{"id":44779,"date":"2025-12-20T13:57:43","date_gmt":"2025-12-20T18:57:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.info\/?p=44779"},"modified":"2025-12-20T13:57:56","modified_gmt":"2025-12-20T18:57:56","slug":"now-we-find-out-that-the-epstein-wexner-crime-duo-were-very-deep-into-the-iran-contra-scandal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.info\/?p=44779","title":{"rendered":"

Now we find out that the Epstein-Wexner crime duo were very deep into the Iran-Contra Scandal.<\/b><\/h2>"},"content":{"rendered":"

Epstein, Israel, and the CIA: How the Iran-Contra Planes Landed at Les Wexner’s Base<\/h1>\n

Jeffrey Epstein helped Leslie Wexner repurpose the CIA\u2019s Iran-Contra planes from arms smuggling to shipping lingerie.<\/h3>\n

by Ryan Grim, Murtaza Hussain, and Harrison Berger<\/p>\n

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This week, the New York Times awoke from its slumber to publish an extensive investigation on Jeffrey Epstein that purported to put to rest the question of how the man made his money early in his career. In it, the Times dismisses the possibility that Epstein could have worked for or adjacent to intelligence agencies. \u201cAbundant conspiracy theories hold that Epstein worked for spy services or ran a lucrative blackmail operation, but we found a more prosaic explanation for how he built a fortune,\u201d the paper wrote.To the paper\u2019s credit, their journalists have put into the record some details that took an impressive effort to track down. For instance, the paper reported about Epstein\u2019s business associates in the early 1980s:<\/p>\n

Epstein had been spending extravagantly, and despite his lofty compensation at Bear Stearns and his work for [Douglas] Leese, he found himself strapped, even occasionally bouncing rent checks. Back in New York,\u00a0he joined forces with John Stanley Pottinger<\/strong>, a lawyer who had recently left a senior post in the Justice Department. Epstein, Pottinger and Pottinger\u2019s brother rented a penthouse office in the Hotel St. Moritz on Central Park South. (The broker, Joanna Cutler, told us that Epstein initially stiffed her on the commission.)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Times deserves credit, we suppose, for digging up that nugget from his one-time broker\u2014but had the paper decided to look up rather than look down, they may have noticed something a bit more revelatory in their own reporting.<\/p>\n

Stanley Pottinger, as it happens, was a notable figure in the scandal that became known as Iran-Contra, in which the CIA used Israel as a middleman to move off-the-books weapons to Iran. In the early 1980s, under the CIA\u2019s supervision, Pottinger advised an Iranian banker on shipping embargoed arms to Iran using fraudulent paperwork and overseas \u201cdummy companies\u201d\u2014in the very same period that Pottinger and Epstein worked together selling \u201ctax-avoidance\u201d strategies from a penthouse by Central Park. Pottinger\u2019s system eventually gave rise to a network of covert intermediaries shipping arms around the world; the CIA\u2019s profits became a slush fund used to illegally bankroll the insurgent Contra army, who waged a war against Nicaragua\u2019s leftist government while simultaneously trafficking cocaine to the United States.<\/p>\n

The other figure from Epstein\u2019s past, Douglas Leese, meanwhile, is described by The Times as \u201ca defense contractor with extensive connections in the arms industry and the British government.\u201d What he did with those connections and where he trafficked those arms is left unexplored by the paper\u2014a look at Bermuda financial records and Leese\u2019s own lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Miami, suggests he was working with the U.S. government and linked to a Chinese arms manufacturer. The Times also failed to note that Epstein and Leese had a mutual associate in Adnan Khashoggi, the notorious money launderer and weapons trafficker\u2014who was also a central player in the Iran-Contra affair.<\/p>\n

The Times did find that Epstein was \u201ca relentless scammer\u201d who \u201cabused expense accounts, engineered inside deals and demonstrated a remarkable knack for separating seemingly sophisticated investors and businessmen from their money.\u201d The contrast between what The Times found noteworthy about his relationship with his penthousemate Pottinger\u2014he initially stiffed the broker!\u2014and what they failed to notice is stark. In order to acquit Epstein of any connections to intelligence agencies, the paper of record instead crafted Epstein into an antisemitic caricature of historic proportions. We put this take to The Times, and were told by spokesperson Danielle Rhoades Ha, \u201cWe report on facts that we are able to confirm, not supposition.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course, it could be an extraordinary coincidence that Epstein shared a penthouse with an Iran-Contra lawyer, worked for an Iran-Contra arms dealer, and then, as we report below, moved the Iran-Contra planes to Ohio for use by billionaire retail mogul Leslie Wexner. It may simply be a coincidence that Ehud Barak, one of Epstein\u2019s closest friends, was the head of Israel\u2019s military intelligence during the planning for Iran-Contra, and he supervised the CIA\u2019s first delivery. But it might also be something The Times should look a bit closer at, if they\u2019re so inclined.<\/p>\n

