From "Spook Air" to the "Lolita Express": The Genesis and Evolution of the
Jeffrey Epstein-Bill Clinton Relationship
Far from being the work of a single political party, intelligence agency or
country, the power structure revealed by the network connected to Epstein is
nothing less than a criminal enterprise that is willing to use and abuse
children in the pursuit of ever more power, wealth and control.
by Whitney Webb
August 23rd, 2019
By Whitney Webb Whitney Webb
On August 10th, and for several days after, speculation swirled after it was
announced that Jeffrey Epstein had been found dead in his cell. His cause of
death has officially been ruled suicide by hanging.
Epstein, the billionaire pedophile and sex trafficker with a myriad of
connections to the rich and powerful in the United States and several other
countries, had told those close to him that he had feared for his life prior
to his sudden "suicide," the Washington Post reported, while his defense
lawyers claimed that he had planned to cooperate with federal authorities.
Following the controversial conclusion by the New York Medical Examiner that
Epstein's death was a suicide - a conclusion contested by Epstein's
attornies as well as by independent forensic pathologists, given the
apparent evidence pointing towards strangulation - corporate media coverage
of the Epstein case has slowed to a trickle, save for sensationalist stories
about his alleged co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell and new salacious details
of his past. Gone from corporate media are any hints of the larger scandal,
revolving around the admission that Epstein had "belonged to intelligence."
In this four-part series, "The Jeffrey Epstein Scandal: Too Big to Fail,"
MintPress has revealed that Epstein's activities - a sexual blackmail
operation involving minors and connected to intelligence agencies - was one
of many such operations that have taken place for decades, developing from
the nexus forged between the CIA, organized crime and Israeli intelligence
shortly after World War II.
As Part II of this series revealed, these sexual blackmail operations
proliferated during the Iran-Contra affair, which involved this same dark
alliance between U.S./Israeli intelligence and organized crime. Though this
series has thus far largely focused on the ties of Republican officials to
those operations and associated crimes, the final installment of this series
will focus on Democratic politicians, namely the Clinton family, and their
ties to this same network as well as Jeffrey Epstein.
The Clintons' own involvement in Iran-Contra revolved around the covert
activities at Arkansas' Mena Airport, which involved the CIA front company
Southern Air Transport and occurred while Clinton was governor. Just a few
years into the Clinton presidential administration, Leslie Wexner and
Jeffrey Epstein would play a major role in Southern Air Transport's
relocation to Columbus, Ohio, leading to concerns among top Ohio officials
that both men were not only working with the CIA, but that Wexner's company,
The Limited, sought to use the CIA-linked airline for smuggling.
During that same period of time, Epstein had already forged close ties to
important Clinton White House officials and prominent Clinton donors like
Lynn Forester de Rothschild and made several personal visits to the official
presidential residence.
Some of these ties appear related to Epstein's shady financial activities,
particularly involving currency markets and offshore tax havens - activities
he began to perfect while working for prominent Iran-Contra figures in the
early 1980s, several of whom were tied to the CIA-linked bank Bank of Credit
and Commerce International (BCCI) and had known relationships with Israeli
intelligence, namely the Mossad. The nature of Epstein's work for these
individuals and other evidence strongly suggests that Epstein himself had a
relationship with BCCI after leaving Bear Stearns and prior to the bank's
collapse in 1991.
Of particular importance are Epstein's relationship to the Clinton
Foundation and the alleged role of Epstein's Virgin Islands-based hedge fund
and the Clinton Foundation in money laundering activity, a relationship
still under investigation by MintPress.
It is this tale of intrigue that fully reveals the extent to which this
decades-old alliance between organized crime, the CIA, and Israeli
intelligence has corrupted and influenced politicians of both political
parties, both through the use of sexual blackmail and through other means of
coercion.
Far from being the work of a single intelligence agency or a single country,
the power structure revealed by this network connected to Epstein is nothing
less than a criminal enterprise that transcends nationality and is willing
to use and abuse children in the pursuit of ever more power, wealth and
control. Existing for decades and willing to use any means necessary to
cover its tracks, this criminal racket has become so integrated into the
levers of power, in the United States and well beyond, that it is truly too
big to fail.
Iran Contra, Mena Airport and the Clintons
When one thinks back to the now-famous Iran-Contra scandal, names like
Ronald Reagan, Oliver North and Barry Seal comes to mind, but former
President Bill Clinton also played an outsized role in the scandal - using
his home state of Arkansas, where he was then serving as governor, as a sort
of rallying point for the CIA's U.S.-side of the Central American operation.
In fact, during Clinton's reign as governor a small town called Mena,
nestled in the Ozark Mountains west of Arkansas' capital Little Rock, would
be propelled into the national spotlight as a hub for drug and arms
smuggling and the training of CIA-backed far-right militias.
Under the close watch of the CIA, then led by William Casey, the Mena
Intermountain Regional Airport was used to stockpile and deliver arms and
ammunition to the Nicaraguan Contras. The arms were sometimes exchanged for
cocaine from South American cartels, which would then be sent back to Mena
and used to fund the covert CIA operation.
Though efforts have been made to dismiss Clinton's role in the scandal, his
direct intervention in the Contras' attempts to overthrow the Sandinista
government of Nicaragua suggests Clinton had some sort of personal stake in
the efforts and was unlikely aloof to the major smuggling operation taking
place in his state while he had been governor. In fact, while governor,
Clinton split with many other state governments in sending a contingency of
the Arkansas National Guard to Honduras to train the Nicaraguan Contras on
how to overthrow their Sandinista government. Clinton would also discuss his
first-hand knowledge of the operation with now-Trump administration Attorney
General William Barr.
Much of this channeling of both weapons and drugs was carried out by
notorious drug smuggler and alleged CIA/DEA operative Barry Seal. According
to the book Whiteout: the CIA, Drugs and the Press by Alexander Cockburn and
Jeffrey St. Clair:
A federal investigation aided by the Arkansas State Police established that
Barry Seal, a drug dealer working for the Medellin cartel as well as with
the C.I.A. and the D.E.A., had his planes retrofitted at Mena for drug
drops, trained pilots there and laundered his profits partly through
financial institutions in Arkansas. Seal, at this time was in close contact
with [Oliver] North, who acknowledged the relationship in his memoir. These
were the years in which North was constructing his covert supply lines for
the contras."
Seal was known to use aircraft that belonged to the company Southern Air
Transport and he also employed flight crews that worked for that same
company. Southern Air Transport, formerly Air America, was once directly
owned by the CIA and today is remembered for being a CIA front during
Iran-Contra. Less known is the relationship between the CIA-linked airline
and Leslie Wexner and his then-close associate Jeffrey Epstein, which will
be discussed in detail later in this report.
Seal seemed to always operate with much less than six degrees of separation
from Clinton while the latter served as governor. In his 1999 confessional
expose, Cross-fire: Witness in the Clinton Investigation, former Arkansas
policeman turned personal driver and security guard for Bill Clinton, L.D.
Brown, recounts how Clinton encouraged him to seek out a post at the CIA.
Clinton allegedly went so far as to edit the essay Brown wrote for this
employment application. The essay topic was drug smuggling in Central
America. Upon receiving his application, the CIA put Brown in touch with
none other than Barry Seal. Seal would later be gunned down in 1986 while
serving six-months probation for drug-smuggling charges.
