The CIA, Mossad, and Epstein: Unraveling the Intelligence Ties of the Maxwell Family
By Alan Macleod | MintPress News | August 22, 2025
With speculation mounting that Trump could pardon her, MintPress profiles the family of convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. From her media baron father, who acted as a high-level spy for Israel, her sister, working to push Tel Aviv’s interests in Silicon Valley, her brothers, who founded a dubious but highly influential anti-Islamic extremism think tank, and nephews in influential roles at the State Department and White House, the Maxwell clan have wide-ranging ties to U.S. and Israeli state power. This is their story.
Releasing Ghislaine, Burying the Epstein Files
Speculation is growing that Ghislaine Maxwell could soon be freed. Despite campaigning on the promise to release the Epstein Files, there are increasing signs that the Trump administration is considering pardoning the world’s most notorious convicted sex trafficker.
Last month, Trump (who contemplated the idea in his first term in office) repeatedly refused to rule out a pardon, stating to journalists that “I’m allowed to do it.” Just days later, Maxwell was transferred across states to a minimum-security facility in Bryan, Texas—a highly unusual practice. Neither women convicted of sex crimes nor those with more than 10 years remaining on their sentences are generally permitted to be transferred to such facilities. The move sparked equal measures of speculation and outrage.
The decision to relocate Maxwell came after somebody—potentially a source within her team itself—began leaking incriminating and embarrassing evidence linking Trump to Epstein. This included a birthday card Trump sent Epstein, featuring a hand-drawn nude woman, accompanied by the text: “Happy Birthday—and may every day be another wonderful secret.”
For years, Maxwell aided her partner Jeffrey Epstein in trafficking and raping girls and young women, creating a giant sex crime ring in the process. Epstein’s associates included billionaires, scientists, celebrities, and politicians, including President Trump, whom he considered his “closest friend.”
In 2021, two years after Epstein’s mysterious death in a Manhattan prison, Maxwell was found guilty of child sex trafficking offenses and was subsequently sentenced to 20 years in prison.
The news that Trump may soon free such an infamous criminal sent shockwaves through his base and drew charges of blatant corruption from the media. “Is there any reason to pardon Ghislaine Maxwell except to buy her silence?” ran the headline of one article in The Hill. Meanwhile, Tim Hogan, senior Democratic National Committee adviser, denounced what he claimed was a “government cover-up in real time.” “Donald Trump’s FBI, run by loyalist Kash Patel, redacted Trump’s name from the Epstein files—which have still not been released,” he said.
Robert Maxwell: Media Tycoon and Israeli Operative
While many of Ghislaine Maxwell’s crimes have come to light, less well-known are her family’s myriad connections to both the U.S. and Israeli national security states. Chief among these are those of her father, disgraced media baron and early tech entrepreneur, Robert Maxwell.
A Jewish refugee fleeing Hitler’s occupation of his native Czechoslovakia, Maxwell fought for Britain against Germany. After World War II, he used his Czech connections to help funnel arms to the nascent State of Israel, weapons that helped them win the 1948 war and carry out the Nakba, the ethnic cleansing of nearly 800,000 Palestinians.
Maxwell’s biographers, Gordon Thomas and Martin Dillon, write that he was first recruited by Israeli intelligence in the 1960s and began buying up Israeli tech corporations. Israel used these companies and their software to carry out spying and other clandestine operations around the globe.
Maxwell amassed a vast business empire of 350 companies, employing 16,000 people. He owned an array of newspapers, including The New York Daily News, Britain’s Daily Mirror, and Maariv of Israel, in addition to some of the world’s most influential book and scientific publishing houses.
With business power came political power. He was elected to the U.K. parliament in 1964 and counted U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev among his closest friends.
He used this influence to advance Israeli interests, selling Israeli intelligence-gathering software to Russia, the U.S., the U.K., and many other countries. This software included a secret Israeli backdoor that allowed the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad, to tap into classified information gathered by governments and intelligence agencies around the world.
At the same time, it was expanding its espionage capabilities, Israel was developing a secret nuclear weapons program. This project was exposed by Israeli peace activist Mordechai Vanunu, who, in 1986, leaked evidence to the British press. Maxwell—one of Britain’s most powerful press barons—spied on Vanunu, passing photographs and other information to the Israeli Embassy—intelligence that led to Vanunu’s international abduction by Mossad, and his subsequent imprisonment.
His death was also surrounded by controversy, similar to Epstein’s. In 1991, his lifeless body was found in the ocean, in what authorities ruled a bizarre accident whereby the tycoon had fallen from his luxury yacht. To this day, his children are split on whether they think he was murdered.
The rumors that Maxwell had, for decades, been acting as an Israeli “superspy” were all but confirmed by the lavish state funeral he received in Jerusalem. His body was interred at the Mount of Olives, one of the holiest sites in Judaism, the spot from which Jesus is said to have ascended to heaven.
Virtually the entirety of elite Israeli society–both government and opposition–attended the event, including no fewer than six living heads of Israeli intelligence organizations. President Chaim Herzog himself performed the eulogy. Also speaking at the event was Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, who stated that “Robert Maxwell has done more for Israel than can today be said.”
In the United Kingdom, however, he is remembered less fondly. A man with a fearsome reputation, Maxwell ruled his media business with an iron fist, in a similar vein to Rupert Murdoch (another individual with extremely close links to Israel). After his death, it transpired that he had stolen more than $500 million from his employees’ pension fund to bail out other failing companies in his empire, leaving many of his workforce’s retirement plans in tatters. As the newspaper, The Scotsman, remarked ten years later in 2001:
If [Maxwell] was despised in life, he was hated in death when it emerged he had stolen 440 million [pounds] from the pension fund of Mirror Group Newspapers. He was, officially, the biggest thief in British criminal history.”
Isabel Maxwell: Israel’s Woman in Silicon Valley
Even before it had been published, Isabel Maxwell– Robert’s daughter and Ghislaine’s older sister– managed to obtain a copy of Thomas and Dillon’s biography. She immediately flew to Israel, The Times of London reported, where she showed it to a “family friend” and deputy director of Mossad, David Kimche. These actions did little to beat the book’s central allegation that her father was indeed a high-level Israeli “superspy.”
Isabel has enjoyed a long and successful career in the tech industry. In 1992, along with her twin sister, Christine, she founded a company that developed one of the internet’s first search engines.
After the pension scandal, however, she and her siblings shifted their focus to rebuilding every facet of their father’s collapsed business empire. The sisters sold the search engine, netting enormous profits.
As Israeli outlet Haaretz noted, in 2001, Isabel decided to dedicate her life to advancing the Jewish State’s interests, vowing to “work only on things involving Israel” as she “believes in Israel.” Described by former MintPress journalist and investigative reporter Whitney Webb as “Israel’s back door into Silicon Valley,” she has transformed herself into a key ambassador for the country in the tech world.
“Maxwell created a unique niche for herself in [tech] as a liaison between Israeli companies in the initial development stages and private angel investors in the U.S. At the same time, she helps U.S. companies interested in opening development centers in Israel,” wrote local business newspaper, Globes. “She lives intensively, including innumerable flights back and forth between Tel Aviv and San Francisco,” it added.
