Putin’s Interrogation Targets Have Deep Stanford Roots
“Offer” to Trump eyes alumni and current faculty member.
By Sam Scott
The latest outrage in Washington has strong tinges of Cardinal. Politicians and pundits from across the spectrum were up in arms at the White House’s suggestion that President Trump would consider a Russian request to interrogate former U.S. ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, as well as Anglo-American financier Bill Browder.
Both men are Stanford alums — Browder earned an MBA from the Graduate School of Business in 1989. McFaul, ’86, MA ’86, has spent much of his life on the Farm, pausing his academic career as a Stanford political science professor to join the Obama administration in 2009. In 2014, he returned to Stanford, where he is director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s loathing for both is well documented. McFaul’s latest book, From Cold War to Hot Peace, begins with details of the withering reception McFaul received in his first meeting with Putin after he became ambassador in 2012. Soon McFaul, his staff and even his family were being followed and harassed as they tried to make their way around Moscow and beyond. Russia media treated him like a foreign revolutionary.
He was a high-profile punching bag for a Russian president filled, in the words of the New Yorker, with a ‘raw and resentful anti-Americanism, unknown since the seventies.’
His offense? Meeting with Putin critics, in accordance with traditional American diplomacy, as well as his criticisms and earlier writings encouraging reforms in nearby former Soviet nations. More broadly, he was a high-profile punching bag for a Russian president filled, in the words of the New Yorker, with a “raw and resentful anti-Americanism, unknown since the seventies.”
The irony: McFaul, who first visited Russia as a Stanford undergraduate, has spent his career championing the importance of good relations with Moscow. Last year, his invitation brought Russian ambassador Anatoly Antonov to campus, even as McFaul was banned from going to Russia.
Browder, who once was a major investor in Russia, is also barred from the country. In 2008, Sergei Magnitsky, Browder’s friend and lawyer, was jailed and later killed for exposing fraud involving senior Russian officials. His death spurred Browder to push Congress to pass the 2012 Magnitsky Act, which has led to sanctions against numerous officials close to Putin. “In an attempt to get the sanctions lifted, the Putin government has tried to portray Mr. Browder as the criminal, repeatedly and unsuccessfully seeking his arrest by Interpol,” the Washington Post wrote in an editorial.
In response to Trump’s consideration of exposing him to Russian interrogation, Browder, who had renounced his American citizenship and is a British citizen, said giving him to Russian officials would be an effective death sentence.
By Thursday afternoon, Trump, who had started the firestorm by calling Putin’s suggestion an “incredible offer,” was distancing himself from the idea. “It is a proposal that was made in sincerity by President Putin, but President Trump disagrees with it,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement.
McFaul wasn’t impressed: “I don’t consider it ‘sincerity’ to falsely accuse U.S. government officials of being criminals,” he tweeted. •
Sam Scott is a senior writer for STANFORD.
For more:
McFaul on Twitter
McFaul on Facebook
“McFaul and Putin: The Backstory” (2014 STANFORD profile)
“Putin wanted to interrogate me. Trump called it ‘an incredible offer.’ Why?” (Washington Post, July 27, 2018)
“What’s it like to meet Putin face to face?” an excerpt from From Cold War to Hot Peace
“McFaul and Putin: The Backstory” (2014 STANFORD profile)
“What’s it like to meet Putin face to face?” an excerpt from From Cold War to Hot Peace
Browder on Twitter
“I’m Bill Browder. Here’s the Biggest Mistake Putin Made When Trying to Get Access to Me Through Trump” (Time magazine, July 17, 2018)
“Bill Browder Doubts He’ll Be Swapped To Russia For U.S. Access To Russian Agents” (NPR, July 19, 2018)