Seal was not the only affiliate of Oliver North running a Contra-connected
operation in Arkansas. Terry Reed, who had worked for North since 1983,
claimed to have been put in touch with Seal by North and established a base
just 10 miles north of Mena - in Nella, Arkansas - where "Nicaraguan Contras
and other recruits from Latin American were trained in resupply missions,
night landings, precision paradrops and similar maneuvers," according to
Cockburn and St. Clair. Reed further asserted that drug money was being
laundered through Arkansas financial institutions.
After Clinton's half-brother Roger was busted for cocaine smuggling (Clinton
would later pardon him while president) the CIA sought to move Contra
operations out of Arkansas, hoping to put a damper on the increasingly
public and sloppy Arkansas-based operation. According to Terry Reed in his
book Compromised: Clinton, Bush and the CIA, co-written with John Cummings,
a hushed meeting was held in a bunker at Camp Robinson in North Little Rock,
Arkansas. During the meeting, William Barr, who represented himself as the
emissary of then-CIA Director Bill Casey told Clinton:
The deal we made was to launder our money through your bond business but
what we didn't plan on was you and your n****r here start taking yourselves
seriously and purposely shrinking our laundry."
Barr chastised Clinton for his sloppy handling of the delicate operation and
his half-brother's very public fall from grace. He would later tell Clinton,
according to Reed,
Bill, you are Mr. Casey's fair-haired boy . You and your state have been our
greatest asset. Mr. Casey wanted me to pass on to you that unless you fuck
up and do something stupid, you're No. 1 on the short list for a shot at the
job that you've always wanted. You and guys like you are the fathers of the
new government. We are the new covenant."
Attempts to investigate Clinton's role in the Mena operations and more
broadly in the Iran-Contra affair were allegedly axed by Clinton's own
confidantes, who consistently denied he played a role in the scandal.
According to the Wall Street Journal, former IRS investigator William Duncan
teamed with Arkansas State Police Investigator Russell Welch in what became
a decade-long battle to bring the matter to light. In fact, of the nine
separate state and federal probes into the affair, all failed.
Duncan would later say of the investigations, "[They] were interfered with
and covered up, and the justice system was subverted," and a 1992 memo from
Duncan to high-ranking members of the attorney general's staff notes that
Duncan was instructed "to remove all files concerning the Mena investigation
from the attorney general's office." The attorney general, serving under
George H. W. Bush, at that time was William Barr, who is currently attorney
general under Trump.
The Bank of Crooks and Criminals International
Another Clinton connection to the CIA and the Iran-Contra affair runs
through the family's connection to Arkansas financier Jackson Stephens and
the CIA-linked Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), which
critics nicknamed the "Bank of Crooks and Criminals International." Stephens
was among the richest people in Arkansas and was also a major donor and
backer of Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. He also played a
key role in the rise of Walmart.
Jackson Stephens and other members of the Stephens family bankrolled Bill
Clinton's rise to political prominence, contributing large sums of money to
both Clinton's gubernatorial and his later presidential campaigns. In
addition, Worthen Bank, which was majority-owned by Stephens, provided
Clinton's first presidential campaign a $3.5 million line of credit. In
addition, Stephens' many businesses were frequently represented by the Rose
Law Firm, where Hillary Clinton was a partner.
A redacted FBI report from 1998 describes Stephens as having "lengthy and
continuing ties to the Clinton administration and associates" and also
discusses allegations that Stephens has been involved in the "illegal
handling of campaign contributions to the Democratic National Party."
BCCI had originally been founded by a group of bankers from Pakistan, though
Newsweek later reported that CIA officials appeared to have been involved in
the bank's founding and that BCCI founder Agha Hasan Abedi had been
encouraged by the CIA to found the bank after "the agency realized that an
international bank could provide valuable cover for intelligence
operations." CIA documents that later surfaced during congressional hearings
on the bank's activities and related scandals stated that BCCI was directly
involved in "money laundering, narco-financing, gunrunning and holding large
sums of money for terrorist groups."
BCCI cocaine and cash
Evidence in the case against BCCI shows cocaine seized from a warehouse and
suitcases full of cash to be laundered. Photo | FLMD District Court
Though BCCI was known for its CIA links, Catherine Austin Fitts - former
Assistant Secretary for Housing-Federal Housing Commissioner at HUD during
the George H. W. Bush administration, and investment banker with the firms
Hamilton Securities Group and Dillon, Read & Co. - believes that those links
went well beyond the CIA. Fitts - who was placed on the board of the BCCI
subsidiary First American Bank following BCCI's collapse - told MintPress
that, after reading through troves of documents regarding the bank's
activities prior to its implosion, it was clear to her that there was "no
way" its clandestine activities were carried on without the full knowledge
of the Federal Reserve, specifically the Federal Reserve Bank of New York,
and the White House.
BCCI also played a key role in the Iran-Contra affair and accounts of the
bank were used to send payoffs to individuals linked to the scheme. Adnan
Khashoggi, a key figure and intermediary in the scandal, used one BCCI
account to move more than $20 million related to illegal arms sales and BCCI
created fake documentation, including checks signed by Oliver North,
allowing the sale to go forward. The bank later, when its activities
subsequently came under congressional scrutiny, claimed it had no records of
these transactions.
In addition, BCCI appears to have been involved in the sex trafficking of
underage girls, including girls that had not yet reached puberty. According
to the report entitled "The BCCI Affair," by then-U.S. Senators John Kerry
(D-MA) and Hank Brown (R-CO), BCCI officials were alleged to have obtained
leverage with powerful individuals, including prominent members of the
ruling families of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), by providing them with
young virgins.
The report (page 70) specifically states:
According to one U.S. investigator with substantial knowledge of BCCI's
activities, some BCCI officials have acknowledged that some of the females
provided some members of the Al-Nahyan family [one of the ruling families in
the UAE] were young girls who had not yet reached puberty, and in certain
cases, were physically injured by the experience. The official said that
former BCCI officials had told him that BCCI also provided males to
homosexual VIPs."
BCCI was largely brought into the United States business community through
the efforts of Jackson Stephens and Bert Lance, former budget director for
Jimmy Carter, who assisted with BCCI's acquisition of First American Bank.
The law firm involved in this effort was Arkansas' Rose Law Firm and it
involved several of the firm's lawyers, including Hillary Rodham Clinton,
Webster Hubbell and C.J. Giroir. Also involved in the effort was Clark
Clifford, former Secretary of Defense under Lyndon B. Johnson, and Kamal
Adham, former director general of Saudi intelligence.
One of the men added to the BCCI board after the acquisition of First
American Bank was Robert Keith Gray, whom Newsweek described as often having
"boasted of his close relationship with the CIA's William Casey; Gray used
to say that before taking on a foreign client, he would clear it with
Casey." As was discussed in Part II of this series, Gray was also an expert
in homosexual blackmail operations for the CIA and was reported to have
collaborated with Roy Cohn in those activities. Some of Gray's clients at
the powerful PR firm he led, Hill & Knowlton, included BCCI clients and
Mossad-linked individuals, such as Adnan Khashoggi and Marc Rich.
While the Rose Law Firm was assisting BCCI's entrance into the American
financial system, it also represented the Stephens-owned financial services
company, Stephens Inc., as well as the data-processing company Systematics
Inc., which Stephens acquired in the late 1960s. According to James Norman
in his book The Oil Card: Global Economic Warfare in the 21st Century,
Systematics was "a primary vehicle or front company for the National
Security Agency in the 1980s and early 1990s to market and implant bugged
software in the world's major money-center banks and clearinghouses as part
of the Reagan/Bush 'follow the money' effort to break the Soviets."
