American Paul Whelan was arrested a week ago in Russia on charges he was a spy. His brother has vehemently denied the charges and media outlets have seemed to cast doubt on Russia's claims. Let's dig a little bit deeper on this one.
Whelan was court-martialed in 2006 and dishonorably discharged from the Marines in 2008 for what the Washington Post reports was an attempt “to steal more than $10,000 worth of currency from the U.S. government while deployed to Iraq in 2006 and bouncing nearly $6,000 worth of checks around the same time,” as well as several other types of fraud.
So he has the capacity for deceitfulness and deception-- an allegation which is backed up by his testimony in a 2013 court deposition. In that testimony, Whelan claimed he had been a sheriff’s deputy in Washtenaw County and a police officer for the city of Chelsea, though Washtenaw County has no record of him, and in Chelsea he was actually a part-time police officer, a dispatcher, a crossing guard, and a parking officer.
For some reason, Whelan also has acquired passports from Britain, Canada, and Ireland-- something which is not permitted by the U.S. government.
Whelan also has an unexplained interest in Russian culture, has studied the Russian language and has visited Russia multiple times on personal business-- preferring to traveling the country by train. According to reports, Whelan has spent more than a decade cultivating friends and contacts in Russia-- and unusually for a foreigner, has an account on Vkontakte, the Russian version of Facebook. Even more unusually, most of his contacts on the site were what the New York Times describes as “men with some sort of connection to academies run by the Russian Navy, the Defense Ministry or the Civil Aviation Authority.”
The BBC is also reporting that there are uncorroborated reports Whelan had been caught receiving a digital storage device containing a list of intelligence officials.
Hmmm . . .what do you all think, comrades?
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