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 sentshockwaves 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 Londonreported, 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 Haaretznoted, 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 Haaretznoted:
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 MintPressstudy 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 Timeswrote 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 least30 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 toldRolling 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.
Cassville is located in the extreme southwest of Missouri, sitting adjacent to the northeastern Oklahoma and southeastern Kansas state borders. It’s about an hour away from the nearby cities of Joplin and Carthage and about two and a half hours, 130 miles, from Elohim City, Oklahoma.
It was in Cassville that William Maloney operated a real estate brokerage office. In the fall of 1994, Maloney had advertised for sale forty acres of property in the Ozark Mountains. Sometime from October 25th to 27th, 1994, Maloney’s office received a phone call inquiring about that property.
The caller expressed an interest in purchasing the property and Maloney wrote down the caller’s name. Maloney recalled that he asked the caller to repeat his last name, and that the caller told him “McVeigh.” Maloney spelled the name back to the caller, saying “M-C-V-E-Y.” According to Maloney, the caller responded “That’s close enough.”
Thus begins William Maloney’s fateful encounter with Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. The phone call wouldn’t be the last time that Maloney heard from McVeigh. In fact, he would come face to face with the bomber and co-conspirator Terry Nichols, with a third accomplice, in the first week of November.
William Maloney and Joe Davidson were working at Maloney’s realty office on the morning of November 2nd, 1994 when three men in a white late 70’s model Monte Carlo pulled into the parking lot. One man remained in the vehicle while the other two got out and went inside.
The two men who went inside the office introduced themselves to Bill Maloney as Bob Jacquez and Terry Nichols. Maloney related that “they was just nice and calm,” just a couple of potential buyers as far as Maloney was concerned. After a few minutes of discussion the third man who had stayed in the car at first finally came into the office and introduced himself as Tim. The group was there, they told Maloney, to discuss their mutual interest in the forty acre parcel in the Ozarks that McVeigh had called about two weeks prior.
During the conversation, Maloney observed that it appeared Jacquez was the leader of group, saying “Jacquez was very articulate; he was smart. He did about all the talking, and during that period of time, he was in charge. He was the boss man.” Maloney’s business partner, Joe Davidson, was equally observant of the scene, saying “He [Jacquez] seemed to be the one that was in control and in charge of what was going on.” The unusual trio of supposed buyers did not tell Bill Maloney why they were interested in buying land that had been advertised as “in the middle of nowhere, at the end of a rough road, at the bottom of a hollow” with the addendum that “there may be a cave.”
Maloney said that at the time he was curious what the men were interested in, asking the question “Were they looking for a place to hide?” Joe Davidson noted that the men chuckled at the question but provided no verbal response. Later, Oklahoma FBI agent Bob Ricks would express a similar sentiment to a documentary film crew:
“The theory there was that Timothy McVeigh was searching for a place to perhaps have a hide-out and Robert Jacquez was utilized to perhaps obtain property in Missouri. It’s very remote terrain, it’s terrain familiar — there are a lot of right wing groups around there, from Elohim City Oklahoma to other groups in Arkansas to the Ozarks in Missouri which would be the perfect type spot.”
In discussing the geography surrounding the for-sale property, Maloney had Jacquez handle a new laminated topographical map of the area and afterwards he put the map in his safe. Maloney provided the map to the FBI during his first interview, hoping it may turn up fingerprints that could identify the man he saw as being in charge that day. It is unknown what became of this map: once it was in the FBI’s hands, it disappeared. As with the Murrah building surveillance tape videos, Maloney’s map with its possible fingerprint evidence has disappeared from the investigatory record, never to appear at trial.
Maloney told FBI Special Agent Bill Teater that Robert Jacquez was a muscular man with large biceps and a bulging neck, standing about 5’11 and said that “he looked like a military guy. I spent a long time in the service and I can pretty well spot ’em. He was real muscular; he looked maybe like a weightlifter.” Maloney’s description, given during his witness interview, was documented by the FBI in what is called a 302 report. In general, an FBI 302 report contains information about what a witness said to the interviewing Special Agent and includes whatever details the interviewing agent deems relevant to an investigation. Maloney’s 302 report details that Jacquez was wearing black pants, a black t-shirt, and olive colored hiking boots with small “suction cups” on the soles. He had a tattoo visible on his left forearm that had wings or some sort of insignia, possibly military. Jacquez had a short “flat-top” type haircut and a dark tanned complexion, described as “possibly American Indian.” This detail is notable — McVeigh was, by all accounts, a white-supremacist as were the vast majority of other potential suspects suggested as possible co-conspirators within alternative accounts of the bombing. Who was this dark skinned man, described as the evident “boss” of McVeigh?
The FBI considered Maloney and Davidson’s account significant enough to submit Maloney to a polygraph test, which he passed. The FBI also took the unusual step of placing Maloney’s secretary, Nora Young, under hypnosis in an effort to recall potentially more details about the encounter. They commissioned the “OKBOMB” task force’s sketch artist, Jean Boylan, to produce a sketch based on Maloney’s description. There was an unusual level of secrecy surrounding the sketch of the suspect, with an FBI teletype about the suspect containing the disclaimer “CAUTION: SENSITIVE INFORMATION: THIS SKETCH OF JACQUES IS ON A “NEED TO KNOW” BASIS AND HAS NEVER BEEN RELEASED TO THE PUBLIC, THE MEDIA, OR EVEN OTHER LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCIES. PROTECT.”
Unlike the other sketches produced for the task force, this one was not widely circulated and appears to convey a level of sensitivity and significance that is uncommon in the bombing case. One source told this writer that Associated Press Washington Bureau Chief John Solomon interviewed a senior Customs Agency rep at OKC for the investigation, and that he told Solomon that the FBI were not real concerned about John Doe #2 reports, but they were really worried about John Doe #3, or “Robert Jacquez,” getting media attention. This is obvious enough from the bureau’s unusual disclaimer that is plastered all over November 1995 teletypes concerning the suspect. The notion that Jacquez could have been connected to some sort of sensitive operation comes to mind when you consider the unusual level of secrecy surrounding the sketch, and FBI investigators’ worry over the suspect receiving media attention.
The Manhunt for “John Doe #3”
The timing of the Jacquez visit to Cassville was reason enough for FBI investigators to suspect the man was a key conspirator in the bombing plot: just three days after the visit to Cassville, McVeigh was checked into a hotel in Kent, Ohio attending the Niles Gun Show while accomplices were busy carrying out the robbery of gun dealer Roger Moore in Royal, Arkansas.
Just five days after the Cassville visit, Terry Nichols rented a storage locker in Council Grove, Kansas where many of Roger Moore’s stolen firearms were kept. The Moore robbery was directly linked to funding the Oklahoma City bombing, with $60,000 worth of guns and precious metals stolen to raise funds for the bombing.
At the time of the Cassville visit, McVeigh had spent the previous month gathering bomb components: three 55-gallon barrels of nitromethane and 2,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate had already been sourced and secured in storage lockers. So, too, had McVeigh and Nichols burglarized a quarry for over 350 pounds of Tovex high explosive and blasting caps. Clearly, whoever this Jacquez figure was, he was with McVeigh and Nichols in the middle of the bombing operation when central actions were being carried out in furtherance of the bombing conspiracy.
FBI lead investigator Danny Defenbaugh would continue the Robert Jacquez investigation for five years, much longer than the FBI’s prematurely aborted manhunt for John Doe #2. This indicates that the FBI believed that John Doe #2—a man seen at Elliott’s Body Shop with someone witnesses identified as Timothy McVeigh—was a separate and different person than the man witnesses described as Robert Jacquez and it also indicates that the FBI considered Jacquez to be of great importance given the length of time and man hours invested in investigating him.
The results of a Rocky Mountain News investigation into the Jacquez manhunt was published in the fall of 1998 and revealed that in the three years since the bombing, the FBI had been relentlessly looking for the suspect. Investigative journalist Kevin Flynn wrote that “No other name investigated in the bombing consumed nearly the time and effort the FBI spent turning the nation upside down to find him” and Flynn provided many examples, some recounted here:
Over a three year period, the FBI performed hundreds of background checks on people whose last names are Jacks, Jacques, Jacquez or Jocques.
FBI agents fanned out through 39 states, interviewing people and performing records searches related to any people whose names were variations on the name “Jacquez”
The lengths to which the FBI went when investigating Jacquez are exemplified by the investigation of a woman named Linda Jacquez from Percy, Illinois. The FBI examined records of over 1,000 personal calls made from her home in 1994. Similar records analysis was likely performed on the other hundreds of subjects whose names were Jacquez or variations thereof.
A man named Jacquez who lived in Colorado Springs was interviewed by the FBI in August 1995 because agents had found his name on a motel registration card at a Days Inn in Rogers, Arkansas dated September 5th, 1994. While the man was found to have had no connection to the bombing, some clues regarding the FBI’s interest emerge from the details: Rogers, Arkansas is located just 35 miles from Cassville, Missouri. Additionally, and perhaps significantly, a group of bank robbers that FBI investigators at one time linked to the bombing had been through Rogers, Arkansas casing armored car routes.
The FBI subpoenaed Newsweek for its subscription records on anyone named Robert Jacks, Jacques or Jocques. Other contemporary news magazines were probably similarly the recipients of targeted subpoenas.
It appears that the FBI’s all-encompassing investigation was in some respects superficial: the FBI investigated every person and conceivable record that might feature the name “Jacquez” (and variations thereof) even though “Jacquez” was probably a fake name that the man had used. Surely FBI investigators would have realized this, but nevertheless continued to track down any and all details they could related to the phony name.
Unresolved Leads and Dead Ends
Among the details uncovered when investigating Jacquez was that McVeigh buddy Michael Fortier’s former neighbor and associate Jim Rosencrans once shared a post office box with a “Robert Jacquez” in Odessa, Texas. This fact did little to contribute to understanding the man’s true identity—only denials were offered from Rosencrans with him saying that he had never heard of anyone using the name Jacquez in spite of evidently having shared a mail box with the man. Thus, this possible lead remains unresolved to the satisfaction of anyone curious enough to consider the lead possibly relevant. Who was it, and why wasn’t Rosencrans more thoroughly “motivated” to provide answers? Was the mailbox detail a red herring?
