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<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The Corbett Report<\/p>\n
The verdict is in: Epstein was a spy!<\/p>\n
And, despite\u00a0what the MSM says<\/a>, he wasn\u2019t making Kompromat for his KGB komrades so much as he was wheeling and dealing for his friends, the Israelis.<\/p>\n In addition to the many, many ties to Israel I listed in my\u00a010 Things I Learned from the Epstein Files<\/a>\u00a0editorial, more and more data continues to emerge showing how Epstein worked with his pal (and ex-Israeli Prime Minister) Ehud Barak to secure contracts and achieve diplomatic objectives for Israel. This data includes information on how Epstein:<\/p>\n Heck, the Israeli government even\u00a0installed and maintained the security system<\/a>\u00a0at the Manhattan apartment Epstein frequently lent out to Barak.<\/p>\n Yes, whatever else Epstein may have been doing, it seems he was working diligently behind the scenes as an agent of influence to promote Israeli interests around the world.<\/p>\n But Epstein is dead, as you may have heard. So, how will Israel wield power and influence over foreign diplomats and businessman now that they can no longer rely on their favourite fixer?<\/p>\n As it turns out, we can catch glimpses of the answer to that question in the Epstein files, too…<\/p>\n Last November, the San Francisco Standard published \u201cInside the extended courtship linking Jeffrey Epstein, Peter Thiel, and Israeli officials<\/a>.\u201d The article details how Handala (an \u201cIran-linked hacking group\u201d) obtained emails from Israeli officials that show that Epstein was once again the lubricant greasing the skids for the Israeli deep state in their attempt to woo the Silicon Valley broligarchs.<\/p>\n First, Epstein courted Thiel:<\/p>\n By 2014, Epstein had a relationship with Thiel. The two had at least three meetings scheduled in September of that year alone, according to copies of Epstein\u2019s calendar obtained by\u00a0The New York Times<\/a>.<\/p>\n In hindsight, they were getting into business together: In the year or so after these meetings, Epstein put $40 million into Valar Ventures, a firm Thiel cofounded,\u00a0according to The New York Times<\/a>. Thiel has not been accused of any wrongdoing in connection with his relationship with Epstein.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Then, he introduced Thiel to Barak:<\/p>\n In 2014, Epstein was eager to connect his two contacts, urging Barak over email to have dinner with Thiel. Barak eventually agreed to Epstein\u2019s overture, and, according to emails he sent to friends, had dinner with the Palantir cofounder in June 2014.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n So, what became of this relationship?<\/p>\n As Drop Site News\u00a0reported last month<\/a>, Epstein immediately used this connection to sell Thiel on Carbyne, an Israeli firm providing \u201cvideo streaming and geolocation software for emergency services\u201d around the world.<\/p>\n Originally called \u201cReporty,\u201d Carbyne didn\u2019t just receive funding from Epstein. The company wasn\u2019t just chaired by Barak. It didn\u2019t simply boast Sultan Ahmed bin \u201cloved the torture video<\/a>\u201c Sulayem among its investors. It\u00a0also<\/em>\u00a0just happened to be founded by Amir Elichia, a veteran of Israel\u2019s cyberspook signals intelligence service, Unit 8200.<\/p>\n Sulayem forwarded an email from Elichai, a veteran of Israel\u2019s Unit 8200 signals intelligence unit, proposing Sulayem\u2019s participation in Carbyne\u2019s Series B fundraising round that year. After meeting with Epstein and Barak, Peter Thiel had also invested in the round. Epstein introduced Barak and Elichai to one of Thiel\u2019s venture funds while helping Barak develop relations with senior security officials in Mongolia. (Those talks had\u00a0blossomed<\/a>\u00a0into a formal security agreement between Israel and Mongolia in 2017, which included plans for integrating Carbyne into the Mongolian emergency service.)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n In other words, Epstein turns out to be the connecting point between the Israelis, the financiers, the Big Tech cartel and various foreign governments.<\/p>\n None of this is news to those who followed Whitney Webb\u2019s reporting on the subject\u00a0back in 2019<\/a>, of course. But the recently released Epstein files contain more information on these connections, including the\u00a0actual correspondence<\/a>\u00a0between Epstein, Barak, Thiel, Sulayem and the other people involved in this venture as well as the\u00a0actual documents<\/a>\u00a0they were examining.