
in style and content.
It was Ian Fleming however, who created Secret Agent James Bond – 007 – who would become the world’s most famous spy after the books were converted to film.
The President’s wife, as well-read as her husband, and later a book editor and publisher, also took notice of Ian Fleming’s novels. Thought she may not have gotten the joke, she recommended Fleming’s books to
It was Ian Fleming however, who created Secret Agent James Bond – 007 – who would become the world’s most famous spy after the books were converted to film.
But before Kennedy endorsed the books and the before the
films came along, Fleming’s novels were something of a literary oddity. When
the head of British MI5 visited Washington CIA ,
Helms asked him about this British writer Ian Fleming. The MI5 director said he
didn’t know, but the very next day the newspapers revealed that British Prime
Minister Anthony Eden had spent a week at Fleming’s Jamaican home “Goldeneye,” which led Helms to conclude
that he had been lied to since the head of British counter-intelligence had to
know where the Prime Minster was living.
Fleming’s book got an unexpected plug when one of them was included among the books the President was reading.
Hugh Sidey, in Life
Magazine (March 17, 1961) wrote an article titled The President’s Voracious
Reading Habits which listed From
Russia With Love as one of his 10 favorite books. A list of the
President’s favorite books was also sent out to various libraries during
National Library Week.
http://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Ready-Reference/JFK-Miscellaneous-Information/Favorite-Books.aspx
Among the particular favorites of President Kennedy was Fleming’s “From Russia with Love”:
Lord Melbourne by David Cecil
Montrose by John Buchan
Marlborough by Sir Winston Churchill
John Quincy Adams by Samuel Flagg Bemis
The Emergence of Lincoln by Allan Nevins
The Price of Union by Herbert Agar
John C. Calhoun by Margaret L. Coit
Talleyrand by Duff Cooper
Byron in Italy by Peter Quennell
The Red and the Black by M. de Stendhal
From Russia With Love by Ian Fleming
Pilgrim's Way by John Buchan
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon
Writing and Speeches of Daniel Webster
Andre Malraux
The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman
Henry Clay by Carl Schurz
While Dave Powers added a few titles to the list, Kennedy’s
secretary Mrs. Lincoln later acknowledged she added “From Russia With Love” to the list of otherwise dull and academic
books to give it a human touch with a book she knew Kennedy had read that
ordinary people could identify with.
While “Casino Royale”
was the first 007 novel, the story had been adapted to an American television
show, so the first 007 major motion picture was “Dr. No,” which Oswald could have seen and probably did. Kennedy
also requested a private screening of the James Bond movie at the White House.
Whether he saw the first film or not, we do know he read the books, including “Goldfinger,” which was checked out on September 19, 1963, a few days before he was to suddenly leave New Orleans, travel to Mexico City to visit the Cuban and Soviet embassies, and then relocate to Dallas, where he was to work in a position that would allow him to assassinate the President of the United States, or so they would have us believe.
If Oswald was the assassin of the President, despite the fact that no motive can be or has been attributed to him, then an assessment of his reading habits would be in order since they would naturally help indicate what he was thinking and what motivated him.
Whether he saw the first film or not, we do know he read the books, including “Goldfinger,” which was checked out on September 19, 1963, a few days before he was to suddenly leave New Orleans, travel to Mexico City to visit the Cuban and Soviet embassies, and then relocate to Dallas, where he was to work in a position that would allow him to assassinate the President of the United States, or so they would have us believe.
If Oswald was the assassin of the President, despite the fact that no motive can be or has been attributed to him, then an assessment of his reading habits would be in order since they would naturally help indicate what he was thinking and what motivated him.
And so Lee Harvey Oswald read through “Goldfinger,” probably very quickly as he was a voracious reader and Ian Fleming’s novels would be very light reading compared to the more heavy science fiction, biographies and world affairs that he was also reading at the time.
Any cursory review of the books Oswald read should begin with “Goldfinger,” which opens with a quote above the table of contents that reads: “Goldfinger said, ‘Mr. Bond, they have a saying in
The other books on the list – two dozen in all, are mostly
non-fiction history, science fiction and biography.
