>>171911
The intelligence ties are pretty much common knowledge at this point. There's a mountain of evidence supporting the thesis that Epstein's ring was an intelligence operation. Off the top of my head...

a) As prosecutor for the 2008 case, Alexander Acosta said he was told to "back off" and that Epstein "belonged to intelligence" resulting in the sweetheart deal
b) Ghislane Maxwell is the daughter of Robert Maxwell who, working for the Mossad, was responsible for tipping them off about the whereabouts of Mordechai Vanunu, sold a backdoor'd version of the stolen PROMIS software to different countries, for these and other exploits he was given a lavish funeral in Israel attended by the top brass of the Israeli military and intelligence community, was eulogized by then prime minister of Israel Yitzhak Shamir as having done "more for Israel than can now be said"
c) Epstein was a close associate of Ehud Barak, former head of Aman (Israeli intelligence) and prime minister of Israel

Of course most of this points to him being an Israeli intelligence asset, but the CIA would have definitely known about him and used him too.