Yet another bizarre fact emerged concerning Jacquez as it relates to suspects in the investigation: the FBI discovered an address book in Terry Nichols’ home which featured the name “Jacquez” written out multiple times with variations on the spelling: Jacques, Jacquez, Jacks. The handwriting on the paper was thought to belong to Marife Nichols, Terry Nichols’ mail order bride from the Philippines, because the address book belonged to her. However, what exactly Marife (or someone else) was doing writing this name down on an otherwise blank page in her address book remains unknown and incredibly suspect. When interviewed about this unusual detail by Kevin Flynn of the Rocky Mountain News, former FBI lead investigator in the bombing case, Weldon Kennedy, claims he wasn’t even aware of the notebook or the writing found within it. This fact either shows a stunning level of ignorance and possible incompetence by the OKBOMB task force’s supposed leader, or, dishonesty. Kennedy would add “For the life of us, we were never able to pin (the Jacquez sighting) down.” Consider the fact that Weldon Kennedy lied about a significant detail of the investigation in his book, On Scene Commander, where Kennedy wrote that “the case would primarily be based on forensic evidence because there were no eyewitnesses.” Contrast that with the established fact that there were over 24 eyewitnesses in downtown Oklahoma City who saw Timothy McVeigh and a judgment about Weldon Kennedy’s honesty can be rendered.
Ultimately the Jacquez leads were followed up on exhaustively over at least five years with no identification of the suspect being made. One of the obvious problems with the FBI’s seemingly exhaustive investigation was that the focus appeared to be on potential suspects whose actual real names were “Robert Jacquez” or variations thereof when it’s highly probable that the name was just an alias that the mystery man had used. This fact would prove to be the likely reason FBI investigators were stymied when trying to identify the man. Contributing to this failure is the fact that certain leads appear to not have been examined more aggressively: the Rosencrans lead, the notebook found in Nichols’ home, and finally, the fingerprint evidence.
Though Maloney turned over a laminated map with the “Jacquez” fingerprints on it, the FBI doesn’t appear to have compared those fingerprints to the 1,035 fingerprints collected in the case from key locations such as motel rooms. This is known due to the testimony of FBI fingerprint expert Louis Hupp who testified at the Nichols trial. Hupp’s testimony reveals that none of the 1,035 fingerprints collected had been run through the NCIC or FBI fingerprint database for a match. Worse, they failed to check to see if any of the 1,035 fingerprints matched with one another. Doing that would have allowed the FBI to determine if one or more persons were present at multiple locations, placing that person with McVeigh during the bombing conspiracy and confirming that the prints belong to a likely accomplice. Shockingly, Hupp testified that the bombing task force’s leadership had decided that attempting to identify the other fingerprints “would not be necessary.” This failure of diligence is an outrage and can only be explained by two possibilities: incompetence or, the FBI had reason to not want to identify the other suspects. The latter explanation brings with it a host of uncomfortable questions.
The FBI’s failed Jacquez investigation would later cause McVeigh’s execution to be delayed after it was discovered that the FBI had withheld from defense attorneys the full facts concerning the five year manhunt. On May 9th, 2001, the FBI officially disclosed to Timothy McVeigh’s defense attorneys—just six days before his execution date—that it had failed to turn over around 3,000 pages of documents during McVeigh’s trial. A week later, it was reported that many of the withheld documents were “witness statements and photographs relating to a mysterious person known as Robert Jacquez.”
Possible Identification?
At one point during the FBI investigation the Robert Jacquez sketch was compared by FBI investigators to sketches of suspects from a bank robbery investigation called “BOMBROB.” A November 1st, 1995 teletype from the St. Louis field office sent to the director of the FBI and eight field offices details the comparison.
The teletype describes an October 1995 broadcast of “America’s Most Wanted” which featured sketches of bank robbers responsible for a series of bank robberies that were under investigation. Agents assigned to the OKBOMB investigation noted a strong similarity between one of the bank robber sketches and the Jacquez sketch.
The bank robber sketch depicted a suspect from an August, 16th 1995 robbery of a bank in Bridgeton, Missouri. The robbers who had carried out the Bridgeton, MO robbery had left a newspaper clipping about Timothy McVeigh in the back-seat of the drop car they had used for the robbery, further igniting suspicions among the investigating agents. That bank robber would later be identified as Richard Lee Guthrie, founder of a white supremacist terrorist group called “The Aryan Republican Army.”
The investigators asked: was Jacquez the same man being sought in the bank robbery investigation? Take a look for yourself, and ask, are these suspects one and the same?
The November 1st teletype also makes additional comparisons between the “Jacquez” suspect’s distinctive jungle boots—described in detail by Bill Maloney—and the distinctive boots worn by bank robber Richard Guthrie when he purchased a getaway vehicle in Alton, Illinois in December of ’94.
Was “Jacquez” the same person who robbed the bank in Missouri who had left a clipping about McVeigh in the back seat of the robbers’ drop car?
Nearly a year after the November 1, 1995 teletype, the Oklahoma City Bombing task force investigators would continue to examine possible links between Jacquez and the bank robbery gang that Guthrie had belonged to. Examining FBI interviews with one member of the bank robbery gang, Kevin McCarthy, shows that apparent interest. A September 20, 1996 FBI interview by SA Bill Teater shows that McCarthy was asked about “any knowledge he may have regarding individuals involved in the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.” SA Teater was the same FBI agent who had interviewed the witnesses at Maloney Real Estate, and was thus the point man in the Jacquez investigation.
During the interview, McCarthy was asked about people he associated with or had seen at Elohim City, a racial separatist compound. Guthrie had visited Elohim City throughout the early to mid 90s and was well known to McCarthy, having participated in numerous bank robberies with him.
During McCarthy’s interview, SA Teater asked McCarthy if anyone he knew had ever traveled to Missouri for the purpose of locating rural property, or if he knew anyone that might have been ex-military. He was shown the sketch of Robert Jacquez and asked if it looked like anyone he knew. Teater asked McCarthy if he knew anyone named “Robert or Bob Jacquez.” The FBI 302 report of the interview says that McCarthy “thought for a few moments and replied that he really could not think of anyone he personally knew by that name” but added that “the name was one he had heard before.”
The most illuminating part of the interview comes from Teater’s line of questioning regarding Jacquez’ appearance. Recall that witness Maloney described Jacquez as dark-skinned and “possibly American Indian” while another witness, Barbara Whittenberg, had said that the man she saw with McVeigh and Nichols on April 15th (speculated to be the same person as Jacquez) was dark skinned and “possibly Hawaiian.” By all accounts the muscular Jacquez figure was not Caucasian. Teater asked McCarthy if he knew anyone matching this description, or if anyone like that had been at Elohim City. McCarthy answered that he did not associate with people matching that description and that “anyone matching that description would not have been welcome at Elohim City.”
Indeed, the bank robbery suspect whose sketch resembled the Jacquez sketch—Richard Guthrie—was a Caucasian. Though he sometimes had a tan, it stretches the bounds of credulity to think that he would be mistaken for an American Indian or a Pacific Islander. Likewise, a person fitting that description would be an unlikely figure to be found among the white supremacists to be found at Elohim City and within McCarthy and Guthrie’s social circle.
Ultimately, Guthrie just doesn’t fit the description of Jacquez in spite of similarities between his sketch and the sketch of Jacquez. For example, Richard Guthrie did not look like a body builder, did not have a “thick neck” or a powerful build. He was 5 foot 7, where Jacquez was described as near 6 feet tall.
After an examination of the facts, it appears that Guthrie can be ruled out as having been Jacquez. Like the Rosencrans lead, the possible identification of Guthrie as Jacquez would become a dead end.
Other Witnesses to the “Jaquez” Suspect
The FBI’s OKBOMB investigation uncovered multiple witnesses whose statements to the FBI indicate that the man Maloney and Davidson saw with McVeigh and Nichols calling himself Robert Jacquez may have been seen by other people in the days and weeks prior to the bombing.
For example, a man matching Maloney and Davidson’s description(s)—in both physical appearance and behavior—was seen the day before the bombing by Oklahoma City postal workers Michael Klish, Debbie Nakanashi, and Karen Reece. Nakanashi told the FBI that the day before the bombing, McVeigh and another man had been at the post office branch across the street from the Murrah building. Nakanashi’s account is important to reference here because Nakanashi’s memory of the man’s behavior and appearance so closely matches that of the man calling himself Robert Jacquez that Maloney and Davidson had encountered just five months prior. Nakanashi told the FBI that the man with McVeigh “walked with a military bearing.” Using words almost identical to those used by Maloney to describe the man, Nakanashi said that “it was obvious to me this other man was the one that was in control of the situation, he was the boss.”
Another witness who may have encountered the enigmatic “Robert Jacquez” was restaurant owner Barbara Whittenberg. Whittenberg was the proprietor of the Sante Fe Trail diner located just off route 77 in Kansas. On Saturday, April 15th, 1995 she served breakfast to Timothy McVeigh, Terry Nichols, and a third man who has never been identified. Noting a Ryder moving truck in the parking lot, Whittenberg asked the group if one of them was moving, and where to. The third man replied, telling her “Oklahoma City.” Whittenberg replied that she had relatives in a town south of Oklahoma City, making friendly small talk with the group. According to Whittenberg, the remark immediately stopped the conversation dead in its tracks—“McVeigh looked at him and you could feel buckets of ice being poured over our conversation. I got out of it.”
