The Bridge of Spies Swap That Freed Gary Powers
On this day · 10 February 1962
On a frozen Berlin bridge, two captured agents walked past each other in silence as the Cold War's superpowers traded their spies.
On February 10, 1962, the United States and the Soviet Union carried out one of the Cold War’s most theatrical exchanges. Francis Gary Powers, the CIA U-2 pilot shot down over the Soviet Union in May 1960, was handed back in return for Colonel Rudolf Abel, a senior Soviet intelligence officer convicted of espionage in a Brooklyn federal court.
The trade took place at the Glienicke Bridge, which spans Lake Wannsee between West Berlin and East Germany. Negotiators conferred over a white line painted at the midpoint; on signal, the two men crossed in opposite directions, barely acknowledging each other as they passed. The choreography earned the crossing its enduring nickname, the “Bridge of Spies.”
The exchange quietly confirmed that espionage was now a permanent fixture of superpower rivalry.
The deal was brokered in part by American lawyer James Donovan, who had defended Abel at trial and argued he might one day be worth more alive than executed. Shortly before the swap, a detained American student, Frederic Pryor, was released separately at Checkpoint Charlie.
Sources & references
2 referencesWell-established. Corroborated by 2 independent sources.
