On December 16th of 2025, the New York Times made an ironclad pronouncement that would withstand the test of time: Jeffrey Epstein had absolutely no connections to “intelligence” agencies—foreign and/or domestic. The Times' grand proclamation was delivered to humanity via an article— “Scams, Schemes, Ruthless Cons: The Untold Story of How Jeffrey Epstein Got Rich.” The article weighs in at nearly 8,500 words and deploys eight Times’ journalists. The Times concludes that Jeffrey Epstein’s wealth was the byproduct of various grifts, but he had no connections to intelligence agencies—foreign and/or domestic.
Let’s Make a Deal
The first media mention of Epstein being affiliated with the CIA was an article, “Andrew's Fixer She's the Daughter of Robert Maxwell and She's Manipulating His Jet set Lifestyle,” published in the United Kingdom’s Evening Standard on January 22, 2001. The article is written by renowned British journalist Nigel Rosser. Though Rosser focuses on Ghislaine Maxwell and the alleged perpetrator formerly known as Prince Andrew, he gave considerable geography to reporting on Epstein. For example, “Epstein has joined Andrew and Ghislaine on five of their breaks together in the past 12 months—to Mar A Largo, Phuket, Sandringham, Florida and Windsor—and has also welcomed Andrew to stay at his 30 million dollar New York townhouse at least twice last year.”
The Evening Standard article reports: “He [Epstein] has a license to carry a concealed weapon, once claimed to have worked for the CIA although he now denies it.” Rosser then interviews an unnamed journalist who said: "‘He's Wexner's Mr. fix-it. He has the spook connections and pulls the strings worldwide. He handles all the logistics and moves the portfolio around for him.’" The article then notes that Epstein “declined to be interviewed by the Evening Standard.”
Though afield of the scope of this blog, the Evening Standard article reports that Epstein makes “many millions” via his relationships with Wexner, Donald Trump, and Bill Gates. Despite the article being published in 2001, the legacy media maintains that Gates didn’t meet Epstein until 2011, so either Rosser or the legacy media is mistaken when Epstein actually met Gates.
An article published by the Daily Beast on August 19, 2019, “Jeffrey Epstein’s Sick Story Played Out for Years in Plain Sight,” comments on Epstein being an “intelligence” asset. Though the Daily Beast article has been cited ad nauseum, new nuances have emerged that lends credence to the article. The article reports that when Acosta was being vetted for Labor Secretary by the first Trump administration, he was asked about Epstein’s “sweet heart” deal, and he responded: “I was told Epstein ‘belonged to intelligence’ and to leave it alone.”
Alexander Acosta was the source of the article alluding to Epstein’s nexus with intelligence. Acosta was United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida who engineered Epstein’s “sweet heart” deal in 2008. At the behest of Acosta, the Justice Department directed the state of Florida to charge Epstein with one count of soliciting prostitution with an adult and one count of solicitation of prostitution with a minor, even though the Justice Department had a list of 34 underage victims and was aware of 40 underage victims. Epstein was sentenced to 18 months in the county jail, where he served 13 months. Emails demonstrate that the assistant U.S. Attorney prosecuting Epstein, Ann Marie Villafana, colluded with an Epstein attorney to ensure that Epstein’s federal non-prosecution agreement granted immunity to all of his co-conspirators, including procurers and perpetrators.
Despite the cakewalk that the Justice Department ultimately devised for Epstein and his co-conspirators, Acosta and the feds initially approached the Epstein case with the gravitas it deserved. In my prior research on the Epstein case, I had heard that the Southern District of Florida impaneled a grand jury, but I had difficulties corroborating its existence, because the Epstein case has been so shrouded and underhanded. But on December 23, 2025, Bloomberg published an article stating that the federal grand jury investigating Epstein had wended for months, and it drafted a 60-count indictment against Epstein. Count 51 found that Epstein had sex trafficked a minor, which the federal guidelines mandate is a 15-year to life sentence. The grand jury was also prepared to indict three of Epstein’s “employees” for facilitating his abuse of underage girls.
