The newly released batch of Epstein’s files turn conjecture into a certainty: his whole operation was set up and run by the KGB.
The files include 1,056 documents naming Putin and 9,629 referring to Moscow. Epstein even met Putin after already serving a prison term for procuring a child for prostitution. (Some 5,300 files also mention Donald Trump, and I for one am anxious to find out what they say.)
This intimate link explains the billions Epstein’s lifestyle must have cost. His known financial activities could have explained, at a stretch, a million or two. Not the billions pouring out of some invisible horn of plenty.
The files also identify the greatest Russian export other than oil: prostitutes. The KGB was, and the FSB is, a great believer in catching flies with honey rather than vinegar. Acting in the capacity of a honeycomb is a beehive of comely young ladies trained to use their charms for both pecuniary gain and information gathering.
Before perestroika, those creatures were mainly used domestically, to entice foreign diplomats, journalists and tourists into blackmailable indiscretions. However, when the borders were open, a swarm of long-legged Russian girls descended on the West.
Some were independent operators; some (most?) were run by the FSB. Apparently, Epstein had a steady supply of Russian labour for the delectation of his guests. According to vigorously denied rumours, some VIPs’ pleasure came packaged with a dose of clap, but hey – soldier’s chances and all that.
The nature and amount of leverage the KGB/FSB obtained from the Epstein bordello must be staggering. I suspect that information about it will be drip-fed into the media for years, with some illustrious names besmirched for ever.
Since every newspaper in His Creation is running extensive reports of an expository nature, I shan’t repeat things you can read elsewhere if you are interested. What I find fascinating is how a small-time wheeler-dealer ended up running – or rather fronting – a major KGB op.
Actually, the link is obvious: Ghislaine Maxwell. Her father, Robert ‘Cap’n Bob’ Maxwell was a KGB asset, and Ghislaine was not only Maxwell’s daughter but also his business associate and closest confidante. It’s inconceivable that she neither knew about her father’s illegal activities nor participated in them.
The current newspaper accounts state that Maxwell became a KGB agent in the 1970s, but (as The Mitrokhin Archives and other documents show) Cap’n Bob’s tenure is of much longer standing
Maxwell was what the Soviets called ‘an agent of influence’, perhaps the most important one next to the American industrialist Armand Hammer. Said influence was exerted through both individuals and ‘friendly firms’. One such firm was Maxwell’s Pergamon Press.
Maxwell, a retired captain in the British army, bought 75 percent of the company in 1951 and instantly made it an unlikely success. Actually, it’s also unlikely that a poor Czech immigrant could have found the required £50,000, which was then serious money, at least £1,000,000 in today’s debauched cash.
If the original investment miraculously didn’t come courtesy of the KGB, the overnight success did. Maxwell signed a brother-in-law deal with the Soviet copyright agency VAAP (a KGB department) and began publishing English translations of Soviet academic journals.
Making any kind of income, never mind millions, out of that would have been next to impossible. Publishing even English-language academic periodicals is a laborious and low-margin business requiring much specialised expertise. That’s why it’s usually done by big and long-established firms, which Maxwell’s wasn’t. Add to this the cost of translation and one really begins to wonder about the provenance of all that cash.
Subsequent close ties between Maxwell and the Soviets dispel any doubts. He became a frequent visitor to Moscow and a welcome guest in the Kremlin. Cap’n Bob met every Soviet leader from Khrushchev to Gorbachev, and they didn’t just chat about the weather.
As an MP, Maxwell made speeches defending the Soviet 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia, bizarrely portraying it as some kind of recompense for the country’s betrayal at Munich.
In the ‘70s Pergamon Press prospered churning out such sure-fire bestsellers as books by Soviet leaders. On 4 March 1975, Maxwell signed, on his own terms, another contract with VAAP and published seven books by Soviet chieftains: five by Brezhnev, one by Chernenko and one by Andropov, then head of the KGB.
