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By Whitney Webb<\/p>\n
As billionaire pedophile and alleged sex-trafficker, Jeffrey Epstein sits in prison, reports have continued to surface about his reported links to intelligence, his financial ties to several companies and \u201ccharitable\u201d foundations, and his friendships with the rich and powerful as well as top politicians.<\/p>\n
While Part I and Part II of this series, \u201cThe Jeffrey Epstein Scandal: Too Big to Fail,\u201d have focused on the widespread nature of sexual blackmail operations in recent American history and their ties to the heights of American political power and the U.S. intelligence community, one key aspect of Epstein\u2019s own sex-trafficking and blackmail operation that warrants examination is Epstein\u2019s ties to Israeli intelligence and his ties to the \u201cinformal\u201d pro-Israel philanthropist faction known as \u201cthe Mega Group.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Mega Group\u2019s role in the Epstein case has garnered some attention, as Epstein\u2019s main financial patron for decades, billionaire Leslie Wexner, was a co-founder of the group that unites several well-known businessmen with a penchant for pro-Israel and ethno-philanthropy (i.e., philanthropy benefiting a single ethnic or ethno-religious group). However, as this report will show, another uniting factor among Mega Group members is deep ties to organized crime, specifically the organized crime network discussed in Part I of this series, which was largely led by notorious American mobster Meyer Lansky.
\nBy virtue of the role of many Mega Group members as major political donors in both the U.S. and Israel, several of its most notable members have close ties to the governments of both countries as well as their intelligence communities. As this report and a subsequent report will show, the Mega Group also had close ties to two businessmen who worked for Israel\u2019s Mossad \u2014 Robert Maxwell and Marc Rich \u2014 as well as to top Israeli politicians, including past and present prime ministers with deep ties to Israel\u2019s intelligence community.<\/p>\n
One of those businessmen working for the Mossad, Robert Maxwell, will be discussed at length in this report. Maxwell, who was a business partner of Mega Group co-founder Charles Bronfman, aided the successful Mossad plot to plant a trapdoor in U.S.-created software that was then sold to governments and companies throughout the world. That plot\u2019s success was largely due to the role of a close associate of then-President Ronald Reagan and an American politician close to Maxwell, who later helped aid Reagan in the cover-up of the Iran Contra scandal.<\/p>\n
Years later, Maxwell\u2019s daughter \u2014 Ghislaine Maxwell \u2014 would join Jeffrey Epstein\u2019s \u201cinner circle\u201d at the same time Epstein was bankrolling a similar software program now being marketed for critical electronic infrastructure in the U.S. and abroad. That company has deep and troubling connections to Israeli military intelligence, associates of the Trump administration, and the Mega Group.<\/p>\n
Epstein appears to have ties to Israeli intelligence and has well-documented ties to influential Israeli politicians and the Mega Group. Yet, those entities are not isolated in and of themselves, as many also connect to the organized crime network and powerful alleged pedophiles discussed in previous installments of this series.<\/p>\n
Perhaps the best illustration of how the connections between many of these players often meld together can be seen in Ronald Lauder: a Mega Group member, former member of the Reagan administration, long-time donor to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel\u2019s Likud Party, as well as a long-time friend of Donald Trump and Roy Cohn.<\/p>\n
From cosmetics heir to political player<\/strong> In a statement given by Lauder to New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman in 2018, the cosmetics heir noted that he has known Trump for over 50 years, going back at least to the early 1970s. According to Lauder, his relationship with Trump began when Trump was a student at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, which Lauder also attended.<\/p>\n Though the exact nature of their early friendship is unclear, it is evident that they shared many of the same connections, including to the man who would later count them both as his clients, Roy Cohn. While much has been said of the ties between Cohn and Trump, Cohn was particularly close to Lauder\u2019s mother, Estee Lauder (born Josephine Mentzer). Estee was even counted among Cohn\u2019s most high-profile friends in\u00a0his\u00a0New York Times<\/i>\u00a0obituary<\/a>.<\/p>\n A small window into the Lauder-Cohn relationship surfaced briefly in\u00a0a 2016 article\u00a0in\u00a0Politico <\/i>about a 1981 dinner party held at Cohn\u2019s weekend home in Greenwich, Connecticut. The party was attended by Ronald Lauder\u2019s parents, Estee and Joe, as well as Trump and his then-wife Ivana, who\u00a0had a weekend home<\/a>\u00a0just two miles away. That party was held soon after Cohn had helped Reagan secure the presidency and had reached the height of his political influence. At the party, Cohn offered toasts to Reagan and to then-Senator for New York Alfonse D\u2019Amato, who\u00a0would later urge<\/a>\u00a0Ronald Lauder to run for political office.<\/p>\n Two years later, in 1983, Ronald Lauder \u2014 whose only professional experience at that point was working for his parent\u2019s cosmetics company \u2014\u00a0was appointed<\/a>\u00a0to serve as United States Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for European and NATO Affairs. Soon after his appointment, he\u00a0served on<\/a>\u00a0the Dinner Tribute Committee for a dinner hosted by the Jewish fraternal and strongly pro-Israel organization B\u2019nai B\u2019rith, the parent organization of the controversial Anti-Defamation League (ADL), in Roy Cohn\u2019s honor. Cohn\u2019s influential father, Albert Cohn, was\u00a0the long-time president<\/a>\u00a0of B\u2019nai B\u2019rith\u2019s powerful New England-New York chapter and Roy Cohn himself was a member of B\u2019nai B\u2019rith\u2019s Banking and Finance Lodge.<\/p>\n The dinner\u00a0specifically sought<\/a>\u00a0to honor Cohn for his pro-Israel advocacy and his efforts to \u201cfortify\u201d Israel\u2019s economy, and its honorary chairmen included media mogul Rupert Murdoch, Donald Trump and then-head of Bear Stearns Alan Greenberg, all of whom\u00a0are connected<\/a>\u00a0to Jeffrey Epstein.<\/p>\n During his time as deputy assistant secretary of defense, Lauder was also very active in Israeli politics and had already become an ally of the then-Israeli representative to the United Nations and future prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu. Lauder would go on to be one of the most important individuals in Netanyahu\u2019s rise to power, particularly during his upset victory in 1996, and\u00a0a major financier<\/a>\u00a0of Israel\u2019s right-wing Likud Party.<\/p>\n In 1986, the year that Roy Cohn died, Lauder left his post at the Pentagon and became the U.S. ambassador to Austria, where his tenure was shaped by\u00a0his confrontations<\/a>\u00a0with the then-Austrian president and former Nazi collaborator, Kurt Waldheim. Lauder\u2019s interest in Austrian politics has continued well into recent years, culminating in accusations that he\u00a0sought to manipulate<\/a>\u00a0Austrian elections in 2012.