Epstein Case: Documentaries Won't Touch Tales of Intel Ties
June 17, 2020
Two new documentaries on the Jeffery Epstein affair delve into lurid details
& give voice to his victims, but both scratch the surface of the political &
intelligence dimensions of the scandal, writes Elizabeth Vos.
By Elizabeth Vos
Special to Consortium News
Investigation Discovery premiered a three-hour special, "Who Killed Jeffrey
Epstein?" on May 31, the first segment in a three-part series, that focused
on Epstein's August 2019 death in federal custody. The series addresses
Epstein's alleged co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell, his links with
billionaire Leslie Wexner, founder of the Victoria Secrets clothing line,
and others, as well as the non-prosecution deal he was given.
The special followed on the heels of Netflix's release of "Jeffrey Epstein:
Filthy Rich," a mini-series that draws on a book of the same name by James
Patterson.
Promotional material for "Who Killed Jeffery Epstein?" promises that: ".
exclusive interviews and in-depth investigations reveal new clues about his
seedy underworld, privileged life and controversial death. The three-hour
special looks to answer the questions surrounding the death of this
enigmatic figure." Netflix billed its series this way: "Stories from
survivors fuel this docuseries examining how convicted sex offender Jeffrey
Epstein used his wealth and power to carry out his abuses."
Neither documentary however deals at all with Epstein's suspected ties to
the world of intelligence.
Absent from both are Maxwell's reported links to Israeli intelligence
through her father, Robert Maxwell, former owner of The New York Daily News
and The Mirror newspaper in London. Maxwell essentially received a state
funeral in Israel and was buried on the Mount of Olives after he
mysteriously fell off his yacht in 1991 in the Atlantic Ocean.
Ari Ben-Menashe. (From his memoir, "Profits of War")
In an interview with Consortium News, former Israeli intelligence officer
Ari Ben-Menashe said Epstein did not work with Mossad. "Military
intelligence was who he was working with," said Ben-Menashe. "Big
difference," he said. "He never worked with Mossad, and Robert Maxwell never
did, either. It was military intelligence."
Ben-Menashe claimed Robert Maxwell was Epstein's "tie over. Robert Maxwell
was the conduit. The financial conduit."
In "Epstein: Dead Men Tell No Tales," a book published in December,
Ben-Menashe is quoted as saying he was the handler of Robert Maxwell who
introduced his daughter and Epstein to Israeli intelligence, after which
they engaged in a blackmail operation for Israel. "[Epstein] was taking
photos of politicians f**king fourteen-year-old girls - if you want to get
it straight. They [Epstein and Maxwell] would just blackmail people, they
would just blackmail people like that," he says in the book.
Ben-Menashe also claims that Robert Maxwell had attempted to blackmail
Mossad. "He really lost his compass once he started playing these games with
people," he told Consortium News.
Prince Andrew
Prince Andrew in a carriage procession, June 2012. (Carfax2, CC BY-SA 3.0,
Wikimedia Commons)
About a week after both documentaries premiered, the U.S. Department of
Justice approached the U.K.'s Home Office requesting that Prince Andrew
answer questions in the U.K. over his links to Epstein, The Mirror reported.
If he refuses, the paper said, U.S. prosecutors would ask that he be brought
to a British court to respond to their questions. Andrew's lawyers say he
three times agreed to be questioned by U.S. authorities, but it is not known
if Andrew attached conditions, such as immunity.
Both documentaries mention Prince Andrew in the context of allegations about
him from one of Epstein's victims, Virginia Roberts Giuffre. But neither
film goes into much detail about Andrew's role in the Epstein operation,
which Ben-Menashe said, was to lure powerful men into Epstein's orbit.
"One of the things that are really key to this is that he [Epstein]
befriended a very useful idiot called Prince Andrew," Ben-Menashe told CN.
"Now what really happened was that this Prince Andrew, with nothing to do,
was having fun with this, and Prince Andrew brings in the fancy people,
invites them to play golf with him, and then takes them out for fun. Then
Epstein shows up, and these people are basically blackmailed."
"The only person that can talk, that probably knows quite a bit, is the
great prince," Ben-Menashe said. "He was with him [Epstein] all the time. I
really don't know what his future is going to be like, either."
Since a number of influential figures were named in a lawsuit filed by
Giuffre against Ghislaine Maxwell the day before Epstein was found dead in
his federal prison cell in New York, Ben-Menashe said: "I'm starting to
think that lawsuit was his death sentence, because people didn't want to be
named. That's my guess, it's just a guess. Obviously, somebody decided that
he had to go."
Epstein's death was ruled a "suicide" by New York's chief medical examiner.
A pathologist hired by Epstein's brother said it was homicide.
An Angry Call
Just before Ben-Menashe spoke to Consortium News on Monday, he said he had
received an angry telephone call from Israel's Channel 13 television
station.
"They called me, and they went wild: 'What, you believe Israel would use
little girls? You are saying that? You are insulting the nation, you are
making us anathema around the world.' I said, 'The truth is the truth.' And
Jeffrey Epstein's story is something that nobody wanted to hear. He was
working with the Israelis, he was working with Maxwell," Ben-Menashe said.
He added: "It's a very bad story, and I can see why the Israelis are so
concerned about it. I believe [Channel 13] were expressing anger, and I
believe this was a message. I don't like messages like that. it has to do
with the timing and these stories coming out about Epstein. They [Israel]
are starting to become anathema to the world, this adds to it - the Epstein
story."
