A senior Russian diplomat says the European troika—Britain, France, and Germany—lack a clear strategy to break the “deadlock” they are poised to create if they follow through on their threat to invoke the “snapback” mechanism against Iran.
Russia’s permanent envoy to international organizations in Vienna, Mikhail Ulyanov, made the remarks in a post on his X account on Saturday.
He proposed to put aside legal and procedural issues which definitely do not give the E3 the right to trigger the snapback mechanism and to address the issue from a purely political viewpoint.
The Russian diplomat asked whether the trio has an exit strategy and a vision of how to find a way out of the deadlock they are going to create.
“The answers to these questions seem to be negative,” Ulyanov emphasized.
Snapback would bring into force six previous Iran-related Security Council resolutions adopted between 2006 and 2010. It would reinstate the expired UN arms embargo that barred countries from supplying, selling, or transferring most military equipment to Iran and prohibited Tehran from exporting any weapons.
It would also impose export controls, travel bans, asset freezes, and other restrictions on individuals, entities, and banks.
In a Friday phone conversation with the EU high representative for foreign and security policy and his British, French, and German counterparts, whose countries are the European signatories to the 2015 nuclear agreement, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi warned that triggering the snapback would have consequences.
The top Iranian negotiator once again emphasized that the European countries lack the legal and moral authority to resort to the mechanism.
China’s mission to the United Nations on Wednesday declared the country’s firm opposition to threats by European parties to the 2015 nuclear deal to activate the snapback mechanism within the framework of UN Security Council Resolution 2231.
The mission at the UN headquarters in New York distributed an explanatory note to the Security Council, stating that the difficult situation in implementing the JCPOA and Resolution 2231 is not the result of Iran’s actions but the disruption of the JCPOA’s implementation by the United States and the three European countries.
China and Russia’s backing plays a critical role in Iran’s diplomatic efforts to counter the snapback threat. Both countries are permanent members of the UN Security Council and have veto power over resolutions, including those related to Iran’s nuclear program.
The Russian Foreign Ministry has pushed back against Western media reports claiming Moscow undermined Ukraine peace talks with the US by insisting it must take part in discussions about security guarantees for Kiev.
On Friday, Bloomberg reported, citing sources, that remarks by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov about the principles of “indivisible security” in Europe have “effectively fractured Russia’s talks with the US,” while describing Moscow’s stance as “an attempt to stall the [settlement] process.” The Wall Street Journal similarly accused Lavrov of “toss[ing] all sorts of obstacles” in the way of possible high-level talks between Moscow and Kiev.
The ministry responded that Russia has followed a consistent policy on the conditions needed both to resolve the Ukraine conflict and to build a stable European security framework.
The ministry recalled that following the Alaska summit with US President Donald Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin noted that a sustainable peace in Ukraine could be achieved only if “all root causes of the crisis are eliminated, all of Russia’s legitimate concerns taken into account, and a just balance in security in Europe and worldwide restored.”
He added at the time that Moscow “was ready to work on ensuring security for Ukraine.”
Later, Lavrov, responding to a question about the possible deployment of Western troops to Ukraine – which has been a red line for Moscow – noted that Russia “will firmly and strictly ensure our legitimate interests.” “Any serious discussion of security issues without Russia is a utopia.. [and] a road to nowhere,” he added.
“So how can anyone consider Lavrov’s words as ‘undermining’ the settlement process? On the contrary, Russia’s position is marked by consistency, and the minister’s statements confirm the points repeatedly voiced by President Putin on the Ukraine crisis,” the ministry noted.
Russia has repeatedly said that the Ukraine conflict can only be settled if Kiev commits to neutrality, demilitarization, denazification, and recognizes the new territorial reality on the ground.
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.
How would your child score on a common mental health screening?
A mental health professional might view the results and conclude that your child has a mental health problem… that needs to be psychiatrically diagnosed and treated, even medicated.
Will this help your child thrive? Or will it reshape their identity in undesirable ways? Will you be comfortable with your child taking medications that alter their developing brains and could perturb their sexuality? When your child reaches adulthood, will they be able to withdraw from these drugs, or will they despair to find out that their body and brain have adapted to them, making this difficult or maybe even impossible?
For any parent with even minor reservations about our current medical and mental health system, these aren’t theoretical questions. A new public policy has just made them very salient.
Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker has signed a new law mandating universal mental health screenings for every child in public school. This includes healthy children with no signs of behavioral problems. Parents can theoretically opt out, but they’ll have to do so repeatedly, as the screenings will be given at least once a year from grades 3-12.
Media coverage has been laudatory, expounding on the importance of “getting kids the help and support they deserve.” But do you know what a mental health screen is and how it works? Before sounding the applause, parents need to understand what these screenings are, how they’re used, and what the potential outcomes of their use might be.
