DONOVAN: PRAISED BY JFK AND CASTRO

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP75-00001R000100370077-3
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 15, 2016
• Document Release Date: November 14, 2003
• Sequence Number: 77
• Publication Date: April 7, 1963
• Content Type: NSPR

HERALD
4e
Donovan: Praised by JFK and Castro
By MILT FREUDENHEI31
Miami Herald-Chicago News Wire
NEW YORK - Cuban Pre-
mier Fidel Castro recently
told attorney James B. Dono-
van that the ambassador of
Communist Romania had been
asking about him.
"I told him you were a very
unusual man, unique in my
experience," Castro related. "I
told him you might have be-
come a great revolutionary,
except for one quality-y o u
have too good a sense of hu-
mor!"
The man who negotiated the
release of more than 3,500
Americans from Fidel Cas-
tro's Cuba laughed heartily,
then told an anecdote only a
man with a sense of humor
would tell.
It happened in February,
1962. Donovan had just re-
turned from Berlin where he
officiated at the exchange of
Soviet master spy Rudolph
Abel for American U-2 pilot
Gary Powers and a n o t h e r
American held by the Com-
munists in East Berlin.
Newsmen, foreign corre-
spondents, television camera-
men by, the hundreds had been
swarming through Donovan's
15-room duplex apartment ov-
erlooking Prospect Park in
Brooklyn.
Mrs. Donovan and their four
children had survived t h i s
with outward calm. Then on
Feb. 20 her husband came into
the dining room and found her
reading a newspaper. S h e
looked up and pointed to a
,huge headline that s a i d,
"Glenn in Orbit," reporting
on astronaut John Glenn.
"Why don't you do some-
Mary McKenna Donovan,
"You never do a darn thing!"
Perhaps spurred by this
crack, the ebullient w h i t e-
haired Donovan went on to
conduct some of the strangest
negotiations in U.S. history.
As a side operation, he con-
ducted a losing campaign for
the U.S. Senate of a charac-
ter unprecedented in the an-
nals of New York State: He
was absent negotiating for
prisoners most of the cam-
paign.
Now 47, he has 30 Ameri-
can prisoners still to bring
back from Cuba, and hun-
dreds of requests for help in
releasing prisoners in other
parts of the world.
"Word has gotten around,"
he says, "that I specialize in
releasing people from bond-
age. "
James Donovan
... negotiator
It is a dangerous specialty.
Fanatical anti-Castro Cubans
in the U.S. have threatened
his life. They consider t It e
prisoner release a setback to
their dream of U.S. Invasion
of Cuba.
In Havana, Castro provides
Donovan with "my p r i v a t e
army" of bodyguards to bar
fanatics on the other side who
also abhor any step that might
improve Cuba-U.S. relations.
However Castro's guards
did not prevent Donovan from I
receiving delivery in Havana
of a clandestine gift-a humi-
dor full of cigars bearing the
emblem of the Bay of Pigs
invasion brigade and Dono-
van's name on the cover.
The anti-Communist under-
ground had sent it.
Donovan, who hats been
wearing a sling because of 1
bursitis in his shoulder, smug-
gled the souvenir out of Cuba
inside the sling.
In his downtown Manhattan
office overlooking the E a s t
River, Brooklyn and New
York Harbor, he proudly dis-
plays another memento, a gift
from spy Abel, whom he de-
fended by order of a U.S.
court for four years before
arranging the Abel-Powers
prisoner swap.
It is a 17th century edition
of commentaries on the legal
code of Roman Emperor Jus-
tinian. Knowing Donovan col-
lects old books, Abel sent back
the rare item through Check-
point Charlie in the Berlin
Wall after his release.
Removing a slip of p a p e r
pasted inside the cover, bibli-
ophile Donovan found a book-
plate showing a former owner
was the exceedingly un-
Marxist Royal Library of
Saxony.
This week another s It i p
(}~
APR 7 1963
Approved For Release
left New York carrying more
medicines and baby f o o d
promised Castro in the pris-
oner "ransom" deal. A b o u t
half of the promised total has
reached Cuba.
The value to Castro is $53,-
000,000. But American com-
panies provided the drugs and
baby food at an actual cost
of less than $23,000,000. Some
companies even came o u t
ahead after tax deductions.
they have announced gifts of
the "profit" to charities.
Donovan, whose law firm is
one of the nation's leading in-
surance corporation attorneys,
has donated endless hours of
his own valuable time.
Recently he spent all of a
Friday in a Brooklyn court-
house where a battle for con-
trol of a company w i t h
$12,000,000 assets is raging.
Than he took a jet to Miami
and registered under an as-
sumed name in a hotel for a ,
night's sleep.
Telephoning Cuba, he ar-
ranged clearance for a small
Pan American plane to fly
him to Havana where he spent
the better part of Saturday
negotiating with Castro a n d
rar Tne ae5T to
German food
dine in an bid
world atmospher,
at
BAVARIAN INN
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CAPT. NICK'S RESTAURANT
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ALL U $125
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aides. Returning to New York
via Miami Sunday night, he
was back at the courthouse
Monday morning.
Said a judge who has an
inkling of Donovan's busy life:
"What's new? What have you
been doing lately?"
Deadly serious business for
the thousands of individuals
involved and their families,
Donovan's work recently took
him to the notorious Isle of
Pines prison where he w a s
able to arrange eigaret and
coffee privileges for 17 Amer-
icans held as "counter-revolu-
tionary agents."
"You have been in in o r e
danger than the prisoners,"
Castro once informed Dono.
van. "By now," the quick-spok-
en lawyer replied, "You could
put me in any prison in Cuba
and I would feel at home."
Donovan probably is the
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only American to have been
commended both by Castro
and by the President of the
U. S. F or Brooklyn College
ceremonies, President Kenne-
dy w i r e d congratulations
"paying tribute to the public
service of James Donovan} ...
particularly the role he has
performed in recent months
in the difficult negotiations in
Cuba."
A healthy-appearing g o l f
(glutllxudrlm~
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time for a vacation at his 10-
room Lake Placid cottage in
two years, the pink-faced, 5
foot 8 inch Donovan foresees
no early end to his 1aaoN.
"I've got a bear by the tail,
and I can't let go," he says. it
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