The Lawfare Podcast: Paul Beckett on the Evan Gershkovich Case

[Audio Excerpt]

Paul Beckett

I would say he is doing remarkably well under very difficult circumstances. So he is in Lefortovo prison. That's a notorious establishment. I think it's actually under the FSP headquarters in Moscow. It's been used for decades for political prisoners, designed to disorient them to isolate them. Evan spends 23 hours a day in a cell. The other hour that he has is in this courtyard about the same size as his cell. So it's basically six steps, in each direction, so incredibly cramped and unpleasant. One of his friends described his actual cell as basically a glorified toilet, because I think the facilities are there, and his bed is there, he has a cellmate, but that's it. You can imagine what that's like. He, under those circumstances has just shown extraordinary fortitude.

[Main Podcast]

Hyemin Han

I'm Hyemin Han, Associate Editor of Lawfare. This is the Lawfare Podcast for April 4^th, 2024. Paul Beckett was the Washington Bureau Chief of the Wall Street Journal. But ever since the arrest of the newspaper's Russia correspondent Evan Gershkovich last year on bogus spying charges, he's been working full-time on advocating for the reporter's release. In connection with the one-year anniversary of Gershkovich's arrest, he joined Lawfare's Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes in the Virtual Jungle studio to discuss the case. What do we know about the charges against the young reporter? What is the U.S. government doing to secure his release? What progress, if any, has been made? And how is Gershkovich holding up in prison in Moscow?

It's the Lawfare Podcast, April 4^th: Paul Beckett on the Evan Gershkovich Case.

Benjamin Wittes

All right, so I want to start off with just a sense of what your role is at the Wall Street Journal with respect to Evan Gershkovich and his case.

Paul Beckett

I was a Washington Bureau Chief when this first happened, so I was the person that Emma Tucker, our Editor-in-Chief, called when we realized that Evan had gone missing, so that we could alert the U.S. government. And we did that just right before, hours really, before Russia declared publicly that they had taken him and accused him, baselessly in our view, of espionage. I was doing that and that became an increasing part of the job as the weeks and months progressed because we were trying very hard to keep the spotlight on Evan and to engage all the relevant folks that we could to help us to get him out. And then in October, I switched to doing that full-time.

So the role now in some ways it's like being a reporter for, but with an audience of two: Dow Jones, the parent of the journal, and Evan's family. So I spend lots of time asking people to give us advice on what they would do in our situation, how to keep Evan prominent in people's thoughts and very visible across the country and across the world, what ideas we might be able to engage the U.S. government with that might lead to some kind of breakthrough in his release, how to engage the newsroom itself because obviously there's a huge staff at the Journal that's ready and willing to help in any way it can and we do want to show that we are being good employers for our colleague and send a basic outlet, the employers that you would want to, if you were in Evan's situation, try to anyway. And then also be there for Evan's family and friends. He has a network of friends from Moscow, from around the world. He's a very sociable, popular guy, so keeping them informed and engaged, those are all parts of the job.

Benjamin Wittes

For those who don't have any idea what you're talking about, let's step back and talk about who Evan is and what happened a year ago to him?

Paul Beckett

Evan is a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, and only for the Wall Street Journal, I should add, but he joined us in—

Benjamin Wittes

Just to be clear, no connection to the CIA or any other intelligence agency?

Paul Beckett

None, none, and none. As it's been repeatedly stated by the U.S. government, the Senate Intelligence Committee, us, Evan, Evan's family, across the board, blanket note. So we hired him in early 2022 as a Moscow correspondent. We were very excited to have him come on board. We hired two correspondents in Moscow at the time, and that had been a kind of a gap for us. So we were very excited to have more coverage coming out of Russia at the time. And Evan was a wonderful hire for us because he had been working really his entire career. He's only 32, but he'd been working his entire career in Russia, first as a reporter for the Moscow Times, English language newspaper there, and then for Agence France-Presse, AFP.

Benjamin Wittes

And he is native Russian-speaking?

Paul Beckett

He is. So his family backstory is also very interesting here because his parents were Soviet-era emigres who came to this country and then had two kids, Evan and his older sister, Danielle. They were both born here, and they were raised as all American kids, as his parents like to say, but they also were raised with a strong sense of their Russian heritage. So they were, fluent in the language, very familiar with the culture, and it was an obvious and advantageous place for him to go back and be a foreign correspondent because he was both learning about his own personal background, while learning a lot about another country. He is fluent Russian, very attuned to Russian culture, and really fascinated by the country and its people.