The late journalist Michael Ruppert asserted that this "bugged software" was
none other than the Promis software, which both U.S. and Israeli
intelligence had bugged in order to spy on intelligence and which had been
marketed in part by Robert Maxwell, father of Jeffrey Epstein's madam,
Ghislaine Maxwell. Ruppert cited Systematics as "a primary developer of
Promis for financial intelligence use." Promis had originally been leased by
Inslaw Inc., a small software company founded by Bill Hamilton, to the
Department of Justice - which later stole it from Inslaw, forcing it to
declare bankruptcy.
According to a 1995 document sent on behalf of Inslaw's founders to
then-independent Counsel Ken Starr that asked him to review Inslaw's case,
Systematics had "covertly implanted [software] into the computers of its
bank customers" that allowed "allied intelligence agencies surreptitiously
to track and monitor the flow of money through the banking system" and had
done so at "the behest of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) and its
partner in Israeli intelligence." Inslaw also stated that the software was
used by these same intelligence agencies in the "laundering of money,
especially drug profits."
Systematics also had a subsidiary in Israel that, according to a former
Israeli intelligence officer, was operated by contractors for the Mossad
and sold software to banks and telecommunications companies. According to
Richardson's letter, that Israeli subsidiary of Systematics also had a
Massachusetts-based front company, which was partially owned by a former
U.S. intelligence official.
Two partners in the Rose Law Firm who would later serve in the Clinton
administration, Vince Foster and Webster Hubbell, acquired significant
financial interests in Systematics through ownership in Alltel, which
purchased Systematics in the early 1990s. The Hamiltons also provide
considerable evidence that Foster's distress prior to his death in 1993
appears to have been related to concerns about litigation involving
Systematics and the on-going litigation over Promis' theft.
BCCI itself was known to employ the Promis software after its theft by the
DOJ; and one of its subsidiaries, First American Bank, also "filtered PROMIS
money" - i.e., laundered the money generated from the sale of the stolen
Promis software - according to the late journalist Danny Casolaro.
Casolaro had been investigating an international crime syndicate he termed
"the Octopus" at the time of his death in 1991. Casolaro believed that this
"Octopus" involved powerful individuals in the private and public sectors as
well as the criminal underworld and that they were collectively responsible
for some of the biggest scandals of the 1980s, including Iran-Contra, BCCI
and the theft of the Promis software.
Casolaro had told friends and family that he was close to concluding his
investigation and several people close to him had seen documents involving
money transfers involving BCCI and the World Bank to people involved in
these scandals, such as Earl Brian and Adnan Khashoggi. Casolaro went to
Martinsburg, Virginia to meet with some sources to get the final piece of
the puzzle and "bring back the head of the Octopus." Two days after arriving
in Martinsburg, Casolaro was found dead in his hotel room and his briefcase
full of his research notes and evidence was missing. His death was ruled a
suicide.
Casolaro crime scene
Crime scene photos show deep lacerations in Casolaro's arms
Many, including Casolaro's family, do not believe that Casolaro committed
suicide. A week before his death, Casolaro told his brother he had been
receiving death threats and the manner in which he died, deep slashes in his
arms, was not consistent with Casolaro's well-known squeamishness around
even minor amounts of blood. Speculation only grew following the FBI
investigation, given that the FBI lied to Congress, pressured its own agents
not to question whether it was a suicide and lost 90 percent of its files
related to Casolaro's death - among other glaring inconsistencies.
In a 1994 letter provided to MintPress by Inslaw Inc., Inslaw lawyer Charles
Work told then-Assistant Attorney General John Dwyer that one of Inslaw's
confidential sources in government had stated that Casolaro had been
injected with a substance that deadened his nerves from the neck down,
explaining the apparent lack of struggle and that the substance used had
come from the U.S. Army inventory. The person who had arranged Casolaro's
final meeting before his death was a U.S. military intelligence officer
named Joseph Cuellar.
The same year that Casolaro died, there were several other suspicious deaths
involving people directly connected to the Promis scandal or involved in
Casolaro's investigation of "the Octopus" - including Alan Standorf, one of
Casolaro's sources; Robert Maxwell, father of Ghislaine Maxwell, Mossad
operative, and salesman of the bugged Promis software; and John Tower - the
former Texas senator who assisted Maxwell in selling the bugged Promis
software to the Los Alamos laboratories.
Jeffrey Epstein and "The Dirtiest Bank of All"
While the role Arkansas played in Iran-Contra is one aspect of the scandal
that is often overlooked, so to is the key role played by Israeli
intelligence-linked arms dealers and smugglers who would later be connected
to powerful individuals in the Mega Group and Jeffrey Epstein, such as Marc
Rich and Adnan Khashoggi.
One of the key players in the Iran-Contra affair was Saudi arms dealer Adnan
Khashoggi, uncle of the slain Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. One
lesser known fact about Adnan Khashoggi is that, at the time of his
Iran-Contra dealings, he was working for the Israeli Mossad, according to
former Mossad agent Victor Ostrovsky.
Ostrovsky, in his #1 New York Times bestseller "By Way of Deception," notes
that Khashoggi had been recruited by the Mossad years before and that his
private jet had been fitted in Israel. In relation to Iran-Contra, Ostrovsky
claims that it was a $5 million bridge loan that Khashoggi provided that
helped to overcome the lack of trust between Israel and Iran during the
initial arms deals in the early 1980s, and thus his participation was
critical to the success of the scheme.
According to journalist Vicky Ward, Adnan Khashoggi was a client of Jeffrey
Epstein's in the early 1980s, not long after Epstein's departure from Bear
Stearns in 1981. The reason Epstein left the bank remains murky. Though some
former Bear Stearns employees claim he was fired, others - including Epstein
himself - claimed that he resigned of his own volition.
Ward suggests that Epstein may have left the bank owing to a Securities and
Exchange Commission (SEC) investigation into insider trading in a case that
involved a tender offer placed by the Seagrams corporation for St. Joe
Minerals Corp. Seagrams owner Edgar Bronfman, son of Meyer Lansky associate
Samuel Bronfman and member of the Mega Group, had tipped off several
investors and bankers of the coming tender offer. Epstein resigned from Bear
Stearns the day after the SEC opened the case and later claimed he had left
the company as a result of a relatively minor "Reg D" violation and rumors
that he had an "illicit affair with a secretary."
Yet, as Ward noted:
The SEC never brought any charges against anyone at Bear Stearns for insider
trading in St. Joe, but its questioning seems to indicate that it was
skeptical of Epstein's answers. Some sources have wondered why, if he was
such a big producer at Bear Stearns, he would have given it up over a mere
$2,500 fine."
Regardless of the exact reason for Epstein's sudden departure, it was
immediately after he left the bank that "the details [of Epstein's work
history] recede into shadow. A few of the handful of current friends who
have known him since the early 1980s recall that he used to tell them he was
a "bounty hunter," recovering lost or stolen money for the government or for
very rich people. He has a license to carry a firearm."
Writing in Salon, a former friend of Epstein's, Jesse Kornbluth, also stated
that Epstein had claimed to be a "bounty hunter" for the rich and powerful:
When we met in 1986, Epstein's double identity intrigued me - he said he
didn't just manage money for clients with mega-fortunes, he was also a
high-level bounty hunter. Sometimes, he told me, he worked for governments
to recover money looted by African dictators. Other times those dictators
hired him to help them hide their stolen money." (emphasis added)
One of Epstein's clients after leaving Bear Stearns, per Ward's sources, was
the CIA/Mossad-linked Khashoggi at the very time that Khashoggi was involved
in Iran-Contra, an operation involving both U.S. and Israeli intelligence.
