January 22, 2014
Robert Levinson
(Photo courtesy huffingtonpost)
The wife of missing American Robert Levinson has confirmed that her husband was working for the CIA when he disappeared in Iran in March 2007, while her lawyer called on the U.S. to admit that fact to the Tehran government in a bid to win the American’s release.
“He was working as a consultant for the CIA,” Christine Levinson told CBS News in an interview Tuesday. “He was also a private investigator. He was able to do both at the same time in his travels.”
The Associated Press first reported last month that Levinson had been sent to Iran on an unapproved intelligence-gathering mission by a team of CIA analysts. The U.S. government has described Levinson publicly as a private citizen who vanished while on a business trip to Kish Island, in the Persian Gulf off Iran’s southern coast. In fact, the AP investigation found that the retired FBI agent was meeting with an American fugitive who had ties to reformers and moderates in the Iranian government.
“There is no further value in continuing to deny what everyone in the world knows to be the truth,” Christine Levinson’s lawyer, David McGee, told CBS.