Defence Wing

Chapter 8 — The Senate Race: James B. Donovan Enters American Politics From International Negotiator to Political Candidate By 1962, James B. Donovan had become one of the most unusual public figures in New York. He was a successful lawyer, a former wartime officer, a Nuremberg prosecutor, the defender of Soviet intelligence officer Rudolf Abel, and the negotiator who had helped arrange the exchange of Abel for American U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers. At the same time, Donovan was deeply involved in another extraordinary mission: negotiating the release of prisoners held in Cuba after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion. And then he made a dramatic decision. He entered electoral politics. The man who had been negotiating with Soviet representatives and Fidel Castro would now have to persuade ordinary voters. That was a completely different kind of negotiation. --- 1. The Political Donovan Donovan's political ambitions did not emerge from nowhere. Public service had been a recurring them...

Chapter 7 — James B. Donovan in Cuba: The Negotiator Who Faced Fidel Castro From the Glienicke Bridge to Havana James B. Donovan had already accomplished something extraordinary. He had defended Soviet intelligence officer Rudolf Abel when almost everyone around him regarded Abel as an enemy. He had persuaded the American judicial system to spare Abel's life. Years later, that decision became strategically invaluable when Abel was exchanged for American U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers. But Donovan's most remarkable diplomatic chapter was still ahead. His next challenge would take him from the tense atmosphere of Cold War Berlin to revolutionary Cuba, where he would sit across the table from one of the most formidable political figures of the twentieth century: Fidel Castro. This time, there would be no courtroom, no judge, and no formal diplomatic delegation. There would be conversation, persuasion, psychological calculation—and an extraordinary amount of patience. --- 1. Cuba Af...

Chapter 6 — The Abel–Powers Exchange James B. Donovan and the Most Dangerous Negotiation of the Cold War The courtroom battle was over. Rudolf Abel had been convicted. The Supreme Court had upheld his conviction. He was sitting in a U.S. prison. For most people, the story would have ended there. But James B. Donovan had seen further. He had argued that Abel should not be executed because someday the Soviet Union might capture an American intelligence officer and the United States might need Abel as a bargaining asset. Then, in 1960, that seemingly hypothetical possibility became reality. An American U-2 reconnaissance aircraft was shot down over the Soviet Union. The pilot survived. His name was Francis Gary Powers. And suddenly, Donovan's old client became extremely valuable. --- 1. The U-2 Mission On 1 May 1960, Francis Gary Powers was flying a highly classified American U-2 reconnaissance aircraft over Soviet territory. The U-2 was designed for extremely high-altitude intelligen...

Chapter 5 — The Arrest and Trial of Colonel Rudolf Abel The Spy, the Hollow Nickel, and the Lawyer Who Refused to Give Up By 1957, the Cold War had transformed espionage into a national obsession in the United States. Soviet intelligence officers were operating secretly inside Western countries, while American counterintelligence agencies were trying to uncover them. Then the FBI caught one of the Soviet Union's most important “illegal” agents in America. His operational identity was Rudolf Abel. His real name was William Fisher. And his capture began a chain of events that would eventually lead to one of the most famous prisoner exchanges of the Cold War.  --- 1. The Strange Beginning: A Hollow Nickel The story actually began four years before Abel's arrest. On June 22, 1953, a Brooklyn newspaper boy discovered something bizarre. A nickel he was carrying suddenly came apart. Inside the coin was a tiny photographic image containing rows of numbers. It looked like something from...