I tend to be very skeptical of claims of conspiracy and conspiracy theories in general but I've yet to hear a reasonable theory to explain how Epstein could have killed himself in a cell and unit where suicide is made a practical impossibility. A friend in law enforcement related a story about someone on suicide watch who managed to kill himself by eating/shoving massive amount of toilet paper down his throat and then drinking water (which caused the tissue to expand and suffocate him). After that, toilet paper was issued as needed rather than having rolls available in the cells. They go to INSANE degrees to make self-slaughter impossible in these units.
> killed himself in a cell and unit where suicide is made a practical impossibility
Ken White (famous-ish lawyer and notable internet personality) puts it this way: "But your assessment of plausibility is based on your assumptions about how the system works. Those assumptions are, mostly, wrong — naive Dick-Wolf-level law-enforcement-are-competent-good-guys stuff".
Prisons, particularly american prisons, are full of incompetence and casual disregard to human life and dignity. The prison where Epstein died was understaffed, and the guards tasked with watching him had next-to-no training. Epstein had also been taken off suicide watch nine days earlier.
The jail that Epstein died in has had one other suicide in the past 40 years. They haven't actually lost someone to suicide 21 years, despite several attempts. They're not incompetent at all at preventing their inmates from committing suicide. So no, the statement that suicide is made practically impossible there isn't based on wrong assumptions, it's very well supported by statistics.
I didn't quickly get data on attempt/completion in prison, but the attempt/completion rate is the general pop is ~30 attempts/completion, and the completion rate is dramatically driven up with access to firearms. (https://afsp.org/about-suicide/suicide-statistics/) I'd expect to see a lower completion/attempt rate in prison, not a higher one, given the monitoring and reduced access to methods.
I stand by my statement- something is funny with the way they reported that data.
The general prison suicide rate isn't comparable- Epstein was in jail rather than prison, previously already on suicide watch from a supposed attempt and was more importantly possibly the most high profile prisoner of the Millenium.
Again you are comparing apples with oranges. Outside of prison, nothing prevents you from attempting suicide. Whether you succeed or not depends mostly on your resolve and how you do it.
In a perfect prison, suicide attempt should be 0%, not because people are happy, but because inmates should have no way to even attempt a suicide.
If at some point a mistake is made and an inmate manages to kill himself, it will be a 1 attempt/completion and going to the conclusion that prisons make it easy to kill yourself does not seem right.
No that is not a perfect prison. A perfect prison should probably be more like the general population. Unless you think the perfect prison is chained to the wall at all times. And that prison is no place for rehabilitation.
Sure, I thought it was obvious I meant : "in a perfect high-security cell where the goal is to keep the prisoner from killing himself before testifying"
Just because something is a conspiracy doesn't mean it isn't the most plausible scenario. The theories that a man who as many powerful people wanted dead as Epstein not only beat the odds when it came too attempting suicide but also succeeding is just not plausible. It's just unlikely. It's possible but not probable.
There's such a thing as an irrational bias that something CAN'T be a conspiracy if other scenerios are possible. Many people take pride in "debunking" conspiracies and that ego can make it hard to see a real one right in front of you.
Yep. The hard conspiracy theory - that some rich agent with something to lose took determined action to subvert the prison's protections and assassinate him - doesn't hold water for me.
I am, however, willing to entertain the softer conspiracy theory - that people in prison (prisoners and staff) hate pedophiles and people who enable pedophilia, and the guy was, perhaps, given more opportunity than average to "fix his own problem" by a staff that wasn't going to shed a tear over a dead pedo.
Maybe in some more run-of-the-mill cases, sure. But even the dimmest staff member must have been well aware that this particular pedophile was on the verge of testifying against an entire network of other pedophiles.
If you hate pedophiles so much you're willing to risk your life/career just to let one of them commit suicide, surely you also hate them enough to wait just a little bit longer to prevent a bunch more of them from getting away with it.
They were sleeping through their shift because that's just what prison guards frequently do. They were doing a lot of overtime, partly because the prison is understaffed and partly because you make a lot of money signing up for overtime. They were tired, and nobody watches the watchers.
Why do you think that sleeping through overtime would be a case of the guards risking their life? I doubt they've even been fired.
If nobody watched them, how do we know they slept through their shift, and if they did, how do we know they did it because they were tired and not because somebody asked them to sleep for a while and not worry about a thing, and that part of overtime would be paid at much, much different rate?
> I doubt they've even been fired.
Especially in this situation. We have huge motive, excellent opportunity and unless one of the guards is so stupid as to talk, almost no possibility of detection. A perfect crime, if there's one. Of course, there's no proof of that - maybe Epstein indeed was suicidal. Maybe the guards were just paid to give him an opportunity, not avoid witnessing murder. Who knows. But I don't see how guards sleeping excludes any of that.
First, there are lots of suicides in prison. The suicide rate is 4 times higher there than in the general public, and the rate is highest among pre-trial detainees, like Epstein.
Second, people are generally pretty bad at suicide, and the methods most likely to succeed (firearms, drugs, falling) are not available as options.
Why do you think he would witness against anyone? He didn't do that last time as far as I know.
And IF people thought he had dirt on people then I would assume he would at least have a basic dead mans switch that would send out the dirt to the press in case of death; to prevent assassinations. Especially if there was an earlier attempt.
The people he had dirt on may not be the same people that would assassinate him. If the honeypot theory is true, then exposing those people doesn't serve the purpose, but it also wouldn't be much of a problem. What's more problematic is the information that only Epstein had and could testify to.
Also, from Epsteins perspective, actually having a dead man switch versus just letting people assume he has one has exactly the same impact.
So why bother setting one up? If the switch goes off, he will be dead, perhaps there will be retaliation against relatives. How would he benefit?
Guards at this prison have raped and beaten inmates. At least some of them have been convicted. There's no real reason to believe that they would be acting based on some kind of higher-level planning. https://gothamist.com/news/prisoners-endure-a-nightmare-gula...
Assuming they are rational. But it's evident to me that in a lot of cases pedophilia flips a switch in peoples brains and rage completely crowds out reason.
The softer conspiracy theory is also possible but it lacks a plausible motive given anybody with two brain cells to rub together would know that killing Epstein would be protecting pedophiles.
Why doesn't the hard conspiracy theory hold water for you? The motive is much more reasonable and prison assassinations are hardly some unheard of impossibility especially given the sheer amount of extremely powerful people with a reason to kill him.
When competing theories nessecarily have the prison guards who have been overwhelmingly successful in preventing suicide attempts and somewhat successful in stopping suicides after they get to attempts to hold the idiot ball it stretches credulity. Why haven't more prisoners been suicided if these guard were on such a hair trigger they would murder somebody at the expense of children's safety?
On the other hand compromising a prison guard and blackmailing him into murdering Epstein or else would be trivial for an Epstein associate. I just don't get how enraged prison guard is a remotely more plausible motive than prison guard being given a compelling reason to kill Epstein by an associate. It seems like setting out to prove the conclusion Epstein wasn't killed by the rich.
The two broken cameras must have been incompetent as well then. Not suggesting a conspiracy, but I wouldn't call it that anyway. Maybe it was just a crime.
Add to this the fact that he had been reported as being optimistic about winning his case and had never exhibited suicidal behavior before, even when he was facing a serious sentence
From what I've read, the two broken cameras story is just that "two of the many cameras in the area" were broken. At least one camera was actively recording the area outside his cell and they have the footage and it doesn't show anything interesting.
If they were going to fake footage why would they have allowed broken cameras? I'd also bet it's not really that easy to get fake footage into their security system even if you could produce it.
"The Washington Post reported that 'at least one camera in the hallway outside the cell where authorities say registered sex offender Jeffrey Epstein hanged himself earlier this month had footage that is unusable' and that it is 'unclear whether the flaw in the taping affected a limited duration of the footage or whether it was a chronic problem in the beleaguered Manhattan facility.' "
Yeah the shorter version of Ken "Popehat" White's thoughts are: middle class white people have no fucking idea how shitty the justice system is.
And it's true, based on the replies to this post. No one who says Epstein's suicide was a "practical impossibility" has been anywhere near the justice system. They definitely don't know anyone who has been on the prisoner side of it.
Convicted terrorists have said that Gitmo and warzones are better than this place. It's also very used to "high profile" prisoners, like El Chapo and accused terrorists picked up in Somalia and transferred back here.
Because he is the 20th prisoner in federal custody to commit suicide in a year? Because people routinely kill themselves even in supermax jails? Because 4-5 people attempt suicide in that prison every year and it'd be even more surprising if they were perfect at preventing it? Because they weren't allowed to hire new staff since Sessions froze hiring in 2017, until April, and their staffing levels went well down over that time?
Here's the story of a death, not suicide, in an equivalent facility in Chicago - Solebo. He wasn't taking his meds, and nobody knew because the blood samples they'd taken from him were contaminated. Coincidence? And although a judge had ordered twice, six months apart, that he be transferred for proper medical examinations, he wasn't. Coincidence? And every staff member with a medical license was on leave or away the day he was found dead. Coincidence? Does the federal DoC just actually fail that much in that many ways? Yes. All the time.
It's actually fairly normal to not keep people on suicide watch for very long. Full-blown suicide watch is expensive, but furthermore can stress a patient to the point of actually encouraging suicide. Being unable to sleep because your cell lights are kept on 24/7 and you're constantly getting checked on, the humiliation of having to wear a suicide smock, not having sheets on your bed, etc.
You can argue that this is a crappy system, and I'd agree - but it is the dominant system in US prisons.
I understand your point, however I want to rhetorically ask: expensive relative to what? What's a life worth? What's it worth to keep someone alive where there's very high probability that they alone could be linchpin to bring down a network of bad actors?
> expensive relative to what? What's a life worth?
I absolutely agree - it was stupid and shortsighted to take him off of suicide watch, and better suicide watch programs are needed in general.
My point is more that nothing that much out of the ordinary for American jails happened here. Things happen in US jails every day that, to most people, would seem insane - incompetence and indifference to life are the norm. See my comment above - US jails are run on shoestring budgets with no accountability. People die in jail all the time for causes that were trivially preventable.
I've been in jail and while I fully agree about the poor quality thereof, the argument that 'jail is crap there's your answer' is woefully insufficient; in the worst case, it can be used to foreclose any inquiry in specific circumstances by a sort of reverse concern trolling.
It can be true both that the carceral system is hopelessly corrupt and should be abolished, and also that an individual death within the carceral system was avoidable and hyper-suspicious.
My point is more that nothing that much out of the ordinary for American jails happened here.
This argument holds water if we're talking about an ordinary prisoner, but we aren't. Careers were at stake -- and reportedly have been lost -- over this one in particular.
It made no sense not to give Epstein 24/7 supervision, with everything from (competent) guards outside his cell to dedicated IR cameras looking into it. Nobody is entitled to privacy in prison, so why was it voluntarily given?
Fed prison policy to stop after x days, because most inmates to avoid being written up for things/force a transfer will threaten suicide and play the system.
Epstein himself was also a consummate con-man and sociopath. If he'd resolved to kill himself, he'd know the things to say to exit suicide watch as smoothly and cleanly as possible.
