Biden, Zelensky and the Neocons
BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • APRIL 5, 2022
There are many backstories surfacing from what is going on in Ukraine and Washington that have been largely ignored amid the drumbeat of casualty counts combined with claims and counter-claims from the two sides. Two stories that I believe have received insufficient attention are the US government’s three decades long obsession with weakening and de facto destroying the Russian state and the dominant neocon plus associate liberal democracy promoter role in what has become American foreign policy.
To be sure, anyone who doubts that the US is currently on a course to not only replace President Vladimir Putin but also to crash the Russian economy is delusional. Washington has been trying to deconstruct the former Soviet Union ever since 1991, beginning with President Bill Clinton’s expansion of NATO into Eastern Europe in spite of a pledge not to do so and his unleashing the oligarchs who looted the country’s natural resources under President Boris Yeltsin. The pressure continued under the beatified President Barack Obama, who appointed as Ambassador Michael McFaul, who saw his mission as connecting with dissidents and opposition forces inside Russia, a role incompatible with his promotion of US interests and protecting US persons.
And then we had the redoubtable President Donald Trump undoing confidence building agreements with Russia followed by the current disaster that is unfolding before our very eyes. One should not ignore the fact that the fighting in Ukraine came about largely because the Biden Administration refused to negotiate seriously regarding the mostly reasonable demands that the Kremlin was making to enhance its own security. Former US arms inspector Scott Ritter cites a reported comment by a senior Biden Administration official which sums up the current policy, such as it is: “The only end game now is the end of Putin regime. Until then, all the time Putin stays, [Russia] will be a pariah state that will never be welcomed back into the community of nations.”
Indeed, President Joe Biden’s recent disastrous trip to Europe can likely be characterized as one wishes to see it and the media has certainly done considerable spinning, but Biden left behind a legacy of various gaffes and lapsus linguae that made clear that the US is in the game to defeat Russia however long it will take to play out. And Biden has considerable support from brain dead congressmen like Republican Senator Lindsey Graham who has called for someone to murder Putin, lamenting “Is there a Brutus in Russia?”
On his trip, Biden revealed that he expects US combat troops to go to Ukraine’s assistance and he has also taken delight in denouncing Putin as a “killer,” a “thug,” a “murderous dictator” and a “man who cannot remain in power.” In so doing, he has openly called for Putin’s removal from office, i.e. regime change, while also opening the door to an obvious false flag operation in his unwillingness to reveal when questioned by a reporter how the US might respond if Russia were to use chemical weapons in Ukraine. That he has taken those positions means that it will be impossible to restore manageable relations with Moscow post Ukraine. It is a heavy price to pay for something that is little more than posturing.
The chemical weapon issue is particularly important as President Donald Trump bombed Syria with cruise missiles in the wake of a fabricated report that Bashar al-Assad had used such weapons in an attack on Khan Shaykhun in 2017. It turned out that the anti-regime terrorists who were occupying the city at the time had themselves staged the attack and deliberately blamed it on the Syrian government to produce an expected US response.
Based on what I am seeing and hearing, I would conclude that the neoconservatives and their liberal democracy promoting friends are working hard from the inside to make something like a war with Russia happen. Note in particular that we are talking about war with shooting and deaths, not just a reincarnation or extension of the Cold War of yore. News on April 1st, admittedly April Fools’ Day, suggests that Ukraine has staged helicopter launched missile attacks on a fuel storage depot inside Russia, which, if true, could produce a massive escalation from the Kremlin. It would be a typical neocon maneuver to dramatically increase the level of the fighting and draw the United States into the conflict.
In addition to that, I know I am not the only one who has noticed the pace and focus of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskys’ widely promoted appeals to groups and world governments to come to his country’s aid, to include establishment of a no-fly zone. The appeals are slick, convincing and carefully focused, with Zelensky being framed as a “hero” fighting valiantly against savage invaders. To put it mildly they are way beyond the capabilities and experience level of a former comedian, whose performances featured erotic dancing and playing a piano with his penis, corruptly placed on the presidential hotseat by a billionaire oligarch Israeli citizen.
The US media is, of course, lavishly praising Zelensky, but I would bet that he has a cadre of American and possibly Israeli neoconservatives working diligently behind him to get it right, coaching him on what to say and do. There might be US government players also in on the act, to include NED (National Endowment for Democracy), CIA information specialists, State Department media consultants and observers from the National Security Council. Indeed, there is as much a war going on over the airwaves and internet to influence thinking internationally as there is fighting taking place on the ground.
One should conclude that the CIA is playing the central role in the “Russia Project” because of its ability to shield what it is doing from scrutiny. Based on previous operations to overthrow governments in various places, one might assume that the so-called covert action approach is multi-level. It consists of media placements that are intended to sway opinion both inside and outside Russia and produce unrest, the identification and recruitment of Russian government officials when they travel overseas, and the support of dissidents both internally and externally who share a negative view of Moscow and its policies. A major component in the approach is to obtain Western liberal support for harsh sanctions and other repressive measures against the Kremlin based on the fraudulent proposition that Putin and his associates are out to destroy “democracy” and “freedom.” Ironically, Americans are less “free” and also poorer because of the actions of their own government since 2001, not because of Vladimir Putin.
As was the case with Iraq, Afghanistan and the long list of American interventions, it is the neocons who are in front demanding a powerful military response, both to Russia and, inevitably, to Iran. What is particularly noticeable is how the neocons and their liberal democracy promoting counterparts have in several areas dominated the foreign policies of both parties. Leading neocon Bill Kristol, who called the Biden speech “a historic call to action on par with Ronald Reagan[‘s] ‘Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall speech,’” recently also contributed “There would be no real prospect of an awakening in the United States and Europe were it not for the stand the Ukrainians have made. We would still be denying the threats we face. We would still be turning away from the urgency of the task we face. We would even, I daresay, still fail to appreciate the preciousness of the freedom and decency we have the obligation—and the honor—to defend. It is the Ukrainians who have shown us what free men and women can do, and what they are sometimes required to do, in defense of that freedom. It is the Ukrainians who have shown the world that we are in a new period of consequences. It is the Ukrainians who have given us the example of what it means today to fight back against brutality, and to fight for freedom.”
Kristol is, as so often, full of flag waving, chest puffing nonsense, peddling the notion that the United States has an obligation to police the world. Another leading neocon and regular Washington Post and The Atlantic contributor Anne Applebaum puts it this way and in so doing expands the playing field to include much of the world: “Unless democracies defend themselves together, the forces of autocracy will destroy them. I am using the word forces, in the plural, deliberately. Many American politicians would understandably prefer to focus on the long-term competition with China. But as long as Russia is ruled by Putin, then Russia is at war with us too. So are Belarus, North Korea, Venezuela, Iran, Nicaragua, Hungary, and potentially many others.”
It would be nice, for a change, to end an article on a high note, but high notes are hard to find these days. If there is anything beyond Ukraine to demonstrate the insanity of US foreign policy it would have to be, inevitably, recent news out of Israel. US Secretary of State Tony Blinken was recently in Israel trying in part to sell the possibility that the Biden Administration might actually come to a non-proliferation agreement with Iran over its nuclear program. Israel strongly opposes any such move and its lobby in the US led by various neocon think tanks has been working hard to kill any deal. So, what did Blinken do? He asked Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett for suggestions of what might be done in lieu of an actual agreement. Naftali reportedly suggested harsher sanctions on Iran. Cut it any way you want, but the renewal of 2015’s Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) is beneficial for both the United States and all of Iran’s neighbors, and here the US senior-most representative involved in the negotiations is asking the head of a foreign government to tell him what to do. Something is very wrong in Washington.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
The ‘Ukrainian Resistance’ and the Houthis – A contrast in media coverage
By Gavin O’Reilly | Ron Paul Institute | March 28, 2022
In the now month-long mainstream media coverage of the Russian military intervention in Ukraine, much attention has been paid to the actions of the ‘Ukrainian Resistance’.
In a manner not dissimilar to its coverage of the ‘Syrian rebels’ a decade ago, a romanticised image of ‘Ukrainian freedom fighters’ fighting bravely against a militarily superior Russian foe has been widespread amongst corporate outlets, alongside their fawning over Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in his calls for the implementation of a No Fly Zone – a move that would undoubtedly trigger nuclear war.
This Hollywood-style PR makeover of the Ukrainian military by the corporate media, including the notorious neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, also shares a strong similarity with the aforementioned ‘Syrian rebels’ in that it highlights the strong presence of CIA involvement in the background.
