William Stephenson
This article includes a list of references, but its sources remain unclear because it has insufficient inline citations. Please help to improve this article by introducing more precise citations. (March 2010) Sir William Samuel Stephenson, Kt, CC, MC, DFC (23 January 1897 – 31 January 1989) was a Canadian soldier, airman, businessman, inventor, spymaster, and the senior representative of British intelligence for the entire western hemisphere during World War II. He is best known by his wartime intelligence codename Intrepid. Many people consider him to be one of the real-life inspirations for James Bond. Ian Fleming himself once wrote, "James Bond is a highly romanticized version of a true spy. The real thing is ... William Stephenson." As head of the British Security Coordination, Stephenson handed over British scientific secrets to Franklin D. Roosevelt and relayed American secrets to Winston Churchill. In addition, Stephenson has been credited with changing American public opinion from an isolationist stance to a supportive tendency regarding America's entry into World War II. Many of the claims about him in the 1976 biography A Man Called Intrepid by the British-born Canadian author William Stevenson have since been disputed; see "Disputes" below.