The top U.S. hostage official on Sunday reflected on the conduct of the prisoner exchange that led to Brittney Griner’s release, saying the WNBA star immediately thanked the crew for bringing her back to the United States.
“When she finally got on the American plane, I said, ‘Brittney, you must have been through a lot in the last 10 months. Here is your position. Feel free to decompress. We’re going to give you your space,” the President’s Special Envoy for Hostage Affairs, Roger Carstens, told CNN’s Dana Bass on “State of the Union.”
“And he said, ‘Oh no. I have been in prison for 10 months and I can speak Russian, I want to talk. But first of all, who are these guys?’ And he walked right past me and went to every member of that crew, looked them in the eye, shook their hands and asked them and took their names, making a personal connection with them. It was really amazing,” recalls Carstens. “And later, on an 18-hour flight, he probably spent 12 hours just talking and we talked about everything under the sun.”
Carstens, who led the mission to the UAE, gave CNN new details about Griner’s trip home. Griner, whom she described as “a smart, passionate, compassionate, humble, interesting person, a patriotic person, but most of all, genuine,” seemed healthy and full of energy during the trip.
She was given a sense, she said, that she would be coming home that day, and it felt real the moment she was able to board the other plane and tell her that “on behalf of the President of the United States, Joe Biden, and Secretary of State Tony Blinken, I’m here to take you home.”
“At that point, we have to go through the choreography a little bit more to get her on the plane, usually it takes about three minutes,” Carstens said.
While she said Griner talked about her ordeal during the trip, she declined to elaborate.
“It’s humiliating. I’m very grateful that President (Joe) Biden is giving me the opportunity to do this job. It’s hard work too. So when you get a chance to shake someone’s hand, it’s one of those rare moments where you can celebrate a win,” Carstens told Bash.
“But know this, even though we welcome someone home, we still have work to do. So as I shake Brittney’s hands and we get on the plane and have this wonderful conversation, my brain is already thinking about Paul Whelan. What can we do to bring him back? What’s the next move? What is the strategy? How can we adapt?”
The envoy said he spoke with Whelan, an American who remains detained in Russia, the day after the exchange, and reiterated the Biden administration’s commitment to repatriate him.
“I said, Paul, you have the commitment of this President. The President focused, the Foreign Minister focused. I am definitely focused and we will bring you home. And I reminded him, I said, “Paul, when you were in the Marines and I was in the Army, you were always reminded to keep the faith,” and I said, “Keep the faith. We’re coming to get you,” Carstens said.
He said he told Whelan that “this was a case where it was either one or none.
“We couldn’t get you out of this round. We couldn’t get the deal with the Russians. But if we hadn’t made the deal, then Brittney wouldn’t have come home. There was no chance to bring you home right now,” he told Whelan of the negotiations that led to Griner’s release.
The call between Carstens and Whelan on Friday lasted 30 minutes, a US official told CNN.
Carstens did not provide additional details about negotiating efforts to bring Whelan home, but said “options are always being evaluated.”
“We have to adapt to the times,” he said. “But here I’d like to leave you, you know, we have an ongoing, open dialogue with the Russians. And we have the commitment of this President and my office, certainly, to bring Paul Whelan home.”
CORRECTION: This story has been updated to correct the spelling of Brittney Griner’s name on two occasions.