When Whittenberg was shown the “John Doe #2” sketch, she said that the third man she served breakfast to that morning looked different, saying “his face was thinner, his cheekbones more prominent, and his nose wider” than what the sketch depicted. However, when she was shown the sketch of “Robert Jacquez” she made a more positive identification, telling a CNN reporter “Yes. This is the closest picture I’ve seen yet!” Using language almost identical to Bill Maloney, Whittenberg recalled that the man she had seen was “darker skinned” and had a “thick neck,” looking “like a bodybuilder.” She said that the man was “possibly Hawaiian,” accounting for SA Bill Teater using that descriptor when asking bank robber Kevin McCarthy about Jacquez.
It is important to note that Whittenberg’s account of what she had seen appeared in reports from The New York Times in the fall of 1995, the Washington Post in April of 1996, a May 1996 issue of The New American magazine, the June 4th edition of McCurtain Gazette, followed by a citation and quote in the June 23rd 1996 edition of the Kansas City Star. The Associated Press would issue a syndicated report throughout all national newspapers on March 9, 1997, and the same month Whittenberg’s account would feature prominently in a TIME magazine article. Whittenberg’s media exposure, and the thus the exposure of the reality of the third suspect she had seen, was at an apex in 1997. That’s when the death threats started. Yes, death threats.
Whittenberg would later testify in 1997 before the grand jury impaneled to investigate the bombing that she began receiving death threats telling her to keep her mouth shut. At that time she told a Daily Oklahoman newspaper reporter covering the grand jury proceedings that “I’ve started to regret I ever said a thing,” adding, “I don’t do telephone interviews any more. I used to not be that way. I’m sorry.”
Who was this man, described by witnesses as the evident boss of McVeigh? His identity was sensitive enough for FBI teletypes to issue a disclaimer noting that the sketch was sensitive and on a “NEED TO KNOW” basis, to be withheld from newsmedia and other law enforcement agencies and media exposure about the man caused at least one witness to receive death threats. Terry Nichols, too, would express apparent fear concerning the identification of these other suspects.
Nichols Fears for His Life, Stonewalls
Additional confirmation that this Jacquez figure was a sensitive suspect emerges after an analysis of a batch of FBI documents stemming from 2005 interviews with convicted bomber Terry Nichols. In 2005, Nichols was interviewed by the FBI numerous times in relation to explosives and other evidence that he revealed were preserved and buried under his former Herington, Kansas home. Some of the revelations gleaned from those 2005 interviews as they relate to Robert Jacquez and John Doe #2 are relevant to the “Robert Jacquez” story but they offer more questions than they do answers.
During the 2005 interviews, Nichols told the FBI where they could locate explosives he said were buried under his former Herington home. During the interviews concerning these explosives, Nichols would tell the FBI that John Doe #2 exists and that he knows his identity, but would not reveal it out of fear for his family’s safety. Nichols said that the man’s name had not been revealed or mentioned by anyone at that time, and implied that the man or those whom he represents presented an immediate threat to his life and that of his family members.
Nichols was equally evasive about the enigmatic Robert Jacquez. Nichols said in his interviews that he had visited Missouri looking to buy real estate, but that only he and McVeigh had been there. Nichols’ description of the visit entirely omits Robert Jacquez from the narrative as if he wasn’t there. Assuming the 302 report is accurate, what prompted Nichols to exclude Jacquez from the narrative? The man clearly exists based on the solid accounts from Bill Maloney, Joe Davidson, and Nora Young. So, too, did the existence of a slip of paper recovered from Nichols’ home with the name “Jacquez” scrawled on it raise serious questions about the likelihood that the man was involved in a criminal conspiracy with McVeigh and Nichols.
Ultimately, what can be concluded based on the witness testimony, polygraph results, and FBI documents is that Robert Jacquez was involved with McVeigh and Nichols—perhaps on more than one occasion—and that for some reason, Terry Nichols is covering for this person in denying his presence. Like John Doe #2, Nichols may be fearful of the man or who he represents, and this may account for his silence on the matter. And so it remains a key mystery in the case whose answers may lie locked away with Terry Nichols.
Who was the man who called himself “Robert Jacquez,” seen with Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols in November 1994? What became of the fingerprint evidence that Maloney turned over to the FBI and why wasn’t it compared to the fingerprints collected in the case? Was the man spotted by Maloney and Davidson the same man seen with McVeigh the day prior to the bombing by Debbie Nakanashi? Was it the same man spotted with McVeigh and Nichols by Barbara Whittenberg on April 15th? Why was Nichols so evidently fearful concerning these suspects? Why did the FBI enact such secrecy surrounding the Jacques sketch, and fear subsequent media coverage of the suspect? Just who the hell was Robert Jacquez?
Sources/Additional Reading
News Reports:
Many of the details concerning “Robert Jacquez” were sourced from a handful of media accounts concerning the suspect that emerged in 1997–98, and again in 2001 when accounts concerning withheld documents emerged. Here is a suggested reading list for students of the case curious about this suspect:
“Report: FBI Looking for Man Seen With Bombing Suspects.” Associated Press, 9 Mar. 1997. [link]
“FBI Searches For Third Man.” CNN, 9 Mar. 1997. [link]
“FBI Reportedly Looking For Man In Bombing.” Associated Press, 10 Mar. 1997. [link]
“3rd Man Sought in Bomb Probe.” Associated Press, 10 Mar. 1997. [link]
“Man Linked to McVeigh Nichols During Land Inquiry Is Sought.” Buffalo News, 10 Mar. 1997. [link]
“Mystery Man Linked to McVeigh Broker Believes Trio Sought Hideout.” Cincinatti Post, 10 Mar. 1997. [link]
“Report: FBI Searching for McVeigh Cohort.” Daily News [Los Angeles], 10 Mar. 1997. [link]
“FBI Reportedly Seeks Man Seen with McVeigh, Nichols.” Dallas Morning News, 10 Mar. 1997. [link]
“FBI Looking for Man Who Sought Hideout With Suspects in Blast.” Houston Chronicle, 10 Mar. 1997. [link]
“FBI Seeks Man With McVeigh.” Spokane Spokesman-Review, 10 Mar. 1997. [link]
“Man Linked to McVeigh, Nichols During Land Inquiry Is Sought.” The Buffalo News, 10 Mar. 1997. [link]
“FBI Seeks Suspects’ Companion.” The Salina Journal, 10 Mar. 1997. [link]
“Who Is Robert Jacquez?” TIME, 17 Mar. 1997. [link]
“OKC Case Still Missing a Link.” Rocky Mountain News, 21 Apr. 1998. [link]
“John Doe 2 It’s Still an Open Question.” Kansas City Star, 4 Jun. 1998. [link]
“Conspiracy Theory Lingers in Oklahoma City Attack.” Kansas City Star, 6 Jun. 1998. [link]
“More McVeigh Files Found: FBI Orders Massive Search.” Los Angeles Times, 15 May 2001. [link]
“Were There Others?” ABC News, 30 May 2001. [link]
Books:
Gumbel, Andrew, and Roger Charles. Oklahoma City: What the Investigation Missed — and Why It Still Matters. HarperCollins, 2012, pp. 212–216, 255, 309
Richard Booth is an independent citizen journalist and member in good standing with the Constitution First Amendment Press Association (CFAPA). A student of the OKC bombing case since 1995, Richard began researching the Oklahoma City bombing in earnest in 2012 and is currently writing a book about the case. Richard has appeared on podcasts to discuss his interest, highlighting areas that warrant additional research and expressing the need for more students to actively research this case. In April 2020, Richard donated his archive of research materials—thousands of news reports, articles, magazine pieces, FBI documents, ATF documents, court records and trial transcripts to The Libertarian Institute. You can find this archive here.
Veteran CIA counterintelligence chief James Angleton secretly oversaw a top-level spy ring involving Jewish émigrés and Israeli operatives without “any clearances” from Congress or Langley itself, according to recently declassified documents published as part of the Trump administration’s pledge to disclose all available information on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
The files provide a fresh and often disturbing look at a spy described by historian Jefferson Morley as “a leading architect of America’s strategic relationship with Israel,” detailing Angleton’s role in transforming the Mossad into a fearsome agency with global reach, while assisting Israel’s theft of US nuclear material and protecting Zionist terrorists.
Angleton established the Jewish emigre spying network in the aftermath of WWII, with the apparent goal of infiltrating the Soviet Union. But as the files show, the spymaster considered his “most important” task to be maintaining the supply of Jewish immigrants flowing from the Soviet Union towards the burgeoning Israeli state.
According to Angelton, his Jewish assets were responsible for 22,000 reports on the USSR, generating several intelligence masterstrokes. Chief among them was the publication of Soviet Prime Minister Nikita Kruschev’s famous 1956 secret speech denouncing Stalin, which the spymaster boasted “practically created revolutions in Hungary and Poland.” Elsewhere, Angleton bragged that his arrangement with Israel had produced “500 Polish intelligence officers who were Jewish” who “knew more about Polish intelligence than the Poles.”
Other passages appear to show Angleton taking credit for securing the “release” of several Zionist terrorists affiliated with the Irgun militia before they could be convicted for bombing the British embassy in Rome. Though the group had been captured by Italian authorities, the newly-disclosed files indicate the terror cell was freed on the orders of the CIA.
The information was originally divulged in 1975 to senators serving on the Church Committee, which probed widespread abuses by US intelligence in the decades prior. Congress was particularly interested in claims by New York Times foreign correspondent Tad Szulc, who testified under oath that Angleton had personally informed him that the US provided technical information on nuclear devices to Israel in the late 1950s. The new documents show that Angleton was deceptive under questioning, and evaded questions on Israel’s nuclear espionage efforts on the record.
Additional unsealed FBI documents, which refer to Israel’s Mossad as Angleton’s “primary source” of information, confirm that the CIA’s head of counterintelligence relied heavily on Tel Aviv to solidify his position within the Agency – and also add to the growing body of evidence that Angleton may not have been operating with US interests in mind throughout his 21-year tenure.
Other newly declassified files from the FBI have shown that Angleton maintained a wildly lopsided relationship with the Bureau, which saw federal agents deferring to the CIA counterintelligence chief after they caught him surveilling the correspondence of huge numbers of Americans. The files show Angleton openly admitting he would have been fired if Langley caught wind of his leaks to the Bureau.