It is true that prisons are not exactly healthy environments, prison guards are not exactly loving companions, obsessed with inmate's wellbeing, and that many of them are careless and/or incompetent. And sometimes deliberately cruel and criminal. However, the case of Epstein is one of the major scandals of the century. He's not a random stoner police picked up. He's somebody whose name has been on the front pages of every newspaper for months. In this condition, either everybody in the prison system are blithering idiots, or somebody took care that Epstein would be surrounded by specific idiots at specific time. And then plausibly denied all involvement - we have idiots, what can you do. If you start counting how many times government officials used this excuse - we're just idiots, you know, can't blame us - to successfully escape responsibility for corruption, fraud and blatant criminal behavior. True, murder requires special hutzpah - but that also doesn't happen every day. Now it happened.
While I get what you’re trying to say ... the incompetence also makes them especially susceptible to corruption and nefarious influence. So, while accidents happen at a higher rate with incompetent staff ... so do “accidents”.
Apparently as Epstein arrived or shortly before his death the guards were rotated and two with very little suicide watch experience were present. One was also caught sleeping?
Is a guard sleeping on duty during a night shift surprising to you? As 542458 said, the level of competency that people assume is hilarious. Prison staff are overworked, underpaid, and have miserable jobs.
It was two guards that both fell asleep. Okay that might be coincidence. What about the two cameras that failed at the same time? They should publish failure rates of cameras at that facility.
When was the last time two sets of electronics failed at the exact same time randomly? If there was a voltage spike or something that killed them both how come it didn't affect anything else at the facility? Maybe they were EMP'ed or something? Okay that sounds fantastical, but I hope they do answer questions. There is likely an innocent explanation to all this, but there should be a thorough investigation.
It was probably less a coincidence and more of SOP. The guards probably have to do rounds at set times (every hour, for example) and then post up somewhere between those times and most likely fall asleep, or do a crossword puzzle or whatever to pass the time.
As for electronic failure, I would say it's probably common as well. Just search for "Prison conditions in the united states" or "deterioration of prisons". Our prions are overcrowded and under funded. These things are usually reported in regards to the terrible conditions for prisoners (heating constantly failing, mice/bug infestations, leaking roofs, etc), but this also applies to equipment used by guards. We are talking about facilities running old facilities and equipment with minimum maintenance. Even if the camera's didn't fail (I am not up to date on the story, but I assume they both did?), I would be surprised if the quality of the footage was usable (or if it was even recorded).
If they had been broken for a long time before this, why would they put the highest-profile prisoner in the entire country in there without fixing them first, or moving him to a cell where the cameras do work?
-I don't know how the cameras were installed, but it wouldn't surprise me if the explanation was simply that they were on the same mains circuit - only to have that trip for some reason or the other.
Heck, possibly they were dumping their video onto a recorder in the prison guards' personnel room. Right next to the water boiler. With only one socket within easy reach. Go figure.
(The latter example not being as far-fetched as it may seem; our workshop pager system went down several times a day for this very reason until we cajoled an electrician into fitting another outlet...)
Do you think these low tech security cameras are hooked up to Pager Duty or something so their crack team of IT pros staffed 24x7 can jump into action and fix them?
24x7 no but 9-5 staff fixing broken cameras in a matter of weeks is probably more typical. Especially considering how many cameras are in this one location and how straightforward it is to keep track of if any cells don't have working cameras.
I'm not saying it's a movie where the moment a camera goes down a 250lb Russian goon comes down and investigates. However cameras not working for years? In the fucking suicide watch cell? You honestly think that's realistic? Honestly those would probably get replaced faster than most cameras...
Maybe there's a few cameras people just forgot were broken and get forgotten about for years but it wouldn't be a typical case if the IT and maintenance team was even half-competent.
Also the cameras just so happened to not have been recording at the time of the incident... doesn't seem coincidental considering his profile and potential to bring down some big name elites
This is the problem with conspiracy theories... Avoidable accidents and conspiracy theories have the same fact pattern, which is an overlap of failure modes that should have been preventable but weren't prevented.
Was the Titanic disaster a tragic accident borne of negligence... or a conspiracy to assassinate John Jacob Astor and make it look like an accident? A lot had to go wrong to make an unsinkable ship sink. Who paid off the watchmen that evening? Why was the captain going so fast? And did one of Astor's rivals gain a contract to sell the steel that... etc., etc.
Occam's razor is important to keep handy, and Occam's razor here should be factoring in that American prisons are designed-by-committee-and-cruelty shit that have needed a massive overhaul for decades.
Good post. I hope they do release the statistics of how often cameras fail at that facility. Two cameras failing in the same time widow feels very unlikely to me unless they're using some really bad ones, which won't surprise me. Would still like to know how that happened.
Sure, two cameras failing at the same time right before he incident seems very suspicious. But is that the case? Seems more likely both cameras were broken and had been for a long time and were never fixed.
How many other cameras in the facility were broken?
If cameras are broken, how would you ever learn that they are broken? Perhaps it would require an important event like a suicide to occur so that you would need to review the tapes and discover the broken cameras.
most likely the power line to the cameras were cut or interfered with. They should both be on the same network and it should not be difficult to disable if knowing about the security system before hand.
Not to mention, Epstein had pretty good reason to kill himself outside of anyone who might benefit from it. He was probably facing life in prison for despicable crimes. There's no coming back from that.
He had “come back from” one conviction before. And with what he knew he could probably have cut a deal, even gone into witness protection. The suicide theory just doesn’t hold water.
I thought the Titanic disaster was pretty well-explained as an accident caused by incompetence and hubris. The ship wasn't "unsinkable"; they just advertised it that way, but it was no match for a big iceberg. The ship was sailing through an area with icebergs, and going fast too, and it was nighttime. IIRC, the captain was in a rush to get to the destination (sorry, it's been a while since I watched Cameron's movie). Really, all it took was the decision to go full-speed through an area with icebergs at night to cause that disaster. Then other stuff afterwards was sheer incompetence and classism, like not fully filling the lifeboats.
Assassinating one person by sinking a whole ship is a pretty crazy way to kill someone; it's surely far easier to just hire someone to club him when he's walking the street somewhere. However, with Epstein, there's no such similarity: he was the only one to die, and since he was locked up in prison, anyone wanting to kill him really didn't have much choice, if they wanted to get him before he testified against someone. And there do seem to be a disturbing number of things that went "wrong" for this to happen.
Addendum: after watching an interesting YouTube video on the disaster, it seems that not filling the lifeboats actually wasn't all that incompetent. A lot of people didn't think the boat was really sinking, and there was another large ship within visual distance which could see them and their flares, and which they were radioing for help, so they thought help was going to be there very shortly if they needed it. Unfortunately, there was some very serious incompetence going on at that ship: the radio operator had gone to sleep for the night, and the captain, despite seeing many flares, decided not to bother investigating. After the disaster, apparently his story changed every time he was asked.
Anyway, I think my point stands: trying to murder someone by engineering a disaster at sea like this is pretty ridiculous; too many things have to go wrong all at the same time, which really aren't under control of any one person or small group. Getting the captain to speed through iceberg territory (and honestly, there weren't that many icebergs, they were just unlucky and happened across a big one), making sure a large iceberg was directly ahead, making sure just enough compartments flooded, making sure the radio operator on the other ship went to bed, making sure the captain of the nearby ship refused to investigate, and finally when help did arrive (and it did), making sure the assassination target somehow wasn't among the survivors. Killing someone in a prison cell where there's no witnesses except a camera or two (that "just happened" to be "malfunctioning") and a couple of guards to bribe is actually realistic and possible, especially if state-level operatives are involved.
You might be interested in the investigation into the death of Sandra Bland, which also found a disturbing number of things going wrong in the Texas jail system. Or probably any other investigation into any jail/prison in the US. A guy died of dehydration in a county jail in Washington. How ridiculous does that sound? (Keaton Farris, if you want to read more about it).
The pathologist from the article claims "Epstein suffered multiple fractures in his neck that are more consistent with strangulation than suicide by hanging". This is a forensic claim first, but one that also raises questions about the quality of the system. Mr. White's perspective is interesting, but doesn't speak to the forensics.
Mr. White might raise questions about the argument "Epstein couldn't have committed suicide because of the system", but by highlighting the incompetence in the system he lends plausibility to the idea that someone could gain access to Epstein in order to murder him.
The pathologist from the article, it is important to remember, contradicts the NY ME's report, and has been hired by Epstein's family, who have a wrongful death suit brewing. He's hardly an unbiased source, and unlike the NY ME, he's retired and (while he has a reputation to protect as a human being who cares about such things) he has no career to protect by not screwing up the details on this one.
Bias, reputation, and motive are irrelevant to the claim that "Epstein suffered multiple fractures in his neck that are more consistent with strangulation than suicide by hanging". 1) Did Epstein suffer these fractures? 2) Does established forensic science support that these fractures are more consistent with strangulation? 3) How much more? 4) Is there other evidence that supports the conclusion this was suicide?
The pathologists uses facts and established scientific knowledge to draw a conclusion. Legitimate responses to that conclusion should be factual and scientific. Counter arguments along the lines of the "middle class people don't understand the justice system" or "this guy was paid", however true they may be, don't have any bearing on the neck fractures and if those fractures are consistent with strangulation or suicide.
They are consistent with both, And if the standard were preponderance of evidence and the only evidence on the table where the forensic report, it's two to one odds in favor of homicide by strangulation.
One thing I don't know regarding a medical examiner's job is whether they are supposed to take in additional evidence, and if an ME is required to give one single conclusion. If they are required to give one single conclusion, then it still makes sense that the New York medical examiner would conclude the thing that is more probable in light of circumstances, even if the forensic evidence alone indicates something else is more probable. Because a 25% frequency isn't low enough that one would bet on the 50% frequency event being what occurred in light of the fact that the homicide would have had to happen In a secure and protected facility with an isolated prisoner.
It's almost feels like a Bayesian versus frequentist analysis question.
But in any case, if the medical examiner is required to give a single answer, and their reputation suffers if that answer turns out to be wrong, I would assume that they would factor in mitigating circumstances to allow for the lower probability scenario to outweigh the higher probability scenario in isolation. And the forensics expert who is not responsible for analyzing future cases and may not be constrained to give a single answer is free to answer based on raw probabilities without factoring in circumstances.
Yeah I’m also skeptical of improbable theories... but this one looks, I mean looks, too convenient. Cameras go offline, taken off suicide watch... even if it wasn’t someone physically doing him in, they can drive him to do it by psychological means.
This was one of the highest profile cases in the last decade. That they didn’t have him watched 24x7 is incredible gross negligence or more.
I mean you have low level criminals get more attention when they signal possible self harm than this guy.
PS toilet paper: can’t they get prison safe bidets?
Yes of course, but normally security would get pinged with alarms especially if the cameras were tagged as critical. In secure environs when they get a camera offline condition they send out people to do the watching.
Honestly an IT team would MAYBE bother to prioritize these cameras as critical. They only definitely would after something like this happened. It's an easy thing to put on the backburner...
