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Suspicion immediately pointed to Iranian security officers. As a private investigator, Mr. Levinson was traveling under an assumed name, ostensibly trying to track sellers of counterfeit cigarettes on behalf of a client, British American Tobacco. But he also had a sub rosa purpose. On his own Missing Man: The American Spy Who Vanished in Iran, he hoped to recruit as a CIA informant, a man who was born as Teddy Belfield, converted to Islam while a student at Howard University, and took the name Dawud Salahuddin. Inon behalf of anti- Shah Iranian radicals, Salahuddin posed as a postal carrier and shot dead a spokesman for the Iranian embassy in Washington at his Bethesda home. He told investigators and journalists who were friends with Mr. Levinson seized what he saw as an opportunity to tighten his relationship with the CIA. The association began at a conference on Russian organized crime inwhere Mr. She and her husband socialized with Mr. Levinson on his trips to Washington, exchanging stories about Russian gangsters. Given Mr. Jablonski saw him as a source of information on international crime. Through her efforts, the CIA signed him to a one-year contract to provide reports on money laundering and smuggling. Levinson was productive. Jablonski did not know that Mr. Meier apparently means Ms. But Ms. Levinson entered a touchy area at the CIA. Rules are rather plain that analysts cannot become involved in clandestine operations overseas. Such is the exclusive province of the Directorate of Operations. As Mr. Although Mr. Meier interviewed Ms. Jablonski at length, his book is unclear as to whether she was aware of Mr. He left before the request was approved. Iran finally acknowledged it was holding Mr. Levinson in in an attempt to escape sanctions for its nuclear program. Its price: the United States must delay the release of a report on its nuclear program compiled by the International Atomic Energy Agency. The Obama administration refused to pay the price. Two alleged American spies Missing Man: The American Spy Who Vanished in Iran traded on signing of the nuclear pact with Iran ; Mr. Levinson was not among them. The aftermath cost Ms. Jablonski her job, although Mr. Meier quotes Missing Man: The American Spy Who Vanished in Iran as denying she violated rules. Levinson remains among the missing — a year-old man with seven children and severe heart problems. The moral? Even spies, and especially their handlers, should play by the rules. Manage Newsletters. Click here for reprint permission. Click to Read More and View Comments. Click to Hide. May Cheryl K. Donald Trump. Joe Biden. Champions League. Joseph R. United Nations. By Joseph C. Goulden - - Tuesday, May 10, Please read our comment policy before commenting. BOOK REVIEW: 'Missing Man: The American Spy who Vanished in Iran' - Washington Times

Goodreads Missing Man: The American Spy Who Vanished in Iran you keep track of books you want to read. Want to Read saving…. Want to Read Currently Reading Read. Other editions. Enlarge cover. Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Open Preview See a Problem? Details if other :. Thanks for telling us about the problem. Return to Book Page. Preview — Missing Man by Barry Meier. In lateAmericans were shocked to learn that a former FBI agent turned private investigator who disappeared in Iran in was there on Missing Man: The American Spy Who Vanished in Iran mission for the CIA. Barry Meier, an award-winning investigative reporter for The New In lateAmericans were shocked to learn that a former FBI agent turned private investigator who disappeared in Iran in was there on a mission for the CIA. Barry Meier, an award-winning investigative reporter for The New York Timesdraws on years of interviews and never-before-disclosed CIA files to weave together a riveting narrative of the ex-agent's journey to Iran and the hunt to rescue him. The result is an extraordinary tale about the shadowlands between crime, business, espionage, and the law, where secrets are currency and betrayal is commonplace. Its colorful cast includes CIA operatives, Russian oligarchs, arms dealers, White House officials, gangsters, private eyes, FBI agents, journalists, and a fugitive American terrorist and assassin. Missing Man is a fast-paced story that moves through exotic locales and is set against the backdrop of the twilight war between the United States and Iran, one in which hostages are used as political pawns. Filled with stunning revelations, it chronicles a family's ongoing search for answers and one man's desperate struggle to keep his hand in the game. Get A Copy. Hardcoverpages. More Details Other Editions 5. Missing Man: The American Spy Who Vanished in Iran Reviews. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. To ask other readers questions about Missing Manplease sign up. Is this book available at the libraries? Barry Meier Yes, some libraries are carrying. See 2 questions about Missing Man…. Lists with This Book. Community Reviews. Showing Average rating 3. Rating details. More filters. Sort order. May 04, Anne Martin rated it really liked it Shelves: goodreads-arc. It took me a while to finish this book. Not at all because it was boring, but because of the amount of names and information it holds. Many times, you have to read a page several times and go back to check who is who. Bob Levinson was an FBI agent for 30 years and decided to retire, get his pension and look for other jobs on the side to finance his children studies. His pension would It took me a while to finish this book. Now, he had to find other jobs as some kind of a PI. With some jobs for tobacco companies worried about the copies of their cigarettes sold in a lot of places in the world plus some other small contracts, he thought he would have