The internet is filled with things. Here is one of them.
Who knows what really happened to Robert A Levinson?2024 Oct 30
Robert A. Levinson was working for the CIA, supposedly investigating cigarette smuggling, when he disappeared on the resort island of Kish off the coast of Iran. Not a CIA agent, but a retired FBI special agent working a contract for the CIA which the agency paid his family $2.5m/yr to keep quiet about, Levinson's death remains merely speculation at this time based on his age and the length of his captivity.
A US judge ordered Iran to pay $1.45bn in penalty for his kidnapping, which Iran has not, as far as I can tell, done. In March 2020 the Iranian foreign minister said "According to authentic evidence, the person had left the Iranian soil for an unknown destination years ago."
Cases like this expose weird rough edges of statecraft, such as that when Obama's team negotiated a nuclear deal with Iran in 2016 in exchange for some other hostages, Levinson's name was not mentioned. Was this a tacit and unofficial way of acknowledging his death?
There remains to this day a $5m reward for information leading to his return.
Robert A. Levinson was working for the CIA, supposedly investigating cigarette smuggling, when he disappeared on the resort island of Kish off the coast of Iran. Not a CIA agent, but a retired FBI special agent working a contract for the CIA which the agency paid his family $2.5m/yr to keep quiet about, Levinson's death remains merely speculation at this time based on his age and the length of his captivity.
A US judge ordered Iran to pay $1.45bn in penalty for his kidnapping, which Iran has not, as far as I can tell, done. In March 2020 the Iranian foreign minister said "According to authentic evidence, the person had left the Iranian soil for an unknown destination years ago."
Cases like this expose weird rough edges of statecraft, such as that when Obama's team negotiated a nuclear deal with Iran in 2016 in exchange for some other hostages, Levinson's name was not mentioned. Was this a tacit and unofficial way of acknowledging his death?
There remains to this day a $5m reward for information leading to his return.