Iraq News Now

President Donald Trump deserves praise for freeing Americans

held by foreign governments as hostages. Now, he can also take steps to resolve

the case of a long missing American: Robert Levinson, the former FBI agent

turned CIA consultant who vanished in Iran in 2007.
Yesterday (March 9) marked the twelfth anniversary of his

disappearance on an Iranian island where he had gone on a self-appointed

mission to try and recruit a fugitive American as a CIA informant. He was last

seen alive in a 2010 video pleading for help. His wife, Christine, and their

seven children have endured an agonizing wait for answers.
As a journalist who wrote a book that chronicled Bob

Levinson’s story, I do not know whether he is still alive.  Iran has said

for more than a decade that it knows nothing about what happened to the former

FBI agent.  Teheran’s claims are clearly false; the idea that religious or

political leaders in Iran, one of the world’s most oppressive regimes, would be

unaware of the fate of a missing American is absurd.
The Obama Administration, for reasons of its own, allowed this

charade to persist. While Levinson did not go to Iran at the CIA’s request,

U.S. officials did not want to admit that the spy agency had paid him to gather

information about laundering money by Iran’s mullahs. But President Obama

avoided a confrontation with Tehran over Levinson in order to win what he saw

as a bigger prize — the 2016 Iranian nuclear accord.
Soon after that deal was struck, U.S. and Iran entered into a

prisoner exchange agreement that led to the release of Washington Post

journalist Jason Rezaian and several other Americans from Iranian jails. As

Rezaian wrote in his recent memoir, Iranian officials debated before those

talks what to tell U.S. officials about Levinson’s case.
They decided, it appears, to continue to lie. During those

discussions, they insisted again they knew nothing about Levinson’s fate and

insisted that the U.S. provide Tehran with information about an Iranian spy who

had defected to the West in exchange for its help in finding the missing

American.  When that man, Ali Reza Asgari, disappeared in late 2006, Iran

had claimed that the CIA had kidnapped him and vowed revenge.  Four months

later, Levinson vanished.
An FBI agent told the Levinson family that Iranian officials

sought to get language inserted in the 2016 prisoner exchange in which Tehran

agreed to help find Levinson in exchange for American help in locating Asgari.

(The State Department has refused to date to release records related to the

prisoner exchange agreement in response to my Freedom of Information Act

requests.)
Christine Levinson never learned about the prisoner exchange

deal until after it was struck when she was told her husband was not part of

it.  As a supposed gesture of good faith, Teheran privately told U.S.

negotiators that their intelligence officials had learned that the bones of an

American had been buried in a rugged region of western Pakistan. U.S.

officials, sensing it might be the site of Levinson’s remains, had the area

inspected but found nothing.
President Trump, having thrown out the

Iranian nuclear accord, is also now free to unmask Tehran’s deceptions in the

Levinson case.  With a stroke of his pen, he can order the release of

State Department documents related to the 2016 prisoner exchange as well scores

of secret FBI and CIA reports that point to Iran’s role in the seizure of an

American and his possible death.
Those records will not bring Bob Levinson back. But the

information they contain will serve an important purpose — they will do justice

to him and his story. They also will show, I believe, that Tehran never

intended to release him or return him to his family.
Twelve years ago, Bob Levinson’s wife and his children were

robbed of him. Their brutal and cruel wait continues. President Trump can open

the Levinson case and give one American family the answers they desperately

deserve.