One Nation Under Blackmail: The Sordid Union Between Intelligence and Crime that Gave Rise to Jeffery Epstein By Whitney Webb
Volume 1 Reading Notes are here.
In this second volume, Webb zeroes in on Epstein’s closest circle of influence and chicanery while situating him amidst a global psychopathic brotherhood. The single most important thing to take away from her 1000-page tome, in my opinion, is that the so-called elite who run the world (99% are male) will make deals with anyone inside their network and a network is anything that increases their power, wealth and influence; no separation exists between and among mafia, organized crime, political parties, business, science, intelligence or military. Bear that in mind the next time the news tries to sell you their fictions.
Publisher’s Forward quotes Bush’s Senior adviser, who told Ron Suskind, New York Times, 2004: We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors … and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.
[Most mainstream media declined to dig deeper into Epstein’s connections [or were prevented] to the CIA and Israeli intelligence], instead largely focusing on the salacious aspects of the Epstein case. In addition, also in the early 1990s, Epstein’s name was mysteriously dropped from a major investigation into one of the largest Ponzi schemes in history even though he was labeled the mastermind of that swindle in grand jury testimony. Around the same time, subsequently released White House visitor logs show that Epstein visited the Clinton White House 17 times, accompanied on most of these visits by a difference, attractive young woman. (viii)
This two-volume book endeavors to show why Jeffery Epstein was able to engage in a series of mind-boggling crimes for decades without incident. Far from being an anomaly, Epstein was one of several men who, over the past century, have engaged in sexual blackmail activities designed to obtain damaging information (i.e. intelligence) on powerful individuals with the goal of controlling their activities and securing their compliance. Most of these individuals, including Epstein himself, have their roots in the covert world where organized crime and intelligence have intermingled and often cooperated for the better part of the last 90 years, if not longer. Perhaps most shocking, these men are all interconnected to various degrees in networks and associations. (ix)
While the sex trafficking activities of Epstein and Maxwell are discussed at length and examined in depth, this book gives particular attention to the dramatically under-reported relationship that Jeffery Epstein had with the Clinton White House from 1993 to 1995 and the significance of his 17 known meetings. Epstein brought many attractive young women with him to these meetings and many of his meetings were with a man named Mark Middleton. Middletown, who died under suspicious circumstances in May 2022, was embroiled in foreign espionage activities at the time he was meeting with Epstein. Those activities were later investigated by Congress in relation to illegal fundraising efforts for Bill Clinton’s 1996 re-election campaign. Epstein’s activities at the the Clinton White House, and in other parts of the country during this same period in time, point toward a major scandal of the Clinton era that has yet to be properly investigated. (ix)
Hoffenberg has also asserted that Epstein, in the early 1980s, “was trained in arms trafficking and money laundering by Adnan Khashoggi and Sir Douglas Leese jointly….Jeffery Epstein was a major participant and principal in the arms trafficking and money laundering operations of Adnan Khashoggi and Sir Douglas Leese, for Israel, for what they were doing in the United Kingdom.” Though it’s not exactly clear, Thompson Ramo-Woodbridge [aircraft parts and weapons components systems] seems to have been Leese’s introduction into the world of weapons dealing. Oddly enough, years later, a young Bill Gates, who would eventually develop his own ties to Epstein (see Chapter 20), would also get “his first break” thanks to TRW, when he worked “debugging grid control software for” the company at age 15. (12)
Per his claims to several friends and as mentioned in more than a few press reports authored prior to his 2007 arrest, Epstein was working as a financial “bounty hunter” and helped both recover and hide stolen money on behalf of powerful people. (16)
Hoffenberg, who was found dead in his apartment in late August 2022, had notable confided in Edward Szall off the record that Epstein had had a relationship with BCCI [Bank of Credit and Commerce International], but did not provide any specifics. (17)
In addition, in 1989, Khashoggi himself had been called by Vanity Fair “one of the greatest whoremongers in the world.” His biographer, Ronald Kessler, remarked in 1988 that “His [Khashoggi’s] whole modus operandi was to influence clients with his opulent lifestyle” and that “he would give them [potential clients] anything they wanted: girls, food, cash…He had quite a variety of occasions on the boat. Some were very formal, some were orgies.” According to the UK’s Independent, ‘One of the ‘girls’ used in this way, Pamella Bordes, later spoke of being “part of an enormous group…used as sexual bait,’” suggesting that Khashoggi commanded a veritable harem of women who were used to entice, or potentially coerce, would-be clients. However, these lists of “potential clients” also included notable politicians, diplomats, celebrities, and a cadre of businessmen. In the case of politicians and diplomats, it’s entirely possible that Khashoggi’s yacht was used as a means of collecting blackmail that Khashoggi used to benefit his network, or anyone willing to pay the right price. This was also alleged by the head of a highly-connected call-girl ring, Fortuna Isreal a.k.a. “Madame Tuna”. (17)
