The Rest Is Classified - 116. Epstein Files Declassified: Was He A Spy? (Ep 1)

Episode Date: January 12, 2026

Was disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein working undercover for an intelligence agency? And, if so, which one? Listen as David and Gordon begin a two-part series on Epstein’s alleged espionage connections. ------------------- Make someone a Declassified Club Member this year – go deeper into the world of espionage with exclusive Q&As, interviews with top intelligence insiders, regular livestreams, ad-free listening, early access to episodes and live show tickets, and weekly deep dives into original spy stories. Members also get curated reading lists, special book discounts, prize draws, and access to our private chat community. Just go to ⁠⁠therestisclassified.com⁠ or join on Apple Podcasts. ------------------- EXCLUSIVE NordVPN Deal ➼ ⁠⁠https://nordvpn.com/restisclassified⁠⁠ Try it risk-free now with a 30-day money-back guarantee  ------------------- Email: ⁠[e-mail] ⁠ Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@restisclassified Video Editor: Oli Oakley Social Producer: Emma Jackson Producer: Becki Hills Head of History: Dom Johnson Exec Producer: Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

For exclusive interviews, bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, first look at live show tickets, a weekly newsletter, and discounted books. Join the Declassified Club at the Rest Is Classified.com. This episode is sponsored by HP. Most people are not counter-espionage experts, but that won't stop them getting targeted by cybercriminals seeking to extract their secrets. HP understands that approximately four in 10 UK businesses have reported cyber breaches in the past 12 months alone. That's why HP business laptops,

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Find out more about how HP can protect your business at HP.com forward slash classified. Podcast listeners benefit from a 10% discount on all business PCs, printers and accessories using the code TRIC-10, Terms and Conditions Apply. Well, welcome to The Rest is Classified. I'm David McCloskey. And I'm Goulden Carrara. And we are starting Gordon A two-part series looking at a single question, which I think is very elevated in the public consciousness right now, as we'll talk about.

And that question is, was financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein working for or with an intelligence service? And I think we should say right up front a little bit about why we're going to look at this. And I think the answer at least, I don't know how the story has resonated in the UK, but in the U.S., the overall kind of Epstein affair or drama has taken on. It has an enormous gravitational pole here at the States. I can anecdotally say that at every single book event and talk I did this fall, during the Q&A, I got a question about Epstein. Wow. And his connection to Mossad, to CIA, whatever, just every single time, there was a question. It's having real political repercussions, kind of creating some cracks in the MAGA movement.

And, I mean, even this past week with the events in Venezuela, we should say, You know, we're recording this episode just a few days after Nicholas Madura was apprehended in Operation Absolute Resolve. In some ways, the operation in Venezuela may have been an attempt by the Trump administration to sort of distract the public from not releasing aspects of the Epstein files. It's wild, isn't that? An idea, by the way, that I think neither of us give any credence to, but we mention it because any sort of global event, there's a, an effort, I think, to sort of tie it to Epstein. The story has really outsized importance right now in the American political consciousness. I don't know how it's going or how it's sort of seen in the UK. Oh, it's certainly played big over here, obviously relating partly to the royal family.

The prince formerly known as Andrew, who certainly had a social, you know, acquaintance with Jeffrey Epstein at various points, although he's obviously denied any role in criminality. But that question about intelligence services and the links to Epstein is one that's kind of moved, I suppose, from the fringe to the mainstream. And I think it is one, which is important to look at in a kind of sensible rest is classified way, rather than in a conspiratorial way. And what we're not going to do, though, we should say as well, is we're not going into the whole bigger drama of who is or isn't implicated in the files, whose names are in there, how they knew Jeffrey Epstein, we're not going into the connections with any royals or with President Trump.