British journalist Nigel Rosser reported in January 2001 in the Evening
Standard that Epstein had claimed that he was also working for the CIA
during this same time period.
Since Epstein's arrest, records of Rosser's article have been scrubbed from
British newspaper archives, including the Evening Standard's own. However,
MintPress independently confirmed with Bob Fitrakis, whom Rosser had
interviewed for the article in question, that the article did allege that
Epstein used to claim he worked for the CIA. In addition, other reports from
the time period cited excerpts of Rosser's article, including the reference
to Epstein's past claims of involvement with the CIA.
Specifically, Rosser's article had included the following passage:
He [Epstein] has a license to carry a concealed weapon, once claimed to have
worked for the CIA, although he now denies it - and owns properties all over
America. Once he arrived at the London home of a British arms dealer
bringing a gift - a New York police-issue pump-action riot gun. 'God knows
how he got it into the country,' a friend said."
Though Epstein denied past connections to the CIA at the time Rosser's
article was published, it is worth mentioning that Robert Maxwell - father
of Ghislaine Maxwell and long-time Mossad operative - also vehemently denied
his now well-documented links to Israeli intelligence until his death.
Furthermore, as will be shown later in this article, Epstein and his only
known billionaire "client," Leslie Wexner, would later forge a business
relationship with the CIA front company Southern Air Transport and play a
major role in the airline's relocation to Columbus, Ohio in the mid-1990s.
During that period, two prominent Ohio officials believed that both Epstein
and Wexner were working with the CIA, according to Ohio-based journalist Bob
Fitrakis.
Past claims and evidence of Epstein's involvement with the CIA, coupled with
his time as a "shadowy" financial fixer for double-asset Khashoggi, strongly
suggest that, whatever Epstein was doing for Khashoggi during this time, it
likely involved BCCI. According to "The BCCI Affair" report, Khashoggi
"acted as the middleman for five Iranian arms deals for the United States,
financing a number of them through BCCI" and "served as the 'banker' for
arms shipments as the undercover scheme developed." The report continued:
Khashoggi and [another Iran-Contra arms dealer Manucher] Ghorbanifer
performed a central role for the U.S. government in connection with the
Iran-Contra affair in operations that involved the direct participation of
CIA personnel [and both Khashoggi and Ghorbanifer] banked at BCCI's offices
in Monte Carlo and, for both, BCCI's services were essential as a means of
providing short-term credit for sales from the U.S. through Israel to Iran."
Adnan Khashoggi Jeffrey Epstein
Saudi arms deale Adnan Khashoggi arrives at Manhatten Federal Court, New
York, April 4, 1990. Photo | AP
This connection is even more likely given the fact that Bear Stearns -
Epstein's previous employer right up until he became a financial fixer for
Khashoggi and other powerful people - also worked directly with BCCI during
this period. Indeed, Bear Stearns served as a broker to BCCI, a fact that
remained hidden until a lengthy court battle in the U.K. concluded in 2011
and forced the government's "Sandstorm Report" about BCCI's activities to
unredact the names of Bear Stearns and other institutions, individuals and
countries that had done business with the CIA-linked bank.
Furthermore, there is the additional fact that BCCI trafficked underage
girls for sex as a means of obtaining favors from and gaining leverage over
powerful individuals, something in which Epstein would later become deeply
involved. As was shown in Part II of this series, several individuals who
were running either sexual blackmail operations involving minors or child
trafficking operations were connected to CIA front companies like BCCI,
other organizations connected to the Iran-Contra scandal, and several
individuals close to the Reagan White House.
The CIA director at the time, Bill Casey, was a close friend of Roy Cohn,
who also ran the sexual blackmail operation involving underage boys out of
Manhattan's Plaza Hotel, described in Part I of this series. According to
Cohn's long-time secretary Christine Seymour, Casey was one of Cohn's most
frequent callers.
Another fact that further suggests that Epstein had connections to BCCI is
that Epstein was known to have been close to other arms dealers of the
period and BCCI was frequently used specifically for covert arms deals.
After the bank's collapse in 1991, an article in Time magazine entitled
"BCCI: The Dirtiest Bank of All" noted the following:
.[T]he CIA may have used B.C.C.I. as more than an undercover banker: U.S.
agents collaborated with the black network in several operations, according
to a B.C.C.I. black-network "officer" who is now a secret U.S. government
witness. Sources have told investigators that B.C.C.I. worked closely with
Israel's spy agencies and other Western intelligence groups as well,
especially in arms deals." (emphasis added)
One of the arms dealers that Epstein apparently knew quite well was the
British arms dealer Sir Douglas Leese. Leese was involved in brokering the
first of a series of controversial British arms deals that involved
Khashoggi, known as the Al Yamamah Deal and allegedly involving bribery of
members of the Saudi royal family and top Saudi officials. In addition to
Khashoggi, several of those officials and royal family members had deep ties
to BCCI.
Later iterations of that arms deal were allegedly brokered with the
involvement of Prince Charles of the British royal family, and corruption
investigations into Al Yamamah were later shut down by the efforts of Tony
Blair as well as Prince Andrew. Leese is said to have spoken of Epstein's
"genius" and lack of morals when he introduced him to Steve Hoffenberg of
Tower Financial, and soon after that introduction Hoffenberg hired Epstein.
Two years after BCCI's fraud-driven collapse, Tower Financial imploded in
1993 in what is still considered to be one of the largest Ponzi schemes in
American history. Hoffenberg later asserted in court that Epstein had been
intimately involved in Tower's shady financial practices and had called
Epstein the "architect of the scam." However, by the time Tower Financial
had collapsed, Epstein was no longer working for the company. Despite
Hoffenberg's testimony and abundant evidence regarding Epstein's role in the
scheme, Epstein's name was mysteriously dropped from the case.
Given that Epstein allegedly received his "sweetheart deal" in 2008 as a
result of having "belonged to intelligence," Epstein's activities in the
1980s and early 1990s suggest that his ability to avoid charges in relation
to the Tower Financial Ponzi scheme may have been for similar reasons.
Though Hoffenberg claims that he met Epstein through Leese, Epstein himself
claimed that he had met the convicted fraudster through John Mitchell,
former attorney general under Richard Nixon.
As was noted in Part II of this series, Mitchell was a "friend" of disgraced
Washington lobbyist Craig Spence, according to Spence before his fall from
grace. Spence, for much of the 1980s, ran a sexual blackmail operation in
D.C. involving underage boys and had taken some of those "call boys" on
midnight tours of the White House that he said had been arranged by
then-National Security Adviser Donald Gregg. Spence, after his trafficking
and exploitation of minors was exposed, died under mysterious circumstances.
His death was quickly labeled a suicide, not unlike Jeffrey Epstein's.
With Epstein and Wexner's Help, "Spook Air" Finds a New Home
While the state of Arkansas became a hub for CIA activity during the Reagan
years and the Iran-Contra scandal, another state appeared to take its place
in the 1990s - Ohio. Just as Arkansas oligarch Jackson Stephens helped
attract the CIA to his home state during Iran-Contra, it was also an Ohio
oligarch and his close associate that helped attract the CIA to the Buckeye
State. Those men were Leslie Wexner and Jeffrey Epstein, respectively.
In Part III of this series, MintPress detailed Wexner's alleged ties to
organized crime and his links to the still unsolved homicide of Columbus,
Ohio lawyer Arthur Shapiro. Shapiro, who was representing Wexner's company
"The Limited" at the time of his death, was set to testify before a grand
jury about tax evasion and his involvement with "questionable tax shelters."