Until then, Drop Site\u2019s reporting will have to do, and we can\u2019t do it without readers. If you haven\u2019t yet upgraded your subscription, please consider doing so today. And remember that contributions to Drop Site\u2013which you can make here\u2013<\/a>are fully tax deductible to the extent permitted by law.<\/p>\n

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Private photograph from Epstein\u2019s birthday book, no date.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

How the Iran-Contra Planes Landed at Les Wexner\u2019s Base<\/h1>\n

Jeffrey Epstein helped Leslie Wexner repurpose the CIA\u2019s Iran-Contra planes from arms smuggling to shipping lingerie.<\/em><\/h4>\n

When a Southern Air Transport plane was shot down over Nicaragua in October 1986, the world got a rare window into U.S. government covert activity. Southern Air Transport was founded as a small cargo airline in 1947, the same year the Office of Strategic Services evolved into the Central Intelligence Agency, as the U.S. pivoted to a Cold War posture. The agency owned the airline outright from 1960 until 1973, at which point it was sold to the same man, Stanley G. Williams, who had run the company since the Kennedy administration.<\/p>\n

The downing of the plane, and the testimony of its lone survivor, Eugene Hasenfus, pulled a string that eventually unraveled the scandal known as Iran-Contra. Using Southern Air Transport planes, the CIA was shipping weapons to Iran, using Israel as a middleman, and deploying the profits to arm the Contras against the leftist Nicaraguan government.<\/p>\n

None of it was legal, and Southern Air Transport was getting too hot. In need of a new mission, the company relocated its headquarters from Miami, Florida, to Columbus, Ohio. By 1995, the company had rebranded by flying imported shipments of clothing from China. But for three years in Columbus, the airline continued to be dogged by rumors it had been\u2014or was still\u2014involved in smuggling.<\/p>\n

According to veteran Columbus journalist Bob Fitrakis, who provided his historical reporting on the topic to Drop Site and The American Conservative, investigators in both the Franklin County Sheriff\u2019s Office and Ohio\u2019s Office of Inspector General were looking into Southern Air Transport amid rising public scrutiny of the Iran-Contra affair\u2014and sources in both offices identified Jeffrey Epstein as having a pivotal role in relocating the planes.<\/p>\n

At the time, Epstein was a relatively obscure financier managing the money and real estate investments of Ohio-based fashion and retail mogul Leslie Wexner. Under his stewardship of the Wexner empire, the planes that previously carried arms to Iran and Nicaragua were repurposed to deliver clothes to feed Wexner\u2019s network of retail chains, including Victoria\u2019s Secret and Abercrombie & Fitch.<\/p>\n

Southern Air Transport abruptly declared bankruptcy on October 1, 1998\u2014exactly one week before the CIA Inspector General released its official findings on the Iran-Contra affair linking the airline to allegations of Contra cocaine trafficking from Nicaragua. Under pressure from the governor\u2019s office, Ohio officials dropped their inquiries, meaning that Epstein\u2019s role never became public.<\/p>\n

How did Epstein end up moving the former Contra planes to Columbus? Answering that question\u2014or at least getting close\u2014requires a closer look at the men behind the scandal that defined the second half of the Reagan administration, and gave the public the clearest look inside the U.S. government\u2019s clandestine global operations in a generation or more. Like a spy service Forrest Gump, Jeffrey Epstein can be found there every leg of the way.<\/p>\n

\u201cFinding Hidden Money\u201d<\/strong><\/h2>\n

In 1981, Jeffrey Epstein resigned from Bear Stearns amid suspicions of insider trading, and began traveling regularly to London, where he grew close with the family of Douglas Leese, a British businessman with a long career in auto and aerospace manufacturing. Epstein became Douglas Leese\u2019s prot\u00e9g\u00e9 and fast friends with his sons Nicholas and Julian, according to\u00a0a podcast interview<\/a>\u00a0later given by the latter. After World War II, Douglas Leese had been managing director of his father\u2019s company, Cam Gears, a steering-gear manufacturer that supplied Jaguar, Ford, Nissan, and other global auto brands. In 1965, the company was sold to TRW, a U.S. aerospace conglomerate known for satellites and intercontinental ballistic missiles.<\/p>\n

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CIA map of the Strait of Hormuz, 1980. Image: Library of Congress.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

1979 was a revolutionary year in the Persian Gulf\u2014Saddam Hussein became president of Iraq and swiftly executed and imprisoned his political rivals, while, across Iraq\u2019s eastern border,\u00a0the people of Iran overthrew the CIA-backed Shah<\/a>. During Iran\u2019s revolution, university students seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran and took Americans as hostages, leading the U.S. to impose harsh economic and military sanctions.<\/p>\n