A side-by-side analysis of the now-unredacted Church Committee files compared with their previously-released versions from 2018 demonstrates that even after 70 years, Washington felt compelled to conceal details of its real relationship with Israel’s founders. Over a dozen references to “Israel,” “Tel Aviv,” or descriptions of figures as “Jewish,” which were scrubbed from the 2018 release, can now be viewed on the National Archives site.
The documents reveal that Angleton repeatedly lied to multiple Congressional bodies, including the Church Committee, which investigated CIA abuses, and the House Select Committee on Assassinations, which probed the murders of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. Angleton was similarly evasive when interrogated over Israel’s nuclear weapons program, and about CIA knowledge or complicity in the scheme.
Those documents also reveal that Angleton’s CIA counterintelligence staff ordered Lee Harvey Oswald’s removal from federal watchlists six weeks before Kennedy’s assassination, despite his classification as a high security risk. The surveillance of Oswald was personally overseen by a member of Angleton’s intelligence network of Jewish emigres, Reuben Efron, a CIA spy from Lithuania. Angleton had placed Efron in charge of an Agency program called HT/Lingual which intercepted and read correspondences between Oswald and his family.
Numerous historians have questioned why the CIA counterintelligence chief insisted for decades on personally overseeing what he described as the “Israeli account.” Though several off-the-record interactions remain impossible to parse, the documents show that when grilled about his “unusually close” connections to the Israeli Mossad, Angleton acknowledged forming an “arrangement” in which, “in most simplistic terms, [the Israelis] were informed that we would not work with them against the Arabs, [but] that we would work with them on Soviet bloc Intelligence and communism.”
Freeing Zionist terrorists
One of the earliest instances of Angleton’s cooperation with Zionist elements came as Zionist militants embarked on a terrorist campaign to pressure the British colonial authorities to leave Mandate Palestine.
In October 1946, three months after they bombed the British administrative headquarters at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, members of the right-wing Irgun militia planted explosives in the British embassy in Rome in a failed bid to assassinate the UK’s ambassador to Italy.
According to Angleton, after the Irgun “blew up the British embassy in Rome” in 1946, the CIA intervened to ensure they escaped Italy without prosecution.
“We had the members of the group, and then we had the dilemma again as to whether we turned them over to the British authorities,” noted Angleton, who had served as counterintelligence chief for the Italian branch of the Office of Strategic Services, the CIA’s predecessor. “And we were in a position to make the decision one way or the other. And eventually we came down on the side of releasing them.”
A secret deal with the Mossad
As Washington sought to manage the political ruptures caused by the creation of Israel, and monitor the wave of Soviet migrants pouring into the self-proclaimed Jewish state, Angleton framed his takeover of “the Israeli account” as a convenient way for US intelligence to kill two birds with one stone.
“The other side of the Israeli problem was that you had thousands coming from the Soviet Union and you had the Soviets making use of the immigration for the purpose of sending illegal agents into the West and breaking down all the travel control, identifications and so on. And so there was both a security problem and a political problem.”
To manage these “problems,” the US and Israelis brokered a deal involving the secret exchange of “papers and signals, communications intelligence, [and] the other products of intelligence action,” Angleton stated. The spy chief claimed the only records of the 1951 arrangement held by the US side would be in the possession of the Agency, and admitted US Congress had been left in the dark, telling senators, “I don’t think there were any clearances obtained from the Hill.”
Asked by one legislator how it was “possible for succeeding directors of the intelligence agency to understand what the agreements were between” US and Israeli intelligence, Angleton responded: “Very simple. They saw the production to begin with. And they met with directors or the head of Israeli intelligence. And they met with Ambassadors and prime ministers. And they were very much involved.”
Grooming Zionist spies “outside the structure” of the CIA
Angleton was especially protective of what he called “the fiduciary relationship” with Tel Aviv, assembling a close-knit clique of Jewish Americans with dubious loyalties to manage it as World War Two drew to a close. “I started from the south side with two Jewish men who worked with me during the war,” he explained. Having “sent them over as ordinary people under cover” to get their bearings in newly-formed Israel, Angleton “brought over six others and put them through some months of training, outside of the structure” of the CIA.
“To break down the fiduciary relationship – which is after all a personal business – all the men I have had, were men who stayed in it and came back to headquarters and went back to Tel Aviv, they went to the National Security Council, and went back to Tel Aviv, et cetera.”
“It was probably the most economical operation that has ever been devised in the U.S. Government,” Angleton crowed. “I don’t think there was [sic] more than 10 people that were hired in the same process.”
Having trained these spies “outside of the structure” of the CIA, it’s unclear how Angleton ensured they remained faithful to US national security objectives, or whether he ever intended to.
Enabling Israeli theft of US nuclear material, spying on America
Angleton’s role in enabling Israel’s wanton theft of nuclear material from an American facility is one of the more shocking episodes in the US-Israeli relationship. The scene of the crime was the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation, or NUMEC, a uranium processing facility in Apollo, Pennsylvania owned by a Zionist financier named David Lowenthal. In 1965, Zalman Shapiro, a fellow Zionist hired by Lowenthal to run the plant, illegally diverted hundreds of kilograms of nuclear fissile material to Israel. Posing as a scientist, the notorious Mossad spy Rafi Eitan visited NUMEC three years later to continue the heist.
As Jefferson Morley documented in his biography of Angleton, “The Ghost,” the late CIA counterintelligence chief made sure the CIA looked the other way as Israel constructed its first nuclear weapon out of the stolen fissile material. According to Morley, “Angleton, it is fair to say, thought collaboration with Israel was more important than U.S. non-proliferation policy.”
A 1977 investigation by the US Government Accountability Office found that the CIA withheld information about the NUMEC nuclear theft from the FBI and Department of Energy, and “found that certain key individuals had not been contacted by the FBI almost 2 years into the FBI’s current investigation.”
The latest batch of Church Committee files add new detail about Angleton’s compromising of US national security to benefit Israel, and his attempts to cover up his betrayal.
During his testimony before the Committee, Angleton was pressed about media reports alleging that he and his counterintelligence unit provided Israel with technical support for constructing nuclear weapons. He strenuously denied the charges, insisting the CIA had never played any role in providing Tel Aviv with nuclear materials. However, when questioned about whether “Israeli intelligence efforts” were ever conducted in the US “aimed at acquiring… nuclear technology,” Angleton equivocated.
First, he blustered, “there have been many efforts by many countries to acquire technical knowledge in this country, and that doesn’t exclude the Israelis.” Asked if CIA counterintelligence had “certain knowledge” of Israeli agents “trying to acquire nuclear secrets in the US,” Angleton pleaded, “Do I have to respond to that?”
The Committee then went “off record” at the senators’ request, making Angleton’s responses impossible to scrutinize.
In a secret 1975 memorandum to the FBI, the ousted CIA counterintelligence chief disclosed that he had “avoided any direct answers” during his Senate testimony on Israel’s spies carrying out “intelligence collection” to gather “nuclear information” in the United States.
Just days later, a Bureau report on “Israeli intelligence collection capabilities” revealed Angleton entertained “frequent personal liaison contacts” with Mossad representatives at Israel’s Washington DC embassy between February 1969 and October 1972. This “special relationship” involved “the exchange of extremely sensitive information.”
Further, the 1975 FBI memo on Angleton disclosed the Israeli embassy’s establishment of a “technical intelligence network” seven years earlier which was directed by an Israel scientist who worked on Tel Aviv’s nuclear program. This may explain why Angleton was so cagey under Senate questioning.
“Israeli matters” trigger Angleton’s downfall
The Church Committee files show Angleton bristled at then-CIA Director William Colby’s efforts to apply a modicum of transparency to the Agency’s activities, especially as they related to Israel. The spymaster warned that if the USSR ever caught wind of Langley’s use of the self-proclaimed Jewish state as a de facto halfway house for communist turncoats, they would almost certainly end their policy of encouraging Eastern European Jews to migrate to Israel:
“This idea of opening the doors and letting the light in, and breaking down compartmentation, and breaking down the need to know, would inevitably put in jeopardy the immigration, if the Soviets should learn the extent of the activities,” Angleton stated.
Colby fired Angleton in 1974 after the New York Times revealed that he devised an illegal program of domestic spying targeting antiwar American dissidents. In his testimony, Angleton framed their clash as an interpersonal conflict, describing Colby as “not my cup of tea professionally or in any other way.”
Yet Angleton also acknowledged to Senate that a “dispute in connection with these Israeli matters” between himself and Colby contributed to his departure from the Agency. Was this a reference to the former spook’s involvement in Israeli theft of US nuclear secrets, enabling Israel to acquire the bomb?
Whatever the case, it was clear why Angleton would be remembered more fondly in Israel than inside the country he ostensibly served.
On December 4, 1987, the director of Israel’s Mossad and Shin Bet intelligence services gathered in secret on a hillside in Jerusalem to plant a tree in honor of Angleton. They were joined there by five former Israeli spy chiefs and three former military intelligence officers.
Despite attempts to keep the ceremony under wraps, two local reporters managed to evade the cordon to record the ceremony for the former CIA counter-intelligence director, who had died seven months prior. Together, the Israeli spooks laid a memorial stone that read, “In memory of a dear friend, James (Jim) Angleton.”
Given the recentstories about Merrick Garland’s experience at the helm of the Oklahoma City bombing prosecution and his own comments about prosecuting white supremacists should he be made Attorney General, I have some questions about Garland’s handling of the OKC bombing case.
My questions:
At an April 27, 1995 Preliminary Hearing, why did you “object” when defense attorneys noted that your witness, FBI agent Jon Hersley, testified that the Ryder truck carried “passengers” — plural? Your objection was overruled, and your witness confirmed that Timothy McVeigh was seated in the Ryder truck with another individual. Who is that individual?
