By Phil Giraldi
Amidst the turmoil caused by the dispute over who was actually elected president on Nov. 3, a few stories that should definitely be of interest have flown beneath the radar insofar as the mainstream media is concerned. One is the still breaking tale of how Dominion Voting Systems just might have been manipulated to produce fraudulent polling results. Another is how the Trump administration’s Special Representative for Syria Engagement and Special Envoy to the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS James Jeffrey colluded with senior military officers to lie to the president about how many U.S. soldiers were actually in Syria and Iraq, making it appear that there were fewer than actually were present. But one story that has most interested me of late relates to the deceased pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
The Epstein story continues to enthrall because so little of the truth regarding it has been revealed in spite of claims by the government that a thorough follow-up investigation has been initiated. The case is reportedly still open, and it is to be presumed that Justice Department (DOJ) investigators have been able to examine certain aspects of what occurred more intensively. A major part of the investigation has been a review of actions taken by the four government prosecutors who were most directly involved with the negotiations with Epstein and his lawyers in 2007-08. The 22-month-long review, carried out by the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR), finally produced a 350-page report, which was released on Nov. 12.
The DOJ has now picked out a scapegoat for what many now think was gross prosecutorial negligence, possibly including corruption of senior government officials. He is not surprisingly Alexander Acosta, who was the U.S. attorney for Miami when the Epstein case came up. Relying substantially on internal government emails as well as communications between the prosecutors and Epstein’s team of high-profile lawyers to reach its conclusion, the OPR review concluded that Acosta exhibited “poor judgment” in his handling of the Epstein deal. He did not inform the victims or their attorneys of developments in the case, as required by law, and overruled the lead prosecutor and FBI agents who argued that Epstein should face serious jail time. He even cut a deal with Epstein before the investigation into his crimes was completed. The OPR investigators also determined that many emails that would have materially aided the plaintiffs were not made available to their attorneys, a shortcoming that the report attributed to a “technological error.”
The email gap covers the time span from May 2007, when the prosecutor’s office prepared a 53-page draft indictment of Epstein, to April 2008, shortly before Epstein’s guilty plea and slap-on-the-wrist sentence in state court ended the federal investigation. Epstein’s defense attorneys had during that time period been engaged in an aggressive lobbying campaign to persuade the federal prosecutors to rescind the indictment and shut down the federal case. Epstein’s “sweetheart deal” with the federal government negated a possible conviction of serious crimes against 19 alleged victims, most of whom were minors. Instead of a possible sentence of between 14 and 17 years in federal prison, Epstein was encouraged by federal prosecutors to plead guilty to two prostitution-related crimes in state court to resolve the case. He served 13 months of an 18-month sentence in a county jail on a liberal work release program, often sleeping in his own home, and the federal case was duly closed.
It is, of course, noticeable that neither Acosta, who has possibly now retired from public life, nor anyone else will be punished for what was clearly a gross miscarriage of justice. That is the way the government works these days. But there is also a much bigger problem with the report, which is that it essentially failed to follow up on an argument that Acosta made when the bungling of the Epstein case began to surface in the media last year. There has, in fact, been a cover-up of a major element in the Epstein saga, namely his possible connection with Israel’s intelligence agency, the Mossad.
The evidence that Epstein was involved in intelligence work to include bribing or blackmailing prominent individuals to act on behalf of Israel, derives both from the statement made by Acosta in 2017 that, “I was told Epstein ‘belonged to intelligence’ and to leave it alone” and from other external evidence. Epstein was making videos of his guests having sex with his young girls, which is a version of a classic intelligence entrapment technique employed by every major spy agency world-wide.
Epstein’s sources of income have also been questioned. Epstein’s sole identified business connection was Ohio billionaire Les Wexner, who maintained very close ties to the upper echelons of the Israeli diplomatic and intelligence establishment. Epstein served as Wexner’s trustee when the latter was forming the Mega Group, created by Wexner and Edgar Bronfman to generate positive views of Israel as a cover for Israeli propaganda dissemination in America.
Epstein’s lack of an identifiable income stream rather suggests that he might have been supported by a government agency of some kind. He had hidden in his Manhattan house a great deal of cash, diamonds, and an Austrian passport. The diamonds might have represented payment in kind from Israel, which is the capital of the world diamond trade, and the existence of the passport is intriguing. It has been described in the media as “fake” but that can mean anything. The passport, dating from the 1980s, was apparently authentic, with a photo of Epstein and a fake name inserted in it, but it might plausibly be the product of a government document forgery lab. Why Austria? Because Austria was at the time politically neutral and the passport would be a good one for traveling anywhere. It would be much preferred by spy agencies or by agents who wanted to travel anonymously.
That Epstein would be linked to Israel rather than to some other intelligence service is due to his relationship with his lover and accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, whose father Robert, a Czech Jew who became a naturalized British citizen, was believed by the CIA and other intelligence services to be a longtime agent of Mossad. After he died under mysterious circumstances, he was given a state funeral in Israel that was attended by every current and former head of the Jewish state’s intelligence service as well as by Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, who eulogized: “He has done more for Israel than can today be said.” Ghislaine reportedly became the principal procurer of Epstein’s young girl victims.
Of interest to many following the story with the apparent exception of the FBI and Justice Department, a former Israeli intelligence officer also has written a book describing how Epstein and Maxwell were blackmailing prominent politicians on behalf of Mossad. According to Ari Ben-Menashe, the two had been working directly for the Israeli government since the 1980s, and their operation, which was funded by the Mossad and also by prominent American Jews, was a classic “honeytrap” which used underage girls as bait to attract well-known politicians from around the world, a list that included Prince Andrew and Bill Clinton. The politicians would be photographed and video recorded when they were in bed with the girls.
Ben-Menashe’s book Epstein: Dead Men Tell No Tales describes how Epstein was introduced to Ghislaine originally by her father, Robert. Ben-Menashe claims that he was Robert Maxwell’s agent handler, meaning that he was the Israeli government intelligence officer who actually met with the high-level spy. Through Maxwell, Epstein also met prominent Israelis, including Ehud Barak, prime minister from 1999-2001, who had a business relationship with the American financier and occasionally visited the Epstein mansion in New York City.
So, it would appear that one more opportunity to discover what Jeffrey Epstein was really up to has been missed, or perhaps one should say deliberately covered up. Did no one at the Justice Department think to ask Acosta what he meant by his reference to having been told
about Epstein having “belonged to intelligence”? And who “from above” told him to “leave it alone”? One might also wonder why there has been no questioning of possible victims of the blackmail, to include Bill Clinton, but there is no suggestion from anyone in the DOJ that that has actually taken place. One has to suspect that a tale of the Mossad running a major spy ring in the U.S. using a pedophile and young girls might just be too much for some folks in power to tolerate and they have made sure that the true story will never see the light of day.
Philip Giraldi is a former CIA counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer and a columnist and television commentator. He is also the executive director of the Council for the National Interest. His other articles appear on the website of “The Unz Review.”
