Late on Tuesday morning, aboard Air Force One, President Joe Biden’s tie was loose and his blazer was off. In the conference room at the back of the plane, Rep. Greg Stanton of Arizona stood up and pressed for an urgent answer: When was Brittney Griner coming home? The Congressman had been advocating for the administration to prioritize the case of the wrongfully detained basketball star who played in his neighboring district, after months of what one person familiar with the Russian talks called “dilly-dallying” by a White House that had developed a habit of “ghosting on the families” of political prisoners. The president cut off the Congressman and looked him in the eyes.
“There could be very good news in the very near future on this front,” Biden said, according to Rep. Stanton.
While Biden was in the air, the Griner family’s independent hostage adviser, a 46-year-old former Israeli Defense Force paratrooper named Mickey Bergman, was eating lunch in Washington with Griner’s agent. “We live in a world of partial and misinformation,” Bergman tells Rolling Stone in an interview. “But we had this conversation: ‘Do we think something is happening? Yeah, it looks like it. It sounds like it.’” Bergman is vice president of the Richardson Center, former Gov. Bill Richardson’s organization that works as a liaison between many American captives, their captors, and the governments of hostile regimes, and he knew better than to trust a White House vibe shift alone: “We were absolutely worried that something could go wrong.”
Such is the excruciating nature of Americans detentions abroad that Griner’s advocates didn’t know it yet, but — right around the same time — she was en route from a penal colony toward Moscow and successfully, finally transferred into U.S. custody less than 48 hours later. A joyous White House ceremony ensued. Biden awkwardly clutched the hand of Griner’s wife, Cherelle, who said at the podium that the most important emotion she had was gratitude for his administration.
According to multiple sources directly involved in the negotiations that culminated in Griner’s return to the U.S. on Friday, however, the White House responded to bad press faster than personal pleas from her family, while the State Department made what experts in prisoner and hostage recovery view as self-inflicted delays behind the scenes. The administration treaded lightly in public, the Griners got loud, and the information vacuum of sensitive talks led to a combustible relationship between the government and shadow diplomats working on behalf of Griner. “Sometimes there are tensions, and sometimes there is collaboration,” Bergman says. “Sometimes there are sparks.”
Supporters of Griner’s family remember that there was the missed opportunity early in her nine-month detention. There was the public “crisis” sparked by Secretary of State Antony Blinken that left Griner’s independent advisers scrambling at an 11-hour meeting and in hotel lobbies across Russia to bring the Kremlin back to the table — and that a senior administration official insists led to renewed talks on the State Department’s terms. There was an ensuing and previously unreported moment of optimism in late October, when word got to Cherelle — and, through her Russian lawyers, to Brittney on her way to the penal colony — that a deal might be reached by year’s end. There was even the 11th-hour West Wing scramble when, the morning after Biden had accepted a one-for-one swap for the Russian “Merchant of Death” arms dealer Viktor Bout last Thursday, a CBS journalist’s reporting threatened to complicate the negotiations all over again.
“I was worried it would fall apart because they just went so cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs at the White House,” says the person familiar with this year’s Russian talks. “They’re the best and the brightest, but on prisoner swaps, they’re extremely out-to-lunch — and they have a truly special policy of deciding not to decide.”
A senior U.S. official involved in the negotiations tells Rolling Stone that the administration’s sprawling hostage- and prisoner-release staff “work our butts off” and that the White House effort to return detained Americans “continues in the spotlight and sometimes without spotlight,” seeking to partner with families in parallel. In a statement to Rolling Stone, the White House said, in part, “Throughout our work in this area, we have engaged extensively with families of detained Americans, families of freed Americans, and advocates for these causes.”
In February and March, multiple non-government advocates for prisoner families had traveled to Moscow for back-channel communications, asking about the wrongfully imprisoned former Marines Paul Whelan and Trevor Reed. But they didn’t know Griner was under arrest, too, allegedly for packing vape cartridges on her way home from playing basketball in the middle of a war.
“Everybody had been told: ‘Best to be quiet — we’re gonna get her out,’” says Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, who represents Griner’s hometown of Houston and received classified intelligence briefings on her detention.
The day before Griner’s case went public on March 5, according to a person familiar with the situation, a White House official had blown off a request from the Reed family to meet with President Biden. That week, Biden visited the Texas medical clinic where Reed had received care — for an unrelated presidential event — and ended up staring down a protest by the Reed family on the route of his motorcade outside. “I’ve seen that look,” the person says. “It’s something like, ‘What the fuck? Why are these people protesting me, and why didn’t you tell me about it?’” Biden called the Reeds less than an hour after the event; on the Air Force One flight back to Washington, his press secretary was suddenly talking about a family White House visit. The senior U.S. official involved in the negotiations says, “The president meets with families because he cares about these issues, but the real work of bringing people home happens regardless of that.”