The CIA planned to fuel a war between Iran and Iraq, to\u00a0ensure neither<\/a>\u00a0Saddam Hussein nor Ayatollah Khomeini could gain control of the Strait of Hormuz, while\u00a0keeping<\/a>\u00a0the Soviet navy out as protector of the Gulf. But the hostage crisis had added a wrinkle to their plans. After the 1979 revolution, the U.S. was prohibited from selling weapons to Iran, as any overt weapons deals would violate an official arms embargo and undermine President Ronald Reagan\u2019s public position that America did not bargain with terrorists.<\/p>\n

Instead, in a strategy aimed at reducing Soviet influence with Iran, the CIA tacitly supported weapons sales from China, and Beijing\u00a0began<\/a>\u00a0shipping armaments to both Iran and Iraq in 1980. In spring 1983, Iran signed a\u00a0$1.3 billion arms deal<\/a>\u00a0with China. These weapons were supplied in part by Chinese manufacturing conglomerate Norinco\u00a0using British Hong Kong as the transshipment point<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Douglas Leese at the time owned a Bermuda holding company, Lorad. Soon after the Iran arms deal was signed, a new Lorad entity,\u00a0a shell company called Norinco Lorad<\/a>, was formed in Bermuda; a Hong Kong trading company called Lorad Far East followed a few months later.<\/p>\n

Leese\u2019s exact role in China\u2019s weapons sales has never been made public. But in 1995, a British MP\u2014George Galloway, in fact\u2014alleged Leese had\u00a0clandestinely funded<\/a>\u00a0Middle East arms deals using a Bermuda bank. That year, the owners of British retail chain Littlewoods raised alarm bells about Leese\u2019s arms trafficking ties, after the company received a\u00a0proposal<\/a>\u00a0for Norinco to sell washing machines to Littlewoods and weapons to Lorad.<\/p>\n

Two years later, in a U.S. civil complaint against the Littlewoods owners, Leese claimed his work concerned \u201chighly-sensitive\u201d projects \u201cbelieved to be classified by the Department of Defense and other agencies of the United States government.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Jeffrey Epstein requests a U.S. passport from the State Department before a trip to London in 1983<\/em>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Meanwhile, the CIA prepared its own covert pipeline to ship American-made weapons to Iran. In the fall of 1980, the FBI placed Cyrus Hashemi, an Iranian banker, under extensive electronic surveillance, recording tens of thousands of conversations over a five-month span. The tapes revealed that John Stanley Pottinger, Hashemi\u2019s attorney, was\u00a0helping<\/a>\u00a0the Iranians circumvent the arms embargo using phony invoices and overseas shell companies. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee later\u00a0found<\/a>\u00a0that the CIA was involved in planning the arms deals and had met with Hashemi in Pottinger\u2019s office.<\/p>\n

Pottinger, it turns out, was working together with Epstein in New York. Pottinger had previously served as an Assistant Attorney General under President Richard Nixon\u2014now, he joined up with another \u201ccrook,\u201d and the two men rented a penthouse office together on Central Park South, according to the New York Times. The Times reported that Pottinger and Epstein were pitching \u201ctax avoidance\u201d strategies for wealthy clients, and noted that the business partnership was \u201cshort-lived.\u201d In 1984, Pottinger was\u00a0identified<\/a>\u00a0in a federal indictment against Hashemi for illegal arms exports, and Hashemi fled to England.<\/p>\n

Pottinger escaped prosecution after the FBI\u2019s incriminating tapes of his conversations mysteriously disappeared; he went on to\u00a0make a fortune on real estate deals<\/a>\u00a0in the 1980s, and became a New York Times\u2019 bestselling novelist. His Times obit from last year reports that his final spy thriller remains unpublished. Hashemi died in 1986 after being infected with \u201ca rare and virulent form of leukemia\u201d that was diagnosed only two days before he died. (His death was\u00a0later alleged<\/a>\u00a0to be foul play.)<\/p>\n

After Hashemi\u2019s indictment, another player stepped in to broker access to Iran for the Americans: Saudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi, uncle of slain Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi. In July 1985, Hashemi, Khashoggi, and Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres had\u00a0met secretly<\/a>\u00a0in Hamburg, West Germany, to hatch a plot: With CIA director William Casey\u2019s blessing, the U.S. would ship the weapons to Israel, Israel would sell its own weapons to Iran, and Washington would commit to replenishing Israel\u2019s stockpile later.<\/p>\n

