The Conspiracy That Wasn't
Jeffrey Epstein's name has been synonymous with shadowy intelligence operations and elite sexual blackmail since his death in 2019. Journalists, commentators, and social media sleuths on both the left and right built an elaborate narrative: Epstein was filming powerful men with underage girls on behalf of the CIA, Mossad, or both. Michael Shellenberger and his team at Public have now spent weeks reading through the released Epstein files and arrived at a strikingly different conclusion.
The totality of available evidence does not support the picture of a government-backed sex blackmail operation. Rather, it suggests that Epstein primarily served his own interests.
This is a significant reversal. Public had previously repeated claims that lent credibility to the intelligence theory, and Shellenberger openly acknowledges the error.
The Intelligence Links That Don't Hold Up
The article systematically dismantles the pillars of the intelligence conspiracy. The most frequently cited piece of evidence -- journalist Vicky Ward's claim that prosecutor Alex Acosta was told Epstein "belonged to intelligence" -- turns out to be third-hand hearsay from an anonymous source. Ward's own former editors at Vanity Fair questioned her reliability.
Epstein's request for his own CIA file, rather than proving a relationship with the agency, actually suggests the opposite. As the article notes, if he were a CIA asset, he would not have needed to file such a request. His two meetings with former CIA Director William Burns occurred when Burns was at the State Department, not running intelligence operations.
Epstein's emails about camera installation, and his email concerning compromising information about Gates, suggest, if anything, amateur methods, not a sophisticated intelligence operation.
The hidden cameras in Kleenex boxes, the self-addressed emails about Bill Gates's personal life -- these are the methods of a freelance schemer, not a trained operative working under agency protocols. The argument is persuasive on its face, though it does carry a logical vulnerability: intelligence agencies have historically used sloppy intermediaries precisely because plausible deniability requires distance from professional tradecraft.
Portrait of a Master Manipulator
What emerges from the files, Shellenberger argues, is something both simpler and more disturbing than a government conspiracy. Epstein was an extraordinarily gifted social predator who operated through generosity, charm, and an uncanny ability to identify what powerful people wanted.
He put himself at the service of helping powerful people meet their social, sexual, financial, career, intellectual, and other needs.
The examples are specific and damning. Epstein helped former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak transition to civilian life in exchange for access to cybersecurity contracts. He arranged for former White House Counsel Kathryn Ruemmler to settle a case for Ariane de Rothschild -- charging $25 million for his services and $10 million for Ruemmler's. He tipped off by Peter Mandelson about Europe's impending bailout of Greece, information that could move stock markets.
The Files suggest that people loved Epstein and called him a "best friend" because he was skilled at helping them, including by giving them advice they trusted was in their interest.
The comparison to cult leaders is apt. Jim Jones charmed Democratic politicians in 1970s San Francisco while sexually preying on congregants. Epstein operated the same playbook at a higher altitude.
Why Everyone Got It Wrong
The article's most valuable section is its autopsy of the collective error. Shellenberger identifies several forces that pushed observers toward the conspiracy theory.
Real historical precedents made the theory plausible. The CIA's Operation Midnight Climax used sex workers to lure men to safe houses where they were secretly dosed with LSD. The FBI ran the Playpen child exploitation site for weeks rather than shutting it down. These are documented facts, not paranoid fantasies.
During a chaotic time of eroding trust in institutions, the story of Epstein as a puppet for shadowy deep state agencies and creepy elites seemed plausible.
Motivated reasoning did the rest. The left saw Epstein as a weapon against Trump. The right folded him into pizzagate-adjacent theories about elite pedophile rings. Anti-Israel activists seized on his connections to wealthy Jewish businessmen. Everyone found what they were looking for.
It wasn't so much that the facts in those sources were all wrong as that they were exaggerated and arranged to create a misleading narrative.
This is an honest and uncomfortable admission. Shellenberger concedes that Public relied too heavily on secondary sources like Whitney Webb's "One Nation Under Blackmail" and mainstream outlets like the Miami Herald, whose reporting was not necessarily wrong in its facts but misleading in its framing.
The Sexual Culture Question
The article takes a more provocative turn in its final sections, arguing that sexually libertarian cultural norms made Epstein's predation invisible to those around him. One hundred and fifty people signed his 50th birthday book. Many of them knew about the "massages." Few saw a problem.
"Grooming, pimping out, coercive control, sexual exploitation, an insatiable appetite for extreme youth and novelty: all fall under the respectability cover of 'sex work,'" notes Stock.
Shellenberger draws on Kathleen Stock and Julia Yost to argue that the collapse of traditional sexual morality created the conditions for Epstein's operation. This is where the analysis is most contestable. Epstein's crimes were illegal under existing law regardless of cultural attitudes toward sex work. The problem was not that society lacked moral frameworks but that wealth and connections purchased impunity -- a dynamic that exists in both sexually liberal and sexually conservative societies.
What Remains Unknown
The article is careful to note that between 2.5 and 3 million pages from the Epstein files remain unreleased. The DOJ has withheld or heavily redacted roughly 200,000 pages under various privileges. Future disclosures could change the picture.
The piece also acknowledges that Epstein may have worked as a financial fixer for intelligence agencies -- laundering money, hiding transactions, facilitating arms deals. Mike Benz has traced connections between Epstein and the CIA-created Bank of Credit and Commerce International. But financial services for the intelligence community, Shellenberger argues, are a far cry from running a government-directed sexual blackmail ring.
Just as Giuffre and Farmer must be above reproach, Epstein must be below understanding. Trying to understand him is, for many, tantamount to defending him.
This is perhaps the article's sharpest observation. The moral panic surrounding Epstein has made dispassionate analysis nearly impossible. Online commentators routinely accuse journalist Michael Tracey of defending pedophilia simply for questioning the conspiracy narrative.
Bottom Line
Shellenberger and Public deserve credit for a rare act in modern journalism: publicly retracting a narrative they helped amplify. The evidence they present is substantial, and the self-examination is genuine. The core thesis -- that Epstein was a self-serving predator rather than a government puppet -- is well supported by the available files.
Two caveats deserve emphasis. First, the article's pivot from intelligence conspiracy to cultural critique of sexual liberalism feels like an overcorrection, swapping one grand theory for another. Epstein's impunity was purchased with money and social capital, full stop. Second, with millions of pages still unreleased, any definitive conclusion remains premature -- a point Shellenberger himself acknowledges but that can get lost in the force of the argument.
What the piece does exceptionally well is demonstrate how motivated reasoning, historical precedent, and institutional distrust combined to produce a collective misreading. That lesson extends far beyond the Epstein case.