Who really was Jeffrey Epstein?

• Was he just some unusually monstrous individual who managed to draw all kinds of rich and powerful men into his web? That is the general narrative that is being told today.
• Was he an agent or asset of Israel’s Mossad?
• Was he an agent or asset for Russia’s FSB?
• Or was Epstein’s role far more complex than being an agent for one government or country? Does that label – agent or asset for Russia or Israel – obscure who the capitalist class really is and how it functions?

This is the first in a two-part series on this question. In this part, we will explore his connections with the FSB and Mossad and the allegations that he was an asset or agent of one of them. The second part of this series provides a more complete alternative to the idea that Epstein was simply an asset or agent of Israel or Russia and a fuller explanation of Epstein’s role. See: Jeffrey Epstein and the world capitalist class. 

Russia’s FSB. Was Epstein an agent or asset of theirs?

Russian asset
The claim that Epstein was an agent for Russia’s FSB is not simply made up out of whole cloth. Consider, for example, a February 2, 2026 article in the New York Post written by Britain’s former Prime Minister Tony Blair. He reports on the nearly 10,000 times Putin is mentioned in the recently released file of Epstein documents. Blair also reports on Epstein’s links to Masha Drakova, founder of Day One Ventures which has been accused of trying to steal US technology for Russia. Both Blair’s article and another article in the Washington Post report on Epstein’s links with Sergey Belyakov, who was a graduate of Russia’s security services academy. At one point Epstein even wrote to Belyakov: “I need a favor. There is a Russian girl from Moscow. She is attempting to blackmail a group of powerful businessman in New York. It is bad for business for everyone involved…. Suggestions?” According to a February 10, New York Times article that businessman was billionaire financier Leon Black, whom we will encounter later.

Then there is the former BBC presenter and bourgeois journalist Andrew Marr, who reported in the Telegraph newspaper, “my sources in America tell me… Epstein was recruited as early as the 1970s by Russian organized crime figures in New York, and his information and operational techniques were being used from that point onwards.” Marr’s source was the former head of MI6’s Russia desk, Christopher Steele.

Finally, there is Sasha Ingber, who formerly was the national security correspondent for national TV network Script News. She quotes Markho Mihkelson, chairman of Estonia’s foreign affairs committee, who said in regard to such information as what Blair and Marr reported and says: “what the public has seen so far is probably just the tip of the iceberg. Ingberg also cites former CIA officer, Alex Finley, who talked about “Epstein‘s use of sanctioned Russian banks.— like Alpha-Bank and Sberbank. ‘These are banks that are known to be connected back to Putin and his main oligarchs. They’ve been used in the past to get money out of Russia in order to use for Russian intelligence operations in the west.’” said Finlay.

Knowing how the FSB operates, it does seem likely that as Mihkelson said, we have only seen the tip of the iceberg here.

The main sources of these claims are government figures from countries threatened by Russia (Estonia and also Poland), one top Western capitalist figure (Tony Blair) and figures involved in international intelligence. It is natural that all these would focus on that aspect of Epstein’s entanglements. It is not possible for anybody to be an asset or agent of two countries. With that in mind, let’s turn to the claim that Epstein was a asset of Mossad and Israel:

Was Epstein an agent of Mossad?

Epstein an Israeli asset
The belief that Epstein was an asset or agent of Israel is more wide-spread within both the far right and the far left.

One of the first to make this claim was Tucker Carlson. Speaking at the July, 2025, conference of Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point, Carlson attacked the view that Epstein was just “a weirdo who was abusing girls.” He said that the real question was “why was he doing this, on whose behalf and where was the money coming from?” Carlson suggested that the money was coming from a foreign government. He continued, “ no one is allowed to say that government is Israel…. What the hell is this? You have the former Israeli Prime Minister living in your house, you have had all this contact with a foreign government. Were you working on behalf of the Mossad? Were you running a blackmail operation on behalf of a foreign government?”

Much of what Carlson said is also presented by left pro Palestine sources like The Middle East Monitor, which claims that pro-Trump pro Israel lawyer Alan Dershowitz told then US attorney of the Southern District of Florida Alex Acosta, that “Epstein belongs to both US and allied intelligence

Both Ehud Barak and Netanyahu associated with Epstein. Does that mean he was an agent or asset for Israel?

services.” The Middle East Monitor also wrote that a confidential human source “shared phone calls between Dershowitz and Epstein… after these calls, Mossad would then call Dershowitz to debrief. Epstein was close to the former Prime Minister of Israel, Ehud Barack, and trained as a spy under him,” according to a document that the Middle East Monitor shared.

Even Zeteo, the news outlet for the popular and usually very thoughtful Mehdi Hasan, makes the same claim. Zeteo refers to “the increasing pile of evidence suggesting ties between the infamous, well connected pedophile, and the Israeli government.” Zeteo criticizes those news outlets which, having written a lot about Epstein’s ties to the Russian government, but “barely any of the same outlets…. Have covered Epstein’s eyebrow raising links to Israel.” The fact that Zeteo and the Middle East Monitor present the same explanation of Epstein’s role does not discount that explanation, nor does it make them anti Semites. But it should be borne in mind.