<\/p>\n After leaving his ambassadorship, Lauder\u00a0founded<\/a>\u00a0the Ronald S. Lauder Foundation in 1987 and later went on to run for Mayor of New York against Rudy Giuliani in 1989. Lauder\u00a0was encouraged<\/a>\u00a0to run by then-Senator Alfonse D\u2019Amato, who had close ties to Roy Cohn and his long-time law partner Tom Bolan, who\u00a0was D\u2019Amato\u2019s adviser<\/a>. At the aforementioned 1983 B\u2019nai B\u2019rith dinner honoring Cohn, D\u2019Amato was the featured speaker.<\/p>\n The likely reason was that Giuliani, though once an ally of the \u201cRoy Cohn machine,\u201d was at the time\u00a0deeply disliked<\/a>\u00a0by the late Cohn\u2019s associates for prosecuting Cohn\u2019s former law partner, Stanley Friedman, for racketeering, conspiracy and other charges. Giuliani also had a history of bitter disagreements with D\u2019Amato. Lauder\u2019s primary campaign, though unsuccessful, was noted for its viciousness and its cost, as it\u00a0burned through<\/a>\u00a0more than $13 million.<\/p>\n A few years later, in the early 1990s, Lauder would join a newly formed group that has long evaded scrutiny from the media but has recently become of interest in connection with the Jeffrey Epstein scandal: the Mega Group.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Before getting to the Mega Group, it is worth noting one particular act apparently undertaken by Lauder while he was U.S. ambassador to Austria that has recently come to light in relation to the arrest in early July of Jeffrey Epstein, a finding first reported by journalist Edward Szall. When police recently discovered an Austrian passport with Epstein\u2019s picture and a fake name after raiding his Manhattan residence, the source and purpose of the passport came under media scrutiny.<\/p>\n According to\u00a0the\u00a0Associated Press<\/em><\/a>, Epstein\u2019s defense lawyers specifically argued that \u201ca friend gave it to him [Epstein] in the 1980s after some Jewish-Americans were informally advised to carry identification bearing a non-Jewish name when traveling internationally during a period when hijackings were more common.\u201d This claim appears to be related to concerns that followed the\u00a0hijacking of Air France Flight 139<\/a>\u00a0in 1976 when Israeli and Jewish hostages were separated from other hostages based largely on the passports in their possession.<\/p>\n Given that Epstein was unable to meet the conventional qualifications for an Austrian passport \u2014 including long-term residency in Austria (the passport lists him as a resident of Saudi Arabia) and fluency in German \u2014 it appears that the only way to have acquired an Austrian passport was by\u00a0unconventional<\/i>\u00a0means, meaning assistance from a well-connected Austrian official or foreign diplomat with clout in Austria.<\/p>\n Lauder, then-ambassador to Austria for the Reagan administration, would have been well-positioned to acquire such a passport, particularly for the reason cited by Epstein\u2019s attorneys that Jewish-Americans could be targeted during travel, and in light of Lauder\u2019s very public concerns over threats Jews face from certain terror groups. Furthermore, the passport had been issued in 1987, when Lauder was still serving as an ambassador.<\/p>\n In addition, Lauder\u00a0was<\/a>\u00a0well-connected to Epstein\u2019s former patron \u2014 former head of Bear Stearns Alan Greenberg, who had hired Epstein in the late 1970s immediately after the latter was fired from the Dalton School \u2014 and Donald Trump,\u00a0another friend\u00a0of Lauder and Greenberg who began his friendship with Epstein in 1987, the same year the fake Austrian passport was issued. In 1987, Epstein also began his relationship with his principal financier, Leslie Wexner, who is also closely associated with Lauder (though some sources claim that Epstein and Wexner first met in 1985 but that their strong business relationship was not established until 1987).<\/p>\n Though Epstein\u2019s defense attorney declined to reveal the identity of the \u201cfriend\u201d who provided him with the fake Austrian passport, Lauder was both well-positioned to acquire it in Austria and also deeply connected to the Mega Group, which was co-founded by Epstein\u2019s patron Leslie Wexner and to which Epstein has many connections. These connections to both the Austrian government and to Epstein\u2019s mentor make Lauder the most likely person to have acquired the document on Epstein\u2019s behalf.<\/p>\n Furthermore, Epstein and the Mega Group\u2019s ties to the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad, also suggest Lauder was involved in procuring the passport, in light of his close ties to the Israeli government and the fact that Mossad\u00a0has a history<\/a>\u00a0of using ambassadors abroad to procure false, foreign passports for its operatives.<\/p>\n Lauder himself has been alleged to have ties to Mossad, as he is a long-time funder of IDC Herzliya, an Israeli university\u00a0closely associated with<\/a>\u00a0Mossad and their recruiters as well as Israeli military intelligence. Lauder even\u00a0founded<\/a>\u00a0IDC Herzliya\u2019s Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy and Strategy.<\/p>\n Furthermore, Lauder co-founded the Eastern European broadcasting network CETV with Mark Palmer, a former U.S. diplomat, Kissinger aide and Reagan speechwriter. Palmer is better known for co-founding the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), an organization often described as an accessory to U.S. intelligence, and one whose first president confessed to\u00a0the\u00a0Washington Post<\/i><\/a>\u00a0that \u201ca lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.\u201d A 2001 report in the\u00a0Evening Standard<\/i>\u00a0noted that Epstein\u00a0once claimed<\/a>\u00a0that during the 1980s he worked for the CIA, but Epstein later backed away from that assertion.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Mega Group \u2014 a secretive group of billionaires to which Lauder belongs \u2014 was formed in 1991 by Charles Bronfman and Leslie Wexner, the latter of whom has received considerable media scrutiny following the July arrest of his former protege Jeffrey Epstein.\u00a0Media profiles\u00a0<\/a>of the group paint it as \u201ca loosely organized club of 20 of the nation\u2019s wealthiest and most influential Jewish businessmen\u201d focused on \u201cphilanthropy and Jewishness,\u201d with membership dues upwards of $30,000 per year. Yet several of its most prominent members have ties to organized crime.<\/p>\n Mega Group members founded and\/or are closely associated with some of the most well-known pro-Israel organizations. For instance, members Charles Bronfman and Michael Steinhardt\u00a0formed<\/a>\u00a0Birthright Taglit with the backing of then- and current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Steinhardt, an atheist, has stated that his motivation in helping to found the group was to advance\u00a0his own belief\u00a0that devotion to and faith in the state of Israel should serve as \u201ca substitute for [Jewish] theology.\u201d<\/p>\n Other well-known groups associated with the Mega Group include the World Jewish Congress \u2014 whose past president, Edgar Bronfman, and current president, Ronald Lauder, are both Mega Group members \u2014 and B\u2019nai B\u2019rith, particularly its spin-off known as the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). The Bronfman brothers were major donors to the ADL, with Edgar Bronfman\u00a0serving as<\/a>\u00a0the ADL\u2019s honorary national vice-chair for several years.