Whelan was set up? Did Russia force Whelan to travel to Russia to accept a document with classified information? It looks like he did that on his own. He just wanted make everyone think he was going to Russia to attend a wedding. What was he doing with that $80,000, was he going to buy the wedding couple two BMW's for a wedding present?
President Biden did try to get Whelan out. Russia wanted some guy who is in prison in Germany. Germany said no to the proposal.
Originally Posted by adav8s28
Adav8s28, Whelan was given a USB memory stick with the names of all the employees of a Russian security agency. Moments later he was arrested. Ilya Yatsenko, an FSB agent, gave him the stick. Whelan says he previously counted Yatsenko as a friend, and thought the memory stick contained photos of Russian churches and other sites that Yatsenko visited in Russia.
We know that the Russians set Whelan up. Again, they arrested him moments after Yatsenko gave him the memory stick. And Yatsenko received a promotion afterwards.
Since the Russians planted the memory stick on him, it's likely the $80,000 is manufactured evidence.
I think there are two possibilities,
A. Whelan is a complete nobody, and the Russians manufactured an excuse to put him in jail to use for extortion
B. Whelan was working for U.S. intelligence, and the Biden and Trump administrations told us otherwise, i.e., they lied to us.
The press has interviewed Whelan's friends and family, and determined he was head of security for Borg Warner. As you wrote, he was a royal fuck up when in the military, so it would be unlikely he was a U.S. intelligence agent, using the Borg Warner position as a front.
So, I think "A" is much more likely than "B" above. And, assuming that's the case, that Whelan was not working for the CIA, I don't think we should hand over someone like Viktor Bout or the Russian assassin in Germany for his release. It just encourages Russia and other countries to pull this type of stunt again and again.
If the answer is "B", if Whelan was working for U.S. intelligence, then perhaps a prisoner swap for a high value Russian makes sense.
Maybe there's an outside chance of a third possibility -- Whelan was a free lancer, looking to make a deal with the CIA or Mosad or whoever, to sell them a list of members of a Russian security agency. Then the $80,000 makes sense. That seems remote though.
The Russians pulled the same stunt by the way with an American journalist, Nicholas Daniloff:
https://www.npr.org/2019/01/22/68743...rets-lawyer-sa
Here's an interesting article. It describes how Whelan, an ex marine, developed contacts with retired military and other every day Russians through something like Facebook, and vacationed frequently in Russia,
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...ht-friend.html