From Riyadh to Wall Street: The Education of Jeffrey Epstein in Secrets and Shadows (Part 2) (8/19/25)

The Epstein Chronicles

Jeffrey Epstein’s story doesn’t begin with the penthouse, the island, or the mugshot—it begins in the shadows of the Cold War. In the 1980s, he worked as a financial adviser for Saudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi, a man entangled in the Iran–Contra scandal and the massive Al-Yamamah arms deal. Through Khashoggi, British defense contractor Douglas Leese, and financier Steven Hoffenberg, Epstein was introduced to a world where money moved invisibly, arms were traded for oil, and intelligence agencies relied on businessmen as covert intermediaries. These early associations taught him the culture of power: secrets were currency, crimes could be reframed as strategy, and the right connections offered protection from the law.
Epstein didn’t invent this playbook—he adapted it. Where Khashoggi traded weapons and oil, Epstein traded access and leverage, turning young victims into bargaining chips in a network of elites. His empire mirrored the same operating principles he absorbed in the 1980s: plausible deniability, hidden money flows, and the insulation of power. This is why his story is more than personal depravity—it’s proof that the system itself breeds and shields men like him. Epstein wasn’t a glitch in the matrix. He was the proof that it works, and the machinery that built him is still running, still producing new Epsteins, waiting for their turn in the spotlight.
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