JFK’s secret weapon in the Cold War: James Bond

JAMES Bond’s most politically important mission didn’t take place on the silver screen, but at the White House in the early ’60s.

John F Kennedy was a vocal

Bond fan, and the media loved to draw parallels between the fictional spy and the real-life president –so much so that their personas became intertwined in America’s cultural subconscious. This was no accident: Kennedy used Bond to project an image as a heroic leader who could meet any challenge in the most perilous years of the Cold War.

In 1954, then-senator Kennedy was in the hospital recovering from back surgery when a friend handed him a copy of Casino Royale, the first of the 007 novels, by British author Ian Fleming. JFK devoured it.

In 1960, during his presidential campaign, Kennedy invited Fleming over to his Georgetown house.

Fleming inspires American spymasters. Allen Dulles, who served as CIA chief under presidents Dwight D Eisenhower and Kennedy, was another Bond devotee, and he instructed his Office of Technical Service to engineer 007-style gadgets for his agents. The resulting devices included exploding cigars and knife-tip shoes.

In 1961, JFK was quizzed about his favourite books. Among them was From Russia With Love – in which Bond comes up against Soviet counterintelligence. The presidential shout-out sent the 007 series flying off the shelves. The novelist repaid the president – the next entry in the series, The Spy Who Loved Me, included the line: “We need some more Jack Kennedys.”

007’s popularity stateside persuaded Eon Productions to dash ahead with its movie adaptation of Fleming’s Dr. No. It was later screened at the White House. Afterwards, JFK told the producers they should film From Russia With Love next. It wasn’t an executive order, but they followed it anyway.

Kennedy’s Bond fandom was not, as his adviser Arthur Schlesinger would explain, simply a “publicity gag”. The ’60s were replete with challenges: civil rights at home and the Cold War abroad.

Upon entering office in 1961,JFK strove to preside over a moral renewal. Kennedy abhorred “the Organization Man” – that avatar of ’50s conformity who held a 9-to-5 corporate job and led a stale life that prioritised material comfort and groupthink over adventure and gumption. Say what you will about Bond, but no one’s ever mistaken him for an Organization Man. Therein lay JFK’s admiration for Fleming’s hero. 007 is masculine, intrepid, gutsy – all qualities the president wanted to project.

JFK was a master of spin. He knew that professing his fondness for Bond would result in an avalanche of articles lumping them together. When people thought of Bond, they would also think of Kennedy – and thus the heroic qualities of the spy would get bestowed on the president.

Bond himself may have been more of a fighter than a diplomat, but the mark he made on his greatest Oval Office admirer might just have helped save the world. |