Epstein obtained an Austrian passport with a false name and an address in Saudi Arabia at some time in the 1980s. After his arrest in 2019, U.S. authorities discovered it in a safe in his New York mansion. At a bail request hearing, Epstein\u2019s attorneys\u00a0claimed<\/a>\u00a0it came from a \u201cfriend,\u201d intended to conceal his Jewish identity in case of a potential kidnapping while traveling. Seven Americans, including a CIA officer, were kidnapped in Lebanon between 1984 and 1985, and discussions emerged around an \u201carms-for-hostages\u201d trade with Iran.<\/p>\n

After Peres\u00a0agreed to facilitate<\/a>\u00a0Khashoggi\u2019s shipments to Iran, the logistics were handled by Israeli military intelligence. Epstein\u2019s close friend and confidante, Ehud Barak, was the head of Israel\u2019s military intelligence directorate (AMAN)\u00a0during the planning phases<\/a>, from April 1983 to September 1985\u2014he left the position one month after the first arms shipment was completed. To this day, Barak\u00a0maintains<\/a>\u00a0that he was introduced to Epstein by Shimon Peres at a \u201cpublic event\u201d in 2003, after he left government service. Barak has also falsely claimed that he barely knew Epstein. Whether they truly met before 2003 is unknown.<\/p>\n

The Israeli arms pipeline depended on a fragile trust. The Israelis wanted cash up front, but the Iranians would only pay after the weapons were delivered. Acting as\u00a0the \u201cbank,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0using accounts at the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), Khashoggi advanced tens of millions of dollars in credit so that weapons could move even when the parties\u00a0did not trust each other<\/a>. Ghaith Pharaon, a Stanford-educated businessman close to the Saudi royal family,\u00a0acquired<\/a>\u00a0regional banks and distressed insurance companies in the U.S., to loop BCCI into U.S. financial markets.<\/p>\n

The CIA\u00a0shielded<\/a>\u00a0BCCI from federal investigators, to conceal the money trail to their illicit arms deals. BCCI operated as a Cayman Islands entity\u00a0structured as a charitable trust<\/a>, funneling capital into employee-benefit funds and philanthropic foundations in the UK and South Asia, which in turn owned a plethora of shell companies. The shells served as parking lots for BCCI assets, and conduits for transactions that needed to be hidden from the balance sheets of the bank\u2019s local branches around the world. In practice, BCCI founder Agha Hasan Abedi and his small circle of deputies controlled the entire flow of money with almost no outside oversight.<\/p>\n

With each successful delivery, an American hostage was freed in Lebanon, and the intermediaries earned handsome commissions. Once arms profits had been cycled through BCCI\u2019s network, real estate was a method of transforming suspicious cash flows into legitimate sales and rental income, while obscuring the \u201ctrue\u201d ownership behind layers of shells. BCCI was heavily involved in real estate lending and property purchases through shells and nominees and Khashoggi himself had massive real estate holdings worldwide, including hotels, ranches, mansions, and commercial properties.<\/p>\n

Decades before Epstein became a household name, former Israeli intelligence officer Ari Ben-Menashe wrote in his 1992 memoir that Barak feared Peres or the Americans would discover the slush fund bank accounts where the arms profits were hidden, and take the money for themselves. Ben-Menashe claimed that Barak arranged for media mogul Robert Maxwell, Ghislaine Maxwell\u2019s father, to launder the Iran weapons profits through his companies\u2019 accounts, and hide the money in Soviet banks where they could not be touched by the Americans.<\/p>\n

In 1991, four years after Iran-Contra, Maxwell disappeared from his 180-foot yacht, the Lady Ghislaine, while it cruised off the Canary Islands. Hours later, Spanish authorities recovered his body from the Atlantic. Maxwell\u2019s media empire was collapsing under a mountain of debt, and he was secretly siphoning hundreds of millions of pounds sterling from his companies\u2019 pension funds. When investigators began untangling the books after his death, they found nearly half a billion pounds missing, and possibly more.<\/p>\n

An email obtained from Epstein\u2019s Yahoo! inbox, dated October 15, 2005, suggests Ghislaine Maxwell was trying to purchase information about her father\u2019s missing fortune\u2014from a CIA operative. Maxwell emailed Epstein excitedly while visiting Bhutan for the wedding of Princess Chimi Yangzom Wangchuck. She wrote Epstein, \u201cThe wedding was amazing\u2026Also was w\/a CIA operative who sd that he \u2018worked\u2019 w\/Dad! I was so shocked. He sd he could tell, all find all, and reveal all, (for a price)!!\u201d<\/p>\n

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Emails between Ghislaine Maxwell and Epstein, October 15, 2005.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Epstein often made vague boasts about being a \u201cfinancial bounty hunter\u201d who tracked down \u201chidden\u201d money. In 1987, while Robert Maxwell was allegedly \u201chiding\u201d money from arms deals, Epstein bragged to a journalist about \u201cfinding\u201d money for Adnan Khashoggi in such detail, the journalist thought Epstein \u201cmight be in the business of hiding as well of finding it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLogistics Man\u201d<\/strong><\/h2>\n