<\/p>\n The story of Carbyne\u2014an Israeli intelligence-founded and Israeli-backed company seeking to worm itself into the emergency response systems of countries around the world, including the US\u2014is important in and of itself. Those interested in exploring the subject really owe it to themselves to read Webb\u2019s\u00a0original reporting<\/a>\u00a0on the topic from 2019.<\/p>\n But the Carbyne saga is not just interesting in and of itself. It\u2019s interesting for what it tells us about the nature of spying in the 21st century.<\/p>\n Firstly, it provides a window into the story of Unit 8200, Israel\u2019s infamous cyberspy team.<\/p>\n As noted above, Carbyne\u2019s founder and CEO was Amir Elichai.<\/p>\n The company\u2019s \u201cAbout Us<\/a>\u201c page helpfully explains the Eureka moment that prompted Elichai to create the company:<\/p>\n Carbyne was founded in 2015 by Amir Elichai after a personal experience revealed a critical gap in emergency communication. After being robbed at the beach, Amir called local emergency services\u2014only to discover they couldn\u2019t verify his location or send immediate help. This moment highlighted the disconnect between modern communication technology and outdated emergency response systems.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n What Carbyne\u2019s \u201cAbout Us\u201d page unhelpfully leaves out, however, is Elichai\u2019s background. This was not some random mugging victim (assuming such a mugging ever actually took place). Rather, as Adam Bensaid\u00a0reported for TRT World<\/a>\u00a0back in 2019, Elichai was \u201ca distinguished member of Israel\u2019s elite military intelligence group.\u201d And he wasn\u2019t the only \u201cex\u201d-Israeli intelligence official on the company\u2019s board. The company\u2019s co-founder, Lital Leshem, was still a reservist in the Israeli Defense Force at the time he helped start Carbyne; Alex Dizengof, the company\u2019s Chief Technology Officer, was previously responsible for cybersecurity in Israel\u2019s Prime Minister\u2019s office; and, as Bensaid also reports, the company\u2019s first director had his own link to Israeli intelligence.<\/p>\n Pinchas Berkus, a former Brigadier General of the elite 8200 unit, was part of the Israeli Intelligence Corps responsible for signals intelligence and decryption, until he came to serve in Carbyne as a company director.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n So, what\u00a0is<\/em>\u00a0Unit 8200, exactly? As I explained in \u201cBeyond Pegasus: The Bigger Picture of Israeli Cyber Spying<\/a>,\u201d my 2021 editorial on Israel\u2019s military-grade \u201cPegasus\u201d spyware:<\/p>\n For those who don\u2019t know, Unit 8200 is the branch of the Israel Defense Force responsible for signals intelligence\u2014i.e., Israel\u2019s equivalent of the NSA. Supposedly founded in 1952 (or was it the 1930s<\/a>?), the unit was not officially acknowledged until the early 2000s, when stories of the incredible (and incredibly illegal) acts of cyber espionage it has perpetrated over the decades began to be publicized.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n And what acts of cyber espionage have Unit 8200 been involved in, exactly? How about acts such as:<\/p>\n There are doubtless many other examples of perfidy and war crimes perpetrated or enabled by Unit 8200, but, given that it is an intelligence agency, such actions are still heavily classified.<\/p>\n Arguably more important than the operations Unit 8200 members conduct while still active members of the organization, however, are the companies they form\u00a0after<\/em>\u00a0leaving the spy unit. As one 8200 veteran, Avishai Abrahami,\u00a0told\u00a0<\/a>Forbes<\/a><\/em>\u00a0in 2016<\/a>, the prevelance of \u201cex\u201d-8200 members in Silicon Valley is by now impossible to ignore: \u201cJust from my generation, there are more than 100 guys from the unit that I personally knew who built startups and sold them for a lot of money.\u201d<\/p>\n Again, as I reported in \u201cBeyond Pegasus<\/a>\u201c:<\/p>\n From communication companies like AudioCodes and Viber to cybersecurity companies like Argus and CheckPoint to GPS navigation software services like Waze, the prevalence of Unit 8200 alumni in the private tech sector has received\u00a0so<\/a>\u00a0much<\/a>\u00a0press<\/a>\u00a0that even trade publications have been forced to\u00a0report on the matter<\/a>, noting that the Israeli military is increasingly outsourcing cybersecurity and intelligence projects to companies \u201cthat in some cases were built for this exact purpose.