The Epstein Question No One Will Answer

New documents reveal how Jeffrey Epstein’s lawyers quietly pressed the CIA and NSA for records and why America’s intelligence agencies still won’t say whether the disgraced financier had ties.

Welcome back to The Red Letter.

As the Epstein documents are digested, a clearer picture is emerging. Not of a lone predator. Not even of a well-connected financier. But of a man who appeared to move with unusual freedom inside some of the most sensitive corridors of power.

Foreign governments are paying attention. Polish authorities have reportedly launched an investigation into Epstein’s ties to Russian expatriates. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s leadership hangs in the balance for appointing Epstein’s pal Peter Mandelson to the U.S. Ambassador posting. And here at home, newly surfaced correspondence shows that Epstein’s lawyers formally sought records from both the CIA and the National Security Agency regarding any affiliation their client may have had with U.S. intelligence between 1999 and 2011 — including after his 2008 conviction for soliciting minors.

That timeline matters because as we try to understand how Epstein secured a sweetheart plea deal in Palm Beach — 13 months of overnights in county jail with work release — the question is no longer just who protected him. It’s whether he was useful.

I’ve long believed based on my reporting that Epstein operated as what some in the intelligence community might call a “hyper-fixer” — a person whose currency wasn’t just money or blackmail, but access. Presidents. Royalty. Tech moguls. Scientists. Financiers. Foreign dignitaries. He moved between worlds with ease. That kind of access has value because it can glean highly sensitive information and open doors.

And oftentimes value buys protection. This isn’t conspiracy. In fact, it’s based on what I learned while reporting my podcast, Broken: Jeffrey Epstein, when I interviewed victims’ attorney Brad Edwards.

Edwards told me about a conversation with Epstein’s Russian-born bodyguard, Igor Zinoviev — a former UFC fighter who cut an imposing figure and claimed to have carried out unusual assignments on Epstein’s behalf during his 2008 detention.

According to Edwards, Zinoviev said that during Epstein’s jail term he was sent to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, where he attended classes for a week as the only private citizen in the room. At the end of the visit, he was allegedly handed a book with a handwritten note inside and instructed not to read it, but to deliver it directly to Epstein in jail.

“Everybody there knew who he was. He’s an important person,” Edwards recalled Zinoviev telling him.
“Is he in the CIA?” Edwards asked.
“I don’t know,” Zinoviev replied.

Edwards later detailed this account in his book Relentless Pursuit.

I reached out to the CIA over the summer to ask whether Zinoviev had ever entered Langley. The agency maintains visitor logs of all of the people who enter the headquarters. After initial contact, I never received a substantive response. Zinoviev himself did not respond to repeated attempts to reach him. My former colleague M.L. Nestel, who interviewed him for New York Magazine, described him as credible.

Then there are the letters, that the Washington Post surfaced in the Epstein files.

In 2011, in response to a request from Epstein’s attorneys, the CIA wrote:

“We were unable to locate any information or records. With respect to responsive records that would reveal a classified connection to the CIA … the CIA can neither confirm nor deny the existence or nonexistence of records responsive to your request.”

That phrase — “neither confirm nor deny” — is known as a Glomar response. It’s not a denial. It’s an assertion that answering the question itself could reveal classified information.

In 2014, the National Security Agency issued a similar response when another Epstein attorney appealed under FOIA. The NSA concluded it could “neither confirm nor deny the existence or nonexistence of any intelligence material” related to Epstein, arguing that doing otherwise could expose sources and methods and harm national security.

They’re not saying it happened. They’re saying they can’t tell you if it happened. That distinction matters.

Add to this the documented meetings between Epstein and former CIA Director William Burns. Epstein appeared multiple times on Burns’s schedule when Burns was serving as Deputy Secretary of State — a role that works closely with intelligence agencies, particularly in diplomatic contexts where officials operate under cover.

John Sipher, a 28-year CIA veteran who served overseas recruiting foreign sources with access to high-level secrets, told me that if someone like Epstein were meeting a senior State Department official without formal handling by an analyst, it would likely be informal — a top-level exchange of insights and foreign contacts.

The CIA has maintained that Burns met Epstein to discuss private-sector opportunities as Burns was leaving government service. That was the official explanation given to The New York Times in 2023.

But the newly surfaced exchanges raise new questions. Not about one meeting, but about a pattern.

Epstein’s power did not stem solely from wealth. It came from what he knew and who he could connect. If he was operating as a fixer — or a repository of secrets — between foreign elites and American power centers, that would help explain why so many doors opened for him. It would also help explain why they stayed open for so long.

The Epstein story isn’t just about abuse, as horrific and devastating as it was. It’s about leverage. It’s about intelligence. It’s about a man who may have been too useful to too many powerful people to be easily discarded.

And as more documents emerge, the silence from institutions that could clarify this picture grows louder.

The question isn’t whether Epstein was connected. We know he was.

The question is: connected how and for whom?