2nd May 2023

Director of CIA Says He Had No Clue That Meeting With Jeffrey Epstein Was a Bad Idea

By Ben Mathis-Lilley, Slate

Jeffrey Epstein! Despite having died in 2019 in a not-at-all-suspicious jailhouse “suicide,” the finance-world hustler and convicted sex criminal has remained the gift that keeps on giving for the various powerful U.S. figures who knew him, of whom there were apparently about one million. Every few months, it seems, someone new is trying to explain through a crisis public relations firm why they spent so much time on the man’s plane, at his Manhattan townhouse, or at his private Caribbean island, despite his reputation—established in the public record by a 2008 criminal conviction and countless lawsuits and media reports—for coercing minors into performing sex acts. The number of people who at one point had a private dinner with infamous sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein seems like it’s larger than the number of people I have spoken to in my entire life. A real extrovert, that Jeffrey Epstein! 

Anyway, a number of newly identified Epstein contacts are in the news this week thanks to the Wall Street Journal. The Journal reports that it has obtained “thousands of pages” of Epstein’s emails and schedules from the period between 2013 and 2017 that include the names of individuals he was scheduled to meet with. In terms of star power, the biggest is probably linguist and activist Noam Chomsky, who confirmed to the Journal that he occasionally saw Epstein to discuss neuroscience and other subjects. (Epstein liked to make a show of his interest in science. Chomsky is not accused of any inappropriate or criminal behavior.)

There is also an incredible Mad Libs payoff deep in the article concerning a dinner that Chomsky and Epstein reportedly had in New York City. You simply will not believe who the other A-list guest at the dinner was:

Two months later, Epstein planned to fly with Mr. Chomsky and his wife to have dinner with them and movie director Woody Allen and his wife, Soon-Yi Previn, the documents show.

“If there was a flight, which I doubt, it would have been from Boston to New York, 30 minutes,” Mr. Chomsky said. “I’m unaware of the principle that requires that I inform you about an evening spent with a great artist.”

Yes! What a world.

Also grudgingly confirming that he met with Epstein is William Burns, a longtime State Department figure who is now the director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Epstein’s schedules listed three meetings with Burns in 2014, two in Manhattan and one at a law firm in the District of Columbia; a CIA spokeswoman says Burns remembers meeting Epstein once at the law firm and once in New York.

This is Burns’ explanation for their interactions, which perhaps calls into question whether he is the best person to hold the United States’ most high-stakes job in the field of information-gathering:

"The director did not know anything about him, other than that he was introduced as an expert in the financial services sector and offered general advice on transition to the private sector,” she said. “They had no relationship.”

(Burns has not been accused of inappropriate or criminal behavior.)

In limited defense of Burns, his contacts with Epstein took place in 2014, after the financier had served the sentence for this 2008 conviction, but before litigation filed by one of his alleged victims revived scrutiny of his case and behavior. The same cannot be said for Kathryn Ruemmler, who served as White House counsel during Barack Obama’s administration and is shown to have met and socialized with Epstein “dozens” of times after leaving the position. (She says she regrets “ever knowing” Epstein, did not ever fly on a private plane with him, and never visited his island.)

Ruemmler is now the general counsel at the investment bank Goldman Sachs and, in the Journal’s dry telling, the “co-chair of its reputational risk committee.” Jeffrey Epstein might be dead, but irony is not! 

A coordinated censorship attack is being waged against independent media by Google, YouTube, Twitter, PayPal and Facebook. After being banned by Google, Facebook is now deliberately blocking the sharing of our stories to further censor our important reporting of human freedom and medical choice. Censorship has now reached extreme levels across the internet. The truth is being suffocated. PLEASE SHARE.

Do yourself a favor. Think for yourself. Be your own person. Question everything. Stand for principle. Champion individual liberty and self-ownership where you can. Develop a strong moral code. Be kind to others. Do no harm, unless that harm is warranted. Pretty obvious stuff...but people who hold to these things in their hearts seem to be disappearing from the earth at an accelerated rate. Stay safe, my friends. Thanks for being here.

Sources:

Epstein's Little Black Book

FBI Files Jeffrey Epstein

Epstein's Private Jet's Flight Manifests

If you’re having any difficulty you can contact:

The nonprofit organization End Violence Against Women International began the national Start By Believing Campaign in 2011, to promote positive responses to sexual assault survivors who disclose. As the campaign’s name suggests, a statement of belief can have a huge impact on sexual assault survivors, and can influence their decision whether or not to disclose their sexual assault again. Start By Believing also provides more tips on what to say and what not to say when someone confides in you they’ve been sexually assaulted.

Do yourself a favor. Think for yourself. Be your own person. Question everything. Stand for principle. Champion individual liberty and self-ownership where you can. Develop a strong moral code. Be kind to others. Do no harm, unless that harm is warranted. Pretty obvious stuff...but people who hold these things in their hearts seem to be disappearing from the earth at an accelerated rate. Stay safe, my friends. Thanks for being here.

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