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The companies formed by these \u201cformer\u201d 8200 operatives include not just Carbyne, but Comverse Infosys (yes,\u00a0that<\/a><\/em>\u00a0Comverse Infosys), Cybereason (yes,\u00a0that<\/a><\/em>\u00a0Cybereason), Toka (yes,\u00a0that<\/a><\/em>\u00a0Toka) and, of course, the NSO Group (yes,\u00a0that<\/a><\/em>\u00a0NSO Group).<\/p>\n The fact that so many high-tech Israeli companies at the heart of America (and the world\u2019s) emergency responses, communication infrastructure, payment systems and digital forensic tools have been founded by military-trained Israeli cyber intelligence officers should tell us something. Namely, that these apps, devices and spyware systems are vital tools of the trade for would-be spies in the 21st century.<\/p>\n Yes, as the Epstein\/Thiel\/Barak\/Elichai nexus found in the Epstein files themselves informs us, the growing importance of the Unit 8200 gang in the heart of the global cybersecurity industry reflects a fundamental change that has taken place in intelligence in recent decades. In short, the spooks and spies are moving away from the old-school flesh-and-blood-style sexpot honeytraps that characterized the Epstein era of espionage and moving toward the Palantir-esque panopticon backdoor surveillance that characterizes the post-Epstein era of espionage.<\/p>\n Anyone who\u2019s been paying even cursory attention to the workings of the kakistocracy over the past century will know that good old-fashioned blackmail has worked to ensure the deep state\u2019s control over their puppets in the surface state for decades if not centuries (if not millennia). And no blackmail works as well as sexual blackmail.<\/p>\n We know, for instance, that J. Edgar Hoover\u00a0had blackmail on every political player of consequence in Washington<\/a>\u00a0during his nearly half-century tenure as director of the FBI, including (it is alleged) the Kennedy brothers. And we know that\u00a0others had blackmail on Hoover<\/a>\u00a0regarding his own taboo sexual practices.<\/p>\n We know the FBI tried to\u00a0pressure Martin Luther King into committing suicide<\/a>\u00a0by threatening to release the audio tapes of his affairs with various women.<\/p>\n We know the KGB used a honeytrap to\u00a0blackmail John Vassall<\/a>, a British civil servant, into spying for the Soviet Union.<\/p>\n And readers of Whitney Webb\u2019s\u00a0One Nation Under Blackmail<\/a><\/em>\u00a0will know about the many, many ways that those in and around power in American politics have been steered into compromising positions for the purpose of being put under the thumb of various criminal elements.<\/p>\n Of course, these are just a few of the examples of sexual blackmail that we know about and have documentary evidence of. There are many, many more examples about which we have only the outline of the story.<\/p>\n But throughout the long, sordid history of blackmail, there has always been the need for would-be blackmailers to find, entice, record and recruit the target in question. Hitherto, this has required would-be blackmailers to engage in elaborate setups, including bringing targets to facilities that have been bugged with recording devices.<\/p>\n As successful as such tactics have historically proven to be, they are undoubtedly difficult, cumbersome and unreliable. A target with anything approaching a degree of discretion or basic training in espionage would likely recognize that they were being led into a honeytrap long before the trap could be sprung.<\/p>\n As the Epstein files also demonstrate, as often as Epstein and Maxwell were able to lure wealthy and powerful figures into their orbit and entice them to the island or the ranch or the Manhattan apartment, they were just as often unsuccessful in digging their talons into their target. There were many would-be victims of Epstein\u2019s blackmail operation who sensed that something was off and rejected his or Ghislaine\u2019s advances. Such are the vagaries of these meatspace blackmail operations.<\/p>\n But in our current digital dystopia, such tactics aren\u2019t necessary. At this point, everyone is carrying a tracking and recording device with them 24\/7. Any intel agent in a position to monitor those devices through spyware backdoors and to record the conversations of any target at any time with the simple click of a button would be able to find plenty of blackmail material on that target\u00a0without<\/em>\u00a0the need for an elaborate Epstein-type honeytrap operation.