--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Hello. Hello. Hi there. How's it going? This is Sean. Hi. Hi. Nice to meet you. You too. Thanks for doing this with us.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Absolutely. Yeah. I hope it's okay. There's all sorts of anything's possible in Russia. So if suddenly you don't hear me, then we can. No, I just mean if the connection cuts.
--:-- Amy Ferris Rotman: It's just fair to say that if you're a foreign correspondent in Russia and you think that your phone calls are not being listened to and that your movements are not generally being surveyed by the Russian government, you're acting pretty foolishly.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But it isn't just journalists who have to be cautious. You might have to watch your six if you're just a tourist going to Moscow for a friend's wedding.
--:-- Amy Ferris Rotman: It was on New Year's Eve in Russia, and Russia's FSB, which is the successor to the KGB service, put out a very tersely worded press statement saying that they had arrested an American three days previously on espionage charges.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: A 48-year-old American named Paul Whelan was detained and arrested in Moscow while in the Russian capital for the wedding of a friend. He's a former Marine and he comes from Michigan and the Russian government says he was on a spy mission and could face up to 20 years behind bars in Russia if he's convicted on espionage charges.
--:-- Amy Ferris Rotman: It's also worth noting that his arrest comes just weeks after Russian Maria Butina pleaded guilty to trying to infiltrate GOP political circles and influence U.S. relations with Russia before the 2016 election.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, on its face, does a former U.S. Marine in town in Moscow for a wedding, does that sound suspicious? It really doesn't.
--:-- Amy Ferris Rotman: And all of us are trying to figure out exactly what's going on here.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There have been spies in the past, obviously, and in the recent past, such as in 2013, when an American was discovered and charged with espionage by the Russian government.
--:-- Amy Ferris Rotman: But he was working for the U.S. embassy. He was under diplomatic cover, as is usual for spies working, at least in this part of the world, if they're going to be American.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So, yeah, he was here on a personal trip. Whelan's company have come out and said that he was here not on a business trip. His family have said it was a purely personal trip.
--:-- Amy Ferris Rotman: And he seems to have been arrested at a very fancy hotel right near the Gremlin.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What else do we know about this guy, Paul Whelan? What does he do back here in the States? And what kind of involvement did he have in the U.S. Marines?
--:-- Amy Ferris Rotman: So he's in charge of global security for an American auto parts manufacturer called BorgWarner. They're an extremely large company. They have 66 facilities across the globe, not in Russia notably, over which Waylon sees security for.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He's an Iraq war veteran. He's a former cop. He's from Michigan. He's an animal lover. He's not married and has never been married, has no kids, and has a twin brother called David, who has been speaking to the media about his arrest.
--:-- Amy Ferris Rotman: He has a law enforcement background. He was a former U.S. Marine who served a number of tours in Iraq. He does corporate security. It's the sort of personality that you wouldn't expect to be a lawbreaker of any sort, let alone someone who's breaking spy laws.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But then we have an interesting moment in 2008, according to releasable records, which we obtained on Tuesday, which the Post obtained from the military.
--:-- Amy Ferris Rotman: He was discharged for bad conduct in 2008. He was convicted on several charges related to larceny. Really? Or theft, yes.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So when I approached his brother David about this, he actually said this was news to him. That's what he told me on Tuesday evening.
--:-- Amy Ferris Rotman: So that is something that is interesting That something that jumped out at us And it also makes him a very unlikely target by the CIA to be acting as a spy if indeed he was Or is it the perfect cover?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You know, this guy was dismissed from the military. So who would want him? Perhaps.
--:-- Amy Ferris Rotman: I mean, right now we know so little about this entire case.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: How is this all being portrayed over there? You're in Moscow. What does it look like there in the media?
--:-- Amy Ferris Rotman: Well, first of all, it's worth bearing in mind that this happened on New Year's Eve, which in Russia is the biggest holiday of the year.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: New Year's Day is sort of akin to Christmas or Thanksgiving in the United States in terms of how important it is. It's a big party event.
--:-- Amy Ferris Rotman: Absolutely nothing is working. And then the Russians go on a week long holiday. The government is effectively closed for a week.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So it's very difficult to actually see how this is playing out exactly because of the atmosphere we're currently in.
--:-- Amy Ferris Rotman: But of course, the story is getting a lot of attention. And there is an element of pride on the side of the Russian state media that they've managed to quote unquote nab an American.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What has the response of the U.S. government been to the arrest of Paul Whelan?