In 2018, Britain refused to extradite a guy to the US because he would have been held in either this prison or it's Brooklyn equivalent (the one where prisoners were left without heat or electricity in the storm this year), and they said it was too likely that he would commit suicide given the terrible conditions and lack of care (https://gothamist.com/news/prisoners-endure-a-nightmare-gula...). Guards at this prison have been (recently!) convicted of raping or beating inmates. A few years ago a guy was beaten to death and the jail said he'd overdosed - the footage of that has never been seen either, the family is still suing the jail.
Everyone who cared knew that this prison was a hellhole with poor oversight and poor control, long before Eptstein came near it. Nobody in American politics gives a shit that people facing federal charges are (according to the UN) routinely tortured by being held here. The DoJ is "investigating" conditions at these prisons, but since they are also running them, nobody expects much. (https://theintercept.com/2019/02/09/mdc-brooklyn-justice-dep...)
The sheer ignorance that drives most of the reaction to Epstein's death is awful. Maybe a little of this righteous outrage could get spent on actually making these prisons the well-run, safe facilities people think they are, but I doubt it will be.
What is "ignorant" is pointing to the prison conditions of the poor and relatively unknown mass of prisoners and then asserting that we should have expected the same thing for Jeffrey Epstein. He was worth hundreds of millions of dollars (allegedly, at least), and when people of that level of wealth are imprisoned at all, it is at some Club Fed facility where they're relatively comfortable and well protected. In fact, we already have an example of how people like Jeffrey Epstein are usually treated in federal prison, because he himself served a stint in one after his 2008 plea deal, and it was nothing like the parade of horrors we are now constantly told is just par for the course for prisoners like him.
You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. For a start, this facility only holds people who have not yet had a trial. "Normally", wealthy people like him are not held in detention at all while waiting for their trial - like Martha Stewart.
Crazy to think that our justice system is so dysfunctional we can hardly distinguish between malice and incompetence. Conspiracies aside, such dysfunction provide opportunities to those who oversee to just "let it happen".
He was taken off of suicide watch, so he had all the materials he needed to kill himself. Also...every person I've read with working knowledge of that prison has stressed the gross negligence and incompetence there.
This was the same prison that somehow held El Chapo, a serial jailbreaker, in custody throughout his trial. They can be competent when actually motivated to do so.
El Chapo broke out of Mexican prisons where his ability to influence guards/staff is much greater than a US prison. Also, being able to prevent someone from breaking out and preventing someone from killing themselves seem like two different classes of problems. Being good enough to prevent one doesn't necessarily imply being good enough to prevent the other.
yeah but every noted pathologist who I've read with working knowledge of the case - which is the one in the linked article - says it looks like murder.
He said much more than that... For example, he pointed out that broken bones are very rare in suicide cases like this, and multiple fractures is even rarer.
This was already stated well before this article by multiples pathologists. While most agreed that they are rare...the rarity decreases with the age of the person.
The very fact that his article says he was on suicide watch (he wasn't) makes its entire claim wrong. That's the entire premise of the article...you get very thin sheets while on suicide watch (sometimes they even take them away.) Of course he wasn't on suicide watch and had normal sheets.
The criminal justice / mental health field being what it is, I do not find it surprising in the least that a reviled kiddie-fucker would be allowed, by several levels of people involved, 15 minutes alone, along with plausibly accidental access to a means to kill themselves.
The breaking of the hyoid bone is, in fact, not uncommon in hangings. Nor is the breaking of the cartilage. Nor is hemorrhaging in the face or eyes. Nor is blatant disregard for the fate of a paedophile, who in nobody's right mind could conceivably be innocent.
Sources for what exactly? I never said that. What I said is that we have a very well credentialed and highly experienced expert saying A, and then we have random internet guy contradicting him with nothing to support his claims. You think taking what you say at face value would be the reasonable thing to do?
Yeah, I would be surprised if Epstein had any sort of drop if it was suicide. It's not like he had the means to tie a rope to a fan and kicked the bucket. If he did do it, it would be very ad hoc.
Edit: the rate of suicide is still pretty darn low, and lots of other stuff worth looking in to. Just pointing out that he wasn't on suicide watch at the time.
...but surely it's also the case that successful suicide is more likely when someone is taken off of suicide watch, no? Citing this as evidence of malicious intent seems like a reach.
He supposedly tried to kill himself 18 days prior, and he was a witness who could potentially spill the beans on a bunch of wealthy kid fucks (and whoever had blackmail against them, if Epstein wasn't the ultimate top of this pedo pyramid). Yes, not monitoring the arrested billionaire pedophile who had been fucking kids with other billionaires and political figures who control the country, right after a first "suicide" attempt is made, seems sketch as fuck. If they're not complicit in whatever happened, the TLAs would have had an obvious interest in monitoring that cell. Does the federal government not care about knowing if a foreign power has videos of a former President (and quite possibly a sitting one, though we don't have flight records) raping kids, or is the federal government incapable of monitoring a man in prison? I was expecting Epstein to die before trial, but I was still surpised by how brazen it was. This is the most obvious American deepstate murder since Michael Hastings.
So why didn't Epstein arrange so any attempt on his life would result on all the dirt on people being sent out?
Why didn't Epstein tell the prosecution "Holy fuck, people are trying to kill me, I want a protection and a deal and I will tell on everyone" after the first attempt?
I don't know how intelligent Epstein was or how much he knew. It's possible that those CDs they took from his locked safe[0] were the only insurance policy he had:
> Federal agents who searched Epstein's $77 million Upper East Side townhouse in Manhattan also found "in a locked safe ... compact discs with hand-written labels including the following: 'Young [Name] + [Name],' 'Misc nudes 1,' and 'Girl pics nudes,' " according to a new court filing in Epstein's case.
I can't find anything about what was on those tapes, what names were actually written on them, if the were encrypted, or if any followup investigation is being done, but maybe my googlefu is just weak. He certainly could have hired somebody competent enough to write a dead man's switch which would release the files if he didn't run a script every X months, but only if he was intelligent and knowledgable enough to come up with that plan in the first place. He could have known that he had no undeniable evidence left in his hands. He could have taken the first attempt as a message, and thought that keeping his head low and shutting up was his best chance at avoiding further trouble. He could have understood his time was limited while also still supporting the greater mission of the blackmail plot and not being willing to blow the cover on his handlers. These are all speculations, I don't know exactly how the events played out. I'd even give the body-double crowd a ~5% chance of being right (but that's a crit fail on a d20; 5% isn't much). I do feel comfortable saying that Epstein almost certainly photographed a former President raping a child, which screams "state actor blackmail," and it seems highly unlikely to me that such a man wasn't being watched by the TLAs unless they were purposefully turning a blind eye.
What is being counted, and how is it being counted?
For example, what has to happen for it to be counted as a death by suicide in that prison? Is it enough for the self injurious act have to occur in the prison, or does the person have to die in the prison?
That's not the issue with regards to the parent comment. The parent said he couldn't believe someone could kill themselves in a bare cell meant to stop people from suicide, but that's not where he was.
What do you mean 'thus your question'? That's the first question everyone has, why would you ask it in an irrelevant chain of replies to someone who wasn't commenting on it in the first place?
The takeaway from that story for me is that people will go insane lengths to commit suicide, though means nobody would have even thought of, and law enforcement just removes each mechanism as it's discovered.
Could you put numbers on that? From what I can tell, in the facility where Epstein died, there have been many thousands of people held, and only one recorded suicide in the last 40 years. Do you disagree with this claim, and think there were many more suicides that were not recorded as such? Or do you consider this rate to be "not in any way uncommon"? I could agree with "not impossible", but not with "not uncommon".
> and only one recorded suicide in the last 40 years.
> Do you disagree with this claim
Yes.
It's clearly nonsense to suggest that no-one has caused their own death while in that prison, so we need to ask what is being counted and how it's being counted.
Suicide accounts for at least one quarter of unnatural death in jails. Suicide is the leading cause of death in local jails. Deaths by suicide are consistently higher in jails than in the general population. https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/ascii/mlj07.txt
Are they talking about NVDRS, or about state reports, or about institution reports? What ICD10 codes are they using?
Are they only including deaths where the person died in the prison and that are ruled by coroners to be suicide? Because these two things alone will remove most deaths from the stats. Or are they including all deaths where the lethal action was completed in the jail, even if the person died later in hospital? Many people will die in hospital, not the prison.
A suicide verdict will require a coroner / medical examiner to be convinced to whatever burden of proof they're using (beyond all reasonable doubt? Preponderance of evidence? balance of probabilities?) that the death was both self-inflicted and that the dead person had the intent to end their life. These are high thresholds, which is why statistical organisations (ONS in UK, CDC in US) don't count death by suicide by only counting verdicts of suicide from coroners.
The vast majority of people talking about this death do not know what type of coronial / medical examiner system is used for deaths that occur in that prison. They don't know what burdens of proof are used. They don't know what a coroner / medical examiner needs to know to find a verdict of suicide. They don't know about the high rates of deaths by suicide among prisoners. They don't know that while, male, middle-aged, sex-offending, inmates are at highest risk of death by suicide. They don't know about the high rates of negligence among prison guards tasked with monitoring people at risk of suicide. And yet, even though they're ignorant of all this, they feel free to make wild speculation that he was murdered.
Are we supposed to believe they didn't kill him? They took off suicide watch. The authorities are responsible for his well being. As others have said they go to insane degrees to prevent suicide. It's either death through negligence or active killing. If you take his moment of physical death out of the equation, the story around his legal protection and then lack of it was enough to kill him.
I don't think there's much of a story in the end of the Epstein case. The only people that know aren't going to say anything until it's a footnote in the history books. The conservatives peso hunt comes to a close and metoo had Weinstein. Who knows what crimes they committed against the powers that be, if any. I don't know.
Yeah, outside of Lee Harvey Oswald this guy was the most important prisoner in the history of the USA. The fact that he just "suicided" in prison and we're all supposed to move on and share links about suicide awareness is utter nonsense.
If the corporate media doesn't get to the bottom of this then someone else will, it's just a matter of time. Everyone is so tired of being lied to by authority figures.
And it's a great letter. Of interest, it's extremely similar to Civil Disobedience which is a letter Thoreau wrote from jail, and of which King possessed a copy of at the time he wrote his own letter. Related, Gandi carried a copy of Civil Disobedience with him at all times. Thoreau's rejection of US taxing authority was far more influential than most realize, leading to cascading revolutions throughout the 20th century.
That's a big part of the problem right? We've stratified information access such that special elite groups get to decide what the lowly commoners are allowed to know. We know what's best for them.
In theory this would be fine if we had a rigorous and well tested process for managing dangerous information, but the whole classification system has just been subverted to just hide whatever embarrasses the rich and powerful. It's an illegitimate farce.
If he had dirt on people would he not arrange so it would be sent out in case of his death? Especially if there was a failed murder attempt just weeks before?
And what stops the victims of naming names now? And what would have stopped Epstein of just not talking and just denying?
