Original subtitles

[Dramatic music playing]

[Christopher] The first time I really heard about Jeffrey

was when ghislaine called me and told me

that she was throwing a party in honor of her mother.

She said it was at the house of the guy she was dating.

I remember people talking about ghislaine's boyfriend

had suddenly struck it rich.

As I recall, Jeffrey wasn't there.

And there was this rumor going around

that this guy, Jeffrey Epstein,

he, kind of, likes...

He likes dating...

High school girls.

That's kind of what he's into

and ghislaine is...

Introducing him to these young women.

She's finding these girls

that he's flirting with,

spending time with, and with, kind of, disbelief.

I am ashamed to say that I don't remember feeling

in any way at the time

that there was anything sinister about it.

But seemed deeply weird.

If this was the guy that she was dating...

Why the hell would she be finding...

Young girls for him?

[Suspenseful music playing]

Yeah. Okay.

I've known ghislaine Maxwell since 1999.

I had no idea that she had any connection

to Jeffrey Epstein until I investigated him

in 2002.

Any time I had seen her out at parties in New York,

she was either by herself

or she was with some random guy,

but nobody ever mentioned the name Jeffrey Epstein.

There is this very strange confusion

as to nobody quite knowing for sure

when she and Jeffrey actually met.

We have one of Jeffrey's best friends,

Stuart pivar, one of the founders

of the New York academy of art.

He says that they definitely knew each other

before Robert Maxwell died

because Jeffrey asked Stuart

to watch ghislaine sort of 24/7

after her father died.

He put Stuart on what he called suicide watch.

[Stuart] She was a terrible wreck, and Jeffrey,

sort of, put me in charge of her

because he was afraid she would...

She was so depressed that she would...

Wouldn't make it.

She was deeply upset about him dying

and the circumstances of his death

because it had so completely wrecked...

And changed her life.

She wasn't expressing sympathy

for the dead father.

It was all about her plight in this staggering situation

that was so public.

Ghislaine's friends told me

that she was distraught.

She told one person that I spoke to

that she had basically become the equivalent of a leper.

She described the two-bedroom apartment that she lived in

on the Upper East Side as being like a toilet.

When she meets an Epstein, she probably sees an Epstein

her father thinks, "well, this is great.

And he's gonna provide me with all the things

that my father would have given me,

had he lived."

The early 90s is a really interesting period

to watch Jeffrey's transformation.

He goes from living in a one-bedroom apartment

on the east 60s to renting the former residents

of the Iranian consult to the United Nations.

I mean, in a very short space of time after that,

Jeffrey acquires a vast ranch

in new Mexico called Zorro.

He starts to acquire the house,

the plane, the chef, the staff

that ghislaine grew up with it,

she was used to.

But there's a one-sidedness

to the ghislaine-Jeffrey relationship.

He definitely did see

that ghislaine could be very useful to him.

She had this extraordinary rolodex

and she knew rich, powerful people

all around the world,

and he didn't.

[Martin] She had inroads into the kind of world

that Epstein didn't have

and that was the political world,

and I think that was very important for Epstein.

If ghislaine knew half of what her father knew

and what her father was doing,

she would have been quite an asset

to someone like Jeffrey Epstein.

I was being told that he was...

Jeffrey was a social klutz,

that he was, kind of, diamond in the rough,

had no interests or aptitude

for having normal friends and having a, kind of,

you know, normal social life.

He wouldn't have known, for example,

how to dress properly

for the [indistinct] closure

at askett in england.

He wouldn't necessarily have known

how to run all the staff

that he acquired.

Ghislaine knew how to do all of this,

one person put it to me very simply.

She told him, you know, which was the salad fork.

She was sort of like the chief administrator

in his life.

She organized his houses, his real estate.

I asked Jeffrey about their relationship

when I interviewed him in 2002.

I preserved the transcripts of those conversations,

one of the very few interviews

ever done with him.

[Jeffrey] She's not really involved in the business.

You know, I was trying to figure out

how to best describe it.

As I've said, what I've tried to do

is search for the best and brightest.

- [Vicky] Right. - [Jeffrey] And that's how

ghislaine fits in.

Ghislaine is the best at what I need.

Ghislaine speaks five languages fluently.

So, in Europe, you know,

she'll come to a meeting and not only

will she be able to translate what the person's saying,

but she can also give me a sense of,

is the person telling the truth.

I enjoy...

Yeah, I need especially female input on that.

[Vicky] Ghislaine took her role extremely seriously.

As I heard from one woman, who was a local assistant

for Jeffrey for a few years,

she wishes to remain anonymous

for fear of retribution.

[Woman] There was definitely this sense of,

"I'm better than you", and "you're not at my level",

and "you do as I say."

She commanded a certain level of,

not respect, but almost fear.

So, what was ghislaine's job?