The new law does not specify how children will be screened, what questionnaires will be used, or what procedures will be followed when a child’s answers are seen as troubling. But to get a sense of the ground that self-report mental health questionnaires cover, you can screen your kids right now with a commonly used questionnaire:
While this is a self-assessment, the questions are the same whether you’re a parent or teacher filling this out on behalf of a child. Each of the 35 questions can be answered “never,” “sometimes,” or “often.” The scoring is simple:
0 = “never”
1 = “sometimes”
2 = “often”
If the total score is at or above 28, professionals will consider it likely that your child has a mental health problem. The law doesn’t define what happens next. Ideally, there would be a lengthy (and costly) multi-hour clinical assessment for each such child that views these results skeptically, and heavily considers normal developmental issues and transitory problems. In the real-world mental health system, it’s hard to imagine that actually happening.
Unfortunately, the bias of the current system is towards overmedicalization, overdiagnosis, and overtreatment. The implementation of universal screening is likely to worsen these problems.
In the past, some physicians gave annual chest X-rays to smokers. This was a form of universal screening in response to concerns about lung cancer. At first blush, this sounds reasonable. The problem? False-positive results. Studies showed that annual X-rays did not prevent mortality. They did cause anxiety in patients. And incidental findings were common, causing unnecessary biopsies, procedures, and interventions.
Current screening guidelines now target high-risk individuals. This is an example where the medical establishment carefully weighed the risks and benefits of universal screening and concluded that it was not in the interests of patients, and with a well-defined disease in mind, lung cancer.
Mental health diagnosis is not like cancer. It is a fuzzy, subjective enterprise. We don’t have blood tests or brain scans; we have flawed checklists and clinical judgment. And obviously, being improperly identified as having a mental disorder comes with a real cost for the child.
Screening every single child makes it inevitable that some healthy children will be thrust into the mental health pipeline. Even assuming that the questionnaires work reasonably well, a 15% false-positive rate is likely. Combine this false-positive rate with twice-a-year universal screening from grades 3-12, and your child will have 20 separate chances to be wrongly identified as having a mental health problem…at which point the government ostensibly gets involved in the mental health of your child.
It’s easy to imagine the catastrophic results. A child’s mental health screen inaccurately identifies a mental health problem; the busy therapist confirms a diagnosis; there’s eventually a referral to a psychiatrist, who prescribes psychotropic medication. Out of 20 screenings, this only has to happen once to alter your child’s life forever.
I (C.D.) know, because it happened to me.
I was caught up in a similar diagnostic dragnet in 1991, when my teacher read about Ritalin in Time magazine and began “identifying” students she believed might have the condition, which at the time was known as “ADD” (the “H”, for hyperactivity, came later). My parents chose not to medicate me, but did send me to a psychologist and a pediatric psychiatrist. From them, I learned that my constant chair-tipping, foot-tapping, wiggling, and inability to tolerate boredom — the very traits that drove me to act out in class and leave little space between impulse and action — weren’t just part of me, but symptoms of a medical condition. It was presented as both permanently part of my nature and “acceptable,” yet somehow also extrinsic to me and framed primarily as a “deficit.” (At that time, ADD was not as widely viewed as a full disability as it is today.)
At 17, when I was legally able to decide for myself — though I now view the “informed” part as questionable — I chose to begin drug treatment. Even without the drugs, however, the diagnosis had already shaped my sense of self: diminishing my agency, reinforcing a feeling of abnormality, and feeding the belief that my more organized, conscientious, and inconspicuous peers possessed something essential that I never would. You can hear a fuller account in The Atlantic’s Scripts podcast series (“The Mandala Effect,” Episode 2, on YouTube).
My experience is just one example of how a single screening can lock a child into a lifelong diagnostic identity — and once that process starts, there are few real off-ramps. Surely no one in favor of this law wants that scenario to come true for any child.
But with 1.4 million schoolchildren in Illinois, we’re talking about dealing with the results of up to 28 million separate mental health screenings in the decade after implementation. Will the mental health professionals dealing with this deluge approach the medicalization of your child’s supposed problems carefully, gingerly, sensitively? A 2004 study found that screening 1,000 children for ADHD using the American Psychiatric Association’s DSM criteria would result in 370 false positives. And it’s common for children to be prescribed psychotropic medication at their first consultation with their physician or psychiatrist.
A comprehensive, in-depth psychological assessment for each child might help reduce false positives — but it would also mean spending 3-6 hours assessing each child, which represents a high burden in terms of both time and money. School districts in Illinois already report that a lack of time, expertise, and financial resources presents challenges to implementing universal mental health screening. The law passed anyway.
It’s hard to argue that attempts to identify and measure human misery, suffering, and emotional pain are a bad thing, etc.—especially when the goal is “getting people the help they need.” It sounds right. But the kids who will be screened every year in Illinois? They have many kinds of problems: social, relational, environmental, academic, psychological, and physical problems. Children today have issues navigating a modern life dominated by endless screens, scrolling, and even more endless data.
