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By\u00a0Elizabeth Vos The special followed on the heels of Netflix\u2019s release of \u201cJeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich<\/a>,\u201d a mini-series that draws on a book of the same name by James Patterson.<\/p>\n Promotional material for \u201cWho Killed Jeffery Epstein?\u201d promises that: \u00a0\u201c\u2026 exclusive interviews and in-depth investigations reveal new clues about his seedy underworld, privileged life and controversial death. The three-hour special looks to answer the questions surrounding the death of this enigmatic figure.\u201d\u00a0 Netflix billed its series this way: \u201cStories from survivors fuel this docuseries examining how convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein used his wealth and power to carry out his abuses.\u201d<\/p>\n Neither documentary however deals at all with Epstein\u2019s suspected ties to the world of intelligence.<\/p>\n Absent from both are Maxwell\u2019s reported links to Israeli intelligence\u00a0through her father, Robert Maxwell<\/a>,<\/u>\u00a0former owner of\u00a0The New York Daily<\/em>\u00a0News<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0The Mirror<\/em>\u00a0newspaper in London. Maxwell essentially received a state funeral in Israel and was buried on the Mount of Olives after he mysteriously fell off his yacht in 1991 in the Atlantic Ocean.<\/p>\n Ari Ben-Menashe. (From his memoir, \u201cProfits of War\u201d)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n In an interview with\u00a0Consortium News<\/em><\/strong>, former Israeli intelligence officer Ari Ben-Menashe said Epstein did not work with Mossad. \u201cMilitary intelligence was who he was working with,\u201d said Ben-Menashe. \u201cBig difference,\u201d he said. \u201cHe never worked with Mossad, and Robert Maxwell never did, either. It was military intelligence.\u201d<\/p>\n Ben-Menashe claimed Robert Maxwell was Epstein\u2019s \u201ctie over. Robert Maxwell was the conduit [in the Iran-Contra scandal]. The financial conduit.\u201d<\/p>\n In \u201cEpstein: Dead Men Tell No Tales<\/a>,\u201d a book published in December, Ben-Menashe is quoted as saying he worked with Robert Maxwell who introduced his daughter and Epstein to Israeli intelligence, after which they engaged in a blackmail operation for Israel. \u201c[Epstein] was taking photos of politicians f**king fourteen-year-old girls \u2014 if you want to get it straight. They [Epstein and Maxwell] would just blackmail people, they would just blackmail people like that,\u201d he says in the book.<\/p>\n Ben-Menashe also claims that Robert Maxwell had attempted to blackmail Mossad. \u201cHe really lost his compass once he started playing these games with people,\u201d he told\u00a0Consortium News.<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Prince Andrew<\/strong><\/p>\n Prince Andrew in a carriage procession, June 2012.\u00a0(Carfax2, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n About a week after both documentaries premiered, the U.S. Department of Justice approached the U.K.\u2019s Home Office requesting that Prince Andrew answer questions in the U.K. over his links to Epstein,\u00a0The Mirror<\/em><\/a>\u00a0reported.\u00a0 If he refuses, the paper said, U.S. prosecutors would ask that he be brought to a British court to respond to their questions. Andrew\u2019s lawyers say he three times agreed to be questioned by U.S. authorities, but it is not known if Andrew attached conditions, such as immunity.<\/p>\n Both documentaries mention Prince Andrew in the context of allegations about him from one of Epstein\u2019s victims, Virginia Roberts Giuffre. But neither film goes into much detail about Andrew\u2019s role in the Epstein operation, which Ben-Menashe said, was to lure powerful men into Epstein\u2019s orbit.<\/p>\n \u201cOne of the things that are really key to this is that he [Epstein] befriended a very useful idiot called Prince Andrew,\u201d Ben-Menashe told\u00a0CN<\/em><\/strong>. \u201cNow what really happened was that this Prince Andrew, with nothing to do, was having fun with this, and Prince Andrew brings in the fancy people, invites them to play golf with him, and then takes them out for fun. Then Epstein shows up, and these people are basically blackmailed.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe only person that can talk, that probably knows quite a bit, is the great prince,\u201d Ben-Menashe said. \u201cHe was with him [Epstein] all the time. I really don\u2019t know what his future is going to be like, either.\u201d<\/p>\n Epstein\u2019s death was\u00a0ruled<\/a>\u00a0a \u201csuicide\u201d by New York\u2019s chief medical examiner. A pathologist hired by Epstein\u2019s brother\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0it was homicide.