Former FBI-Agent Robert Levinson Imprisoned in Iran
Source: Levinson Family
FBI director James Comey announced today that they agency raised the reward for information to $5 million on the whereabouts of former FBI agent Robert Levinson of Coral Springs, Florida. Levinson disappeared from the Kish Island resort in the Persian Gulf eight years ago. A proof of life video of him was last seen in 2010. His family and lawyer have endeavored to seek the assistance of the Administration to have him returned. Secretary of State John Kerry apparently asked Foreign Minister Zarif for assistance in locating him. CBS News reported:
FBI Director James Comey said “it is long past time for Bob to come home.” Secretary of State John Kerry urged the Iranian government to “work cooperatively with us on the investigation.”
An Associated Press investigation published in 2013 revealed that Levinson vanished while working for the CIA on an unapproved intelligence-gathering mission. In January 2014, Christine Levinson confirmed her husband was working for U.S. intelligence.
“He was working as a consultant for the CIA,” she told CBS News. “He was also a private investigator. He was able to do both at the same time in his travels.”
Tuesday is Levinson’s 67th birthday. He retired from the FBI in 1998.
Levinson has had no direct contact with his family since his capture in 2007. In 2010, documents detailing Levinson’s “arrest and detention in Iran” were anonymously emailed to his wife, who later received pictures and a short videotape.
[…]
“Leads were followed up, and investigations were made, but we have not gotten any new information about Bob,” Christine Levinson said last year.
We wrote about the shadowy circumstances behind his likely abduction on his way to meet an American convert to Islam David Belfield, a.k.a. Dawud Salahuddin, who, assassinated a leading opponent of the Islamic republic, disguised as a postman delivering a package to him in suburban Washington, DC. See our December 13, 2013 Iconoclast post, Unanswered Questions Follow the Levinson CIA Rogue Mission Expose:
There were secret House and Senate Intelligence Hearings on the Levinson disappearance and CIA involvement. A multi-million compensation deal for Levinson’s wife to keep her quiet was engineered in part by Florida US Senator, Bill Nelson. Meanwhile in 2011, proof of life videos and photos emerge showing a bushy haired grey bearded Levinson attired in an orange prisoner jumpsuit in chains pleading for his life. According to the WaPo report, the video audio background appears to favor the notion that he may have been moved to Afghanistan or Pakistan by Iranian intelligence. The US secretly approached Iran about Levinson’s whereabouts. Meanwhile former Iranian President Ahmadinejad charged the US with using Levinson to perpetrate another CIA plot not unlike the 1950’s one that overthrew Iranian President Mohammed Mossadegh. Then in 2013 a new ‘reformist’ Iranian President emerges after the June election who engages in dialogue with the Obama Administration. The State Department alleges that it made inquires during the recent P5+1 negotiation with Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif concerning the whereabouts of another American prisoner, Pastor Abedini. However there is silence on the whereabouts of Levinson. Concern rises about Levinson given that he is a diabetic and may have a heart condition. The inference is that he might have died in the course of interrogation. His case has gone dark. That is, until today’s expose. An expose that appears to have been embargoed for several years.
[…]
The assassin Salahuddin was recruited in 1980 by the late Muslim Brotherhood principal, Dr. Said Ramadan, father of Oxford/Notre Dame Professor Tariq, to do a hit for Ayatollah Khomenei. Salahuddin, disguised as a US Postman, went to the door of a former Shah official in Washington, DC suburb, Ali Akbar Tabatabai’e, shot and killed him and then fled to Tehran. We wrote about this Ramadan assassination mission ordered by Ayatollah Khomenei in our NER article How the CIA Helped the Muslim Brotherhood Infiltrate the West (August 2011). Given Salahuddin’s background, that possibly means Levinson set up for a snatch by Iranian Intelligence. Given Levinson’s ‘contract’ work with the CIA Illicit Funds Office in Venezuela and Colombia, our hunch is that the IRGC Qods Force got wind of this in Venezuela and started tracking him.
Former FBI agent Levinson, Pastor Abedini, former US Marine Amir Hekmati and WaPo Tehran Bureau chief, Jason Rezaian are all held by the alleged moderate regime of Iran’s President Rouhani currently engaged in negotiations for a nuclear deal with the P5+1, that Israel’s PM Netanyahu called a very bad deal in his address to a Joint Meeting of Conference on March 3rd. Iran’s Supreme Ruler, ailing Ayatollah Khamenei could snap his fingers and have all of the imprisoned Americans released, if he thought it might bring a release of punishing economic sanctions. Don’t count on it from this Administration. They are seemingly indifferent to the repeated pleas for assistance from the prisoners’ concerned families and millions of concerned Americans.
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One Response
There should be no nuclear negotiations with Iran under any circumstances, but their continued egregious behavior of taking American hostages should even preclude diplomatic relations with that terrorist regime. We should be sending the Iranian Ambassador and his staff home, then launching a raid to free the prisoners. I feel for the families of Mr. Levinson and the other three American hostages.