The internet platform Drop Site News recently acquired a cache of emails between Jeffrey Epstein and the former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, showing that Isreal used Epstein as a conduit for dealing “cyber weapons.” The emails were courtesy of the Handala, a pro-Palestinian hacking group with possible ties to Iran, and they were posted by Distributed Denial of Secrets, a non-profit whistleblower and file-sharing website. After due diligence, Drop Site News authenticated the emails, and its investigation of the Epstein/Barak emails are the foundation of this blog.
The often daily emails between Epstein and Barak from 2013 to 2016 show that they were a dynamic duo. Barak has, of course, denied being privy to Epstein’s sex trafficking and abuse of minors, even though the aforementioned emails were exchanged five years after Epstein had become a convicted child molester and registered sex offender. The late Virginia Giuffre also named Barak as one of her very unsavory perpetrators.
As Epstein pimped out underage girls and young women to his affluent and powerful cronies, Israel was en route to becoming a trendsetter in the development of cyber warfare technology, which included malware, spyware, cyber-attacks and state-of-the art surveillance. So, Epstein and Barak hatched a scheme to augment the coffers of both Barak, Isreal, and, of course, Epstein by peddling cyber technology to various countries, including an African dictator.
For purveyors of carnage, Third World countries are invariably a wellspring of revenue. And convicted child molester Jeffrey Epstein and former Israeli Prime Minister and alleged pedophile Ehud Barak had a panache for war profiteering.
Epstein and Barak lined up the west African country of Côte d’Ivoire in their sights as a target that was ripe for war profiteering. Epstein emailed Barak: “…with civil unrest exploding [...] and the desperation of those in power, isn’t this perfect for you.” Barak replied: “You’re right [in] a way. But not simple to transform it into a cash flow.”
Transforming Côte d’Ivoire’s political unrest into “cash flow” involved various clandestine contortions among Epstein, Barak, Israel, and, ultimately, subversion of the United Nations.
Côte d’Ivoire has a fabled history of political instability and upheaval. In 1996, Robert Guéï became the Côte d’Ivoire strongman when he seized power with a military junta. Leftist Laurent Gbagbo then overthrew Guéï in 2000, but Gbagbo’s reign ignited a civil war that wended for two years. In 2010, Côte d’Ivoire held a highly disputed presidential election between Gbagbo and Alassane Ouattara.
Though the presidential margin for victory was relatively thin, Ouattara was declared the victor by the Economic Community of West African States, African Union, and the United Nations. Gbagbo, however, was declared the winner by the Constitutional Council, an Ivorian coterie that oversaw the fidelity of Côte d’Ivoire elections, which was dominated by Gbagbo supporters. So, Gbagbo opted not to go gently into that good night.
The political fate of Côte d’Ivoire was rather nebulous when both Gbagbo and Ouattara assumed the presidency in December of 2010. But after a second civil war that resulted in the deaths of 3,000 citizens, pro-Ouattara forces buttressed by French troops overran Gbagbo devotees, and Ouattara became the undisputed president of Côte d’Ivoire.
In June of 2012, Ouattara suppressed a coup attempt that was fomented by Gbagbo loyalists. Shortly thereafter, he flew to Jerusalem and met with Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—“counterterrorism” was a topic of discussion..
Drop Site News reports on an uncanny synchronicity: “On June 18, 2012, the very same day that Barak and Netanyahu were meeting with Ouattara in Jerusalem, according to Epstein schedules released by the U.S. House Oversight Committee, his son David Dramane Ouattara was in New York City for an appointment with Epstein.”
Though Barak has maintained that his “private investments” with Epstein were as a private citizen, documents gleaned by House’s Oversight Committee indicate that Epstein and Barak began to prey on Côte d’Ivoire when Barak was the Defense Minister of Israel.
In October of 2012, Epstein flew to Africa. He instructed Leslie Groff, one of his pedophilic procurers and henchwoman, to arrange for flights to London, Côte d’Ivoire, Angola, and Senegal.
Epstein’s visit to Côte d’Ivoire apparently had favorable yields: Two weeks after Epstein’s sojourn to Africa, the Ivorian Interior Minister Hamed Bakayoko visited Tel Aviv and rendezvoused with Barak to discuss intelligence and cybercrime.
Ouattara would ultimately shred the Côte d’Ivoire constitution and make the upwardly mobile career move to dictator. After all, being the dictator of a Third World country can be highly lucrative, and it doesn’t have the headaches of appeasement posed by a democracy. He banned public demonstrations and jailed protestors.