The way it was described to me

was Jeffrey had all the money,

and none of the old money connections.

Ghislaine had the name and none of the money,

so it was a very symbiotic relationship,

but it appeared to me,

at least from the outside,

that ghislaine was at Jeffrey's Beck and call.

And it appeared she was very dependent on Jeffrey.

She felt she needed him for,

I think, more than just the money.

[Vicky] Ghislaine did continue

her very gregarious,

busy social life in New York.

But what's really strange is that

the richer Jeffrey Epstein became,

the more reclusive he became.

He retreated within the walls

of his Shangri-la's,

while ghislaine was the person

out and about.

At the same time,

he was always in total control of her.

Ghislaine was one of the few people

at that point in New York who had a cellphone.

When you had lunch with her,

she would very ostentatiously

put the phone on the table

as a kind of show off thing.

And the phone rang,

and ghislaine got up and said,

"oh, my god, it's Jeffrey.

He's got a cold

and he wants me to find the best chicken soup

in New York City. Oh, god, what do I do?"

And she was dialing frantically

and trying to figure out what was considered

the best chicken soup in New York City.

Isn't that weird?

Couldn't he just call for delivery?

Why is this suddenly

the most important thing on ghislaine's agenda

that must be accomplished immediately

in order to satisfy and please Jeffrey Epstein?

[Suspenseful music playing]

[Vicky] Jeffrey seemed to embrace this power dynamic.

[Jeffrey] My association with drugs and drink

is only negative.

[Vicky] Is that why ghislaine doesn't drink?

[Jeffrey] She did before she met me.

[Vicky] That's what I mean.

[Jeffrey] Because I helped most of the people around me.

What he didn't tell me

is that...

He was really unkind to her.

Sources who knew them during this time

told me that he insisted she lose weight,

and that she did.

That he could be incredibly

abusive to her in public,

and she put up with it in silence.

Somebody who worked very closely with Jeffrey

in the 1980s and 1990s

told me that ghislaine was

working in Jeffrey's offices,

and he happened

to walk in there as well,

along with a model who was from the south.

He and the model

bounced into his office and bounced out.

My source says that he said to ghislaine,

"you don't have to put up with this.

You really don't have to do this."

And she replied,

"yes, I do.

My father taught me

you do whatever it takes

to keep your man."

[Dramatic music playing]

[Tom] Ghislaine Maxwell was used in her life

to being the subject and object of a rich tyrant,

and had been brought up to be totally obedient.

So, it's natural for her to slide

into the center of relationship

with Jeffrey Epstein, she knew no different.

[Vicky] I turned to psychologist

Laura Saunders

who specializes in family therapy.

She has never interviewed ghislaine Maxwell,

but she explained what effects childhood trauma

could have on somebody in adulthood.

When you find that your life is full of control,

and power dynamics, and chaos,

and things that would make it

very emotionally unstable,

that then becomes your internal expectation

of the way life is.

It would not be surprising

that an adult female would then engage

in a... in a relationship with a male

that recreated that father-daughter dynamic,

that sort... Sense of control and power,

and absolute need for approval

and going way outside your comfort level

just to get that approval.

[Vicky] Journalist, ed Epstein

remembers ghislaine outrageous conversations

at a wedding at mar-a-lago.

[Edward] She didn't show up during dinner.

Just as we were finishing desert,

she showed up and, of course,

she needed an excuse.

So, she said, "you know,

I was just having the greatest sex of my life,

and I've never had such great sex

so please forgive me."

And everyone laughed.

But that was her excuse.

She talked about sex so much

that people began to wonder

if she was compensating for something.

One person who worked

for Jeffrey and knew ghislaine

did say that there was definitely some bond.

This person called it a cosmic bond.

But the more I have learned

in my reporting this year,

the more it suggests

that she was truly besotted

and in love with him.

But it's not at all clear to me

or to any of my sources

that he was ever in love with

or besotted with ghislaine.

[Assistant] He had these beautiful models,

and all of these young eastern European women

that were around him all the time.

It seemed to me she played a background role.

I remember that one time her and I discussing

their relationship actually

that led into her sharing with me

that they had clearly an open relationship.

And that they enjoyed the company of other women.

But she seemed almost sad.

It wasn't what she wanted in the relationship.

It appeared to me that she wanted more

than he was willing to give.

[Vicky] Ed Epstein was friend

with both Jeffrey and ghislaine,

but separately.

He remembers a dinner with ghislaine

while he saw firsthand her efforts

to provide for Jeffrey.

At a certain point during dinner,

she got up from the table

and she walked to another table.

And there was a very attractive girl

who I later learned was a model from Denmark,

and she struck up a conversation with her.

And, you know, again,

I turned to someone else

at the table and said, "what's she doing?

Does she know her? "" No, she's trying to get that...

