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Tongsun Park's Club: How the Korean Built His Georgetown Base
by Phil McCombs
Washington Post
October 16, 1977
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/ ... edirect=on

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FRANCIS COLT DE WOLF JR., Washington insurance man, gazed into the distance and recalled the days, more than a decade ago, when Tongsun Park wanted to start a new Washington social club.

"Well, he just started moving around socially in town," recalled de Wolf. "People used to ask me what the heck this kid is doing. He was a rich kid, you know. I just said, "Well, I don't know. Some rich kids like to buy yachts, some like to start clubs . . . In retrospect, I think he had something in mind."

Indeed. According to a federal indictment, Park "set up and operated" Washington's exclusive George Town Club with the aid of Korean Central Intelligence Agency officials as a primary means in an illegal effort to influence U.S. politicians and officials.

With money, boldness and charm for credentials it appears that Park was able to harness for his own use, in part by means of this club, the enormous social energies of a world capital where the cocktail and dinner party is stock-in-trade.

How did he do it?

Interviews with eight of the club's 14 founders, 12 of its 15 present board members and others tell this story.

More than a decade ago, Park contacted a few friends and acquaintances and began putting together a founding group that was in tone predominantly Republican, conservative and social old-guard. At least one founder, the late Marine Gen. Graves B. Erskine, had been closely linked with high-level national intelligence activities.

These founders, in snowball fashion, then contacted their friends to be founding members. The club now has about 330 members and its leadership emphasizes that this group is separate from Park, who, they say, merely owns the club premises and runs and rents it for the members under contract.

According to records and interviews, Park acquired the club premises at 1530 Wisconsin Ave. NW under a lease in 1961, purchasing the property in 1965. The club opened in the spring of 1966.

It appears that what Park did was take advantage of the normal social and professional instincts of at least some of the persons named in this article, who, with one exception, are free of any charges in the case.

Park acquired the lease on the club premises after returning from Korea to resume his studies at Georgetown University. After entering Georgetown as a freshman in 1956, Park had been suspended for "academic deficiencies" and had gone to Seoul in 1960 where, according to a knowledgeable American source, he apparently had made some powerful friends among the men closest to the new South Korean president, Park Chung Hee.

After several years of developing the club premises and preparing to open it - years when Tongsun Park was also engaged in complex worldwide business dealings often allegedly linked to the Korean Central Intelligence Agency - he set out in search of a founding group. His hope was apparently that the club would fly on its own, with no overt link to Korea other than himself.

COLT DE WOLF remembers meeting Park for the first time in 1959 through a relative of his wife's who had roomed with Park at Georgetown University.

"I was a founder of The George Town Club but I didn't know I was a founder," said de Wolf. "Park approached me when he was getting ready to open the club . . . In the back of my mind I said, "I need another club like a hole in the head. I was a member of three clubs already. Basically his approach was, 'Can you help me, help me find prospective members?' I was born and raised in this town, I know this town.

"His secretary would come down and we'd look at lists, the social register and so on, and work up prospective members. Mailings went out. He always did things well: a whole bunch of engraved invitations. Before I knew it, people I met on the street said, 'I see you're a founding member of a new club,' I said, 'I didn't know that.' Then I got the bill."

De Wolf said he never paid and that he was, legally, "never a member." Gradually, de Wolf and his wife cooled in their friendship with Park and stopped inviting him to parties - a move that was reciprocated, de Wolf said.

Another club founder and source of members, according to interviews, was Anna Chennault, the Chinese-born widow of Maj. Gen. Claire Chennault of World War II's Flying Tigers.

A Washington hostess and proponent of U.S. support for the non-Communist Republic of China on Taiwan, Anna Chennault has been characterized in press reports as having introduced Park to many powerful persons in Washington and showing him how to make his views felt.

Chennault was a club founder, according to the list of founders provided by the club manager Norman Larsen, who took that job in the early days of the club, working directly for Park. Larsen, formerly with H.L. Hunt's rightwing educational "Life Line Foundation," said he still reports directly to Park.

Chennault did not return repeated phone calls. Three other club founders who could not be reach for interviews were:

Thomas G. Corcoran, known as "Tommy the Cork," the former FDR braintruster who is now a widely influential Washington attorney. Corcoran, who did not return phone calls from The Washington Post, was quoted in other press reports as saying that Park called him "Papa Tom," although Corcoran was not associated with Park in business or lobbying. Nevertheless, Corcoran has been characterized in press accounts as having taught Park a good deal about how to operate in Washington. Corcoran has also been an escort of Anna Chennault at social functions.

Air Force Gen. Fred M. Dean, now officially listed as retired. Dean commanded the U.S. Air Task Force on Taiwan from 1957 to 1960, then went on to key staff and command positions in Washington and Europe.

Marine General Erskine, deceased, who commanded the Third Marine Division at Iwo Jimma. From 1953 to 1961 Erskine was assistant for special operations to the Secretary of Defense. "His responsibilities," according to a press release of the period. . . . included the areas of intelligence, counter-intelligence, communications security, CIA relationships and special operations, and psychological warfare operations."

De Wolf recalled that club board meetings were at first held in the office of another founder, Robert K. Gray, who is now president of The George Town Club.

GRAY HEADS the Washington office of the large public relations firm, Hill & Knowlton. A man of influence who likes to keep a low profile, Gray was President Eisenhower's cabinet secretary and has been a noted Republican fund-raiser.

Gray said Park called in 1965 on public relations business and, in the course of their meetings, Park asked how to start a social club - a subject naturally interesting to Gray, who attends several parties a week as a matter of professional duty. (Gray said he and Park never did do business but had a purely social relationship.)

Gray said he suggested that Park pick several people and have them call their friends, and so on. In their discussions, Gray said, the idea developed of having a "cross-section of people" in a club with a "congressional overtone."

Gray said Park suggested Anna Chennault as a founder. He said he himself suggested Geroge Murphy, Clark W. Thompson and Mrs. Robert McCormick. All three became founders.

"I think I was invited for window-dressing," said Murphy, the actor-turned-conservative-politician who was then serving his one term in the Senate. Murphy had met Gray in 1952 when they both worked at the Republican convention that nominated Eisenhower.

Murphy said he was asked to be a club founder by Gray and by Lawrence C. Merthan, who at the time worked for Hill & Knowlton here and who is now with the Carpet and Rug Institute. Merthan, also a club founder, could not be reached for an interview.

Murphy said that at the time he was already a member of the 1925 F Street Club and was unimpressed with plans for The George Town Club but agreed to be a founder anyway. "Then they sent me a bill for $300. I said, 'Please take my name off the scorecard.' I never met the Korean gent [Park]."

After Murphy left the Senate in 1970 he said he worked briefly for Hill & Knowlton here and later established his own PR firm.

Clark W. Thompson was for 22 years a well-known conservative Democrat in the House until his retirement in 1966. He remembers that Gray suggested he become a club founder but can't remember how he met Park.

"I didn't know Park particularly well," said Thompson. "I often wondered why, when he was doing all this rice buying, he never did discuss it with me. He never discussed politics. It was just social." Thompson said his Texas district was a big rice producer and that he was concerned with rice matters in Congress.

According to the indictment, part of the Korean influence-peddling conspiracy involved Park's being designated as the sellers' agent for the purchase of all rice by South Korea from the U.S. Park then used his agent's commissions to pay off congressmen and senators to influence them, the indictment charges. (Thompson was not named in the indictment and has not been connected with the case in any way.)

Mrs. Robert McCormick, wife of the late Chicago Tribune publisher, said she met Park through Anna Chennault. "I liked him, he was very hospitable," said Mrs. McCormick, recalling that Park was sometimes referred to as "the Onassis of the Far East" because of oil tankers he owned.

Mrs. McCormick said that she used to have "a lot of fun" at the club even though there were "an awful lot of tacky politicians in there, mostly Democrats."

Milton G. Nottingham Jr. was another founder. A 1944 graduate of the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy who after 1949 held various government marine posts in Korea and the United States, Nottingham then went into the ship chartering and brokerage business. He said he was once "the maritime adviser" to Tongsun Park.

"I'd known him a year when he asked me to be a founding member, then to be president," said Nottingham. "I thought it was a short-term matter. I served for a year or so. It was more of an honorary thing than anything else. It didn't call for management decisions . . .

"Like many organizations of a social nature, it was socially a success but not financially. In any event, he got behind in his [financial situation]. One day I received a summons to the Corporation Counsel's office. I explained I had nothing to do with the management of the club. Park appeared with an attorney and agreed with that. At that point in time I thought, "I don't really need this."

ANOTHER FOUNDER was Louise Gore, who was for eight years a member of the Maryland legislature and who in 1974 ran unsuccessfully for governor of Maryland. Gore said she first met Park in the late 1950s when he and another young man called upon her to promote Young Americans for Freedom, a conservative youth group.

Gore remembers hearing at one point that the woodframe townhouse at 1530 Wisconsin Ave., thought by some to be at or near the site of the historic Suter's Tavern that George Washington used to visit, was for sale.

As a history buff, she said, she was interested, but because she was busy opening The Jockey Club restaurant at the time she couldn't do anything about it but try to interest her friends and acquaintances, including Park, in the property.

"I took him by there," she said. "I can't remember when the idea of . . . a club came up, but I used to say Washington is a very transient town and it was too bad there's notsomething that transient people could join . . . The next thing I hear is that [Park] wanted to go ahead with a club."

Later, she said, "Someone called. Tongsun Park or maybe Bob Gray, and asked me to join as a founder." She did, although she was too busy to ever attend a meeting, she said.

Henry Preston Pitts Jr. was also a founder. Pitts, a longtime Washingtonian, had worked for Hill & Knowlton at about the time the club was founded and then as a PR man for a large holding company. He is now a spokesman for the U.S. Information Agency.

"I was introduced to Tongsun at the time of the founding of the club," he said. "Bob (Gray) called me and asked me to have lunch and meet a young Oriental gentleman who was founding a club, and I did, and I liked Tongsun. He's a charming, charming person. Subsequently, when the founding board was being put together, I was invited to be a founder."

It was the job of the founders, Pitts said, to draw up membership lists for the club, to "get the snowball rolling." Club manager Larsen said that the founders suggested most of the original 160 or so club members.

Gray, Gore, Thompson and Pitts are still club officers. All the other living founders continue to be listed as members except Murphy, de Wolf and Mrs. McCormick. Park himself was a founder, according to Larsen, and is still listed as a member.

YEARS BEFORE Park began rounding up founders and launching the new social club, he had prepared an elegant clubhouse. This preparation was the object of an entirely separate operation that had required more than deft socializing. Park had needed money, decorating and construction talent, and legal advice.

This part of the story begins in 1960 with J. Francis Harris III, a Washington real estate broker and builder who was part owner of the townhouse at 1530 Wisconsin Ave.

Harris had wanted to start a tavern there and early in 1960 has set up a corporation called Suter's Tavern Inc. However, as Harris recalled it, the effort did not succeed. His hands were full with construction elsewhere.

Meantime, Harris said, he had met Tongsun Park socially, somehow the idea had hatched of Park taking over the tavern effort, and Harris and his co-owner had leased the place to Park with an option to buy for four years and had then sold it to him.

The record shows the sale of the $90,000 property took place June 22, 1965, with Park obtaining a 15 year, $325,000 mortgage from Philadelphia Life Insurance Co.

Henry A. Meinzer, a private attorney near Philadelphia who was Philadelphia Life's mortgage officer at the time, recalled nothing unusual about the transaction.

The difference betwen $90,000 and $325,000 would have allowed Park to finish work on the club and get it going, Meinzer said. Land records show that security for the mortgage loan included the premises, an insurance policy on Park's life, and "all fixtures and personal property" on the premises.

According to his testimony this June before a congressional subcommittee, ex-KCIA Director Kim Hyung Wook let Park use $3 million in South Korean government funds in 1967 as collateral to help finance the club as a way of gaining access to and influencing U.S. politicians and officials.

If so, then why do so amy people recall Park's financial difficulties during the late 1960s?

"Like any new business it took a long time to get in the black," said Lawrence D. Huntsman, an attorney who represented Park during the late 1960s. "I know of no $3 million or heavy financing from the outside. Everything came from leasing companies, banks, the life insurance company . . . club membership grew and patronage grew, the leases were negotiated and renegotiated. Each time a default would build up we'd say, 'You're businessmen and we're businessmen and if you pull out the equipment (you won't get paid).' Finally everyone got paid.I'm telling you, it was nip and tuck for a long time."

On the other hand, there was widespread impression that Park was getting a lot of money from somewhere and sinking it into the club. "He spent an awful lot of money," said Mrs. McCormick. De Wolf thought Park must have spent about $600,000 redoing the building.

"There were times when we couldn't pay the rent and Tongsun didn't throw us out," said one club officer who asked not to be identified.

"It was generally perceived," said another club officer, "that he had a lot of money behind him, much of which he didn't have his hands on." This same person, who also asked for anonymity, conceded that there were times when it was said that the club's cook paid for food with his own money because Park couldn't come up with operating cash.

"In the early days of the club it was quite obvious to all of us that it was not a financial success for [Park] at all," said Gray. "At one point I've heard he had $500,000 in it . . . Knowing what we paid, we knew it didn't balance out at all. He seemed to have all kinds of personal funds - so far as I know they were personal funds.I believe that those early monies were his own. It was very easy not to notice the financial end of it because it was to our benefit."

IN 1976 PARK was able to purchase the adjoining properties at 1532 and 1534 Wisconsin for $300,000. The five year mortgage for $225,000 is held by Montgomery Federal Savings and Loan, according to records. Much of this space had been rented by Park previously. Its purchase allowed for renovation and expansion, according to Larsen.

