My tastes in fiction are terrible, as I’ve mentioned on one or two occasions previously, but in the pile of pulp thrillers and semi-porn are some outstanding books by Gavin Lyall. In subject matter they are just more crime or espionage thrillers, but his observations keep occurring to me as I read the news, even half a century after some of the books were published.
In The Secret Servant, written to be a television series starring a young Charles Dance (it wasn’t very good, the plot was way too complicated for TV), the protagonist, “Harry Maxim”, is assigned to bodyguard a military strategist, who is attending some weapons trials. After having dealt with an intruder, he approaches the representative of the arms company whose products were being evaluated:
Maxim found it difficult to begin. “I haven’t mentioned it to anyone else… There was a girl in Professor Tyler’s room…”
“From what I hear tell, there’s usually a girl in Professor Tyler’s room. There certainly was at Princeton.”
“You provided this one.”
Brock narrowed his eyes. “Sure.”
“And there was a newspaper reporter staying here.”
“That’s right. He got one of the other girls. Were you thinking I was setting up Professor Tyler for a nice dirty story?”
“I was just asking.”
For a moment, Brock was about to get angry. Then he shook his head and said gently: “Harry, it’s a long time since I told anybody about the birds and the bees, but I’ll try … Fact one: we aren’t going to get any British contract for the mortar. We never were; I could smell that the moment we got here. I assume there’s a political reason, but I don’t know why.
“But so what?” He took a gulp of coffee. “There’s no winning in being a bad loser. Next year maybe we’ll sell you the biodegradable anti-personnel mine, or something new in rifle grenades. I could talk your ass off about what we’ve got coming up there.
“I believe I will have something stronger.” He filled up his coffee with Irish whiskey. “Fact two : if you think I was setting up your Professor for a little blackmail, you’ve blown your tiny Neanderthal mind. For one thing, I really do admire him as a military thinker. Sure, knowing him could be good for trade – or it could be no good at all, particularly if your prime minister loses the next election. Then the Professor would be back in the wilds of Cambridge, England, without any say in policy.
“But—” he stood up and made slow mark-time movements, stretching the stiffness out of his legs. He must have been sitting there a long time, Maxim realised; “—but let me tell you something that would be very bad for trade indeed: any whisper that we went in for blackmail. Giving big commissions, sweeteners, call it bribery if you like – yes, that happens all the time. In most of the countries we do it, there isn’t even a word for it : it’s just a way of life. And it hasn’t hurt Lockheed or Dassault or all the others that there’s a rumour they give away free money. They get it all back in the final purchase price anyhow.
“But blackmail . . . never. Last night I brought along those girls just the same as I made sure the hotel had the Professor’s favourite brand of whisky, that they wouldn’t serve us shellfish, that I had some good cigars to offer him. Harry, this is just routine. If it had been boys instead of girls, I could organise that, too. And when you send me somebody who just wants to talk business, I’ll be very happy to talk business and get to bed early. Until then…”
He sat down again. “Major Harry Maxim, takes coffee black with plenty of sugar, doesn’t drink much but is particular about beer, doesn’t smoke – except maybe a cigar? How’m I doing?”
Maxim smiled quickly. “Pretty well.”
“And it would be girls not boys, if anything. Sheet, you should hear some of what we have to organise in the Middle East or Latin America. Europe’s supposed to be easy territory.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_Servant_(Lyall_novel)
I just always assumed that Epstein was doing the same thing. He made a lot of money managing investments for very rich people, and his clients and prospects got all the entertainments he could lay on for them, including celebrity speakers, including girls, including underage1 girls if that was their taste.
It’s not nothing — it’s crime and corruption and I have no inclination to defend it. But it’s always happened, and always will happen, and occasionally people will get properly busted for it, and usually they won’t.
Now the idea that Israeli intelligence, via their connections to Epstein and Maxwell, could have been getting something on the side is not insane. It might or might not be true. But as the “Brock” character above implies, it’s not something they could have been making any regular use of without destroying the whole thing. Very bad for trade indeed.
- In the international context, “underage” is a pretty complex question. Hollywood has memed the world into assuming anyone under 18 is “underage”, though that is not the law in any of Europe or most of the USA, at least at the time. On the other hand prostitution changes things, and any coercion changes things, so whatever the details, it’s been established that there were crimes.
I have of late taken to watching Downton Abbey, something I had always steadfastly despised before I had actually seen it. When I actually got down to watching it, I was immediately rather nerdishly impressed by the public transport vehicles from the period and the wonderful number of costumes the Dowager Countess manages to get through—it seems she works her way through the whole V & A collection of that era. There are no Bridgerton style anachronisms— there is not a single Black Man till the fourth season, and even then he is true to the period.
It is though possible to spot certain similarities to existing literature of the sort: the entail theme which disinherits a family of daughters, which occurs in Pride and Prejudice, and also Lady Mary Crawley’s heartless fiancé, Sir Richard Carlisle, the press baron, who corresponds to Lady Julia Flyte’s suitor and husband, Rex Mottram in Brideshead Revisited.
Mottram, generally misidentified as Brendan Bracken, is actually based on Max Aitken or Lord Beaverbrook, who was Waugh’s bête noire as well as his employer, and in his other books appears as (Up to a point) Lord Copper. One man of the period remembered how his father would always intone “Beaverbrook, been a crook” on mention of his name. In Downton we are made aware of his blackmailing activities. He was the press baron who gets what he wants by peddling scandal about people who are not in his favour, and at the same time offering a cover-up service to those who are important enough to him.
A similar role was played by J. Edgar Hoover, who was a Chief of Police rather than Press Baron. Beaverbrook exerted control by dominating the press, Hoover by running the FBI and covertly photographing the sexual peccadilloes of prominent people.
Epstein was in a good position to do the same, but quite what his business was I cannot say. You inform me that he “made a lot of money managing investments for very rich people” but it seems to me that his tentacles extended further than that. Lord Mandelson and Prince Andrew are not “very rich people”: Epstein seems to have done a lot of favours for a lot of people he thought would prove useful.
As recently as 1999 he was a school-teacher living in one two bedroom apartment. His money came to him very rapidly, suggesting that it wasn’t his: he was only fronting it for someone else. Charlie Kirk deceased said that it was Mossad. Ghislaine Maxwell was the daughter of Robert Maxwell, who almost certainly was working for Mossad.
Blackmail is not necessarily in the mind of the person who first acquires the useful information.
Julian Assange writes “The reason the FBI wouldn’t let the Epstein client list come out in court is because if they did, their blackmail would no longer be useful, and the CIA would lose their control over all the powerful people they spent decades setting up.”
Someone else on the sub-stack suggests that it is entirely possible for Mossad AND the CIA to have the same information. Of course the notion of “client list” is imaginary. Epstein had a list of phone numbers and e-mails, the same as any of us. He knew whether they were the number of plumbers and tradesmen or fellow miscreants.
It is only if such info is added to useful facts such as call traffic and access to e-mail content that it can be rendered useful for blackmail purposes. This means the CIA can use it, but it only needs one Mossad mole to put it in their hands as well.