Some notable past spy swaps involving the United States and the former Soviet Union:
_Feb. 10, 1962: Francis Gary Powers and Rudolf Ivanovich Abel are released from their prison terms for espionage and are exchanged secretly at the border between West Berlin and East Germany. Powers was the pilot of the U.S. U-2 photo-reconnaissance plane shot down May 1, 1960 near Sverdlovsk in the central USSR. Abel was reputed to be the director of a Soviet spy network in the U.S. at the time of his arrest, June 21, 1957 in New York.
_Oct 11, 1963: The State Department announced that two accused Soviet agents held by the U.S. had been exchanged for two Americans convicted and imprisoned on espionage charges. The Americans freed by the exchange are Marvin William Makinen, 24, an Ashburnham, Mass., student arrested in Kiev in 1961 while touring, and the Rev. Walter M. Ciszek, of Shenandoah, Pa., a Jesuit missionary arrested in the USSR in 1941. The freed Russians were Ivan D. Egorov, former UN Secretariat personnel officer, and his wife Alexsandra.
_April 22, 1964: Greville Maynard Wynne, a British businessman jailed in 1963 on charges of spying for Britain and the U.S., was exchanged for Konon Trofimovich Molody, a Russian army officer imprisoned by the British in 1961 for masterminding a spy ring that obtained valuable information about British submarines. The exchange took place at Heerstrasse on the West Berlin-East German border.
_April 30, 1978: A three-way prisoner exchange among the U.S., East Germany and Mozambique was completed. Miron Marcus, an Israeli citizen held since September 1976, was released on the Mozambique-Swaziland border. The U.S. released Robert G. Thompson, a former Air Force intelligence clerk convicted of passing secrets to the Soviets. East Germany released Alan Van Norman of Windom, Minn., who had been arrested in East Germany while trying to smuggle a German doctor, his wife and son to the West.
_April 27, 1979: Five political and religious dissidents were released from Soviet prisons and flown to New York in exchange for two Russians convicted of spying in the United States. The dissident group included Alexander Ginzburg, one of the best known Russian dissidents. The two spies were Valdik A. Enger and Rudolf P. Chernyayev.
_June 11, 1985: The U.S. and the Eastern bloc exchanged accused spies in a deal that was to eventually involve 29 people. The exchange took place on the Glienecke Bridge between East Germany and West Berlin. Four people convicted or indicated for espionage in the United States were exchanged for five Polish prisoners and 20 other alleged spies held in East Germany and Poland in what was described as one of the largest East-west prisoner swaps since World War II.
_Feb. 11, 1986: Soviet Jewish dissident Anatoly B. Shcharansky was freed in an exchange that involved a total of nine persons either accused or convicted of espionage. The exchange took place on the Glienicke Bridge between East Germany and West Berlin. Shcharansky, had been convicted in the U.S.S.R. in 1978 of spying for the West. His release came after eight years of imprisonment and forced labor. The West freed five people: Karl and Hana Koechner, a Czechoslovakian-born couple accused by the U.S. in 1984 of spying for their native country; Yevgeny Zemlykov, a Soviet jailed in West Germany in 1985 for stealing technology secrets; Jerzy Kaczmarek, a Polish intelligence agent jailed in West Germany, and Detlef Scharfenoth, an accused East Germany spy arrested in West Germany in 1985.
_September 1986 — American journalist Nicholas Daniloff and accused Soviet spy Gennadiy Zakharov, a worker at the United Nations, were released a day apart after just three weeks of negotiations by the U.S.S.R. and the U.S. following their arrests a few days apart.
Sources: The Associated Press, Facts on File
Compiled by AP Reseacher Julie Reed.
Copyright © 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
