“The Real Ian Fleming” with Nicholas Shakespeare

Erin Dietrick: Welcome to "SpyCast", the official podcast of the International Spy Museum. I'm Erin Dietrick, and your host is Dr. Andrew Hammond. Each week we explore some aspect of the past, present, or future of intelligence and espionage. If you enjoyed this week's episode, please consider leaving us a five star review wherever you listen to your podcasts. If you want to dig even deeper into the content of this week's episode, you can find links to further resources, suggested readings, and full transcripts at cyberwire.com/podcasts/spycast. Coming up next on "SpyCast."

Nicholas Shakespeare: After dinner, Kennedy says to Fleming, "What would James Bond do about Castro?" It's not a frivolous question, which I think too often it's been seen as. He's really asking what would Ian Fleming do about Castro? [ Music ]

Erin Dietrick: This week's guest is Nicholas Shakespeare, author of the new biography "Ian Fleming, the Complete Man." This is the first authorized biography of Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond, since 1966. In this episode, Andrew and Nicholas discuss the complicated and often quite misunderstood life of Ian Fleming. They'll talk about his family and his upbringing. We'll debunk a couple of misconceptions about Fleming's character, and they'll discuss Fleming's career in naval intelligence during World War II, a career that would inspire the iconic 007. The original podcast on intelligence since 2006, we are "SpyCast." Now, sit back, relax and enjoy the show.

Andrew Hammond: Well, it's a pleasure to speak to you, Nicholas. Thanks for coming to speak to me about your biography on Ian Fleming.

Nicholas Shakespeare: No, the pleasure is mine.

Andrew Hammond: And I'm just wondering, you make an interesting point in the book, people think of Lacari before they think of George Smiley. But with Ian Fleming, it's the opposite. They think of Bond before they think of Fleming. So I think that this is quite an interesting opportunity for our listeners to try to understand a little bit more about who Ian Fleming was. And you have had access to previously unpublished materials. You've spent a long period of time researching this. So I'm looking forward to exploring that a little bit more. But just before we get there, how did you end up writing this book? How did it, how did it fall in your lap?

Nicholas Shakespeare: Well, I'm a novelist before I'm a biographer. And I was living in my own Goldeneye, which is a bungalow on a strand in Tasmania, right at the end of the world, when, about five years ago I was contacted by my agent who said we've got a rather interesting approach from the Fleming estate. They would like you to write the first authorized biography of Ian Fleming since John Pearson's biography in 1966. Would you be interested? And although I was immensely flattered and knew that this was a big, juicy subject, I confess that my first reaction was hesitation. For me, I hadn't really, although I'd grown up on James Bond and read all his books under a blue blanket in my preparatory school by dim torchlight, and I'd seen the films. I wasn't really a paid up member of the James Bond fan club. I had kind of glimpsed Ian Fleming through sideways glances in my previous book, which may have been why the family approached me. This was a nonfiction book about Churchill coming to power in 1940 following the disastrous campaign in Norway, which Churchill had been responsible for. And in that campaign, the first British officer, a kind of prototype commander, to land in occupied Europe in the Second World War was Peter Fleming, Ian Fleming's elder brother. And he was a person of extraordinary valor and talent. And I went to the family and asked if I could have any, you know, diaries or anything that might could help me understand the Norway campaign. So that book came out, and I think they must have liked how I treated the material. But as I say, my impression of Fleming, Ian, was of a kind of sardonic bounder, a rather arrogant public school boy who had betrayed a lot of women and smoked and drank his way through life. I had a kind of caricature of a tabloid caricature. One of the morals of his story that struck me only recently is don't run off with the wife of the owner of the "Daily Mail" if you wish to avoid forever after being rendered into tabloid fat, which is what has happened. And I was, I think I'd absorbed this tabloid image of a kind of bounder who came back late from his golf club or London club in his fast car. Screeched to a halt outside his house in Victoria Square. Climbed the stairs past his wife's smart friends who would be looking at him as he waved airily at them as he went up to his monastic top floor bedroom and then pulled the sheets over his face to stop himself hearing the snickers as they dissected his latest book below. I think that was the image I had of him through the "Daily Mail" and other papers. And I thought, do I really want to spend three or four years in the company of a cad? And so I asked the Fleming estate, I said let me do some due diligence. Let me spend a couple of months seeing if I want to do this. So I looked at the material they had offered, which was unpublished letters they had, nothing too dramatic but interesting that it was new. I mean, he's a slightly over tilled vineyard like Churchill and Napoleon. But anything new is quite interesting. So I then went to see whoever, not many people who are alive still but the few people who remembered him. He died in 1964 aged 56, and I'm surprised there aren't that many surviving witnesses to him. But I interviewed his stepdaughter, Fionn Morgan, who is one of the only people alive who remember seeing him naked when she was 14. And I began to, two things happened that emerged that I hadn't expected. The first was that he was a much kinder person than I'd hitherto expected. Again and again, the word kindness was used to describe him by both his male and his female friends. I mean, although Rebecca West said that all the women who were in love with Ian Fleming could have filled the Albert Hall, it seemed that most of them remained very close to him and kept on loving him long after the affair had petered out. This was particularly true of a woman called Maud Russell, who had bought Goldeneye for him after the war and who with whom he had an affair during the war. And who was quite crucial in getting him into intelligence and before that into banking where he was a kind of deplorable banker and stockbroker. And it was Maud Russell's journal, unpublished, which I got hold of. Which seven years after his death, she writes this amazing entry saying, "I think of Ian above all of his kindliness." Now, kindliness is not an epithet you associate with James Bond, but it was repeated again and again by women like Rosamund Lehmann and by women like Mary Pakenham and then by his male friends. And he had a very loyal coterie of mainly school friends who he kept really through to the end of his life, with whom he played golf and bridge. These people weren't particularly exciting, but they were all almost without exception, upstanding people who would not have tolerated the company of a cad. So that struck me as interesting for a biographer to discover an unexpected feature like kindness is always quite a beguiling, a beguiling lure. The second thing was that he was much more important than I had been led to believe. I mean, the popular image of him, the tabloid image of him, is that Ian Fleming is just during the war his six years in naval intelligence, he was just a kind of, he cleared out trays, in trays and ashtrays. He was --

Andrew Hammond: He was a sort of a minor desk jockey.

