Good solid investigative journalism here. FYI, it has been your dogged work on the "Summer of Epstein" that finally got me to break down and subscribe. In general, I find you to be alternately irritating and enlightening but lately it's been more of the latter. Thank you for what you do.
I became a paid subscriber after this Michael. I was initially awed by her. The more I listened, the more disenchanted I became. Lots of inference but nothing conclusive. This is how it's done. Great to see someone counter her factually. Also, she's just weird!
Western Educated Industrial Rich and Democratic. You check four of those boxes. But instead of "Rich" I would write "Poor but fiercely in-your-face independent" or something like that. Messes up the anagram but who cares.
Spending time on poking holes in the work of the only journalist who even touched this stuff going back 6/7 years is not very wise. Just personally speaking, it was reading Whitney Webb’s stuff that first taught me about the existence of the MEGA group & Les Wexner etc…are petty internecine journalistic wars really worth it at this point? Isn’t staying focused on the big picture..ie the total control over the US gov by Israeli intelligence…a bit more important???
There is nothing worse in journalism, or in holding leaders accountable, than a 'journalist' who exaggerates and even makes sh't up out of thin air, to get more clicks. No thanks.
Whitney Webb is a fantastic journalist. Have you ever read the series she did on Mint Press re Epstein? It’s like the opposite of clickbait. My point here is that Michael Tracy’s attack on her seems awfully nit-picky given the truly extraordinary work she’s done. Let’s compare the two: Webb has done extensive research and writing on the entire circle of info surrounding Epstein. Michael Tracy, by contrast, seems to be spending all his energy trying to undermine her. Who’s the one providing the valuable service to society, Tracy or Webb?
Like the JFK hit, The Epstein case is an example of political archeology. We have what amounts to a fossil record made from the bones of Epstein, Robert Maxwell, Giuffre, and a few others who actually did die in jail. The narrative is almost completely controlled by the perpetrators. From this we have to reconstruct a plausible chain of events leading to our unarguable reality.
The reality is that the Israel lobby is massively powerful, and controls much of the US government and Press. That is the conspiracy hiding in plain sight, and rightly prompting a thousand theories.
Given the daunting imbalance of tiny little Whitney Webb, against this behemoth of power and corruption, I’m inclined to give her a little more wiggle room than I would a quotidian criminal investigation.
Long before I even knew who Michael Tracey was, I identified accurately that Webb peddles conspiracy theories to get clicks and views. I’ve repeatedly seen her interviewed about Epstein, in depth. As Tracey says, she makes sh’t up.
I personally believe that Epstein *did* help Israel and the CIA blackmail public officials. Webb’s sloppy bs detracts from the pursuit of uncovering that reality.
I generally agree with you. But Micheal Tracy’s arguments are almost equally clickbait. He’s found a lane for everyone to have him on their shows to be the contrarian. There’s a mountain of evidence, not attributed to Webb, that shows a long history of incredibly sketchy behavior.
Micheal’s initial go to move was to smear Virginia Giuffre. As if one person’s credibility in a situation with this many layers was all the evidence he needed. Almost to the point of pathetic and or suspicious.
His garbage stinks way worse than Whitney. I would pay to see the debate🍿
None of that to me is relevant. What is relevant are the facts. Webb made false statements. Tracey showed that she did so. End of story. Establishing whether Epstein was a spook or not is a question that should be based on solid evidence on the record, not on mere speculation.
The false statement was mysterious death in prison. Turns out, it was shortly after his release from prison. Ooooh. BFD!
The rest was that she was oblivious to a DOJ report. Or maybe she ignored it because the DOJ is not great at holding the greasiest power brokers accountable for their crimes. But hooray for Michael Tracy? He’s an attention seeker trying to keep his garbage journalism relevant on the reputation of Webb. I can’t wait to watch him disappear.
What receipts? Why respond? He’s re litigating the parts we actually know. Because damages were paid and people plead guilty. People got paid to shut up. But Guiffre was unstable so case dismissed? Webb misspoke about the death of a witness after prison. So, logically she should have a sit down with a fat fuck who is notoriously obnoxious in any format? Are you fucking high? Utter clickbait.
Whatever; you do you. My only point here is that losing time on stuff like this detracts from the main goal. I have never heard Webb make things up, and unlike a lot of journalists, when she makes a mistake, she admits it
That Webb exaggerates, so much, and so often (she does - I've been watching her do so for years) is a real problem to winning real justice and change in cases of corruption like this.
As a longtime reader of Webb, I have to ask: if she is so "fantastic," why doesn't she just address his questions? He's posted the receipts. Why won't she address? Too busy, too tired, too many babies?
Journalists correcting other journalists is the best path to truth for consumers, both in terms of keeping them honest to start with and fixing a false record in the long run for posterity.
Correction: there *is* something worse. And what is that? It is the total domination of one government by a foreign entity. Especially when said foreign entity used blackmail to achieve its goals. That is MUCH worse. Which is why Michael Tracey is actually doing a disservice to the ultimate goal here, which is to illuminate the role played by Epstein and co in influencing the past admins…In other words, time to sit down and shut up and let the truth come out
Oh honey no; no one is coming to the conclusion that the US gov is under Israeli control just because of the Epstein case. Believe me, it’s just one more nail in the coffin for those of us following it. So no, no “affirming the consequent” here
Nice. I think we all need to go pop some popcorn before reading this. Been waiting for somebody to push back against Whitney whose every sentence and word is taken as ex cathedra by alt news sources
Whitney Webb makes leaps about connections or histories that can seem that she "makes it up" but I think a more accurate thing to say is that she "believes it is better sourced than it is." A good example is from the Briahna Joy interview when she said:
"...a lot of the '60s culture, counter culture had was engineered uh for uh various purposes. But I'm not an expert on that, so I don't really want to speculate too much."
