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...and this:

To: MestaMachine; Fedora
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

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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.

50 posted on 2/22/2019, 11:08:13 PM by piasa