The only thing they had to do was to keep him alive, and given his health, it was not a hard thing to do. If there were no benefactors, it would've been criminal incompetence. As it stands, incompetence is as likely as if he got killed by an anvil falling from the sky.
To paraphrase: it's as if I gave you a new iPhone to keep for a day, and you returned empty-handed and told me someone stole it from you... because you left it on the edge of the platform at a NYC subway station for the night and (surprise!) it wasn't there in the morning!
In this scenario, it makes no difference whether your friend took it, someone else took it, or it got knocked onto the tracks by accident. What matters is that you ensured that I don't have my phone back.
And that's what happened in the Epstein case. His keepers facilitated his death. The exact manner is irrelevant.
Funny to see this comment getting downvoted when it really gets to the heart of the issue: keeping Epstein alive was crucial to the cause of justice, everyone knew this and that many powerful people had a huge stake in having him silenced, so even if it was suicide his death was willfully facilitated.
It also sends a clear message to anyone who may know information to keep their mouth shut.
It basically says, "Yeah you can be put on 24/7 security, in a prison cell watched by rotating armed guards and we will still find a way to disable the cameras, get the guards away from you cell, and murder you."
Yes, both cameras that watched the cell and hallway outside it had "technical difficulties" and there was no recoverable footage around the time of Epstein's death.
At least one camera in the hallway outside the cell where authorities say registered sex offender Jeffrey Epstein hanged himself earlier this month had footage that is unusable, although other, clearer footage was captured in the area, according to three people briefed on the evidence gathered earlier this month
The problem is that many jails are designed with lots of corridors and halls basically identical.
I assume that recording that nothing happened could be as easy as put a number over a different door, (or pick the equivalent door in a different floor), record for a while, stop, remove the number tag, and swap the records.
Are those the same people that were unable to notice not one, but two cameras broken pointing to a very special recluse for an undefined amount of time?
We could ask the smartest team of architects in the planet to design the most secure jail in the planet and then put idiots at charge. The security of the jail will vanish in a poof of "I couldn't care less about replacing this broken bulb"
> Are those the same people that were unable to notice not one, but two cameras broken pointing to a very special recluse for an undefined amount of time?
Did the people who design the prison also work there as security guards? Is that what you're asking?
> We could ask the smartest team of architects in the planet to design the most secure jail in the planet and then put idiots at charge. The security of the jail will vanish in a poof of "I couldn't care less about replacing this broken bulb"
What does this have to do with what you wrote? This actually sounds that you're arguing that it most likely was a suicide if everyone was so inept. Let me ask, how many times did something like this happen before, do you think, in the last 40 years or so?
>Not being able to do that while in high-security confinment.
Why would he not be able to do that? He had access to his lawyer, right? Or why would he not be even more upfront and straight up tell the prosecution that someone tried to kill him and that he would spill everything for protection?
It's not impossible people are just pointing out it was implausible that the highest profile prisoner in the damn prison was the first person to successfully kill themselves in years and years.
I don't have information that would prove Epstein's death wasn't suicide. Given he was on suicide watch earlier, that doesn't matter much to the situation of those with power acting to conveniently dispose of him.
The Epstein case could still be pursued. But when the government disposes of the star witness, the average person quite reasonably tends to doubt the state is going to give satisfaction, plus the media-driving focus of attention is gone.
> If he had dirt on people would he not arrange so it would be sent out in case of his death?
Considering the circumstances, if you received information from Epstein, what would you do with it? Even if you were brave enough to risk your life in the service of justice, what authority would you even send it to?
Honestly, Glenn Greenwald would probably be where I’d turn to. I’d trust him as a journalist, for sure. There aren’t a ton of them who’ve publicly demonstrated how they handle something of this importance (Woodward and Bernstein are the only other two I can come up with off the top of my head).
Assange - for which I will get hate. He will publish, in full at considerable personal cost. I don't think there are any credible accusations about him doing anything else, ever. You can still hate him for whatever reasons you have and expect him to do just that.
Have you seen Greenwalds thoughts on Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.
I'm not sure they should still be on that list... Maybe, but there's some doubt. More about them than say Assange, for this purpose which is pretty weird and unexpected to think about.
Is it fair? I mean calling a journalist an agent of the deep state for publishing leaks given to them is quite a leap... especially given that Greenwald is famous in large part for the same.
I don't think there's any evidence of Greenwald publishing leaks provided by russian officials. Unless you go with the "Snowden is a russian asset" line which I find lacks credibility. Especially given how often it's been used. Lately Hilary is accusing Deomcrat candidates of it, which is, well, exactly in keeping with her character. An observation that is less controversial now than it used to be.
Never heard of towerload before, but wow, that article is comically terrible. Don't believe me? Here's a tweet from nobody making the same claim without evidence.
The arc digitial article (deliberately?) conflates all those idiots running around yelling "The President is a Russian spy!" and saying that is idiotic with not wanting Mueller's report at all as if those idiots were necessary for Mueller to perform his investigation and write a report.
So yeah, making the claim against Greewald. I'm going with "Not Fair" if that's the best evidence there is.
I've seen no credible evidence that Assange worked with russia fwiw (but the NYT article making the accusation had the silliest diagram I've ever seen in lieu of evidence - so silly it looked deliberately so - as a covert protest perhaps..? ymmv incompetence is the usual go to). If I saw some evidence I might well change my mind on that but I'm just not willing to see russians pulling strings without evidence. I believed WMD claims and I hope I learned /something/ from that error.
Quoting the actual content of Mueller's report. Yeah, I'm ok with that when reporting on it myself. Pointing out that Trump can be a horrible person and awful president without being a russian spy and that constant accusations of it are silly, counterproductive, a massive distraction from the duty of the fourth estate and just need to stop now so we can analyse reality is from the competent journalist playbook rather than a russian conspiracy IMHO.
The claim against Woodward has more legs because he gets top secret leaks and there's no investigation, there's no prosecution, there's no outrage and the stories he writes based on the leaks are anything but embarassing to the government. So I guess all that is at least consistent with what Greenwald is saying. I mean an article that embarasses the government based on leaks with woodward as author - that would be inconsistent and you'd have to address that to keep making the case at least. (well it's 1 this way and 5 the other or something - but I haven't seen the 1).
If I wanted to make a criticism of Glenn in the original context it is that he will use whatever you give him for maximum political impact in support of his political views (but will do so with integrity, eg Snowden is a republican and went to Glenn because of his integrity, also Barton Gelmann and deliberately avoided the NYT for burying stories which should have sent alarm bells ringing loud there, I wonder if it did). Is that political impact according to Glenn what you want? But I guess if what you want released embarasses the government, Woodward hasn't got much form since Watergate..?
I believe most of the major (and some of the minor) newspapers offer a SecureDrop instance to transfer confidential information.
So I would send the entirety of the information to every newsroom that could receive it, then pray that I: A) was not the only initial recipient of the Epstein drop and B) that the information I received doesn't contain any content that could be uniquely identified to me.
Afterwards I would sit down and have a long think about how my life got to the point where Epstein is communicating with me personally.
Interesting how Oswald was murdered. And then the murderer conveniently died of cancer soon after. Also interesting how that plot has been made out to be this big mystery with every which way being considered, except for an internal job. The patterns are getting pretty clear now
Every which way is considered because that's what humans do. Everyone wants to be the guy who came up with an original theory to show how clever they are.
Your vague “internal job” accusation is no exception to this.
There are already lots of people investigating this independently and a lot of information has been uncovered. I can recommend a podcast that has really good research and is also a very entertaining listen:
Plenty of crackpot theories abound of course, but the hosts here try to piece things together that are based in fact to get a more plausible understanding of the course of events.
> Everyone is so tired of being lied to by authority figures.
I see very little sign of this. On the contrary, basically anywhere I look I see nothing but rabid enthusiasm for the latest Russia boogeyman story, and utter disdain for any idea that things may not be quite as we're told by the government and media.
I suspect the only reason there happens to be any interest in this story is that it involves children. Considering how relatively carefree the public seems to be on this story, when usually any story involving children and sex results in widespread hysteria and disgust, I think whoever is behind the memory holing of this story is probably feeling pretty comfortable with their ability to control people's perception of reality.
This is not the head pathologist who performed the autopsy or anything. This is an pathologist hired by Epstein's family who is notable for saying dramatic things in an apparent attempt to get news time:
Furthermore, there's nothing new here - all of this was known months ago. The damage in question - Baden's smoking gun - is not uncommon in suicides either.
(Edit: this comment formerly claimed that Baden wasn't at the autopsy. This appears to be incorrect - he was there, but not on the medical team.)
> Dr. Michael Baden, one of the world’s leading forensic pathologists, viewed Jeffrey Epstein’s body and was present at the autopsy, which was held the day after Epstein was found dead at the notorious Metropolitan Correctional Center in downtown Manhattan.
It looks like he was at least present at the autopsy
You're right, I was incorrect there - I was confused because he wasn't on the medical team for the autopsy. Looks like he was there as an observer, being paid by Epstein's family - which also introduces a fairly significant conflict of interest.
Sort of. The family's hired pathologist is retired. I'm sure he cares about reputation for personal reasons, but it's not like his career is riding on it.
(... and thanks to the power of conspiracy theories, he's now got a cemented reputation forever among some circles).
The state pathologists keep getting paid no matter what their conclusions were.
Epsiein's family pathologist only gets paid as long as he's involved in the investigation. If he said "Yep, looks like a suicide", the family would have no further use for him. But if he discovers some conspiracy that will take an indefinite amount of time to deal with, he keeps collecting paychecks. Also, this fellow seems to thrive on fame, so even more incentive to find something juicy.
What does a career or reputation matter when there's billions of dollars floating around, and you can quietly disappear to a fully funded retirement (out of all the spotlights of course) fifteen minutes after you make whatever statement is required of you?
Not that I think there's any sort of attempts at influencing the story here...
I'm don't buy into conspiracy theories and am a firm advocate for Hanlon's razor but this story is really hard to swallow. This is the passage from the relevant Wikipedia article:
> The jail informed the Justice Department, when Epstein was placed in the special housing unit, that he would have a cellmate and that a guard would look into the cell every 30 minutes. These procedures were not followed on the night he died.[4] On August 9, Epstein's cellmate was transferred out, and no new replacement cellmate was brought in. Later in the evening, in violation of the jail's normal procedure, Epstein was not checked every 30 minutes.[4] The two guards who were assigned to check his cell overnight fell asleep for about three hours.[21] Two cameras in front of Epstein's cell also malfunctioned that night.[5]
Also assuming it's true one might expect, given the gravitas of this case, that the multiple people responsible for such gross negligence would be prosecuted and brought to light and justice.
- those cameras functioned before that night, when they might as well have been broken for months and/or often broke
- moving cellmates very rarely results in not having someone else move in in the same day
- guards don't usually sleep on their shifts
If however, you assume the much more likely situation that the cameras were already broken or often broke, that guards pretty much always sleep on their shifts and don't follow procedure, and that cellmates are often moved out without a replacement, then it stops looking very unlikely. Then it's just a case of selection, the fact that Epstein succeeded in killing himself means he had the opportunity to do it, meaning the fact that we look into the situation after he has successfully killed himself implies all those things that need to happen for that to be possible likely did happen.
