The US Government (USG) insisted throughout the entire time of Evan Gershkovich and Paul Whelan’s imprisonment in Russia on espionage charges that these two were “wrongfully detained”, but newly released footage from the FSB proves that they were indeed American spies. Folks can view the footage of Gershkovich here and Whelan here, both of which have a brief video analysis from RT’s Murad Gazdiev embedded at the bottom that’s also worth watching to place everything into context.
Gershkovich’s includes audio which proves that he knew that he was soliciting classified defense secrets on behalf of the Wall Street Journal and then planned to mislead their readers by claiming that they only spoke to an “anonymous source” without mentioning that they also obtained documents about this. He also tried hiding the flash drive that he obtained during his meeting with his source in a Yekaterinburg restaurant when he was arrested, which the video specifically highlights to draw attention to.
As for Whelan, there’s no audio in his video but it shows him receiving a flash drive in a hotel bathroom from a friend who he claimed during his interrogation was allegedly giving him pictures of churches. RT’s brief analytical video amusingly mocks his story as absurd. After all, Gazdiev reminded everyone that friends share pictures over email or text, not via flash drives in hotel bathrooms. Just like Gershkovich, he also obviously knew that he was illegally soliciting classified secrets, in this case about FSB officers.
Nevertheless, CNN promptly spun this newly released footage as alleged evidence of “entrapment”, completely ignoring the fact that both men knowingly accepted flash drives from their Russian sources that they were told contained classified information about their host country’s national security. It’s altogether a very shoddy information product that reeks of desperation to distract from the visual evidence that those two were literally caught red-handed receiving Russian state secrets.
It can only be speculated whether CNN’s Nathan Hodge – their London-based Senior Row Editor who used to serve as the outlet’s Moscow bureau chief and whose official bio reveals that he was “embedded extensively with the US military” – is running interference for the USG on his own or as a favor to friends. In any case, the fact that someone with such “impressive credentials” from the Mainstream Media’s perspective produced such a shoddy information product shows how much the West is panicking.
CNN’s reaction is literally Orwellian too since one can’t help but recall what he wrote in 1984 about how “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” That’s precisely what’s happening here since average Westerners are being told that neither Gershkovich nor Whelan were caught red-handed, the first of whom even acknowledged on tape that he knew he was soliciting secrets and planned to mislead his audience about the origin of that information.
The reality is that foreign intelligence agencies have always had some of their spies disguise themselves as journalists and tourists, and the US isn’t the only country that does so, of course. Be that as it may, whenever its spies get busted after hiding under these covers, the US always plays dumb and denies that they were engaged in espionage. It relies on a combination of the public’s generally friendly attitude towards journalists and tourists as well as their negative one towards rival states to keep up the charade.
Ironically enough, this gaslighting ends up backfiring whenever the US’ detained spies are swapped with another country’s alleged ones like what happened during last week’s historic exchange. Whichever party is in opposition at the time can claim like Trump just did that actual Russian spies were traded for “American hostages”, which could supposedly “encourage more hostage-taking” and should thus have never happened. Even so, it remains unclear how much of the population is receptive to those claims.
The importance of the footage that the FSB just shared about Gershkovich and Whelan’s arrests is that it debunks the fake news alleging that they were “innocent Americans taken hostage by Russia”. They were bonafide spies who knew the risks that they were taking, especially Gershkovich, who exploited his cover as a journalist to engage in espionage and thus risked endangering his colleagues in other countries. Neither of them deserves the sympathy that they received from their misled fellow Americans.
