Former FBI Agent on Private Business in Iran Missing *Update*

Originally posted by The Big O
This is all crazy. Here I was reading headlines that an ex-FBI agent was missing and never clicked on a link. Then, I find out it's the father of an old friend of mine. Just crazy, crazy stuff.

w0w, lucky you...

you know someone famous

i hope everything is alright...

Well this just in...nothing new, but a sign Levinson hasn't been quite forgotten. It turned up at the end of a current report:

Bush to Iran: Release detained Americans
WASHINGTON - President Bush on Friday demanded that Iran "immediately and unconditionally" release four Iranian-Americans detained for alleged espionage and provide information about a former FBI agent missing in the country...

Bush's statement also said he was "disturbed" by the fact that Iran has still not provided any information about the welfare and whereabouts of former FBI agent Robert Levinson who went missing in Iran while on private business there in March.ext

news.yahoo.com...;_ylt=AvWB5yEMQGarWmQPdJXtb8is0NUE

Okay I got this message from is daughter Sarah on June 5th. It's a big mass mail she sent out to her friends on Myspace and through e-mail. However, I'm on my honeymoon right now, and did not get the message until today, thus I didn't send anything.

We are writing to you, our friends, because we are in need of help. As you know, our father, Robert Levinson, has been missing in Iran for almost three months. We still do not have any information on Bob’s welfare or whereabouts. As you can imagine, this has been a nightmare for our family.

Here is how you can help…..

On Wednesday, June 6, 2007, we would like each one of our friends and family to send an e-mail to Ambassador Zarif, the Iranian Ambassador to the United Nations, asking for his help in locating Bob. If you are willing to help us, we ask that this email be very brief and neutral in tone - in other words, it would not reflect any negativity or be accusatory in any way.

The e-mail should contain the following:

- Your name

- Your relationship to Bob

- Two to three sentences asking for his help

While you should use your own words, here is an example that may be helpful:

The last time I saw my brother-in-law Bob it was at his daughter's baby shower. We talked and laughed over lunch. I love Bob. His family misses him so much. Please find him and bring him home to them.
- Suzi Halpin

For those of you who have never met our dad, you can simply write something to the effect of:

I am a friend of Sarah Levinson, Bob Levinson's daughter. She and her family have always spoken very highly of him, and now they miss him so much. Please help find him and bring him home to them for Father's Day.
- Joe Smith

Ambassador Zarif’s e-mail address: [email protected]

We hope that by taking five minutes out of your day to do this, it will aid in the safe return of Bob Levinson. We would love to have him home in time to help us celebrate the most important Father’s Day of our lives.

Thank you so much for your help. We are so truly grateful for the support from our family and friends during this difficult time.

Sincerely,
Sarah and the entire Levinson family

Dude, I'm just headed outta town overnite, and I'll get it out tomorrow. Thanks for bringing it to our attention, and the Mods might jump on this too...make other ATS types aware...Amnesty International style.
Cheers, Canuck

There was a piece on Good Morning America the other day... thought I'd share.

abcnews.go.com...

I just caught an interview on FNC with the wife of the missing Robert Levinson and did some checking, here is a couple of recent articles concerning the missing man:

Iran Denies Request on Missing American

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran said Sunday had refused a request by the Swiss Embassy to travel to the site where an American is believed to have disappeared earlier this year.

Robert Levinson was last seen March 8 on Kish Island, a resort off the southern coast of Iran, and Tehran has repeatedly said it has no information on his whereabouts.

Wife Of Missing American Hopes To Meet Iran's President

The wife of a former FBI agent who disappeared in March while on a business trip to Iran told Radio Farda today that she has traveled to New York to try to meet with Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad, who is expected to speak at the UN General Assembly.


Christine Levinson told Radio Farda that she has not been able yet to get an appointment with the Iranian president.

"I keep trying to get an appointment, I know he's a very busy man but I hope he will be able to find even 10 minutes to see me," she said. "I want to ask him for his help in finding my husband, I know that he has the ability to find him."

I feel for his family, still no word and at one point it appeared he was to be released, now his whereabouts are unknown to the Iranians.

There is much more to this story than what is seeing the light of day.

Iran has given permission for the family of Robert Levinson to visit the country:

Iran: Missing American's family can visit

Tehran announced Sunday that it will allow the family of Robert Levinson, a former FBI agent who disappeared while on a business trip to Iran in March, to travel to Iran.

His whereabouts are unknown, and the Iranian government has said it has no knowledge of his fate. Levinson was last seen on Iran's Kish Island.

The latest on the still missing Robert Levinson who disappeared early last year while in Iran.

The family was permitted to visit Iran and completed their visit without the answers they were seeking.

US Asks Iran Again to Find Missing Agent

WASHINGTON (AP) — The State Department on Thursday renewed its calls for Iran to find out what happened to a former FBI agent who went missing on an Iranian island last year and has not been heard from since.

