Clinton Promises to Help Free American Businessman Jailed in Russia

0 Comments | Insight on the News, August 7, 2000 | by Jamie Dettmer, | J. Michael Waller

Under increasing criticism for administration inaction in securing the release of U.S. businessman Edmond Pope from a KGB prison, President Clinton has promised to do all he can to free the retired Navy officer.

News alert! has learned that Clinton made the pledge on July 10 in a half-hour meeting with Pope's wife, Cheryl, during a National Governors' Association conference at Penn State University, where the president delivered a speech.

Cheryl Pope is a Penn State employee and was one of the organizers of the conference.

The Russian secret police arrested Pope early in April, accusing him of espionage. He has denied the allegation, saying that the torpedo technology on which he is accused of spying is available commercially on the open market from Russia's state-owned arms-export agency. U.S. intelligence sources tell news alert! that Pope, who was completely open with the Russians about having once served in naval intelligence, is not a spy.

Some sources have suggested that Russian authorities ordered Pope's arrest to divert attention from a high-profile political scandal in which the Russian Supreme Court ruled that the security forces illegally had persecuted a retired Russian navy officer, Alexander Nikitin, for his environmental work.

Until the the Penn State conference, the White House and Vice President Al Gore had ignored repeated private and public requests from Cheryl Pope for assistance. Pennsylvania Republican Reps. John Peterson and Curt Weldon have called on the administration to act, and Weldon recently visited Moscow in a bid to get Pope freed. Family members insist that the State Department has done the bare minimum for Pope. State Department spokesmen have said publicly that the case should be resolved by the Russian criminal-justice system.

Gore's office told Cheryl Pope at least three times that it would not help her and advised her to ask the Immigration and Naturalization Service, or INS, for assistance.

Members of the Pope family say Cheryl Pope was shocked last month when she flew to Moscow to visit her husband in jail only to hear at the same time Clinton and more than 50 congressmen back home call for the release of a jailed Russian oligarch while saying not a word about her husband.