In 1962, captured American pilot Francis Gary Powers was exchanged in a prisoner swap for which Soviet spy?

Francis Gary Powers (1929-1977) was an American pilot whose Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) U-2 spy plane was shot down while flying a reconnaissance mission in Soviet Union airspace, causing the 1960 U-2 international incident. He was convicted by a Soviet court in 1960 and sentenced to 10 years confinement, three of which were to be in a prison, with the remainder in a labor camp.

Rudolf Abel (1903-1971), also known as Colonel William Fisher, operated as a spy for the Soviet Union in the United States from 1947 to 1957, the defection of his assistant, Reino Hayhanen, revealed him. They had been using hollow coins to send messages to their handlers, but their scheme began to unravel when one of their hollow nickels containing a coded message accidently ended up in the hands of a Brooklyn newsboy. Abel went to trial. He received a sentence of five years in prison.

In 1962, the U.S. exchanged him for U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers and an American student. The exchange took place 10 February 1962 in a well-publicized spy swap at the Glienicke Bridge in Berlin.

The event is depicted in Hollywood's 2015 historical drama film "Bridge of Spies" directed and co-produced by Steven Spielberg and starring Tom Hanks. The name of the film refers to the Glienicke Bridge.