Background
According to media and secondary accounts · not confirmed by official sourcesHe was born on 11 July 1903 in England, where his parents had emigrated, writes Rossiyskaya Gazeta.4
The CIA notes that he was an Englishman who moved to Russia as a child, and that his real identity – William Fisher – became known only after his death.1
An illegal in New York
In 1948 he entered the United States as Andrew Kayotis.1
In 1953 a Brooklyn newspaper boy dropped a nickel that split in half and revealed what was hidden inside. Four years later the Soviet spy Reino Hayhanen (real name Eugene Maki) came over to the American side, and the FBI established that ‘Mark’, the officer running the network, was Colonel Rudolf Abel, who operated under several false identities.2
Arrest and trial
He was arrested on 21 June 1957 and gave his FBI captors the name Rudolf Abel.1,2
He was defended by the New York lawyer James B. Donovan, formerly counsel to the OSS, who fought against the death penalty for his client in the hope that the US might one day want to exchange Abel for an American. Abel was convicted of espionage and given a long prison term.2,3
The case began with an administrative arrest by the immigration service, and the items used as evidence at his trial for conspiracy to commit espionage were seized without a search warrant. The US Supreme Court considered the issue in Abel v. United States and delivered its judgment on 28 March 1960.5,6
Glienicke Bridge
The exchange was set in motion by the father of Francis Gary Powers, the pilot of the U-2 shot down over the USSR: about a month after his son’s capture he wrote to Abel at the federal penitentiary. Donovan negotiated the trade together with the CIA lawyer Milan Miskovsky.3
On 10 February 1962, on the Glienicke Bridge in Berlin, Abel was exchanged for Powers; the American Frederick Pryor was also freed that day.3,7
Abel died in 1971.1
Sources
- CIA (archived copy, UNT Web Archive, 5 May 2009), Strangers on a Bridge
- FBI, A Byte Out of History: The Case of the Hollow Nickel (2004)
- CIA, May Day over Moscow: The Francis Gary Powers Story
- Nikolai Dolgopolov, Rossiyskaya Gazeta, Рудольф Абель, он же Генрих Фишер, был выдающимся разведчиком, абсолютно незаметным для окружающих (Rudolf Abel, alias Genrikh Fisher, was an outstanding intelligence officer, entirely unnoticed by those around him), 9 July 2010
- US Supreme Court (text in the Leagle database), Abel v. United States, 362 U.S. 217, decided 28 March 1960
- Library of Congress, Abel v. United States, 362 U.S. 217 (1960) – record in the U.S. Reports collection
- US Department of State, Office of the Historian, FRUS 1961–1963, vol. V, doc. 153: Editorial Note (the exchange of 10 February 1962)
Checked: 7 November 2026