FROM DONOVAN'S DIARY, GRIPPING TALE OF A SPY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP75-00001R000100350038-8
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: November 11, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 1, 1999
• Sequence Number: 38
• Publication Date: March 23, 1964
• Content Type: NSPR

Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-
NATIONAL OBSERVER
?o
LIAR 2 3 1964
onovan s
vacation that hadn't begun and started
a five-year "assignment" that was to cost
him clients, alienate friends, distress his
family, and finally take him behind the
Berlin Wall to dicker secretly with Soviet
agents.
The assignment: The defense of the
master Soviet spy Col. Rudolf I. Abel,
which Mr. Donovan accepted and has now
turned into a fascinating journal,
Strangers on a Bridge (Atheneum;, 432
pages; $6.95). The story of the bizarre
Abel affair is told chronologically from
Mr. Donovan's day-by-day diary. And
despite the widespread coverage of the
Abel trial, the U.S. Supreme Court de-
cision on his appeal, and the Abel-Francis
Gary Powers swap in 1962, this first com-
plete account holds the reader from be-
ginning to end.
The Government's Trump Card
Arrested in a Manhattan hotel room in
June 1957, Abel, a colonel in the KGB
(Soviet secret service), was an almost
impossible defendant to defend. In the
hotel room and Abel's artist studio in
Brooklyn, the FBI found short-wave
radios, coded messages, microfilm equip-
ment, and marked-up maps of U.S. defense
areas. On viewing the evidence against
his client, Mr. Donovan wrote in his
journal: "It [the evidence] spread out
before us in a long, well-lighted "room like
some giant smorgasbord, 'filling 25
tables."
This evidence, of course, provided the
Government with its strongest suit against
Abel, but its trump card was a full con-
able oddsL and Ltheirisk of LuEllllu- in a possible swap of Abel for Mr. Powers,
Pen- the American pilot captured by Russia for
city for peacetime espionage, many at- spying in a U-2 aircraft, the pace of the
torneys would prefer their clients to plead book actually picks up. The final negoti-
guilty, in hopes of winning a more lenient ations, which take place in a run-down
sentence. section of East Berlin, have the aura of
Working on Jail Blueprints a Janmes Bond thriller.
had u u o 1"V UAAU ncn Strangcr.S On a Bridge fills in the gaps
of evidence violated Constitutional al and provides an excellent wrap-up of an
guarantees. His appeal based on this point important story of the 1960s.
eventually reached the Supreme Court,
where it was turned dnwn_hn . nnly by a -JAMES H. MOONEY, Jig.
CPYRGHT
iary, Gripping Tale of a Spy
Many attacked M. Donovan for this
appeal on the ;;rounds that the defense was
standing on a "technicality" to free an
obvious spy. But these attacks were noth-
ing new to the Donovans. From the mo-
ment Mr. Donovan took the case, he and
his family suffered threats, crank calls,
and snide innuendos about "leftist lean-
ings." Even long-standing clients shied
away from "embarrassing" business ties.
Always buttressing Mr. Donovan
against such threats and rebuffs was his
belief that, by giving Abel a strong de-
fensc, he was serving the best interest of
the United States and the law. Mr. Don-
ovan turned over his $10,000 fee to
charity.
. Strangely enough, when the, pressures
it was often the defendant who eased the
tensions. Once, Mr. Donovan was sur-
prised to find Colonel Abel calmly work-
ing on a complete set of the blueprints of
the New York jail in which he was being
held. He was redrafting some plans he had
suggested to the warden for better utiliza-
tion of space.
The author describes Colonel Abel as
a "genius," and the facts would seem to
bear him out. The colonel knew six lan-
guages; was an electronics engineer; was
well versed in nuclear physics, chemistry,
higher mathematics, and cryptography;
and was also considered an accomplished
amateur painter and musician. Paradox-
ically, his eventual undoing was caused
by two rather stupid mistakes: Blind ac-
ceptance of an obviously incompetent
confederate who later betrayed him, and
failure to follow a basic rule of spies-hide
incriminating equipment.
Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP75-00001 R000100350038-8