Indeed, the training of Ukrainian military personnel by the CIA to engage in guerrilla warfare against Russia was recently outlined in a Western corporate media report, indicating that a plan was in place to draw Moscow into an Iraq-war style military quagmire in Ukraine – the second largest country in Europe.
Such a tactic has historical usage against the Kremlin, when in 1979, then-US President Jimmy Carter would launch Operation Cyclone, a CIA programme which would see the arming, funding and training of Wahhabi insurgents known as the Mujahideen, who would go onto wage war on the USSR-aligned government of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan – with Kabul, previously Western-friendly, having come under Soviet influence following the 1978 Saur Revolution.
This romanticised image of ‘Ukrainian freedom fighters’ by the corporate media however, lies in stark contrast to their coverage of Ansar Allah, more commonly known as the Houthis, currently waging an armed resistance campaign against Western-allied Saudi Arabia’s seven year long war and blockade on neighbouring Yemen – leading to mass-starvation in what is already the most impoverished country on the Arabian Peninsula.
Indeed, this was evidenced as such on Friday, when the Yemeni armed forces launched air strikes against a key oil refinery in the Saudi city of Jeddah, to a noticeable absence of articles by the Western media celebrating the actions of the Yemeni resistance against the Western-backed might of Riyadh, unlike their coverage of Ukraine and Russia.
To understand this contrasting approach to both Yemen and Ukraine by the corporate media, one must look further into the wider geopolitical and historical context in the West’s relationship with both countries.
In 1979, the same year as the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, the Islamic Revolution in Iran saw the anti-Western and anti-Zionist Ayatollah Khomeini come to power in Iran following the overthrow of the US and UK-aligned Shah Pahlavi – who had himself come to power following 1953’s Operation Ajax, an MI6 and CIA-orchestrated regime change operation launched in response to then-Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh’s decision to nationalise Iran’s vast oil reserves.
In order to counter the influence of Khomeini’s newly-established anti-Imperialist state and to maintain hegemony in the Middle East, the United States adopted the strategy of using Saudi Arabia – separated from the Islamic Republic by the Persian Gulf – as a political and military bulwark against Iran.
This is where the media coverage of the Yemen conflict comes into play, with Tehran long being accused of backing the Houthis, whose seizure of the capital Sana’a in March 2015 led to Riyadh launching its current air campaign – involving US and British-supplied bombs – in a bid to restore its favoured Presidential candidate, Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi, to power.
Therefore, with the aims of Ansar Allah consequently being opposed to the aims of the US-NATO hegemony, this explains why no heroic descriptions such as ‘Yemeni resistance’ or ‘freedom fighters’ are ascribed to the Houthis by the Western media, in stark contrast to their coverage of the Armed Forces of Ukraine – supported by the West since the 2014 Euromaidan colour revolution and their subsequent war on the breakaway Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, a situation that has escalated to the point where nuclear war has now become a distinct possibility.
Copyright © 2022 by RonPaul Institute
What About Pentagon and CIA Aggression Against Cuba?
By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | March 22, 2022
While the mainstream media and American statists remain transfixed on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it’s difficult not to notice their moral blindness with respect to the evil and hypocrisy of the Pentagon and the CIA, which have spent years ginning up this deadly and destructive crisis as part of their political gamesmanship against Russia.
After all, let’s face it: When it was the Pentagon and the CIA invading Iraq and Afghanistan, the reaction of the mainstream media and American statists was totally opposite to how they have responded to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. During those deadly and destructive invasions, there was hardly ever any sympathy for the victims and instead accolades, praise, and glorification of the invaders. Don’t forget the daily mantra that everyone was exhorted to recite, “Support the troops!”
But let’s leave Iraq and Afghanistan aside and let’s go back to the early 1960s, when the CIA and the Pentagon were doing everything they could, including committing fraud, to induce President Kennedy to invade Cuba, which is every bit as sovereign and independent as Ukraine.
Let’s begin with a recent statement by U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price, who was expressing the official position of the Pentagon and the CIA. Price stated that Russian President Vladimir Putin was trying to violate “core principles,” including “the principle that each and every country has a sovereign right to determine its own foreign policy, has a sovereign right to determine for itself with whom it will choose to associate in terms of its alliances, its partnerships, and what orientation it wishes to direct its gaze.”
Price was referring to Ukraine’s “right” to join NATO, the corrupt bureaucratic dinosaur that should have gone out of existence at the ostensible end of the Cold War. Price’s statement confirms, of course, the point I have long been making — that the war in Ukraine is not about freedom, it’s about NATO.
Keep Price’s statement in mind as we go back to the height of the Cold War and see how the Pentagon and the CIA were hell-bent on doing to Cuba what Russia is now doing to Ukraine.
That’s what the CIA’s invasion of the Bay of Pigs in Cuba was all about — an effort to invade the island for the sake of ousting the Castro regime from power and replacing it with another corrupt and brutal U.S. puppet dictatorship, such as that of Fulgencio Batista, the brutal pro-U.S. dictatorial puppet that the Cuban revolution succeeded in ousting from power.
But that’s not all there is to the Bay of Pigs story. As I detail in my new book An Encounter with Evil: The Abraham Zapruder Story, the Pentagon and the CIA were engaged in political gamesmanship against President Kennedy, who the CIA considered to be a neophyte president who could easily be manipulated into ordering an invasion of Cuba, one that would have been no different from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The CIA told Kennedy that its invasion would succeed without direct U.S. military air and ground support. It was a lie — a deliberate, knowing, intentional lie. The CIA was just playing and maneuvering what they considered was an easily manipulable president. The CIA figured that once the invasion began faltering, Kennedy would have no choice but to send in air support, followed by a full-scale military invasion of Cuba. The Pentagon played its part in the fraudulent scheme by falsely telling Kennedy that the invasion had a high chance of success, when, in fact, the Pentagon knew otherwise.
In other words, the Pentagon and the CIA, who are both pontificating in righteous tones about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, were manipulating a U.S. president into doing to Cuba precisely what Russia is now doing to Ukraine.
Kennedy refused to fall for the scheme and the CIA’s invasion went down to ignominious defeat at the hands of the communists, which is one big reason why the Pentagon and the CIA still maintain their brutal economic embargo against the Cuban people to this day. They’ve never forgotten or forgiven their defeat at the hands of the Cuban Reds.
Unfortunately, that was not the end of the story. After the CIA’s fraudulent fiasco at the Bay of Pigs, the Pentagon began exhorting Kennedy to undertake a full-scale military invasion of Cuba — yes, the same type of military invasion that Russia has undertaken against Ukraine.
This was when the Pentagon presented Kennedy with one of the most infamous plans in U.S. history, one based on falsehoods and fraud. It was called Operation Northwoods. The Pentagon succeeded in keeping it secret from the American people for some 30 years. It was uncovered in the 1990s by the Assassination Records Review Board, the entity that was charged with securing the release of JFK-assassination related records from the military, the CIA, the Secret Service, and the FBI, which had succeeded in encasing the assassination in “national security” rubric.
Operation Northwoods called for real terrorist attacks against American citizens, in which Americans would die. The attacks (and murders) would be carried out by Pentagon agents secretly posing as Cuban communists. The president would then use those attacks as a pretext for invading Cuba — an invasion no different from what Russia is now doing to Ukraine.
To his everlasting credit, and to the ire and rage of the military establishment, Kennedy rejected Operation Northwoods.
His relationship with the military did not improve when he walked out of a meeting in which the military was endorsing a plan to initiate a surprise full-scale nuclear attack on Russia, similar to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, but with carpet bombing using nuclear bombs. That was when JFK stated in disgust as he left the meeting, “And we call ourselves the human race.’’
During the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Pentagon was doing everything it could to pressure Kennedy into ordering a full-scale bombing and military invasion of Cuba to retaliate for Cuba’s installation of Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba. The Pentagon and the CIA took the position that Cuba didn’t have the “right” to do that.
Let’s revisit State Department spokesman Ned Price’s pontifical words with respect to Ukraine: “the principle that each and every country has a sovereign right to determine its own foreign policy, has a sovereign right to determine for itself with whom it will choose to associate in terms of its alliances, its partnerships, and what orientation it wishes to direct its gaze.”
