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Authors: Giles Whittell

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Bridge of Spies

BOOK: Bridge of Spies
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ALSO BY GILES WHITTELL

 

Lambada Country

 

Extreme Continental

 

Spitfire Women of World War Two

 

 

Copyright © 2010 by Giles Whittell

 

All rights reserved.

 

Published in the United States by Broadway Books,
an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group,
a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

 

www.crownpublishing.com

 

BROADWAY BOOKS and the Broadway Books colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

 

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Whittell, Giles.
Bridge of spies : a true story of the Cold War / Giles Whittell. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
1. Espionage, American—History—20th century. 2. Espionage, Soviet—History. 3. Intelligence service—United States—History—20th century. 4. Intelligence service—Soviet Union—History. 5. Powers, Francis Gary, 1929–1977. 6. Pryor, Frederic L. 7. Abel, Rudolf, 1903–1971. I. Title.
Jk468.I6W446 2010
327.127304709′045—dc22                2010018120

 

eISBN: 978-0-307-71998-0

 

v3.1

 

For Bruno, Louis, and Enzo

 
 
 
 

THE PRINCIPALS

William Fisher
, aka Rudolf Abel, Emil Goldfus, Martin Collins, Robert Callan, Frank, Milton, and Agent Mark: KGB colonel and the most senior undercover Soviet agent in North America from 1948 to 1957

Francis Gary Powers:
U-2 pilot trained by the U.S. Air Force and employed by the CIA to fly reconnaissance missions over Soviet Russia; shot down May 1, 1960

Frederic Pryor:
PhD student at the Free University of West Berlin who was arrested by East German secret police on suspicion of spying but released to his parents as part of the Glienicke Bridge exchange on February 10, 1962

    
KGB

Reino Hayhanen
, aka Eugene Maki and Agent Vik: Fisher’s KGB subordinate in New York from 1952 to 1957 and the man who would betray him to the United States

Pavel Sudoplatov:
KGB general who masterminded the assassination of Leon Trotsky in 1940 and adopted Fisher as his protégé later in World War II.

Yuri Drozdov:
KGB officer assigned to correspond with James Donovan from East Germany in hopes of arranging an exchange of Powers for Abel

Alexander “the Swede” Orlov:
prewar Soviet “illegal” agent who defected to the United States, where he was the only person who knew Fisher’s true identity

Ivan Shishkin:
senior KGB officer who posed as second secretary at the Soviet embassy in East Berlin to represent Moscow in negotiations for the Powers-Abel swap

    
CIA

Marty Knutson:
U-2 pilot whose July 1956 photographs of Engels Air Force Base in Russia helped to demolish the theory of a “bomber gap” threatening U.S. national security

Bob Ericson:
U-2 pilot who flew the penultimate Soviet overflight of April 9, 1960, and was Powers’s backup pilot on May 1

Richard Bissell:
civilian head of the CIA’s U-2 program from 1954 to 1962 as the agency’s deputy director and then director of plans

Allen Dulles:
Director of Central Intelligence from 1953 to 1961; lobbied President Eisenhower for authorization for U-2 overflights of the Soviet Union and was responsible for the timing of Powers’s flight on May 1, 1960

Stan Beerli:
air force colonel who joined the CIA to become civilian head of Detachment B, the U-2 unit based in Adana, Turkey, where he designed the Operation Quickmove security procedures for Soviet overflights

Joe Murphy:
CIA security officer in Adana who was later assigned to identify Powers on Glienicke Bridge in Berlin on February 10, 1962

    
SOVIET LEADERSHIP

Nikita Khrushchev:
Soviet premier from 1958 to 1964; abandoned bold plans for nuclear disarmament and walked out of 1960 Great Power Summit meeting in Paris after the Gary Powers overflight of May 1, 1960

Roman Rudenko:
Soviet prosecutor general and veteran of the Nuremberg Nazi war criminal trials who presided at the trial of Gary Powers in August 1960

Sergei Biryuzov:
marshal of the Soviet Air Defense Forces who coordinated efforts to intercept Gary Powers and told Khrushchev once the shoot-down was confirmed

Yevgeni Savitsky:
colonel-general in the Soviet Air Defense Forces who ordered Igor Mentyukov to ram Powers in his Sukhoi Su-9 fighter, knowing the mission would be suicidal if successful

    
U.S. LEADERSHIP

Dwight D. Eisenhower:
president of the United States from 1953 to 1961; authorized the U-2 program but bitterly regretted the flight of May 1, 1960

John F. Kennedy:
president of the United States from 1961 to 1963; promised as a candidate to close a “missile gap” that did not exist and declined to meet Powers on his return to the United States

William F. Tompkins:
U.S. attorney assigned to prosecute “Rudolf Abel” (William Fisher) in 1957; called Fisher’s espionage “an offense directed against our very existence”

James Donovan:
former U.S. prosecutor at Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals assigned to defend Fisher at his trial; later brokered the Glienicke Bridge exchange in Berlin

Llewellyn Thompson:
U.S. ambassador to Moscow from 1957 to 1962; learned of Powers’s survival minutes too late to prevent the release of a false cover story by NASA

Frank Meehan:
U.S. diplomat assigned to assist the family of Frederic Pryor in Berlin in 1961; subsequently became the last U.S. ambassador to East Germany

    
SUPPORTING ACTORS

Burt Silverman:
Brooklyn artist and friend of “Emil Goldfus” (William Fisher) whose typewriter was used to help convict Fisher of espionage against the United States

James Bozart:
Brooklyn newspaper delivery boy who picked up a “hollow nickel” dropped by Reino Hayhanen containing a microfilm eventually decoded and traced to Fisher

Oliver Powers:
miner, cobbler, and father of Gary Powers; requested an exchange of “Abel” for his son in a letter to Khrushchev and traveled to Moscow for his son’s trial in 1960

Millard Pryor:
businessman and father of Frederic Pryor; traveled to Berlin in 1961 to seek his son’s release from the notorious Stasi Investigation Prison at Hohenschönhausen

Wolfgang Vogel:
East German lawyer who served as go-between in Millard Pryor’s efforts to contact East German authorities

Carl McAfee:
Virginia lawyer who traveled with Oliver Powers to Moscow for the Gary Powers trial and pleaded unsuccessfully for leniency to Leonid Brezhnev, the future Soviet premier

Kelly Johnson:
founder of Lockheed’s secret “Skunk Works” hangar in Burbank, California, designer of the U-2, and employer of Gary Powers after he parted ways with the CIA

Dave Clark:
pioneer of the use of stretch fabrics in women’s underwear and designer of the pressure suits worn by all U-2 pilots including Powers at the time of his last flight over Russia

Marvin Makinen:
American student at the Free University of West Berlin who was sentenced to eight years in prison for spying on Soviet military installations in 1961 but released after two years at the urging of James Donovan

BOOK: Bridge of Spies
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