After the Southern Air Transport plane carrying Hasenfus was shot down over Nicaragua on October 5, 1986, the Iran-Contra scheme began to unravel. On October 9, Hasenfus\u00a0confessed<\/a>\u00a0in a conference before the world\u2019s press that he was working with the CIA to ferry weapons to the Contras, secretly backing their war against Nicaragua\u2019s leftist government. U.S. officials quickly denied Hasenfus\u2019s confession, saying he was on a \u201cprivate\u201d mission. (Hasenfus passed away in late November of this year)<\/p>\n

Southern Air Transport, a CIA front, was not only shipping weapons to the Contras\u2014the planes were also carrying weapons to Israel, to fuel the brutal war between Iran and Iraq. Just weeks after Hasenfus\u2019 press conference, SAT flew its\u00a0last Iran-Contra mission<\/a>, from Tel Aviv to Tehran, carrying 500 U.S.-made anti-tank missiles.<\/p>\n

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The front page of Los Angeles Times on October 8, 1986 with highlighted mentions of Southern Air Transport.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

One month later, a Lebanese newspaper broke the story that the Iran arms sales were part of a secret deal in exchange for the release of Americans taken hostage in Lebanon. One of the hostages, CIA officer William F. Buckley, had been killed in captivity. U.S. officials confirmed the reports, spurring an investigation by the Justice Department. Within weeks, the U.S. Attorney General was forced to step in front of news cameras and acknowledge that profits from the Iran arms sales were secretly fueling the Contras. Soon afterwards, newspapers reported that the\u00a0same SAT planes<\/a>\u00a0had been smuggling cocaine from Nicaragua and Colombia into the United States.<\/p>\n

The story became a major political scandal in the U.S. In December 1986, reports emerged that Khashoggi had received tens of millions of dollars for brokering the weapons shipments. Within one month, in January 1987, Khashoggi\u2019s U.S. holding company\u00a0filed for bankruptcy<\/a>; BCCI\u2019s front man, Ghaith Pharaon,\u00a0sold off<\/a>\u00a0his bank assets shortly thereafter. SAT, which was now\u00a0flagged in DEA databases<\/a>\u00a0for suspected cocaine trafficking, pivoted to highly publicized\u00a0famine relief<\/a>\u00a0missions in war-torn \u201chot spots<\/a>\u201d in Africa with the United Nations and the World Food Programme.<\/p>\n

Within months, Epstein appeared to be absorbing lessons from the era\u2019s covert financial engineering. In 1987, as the Iran-Contra operation was unraveling, he emerged as a key financial advisor to retail and fashion kingpin Leslie Wexner. Epstein became an officer of several Wexner shell companies,\u00a0while later leading<\/a>\u00a0the same family office that ran Wexner\u2019s philanthropic foundation\u2014an architecture that, like BCCI\u2019s, placed a charitable vehicle at the apex of a vast web of companies. That same year, Wexner established The New Albany Company, a massive real estate development project to build a new city in a rural area outside Columbus, Ohio.<\/p>\n

Later in 1987, Epstein reprised a basic BCCI tactic: use a regulator-friendly narrative to gain control of a financial institution, then pillage its assets. Just as BCCI used Ghaith Pharaon as a nominee to acquire banks and insurance companies, Epstein helped Steven Hoffenberg persuade Illinois regulators to approve the purchase of two ailing insurers, by promising a $3 million capital injection from Towers Financial, Hoffenberg\u2019s debt collection agency. The money never arrived, of course\u2014after closing the sale, they used the insurers\u2019 bonds as collateral to finance hostile takeovers of two struggling airline companies, Pan Am and Emery Worldwide.<\/p>\n

Towers Financial became a\u00a0slush fund\u00a0<\/a>that subsidized Epstein\u2019s lavish lifestyle in New York. After it collapsed in 1993, Hoffenberg pleaded guilty to defrauding investors out of nearly half a billion dollars in what the SEC called the largest Ponzi scheme in U.S. history at the time. He was sentenced to twenty years in prison; he later described Epstein as his \u201cco\u2011conspirator<\/a>,\u201d though Epstein was never charged.<\/p>\n

The stolen money, however, vanished. In 2002, Hoffenberg alleged that Epstein hid $100 million in offshore accounts while\u00a0working with prosecutors<\/a>\u00a0to scapegoat Hoffenberg and other Towers Financial executives. \u201cEpstein certainly did secretly cooperate against Hoffenberg and gave at least three interviews to prosecutors,\u201d\u00a0Vicky Ward reported for Rolling Stone,<\/a>\u00a0adding that \u201chad the case gone to trial, a source with knowledge says it would have likely turned out far worse for Epstein than for Hoffenberg.\u201d<\/p>\n