But the best in-depth argument that Epstein was an agent of Israel comes from former Department of Defense employee Darryl Cooper, who was interviewed by Tucker Carlson. Understanding this interview requires familiarity with Darryl Cooper’s politics. Cooper claims that the Holocaust was simply a matter of poor planning on the part of Hitler; he refers to those who were killed in the Nazi concentration camps as having somehow “ended up dead”. He blames Winston Churchill for having been responsible for World War II thereby absolving Hitler. In other words, Cooper defends the Nazis. However, facts are facts no matter who presents them. Carlson’s interview with Cooper was two hours and 44 minutes long. Four fifths of what Cooper presented could have been presented almost word for word by any standard run of the mill “anti-imperialist” in the United States. He goes into great detail about the history of Epstein, starting from when he went to work as a teacher at the elite Dalton school in New York City. Cooper points out that the headmaster at Dalton was Donald Barr, the son of Bill Barr, Trump‘s former Attorney General. Then he connects Bill Barr to the CIA. 

Then Cooper details Epstein‘s history, how he was hired by Bear Stearns CEO Ace Greenberg. Cooper talks about how Alex Acosta cut Epstein a deal. His explanation for all the connections that Epstein made as well as for the basically get out of jail free card that Acosta gave Epstein is that Epstein “was an asset of Israeli military intelligence.” Time and again, authorities let Epstein slide because they were told he was connected to US and Israeli intelligence, according to Cooper.

Cooper talks on in great detail about related history, including the Iran Contra affair. He talks quite a bit about Israel, including attacking the Stern Gang for their terrorist past. Significantly, Cooper never mentions that the Stern Gang had sent a letter to Germany during World War II, offering to join the war on Germany’s side. Cooper clearly knows a lot about all kinds of historical details, and he must know about this. 

We cite Cooper in greater length because he is so detailed and because his details are factually accurate. It’s the spin he puts on those details that require a very nuanced understanding.

There is a lot more in this extremely long interview, but the most revealing part comes at the very end. Cooper says “a child’s innocence is sacred… If exposing the information about somebody like Jeffrey Epstein means that a Doctor Strangelove style nuclear device goes off and destroys the planet, too bad. Let’s just get it done, even if the heavens fall or something like that because the crime is just, is beyond the pale…. If you lie to us in such a brazen way about a guy who was raping children, if you’ll do that, then there’s just nothing more to talk about with the ruling class.”

This can only be fully understood in light of who the audience is, starting with the fact that the blood libel against Jews is still alive and well among millions of Americans, including, probably the majority of those who listen to Tucker Carlson. That is the claim that Jewish matzoh is baked with the blood of children. That claim is more widely believed than some may think. I have a friend who comes from an ordinary working class Catholic home. At one event, somebody who was Jewish brought some matzoh and the family recoiled. They believed in the blood libel! So when Cooper talks about the sacred innocence of children, this is a dog whistle for the blood libel. given who he and his audience are. After all, yes, raping children is a horrific crime, but so was the Nazis having performed vivisection – cutting people up who were alive and conscious while they were strapped down to a table. So were all the other forms of diabolical torture that rulers from Hitler to Assad have used. Neither Carlson nor Cooper ever mention such crimes.

There is also another dog whistle: Tucker Carlson attacks two critics of Darryl Cooper. They are Mark Levin and Ben Shapiro. But there are many other harsh critics of Cooper such as Republican member of the House of Representatives Dan Bacon and former representative Liz Cheney. There is also the Wall Street Journal editorial board, which on two separate occasions, attacked Tucker Carlson for giving a platform to Darryl Cooper. None of these is mentioned by Carlson. It is no accident that the only two critics of Cooper that Carlson mentions are Jewish.

The dog whistles of Carlson and Cooper are similar to Trump’s talking about protecting “our wives and daughters”. Trump knows perfectly well that his audience hears “protecting white women and girls from black men”. When Pam Bondi holds up pictures of a few undocumented immigrant men who committed a violent crime she does not have to say “this is what immigrant Latino men do”. It is understood. These are the same kinds of dog whistles that Darryl Cooper and Tucker Carlson use. All this simply means there is a lot more to the Epstein story than his connections to either the Russian or Israeli state. Seeing only those connections is like looking at a scene from the wrong end of a telescope; the viewer may see something in great detail, but they only see that one thing. Claiming that Epstein was an asset or agent of Israel is not in and of itself anti Semitic. Mehdi Hasan or the Middle East Monitor are not anti Semites. Their problem is their limited focus, their inability time and again to see capitalism as a whole as the issue.

Conclusion
The claims that Epstein was simply an agent or asset for Russia’s FSB, or similar claims regarding Mossad contradict each other. Epstein operated out in the open, and no spy agency would allow an agent or asset to work for another one at the same time. Nor is it credible that Epstein blackmailed those around him to gain intelligence for Mossad or the FSB. If he had done that, he would have been murdered on short order. Epstein’s links were so wide that of course they would have included agents of both the FSB and Mossad. Nor is there any evidence – not even any claim – that Epstein had any special access to information that Mossad or the FSB lacked. Nor did Epstein seem to take any great interest in either Russian or Israeli politics. Yes, these agencies probably pumped him for the thinking of the various figures with whom he was in contact, but that’s nothing very special.

