by Barry Meier
Krzemien did most of the talking. Being a contractor allowed him to take greater liberties with the truth than Martin Hellmer, and the partners had worked out a routine to cover occasions when Krzemien needed to ad-lib—he would give Hellmer a certain look and the young agent would say he needed to leave the room. Krzemien told Deripaska, who spoke fluent English, that he and Hellmer were representatives of the U.S. government but didn’t specifically mention the FBI. The ruse wasn’t necessary. Krzemien realized Deripaska would never have agreed to meet with him and Hellmer absent agreement from Putin’s office and that Russian intelligence officials probably knew who they worked for.
The oligarch told Hellmer and Krzemien he needed two questions answered before deciding whether to go forward. The first question was whether Bob had been kidnapped or killed in retaliation for something he had done as an FBI agent. When Krzemien said he didn’t believe so, Deripaska posed his second question. “Has he ever done anything to hurt Russia?” he asked. Assured that he hadn’t, Deripaska announced he was willing to fund a search and pay any ransom needed to free Bob, expenses that could amount to tens of millions of dollars. That price was small compared with what the State Department’s refusal to issue him a visa was costing. A worldwide economic recession then unfolding was devastating the oligarch’s business. To build his aluminum empire, Deripaska had taken out billions in bank loans, but he faced the prospect of defaulting on them because the price of aluminum and other metals was plummeting due to reduced demand. He had hoped to raise capital from investors by selling shares of RUSAL on the London Stock Exchange. But British regulators did not allow the offering to go forward, and financial analysts speculated the State Department’s refusal to give Deripaska a visa was a factor in the decision. Wall Street investment firms were interested in Deripaska’s ventures, but to get their money he needed a clean bill of health from U.S. authorities.
The businessman insisted on one condition for his participation in Bob’s case. His role was to remain secret so rivals in Russia wouldn’t know he was cooperating with the United States, a disclosure that could put him in physical danger. It was agreed that the oligarch would remain in the background while Madzhit Mamoyan oversaw the search for Bob on the ground. Boris would act as the go-between, relaying information among Madzhit, Deripaska, and the FBI. Bureau officials were elated. Deripaska, who was also involved in the automobile industry and other ventures, had contacts in Iran who might know about Bob. One FBI official called Chris and, without mentioning the oligarch’s name, told her the bureau was now dealing with someone who could “fly into Iran on his private jet” and bring her husband out.
By 2009, Chris was getting regular weekly briefings from the FBI and the State Department about her husband’s case. Typically, there was nothing new to report, but speaking regularly with Chris limited the number of spontaneous calls she made to agents. U.S. officials wanted her to feel they were doing everything possible to bring her husband home. They feared she would grow frustrated and go public about Bob’s CIA ties, an outcome they desperately wanted to avoid, both for his sake and for the fate of the three young American hikers who were still being held in Evin Prison.
Bob’s friend in London, Jeff Katz, the private investigator who headed Bishop International, was losing patience with the FBI’s lack of progress. A native New Yorker in his sixties, Katz had lived for decades in England and spent much of his career working for Kroll Associates, the big investigative outfit, before starting his own firm. His most high-profile case at Kroll involved the mysterious death of Roberto Calvi, an executive of Banco Ambrosiano, an Italian bank that served the Vatican. When Calvi was found hanged in 1982 underneath London’s Blackfriars Bridge, police officials concluded that his death was a suicide. A decade later, Calvi’s family, unable to collect his life insurance because of the suicide finding, hired Katz to reinvestigate. He assembled a team of forensic experts, engineers, and a stuntman to re-create events on the night of Calvi’s death. The key to the case turned out to be the dead man’s shoes. Calvi favored shoes made by John Lobb Ltd., a famous cobbler on St. James’s Street in London. Katz had the stuntman put on an identical pair and walk along the same metal scaffolding Calvi would have needed to navigate to reach the point underneath the bridge where he would have hanged himself. Calvi’s body was found partially submerged in the river Thames, so the stuntman’s shoes were soaked overnight in a bucket of Thames water. Technicians then microscopically examined both pairs of shoes. Unlike the stuntman’s shoes, whose soles showed flecks of paint and rust from the scaffolding, the banker’s shoes were free of debris, suggesting murderers staged the hanging by hoisting him up onto the bridge from a boat underneath it. Katz’s finding prompted insurers to pay millions to Calvi’s survivors.