Israel is known to be the source of much of the world’s most controversial spyware and hacking tools, used by repressive governments the world over to surveil, harass, and even kill political opponents. This includes the notorious Pegasus software, used by the government of Saudi Arabia to track Washington Post journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, before assassinating him in Türkiye.
Isabel built on her father’s political connections. “My father was most influential in my life. He was a very accomplished man and achieved many of his goals during his life. I learned very much from him and have made many of his ways my own,” she said. This included developing intimate ties to a myriad of Israeli leaders, including Ehud Olmert and Ehud Barak, one of Jeffrey Epstein’s closest associates.
During the 2000s, she was a regular participant at the Herzliya Conference, an annual, closed-door gathering of the West’s most senior political, security and intelligence officials, in addition to being a “technology pioneer” at the World Economic Forum.
She was also placed on the board of the Israeli government-funded Shimon Peres Center for Peace and Innovation and the American Friends of the Yitzhak Rabin Center for Israel Studies, two organizations closely associated with those former Israeli prime ministers.
In 2001, she became the CEO of iCognito, taking the job, in her words, “because it [the company] is in Israel, and because of its technology.” The technology in question was aimed at keeping children safe online—highly ironic, given that her sister was actively trafficking and abusing minors throughout that period.
Isabel was a much more serious and accomplished individual than Ghislaine. As Haaretz noted:
While her younger sister, Ghislaine, makes the gossip columns after breakfasting with Bill Clinton or because of her ties with another close friend, Britain’s Prince Andrew, Isabel wants to show photos taken of herself with the grand mufti of Egypt, or with Bedouin in a tent, or of visits to a Gaza refugee camp.”
In 1997, Isabel was appointed president of the Israeli tech security firm, Commtouch. Thanks to her connections, Commtouch was able to secure investment from many of the most prominent players in Silicon Valley, including Bill Gates, a close associate of both the Maxwell family and Jeffrey Epstein himself.
Christine Maxwell: Funded by Israel?
Isabel’s twin sister, Christine, is no less accomplished. A veteran of the publishing and tech industries, she co-founded data analytics firm Chiliad. As CEO, she helped oversee the production of a massive “counterterrorism” database that the company sold to the FBI during the height of the War on Terror. The software helped the Bush administration crack down on Muslim Americans and tear down domestic civil liberties in the wake of 9/11 and the PATRIOT Act. Today, she is the leader and co-founder of another big data corporation, Techtonic Insight.
Like her sister and father, Christine has a close relationship with the State of Israel. She is currently a fellow at the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP), where, her biography states,
She works to promote innovative academic research that leverages enabling technologies to empower proactive understanding and combatting the great dangers of contemporary antisemitism, and enhancing the ongoing relevance of the Holocaust for the 21st century and beyond.”
ISGAP’s board is a who’s who of Israeli national security state officials. This includes Natan Sharansky, former Minister of Internal Affairs and Deputy Prime Minister of Israel, and Brigadier General Sima Vaknin-Gil, the former Chief Censor for the IDF and Director General of the Ministry of Strategic Affairs and Diplomacy. Also on the board is Jeffrey Epstein’s lawyer, Alan Dershowitz.
The think tank was a key player in the U.S. government’s decision to repress the 2024 Gaza protests on university campuses nationwide. The group produced reports linking student leaders with foreign terrorist organizations and promoted dubious claims about a wave of anti-Semitism washing over American colleges. It met frequently with both Democratic and Republican leaders, and urged them to “investigate” (i.e., repress) the leaders of the demonstrations.
ISGAP has continually warned of foreign influence on American campuses, producing reports and holding seminars detailing Qatar’s supposed stranglehold over the U.S. higher education system, and linking that with growing anti-Israel sentiment among America’s youth.
Yet if ISGAP wished to investigate other foreign government influence operations, it would not have to look far, as its own funds overwhelmingly come from a single source: the Israeli state. In 2018, an investigation found that Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs (then headed by Brigadier General Vaknin-Gil herself) channeled $445,000 to ISGAP, a sum representing nearly 80% of its entire revenues for that year. ISGAP failed to disclose that information to either the public or the federal government.
At the height of the concern over foreign interference in American politics, the news barely registered. Since then, the Israeli government has continued to bankroll the group to the tune of millions. In 2019, for example, it approved a grant of over $1.3 million to ISGAP. Thus, in her role as a fellow at the organization, Christine Maxwell is the direct beneficiary of Israeli government cash.
Third Generation Maxwells: Working In the US Government
While Robert Maxwell’s daughters were close to state power, some of the family’s third generation have taken up positions within the U.S. government itself. Shortly after graduating from college, Alex Djerassi (Isabel Maxwell’s only son) was employed by Hillary Clinton on her 2007-2008 presidential campaign. Djerassi drafted memos, briefings, and policy papers for the Clinton team and helped prepare her for more than 20 debates.
The Clinton and Maxwell families are closely intertwined. Ghislaine vacationed with Hillary’s daughter, Chelsea, and appeared prominently at her wedding. Both she and Jeffrey Epstein were invited multiple times to the Clinton White House. Long after Epstein was jailed, President Bill Clinton invited Ghislaine to an intimate dinner with him at an exclusive Los Angeles restaurant.
Although she failed in her bid for the White House, President Obama named Hillary Clinton as his Secretary of State, and one of her first actions was to appoint Djerassi to her team. He quickly rose in the ranks, becoming Chief of Staff at the Office of the Assistant Secretary of State, Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs. In this role, he specialized in developing the United States’ policy towards Israel and Iran, although he also worked on the U.S. occupation of Iraq, and accompanied Clinton on visits to Israel and the Arab world.
While at the State Department, he served as the U.S. government representative to the Friends of Libya and the Friends of the Syrian People Conferences. These were two organizations of hardline, hawkish groups working towards the overthrow of those two governments, and their replacement with U.S.-friendly regimes. Washington got what it wanted. In 2011, Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi was overthrown, killed and replaced by Islamist warlords. And last December, longtime Syrian President, Bashar al-Assad, fled to Russia and was replaced by the founder of al-Qaeda in Syria, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani.
Djerassi was later appointed an associate at the U.S.-government-funded think tank, the Carnegie Endowment for Peace. While there, he again specialized in Middle East policy, his bio noting that he “worked on matters relating to democratization and civil society in the Arab world, the Arab uprisings, and Israeli-Palestinian peace.” Today, he works in Silicon Valley.
While Djerassi’s fortunes were tied to the Clinton faction of the Democratic Party, his cousin Xavier Malina (Christine Maxwell’s eldest son) backed the right horse, working on the Obama-Biden 2008 presidential run.
He was rewarded for his good work with a position in the White House itself, where he became a Staff Assistant at the Executive Office of the President. Like his cousin, once his time in office was over, Malina also secured a position at the Carnegie Endowment for Peace before pursuing a career in the tech world, working for many years at Google in the Bay Area. He currently works for Disney.
