Prisoner of Lies: Jack Downey’s Cold War

Journalist Werth (The Antidote) offers a riveting account of a “botched and blown” spy mission during the Korean War and the subsequent 21-year imprisonment of CIA agent Jack Downey (1930–2014), “America’s longest-held captive of war.” In 1952, Downey was among the crew of a clandestine flight into northern China assigned to exfiltrate a courier who was supposedly carrying vital communiques. But the “air-snatch” (literally dropping a line from a slow-moving plane) was a setup, Werth writes; the asset had turned coat, the plane was shot down, and Downey and another survivor were taken captive. Within a month, Downey confessed to working for U.S. intelligence. China offered to release Downey as a spy and, over time, began allowing visits from Downey’s mother, who spoke openly with journalists about her son’s plight. But U.S. policy was to never acknowledge spies held by a hostile power; even as spy exchanges with Soviet Russia became de rigueur, Downey continued to languish, unacknowledged as an American operative because the U.S. didn’t officially recognize China’s communist government. In a dense narrative, Werth meticulously details the tangled diplomatic goals and maneuvers that contributed to Downey’s long interment and his eventual release in 1973 when the U.S. began to normalize relations with China. It adds up to a robust look at the Cold War’s perpetual limbo through the prism of one spy’s harrowing ordeal. (Aug.)