Jeff at State
What Was The U.S. State Department Doing With Epstein?
Two years after getting out of Palm Beach jail’s executive-suite sleepover camp, Jeffrey Epstein was apparently renting out his Boeing 727 – better known in later years as the Lolita Express – to the U.S. State Department to ferry unnamed employees to Libya, according to an email in the recent batch of DOJ releases.
The jet rental was scheduled for spring 2011. The timing is pivotal: the rebellion against Moammar Gaddafi began in Benghazi around February of that year and is known to have been a goal of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. By March, the U.N. Security Council had authorized a no-fly zone to protect civilians, and NATO took command of military operations shortly after that. In August, rebels took Tripoli, Gaddafi went into hiding and was captured and killed in October.
The collapse of the regime led to years of civil war and a failed state.
The email subject line was “Boeing 727 U.S. State Department trip,” written by a redacted sender, who seems to have been an aviation employee. It includes pricing for a Boeing “State Department trip” to be undertaken before the end of April, from Palm Beach through Malta to Libya.
Epstein replied: “Who is on plane? Do we need stewArdess [sic] when do they want to go”
The emailer also noted that an entity called JEGE, Inc. owned by Epstein and which owned the plane, would make a profit of $109,414 on the trip.
The Libya trip jet rental is just one of multiple interactions between Jeff and the State Department revealed in the Epstein files.
Add to the growing list of Epstein mysteries how a college dropout and convicted sex offender gained access and influence we normally expect of foreign service officers with advanced degrees, years of language training, and diplomatic experience.
Epstein’s jet was apparently one key asset. He seems to have rented it – or sometimes donated flights – to diplomats and attachés. Perhaps the Boeing made him cozier with State Department fliers and world leaders than he might otherwise have been. We may never know how many he ferried around.
In 2003, he flew former Colombian president Andrés Pastrana to Cuba to meet with Fidel Castro and later visited Pastrana in Colombia with Ghislaine Maxwell in tow. There, Maxwell flew a Black Hawk helicopter, posing barefoot in a flight suit and later boasting that she fired a missile at a “terror camp.”
In 2007, he flew former UN Ambassador Bill Richardson to Khartoum, covering the costs. In 2013, Japanese venture capitalist and frequent Epstein interlocutor Joi Ito asked Jeff about flying a 727 into Japan. Epstein responded with information about the rules and added that he had been to Japan before on a State Department trip. Epstein did fly into Japan on his 727 when he landed at a military base to pick up passenger Bill Clinton in 2002.
Epstein was certainly known to the State Department by the early 1990s, when George H.W. Bush was president. In 1989, he was invited on a congressional delegation trip to Israel organized by Utah Republican Congressman Wayne Owens; his name appears on the official report.
In 1992, he leased a Manhattan townhouse from the State Department’s Office of Foreign Missions – property the US had seized from Iran. In 1993, he flew former Reagan Deputy Secretary of State John C. Whitehead on his plane.
As we have reported before, Epstein became a member of the Council on Foreign Relations in 1995 and remained on the rolls until 2009. The CFR has claimed he only showed up a few times, but records indicate he participated far more extensively, attending meetings, visits, and trips organized by the CFR, including to the CIA, Russia, and a military base in California.
Epstein’s skill set included lying about his wealth, so it’s not always clear exactly how many of his references to his dealings with “state” were grounded in fact. But his correspondents seemed to think he was a useful conduit, especially during the Obama and Trump 1.0 years.
In an October 2011 email with an unknown redacted whose handle suggests a connection to Africa, Epstein wrote: “I have been forceful at the state dept. on your behalf.”
A year later, sex offender Epstein was invited to an evening meeting with Charles Rivkin, U.S. Ambassador to France, at his Paris residence.
His pals clearly thought he had deep access to the U.S. State Department: In 2013 his powerful friend and frequent correspondent Emirati businessman Sultan bin Sulayemman, asked Jeff to help him meet with recently-appointed Secretary of State John Kerry during an upcoming trip to the UAE. Epstein replied that “state dept needs more details, doesnt want to disturnb [sic] protocol.”
Epstein claimed to be pals with John Kerry, but his most significant State Department connection during the Obama years appears to have been Deputy Secretary of State Bill Burns. The Wall Street Journal reported on three meetings Epstein had with Burns. “The director does not recall any further contact,” his spokesman told the Journal in 2023. But we have found that Epstein had multiple meetings scheduled with Burns in 2013-2014, including a private lunch following a mysterious private meeting at the U.S. Treasury Department.
A month before that lunch, Epstein wrote to his Norwegian diplomat pal Terje Rød-Larsen: “i would love bill burns [sic] views on whether I should or not” meet with a Russian Central Bank official in charge of the Kremlin’s response to Western sanctions after the Crimea invasion. In April 2013, he wrote to Terje: “lets set a meeitng [sic] with Bill burns in wash or ny.”
In July 2013, he told Rød-Larsen to reach out to Burns “and tell him you are there if he needs help.” The following day, he reported to Terje that Secretary of State John Kerry would be busy, so “they” would turn to Burns “who will need more help.” After that he wrote “middle east syria egypt etc.” In late May 2014, he wrote Peter Thiel to tell him that Ehud Barak, Bill Burns, and Terje Rød-Larsen would all be at his house on June 1. In September 2014, Epstein scheduled a meeting with Burns and Thiel, telling Thiel that afterward he would need “alone time” with Burns.
And on his last day at State, Bill Burns emailed Epstein at 5:36pm.
What did the foreign service officers make of him? One clue is in a 2019 proffer to New York federal prosecutors, in which an unnamed female victim witness recalled of one flight that: “A Department of State Agent flew on EPSTEIN’s plane and asked who all of the girls were.”
In a 2019 exchange with Steve Bannon a month before his arrest, discussing the documentary they were collaborating on, Epstein reported that his high-level pals would participate. He wrote that he had just had “an hour meeting with govt” to discuss “casting” for the documentary.
Congressional Republicans have subpoenaed the Clintons to grill them about their relationship with Epstein for the pettiest of all purposes: satisfying their mad king’s obsession with political revenge. A better use of their time and service to the public interest would be examining how a global sex trafficker gained an apparent E-ZPass into the State Department, during and before and after HRC’s tenure as Secretary of State.
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The international spy theory seems less fringe with each disclosure.
This is fine reporting on Jeff's access and usefulness to the US State Department.
It is a very worthwhile angle that has not been covered yet in substacks I subscribe to. So, thank you very much!
As you likely know, the others trace 30 years of Russian and Israeli intellligence links; the money laundering - e.g. by Trump - of great sums of dirty money from Russian oligarchs; the political and foreign affairs influence in US, EU and ME; the connections with major US banks and other banks; the chase after models; the hideous sex trafficking to notable men unfazed by how they personally degraded girls and women; and the murders at Zorro and Trump's California golf course. That's a "for instance".
You may also know that Donald Tusk, head of Poland's government, launched an investigation into Epstein-Putin ties on Feb. 4th. His concerns are national security and also the well-being of any Polish girls and women lured into the Maxwell-Epstein-Trump "honey-pot".
Any legal cases that result will to Europe's courts and the ICC.