Notably, Khashoggi’s infamous yacht would be sold to Roy Cohn’s protege, Donald Trump, in 1988, with the involvement of the Sultan of Brunei. The Sultan of Brunei would become Epstein’s landlord in the office he shared with Evangeline Gouletas-Carey and, as we will see in Chapter 19, the Sultan of Brunei makes other curious appearances in the Epstein-Clinton relationship. (18)
Furthermore, given that Khashoggi was affiliated with Saudi, American, British, and Israeli intelligence by 1982, it is also possible that Epstein made his way into the fold of intelligence himself through Khashoggi. Epstein’s affiliation with some national intelligence agency was essentially confirmed in 2019, when it was reported that then-Secretary of Labor Alex Acosta, who had signed off on Epstein’s “sweetheart deal” during his first criminal case, had “been told” to back off Epstein, that Epstein was above his pay grade. “I was told Epstein ‘belonged to intelligence’ and to leave it alone,” Acosta repeatedly told the Trump transition team. (20)
Hoffenberg told the Washington Post in 2019 that Leese had told him about Epstein. “The guy’s a genius…He’s great at selling securities. And he has no moral compass.” Hoffenberg, at the time, has admitted to having been “a schemer,” stating that he “was always under investigation,” well before Towers Financial Corporation collapsed and became known as one of the largest Ponzi schemes in US history. (26)
Hoffenberg appeared in front of a Chicago grand jury, in November 1993, to which he confirmed while being questioned that “Jeffery Epstein was the person in charge of the [fraudulent] transactions.” Kohler’s line of questioning and overarching narrative at the hearing painted Epstein as the “technical wizard” of the Towers Financial fraud; yet, somehow, three months later, Epstein’s name mysteriously disappeared from the case. (28)
Hoffenberg was arrested in 1994 and pled guilty in April 1985. Hoffenberg had been offered a reduced sentence by prosecutors in exchange for information about co-conspirators, but either prosecutors were longer interested in pursuing Epstein or Hoffenberg chose not to talk about Epstein. Other Towers executives were charged for their role in the Towers Financial schemes, but Epstein was never charged. (29)
As detailed in Chapter 9, the CIA’s modification of the PROMIS software was alleged to have taken place at the Cabazon Indian Reservation in Indio, California. Cabazon, at this point, was under the dominion of a mobster (and possible CIA asset) named John Nichols, who had managed to take control of the reservation from the tribal government after becoming the manager of a bingo hall—and projected casino project—at the reservation. The multi-faceted plan—which came to full fruition, despite a surprising number of dead bodies turning up along the way—included a scheme for an arms research, development, and manufacturing plant. It seems that the weapons made at Cabazon were to be deployed into the different theatres of the Reagan administration’s various covert wars. For instance, as previously mentioned, it is a matter of record that representatives of the Contras attended a meeting at Cabazon to observe a weapons demonstration. (42)
The year 1987 was a pivotal year for Epstein, as it was the year he not only became involved with Hoffenberg and the Gouletas, but also with Donald Trump and Leslie Wexner. Both Trump and Wexner, at the time, were deeply involved in the worlds of New York real estate, as were the Gouletas. It was during this period that Epstein would begin branding himself a “property developer” and become focused on real estate deals, with numerous reports referring to Epstein as “a property developer” well into the 2000s. However, it seems that Epstein’s involvement with real estate may have been a new means of disguising his old financial tricks, as many of his real estate transactions during this period involved the same property multiple times, all for miniscule sums, including for as low as $1. (47)
Commercial real estate in the US has a long history of being used to launder money, and the practise is particularly common in specific American real estate markets like New York City and Palm Beach, Florida. These are notably two places where Epstein, as well as trump, have long been active in property markets. Trump and his inner circle, including the family of his son-n-law Jared Kushner, have long been accused of both permitting or engaging in money laundering in connection with their real estate interests, particularly in New York. Much of the money laundering accusations that would later dog Trump during his political career revolved around his alleged cooperation with Russian mobsters whereby those mobsters used Trump properties to launder their ill-gotten gains. However, while some in the mainstream press misleadingly painted this Russian mobster-connection as meaning Trump was “owned” by Vladimir Putin, it is important to note that the Russian mobsters in question connected back to Russian mob boss Semion Mogilevich. Mogilevich was a major business partner of Robert Maxwell [Ghislaine’s father, Guislane became Epstein’s girlfriend] and a key figure in the global criminal syndicate that Maxwell had helped to create at the end of the 1980s. (48)
After purchasing the Plaza Hotel, it would be reported and confirmed by then-attendees that Trump “used to host parties in suites at the Plaza when he owned it, where young women and girls were introduced to rich, older men” and “illegal drugs and young women were passed around and used.” (49)
