00 Agent

In Ian Fleming's James Bond novels, and the derived films, the 00 Section of MI6 are considered the secret service's elite. 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 lists 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.

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 was military, it was convenient to use the last three digits 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 (Kingsley Amis, The James Bond Dossier, 1960).

The inspiration for the code name 007 comes from the 007 National Express bus service from London to Dover and Deal which was used by Ian Fleming while writing the James Bond novels. Fleming used the bus when he frequently visited Higham Palace near Bridge and later to travel to his home in Bekesbourne near Canterbury. The route of the 007 bus lies close to the route Bond takes in Fleming's 3rd novel, Moonraker. In the novel, Bond visits a number of villages near the route, including St Margaret's Bay and Kingsdown.

Description

A 00 agent holds a licence to kill in the field — at his discretion — to complete the mission. The only 00 agents not to be killed or replaced are James Bond (007) and Edward Donne (001).

In the first novel, Casino Royale, the 00 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 00 number (007) was awarded him because he twice killed in fulfilling assignments. In the second novel, Live and Let Die, the 00 number designates a past killing; not until the third novel, Moonraker, does the 00 number designate a licence to kill.

Thereafter, the novels are ambiguous about whether or not a 00 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 00 section is a discrete area of MI6, whose agents report to M. Per Fleming's Moonraker, 00 agents face mandatory retirement at age forty-five; John Gardner contradicts this in his novels, depicting a fifty-odd-year-old secret agent. Fleming himself contradicted this statement by having Bond serve past the remaining years he was supposed to have. Sebastion Faulks' novel, Devil May Care features M giving Bond a choice of when to retire.

In the 2006 film adaptation of Casino Royale, it is revealed that in order to reach 00 status, you are required to have completed two kills.

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, Glyn Baker	Shot through the neck and 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, Jack Mason	Found dead, in Siberia, in A View to a Kill film. Another (unrelated) MI6 agent is Jack Mason, 003 who is shot in the gut and 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 Papava	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. His support rope is cut and he is sent plummeting down a cliff to his death. 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 Papava is unveiled 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's friends, he betrayed MI6 and Her Majesty's Government with his fake death, and then, years later, by 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 GoldenEye. He is killed when he is crushed by a huge falling satellite dish. 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. Another 006 is sitting next to Bond in Thunderball in the briefing.
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 the movies 008 is the only one (other than Bond) that wasn't killed doing his job.
Agent 009	Peter Smith	Mischka and Grischka kill him in the Octopussy film by throwing a knife into his back. In The World Is Not Enough. M assigned another 009 to kill Renard, despite putting a bullet in his head, Renard lives with the bullet in his head slowly killing off his senses. In Quantum Of Solace another 009 MI6 Agent is assigned as M’s sentinel. The graphic novels Deadly Double and Serpent's Tooth, feature a fourth 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.

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. Moonraker mentions an agent 0011. In Thunderball, there are nine chairs for the 00-agents; Moneypenny says every 00 agent in Europe has been recalled, not every 00 agent in the world.

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: 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.

In the alternate history novel Back in the USSA, Agent 007 is an agent of SMERSH played by Rudolf Nureyev in a series of Russian movies including From America With Love.

In an episode of Cory in the House, Stictler mentions his father is Agent 001.

In an episode of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Will's grandmother is given the codename 0070.