You know, we're not going deep into some of the questions about whether he killed himself or the kind of legal criminal dimensions to this. Instead, I think we're taking a kind of specific lens, which is to look at that question you posed about whether it's plausible, as some have claimed, that there are links between Jeffrey Epstein and the intelligence world. That's right, Gordon. I mean, I guess it's also probably wise up front to offer this sort of disclaimer or to flag that very often the theories and, dare I say, conspiracy theories about Epstein's connections to intelligence services often drift into, or frankly are motivated by just blatant anti-Semitism. That obviously is not a stance that we're going to be taking on

the rest is classified and we're going to be looking at this question with a very kind of sober and fact-based lens to try to understand whether there's any truth to the idea that he may have had connections to a foreign intelligence service. I think it is also worth saying that we're not going to be focusing deeply on the victims and their stories, but I think it is important to acknowledge up front at this point the terrible suffering that some people endured at the hands of Jeffrey Epstein and some of those around him, which is truly awful. And horrific and some of those details really are horrific. So even though we're not going to be kind of delving deep into those stories, we just think it's important to kind of acknowledge

how awful it is and some of the things that happened around him and to people, you know, who were used and abused by him really were. Gordon, with the table set and the caveats out there, maybe it's helpful. We just start with a brief setup of who Epstein was, a bit of his biography. This will not be comprehensive, but we've, we've crafted this with an emphasis saw the sort of experiences and connections and assets he would potentially have brought to an intelligence service as we're sort of talking about the man. So Jeffrey Epstein, born in Brooklyn, raised the middle class Jewish family. In the mid-70s, he begins working as a teacher at the Dalton School, which is an elite private school in Manhattan. In the 70s and 80s,

Epstein transitions to work in finance. He works briefly at Bear Stearns. for establishing his own firm, which he liked to claim managed money exclusively for billionaires. And the money, surprise, surprise, is one piece of this story that has fed a lot of the conspiracy theories around Jeffrey Epstein and his connection to the spy world. Yeah, and we should say, I think we'll come back a little bit later to the precise source and scale of his wealth, because there is some mystery around that. And that is part of, you know, some of those claims about intelligence services links. But, yeah, we'll come back to that. The money and the fact he's managing wealth for incredibly wealthy people means he's incredibly well connected.

And he builds on those connections, doesn't he? Not just in the financial world, but across politics, business, you know, even academia and entertainment and wider sectors. Yeah, he is very, very well networked and connected. And I think the most important of those connections in that period, was a billionaire named Les Wexner, who Jeffrey Epstein met in the mid-1980s. Now, at the time, Epstein is a relatively obscure financier. Wexner is one of the wealthiest businessmen in the U.S.

He's the founder of Elbrans, which is the retail conglomerate that includes Victoria's Secret, Bath & Body Works, and a lot of other chains. Now, Epstein quickly becomes deeply embedded in Wexner's, kind of personal and financial affairs. We should say that the accounts of this, you know, have been confirmed by Wexner himself. So this is not about any of Epstein's criminality. This is about his sort of financial relationship and personal relationship with Epstein. Yeah, which Wexner has said, I think, regrets. But they're kind of confirmed that he have those relationships and that he did hand over some of that influence to Jeffrey Epstein.

Yeah, which included, you know, giving Epstein broad power of attorney, right, giving him control over large portions of Wexner's finances. Things when you look back on it seem, you know, almost, almost inexplicable. In the early 1990s, Epstein means another key character in this story, Galeigh Maxwell. Yes, and Gilein Maxwell is also going to be an important part of our story. And again, we're going to come back to her a bit later because she's a fascinating character and her own right and her father is a very interesting figure. But she becomes the kind of girlfriend, doesn't she, of Jeffrey Epstein at this point in the 1990s?

and a close, confident, and companion from then onwards. Yes, and the relationship, you know, it blends personal intimacy, business, eventually criminal coordination. Glead Maxwell is and will become Epstein's principal accomplice. She's responsible for recruiting, grooming, and facilitating, you know, the abuse and trafficking of underage girls. She's also, she's living in Epstein's residences. She's managing aspects of his household. She's acting as a gatekeeper for him. So, you know, she's a very important and influential figure in his life.