enough money to tie the ends. But amazingly, a lot of the info he gathered would have been especially interesting for the C. Bob was in friendly terms with the person he connected with at the CIA, Anne Jablonski, and had lots of leads for her. Bob kept sending more and more memos and emails to Anne, asking for more funding and promising great results. When you read the mails exchanged between Bob and Anne, it feels like the usual dance between a man and a woman, the man pushing for more, the woman trying to slow him down, without telling him to get lost. It feels like Anne hoped getting information from Bob, but without paying, or paying as late as possible. For Bob, though, in dire Missing Man: The American Spy Who Vanished in Iran of money, all those mails he got as answers, telling him he was wonderful and his info was greatly appreciated just fueled his desire to serve his country and improve everything In the beginning ofBob wanted to get to the island of Tisch, which belongs to Iran, but can be accessed by foreigners without a visa to meet with a radical-Islamist who could give him good tips. He went to Dubai, left for a day on the island and vanished. Since MarchBob has disappeared. A video of him was sent by his captors -no matter who they are to his family innothing since. The CIA contested any involvement with Bob, until the trail of paper and electronics trapped them. But in the 9 years since he disappeared, Nothing has permitted to find or trace Bob. Is he still alive? Difficult not to be shocked by Kerry's discussions with Iran when Bob's name was not even mentioned. Difficult to accept Iran's exigences of liberation of their prisoners in the US, without the US making the same demands for Bob. But according to the book, that is what happened. The great weakness of this book is the lack of ending. Bob is still, if alive, into the hands Missing Man: The American Spy Who Vanished in Iran Iran or Iran's friends, and nobody knows anything. It leaves you with the feeling you left earth for a few hours and immersed yourself in a world of corruption, blackmail, lust and money, lots of money Of course, the book is disappointing. I kept Missing Man: The American Spy Who Vanished in Iran something new would happen, though I googled Levinson, and read no one knows what happened. Maybe, one say, we will learn the truth. For now, I'm left with a very unpleasant feeling that you cannot trust anybody. View all 3 comments. May 25, Philip rated it really liked it Shelves: non-fiction4-starsprisonerspy-fact. None of the lead characters come off particularly well here. That said though, both Levinson and his CIA "handler" Anne Jablonski were definitely way off the reservation - there are excellent reasons the CIA separates the spooks from the analysts. As noted by the book's only other reviewer so far, there are a lot of names to remember and try to keep straight here, but Meier includes a helpful index so you can go back Missing Man: The American Spy Who Vanished in Iran remind yourself of just who's who. Sadly, there has not been - below is the latest posting on Chris Levinson's " www. My children and I ask those same questions every day. But, as difficult as it has been for us, we know that Bob is living a nightmare that is times worse. We need the United States government and the country of Iran to work together to resolve what happened to Missing Man: The American Spy Who Vanished in Iran and return him safely to his family. Jul 15, Naghmeh Taba added it. This book is rather superficial, only slightly better than a season of Homeland! And note that his family was fortunate enough to be silenced by a huge amount of hush money from the CIA. A former FBI agent on an unauthorized CIA mission travels to Iran and meets with a wanted fugitive, thinking he successfully deceived Iran in believing the purpose of his travel. How can anyone with a sound mind feel sorry for him? My point is that if you take a job anywhere in any section, you know the rules. If you break them, there will be expenses to pay. First, please don't glorify disobedience and stop turning it into victimization. Levinson lacked common sense in my opinion. Speaking of his sanity, I wonder how the FBI employed him in the first place. What did he really think when he decided to travel to the supposedly free zone island of Iran, Kish in order to meet a fugitive with an amateurish forged letter from British American Tobacco to deceive Iranian authorities? His intention is still unclear and I can't trace any wisdom in his actions. I read in the book that he didn't even notice the Israel stamp in his passport in his first attempt to travel to Iran. Just whoa! What Mr. Levinson wanted was ten seconds of fame and zero consequences for his actions. Unfortunately his indiscretion lasts a bit longer. And his instructor at CIA was a woman who have been fired with probably a considerable exit package, too. How fairly treated indeed! Time for immature minds to grow up and review the history, at least the history of somewhat more innocent days of last century. Then they re-installed the repressive Shah and initiated and trained the murderous SAVAK, which helped him survive until the religious populist revolution of I can hardly feel sympathy for any CIA-affiliated agent. This book was okay and fairly interesting. Missing Man: The American Spy Who Vanished in Iran - Barry Meier - Google книги