That is a belief that has been promulgated for many years within conspiracy circles but especially by religious people who seek to discredit the counterculture of the 1960s as a controlled OP by the CIA in concert with other rich and powerful people. What for? That depends on the person who promotes that theory ranging from wanting to make drugs widely available in order to bring down the antiwar movement to more esoteric ideas about Satan. I sourced it to Lyndon Larouche who is often the original source of many of these types of theories. Larouche typically would make claims within his many theories about "how the world is really run from behind the scenes" which when investigated are easily disproven. But since he has many devoted acolytes on the Internet with podcasts and other forms of communication his ideas have been shared far and wide ever since the start of the Internet--and from I can tell his acolytes usually do not check to see if the veracity of his claims hold-up to scrutiny. For example:
Larouche stated that the counterculture of the '60s was created and controlled by Tavistock/British Intelligence. But Larouche didn't invent that idea, he imbibed it from the John Birch Society whose writers in the 1960s were an influence on all subsequent ideas of a worldwide conspiracy of British elites. They were influenced by the writings of Carroll Quigley--who was the first to write about the Rhodes financed Round Table groups and their influence on American elites.
Larouche said that a handful of religious groups that had become popular in the counterculture of the '60s--The Moonies, The Children of God, and the Hare Krishnas (and also the Beatles!) were created and controlled by British Intelligence to bring on the destruction of all that is good and holy.
He had no facts to back that up. He had extrapolated those ideas from a base set of other facts. There were people involved in the early days of the counterculture who had connections to government security agencies through the MK Ultra--LSD experiments, like Ken Kesey and other famous counterculture people who had volunteered to test LSD. There was nothing conspiratorial to what those people were doing though, drugs were popular in the Beatnik scene of that era which they were a part of in the later 1950s and early 60s. LSD and Mescaline had developed a devoted following in the Beatnik scene which was popular in the elite colleges where trust funded children of elites were free to do what they wanted because they were rich and from famous families. LSD became an important part of that Beat scene. In the 1960s children of elite families, some with connections to government and security services, were taking LSD and becoming hippies after first going through a beatnik phase in the later 1950s and early '60s.
Even the Beatles it is speculated named themselves after the Beat scene and they also became hippies after taking LSD. It was common for rich young people in college to drop acid which would then open their eyes to a mystical side of reality. They would commonly get into the mystical philosophies of eastern religions because in 1965 a new immigration law passed which ended the restricting of people from Asia from coming to America. Indians started to come to America and brought with them their religions and gurus right at the start of the counterculture in 1965-66. Rich kids were dropping acid, playing and dancing to new music inspired by acid, and meeting a bunch of gurus from India. That is the origin of the counterculture. Those rich hippies (Steve Jobs was a hippie living on a Yoga commune farm owned by a rich hippie friend) would start the environmental movement and the Whole Earth "back to the land" movement also.
Matt Ehret who I think is the source of Whitney Webb's statement about the CIA and the counterculture, was a member of the Larouche group, and he promotes similar types of mistaken histories as Larouche. For example, Matt said that The Grateful Dead, who were leaders of the counterculture, were a creation of The Tavistock Institute/British Intelligence, to help bring about the counterculture. The proof for that, he claimed, was an extrapolated idea from a basic fact. He said a friend of Jerry Garcia named Alan Trist in 1961 introduced Garcia to what would become his main lyricist, Robert Hunter. Alan Trist according to Matt, was the controlling factor behind the Grateful Dead in service to British Intelligence/Tavistock. That sounded odd to me so I researched it.
According to Grateful Dead biographers Alan Trist left England as a teenager right before he was to go to college in England on a trip to Palo Alto, California with his dad. His dad was indeed a director at Tavistock and had some business at Stanford University for a short time. While Alan was there, he randomly met Jerry Garcia at a house party, and they became fast friends. They then both met Robert Hunter (the lyricist of the GD) and all 3 became close friends. Alan then left and went back to England to go to college--after only hanging out with Garcia and Hunter in 1961 for a short time years before the Grateful Dead was created.
He wouldn't hear from Jerry Garcia again until 1970 when Garcia asked him to come back and I guess share in his success as a rock star. And Alan, being enamored that his old friend from 9 years earlier had become a world famous rock star, did just that. He has worked for the GD ever since.
The problem with Matt's telling of Alan Trist working for the British, is that the Grateful Dead was formed in 1965, 4 years after Alan Trist left for England. For a scant few months in 1961 he hung out with Garcia and Hunter. He never had any contact with Garcia again till 1970. In the interim the 1960s counterculture was almost over by the time Alan Trist had reconnected with Garcia in 1970. The Haight-Ashbury scene was over, the Grateful Dead had been famous leaders of the counterculture for years before Alan Trist joined them.
Matt didn't do the research. He must have read or heard that an executive in the Grateful Dead organization had met Garcia before the band started and that his dad was a director of Tavistock. Matt then extrapolated that as a proof that Tavistock created and controlled not just the Grateful Dead, but also the 1960s counterculture.
