I've just finished listening to a discussion on a podcast, Unauthorized
Disclosure, among 3 young people about how poorly the Left responds to
Conservatives when, in fact, there are times that they agree upon issues. Their
point is that on social media, where these discussions are going on constantly,
when people on the right agree about an issue like gun control, instead of
seeking ways to work together for change, the response of people on the left is
to then ask, "So if you think that way, why did you vote for Trump?" There was
also discussion about how people have to be so careful about the words they
use, the jokes they make, or even like in the case of Bernie Sanders, appearing
on Fox News. One would think he would be applaueded for talking with its
viewers. Instead, he's criticized. The guest on the podcast to which I was
listening, is a comedian, and he's been on right wing talk radio lately and had
right wing guests. That doesn't mean that he's changed his views. It means that
he wants to engage with people who think differently to see if he can't
influence their listeners. He's observed that they are a lot more tolerant of
left wing people than people on the left are of them.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Sunday, August 25, 2019 1:29 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Long Before Epstein: Sex Traffickers & Spy
Agencies
Understood, Miriam.
I do hope that you are not directing the "wise comments" toward me.
What I post are my opinions at the moment of reading a post. Mostly what I am
unloading is frustration at not being able to turn the tide.
Also, I feel real pain as I hear and read the thoughtless, self serving,
hateful Trumpian comments by people whose lives are becoming worsened by this
administration. And, along with their own downward spiral is the fact that
such mindlessness affects my life, and the lives of the people I care most
about. And finally, what causes me the most pain is the knowing that there is
nothing I can do to change the direction, other than continuing to do what I
do. And I know the results of that course of action.
Carl Jarvis
On 8/25/19, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I read the 3 part article in Mint Press, referred to in this article.
What was most disturbing about it, was the evidence of how well known
government officials, people in finance, people in show business, and
crime bosses, along with folks in our spy industry, are all so
intimately connected and how vulnerable children, used as sex objects,
are used for blackmail by all of them. To read about these well known
personalities in the context of the sexual exploitation of children,
is shocking. Yes, we can explain it with all sorts of theorizing,
political, moral, religious, economic, whatever framework we choose.
But when you actually read the details, it's horrifying. It's like, I
know what is being done to Venezuela, has been done many times before
by our country to other countries. But to watch it enfold, step by
step, to read about the murder of a country and the lying about it
being spread by the mainstream media, is very hard for me to just
watch and make wise comments about how this is just another example of US
domination of South and Central America.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Sunday, August 25, 2019 11:43 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Long Before Epstein: Sex Traffickers &
Spy Agencies
In my opinion, while sex is the focus, control is the actual issue.
Until we learn how to regulate how we view success, from controlling
others, to upholding others, we will never see an end to predators of all
sorts.
Carl Jarvis
On 8/24/19, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Long Before Epstein: Sex Traffickers & Spy Agencies
August 23, 2019
Elizabeth Vos reviews the unsavory history of intelligence agencies
providing protection to child sex-trafficking rings.
Jeffrey Epstein's compound in the Virgin Islands. (YouTube) By
Elizabeth Vos Special to Consortium News
The alleged use of sexual blackmail by spy agencies is hardly unique
to the case of Jeffrey Epstein. Although the agencies involved as
well as their alleged motivations and methods differ with each case,
the crime of child trafficking with ties to intelligence agencies or
those protected by them has been around for decades.
Some cases include the 1950s -1970s Kincora scandal and the 1981
Peter Hayman affair, both in the U.K.; and the Finders' cult and the
Franklin scandal in the U.S. in the late 1980s. Just as these cases
did not end in convictions, the pedophile and accused
child-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein remained at arms' length for years.
"For almost two decades, for some nebulous reason, whether to do with
ties to foreign intelligence, his billions of dollars, or his social
connections, Epstein, whose alleged sexual sickness and horrific
assaults on women without means or ability to protect themselves.
remained untouchable,"
journalist Vicky Ward wrote in The Daily Beast in July.
The protection of sex traffickers by intelligence agencies is
especially interesting in the wake of Epstein's death. Like others,
Epstein had long been purported to have links with spy agencies. Such
allegations documented by Whitney Webb in her multi-part series were
recently published in Mintpress News.
Webb states that Epstein was the current face of an extensive system
of abuse with ties to both organized crime and intelligence interests.
She told CNLive! that: "According to Nigel Rosser, a British
journalist who wrote in the Evening Standard in 2001, Epstein
apparently for much of the 1990s claimed that he used to work for the
CIA."
