Rolling Stone’s “Is Jeffrey Epstein a Spy?” Inadvertently Reveals Vanity Fair Sat on Evidence of Intelligence Ties for their 2003 Puff Piece, “The Talented Mr. Epstein”
Corporate Media Buries Ledes and Leaves No Justice or Resolution for Over 130 Known Epstein Victims
Honest Media’s first report on billionaire pedophile and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein took a critical look at corporate media coverage in early January of unsealed court documents containing additional accusations made by victims of Epstein’s sex trafficking operation. That report concluded by examining repeated claims that Epstein was an intelligence asset.
This second report will review supporting evidence for this claim from a reporter whose shocking findings were spiked by Vanity Fair nearly 20 years ago.
A future piece will critically review media reports on the lawsuits against Epstein’s bankers, neither of which were part of the January spate of Epstein media coverage. We will also highlight independent media’s exposé of ties between Epstein (as well as Ghislaine Maxwell) and a CIA-backed expert on pandemics named Nathan Wolfe whose company Metabiota was privately funded by Hunter Biden’s venture capital firm. This person had conducted bio-research in the Ukraine prior to the war and was active in Wuhan ahead of the pandemic.
Vanity Fair’s Editor-in-Chief Spikes Claims of Rape Made Against Epstein
In July 2021, Rolling Stone published a provocative story on Epstein by veteran investigative journalist Vicky Ward, who almost twenty years earlier in 2002 had first reported on the notorious billionaire in another article titled “The Talented Mr. Epstein.” The backstory not revealed to Vanity Fair readers at the time was that Ward had learned that Epstein was likely an intelligence asset, a pedophile, and a rapist. After a personal visit from Epstein prior to publishing, Vanity Fair’s Editor-in-Chief Graydon Carter did not publish these revelations from Ward’s featured profile.
In 2002, Vanity Fair had sent Ward to Massachusetts to interview imprisoned Steven Hoffenberg, a former business associate of Epstein who claimed that Epstein had multiple intelligence ties and was an arms dealer. These revelations, backed by three additional sources that Ward turned up, would have to wait until after Maxwell’s arrest and a new gig for Ward with Rolling Stone nearly two decades later.
Opportunity Lost to Expose a Pedophile, Sex-Trafficking Spy
Vanity Fair’s Editor-in-Chief Graydon Carter not only refused to cover claims of sexual abuse made by two corroborating Epstein victims, sisters Annie and Maria Farmer who spoke to Ward on the record, but he also backed away from publishing Ward’s surprise discovery of Epstein’s apparent high level intelligence ties.
Turning back to details in her old interview notes, Ward was finally able to publish for Rolling Stone in 2021 what she had found during her original Vanity Fair investigation:
“Hoffenberg also knew something else Epstein wanted hidden, according to Hoffenberg: He claimed that Epstein moved in intelligence circles.
Four separate sources told me — on the record — that Epstein’s dealings in the arms world in the 1980s had led him to work for multiple governments, including the Israelis.
He was known in the intelligence world as a ‘hyper-fixer,’ somebody who can go between different cultures and networks.”
Rather than publishing these disturbing findings, Carter opted to glamorize over her disturbing findings in favor of the puff piece titled, “The Talented Mr. Epstein.”
The story on why Vanity Fair didn’t expose Epstein the pedophile was published by The New Yorker in February 2022 and by NPR in August 2019. Carter claimed that he couldn’t publish the accusations of rape made against Epstein because of the company’s “legal requirement” of having three sources.
The claim that Epstein was part of high level government intelligence operations had four sources according to Ward, as reported by Rolling Stone. Despite exceeding Carter’s cited standard of credibility, this revelation about Epstein was nevertheless buried for the 2003 Vanity Fair feature and an opportunity was lost to expose a pedophile intelligence operative running a sex trafficking operation involving some of the most powerful leaders in the world, according to its victims and implied by other evidence such as flight records.
To date, no one else has been held accountable in Epstein’s sex trafficking ring, except for Maxwell who continues to maintain her innocence even while behind bars.
At the time of publishing, Honest Media’s attempts to reach Ward and Carter for comment had not been successful.