Whoops! Well, except for Cuba! To Kennedy’s everlasting credit, he refused to succumb to the Pentagon’s pressure to invade Cuba. In fact, by this time he held the military-intelligence establishment in deep disdain, and, of course, the feeling was mutual. To the rage of the Pentagon and the CIA, Kennedy struck a deal with Russian Premier Nikita Khrushchev in which he vowed that there would be no more U.S. invasions of Cuba by either the Pentagon or the CIA.
Adding insult to injury, in a secret codicil to the agreement, Kennedy promised to remove the Pentagon’s nuclear missiles in Turkey that were aimed at the Soviet Union. Yes, you read that right: The Pentagon and the CIA claimed that Cuba had no “right” to install nuclear missiles in Cuba while maintaining that the Pentagon and the CIA had the “right” to install nuclear missiles in Turkey aimed at the Soviet Union.
That’s one reason why the Pentagon and the CIA knew that Russia would invade Ukraine when NATO threatened to absorb Ukraine. The absorption would enable the Pentagon and the CIA to install their nuclear missiles on Russia’s border. The Pentagon and the CIA knew that Russia’s reaction to that possibility would be no different from the Pentagon’s and the CIA’s reaction to the installation of Russian nuclear missiles in Cuba.
Needless to say, neither the Pentagon nor the CIA has ever apologized for their Cold War machinations against both Kennedy and Cuba. That, of course, is not surprising. The reaction of their Operation Mockingbird assets in the mainstream press is also not surprising.
What is disappointing, however, is how so many Americans refuse to acknowledge, criticize, and condemn this manifest evil and rank hypocrisy within their own country. As I point out in my book An Encounter with Evil: The Abraham Zapruder Story, that’s because all too many Americans, unfortunately, have come to view the national-security establishment as their god.
Meet Ghislaine: Heiress to an Espionage Empire
BY WHITNEY WEBB |
UNLIMITED HANGOUT| MARCH 17, 2022
Despite being found guilty late last year for her role in sex crimes against minors, Ghislaine Maxwell, the “madam” and chief accomplice of the intelligence-linked pedophile and sex trafficker, Jeffrey Epstein, may soon walk free. A juror in the case, Scotty David, subsequently took credit for the jury’s decision to find Ghislaine Maxwell guilty and “inadvertently” revealed that he had incorrectly answered a pre-trial questionnaire. As a result, the possibility of a mistrial, and Ghislaine walking free, now looms large.
David has some interesting connections, as he currently works for the Carlyle Group – the global investment firm whose ties to the bin Laden family during the early 2000s have come under scrutiny. Carlyle’s executives often have ties to intelligence, with one example being its former chairman and then chairman emeritus, Frank Carlucci, who had been deputy director of the CIA and, later, Reagan’s Secretary of Defense. Carlyle’s current co-founder and co-chairman David Rubenstein, as noted in this article from Free Press Report, served on the board of the influential Trilateral Commission during the same time as Jeffrey Epstein, while his ex-wife Alice Rogoff (divorced in 2017) had a very close working relationship with Ghislaine Maxwell, including with her now defunct “charity” the TerraMar Project. Given the fact that there are known ties between David’s employer and Ghislaine Maxwell, why has this potential conflict of interest gone unmentioned by mainstream media?
Not only that, but – according to a family member of one of the women who testified against Maxwell during her trial – David was connected with the journalist who would publish the now infamous, post-verdict report via Vicky Ward. Ward has been denounced by Epstein victims and others close to the case for having had a past “chummy” relationship with Ghislaine Maxwell she declined to disclose for years and for subsequently telling Ghislaine that Epstein victim Maria Farmer had been the person who had first reported Maxwell and Epstein to the FBI back in 1996. Farmer later claims that Ward’s lack of journalistic integrity, after promising to keep Farmer’s identity secret, had put her life in danger and forced her into hiding.
It seems that there is, yet again, a major cover-up in the works, one which involves major centers of financial and political power in New York City and beyond. In order to fully understand the sexual trafficking and blackmail operation that Maxwell and Epstein oversaw, and why powerful forces apparently continue to intervene in the case, one must first understand its genesis, particularly how and why Ghislaine Maxwell arrived in New York City. In this second installment of “Meet Ghislaine” (read Part 1 here), the beginnings of Ghislaine’s career – closely controlled by her father, Robert Maxwell, until his 1991 death – are followed in detail.
The Young Ghislaine
Early on in life, Ghislaine Maxwell was surrounded by the rich and powerful figures who frequented her father’s offices as his publishing empire and political connections grew both in the UK and abroad. Her father, Robert Maxwell, was a dominant force in her life as he was for her siblings as well, though Ghislaine gained a reputation as his favorite child, despite having been neglected in the earliest years of her life.
However, Ghislaine did not escape the abuse that was known to befall Robert Maxwell’s other children. While brothers Kevin and Ian were well known to regularly receive tongue lashings from their father in full view of friends and business associates, Ghislaine received “prearranged hidings [beatings]” from her father, with a nine-year-old Ghislaine telling author Eleanor Berry, a friend and confidant of her father’s, that “Daddy has a series of things lined up in a row. There’s a riding crop with a swish to it, another straight riding crop and a few shoehorns. He always asks me to choose which one I want.”
By all accounts, Robert Maxwell had firm control over Ghislaine’s young life. This was particularly true when it came to her love life through her teens and into her time at university, when he reportedly would ban her boyfriends from the family home and try to keep her from being seen with them publicly. It appears that Robert Maxwell applied this rule uniquely to Ghislaine and not to his three older daughters. Though such behavior could be attributed merely to his being a protective father, he later went to great lengths—even involving his publishing empire—to promote Ghislaine’s affairs with certain individuals, particularly those who inhabited elite circles (explored in more depth later in this article). This behavior suggests that Robert Maxwell may have seen Ghislaine’s sexuality as a useful tool in growing his influence empire, beginning when she was quite young. It also may have contributed to Ghislaine’s willingness, years later, to sexually exploit and abuse the young women targeted by herself and Jeffrey Epstein.
In much the same way as Ghislaine’s young personal life was controlled by her father, her entry into the working world after her graduation from Oxford was directly facilitated and managed by her father, with Robert Maxwell setting her up “with a string of jobs across his business empire.” By 1984, at age twenty-two, she was serving as a director of the British football club Oxford United alongside her brother Kevin. At the time, Robert Maxwell held shares in the club through a company created explicitly for that purpose. He served as the club’s chairman beginning in 1982.
Ghislaine and her father at an Oxford United football match
Prior to and during this same period, Ghislaine worked in various roles at her father’s companies Pergamon Press and the Mirror Group, with British media later describing her early career as “entirely dependent on her father’s patronage.” She was working for the Mirror Group by 1984 and possibly earlier. During this period, Robert often used Ghislaine to market and generally represent his newspapers publicly.
In 1985, and with Robert Maxwell’s full approval, The People — the Sunday edition of the Daily Mirror— ran a story claiming that efforts were being made to blackmail the paper’s publisher, Robert Maxwell himself. The blackmailer had reportedly threatened Maxwell with information regarding Ghislaine’s alleged relationship with David Manners, then-Marquis of Granby and the future Duke of Rutland. The article sought to paint Robert Maxwell as bravely resisting the “blackmailer,” but there is more to the story.
This astonishing article claimed that people connected with the British MP Harvey Proctor had tried to blackmail Maxwell via The People. The article claimed that a “sinister phonecaller” had warned that, if the newspaper continued its campaign to expose Harvey Proctor, they would “produce a story about Ghislaine and Lord Granby at Belvoir Castle with incriminating pictures of them in compromising positions.” Manners denied the claim, stating that he and Ghislaine were merely friends.
The bizarre decision to publish a front-page story exploiting his own daughter’s alleged sexual relationship because of an anonymous phone call was especially odd given that Robert Maxwell was known for his tight control over his youngest daughter’s love life. As previously mentioned, he had banned her boyfriends from visiting the family house and had gone to great lengths to prevent her from being seen in public with them. Yet, for whatever reason, Robert Maxwell clearly wanted information linking Ghislaine to the future duke put out into the public sphere. Though it is difficult to know exactly what was behind this odd episode in Ghislaine’s past, the situation suggests that Robert Maxwell saw Ghislaine’s young sexuality as a useful tool in building his influence empire.
The story is also odd for other reasons. The motive of the blackmailer was ostensibly to prevent Maxwell-owned papers from covering the Harvey Proctor scandal. But Manners (Lord Granby in the article), who was allegedly involved with Ghislaine, was also a close friend and later the employer of Harvey Proctor. Why would someone close to Proctor seek to blackmail Maxwell by putting the reputation of his own friend on the line?
