One Nation Under Blackmail: The Phenomenon of Jeffrey Epstein

One Nation Under Under Blackmail: The Sordid Union Between Intelligence and Organized Crime that gave rise to Jeffrey Epstein

By Whitney Webb

TrineDay 2022

Book Review

Naming names, Webb lays down a thorough background of the murky marriage between US intelligence and organized crime that gave rise to Jeffrey Epstein. Her style is reminiscent of the shadow government research carried out by the late Mae Brussell and John Judge in the 1980s. Many of the intelligence and organized crime figures the book introduces will already be familiar to followers of Brussell’s and Judge’s work, as well as the efforts of Santa Barbara’s Prevailing Winds Research. The latter took over public dissemination of the Christic Institute archives after the IRS stripped the latter of their non-profit charitable status.*

Book 1 is both an encyclopedia and a Who’s Who of US intelligence figures and political officials involved in organized crime, illegal weapons sales,financial fraud, money laundering, pedophilia and sexual blackmail.

Chap 1 The Underworld – details the close collaboration between US intelligence and organized crime initiated by the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) on the pretext of enlisting the Mafia-controlled dock workers union against potential German sabotage of US shipping. As the OSS evolved into the CIA, it continued the collaboration, relying heavily on organized crime figures for covert assassinations, gun running, financial fraud, money laundering and sexual trafficking and blackmail. Like its successor the CIA, the OSS was largely a fraternal organization of elite Wall Street families, with the exception of the Rockefeller family – who formed their own intelligence networks.

Chap 2 Booze and Blackmail – mainly concerns the Jewish-Canadian Bronfman family (founders of Seagram’s liquor distillery)** and their involvement in bootlegging during Canadian and US prohibition and eventually prostitution rings and sexual blackmail.

Chap 3 Organized Crime and the State of Israel – concerns the role of US organized crime figures in the early formation of the state of Israel, via their Illegal arms trafficking to the Jewish terrorist organization Haganah.

Chap 4 Roy Cohn’s Favor Bank – provides a biographical sketch of Trump’s mentor Roy Cohn, best known for his role as chef council during the 1954 Army McCarthy hearings. Webb emphasizes Cohn’s close collaboration with late FBI director J Edgar Hoover, both in sexual black male and the sex-blackmail parties they had with other closeted gay men at the Plaza Hotel in the fifties and sixties. She also explores Cohn’s involvement in the 1980’s Savings and Loan Crisis (the failure of more than 1,000 US savings and loan institutions thanks to their looting by intelligence-linked organized crime figures, in part to finance CIA-backed Contras in Nicaragua). This chapter also elaborates sexual blackmail crime boss Meyer Lanksy and OSS director Bill Donovan subjected him to, based on photos of him performing oral sex on assistant FBI director Clive Tolson. Webb attributes Hoover’s refusal to investigate or prosecute organized crime rackets to his fear of being exposed.

Chap 5 Shades of Gray – profiles the shadowy intelligence figure and specialist in CIA homosexual blackmail Robert Keith Gray, who was also linked to the Franklin Scandal, a nationwide pedophile ring exposed in 1988. This chapter also covers the CIA infiltration of the AFL-CIO and organized labor, unsuccessful efforts to subject John Kennedy to sexual blackmail, Operation CHAOS (the largest illegal domestic CIA spying operation – on civil rights and anti-war activists – in US history), and Watergate. For me the most interesting section explores the motivation of the Watergate burglaries (which have never been explained). Webb speculates the burglars were after the confidential records of a call-girl service run out of the Democratic National Committee.

Chap 6 A Private CIA – concerns a private intelligence operation formed by former CIA operative Ted Shackley after reforms initiated by Congress and Jimmy Carter ended the most egregious criminal activities of the CIA and their organized crime cronies. The intent was for Shackley’s private CIA to take over once the Republicans regained the presidency. This chapter also discusses the October Surprise.***

Chap 7 A Killer Enterprise – concerns the cast of characters involved in the CIA-linked Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), initially founded to bolster Saudi development through cheap Pakistani labor. At its height, BCCI was engaged in financial fraud, money laundering, weapons trafficking, drug trafficking and adult and child sex trafficking. Before its collapse in 1991, the bank enabled covert funding of the CIA-back Mujahideen in Afghanistan (in which Jeffrey Epstein played a major role) and Iran Contra. Under Iran Contra, US intelligence used funds from illegal weapon sales to Iran to illegal finance gun running to CIA-backed Contras (after Congress outlawed continued US support) attempting to overthrow Nicaragua’s Sandinista government. The planes used to secretly fly weapons to the Contras in Honduras returned with cocaine shipments destined for major US cities. 

Chap 8 Clinton Contra – concerns Bill Clinton’s role as governor in suppressing investigation into the CIA/Contra cocaine flights into the Mena Airport in Arkansas. It also details the involvement of Hillary Clinton’s Rose Law firm into questionable financial dealings with the companies supplying weapons and airplane parts for the planes involved in the weapons/cocaine exchange.

Chap 9 High Tech Treason – details the involvement of late British publisher and spy Robert Maxwell (father of Ghislane Maxwell) in British, Israeli and Soviet intelligence and his role in selling bugged PROMIS software to dictators in Eastern Europe, Africa and Latin America. The software’s ability to track financial transactions in real time made it easier to to commit and hide financial crime. Maxwell died under mysterious circumstances in 1991, the same year as former Texas senator John Tower (who was assisting Maxwell in selling PROMIS software) and investigative reporter Danny Casolaro, The latter was investigating BCCI, the PROMIS software scandal and intelligence/organized crime links.

Chap 10 Reagan Government by Blackmail – details Reagan’s rise to prominence, focusing particularly on the role of longtime Music Corporation of America (MCA) studios president Lew Wasserman and his organized crime links. Wasserman was instrumental in advancing Regan’s TV and film career and funding both his gubernatorial and presidential campaigns. In addition to covering Iran Contra, PROMIS software, BCCI and the CIA-linked savings and loan crisis, this chapter also explores the role of Nebraskan Republican Party activist Larry King as the key organizer of a pedophile ring he ran out of the Franklin Community Credit Union. The latter collapsed in 1988, in part due to King (a major financier of the CIA-backed Contras) siphoning off depositors savings to fund the Contras.

I can’t wait to read volume 2, which concerns Epstein himself and the role he played in arms trafficking, financial fraud, money laundering long before he specialized in sexual blackmail.

---

*See https://www.christicinstitute.org/. Prior to wide Internet access, subscribers to the Prevailing Winds Catalog/Reader could order among hundreds of carefully researched monographs related to intelligence assassinations and drug trafficking and other government crimes.

**The family would also come to play a role in Jeffrey Epstein’s life, specifically his dismissal from Bear Stearns in 1981 following suspected involvement in insider trading.

***The October Surprise was a secret agreement negotiated between Shackley operatives and the Iranian government to sway the results of the 1980 election by delaying release of their US hostages until the inauguration of the new US president (Reagan) in January 1981.