The relationship with Trump would continue for some time, with Trump flying on Epstein’s place in 1997 and the two men being photographed together at a Victoria’s Secret party that same year. A year later, Epstein claimed to have introduced Trump to his current wife, Melania, at an event during New York fashion week. They would attend other parties together, including an event in 2000 hosted by media baron and convicted fraudster Conrad Black, who appears in Epstein’s book of contacts. Mar-a-Lago would figure prominently as a place of socialization for Epstein and Maxwell, as well as a place where they recruited minors into their sexual blackmail/sex trafficking operations, with the most well-known of these being Virginia Roberts (now Virginia Giuffre). (50)
Those apartments at 301 East 66th Street would play a role in Epstein’s sexual trafficking and blackmail activities. For instance, Ehud Barak, former Israeli Prime Minister and Israeli military intelligence chief, was a frequent visitor to this location. Specifically, several apartments in the building were “being used to house underage girls from South America, Europe, and the former Soviet Union,” according to a former bookkeeper employed by one of Epstein’s main procurers of underage girls, Jean Luc Brunel. (53)
Today, LS Power is a major supplier to Elon Musk’s Tesla, while Luminus Management was the largest shareholder in Valaris, which—in 2020—sold $650 million in oil rigs to Musk’s SpaceX. SpaceX plans to transform the rigs into rocket launching platforms. As reported by Business Insider, Jeffery Epstein had introduced a member of his entourage to Elon’s brother Kimbal Musk, who sits on the board of SpaceX and Tesla. The woman in question, who lived at an apartment at 301 East 66th Street and had previously “dated” Epstein, dated Musk from 2011 to 2012 and the relationship “brought Epstein into contact with the Musk family and its businesses.” In 2019, it was reported that Epstein had confirmed rumours to journalist James Stewart that he had been secretly advising Tesla. (55)
Michael Chertoff later became intimately involved in an Orwellian company funded by both Epstein and former Israel Prime Minister Ehud Barak named Carbyne911 whose founding leadership was replete with Israeli intelligence veterans and assets. (84)
Klaus Schwab’s now infamous “penetrate the cabinets” quote may offer insight as to Leslie Wexner’s own interest over the decades in “developing leaders” in American Jewish communities, in Israel and beyond. With nearly 40 years focused specifically on training men and women of influence in American Jewish society—as well as in Israel’s government and private sector—ideas and policies that benefit Wexner both personally and professionally have been instilled into generations of leaders and influencers, who then go on to influence many others. Over the past two decades, Wexner’s foray into becoming one of the main donors of the Harvard Kennedy school allows for much the same to occur, but this time for leaders who operate and influence those far outside the boundaries of the global Jewish community. (124)
The same year he and Epstein began donating to Harvard, in 1991, Leslie Wexner teamed up with Charles Bronfman to establish an exclusive group of 20 of “the nations wealthiest and most influential Jewish businessmen” that is referred to as either the “Study Group” or the “Mega Group.” (124)
The 1990s saw a proliferation of Israeli espionage activity that targeted the highest levels of government, including the White House. FOX news reported: Israeli telecommunications company Amdocs helped Bell Atlantic install new telephone lines in the White House in 1997…[and] a senior-level employee of Amdocs had a separate T1 data phone line installed from his base outside St. Louis that was connected directly to Israel…
While this wiretapping for the purpose of blackmail took place, it is important to keep in mind that Jeffery Epstein had been visiting the White House, where he allegedly courted the president and influential White House officials, Congressmen and Senators. Former Israeli intelligence official Ari Ben-Menashe has alleged that Epstein’s sexual blackmail operation was created at Israel’s behest specifically to blackmail Bill Clinton. Ben-Menashe specifically said the following: The Israelis feared that Mr. Clinton, when he was campaigning for President, will be a repeat of Mr. Carter. He wanted to press them for peace with the Palestinians and all that stuff. …And I think Mr. Epstein was sent early on to catch up with President Clinton. (130)
In 1996, Leslie Wexner joined the board of directors of Hollinger International, a media holding company created by Conrad Black, a now disgraced media mogul who also makes an appearance in Epstein’s contact book. Black was the son of prominent Canadian businessman George Montegu Black, Jr., who managed a division of Argus Corporation called Canadian Breweries. (131) By the late 1970s, Conrad and his brother controlled the company. Between 1978 and 1985, Conrad Black asset stripped the conglomerate and used the spoils to build a major Anglo-American media empire, rivaling that of Rupert Murdoch and Robert Maxwell. A year later, he began aggressively acquiring US media assets, and, by the time Wexner joined the board, Black, via a Hollinger subsidiary, controlled 393 newspapers in US alone. Not long after Wexner joined the board of Hollinger, Conrad Black began to exhaustively defraud the company. It was later discovered that, from 1997 to 2004, Black stole approximately $400 million from the company, “a sum equal to 95 percent of the net profits for the period 1997-2003.” (132)
In this same 1985 period, Ghislaine also became involved with “philanthropy” tied to her father’s business empire by hosting a “Disney day out for kids” and benefit dinner on behalf of the Mirror Group for the Save the Children NGO. Part of the event took place at the home of the Marquess and Lady of Bath, a gala that was attended by members of the British royal family. It’s worth noting that the Marquess of Bath at the time was an odd person, having accumulated the largest collection of paintings made by Adolph Hitler and having said that Hitler had done “great things for his country.” The very same evening that the Ghislaine-hosted bash concluded, the Marquess of Bath’s son was found hanging from a bedspread tied to an oak beam at the Bath Arms in what was labeled as a suicide. (146)
