Missing Man (25 page)

Through contacts, Katz was introduced to an oil industry consultant in Paris who had spent his career cutting deals in the Middle East, including Iran. The consultant, Xavier Houzel, also served as a courier of information between governments. After speaking with Katz, he agreed to call an Iranian official in Paris. The diplomat told him he knew nothing about Bob's case but offered to arrange a meeting in Tehran for Houzel with officials of the Ministry of Intelligence when the consultant next traveled there. Katz brought Houzel to London, where the two men went to the U.S. embassy and spoke over a secure video link with FBI agents in Washington. The agents appeared eager to use the consultant, but a few days later they called Katz back and said State Department officials wanted them to stand down because the United States was “getting results from other irons in the fire.” Katz relayed the message to Houzel, thanking him and saying his services wouldn't be needed.

When Houzel next visited Tehran on oil-related business, intelligence operatives had been tipped off to his interest in Bob. Two agents from the Ministry of Intelligence came to his hotel room and told him to follow them. They escorted him to a small, unmarked building, where he was taken into a barren room without windows. He was questioned for two hours about the purpose of his trip and why he was so interested in the case of the missing American. Houzel tried to provide neutral answers. The two agents instructed him to remain in the room while they reported to their superiors. A young boy appeared with a sandwich and a bottle of water. When the men returned, they questioned Houzel for two more hours before saying the Intelligence Ministry knew nothing about Bob. The consultant was allowed to go back to his hotel. Not long afterward, another of Katz's sources made inquiries about Bob while visiting the Iranian city of Qom, the country's religious center. He was warned to mind his own business and told that Iranian leaders knew exactly why the former FBI agent was on Kish.

By then, Madzhit Mamoyan was hopscotching across the Middle East and Europe trying to pick up information. He met with leaders of the two most powerful Kurdish factions in northern Iraq, the Talabani and the Barzani. On his travels, he kept hearing about the Rafsanjani family and its involvement in smuggling, including the trafficking of counterfeit cigarettes and other contraband through Kish. Many of Madzhit's sources insisted that Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and his sons had to know about Bob's arrest and might be playing a role in his detention. It wasn't an empty theory. During Iran's presidential campaign in 2009, the Fars News Agency, an outlet closely associated with the country's Supreme Leader, had attacked Rafsanjani by publishing an exposé of what it described as his family's Mafia-like grip on Iran's economy. The news service also called Rafsanjani the de facto ruler of Kish.

Around 200,000 square meters of the most expensive lands in the free trade region of Kish have been exclusively given to the relatives of and aides to Mr Hashemi Rafsanjani, and they have made enormous investments in this region. This gang recognized itself as the owner and master of Kish and has grasped its economy in a manner that all the foreigners who come to Kish for trade have to pay a considerable amount of commission to the children of Mr Hashemi under different pretexts like donations to charities etc.

In addition to all other activities, this mafia trend has established a landing ground for private planes in Kish through which they are able to directly import their commodities to Iran.

Madzhit also dispatched operatives into Iran who made it clear that the Kurd was willing to pay large sums of money for news about Bob. Before long, an Iranian who said that Bob was alive contacted him, adding he could secure the American's freedom for a price. FBI officials didn't take the man seriously at first; they had heard plenty of similar claims over the years from people such as Sarkis Soghanalian. But after they sent the Iranian's name to the CIA for any background information it might have on him, they sat back and took notice. The spy agency told them that the man, Seyed Mir Hejazi, appeared to be the son of Asghar Mir Hejazi, the top intelligence advisor to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's Supreme Leader.

As bureau officials encouraged Madzhit to pursue Hejazi, Boris Birshtein was telling them that Oleg Deripaska needed to come to the United States. The oligarch's financial problems were growing and he wanted to meet with top Wall Street executives to discuss financing deals. The FBI was eager to keep Deripaska happy and asked the State Department to issue him a limited visa so he could make a brief visit. To the bureau's surprise, department officials refused to do so.