Recruit that girl to go on with them

to palm beach because Jeffrey likes models"

or something like that.

And then, I later found out that she succeeded,

and that girl did go to palm beach with them.

[Laura] When your level of distortion is so great,

you lose touch with what is real

and what's not real.

And so, when you lose touch with reality,

it makes it harder for you to do the things

that you need to do to help yourself,

and you really continue to engage in behavior

despite the fact that it will have

long term negative effects for you.

[Vicky] What I would call the New York crowd

of people who knew ghislaine,

they talked about something dark,

something quite sick

about the way ghislaine

worshipped this man,

and it clearly wasn't reciprocated.

Certainly, in all my conversations

that I ever had with Jeffrey,

even as he was praising ghislaine,

he was distancing himself from her.

[Jeffrey] You know, she's my best friend.

[Vicky] Right. Well, that is what I thought.

[Jeffrey] And she has been for a very long time.

[Vicky] Right.

I mean, the picture that I have is of, you know,

people who are very,

very mutually dependent on each other.

[Jeffrey] Mutually dependent

has sort of a syrupy connotation.

[Vicky] When you have your set up dinners

for the scientists at your house,

she's the one organizing it.

[Jeffrey] That's correct.

[Vicky] She's involved in buying art sometimes,

or, you know, she gets very involved

in a lot of administration.

[Jeffrey] She doesn't find girls for me, by the way.

[Vicky] I didn't ask you that.

Back in 2002, I thought it was

the strangest thing for him to say.

And I thought he was making

some really sick terrible joke.

At the time, I had no idea

how revealing that admission was.

[Vicky] Here is the dilemma

when you're dealing with Jeffrey Epstein.

He was someone who bragged, he boasted.

Even the people who sort of thought

they knew him really well

ended up wondering

what had he said that was the truth,

and what had he said that was a complete lie.

In the 1990s,

he'd moved to this enormous townhouse

that's now the largest

private townhouse in Manhattan,

he acquires an island in the Caribbean,

he acquires a private jet.

This all happens within

an astonishingly short time period.

So, Jeffery told people who asked about

his sudden wealth that he was this,

sort of, money manager to billionaires

only for a very, very exclusive club,

and it was very hard to get on his list of clients.

But what caused people to ask questions

about what Jeffrey said was,

if he's really such a good money manager,

why is there absolutely no footprint,

no trace of him in the market.

The question that you and I posed to each other

was where did he get that money?

The first theory had to do with Robert Maxwell

who stole money from the pension funds

of the newspapers he owned and died.

So, that theory goes that Maxwell tried to hide

some of the money for his family.

And that Jeffrey represented himself

as someone who is an expert in hiding money.

And that he gave him a sum,

it could have been 50, 60 million or 100 million.

And that Jeffrey and ghislaine lived off his money.

[Vicky] Robert Maxwell's biographers tell me

that they're skeptical of this theory.

After his death, the British government

had to investigated, you know,

looking for Maxwell's millions or billions.

They never find the money that'd been

very, very well-hidden by Robert Maxwell.

[Vicky] There is a theory that one of the reasons

ghislaine was so loyal to Jeffrey Epstein

was that he was...

Was hiding money for Robert Maxwell,

her father, dead father...

Or, hid her... Or hid her money, somehow.

No. I don't... I don't think that's true.

[Tom] Maxwell was not the sort of man

in his life who ever entrusted his money

to somebody else to look after.

He wasn't a person who trusted anyone

because as a crook, the last thing he would do

is trust anybody else.

Any money he had, he needed

to keep his bankrupt global organization afloat.

[Vicky] Tom bower believes Maxwell

had sorted away money over the years,

but not enough to explain Epstein's new lifestyle.

Some of the money that Robert stole

was in the bank accounts, not only in lichtenstein,

but more importantly in the Cayman Islands

and the Virgin Islands.

But that was in 1991.

The money would have run out by about 1992, '93,

which he's spending on a large scale.

The second theory is the hoffenberg theory,

where basically hoffenberg had reason to hide money,

because the government was gonna seize all his assets.

[Vicky] Jeffrey had become a consultant

to Steve hoffenberg and towers financial in 1987,

and it helped build the company into a colossus.

But prosecutors began nosing around the firm.

In 1997, hoffenberg was convicted

for running the biggest Ponzi scheme

in American history at the time.

Hoffenberg took money from new investors

to pay off earlier investors

as well as lining his own pockets.

Hoffenberg has since said

that Jeffrey was the mastermind

behind the fraud, and yet, he, hoffenberg,

was the one who served 18 years in prison.

Not only did Epstein escape prosecution,

but hoffenberg says Jeffrey stole money from his company.

So, how much money do you think

Jeffrey Epstein siphoned out of towers financial?

