SPECTRE Irma Bunt, Blofeld's assistant, in his short story "Blast From the Past", which is a sequel to "You Only Live Twice". In the Eon Productions James Bond series, which began in 1962 with "Dr. No", SPECTRE plays a more prominent role. The organisation is first mentioned in "Dr. No" as the organisation for which Dr. No works. This was changed from Fleming's novels, which had Dr. No working for the USSR. In the films, SPECTRE usually replaced SMERSH as the main villains, although there is a brief reference to SMERSH in the second Eon Bond film, "From Russia with Love"
On Her Majesty's Secret Service (novel) 1964–1965. In 1969 the novel was adapted as the sixth film in the Eon Productions James Bond film series and was the only film to star George Lazenby as Bond. In 2014 "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" was adapted as a play on BBC Radio, starring Toby Stephens. For more than a year, James Bond, British Secret Service operative 007, has been involved in "Operation Bedlam": trailing the private criminal organisation SPECTRE and its leader, Ernst Stavro Blofeld. The organisation had hijacked two nuclear devices and subsequently blackmailed the western world, as described in "Thunderball". Convinced SPECTRE no longer exists,