John Downey

John Thomas Downey or Jack Downey (April 19, 1930 – November 17, 2014) was an American judge and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer. His father died in a car accident when Downey was eight years old. After college, he planned to attend law school and, then, enter politics. thumb The CIA offered Downey continued employment and gave him back pay of $170,000. In 2008, the CIA declassified the internal side of the incident. John A. Corrozzela was Downey's former classmate at The Choate School and Yale, where they were both on the wrestling team. On the board, Downey served as an arbitrator in disciplinary hearings. He served until January 1, 1978, when Grasso appointed him Connecticut's first Secretary of the Department of Business Relations. However, he experienced a "crushing defeat" in the Democratic primary in May 1982.

In 1984, newly elected Governor William O'Neill appointed Downey to another term on the Utility Control Authority; he became its chairman in 1985. Downey was appointed to fill a vacancy on the Connecticut Superior Court by Governor O'Neill on July 10, 1987. He received the Robert C. Zampano Award for Excellence in Mediation in May 1995. He was inducted into the Choate Rosemary Hall Athletic Hall of Fame in 2004. He received a National Clandestine Service Medal from the CIA's East Asia Division in 2010.

Assessment

Historian Roger B. Jeans offered the following assessment of the Downey-Fecteau mission:

Publications Books Lost in the Cold War: The Story of Jack Downey, America's Longest-Held POW, with Thomas J. Christensen. New York: Columbia University Press, 2022. . Jeans, Roger B. The CIA and Third Force Movements in China during the Early Cold War. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2018. .

Personal life Downey and his Chinese-born wife, Audrey Lee, were married in May 1975.

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