There was another time I checked what Matt said because I didn't think it sounded right. He is a big fan of FDR and tells us that FDR was an enemy of the elites of his time. Matt said, as proof of that, that after the stock market crashed in 1929 Roosevelt as president went after the bankers who caused the crash and the Great Depression. Matt said: "thousands of bankers" who were responsible for the stock market crash and the Great Depression were convicted and went to jail--convicted by the "Pecora Commission" working under Roosevelt, Matt's hero, According to Matt.
Except it is completely wrong. He got that from Larouche.
Larouche had named a rich elite banker who supposedly was convicted by the Pecora Commission and then went to jail: Edward "Jock" Whitney.
The problem is---no one was convicted by the Pecora Commision. No one went to jail, aaaand there is no Edward "Jock" Whitney.
A banker named Richard Whitney (a relative of John Hay "Jock" Whitney) went to jail 9 years later for something else entirely. He embezzled a lot of money and famously went to jail for 3 years, the FTX scandal of his day--but it had nothing to do with the investigation into the stock market crash. In later writings the Larouche people pretended that Larouche had said "Richard Whitney," but they still insisted he went to jail and had something to do with the stock market crash, when he didn't. Look it up.
The Pecora Commission in reality showed the opposite of what Matt was trying to prove about FDR, that he had declared war against the elites by jailing them, thousands of them. In reality *no one* went to jail for the crash of 1929. The Pecora Commission put a couple people on trial, but they were let off because what they did was not illegal at that time. They admitted to doing things which are now illegal, but those things were made illegal after the Pecora Commission. They didn't get convicted and no one went to jail.
I'm not saying Matt is always wrong, just that he can be sloppy and speculative, and he can take other people's work as true without first checking them out carefully--because it serves the narrative he promotes, i.e., British elites have ruled over America for a long time.
If that was true--then why did American elites force English elites to call off their war to steal the Suez canal? The British were even threatened by President Eisenhower with the sinking of their economy and their ships if they didn't end the "Suez Crisis" in 1956. How does that fit into the idea that Britain has been ruling America for a very long time?
Whitney Webb's books are not centered on Epstein even though that is the perception of those who haven't read it, he is more of a jumping off point into something much different than illicit sex. What it really is, is a compilation of the work of many previous authors who did a variety of investigations into the intersection of organized crime, politics, and big business--and her own research. She can make mistakes, but most of what she wrote is stuff you can read from authors like mob researcher Gus Russo, the political writing team of Sally Denton and Roger Morris, and other respectable researchers and authors.
And it’s kind of his “Gotch ya”! Micheal Tracy is a bloviating retard that loves to wear out his opponents with interruptions and filibuster. What pos. The headline alone is the most clickbait bullshit ever. I think I will subscribe merely to ridicule this pompous never been.
Again, his gotcha is a report from the DOJ which has proven consistently to be corrupt and incompetent over the last several decades.
Further, none of his points change the fundamental fact that Epstein was a pedophile who ran a blackmail op targeting sexual deviants using young girls for “our greatest ally”.
Tracy confuses the noise for the signal - and epitomizes the expression that “consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”
No, it's just that it exists and she apparently wasn't even aware of it. As an "expert." He clearly says that. That she should have known of it and should have included it and addressed it as part of her reporting. She puts herself out -- she and her publisher -- as a fact claim expert on Epstein. But her claims are not factual; they are speculative. But she wants to sell books. She wants to take your dollar.
Michael's critics told him to shut up and read Whitney Webb's book on Epstein; so he did just that, and he listens to her interviews as they commanded. He's doing the work here of a journalist. And he's finding a lot of discrepancies and is producing receipts that punch holes in much of what she claims a "fact." And somehow a lot of people are pissed off at that.
It is the historical weight of blackmail and corruption which lends Webbs work credence. You will not be able to debunk both books when you have read them a couple of times. One must ask oneself why so much has been concealed from us about Epstein and still remains a mystery.
Michael- maybe your next article you can go into depth about Epstein’s arrest in 2008 because it really blows a hole in the whole agent provocateur theory. I see so many people say yeah you make good points but what about the ‘intelligence angle’ isn’t the sheer fact that the local police department had to go to the Feds for help to get a prosecution prove he wasn’t working for the government? After all, if Epstein was this super secret James Bond agent for the FBI/CIA, how it that his arrest and prosecution was totally off their radar until a local police department told them about him? I think those chain of events really put a dent into the conspiracy theory
Have you really thought through your thesis? Why would the FBI even get involved with a state case? Did they have to go to the Feds? Or did they ask locals to claim that was the case to cover up the rescue of their boy? How often does the FBI step in to rescue a state prosecutor? If it’s a loser, let the locals drowned in their incompetence. Obfuscation disguised as prosecution to lessen the charges tracks in a way more compelling way.
I have resubscribed, sir, this is too interesting and you seem to be the only journalist willing to point out the facts surrounding the current pedophile billionaire witch-hunt. I appreciate you providing links to the source material such as the DOJ report, should make for some intriguing reading.
Whitney Webb's books and interviews contain a lot of data points, and a lot of 'this person, who has ties to the mob' with no further explanation, or 'the BCCI-linked financial entity' but it's not always explained how they're linked. Which doesn't mean they aren't, but I found her books to be less conclusive and more of a starting point for people to do their own research.