Nicholas Shakespeare: A totally minor desk jockey who didn't go out and risk his life like many of his friends. Many of his friends, their children died or they died. And he sat safely in his smart uniform behind his desk in room 39 below, directly below Churchill, the first Lord of the Admiralty. He certainly was not this kind of in tray, out tray and ashtray person. He certainly wasn't this unpopular bounder. But there was a third factor that led to me deciding to do this book. And writers are very superstitious as well as skeptical. I think superstition and skepticism are two of the writer's guiding stars. And I became spookily receptive to one or two tiny twinkles that suggested this was a propitious subject for me. First of all, John Pearson, the first authorized biographer, was still alive. And my father, to whom I've dedicated this biography, told me that he had shared a desk with John Pearson in 1953 when they worked at the "Times Literary Supplement" together in London. And I brought them back together 66 years later. And it turned out that John Pearson had then gone on to work for Ian Fleming on "The Sunday Times" in the same position that my father had gone on to work for Frank Giles, who became Fleming successor on "The Sunday Times" as the foreign manager. So that all these totally unimportant connections made me, all these connections, the discovery that Fleming was more important and kinder led to me finally saying yes, I will do this biography.

Andrew Hammond: I think it would be quite interesting to just touch on his family background a little bit. So his grandfather really bootstraps his way up from, like you say, a slum in Dundee. Then he has a father, Valentine Fleming, who Churchill writes his obituary. When he dies, he dies in 1917 in the First World War. He has the, the nightmare of younger siblings, older brother, who's just successful at everything he does. Very difficult to live up to. But like you say, people remember Ian, not so much Peter. So just briefly talk about that family environment, the Flemings, the, the sort of narrative arc of the Fleming family from the slums of Dundee to Ian, who's on, you know, first name terms with the great and the good and on both sides of the Atlantic. Talk a little bit more about the family Fleming.

Nicholas Shakespeare: Okay. I'll begin by talking about Churchill, because it always struck me as an enigma. Why are the Flemings so close to Churchill who would come and shoot at the grandfather's house near Henley, this vast house called Joyce Grove, which had 44 bedrooms. And Churchill then read the obituary for Fleming's father, Val, marvelous obituary in "The Times" in 1917, after he was killed in France, when Fleming is only eight. And what is extraordinary is how the Fleming father and his brother Philip had both, they'd been in Churchill's regiment, the Oxfordshire Hussars. And I thought, what, what is this son of a kind of not a peasant, but a kind of slum dweller doing going to Eton and Oxford and rowing at Henley. How has he got in one generation into the, into bed with Churchill, so to speak? I mean it's, it's quite a, an illustration of the mobility of England at that time. We think of England as rigidly class structure, but actually this is an example of how fluid it was. It's, and I had to go to Dundee to, for the, for the, for it to be explained to me. The taxi driver was moaning that, you know, no one knows about Ian Fleming or, or James Bond in Dundee. They don't really know he came from here. And then he suddenly looks at the Queen's Hotel, he says, "That's where Churchill used to come when he was an MP." And both me and James Fleming, who I was with, Ian's nephew, who had never been to Dundee before. We were astonished that Churchill had been MP in Dundee, and it turned out exactly the same period that Robert Fleming was setting up his bank in London in 1908 and 1909. So Robert Fleming was probably the richest Dundonian in history. And of course, Churchill would beat a path to his door in London. And of course he'd want to go shooting with him. The complication was that when Val dies in 1917, the share of the bank, which he, it was three part share with his father and his brother. It diverted back to the father and brother, and it didn't rest with, you know, Val's widow and his four children. And then the bank becomes more and more successful. You know, it runs Anglo-Persian Oil, which becomes BP. And, you know, by the time 1930, Robert Fleming's in charge of kind of three trillion pounds' worth of business. And none of this is trickling down or very little to Ian Fleming. And I think so, although he's a grandson of poverty and a son of wealth, he was not himself wealthy. And his other important influence, apart from his brother, who, as you say, you know, was effort, he's one of the most famous [inaudible 00:14:23] has ever been, effortless in everything he did. So that Ian was forced in, by contrast, to become a black sheep. He was probably forced to become much more of a black sheep than he naturally was. But he, he didn't go to Oxford. He failed to get into the army because he had gonorrhea. He tried to get into the [inaudible 00:14:43] and he failed. He then spent a lot of his time in Kitzbuhel in Austria, sleeping with lots of attractive Austrian girls. So I think he was forced into playing a black sheep more than his probably quite upright character, elements his upright character, would have wanted. But what happened to him is that he, he found his kind of metier in Reuters. He got into Reuters through his mother. The mother is probably important to mention here. She was an abs- very beautiful but an absolute nightmare of a mother because she decided what his job should be. She wanted him to go to the Foreign Office. And if that wasn't going to work, she got him into Reuters. And then she got him out of that to go into banking. She wanted him to go into the Fleming Bank, which he just wasn't suited for at all. And then she decided on his girlfriends or where he took his holidays. And she was a kind of nightmare who held the purse strings. I mean, he had to depend on her handouts right up until the end of his life. I mean, she only, he only survived her by two weeks. And so you have to think of this man overshadowed by his older brother. Overshadowed by his dominating mother, who actually squirms for a lot of his life to escape these two presences. And it's significant that the mother only once visited Goldeneye and I think finds it too, too uncomfortable and soon moves out to a hotel. And Peter Fleming never visited Goldeneye once. So for Fleming, Goldeneye was a kind of Fleming-free zone in which he could, he could mine out his own territory, which he did very successfully. So that what, what happens in his first years as a young man, basically, he's a playboy. I mean, he's attractive. He earned some money. After he doesn't get into the Foreign Office, he works for a bit for Reuters and shows what a good journalist he is and goes to Moscow and covers the kind of style in his trials and does it incredibly effectively and has an appetite for journalism. I think in Reuters he learns about succinct writing. About getting the truth first and quickly. It was a very important training for him, and he did say if he was ever to be born again, he'd love to go, become a news cameraman. So it would be interesting to know what he would have done with his news camera in these days. But his mother, again, interfered with his Reuters thing and made him leave Reuters to join a bank for which he was totally unsuited. He was meant to be the worst stockbroker on Earth. And he just spent the time with his mates playing golf, drinking, sleeping with women and having a good time. And say it was rather extraordinary that he would have been selected to have been the personal assistant for the Director of Naval intelligence in 1939.