Through contacts, Katz was introduced to an oil industry consultant in Paris who had spent his career cutting deals in the Middle East, including Iran. The consultant, Xavier Houzel, also served as a courier of information between governments. After speaking with Katz, he agreed to call an Iranian official in Paris. The diplomat told him he knew nothing about Bob’s case but offered to arrange a meeting in Tehran for Houzel with officials of the Ministry of Intelligence when the consultant next traveled there. Katz brought Houzel to London, where the two men went to the U.S. embassy and spoke over a secure video link with FBI agents in Washington. The agents appeared eager to use the consultant, but a few days later they called Katz back and said State Department officials wanted them to stand down because the United States was “getting results from other irons in the fire.” Katz relayed the message to Houzel, thanking him and saying his services wouldn’t be needed.
When Houzel next visited Tehran on oil-related business, intelligence operatives had been tipped off to his interest in Bob. Two agents from the Ministry of Intelligence came to his hotel room and told him to follow them. They escorted him to a small, unmarked building, where he was taken into a barren room without windows. He was questioned for two hours about the purpose of his trip and why he was so interested in the case of the missing American. Houzel tried to provide neutral answers. The two agents instructed him to remain in the room while they reported to their superiors. A young boy appeared with a sandwich and a bottle of water. When the men returned, they questioned Houzel for two more hours before saying the Intelligence Ministry knew nothing about Bob. The consultant was allowed to go back to his hotel. Not long afterward, another of Katz’s sources made inquiries about Bob while visiting the Iranian city of Qom, the country’s religious center. He was warned to mind his own business and told that Iranian leaders knew exactly why the former FBI agent was on Kish.
By then, Madzhit Mamoyan was hopscotching across the Middle East and Europe trying to pick up information. He met with leaders of the two most powerful Kurdish factions in northern Iraq, the Talabani and the Barzani. On his travels, he kept hearing about the Rafsanjani family and its involvement in smuggling, including the trafficking of counterfeit cigarettes and other contraband through Kish. Many of Madzhit’s sources insisted that Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and his sons had to know about Bob’s arrest and might be playing a role in his detention. It wasn’t an empty theory. During Iran’s presidential campaign in 2009, the Fars News Agency, an outlet closely associated with the country’s Supreme Leader, had attacked Rafsanjani by publishing an exposé of what it described as his family’s Mafia-like grip on Iran’s economy. The news service also called Rafsanjani the de facto ruler of Kish.
Around 200,000 square meters of the most expensive lands in the free trade region of Kish have been exclusively given to the relatives of and aides to Mr Hashemi Rafsanjani, and they have made enormous investments in this region. This gang recognized itself as the owner and master of Kish and has grasped its economy in a manner that all the foreigners who come to Kish for trade have to pay a considerable amount of commission to the children of Mr Hashemi under different pretexts like donations to charities etc.
In addition to all o
ther activities, this mafia trend has established a landing ground for private planes in Kish through which they are able to directly import their commodities to Iran.
Madzhit also dispatched operatives into Iran who made it clear that the Kurd was willing to pay large sums of money for news about Bob. Before long, an Iranian who said that Bob was alive contacted him, adding he could secure the American’s freedom for a price. FBI officials didn’t take the man seriously at first; they had heard plenty of similar claims over the years from people such as Sarkis Soghanalian. But after they sent the Iranian’s name to the CIA for any background information it might have on him, they sat back and took notice. The spy agency told them that the man, Seyed Mir Hejazi, appeared to be the son of Asghar Mir Hejazi, the top intelligence advisor to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader.