<\/p>\n When Edgar Bronfman died in 2013, long-time ADL Director\u00a0Abe Foxman said<\/a>, \u201cEdgar was for many years Chair of our Liquor Industry Division, Chair of our New York Appeal, and one of our most significant benefactors.\u201d Other Mega Group members that are donors and major supporters of the ADL include\u00a0Ronald Lauder<\/a>,\u00a0Michael Steinhardt<\/a>\u00a0and the late\u00a0Max Fisher<\/a>. As previously mentioned, Roy Cohn\u2019s father was a long-time leader of B\u2019nai B\u2019rith\u2019s influential New England-New York chapter and Cohn was later a celebrated member of its banking and finance lodge.<\/p>\n In addition, Mega Group members have also been key players in the pro-Israel lobby in the United States. For instance, Max Fisher of the Mega Group\u00a0founded<\/a>\u00a0the National Jewish Coalition,\u00a0now known as<\/a>\u00a0the Republican Jewish Coalition \u2014 the main\u00a0pro-Israel neoconservative political lobbying group<\/a>, known for its support of hawkish policies, and whose current chief patrons, Sheldon Adelson and Bernard Marcus, are among Donald Trump\u2019s top donors.<\/p>\n Though the Mega Group has officially existed only since 1991, the use of \u201cphilanthropy\u201d to provide cover for more unscrupulous lobbying or business activities was pioneered decades earlier by Sam Bronfman, the father of Mega Group members Edgar and Charles Bronfman. While other North American elites like J.D. Rockefeller had previously used philanthropic giving as a means of laundering their reputations, Bronfman\u2019s approach to philanthropy was unique because it was focused on giving specifically to other members of his own ethno-religious background.<\/p>\n Sam Bronfman, as was detailed in\u00a0Part I<\/a>\u00a0of this series, had long-standing deep ties to organized crime, specifically Meyer Lanksy\u2019s organized crime syndicate. Yet, Bronfman\u2019s private ambition, according to those close to him, was to become a respected member of high society. As a consequence, Bronfman worked hard to remove the stain that his mob associations had left on his public reputation in Canada and abroad. He accomplished this by becoming a leader in Canada\u2019s Zionist movement and, by the end of the 1930s, he\u00a0was head\u00a0<\/a>of the Canadian Jewish Congress and had begun to make a name for himself as a philanthropist for Jewish causes.<\/p>\n RELATED CONTENT: The Last Round \/ You Look Prettier When You Keep Your Mouth Shut<\/a><\/p>\n Yet even some of Bronfman\u2019s activism and philanthropy had hints of the mobster-like reputation he tried so hard to shake. For instance, Bronfman was actively involved in the illegal shipping of arms to Zionist paramilitaries in Palestine prior to 1948, specifically as\u00a0a co-founder<\/a>of the National Conference for Israeli and Jewish Rehabilitation that\u00a0smuggled weapons<\/a>\u00a0to the paramilitary group Haganah.<\/p>\n At the same time Bronfman was abetting the illegal smuggling of weapons to the Haganah, his associates in the criminal underworld were doing the same. After World War II, close aides of David Ben-Gurion, who would later become the first prime minister of Israel and was instrumental in the founding of Mossad,\u00a0forged tight-knit relationships\u00a0with Meyer Lansky, Benjamin \u201cBugsy\u201d Siegel, Mickey Cohen and other Jewish gangsters of the period. They used their clandestine networks to establish a vast arms smuggling network between the United States and Zionist settlements in Palestine, arming both the Haganah and the Irgun paramilitary groups. As noted in Part I of this report, at the same time these gangsters were aiding the illegal arming of ZIonsit paramilitaries, they were strengthening their ties to U.S. intelligence that had first been formally (though covertly) established in World War II.<\/p>\n After Israel was founded, Sam Bronfman\u00a0worked with<\/a>\u00a0future Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres to negotiate the sale of Canadian armaments at half-price to Israel and the bargain weapons purchase was paid for entirely by a fundraising dinner hosted by Bronfman and his wife. Many years later, Peres would go on\u00a0to introduce<\/a>\u00a0another future prime minister of Israel, Ehud Barak, to Jeffrey Epstein.<\/p>\n The rest of the Bronfman family\u2019s march on \u201cthe road to respectability\u201d was undertaken by Bronfman\u2019s children, who married into aristocratic families such as\u00a0the European Rothschilds<\/a>and the Wall Street \u201croyalty\u201d of\u00a0the Lehmans and the Loebs<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Bronfmans\u2019 newfound respectability did not mean that their association with the Lansky-led criminal empire had dissolved. Indeed, prominent members of the Seagrams dynasty came under fire in the 1960s and 1970s for their\u00a0close association<\/a>\u00a0with Willie \u201cObie\u201d Obront, a major figure in Canadian organized crime, whom Canadian professor Stephen Schneider has referred to as the Meyer Lansky of Canada.<\/p>\n However, Edgar and Charles Bronfman were hardly the only members of the Mega Group with deep and long-standing ties to the Lansky-led National Crime Syndicate. Indeed, one of the group\u2019s prominent members, hedge fund manager Michael Steinhardt, opened up about his own family ties to Lansky in his autobiography\u00a0No Bull: My Life in and out the Markets<\/i>, where he noted that his father, Sol \u201cRed McGee\u201d Steinhardt, was\u00a0Lansky\u2019s jewel fence of choice<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0a major player<\/a>\u00a0in New York\u2019s criminal underworld. Sol Steinhardt was also his son\u2019s first client on Wall Street and helped him jumpstart his career in finance.<\/p>\n The ties between the Mega Group and the National Crime Syndicate don\u2019t stop there. Another prominent member of the Mega Group with ties to this same criminal network is Max Fisher, who has been described as Wexner\u2019s mentor and is also alleged\u00a0to have worked<\/a>\u00a0with Detroit\u2019s \u201cPurple Gang\u201d during Prohibition and beyond. The Purple Gang were part of the network that smuggled Bronfman liquor from Canada into the United State during Prohibition, and one of its founders, Abe Bernstein, was\u00a0a close associate<\/a>\u00a0of both Meyer Lansky and Moe Dalitz. Fisher was a\u00a0key adviser<\/a>\u00a0to several U.S. presidents, beginning with Dwight D. Eisenhower, as well as to Henry Kissinger.<\/p>\n In addition to Fisher, Mega Group member Ronald Lauder was connected to Roy Cohn and Tom Bolan, both of whom were closely associated with this same Lansky-led crime network (see\u00a0Part I<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Part II<\/a>) and who regularly represented top Mafia figures in court. Furthermore, another member of the Mega Group, director Steven Spielberg, is\u00a0a well-known protege<\/a>\u00a0of Lew Wasserman, the mob-connected media mogul and long-time backer of Ronald Reagan\u2019s film and later political career, discussed in\u00a0Part II<\/a>\u00a0of this series.<\/p>\n One surprise connection to Cohn involves Mega Group member, and former president of U.S. weapons firm General Dynamics, Lester Crown, whose brother-in-law is David Schine, Cohn\u2019s confidant and alleged lover during the McCarthy hearings,\u00a0whose relationship with Cohn<\/a>helped bring about the downfall of McCarthyism.<\/p>\n Another member of the Mega Group worth noting is Laurence Tisch, who owned\u00a0CBS News<\/i>\u00a0for several years and founded Loews Corporation. Tisch is notable for his\u00a0work for<\/a>\u00a0the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the precursor to the CIA, where Donald Barr, who hired Epstein at the Dalton School, also served and which forged ties with Lansky\u2019s criminal empire during World War II.