Missing Man (11 page)

Please insure that the “powers that be” know that I continue to regard this work as a unique opportunity to serve my country and do not take anything for granted.

When Bob heard back from Anne, it wasn't the response he was expecting. She told him the legislation authorizing the CIA's new fiscal year budget was stuck in Congress and that agency expenditures were on hold until it passed.

Minor problem. We're OUT of cash on this contract for extras. Brian is searching high and low to scare up some cash to cover some recent expenses you billed. The well is sorta' dry thanks to some cuts here. So … feel free to take some TIME off, as right now we've got to start robbing Peter and paying Paul to cover things … Lovin' the stuff, though.

Bob could hardly believe it. During the past six months, all his feedback was positive and upbeat. He began to worry that maybe Tim Sampson or Brian O'Toole was unhappy he had used up his funding too quickly. He wrote Anne: “Wanted to make sure you knew that I was sorry for any aggravation caused, tried to stay within budget and get the job done. Also wanted to know if Mr. T. and Mr. B. were satisfied with what I've been doing.”

She reassured him the agency's budget was the only issue: “Oh, Bobby, everybody's MORE than satisfied, they're thrilled. Right now the problem is the coffers are EMPTY and so there's just nothing to pay for the extra at this point. But trust me, everyone is THRILLED.”

He managed to hide his disappointment from Chris and the kids. Some of his sources, including Ken Rijock, the ex-lawyer in Miami, were clamoring for money and he needed to hold them at bay. Rijock kept emailing Bob about the dynamite intelligence Thor Halversson was getting from his informants in Venezuela. Rijock said if the CIA wasn't going to pay, Bob should start shopping Thor's material to another part of the U.S. government, like the Defense Intelligence Agency: “T is losing faith that the sponsor will come up with the money. There is uranium activity by Iranians in VZ and T has 2 weeks of intel on many important subjects sitting on his desk waiting for funds. If the sponsor fails to deliver, what do we do? Go to DIA? I think that's our next move here. The stakes are too high.”

Bob responded he was also frustrated with the agency. “I too am pissed off to a fare-thee-well … My feeling is that if this stuff is so important and so good, they should have begun re-funding the project on December 13th.”

He sent Anne another memo listing projects he could pursue if funding was freed up. He wrote:

Enroute to your house for delivery on Friday 29 December is something I put together for you and the gang, dealing with your own favorite subjects. I know that I'm supposed to be a “good boy” and stand down but, as I explain in the accompanying note in the package, I felt an obligation to get what I got and get it in your hands. After more than 35 years of doing this stuff, I still love it and can do it in my sleep. Best wishes for a happy, healthy and successful New Year. Hoping that I can continue helping out!

His accompanying memo mentioned several projects, including a report about an upcoming meeting between Hugo Chávez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to discuss what Venezuela might do if Israel attacked Iran. Bob had also contacted Houshang Bouzari, the oil consultant in Toronto, and asked him to run down information about Ahmad Rowshandel, one of the Iranians he had met in Istanbul. Without mentioning Bouzari's name in his memo to Anne, Bob wrote that one of his sources had “conducted detailed inquiries concerning six (6) companies which were registered in the Islamic Republic of Iran by Ahmad Rowshandel of Teheran and Berlin—these inquiries show that Rowshandel is probably running these companies as ‘fronts' for the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.”

It was also around Christmas that a juicy case came through Bob's door, one he knew Anne would love. It had everything—Russian organized crime, Kremlin politics, espionage, and a mysterious murder—and the case was making front-page news around the world. The dead man was a former KGB agent named Alexander Litvinenko, who had been living and working in London as a private investigator. He was an outspoken critic of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and publicly blamed him for the murder of a Russian investigative journalist and other crimes. On a November day in 2006, Litvinenko developed severe stomach cramps and diarrhea. After he was hospitalized, doctors discovered that an assassin had slipped him a lethal dose of a radioactive material, polonium, and on his deathbed Litvinenko accused Putin of ordering his murder.