--:-- Amy Ferris Rotman: President Trump is yet to speak on it. The American government was quite slow to respond.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The State Department admitted that an American had been arrested, but they wouldn't confirm his name even though the family had come out and said it.
--:-- Amy Ferris Rotman: This was because of privacy concerns, they said. However, that did change on Wednesday afternoon.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, in a visit in Brazil, spoke about Waylon's case.
--:-- Amy Ferris Rotman: We've made clear to the Russians our expectation that we will learn more about the charges, come to understand what it is he's been accused of.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And if the detention is not appropriate, we will demand his immediate return.
--:-- Amy Ferris Rotman: So pretty strong language coming from Mike Pompeo on Wednesday.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And shortly afterwards, the U.S. ambassador to Russia met with Waylon, right? In a Russian prison, Ambassador Huntsman also talked to some members of Whelan's family.
--:-- Amy Ferris Rotman: That's the first time they've heard anything about him since Friday.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: How does the Russian government define spying?
--:-- Amy Ferris Rotman: I mean, could this guy have just taken a photo of something he wasn't supposed to have and been thrown away for spying?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So that is part of the problem here. The espionage law or the espionage law under the criminal code of the Russian Federation is extremely broad.
--:-- Amy Ferris Rotman: It's not like the one you have in the United Kingdom or in the United States.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: In 2012, President Putin actually amended the law and he widened it to include pretty much anything.
--:-- Amy Ferris Rotman: Rights activists say it is broad intentionally so that all sorts of people could be arrested and detained under this.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And obviously these two countries have a long, complicated history of spying on each other.
--:-- Amy Ferris Rotman: Oh, yes.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: How have the rules sort of spying changed in the Putin era in Russia?
--:-- Amy Ferris Rotman: Well, in 2010, we saw the biggest spy swap between the U.S. and Russia since the Cold War.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: A huge spy case broken wide open in this country. The U.S. arrested 10 Russians, accusing them of being secret agents sent to the U.S. with fake names, birth certificates and college diplomas.
--:-- Amy Ferris Rotman: I mean, that was just absolutely shocking to everyone who was here. I was here at the time. It was kind of, it was like watching the TV show The Americans play out in real life.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The spy swap was completed on an airport tarmac in Vienna, Austria.
--:-- Amy Ferris Rotman: A chartered Vision Airlines jet carrying the 10 secret agents expelled from the U.S. pulled directly behind a Russian plane carrying four prisoners from Russia.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There were 10 illegals, as they're called, part of the illegal program, who were traded here for four, interestingly, four Russian prisoners and who had been detained and caught for spying for the West.
--:-- Amy Ferris Rotman: And one of them was Sergei Skripal, who is the former Russian spy who now lives in England, who was poisoned in 2018.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There is a very long history of espionage happening between the United States and Russia
--:-- Amy Ferris Rotman: And of course we can forget Maria Butina the young flame Russian who pled guilty just before the new year in early December to trying to influence the 2016 election campaign.
--:-- Zach Kahn: Hello? Hey, Zach Kahn. Hey. You do marketing for all of the Vox Media Podcast Network podcasts, right?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah, yeah. I help people find our shows, like today explained.
--:-- Zach Kahn: One of the ways to help people find a podcast is to rate and review it in whatever app you use for the podcast, right?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah. So what happens is when someone leaves a rating or review on Apple Podcasts, it actually tells the folks at Apple Podcasts that people are really enjoying the show.
--:-- Zach Kahn: and then they actually help rank that show higher both in search results.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So when you're searching for a new show, like a news show, or if you're looking at the top charts, you're looking for popular podcasts, they often rank shows that are really well rated in those top charts.
--:-- Zach Kahn: So what you're saying is like if every person listening to this right now went and reviewed the show on whatever app they use to listen to the show, we could have like a great 2019?
--:-- Amy Ferris Rotman: It would be huge. We would be so, so happy, and so would many of their friends who would discover this great show.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Fascinating.
--:-- Amy Ferris Rotman: Amy, how might the arrest of this former Marine, Paul Whelan, be related to the arrest of this Russian, Maria Butina?
--:-- Zach Kahn: So Maria Butina is, she's a Russian gun rights activist and she successfully managed to get some information, get involved with different lobbyists in the United States.
--:-- Amy Ferris Rotman: She managed to infiltrate the NRA, which is quite remarkable, especially because Russia itself has extremely tight gun laws. It's not like the United States.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, she was known here before she went to America as kind of a gun nut.
--:-- Amy Ferris Rotman: She was in the United States on a student visa, and she was caught, and she pled guilty to trying to influence the 2016 election.