I have calculated

and added up some $100 million

that Jeffrey Epstein was involved in in looting

from towers financial with others.

[Vicky] Epstein denied any involvement

in the towers fraud,

but he was certainly close to the company.

So, why wasn't he indicted with hoffenberg.

After November '93,

Jeffrey Epstein's name

disappears in all the court papers

about hoffenberg's crime.

Jeffrey told me back in 2002

that he never answered any questions,

that he hadn't cooperated with the government.

You were never aware,

and no one ever asked you to give testimony, or...

[Jeffrey] No, I was never called.

I wasn't involved in that whole trial or anything.

- [Vicky] I know, but... - [Jeffrey] Not even as a witness, nobody.

That turns out according to my reporting

to be complete rubbish.

He was brought in for questioning

at least three times.

He did cooperate.

Over the last several years,

I was able to understand and discover

some of what Jeffrey Epstein did,

which is shocking to me.

You mean, you didn't know all this time

that Jeffrey Epstein had cooperated against you?

[Steven] No. I didn't know it earlier

that he destroyed me

and blamed me for everything.

I didn't had known that at the time

up until the last few years.

If I didn't go near Jeffrey Epstein,

I would've never faced the penalties

that I suffer

that was so detrimental to my life,

my family, and towers financial.

[Vicky] I think Jeffrey made the decision

to cooperate with the government

to save himself.

Jeffrey, not only didn't want to pay a price

for towers financial and the crimes connected with that,

he had told hoffenberg much too much

about how he could steal from the people,

whose money he managed.

Hoffenberg has always said that Jeffrey had a plan

to rip-off all these high net worth individuals,

and Jeffrey would layout in detail

how he was going to do this.

He called it playing the box.

Essentially, he was in control of every aspect

of what he did for his clients

to the point that if they discovered

that he had stolen from them,

there was nothing they could do about it,

unless they wanted to risk

embarrassment or exposure.

So, it's very convenient for Jeffrey Epstein

that the witness

to all his financial planning

goes to jail for 20 years,

effectively, he silenced Steve hoffenberg.

He kept his connection to Steve hoffenberg

completely hidden from the most important person

in his life, it wasn't ghislaine.

It was Leslie wexner.

[Vicky] The only client that Jeffrey Epstein

was quite open about,

and was sort of his calling card

was the self-made multibillionaire les wexner,

a retailer who'd made a lot of money very quickly

for a company that was then called the limited,

is now called l brands.

You wanna know Victoria's real secret?

It's the company's 77-year-old billionaire ceo,

wexner, worth more than $7.5 billion,

is the wealthiest guy in Ohio.

Jeffrey wasn't shy about talking about

his friendship with les wexner.

He told me that rich people

were often not careful with numbers.

The way Jeffrey explained it to me was that,

as people get wealthier and wealthier,

their financial affairs need to be completely reorganized.

[Jeffrey] I always describe it, Vicky,

as someone who started out in a small home,

as they become wealthier, had add-ons.

They added on another addition,

they built a room over the garage,

it means you have a house that is usually a mess.

So, if you finally had to knock the house down

and start again, that's what I really do.

I knock their financial houses down to some extent

because it was built over time,

and not really architected from the overall view.

[Vicky] Wexner was considered serious and reclusive.

A man who didn't tolerate fools.

In 1991, Jeffrey had been given power of attorney

over all of les wexner's assets

except for his company.

That was a very unusual thing

for anyone to have done,

let alone ago who's worth many billions of dollars.

I want to know why he did it.

Columbus, Ohio-based activist and reporter, Bob fitrakis,

says that at the time

nobody could figure out what was happening.

Epstein's name really started coming out around 1991.

And the question is, you know, what's their relationship,

you know, what the hell is going on?

And to some extent, many people,

you know, made fun of them

and thought it was a... Was a joke.

I mean, he was... He was called the valet.

He was called, you know, wexner's girl Friday.

You know, I asked people that were

very well connected in this town,

and some that worked at the limited,

and many of them said, you know, he's his enigma.

I mean, he's thought to have some ties,

you know, to intelligence, he's thought to be an asset

to very important people,

people who are afraid of Jeffrey Epstein.

He was vindictive, he could do damage.

And he had wexner's ear, he was... he was the fixer.

[Vicky] When I spoke with Jeffrey in 2002,

he was delighted with his reputation

as wexner's hatchet man.

[Jeffrey] The people hate me there.

- [Vicky] They hate you. - [Jeffrey] Yes.

If there's a decision made

between the company and him, I negotiate.

They only negotiate with me,

therefore, it avoids his conflict of interest.

[Vicky] Got it.

[Jeffrey] As you probably have heard, I am vicious

in my representation of my clients.

[Vicky] I have heard.

[Jeffrey] And it's the same thing, I do it all.

[Vicky] Did people lose their jobs

at the limited because of you?