At one point before the club opened, the office of International Youth Federation for Freedom, a nonprofit anti-Communist group of whicn Park was an incorporator, a director and the president, had moved into part of this space. In those early days, Larsen took over the management of IYFF, which from time to time was visited by CIA officials who wanted to check on its activities, according to two of Park's former IYFF associates. Larsen said he played no substantive role other than to preside over IYFF's dying days.

City records show that Park and others had become th directors and officers of Suter's Tavern Inc., apparently taking it over from Harris and his associates, during the four years they leased the premises.

The others associated with Park in developing the club appear to have been, on the basis of available records and interviews, only peripherally involved.

During most of the time Park was working to open the club and then to keep it open he was, as has been previously reported in The Washington Post, simultaneously engaged in activities as an "agent of influence" for the Korean CIA.

For example, at a time when Park was listed as a director and vice president of Suter's Tavern Inc., he was helping plan the October, 1962, visit to Washington by KCIA chief Kim Jong Pil, the strongman who had helped put President Park Chung Hee in power in a 1961 coup d'etat.

In 1969, Tongsun Park was receiving cabled instructions from a senior official on President Park's staff - instructions which, at least once, were coordinated with the head of the KCIA, Lee Hu Rak.

IT WAS NOT LONG after the club opened before the Republican, conservative, somewhat old-guardish tone set by the founding group gave way to broader-based activity.

In the summer of 1966, just months after the club opened, Luci Johnson's wedding rehearsal dinner was held there. (Bess Abell, White House social secretary at the time, said recently that a routine selection process would have been used to select the club. She could recall little beyond this. A society page item at the time said the Johnson "catering plum" fell to the club because older clubs were booked).

Park sponsored many lavish parties at the club in the years that followed. Guests included such prominent politicians as then-House Speaker Carl Albert (D-Okla.) then-Majority Leader Thomas P. ((Tip) O'Neill Jr. (D-Mass.), scores of other representatives and senators and administration leaders such as former Secretary of Defense Melvin R. Laird, Attorney General William B. Saxbe and then-Vice President Gerald R. Ford.

A club member who asked not to be identified recalled these affairs:

"Other members gave parties and had 10 or 12 people. Mr. Park would take over the entire club - the whole place was filled with 75 or 80 people. There were interesting people, not a lot of Koreans. It was never, never a Korea night . . .

"The guest list would be old Washington society, several attractive young ladies, single men, people from government, say two or three senators and two or three congressmen. Congressman Hanna was nearly always there [Former Rep. Richard T. Hanna (D-Calif.) was indicted Friday on federal charges of bribery, conspiracy and failure to register an agent of the Korean government. The indictment charged that as part of the alleged conspiracy to influence U.S. officials. Hanna "did assist Tongsun Park in the development, operation and financing of the Georiga Town Club," and that Park paid Hanna's initiation fee and the costs of a 1969 fun-raising dinner for Hanna at the club] . . .

"There would be a long, embassy-type French menu . . . Tongsun would talk, tell some jokes. Congressman Hanna would sing in his dismal tenor voice. Tommy the Cork would tell some stories. He was usually there with Anna Chennault. Then it would drag on, and end."

THE SCANDAL, Park's flight to London last fall, the indictment - all this has left many members of the club dazed and realizing they may not have known Park very well at all.

Park, they point out, merely rents the building, staffs it with 19 employees, and runs it through manager Larsen. Club officers said they are taking further steps to give the club "a new face," to "restructure" it in order to "get out from under the criticism that it's a Tongsun Park club."

Club treasurer Frank Spinetta, who is head of Colonial Mortgage Corp., said he spoked by telephone with Park in London and worked out a "verbal agreement" for sale of the club premises to the members.

Spinetta would not discuss the tentative sale price, and said the issues would be presented to the membership.

Spinetta and others said that the scandal has not hurt the club, that revenues are high and that there is a long waiting list for membership.

At one time, Spinetta said, as many as eight congressmen and senators were members. Now there is only one, Rep. Fortney Stark (D-Calif.). Club officials said the decline in such membership has nothing to do with the scandal, but was the natural result of retirements.

"I probably should resign," said Stark, "then I could tell you I resigned. My staff thinks I should."

Stark said he joined the club, which he uses only a few times a year, about four years ago. "I just picked it out of a list of clubs that allow minorities," he said.

The club had a policy. Spinetta said, of extending honorary memberships to the President, Vice President, cabinet officers and - in the past three years - members of the Supreme Court. The policy has now been discontinued, he said. While it was in effect those offered honorary memberships could either accept or decline, and no response was taken as a declination. Spinetta said.

However, it appears that there remains some confusion on the point.

"He's not a member, doesn't pay any dues and he's never been in the club," said the secretary of Supreme Court Justice William J. Brenna Jr., whose name appears on the most recent membership list.

Justice Harry A. Blackmun is also listed as a member. "He has never joined the club, never been inside the place and has no expectation of going," said his secretary.

Justice Potter Stewart is also listed, and his secretary said that Stewart, extended an honorary invitation in 1973, had said he would be glad to accept on the understanding that he couldn't use the club frequently. He never has used it, the secretary said.

A spot check of other names on the list, including ambassadors from several countries, showed that they were dues-paying members.

Club dues are $450 annually for married couples and $350 for single persons. Spinetta said. The initiation fees for new members are $800 and $600 respectively, he said.

Besides Gray, Gore, Thompson, Pitts and Spinetta, current members of the board of governors are listed in the most current club bulletin as: Marion H. Smoak, an attorney who was formerly the State Department's chief of protocol; the socially prominent Mrs. James McS. Wimsatt; stockbroker Kenneth M. Crosby; builder Antonio M. Marinelli; attorney Edward L. Merrigan; Georgetown University professor John H. McDonough; attorney William F. Ragan; Robert L. Shafer, Washington vice president of Pfizer Inc.; Lucien J. Sichel, retired former vice president of Abbott Laboratories, and attorney Hobart Taylor Jr.

Although Park is still listed as a member, Spinetta said he is "not exactly" a member. "We wouldn't throw him out if he walked in," said Spinetta.

"I think very few people really knew Tongsun Park." mused one club officer who asked not to be identified. "I often wonder if we had treated him differently if things would have turned out the way they did. It's like the Great Gatsby in a way: if we could have sort of pierced the veil . . ."

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V.I. Releases New Exhibits Detailing JPMorgan’s Epstein Ties
by Sian Cobb
June 20, 2023

New exhibits filed Tuesday in the V.I. government’s lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase reveal how the bank’s top brass continued to court Jeffrey Epstein for his ties to some of the world’s wealthiest individuals even as its compliance arm warned that he was a growing liability as a felon under investigation for sex crimes.

The exhibits include a June 7 letter to Judge Jed Rakoff of Manhattan federal court that was previously filed under seal, seeking to allow the V.I. Attorney General’s Office to reopen depositions in light of information it received after questioning key witnesses in the case, including JPMorgan’s billionaire CEO Jamie Dimon.

Rakoff on Friday denied that motion, and on Tuesday the government unsealed 10 exhibits offering a closer look at JPMorgan’s relationship with Epstein, the wealthy financier who died by apparent suicide in August 2019 while in custody in New York on federal child sex trafficking charges. His primary residence was Little St. James, his private island estate of St. Thomas.

The government’s complaint, filed Dec. 27 in Manhattan federal court, claims JPMorgan violated the federal Trafficking Victims Protection Act in its services to Epstein, whom it kept as a client even after his 2008 conviction for procuring a minor for prostitution in Florida. The case is scheduled for trial on Oct. 23.

“Jeffrey Epstein connected JPMorgan Chase’s executives with some of the world’s most high profile and wealthy individuals,” the V.I. Attorney General’s Office said in a statement following Tuesday’s filing. “The USVI’s complaint alleges that, in return for bringing valuable new clients into the bank, JPMorgan Chase, through its senior executives, including Mary Erdoes, ignored the evidence of Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes and traded victims’ public safety for its own profits.”

Friends in High Places

According to the government’s filing, Epstein offered JPMorgan access to such high-profile individuals as Prince Andrew of Great Britain, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, American billionaire and private equity investor Leon Black, former U.S. presidential adviser David Gergen, Israeli general and politician Ehud Barak, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the children of former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating, Lord Peter Mandelson of the British government, the Agnelli family of Fiat Motor Company fame, and the ruling sheiks of Kuwait, Bahrain, Dubai, and the United Arab Emirates, among many others.

Meanwhile, employees with the bank’s compliance arm were sounding alarms that Epstein was under federal investigation for child sex trafficking, which was drawing press attention, and that the bank should drop him as a client, according to the filings.

JPMorgan’s top officials eventually ordered an internal investigation into the bank’s Epstein ties in 2019 — a probe that became known as “Project Jeep.” It released an unredacted summary of those findings to the government on May 30, the last day for discovery in the case, according to Tuesday’s filing.

According to the summary — a 22-page bulleted list detailing emails between Epstein, Jes Staley, the former CEO of investment banking, Erdoes, the CEO of asset and wealth management, and occasionally others dating back to 2008 — Epstein was actively involved in the business of JPMorgan, particularly through Staley.

JPMorgan in March filed a third-party lawsuit against Staley, alleging he thwarted its efforts to sever ties with Epstein and should pay if the V.I. government prevails in its suit. Rakoff in April denied Staley’s motion to dismiss the suit.

According to the “Project Jeep” summary, the pair had a close relationship, with Staley maintaining communications even while Epstein was serving time in Florida on the child prostitution charges.

Staley consulted Epstein on everything from his compensation package and his dealings with the Federal Reserve, to the bank’s real estate portfolio and his promotion to CEO of investment banking in 2009, to asset acquisitions and JPMorgan’s forays into China, according to the exhibit.

In an October 2009 email, Epstein wrote to Staley, “feel free to call often, it is difficult for the quarterback to see the playing field. That’s why he calls up to the box.”

A few days later, he wrote to Staley, “my suggestion Your first Great move, should be a new CHina, initiative. first it was alternative investments now china. , you should have a dedicated china entity , with its own board of advisors, should include china politicos. they love to travel. you should be their link to treasury .. or you can issue credit default swaps, for their investment in us co , and you can ask the treasury to be the third party – just an example.”

“Brilliant!” Staley replied.

Epstein went on to organize a tutorial for Staley on doing business in China, according to the summary, and wrote an extensive email laying out the steps for JPMorgan to expand its business in the country, “down to details surrounding the culture, office locations and suggestions for approaching government officials.”

Epstein also suggested Staley “might want to approach abu dhabi, and say as a key player in the world financial system, you will advise them for free. If and only if they decide to implement your advicei.e. sale of assets. thats how you will be compensated. just an idea.”

A day later, on Nov. 29, 2009, Staley forwarded Esptein what appeared to be an internal email regarding discussions with senior officials in the Dubai and Abu Dhabi departments of finance, according to the summary. Two days later, Epstein wrote to Staley, “The first most elegant deal that you can do. is to have China buy Dubai World Ports. They want turnkey, ops where they can then use their worldwide construction cos for building. would be a first great deal for the new ceo of the IB.”

A Close Friendship

On Dec. 3, 2009, Staley wrote to Epstein, “I realize the danger in sending this e-mail. But it was great to be able, today, to give you, in New York City, a long heartfelt, hug. To my friend, thanks. Jes.” According to the summary, it appears that at the time Epstein was not permitted to leave the state of Florida based on the terms of his sentence, “which provides context to the preface of Staley’s email.”

The relationship extended to the U.S. Virgin Islands, which Staley appears to have visited with some frequency, including on his sailboat Bequia, according to the court filings. On Dec. 26, 2009, he wrote to Epstein, “Fun tonight. What do we do next?????” Epstein replied, “my car and driver ,, former dea armed. will pick you up in st thomas we have all the on field permits.. helicopter also available for a tour around , … remember I own the two big marinas.. yacht haven grand, in st thomas and the marina at red hook… you can use my atv’s jet ski gym etc. , i will organize the harbor at Norman island if you like, in the bvil . as well as lunch at guana.”

On Jan. 14, 2010, Staley wrote to Epstein, “Arrived at your harbor. Someday we’ll have to do this together.”

By March 5, 2011, as news of investigations into Epstein was taking hold in the press, he emailed Staley, “more bad press. Ignore it.” Staley replied, “The post?” Epstein replied, “no,, english papers have gone berserk,, claiming fbi re opening investigation. not true,, publishing a phonebook that is not mine , but was stolen by my houseman cuurently in prison for doing so.”

The same day, Staley wrote to Epstein that he and his wife “were talking tonight about what you have meant to me and to [redacted]. You have paid a price for what has been accused. But we know what you have done for us. And we count you as one of our deepest friends. And most honest of people. Thanks, Jes.” Epstein replied, “family.”

Three days later, Vanity Fair published an article about Epstein and his onetime girlfriend and accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, who is currently serving a 20-year sentence for her role in his sex-trafficking scheme.

Trouble on the Horizon

Beginning in 2011, Staley and Erdoes were having regular communications with Epstein relating to certain strategic initiatives and business proposals, including a donor advised fund involving Bill Gates that he proposed could be worth $2 billion within two years, according to the exhibit.

Meanwhile, employees with JPMorgan’s compliance arm held a “Rapid Response meeting” in early January 2011 regarding Epstein and were conducting a review of the bank’s relationship with him amid reports that he was under investigation for allegedly trafficking young girls, according to emails.

Again, Epstein’s personal friendship with Staley was at the center of the discussion.

“He is also an alleged personal associate of the CEO of the Investment Bank (Jes Staley),” the email from Phillip DeLuca, then managing director for the bank’s Financial Intelligence Unit, to two other employees stated. “[Anti Money Laundering] Operations went to a PB risk meeting late last week requesting that we exit this relationship.” It said a meeting was arranged with Staley to discuss the bank’s recent human trafficking initiative with him.

