Loading summary
Transcript19 lines
- [00:01]
Tara Palmeri
Running a business comes with a lot of what ifs, but luckily, there's a simple answer to Shopify. It's the commerce platform behind millions of businesses, including Thrive Cosmetics and Momofuku. And it'll help you with everything you need. From website design and marketing to boosting sales and expanding operations. Shopify can get the job done and make your dream a reality. Turn those what ifs into Sign up for your $1 per month trial@shopify.com specialoffer my focus has always been on the survivors of Jeffrey Epstein. They're the constant. They're the ones who suffered, the ones who are ignored. But to understand why, to understand that injustice, you have to understand the shadowy way that Epstein operated, the way that he slipped in and out of justice over and over again. Was it just his powerful connections and money? Or was there something more? Did he offer the government something that money can't buy? And that's what's also brought me back to this haunting conversation that I had in 2020 for broken Jeffrey Epstein. A podcast that I hosted and reported it was with a lawyer for the victims, Brad Edwards. He described a warning that he received from Epstein's bodyguard about how deeply Epstein was protected.
- [01:24]
Brad Edwards
You don't know who you're messing with and you need to be really careful. You are on Jeffrey's radar and somebody that Jeffrey pays a lot of attention to, which is not good. You don't want to be on Jeffrey's radar. And I said, well, give me some examples. I mean, who am I messing with?
- [01:41]
Tara Palmeri
And that's when he looked across the table and whispered three letters, CIA. Brad was recalling a conversation with Zinoviev, a Russian born UFC fighter who was the type of guy who could be a bouncer at a really rough bar. He was hired by Epstein when he was worried that a father for one of his countless victims might kill him. But what Brad described next from Zinoviev about his trip to the CIA headquarters for Epstein may explain how Epstein was playing both sides of the law all along and that's why he was treated as untouchable.
- [02:23]
Brad Edwards
He said, listen, when he was in jail, one of the first things that I had to do was go to Langley to the CIA and sit in these classes for a week with CIA. I was the only private citizen there at the end, the assistant director or director, I don't remember which, gave me a book with a handwritten note in it that I was told not to read and go deliver it to Jeffrey in jail. Everybody there knew who he was. He's an important person. And I said, is he in the CIA? He said, I don't know.
- [02:55]
Tara Palmeri
I'm a reporter. So I've obviously tried to reach Zinoviev many times. I have a cell phone number. I've texted him, I've called him. No luck. Brad Edwards also wrote about this shocking interaction in his own book, Relentless Pursuit, My Fight for the Victims of Jeffrey Epstein. I also reached out to a former colleague from the New York Post, Amel Nassel, who interviewed Zinoviev for New York magazine. I wanted to know if Zinoviev was a reliable source, and he said he was very reliable. In fact, Mistel, like a true investigative reporter, has been on the Epstein story since before his 2019 arrest. I also tried the CIA multiple times. I first reached their press office on July 21st. We traded emails, phone calls, but they wouldn't give me a definitive answer on whether Zenovia visited their headquarters in Langley in 2008, while Epstein was serving just 13 months in county jail with work release for two counts of soliciting a minor for prostitution. I even emailed them again on Monday to let them know that I was going to publication on my substack, the Red Letter, which you can find@tara palmeri.com you can support my independent journalism there and get all of my exclusives like this straight to your inbox. I just couldn't make sense of it all. What was Jeffrey Epstein and what was his relationship with the CIA that he would get a binder and a note while he was in prison? So I reached out to a source, a former CIA officer of 28 years, John Cipher. He worked in clandestine services abroad, working on really serious stuff during the Cold War. He was doubtful that Epstein was an actual source or agent because he wasn't foreign and he had run foreign sources and agents as a source spy. Cipher said that the CIA could never compel Epstein to talk or give them information because he was an American, and they don't do that with Americans. But he could be what's called a hyper fixer, someone with elite connections who can open doors anywhere in the world, and he could volunteer that information to them.
- [04:59]
John Cipher
You're looking for someone who can help you collect information on what's going on overseas.
- [05:03]
Tara Palmeri
There's.
- [05:04]
John Cipher
There's those kind of people who know everybody. And so if you can go to someone who knows everybody and say, hey, listen, I'm looking to get information on, you know, what companies might be doing work in on this area and this place, you know, I mean, so someone who can be of assistance that can help make those, those connections. Because that, I mean, intelligence, like most anything else, is networking, right? And so it's personal relationships. It's relationships is networking. So a hyper fixture is someone who can find ways to connect you with who you need to be connected.
- [05:36]
Tara Palmeri
That would obviously provide immense value to the intelligence communities. He also explained to me how people always seem to get spy terminology all wrong.
- [05:45]
John Cipher
So some definitions for us.
- [05:47]
Tara Palmeri
Okay, for sure.
- [05:49]
John Cipher
One of the words that ends up messing people up is the whole agent word. And so FBI, FBI employees are called FBI agents and they are a law enforcement organization. And they often have sources, you know, snitches, people who are, provide information for them. But in a law enforcement sense, CIA, we're called CIA officers. We use the term though agents for our sources. And so if I recruit, let's make this up. An Iranian nuclear official who's providing us information on secret information on their Iranian, on the Iranian nuclear program. That is my agent. That's a controlled source or asset is another word that I meet secretly, that, that provides us that information, that intelligence we need to understand Iranian, Iranian nuclear program. So we call ourselves officers. Our agents are our sources, or spies, it might be a better word. You know, they're spying against their country, they're spying against their regime to provide the United States something.