Andrew Hammond: It's interesting when you're discussing the Flemings. And I was just thinking of the Churchills, because their elevation, the elevation of that family within British society occurred much earlier, right, with John Churchill becomes the Duke of Marlborough, Blenheim Palace, where Winston Churchill was born. But, but your point as the, in the 20th century, the Flemings can come along and get inserted into that, that class structure. And Valentine goes on to become an MP as well, Fleming's father. So I think there's lots of, there's lots of interesting stuff going on there. So I want to dig more into the intelligence part, obviously, because of our listeners. But just before we get there, just to round out the, the, the, the social history in Fleming, let's just briefly talk about Ann, his wife. She's a really fascinating character and figure. Both of them are having affairs left, right and center. Both of them have a very colored kind of past. Like what's, what's going on there, is this, is this the norm for the social class, or did they have an open marriage? Is this common for the social class of the time, or is this atypical? And is there tension within the marriage because of this, or is this kind of accepted just sort of open-ish?

Nicholas Shakespeare: Wow. So well, let's try and unpick this. I mean, let's begin in the war. I think we have to remember that during the war, Len Deighton told me that, you know, you said goodbye to somebody as if you were never going to see them again. And so --

Andrew Hammond: This is the First World War?

Nicholas Shakespeare: The Second World War, so in 1939.

Andrew Hammond: Second World War.

Nicholas Shakespeare: So Fleming is 31 when the war begins. And he has a girl who is, he's been having an affair with who he's decided he's going to marry her. And he goes, he's about to go up to Yorkshire to ask her father for his daughter's hand in marriage. And the girl is killed by a flying bomb in London. This is Muriel Wright in 1944. I think Fleming in the war, when we, when we think of Bond and the kind of steaminess of Bond's sexuality which we almost misread as Fleming being modern in his, you know, predicting the swinging 60s, almost bringing it in. Well actually, that's a misreading, because all Fleming is doing is reheating the human sexuality of the blitz in which people slept with each other the whole time. And you know, a moral norm was suspended because you didn't see, think you were going to see each other again. You, you might be killed. And so a lot of, there was a lot of sex in the blitz. And Fleming used his Bond in the Cold War to just seem to basically reheats that old cabbage. So Bond is having blitz sex in the Cold War, so to speak. I think the marriage, divorce, we have to remember, is a stigma. People don't get divorced. So that if you don't get divorced, you have an unhappy marriage, there's more latitude to allow your, your wife or husband to stray without it being a finalizing end to your union. And it's interesting that Fleming's bridge partners in the war, he has, you know, he's sleeping with their wives. Lord Rothermere, he's sleeping with Ann Rothermere. He's, he's, he's sleeping with a lot of his best friend's wives without kind of any moral compunction. And I think it leaves a very unpleasant taste in the mouth. But I think we have to launch ourselves back into the, into the moral complications of the late 1930s and the war. Going to Ann Fleming, so she's an aristocrat, unlike Ian. She met him in 1937 in France at one of the French resorts, immediately was struck by his attractiveness but also the fact that he wasn't going to be owned by anybody. And I think he should never have married anyway, and he certainly shouldn't have married her. And I think it's another example of Fleming, he's a bit like Bruce Chatwin, an English writer I also wrote a biography about. Assume almost anything you say, the opposite is also true. So Chatwin, like Fleming, is a kind of scrum of people, all quite contradictory. So you can say of Fleming, oh he was James Bond. Somebody else's name has nothing to do with James Bond. Somebody could say, oh, he loved art. No he hated art. Or he was obsessed by money. He hated money. So it's rather difficult to tread your path between these contradictory messages that flash out of this man. One of them is that he ends up marrying a woman who's the complete opposite to himself. She loved society. She loved her home life. He loved travelling. He couldn't bear domestication. In almost every aspect of their life, they were contradictory. And I suppose what had been exciting when it was all forbidden fruit became almost the moment they got married, a horror story. And I think she wakes up the day after they marry in Jamaica thinking she's married a stranger. And I think he wakes up thinking he's also married a stranger. And there's not much generosity that goes on after that. I think they do love each other, but it's not a love that lends itself to being in wedlock. And so I don't think he's, there's not much evidence to prove that he's very unfaithful after the marriage. I think all his infidelities took place before marriage. And I think he was quite an upright figure in that. I think he felt that once you married, you were faithful. And only, I've only found one affair, which is a very important affair for him with Chris Blackwell's mother, Blanche Blackwell, who kind of came to Fleming's rescue when Ann was making him completely miserable. I mean, just to give an example of Ann's, she's very brilliant kind of, she likes prodding people into kind of reacting. She loves a fight. She loves these dinner parties she gives two or three times a week in London. She just loved it if everyone's flying at each other's throats. And Fleming kind of sits there watching with horror as England's upper classes and their most important politicians and actors and artists have filed through the drawing room to kind of argue with each other. And he goes up to bed, you know, pulling his hair out at her lead to be constantly in the center of attention. It is an interesting attention, because it's a portrait of England, England at that period. But I'm not, Fleming is an outsider watch- watching in of why it's not his natural pleasant habitat. He's much happier in Jamaica going snorkeling underwater by himself, watching coral reefs and tropical fish and being at his desk, finally writing the books he'd always possibly wanted to write ever since he was a student in Austria. But I think one of Ann's, it's difficult to capture Ann in a way that's sympathetic because she seems like a coral you bring up from the sea that probably amongst her own community and family and friends she would have been colorful and attractive. And you could have seen her- her lights. But as soon as you bring her up out of her natural surrounds, she just seems to defy an ability to kind of resuscitate her in an empathetic way. At least I found that.

Andrew Hammond: And she has an affair with Hugh Gaitskell, the leader of the opposition. So in American terms, this would be similar to the a presidential candidate from a major political party or something. This is the, and this is while she's married to Fleming, right. Is that correct?