[Jeffrey] Hmm. You should ask him.

- [Vicky] I'll ask him. - [Jeffrey] Now, I don't...

I can't fire anyone.

[Vicky] Nope, I'm not talking about that.

[Jeffrey] They wanted to commit suicide.

It's not the same thing.

[Vicky] The power that Jeffrey wielded over wexner

was not lost on wexner's closest business associates

including Alfred taubman, a shopping mall developer

and a crucial ally in wexner's retailer empire.

Christopher Mason wrote a book

that included taubman.

Wexner revered Alfred taubman

and looked to him for advice on everything,

but my source, very close to taubman,

was saying that, you know,

taubman just could not figure out

what the hell this grip was

that this guy Jeffrey Epstein had

on his good friend les wexner,

he just couldn't fathom it.

I think they had very similar beliefs

in supporting Israel as a state.

At one point, Mr. Wexner was, you know,

listed as one of the single largest private donors

to the state of Israel.

[Vicky] So wexner and Epstein shared close ties to Israel.

The same strong ties Robert Maxwell had

earlier in Jeffrey's career.

Wexner had other ties that benefited Jeffrey.

Leslie wexner had very deep reach

into places like Harvard.

So Jeffrey was very quick to use wexner,

to use his contacts at Harvard.

He then expanded the network further,

meeting people like then law professor Alan Dershowitz.

Jeffrey Epstein was very strategic

about the people he collected around him.

He wanted the legitimacy of Harvard.

There's no doubt about that.

He got an office in brattle square,

right in Harvard square where he would have these lunches

and the lunches were amazing.

I had been in Harvard at that point,

what, 35 years.

He introduced me to people at Harvard I didn't know.

He boasted friendships

with the president of Harvard.

[Vicky] This gave him access

to some of the leading thinkers

and academics in the country.

It also sets Jeffrey up on a sort of fake pedestal

as somebody who was really trying to do

good in the world.

Basically, it gave him gravitas and credentials

that he shouldn't have had.

Using those credentials

and touting wealthy clients like wexner,

Jeffrey could approach new potential clients.

Through my recent reporting,

I've realized that he invested that money

through friendly bankers on wall street.

That's why there was no trace of him in the market.

He wasn't doing his own trading.

Ed Epstein heard about one of Jeffrey's pitches

to a potential client who he declines to name.

Jeffrey had offered to save him

something like $120 million in taxes

by moving the money through charities offshore.

And a person who's very smart, listened and said,

"well, I think this might be a violation of the law."

And you did know that was a gray area.

But if you're worried,

if you give me a power of attorney,

you don't have to know anything about it,

and that will your alibi.

[Vicky] Once again, it was an example of Jeffrey's

basic strategy, charm, control, and con.

It seems he often made it work.

[Tom] The one great similarity

between Robert Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein

is they knew how to perform.

They could convince a snowman to buy snow.

And that is their genius, it's the art of the deal,

the art of persuading people to trust them.

That's the key thing.

And that is an amazing quality to have

and is vital for the dealmaker,

especially for the crook.

[Vicky] Very few of the people Epstein ripped off ever spoke up.

Leslie wexner, for instance, has said publicly

that Jeffrey stole almost $47 million from him,

but he didn't say anything until after Jeffrey died.

Jeffrey understood the enormous power

of social embarrassment.

He understood that wealthy people

don't like admitting publicly that they've been robbed.

Jeffrey also boasted

that he had so much stuff on people.

You have no idea what that leverage is

and Jeffrey could have been lying

but nonetheless, he boasted.

In the 1990s,

Leslie wexner was Jeffrey Epstein's

biggest patron by far.

Ghislaine complained she felt like "the help"

around Leslie wexner

but at the same time,

if she had interfered with that relationship,

she would have been directly been hurting herself.

Christopher Mason saw the lengths

ghislaine went to, to keep the pair happy.

When she hired him to perform a bawdy comic song

for Jeffrey's 40th birthday party.

Usually, when I do one of the songs,

I try to talk to as many people as possible,

you know, the secretary, the wife, the mistress,

all, you know, all the best friends

and everyone is sworn to secrecy.

What's surprised me was that ghislaine was very specific

that she had to give me all the information.

I was startled by some of the things

that she insisted had to be in the song.

Had to allude to when he was teaching at Dalton school

and that he was the subject of many schoolgirl crushes.

And then she wanted me to include that

ghislaine claims he has 24-hour erections.

Possibly an exaggeration.

So when I got to the house that evening,

ghislaine asked me to change into Jeffrey's karate outfit.

I had to climb the stairs, sit on the floor,

cross-legged in his karate outfit,

sing the song.

I remember it was... It was clubby atmosphere,

only about eight guys.

