An East-West Swap

The exchange took place on the Glienicker Bridge spanning the Havel River between Potsdam, East Germany, and West Berlin. The Soviet and East German & officials clustered at one end, the Americans, led by Assistant Secretary of State Richard Burt, at the other. From the Potsdam side, a bus containing some two dozen East Germans and Poles who had been imprisoned as spies for the West crept to the span's center. The passengers switched to a West German bus and rode to freedom. Moments later, a blue van drove from the West Berlin side to the same spot. Three men and a woman, released from American prisons where they were serving sentences or awaiting trial for espionage, got out and walked eastward.

It was the largest East-West spy swap since World War II, the result of talks among six nations: the U.S., East and West Germany, Poland, Bulgaria and the Soviet Union. Negotiations began after Polish Spy Marian Zacharski was sentenced to life in prison in 1981 for buying classified documents from a Hughes Aircraft Co. radar engineer. Poland let the U.S. know it wanted him back. In 1983 Alfred Zehe, a Dresden physicist, was arrested in Boston for buying classified information from a Navy employee cooperating with the FBI. East Germany then entered the talks through Wolfgang Vogel, an East German lawyer who helped engineer the 1962 swap of American U-2 Pilot Francis Gary Powers for Soviet Master Spy Rudolf Abel, also across the Glienicker Bridge. Soon Vogel was dealing as well for Bulgarian Penyu Kostadinov, indicted in 1983 for buying nuclear weapons secrets in New York City, and for Alice Mickelson, an East German arrested last year at New York's Kennedy Airport in a smuggling attempt.

American officials first sought the release of Soviet Dissidents Anatoly Shcharansky and Andrei Sakharov. When Moscow said no, the U.S. went instead for numbers. The deal was finally closed last month when President Reagan was in West Germany for the economic summit. The 19 East Germans and six Poles involved were mainly low-level spies employed by U.S. intelligence agencies.

The swap occurred while Washington was preoccupied with the Walker spy scandal. "We considered the awkward timing," said a senior U.S. diplomat. "But we felt this was sufficiently different so we could go forward. Besides, it had been so painstaking to put together, we had to."