Her response to you is pretty honest. Sometimes, people make lame excuses for their public errors (e.g. "I was confused because I took antihistamines"), but she says she's caring for an infant and out of sorts, which is a reasonable excuse—especially because she acknowledges her mistakes and stands corrected.
Whitney correctly identified that your correction of her Bad Faith interview is, itself, in bad faith. The hermeneutics of suspicion implied by all these scare quotes around the word "mistake" prove this. She's also willing to engage with you, anyway, and the explanation that her kids are a higher priority than you is a valid one.
Never took Whitney Webb all that seriously. She just goes around in circles making lots of inferences and connections that seem very tenuous when looked at closely, as Tracey points out when he says she throws spaghetti at the wall.
I don’t understand why she didn’t link or at least give approximate date of publication of Miami Herald report on Epstein being an informant. Most of all I don’t understand why so many left-identified journalists/podcasters/pundits whose work I respect have pushed the Epstein narrative without doing some due diligence. I think there is a feverish social contagion at work in the online political community. . .
Also, I simply have to say as someone who was a ward of the state at age 13 and then lived on my own that I am incredibly weirded out by the discourse on all this. . . .Adult men should not be allowed to exploit underage girls; it’s psychologically damaging, and while a 16 year old has agency the brain is simply not developed enough to fully comprehend the consequences of her actions. But she’s not a fucking child. One is creepy and predatory and shouldn’t be allowed. The other is profane, and truly should be taboo.
Because of Trump. Not a fan of the guy, but pretty clear the Left only cares about this as a weapon to is against Trump. Biden sat on this stuff for four years and nobody in Democratic circles or the Left paid much attention to it during that time ( mostly cause it would harm Clinton) . But I think the very fact that Biden Administration sat on this stuff proves it’s a whimper rather then cry because if there was dynamite in the so called Epstein files against Trump, the Dems would have leaked they shit out of it last year to save Kamala Harris in an October Surprise
While I strongly agree that the Dems and their liberal groupies will rabidly grab at any shred of hearsay and start thrashing it in their teeth if they feel that it might bring down Trump, I don't agree it's a given that if the Epstein files have dirt on Trump the DNC would have released it. If deep DNC insiders like the Clintons are also implicated, the last thing they would want to do is start releasing the bits about Trump, because they know that would open the floodgates and put the Clintons and other powerful Dems in danger.
"It seems far more likely that Rodriguez was instead circling the name of the host of The Apprentice to entice Bradley Edwards to pay him $50,000 for his copy of the book. (Rodriguez was unemployed, and increasingly destitute."
That's a plausible explanation and something I had not considered. Courtney Love, as you may know, denied ever knowing Jeffrey Epstein.
Still, many of Epstein's more famous friends, like Kevin Spacey and Chris Tucker, are not circled in the book, and there's several mundane names that are circled such as Colonial Bank and PB National.
In 2015, Nick Bryant was rather equivocal about what the circles meant:
"Rodriguez, who spent 18 months in prison, died in December after a long illness and never spoke out about the address book, so the precise significance of the names he circled remains fuzzy. But the FBI's case against him makes clear that Rodriguez regarded the address book as crucial to understanding Epstein's crimes; during a conversation with an undercover FBI agent posing as a potential buyer, he "discussed in detail the information contained in the book, and identified important information" to the agent."
Brad Edwards, though, said in his book that Rodriguez "circled the names of others who he claimed were involved with or had knowledge of the sexual molestation operation. I wasn’t in the room when the FBI takedown occurred, so I am not sure to this day of the discussion they had deciphering Alfredo’s handwritten marks on the document. But several of the names of those I had suspected and whom I had subpoenaed months prior were circled."
Julie Brown said that she was told by the lead detective about why the names were circled.
"Joe Recarey, the lead detective, got pieces of the book from Rodriguez. What Rodriguez did was he circled certain names on that list. If you look at the list, what Recarey told me was that Rodriguez circled the names of people who were involved in Epstein’s activities, or knew about what he was doing. For example, Trump is circled in there."
This explanation also seems plausible. But why are Love and Trump circled?
Rodriguez perhaps never took a phone call from Kevin Spacey or Chris Tucker, and therefore wouldn't have had grounds to connect them meaningfully to Epstein. Rodriguez began working at Epstein's house in 2004, and perhaps never knew that Spacey and Tucker traveled to Africa on Epstein's jet with Bill Clinton in 2002. Perhaps Rodriguez was simply unfamiliar with Spacey or Tucker, but had heard of Courtney Love. His depositions indicate he didn't know very much of any significance about Epstein's lifestyle or associates. So he embellished based on whatever limited information he did have, in order to convince Bradley Edwards to buy the book for $50,000. The most plausible explanations for why Rodriguez did or didn't circle any given name are much more banal than people want them to be.
These are minor and trivial mistakes made during a live podcast. Webb's case still stands. Your obsession with her work makes you look like a desperate loser, to be honest.
Good solid investigative journalism here. FYI, it has been your dogged work on the "Summer of Epstein" that finally got me to break down and subscribe. In general, I find you to be alternately irritating and enlightening but lately it's been more of the latter. Thank you for what you do.
I became a paid subscriber after this Michael. I was initially awed by her. The more I listened, the more disenchanted I became. Lots of inference but nothing conclusive. This is how it's done. Great to see someone counter her factually. Also, she's just weird!
Thank you! My only objection would be to maligning her on the ground that she may be "weird." I am definitely weird!
