Epstein's obsessions: The sex offender's attempts to whitewash Wikipedia run deeper than we first thought.
Feb 1, 2011 8:29 PM
<>
to Story Cowles
Did you check out what this guy does on the wikipedia site?
The above email was sent from a redacted account, likely Jeffrey Epstein's, to Epstein's male assistant, Story Cowles. What would Epstein, a convicted sex offender, want to know about what "this guy" did on Wikipedia? It might be that Epstein just wanted information on a university professor and his activities, since he was known to use academics to help cleanse his own reputation by sponsoring their research. Or perhaps, he was interested in the reputation management skills of "this guy" and his ability to whitewash the article about Epstein himself. Maybe, he just wanted to mark the article for further reading, like he did with over a hundred other articles. We don't know the answer, but we do have a large amount of data that could help answer this question.
It took an act of Congress, but the DOJ finally released the Epstein files on January 30. The DOJ calls the data dump the "Epstein Library". Jmail offers a slightly more accessible copy is available at Jmail.world. The public may now see 3.5 million computer files that the federal government collected for the Jeffrey Epstein sex abuse cases, whereas another million or more files have not been released, yet.
The release and its handling were botched, with some media observers calling it a "disaster". The reaction of some members of Congress was even more hostile, as experienced by US Attorney General Pam Bondi.
The release includes government documents, photos, and most intriguingly, at least 1.3 million emails to or from Epstein. Jmail lists 1347 files that include the word "Wikipedia", far too many for this reporter to read in any reasonable time period.
It is important to remember that the inclusion of a person's name in these emails does not, by itself, indicate any wrongdoing. Wikipedia editors should understand that the files should not be used directly as reliable sources for reasons such as missing or botched redactions of the names, places or dates associated with the files.
News stories from reliable sources began to sort out the files almost as soon as they were released and have avalanched over the last week. Some of the best of them so far have concentrated on the smaller stories that can be most easily checked, such as those about Norway's Crown Princess Mette-Marit or lawyer Brad Karp. Broader stories focusing on the big picture and multiple names are included in Associated Press and Wall Street Journal (paywalled) articles. Some of these articles are also discussed in this issue's In the media column.
The Signpost has reported on Jeffrey Epstein and his whitewashing of Wikipedia twice before. In 2020, we reported on how editors who were apparently related to Epstein had conducted a campaign to remove information in the article about the financier's conviction for soliciting a minor for prostitution and how this may have prevented MIT from turning down donations from Epstein which were intended to cleanse his reputation. In a second article from last December, we used material from a Congressional release of Epstein emails to show how he recruited SEO and reputation management companies which planned, executed, and gave progress reports on their whitewashing of the article. This investigation shows that the DOJ release confirms and strengthens the conclusions of the two prior Signpost articles. Epstein's emails also show his obsession with Wikipedia: for example, he often sent out one-line emails to his contacts – or to himself – consisting entirely of a Wikipedia article's URL.
Reading the content of the DOJ release may be disturbing to readers and even to journalists who report the content. Amelia Gentleman wrote in an opinion published in The Guardian that she found Epstein's e-mails to be crude and misogynist. Most readers will feel the same.
The Economist reports (limited free access) on the 1.3 million emails that it was able to extract and process with AI to classify them into categories. 442,470 of these emails came from "Emails from top 500 Epstein correspondents, excluding staff". Under the finance category, Ariane de Rothschild sent or responded to 5,532 emails, followed by Jes Staley with 4,566 emails. The academia category included, among others, Boris Nikolić (15,503 emails), Lawrence Krauss (7,593) and Martin Nowak (5,698). Girlfriends/exes included Karyna Shuliak – who was Epstein's girlfriend in 2019 – (41,091) and Ghislaine Maxwell (10,186). Media/entertainment included Peggy Siegal (6,437) and Michael Wolff (4,831). Tech included Joi Ito (8,400). Business included Sultan bin Sulayem (5,194) and Tom Pritzker (5,029). Politics included Peter Mandelson (4,597) and Ehud Barak (4,248). Law included Kathryn Ruemmler (11,265). Real Estate included David Mitchell (7,554). Other included Deepak Chopra (5,348).
The Economist also notes that most of these emails (588,517 of the 653,550 tracked) were everyday matters, scoring 1 on their "disturbing scale", with only 1,474 scoring 10 ("very disturbing"). Of interest to Wikipedians, they report that "a quarter of his top non-staff contacts have a Wikipedia page. He traded emails with at least 18 current or former billionaires."
In order to get through even a portion of these emails, you should remember that Epstein had many email addresses starting with "jee", with "jeevacation" and "jeeproject" probably being the most common ones. Ghislaine Maxwell's emails are generally given as "GMAX", "G Maxwell", or "G Max".
Epstein's executive assistant, Lesley Groff, probably sent him more emails than anyone else. Many of these are of the form "Bob telephoned. Pls return his call". Groff and other staff members, including Darren Indyke (personal lawyer), Richard Kahn (accountant), and Christina Galbraith (publicist), are identified in several reliable sources.
Epstein's obsession with sex is already well-known. He also seemed to be obsessed with the media in general and in telling his own story in his own way, to the point that Steve Bannon offered him "media training". But few people likely knew of his enamoration with Wikipedia. Both he and his contacts often linked to a Wikipedia article seemingly for various reasons, but often with no explanation at all, just a linked URL in both the subject line and the body of the text. There are likely well over 100 total article links in the released emails.