While the actions of parents and grandparents should not determine the careers of later generations, the fact that two individuals who come from a multi-generational family of unrepentant spies and operatives of a foreign power secured positions at the center of the U.S. State is at least worthy of note.
The Maxwell Brothers: From Bankruptcy to Counterterrorism
Much of the Maxwell clan is most influential in American and Israeli politics. However, brothers Ian and Kevin also hold considerable sway over affairs in their native Great Britain. Although being acquitted of charges over widespread allegations that they helped their father, Robert, plunder over $160 million from his employees’ pension fund, the brothers kept a low profile for many years. Kevin, in particular, was known for little more than being Britain’s largest-ever bankrupt, with debts exceeding half a billion dollars.
However, in 2018, they launched Combating Jihadist Terrorism and Extremism (CoJiT), a controversial think tank pushing for a far more invasive and heavy-handed government approach to the question of radical Islam.
In his organization’s book, “Jihadist Terror: New Threats, New Responses,” Ian writes that CoJiT was set up to play a “catalyzing role in the national conversation,” and to answer “difficult questions” arising from the issue. Judging by the content of the rest of the book, this means pushing for even more extensive surveillance of Muslim communities.
Within Britain, CoJiT was a highly influential organization. Its editorial board and contributors are a who’s who of high state officials. Individuals participating in its inaugural conference in London in 2018 included Sara Khan, the government’s Lead Commissioner for Countering Extremism, and Jonathan Evans, the former Director General of MI5, Britain’s domestic intelligence agency.
Like so many Maxwell projects, CoJiT appears to have wrapped up its affairs. The organization has not updated its website or posted anything on its social media channels since 2022.
In fairness, in the past few years, the brothers have had other priorities, leading the campaign to free their sister Ghislaine from prison, insisting that she is entirely innocent. In a manner reminiscent of Robert Maxwell, however, it appears that Kevin may have failed to pay the defense team; in 2022, Maxwell’s lawyers sued him, seeking unpaid fees of nearly $900,000.
The Infamous Mr. Epstein
For years, Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein ran a sex trafficking ring that exploited hundreds of girls and young women. They were also connected to vast networks of the global elite, including billionaire business owners, royalty, star academics, and foreign leaders, among their closest acquaintances, leading to intense speculation about the extent of their involvement in their many crimes.
It is still unclear when Epstein first met with the Maxwells, with some alleging that he was recruited into Israeli intelligence by Robert Maxwell. Others state the relationship only began after Robert’s death, when he saved the family from penury following its financial problems.
Only one month after his 2019 arrest, Epstein was found dead in his New York City prison cell. His death was officially ruled a suicide, although his family has rejected this interpretation.
Perhaps the two most powerful individuals in Epstein’s circle of confidants were Presidents Bill Clinton and Donald Trump. Clinton, already infamous for the numerous accusations of sexual misconduct against him, is known to have flown at least 17 times on Epstein’s private jet, nicknamed the “Lolita Express,” and was accused by Epstein victim, Virginia Giuffre, of visiting Little St. James Island, the multimillionaire’s private Caribbean residence, where many of his worst crimes took place.
Trump, arguably, was even closer to the disgraced financier. “I’ve known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy,” he said in 2002, “He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it.” Like Clinton, Trump flew on the Lolita Express. Epstein attended his wedding to Marla Maples in 1993, and claimed to have introduced him to his third wife, Melania.
Unfortunately, while Epstein’s ties incriminate the entire political spectrum, coverage has often been framed as a partisan issue. A MintPress study of over one year of Epstein coverage on MSNBC and Fox News found that each network downplayed his connections to their preferred president, while emphasizing and highlighting the links to the leader of the other major party. As a result, many in the United States see the affair as an indictment of their political rivals, rather than of the political system as a whole.
There also remains the question of Epstein’s links to intelligence, something that has been openly speculated about in the media for decades, even years before any allegations against him were made public. Throughout the 1990s, Epstein’s biographer Julie K. Brown noted, he openly boasted about working for both the CIA and Mossad, although the veracity of his claims remains in doubt. As Britain’s Sunday Times wrote in 2000, “He’s Mr. Enigmatic. Nobody knows whether he’s a concert pianist, property developer, a CIA agent, a math teacher or a member of Mossad.” It is possible that there is at least a grain of truth to all of these identities.
Epstein met with U.S. Deputy Secretary of State William Burns three times in 2014. Burns would later be named director of the CIA. Burns’ proximity to Epstein, however, pales in comparison to that of former Israeli Prime Minister, Foreign Minister, and Defense Minister Ehud Barak. Between 2013 and 2017 alone, Barak is known to have traveled to New York City and met with the convicted criminal at least 30 times, sometimes arriving at his Manhattan mansion incognito or wearing a mask to hide his identity.
Numerous sources have commented on Epstein’s connections to Israeli intelligence. A previous girlfriend and victim of his, referred in court documents as Jane Doe 200 to hide her identity, testified that Epstein boasted about being a Mossad operative and that, after he raped her, she could not go to the police because his position as a spy made her fear for her life.
“Doe genuinely believed that any reporting of the rape by what she believed to be a Mossad agent with some of the most unique connections in the world would result in significant bodily harm or death to her,” reads the court filing.
Ari Ben-Menashe, a former senior official in Israel’s Military Intelligence Directorate, claimed that Epstein was a spy and that he and Ghislaine Maxwell were running a honeytrap operation on behalf of Israel. Four (anonymous) sources told Rolling Stone that Epstein had directly worked with the Israeli government.
Unlike much of the Maxwell family, however, his Israel and intelligence connections are based largely on testimony and unverified accounts. His only known trip to the country was in April 2008, just before his sentencing, a move that sparked fears he would seek refuge there.
Nevertheless, there has been intense public speculation that he could have been working for Tel Aviv. At the Turning Points USA Student Action Summit 2025, former Fox News host Tucker Carlson stated that there is nothing wrong, hateful or anti-Semitic about asking questions about Epstein’s foreign connections. “No one’s allowed to say that the foreign government is Israel, because we’ve been somehow cowed into thinking that that’s naughty,” he said, before expressing his exasperation about the media’s silence on the issue.
What the hell is this? You have the former Israeli prime minister living in your house, you have had all this contact with a foreign government, were you working on behalf of the Mossad? Were you running a blackmail operation on behalf of a foreign government?”
Carlson’s comments drew harsh condemnation from former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett. “The accusation that Jeffrey Epstein somehow worked for Israel or the Mossad running a blackmail ring is categorically and totally false. Epstein’s conduct, both the criminal and the merely despicable, had nothing whatsoever to do with the Mossad or the State of Israel,” he wrote.
“This accusation is a lie being peddled by prominent online personalities such as Tucker Carlson pretending they know things they don’t,” he added, concluding that Israel was under attack from a “vicious wave of slander and lies.”
Whatever the truth about Epstein, it is indisputable that the powerful Maxwell family holds wide-ranging connections to U.S., British and Israeli state power. It is also beyond doubt that if the full story of their activities were ever to reach the public, it would incriminate a significant number of the world’s most powerful people and organizations. Perhaps that is why Trump has, in short order, gone from promising to release the Epstein Files to potentially releasing his accomplice.
