As I mentioned several months ago, I have a friend who got to know the late Jeffrey Epstein in the mid 2000s before his legal problems began. My friend worked as a teenage research assistant for a famous friend of Epstein’s, and Epstein hung around the office a certain amount. Epstein seemed to be world’s least busy money manager, and would talk to him about random topics such as my friend’s relationship with his mom (my friend’s mom, not Epstein’s mom) and what he should get her for her birthday.

Last summer, my friend pushed back against the fairly popular theory that Epstein, like his old girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell’s dad Cap’n Bob Maxwell, was working with Israeli intelligence.

Since then, however, he has gone over his old notes from his job and changed his mind, based on patterns of phone calls.

That’s not proof, but I was definitely struck that he had changed his mind. I questioned him closely about his change of mind and he said he hadn’t believed the Mossad rumors until he’d gone through his old log books documenting his interactions with Epstein and his boss and their phone calls.

Earlier, he’d recounted the one time he’d sat in on a meeting involving Epstein, his boss, and visitors identified as being from Mossad. In that meeting, Epstein had gushed to the Mossad guys about how their jobs sound awesome and he’d always wanted to be a secret agent just like them.

Now, after looking through his old records and finding a pattern compatible with extensive Mossad contacts, he thinks that one meeting with Mossad where Epstein played the uncool newbie was a set up. If he was anything else, Epstein was a cool guy, and this was uncharacteristically over the top for him.

A Wilderness of Mirrors, of course …