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Leslie \u201cLes\u201d Wexner, the other Mega Group co-founder, also has ties to organized crime. Wexner\u2019s ties to Jeffrey Epstein have come under scrutiny following the latter\u2019s recent arrest, as Wexner was the only publicly acknowledged client of Epstein\u2019s suspicious hedge fund, the source of much of this wealth, and\u00a0the previous owner<\/a>\u00a0of Epstein\u2019s $56 million Manhattan townhouse, which Wexner transferred to an Epstein-controlled entity for free.<\/p>\n Before Epstein received the townhouse, Wexner appears to have used the residence for some unconventional purposes, noted in\u00a0a 1996\u00a0New York Times<\/i>\u00a0article<\/a>\u00a0on the then-Wexner-owned residence, which included \u201ca bathroom reminiscent of James Bond movies: hidden beneath a stairway, lined with lead to provide shelter from attack and supplied with closed-circuit television screens and a telephone, both concealed in a cabinet beneath the sink.\u201d The\u00a0Times<\/i>article does not speculate as to the purpose of this equipment, though the allusion to famous fictional superspy James Bond suggests that it may have been used to snoop on guests or conduct electronic surveillance.<\/p>\n The 1996\u00a0Times<\/i>\u00a0article also noted that, after Wexner bought the residence for $13.2 million in 1989, he spent millions more decorating and furnishing the home, including the addition of the electronic equipment in the \u201cJames Bond\u201d bathroom, only to apparently never live in it. The\u00a0Times<\/i>, which interviewed Epstein for the piece, quoted him as saying that \u201cLes never spent more than two months there.\u201d Epstein told the\u00a0Times<\/i>, which identified Epstein as Wexner\u2019s \u201cprotege and one of his financial advisers,\u201d that the house, by that time, already belonged to him.<\/p>\n That same year, Epstein was commissioning artwork for Wexner\u2019s Ohio mansion. A\u00a0recent article<\/a>\u00a0from the\u00a0Times<\/i>\u00a0noted that:<\/p>\n In the summer of 1996, Maria Farmer was working on an art project for Mr. Epstein in Mr. Wexner\u2019s Ohio mansion. While she was there, Mr.\u00a0<\/i>Epstein sexually assaulted her, according to an affidavit Ms. Farmer filed earlier this year in federal court in Manhattan. She said that she fled the room and called the police, but that Mr. Wexner\u2019s security staff refused to let her leave for 12 hours.\u201d<\/p>\n Farmer\u2019s account strongly suggests that, given the behavior of his personal security staff at his mansion following Epstein\u2019s alleged assault on Farmer, Wexner was well aware of Epstein\u2019s predatory behavior towards young women. This is compounded by claims made by Alan Dershowitz \u2014 a former lawyer for and friend of Epstein\u2019s, who has also been accused of raping underage girls \u2014 that Wexner\u00a0has also been accused<\/a>\u00a0of raping underage girls exploited by Epstein on at least seven occasions.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The presence of the electronic equipment in his home\u2019s bathroom, other oddities related to the townhouse, and aspects of the links between Epstein and Wexner suggest there is more to Wexner, who has rather successfully developed a public image of a respectable businessman and philanthropist, much like other prominent members of the Mega Group.<\/p>\n However, bits and pieces of Wexner\u2019s private secrets have occasionally bubbled up, only to be subjected to rapid cover-ups amidst concerns of \u201clibeling\u201d the powerful and well-connected billionaire \u201cphilanthropist.\u201d<\/p>\n In 1985, Columbus (Ohio) lawyer Arthur Shapiro\u00a0was murdered<\/a>\u00a0in broad daylight at point-blank range in what was largely referred to as a \u201cmob style murder.\u201d The homicide still remains unsolved, likely due to the fact that then-Columbus Police Chief James Jackson ordered the destruction of key documents of his department\u2019s investigation into the murder.<\/p>\n Jackson\u2019s ordering of the documents\u2019 destruction came to light years later in 1996, when he was under investigation for corruption. According to\u00a0the\u00a0Columbus Dispatch<\/i><\/a>, Jackson justified the destruction of one \u201cviable and valuable<\/a>\u201d report because he felt that it \u201cwas so filled with wild speculation about prominent business leaders that it was potentially libelous.\u201d The nature of this \u201cwild speculation\u201d was that \u201cmillionaire businessmen in Columbus and Youngstown were linked to the \u2018mob-style murder.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Though Jackson\u2019s efforts were meant to keep this \u201clibelous\u201d report far from public view, it was eventually\u00a0obtained by Bob Fitrakis<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 attorney, journalist, and executive director of the Columbus Institute for Contemporary Journalism \u2014 after he was \u201caccidentally\u201d sent a copy of the report in 1998 as part of a public records request.<\/p>\n The report, titled \u201cShapiro Homicide Investigation: Analysis and Hypothesis<\/a>,\u201d names Leslie Wexner as linked \u201cwith associates reputed to be organized crime figures\u201d and also lists the names of businessman Jack Kessler, former Columbus City Council President and Wexner associate Jerry Hammond, and former Columbus City Council member Les Wright as also being involved in Shapiro\u2019s murder.<\/p>\n The report also noted that Arthur Shapiro\u2019s law firm \u2014 Schwartz, Shapiro, Kelm & Warren \u2014 represented Wexner\u2019s company, The Limited, and states that \u201cprior to his death, Arthur Shapiro managed this account [The Limited] for the law firm.\u201d It also noted that, at the time of his death, Shapiro \u201cwas the subject of an investigation by the Internal Revenue Service because he had failed to file income tax returns for some seven years prior to his death, and he had invested in some questionable tax shelters.\u201d It also stated that his death prevented Shapiro from his planned testimony at a grand jury hearing about these \u201cquestionable tax shelters.\u201d<\/p>\n As to Wexner\u2019s alleged links to organized crime, the report focuses on the close business relationship between Wexner\u2019s The Limited and Francis Walsh, whose trucking company \u201c[had] done an excess of 90 percent of the Limited\u2019s trucking business around the time of Shapiro\u2019s murder,\u201d according to the report. Walsh was named in\u00a0a 1988 indictment<\/a>\u00a0as a \u201cco-conspirator\u201d of Genovese crime family boss Anthony \u201cFat Tony\u201d Salerno, whose long-time lawyer was Roy Cohn; and the Shapiro murder report stated that Walsh was \u201cstill considered associates of the Genovese\/LaRocca crime family, and Walsh was still providing truck transportation for The Limited.\u201d<\/p>\n Notably, the Genovese crime family has long formed a key part of the National Crime Syndicate, as its former head, Charles \u201cLucky\u201d Luciano,\u00a0co-created<\/a>\u00a0the criminal organization with his close friend Meyer Lansky. Upon Luciano\u2019s imprisonment and subsequent deportation from the United States, Lansky took over the syndicate\u2019s U.S. operations and his association with Luciano\u2019s successors continued until Lansky\u2019s death in 1983.