Dean "Do-Daddy Dean" Don Blakely as "Stud" Davis David Lemieux as Willie "Pretty Willie", white-passing Cobra member who identifies as Black. Freeman targets him as a leading propagandist. Jack Aaron as Carstairs Joseph Mascolo as Senator Hennington, running for Senator; losing the Black vote, he decides to blame the CIA for not hiring Negroes, and seeks to integrate the CIA. Elaine Aiken as Mrs. Hennington, the Senator's wife Beverly Gill as Willa Bob Hill as Calhoun Martin Golar as Perkins Frank E. Ford as Cobra Member Maurice Wicks as Cobra Member Perry Thomas as Cobra Member Clinton Malcome as Cobra Member Orlanders Thomas as Cobra Member Larry Lawrence as Cobra Member Rodney McGrader as Cobra Member Tyrone R. Livingston as Cobra Member Ramon Livingston as Cobra Member James Mitchell as Cobra Member Historical context The 1969 novel The Spook Who Sat by the Door, from which the film was adapted, had been much rejected by mainstream publishers on both sides of the Atlantic before the author met Margaret Busby in London in 1968, and her new company Allison & Busby took on the book and launched it the following year to much critical attention. The political atmosphere in the United States during the time of the book's publication was particularly contentious, as civil rights, women’s rights, and gay rights movements became visible in the public sphere. Tim Reid, whose company helped to release Spook on DVD, said to the Los Angeles Times in 2004: "When you look back at the times...Martin Luther King was assassinated, Malcolm X, Bobby Kennedy. Black people were really angry and frustrated; we were tired of seeing our leaders killed. What do we do? Do we have a revolution? There is nothing that comes close to this movie in terms of black radicalism." Soon after its release, with the facilitation of FBI suppression, as author Sam Greenlee believed, the film was removed from theaters as a result of its politically controversial message. Nina Metz wrote in the Chicago Tribune: "For years it was only available on bootleg video. In 2004, the actor Tim Reid tracked down a remaining negative stored in a vault under a different name ('When they want to lose something, they lose it,' Reid told the Tribune at the time) and released it on DVD." In a 2004 feature for NPR, Karen Bates reported that the director of the film, Ivan Dixon, admitted