KENNEDY'S MAN IN HAVANA Experience in Dark Corners

WHEN James Britt Donovan finished college, he asked his father to buy him a newspaper. That request was typical of Donovan's positive-thinking approach to life. At New York's Fordham University, where his classmates voted him "best all-round man," he had prepared for a career in journalism, and it seemed sensible to start out as owner-editor-publisher of his own newspaper rather than as a cub reporter on somebody else's. His father, a high-fee New York surgeon, agreed to buy his son a newspaper, but he laid down a condition: James would have to get a law degree first.

At Harvard Law School, Donovan changed his mind about his future. And as a lawyer he has prospered splendidly. He can afford the rich man's hobby of collecting rare books and manuscripts. He can also afford to leave his practice now and then for spells of public service as an operator in international dark corners--a specialty that traces back to his wartime service as legal counsel to "Wild Bill" Donovan (no kin), head of the cloakand-dagger Office of Strategic Services. After the war, Donovan served on the U.S. legal staff at the war-criminal trials in Nurnberg, later helped draft the legislation setting up the Central Intelligence Agency.

Donovan came to public attention in 1957 as the defense lawyer for Colonel Rudolf Ivanovich Abel, who in the guise of a struggling artist had masterminded a Russian spy ring from a studio in Brooklyn. Donovan did not seek the task--it was assigned to him by the court on the recommendation of a Bar Association committee. But once he took it on, he defended Abel with skill and dedication. He carried the defense to the Supreme Court, succeeded in getting Abel a fairly gentle sentence of 30 years' imprisonment. "In my time on this court," said Chief Justice Earl Warren, "no man has undertaken a more arduous and self-sacrificing task." In gratitude. Abel presented Donovan with one of his paintings. Donovan also received a $10,000 fee from somebody behind the Iron Curtain purporting to be Abel's wife. He donated the $10,000 to Fordham, Harvard and Columbia.

Donovan paid an uncomfortable price for defending Abel. Abusive calls poured in upon him. and he had his phone disconnected. His four children were jeered at by their schoolmates. His own friends teased him about being pro-Red. "You get rather tired of it," he said. "At a recent dinner, it was good for 20 minutes of needling for me to ask the waiter to bring Russian dressing for my shrimp."

In arguing against the death penalty in the Abel case, Donovan made the point that some time in the future "an American of equivalent rank" might be taken prisoner by the Communists, and it might be useful to the U.S. to work out an "exchange of prisoners." That plea proved to be prophetic: in Berlin early this year, the Kennedy Administration released Abel to the Russians in exchange for captured U-2 Pilot Francis Gary Powers (TIME, Feb. 16). Negotiator of the deal: James B. Donovan. As in the current negotiations with Fidel Castro, Donovan played a murkily ambiguous role. He was supposedly acting as an attorney for Abel's putative wife. But in effect he was serving as a Kennedy Administration agent.

In the apparent belief that these negotiations with Communists have appeal to voters, the Kennedy Administration last month backed Donovan, 46, as the Democratic choice to run for the U.S. Senate against Republican Incumbent Jacob Javits. Only a man as determinedly hopeful as Donovan would be willing to take on that sacrificial assignment. He said he was going to wage a "positive" campaign to make the voters of New York State "realize that their interests would be better served in the Senate by a Democrat working with President Kennedy." That is just about the only campaign statement Donovan has made so far. Almost ever since, he has been going to or from Havana.

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