Nicholas Shakespeare: This is when she's married to Fleming. I mean, it's the most extraordinary. I did that kind of- I was doing the dates of everything and on the very day that Fleming is arranging for the British Prime Minister Anthony Eden to go to Goldeneye in the middle of the Suez crisis, which has been a catastrophe for England, a bit like Brexit, Eden wants to go and recuperate in the Caribbean in Fleming's house. So Fleming is arranging with him in November 1956, his bedroom for Eden to take over. On the same day, Ann is in bed with the leader of the opposition in Paris, in a hotel in Paris. And you, you have to get your head around the neatness of this symmetry. [ Music ]

Erin Dietrick: One critical piece of Ian Fleming's life that did not make this episode is his son Caspar. Caspar was born in August of 1952, only a couple of months after Ian and Ann were married. After his birth, Fleming wrote in a letter to a friend. "If it were possible to make a better man out of me, he is certainly assisting in the process." Fleming would often tell Caspar stories of a magical flying car. Yes, a story that would eventually become Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Ian absolutely adored his son, who he lovingly called 003 and 1/2. Unfortunately, Caspar's childhood was plagued by the infidelity of both of his parents and his father's untimely death in 1964. Ian Fleming died on Caspar's 12th birthday. He became known as a sort of troubled child. He was educated at Eaton like his father but later dropped out of Oxford in his second year. He was quite intelligent, particularly interested in Egyptology and archaeology but became worn from the pressure of school and suffered from severe depression. In 1974, Caspar made a trip to Goldeneye, now his inherited property, where he attempted to take his own life by swimming out to sea after taking a lethal amount of drugs. Thankfully, he was saved, but he never truly recovered. He passed away less than a month later in London. He was 23 years old. Ann wrote, "Caspar tried to come to terms with life for my sake and then suddenly could not try anymore." He was buried alongside his father and on Caspar's grave was written, "To cease upon the midnight with no pain." [ Music ]

Andrew Hammond: Let's say pivot on to discuss Fleming and intelligence. At the beginning you brought up this idea that you know he was some low level administrator in the Admiralty, but you uncovered that the story is actually much richer and much deeper. So help, help us understand that a little bit more. So the way that he ends up working for the director of Naval intelligence, Admiral Godfrey, is- is through the- the old boys' network really. The way you describe it in the book, he's not on paper anyway particularly likely to be a candidate for the position. But the way you describe it in the book, it actually almost seemed like the perfect position for him. He has international connections. He's well connected. He's got the journalistic background. He knows how to write. He's got a very vivid imagination. So, so and almost that, he almost falls into the perfect job for him during the war. But it's not, it's not like the way that everybody's thought about it. He's just some, you know, naval functionary who's sitting at his, like, put, put, put some more color on that. I think the way to start off is just by covert operations. This is one that we hear about a lot. So, so what, why was he doing that? Why was the director of Naval intelligence involved in this? Help our listeners understand that a little bit more.

Nicholas Shakespeare: Well before we get to the war, I ought to say that many of the people who had, he'd been at school with his headmaster at his prep school. Was a scout for Naval intelligence also. Then when he goes to Kitzbuhel when he's about, you know, 18 or 19, he's tutored there. Ernan Forbes Dennis is also a scout for the Foreign Office and for intelligence. And then he joins this bank, well, this stockbroker, Rowan Pittman. And the man who's the senior partner there, he has also worked in Naval intelligence, and he's a scout for naval intelligence. So what you realize is that. and then Fleming had worked at Reuters from man called Bernard Rickatson-Hatt, who was the chief editor, and Rickatson-Hatt, was in in intelligence. And so many of the people Fleming had kind of brushed up against were very involved in intelligence and would have been able to vouch for those elements in his character, both bad and good, which would have leant him to the attention of Admiral Godfrey. I mean, I think one of the blows which is hard to remind ourselves of, is that one of Fleming's contemporaries at Eton, Guy Burgess, who was at Eton with Fleming in 1924, you know, becomes one of the big betrayers of British intelligence. I think that was a blow, you know, to this small, tight community that trusted each other and relied on trusting each other. That was quite devastating. And I think again, is a feature behind Fleming's first book, Casino Royale. You know I think he's trying to resuscitate the British intelligence Service as a good thing to try and restore its reputation and luster after it had been damaged so badly by Burgess and Maclean, and later on by Philby.

Andrew Hammond: So, so just very briefly for our listeners, Burgess and Maclean, this was around 1953. They defected the Soviet Union '52, '53. So it was before --

Nicholas Shakespeare: They defected.

Andrew Hammond: Casino Royale comes out.

Nicholas Shakespeare: Yes, they'd defect in '51, I think. I can't, it's early '50s they suddenly defect. They don't, no one knows if it's to the Soviet Union, but they disappear. And they take, it's worried that they have because they're so much in the center of British intelligence.

Andrew Hammond: I'm sorry, did --

Nicholas Shakespeare: Burgess had worked, and Mclean, they both, between them, they had knowledge of American intelligence, American atomic intelligence. They had a knowledge of British intelligence. And so this was a devastating, the two moles inside, inside British intelligence. And that's why the Americans ended up never trusting us again, added to Philby's betrayal later on. But again, Fleming had known Philby in the 30s. These are all some of the, the elements that make up Bond, or why Fleming makes Bond such a patriotic figure. It's a kind of compensatory act for the slight disasters of the British Intelligence Service had endured. But I think it was, so going back to it, he joins this slightly, you know, under staffed Naval intelligence unit in 1939. It had been, you know, in the 30s had been allowed to kind of really be run down. And so he has somebody in his position who has a bit of whiz and contacts and can show that he's quite impressive. Suddenly becomes much bigger than his rank as a commander might suggest. I mean, he's rewriting old Churchill, Churchill sending out orders every day from above. And Fleming is the person instructed to answer Churchill's prayers as they're called. And he knows from Reuters how to do this in a language that Churchill will understand. If he bumps into a Churchill in the corridor, Churchill will recognize the son of his great friend, Val Fleming. So there's an insider fluidity that allows quick access to the powers that be and to the movers and shakers so he can ring up somebody immediately and get things done. I think in a way that probably we are able to do less these days. I'm not in intelligence so, but I would imagine it's less easy.

Andrew Hammond: You discussed that during the war, outside of number 10, the foreign side of the British government machine is really dominated by Ottonians [phonetic] who have got Anthony Eden, Lord Halifax, Cadogan, Vansittart, Harold Macmillan. Duff Cooper, the two ministers responsible for the special operations executive. The heads of the two secret services. But then it says, one of the people says it did a lot to facilitate relationships and promote efficiency. So there's this almost cultural shorthand because they've all been to Eton and, but then the point that you make is that somebody like Burgess ruptures the, the inner sanctum, cultural trust. And that also leads me on to the question, did Fleming know Burgess?

