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Associated Press — Delicate negotiations between the United States and Russia led to basketball star Brittney Griner’s return Friday in exchange for notorious arms dealer Viktor Bout, once nicknamed “the Merchant of Death.”
It’s the latest in a series of high-profile prisoner swaps involving Americans detained abroad. Here is a look at some of the most notable exchanges.
FRANCIS GARY POWERS, 1962
Perhaps the most famous one came at the height of the Cold War when Powers, a high-altitude U-2 spy plane pilot who was shot down over the Soviet Union in 1960, was exchanged on a German bridge for Russian spy Col. Rudolph Abel.
The swap was depicted in Steven Spielberg’s 2015 movie “Bridge of Spies.”
Powers was criticized by some for allowing himself to be captured but cleared of wrongdoing. Documents declassified in 1998 show that Soviet intelligence gained no vital information from him, according his biography on the National Air and Space Museum’s website.
NICHOLAS DANILOFF, 1986
In August 1986, Gennadiy Zakharov, a 39-year-old Soviet physicist and United Nations employee, was arrested by the FBI on federal espionage charges.
Days later Daniloff, the Moscow bureau chief for U.S. News & World Report, was arrested by the KGB after a Soviet acquaintance handed him a closed package containing maps marked “top secret.