Up until that point, Dave McGee and Ira Silverman had been unaware of Deripaska's role in the hunt for their friend. The FBI didn't tell them about the operation because of its sensitivity. And they were happy to keep Dave and Ira in the dark for another reason. Over time, FBI managers had come to see them and Larry Sweeney as meddlers who regularly criticized and second-guessed bureau decisions. They figured the less they knew, the better.

But Boris, with his plan in jeopardy, needed new allies, and he reached out to Dave to tell him about Deripaska's involvement. He also warned him the oligarch might pull out of the operation if his visa request wasn't granted. Dave contacted Senator Nelson's office to see if the lawmaker could help, but the State Department remained adamant. Then, at a meeting about the visa, FBI officials encountered one of the State Department officials apparently opposed to letting Deripaska into the United States—it was Anne Jablonski's husband, Robert Otto, a department expert on Russian crime.

A year had passed since Anne's forced departure from the CIA. She hadn't gone to work for a public interest group, as she had once imagined. Instead, she followed a more predictable path and was employed by corporate investigative firms doing diligence reports about Russian businessmen and companies. The Justice Department, at the CIA's request, had looked into the question of whether to charge Anne or other agency officials with crimes, such as lying to FBI agents about Bob, but closed the investigation after finding insufficient evidence to do so.

During that inquiry, however, FBI agents had learned some things about Anne's husband and the information had left them with a bad taste. When Bob disappeared, a Russian analyst at the National Security Agency with whom he shared information had quickly alerted that agency about their relationship. But Robert Otto apparently had said nothing to his State Department superiors about his ties to Bob or disclosed to them that his wife was the missing man's CIA handler. When FBI agents encountered Otto participating in a meeting about Deripaska's visa, they were outraged. “What the hell are you doing here?” one agent shouted at him. “We know who you are.”

In the end, FBI officials decided to make an end run around the State Department and secretly arranged to have the Department of Homeland Security issue the oligarch a special, short-term visa. In August 2009, Deripaska sat with Boris, Madzhit, Martin Hellmer, and Joe Krzemien in a hotel lobby in Washington. All of them felt Bob's release was imminent. Madzhit's Iranian contact, Seyed Mir Hejazi, had offered to arrange a phone call between Bob and Chris, but FBI officials, certain he was about to be freed, decided to forgo the offer, fearing the conversation might be intercepted.

Deripaska came again to the United States in the fall of 2009, meeting with top Wall Street executives, including Lloyd Blankfein, the head of Goldman Sachs. Earlier, he had traveled to Detroit to talk with General Motors executives. Deripaska already owned Russia's second-biggest automobile maker, and he was interested in purchasing GM's stake in Opel, a European car company. Initially, the oligarch's trips to the United States escaped the attention of the American news media. But he wasn't camera shy. In September, a Russian publication published a photograph showing him with GM executives, and in late October, reporters at
The Wall Street Journal
got a tip about his visits and the fight between the FBI and the State Department over his visa. The newspaper ran a front-page article under the headline “FBI Lets Barred Tycoon Visit U.S.” Prior to its publication, reporters had called the FBI to ask an obvious question—why had the bureau allowed the barred oligarch into the United States? The reporters weren't told the reason. Instead, two unnamed “administration officials” were quoted in the article describing Deripaska's visits as part of “a continuing criminal probe.” The newspaper reported that it had been unable to learn the investigation's focus.

FBI officials suspected the State Department was the source of the leak, and Boris was frantic that Deripaska might abandon the hunt because of the article. He asked Martin Hellmer and Joe Krzemien to fly to Vienna to meet the oligarch at a five-star hotel there, the Sacher, the birthplace of the famous Austrian pastry the Sacher torte. Boris and Madzhit also attended. Deripaska didn't appear upset. As he dined with his visitors inside a luxury suite on the hotel's top floor, he talked mainly about his businesses and the international economy, explaining how he felt a personal obligation to keep his companies afloat because they employed thousands of workers. Five waiters were present in the room, one for each diner. They moved cautiously as they served the meal, seemingly terrified of making a misstep that might upset Deripaska. When the soup course was brought to the table, the oligarch asked one waiter what it was. The man responded, describing it with a drawn-out, French-sounding name. Deripaska nodded and looked at the FBI agents. He smiled and said, “That's just a fancy name for gruel.”

