Thread by @AliAdair22: "🧵2.1 THREAD—Why Did Jeffrey Epstein Get Such a Lenient Sentence? Part 2—Robert Maxwell, Superspy Ghislaine Maxwell, JE's close companion 4 m […]"

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🧵2.1 THREAD—Why Did Jeffrey Epstein Get Such a Lenient Sentence?

*⃣ Part 2—Robert Maxwell, Superspy

Ghislaine Maxwell, JE's close companion 4 many yrs who was accused of procuring girls for him, also has strong ties to the intelligence world.

Her father was Robert Maxwell.

2.2 Arguably, the most culpable of Jeffrey Epstein’s co-conspirators is Ghislaine Maxwell, his friend and former girlfriend, who is alleged to have been Epstein’s “madam,” who helped him get and keep girls, but she also allegedly had sex with the girls and groomed them.

2.3 Yet she has seemed to disappear into the background. See Part 3 for more background on Ghislaine Maxwell.

🖼️Photo by: Richard Young, Shutterstock, Rex Features.

2.4 Where this story starts intersecting with U.S. national security is when one delves into the experiences her father Robert, who was trusted with Israeli state secrets about their top secret nuclear weapon program & the Russian coup of 1991, involving the KGB, among others.

2.5 As hypothesized in Part 1, the reason the federal prosecutors waived Epstein’s charges might have had something to do with our country’s national security.

2.6 But today, Epstein is recovering from injuries sustained in recent days when he was found semiconscious with marks on his neck in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan.

⚰️Epstein is now on suicide watch.

tinyurl.com/y647m35a

2.7 According to NBC, Two sources said that Epstein tried to hang himself, another said that his injuries weren't serious and that he might have "staged an attack or a suicide attempt to get a transfer to another facility."

2.8 Another inmate at the federal detention facility, Nicholas Tartaglione, a former police officer in New York accused of killing 4 men in a cocaine conspiracy, was questioned, but claimed innocence. Via @NBC

🖼️Metropolitan Correctional Center, NYC. Photo: Jim Henderson.

@nbc 2.9 Robert Maxwell, nicknamed “Captain Bob” for his signature bow tie and cap, was a publishing magnate in the U.K.: he first built up Pergamon Press.

🖼️Photo by: Bride Lane Library/Popperfoto/Getty Images

2.10 He bought the British Printing Corporation, Mirror Group Newspapers, the New York Daily News, The Racing Times, & MacMillan Publishers among others.

His archrival was Rupert Murdoch.

September 2010, 5th Important Dinner 4 Women, NYC. Photo by: Rex Features via Daily Mail.

2.11 Maxwell was described as a “super tycoon, a one-man conglomerate who owned newspapers, publishing, television, printing and electronic databases from one end of the earth to another...

2.12...They knew his name and power in a hundred countries where his assets, on paper, were a staggering £4.2 billion—a figure he never tired of quoting.”

📕Via Robert Maxwell, Israel's Superspy, The Life and Murder of a Media Mogul by Gordon Thomas and Martin Dillon

2.13 Maxwell was also described as “theatrical, egocentric & vain beyond measure. But to his Israelis he had the chutzpah no other Jew in living memory had displayed."

📕Via Robert Maxwell, Israel's Superspy

2.14 Maxwell was born under the name of Jan Ludvik Hoch in the Slovakian village of Solotvino, the son of Jewish farm laborers. The war possibly kept him from being a farmer himself.

🗣️He was quoted as saying “Until the age of 8, I had no shoes.”

tinyurl.com/y5jfwzze

2.15 His parents sent him to Budapest with a cousin in 1939 because they thought he would be safer there.

They were right.

Anti-Semitism had become pervasive in Czechoslovakia.

🇫🇷 He escaped to France and while in Marseille, he joined the Czechoslovakian Army.

2.16 His family was slaughtered at Auschwitz.

📕Via Robert Maxwell, Israel's Superspy, The Life and Murder of a Media Mogul by Gordon Thomas and Martin Dillon

2.17 Maxwell made his way across France with the Czech Legion, arriving in Liverpool in 1940. At first, he joined the Pioneer Corps, the part of the British Army that let in “aliens.”

Via @guardian

2.18 But then he legally changed his name from Jan Ludvik Hoch to Ian Robert Maxwell, added a year to his age and signed up for the main British Army.