The claim of the left regarding Epstein allegedly working for Mossad may sound very radical; in actual fact, as we will see in the second part of this series, it lets capitalism off the hook.

None of this in any way minimizes the monster that Epstein was nor his crimes. Nor does it make it out of bounds to point out his connections with the Russian and Israeli states. We also totally reject the claims that critics of Israel, or of Zionism itself, are anti-Semitic. If it were, then Oaklandsocialist would be anti-Semitic. But right wing pro-Nazi anti Semitism is real and it is a threat not only to Jews but to all of the working class. 

The issue goes deeper. Throughout his entire interview, Cooper paints an image of a government that is totally out of control, or rather one that is controlled by a few elites. Implied is that this “elite” has been corrupted by the Satanic Jews. That isn’t spoken openly in forums like Carlson’s, but it is understood by Carlson and Cooper and implied by dog whistles. Were Cooper or Carlson to speak about the capitalist class, that would immediately raise the class question, including the role of the true opponents of that class – the working class. Instead it is understood that that elite is those who control money – “the Jews.” The task is to rid society of the Satanic Jews so that “true patriots” can take over. Left politicians like Bernie Sanders of course oppose these views. However, by their lack of clarity about the class question, by their references to the elite” or “the oligarchs” they leave the door open to the Tucker Carlsons and Darryl Coopers. Their further lack of clarity on the independent role of the working class as a class adds to the confusion.

The majority of the left opponents to Israel, no matter how valid their criticisms may be, also fall into a similar trap. This includes the Middle East Monitor and most of the Palestine support groups. They all tend to ignore the issue of capitalism itself and the potential power of the working class as an independent force. By doing so they leave themselves open to a similar exaggeration of the actual power of Israel. That is just about all they can see. Even Jewish Voices for Peace falls into this trap. They promoted a podcast by al Jazeera which makes that claim about Epstein and Israel. Their unwillingness to see the issue of capitalism itself leads them to ignore the role of the capitalist class – the bourgeoisie – as a whole. Instead, all they can see is one aspect of the bourgeoisie – their links with Israel and connected with this the role of US imperialism – not capitalism, imperialism.

The usually extremely sharp Mehdi Hasan missed the boat regarding Epstein.

Even the extremely sharp and informative Mehdi Hasan never talks about capitalism itself. This failure leaves the same door open.

We commented on Cooper’s having failed to mention the Stern gang’s offer to collaborate with the Nazis. An even more significant gap in Cooper’s detailed timeline is any discussion of the role of JP Morgan bank. As we will see in the second installment of this article, without the role of JP Morgan Epstein‘s entire rise would have been impossible.

Cooper fails to mention JPMorgan for two reasons: the first is that it does not fit in Cooper’s picture of the unnamed “elites” who are controlled by “the Jews” and who control the government. The second reason for Cooper’s failure to mention JP Morgan is the fact that the principal bank officers with whom Epstein worked – Mary Erdoes, Jes Staley, and Jamie Dimon – are gentiles (non Jews). If any of them were Jewish they would have been prominent in Cooper’s timeline. Yes, Epstein was working with Israel. He was working with FSB agents. He was working with a Saudi international arms dealer. In his web he were all sorts of links.

The point is the role of the capitalist class, or the bourgeoisie, in society directly conflicts with the entire working class, known more accurately as the proletariat. If we as the working class are to ever resolve the inescapable and evermore dire conflict with the bourgeoisie, then we have to understand every aspect of how that capitalist class functions and lives. This is where Jeffrey Epstein comes in. The second part of this series will start with a summary timeline of his life. It shows that Epstein was a nexus, a connecting point, for the global capitalist class. Through his links, he met the capitalists’ financial, intellectual and emotional needs and interests. An important aspect was their need to dominate and exploit, not only in their economic and political relations, but in their personal relations also. That is what the drive of powerful men and their hangers-on to exploit and dominate young women and girls represents. Epstein drew all of this together, as we will show. This timeline draws from two main sources: One is the biography of Epstein called The Spider by Barry Levine. The second is a lengthy New York Times article How JPMorgan enabled the crimes of Jeffrey Epstein. Both are worth reading in full. Epstein’s connections with agents of the FSB or Mossad prove nothing for a man who was as widely connected as he was.

Epstein’s connections with the Israeli and Russian states do not sum up role in the world. Far from it.

Further reading:
Defenders of Israel tend to label any serious criticism of that country’s criminal role as being “anti-Semitism”. The result is that many on the left are reluctant to consider genuine, Nazi-type anti-Semitism, yet that phenomenon is far more widespread than many socialists think. For further reading on the issue, see “Antisemitism is a growing danger, but not in the way you think”. 

For further reading on the historical roots of confusion in the US on the class question, see “Fascist Ideas on the left”.