Columbus police described the Shapiro murder as "a Mafia 'hit'" and a
suppressed police report implicated Wexner and his business associates as
being involved in or benefiting from Shapiro's death, and as having links to
prominent New York-based crime syndicates.
However, Wexner and The Limited also appear to have had a relationship with
the CIA. In 1995, Southern Air Transport (SAT) - a well-known front company
for the CIA - relocated from Miami, Florida to Columbus, Ohio. First founded
in the late 1940s, SAT from 1960 until 1973 was directly owned by the CIA,
which sought to use the company as a cover for covert operations. After
1973, the company was placed in private hands, although all of its
subsequent owners would have CIA ties, including James Bastian, a former
lawyer for the CIA, who owned SAT at the time of its relocation to Ohio.
SAT was intimately involved in the Iran-Contra affair, having been used to
funnel weapons and drugs to and from the Nicaraguan Contras under the guise
of delivering "humanitarian aid," while also sending American weapons to
Israel that were then sold to Iran in violation of the U.S. arms embargo. In
1986 alone, SAT transported from Texas to Israel 90 tons of TOW anti-tank
missiles, which were then sold to Iran by Israel and Mossad-linked
intermediaries like Saudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi.
Even though the airline's CIA links were well known, Leslie Wexner's
company, The Limited, sought to coax SAT to relocate its headquarters from
Miami, Florida to Columbus, Ohio, a move that was realized in 1995. When
Edmund James, president of James and Donohew Development Services, told the
Columbus Dispatch in March 1995 that SAT was relocating to Columbus'
Rickenbacker airfield, he stated that "Southern Air's new presence at
Rickenbacker begins in April with two regularly scheduled 747 cargo flights
a week from Hong Kong," citing SAT President William Langton. "By fall, that
could increase to four a week. Negotiations are underway for flights out of
Rickenbacker to the Far East.Much of the Hong Kong-to-Rickenbacker cargo
will be for The Limited," Wexner's clothing company. "This is a big story
for central Ohio. It's huge, actually," James said at the time.
The day following the press conference, Brian Clancy, working as a cargo
analyst with MergeGlobal Inc., told the Journal of Commerce that the reason
for SAT's relocation to Ohio was largely the result of the lucrative Hong
Kong-to-Columbus route that SAT would run for Wexner's company. Clancy
specifically stated that the fact that "[The] Limited Inc., the nation's
largest retailer, is based in Columbus . undoubtedly contributed in large
part to Southern Air's decision."
According to documents obtained by journalist Bob Fitrakis from the
Rickenbacker Port Authority, Ohio's government also tried to sweeten the
deal to bring SAT to Columbus in order to please powerful Ohio businessmen
like Wexner. Orchestrated by Governor George Voinovich's then-Chief of Staff
Paul Mifsud, the Rickenbacker Port Authority and the Ohio Department of
Development created a package of several financial incentives, funded by
Ohio taxpayers, to lure the airline to relocate to Ohio. The Journal of
Commerce described the "generous package of incentives from the state of
Ohio" as "including a 75 percent credit against its corporate tax liability
for the next 10 years, a $5 million low-interest loan, and a $400,000
job-training grant."In 1996, then-SAT spokesman David Sweet had told
Fitrakis that the CIA-linked airline had only moved to Columbus because "the
deal [put together by the development department] was too good to turn
down."
Though SAT had promised Ohio's government that it would create 300 jobs in
three years, it quickly laid off numerous workers and failed to construct
the maintenance facility it had promised, even though it had already
accepted $3.5 million in taxpayer funds for that and other projects. As the
company's financial problems mounted, Ohio's government declined to recoup
the millions in dollars it loaned the company, even after it was alleged
that $32 million in the bank account of Mary Bastian, the wife of SAT's
owner and former CIA lawyer James Bastian, were actually company funds. On
October 1, 1998, SAT filed for bankruptcy. It was the very same day that the
CIA's Inspector General had published a comprehensive report on the
airline's illicit involvement in drug trafficking.
Furthermore, Fitrakis noted that in addition to Wexner the other main
figures who were key in securing SAT's relocation to Ohio were Alan D. Fiers
Jr., a former chief of the CIA Central American Task Force, and retired Air
Force Major General Richard Secord, head of air logistics for SAT's covert
action in Laos between 1966 and 1968, while the company was still known as
Air America. Secord was also the air logistics coordinator in the illegal
Contra resupply network for Oliver North during Iran-Contra. Fiers was one
of the key individuals involved in Iran-Contra who was later pardoned by
George H.W. Bush with the assistance of then-Attorney General Bill Barr.
Barr - currently serving as attorney general in the Trump administration,
and top of the chain of DOJ command in the investigation of Epstein's death
in prison - has refused to recuse himself from the investigation into
Epstein's network and his recent death.
Despite the involvement of these CIA-linked men, as well as the organized
crime-linked Leslie Wexner, the then-president of SAT told the Columbus
Dispatch that the airline was "no longer connected to the CIA."
Notably, It was during this same time that Epstein exerted substantial
control over Wexner's finances; and, according to Fitrakis and his extensive
reporting on Wexner from this period, it was Epstein who orchestrated
logistics for Wexner's business operations, including The Limited. As was
revealed in the Arthur Shapiro murder file and in ties between SAT and The
Limited, much of The Limited's logistics involved figures and companies
connected to organized crime and U.S. intelligence. It is also important to
note that SAT was well-known for being a CIA front company prior to the
efforts of Wexner et al. to bring the airline to Columbus, and that, a few
years prior, Epstein himself had previously worked for intelligence-linked
figures also involved in Iran-Contra, such as Adnan Khashoggi.
In addition, during this time period, Epstein had already begun to live in
the now infamous New York penthouse that had first been purchased by Wexner
in 1989. Wexner had apparently installed CCTV and recording equipment in an
odd bathroom in the home after his purchase, and never lived in the home, as
was noted in Part III of this series.
In an exclusive interview, Bob Fitrakis told MintPress that Epstein and
Wexner's involvement with SAT's relocation to Ohio had caused suspicion
among some prominent state and local officials that the two were working
with U.S. intelligence. Fitrakis specifically stated that then-Ohio
Inspector General David Strutz and then-Sheriff of Franklin County Earl
Smith had personally told him that they believed that both Epstein and
Wexner had ties to the CIA. These claims further corroborate what was first
reported by Nigel Rosser in the Evening Standard that Epstein had claimed to
have worked for the CIA in the past.
Fitrakis also told MintPress that Strutz had referred to SAT's route between
Hong Kong and Columbus on behalf of Wexner's company The Limited as "the
Meyer Lansky run," as he believed that Wexner's association with SAT was
related to his ties to elements of organized crime that were connected to
the Lansky-created National Crime Syndicate. In addition, Catherine Austin
Fitts - the former investment banker and government official, who has
extensively investigated the intersection of organized crime, black markets,
Wall Street and the government in the U.S. economy - was told by an ex-CIA
employee that Wexner was one of five key managers of organized crime cash
flows in the United States.
As this series has noted in previous reports, Meyer Lansky was a pioneer of
sexual blackmail operations and was deeply connected to both U.S.
intelligence and Israel's Mossad. Furthermore, many members of the so-called
Mega Group, which Wexner co-founded, had direct ties to the Lansky crime
syndicate.
Marc Rich's Pardon and Israel's "Leverage" over Clinton
Another shadowy figure with connections to the Mega Group, Mossad, U.S.
intelligence and organized crime is the "fugitive financier" Marc Rich,
whose pardon during the last days of the Clinton White House is both
well-known and still mired in controversy years after the fact.