Nicholas Shakespeare: He was at a party waiting to have Burgess come to dinner when Burgess doesn't turn up. And Anthony Blunt is there and says I don't think he'll be coming. Anthony Blunt at that afternoon helped clear Burgess's flat. Burgess has in fact left for Saint-Malo about four days earlier. It's hard to know if Fleming knew him. He wouldn't have known very well, but they would have sat, you know, opposite each other in chapel in 1924. He would have made his face. It's hard to know if it was anything more than that. One of the, I'm glad you touched on Eton because it's one of the spooky coincidences. When I was approached to do this book is that my son was then at Eton in the same house as Fleming's house, the Timbralls, where both Ian and Peter Fleming were. And there was a Fleming room there, which had been established for Peter Fleming. Now nobody's heard of Peter Fleming. And so the room is full of kind of covers of bombed movies and first edition jackets. But that allowed me, and my son, like Fleming, got into pop, so it was allowed, was able to show me the inner sanctum, which no masters are allowed to see. The room where pop, you know, happens. And so I went in there one day and, you know, Fleming --

Andrew Hammond: What is pop? Sorry.

Nicholas Shakespeare: Pop is the kind of self-elected elite of prefects that run the school. And Fleming, in a sense, was characterized as somebody who wanted to continue pop the rest of his life, you know, creating self-appointed elites the "Sunday Times" or in intelligence. And it was very important, the Eton aspect of Fleming, I felt if I cracked that, I would understand the rest of Fleming's life, and I was able to crack it through my son, who was in the same house, as I said.

Andrew Hammond: So and in the book you mentioned that quite a few, quite a few women said that he had nice legs. So potentially, he could have been on "The Bachelor" or something like that if there were, if they were casting.

Nicholas Shakespeare: Well, he was apparently, you know, people who watched, he was determined when he was in Austria, he just climbed the mountain. The kids pull a horn, you know, whenever he could. And he would, he would scale it, struggling and sweating, and then have a shower afterwards, as if it was something to be kind of conquered. And I imagine that gave him, gave him his lean legs.

Andrew Hammond: And I mean, I think it's quite interesting to me as well the, the Scottish connections. So you say in the book that he as a patriotic Scot, and his father was born in Scotland, his grandfather is originally from Scotland. Fleming, obviously quite a Scottish name. How, tell us a bit more about that. And was that a barrier to being like being accepted or welcomed into the sort of English upper class? Was that something that was --

Nicholas Shakespeare: Not at all. I mean, he doesn't speak with a Scottish accent, although his grandfather did.

Andrew Hammond: Sure, sure.

Nicholas Shakespeare: No, I think, I think Bond is very, Scotland is an important part of Bond's makeup. And he refuses an honor I think by saying he's a Scottish peasant. And Fleming very much liked that attitude. And he's also Scottish on his mother's side. I think Eve Fleming had some Scottish ancestors. And I, there's a kind of reference to how Caspar when he's three, Fleming was determined to dress him up in his mother's Scottish tartan or something. So I think Scottland, and I think he calls himself in one of his CVs, he calls himself Scottish, not English. So I think Scotland was a very important part of his makeup. And right at the end of his life, it's significant that he is going back, he wants to go back to stay with David Bruce, who is the American ambassador in London. Who he'd known in the war in OSS and in London. And Bruce has taken a house up in Scotland. And Fleming has arranged to come and see him as he wants to show his wife and son his childhood haunts, the Fleming haunts, the Robert Fleming haunts. And I think he says, you know, it's a place where you go back to die in Scotland. He refers to it at one place. And I think he very much felt it was his neighborhood, his, where he came from. The culture that informed him. There was a Puritanism now that one might say is a bit Scottish if I was English, that was an element of his makeup. There was a tightness in his, in his dealings with money, which again, an English person would say, is very much a Scottish makeup. So yes, there were elements in his makeup that were Scottish, and he was proud of them. And let's just go on to discuss a little bit more about his, his career during World War II. So World War II, the director of Naval intelligence, Admiral Godfrey, so he's looking for a right hand man. He gets Fleming. Fleming really discusses or becomes the embodiment of the Director of Naval intelligence. He represents Britain and America. He's involved in this effort to bring America in the war. He really liaises almost doesn't equal with the head of MI-6 and MI-5, and the Special Operations executive. So just help us understand like, why is the director of Naval intelligence important? Like, you know, to me, I know the answer and partly it's because of the role that the Navy has played in British history, you know, Britannia rules the waves and all that sort of thing. But help the listeners understand like, why that, what the Admiralty is and why the director of Naval intelligence is important going into the war. Well, as you say, British history depended largely on the Navy. But as important is that in 1939, after the Germans invaded Poland, and that night, I think, destroy a British passenger liner. That Naval intelligence is engaged in a way that military intelligence and Air Force intelligence is not. We don't really engage with Germany again until the Germans invade France and Norway in April, May 1940. So Naval intelligence is running the show for the first, you know, eight months of the war. And they've got all the experience. They're getting the experience. Peter Fleming, interestingly, is performing a job identical to Ian for the head of British military intelligence before he is sent off to Norway. But I, you know, you get a sense from that that it's pretty, it's a pretty run down. We all think of Naval intelligence and British intelligence now as a kind of sophisticated thing. But you know, I think in the 30s it boiled down to a few journalists who were paid to kind of tell them what they've seen in China. Or I don't think it was this amazingly organized operation. And under Fleming and Godfrey, it had to become much more organized, and it had to spread its tentacles very quickly. You know, he was doing Air Force reconnaissance, Fleming was. Sidney Cotton. he was getting this spitfire to take photographs of German ports to bring back so they could decipher what the movements of German ships. This is all stuff that the army isn't able to do and the Air Force isn't really up to doing at that moment. So the Navy was already quite an important section of British armed forces, but it was the one that was really engaged from day one and had a kind of eight month head start. So by the time, by the time we have France collapse, you know, Naval intelligence is kind of running the, is running the show basically and probably given more funds and listened to more, and Fleming has made all his connections with the joint intelligence staff and et cetera.