At the April 27, 1995 Preliminary Hearing, why did you “object” when attorneys asked your witness the names of those FBI agents tasked with reviewing the surveillance camera footage of the bombing?
You once said “we did everything we could to find every person who was involved.” If that’s true, then how do you explain the fact that every eyewitness you touted at the April 27th 1995 preliminary hearing never testified at the federal trials? Why didn’t these witnesses get to tell a jury what they saw? Why is it that the man seen with Timothy McVeigh in the Ryder truck has never been identified?
If Merrick Garland is truly dedicated to prosecuting dangerous white supremacists then he can show it by reopening the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing case and identifying and prosecuting Timothy McVeigh’s accomplices. I would not be alone in calling for the case to be re-opened. Danny Coulson, the FBI on-scene commander for the Oklahoma bomb site, agrees. In 2004, Coulson told John Solomon of the Associated Press that there are “some unanswered questions here. A lot of things happened that were inappropriate,” Coulson said. “I think it needs to be reopened, but I don’t think it should be reopened by the FBI. It needs to be a special investigator, a lawyer, totally independent. He needs to have subpoena power and the ability to use a grand jury.”
Danny Defenbaugh, then the retired chief of the FBI’s OKBOMB investigation agreed: “If I were still in the bureau, the investigation would be reopened” said Defenbaugh, commenting on new evidence that came to light almost a decade after the bombing. ”If the evidence is still there, then it should be checked out.”
Garland can kick off this effort by compelling the FBI to produce the surveillance camera footage that shows two men exiting the Ryder truck, and he can finish by apologizing for letting dangerous white supremacists get away with it for the last 25 years.
On July 30th, the ODNI declassified damning evidence from a US intelligence community whistleblower. They attest to being aggressively – but unsuccessfully – pressured by superiors into signing off on the infamous 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment, which expressed “high confidence” Russia interfered in the previous year’s Presidential election to ensure Donald Trump’s victory. Their testimony indicates senior US spy agency officials not only well-knew the ICA’s findings were bogus, but consciously ignored and suppressed far more compelling evidence of widespread, non-Russian meddling in the vote.
The whistleblower is a US intelligence veteran who from 2015 to 2020 served as Deputy National Intelligence Officer, at the ODNI-overseen National Intelligence Council. They specialised in “cyber issues”, including “cyber-enabled information operations”. Prior to the 2016 vote, they led the production of an ICA on “cyber threats” to US elections, at the order of Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, for which they were “commended”. They were then tasked by the outgoing Obama administration to assist in the 2017 ICA’s production.
That assessment purported to expose “Russian activities and intentions” in the Presidential election. The whistleblower’s role was to investigate alleged attempts by Moscow “to access US election-related infrastructure”, as “reporting suggested many Russia-attributed IP addresses were making connection attempts that the [US intelligence community] could not explain the purpose of.” However, an official – name redacted – subsequently “directed us to abandon any further study of the subject,” on the basis it was “something else.”
For the whistleblower, the “abrupt dismissal of the study effort” raised significant concerns about the true nature and source of the “Russia-attributed cyber activity.” They suspected their superiors were attempting to conceal how state or non-state actors closer to home may have been engaged in “Domain Name Service (DNS) record manipulation”, to falsely ascribe cyber meddling efforts to Moscow. Their anxieties only multiplied when superiors rebuffed their attempts to include references to “other nations’ efforts to influence the 2016 Presidential election” in the 2017 ICA.
The whistleblower’s “professional judgment… was multiple nations were seeking to shape the views of the US electorate,” and therefore influence their voting preferences. This assessment was based not only on relentless negative media coverage of Trump in allied countries, including Britain and other “NATO partners”, but the “interception of electronic communications from members of [Trump’s] incoming Presidential administration.” The source of this interception is redacted. So too is the identity of an official who repeatedly demanded the whistleblower conceal this from the National Security Council.
‘Tradecraft Standards’
The ICA’s release on January 6th 2017, 11 days prior to Trump’s inauguration, ignited a media frenzy over the President-elect’s potential ties to Russia, and the Kremlin’s purported role in installing him in the White House. The New York Times dubbed the document a “damning and surprisingly detailed account” of Moscow’s “efforts to undermine the American electoral system.” The Washington Post boldly described it as “a remarkably blunt assessment”, and “extraordinary postmortem of a Russian assault on a pillar of American democracy.”
In reality, the ICA offered zero evidence to support its bombastic headline conclusions. It was claimed “full supporting information on key elements of [Russia’s] influence campaign” was “highly classified”. Bizarrely, much of the Assessment’s content focused instead on the output of Russian media – both for domestic and international audiences – with no relevance whatsoever to the 2016 election. This included RT America coverage of topics including police brutality, fracking, and “alleged Wall Street greed.”
The whistleblower records how when they learned the ICA was so heavily dependent on a “simplistic treatment” of “English language Russian media articles”, they expressed “substantial concern” over the “legitimacy” of the Assessment’s “analytic tradecraft”. They moreover “could not concur in good conscience based on information available,” and their “professional analytic judgement,” of a “decisive Russian preference” for Trump’s victory, as concluded by the ICA. The whistleblower thus refused to sign off on its findings.
This was not well-received by a senior US intelligence official, name redacted. Leading up to the ICA’s release, they sought to harass and suborn the whistleblower into endorsing the Assessment. After multiple failed attempts to bully the whistleblower to “abandon” their “tradecraft standards” and simply “trust” there was “reporting you are not allowed to see,” which “if you saw it, you would agree,” the official strongly implied the whistleblower’s subsequent promotion was contingent on their agreement.
When this approach didn’t work, the “visibly frustrated” official fulminated, “I need you to agree with these judgments, so that DIA [Defense Intelligence Agency] will go along with them.” This prompted discussion between the pair about the DIA’s “supposed trust” in the whistleblower, and “the necessity” of them proving their “bona fides” as an intelligence community officer “by doing what it took to bring DIA on board as an additional [intelligence] Agency signing on to the 2017 ICA.”
Refusing to compromise on “standards, tradecraft, and ethics”, the whistleblower defied his superior’s direct order “to misrepresent my views to DIA.” While unexplored in the declassified file, the official’s desperation for the DIA to endorse the ICA is understandable. In September 2020, it was revealed the entire US intelligence community had no “confidence” in the Assessment. In fact, then-CIA director John Brennan personally wrote the report’s incendiary conclusions, before selecting a coterie of his close Agency confidantes to sign off.
Many US intelligence analysts conversely assessed Russia favoured Hillary Clinton’s victory, and viewed Trump as a potentially dangerous “wild card”. As such, creating the false impression of US intelligence community unanimity over Brennan’s concocted conclusion was of paramount importance to the CIA chief. In the end, only the Agency, FBI, and NSA publicly endorsed the ICA’s findings. Even then, the NSA – which closely monitors communications of Russian officials, and could therefore detect any high-level discussions about the 2016 election in Moscow – merely expressed “moderate confidence”.
‘Something Else’
The whistleblower’s testimony indicates they were surprised the FBI expressed “high confidence” in the 2017 ICA. They were aware “as recently as September 2016,” the Bureau had “pushed back” against suggestions “of Russian intent to influence” the Presidential election, believing “such a judgement would be misleading.” The whistleblower notes the FBI “altered its positions… without any new data other than the election’s unexpected result [emphasis added] and public speculation Russia had ‘hacked’ the vote – a scenario [the US intelligence community] judged simply did not occur.”
They were furthermore shocked to learn years later disgraced former MI6 spy Christopher Steele’s ‘Trump-Russia’ dossier was a core component of the “highly classified” material, upon which the ICA’s dynamite conclusions heavily relied. It was their understanding the ODNI viewed the dossier at the time “as non-credible sensationalism”, the Office’s chief, James Clapper, considered it “untrustworthy”, and Steele’s ludicrous claims “had never been taken seriously” by US intelligence more widely.
The whistleblower’s grave, myriad anxieties about the Assessment’s construction led them to approach a variety of US government oversight agencies, including the Intelligence Community Inspector General, with what they knew. Despite receiving acknowledgement they “had witnessed malfeasance”, the whistleblower was stonewalled, and their evidence never appears to have reached any relevant authority, let alone been acted upon. Given the explosive nature of the whistleblower’s insider testimony, ominous questions abound over why they encountered such resistance – and where the non-Russian interference they identified truly emanated from.
The whistleblower’s account of being tasked to investigate alleged Russian hacking of “election-related infrastructure” the US intelligence community found inexplicable, only to be told to leave it alone as it was “something else”, is particularly striking. There are several explanations for this activity, all of which point to concerted attempts to falsely concoct the narrative of Russian election interference for malign purposes. For example, in September 2016, Hillary Clinton-connected lawyer Michael Sussmann approached the FBI, claiming to possess explosive evidence of Trump’s collusion with Moscow.
The material comprised DNS logs, supposedly indicating the Trump Organization used a secret server belonging to Russia’s Alfa Bank for back-channel communications with the Kremlin. This was fed to the media, and excitedly reported by certain liberal outlets prior to the election. However, The Intercept rubbished the trove, given the DNS records supplied couldn’t “prove anything at all, and certainly not ‘communication’ between Trump and Alfa,” meaning “no one… can show that a single message was exchanged between Trump and Alfa.”
An alternative may be the Department of Homeland Security was responsible for targeting election infrastructure. In December 2016, The Wall Street Journal reported an attempted hack into the state of Georgia’s voter registration database traced back to a DHS IP address. The incursion came at a time the Department was lobbying for election systems to be regarded as “critical infrastructure”, therefore making their protection part of the agency’s formal purview.
On January 6th 2017, the same day the ICA dropped, DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson jubilantly announced he had designated “election infrastructure” part of the agency’s already vast domestic spying remit. He acknowledged “many state and local election officials… are opposed to this designation.” It was certainly a good day to bury bad news – and assist the CIA and Clinton campaign in furthering nonsense conspiracy theories about Russian attempts to “hack” the 2016 Presidential election, therefore hopefully invalidating its “unexpected result”.
