Free Pope Now

(Washington, D.C.): The 20-year prison sentence handed down today to U.S. businessman Edmond Pope following a Soviet-style show trial is more than a death sentence for the ailing American. It is yet another sign of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s determination to put U.S.- Russian relations squarely back on the path of confrontation and potential conflict.

This grotesque outcome is also an opportunity for President-elect George W. Bush to demonstrate that — in contrast to the Clinton-Gore Administration’s malign neglect of this case — such hostage-taking and blackmail will entail real costs for the Kremlin. There is an interesting parallel to events twenty years ago: Within hours of President Reagan’s 1980 inauguration, the Americans who had been held in Iran for 444 days were released, sending a strong message to the world that America was back on its game.

The Pope situation presents the new president with an opportunity to send a similar and much-needed signal, making it very clear that the U.S. relationship with Russia can only proceed after this matter has been satisfactorily resolved. Were Gov. Bush to do otherwise, he would be inviting not only more of the same from the Russians; he would also be announcing an “open season” on U.S. citizens traveling, doing business or living elsewhere around the world.

A Travesty

Mr. Pope is a retired U.S. Navy officer and the founder of CERF Technologies International, a company specializing in studying foreign maritime equipment. He was arrested in Moscow in April 3 and accused of illegally acquiring classified plans for a high-speed torpedo, the Shkval. Pope insisted on his innocence throughout the trial and contends that the plans were not only not classified, but had been sold abroad and published in open sources. He operated under a contract with the Moscow Bauman Technical Institute and the Applied Research Laboratory at Pennsylvania State University. Pope’s lawyers claimed that under a contract, signed by Pope, the documents he received were supposed to contain no secret data. They were able to establish in the course of the trial that the information he solicited had, in fact, been openly available on the arms market.

Mr. Pope’s conviction on spying charges was the first of its kind since the height of the Cold War, when U.S. U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers was shot down over the Soviet Union in 1960. In the manner of Soviet “justice,” it was a “closed trial”; neither the media nor outside observers were allowed to monitor its proceedings.

The outcome is all the more Kafkaesque insofar as the State’s case collapsed when Anatoly Babkin, a Moscow professor who had been the star witness against Pope, wrote a letter stating that his earlier testimony was given “under duress.” He recanted entirely his earlier claim of collusion with Pope to pass him classified material, stating that he was handed a confession by the successor to the notorious KGB and forced to sign it.

The Russian government’s handling of the Pope case reads like a Solzhenitsyn novel: According to the respected Russia Reform Monitor — which has been closely following developments in the trial — the judge, who was appointed by the successor of the KGB, the FSB: rejected Pope’s request for an independent medical panel to determine his fitness to stand trial; denied his request for an independent court translator; refused to allow the hearings to be recorded for a later review of the translations; threw out Pope’s request to subpoena a Moscow university from which Pope had been granted permission to acquire the technology he sought; and refused to call Babkin, whose recantation essentially gutted the Russian government’s case. All in all, the defense filed some 200 petitions for the defense, but the FSB judge threw out all but a handful. By contrast, petitions filed by the prosecution were routinely granted.

U.S. Moves: Too Little Too Late

In the weeks following Edmond Pope’s arrest, his family became increasingly frantic about his failing health but was told by the Clinton Administration officials that they were working feverishly behind the scenes to secure Pope’s release. The family was strongly advised to keep a low profile since the U.S. government believed that quiet diplomacy offered the best chance of freeing the incarcerated American. These were lies. In fact, the U.S. government let Pope sit in the Russian prison for months, until August, before it made any move at all on his behalf.

It took the death of another U.S. citizen in a Russian prison and the persistence of Pope’s wife and other family members before the Clinton Administration bestirred themselves to take up the case. Even then, if U.S. Ambassador to Russia James Collins made any moves to attempt to secure Pope’s release, they were not evident. Indeed, many of Pope’s defenders began to wonder which government Collins was really representing — the United States or Russia. President Clinton also failed Ed Pope. Although he promised to bring up the issue in his June summit with Putin, Clinton did not evince before, during or after that meeting anything like the kind of interest in or insistence upon Pope’s release to free the ex-KGB officer’s American hostage.

Interestingly, starting in May, Vice President Al Gore refused numerous verbal and written requests for help from Pope’s family. In three different telephone conversations and once in writing, Gore’s staff told Pope’s sister, Brenda Linstrom, that he would not help her.

As Congressman Curt Weldon (R-PA) said today, “The conviction wasn’t a conviction of Ed Pope but a conviction of Bill Clinton, Al Gore and Ambassador Jim Collins. They let him languish for months and didn’t demand to free this innocent man.”

On 2 October, however, the House International Relations Committee unanimously approved a resolution calling on the Kremlin to release him immediately out of concern over Mr. Pope’s deteriorating health and the failure of the Clinton-Gore Administration to secure appropriate medical care for him. The call went unheeded.

The Bottom Line

The Clinton-Gore team’s fecklessness in the face of this outrageous provocation continued today in the wake of Pope’s conviction and harsh sentence. White House spokesman Jake Siewert could only muster, “There’s no doubt this [outcome] has cast a shadow over U.S. Russian relations.”

Now, the Nation and the world will get — one way or the other — a taste of the kind of leader George W. Bush will be in international affairs: Will he choose to continue down the Clinton-Gore path of appeasement and accommodation with Moscow by letting Edmond Pope die in a KGB prison or purchase his freedom at some exorbitant price (trading a real Russian spy for their American hostage or perhaps for huge amounts of cash)? Or will he put to the Russians — and rogue states and other thugs all over the planet — that the next President, like Ronald Reagan, will not be one to trifle with and that the costs of attempting to do so, by seizing or otherwise harming American citizens and interests will meet with certain and disproportionately harsh responses.