WARSAW, Poland—A mystery left unsolved by the spies of the Communist era reopened one recent morning, when an archivist found a curious folder sheltered in a warehouse of secret files from the Cold War.
In 1964, a British diplomat arrived in the capital, then vanished, thwarting the minders ordered to shadow his every movement. He was next seen snooping around a military base along the border of the Soviet Union. Dark-haired and inconspicuous, the suspected agent had all the makings of a discreet operative except for one glaring giveaway.
His name was Bond. James Bond.
Filip Hagenbeck, the ex-leader of [Poland's] Counterintelligence Branch Ten, the agency tasked with rooting out foreign spies:
“Frankly speaking, I don’t think he was a spy,” said Mr. Hagenbeck, whose assumption is that Mr. Bond was a decoy. The first Bond movie– “
Dr. No ” starring Sean Connery–had just come out in 1962, and Mr. Hagenbeck suspects London knew a man with his name would distract Polish counterintelligence from more sensitive operations under way.
“They were sending him to make him some kind of bait. To make counterintelligence chase him instead of other persons,” said Mr. Hagenbeck. “It was a game which was played, you know?”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/declas...ble-spy-in-polandnamed-james-bond-11603391492
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