John Downey

John Downey (born 1930, November 17, 2014) is an American spy, officer of the Central Intelligence Agency, captured in China on November 29, 1952.

While studying at Yale University he was recruited to the CIA. After training, he was directed to a top secret agency base in Japan, where recruited agents (mostly in Taiwan) were sent to China after training. On one of these operations, on November 29, 1952, the unmarked C-47 dacota was shot down by Chinese anti-aircraft artillery and forced to land. There were another CIA officer named Richard Fecteau and seven Taiwanese agents in the mountains of Manchuria outside Taiwan and Downey. Focused on the nature of the mission thanks to their own radio listeners, the Chinese arrested Downey and Fecteau. The Taiwanese were probably lost or recaptured. Holding a predetermined version, the US State Department declared that a plane with two Fecteau and Downey missions was lost during a routine flight from Seoul to Tokyo; Both were officially deceased. At the same time, the United States and China have signed an agreement on the exchange of prisoners of war from the recently concluded Korean conflict. But either Richard Fecteau or John Downey were not on the list made by the Americans - it was because the US authorities did not acknowledge that they were both CIA employees. In 1957, the Chinese rediscovered the proposal to release the convicted officers, but Secretary of State John Foster Dulles rejected the proposal.

Both prisoners were released only after the official confirmation of their relationship with the CIA by President Nixon. Richard Fecteau was released in 1971, John Downey two years later in 1973.

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