Former FBI Agent Missing Four Years from Kish Island

Former FBI Agent Missing Four Years from Kish Island

The family of missing retired FBI agent Robert Levinson voiced increasing hope he will return home soon as they marked on Wednesday the fourth anniversary of his disappearance.

Last week Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Washington has received information that Levinson is in southwest Asia as officials here said they were more optimistic than they have been in four years that he is alive.

"We are encouraged at news that he is alive," his wife Christine Levinson said in a Tuesday posting on the family website www.helpboblevinson.com.

"Our family is eagerly waiting for the day we will be reunited," she said.

She regretted that Levinson, a father of seven, had missed important family occasions, like the birth of a second grandchild and the marriage of their daughter Sarah.

"Bob's absence weighs on us every day and is magnified during these once-in-a-lifetime family moments," she said. "Our family asks for your continued prayers and support. They mean more to us than words can say."

Mystery shrouds the fate of Levinson who disappeared on Iran's Gulf island of Kish in March 2007.

Christine Levinson says her husband, who retired from the FBI more than a decade ago, had traveled to Kish island to investigate cigarette counterfeiting in the region and was last heard from on March 8, 2007.

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