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In May 1997, the\u00a0Washington Post<\/i>\u00a0broke\u00a0an explosive story<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 long since forgotten \u2014 based on an intercepted phone call made between a Mossad official in the U.S. and his superior in Tel Aviv that discussed the Mossad\u2019s efforts to obtain a secret U.S. government document. According to the\u00a0Post,\u00a0<\/i>the Mossad official stated during the phone call that \u201cIsraeli Ambassador Eliahu Ben Elissar had asked him whether he could obtain a copy of the letter given to [Palestinian leader Yasser] Arafat by [then-Secretary of State Warren] Christopher on Jan. 16, the day after the Hebron accord was signed by Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.\u201d<\/p>\n The\u00a0Post\u00a0<\/i>article continued:<\/p>\n According to a source who viewed a copy of the NSA transcript of the conversation, the intelligence officer, speaking in Hebrew, said, \u2018The ambassador wants me to go to Mega to get a copy of this letter.\u2019 The source said the supervisor in Tel Aviv rejected the request, saying, \u2018This is not something we use Mega for.\u2019\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The leaked communication led to an investigation that sought to identify an individual code-named \u201cMega\u201d that the\u00a0Post<\/i>\u00a0said \u201cmay be someone in the U.S. government who has provided information to the Israelis in the past,\u201d a concern that subsequently spawned a fruitless FBI investigation. The Mossad\u00a0later claimed<\/a>\u00a0that \u201cMega\u201d was merely a codeword for the U.S.\u2019 CIA, but the FBI and NSA were unconvinced by that claim and\u00a0believed<\/a>\u00a0that it was a senior U.S. government official that had potentially once been involved in working with Jonathan Pollard, the former U.S. naval intelligence analyst later convicted of spying for the Mossad.<\/p>\n Almost one year to the day after the \u201cMega\u201d spy scandal broke, the\u00a0Wall Street Journal<\/i>\u00a0was\u00a0the first outlet<\/a>\u00a0to report on the existence of a little-known organization of billionaires that was \u201cinformally\u201d called the Mega Group and had been founded years prior in 1991. The report made no mention of the spy scandal that had spread concerns of Israeli espionage in the U.S. only a year prior. However, the group\u2019s distinctive \u201cinformal\u201d name and the connections of its members to the Mossad and to high-ranking Israeli politicians, including prime ministers, raise the possibility that \u201cMega\u201d was not an individual, as the FBI and NSA had believed, but a\u00a0group.<\/i><\/p>\n In 1997, when the \u201cMega\u201d spy scandal broke, Netanyahu had recently become prime minister of Israel after an upset victory, a victory that was\u00a0largely credited<\/a>\u00a0to one well-connected Netanyahu backer in particular, Ronald Lauder. Beyond being a major donor, Lauder had brought Arthur Finklestein on to work for Netanyahu\u2019s 1996 campaign, whose strategies were credited for Netanyahu\u2019s surprise win. Netanyahu was close enough to Lauder that he personally enlisted Lauder and George Nader to serve as his peace envoys to Syria.<\/p>\n Nader, who was connected to the Trump 2016 campaign and Trump ally and\u00a0Blackwater<\/a>founder Erik Prince, was\u00a0recently hit<\/a>\u00a0with federal child sex trafficking charges last month, soon after Jeffrey Epstein had been arrested on similar charges. At the time Nader was picked to work with Lauder on Netanyahu\u2019s behalf, he had\u00a0already been caught<\/a>\u00a0possessing large amounts of child pornography on two separate occasions, first in 1984 and later in 1990.<\/p>\n This strong connection between Netanyahu and Lauder during the time of the 1997 \u201cMega\u201d spy scandal is important considering Mossad answers directly to Israel\u2019s prime minister.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n RELATED CONTENT: European Union Rejects the Extraterritorial Implementation of Unilateral Sanctions Against Venezuela<\/a>Another possible connection between the Mega Group and the Mossad owes to the Mega Group\u2019s ties to Meyer Lansky\u2019s criminal network. As was detailed in Part I, Lansky had established deep ties to U.S. intelligence after World War II and was also connected to the Mossad through Mossad official Tibor Rosenbaum, whose bank was frequently used by Lansky to launder money. In addition, Lansky collaborated on at least one occasion with notorious Mossad \u201csuperspy\u201d Rafi Eitan, who he\u00a0helped acquire<\/a>\u00a0sensitive electronic equipment possessed only by the CIA but coveted by Israeli intelligence. Eitan is best known in the U.S. for being the Mossad handler of Jonathan Pollard.<\/p>\n Notably, Eitan was\u00a0the main source<\/a>\u00a0of claims that the code-word \u201cMega\u201d used by the Mossad officials in 1997 referred to the CIA and not to a potential source in the U.S. government once linked to Pollard\u2019s spying activities, making his claims as to the true meaning of the term somewhat dubious.<\/p>\n Given that the organized crime network tied to the Mega Group had ties to both U.S. and Israeli intelligence, the \u201cMega\u201d codeword could plausibly have referred to this secretive group of billionaires. More supporting evidence for this theory comes from the fact that prominent members of the Mega Group were business partners of Mossad agents, including media mogul Robert Maxwell and commodities trader Marc Rich.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Maxwell family has become a source of renewed media interest following Jeffrey Epstein\u2019s arrest, as Ghislaine Maxwell, long described in the media as a British \u201csocialite,\u201d was publicly cited as Epstein\u2019s long-time \u201con and off\u201d girlfriend, and Epstein\u2019s victims, as well as former wives of Epstein\u2019s friends, have claimed that she was Epstein\u2019s \u201cpimp\u201d and procured underage girls for his sexual blackmail operation. Ghislaine Maxwell is\u00a0also alleged<\/a>\u00a0to have engaged in the rape of the girls she procured for Epstein and to have used them to produce child pornography.<\/p>\n Ghislaine was the favorite and youngest daughter of media mogul Robert Maxwell. Maxwell, born Jan Ludvick Hoch, had joined the British Army in World War II. Afterwards, according to authors\u00a0John Loftus and Mark Aarons<\/a>, he greatly influenced the Czechoslovakian government\u2019s decision to arm Zionist paramilitaries during the 1948 war that resulted in Israel\u2019s creation as a state, and Maxwell himself was also involved in the smuggling of aircraft parts to Israel.<\/p>\n Around this time, Maxwell was approached by British intelligence outfit MI6 and offered a position that Maxwell ultimately declined. MI6 then\u00a0classified\u00a0him as \u201cZionist \u2014 loyal only to Israel\u201d and made him a person of interest. He later became an agent of the Mossad, according to several books including Seymour Hersh\u2019s\u00a0The Samson Option: Israel\u2019s Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy,<\/i>\u00a0and\u00a0Robert Maxwell: Israel\u2019s Superspy<\/i>\u00a0by Gordon Thomas and Martin Dillon.<\/p>\n According to\u00a0Victor Ostrovsky<\/a>, a former Mossad case officer:<\/p>\n Mossad was financing many of its operations in Europe from money stolen from Maxwell\u2019s newspaper pension fund. They got their hands on the funds almost as soon as Maxwell made the purchase of the Mirror Newspaper Group with money lent to him by Mossad.