Sean Connery Voted Best James Bond Actor In CBS Poll

CBSNews.com offers a piece on the poll taken on which actor best portrayed Ian Fleming's iconic James Bond character.

Over the past 50 years there have been 23 official James Bond films, and the character has been portrayed by six different actors. So who was the best Bond?

Americans strongly favor the first man to portray the character in film, with 51 percent picking Sean Connery as the best James Bond.

Connery originated the role in the 1962 film "Dr. No." He would go on to star in five more Bond adventures, in addition to the non-official 1983 Bond film, "Never Say Never Again."

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/cbs-news-poll-who-was-the-best-james-bond/

You can also watch Sean Connery's introduction as Bond in Dr No via the below link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xDj3NRYTU8

Note: I agree that Sean Connery was the best James Bond, but I would rank Timothy Dalton as the second best and George Lazenby as the third best.

Timothy Dalton offered film viewers a harder, more serious Bond than the previous Bond, Roger Moore, and although their were some silly bits in his two Bond films, I thought they were well done.

George Lazenby was a good Bond, in my view, considering that he had never acted before, and he had to follow Sean Connery. He looked like Ian Fleming's Bond and he did the fight scenes very well. Had he continued as Bond he might have grown into a very good Bond. I also think On Her Majesty's Secret Service is one of the best Bond films. 

As for Pierce Brosnan, he had some good moments as Bond, but I was not too thrilled with the films he starred in.

As for Roger Moore, I liked him as the Saint on TV when I was a teenager, but I didn't like his light-hearted portrayal of Bond and I didn't like the silly films he starred in.

Lastly, I'm glad that the film producers have returned to making Bond films thrillers, instead of silly comedies, and Daniel Craig is a good Bond, even he does not look like Fleming's Bond.

I think the producers should have hired Clive Owen instead of Craig. Owen would have perhaps offered a Bond to rival Sean Connery.

I'm looking forward to seeing who the next Bond actor will be.

FBI: Health Care Fraud Enterprise Dismantled

The FBI web site offers a piece on the take down of a health care fraud criminal enterprise.

It was a combination health care fraud and drug distribution scheme on a massive scale. It involved 26 Michigan pharmacies, nine doctors, and two health care agencies. There were bribes and kickbacks aplenty and thousands of illegal doses of sought-after drugs like oxycodone and hydrocodone. And fraudulent billings to Medicare and Medicaid totaled more than $60 million, not to mention additional amounts to private insurers.

But the case began on a much smaller scale. In 2008, the Bureau learned that a single Michigan pharmacy was allegedly sending phony bills to Medicare and private insurance companies for prescription drugs. During the ensuing joint investigation with the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Inspector General, however, we were able to connect a wide array of other pharmacies—and subjects—to this illegal activity. We also uncovered the illegal diversion of controlled substances to people who didn’t medically need them, as well as billings to the government and private insurers for millions of dollars of non-controlled medications that were never dispensed to patients.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2014/august/health-care-fraud-enterprise-dismantled

You can also read my column on the FBI's fight against health care fraud via the below link:

http://home.comcast.net/~pauldavisoncrime/pwpimages/FBIHealthFraudJPG.jpg 

Covert Inspiration: Sly Instances of Kim Philby On Film

Ben Macintyre, author of A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal, offers a look at the films based on Kim Philby at Word & Film.

Kim Philby, the most notorious and successful spy of modern times, has inspired myriad films for cinema and television. Some are broadly factual, others factual, and most others somewhere in between - which is appropriate, since the gray area between truth and untruth, reality and deception, is where Philby spent his entire life.

Philby's long and ongoing role in film is easy to explain, for his is the essential spy story: the man who appears, on the outside, to be the perfect English gentleman, but on the inside is someone else, playing for the other side, smiling and betraying. The moral uncertainty here is irresistible to dramatists, going all the way back to Shakespeare, who noted man's ability to "smile and smile and be a villain." Philby's very charm was his armor.

The Philby story, and its numerous spin-offs, enables filmmakers to ask the essential questions: Who do you trust? What is friendship? Is it possible to love your betrayer?

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.wordandfilm.com/2014/07/covert-inspiration-sly-instances-kim-philby-film/

Channelling George Washington: Regaining The Initiative

Thomas Fleming offers another piece in his Channelling Washington series at the History News Network.

You can read the interesting piece via the below link:

http://hnn.us/article/156635

General Flynn's Last Interview: Iconocast Departs DIA With A Warning

James Kitfield at breakingdefense.com offers an interview with the retiring director of the Defense Intelligence Agency.

