Former NSA counterspy on Epstein spy hyperlinks

NEWS AND ANALYSIS:

John R. Schindler, a former National Security Agency counterintelligence official, just lately disclosed new data linking deceased pedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein to Russian intelligence.

Mr. Schindler wrote an in depth counterintelligence evaluation of Epstein, who died below mysterious circumstances in a New York jail in August 2019.

Since his dying, Epstein has been linked to an array of high-profile figures together with CIA Director William Burns, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, and America’s largest financial institution, JPMorgan Chase.

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The financial institution’s CEO Jamie Dimon, was deposed final month in an Epstein-related sex-trafficking lawsuit and mentioned he had no relationship with the deceased.

Mr. Schindler, who writes the intelligence e-newsletter Top Secret Umbra, quoted a favourite expression of counterintelligence officers from “Goldfinger,” the e book by spy novelist Ian Fleming: “Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it’s enemy action.”

Epstein confronted prices of sexually abusing women in 2006 and pleaded responsible in 2008 to soliciting and procuring a minor for prostitution. He was jailed in Florida and registered as a intercourse offender. He was being held on intercourse trafficking prices when he died.

Epstein additionally operated a fancy resort within the U.S. Virgin Islands that was visited by quite a few highly effective and rich individuals.

In April, The Wall Street Journal reported that paperwork from Epstein present that Mr. Burns, who has been CIA director since early 2021, was scheduled for 3 conferences with Epstein in 2014 to acquire profession recommendation.

Mr. Schindler weighed in on the report, writing “this is a strange story, to put it mildly.”

“Burns was a well-regarded top diplomat (and the first career diplomat to head CIA),” he wrote. “We don’t know what career advice Epstein shared with Burns, nor if Epstein had anything to do with Burns getting his plum gig at the Carnegie Endowment. But that also misses the point.”

Mr. Schindler requested why the extremely related senior diplomat, thought of one among Washington’s most distinguished officers, would flip to a registered intercourse offender for profession recommendation.

“Did Burns not know any financial matchers who weren’t pedophiles?” he requested.

Mr. Schindler mentioned there are two potentialities. One is Mr. Burns knew who Epstein was and didn’t care that he was a felony intercourse offender, one thing that “hardly speaks well for Burns’ judgement or moral compass.”

A second chance is Mr. Burns by no means bothered to inquire about Epstein.

“Such willfully careless ignorance fails Spook School 101 and stands as an instant disqualifier to lead the CIA,” Mr. Schindler wrote, noting that he has known as for the CIA director to step down in consequence.

CIA spokeswoman Tammy Thorp instructed Inside the Ring that Mr. Burns met Epstein on the suggestion of a buddy.

“As Director Burns has emphasized before, he deeply regrets ever having met [Epstein] and wishes he had done his homework first,” she mentioned. “He recalls being introduced by a mutual friend in Washington, D.C., and then met with him once briefly in New York City, about a decade ago.”

Mr. Schindler’s evaluation forged doubt on that rationalization. If Mr. Burns had no concept who Epstein was, then why would he solicit profession recommendation from an individual he knew nothing about?

Aside from the CIA director, Mr. Schindler expertly related the dots of Epstein’s relations with Mr. Gates, essentially the most attention-grabbing of which concerned the tech chief’s affair with a Russian nationwide named Mila Antonova, who was half his age.

“The Gates-Antonova story includes a big dollop of Jeffrey Epstein, because of course it does,” Mr. Schindler wrote. “She was seeking funds for an online bridge venture called BridgePlanet and Antonova was introduced to Epstein by Boris Nikolic, a top adviser to Gates.”

Ms. Antonova, in response to The Wall Street Journal, met Epstein at his New York City residence in late 2013 and requested for $500,000 in startup funds. In 2014, she stayed at an residence supplied by Epstein, and he or she claimed to do not know about his felony previous.

Then in 2017, Epstein requested Mr. Gates for a donation for a multimillion-dollar charity he began with JPMorgan Chase, and Mr. Gates declined.

Epstein then emailed Mr. Gates asking for a reimbursement of the cash he gave to Ms. Antonova’s on-line startup that included a veiled menace to reveal Mr. Gate’s affair together with her.

According to Mr. Schindler, it appeared Epstein “was running a kind of kompromat operation on his super-wealthy pals.”

Kompromat is a Russian intelligence time period for blackmail operation.

Mr. Schindler wrote that Epstein bought a lenient deal from the Justice Department in 2008 after prosecutors have been instructed he “belonged to intelligence,” a sign he was not a supply for American intelligence companies, however international ones.

