Ari Ben-Menashe said that Epstein Island Was Entirely an Intelligence Operation Aimed at Controlling

Ari Ben-Menashe Claims Epstein Island Was Entirely an Intelligence Operation Aimed at Controlling Powerful Figures

Ari Ben-Menashe, a former Israeli military intelligence officer, has said that Jeffrey Epstein's activities, including those on his private island Little Saint James, were part of an Israeli intelligence operation. According to Ben-Menashe, Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell ran a honeytrap scheme to provide underage girls to prominent figures for sexual encounters, with the encounters recorded to produce compromising material for blackmail purposes.

Ben-Menashe states that he first met Epstein and Maxwell in the 1980s through Robert Maxwell, Ghislaine Maxwell's father, who he describes as connected to Mossad. He asserts that the private island and other Epstein properties were used as locations for surveillance to gather kompromat on politicians, business leaders, and other influential individuals in order to exert control or influence.

These claims were made publicly by Ben-Menashe in interviews conducted around the publication of the book "Epstein: Dead Men Tell No Tales" in December 2019. He has characterized the operation as a standard intelligence tactic employing sexual compromise to obtain leverage over elites.

Jeffrey Epstein was arrested in July 2019 on federal sex trafficking charges and died in custody in August 2019. Ghislaine Maxwell was arrested in 2020, convicted in 2021 on sex trafficking charges, and sentenced to 20 years in prison.