And she is the daughter of Robert Maxwell, who has his own role to play in the story and will look in more depth at him in our next episode. That's right, because he's a really interesting figure and who certainly did have ties to the intelligence world. And I think that is also part of the theory and the claim about Jeffrey Epstein is that link, if you like, through Robert Maxwell, through the Jelaine and into Jelain. Jeffrey Epstein. But that friendship which starts around 1991, which is when Robert Maxwell the father dies, Jelaine is moving to New York and she becomes friends with Jeffrey Epstein, and also connects him to more people in turn as Jeffrey Epstein builds up these kind of these circles of connections with business leaders, scientists, academics and the like. With the help of Elaine Maxwell and his own connection, Jeffrey Epstein builds a pretty

wild roster of social and financial connections. There's a long list of influential politicians, business leaders, scientists, academics. I mean, connections to Bill Clinton, to Donald Trump, to Alan Dershowitz, to Prince Formulidota's Andrew, to Woody Allen, to Ehud Barak, and should say Ahad Barak, the former Prime Minister of Israel. So it's a long and varied list of social connections, right? Again, we're not making any statement here about the links that those people have to the criminality, right? Yeah, exactly. And they've denied any role in the criminality, but, you know, it's acknowledged that they knew him. This was also in these kind of glamorous properties, I guess he had. And he had this Manhattan townhouse, which I think was sometimes said to be the largest private

residence in New York. I mean, that seems extraordinary. And, you know, residents in Florida, ranches and private island of his own in the Virgin Islands. And his own Boeing 727, which he could fly people around on, you know, his own yacht. So he's got a world which also entices a lot of people into it thanks to this very, very fancy lifestyle. Julie Kay Brown has written a great book, I think, about Epstein and his criminality, a little bit of armchair psychology here, but, you know, thinks that Epstein's probably a sociopath. He's got a sexual obsession with underage girls. And in 2008, Epstein pleaded guilty in Florida state court to charges relating to soliciting prostitution. from a minor. Here, he receives what has become a very controversial plea deal that resulted in an

18-month sentence, of which he served about 13 months, most of it under work release privileges. So he's actually not in jail for a lot of that time. And it's essentially a non-prosecution agreement that Epstein's lawyers secretly cut with federal prosecutors. At the time, it takes the the gas out of an ongoing FBI probe into whether they're more victims and other powerful people who took part in Epstein's sex crimes. The deal required that Epstein fleet guilty did two prostitution charges in a state court and agreed to serve those 13 months. It essentially makes the case that Epstein is only paying for sex when he actually stood accused of sexually abusing minors. So he kind of could get out of this with his reputation still intact.

Semi, semi-intact. Or at least it could have been worse. I think that's the way to put it. But then he gets arrested again, doesn't he, in July 2019, which is significant and almost brings his story to an end, I guess. That's right. So he's arrested in the summer of 2019. He's charged in federal court with sex trafficking and a conspiracy to traffic biners based

on allegations involving dozens of underage girls over many years. He pleads not guilty. But then on August 10th of 2019, Epstein is found dead in his jail cell. in New York City. It is ruled a suicide by hanging, though, of course, as listeners are doubtless aware, that has sparked widespread controversy investigations and conspiracy theories about whether he actually killed himself. So that gives us a pretty useful summary, doesn't it, of the man and his life. But let's now just set up some of the theory, and we should say it is a theory, and a claim that he might have had intelligence connections.

And we should say that in many cases the facts are pretty loose, aren't they? The claim is he was acting as an asset or a fixer, some way working for an intelligence agency. And I think it's worth breaking it down into a few different points, isn't it, David? One is, you know, did he in his early days receive financial support? Was he being backed by an intelligence agency? Does that explain the kind of the wealth and the access? stories about, you know, whether he was a fixer for intelligence agencies who brokered deals in the kind of security arena. There are claims that perhaps he had some kind of protection so that when you

go back to that 2008 prosecution of sorts that happened in the plea deal, was that the result of some kind of protectional deal from intelligence agency? I think, you know, there's also the way he acted and behaved, isn't there? There's elements of the way he moved around the world, which again, have made people go, that looks like a spy. One of the most cited alleged facts in this case is that the prosecution or the non-prosecution deal that was struck in 2008, that the sort of legal leniency came about because Epstein was sort of vaguely connected to intelligence services.