It's like finding bugs in complex multi-layered systems (think airplanes), it's not sufficient for one thing to fail to get a catastrophe, but a multitude of failures combined. And in this case that doesn't seem unlikely at all unless we get more data as to how statistically unlikely each of the listed conditions are normally in that prison.
That’s quite a few assumptions to make. Notably that a prison with such high profile prisoners is fine with cameras that break regularly, but don’t permanently break—just small periods of time, and nobody ever considered to get such a strange problem fixed.
If those cameras failed often, I’m sure they’d have countless hours of videos that spontaneously cut off as proof.
And that people could be put into suicide watch as a punitive measure. So suicides are rare despite all the flaws because most people on suicide watch aren’t suicidal.
How many times do people need to be hit over the head with conspiracy "theories" to realize that many of them are startlingly close to reality?
The inability of most people to read between the lines baffles me. It's not that hard, especially for an adult with even the barest understanding of the concepts of nuance and subtlety.
How was my comment even an argument? More of an observation that you likely have a theory you don’t stand behind except when it validates your existing beliefs.
The general dismissal of "conspiracy theories" as being categorically untrue and the realm of insane people is such a tired notion. Happily for the power structure, it is the very notion they hope we all parrot. Countless comments here and in similar threads start with some preamble about not believing in conspiracy theories, but...
People all over the world are engaged in conspiracies. A theory is an attempt to understand a complex reality. Anybody who thinks that governments ever cover up wrong-doing is a conspiracy theorist. Do you believe that your government ever lied about something?
This whole insistence on not bearing the "label" is so mind-numbing. Can we get past the superficiality of name-calling and talk about reality?
Of course, we sit around and say conspiracy theories can't possibly be true because of vaccine+autism and flat earth. End of story. Well it turns out there are links between vaccines and developmental disorders, but maybe those fears are overblown by scared parents (yeah, don't look too closely). You can argue that it's a worthwhile risk to take for the preservation of civilization. But to say there is no link is false.
The world is full horror being perpetrated by powerful people. But we were taught by the evening news that conspiracists are whackos. One thing I've learned is that if the media repeats something over and over again in order to imprint it into your brain, it's probably because there is an agenda behind it and not because it's the good old truth.
I don't know if he killed himself or not, but it sure looks suspicious. The expectation is that there would be a flurry of investigative journalism lasting perhaps months, by different media organizations trying to uncover how he got his money, who flew to his island, or other properties, how many victims he had, interview with his house keepers, lawyers, Ghislaine Maxwell etc.
But except for very few news items, there was surprisingly little uptake. You'd think after Weinstein, and #meetoo movement, there would so much interest in finding who is exploiting and abusing girls and young women, especially by someone as connected as Epstein and his "guests".
One article was odd: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/janelytvynenko/fdny-rev... Odd because it was concerned not with the victims or his connections but that some paramedic or bystander took a picture of Epstein's body as it was wheeled out and posted it on 4chan. And how it was an egregious violation of HIPPA and FDNY should look into investigating that. Not a word whether they should look into investigating why the CCTV cameras didn't work showing exactly how he hanged himself with toilet paper...
> but that some paramedic or bystander took a picture of Epstein's body as it was wheeled out and posted it on 4chan. And how it was an egregious violation of HIPPA and FDNY should look into investigating that
Apropos of all the other things going on in this case - which lets be honest, were getting plenty of news play - why is this article odd?
Because, as a paramedic - fuck whomever did that. I don't care who it is, that is one of the most unprofessional and unethical things we can do. I teach new EMTs and paramedics and we talk about the huge amount of trust and access into the most intimate, worst moments of people's lives, and that's because we have built up this culture of being able to be entrusted to do this.
Whether you're giving care to someone bitten by a canine unit after they were found in the woods after an alleged rape, or to a drunk driver who t-boned your ambulance when you had a patient inside, and so on and so forth, if you can't disconnect your personal passion or despising of someone from your ability to provide medical care, you need to not be in this profession. And furthermore, if you see it not just as an opportunity to be unprofessional but to make a buck / publicity out of an abuse of trust, then even more, get out.
All firefighters and paramedics are certainly not perfect, but there is also a huge stock in trying to maintain the reputation we have - it's what allows people to tell me what drugs they've taken, etc., or whether there's a chance of pregnancy, when otherwise they might not.
> Apropos of all the other things going on in this case - which lets be honest, were getting plenty of news play - why is this article odd?
Because when it came to this story, most people, who are not paramedics would expect a lot more investigative information around Epstein's story besides the fact that his dead picture leaked to some dark web site full disgusting images.
Let's say they followed up the article with another 5 or 10 analyzing the flight logs, unsealed court documents, tried to interview his associates, looked at all his properties, see maybe other inmates heard anything that night. But it didn't happen, it was mostly dropped and instead they called FDNY to ensure there is investigation into the leaked pictures.
It looks suspicious, true, but it inconveniently looks suspicious along precisely the axes that one could expect from simple prison negligence, which is rife in the American systems.
Plenty of people are interested in Epstein's crimes. The FBI is still chasing evidence discovered during investigation of those crimes (mostly because it could tie to other people's crimes, and mostly without interference from Epstein's estate, since dead people have no Fifth Amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizure).
But if the question on the table is "Was Epstein killed to eliminate the possibility he'd implicate others in his criminal confessions," the answer is "Probably not."
The most frustrating part is how blatant and in-your-face the excuses have been and how many media outlets just seem to accept what they're told and run with it without question.
Just look at the responses we've been given to various questions (paraphrased, of course):
Q: "How could he have committed suicide, wasn't he on suicide watch?"
A: "Oh, well he was taken off suicide watch shortly before he committed suicide"
Q: "Didn't he have a cellmate though? Why didn't his cellmate do anything?"
A: "Oh, his cellmate was moved to a different location shortly before he committed suicide"
Q: "Well what about the guards, weren't they supposed to be checking up on him every 30 minutes?"
A: "Yeah, turns out they both fell asleep - sorry, we know how important a criminal Esptein was, but our guards were simply overworked"
Q: "What about the cameras? Wasn't there a camera inside his cell?"
A: "Yes, but unfortunately it malfunctioned"
Q: "Well what about the camera surveying the outside of his cell?"
A: "Oh...well...we've reviewed the footage on that one and unfortunately it's, erm, unusable"
Q: "Wasn't the room supposed to be 'suicide-proof'?"
A: "Uhh...it was but we overlooked the surprising tensile strength properties of the paper-thin bedsheets...our bad".
Q: "Well how about some photos of the body? Can we see them?"
A: "Sorry, he's been cremated and buried at his brother's request and we can't release any photos at this time"
And of course, nothing (that we know of) has happened to all the many people associated and possibly complicit with Epstein. The paparazzi is following Ghislaine Maxwell around burger joints while Bill Barr's justice department files lawsuits to prevent Edward Snowden from making a profit from his book sales.
It is legitimately more difficult to accept all of these circumstances than it is to believe it was covered-up, bought-and-paid-for hitjob. I truly do think Occam's Razor would dictate it is more likely that this is the case. Though, it is important to note, we do not yet have the evidence to say this is the case definitively.
Plus the motivations of those implicated, if you're Prince Andrew, a Saudi Royal, or a Soviet Bloc oligarch you're just going to sit there and accept consequences?
All the players involved kind of add a cover for any nefarious actors. There's so many people involved and so many people that would have motivation to order a hitjob that trying to determine who would be behind such a thing would be at best a wild guessing-game.
Seriously, people who think this isn't a cover-up have to think about the other alternative. Lets say you own, even $100 million dollars. A small sum for the wealthy class. Even if you spent a fraction of that money on a hit and cover up, it would be nothing. A few million dollars would be a gamechanger for an ordinary man. I would bet ordering a hit is surprisingly easy and cheap (especially for an uber-wealthy man who routinely pays for child prostitution), and a far likelier outcome than everything you listed happening in tandem. Keep in mind people like these are also usually psychopaths with a complete lack of empathy and it wouldn't trigger anything in them to take any of these actions. There really is nothing stopping them from going back to the store and buying a get out of jail card because they got a little scared.
When Edward Snowden “revealed” that the NSA had been spying on us for decades, I was shocked that anybody was shocked. After all, we’ve known that for a long time - people had been SAYING that for a long time. I realized after the Snowden leaks that most people actually thought they were joking when they said that the NSA was spying on all of us: “har har, as if that could ever happen”. It’s become increasingly clear that I’m not just being paranoid when I believe that they _are_ spying on us, and disposing of the ones who become a problem.
While I agree, I think it’s worth teasing apart the “They” in this line of thinking. The conspiracy/Illuminati narratives imply a singular, unified cabal of power, which is a very difficult thing to achieve. But I think is more likely, is a loosely coupled system of mutual benefit with many players and imperfect knowledge, but all of whom are incentivized to (or selected for) not rocking the boat too much.
Elizabeth Warren’s quote comes to mind: “The first rule of DC is that insiders don’t criticize other insiders.” I suspect the kernel of truth to conspiracy theories is that various private cabals, from fraternities to Skull & Bones to Bilderberg, act as trust and secrecy filters, selecting for those who know where their bread is buttered, and therefore can be trusted by various elites, who have common interests despite being in direct competition for power, influence, and resources (“honor among thieves”). There need not be a singular group of robed masterminds; just the amorally ambitious pursuing their own interests.
Or it's just incentives: if they rule the case is a suicide, it's closed and they can move on with their lives, while if they rule it's a homicide, it opens up a whole criminal investigation and media circus, they'll have a lot of attention on them, they'll have to testify at the trial, there are potential career repercussions if they're wrong (i.e. no conviction), there are potential personal repercussions if they're right and various powerful people would like to see that fact buried, etc. If there's any ambiguity at all, better just lie low and go with the conclusion that means the least work and risk.
HN tends to attract people who believe in finding the Truth with a capital T, but the majority of the world does not function like that. Most people are more concerned about personal costs and benefits and how a given action will affect them. The abstract Truth out there is immaterial; they just don't care, and save their energy for things that matter more to them. Explains a lot about the media, politics, corporate scandals, and so on.
When two Saudi teenagers were found bound together in the Hudson had their deaths ruled a suicide, my confidence in the integrity NYC coroners office died.
Well, they were apparently being abused by their family, had applied unsuccessfully for asylum, and were (or thought they were) about to be deported to Saudi Arabia. They had told people that they would kill themselves if they were forced to go back. They had spent weeks maxing out their credit cards staying in luxury hotels and shopping. They had run out of money the day before they died, and were seen hours before their bodies were found at a park on the bank of the river praying. Also they weren't bound in any way that would have caused them to drown - they had apparently taped themselves together, possibly to keep their bodies from floating apart.
I mean, it's possible that they were murdered. But it's not unreasonable to conclude from the available facts that it was suicide. Do you have access to additional facts that would dispute that conclusion?
Classifying obvious murders as suicide often happens if intelligence services have a stake in the investigation. That doesn't mean they want to bury the case. They could try to do an investigation above the "pay grade" of the local cops who otherwise would have a mandate.