The Warren Commission memo with the list of Oswald’s library
books also reported: “Marina Oswald in discussing Oswald’s reading habits, said
that he read generally histories or biographies and she recalled specifically
that he read biographies of Hitler, Kennedy and Khrushchev. She is not clear,
however, whether he read those books in New Orleans Dallas Dallas Marina United
States Texas
Oswald did take an literary interest in the subject of
espionage, as another book he checked out was, “Five Spy Novels.”
US Army Reserve Col. Jose Rivera, who was affiliated with a
top secret MK/ULTRA program at Fort Detrich New Orleans
Oswald also read “Portrait
of a President,” about the man he is accused of killing, as well as
Kennedy’s own “Profiles in Courage,”
which earned the Pulitzer Prize.
Although “From Russia
with Love” is the only book that is cross referenced among the books ready
by both Kennedy and Oswald, their interests are very similar, primarily history
and biography, while Kennedy leaned more towards the classics and Oswald
drifted into Science Fiction.
The books on Oswald’s list include:
The Berlin
One Day in the Life of
Ivan Denisovich
Soviet Potentials
What We Must Know
About Communism
Portrait of A
Revolutionary: Mae Tse-Tung
This is My Philosophy
Conflict
The Bridge Over the
River Kwai
Hornblower and The Hotspur
The Hittites
The Blue Nile
Ben-Hur
I am not the only one to notice the similarities and
literary coincidences as one internet essay notes:
“ Meanwhile, the James Bond novels
were having a huge impact on another young man, Lee Harvey Oswald. He too was a
fan of the novel From Russia With Love, a story of political defection that
oddly mirrors Oswald’s own defection to the Soviet Union .
In the story, James Bond wisps the young Russian Tatiana Romonvav across the
iron curtain with promises of decadent western luxuries.While in Russia America
According to Robert A. Caplen in “Shaken& Stirred - The Feminism of James Bond” (Xlibris 2010)
“Kennedy was reportedly reading a Bond novel the night before he was
assassinated. In fact, reports surfaced that Lee Harvey Oswald was also reading
a Fleming novel the night before Kennedy’s assassination.”
In addition to “From
Russia with Love” being on their reading lists, and both reported to have
read Fleming novels on their last Thursday night on earth, Fidel Castro was
another mutual obsession with both Kennedy and Oswald.
In this more detailed internet analysis of Oswald and
Fleming’s novels it is noted:
“And yet, the tragic assassination of
President John Fitzgerald Kennedy on in Dallas Texas November 22nd 1963 , is
oddly paralleled in the life and times of James Bond 007. In the novel and film
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, James Bond’s marriage to Contessa Teresa
Vicenzo ended in the same way as Jacqueline Kennedy’s marriage to Jack. Just as
Jack Kennedy was gunned down by a hail of assassins bullets in his car, so too
was Teresa Bond. Just as Jack Kennedy’s lifeless body fell into Jackie’s lap,
so too did Teresa. They say that once the Presidential limousine reached the
hospital, Jackie Kennedy refused to let go of her husband’s body, even as
other’s entreated her to do so. And when all hope was lost for Contessa Teresa
Bond, James Bond too refused to let go. On Her Majesty’s Secret Service was
published in April of 1963, mere months before the assassination.”
“In life, JFK was as
physical manifestation of the James Bond lifestyle. The luxury, the charm, the
wit, as well as the arrogance and bravado. In death, John Kennedy transcended
his status as a historical figure and became a timeless cultural icon of the
1960s, rivaled in prominence by perhaps only James Bond himself. In the
turbulent political atmosphere of the 1960s, people turned to the gleeful
escapism of James Bond to pull them through the harsh realities of an
increasingly complex world. Jack Kennedy did. And now the world needs James
Bond again. His enemies are invigorated and reborn. But so too, are his allies.
Through tragedy, James Bond lost his naiveté. But so too has the nation, and
indeed the world. A world that needs heroes like James Bond now more than ever.
But 007 is up to the challenge, for he is a man who lives by the credo: “Ask
not, what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.”