Benjamin Wittes

So, one year ago, give or take a few days—

Paul Beckett

Yeah, one year ago, Evan was out reporting in Yekaterinburg for the Wall Street Journal, he's out doing story for us, he'd gone back. He'd been in and out of Russia, he'd been in Russia, he'd been in Ukraine, he'd been in London since the start of the Ukraine war. And he decided to go back, was reporting in Yekaterinburg, which is about a thousand miles from Moscow. And he was in a steakhouse when the security services grabbed him, pulled him out of the restaurant with his jacket over his head. And the next we saw him, or the first we saw him really, was when he was produced outside Lefortovo prison, which is a security services prison in Moscow.

The first we knew about it was that he had failed to check in. So the Journal, we have pretty strict protocols around foreign correspondents, especially those in dangerous places, that they have to check in. So he missed the first one and that was slightly alarming, and then he missed a second one. That was truly alarming. So that's when we started to really worry about him, but also to take action to alert the U.S. government and to be in touch with all the relevant parties that we thought might be able to help us. And then the Russians came out and said that they had caught him and that he was being accused of being an American spy.

Benjamin Wittes

Do you have a theory, given that he is not an American spy, and is a Wall Street Journal reporter, what the strategic purpose of his arrest or kidnapping or abduction was or is? Is this a hostage situation? Brittney Griner yielded some fruit in a trade for a Russian arms dealer who was in prison in the United States. Paul Whelan is being held. So you have a reporter that kind of ups the ante and maybe you trade him back for something, somebody. Or is there some other concern? Was it about what he was reporting about? What do we know about why he was taken?

Paul Beckett

So we have thought obviously a huge amount about that question over the last 12 months. We start from a premise of emptiness because we have not seen any evidence. We have not seen any statements from the Russians that would illuminate why they took him in the circumstances that he took him and what precipitated it. So we start with this really complete lack of knowledge onto which we apply our speculations. So it's not very convincing, but I think where we probably come down is that this is a business for the Kremlin. It's a business for Putin and ith Brittney Griner's release and with Russia on the back foot over Ukraine and sanctions, that this is a way for him to gain leverage over the United States.

And Putin himself has talked twice about Evan, once was in his annual press conference in December, then he talked about him in his interviews with Tucker Carlson. And he was really quite forthright about what he was looking for from this, and that was the swap. And he didn't name, but outlined someone who clearly fit the profile of an FSB assassin that is in Germany that Putin wants home. This is someone who has been mentioned before in prisoner swaps, came up in the Trevor Reed, Brittney Griner negotiations, but it's clear that this is the person that the Kremlin wants most. I think on one level it is hostage taking for the business of swapping prisoners.

I do think, and this is another, you feel just awful for everyone who is taken there. Paul Whelan's family, Alsu Kurmasheva’s family, the Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty reporter who was taken by the Russians about six months ago now. When you take a journalist, you do get the added benefit from the Russian perspective, or Russian government's perspective, which is a lot of other journalists very understandably withdraw. At a time when the press, about Russia because of what was happening in Ukraine, because of the international condemnation of the war there, because of the effect on the economy of Western sanctions, you do stifle the news. You do stifle the sources of fact-based information that we would argue are massively important and they would argue probably run far too contradictory to the message of state propaganda. I think that may also have been an ulterior motive.

Benjamin Wittes

Yeah, so you also get another advantage when you take a journalist, which is that journalists cover it in a way that they don't cover non-journalists. The Sunday talk shows this weekend were filled with people commenting on Evan's case, and rightly in a way that I don't even think, Brittney Griner inspired that kind of attention from the press. And, of course, you guys ran this incredible front page, which I urge people who haven't seen it to take a look at it, is a giant blank space that is the material that represents the material that Evan would have run had he not been taken. So talk a little bit about this is one of the few issues on which a journalism organization makes no pretense to neutrality or not having a position. Talk about the role the paper plays in publicizing and advocating for Evan.

Paul Beckett

Yeah, it's an interesting new territory for us, really. So we're feeling our way. I'd point out a few things, we do cover these issues fairly closely. We covered Brittney Griner, we covered Paul Whelan.

Benjamin Wittes

Oh, I'm not saying you don't cover them, but you don't but you didn't, and nor should you have, by the way, devoted an entire front page to—there's just a difference when you're talking about one of us broadly in the sense of people doing journalism and in particular, one of our employees in the sense of the organization.