2.19 While in the British Army in World War II, he was promoted to Captain & received the Military Cross, the third-level military decoration awarded to British Army officers & other ranks for “an act or acts of exemplary gallantry during active operations against the enemy...@AP

2.20...on land” at the Dutch-Germany border after the invasion of Normandy. Maxwell: “I refused an order to retreat because my mates had been captured and I had to go to free them. But I was young and foolish then."

2.21 In later years, Maxwell was known to wear that medal when hobnobbing with Washington elites, most notably Senator John Tower who invited him to cocktail parties that were attended by George Schultz, Casper Weinberger, Ed Meese and George H.W. Bush.

Via Superspy

2.21 As World War II wound down, Maxwell extended his proficiency in foreign languages by learning Russian "and after the war, such skills became the key to his advancement in British intelligence."

📕Via The Secret War Against the Jews by John Loftus & Mark Aarons

2.22 Officially, Maxwell served in occupied Germany with the British Foreign Office as head of the press section in Berlin.

But unofficially he was sent to Spandau Prison in Germany to interrogate prisoners, important Nazis, including...

📕Via The Secret War Against the Jews

2.23...the custodian of Hitler's will, the SS adjutant to Martin Bormann, Hjalmar Schacht, the financial wizard of the Third Reich & Friedrich Flick, the Nazi steel tycoon, who later became the richest man in W Germany after serving 7 yrs for war crimes & crimes against humanity.

2.24 According to Maxwell biographer Joe Haines, the most significant interview was with German intelligence officer Herman Giskes. From this interview, using his skillful language skills, Maxwell correctly deduced that British intelligence had...

📕Via Robert Maxwell/J. Haines

2.25..."fed the Free French false information about D-Day and then deliberately parachuted French volunteers into German hands to be tortured."

📕Via The Secret War Against the Jews

2.26 This clever reasoning reportedly convinced British intelligence that Maxwell had to be recruited. Maxwell was eager & assigned to the British Control Commission for Germany, then appointed the British representative to supervise elections in the Soviet sector of Berlin.

2.27 Later, sources say that Maxwell was in fact under cover & had been ordered by the British Secret Service “to set up a series of publishing firms as a means of identifying German scientists for possible recruitment.”

📕Via The Secret War Against the Jews

2.28 In 1946, the British 🇬🇧 were also looking for a way to beef up their publishing arm to match their first-class abilities in science.

2.29 So the government’s solution was to direct the publishing house Butterworths, apparently a “front” for MI6, to pair with the German publisher Springer & hire Maxwell to help manage the co. called Springer Verlag in Germany, a scientific journal and textbook publishing co.

2.30 Springer Verlag was rife with intelligence agents: former and current.

One such British intelligence person, a “shadowy and influential person” was Frederick Vanden Heuvel with whom Maxwell shared tips about German scientists to materialize from the Naxi underground...

2.31...and in return, “the count” supplied him with juicy pieces of information. In 1951, Maxwell got control of the company, renamed it Pergamon Press, moved it to Britain and rapidly attained great success.

wikispooks.com/wiki/Frederick…

2.32 After Maxwell’s death in 1991, The Mirror, Maxwell’s own newspaper, wrote some scathing articles about him because the news emerged that he had embezzled money from his employees’ pension fund in order to keep his publishing empire afloat.

🖼️Photo: @DailyMailUK

2.33 The Mirror printed an interview with a former secretary, who said Maxwell seduced her and “insisted that she call him ‘Mr. Maxwell’ even when they were in bed.”

2.34 It was also known that Maxwell was selling assets to meet a $750 million payment due in October 1992.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Ma…

2.35 In a very controversial press conference less than 2 weeks before his death, Maxwell had been accused—along with his editor Nick Davies—of being spies for Israel’s national intelligence agency, Mossad, by author Seymour Hersh.

2.36 Hersh's book, The Samson Option: Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy, was being released at that time (much more about this in Part 5).

Maxwell sued Hersh for libel, but Hersh ultimately prevailed.

2.37 Accordingly, newspaper articles were also printed about Maxwell being an operative for Mossad, the UK , Russia and possibly more countries.

2.38 And in 1994, John Loftus and Mark Aarons' book, The Secret War Against the Jews: How Western Espionage Betrayed the Jewish People in which they found that Maxwell was a crucial liaison as early as 1948 between Czechoslovak anti-Stalinist leaders and Israel...

2.39...helping them prevail in the 1948 Arab—Israeli War. Loftus and Aarons alleged that Maxwell’s covert help in smuggling aircraft parts into Israel led to their having air supremacy in the 1948 War of Independence.