Mr. Schindler asserted the hyperlink to Russian intelligence features a {photograph} displaying Ms. Antonova within the late 2000s – across the time she met Mr. Gates – on a New York road with Ana Kushchenko, also called Ana Chapman.

Ms. Chapman was among the many 10 Russian intelligence deep cowl “illegal” brokers arrested by the FBI in 2010. The Russians have been shortly traded to Moscow in a spy swap.

“What was Chapman’s relationship with Mila Antonova? Who knew about that relationship? Was Jeffrey Epstein aware of this? Did Antonova meet Bill Gates purely by chance? It’s possible that two young Russian women just happened to meet in New York during the brief period circa 2009-10 when Chapman, the model-esque SVR Illegal, was in living in Manhattan, which was the same period that Antonova’s relationship with Gates just happened to commence, which Epstein just happened to know about?” Mr. Schindler notes.

SVR is the acronym for Russia’s international spy company.

Epstein “was clandestinely involved with multiple intelligence agencies” with substantial help from the Israelis and the Russians, Mr. Schindler concluded.

Former State official on U.S., China confrontation

David Stilwell, a former assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, weighed in on the latest verbal sparring between Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and China’s Defense Minister Li Shangfu.

The two protection leaders criticized one another’s militaries in the course of the Shangri-La protection convention in Singapore final weekend.

“Since the U.S. first took off the kid gloves at the Shangri-La Dialogue in 2014, the open elevating of shared concerns of the U.S. and the region has put the People’s Republic of China on notice that the days of unopposed goals is over,” Mr. Stilwell, who held the State put up in the course of the Trump administration, instructed Inside the Ring.

“Kudos to the Defense Department for demonstrating both the freedom of navigation and for publicizing what DoD has kept secret for too long: PRC dangerous maneuvering in international waters against U.S. and allied/partner professionalism,” he added.

The Pentagon now must launch photographs of the surveillance gear recovered from the February shootdown of a Chinese balloon off the Carolina coast, he mentioned.

The photographs “would make a mockery of PRC complaints about [U.S.] reconnaissance operations 100 miles from their shores,” he mentioned.

On complaints a couple of lack of conferences with Chinese protection and navy officers, Mr. Stilwell, a former Air Force attaché in China, mentioned the Pentagon has been accepting conferences with low-level Ministry of Defense and Central Military Commission officers.

The People’s Liberation Army would by no means settle for a gathering with an appearing assistant protection secretary, “but that’s who Beijing puts up against the defense secretary,” Mr. Stilwell mentioned.

“U.S. interlocutors need to understand that when negotiating with the Chinese Communist Party, you always have to be ready to walk away to show you’re serious,” he mentioned. “We don’t teach these people how to negotiate and it’s really hurting us.”

As for these calling for lifting sanctions on Chinese Defense Minister Li so he may journey and meet with U.S. counterparts, Mr. Stilwell famous that he’s amongst greater than 10 former U.S. officers, together with himself and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who’ve been sanctioned by Beijing.

“If Beijing really wants to talk, they know how to get a hold of us, and we’ve always picked up the phone,” he mentioned. “The sanctions thing is just an excuse.”

HASC chair to hunt extra China funding

House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers desires Congress to supply extra money to the Pentagon to cope with China.

Mr. Rogers, Alabama Republican, instructed reporters this week {that a} supplemental spending invoice could also be wanted for China, whereas spending for Ukraine could also be curbed.

The chairman mentioned after Congress completed the fiscal 2024 protection authorization and appropriations payments, “then it’s time for us to look and see if we actually address China. If we did, fine. If we didn’t, we’ll go ahead and drop more funding. It’s all about China for me.”

“It is premature to be talking about a supplemental right now,” Mr. Rogers mentioned Tuesday. “But we will need a supplemental later this year, for China specifically.”

The feedback have been reported by Politico and Defense News.

The extra China spending would want to bypass the $886 billion restrict on navy spending within the debt ceiling deal just lately signed into regulation.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy mentioned Monday that the Pentagon funds request is sufficient, and that the Pentagon wants to seek out cash elsewhere.

“What we really need to do, we need to get the efficiencies in the Pentagon,” Mr. McCarthy mentioned. “Think about it, $886 billion. You don’t think there’s waste? They failed the last five audits. I consider myself a hawk, but I don’t want to waste money. So, I think we’ve got to find efficiencies.”