Andrew Hammond: It's quite interesting the, you know, although like you say, it's not this sophisticated machine that's running when the war, when the war begins. And there, there is a template from World War I that is sort of used or or built out in World War II. So I'm thinking of the director of Naval intelligence during World War I, Reginald Blinker Hall. He advises Admiral Godfrey, the director of Naval intelligence during World War I. He says, get yourself a really a right hand man, a corkscrew thinker who can assist you. This leads to the search for Fleming. Then, of course, in World War I, we have room 40, which is an early path breaker and code breaking. And that's, you know, splendid British amateurism at its best, that's, you know, eccentric chess players sitting in the bath and, you know, trying to crack codes and so forth. And then during the Second World War, Fleming is in room 39. So the, there's a sort of chime. There's a template in which they can build off of from World War II. And so he's there. He's a right hand person to Godfrey. Then help us understand just a couple of the things that he's involved in. So maybe we can talk about Operation Mincemeat or Operation Goldeneye just to give our listeners a flavor of the types of things that he was involved in

Nicholas Shakespeare: Well what has kind of submerged Fleming a tiny bit unfairly is that stories like Operation Mincemeat and Operation Goldeneye have tended to color our perception rather dramatically of what Fleming got up to in the war. I mean, these are, these are fun stories. Mincemeat comes about through him recommending a book he'd read by an older Ottonian policeman that was in his library that suggested planting a body with false documents. And this was taken up by Ewen Montagu in his department and became Operation Mincemeat in 1943 when they, well, Tramp is dressed up as a soldier floating off Cadiz with documents that will mislead the Germans into the invasion of Sicily. And Ben Mcintosh has written a brilliant book about that. The films we made. But I mean, I mean Fleming, you know, he spent probably 10 minutes on it, suggesting the idea. Simply Goldeneye, which has a great name. Goldeneye is an umbrella term for lots of different eventualities if the Germans invaded the Spanish peninsula, the Iberian peninsula. And if the Germans invaded, and the Spanish didn't resist them, then that fell into two separate elements of Goldeneye. I color there was Operation Sconce and one other thing. That, so that it was all eventualities that would happen if Germany invaded the Iberian Peninsula. But Germany never did invade it. So Goldeneye never happened. But it was, it was a kind of it was set up. Lots of agents who would perform kind of guerrilla tactics against the Spanish or the Germans. And there was a cave. Operation Tracer in Gibraltar, which Fleming and Godfrey had the idea of establishing a cave. And it was built with six men, were trained and they were going to sit there while the Germans invaded Gibraltar, and they were going to look out over the straits with binoculars. And they were given 10,000 gallons of water and a bicycle pump to bring oxygen in. And they were going to report back to England on German movements. Well, that was set up and never happened. Far more important for the course of the war was stuff that hasn't been so celebrated, which was Fleming's use of his banking connections to help a really rotten kind of Spanish character who was marvelous. And who was probably very much contributed to our idea of a Bond villain and who was a Spanish businessman, ruthless. Who offered, who always kind of, you know, fished in whatever sea was advantageous to him. So in the First World War, I think he'd told Britain to pay him, to give for the oil he would give them. And then he told the Germans which boats the oil was in so they could destroy the boats. So he was a complete rascal. But during the Second World War he came up with a plan that he approached Godfrey in Naval intelligence. And I think Fleming wrote up the report. We don't know where it is, but it's likely that Fleming did this report which suggested that the Spanish could get hold of 59 ships currently German owned in Spain. And the British would, the British would buy them off the Spanish, and that would be quite helpful. A bit kind of anticipating of the Lend-Lease program that America and Britain went into the following year when Britain, when America lends, leases Britain destroyers in exchange for bases in the Caribbean. So Fleming is deputed because of his banking connections to kind of release money to pay. He's called Juan March.

Andrew Hammond: Juan March.

Nicholas Shakespeare: Juan March. And he is the richest and allegedly the most unscrupulous man in Spain. And he had financed Franco's coming to par. And he was totally finger in every pie. And I think Fleming was rather mesmerized by him. And so Fleming was deputed to liaise with Juan March to release funds from the British Treasury using Fleming's banking connections to pay Juan March for the boats that he would be selling. I don't know how much use they were to the British. But then the second thing happened was that after the invasion of France, Juan March came up with a second suggestion that he could bribe something like eight of Franco's generals to stop Franco from letting the Germans come into the peninsula. Because if the Germans entered Spain and Portugal, really it was going to be very, it was going to be curtains for the British because they would be able to control the Atlantic and the Mediterranean. And so the two things Churchill wanted in 1940 was to stop the Germans' invade the Iberian Peninsula and to bring, and to keep Spain and Portugal, Portugal, neutral. But to bring in neutral America on the British side. So Fleming was involved in all these two, these two attempts to kind of help Churchill's plans. But Fleming was able to bribe using, again, his banking connections. He was able to send money to bribe these Spanish generals. And they, it had a, it had a big effect. I mean, you know, they, they told Franco, that he mustn't let the Germans in. These are unsung and much more important operations than the more famous Operation Mincemeat and Goldeneye. And so I think he had other important operations like the 30 year. I mean, one of the, the biggest successes was 30 AU captured the entire German naval archives in Tambach in 1945. And Fleming went out, you know, in, as the war was raging just before the surrender, he went out from Paris in a car all the way to this castle to secure what was an extraordinary trove, one of the greatest arch- archival troves probably ever captured by one country. The entire German Naval record. [ Music ]

Erin Dietrick: "SpyCast" listeners will have heard Andrew and I talk about our new temporary exhibit, Bond in motion for a while now. It's been opened since March 1st, and it will stay here through April of 2025. So make sure you head down to the International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C. while you can to see this fantastic collection of 17 different vehicles from the James Bond franchise. You've heard how great this exhibit is from Andrew and I, but how about hearing from one of the men who actually drove in these cars? We reached out to George Lazenby, James Bond himself, and "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" for a special message for "SpyCast" listeners. We were lucky enough to hear back, and I'm thrilled to share the following message with you all. My manager brought me to see the Bond in motion exhibition in 2019 when it was displayed in London and again in December of 2021 when it was displayed at the Peterson Museum in LA. For me personally, it was very special to see the Cougar again as it brought back some wonderful memories of making "On Her Majesty's Secret Service." I remember Diana Rigg driving that thing for real. She was great behind the wheel. It's funny when I played the ultimate spy, I was a bit of a hippie. I thought all this espionage stuff was a bit dated. Make Love, not war, was my motto. The work of preserving these things for the next generations is important to a family man like me with younger kids of my own. My Bond film is a bit of a museum piece now, but I've been told over that directors like Steven Soderbergh and Christopher Nolan figure it to be the best one, so I guess it does hold up. I have fond memories of having a good time with Doug Redenius, who helps keep these cars going at The Ian Fleming Foundation. Bond is the gift that keeps giving. I guess every six or seven years, it's 1969 again. Only love, George. [ Music ]

Andrew Hammond: And when you were speaking, there reminded me a little bit like Alec Guinness. What you were saying was almost the, it's a little bit like Operation Mincemeat and Goldeneye are a little bit like Star Wars for, like, Guinness. He always bemoaned that that's what he became known for. But he had this storied career beforehand where he was a Shakespearean actor, "The Bridge Over the River Kwai," all of these pivotal movies in the, in the 50s and so forth. But he became known as Obi-Wan Kenobi. So, so what you're basically saying is the, the contribution of helping to bring America into the war, helping to keep the Nazis out of the Iberian Peninsula and then the 30 assault unit and T fours are really the big things that he should be remembered for in terms of British intelligence during World War II.

