Tina Rosenberg's D For Deception tells the true story of Dennis Wheatley, a British spy novelist hired to deceive Hitler. Rosenberg recounts part of the amazing tale to Scott Horton:
Deception worked like this: First, Wheatley and his colleagues drew up a cover story ("story" is actually the term of art) for each operation — what they wanted Hitler to believe. Then they began to scatter crumbs for the Nazis to find. Wheatley created enormous charts detailing what lies to tell on what date, and through what channel. Diplomatic gossip? False reports by double agents? Physical means such as "losing" a rucksack or a dead body? Nothing too direct or it wouldn’t be believable — the Germans had to gradually construct the story themselves.
That is how to write a deception plan. It’s also how to write a novel. The biggest difference was that instead of writing for millions of readers, Wheatley was writing for just one.
And, as Rosenberg notes, "the deception plans he wrote to trick Hitler were in many ways echoes of his Gregory Sallust stories, which were all set against the backdrop of real events." While on staff, Wheatley worked with a young intelligence officer named Ian Fleming, the author of the James Bond series, which premiered in 1953.
The Dish 