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Casino Royale Espionage

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“The name’s Bond. James Bond.” A short, simple phrase to introduce one of the most famous fictional spies ever created. James Bond’s stories are entertaining thrillers but it causes one to wonder, is that all it is? Entertainment? Ian Fleming’s Casino Royale is a Bond novel that portrays the reality of espionage, to some extent, while also maintaining the flare that makes it fiction. On the realistic side, Fleming gives you an inside look at the bureaucracy of espionage and the mystery behind the operatives themselves. But James Bond’s mission is an excellent example of the glamor added purely to make the novel a more engaging one rather than an accurate depiction of espionage. Casino Royale is the story that introduced the world to James …show more content…

An agent is a human-intelligence source, someone who provides information to SIS. The agents are typically foreign nationals meaning they don’t work out of an office in England but are from other countries. They could be anyone from hotel receptionists to businessmen and become traitors to their countries. The spies who handle these agents and collect their information are “intelligence officers.” If these intelligence officers are working overseas they more than likely are doing so as diplomats working out of a British embassy. If they get caught they would have diplomatic immunity. Having this immunity is essential since they are participating in espionage as well as persuading other local citizens to engage in espionage, an act of treason against their home countries. The intelligence officers’ main tool? Blackmail, not …show more content…

It is unlikely that a government organization would invest so much money into a mission so incredibly risky. Now, I am sure there are a multitude of risky missions that go on that I, along with the public, will never know about; but, yet, a mission specifically to gamble with millions of francs provided by not one but two government organizations seems unrealistic. In fact, Bond took a chance and lost all the money he had at his disposal when out of nowhere he got a note from a man named Leiter, who was working for the USA. The note read, “Marshall Aid. Thirty-two million francs. With the compliments of the USA,” (Fleming 77). That was it, all that money with no questions asked. In a stroke of luck, Bond used that money in an “all-in” gamble that resulted in a victory for him and a hard loss for Le Chiffre, but the thought that the USA would just hand over so much money with no kinds of conditions seems a little far-fetched. In reality such large investments have a higher chance of occurring if they have a higher chance of success, but an assignment to gamble with the government’s money has anything but a high chance of success. This kind of plot is just what makes for a good story. Overall, Ian Fleming crafted a suspenseful spy story when he wrote Casino Royale but most of it was simply story, fictitious in nature. There is a gray area between myth and reality in espionage

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