Washington has maintained that Robert Levinson disappeared on a business trip, but probe shows he was on an unapproved CIA mission to collect intel on Tehran
Undated photo of retired-FBI agent Robert Levinson (photo credit: AP/Levinson Family)
WASHINGTON (AP) — An American
who vanished nearly seven years ago in Iran was working for the CIA on
an unapproved intelligence-gathering mission that, when it came to light
inside the government, produced one of the most serious scandals in the
recent history of the CIA — but all in secret, an Associated Press
investigation found.
The
CIA paid Robert Levinson’s family $2.5 million to head off a revealing
lawsuit. Three veteran analysts were forced out of the agency and seven
others were disciplined.
The US publicly has described Levinson as a private citizen.
“Robert Levinson went missing during a business trip to Kish Island, Iran,” the White House said last month.
That was just a cover story. In an
extraordinary breach of the most basic CIA rules, a team of analysts —
with no authority to run spy operations — paid Levinson to gather
intelligence from some of the world’s darkest corners. He vanished while
investigating the Iranian regime for the US government.
Details of the disappearance were described in
documents obtained or reviewed by the AP, plus interviews over several
years with dozens of current and former US and foreign officials close
to the search for Levinson. Nearly all spoke on condition of anonymity
because they were not authorized to discuss the sensitive case.
There is no confirmation who captured
Levinson, who is Jewish, or who may be holding him now. Although US
authorities have investigated possible involvement of drug traffickers
or terrorists, most officials say they believe Iran either holds him or
knows who does.
The AP first confirmed Levinson’s CIA ties in
2010 and continued reporting to uncover more details. It agreed three
times to delay publishing the story because the US government said it
was pursuing promising leads to get him home.
The AP is reporting the story now because,
nearly seven years after his disappearance, those efforts have
repeatedly come up empty. The government has not received any sign of
life in nearly three years. Top U.S. officials, meanwhile, say his
captors almost certainly already know about his CIA association.
There has been no hint of Levinson’s
whereabouts since his family received proof-of-life photos and a video
in late 2010 and early 2011. That prompted a hopeful burst of diplomacy
between the United States and Iran, but as time dragged on, promising
leads dried up and the trail went cold.
Immediately after Levinson’s disappearance in
March 2007, the CIA acknowledged to Congress that Levinson had
previously done contract work for the agency. But the agency had no
current relationship with Levinson and there was no connection to Iran,
the CIA assured lawmakers.
But in October 2007 Levinson’s lawyer
discovered emails between Levinson and his friend Anne Jablonski, who
worked at the CIA. Before his trip, Levinson had told Jablonski that he
was developing a source with access to the Iranian regime and could
arrange a meeting in Dubai or an island nearby.
Problem was, Levinson’s contract was out of money and, though the CIA was working to authorize more, it had yet to do so.
“I would like to know if I do, in fact, expend
my own funds to conduct this meeting, there will be reimbursement
sometime in the near future, or, if I should discontinue this, as well
as any and all similar projects until renewal time in May,” Levinson
wrote.
There’s no evidence that Jablonski ever
responded to that email. And she says she has no recollection of ever
receiving it. She said she had no idea he was going to Iran.
In a later email exchange, Jablonski advised
Levinson to keep talk about the money “among us girls” until it had been
officially approved.
Jablonski signed off: “Be safe.”
Levinson said he understood. He said he’d try
to make this trip as successful as previous ones. And he promised to
“keep a low profile.”
Levinson’s flight landed on the Iranian island
of Kish late the morning of March 8, a breezy, cloudy day. He checked
into the Hotel Maryam, a few blocks off Kish’s eastern beaches.
Levinson’s source on Kish, Dawud Salahuddin, has said he met with
Levinson for hours in his hotel room. The island is a free-trade zone,
meaning Americans do not need a visa to visit.
Salahuddin was an American fugitive wanted in
the killing of a former Iranian diplomat in the state of Maryland in
1980. Since fleeing to Iran, Salahuddin had become close to some in the
Iranian government, particularly to those seen as reformers and
moderates.
The hotel’s registry, which Levinson’s wife has seen, showed him checking out on March 9, 2007.
What happened to him next remains a mystery.
Once the Senate Intelligence Committee saw the
emails between Jablonski and Levinson, lawmakers demanded to know more.
That touched off an internal CIA investigation, which discovered that
the agency’s relationship with Levinson had been unusual from the start.
Instead of e-mailing his work product to the
CIA, he mailed packages to Jablonski’s home in Virgina. His
correspondence was primarily with Jablonski’s personal email account.
Jablonski said the analysts simply wanted to avoid the CIA’s lengthy mail screening process.
“I didn’t think twice about it,” she said in an interview.
