If someone updated Israel Shahak’s seminal 1982 book Israel’s Global Role: Weapons for Repression, they would no doubt have to add an extra chapter for Jeffrey Epstein’s activities. Or perhaps an entire extra volume would be needed.
With that as a caveat, I’ll survey some aspects of the nefarious dealings of Epstein and his cohort. This will include the Iran-Contra episode; a little about marketing Israeli surveillance technology to variety of countries, particularly in West Africa; and his money laundering and illicit money transfers, which go beyond the disgusting human trafficking that is commented on by the corporate press.
The complexity of the situation surrounding Epstein is daunting. There are so many dimensions to this terrible case of impunity of the wealthy malignant elite. The big for-profit press welcomes the money-making opportunities such a scandal affords them. However there are some courageous and talented journalists working on revealing the other sordid details. And it is not entirely due to the rest of the media’s self-censorship, as the suppression of many hundreds of thousands of documents and redactions of others have impeded getting to the truth.
Epstein’s connections to the intelligence communities of a variety of countries is one of the dimensions that seems to be too hot to handle. The most recent hearing the oversight committee had in Florida was repeatedly going to look into the causes of the “sweetheart” deal that allowed Epstein to be charged with abusing a 17-year-old, as opposed to his younger victims, which in turn apparently allowed him to be on a very generously administered work release program.
Alex Acosta, when he was before the Senate to be installed as Trump’s first labor secretary, reportedly said that part of the reason was that Epstein was untouchable because he was with intelligence. Of course he now denies saying that, and any substantiation of this is not available through the record of the hearing. (Apparently that too has been redacted.)
Drop Site News has done a lot with emails between Epstein and Ehud Barak, former Israeli prime minister and spy chief. These documents have not been released by the Justice Department, though they should be. This would verify these hacked documents, and not give corporate media the excuse to not refer to them. Drop Site got them through anonymous sources. There was a claim of responsibility by a hacking group called Handala, a pro-Palestinian organization that may or may not be Iranian.
The emails from the Epstein side of the conversation have not been released, obscuring the insights extremely important to understanding Epstein’s role as a major player in international relations.
Perhaps the most explosive is Epstein’s role in Iran-Contra—or, as Drop Site’s Ryan Grimm calls it, the Iran-Israel-Contra connection— in the latter days of the Reagan administration. Through his connections with arms dealers and Israeli defense agencies, he was able to broker the deal that allowed Israeli weapons to be sold to Iran, with the money from the sales being sent illegally to the Contras fighting Nicaragua’s Sandinista government, violating the congressional ban on such support. It’s alleged that the illegal mechanism was also used to fund the apartheid South Africa–supported UNITA forces in Angola at the same time, violating a similar prohibition from Congress. Local journalists in Ohio, notably Bob Fitrakis of the Columbus Free Press, were able to document other flights to Central America and alleged trafficking by CIA Southern Air Transport drug-running planes. This fleet eventually ended up at Epstein sponsor Wes Flexner’s Ohio airport, where incidentally they transported lingerie from China.
Epstein worked with Stanley Pottinger, Adnan Khashoggi, and other shady, spooky types to facilitate this transfer of weapons money to the contras. Pottinger is documented to have lived at Epstein’s New York apartment while working on the project. Pottinger, ironically, much later worked on a case with another attorney for the benefit of Epstein’s victims. His colleague knew nothing of Pottinger’s prior dealings with Epstein. Another twist is that Khashoggi was the uncle of the dismembered Jamal Khashoggi, opponent of MBS (“Mr. Bone Saw”), Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, in Saudi Arabia.
Another aspect of the sordid Epstein phenomenon was his documentation of his perverse exploits and those of his fellow perpetrators. Many feel that his affluence was related to his manipulation through blackmail of wealthy clientele with the videos he recorded. Drop Site has, again through the Barak emails, established that it was Israeli intelligence, possibly through its UN offices, that installed a surveillance alarm system much more elaborate than needed just for the prime minister’s security.
Other connections to Israel’s security companies are illustrated by the many “investment” deals that Barak was transacting around the world with Epstein’s aid. Sales of surveillance software to West African countries were profitable and strategic, no doubt including back doors for allowing spy agencies access.
It’s not clear if Barak and Epstein benefited materially when they negotiated a security arrangement between Mongolia and Israel, but it wouldn’t be surprising if there were some trade deals involved in the normalization of state-to-state relations. No doubt Epstein, if still alive, would’ve been involved in the December, 2025 recognition of Somaliland by Israel, as he had ties to Africa. This breakaway “nation,” part of Somalia, is across the Red Sea from Yemen and an entirely strategic creation. It only has diplomatic relations with Israel.
Epstein’s fortune may be explained by the largesse of his patron Les Wexner and blackmail, but it’s worth looking at some of the records of his dealings that are available. James Henry of United Against Money Laundering, an academic at Yale, points out that when Epstein was at Bear Stearns he sent over $1 billion in just under 5000 questionable money transfers. These were not flagged to the Treasury Department as per regulations. Senator Ron Wyden has been investigating Epstein’s finances for over four years, and he’s not getting any cooperation from Trump’s Treasury Department. This is comparable to the lack of transparency and failure to follow the congressional bill that called for the release of all Epstein files. After leaving Bear Stearns, probably partially because of those irregularities, he started International Assets Group, which likely continued his illicit dealings, whether paying for human trafficking or money laundering.
He may have been dealing with Russian oligarchs even in those days, but it seems likely that he participated in the corrupt mid-1990s Russian loans-for-shares scandal that involved Harvard University, where his bestie Lawrence Summer resided. Obviously this needs further investigation; it facilitated the larceny that surrounded the privatization of the former Soviet Union’s enterprises
Speaking of treasury departments, Drop Site also reported that the Barack Obama Treasury Department consulted with Epstein over the use of cryptocurrency in subverting economic sanctions, after a cyber unit in Iran decided it was going to investigate the use of alternate payment schemes. This was in 2014, well after Epstein’s disgrace and partial coverup in Florida. It is a bit ironic in that he, though having differences with Benjamin Netanyahu and close ties to Netanyahu’s political opponent Barak, did support a combined military effort by the US and Israel against Iran. He didn’t live to see it.
Jeet Heer in The Nation magazine summarized this broader view of Epstein’s role. Heer quoted him at length. “A 2016 exchange between Epstein and [Peter] Thiel [of military contractor Palantir] is revelatory:
Epstein: brexit, just the beginning.
Thiel: Of what?
Epstein: return to tribalism, counter to globalization. Amazing new alliances. . . . finding things on their way to collapse, was much easier than finding the next bargain.”
In a 2014 email to a banking executive, Epstein reflected, “ukraine upheaval should provide many opportunities, many.” That same year, Epstein wrote to his business partner Barak, “with civil unrest exploding in ukraine syria, somolia [sic], libya, and the desperation of those in power, isn’t this perfect for you.”
Here is Heer reflecting on the sociopathy of vulture capitalism: “As I’ve argued in a previous column, Epstein was a modern-day warlord, and a practitioner of ‘the shock doctrine’ (a term usefully popularized by Naomi Klein). He thrived on fomenting upheaval—something that made him akin to the richest people in the world, who derive great profit from human misery.”
This is the Epstein class.