In addition, the appearance of Harvey Proctor, a Conservative member of Parliament, in this tabloid spectacle is interesting for a few reasons. In 1987, Proctor pleaded guilty to sexual indecency with two young men, who were sixteen and nineteen at the time, and several witnesses interviewed in that investigation described him as having a sexual interest in “young boys.” Later, a controversial court case saw Proctor accused of having been involved with well-connected British pedophile and procurer of children Jimmy Savile; he was alleged to have been part of a child sex-abuse ring that was said to include former UK prime minister Ted Heath.
Of course, the Maxwell-owned newspapers, in covering the alleged effort to blackmail Robert Maxwell, did not mention the “young boys” angle at all, instead focusing on claims that distracted from the then-credible accusations of pedophilia by claiming that Proctor was merely into “spanking” and was “whacky,” among other things.
As was mentioned in Part 1 of this series, Ghislaine had also become involved with “philanthropy” tied to her father’s media empire during this period, which included hosting a “Disney day out for kids” and benefit dinner on behalf of the Mirror Group for the Save the Children NGO. Part of the event took place at the home of the Marquess and Lady of Bath, with the former known being for his strange obsession with Adolf Hitler. The gala was attended by members of the British royal family. The same evening that the Ghislaine-hosted bash concluded, the Marquess of Bath’s son was found hanging from a bedspread tied to an oak beam at the Bath Arms bar in what was labeled a suicide.
The attendance of royals at this Ghislaine-hosted gala was not some lucky break for Ghislaine or her “philanthropic” efforts, given that Ghislaine had been close to the royals for years, as some of her later employees and victims attested to having personally seen pictures of her “growing up” with the royals, a relationship allegedly facilitated by the Maxwell family’s ties to the Rothschild banking family. Ghislaine was heard on more than one occasion describing the wealthy and influential Rothschilds as her family’s “greatest protectors,” and they were also among Robert Maxwell’s most important bankers, who helped him finance the construction of his vast media empire and web of companies and untraceable trusts.
While Ghislaine was working in these capacities for her father’s business empire, there are indications that she had also, to some extent, begun to become involved in his espionage-related activities. According to former Israeli intelligence operative and associate of Maxwell in his dealings with Mossad, Ari Ben-Menashe, Ghislaine accompanied her father to events frequently, including the now-infamous 1989 party on Maxwell’s yacht where several key figures in the intelligence-related PROMIS software scandal were in attendance.
Ben-Menashe has also claimed that Jeffrey Epstein was brought into the group of Israeli spies that included himself and Robert Maxwell during this period in the mid-1980s and that Epstein had been introduced to Robert Maxwell after having been romantically involved with Ghislaine.
In 2019, Ben-Menashe told former CBS News producer Zev Shalev that “he [Maxwell] wanted us to accept him [Epstein] as part of our group. . . . I’m not denying that we were at the time a group that it was Nick Davies [foreign editor of the Maxwell-owned Daily Mirror], it was Maxwell, it was myself and our team from Israel, we were doing what we were doing.” He then added that Maxwell had stated during the introduction that “your Israeli bosses have already approved” of Epstein. Shalev later corroborated Epstein’s affiliation with Israeli military intelligence during this period with another former Israeli intelligence official. Epstein’s former business associate Steve Hoffenberg, who worked with Epstein from the late 1980s until 1993, has also stated that Epstein had boasted of his work for Israeli intelligence during that period and “rumors” of Epstein’s affiliation with both Israeli and US intelligence appeared in media reports as early as 1992.
Ari Ben Menashe in his office. He now runs a consultancy firm.
Past reporting by Seymour Hersh and others revealed that Maxwell, Davies, and Ben-Menashe were involved in the transfer and sale of military equipment and weapons from Israel to Iran on behalf of Israeli intelligence during this period. Epstein is also known to have been involved with arms dealers at this time, including with UK’s Douglas Leese and the Iran-Contra–linked Adnan Khashoggi. Ben-Menashe went on to tell Shalev that he had “met him [Epstein] a few times in Maxwell’s office, that was it.” He also said he was not aware of Epstein being involved in arms deals for anyone else he knew at the time but that Maxwell wanted to involve Epstein in the arms transfer in which he, Davies, and Ben-Menashe were engaged on Israel’s behalf. He later clarified that he had seen Epstein on several occasions after his initial recruitment, as Epstein “used to be in [Robert Maxwell’s] office [in London] quite often” and would arrive there between trips to and from Israel.
Moving On Up
Beginning roughly during this same period, in 1986, Ghislaine began dating an Italian aristocrat named Count Gianfranco Cicogna, whose grandfather was Mussolini’s finance minister and the last doge of Venice. Cicogna also had ties to both covert and overt power structures in Italy, particularly to the Vatican, to the CIA in Italy, and to the Italian side of the National Crime Syndicate. The other half of that syndicate, of course, was the Jewish American mob with its modern-day ties to the informal Mega Group, which itself was deeply connected to the Epstein scandal and whose members included business partners of Robert Maxwell.
Gianfranco Cicogna in an undated photo
Cicogna’s relationship with Ghislaine lasted throughout the 1990s, though numerous media outlets have misreported their relationship as having taken place only during the early 1990s. It was reported in the British media in 1992 that Cicogna had been Ghislaine’s “great love” and that he had “moulded the Ghislaine we now see. He told her where to get her hair cut, and what to wear.” It’s worth noting that Gianfranco Cicogna met a grisly end in 2012 when the plane he was flying exploded in a giant fireball during an air show, a morbid spectacle that can surprisingly still be viewed on YouTube.
Toward the end of her relationship with Cicogna, Ghislaine is said to have founded the Kit Kat Club, which she depicted as a feminist endeavor. Why Ghislaine chose the name “Kit Kat Club” is something of a mystery. The original Kit Kat Club was set up by a renowned pie maker named Christopher Catling in London during the eighteenth century to promote the freedoms obtained during the 1688 Glorious Revolution. Until the late 1800s, Catling’s organization was the only entity to use the name. Then, in the 1900s, various wealthy private clubs, music venues, and public houses adopted the name for establishments all around the UK. The original name of the club created by Catling was also the inspiration behind the naming of the famous KitKat chocolate bar produced by Nestlé. The name caught on, with independent music venues bearing the name in Wales, Northern Ireland, and the North of England; there was even a Kit Kat Club band in Scotland. Then came the 1966 musical Cabaret, which was set in the Kit Kat Club in Berlin. Cabaret had been turned into a movie around the time Ghislaine Maxwell supposedly founded and named her own Kit Kat organization, but her true reasons for choosing this name may never be known.
An article in the Sydney Morning Herald later described Maxwell’s Kit Kat Club as “a salon held in a variety of locations, designed to bring together women from the arts, politics and society.” The article goes on to quote an attendee of the events, author Anna Pasternak, who stated, “It was bright, wealthy and society women. Nowadays, it seems quite normal to be going to a meeting just for women, but 30 years ago it seemed exciting.” Of Ghislaine, Pasternak stated that she was “very mindful of who you were, your status, your importance. I think it was more a way of advancing herself, making contacts that could be useful to her.”
The Kit Kat Club, despite being described by other outlets as “an all-female debating society” and group meant to “help women in commerce and industry,” held functions that were hosted by Maxwell that often had many men in attendance. One apparently frequent attendee of the Kit Kat Club was Jeffrey Archer. Archer is a former Tory MP turned novelist who has been the recipient of various accusations of financial fraud over the years and who has served time in prison for perjury. He was another close colleague of Harvey Proctor and helped finance his business ventures following the latter’s conviction for acts of “gross indecency” with two teenage boys. In a 1996 article published by the Daily News, Archer said of his experience at the Kit Kat Club: “I had the time of my life, surrounded by women under 40. I had orgasm after orgasm just talking to them!”
Archer can also be seen in images taken at a Kit Kat Club event in 2004. Pictures from that same event show other attendees, including Stanley and Rachel Johnson, the father and sister of current UK prime minister Boris Johnson. Also seen at this 2004 Kit Kat function was former Tory MP Jonathan Aitken, who went to jail for perjury and is known for his close ties to Saudi royalty; former key figure in the Rupert Murdoch media empire, Andrew Neil; and Anton Mosimann, who has been called the “chef to royalty.”
