Former FBI agent missing in Iran photographed in Guantánamo jumpsuit

The family of retired FBI agent Robert Levinson, who went missing in Iran in 2007, have released pictures of him dressed in an orange jumpsuit like a Guantánamo Bay prisoner, as they continue to hold hope that he is still alive.

The reason the signs are on multiple small papers is because the captors used a common printer that only prints on standard sized paper or smaller. If they had a large-format printer and huge paper they might have gone with a jumbo sign, but they did not, or if they were really into printing techniques they could have got fancy and fiddled with the printer settings to do poster format prints, then taped them together.
This small paper signage is not odd, it is to be expected because most people do not have jumbo-sized paper lying around unless they live in an art studio or butcher shop, nor do most people feel like breaking out the scotch tape to assemble a jumbo sign when simply snapping some pictures of the guy holding sheets straight from the printer will do. His captors took the easiest route and simply used what they had.

They used a printer instead of wrting it out by hand because they know clues can be garnered from handwritten styles because handwriting is very personal.

At the time this FBI retiree disappeared in 2007 the US, Iraq, Iran and the UK had been involved in a tit for tat prisoner grab. The UK had had some sailors captured, etc, and the US had grabbed some Iranian operatives.

What's really bad is that what leverage we really did have against Iran the Obama admin decided to give back to Iran...apparently receiving no one and nothing in return. Was this release an effort by our unbelievably stupid Obama admin to appease Iran by showering it with the gift of these men an effort gone awry?

We caught these Quds guys in January 2007 in Irbil, Iraq, and Bush refused to return them because Iran was conducting terror operations in Iraq. Then Obama gets inaugerated... Obama Frees Iranian Terror Masters, National Review ^ | July 1ith 2009 Posted on Saturday, July 11, 2009 10:34:18 PM by Steelfish 5 Iranian Officials Released by U.S. Return to Iran, Fox News ^ | 07/12/2009 | Fox News Posted on Sunday, July 12, 2009 1:59:05 PM by Dallas

It's weird alright. He was working for british american Tobacco which hired a security firm in an investigation of cigarette smuggling and counterfeiting; they say his investigation was of South American smuggling, not Middle East. Of course, S American smuggling involves both North Africa and the Middle East.

He met with Dawud Salahuddin a/k/a Hassan Abdulrahman on Kish; he's an American convert to Islam who had been involved in an assassination plot back in the US before running off to Iran.

Mueller may have a conflict — and it leads directly to a Russian oligarch
The sHill ^ | 5/14/18 | John Solomon
Posted by SoFloFreeper

...In 2009, when Mueller ran the FBI, the bureau asked Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska to spend millions of his own dollars funding an FBI-supervised operation to rescue a retired FBI agent, Robert Levinson, captured in Iran while working for the CIA in 2007.
(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...

Interesting that Levinson is/was? an expert on Russian organized crime...

2009 to 2011 : (OLEG DERIPASKA [See PUTIN, CHRISTOPHER STEELE, BRUCE OHR] COOPERATES WITH THE FBI IN TRYING TO RESCUE RETIRED FBI AGENT LEVINSON [See CIGARETTES, HEZBOLLAH], AND IS FINALLY ALLOWED A US VISA, WHICH IN PREVIOUS YEARS WAS DENIED TO HIM DUE TO HIS RUSSIAN MAFIA TIES, TO ENTER THE US) ...By that time, Deripaska already had proven himself helpful to the FBI. As I’ve written previously, based on numerous U.S. sources, he cooperated with the bureau from 2009 to 2011 and spent more than $25 million of his own money on an FBI-supervised operation to try to rescue retired FBI agent Robert Levinson, who was captured in Iran while working as a CIA contractor.
U.S. officials and Levinson’s family told me that Deripaska’s efforts came close to securing Levinson’s freedom before the State Department scuttled a deal. The former agent has never been heard from again....
... Deripaska — like the many foreign business figures to whom U.S. intelligence has turned for help over the decades — is not without controversy or need. The State Department tried to keep him from getting a U.S. visa between 2006 and 2009 because they believed he had unspecified connections to criminal elements in Russia as he consolidated power in the aluminum industry. Deripaska has denied those allegations and claims FBI agents told him in 2009 that the State Department file blocking his entry to the country was merely a pretext.
Whatever the case, it is irrefutable that after he began helping the FBI, Deripaska regained entry to the United States. And he visited numerous times between 2009 and 2017, visa entry records show.
We now know that, on multiple occasions during those visits, the DOJ and FBI secretly collaborated with Deripaska in the hope of getting help, first regarding Levinson, then on Ohr’s matters, and finally on the Manafort case. U.S. officials told me they assumed Deripaska let Putin’s team know he was helping the U.S. government and that his motive for helping was to keep visiting America.
-—— Russian oligarch, Justice Department and a clear case of collusion, thehill.com, By John Solomon, Opinion Contributor, August 28, 2018

&&&&

I wonder if Deripaska was actually sent to recover him or if Deripaska may have been the guy Levinson was investigating in the first place.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.