Beware Universal Mental Health Screening
By Cooper Davis, Jeffrey Lacasse | Brownstone Institute | August 21, 2025
How would your child score on a common mental health screening?
A mental health professional might view the results and conclude that your child has a mental health problem… that needs to be psychiatrically diagnosed and treated, even medicated.
Will this help your child thrive? Or will it reshape their identity in undesirable ways? Will you be comfortable with your child taking medications that alter their developing brains and could perturb their sexuality? When your child reaches adulthood, will they be able to withdraw from these drugs, or will they despair to find out that their body and brain have adapted to them, making this difficult or maybe even impossible?
For any parent with even minor reservations about our current medical and mental health system, these aren’t theoretical questions. A new public policy has just made them very salient.
Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker has signed a new law mandating universal mental health screenings for every child in public school. This includes healthy children with no signs of behavioral problems. Parents can theoretically opt out, but they’ll have to do so repeatedly, as the screenings will be given at least once a year from grades 3-12.
Media coverage has been laudatory, expounding on the importance of “getting kids the help and support they deserve.” But do you know what a mental health screen is and how it works? Before sounding the applause, parents need to understand what these screenings are, how they’re used, and what the potential outcomes of their use might be.
The new law does not specify how children will be screened, what questionnaires will be used, or what procedures will be followed when a child’s answers are seen as troubling. But to get a sense of the ground that self-report mental health questionnaires cover, you can screen your kids right now with a commonly used questionnaire:
While this is a self-assessment, the questions are the same whether you’re a parent or teacher filling this out on behalf of a child. Each of the 35 questions can be answered “never,” “sometimes,” or “often.” The scoring is simple:
- 0 = “never”
- 1 = “sometimes”
- 2 = “often”
If the total score is at or above 28, professionals will consider it likely that your child has a mental health problem. The law doesn’t define what happens next. Ideally, there would be a lengthy (and costly) multi-hour clinical assessment for each such child that views these results skeptically, and heavily considers normal developmental issues and transitory problems. In the real-world mental health system, it’s hard to imagine that actually happening.
Unfortunately, the bias of the current system is towards overmedicalization, overdiagnosis, and overtreatment. The implementation of universal screening is likely to worsen these problems.
In the past, some physicians gave annual chest X-rays to smokers. This was a form of universal screening in response to concerns about lung cancer. At first blush, this sounds reasonable. The problem? False-positive results. Studies showed that annual X-rays did not prevent mortality. They did cause anxiety in patients. And incidental findings were common, causing unnecessary biopsies, procedures, and interventions.
Current screening guidelines now target high-risk individuals. This is an example where the medical establishment carefully weighed the risks and benefits of universal screening and concluded that it was not in the interests of patients, and with a well-defined disease in mind, lung cancer.
Mental health diagnosis is not like cancer. It is a fuzzy, subjective enterprise. We don’t have blood tests or brain scans; we have flawed checklists and clinical judgment. And obviously, being improperly identified as having a mental disorder comes with a real cost for the child.
Screening every single child makes it inevitable that some healthy children will be thrust into the mental health pipeline. Even assuming that the questionnaires work reasonably well, a 15% false-positive rate is likely. Combine this false-positive rate with twice-a-year universal screening from grades 3-12, and your child will have 20 separate chances to be wrongly identified as having a mental health problem…at which point the government ostensibly gets involved in the mental health of your child.
It’s easy to imagine the catastrophic results. A child’s mental health screen inaccurately identifies a mental health problem; the busy therapist confirms a diagnosis; there’s eventually a referral to a psychiatrist, who prescribes psychotropic medication. Out of 20 screenings, this only has to happen once to alter your child’s life forever.
I (C.D.) know, because it happened to me.
I was caught up in a similar diagnostic dragnet in 1991, when my teacher read about Ritalin in Time magazine and began “identifying” students she believed might have the condition, which at the time was known as “ADD” (the “H”, for hyperactivity, came later). My parents chose not to medicate me, but did send me to a psychologist and a pediatric psychiatrist. From them, I learned that my constant chair-tipping, foot-tapping, wiggling, and inability to tolerate boredom — the very traits that drove me to act out in class and leave little space between impulse and action — weren’t just part of me, but symptoms of a medical condition. It was presented as both permanently part of my nature and “acceptable,” yet somehow also extrinsic to me and framed primarily as a “deficit.” (At that time, ADD was not as widely viewed as a full disability as it is today.)
At 17, when I was legally able to decide for myself — though I now view the “informed” part as questionable — I chose to begin drug treatment. Even without the drugs, however, the diagnosis had already shaped my sense of self: diminishing my agency, reinforcing a feeling of abnormality, and feeding the belief that my more organized, conscientious, and inconspicuous peers possessed something essential that I never would. You can hear a fuller account in The Atlantic’s Scripts podcast series (“The Mandala Effect,” Episode 2, on YouTube).
My experience is just one example of how a single screening can lock a child into a lifelong diagnostic identity — and once that process starts, there are few real off-ramps. Surely no one in favor of this law wants that scenario to come true for any child.
But with 1.4 million schoolchildren in Illinois, we’re talking about dealing with the results of up to 28 million separate mental health screenings in the decade after implementation. Will the mental health professionals dealing with this deluge approach the medicalization of your child’s supposed problems carefully, gingerly, sensitively? A 2004 study found that screening 1,000 children for ADHD using the American Psychiatric Association’s DSM criteria would result in 370 false positives. And it’s common for children to be prescribed psychotropic medication at their first consultation with their physician or psychiatrist.
A comprehensive, in-depth psychological assessment for each child might help reduce false positives — but it would also mean spending 3-6 hours assessing each child, which represents a high burden in terms of both time and money. School districts in Illinois already report that a lack of time, expertise, and financial resources presents challenges to implementing universal mental health screening. The law passed anyway.
It’s hard to argue that attempts to identify and measure human misery, suffering, and emotional pain are a bad thing, etc.—especially when the goal is “getting people the help they need.” It sounds right. But the kids who will be screened every year in Illinois? They have many kinds of problems: social, relational, environmental, academic, psychological, and physical problems. Children today have issues navigating a modern life dominated by endless screens, scrolling, and even more endless data.
And also, they have some problems that you’re supposed to have—problems that have been a critical part of growing up since the dawn of time.
Our culture is currently debating the medicalization of human problems, the credibility of medicine, the influence of the pharmaceutical industry, and the ethics of imposing medical authority as state policy. Covid lockdowns were a prime example of this, and, similar to universal mental health screening, they were imposed without consideration of the unintended consequences.
Mandatory Covid vaccinations also led many Americans to rethink the role of government in their bodily autonomy, and to consider how arbitrary social policy could be when it claimed to be for the greater good (e.g., insisting that those with immunity to Covid must still get vaccinated). For those who have grown skeptical of medical authority, universal mental health screening will likely be viewed as another overextension of the government into the lives (and minds) of their children. Children aged 12-17 can already receive psychotherapy in Illinois without parental consent; universal screening offers a new on-ramp to this process.