Western Educated Industrial Rich and Democratic. You check four of those boxes. But instead of "Rich" I would write "Poor but fiercely in-your-face independent" or something like that. Messes up the anagram but who cares.
I second this
Spending time on poking holes in the work of the only journalist who even touched this stuff going back 6/7 years is not very wise. Just personally speaking, it was reading Whitney Webb’s stuff that first taught me about the existence of the MEGA group & Les Wexner etc…are petty internecine journalistic wars really worth it at this point? Isn’t staying focused on the big picture..ie the total control over the US gov by Israeli intelligence…a bit more important???
There is nothing worse in journalism, or in holding leaders accountable, than a 'journalist' who exaggerates and even makes sh't up out of thin air, to get more clicks. No thanks.
Whitney Webb is a fantastic journalist. Have you ever read the series she did on Mint Press re Epstein? It’s like the opposite of clickbait. My point here is that Michael Tracy’s attack on her seems awfully nit-picky given the truly extraordinary work she’s done. Let’s compare the two: Webb has done extensive research and writing on the entire circle of info surrounding Epstein. Michael Tracy, by contrast, seems to be spending all his energy trying to undermine her. Who’s the one providing the valuable service to society, Tracy or Webb?
Like the JFK hit, The Epstein case is an example of political archeology. We have what amounts to a fossil record made from the bones of Epstein, Robert Maxwell, Giuffre, and a few others who actually did die in jail. The narrative is almost completely controlled by the perpetrators. From this we have to reconstruct a plausible chain of events leading to our unarguable reality.
The reality is that the Israel lobby is massively powerful, and controls much of the US government and Press. That is the conspiracy hiding in plain sight, and rightly prompting a thousand theories.
Given the daunting imbalance of tiny little Whitney Webb, against this behemoth of power and corruption, I’m inclined to give her a little more wiggle room than I would a quotidian criminal investigation.
exactly; you’ve expressed what I was trying to say, and much better than I would have managed
Long before I even knew who Michael Tracey was, I identified accurately that Webb peddles conspiracy theories to get clicks and views. I’ve repeatedly seen her interviewed about Epstein, in depth. As Tracey says, she makes sh’t up.
I personally believe that Epstein *did* help Israel and the CIA blackmail public officials. Webb’s sloppy bs detracts from the pursuit of uncovering that reality.
I generally agree with you. But Micheal Tracy’s arguments are almost equally clickbait. He’s found a lane for everyone to have him on their shows to be the contrarian. There’s a mountain of evidence, not attributed to Webb, that shows a long history of incredibly sketchy behavior.
Micheal’s initial go to move was to smear Virginia Giuffre. As if one person’s credibility in a situation with this many layers was all the evidence he needed. Almost to the point of pathetic and or suspicious.
His garbage stinks way worse than Whitney. I would pay to see the debate🍿
None of that to me is relevant. What is relevant are the facts. Webb made false statements. Tracey showed that she did so. End of story. Establishing whether Epstein was a spook or not is a question that should be based on solid evidence on the record, not on mere speculation.
The false statement was mysterious death in prison. Turns out, it was shortly after his release from prison. Ooooh. BFD!
The rest was that she was oblivious to a DOJ report. Or maybe she ignored it because the DOJ is not great at holding the greasiest power brokers accountable for their crimes. But hooray for Michael Tracy? He’s an attention seeker trying to keep his garbage journalism relevant on the reputation of Webb. I can’t wait to watch him disappear.
I don't think it is clickbait. Michael produced the receipts. Why doesn't Whitney just respond instead of making excuses as to why she can't?
What receipts? Why respond? He’s re litigating the parts we actually know. Because damages were paid and people plead guilty. People got paid to shut up. But Guiffre was unstable so case dismissed? Webb misspoke about the death of a witness after prison. So, logically she should have a sit down with a fat fuck who is notoriously obnoxious in any format? Are you fucking high? Utter clickbait.
Whatever; you do you. My only point here is that losing time on stuff like this detracts from the main goal. I have never heard Webb make things up, and unlike a lot of journalists, when she makes a mistake, she admits it
That Webb exaggerates, so much, and so often (she does - I've been watching her do so for years) is a real problem to winning real justice and change in cases of corruption like this.
As a longtime reader of Webb, I have to ask: if she is so "fantastic," why doesn't she just address his questions? He's posted the receipts. Why won't she address? Too busy, too tired, too many babies?
Really?
I'm looking at Webb under a whole new light now.
Tracey.
Journalists correcting other journalists is the best path to truth for consumers, both in terms of keeping them honest to start with and fixing a false record in the long run for posterity.
Correction: there *is* something worse. And what is that? It is the total domination of one government by a foreign entity. Especially when said foreign entity used blackmail to achieve its goals. That is MUCH worse. Which is why Michael Tracey is actually doing a disservice to the ultimate goal here, which is to illuminate the role played by Epstein and co in influencing the past admins…In other words, time to sit down and shut up and let the truth come out
I said nothing worse in *journalism*.
👍
This is a textbook example of affirming the consequent. The entire issue at hand is that the very basis of your conclusion is a fabrication.
Oh honey no; no one is coming to the conclusion that the US gov is under Israeli control just because of the Epstein case. Believe me, it’s just one more nail in the coffin for those of us following it. So no, no “affirming the consequent” here
Nice. I think we all need to go pop some popcorn before reading this. Been waiting for somebody to push back against Whitney whose every sentence and word is taken as ex cathedra by alt news sources
No kidding! I upgraded to paid. This made my day!