And so he was let off the hook. That's a kind of central claim. I think as part of this theory, and interestingly enough, the official that was said to have claimed this as since said, I didn't say anything of the sort. And so there's a whole, I mean, we were talking, you know, as we were putting this together, there's 30 minutes of very dry content we could do on sort of the back and forth there. But the point is, is that whether they're facts or not, they get injected into the discourse around Epstein and then build this set of claims, right?

Not facts, but claims that he's got this kind of connection to the intelligence world. Yeah, and that that explains events, yeah. One of the interesting tidbits of just kind of things that seem a little bit tradecrafty. Prosecutors have discovered that Epstein in the 80s had an Austrian passport in a fake name, which he used to enter several countries back in the 80s, including the UK, Spain and Saudi Arabia. It has his photograph, very clearly his photograph, but lists his name as Marius Forteldney. So again, it's like that doesn't prove he's working for an intelligence service. There's ways to get fake passports.

But again, it kind of feels spy adjacent. It does. Spire adjacent is exactly the word. And, you know, that fits him with this idea that he was able to move across borders, you know, in his private jet. get to interesting places with little friction, which again fits into this theory that, you know, he had kind of protection or support from somewhere. So a lot of that is very, very kind of vague and suggestive rather than, you know, hard fact. But I guess one of the central claims is that his value, if you like, as an intelligence asset, is the claim, is precisely because of

his use of those residences for some kind of compromat or collection of blackmail information against some of those influential people. And I think that's one of the ways in which it's argued that he might or could have been a spy. So maybe there, Gordon, having established some of the claims related to Epstein and his alleged links to the spy world, let's take a break when we come back,

we'll explore whether he was collecting that compramat on the rich and powerful. We'll see you after the break. Hello, it's Gordon here from The Rest is Classified. A quick message for American listeners to let you know the news that my new book, The Spy in the Archive, is now finally available to buy in the US. It is the story of Vasily Mitrochin, the man who was the archivist of the KGB, but who went on to steal its deepest secrets. But after shockingly being turned away by the CIA,

he ends up in the hands of MI6 and exfultrated from Russia in a wild, dangerous, almost comic operation. It's also the story of how his attempts to destroy the KGB ultimately failed and how that paved the way for the rise of Vladimir Putin and the return of the KGB men who now rule Russia. That's The Spy in the Archive, available from All Good Bookshops stateside now. Welcome back. We are looking at this question of whether Jeffrey Epstein had connections to the intelligence world or for an intelligence service. And I think Gordon, the most prominent theory in part because it's the most salacious is this idea that Epstein was running essentially a blackmail ring to gather, Compromot on. influential, you know, politicians and business leaders. I think it makes sense to maybe start here because that compromat theory is the one that I think

has, it's generated, you know, an incredible amount of interest. Maybe we should say compromise. It's a Russian term. Yeah. The central claim, you know, is that, is that Epstein is supplying young women to sort of elite targets and then is, you know, filming them in compromising acts and passing that along to whoever his handlers might be. In some ways, you can see why this is potentially a more plausible part of the theory,

because there is historical precedent for this. And we know about compromise, as you said, it's a Russian term. Collecting compromising material against influential people is well established in lots of countries, but you know, we think of it particularly in Russia. I mean, the diplomats in Moscow, famously, if you go back to the 60s, you had a British ambassador honey trapped by his maid. You had a conservative MP, Anthony Courtney, who was honey trapped by a tourist guide while he was in Moscow. French officials and ambassadors being kind of honey trapped. And in one case, one actually, who took their own life after they had compromising material collected on them by, in that case, the KGB, who then basically tried to blackmail.