The Illicit Finance Group also didn’t follow
the typical routine for international travel. Before someone travels
abroad for the agency, the top CIA officer in the country normally
clears it. That way, if an employee is arrested or creates a diplomatic
incident, the agency isn’t caught by surprise.
That didn’t happen before Levinson’s trips,
former officials said. He journeyed to Panama, Turkey and Canada and was
paid upon his return, people familiar with his travels said. After each
trip, he submitted bills and the CIA paid him for the information and
reimbursed him for his travel expenses.
Nobody who reviewed the intelligence or reviewed the contract ever flagged this as a potential problem, investigators found.
The whole arrangement was so peculiar that CIA
investigators conducting an internal probe would later conclude it was
an effort to keep top CIA officials from figuring out that the analysts
were running a spying operation. Jablonski adamantly denies that.
The internal investigation renewed some
longtime tensions between the CIA’s operatives and analysts. The
investigators felt the analysts had been running their own amateur spy
operation, with disastrous results. Worse, they said the analysts
withheld what they knew, allowing senior managers to testify falsely to
CVongress.
Investigators blamed Jablonski and fellow
analyst Tim Sampson for not coming forward sooner. But the analysts said
the evidence had been hiding in plain sight. All the information
Levinson provided was uploaded to a shared server for others to see. The
invoices had been submitted and paid.
The analysts felt they were being blamed as part of an internal CIA power struggle.
Sampson said he was never aware of Levinson’s emails with Jablonski or the Iranian trip.
“I didn’t even know he was working on Iran,”
he said. “As far as I knew he was a Latin America, money-laundering and
Russian organized crime guy. I would never have directed him to do
that.”
Sampson offered to take a polygraph. Jablonski says she has consistently told the truth.
Recently, as the five-year statute of
limitations concluded, FBI agents interviewed her again and she told the
same story, officials said.
In secret Senate hearings from late 2007
through early 2008, CIA Deputy Director Stephen Kappes acknowledged that
the agency had been involved in Levinson’s disappearance and conceded
that it hadn’t been as forthcoming as it should have been, current and
former officials said.
Once the internal review was complete, the CIA
gave the family a $2.5 million annuity, which provides tax-free income,
multiple people briefed on the deal said. Neither side wanted a lawsuit
that would air the secret details in public.
US investigators said they believe Iranian
authorities, if they have Levinson, must know about his CIA ties.
Levinson wasn’t trained to resist interrogation. US officials could not
imagine him withholding information from Iranian interrogators, who have
been accused of the worst types of mental and physical abuses.
In an October 2010 interview with the AP,
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran at the time, said his country
was willing to help find Levinson. But he appeared to suggest he knew
or had suspicions that Levinson was working for the US government.
“Of course if it becomes clear what his goal
was, or if he was indeed on a mission, then perhaps specific assistance
can be given,” Ahmadinejad said. “For example, if he had plans to visit
with a group or an individual or go to another country, he would be
easier to trace in that instance.”
In late 2010 and early 2011, Levinson’s wife
Christine received a proof-of-life video and photos that the US hoped
signaled Levinson’s captors were willing to negotiate. US and Iranian
officials met several times in secret, but to no avail.
In March 2011, Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton released a statement saying the U.S. had evidence that Levinson
was being held “somewhere in southwest Asia.” The implication was that
Levinson might be in the hands of terrorist group or criminal
organization somewhere in Pakistan or Afghanistan, not necessarily in
Iran.
US intelligence officials still believed Iran
was behind Levinson’s disappearance, but they hoped Clinton’s statement
would offer a plausible alternative story if Iran wanted to release him
without acknowledging it ever held him.
Then, a surprising thing happened.
Nothing.
Nobody is sure why the contact stopped. Some
believe that all Iran wanted was for the United States to tell the world
that Levinson might not be in Iran after all. Others believe Levinson
died.
Iran denies any knowledge of Levinson’s whereabouts and says it’s doing all it can.
“If any help there is that I can bring to
bear, I would be happy to do so,” Ahmadinejad said in an AP interview in
September 2012.
In June this year, Iran elected Hassan Rouhani
as president. He has struck a more moderate tone than his predecessor,
sparking hope for warmer relations between Iran and the West. But
Rouhani’s statements on Levinson were consistent with Ahmadinejad’s.
“He is an American who has disappeared,” Rouhani told CNN in September. “We have no news of him. We do not know where he is.”
At home in Florida, Christine Levinson works
to keep her husband’s name in the news pushing the Obama Administration
to do more. Last year, the FBI offered a reward of $1 million for
information leading to the return of her husband. But the money hasn’t
worked.
In their big, tight-knit family, Bob Levinson has missed many birthdays, weddings, anniversaries and grandchildren.
“There isn’t any pressure on Iran to resolve
this,” she said in January, frustrated with what she said was a lack of
attention by Washington. “It’s been much too long.”
Copyright 2013 The Associated Press.
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