In this exclusive exit interview with Breaking Defense contributor james Kitfield, the outgoing chief of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, talks about metastasizing Islamic terrorism, his struggles to reform intelligence-gathering, and the risk of lurching from crisis to crisis in an Internet-accelerated world.  – the editors.

“Disruptive.” That’s how Michael Flynn’s enemies reportedly described him during his time as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, a tenure that ends tomorrow – a year early – when the three-star general retires after 33 years in the U.S. Army. Was Flynn forced out? The Pentagon said his departure had been “planned for some time” when it made the announcement in April. But Flynn had challenged the Obama administration narrative that al-Qaeda’s brand of nihilistic extremism had died with Osama bin Laden in 2011. He had bruised egos at the DIA trying to transform the 17,000-person bureaucracy into a more agile and forward-deployed intel operation, one shaped by the lessons he had learned as intelligence chief for Joint Special Operations Command in Iraq and Afghanistan, working for the ill-fated iconoclast Gen. Stanley McChrystal. As early as 2010, Flynn made waves with a report, Fixing Intel, that said US intelligence could not answer “fundamental questions” in Afghanistan.

You can read the interview via the below link:

http://breakingdefense.com/2014/08/flynns-last-interview-intel-iconoclast-departs-dia-with-a-warning/

Real To Reel Crime: Whitey Movie Eerie Experience For "Black Mass" CoAuthor

Dick Lehr, coauthor with Gerard O'Neill of Black Mass: The True Story of an Unholy Alliance Between the FBI and the Irish Mob, offers an interesting piece in the Boston Globe about the making of a movie from his book.

Whitey Bulger relaxes on Miami Beach on a sizzling hot day, sharing a lounge chair with his girlfriend, Catherine Greig, a gorgeous blonde in a bikini who cuddles like a cat between the crime boss’s legs. Nearby, Bulger’s partner, Stevie Flemmi, pulls on a cigarette. FBI agent John Connolly peels off twenties to pay for rum drinks as Boston businessman John Callahan, an executive with World Jai Alai, eagerly sips his. Bulger’s protege Kevin Weeks struts from the surf and joins them.
 

It’s the Whitey Bulger Gang, circa 1981, riding the wave of its unholy alliance with the deeply corrupted FBI. The notorious gangster is catching a break from the underworld grind, even as he mulls yet another murder, that of Callahan’s boss, the owner of World Jai Alai.

 

But this isn’t 1981. It’s July 11, 2014 — and it’s not Whitey Bulger, but Johnny Depp. Nor is that Catherine Greig, but Sienna Miller. John Connolly is Joel Edgerton, and so on. It’s also not Miami Beach, but our own Revere Beach, transformed magically with imported palm trees and popsicle-colored cabanas to resemble the Florida coast.

This is Scene 91 in director Scott Cooper’s adaptation of “Black Mass: Whitey Bulger, the FBI and a Devil’s Deal,” a book Gerry O’Neill and I wrote that built off of years of reporting we and others did for The Boston Globe.

Since May 19, Cooper and his vast crew have been moving around the area, making a movie out of the murderous collusion between Whitey and the FBI. I was invited to the set soon after, and it was a Chelsea morning in early June, under a gray, unfriendly sky, when I first met Depp — or, I should say, Whitey. I had arrived while they were shooting a scene where Depp as Whitey, driving a Malibu, gets pulled over by a Boston police officer on the payroll of Mafia underboss Gennaro “Jerry” Angiulo.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/07/30/whitey-bulger-film-black-mass-comes-revere-beach-and-suddenly-again/PszhmfhKxyoOx2x7SFwGON/story.html

You can also read my interview with Dick Lehr via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2013/06/crime-beat-column-q-with-dick-lehr-co_17.html

FBI: Long-Time Fugitive And Child Predator Neil Stammer Captured

The FBI web site offers a piece on the capture of child predator Neil Stammer.

How do you catch a fugitive who has been on the run for 14 years, has traveled extensively overseas, speaks a dozen languages, and could be anywhere in the world?

The answer to that question, as Special Agent Russ Wilson learned, is a lot of hard work—and a little bit of luck.

Neil Stammer, a talented juggler with an international reputation, was recently arrested in Nepal and returned to New Mexico to face child sex abuse charges. The events that led to his capture are a testament to good investigative work and strong partnerships, and also to the strength of the FBI’s fugitive publicity program.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2014/august/long-time-fugitive-neil-stammer-captured/long-time-fugitive-neil-stammer-captured?utm_campaign=email-Daily&utm_medium=email&utm_source=fbi-top-stories&utm_content=344044