The new Illinois law seems almost tone deaf, out of step with the lessons learned from Covid. This critique is cultural, social, and ethical in nature. But universal mental health screening is supposedly based on science. The new Illinois law does not give details; it just authorizes universal screening as if it is an unmitigated good. The devil (and the science, or lack thereof) will be in these details – how the policy is implemented. Assuming that the rationale for universal screening is scientific, we present critically important questions that should be addressed as procedures are developed:
- What is the evidence that universal mental health screening improves real-world outcomes for children? Is there evidence that it could cause harm? The scientific rationale for the program needs to be stated clearly, citing compelling data, and explicitly addressing the measures taken to avoid harm.
- Given that Illinois has already implemented universal mental health screening in some school districts, what were the outcomes for the children? After testing positive for a mental health condition, how many were further assessed, and how much time was spent on each child? How many ended up in psychotherapy or on medication? Usually, a pilot program tests the effectiveness of an intervention, and it is only adopted on a wide scale if it is shown to be effective and not harmful – where is that data?
- How many children a year does Illinois expect to inaccurately identify as having a mental health problem (e.g., how many false positives)? How many children will make it from 3rd to 12th grade without ever screening positive? What measures will address the known issue of false-positive results in universal screening? Do Illinois public schools have the time, money, and expertise to carefully assess each child who screens positive for multiple hours to ensure that they do not overdiagnose and overtreat Illinois children? If universal screening results in a surge of children who ultimately end up on psychiatric medication, how will the public know? Implementing this program without addressing these issues ignores the potential harm of universal screening.
- How will Illinois taxpayers know if this program is a success? What metrics will be tracked? The easy out is to focus on the implementation of the program, and if a high proportion of children are screened, call it a success, never mind the details or outcomes. But using the screening of children as a measure of success for a universal screening program is tautology; data must be collected that demonstrates that the program helps children measurably and does not harm them.
There are good reasons to object to the new Illinois program based on general principles. If the issues above go unaddressed, or if sufficient resources are not provided to allow careful and precise identification of children in distress, it has the potential to be a disaster.
Cooper Davis is an advocate, speaker, and writer. He is the Executive Director of Inner Compass Initiative (ICI), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that advocates for mental health system reform and helps people make informed choices about psychiatric diagnoses, drugs, and drug withdrawal.
ILLINOIS TO FORCE MENTAL EXAMS ON KIDS
The HighWire with Del Bigtree | August 21, 2025
A shocking new Illinois law will force public schools to conduct annual mental health checks on students from 3rd through 12th grade. Jefferey exposes the hidden risks and potential harm this invasive mandate could bring to children.
Was the Oct 7 attack a pre-emptive strike?
In incendiary leaked comments, the former head of Israel’s military intelligence disclosed plans to assassinate Hamas’ leadership and initiate war
By Max Blumenthal | The Grayzone | August 22, 2025
In comments leaked by Israel’s Channel 12 this August 16, the Israeli army’s former head of military intelligence, Aharon Haliva, called for a “new Nakba” against the Palestinians and declared, “50,000 dead in Gaza is necessary and required for future generations.”
“For everything that happened on October 7, he proclaimed, “for every person on October 7, 50 Palestinians need to die. It does not matter now if they are children.”
Haliva’s remarks offer further proof of Israel’s genocidal intent in Gaza, and provide fresh evidence in future prosecutions of the country’s military and political leadership for crimes against humanity.
While social media users reeled in horror at his fascistic rhetoric, few noticed a revelation by Haliva which should cast the Al Aqsa Flood operation on October 7 in an entirely new light.
According to Haliva, “After the holidays [in the Fall of 2022], we were opening a joint reorganization with [Israel’s General Security Services] Shin Bet to collect intelligence on [Al-Qassam Chief of Staff Mohammed] Deif and [Hamas Secretary Genera Yahya] Sinwar in order to kill them, because every time we prepared a plan, they moved, and you have to re-collect on them.”
In other words, Israel was planning to violate its ceasefire with Hamas and launch a major decapitation strike against its leading figures, much like the one it deployed against Iran’s military leadership this June 13, when it assassinated 8 major IRGC officials without provocation. The killings would have touched off a major war, but unlike after October 7, Hamas would have been left without any negotiating leverage, as it would have had no Israeli captives in its possession when hostilities began.
When seen in this light, Al Aqsa Flood was a preemptive strike. Sinwar and Deif almost certainly understood that Israel was plotting their assassinations as the opening blow of a punishing assault aimed at snuffing out Palestinian resistance in Gaza once. Deif had already survived four assassination attempts, losing his family, an eye and use of several limbs in the process. As Haliva acknowledged, he and Sinwar were constantly on the move to evade their would-be killers.
And so, as the sun rose on October 7, 2023, Hamas took the initiative, denying a far more powerful adversary the devastating opening move it had methodically planned.
The war on truth: Why are Palestinian journalists being systematically erased?
By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | August 22, 2025
The killing of seven Palestinian journalists and media workers in Gaza on 10 August has prompted verbal condemnations, yet has inspired little to no substantive action. This has become the predictable and horrifying trajectory of the international community’s response to the ongoing Israeli genocide.
By eliminating Palestinian journalists like Anas al-Sharif and Mohammed Qraiqeh, Israel has made a sinister statement that the genocide will spare no one. According to the monitoring website Shireen.ps, Israel has killed nearly 270 journalists since October 2023.
More journalists are likely to die covering the genocide of their own people in Gaza, especially since Israel has manufactured a convenient and easily deployed narrative that every Gazan journalist is simply a “terrorist”. This is the same cruel logic offered by numerous Israeli officials in the past, including Israeli President Isaac Herzog, who declared that “an entire nation” in Gaza “is responsible” for not having rebelled against Hamas, effectively stating that there are no innocent people in Gaza.
This Israeli discourse, which dehumanises entire populations based on a vicious logic, is frequently repeated by officials who fear no accountability. Even Israeli diplomats, whose job in theory is to improve their country’s image internationally, frequently engage in this brutal ritual. In comments made in January 2024, Israeli ambassador to the UK, Tzipi Hotovely, callously argued that “every school, every mosque, every second house has access to tunnels,” implying that all of Gaza is a valid military target.
This cruelty of language would be easily dismissed as mere rhetoric, except that Israel has, in fact, according to Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor reports, destroyed over 70 per cent of Gaza’s infrastructure.
While extremist language is often used by politicians around the world, it is rare for the extremism of the language to so precisely mirror the extremism of the action itself. This makes Israeli political discourse a uniquely dangerous phenomenon.
There can be no military justification for the wholesale annihilation of an entire region. Yet again, the Israelis are not shying away from providing the political discourse that explains this unprecedented destruction. Former Knesset member Moshe Feiglin chillingly said, last May, that “Every child, every baby in Gaza is an enemy… not a single Gazan child will be left there.”