And also, they have some problems that you’re supposed to have—problems that have been a critical part of growing up since the dawn of time.
Our culture is currently debating the medicalization of human problems, the credibility of medicine, the influence of the pharmaceutical industry, and the ethics of imposing medical authority as state policy. Covid lockdowns were a prime example of this, and, similar to universal mental health screening, they were imposed without consideration of the unintended consequences.
Mandatory Covid vaccinations also led many Americans to rethink the role of government in their bodily autonomy, and to consider how arbitrary social policy could be when it claimed to be for the greater good (e.g., insisting that those with immunity to Covid must still get vaccinated). For those who have grown skeptical of medical authority, universal mental health screening will likely be viewed as another overextension of the government into the lives (and minds) of their children. Children aged 12-17 can already receive psychotherapy in Illinois without parental consent; universal screening offers a new on-ramp to this process.
The new Illinois law seems almost tone deaf, out of step with the lessons learned from Covid. This critique is cultural, social, and ethical in nature. But universal mental health screening is supposedly based on science. The new Illinois law does not give details; it just authorizes universal screening as if it is an unmitigated good. The devil (and the science, or lack thereof) will be in these details – how the policy is implemented. Assuming that the rationale for universal screening is scientific, we present critically important questions that should be addressed as procedures are developed:
What is the evidence that universal mental health screening improves real-world outcomes for children? Is there evidence that it could cause harm? The scientific rationale for the program needs to be stated clearly, citing compelling data, and explicitly addressing the measures taken to avoid harm.
Given that Illinois has already implemented universal mental health screening in some school districts, what were the outcomes for the children? After testing positive for a mental health condition, how many were further assessed, and how much time was spent on each child? How many ended up in psychotherapy or on medication? Usually, a pilot program tests the effectiveness of an intervention, and it is only adopted on a wide scale if it is shown to be effective and not harmful – where is that data?
How many children a year does Illinois expect to inaccurately identify as having a mental health problem (e.g., how many false positives)? How many children will make it from 3rd to 12th grade without ever screening positive? What measures will address the known issue of false-positive results in universal screening? Do Illinois public schools have the time, money, and expertise to carefully assess each child who screens positive for multiple hours to ensure that they do not overdiagnose and overtreat Illinois children? If universal screening results in a surge of children who ultimately end up on psychiatric medication, how will the public know? Implementing this program without addressing these issues ignores the potential harm of universal screening.
How will Illinois taxpayers know if this program is a success? What metrics will be tracked? The easy out is to focus on the implementation of the program, and if a high proportion of children are screened, call it a success, never mind the details or outcomes. But using the screening of children as a measure of success for a universal screening program is tautology; data must be collected that demonstrates that the program helps children measurably and does not harm them.
There are good reasons to object to the new Illinois program based on general principles. If the issues above go unaddressed, or if sufficient resources are not provided to allow careful and precise identification of children in distress, it has the potential to be a disaster.
Cooper Davis is an advocate, speaker, and writer. He is the Executive Director of Inner Compass Initiative (ICI), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that advocates for mental health system reform and helps people make informed choices about psychiatric diagnoses, drugs, and drug withdrawal.
A shocking new Illinois law will force public schools to conduct annual mental health checks on students from 3rd through 12th grade. Jefferey exposes the hidden risks and potential harm this invasive mandate could bring to children.
One of the most useful instruments hidden behind the U.S. empire’s rhetoric of “freedom and democracy” was the Central Intelligence Agency, founded on September 18, 1947, as the successor of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS).
Since its creation, the CIA has carried out countless inhumane operations: assassinations, coups, drug trafficking, support for terrorism, conspiracies. The list of its crimes is endless. But among the darkest and most inhumane chapters of its record lie the notorious “mind control” experiments.
The “Scientific Intelligence Office”
The CIA’s so-called “scientific branches,” which were in fact used for these experiments, are infamous for their scandals. These activities, always cloaked under the veil of “national security” and secrecy, began with the Scientific Branch within the Office of Reports and Estimates. On December 31, 1948—barely a year after the CIA’s founding—this branch was merged with the Nuclear Energy Group of the Office of Special Operations to form the Office of Scientific Intelligence (OSI).
Of course, these units never pursued “scientific discovery” or any purpose for the benefit of humanity. Their main objective was to develop special interrogation techniques and to transform individuals into instruments who could act against their own will, under CIA command.
Between 1949 and 1950, a program code-named Bluebird was initiated for this purpose. Soon after, it evolved into what became known as Artichoke.
CIA code names often had little apparent connection to the projects’ real purpose, but they frequently carried subtle allusions. The transition from “Bluebird”—a symbol of happiness and hope in English—to “Artichoke,” a vegetable with tightly layered leaves, can be read as a metaphor for gradually peeling away the layers of the human mind.