Former President Barack Obama’s administration deliberately manipulated intelligence to frame Russia for interfering in the 2016 presidential election, according to newly declassified documents released on Friday by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.
Gabbard unveiled more than 100 pages of emails, memos, and internal communications, which she described as “overwhelming evidence” of a coordinated effort by senior Obama-era officials to politicize intelligence and launch the multi-year Trump–Russia collusion investigation. She dubbed it “a treasonous conspiracy to subvert the will of the American people.”
The scandal severely damaged relations between Moscow and Washington, leading to sanctions, asset seizures, and a breakdown in normal diplomacy.
”This intelligence was weaponized,” Gabbard said. “It was used as a justification for endless smears, for sanctions from Congress, and for covert investigations.” She added: “When key internal assessments found that Russia ‘did not impact recent U.S. election results,’ those findings were suppressed.”
“For months before the 2016 election, the Intelligence Community maintained that Russia lacked both the intent and capability to hack U.S. elections,” Gabbard noted. “But once President Trump won, everything changed.”
One document — a draft President’s Daily Brief dated December 8, 2016 — stated Russia “did not impact recent U.S. election results” through cyberattacks. The report, prepared by the CIA, NSA, FBI, DHS, and other agencies, found no evidence of voting interference.
Yet Fox News reported on Friday that the document was pulled — “based on new guidance,” according to internal emails. Hours later, a high-level Situation Room meeting took place, attended by officials including DNI James Clapper, CIA Director John Brennan, National Security Adviser Susan Rice, FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, and Attorney General Loretta Lynch.
According to declassified notes, attendees agreed to produce a new intelligence assessment at President Obama’s request. That report, released on January 6, 2017, claimed Russia had intervened in the election to help Donald Trump — directly contradicting earlier assessments.
Gabbard claims the revised assessment leaned on the discredited Steele Dossier — compiled by a former British spy — while sidelining dissenting views within the intelligence apparatus. “This was not intelligence gathering,” Gabbard stated. “It was narrative building.”
Confirmed as DNI earlier this year — after a contentious process — Gabbard says she has forwarded the documents to the Department of Justice. She has urged investigations into former CIA Director John Brennan and former FBI Director James Comey, who are reportedly facing criminal inquiries. “No matter how powerful, every person involved must be brought to justice,” she stressed. “Our nation’s integrity depends on accountability.”
“The integrity of our democratic republic depends on full accountability,” Gabbard concluded. “Nothing less will restore the public’s trust — and ensure nothing like this ever happens again.”
“Libertarians are in the federal crosshairs… Many libertarians assume they have nothing to fear because they are not engaged in seeking to violently overthrow the government. But the feds will be able to find many other pretexts to target peaceful citizens with supposedly subversive ideas.”
Three years ago, I warned at the Institute that White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was damning anyone who did not kowtow to the regime:
“’When you are not with what majority of Americans are, then you know, that is extreme. That is an extreme way of thinking.’ That wacko definition of extremism designed to vilify anyone who doubts Biden will save America’s soul.”
“Federal bureaucrats heaved together a bunch of letters to contrive an ominous new acronym for the latest peril to domestic tranquility. The result: AGAAVE—’anti-government, anti-authority violent extremism’—which looks like a typo for a sugar substitute. The FBI vastly expanded the supposed AGAAVE peril by broadening suspicion from ‘furtherance of ideological agendas’ to ‘furtherance of political and/or social agendas.’ Anyone who has an agenda different from Team Biden’s could be AGAAVE’d for his own good.”
President Joe Biden’s Brain Trust sounded the alarm on criticisms such as “COVID-19 vaccines are unsafe, especially for children, are part of a government or global conspiracy to deprive individuals of their civil liberties and livelihoods, or are designed to start a new social or political order.” After government lockdowns had destroyed millions of jobs, only the paranoid would fear the government would ever violate their liberties or subvert their livelihoods.
Biden policymakers pretended that the surge in criticism of COVID policies was proof of the psychopathology of Biden’s opponents. But in September 2021, Biden dictated that one-hundred million Americans working for private companies must get the COVID vaccine. The official counterterrorism report stated that it anticipated that “the threat will continue at least into the winter, as many of the new COVID-19 mandates in the U.S….are implemented, including U.S. workplace vaccination policies that carry disciplinary or termination penalties.” The Supreme Court struck down most of that vaccine mandate as illegal in January 2022 but not before it had profoundly disrupted legions of lives and businesses—as well as American health care.
The other factor spurring the surge in COVID criticism was the failure of the COVID vaccines. In early 2022, the effectiveness of the COVID booster shot had fallen to 31%—too low to have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration.Though most American adults had gotten COVID vaccines, there were more than a million new COVID cases a day in January 2022. Most COVID fatalities were occurring among the fully vaxxed. Studies showed that people who received multiple boosters were actually more likely to be hit by COVID infections.
So obviously, the Biden administration had no choice but to demonize any and all COVID critics. A confidential 2022 Department of Homeland Security report detailed pending crackdowns on “inaccurate” information on “the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines,” among other targets. A few months earlier, Jen Easterly, the chief of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, declared, “We live in a world where people talk about alternative facts, post-truth, which I think is really, really dangerous if people get to pick their own facts.” Plenty of Biden administration officials considered it “really dangerous” to permit people to assert that COVID vaccines were failing.
The National Counterterrorism Center report noted, “The availability of a vaccine for all school-age children might spur conspiracy theories and perceptions that schools will vaccinate children against parents’ will.” Like the same way that some states and many school systems have sought to enable children to change their gender without their parents’ knowledge or consent?
The report also warned that “new COVID-19 mitigation measures—particularly mandates or endorsements of vaccines for children—will probably spur plotting against the government.” The FDA knew that COVID vaccines sharply increased the risk of myocarditis—an inflamed heart—in young males but the Biden White House browbeat the agency into fully approving the COVID vaccine anyhow. New York Governor Kathy Hochul sought unsuccessfully to mandate vaccines for all schoolkids in the Empire State even though her State Department of Health reported in May 2022 that the Pfizer vaccine was only 12% effective for children during the Omicron surge. The Biden administration included COVID vaccines in the semi-mandatory regimen for young children despite the vaccine’s failure and perils.
The vilification of COVID doubts propelled the Biden crackdown on uppity parents. As governments shut down schools and issued mask mandates in failed responses to COVID, parents raised hell at school board meetings. The National School Board Association denounced such criticism as “a form of domestic terrorism” and urged Team Biden to deploy the FBI and the Patriot Act against protesting parents (an initial draft of the letter called for sending in the National Guard to protect school boards).
On October 4, 2021, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced that the FBI would speedily “convene meetings” in every state aimed at “addressing threats against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff.” The Justice Department announced that its National Security Division would help determine “how federal enforcement tools can be used” to prosecute angry parents. The Biden administration effectively announced plans to drop legal nuclear bombs on school board critics. An FBI whistleblower revealed that FBI counterterrorism tools were being used to target angry parents. FBI agents across the nation began interrogating parents whose names were reported on a “tip line” set up for people to phone in accusations against anyone who complained about school closures, mask mandates, or other issues.
Portraying doubts on COVID policy as a warning sign of domestic violent extremism unleashed the FBI to target anybody who howled against mandatory injections or the near-total destruction of their freedom of movement.That December 13, 2021 National Counterterrorism Center report may be only the tip of the iceberg of federal mischief. We may soon learn of far more direct machinations to vilify, undercut, or other stifle COVID critics.
Former President Joe Biden announces Covid vaccine mandates on September 9, 2021, in Washington, DC. Three months later (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
The Biden Administration labeled Americans who opposed the COVID-19 vaccination and mask mandates as “Domestic Violent Extremists,” or DVEs, according to newly declassified intelligence records obtained by Public and Catherine Herridge Reports. The designation created an “articulable purpose” for FBI or other government agents to open an “assessment” of individuals, which is often the first step toward a formal investigation, said a former FBI agent.
The report, which the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, has declassified, claims that “anti government or anti authority violent extremists,” specifically militias, “characterize COVID-19 vaccination and mask mandates as evidence of government overreach.” A sweeping range of COVID narratives, the report states, “have resonated” with DVEs “motivated by QAnon.”
The FBI, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) coauthored the December 13, 2021 intelligence product whose title reads, “DVEs and Foreign Analogues May React Violently to COVID-19 Mitigation Mandates.”
The report cites criticism of mandates as “prominent narratives” related to violent extremism. These narratives “include the belief that COVID-19 vaccines are unsafe, especially for children, are part of a government or global conspiracy to deprive individuals of their civil liberties and livelihoods, or are designed to start a new social or political order.“
“It’s a way they could go to social media companies and say, ‘You don’t want to propagate domestic terrorism, so you should take down this content,’” said former FBI agent Steve Friend…
On March 25, Donald Trump signed an executive order declassifying all documentation related to Crossfire Hurricane, the FBI’s 2016 investigation into alleged collusion between Russia and then-presidential candidate Donald Trump. The order has unexpectedly resurrected buried documents that cast new light on the Steele dossier — and when it was known to be false.
It is unclear what new information will be revealed, given substantial previous declassifications, two special counsel investigations, multiple congressional inquiries, several civil lawsuits, and a scathing Justice Department internal review. It has long been confirmed the FBI relied heavily on Steele’s discredited dossier to secure warrants against Trump aide Carter Page, despite grave internal concerns about its origins and reliability, and Steele’s sole “subsource” for all its lurid allegations openly admitted in interviews with the Bureau he could offer no corroboration for any of the dossier’s claims.
Such inconvenient facts and damning disclosures were nonetheless concealed from the public for several years following the dossier’s January 2017 publication by BuzzFeed News, now defunct. In the intervening time, it became the central component of the Russiagate narrative, a conspiracy theory that was a major rallying point for countless mainstream journalists, pundits, public figures, Western intelligence officials, and elected lawmakers. In the process, Steele attained mythological status. For example, NBC News dubbed the former MI6 operative “a real-life James Bond.”
