The Dirty Secrets
What we actually know about the Epstein network
Grüezi!
A brief journey into the sordid world of Jeffrey Epstein.
1. American exceptionalism
The US Department of Justice has released another 3.5 million pages of Epstein documents.
But any American names popping out from the redactions need have no fear. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche says there will be no further prosecutions.
Abroad, there have been consequences. In Britain, former cabinet minister and EU commissioner Peter Mandelson has resigned his ambassadorship, his party and his peerage, and faces a police investigation. Ex-Prince Andrew has been stripped of his titles and internally exiled.
Norway’s former prime minister, its Crown Princess and two of its most celebrated diplomats are in public disgrace.
Slovakia’s national security adviser resigned.
In the United States? Nothing.
No serving politician has lost their position. Donald Trump is named hundreds of times in the files. He remains president.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick claimed he cut ties with Epstein in 2005. Yet he drank with Epstein in 2011, visited his island with his family in 2012, is there exchanging casual emails in 2017, and took a charity dinner donation in 2018. But with neither embarrassment nor impropriety he remains in his role as Commerce Secretary.
The Clintons reluctantly complied with a congressional subpoena.
The only notable departure from public life? Former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers resigned from OpenAI’s board and went on leave from Harvard – but he hasn’t held government office since 2010.
Virginia Giuffre, who gave other survivors the courage to speak out, died by suicide last April at the age of 41.
Why has there been some limited accountability everywhere except Epstein’s home?
2. Security services knew
One of the dirtiest and most obvious secrets is that security services knew. This is hardly speculation. It’s what agencies exist to do. The US Secret Service and Britain’s Royal Protection know who’s where and when. Presumably Norway and Israel do not lose track of ex-Prime Ministers.
Official flight logs show Bill Clinton travelled on some Epstein trips with as many as 10 Secret Service agents. But on a five-leg Asia trip in May 2002, not a single agent is listed.
A former Secret Service agent told Fox News that Clinton would have been required to file a form to dismiss his detail. Someone signed off on a former president travelling without protection.
In October 2025, it emerged that Andrew had allegedly instructed one of his security detail to investigate Virginia Giuffre – including obtaining her date of birth and US Social Security number. Hardly ‘passive’ official protection.
The question isn’t whether multiple security services knew where these people were and who they were seeing. That’s their job. The question is why that knowledge didn’t translate into action.
But we already know the answer. The system isn’t designed to investigate further up, or to protect further down.
3. The post-2008 filter
After 2008, Jeffrey Epstein was a registered sex offender convicted of soliciting prostitution from a minor. Public record. Anyone taking the trouble to google him knew exactly who he was.
But what happens when a man with a conviction has a network with no convictions?
For Epstein’s legitimate contacts, that criminal case should have ended the relationship. The reputational risk alone would deter anyone with normal institutional accountability.
Jes Staley lost his British banking career for maintaining his Epstein relationship after 2008. In America, Howard Lutnick was confirmed to the Cabinet.
Former Israeli premier Ehud Barak visited Epstein about 30 times between 2013 and 2017. Norway’s ex-PM Thorbjørn Jagland corresponded with Epstein between 2016 and 2018 – telling him “If Trump wins in US I’ll settle on your island.”
Peter Mandelson’s friendship with Epstein also continued post-conviction. Diplomatic power couple Terje Rød-Larsen and Mona Juul – architects of the Oslo Accords – visited Epstein’s private island with their kids – a sort of Center Parcs of sleaze.
Anyone associating with Epstein after 2008 either calculated that he still offered something valuable enough to outweigh the reputational risk, or believed they were protected and therefore the risk was manageable, or were too deeply associated to exit cleanly. Or some combination.
So the 2008 conviction wasn’t a disqualifier. It was a filter.
4. Compartmentalised corruption
Not everyone in the network need have been involved in Epstein’s sexual exploitation. After 2008, there was no excuse for not being aware of it.
The operation appears to have run on several levels.
First, sexual exploitation and compromise – Maxwell, Jean-Luc Brunel (the French modelling agent who recruited girls for Epstein), and direct operational roles. Victims named specific individuals.
Second, insider tips – Mandelson allegedly sent Epstein internal government documents and tipped him off about the €500 billion euro bailout hours before announcement. Epstein brokered meetings between Ehud Barak and Qatar’s former PM. Audio from 2013 shows him advising Barak on Palantir, the surveillance company co-founded by Peter Thiel.
Third, access and introductions – Epstein connected wealthy individuals to politicians, academics, and media figures, facilitating dinner-party diplomacy and creating back-channels where more formal openings were impossible.