<\/p>\n An Angry Call<\/strong><\/p>\n Just before Ben-Menashe spoke to\u00a0Consortium News\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>on Monday, he said he had received an angry telephone call from Israel\u2019s Channel 13 television station.<\/p>\n \u201cThey called me, and they went wild: \u2018What, you believe Israel would use little girls? You are saying that? You are insulting the nation, you are making us anathema around the world.\u2019 I said, \u2018The truth is the truth.\u2019 And Jeffrey Epstein\u2019s story is something that nobody wanted to hear. He was working with the Israelis, he was working with Maxwell,\u201d Ben-Menashe said.<\/p>\n He added: \u201cIt\u2019s a very bad story, and I can see why the Israelis are so concerned about it.\u00a0 I believe [Channel 13] were expressing anger, and I believe this was a message. I don\u2019t like messages like that\u2026 it has to do with the timing and these stories coming out about Epstein. They [Israel] are starting to become anathema to the world, this adds to it \u2014 the Epstein story.\u201d<\/p>\n Victims\u2019 Voices<\/strong><\/p>\n The Netflix and Investigation Discovery productions allow survivors to recount their experiences in interviews as well as taped police recordings and focus on the sweetheart plea deal provided to Epstein by former Trump Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta during Acosta\u2019s tenure as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida.<\/p>\n Each series outlines Epstein\u2019s relationships with Wexner, Maxwell, and a variety of elite figures. \u00a0Investigation Discovery focuses on the controversy surrounding Epstein\u2019s death while Netflix\u2019s \u201cFilthy Rich\u201d examines the second attempt to prosecute Epstein in the context of the Me Too movement.<\/p>\n The Netflix series describes the initial investigation of Epstein as it shifted from the state to the federal level, and airs allegations that Florida\u00a0 journalists\u00a0 covering the story were threatened. Netflix also interviews psychologist Dr. Kathryn Stamoulis, a specialist in adolescent sexuality, who gives a description of Epstein\u2019s targeting and grooming of young girls. Epstein survivor Giuffre later describes in the film being groomed to tolerate exploitation and sex trafficking as part of a \u201cderanged family.\u201d<\/p>\n As in\u00a0the Belgian Dutroux case<\/a>, victims alleged that multiple abusers acted in concert with each other, using blackmail to keep each other in line. In both instances, authorities and the media portrayed the abuse as chiefly the product of an aberrant lone predator.<\/p>\n \u201cThis wouldn\u2019t be the only time this happened, but this guy got way over his head,\u201d Ben-Menashe told\u00a0Consortium News<\/em><\/strong>. \u201cHe probably was blackmailing too many people, too many powerful people. And then, this is a story the Israelis wouldn\u2019t want to come out, anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n Thriving in Murky Waters<\/strong><\/p>\n Another angle the documentaries did not approach was the environment in which Epstein thrived like an algae bloom in stagnant water, that is, within a long history of\u00a0child trafficking rings linked with intelligence agencies<\/a>, often with the aim of gathering blackmail material. It was within this reality that Epstein appeared to be rendered untouchable.<\/p>\n Omitting the intelligence aspect of Epstein\u2019s history allows the Establishment media to portray his case as a mysterious and unsolvable aberration, rather than perhaps a continuation of business-as-usual amongst those in power.<\/p>\n The glaring refusal to address Epstein\u2019s intelligence involvement becomes\u00a0 clear when Investigation Discovery and Netflix\u2019s programs discuss the role of Acosta in securing Epstein\u2019s \u201csweetheart\u201d plea deal, but do not reference Acosta\u2019s widely reported explanation as to why Acosta agreed to the deal.\u00a0 As reported by\u00a0The Daily Beast<\/em><\/a>, Acosta claimed that he cut the non-prosecution deal because he had been told that \u201cEpstein \u2018belonged to intelligence\u2019 and to leave it alone.\u201d<\/p>\n Independent journalist Whitney Webb has reported on\u00a0Epstein\u2019s many ties with intelligence<\/a>, telling\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>CNLive!<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0in August last year that there is evidence this included with the CIA.<\/p>\n Webb\u00a0spoke about\u00a0<\/a>\u00a0Iran-Contra links to Epstein via his and billionaire Wexner\u2019s efforts to relocate Southern Air Transport (formerly the CIA\u2019s Air America) from Florida to Ohio: \u201cWhat\u2019s significant here is that out of all the airlines in the United States, Wexner and Epstein choose the airline, the only airline that is outed, publicly known at the time, to be a CIA cut-out. Out of all the airlines that exist, that\u2019s the one they go for,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Webb also cited reporting by Nigel Rosser, a British journalist, who wrote in the\u00a0Evening Standard<\/em>\u00a0in 2001 that Epstein claimed he worked for the CIA in the 1990s.