Whitney Webb makes leaps about connections or histories that can seem that she "makes it up" but I think a more accurate thing to say is that she "believes it is better sourced than it is." A good example is from the Briahna Joy interview when she said:
"...a lot of the '60s culture, counter culture had was engineered uh for uh various purposes. But I'm not an expert on that, so I don't really want to speculate too much."
That is a belief that has been promulgated for many years within conspiracy circles but especially by religious people who seek to discredit the counterculture of the 1960s as a controlled OP by the CIA in concert with other rich and powerful people. What for? That depends on the person who promotes that theory ranging from wanting to make drugs widely available in order to bring down the antiwar movement to more esoteric ideas about Satan. I sourced it to Lyndon Larouche who is often the original source of many of these types of theories. Larouche typically would make claims within his many theories about "how the world is really run from behind the scenes" which when investigated are easily disproven. But since he has many devoted acolytes on the Internet with podcasts and other forms of communication his ideas have been shared far and wide ever since the start of the Internet--and from I can tell his acolytes usually do not check to see if the veracity of his claims hold-up to scrutiny. For example:
Larouche stated that the counterculture of the '60s was created and controlled by Tavistock/British Intelligence. But Larouche didn't invent that idea, he imbibed it from the John Birch Society whose writers in the 1960s were an influence on all subsequent ideas of a worldwide conspiracy of British elites. They were influenced by the writings of Carroll Quigley--who was the first to write about the Rhodes financed Round Table groups and their influence on American elites.
Larouche said that a handful of religious groups that had become popular in the counterculture of the '60s--The Moonies, The Children of God, and the Hare Krishnas (and also the Beatles!) were created and controlled by British Intelligence to bring on the destruction of all that is good and holy.
He had no facts to back that up. He had extrapolated those ideas from a base set of other facts. There were people involved in the early days of the counterculture who had connections to government security agencies through the MK Ultra--LSD experiments, like Ken Kesey and other famous counterculture people who had volunteered to test LSD. There was nothing conspiratorial to what those people were doing though, drugs were popular in the Beatnik scene of that era which they were a part of in the later 1950s and early 60s. LSD and Mescaline had developed a devoted following in the Beatnik scene which was popular in the elite colleges where trust funded children of elites were free to do what they wanted because they were rich and from famous families. LSD became an important part of that Beat scene. In the 1960s children of elite families, some with connections to government and security services, were taking LSD and becoming hippies after first going through a beatnik phase in the later 1950s and early '60s.
Even the Beatles it is speculated named themselves after the Beat scene and they also became hippies after taking LSD. It was common for rich young people in college to drop acid which would then open their eyes to a mystical side of reality. They would commonly get into the mystical philosophies of eastern religions because in 1965 a new immigration law passed which ended the restricting of people from Asia from coming to America. Indians started to come to America and brought with them their religions and gurus right at the start of the counterculture in 1965-66. Rich kids were dropping acid, playing and dancing to new music inspired by acid, and meeting a bunch of gurus from India. That is the origin of the counterculture. Those rich hippies (Steve Jobs was a hippie living on a Yoga commune farm owned by a rich hippie friend) would start the environmental movement and the Whole Earth "back to the land" movement also.
Matt Ehret who I think is the source of Whitney Webb's statement about the CIA and the counterculture, was a member of the Larouche group, and he promotes similar types of mistaken histories as Larouche. For example, Matt said that The Grateful Dead, who were leaders of the counterculture, were a creation of The Tavistock Institute/British Intelligence, to help bring about the counterculture. The proof for that, he claimed, was an extrapolated idea from a basic fact. He said a friend of Jerry Garcia named Alan Trist in 1961 introduced Garcia to what would become his main lyricist, Robert Hunter. Alan Trist according to Matt, was the controlling factor behind the Grateful Dead in service to British Intelligence/Tavistock. That sounded odd to me so I researched it.
According to Grateful Dead biographers Alan Trist left England as a teenager right before he was to go to college in England on a trip to Palo Alto, California with his dad. His dad was indeed a director at Tavistock and had some business at Stanford University for a short time. While Alan was there, he randomly met Jerry Garcia at a house party, and they became fast friends. They then both met Robert Hunter (the lyricist of the GD) and all 3 became close friends. Alan then left and went back to England to go to college--after only hanging out with Garcia and Hunter in 1961 for a short time years before the Grateful Dead was created.
He wouldn't hear from Jerry Garcia again until 1970 when Garcia asked him to come back and I guess share in his success as a rock star. And Alan, being enamored that his old friend from 9 years earlier had become a world famous rock star, did just that. He has worked for the GD ever since.
The problem with Matt's telling of Alan Trist working for the British, is that the Grateful Dead was formed in 1965, 4 years after Alan Trist left for England. For a scant few months in 1961 he hung out with Garcia and Hunter. He never had any contact with Garcia again till 1970. In the interim the 1960s counterculture was almost over by the time Alan Trist had reconnected with Garcia in 1970. The Haight-Ashbury scene was over, the Grateful Dead had been famous leaders of the counterculture for years before Alan Trist joined them.
Matt didn't do the research. He must have read or heard that an executive in the Grateful Dead organization had met Garcia before the band started and that his dad was a director of Tavistock. Matt then extrapolated that as a proof that Tavistock created and controlled not just the Grateful Dead, but also the 1960s counterculture.
