Robert Glenn Thompson (born January 20, 1935) is a former

U.S. Air Force The United States Air Force (USAF) is the air service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is one of the six United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Tracing its origins to 1 ...

clerk who confessed in 1965 to passing hundreds of photos of secret documents to the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

since 1957 while he was based in

West Berlin West Berlin ( or , ) was a political enclave which comprised the western part of Berlin from 1948 until 1990, during the Cold War. Although West Berlin lacked any sovereignty and was under military occupation until German reunification in 1 ...

, at the Office of Special Investigation at Tempelhof Air Base. He served there from December 1952 to December 1958. He became an Airman Second Class. Thompson was in contact with the Soviet intelligence after he returned to the United States. On June 7, 1963,

Federal Bureau of Investigation The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic Intelligence agency, intelligence and Security agency, security service of the United States and Federal law enforcement in the United States, its principal federal law enforcement ag ...

surveillance watched a personal meeting with a known

KGB The Committee for State Security (, ), abbreviated as KGB (, ; ) was the main security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 to 1991. It was the direct successor of preceding Soviet secret police agencies including the Cheka, Joint State Polit ...

officer and an individual who later was identified as Thompson. Thompson was arrested on January 7, 1965, at his service station in

Babylon, New York The Town of Babylon is one of ten towns in Suffolk County, New York, United States. Its population was 218,223 as of the 2020 census. Parts of Jones Beach Island, Captree Island and Fire Island are in the southernmost part of the town. It borde ...

, where he was running a home fuel-oil delivery service as a truck driver. He pleaded guilty and received a 30-year sentence which he served in the

Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary The Federal Correctional Institution, Lewisburg (FCI Lewisburg) is a medium-security United States federal prison in Kelly Township, Pennsylvania, for male inmates. It is operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, a division of the United States ...

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania, officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a U.S. state, state spanning the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern United States, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes region, Great Lakes regions o ...

Prisoner exchange

Thompson's release came in 1978 in a three-way

spy swap A prisoner exchange or prisoner swap is a deal between opposing sides in a conflict to release prisoners: prisoners of war, spies, hostages, etc. Sometimes, dead bodies are involved in an exchange. Geneva Conventions Under the Geneva Conven ...

. As part of the deal, an

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, p ...

student Alan van Norman who was arrested on August 2, 1977, in East Germany for trying to help a family escape East Germany and an

Israel Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in West Asia. It Borders of Israel, shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the north-east, Jordan to the east, Egypt to the south-west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Isr ...

i pilot imprisoned by the

Marxist Marxism is a political philosophy and method of socioeconomic analysis. It uses a dialectical and materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to analyse class relations, social conflic ...

regime in

Mozambique Mozambique, officially the Republic of Mozambique, is a country located in Southeast Africa bordered by the Indian Ocean to the east, Tanzania to the north, Malawi and Zambia to the northwest, Zimbabwe to the west, and Eswatini and South Afr ...

were released. The swap was arranged by East German lawyer

Wolfgang Vogel Wolfgang Vogel (30 October 1925 – 21 August 2008) was a German lawyer active in East Germany at the time of the Cold War who had brokered some of the most famous swaps of spies or exchanges against ransom of political prisoners between the Sov ...

. The triple prisoner play was the result of several months of negotiations. Among the key Western officials involved in the bargaining was Congressman

Benjamin Gilman Benjamin Arthur Gilman (December 6, 1922 – December 17, 2016) was an American politician and Republican member of the United States House of Representatives from Middletown, New York, from January 3, 1973, to January 3, 2003. Early life Gil ...

, a

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York New York may also refer to: Places United Kingdom * ...

Republican who has involved in obtaining freedom for a number of people imprisoned by

Communist Communism () is a sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology within the socialist movement, whose goal is the creation of a communist society, a socioeconomic order centered on common ownership of the means of production, di ...

regimes.

True identity

U.S. investigators held that Thompson was a

Detroit Detroit ( , ) is the List of municipalities in Michigan, most populous city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is situated on the bank of the Detroit River across from Windsor, Ontario. It had a population of 639,111 at the 2020 United State ...

-born American. Robert Glenn Thompson was born on January 1, 1935, in Detroit, Michigan. His mother Berenice M. Simmers got divorced and moved to Tucson, Arizona where she died in March 1993. In 1991, intelligence author and historian Nigel West wrote in a British newspaper that he discovered Thompson was not an American but a German named Gregor Alexander Best with a wife named Sylvia and two children in East Germany. He wrote that Thompson was born in Germany to a Russian mother and a German father, served in the Red Army as a tank commander and was trained to spy by the KGB and sent to

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its Provinces and territories of Canada, ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, making it the world's List of coun ...

in 1949. Thompson himself claimed when he was released in 1978 that he was an East German who was born in

Leipzig Leipzig (, ; ; Upper Saxon: ; ) is the most populous city in the States of Germany, German state of Saxony. The city has a population of 628,718 inhabitants as of 2023. It is the List of cities in Germany by population, eighth-largest city in Ge ...

and that spying "was his job." He said that he was a Soviet agent and Thompson was his cover name. In 2010, Nigel West said that Thompson's claims to be a Soviet intelligence officer were false and that evidently Thompson believed that he would not be exchanged in a spy-swap if he acknowledged being a US citizen. German website 'Konfront' claims that he was in fact Gregor Alexander Best and that he died in the Berlin district of Friedrichshain on March 19, 2019 aged 93.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Thompson, Robert 1935 births Living people American people convicted of spying for the Soviet Union United States Air Force airmen People convicted under the Espionage Act of 1917