(CNN)�-- The family of long-missing former FBI agent Robert Levinson has renewed its request for a meeting with the bureau's new director following reports Levinson had been working for the CIA when he vanished, the family's lawyer said Monday.
Levinson disappeared on a trip to Iran in 2007, and U.S. officials say they have no idea where he is now. The Associated Press and The Washington Post reported last week that he had been working as a contractor for the CIA, but the White House said Levinson "was not a U.S. government employee" when he disappeared.

Family attorney David McGee said Levinson's relatives were supposed to meet with FBI Director James Comey about the case long before it became publicly known that Levinson was working for the CIA. The FBI has delayed previously scheduled meetings since Comey took over as director in September, McGee says.

A U.S. law enforcement official said the FBI is working to set up that meeting with Comey, who has been traveling extensively, and the bureau hopes to arrange that meeting soon.

Levinson, now 65, had gone to Iran on a mission to investigate corruption involving the laundering of oil profits by Iranian officials, including former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, according to a source. Iran has consistently denied having any knowledge of Levinson's whereabouts, and there has been no sign of him since a 2010 video.

At the time of his disappearance, the State Department said he was on a private business trip investigating cigarette smuggling and said he was not working for the government. His family had also said he wasn't working for the government.

Levinson was on the CIA books as an "analyst," to write academic papers, with money laundering a particular area of expertise, McGee said. But in reality, Levinson was an operative traveling overseas, recruiting, and interviewing sources.

McGee said records he found show "without a shadow of a doubt" that Levinson was a CIA contract employee on a rogue assignment in Iran for the agency when he disappeared. After Levinson disappeared, McGee said he called people at the CIA to tell them they had a man missing. Nothing happened, McGee said.

When the Levinson family first went to the Senate Intelligence Committee for help, staffers contacted the CIA and at that point, the CIA told them "they have no connection with him at all," McGee said.

The family then found documentation and returned to the Intelligence Committee, giving staffers what they call "smoking gun" evidence. The documents included Levinson's contract and expense reports that detailed his previous assignments, including a detailed 2006 report of his work on a separate mission regarding Iran's nuclear program. That mission did not take him to Iran.

The family also had e-mails regarding his pending 2007 trip to Iran involving his instructions with Dawud Salahuddin, an American fugitive who lives in Iran.

Salahuddin has said he met with Levinson in a hotel on Kish Island on March 8, 2007. The meeting was an effort to put Levinson in touch with Iranian authorities to help the American investigate cigarette smuggling as a contractor for a tobacco company.

In classified Intelligence Committee meetings that followed, Florida Sen. Bill Nelson gave then-CIA Director Michael Hayden a "grilling," McGee said. Confronted with the evidence, the CIA then demurred, said it would get back in touch and later admitted the relationship with Levinson, he said.

In the meantime, the CIA paid the family $120,000 for Levinson's trip and eventually settled for $2.5 million to avoid a lawsuit, according to McGee.

Ultimately, seven CIA staffers were disciplined and three were fired, McGee said -- including Levinson's chief handler.

By CNN

 

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