Jeffrey Epstein’s Federal Agents for Hire
The most recent Epstein emails disclose ties to DEA, FBI, CIA, and D.A.R.E.
The American Conservative has gained access to more than 20,000 unreleased emails from Jeffrey Epstein’s private Yahoo account. The emails were first leaked to Bloomberg shortly after passwords for Jeffrey Epstein’s email accounts were obtained and published by Deeper States. A slightly modified version of the same set of emails—verified by Bloomberg as authentic—was leaked to the non-profit Distributed Denial of Secrets, which provided TAC with access to the files.
What the most recent cache of emails shows, among other things, is the ease with which elite operators like Epstein routinely hire (or are offered) the services of former federal law enforcement agents and intelligence personnel who maintain close ties to those still employed by the federal government. In addition to purchasing the services of former DOJ officials whose expertise and connections helped secure a sweetheart plea deal, the disclosure also shows that Epstein was able to purchase favor and proximity with officers of the law.
Epstein himself contracted with a private investigation firm run by two former DEA agents to investigate his victims and aid in his legal defense. More than a decade after his plea deal in 2008, Epstein was still being invited to meet-and-greets through the firm with senior federal law enforcement executives including agents and officials from the FBI, DEA, NYPD, and Secret Service.
In the email tranche, Epstein’s longtime fixer and girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell describes being approached by a former CIA asset for hire. And a DHS official is found in the emails soliciting Epstein for a charitable donation to the “U.S. Custom and Border Patrol Explorer’s Post 5101”, a Boy Scouts affiliate overseen by the Department of Homeland Security.
Taken together, the new emails offer an insight into the world of special agents for hire, where the deep ties forged between special agents and intelligence officers serving their country are tapped for the benefit of the rich and powerful who can afford services in an elevated lane of justice reserved for those who operate above the law.
In a July article published in Rolling Stone, multiple FBI sources said that Epstein had hired private investigators to surveil and intimidate FBI agents who were contacted by the West Palm Beach Police Department to investigate Epstein. While the recent tranche does not show further evidence of this allegation, it does shed light on a private firm tied to federal law enforcement surveilling Epstein’s accusers.
Dozens of emails in the recent tranche entail Epstein’s communication with private investigators from the private investigation firm Investigative Management Group, founded by the former DEA agents Robert J. Strang and Ann Hayes. A handful of those emails are dated to April 2006, one month prior to Palm Beach police filing a probable cause affidavit for unlawful sex with minors and sexual abuse.
In one of the emails, Epstein appears to describe one of his victims to aid in surveillance:
In another email, a private investigator from Investigative Management describes surveillance of a victim to try to obtain proof that she is partying.
While Epstein’s messages to his private investigators trail off, luncheon invitations with current and former law enforcement officials from the firm continued up through 2021. Among those event hosts were the former NYPD Commissioner James P. O’Neill, Secret Service special agent Thomas A. Petro, DEA Special Agent James J. Hunt, NYPD Deputy Commissioner for Intelligence and Counterterrorism John Miller, NYC DEA Special Agent in Charge Raymond P. Donovan, the FBI special agent in charge of counterterrorism, Bryan Paarmann, and a former member of the French intelligence service.
In another instance of intelligence connections put up for sale, an email from Ghislaine Maxwell to Epstein details the efforts of one unnamed man to trade off the CIA’s good name. In the email below, Maxwell claims to have met a CIA “operative” who worked with her father Robert Maxwell, a notorious British media magnate and fraudster who was suspected by the British foreign service of being a spy. That “operative,” a term no CIA officer would use, claimed he “could tell, all find all, and reveal all, (for a price)!!”
As POLITICO reported in the 2010s, the CIA has routinely allowed its employees to moonlight for corporate firms, with hedge funds winning out as the top landing spot. Other agencies including the Department of Defense, the National Security Agency, Defense Intelligence Agency, and Office of the Director of National Intelligence have also endorsed the practice to varying degrees. In 2013, Newsweek reported that the financial benefits of working on Wall Street were so great that the CIA was concerned about the number of officers hemorrhaging to the private sector.
In another bizarre exchange documented in the latest email tranche, Epstein agreed to pony up $10,000 dollars for a joint DHS/Boy Scouts of America program called U.S. Customs & Border Protection Explorer Post 5101 Saint Thomas (USCBPE).
According to the back and forth,
The Virgin Islands Police Department Training Staff and Immigration and Customs Enforcement RAC and Special Agents train “Explorers” in Accident Scene, Traffic Stop Neighborhood Watch, Bomb Threat, Shoot Drill, Domestic Violence, Forensic, Inspection, Narcotics, Self Defense, White Collar Crime & Arrest Techniques.
“For the past 14 years, the U.S. Customs & Border Protection Explorer Post 5101 Saint Thomas, (USCBPE) has been a youth organization, registered under the Learning for Life, a division of the Boy Scouts of America career education program, that is developed to help young adults build character, enhance leadership, professionalism, and personal development by promoting integrity, accountability, fairness, service, and pride that is useful in selecting a career in law enforcement,” a DHS employee wrote to Epstein as part of solicitation for program funds. “The Instructors and Advisors have joined together to work hand in hand to encourage positive behavior conducive to promoting productive, law abiding citizens amongst our youths in the community. One of our goals is to have the community realize that the programs will also develop a positive relationship between law enforcement and the youths and citizens of this community.”
The CBP Explorers were not the only youth organization seeking donations from Epstein. For years after Epstein inked his plea deal, the disgraced financier was routinely invited to attend the D.A.R.E fundraising gala in New York by the chairmen Robert J. Strang (former FBI/DEA), Howard Safir (NYPD/DEA/USMS), and the D.A.R.E President Frank Pegueros.
Jeffrey Epstein’s affinity for Israel is now well documented. Emails first reported by Drop Site News show how Epstein helped the celebrity lawyer Alan Dershowitz organize a campaign against the political scientists John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt following their paper on the Israel lobby while simultaneously working with Dershowitz to discredit a teenager who accused him of sexual abuse. The Harvard megadonor Les Wexner, a longtime Epstein associate, also participated in the campaign against Walt through the surrogate David Gergen.
In another illustrative email, Ghislaine Maxwell forwards a complaint from a Davos participant objecting to what they call “the single most anti-Semitic, anti-Israel article” printed in the World Economic Forum’s official magazine at the time, Global Agenda.
“woujld he like me to call mort.. ..2 where are you?” replied Epstein. “Mort” is a likely reference to the Canadian-American billionaire and owner of U.S. News and World Report Mort Zuckerman.
The material reviewed by TAC so far does not suggest that Epstein manipulated or directed intelligence services. What it does reveal is that Epstein was a player in a market for private investigators, technology, and connections that is only on offer for the most powerful and well-financed business people.
What remains notable about the Epstein saga is that even now, with thousands of emails available and reporters combing through them, some of the simplest questions about Epstein remain unanswered: how he acquired his wealth, what role he played in the finances of an international suite of billionaires and power players. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and the House Oversight Committee are currently leading an effort in Congress to subpoena the world’s largest banks, many of which Epstein continued to do business with up until the time of his death.
The post Jeffrey Epstein’s Federal Agents for Hire appeared first on The American Conservative.
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