Toward the end of her relationship with Cicogna, Ghislaine founded the Kit Kat Club, which she depicted as a feminist endeavor. Why Ghislaine chose the name “Kit Kat Club” is something of a mystery. The original Kit Kat Club was set up by a well-known pie maker named Christopher Catling in London during the eighteenth century to promote the freedoms obtained during the 1688 Glorious Revolution. Until the late 1800s, Catling’s organization was the only entity to use the name. Then, in the 1900s, various wealthy private clubs, music venues, and public houses adopted the name for establishments all around the UK. The original name of the club created by Catling was also the inspiration behind the naming of the famous KitKat chocolate bar produced by Nestle. (147)
There has since been speculation that Ghislaine’s Kit Kat Club is where Donald Trump met his future wife Melania. Although the New York Times and other outlets reported that, at Fashion Week 1998, Donald Trump first met Melania at the Kit Kat Club in New York… (148)
Soon after her “painful” split from Gianfranco Cicogna, Ghislaine was seen skiing in Aspen, Colorado—”where the rich and famous mix” during the winter season—with American actor George Hamilton, who was also seen escorting Ghislaine to the Epsom races in 1991. Hamilton, twenty-two years Ghislaine’s senior, is apparently much more than just an actor, as he allegedly played a major role in aiding Ferdinand Marcos, the former dictator of the Philippines, and his wife Imelda move billions of public funds out of the country and convert them into private wealth for themselves and their accomplices abroad. Marcos originally rose to power with the help of the CIS and, as previously mentioned, Adnan Khashoggi—who worked with Epstein in the 1980s—was also close to the Marcos’s, specifically Imelda Marcos, and stood trial alongside her for his alleged role in aiding her in illegal financial schemes. (148)
The Rothschilds’ interest in gaining a foothold in Wall Street seems to have been motivated by more than money. The Times report notes that “although the family staked valuable claims in Africa, the Middle East, and South America, they grossly mismanaged the opportunities directly across the Atlantic” and in the United States. It quotes Evelyn de Rothschild as saying, “We’ve been in business for 200 years, but we never seized the initiative in America and that was one of the mistakes my family made.” The New York Times also states, perhaps controversially, that “No other family in the annals of finance can match the Rothschild record for influencing the course of history, or its Machiavellian instincts for economic opportunity. (150)
…the banking entity looking to help the Rothschild family “reassert its dominant role in international finance,” i.e. Rothschild Inc., was directing Robert Maxwell’s efforts to “establish a strategic presence in the United States” via a takeover of a major US-based publishing company. This intimate relationship between Rothschild banks and Robert Maxwell would again become evident as N.M. Rothschild was the group “called in to investigate his books and arrange the sale of his heirs’ 54 percent stake in Mirror Group Newspapers” after Maxwell’s 1991 death [murder]. (151)
After Maxwell purchased Macmillan with the help of Pirie and Rothschild Inc., he used the company to establish his foothold in the United States, specifically New York City. There, he would being a sprawling influence operation to cultivate the city’s elite, which would soon intimately involve his daughter Ghislaine. With Macmillan under his control, he began using funds from the company’s charitable trusts, “spending lavishly on events in New York, paying large sums of money, sometimes as much as $100,000, for a seat at charitable functions attended by people he wanted to impress. He has acquired Macmillan for $2.6 billion, a sum “considerably more than his own Maxwell Communications Corporation was worth.” The amount of money he had to repay for this and other acquisitions of this period would become a factor in his infamous decision to pilfer the pension funds of the Mirror Group. (151)
Some speculated at the time that some of the funds Maxwell raised during this period for these acquisitions had originated in the Soviet Union, where had had considerable connections, including to the KGB. There are also the possibilities that some of the funds included proceeds from Maxwell’s sale of bugged PROMIS software to governments around the world on Israel’s behalf or, as previously detailed in Chapter 9, included profits from his business interests that were interlaced with notorious Russian mobster Semion Mogilevich. (151)
Tennessee Senator Howard Baker, best known for being the vice-chairman of the Senate Watergate Committee and subsequently Reagan’s chief of staff after the Iran-Contra scandal, had become Robert Maxwell’s business partner in 1991 in a venture called Newstar. Newstar focused on expanding investment opportunities for Americans in the former Soviet Union and was described by Richard Jacobs, who cofounded the company with Baker, as “an international merchant banking, investment, and advisory company.” Jacobs also stated that Robert Maxwell was one of the major shareholders in the company. Newstar just one of several companies that Maxwell used to enrich himself through privatizing assets of the former Soviet Union. Baker and Maxwell also attempted to recruit other respected public figures into Newstar, including the former top banking regulator in the US, William Seidman. (153)