When they were teenagers, Bob Levinson's oldest sons thought the greatest way to spend a Sunday afternoon was to sprawl out on the living room couch with a bag of Famous Amos cookies and watch Mafia movies. Dan and Dave were big fans of Goodfellas, and Dave had memorized nearly every line spoken by Ray Liotta, who portrayed Henry Hill, a mobster in the federal witness protection program. The boys would crack up as Dave reeled off dialogue. Their father liked to sit nearby, at Missing Man: The American Spy Who Vanished in Iran kitchen table reading a book. But sooner or later, he would get up and walk over to his sons with a disapproving look. Dan and Dave knew it came with the turf when your father was an FBI agent. Bob and Chris had seven children. Their children had been born over sixteen years and they were all brought up to revere the FBI; they liked having an agent for a father. As kids, they would race to the front door when they heard it open in the evening because the first one to greet him got to pull off his shoes. He always came back from FBI trips with presents. One time, he handed out tee shirts decorated with pictures of pineapples, a reference to "Old Pineapple Face," the name coined by Panamanians for Manuel Noriega, their pockmark- faced president who was arrested by the United States on drug trafficking charges. The Missing Man: The American Spy Who Vanished in Iran helped him keep his files organized by stapling his expense receipts into them. None of them realized some of the receipts were records of cash that their father had Missing Man: The American Spy Who Vanished in Iran to criminals and other sources for information. The couple's first home in Coral Springs, Florida, where they moved in after Bob transferred to the bureau's office in Miami from New York, was tiny. The three oldest girls shared a bedroom outfitted with bunk beds and a trundle underneath that was pulled out at night. When a new baby arrived, Bob created a nursery by cordoning off part of the dining room with a curtain. Chris never went food shopping without filling her purse with coupons, and a big family night out meant going to McDonald's on days when two hamburgers were on sale for the price of one. No one minded and the kids were happy and thriving. By the late s, the family needed more money. Susan, Stephanie, and Sarah were in college or about to start, and soon there would be four more college tuitions to pay. Bob also wanted Chris to have a Missing Man: The American Spy Who Vanished in Iran home and a more comfortable life. During their long marriage they had never gone away alone together for a weekend. Inwhen he was fifty, Bob decided to leave the FBI, seven years before mandatory retirement age. After three decades as a federal agent, he joined the exodus of graying government detectives into the private sector, where he could triple his salary. But leaving the FBI behind would prove far harder than he imagined. When Bob started in law enforcement in the s, private investigators were regarded as sleazy snoops hired to catch cheating spouses or find runaway teenagers. By the s a new corporate investigations industry was feeding a growing demand for information from companies, Wall Street firms, lawyers, and others. Manufacturers making pharmaceuticals, cigarettes, and high-fashion handbags needed investigators to track down criminals producing counterfeit versions of their products. Hedge funds and private equity firms were hungry for secrets about investment targets. American companies and banks doing deals with businessmen in Russia and Eastern Europe wanted to know if they were corrupt or had criminal ties. The big investigative firms were staffed by former prosecutors, retired agents from the FBI and other agencies, and ex—newspaper reporters. They adopted the veneer of law firms and charged clients similar rates. One of the largest, Kroll Associates, employed dozens of investigators and had offices throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia. It was a highly competitive industry in which firms won contracts by convincing clients they had the connections to deliver valuable "strategic" information. Often, they produced high-priced smoke — reports that blended fact, rumor, and speculation. Their tactics could also be as bare-knuckled as those of the old-time private eyes who spied on love nests. In the late s, one major new source of work for corporate investigative firms came from Russian oligarchs, financial and industrial magnates who had gained astronomical wealth after the fall of the Soviet Union. The oligarchs liked to depict themselves as a new breed of Russian entrepreneurs, Western-style capitalists who succeeded through shrewd dealings and risk-taking, rather than payoffs and political corruption. That often wasn't the case, and some oligarchs hired investigative firms to dig up dirt that could be used to blackmail a critic into silence, a technique known in the trade as a "hard shoulder. Bob preferred to keep his nose clean. Construction was then under way on the American Airlines Arena, the indoor stadium that became home to the Miami Heat basketball team, and DSFX Missing Man: The American Spy Who Vanished in Iran hired to help local officials monitor possible fraud on the project. Bob also began to work with Philip Morris, the maker of Marlboro cigarettes, trying to locate pirate factories producing counterfeits of its famous brand. At the time, drug gangs in Latin America were also doing a brisk business in kidnapping American executives and demanding large ransoms for their release, and companies used Bob to negotiate those deals. With more money, Bob and Chris, like most people, found ways to spend it. They bought a big new home in a gated community in Coral Springs and two new cars. While their three older daughters had gone to Florida State University, their two older sons wanted to go to more expensive private colleges outside the state and Bob and Chris agreed to send them. He had never operated a business before and it proved a constant hustle. He had to scramble for work, cater to clients, pay bills, collect on accounts, and make sure more money was coming in than going out. As a lone wolf, he took what he could get. His assignments were