There's no smoke without fire. Not even a leaf moves without wind. These are common expressions we use in everyday conversation to point out that things may be true even though we have no proof. Americans use similar phrases when they want to support the claim that Jeffrey Epstein was a person of interest to Israeli civilian intelligence and the Mossad intelligence agency.
But could there be some truth to this? It is true that certain phases of the infamous investor and sex offender's life resemble a spy thriller by authors such as Robert Ludlum or Frederick Forsyth. Mostly, these are hints and inconsistencies, but when viewed through "spy thriller" glasses, they appear to be clues pointing to the agent's double life.
For those who demand hard evidence at all costs, there is nothing left to do but wait 60 to 100 years for the next batch of secret service archives to be declassified. On the other hand, those who rely on indirect clues and ephemeral hints have already answered this question for themselves. However, it is necessary to choose a middle ground and subject all these clues to rigorous analysis.
Professor without a title
Epstein did not complete a university education, despite two attempts to graduate in mathematics and physics. Even without this degree, however, he obtained a position at the prestigious Dalton School, a "children's university" in Manhattan, New York, attended by the children of wealthy celebrities.
A mathematical talent with a later career as an investment banker and a record in the sex offender registry, he could simply use the connections he had acquired in his youth. He himself was born and raised in the Sea Gate neighborhood of Brooklyn, a closed private community for upper-middle-class New York Jews. In the 1930s, they made up the majority of the population.
Some of the community's law enforcement officers made several racially intolerant statements that were reported in the media, with the chairman of the homeowners' association referring to a black police officer on duty as a "schwartze." According to the New York Post, this is a derogatory term from German or Yiddish.
In 2017, local police officers filed a complaint against their colleague Jeffrey Schneider, who called a black police officer a "militant Negro sergeant" and allegedly refused to patrol with a Hispanic colleague who "is a fat 'spic' from Puerto Rico." The derogatory term "Spic" is short for "Hispanic" and carries a similar stigma as the term "nigger" for black people.
Jews are often attributed with a kind of tribal thinking, more accurately called tribalism. This is based on a shared perception of a specifically distinguishable identity, which is often hereditary and also has its downside, as can be seen in the examples mentioned above. However, tribalism is not only negative and in many cases serves as a basis for strengthening a sense of community.
"Tribalism is simply an extended family and carries with it all the magic and dysfunction of a family. The tribal instinct of Jews is strong due to historical conditions; in many places and for many centuries, Jews were an oppressed minority. We had no one to rely on but each other," explained prominent American rabbi Sid Schwarz, whose work focuses on revitalizing Jewish spiritualism.
At the same time, it offers an explanation for how Jeffrey Epstein was able to get a teaching position at the Dalton School. He probably turned to a "friend of a friend" with a request to nurture mathematical talent in the next generation.
The world of money
After two years of teaching, Epstein's connections led him into the world of investment banking when he was approached by the father of the children he taught. His name was Alan Greenberg, and in 1978 he became the head of Bear Stearns, a stock trading bank.
Greenberg brought Epstein into the company two years earlier, and the former teacher became a junior trading assistant on the American Stock Exchange (now NYSE American). He was fired from Bear Stearns in 1981 after New York financial investigators began investigating him on suspicion of insider trading.
With his new training straight from the stock exchange, the financier founded Intercontinental Assets Group in the same year, which was based in his old New York apartment. He helped clients recover embezzled or stolen funds, with these operations accounting for about 80 percent of his total workload.
This also brought him into the highest echelons of American society, specifically among oil magnates. As a financial advisor to individuals at risk of illegal financial losses, he secured a $450,000 investment in oil and gas for one of his clients in 1982.
This also brought him to the attention of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), as he strengthened several important contacts while collecting money abroad. The US intelligence agency apparently turned to Epstein frequently, as the financier boasted to his acquaintances that he "worked for the secret service."
The same reason was allegedly given by Alexander Acosta, the prosecutor in a later case of sexual abuse of minors. "I was told that he 'belonged to the secret service' and that I should leave it alone," he reportedly told Donald Trump's transition team in 2016 when he was nominated for Secretary of Labor.
