Latest / The Vault: The Epstein Files / The Octopus Grows Tentacles: PROMIS, Maxwell, Mossad, and Epstein’s Network (Part 2)

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The Octopus Grows Tentacles: PROMIS, Maxwell, Mossad, and Epstein’s Network (Part 2) · The Vault: The Epstein Files

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: What's up, everyone, and welcome to another episode of the
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Epstein Chronicles. In this episode, we're going to pick up
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: where he left off talking about the Promise software scandal
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: and how it intersects with Jeffrey Epstein. Evidence of Maxwell's
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: intelligence work stretches back decades. Former Masad officers have gone
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: on record calling him a trusted asset who carried out
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: sensitive missions. His media empire gave him cover and access.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: It also gave him leverage. He could use his newspaper
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: to build relationships with Head's estate, who would then be
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: open to business pitches. The Promise operation fit perfectly within
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: his skill set. He was a showman, a deal maker,
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  Speaker 1: and a man who understood secrets. Sources inside Israel later
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: said that Massad had a dedicated unit for Promise Engineers
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: allegedly stripped down the code, inserted the trap door, and
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: tested it before handing it out to Maxwell. He would
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: then broker sales to governments who had no idea they
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: were buying a trojan horse. The Soviets, the Chinese, the Canadians,
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: even some US agencies all were rumored to have installed
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: Promise at one point. In each case, Masad was effectively
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: reading their mail in real time. Maxwell's Moscow trips were
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: not just journalistic junkets. One alleged meeting, he demonstrated Promise
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: to KGB officials as a Western innovation that could streamline
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: their bureaucracies. The KGB, always hungry for technological parody, took debait.
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: By installing Promise. They opened their internal operation to Israeli
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: surveillance at the tail end of the Cold War. It
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: was an audacious move, Masad riding inside the KGB's own system.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: The operation extended to banks and trading platforms. Modified Promise
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: versions were marketed to financial institutions under the banner of
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: fraud detection and transaction tracking. Once installed, the software allowed
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: Israeli intelligence to see how money moved across borders, which
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: accounts were connected to arms dealers, and how covert funds
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: were laundered. This was intelligence gold. Instead of chasing rumors,
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: Masad had a live feed of the world's covert cash flow.
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: Maxwell's cut was enormous. He reportedly earned tens of millions
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: in commissions, which he used to prop up as crumbling
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: business empire. Masad gained global reach. Both sides got what
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: they wanted until Maxwell began to push for more. According
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: to several intelligence veterans, he started using his knowledge of
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: the operation to extract larger payments, threatening to expose it
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: if he wasn't paid. That was a dangerous game to
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: play with the service known for eliminating liabilities. Inside Washington,
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: pieces of the story began to break. Journalists like Danny
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: Castelero stumbled on the fragments of the Promise Maxwell operation.
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: Cassilero called it the octopus, a network of intelligence, organized crime,
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: and high finance. He told friends he was close to
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: blowing it open. Days later, he was found dead in
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: a hotel bathtub with his wrist slashed. Officially suicide. Unofficially,
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: many believe he was silent for getting too close to
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: the truth about Promise and Maxwell. Congressional inquiries were hamstrung,
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: witnesses recanted, documents vanished, and intelligence agency stonewalled. The final
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: reports were cautious, but between the lines they acknowledged evidence
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: that Promise had been transferred to Israel and repackaged. What
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: they didn't say openly was that it had become one
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: of the most successful covert operations of the Lake Coal War,
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: giving a small country unprecedented insight into the affairs of superpowers.
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: Maxwell's death in nineteen ninety one, his body floating off
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: his yacht, the Lady Glaine, fits this pattern. Officially, it
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: was an accident or suicide, but intelligence insiders have long
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: whispered it was an execution. Maxwell had become a liability,
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: his debts mounting, his demands growing. Rather than risking exposure
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: of the Promise operation, Masad cut him loose. Within weeks,
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  Speaker 1: his companies collapsed, his secrets scattered, and his reputation shifted
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: from tycoon to a disgraced businessman. Even after his death,
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: traces a promised network persisted. Governments quietly replace the software,
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  Speaker 1: but not before years of sensitive data had been siphoned off.
