AN AMERICAN EXAMPLE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP75-00001R000100350031-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: November 11, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 1, 1999
• Sequence Number: 31
• Publication Date: March 30, 1964
• Content Type: BOOK

FOIAb3b
SanitWtR.GkpTproved For Rele
NZ,w w
BOOMS
MAR 3 0 1904
An American Example
STRANGERS ON A BRIDGE: TILE CASE OF
+.oL.oNEL ABEL. By James B. Donovan.
432 pages. Atheneum. $6.95.
Forty-eight-year-old James B. l )ono-
an is a robust Brooklynite used to
variety of difficult tasks. During World
War 11 he was general counsel of the
SS; later he became an associate pros-
cutor at Nuremberg; recently he nego-
-
iated the release of some 9,700 Cubans
nd Americans from Cuba; and at the
resent moment he is 'having ' his trou-
]es, in a situation hot with racial ten-
ion, as unpaid president of New York
:ity's Board of Education. but none of
)onovan's experiences has placed him
n such a vivid and concentrated light
s his defense, beginning in 1957, of
he Soviet "master spy" Col. Rudolf
vanovich Abel, That service, vividly de-
cribed in this book, ended in February
962, when Donovan escorted Abel to
he middle of a Berlin bridge, where
be] was exchanged for the American
2 pilot Francis Gary Powers.
Donovan was asked to represent Abel
y the Brooklyn Bar Association, acting
n the spirit of the Sixth Amendment
vhich holds that the accused in every
riminal prosecution "shall enjoy the
-fight ... to have the assistance of coun-
for his defense." The first of three
:barges against Abel (conspiracy to
ransmit atomic and military information
o Soviet Russia) carried the death pen-
alty, and Donovan could find no
evidence in "American or modern Euro-
pean history of a foreign spy being
xecuted for peacetime espionage."-
Donovan also felt that Abel had been il-
legally arrested, in the light of the
Fourth Amendment, which protects peo-
ple "against unreasonable searches and
seizures." Abel had been picked up at
New York's Hotel Latham: "He and his
belongings had disappeared from Man-
hattan off the face of the earth; there
was no public disclosure of his arrest,
his transfer to Texas 2,000 miles away, or
his being held as a prisoner suspected o
committing a capital crime."
Jus ice: Donovan took the defense,
vith the belief that the world should be
iven an example of American justice.
e was determined to hammer home
he point that Colonel Abel, and not So-
viet Russia, was the defendant in the
ase. The lawyer asked a fee of $10,000
hich he divided among Fordham Uni-
versity and Harvard Law School (his
own schools) and Columbia Law School
(that of his assistants).
Thus there took place the spectacle
f a devout Roman Catholic American
awyer defending a secret agent of the
officially atheistic Soviet Union, in the
spiri e_13>> ~{ Rirti of thr Ameri-
`r.
Defendant: Opposite Donovan there
was Rudolf Ivanovibh Abel. This wily,
gray little man with keen patrician fea-
tures spoke English perfectly with an
upper-class British accent, and was easy
with five other langjuages and American
slang. He was an
knew much about
physics, and mathe
amateur of music an
lectronics engineer,
chemistry, nuclear
atics, and was an'
painting. For years
he had not seen hi$ wife and daughter
in Russia, but he' regularly received
microfilm letters fr4rm both filled with
melancholy and great affection.
Abel operated largely out of a studio'
in downtown Broodyn equipped with
hollowed-out... screws, cipher tables,
maps, countless to~ls, a photographic
laboratory fitted ford microfilming, and i
varied library ("Abel read Einstein the
way some people read 'Erie Stanley;
Gardner"). He chimed that he had.
never transmitted information by radio
out of the U.S. or
evidence against hi
failed him, and wh
been asked to steal
e seems little or no
of important espio-'
e apparently never
n he had been sen-
tenced to 30 years,) he said equably to
Donovan. concerning his defense: "That
wasn't bad. What you said,up there was
quite well done."
In Berlin, shortly before their final
parting, Abel for th first time dropped
the "Mr. Donovan" and greeted his for-
--? mer lawyer with " ello Jim." He told
Donoyan that somed y he hoped to give
him an "appropriate; expression" of grat-
itude. In August 1662 _ the lawyer re-
Court and twice before; the U.S. Su tained "two rare, si
after the first Supreme Court decision, the JustinianACode; j in Latin."
Chief justice Warren thanked him on
behalf of the entire Court: "I think I
can say that in my time on this Court
no man has undertaken a more arduous,
more self-sacrificing task ... It gives us
great comfort to know that members of
our bar associations are willing to under-
take this sort of public service in this
type case, which normally would be of-
_
fensive to them....
Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP75-00001 R00010035 031-5
erlin wall. It con-1
teenth-century, vel-