On August 20, 1951, Project Artichoke was officially launched. It would later evolve into MKUltra, the infamous mind control program that remains one of the CIA’s most sinister undertakings.
The project’s core goal was to test whether a human being could be forced to act against their own will—even against their instinct for self-preservation—in order to serve the CIA’s interests. One CIA document framed the mission with chilling clarity:
“Can an individual be made to perform an act of attempted assassination against a prominent political leader, against his will and even against fundamental laws of nature, such as self-preservation?”
This single sentence demonstrates how the United States treated the human mind as nothing more than a laboratory specimen.
Experiments on subjects involved hypnosis, LSD, morphine addiction and withdrawal, isolation, and electroshock. Some of these methods were even tested directly within the agency itself.
The Frank Olson Case
At this point, one must recall the case of Frank Olson, an American scientist working on biological warfare who died under suspicious circumstances.
In the 1950s, Olson was stationed at Fort Detrick, a U.S. Army facility, and was closely connected to the CIA’s secret projects such as Artichoke.
In November 1953, at a CIA retreat in Maryland, Olson was secretly dosed with LSD. Following this, he suffered severe psychological distress and began questioning the morality of his research, expressing unease over the CIA’s clandestine biological and chemical experiments.
His superiors, alarmed by Olson’s state of mind, quickly decided he had become a liability.
On November 24, 1953, Olson was taken to New York’s Statler Hotel under the supervision of CIA officer Robert Lashbrook. In the early hours of November 28, Olson fell to his death from the 13th-floor window of his hotel room. The official explanation: suicide.
Years later, in 1975, the Rockefeller Commission report revealed that the CIA had conducted LSD experiments on humans, identifying Olson as one of the victims. Public pressure forced a new investigation. In the 1990s, an independent autopsy concluded that Olson had suffered blunt-force trauma to the head before his fall—suggesting he may have been pushed.
Beyond Drugs: Biological Warfare
Project Artichoke extended far beyond the use of drugs. The CIA also explored diseases such as dengue fever and experimented with viruses as potential biological weapons—not to kill, but to incapacitate and disable.
The agency focused its inhumane experiments on the most vulnerable groups within the imperial system: “weaker peoples, the uneducated, refugees, prisoners of war, and defectors.”
Other reports revealed even darker ambitions: creating assassins capable of eliminating political figures—or even U.S. officials themselves—under the program’s methods. This chilling fact showed that the imperial machine was willing to turn against its own citizens if necessary.
Although much about the project remains secret, evidence indicates that these experiments were carried out not only on U.S. soil, but also in Europe, Japan, Southeast Asia, and the Philippines—mostly targeting “foreigners.”
The populations of countries under U.S. hegemony were turned into guinea pigs for American laboratories.
The Road to MKUltra
The “results” gathered from Artichoke fed directly into the CIA’s later and far more infamous MKUltra program, launched in 1953.
In 1977, CIA Director Stansfield Turner admitted before a joint U.S. Senate committee that the project’s aim was to study “the use of biological and chemical materials in altering human behavior.”
American journalist Stephen Kinzer, who investigated these secret CIA projects, documented that mescaline—later used by the CIA in its experiments—was first tested on humans at Nazi concentration camps such as Dachau.
In 1985, the U.S. Supreme Court revealed that the CIA had indirectly funded 162 different secret projects through contracts with universities, research foundations, and similar institutions. At least 80 organizations and 185 researchers were involved—many of them unaware they were working for the CIA.
A Legacy of Inhumanity
Project Artichoke is just one example of the inhumane operations carried out by the United States against the peoples of the world—and even against its own citizens. While U.S. politicians preached “peace” and “democracy” abroad, their intelligence services were busy developing technologies to enslave, control, and even weaponize human beings as assassins.
One of the CIA’s most senior Russia analysts has lost her job during President Donald Trump’s campaign to depoliticize the intelligence services, The Economist reported on Thursday.
The officer, whose identity was not disclosed, oversaw the drafting of a report accusing Russia of interfering in the 2016 US presidential election in favor of Trump.
The Economist described her as “the country’s top intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia,” who coordinated operations related to the former Soviet Union. According to the outlet, her security clearance was revoked on August 19, along with those of 36 other current and former officials.
The Kremlin denied the allegations of election meddling, while Trump and the Republicans denounced them as a “hoax” by former President Barack Obama and the Democrats to delegitimize Trump’s first election victory and undermine his presidency.
Since mid-July, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has released multiple documents that she claims expose a coordinated effort by senior Obama-era officials to falsely accuse Trump of colluding with Russia.
Earlier this week, Gabbard announced that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which oversees 18 agencies, will be reduced by nearly 50%. The US intelligence community has become “plagued with unauthorized intelligence leaks, politicization, and weaponization of intelligence,” she said.