Under a later 1978 contract he also published Brezhnev’s immortal masterpiece Peace Is the People’s Priceless Treasure, along with books by Grishin and Ponomarev, the former a Politburo member, the latter head of the Central Committee Ideology Department.
All those books were published in huge runs and, considering the nonexistent demand for this genre, would have lost millions for any other publisher. But Maxwell wasn’t just any old publisher and these weren’t any old publishing ventures. The translation, publishing and printing were paid for by the Soviets.
In the ‘80s Maxwell met Gorbachev three times, the last meeting also involving Vladimir Kryuchkov, the KGB boss. As a result Pergamon Press began publishing the English-language version of the Soviet Cultural Foundation magazine Nashe naslediye (Our Heritage), along with the writings of both Gorbachev and his wife Raisa (Charles Dickens and Jane Austen they weren’t).
One objective pursued by the Soviets was propaganda, but this could have been achieved with less capital outlay and greater effect. The real purpose was the old Soviet pastime: money laundering and looting Russia in preparation for ‘the collapse of the Soviet Union’, which in effect was a transfer of power from the Party to the KGB. And the core business of Pergamon Press played only a small role in this enterprise.
Between 1989 and 1991 the KGB transferred to the West eight metric tonnes of platinum, 60 metric tonnes of gold, truckloads of diamonds and up to $50 billion in cash. The cash part was in roubles, officially not a convertible currency. But the Soviets made it convertible by setting up a vast network of bogus holding companies and fake brass plates throughout the West.
The key figures in the cash transfer were the KGB financial wizard Col. Leonid Veselovsky, seconded to the Administration Department of the Central Committee, and Nikolai Kruchina, head of that department. Putin, who ‘left’ the KGB at that time, took a modest part in the looting of Russia in his capacity as Deputy Mayor of Petersburg.
The focal point of that transfer activity in the West was Maxwell, the midwife overseeing the birth pains of the so-called Soviet oligarchy. We know very little about the exact mechanisms of this scam, perhaps the biggest one in history. The actual operators knew too much, which could only mean they had to fall out with the designers.
Specifically, in August 1991 Kruchina fell out of his office window. Two months later Maxwell fell overboard from his yacht. Veselovsky, who handled most of the legwork, managed to leg it to Switzerland, where he became a highly paid consultant. Obviously he knew quite a bit not only about his former employers but also about his new clients, which enhanced his earning potential.
Evidence shows that Epstein, in cahoots with Maxwell, set up one of the laundromats for the Russian cash. His operation was thus multi-purpose, combining business with pleasure – and turning his customers’ pleasure into KGB business.
We don’t yet know how much kompromat Epstein’s bordello delivered to history’s most diabolical secret police, nor how damaging it will turn out to be. It has already pushed our monarchy to the brink, courtesy of Prince Andrew, as he then was, but this is only a warm-up.
New blows are bound to land on political and corporate offices all over the world, and not all of them will be able to pick themselves up off the floor. I won’t be surprised if the ensuing scandals make Watergate look like an innocent peccadillo by comparison.
Meanwhile, I look at the unfolding events with the squeamish wince of a man who accidentally touches a slug. How could the US authorities let that transparent KGB operation run unmolested for decades? Don’t bother replying: the question is rhetorical.
P.S. Some of the facts I cite in this article I first used 13 years ago. The proverb “Everything new is the well-forgotten old” is thereby vindicated.
P.P.S. My programme of learning English as a second language is proceeding apace. As ever, I use sports commentators as instructors.
Thus Jamie Carragher, one of our most perceptive football analysts, wrote that “Raheem Stirling doesn’t get the adoration he deserves”. There I was, thinking that, while God is adored, athletes are at best admired. Learn something new every day.
Then a tennis commentator at the Australian Open suggested that Sabalenka “pick up her intention”. Thus I learned that ‘intention’ and ‘intensity’ are full synonyms, and I’m grateful for this contribution to my vocabulary.