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Evan Gershkovich, Paul Whelan among Americans freed from Russian custody in prisoner swap
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Caroline MacGregor: You're listening to 89.1 WEMU. I'm Caroline MacGregor. It's been just over a year since the release of Manchester native and former Canadian-born United States Marine veteran Paul Whelan. He was imprisoned for nearly six years in Russia for what he and the U.S. term as bogus espionage charges. Well, he's joining us today to talk about his experience and difficulties assimilating back into the U.S. since his release. Welcome, Paul!
Paul Whelan: Yeah, thank you very much for having me!
Caroline MacGregor: International Man of Mystery.
Paul Whelan: Yeah, Austin Powers and myself, right?
Caroline MacGregor: Indeed! So, I'm going to start out at the beginning, or at least the point where you were arrested while visiting Moscow. This all happened on the evening of December 28th, 2018 in room 3324 of Moscow's Metropol Hotel. Then, in June of 2020, you were charged and sentenced to 16 years in a Russian prison. Why were you in Moscow at the time, and what happened?
Paul Whelan: Well, I was actually with a group of friends from the United States. We were there for a wedding. I'd been there before several times. I was used to the hotel. It was the Metropol. It's right on Red Square, so you wouldn't expect any sort of problems because Red Square has a lot of police and military presence. So, it's considered very, very safe. And we had toured the museums and whatnot in the Kremlin, including the diamond room where the crown jewels of Russia are kept, the art galleries, and all sorts of things.
Caroline MacGregor: What was it about Russia that you went back to this country so often?
Paul Whelan: Well, Russia was of interest, basically, because it's a place I hadn't been to, and one of my friends from the Marine Corps was stationed in Moscow. And he said, "Hey, if anyone's looking for a place to stay, come and stay with me in Moscow?" So, I had an opportunity to stay with my friend and his wife in Moscow, and that's really how the interest started. I've been all over Europe. I've been to many, many places. I've been to China more than I've been to Russia, but the benefit of going to Russia is the culture and the economy. They have a lot of culture over the years, from the czar to Bolshevism to the Communist era to the present era. A lot of that ties into the British royal family and the German royal family. The other thing is the economy. It is now, and it has always been, very inexpensive to travel in Russia. So, you could fly from Detroit, Michigan to Moscow, Russia for $800. Hotels, food--everything was very, very inexpensive, so if you wanted a cultural experience in a foreign country that wasn't expensive. And generally, it was considered safe for Westerners to go to St. Petersburg, to go to Moscow. You wouldn't want to go the other cities are off the beaten track, but it was considered safe to go there, although the government was aware of the foreigners there. And you have to register your visit at a hotel or private residence. And the Russians, obviously, liked the dollars that they brought in from tourism. That was a big draw.
Caroline MacGregor: So, tell me what happened as you were getting ready for your friend's wedding in the hotel.
Paul Whelan: Yeah, so it's 5:00 in the evening. One of my friends is with me. We're getting ready. I'm actually in the bathroom. And there's a knock at the door, and it's another person that I know. I've known him for 10 years, Russian. I knew his family, his parents, his wife, his brother. You know, I hadn't expected him to stop by, but he did. So, I would say, in the Russian culture, if I was visiting Moscow, people would stop by to say hello or for coffee. That was fairly common. This guy, he came into the bathroom, and he said, "Hey, I've got a thumb drive of pictures and videos from an earlier visit," which was true. I had visited earlier, and I'd stayed with his family and his parents at their summer cottage. And we had toured the local areas, seen a lot of cultural sites and whatnot. And I said, "Okay." Well, it was a little bit odd because I'm standing in the bathroom, I've got a brush in one hand and here he is with the thumb drive. He turned around and walked out, and I went back to brush my hair. And he exited the room and let in the FSB--the modern-day KGB. And you can change the name, but you can't change the shame. And what they did is come in and say, "Mr. Whelan, we're the federal security service. You're under arrest for espionage." And they did this in English because, obviously, they knew I didn't speak Russian. And my reaction was, "Well, I haven't committed espionage." And they said, "Well, we think you have."
Caroline MacGregor: And the arrest itself, I believe, was quite a violent arrest or interaction.
