A spy for Iran or a victim?
Ex-captive faces FBI suspicion
The documents show the FBI opened an espionage investigation into Hekmati as far back as 2011, the year he was detained in Iran on suspicion he was spying for the CIA.
Hekmati, who was raised in Michigan and served as an infantryman and interpreter in Iraq before being honorably discharged from the Marines in 2005, says he went to Iran to visit an ailing grandmother after a brief, unsatisfying stint as a Defense Department contractor conducting intelligence analysis in Afghanistan. But the FBI concluded that he went there intent on selling Iran classified information, according to an unsigned fivepage summary of its investigation.
The unproven assessment is based partly on accounts from four independent but unnamed sources who say Hekmati approached Iranian officials offering classified information, as well as the fact he abruptly resigned his contracting position and left for Iran without notifying supervisors, the FBI says.
An FBI computer forensics search concluded that while in Afghanistan, he accessed hundreds of classified documents related to Iran that agents believe were outside the scope of his job responsibilities, the documents say.
Hekmati, the son of Iranian immigrants, says he researched Iran openly to cultivate an expertise on Iranian influence in Afghanistan.
“Everyone knew” about the work he was doing, he said at a hearing last year, and supervisors didn’t place restrictions. He says he had already quit his job when he left for Iran and wasn’t obligated to tell supervisors of his trip. At no point in Iran, he said, did he meet with any Iranian officials or try to sell secrets.
Hekmati’s lawyers say the FBI’s suspicions are impossible to square with the treatment he endured in prison, which included torture like being whipped and chained to a table and being forced to record a coerced but bogus confession.
Were he spying for Iran, Gilbert said, “You’d think the guy would have been a valuable asset, they actually would have wanted to do something with him” rather than abuse him.
He was initially sentenced to death, but the punishment was ultimately cut to 10 years.
In January 2016, after more than four years behind bars, he was freed with several other U.S. citizens.
Months later, Hekmati sued Iran over his torture. A federal judge in Washington entered a $63.5 million default judgment after Iran failed to contest the claims.
Hekmati subsequently applied to collect through a Justice Department-run fund for terror victims financed by assets seized from U.S. adversaries. He was awarded the statutory maximum of $20 million, his lawyers say.
The fund’s special master then was Kenneth Feinberg, renowned for overseeing payments to victims of the Sept. 11 attacks. In December 2018, he authorized an initial payment of more than $839,000.
But for months, no money came. After Hekmati’s lawyers warned they’d have to sue, the Justice Department cryptically indicated it was seeking a reconsideration of the award.
In January 2020, Feinberg formally revoked Hekmati’s eligibility for the fund, saying his application contained errors and omissions and that information from the Justice Department supported the conclusion Hekmati visited Iran with the intent of selling classified information. A second letter last December didn’t repeat that precise allegation but said Hekmati had given “evasive, false and inconsistent statements” during three FBI interviews, failed to “credibly refute” that most of the classified information he accessed related to Iran and “traveled to Iran for primary purposes other than to visit his family.”