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The mystery man at the center of Florida Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz’s charges that he was the target of an extortion scheme to make sex trafficking charges go away is a former U.S. Air Force intelligence officer with business interests in the Middle East who has been obsessed for years with rescuing former FBI agent Robert Levinson from Iran.

U.S. intelligence concluded years ago that Levinson, an FBI organized crime expert who disappeared in March 2007 during a covert CIA mission on Iran’s Kish Island, had died in custody, either in Iran or in the hands of Islamic militants. Levinson’s family accepted that finding last year.

But Bob Kent, an Air Force “special tactics/intelligence officer” from 2000 to 2007, according to his LinkedIn profile, remained undeterred. He never believed Levinson was dead and in 2018 began assembling a network of Iranian exile sources in Iraq, where he’s been involved in the oil business, to gather information on Levinson’s whereabout…