In that 2002 interview, Hoffenberg also helped to piece together part of Epstein\u2019s past; he told Ward he believed it was, in fact, Douglas Leese who had introduced Epstein to Adnan Khashoggi. When Ward asked Epstein to respond to Hoffenberg\u2019s claims, Epstein said he didn\u2019t know Leese and furiously rejected any association with the Towers Financial fraud.<\/p>\n

Epstein threatened to sue Ward if her story insinuated his culpability in the Ponzi scheme\u2014and, when Vanity Fair attempted to revive the story in 2007, private messages in his Yahoo inbox show that Epstein drafted letters to Ward\u2019s editor, Graydon Carter, railing against her piece and threatening again to sue for defamation. In drafts sent to himself by email, he wrote to Carter, \u201cI am writing to you to give you the opportunity , while ti (sic) still exists to correct a wrong.\u201d (Epstein may have been counseled against sending those emails; Carter told Drop Site he never received them.)<\/p>\n

Epstein lied to Ward about his ties to the Leese family: he knew both of Douglas Leese\u2019s two sons very well. The elder brother, Nicholas, wrote a bawdy letter in Epstein\u2019s fiftieth \u201cbirthday book\u201d containing anecdotes of escapades \u2013\u00a0including description of a sexual assault<\/a>\u00a0framed as hijinx gone wrong \u2013 in Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, and Tramp nightclub in London.<\/p>\n

The relationship between Epstein and the Leeses remained intimate over the years. According to the emails obtained by Drop Site, Epstein was the godfather of Leese\u2019s granddaughter, and both brothers affectionately addressed Epstein in their emails as \u201cmy boy.\u201d In 2007, at Epstein\u2019s request, Julian Leese sent a collection of family photos, writing, \u201cAlways thinking of you and the old days.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Epstein asks Nick Leese to send pictures of his family, December 25 and 16, 2007.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Julian Leese briefly worked as an intern at Towers Financial after graduating from University of Salford, and he told journalist Tom Pattinson that his father had\u00a0supported<\/a>\u00a0Towers Financial by introducing Hoffenberg to people in his circle. In his final recorded interview, Julian claimed his father sold radar equipment, not weapons, and admitted that Epstein occasionally advised his father and was present at some of his business meetings. In the same interview, he claimed Epstein and his father had a falling out around the early 80s, over Epstein\u2019s abuse of his father\u2019s expense account\u2014a claim that raises more questions than it answers. (Julian passed away in 2024.)<\/p>\n

\u201cCorruption All Over the City and State\u201d<\/strong><\/h2>\n

While the Towers Financial ponzi scheme was taking off, Epstein had risen to the status of chief financial adviser to Wexner\u2019s business empire, built around his clothing company The Limited, headquartered in Ohio. Epstein also became the financial engineer and trusted fixer behind Wexner\u2019s massive real estate development project in New Albany. By 1991, The New York Times\u00a0described<\/a>\u00a0Epstein as \u201cpresident of Wexner Investment Company.\u201d Epstein\u2019s sudden rise to influence\u00a0baffled<\/a>\u00a0Wexner\u2019s old advisers, who were\u00a0pushed out<\/a>\u00a0of Wexner\u2019s organization one by one.<\/p>\n

Although Epstein is sometimes described as a con artist who beguiled a naive billionaire\u2014the New York Times called Wexner \u201chis most significant mark<\/a>\u201d\u2014the series of events leading up to Epstein\u2019s takeover of Wexner\u2019s fortune paint a very different picture.<\/p>\n

In 1991, the Columbus Police Department was investigating the mob-style assassination of Arthur Shapiro, an attorney whose firm worked for The Limited. In March 1985, Shapiro was due to testify before a grand jury in a major tax evasion case\u2014but the day before his testimony, he was shot twice in the head, at point-blank range, in his car outside a Columbus cemetery.<\/p>\n

Berry Kessler, an accountant, was\u00a0considered<\/a>\u00a0the prime suspect in Shapiro\u2019s murder; he was later convicted for two unrelated murder-for-hire plots, and sentenced to death. Another Columbus man sharing his last name, John \u201cJack\u201d Kessler, was Wexner\u2019s partner in The New Albany Company, where Epstein became co-president.<\/p>\n

On June 6, 1991, a Columbus police analyst submitted an internal memo that suggested Wexner\u2019s business was\u00a0connected<\/a>\u00a0to organized crime. The memo identified several Wexner corporate entities formed by the slain lawyer\u2019s office, some of which appeared to be linked to Wexner\u2019s New Albany property development. Epstein\u2019s name later appeared as an officer of some of these same companies when they were dissolved a few years later.<\/p>\n

