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4.2.12
WC: 191694

“On the face of it the issue certainly seems to me like blacklisting. I’m sure they make
good arguments for it on the basis that a legitimate tactic of the United Nations is
boycotting, but still I’m sure that if I examined it as closely as you have, I would find there
would be no excuse for it. Thanks for keeping me informed. Best, Woody.”

During the Apartheid regime, I was invited to speak at the Witwatersrand University in
Johannesburg. Many in that university had been on the forefront of opposing Apartheid and I was
anxious to lend support to these efforts by delivering a strong human rights message. When I
appeared at the South African consulate in Boston to receive my Visa, the Counsel General was
well prepared: he had on his desk the Yale Law Journal article I had edited. He told me that
before he could consider my application, he wanted to see a copy of my proposed speech. I
declined his request, citing freedom of expression. I did not receive the Visa and had to postpone
my first visit to South Africa until after the end of apartheid.

I had hoped not only to speak against apartheid during my aborted visit to South Africa, but also
to try to get to Robin’s Island to meet with the imprisoned Nelson Mandela. I was working with
Professor Irwin Cotler, with whom I had taught human rights at Harvard Law School, on a
complicated legal plan to free Mandela.

Our plan began following the arrest of an East German professor in Boston on charges of spying
for his country. I received a call from an East German lawyer asking if I could represent him or
recommend a good lawyer who could. The East German lawyer—who was a well known and
trusted “spy-swapper”—told me that his client was innocent, but that the East German might be
willing to arrange a “spy swap” for my client Anatoly Sharansky. I told him that my client wasn’t
a spy so a “spy swap” was off the table. He responded “neither is my client.” He then proposed a
possible “prisoner exchange, including prisoners who were accused of spying but were innocent.”
It was an interesting idea.

I then called my friend and colleague Irwin Cotler in Canada and told him of the call. He was, at
the time, working on both the Sharansky and Mandela case, and he had previously sought my
advice on the Mandela matter. He suggested that we inquire whether there were any South
African spies in Soviet Block prisons, and whether South Africa might be willing to release
Mandela as part of a prisoner exchange among several countries.

In the end, Sharansky was exchanged for the East German man (who was represented by other
lawyers), but we learned from the African National Congress lawyers with whom we were
conferring that Mandela refused to participate in any prisoner exchange, particularly one that
involved anyone accused of spying. He wanted to be released on his own terms, even though his
decision would require him to remain imprisoned until his own terms were accepted by the South
Africa government, as they finally were in 1990.

My negotiations with the East German lawyer were shrouded in secrecy and had elements right
out of a John Le Carre novel. We used code words over the phone and met in out of the way
places at unusal times. He was a man of his word and could always be counted on to honor his
commitments. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, he was indicted on an assortment of concocted

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