Backchannels and geopolitics: Syria and Russia

I’ve had a hard time knowing what to make of the still-unfolding saga around Jeffrey Epstein.

Like basically everyone else in the world, I’ve been following the story with interest for years.

Even before the Miami Herald’s explosive 2018 investigation into the extend of his sexual abuse and how he had been able to get away with it, I had a vague understanding of a man named Jeffrey Epstein who abused girls and hobnobbed with powerful men like Bill Clinton and Bill Gates.

And since then we’ve learned so much more. There have been so many journalistic investigations into Epstein’s connections with the elite, into his finances and into the circumstances around his death.

Of course, we’re still left with more questions than answers. Which has allowed Epstein to become this sort of Ur-conspiracy theory that people online obsess over. Was he a CIA asset or a Mossad agent? Was he collecting blackmail on the rich and powerful? Did he really kill himself?

But somehow, there was a part of me that felt like these were the wrong questions to ask. That they didn’t explain exactly who this guy was and why he was able to get away with what he did for so long. And didn’t really get at the heart of why this story has global importance.

And then just the other week, I read a piece by Canadian journalist Jeet Heer in The Nation that made it all make sense to me.

Heer argues that the Epstein was — alongside many other things — a warlord.

He was basing this assessment on a number of articles that have been coming out of publications like Drop Site News and Reason that examine troves of email correspondence that Epstein had that the mainstream media is so far refusing to report on.

And the case he makes is compelling. So I decided to give Jeet a call and ask him all about it.

Featured in this episode: Jeet Heer

To learn more

"Jeffrey Epstein Was a Warlord. We Have to Talk About It." by Jeet Heer in The Nation

"Jeffrey Epstein and the Mossad: How The Sex-Trafficker Helped Israel Build a Backchannel to Russia Amid Syrian Civil War" by Murtaza Hussain & Ryan Grim in Drop Site News

"Inside Jeffrey Epstein's Spy Industry Connections" by Matthew Petti in Reason

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Music: I dunno by grapes (c) copyright 2008 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. Ft: J Lang, Morusque

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