2.40 1948 was the year that British Mandate expired and the State of Israel was formed.

2.41 Maxwell’s motives for helping Israel appeared to be deeply connected to his grief over the death of his parents, who died at the hands of Nazis and accordingly, his desire to enable Soviet Jews to emigrate to Israel.

2.42 FBI files reveal that there was an investigation—as early as 1953—into Maxwell’s and his then-partner Kurt Wallersteiner’s activities in regards to their scientific publishing company. After extensive investigations, the FBI closed that case in 1964.

2.43 A memo written in February of 1955—nearly ten years before the case was officially closed—declares after an “extensive investigation regarding the subject’s travels, activities, interests & contacts in the U.S. during 1954...

2.44 ”revealing no suspicious requests for information,” the case was closed due to lack of evidence.

The FBI appeared to be concerned mainly with Maxwell's contact with Russian scientists.

However, there was still a significant amount of information added for 10 years after.

2.45 Later in 1984, the FBI interviewed Sue Rugge, the President of Information on Demand, an information and research service company located in San Francisco, near the location where Maxwell’s daughter Isabel lived.

FBI memo pp. 1-2

2.46 Isabel Maxwell was living there at the time with her Bulgarian husband, Dale Djerassi, the son of Carl Djerassi, the scientist who invented the birth-control pill in the 1980s.

FBI memo pp. 3-4

2.47 Rugge revealed that the Lenin State Library had been her client for at least 10 years and acknowledged that her company gave her clients access to numerous U.S. government databases. Maxwell acquired her company and managed it through Pergamon Press.

FBI memo p. 5

2.48 Later it was discovered that two technicians from Sandia Laboratories had tipped off the FBI (more on this in Part 6).

2.49 An FBI memo from San Francisco to New York dated August 23, 1989, clearly states that “source information” reveal that Robert Maxwell and Kurt Wallersteiner, partners in the Austrian firm, Anglo-Continental Exchange Ltd. London,...

2.50...a scientific publishing and book selling company, were “ambitious and unscrupulous businessmen who had allegedly been recruited by the Soviet Intelligence Service (SIS) for espionage purposes.”

2.51 The file was marked “RUC,” meaning “referred upon completion to office of origin,” and a memo dated June 29, 1984 to the FBI Director states “San Francisco taking no further action.”

FBI memo pp. 1-2

2.52 Why the case was vigorously pursued, then suddenly dropped twice is a mystery. But in 1984, it is possible the case was dropped because of Maxwell’s close relationship with Senator John Tower.

FBI memo pp. 3-5

2.53 Sue Rugge, the former President of Information on Demand, died of complications from a perforated ulcer in 1999 at age 58.

sfgate.com/news/article/S…

2.54 In any case, publishing scientists’ work, showcasing scientific discoveries, experiments, and advances in technology gave Maxwell a unique insight as he had his finger on the pulse of valuable information that intelligence agencies from every country covet.

2.55 Maxwell’s unusual relationships with Eastern Bloc countries & the Soviet Union were well documented and encouraged by the British intelligence agency MI6, who used his publishing presses to disclose scientific works by...

2.56...Russian & Eastern European scientists as well as his ability to speak nine languages—sometimes inflated to eleven.

After the war, Maxwell spent 6 years working in the House of Commons for the Labor Party.

🖼️Photo: @guardian

2.57 He then started building his publishing empire, starting with Pergamon Press which he built, after purchasing a company in Germany.

🖼️Photo: @Guardian

2.58 He later helped promote relations between Israel and Russia and was alleged to have laundered money from arms sales to Iran in the 1980s, according to Seymour Hersh's book and many newspaper articles written at the time.

Via @guardian

@guardian 2.59 But Maxwell had many valuable, important contacts as he reigned supreme over a formidable publishing empire and was thought to be a billionaire.

2.60 Regarding Margaret Thatcher in her prime, Maxwell “liked nothing better than calling her to say what the main story in his morning Daily Mirror was going to be.”

🖼️Photo: Hamish Campbell via @edinburghpaper

@edinburghpaper 2.61 In 1991, Robert Maxwell purchased the then-ailing @NYDailyNews. Although Carolyn Hinsey, who worked as his assistant there described him well in @NYMag: “His temper was as bad as I had feared, but he also had a sense of humor that surprised me...

Photo: Cover @NYMag 3.15.91

2.62 Carolyn Hinsey (cont'd)

...He could be a gluttonous pig when eating alone, but charming at public dinners.”