In July 1991, one month after the \u201cShapiro murder\u201d memo was submitted to the police department\u2019s Intelligence Bureau commander, Wexner signed a document giving Epstein power of attorney to act on his behalf in all affairs, effectively handing Epstein personal control of his vast fortune, and the right to sign property transactions on Wexner\u2019s behalf. The Columbus Police Chief\u00a0ordered<\/a>\u00a0the memo destroyed. Ohio\u2019s former Inspector General David Sturtz leaked a\u00a0surviving copy<\/a> of the \u201cShapiro murder\u201d memo to journalist Bob Fitrakis, who published it in July 1998.<\/p>\n

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Map of Wexner corporate entities, from Columbus Police Department \u201cSHAPIRO HOMICIDE INVESTIGATION\u201d<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Meanwhile, Miami International Airport made plans to demolish the hangar where Southern Air Transport was suspected of smuggling cocaine, a former U.S. Army depot that had been used by the CIA for more than twenty years. With Epstein acting as Wexner\u2019s \u201clogistics man<\/a>\u201d in Ohio, in 1996 SAT finished relocating its world headquarters to Columbus to deliver products\u00a0from factories in Hong Kong<\/a>\u00a0and southern China directly to Wexner\u2019s network of Limited Brands\u2019 stores.<\/p>\n

The Ohio Department of Development and Rickenbacker Port Authority assembled a generous incentive package to lure SAT out of Miami, according to FOIA records obtained by Fitrakis.<\/p>\n

The Rickenbacker Air National Guard Base was already a well-established military and intelligence hub when Wexner\u2019s company planned to turn it into a consumer logistics port. The nearby\u00a0Defense Logistics Agency<\/a>, 15 miles away, was in charge of the global supply chain for weapons systems. A decade earlier, CIA technicians had quietly met Louisiana smuggler\u00a0Barry Seal<\/a>\u00a0at the same base and installed hidden cameras inside his plane\u2019s fuselage, before sending him back to Nicaragua on a DEA sting.<\/p>\n

The state offered a $6 million low-interest loan and a half-million dollar development grant, while the Department of Transportation agreed to pay ten million dollars for infrastructure upgrades. The port authority freed up $30 million in revenue bonds to be used by the project, and the county made the facilities 100-percent tax exempt for fifteen years.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile I was writing investigative articles for Columbus Alive…I found myself inundated with people leaking stories about corruption all over the city and state,\u201d Fitrakis told Drop Site and The American Conservative. Sturtz, the former inspector general who leaked the Shapiro murder file, spoke to the journalist specifically about Epstein. \u201cAfter that, he verbally gave me a lot of information about Wexner and Epstein\u2019s ties to organized crime and the intelligence community,\u201d Fitrakis said. \u201cThat\u2019s how I learned about Southern Air Transport.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fitrakis contacted former Franklin County Sheriff Earl Smith to find out what he knew about Epstein. Smith\u2019s office, he learned, had an ongoing investigation into drug smuggling at Rickenbacker, related to the CIA\u2019s planes. \u201cHe knew Epstein was the point person in soliciting Southern Air Transport to come to Ohio,\u201d Fitrakis said. Sturtz was dismissed from the Inspector General position in 1994, which he told Fitrakis he believed was connected to his inquiry into Wexner and Southern Air Transport. His successor also\u00a0resigned after two months on the job<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In Columbus, the airline did not shed its drug smuggling pedigree. In 1996, customs agents\u00a0discovered cocaine<\/a> hidden aboard a SAT plane, according to a report in a Mobile, Alabama paper. SAT\u2019s public information officer told the newspaper the plane was delivering \u201cfresh flowers\u201d from a large flower exporter in Colombia. SAT asserted it was \u201cnot tied to the CIA and would like to know itself where the cocaine came from.\u201d By the time the Alabama incident hit newswires, the plane in question had been handed over to an insurance company due to \u201cmercury contamination.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Southern Air Transport Lockheed L-100 Hercules Image:\u00a0Wikimedia<\/a>.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

The Columbus experiment ended one year later, as more of SAT\u2019s sordid smuggling history was dragged into public view. In June 1998, after the airline had already collected millions of dollars in state subsidies, SAT decided to \u201cpark and sell off<\/a>\u201d its fleet of Lockheed Hercules planes. On October 1, 1998, SAT abruptly filed for bankruptcy\u2014exactly one week before the CIA Inspector General released\u00a0its official findings<\/a>\u00a0on Contra cocaine trafficking allegations.<\/p>\n