them and say, you know, you work for us or this material will be exposed and it will be the end of your career. So it is an established kind of technique, isn't it? Another piece of information that gives on the face of it some maybe fuel for this theory is that Epstein's residences, I think, in particular the residence in Manhattan and his island were really wired up for audio and video, it's believed. And so, I mean, we'll come back to that, I think, detail later, but that gives some energy to this idea. idea that he could have been taping people for the purposes of collecting blackmail. Yeah, and I think it's that fact of having a kind of an established location being wired

and then being used for collection, intelligence, collection of blackmail. Again, has a kind of historical precedent. I mean, the most interesting one came to my mind was something actually that the Nazis ran in the late 30s, early 40s, which was known as Salon Kitty. And this was a high-class brothel in this case, which the Nazi secret service used to entrap foreign diplomats and their own elite. And it was run by this, it's a really interesting story. It's run by a woman called Kitty Schmidt, Katerina Schmidt,

who'd worked as a governess and a piano teacher and briefly lived in England, and then ends up running a brothel in Berlin. And then once the Nazis take over and they're kind of aggressively trying to clamp down on immoral activity, as they would put it, she realized she's in trouble, she's trying to get some of the money smuggled out to England by some of the girls. But then she gets arrested by the Gestapo and made an offer. She can't refuse, who tells her, basically, you're going to keep running this brothel,

but you're going to run it as an intelligence gathering operation for the Nazis. And it was run out of a four-story building on a quiet residential street and quite a fancy quarter of Berlin. You can see almost a parallel there, can't you, to Epstein's Manhattan House, this place where people would go. Technically, it was a boarding house, discreet, luxurious place, chandeliers, silk, grand piano, German elites, foreign diplomats all entertained there by women and lots of booze. But it's thought that maybe as many as 50 microphones were installed throughout the property

in the bedrooms and in these salons, concealed in chandeliers behind headboards, in the upholstery of the armchairs. And all of that led into a cellar where technicians worked and shifts to record everything on wax discs. And there were just tons of conversations. that they were recording. Most of it, it seems to be, was gathering intelligence about what people were saying, rather than necessarily compromising, though, with the fact that they'd gone to this brothel. I think it was pretty successful in its own way as an intelligence operation. One key piece of this, which I think stands in stark contrast to the Epstein story,

is that there was a special selection of women in this brothel who were, I mean, essentially, trained almost as intelligence collectors. They were, you know, this kind of special book of 20 additional women who were shown only to clients who used a secret password, which I come from, your German is better than mine, Gordon. Is it Rotenberg? I come from Rothenberg. Rotenberg, I think. And that's the password.

And these women were trained in languages and to elicit information and conversation from people to understand military, sensitive military information. if they overheard it. Also, trained in techniques to steer conversations towards sensitive topics without arousing suspicion. So how do you elicit information from somebody? So that's very different with the Epstein story. It is. It is. But in this case, because you essentially have these women trained as intelligence collectors to go after diplomats and military officials who happen into this brothel. Yeah, you get people like the son-in-law of Mussolini, the Italian leader, who's also the Italian foreign minister, who kind of comes in and he speaks and is quite critical of Hitler.

You also get a lot of people from the Nazi elite, including gerbils, who kind of turn up at this place. And, you know, it allows the people running the operation to find out what they really think. And there's even claims that this was, you know, from the guy running it, that it provided valuable information about Spain, for instance, which had a real impact. I mean, you know, it was kind of slightly unclear how big an impact it had. And it only lasted a few years at the early part of the war. Though it does seem to have kind of continued after the war and Kitty herself kept her secrets. taking them to a grave. But it's an interesting example of what you can do with a premises used in this way as a kind of glamorous location for the elite to come into and for it to be

wired. But it was more about eliciting information through conversation that it was through compromise in the sense of video and audio blackmail, which I think is the allegation with Jeffrey Epstein. We do know that these kinds of operations are things that intelligence agencies, you know, have done in the past. I mean, there are other places where they've wired premises. I remember visiting a Hotel Viru in Tallinn in Estonia. And it's the, it's really interesting. You can go there now. And if you ask nicely at the hotel, they'll take you up to the top floor for a tour. This was the tourist hotel during the days of the Soviet Union, where any visiting foreigners would be taken. And when the KGB left Estonia in a hurry, they basically