Primetime news networks dedicated countless hours to the topic, while leading media outlets invested enormous time, energy and money into verifying the dossier’s claims without success. Undeterred, legacy reporters relied on a roster of mainstream “Russia experts,” including prominent British and U.S. military and intelligence veterans, and briefings from anonymous officials to reinforce Steele’s credibility and the likely veracity of his dossier. As award-winning investigative journalist Aaron Maté told MintPress News :
Media outlets served as unquestioning stenographers for Steele. If his dossier’s claims themselves weren’t sufficient to dismiss it with ridicule, another obvious marker should have set off alarms. Reading the dossier chronologically, a clear pattern emerges – many of its most explosive claims are influenced by contemporary media reporting. For instance, it was only after Wikileaks published the DNC emails in July 2016 that the dossier mentioned them. This is just one example demonstrating the dossier’s true sources were overactive imaginations and mainstream news outlets.”
Even more damningly, leaked documents reviewed by MintPress News reveal that while Western journalists were hard at work attempting to validate Steele’s dossier and elevating the MI6 spy to wholly undeserved pillars of probity, the now-defunct private investigations firm GPW Group was, in early 2017, secretly unearthing vast amounts of damaging material that fatally undermined the dossier’s content, and comprehensively dismantling Steele’s previously unimpeachable public persona. It remains speculative what impact the firm’s findings might have had if they had been released publicly at the time.
‘Financial Incentives’
GPW’s probe of Steele and his dossier was commissioned by Carter Ledyard & Milburn, a law firm representing Mikhail Fridman, Petr Aven, and German Khan — owners of Alfa Bank. The dossier leveled several serious allegations against them. The trio purportedly possessed a “kompromat” on Vladimir Putin, delivered “illicit cash” to him throughout the 1990s, and routinely provided the Kremlin with “informal advice” on foreign policy — “especially about the U.S.” Meanwhile, Alfa Bank supposedly served as a clandestine back channel between Trump and Moscow.
“In order to build a profile of Christopher Steele… as well as the broader operations of both Orbis Business Intelligence and Fusion GPS,” which commissioned the dossier on behalf of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee, GPW consulted “a variety of sources.” This included “U.S. intelligence figures,” various journalists, “private intelligence subcontractors” who had previously worked with Steele and Orbis, and “contacts who knew the man from his time with [MI6]…and, in one instance, directly oversaw his work.”
The picture that emerged of Steele sharply contrasted with his mainstream portrayal as a “superstar.” One operative who “acted as Steele’s manager when he began working with [MI6] and later supervised him at two further points” described him as “average, middle of the road,” stating he had never “shined” in any of his postings. Another suggested Steele’s founding of Orbis “was the source of some incredulity” within MI6 due to his underwhelming professional history and perceived lack of “commercial nous.”
Yet another suggested Steele’s production of the dossier reflected his lack of “big picture judgment.” Sources consulted by GPW were even more critical of Fusion GPS chief Glenn Simpson. One journalist described him as a “hack” without “a license or the contacts to do… actual investigations,” instead outsourcing “all” work ostensibly conducted by his firm to others while skimming commissions. They also “openly admitted” to disliking Simpson, described by GPW as “not an uncommon attitude amongst those to whom we spoke.”
GPW also scrutinized “credibility and perceptions of the dossier in Russia,” specifically whether Steele‘s claims that high-ranking Kremlin-linked sources in Moscow provided him with information had any merit. The firm consulted “Western and Russian journalists, former officials from the FSB and the Russian security services more broadly, a former high-ranking official at the CIA who oversaw the agency’s Russian operations, and several private-sector intelligence practitioners operating in Moscow” for this purpose:
The prevailing sentiment from our contacts was one of extreme skepticism as to the accuracy of… the [dossier]. Most found it unimaginable… senior Russian officials would risk life imprisonment (or worse) by speaking to a former foreign intelligence official about such sensitive issues. At the very least… it would have cost Steele a great deal more… than he could afford… Former intelligence operatives (from both the U.S. and Russian services) seriously doubted Steele would have been able to retain Russian sources from his time in MI6.”
GPW also examined “possible sources for the dossier” that had been hypothesized in the media to date. Among them was former FSB General Oleg Erovinkin, who was found dead in his car in Moscow in December 2016. After the dossier’s release, the Daily Telegraph suggested his death was “mysterious” and could have resulted from providing information to Steele. A former high-ranking official in U.S. intelligence mockingly dismissed the proposition, noting that career security and intelligence officer Erovinkin was “unlikely to have needed the money.”
While conceding that financial incentives could encourage such a breach… [if] Steele had offered Erovinkin £100,000, the mooted budget for the entire project, ‘Erovinkin would have said he needed to see three more zeros before opening his mouth. It’s just a ridiculous proposition to think he would speak to a former intelligence officer from the UK, or anyone else for that matter, for such a paltry sum of money.’”
Overall, GPW concluded: “The quality and level of the sourcing was greatly exaggerated in order to give the dossier and its allegations more credibility.” This impression was reinforced by “informed sources from both government and the private sector” in Russia who were “very dismissive” of the dossier’s content. Many pointed to “woeful inaccuracies” contained therein “and its author’s general lack of understanding around Russian politics and business.” This “deficiency was particularly acute with respect to the dossier’s coverage of Alfa Bank.”
‘Reputational Damage’
GPW’s investigation also proved prescient in other areas. For example, several knowledgeable sources the company consulted — including former senior Russian and U.S. intelligence officials — suggested the dossier’s “most likely sources” were Russian émigrés, “providing… their own views.” They also noted the Steele dossier’s “hyperbole and inaccuracies” were “typical of the hyperactive imaginations of the subcontractors widely used in the business intelligence sector.” This was not confirmed until July 2020.
That month, the Senate Judiciary Committee released notes taken by FBI agents during February 2017 interviews with Igor Danchenko, Steele’s “subsource” and the dossier’s effective author. A Washington think tank journeyman jailed years earlier on multiple public intoxication and disorderly conduct charges and investigated by the FBI for potentially serving as a Kremlin agent, Danchenko admitted he had been fed much of the dossier’s salacious content by his Russian drinking buddies, who lacked any high-level access. Steele then embroidered their dud information further.
Other striking passages in the leaks refer to a conversation between GPW and “a source from within the business intelligence sector in London [who] knows Christopher Steele well, both socially and professionally, and is familiar with his company.” They relayed various details and “commentary” gleaned “directly from speaking to Steele.” For example, they noted that contrary to its self-description as a “leading corporate intelligence consultancy,” Orbis was “not a major operation” and seemed to employ just two junior analysts “who looked like recent graduates.”
The source revealed that “other, larger firms in the sector were approached before Steele and turned the work down before he took it on,” and the dossier was his solo project. “The rest of the company wasn’t involved at all, either to help on the research side of things or to look through the product before it went out,” and “Steele basically collated the information himself.” They further suggested the dossier’s sources let their imaginations run wild, believing their claims would never see the light of day:
I think they got carried away — they didn’t think the material would ever be made public because at that point it was very unlikely that Trump was going to get into power…Steele was rather naive about the whole thing. He didn’t think that it would get exposed in the way it did.”
In other investigative briefs, GPW noted it was unusual that “Steele would have permitted (or indeed facilitated) the distribution of such questionable material under his name,” given the dossier’s apparent falsity. The firm postulated that “in sharing the material with U.S. government figures,” the former MI6 operative “may have thought he was currying favor with them by doing so,” but ultimately, “he never intended for the dossier to be made public in the manner it was.”
One possible answer to this question is found in a defamation case brought against Orbis by Petr Aven, Mikhail Fridman, and German Khan in Britain in May 2018. In July 2020, a British court ruled that the dossier’s allegations against them and Alfa Bank were “inaccurate and misleading,” awarding damages “for the loss of autonomy, distress and reputational damage.” During the trial, Steele made a notable disclosure:
Fusion’s immediate client was law firm Perkins Coie… it engaged Fusion to obtain information necessary for Perkins Coie to provide legal advice on the potential impact of Russian involvement on the legal validity of the outcome of the 2016 U.S. Presidential election. Based on that advice, parties such as the Democratic National Committee and [“Hillary for America”] could consider steps they would be legally entitled to take to challenge the validity of the outcome of that election.”
In essence, the dossier was commissioned by Clinton’s campaign as a contingency in the event she lost the election. However, as GPW’s source close to Steele noted, when the MI6 operative took on the work, the prevailing perception was that “it was very unlikely” Trump would win. As a result, Steele may have had the motivation to fill the dossier with unverified material, believing it would never be used for its intended purpose. He also had a commercial incentive to exaggerate his high-level access. A serving CIA official told GPW:
Steele was known to have been ‘up and down the alley’ pitching for business – a reference to the major defense firms, such as Lockheed Martin, which are located close to one another in Arlington, Virginia. She did not know which firms Steele had worked for in particular, if any, but he has visited several of them in person at their headquarters.”
‘Supposedly Unaware’
A core mystery at the heart of the Steele dossier saga has never been satisfactorily resolved — one that Trump’s latest declassification order could help illuminate. In his December 2019 report on Crossfire Hurricane, Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz criticized the FBI’s use of the dossier to obtain warrants against Carter Page but insisted Steele’s assorted claims “played no role” in the bureau opening its investigation of Trump’s campaign, reportedly on July 31, 2016.
As extensively documented by Aaron Maté, this claim is difficult to reconcile with the numerous contacts and meetings between Steele and senior FBI and Justice Department officials in the weeks leading up to that date. The former MI6 officer provided material that would later comprise the dossier to senior U.S. government officials, including Victoria Nuland, prior to the official opening of Crossfire Hurricane. Nuland reportedly encouraged the bureau to investigate the contents.