Soon after arriving in New York City, Robert Maxwell was determined to expand his footprint in there as well as to grow the influence of a Maxwell “dynasty.” His hopes to establish a dynasty were also described by the New York Post, which noted that Maxwell “saw himself as Britain’s Joseph P. Kennedy, the patriarch of a dynasty that would wield financial and political power on a global scale. Like Kennedy, he expected much of his children and pushed them hard.” (156)
One of the weddings Ghislaine attended was the June 1990 nuptials between Kerry Kennedy, daughter of Robert F. Kennedy, and Andrew Cuomo. Cuomo, the son of New York governor Mario Cuono who would later become governor of the state himself, was said to have treated the planning of the wedding “like a political campaign” and, not unlike Robert Maxwell, had allegedly sought to marry into the Kennedy political dynasty for personal gain. (157)
However, it is worth noting that Ghislaine Maxwell’s and Jeffery Epstein’s subsequent influence and blackmail operations, beginning in 1991, had largely targeted politicians and prominent figures within the Democratic Party. Given this context, it is also entirely possible that Robert Maxwell and his network, including organized crime networks and intelligence services, were looking for a launching pad to more broadly influence the Democratic Party before Maxwell’s death—and what better way to do that than marry into the most prominent (and respected) of Democratic political dynasties. (157)
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. also stated that the two occasions he was on Epstein’s plane had been arranged between Ghislaine Maxwell and Mary Richardson. In one instance, the flight was part of a pre-planned fossil hunting trip to South Dakota, which he believed had been Ghislaine’s idea as Epstein appeared to only have attended “grudgingly.” On that trip, Kennedy remembered that Epstein “did not mingle with us and hardly spoke and did not participate in the fossil hunt.” One one of the flights, the return trip to New York from South Dakota, Epstein “clearly” had a problem with Kennedy’s “rambunctious children” and “half way back to New York, Epstein ordered the pilot to put down at Midway Field in Chicago. He got off the plane and made his own way home. A blonde was waiting for him at planeside in Chicago”. (159)
Among other questions that emerge when considering Ghislaine’s efforts to court at least two Kennedy men—would she have continued to court a Kennedy, or perhaps a Democrat politician of influence, if her father had not died so abruptly in late 1991? Indeed, Robert Maxwell’s planned trajectory, not just for himself but for his “dynasty”, was in tatters after his death, particularly as his financial crimes were revealed, permanently staining his legacy. Indeed, numerous reports have alleged that it was the chaos after her father’s abrupt death that drove Ghislaine so publicly into the arms of Jeffery Epstein. (159)
Kroll was unable to give Robert Maxwell the information he had wanted [if there was a conspiracy to ruin him financially and destroy his empire] before Maxwell died under suspicious circumstances on his yacht in November 1991. Though media reports often say that his death was most likely a suicide, several biographers, investigators, and Ghislaine herself assert that he was murdered, having hit the end of the line in terms of usefulness to those who had empowered his legal and illegal activities over the years. Many of them have asserted that “rogue” Mossad agents had been responsible, including Ghislaine herself. Ghislaine reportedly blames “a dark conspiracy of Mossad renegades and Sicilian contract killers” for taking her father’s life. (160)
Throughout the 1990s, Maxwell described herself to the press as an “internet operator.” She and a few family members to found an internet services company called the McKinley Group. It’s not hard to see why Christine and Isabel [Ghislaine’s sisters] saw the internet as their chance to expand upon and rebuild upon Robert Maxwell’s “legacy.” Christine, right up until her father’s death, had been president and CEO of the Robert Maxwell-owned Israeli intelligence front company, Information on Demand, where Isabel had also worked. Upon his death, Christine had founded a related company called Research on Demand, which specialized in “internet and big data analytics” for telecommunications firms, and would later overlap with the McKinley Group’s work. (162)
Ghislaine and Jeffrey Epstein’s public relationship is believed to have officially begun in 1991 during a tribute dinner at the Plaza Hotel in Robert Maxwell’s honor, where Epstein sat at the same table with Ghislaine and Betty Maxwell. According to media reports, this was Ghislaine’s “first step in publicly announcing her deep affection for Epstein. The choice of the Plaza would prove to be ironic given that Epstein and Ghislaine were beginning an extensive sexual-blackmail operation that would go on for well over a decade. (165)
The earliest official interaction between Epstein and the Clinton White House took place in 1993. For Epstein, it would be the first of 17 visits he would make to the executive residence in just under two years. (171) One of the top executives of Robert Maxwell’s main bank with “substantial responsibility” for at least one of his major financial crimes, was the person to first connect Epstein with the Clinton White House. [Robert Rubin] Furthermore, Rubin would become Treasury Secretary at the tail end of 1994, the year when Epstein made 12 of his 17 visits. While Rubin served as Clinton’s second Treasury Secretary, his deputy was Lawrence “Larry” Summers, who would later take over for Rubin as Treasury Secretary in 1999 and who, along with Rubin, helped engineer the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act. This allowed an economic bubble to inflate, ultimately resulting in the 2008 crisis. Epstein is also alleged to have played some role in the 2008 financial crisis by apparently helping to instigate the collapse of Bear Stearns. (172)