2.63 Hinsey, who is over six feet tall, was told to call Robert Maxwell "R.M." and recounted his love of Clint Eastwood films, although she said he would frequently fall asleep during them.

2.64 Former assistant Hinsey also detailed Maxwell’s diet: “He started his day with two or three bowls of cereal, a pot of coffee and a whole watermelon...

2.65 Hinsey (cont'd):

...he ate fresh fruit, chicken soup (“Jewish penicillin”), cheeses, and chocolate bars throughout the day, and for dinner usually enjoyed $200-worth of Chinese food…one time we walked into the living room as he was finishing an entire watermelon...

2.66 Hinsey (cont'd):

...He had spit all the seeds onto the hotel carpet in a perfect semicircle in front of his chair.”

2.67 At the end of her @NYMag piece, Carolyn Hinsey recounted a scary conversation she had with Robert Maxwell about a friend of hers who died in a boating accident.

Before she left for the day, he demanded to know what had happened.

2.68 Hinsey told Maxwell that her friend and her husband were trapped at sea during a hurricane.

🌬️“What hurricane?” Maxwell asked.

“Hurricane Bob.”

“You’re making that up,” Maxwell said, but she wasn’t.

“We had Hurricane Bob and the boat capsized."

2.69 Hinsey's friend was kept afloat for 24 hours, "but she was thin and she died of hypothermia in the cold water.”

🦗🦗There was a pause.

“That will never happen to us, will it Tiny?" Maxwell quipped.

2.70 The former Prime Minister of the UK, John Major testified after Maxwell’s death that Maxwell had provided him “valuable insights” into the “1991 Soviet coup d’état” against Mikhail Gorbachev in the summer of 1991, organized by 8 members of the Communist party...

@Guardian

@guardian 2.71...but orchestrated by the head of the KGB, Vladimir Kryuchkov, and other senior Soviet officials, behind the scenes.

@guardian 2.72 The coup that was “hatched at a bathhouse in downtown Moscow” failed, but weakened Gorbachev, while strengthening Boris Yeltsin & the Soviet Union ultimately collapsed on December 25, 1991 soon after Maxwell’s death.

nytimes.com/2011/08/21/opi…

@guardian 2.73 The Guardian alleges that Maxwell was used by the former Soviet elite—including KBG agents, to shift large sums of money to the west, including Lichtenstein. More on Maxwell’s Russian and Eastern European connections in Part 5.

@guardian 2.74 Robert Maxwell died very mysteriously at age 68 (June 10, 1923-November 5, 1991). He was last seen on his 180’ yacht Lady Ghislaine, named after his daughter and purchased from Saudi weapons dealer Adnan Khashoggi’s brother.

tinyurl.com/y5h769tg

2.75 Maxwell was found floating in the Atlantic Ocean, having either been pushed, fallen or jumped overboard.

At 4:25am, in the early morning of November 5, 1991, a crew member saw him strolling on the deck. That was the last time he was seen.

🖼️Photo: @Independent

2.76 At 4:45am, he called and asked for the air conditioning to be turned down.

A call for Maxwell came in at 10:30AM, but the caller did not want to disturb Maxwell.

2.77 A more urgent call came in at 11AM & when there was no reply, Raskin, the captain, decided to check his stateroom. When he found him missing, he did a thorough check of the boat. He repeated the check three times and when he could not find Maxwell, he made an emergency call.

2.78 Spain’s air sea rescue service (SAR) first spotted the body off the southwest coast of Grand Canary at 17:55 hours or 5:55PM local time and rescued it at 18:18 hours or 6:18PM. However, there were errors in reporting the exact location of the body.

2.79 On the evening of November 5, 1991, Maxwell’s nude body—face up with his arms and leg splayed—was found floating in the Atlantic Ocean.

🗺️🗺️Maps via @Guardian & @AP

@guardian @AP 2.80 It usually took 2-3 days on the average to find a body back then, but it only took them 13 hours to find Maxwell and there were no signs of violence, according to the first reported observations.

Via @ObsMagazine

2.81 In a slightly conflicting report in “Robert Maxwell, Superspy,” Maxwell’s feet were together and he “looked as if he had been crucified on some invisible cross.”

2.82 From the very beginning there was pressure on the pathology team to expedite the autopsy results so that Maxwell’s body could be flown to Jerusalem before the Jewish Sabbath for a religious funeral on Sunday, November 10, 1991.

2.83 The inquest ruled that death was by a heart attack combined with accidental drowning although three pathologists could not agree on the cause of death.