Nearly 10 months after Robert Levinson disappeared on Kish Island in uncertain circumstances in March 2007, the State Department said neither the U.S. government nor Levinson's wife, who went to Iran in December, hoping to find clues about her husband's whereabouts, had gotten any new information about the case.

After hearing the wonderful news of the hostages being rescued in Colombia, I remembered the story of Robert Levinson who went missing and was last seen in Iran.

In kind of ironic fashion, the latest article on the missing US citizen was posted on the same day as the rescue in Colombia.

This piece goes through the story once again and includes a recent interview with Levinson's family.

An American Gone Missing in Iran: Interview with Christine Levinson about her husband's case and the family's ordeal

Iranians are famous for being very hospitable people. There is a saying in Persian that says guest is God's friend. So the disappearance of Robert (Bob) Levinson, an American on a private visit to the Kish island in Persian Gulf, is quite surprising, disturbing and mind-boggling.



Levinson had traveled to the Iranian island of Kish in Persian Gulf which is a Free Trade Zone and requires no visa to enter. He was reportedly last seen on March 9, 2007 where he checked out of his hotel in Kish. The Iranian government claims they have no information on Mr. Levinson's whereabouts and that their investigation is still pending.

ok so how would the stae department react if i said ` hi , my brother disappeared in IL , wee have no idea where he was at the time , or who he was seeing - but in the name of the free world i demand you do everything to find him`


how many tourists go missing each year , the police investigate and file a missing person , put out an apb , ask the hospitals, morgues, jails , and locals where they were last seen.

Everyone seems to mis the fact that he went there JUST to meet with a murderer

David Belfield (also known as Hassan Abdulrahman or Hassan Tantai, aka Dawud Salahuddin) is an African-American convert to Islam who killed an Iranian critic of Ayatollah Khomeini and fled to Iran.[1][2]

Dawud Salahuddin was born David T. Belfield in Roanoke Rapids, NC on November 10, 1950. He is most famous for the alleged murder of Iranian dissident Ali Akbar Tabatabai in Bethesda in 1980. Salahuddin grew up in Bayshore, Long Island in a Baptist family, and attended Howard University for one semester. He has said that, as a child the, "most damage done to him," was "an indecency, an insufficiency, certainly a shame not to be white." He became politicized in 1963, while watching news footage from Birmingham, Alabama showing a police chief turn back civil-rights marchers with fire hoses and dogs, which caused him to develop "an implacable hatred toward all symbols of American authority." After graduation from high school, he attended [Howard University] for one semester. He was attracted to Islam because it is "color-blind" and converted at the age of 18. He frequented an Iranian student center run by Bahram Nahidian. During the early 1970s he spent time visiting prisons around Washington to, "bring the message of Islam to black inmates". He met Said Ramadan in 1975 and Ramadan later became his mentor. After the murder, he fled from the US and took refuge in Iran. He currently lives in Iran, is married to an Iranian woman, speaks Persian and works as a freelance writer. In an interview with The New Yorker [3] he admitted to killing Tabatabai. He described the killing as, not "murderous" but as, "an act of war and a religious duty. He said that, "In Islamic religious terms, taking a life is sometimes sanctioned and even highly praised, and I thought that event was just such a time."

American charges Belfield has admitted to and is charged with assassinating Ali Akbar Tabatabai, a former Iranian diplomat, and supporter of the exiled Shah of Iran, in a suburb of Washington, D.C., in 1980.[2][4] [edit] Exile Belfield left the USA, and has spent much of the time since then living in Iran. He has occasionally traveled to Arab countries and North Korea, but has been careful not to expose himself to being extradited back to the United States to face charges for homicide.[2][4]

I want to know what the connection is . This seems a little weird to me . This "personal business" Going to meet up with a murderer??
Maybe he was there to hire the guy for another "hit"?

Well even if nothing or if im reading to much into things . I hope this helps a bit with research..

en.wikipedia.org...

[edit on 3-7-2008 by d11_m_na_c05]

reply to post by d11_m_na_c05


That is intriguing, when Levinson went missing, it was during the UK 15 incident if I remember correctly, and at the same time the US had 6(?) Iranians in Iraq being detained.

I keep following this and updating when I find some news, but I agree that there is more than meets the eye in this story.

thanks for the info

reply to post by JacKatMtn


No problem . That one interview caught my eye and i figured i would do a little search . Oh crap forgot my source . .

Wife plans Iran trip to find husband
Posted 8/3/2007

NEW YORK — Christine Levinson's husband vanished while on a business trip to Iran. Five months later, she's going there to try to bring him back. The mother of the couple's seven children is planning her own trip to Iran in search of husband Robert Levinson even though she's been advised by the State Department not to travel to Iran because of the risk. "I am positive he is alive," Christine Levinson told the Associated Press in an interview Thursday from her home in Coral Springs, Fla. "If he were hospitalized or had been killed, we would have known by now." The 6-foot-4 burly Levinson was last seen March 8 on Kish Island, a resort off the southern coast of Iran, where he had gone to seek information on cigarette smuggling for a client of his security firm. His wife believes he remains in Iran because his name has not shown up on any flight manifests of planes leaving the country and his passport has not been used anywhere.