Fostergate. Grabbe’s investigation found it unlikely that this woman had been responsible for Foster’s death, which would mean their meeting was likely related to the Fostergate allegations regarding Foster and espionage on behalf of Israel. Grabbe’s investigation instead pointed to a “Bush plumbers unit” that continued to operate after Clinton’s election as having been responsible for Foster’s death. Grabbe notes that Foster’s murder had been sloppy and had “taken place under emergency conditions—a spontaneous, last-minute solution when Vince Foster failed to react in expected fashion to a $286,000 attempted bribe” [suspicion the hush money came from Hillary Clinton, involving CIA, money laundering and the usual bullshit during a White House heritage renovation project.] “We dumped him [Foster] in a queer park to send Clinton and his queer wife a message,” said FBI agent Robert Goetzman. (185)
After Grabbe’s investigation into Fostergate and other issues, he was smeared by 60 Minutes’ Leslie Stahl as a source of “misinformation” online and an example of why Americans should not read reporting outside of mainstream media outlets, which are now owned by a small handful of companies and many of which are controlled by the intelligence-organized crime networks profiled in this book. Stahl’s segment sought to portray Grabbe, a Harvard-trained economist and former assistant professor of economics at Wharton Business School, as a loony “conspiracy theorist” without making an effort to factually challenge any of Grabbe’s reporting. Stahl argued the interest in Grabbe’s reporting was of the danger of allowing “just anyone” to post content onto the internet. 60 Minutes may have had a vendetta against Grabbe’s reporting on Fostergate as he had written, as part of that series, that 60 Minutes’ Mike Wallace (an attendee of parties on the Lady Ghislaine [Robert Maxwell’s yacht, named after his daughter] had been paid $150,000 by the Democratic National Committee to attack reporters who questioned the official narrative that Foster had committed suicide. (186)
Aside from the sudden death of Ron Brown and other Commerce officials, Mark Middleton—a central figure in the campaign finance scandals of the mid-1990s—would also, years later, suffer a grisly fate. He died on May 7, 2022 at a ranch in Arkansas owned by Heifer International, a non-profit whose funders included Walmart, Blackrock and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The local sheriff told media that, at the ranch, Middleton was found hanging from a tree branch by the neck with a shotgun blast to the chest. It was subsequently claimed by authorities that he had hung an extension cord around his neck before shooting himself in the chest with a shotgun. Despite the shotgun blast to hischest, police claimed there “was not a lot of blood or anything” at the scene. Speculation about Middleton’s death grewafter an Arkansas judge sealed all photos, videos, and visual content related to Middleton’s alleged suicide. (213)
Shortly after Middleton’s death was reported, it was widely noted that he had been the official at the Clinton White House to sign off on many of Jeffery Epstein’s visits. The full extent of Middleton’s role in facilitating these visits had been made public only a few months before Middleton’s death, in December 2021. Thus, not only was Middleton the point man for questionable individuals with links to Chinese military intelligence seeking to gain access to the White House compound, he was also the point man for the intelligence-linked Epstein to do the same. This should be a clear indication that the real “Chinagate” scandal was much larger in scope than just China and the same can also be said of Mark Middleton’s activities at the time. (213)
With both Middleton and Epstein dead, it is exceedingly difficult to determine the exact nature and extent of their relationship as well as the subject of their White House meetings. Yet, Middleton’s major role in the campaign finance scandal is a critical clue. As it turns out, Epstein and other unsavory figures tied to Robert Maxwell were also involved in suspect fundraising and influence efforts during the 1996 campaign season in what is perhaps the other, less explored side of the so-called Chinagate scandal. (215)
[Was Monica Lewinsky an operative?] Perelman’s controversial hiring of Hubbell and Lewinsky had been arranged by Clinton advisor Vernon Jordan…Jordan was known as Clinton’s “conduit to the high and mighty” and had taken Clinton to the 1991 Bilderberg conference. On the decision to hire Lewinsky following the scandal, a former business associate of Perelman’s told the Washington Post that “It’s like the Mafia, it’s all done in code,” adding that “I can assure you that Ronald made the decision to give Lewinsky the job. And I can assure you he wouldn’t want you to know why Jordan was asking.” (216)
As previously mentioned, the son of Esther Salas, the judge set to oversee a case against Deutsche Bank related to its role in enabling Epstein’s financial activities, was murdered right before that court case was to begin. (221)