Paul Beckett

Yeah. I would still point you to the other. There were three stories on that front page. One of them was what Evan had lost. That ran around a blank space. So I appreciate you talking about that because it was an important moment for us as a journal. There was a blank space. The other stories were what Evan had lost over the course of the year. How regimes around the world are doing this more and more, the hostage-taking is becoming increasingly common in the world, an increasingly hostile place for Americans, really, in addition to journalists. And the other was the struggles of other families as they tried to speak up for their loved ones in Russia and other places, as this drags on. So I hope we're less of making noise about everybody. But obviously in our case, Evan is our colleague and we do have a singular focus on trying to get him out. And it's been an interesting year from a news coverage perspective and an advocacy perspective, as you say.

We're very conscious of not wanting to write any stories that don't meet the standards of the Journal. So we don't want to let our advocacy influence our news coverage. That's something that's a bond between us and our readers, that we need to keep sacrosanct, so it's something that our standards departments watch as they read every story that we write about Evan before it's published to make sure that we are exactly where we should be in terms of what quality Wall Street Journal journalism. But there are a lot of us at the company who have been advocating for Evan’s release and doing so vociferously. So you just try to keep that balance between the two and keep the proper separations because there's nothing, from an editor's perspective or a manager's perspective, there is a coverage, which is what we do every day and it's hugely important and that's why people read the Wall Street Journal. But then there's something that much more visceral about your colleague and being snatched, and the sort of human impact of that when it is so close to home, when he was doing a job that we sent him there to do, then it becomes your responsibility. I've run reporters in many dangerous parts of the world and done coverage from many dangerous parts of the world in my long career at the Journal and nothing has compared to this in terms of its visceral and emotional nature.

Benjamin Wittes

So what do we know about the conditions under which Evan is being held, his contact with you all and with his family? When I last checked in on this situation, he was just starting to be able to receive letters there was a letter-writing campaign going on. What do we know about how he's doing?

Paul Beckett

I would say he is doing remarkably well under very difficult circumstances. So he is in Lefortovo prison. That's a notorious establishment. I think it's actually under the FSB headquarters in Moscow. It's been used for decades for political prisoners, designed to disorient them, to isolate them. Evan spends 23 hours a day in a cell. The other hour that he has is in this courtyard about the same size as his cell, so it's basically six steps in each direction. And so, incredibly cramped and unpleasant. One of his friends described his actual cell as basically a glorified toilet because I think there's facilities are there, and his bed is there. He has a cellmate, but that's it. So you can imagine what that's like. He, under those circumstances has just shown extraordinary fortitude. He does write letters, so he gets letters out, he gets letters in. It's a fairly elaborate process. They have to be translated. They obviously get read by the authorities. There's sort of photographs of letters that ultimately come through. So it's quite complex, but that's a place where his friends have done an extraordinary job in keeping the letter channels open. And so he writes to his family. He writes to other friends, other people, whenever he can. So he writes letters, he writes, he meditates, he reads books, he exercises, does body weight exercises. So he's holding up and we have lawyers who see him once a week, who have been hired by Dow Jones, and we have the occasional visits from the U.S. ambassador to Moscow, Lynne Tracy, who has been very good at pushing the cause, because for a long time now she wasn't even allowed to get in to see him, so that has improved a bit since then.

Benjamin Wittes

And what we know about the charges and evidence against him is exactly nothing, right?

Paul Beckett

Correct.

Benjamin Wittes

It's not even worth having a conversation about that.

Paul Beckett

Up until this point, so it's just over a year as you said, so up until this point, he has been held on a series of pretrial detentions. So every two or three months he comes up in a Moscow court in that glass case that you may have seen on TV. And he stands there, and the Moscow court approves the FSP's request for an extension, and then we appeal that, and we lose, and then on we go. We just hit the one-year mark. I think in theory, they should be there for moving to a trial. In practice, they can do whatever they want. And sure enough, just before his one-year mark, they went back and asked for another pretrial detention, and they got that till June 30th. So we know that he will be there at least until June 30th under the legal process. And at that point, we assume they will move to a trial, that could be months from now, the trial itself could take months. And as you say, we haven't seen any evidence at all of what they think he did that would lead them to draw the conclusions that they have.

Benjamin Wittes

And my recollection of Russian law, such that it is, is that that the trial, when they do have it, can be exactly as secret as they want it to be. Is that right?

