American who was arrested and detained in Russia speaks out
WASHINGTON (CBS, KYMA/KECY) - Paul Whelan spoke with Margaret Brennan on Face the Nation Sunday about being arrested and detained in Russia.
Whelan, according to Brennan, was in Moscow in 2018 for a friend's wedding, but according to a newly released video of his arrest, it showed an "acquaintance who worked for the FSB" putting a flash drive in his hands in a Moscow bathroom, which led to his arrest. When if the man set him up, Whelan said:
"I was certainly targeted. I hadn't done anything. I hadn't committed espionage. I was accused of being a brigadier general with the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, the DIA. I certainly, you know, was never a general, and I never worked for the DIA, and I was never a secret agent. So the case they came up with was, you know, materially false. I was obviously set up."
Following his arrest, the Russians wanted to trade Whelan for Maria Butina, a Russian spy who was arrested in the United States.
During the interview, Brennan and Whelan talked about the latter being detained in a Russian labor camp, where he was sentenced to 16 years in 2020, but two years after that, he not only learned that WNBA star Brittney Griner was detained in February of 2022, but that Russia invaded Ukraine that same year.
When asked how much of this was he hearing in terms of what was happening outside the prison, Whelan said:
"I was fortunate. The ambassadors and the consular teams from my four countries, America, Canada, Ireland and England would come and visit me on a regular basis at the labor camp. I received a lot of information from them. You know, I did get mail from home. A lot of supporters around the world were sending letters in. A lot of that came through, you know, the consular officials. I was able to use telephone legally. There was a phone in the prison control room that I could use with a phone card to call my family. So I got some information from them. I was in touch with government officials from my four countries overseas, including Roger Carstens, the Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs. And I would also speak with the family members of prisoners in the prison and get their take on things that were happening around the world. So I- you know, I had a fair amount of information coming in the, you know, the Russian media is just propaganda. It's, you know, oh yeah, there's a forest fire in Russia. Oh yeah, well, Canada has those too, you know, it's not just Russia. There's a car accident in Russia. Oh yeah, America has car accidents too. It's not just us. It's that sort of thing. It's all propaganda. And they didn't report much on the war. And they didn't report much on the war because they were losing, and that was interesting for us. Information came in very, very slowly, but when the Russian government started taking prisoners from our camps to go to the war, then we knew they were really in trouble."
Also during the interview, Brennan and Whelan talked about the latter's lowest point during his detainment: Learning that Griner would return home to the United States before him.
"I started to explain earlier that I had been working in the factory, I was called to the warden's office, the FSB's there, etc, etc. There's a phone call for me. I pick up the phone. It's the White House. It's one of the officers with the DHS, and he basically tells me that, you know, Brittney Griner was going home, that the trade was for Viktor Bout. And you know, I asked him point blank. I said, 'So, what else do you have to trade?' And he said 'Nothing.' I said, 'You gave up your negotiation platform. There's nothing else. How do you now get me back?' And he said, 'Well, you know, we're going to reconvene tomorrow to discuss that.' And I said, you know, I said point blank to him, 'You realize what you've done, that you've abandoned me here. You have no one to trade. They don't want anyone else.' And he said, 'Yes, yes, we realize that.' And I said, 'well, you know, you know, say hello to Brittney. I'm glad she's going home.' You know, she shouldn't have been there at all ever. I mean, she shouldn't have been arrested. I shouldn't have either. Trevor shouldn't have either. I was glad that she was going home, just as I was glad Trevor was going home. But I said, 'You know,' to the gentleman on the phone, 'You have got to do more. You have got to do something.' And you know, that was my complaint all along. And when I was in court, I, you know, I'd hold up my signs and say you've got to do something, take some action. And that's one of the problems with the U.S. policy on hostage diplomacy. We're- we're fairly good at getting people back, okay, but that's not the deterrence that's needed. The U.S. government has got to have a policy where they deter countries like Russia and China from taking our citizens in the first place."
However, Whelan would finally be free when President Joe Biden had to convice the Chancellor of Germany to free a convicted Russian assassin, whom the Russian government wanted back.
After the swap took place in Turkey, Whelan met with President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris on the tarmac of Andrews Air Force Base.
"I didn't realize we were going to Andrews, and I didn't realize the president and the vice president were going to be there. You know, I was...I had been in solitary confinement for the five days prior to leaving at Lefortovo Prison in Moscow. You know, I had on clothes that I had worn in 2018 when I'd been arrested. You know, they hadn't been washed. They were too big for me. I was very careful coming down the, you know, the stairs from the plane. You know, I was told I could go first because I'd been held the longest. But, you know, you- you see the the stairs come down, and the president and vice president are looking up at the plane, and I'm in the plane, and I'm looking out, and I'm looking at all the media saying, wow, okay, you know, I need to figure out how to do this really quickly. And so I came down slowly. I, you know, I waved at people that were waving at me, and then I gave the president a salute as the Commander in Chief. And I just walked down to him and started talking to him, you know, I thanked him for getting us home. You know, thanked him for, you know, what it meant to me and my family, as well as the others that were, you know, on the plane coming- coming behind me, you know, it's, you know, it's one of those situations you can't really plan for very well, but President Biden, he was very, very personable. Same with Vice President Harris, you know, you saw us. We embraced, we hugged, we chatted. You know, at one point the president took the, you know, the flag lapel pin off his lapel and put it on my shirt. You know that...it was supposed to be a choreographed like receiving line, where we'd get off the plane, we'd shake hands, and then, you know, meet our family and go into the operations building at the Air Force. But that's not what happened. And we just, you know, we kind of milled about chatting and talking to the media and whatnot. And you know that that made it real, because we were, we were with real people. Jake Sullivan was there, National Security Advisor, some of the other people that had helped get me home were there, and we talked, you know, we chatted."
Paul Whelan
During that time, Whelan learned that Griner was also instrumental in getting him home saying:
"Brittney was a great help after she came home, you know, I think probably the, you know, within days of her getting home, she was talking to people about how they could support me, and she had people making monetary donations, sending cards, sending letters, offering all sorts of support, her basketball team, all sorts of support. And, you know, those cards and whatnot that came to the camp, they didn't just benefit me. They benefited all the people that I interacted with who never get any mail, because it's, you know, in their culture, it's very difficult. It's just not what they do. But all these cards and things coming in, they'd never seen this. So this was kind of like a piece of America, a piece of the West, and all of my friends would take the cards and try to read them. They, you know, they'd want the card because of the picture on the front. So everything that she did, as well as others sending in cards and letters and things, that really helped me, but it also helped all the other people in the camp. And we were, you know, we were known like me and my friends and whatnot, we were known for having all these letters and cards. And people would come and, you know, want to just look at the cards. You know, they couldn't understand the English, but they wanted to look at the cards and see what the West was like, you know, and the Christmas cards, the Easter cards, things that in the, you know, these Muslim countries, they just don't have. So yeah, she did a lot to help me. And, you know, I was glad she got back, and I was glad that when she got back, that she, you know, then turned her attention on, not just her reintegration, but also, you know, my release, and what she could do morally to support me."
To watch Brennan's full interview with Whelan, click here.
