A spy swap I knew and loved: US reporter Daniloff’s harrowing arrest and release in 1986

Recalling an earlier US-Russia spy swap

WASHINGTON — I jammed the accelerator of the black Mercedes to the floor, weaving from lane to lane northward along the embankment of Moscow’s Yauza River. It felt like the harrowing, big city auto chase in that “French Connection” movie.

I and my NBC television camera crew had just learned that Nicholas Daniloff, a fellow reporter, was being sprung from Lefortovo Prison after 13 days of KGB interrogation.

The U.S. News and World Report correspondent was accused of spying for America.

Before the latest swap of 10 alleged deep-cover agents for accused Western spies held in Russia, the Daniloff case — now nearly a quarter-century ago — was the last known U.S.-Russia espionage exchange.

We broke traffic laws moment by moment, speeding to 80 mph along the traffic-clogged, tree-lined thoroughfare on the dangerous dash. The sweep second hand on the dashboard clock — not digital in the old Mercedes — seem to move at twice the normal speed. Would we make it in time?

Video of Daniloff leaving jail would be precious for a television report on a spy case that was gripping U.S. audiences in September 1986.

The crew was out of the car before it screeched to a stop on a side street near the infamous lockup, sprinting for the northeast Moscow prison entrance. The Soviet police didn’t stop them, a clear sign we were in time for an event the KGB had decided we could videotape.

On a normal day, a TV camera crew couldn’t get within blocks of the prison.

Daniloff emerged grinning and waving his clasped hands over his head like a boxer who just knocked out his opponent. Daniloff’s unshaven face was just visible above the roof of a waiting U.S. Embassy vehicle. He looked a little haggard as he slid inside on that mid-September late afternoon.

We turned and ran back to the Mercedes. Destination: the American Embassy and a chance for some words with the reporter who had survived a bad dream shared by all Cold War American correspondents.

Daniloff was snatched by the KGB in Moscow’s Lenin Hills after meeting a Russian contact. His Sept. 2 arrest followed just days after the Americans grabbed Gennady Zakharov, a Soviet physicist who worked for the United Nations in New York.

The Russian had been set up by the FBI: He thought he was buying secrets about U.S. military jet engines from a Guyanese student he had befriended. Zakharov was arrested at a Queens subway station.

Through Daniloff’s imprisonment, his wife, Ruth, held regular briefings for his fellow correspondents after she visited Nick. The Soviet news agency TASS routinely dismissed us all as “scribblers” who wrote only what the U.S. government told us. We were certainly wearing our pencils to a nub in those days.

Daniloff was a half generation older than me. He spoke flawless Russian, had great contacts and was obviously in the sights of the KGB, particularly because of his Russian origins. His grandfather had been a general in the last czar’s army at the start of World War I.

His son, Caleb, was in school together with my daughters at the Anglo-American school in Moscow. The Daniloffs and Hursts often found themselves seated together around diplomatic dinner-party tables.

It had quickly became obvious that Daniloff was a hostage to be traded for Zakharov; the question was when.

As I made a screeching, illegal U-turn across four lanes of traffic in front of the U.S. Embassy on Moscow’s inner ring road, Daniloff emerged from the embassy vehicle, said little but how happy he was to have been freed. He was not yet allowed, however, to leave the country.

The deal was not quite done for Zakharov. It would be by Sept. 23.

Leaves on the poplar trees Stalin had ordered planted along Moscow streets were turning to brown. The first flakes of snow could be expected in just a couple of weeks.

The U.S. News editor-in-chief, Mort Zuckerman, born in 1937 like Daniloff, had quickly flown to Moscow during his correspondent’s imprisonment. Zuckerman had been helpful as a source in the course of the story.

With the U.S. News office in disarray after Daniloff’s final, hasty departure, Zuckerman, I learned, needed a lift to Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport for the flight home.

As we drove the broad highway heading West, I asked the media big shot how he’d liked the visit.

“The end,” he said, “was the best.”