[Vicky] Christopher says that the group included

les wexner, Henry rosovsky

who was then a Dean at Harvard,

and the violinist Itzhak perlman.

These powerful guys all seemed to know Epstein very well,

and they were, kind of, roaring with laughter

at these lyrics that were poking fun at him.

[Vicky] But the other interesting thing right

was that ghislaine was not at the dinner.

[Christopher] It was like ghislaine was the kind of power geisha.

[Vicky] Yeah.

[Christopher] Orchestrating everything

for Epstein's maximum delight.

[Vicky] Soon after Jeffrey Epstein moved into his Upper East Side mansion,

ghislaine moved to her own townhouse.

Although it's unclear who paid for it.

She continued to manage Jeffrey's properties

and his social events

and to introduce him to the rich and powerful.

One of her most important introductions

was to prince Andrew, whom ghislaine had known

since she was in her early 20s.

Investment banker euan rellie describes the dinner

ghislaine invited him to with prince Andrew.

Ghislaine was there busily making sure everybody

was getting along and being flirt...

She was quite flirtatious. Quite charming.

[Vicky] What did it strike you the relationship

between prince Andrew and Jeffrey Epstein was?

I think Epstein was showing off that Andrew was there,

but it seemed like a bit of a...

You know, frankly a bit of a pissing contest

between Andrew and Epstein.

It was almost as if these two guys

were competing about who could seem

more bored or more, you know,

just not interested in the evening at all.

It was a very strange situation.

This may seem a strange question,

but did you feel at all sorry for ghislaine while...

[Euan] No. Actually, not really.

Because it... because she was very good at...

It felt like water off a duck's back.

- [Vicky] Right. - [Euan] And I think she enjoyed being the mother hen.

[Vicky] Andrew and Jeffrey became close associates.

Former arms dealer Ari Ben-menashe

is one of three people

who says that Jeffrey used prince Andrew as bait

to attract new clients.

Prince Andrew is a very important character.

He gave Jeffrey Epstein access

to quite a number of very important people.

See, I know the son of the queen.

[Vicky] Prince Andrew wasn't the only high-profile person

that Epstein bragged about knowing.

Ben-menashe, a controversial character

whose views can run towards conspiracy theories,

claims that just like Robert Maxwell,

Jeffrey was part of an influence campaign.

[Ben-menashe] The Israelis had this thing

about President Clinton.

When he got elected as president,

the Israelis were genuinely worried

that he'd force them into a deal

with the Palestinians

just like president Carter forced them

into a deal with the Egyptians.

They tried to pressure Mr. Clinton in different ways.

Are you suggesting that Jeffrey Epstein

was involved in a sort of influence operation

on President Clinton?

Yes. Very much so.

So the allegations then about Jeffrey

are similar to what you've described with Robert Maxwell,

very similar pattern that he was used

by the Israelis, who is somebody who knew everybody.

Actually, there's a name for that.

- It's called "mabua". - "Mabua".

Mabua. Mabua means somebody who is in-between.

I know somebody who is close to somebody else

and I'm gonna use him to... In the operation.

Whether Israel would have used him?

Of course, they will use anybody.

They would use a reporter,

they'd use you tomorrow if they could.

Right.

I understand why many people

would be extremely skeptical of the idea

that Jeffrey Epstein was part of some influence campaign

trying to orchestrate us foreign policy

under Bill Clinton.

But we do know that Bill Clinton in 1993

gave Jeffrey Epstein and ghislaine Maxwell

a vip tour of the white house

because Jeffrey Epstein was one of the donors

who paid for the oval office to be refurbished.

Now, that is what you call influence.

So what was Jeffrey paid?

It wasn't a salary or something of that nature.

But he was taken care of through different means.

Jeffrey's lifestyle was extraordinary,

you know, he had an island, a ranch,

a plane, the biggest townhouse in...

He needed... had to have that lifestyle

to attract these people.

So who paid for it?

[Ben-menashe] Friends of Israel.

Who are friends of Israel? Who do you mean by that?

I don't want to name names, but take your pick.

Wealthy friends of Israel were actually helping him.

[Vicky] If this is true,

the question becomes

did Israel or these friends know about the other ways

that Jeffrey tried to influence people?

Epstein, from what I understand, was doing

deals of influence for a lot of people.

He introduced people on his private plane,

on his way to the private island

and just getting them all together to an island

was creating what's called "proximity."

In the process that he did,

he influenced a lot of them

using means that were not proper.

Right. You mean the young girls?

[Victor] Yeah, the girls and everything else.

[Vicky] Back in 2002, this was one thing

that everybody did talk to me about.

They all said that it was rumored

that he had a room full of camera equipment

and he could monitor what was going on

in all the rooms of his houses.

What was less open was what he was interested in filming.

That's what he was doing, compromising people.

That's right.