Reed returned home in late April, in a swap for a Russian pilot. There was speculation that Whelan might soon follow. With the Russians at the negotiating table, some on Griner’s team wondered if she might get off with a fine and a symbolic sentence. But a court delayed her trial. State Department officials tried to untangle Russian bureaucracy to visit her in prison. Griner’s local attorneys served as the main conduits to her plight, and her team back home came to realize that the initial window for a prisoner swap had closed. “Brittney always had hope, but realistically we knew that nothing could happen before the verdict,” one of the attorneys, Alexander Boykov, tells Rolling Stone.
In early June, according to an administration official, the State Department made a secret offer: Griner and Whelan for the “the Merchant of Death” — two for one, a nonstarter with the Russians. “This is becoming more of a street fight,” says Rep. Haley Stevens of Michigan, who counts Whelan as a constituent and serves as chair of the Congressional hostage task force. “Diplomacy is a great tool, but we are not negotiating with rational actors.” Stanton, the Congressman who would fly on Air Force One, passed a resolution on behalf of Griner and demanded that more classified briefings make their way to Congress. “But the hero is Cherelle,” he says. “It was Cherelle who said, ‘It’s best for Britteny to get as loud as possible.’”
Brittney Griner’s wife took to the airwaves. She’d had enough. Enough of the promises on the phone from the Secretary of State. (“You say she’s top priority, but I wanna see it.”) Enough of the excuses that nobody was working at the U.S. embassy when she tried to call her wife 11 times on their anniversary. (“I have zero trust in our government right now.”) Enough of writing to Brittney about “the failed attempts” to meet with the White House, until Brittney said she would write to Biden herself, on the eve of her long-awaited sham trial. On July 6, Cherelle said on CBS Mornings that she was “very disheartened” that the president hadn’t responded to her wife’s letter or to the family directly; the White House scheduled a call with Cherelle for later that day.
“There came a time where it just hit me over the head that the families cannot be this quiet and that the administration is giving them B.S. advice that makes the administration’s life easier but does not benefit Brittney Griner,” says Jonathan Franks, an official with the Bring Our Families Home campaign, who advised the Reed family and Griner family representatives. “Frequently, the request to be quiet benefits the government and not the hostage.”
A U.S. official argued that the administration’s objective in engaging with families was “not getting credit, clout, or recognition in any way.” But the public agitation by the Griners worked. “Shortly after Brittney’s letter,” says Rep. Lee, “the United States was still continuing to push for both Brittney and Paul. What intensified was: “We gotta get this lady outta here.’”
On July 27, Secretary of State Blinken revealed the failing two-for-one offer to Russia at a press conference. A senior State Department official tells Rolling Stone that the unusual public remark “was a considered judgment that we needed to throw out the standard playbook in order to attempt to jump-start the process.” But some diplomats saw Blinken’s move as breaking an unwritten rule of Russian relations: “You don’t negotiate on TV,” says a source close to the negotiations. “So the Russian response was as dismissive as you would expect.”
Griner’s family and advisers had “a few calls” with the administration over the next month, according to Bergman, who worked closely with the family through the Richardson Center. “You come out of it and you don’t know,” Bergman tells Rolling Stone. “Is that really the case? So we just need to let go because the government is doing everything and the Russians aren’t responding? Or is there something happening that they can’t tell us?” The Russians were responding, according to a White House official, with an offer the U.S. wasn’t capable of accepting.
Griner was sentenced to nine years on Aug. 4. “That was shocking to her,” says her other attorney, Maria Blagovolina. Griner languished, even as letters poured in from abroad. (She became “pen pals” with Keith Richards, her lawyer says, after reading his memoir three times in prison.)
Because of what he perceived as the Secretary of State-induced public “crisis,” Bergman says he and Richardson’s planned August trip to “spend time getting to know our adversaries” in Russia was postponed. He says it further delayed their ability to lay groundwork for a deal face-to-face “with ideas and insights that you can only get when you talk directly to people, not when you read intelligence reports or newspapers.” As another person familiar with the West Wing’s role in negotiations put it, “It’s like, ‘Hey, guys get out of the Harvard and Yale debating society and come join us in the real world.’” The person continued: “The White House’s feud with Bill Richardson was weird — and it upsets the families tremendously. He’s the highest ranking American that’ll speak to them regularly.”