However, the lead pathologist, Dr. Carlos Lopez de Lamela ruled out poisoning or violence.

📰Via @smh

2.84 @theage quoted a doctor in Nottingham said that it would have been "extremely unlikely" that if Maxwell had a heart attack that he would have ended up in the sea. More likely, Dr. David Gray said, his legs would have buckled & he would have fallen downwards.

2.85 Spanish Judge Isabel Oliva closed the case after studying the report. The family had 10 days to appeal, but declined to do so.

2.86 On January 20, 1996, The Guardian published an article with an interview with the Captain that revealed some more details about Maxwell's death.

2.87 In the article, the Captain, Angus “Gus” Rankin, pointed out that as Maxwell was retiring for the night, he asked the stewardess to lock his stateroom door from the inside and depart through the bathroom. The bathroom led to the area Maxwell used as his office.

2.88 When he arrived on the scene, Rankin found the door to the office locked from the inside (“because that’s the only way to lock it.”) His main stateroom door was locked from the outside when they realized Maxwell was missing.

🖼️Photo: @Guardian

@guardian 2.89 Rankin deduced that Maxwell had to take the key with him when he left since it was locked from the outside. “Closing the door, locking it, taking the key out and having that presence of mind at that point to do that...

2.90 Rankin (cont'd):...There’d be no reason to lock the door from the outside if he were planning to go back in.

🔑And why take the key?

Was this done to maybe keep us crew members to think that he was still inside? I think so.”

2.91 At a press conference on her father’s yacht, Ghislaine Maxwell announced that she thought her father was murdered & in February 1997, she reiterated that belief again in @ObserverUK .

Photo: @AP

2.92 Ghislaine Maxwell on her father's death:

At a press conference after her father's death a reporter asked her "How did your father die?"

Ghislaine answered in a loud, clear voice, "I think he was murdered."

📕Via Robert Maxwell, Superspy

2.93 In February 1997, Ghislaine Maxwell said:

“He did not commit suicide. That was not consistent with his character. I think he was murdered.”

Via @ObserverUK

@ObserverUK 2.94 A family friend doubted he could have fallen off the side of the ship underneath the banisters because he was a portly man and could not have fit under the banisters.

The same family member doubted he could fall over the banisters either without hitting the a deck below.

@ObserverUK 2.95 @Guardian did several in-depth articles about the death inquiry and pointed out that a 1 millimeter fissure was found behind Maxwell’s left ear.

Could this have been the site of a lethal injection?

2.96 The reporter estimated that Maxwell’s body was in the water for about 13 hours, yet it did not have burns on it from the sun (again he was naked), nor were there wrinkles that develop on the skin from long exposure to water.

2.97 Another anomaly from the Civil Guard report: it describes the dead body as “white male, with athletic build and prominent belly, chestnut hair—possibly dyed—with a slight widow’s peak, 1 metre, 90 centimetres tall and weighing 130-140 kilos.”

🗞️Via @guardian

2.98 The forensic experts used similar wording.

👱‍♂️Yet Maxwell’s hair was jet black and probably dyed, not “chestnut” as the report stated.

🌊Could the sea have washed the dye away?

📰Via @guardian

2.99 The reporter John Hooper interviewed an official in the Canaries whose job led him to see numerous bodies pulled out of the water.

He said that the long-term effect of the sea on dyed hair was “usually to ‘burn’ the hair, but not change its color.”

🗞️Via @guardian

@guardian 2.100 The forensic Institute did need a positive identification of the body so they asked for permission to take a dental mold of the body recovered. They were refused by the family on “humanitarian grounds.”

2.101 There was also an attempt to match his fingerprints—the only available for comparison were from Maxwell’s army days.

The Civil Guard didn’t make a match with his fingerprints, but they suspect that is because the Army sample had degraded.

2.102 However, his wife identified the body at the morgue where the body was transferred after it was first brought to a military base. Her eldest son Philip accompanied her on that trip.

2.103 Elisabeth Maxwell—generally known as Betty—died at age 92 in 2013.

She & her husband had 9 children, 2 of whom died young. Karine died in 1957 at age 3 of leukemia & Michael, their eldest, died after 7 yrs in a coma following a car accident in '61.

tinyurl.com/y4h8u6ss

2.104 On the day of Robert Maxwell's death, several credible witnesses saw other similar large, white yachts that day—although smaller than Lady Ghislaine—in the harbor.