Gabbard also said the Foreign Malign Influence Center (FMIC), created by Congress in the wake of the Russiagate allegations, will be significantly scaled back and stripped of some of its core functions.
Volodymyr Zelensky said ‘no’ to all of US President Donald Trump’s proposals for resolving the conflict in Ukraine, which the US considers necessary, at a meeting in Washington, said Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov:
“President Trump suggested, after Anchorage several points which we share, and on some of them, we agreed to be to show some flexibility. When President Trump brought those issues to the meeting in Washington with Zelensky present together with his European sponsors, he clearly indicated… that there are several principles which Washington believes must be accepted, including no NATO membership, including the discussion of territorial issues. And Zelensky said no to everything. He even said no to, as I said, to canceling legislation prohibiting the Russian language. How can we meet with a person who is pretending to be a leader?”
At the Alaska summit Russia agreed to demonstrate flexibility on a number of issues raised by US President Donald Trump, Lavrov added.
A meeting between Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky has not been planned, but the Russian leader is ready to meet him when the summit agenda will be ready, which is currently inexistent, Lavrov said.
“There is no meeting planned… Putin is ready to meet with Zelensky, when the agenda would be ready for for a summit, and this agenda is not ready at all,” Lavrov told NBC.
37 years ago today, on August 17, 1988, General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq died in a mysterious plane crash that eliminated nearly every member of Pakistan’s military high command in a single devastating blow. The crash of Pak-1, a specially configured C-130 Hercules aircraft, near Bahawalpur claimed not only the Pakistani president and army chief but also Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee General Akhtar Abdur Rahman, several senior Pakistani military officers, U.S. Ambassador Arnold Lewis Raphel, and Brigadier General Herbert M. Wassom, head of the U.S. military aid mission to Pakistan.
Zia’s Strategic Legacy: Architect of Pakistan’s Nuclear Ambitions
Before examining the mysterious circumstances of his death, Zia’s foreign policy accomplishments merit recognition. During his rule (1978—1988), Zia transformed Pakistan from a middling regional actor into a regional power with the ability to change the strategic landscape. His most significant achievement was shepherding Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program to near-completion while successfully balancing Cold War pressures.
After India conducted its first nuclear test—codenamed Smiling Buddha—on May 18, 1974, Pakistan moved swiftly toward its own weapons program. In response to this move, then-Pakistani Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto pledged that his nation would not be left behind.
“We will eat grass or leaves, even go hungry, but we will get one of our own,” he declared. Pointing to the existing arsenals of other faith-based powers, he remarked: “There is a Christian bomb, a Jewish bomb and now a Hindu bomb. Why not an Islamic bomb?”
When Zia took power in 1978, he continued the Pakistani ruling class plan to turn the South Asian nation into a nuclear power. In 1987, Zia told the Carnegie Endowment that Pakistan sought sufficient nuclear capability “to create an impression of deterrence.” His bold proclamation that Pakistan was “a screwdriver’s turn away from the bomb” sent shockwaves across intelligence communities worldwide.
The nuclear program’s success vindicated Zia’s vision. Pakistan conducted its first successful nuclear tests on May 28, 1998, becoming the world’s seventh nuclear power.
Pakistan’s Unpredictable Foreign Policy Under Zia
Zia’s foreign policy demonstrated remarkable strategic acumen. As the primary architect of the Afghan resistance against the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, he successfully convinced initially reluctant Americans to provide massive military aid. CIA veteran Bruce Riedel emphasized that “the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan was run by Zia, not by us.” Zia rejected President Carter’s initial $400 million aid offer as “peanuts” and ultimately secured $3.2 billion in military and economic aid from the Reagan administration.
Simultaneously, Zia pursued deeper ties with China and maintained complex relationships with Iran despite sectarian pressures. During the Iran-Iraq War, Pakistan officially maintained neutrality while covertly supporting Iran. Zia described Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini as “a symbol of Islamic insurgence” in 1979 and was one of the first countries to diplomatically recognize the Islamic Republic of Iran. Pakistan reportedly conducted clandestine arms deals that saw Chinese and U.S. weapons sent to Iran, including Silkworm and Stinger missiles originally intended for Afghan mujahideen, which played a decisive role for Iran in the “Tanker War” against Iraq.
The Fatal Flight: August 17, 1988
The events of that fateful day began routinely. Zia had traveled to Bahawalpur to witness a demonstration of the U.S. Army’s M1 Abrams tank at the Thamewali Test Range. After the successful demonstration, organized by Major-General Mahmud Ali Durrani, Zia and his delegation departed by army helicopter before transferring to the specially configured C-130 for the return flight to Islamabad.
At 3:40 PM Pakistan Time, Pak-1 took off from Bahawalpur Airport with thirty people aboard, including 17 passengers and 13 crew members. The aircraft had been equipped with an air-conditioned VIP capsule where Zia and his American guests were seated, walled off from both the flight crew and passenger sections. For two minutes and thirty seconds, the plane rose into clear skies. Takeoff was smooth and without problems.