Thus, in 1991, we have a situation where Chinese arms giants, also major figures in technology transfer, were at a crossroads. They needed new markets for their weapons and, with the collapse of BCCIHK [international bank fond of dirty money laundering and intel agency smuggling, etc] they needed a new yet similar web of financial institutions that would aid them in the laundering and sequestering of their profits. They found their new market, not in the Middle East, but in the United States. As the LA Times reported: “When [the Iran-Iraq] war subsided, the three companies [Norinco, Polygroup, and China Jingan, all Chinese companies] moved into the market created by the ballistic mayhem of American streets, selling primarily semiautomatic versions of the AK-47 and low-cost handguns modeled on more famous brands [like Colt and Smith & Wesson]. (247)
It turns out the ships used to smuggle the weapons seized via Operation Dragon Fire were owned by China Ocean Shipping Company (COSCO), the “merchant marine arm” of the People’s Liberation Army. A partner of COSCO at the time was Hutchinson-Whampoa, whose main shareholder was Li Ka-Shing. [Vancouverites will recall that Li Ka-Shing was the whale who bought the entire False Creek lands, which were then turned into Expo 86 and a rash of condo towers—the purchase spelled the beginning of the end of our beloved old Vancouver which soon thereafter was plagued by Chinese Triads and money laundering.] (251)
If Epstein’s meetings with Middleton were connected to Southern Air Transport’s activities [CIA smuggling cocaine into the US) during the same period, what would that mean? The Chinese network in which Middleton was enmeshed at the time was known to be engaged in smuggling weapons into the U.S. They simultaneously seem to have been paying off the DNC and the Clintons, a political dynasty notorious for pay-to-play politics. (254)
Those of us without national security clearances are left to look at a trail of crumbs, which seem to paint a certain picture and lead us to a particular conclusion. However, it seems that, unless greater pressure from the public [hahahahahaha] is applied to these concerns, the true nature of Epstein’s meetings with Middleton and the real motive behind Epstein’s courting of CIA-linked airlines on Wexner’s behalf will remain elusive. At the same time, as this book has labored to show, the US government is clearly in a position where it cannot investigate itself. Indeed, if any of these threads were to be pulled on, much of the excessive corruption, espionage, and criminal activity that has filled these pages thus far would quickly unravel. (258)
Vasquez also testified that the teenage models that Brunel flew in to “work” for MC2 (and whose visas had been paid for by Epstein) were housed in the 301 66th Street apartment owned by Ossa Properties—the company of Mark Epstein, Jeffery’s brother. Vasquez stated that the girls were then “loaded out to wealthy clients” for as much as $100,000 a night. If they refused to have sex with the “client”, then they weren’t paid. Brunel denied these claims, but they were notably corroborated by the most well-known of Epstein’s victims, Virginia Roberts Giuffre. In a 2014 court filing [before Virginia was murdered/suicided], Giuffre alleged that Brunel offered “girls ‘modeling’ jobs. Many of the girls came from impoverished backgrounds, and he lured them in with a promise of making good money.” She also alleged that she was forced to have sex with Brunel of several occasions. She also stated that Epstein imported underage girls from France with Brune’s assistance, including 12-year-old triplets he had flown in from France so he could abuse them as a “birthday present” to himself. (266)
Epstein is believed to have had many of his underage victims photographed in the nude, pictures which were displayed all over his Palm Beach mansion when it was first raided by police in 2005. He was never charged, nor have any of his accomplices ever been charged, with child pornography. Police also found that clocks in parts of the house had contained hidden cameras which filmed many of the girls while inside the house and potentially some of their sex acts with Epstein and his wealthy “friends”. Those images were stored on a computer hard drive also found in the residence. Vanity Fair reported that Ghislaine had openly stated that, in addition to Epstein’s residences in Palm Beach and New York, Epstein’s “island had been completely wired for video”… as an insurance policy, as blackmail. Brunel, like Epstein himself, died under what some regard as suspicious circumstances while in prison. Brunel was detained in December 2020 in connection with a French investigation into Epstein’s sex crimes in that country and was found hung in his cell in February 2022. The death was quickly ruled a suicide. (268)
Other girls were offered a mix of money and promises that Epstein could help them receive an education at places like Harvard. In court testimony from 2021, a victim referred to as Jane Doe #11 stated that: “He promised me that he would write me a letter of recommendation for Harvard if I got the grades and scores needed for admission. He word was worth a lot, he assured me, as he was in the midst of funding and leading Harvard’s studies on the human brain, and the president was his friend. [Another woman, formerly a model, who was seduced by Epstein became a neuro-surgeon and is now ensconced in the World Health Organization and WEF] Epstein, once in a locked room with Jane Doe #11 after luring her in with such promises, threatened to kill her and then raped her. (273)
Other victims of Epstein’s have stated that, in addition to luring girls in with promises to help them, Epstein also perversely claimed to some of his victims that being sexually abused by him was also a form of “help.” One victim, identified as Jane Doe #9, stated that “When I was 15 years old, I flew on Jeffery Epstein’s plane to Zorro Ranch, where I was sexually molested by him for many hours. What I remember most vividly was him explaining to me how beneficial the experience was for me and how much he was helping me to grow.” (275)