According to the FBI’s electronic communications that initiated Crossfire Hurricane, the probe’s founding predicate was a vague tip provided to the bureau by Australian diplomat Alexander Downer. He claimed that low-level Trump campaign staffer George Papadopoulos had “suggested” to him over drinks in London that “the Trump team had received some kind of suggestion [emphasis added] from Russia that it could assist… with the anonymous release of information during the campaign that would be damaging” to Clinton. The EC further acknowledged that “It was unclear whether he or the Russians were referring to material acquired publicly or through other means. It was also unclear how Mr. Trump’s team reacted to the offer.”
As Maté told MintPress News, this was an “extraordinarily thin basis upon which to investigate an entire presidential campaign.” He added that “upon officially opening Crossfire Hurricane, FBI officials immediately took investigative steps that mirrored the claims in the Steele dossier, even though they were supposedly unaware of it.” The FBI’s first probes into individual Trump campaign figures — Carter Page, Michael Flynn, and Paul Manafort — began in August 2016. All are mentioned in the dossier. Maté concludes:
To accept the official timeline, one has to stipulate that the FBI investigated a Presidential campaign, and then a President, based on a low-level volunteer having ‘suggested’ Trump’s campaign had received ‘some kind of suggestion’ of assistance from Russia. One would also have to accept that the Bureau was not influenced by the far more detailed claims of direct Trump-Russia connections – an alleged conspiracy that would form the heart of the investigation – advanced in the widely-circulating Steele dossier.”
The US House Judiciary Committee has released internal chat logs, that show the FBI moved into cover-up mode the very day the New York Post published the Hunter Biden laptop story, on October 14, 2020.
The logs, first reported about by journalists Michael Shellenberger and Catherine Herridge, reveal that the FBI employees were immediately instructed “not to discuss the Biden matter,” while an intelligence analyst who, during a call with Twitter, accidentally confirmed that the story, i.e., the laptop, was real, was placed under a “gag order.”
The reason the analyst, who was with the FBI’s Criminal Investigative Division, was able to so quickly confirm the reporting was based on credible information was the fact the FBI had seized and authenticated Hunter Biden’s laptop several months earlier.
Big Tech platforms – notably Twitter and Facebook – then started censoring the article, branding it falsely “Russian disinformation.” By maintaining the “no comment” policy instead of confirming that the laptop was real and under investigation, the FBI was in effect tacitly promoting the false narrative about foreign interference.
These moves originated from the Foreign Influence Task Force, which was shut down earlier this year for its activities related to censorship through pressure on social platforms.
The laptop scandal was unfolding during a crucial time in the 2020 campaign and represents one of the most egregious publicly known examples of political censorship of free speech and media orchestrated by government agencies.
The chat logs that have now been published reveal that one of the FBI staff involved in the Hunter Biden laptop story suppression was Bradley Benavides.
Only weeks prior, Benavides featured in another controversy: that time in what appeared to be a smear campaign against Senators Ron Johnson and Chuck Grassley, who were allegedly “advancing Russian disinformation.”
At the time, the senators just so happened to be investigating Hunter Biden’s financial connections to foreign governments.
A letter the Judiciary Committee sent Benavides in June 2023, shows that he had by that time gone through the Big Tech-Big Government “revolving door” – and was senior risk manager at Amazon.
The FBI often allows violent attacks on Americans “to keep fear alive” like the 1993 World Trade Center bombing in New York. A truck bomb exploded in the underground parking garage killing 6 Americans and injuring over a thousand. In this case, the FBI and its CIA ally had allowed known terrorists to enter the United States and provided them the explosive material to construct a massive bomb.
Emad Salem, a former Egyptian military officer, was recruited by the FBI to infiltrate an extremist Muslim group in New York. He helped them plan the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and provided them with bomb material from the FBI. Salem suggested that fake bomb material be used in case things got out of control, but the FBI ignored his suggestion. After Salem reported the bomb was loaded on a rented van and was on its way to the World Trade center, the FBI did nothing!
In recent years, Venezuela has been the stage for an intense political battle, marked by polarization and foreign intervention. In this context, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has played a controversial role, repeatedly accused of diverting funds intended for humanitarian aid and being involved in corruption schemes that include prominent figures from the Venezuelan opposition. Recently, following controversies surrounding the American agency, these accusations have taken on new dimensions, with allegations that opposition leaders misappropriated 116 million dollars provided by USAID, exposing a scandal that calls into question not only the integrity of the opposition but also the true intentions behind international “aid.”
During the period of the self-proclaimed “interim government” of Juan Guaidó, large sums of money were directed into Venezuela under the guise of humanitarian assistance. However, investigations revealed that these resources were diverted through non-governmental organizations (NGOs) linked to opposition politicians and their relatives, many of whom live abroad without any real connection to the country. Leaked documents from the U.S. embassy in Venezuela indicate that Carlos Vecchio, an opposition figure wanted by Venezuelan authorities, allegedly received 116 million dollars from USAID. Additionally, the FBI is investigating Juan Guaidó himself for corruption and embezzlement, further raising suspicions about the legitimacy of the Venezuelan opposition.
This diversion of resources is not only a betrayal of the trust of Venezuelans who genuinely need help but also raises serious questions about the transparency and accountability of the opposition. While millions of Venezuelans face social hardships (largely due to American economic coercion), opposition leaders appear more interested in enriching themselves at the expense of the population and foreign funds.
The situation becomes even more complex when considering the revelations made by Jordan Goudreau, a mercenary who orchestrated a failed armed incursion into Venezuela in May 2020. Goudreau claimed that U.S. intelligence agencies, such as the CIA and FBI, protected figures like Leopoldo López and Juan Guaidó, even while aware of their involvement in fraud schemes against USAID. These allegations suggest a deep complicity between the Venezuelan opposition and U.S. agencies, revealing that the Venezuelan crisis is not merely an internal conflict but rather a geopolitical game in which U.S. interests play a central role.
In light of these allegations, the Venezuelan government has launched investigations against opposition figures involved in corruption schemes. These actions are seen as an attempt to dismantle the networks that undermine the opposition’s credibility and expose the hypocrisy behind the “humanitarian aid” promoted by the U.S. However, USAID, which in theory should be an instrument of development and assistance, sees its reputation seriously compromised. The accusations of corruption and embezzlement not only tarnish its image but also make clear how the institution has become a tool of imperialist aggression in Latin America and other continents.
The truth is that USAID was never truly a development agency but rather a weapon of political intervention — which is why Donald Trump’s recent decision to dismantle it should be celebrated among Global South countries. Under the guise of “promoting democracy” and “helping the needy,” the agency has been used to destabilize governments considered adversaries of U.S. interests. In Venezuela, as in other Latin American countries, USAID acted as a soft power tool, conducting resources to groups and individuals aligned with U.S. geopolitical objectives.
This strategy, however, comes at a high cost. By financing and supporting opposition groups that are often corrupt and disconnected from the real needs of the population, USAID has contributed to political and social instability, exacerbating the problems it supposedly seeks to solve. In the case of Venezuela, the result has been the perpetuation of a crisis that benefits only a reactionary elite minority and their foreign allies, attempting to create dissent in the local political situation.
In an increasingly multipolar world, it is essential to question the role of agencies like USAID and their influence in the internal affairs of sovereign nations. Venezuela is just one example of how “humanitarian aid” can be used as a geopolitical weapon, serving the interests of foreign powers at the expense of the local population. Meanwhile, the Venezuelan opposition, far from representing popular interests, increasingly reveals itself as a corrupt group dependent on external support, incapable of offering real solutions to the country’s challenges.
The so-called “Venezuelan crisis” is, ultimately, a reflection of the complex power dynamics that define international politics, particularly concerning American interventionism in Latin America. And in this game, USAID and its local allies demonstrate that, for them, “the ends justify the means” — even if it means sacrificing the sovereignty and well-being of an entire nation.
By MANUEL R. GÓMEZ | CounterPunch | February 27, 2015
… As far back as 1809, Jefferson tried to purchase Cuba. In 1820 he went further; he told Secretary of War J.C. Calhoun that the U.S. “ought, at the first possible opportunity, to take Cuba.” As President, John Quincy Adams predicted that Cuba would fall “like a ripening plum into the lap of the union.” These are but two of many prominent examples of a widespread ambition to annex Cuba, or at least to control its destiny, from very early in U.S. history. After “the West,” Cuba figured as a prominent second place in U.S. expansionist aims from the beginning of the Republic. … Read full article
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The word “alleged” is deemed to occur before the word “fraud.” Since the rule of law still applies. To peasants, at least.
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William Maloney and Joe Davidson were working at Maloney’s realty office on the morning of November 2nd, 1994 when three men in a white late 70’s model Monte Carlo pulled into the parking lot. One man remained in the vehicle while the other two got out and went inside.“The theory there was that Timothy McVeigh was searching for a place to perhaps have a hide-out and Robert Jacquez was utilized to perhaps obtain property in Missouri. It’s very remote terrain, it’s terrain familiar — there are a lot of right wing groups around there, from Elohim City Oklahoma to other groups in Arkansas to the Ozarks in Missouri which would be the perfect type spot.”
Unlike the other sketches produced for the task force, this one was not widely circulated and appears to convey a level of sensitivity and significance that is uncommon in the bombing case. One source told this writer that Associated Press Washington Bureau Chief John Solomon interviewed a senior Customs Agency rep at OKC for the investigation, and that he told Solomon that the FBI were not real concerned about John Doe #2 reports, but they were really worried about John Doe #3, or “Robert Jacquez,” getting media attention. This is obvious enough from the bureau’s unusual disclaimer that is plastered all over November 1995 teletypes concerning the suspect. The notion that Jacquez could have been connected to some sort of sensitive operation comes to mind when you consider the unusual level of secrecy surrounding the sketch, and FBI investigators’ worry over the suspect receiving media attention.
The Manhunt for “John Doe #3”
The November 1st teletype also makes additional comparisons between the “Jacquez” suspect’s distinctive jungle boots—described in detail by Bill Maloney—and the distinctive boots worn by bank robber Richard Guthrie when he purchased a getaway vehicle in Alton, Illinois in December of ’94.
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