Marc Rich was a commodities trader and hedge fund manager best known for
founding the commodity trading and mining giant Glencore and for doing
business with numerous dictatorships, often in violation of sanctions. He
worked particularly closely with Israel and, according to Haaretz:
In the years after the 1973 Yom Kippur War and the ensuing global Arab oil
embargo, a period when nobody wanted to sell oil to Israel, for almost 20
years Rich was the main source of the country's oil and energy needs."
It was that trading on Israel's behalf that would ultimately lead to Rich
being charged in 1983 for violating the U.S. oil embargo on Iran by selling
Iranian oil to Israel. Rich was also charged with tax evasion, wire fraud,
racketeering and several other crimes.
Haaretz also noted that Rich's businesses were "a source of funding for
secret financial arrangements" and that "his worldwide offices, according to
several reliable sources, frequently served Mossad agents, with his
consent." Rich had more direct ties to the Mossad as well. For instance, his
foundation - the Rich Foundation - was run by the former Mossad agent Avner
Azulay. Rich was also friendly with prominent Israel politicians, including
former Prime Ministers Menachem Begin and Ehud Barak, and was a frequent
provider of "services" for Israeli intelligence, services he freely
volunteered.
Marc Rich Jeffrey Epstein
Marc Rich, right, is pictured with Israel's Shimon Peres in a photo from
Mark Daneil Ammann's "The King of Oil."
According to Rich's biographer, Daniel Ammann, Rich also fed information to
U.S. intelligence but declined to give specifics. "He did not want to tell
with whom he cooperated within the U.S. authorities or which branch of the
U.S. government he supplied with intelligence," Ammann said in an interview
with the Daily Beast.
One clue as to the nature of Rich's relationship to U.S. intelligence is his
apparent ties to BCCI. "The BCCI Affair" report mentions Rich as a person to
investigate in relation to the bank and states:
BCCI lending to Rich in the 1980s amounted to tens of millions of dollars.
Moreover, Rich's commodities firms were used by BCCI in connection with
BCCI's involv[ement] in U.S. guarantee programs through the Department of
Agriculture. The nature and extent of Rich's relationship with BCCI requires
further investigation."
Rich was also deeply tied to the Mega Group, as he was one of the main
donors to the Birthright Israel charity along with Mega Group co-founder
Charles Bronfman and Mega Group member Michael Steinhardt. Steinhardt was
particularly close to Rich, first meeting the commodities trader in the
1970s and then managing $3 million for Rich, Rich's then-wife Denise, and
Rich's father-in-law from the early 1980s to the mid-1990s through his hedge
fund. In the late 1990s, Steinhardt would enlist other Mega Group members,
such as Edgar Bronfman, in the effort to settle the criminal charges against
Rich, which eventually came to pass with Clinton's controversial pardon in
2001. Steinhardt claimed to have come up with the idea of a presidential
pardon for Rich in late 2000.
Rich's pardon was controversial for several reasons, and many mainstream
outlets asserted that it "reeked of payoff." As the New York Post noted in
2016, in the run-up to the presidential pardon the financier's ex-wife
Denise had donated $450,000 to the fledgling Clinton Library and "over $1
million to Democratic campaigns in the Clinton era." In addition, Rich had
hired high-powered lawyers with links to powerful individuals in both the
Democratic and Republican parties as well as the Clinton White House,
including Jack Quinn, who has previously served as general counsel to the
Clinton administration and as former chief of staff to Vice President Al
Gore.
However, per Clinton's own words and other supporting evidence, the main
reason behind the Rich pardon was the heavy lobbying from Israeli
intelligence, Israeli politicians and members of the Mega Group like
Steinhardt, with the donations from Denise Rich and Quinn's access to the
president likely sweetening the deal.
Among the most ardent lobbyists for Rich's pardon were then-Israeli Prime
Minister Ehud Barak, former Prime Minister Shimon Peres, then-Mayor of
Jerusalem Ehud Olmert, then-former Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami and
former Director of the Mossad Shabtai Shavit. According to Haaretz, Barak
was so adamant that Clinton pardon Marc Rich that he was heard shouting at
the president on at least one occasion. Former adviser to Barak, Eldad
Yaniv, claimed that Barak had shouted that the pardon was "important . Not
only from the financial aspect, but also because he helped the Mossad in
more than one instance."
The Israel lobbying effort had considerable help from Mega Group member
Michael Steinhardt as well as Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League
(ADL), which was at the time heavily funded by Mega Group members, including
Ronald Lauder and Edgar Bronfman.
There has been speculation for years that Clinton's decision to pardon Rich
may have been the result of "leverage" or blackmail that Israel had acquired
on the then-president's activities. As was noted in Part III of this report,
the Mossad-linked "Mega" spy scandal broke in 1997, whereby Israeli
intelligence had been targeting Clinton's effort to broker a peace agreement
between Israel and Palestine and had sought to go to "Mega," likely a
reference to the Mega Group, to obtain a sensitive document.
In addition, Israel is known to have acquired phone conversations between
Clinton and Monica Lewinsky before their affair was made public. Author
Daniel Halper - relying on on-the-record interviews with former officials
and hundreds of pages of documents compiled in the event that Lewinsky took
legal action against Clinton - determined that Benjamin Netanyahu told
Clinton that he had obtained recordings of the sexually-tinged phone
conversations during the Wye Plantation talks between Israel and Palestine
in 1998. Netanyahu attempted to use this information to get Clinton to
pardon convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard. Clinton considered pardoning
Pollard but decided against it after CIA Director George Tenet threatened to
resign if the pardon was given.
Investigative journalist and author Gordon Thomas had made similar claims
years prior and asserted that the Mossad had obtained some 30 hours of
phone-sex conversations between Lewinsky and Clinton and used them as
leverage. In addition, a report in Insight magazine in May 2000 claimed that
Israeli intelligence had "penetrated four White House telephone lines and
was able to relay real-time conversations on those lines from a remote site
outside the White House directly to Israel for listening and recording."
Those phone taps apparently went well beyond the White House, as revealed by
a December 2001 investigative report by Carl Cameron for FOX News. According
to Cameron's report:
[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 of
St. Louis that was connected directly to Israel.
[I]nvestigators are looking into whether the owner of the T1 line had a
'real time' capacity to intercept phone calls from both the White House and
other government offices around Washington, and sustained the line for some
time, sources said. Sources familiar with the investigation say FBI agents
on the case sought an arrest warrant for the St. Louis employee but
[Clinton] Justice Department officials quashed it."
According to journalist Chris Ketcham:
[Both Amdocs and Verint Inc. (formerly Comverse Infosys)] are based in
Israel - having arisen to prominence from that country's cornering of the
information technology market - and are heavily funded by the Israeli
government, with connections to the Israeli military and Israeli
intelligence.
The companies' operations, sources suggest, have been infiltrated by
freelance spies exploiting encrypted trapdoors in Verint/Amdocs technology
and gathering data on Americans for transfer to Israeli intelligence and
other willing customers (particularly organized crime)."
Given the extent of phone tapping of the U.S. government by Israeli
intelligence-linked companies and Netanyahu's previous use of intercepted
phone calls to pressure Clinton to pardon Jonathan Pollard, it is entirely
reasonable to speculate that some other trove of intercepted communications
could have been used to push Clinton to pardon Rich in the final hours of
his presidency.
Also notable is the fact that several figures who heavily lobbied Clinton
over the Rich pardon had ties to Epstein, who also had ties to Israeli
intelligence and Israeli intelligence-linked tech companies, as discussed in
Part III of this series. For example, Ehud Barak, a close friend and
business associate of Epstein, and Shimon Peres, who introduced Barak to
Epstein, were the major players in convincing Clinton to pardon Marc Rich.
