Is the FBI offering one million in taxpayer money as a reward for a missing private citizen? [View all]

[trumad]

I don't get this. The guy was is no longer with the FBI and was in Iran as a private investigator snooping around. Why the hell do taxpayers have to foot the bill for something like this. I mean if that is the case, why don't we offer a million dollar reward for every missing U.S citizen?

Almost five years ago, Bob Levinson, a retired FBI agent from Coral Springs, vanished on a resort island near the southern coast of Iran.

Now, the FBI is offering a reward of up to $1 million for information leading to the kidnapping victim's safe return home. The reward was praised by his relatives, who have faced the ordeal of losing their patriarch and the frustrating inability to help from so far away.

"Knowing that Bob is being held against his will and not being able to help him, there are no words to describe the nightmare my family and I have been living every day," Levinson's wife of 37 years, Christine Levinson, said at aWashington, D.C., news conference on Tuesday.

The reward is part of a new FBI publicity campaign aimed at raising awareness about Levinson's case, mainly in Southwest Asia, the region where the U.S. government received indications Levinson was being held captive.
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/broward/fort-lauderdale/fl-bob-levinson-missing-anniversary-20120307,0,6161080.story