Paul Beckett

Yeah, that's it. I'm sure that's a case. And our understanding is again, that they can do what they want. So especially given the national security implications of the charge, we don't know if we will see the trial, how he will be represented at that trial. We do strongly suspect that if it does go to trial, given the nature of the system, he will be convicted. And if he's convicted, he faces up to 20 years.

Benjamin Wittes

Talk to me about the government's efforts on his behalf. Unlike the case that we talked about on this podcast a week ago, that of Elizabeth Tsurkov, the Princeton graduate student, Evan is a U.S. citizen, so this is a matter that the U.S. government has—one of the reasons we have diplomatic relations with countries is to protect our nationals when they are in trouble with the law overseas. The government took major steps to get Brittney Griner back. What do we know about the U.S. government's efforts on Evan's behalf?

Paul Beckett

The government's been very responsive on Evan's case, and we appreciate that. They have, right from the moment we found out, have said they'll do whatever they can to help and to help get him home. The first we saw of actual negotiations, the State Department talked about it in early December, where they said that they'd made an offer for Evan and for Paul Whelan and that the Russians had rejected it. We then heard Putin talk twice about Evan, and then we've reported, and others have reported, that there were more machinations and negotiations going on that may have involved Navalny, then he died in his Arctic prison, and we assume since then, and we've heard from the government since then, and they've said publicly since then, that the conversations are ongoing. But the status is, we're not privy to it because obviously as the Russians have repeatedly said, and I think the Americans agree, that these are best conducted in secret.

Benjamin Wittes

Have you guys had any conversations with official Russian channels, have you been able to meet with Ambassador Antonov, for example, or talk to the foreign ministry, in your capacity as his employer?

Paul Beckett

I don't know all the conversations that have gone on, but we do very much view this as negotiations that will be government to government. And the Wall Street Journal won't negotiate this directly. We're relying on the U.S. government and on President Biden's promise to Evan's family that he will bring Evan home. We think, especially given the possibility of some kind of swap, that would be the key to getting Evan back, that's really very much government to government territory.

Benjamin Wittes

So imagine a swap now, like one of the things about Evan, in contrast to, say, Paul Whelan, is that, because he's an employee of the Wall Street Journal, because he's a journalist, because there's a great deal of publicity about it, he's a very high-value hostage from Putin's point of view. And the hypothetical trade that Putin described for him, for, essentially, an assassin being held, by the way, by a different country, there's something, with all desire to get him back, and I certainly think we should trade for him, there's something very distasteful about the idea of trading a basketball player for an arms dealer or trading a journalist for an FSB killer. And if I were the Wall Street Journal my view would be, okay, we are not sending people back into a zone where we are required, or the U.S. government is required, to create these weird equivalences between people who are doing noble work or just playing basketball and people who are doing really bad stuff. How does this affect, you mentioned that it causes journalists to pull out, but how does it affect your all's willingness to send people into Russia and other conflict zones where the work is really dangerous, and these hostage situations are a real possibility?

Paul Beckett

Yeah. Obviously, we would very much hope that any swap, I know the government certainly would intend for any trade to bring both Evan and Paul Whelan home, and that has to be our hope. The question of swaps, it's really a very unpleasant business. And you look at it and Paul Whelan has been designated unlawfully detained by the State Department, was convicted of espionage, under the same, from the State Department's view, baseless circumstances as Evan has been charged with them. And Evan is there on baseless charges. So basically you have innocents who are being traded for people found guilty of heinous crimes under rules of law systems that we respect. And so, you can't escape the fact that's really unpleasant.

In terms of how do we view that? Obviously, it would be wonderful to see the U.S. government and other Western governments, other people who condemn this behavior and stand on higher principle, find a way to deter it, right? The answer really here is to stop this happening. It needs to mean it's such a strong deterrent for the people who do it that they don't do it anymore. From the Wall Street Journal's perspective, the world is a dangerous place for journalists now, especially, I think we are committed to covering that on journalistic principle and for the benefit of our readers. We haven't made any big pronouncements or changes to how we cover the news internationally. And we've, I don't know, not ironically exactly, but poignantly maybe, we have among the highest protocols for the security of our reporters in the field of any news organization out there, and that effort stemmed from the tragedy of Danny Pearl's murder in 2002. Evan was snatched in spite of our very high protocol standards for security in the field, and not because of the lapse of them, and of them. It's a reminder, really, at the heart of it, that journalism is a risky endeavor, and it takes a lot of courage to go out there and report the news.

