EXCLUSIVE Why the next James Bond should NOT be a woman, female ex-CIA intelligence officer has surprising good reasons

Daily Mail​

2 days ago

Since the release of No Time to Die in 2021, rumors have swirled about who will be the next James Bond. The conversations are heating up again now that producer Barbara Broccoli and producer-writer Michael G Wilson sold the franchise to Amazon.
Will he remain British? What race will he be? And could Bond be a woman?
Names tipped to succeed Daniel Craig in the iconic role have included Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Henry Cavill and Theo James.
Actresses Sydney Sweeney and Zendaya have both been suggested as possible Bond girls, and it seems Amazon has, at least for now, silenced any possibility of a female 007.
As a former CIA intelligence officer - and a woman - myself, people naturally assume I'm in favor of a female Bond.
Imagine their surprise when they learn I'm not.
It's no secret that espionage has long been a 'man's world' - the disparities in pay and position between men and women at the CIA were documented as early as 1953, around the same time Ian Fleming first introduced us to the suave, womanizing spy in his novel Casino Royale.
The Bond world Fleming created largely reflected this male-centric reality, its female characters relegated to seemingly less important roles behind a typewriter or at the British spy's side as his far less capable companion. And don't get me started on their scandalous attire and sexual innuendo-filled names.
The reality at the CIA was that women donned sensible skirts with pantyhose - pants weren't permitted - and wore crisp, white gloves.
Despite having both the skill and desire to work in clandestine operations, women served in positions that 'better suited' their abilities - think secretaries, librarians and file clerks. Many even began their espionage careers as unpaid 'CIA wives,' providing secretarial and administrative support to field stations. It was an undoubtedly clever, yet misogynistic, strategy in which the agency leveraged male case officers' highly educated spouses for free labor.
'I always felt like, you know, I'm not stupid - and here I was, doing filing, typing,' Marti Peterson told me of her time as a CIA wife in Laos in the early 1970s.
In 1975, Peterson became the first female case officer to operate in Moscow, only after turning down the CIA's initial offer to become an entry-level secretary.
A mere month into her tour, she began handling one of the Moscow station's most prized assets, even delivering a suicide pill to him at his request. (He wanted to be prepared to die by suicide in the event the KGB arrested him for treason.)
Hidden in a fountain pen, the lethal package was tucked into Peterson's waistband and held close to her body as she twisted and turned through the streets of Moscow ensuring she wasn't being followed, before making the delivery.
After months of operating freely in one of the harshest counterintelligence environments - women were largely able to go undetected as our enemies didn't expect us to carry out plans - Peterson's world changed.
This time, when she conducted the dead drop, she was accosted by nearly two dozen KGB officers who she said forced her into a van and off to Lubyanka prison for interrogation.
Peterson didn't break under their questioning, and was released after several hours with strict orders to leave the country and never return.
Her male managers accused her of failing to spot a surveillance team on her, a cardinal sin in espionage.
Peterson shouldered that blame for seven years until it was revealed that the asset was compromised by double agents working for both the CIA and the Czech intelligence service. She could finally rest easy knowing she wasn't to blame for the arrest of that most important Moscow asset.
It was thanks to her bravery that the asset was able to boldly choose his own fate, rather than be subjected to whatever punishment the KGB had in mind for him.
There were others like Peterson - intrepid women who successfully convinced their male colleagues they had more to offer than typing and filing skills.
Janine Brookner, for example, entered on duty in 1968 and by the '80s became the first female chief of a station in Latin America, in one of the Caribbean's most dangerous posts.
Around that time, more women were conducting clandestine operations - and they were good at it. Really good. This should have come as no surprise, given that women had already operated in this capacity unofficially for decades.
Even so, women had to fight for the best cases that traditionally went to male counterparts, and despite repeated operational successes, the mostly male managers still doubted their clandestine capabilities.
The same stereotypes meant women were equally underestimated by the enemy - a situation we continue to take full advantage of even today, allowing us to go unnoticed in some of the most dangerous environments in the world.
Janine Brookner became the first female chief of station in Latin America, in one of the Caribbean's most dangerous posts
Across the Atlantic, women in the UK have also been key players in the British Secret Intelligence Service, MI6.
Kathleen Pettigrew, for example, served as the personal assistant to not one but three MI6 chiefs, making her far more powerful than the Miss Moneypenny character she inspired.
In her book, Her Secret Service, author and historian Claire Hubbard-Hall describes the forgotten women of British Intelligence as 'the true custodians of the secret world,' whose contributions largely remain shrouded in mystery, while men's are often cemented in our collective memory thanks to their self-aggrandizing memoirs.
At the same time women were making slow gains in intelligence, the Bond girl was evolving on the silver screen, a credit to Broccoli who, together with her half-brother Wilson, took over the rights from their ailing father in 1995.
In the decades since, Broccoli expertly shepherded Bond through an ever-changing global and political landscape, adding nuance to the charming, deeply flawed intelligence operative so many of us have grown to love.
Perhaps just as importantly, she brought balance and inclusivity to the films, creating multi-dimensional, capable Bond girls and even casting a woman as 'M,' the head of MI6, in 1995. The real MI6, on the other hand, has yet to have a woman in its top leadership role, and it wasn't until 2018 that the CIA saw its first female director.
It's taken every bit of the past 70-plus years to somewhat level the playing field for real women in espionage, so one might argue that it's about time for a female James Bond.
Certainly, women are capable - a history of successful female intelligence officers from both sides of the pond already proves that.
But what if it's not a question of whether she's able to believably pull off the role but whether that's something viewers, especially women, actually want?
Broccoli didn't seem to think so.
'I'm not particularly interested in taking a male character and having a woman play it. I think women are far more interesting than that,' Broccoli told Variety in 2020.
Perhaps she knew something the rest of us didn't - or something we just weren't ready to admit: Women don't want to be James Bond. Not because we're content as his sexy sidekick, but because we want our own spy.
The success of shows like Netflix's Black Doves and Paramount's Lioness suggest a female-led spy thriller isn't just palatable for audiences - it's satisfying a hunger for something new: a unique spy character created specifically for a woman.
And while we're at it, let's make her more capable than Bond. After all, that reflects the reality on the ground.
The best spies are those who operate in the shadows and avoid romantic entanglements with their adversaries - the antithesis of James Bond. Spies who are unassuming and underestimated. Delivering poison right under the noses of our greatest adversaries.
Spies who are, dare I say, women?
Christina Hillsberg is a former CIA intelligence officer and author of Agents of Change: The Women Who Transformed the CIA, published June 24.