Acosta led the prosecution in a 2008 case that began when the mother of a young girl from Palm Beach, Florida, contacted the police—her daughter had allegedly been forced to undress and massage Epstein. The prosecutor originally sought a much harsher sentence, but the financier was ultimately sentenced to 18 months in prison with minimal supervision and a luxurious outdoor regime.
After the agreement was concluded, the Florida prosecutor's office released a report stating that it had known about Epstein's criminal activity two years before the verdict. The wording of one passage of the plea agreement also suggests the existence of a wider circle of people who recruited or abducted minors for the purpose of abusing them.
"In addition to sexually abusing the victims himself, Epstein also directed others to sexually abuse the girls. Epstein used paid employees to find and bring him underage girls. Epstein collaborated with others to obtain minors not only for his own sexual gratification, but also for the sexual gratification of others," writes the introduction to the agreement, which probably refers to people such as Bill Clinton and Bill Gates.
"The United States also agrees not to prosecute any potential co-conspirators of Epstein, including, but not limited to, Sarah Kellen, Adriana Ross, Lesley Groff, or Nadi Marcinková," states the text of the agreement in the section on the promise of the federal prosecutor's office for the district that includes the state of Florida.
According to the opinion portal Mother Jones, it is precisely this wording that "gives free rein" to a large number of potential collaborators whom the federal government has not yet investigated. This group may include representatives of the government, Congress, secret services, and anything else.
It is precisely the possible involvement of politically exposed persons that is the argument of various theorists who claim that the classified part of Epstein's files will never see the light of day—politicians, economic and media moguls, and prominent secret agents are protecting themselves and their global contacts.
Eric Weinstein, who worked as director of Thiel Capital in 2021 and 2022, also drew attention to the alleged intelligence background. "I don't know who Jeffrey Epstein was, but I would definitely bet money that he was a product of at least one or more components of the intelligence community. I don't know who it was. I don't know who was running him. He certainly wasn't a financier in any standard sense. It was a cover story," he said on the Diary of a CEO podcast.
"On the day I met him, he wasn't a financier," he added, describing him as a "weird guy" who "didn't seem to know much about currency trading."
Cover jobs and fictional life stories are a common part of the work of intelligence officers in books and films set in this environment. Ludlum's Jason Bourne, Forsyth's The Jackal, and even Spielberg's Avner from the film Munich (2005) have ingeniously constructed stories that they present to the public while carrying out their activities.
Conviction
Further connections led Epstein in 1986 to prominent Zionist Leslie Wexner, who inherited the L Brands label (which owned the Victoria's Secret label until 2021) and founded an extensive philanthropic empire with powerful influence. The New Yorker managed the Ohio clothing magnate's assets in his home state and his townhouse in New York, which he bought from him in 1998.
In 1998, the financier founded his own company, J. Epstein & Co., which was dedicated to the financial management of the wealthiest clients possible – he offered his services only to those whose annual turnover exceeded one billion dollars.
In 1991, Wexner granted Epstein, as a natural person, the right to act as an executive in all personal and corporate matters and later appointed him to the board of directors of the foundation of the same name. However, they parted ways in 2007 when the billionaire discovered that the New Yorker had embezzled tens of millions of dollars from his assets and his wife's funds.
An internal report by the Wexner Foundation described Epstein as a person who "showed no interest in philanthropy." According to its own words, the foundation focuses "on developing Jewish professional and volunteer leaders in North America and public leaders in Israel."
At the end of his tenure at the foundation in 2008, Epstein transferred $46 million to Wexner's wife, Abigail, which the internal report assessed as a return of embezzled funds.
However, while working for the foundation, he supported the then Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, who later served as Minister of Defense from 2007 to 2013 and was also formerly Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), with a total of $2.3 million.
Epstein referred to this man as a "close friend" and hosted him at his Manhattan home on several occasions. Together, they founded the defense technology company Reporty Homeland Security, which develops eavesdropping and surveillance technologies for the Israeli Army's Unit 8200 intelligence unit.
