Paul Whelan, a former U.S. Marine jailed in Moscow on espionage charges, wound up on the radar of Russia’s Federal Security Service more than 10 years before he was arrested late last year, according to Russia’s Kommersant newspaper. Sources cited by the news outlet say Whelan caught the attention of the security services during his very first visit to Moscow in 2007, when he was still in the Marines and his unit was in Iraq. Authorities claim he drew suspicion immediately by seeking out members of the Russian military and FSB, a move which is said to have led the intelligence services to bug his phone calls and keep track of his meetings in the country for several years. Whelan was arrested last December in a room at Moscow’s Metropol Hotel after Russian authorities claim he was “caught red-handed” with a flash drive containing state secrets. Whelan has maintained that he was set up by a Russian friend who worked in the FSB, and that he thought the drive contained vacation photos. Kommersant reports that Whelan did in fact get the flash drive from a man employed by the FSB with whom he had been acquainted for several years.