Nicholas Shakespeare: Yes, I mean again, it's hard to be specific about his contribution. But when you look at all these pieces put together, it does form an amalgam of somebody who was far more important than a chocolate sailor. I mean Fleming at the end of the war was chairing JIC meetings. Now you don't do that if you're in charge of ashtrays. And he was helping to contribute to the Bland Report which was looking at what a future British intelligence would look like after the war. And he makes very interesting recommendations which anticipate modern drones and anticipate some of the conflict zones in the post war period. And he anticipates cyber warfare in his suggestions. This is done in 1945. And it seemed that, and he's in charge. He actually chairs Joint intelligence Bureau meetings in August 1945, you know, about the future of British intelligence.

Andrew Hammond: Tell us how, just how important was he in terms of bringing America into the war? And so obviously, you know, it's not like Ian Fleming gets involved, America comes into the war. You know, the whole thing is over determined. Pearl Harbor brings America into the war, et cetera. But just help us understand the role that he played in the British effort to try to bring America and American sensibilities round to, to their predicament and to entering the war and our in an allied fashion.

Nicholas Shakespeare: Well, it was not only Fleming, because William Stephenson, who I've mentioned earlier, who was in charge, the Canadian in charge of British intelligence in North America, Canada and the Caribbean. He, a great friend of William Donovan, he was devoting many of his resources to persuade the American public to not be like Charles Lindbergh and to see that Germany posed a real threat to America as well. And so there were wonderful stories of Fleming's best friend Ivar Bryce went to work for Stephenson and did this fake map of South America because he had proven connections and had married a Brazilian wife. And he created this map of Nazi intentions that were smuggled to Roosevelt who then did a famous broadcast saying I have in my hand a map that shows what Nazis are going to do in South America. So although Roosevelt would have been, would have been, you know, impeached if people had known the extent to which he was helping the British at a point when he was neutral. Roosevelt was very much pro-British and a pro-what Admiral Godfrey was trying to persuade him to do, which was to set up an American intelligence service that would be able to liaise with the British. So this was taking place in the six months before Pearl Harbor. So Fleming didn't bring America into the war. But when America came into the war, there was a whole set up that would allow American intelligence to flourish. And this also, I would add, Camp X, which Stephenson had set up in Canada to train American operatives. I mean that became very important for William Donovan's men and future CIA people in OSS to be trained there under British instructors, it has to be said, Scottish instructors. They went off to the Far East, to India, to the Philippines and, you know, having been trained by the Brits. So I would not make claims that Fleming brought Americans to the war, but I would say he facilitated once America came into the war, the easiness of their, into reaction, interaction with British intelligence. And so it was completely seamless until Burgess and Maclean. The kind of trustiness of British and intelligent and American operatives. And in fact, many of Fleming's friends, you know, that he met then became friends later on with Alan Dulles, who became head of the CIA. You know, he knew Fleming. He became a Fleming, Dulles became a great Bond fan, as did Kennedy, who'd also been in Naval intelligence.

Andrew Hammond: And he helps to draft a blueprint for what American intelligence will want to look like, what the Office of Strategic Services will look like.

Nicholas Shakespeare: That's right. The, in Donovan's house in Georgetown and also in Fleming's friend Peter Smithers's house in Georgetown. Smithers talks about how they would sit together, working hard, drafting what would be the American Intelligence Service. And Ivar Bryce also says something, it's hard to credit, but Fleming produced a 70 page document in the British Embassy. He was locked up in the British Embassy until he finished this document. Now all this is mouthwatering if it exists. But sufficient evidence still survives that four memos were written at least, and then there's all the kind of oral contributions that Fleming made. Fleming had already met Donovan in Europe when he came to visit British intelligence, the setup in 1940. So they already knew each other. He wasn't flying into a person he didn't know. And I think Donovan and Fleming kind of really, they were birds of a feather. They liked extravagant gestures, imaginative gestures. I think Donovan was rather keen on this exploding donkey turd. He was keen on some powder that would make Hitler's voice go falsetto. Fleming was very keen on exploding cigars that he would give to Castro, which he got from a book written in, you know, 1902 or something, a thriller writer. So I think they had the same imaginative approach to intelligence.

Andrew Hammond: And just as we get towards the end of the interview, you know, it's been amazing to speak to you, and I could speak all day. I'm just thinking as well of the role that he plays. You bring this out in the book, the role that he plays in even the American presidency. He has an intimate supper with JFK. I've done some research online for the inauguration of Richard Helms as CIA Director, 1966. LBJ references 007, and Ronald Reagan says, "I believe he's a symbol of real value to the free world." Donald Trump, when Sean Connery dies, he says the legendary actor 007 Sean Connery has passed over into even greener fairways. He says this on Twitter. So the Fleming and Fleming's creation are really rippling down through the most powerful office of the world, really. It's quite interesting.

