The Academy Award-nominated film Bridge of Spies is the Cold War tale of James B. Donovan, a private attorney recruited by the U.S. government to represent captured Soviet spy Col. Rudolph Abel.

Not very many people wanted to be associated with a communist enemy at the height of the Red Scare. Donovan’s daughter, Mary Ellen Fuller, tells Steve Fast that although a number of attorneys turned down the offer to serve as legal counsel for Abel, Donovan was not worried about being seen as a “commie lover.”

“He was one of those purists,” Fuller says. “He believed in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and he actually saw it as a great opportunity to show the entire world what America is, what it stands for, and what we can do with the letter of the law.

Fuller was 13-years-old when Donovan negotiated the exchange of Abel for two U.S. citizens held by the Soviets, including spy plane pilot Francis Gary Powers. Fuller says that although her father had the high-profile role of representing Abel, her family had no idea that Donovan had been sent to Berlin for secret prisoner exchange negotiations.

“We thought he was golfing in Scotland,” Fuller says. “The only person who knew was John Dulles at the CIA.”

The East Berlin negotiation was not the last time Donovan would be asked to work, as a private citizen, on behalf of the government. In 1962, Donovan negotiated the release of over 9,000 men, women, and children detained in Cuba.

Fuller recalls Fidel Castro frequently calling the Donovan home phone.

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