One U.S. official said the White House engaged with the Richardson center on their ideas, but a senior administration official tells Rolling Stone that freelance diplomats were not officially part of the negotiations, “even if they say they are.” The senior State Department official said, “We make no apologies for doing everything we can to secure the release of our wrongfully detained citizens, even if it’s untraditional.”
After scrambling on Zooms with Kremlin contacts, Bergman flew to a country neighboring Russia for an 11-hour meeting to save face, leaving with a list of action items upon which he declined to elaborate. He and Richardson finally ended up visiting Russia in mid-September for an unheralded trip. Across hotel lobbies and restaurants, the shadow negotiators were able to get a reality check: Not only was the two-for-one deal of Griner and Whelan for two Russians a no-go, Bergman says — the two-for-two deal, which the administration preferred at that point to a one-for-one, wasn’t looking good either.
“Our conversations are very limited to humanitarian topics, which means that it insulates the issue of the prisoners,” Bergman says, “without bringing up the war in Ukraine and without bringing up nuclear negotiations. And that’s helpful because then we can actually experiment with some formulas of how to solve this.” Three days after their return from Russia, Biden met with Cherelle in the Oval Office at last. She and her agent were speaking directly with officials from the National Security Council.
Richardson and Biden never met during the negotiations, but the independent diplomats debriefed interlocutors at the NSC and vice-versa. The administration was frustrated that the Richardson Center’s information from Russian conduits remained anonymous and difficult to assess. “Our work is getting the ball as close as we can to the end zone,” Bergman adds. “It’s a way of saying, ‘We can keep waiting it out and trying to see if we can get two-for-two, but we cannot hold Brittney back from this.’”
After a round of follow-ups, the Richardson Center also debriefed Cherelle. Griner’s wife had told Bergman and NSC officials that she did not need constant updates with “fluff.” But Bergman recalls delivering word of “a significant breakthrough” in late October: “We’re cautiously optimistic that this will be resolved by the end of the year.” (A senior administration familiar with the situation tells Rolling Stone that when the Richardson Center told the family of a breakthrough at the time, “It was simply not true and continued to reflect a disconnect.”)
Back in Russia, Griner’s legal team was running out of time. Their appeal of her conviction had essentially been a stall tactic to keep her out of a penal colony for as long as possible, but it was denied on Oct. 25. Griner did not know when or to where she would be transferred, “but it was quite obvious that it wasn’t the way to the plane,” says Blagovolina, one of her attorneys. “She was hopeful that the situation would be resolved, but at the same time she was prepared to spend some time.”
The message of hope cultivated through her back-channel advisors, however, seemed to have made its way back to Russia. Brittney Griner was going to a gulag, but her lawyers suggest that she knew she was going home. “She was aware that it might happen any day,” her other attorney, Boykov, tells Rolling Stone.
The Griner family remained in a relative information vacuum, putting their faith in the hands of chief negotiator Roger Carstens, a holdover from the Trump administration and former Army Ranger who is known to speak in sentences with family representatives that end as if he’s on military radio: Over. “They kept their foot on the gas,” says Rep. Lee, even though Vladimir Putin went dark until after the midterms to avoid giving Biden a win in public. By November, Lee recalls, “It was made very clear that he was only going to deal one-for-one.”
Biden made the call to go for a straight-up Griner-Bout swap by Thursday, December 1, according to an administration official. On Friday, however, a person familiar with the Russian negotiations tells Rolling Stone they received an email from CBS, which had the sensitive scoop. Multiple networks followed up on Wednesday as the White House staved them off. “I wasn’t worried about them blowing up the deal,” the person says. “I was annoyed because I should have heard directly from the White House, not a reporter.” The White House was gravely concerned about the story leaking, according to an administration official.
The senior U.S. official involved in the negotiations tells Rolling Stone that “the White House worked very closely — day-to-day and at times hour-to-hour — to ensure that Brittney’s family and supporters understand steps that would occur trending toward her release while also not getting too optimistic, given that things come up at the last minute that take things off track.”
Even members of Congress, trying to break an inherent communication dam from the White House, received half-answers. Rep. Stevens, the leader of the hostage task force, says she consistently informed Paul Whelan’s family to begin “managing expectations appropriately.” Stevens says she was briefed on Wednesday night about Griner and Whelan — but not told that Griner would be headed home alone.
After his trip aboard Air Force One, Rep. Stanton wondered whether Griner might be on a flight back to the U.S. imminently. He’d learned, from working with the experts in the world of prisoner releases, never to get his hopes up too high. But the president, Stanton tells Rolling Stone, “left me with cautious optimism. And I think that reflected his own cautious optimism, because until she has left Russian soil, until she has physically left that country, we know that this could have gone in a different direction — he knows better than anyone that it could go awry.”