Stars in their Spies: how the CIA recruits in Hollywood - my Sunday column
Hollywood is not just a hotbed of hot beds, but also a hotbed of spies.
Big names in the movie business are apparently working secretly for the CIA.
Film stars can be anywhere in the world on location without arousing suspicion so they make perfect "access agents" for the CIA's Foreign Research Division.
And they report back to their spymasters on the health and state of mind of foreign leaders they meet.
Actors are keen to adopt a real Bourne Identity because they enjoy the intrigue and excitement.
You can imagine what they might say after a Royal premiere with the Queen. "Nice old biddy in good nick, but that husband of hers wants to blow up wind farms."
I know this because an American spy I know called Robert Eringer told me although I didn't know he was a spy when I first knew him.
We go back 25 years since working together to expose an anarchist plot to disrupt Prince Andrew's wedding to Sarah Ferguson.
I always had suspicions about Eringer. His undercover skills were too polished for the jobbing hack he purported to be and his contacts were remarkable.
Through him I got to know swashbuckling CIA adventurer Miles Copeland, a drinking buddy of double-agent Kim Philby, and MI6 legend Nicholas Elliott who confronted Philby with his treachery.
Eringer even found a Deep Throat to give us the high-level lowdown on the anarchists - a senior Tory politician still a household name.
Eventually Eringer, 57, admitted in his memoirs he'd been a contract agent for FBI foreign counter-intelligence.
He had tried to lure the CIA defector Edward Lee Howard away from Moscow by posing as a book publisher so the FBI could snatch him.
The mission was aborted, and Howard later broke his neck falling down the basement stairs of his Russian dacha.
Eringer reckons he was bumped off by the same spooks who poisoned Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko in London.
The American went on to set up an intelligence service for Prince Albert of Monaco.
Now he has fictionalised his latest claims in 'Cloak & Corkscrew: Where CIA Meets Hollywood' to be published in January.
"The CIA has no problem recruiting celebrities," Eringer tells me. "The hard part of the job is stroking their egos."
