By JENNIFER LOVEN
AP White House Correspondent
WASHINGTON – It took less than month for the largest U.S.-Russian spy swap since the Cold War to unfold from an idea secretly hatched in the Oval Office to reality on a remote stretch of Vienna airport tarmac.
The whirlwind exchange took place Friday in a choreographed script of spy novel intrigue. Two planes, one from New York, the other from Moscow, arrived within minutes of each other and parked nose-to-tail. Their passengers – 10 Russian sleeper agents arrested in the U.S. and four prisoners accused by Russia of spying for the West – were ferried to each other, and the planes departed again just as quickly.
The whole thing, a soundless drama seen only at a distance through camera lenses, took less than an hour and a half – displaying the efficiency of this extraordinary new chapter in U.S.-Russian relations.