It was two more years before the bank severed its ties with Epstein, though it kept close tabs on his activity as a “high-risk” private bank customer, including annual reviews, according to two exhibits detailing conversations in 2012 and 2013.

JPMorgan has called the V.I. government’s suit a “masterclass in deflection.” Key to their argument is the fact that the V.I. government, through its Economic Development Commission, granted Epstein lucrative tax and other benefits during the same period that it is accusing JPMorgan Chase of helping to further the wealthy financier’s sex trafficking scheme.

The bank contends that, having won a $105 million settlement in its lawsuit against Epstein’s estate in November, the V.I. Attorney General’s Office “now casts afield for deeper pockets.”

On June 12, JPMorgan asked the court to order the government to withdraw confidentiality designations over public records it produced in response to the bank’s document requests. On Friday, Judge Rakoff granted that request, ordering the USVI to de-designate as confidential the annual reports filed by Epstein’s companies to the USVI, as well as his sex-offender file.

[admin]

Jeffrey Epstein, My Very, Very Sick Pal. A very weird interview with Stuart Pivar about Epstein, his science parties, his “pathology,” and the industrial scale of it all.
by Leland Nally
Mother Jones
August 23, 2019
https://www.motherjones.com/criminal-ju ... -sick-pal/

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Stuart Pivar, 89 years old, is an art collector and a controversial scientist who says Jeffrey Epstein was his “best pal for decades” until the two fell out, he told me, over allegations of Epstein’s sexual misconduct. Still, when we spoke last week, Pivar was in mourning for his old friend, who days earlier had killed himself in jail while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. Pivar was angry, too, with the shallow coverage of the Epstein case. “Jeffrey was profoundly sick,” he said, ascribing Epstein’s sexual compulsions to a case of satyriasis.

Pivar, an industrialist who made his money in plastics, acted as a sort of art consultant to Epstein. In 1982 Pivar helped found the New York Academy of Art alongside Andy Warhol; Epstein would later serve on the academy’s board, which is how he came to meet, in 1995, an aspiring artist named Maria Farmer, who was 25 at the time. In an affidavit filed in April, Farmer said she and her 15-year-old sister were sexually assaulted by Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, the British socialite accused of soliciting young girls on Epstein’s behalf. (Maxwell has repeatedly denied accusations of sexual abuse and sex trafficking.)

Pivar was also present for a number of Epstein’s science summits. Epstein himself was no scientist, said Pivar, the author of Lifecode: The Theory of Biological Self-Organization and an advocate of non-Darwinian models of evolution. (This was borne out in a recent New York Times story that described Epstein’s interest in cryonics and eugenics and his wish to “seed the human race with his DNA by impregnating women” at his New Mexico ranch.) Epstein was a dilettante, and easily distracted. But he pulled so many prominent thinkers into his social circle, using the promise of his money to create “some kind of a mini university of thought,” that in Pivar’s view he did “amazing, incredible, amazing, remarkable things for science.” There were lavish dinner parties with the likes of Steven Pinker and Stephen Jay Gould during which Epstein would ask provocatively elementary questions like “What is gravity?” If the conversation drifted beyond his interests, Epstein was known to interrupt, “What does that got to do with pussy?!”

Pivar was close enough to Epstein that the financier put him “in charge of Ghislaine while she was profoundly depressed from the death of her father,” the media mogul Robert Maxwell. Despite their friendship, Pivar said, he was “insulated” from the lurid aspects of Epstein’s personal life. “I don’t know anything about that,” he said, “because I was never invited to the Isle of Babes,” Epstein’s private island in the Caribbean.

In his telling, Pivar ended his friendship with Epstein after learning from Farmer of her sexual assault. Some evidence of the tension between Pivar and Epstein is lying in public view. In August 2007, Pivar sued a science blogger named P.Z. Myers and Seed Media Group, which hosted his blog, alleging defamation. Myers had lit into Pivar’s work, calling him “a classic crackpot.” In his complaint, Pivar made a point of mentioning by name two prominent members of SMG’s board: Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. The lawsuit was later dropped.

Pivar and I spoke by phone last week, a bizarre but occasionally illuminating exchange that ended with a half-joshing threat to sue me. The conversation below has been edited for length and clarity.

Q. I’m a writer doing a story on Jeffrey Epstein. I was wondering if maybe you wanted to talk, if you had any interactions with him or ever met him?

A. Jeffrey who?

Q. Jeffrey Epstein.

A. Oh, that Jeffrey. Oh, I’ve heard of him. [Laughs] Who are you?

Q. I’m writing for Mother Jones right now—

A. Mother Jones. That is some kind of uh—

Q. It’s a publication, a political magazine.

A. I’ve heard of it, from way back, right?

Q. Yeah, they’ve been around since the ’70s. The reason I’m calling is because you were listed as a contact in his contact book.

A. I was? Oh, I thought he knew my telephone number by heart.

Q. Oh, really? So you did know him well?

A. Jeffrey Epstein was my best pal for decades.

Q. Really?

A. Yeah. Jeff, I adored him.

Q. How did you guys meet?

A. One day in the early ’70s a friend of mine brought me to Jimmy Goldsmith’s mansion on the east side. And I walked in, and there in the grandiose lobby was a grand piano, and there was somebody playing the piano with great virtuosity. And it was Jeffrey Epstein. That’s how I met him. Did you know that Jeffrey was a piano virtuoso?

Q. I heard that he played the piano. I never heard the word “virtuoso.”

A. Yeah, he was a major talent, among his other talents.

Q. So you guys were friends since then?

A. For a very long time. Daily pals.

Q. So I’ve got to ask right off the bat: What’s your take about the current scandal? The allegations?

A. Listen, I’m in mourning for Jeffrey.

Q. I understand.

A. The way he died is very immaterial.

Q. Do you think he would be the type of person to take his own life?

A. Those kind of things are trivia to me, with respect to Jeffrey and what he was and all that kind of stuff. That’s not the issue.

Q. I understand.

A. That’s not of any interest, really. Jeffrey was an important person. The detail of he happened to kill himself is completely immaterial and profoundly sad.

Q. What do you think you know about Jeffrey that the broader public might not know? You know, about who he is as a person?

A. Everything, everything, everything.

Q. Okay. Would you ever like to talk in more detail about your relationship with him?

A. What do you want to know?

Q. Well, he’s obviously at the center of a lot of attention right now.

A. No kidding.

Q. The allegations are very severe. They’re very alarming. And it’s—

A. No kidding. But they’re totally, totally, totally, totally misunderstood.

Q. So you don’t think he’s guilty of any of the allegations against him right now?

A. Let’s put it this way. What’s the difference between the punishment which befalls a murderer and a serial murderer? It’s the same. If Jeffrey Epstein was found guilty of fooling around with one 16-year-old trollop, nobody would pay any attention. The trouble is, what he did was quantitative and not qualitative.

What Jeffrey did is nothing in comparison to the rapes and the forceful things, which people did. Jeffrey had to do with a bunch of women who were totally complicit. For years, they went, came there time and time and time again. And if there was only one of them who did it, no one would have noticed—except he made an industry out of it. And why did he make an industry out of it? Because Jeffrey was a very, very, very sick man. For some reason that doesn’t get understood. Did you ever hear of nymphomania? Do you know what that is?


Stuart Pivar with Mary McFadden at the opening of the Andy Warhol Museum in 1994. Globe Photos/ZUMAPRESS.com

Q. Vaguely, yes.

A. What do you mean “vaguely”? Everybody knows what a nymphomaniac is. It’s a girl who is insatiable in her sexual appetite, right?

Q. Yes.

A. Yeah. There are men who are like that, and it’s a disease. It’s called satyriasis, and Jeffrey was afflicted with that.

Some pocket-size books express nothing but the pornography of violence, which derives from crime comics directly or indirectly....Here is one endorsed by an "Internationally Famed Psychiatrist." The endorsement says that this book also is an "educational experience," that it shows a disease "medically known as satyriasis ... based on one or more emotional traumas occurring in early life" and that such a person "will stop at nothing to gain his ends, not even murder." (Even medically that is entirely false.) In this book, girls are murdered, but the high point here is when the hero beats the heroine. She "enjoys the blows." "It was like the time she had watched the Negro being beaten and stoned and what she had felt then she was experiencing again." Sadism (or masochism) as sexual fulfillment -- that is the "educational experience" in these books.

-- Seduction of the Innocent, by Fredric Wertham, M.D.

The most horrible execution, perhaps of all time, was that of unfortunate Robert François Damiens who made an attempt on the life of Louis XV and on March 21 of that year was tortured to death. Thomas Carlyle in his The French Revolution cries out: "Ah, the eternal stars look down as if shedding tears of compassion down on the unfortunate people." We believe that a thousand executions by the guillotine cannot balance the terrible execution such as that of poor Damiens, who merited the sympathy of heaven and the stars. This shameful deed of the ancien régime could not have been washed away by all the blood that fell during the Revolution.

And when the individual details are given, the cruelty in Marquis de Sade's works seems entirely conceivable and heralds the passionate bloodthirstiness of the Revolution.

We possess the following account of the execution of Damiens by an eyewitness, de Croy, which we follow in the main. The same judgment was carried out on Damiens as on the murderer of Henry IV, François Ravaillac, on May 27, 1610. On the morning of March 28, 1757 Damiens was put on the rack; with glowing hot forceps his breasts, arms, legs and calves were torn out and in the wounds were poured molten lead, boiling oil, burning pitch mixed with red hot wax and sulphur. At three o'clock in the afternoon the victim was first brought to Notre Dame and then to the Place de Grève. All the streets that he had to pass by were packed with people who showed "neither hate nor pity." Charles Manselet reported: "Wherever one turns one's eyes one sees only crowds in Rue de la Tannerie! The crowds at the intersection of Rue de I'Épine and Rue de Mouton! The crowds in every part of the Place de Grève. The court itself was a compact mass, consisting of all possible classes, particularly the rabble."

At half past four that dreadful spectacle began. In the middle of the court was a low platform upon which the victim, who showed neither fear nor wonder but asked only for a quick death, was bound fast with iron rings by the six executioners so that his body was completely bound. Thereupon his right hand was extended and was placed in a sulphurous fire; the poor fellow let loose a dreadful outcry. According to Manselet, while his hair was burning, they stood on end. Thereupon his body was again attacked with glowing tongs and pieces of flesh were ripped from his bosom, thighs and other parts; molten lead and boiling oil were again spilled on the fresh wounds, the resulting stench (declared Richelieu in his Memoirs), infected the air of the entire court. Then four horses on the four sides of the platforms pulled hard on the heavy cables bound to his arms, shoulders, hands and feet. The horses were spurred on so that they might pull the victim apart. But they were unused to acting as the handmaids of executioners. For more than a hour they were beaten to strain away so that they might tear off the legs or arms of the victim. Only the wailing cries of pain informed the "prodigious number of spectators" of the unbelievable sufferings that a human creature had to endure. The horses now increased to six, were again whipped and forced to jerk away at the cables. The cries of Damiens increased to a maniacal roaring. And again the horses failed. Finally the executioner received permission from the judges to lighten the horrible task of the horses by cutting off the chains. First the hips were freed. The victim "turned his head to see what was happening," he did not cry but only turned close to the crucifix which was held out to him and kissed it while the two father-confessors spoke to him. At last after one and one-half hours of this "unparalleled suffering" the left leg was torn off. The people clapped their hands in applause! The victim betrayed only "curiosity and indifference." But when the other leg was torn off he started anew his wailing. After the chains on his shoulders had been cut off his right arm was the first to go. His cries became weaker and his head began to totter. When the left arm was ripped off the head fell backwards. So there was only left a trembling rump that was still alive and a head whose hair had suddenly become white. He still lived! As the hair was cut off and his legs and hands collected and dropped into a basket, the father-confessors stepped up to the remainder of Damiens. But Henry Sanson, the executioner, held them back and told them that Damiens had just drawn his last breath. "The fact is" wrote trustworthy Rétif, "that I saw the body still move about and the lower jaw move up and down as if he wanted to speak." The rump still breathed! His eyes turned to the spectators. It is not reported if the people clapped their hands a second time. At any rate during the length of the entire execution none moved from their places in the court or from the windows of adjoining buildings. The remainder of this martyr was burnt at a stake and the ashes strewn to the four winds. "Such was the end of that poor unfortunate who it may well be believed—suffered the greatest tortures that a human being has ever been called upon to endure." So concluded the Duke de Croy, an eyewitness, whose report we have almost literally translated. We will give a few more accounts by eyewitnesses of that fateful day when an entire populace greedily waited through few hours for the most dreadful tortures that the world had ever seen.

"The assemblage of people in Paris at this execution was unbelievable. The citizen of near and far provinces, even foreigners, came for the festival. The windows, roofs, streets were packed head on head. Most surprising of all was the dreadful impatient curiosity of women who strained for closer views of the torturings." Madame du Hausset tells in her memoirs that gambling went on during the execution and that wagers were made on the length of the duration of the tortures by Damiens.

Casanova, one of those who came from a foreign country to see the execution, reported a scene that was an excellent if terrible example of the theory of de Sade, that the tortures of another spur on real pleasure. He writes: "On March 28, the day of the Martyrdom of Damiens, I called for the ladies at Lambertini's and since the carriage could scarcely hold us all, I placed my charming friend on my lap without much difficulty and so amused ourselves until we came to the Place de Grève. The three ladies pressed as close to each other as they could so that they could all look through the window. They rested on their arms so we could see over their heads.