Barak would resign as Israel’s Defense Minister in March of 2013. One day after Barak’s resignation, he received an email from Doron Cohen, his brother-in-law and business partner. The email contained information from the MF Group, a French-Israeli conglomerate of companies, whose specialty is arms dealing and mass surveillance technology. Two commodities that are extremely prized by dictators of Third World countries.
In fact, the MF Group planned to sell a mobile and internet communications surveillance center and a video monitoring center to Côte d’Ivoire. Barak had a clandestine meeting with the CEO of the MF Group, Michel Farjon, in Tel Aviv three days later.
According to Drop Site News, “After he [Barak] left his formal government role, emails and private records show that he finished negotiating the intelligence deal with Côte d'Ivoire covertly. In these efforts, Epstein provided critical assistance.”
In 2004, the UN Security Council imposed an arms embargo on Côte d’Ivoire, which included strict requirements for even “non-lethal” training and equipment transfers. But the arms embargo was expiring in April of 2013, so the prospective deal forged by Barak and Epstein was all systems go.
But in April of 2013, the UN put a kibosh on the prospective deal Barak and Epstein had engineered by extending the Côte d’Ivoire arms embargo for an additional year because “dozens of crates” of Israeli ammunition had been discovered at the presidential palace and a Côte d’Ivoire naval base. The crates had Israel Military Industries labels—Israel Military Industries was an Israeli state-arms manufacturer. In an apparent attempt at subterfuge, the crates had Spanish markings. The UN Security Council surmised that the ammunition had been rebranded and retransferred to Côte d’Ivoire via a third country.
An extension of the Côte d’Ivoire arms embargo didn’t conform to the Epstein/Barak timetable. However, the best laid plans of pedophiles and arms dealers were not to be thwarted. Barak was an ethical eunuch who was not to be deterred.
In May, Barak seemed to be groping for ways to circumvent the Côte d’Ivoire arms embargo, and he became a whirlwind of activity. He phoned Amos Malka who was a former director of Aman, the intelligence branch of the Israel Defense Force. Aman focuses on the internal security of Israel, whereas the Mossad is responsible for collecting intelligence outside of Israel.
After Malka retired from Aman in 2002, he had been the CEO of various Israeli military contractors, including Plasan, which manufactured “customized, lightweight survivability solutions for tactical combat vehicles, fixed- and rotary-winged aircraft, naval platforms, civilian armor vehicles, and personal protection.” Plasan had apparently attempted to circumvent the Côte d’Ivoire arms embargo, but UN monitors impounded a five-ton shipment of Plasan body armor in Côte d’Ivoire.
Malka then incarnated as the CEO of Israel-based Logic Industries, a bellwether in cyber warfare technology, including malware, spyware, and cyber-attacks. Logic was in the midst of installing surveillance technology in the United Arab Emirates under contract with a Swiss company. Logic had to use a Swiss company because Israel and the U.A.E. did not have a “security accord”—an agreement or partnerships where nations commit to mutual defense, intelligence sharing, and military cooperation.
Drop Site News reports: “The email logs do not disclose the subject matter of Barak and Malka’s phone call—but, after hanging up, Barak emailed Malka the résumé of a Spanish-Israeli logistics expert at the “Prime Minister’s Office,” a common cover name for either Shin Bet, Israel’s counterintelligence service, or the Mossad, both of which are based out of the office.”
Barak then phoned Michael Federmann, an Honorary Consul of Côte d’Ivoire in Israel. Honorary Consuls look after a country’s interests and its citizens in foreign countries by promoting bilateral relations and providing assistance with passports, visas, and other ancillary services. Honorary Consuls are generally unpaid government officials, who serve on a part-time basis for countries that are too small for a full consulate. But they enjoy limited diplomatic privileges and immunity.
When Federman wasn’t assisting Côte d’Ivoire citizens in Israel, he was the CEO of the Israeli arms behemoth Elbit Systems. In fact, he was a veteran at sidestepping UN sanctions. Elbit had supplied military helicopters to Côte d’Ivoire during the first Ivorian civil war.
At the end of May, Barak phoned President Ouattara’s chief-of-staff, Sidi Tiémoko Touré, requesting an audience with Ouattara. They agreed on an August meeting in Abidjan, the largest city in Côte d’Ivoire.