Lady Ghislaine was about 180’ and typically—especially in November—it was unusual to see yachts over 98’.

2.105 Two larger yachts were seen that day: one was identified as being British-owned, but the other was not.

It was extremely unusual to have one, let alone 3 large white yachts in the area. Could one of these unfamiliar yachts have transported the killers on board?

2.106 Dr. Iain West, a British pathologist from Guy’s Hospital working on behalf of Lloyd’s of London, performed a second autopsy at the Abu-Kabir Pathological Institute in Tel Aviv, Israel, commencing on the night of Saturday, November 9, 1991 and taking 5-6 hours.

2.107 Dr. West, noting that he performed the autopsy after Maxwell’s body had been embalmed, “very narrowly” favored the ruling of suicide, but admitted that a lot of evidence was missing.

2.108 However, on January 9, 1992, the French weekly Paris Match reportedly obtained a copy of videotape of this second autopsy.

Paris Match reported that this second autopsy showed that Maxwell was probably beaten before his death and had injuries including a broken nose,...

2.109...bruises to the ear, right eye, shoulder blades, lower back, stomach, kidney area and calves—as well as one lung containing a large quantity of blood—and all these injuries occurred before his death.

2.110 Paris Match published “photographs and conversation taken from a videotape made during the autopsy” and named the five pathologists, including West and Dr. Esther Daniels of the Abu Kabir Institute.

2.111 Dr. West denied the accusations by Paris Match, saying the conversation contained “considerable inaccuracies” and contained “snatches” of conversations out of context.

nyti.ms/2FZtc5c

2.112 At one point a doctor is quoted as saying “Why is there so much blood in someone who drowned? ...This man didn’t drown.”

🇪🇸 However, Dr. West claimed the blood came from the first autopsy, performed in Spain, and some could have come from recovery of the body.

2.113 The same quote was in the Sydney Morning Herald, with more from the same doctor: “He did not drown. Was he hit on the head? I’ve never seen so much blood.”

2.114 And another doctor said, “You don’t end up in that state by falling overboard.”

2.115 Another said, “Are you sure it’s him?…Some teeth are missing and others are bent out of place. Are we really certain it is him?”

2.116 The Spanish autopsy had concluded Maxwell died of natural causes probably a heart attack— and only referred to “abrasions” on the body which they had attributed to the body recovery operation.

2.117 “I don’t think the Spanish police investigation was particularly thorough, so a lot of the evidence which could have assisted in saying whether we were dealing with a suicide or homicide wasn’t gathered” noted Dr. Iain West.

2.118 “I’ve got no positive evidence of homicide so it remains a possibility, one which one simply can’t exclude.”

2.119 Dr. West, however, did find “a tear of a fairly large muscle in the back of the shoulder blade, not caused by impact but caused by violent stretching of that muscle.”

2.120 The damage was consistent with Maxwell “holding onto something and his body suddenly dropping so that the shoulder takes all his weight, even for a relatively short time.

2.121 He wasn’t particularly fit, so that the muscle wouldn’t be able to cope with this sudden violent wrenching; it would simply split.” Maxwell was “clearly alive when the muscles received the damage.”

2.122 Was Maxwell trying to save himself from going overboard or was there a struggle with assassins?

2.123 Dr. Iain West’s autopsy was performed at the behest of Lloyds of London whose motive was to rule Maxwell’s death a suicide so that their $36 million accident insurance policy on Robert Maxwell would be null and void.

tinyurl.com/yyuoghyw

2.124 Robert Maxwell was buried in Jerusalem on the Mount of Olives, a place where the Jerusalem’s most important citizens have been buried since biblical times.

🖼️Photo: @AP

@AP 2.125 Eulogies were given by former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir and then-President Chaim Herzog, who referred to Maxwell as “a figure of almost mythological stature.”

🖼️Funeral. left: former Prime Minister Shimon Peres; center: Yitzhak Shamir; right: Shalamit Shamir

@AP 2.126 Soviet emigre Natan Sharansky, a score of Ukrainian children whom Maxwell helped to emigrate from Chernobyl after the nuclear disaster, his bankers from Nikko Securities in London and hundreds of Israelis also attended the funeral.

🖼️Photo: @NYDailyNews

@AP @NYDailyNews 2.127 His eldest son Philip also spoke and said that his father would be buried as he wished: facing the Western Wall on a hillside overlooking the Dome of the Rock and the city of Jerusalem.

