Apophenia
“Epstein was found semi-conscious with marks on his neck, sources said and investigators are trying to piece together exactly what happened.”
NBC New York; 7-24-2019
With so much interest focused upon Robert Mueller's testimony this week, little attention has been paid to the case of Jeff Epstein. However, there was some high-quality reporting in the New York Times that attempted to identify where Epstein's income came from. However, what might be more important is a ppoint made by William Cohen of Vanity Fair on this topic.
Cohen recently questioned not the quality of the Times' reporting, but rather, if some of the information being released is actually an attempt to distract people from understanding the true history of Epstein's adult life. By coincidence, perhaps, I was recently talking to an old friend about this very topic.
In order to understand why Epstein got the earlier deal with the federal government, one needs to go back even before he was hired to teach at the private Dalton School. Most people are now aware that Attorney General Barr's father hired Epstein there, despite Jeff's not having a college degree or anything resembling teaching experience. But who was Barr's father?
Donald Barr was teaching English at Columbia when he was picked to work for the Office of Strategic Services in the WW2 era. The OSS was an earlier version of the CIA, set up similar to the English intelligence agency M16. The OSS tapped the services of many of the oil industry's private intelligence operations – it is important to understand that large corporations have always had their own intelligence groups – but also followed the British example of hiring people who had cover that did not hint at intelligence connections. University professors and journalists were among these groups.
I'm not able to determine if Donald Barr continued with government intelligence after the war, but there is reason to believe that he was connected to private groups. As such, he apparently was looking to identify potential assets, and this likely included Epstein. That seems far more likely than Barr's mistaking Epstein as a potential diamond in the rough for high school education.
Both Barr and Epstein left the Dalton School relatively soon after Jeff began his teaching career. But before leaving, Epstein had become acquainted with Alan Greenberg, as has been reported. And thus followed Epstein's career with Wall Street, although the exact nature of his “work” for various clients is ill-defined. One of those clients in particular is of interest.
In 1981, Epstein opened his own consulting company. In the years that followed, he traveled frequently to the Middle East. The recent raid on his New York City residence resulted in, among other things, a fake passport where, under a false name, Epstein identified as living in Saudi Arabia. I suppose any of us could easily get a fake passport to travel to the Middle East …..if we had the right connections.
Among his clients, in fact, was a Saudi businessman named Adnan Khashoggi. And Khashoggi, as many here will recall, was in charge of moving American weapons in Israel to Iran in the Iran-Contra scandal. This was when the Reagan administration decided to sidestep the law in an operation that is generally believed to have been run by vice president George H. W. Bush.
This wasn't the first time that segments of the executive office coordinated with unethical and disgusting people. In the late 1950s, for example, vice president Nixon was involved in the CIA's coordinating with organized crime in an effort to kill Castro. There was an unholy alliance in Boston between an FBI agent and sociopath Whitey Bulger. The list is long.
Those private interests that were funding Epstein knew he was a dangerous sex offender. He was able to appeal to the perverted appetites of business and government leaders around the globe. Those funding him knew that J. Edgar Hoover, while at the FBI, kept extensive records of hundreds of American's sexual habits. And used them to blackmail all sorts of people. And almost certainly shared some of their information with some in American intelligence.
A lot has been made of then-federal prosecutor Alex Acosta's mysterious dealings with Epstein's legal team, and failure to prosecute a sex offender preying on children. It's possible Acosta did it all on his own, but extremely unlikely. It is almost certain that he would not have made such a controversial decision without first consulting with the Attorney General.
At this time, the AG was Alberto Gonzales who is best remembered for his advocacy for warrantless surveillance and torture. It should not be forgotten that he also been in charge of the firing of some U.S. Attorneys who refused to indict and prosecute White House “enemies,” in the scandal that eventually led to his resignation.
It's unclear if Gonzales discussed the Epstein issue with George W. Bush. Although VP Cheney had been castrated by the Plame scandal by then, there is evidence that he was still the crucial player in terms of dealing in the moral gutter.
Some ugly interests with secrets to hide will continue to try to manipulate the public's perception of the Epstein case history. They will continue to point to Bill Clinton, despite the total lack of evidence that Clinton was ever aware of Epstein's sex offenses until his first arrest. But the truth is that this is a republican and corporate scandal.
This brings me to a final point: do not believe the story about how and why Trump ended his friendship with Epstein on face value. Trump could have been made aware of Epstein's recording powerful people's sexual habits for Wall Street interests. And that's closely related to why the reported Moscow tape so upset Trump.
= new reply since forum marked as read
...an awful lot of winnowing takes place before candidates get to us, so I no longer get too invested early on.
Bill ultimately charmed me, made me tsk-tsk over his bimbo eruptions (what a phrase), charmed me again, then disappointed the hell out of me for his lack of self-control. Seriously though, as far as I could tell all the women he went after were ready, willing, able, of legal age, and in at least one case, flashed her panties at him. So, consenting adults and all that. Certainly not worth an impeachment, and certainly Hillary's business what she chooses to do about it.
I got to shake his hand when he was POTUS. (I was active in local politics at the time, so was given VIP tickets close to the stage at an outdoor event -- he was at the rich end of town fundraising and came by the community college to give a speech.) I only mention this because for the first and only time in my life I got jolted with the electricity of charisma when I shook someone's hand. The event was so crowded that the crowd-surge lifted me off my feet and up against the chainlink fence, where he was working the line, so it was scarcely an intimate moment of personal introduction. He came back in my direction, so I stuck my hand out again -- yeah, still there.
I left that event thinking: Holy crap, no wonder women of a susceptible nature fall over backwards when they meet him personally. Take your hand, murmur how pleased to meet you, look deep in your eyes... 
I felt sick in the pit of my stomach when DU's gossip-mill recently linked his name to Epstein's. Please, God, no. After all Hillary and Chelsea have been through, not this. And after all of those who still fondly think of him as the Big Dog have gone through... So anyway, thanks for your bit of solace, H2O Man.
So you chew over the implications of a word, do you? Bill Clinton is known to chew his food, so is Hillary. I think the connection is obvious!
