Lawfare Archive: John Sipher on Spy Swaps: Past, Present, and Future
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 1 April 2023
⏱️ 36 minutes
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Summary
From January 8, 2019: The Russian government's recent arrest of American Paul Whelan and its charges against him have many politicians and pundits speculating about the possibility of an intended spy swap for Maria Butina. There's a lot going on here, but there's also a lot of misunderstanding about the history of spy swaps, what they are, and what they aren't.
Earlier this week, David Priess sat down with his former CIA colleague John Sipher to talk about it all. They discussed the history of spy swaps, the current case involving Paul Whelan, and prospects for some kind of a release.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The following podcast contains advertising to access an ad-free version of the LawFair |
| 0:07.2 | podcast become a material supporter of LawFair at patreon.com slash LawFair. |
| 0:14.7 | That's patreon.com slash LawFair. |
| 0:18.2 | Also, check out LawFair's other podcast offerings, rational security, chatter, LawFair |
| 0:25.6 | no bull and the aftermath. |
| 0:39.6 | I'm Avery Schmitz. |
| 0:40.6 | Internet LawFair with an episode from the LawFair Archive for April 1st, 2020. |
| 0:46.5 | On March 30th, Russian officials arrested Evan Gurkovich, a Moscow-based correspondent |
| 0:51.5 | for the Wall Street Journal, on charges of espionage. |
| 0:54.6 | A made condemnations by the White House and a conglomeration of media outlets and press |
| 0:58.7 | freedom advocacy groups. |
| 1:00.5 | A Russian district court claimed Gurkovich would be held until May 29th. |
| 1:04.9 | This detention marks the first time Russia has arrested American journalist since the |
| 1:08.9 | end of the Cold War. |
| 1:10.6 | To contextualize the arrests, I chose an interview from January 8th, 2019. |
| 1:15.4 | In the episode, David Priests sat down with John Cyper to discuss the history of spy swaps |
| 1:20.5 | between the US and Russia. |
| 1:22.5 | The Russian government's arrest of American Paul Wheeling in 2019 and more. |
| 1:33.5 | I'm David Priests and this is the LawFair podcast January 8th, 2019. |
| 1:39.3 | The Russian government's recent arrest of American Paul Wheeling and its charges against |
| 1:43.4 | him have many politicians and pundits speculating about the possibility of an intended spy swap |
| 1:49.8 | for Maria Butina. |
... |
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