I presume when you say

"embarrassed and compromised", you mean that Jeffrey taped

a lot of these sexual encounters,

if not all of them.

They're all blackmail tapes.

He taped, he photographed, he did all that.

[Vicky] Steve hoffenberg says that this is yet another element

of his life that Jeffrey confided in him about.

They were trying to blackmail

powerful people.

That's what Jeffrey Epstein does.

That's his mo.

Compromising people and using them

to the fullest extent that he can.

Influence trading,

information trading...

Right.

At the level we're discussing

is very serious.

You know, there are many stories

from people I know and who I trust,

who said they saw photographs that Jeffrey had

of powerful people with young women.

I don't think anything is beyond Jeffrey

in terms of morality that he would say,

"I'm not gonna blackmail a friend or anything."

That's the way Jeffrey thought.

[Vicky] Jeffrey's accusers say he taped them as well.

And one has alleged in a lawsuit

that he kept dossiers on them

to keep them in line.

He told me when I was reporting on him

that he had collected a dossier

on me and my husband,

and he read aloud some bits of it

in an attempt to try to threaten me.

So it didn't remotely surprise me

that other people told me he was well-known

for making dossiers

on a lot of the people in his world.

[Newscaster] Epstein was arrested in...

[Vicky] We now know that whether for blackmail

or for his own pleasure, Jeffrey had teenage girls

shuffling between his multiple homes.

[Stephen] Jeffrey Epstein was accused of sex trafficking

of underage girls.

He had a routine of sexual abuse

in which he would groom these underage victims

for massages.

And the massages were just sort of a code word

for sexual abuse.

And he would pay the victims afterwards.

[Vicky] Ghislaine stands accused

of playing a key role in the scheme.

[Stephen] Ghislaine Maxwell is alleged

to have been sort of a second-in-command

of Jeffrey Epstein's operation.

She is alleged to have been his chief recruiter.

She was on the lookout for victims for Epstein.

She allegedly sought new victims for him,

and then encouraged those victims

to find new victims themselves.

[Vicky] Jennifer araoz says

that it was an unidentified young woman

who approached her outside her high school

in New York in 2001.

You were 14 years old,

you've just lost your father who just died.

So, what did she say to you that sort of

gets you into the world of Jeffrey Epstein?

She was like, "you know, I can really introduce you to somebody that's been

so, like, impactful in my life.

You know, you're so lucky you met me."

Can you remember your first meeting

with Jeffrey Epstein?

It was, kind of, brief but he was very just like,

"I heard so much about you," you know.

"I'm so happy to meet you

and I'm so sorry what happened to you

and, you know, your father."

And basically, just, you know,

would, kind of, just give me, uh, money

without even doing anything at all, you know.

So, I was just like, "wow, this guy is incredibly kind and generous,"

and, you know, he just seems so powerful

and larger than life.

Because he knew that I worked at school for, you know, my talent school

so he's, like, "you know, you're beautiful girl.

I could, you know, get you into modeling agencies.

I have a lot of connections with modeling agencies."

When these visits stopped being

just conversational...

Well, soon after, I guess,

you know, he started promising me all those things,

he went to slowly just, like, you know, "I need to see your body,

I need to see how you look without clothes on,

you know, to really help you if you wanna,

you know, get into the modeling industry,

if you wanna get into any type of acting industry."

I really didn't know better

and I, kind of, felt like I owed him something in a way

because he had paid me a lot even for not doing anything.

So, yeah, I, kind of, just,

you know, took off my clothes, my top,

and then he asked me if I was good at massages,

and it, kind of, just transitioned into that.

I started not really wanting to go there anymore

because I... at the time,

I just felt like he was, kind of, full of it,

he was... he was kind of just... kind of, sick.

I think he felt that and I... And that's when raped me.

[Vicky] In the fall of 2002,

I was reporting on Jeffrey Epstein for vanity fair.

I, of course, had no idea about Jennifer araoz

or the other alleged victims at the time.

But I was having my own troubles with Jeffrey.

I asked Martha little,

who's editing my podcast at audible,

to help me talk about that experience.

So, you were reporting on Jeffrey in 2002

and you were speaking to him every day,

and you were pregnant with twins.

The New York post's gossip column page six

had run an item mentioning that Jeffrey Epstein

had flown Bill Clinton and various other celebrities

to Africa on a philanthropic mission.

This was what sparked my boss to say,

"you go find out who he is and how he made his money."

It was meant to be an easy assignment.

I had a complicated high-risk pregnancy.

And, you know, I think my boss

thought he was doing me a favor

because Jeffrey Epstein lived in New York, so did I,

and it seemed like a straightforward assignment.

So, you spoke to him every day,

practically for six months.

What did you make of him?

He was a master manipulator.

He could go from being incredibly charming

and ingratiating,

and sort of trying to be funny to a thug.

