ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a considerable non-fiction literature on covert action – the intelligence ‘mission’ which perhaps most comfortably encapsulates Bond’s antics. John Ferris, the official historian of British signals intelligence, once observed that ‘Students of intelligence should aim not just to astonish their audience, but to bore them’. The overwhelming bulk of intelligence work does not involve assassinations, explosions and the like. Intelligence communities will always be taken by surprise, however much money and effort goes into intelligence collection and analysis. Claims of ‘intelligence failure’ are often simplistic, relying on knowledge after the event to piece together what should have been done. Predicting what might happen in future is extremely difficult and intelligence professionals are no better at it than ‘journalists, academics, diplomats, or ordinary people with common sense’. The reality is that intelligence organisations are far from the all-seeing, all-knowing entities of public imagination.
