007’s File Was Actually Hidden in Poland

In the mid-1960s, however, the situation was very different: The East and West had eased the tension, and espionage was less frequent, also, the threat from Soviet was less imminent. Naturally, while the intelligence services were still very interested in military intelligence, they relied more on the established networks, rather than launching fieldwork to investigate the moves on military bases; so, when they went out into the countryside, it was more like going on a picnic than gathering information. In this case, Sir Richard Wright, the head of MI6 at the time, may have decided to give a very high-profile name to this operation that might not actually be of much use. Ian Fleming’s best-selling books (the original novels of the James Bond series) had been popular for over a decade, so, even communist countries should have heard of them; even if they hadn't heard of the novels, they should have seen the Sean Connor (the original 007) movies. So, the act of James Bond’s arrival in Poland is as remarkable as a Christmas tree in the middle of the road (in Europe and the US, Christmas season is celebrated with a huge tree setting up in a square or at an intersection). Of course, even if the Second Bureau or the Internal Military Service (the Polish counter-intelligence agency) had not been fooled by this obvious hoax, they would not have ignored the man and not spy on him.

So, this could be the third guess of James Bond’s identity in the whole activity: a smoke bomb or a decoy to waste Polish counterintelligence resources, or at least to force them to devote a lot of human and material resources to spy on a small secretary and archivist. They were made to do a fruitless work to follow Bond around Warsaw’s bars and suburbs, so that other agents could have the opportunity to devote themselves to those actions and places in which Sir Richard would be more interested and more sensitive. It is generally accepted that Polish intelligence was not fully established in the mid-1960s, let alone had much of a counterintelligence capability in 1964. So, for MI6, it would be worthwhile to consume the Polish counterintelligence forces with 007 operation. It wouldn’t be the first time, nor the last time, that spies have misled and fooled counterintelligence in this way.

We will never know whether this was a new mission by a young spy in Warsaw, or Sir Richard Wright’s plan to keep Poland a close eye on Bond. The only thing we know is that while Ian Fleming was writing spies into his novels, MI6 was using novels to dress up their spies.