Even after his conviction, Epstein invested significant amounts of money in technology startups. While his emails often refer to his interest in longevity and gene therapy technologies, in 2015 and 2016 he invested in a tech company that develops financial tools.
This company is called Valar Ventures and, since its inception in 2010, has been supporting high-risk technology startups focused on the financial sector. One of the founders was the well-known billionaire and Antichrist enthusiast Peter Thiel, who often uses terminology from The Lord of the Rings for companies—he founded the investment firm Mithril Capital for Vice President JD Vance.
Epstein's investments grew from an initial $40 million to a staggering $170 million and are now the largest share of Epstein's estate, as revealed by an investigative report in the New York Times.
Thiel had already received financial support from prominent Zionists while studying at Stanford University. The largest contribution to the founding and financing of the Stanford Review student magazine came from the "godfather of neoconservatism" Irving Kristol (as described by author Jonah Goldberg in the National Review magazine), whose son Bill is following in his father's footsteps – his Bulwark newspaper regularly criticizes Trump's isolationism.
However, the 1990s were extremely lucrative for Epstein, when in 1997 he became a member of the board of directors of the Debra and Leon Black Foundation. Leon Black was a prominent name on the list of contacts known as the "little black book."
Epstein earned tens of millions of dollars for financial advice and asset management, with the New York Times estimating the amount at $50 million, which Black disputed. However, he paid him $158 million for consulting services between 2012 and 2017. According to an internal investigation, the founder and head of the investment firm Apollo Global Investment knew about the rape of minors.
The two billionaires of Jewish origin are the only known clients of Epstein's consulting firm. However, this can be explained by the fact that, in addition to financial advice, the financier also offered a certain degree of secrecy. Neither Wexner nor Black have any proven contacts with the Israeli intelligence community, which again raises the question of how Epstein would have gotten to them.
Mossad is not everywhere. Or is it?
The basic theory surrounding Epstein's life (and death) is that he led a coordinated blackmail operation by the Mossad secret service. Its targets were politicians, economic magnates, and actors as narrative creators who were supposed to engage in contact with minors in front of hidden cameras—which were indeed found in Epstein's Palm Beach villa and New York home.
Israeli intelligence was then supposed to use these videos as potential punishment in case the perpetrators decided to turn their backs on the Jewish state.
One of the important components of this theory is Ghislaine Maxwell, whose father was also a suspected secret agent – an indication of this claim is Robert Maxwell's funeral with state honors on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem.
Another is the New Yorker's death itself, which is still the subject of controversy – which even led to the meme "Epstein didn't kill himself." As claimed by the pathologist hired by Epstein's brother Mark, the fractures in Jeffrey's neck were not consistent with hanging and suggested the involvement of another person.
The coroner's official opinion on suicide is therefore considered a "cover-up" by the US as an "accomplice" or "blackmailed" superpower.
This brilliantly constructed theory has one weakness: a lack of evidence. Intelligence agencies generally declassify evidence after all those involved are dead, to guarantee their impunity.
At the end of July this year, former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett denied Epstein's alleged connection to Mossad. In a series of posts on the X network, he criticized the "malicious wave of slander and lies against" Israel, as he described the rhetorical linking of the Jewish state with a sex offender.
"As a former Israeli prime minister—with Mossad reporting directly to me—I can tell you with 100% certainty: the accusation that Jeffrey Epstein somehow worked for Israel or Mossad, which ran a blackmail ring, is categorically and completely false," he said, immediately becoming the target of anti-Israel insinuations.
One of the most frequently cited insinuations was Mossad's former motto: "For by lying and deceit you wage war."
The same motto, taken from the Hebrew original of the biblical Book of Proverbs, was also used by former secret service operative Victor Ostrovsky for the title of his book. Israel provisionally censored his book By Way Of Deception in its entirety even before it was published in 1990, as its content "endangered agents in the field."
