00 Agent
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In Ian Fleming's James Bond novels, and the derived films, the 00 Section of MI6 are considered the secret service's élite. The original novels establish that the section usually has only three agents at a time (yet, this reference in Goldfinger could mean at that time); the films, beginning with Thunderball, establish the number of 00-agents as less than twelve. If Bond (whose biography list him as a Special Boat Service veteran), and what little is revealed about the other 00-agents in the novels is any indication, assassins typically are recruited from the military's Special Operations forces.
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[edit] Origin of nomenclature
In the British and Commonwealth armed forces, soldiers and officers are assigned identity numbers; the American military do likewise. During Ian Fleming's work in Vichy France, an agent's anonymity was imperative, and, when the agent is military, it was convenient to use the last three letters of the agent's number as identification.
In World War II, SO agents did not have identifiers assigned to them such as the 00 or related 'systems' of nomenclature - specific agents would be known to high command by their own names, and when deniability was at stake, their service numbers in long form, or else by invented codenames, etc.
For the sake of romance and memorability, Fleming used the 00 and mystical number 7 for James Bond — himself a shell for the reader to inhabit (Kinglsey Amis, The James Bond Dossier, 1960).
[edit] Description
The double-oh agent holds a licence to kill in the field — at his discretion — to complete the mission.
In the first novel, Casino Royale, the double-oh concept is introduced, and, in Bond's words, means: "that you've had to kill a chap in cold blood in the course of some assignment." His double-oh number (007) was awarded him because he twice killed in fulfilling assignments. In the second novel, Live and Let Die, the double-oh number designates a past killing; not until the third novel, Moonraker, does the double-oh number designate a licence to kill.
Thereafter, the novels are ambiguous about whether or not a double-oh agent's licence to kill is limited (see Dr. No, Goldfinger, and The Man with the Golden Gun).
The film The World Is Not Enough shows that the double-oh section is a discrete area of MI6, whose agents report to M. Per Fleming's Moonraker, double-oh agents face mandatory retirement at age forty-five; John Gardner contradicts this in his novels, depicting a fifty-odd-year-old secret agent.
[edit] List of 00s
This list is of the known 00-agents of the British Secret Service who exist in officially-licensed novels, cinema, video games, and comic strips.
| 00-agent | Name | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Agent 001 | Edward Donne | Referred to in the Raymond Benson novel, Doubleshot. 001 and 007 are the only agents not to be replaced or killed. |
| Agent 002 | Bill Fairbanks | Killed by Francisco Scaramanga, The Man with the Golden Gun, in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1969 (film version: The Man with the Golden Gun [1974]). In The Living Daylights film, agent 002 was training at Gibraltar, with 004 and 007. |
| Agent 003 | Jason Walters | Found dead, in Siberia, in A View to a Kill film. Another (unrelated) MI6 agent is Jack Mason, 003 who is killed by Nikolai Diavolo, the villain, in the Everything or Nothing video game (2004). Diavolo is connected with the villain Max Zorin from A View to a Kill. |
| Agent 004 | Frederick Warder, Scarlett Paplava | Accompanied 002 and 007 to Gibraltar in The Living Daylights film; murdered by a false KGB agent who tagged the body: "Death to Spies" in Russian. Another 004 appears in the Benson novel The Facts of Death. In the GoldenEye video game, on the Silo mission briefing, Q mentions to 007 to "remember to treat the timed explosives with respect - you remember what happened to 004 in Beirut"; it is unclear whether he speaks of another agent or the one listed above. In the Sebastian Faulks novel Devil May Care, Bond girl Scarlett Paplava is unvealed as 004, replacing the previous agent who was killed in Berlin. |
| Agent 005 | Stuart Thomas | Was 005 until defective eyesight impaired his marksmanship, and he was made head of Station G (Greece) in Colonel Sun. |