"We had the patience to maintain our uncomfortable position for four hours of this horrible spectacle. The execution of Damiens is too well-known for me to write about it. Also because the description would take too long and because nature revolts at such atrocities. During the execution of this sacrifice of the jesuits (his execution was said to have been done by order of the jesuits), I had to turn my eyes and hold my ears so that I might not hear that heart-rending cry when he had but half of his body. But Lambertini and her old friend made not the slightest movement; was that because of the cruelty of their souls? I had to pretend that I believed them when they said that his crime had prevented them from feeling sympathy for his plight. The fact is that Tiretta occupied herself during the execution in a most peculiar manner. She lifted her skirt high because, she said, she didn't want it dirtied. And her friend obliged her in the same way. Their hands were busily engaged during all the tortures."

Commentaries to Casanova's account are superfluous. That it was not an isolated case of satyriasis but one of the phases accompanying the horrible execution and calling forth passionate ecstasies was shown clearly by the fact that this charming sexual maneuver lasted two hours as expressly mentioned by Casanova later. "The action was repeated and without a resistance.” That Louis XV told the embassies all the details of the execution with great satisfaction is not strange. The execution of the poisoner Desrues who, on May 6, 1772, was placed on the wheel and then burnt alive, was also "well attended by a distinguished crowd."

-- Marquis De Sade: His Life and Work, by Dr. Iwan Bloch, 1889

I see.

He couldn’t help himself.

And this is something—

I know that.

This is something that you observed with him personally, as his friend?

At close range.

You saw him struggle with this?

Yeah.

Was it a struggle for him? Did he ever—

I wouldn’t say struggle. He didn’t struggle with it. He was in a position financially to yield to it, big time. But nevertheless, he could not help himself. I’ve seen him do things which he couldn’t—couldn’t help himself, he was afflicted with it. If he had tuberculosis it wouldn’t be called a perversion, would it? Because he coughed too much?

Right. So you’re not disputing whether he did these actions or not?

I know what he did except I know the cause of it and other people simply can’t conceive of the idea that what Jeffrey did—that he was beset with a pathology, like a disease. I watched it happen.

So were you ever around for any instances of these?

Of course! No, I never saw him fool around with—in fact, Jeffrey was a very, very close friend of mine. And he shielded me. I never saw what he did until finally I did notice certain things, and that was the end of me having to do with him. But for a very long time, for years and years and years, Jeffrey did amazing, incredible, amazing, remarkable things for science and all kinds of stuff. He was a very, very good friend to me.

He never invited me to the “Isle of Babes,” luckily. I never knew it was even there.

Really? So you ended your relationship? You said when—

Well, I ended my relationship when I began to realize that he was doing things that I didn’t know about.

What were some of those things—

One day at the flea market there was Maria Farmer there, and I said, “What are you doing here?” And she told me this bizarre story, and then Jeffrey shows up, and I realized oh my god something was happening after years and years, which he didn’t tell me.

He was very scrupulous about leaving me out of that stuff. He never invited me to the Isle of Babes.

[Editor’s note: Attempts to reach Farmer were unsuccessful.]

So you never went there or anything like that?

No, of course I didn’t. For a while I was annoyed that he didn’t invite me. ’Cause all kinds of—see, I was involved in his scientific affairs.

I see. So—

I’m a scientist, and I saw all the incredible, wonderful things he did for science, which nobody’s managed to have the intellect to understand.

Right. Interesting.

Damn right, it’s interesting.

What were some of the signs that led you to end your relationship with him?

I told you.

So that was the main one, Maria Farmer, who you saw when—

Right, when one day at the flea market there’s Maria Farmer, who I knew ’cause she was a student at the New York Academy of Art, and I [asked], “What are you doing here?” And she started to tell me about some terrible thing, too terrible to utter, having to do with Jeffrey Epstein. And then a minute later, he shows up. And I began to put two and two together. And I realized that something was going on, which I didn’t know about. And at that point, I knew that he had a different life that I was not aware of.

The press coverage of this—what Jeffrey did was quantitative, not qualitative.

So what you’re saying—

Anyone who did one thing, let us say, to some 16-year-old trollop who would come to his house time after time after time and then afterwards bitch about it— why, no one would pay attention. Except Jeffrey made an industry out of it.

When you say he made an industry out of it—

Apparently he went beyond. This got out of hand. What’s the name of that girl? I forget. Time after time after time after time she comes there for I don’t know what length of time, and then after it’s all done, she has things to say—why did you stay there? In other words, what I’m saying is, what Jeffrey did in comparison with other people is only different in the fact that he made an industry out of it.

And when you say industry, do you mean bringing—

Industry! He did stuff with underage girls who knew what the hell they were doing. By the hundreds. If he only did one, no one would pay attention. Nor, on the other hand, did he actually rape any of them or anything like that, which happens, you know. If you want to make a list of, let us say, in the past several years, of the kind of stuff going on of sexual abuse of children and what the hell not—you want to compare that with what Jeffrey did? What Jeffrey did in comparison with the kind of stuff which gets exposed every day of people who are abusing children left and right and all kinds of institutions? Jeffrey never did anything like that. Everything he had to do with these girls was complicit. And it was just interesting to the rest of the world who doesn’t understand that Jeffrey was a very sick man. He had a case of what is called satyriasis. Did you hear of that?

No, I haven’t, actually. First time.

Let me elucidate you then. You ever hear of nymphomania?

Yes.

That’s girls who can’t, who are, how would you describe it? Nymphomania is a known sexual aberration, which is described scientifically in works on that subject. Another subject is called satyriasis. This is men who are afflicted with a similar—I hate to use the word “perversion,” because what does “perversion” mean? Perversion is, I mean, there are pathologies of all kinds. People get sick and do all kinds of weird things. Some of them are called perversions because they’re peculiar.

And you think Jeffrey had a perversion?

Jeffrey was ill. Jeffrey was born with a case of satyriasis. Somebody like you, incidentally, who wants to be writing on the subject, should know a thing like that.

Okay. This is the first time I’ve heard it in connection with him.

What do you mean? Isn’t it quite obvious that Jeffrey was pathological?

There are plenty of people with satyriasis like there are plenty of nymphomaniacs, except very few of them have the money to, let us say, treat themselves to sex three times a day with young girls. That was what he had to do. Other people, there are plenty of cases, presumably, if you want to read up on the subject—it’s called satyriasis, right? It’s the male version of—did you ever meet a nymphomaniac?

No, but I understand the concept.

Do you know what a nymphomaniac is?

Yeah.

These are many women who are possessed with an uncontrollable need for sex. I actually once sort of knew one, as a matter of fact. She told me she was abused by her father. And as a result of this, the poor thing had an uncontrollable need for sex to the point that it was embarrassing. She was what’s called a nymphomaniac.

You told me you heard something terrible that Maria told you.

Jeffrey brought her there, and what he did to Maria was inexcusable, of course. He locked her up, and she couldn’t get away, and her father had to come and rescue her. That’s a story she told. And, of course, that’s the least of what she told me. Forget that, her little sister, for Christ’s sake, the guy actually brought her to his place and did those kind of things, which, of course, is inexcusable and that’s the kind of thing which satyriasists do because they can’t help themselves.

And this is Maria Farmer you’re talking about, who you knew? How’d you know her?

She was a student at the New York Academy of Art. Jeffrey was on the board of trustees of the New York Academy of Art. That’s how come he knew her.

How do you think they met?

Jeffrey used to go to the functions of that institution. She was there. She was an artist, and Jeffrey used to buy drawings and what the heck not. My guess is that he was there only for the purpose of meeting…it wouldn’t surprise me.

So this was when you started to—

The story of Maria Farmer and her sister is already in print. You don’t need me to tell you that, and if you don’t know it, you’re not qualified to write this story.

No, I understand. But it’s interesting hearing it from your perspective. You had a really interesting moment, to hear that directly from her.

I saw that he did that, and I was horrified. It was the last I ever saw of the guy.

So you believed her when she told you that story?

Well, of course!

And were there any other moments like that where you became aware of things Jeffrey was doing—

Yes, yes, yes.

Would you care to share any of those details?

Yeah, one time—the point is, Jeffrey was a sick man. Like people are sick with all kinds of diseases of every kind, especially behavioral ones. There are all kind of nuts running around. They get guns, and they kill people and all that kind of stuff, due to behavioral aberrations.

It’s interesting to hear from someone who knew Jeffrey Epstein—

I knew him quite well, for years and years and years and years and years.

—who is bringing this perspective that he was a sick individual, that he couldn’t help himself.

I observed that Jeffrey Epstein was a very important person in the scientific world. Jeffrey brought to science something which nobody else did.

What was that?

He brought together scientists for the sake of trying to inculcate some kind of a higher level of scientific thought, even though he himself didn’t know shit from Shinola about science.

He never knew nothing about anything. Nevertheless—

How do you think he got so successful if he didn’t know anything? That’s one big question around Jeffrey Epstein—

No, no, no, he didn’t know anything about science.

Okay.

He knew plenty about how to make money.

What were some of his passions in science? What did he talk to you about in the realm of science?

Jeffrey—how to put this? Jeffrey came into the concept of thought and science and all with no knowledge whatsoever about anything. He really didn’t know a goddamn thing. I don’t even believe that he taught math. I can’t—oh, Jeffrey once told me that he studied math with the Unabomber. Did you know that?

Really?

Yeah. Jeffrey told me that he studied math at UCLA with the Unabomber, who was a math teacher.

Wow, that’s interesting.

That’s what he says, I don’t know. You might want to track that down.

But Jeffrey didn’t know anything about science. Nevertheless, in his peculiarly inquiring mind, let’s say, like a child who is fresh to the world—because he has no compunction about approaching people—he brought together the most important scientists like Stephen Gould, like Pinker, like all of those people, and myself even, at dinners, and would propose interesting, naive ideas. Steve Pinker describes that. He would say, “Oh, what is gravity?” Which of course is an unanswerable thing to present at a dinner to a bunch of scientists. And because he was Jeffrey, why, they would—and as the founder of the feast—they would listen to him and try to give [answers]. He was attempting, somehow, in his ignorant and scientifically naive state, to do something scientifically important. He had no compunctions about inviting people, and since he had money, they would listen. He would promise money to people and, of course, never come across, by the way. That’s what’s called a dangler. Didn’t he promise $15 million to Harvard? I don’t know if they got two cents.

So people would come to his dinners, including myself. I even had them. Take a look at Steven Pinker’s essay. Jeffrey brought these people together and thought that he was causing basic thought processes to happen, which he sort of was, even though they were sort of irrelevant. I mean, to bring together a bunch of scientists and say, what is gravity? Which is ridiculous in a way, even though it’s a question nobody can answer. But he would do that kind of stuff. Just for the sake of, I don’t know what. And Jaron Lanier and all that group, the greatest thinkers that they were, he brought together with a purpose of thinking, rightfully or wrongfully, that he was going to introduce some kind of logic or something—some special kind of a thought process, which others hadn’t thought of, which of course is absurd.

While everybody was watching, we began to realize he didn’t know what he was talking about. Then after a couple of minutes—Jeffrey had no attention span whatsoever—he would interrupt the conversation and change it and say things like, “What does that got to do with pussy?!”

Really?

That was his favorite expression. It was a subject changer. And it revealed what was really in his mind. Of course, that was the only thing that was going on in his mind. The poor guy had—it’s hard to, you can’t describe Jeffrey. And because he had dough, he was able to realize the weirdest situations, which he would convoke by bringing brilliant people together and proposing silly ideas at dinner, and everyone would listen because he was handing out dough. And it was an indescribable situation—trying to create some kind of a mini university of thought while he himself knew zero.

You said he brought up these crazy ideas. Can you remember any of his own ideas?

He would propose the fundamental questions of science. What’s up? And what’s down? And what’s gravity? And then when I knew him at the very, very beginning, before he was Jeffrey—I knew Jeffrey before he was Jeffrey.

And when he brought Ghislaine [Maxwell] to this country, he put me in charge of her because she was a total wreck. It was my job to try to amuse her.

And that was when you first met Jeffrey, he handed her off to you because—

No, that was much later. I knew Jeffrey a long time before that. But when she arrived, after her father jumped off the boat or whatever happened, she was a total wreck. And my job was to amuse her, take her to dinner and lunch and what have you until she finally came around, and then was okay.

When I watched this happen, I had no idea what the hell it was all about. And the idea that no one has recognized that Jeffrey was profoundly sick, with a male counterpart of nymphomania, which he could not control…

What was his relationship to—

Look, it wouldn’t surprise me—probably a lot of men have that for all I know. But none of them have the dough to have underage girls three times a day to work it out. So instead, God knows what they do. The peculiar thing is, let’s put it this way, now that you’ve got me thinking: Jeffrey had a severe case of what’s called satyriasis, the male counterpart of nymphomania. Except that he had the money and the wherewithal to work it out, to manage to supply himself with three underage girls every single day.

Who knows how many men have that? And the difference is that if there are other ones who have it, I don’t know, they probably go around raping or God knows what they do. Jeffrey had the money to do it politely—namely, by getting complaisant young girls.

Now what was his relationship like to Maxwell? Because you knew them both.

It annoys me that that the whole thing is dealt with so superficially. Why doesn’t somebody talk to a psychologist?

For example, I was a sort of an art consultant, furnishing his numerous houses, and at one point I took him to a very prominent art dealer to buy furniture and what have you. I brought along an assistant I had who was a very attractive young girl, and there we were in those precincts of art and Renaissance furniture and what have you. He grabbed her up from behind and lifted her up and squeezed the hell out of her and she screamed. I said, “Jeffrey put her down! What are you doing?”

And the three or four of us who were watching were horrified, and he put her down. He was out of control. Have you ever seen anyone do a thing like that?

No, never. Where were you guys when he did that?

As a matter of fact, it was at the gallery of Ruth Blumka.

