Epstein’s network may have had a major hand in blocking peace initiatives in the Middle East—past and present
[For an earlier examination of Jeffrey Epstein’s ties to intelligence agencies, see previous CAM article here.—Editors]
Ari Ben-Menashe is an Iranian-born former Israel Defense Forces intelligence operative.
In the 1980s, he was involved in the Iran-Contra scandal in which American hostages were released from Lebanon in exchange for Israeli weapons being sent to Iran.
From 1983 to 1985 the IDF intelligence director was Ehud Barak, who later became head of the IDF and then prime minister of Israel.
According to Ben-Menashe, the Iranian money was held for the Israeli government by publisher Robert Maxwell.
As part of his work with Maxwell, Ben-Menashe says he knew first-hand that Jeffrey Epstein was working for Robert in “financial services” and with Israeli intelligence.
Robert introduced Epstein to his daughter Ghislaine.
Speaking out is dangerous for Ben-Menashe. His Canadian home was bombed in 2012 after he defected from IDF intelligence.
Ben-Menashe said in mid August 2025: “In the 1990s [culminating in the Camp David summit in 2000] Bill Clinton and Ehud Barak, who was prime minister of Israel at the time, had a meeting in Washington with [PLO President Yasser] Arafat, and they did not sign the peace deal that was available because they were blackmailed by the Israeli Right. We could have had some sort of deal with the Palestinians going back to the ‘90s. But Ehud Barak and Clinton were being blackmailed by the Israeli Right [i.e., Benjamin Netanyahu and others].”[1]
Clinton met with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu in February 1997.
Recall the portrait of Clinton in Epstein’s New York townhouse where Clinton is wearing Monica Lewinsky’s blue semen-stained dress. Monica Lewinsky was in a sexual relationship with the president at this time.
Many in Washington knew about the on-going affair, and it would have been easy to tap her phone. Gordon Thomas (Gideon’s Spies, 1999) reported that Clinton was blackmailed through Netanyahu’s possession of tapes of sexual phone calls made between him and Lewinsky.
In April 1997 Netanyahu and Clinton met again. The next month, according to Lewinsky, Clinton broke up with her and proposed that they pretend they were trying to fool eavesdroppers if the tapes ever surfaced.
In fall 1998 Clinton hosted Netanyahu and Arafat for further peace talks. The Washington Post broke the Lewinsky sex story at this time. Was Monica another unwitting Queen Esther who saved Israel (i.e., Netanyahu)?
According to The New York Times, Netanyahu at the time asked Clinton to release Jonathan Pollard, referring to the Lewinsky tapes by saying he had thrown them away.[2]
Pollard was not released by Clinton nor was it the principal blackmail goal. Rather, the goal was to destroy the peace accord with Arafat. The 2000 Palestinian summit was indeed wrecked. Ben-Menashe says that Epstein had blackmail material on both Clinton and Barak, who made many visits to Epstein and who made a fortune in the U.S. in business after he left government.
The peace deal failed when Barak suddenly demanded that Arafat state that the PLO would make no such claims in the future, something to which the Palestinians could not possibly agree. Also, Clinton reneged on a promise to Assad to return the Golan Heights to Syria.[3]
Earlier, in 1995, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who had reached a peace agreement with Arafat, the Oslo Accords, was assassinated by the Israeli Right, inflamed by Netanyahu.
Perhaps Rabin had stood up to blackmail attempts made by the Israeli Right. (The Right claimed Rabin was blackmailed by Washington into making concessions in the Oslo Accords.) Rabin rightly received the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts. But the Accords failed after his assassination.
Last month, the usually reticent Ben-Menashe, gave a couple of interviews in which he pleaded with President Donald Trump to end the genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza.
Unlike the Ukraine War, Trump could actually stop the killing in Palestine in one day by withholding funding from Israel. But Netanyahu exerts extreme leverage over him.
Ben-Menashe urges President Trump to face whatever this hold is, no matter how dark and dangerous. If Trump, who has survived one assassination attempt, were brave enough to take this action, he could honestly merit the Nobel Peace Prize.