We can only guess the reason for some of these links. For example, coitus reservatus, and female sexual arousal disorder may have been motivated by his sexual obsessions. Credit default swap, special drawing rights, and Grab Holdings may be related to his business interests. Religious views of Abraham Lincoln, and World Day of the Sick may reflect his moral aspirations. Hilbert's problems and Huffman coding likely relate to his academic pretensions. But others just appear random.
Yannick Nézet-Séguin is almost certainly a special case: it is likely that Epstein's then-girl-friend just wanted to go to a classical music concert. But the links to biographies present a special problem on Wikipedia, due to our strong policy on presenting information on living people. For example, one email appears to be a simple draft list of people Epstein wanted to invite to a seminar: it has over 30 names, most of them from academia, and 24 of those are identified with links to the Wikipedia article about them. In another case, Epstein simply asked, "Did you check out what this guy does on the wikipedia site?" Since Epstein tried to recruit many people in academia, or even people he'd never met, to help whitewash his reputation, we will omit naming or linking to many biographies.
Back in 2020, The Signpost tracked how three editors – who went under the usernames Stgeorge12, Turvill and Ottotiv – attempted to whitewash the articles about Jeffrey Epstein and the Jeffrey Epstein VI Foundation. The starting point for that investigation was from an article in the New York Times that stated (paywalled) that an editor named Turville (with an "e") was named in Epstein's required annual sex offender registration statement. The Epstein Library has finally shown that document, where Turville is listed twice near the very bottom of the very long lists (6th and 7th from the end) under "Wikipedia".
Similarly, many of the emails in the new release should not surprise anybody. They may have different senders, but the messages are similar: for example, how they intended to whitewash Wikipedia, what is the plan, how long it would take, and how much it would cost.
In an early case, an email sender with a common name and a childish sense of humor wrote:
I see your wikipedia profile is changed. Hooray! Me is happy.
In an even earlier email, a sender wrote about the Wikipedia article about Epstein:
not good news. they've got your wiki page under "lockdown" essentially, any changes can only be approved by one editor and he's not on your side and will scrutinize things vigorously. The only way to get good stuff added to what's there, and to eventually start cleaning up what is already there, is to have some positive things in the mainstream press that we can refer to with citations. Can't really advise you about what, or how, to get stuff in mainstream press, but if you can do this step, then there's a shot with wikipedia...otherwise, all you can really do is ride out this latest storm and when things have been calm for awhile we can attempt some limited cleanup.
In neither of these cases were the apparent whitewashing attempts successful.
On November 12, 2010, Epstein emailed Al Seckel, a reputation manager who was the brother-in-law of Ghislaine Maxwell. The financier wanted to be sure that material in a series of articles written by Daily Beast author Conchita Sarnoff had been used in the Wikipedia article about him. At about this time, Epstein was threatening legal, and possibly other, action against Sarnoff and her editor Tina Brown, according to a new article published by the same website. While these threats to a journalist may not have had a direct impact on the Wikipedia article, they could be expected to have an indirect effect on future edits.
From: Jeffrey Epstein <jeevacationifpgmall.com>
To: AI seckel
Sent: Fri, November 12, 2010 7:11:23 AM
it is important , that I can be certain that the Wikipedia stuff has Conchita Sarnoffs input . how certain are we?
The process of Epstein searching for a reputation management company and taking bids is shown by a series of emails – starting on February 7, 2012 – with IntegrityDefenders.com (currently an expired domain). The results of their services would reportedly "take 6 months to a year. Cost is $2,449." Epstein questioned if that was the monthly cost.
Feb 7, 2012 1:47 PM
Hi a,
In reference to your client's online reputation management plan, we have a process we execute for all of our clients that entails creating volumes of numerous sites, back linking and good content that will rank highly in results, eventually displacing the negative content. The process for you client will take well into 6 months to a year because of the high profile nature of his links. We will need access to the wwwjeffreyepstein.orgin order to move it up the ranks as well. We will recycle information found on his foundation website and also focus on other individuals with the same name in order to diffuse the monopoly of information there is about him.
You can usually see our input within the first few weeks. Please ask him or anyone else not to click on any of the negative links EVER again as that can keep them lingering on the first page. If you have any other questions, feel free to email me. ...
A staffer, or possibly an editor hired by Epstein, sent an email to him in 2013. Again, the long-term effect on the article seemed minimal, but Wikipedia editors must have been tiring from the long siege.
Mar 22, 2013 7:13 AM
Hi Jeffrey, am almost done with the new wikipedia article. My first draft was accepted by them. I have to put in a list of press references to back it. will send to you when approved. am also working on: ...
How long could these Wikibullying attempts go on? Surprisingly, something similar seems to have happened last September, according to The Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ), in Epstein details scrubbed from Mandelson's Wikipedia page by shady paid editor. TBIJ has an impressive record of reporting on paid editing on Wikipedia, having broken stories on Portland Communications and Bell Pottinger. They recently reported that the Wikipedia article on Peter Mandelson, the now former UK ambassador to the US and Epstein's self described "best pal", was edited contentiously by an editor later banned for undeclared paid editing, BeansS77. A second editor was similarly banned.
Of course, there's no indication that Epstein's old network is still at work whitewashing, or even that The Lord Mandelson had any connection with BeansS77's effort. What is of concern is that Wikipedia is still open to interference from well-connected paid editors.
Even without the mishandling of the Epstein files by the DOJ or the current political brouhaha in the United States, the Epstein story would continue to drag on. The huge number of the released files, and likely a few trials will make new information available, perhaps for several years. Our readers may have their own takes or done their own investigations into the matter. Feel free to add your take in the comments section below, but please be careful to follow Wikipedia's rules about biographies of living people and outing. Or you may contact this reporter through the Wikipedia email system.
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