Ruth is dead now. But the point is, I saw Jeffrey do a thing I’d never seen in my life anyone do. And when I saw him do that, I said, oh my god. This is a screw loose. To do an uncontrollable thing like that.

Was there anything else like that? You mentioned him interrupting, talking about pussy at scientific dinners and—

You need to talk to Steven Pinker, who characterizes very well what Jeffrey’s mind was, how he couldn’t concentrate on a subject for more than two minutes before having to change the subject because he didn’t know what anyone was talking about and would blurt out the dumbest things.

Jeffrey is being dealt with as—the word “pervert” comes up. What’s a pervert? There are all kinds of behavioristic aberrations, obviously, including mass murderers. You don’t call mass murderers “perverts,” do you? “Perversion” is a word which is restricted, I suppose, to a certain kind of behavioral aberration having to do with sex. But the guy had this incredible sickness. You put that together with somebody with the kind of dough to pursue it, big time…

And you said he made an industry out of this. Do you know of any other people that Jeffrey knew that took part?

No of course not. Do you? Nobody—there was only one, only, only Jeffrey.

Okay, so you don’t think he roped anyone else into this or any of his friends or colleagues or whatever took part in these parties where these kinds of things would happen?

I don’t know anything about that because I was never invited to the Isle of Babes.

And you never heard anything? You never heard stories secondhand?

No. I didn’t even know it existed because Jeffrey insulated me from it.

What do you think about the allegations around that this was sort of a pedophile ring that had a very large scope, that had lots of people involved. Do you see that as a possibility?

Jeffrey had lots and lots and lots of dough. Scientists are always looking for lots and lots of dough, because most scientists spend most of their time writing grant proposals to raise money. Jeffrey didn’t require a grant proposal. Jeffrey would promise money and so they crowded around, and he also was an extremely personable, amusing kind of person to talk to. He was full of incredible ideas. He was charming in the extreme, and that’s why everyone paid attention to him.

You said he’s full of incredible ideas. What kind of ideas do you remember of Jeffrey’s?

He used to come up with all kinds of interesting—it’s hard to even put my finger on it. Haven’t you spoken to the other scientists who went to his various dinners? Or else went down to the Isle of Babes, which I did not do, and have them describe to you how come he was so fascinating? He is a very, very brilliant guy and has a very—how should I say—charming way of expressing himself, which everybody knows. And on top of that, promising all kinds of dough to scientists who were starving to get funded is a powerful combination. So they all listened. And of course, some of them may or may not have succumbed to whatever the hell they did down there at the Isle of Babes, ’cause I don’t know.

Sure, but you didn’t know of anyone who took part in the stuff that Jeffrey was doing on that island?

I knew perfectly well—I knew the people involved. But I didn’t know that they were doing, that they were—I didn’t know if or whether they partook in those kinds of things. Jeffrey used to appoint me in charge of Ghislaine while she was profoundly depressed from the death of her father. And other people, he would introduce me to wives of some of them and all that, I had no idea why that was. Jeffrey had numerous residences. And he used to rely on me to help him furnish them with art. I was sort of his art consultant, you might say, not that he ever took my advice. Because he pretended to be interested in art, but he was really more interested with—Jeffrey was so perverse. “Perverse,” that word, haha. You have to use it. What is perversion? You want to examine that.

Jeffrey was amused to have in his house fake art which looked like real art. Because of the fact that he was putting one over, so to speak. He thought that he was—how do you describe that? When you walked into this house, for example, there was a Max Weber or something like that, and it was a fake. And it amused him that people didn’t realize that. He was able to furnish his house with the fake paintings. Jeffrey had a collection of underage Rodins, for example, because what difference does it make if it’s real or not real? And if the real one costs nothing and the expensive one—it doesn’t make a difference. He was amused to put one over on the world by having fake art. He thought that he was seeing through the fallacy.

So would you say this was a pattern with him, that he would sort of pretend to be interested in science and pretend to be interested in art, but it was really all surface level?

Yeah. Let’s put it that way.

And in your perspective, is the reason for that—

You know, I just realized something. Why the hell am I talking to you and getting involved with Jeffrey Epstein when I shouldn’t? I regret everything I just told you, by the way.

Oh god, when journalists talk you’re supposed to not talk to them. Now, I’ve told you those interesting things, and they are interesting things. And, you know—by the way, is he going to have a funeral? Is there going to be a eulogy?

I imagine so.

Hey, why don’t you find that out? That’ll be interesting.

Would you attend?

Why don’t you try to find out if there’s going to be a funeral for Jeffrey or the eulogy or something like that.

I will do that.

In other words, the Jeffrey thing is profoundly deep, and all we see is a superficial thing. While underneath it is a kind of human aberration, which should be interesting to science rather than to trivial journalism. And sensational journalism. No one is paying attention to what he was afflicted with, with the possibility that other people are afflicted with it, too, and don’t have the money to do it quantitatively like he did. Who knows what lurks out there? How many Jeffreys are there—who don’t have the dough to do what he does, but instead do whatever the hell they do? Who examines sex crimes to determine if they’re really cases of Jeffreyism?

There’s so much there. It is a disgrace to science that what afflicted Jeffrey is not being investigated.

So that’s what you wish people knew about Jeffrey?

I’m saying this to you, that it’s a disgrace to science that what afflicted Jeffrey is not being discussed scientifically, in the event that there are plenty other Jeffreys who don’t have money. It’s an interesting question.

The business of sexual attraction, the attraction of males and females in its natural state, is not the same as what happens when civilization puts [up] all kinds of rules. Because sexual attraction starts at a very, very young age. When I was 14, I had to deal with a girl who was only 13. And somehow, I remember, it was at summer camp. And I stopped having to do with her because of the tremendous age gap. Girls at the age of 12, 13, and 14 have sexual attraction to 14- and 15-year-olds. But it’s not supposed to be that way. And so, all kinds of rules get made. And nature is not allowed to take its course on account of civilization. Jeffrey broke those rules, big time. But what he was pursuing was the kind of, I suppose, sexual urges which would—why am I telling you this stuff for? Leave me alone. Go away.

This is all very interesting—

I know it’s very interesting, but I’m just realizing something. I have just gotten myself into terrible trouble and everyone who knows is going to be mad at me—why the hell did I pick up the phone?

I appreciate you giving me your perspective on this. And—

No, you don’t. You’re going to misinterpret everything I just said, and you are about to get me into big-time trouble!

I had no idea of what the hell Jeffrey was doing in all the years I knew him until it became clear, and then I divorced myself from having anything to do with him. But before that happened, for years and years and years, I watched Jeffrey do all kinds of interesting and amazing things, scientifically and so on.

Yeah. And you said that from the very beginning. And I understand that, and I appreciate you giving me your perspective. The fact that you heard that story firsthand from Maria—

No, you don’t. I am suddenly—I am mad at myself for even talking to you. What’s the name of your publication?

I’m writing for Mother Jones right now.

Yeah, that’s been around for a very long time, since the ’70s, am I right? Or ’60s even?

Yeah, ’70s.

Isn’t that an outgrowth of Woodstock?

No. It’s very politically focused right now and environmentally as well.

What have I done? I have just shot myself in the foot.

Is there anything else that you think—

I am mad at myself! What have I—oh, dammit.

Is there anything—

I don’t trust you. You’re a journalist, and you’re not gonna take time to figure out what I really said.

I have now put myself into terrible trouble when I actually have no idea what the hell Jeffrey was ever doing. Except his scientific things and his supposed art things, I used to help him furnish his house with art. That’s all. And while that was going on—oh boy. What have I done?

I understand, and you spending time with Jeffrey was—

How much do you want to forget this whole conversation?

I’m not gonna take any money.

[Laughing] I know, I’m sorry I said that.

Did you ever spend any time with Jeffrey that wasn’t in a science dinner or in the art world—did you ever have any one-on-one time?

Only those kind of things, and the reason all the kind of people had to do with him—look at the list, it’s incredible. Why? Because Jeffrey was a fascinating guy. He promised money to scientists. I don’t need money because I have money, and I was just a pal of his, but I saw that happen. Scientists spend 50 percent of the time trying to raise money. And Jeffrey was an easy way out.

If you want to know what satyriasis is, get a copy of Psychopathia Sexualis, by Krafft-Ebing. You know that work?

I don’t know that work. But I know the condition you’re talking about.

You ever heard of Krafft-Ebing and Psychopathia Sexualis?

No, but I’m familiar with the term you’re using to say that Jeffrey was afflicted with. You described it as the male counterpart to nymphomania, correct?

Yeah, but if you were a person with any kind of literary knowledge or background, you would have heard of Robert [sic] Krafft-Ebing, the great contemporary of Sigmund Freud, who made an encyclopedia of sexual aberrations.

And that’s your thesis that he was—

Before you write, why don’t you equip yourself with what you’re supposed to know, but don’t, of the background of sexual perversion. Which was studied thoroughly at the time of Freud by Robert Krafft-Ebing, which most educated people know about. You don’t. A shame.

Is there anything—

Excuse me, but that’s the truth of it. You should know that if you had any kind of background. He had a copy, Jeffrey had a copy of that book.

I can tell that you are—

Why don’t you get a copy of it? Read the thing. Very thick. It talks about all imaginable, mad things. All the sexual perversions known to mankind. Before you write, why don’t you look at that, and in one page you’re going to find a thing called satyriasis—these are people who, like Jeffrey, are afflicted. I read some place the other day that he had to have an orgasm three times a day. Did you read that?

I’ve heard that. Yes.

Do you mean you’ve read it?

Yeah. Well, yes.

You’re not equipped to write what you’re writing. You’re not.

I really urge you—before you write, don’t make a fool of yourself and read what’s already written.

I appreciate it.

Because the point is that Jeffrey was afflicted with a disease. And if it was tuberculosis, you wouldn’t call it a perversion because someone coughs too much. Instead, he was uncontrollable, and he had the dough to yield to it and then, by chance, had a partner in it, Ghislaine, who was a basket case. The story is more bizarre than people begin to realize. All you read in the press is the superficiality of the scandalousness of it without realizing that underneath it is the science of the pathology and the medicine of it. I’ve got a great idea for you. Why don’t you look in the Yellow Pages, if there is still such a thing. You know what I mean by Yellow Pages?

Yes, of course.

For some type of sex pathologist or doctors or something, and ask them what their opinion is of people who uncontrollably did what he did, and get a medical background of the thing, and you might begin to write something intelligent on the subject.

I think that’s a good idea. Do you think Maxwell was—

And in exchange for telling you this, why don’t you leave me out of it?

I’m not trying to drag you into anything.

Why did I talk to you! I’m a dead fish, and you’re going to ruin me. Luckily, I don’t know anybody who reads the Mother Jones anymore. I can’t believe it still existed. How many years has this thing been published. Forty?

Just about 50. So you said Maxwell was his partner. Do you think she was pathological as well?

She arrived a dysfunctional wreck from what happened to her on account of her father. And the last thing that should’ve happened to someone like that is to fall in to the care of the likes of Jeffrey. He molded her into being complicit with his aberrations.

What was Maxwell’s role in the operations?

You know as much as I do about that.

So you were never privy to anything?

Jeffrey was a very good friend of mine. And never let on to me as to what was going on, until I finally found out when I saw the Maria Farmer thing, and then I realized that I wanted nothing to do with him.

Did you ever talk to him about that? Did you ever confront him and say, “Hey, I heard this thing”—or did you just cut ties with him? Did you ever confront him?

I can’t remember that, but in any case I stopped having to do with him when I realized the catastrophe that he had done. I couldn’t believe he did that kind of stuff.

So you never talked to him about it?

While, incidentally, everybody he has—what am I saying? What about all these guys like Dershowitz?

Yeah. There were many people who stayed friends with him after that first allegation.

I knew Alan Dershowitz, and Jaron Lanier was a good friend of mine. No, Jaron had nothing to do with it. I’m sure of that.

I knew these guys. Jeffrey introduced me to the scientists. And Steve Gould, who of course had nothing whatever to do with it. Do you know who Steve Gould is?

Yes.

What?

Yeah, I’ve heard the name in regards to Epstein.

You’ve heard the name—he’s one of the greatest scientists of the age, and you heard his name, oh bravo, you’re very qualified. You’re so full of shit, it’s terrible. You should not be writing about this. You’re not qualified.

Oh boy. Why did I pick up the phone? Why wasn’t I out to dinner?

Do you think Dershowitz—

What have I done? You’re going to distort everything I said. I just know it.

You’re being very clear in what you’re saying, and it’s very easy to understand your point of view here.

I never knew what the hell he was doing. On the other hand, however, I was instrumental—I hung out with the scientists. He introduced me to a lot of scientists I otherwise would not have known.

I’m curious what you said about Dershowitz.

How could I possibly know what Alan Dershowitz—I don’t know what Alan Dershowitz did.

Okay, so your point is, you have no clue—

In fact, I can’t believe that anyone as smart as Alan Dershowitz would get involved in anything like that at all. I don’t believe that Alan Dershowitz or any of these other important people were dumb enough to go along with Jeffrey’s—and I believe that that was all the kind of calumnies and lies which this girl—what’s her name? That trollop, who, for months, or whatever the hell she did. What the hell was she doing all this time? And she has made an industry for herself out of inventing calumnies against all of these respectable people.

[Editor’s note: He’s apparently referring to Virginia Giuffre. Giuffre has accused Epstein and Maxwell of sexually abusing her and lending her out for sex to the financier’s powerful friends, among them the lawyer Alan Dershowitz. Dershowitz has adamantly denied the allegations, accusing Giuffre of trying to extort him. Giuffre in turn has sued Dershowitz for defamation.]

