LONDON — Jason Pack has spent his career advising Western governments and corporations on the Middle East, running a Libya oil-and-gas consulting firm, and briefing United Nations bureaucrats. Now a fellow at RUSI, the storied British defense and security think tank, his career has sometimes crossed paths with actors in the Western intelligence alliance.

That background provides solid fundamentals for understanding the world Jeffrey Epstein operated in — and the known knowns and known unknowns surrounding the recent US government disclosures. While the disclosures have led to new revelations, such as Bloomberg’s scoop on a DEA investigation into allegations that Epstein laundered money for organized crime while trafficking in synthetic narcotics and Eastern European women, Epstein’s sex crimes were an open secret covered up for too long, according to Pack.

“There has been a cover-up both at the governmental level and at the media level,” Pack told The Bureau podcast. “The media one outrages me even more.”

Pack’s explanation of Epstein’s origin story and accumulation of power is logical and grounded in the available evidence. A secular, middle-class kid from Long Island, Epstein got a teaching job at Dalton, the elite Manhattan private school, and used those connections to land at Bear Stearns. From Bear Stearns, he reached powerful clients. From powerful clients, he reached billionaires. At each rung, he found leverage — insider trading networks, offshore tax schemes, then something no amount of money could buy.

“He was a provider of non-monetary assets,” Pack said. “You can’t buy underage women. You can’t buy tax evasion. You can’t purchase, ‘I want to be invited to this party where there are models and media elites.’ That instantly crosses over into intelligence.”

The sex trafficking, Pack argues, was not primarily about gratification. It was about domination and psychological manipulation — a tool Epstein wielded over the powerful the same way he wielded it over teenagers. Pack calls it a revision of his own theory of power. Lord Acton’s famous formulation — power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely — may have it backwards. “What if people sought power because they were already twisted?”

On why Epstein was never reined in, Pack offered a framework he calls “too big to fail.” Once Epstein held compromising material on enough Democratic donors and Republican elites alike, prosecution became politically suicidal. “Biden couldn’t release information on Epstein because so many Democratic donors would be made to look bad,” he said. Neither political party could deploy the material as a weapon without the collateral damage destroying its own base.

Intelligence agencies, Pack argues, had their own calculus. He pointed to “The Rest is Classified” podcast’s reporting that CIA director William Burns helped rent an apartment for Epstein’s brother, at which young women were brought to associates — suggesting Epstein represented a collection asset too valuable to burn. “Every side thought it was beneficial for the guy to exist so long as they were in on it.”

Jason Pack hosts the Disorder Podcast, available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

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What Money Couldn't Buy: The Intelligence Logic Behind the Epstein Cover-Up