Fourth, financial services – whatever Epstein actually did for Les Wexner, the retail billionaire who gave him power of attorney, and the murky investment activities that never produced a verifiable client list.
You could trade information with Epstein, attend his townhouse suppers, use his introductions, without ever confronting a victim.
5. Capture
Mandelson is gay and in a long-term relationship. There’s no suggestion he was interested in Epstein’s sex crime operation. Yet he – allegedly – passed him sensitive government information whilst serving in the British Cabinet.
Epstein’s network could capture people through non-sexual transactions – favours, information exchange, access – whilst the sexual operation ran in parallel. You didn’t need to be compromised sexually to be compromised through greed, vanity, or ambition.
The newly released documents show Mandelson allegedly forwarded confidential minutes of meetings between the Chancellor and Larry Summers within minutes of receiving them. He suggested Jamie Dimon should “mildly threaten” the British finance minister over bankers’ bonus tax.
The academic network operated similarly. Martin Nowak, a Harvard biology professor, received $6.5 million from Epstein to establish the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics.
In August 2002, Nowak had emailed Ghislaine Maxwell thanking her for her “amazing hospitality” and adding, bizarrely: “i am so happy that i did not kill anybody...”
After Epstein was convicted, Nowak gave him an office, a key card, and access to his Harvard program – which Epstein used over 40 times, “typically accompanied by young women.”
Harvard shut down Nowak’s institute in 2021. Nowak wasn’t charged with any crime. But the email suggests something about the kind of dark hospitality on offer – and someone who understood it.
If Epstein were running straightforward blackmail for personal gain, you’d expect him to target people with money – hedge fund managers, tech billionaires, corporate executives. People he could extract from directly.
Instead, his network was weighted toward information and access: diplomats, former heads of government, royals, influence-brokers. Peripheral people whose value is what they know and who they can reach, not what they can pay.
The common thread runs through brokers with access to the soft underbelly of Western governments: Wexner, co-founder of the Mega Group, a network of pro-Israel American philanthropists, and Epstein’s primary funder; Ehud Barak, former Israeli PM and defence minister with a military intelligence background; Terje Rød-Larsen, architect of the Oslo Accords and UN Middle East envoy; Peter Mandelson, UK cabinet minister and EU trade commissioner.
Israel, Norway, the UK. Small and medium powers that punch above their weight through intelligence, diplomacy, and integration with US power structures.
Was Epstein – or his right hand woman Ghislaine Maxwell – someone’s confidential informant? It is unlikely we’ll find out, but agencies have recruited and protected equally appalling people.
6. Smiley and dially
Epstein made grandiose claims that even associates describe as exaggerated. He bragged about his connections rather than maintaining operational silence. He misspelled words constantly in emails.
In one exchange, he asked Barak to “make clear” that “i dont work for mossad” – then added a smiley face. He collected ‘trophies’ – photos, contact books, flight logs.
Steven Hoffenberg, Epstein’s former business partner who served 18 years for a Ponzi scheme they ran together at Towers Financial (Epstein was never charged) summed him up:
“You’re talking about a sociopath who was only interested in advancing himself monetarily, and every component of his existence was at the destruction of other people.”
Epstein’s MO wasn’t sophisticated tradecraft. It was constant improvisation by someone who kept on getting away with it.
None of this argues against an intelligence connection. Informants can be criminals, oddballs, grifters, and boundary-crossers – people who can move between milieus that respectable operators can’t access. The sloppiness and the usefulness aren’t contradictory, they’re complementary.
Epstein may have been a predator and a conman who stumbled into usefulness. His network-building, his documentation habits, his access to powerful people – these would have made him valuable to multiple interests, whether or not he was ever formally recruited.
7. The uncomfortable conclusion
The DOJ now claims to have met its obligations, though 2.5 million pages remain unreleased.
For all those souls whose names pop up in flattering and friendly exchanges, they can cover their consciences with the excuse that Epstein’s network was structured to allow ‘not-knowing.’
You could participate in levels B, C, and D without direct involvement in level A – but those levels attracted the most profoundly depraved to the most superficially vain.
Whatever Epstein was providing – access, back-channels, information – was valuable enough that sophisticated and powerful people set aside the good judgment that is supposed to come with sophistication and power.
There’s also a simpler possibility that may be more damning than any conspiracy theory: they just didn’t care enough to stop.
Thanks for reading,
best
Adrian
Somehow, I doubt we'll ever find out the whole truth about the Epstein network. I love the fact that you separated the various compartments, as a lot of people seem to miss the most obvious point: Epstein wasn't a pimp; he was a provider of information. The pimping? That was simply one of his many ways of getting the intel he needed.
At the end of the day, the Epsteins of this world exist by those who enable them.