There has since been speculation that Ghislaine’s Kit Kat Club is where Donald Trump met his future wife Melania. Although the New York Times and other outlets reported that, at Fashion Week 1998, Donald Trump first met Melania at the Kit Kat Club in New York, this locale was not related to Maxwell’s Kit Kat Club and is instead a famous club in New York that also got its name from Catling’s original Kit Kat Club. However, these same outlets also reported that Epstein and Maxwell claimed to have been the ones who introduced the Trumps to each other.
Soon after her “painful” split from Gianfranco Cicogna, Ghislaine was seen skiing in Aspen, Colorado—“where the rich and famous mix” during the winter season—with American actor George Hamilton, who was also seen escorting Ghislaine to the Epsom races in 1991. Hamilton, twenty-two years Ghislaine’s senior, is apparently much more than just an actor, as he allegedly played a major role in aiding Ferdinand Marcos, the former dictator of the Philippines, and his wife Imelda move billions of public funds out of the country and convert them into private wealth for themselves and their accomplices abroad. Marcos originally rose to power with the help of the CIA.
George Hamilton and Ghislaine Maxwell attend the Epsom races in 1991
A NY prosecutor referred to Hamilton as a “front” for Marcos, and media reports at the time claimed he had also acted as Imelda Marcos’s financial adviser. The Associated Press reported that Hamilton had been an unindicted co-conspirator in the fraud and racketeering cases brought against Imelda Marcos after she and her husband fled their country in 1986. The congressional committee tasked with investigating the flight of billions from the Philippines just prior to Marcos’s ouster declined to investigate the financial transactions surrounding Hamilton, which were alleged to have been connected to that very crime. Notably, at the same time, the CIA refused to disclose what it knew about the capital flight. As mentioned later in this article, the private investigator hired by this congressional committee to track down the Marcos’s money was Jules Kroll.
In 1990, Ghislaine was added to the payroll of another of her father’s newspapers, the European, which had launched that same year. It’s not exactly clear, however, at what point she joined the company or in what role(s) she served. A website recently set up by Ghislaine’s siblings following her July 2020 arrest for sexual crimes related to minors states that she developed and created “advertising opportunities” in the newspaper’s supplement during her time there. This same year, she moved to the United States, first to Los Angeles after being “offered a small part in a movie” that was being filmed there.
Coming to America
During the late 1980s, Robert Maxwell’s media empire began to falter as he had overextended his finances by making massive purchases, including Macmillan publishing among many others. Part of the reason behind his rapid, and arguably hasty, expansion was related to his rivalry with fellow media baron Rupert Murdoch. Another factor was his desire to become ever more wealthy and powerful. Former British ambassador to the US Peter Jay, who had also served as Maxwell’s chief of staff, later said that these purchases were partially motivated by Maxwell being “offended and upset that he was seen as merely a printer. . . . He was determined to go and demonstrate to the world that he was a publisher as well.”
Given Robert Maxwell’s ties to intelligence and the role some of his media assets played in espionage-related affairs, such as the arrest of Israeli nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu, it is possible if not likely that some of these acquisitions during this period were motivated by more than just his ego. Indeed, some of the companies Maxwell purchased or created during this period played a role in his sale of the bugged PROMIS software, acting as fronts for Israeli intelligence in the process.
In the lead-up to the 1990s, some of Maxwell’s companies became increasingly linked to organized criminal activities, such as those of Russian mobster Semion Mogilevich, and to the effort of Bulgarian intelligence to plunder Western technology known as Neva. Some of the companies Maxwell created to operate the Neva program were also used as cover for Israeli intelligence. The ties between this Maxwell-operated web of companies to the interconnected worlds of intelligence and organized crime grew under the umbrella corporation known as Multi-Group. The FBI later referred to Multi-Group, cofounded by Maxwell, as giving rise to a global criminal syndicate that came to control a large percentage of the profits from major industries, including oil, telecommunications, and natural gas. The Maxwell model for moving and laundering money between a web of Eastern and Western banks was at the core of the criminal enterprise that lurked within the Multi-Group web of companies.
Years later, the FBI’s foremost counterintelligence expert, John Patrick O’Neill, described Robert Maxwell as being “at the heart of the global criminal network” and that his lasting contribution to the world was having been “the man who set in motion a true coalition of global criminals” through the creation of Multi-Group. O’Neill died in the attacks of September 11, 2001. His death was not only convenient for those constructing the official narrative of the attacks, as he had been the top expert in the FBI on Al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, but it was also convenient for those who took the reins of Maxwell’s criminal enterprises in New York after Maxwell’s 1991 demise. Indeed, in the late 1990s, O’Neill had told author Gordon Thomas that he “had staff still trying to unravel the links from Maxwell’s legacy,” particularly his organized crime links and their operation in New York.
John P. O’Neill, the FBI counterintelligence expert, was the Bureau’s top expert on Osama bin Laden and was also attempting to track down the vestiges Robert Maxwell’s crime-linked enterprises in New York City before his death on September 11, 2001.
Robert Maxwell’s foothold in New York, which led to his establishing links to the city’s criminal underworld, appear to have gotten underway when he purchased Macmillan. He had little trouble raising money for a grander entry into New York business and society, despite his well-known past financial chicanery that had earned him the nickname “the bouncing Czech.” Investment banks such as Lehman Brothers, Rothschild Inc., Salomon Brothers, and Goldman Sachs lined up to represent and help finance Maxwell and his ever-growing web of businesses and corporate entities. Some speculated at the time that some of the funds Maxwell raised during this period and for this purpose had originated in the Soviet Union, where he had considerable connections, including to the KGB. There is also the possibility that some of the funds included proceeds from Maxwell’s sale of bugged PROMIS software to governments around the world.
Despite having opened a considerable new stream of revenue through Multi-Group and its legitimate and illegitimate businesses, years of financial fraud and stock-buying schemes caught up with Robert Maxwell’s empire, which began rapidly imploding in early 1991. In what is often considered a bizarre move by observers, given Maxwell’s dire financial situation and the poor state of the newspaper, Maxwell decided to expand his presence in New York by buying the New York Daily News in March 1991. However, Gordon Thomas later reported that the paper’s previous owners, the Chicago Tribune Group, had offered Maxwell $60 million to take over the floundering paper. Regardless of the true story behind his acquisition of the paper, he chose to put his daughter Ghislaine in charge of “special projects” shortly after becoming its owner. That position, per London’s Sunday Times, “provided her with her entree to the power base of the city.”
In addition to her new role in charge of “special projects” for the paper, Ghislaine was also made managing director of a “ready-made” company based in New York and created by her father, Maxwell Corporate Gifts. The New York Post later described the company as Ghislaine’s “own fiefdom.” Little is otherwise known about Maxwell Corporate Gifts, with the Maxwell family subsequently describing the company as “a business that supplied long-term service awards for companies.” In 2021, Ghislaine’s siblings published a short biography of their sister that asserted that Ghislaine had founded Maxwell Corporate Gifts in the mid-1980s after her graduation from Oxford and before her move to the US. Their claim is at odds with past media reports that predate Ghislaine’s infamy by several years and even decades. It is also possible, however, that the entity’s creation preceded by several years its use by Ghislaine and her father in New York.
Because few or no public records remain accessible regarding the company’s activities, we can only speculate about its activities. Given that the creation of the company coincided with the Maxwells’ entry into New York as well as the fact that Robert Maxwell’s ambition to expand his influence throughout the city was quite clear at the time, it was most likely a part of the growing Maxwell influence network in the city. New York media outlets subsequently claimed that Robert Maxwell saw himself as “the patriarch of a dynasty that would wield financial and political power on a global scale” and that he additionally saw New York as where they would truly make their mark.
After buying the New York Daily News, and despite his mounting financial problems, Maxwell received such positive attention in New York City that it surprised even him. According to an anecdote from Robert Pirie, investment banker and the then-president of Rothschild Inc.:
After he bought the Daily News, I picked him up at his boat. He liked Chinese food, so I decided to take him to Fu’s, which is the best Chinese restaurant in the city. As we drove up First Avenue, people would recognize him, and open their car doors and come out and shake his hand. At Fu’s, the entire restaurant got up on its feet and started clapping. He was overwhelmed. He told me, “In my whole life in London, no one’s ever acted like this. I’m here a month and look what’s happening.”