“His rages, his
wrath. The irony inherent in any substantive comparison of JFK and 007 is
inescapable. For while James Bond is a timeless figure, JFK was a figure taken
before his time. And while James Bond is unkillable, the same cannot be said of
Jack Kennedy.”
Just like 007, there
was always someone trying to take out JFK. His most dangerous enemy might have
been Russian Premiere Nikita Kruschev, but his closest foe, and most personal
nemesis was communist supervillian Fidel Castro, AKA “The Beard”. The plan was
to whack the Beard before he could get to Kennedy. When asked what kind of
man should spearhead the operation to whack Castro, JFK said ‘We need James
Bond.’”
“The man selected to
wack the beard was William Harvey….(America
Indeed, in a more mainstream publication Vincent Canby made
a similar observation when he wrote: “Whether accurately or not, the first
films made from the Bond novels came to characterize a number of aspects of the
Kennedy Administration with its reputation for glamour, wit and sophistication,
and its real-life dram and melodrama. Indeed, the President himself could be
seen as a kind of Bond figure, and the 1962 Cuban missile crisis as a real-life
Bond situation.”
Most significant is the time when Kennedy met Fleming and
invited him to dinner, about which there has been many misrepresentations, as
that recounted here:
“The summer before
his election, Jack Kennedy invited Ian Fleming over to his estate and asked the
novelist how M and 007 would take out Cuban Dictator Fidel Castro. Fleming
suggested three plans. When JFK became president, the CIA
acted on all three of these proposals. So the leader of the free world and the
head of its largest intelligence agency were conducting foreign policy based on
James Bond novels. Ian Fleming was not only writing the greatest literary
character in history. He was literally writing history.”
In an interview with his friend William Polmer Ian Fleming
recounted:
“Well, it was rather interesting. About a year before Mr.
Kennedy became President, I was staying in Washington with a friend of mine and
she was driving me through, it was a Sunday morning, and she was driving me
through Washington down to Georgetown and there were two people walking along
the street and she said, ‘Oh, there are my friends Jack and Jackie,’ and they
were indeed very close friends of hers, and she stopped and they talked. And
she said, ‘Do you know Ian Fleming?’ And Jack Kennedy said,
‘Not the Ian Fleming?’ Of course that was a very exciting thing for
him to say and it turned out that they were both great fans of my books, as
indeed is Robert Kennedy, the Attorney General, and they invited me to dinner
that night with my friend, and we had great fun discussing the books and from
then on I’ve always sent copies of them direct and personally to him before
they’re published over here.”
“I think that was an historic encounter,” Plomer noted.
Although Fleming discretely avoided her name, the mutual friend
was Marion 3259 R Street NW ,
Georgetown
Apparently Mrs. Leiter had been invited to the Kennedy home
for dinner that night, and they drove over to Kennedy’s Georgetown
As for joining them for dinner, “By all means,” Kennedy
said.
Just as Fleming had taken the name James Bond from the
American ornithologist and author of the book Birds of the West Indies, he had
also appropriated the surname for 007’s CIA
sidekick Felix Leiter from John Leiter, Kennedy and Fleming’s mutual friend and
Kennedy’s Georgetown neighbor, and James Bond would be a popular subject at the
dinner table that night.
Other guests reported to be there include painter and
longtime Kennedy friend William Walton, as well as journalist and CIA
asset Joseph Alsop. The CIA itself was
represented by John Bross, who had served with distinction in Cold War Germany
In recounting the dinner that night Fleming’s official biographer
John Pearson wrote:
“During the dinner the talk largely concerned itself with
the more arcane aspects of American politics and Fleming was attentive but
subdued. But with coffee and the entrance of Castro into the conversation he
intervened in his most engaging style. Cuba Washington United
States
“Kennedy studied the handsome Englishman, rather as puzzled
admirals used to study him in the days of Room 39. Was he an oddball or
something more? What ideas had mister Fleming in mind?”
What would James Bond do about Castro? Fleming sarcastically
replied, “Ridicule, chiefly,” and as Pearson related, “…with immense
seriousness and confidence he developed a spoof proposal for giving Castro the
James Bond treatment…”
According to another account, “Fleming … in their
conversation,….told Kennedy that he had a way to get rid of Fidel Castro, the
Communist leader of Cuba U.S.