Vicky Ward, who wrote on Epstein for Vanity Fair before his first
arrest, and claimed the magazine killed one of her pieces after
Epstein intervened with editor Graydon Carter, said in a Tweet that
one of Epstein's clients was Adnan Khashoggi, an arms dealer who was
pivotal in the Iran Contra scandal and was on the Mossad (the Israeli
intelligence agency) payroll.
This was also noted in a book "By Way of Deception" by former Mossad
agent Victor Ostrovsky.
The Times of Israel reported that Epstein was an "active business
partner with former prime minister Ehud Barak" until 2015, adding:
"Barak formed a limited partnership company in Israel in 2015, called
Sum (E.B.) to invest in a high-tech startup.. A large part of the
money used by Sum to buy the start-up stock was supplied by Epstein."
Webb wrote he "was a long-time friend of Barak, who has long-standing
and deep ties to Israel's intelligence community." On the board of
their company sat Pinchas Bukhris, a former commander of the IDF
cyber unit 8200.
Epstein's allegedly protected status was revealed by Alexander
Acosta, the former U.S. attorney in Miami who gave Epstein an
infamously lenient plea deal in 2007. Acosta, who was forced to
resign as President Donald Trump's labor secretary because of that
deal, reportedly said of the case: "I was told Epstein 'belonged to
intelligence' and to leave it alone."
Alexander Acosta: "Told to leave it alone." (Flickr/Gage Skidmore)
Kincora Boy's Home
Several cases in the unsavory history linking intelligence agencies
and sex scandals put the allegations against Epstein in context.
Among these was the U.K. Kincora Boy's Home, where at least 29 boys
were reported to have been targeted at the Belfast, Northern Ireland,
facility from the mid-1950s until the late 1970s, until it was shut
in 1980. It also involved the alleged protection of child sexual
abusers at the home and among their clients.
The Irish Times wrote that "destitute boys were systematically
sodomised by members of Kincora staff and were supplied for abuse to
prominent figures in unionist politics. The abusers - among them MPs,
councillors, leading Orangemen and other influential individuals -
became potentially important intelligence assets."
The Belfast Telegraph also quoted former Labour Party MP Ken
Livingstone, who said: "MI5 weren't just aware of child abuse at
Kincora Boys' Home - they were monitoring it. They were getting
pictures of a judge in one case, politicians, a lot of the
establishment of Northern Ireland going in and abusing these boys."
Three staff were eventually convicted of sexually abusing minors,
which included the housemaster William McGrath, a loyalist "Orangeman"
and allegedly an MI5 agent, according to the Belfast Telegraph in
July 2014.
Kincora Boy's Home. (YouTube)
Although the U.K.'s Historical Institutional Abuse inquiry ultimately
found "no credible evidence" to support the allegations, two former U.K.
intelligence officers maintained their claim of MI5's involvement:
Brian Gemmell says he alerted MI5 to the abuse at Kincora and was
told to stop his investigation; and a former army intelligence
officer, Colin Wallace, "consistently claimed that MI5, RUC special
branch and military intelligence knew about the abuse at Kincora and
used it to blackmail the pedophile ring to spy on hardline
loyalists," according to The Guardian.
The Irish outlet, An Phoblacht, wrote: "The systematic abuse of young
boys in the Home and the part played by the British intelligence
organisations to keep the scandal under wraps ensured that one side
of the murky world of Unionist paramilitarism and its links to the
crown forces was kept out of the public domain for years."
In the U.S., the New York State Select Committee On Crime in 1982
investigated nationwide networks of trafficking underage sex workers
and producing child pornography. Dale Smith, a committee
investigator, noted that call services using minors also profited from
"sidelines,"
besides the income from peddling prostitution. Smith said they sold
information "on the sexual proclivities of the clients to agents of
foreign intelligence."
Presumably, this information could be used to blackmail those in
positions of power. Smith added that one call service sold
information to "British and Israeli intelligence."
The Hayman Affair
Ken Livingstone "MI5 monitored abuse at Kincora Boys' Home. (World
Economic
Forum)
Another U.K. scandal included allegations that Sir Peter Hayman, a
British diplomat and deputy director of MI6, was a member of the
Pedophile Information Exchange (PIE).
Police discovered that two of the roughly dozen pedophiles in his
circle had been writing to each other about their interest in "the
extreme sexual torture and murder of children," according to the The
Daily Mail.
In 2015, The Guardian reported that former Prime Minister Margaret
Thatcher had been "adamant that officials should not publicly name"
Hayman, "even after she had been fully briefed on his
activities..formerly secret papers released to the National Archives
shows."
Still, Hayman was unmasked as a subscriber to PIE in 1981 by M.P.
Geoffrey Dickens, who also reportedly raised the national security
risk of Hayman's proclivities, implying they were a potential source
of blackmail sought by intelligence agencies.
