STRANGERS ON A BRIDGE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP75-00149R000100020018-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: November 11, 2016
• Document Release Date: October 29, 1998
• Sequence Number: 18
• Publication Date: March 28, 1964
• Content Type: NSPR

Sanitized - Approved For Relle Ab fbI
SATURDAY EV.BNING
POST
JAMES B. DONOVAN
CPYRGHT
MAR 2 8 1964
A daring secret mission revealed:
Ordered to swap Soviet spy Abel for
U-2 pilot Powers, he gambled-for
much higher stakes-and wow
On a June morning in 1957 the FBI arrested one "Col. Rudolf Ivanovich Abel" in
his Manhattan hotel room. In his Brooklyn artist's studio, they found radios,
maps, code books-all the paraphernalia of espionage. Abel, whose real name
was never. known, was convicted and sentenced to 30 years in prison. On the recom-
mendation of the Brooklyn Bar Association his defense had been conducted by James
Britt Donovan, a noted lawyer and an associate prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials.
For much of this time Abel was allowed to correspond, through U.S. censors, with
relatives behind the Iron Curtain, and there was strong suspicion that this "family"
was in reality a group of agents for K.G.B.; the Soviet secret intelligence. (The
"family" paid Donovan's legal fees of $10,000, which he donated to Fordham,
Harvard and Columbia.)
Then in May, 1960, Francis Gary Powers, a pilot employed by the CIA for high-
altitude photographic missio7zs, crashed his U-2 plane on Soviet territory near
Sverdlovsk. Talk at once began about an exchange of captives- our U-2 pilot for the
Red master spy. A year later "Mrs. Abel" wrote to Donovan suggesting exactly such,
a deal, which indicated that Soviet authorities were interested. Meanwhile Francis
Powers had been sentenced to three years in a Soviet prison and seven more in a labor,
camp. Would President Kennedy grant the necessary executive clemency to obtain
Abel's release? Seven months after Mrs. Abel's letter to Donovan, American authori-
ties made their decision. Here, using his own private diaries and confidential re-
ports, Donovan tells the dramatic inside story for the first time. `
Thursday, January 11
At the request of the, United States
Government, I attended a meeting in
Washington and was told it had'been de-
termined "on the highest level" that it
would be in the national interest to effect
a Powers-for-Abel exchange.
"If you are willing," they said, "we
would like you to undertake a mission to
East Germany to negotiate the exchange." I sent from Washington a letter to
"Frau Helen Abel" in Leipzig, in.East
Germany, which had been her address for
the past three years. I said that there had
been "significant developments" which
My proposal is that I meet you at the Soviet
embassy in East Berlin on Saturday, Febru-
ary 3, 1962, at 12 noon. It is imperative that
no publicity be given to this meeting by any
party. Accordingly, if the foregoing meeting is
satisfactory, please cable me at my law office
only the message "Happy New Year."
I believed it necessary for me to carry
an official letter which would convince
the Russians that the United States Gov-
ernment would stand by my commitment
to release Abel. Late on this afternoon I
was given such a letter, which I criticized
as being so cautious in its wording as to
be ambiguous. However, they declined
to change it, and it was. all that I carried
lent of Justice stationery and read:
status and good faith. It was on Depart-
CPYRGHT
CPYRGHT
nto East Germany as evidence of my
dcar Mr. Donovan:
With respect to the recent conference with
you regarding executive clemency for your
lient, this is to assure you that upon the ful-
lllmentof circumstances as outlined the rca-
;on set forth in the letter to your client's wife
s to why executive clemency should not be
:onsidered. will no ionizer exist.
Sincerely yours,
Reed Cozart
Pardon Attorney.
On this morning at 10 o'clock I re-
;cived at my law office in New York a
ablegram from Berlin which read HAPPY
JEW YEAR and was signed HELEN. The
neeting in East Berlin was set.
aatu.rday, January 27
I took a cab to the Harvard Club to,
wet a Washington contact for my final
riefing. I gave him my detailed itinerary
or the trip, and he informed me when I
ould expect to receive official instruc-
ions in London.
He told me that the East Germans were
olding a young American Yale student
om Michigan named Frederic L. Pryor
r trial on espionage charges. Before
e Berlin Wall was erected, Pryor had
cen doing research in East Berlin to,
mplctc his doctorate thesis on trade
hind the Iron Curtain. He dug too
eply, obtained some material regarded
confidential, and now the East Ger-
ans planned a propaganda trial. The
rosecutor had publicly announced that
would demand the death penalty for
e young American. It was believed that
e whole affair was being publicized
^~ . nua
Sanitized -"Approved For Release : CIA-RDP75-00149R000100020018-3