Benjamin Wittes

I want to ask about Evan's family. On the Lawfare Podcast, we've had you representing his employer. We've also had Polina Ivanova, a close friend of his and a reporter at the [Financial Times]. I don't know the family. I haven't spoken to them. How are they doing?

Paul Beckett

They're holding up under the toughest of circumstances. And obviously Evan is in the worst position. His family is in such a difficult position, and they have been absolutely amazing and pretty inspiring to all of us working on Evan's behalf by their strength and conviction that they will do whatever they can to get him out and not stop until the day he comes home. His parents, Ella and Mikhail, live in Philadelphia as does his sister, Danielle, and her husband, Anthony. I've had the pleasure of getting to know them over the past year. They're a tight-knit family. They write to Evan a lot. He writes back. I think humor is a strain that runs through all of their family interactions. I've heard Danielle say that humor and teasing is the way that they express love for each other. So in the letters that she has written, she trades jokes and lines from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, which obviously is a show that they enjoyed and also their hometown. And I think that's a way in which they have established a pretty good mutually reinforcing loop where I hear his family say a lot that Evan is the one supporting them in addition to them supporting him. And we hope that positive under the circumstances cycle continues.

And Evan makes lovely gestures towards them. For International Women's Day on March 8^th, he arranged for flowers to be sent to his mother and his sister and other women in his life. And so, he's obviously thinking a huge amount about them, and I hear from them that they are amazed at how much attention he is paying to their well-being, as they are to his.

Benjamin Wittes

I want to close just by asking what listeners can do, what the Wall Street Journal has asked of the public with respect to this issue? People feel very strongly about it. Are there things that individuals can do that are helpful?

Paul Beckett

Really appreciate that and appreciate all the support we've got from the public, from news outlets, from Lawfare. You just mentioned the ways in which you've brought attention to this, so we're really grateful. Thank you. I get a bit karmic about this, to be honest. I just think every time he is in someone's thoughts, someone's prayers, if that's where you want to take it, being talked about, being mentioned in conversations with friends, being talked about around the dinner table, any way in which Evan’s name is mentioned thoughts and focus are given to him, I think do ultimately make a difference. On a slightly more concrete level, we are using the hashtag on social media, #IStandWithEvan, which we always appreciate the amplification of our and others’ efforts. If you want to get to know Evan better, then go on wsj.com/Evan. It's not behind the paywall, so it's free to access, and that's a treasure trove of his journalism, of his videos with his family, getting to know him, seeing what the Journal is up to, writing to him. I think he really appreciates letters. I think at this point, just letters about what's going on in the world, what's going on in your lives, whatever you want to say to him, I think he would appreciate it. There are active steps. And if you feel so inclined, writing to your member of Congress to say how much Evan's case means to you, and how much the broader issue of press freedom means to you, because really this is at a more existential level of just a blatant attack on press freedom, and those are the freedoms that we all rely on every day to do our jobs, so we do view it as—it might be a long way away, it's thousands of miles, and it is a very different regime, but an attack on one journalist's press freedom is an attack on all our freedoms. So letting people know that you care about the cause we'd be really grateful.

Benjamin Wittes

And for people who do want to write letters, how do you write a letter to Lefortovo Prison?

Paul Beckett

So I would go on freegershkovich.com, which is a website maintained by his wonderful friends. And there's a section there on Write to Evan, and it will give you that, take you through the steps, and you can send an email to them, and they will translate it, and send it off.

Benjamin Wittes

So one of the people who runs that site emphasized when she was on the podcast that he really does enjoy receiving letters and people, should they set up the site to make it easy for people to do this. So don't be shy.

Thank you so much for joining us. We are all hoping for a good outcome in this very ugly case and appreciate your taking the time to discuss it.

Paul Beckett

Appreciate you. Thanks so much, man. Thanks for all the support.

Benjamin Wittes

The Lawfare Podcast is produced in cooperation with the Brookings Institution. Our audio engineer this episode is me. I did it myself. And so any problems just blame on me. One thing I did not do myself, however, is promote the Lawfare Podcast. That's your job. So please tweet the Lawfare Podcast. Share us on Facebook, on Bluesky, on Mastodon, on Threads, on Instagram, TikTok videos, Pinterest, all the things, YouTube. Share the Lawfare Podcast.

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