The British tabloid The Mirror reported that intelligence agencies,
including the KGB and CIA, kept their own dossiers on U.K.
establishment figures involved with PIE and the abuse of minors, to
blackmail the targets in exchange for information.
Hayman was never charged for his association with PIE: The U.K.
attorney general at the time, Sir Michael Havers, defended the
decision and denied claims that Heyman was given special treatment.
Labour Party MP Barbara Castle allegedly gave a dossier she compiled
on pedophiles in positions of power to U.K. journalist Don Hale in
1984 when he was editor of the Brury Messenger. Hale alleged that
soon afterward, police from the "Special Branch, the division
responsible for matters of national security," raided his office and
removed the Castle dossier. They then threatened him with a
"D-notice," which prevented him from publishing the story on the
threat of up to 10 years in prison.
The Finders Cult
Another group accused of trafficking children, which had links to
intelligence agencies, was the "Finders" cult. In 1987, The
Washington Post reported that two members were arrested in connection
with the alleged abuse of six children. Investigators found materials
in Madison County, Virginia, which they said linked to a "commune
called the Finders."
Vauxhall Cross, London, headquarters of British Secret Intelligence
Service.
(Laurie Nevay, CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons)
Besides nude photographs of children, a Customs Service memo written
by special agent Ramon Martinez refers to files "relating to the
activities of the organization in different parts of the world,
including "London, Germany, the Bahamas, Japan, Hong Kong, Malaysia,
Africa, Costa Rica, and Europe."
Martinez's memo notes that a Finders' telex ordered the purchase of
two children in Hong Kong. Another expressed interest in "bank
secrecy situations." The memo also documents high-tech transfers to
the U.K., numerous properties under the Finders' control, the group's
interest in terrorism, explosives, and the evasion of law enforcement.
Martinez describes the swift end to his investigation. He wrote that
on April 12, 1987, he arrived at the Metropolitan Police Department
and was told that all the data was turned over to the State
Department which, in turn, advised MPD that "all travel and use of
passports by the holders was within the law and no action would be
taken. Then he was told that the investigation into the Finders had
become a CIA internal matter. The MPD report was classified, not
available for review" and "No further action will be taken."
Martinez was not the only person with unanswered questions. The
U.S.News & World Report wrote that N. Carolina Rep. Charlie Rose
(Dem.), chair of the House Administration Committee, and Florida's
Rep. Tom Lewis (Rep.) asked "Could our own government have something
to do with this Finders organization and turned their backs on these
children? That's what the evidence points to," says Lewis, adding
that "I can tell you that we've got a lot of people scrambling, and
that wouldn't be happening if there was nothing here."
The leniency shown by the State Department and the fact that the CIA
would designate the investigation of the Finders group as "an
internal matter"
raises serious questions. What motive might have driven the CIA to
associate with or protect a child abuse ring?
Harry S. Truman State Department building. (Paco8191, CC BY 3.0,
Wikimedia
Commons)
The Franklin Scandal
The Franklin Scandal erupted in 1988, centering on a
child-trafficking ring operating in Omaha, Nebraska, by Lawrence E.
King Jr., a former vice chairman of the National Black Republican
Council: It was alleged that children were provided to politicians in
Washington, D.C., and elsewhere, among other illegal activities.
The late former state Sen. John Decamp alleged in his book "The
Franklin Coverup" that a special committee of the Nebraska
Legislature launched a probe to investigate the affair, which
involved King being indicted for embezzling money from the Franklin
Credit Union. The committee hired former Lincoln, Nebraska, police
officer Jerry Lowe, whose reports suggested that King was involved
in "guns and money transfers to Nicaragua," and was linked with the CIA.
James Flanery, an investigative reporter at The World Herald who
reported on the scandal, told associates that King was "running guns
and money into Nicaragua," and that the CIA was heavily involved."
Like many scandals before and since, the Franklin case ended with no
prosecution of the perpetrators. However, Paul Bonacci, one of the
alleged victims, was indicted for perjury. He had alleged that he was
sexually abused as a minor in Nebraska and around the country where
he was flown by Lawrence King.
In 1999, the Omaha World Herald reported Bonacci was awarded $1
million in damages due to his lawsuit against King and other alleged
perpetrators.
Decamp, who was Bonacci's attorney, told the newspaper "Obviously,
you don't award $1 million if you don't think he (Bonacci) was
telling the truth."
Given the history of child trafficking rings that were allegedly
connected with or enjoyed the protection of intelligence services, it
is possible that similar claims about Jeffrey Epstein are something
the authorities, though unlikely given these other instances, should
investigate.
Elizabeth Vos is a freelance reporter and regular contributor to
Consortium News.
