Advertisement

On This Day: U.S. swap Soviet agent Rudolf Abel for captured U2 pilot Gary Powers on Berlin’s ‘Bridge of Spies’

FEBRUARY 10, 1962: American CIA pilot Gary Powers was swapped for Soviet agent Rudolf Abel in one of the most legendary Cold War spy exchanges on this day in 1962.

Powers, who was jailed after crashing his U2 reconnaissance jet in Russia, and Abel, who ran an espionage ring in New York, were exchanged at the Glienicke Bridge.

The Havel River crossing separated Potsdam in communist East Germany from the capitalist enclave of West Berlin.

Powers and Abel crossed the border at the same time – 8.52am – after months of negotiations.

At that moment, Frederic Pryor, a U.S. student captured in East Germany a year earlier, was also released to American authorities at another checkpoint.

Three other swaps later took place at the Glienicke crossing, which was nicknamed the Bridge of Spies, a pun on Venice’s Bridge of Sighs.

But the exchange between Powers and Abel, real name Vilyam Fisher, who had smuggled secrets inside coins, was the most iconic.


Powers in particular was a global cause célèbre after sparking a scandal that exposed espionage and dramatically raised tensions between the U.S. and Soviet Union.

The CIA pilot was used for propaganda by the communists, who claimed they had shot him down – despite him flying beyond the reach of anti-aircraft guns – in 1960.

The Soviets displayed intact the jet, which contained high-resolution cameras, after exposing America’s weather plane claims as “silly lies”.

[On This Day: Britain invades uninhabited Island in bizarre Cold War drama]

It coincided with Paris talks between the rivals that collapsed when U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower refused to apologise to Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev.

To add to the Americans’ humiliation, Powers delivered a public confession after being interrogated, and then had to endure a televised show trial in Moscow.

Powers was flown back to the U.S., where he faced public suspicion and a grilling by the Senate Armed Services Committee.


He faced criticism for failing to trigger the aircraft’s self-destruct mechanism.

Senators also quizzed him about his doubts over the Soviets’ insistence that they had shot down the aircraft while it was flying at 70,000ft.

It later emerged that the communists had actually shot down one of their own planes, killing the pilot - and it was this high-altitude flyby that had damaged the U2.

In 1965, Powers was awarded the CIA’s Intelligence Star and received several more medals posthumously following his tragic death in a helicopter crash in 1977.

[On This Day: Italy sides with the Allies and declares war on Germany]

The U2 incident showed the world the lengths the Americans were willing to go to spy on their rival superpower.

Soviet spies had a somewhat easier job since Western societies were less secretive and easier to infiltrate.

They also had an easier job recruiting foreign ideological supporters such as Abel, who was born in Britain in 1903 to Russian revolutionary émigrés.


He became a highly accomplished spy and espionage teacher after travelling to the Soviet Union in 1921 and initially training as a radio operator.

In 1946 he travelled to the U.S. using a stolen American passport with the name of Andrew Kayotis – the first of many aliases – to begin 11 years as a spy in New York.

Among the secrets he and his network helped smuggle to Soviet officials were details of U.S. nuclear bombs that had been coaxed from government scientists.

[On This Day: First World War ends after Germany surrenders and Armistice is signed]

The KGB colonel, who used several devices to hide notes, including inside 5c coins, was only thwarted when an assistant defected at the U.S. embassy in Paris in 1957.

The FBI, despite not knowing Abel’s name as Soviet spies even kept this a secret among each other, eventually tracked him down and revealed his latest identity.

He served five years of a 30-year sentence before the spy exchange – covered by a short News of the Day newsreel - and return to Moscow.

Despite his unwavering loyalty, the Soviets forced him into retirement amid fears he’d been turned into a double agent, and he died aged 68 from lung cancer in 1971.