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I think you are correct.
I would love to get Epsteins ability to get random super successful people to email me back. Maybe this is just a part of the maxim that no publicity is bad publicity and everyone assumed he got away with pedophilia because he was a highly connected guy. If your rumored to be Mossads number 1 spy then I guess I should return your emails?
In the academic/philanthropic space here I think it might be sufficient to just have money. Full professors at research institutions are, from having talked with several, largely focused on raising money to pay for grad students and postdocs to do the real work (and a large fraction for university overhead). Other university leadership is looking to put names on new buildings or departments. The startup/VC ecosystem seems largely similar, where I've seen founders stoop to surprising levels in the interest of closing a funding round, and only later go on to great success. These people aren't fools, but having it known that there are nine or more digits in your bank account makes them take you seriously, laugh at your dumb jokes, and tell you how great your ideas are. The comparisons to, uh, escorts (which Epstein also seemed to like hanging out with) write themselves.
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Known philanthropists can get academics and other people whose work is funded by similar patronage-begging to email them back for the obvious reasons. In addition, Minsky and Bach were affiliated with the MIT Media Lab, whose director Joi Ito was deeply committed to keeping the Epsteinbucks flowing to the point where (assuming the information about Neri Oxman which became public during the epic Ackman-Big Academia social media feud is roughly correct) being willing to put on dog-and-pony shows for Epstein was a condition of continued employment.
Chomsky is a piece of shit who didn't do anything for Epstein that he wouldn't have done for Pol Pot, of course.
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My understanding is that Maxwell was mossad's number one spy, and Epstein was mossad's number one receptionist for mossad's number one spy.
Robert Maxwell was deeply involved with the Israeli deep state, but the dates don't line up for him to have recruited Epstein. Mossad membership is not hereditary, and nothing apart from her parentage points to Ghislaine being Mossad. If she was, she wouldn't have been senior enough to be Epstein's handler (in any case, as a diaspora Jew who never lived in Israel she would not have been eligible for the required Israeli security clearance). Plus there are plenty of other Israeli figures in the Epstein files, up to and including former Prime Minister Ehud Barack, who could have recruited and/or handled Epstein, if he was in fact Mossad.
I find Epstein being Mossad plausible, but on balance less likely than not because I think Mossad would have tried to cover up the sex crimes if he was their top asset. I don't find either Maxwell being responsible plausible.
"It's not the crime, it's the coverup" would have applied here, no? The sex crimes were too numerous to cover up entirely, and any half-successful attempt at a cover-up would have required a bunch of meddling that would have made "but his partner's dad!" look like a lot more than a conspiracy theory.
Plus don't forget the distinction between "asset" and "agent". Epstein being a Mossad agent seems implausible to me, but any major spy agency to whom he wasn't an asset should be ashamed of that. There's a publicly-known creep who's hosted ex-Presidents and future-Presidents and ex-prime-ministers and princes and billionaires and physics geniuses and so on and so on, and you couldn't even get your hands on copies of a few of his incriminating video discs before they mysteriously disappeared? What are you even getting paid for?
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What exactly does "being Mossad" entail? Some people seem to imagine that you have to go through an initiation theory in a dark cellar with guys in robes chanting and skull lanterns and everything, while a weaker version at least involves an explicit interview and training or being told that you are working for Israel and are to make periodic reports on some burner phone in return for a paycheck turning up under your garbage bin. I could see many instances being much more tacit, though: at some point you are made to realise that you dodged a legal or reputational bullet in ways that seem to be more unlikely than regular luck, and then a friend of a friend asks to have a chat and strongly hints that it really was not luck after all and maybe you can casually tell him your best gossip about how much Prince Andrew enjoyed himself on your island.
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