Spy Swaps Harken Back to Cold War and Virginian Gary Powers
All 10 of the accused Russian spies held in the United States pleaded guilty Thursday at a hearing in Manhattan, a key step in a reported deal under negotiation with Russia for the largest swap of espionage detainees since the Cold War. Charles Fishburne reports.
Virginia has a long history of spy activity, and three of the accused Russian spys were arrested in Northern Virginia, transferred to New York for hearing in Manhattan yesterday. But the most celebrated case of swapping spies involved Virginia U-2 Pilot Francis Gary Powers, who was shot down over the Soviet Union in 1962.
Powers: Everyone was hoping and praying that nothing like this would ever happen.
Francis Gary Powers was captured, interrogated, tried and sentenced to ten years in a Soviet prison.
Powers: I knew that there was information that I wanted to keep from them, you know, at all costs, any way that I could.
He never talked and he was eventually swapped for Soviet spy Rudolph Ivanovich Abel. Recent talks of spy swaps is both a reminder of the Cold War and a reminder we may not have entirely left it behind.
Charles Fishburne, WCVE News
Post new comment