This month has also seen the publication of Andrew Lownie’s biography of Prince Andrew, Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York. In it he claims that the president’s future wife, Melania Knauss (nee Melanija Knavs in Yugoslavia), had sex with Epstein (a close associate of Prince Andrew as well as Trump) a year before she married Trump.[4]
That this assertion was subsequently excised in the audio and eBook versions of Lownie’s biography speaks volumes. Epstein and Trump biographer Michael Wolff, who has many hours of interview tapes with Epstein, claims that Epstein introduced Melania to Trump. If Trump was introduced to his present wife by Epstein, or even by associates of Epstein such his Trump Organization associate and Melania’s model agent, Paolo Zampolli, that would put an Israeli asset in the president’s marital bed. (One wonders who introduced Trump to his first wife, Ivana, also a model, in the early ‘80s. The official story is said to be “lost in the mists of time.”)
Hunter Biden repeated Wolff’s assertion about how Trump met Melania on Access 5 news on August 6. Melania responded by threatening to sue Hunter Biden for defamation and demanded that the interview in which Hunter made that statement be removed. It is still up on YouTube as of August 20, 2025, as well as Hunter’s response in which he says he welcomes an official discussion of the matter.[5]
At the same time, Melania Trump has penned an odd letter to President Putin expressing her concern for children relocated from Donbas to Russia. Is she trying to win good will from the public in advance of revelations to come?
If so, where is her concern for Palestinian children who are starving and being shot in the genocide that her husband pays for and could easily end if he were not under intense pressure from Netanyahu?
Michael Wolff in the Daily Beast claims that Trump met with Putin about ending the Ukraine War, as promised to his MAGA base, in order to distract from never-ending demands that he come clean on Epstein. By now, the media have established Jeffrey as an ever-greater villain than Vladimir Putin.
Is a Melania-Epstein connection a major blackmail element for Trump? Epstein, as part of an Israeli intelligence network headed by the Maxwell family, provided a variety of services to powerful men, not just the financial services noted by Ben-Menashe and others or the more publicized services involving underage girls.
Although outright financial blackmail might result from Epstein’s taping pedophilic acts, blackmail for political purposes can be brought to bear on powerful men in their relations with young adult women if they are tainted by being supplied by Epstein, especially if he was working for Israeli intelligence.
One of Epstein’s services was providing beautiful and accomplished young, but definitely over-the-age-of-consent, trophy wives for powerful older men. The problem here is that the wives, as assets of Israeli intelligence, have access to vast amounts of information that is easily transmitted to their handlers, whether they are consciously cooperating or not. They are also tainted by intimate friendship with the voracious pedophile.
One example of Epstein’s match-making is that of former Miss Sweden, Eva Andersson, who had a relationship with Epstein in the 1980s when she was modeling and attending medical school. Andersson later met and married Glenn Dubin, Jewish billionaire founder of Highbridge Capital Management.
The couple maintained a close relationship with Epstein. Dr. Andersson-Dubin has since founded the Dubin Breast Center of the Tisch Cancer Institute at Mount Sinai Medical Center.
The late Virginia Roberts Giuffre testified under oath that Ghislaine Maxwell instructed her to “have sex with Glenn Dubin,” including “erotic massages.” There is no proof that Epstein introduced Andersson to Dubin, but they clearly were all mutually involved.
A less well-known example of Epstein’s match-making is Melanie Starnes Walker, sometimes known as Starnes-Zuniga. When she first met Epstein and Trump in 1992, she was an attractive, sophisticated, and intelligent daughter of an upscale Mexican-American family in Laredo, Texas.
She had recently graduated from the University of Texas and was looking for summer work in New York. Epstein and Trump spied her dining at Trump’s New York Plaza Hotel. Epstein offered her a job as a lingerie model for Les Wexner’s Victoria’s Secret.
Walker apparently left her law student husband in Texas and moved to Manhattan. When Epstein discovered Walker’s brains and breeding, he encouraged her to attend medical school while grooming her as a suitable mate for a powerful man. He hired her as his “science adviser.” Epstein introduced Walker to Prince Andrew in New York in 1999.
Walker dined with the Prince and spent intimate time with him at Epstein’s Zorro Ranch in New Mexico. Walker was too brainy and too old for the Prince—he called “Dork” and “smarty pants” —but they remained close friends.