Weird that this article seems to be from last year..
www.usatoday.com...

Another article from last year about this .
Is this new or ?? Has it happened before? Or am i missing the time line here ? Cause wouldn't he have been gone over a year now?

friday-lunch-club.blogspot.com...

[EDIT:] Sorry just noticed this is an old thread . I may have re-iterated a few things here . [EDIT:] Sorry just noticed this is an old thread . I may have re-iterated a few things here .

[edit on 3-7-2008 by d11_m_na_c05]

I found this on our guy.... interesting...

Levinson's resume states he served as a special agent of the FBI for 22 years, specializing amongst other things in Russian organized crime and money laundering. In 1998 Levinson retired from the law-enforcement business and in 2001 started his own firm: Robert A. Levinson & Associates, Inc. together with his wife, Christina Levinson, who is listed as Director of his corporation and appears to be the only "associate" of the "& Associates, Inc." outfit. Mr. L & Associates specialize in private investigations and giving expert testimonies on "Russian matters" in courts

source

I have been following this thread, but havent had anything to add to it.

Today I checked my email and I receive press releases from the FBI and received this one on July 15th. There is no new news, but I found it interesting that they are just now releasing this!

www.fbi.gov...


For Immediate Release
July 15, 2008

Washington D.C.
FBI National Press Office
(202) 324-3691


FBI Seeking Information about Missing Retired Special Agent Robert Levinson
Retired FBI Special Agent Robert Levinson has been missing since March 2007 and is believed to be in Iran. As Mr. Levinson is a retired Special Agent, the FBI has an interest in his disappearance. Through the FBI’s legal attaché offices worldwide, the FBI is working with the Department of State to gather information regarding his safety and whereabouts.

The FBI has obtained information that Mr. Levinson arrived on Iran’s Kish Island on March 8, 2007, had several meetings at the Maryam Hotel, and then checked out the next day. However, Mr. Levinson did not fly to Dubai on a previously scheduled flight. There is no record of Mr. Levinson leaving Kish Island. Nor is there any record of Mr. Levinson using his passport or credit cards after March 9, 2007.

“This is a matter of great concern for the FBI. Bob had a long and distinguished FBI career, and he has a wife, four daughters, three sons, one grandchild, and another on the way, all awaiting his return. Plain and simple, our goal is to bring Bob home to his family,” said FBI Assistant Director in Charge Joseph Persichini, Jr., Washington Field Office.

Anyone with information about Mr. Levinson’s disappearance should contact their local FBI field office, or if outside the U.S., the legal attaché at the nearest U.S. Embassy or Consulate. You can also submit information on the web at www.fbi.gov.

###

[edit on 16-7-2008 by greeneyedleo]

Two years on and a new effort to find out what happened to Levinson. Some still think he is being held prisoner in Iran, up till now the Iranian government has pulled a Sgt Schultz...

We Know Nothing

Let's hope the latest efforts on the part of the new administration can yield some better results in this mystery.

New Bid to Find Missing Ex-F.B.I. Agent

Two years after a former agent for the F.B.I. disappeared while on a trip to Iran, American diplomats and investigators are intensifying their efforts to resolve his case.

Two weeks ago, an Obama administration envoy, Richard C. Holbrooke, gave a letter to Iranian officials requesting information about the missing former agent, Robert Levinson, and two Americans imprisoned in Iran. Over the past year, a small team of F.B.I. agents, aided by consultants and businessmen with contacts in Iran, has also been seeking information about him.

The efforts come at a delicate time in American-Iranian relations. The Obama administration is seeking greater engagement with Iran, even as the government there has announced that it will try one of the imprisoned Americans, Roxana Saberi, a freelance journalist, on espionage charges.

reply to post by JacKatMtn

Thanks for the update. Levinson had come to mind recently as I had been wondering about a couple of apparent intelligence operatives who had 'evaporated' in the last few years after making a splash...Richard Tomlinson and Mike Vreeland. Different cases entirely, but curious just the same.

I hope Levinson is able to make his way back out of the rabbbit hole.

reply to post by JacKatMtn

I think it's important that this case stay on our radar, so I am providing a link to continuing developments.

Robert Levinson Photos Show Iran Holding Former FBI Agent Hostage Since 2007, U.S. Officials SayTwo years after a hostage video and photographs of retired FBI agent Robert Levinson raised the possibility that the missing American was being held by terrorists, U.S. officials now see the government of Iran behind the images, intelligence officials told The Associated Press. www.huffingtonpost.com...