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Paul Whelan expected some holiday snaps during a Moscow hotel meetup. What he got was a thumb drive full of purportedly classified data and an extended stay at Moscow’s most notorious prison. His Russian lawyer is talking and revealing a little bit more about the espionage case against the former U.S. Marine—but not much. Even if Moscow does show a little more leg on the case against Whelan, there are plenty of reasons to be skeptical.
Changes his tune: When we last heard from Vladimir Zherebenkov, Whelan’s (likely government-appointed) attorney, he was praising the work of the Federal Security Service, Russia’s domestic security and intelligence agency. “They are professionals of a very high level,” he told The Daily Beast earlier this month. “The FSB must have collected and double-checked their evidence against Whelan before they arrested and accused him; they must have been following him for a while.” Compare those comments to an interview he gave Tuesday in which he admitted that “there are many weak places in the investigation” and that he’ll be sifting through “recordings” for signs of misleading editing.
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Recordings? Authorities allegedly recorded Whelan’s phone calls and spied on his internet chats while he was in Russia. Keep in mind that Zherebenkov’s reference to potentially doctored recordings is quite valid when it comes to the FSB. Just ask Brendan Kyle Hatcher. Hatcher earned Moscow’s ire by working with religious and human-rights groups as a U.S. diplomat in Russia, and for that he became the subject of an FSB blackmail attempt in 2009. State Department officials say Russian officials tried to blackmail Hatcher with a doctored video purporting to show him having sex with a prostitute. When he rebuffed the attempt and informed the department, the tape leaked to a website known for ties to Russia’s security services.
Or you can ask the National Democratic Institute. The non-governmental democracy-promotion arm of the Democratic Party had someone email a claim that an NDI employee raped an underage girl. The claimant attached a doctored photo of an NDI employee with the underage girl—a move both NDI and the U.S. embassy concluded was an attempt by the FSB to harass and intimidate the organization.
Thumb drive of doom: But the heart of the case is the thumb drive allegedly passed to Whelan in a Moscow hotel room by an unknown person. What’s on the drive? It depends on who you ask. Rosbalt, an FSB-friendly Russian news outlet, reported this month that the USB contained the names of Russian security service employees. Given that Russian covert operatives have had a hard time staying covert lately, that seemed like a convenient way for Moscow to explain why GRU officers keep getting their real names in the news. A few days ago, Britain’s Daily Telegraph reported that Whelan would be charged with spying on “classified military structures.” But Whelan’s attorney told Reuters that his client was not expecting the drive to contain anything even remotely classified—that he’d accepted it with the belief that it had only pictures of “cultural things, a trip to a cathedral, Paul’s holiday,” and other innocuous things.
Trade? There’s also the possibility that Moscow could try to link the case to the arrest of Russian citizens in U.S. custody. Given the espionage charges against Whelan, Maria Butina is the only Russian in American custody under espionage-related charges. But Zherebenkov is signaling that the Whelan case will take a while and any talk of a trade is way too premature. Meanwhile, if Butina gets the sentence prosecutors have argued for along with credit for time served, she could be out of jail and on a plane to Moscow relatively quickly.
So who’s left to trade? Moscow could make a bid for notorious arms dealer Viktor Bout or one of the Russian hackers the U.S. has managed to extradite from abroad. But there’s a relatively newer candidate, as well. Shortly after Moscow announced Whelan’s arrest, the Russian foreign ministry released a statement saying it was seeking consular access to a Russian national arrested by the FBI in the Marianas Islands on New Year’s Eve.
Makarenko: The Russian man the FBI arrested was Dmitry Makarenko, the alleged co-conspirator in a scheme to illegally export sensitive night-vision scopes from the U.S. to Russia. In 2017, federal prosecutors charged one man, Vladimir Nevidomy, with illegally sending U.S. night-vision rifle scopes and ammunition to Makarenko, a Vladivostok-based businessman. The pricey scopes are export-restricted because their dual-use applications in combat and law enforcement make American officials particularly concerned about them ending up in Russia. Moscow’s military is still behind in developing and fielding the technology and the U.S. has prosecuted at least five cases of illegal exports involving Russia.
In Makarenko’s case, at least, prosecutors haven’t alleged any connection to the Russian government or military. Nevidomy pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to export defense articles without a license and in a sentencing memo claimed that Makarenko was “an avid hunter in Vladivostok,” and that the sole purpose of his involvement in the export case was to provide “high-end hunting equipment to a wealthy Russian for a profit.” Prosecutors were more circumspect, noting that he “was not even aware of the buyer’s name” when he arranged the sale and “could not possibly know how the buyer intended to use this military hardware.”
Small world: You may remember Vladimir Nevidomy from a Daily Beast article because, in addition to his role in the export violation scheme, he also ran a birth tourism business on the side. Nevidomy was part owner of Status Med, one of at least two Miami companies that help wealthy pregnant Russian women give birth while in the United States in order to make sure their children get a U.S. passport and citizenship. In addition to the weapons export charges against him, Nevidomy also pleaded guilty to charges that he made false statements on passport applications as part of the State Med business.