Carbyne911, formerly Reporty, is an Israeli tech-start-up founded in 2014 that promises to revolutionize how calls are handled by emergency service providers, as well as by governments, corporations, and educational institutions. Prior to Epstein’s arrest in mid-2019, Carbyne had received high praise from US and Israeli media. Other reports claimed that Carbyne’s services result in “a 65% reduction in time-to-dispatch” for emergency services. (359)
Privacy concerns with Carbyne go beyond the company’s ties to Israeli intelligence and US intelligence contractors like Peter Thiel’s Palantir. For instance, Carbyne’s smartphone app extracts the following information from the phones on which it is installed: Device location, video live-streamed from the smartphone to the call center, text messages in a two-way chat window, any data from the user’s phone if they have the Carbyne app and ESInet, and any information that comes over the data link, which Carbyne opens in case the caller’s voice link drops out. According to Carbyne’s website, this same information can also be obtained from any smartphone, even if it does not have Carbyne’s app installed, if that phone calls a 911 call center that uses Carbyne or merely any other number connected to Carbyne’s network. Carbyne is a Next-Generation 9-11 (NG911) platform and the explicit goal of NG911 is for all 911 systems nationwide to become interconnected. Thus, even if Carbyne is not used by all 911 call centers using an NG911 platform, Carbyne will ostensibly have access to the data used by all emergency service providers and devices connected to those networks. (361)
Epstein was also working to build up a company focused around “DNA data-mining.” Created in 2012, Southern Trust was a “start-up” created by Epstein with the apparent goal of sequencing people’s genomes and selling that data to the pharmaceutical industry. In 2012, Epstein seemed to know something that those guiding other, more prominent “data mining” firms like Chiliad and Palantir also knew—that, soon, data would become the world’s most valuable commodity. This would become a common public talking point in the years that followed. For instance, in 2017, The Economist declared that the world’s most valuable resource was no longer oil, but data. Referring to data as “the oil of the digital era”, it notes that this new “data economy” runs on masses of data generated by billions of devices as well as algorithms, particularly Artificial Intelligence algorithms. It also notes that the “data economy” is intimately linked to Big Tech’s “surveillance systems”, which gives these powerful companies a “God’s eye view” of both markets and citizens behaviour. (372)
Epstein’s decision to court and gather “dirt” on Big Tech scions, while also rebranding as a tech investor and entrepreneur, was carefully calculated. Indeed, he and the Maxwells were intimately aware of h ow the digital revolution was drastically reshaping the face of blackmail and influencing operations. Arguably beginning with the PROMIS software scandal, which intimately involved the Maxwells, the utility of bugged software to intelligence agencies quickly became obvious. With a few lines of surreptitious code, intelligence agencies could gain access to troves of sensitive data in real-time, which previously would have required scores of highly embedded and sophisticated spies. Yet, those spies could be caught if just one in their network slipped up. However, with a few lines hidden among thousands and thousands of line of code, a software program’s “treachery” is much more difficult to detect. While Epstein and the Maxwells, throughout the 1990s and beyond, blackmailed powerful people using trafficked women and girls, the digital revolution offered them, and their benefactors, a new opportunity to fulfill the same operational goals, but with much less risk. (372)
In a world where blackmail is overwhelmingly electronic, people like Epstein and Ghislaine become liabilities to be silenced, rather than assets to protect. Another critical consequence of the advent of electronic blackmail is that the very same systems that enable that blackmail to occur are intimately enmeshed with the infrastructure of mass surveillance. This is the core idea behind the panopticon model. (373)
While the US has long been “one nation under blackmail”, the perpetuation of this system and means of control is rapidly reaching its logical conclusion. The more we live our lives on our phones and our computers, the more we can be exploited if and when certain groups and networks with access to our data decide that they want something from us. Yet, now that these corrupt power structures have grown so accustomed to our digital dependence, we now have the chance to disrupt the empire that they have built on a foundation of blackmail, bribes and bullet. By taking ownership of our data, and depriving intelligence-linked Big Tech their monopoly of control over it, we can start to rupture a system that would enslave us if allowed to advance. (374)
When one realizes where power really lies and how it really functions, it becomes clear that the only way to deter a corrupt system of this magnitude, which has now merged public and private power into the hands of the few, is not to comply. The government is no longer capable of investigating itself and our institutions have long been too compromised to guarantee American well-being or the American way of life. Instead, quite the opposite had taken place. The US, after being used by these networks to loot countries around the world, has itself been looted and hung out to dry…as this book has endeavored to show, non-compliance is a must when facing a system that, among other crimes, is willing to enable and engage in the unconscionable exploitation and abuse of children to further its stranglehold over the country, and ultimately over us. (375)
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