Furthermore, as will be shown in a subsequent section of this report,
Jeffrey Epstein had developed ties with the Clinton administration beginning
in 1993 and those ties expanded, particularly in 1996, when Epstein's
intelligence-linked sexual blackmail operation was underway. Clinton would
later fly on Epstein's infamous private jet, nicknamed the "Lolita Express,"
and Epstein would later donate to the Clinton Foundation and claim to have
played a key role in the creation of the Clinton Global Initiative.
In addition to the role of figures close to Epstein in securing Rich's
pardon, Epstein himself appeared to share some level of connection with
Rich's former business partners. For instance, Felix Posen - who ran Rich's
London operations for years and whom Forbes described as "the architect of
Rich's immensely profitable but suddenly very controversial business with
the Soviet Union" - appears in Epstein's book of contacts. In addition,
Epstein's offshore structured investment vehicle (SIV), Liquid Funding, has
the same attorney and director as several Glencore entities: Alex Erskine of
the law firm Appleby.
The significance of that connection, however, is unclear, given that Erskine
was connected to a total of 274 offshore entities at the time of the
"Paradise Papers" leak in 2014. Catherine Austin Fitts told MintPress that
it could suggest that Epstein's Liquid Funding - 40 percent of which had
been owned by Bear Stearns, and which may have received a "secret" bail-out
from the Federal Reserve - is part of the same shadow economy "syndicate" as
Glencore.
This possibility merits further investigation, given that Glencore is
partially owned by British financier Nathaniel Rothschild, whose father,
Jacob Rothschild, is on the board of advisers of Genie Energy, which
includes Michael Steinhardt as well as several alleged associates of
Epstein, such as Bill Richardson and Larry Summers. In addition, Nathaniel
Rothschild's cousin by marriage, Lynn Forester de Rothschild, is a long-time
associate of Jeffrey Epstein with considerable ties to the New York City
"Roy Cohn machine." Marc Rich had long-standing ties to the Rothschild
family, going back to the early 1970s when he began commodity trading at
Philipp Brothers.
Lynn Forester de Rothschild's surprising interest in Epstein
After Epstein's arrests first in 2007 and then again last month, numerous
media reports emerged detailing the links between Epstein and Clinton, with
most asserting that they had met not long after Clinton left office in 2001
and, as recently mentioned, issued the controversial pardon of Marc Rich.
Those reports claimed that the Epstein-Clinton relationship had been
facilitated by Epstein's long-time girlfriend and alleged madam Ghislaine
Maxwell. However, documents obtained from the Clinton presidential library
have revealed that the ties between Epstein and Clinton date back years
earlier and were facilitated by powerful individuals who have largely evaded
scrutiny in connection with the Epstein case.
One major player who has been largely overlooked in bringing Epstein and the
Clintons together is Lynn Forester de Rothschild. Notably, Forester de
Rothschild has long been connected to neoconservative Reagan era officials -
the Lewis Rosenstiel/Roy Cohn network described in Parts 1 and 2 of this
series, as well as the Mega Group, which was detailed in Part 3 of this
series.
Lynn Forester de Rothschild became involved in the world of Democratic Party
politics in the late 1970s when she worked on the 1976 campaign of hawkish
Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY) alongside now-notorious
neoconservatives like Elliott Abrams, who would go on to play an important
role in the Iran-Contra affair during the Reagan era and later serve in the
State Department under Trump. She was also introduced to her second husband,
Evelyn de Rothschild, by Henry Kissinger at a Bilderberg conference. Several
of the individuals connected to the Mega Group and the Mossad-linked media
mogul Robert Maxwell - including Mark Palmer, Max Fisher and John Lehman -
were one-time aides or advisers to Henry Kissinger.
Before marrying into the Rothschild family in 2000, Lynn had previously been
married to Andrew Stein, a major figure in New York Democratic politics,
with whom she had two sons. Andrew's brother, James Finkelstein, married
Cathy Frank, the granddaughter of Lewis Rosenstiel, the mob-linked
businessman who ran a sexual blackmail operation exploiting underage boys,
as was discussed in Part 1 of this series. Rosenstiel's protege Roy Cohn was
the lawyer for Cathy Frank and James Finkelstein and it was at their behest
that Cohn attempted to trick a nearly comatose Rosenstiel to into naming
Cohn, Frank and Finkelstein the executors and trustees of his estate, valued
at $75 million (more than $334 million in today's dollars).
According to the New Yorker, Lynn Forester de Rothschild requested
"financial help" from none other than Jeffrey Epstein in 1993 during her
divorce from Andrew Stein.
As far as Forester de Rothschild's ties to the Mega Group go, she is
currently on the board of directors of Estee Lauder companies, which was
founded and is still owned by the family of Ronald Lauder - a member of the
Mega Group, a former Reagan official, a family friend of Roy Cohn, and the
alleged source of Jeffrey Epstein's now-infamous Austrian passport. In
addition, Forester de Rothschild also partnered with Matthew Bronfman - son
of Mega Group member Edgar Bronfman and grandson of Samuel Bronfman, who had
close ties to Meyer Lansky - in creating the investment advisory firm
Bronfman E.L. Rothschild LP.
It is unclear when Lynn Forester de Rothschild first met Jeffrey Epstein,
but she was one of his leading advocates and had the ear of then-President
Bill Clinton in the early 1990s, speaking to Clinton specifically about
Epstein during her "fifteen seconds of access" with the president and also
introducing Epstein to lawyer Alan Dershowitz in 1996.
Clinton Rothschild
Living History by Hilary Clinton Book Party Hosted Lynn Forester and Evelyn
De Rothschild pose with Bill and Hilary Clinton at the Kensington Palace in
London. Photo | Alan Davidson
Forester de Rothschild is a long-time associate of the Clintons and has been
a major donor to both Bill and Hillary Clinton since 1992. Their ties were
so close that Forester de Rothschild spent the first night of her honeymoon
at the Lincoln Bedroom in the White House while Clinton was president.
Furthermore, a leaked email between Forester de Rothschild and Hillary
Clinton saw Clinton request "penance" from Forester de Rothschild for asking
Tony Blair to accompany Clinton on official business while she was secretary
of state, preventing Blair from making a planned social visit to Forester de
Rothschild's home in Aspen, Colorado. Humbly requesting forgiveness is not
something Hillary Clinton is known for, given that her former bodyguard once
said she could "make Richard Nixon look like Mahatma Gandhi."
In 1995, Forester de Rothschild, then a member of Clinton's National
Information Infrastructure Advisory Council, wrote the following to
then-President Clinton:
Dear Mr. President: It was a pleasure to see you recently at Senator
Kennedy's house. There was too much to discuss and too little time. Using my
fifteen seconds of access to discuss Jeffrey Epstein and currency
stabilization, I neglected to talk to you about a topic near and dear to my
heart. Namely, affirmative action and the future."
Forester de Rothschild then states that she had been asked to prepare a memo
on behalf of George Stephanopoulos, former Clinton communications director
and currently a broadcast journalist with ABC News. Stephanopoulos attended
a dinner party hosted by Epstein at his now infamous Manhattan townhouse in
2010 after Epstein's release from prison for soliciting sex from a minor.
While it is unknown what Forester de Rothschild discussed with Clinton
regarding Epstein and currency stabilization, a potential lead may lie in
the links of both Forester de Rothschild and Epstein to Deutsche Bank.