This is the crux of it; inevitably, government institutions and individuals in important positions are perfectly capable of quietly trading favors and taking action off-books. And in the other direction, private citizens and groups can have pressure applied on them, directly or indirectly, by mechanisms of government.
No, it doesn't - it was a federal prison and the NY DoC has nothing to do with it. And no, even if you buy into the idea that he was killed, there is no collusion needed to make it a plausible narrative, you just have to have the strangulation done competently enough to look like hanging.
So, I was one of the people who read a lot about purported state surveillance before Snowden, and was still "shocked" by what he revealed. It's simple really: while Slashdot commenters et al had been murmuring about Echelon and the NSA for years already, there was no evidence, and therefore no way to sort out the fantasy from the reality.
The shocking part was (a) that the reality turned out to be even more pervasive than the fantasy in some respects; (b) that the details had remained a secret for so long (which is a surprising counterpoint to the whole "governments aren't good at keeping secrets" thing); (c) that it was leaked at all given the first two points; and (d) that any backlash against it all was so milquetoast.
All of this shifted some pretty fundamental stuff in my worldview and the way I regard conspiracy theories. I'm still skeptical of them, by default, but now only because I think that's a necessary blockade against insanity, not because widespread government secret-keeping is implausible.
> It's simple really: while Slashdot commenters et al had been murmuring about Echelon and the NSA for years already, there was no evidence.
Does the European Parliament's 2000 ECHELON report not count? I would say that there was plenty of evidence around, but the attacks of September 11 simply obscured the prior debates about telecommunications privacy in press coverage.
'Spying' suggests something much more targeted than across-the-board data collection. The odds that the NSA keeps track of everyone's online footprint to a large extent is high. The odds that anyone is singled out for close personal scrutiny are very low.
Of course the former makes the latter trivially easy to do, but privacy advocates have failed in two ways: bridging that cognitive gap between passive and active surveillance, and explaining why/how government can reasonably be expected to have worse capabilities than exist in the private sector.
We certainly need stronger privacy laws, but the solution is not for everyone to become a security expert or accept total compromise. That just leads to neighborhoods where every house is barricaded like a prison and the main profit makers are security firms and locksmiths, a condition which already afflicts us: http://tuvalu.santafe.edu/~bowles/GarrisonAmerica2007.pdf
I think the trick with social progress is not in getting people to be aware of a shocking problem, any shocking problem, it's what to do with that energy once it exists.
Which is why Greanpeace and PETA are a joke, but the Nature Conservancy, EFF, and the ASPCA are less so.
Almost anyone can learn to piss people off. We often call them 'assholes'. Turning that energy to something requires leadership.
I pay close attention to the "nutters" and "conspiracy theorists". A great way to hide something big in plain sight is to let someone that is unstable see 1/8th of your secret. They will conflate other things into it and sound totally loony, thus invalidating any discussion about your evil plans by anyone, as they will be associated with the unstable person.
I am not going to name names, as that would be inappropriate, but there are some popular public figures that make video and news streams, that have sounded totally loony for decades and yet, turned out to be mostly right or in some cases, spot on. They just conveyed the message poorly.
Which would be why the CIA under Johnson came up with the idea. Keep all the undesirable thought together and let it eat itself getting stranger and less palatable all the way.
Too many "conspiracy theories" have come out as true lately.
The latest was the satanic child abuse thing from the 80s that was just un-debunked from the Finders release.
We have have reached the point where it's worth looking at the "debunked" conspiracy theories with a new, critical eye.. which is all kinds of disturbing.
I agree, and I also think that's why there's no widespread outcry about surveillance among the general population. For example a lot of baby boomers grew up with "party line" telephones. I did, rural areas in the 80's still had them. You get used to idea of someone listening. I'm not saying this makes it right, just that it could explain the ambivalence of many.
Not only disposing of those individuals who become a problem.
Disposing of entire groups and social movements. Example, occupy wallstreet.
As in, stealing, literal, bloody, stealing of an entire generations wealth, and transfering it to those who cause poverty and suffering... and yeah, all the masses can do is "well at least I got a new shiny iphone".
Wake up people, you americans especially are living in worse conditions than people under Stalin lived. Thats not a joke or har har, hard reality.
>Wake up people, you americans especially are living in worse conditions than people under Stalin lived. Thats not a joke or har har, hard reality.
Stalin committed literal genocide of millions of people. That simply does not happen in the USA today and conflating the two weakens any point you may have had.
It sure was convenient for a lot of high profile people that this guy is dead.
The cameras happened to malfunction on that day... guy got taken off suicide watch. Also his cell mate was an ex-cop who looks like he could snap people in half without trying. I mean come on.
Exactly. I find it rather plausible that those in power with something to lose created the circumstances (like malfunctioning cameras) and incentives (like putting him with a real bad cell"mate", with the suggestion he'd share the rest of his life with such people) to drive him into and enable his suicide instead of just whacking him outright, at least at this stage.
I'm fascinated by the idea that someone could have killed and successfully covered up a murder this high profile.
How do you handle the guards? How do you keep the other inmates quiet? Can you get away with bribing a single guard or is a larger operation needed? If you bribe people, how do you get the money to them? How do you keep them quiet when the inevitable investigation happens?
I don't think it's impossible, but if this was a murder then it's fascinating that someone could be this good at assassination.
So it's in the "quite difficult, but not impossible" category. The question then is, who would want him dead that badly, and have the resources to carry it out? Given the circles he ran in and the dirt he might have had on people, a surprising number of people might have had both the means and the motive.
Mind you, I'm not saying that it was murder. I'm just saying that the degree of difficulty isn't as big a barrier as it would seem.
Robert Maxwell has been accused of being a Mossad agent.
Ghislaine Maxwell was the daughter of Robert Maxwell. Upon his death, six serving and former heads of Israeli intelligence services attended his funeral in Israel, while Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir eulogized him and stated: “He has done more for Israel than can today be said."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Maxwell
I think some intelligence agency (even money CIA or Mossad) was using Epstein's tapes of powerful people engaged in pedophilia as kompromat to blackmail powerful men into being subservient to their interests.
I would think anyone privy to the situation would be handled the same way, by threat of death to them or loved ones. Maybe a little cash to ease the mental burden.
I'd like to think I could withstand such a threat like a fictional hero, but I have my doubts. I hope to never know for sure.
I do happen to know that for me to ignore murder took nothing more than the implied threat that I would be murdered myself by the team doing the murder. I learned my lesson; getting away with murder is not hard for people that are good at it.
A relatively small amount of people would need to be persuaded/bribed. And how does the perpetrating party keep them quiet? Well, they just demonstrated that they have the desire and ability to kill someone and get away with it.
Especially easy to get people to comply given that the general societal consensus is that pedophiles deserve death without due process, regardless of their proscribed legal punishment.
Bribe the two guards with cash. Threaten to kill them and their families if they talk. It's pretty straightforward. Most people think that they are good people and would do the right thing in this situation, even though most people have no reason whatsoever to believe that they would act morally right if it became a serious sacrifice.
>Most people think that they are good people and would do the right thing in this situation,
Nope, straight up, some people come up to me, bribe me and threaten me or my family so they can kill a pedophile and I wouldn't hesitate for a second. I'd hand them the keys and walk away.
I’m not the parent commenter, but even this seems less straightforward than you’re making out.
For example, how do you know which guards are assigned to Epstein’s cell, and how do you get in contact with them? Is it only one guard, or are there several in rotation? Where do you get this information? Once they accept your bribe, how do you get the money to them?
I’m just thinking about the logistics of the situation. Surely someone who can do all of this stuff would be considered skilful.
It's a little early to call the cover-up "successful." The fact that Baden is on nationwide news media questioning the official suicide narrative probably means a few loose threads haven't been snipped yet.
>How do you handle the guards? How do you keep the other inmates quiet?
i think it is much easier task than what happened in Florida in 2008 and the years after when the federal and the state prosecutors and the FBI and the judges all were basically working on the Epstein side to make sure that the slam dunk serial pedophile charges would get nowhere. You can't directly buy that with money. That was done by some large power and influence from behind the scene (influential enough to make all those participants to accept the obviously fake CIA cover as a way out). Couple prison guards and non-working cameras is just a minor thing for such power and influence.
The expression was coined by Adolf Hitler, when he dictated his 1925 book Mein Kampf, about the use of a lie so "colossal" that no one would believe that someone "could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously".
It doesn't seem that this new claim discusses anything not explicitly mentioned at the time of the suicide decision. See the NYT article on this new report for a fuller discussion, as well as quotes from many pathologists:
The fact that Baden, one of the only two MEs assigned to examine the body, believes it was a homicide is certainly news. So is the fact that the NYC ME listed cause of death as "pending" initially and then it was later amended to "suicide" for reasons unknown.
Baden was present for the examination - he didn't perform the examination himself. It's a small detail but I wouldn't put Baden's opinion and the official examiner's at the same level.
> The poor brother was grown up now and a software engineer who already went through enough trauma and had to sue the show for defamation.
I have watched that documentary and as someone who has a lot of experience with autism spectrum disorder and complete inability to control one's actions at not such a young age, I have little doubt that he could have done that unintentionally.
Even as an adult, he still doesn't look as someone who is fully able to comprehend his actions.
In such a case, it would be easy to understand the parents' desire to protect at least the child who was still alive.
And not suing after the documentary was released was not an option, if they wanted to stick to their story.
This may be the kind of thought bubble that's not welcome on HN, but the Epstein situation of high-powered contacts, the decade-old non-prosecution agreement (for child-sex crimes!) and the various inconsistencies surrounding Epstein's death as described in the article, form a seriously twisted situation when combined with the political rhetoric around end-to-end encryption and societal surveillance in general.
Politicians chanting, essentially, "Think of the children", is phenomenally hypocritical when layered on top of the Epstein situation.
The US and Five Eyes world-spanning communications surveillance operations couldn't even get this guy jailed for child-sex crimes?! How much is it costing for this wholly-ineffectual-at-what-its-claimed-purpose-is infrastructure?
You can't just advertise whatever loony accusations your link goes to (I didn't click) and absolve yourself of responsibility. That's the old "I'm just asking questions..." shtick.
To not make a snippy comment about the media treatment about it because that would be tiring, I'd like to instead draw an imperfect parallel to narcopolitics in Latin America. Kingpins from El Chapo to Escobar were notorious for getting away with just about anything, the former for his tunnel and the latter for actually dropping bombs. For a lot of folks on the other side of the border, perhaps they thought it was something that could never happen here.
But, I think what I see there, what I see here just tend to reinforce something that I believe is vindicated by the rest of history -- politics can be very dirty, and to prematurely label something a conspiracy theory can get in the way of seeing the reality of what happens on the ground. There's a difference between labeling something a conspiracy theory because it feels unthinkable and labeling something a conspiracy theory because it's a stretch to imagine it logistically possible. I have a hope that somehow we can get to a reality where that's not the case, but it's hard to reconcile that with seeing these things happen again and again.