The next morning, CIA director Allen Dulles received a full briefing of the previous night's dinner conversation, ostensibly from Bross, the CIA man.
Bill Koenig visited the Lilly Library at Indiana
University Bloomington ,
Indiana CIA directors or U.S.
In a 1962 letter to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy,
Fleming wrote that “I am delighted to take this opportunity to thank Kennedys
everywhere for the electric effect their commendation has had on my sales in America
Allen Dulles, the former CIA
chief wrote to Fleming on April 24,
1963 , saying, "I have
received and finished reading your latest ‘On
Her Majesty's Secret Service.’ I hope you have not really destroyed my old
friend and colleague James Bond, but I fear his bride has gone." More than
a year later, in June 1964, Dulles wrote again. "I see that ‘From Russia With Love’ is now a movie
and although I rarely see them I plan to take this one in."
In “Goldfinger,” Fleming wrote:
1. HAPPENSTANCE
Chapter One
REFLECTIONS IN A DOUBLE BOURBON
JAMES BOND, with two double bourbons inside him, sat in the final departure lounge of
It was part of his profession to kill people. He had never liked doing it and when he had to kill he did it as well as he knew how and forgot about it. As a secret agent who held the rare double-O prefix – the license to kill in the Secret Service – it was his duty to be as cool about death as a surgeon. If it happened, it happened. Regret was unprofessional – worse, it was death-watch beetle in the soul.
And yet there had been something curiously impressive about the death of the Mexicn. It wasn’t that he hadn’t deserved to die. He was an evil man, a man they call in
….The operator’s voice came softly to him, ‘Ocean Station Charlie. This is Speedbird 510. G-ALGY calling C for Charlie, G-ALAGY calling Charlie. G_ALGY….’
A sharp voice broke in. An ‘G-ALAGY give your position. G=ALGY give your positon. This is Grander Control. Emergency. G-ALGY….’
Suddenly the quite voice of C for Charlie came in. ‘This is Ocean Station Charlie calling Speedbird 510. Charlie calling G-ALGY. Can you hear me? Come in Speedbird 510.’
Bond slipped the small gun into his pocket and took the offered microphone. He pressed the transmitter switch and talked quietly into it, watching the crew over the oblong of plastic.
‘C for Charlie this is G-ALGY Spedbird hi-jacked last evening at Idlewild. I have killed the man responsible and partly disabled the plane by depressurizing the cabin. I have the crew at gunpoint. Not enough fuel to make Goose so propose to ditch as close to you as possible. Please put out line of flares.’
A new voice, a voice of authority, perhaps the captain’s, came over the aid. ‘Speedbird this is C for Charlie. Your message heard and understood. Identify the speaker. I repeat identify the speaker over.’
Bond said and smiled at the sensation his words would cause, ‘Speedbird to C for Charlie. This is British Secret Service agent Number 007, I repeat Number 007. Whitehall Radio will confim. I repeat check with Whitehall Radio, over.’
There was a stunned pause. Voices from round the world tried to break in. Some control, presumably
The internet analysis of James Bond and President Kennedy
concludes:
“These days, everyone in America United States
“The early 1960s. The pinnacle of male style, when men
treated each activity, accouterment and debutant with sophistication and taste.
But the two ambassadors of swinging sixties charm were also two of the Cold
War’s coldest warriors. Both were boarding school boys turned navy officers,
men who rose in rank to the heights of government service. They were the sort
of men all others envied, and all women pined for. They were men of legendary
libidos, womanizers worthy of even Don Juan’s envy. Both travelled the
world, wooing and winning the world’s most gorgeous women in the lap of luxury,
while also facing down some of the most nefarious villains of our times.”
“Their way with women was matched only by their way with
words, wit, and whimsy. With a wink and smile these two men pulled the world
from the brink of Nuclear Annihilation time and time again. These two men, are
of course Secret Agent James Bond, and President John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Two
men who need only be known by three characters, JFK & 007.”
