AP Reporter: Keeping The Levinson Story A Secret Was The "Hardest Thing I've Done"

BuzzFeed - The government asked several journalists to stay quiet — even as other media outlets — and occasionally their own — told a story they and others knew to be false or incomplete. Handout / Reuters WASHINGTON — For years reporters and editors at top news organizations sat on a story that disproved the official lie about retired FBI agent Robert Levinson — even as other outlets continued to report it as fact.But as the government's strategy for bringing Levinson home floundered, the Associated Press Thursday night revealed that Levinson did not go to Iran as a private businessman as the government and his family had said, but as a CIA contractor. The report also revealed that the mission had already triggered a minor meltdown at the country's most important intelligence agency: it lead to several firings and a rewriting of the CIA's rules for "analyst.""This is the hardest thing I've done," Matt Apuzzo, who wrote the AP story along with Adam