THE GAME OF THE NAME MISSING LINK = "COLUMBO" & "THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN"

‘THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN’
“THE SOLID GOLD KIDNAPPING”

From the IMDb:
A criminal organization, known as "O.S.O.", specializes in kidnapping high ranking U.S. representatives. Although Colonel Steve Austin has already thwarted one of their kidnappings, he is unable to stop them from grabbing William Henry Cameron right from under O.S.I.'s nose.   

It was Ambassador Scott, the United States ambassador to Mexico, who was rescued by Colonel Austin.  Because the O.S.O was an organization which might have many cells, it was deemed too dangerous to reassign Scott (first name unknown) to another ambassadorial posting in some other country.  But he was far too valuable an intelligence asset to be left underutilized for long.  And so it was deemed that as he was a man who was able to keep secrets – a lot of classified intel crossed his desk in at the embassy in Mexico, plus the secret of Steve Austin’s cybernetic enhancements remained safe with him – it was decided by the higher-ups in the government that Scott should take on the directorship of one of the shadow ops groups in the nation’s intelligence community.  (I’m going with the S.I.A. as the Toobworld organization – the Secret Intelligence Agency from ‘It Takes A Thief’.)

But as the SIA was so top secret that there weren’t any confirmation hearings for the people in charge, Ambassador Scott couldn’t work under his real name.  Instead he followed the tradition set by his predecessors in the post and used the same code name that they assumed – “Phil Corrigan, Secret Agent X-9”.

From the very beginning of the SIA, it had been decided that even this alias needed to be protected.  And so the organization known as UNReel was brought in to create a cover story.

(For those who have never seen me mention UNReel before, it is an off-shoot of UNIT which concerns itself with providing plausible deniability to people and events which should be kept secret from the public.  Through the use of manufactured books, movies, TV shows, etc., it can be asserted that if somebody in the public claimed to have seen one of those operatives at work (U.N.C.L.E. agents or James Bond) or the real cause behind some disaster [the destruction of Big Ben by a spaceship], UNReel leaps into action to convince the rest of the world that the claimant was deluded by something else, like a movie they saw on the late show.  It is a technique that may have begun with the writings about Sherlock Holmes in the Strand which led people to believe he was fictional.  Sherlock’s brother Mycroft, who was the British government, saw the potential in that concept and created UNReel.  It has been used for the aforementioned MI6 agent [whichever one is currently using the alias of “James Bond”], agents from U.N.C.L.E., superheroes, the various moon-bases, and a certain Time Lord from Gallifrey.)
Here in the Real World, we see this utilized as weather balloons and swamp gas to splain away UFOs.

UNReel began by creating a comic strip series, hiring only the best to be their front – Dashiell Hammett provided the script and Alex Raymond the art.  From there, movie serials and radio shows were also created to maintain the illusion that Phil Corrigan was a fictional character.  Meanwhile, in the “real life” of Toobworld, at least seven men helmed the Secret Intelligence Agency before Ambassador Scott assumed the leadership role, and all of them used the alias of “Phil Corrigan, Agent X-9”. 

‘COLUMBO’
“IDENTITY CRISIS”

From the IMDb:
Nelson Brenner, a top CIA operative, is really a double agent who finds it necessary to rid himself of a fellow spy and make it look like a mugging. Brenner inadvertently leaves tiny clues in a photo shop at a carnival, on Henderson's corpse at the beach, in a tape recording he makes while in his Agency-approved identity as a speech-writing consultant - the kind of clues that no one would ever pick up on. No one, that is, except the rumpled, redoubtable Lt. Columbo. The indefatigable detective will find himself followed by mysterious agents, visited by the top man himself and entertained with a recording of "Madame Butterfly" in Brenner's own mansion before solving this difficult case.  

That “top man” would be Ambassador Scott.

So by the early 1970s, Ambassador Scott became known as “Phil Corrigan, Agent X-9”, the Director of the Secret Intelligence Agency.  He then established a cover identity beyond that, traveling under the alias of “Larry Tate”, an advertising executive from New York City who lived in Westport.  It was a trick one of his operators (he never could get the hang of calling them operatives), code-named Geronimo, used as well.  He would assume the identity of an insurance agent named AJ Henderson from Westport.  (Only “Corrigan” looked more like Tate than Geronimo looked like Henderson.)

The only real crisis Agent X-9 had during his term in office was the double agent/trafficker in intelligence known only as Steinmetz.  It would be the black mark of his career at the SIA that an outsider, a member of the LAPD known as Lt. Frank Columbo, would be the one to solve the mystery of “our old friend Steinmetz” and reveal him to be actually another of his operatives, Nelson Brenner.  (A few years earlier, Nelson Brenner worked as a double agent known as Curtis and was nearly killed during a plot to undermine the sanity of a former M9 operative named John Drake who was his exact double.)

The writing was on the wall for X-9 because of the Steinmetz fiasco, and so he submitted his resignation.  But before he stepped down from the Directorship, Scott performed one last official bit of business.  He sanctioned the assassination of Nelson Brenner before he could go to trial for the murder of “Geronimo”.  The only stipulation on the contract killing was that it had to look like an accident or natural causes. 

The job was assigned to a professional assassin often contracted by the SIA; she was known only by the name “Eve”.  But I can reveal to you, Team Toobworld, her true identity: she was a pan-dimensional spiritual entity, a demi-god known in ancient times as Bastet, the cat-headed deity of the ancient Egyptians.  

When Selena Kyle, AKA Catwoman, perished by falling into a deep chasm in the caves beneath stately Wayne Manor, Bastet possessed her lifeless corpse, rejuvenating it, and resumed the Catwoman’s larcenous career.  Eventually this escalated to becoming a paid assassin.  (It would be almost a decade before she was caught, but Bastet simply fled the shell of flesh so that it looked like she died of a heart attack.)

Sound far-fetched?  Tough.  Remember, we’re dealing with Earth Prime-Time, not Earth Prime.

“Eve” carried out that contract killing by making it look as though the vehicle bringing Nelson Brenner to court on the first day of trial had a terrible accident.  All in the van were killed along with Brenner – the driver, Brenner’s attorney, and the three detectives assigned to guard him.  Director Corrigan pulled a few strings to make certain that Lt. Columbo would not become involved in the investigation of the crash in any way.  He had familiarized himself with Columbo’s career and realized that no matter how thorough “Eve” had been in the execution of the hit, the Lieutenant was bound to find one little niggling piece of evidence that could expose the plot.

With that one last job completed, Ambassador Scott stepped down from the leadership of the SIA and handed over the mantle of “Phil Corrigan, Agent X-9” to his successor.  Since then (which happened by the end of 1975), Scott retired to a life of leisure, taking up the hobby of model trains – a little diversion he picked up after his encounter with Lt. Columbo.  He passed away in 1990, at the age of 74… presumably of natural causes.

TV SHOWS CITED:

• 'The Six Million Dollar Man'
• 'Columbo'
• 'The Prisoner'
• 'Danger Man'
• 'Batman'
• 'Hart To Hart'
• 'It Takes A Thief'
• 'Bewitched'
• 'The Man From U.N.C.L.E.'
• 'Climax' ("Casino Royale")
• 'Doctor Who'

BCnU!