This type of reception throughout the city led Maxwell to become even more determined to expand his presence there. He hired a “group of prominent consultants and lawyers to help him make his way in America.” These included former senator Howard Baker and former senator John Tower as well as Republican Party consultant and high-profile public relations executive Robert Keith Gray. The inclusion of these three men in advising Maxwell on his entry into the United States is highly significant, but each is important for a different reason.
Tennessee senator Howard Baker, best known for being the vice-chairman of the Senate Watergate Committee and subsequently Reagan’s chief of staff after the Iran-Contra scandal, had become Robert Maxwell’s business partner in 1991 in a venture called Newstar. Newstar focused on expanding investment opportunities for Americans in the former Soviet Union and was described by Richard Jacobs, who cofounded the company with Baker, as “an international merchant banking, investment and advisory company.” Jacobs also stated that Robert Maxwell was one of the major shareholders in the company. Newstar was just one of several companies that Maxwell used to enrich himself through privatizing assets of the former Soviet Union. Baker also attempted to recruit other respected public figures into Maxwell’s empire.
It appears that Maxwell first encountered Baker through his years-long relationship with Senator Tower, with whom Baker had had a decades-long partnership in the Senate. Maxwell had first gotten close to Tower years earlier, at Henry Kissinger’s behest, with the intention of advancing the Mossad goal of installing PROMIS software on the computers of top-secret US laboratories tied to the nuclear weapons program. It was Maxwell who placed Tower on the Mossad payroll, prompted his involvement in the Iran-Contra deal, and later added him to his own payroll via the company Pergamon-Brassey, which appears to have been strongly related to both the PROMIS scandal and the Bulgarian-led Neva program. Tower died just months before Maxwell, in early 1991, as the result of a suspicious plane crash, which at the time reportedly made Robert Maxwell fear for his own life.
Robert Keith Gray is perhaps the key to unlocking the truth about Robert Maxwell’s plans and ambitions for his future in New York City. Gray was a smooth operator, having worked on major presidential campaigns and as the top executive at the public relations firm Hill and Knowlton. Less known is the fact that Gray had extensive ties to US intelligence and also to a handful of call girl and sexual-blackmail rings that encircled the Watergate scandal of the Nixon presidency and the more obscure Koreagate scandal of the same era. He was also tied, through connections in his home state of Nebraska, to figures involved in the Franklin Scandal. One common thread throughout the sexual blackmail scandals that were linked in some way to Gray was the Georgetown Club, owned by South Korean intelligence asset Tongsun Park and whose president was Robert Keith Gray at the time when it was used by CIA and other intelligence-linked figures to acquire sexual blackmail. John Tower was a member of the Georgetown Club during this period, as were many other prominent politicians and power brokers in Washington, DC.
During the period where he sought these men’s advice about how to grow his influence in New York, Robert Maxwell was also eager to get closer to George H. W. Bush—then the US president—with whom he had cultivated a relationship decades earlier. The Bush White House later became embroiled in the pedophile, blackmail, and sex-trafficking scandal that enveloped former Washington lobbyist Craig Spence, a network later shown by journalist Nick Bryant to have been at the core of the Franklin Scandal network. The alleged contact Spence had at the Bush White House was former National Security Advisor Donald Gregg. Gregg denied these reports, and the story was quickly memory holed. In 1989 Spence was found dead in a Boston hotel room and his death was quickly ruled a “suicide.”
Soon after Robert Maxwell’s effort to expand his footprint in New York, which author Gordon Thomas alleges involved Maxwell’s desire to become “king” of the city, he was being “courted” by Edgar Bronfman, Laurence Tisch, and other “luminaries of the New York Jewish community.” Bronfman and Tisch were among the founding members of the informal Mega Group, founded that same year by Leslie Wexner and Edgar Bronfman’s brother Charles. Charles Bronfman had previously teamed up with Maxwell in 1989 in an ill-fated attempt to purchase the Jerusalem Post. In a previous report that I wrote for MintPress News, I noted how many Mega Group members, including Wexner and the Bronfmans, had clear ties to organized crime networks and/or intelligence (as was the case for Tisch). Maxwell himself, as explored in this article and Part 1 of this series, checked these boxes as well.
The Mega Group’s existence was not revealed to the public until seven years later, in 1998. At that time, it underwent a very public reveal in the Wall Street Journal, and the names of its most prominent members were disclosed. Given that Robert Maxwell was cozy with this network and was being “courted” by them the year of its founding and that he had died long before the publication of the Wall Street Journal article, it is worth considering the possibility that Maxwell himself was a Mega Group member and that the only reason his name was not included in the WSJ’s disclosure of the group is because he was no longer alive. Support for this thesis can be adduced in the subsequent team-up of sexual-blackmail influence operator Jeffrey Epstein, who had been a financial adviser to Wexner since 1987 and his money manager since 1990, and Ghislaine Maxwell, Robert Maxwell’s favorite daughter.
While Wexner is often considered to be an Ohio business mogul, he had become increasingly active in New York in the 1980s, particularly its real estate market, especially following his involvement with Epstein. For over a decade and up until the early 2000s, Epstein was frequently referred to in the press as a real estate mogul or “property developer,” and some of these early articles, including one that named Ghislaine as the “mysterious business queen” of social circles that spanned New York and London, also discussed allegations that Epstein was involved with both the CIA and Israel’s Mossad.
Rising from the Ashes
At the end of October 1991, Robert Maxwell contacted private investigator Jules Kroll and arranged a meeting to see if he could hire Kroll to investigate a “conspiracy” to ruin him financially and destroy his empire. Kroll told Maxwell he would take the case.
Jules Kroll’s involvement in this matter is significant for several reasons but chiefly because of the ties of his firms to US and Israeli intelligence. Kroll Associates, founded by Jules Kroll in 1972, became known as “the CIA of Wall Street” and was later alleged by French intelligence to have been used as an actual front for the CIA. The reasoning behind this nickname and such claims is partially related to the company’s penchant for hiring former CIA and FBI officers as well as former operatives of Britain’s MI6 and Israel’s Mossad. The successor company to Kroll Associates, K2 Intelligence, has similar hiring practices. In 2020, former Kroll Associates employee Roy Den Hollander was accused of murdering the son of New York judge Esther Salas at their family home just as Salas was due to preside over a case involving ties between Jeffrey Epstein and Deutsche Bank.
At the time that Robert Maxwell hired Kroll, the brother of then US president and former CIA director George H. W. Bush—Johnathan Bush—was on its corporate advisory board. Soon afterward, Kroll became employed by Bill Clinton in his first presidential campaign and later was hired to manage security for the World Trade Center in New York after the 1993 bombing. In addition, Kroll had been hired to investigate how money had been spirited out of the Philippines by the Marcos family. As previously mentioned, Ghislaine’s friend George Hamilton had played a significant role in that affair.
Furthermore, just weeks before 9/11, Kroll hired John P. O’Neill, with the involvement of Jerome Hauer—also a Kroll employee at the time, who would be one of the few, and possibly the only, high-ranking Kroll employee to die in the attacks. As previously noted, O’Neill was seeking to unravel “Maxwell’s legacy” in New York criminal networks at the time of his death on September 11, 2001. A report from January of that year noted that federal investigators were still trying to determine “how much of her [Ghislaine’s] father’s fortune is buried in the offshore trusts he used so freely for the benefit of his family.”
Kroll was unable to give Robert Maxwell the information he had wanted before Maxwell died under suspicious circumstances on his yacht in November 1991. Though media reports often say that his death was most likely a suicide, many biographers, investigators, and even Maxwell’s own family assert that he was murdered, having hit the end of the line in terms of his usefulness to those who had empowered his legal and illegal activities over the years. Ghislaine herself claims it was a group of “Mossad renegades” who took her father’s life.
Soon after news of Robert Maxwell’s death spread, his wife Betty Maxwell, accompanied by Ghislaine, headed to his place of death—his yacht, then located near the Canary Islands. As mentioned in Part 1, journalist John Jackson, who was present when Ghislaine and Betty boarded the yacht shortly after Robert’s death, claims that it was Ghislaine who “coolly walked into her late father’s office and shredded all incriminating documents on board.” Ghislaine denies the incident, though Jackson has never retracted his claim, which was reported in a 2007 article published in the Daily Mail. If Jackson is to believed, it was Ghislaine—out of all of Robert Maxwell’s children—who was most intimately aware of the incriminating secrets of her father’s financial empire and espionage activities. Betty Maxwell subsequently claimed that Ghislaine had been the child she chose to accompany her because she spoke Spanish and could help more than her other children in communicating with local authorities.
