Once in the early days of the Ukraine war, when explaining the risks journalists take in places like that, I wrote that in my own career in hostile countries I’ve been detained, arrested, and put in jail. I’ve been beaten, shot at, even chased by a gang with machetes.
But none of that was any scarier than being searched. Searched at airports, searched in pat-downs, searched with a machine gun pressed to my temple. I never had anything illegal with me— no drugs, no weapons, no pornography, no propaganda impermissible in the host nation. But I always knew that if I flew into Tehran or Tripoli or Damascus or Caracas or Moscow or a few other places on the wrong day, a day when the authorities needed to make a point, I could be the poor prey on whom agents plant something to produce a patsy and concoct a conflict with the United States of America, the fall guy who would languish in some wretched cell until my government saw fit to trade something for my freedom..
I thought about that back in February when I read the news that American basketball all-star Brittney Griner had been arrested in Moscow and accused of smuggling drugs into the country. I’ve stood there in the no-man’s land at Sheremetyevo, the airport where Griner was taken down, and nervously watched customs officials rifle through my belongings. I never smuggled anything, they never planted anything, but I knew that they could. A network correspondent would be a good catch.
So when I read about Griner, I could imagine her horror. As it turns out, apparently they didn’t have to plant anything because, although she says it was totally unintentional, she was carrying a third of an ounce of oil derived from cannabis, which is legal where she came from but not where she landed. Evidently her doctor here in the States had prescribed it for pain— a professional basketball player has a lot of pain to relieve. But her story is, knowing that it was forbidden in Russia, she didn’t even mean to pack it but that it got swept into her suitcase along with all the rest.
It was a comparatively minor infraction but that didn’t really matter. It landed her in a penal colony 350 miles from Moscow because, as we learned this past week when the U.S. freed a notorious Russian arms dealer to win her release, she was a great catch.
Her arrest also made me think about an American businessman who had been my seat-mate once on a flight from London to Moscow when it was still part of the Soviet Union. He made the trip a few times every year, and told me that he felt as comfortable flying into Moscow as he did flying home into Chicago.
Tragically, he spoke too soon. The second day I was there, the newspaper Pravda had his picture plastered across the front page. In what I look back on as a petrifying precursor to the plight of the currently imprisoned American businessman and ex-Marine Paul Whelan, he’d been arrested as a spy. As a journalist, especially since I felt a personal connection, I tried with the help of ABC’s local staff in Moscow to find out where he was and what they had on him. But this was the Soviet Union. I might as well have asked for the keys to the palace.
Let me add this: I wouldn’t purport to profess that the man with whom I shared a few hours on an airplane wasn’t a spy. There have been Americans over the years, masquerading in some other profession, who actually went to Russia to work as spies, just as the U.S. has uncovered spies among Russians who came to the U.S. under the guise of some other work. But knowing the Soviets’ disrespect for the rule of law, my guess is that my friend from the flight from London was just a fall guy who was framed when he flew in on a day when they felt the need to concoct a conflict. If I had to guess, the same is true for Paul Whelan.
Our government does try to warn us. Six months ago, in its periodic travel advisories for U.S. citizens going abroad, it added a new category of risk: the risk that some foreign governments could wrongfully detain us. The range of recommendations from the government runs from “Exercise normal precautions” to “Do not travel.” That one, the most severe, applies to China, Eritrea, Iran, Myanmar, Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela… and Russia. The United States doesn’t want to have another Paul Whelan… or another Brittney Griner.
So I was somewhat astonished to read estimates yesterday that more than 40 Americans play in Russian basketball leagues during the U.S. off-season, and roughly 30 hockey players do the same. And although the war in Ukraine and sanctions against Russia have cut deep into its ties with American businesses, it hasn’t altogether stopped them.
Mr. Putin must love what he considers the validation of American citizens still keeping any kind of relationship with Russia. But for whatever they get out of it, these Americans are playing a genuine game of Russian Roulette. If they stumble into the country on the wrong day, it can cost them, bigtime. As we saw with the negotiated release of Brittney Griner, it can cost all of us.
Over almost five decades Greg Dobbs has been a correspondent for two television networks including ABC News, a political columnist for The Denver Post and syndicated columnist for Scripps newspapers, a moderator on Rocky Mountain PBS, and author of two books, including one about the life of a foreign correspondent called “Life in the Wrong Lane.” He has covered presidencies, politics, and the U.S. space program at home, and wars, natural disasters, and other crises around the globe, from Afghanistan to South Africa, from Iran to Egypt, from the Soviet Union to Saudi Arabia, from Nicaragua to Namibia, from Vietnam to Venezuela, from Libya to Liberia, from Panama to Poland. Dobbs has won three Emmys, the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, and as a 36-year resident of Colorado, a place in the Denver Press Club Hall of Fame.
Slightly different subject. Can you see an exit strategy for Putin in Ukraine? If so, please write about it.
All very true Greg; traveling to any of the countries you mentioned is just plain stupid. And it’s very costly to the justice system to have to trade genuine criminals for selfish Americans.