🖼️Photo: Iain MacFarlaine

2.128 Philip broke down in tears as he said “We salute you. We love you. We need you. We miss you. We cry for your presence. Whether by land, sea or air, you can travel no more and our hearts can bear no more pain. May you rest in peace.”

🖼️Photo: @NYDailyNews, Maxwell bros.

@NYDailyNews 2.129 A Tenerife lawyer retained by the Maxwell family told a London newspaper at the time: “It is possible Robert Maxwell was murdered. I am expressing the concerns of Mrs. Maxwell and her children. They are sure he did not die of a natural heart attack.”

Via @NYDailyNews

@NYDailyNews 2.130 His widow, Elisabeth Maxwell also told the Daily Mirror: “I toyed with every possibility, that he had been pushed in by someone planted there. There were so many people who hated him…He was a tremendous fighter. Suicide would have been totally out of character.”

2.131 The New York Daily News @NYDailyNews & other newspapers quoted Maxwell’s doctor, Dr. Joseph Joseph who said Maxwell did not have a heart condition and was in good health at the time of his death.

@NYDailyNews 2.132 Obviously, Robert Maxwell's children did not believe the suicide theory.

Mrs. Maxwell was astonished that there was no note or anything of the sort left by her husband.

📕Via Robert Maxwell, Superspy

2.133 The Associated Press learned several days after her husband's death that Mrs. Maxwell had accepted that her husband died accidentally and criticized reporters that were speculating that he was murdered.

2.134 Elisabeth Maxwell reiterated that view in her autobiography, A Mind of My Own: My Life with Robert Maxwell, which was published in 1994.

2.135 But if it was true he was murdered, who could have killed Robert Maxwell? And what was the motive?

🖼️Photo: Derek Hudson/Sygma @NYMag

@NYMag 2.136 The Russians 🇷🇺 had a motive in that Maxwell knew too much about the attempted coup in the summer of 1991 as well as many other “state secrets”—and possibly about $50 billion that went missing—but more about that in Part 4.

🖼️Photo: Getty Images

@NYMag 2.137 In his book, Profits of War: Inside the Secret U.S.-Israeli Arms Network, Ari Ben-Menashe notes that the Iran-Contra affair had two slush funds: an American CIA fund & an Israeli fund: each with over $600 million, plus interest.

🖼️Photo: Ben Rushton/Fairfax Media via Getty

2.138 Israel became the “guardian” of the CIA money (he surmises because Robert Gates was not confirmed as CIA director, the first time in 1987) and Ben-Menashe was a signatory on both funds.

🖼️Photo: Department of Defense

2.139 In 1988, Ben-Menashe says that Maxwell approached Yitzhak Sharmir, who was the Prime Minister of Israel (1986-1992) and “asked for a loan guarantee to expand his publishing empire.”

Shamir agreed, providing the Americans agreed.

🖼️Photo: National Archives, Netherlands

2.140 Ben Menashe: “The man who personally gave Shamir the permission, according to Avi Pazner [a former Israeli diplomat], was John Tower.”

Via Profits of War

🖼️Photos: Pazner, Getty; Tower, John Duricka/Associated Press

2.141 Ben-Menashe alleges that after Tower gave his permission, Maxwell had guaranteed backing of nearly $1 billion & as a result, “he was able to borrow hundreds of millions from banks.”

Photo: Rick Maiman/Sygma @NYMag taken in March 1991, less than 9 months before his death.

2.142 Ben-Menashe said that Maxwell went on a “spending spree” in 1988-89, buying controlling interest in Ma’ariv newspaper in Israel, founded The European, (a weekly British newspaper), & attempted to purchase two Australian newspapers, but was stopped by the Australian gov't.

2.143 However, Ben-Menashe pointed out that the loan guarantees had to be renewed every three months. In 1989, the CIA money, which was then up to $710 million, was transferred without using Maxwell’s companies as a conduit.

2.144 Ben Menashe: “The move left Maxwell danging. The banks that had lent him money in 1988 no longer had their guarantees.”

His boss, Yitzhak Shamir was furious that Maxwell was not protected, but Shamir was able to talk the banks into continuing to back Maxwell at that time.

2.145 Ari Ben-Menashe worked for Israel's Military Intelligence Directorate, the central, overarching military intelligence body of the Israel Defense Forces, for 10 years (1977-87) and as an advisor to Yitzhak Shamir for two years (1987-89).

2.146 In October 1989, Ben-Menashe was arrested and months later charged with conspiracy to sell three U.S.-built C-130s to Iran in contravention of the U.S. Arms Export Control Act, but also with conspiring to defraud the U.S. and covering up the illegal dealings.

