(Trends Wide) — The United States’ top hostage affairs official reflected Sunday on the completion of the prisoner swap that led to the release of Brittney Griner, saying the star basketball player immediately thanked the team that returned her to the United States.
“When she finally got on the American plane, I said, ‘Brittany, you must have been through a lot in the last 10 months. Here is your seat. Please feel free to unzip. We’ll give you your space,'” special presidential envoy for hostage affairs Roger Carstens told Trends Wide’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union.”
“And she said, ‘Oh no. I have been in prison for 10 months listening to Russian, I want to speak. But first of all, who are these guys?” And she walked past me and went up to each member of that team, looked them in the eye, shook their hands and asked for them and got their names, setting up a personal connection with them. It was really amazing,” Carstens recalled. “And then on an 18-hour flight, he probably spent 12 hours talking, and we talked about everything under the sun.”
Carstens, who led the mission to the United Arab Emirates, provided Trends Wide with new details about Griner’s journey home, describing him as “an intelligent, passionate, compassionate, humble, interesting, patriotic, but most of all authentic person.” , appeared healthy and full of energy during the trip.
Roger Carstens
It gave him a feeling, he said, that he was going home that day, and it felt real the moment he was able to board the other plane and tell her that “on behalf of the President of the United States, Joe Biden, and the Secretary of Status Tony Blinken, I’m here to take you home.”
“At that point, we have to go through a little bit more of the choreography to get it on the plane, it usually takes about three minutes,” Carstens said.
While he said Griner opened up about his ordeal during the trip, he declined to elaborate.
“It is humiliating. I am very grateful that President (Joe) Biden allows me the opportunity to do this job. It is also painful work. So when you get a chance to shake someone’s hand, it’s one of the rare moments where you get to celebrate a victory,” Carstens told Bash.
“But know this, even when we’re welcoming someone home, we still have work to do. So as I shake Brittney’s hand and we go to the plane and have this great conversation, my brain is already thinking about Paul Whelan. What can we do to get it 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, reiterating the Biden administration’s commitment to bring him home.
“I told him, ‘Paul, you have this president’s commitment. The president is focused, the secretary of state is focused. I’m certainly focused, and we’ll get you home. And I reminded him, I said, ‘Paul, when you were in the Navy, and I was in the Army, they always reminded you to keep the faith,’ and I said, ‘Keep the faith. We’re going to find you,’” Carstens recounted.
He said he told Whelan “this was a one or neither case.”
“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 opportunity to bring you home at this time,” she 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 Trends Wide.
Carstens did not provide additional details about the negotiation efforts to bring Whelan home, but said that “options are always being evaluated.”
“We have to adapt to the times,” he said. “But here is what I would like to leave you, you know, we have an open and ongoing dialogue with the Russians. And we have a commitment from this president and my office, certainly, to bring Paul Whelan home.”
Trends Wide’s Paul LeBlanc contributed to this report.
Related Post
(Trends Wide) — The United States’ top hostage affairs official reflected Sunday on the completion of the prisoner swap that led to the release of Brittney Griner, saying the star basketball player immediately thanked the team that returned her to the United States.
“When she finally got on the American plane, I said, ‘Brittany, you must have been through a lot in the last 10 months. Here is your seat. Please feel free to unzip. We’ll give you your space,'” special presidential envoy for hostage affairs Roger Carstens told Trends Wide’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union.”
“And she said, ‘Oh no. I have been in prison for 10 months listening to Russian, I want to speak. But first of all, who are these guys?” And she walked past me and went up to each member of that team, looked them in the eye, shook their hands and asked for them and got their names, setting up a personal connection with them. It was really amazing,” Carstens recalled. “And then on an 18-hour flight, he probably spent 12 hours talking, and we talked about everything under the sun.”
Carstens, who led the mission to the United Arab Emirates, provided Trends Wide with new details about Griner’s journey home, describing him as “an intelligent, passionate, compassionate, humble, interesting, patriotic, but most of all authentic person.” , appeared healthy and full of energy during the trip.
Roger Carstens
It gave him a feeling, he said, that he was going home that day, and it felt real the moment he was able to board the other plane and tell her that “on behalf of the President of the United States, Joe Biden, and the Secretary of Status Tony Blinken, I’m here to take you home.”
“At that point, we have to go through a little bit more of the choreography to get it on the plane, it usually takes about three minutes,” Carstens said.
While he said Griner opened up about his ordeal during the trip, he declined to elaborate.
“It is humiliating. I am very grateful that President (Joe) Biden allows me the opportunity to do this job. It is also painful work. So when you get a chance to shake someone’s hand, it’s one of the rare moments where you get to celebrate a victory,” Carstens told Bash.
“But know this, even when we’re welcoming someone home, we still have work to do. So as I shake Brittney’s hand and we go to the plane and have this great conversation, my brain is already thinking about Paul Whelan. What can we do to get it 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, reiterating the Biden administration’s commitment to bring him home.
“I told him, ‘Paul, you have this president’s commitment. The president is focused, the secretary of state is focused. I’m certainly focused, and we’ll get you home. And I reminded him, I said, ‘Paul, when you were in the Navy, and I was in the Army, they always reminded you to keep the faith,’ and I said, ‘Keep the faith. We’re going to find you,’” Carstens recounted.
He said he told Whelan “this was a one or neither case.”
“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 opportunity to bring you home at this time,” she 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 Trends Wide.
Carstens did not provide additional details about the negotiation efforts to bring Whelan home, but said that “options are always being evaluated.”
“We have to adapt to the times,” he said. “But here is what I would like to leave you, you know, we have an open and ongoing dialogue with the Russians. And we have a commitment from this president and my office, certainly, to bring Paul Whelan home.”
Trends Wide’s Paul LeBlanc contributed to this report.