But then the Justice Department did an about-face, and Epstein was the recipient of manna from heaven. Acosta testified before the House Oversight Committee in October of 2025 regarding his intimation that Epstein was an intelligence asset and the sweetheart deal. He categorically denied the former, and he disparaged the Epstein victims to justify Epstein’s sweetheart deal. “Many victims refused to testify,” he said. “Many victims had changing stories. All of us understood why they had changing stories, but they did. And defense counsel would have … cross-examination would have been withering. … Many of them had issues in their background. They had MySpace pages, they had priors that would’ve been used against them by defense counsel. And that was a time when, in all candor, defense could be much, much tougher on victims on the stand.”
Acosta further testified that convicting Epstein would have been a “crapshoot’ and the Justice Department merely had a 14-count indictment. If Bloomberg is correct about the grand jury drafting a 60-count indictment, then Acosta committed perjury before the House Oversight Committee. Attorney Spencer Kuvin, who represented nine Epstein victims, said Acosta’s statements about victim credibility were “patently absurd.”
Through the prism of the latest revelations regarding Epstein’s sweetheart deal and Acosta’s probable lies before the House Oversight Committee, Epstein as an “intelligence” asset has a newfound ballast.
Acosta was clearly told to stand down from prosecuting Epstein. And only two individuals in the government have the authority to order a U.S. Attorney to stand down: the attorney general and the president. The directive can be delivered by one of their minions, but it emanated from either Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez or President George W. Bush.
An additional facet of the sweetheart deal that fortifies the progenitor of Epstein’s protection was almost invariably George W. Bush is that Acosta would not have unilaterally risked his career by covering up a child sex trafficking network without authorization from his superiors. Gozales, too, would not have unilaterally risked his career by covering up a child sex trafficking network without authorization from his superior—George W. Bush.
According to the latest tranche of Epstein documents released on January 30, 2026, a confidential human source (CHS) was interviewed by the FBI on October 19, 2020, and he states the following: “CHS remembered Dershowitz tell Alex Acosta (U.S. Attorney of Southern District of Florida at the time) that Epstein belonged to both U.S. and allied intelligence services.” After a little spelunking, I discovered that the CHS in question is Charles Johnson who has a dubious reputation.
Epstein, Leese and Khashoggi: The Art of the Deal
The New York Times article, “Scams, Schemes, Ruthless Cons,” then explains how Epstein skipped on to the yellow brick road:
“One of the Bear Stearns contacts who would prove invaluable to Epstein was a junior saleswoman —and former Miss Indianapolis —named Paula Heil. She would expose Epstein to a previously unseen world of wealth, privilege and possibilities. They started dating before he left Bear Stearns; we tracked down a financial self-help book Heil wrote in 1981 that was dedicated “to Jeffrey.” That year, the couple traveled to England. While they were there, Heil took Epstein to visit a rich acquaintance of hers, Nick Leese, at his family’s countryside manor. There they met Nick’s father, Douglas Leese, a defense contractor with extensive connections in the arms industry and the British government. He took an immediate liking to Epstein.”
The Times certainly underplayed the underhanded endeavors of Douglas Leese when it notes he was merely a “defense contractor with extensive connections in the arms industry and the British government.” An article published in the UK’s Independent on March 25, 1995 describes Leese as an “international "Mr. Fixit."—like Pulp Fiction’s Winston Wolf on a global scale.
The Iran-Contra affair, occurring in the 1980s, needed a detachment of Mr. Fixits, because it involved the CIA hawking arms to Iran, and routing the proceeds to Nicaraguan rebels, which Congress had outlawed. Iran was engaged in a full tilt war with its neighbor Saddam Hussein and Iraq, so it had an unquenchable demand for weapons.
The CIA had a Top-Secret powwow when China started dealing weapons to the Iranians. It concludes that China was arming Iran for, of course, the cash but also for ideological motives: The Chinese sought to minimize the Soviet Union’s presence in the Middle East. The CIA was engaged in an octagon fight to the death with the Soviet Union in which tapping out was verboten, so it tacitly condoned China acting as a merchant of death in the Middle East.