So—

None of which can she substantiate. And none of which I believe, because those people she’s talking about—do you think the guy with the intelligence of Alan Dershowitz would dare to compromise himself?

Well, you know, you said Epstein was a smart guy, too, you know?

All right. Who knows. Human nature.

Now, do you think there were parties at the Isle of babes, as you called it?

I’ve heard it called that. I was never invited there.

He insulated me. I was a very close friend, and he insulated me totally. And never let me know that until, to my horror, I realized, and then I had nothing whatever to do with him after that.

Right. So do you know anybody who did go to the island?

No.

No, nobody?

All I know—let’s put it this way. All I know is what I read in the papers.

I had no idea what the hell was going on. Jeffrey had, let us say, two separate worlds going. Do you think his financial friends knew? Of course they didn’t. Could you imagine having all kinds of financial dealings with people if they had any idea what he was doing? They wouldn’t have touched him with a hot potato. He insulated totally those two lives of his.

I see. So what I’m curious about is, we talked about how some people remained friends with him after that first allegation, and you didn’t. Were there any friends of yours who also cut ties with Jeffrey around that time? Or who stayed friends? Did you have any conflicts with people who decided to keep in touch with Jeffrey or go to his dinners, etc.?

No. Boy am I glad that nobody I know reads Mother Jones. I mean, I stopped reading that about 40 years ago.

I see.

Why did I pick up the phone? Listen, I’m going to be mad at you if you misquote me one iota.

I promise you I won’t. I have no interest.

Let’s put it this way: If you misquote me, I’ll raise hell with you. I am not a poor guy.

Okay.

And if you contort anything I told you in good faith—

I have no interest in doing so.

Do you know what I’m saying?

Yeah, you’ve been very clear in the things that you said.

You inveigled me, so to speak, into yapping pointlessly because I have nothing else to do for the moment, and I’m relying on you to understand what I say. If you misquote me or anything like that, I will sue your magazine until the end of the Earth.

I understand. You’ve been very clear in what you’ve said. I will absolutely not distort or misquote you.

Tell me your name again so I can start writing a complaint to sue you.

My name is Leland. But we can go ahead and end the conversation here. I appreciate you offering me your point of view.

Look, it’s been fun, but for heaven’s sakes, please don’t screw me over.

You have my word and you got—

I’ve done you a big favor by telling you a lot of stuff, and I don’t expect you to stab me in the back.

I absolutely have no intention of doing so. You also have—

Otherwise I will stab you in other places.

Okay, you also have my number. So if you feel the need—

Oh, I’ve got your number.

You’ve got it. I appreciate you giving me your perspective on this.

No, you don’t, you’re a journalist. Journalists don’t appreciate nothing. They’re like lawyers.

I’m insulted, but that’s okay. All right. Well, you have a great night.

Ok, have a nice evening. You’ve ruined mine.

You can reach Leland Nally at [email protected].

[admin]

The Talented Mr. Epstein. Lately, Jeffrey Epstein’s high-flying style has been drawing oohs and aahs: the bachelor financier lives in New York’s largest private residence, claims to take only billionaires as clients, and flies celebrities including Bill Clinton and Kevin Spacey on his Boeing 727. But pierce his air of mystery and the picture changes. Vicky Ward explores Epstein’s investment career, his ties to retail magnate Leslie Wexner, and his complicated past.
By Vicky Ward
March 1, 2003
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2003/03 ... hxdlBYu1MU

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On Manhattan’s Upper East Side, home to some of the most expensive real estate on earth, exists the crown jewel of the city’s residential town houses. With its 15-foot-high oak door, huge arched windows, and nine floors, it sits on—or, rather, commands—the block of 71st Street between Fifth and Madison Avenues. Almost ludicrously out of proportion with its four- and five-story neighbors, it seems more like an institution than a house. This is perhaps not surprising—until 1989 it was the Birch Wathen private school. Now it is said to be Manhattan’s largest private residence.

Inside, amid the flurry of menservants attired in sober black suits and pristine white gloves, you feel you have stumbled into someone’s private Xanadu. This is no mere rich person’s home, but a high-walled, eclectic, imperious fantasy that seems to have no boundaries.

The entrance hall is decorated not with paintings but with row upon row of individually framed eyeballs; these, the owner tells people with relish, were imported from England, where they were made for injured soldiers. Next comes a marble foyer, which does have a painting, in the manner of Jean Dubuffet … but the host coyly refuses to tell visitors who painted it. In any case, guests are like pygmies next to the nearby twice-life-size sculpture of a naked African warrior.

Despite its eccentricity the house is curiously impersonal, the statement of someone who wants to be known for the scale of his possessions. Its occupant, financier Jeffrey Epstein, 50, admits to friends that he likes it when people think of him this way. A good-looking man, resembling Ralph Lauren, with thick gray-white hair and a weathered face, he usually dresses in jeans, knit shirts, and loafers. He tells people he bought the house because he knew he “could never live anywhere bigger.” He thinks 51,000 square feet is an appropriately large space for someone like himself, who deals mostly in large concepts—especially large sums of money.

Guests are invited to lunch or dinner at the town house—Epstein usually refers to the former as “tea,” since he likes to eat bite-size morsels and drink copious quantities of Earl Grey. (He does not touch alcohol or tobacco.) Tea is served in the “leather room,” so called because of the cordovan-colored fabric on the walls. The chairs are covered in a leopard print, and on the wall hangs a huge, Oriental fantasy of a woman holding an opium pipe and caressing a snarling lionskin. Under her gaze, plates of finger sandwiches are delivered to Epstein and guests by the menservants in white gloves.

Upstairs, to the right of a spiral staircase, is the “office,” an enormous gallery spanning the width of the house. Strangely, it holds no computer. Computers belong in the “computer room” (a smaller room at the back of the house), Epstein has been known to say. The office features a gilded desk (which Epstein tells people belonged to banker J. P. Morgan), 18th-century black lacquered Portuguese cabinets, and a nine-foot ebony Steinway “D” grand. On the desk, a paperback copy of the Marquis de Sade’s The Misfortunes of Virtue was recently spotted. Covering the floor, Epstein has explained, “is the largest Persian rug you’ll ever see in a private home—so big, it must have come from a mosque.” Amid such splendor, much of which reflects the work of the French decorator Alberto Pinto, who has worked for Jacques Chirac and the royal families of Jordan and Saudi Arabia, there is one particularly startling oddity: a stuffed black poodle, standing atop the grand piano. “No decorator would ever tell you to do that,” Epstein brags to visitors. “But I want people to think what it means to stuff a dog.” People can’t help but feel it’s Epstein’s way of saying that he always has the last word.

In addition to the town house, Epstein lives in what is reputed to be the largest private dwelling in New Mexico, on an $18 million, 7,500-acre ranch which he named “Zorro.” “It makes the town house look like a shack,” Epstein has said. He also owns Little St. James, a 70-acre island in the U.S. Virgin Islands, where the main house is currently being renovated by Edward Tuttle, a designer of the Amanresorts. There is also a $6.8 million house in Palm Beach, Florida, and a fleet of aircraft: a Gulfstream IV, a helicopter, and a Boeing 727, replete with trading room, on which Epstein recently flew President Clinton, actors Chris Tucker and Kevin Spacey, supermarket magnate Ron Burkle, Lew Wasserman’s grandson, Casey Wasserman, and a few others, on a mission to explore the problems of AIDS and economic development in Africa.

Epstein is charming, but he doesn’t let the charm slip into his eyes. They are steely and calculating, giving some hint at the steady whir of machinery running behind them. “Let’s play chess,” he said to me, after refusing to give an interview for this article. “You be white. You get the first move.” It was an appropriate metaphor for a man who seems to feel he can win no matter what the advantage of the other side. His advantage is that no one really seems to know him or his history completely or what his arsenal actually consists of. He has carefully engineered it so that he remains one of the few truly baffling mysteries among New York’s moneyed world. People know snippets, but few know the whole.

“He’s very enigmatic,” says Rosa Monckton, the former C.E.O. of Tiffany & Co. in the U.K. and a close friend since the early 1980s. “You think you know him and then you peel off another ring of the onion skin and there’s something else extraordinary underneath. He never reveals his hand…. He’s a classic iceberg. What you see is not what you get.”

Even acquaintances sense a curious dichotomy: Yes, he lives like a “modern maharaja,” as Leah Kleman, one of his art dealers, puts it. Yet he is fastidiously, almost obsessively private—he lists himself in the phone book under a pseudonym. He rarely attends society gatherings or weddings or funerals; he considers eating in restaurants like “eating on the subway”—i.e., something he’d never do. There are many women in his life, mostly young, but there is no one of them to whom he has been able to commit. He describes his most public companion of the last decade, Ghislaine Maxwell, 41, the daughter of the late, disgraced media baron Robert Maxwell, as simply his “best friend.” He says she is not on his payroll, but she seems to organize much of his life—recently she was making telephone inquiries to find a California-based yoga instructor for him. (Epstein is still close to his two other long-term girlfriends, Paula Heil Fisher, a former associate of his at the brokerage firm Bear Stearns and now an opera producer, and Eva Andersson Dubin, a doctor and onetime model. He tells people that when a relationship is over the girlfriend “moves up, not down,” to friendship status.)

Some of the businessmen who dine with him at his home—they include newspaper publisher Mort Zuckerman, banker Louis Ranieri, Revlon chairman Ronald Perelman, real-estate tycoon Leon Black, former Microsoft executive Nathan Myhrvold, Tom Pritzker (of Hyatt Hotels), and real-estate personality Donald Trump—sometimes seem not all that clear as to what he actually does to earn his millions. Certainly, you won’t find Epstein’s transactions written about on Bloomberg or talked about in the trading rooms. “The trading desks don’t seem to know him. It’s unusual for animals that big not to leave any footprints in the snow,” says a high-level investment manager.

Unlike such fund managers as George Soros and Stanley Druckenmiller, whose client lists and stock maneuverings act as their calling cards, Epstein keeps all his deals and clients secret, bar one client: billionaire Leslie Wexner, the respected chairman of Limited Brands. Epstein insists that ever since he left Bear Stearns in 1981 he has managed money only for billionaires—who depend on him for discretion. “I was the only person crazy enough, or arrogant enough, or misplaced enough, to make my limit a billion dollars or more,” he tells people freely. According to him, the flat fees he receives from his clients, combined with his skill at playing the currency markets “with very large sums of money,” have afforded him the lifestyle he enjoys today.

Why do billionaires choose him as their trustee? Because the problems of the mega-rich, he tells people, are different from yours and mine, and his unique philosophy is central to understanding those problems: “Very few people need any more money when they have a billion dollars. The key is not to have it do harm more than anything else…. You don’t want to lose your money.”

He has likened his job to that of an architect—more specifically, one who specializes in remodeling: “I always describe [a billionaire] as someone who started out in a small home and as he became wealthier had add-ons. He added on another addition, he built a room over the garage … until you have a house that is usually a mess…. It’s a large house that has been put together over time where no one could foretell the financial future and their accompanying needs.”

He makes it sound as though his job combines the roles of real-estate agent, accountant, lawyer, money manager, trustee, and confidant. But, as with Jay Gatsby, myths and rumor swirl around Epstein.

Here are some of the hard facts about Epstein—ones that he doesn’t mind people knowing: He grew up middle-class in Brooklyn. His father worked for the city’s parks department. His parents viewed education as “the way out” for him and his younger brother, Mark, now working in real estate. Jeffrey started to play the piano—for which he maintains a passion—at five, and he went to Brooklyn’s Lafayette High School. He was good at mathematics, and in his early 20s he got a job teaching physics and math at Dalton, the elite Manhattan private school. While there he began tutoring the son of Bear Stearns chairman Ace Greenberg and was friendly with a daughter of Greenberg’s. Soon he went to Bear Stearns, where, under the mentorship of both Greenberg and current Bear Stearns C.E.O. James Cayne, he did well enough to become a limited partner—a rung beneath full partner. He abruptly departed in 1981 because, he has said, he wanted to run his own business.

Thereafter the details recede into shadow. A few of the handful of current friends who have known him since the early 1980s recall that he used to tell them he was a “bounty hunter,” recovering lost or stolen money for the government or for very rich people. He has a license to carry a firearm. For the last 15 years, he’s been running his business, J. Epstein & Co.

Since Leslie Wexner appeared in his life—Epstein has said this was in 1986; others say it was in 1989, at the earliest—he has gradually, in a way that has not generally made headlines, come to be accepted by the Establishment. He’s a member of various commissions and councils: he is on the Trilateral Commission, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Institute of International Education.

His current fan club extends to Cayne, Henry Rosovsky, the former dean of Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and Larry Summers, Harvard’s current president. Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz says, “I’m on my 20th book…. The only person outside of my immediate family that I send drafts to is Jeffrey.” Real-estate developer and philanthropist Marshall Rose, who has worked with Epstein on projects in New Albany, Ohio, for Wexner, says, “He digests and decodes the information very rapidly, which is to me terrific because we have shorter meetings.”

Also on the list of admirers are former senator George Mitchell and a gaggle of distinguished scientists, most of whom Epstein has helped fund in recent years. They include Nobel Prize winners Gerald Edelman and Murray Gell-Mann, and mathematical biologist Martin Nowak. When these men describe Epstein, they talk about “energy” and “curiosity,” as well as a love for theoretical physics that they don’t ordinarily find in laymen. Gell-Mann rather sweetly mentions that “there are always pretty ladies around” when he goes to dinner chez Epstein, and he’s under the impression that Epstein’s clients include the Queen of England. Both Nowak and Dershowitz were thrilled to find themselves shaking the hand of a man named “Andrew” in Epstein’s house. “Andrew” turned out to be Prince Andrew, who subsequently arranged to sit in the back of Dershowitz’s law class.