As bureau officials encouraged Madzhit to pursue Hejazi, Boris Birshtein was telling them that Oleg Deripaska needed to come to the United States. The oligarch’s financial problems were growing and he wanted to meet with top Wall Street executives to discuss financing deals. The FBI was eager to keep Deripaska happy and asked the State Department to issue him a limited visa so he could make a brief visit. To the bureau’s surprise, department officials refused to do so.
Up until that point, Dave McGee and Ira Silverman had been unaware of Deripaska’s role in the hunt for their friend. The FBI didn’t tell them about the operation because of its sensitivity. And they were happy to keep Dave and Ira in the dark for another reason. Over time, FBI managers had come to see them and Larry Sweeney as meddlers who regularly criticized and second-guessed bureau decisions. They figured the less they knew, the better.
But Boris, with his plan in jeopardy, needed new allies, and he reached out to Dave to tell him about Deripaska’s involvement. He also warned him the oligarch might pull out of the operation if his visa request wasn’t granted. Dave contacted Senator Nelson’s office to see if the lawmaker could help, but the State Department remained adamant. Then, at a meeting about the visa, FBI officials encountered one of the State Department officials apparently opposed to letting Deripaska into the United States—it was Anne Jablonski’s husband, Robert Otto, a department expert on Russian crime.
A year had passed since Anne’s forced departure from the CIA. She hadn’t gone to work for a public interest group, as she had once imagined. Instead, she followed a more predictable path and was employed by corporate investigative firms doing diligence reports about Russian businessmen and companies. The Justice Department, at the CIA’s request, had looked into the question of whether to charge Anne or other agency officials with crimes, such as lying to FBI agents about Bob, but closed the investigation after finding insufficient evidence to do so.
During that inquiry, however, FBI agents had learned some things about Anne’s husband and the information had left them with a bad taste. When Bob disappeared, a Russian analyst at the National Security Agency with whom he shared information had quickly alerted that agency about their relationship. But Robert Otto apparently had said nothing to his State Department superiors about his ties to Bob or disclosed to them that his wife was the missing man’s CIA handler. When FBI agents encountered Otto participating in a meeting about Deripaska’s visa, they were outraged. “What the hell are you doing here?” one agent shouted at him. “We know who you are.”
In the end, FBI officials decided to make an end run around the State Department and secretly arranged to have the Department of Homeland Security issue the oligarch a special, short-term visa. In August 2009, Deripaska sat with Boris, Madzhit, Martin Hellmer, and Joe Krzemien in a hotel lobby in Washington. All of them felt Bob’s release was imminent. Madzhit’s Iranian contact, Seyed Mir Hejazi, had offered to arrange a phone call between Bob and Chris, but FBI officials, certain he was about to be freed, decided to forgo the offer, fearing the conversation might be intercepted.
Deripaska came again to the United States in the fall of 2009, meeting with top Wall Street executives, including Lloyd Blankfein, the head of Goldman Sachs. Earlier, he had traveled to Detroit to talk with General Motors executives. Deripaska already owned Russia’s second-biggest automobile maker, and he was interested in purchasing GM’s stake in Opel, a European car company. Initially, the oligarch’s trips to the United States escaped the attention of the American news media. But he wasn’t camera shy. In September, a Russian publication published a photograph showing him with GM executives, and in late October, reporters at The Wall Street Journal got a tip about his visits and the fight between the FBI and the State Department over his visa. The newspaper ran a front-page article under the headline “FBI Lets Barred Tycoon Visit U.S.” Prior to its publication, reporters had called the FBI to ask an obvious question—why had the bureau allowed the barred oligarch into the United States? The reporters weren’t told the reason. Instead, two unnamed “administration officials” were quoted in the article describing Deripaska’s visits as part of “a continuing criminal probe.” The newspaper reported that it had been unable to learn the investigation’s focus.