Walker proved, however, an ideal partner for what some considered the second-most-powerful man at Microsoft—Steven Sinofsky. In June 2000 she took him as her date to Andrew’s gala 40th birthday party at Windsor Castle, which Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell also attended.
In turn, Sinovsky introduced Walker to Bill Gates at a company barbecue. Walker moved to the Los Angeles area to pursue a medical residency in neurosurgery, which she completed in 2005. She then spent a year with the WHO in China. On her return, she moved in with Sinofsky in Seattle and got a job as a senior program officer with the Gates Foundation. The Gates Foundation subsequently set her up as a senior adviser for the World Bank. Sinofsky became president of Microsoft’s Windows Division in 2009.
At the Foundation, Walker befriended the organization’s science adviser, Harvard Professor Boris Nikolic, who traveled and socialized with Gates. She remained close to Epstein and introduced Nikolic to him. Nikolic, in turn, introduced Gates to Epstein. In 2011 Gates went to Epstein’s New York City townhouse and was joined by Eva Andersson-Dubin and her daughter.
Shortly thereafter, Melinda Gates began expressing concern about her husband’s connections to Epstein. Sinofsky was abruptly fired from Microsoft in November 2012. Walker left the Gates Foundation in 2013 and became a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum specializing in Neurotechnology and Brain Science. In 2019 the WEF held Event 201, which foresaw the Covid pandemic. Ironically, Walker subsequently founded and currently directs the University of Washington’s Clot Bank, which studies use of mitochondrial infusions to heal from stroke.
In a peculiar denouement, a few days before he “died,” Epstein designated Nikolic an executor of his will. Nikolic was shocked and declined the job. He claimed Epstein’s selection of him was “retaliatory” because those at the Foundation had realized for several years that Epstein’s philanthropy was to ingratiate himself with powerful others for his own purposes. Did he realize that Epstein worked for Israeli intelligence?
Israeli kompromat is not only for money but for major political favors, such as those previously given to Netanyahu by Barak and Clinton. Such a stranglehold comes from a combination of physical threat, sexual favors, bribes and blackmail.
Consider President Harry Truman. In 1947 he was sent a letter bomb by the Zionist Stern Gang, headed by Yitzhak Shamir, future prime minister of Israel. Truman’s letter was intercepted by security, unlike some others sent by the Stern Gang. Truman then pushed a Palestinian partition plan through the UN. His 1948 presidential campaign was funded by Zionist lobbyist Abe Feinberg. Truman made the U.S. the first state to defacto recognize Israel in 1948 when David Ben-Gurion announced its independence.
Ben-Gurion may have initiated the assassination of the unbribable (they tried) and unblackmailable (despite his numerous affairs) President John Kennedy. (See my forthcoming series in CovertAction Magazine on “Who Killed Heinz Krug?”)
And now President Trump is at the crossroads. He could truly earn the Nobel Peace Prize. Or he could continue his panicky distractions that result in more genocide and endless war. Either way, he cannot escape the shameful revelations he fears.
The courageous way, whatever the tawdriness of the revelations and however vile the reprisals, could make him an American superhero.
Shaun Attwood, True Crime Podcast 783, August 14, 2015, “Epstein Blackmailed Bill Clinton to Squash Palestine Peace Deal, Ari Ben-Menashe, pt. 2.” ↑
See Ryan Grim, “Bibi Blackmailed Bill Clinton with Lewinsky Tapes,” Breaking Points, July 21, 2025. ↑
See Shimon Peres interview by Oliver Stone in his 2003 film Persona Non Grata. ↑
Michael Wolff, Instagram account, August 15, 2025, “A new book was published yesterday called Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York.” ↑
“Hunter Biden Returns,” August 6, 2025, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4WCtYDtgbM ↑
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About the Author
Kathleen Meigs is a thirteenth generation American.
She walked precincts for John Kennedy for president in 1960.
Kathleen matriculated at Stanford University and graduated from UCLA in history and is a journalist, editor, and published academic author.
Her anthropological novel Mishopshno is available on Amazon. Her love is research, and her passion is truth and good government.
Kathleen can be reached at katymeigs@sbcglobal.net.
