‘We wasted a lot of lives’: CIA spymaster’s caution over past Iran intervention resurfaces from beyond the grave

A documentary about Peter Sichel – the ‘Jewish James Bond’ who died in 2025 – includes striking mea culpas about the cost and efficacy of US involvement in the Middle East In New York social circles, he was known as the “Jewish James Bond”: a refugee from Nazi Germany whose gratitude to his American hosts was such that he volunteered to join the US army and became the CIA’s first station chief in Berlin as a mere twentysomething, filing early warnings about Soviet activity that have been cred...

By Philip Oltermann European culture editor