--:-- Zach Kahn: A Russian woman accused of being a secret agent pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges in Washington Thursday. Maria Butina admitted to infiltrating political groups in the U.S. to gather intelligence.
--:-- Amy Ferris Rotman: Now today she admitted that she operated at the behest of a Russian official, but she did not admit to being an intelligence officer.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Butina is the first person, the first Russian, who has pled guilty to trying to interfere in the 2016 election.
--:-- Amy Ferris Rotman: Her detention came as a massive blow to Russia, to the Kremlin, to the Putin regime.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And the Russian government has gone to great lengths to portray her as an innocent political prisoner.
--:-- Amy Ferris Rotman: Putin has even called her a girl.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And she's portrayed as this innocent young Russian who's been caught up in the madness that is modern America under President Trump.
--:-- Zach Kahn: Yeah, I mean, listening to the radio this morning and hearing people talking about this American who's been arrested in Russia, you hear American media and American security experts saying, like, this is an insane story.
--:-- Amy Ferris Rotman: There's no way this guy is a spy.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Was the arrest of Maria Butina treated the same way by Russian media? Like, this is insane that the Americans are doing this.
--:-- Zach Kahn: There's no way she's a spy.
--:-- Amy Ferris Rotman: Exactly the same way. Everyone here says she was not a spy and also she become a household name
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: A massive social media campaign was launched by the government in her defense
--:-- Zach Kahn: The Russian foreign ministry still has a picture of Butina kind of smiling and pulling her hair back in a golden sun-kissed field as their image.
--:-- Amy Ferris Rotman: So she's totally seen as absolutely innocent.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So I think we can draw obvious parallels between that.
--:-- Zach Kahn: Americans believe Waylon is completely innocent and has been wrongly arrested, and Russians believe Butina was also wrongly arrested.
--:-- Amy Ferris Rotman: The US-Russian relationship is in a pretty sad state of affairs.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Officials on both sides describe it as the worst time since the Cold War, and they've also repeatedly said that things were actually better between Washington and Moscow in the 1980s.
--:-- Zach Kahn: So, yeah, things are really bad.
--:-- Amy Ferris Rotman: I've been reporting on this country since 2007, on and off, and it's definitely the worst I've seen it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There's just so many disagreements between the two, ranging from what to do in Ukraine, what to do in Syria, and also, of course, the huge issue of the 2016 election interference, the Mueller probe, the poisoning of the former spy in Britain, and now this.
--:-- Zach Kahn: There just seems to be an endless stream of issues which are bringing this relationship down.
--:-- Amy Ferris Rotman: Is there a chance that this is just tit for tat and this guy, you know, Paul Whelan got caught up in the wrong country at the wrong time?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Absolutely, that's a possibility.
--:-- Zach Kahn: I mean, I don't know if he's innocent or not, but it's just very strange indeed that a former Marine who was in Moscow for another former Marine's wedding was nabbed by Russia's FSB.
--:-- Amy Ferris Rotman: Whatever Weyland has done or allegedly done, I think it's also worth bearing in mind he was not completely random in the sense that he didn't work in Russia, he didn't live here, but he has been visiting the country on and off since 2007, at the least, from what we know from his family and from some Russian friends he has here.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So he does have a relationship of sorts with Russia.
--:-- Zach Kahn: What that relationship is beyond pure curiosity, which is what it seems at the moment, we don't know.
--:-- Amy Ferris Rotman: But if anyone knows, the Kremlin will know.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Is there a chance that Russia just wants to trade back its people? So we'll give you Weyland for Butina?
--:-- Zach Kahn: There is widespread speculation that the Russians do want to see a swap for Maria Butina.
--:-- Amy Ferris Rotman: It makes sense on some levels.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Maria Butina is a very high level case.
--:-- Zach Kahn: Some people I've spoken to who are experts in espionage and experts in Russian espionage in particular have described this potential swap between the two as being that Russia wants to trade a low value asset, that is Weyland, for a high value asset, which is Butina.
--:-- Amy Ferris Rotman: The US and the Soviet Union certainly did this before.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And perhaps the Russians have, perhaps, you know, they're taking a leaf out of their old Soviet era playbook.
--:-- Zach Kahn: And I mean, if Putina comes back to Russia without serving the time that she's meant to serve, that would be quite victorious for the Russians.
--:-- Amy Ferris Rotman: Amy Ferris Rotman writes about Russia for the Washington Post.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I'm Sean Ramos for him, and this is Today Explained. Thank you.
