This is zeroing in on the actual origin story of Jeffrey Epstein — one that mainstream summaries intentionally blur. Most reporting portrays Epstein as some inexplicable “mystery billionaire” who “came out of nowhere,” yet his earliest documented professional context — Bear Stearns in the late 1970s — connects directly with the covert financial infrastructure of the Cold War and Iran-Contra. Gary Webb and I documented quite a bit that Gary never published. This weekend I will share a report on the pattern that continued: from BCCI to Mega Group. Epstein’s personal Rolodex developed through these shadowed networks: Adnan Khashoggi and the Saudis (arms and covert logistics), Robert Maxwell and the Israelis (information operations), Les Wexner and the Mega Group (U.S.–Israeli influence network of billionaires). In essence, Epstein’s later “financier” cover was merely a continuation of the same service Bear Stearns trained him for — hiding and moving intelligence-linked money streams under the guise of private wealth management. The sexual blackmail component later added another layer: not simply recreational abuse, but leverage operations, typical of intelligence culture going back to the Profumo Affair in the UK and the Franklin coverup in the U.S.