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  Speaker 1: Financial institutions rewrote their systems, but by then the intelligence
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: had already been harvested. For Israel, the operation was a triumph.
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  Speaker 1: For the rest of the world, it was a cautionary
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  Speaker 1: tale about how easily a benign program could be turned
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  Speaker 1: into a global surveillance platform. The Promise affair also showed
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  Speaker 1: how the lines between allies and adversaries blur and intelligence work.
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  Speaker 1: The United States looked the other way while its ally
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: used stolen software to spy on governments including perhaps America
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: agencies themselves. The scandal foreshadowed later revelations about the NSA's
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  Speaker 1: global spying. Promised was the prototype. Maxwell, Masad and the
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: CIA were the pioneers for Bill Hamilton. Learning that his
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: software had been used this way was a bitter revelation.
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  Speaker 1: He had built Promise to help prosecutors catch criminals. Instead,
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  Speaker 1: it had become an instrument of espionage, theft, perhaps murder.
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: Hamilton's decades long legal battle with the Justice Department was
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: never just about money. It was about reclaiming his creation
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: from the shadows that had consumed it. Maxwell's involvement also
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: underscored how powerful non state actors can be aligned with
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: intelligence services. He wasn't a case officer or a spy
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  Speaker 1: in the traditional sense. He was a billionaire publisher who
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  Speaker 1: could pick up the phone and reach presidents. By turning
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  Speaker 1: him into their frontmen their asset, Masad leveraged not just
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  Speaker 1: his network but his reputation, cloaking their operation in respectability.
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: This story also explains why so many key players died
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  Speaker 1: suddenly or saw their reputations destroyed. Promise wasn't just another
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: government contract. It was the golden key to the world's
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  Speaker 1: most sensitive data. People who tried to expose it, from
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: Cassilero to Maxwell himself, maybe ended up dead. Others, like Hamilton,
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: were buried under lawsuits and financial ruin. The pattern speaks
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: louder than the official denials. In the years since, the
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: classified fragments and whistleblower accounts have continued to emerge, each
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: reinforcing the outline of the CIA Maxwell Massad Promise operation.
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  Speaker 1: They don't prove every detail, but together they draw a
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  Speaker 1: picture of a covert program that use stolen software, a
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  Speaker 1: global salesman, and a small intelligence service to spy on
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: the world. Today, Promise is mostly forgotten by the public,
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  Speaker 1: but inside the intelligence community it is remembered as a
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  Speaker 1: template modern spyware operations like Stuxnet or Pegasus Echo with
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  Speaker 1: structure a trojan horse, designed as a legitimate product, distributed
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  Speaker 1: through commercial channels and used to penetrate high value targets.
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: In that sense, Maxwell, the CIA, and the Masade were
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: way ahead of their time. Seen this way, the Promise
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: saga is not a conspiracy but an early chapter in
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: the story of the digital surveillance state. It shows how
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: software can be weaponized, how frontmen can launder espionage, and
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  Speaker 1: how official inquiries can be blunted. It's a case study
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  Speaker 1: in covert power, and Robert Maxwell's fingerprints are all over it.
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  Speaker 1: And that's why, decades later, the Promise scandal still resonates.
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: When you look at this story and you look at
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: Epstein through the lens of intelligence operations, many of the
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  Speaker 1: features echo the Promise saga, secrecy, infiltration, frontmen, and sudden deaths.
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  Speaker 1: The same tools and tactics that turn a piece of
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: software like Promise into a trojan horse mirror how a
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: sex trafficking ring might be weaponized as a black man operation.
