In 2007, Robert Levinson took a business trip to Kish Island and was never seen again by family members or friends. At the time, Kish Island was under the jurisdiction of Iran.
His case is thought to have something to do with American and Iranian relations. It is unknown if Levinson is still alive today.
Levinson was born in 1948 in Flushing, New York. For 28 years, he served as a federal agent for the DEA and the FBI. In 1998, he retired and opened his own private detective agency.
Then, he vanished in 2007. A few years after his disappearance, the CIA gave his family an annuity worth $2.5 million in exchange for not suing the agency.
Officials believed that Levinson had been arrested by Iranian intelligence officials for interrogation. But as their leads went cold and Iranian officials denied any involvement, they began to presume he was dead.
He was last seen alive in a video sent to Levinson’s family in late 2010. He was in poor health and seemed to be in some kind of holding facility.
A few months later, the family received photographs of him in an orange jumpsuit. The materials were sent anonymously and could not be traced. The Iranian government denied sending the materials.
On December 12, 2013, it was revealed that Levinson was working for the CIA, which contradicted the United States government’s statement that he was not an employee of the government and had gone to Iran as a private investigator to work on a cigarette-smuggling case.
Kish Island is a tourist destination and a hotspot for international organized crime. Levinson’s travel there was planned by three CIA officials who did not follow the proper protocols.
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His mission to gather intelligence was unauthorized, and it was unclear what his end goal was.
Levinson was supposed to meet with Dawud Salahuddin, an American citizen who defected to Iran and was possibly willing to provide information about Iran to the U.S. government.
According to Salahuddin, the meeting went as planned, but they were both arrested by the Iranian government shortly afterward.
Salahuddin was released the next day. Levinson was expected to be released as well, but he vanished without a trace. The Iranian government spent 18 years denying having anything to do with Levinson’s disappearance.
They claimed to be innocent and were willing to work with the U.S. government to find out what happened.
In 2020, a federal court ordered that an additional $1.4 billion should be paid to the family. That was also when Levinson was legally declared to be dead.
The U.S. State Department’s Rewards for Justice is offering a $20 million reward for any information about Levinson’s disappearance or safe return, and the FBI is offering $5 million.
You can view the website Robert’s family created for him here.
By Emily Chan
Emily Chan is a writer who covers lifestyle and news content. She graduated from Michigan State University with a degree in... More about Emily Chan