Unlike this book, the work Gideon's Spies was approved by Mossad itself. In his article "Mossad's Right to Kill," its author, Gordon Thomas, published certain parts of the secret service's structure, which is itself a classified fact—apart from the name of the director, it is impossible to find practically anything on the official website.
The term kaca refers to field or back-office staff, while kidon refers to agents specializing in killing selected targets. These must be approved by the Israeli government, whose prime minister has nominal control over Mossad. In addition to these two categories, however, there is a broad personnel base of people who do not work directly for Mossad but perform specific tasks in support of a given mission.
They are called sajanim (from the Hebrew for "helpers"), and this term refers to any Jew who assists an agent in the field—a sajan doctor can stitch up an agent's wound without reporting the shooting, a sajan driver can drive an agent from point A to point B – and, as Thomas admitted in Gideon's Spies, there were at least 16,000 of them living in the US in 1998.
The concept of sajans was created by former Mossad director Me'ir Amit, who also served as commander of the Aman military intelligence service. However, these assistants – whom Mossad can recruit from the Jewish population of any country – are not assigned more demanding tasks. Epstein, with his alleged activities, could not fall into this category.
What would Mossad gain from the coordinated blackmail of American, British, French, and other prominent figures? According to the conspiracy theory, those blackmailed were supposed to secure the favor of their governments and the public towards Israel.
However, there are a whole host of non-governmental organizations and foundations registered directly in the US that fall into the category of the Israeli lobby, as defined in the book of the same name by political scientists John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt. At their imaginary head sits the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which, under the banner of the American Zionist Council (AZC), was to be registered as a "foreign agent."
President John F. Kennedy called on American Jewish leaders to take this step. Supporters of Jewish conspiracy theories therefore see threads stretching back more than 60 years into the past.
At the same time, Mossad would not need to "capture" American prominent figures in order to maintain the pro-Israel course of the federal government – from the latest batch of declassified Kennedy files, the public learned that in 1961, CIA counterintelligence director James Angleton established a permanent communication channel with Mossad. This is described as a "back door."
Tel Aviv also eavesdropped on the American president on at least one occasion. Two years later, in 2019, White House staff admitted this to Politico magazine, saying that the Trump administration at the time did not even send a diplomatic note to the Israeli side.
Perhaps the most accurate expression of the theory about Epstein's cooperation with Tel Aviv came from former Israeli arms dealer Ari Ben Menashe. He considers the financier's "father-in-law" Robert Maxwell to be the commanding agent in an operation aimed at blackmailing American and European leaders.
According to Menashe, Maxwell's youngest daughter, Ghislaine, became Epstein's mistress in the 1980s, but she herself claims that she did not come to the US until after her father's death in 1991. This death is shrouded in doubt, as several people immediately rejected the theory of drowning.
Robert Maxwell fell from the deck of his yacht Lady Ghislaine near the Canary Islands. His previous life also resembled a spy thriller, although he publicly bought textbook publishers and founded a scientific project together with the Soviet Academy of Sciences (in 1989).
However, this information relates to the Maxwells and is only attributed to Epstein as a result of his cohabitation with Ghislaine – who, according to one of the victims named Virginia Giuffre, herself led "training" in sexual gratification.
However, Israel did not need Epstein to influence US foreign policy.
A more likely possibility is that the financier, with his extensive contacts—a New York Times report mentions people from Clinton, Trump, and Bill Gates to Pope John Paul II, Mick Jagger, and David Copperfield—provided a new wave of excitement for those who "have everything."
As John Edward Dalberg-Acton, the first Baron Acton, a pioneer of modern British historiography, used to say, "Power tends to corrupt [character]. Absolute power corrupts absolutely." This means that with increasing power, political and other leaders would have increasingly depraved appetites, which in Epstein's case crossed the line of legality.
At the same time, it is said that people who have everything are bored. A financial advisor with a penchant for massages from 16-year-old girls approached these bored "leaders of society" and offered them participation. This scenario is at least as realistic as the one involving Mossad, but it does not absolve the perverts involved of responsibility. We must therefore wait with the skeptics for confirmation of the Israeli intelligence service's involvement.