Epstein gets annoyed when anyone suggests that Wexner “made him.” “I had really rich clients before,” he has said. Yet he does not deny that he and Wexner have a special relationship. Epstein sees it as a partnership of equals. “People have said it’s like we have one brain between two of us: each has a side.”

“I think we both possess the skill of seeing patterns,” says Wexner. “But Jeffrey sees patterns in politics and financial markets, and I see patterns in lifestyle and fashion trends. My skills are not in investment strategy, and, as everyone who knows Jeffrey knows, his are not in fashion and design. We frequently discuss world trends as each of us sees them.”

By the time Epstein met Wexner, the latter was a retail legend who had built a $3 billion empire—one that now includes Victoria’s Secret, Express, and Bath & Body Works—from $5,000 lent him by his aunt. “Wexner saw in Jeffrey the type of person who had the potential to realize his [Jeffrey’s] dreams,” says someone who has worked closely with both men. “He gave Jeffrey the ball, and Jeffrey hit it out of the park.”

Wexner, through a trust, bought the town house in which Epstein now lives for a reported $13.2 million in 1989. In 1993, Wexner married Abigail Koppel, a 31-year-old lawyer, and the newlyweds relocated to Ohio; in 1996, Epstein moved into the town house. Public documents suggest that the house is still owned by the trust that bought it, but Epstein has said that he now owns the house.

Wexner trusts Epstein so completely that he has assigned him the power of fiduciary over all of his private trusts and foundations, says a source close to Wexner. In 1992, Epstein even persuaded Wexner to put him on the board of the Wexner Foundation in place of Wexner’s ailing mother. Bella Wexner recovered and demanded to be reinstated. Epstein has said they settled by splitting the foundation in two.

Epstein does not care that he comes between family members. In fact, he sees it as his job. He tells people, “I am there to represent my client, and if my client needs protecting—sometimes even from his own family—then it’s often better that people hate me, not the client.”

“You’ve probably heard I’m vicious in my representation of my clients,” he tells people proudly; Leah Kleman describes his haggling over art prices as something like a scene out of the movie Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome. Even a former mentor says he’s seen “the dark side” of Epstein, and a Bear Stearns source recalls a meeting in which Epstein chewed out a team making a presentation for Wexner as being so brutal as to be “irresponsible.”

One reporter, in fact, received three threats from Epstein while preparing a piece. They were delivered in a jocular tone, but the message was clear: There will be trouble for your family if I don’t like the article.

On the other hand, Epstein is clearly very generous with friends. Joe Pagano, an Aspen-based venture capitalist, who has known Epstein since before his Bear Stearns days, can’t say enough nice things: “I have a boy who’s dyslexic, and Jeffrey’s gotten close to him over the years…. Jeffrey got him into music. He bought him his first piano. And then as he got to school he had difficulty … in studying … so Jeffrey got him interested in taking flying lessons.”

Rosa Monckton recalls Epstein telling her that her daughter, Domenica, who suffers from Down syndrome, needed the sun, and that Rosa should feel free to bring her to his house in Palm Beach anytime.

Some friends remember that in the late 80s Epstein would offer to upgrade the airline tickets of good friends by affixing first-class stickers; the only problem was that the stickers turned out to be unofficial. Sometimes the technique worked, but other times it didn’t, and the unwitting recipients found themselves exiled to coach. (Epstein has claimed that he paid for the upgrades, and had no knowledge of the stickers.) Many of those who benefited from Epstein’s largesse claim that his generosity comes with no strings attached. “I never felt he wanted anything from me in return,” says one old friend, who received a first-class upgrade.

Epstein is known about town as a man who loves women—lots of them, mostly young. Model types have been heard saying they are full of gratitude to Epstein for flying them around, and he is a familiar face to many of the Victoria’s Secret girls. One young woman recalls being summoned by Ghislaine Maxwell to a concert at Epstein’s town house, where the women seemed to outnumber the men by far. “These were not women you’d see at Upper East Side dinners,” the woman recalls. “Many seemed foreign and dressed a little bizarrely.” This same guest also attended a cocktail party thrown by Maxwell that Prince Andrew attended, which was filled, she says, with young Russian models. “Some of the guests were horrified,” the woman says.

“He’s reckless,” says a former business associate, “and he’s gotten more so. Money does that to you. He’s breaking the oath he made to himself—that he would never do anything that would expose him in the media. Right now, in the wake of the publicity following his trip with Clinton, he must be in a very difficult place.”

According to S.E.C. and other legal documents unearthed by VANITY FAIR, Epstein may have good reason to keep his past cloaked in secrecy: his real mentor, it might seem, was not Leslie Wexner but Steven Jude Hoffenberg, 57, who, for a few months before the S.E.C. sued to freeze his assets in 1993, was trying to buy the New York Post. He is currently incarcerated in the Federal Medical Center in Devens, Massachusetts, serving a 20-year sentence for bilking investors out of more than $450 million in one of the largest Ponzi schemes in American history.

When Epstein met Hoffenberg in London in the 1980s, the latter was the charismatic, audacious head of the Towers Financial Corporation, a collection agency that was supposed to buy debts that people owed to hospitals, banks, and phone companies. But Hoffenberg began using company funds to pay off earlier investors and service a lavish lifestyle that included a mansion on Long Island, homes on Manhattan’s Sutton Place and in Florida, and a fleet of cars and planes.

Hoffenberg and Epstein had much in common. Both were smart and obsessed with making money. Both were from Brooklyn. According to Hoffenberg, the two men were introduced by Douglas Leese, a defense contractor. Epstein has said they were introduced by John Mitchell, the late attorney general.

Epstein had been running International Assets Group Inc. (I.A.G.), a consulting company, out of his apartment in the Solo building on East 66th Street in New York. Though he has claimed that he managed money for billionaires only, in a 1989 deposition he testified that he spent 80 percent of his time assisting people recover stolen money from fraudulent brokers and lawyers. He was also not above entering into risky, tax-sheltered oil and gas deals with much smaller investors. A lawsuit that Michael Stroll, the former head of Williams Electronics Inc., filed against Epstein shows that in 1982 I.A.G. received an investment from Stroll of $450,000, which Epstein put into oil. In 1984 Stroll asked for his money back; four years later he had received only $10,000. Stroll lost the suit, after Epstein claimed in court, among other things, that the check for $10,000 was for a horse he’d bought from Stroll. “My net worth never exceeded four and a half million dollars,” Stroll has said.

Hoffenberg, says a close friend, “really liked Jeffrey…. Jeffrey has a way of getting under your skin, and he was under Hoffenberg’s.” Also appealing to Hoffenberg were Epstein’s social connections; they included oil mogul Cece Wang (father of the designer Vera) and Mohan Murjani, whose clothing company grew into Gloria Vanderbilt Jeans. Epstein lived large even then. One friend recalls that when he took Canadian heiress Wendy Belzberg on a date he hired a Rolls-Royce especially for the occasion. (Epstein has claimed he owned it.)

In 1987, Hoffenberg, according to sources, set Epstein up in the offices he still occupies in the Villard House, on Madison Avenue, across a courtyard from the restaurant Le Cirque. Hoffenberg hired his new protégé as a consultant at $25,000 a month, and the relationship flourished. “They traveled everywhere together—on Hoffenberg’s plane, all around the world, they were always together,” says a source. Hoffenberg has claimed that Epstein confided in him, saying, for example, that he had left Bear Stearns in 1981 after he was discovered executing “illegal operations.”

Several of Epstein’s Bear Stearns contemporaries recall that Epstein left the company very suddenly. Within the company there were rumors also that he was involved in a technical infringement, and it was thought that the executive committee asked that he resign after his two supporters, Ace Greenberg and Jimmy Cayne, were outnumbered. Greenberg says he can’t recall this; Cayne denies it happened, and Epstein has denied it as well. “Jeffrey Epstein left Bear Stearns of his own volition,” says Cayne. “It was never suggested that he leave by any member of management, and management never looked into any improprieties by him. Jeffrey said specifically, ‘I don’t want to work for anybody else. I want to work for myself.’” Yet, this is not the story that Epstein told to the S.E.C. in 1981 and to lawyers in a 1989 deposition involving a civil business case in Philadelphia.

In 1981 the S.E.C.’s Jonathan Harris and Robert Blackburn took Epstein’s testimony and that of other Bear Stearns employees in part of what became a protracted case about insider trading around a tender offer placed on March 11, 1981, by the Seagram Company Ltd. for St. Joe Minerals Corp. Ultimately several Italian and Swiss investors were found guilty, including Italian financier Giuseppe Tome, who had used his relationship with Seagram owner Edgar Bronfman Sr. to obtain information about the tender offer.

After the tender offer was announced, the S.E.C. began investigating trades involving St. Joe at Bear Stearns and other firms. Epstein resigned from Bear Stearns on March 12. The S.E.C. was tipped off that Epstein had information on insider trading at Bear Stearns, and it was therefore obliged to question him. In his S.E.C. testimony, given on April 1, 1981, Epstein claimed that he had found “offensive” the way Bear Stearns management had handled a disciplinary action following its discovery that he had committed a possible “Reg D” violation—evidently he had lent money to his closest friend. (In the 1989 deposition he said that he’d lent approximately $20,000 to Warren Eisenstein, to buy stock.) Such an action could have been considered improper, although Epstein claimed he had not realized this until afterward.

According to Epstein, Bear Stearns management had questioned him about the loan around March 4. The questioners, Epstein said, were Michael (Mickey) Tarnopol and Alvin Einbender. In his 1989 deposition Epstein recalled that the partner who had made an “issue” of the matter was Marvin Davidson. On March 9, Epstein said, he had met with Tarnopol and Einbender again, and the two partners told him that the executive committee had weighed the offense, together with previous “carelessness” over expenses, and he would be fined $2,500.

“There was discussion whether, in fact, I had ever put in an airline ticket for someone else and not myself and I said that it was possible, … since my secretary handles my expenses,” Epstein told the S.E.C. In his 1989 testimony he stated that the “Reg D” incident had cost him a shot at partnership that year.

What the S.E.C. seemed to be especially interested in was whether there was a connection between Epstein’s leaving and the alleged insider trading in St. Joe Minerals by other people at Bear Stearns:

Q: Sir, are you aware that certain rumors may have been circulating around your firm in connection with your reasons for leaving the firm?

A: I’m aware that there were many rumors.

Q: What were the rumors you heard?

A: Nothing to do with St. Joe.

Q: Can you relate what you heard?

A: It was having to do with an illicit affair with a secretary.

Q: Have you heard any other rumors suggesting that you had made a presentation or communication to the Executive Committee concerning alleged improprieties by other members or employees of Bear Stearns?

A: I, in fact, have heard that rumor, but it’s been from Mr. Harris in our conversation last week.

Q: Have you heard it from anyone else?

A: No.

A little later the interview focuses on James Cayne:

Q: Did you ever hear while you were at Bear Stearns that Mr. Cayne may have trader or insider information in connection with St. Joe Minerals Corporation?

Q: Did Mr. Cayne ever have any conversation with you about St. Joe Minerals?

Q: Did you happen to overhear any conversations between Mr. Cayne and anyone else regarding St. Joe Minerals?

And still later in the questioning comes this exchange:

Q: Have you had any type of business dealings with Mr. Cayne?

A: There’s no relationship with Bear Stearns.

Q: Pardon?

A: Other than Bear Stearns, no.

Q: Have you been a participant in any type of business venture with Mr. Cayne?

Q: Do you have any expectation of participating in any business venture with Mr. Cayne?

Q: Have you had any business participations with Mr. Theram?

A: No; nor do I anticipate any.

Q: Mr. Epstein, did anyone at Bear Stearns tell you in words or substance that you should not divulge anything about St. Joe Minerals to the staff of the Securities and Exchange Commission?

Q: Has anyone indicated to you in any way, either directly or indirectly, in words or substance, that your compensation for this past year or any future monies coming to you from Bear Stearns will be contingent upon your not divulging information to the Securities and Exchange Commission?

A: No.

Despite the circumstances of Epstein’s leaving, Bear Stearns agreed to pay him his annual bonus—which he anticipated as being approximately $100,000.

The S.E.C. never brought any charges against anyone at Bear Stearns for insider trading in St. Joe, but its questioning seems to indicate that it was skeptical of Epstein’s answers. Some sources have wondered why, if he was such a big producer at Bear Stearns, he would have given it up over a mere $2,500 fine.

Certainly the years after Epstein left the firm were not obviously prosperous ones. His luck didn’t seem to change until he met Hoffenberg.

One of Epstein’s first assignments for Hoffenberg was to mastermind doomed bids to take over Pan American World Airways in 1987 and Emery Air Freight Corp. in 1988. Hoffenberg claimed in a 1993 hearing before a grand jury in Illinois that Epstein came up with the idea of financing these bids through Towers’s acquisition of two ailing Illinois insurance companies, Associated Life and United Fire. “He was hired by us to work on the securities side of the insurance companies and Towers Financial, supposedly to make a profit for us and for the companies,” Hoffenberg reportedly told the grand jury. He also alleged that Epstein was the “technician,” executing the schemes, although, having no broker’s license, he had to rely on others to make the trades. Much of Hoffenberg’s subsequent testimony in his criminal case has proven to be false, and Epstein has claimed he was merely asked how the bids could be accomplished and has said he had nothing to do with the financing of them. Yet Richard Allen, the former treasurer of United Fire, recalls seeing Epstein two or three times at the company. He and another executive say they had direct dealing with Epstein over the finances. And in his deposition of 1989, Epstein stated that he was the one who executed “all” Hoffenberg’s instructions to buy and sell the stock. He called it “making the orders.” He could not recall whether he had chosen the brokers used.

