Abel: The True Story of the Spy They Traded for Gary Powers (Dialogue Espionage Classics)

Most people have now seen the Tom Hanks movie "Bridge of Spies", whichwas derived from James Donovan's (no relation to William Donovan) book by the same name. written in 1962 or 1964.  The movie is pretty accurate to the book,where Donovan relates his very interesting role in brokering the exchange of the Sovietspy ("illegal reszident") Rudolph Abel (real name Willie Fisher) and Francis Gary Powers, theU-2 "spy plane" pilot shot down over the Soviet Union in 1960. This latter incident had a profound effect on the post war generation, which missedWorld War II, and now found that the "Cold War" was very real, and deadly, and the Russiansvery scary adversaries.  The Power's mission was yet another spectacular failure by AllenDulles, and his CIA - based on the Dulles hubris that the Russians could not possibly shootdown a plane flying on the edge of space at 70,000 feet. In those few short years of the late 1950's, the Russians launched Sputnik, passed the US inthe "space race", and then shot down a U-2 spy plane flying brazenly over their territory, takingpictures of the secret missile bases.  Powers was supposed to kill himself with the secret pingiven to all the U-2 pilots, but somehow he failed to do this.  In addition, most Americansthought that Powers was too compliant at his Moscow show trial, which sentenced him to 10 or 20years in Soviet prisons. Unlike the Soviet show trial, Rudolph Abel was given a real trial, with the American Bar Associationappointing Brooklyn insurance lawyer James Donovan to defend him.  Donovan was not a criminal lawyer,but a decorated OSS veteran who helped prosecute the Nuremburg trials after WWII.  When Donovanlost his case, he wrote a convincing pre sentencing document to the Judge pointing out that,  sooneror later, an American spy would be caught by the Soviets, and they could trade a live Abel, sparedexecution, for that American spy.  Powers was not a spy, but  the Soviets would be more than willingto recover a key KGB asset for a mere air force pilot. By the time of his capture, Abel was a colonel in the Soviet NKVD, and served in NYC as the"illegal reszident" for all Russian agents in that area.  Illegal reszident  meant that he was a sovietagent, not registered with the US government (naturally), and transmitting directly, via radio, to theMoscow "centre".  He was caught because another illegal reszident  (Reino Hayhanen) in NYC defected to the FBI, andrevealed Abel.  Hayhanen was a weak agent, an alcoholic, and never should have been deployed tothe U.S. by the NKVD - it showed an over all weakness in their approach.Most American spies, such as the executed Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, had been captured by the 1957trial of Abel.  While the FBI had its notorious shortcomings, one thing it did have was cars, communications,and manpower.  It just eventually overwhelmed the Soviet apparatus. You can still today go on a "spy tour" in Santa Fe, New Mexico, to the various places where theAmerican spies gave away atomic secrets right under the noses of the FBI and General Groves toSoviet agents.  One of them is the former "Zooks" drug store, where a Stalinist agent plotted the assassination ofLeon Trotsky in Mexico, in 1940. Rudolph Abel came from a german - Russian family who grandparents came from Germany, butended up in New Castle, England (not far from where Winslow Homer painted his famous seascapes). Father Heinrich ran guns to the Bolsheviks in 1905,  around the time that Rudolph (Willie Fisher) was bornin England. The family were dedicated Bolsheviks, and returned to Russia after the Revolution to supportLenin.  The British dutifully followed all this activity, while its intelligence services plotted to strangle thenewly formed Soviet government. Willie (Rudolph) quickly joined the NKVD when he got back to Russia, and became a very active,and prominent agent in WWII.  After the war, he was trained to penetrate "the main adversary", i.e.the United States.  Hence his deployment to New York City, a city full of communists, anyway, orat least communist sympathizers.  Abel was also the "banker" for local agents, including some in theatomic spy ring, but CPUSA membership was down to 3000 in the late 50's, and he did very little actual spying.Mostly he painted, to maintain a local cover, and mixed with the locals.What interested me in this book, was the British role in his life.  Back in Moscow,in 1931, he applied for and received a renewal of the British passport, which was a goldendocument for any Soviet Spy - an open road to the West. Why did the British give it to him, whenhe was already working for the NKVD? Secondly, his overall boss in the NKVD was one Alexsandr Orlov, who designed the "intellectual"model for recruiting the Cambridge 5 - the infamous Soviet Spy Ring at the top levels ofBritish intelligence before, during,  and after WWII.   Orlov developed a theory that targeted the upperBritish classes for recruitment to Soviet agents, which was counterintuitive to "normal"Soviet thinking, but brilliant in its results:  All "Cambridge Five" were pessimistic about Britishcommitment to stop fascism (for good reason). They did not need Soviet money, and had automatic promotions in the British Secret Service,due to their upper class social status  The dumb Americans then watched for years as this cabalkilled their agents and destroyed their covert operations in the 1950's.The least well known Britisher was John Cairncross, who wrote his history thesis on "WhenPolygamy was made a sin." Three of them ended up in Moscow exile, which was social and sexualPurgatory for them, since part of their recruitment featured homo and bisexuality. Another exceptional NKVD agent in the field in Austria, Arnold Deutsch, was said to be the realauthor of the Orlov "theory", and he combined Reich and Freud (both proven charlatans from laterexperience)  to target sexual weaknesses in targeted foreign agents.After Powers was shot down, it did not take long for the KGB to put out back channel feelers for anexchange of Abel for Powers.  The Soviets knew that Abel was still loyal, but their daily practice toldthem he could be turned.  He had in fact told the FBI nothing, and unlike today, was treated very wellin prison, with the Atlanta warden taking special interest in him. The CIA picked its old OSS agent, James Donovan, still a commander in Naval Reserve, to defendAbel, and he did an excellent job. The movie is pretty accurate about the exchange details, whichtook place in East Berlin, as the Soviets were constructing the Berlin Wall. The East Germans had arrested an American graduate student, who stupidly was making contacts inEast Germany for his economic thesis on the East Bloc economy, and Donovan pressured the Soviets torelease him.  The East Germans wanted to maintain the fiction that they were a sovereign country, sohe was released at the infamous Checkpoint Charlie, while the bigger exchange took place on a remotebridge between East and West Berlin, the Glienicke Bridge.Both sides showed up with plenty of military backup, to the consternation of local fishermen under theBridge.  Abel was in his 50's and would have been replaced anyway, very soon.  Donovan joked with him,that he would have shot Abel, if he had been acquitted.  Abel laughed, and said, "I believe you would."