Bob's connection to the case was through another former KGB agent turned private investigator named Yuri Shvets. When Bob got assignments from clients seeking information about Russian businessmen, he often subcontracted the jobs out to the former Soviet spy, who had been living in the United States since the early 1990s. Shvets told Scotland Yard detectives that Litvinenko had asked him for similar help on a background investigation he was hired to conduct on a very highly placed member of Putin's inner circle. Their inquiry had turned up damaging material on the man, Viktor Ivanov, the chairman of Aeroflot airlines and a Moscow power broker known as the “Cardinal of the Kremlin.” Then Litvinenko made a fatal mistake, Shvets told British detectives. He gave the report to another former KGB operative working on the assignment. Shvets said he was certain that the man, Andrei Lugovoi, was a double agent working for Russian intelligence and that when Putin and his allies learned about Litvinenko's findings, they ordered him killed.

Shvets shared much of his story with a British journalist, Tom Mangold, who had known Bob for many years. Mangold had the same type of relationship with Bob that Ira Silverman enjoyed; he tipped off the journalists to information and they reciprocated by treating him well. Mangold had suggested to Bob after his bureau retirement that they collaborate on a book about his law enforcement career that the British writer wanted to call “Manhunter.” With England transfixed in late 2006 by the bizarre murder of Alexander Litvinenko, Mangold did a radio program about the case called
The Litvinenko Mystery
, on which both Bob and Yuri Shvets appeared as guests. Bob explained how the results of due diligence investigations could make or break multimillion-dollar business deals, suggesting the stakes were high enough to provide a motive for murder.

Around the time the program aired, a Canadian-born lawyer living in London, Robert Amsterdam, contacted Bob about the Litvinenko case. Bob had worked earlier for Amsterdam, who represented Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former head of a major Russian energy company, Yukos Oil. In 2005, Khodorkovsky had been convicted of tax fraud charges and sent to a Soviet-era prison that once served as a forced labor camp. Many people suspected Vladimir Putin of engineering his downfall, and Amsterdam believed that any information tying Putin or his allies to Litvinenko's murder might help free his client. He hired Bob to find out what he could.

Right after New Year's Day, Bob sent Anne another note, alerting her to his involvement in the Litvinenko case. He also told her he was about to take another overseas trip for Global Witness as part of his continuing investigation into Semion Mogilevich and would be meeting in the coming weeks with sources in the United States and abroad who could provide valuable information for Illicit Finance Group. In the note, he abbreviated counterterrorism as “CT” and Russian organized crime as “ROC.”

Can you give me any guidance on what to realistically expect regarding the possibilities of obtaining continued funding? I'm asking for the following reasons, which hopefully will show why this is on my mind.

I'm going to be meeting with a couple of people this week here in Miami, one of whom had been very helpful on the situation down south. The other has been helping on CT stuff down south.

Next week, I'll be in Tel Aviv in connection with the natural gas investigation.

I was contacted during the holidays by Khodorkovsky's Canadian lawyer, whom I helped out on a couple of international cases a few years ago, and he is interested in turning me loose to document connections between Yukos and the Litvinenko poisoning.

I'm going to Budapest on the 20th and while most of my time is to be spent on the natural gas thing, an intermediary is going to be setting up a meeting with a top level Russian “businessman” who should be able to assist us with the ROC program.

Please let me know if you can share anything, even at this early time.

When he didn't hear anything from her for two days, he emailed Anne again. “If Mr. Brian and Mr. Tim have any news, please share when you get a chance,” he wrote. This time, she responded. Anne said that the CIA, like other government offices, had been closed an extra day over the New Year's break to mark the funeral of the former president Gerald Ford, who had died in late December.

Brian and Tim? Poor chumps got the flu! Our office is a dang sick ward. Everyone, myself included, is just coming back off a lonnnnnnng holiday weekend. We got Monday off for New Year's, Tuesday for Ford's day of mourning and I took Wednesday to burn up some use/lose leave. Lovely. And we were in NJ for the annual family holiday (dys)function. We're desperately hunting for money. The budget is AWFUL. We barely have travel money left for the analysts. But we're still hopeful. You're doing AWESOME stuff. Don't doubt that for a second.

He emailed her back:

Thanks for the update—trying to stay out of your way and keep what for me would be a very low profile (can't seem to do it, though!)—I truly and I mean TRULY appreciate the kind words—having been doing my best to keep all of my “friends” happy and hopeful—expect to be back from across the pond on the 13th. If there's anything new just email me.

Best to Mr. Bob and the sick ward inhabitants.