But for the systematic destruction of a whole nation to succeed, it must include the deliberate targeting of its scientists, doctors, intellectuals, journalists, artists and poets. While children and women remain the largest categories of victims, many of those killed in deliberate assassinations appear to be targeted specifically to disorient Palestinian society, deprive it of societal leadership, and render the process of rebuilding Gaza impossible.
These figures powerfully illustrate this point: according to a report released by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, based on the latest satellite damage assessment conducted in July, 97 per cent of Gaza’s educational facilities have been affected, with 91 per cent in need of major repairs or full reconstruction. Additionally, hundreds of teachers and thousands of students have been killed.
But why is Israel so intent on killing those responsible for intellectual production? The answer is twofold: one unique to Gaza, and the other unique to the nature of Israel’s founding ideology, Zionism.
First, regarding Gaza: Since the Nakba in 1948, Palestinian society in Gaza has invested heavily in education, seeing it as a crucial tool for liberation and self-determination. Early footage shows classrooms being held in tents and open spaces, a testament to this community’s tenacious pursuit of knowledge. This focus on education transformed the Strip into a regional hub for intellectual and cultural production, despite poorly funded UNRWA schools. Israel’s campaign of destruction is a deliberate attempt to erase this generational achievement, a practice known as scholasticide, and Gaza is the most deliberate example of this horrific act.
Second, regarding Zionism: For many years, we were led to believe that Zionism was winning the intellectual war due to the cleverness and refinement of Israeli propaganda, or hasbara. The prevailing narrative, particularly in the Arab world, was that Palestinians and Arabs were simply no match for the savvy Israeli and pro-Israeli public relations machine in Western media. This created a sense of intellectual inferiority, masking the true reason for the imbalance.
Israel was able to “win” in mainstream media discourse due to the intentional marginalisation and demonization of Palestinian and pro-Palestinian voices. The latter had no chance of fighting back simply because they were not allowed to, and were instead labeled as “terrorist sympathizers” and the like. Even the late, world-renowned Palestinian scholar Edward Said was called a “Nazi” by the extremist, now-banned Jewish Defense League, who went so far as to set the beloved professor’s university office on fire.
Gaza, however, represented a major problem. With foreign media forbidden from operating in the Strip per Israeli orders, the Gazan intellectual rose to the occasion and, in the course of two years, managed to reverse most of Zionism’s gains over the past century. This forced Israel into a desperate race against time to remove as many Palestinian journalists, intellectuals, academics, and even social media influencers from the scene as quickly as possible—thus, the war on the Palestinian thinker.
The Israeli logic, however, is destined to fail, as ideas are not tied to specific individuals, and resilience and resistance are a culture, not a job title. Gaza shall once more emerge, not only as the culturally thriving place it has always been, but as the cornerstone of a new liberation discourse that is set to inspire the globe regarding the power of intellect to stand firm, to fight for what is right, and to live with purpose for a higher cause.
British investigation reveals Reuters’ Israel bias
Palestinian Information Center – August 22, 2025
GAZA – A British outlet, Declassified, has published an investigative report, based on testimonies from Reuters employees and journalists, highlighting a bias in Reuters’ coverage of Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
The investigation pointed to a recent article titled “Israel kills Al-Jazeera journalist it says was a Hamas leader”, referring to the killing of Palestinian journalist Anas Sharif. According to the report, although Sharif had worked with Reuters and was part of their Pulitzer-winning 2024 news team, the headline was chosen over more accurate alternatives, suggesting an inclination to echo Israeli framing.
The report further noted that this headline, and similar instances, triggered backlash online and raised deep concerns among some staff at the influential news agency.
One email, published by a resigned Reuters journalist in August 2024, expressed disillusionment with the agency’s framing of the “Israel-Hamas war”, stating that their personal values no longer aligned with the outlet’s approach.
He, along with colleagues, had called internally for Reuters to uphold journalistic principles. However, he concluded that senior management was unlikely to reform and continued to suppress internal criticism.
An unnamed source at Reuters told Declassified that “several journalists felt coverage of the Gaza war lacked objectivity.” In response, these staff members conducted an extensive internal investigation, including both quantitative and qualitative analysis of Reuters’ reporting.
The results formed the basis of an internal open letter shared with newsroom staff, intended to strengthen and rebalance coverage of Gaza.
Reuters journalists were also reportedly questioning why the outlet had not published more stories referencing expert claims of Israeli genocide in Gaza, especially when these claims were treated differently compared to similar allegations concerning Russia’s conduct in Ukraine.
Working through 499 Reuters articles covering Israel and Palestine between October 7 and November 14, 2023, the analysis revealed a consistent pattern: Israel-centric stories received significantly more resources than those focused on Palestinian suffering. This was particularly striking given that over 11,000 Palestinians were killed in Gaza, a figure nearly 10 times higher than Israeli casualties at the time.
The report further noted that in May, Reuters seemed to show early signs of editorial shifts, perhaps reflecting internal criticisms.
Declassified also unveiled an email from Howard S. Goller, Reuters’ International Editor, introducing an update to the outlet’s editorial guidelines on the “War in the Middle East.” This update permits the use of the term “genocide,”but always with attribution—and continues to restrict the use of the term “Palestine.”
Critics told Declassified that Goller’s update reinforces an Israeli-never-critical framing. It omits key context, such as the roles of the U.S. and Israel in derailing ceasefire negotiations.
The investigation adds that these guidelines ignore the illegal colonial settlement enterprise, the Israeli apartheid regime, and dramatically downplay the scale of destruction in Palestine. They also omit how Gaza has become the deadliest place for journalists since the American Civil War in 1861.
Euro-Med: Israel’s killing of Gaza farmers reflects a systematic pattern to enforce starvation
Palestinian Information Center – August 22, 2025
GAZA – The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor (Euro-Med) condemned Israel’s deliberate killing of five farmers in Khan Yunis, saying the act is part of a “repeated and systematic approach” aimed at eradicating Gaza’s local food production and enforcing starvation as a weapon in the ongoing genocide, now in its 23rd month.
In a statement released Friday, Euro-Med’s field team documented how at approximately 9:00 AM on Thursday, August 21, 2025, at least one Israeli drone-launched missile targeted five farmers from the same family, Suleiman and Mohammed Jamal Darwish al-Astal, Musa Abdullah al-Astal, Mahmoud Naif Mustafa al-Astal, and Mohammed Marwan Ahmed al-Astal, while they were working their land east of Asdaa Prison, west of Khan Yunis in southern Gaza.
Euro-Med highlighted that the killings coincide with an official declaration by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) that famine conditions have been formally recognized in Gaza for the first time. The IPC warned that after 22 months of conflict, over half a million Gazans face “catastrophic circumstances marked by hunger, severe poverty, and death,” and that famine could spread to Deir al-Balah and Khan Yunis by the end of September.
These deaths are not isolated incidents, according to Euro-Med: Israeli occupation forces have killed or wounded hundreds of farmers and continued to destroy hundreds of thousands of dunums of agricultural land, over 93% of Gaza’s approximately 178,000 dunums.