At 3:51 PM, Bahawalpur control tower lost contact. Witnesses cited in Pakistan’s official investigation reported that the C-130 began pitching “in an up-and-down motion” while flying low before going into a “near-vertical dive” and exploding on impact. The plane crashed with such force that it was blown to pieces, with wreckage scattered over a wide area. All 30 people aboard died instantly.
Brigadier Naseem Khan, flying a French-made Puma helicopter in the vicinity, was among the first to arrive at the crash site. “I walked all around it,” he later recalled. “The plane had crashed at an almost perpendicular angle. I first spotted the cap worn by Gen Wassom, and then Gen Akhtar Rahman’s peaked cap. Then my eye fell upon a dismembered leg, wearing a black sock and black shoe. I suspected it belonged to Gen Zia.”
The Cover-Up Begins
Pakistan’s board of inquiry concluded that the most likely cause of the crash was a criminal act of sabotage within the aircraft. Investigators suggested that toxic gases rendered passengers and crew unconscious, preventing any distress call from being made. Curiously, despite prior C-130 models being fitted with flight recorders, none was found after the crash.
The American response proved equally suspicious. According to former New York Times South Asia Bureau Chief and Council on Foreign Relations member Barbara Crossette’s investigation, Ambassador Robert Oakley and General George B. Crist of CENTCOM rejected an attempt to have the FBI investigate a crash that killed the U.S. ambassador and an American general. Instead, they arranged for the Pentagon and State Department to hold an inter-departmental inquiry. Both officials later apologized to Congress for this decision.
Within two months of the crash, the American government was alone in promoting the theory that mechanical malfunction brought down the plane. On the other hand, most Pakistanis assumed assassination from the start.
Ambassador John Gunther Dean’s Shocking Revelations
The most explosive allegations about Zia’s death came from an unexpected source. John Gunther Dean, who in 1988 served as U.S. Ambassador to India, was a distinguished diplomat with four decades of service who had held more ambassadorships than most envoys. Dean was uniquely positioned to observe the aftermath of Zia’s death, and what he suspected would end his diplomatic career.
Dean believed the plot to eliminate General Zia bore the hallmarks of Israel, specifically the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad. His suspicions weren’t outlandish. Dean had personal experience with Israeli operations. Eight years earlier, while serving as Ambassador to Lebanon, Israelis had sought his support for their local projects, assuming that a fellow Jew would be willing to cooperate with them. When Dean rejected those overtures and declared his primary loyalty was to America, an attempt was made to assassinate him.
On August 28, 1980, Dean, his wife, daughter, and son-in-law narrowly escaped serious injury in a motorcade attack in suburban Beirut. The munitions were eventually traced back to Israel. Dean later discovered the Lebanese group claiming responsibility was an Israeli-created front organization used to carry out Mossad terrorist attacks.
Barbara Crossette’s Investigation
In 2005, after 17 years of silence, Dean finally revealed his suspicions to Barbara Crossette, in what would become a landmark investigation. Crossette’s 5,000-word article “Who Killed Zia?” appeared in the prestigious World Policy Journal, published by The New School in New York City under academic Stephen Schlesinger.
Dean’s theory centered on Israel’s alarm over Pakistan’s nuclear program. A few years before his death, Zia took bold steps to develop a nuclear weapons program. Although his primary motive was balancing India’s nuclear arsenal, Zia promised to share such weapons with other Muslim countries, including those in the Middle East. This possibility created major concerns in the Israeli national security community.
According to journalist Eric Margolis, Israel repeatedly tried to enlist India in launching a joint assault against Pakistan’s nuclear facilities. After careful consideration, India declined. This left Israel in a quandary. Zia was a proud military dictator with very close U.S. ties that strengthened his diplomatic leverage. Pakistan was 2,000 miles from Israel and possessed a strong military, making any long-distance bombing raid similar to the 1981 strike against Iraq’s Osirak reactor virtually impossible. That left assassination as the remaining option.
The Diplomatic Retaliation
Dean chose proper diplomatic channels rather than media disclosure. He immediately departed for Washington to share his views with State Department superiors and other top Administration officials. Upon reaching Washington, Dean was quickly declared mentally incompetent, prevented from returning to his India posting, and soon forced to resign. His four-decade career in government service came to a screeching halt.
Dean was sent to Switzerland to “rest” for six weeks before being allowed to return to New Delhi to pack his belongings and resign. He lost his medical clearance and security clearance because of his views about the crash. The accusation of “mental imbalance” effectively ended any investigation into his allegations.
One might expect such explosive charges from such a solid source would provoke considerable press attention, but the story was instead totally ignored and boycotted by the entire North American media. Stephen Schlesinger, who had spent a decade at the helm of World Policy Journal, saw his name vanish from the masthead shortly after publication, and his employment at The New School came to an end.