Seldom do we find a man of character such as Willie Fisher aka Rudolph Abel. He had a code that he adhered to that is seldom seen in any person of celebrity in this day if at all. One has to admire him for this even knowing he was an "enemy of the state".

history buff---book arrived in excellent condition better then expected

Can't put it down

quick delivery, item as advertised

Very dry and boring. I couldn't get beyond two chapters. To me, it's just an academic style recitation of history with no story telling style to make it interesting. History doesn't have to be boring.

It was a simple throwaway line in Steven Spielberg’s film, Bridge of Spies, which kick-started my deeper interest in Rudolf Abel - the line where someone dropped the fact that the Russian spy was from the north of England. My interest grew even deeper when I trawled the internet and found a book by Vin Arthey, The Kremlin’s Geordie Spy:the man they swapped for Gary Powers (2010) - the first edition had a different title: Like Father Like Son (2004) - and discovered that Rudolf Abel was from Newcastle upon Tyne, my part of the world. The questions were piling up. Why was a Geordie spying for the Russians in America? There was no obvious way to make sense of that. I had to know more.In the original book’s second reincarnation, Abel:the true story of the spy they traded for Gary Powers (2015), cleverly appearing in the wake of the film, the title discards British idioms like “Geordie” and “swapped” because, I suspect, they might have less currency in a global English speakers’ market. The film, however, focuses on everything after Abel’s arrest by the FBI, whereas the book deals mostly with the master spy’s origins and career before that point; though the penultimate two chapters briefly cover the same ground as the film. The book also answers all the questions the film ignores: Who was he? What was he doing? What led to Abel’s arrest? Indeed the film is less Rudolf Abel’s story than that of James Donovan, the lawyer for the defence. That isn’t a criticism of the film; it’s just to say that Abel remains much of a mystery throughout. So that throwaway line about Abel being an English northerner needed explaining. I just had to know more.Vin Arthey has written a very readable and absorbing account of exactly what I wanted to know. Here is the story of an accomplished and honourable man who was a dedicated soldier for his cause, a story of the real stuff behind the world of Le Carre’s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, where some of the characters are said to be borrowed from Abel’s sphere of activity. I read this book in very short order and I would recommend it to anyone who is interested in Soviet Russia and the Cold War. Inspired by Arthey’s book I have now moved on to James Donovan’s account, Strangers on a Bridge, which he wrote shortly after the events he was involved with, based on his diary, notes, trial documents and the reports on his mission in Berlin. I have to know more.

A fuller story of the background of Abel - an Englishman by birth.Some of the sections are difficult to follow. But worth persevering.

this makes a nice compliment to the bridge of spies book and movie. its nice to hear the other side of the story and a detailed account of his life during and after the event

A true story. It all started when a newspaper delivery boy had a coin that split in half. This is true - even blyton could not have this in her plots!

An good read if this is the whole story I wonder but I am a cynical . But nice to read about an event in history.