left all their kits behind. So if you go to the top floor, hotel. You can see the way in which they'd wired the top floor of the hotel with audio and video equipment and with bugging devices all over, again, to collect information, including compromising information from people who are in it. So there's definitely this precedent here for intelligence agencies to run this kind of operation. It also recalled to be Gordon just this nexus of a brothel and intelligence services, the series we did on MK Ultra where the agency had bankrolled essentially a brothel out in, first in New York and then out in San Francisco for the purposes of observing, not for Copphermont, but for the purposes of observing the effects

of LSD. But I guess, Gordon, I mean, this brings us to Epstein. Epstein. What are the similarities between Salon Kitty and the facts of Jeffrey Epstein's life and times? Yeah. I think there's some similarities and some differences. I mean, I think one of the similarities.

is it does look like Jeffrey Epstein's place was wired for audio and video in a modern way compared to Salon Kitting. A lot of that comes from a testimony of a victim, Maria Farmer, who spoke to CBS in 2019, who says she was assaulted by Epstein in the mid-1990s. She was also, she says, given a tour of this house. And, you know, she says Epstein told her it contained hidden pinhole cameras. And that was what he called a media room, which was stacked full of TV monitors with feeds from across the house, including. bedrooms and bathrooms. Maria Farmer says she was told by Epstein that everything was recorded. She said at one point to him, what do you do with this? And he said, I keep it. I keep everything in my safe. Now, we don't actually know what happened to any of those recordings. I mean, the FBI has seized multiple computers and hard drives and other media from Epstein's property. But it's not really clear what might have happened to any of that kind of material. That's the bit which, if you like, feels similar. The kind of collection of compromat by someone.

And we talked about some of the rich and powerful people who'd have gone through these properties. The kind of gossip he'd got off people, let alone the kind of potentially blackmailable material would have been extraordinary. It does explain things. But I think one of the differences, as we said, is that in this case, the women were young women and were victims.

You know, this was not a brothel. This was a place in which underage girls were being abused. and certainly did not have any kind of role in it in the way that the Salon Kitty story talks about and who suffered some, as we said, pretty awful things. So there's a parallel there, but it's not quite exact, is it? Well, most of the time the claims or the theory that Epstein is running this blackmail operation, it ladders into Israel's foreign intelligence service, the Mossad. That is frequently the intelligence service that's listed as working or handling Epstein.

this case. We should say, I mean, the former Israeli Prime Minister, Daph Daly Bennett, has flatly denied claims of Israeli involvement in Epstein's crimes. And he said the accusation that Epstein somehow worked for Israel or the Mossad, running a blackmail ring is categorically and totally false. He wrote on X, Epstein's conduct, both the criminal and the merely despicable had nothing whatsoever to do with the Mossad or the state of Israel. And I have to say, I really don't think an intel agency. would set up an operation or work within an operation that is very much involved in the trafficking

of underage girls, at least not the central intelligence agency nor the Mossad. I think the risk-reward, I mean, even if you put aside the ethics and morality of that, let's just look at this from Mossad standpoint. The risk-reward calculus is really off. I mean, Mossad, they do conduct espionage operations at the U.S. They sometimes work against Americans or try to recruit Americans. But this would just have incredibly devastating consequences, not just in the security relationship between Mossad and CIA, but up to the political level in a way that I don't, I just don't see the value at the end of the day.

To the Israelis, I also think it's worth mention. at this point, there's no facts, right? I mean, there's no fact connecting Mossad to any of this, period. Yeah. I mean, we'll come back, I think, a bit more maybe in the next episode to some of the reasons why these claims about Massad. But I think the risk-reward calculus is a really interesting one when it comes to this operation. Because, I mean, yes, Israel has once or twice, hasn't it, has spied on the US, you know, Jonathan Pollard and places like that. Yeah. Who was a kind of US, I think, you know, naval officer, wasn't it, in intelligence, passed quite useful intelligence, the Israelis, and it's become a big core celebrity, but actually a lot of fallout

