Exchange of Rudolf Abel

Date: February 10, 1962 • Location: Washington D.C., United States

Rudolf Abel, a Soviet spy arrested by the FBI, was exchanged for Francis Gary Powers, the pilot of the CIA spy plane that had been shot down over Soviet airspace two years earlier.

William August Fisher, better known by the alias Rudolf Ivanovich Abel, was a Soviet intelligence officer. He adopted his alias to alert his Soviet KGB handlers when he was arrested in the USA on charges of espionage by the FBI in 1957.