a hodgepodge, running from background Missing Man: The American Spy Who Vanished in Iran into Russian businessmen to counterfeit product cases. In a typical month, he might take three or four trips, including travel abroad to cities like London, Kiev, and Managua. He would book a hotel room to meet with a source and, in the evening, go to a different hotel to sleep. Before turning in, he would order room service and spend hours typing up reports to clients, responding to emails, and sending out feelers to drum up new work. The constant travel and bad eating habits took a toll. At six feet four, Bob had always been a very big man, but he soon weighed pounds and had diabetes and high blood pressure. Inanother large investigations firm, SafirRosetti, hired him to open an office in Boca Raton, Florida. With a steady salary, he didn't constantly have to scramble for clients and could provide his family financial security. But there was a problem — his head and his heart weren't in the work. Chasing product counterfeiters didn't compare to the thrill of an FBI agent hunting criminals for Uncle Sam. After he worked hard to investigate a case, a company's executives might decide not to alert law enforcement officials to his findings, fearing that the resulting publicity might damage their reputation or give a competitor a leg up. He would tell friends he was working for the "rich people's police," and even some of his kids could see that he wasn't happy. He tried to strike a balance by taking on Missing Man: The American Spy Who Vanished in Iran for public interest groups. One organization, the Center for Justice and Accountability, used investigators like Bob to track down people who had committed human rights abuses in their native countries and had since moved to the United States, often under an assumed name. When he traveled on jobs, he fed information he picked up back to friends at the FBI and other federal agencies. Every ex-cop turned private investigator does that in order to keep doors open when they need help. Bob, however, wanted more. He still wanted to be part of the action. Every few months, he traveled to FBI field offices in cities like Memphis, Kansas City, and Seattle to teach seminars for young agents on techniques for identifying and recruiting informants. From the very start of his career, Bob was a collector of information, intelligence, and people. He cast himself as the proverbial "good cop," a big, friendly guy who liked everybody and who wanted everybody to like him. It wasn't an act or even a stretch. By nature, he was gregarious and possessed an instinct for knowing how people wanted to be treated and what they wanted to Missing Man: The American Spy Who Vanished in Iran. Ten minutes after sitting down in a restaurant, he would be on a first-name basis with the waiter or waitress serving him, and he would leave a big tip behind to make sure they remembered him. He loved handing out nicknames; everybody got one, family members, friends, and new acquaintances. The names were usually corny — stuff like "Professor" or "Doctor" — but people walked away charmed, thinking that Bob had coined the name just for them. He even varied how he introduced himself, depending on the impression he wanted to create. Some people knew him as Bob. Others called him Bobby. He liked to use "Bobby" at times, he explained to one of his sons, because its boyish sound made his large stature and status as an agent seem less threatening. Once Bob got people talking, they often kept talking. If they were criminals, they Missing Man: The American Spy Who Vanished in Iran hope he would cut them a break. Other people might cooperate to get cash or because they wanted him to solve an immigration problem. Whatever the specifics, his relationships involved the give-and-take that binds together a cop and an informant. From the start of his law enforcement career, Bob believed he could make more cases from informants than he could from working the street. Once he ran into a Drug Enforcement Administration agent he knew outside a Manhattan courthouse. The DEA agent, who did undercover buys, was dressed for the part in jeans, a battered leather jacket, and a bulletproof vest. He looked at his friend and pulled a pen out of his jacket pocket. During his seminars for young FBI agents, he talked about his experiences and showed PowerPoint slides. He discussed the types of personality traits found in people willing to become informants. They tended to be independent thinkers, he said, rather than rule followers and were often empathetic, imaginative, and social. A variety of motives might cause them to open up; some even saw cooperation with the cops as a way to eliminate or take revenge against a rival. Other informants were thrill seekers or wannabe cops. Bob sprinkled his presentation with references to espionage and true crime books, quoting passages from authors such as David Ignatius, a journalist who wrote spy thrillers, and Robert Baer, a former agent for the Central Intelligence Agency who chronicled his experiences as an operative in the Middle East. It's all a matter of listening to what people are really saying,'" read one of Bob's slides quoting Baer. He warned agents about the pitfalls of dealings with Missing Man: The American Spy Who Vanished in Iran and urged them not to get too close to a source or consider one a friend. Another slide read:. When you are trying to recruit Missing Man: The American Spy Who Vanished in Iran member of a criminal organization or terrorist group, remember one thing — you Missing Man: The American Spy Who Vanished in Iran, in effect. Bob knew from the age of eight what he wanted to be. His inspiration came Missing Man: The American Spy Who Vanished in Iran a movie called The House on 92nd Street, released inthree years before he was born.