Michael Sulick, Former Director, CIA National Clandestine Service
"Far more insidious – and politically complicated – is Russian retaliation via arresting innocent Americans on trumped-up charges in order to exchange them at a later date for an actual Russian spy. A brief review of some past incidents and their outcomes may hint at possible outcomes for the Whelan case."
In October 1963, four KGB officers were arrested by the FBI on espionage charges involving John Butenko, an engineer at the International Electric Company, who passed the Soviets information on the company's projects with U.S. Strategic Air Command. Three of the Soviets who had immunity were expelled, but a fourth, Igor Ivanov, who worked undercover as a driver with the Soviet trade organization AMTORG, was held in prison. Within a few days, Frederick Barghoorn, a Yale university scholar of Soviet affairs, was arrested in a ham-handed encounter while standing outside the Metropol Hotel during a tourist trip to Moscow. A perfect stranger shoved a wad of "classified" papers into his hand and KGB thugs immediately trundled him off to prison.
An incensed President John F. Kennedy demanded the professor's release, warning that impending wheat sales that were sorely needed by the Soviet Union, would be jeopardized. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev freed Barghoorn, supposedly because of the "personal concern of President Kennedy." (In a parallel to the current case, Barghoorn's brother also denied to the media that the professor could have been involved in espionage. He noted that his brother couldn't have been detained on the typical charge of photographing restricted installations since he never carried a camera on travels to the USSR).
Ivanov was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment but was freed on bail pending appeal of his case and eventually allowed to return home.
Michael Sulick, Former Director, CIA National Clandestine Service
"The scenario was replayed in 1978, when Rudolf Chernyayev and Valdik Enger, working undercover as United Nations secretariat employees, were arrested on charges of espionage. Three weeks after their arrest, the Soviets created a bargaining chip by detaining Francis Jay Crawford, an American businessman who worked with International Harvester in Moscow, supposedly on currency violations."
Crawford was found guilty but freed about 18 hours after the Russians were released to the Soviet Embassy. The two spies were ultimately exchanged for five Soviet dissidents.
In 1986, in perhaps the most controversial incident, the KGB arrested US News & World Report journalist Nicholas Daniloff. Similar to the Barghoorn case, the arrest was played out in a clumsily-staged encounter where a Soviet acquaintance handed Daniloff a package containing allegedly top-secret documents. A week earlier, the FBI had detained Gennadiy Zakharov, a Soviet intelligence officer also working undercover at the UN, on charges of espionage. After feverish negotiations, both Daniloff and Zakharov were released about a month after the arrests.
The aftermath of the Daniloff affair, however, was quite different from the other cases. The Reagan administration expelled 80 Russian intelligence officers, and the Soviets retaliated by expelling ten U.S. diplomats and withdrawing the 260 Soviet citizens working for the U.S. Embassy and Consulate in the USSR.
Michael Sulick, Former Director, CIA National Clandestine Service
"Although the Reagan administration freed the imprisoned American citizen and subsequently punished the USSR for the blatantly false arrest, some were critical of the U.S. for acceding to the false equivalency of trading a convicted spy for an innocent journalist."
As famed journalist Daniel Schorr noted, "When a democracy plays the Soviet game of exchanging the guilty for the innocent, it buys trouble for the future. As with terrorists, you may only be encouraging them to do it again."
And, inevitably, they have done it again. While the past cases have usually ended in mutual release, the current administration may be subject to the same criticism if it follows that path and frees Maria Butina. But that criticism would be mitigated if the mutual release is followed by the imposition of severe penalties on the Kremlin, whether they be harsher sanctions, expulsion of intelligence officers, or other pain-inflicting measures. Arresting the innocent to free the guilty deserves consequences.
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How is Russian media reporting on the arrest of Paul Whelan?