Ghislaine aboard the Lady Ghislaine shortly after her father’s death
Following her father’s death, Ghislaine publicly claimed to know next to nothing of his affairs and to have no money herself, despite it being well known that her father had created numerous trusts in the Lichtenstein tax haven that were meant to fund the Maxwell family for “generations.” A New York detective who interviewed Ghislaine in Manhattan while trying to trace her father’s assets later stated:
She came in dressed in sackcloth and ashes. It was pathetic. She said she had no money. Yet here was this expensive lawyer arguing with us in a room so air conditioned we couldn’t hear what he said. In between claiming she had no money, you couldn’t but help warming to her, she was so solicitous. We hadn’t had any lunch and she was recommending restaurants here and there and where to stay and go shopping, and slipping in from time to time how she never had anything to do with her father’s affairs.
Another investigator said that “It is entirely possible, and we didn’t have the resources to check, that Maxwell could have siphoned off money from some of his 400 companies in America to her. She was living on something.”
In 1992, Ghislaine repeated the claims that she was destitute but promised her family would soon make a comeback. That year, she told Vanity Fair, “I’m surviving—just. But I can’t just die quietly in a corner. . . . I would say we’ll be back. Watch this space.” As I previously reported, it was during this same period that the Maxwell siblings were openly attempting to rebuild their father’s empire and legacy, which potentially included his intelligence activities.
It later emerged that during this period and the years that followed, Ghislaine had shifted from being dependent on her father to being “entirely dependent” on Jeffrey Epstein for her “lavish lifestyle.” Some acquaintances of Ghislaine have since claimed that “she started working for him [Epstein] immediately after her father died.”
Ghislaine and Jeffrey Epstein at a 1991 memorial event for her father at the Plaza Hotel
Ghislaine and Jeffrey Epstein’s public relationship began in 1991 during a tribute dinner at the Plaza Hotel held in Robert Maxwell’s honor, where Epstein sat at the same table with Ghislaine and Betty. According to media reports, this was Ghislaine’s “first step in publicly announcing her deep affection for him [Epstein].” The choice of the Plaza would prove to be ironic given that Ghislaine and Epstein were launching an extensive sexual-blackmail operation that would go on for well over a decade. The hotel had previously been the site of a sexual-blackmail operation involving the infamous lawyer Roy Cohn and his mentor, the liquor magnate Lewis Rosenstiel.
The Plaza Hotel was purchased in 1988, not long after Cohn’s death, by Cohn’s protégé, Donald Trump, who had become close to Jeffrey Epstein beginning in 1987, when the two men, along with Tom Barrack, used to frequent New York nightlife hotspots together. The Plaza subsequently became the site of numerous parties attended by underage girls hoping to become “models.” Both Epstein and Trump, during this period and beyond, were known for their efforts to purchase, control, or have significant access to a variety of modeling agencies. Epstein was known to use the promise of modeling opportunities to either recruit or lure in young victims to his and Maxwell’s sexual-trafficking enterprise. Regarding Epstein, Trump stated in 2002: “I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy. 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.” Years later, Trump claimed to have had a falling out with Epstein over the latter’s behavior at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
In the year that followed his first public appearance with Ghislaine, Epstein was treated by both the press and those close to Ghislaine as her father reincorporated, with various media reports stating and/or quoting their associates comparing Epstein directly to Robert Maxwell. Some of these reports, as early as 1992, also openly discussed the possibility that Epstein, like Robert Maxwell, was working for Israeli intelligence as well as the CIA.
Reports throughout the 1990s would say that Ghislaine’s role in Epstein’s businesses was “nebulous” yet central, and she would later be described as having the role of “consultant.” Her own web of businesses was described “as opaque as her father’s,” and one described her as an “internet operator.” When asked about her work by reporters, she would refuse to confirm the nature of her businesses or even their names. The “internet operator” claim seems to be related to the “substantial interest” she possessed in the tech company founded in the 1990s by her twin sisters, Christine and Isabel, which produced the Magellan search engine. During this same period, Ghislaine and Epstein courted Microsoft executives, including Bill Gates, which led to a close relationship between Microsoft and Magellan and Isabel Maxwell’s subsequent business, CommTouch, which had deep ties to Israel’s national-security and intelligence apparatus.
Ghislaine and Epstein, as most now know, were also operating a sexual-trafficking and sexual-blackmail operation that involved the sexual abuse of minors, who were used to seduce and entrap powerful individuals, particularly Democratic politicians. Furthermore, the pair’s ties to intelligence have subsequently emerged and are alleged, including by eyewitnesses, to have begun in the 1980s with the direct involvement of Robert Maxwell. As noted in this article, Robert Maxwell at the time of his death was attempting to become “king” of New York high society.
Given the context surrounding the circumstances during which the Ghislaine-Epstein sexual-blackmail operation developed and launched, as detailed here, it appears more than plausible that this operation not only benefited certain intelligence agencies but also the organized crime–linked Mega Group and the Maxwell family itself. Ultimately, the activities that Ghislaine undertook alongside Epstein, as well as those of her siblings, fulfilled Robert Maxwell’s reported desire to become “the patriarch of a dynasty that would wield financial and political power on a global scale.” However, like the rise and fall of her father, Ghislaine’s power and influence was not meant to last.
In this light, it appears that the sexual-blackmail activities of these two individuals was an operation seeking to not only influence US policy on behalf of a foreign entity (as well as domestic entities such as the CIA) but to influence powerful individuals for the benefit of the Maxwell family itself as well as the organized crime web in which Robert Maxwell enmeshed his business interests in the latter years of his life.
To continue to claim that Ghislaine Maxwell’s activities were only performed to please Jeffrey Epstein who only sought to financially extort certain individuals for his personal gain is dishonest when faced with the facts of the matter and the context in which their operations took place. It also belittles the experiences of those who survived sexual abuse at the hands of both Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein, as the continued cover-up of their complex dealings means that justice will never be served for their enablers, while the names of those they unduly influenced will never become public. It is a revelation that those in power must prevent the public from understanding at all costs, lest Americans realize that the United States has long been a country ruled by backdoor dealings, illicit intelligence operations, and blackmail.
Whitney Webb has been a professional writer, researcher and journalist since 2016. She has written for several websites and, from 2017 to 2020, was a staff writer and senior investigative reporter for Mint Press News. She currently writes for The Last American Vagabond.
CIA prisoner was used as torture prop to teach recruits – declassified documents
The US flag at the US Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba on August 7, 2013 © AFP / Chantal Valery
Samizdat | March 15, 2022
The US Central Intelligence Agency used a detainee in Afghanistan as a ‘prop’ to teach interrogators how to torture prisoners, leaving the man with brain damage, newly declassified documents have revealed.
According to the 2008 report by the CIA’s inspector general, published by The Guardian, 44-year-old Ammar al-Baluchi was used to teach interrogators how to perform a torture technique called ‘walling’. As explained by the CIA, walling is where an interrogator “pulls the detainee towards him and then quickly slams the detainee against [a] false wall.”
The document states that Baluchi was subjected to walling for up to two hours at a time, and a former trainee claimed that “all the interrogation students lined up to ‘wall’ Ammar” so their instructor “could certify them on their ability to use the technique.”
“In the case of ‘walling’ in particular the [Office of the Inspector General] had difficulty determining whether the session was designed to elicit information from Ammar or to ensure that all interrogator trainees received their certification,” the declassified report said, noting that it appeared “certification was key” during the torture sessions.
Baluchi – who was captured by the CIA in 2003 before being transferred to Guantanamo Bay in 2006 – reportedly suffered from brain damage as a result of his detainment by the US intelligence agency.
The Kuwaiti-born man was detained for allegedly having a role in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and serving as a courier for Osama Bin Laden.
Baluchi remains in US custody at Guantanamo Bay, despite calls from the United Nations and human rights activists for his release.
A Saudi Arabian man was released from Guantanamo Bay to receive mental health treatment this month after nearly 20 years in custody. Mohammad Mani Ahmad al-Qahtani, 46, was freed after US officials deemed his imprisonment “no longer necessary to protect against a continuing significant threat to the national security of the United States.”
Qahtani was reportedly diagnosed with schizophrenia and post-traumatic stress disorder after he was subjected to beatings, sexual humiliation, sleep deprivation, and other forms of torture at Guantanamo Bay.
There are 38 detainees left in the military prison.