Paul Whelan: Right. They came in, they grabbed me, threw me down on the bed, they pinned me down, and then they handcuffed me. It was much more force than was necessary. I wasn't resisting. I was overwhelmed by the number of people that came in the room and then, obviously, by the number people that were in the hallway. They had one guy videotaping. And then, everyone had guns. It was a room that I couldn't have tried to get out of. Yeah, it was overzealous. It was overkill. It was more violent than it needed to be. And with my experience in law enforcement, I would have said that there was a better way of doing it.
Caroline MacGregor: So, from that point, you disappear. You're off the grid for several days. And I believe your twin brother, David, he actually saw some report about your arrest. Where were you taken?
Paul Whelan: Well, the people I was supposed to meet for this wedding dinner were trying to find me. They ended up reaching out to my family, and my family started looking to see where I might be--trying to use apps on our iPhones that would give my location and whatnot. They contacted the U.S. ,Canadian, Irish and British consulates to say, "Hey, Paul's in Moscow, but we can't find him." So, my brother looked online to see if there were any stories about Americans being injured or killed in Moscow, and what he found was an article about an American being arrested for espionage. When he found that, the U.S. Consulate had already been notified by the FSB that I'd been arrested.
Caroline MacGregor: So, you were taken to prison, and eventually a prison camp, where you remained for several years. Tell me about the Brittany Griner Exchange. How did you feel when the U.S. Agreed to swap her for convicted arms dealer, Viktor Bout? She was released after 10 months after being held on possession of cannabis oil. How did this feel to you?
Paul Whelan: I wasn't happy, especially considering that Trevor Reed had been sent home in an exchange earlier the same year. And I was supposed to be part of that exchange. I was suppose to be a part of the Brittany Griner exchange with Victor Bout. The U.S. wanted a two-for-one swap. Russia said they'd do one-for one. The Russians still wanted Krasikov out of German prison. And at the end of the day, Brittany Griner was an American citizen. She was being wrongfully detained. I was glad that she went home because she shouldn't have been going through what I was going through or what Trevor had gone through. So, I was that both of those guys had gone home. I just wish that I had been with them. You know, at the end, the trade that the Russians wanted was Krasikov from Germany. He was an FSB colonel. He was under arrest in Germany, but they wanted the U.S. to broker that deal. But we can't forget that our NATO partners were the people who actually gave up prisoners to get Alsu, Evan and I home.
Caroline MacGregor: So, tell me about your eventual release came last year for August of 2024. Your family must have been just beside themselves. Tell me what happened when you came home. You faced a lot of difficulties, I believe.
Paul Whelan: So, after Andrew's Air Force base, we flew to Texas. There's a military base, and we were given extensive medical tests and whatnot, spent a few weeks there, speaking with psychologists and government employees from different agencies and whatnot. And then, I went home. And actually, at that point, some of my friends were allowed to come down and stay. My parents came down for a week while we were doing all this debriefing and whatnot. And then, I want home. And obviously, you don't return to the home that you've left. And the longer you've been gone, the more has changed. So, I came back unemployed. I found that my home was gone. Cars were gone. Some of my savings retirement had been used for lawyers and other expenses. And I had to basically start over, so 54 years old starting over. And I didn't even qualify for unemployment benefits in Michigan because I hadn't worked for the 20 weeks prior to filing a claim. There were other sorts of social services that you would have thought would have been available, but they weren't for one reason or another. And a lot of it had to do with the fact that nobody's used to dealing with hostages. The Hostage Recovery Act, which is also called the Levinson Act, has a provision that the State Department is supposed to provide medical care, mental health care, et cetera, dental care or whatever for a five-year period. And they said, "Well, Congress never funded it. So, yeah, it is in the law, and Congress was very happy to tell me that they'd put this in the law. But the State department said, "Well, there's no money for it. So, we can't provide this to you." So, the social programs that, after working my entire life, I thought would be there, weren't. And then, the provisions in the law that would have helped me apparently aren't funded. So, there was nothing. And you come back to an IRS that doesn't understand why you haven't filed taxes or paid anything for years. The Social Security Administration is reporting that you have no income, which hurts your Social Security benefits when you retire. And it's very difficult to navigate the federal bureaucracy and the state bureaucracy and just trying to get over the fact that you've been held hostage for five-and-a-half years.