How strong is a democracy? What is the price of freedom and liberty, and how resistant are any of the world's well-resourced democracies to this sort of high-level corruption? Were they ever resistant to it? Were democracy and technopolitics always merely a smokescreen over invisible perpetuations of the perennial brutal principle of "might makes right" and any egalitarian, humanist drive somewhat doomed to never fully (or even partially) succeed?
I'd like to remind people that "conspiracy theory" was a propaganda term coined and spread by the CIA in order to discredit people skeptical of the United States.
Coined, no; the term dates back to at least 1870 in a non-political context,[0] and I believe there's a documented use in a political context by 1890. Spread, yes, especially in via the document "Countering Criticisms of the Warren Report"[1] which used the term "conspiracy theory" and "conspiracy theorist" whilst instructing agents "To employ propaganda assets to [negate] and refute the attacks of the critics" (though that document did not directly instruct agents to use the term).
If Epstein was about to testify against the Mob and not about expose wealthy elites and politicians I doubt any of you in this thread would discount, at all, that he was “whacked”.
There’s something really gross about how his proximity to power that we, ostensibly, “like” is decreasing our collective likelihood to state the obvious.
Any evidence it was the Mob he was going to testify against? I have seen a lot more speculation that he would reveal his cooperation with state intelligence agencies.
I am shocked as well how many people in this thread seem to argue that this was not murder. It is ridiculously obvious. Occams razor cleanly shaves off the option that this was in fact a very convenient suicide
If you know a bit of background on how these things work, it is also an obvious intelligence agency level murder, not just someone hiring someone to kill him.
I hate to be boring, but extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, which so far has not been presented.
My brother in law is an attorney who literally makes a career out of the deaths and injuries that result from the incredible incompetence and neglect we inflict upon the imprisoned in this country. And as he puts it "Business is Good."
We know that people are murdered in prison (though probably not as often as the media depicts.)
We know that blackmail exists.
While they might be uncommon, neither of those are extraordinary.
It is also undisputed that:
- a serial and unabashed pedophile had multiple contacts with two presidents, a member of the British royal family and a few titans of industry.
- when prosecuted for his sex crimes said pedophile came away with a sweetheart deal that apart from violating federal regulations, was _incomprehensible_ in it's leniency.
Now just because those two things are quite extraordinary it doesn't mean they are proof of anything. At the same time though, they are a justification for being a little more circumspect about dismissing conspiracies as crank theories.
Both blackmail and homicide are uncommon in prison.
Suicide in prison is very, very common.
The wealthy and powerful being above the law and getting sweetheart deals by prosecutors who are more obsessed with not losing and not working hard for easy pleas against people who cannot afford to defend themselves Federally is very, very common.
Note I am not closed to the possibility he was killed, I'm simply noting the contents of this article are miles away from the kind of evidence sufficient to raise a doubt he killed himself.
Obviously I'm interested...why else am I commenting after reading the article? The problem is that nothing interesting happened.
I'm not sure I follow you here. Which claim do you consider to be extraordinary, the claim that Epstein was killed, or the claim the Epstein was a suicide? Neither claim seems "extraordinary".
Suicide is as high as a third of all prison deaths depending on facility. Homicide is like 2-4%.
The claim that someone entered a locked prison cell, killed Epstein, and then left without getting caught is the definition of extraordinary.
It's possible, but then it's possible I'm being paid to post this by his killers rather than just be some schmuck in Chicago waiting for a meeting to be over.
We're talking about the speculation that a homicide was committed to look like a suicide. I'm not sure I see what "Suicide is as high as a third of all prison deaths" has to do with anything in this instance.
At best, maybe we could say that both potential instances (suicide and homicide) are extraordinary, since what we would expect to happen in the ordinary circumstance is neither suicide nor homicide; but that wasn't the impression given by the original statement.
It could be equally said, therefore, that the claim Epstein hung himself with dental floss inside a secure facility without being captured on camera is also extraordinary. So, when I asked, I wasn't sure which of these two events was supposed to be "extraordinary", because neither really seemed to rank more extraordinary than the other, and still don't.
My condolences about being stuck in Chicago. I spent a good amount of time downtown around Merchandise Mart. Crazy traffic.
"Fractures of the hyoid bone and thyroid cartilage in 25% of Thais who died of suicidal hanging were related with older ages and incomplete hanging but not related with location of the knot."
"Altogether, we identified the following types of laryngohyoid fractures in 129 of 178 cases (72.5%): isolated fracture(s) to the thyroid cartilage in 60 cases (33.7%), combined thyrohyoid fractures in 41 cases (23.0%), isolated fracture(s) to the hyoid bone in 28 cases (15.7%), and no fractures to the cricoid cartilage or the cervical vertebrae."
"There were a total of 40 cases of suicidal hanging with an age range of 17–74 years (average = 35 years; M:F = 33:7). Fractures of neck structures were identified in 19 cases (47.5%) and were more common in older victims and males. Nine victims had only thyroid cartilage fractures (22.5%), four victims had only fractures of the hyoid bone (10%), and six victims had fractures of both the hyoid bone and thyroid cartilage (15%)."
Oh of course it was murder, it was clear he would be killed once they put him in jail (I won a bet saying he would die mysteriously within 2 months of his house arrest motion being denied). Then after he died I won another bet predicting that 'the cameras will have been not working', and sure enough when they looked at the video from the cameras it was corrupted or something. Obvious murder is obvious.
Whitney Webb has written exhaustively on Epstein at mintpressnews. Julie K Brown and others at the Miami Herald have been on the Epstein case for a decade and for a corporate media firm done a good job with investigative journalism. https://youtu.be/uQbndmXIkKQ
I'm gonna go out on a limb here and speculate. Epstein was probably an agent for CIA and/or Mossad, and orchestrated honeypots where prominent figures were lured into sleeping with underage girls. It's such a predictable way for intelligence agencies to gain power over powerful figures.
Once he was headed for a long prison sentence and logically had nothing to lose, the powerful people he had blackmail material over would obviously choose to get rid of him to prevent the chance that he revealed everything. It's really not that far fetched.
Epstein’s death seems the most overt taunt about ruling class impunity in my lifetime. Not only in its circumstances, but in the kind of shifting, threadbare cover stories about everyone with whom he was associated. Bill Gates, for example, had staff overlap between his foundation and Epstein, (including one who was named in Epstein’s will!) and was able to diminish these connections in major media outlets with almost no pushback.
Epstein's ability to carry in his activities with near impunity during his life seems even more shocking to me. Pretty much everyone knew what this guy was doing for decades.
There is some notion that he may have been operating a honeypot (kompromat factory) for Western intelligence services (particularly CIA or Mossad). That would explain why he was collecting blackmail material and all.
I suppose the null hypothesis is that rich and well-connected people can get away with even open crimes in public for years and years. Weinstein got away with rape for years and years, against well-connected people as well. Epstein was a financier just like Weinstein. They have what you need, and they have the ear of a lot of other well-connected people who need things from him.
> There is some notion that he may have been operating a honeypot (kompromat factory) for Western intelligence services (particularly CIA or Mossad).
Mossad seems to be the most likely player here[1][2]:
> Given the chance to refute Ward’s report, specifically that the Epstein case involved intelligence matters, Acosta did nothing of the sort. Indeed, he functionally admitted that it’s true.
> What then can we conclude at this point? It appears that Jeffrey Epstein was involved in intelligence work, of some kind, for someone—and it probably wasn’t American intelligence either. The U.S. Intelligence Community is lenient about the private habits of high-value agents or informants, but they won’t countenance running sex trafficking rings for minors on American soil, for years. While it’s plausible that Epstein was sharing some information with the FBI—many criminals do so to buy themselves some insurance—it’s implausible that he was mainly working for the Americans.
> Who are the suspects then? It seems awfully coincidental that Epstein’s best pal and business partner for decades has been Ghislaine Maxwell, the British socialite and daughter of the late Robert Maxwell, the media mogul who died under mysterious circumstances in 1991.
> Six serving and former heads of Israeli intelligence services attended Maxwell's funeral in Israel, while Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir eulogized him and stated: “He has done more for Israel than can today be said."
In the old country, there is a concept of krysha, which technically refers to protection paid to government for protection ( not unlike mafia ), but, for example, in Russia, referred to money paid for protection to the security apparatus.
I find it difficult to believe Epstein had no protectors. Natually, now nonone really knew the guy.
There's some speculation that he maintained his operational security, such as it was, through the threat of exposure or blackmail. That is, he brought prominent and powerful people into his fold, and then he had power over them. It's similar to how spy organizations intentionally place people in compromising situations, like hiring prostitutes for them, and record it on video.
I cannot believe that he didn't have a deadman switch set up just in case something like this happened to him.
Somewhere or wheres, there has to be a couple boxes of hard drives that could burn the world down if they ever came to light. Although I may be being optimistic; the Panama Papers never amounted to anything.
After he was arrested the FBI raided his mansion and took into its possession a large cache of CDs labeled "young <girl's name> with <famous rich person's name>" which he kept in his safe. There were also hints that people visited his private island and his New Mexico ranch (which the FBI bizarrely still has not raided) before he was killed. So they may have confiscated the materials for any dead man's switch.
Also, if Epstein was indeed an intelligence agency cutout then he was surely watched very closely at all times, so there might not have been an opening for him to set one up (or he might have been told in no uncertain terms what would happen if he tried). Or (most likely of all IMO) after the sweetheart 2008 deal he simply thought he was untouchable and above the law, so why would he need to take precautions against being assassinated?
> My point is, the former already happened, and made zero difference.
To that particular person. Being personally shameless with corrupt friends does have a way of making one immune to many kinds of blackmail. That doesn't mean there aren't a lot of people who have more shame and better friends that can still be controlled via threats of blackmail.
It's similar to what keeps financial bubbles and Ponzi schemes going: when the money is flowing, nobody asks questions. Epstein threw a lot of money around.
The UK had Jimmy Saville and a similar story. He raised a lot of money for various important people and charities so nobody paid attention to the fact that he appears to have been a serial rapist for decades.
Saville was a friend of Prince Andrew's elder brother, the future King Charles.
Don't overlook the snobbery and friend of royalty aspect. The Windsor boys have been very, um, unlucky in their choice of friends. Despite the fact they have advisors and the secret service keeps tabs on them so they aren't compromised by spies or assassinated.
It really is extraordinary that they were both so unlucky and so badly compromised in this way.
Well, that only gives me an impression that those Windsor boys were simply useless to anyone else.
You are not unlucky - you are simply coming from a powerful family but otherwise useless, so the only people who active try to be your friends are people who can’t be friends to someone useful.
I agree with this notion from Eric Weinstein. This comment was in response to an article by NYT which glossed over the horrors. Of course, this criticism isn't particular to NYT.
>We need a second Church committee. Obviously.
>If you don't want to call for one, then tell us why in an editorial. Why doesn't this recent pattern of state-protected child rape excite you as much as 17th century slavery? This story would sell newspapers & subscriptions. Let it.
Usually very rich people have a strong incentive to hire private firms specialized in minimizing the impact of bad stuff like this, and doing so in a very discreet way.
I am 100% speculating, but I'd guess that's what Jeff Bezos did in relation to his extra-marital affair, and what Bill Gates and others have been doing in relation to Epstein.