from that one very narrow case. But if you imagine, you know, doing an operation like this, effectively against the US, with someone that high profile and with that much risk of exposure, I mean, that is a real stretch, even before you get into the morality, as you said, of using underage girls and what's involved in it. So, yeah, I think, you know, that's where the kind of The leap comes with that. I mean, to me, the fact that he's wired these premises, it's plausible. Jeffrey Epstein was doing it for his own weird pleasure. Why do we need to layer on an intelligence service behind this when we know that Epstein is a, you know,

sort of pedophiliac, sex addict control freak who, I mean, right there, you have the sort of necessary and sufficient conditions for someone to maintain an audio-visual surveillance apparatus in their properties. Of his property. Exactly. So he can be doing it for his own pleasure. I mean, you could also buy the idea, or I could plausibly put out the idea he was doing it to collect compromat for himself, you know, maybe not compromise, but influence leverage over these people for his own benefit and for his own protection, you know, which is different from doing it for another state. He's almost in that world running almost a small private compromat stroke intelligence, gathering operation himself. And that I find

more plausible than doing it on behalf of a kind of an operation from another state? It is worth, I suppose, thinking, I mean, the risk side of it is very apparent. What is the reward side? What are you really getting? I mean, I guess the idea in this theory would have to be that you're not just getting some secrets, right? Or gossip, right? that you're getting control of people, I think, is where this is where this theory goes, is that it's an effort to get control of a massive number of sort of, you know, business and academic and political leaders through this, through this compromise. And then exert influence.

And rather than just collecting gossip, you know, rather than the Salon Kitty model. That's right. And again, I guess it's just worth saying, again, there's just no evidence, right? I mean, there's just no credible evidence we were putting this together to say, okay, the Mossad was involved in this. It might make sense at this point. Just to, you know, step back and think about how would a spy service look at Epstein? From your perspective, you know, you know, this world, how do you think an, you know, intelligent service would, you know, would see him? Gordon, it's interesting in preparing for this.

I actually put this question to a whole bunch of former CIA case officers. And I basically said, you know, would Epstein prior to that first sort of non-prosecution agreement or that indictment, I guess, down in Florida in 2008, would Epstein prior to that have been an interesting target for an intelligence agency? And I'll read some of the replies because they had a very similar flavor. And again, this is just a sample. Yes, he would be easy to manipulate and also clearly has no morals. those are the type we look for. A very honest, intelligent. Next quote, definitely

would have been a prime target. Next quote. 100%. He has intel on people. He has direct access to targets of interest. Last one. Hell yeah. Access and info on movers and shakers.

All right. So there were more mixed responses in some cases, but the reluctance to kind of go all in and say, yeah, he would have been a target of interest prior to the actual indictment. The reluctance came from two sources. One, mentioning Epstein as a CIA contact, right, not that of another foreign intelligence

service, which that would have sort of legal complications, potential for jurisdictional overlap with the FBI, right? So there's a host of different reasons why the CIA might have been more reluctant than Mossad, but also a lot of the sort of mixed responses came for people who were blending criminality into the mix. And I think it's safe to say that after he had been, you know, on his kind of work release program down in Florida in 2008, that plenty of Intel services would have soured on him, right, as having that record. They would have been interested in him. Right. You would have been interested in, in particular prior to 2008. It really begs this

very interesting question, which is, okay, if the answer is yes, how would, you? How would would an intelligence agency use someone like Epstein and for what purpose? So maybe there with that question hanging, that very interesting question hanging, about the potential at least value of someone like Epstein. Let's stop. And next time we'll delve into that a bit deeper and look at some of the further evidence and some of those claims regarding the fact and the idea, at least, that he might have had some kind of relationship with the spywark.

And don't forget listeners if you want to get that episode now. Go and join the Declassified Club at the Rest is classified.com. You get early access. You get a whole host of other goodies and you get to hear me and Gordon yammering at you for one more episode a week with our bonus content that we put out on Fridays. So we hope to sign up and we'll see you next time. See you next time.