Missing Man (32 page)

Chris and her children believed that the deal between the United States and Iran was Bob's best and possibly last hope for freedom. “We believe that right now is the time that my father's case can be prioritized, resolved and he can be brought home,” Dave Levinson told
People
in 2015. Bob's daughter Sarah woke up one morning with a premonition that her father's story was about to have a happy ending.

The political fight over the nuclear plan continued, with opponents arguing that Iran shouldn't be trusted and would resume its pursuit of an atomic bomb. By the late summer of 2015, it became apparent that President Obama had secured enough support in Congress to get the agreement passed. Its adoption marked a new chapter in the twilight war, and a possible end to decades of distorted relations between the United States and Iran.

A wave of news reports appeared about possible prisoner swaps between the two countries, many mentioning Jason Rezaian, the
Washington Post
reporter. One Iranian official claimed the United States was illegally detaining nineteen of Iran's citizens in American prisons on embargo violations charges. Leaders in both Washington and Tehran disputed suggestions that an exchange was in the works, but it seemed inevitable that such a deal would take place.

White House officials assured Chris that American diplomats had continued to press Iran about her husband. Bob was mentioned in every newspaper account about Americans detained or unaccounted for in Iran. His place among that group, however, had begun to fade. His name was always there, but typically at the end of an article, almost as an afterthought. It was understandable. The three Americans held in Evin Prison were tangible and alive. Bob existed apart from them, in the realm of memory. The last image of him alive was five years old. His family had taken to calling him the “longest-held hostage” in American history, but his fate had long been unclear.

Most of the people involved in his case had moved on. Anne Jablonski still worked for investigative firms doing reports about Russian businessmen and taught yoga to injured U.S. soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Along with her website devoted to healthy living for cats, she had created a new one called Yoga Set Free, on which she posted her spiritual musings. “The yogi sages say that your divine teacher is your deepest self,” she wrote in one of them. “But at first it feels like
it's not you
, it's something ‘other'—it's fine if it feels like that. So chill. And just ask it, like you're asking someone else, a good friend: ‘
Are you there?
'”

Dave, Ira, Larry Sweeney, and Jeff Katz, the private detective in London, continued to try to find out what had happened to Bob. Dave concentrated on his law practice, though he still provided Chris with legal advice when she needed it. Ira had gone back to writing movie scripts as a way of occupying his time and to avoid obsessing about Bob. He wasn't very successful. He continued to speak regularly with FBI agents, including some who told him they were outraged that the Justice Department hadn't pursued its investigation into the CIA's handling of Bob's case. Ira had also resumed his telephone talks with Dawud. The fugitive told him that he suspected Bob's captors had taken him out of Iran, possibly across the border into Afghanistan. Those conversations came to an abrupt end amid the intense media publicity about Bob's CIA ties. The Levinson family had provided CNN with one of the proposals Bob wrote in late 2005 to the CIA suggesting the possibility of recruiting Dawud as an agency informant. In it, Bob had described Ira as his “source” who would connect him with the fugitive. After CNN aired the segment, Dawud sent Ira an angry email, saying that he couldn't believe that the retired journalist would ever imagine he would agree to become a “snitch.” Ira didn't hear from him again.

The Levinson children, despite the anguish of their father's absence, managed to thrive. Dan worked for a government contractor that put together briefing reports for the Treasury Department about overnight news developments affecting economic issues. Because of the job's nature, Dan could do it from wherever he chose, and stung by his father's wanderlust, he traveled widely. During his campaign to keep his father's name in the news, he had met many politicians, and Dan began to think about a career in politics, possibly as a congressman from Florida. Sue, the oldest of the Levinson daughters, had given birth to a child, Bob and Chris's fourth grandchild. Dave got married in the fall of 2015, and Samantha, the youngest Levinson daughter, had moved to New York and was working at the new Freedom Tower, the soaring building in lower Manhattan erected at the site of the Twin Towers, as a manager on its 102nd-floor observation deck. The youngest of the family's children, Doug, was on track to graduate from Florida State University in 2016.

