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January 5 Information
James Bond's fruit basket
I remember that in one of
Ian Fleming's
James Bond novels, Bond finds a welcome fruit basket in his hotel room. Cautious, he sends the basket back to MI6 to be analysed. The analysis report reads "Every piece of fruit contained enough strychnine to kill a horse. We recommend switching to another greengrocer."
Do real-life secret agents have to be this cautious every time or was this something Fleming added for dramatic effect?
JIP |
Talk10:44, 5 January 2024 (UTC)reply
Most
secret agents are not globetrotters like Agent 007, living the high life while hunting or being hunted by intriguing knaves. Most are only engaged in collecting information and transmitting it to their contacts. To be successful, they need to build up a network of informants by whom they are believed to be trustworthy and to whom it must therefore remain hidden that they are actually informing an agent. This requires both a relatively stable residency and a believable
cover as an ordinary honest citizen. So only their contacts higher up in the organization should know their secret status and there is no reason to be particularly distrustful of things that are not out of the ordinary.
The situation is somewhat different for operatives engaged in
clandestine operations such as
sabotage and
assassinations, a small minority among secret agents. The operatives may rely more on travelling incognito in disguise to avoid being recognized and targeted themselves by
counterintelligence and will need to be more on guard. But even then, I think that at the moment they have little to fear as long as they operate with prudence and caution, so that their cover does not get blown. For example, they should not use and reuse a specific modus operandi so that it becomes their trademark, so to speak. As surveillance AI gets better and ubiquitous, this may change; it may become impossible to use any given operative for more than one clandestine mission. --
Lambiam21:14, 5 January 2024 (UTC)reply
Perhaps you are led to believe that all streaming services are complete junk. In which case you maybe only got Disney+ because your kids begged you to get it so they could watch their favourite Disney films.
Pablothepenguin (
talk)
16:12, 6 January 2024 (UTC)reply
Welcome to the Wikipedia Entertainment Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is a
transcluded archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the
current reference desk pages.
January 5 Information
James Bond's fruit basket
I remember that in one of
Ian Fleming's
James Bond novels, Bond finds a welcome fruit basket in his hotel room. Cautious, he sends the basket back to MI6 to be analysed. The analysis report reads "Every piece of fruit contained enough strychnine to kill a horse. We recommend switching to another greengrocer."
Do real-life secret agents have to be this cautious every time or was this something Fleming added for dramatic effect?
JIP |
Talk10:44, 5 January 2024 (UTC)reply
Most
secret agents are not globetrotters like Agent 007, living the high life while hunting or being hunted by intriguing knaves. Most are only engaged in collecting information and transmitting it to their contacts. To be successful, they need to build up a network of informants by whom they are believed to be trustworthy and to whom it must therefore remain hidden that they are actually informing an agent. This requires both a relatively stable residency and a believable
cover as an ordinary honest citizen. So only their contacts higher up in the organization should know their secret status and there is no reason to be particularly distrustful of things that are not out of the ordinary.
The situation is somewhat different for operatives engaged in
clandestine operations such as
sabotage and
assassinations, a small minority among secret agents. The operatives may rely more on travelling incognito in disguise to avoid being recognized and targeted themselves by
counterintelligence and will need to be more on guard. But even then, I think that at the moment they have little to fear as long as they operate with prudence and caution, so that their cover does not get blown. For example, they should not use and reuse a specific modus operandi so that it becomes their trademark, so to speak. As surveillance AI gets better and ubiquitous, this may change; it may become impossible to use any given operative for more than one clandestine mission. --
Lambiam21:14, 5 January 2024 (UTC)reply
Perhaps you are led to believe that all streaming services are complete junk. In which case you maybe only got Disney+ because your kids begged you to get it so they could watch their favourite Disney films.
Pablothepenguin (
talk)
16:12, 6 January 2024 (UTC)reply