Euro-Med underscored that these actions are carried out under the cover of an ongoing blockade, with major obstructions to aid convoys and deliberate security restrictions that prevent full and equitable aid access to hundreds of thousands of displaced people.
The Monitor emphasized that using starvation as a method of warfare is explicitly prohibited under international humanitarian law. Targeting the food supply, destroying agricultural infrastructure, and depriving civilians of essential means of survival constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity, as defined by international law. The deliberate deprivation of food, considered a primary means of civilian survival, also amounts to genocide.
Euro-Med urged the international community to take immediate and decisive action: open humanitarian corridors, lift the siege, and enable delivery of essential food and non-food supplies to Gaza. The group also called for accountability mechanisms to prosecute those responsible, including issuing and enforcing arrest warrants from the International Criminal Court against Israeli leaders and imposing economic, diplomatic, and military sanctions on Israel to halt its crimes.
New report exposes brutal torture, psychological horror of Gazans in Israeli jails
Press TV – August 22, 2025
Two Palestinian prisoners’ advocacy groups say detainees from Gaza are enduring severe torture and humiliating treatment inside Israeli detention facilities across the occupied territories.
The Palestinian Prisoners’ Society (PPS) and the Palestinian Authority’s Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs released a report detailing systematic mistreatment within the underground Rakevet section of Ramla Prison and the Sde Teiman military camp, both known for brutal abuse of Palestinian detainees.
The briefings, titled ‘Enduring Hell: Gaza Detainees Face Severe Israeli Torture and Terror Behind Bars’, are based on testimonies collected between late July and mid-August.
The findings chronicle the circumstances experienced by individuals detained after being abducted from Gaza, depicting these conditions as among the most dire in many years.
Lawyers who visited inmates in the underground Rakevet unit of Ramla Prison reported that the detainees arrived for their meetings in a state of visible distress, with some weeping and unable to express their traumatic experiences.
Before the visits, the guards physically assaulted and intimidated them, cautioning that they should inform their lawyers that the conditions were “excellent”.
Lawyers were likewise prohibited from disclosing information regarding the families of detainees in Gaza, where the ongoing Israeli genocidal war has killed more than 62,000 Palestinians.
Inmates recounted a system characterized by physical assaults, enforced solitude, and mental anguish. They are deprived of sunlight, permitted merely 20 minutes outdoors every other day, restrained with handcuffs, and compelled to bow their heads.
Mattresses are distributed exclusively at night, leaving the detainees to rest on metal frames throughout the day.
Insults and humiliation are pervasive, as guards are said to compel detainees to curse their own families.
One detainee seemed to have suffered severe beatings, with deep marks on his wrists from handcuffs and streaks of tears on his face.
He stayed quiet throughout the meeting, indicating with his gaze that he was too fearful to voice his thoughts. Lawyers noted a significant level of psychological distress among all detainees they visited.
Multiple detainees reported experiencing severe types of torture while being interrogated and held in detention.
Several detainees described brutal torture during interrogation. One prisoner, identified as AY, said he was arrested in December 2023 and subjected to continuous beatings for 30 days, resulting in torn chest muscles and ongoing pain from prolonged shackling.
Another detainee, YD, reported violent head injuries and rib fractures from beatings during interrogation.
The conditions under which Palestinian inmates are held by Israel are deplorable, with insufficient hygienic standards. Additionally, Palestinian abductees have faced ongoing torture, harassment, and repression.
Palestinian abductees have persistently engaged in open-ended hunger strikes to convey their anger regarding their unlawful detention.
Human rights organizations assert that Israel persists in infringing upon all rights and freedoms afforded to abductees under the Fourth Geneva Convention and international laws.
As reported by the Palestine Detainees Studies Center, approximately 60 percent of Palestinian abductees held in Israeli jails are afflicted with chronic illnesses, with several of them having died either during their detention or following their release as a result of the severity of their conditions.
Germany Reboots Ukrainian Nord Stream Red Herring Plot
21st-Century Wire | August 22, 2025
The Italian authorities have arrested a Ukrainian national in the historic town of San Clemente, in the Rimini province. The man is alleged to have played a significant role in the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines in the Baltic Sea back in September 2022. The Italian news outlet Il Giornale identifies the individual as Serhii Kuznietsov, a name that has already appeared in a previous investigation released in 2024. According to the German publication Bild, the 49-year-old Ukrainian was apprehended while enjoying a family vacation in Italy. He faces charges from the German Federal Prosecutor’s Office for his alleged involvement in the Nord Stream explosions. Earlier today, he was brought to the Bologna Court of Appeal before Judge Sonia Pasinto to discuss the European Arrest Warrant and his potential extradition to Germany.
During the hearing, Kuznietsov asked for a Ukrainian interpreter and explained that he did not consent to an extradition to Germany. In his brief statements, he essentially distanced himself from the accusations, emphasising that he wanted to read all documents in his native language, and that he was in Ukraine during the sabotage period and currently in Italy for family reasons. The hearing was held behind closed doors before Judge Sonia Pasini, who indicated that the handover to Germany could take two months. Deputy Attorney General Licia Scagliarini is in charge of the case. Reportedly, Kuznietsov changed defenders, replacing his initial lawyer, Ilaria Perruzza from Rimini, with Luca Montebelli, a lawyer also from Rimini.
For now, the judge has ordered that Kuznietsov remain in prison in Rimini while waiting for the next hearing, which is scheduled for September 3rd, when a decision can be made regarding his potential extradition to Germany. Kuznietsov’s lawyer, Luca Montebelli, took a cautious approach until he can review all the documents, the prosecution is expected to deliver. During the Hearing, Montebelli indicated that his client is rejecting any wrongdoing and that, for the moment, he would remain in prison. Montebelli described Kuznietsov as calm and serene.
While the story seems to perfectly fit the narrative pushed by the German investigation, it is important to realise that there is more than meets the eye, and much evidence that suggests that this entire German ‘Vaudeville’ is nothing more than an attempt to pin the blame on Ukrainian patsies, to protect the identies of the true Nord Stream’s saboteurs.
Serhii Kuznietsov(aka Kuznetsov Sergeï Anatolyevich ) taken to the Court of Appeal of Bologna, Italy (Source: BILD )
On the night of August 20-21, Kuznietsov was arrested by the Carabinieri officers from Misano Adriatico police at a hotel in San Clemente, where he was staying with his wife and two children. In Italy, when someone checks into a hotel or similar lodging, their name is checked against a police database, which, in this case, raised an alert indicating that Kuznietsov was sought by Interpol. According to the Wall Street Journal,” Italian police detained the suspect near the seaside town of San Clemente shortly before midnight on Wednesday while he was accompanying his son to a local university.” Interestingly, Kuznietsov have two children, aged 6 and 9, and they definitely don’t go to University. Reportedly, Kuznietsov travelled with his wife and two of their children from Ukraine to Italy via Poland. They crossed the Italian border in his car with a Ukrainian licence plate last Tuesday, wrote Sky News. Again, another extravagant claim, for a man wanted by Interpol. Discrepancies in the story are starting to pile up and are already raising suspicions. Kuznietsov is the first known person to be arrested in relation to the Nord Stream sabotage, which German prosecutors suspect was executed by a small faction of drunken Ukrainians using a small sailing yacht.