| Agent 006 | Alec Trevelyan (Sean Bean), Major Jack Giddings | Major character in GoldenEye. One of Bond friends, he betrayed MI6 and Her Majesty's Government with his fake death, and then, years later, stealing the GoldenEye satellite from the USSR. His motive was avenging his parents, Lienz Cossacks, betrayed to the Communists by the British government after World War II. He also begrudged Bond's not allowing him time to escape the Soviet chemical weapons factory they were sent to destroy in the GoldenEye teaser. Another 006, a Royal Marine commando, is mentioned in On Her Majesty's Secret Service and in The Moneypenny Diaries: Guardian Angel as Major Jack Giddings and second to Bond in the 00 section. |
| Agent 007 | James Bond | James Bond is the only agent 007. During You Only Live Twice, Bond was transferred into another branch and given the number 7777, suggesting there was no active agent 007 in that time; he is reinstated as such in The Man with the Golden Gun. In the John Gardner novels, agent 007 is the remaining active 00-agent, the section was disbanded in the 1980s, later contradicted by Raymond Benson's novels. |
| Agent 008 | 'Bill' | In the Goldfinger film, M threatens to replace 007 with agent 008; in the The Living Daylights film, with another agent who can follow orders. In the film Goldfinger, Bond tells Goldfinger "If I don't report, 008 replaces me"; in the novel, Bond thinks to himself that 008 would likely avenge Bond by killing Goldfinger. As Bond thinks this, he ruminates that 008 is "a good man, more careful than Bond." The James Bond 007 role playing game released in the 1980s suggests 008 is a woman. In the novel Moonraker, 008 (called "Bill" by Bond) is mentioned as being on recuperative leave after returning from a mission behind the Iron Curtain. In the video game James Bond 007, 008 (male) gives Bond an exploding pen before dying in Kurdistan. |
| Agent 009 | Peter Smith | Mischka and Grischka kill him in the Octopussy film. In the The World Is Not Enough, M assigned another 009 to kill Renard, despite shooting him in the head, Renard lives. The graphic novels Deadly Double and Sepent's Tooth, feature a third agent 009. |
| Agent 0010 | John Wolfgramm | Referred to in the Benson novel The Man with the Red Tattoo. |
| Agent 0011 | Cederic | Mentioned briefly in the novel Moonraker as vanishing while on assignment in Singapore. |
| Agent 0012 | Sam Johnston | Although unmentioned on screen, Benson's The World Is Not Enough novelisation has Bond investigating 0012's death at story's start (seen in a photograph of a dark-haired man, in the film). |
| Agent 0013 | Briony Thorne | A female 00-agent appearing in the comic strip Fear Face (published January 18, 1971 to April 20, 1971 in the The Daily Express). Thorne is revealed to be a double agent for China. |
| Unknown | Jonathan Hunter "GoldenEye" | A former 00-agent featured in GoldenEye: Rogue Agent. He was shot in the right eye, and was dismissed by MI6 for "reckless brutality". He joined up with Auric Goldfinger against the shooter, Dr. Julius No, and eventually received a gold-hued, synthetic orb as a replacement for his right eye. After killing Goldfinger and Dr. No, he becomes Ernst Stavro Blofeld's bodyguard. Unlike other 00 agents listed here, Goldeneye only appears in the non-canon video game GoldenEye: Rogue Agent. The game takes place in an alternate universe. |
| Unknown | Agent York | Killed in the comic strip River of Death (published June 24, 1969 to November 29, 1969 in The Daily Express). Agent York is a 00 agent but his number isn't revealed. |
| Unknown | Suzi Kew | A recurring character in the Daily Express comic strip series of the 1960s and 1970s, Suzi Kew is a 00 agent but her number is not revealed. |
[edit] In film
SIS's 00-agents are seen in the briefings of Thunderball and The World Is Not Enough. Both suggest that at least one is a woman. In Doubleshot, Benson refers to an agent 001; Moonraker mentions an agent 0011, however, it is interesting to note that in Thunderball, there are nine chairs for the 00-agents; Bond sits in the 7th chair; Moneypenny says every double-oh in Europe has been recalled, not every double-oh in the world.
Moreover, the John Pearson novel James Bond: The Authorised Biography of 007 mentions "real life" 00 agents 002 (named Bill Fairbanks as in Man with the Golden Gun), 003 (badly injured in 1951), 008 (died in 1951), 009 (died in 1955 in Hungary), 0010 (died in 1951).
[edit] In other media
In the 2006 movie The Pink Panther, Clive Owen played the character of Nigel Boswell, Agent 006. This was a reference to him being rumored to take the role of Bond for Casino Royale.
In The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier, the original 007 is stated as being Prospero, who received the position upon being recruited to the English spy organization of Sir Jack Wilton in 1558, during the start of the reign of Queen Gloriana. The earlier volumes had hinted that Campion Bond served as 007 as of 1898.
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