The Case Of The Missing Agent

A former FBI agent who disappeared during a trip to an Iranian island in early March was there to meet with a notorious fugitive from American justice, according to U.S. law-enforcement officials and former colleagues.

The purpose behind ex-FBI agent Robert (Bobby) Levinson's trip to Iran's Kish Island remains murky, though his associates tell NEWSWEEK he was working with a former NBC News producer on what may have been a quixotic plan to coax the fugitive, Dawud Salahuddin—charged in the 1980 Washington, D.C.-area murder of an Iranian dissident—to return to the United States and turn himself in. The Iranian government has harbored Salahuddin for more than 25 years, and some U.S. officials believe he has been a low-level asset for Iranian intelligence. (Salahuddin confessed to the crime in a number of media interviews, but as a fugitive has never been tried in a court of law—and since the U.S. has no diplomatic relations with Iran, there is no extradition treaty.)

Now living in Tehran, Salahuddin, an American who was born David Belfield, appeared to confirm his knowledge of Levinson's whereabouts in an e-mail exchange with NEWSWEEK. "Levinson is fine," he wrote NEWSWEEK in an e-mail Tuesday. "Major news attention is not what he needs at the moment."

But U.S. officials are not so confident of the safety of Levinson, who reportedly suffers from high blood pressure and diabetes. Whatever transpired between Levinson and Salahuddin, the case has now turned ominous, they say. The FBI—whose officials are increasingly worried about his welfare—have assembled circumstantial evidence that Levinson was apprehended during a meeting in a Kish hotel room with Salahuddin on March 8. But despite persistent inquiries, Iranian government officials have recently denied through diplomatic channels they have any knowledge of Levinson's whereabouts.

Friends and former colleagues of Levinson say the former FBI agent, the father of seven children, has become a pawn in a dangerous power struggle between the United States and Iran. Some U.S. officials (who asked not to be identified talking about sensitive diplomatic matters) said they strongly suspect that Levinson is being held hostage by an Iranian government faction: the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which handles internal security for the regime.

The most likely scenario, the officials say, is that they want to use the former agent as a bargaining chip to win the release of five suspected IRGC operatives captured by U.S. Special Forces in a raid in the northern Iraqi city of Erbil last January. The IRGC captives are suspected of providing aid to Shiite militia fighters who targeted U.S. and Iraqi government troops in Iraq. "We are very worried about this," said one U.S. official, who requested anonymity. "We know that the Iranians are increasingly concerned about those guys [the Erbil captives] and want them back."