U.S. Ambassador Jon Huntsman met Wednesday with an American detained while traveling in Russia, the State Department announced Wednesday.
Huntsman met in person with Paul Whelan, accompanied by a head of the U.S. Embassy’s American Citizen Service, and spoke by phone with the Michigan native’s family. Whelan was arrested Monday on charges of espionage, and his family insists he is innocent.
“Ambassador Huntsman expressed his support for Mr. Whelan and offered the embassy’s assistance,” the State Department spokesperson told the Washington Examiner. “Due to privacy considerations for Mr. Whelan and his family, we have nothing further at this time.”
Whelan is a former Marine who worked in a county sheriff department in southeast Michigan before taking position as director of global security at BorgWarner, an auto parts supplier.
“He is responsible for overseeing security at our facilities in Auburn Hills, Mich., and at other company locations around the world,” his employer confirmed Tuesday. “BorgWarner has been in contact with the relevant U.S. government authorities in order to help our employee and the U.S. government.”
Whelan’s detention comes in the immediate context of the U.S. government’s effort to prosecute Maria Butina, a Russian national who pleaded guilty to working as an unregistered foreign agent and is expected to cooperate with the Justice Department in exchange for a lighter sentence.
“This wasn’t planned yesterday. It was probably planned back after [Butina] was arrested,” Dan Hoffman, a former Moscow station chief for the CIA, told The Daily Beast. “They want to deter future U.S. actions against other private citizens.”
Russia’s move immediately prompted speculation that Russia may be looking to gain leverage over the U.S. as it takes steps against Butina. Bill Browder, a former hedge fund manager whose work in Russia led to his role as the leading international critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, suggested that the Kremlin hopes to pre-empt Butina’s cooperation.
“I think Putin is in a raw panic because of Maria Butina, the Russian woman who was caught trying to basically take money from Russia and contribute it to the Trump campaign via the NRA,” Browder told the Detroit Free Press. “Up until five days ago, there was 100 percent chance she was going to cooperate. Now, all of a sudden, Putin has taken a hostage, an ex-military officer. This gives him some possibility of negotiating a prisoner swap.”
The public arrest of an American citizen is an unusual way to go about achieving that kind of goal, though, according to Anthony Cordesman, a national security expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“The Russians are generally a lot more careful,” he said. “But the United States and Russia have been at this a long, long time, and getting into tit-for-tat games over low level operatives is kind of a waste of time [and] effort.”
Browder expressed doubts about the spy allegations. “Why wouldn’t they have done the same thing with him as everybody does with everybody’s spies?” he told the Detroit Free Press. “The U.S. government should respond extremely aggressively. If they don’t, this has a very negative impact on Americans all over the world. If Americans can be grabbed by corrupt dictators for political purposes, you can be assured more Americans will be taken hostage in other countries. This is a litmus test for how tough the Trump administration is.”
If Whelan is innocent, Cordesman suggested the administration should be careful about how they defend him.
“The best way is simply to make it into a human rights issue … simply taking a firm stand on the fact that he’s innocent,” he told the Washington Examiner. “Any kind of formal exchange or tit-for-tat can simply end up escalating and taking time in which he can be detained.”
The arrest is the latest development in five-year slide in relations between the world’s two largest nuclear powers, dating back to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and retaliatory Western sanctions in 2014. Most cases involving alleged espionage happen behind the scenes, and Cordesman credited Whelan’s family with its effort to gain media attention for his case.
Whelan’s family denies that he has any spy connections, and explained to local press that he was in Russia to visit a friend who is preparing to get married. “We are deeply concerned for his safety and well-being,” his twin brother, David, said in a message released on Twitter. “His innocence is undoubted and we trust that his rights will be respected.”
Cordesman allowed that the truth is difficult to establish in these kinds of cases. “The background would easily fit an intelligence officer,” he said. But it’s also true that other countries, such as Turkey and China, have seized westerners on trumped-up charges as part of an exercise in hostage diplomacy.
“So when you talk about this, practically every arrest or detention of some kind involves some kind of conspiracy theory,” Cordesman told the Washington Examiner. “It is not clear that something similar is happening with Russia as yet, but there [would have] to be a first case.”