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n In exchange for his services, the Mossad helped Maxwell satisfy his sexual appetite during his visits to Israel,\u00a0providing him<\/a>\u00a0with prostitutes, \u201cthe service maintained for blackmail purposes.\u201d It was later revealed that the hotel in which he stayed in Israel was bugged with cameras, allowing the Mossad to acquire \u201ca small library of video footage of Maxwell in sexually compromising positions.\u201d As with the CIA, the Mossad\u2019s use of blackmail against both friend and foe is\u00a0well-documented\u00a0and known to be\u00a0extensive<\/a>.<\/p>\n Maxwell was also a close associate and friend of Israeli \u201csuperspy\u201d Rafi Eitan, who, as previously mentioned, was Jonathan Pollard\u2019s handler and who had previously worked directly with Meyer Lansky. Eitan\u00a0had learned<\/a>\u00a0of a revolutionary new software being used by the U.S. government known as \u201cPromis\u201d from Earl Brian, a long-time associate and aide to Ronald Reagan. Promis is often considered the forerunner to the \u201cPrism\u201d software used by spy agencies today and was developed by William Hamilton, who leased the software to the U.S. government through his company, Inslaw, in 1982.<\/p>\n Ariel Sharon (right)meets with Robert Maxwell in Jerusalem on Feb. 20, 1990. Photo | AP<\/p>\n According to author and former\u00a0BBC<\/i>\u00a0investigative journalist Gordon Thomas, Brian\u00a0was angry<\/a>that the U.S. Department of Justice was successfully using Promis to go after organized crime and money-laundering activities and Eitan felt that the program could aid Israel. At the time, Eitan was the director of the now defunct Israeli military intelligence agency Lekem, which gathered scientific and technical intelligence abroad from both public and covert sources, especially in relation to Israel\u2019s nuclear weapons program.<\/p>\n A plan was hatched to\u00a0install a \u201ctrapdoor\u201d<\/a>\u00a0into the software and then market Promis throughout the world, providing the Mossad with invaluable intelligence on the operations of its enemies and allies while also providing Eitan and Brian with copious amounts of cash. According to the testimony of ex-Mossad official Ari Ben-Menashe, Brian\u00a0provided a copy\u00a0of Promis to Israel\u2019s military intelligence, which contacted an Israeli American programmer living in California who then planted the \u201ctrapdoor\u201d in the software. The CIA was later said to have installed its\u00a0own\u00a0<\/i>trapdoor in the software but it is unknown if they did so with a version of the already bugged software and how widely it was adopted relative to the version bugged by Israeli intelligence.<\/p>\n After the trapdoor was inserted, the problem became selling the bugged version of the software to governments as well as private companies around the world, particularly in areas of interest. Brian first attempted to buy out Inslaw and Promis and then use that same company to sell the bugged version.<\/p>\n Unsuccessful, Brian turned to his close friend, then-Attorney General Ed Meese whose Justice Department then\u00a0abruptly refused<\/a>\u00a0to make the payments to Inslaw that were stipulated by the contract, essentially using the software for free, which Inslaw claimed to be theft. Some have speculated that Meese\u2019s role in that decision was shaped, not only by his friendship with Brian, but the fact that his wife was\u00a0a major investor<\/a>\u00a0in Brian\u2019s business ventures. Meese would later become an adviser to Donald Trump when he was president-elect.<\/p>\n Inslaw was forced to declare bankruptcy as a result of Meese\u2019s actions and sued the Justice Department. The court\u00a0later found<\/a>\u00a0that the Meese-led department \u201ctook, converted, stole\u201d the software through \u201ctrickery, fraud and deceit.\u201d<\/p>\n With Inslaw out of the way, Brian sold the software all over the world. Eitan later recruited Robert Maxwell to become another Promis salesman, which he did remarkably well, even succeeding in selling the software to Soviet intelligence and\u00a0conspiring with\u00a0Republican Texas Senator John Tower to have the software adopted by the U.S. government laboratory at Los Alamos. Dozens of countries used the software on their most carefully guarded computer systems, unaware that Mossad now had access to everything Promis touched.<\/p>\n Whereas the Mossad\u2019s past reliance on gathering intelligence had relied on the same tactics used by its equivalents in the U.S. and elsewhere, the widespread adoption of the Promis software, largely through the actions of Earl Brian and Robert Maxwell, gave the Mossad a way to gather not just troves of counterintelligence data, but also blackmail on other intelligence agencies and powerful figures.<\/p>\n Indeed, Promis\u2019 backdoor and adoption by intelligence agencies all over the world essentially provided the Mossad with access to troves of blackmail that the CIA and FBI had acquired on their friends and foes for over half a century. Strangely, in recent years, the FBI has\u00a0sought to hide<\/a>\u00a0information related to Robert Maxwell\u2019s connection to the Promis scandal.<\/p>\n According to\u00a0journalist Robert Fisk<\/a>, Maxwell was also involved in the Mossad abduction of Israeli nuclear weapons whistleblower Vanunu Mordechai. Mordechai had attempted to provide the media with information on the extent of Israel\u2019s nuclear weapons program, which was eventually published by the\u00a0Sunday Times of London<\/i>. Yet, Mordechai had also contacted the\u00a0Daily Mirror<\/i>\u00a0with the information, the\u00a0Mirror\u00a0<\/i>being an outlet that was owned by Maxwell and whose foreign editor was a close Maxwell associate and alleged Mossad asset, Nicholas Davies. Journalist Seymour Hersh alleged that Davies had also been involved in Israeli arms deals.<\/p>\n Per Fisk, it was Maxwell who contacted the Israeli Embassy in London and told them of Mordechai\u2019s activities. This led to Mordechai\u2019s entrapment by a female Mossad agent who seduced him as part of a \u201choney trap\u201d operation that led to his kidnapping and later imprisonment in Israel. Mordechai served an 18-year sentence, 12 years of which were in solitary confinement.<\/p>\n Then, there is the issue of Maxwell\u2019s death, widely cited by mainstream and independent media alike as\u00a0suspicious and a potential homicide<\/a>. According to authors Gordon Thomas and Martin Dillon, Maxwell had sealed his own fate when he attempted to threaten top Mossad officials with the exposure of certain operations if they did not help him rescue his media empire from crippling debt and financial difficulties. Many of Maxwell\u2019s\u00a0creditors<\/a>, who had grown increasingly displeased with the media mogul, were Israeli and several of them were alleged to be Mossad-connected themselves.<\/p>\n Thomas and Dillon argue in\u00a0their biography\u00a0of Maxwell\u2019s life that the Mossad felt that Maxwell had become more of a liability than an asset and killed him on his yacht three months after he demanded the bailout. On the other extreme are theories that suggest Maxwell committed suicide because of the financial difficulties his empire faced.<\/p>\n Some have taken Maxwell\u2019s funeral held in Israel as the country\u2019s \u201cofficial\u201d confirmation of Maxwell\u2019s service to the Mossad, as it was likened to a state funeral and attended\u00a0by no less than six\u00a0<\/a>serving and former heads of Israeli intelligence. During his funeral service in Jerusalem, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir eulogized him and\u00a0stated<\/a>: \u201cHe has done more for Israel than can today be said.