And the reason I recorded him

was that he threatened me.

[Jeffrey] I don't know what you're writing.

Basically, you paraphrase some of it to me.

If there's any implication of wrongdoing,

I will take legal action against you personally.

I'm telling you so you understand,

I will be as harsh as I possibly can personally,

not for the magazine but you.

Because I had this discussion with you.

This relationship is with you.

How did Jeffrey use your pregnancy against you

while you were reporting the story?

There were the avert threats of, you know,

"I'm gonna have a witch doctor place a hex

on your unborn children."

- To even come up with that idea... - Yeah.

Speaks to a really sick mind.

But the other thing that Jeffrey did

was keep on talking about my pregnancy

in a really invasive and creepy way.

[Jeffrey] You know what? When you give birth...

- How many more months? - [Vicky] March.

[Jeffrey] When you give birth, as your vaginal canal opens,

you have these chemical

released into your system with oxytocin.

It actually causes you to fall in love

with the thing you see coming out of it.

He was not afraid to cross all boundaries

and that is what really spooked me out,

when he started asking me about which hospital

I was giving birth in,

and what the exact date was, and who my doctors were,

because I was, like, "whoa, okay.

I don't know what you're capable of,

but this is getting really frightening."

Around this time, I spoke to two sisters,

Maria and Annie farmer, who both said

that they had been sexually assaulted by Jeffrey.

Maria said ghislaine was present when he groped her.

Annie was only 16

when she said he assaulted her

which was truly shocking.

Remember, at that time,

no one had made this type of allegation.

I wondered if he had done this to other girls,

but I couldn't find any.

When I told Jeffrey about the allegations,

he called them nonsense.

And the pressure got worse.

[Jeffrey] I'm telling you, I want you to be clear.

My relationship with you is friendly, if you...

[Vicky] Jeffrey, I'm doing this as a job. This is not...

[Jeffrey] You shouldn't risk your future as a job.

[Vicky] I'm not risking anything.

I'm doing my job to report.

[Jeffrey] You have to make the decision as a journalist

what you think are reliable sources.

[Vicky] Yes.

[Jeffrey] If you think you have a reliable source

and a reliable allegation, you make it.

I will hold you personally responsible.

He took his offensive many steps further.

He actually appeared in person

at the vanity fair offices

as we were trying to close out this piece.

This was unprecedented.

I don't think we've ever had a subject of a profile

go to this much trouble to control

- what was written about him. - [Martha] Mmm-hmm.

- [Vicky] And I think that that was mounting fear. - [Martha] Yeah.

You know, that wasn't just me who was afraid.

Generally, people who wondered who is this guy?

I had not interviewed ghislaine for the story,

but I did have to ask her

about the farmers' accusations.

It was a deeply unpleasant conversation

and she, obviously, denied everything.

I really hoped I would not run into ghislaine ever again.

I thought based on what I discovered,

what the allegations had been, that she was weird

and that, clearly, Jeffrey Epstein

was a terrible influence on her.

[Martha] Your babies were due in march.

It was to end of 2002.

What was happening at that time?

My doctor was getting more and more alarmed.

He started to ask me,

"when are you going to be finished with this article?"

He wanted me to go on bed rest.

I was still getting emails from the research department

and from the legal affairs editor.

I thought that I had won this battle, that I would...

The farmers' allegations were going to make it

into the article because I got asked in mid-December

to produce a photograph of Maria farmer.

So, I thought, "hallelujah, you know.

This is great news."

I had absolutely no idea

that their allegations would entirely be cut

from the article until one of the fact-checkers sent me an email saying,

"have you seen the new version?"

And I'm like, "what new version?"

That was a really bad moment.

The magazine's editors have since said

that we didn't have sufficient sourcing

to run the allegations,

but I had spoken to three corroborating sources.

[Dramatic music playing]

[Vicky] The story appeared in the march 2003 issue of vanity fair

with no mention of Annie or Maria farmer.

I went into a very dramatic emergency birth

and my boys were born,

you know, severely underweight.

One had lungs that were whited out under the X-ray.

I was convinced that Jeffrey Epstein

was coming for them.

If Jeffrey could put me on my back foot

and has had made me so nervous,

if he could end up winning the war

with vanity fair and end up controlling

the article in the way that he did,

what chance would...

A 14-year-old struggling girl have

against somebody like that?

The farmers were incredibly unusual

in having the courage to speak out

about what they said had happened to them.

You know, the fact that we didn't publish

what they said is, you know, I think,

you know, a complete travesty.

Just as Jeffrey had never paid a price

for his frauds or for the towers financial case,

he and ghislaine avoided exposure in the magazine.

It would take another three years

and more than 30 brave victims coming forward

before anybody tried to stop what was happening

to the girls behind these walls.

[Dramatic music playing]