Even while traveling, Bob couldn't let it go. A few days before his return home, he emailed Anne yet again, signing his note as “Buck,” the nickname he often used for himself in his notes to her.

Hey Toots

Heard anything good?

Anyone recovered and back at work?

Asking because lots of things are happening.

Best wishes—home Saturday

Buck

Anne responded that things were status quo and explained that even she was having trouble finding money to fly to Fort Lauderdale on CIA business. Bob wrote back:

Hope they find YOU some travel money as I was planning to take you out to dinner with Christine Mary. We've got quite a few favorite restaurants we were hoping to find an excuse to try … Give my best to Mr. Brian and Mr. Tim and tell them I'm trying to keep everything and I mean EVERYTHING w-a-r-m.

When Bob returned in mid-January from his travels, he made plans to go to Washington. Robert Amsterdam wanted Yuri Shvets to give a formal affidavit about Alexander Litvinenko's murder, and he had arranged for him to do it at a Washington-area law firm. Bob let Anne know he was heading her way.

Toots,

Look out!—I'm coming up around mid-week on another matter—would love to see you and Mr. Bob for dinner. Will be trying to stay in the same place as I always do, around the corner from your place. Anyway, wanted to share a few things, see how things are going in general and someone else is paying the freight.

Anne replied that she and her husband would be happy to meet him for a meal. Then a day later Bob followed with another email, wondering if, while in Washington, he could meet with managers at the “pickle factory,” an old slang term for the CIA he liked to use.

Planning now to fly into DC on Wednesday and, if you and Bob are free, we could do dinner on Wednesday evening. Now, separately, let me know about the possibility of (and I realize it is very, very short notice and probably impossible) getting to sit down with Mr. Brian and/or Mr. Tim there at the pickle factory on Wednesday afternoon or Thursday morning. I would welcome the opportunity to show my face, let them know what's up and basically “check in.” If you think they would consider it “pushing things” and something that wouldn't be appropriate, given the situation with funding just say the word—I'll leave everything be.

Both men were away, Anne replied, adding that the agency's money situation still hadn't improved. On January 17, she and her husband met Bob for dinner at Harry's Tap Room, a restaurant not far from their Arlington home. Bob was still weary from his recent trip overseas, and he told Anne he was about to leave on another one. He said he was feeling tired and his diabetes appeared to be getting worse. Then, when a waiter appeared, he ordered a rich meal. Anne looked at him. “You've got to stop this shit,” she said. “You are not twenty years old.”

Bob took off again and sent Anne several reports based on information he was picking up on his travels for other clients about Russian organized crime and other subjects. She shared them with her husband, Bob: “The first package came—holy SH**!!!… You really did hit the motherlode, my man. Bob and I were gasping reading what you sent. Damn we gotta find some money.”

Two days later, while passing through Paris on his way home, he sent her another email, this one about the Iranians he had met in Istanbul with Boris Birshtein. He urged her to show the note to Tim Sampson, referring to him as “Mr. T.”

Toots,

Greetings from Paris—coming home tomorrow night.

Can you get word to Mr. T that the parties with whom my friend and I met in Istanbul in early December are interested in meeting with my friend (and I) in Europe sometime in Feb. I just know they are going to discuss the kinds of matters of great interest, particularly now. I was wondering if you can just drop this stuff on him with all the other stuff that's coming to your house tomorrow—doing my best to keep things warm.

Anne assured him she would. He didn't get a response back. He had been pushing for two months, sending her email after email filled with bait without getting bites. His financial situation was getting worse. By January 2007, his work for Global Witness was winding down and he had failed so far to find a solid link between Semion Mogilevich and RosUkrEnergo, the gas pipeline company. His search had started on a high note in the fall when he went to Kiev to meet with Ukraine's former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, a politician best recognized in the West by the thick blond braid she wore wrapped around her head. Tymoshenko's supporters claimed that Ukraine's president had removed her from office after she questioned deals involving RosUkrEnergo, and they told Bob they had documents proving Mogilevich's role in the firm. But Tymoshenko, who was known as the “gas princess” for the millions she had made from natural gas companies she and her husband owned, never produced the records, leaving open the question of whether they existed. After that, Bob had spent months and nearly all of Global Witness's money chasing Mogilevich's shadow from country to country without results.