While some critics say US involvement in the swaps could incite foreign governments to hold Americans hostage or captives under false accusations as leverage, Reed told CNN’s Jake Tapper that he doesn’t buy their arguments.
“What you need to understand is countries like North Korea — now, of course, Russia, China, Syria, Iran, Venezuela — countries like these are going to take Americans hostage no matter what,” Reed said in a newly released issue of the upcoming Tapper Clip CNN special report: “Finally Home: The Trevor Reed Interview,” which airs Sunday night. “And even if they don’t get any kind of exchange for those prisoners, they still will, just out of sheer spite, just to show the United States that ‘we took your citizens.'”
Reed told Tapper in the clip, which aired on CNN’s State of the Union, that he believes those nations “will continue to do this as long as American citizens travel there.”
Reed, a former US Marine, was sentenced to nine years in prison in July 2020 after being accused of endangering the “life and health” of Russian police officers in an altercation the previous year. He and his family have denied the allegations against him.
Reed was released from Russia in April as part of a prisoner swap with the US for Konstantin Yaroshenko, a Russian smuggler convicted of conspiracy to import cocaine. The US commuted the sentence against Yaroshenko.
Reed argues in the clip from the forthcoming interview that what sets the US apart from other nations is its willingness to bring Americans home when they are being held hostage or wrongfully imprisoned abroad.
“The United States went out and made the ethical decision to exchange prisoners to get their innocent Americans out of this country, even if they exchanged them for someone better known and more valuable in the United States,” Reed said, later adding , that “the Russians, Chinese, Venezuelans, Iran, Syria, North Korea — none of them have ever in their entire history made an exchange for a prisoner who is just an average of their citizens, and they would never do that that characterizes the United States off.”
Meanwhile, two other Americans, Paul Whelan and Brittney Griner, remain incarcerated in Russia.
A senior administration official told CNN last month that they don’t necessarily see Reed’s successful repatriation as a boost to Whelan and Griner’s cases, but said the US government will continue to push for their release and the channel remains open to potential barter deals.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke to Griner’s wife, Cherelle Griner, last week.
According to a senior State Department official, the top US diplomat said Griner’s release was a top priority for the department and had his full attention.
Reed recalls his mindset in prison and the terrible conditions in Russian psychiatry
In previously released clips from Sunday night’s documentary, Reed recalled his time in a prisoner psychiatric facility and discussed his mindset during his time behind bars.
Reed told Tapper he believed he was committed to the psychiatric facility as punishment for his continued urge to appeal his conviction.
He described the facility: “There was blood all over the wall – where inmates had killed or attempted to kill themselves or other inmates.”
“The toilet is just a hole in the ground. And there’s crap everywhere, all over the floor, on the walls. There’s also people in there walking around looking like zombies,” he continued.
Reed said he didn’t sleep for a few days for fear of what the people in his cell might do to him.
In another clip released on Friday, Reed said he had given himself hope of getting out of Russian prison.
“And a lot of people aren’t going to like what I’m going to say about that, but I took their hope as a weakness,” he said. “So I didn’t want to have any hope that somehow I’d be released and then that would be taken from me.”
“I wouldn’t get my hopes up,” he later remarked.
CNN’s Devan Cole contributed to this report.