Lost in the Cold War

In 1952, John T. Jack Downey, a twenty-three-year-old CIA officer from Connecticut, was shot down over Manchuria during the Korean War. The pilots died in the crash, but Downey and his partner Richard Dick Fecteau were captured by the Chinese. For the next twenty years, they were harshly interrogated, put through show trials, held in solitary confinement, placed in reeducation camps, and toured around China as political pawns. Other prisoners of war came and went, but Downey and Fecteaus release hinged on the United States acknowledging their status as CIA assets. Not until Nixons visit to China did Sino-American relations thaw enough to secure Fecteaus release in 1971 and Downeys in 1973. Lost in the Cold War is the never-before-told story of Downeys decades as a prisoner of war and the efforts to bring him home. Downeys lively and gripping memoirwritten in secret late in lifeinterweaves horrors and deprivation with humor and the absurdities of captivity. He recounts his prison experiences: fearful interrogations, pantomime communications with his guards, a 3,000-page overstuffed confession designed to confuse his captors, and posing for show photographs for propaganda purposes. Through the eyes of his captors and during his tours around China, Downey watched the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, and the drastic transformations of the Mao era. In interspersed chapters, Thomas J. Christensen, an expert on Sino-American relations, explores the international politics of the Cold War and tells the story of how Downey and Fecteaus families, the CIA, the U.S. State Department, and successive presidential administrations worked to secure their release.