American Man Held in Moscow on Charges of Espionage

An American citizen, Paul Whelan, has been detained on suspicion of espionage in Moscow.

He is being detained at the infamous Lefortovo Prison. US ambassador to Russia, Jon Huntsman, visited Whelan on Wednesday where he expressed his support for Whelan and his family, offered the embassy's assistance, and spoke with Whelan's family by phone. His family says he is not a spy, and was in Russia to attend the wedding of an American friend marrying a Russian woman. 

Whelan was arrested on Friday, December 28, but the Russian FSB did not acknowledge the arrest until days later. His twin brother David shared the news in a post on Twitter, where he also wrote on behalf of the family that Paul Whelan's "innocence is undoubted and we trust that his rights will be respected."

Russian news agency Rosbalt says that a source inside the Federal Security Service informed them that FSB officers arrested Whelan at the Metropol Hotel, where he was staying, just minutes after he is accused of having received a flash drive that contained a list of the employees of a classified Russian state security agency. Whelan is suspected of using “highly non-standard methods for intelligence gathering,” through social media, befriending Russian men - he has visited the country several times in the last 10 years. Rosbalt’s source says Whelan used social networks to befriend Russians that had been “tracked and selected in advance by American intelligence as individuals who might have access to classified information.”

NPR reports that Whelan, 48, is the director of global security for Michigan-based auto parts supplier BorgWarner. The company says it does not have facilities in Russia, but The Washington Post reports the supplier does have business contracts in the country. Before joining BorgWarner, The Guardian says, Whelan worked for Kelly Services, which has offices in Russia.

Whelan served in the Marine Corps Reserve from 1994-2008, during which he deployed to Iraq twice and rose to the rank of staff sergeant, serving as an administrative clerk and chief. But he was discharged for bad conduct "on several charges related to larceny," according to an account of his record released by the Marines.

In an interview with NPR, former CIA agent who worked in Moscow, John Sipher, says that Whelan does "absolutely not" fit the profile of an American spy working in Russia. "The one thing I can say for certain...is this is not how the U.S. commits espionage overseas. We would never put a U.S. citizen without diplomatic immunity in harm's way this way, especially looking after low-level things like this. And so one thing I'm pretty confident of is that this person is not involved in any kind of coordinated intelligence activity on behalf of the United States. That doesn't mean it's not a big political deal."

Some commentators have speculated that the arrest may have been staged in order to facilitate a prisoner swap for Russian "foreign agent" Maria Butina, being held in the US after pleading guilty to a charge of conspiracy to act as a Russian agent on American soil without registering, entangled with the fake news scandals and Russian interference in the 2016 elections.

If convicted, Whelan faces up to 20 years in prison. 

By Samantha Guthrie

Photo: Whelan Family/Reuters