\u201cA Photo With Some African Warlords\u201d<\/strong><\/h2>\n

When Ghislaine Maxwell was interviewed by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche in July, she was asked whether Epstein ever had any contact with intelligence agencies. Maxwell gave a\u00a0vague response<\/a>\u00a0about Epstein\u2019s business of \u201cfinding money\u201d in Africa in the 1980s: \u201cI think he may have suggested that there was some people who helped him,\u201d Maxwell said. \u201cHe showed me a photograph that he had with some African warlords or something that he told me\u2026That\u2019s the only actual active memory I have of something nefarious — not nefarious… but covert, I suppose would be the word.\u201d<\/p>\n

In parallel to Iran-Contra, from 1984 to 1986, Southern Air Transport flew hundreds of trips inside Angola, with some runs connecting the capital city Luanda to Dobbins Air Force Base in Marietta, Georgia. Angola\u2019s northeastern diamond-mining towns, cut off by unsafe roads and railways,\u00a0were largely accessible only by air<\/a>. SAT obtained a lucrative contract from Angola\u2019s state-owned mining company to carry equipment to the mining towns, and carry diamonds out. While making trips to the mines, the SAT planes were\u00a0suspected<\/a>\u00a0of air-dropping weapons to the rebel group UNITA with South Africa\u2019s support.<\/p>\n

South Africa profited handsomely from the Angolan civil war. Johannesburg became a booming re-export hub for illicit Angolan diamonds, as UNITA-controlled \u201cblood diamonds\u201d were under UN embargo and could not be exported legally from Angola. By the late 1990s, UNITA earned billions of dollars by\u00a0smuggling diamonds<\/a>\u00a0to Johannesburg, where they re-exported with false certificates-of-origin and shipped onward to London and Belgium. A UN report estimated that over $1 million worth of diamonds were\u00a0smuggled<\/a>\u00a0out of Angola per day in 2001.<\/p>\n

Angola was the mirror-image of Iran-Contra. As in Iran, Saudi money was the \u201cbank\u201d for Angola\u2019s war. As in Nicaragua, the diamonds (like the drugs) were fueled by an off-the-books arms trade. An associate of Saudi ruler King Fahd testified before Congress that Saudi aid to UNITA was part of an\u00a0informal deal<\/a>\u00a0with Washington in exchange for access to mobile radar surveillance systems. He recounted being told that tens of millions of dollars had been funneled through Morocco to train UNITA fighters, and claimed Prince Bandar had planned to sell oil to South Africa. The Saudi government has denied these claims.<\/p>\n

In Columbus, SAT\u2019s collapse was written off as the result of \u201cfinancial troubles<\/a>.\u201d But before declaring bankruptcy in 1998, half of its fleet of Lockheed Hercules planes were\u00a0sold to Transafrik<\/a>, an Angolan airline based in the United Arab Emirates. SAT resumed its missions supporting diamond mining operations, as Angola\u2019s civil war raged on. Decades later, Epstein bragged to journalists about making his fortune out of \u201carms, drugs, and diamonds<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Epstein and unidentified African soldiers, from \u201cbirthday book.\u201d Date unknown.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Epstein, for his part, only came to the attention of the international press after agreeing to ferry former President Bill Clinton around Africa in 2002 on his private jet, later dubbed the Lolita Express. Speaking to Hoffenberg in prison that year, journalist Vicky Ward asked why a man who had thrived in the shadows would risk so much with such a public spectacle. \u201cHe can\u2019t help himself. He broke his own rule,\u201d\u00a0Hoffenberg said.\u00a0<\/a>\u201cHe always said he knew the only way he could get away with everything he did was to stay under the radar, but now he\u2019s gone and blown it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Epstein\u2019s claim to have barely known Hoffenberg, and Wexner\u2019s attempts to personally distance himself from Epstein, are undermined by the fact that both men knew Epstein\u2019s cardinal rule \u2013 a rule he was apparently preternaturally unable to follow.<\/p>\n

On June 30, 2008, the Florida state court accepted Epstein\u2019s guilty plea to state charges of soliciting a minor for prostitution, part of a secret plea deal with federal prosecutors that allowed him to serve an 18-month jail sentence on a work-release program that allowed him to leave the jail and roam the world outside.<\/p>\n

Four days before, Leslie Wexner sent his friend an email: \u201cAbigail told me the result\u2026all I can say is I feel sorry. You violated your own number 1 rule\u2026 Always be careful.\u201d Epstein\u2019s reply to Wexner was contrite: \u201cno excuse.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\nhttps:\/\/www.dropsitenews.com\/p\/jeffrey-epstein-iran-contra-planes-leslie-wexner-pottinger-leese-arms-weapons-smuggling<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Epstein, Israel, and the CIA: How the Iran-Contra Planes Landed at Les Wexner’s Base Jeffrey Epstein helped Leslie Wexner repurpose the CIA\u2019s Iran-Contra planes from arms smuggling to shipping lingerie.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=44779"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44779\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=44779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=44779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=44779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}