The big new house that Bob and Chris had purchased in the 1990s to celebrate the start of a new and better life together was now an empty nest. Chris traveled a lot to be with her children, and under normal circumstances she might have sold the house and bought a smaller one. But as with much else in her life, that option was stuck in limbo. To do so, she would have to file legal papers declaring Bob dead, a step she had no interest in taking. Dave had given thought to ways to work around that roadblock, such as getting a sympathetic judge to hold that Bob was too incapacitated to consent to a sale. Whatever the case, the sale of the house was a symbolic step that Chris was not yet prepared to take.

Over time, hundreds of senators and representatives had signed on to congressional declarations demanding answers from Iran about Bob. Their anger was understandable; the idea that political and religious power brokers within Iran, one of the most repressive countries in the world, didn't know about the fate of a captured American spy was absurd. But American leaders and lawmakers had also utterly failed to give Chris and her children what they deserved most—the truth about Bob. The CIA had never been forced to publicly explain why it suddenly found $10,000 extra for Bob when it heard about his Dubai “side trip,” nor had the agency divulged the names of those officials who misled the FBI and Congress.

The Senate intelligence panel allowed the CIA to cast Bob's case as the fault of a few renegade analysts. Former spy agency officials say that explanation doesn't ring true to them. They believe that many CIA staffers and managers, even if they weren't aware of Bob's role with the agency prior to his disappearance, learned of it in the days and weeks after he vanished. Then each day, while Chris waited for news about her missing husband, those CIA officials went home to their spouses and children.

One day, well before the Iranian nuclear deal was struck, Chris got a phone call from James McJunkin, one of the FBI agents who had been involved in the search for Bob. In 2011, McJunkin had pushed for talks with the Iranians following the arrival of the video showing Bob as a hostage. Since then, he had retired from the FBI and gone to work for Discover, the credit card company headquartered in Chicago. While in Florida on business, McJunkin suggested to Chris that they get together, and she agreed to meet him at the place where she saw most visitors, the Panera Bread restaurant in Coral Springs.

FBI officials had continued to assure Chris they believed Bob was alive. The bureau's stance wasn't the result of any new evidence gathered by agents so much as a reflection of FBI policy, which considers a person to be alive absent proof of his or her death. Since leaving the FBI, McJunkin had begun to wonder whether such proof about Bob would ever be found. He and other agents suspected that Bob's value to his Iranian captors might have expired after they had used the video to lure the FBI into talks about him. It was hard to imagine another reason for his captors to devote the resources needed to keep him alive for another five years.

McJunkin wasn't certain about what had happened to Bob, but he knew his captors had chosen the cruelest outcome for Chris and his children. Without finality, his family was trapped in a cycle of hope and despair, one that might never end. The kids would be okay, but McJunkin worried about Chris. He wanted to gently prod her into moving on with her life. As they sat together, he tried to talk to her about the future and the types of things she might like to do. Chris sensed where the conversation was headed. Years earlier, not long after Bob disappeared, she had sat down with her children. Their futures, she told them, lay ahead. They would marry, have children, and raise families. But Bob, she told her children, was the love of her life.

Chris looked across the table at McJunkin and said, “I want to be there for Bob.”

On January 16, 2016, the day the nuclear deal between the United States and Iran went into effect, the two countries exchanged prisoners. Those released by Tehran included Jason Rezaian, the
Washington Post
reporter; Saeed Abedini, the pastor; and Amir Hekmati, the ex-marine. There was no mention of Bob Levinson.

Chris and her children learned about the exchange in the same way other Americans did: by hearing the news on television. They were devastated and appalled that the Obama administration had not alerted them beforehand.

“I thought that after nine years they would have enough respect for our family to at least tell us in advance that this is happening,” Chris said in one interview. “I am very disappointed. I feel extremely betrayed.”

The White House, the State Department, and the FBI put out statements saying they would continue searching for Bob, adding that Iran had agreed to assist in that effort, the same promise Tehran had made many times before.

When a reporter asked Secretary of State John Kerry if he knew whether the missing man was alive or dead, Kerry's reply was brief. “We have no idea,” he said.