\u201d Other\u00a0eulogies<\/a>\u00a0were given by future Prime Ministers Ehud Olmert (then Health Minister) and Shimon Peres, with the latter\u00a0also praising<\/a>\u00a0Maxwell\u2019s \u201cservices\u201d on behalf of Israel.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n As he built his business empire \u2014 and even became a member of Parliament, Maxwell was also doing work for Israeli intelligence, as several of the Israeli companies in which he invested became fronts for the Mossad. In addition, as he became a media mogul, he developed a bitter rivalry with Rupert Murdoch, a close friend of Roy Cohn and an influential figure in American and British media.<\/p>\n Maxwell also partnered with the Bronfman brothers, Edgar and Charles \u2014 key figures in the Mega Group. In 1989 Maxwell and Charles Bronfman\u00a0partnered up<\/a>\u00a0to bid on the\u00a0Jerusalem Post\u00a0<\/i>newspaper and the\u00a0Post<\/i>\u00a0described the two men as \u201ctwo of the world\u2019s leading Jewish financiers\u201d and their interest in the venture as \u201cdeveloping\u00a0The Jerusalem Post<\/i>\u00a0and expanding its influence among world Jewry.\u201d A year prior, Maxwell and Bronfman\u00a0had become<\/a>\u00a0top shareholders in the Israeli pharmaceutical company Teva.<\/p>\n Maxwell also worked with Charles Bronfman\u2019s brother Edgar in the late 1980s to convince the Soviet Union to allow Soviet Jews to immigrate to Israel. Edgar\u2019s efforts in this regard\u00a0have received more attention<\/a>, as it was a defining moment of his decades-long presidency of the World Jewish Congress, of which Ronald Lauder is currently president. Yet, Maxwell had also made\u00a0considerable use\u00a0of his contacts in the Soviet government in this effort.<\/p>\n Maxwell also moved in the circles of the network previously described in Parts I and II in this series. A key example of this is\u00a0the May 1989 party<\/a>\u00a0Maxwell hosted on his yacht, the\u00a0Lady Ghislaine<\/i>\u00a0\u2014 named for his youngest daughter and Epstein\u2019s future \u201cgirlfriend.\u201d Attendees of the party included Roy Cohn\u2019s protege Donald Trump and his long-time law partner Tom Bolan. A close friend of Nancy Reagan was also present, journalist Mike Wallace, as was literary agent Mort Janklow, who represented Ronald Reagan and two of Cohn\u2019s closest friends: journalists William Safire and Barbara Walters.<\/p>\n The CEO of what would soon become Time Warner, Steve Ross, was also invited to the exclusive event. Ross\u2019 presence is notable, as he had built his business empire\u00a0largely through his association<\/a>\u00a0with New York crime lords Manny Kimmel and Abner \u201cLongy\u201d Zwillman. Zwillman was a close friend of Meyer Lansky, Michael Steinhardt\u2019s father, and Sam Bronfman, father of Edgar and Charles Bronfman.<\/p>\n Another attendee of the Maxwell yacht party was former Secretary of the Navy and former Henry Kissinger staffer Jon Lehman, who would go on to associate with the controversial neoconservative think tank, Project for a New American Century. Prior to being secretary of the Navy, Lehman had been president of the Abington Corporation, which hired arch-neocon Richard Perle to manage\u00a0the portfolio<\/a>\u00a0of Israeli arms dealers Shlomo Zabludowicz and his son Chaim, who paid Ablington $10,000 month. A scandal arose when those\u00a0payments continued<\/a>after both Lehman and Perle joined the Reagan Department of Defense and while Perle was working to persuade the Pentagon to buy arms from companies linked to Zabludowicz. Perle had been part of the Reagan transition team along with Roy Cohn\u2019s long-time friend and law partner Tom Bolan (another Maxwell yacht guest).<\/p>\n In addition to Lehman, another former Kissinger staffer, Thomas Pickering was present at Maxwell\u2019s yacht part. Pickering played a minor role in the Iran-Contra affair and, at the time of the Maxwell yacht party, he was U.S. ambassador to Israel. Senator John Tower (R-TX), who allegedly conspired with Maxwell in the Mossad-bugged Promis software at the Los Alamos laboratories, was also present. Tower died just months before Maxwell in\u00a0a suspicious plane crash<\/a>.<\/p>\n Ghislaine Maxwell was also at this rather notable event. After her father\u2019s mysterious death and alleged murder on the same yacht that bears her name in 1991, she quickly packed her bags and moved to New York City. There, she soon made the acquaintance of Jeffrey Epstein and, a few years later, developed close ties to the Clinton family, which will be discussed in the next installment of this series.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n After it was revealed that Epstein had evaded stricter sentencing in 2008 due to his links to \u201cintelligence,\u201d it was the Mossad ties of Ghislaine Maxwell\u2019s father that have led many to speculate that Epstein\u2019s sexual blackmail operation was sharing incriminating information with the Mossad. Former\u00a0CBS\u00a0<\/i>executive producer and current journalist for the media outlet\u00a0Narativ<\/i>, Zev Shalev, has\u00a0since claimed<\/a>\u00a0that he independently confirmed that Epstein was tied directly to the Mossad.<\/p>\n Epstein was a long-time friend of former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, who has long-standing and deep ties to Israel\u2019s intelligence community. Their decades-long friendship has been the source of recent political attacks targeting Barak, who is running in the Israeli elections against current Prime Minister Netanyahu later this year.<\/p>\n Barak is also close to Epstein\u2019s chief patron and Mega Group member Leslie Wexner, whose Wexner Foundation\u00a0gave Barak $2 million<\/a>\u00a0in 2004 for a still unspecified research program. According to Barak, he was first introduced to Epstein by former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres, who eulogized Robert Maxwell at his funeral and had decades-long ties with the Bronfman family going back to the early 1950s. Peres was also a\u00a0frequent participant\u00a0in\u00a0programs\u00a0funded by Leslie Wexner in Israel and\u00a0worked closely<\/a>\u00a0with the Mossad for decades.<\/p>\n In 2015, a few years after Epstein\u2019s release from prison following his conviction for soliciting sex from a minor in 2008, Barak formed a company with Epstein with the chief purpose of investing in an Israeli start-up then known as Reporty. That company, now called Carbyne, sells its signature software to 911 call centers and emergency service providers and is also available to consumers as an app that provides emergency services with access to a caller\u2019s camera and location and also runs any caller\u2019s identity through any linked government database. It has specifically been marketed by the company itself and the Israeli press as\u00a0a solution\u00a0to\u00a0mass shootings<\/a>\u00a0in the United States and is already being used by at least two U.S. counties.<\/p>\n Israeli media reported that Epstein and Barak were among the company\u2019s largest investors. Barak poured millions into the company and it was\u00a0recently revealed\u00a0by\u00a0Haaretz<\/i>\u00a0that a significant amount of Barak\u2019s total investments in Carbyne was funded by Epstein, making him a \u201cde facto<\/i>\u00a0partner\u201d in the company. Barak is now\u00a0Carbyne\u2019s chairman.