There was another time I checked what Matt said because I didn't think it sounded right. He is a big fan of FDR and tells us that FDR was an enemy of the elites of his time. Matt said, as proof of that, that after the stock market crashed in 1929 Roosevelt as president went after the bankers who caused the crash and the Great Depression. Matt said: "thousands of bankers" who were responsible for the stock market crash and the Great Depression were convicted and went to jail--convicted by the "Pecora Commission" working under Roosevelt, Matt's hero, According to Matt.
Except it is completely wrong. He got that from Larouche.
Larouche had named a rich elite banker who supposedly was convicted by the Pecora Commission and then went to jail: Edward "Jock" Whitney.
The problem is---no one was convicted by the Pecora Commision. No one went to jail, aaaand there is no Edward "Jock" Whitney.
A banker named Richard Whitney (a relative of John Hay "Jock" Whitney) went to jail 9 years later for something else entirely. He embezzled a lot of money and famously went to jail for 3 years, the FTX scandal of his day--but it had nothing to do with the investigation into the stock market crash. In later writings the Larouche people pretended that Larouche had said "Richard Whitney," but they still insisted he went to jail and had something to do with the stock market crash, when he didn't. Look it up.
The Pecora Commission in reality showed the opposite of what Matt was trying to prove about FDR, that he had declared war against the elites by jailing them, thousands of them. In reality *no one* went to jail for the crash of 1929. The Pecora Commission put a couple people on trial, but they were let off because what they did was not illegal at that time. They admitted to doing things which are now illegal, but those things were made illegal after the Pecora Commission. They didn't get convicted and no one went to jail.
I'm not saying Matt is always wrong, just that he can be sloppy and speculative, and he can take other people's work as true without first checking them out carefully--because it serves the narrative he promotes, i.e., British elites have ruled over America for a long time.
If that was true--then why did American elites force English elites to call off their war to steal the Suez canal? The British were even threatened by President Eisenhower with the sinking of their economy and their ships if they didn't end the "Suez Crisis" in 1956. How does that fit into the idea that Britain has been ruling America for a very long time?
Whitney Webb's books are not centered on Epstein even though that is the perception of those who haven't read it, he is more of a jumping off point into something much different than illicit sex. What it really is, is a compilation of the work of many previous authors who did a variety of investigations into the intersection of organized crime, politics, and big business--and her own research. She can make mistakes, but most of what she wrote is stuff you can read from authors like mob researcher Gus Russo, the political writing team of Sally Denton and Roger Morris, and other respectable researchers and authors.
This is what she’s talking on
https://open.substack.com/pub/juli2a5i4/p/the-net-the-edge-the-unabomber-and?r=1pk0jl&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
This series has greatly informed me on the Epstein story. Thank you.
So you are holding up a DOJ report as something that is to be believed? In 2025!?
And it’s kind of his “Gotch ya”! Micheal Tracy is a bloviating retard that loves to wear out his opponents with interruptions and filibuster. What pos. The headline alone is the most clickbait bullshit ever. I think I will subscribe merely to ridicule this pompous never been.
Again, his gotcha is a report from the DOJ which has proven consistently to be corrupt and incompetent over the last several decades.
Further, none of his points change the fundamental fact that Epstein was a pedophile who ran a blackmail op targeting sexual deviants using young girls for “our greatest ally”.
Tracy confuses the noise for the signal - and epitomizes the expression that “consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”
Michael Tracy Is A Jewish BUTTFAGGOT.
No, it's just that it exists and she apparently wasn't even aware of it. As an "expert." He clearly says that. That she should have known of it and should have included it and addressed it as part of her reporting. She puts herself out -- she and her publisher -- as a fact claim expert on Epstein. But her claims are not factual; they are speculative. But she wants to sell books. She wants to take your dollar.
Michael's critics told him to shut up and read Whitney Webb's book on Epstein; so he did just that, and he listens to her interviews as they commanded. He's doing the work here of a journalist. And he's finding a lot of discrepancies and is producing receipts that punch holes in much of what she claims a "fact." And somehow a lot of people are pissed off at that.
It is the historical weight of blackmail and corruption which lends Webbs work credence. You will not be able to debunk both books when you have read them a couple of times. One must ask oneself why so much has been concealed from us about Epstein and still remains a mystery.
Michael- maybe your next article you can go into depth about Epstein’s arrest in 2008 because it really blows a hole in the whole agent provocateur theory. I see so many people say yeah you make good points but what about the ‘intelligence angle’ isn’t the sheer fact that the local police department had to go to the Feds for help to get a prosecution prove he wasn’t working for the government? After all, if Epstein was this super secret James Bond agent for the FBI/CIA, how it that his arrest and prosecution was totally off their radar until a local police department told them about him? I think those chain of events really put a dent into the conspiracy theory
Have you really thought through your thesis? Why would the FBI even get involved with a state case? Did they have to go to the Feds? Or did they ask locals to claim that was the case to cover up the rescue of their boy? How often does the FBI step in to rescue a state prosecutor? If it’s a loser, let the locals drowned in their incompetence. Obfuscation disguised as prosecution to lessen the charges tracks in a way more compelling way.
I have resubscribed, sir, this is too interesting and you seem to be the only journalist willing to point out the facts surrounding the current pedophile billionaire witch-hunt. I appreciate you providing links to the source material such as the DOJ report, should make for some intriguing reading.