> Usually very rich people have a strong incentive to hire private firms specialized in minimizing the impact of bad stuff like this, and doing so in a very discreet way.
I'd be interested in learning about what techniques they use, since they seem like something that ought to be countered.
An interesting comment that I've seen repeated and voted to the top of any post on reddit regarding the Gates-Epstein association is something along the lines of 'Gates is too aloof and nerdy to be interested in the wares that Epstein was peddling.'
I've seen it many times and it has always struck me as the kind of spin that PR firm would write and disseminate.
As someone who's been following the Epstein case for some time and having seen different communities deal with it, I think in the case of Gates a lot of people really looked up to him and refuse to believe that he would do this. There are even comments in this thread about it not being Gates' style.
When you look at the whole Epstein story, the people and the patterns, it's pretty clear that Gates was in a very questionable relationship with Epstein. The MIT donations, the senior Gates employee being the executor of Epstein's will, Gates' denials of knowing Epstein before the NYT article hit and his failure to address his flights with Epstein and meetings at his houses, Gates' email to staff about meeting with Epstein and a "beautiful Swedish woman and her 15 year old daughter, late into the night"...
With Gates in particular a lot of people seem willfully ignorant or have a strong desire not to dig deeper. It was a the same with Matt Gronenig. Prince Andrew, Dershkowitz, Wexner... I think every assumes the worst there but a lot of people are struggling to digest their actual heroes turning out to be much less than they thought.
I agree but what makes it so hard to swallow is that phrase, "be much less than they thought", should really be "be much more than they thought".
I mean, your heroes sometimes turn out to be all that and so many more, horrible things. It's hard to fathom that people can contain good and bad qualities, and after the fact push them aside among "bad people". But if you do this, you won't learn anything, or be watchful of your remaining heroes.
Next time you idolize someone, remember that. They may be more things and those things may not all be pretty.
Agreed. I just grabbed a hook in the text to latch onto a mindset I think is prevalent. (Closely related to "us vs them", the in-group and the out-group, etc.)
If you see people expressing an opinion that’s useful for the rich and powerful, it’s appealing to imagine that the people expressing that opinion are shills. But I think saying such out loud lowers the quality of discourse. If we go around accusing one people we disagree with of being shills, we aren’t learning or participating in an exchange of ideas, which is the point of a discussion forum like this.
There’s a perfectly sound explanation for those posts that seem “shillish”: sincerely held beliefs that are different from yours. I think fanboyism and ideology motivate a lot more people to argue on the internet than money. If you want proof of this, look at all the teeming masses arguing for all sorts of causes that the rich and powerful don’t care about.
I don't believe that everyone who says this kind of thing is being paid to do so. What I think instead is that this kind of thing is invented by someone who is paid to make up these kind of misdirecting and memetic statements and that they then disseminate these kinds of messages on mediums like reddit where they know that they will propagate.
Another example of these kinds of statements would be "Elon Musk is like a real life Tony Stark." Do I think that every Elon fanboy is paid to say this online? No, of course not. Do I think that Elon Musk like many celebrities has a public image crafted by a PR firm and that this kind of jingo-istic soundbite probably originated from that firm? Absolutely.
There's a middle ground between shills and honest sincerely held beliefs: that of the useful idiot [1]. Those are people who have been manipulated by real shills to sincerely advocate for the shill's ideas. Real shills usually don't have the resources get the results they want on their own, so their goal is to create useful idiots to magnify their efforts.
It's not necessarily relevant to this case, and I agree that calling those people out as such lowers the quality of discourse, but I think it's something important to keep in mind.
I think it’s interesting to look at the patterns of historical usage mentioned in the wiki. The phrase always originates with an accusation by party A that party B calls party C useful idiots, but there’s never any evidence backing up the accusation against party B. To me it just seems like a condescending way of dismissing party C - essentially an argument meant to invalidate popular support for party B. It’s not necessarily wrong, but I think without evidence it’s essentially a tactic for party A to deal with the cognitive dissonance arising from their distaste for party B combined with party C’s support for party B.
Now I’m getting in the weeds and questioning the motivations of party A. I suspect this might make party A feel the way party C does when people call them “useful idiots”. And perhaps it demonstrates how this line of questioning is an endless rabbit hole.
> The phrase always originates with an accusation by party A that party B calls party C useful idiots, but there’s never any evidence backing up the accusation against party B.
I think the criteria "that party B calls party C" is actually pretty irrelevant to the concept's usefulness.
> essentially an argument meant to invalidate popular support for party B
In most of the cases where I'd use the term "useful idiot" the "party B" doesn't have much popular support, but is rather engaging in manipulation, disinformation, dishonest propaganda, etc. The realization isn't useful as a dismissal, but rather as a reminder that you need to confront both the idiot's sincere belief along with their ignorance of it's goals, implications, and beneficiaries.
It's shown up in every single HN thread about Gates's ties to Epstein.
Have to say I'm particularly impressed with Reid Hoffman's PR outfit though. By all accounts he was a major Silicon Valley nexus connecting Epstein to Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, and others, yet he managed to stay almost completely out of the headlines and even still hosts a show on NPR about the startup scene.
Read "Catch and Kill" by Ronan Farrow, regarding his experience with Weinstein's campaign against the publication of his crimes. It's exactly what you're asking for (the title is the technique's name), It's also a rather entertaining read.
Ronan Farrow also did amazing investigative journalism on Epstein and revealed the extent of Joi Ito, MIT and some of Bill Gates' relationship with Epstein.
Might be a stretch, but it was interesting to see that around the time of the MIT Media Lab/Joi Ito and Bill Gates connections to Epstein came out, Netflix happened to have a new Bill Gates documentary front and center shortly after. Iirc it was called something like The Brain of Bill Gates and the trailer seemed to paint a positive image of him (didn't watch/don't want to). Maybe it's been up for a while, but it was definitely the centerpiece upon landing for a bit
Gates also did a lot of Twitter advertising for himself right as this happened. Reid Hoffman did a big media push the day his involvement came out as well.
If you think his associates were fucking children or involved in the prostitution ring, just say so.
If you don't think that, well then we do have to hem and haw about how much guilt by association they carry. Because for a lot of people, business connections or rubbing elbows for money with bad people doesn't get much blowback. Just look at Tim Cook gladhanding dictators of nations where homosexuality is outlawed. Or manufacturing in countries with ethnic concentration camps.
I think most people feel that Epstein's associates were involved with the child prostitution ring. Epstein was a child sex trafficker after all. Every person who flew on his plane or visited his houses is suspect and should be investigated.
This is the important time for power. Exercising power in the background, when nobody realises it's happening, is useful.
But when your power base is threatened, when you are wide open and people feel you could go under. That's when you can exhibit that power. When you step forward and pronounce that black is white, and all the press and the politicians nod in agreement.
This entrenches their power. Nobody called them out.
I'm not sure I buy that "temporarily embarrassed millionaires" line. People are tribal and will fight tooth and nail to defend their tribe's beliefs, no matter how little it applies to themselves. People know they will never be rich. Almost everyone knows that. I think it's more accurate to say that Americans have poor education in civics and finance, and cling to near-religious dogma as a result.
As a middle-class person, when I talk to other middle-class people, many make decisions/vote like they are going to be wealthy some day. Actively arguing against their own interests out of this weird fear that it would someday bite them when it's their wealth being taxed etc.
one of the best protections the wealthy have in the US is the poor and middle class voting based on an imagined and unlikely future for themselves.
This is mostly a problem with GOP adherents. The people that actually control and are served by the party are too few to win elections on their own. They have constructed a rhetoric that is meant to appeal to rural working class voters for the sole purpose of winning elections. Hence the phony demonstrations of Christian faith and donning of the trucker cap. The genius is that their failure to execute on promised benefits for all is blamed on the other guys so there is a built in feedback cycle bringing more sheep to the flock every two years.
I think it's more that a lot of the American mythos and our story about ourselves is centered around a combination of individualism and meritocracy, but in a backwards sense where success is kind of assumed to be a sign of merit be it skill, luck, or pluck. That twists the idea of fairness by removing all the collective work and often government work that went into enabling any given business to succeed and thrive.
Are you saying that Gates was being compassionate toward Epstein? Gates hid the depth of his affiliation with Epstein until this NYT article came out. He knew it was wrong.
Much more likely is that Epstein had dirt on Gates and/or connections Gates wanted.
No, it isn't wrong; guilt by association is not a civilised concept.
And if someone commits a crime then the courts determine an appropriate punishment and that is the end of what gets called 'wrong'.
I'm on board if you don't want to talk to convicted paedophiles - seems reasonable to me - but being judgemental of someone else's relationships is not fair.
Thank you, the way people bring out the pitchforks merely over guilt-by-association is one of the worst parts of social media.
I swear we're going to have to relearn all of the lessons we learned over the centuries of developing civil society, all in the name of some strange utopian perfectionism we're putting on every popular person. Mob justice is rarely good justice.
There are obviously times when mob justice goes too far. I do not think Epstein is one of those cases. He was a sex trafficker for the rich and powerful. His associates should be investigated and their attempts to get the media to bury the story should be pointed out.
I wasn't talking about you per se or even Gates alone, so please don't take it as a personal attack. There's plenty of examples of people taking this guilt-by-association stuff way too far. A popular one is when politicians take a photo with an unsavoury character, even though they took a hundred that night alone, and the media spins it like their buddies.
The Gates case is more complicated, as you mentioned, but the general trend is worrying and I personally wouldn't public tell people I met with Epstein either.
That being said, it's not like people are out with actual pitchforks. We're talking about people on the internet criticizing Bill Gates' affiliation with Epstein. Gates is still rich, powerful and free from any real repercussions other than a deserved hit to his reputation (and really, barely even that).
Sadly I think we'll never see true justice since those tasked with it seem completely unwilling to do their job in this case.
OT maybe, but I wish people would stop using pedophile as if it were a crime.
> Pedophilia is a psychiatric disorder in which an adult or older adolescent experiences a primary or exclusive sexual attraction to prepubescent children. [0]
The problem and crime is, when those people act on those attractions and the way society reacts to pedophiles is certainly not helping anyone and I’d assume hindering some of them from seeking or even receiving help.
I've known men that have slept with women who were 15 in countries where it was legal. Not only were these men great examples of humanity but they actively helped those less fortunate than themselves.
To understand how things work at Epstein levels of elite, look up and watch the interviews with whistle-blower Ronald Bernard by Cooperatie de Vrije Media. Be sure to watch the first two interviews in full.
I'm assuming that this is so obvious that it's considered not worth discussing, which is fine. I'd just like to know how are we sure that it's his body? What is the evidence for that? Is it just too hard to fake it and get away with it? Too James Bong (well it is, sure) but how do we know that's not possible?
I'm prepared to believe it but I'm suddenly just really reluctant to believe anything about this case without evidence.
I think sadly (or deliberately) this has been framed as murder vs suicide. Either way, it’s deliberate... Osama Bin Laden would have never been allowed to commit suicide in his cell. Someone looked the other way on purpose.