Nicholas Shakespeare: Well, to me that was the most interesting chapter, and I nearly began the book with it. This is a dinner that takes place in 1960, March 1960. Kennedy is a young senator who's probably going to, you know, he's going to be elected later that year in November, president. So Fleming would have known that this is quite an important person. And Fleming in visiting an old friend, Oatsie Leiter in Georgetown, and Oatsie has known Kennedy for years. And in fact, Kennedy now lives in her old house in Georgetown. And it's Oatsie who has recommended James Bond to Kennedy when he was had back problems. He wanted something to read. So Oatsie sent him Casino Royale, and ever since then, had sent him each new Fleming book. So cut to March 1940, Fleming's gone to visit Oatsie with a new novel in his, in his briefcase. On his way back from Jamaica to London, he calls in to Washington. They're driving through Georgetown and suddenly she sees Jack and Jackie walking from Trinity Church, and she stops and she says, Jack, I've been trying to get hold of you. Your phone doesn't work, but I've got Ian Fleming here. And he leans into the window and says not the Ian Fleming. In another version he says not the, what James Bond is another version which shows you how the two characters easily intermingle. Anyway, they go to dinner that night, Oatsie and Fleming. And there are six people as far as I can, or six other people. And what happens that night is extraordinary because there's the thorny issue of Cuba that has been vexing America since 1958. Fleming had sent Norman Lewis, a journalist and intelligence man to try and find out what was going on in Cuba. Fleming had big connections to Cuba through his grandfather. His grandfather had funded the Cuban Railway, the sugar industry, et cetera, et cetera, in the First World War. Fleming had his house in Jamaica, which was 90 miles from Cuba. So when after dinner, Kennedy says to Fleming, what would James Bond do about Castro? It's not a frivolous, it's not a frivolous question, which I think too often it's been seen as. He's really asking what would Ian Fleming do about Castro. The Ian Fleming who worked in Naval intelligence when I was in Naval intelligence. Who worked around the corner with Colonel Donovan setting up what is now the CIA. Who did lots of black operations in the Second World War and gave Colonel Donovan ideas for these. What would Ian Fleming do? And Fleming uses this as he, he knows this is his opportunity. Just as when he sat down with Admiral Godfrey at the Carlton to be interrogated for a job, he knew that was his opportunity. So I said this is the second most important meal of his life. And he goes into the stratosphere with suggestions about what you would do to Castro based on many of his Black Ops in the Second World War. You know, there was one famous, he'd shower them with fake Cuban pesos so the inflation would run rad. He would transmit a beam into the sky, a cross, which would having announced that Castro was dead to say this was the second coming. But most funnily, he said he would distribute leaflets that said that the Americans had been conducting nuclear experiments in the region, and the fallout would cause men with beards, their hair to fall out. Well, as you know, Castro's men were known as the Barbados, the bearded ones. And so this would be a terrible affront to their manhood. And so this kind of stuff, this was mannered to Kennedy's ear, and he just thought this was terrific. He was bewitched by Fleming. He loved all his books. He saw himself as a James Bond figure. And then he tries to get hold the following day, Alan Dulles in New York is about to have, in Washington, is about to have a meeting. On that Monday to green light a secret operation against Castro, which Eisenhower will green light three days later and give them $13 million or whatever. And he says you've got to get hold of Ian. He's got these fantastic ideas how to deal with Castro. Ian couldn't be got hold of. He was taking his new manuscript Thunderball to his agent in America to try and get it filmed, and I don't think he was got hold of. But what happens is that when you have the Bay of Pigs a year later, so much of the Bay of Pigs is framed in a James Bond paradigm.

Andrew Hammond: So with regards to Castro and then the Churchill [inaudible 01:05:36] committee hearings, we see wartime corkscrew thinking manifesting itself during- during the Cold War. And so that's, that's one part of what you're saying. And then the other one, I think, is that even if Ian Fleming had never put pen to paper, he's still in, he's still an important historical actor in his own right. But, you know, the fact that he did put his pen to paper, I mean you, you have some headlines from newspapers in your book, you know. He's on the news every single day. There's one here, bikini worn by Dr. No Bond girl Ursula Andress to sell for $500,000, which has been absolutely incredible. Diana Riggs's obituary, who's a, you know, a major figure in her own, her own sphere. Only woman to marry James Bond, Diana Riggs's obituary in "The Times." I mean, it's a, it's a, it's an insane and incredible cultural legacy that he's bequeathed. But final question, you mentioned at the beginning that you're a novelist who has done some nonfiction. Who done the book Six Minutes in May, I think, on the, on the Norway crisis. Then you got approached by the Fleming estate to write this book. As a novelist, how significant is Fleming as a writer, how significant is he as a novelist? I guess that's a difficult question to ascertain because, you know the questions of the Canon and who's, you know, a writer and for which audience and so forth. But just as a novelist, like, what's your take on Fleming?

Nicholas Shakespeare: My take on Fleming would be Fleming's take on himself. That he is a good front row storyteller, like Somerset Maugham, like John Buchan, whom he greatly admired. In a sense, Fleming modelled himself on Richard Hannay, Buchan's hero, "Hiding in Plain Sight." And I think he would have liked to have done a book, as he said, that had elements of Tolstoy and a Eric Ambler and Evelyn Waugh. The people he really admired of his contemporaries were Evelyn Waugh and Graham Greene. But he knew that he wasn't up to their level, and nor necessarily could he have been. Because he only devoted, you know, two months of his year to writing the book. And it had to be done at great speed, which is what gave it its energy. But he would never have considered, you know, spending two or three years on a book, which is what they did. And so I think he always knew that he never had extravagant claims for himself, which I think is attractive about him. He, he's the George Sank [phonetic] rather than the Ritz in Paris somebody described him. And he knew that. So I'd say second row front, and he was happy with that, that position. But I don't think we'd be talking about him even so, had the films not been made. Because whatever the ingredients of Bond as a kind of both a hero of modernization but also as a symbol of retrospective power, the films have allowed this protean creature to exist in the future, in the present. And so that almost all over the world, the words, the names Bond, James Bond, will ignite a smile. And so I think that is his achievement. And I think he'd be pleased with that rather than the fact that he wasn't going to win the Nobel Prize for literature. But then nor did John McCary, who regards himself as a much greater writer, quite rightly. John McCary was a much greater writer, but whether he had as much influence as Ian Fleming through his character, I mean Bond is cited every day in the press and will continue to be in a way that George Smiley is not.

Andrew Hammond: It's a pretty incredible legacy and congratulations. I think it's a, it's a fantastic achievement, and there's so much in there. I hope many of our listeners get themselves a hold of a copy and have as much fun doing so as I did. Thanks ever so much for your time.

Nicholas Shakespeare: Well, thank you. [ Music ]

Erin Dietrick: Thanks for listening to this week's episode of "SpyCast." Please follow us on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you have feedback, you can reach us by e-mail at spycast@spymuseum.org or on Twitter at INTL spy cast. Coming up in next week's show.

Unidentified Person: When the bombing started, President Zelensky and his team understood that this was the nightmare scenario that the Americans had been predicting. And indeed, the worst case, the most aggressive approach to the invasion that the Russians could have taken.

Erin Dietrick: If you go to our page the cyberwire.com/podcasts/spycast, you can find links to further resources, detailed show notes, and full transcripts. I'm Erin Dietrick and your host is Dr. Andrew Hammond. The rest of the team involved in the show is Mike Mincey, Memphis Vaughn III, Emily Coletta, Emily Rens, Afua Anokwa, Ariel Samuel, Elliott Peltzman, Tre Hester and Jen Eiben. This show is brought to you from the home of the world's preeminent collection of intelligence and espionage related artifacts, the International Spy Museum. [ Music ]