To win approval from the Illinois insurance regulators for Towers’s acquisition of the companies, Hoffenberg promised to inject $3 million of new capital into them. In fact, in his grand-jury testimony Hoffenberg claimed that he, his chief operating officer, Mitchell Brater, and Epstein came up with a scheme to steal $3 million of the insurance companies’ bonds to buy Pan Am and Emery stock. “Jeffrey Epstein and Mitch Brater arranged the various brokerage accounts for the bonds to be placed with in New York, and I think one in Chicago, Rodman & Renshaw,” Hoffenberg reportedly said. Then, said Hoffenberg, while making it appear as though they were investing the bonds in much safer financial instruments, they used them as collateral to buy the stock. “Epstein was the person in charge of the transactions, and Mitchell Brater was assisting him with it in coordination on behalf of the insurance companies’ money,” Hoffenberg claimed at the time.

At one point, according to Hoffenberg, a broker forged the documents necessary for a $1.8 million check to be written on insurance-company funds. The check was used to buy more stock in the takeover targets. Meanwhile, in order to throw the insurance regulators off, the $1.8 million was reported as being safely invested in a money-market account.

United Fire’s former chief financial officer Daniel Payton confirms part of Hoffenberg’s account. He says he recalls making one or two telephone calls to Epstein (at Hoffenberg’s direction) about the missing bonds. “He said, ‘Oh, yeah, they still exist.’ But we found out later that he had sold those assets … leveraged them … [and] used some margin account to take some positions in … Emery and Pan Am,” says Payton.

Epstein’s extraordinary creativity was, according to Hoffenberg, responsible for the purchase by the insurance companies of a $500,000 bond, with no money down. “Epstein created a great scheme to purchase a $500,000 treasury bond that would not be shown … [as] margined or collateralized,” he reportedly told the grand jury. “It looked like it was free and clear but it actually wasn’t,” he said.

Epstein has denied he ever had any dealings with anyone from the insurance companies. But Richard Allen says he recalls talking to Epstein at Hoffenberg’s direction and telling him it was urgent they retrieve the missing bonds for a state examination. According to Allen, Epstein said, “We’ll get them back.” He had “kind of a flippant attitude,” says Allen. “They never came back.”

Epstein, according to Hoffenberg, also came up with a scheme to manipulate the price of Emery Freight stock in an attempt to minimize the losses that occurred when Hoffenberg’s bid went wrong and the share price began to fall. This was alleged to have involved multiple clients’ accounts controlled by Epstein.

Eventually, in 1991, insurance regulators in Illinois sued Hoffenberg. He settled the case, and Epstein, who was only a paid consultant, was never deposed or accused of any wrongdoing. Barry Gross, the attorney who was handling the suit for the regulators, says of Epstein, “He was very elusive…. It was hard to really track him down. There were a substantial number of checks for significant dollars that were paid to him, I remember…. He was this character we never got a handle on. Again we presumed that he was involved with the Pan Am and Emery run that Hoffenberg made, but we never got a chance to depose him.”

“From the government’s discovery in the main sentencing against Hoffenberg it would seem the government was perhaps a bit lazy,” says David Lewis, who represented Mitchell Brater. “They went for what they knew they could get … and that was the fraudulent promissory notes [i.e., the much larger and unrelated part of Hoffenberg’s fraud, based in New York State]…. What they couldn’t get, they didn’t bother with.”

Another lawyer involved in the criminal prosecution of Hoffenberg says, “In a criminal investigation like that, when there is a guilty plea, to be quick and dirty about it, discovery is always incomplete…. They don’t have to line up witnesses; they don’t have to learn every fact that might come out on cross-examination.”

Epstein was involved with Hoffenberg in other questionable transactions. Financial records show that in 1988 Epstein invested $1.6 million in Riddell Sports Inc., a company that manufactures football helmets. Among his co-investors were the theater mogul Robert Nederlander and attorney Leonard Toboroff. A source close to this transaction claims that Epstein told Nederlander and Toboroff that he had raised his share of the money from a Swiss banker, whose identity they could not be allowed to know. But Hoffenberg has claimed the money came from him, and Towers’s financial statements for that year show a loan to Epstein of $400,000. (Epstein has said he can’t remember the details and has disputed the accuracy of the Towers financial reports.)

Around the same time, Nederlander and Toboroff let Epstein come in with them on a scheme to make money out of Pennwalt, a Pennsylvania chemical company. The plan was to group together with two other parties to take a substantial declared position in the stock. According to a source, Epstein was supposed to help Nederlander and Toboroff raise $15 million. He seemed to fail to find other investors, say those familiar with the deal. (Epstein has said he was merely an investor.) He invested $1 million, which he told his co-investors was his own money. But in his 1989 deposition he said that he put in only $300,000 of his own money. Where did the rest come from? Hoffenberg has said it came from him, in a loan that Nederlander and Toboroff didn’t know about.

Two things happened that alarmed Nederlander and Toboroff. After the group signaled a possible takeover, the Pennwalt management threatened to sue the would-be raiders. Epstein was reluctant initially to give a deposition about his share of the money, telling Toboroff there were “reasons” he didn’t want to. Then, after the opportunity for new investors was closed, co-investors recall Epstein announcing that he’d found one at last: Dick Snyder, then C.E.O. of the publisher Simon & Schuster, who wanted to put up approximately $500,000. (Neither Epstein nor Snyder can now recall the investment. Yet in the 1989 deposition Epstein said that he had recruited Snyder, whom he had met socially, into the deal.)

According to a source, Toboroff and Nederlander told Epstein that Snyder was too late, but, without their realizing it, Hoffenberg has claimed, Snyder wrote a check to Hoffenberg and bought out some of his investment. But then Snyder wanted out.

“Nederlander started to get these irate calls from [Snyder,] who wasn’t part of the deal, saying he was owed all this money,” says someone close to the deal. Toboroff and Nederlander were baffled.

Eventually, a source close to Hoffenberg says, Hoffenberg paid Snyder off.

Just as Nederlander and Toboroff were growing wary of Epstein, he became increasingly involved with Leslie Wexner, whom he had met through insurance executive Robert Meister and his late wife. Epstein has told people that he met Wexner in 1986 in Palm Beach, and that he won his confidence by persuading him not to invest in the stock market, just as the 1987 crash was approaching. His story has subsequently changed. When asked if Wexner knew about his connection to Hoffenberg, Epstein said that he began working for Wexner in 1989, and that “it was certainly not the same time.”

Wherever and whenever it was that Epstein and Wexner actually met, there was an immediate and strong personal chemistry. Wexner says he thinks Epstein is “very smart with a combination of excellent judgment and unusually high standards. Also, he is always a most loyal friend.”

Sources say Epstein proved that he could be useful to Wexner as well, with “fresh” ideas about investments. “Wexner had a couple of bad investments, and Jeffrey cleaned those up right away,” says a former associate of Epstein’s.

Before he signed on with Wexner, Epstein had several meetings with Harold Levin, then head of Wexner Investments, in which he enunciated ideas about currencies that Levin found incomprehensible. “In fact,” says someone who used to work very closely with Wexner, “almost everyone at the Limited wondered who Epstein was; he literally came out of nowhere.”

“Everyone was mystified as to what his appeal was,” says Robert Morosky, a former vice-chairman of the Limited.

Much of Epstein’s work is related to cleaning up, tightening budgets, and efficiencies. One person who worked for Wexner and who saw a contract drawn up between the two men says Epstein is involved in “everything, not just a little here, a little there. Everything!” In addition, he says, “Wexner likes having a hatchet man…. Whenever there is dirty work to be done he’d stick Jeffrey on it…. He has a reputation for being ruthless but he gets the job done.”

Epstein has evidently been asked to fire personal-staff members when needed. “He was that mysterious person that everyone was scared to death of,” says a former employee.

Meanwhile, he is also less than popular with some people outside Wexner’s company with whom he now deals. “He ‘inserted’ himself into the construction process of Leslie Wexner’s yacht…. That resulted in litigation down the road between Mr. Wexner and the shipyard that eventually built the vessel,” says Lars Forsberg, a lawyer whose firm at the time, Dickerson and Reily, was hired to deal with litigation stemming from the construction of Wexner’s Limitless—at 315 feet, one of the largest private yachts in the world. Evidently, Epstein stalled on paying Dickerson and Reily for its work. “It’s probably once or twice in my legal career that I’ve had to sue a client for payment of services that he’d requested and we’d performed … without issue on the performance,” says Forsberg. In the end the matter was settled, but Epstein claims he now has no recollection of it.

The incident is one of a number of disputes Epstein has become embroiled in. Some are for sums so tiny as to be baffling; for instance, Epstein sued investment adviser Herbert Glass, who sold him the Palm Beach house in 1990, for $13,444—Epstein claimed this was owed him for furnishings removed by Glass.

In 1998 the U.S. Attorney’s Office sued Epstein for illegally subletting the former home of the deputy consul general of Iran to attorney Ivan Fisher and others. Epstein paid $15,000 a month in rent to the State Department, but he charged Fisher and his colleagues $20,000. Though the exact terms of the agreement are sealed, the court ruled against Epstein.

Wexner offers some insight into his friend’s combative style. “Many times people confuse winning and losing,” Wexner says. “Jeffrey has the unusual quality of knowing when he is winning. Whether in conversations or negotiations, he always stands back and lets the other person determine the style and manner of the conversation or negotiation. And then he responds in their style. Jeffrey sees it in chivalrous terms. He does not pick a fight, but if there is a fight, he will let you choose your weapon.”

One case is rather more serious. Currently, Citibank is suing Epstein for defaulting on loans from its private-banking arm for $20 million. Epstein claims that Citibank “fraudulently induced” him into borrowing the money for investments. Citibank disputes this charge.

The legal papers for another case offer a rare window into Epstein’s finances. In 1995, Epstein stopped paying rent to his landlord, the nonprofit Municipal Arts Society, for his office in the Villard House. He claimed that they were breaking the terms of the lease by not letting his staff in at night. The case was eventually settled. However, one of the papers filed in this dispute is Epstein’s financial statement for 1988, in which he claimed to be worth $20 million. He listed that he owned $7 million in securities, $1 million in cash, zero in residential property (although he told sources that he had already bought the home in Palm Beach), and $11 million in other assets, including his investment in Riddell. A co-investor in Riddell says: “The company had been bought with a huge amount of debt, and it wasn’t public, so it was meaningless to attach a figure like that to it … the price it cost was about $1.2 million.” The co-investors bought out Epstein’s share in Riddell in 1995 for approximately $3 million. At that time, when Epstein was asked, as a routine matter, to sign a paper guaranteeing he had access to a few million dollars in case of any subsequent disputes over the sale price, Wexner signed for him. Epstein has explained that this was because the co-investors wanted an indemnity against being sued by Wexner. One of the investors calls this “bullshit.”

Epstein’s appointment to the board of New York’s Rockefeller University in 2000 brought him into greater social prominence. Boasting such social names as Nancy Kissinger, Brooke Astor, and Robert Bass, the board also includes such pre-eminent scientists as Nobel laureate Joseph Goldstein. “Epstein was thrilled to be elected,” says someone who knows him.

After one term Epstein resigned. According to New York magazine, this was because he didn’t like to wear a suit to meetings. A spokesperson for the Rockefeller board says Epstein left because he had insufficient time to commit; a board member recalls that he was “arrogant” and “not a good fit.” The spokesperson admits that it is “infrequent” for board members not to be renominated after only one term.

Still, the recent spate of publicity Epstein has inspired does not seem to have fazed him. In November he was spotted in the front row of the Victoria’s Secret fashion show at New York’s Lexington Avenue Armory; around the same time the usual coterie of friends and beautiful women were whisked off to Little St. James (which he tells people has been renamed Little St. Jeff) for a long weekend.

Thanks to Epstein’s introductions, says Martin Nowak, the biologist finds himself moving from Princeton to Harvard, where he is assuming the joint position of professor of mathematics and professor of biology. Epstein has pledged at least $25 million to Harvard to create the Epstein Program for Mathematical Biology and Evolutionary Dynamics, and Epstein will have an office at the university. The program will be dedicated to searching for nature’s algorithms, a pursuit that is a specialty of Nowak’s. For Epstein this must be the summit of everything he has worked toward: he has been seen proudly displaying Harvard president Larry Summers’s letter of commitment as if he can’t quite believe it is real. He says he was reluctant to have his name attached to the program, but Summers persuaded him. He rang his mentor Wexner about it, and Wexner told him it was all right.

An insatiable, restless soul, always on the move, Epstein builds a tremendous amount of downtime into his hectic work schedule. Yet there is something almost programmed about his relaxation: it’s as if even pleasure has to be measured in terms of self-improvement. Nowak says that, when he goes to stay with Epstein in the Caribbean, they’ll get up at six and, as the sun rises, have three-hour conversations about theoretical physics. “Then he’ll go off and do some work, re-appear, and we’ll talk some more.”

Another person who went to the island with Epstein, Maxwell, and several beautiful women remembers that the women “sat around one night teasing him about the kinds of grasping women who might want to date him. He was amused by the idea…. He’s like a king in his own world.”

Many people comment there is something innocent, almost childlike about Jeffrey Epstein. They see this as refreshing, given the sophistication of his surroundings. Alan Dershowitz says that, as he was getting to know Epstein, his wife asked him if he would still be close to him if Epstein suddenly filed for bankruptcy. Dershowitz says he replied, “Absolutely. I would be as interested in him as a friend if we had hamburgers on the boardwalk in Coney Island and talked about his ideas.”

EDITOR’S NOTE: The original version of this story stated that Jeffrey Epstein was a member of the New York Academy of Sciences. The academy has since notified Vanity Fair that it has no record of Epstein’s membership.