Caroline MacGregor: How has Congresswoman Debbie Dingell helped you?
Paul Whelan: So, Debbie Dingell and Congresswoman Haley Stevens, as well as Senator Elissa Slotkin have been deep in the trenches trying to get issues worked out for those that are wrongfully detained.
Caroline MacGregor: And I believe you had difficulty with your driver's license.
Paul Whelan: Well, yeah, the driver's license was an issue that Debbie Dingell spoke with the Michigan governor and Secretary of State to work out. There are professional licenses in Michigan that I have needed renewing, renewing my notary public commission. They asked you, "Have you ever been arrested? Have you ever been in prison or jail?" Well, what am I supposed to say? If I say yes, then on this online form, it automatically denies you, right? But if you say no, or try to give an explanation, then people don't understand. I had actually a funny interaction with the Customs and Border Patrol. I had online tried to renew my global entry card. And I was standing in the Senate building outside the senator's office, and I was on Zoom with a Customs and Border Patrol agent who was doing the interview necessary to renew the license. This is just after I got home. And I'm in Washington, and I'm explaining to him, "Yes, I had been arrested, but it was for espionage against the Russians, which would mean that I was a hero to the United States." And he was like, "Oh yeah, that makes sense." And I said, "Well, I was wrongfully detained there. Here's a letter from the State Department. You can look on CNN. You could look up the story." And he goes, "Well, our protocol is that if you've been arrested then you can't have a global entry card. It doesn't have any provisions or exceptions for your situation." And I said, "Well, come on. This is common sense." And so, he does some other research. He talks to a supervisor. He goes, "Okay, I think we understand what's going on. We'll get back to you before the end of the day with our decision." And I was thinking, surely, they had to have understood. And they did. And by the end of the day, they had responded that my global entry card was renewed. There was no problem. But I've run into this all over the place. Now, there's a new provision in the law, the Levinson Act, that provides a certificate of invalidity to people like me. The President is supposed to sign it, and it basically says whatever conviction, whatever arrest or conviction, that occurred overseas, while the person was wrongfully detained is viewed as being invalid. And that's the sort of thing that would be very helpful. But we're having trouble getting the President to sign them and to distribute them. And I'm not sure where the issue is. Is it the White House? Is it the State Department? Maybe they could use the auto pen to sign all these certificates. But these are the sorts of things that Congress has put this sort of thing into the law to help us, but we can't get the help that Congress is intended.
Caroline MacGregor: Do you think firing people and funding cuts have anything to do with it?
Paul Whelan: Probably not. I think it's a lack of a process to get these sorts of things done. The State Department has to talk to the White House, and they don't have a process worked out to do it. It's the same thing with the medical care. The State Department needs to talk to Congress to get it funded, and nobody's doing it. So, one of the things I'm trying to do is speak to Secretary Rubio. So, I can sit down with him and say to him, like I'm saying to you, there's a problem, and hostages coming home are not being taken care of properly. I think there are some easy ways to do this. Because it's not just me that it involves, it involves all sorts of people. And President Trump has brought back, I think, 70 or something hostages from around the world. And all those people need the same support that I'm talking about.
Caroline MacGregor: And your parents, throughout all of this, they managed to hang in there, hoping for your safe return.
Paul Whelan: Yeah, my family were very supportive while I was gone. My mother and father who I credit with my resilience, they grew up in England during World War II and had to put up with the Germans bombing Birmingham and Coventry and whatnot, they've done a lot to help me. The Manchester community has done a lot to help me. And there are people in the Michigan government, Washtenaw County government and other areas that have reached out and are trying to do what they can for me. There is a lot of local support, and a lot of people supported my parents in Manchester while I was gone. And I truly appreciate that!
Caroline MacGregor: I've been talking with Manchester resident Paul Whelan, who was held hostage in Russia for nearly six years. He was released last year and returned to Michigan where he faced a lot of challenges, and you've just heard about some of those. Thank you for joining us today, Paul!
Paul Whelan: Thank you very much! It's been my honor and pleasure!
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