Alleged Russian sex spy’s husband never suspected her of espionage
While working in Russia in the mid-1990s, David Crenna never once thought the talented Russian interpreter he would first hire, then eventually marry, was trying to extract information from him. “I didn’t get any vibes that she was a spy,” Crenna, 74, told the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada this week. “I’m not an easily deceived guy ... and there was no sense of that happening.” Crenna, a policy adviser who once worked in the Prime Minister’s Office, met Elena Crenna, then known as Elena Filatova, in 1994 while he was co-ordinating a Canadian housing project in Tver, a city northwest of Moscow. Crenna hired Elena as an interpreter but they soon began having an affair. After separating in 1996, they reconnected in 2008, got married in California four years later, and moved to Ottawa in 2013. But Elena Crenna’s permanent Canadian residency application has been in limbo ever since, the minister of public safety and emergency preparedness’s office contending she was acting as a Russian “sex spy” during the affair. More specifically, the minister alleges she engaged in “an act of espionage that is contrary to Canada’s interests” between 1994 and 1998 while working on the Tver housing project. Part of its argument seems to stem from a memoir based on interviews with a former Russian spy, titled Comrade J, which, despite not mentioning them by name, appears to explain the Crennas’ affair and insinuates Elena was “offered” to David while working as a “sex spy.” Though the couple rejects the book’s account, at least part of the story is based in fact. Elena Crenna, now 56, admits she met with an agent from the Federal Security Service (FSB), the security agency that succeeded Russia’s KGB, approximately seven times to discuss the housing project. David Crenna, then her superior, was aware of the meetings and encouraged her to co-operate with the agency to not compromise the project. The IRB ruled in Elena Crenna’s favour in May, but the minister appealed the decision. The Crennas have been testifying before the board’s Immigration Appeal Division in Montreal this week. David Crenna was asked to explain their relationship on Friday. Crenna, married at the time, said the affair started with a “semidate” after weeks of working together. Elena then invited him to her countryside cottage the next weekend. He took the train out to visit. “Who made the first move?” the minister’s lawyer, Josée Barrette, asked Crenna. “It was mutual,” he answered. The affair ended “badly” in 1996, Crenna said, when he told his wife about it and called Elena to tell her it was over. Elena later sent him a letter with an Oscar Wilde poem, and that was it. They only reconnected 12 years later when Crenna became aware of the allegations in the memoir. Crenna said he was never bothered by Elena meeting with the FSB agent during the housing project. He said he considered it normal for Russian intelligence agencies to want to keep tabs on any foreign project of its scale. “But you don’t know exactly what she told them,” Barrette told Crenna of the meetings. So how could he be sure the conversations stuck to details about the project? “Because there was nothing that she knew that was outside the scope of the project,” Crenna answered. Later Friday, the board heard from Wesley Wark, an intelligence and national security policy expert who submitted a 28-page report for the hearing. Wark was asked a series of wide-ranging questions, giving a detailed history of intelligence agencies in Russia and explaining any historical examples of “sex spies.” Questions included “What makes a good spy?” and whether he had seen the movie Red Sparrow, a 2018 “sexpionage” thriller starring Jennifer Lawrence. Wark, who reviewed Comrade J when it was published, also detailed several “incongruences” he found in the book. He concluded, in part, that it’s impossible to verify the account the book puts forward and that it would “appear to be a dressed-up version of what would be a very routine security process by the FSB.” One of the issues he has with the account, he said, is how the character that purportedly represents Elena Crenna would have been “just abandoned” by the FSB after leaving Russia. “That is all very incongruous in terms of standard practice when developing any kind of sexual blackmail plot,” Wark said. While testifying this week, Crenna said she was never contacted by the FSB after moving to the United States in 1998. Representatives for both parties will submit their final arguments in writing over the next few months. A decision from the board can be expected in March or April.