2.147 But Ben-Menashe maintains he was working for the Israeli government at the time.

Both Maxwell and Nick Davies (who were allegedly also working with Israeli intelligence, & Davies, allegedly a partner with Ben-Menashe) refused to help him. (More on this in Part 5)

2.148 Ben-Menashe's trial did not start until 11 months after his arrest & Israel claimed not to know him.

Later, the Israeli government falsely admitted he was a “low-level translator.”

2.149 However, after Ben-Menashe obtained his employment records and more information came out, the judge ordered him to be released on $30,000 bail.

He was found not guilty on November 27, 1991.

🖼️Photo: Christinne Muschi for National Post/Files

2.150 Ben-Menashe was involved w/ Iran/Contra, the October Surprise Theory & other 1980s scandals and as noted before worked for the Israeli government.

Before he was arrested in the U.S., he had talked to reporters about the October Surprise scandal.

2.151 But while he was incarcerated in early 1991, Ben-Menashe said that he was heavily courted by Herbert Alwyn Smith, a convicted British arms dealer who sold helicopters & spare parts to an undercover U.S. Customs Service agent posing as a representative of the Iranian gov't.

2.152 Smith told Ben-Menashe he was representing the CIA offering him a deal: he would get $2 million and U.S. citizenship in exchange for his silence and his signature on an agreement stating he had no claims or allegations against the U.S. government.

🤣Be back tomorrow.

2.153 Smith was sentenced to 10 years in prison in November 1986 for conspiracy to violate the Arms Export Control Act and 13 counts of wire fraud, involving selling $22 million worth of helicopter parts to a U.S. Customs agent, who he thought was an Iranian government official.

2.154 Although Smith visited him five times over the next year to push the offer, Ben-Menashe declined.

Through Smith, Ben-Menashe also met with two CIA officials in Ireland in August 1991 and with Robert Maxwell in the Soviet Union the same month.

Via Profits of War

2.155 Ben-Menashe lived in Australia since his break from Israel intelligence, but was refused refugee status in 1991, then settled in Canada in 1993.

In 2012, his Montreal home was destroyed by what was thought to be a firebomb.

tinyurl.com/y2d6ud8h

tinyurl.com/y2smz5c2

2.156 Ben-Menashe described Maxwell being outed in Seymour Hersh’s book as a spy as “the beginning of the end.”

📕Via Profits of War

2.157 Back to the Iran/Contra intelligence slush funds, which Ben-Menashe says was worth $710 million in 1989. In August 1991, Ben-Menashe says that “we cut a deal handing control of it to Robert Maxwell who in turn was supposed to disburse it to the Americans...

📕Via Profits

2.158 Ari Ben-Menashe: "But Maxwell reneged on that deal.”

So that also gave an incentive to the Americans to kill Maxwell.

2.159 And Herbert Alwyn Smith?

“Unable to deliver a successful deal and perhaps having learned too much,” Smith died of a heart attack at age 54 in March 1992 in Liverpool, ten days after he left Sydney after visiting with Ben-Menashe.

📕Via Profits of War

2.160 After copious research, the authors of Robert Maxwell, Israel’s Superspy, concluded that after years of devotion to Mossad, that Maxwell had elected to use leverage to pressure the powers that be to help him out of a serious financial bind.

📕Via Robert Maxwell, Superspy

2.161 That leverage, the authors concluded, was to reveal all the secrets he had discovered over the decades. In their words, “he had begun to threaten them.” The intelligence agency tried to deescalate the situation, but Maxwell did not listen.

📕Via Robert Maxwell, Superspy

2.162 Not discounting this theory, there could be a more simple explanation. When Robert Maxwell and an editor at The Mirror newspaper were “outed” as Mossad spies...

🖼️Photo: Rex Features via @Independent

2.163...by Pulitzer Prize winning author Seymour Hersh in The Samson Option: Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal & American Foreign Policy, Maxwell was no longer useful to the Mossad. More on that topic in Parts 4-6.

🖼️Photo: (left 2 right): ex-Navy Secretary John Lehman, Trump...

2.164🖼️...the late Senator John Tower, the late Mike Wallace of 60 Minutes and Robert Maxwell.

🎉The photograph was likely taken at a party on Maxwell's yacht, the "Lady Ghislane" in New York in May 1989.

👞Also, very likely none of them are wearing shoes at Maxwell's request.

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