[1][2] In 2013, then-CIA Director John O. Brennan said Downey's "ordeal remains among the most compelling accounts of courage, resolve, and endurance in the history of our agency.

[4][6] At Yale, he was a member of the social and literary fraternity St. Anthony Hall and played on the football, rugby, and wrestling teams.

[1][4] While still a senior in college, Downey began his CIA training at Fort Benning in Columbus, Georgia, learning to parachute out of planes.

"[4] After a year of training, Downey traveled to a secret compound in Japan that was part of the United States Korean War effort called Third Force or Operation Tropic.

[4] On November 29, 1952, two pilots, Downey, and a newly arrived CIA paramilitary officer Richard Fecteau took an unarmed C-47 Skytrain airplane into China to extract the courier via a snatch pickup.

[4] The plane made a second pass 45 minutes later; Downey's view through the cargo doors showed the courier ready on the ground.

[4] As the pilots began a descent, they were ambushed: "Snow-colored sheets snapped back to reveal two anti-aircraft guns on either side of the plane, which started to fire simultaneously."

[4] Except for a bullet that had grazed Downey's cheek, he and Fecteau emerged from the crash with just bruises and scrapes; however, the pilots were killed because the leaking fuel had ignited in the cockpit.

"[5] Because of a CIA blunder, all of Third Force's Chinese operatives had trained together with Downey, so the entire program was at risk by the capture or turning of just one agent.

[4] The CIA came up with a cover story for the missing men, saying that a commercial flight with two pilots and two U.S. Defense Department civilian employees had disappeared somewhere over the Sea of Japan while flying from South Korea to Japan—changing the date to four days after the actual covert operation.

[4] Downey's mother received a telegram from CIA Director Walter Bedell Smith on December 7, 1952, stating that her son was a passenger on a routine commercial flight that was overdue.

[5][9] There were also daily indoctrination sessions, reading and discussing Marxist literature and listening to anti-Western propaganda on Radio Peking.

[4][9] After the trial on November 23, 1954, the Chinese News Agency announced that it had captured and tried two American spies, letting the United States and Downey's family know he was alive.

[8] Because their status as CIA officers was a secret, the U.S. Government claimed Downey and Fecteau were civilian employees of United States Army.

[4] When Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai expressed willingness to discuss Downey and Fecteau's release and invited their families to visit, U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles rejected his offer, forbade visits by their relatives, and claimed China had committed the "reprehensible" crime of holding Americans on "trumped up charges.

[3] In 1957, Zhou again offered to release Downey and Fecteau, this time if the United States would let American journalists visit China.

Thus it was the unlucky, but not coincidental, the fate of John Downey and Richard Fecteau to be imprisoned for two decades after flying covertly over China at the height of the Cold War, with a stubborn, anti-communist, anti-Chinese figure serving as Secretary of State.

[11] After his release, Downey provided little information about his capture and imprisonment publicly, turning down requests for interviews and book offers.

[9] However, CIA Director Allen Dulles had instituted a schedule of promotions and raises in his absence, eventually reaching $22,000 a year.

[9] When the amount exceeded that allowed by bond policy, money was deposited into bank savings accounts under false names.

[9] However, because the Internal Revenue Service required the reporting of earned interest, the money had to be transferred to an account in Downey's name.

[9] During his captivity, the CIA also gave an allotment of $700 a year from his salary to his mother which allowed her to purchase and mail food and vitamins to Downey.

[9] In 2006, the CIA's Studies in Intelligence included an article describing the mission, the capture, and, ultimately, the release of agents Downey and Fecteau.

[2][4] In July 1977, Connecticut Governor Ella Grasso appointed Downey to a six-year term on the State Personnel Appeal Board.

[15][14][17] The Department of Business Relations was considered a good fit for Downey who "lacked government experience" as its function was limited to budgetary and administrative authority over the divisions of banking, consumer counsel, insurance, liquor control, and public utilities.

[20] In 1984, newly elected Governor William O'Neill appointed Downey to another term on the Utility Control Authority; he became its chairman in 1985.

[2][5][23] Downey was a member of the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges and the New Haven County Bar Association.

Jeans offered the following assessment of the Downey-Fecteau mission: Rather than dwell on the tragic fate of Downey and Fecteau, which was the direct result of the CIA’s mistakes and stubborn refusal to admit the two men were on an agency mission, the CIA emphasized the “exemplary manner” with which it had treated the men and their families over their two-decades-long ordeal.

[1][4] They met at Yale after his return from China when he was taking a summer class in Russian (to test his self-study in prison) and she was working on an advanced degree in chemistry.

"[26] Downey died in hospice care at Branford, Connecticut, on November 17, 2014, aged 84, from pancreatic cancer and Parkinson's disease.