Hotel La Pescaccia in San Clemente, where Kuznietsovwas apprehended
The Times reported that Serhii Kuznietsov served as a captain in the Ukrainian army and was previously an agent for the SBU (Security Service of Ukraine). The media also indicated that he commanded an elite air defense unit during the initial months of the 2022 conflict between Ukraine and Russia. Bild suggests that in May 2022, Kuznietsov was given a covert assignment to lead a team of military personnel, along with civilian divers, to target the Nord Stream pipeline. This operation, referred to as “Operation Diameter,” was allegedly deliberated by high-ranking Ukrainian officials and supervised by the then-Chief of the General Staff, Valery Salushny, the former Commander of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
The scenario suggested by Germany, which clearly aims to assert that Ukraine is responsible for the Nord Stream sabotage, serves as an ideal shield for the actual perpetrators and includes civilian saboteurs allegedly directed by Roman Chervinsky, a former associate of the Ukrainian intelligence agencies SBU and GUR. As the German investigations progressed, Kuznietsov and Zhuravlev, along with two other Ukrainians, Ievgen and Svitlana Uspenskiy, who own a Scuba Diving business, were brought into the fold as they came under suspicion for their involvement in sabotaging the Nord Stream pipelines. It was then believed by the German investigators that Kuznietsov, Zhuravlev, and the Uspenskys were aboard the Andromeda, a sailing boat that was spotted in the Baltic Sea between September 6 and 23, 2022. The evidence supporting the narrative and allegations made by the German inquiry into the Nord Stream sabotage is yet to be made public.
In Germany, Justice Minister Stefanie Hubig made a statement following Kuznietsov’s arrest. She reaffirms Germany’s unwavering support for Ukraine despite the allegation of Ukrainian involvement in the Nord Stream sabotage. She claims to seek justice for Germany.
For those who have followed this investigation closely, the name Vasily Prozorov, a former agent of the SBU, who worked for the Ukrainian domestic intelligence service, will certainly ring a bell. In June 16, 2024, Prozorov published on Free21, a platform for journalistic contributions and qualified debates founded in 2014 by the Danish journalist Tommy Hansen, a complete exposé which exposed the interactions between Ukrainian and Western intelligence services, including the SBU (Ukraine’s Domestic Intelligence Service) and the GUR (Ukrainian Military Intelligence Service), which according to Prozorov not only commit terrorist acts but are also used by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) as cover organizations for their nefarious activities. Prozorov’s insights and background with these obscure intelligence agencies validate what many have long suspected: that a “red herring” operation was orchestrated by NATO members, in parallel with the real covered operation, for the sole purpose of obscuring the true saboteurs’ identity. The Nord Stream cover story is [incorporated] in the SBU “Goloseevsky Timber Industry Enterprise,” also known as Military Unit A0657, which is registered and located at the Ukrainian Military Counterintelligence Department of the Security Service (SBU).
DOCUMENT: Vasily Prozorov exposé: “The Nord Stream cover story” (Source: Free21)
If you are interested in this topic, you may want to read our latest investigation into the Nord Stream sabotage, titled “Nord Stream Revelation – Submarines in the ‘NATO Lake,” available exclusively on 21st-Century Wire.
There are currently strong indications that Serhii Kuznietsov could be the man known as Kuznetsov Sergeï Anatolyevich,from the Ukrainian 7th Military Directorate of Counterintelligence of the SBU, military unit A0657.
It is a developing story and will keep reporting on the topic…
Top CIA analyst behind Russiagate loses her job – Economist
RT | August 22, 2025
One of the CIA’s most senior Russia analysts has lost her job during President Donald Trump’s campaign to depoliticize the intelligence services, The Economist reported on Thursday.
The officer, whose identity was not disclosed, oversaw the drafting of a report accusing Russia of interfering in the 2016 US presidential election in favor of Trump.
The Economist described her as “the country’s top intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia,” who coordinated operations related to the former Soviet Union. According to the outlet, her security clearance was revoked on August 19, along with those of 36 other current and former officials.
The Kremlin denied the allegations of election meddling, while Trump and the Republicans denounced them as a “hoax” by former President Barack Obama and the Democrats to delegitimize Trump’s first election victory and undermine his presidency.
Since mid-July, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has released multiple documents that she claims expose a coordinated effort by senior Obama-era officials to falsely accuse Trump of colluding with Russia.
Earlier this week, Gabbard announced that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which oversees 18 agencies, will be reduced by nearly 50%. The US intelligence community has become “plagued with unauthorized intelligence leaks, politicization, and weaponization of intelligence,” she said.
Gabbard also said the Foreign Malign Influence Center (FMIC), created by Congress in the wake of the Russiagate allegations, will be significantly scaled back and stripped of some of its core functions.
Zelensky Rejected All of Trump’s Proposals for Ukraine Settlement, Says Lavrov
Sputnik – 22.08.2025
Volodymyr Zelensky said ‘no’ to all of US President Donald Trump’s proposals for resolving the conflict in Ukraine, which the US considers necessary, at a meeting in Washington, said Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov:
“President Trump suggested, after Anchorage several points which we share, and on some of them, we agreed to be to show some flexibility. When President Trump brought those issues to the meeting in Washington with Zelensky present together with his European sponsors, he clearly indicated… that there are several principles which Washington believes must be accepted, including no NATO membership, including the discussion of territorial issues. And Zelensky said no to everything. He even said no to, as I said, to canceling legislation prohibiting the Russian language. How can we meet with a person who is pretending to be a leader?”
At the Alaska summit Russia agreed to demonstrate flexibility on a number of issues raised by US President Donald Trump, Lavrov added.
A meeting between Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky has not been planned, but the Russian leader is ready to meet him when the summit agenda will be ready, which is currently inexistent, Lavrov said.
“There is no meeting planned… Putin is ready to meet with Zelensky, when the agenda would be ready for for a summit, and this agenda is not ready at all,” Lavrov told NBC.
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Raffi Berg: BBC Middle East Editor Exposed as CIA, Mossad Collaborator
By Alan Macleod | MintPress News | January 3, 2025
A senior BBC editor at the center of an ongoing scandal into the network’s systematic pro-Israel bias is, in fact, a former member of a CIA propaganda outfit, MintPress News can reveal. Raffi Berg, an Englishman who heads the BBC’s Middle East desk, formerly worked for the U.S. State Department’s Foreign Broadcast Information Service, a unit that, by his own admission, was a CIA front group.
Berg is currently the subject of considerable scrutiny after thirteen BBC employees spoke out, claiming, among other things, that his “entire job is to water down everything that’s too critical of Israel” and that he holds “wild” amounts of power at the British state broadcaster, that there exists a culture of “extreme fear” at the BBC about publishing anything critical of Israel, and that Berg himself plays a key role in turning its coverage into “systematic Israeli propaganda.” … continue
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