<\/p>\n Lip Service<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cJames Patterson, before writing his book on Epstein, \u2018Filthy Rich,\u2019 on which this documentary [by Netflix] is based,\u00a0wrote<\/a>\u00a0a novel [\u2018The President is Missing\u2019] with Bill Clinton , who is of course quite close to the Epstein scandal, so that definitely, in my opinion, raises some eyebrows,\u201d Webb told\u00a0Consortium News.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n \u201cI think that one of the goals of this [Netflix] documentary is to basically imply that Epstein was the head of the operation and that now that he is dead, all of that activity has ceased,\u201d Webb said. \u201cIf they had actually bothered to explore the intelligence angle, in some of the more obvious facts about the case, like Leslie Wexner\u2019s role, for example, it becomes clear that Epstein was really just more of a manager of this type of operation, [and] that these activities continue.\u201d<\/p>\n Webb said a main reason for avoiding discussion of the intelligence angle is that mention of state sponsorship would lead to calls for accountability and open inquiry into a history of sexual blackmail by intelligence agencies. \u201cSo if they had given even superficial treatment of those ties, it would have exposed threads that if anyone had bothered to pull on a little bit, would start to unravel a lot of things that obviously these powerful people and institutions don\u2019t want exposed,\u201d Webb said.<\/p>\n More than nine months since Epstein\u2019s death, no alleged Epstein co-conspirator has been arrested or charged with a crime despite reports of an active criminal investigation of Maxwell (who has disappeared), and multiple\u00a0failed attempts<\/a>\u00a0of alleged Epstein victims to serve her with civil suits.<\/p>\n \u201cThe criminal case against him, and all the evidence that was gathered against him as part of that, will never be made public unless someone else is charged,\u201d said Webb. \u201cSo, the fact that they\u2019re not charging anyone else is quite telling, and the fact that the mainstream media isn\u2019t pushing back against that, I think is telling as well.\u201d<\/p>\n The omissions of major aspects of the Epstein case by the media, specifically its links with the intelligence community, seems to be yet another example of a buffer between justice and those responsible for rendering Epstein untouchable.<\/p>\n Elizabeth Vos is a freelance reporter and co-host of\u00a0CN Live.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>Special to Consortium News<\/em><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/ElizabethVos-100x100.jpg\")
I<\/strong>nvestigation Discovery<\/a>\u00a0premiered\u00a0 a three-hour special, \u201cWho Killed Jeffrey Epstein?\u201d on May 31, the first segment in a three-part series, that\u00a0 focused on Epstein\u2019s August 2019 death in federal custody. The series addresses Epstein\u2019s alleged co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell, his links with billionaire Leslie Wexner, founder of the Victoria Secrets clothing line, and others, as well as the non-prosecution deal he was given.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/aribenmenashe.jpg\")
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Since a number of influential figures were named in a lawsuit filed by Giuffre against Ghislaine Maxwell the day before Epstein was found dead in his federal prison cell in New York, Ben-Menashe said: \u201cI\u2019m starting to think that lawsuit was his death sentence, because people didn\u2019t want to be named. That\u2019s my guess, it\u2019s just a guess. Obviously, somebody decided that he had to go.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/Screen-Shot-2020-06-17-at-10.42.16-AM.png\")
The final section of the fourth episode in Netflix\u2019s miniseries includes a survivor stating that this was not simply an Epstein operation, but an \u201cinternational sex trafficking ring that reached all over the world.\u201d Epstein is described as a \u201cvery small piece in a huge network.\u201d But the documentary goes no further than that.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/9780316362450.jpg\")
Investigation Discovery and Netflix give lip service to Wexner\u2019s ties with Epstein, omitting that Wexner gave Epstein the largest private residence in New York City \u2014 essentially\u00a0for free<\/a>. Investigation Discovery does not mention that the residence was extensively wired with surveillance equipment,\u00a0per Webb<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0The New York Times<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n