Ron Unz observed, with some shock, that the article is no longer available on the World Policy Journal website, though the text remains accessible via Archive.org. Even Dean’s detailed New York Times obituary portrayed his distinguished career in flattering terms while devoting not a single sentence to the bizarre circumstances under which it ended.
Zia’s Legacy Lives On
The patterns established during Zia’s era continue influencing Pakistan’s foreign policy today, often creating tension with traditional allies. Pakistan’s integration into China’s Belt and Road Initiative through the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor represents the kind of independent alignment that characterized Zia’s approach to international relations.
However, recent attacks on Chinese nationals working in Pakistan have troubling parallels to the covert plans to potentially target Pakistan’s nuclear program in the 1980s. What was envisioned as a secure trade and energy corridor linking Xinjiang to Gwadar has instead become a flashpoint for insurgency. Baloch separatists, particularly the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), have repeatedly targeted Chinese personnel and infrastructure in a campaign to derail Pakistan’s partnership with China.
These efforts have ranged from the killing of nine Chinese engineers at the Dasu Hydropower Project in 2021, to Operation Dara-e-Bolan in January 2024, and the March 2025 hijacking of the Jaffar Express that left 59 dead. Each new CPEC agreement, including six signed in 2023, has provoked fresh waves of violence, underscoring the project’s vulnerability. Far from isolated incidents, this sustained series of attacks highlights how militant groups and their great power patrons see undermining CPEC as central to weakening the Chinese-Pakistani alliance.
Speculation about Western intelligence support for Balochi separatists has gained currency in recent years. The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), with documented ties to Israeli intelligence, launched a Balochistan Studies Project in 2025. This initiative highlighted Balochistan’s strategic importance for monitoring Iran’s and Pakistan’s nuclear program, suggesting Israel’s continued interest in leveraging regional ethnic tensions for broader geopolitical objectives.
The Imran Khan Parallel
The 2022 removal of Prime Minister Imran Khan bears striking similarities to the pressures Zia faced for maintaining independent foreign policy positions. Khan’s insistence on neutrality regarding the Russia-Ukraine conflict angered Washington, just as Zia’s support for Iran during the Iran-Iraq War created friction with Reagan administration officials.
The leaked diplomatic cable published by The Intercept revealed that U.S. State Department official Donald Lu explicitly linked Khan’s removal to his Russia policy. “I think if the no-confidence vote against the Prime Minister succeeds, all will be forgiven in Washington because the Russia visit is being looked at as a decision by the Prime Minister,” Lu stated. “Otherwise, I think it will be tough going ahead.”
Khan was removed through a no-confidence vote on April 10, 2022, exactly one month after the threatening meeting with U.S. officials. The parallel with Zia’s fate thirty-four years earlier is unmistakable: Pakistani leaders who pursue independent foreign policies will face tremendous pressure from Washington and could be unceremoniously removed from power.
Iran-Pakistan Relations: From Conflict to Cooperation
The January 2024 tit-for-tat missile exchanges between Iran and Pakistan initially appeared to represent a dangerous escalation. Iran struck Balochi separatist targets in Pakistani Balochistan on January 16, killing two children. Pakistan retaliated two days later, targeting Balochi militants in Iranian Sistan-Baluchestan province, killing nine people including four children.
However, the rapid diplomatic resolution echoed Zia’s approach to managing regional relationships. Within days, both countries agreed to de-escalate through diplomatic channels. The now-deceased Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian visited Pakistan on January 29, 2024, leading to agreements on enhanced security cooperation and intelligence sharing. This swift return to cooperation reflected the kind of pragmatic diplomacy Zia employed during the Iran-Iraq War.
This move also reflects the new challenge of challenging Judeo-American perfidy with respect to the activation of Balochi militants against the security interests of both Iran and Pakistan. Iran and Pakistan have been increasingly alarmed by the growing nexus between Baloch separatists and Israel, which both states see as a direct threat to their security. As Mansur Khan Mahsud of Pakistan’s FATA Research Centre toldThe Cradle, “During the recent 12-day standoff between Iran and Israel, Tehran noticed a tight-knit connection between Baloch separatists and Israel. Their sharing of intelligence with Tel Aviv led to significant human and infrastructure losses for Iran.”
Tehran has gone further with its accusations, directly implicating Tel Aviv and accusing Israel of recruiting and deploying mercenaries through the Balochistan Liberation United Front (BLUF). Abdullah Khan of the Pakistan Institute for Conflict and Security Studies warned: “Iran is enhancing its ties with Pakistan in the background of militants’ increased alignment with Israel. Their liaison with Tel Aviv would further crystallize when Iran shifts its policies and takes action against BLA and BLF sanctuaries within its territory. India has cultivated strong ties with both groups, enabling it to serve as a bridge to connect them with Israel.”