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: In both cases, the outward face is benign or even
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  Speaker 1: socially acceptable, the hidden purpose is control. Epstein's connections to
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: the Maxwell family, especially Glaine, and the legacy of Robert
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  Speaker 1: Maxwell provide a bridge between the world of espionage and
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: the world of sexual control. Robert Maxwell, already alleged to
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  Speaker 1: have been Masad linked, and the distributor of covert tools
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  Speaker 1: like Promise, passed some of those shadows to his daughter,
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: who later became Epstein's principal collaborator and social broker. The
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: Maxwell link is thus not incidental. It suggests continuity and
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: intelligence link networks from one generation to the next. One
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: of the hallmarks in both Promise and Epstein's narrative is
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: the use of plausible deniability. In the Promise case, salesmen,
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  Speaker 1: shell companies and frontmen obscure the true origin of the
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  Speaker 1: software's trapped doors. In Epstein's case, high society donors, philanthropic pretenses,
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  Speaker 1: and elite networks shield the darker underpinnings of his oper operation.
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: Just as the MACADE or the CIA might insert itself
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: behind the software vendor, so too might it or similar
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  Speaker 1: agencies hide behind the guise of a financier who seems
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: to collect powerful people. And both narratives, reputational control is critical.
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  Speaker 1: Promised scandal was filtered through legal proceedings, classified reports, redactions
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  Speaker 1: and denials. Epstein scandal has been filtered through gag orders,
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: seal filings, plea deals, non disclosures, and manipulated media. The
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: playbook is familiar Bury, the paper trail villifier, silence those
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  Speaker 1: who dig too deep, and keep the system opaque. Epstein's
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  Speaker 1: possible ties to intelligence are not just speculative fluff. They
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  Speaker 1: have some structural resemblance to operations known in intelligence lore.
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  Speaker 1: For example, former CIA officer John carrickw describe Epstein as
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: a textbook example of an access agent, someone whose role
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: is to grant intelligence services entree into network works of influence,
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: rather than act as a violent operative. That is exactly
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: the sort of role that a trojanized Promise would have played,
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: not as a blunt instrument, but as a key to infiltration.
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: Rumors that Epstein might have worked with Masad have circulated widely,
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  Speaker 1: with press outlets and analysts noting that is MO gathering
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: compromising material, cultivating powerful acquaintances, controlling private spaces is consistent
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: with classic intelligence blackmail operations. One particularly suggestive connection is
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: Epstein's relationship with Ehud Brock, a former Prime Minister of Israel.
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: Barack met Epstein dozens of times, reportedly flew on his
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: private jet, and was an investment partner in technology ventures
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  Speaker 1: linked to defense and surveillance that overlap between financial, political,
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  Speaker 1: and intelligence spheres. Mirrors the model seen in Promise, where
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: MASAD linked actors use commercial software to interpose themselves into
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: state systems. Another echo is the operational use of data capture.
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: Just as promised trappdoors could siphon case files and legal data,
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: Epstein's properties were allegedly wired with surveillance cameras and recording devices.
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  Speaker 1: Some observers suggest he gathered material on guests, perhaps for leverage.
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  Speaker 1: The kind of asymmetric leverage is precisely what an intelligence
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: apparatus might cultivate. The deaths, too, and even the deaths themselves,
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: follow an all too familiar pattern. In's laws, enemies or
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: perceived enemies face legal ruin or suppression. Maxwell met a
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: mysterious watery death. Danny Cassilero died in a suspicious bathtub scenario.
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: In Epstein's case, he died under contested circumstances while jailed,
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  Speaker 1: allegedly by suicide, Yet many people believe foul play was plausible.
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  Speaker 1: The coincidence of high stakes intelligence conspiracies and bodies in
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: water is part of the mythology. Maxwell's death offers a
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  Speaker 1: particularly acute crossroads if Masad partly orchestrated the promised distribution
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: and Maxwell was implicated in it, that Maxwell's demise may
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  Speaker 1: have been a signal a sabotage or a cleanup. Was
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: Epstein just a continuance of the networks that operated under
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: the same logic use sex, finance, power, and technology to
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  Speaker 1: entangle compromise and control. That continuity is what draws many
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  Speaker 1: researchers to see the Epstein scandal not as a separate
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  Speaker 1: moral collapse, but as the next stitch in the covert
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: operations quilt. All right, folks, we're gonna wrap up right here,
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: and in the next episode dealing with the topic, we're
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: gonna pick up where we left off. All of the
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: information that goes with this episode can be found in
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: the description box.