It’s pretty inarguable that James Bond has the coolest assortment of gadgets ever invented - even the CIA thinks so. Research confirms that the covert organization spent a good amount of time pursuing the possibility of getting a gizmo arsenal for his own spies.

It’s pretty inarguable that James Bond has the coolest assortment of gadgets ever invented - even the CIA thinks so.

Research confirms that a former director of the covert organization spent a good amount of time pursuing the possibility of getting a gizmo arsenal for his own spies.

Professor Christopher Moran from the University of Warwick, an expert on US national security, has been studying the declassified letters exchanged between Allen Dulles, Director of the CIA in the 1950’s, and Ian Fleming.

In them, he says he’s found evidence that the CIA had some serious envy issues when it came to all of Bond’s fabulous toys.

Some were replicated successfully, like the poison knife shoes in From Russia With Love, although no reports on their actual usage have come to light.

Others, not so much – the CIA wasn’t up to the task of making a homing device like the one in Goldfinger.

Dulles himself supposedly said, “I put my people in CIA to work on this as a serious project, but they came up with the answer that it had too many bugs in it.”

The professor also discusses how the CIA boss met with the author a number of times. The two reportedly shared thoughts on gadgets and the retooling of the CIA’s image in the books.