The Multipolar Reality
Today’s geopolitical environment increasingly resembles the complex balance Zia navigated during the 1980s. Pakistan’s alignment with China and Iran in various contexts, from CPEC to regional security cooperation against Israel’s Judeo-Accelerationist foreign policy, represents the kind of hedging strategy Zia pioneered.
The emergence of a multipolar world order, with China and Russia challenging American hegemony, provides Pakistan with alternatives to complete dependence on Washington. This mirrors the strategic space Zia created by balancing Cold War pressures while pursuing Pakistan’s independent interests.
The emergence of India as a strategic partner for both Israel and the United States creates new pressure points for Pakistan. This convergence of Israeli and American interests regarding Pakistan mirrors the strategic calculations that may have motivated action against Zia in 1988. Pakistan’s continued opposition to India, combined with its growing alignment with China and Iran, places it squarely in opposition to the emerging U.S.-India-Israel axis.
Just as Zia-ul-Haq’s demise brought one era to a close, the unresolved questions surrounding his death continue to haunt Pakistan’s foreign policy decision-making in a world where old alliances fade and new fault lines emerge.
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.
An American legal advocacy organization has filed a lawsuit to seek the source of funding for the controversial US and Israeli-backed group delivering aid in the Gaza Strip.
The US-run Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a so-called humanitarian group set up to cater to the needs of the Palestinian people, has cost the lives of hundreds of Gazans, already ravaged by famine and genocide.
International aid experts have described GHF’s distribution points as “death traps, criticizing the relief group’s work model as “an insult to the humanitarian enterprise and standards.”
GHF spokesperson Chapin Fay told Channel 4 of the UK last week that Western European countries funded GHF, but that he would not reveal which countries did it.
On Wednesday, the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) filed a lawsuit to seek the source of GHF’s funding and its initial tens of millions of dollars paid as salaries and the travel expenses to its aid workers, who have been described as “mercenaries.”
The CCR was investigating the legality of GHF’s charter and demanding that its financial records be revealed under the Freedom of Information Act.
In its lawsuit, the CCR requested that Delaware’s Attorney General Kathy Jennings “investigate GHF and revoke its charter on grounds that it is illegally abusing its privileges with its complicity in war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.”
The New York-based firm said it filed its lawsuit against the Donald Trump administration for its failure to comply with its request.
The CCR said it aims to follow the money to find who is funding the failed aid operation.
“Today’s lawsuit seeks records that could shed light on not only the decision-making process… but also on the creation of GHF, its funding and how it plans to use” a US government grant, the CCR said.
“The Center for Constitutional Rights is particularly interested in information that could reveal whether the administration’s distribution of funds has any link to President Trump’s ‘Gaza Riviera’ plan, which would cleanse the area of Palestinians and redevelop it for investors,” the statement said.
Since GHF began its relief operations in southern Gaza in May, which have left over 1,000 Palestinians seeking food aid dead at its four distribution points across Gaza, its funding sources have been a secret.
US military contractors who staff GHF have also been seen in videos shooting at aid seekers – something former US special forces soldier Anthony Aguilar confirmed after leaving the organization.
“GHF, far from alleviating suffering in Gaza, is contributing to the forced displacement, killing and furtherance of genocide of Palestinians,” the CCR said.
GHF food aid distribution points “have become synonymous with scenes of chaos and carnage,” it added.
Meanwhile, human rights experts familiar with the matter say the word “humanitarian” in the title of the organization only serves to “add to Israel’s humanitarian camouflage.”
“Without clear accountability, the very idea of humanitarian relief may ultimately become a casualty of modern hybrid warfare,” they warned.
Analysts say the United States and the Israeli regime created GHF to bypass the United Nations’ central role in aid distribution in Gaza.
The UN has refused to cooperate with the US-Israeli program, calling it a militarized aid model that would result in the displacement of the Gaza people.
Since the Israeli regime launched its genocidal war in Gaza in October 2023, most of the population has been forced to relocate, some of them several times.
More than 62,122 people in Gaza, most of them women and children, have been killed during this time, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
If you regard the United States as perhaps flawed but overall a force for good in the world . . .
If you scoff at the notion that the US, a republic founded on principles of freedom and democracy, has morphed into a world empire, perpetrating assassinations, coups d’état, acts of terror and illegal warfare . . .
If you want to promote peace but haven’t yet explored deceptive events that precipitate US warmongering . . .
. . . here is a volume that will clear the air and paint an honest picture of the significant, not-so-rosy impact US foreign policy and actions have had in the world around us.
USA: The Ruthless Empire, by Swiss historian and peace researcher Daniele Ganser, is the newly published English language translation of his book Imperium USA, originally written in German and published in 2020. Here is a summary of key points — including some lesser-known ones — along with remedies for a more peaceful future, that are covered in the book. … continue
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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.
If you regard the United States as perhaps flawed but overall a force for good in the world . . .
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