Jeffrey Epstein and Sergeant Schultz
I begin with a bit of nostalgia from 1965-71.
The sitcom (situation comedy) was Hogan's Heroes. Sergeant Schultz was a guard in a German prisoner of war camp. It was his task to monitor what the American POW's were up to. They bought him off with chocolate bars. Then they got away with murder, so to speak.
Basic to the success of the Americans, and therefore the series, was this: Schultz would never get caught by the commandant of the camp. Basic to the commandant's ability to stay in charge, and thereby not get sent to the eastern front, was that he would not get embarrassed by the Americans. And so it went, week after week, year after year -- longer than Americans were actually in POW camps. Nobody ever got caught. In real life, it's the reverse. If the commandant is after you, the guards will not protect you. Nobody will ever see anything. Nobody will ever get caught. Jeffrey Epstein was in a situation. It was not a comedy. JEFFREY EPSTEIN'S DEMISE This is what we have been told so far regarding the so-called suicide of the so-called investment fund manager, Jeffrey Epstein. This report was published on NPR on August 13. The administrative moves took place amid official investigations into Epstein's death and following harsh official criticism of the Bureau of Prisons. . . . The warden who was supervising the center has been reassigned to the Bureau of Prisons' Northeast Regional Office, according to the Justice Department. The warden was not identified in the announcement and the department has not responded to a request to confirm the name of a person connected in other documents with the Metropolitan Correctional Center. James Petrucci, who was overseeing a prison in Otisville, N.Y., will take over as acting warden, the Justice Department said. "Additional actions may be taken as the circumstances warrant," a spokeswoman said. Later in the day, the former warden was identified by unnamed sources. This is from the Voice of America. "The department did not name the warden who was reassigned, but sources familiar with the matter identified him as Lamine N'Diaye, who formerly was in charge of the Bureau of Prisons office of internal affairs." This is from USA Today. The two staffers were not identified, except to indicate that they had been assigned to Epstein's unit. "Additional actions may be taken as the circumstances warrant," Kupec said. Eric Young, national president of the federal prison workers' union, said the reassignments are "typical to protect the integrity of the investigations." "BOP commonly uses this practice pending the outcome of investigations and any recommendations after action has been completed," Young said. We are told by the head of the federal prison workers union that transfer is "typical to protect the integrity of the investigations." I don't doubt it. We are told "Additional actions may be taken as the circumstances warrant." Or not. The guards on whose watch this gigantic FUBAR took place were not named. Who was in charge of the video system that somehow failed to function? Perhaps it was the company that maintained the video system at the Pentagon on 9/11. We don't know. I don't think we will ever know. We are not supposed to know. We have no right to know. We have no need to know. This is none of our business. So, the kabuki theater will begin. There will be investigations, but they will not be pursued too actively. There is a reason for this. Nobody wants to wind up a suicide victim. After a week of cover-up, which is what this has been so far, there has been dead silence about the technique by which Epstein could have hanged himself. There has been zero discussion of the layout of the prison cell. The Department of Justice is as silent about this as the National Transportation Safety Board has been about the crash site of Flight 93 in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. The public is content with silence. The topic is no longer prime time or front page news. The public has a short collective memory. THE GRAND ILLUSION There is a phrase that I have heard in conservative circles, especially far Right circles, for well over half a century. It is this: "If the American people only knew, they would revolt." No, they wouldn't. This sentence rests on a grand illusion, namely, that the American public can focus on anything for longer than a week or two. Only in the rarest of cases, such as the Kennedy assassination, is there an exception to this. But the Kennedy assassination took place in 1963, and we are no closer to the truth than we were in 1966, when Mark Lane's Rush to Judgment appeared. There are lots of theories, but they all have loose ends. I contend that the public does not want to know the truth whenever it raises the possibility that the government really is corrupt, and that it really cannot be reformed. The public doesn't want reform. The public has used the government to steal wealth on a systematic basis ever since the New Deal. (Before then, the looting was less systematic.) The public doesn't want reform. The public wants access to more of the confiscated funds. The public, in short, is the source of the corruption. The public wants things to roll along smoothly. Any thought that somebody could get away with what Epstein got away with, and get the sweetheart deal from the Department of Justice that he got in 2008, would indicate that we are living in a corrupt society in which justice is not available to victims. People don't want to believe this. They don't want to believe that somebody like Epstein could get away with this, and do so because of his connections, because that would indicate that everything they had been told since high school American history courses is fraudulent. They were not told the truth. They would have to rethink everything around them, and people don't want to do this. The price is too high. The investment is too high. It is easier to let things slide, and so, things slide. The Department of Justice lawyer who gave Epstein his sweetheart deal was the Secretary of Labor until he judiciously resigned a month ago. No one who screened him for Trump to appoint remembered his role in the deal. They knew nothing. They saw nothing. If you are high enough up the chain of political command, your head will not roll. You do not labor under the threat of major negative sanctions for either incompetence or corruption. People inside the system are aware of this. Their careers can be disrupted, but not destroyed. The woman who was in charge of the prison at Abu Ghraib prison was a one-star general. She got demoted to bird colonel. Without the Web and Wikipedia, who would remember her name? Wikipedia reports: In October 2005, she published an account of her experiences, One Woman's Army, in which she claims that the abuses were done by contract employees trained in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, and sent to Abu Ghraib under orders from the Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. She said her demotion was political retribution. Her defense: "I knew nothing. I saw nothing." That's what they all know. That's what they all see. CONCLUSION In cases where high-level conspiracies inside the government are clearly at play, the official government response is this: "The only conspirators are conspiracy theorists." Conspiracy is always outside the government, never inside the government. Most of the public accepts this official explanation most of the time. In cases where there are millions of people who don't accept it, they never come to an agreement on an alternative explanation that holds up under scrutiny. Therefore, the official government position prevails. It is the default setting. It is dominant in the media, and it is dominant in the textbooks. Here is a list of inconsistencies. The investigations should ask -- and find publicly revealed answers -- to these questions. Those people providing the answers must be under oath on penalty of perjury. Any investigation that does not cover these issues in full public view is fake, as in fake news.
The warden of the federal prison in New York City where Jeffrey Epstein was found dead has been reassigned, the Department of Justice says. Two other staffers were placed on leave.
The MCC warden, Lamine N'Diaye, was temporarily assigned to the Northeast Regional Office. . . .
On April 8, 2005, Karpinski was formally relieved of command of the 800th Military Police Brigade. On May 5, 2005, President George W. Bush approved Karpinski's demotion to Colonel from the rank of Brigadier General. Her demotion was not related officially to the abuse at Abu Ghraib.
1. Who inside the prison was in charge of Epstein's incarceration?
2. Where is the paper trail -- signatures required -- that identified each decision?
3. Who identified Epstein as a suicide risk?
4. What administrative procedures did he/she recommend?
5. Who decided which procedures to implement?
6. Who decided that his first suicide attempt was real?
7. Who decided to take him off suicide watch?
8. Who decided which cell to assign him to?
9. What was the design of this cell?
10. Who was the prisoner who shared his cell?
11. Why was this prisoner removed?
12. What were the guards doing at the time when his cell was to be checked?
13. Who told them what procedure to follow?
14. What forms were they required to submit daily?
15. Did they fill out these forms accurately?
16. Who was in charge of the video system of the hallway to the cell?
17. Were the videos automatically time-stamped?
18. How did the data get lost?
19. How could Epstein have hanged himself in his cell?
20. Was he given a sheet?
21. To what was it attached that enabled him to hang himself?