 

17

Proof of Life

Dan Levinson, Bob's oldest son, stepped out of a taxi in front of the Hotel Adlon Kempinski, a majestic building on Berlin's central square right across from the landmark Brandenburg Gate. More than three years had passed since his father's disappearance and Dan, like his siblings, remained haunted by it. All the Levinson children loved their father, though they tended to see him differently, perspectives shaped by their gender and age. Dan was one of his father's fiercest defenders and he had complete faith in his abilities. After 9/11, when it turned out that one of the terrorists, Mohamed Atta, lived for months in Coral Springs, Bob told Dan he might have stopped the attack if he was still with the FBI, explaining that Atta had gotten his hair cut at the same barbershop he used. Every agent who had ever carried a badge felt similar remorse. But Dan, then sixteen years old, sensed his father might have succeeded.

He had first heard about Iran and Dawud Salahuddin in 2002 when he was lying on the living room couch watching television. “Here, read this,” his father said, walking in and tossing him a copy of
The New Yorker
with Ira Silverman's article about the fugitive. He had once passed his father's opened computer and saw a folder labeled
DAOUD,
and not long before Bob disappeared, he and his brother Doug were driving home with their father from a Steak 'n Shake, a fast-food restaurant, when a report about political unrest in Iran came on the car radio. “I'm working on something over there,” Bob told his boys.

Dan was in his first year of law school when his father went missing. He found it difficult to focus on his studies and dropped out. He wrote articles for newspapers about his family's plight and accompanied his mother when she went to Iran. By 2010, he had gotten his academic career back on track but decided to switch out of law and pursue a master's degree in business. He was traveling in Ireland when he learned about an email that his mother had received through the Help Bob Levinson website from an Iranian living in Berlin. The email was about his father, and the Iranian, Amir Farshad Ebrahimi, had attached documents to it. He claimed they were the official records of Bob's arrest on Kish on charges of spying.

Ebrahimi described himself as a former officer in the Quds Force, the special unit of the Revolutionary Guards, who had fled Iran to start a new life in Germany as a freelance journalist and human rights activist. In his email, he told Chris that a friend in Iran, a police official, had found records related to Bob's arrest while going through a folder and photographed them with his cell phone camera. Ebrahimi asked Chris if she wanted him to release the documents to the news media. At the FBI's direction, she asked Ebrahimi to send her the records. In the photographs, they looked authentic. They were written in Farsi, appeared to be on official government stationery, and bore numerous signatures and countersignatures.

The earliest document was dated March 8, 2007, and authorized Bob's arrest on Kish. It referred to him as “Robert Anderson.”

URGENT

Our Nation is Proud to Be the Student of the School of Prophet Mohammed

(Blessing of God be upon him and his descendants)

The Honorable Head of the Judiciary Office of the Armed Forces

H.E. Hojatollah-Aesalm Bahrami

Greetings, I hereby inform you that according to the report and the security services of this Ministry in Kish, a member of the U.S. Federal [Bureau of] Investigation or may be [
sic
] CIA, Robert Anderson, has recently entered the country with a regular passport and a tourist visa. He is here as an undercover tourist while conducting various meetings, taking pictures, and gathering information.

Since his spying activities and efforts to set up a network have been established, please, make an arrangement to arrest him immediately by the end of the day, with the assistance of this ministry's personnel at the headquarter[s] of the intelligence at Kish and transfer him to a detention center with a maximum security.

God Bless you with success.

3619172

274

03/08/2007

Signature of the Deputy of Counter Intelligence

CC:

1—Deputy of the operations

2—In the Name of God, the military prosecutor in Bandar Lange should be notified and the subject must be arrested.