Great movie until I read first trivia

Worth noting: the guy you're responding to apparently isn't able to distinguish between James Donovan (who's in the movie) and William "Wild Bill" Donovan (who was a different person, was over 30 years older than the guy in the movie, and wasn't even still alive at the time of the U2 incident).

This is much more a film about one man's insistence to act nobly in the face of US near-sightedness and fear. While the government was keen to bend every rule one man held up ideas and morals to withstand the perversions of justice that repeatedly occurred during that period. It's actually quite critical of how the US wanted to act - revealing the ingrained hypocrisy of a nation claiming to give a man justice when all they wanted was to showboat their 'ideals'. It took a good man to ensure that those ideals were upheld - regardless of whether anyone took note. As Donovan says to Powers: 'You know what you did. That's all that matters.' This, admittedly, is a classic formula of Hollywood movie making - but an important difference is that the hero defies the US government which follows a trend nowadays of freely criticising US historical behaviour but placing someone who acts according to how the US should have acted. It is retrospective idealism not really US propaganda. It's propaganda for western idealism which sadly the west hardly ever followed - something the film acknowledges. It does, however compare a little too starkly the contrasts between the powers - US safe and clean; East Germany(Soviet Union) unjust and treacherous. But then again, historically that was largely true. The US simply was a place of far less horror and confusion back then. But the way it contrasted the two was perhaps a bit much - I concede that.

As to your other comment concerning American Sniper - odd comment considering American Sniper is one of the most unashamedly pro-US films to come out of the mainstream since The Longest Day. A film glorifying a man who killed a lot and justifying it by creating a fictional bad guy we could all agree to despise. Clint claimed to just show the story of a soldier who had issues while portraying him as a hero - ending the film with the streets of America lined with people honouring the man as were he a fallen hero when really he was just a soldier obeying orders. Reckon Spielberg would actually have been more nuanced in the politics of it all. Spielberg tends to criticise his own country while upholding ideals he believes it should stand for but rarely does.

Well, there's no indication you're working for the CIA, so I presume you are.

Donovan worked for the OSS in a public capacity for about 1-1/2 years in the middle of World War Two. After Nuremberg, he was a full-time practicing lawyer for over ten years before the Abel case. He really did do primarily insurance cases. Of all the people who might have been a clandestine employee of the CIA during those ten years, he probably ranks somewhere behind a couple million other people.

If he worked for the CIA in a role other than as a source of intelligence (analyst, lawyer, administrator, etc.), that information wouldn't have been classified at the time, and - even if it were - would since have been declassified. There's nothing in his history that would really qualify him to be a covert operative, and the existence of that history would actually diminish his capability to be one. And why would the use a covert operative to negotiate the deal, anyway?

He represented Abel. That, at least, is a matter of public record.

He wasn't a "lawyer without experience." He had a lot of experience negotiating deals, as do many lawyers. He also had represented Abel, and had his confidence. His representation of Abel also gave him a convenient role, other than as a representative of the United States, and a degree of credibility with the Soviets and East Germans. Plus, his service at Nuremberg (mentioned in the movie) and his role at the OSS (which the movie, somewhat inexplicably, omits) helped establish him as a reliable guy from the government's point of view. Even if he had never met Allen Dulles before (which he may or may not have - Dulles was in Switzerland when Donovan was with the OSS), they knew people in common, and Dulles presumably vetted Donovan.

I'm not sure where people get the idea that all lawyers are incompetents until they do something else. Dulles himself was a lawyer. So was the other Donovan. Nor do I follow, exactly, why experience as a clandestine CIA operative would better qualify him to negotiate a prisoner exchange than experience negotiating as a lawyer.