‘Sham’ spy charge complicates Whelan’s case
Experts, supporters see no path for him out of Russian jail
WASHINGTON — Over the past eight months, Paul Whelan has watched helplessly as two other Americans detained in Russia, both imprisoned after him, were released in prisoner exchanges while he was left stranded behind the barbed wire of IK-17, a penal colony nearly eight hours from Moscow.
Russia insists that Whelan, 52, is a spy who was caught red-handed, one whose 16-year sentence for espionage is richly deserved. In the Kremlin’s harsh game of human bartering, that makes the asking price for his release higher than it was for basketball star Brittney Griner, who was convicted on drug smuggling charges but freed this month, and for Trevor Reed, who was sentenced for assaulting two Moscow police officers but released in April.
As a result, supporters of Whelan and analysts say, there is no clear path for his release.
Two men held by the United States and whose freedom Russian officials have sought for years, arms dealer Viktor Bout and drug-smuggling pilot Konstantin Yaroshenko, were released in the deals for Griner and Reed. Russia refused repeated U.S. efforts to include Whelan — who rejects his charges, saying he was set up — in the swap for Bout.
“Unfortunately, Russia has continued to see Paul’s case through the lens of sham espionage charges,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken recently said, “and they are treating him differently than they treated Brittney Griner.”
On Monday, Jake Sullivan, President Joe Biden’s national security adviser,
said U.S. officials would have “an engagement” with Russia about Whelan’s case this past week.
Whelan’s sister, Elizabeth, said in an interview that a new approach is necessary.
“I’ve had some wild and crazy ideas that I’ve been sharing with the government,” she said.
Elizabeth Whelan spoke to Biden and to White House officials recently.
Some analysts believe that the price for Paul Whelan’s freedom might include relaxing an aspect of U.S. sanctions on Russia, or even the serendipitous capture of a Russian agent somewhere in the world who could then be traded.
Elizabeth Whelan conceded that confusion persisted about whether her brother might be guilty of the espionage that Russian prosecutors say he was committing when he visited Russia in December 2018. While at Moscow’s upscale Metropol hotel, Whelan
greeted a Russian acquaintance who handed him a USB stick. Minutes later, he was arrested by Russian agents, who said the device contained a classified list of Russian Federal Security Service agents.
“You have a lot of people out there talking very ignorantly, thinking he’s James Bond or something,” Whelan said.
The suggestion has been made in some prominent places. “Was he a spy?” Fox News host Tucker Carlson asked on his nightly show recently, even as he angrily denounced Biden’s failure to win Whelan’s release. “We can’t know for sure.” Some members of Congress expressed similar doubts after his arrest, people familiar with his case say.
Whelan is a former Marine, one who took a keen interest in Russia, traveling there often and making friends with people who have police and military backgrounds. He also
happens to hold passports from Canada, Ireland and Britain as well as the United States.
But Whelan, his relatives and current and former U.S. officials firmly reject the idea that he maintained a secret identity.
“He’s definitely not a spy. But he looks like one,” said John Sipher, a former official in the CIA’s clandestine service who ran the agency’s covert operations in Russia.
American intelligence agencies have a strict policy of never confirming, nor denying, that any individual worked for the U.S. government as a spy or informant. But Biden administration officials insist that the charges against him are fabricated and have classified him, as they did Griner, as “wrongfully detained,” tantamount to a political prisoner.
And in private, U.S. officials flatly state that Whelan was not an intelligence informant. He is, they said, what he appears to be: a slightly eccentric Russophile who was entrapped by an ambitious intelligence agent he had befriended years before, apparently not realizing the man’s full background.
Whelan was an avid traveler, his family says, who first visited Russia while on leave from an administrative military posting in Iraq. In keeping with his longtime habit of making friends in foreign countries, he got to know several Russians and even had an account on the Russian social media network VK. A police officer in Michigan for more than a decade before he joined the Marines, Whelan was working as head of global security for the Michigan-based auto parts maker BorgWarner at the time of his arrest.
“When he goes to a new country to visit, he stops in at the local police station or whatever,” his sister said, adding that he enjoyed exchanging law enforcement patches with other officers. “So when the Russians say he was asking about the police — of course! That’s Paul.”
As for those passports: Whelan was born in Ottawa, Ontario, to British parents and moved to the United States. The government of Ireland often issues passports to people with Irish heritage.
Whelan’s family says he was in Moscow to attend the wedding of a fellow Marine to a Russian woman; the family has declined to name the couple on privacy grounds.
Whelan summarized his defense in memorable fashion at one court appearance in Moscow in 2019.
“Russia says it caught James Bond on a spy mission,” Whelan said in a courtroom statement. “In reality, they abducted Mr. Bean on holiday,” he added, referring to a hapless 1990s British sitcom character.
Russia’s Kommersant newspaper has reported that Whelan’s phones had been under surveillance for many years and that he was recorded telling friends in the country he was interested in classified information. An actual spy, former officials said, would not have left such an electronic trail, sought out the kinds of friendships with ordinary Russians he valued or engaged in a meeting as risky as the one that led to his arrest.
Whelan was apprehended five months after the arrest in Washington of Maria Butina, who was charged with acting as an unregistered foreign agent of Russia and accused of having been part of the Kremlin’s 2016 election interference efforts. Some U.S. officials thought Whelan might have been arrested to facilitate an exchange for Butina, or that he might be released when she finished her sentence.
Neither happened. Butina was released from prison and deported to Russia in 2019.