 

Notes

The page numbers for the notes that appear in the print version of this title are not in your e-book. Please use the search function on your e-reading device to search for the relevant passages documented or discussed.

This book was based on interviews with many of the people portrayed in it. They include Christine Levinson and several of her children, including Dan, Dave, Stephanie, Sarah, and Samantha Levinson. In this account, I took the liberty of referring to Stephanie and Sarah by their maiden names, though they use their married names, Stephanie Curry and Sarah Moriarty. Susan Levinson now uses her married name, Susan Boothe. Chris's sister Suzi Halpin and Bob's sister, Judy Levinson, were also interviewed. Over the course of several years, I spoke regularly with David McGee, Ira Silverman, Sonya Dobbs, Jeffrey Katz, Boris Birshtein, and Madzhit Mamoyan. Several former and current FBI agents involved in the search for Bob also spoke with me, though in most cases they did so on the condition that they would not be identified by name. In reconstructing Bob's work and travels before his disappearance on Kish, I spoke with, among others, Houshang Bouzari, the Iranian-born oil consultant; Philip Séchaud, the Swiss detective; officials of Global Witness; and Hezi Leder, a former Israeli law enforcement officer. To my surprise, when I initially spoke with many of these people, they had not yet been contacted by the FBI. I also interviewed several private investigators who worked with Bob, as well as journalists who knew him. They included Brian Ross, Joe Trento, Linden MacIntyre, Neil Docherty, and Chris Isham. In late 2007, I exchanged several emails with Dawud about Bob's case. Dawud replied that he did not want to discuss the matter, and my subsequent efforts to contact him were unsuccessful.

This book also draws on a wealth of material written by Bob Levinson: reports to the CIA, memos about proposed assignments, emails with agency officials and private clients. Wherever possible, those reports and emails, or extracts from them, are reproduced verbatim. In a few cases, I corrected the types of common mistakes in spelling or punctuation that are typical of email correspondence. Those minor fixes were made for the purposes of clarity and did not alter the language's meaning. In those instances where exchanges of emails between two people are juxtaposed conversationally, the exchanges were part of an email thread or represent exchanges that took place within a short period of time, often minutes. I tried not to draw unwarranted inferences from documents or emails.

The decision by some key actors and organizations central to this book not to cooperate in it was disappointing, though not surprising. The Central Intelligence Agency refused to participate in any way with this project, even denying my request to visit Langley. The Federal Bureau of Investigation responded to a few written questions, but officials there would not address some central ones.

I interviewed Anne Jablonski on several occasions, the first time in 2009, not long after her dismissal by the CIA. My impression of her was similar to the ones given to me by her friends and acquaintances; she was bright, funny, and, yes, goofy. She spoke at length to me and was very eager to present her side of the story. During that time, she also spoke with reporters with the Associated Press and gave her friends permission to do so. However, after her role in the Levinson case became public in late 2013 when the AP published its article, she shut down and refused to speak to me. I contacted her on several occasions while writing this book, and some of Anne's friends encouraged her to participate in it. Her position, according to a note she sent me, was that she did not believe that any good would come from discussing Bob's case and that she viewed the episode as behind her. Both she and her husband, Robert Otto, did not respond to written questions sent to them. A lawyer for Timothy Sampson, Anne's boss at the Illicit Finance Group, said the former CIA official had prepared a response to written questions sent to him and submitted it in the spring of 2015 to the CIA for approval. The agency did not clear his response for release.

One of the first steps I took in 2014 when starting work on this book was to visit the Iranian mission to the United Nations and apply for a visa. In discussions with the mission's press attaché, I made it clear that while I was writing a book about Bob Levinson, I did not want to go to Iran to investigate his case but to gain a better sense of that country and its people. Over the course of one year, I repeatedly contacted the Iranian mission to get an update about the status of my visa request and was told each time that officials in Tehran were still reviewing it. In light of the Iranian government's unconscionable treatment of journalists such as
The Washington Post
's Jason Rezaian, I suppose I should consider myself lucky.