Barak made the sojourn to Abidjan with Nili, his wife. But prior to embarking for Abidjan, Barak had private intelligence firm Ergo to prepare dossiers on Ouattara and his inner circle and also detailed charts of the state’s defense and internal security agencies. Also in the interim, Barak became extremely devious: He had his son-in-law, Michael Menkin, a manager at the medical equipment supplier, write a proposal that included the building of hospitals and diagnostic centers in Nigeria and Côte d’Ivoire. Barak certainly didn’t want to appear as an arms dealer who was contravening the UN embargo!
Barak met with President Ouattara and other high-ranking Côte d’Ivoire officials when he was in Abidjan. And shortly after his return to Israel, he was emailed by the Ivorian ambassador to Israel, Jean-Baptiste Gomis, who wrote: "I seize this opportunity to ask you for a meeting to talk about your impression of your visit in Cote d Ivoire and moreover how can we move forward.” Barak called on Gomis shortly thereafter.
The following month, on September 16, Aharon Ze’evi-Farkash, also a former director of Aman, emailed a mass surveillance proposal for Côte d’Ivoire to Barak. The 13-page PDF was a Big Brother bonanza. Drop Site News reports that the cutting-edge technology allowed for “eavesdropping on phone calls, satellites, tactical radio, and ‘special targets’ like cyber cafés. The data streams flowed to ‘media processing’ servers, to be reviewed by analysts, then synthesized into reports for security leaders.”
A dictator’s dream come true.
But unfortunately for the Ouattara regime, Barak, Epstein, and the Israeli military industrial complex, the UN Security Council had passed that troublesome embargo. Shortly after Barak received the 13-page PDF from Ze’evi-Farkash, he flew to New York City, where the 68th Session of the United Nations General Assembly was commencing on September 17.
Epstein and Barak were unified in their quest to repeal the Côte d’Ivoire arms embargo, and Epstein had been busy organizing meetings for Barak. Epstein wrote that “We should try to schedule some people for dinners or lunches when you are here.” Epstein recommended that Barak rendezvous with the following shakers and movers: New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Joshua Cooper Ramo, banker Ariane de Rothschild, and British Ambassador Peter Mandelson.
(One of the esteemed names mentioned by Epstein was Lord Peter Mandelson who was the consummate British powerbroker. Mandelson was a Member of Parliament from 1992 to 2004 and served in the Cabinets of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. In February of 2025, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer tapped him to be the British Ambassador to the United States. After Mandelson became US ambassador, the House Oversight Committee released an email from Mandelson to Epstein that was rather egregious. In 2008, when Epstein received a sentence of 18 months in jail despite the Justice Department having a list of 40 underage Epstein victims, Lord Mandelson expressed his outrage in an email: “I think the world of you and I feel hopeless and furious about what has happened. . . I can still barely understand it. It just could not happen in Britain. You have to be incredibly resilient, fight for early release and be philosophical about it as much as you can.” (Moreover, a picture of Mandelson in a bathrobe talking to Epstein was in the infamous 50th “birthday book.”)
On September 21, four days after the 68th Session of the United Nations General Assembly convened, Epstein sent Barak the email of Sidi Tiémoko Touré, Ouattara’s chief-of-staff, with an accompanying message that was laden with grammatical errors: “chief of staff of outara, he arrives tomorw, try to coordianate, i am flexible. if you decide you have time.” Barak was visiting Epstein’s Manhattan mansion the following morning: “Let’s talk it tomorrow.”
Following Barak’s visit to New York City, the emails between Barak and Epstein with regards to Côte d’Ivoire are mum’s the word. But an extraordinary coincidence occurred 20 days after the commencement of the 68th Session of the United Nations General Assembly: UN peacekeepers and the Ivorian army, working in tandem, began to overrun armed militia strongholds in Côte d’Ivoire.
In April 2014, after the militias were neutralized, UN Security Council Resolution 2153 extended the Côte d’Ivoire arms embargo for one year, but the Resolution lifted the ban on non-lethal equipment for Côte d’Ivoire to ensure “public order.” So, the UN gave Barak a green light to peddle Big Brother to Ouattara, who was en route to becoming a dictator. New and vastly improved surveillance is a welcome windfall for autocrats.
As Epstein and Barak transformed the troubles of Côte d’Ivoire into “cash flow,” they conscripted former high-ranking Israeli intelligence officials, blurring the line between the state of Israel and Israeli intelligence. However, the truly disturbing facet of Barak and Epstein’s machinations was that it appears they imposed their will on the United Nations to sell Big Brother to an African dictator.