Pushing toward Nuclear War
By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | March 9, 2022
According to Yahoo! News, “More than two dozen foreign policy experts have called for the United States and NATO to institute a partial no-fly zone over Ukraine, which would serve as an escalation of the conflict with Russia.” Joining them is Illinois Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger, who also happens to be a former Air Force combat officer. That would mean the U.S. military would be shooting down Russian planes containing Russian soldiers.
So far, the idea is being resisted by President Biden and the military-intelligence establishment. However, given the extreme anti-Putin mentality that characterizes Biden, the Pentagon, and the CIA, their position could easily change on a moment’s notice.
The matter brings to mind what happened during the John Kennedy administration, the details of which were set forth in an article we posted yesterday on FFF’s website, entitled “When the Pentagon Wanted to Nuke Russia.” The article was an excerpt from FFF’s book JFK’s War with the National Security Establishment: Why Kennedy Was Assassinated by Douglas P. Horne, who served on the staff of the Assassination Records Review Board in the 1990s.
In July 1961, the U.S. military establishment was pressing Kennedy to launch a surprise nuclear attack on the Soviet Union, China, and all the other communist-bloc countries, similar to the surprise attack that Japan initiated against the United States at Pearl Harbor.
Their attitude was that there was inevitably going to be a nuclear war anyway between the United States and the Soviet Union. Given such, the generals believed that it would be in the best interests of the United States to fire first in order to disable a large portion of the Soviet nuclear arsenal.
The generals acknowledged to Kennedy that under their first-strike surprise-attack plan, the United States would nonetheless suffer a large number of deaths — like in the neighborhood of, say, 70 million people — as well as significant destruction of property.
But there would still be tens of millions of Americans who would survive, given that the surprise attack would disable much of the Soviet nuclear arsenal. The important part of the first-strike plan was that there would be no Russians, Chinese, or other communists who would survive the massive U.S. surprise nuclear attack. Since there would still be millions of Americans surviving, that would mean that America will have prevailed as the winner in the war, under indefinite military rule of course.
There is something else that is worth noting: The Pentagon’s plan called for the launching of the surprise nuclear attack “during a period of heightened tensions” with Russia and the rest of the Soviet Union.
To his everlasting credit, Kennedy walked out during the middle of the meeting in total disgust. In the process, he turned to his Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, and stated, “And we call ourselves the human race.” Do you see why they hated the guy so much?
Was that military mindset passed down from generation to generation within the Pentagon? I don’t know. But what I do know is that the political gamesmanship that the Pentagon and the CIA have played to maneuver Russia into having to choose between invading Ukraine versus permitting the Pentagon and the CIA to establish military bases, missiles, tanks, and weapon on Russia’s border constitutes an evil, irresponsible, and dangerous game, one that comes with the possibility of nuclear fire.
In the midst of this war, where the Pentagon and the CIA are furnishing weaponry to the Ukrainians to help them kill Russian soldiers, and where U.S. officials are targeting the Russian people with death and impoverishment with brutal economic sanctions, any mishap can easily lead to a rapid escalation of hostilities between the United States and Russia, one in which it becomes in the interest of both sides to initiate a first-strike nuclear attack. Moreover, there is no telling what any exhausted person, including Vladimir Putin, will do when he is under severe pressure in a highly stressful war situation.
That’s one big reason why this entire escapade is so highly evil and irresponsible, even if it is resolved without a war between the United States and Russia. And make no mistake about the cause of the crisis: It’s not about liberty. It is entirely about NATO, the Pentagon-CIA-controlled bureaucratic dinosaur that should have gone out of existence when the Cold War racket supposedly ended decades ago. If NATO had been abolished back then, this crisis in Ukraine would never have happened. All those dead people in Ukraine would still be alive today.
In the final analysis, President Biden, the Pentagon, and the CIA were willing to sacrifice any number of Ukrainians for the sake of having Ukraine join NATO, which would thereby permit the Pentagon and the CIA to establish U.S. military bases, missiles, tanks, and weaponry on Russia’s border.
If that isn’t evil, I don’t know what is. Not one single Ukrainian life was worth NATO, the corrupt bureaucratic dinosaur that should have gone out of existence a long time ago.
Even worse, their unswerving devotion to NATO has clearly motivated Biden, the Pentagon, and the CIA to run the risk of a war with Russia, a war that could easily turn nuclear and cost the lives of countless millions of Americans. If that’s not evil, I don’t know what is. I do know this: NATO, that corrupt bureaucratic Cold War-era dinosaur, is not worth risking the life of even one American, much less untold millions of Americans.
If the United States can escape a nuclear conflict with Russia this time, there is no telling when the Pentagon’s and the CIA’s political gamesmanship will produce the same sort of crisis in the future, either against Russia, China, or North Korea. That’s one big reason it is imperative that the American people do some serious soul-searching about what they want out of life. If they want a crisis-filled life that might well end up at some point in a nuclear holocaust, then they should keep the national-security state form of governmental structure that was brought into existence after World War II. If Americans instead want a life filled with liberty, peace, prosperity, security, and harmony, there is but one solution: restore America’s founding system of a limited-government republic and a non-interventionist foreign policy.
Featured Video
Chinese jet fuel and the myth of energy independence
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
Book Review
Former Insiders Criticize Iran Policy as U.S. Hegemony
By GARETH PORTER | CounterPunch | February 27, 2013
“Going to Tehran” arguably represents the most important work on the subject of U.S.-Iran relations to be published thus far.
Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett tackle not only U.S. policy toward Iran but the broader context of Middle East policy with a systematic analytical perspective informed by personal experience, as well as very extensive documentation.
More importantly, however, their exposé required a degree of courage that may be unparalleled in the writing of former U.S. national security officials about issues on which they worked. They have chosen not just to criticise U.S. policy toward Iran but to analyse that policy as a problem of U.S. hegemony. … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- Chinese jet fuel and the myth of energy independence
- Ukraine Sea Drone Fired From Libya Hit Russian Tanker in Mediterranean
- IRGC: Iranian forces launched no attacks during ceasefire hours
- Trump Administration Moves To Automate U.S. Military Draft Registration
- Spain orders reopening of Tehran embassy, condemns Israel’s carpet bombing of Lebanon
- Israel faces ‘unsustainable’ strategic crisis following 40-day war against Iran: Analyst
- Iran restricts Hormuz access to 15 vessels per day under ceasefire terms: Report
- The ‘Opposition Party’ Has Done Nothing to Stop the Iran War and Much to Goad Trump Into Continuing It
- Moscow backs Tehran on status of Lebanon in US-Iran deal
- How UK Regulator Ofcom Quietly Bypassed International Law to Police American Speech
- If Americans Knew
- Amnesty: Urgent – Protect Lebanese civilians from brutal escalation in Israeli attacks
- Is The War Against Iran Over?
- Inside the Israeli army’s propaganda wing
- Hundreds of Gaza Amputees Stranded in Legal Limbo
- The gallows law: Israel moves toward executing Palestinian children
- Tucker Carlson: The Path to Peace requires ending ‘special alliance’ with Israel
- This is ceasefire? Israel’s biggest massacre yet in Lebanon, another journalist killed in Gaza – Daily Update
- Tucker Carlson on Israel: This Is the Behavior of an Ally? Really?
- Gazans face a triple crisis: severe shortages of water and bread, healthcare in tatters
- NY Times reports how Netanyahu took the US into Iran War
- No Tricks Zone
- An Inconvenient Tree: Uncovered In Alps… Europe Much Warmer Than Today 6000 Years Ago
- New Study Reports A 60% Slowdown In Greenland’s Ice Loss Rate In The Last Decade
- Low Intensity Tornado Wrecks Major Solar Farm, Creating A Potential Toxic Dump
- New Study Finds Warming Saves Lives…Cold Temperatures 12 Times More Deadly Than Excess Heat
- German Science Blog Accuses PIK Climate Institute Of Hallucinating Climate Tipping Points
- Devastating Assessment Of Comirnaty Vaccine By Former Senior Pfizer Europe Toxicologist
- New Study: CO2 Is ‘Effectively Negligible’ As An Explanatory Climate Change Factor Since 2000
- Former Pfizer Toxicologist Dr. Helmut Sterz Tells Bundestag Hearing Pfizer Vaccine Should Have Never Been Approved
- Energy Expert: Germany’s Nuclear Phaseout Was A “500 Billion Euro Mistake”
- New Research: South Australia’s Mid-Holocene Sea Surface Temperatures Were 4°C Warmer Than Today
Aletho News 