Victims' Voices
The Netflix and Investigation Discovery productions allow survivors to
recount their experiences in interviews as well as taped police recordings
and focus on the sweetheart plea deal provided to Epstein by former Trump
Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta during Acosta's tenure as U.S. attorney for
the Southern District of Florida.
Each series outlines Epstein's relationships with Wexner, Maxwell, and a
variety of elite figures. Investigation Discovery focuses on the
controversy surrounding Epstein's death while Netflix's "Filthy Rich"
examines the second attempt to prosecute Epstein in the context of the Me
Too movement.
The Netflix series describes the initial investigation of Epstein as it
shifted from the state to the federal level, and airs allegations that
Florida journalists covering the story were threatened. Netflix also
interviews psychologist Dr. Kathryn Stamoulis, a specialist in adolescent
sexuality, who gives a description of Epstein's targeting and grooming of
young girls. Epstein survivor Giuffre later describes in the film being
groomed to tolerate exploitation and sex trafficking as part of a "deranged
family."
The final section of the fourth episode in Netflix's miniseries includes a
survivor stating that this was not simply an Epstein operation, but an
"international sex trafficking ring that reached all over the world."
Epstein is described as a "very small piece in a huge network." But the
documentary goes no further than that.
As in the Belgian Dutroux case, victims alleged that multiple abusers acted
in concert with each other, using blackmail to keep each other in line. In
both instances, authorities and the media portrayed the abuse as chiefly the
product of an aberrant lone predator.
"This wouldn't be the only time this happened, but this guy got way over his
head," Ben-Menashe told Consortium News. "He probably was blackmailing too
many people, too many powerful people. And then, this is a story the
Israelis wouldn't want to come out, anyway."
Thriving in Murky Waters
Another angle the documentaries did not approach was the environment in
which Epstein thrived like an algae bloom in stagnant water, that is, within
a long history of child trafficking rings linked with intelligence agencies,
often with the aim of gathering blackmail material. It was within this
reality that Epstein appeared to be rendered untouchable.
Omitting the intelligence aspect of Epstein's history allows the
Establishment media to portray his case as a mysterious and unsolvable
aberration, rather than perhaps a continuation of business-as-usual amongst
those in power.
The glaring refusal to address Epstein's intelligence involvement becomes
clear when Investigation Discovery and Netflix's programs discuss the role
of Acosta in securing Epstein's "sweetheart" plea deal, but do not reference
Acosta's widely reported explanation as to why Acosta agreed to the deal.
As reported by The Daily Beast, Acosta claimed that he cut the
non-prosecution deal because he had been told that "Epstein 'belonged to
intelligence' and to leave it alone."
Independent journalist Whitney Webb has reported on Epstein's many ties with
intelligence, telling CNLive! in August last year that there is evidence
this included with the CIA.
Webb spoke about Iran-Contra links to Epstein via his and billionaire
Wexner's efforts to relocate Southern Air Transport (formerly the CIA's Air
America) from Florida to Ohio: "What's significant here is that out of all
the airlines in the United States, Wexner and Epstein choose the airline,
the only airline that is outed, publicly known at the time, to be a CIA
cut-out. Out of all the airlines that exist, that's the one they go for,"
she said.
Webb also cited reporting by Nigel Rosser, a British journalist, who wrote
in the Evening Standard in 2001 that Epstein claimed he worked for the CIA
in the 1990s.
Lip Service
Investigation Discovery and Netflix give lip service to Wexner's ties with
Epstein, omitting that Wexner gave Epstein the largest private residence in
New York City - essentially for free. Investigation Discovery does not
mention that the residence was extensively wired with surveillance
equipment, per Webb and The New York Times.
"James Patterson, before writing his book on Epstein, 'Filthy Rich,' on
which this documentary [by Netflix] is based, wrote a novel ['The President
is Missing'] with Bill Clinton , who is of course quite close to the Epstein
scandal, so that definitely, in my opinion, raises some eyebrows," Webb told
Consortium News.
"I think that one of the goals of this [Netflix] documentary is to basically
imply that Epstein was the head of the operation and that now that he is
dead, all of that activity has ceased," Webb said. "If they had actually
bothered to explore the intelligence angle, in some of the more obvious
facts about the case, like Leslie Wexner's role, for example, it becomes
clear that Epstein was really just more of a manager of this type of
operation, [and] that these activities continue."
Webb said a main reason for avoiding discussion of the intelligence angle is
that mention of state sponsorship would lead to calls for accountability and
open inquiry into a history of sexual blackmail by intelligence agencies.
"So if they had given even superficial treatment of those ties, it would
have exposed threads that if anyone had bothered to pull on a little bit,
would start to unravel a lot of things that obviously these powerful people
and institutions don't want exposed," Webb said.
More than nine months since Epstein's death, no alleged Epstein
co-conspirator has been arrested or charged with a crime despite reports of
an active criminal investigation of Maxwell (who has disappeared), and
multiple failed attempts of alleged Epstein victims to serve her with civil
suits.
"The criminal case against him, and all the evidence that was gathered
against him as part of that, will never be made public unless someone else
is charged," said Webb. "So, the fact that they're not charging anyone else
is quite telling, and the fact that the mainstream media isn't pushing back
against that, I think is telling as well."
The omissions of major aspects of the Epstein case by the media,
specifically its links with the intelligence community, seems to be yet
another example of a buffer between justice and those responsible for
rendering Epstein untouchable.