Journalist Vicky Ward reported in 2003 that Epstein boasted of "skill at
playing the currency markets 'with very large sums of money'" and he appears
to have done much of this through his long-standing relationship with
Deutsche Bank.
The New York Times reported last month:
[Epstein] appears to have been doing business and trading currencies through
Deutsche Bank until just a few months ago, according to two people familiar
with his business activities. But as the possibility of federal charges
loomed, the bank ended its client relationship with Mr. Epstein. It is not
clear what the value of those accounts was at the time they were closed."
In the case of Forester de Rothschild, she served as an advisor to the
Deutsche Bank Microfinance Consortium for several years and is currently a
board member of the Alfred Herrhausen Society of International Dialogue of
Deutsche Bank.
The same year that Forester de Rothschild made the above-noted comments to
Bill Clinton about Jeffrey Epstein, Epstein attended another Clinton
fundraiser, hosted by Ron Perelman at his personal home, that was very
exclusive, as the guest list included only 14 people.
The evolution of the Epstein-Clinton relationship
Even before Forester de Rothschild's 1995 meeting with Clinton, Epstein was
already an established Clinton donor. Records obtained by the Daily Beast
revealed that Epstein had donated $10,000 to the White House Historical
Association and attended a Clinton donor reception alongside Ghislaine
Maxwell as early as 1993.
The Daily Beast suggests that Bill Clinton's long-time friend from his
college days, A. Paul Prosperi, was the facilitator of that early
relationship, as Prosperi had a decades-long relationship with Epstein and
even visited Epstein at least 20 times while he was in jail in 2008.
Prosperi was intimately involved with the 1993 fundraiser for the White
House Historical Association noted above.
The relationship between Epstein and Clinton would continue well after
Clinton left office in 2001, a fact well-documented by Bill Clinton's
now-infamous flights on Epstein's (recently sold) private jet - often
referred to as the "Lolita Express." Clinton flew on the Lolita Express no
less than 26 times in the early 2000s according to flight logs. On some of
those flights, Clinton was accompanied by his Secret Service detail but he
was unaccompanied on other flights.
Arguably the most infamous flight taken by Clinton on Epstein's jet was a
lengthy trip to Africa, where actor Kevin Spacey, who has also been accused
of raping minors; Ghislaine Maxwell; and Ron Burkle, a billionaire friend of
Clinton's who has been accused of soliciting the services of "super-high-end
call girls," were also present. Clinton specifically requested that Epstein
make his jet available for the trip well in advance, with Doug Band as the
intermediary. President Donald Trump, also a friend of Epstein, is said to
have flown on the plane but appears only once on flight logs.
In addition to flights, an Epstein-run foundation gave $25,000 to the
Clinton Foundation according to the 2006 filing tax return of Epstein's
former charity, the C.O.U.Q. Foundation. Notably, Epstein's lawyers, Alan
Dershowitz among them, claimed in 2007 that Epstein had been "part of the
original group that conceived the Clinton Global Initiative, which is
described as a project 'bringing together a community of global leaders to
devise and implement innovative solutions to some of the world's most
pressing challenges.'"
Before the associations between Epstein and the Clinton White House in the
early 1990s were made public, Ghislaine Maxwell was thought to have been the
bridge between Epstein and the Clinton family because of her close
relationship to the family. However, the close relationship between Maxwell
and the Clintons appears to have developed in the 2000s, with Politico
reporting that it began after Bill Clinton left office. Clinton associate
Doug Band was also reportedly friendly to Maxwell, appearing at an exclusive
dinner party she hosted at her residence in New York in 2005. Maxwell later
became particularly close to Chelsea Clinton, vacationing with Chelsea in
2009 and attending her wedding a year later. Maxwell was also associated
with the Clinton Global Initiative at least up until 2013.
Other close Clinton associates and officials in the early 1990s also had
notable relationships with Jeffrey Epstein, including Mark Middleton, who
was a special assistant to Clinton Chief of Staff Mack McClarty beginning in
1993, and met with Epstein on at least three occasions in the White House
during the early Clinton years. In addition, White House social secretary
under Clinton, Ann Stock, appears in Epstein's "little black book" as does
Doug Band, once referred to by New York Magazine as "Bill Clinton's bag
carrier, body man, fixer, and all-purpose gatekeeper." Band also appears
several times in the flight logs of Epstein's private jet.
Epstein was also associated with both Bill Richardson, former ambassador to
the UN and former secretary of energy under Clinton, and Larry Summers,
secretary of the treasury under Clinton. Both Richardson and Summers sit on
the advisory board of controversial energy company Genie Energy, alongside
CIA director under Clinton, James Woolsey; Roy Cohn associate and media
mogul, Rupert Murdoch; Mega Group member Michael Steinhardt; and Lord Jacob
Rothschild. Genie Energy is controversial primarily for its exclusive rights
to drill in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Bill Richardson also has
ties to Lynn Forester de Rothschild as she was on the Secretary of Energy's
Advisory Board while Richardson was secretary of energy.
Bill Richardson appears to be among the Clinton era officials closest to
Jeffrey Epstein, having personally visited Epstein's New Mexico ranch and
been the recipient of Epstein donations of $50,000 to his 2002 and 2006
gubernatorial campaigns. Richardson gave Epstein's donation in 2006 to
charity after allegations against Epstein were made public. Richardson was
also accused in recently released court documents of engaging in sex with
Epstein's underage victims, an allegation that he has denied.
The Jeffrey Epstein scandal: A post-mortem
In 1990, Danny Casolaro began his fateful one-year investigation of "the
Octopus," an investigation that played no small role in his untimely death.
Shortly after he was found lifeless in a hotel bathtub, Casolaro's friend
Lynn Knowles was threatened and told the following: "What Danny Casolaro was
investigating is a business.Anyone who asks too many questions will end up
dead."
Nearly thirty years later, that same "Octopus" and its "business" remains
with us and has become ever more wrapped around the levers of power -
particularly in the worlds of government, finance and intelligence.
This MintPress investigative series has endeavored to show the nature of
this network and how the world of "the Octopus" is the same world in which
Jeffrey Epstein and his predecessors - Craig Spence, Edwin Wilson and Roy
Cohn among them - operated and profited. It is a world where all that
matters is the constant drive to accumulate ever more wealth and ever more
power and to keep the racket going at all costs.
While this network has long been able to ensure its success through the use
of sexual blackmail, often acquired by the unconscionable exploitation of
children, it has also been a driving force behind many other ills that
plague our world and it goes far beyond human and child trafficking. Indeed,
many of the figures in this same sordid web have played a major role in the
illicit drug and weapons trades, the expansion of for-profit prisons, and
the endless wars that have claimed an untold number of lives across the
world, all the while enriching many of these same individuals.
There is no denying that such a network is "too big to fail." Yet, fail it
must - otherwise this decades-long cycle of abuse, murder and fraud will
continue unabated, destroying and taking even more lives in the process.
Though this report marks the end of MintPress' series on Jeffrey Epstein and
the network of which he was part, this is not the end of MintPress' work on
the case. Several spin-offs - investigating the real reasons why Epstein was
arrested in July; his connections to money laundering and the intelligence
"black budget;" and his network's connections to child trafficking in other
countries, particularly the U.K. - are already in the works and will appear
in Mint Press over the next few weeks.
Correction | This report incorrectly stated that both Donald Trump and Bill
Clinton had visited Jeffrey Epstein's island. Victims of Epstein have
reported seeing Clinton at the island, but not Donald Trump. MintPress
regrets the error.
