SPECTRE SPECTRE SPECTRE (SPecial Executive for Counterintelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion) is a fictional organization featured in the James Bond novels by Ian Fleming, the films based on those novels, and James Bond video games. Led by evil genius and supervillain Ernst Stavro Blofeld, the international organization first formally appeared in the novel "Thunderball" (1961) and in the film "Dr. No" (1962). SPECTRE is not aligned to any nation or political ideology, enabling the later Bond books and Bond films to be regarded as somewhat apolitical, though the presence of former Gestapo members in the organization are a clear sign of
SPECTRE characters were at the centre of long-standing litigation between Kevin McClory and Ian Fleming over the film rights to "Thunderball" and the ownership of the organisation and its characters. In 1963, Fleming settled out of court with McClory, which awarded McClory the film rights to "Thunderball," although literary rights would stay with Fleming and thus allow continuation author John Gardner to use SPECTRE in a number of his novels. In 1963, Eon Productions producers Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman made an agreement with McClory to adapt the novel into the fourth James Bond film, also stipulating that McClory would