<\/p>\n The company\u2019s executive team are all former members of different branches of Israeli intelligence, including the elite military intelligence unit, Unit 8200, that is often likened to Israel\u2019s equivalent of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA). Carbyne\u2019s current CEO, Amir Elichai,\u00a0served in Unit 8200<\/a>\u00a0and tapped former Unit 8200 commander\u00a0Pinchas Buchris<\/a>\u00a0to serve as the company\u2019s director and on its board. In addition to Elichai, another Carbyne co-founder,\u00a0Lital Leshem<\/a>, also served in Unit 8200 and later worked for Israeli private spy company Black Cube. Leshem now works for a subsidiary of Erik Prince\u2019s company Frontier Services Group, according to the independent media outlet\u00a0Narativ<\/i>.<\/p>\n The company also includes several tie-ins to the Trump administration, including Palantir founder and Trump ally Peter Thiel \u2014\u00a0an investor<\/a>\u00a0in Carbyne. In addition, Carbyne\u2019s\u00a0board of advisers\u00a0includes former Palantir employee Trae Stephens, who was a member of the Trump transition team, as well as former Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff.\u00a0Trump donor and New York real-estate developer<\/a>\u00a0Eliot Tawill is also on\u00a0Carbyne\u2019s board, alongside Ehud Barak and Pinchas Buchris.<\/p>\n Narativ<\/i>, which wrote the first expose on Carbyne after Epstein\u2019s arrest, noted that the Chinese government uses a smartphone app very similar to Carbyne as part of its mass surveillance apparatus, even though the original purpose of the app was for improved emergency reporting. According to\u00a0Narativ<\/i>, the Chinese Carbyne-equivalent \u201cmonitors every aspect of a user\u2019s life, including personal conversations, power usage, and tracks a user\u2019s movement.\u201d<\/p>\n Given the history of Robert Maxwell \u2014 the father of Epstein\u2019s long-time \u201cgirlfriend\u201d and young-girl-procuring madam, Ghislaine Maxwell \u2014 in promoting the sale of Carbyne\u2019s modified Promis software, which was also marketed as a tool to improve government efficacy but was actually a tool of mass surveillance for the benefit of Israeli intelligence, the overlap between Carbyne and Promis is troubling and warrants further investigation.<\/p>\n It is also worth noting that Unit 8200-connected tech start-ups are being widely integrated into U.S. companies and have developed close ties to the U.S. military-industrial complex, with Carbyne being just one example of that trend.<\/p>\n As\u00a0MintPress<\/i>\u00a0previously reported<\/a>, Unit 8200-linked outfits like Team8 have recently hired former National Security Agency (NSA) Director Mike Rogers as a senior advisor and gained prominent Silicon Valley figures, including former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, as key investors. Many American technology companies, from Intel to Google to Microsoft,\u00a0have merged with<\/a>several Unit 8200-connected start-ups in recent years and have been moving many key jobs and operations to Israel with\u00a0backing from key Republican donors like Paul Singer<\/a>. Many of those same companies, particularly Google and Microsoft, are also major U.S. government contractors.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Even though Jeffrey Epstein appears to have had ties to the Mossad, this series has revealed that the networks to which Epstein was connected were not Mossad-exclusive, as many of the individuals close to Epstein \u2014 Lesie Wexner, for instance \u2014 were part of a mob-connected class of oligarchs with deep ties to both the U.S. and Israel. As was discussed in Part I of this series, the sharing of \u201cintelligence\u201d (i.e., blackmail) between intelligence agencies and the same organized crime network connected to the Mega Group goes back decades. With Leslie Wexner of the Mega Group as Epstein\u2019s chief patron, as opposed to a financier with direct ties to the Mossad, a similar relationship is more than likely in the case of the sexual blackmail operation that Epstein ran.<\/p>\n Given that intelligence agencies in both the U.S. and elsewhere often conduct covert operations for the benefit of oligarchs and large corporations as opposed to \u201cnational security interest,\u201d Epstein\u2019s ties to the Mega Group suggest that this group holds a unique status and influence in both the governments of the U.S. and of Israel, as well as in other countries (e.g., Russia) that were not explored in this report. This is by virtue of their role as key political donors in both countries, as well as the fact that several of them own powerful companies or financial institutions in both countries. Indeed, many members of the Mega Group have deep ties to Israel\u2019s political class, including to Netanyahu and Ehud Barak as well as to now-deceased figures like Shimon Peres, and to members of the American political class.<\/p>\n Ultimately, the picture painted by the evidence is not a direct tie to a single intelligence agency but a web linking key members of the Mega Group, politicians, and officials in both the U.S. and Israel, and an organized-crime network with deep business and intelligence ties in both nations.<\/p>\n Though this series has so far focused on the ties of this network to main Republican Party affiliates, the next and final installment will reveal the ties developed between this web and the Clintons. As will be revealed, despite the Clintons\u2019 willingness to embrace corrupt dealings during the span of their political careers, their mostly friendly relationship with this network still saw them use the power of sexual blackmail to obtain certain policy decisions that were favorable to their personal and financial interests but not to the Clintons\u2019 political reputation or agendas.<\/p>\n Feature photo | Graphic by Claudio Cabrera<\/p>\n
\nOne often overlooked yet famous client and friend of Roy Cohn is the billionaire heir to the Estee Lauder cosmetics fortune, Ronald Lauder. Lauder is often described in the press as a \u201cleading Jewish philanthropist\u201d and is the president of the World Jewish Congress, yet his many media profiles tend to leave out his highly political past.<\/p>\n![\"AP_16363784324497_edited.jpg\"](\"http:\/\/orinocotribune.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/AP_16363784324497_edited.jpg.webp\")
Lauder, Epstein and the mysterious Austrian passport<\/h2>\n
![\"AP_9910110445-1_edited.jpg\"](\"http:\/\/orinocotribune.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/AP_9910110445-1_edited.jpg.webp\")
The origins of the Mega Group Mafia<\/h2>\n
![\"AP_9504280406.jpg\"](\"http:\/\/orinocotribune.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/AP_9504280406.jpg.webp\")
![\"AP_750819038.jpg\"](\"http:\/\/orinocotribune.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/AP_750819038.jpg.webp\")
Wexner\u2019s mansions and the Shapiro murder<\/h2>\n
![\"AP_835908673040.jpg\"](\"http:\/\/orinocotribune.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/AP_835908673040.jpg.webp\")
The \u201cMega\u201d Mystery and the Mossad<\/h2>\n
![\"1018316866.jpg\"](\"http:\/\/orinocotribune.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/1018316866.jpg.webp\")
The mysterious Maxwells<\/h2>\n
![\"AP_214061448978_edited.jpg\"](\"http:\/\/orinocotribune.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/AP_214061448978_edited.jpg.webp\")
Swimming in the same swamp<\/h2>\n
Jeffrey Epstein and the new \u201cPromis\u201d<\/h2>\n
![\"Epstein-Trump_edited\"](\"http:\/\/orinocotribune.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/Epstein-Trump_edited.jpg.webp\")
Who was Epstein really working for?<\/h2>\n