Since the CIA was ostensibly forbidden to sell arms to Iran, Douglas Leese, Mr. Fixit, played a significant role when China and Iran inked a $1.3 billion arms deal in 1983. Norinco, a Chinese manufacturing conglomerate, was integral to providing weaponry for the transaction. Drop Site News reports that “Leese at the time owned a Bermuda holding company, Lorad. Soon after the Iran arms deal was signed, a new Lorad entity, a shell company called Norinco Lorad, was formed in Bermuda; a Hong Kong trading company called Lorad Far East followed a few months later.”
The New York Times mentions that Epstein worked with Leese after he was fired from Bear Stearns in 1981, and Leese employed him for a “couple of years.” So, it’s certainly within the realm of possibility that Epstein worked for Leese during the Chinese and Iranian arms deal. After all, Leese is a major arms trafficker, and it would be rather naïve to posit that Epstein was merely ironing his shirts or providing pedicures.
In 1991, when Les Wexner gave Epstein power of attorney over his multi-billion dollar empire, Leese was instrumental in facilitating the largest arms transaction in UK history—Al-Yamamah. The 3-phase deal involved British Aerospace selling 120 Tornado planes, 30 Hawk planes, and 72 Eurofighter Typhoons to Saudi Arabia. The revenue generated was over £40 billion, which is equivalent to $116.64 billion in 2026.
In 1985 and 1988, UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher endorsed Al-Yamamah, and then one of her successors, UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, even flew to Saudi Arabia to promote the colossal transaction. I have, perhaps, a cynical belief that merchants of death may be susceptible to the deadly sin of avarice, even though I’ll graciously concede I’m wrong if a reader can provide me with accounts of altruistic merchants of death. My personal prejudices aside, Al-Yamamah was a supersized pie that attracted numerous supersized fingers: Mark Thatcher, son of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, even gleaned $15 million from the deal.
Al-Yamamah became a symbol of plutocratic graft and corruption, and Leese’s role in the corruption was singled out by MP George Galloway in the House of Commons on January 25, 1996: “Among those who shared the millions of pounds sucked from those commissions was the former Cabinet Minister and former Chief Secretary to the Treasury…. Some of those secret commissions on the Al-Yamamah deal have been handled by British Aerospace through a British businessman, Douglas Leese, who has close connections with an offshore bank, the Bank of NT Butterfield in Bermuda.” The Serious Fraud Office, which investigates and prosecutes major fraud and corruption in the UK, launched an investigation into the arms transaction. But Prime Minister Blair quashed the investigation, because of its potential harm to “national interests.”
The Times (London) reports on a U.S. court filing pertaining to Leese that wasn’t related to Al-Yamamah: “The nature and extent of Leese’s activities, and his various contacts around the world involve highly sensitive and confidential information, some of which are believed to be classified by the Department of Defense and other agencies of the United States government.”
The New York Times article comments on Leese having “extensive connections in the arms industry and the British government.” I find that quote to be a bit understated: The British Prime Minister quashing an investigation into the largest arms deal in British history that potentially implicates Leese in graft might be considered to supersede “extensive connections.” And then there’s the U.S. lawsuit that states Leese’s activities were “classified by the Department of Defense and other agencies of the United States government.”
Clearly, the New York Times committed the sin of omission when commenting on Leese, but it’s next sin of omission is strikingly more egregious. “Scams, Schemes, Ruthless Cons” doesn’t mention Epstein’s relationship with billionaire and notorious Saudi Arabian arms dealer, Adnon Khashoggi. In fact, Khashoggi’s name doesn’t even appear in the article.