- [06:46]
Tara Palmeri
He did say that the CIA could have absolutely given me a clear cut answer on whether Zenoviev was in their visitor log, because they keep track of everybody who enters that headquarters in Langley, Virginia.
- [07:01]
John Cipher
There's a record of everybody who comes on that compound. So don't, don't believe them if they say there isn't.
- [07:06]
Tara Palmeri
So how does this all connect to Epstein's infamous 2008 sweetheart deal? His lawyer, Alan Dershowitz, denied that he was an agent for the CIA. He said this, quote, I would have gone to the government and said, he's an intelligence agent. Don't prosecute him. But isn't that exactly what happened? Despite facing as many as 60 federal charges involving potentially a thousand victims, that's the FBI's own estimate. Epstein walked, the charges were dropped, and he pleaded to just two minor state offenses for so long. There is a highly redacted document in the FBI's vault, the files on Epstein from September 18, 2008, that states, quote, epstein has also provided information to the FBI as agreed upon. And people have cited that as an example of his intertwined relationship with the intelligence services like the FBI. A former FBI source said that may have just been information that he needed to provide to get his assets returned after forfeiture. I have studied Epstein very closely for many, many years, ever since his arrest back in 2019. I have a podcast, broken Jeffrey Epstein, that I hosted and reported. There's power. The Maxwell's another one. I wrote a piece for political magazine called the Women who Enable Jeffrey Epstein. I have been on this. I've stayed close to, to the survivors, Virginia Giuffre. And I have zero doubt that Epstein was a con man. And I think he worked both sides of the law from the very beginning. There's a precedent in this country for leveraging criminals. Look at boss and mob boss Whitey Bulger, who murdered people while feeding the FBI intel on the Italian Mafia. Epstein could have been doing a lighter version of the same thing, trading in gossip on high net worth individuals rather than missile systems, or both. I think he was likely running a classic KGB honeypot scheme. He would create lavish, controlled settings like his private island, Little St James on the Virgin Islands, where powerful men could feel safe with young girls hoping that they were of age. He had homes under constant surveillance, and after a weekend, he would ask these men to invest with him. Maybe he would put some of those investments abroad in places that are hard to reach. And what could they say? He knew their secrets and he could ruin them with a single phone call or at least cause a lot of social embarrassment. But maybe Epstein wasn't just blackmailing the powerful. He was also likely feeding the information to the other side, law enforcement. He has a history of it. As far back as the early 1990s, he was cooperating with prosecutors in the case against his own former former mentor, Stephen Hoffenberg, who was running one of the largest Ponzi schemes in history to the tune of over $450 million. According to Vicki Ward's reporting for Rolling Stone. She interviewed Hoffenberg in jail, by the way. She said that he had spoken to prosecutors at least three times during the case and that if they had actually gone to trial, the results could have been a lot worse for Epstein. Hoffenberg sued Epstein, blaming him for being responsible for the scheme. Epstein loved to brag about his connections to powerful people. Princes, presidents, prime ministers and dictators. People like Bill Clinton, Mohammed bin Salman, African dictators. And according to Ward, he even bragged to journalists that he was advising Vladimir Putin when Brad Edwards was trying to overturn Epstein's 2008 sweetheart deal. Shortly before his arrest, Epstein told him. He warned him this.
- [10:47]
Brad Edwards
I'm never going to be prosecuted. You know, Trump was my friend. My close friend. And you know Barr is his boy.
- [10:55]
Tara Palmeri
A Wall Street Journal Freedom of Information request revealed that Epstein's calendar included meetings with Bill Burns when he was the Deputy Secretary of State. He then went on to be the director of the CIA during the Biden administration. The two agencies work very closely together. A CIA spokesperson said at the time to the New York Times that their meeting was only about business opportunities. But of course, with the Epstein story, there's always more. Glenn Maxwell's father, Robert Maxwell, is widely believed to have worked for the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad. He mysteriously died off the side of his yacht, the Lady Galen, after it was found that he was stealing from the pensioners at his newspaper, the Daily Mirror. Clearly he was in a compromise position and an asset like that could be exploited, so he needed to be offed. Nonetheless, he was treated like a national treasure in Israel, buried at the Mount of Olives reserved for kings, princes, prime ministers and presidents. A source told me that Epstein's business partner at The Modeling Agency, MC2 Model Management, Jean Luc Brunel, who died mysteriously in a French prison hanging himself, was. Was also tied to Mossad. I know it's a lot to digest and so many journalists have tried to get down to the bottom of it, including me, and we may never know the full truth. Was it just his money? Was it his A list legal team? Ken Starr, Jay Lefkowitz, Alan Dershowitz? Or was it simply that he was just too valuable to the government and that his crimes against children, they just didn't matter?
- [12:27]
John Cipher
It's very dangerous now that we've created intelligence services, Department of Justice and these other places that are so hyper partisan, you can't you. We've lost faith in their ability to do their jobs professionally.
- [12:40]
Tara Palmeri
What's clear is that the government valued something in Jeffrey Epstein and that her survivors they didn't matter. I want to thank everyone who has been following this channel. Please feel free to leave your questions and comments below. I'll try to answer as many as I can. I want to thank my team producer, Eric Abenate, editor Dan Schiffmacher, Adam Stewart who handles my thumbnails, Sarah Carney and Abby Baker who do my social media and Luke Radle on research and quizzes. If you like my reporting, please subscribe. Rate Share this with all of your friends. You can go to tarapaulmary.com and sign up for my newsletter, the Red Letter, where you can get more of this reporting and reporting like this straight to your inbox. You can also support my independent journalism that way by becoming a paid subscriber.