How elite is the 00 section?
osris
Posts: 558MI6 Agent
If the 00 status is awarded to an agent because they’ve killed someone, and thus are seen worthy of being recruited into the 00 section, wouldn’t this mean that any agent (regardless of competence) who had killed someone in the course of their career could be made a 00? If so, then how is the 00 section “elite”? Surely to be elite, it would have to limit itself to accepting only those agents who were the best, and not just who had killed.
Wouldn’t it be better (and in real life it would probably work this way, if a 00 section really existed) if the 00 section recruited the best standard intelligence duty agents from MI6, trained them up to SAS standards, then gave them a licence to kill? This would be a more professional and organised way of doing things.
Wouldn’t it be better (and in real life it would probably work this way, if a 00 section really existed) if the 00 section recruited the best standard intelligence duty agents from MI6, trained them up to SAS standards, then gave them a licence to kill? This would be a more professional and organised way of doing things.
Comments
Off the top of my head you have
Bill Fairbanks was he 002 in TWTGG?
Alex Trevelyn 006 in Goldeneye
James Bond 007
009 Octopussy was he named?
Can you guys help with the rest.
As far as I remember names of double-o agents were not revealed in films, except those you mentioned above.
In the PTS of AVTAK, Bond recovers 003's body, but no name were mentioned.
In the PTS of TLD, Bond infiltrates to Gibraltar with 002 and 004 (who's killed by fake KGB agent), but again no names were mentioned.
Also 008 is mentioned in TB and in TLD to replace 007 in latter, when he hesitates when M gives briefing about killing General Leonid Pushkin. Bond refers to 008 also in GF, that he'll replace Bond if Goldfinger kills him.
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I think we see more than three during the briefing in TWINE, including a female 00.Also in TB when Bond is late for the briefing we see more in the room.
I always think the 00 Section is to MI6 what the SSAS/Delta Force are to the army.
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Fleming mentions a 0011 in MR.
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I always believed that as well. I used to discuss this with actual intell officers who were Bond fans (it's amazing how many are) when I was assigned to a NATO base during my service. They were usually in agreement that if there actually was such an elite section in an intelligence service that the recruits would be from experienced field operatives who had a few years under their belt and had shown they were emotionally capable of doing "wet work" if it was absolutely necessary. They also agreed that only a few would be selected and kept in this position and trained for it only if the need arose and that - as Fleming wrote in his novels - such work would only need be done perhaps only once or a couple of times a year for special circumstances, since the killing of the average thugs involved in criminal/espionage activities would be handled by paying similar thugs who killed professionally.
I agree. The current system is a catch 22: You have to kill 2 people in order to obtain your licence to kill ? How are you supposed to kill anyone without the license?
Just because Bond killed some thug in a bathroom fight (CR06) means that he's 1/2 way to becoming a 00 agent ? Doesn't make much sense to me.
1. GE 2. MR 3. OP 4. TMWTGG 5. TSWLM 6. TND 7. TWINE 8.DN 9. GF 10. AVTAK
It's not just about 'killing two people' - if it were then half the army would be double-0 agents !
It's about completing 'kills' that you are given on behalf of the Government in a subversive manner - you would have to complete them satisfactorily to earn your double-0 status...
He was " licenced" to kill -{ looks great on an advert
Or book cover.
James Bond- Licence To Kill
That has always been my impression as well.
That all seems to make good sense and is consistent with how Fleming portrayed Bond's professional life as a specialized operative. When watching the recent and not so recent spy movies like the Bourne series, you'd get the idea that elite operatives are secretly cultivated in various remote locations where they're constantly training and put through rigorous drills and testing scenarios. However, in the books, it's hinted that Bond keeps up his fighting training and he periodically hones his shooting skills, but most of the time he comes into the office with "elastic hours" and does a lot of boring paper work (mostly reading intelligence minutiae) and goes on missions 2-3 times a year; but for the most part, this depiction makes me think that Bond's professional life is not that different from a regular white-collared worker that may be employed in an exporting company.
It takes a special agent to be able to kill in cold blood in a cold war as opposed to a hot one. It's also why the targets are chosen with care and termination is only the last resort. Bond seldom had to terminate villains in his career. If they were killed it was usually out of self defence.
Fleming didn't have Bond in MI6 though, his OO section was based within an organisation that grew from SOE, very different from MI6. The MI6 connection only came up in the films and later post Fleming books. SOE and MI6 had a very different doctrine, and therefore Fleming knew what he was talking about as he had close ties and firm interaction with SOE.
Your info is out of date. With the recent de-classification of WWII documents, we know Fleming was very much involved with SOE, in the planning and execution of missions and up until two/three years ago had been classified. It is certain now that Fleming's Bond was nothing to do with MI5 or MI6, but a fiction derivative of SOE as it would have been had it not been disbanded.
Oh, ok, that makes sense, thanks. I didn't pay attention to the identity of Bond's Secret Service, which was not the same as the Secret Intelligence Service or MI6, though interestingly, there were organizational overlaps between the two during and after WWII. As far as information I have, I'm not sure if they do reflect the recently declassified data you mentioned, though the books I've read seem to indicate that, namely Craig Cabell's 2 books on Fleming and 30AU, the Rankin book on the same subject and Macintyre's books and not just the one on Fleming, but also Agent Zigzag, Op Mincemeat and Doublecross, have peripheral information about the extent of Fleming's involvement not limited to high-level operations on behalf of Naval Intelligence, but also in the daily inter-departmental intelligence traffic within and between the War Office and Admiralty.
I don't think that Fleming's role and function ever crossed over to the SOE hierarchy, though he closely coordinated with SOE in his operational planning (many of which didn't come to fruition), or for recruitment for some personnel for and the administration of 30AU. Nonetheless, with the fictional Secret Service being a derivative of SOE, Fleming had enough insider information to flesh it out, though it wouldn't be consistent with the real-life operations of what would have been 007’s logical agency within the UK government, which is MI6. Was it Gardner who first harmonized Bond's Secret Service with MI6? Whoever did, it made good sense to lend some credibility to the continuation novels.
-Mr Arlington Beech
In short of making me read this long story (joking), was there in the narrative a continuity between MOB and James Bond's post-war Secret Service? One snag I do see in your post is the Anglo American command structure of MOB, since in terms of organzation its real-life counterpart, 30AU didn't fall under SHAEF or any joint allied chain of command, except when the unit sometimes fell under an impromptu Allied (American) chain of command while in the field, where there was a lot of politicking and rivalry not only between the Allies, but also among the service branches of the British Armed Forces.
No the command structure is not the same as well as the AO was different: Bavaria for the MOB and italy for the AU.
-Mr Arlington Beech
Thanks for confirming, which reinforces what Asp9mm said that indeed Fleming wrote of Bond's fictional Service as an iteratoin of his own WWII organization.
This is very true, but he also (as I stated earlier) identified SIS being completely different service from (the) Secret Service. Which goes quite a bit further than just "never identifying it as MI6" for the sake of fiction.
-Mr Arlington Beech