A September 13, 2025, article in the Times (London) comments on the connection between Leese and Khashoggi: “It was during this meeting that Epstein met Douglas Leese, a flamboyant businessman who knew Adnan Khashoggi, the billionaire Saudi arms dealer, and whose name later surfaced in parliament in connection with the record al-Yamamah contract…”
New York, The Independent, Radar, Drop Site News, and the Times of Israel, discuss a business relationship between Epstein and Khashoggi. The book, Epstein: Dead Men Tell No Lies, also discusses a business relationship between Epstein and Khashoggi. Even Wikipedia states that Khashoggi was a “client” of Epstein! But the article that’s referenced, “Adnan Khashoggi, Obituary: Saudi Arabian Arms Dealer and Dodi Al-Fayed's Uncle Remembered,” makes no mention of Epstein.
The New York Times had a superlative motive for omitting Khashoggi from the usual suspects, because Khashoggi was demonstrably one degree of separation from the CIA. On June 7, 2017, the Washington Post published a protracted obituary on Khashoggi that did not shirk from delineating his connection to Iran-Contra and the CIA: “[Khashoggi] was named, along with Iran-contra point man Oliver North and others, as a key intermediary in the clandestine CIA directed plan in the 1980s to send arms to Tehran in exchange for captives held by pro-Iranian militias in Lebanon. The Iranian money was then shifted to U.S.-backed Contra rebels in Nicaragua, in violation of codes including Congress-imposed limits on aid to the contras.”
A Daily Telegraph article, published on June 29, 2022, reports that Epstein bestie and unrepentant pedophile, Jean Luc Brunel, was associated with Elite, an infamous model agency that had a perverse nexus with Khashoggi: “The most explicit evidence of human trafficking comes from former model Jill Dodd, who was sent to Monte Carlo by Elite and ended up dating Saudi billionaire Adnan Khashoggi. She later learned that he picked her photo out of a book and paid Elite £50,000 to meet her. "I'd been sold," she says, going on to explain that the practice was commonplace.” (Brunel apparently hung himself in a French jail cell as he was awaiting trial for the rape of minors.)
In 2014, six years after Epstein became a convicted child molester, the Wall Street Journal reports that Epstein had at least three meetings with William Burns, who, at the time, was Barack Obama’s deputy secretary of state. After serving as president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace for seven years, Burns would be elevated to CIA director in 2021 by President Joseph Biden. In a rather disingenuous reply to the Wall Street Journal, a “spokeswoman for Burns has said he met with Epstein for advice related to transitioning to the private sector and didn't have a relationship with him.”
When "Bill Burns" is typed into the Justice Department's Epstein Library search engine, the search yields 324 "results." Burns' name is found in various emails. For example, in two of the emails from 2013, respectively, Epstein suggests that Terje Rod-Larsen and him set up a meeting with Burns in New York or Washington, DC and in the latter email Epstein told Rod-Larsen "reach out" to Bill Burns. Epstein ends the email by writing: “ill explain on phone.”
Rød-Larsen was an esteemed Norwegian diplomat and politician, and, at the time of the emails, he was the president of the International Peace Institute, which was based in New York City. In 2013, ironically, Epstein and former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak deployed Rød-Larsen and the International Peace Institute to facilitate an arms deal between Isreal and Mongolia.
According to Epstein’s itinerary from August 20, 2014, he flew from Teterboro to Washington, DC, where he met Phil West at 8:00 AM. West was the CEO of Steptoe, a powerhouse law firm, specializing in “regulatory defense, complex litigation, and high-stakes white-collar matters.” Epstein and West then rode to the Treasury Department. Afterwards, Epstein then met with Burns at Steptoe.
On September 13th, 2014, Epstein had a rather noteworthy day. Peter Thiel visited him at his palatial mansion on 5th Avenue from 2:00 PM to 4 PM. After the two hour meeting with Thiel, Burns stopped by at 3:00. Epstein, Thiel, and Burns met from 3:00 PM to 4:00 PM, and then only Epstein and Burns met from 4:00 PM to 5 PM.
Additional emails indicate that Epstein had Burns had subsequent meetings, so I feel safe in positing that perhaps Epstein and Burns discussed subject matter that wasn’t solely related to Burns “transitioning to the private sector”?
In “Scams, Schemes, Ruthless Cons,” the New York Times makes no mention of Epstein’s meetings with Burns, so did the Times conclude they were inconsequential or was it a willful omission?