Whitney Webb's books and interviews contain a lot of data points, and a lot of 'this person, who has ties to the mob' with no further explanation, or 'the BCCI-linked financial entity' but it's not always explained how they're linked. Which doesn't mean they aren't, but I found her books to be less conclusive and more of a starting point for people to do their own research.
Her response to you is pretty honest. Sometimes, people make lame excuses for their public errors (e.g. "I was confused because I took antihistamines"), but she says she's caring for an infant and out of sorts, which is a reasonable excuse—especially because she acknowledges her mistakes and stands corrected.
Whitney correctly identified that your correction of her Bad Faith interview is, itself, in bad faith. The hermeneutics of suspicion implied by all these scare quotes around the word "mistake" prove this. She's also willing to engage with you, anyway, and the explanation that her kids are a higher priority than you is a valid one.
Never took Whitney Webb all that seriously. She just goes around in circles making lots of inferences and connections that seem very tenuous when looked at closely, as Tracey points out when he says she throws spaghetti at the wall.
I don’t understand why she didn’t link or at least give approximate date of publication of Miami Herald report on Epstein being an informant. Most of all I don’t understand why so many left-identified journalists/podcasters/pundits whose work I respect have pushed the Epstein narrative without doing some due diligence. I think there is a feverish social contagion at work in the online political community. . .
Also, I simply have to say as someone who was a ward of the state at age 13 and then lived on my own that I am incredibly weirded out by the discourse on all this. . . .Adult men should not be allowed to exploit underage girls; it’s psychologically damaging, and while a 16 year old has agency the brain is simply not developed enough to fully comprehend the consequences of her actions. But she’s not a fucking child. One is creepy and predatory and shouldn’t be allowed. The other is profane, and truly should be taboo.
Because of Trump. Not a fan of the guy, but pretty clear the Left only cares about this as a weapon to is against Trump. Biden sat on this stuff for four years and nobody in Democratic circles or the Left paid much attention to it during that time ( mostly cause it would harm Clinton) . But I think the very fact that Biden Administration sat on this stuff proves it’s a whimper rather then cry because if there was dynamite in the so called Epstein files against Trump, the Dems would have leaked they shit out of it last year to save Kamala Harris in an October Surprise
Dems do not dare speak out against the Clintons at any time.
While I strongly agree that the Dems and their liberal groupies will rabidly grab at any shred of hearsay and start thrashing it in their teeth if they feel that it might bring down Trump, I don't agree it's a given that if the Epstein files have dirt on Trump the DNC would have released it. If deep DNC insiders like the Clintons are also implicated, the last thing they would want to do is start releasing the bits about Trump, because they know that would open the floodgates and put the Clintons and other powerful Dems in danger.
"It seems far more likely that Rodriguez was instead circling the name of the host of The Apprentice to entice Bradley Edwards to pay him $50,000 for his copy of the book. (Rodriguez was unemployed, and increasingly destitute."
That's a plausible explanation and something I had not considered. Courtney Love, as you may know, denied ever knowing Jeffrey Epstein.
Still, many of Epstein's more famous friends, like Kevin Spacey and Chris Tucker, are not circled in the book, and there's several mundane names that are circled such as Colonial Bank and PB National.
In 2015, Nick Bryant was rather equivocal about what the circles meant:
"Rodriguez, who spent 18 months in prison, died in December after a long illness and never spoke out about the address book, so the precise significance of the names he circled remains fuzzy. But the FBI's case against him makes clear that Rodriguez regarded the address book as crucial to understanding Epstein's crimes; during a conversation with an undercover FBI agent posing as a potential buyer, he "discussed in detail the information contained in the book, and identified important information" to the agent."
Brad Edwards, though, said in his book that Rodriguez "circled the names of others who he claimed were involved with or had knowledge of the sexual molestation operation. I wasn’t in the room when the FBI takedown occurred, so I am not sure to this day of the discussion they had deciphering Alfredo’s handwritten marks on the document. But several of the names of those I had suspected and whom I had subpoenaed months prior were circled."
Julie Brown said that she was told by the lead detective about why the names were circled.
"Joe Recarey, the lead detective, got pieces of the book from Rodriguez. What Rodriguez did was he circled certain names on that list. If you look at the list, what Recarey told me was that Rodriguez circled the names of people who were involved in Epstein’s activities, or knew about what he was doing. For example, Trump is circled in there."
This explanation also seems plausible. But why are Love and Trump circled?
Rodriguez perhaps never took a phone call from Kevin Spacey or Chris Tucker, and therefore wouldn't have had grounds to connect them meaningfully to Epstein. Rodriguez began working at Epstein's house in 2004, and perhaps never knew that Spacey and Tucker traveled to Africa on Epstein's jet with Bill Clinton in 2002. Perhaps Rodriguez was simply unfamiliar with Spacey or Tucker, but had heard of Courtney Love. His depositions indicate he didn't know very much of any significance about Epstein's lifestyle or associates. So he embellished based on whatever limited information he did have, in order to convince Bradley Edwards to buy the book for $50,000. The most plausible explanations for why Rodriguez did or didn't circle any given name are much more banal than people want them to be.
You’re A Jewish BUTTFAGGOT.
Didn't you make up that Maxine Waters thing?
These are minor and trivial mistakes made during a live podcast. Webb's case still stands. Your obsession with her work makes you look like a desperate loser, to be honest.
Not a coincidence