<\/p>\n And, wouldn\u2019t you know it, the development of just such spyware technology is\u00a0exactly<\/em>\u00a0what Israeli intelligence has been working on feverishly.<\/p>\n With Comverse InfoSys, an Israel-based, Israeli-backed, Israeli-run company was able to\u00a0wiretap phone communications<\/a>\u00a0in the US for decades.<\/p>\n With Pegasus, an Israeli spyware company was able to help governments in numerous countries\u00a0snoop on their dissenters<\/a>\u00a0through their smartphones.<\/p>\n With Toka, Israel offered a \u201cone-stop hacking shop for governments<\/a>\u201c to help spooks around the world spy on people through their \u201cInternet-of-Things\u201d devices, including\u00a0Wi-Fi connected security devices<\/a>.<\/p>\n Of course, there would be one obvious way to diminish the influence of these Israeli cyber spies: governments could stop giving contracts to companies founded by \u201cex\u201d-Israeli intelligence operatives.<\/p>\n In the wake of the Pegasus spyware scandal in 2021, there was a moment where it looked like the EU was actually going to do the bare minimum to clear this incredibly low threshold of \u201caction\u201d on the spyware subject. After a European Parliament committee examining the use of spyware in Europe issued a\u00a0blistering report<\/a>\u00a0condemning the NSO Group (the company that developed the Pegasus spyware) and Black Cube (a private Israeli intelligence agency comprised of former Mossad members) by name, European Parliament took the bold step of…\u201dSetting spyware standards<\/a>\u201c for EU states to follow. If they feel like it. Even the EU\u2019s cheerleaders\u00a0had to admit<\/a>\u00a0that the parliament\u2019s totally ineffectual response means that it will continue to be business as usual for the (mostly Israeli) spyware industry.<\/p>\n And\u2014whodathunkit?\u2014those detractors have been proven right. Just last summer, the EU was struck with\u00a0yet another spyware scandal<\/a>. This time, Paragon Solutions, a \u201cUS-backed Israeli company,\u201d was caught helping the Italian government spy on three prominent European journalists.<\/p>\n So, how about Uncle Sam? In a move that will surprise precisely no one, the US government has now doubled down on its reliance on Israeli-produced spyware. In fact, as Reuters\u00a0reported last month<\/a>, the Trump administration is actively working to\u00a0remove<\/em>\u00a0sanctions on Israeli spyware-linked executives.<\/p>\n President Donald Trump\u2019s administration has lifted sanctions on three executives tied to the spy software consortium Intellexa, according to\u00a0a notice published to the U.S. Treasury\u2019s website<\/a>. The move partially reverses the imposition of sanctions last year by then-President Joe Biden\u2019s administration\u00a0on seven people tied to Intellexa<\/a>. The Treasury Department at the time\u00a0described the consortium<\/a>, launched by former Israeli intelligence official Tal Dilian, as \u201ca complex international web of decentralized companies that built and commercialized a comprehensive suite of highly invasive spyware products.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n But don\u2019t worry, Americans. Rather than outsourcing all the spying to Israel, US companies are now looking to get in on the post-Epstein surveillance dragnet…by buying up sanctioned Israeli spyware companies.<\/p>\n In an article last year on how \u201cAmerica now leads the world in surveillanceware investment<\/a>,\u201d The Register reported on one such Israeli surveillanceware company, Saito Tech Ltd, which was\u00a0sanctioned by the US Commerce Department in 2021<\/a>\u00a0\u201cbased on evidence that these entities developed and supplied spyware to foreign governments that used these tools to maliciously target government officials, journalists, businesspeople, activists, academics, and embassy workers.\u201d<\/p>\n After the sanction, US investors didn\u2019t shy away from the sanctioned company. Instead, they bought it out.<\/p>\n\n
\n\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nTHE CARBYNE CREW<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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<\/picture>\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\nTHE 8200 GANG<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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FROM HONEYTRAPS TO PANOPTICON<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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