The problem, I think, is that competent people often think of competence as a general kind of talent, applicable to anything to which they might turn their hand. Unfortunately, competence often proves less fungible and more particular than we like to imagine. To have done one job well doesn’t guarantee an ability to do some other job just as well.
If you ever need an example, you’ll find it in Robert Levinson, the American spy who has been missing in Iran for almost a decade. As recounted by the New York Times reporter Barry Meier in his book Missing Man, Levinson’s tale is by turns shocking, infuriating, and insanely weird--populated with Mafia figures, Russian oligarchs, Columbian drug smugglers, reckless spymasters, and lying diplomats.
But at the same time, Levinson’s story seems almost like a fugue, heading toward its predictable conclusion from the moment the former FBI agent decided to supplement his retirement pension by trying his hand at international intrigue. Once Levinson began contracting part-time with the CIA, he was stumbling toward the end of the dock, where the water is always dark and deep.
As Meier explains in Missing Man, the facts of Levinson’s disappearance are now fairly well known. In 2007, he traveled to Kish, a resort island off the coast of Iran. He did have a letter from British American Tobacco, authorizing him to investigate cigarette smuggling there. But, as it turns out, Levinson himself had forged the letter, and he had actually gone to Iran to gather information he hoped to sell to the Illicit Finance Group of the CIA.
In particular, Levinson seems to have planned a meeting with an American named Teddy Belfield--"a supreme sociopath," according to Meier--who had changed his name to Dawud Salahuddin, assassinated an Iranian dissident in Washington, D.C., and fled to Iran more than 30 years ago. One of Levinson’s old friends, the journalist Ira Silverman, had interviewed Salahuddin, and apparently suggested to Levinson that the man might be growing tired of his Iranian exile. So off Levinson went to see if he could arrange a repatriation, bringing back to the United States all that Salahuddin knew.