Trading Russian arms dealer for Griner is a ‘tragic mistake’ by US government: Former U.S. intel officer
Former U.S. intel officer Rebekah Koffler provides analysis on the Russian courts’ decision to sentence WNBA player Brittney Griner to 9 years in prison on ‘Fox & Friends Weekend.’
President Joe Biden recently stated that his administration will "pursue every possible avenue" to bring U.S. citizens Brittney Griner and Paul Whelan home to the United States. Griner, a women’s basketball star, was sentenced last week by a Russian court to nine years in prison for marijuana possession, a crime in Russia for which she had pleaded guilty. Whelan is serving a 16-year jail term in Russia on espionage charges, accused of receiving and possessing classified information on a USB drive.
Secretary of State Anthony Blinken confirmed on Friday that the United States put forward a "substantial proposal" to Putin’s regime for a prisoner exchange, which reportedly would entail releasing Viktor Bout, a dangerous Russian arms trafficker, back to Russia in exchange for Griner and Whelan.
Bad idea.
Here are the top three reasons why this potential deal is not in U.S. interests and should not take place.
BRITTNEY GRINER'S SENTENCE PUTS SPOTLIGHT BACK ON STRAINED US-RUSSIA RELATIONS
First, the deal would embolden Putin to continue using "hostage diplomacy" to achieve his anti-American agenda. The Biden administration may bring two Americans home, scoring much needed political points -- at a time the president’s popularity is at historic lows -- but it will endanger many more Americans in the future and harm U.S. security. For years, the Russian government has used prisoner exchanges to retrieve Russian intelligence operatives, cyber criminals, and other types of Russian citizens held in U.S. prisons. Typically, however, the Russians get away with extorting much more valuable Russian nationals, in exchange for ordinary Americans who break Russian law, sometimes unwittingly. The Russians have perfected this playbook.
In April, the Biden administration exchanged a former U.S. Marine Trevor Reed, who was serving a 9-year sentence in a Russian labor camp, after being convicted of assaulting two Russian police officers while drunk on a visit to Moscow. The Russians got back Konstantin Yaroshenko, a Russian pilot who was arrested by US special forces in 2010 in Liberia and sentenced to 20 years of prison time in US jail in 2011 for conspiring to smuggle more than $100 million worth of cocaine into the United States.
In 2021, the Biden administration quietly deported back to Russia the world’s most dangerous cybercriminal, Alexei Burkov, who had been sentenced to nine years in prison in America. An elite hacker, Burkov operated a website, which sold stolen numbers of credit and debit cards and extorted millions of dollars in ransom from US businesses, in return for unlocking infected computer networks. No Americans appear to have been released by the Russians, and there’s a congressional investigation underway to determine if the Biden Administration got anything in return.
In 2010, the Obama administration released ten Russian spies who had been infiltrated into the United States by Russian intelligence Service, the SVR, ten years earlier. These deep cover agents posed as Americans, blending into regular American day-to-day life, with the goal of penetrating top echelons of U.S. government in order to influence U.S. politics. Some of the sleeper agents in this spy ring got close to infiltrating Hillary Clinton’s circle. The U.S. government did not rescue any Americans out of Russia in exchange for these Russian sleeper agents. Instead, it brought in just four Russian citizens – one nuclear scientist, two intelligence operatives, and one KGB agent – who had been jailed by the Russians for providing secrets to U.S. government.
Second, giving up Viktor Bout to the Russians would harm American security. Bout is not just a regular Russian criminal. He is a high-value asset for the Russians, having ties to Russian spy services and indirect links to Putin himself. Bout is the world’s most prolific international arms trafficker and is serving a 25-year federal sentence for conspiring to kill Americans. This former military intelligence officer was conspiring to sell millions of dollars-worth of weaponry and 10 million rounds of ammunition to a Colombian narco-terrorist organization before he was arrested in a sting operation by U.S. law enforcement officers.
Bout has already spent 15 years in prison and has been thoroughly interrogated by US officers. As a highly trained military intelligence officer, he is also a gifted linguist with command of five languages. Bout undoubtedly has critical insights to share with his former comrades in Russian intelligence about what he experienced in the hands of U.S. debriefers and what was of interest to them.
Bout is connected to a Putin ally, Igor Sechin, who is a former deputy prime minister of Russia and currently the CEO of Rosneft, Russia’s state-owned energy conglomerate. Despite being isolated in a prison cell for over a decade, Bout never gave up his connection the Sechin, a fellow intelligence operative with whom he had served in the Soviet military running operations abroad.
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Finally, by giving up Viktor Bout, President Biden would waste millions of dollars from the U.S. intelligence budget and demoralize dozens and possibly hundreds of American law enforcement officers, intelligence analysts, and support personnel who made it possible to capture this criminal. U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) officers finally arrested him in a hotel in Thailand in 2008 after almost a decade-long operation. Similarly, it took ten years of scrupulous work by US counter-intelligence to nab Putin’s spy ring of sleeper agents in 2010. With a stroke of a pen President Biden, and Obama before him, undid all that hard and often dangerous work by U.S. officers.
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The Russians are acutely aware of President Biden’s naïveté, weakness, and his self-interest at a time his domestic popularity is at historical lows. They have floated the idea of adding another Russian criminal to the Griner-Whelan-Bout swap – Vadim Krasikov, another Russian spy who was sentenced to life in prison in Germany for having assassinated a former Chechen fighter on German soil.
President Biden must prioritize American interests and security by keeping Viktor Bout in jail.
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