FBI officials suspected the State Department was the source of the leak, and Boris was frantic that Deripaska might abandon the hunt because of the article. He asked Martin Hellmer and Joe Krzemien to fly to Vienna to meet the oligarch at a five-star hotel there, the Sacher, the birthplace of the famous Austrian pastry the Sacher torte. Boris and Madzhit also attended. Deripaska didn’t appear upset. As he dined with his visitors inside a luxury suite on the hotel’s top floor, he talked mainly about his businesses and the international economy, explaining how he felt a personal obligation to keep his companies afloat because they employed thousands of workers. Five waiters were present in the room, one for each diner. They moved cautiously as they served the meal, seemingly terrified of making a misstep that might upset Deripaska. When the soup course was brought to the table, the oligarch asked one waiter what it was. The man responded, describing it with a drawn-out, French-sounding name. Deripaska nodded and looked at the FBI agents. He smiled and said, “That’s just a fancy name for gruel.”
17
Proof of Life
Dan Levinson, Bob’s oldest son, stepped out of a taxi in front of the Hotel Adlon Kempinski, a majestic building on Berlin’s central square right across from the landmark Brandenburg Gate. More than three years had passed since his father’s disappearance and Dan, like his siblings, remained haunted by it. All the Levinson children loved their father, though they tended to see him differently, perspectives shaped by their gender and age. Dan was one of his father’s fiercest defenders and he had complete faith in his abilities. After 9/11, when it turned out that one of the terrorists, Mohamed Atta, lived for months in Coral Springs, Bob told Dan he might have stopped the attack if he was still with the FBI, explaining that Atta had gotten his hair cut at the same barbershop he used. Every agent who had ever carried a badge felt similar remorse. But Dan, then sixteen years old, sensed his father might have succeeded.
He had first heard about Iran and Dawud Salahuddin in 2002 when he was lying on the living room couch watching television. “Here, read this,” his father said, walking in and tossing him a copy of The New Yorker with Ira Silverman’s article about the fugitive. He had once passed his father’s opened computer and saw a folder labeled DAOUD, and not long before Bob disappeared, he and his brother Doug were driving home with their father from a Steak ’n Shake, a fast-food restaurant, when a report about political unrest in Iran came on the car radio. “I’m working on something over there,” Bob told his boys.
Dan was in his first year of law school when his father went missing. He found it difficult to focus on his studies and dropped out. He wrote articles for newspapers about his family’s plight and accompanied his mother when she went to Iran. By 2010, he had gotten his academic career back on track but decided to switch out of law and pursue a master’s degree in business. He was traveling in Ireland when he learned about an email that his mother had received through the He
lp Bob Levinson website from an Iranian living in Berlin. The email was about his father, and the Iranian, Amir Farshad Ebrahimi, had attached documents to it. He claimed they were the official records of Bob’s arrest on Kish on charges of spying.
Ebrahimi described himself as a former officer in the Quds Force, the special unit of the Revolutionary Guards, who had fled Iran to start a new life in Germany as a freelance journalist and human rights activist. In his email, he told Chris that a friend in Iran, a police official, had found records related to Bob’s arrest while going through a folder and photographed them with his cell phone camera. Ebrahimi asked Chris if she wanted him to release the documents to the news media. At the FBI’s direction, she asked Ebrahimi to send her the records. In the photographs, they looked authentic. They were written in Farsi, appeared to be on official government stationery, and bore numerous signatures and countersignatures.
The earliest document was dated March 8, 2007, and authorized Bob’s arrest on Kish. It referred to him as “Robert Anderson.”
URGENT
Our Nation is Proud to Be the Student of the School of Prophet Mohammed
(Blessing of God be upon him and his descendants)
The Honorable Head of the Judiciary Office of the Armed Forces