By law, the Central Intelligence Agency isn’t allowed to operate domestically in the United States. But that reassuring civic factoid has long come with a big asterisk: going back to its earliest years, the agency has, in fact, interfered in homeland affairs to combat dissident movements (historically, from the Left), to defend its institutional prerogatives — and, increasingly, to recruit assets among the financial elite.
Yet today, as l’affaire Jeffrey Epstein roils the country amid new revelations of links between the creepy financier and President Trump, almost no one is asking: what did CIA agents know, and when did they know it? As one former CIA operations officer told me, “Epstein was telling everyone who would listen how connected he was. You’d have to be an idiot not to contact him. Maybe you realize he’s totally useless, but there must have been a meeting of some sort.”
Given the media frenzy on Epstein’s links to governments foreign and domestic, I spent the past month calling intelligence officers past and present to understand what is being left out of one of the most high-profile intel reckonings of the past two decades. The answer I received: Democratic and Republican investigators should look no further than the agency’s National Resources Division, known as NR.
Two former CIA officers and one former intelligence official told me that the NR is conspicuously absent from the Epstein debate. This, even as the NR must have conducted interviews with the man going back decades. The NR should also have maintained records of those conversations, according to all three officials.
The NR was formed in 1991, combining the Domestic Resources Division’s task of recruiting foreigners on US soil for spying abroad, with the National Collection Division, which, among other activities, debriefed Americans traveling overseas to collect information about inaccessible and hostile nations.
In the wake of 9/11, the NR’s already-wide remit was expanded with a sweeping hiring spree and a glut of new powers. According to reporting by Jeff Stein, one of the only reporters to cover the NR in the past two decades, the State Department couldn’t provide diplomatic cover for the vast number of newly recruited officers drafted into the war on terror. In order to find roles for these new ranks, hundreds of intelligence officers were assigned to the NR.
At the time of this surge in the early Aughts, the NR had opened offices and bases in some 52 locations. Since then, that number has shrunk by more than half. But that doesn’t mean that the NR has stopped bugging embassies and pouring stiff drinks with business leaders, not least in the financial industry that Epstein called home.
Every few years, reporting trickles out detailing the NR’s tight embrace of Wall Street. So close are NR officers to investment bankers and hedge-fund managers that news of attrition from agency ranks into the private sector often bubbles up surreptitiously in the press. In 2010, for example, Politico revealed that not only do NR officers routinely cavort with the giants of banking, often leaving government service to join them, but that they are also authorized to collect a paycheck from hedge funds, moonlighting as bankers at the same time they are paid a government salary.
Under Attorney General Guideline 12333, intelligence officers, including those serving in the NR, are required to report criminal wrongdoing to the Department of Justice during the course of their investigations. But over scotch and soda on the 50th floor, why would an officer ask, and an executive tell, anything other than what both parties want to hear? (As Time reported in the early Aughts, information can flow both ways, with executives asking their handlers for insider information to gain a competitive edge.)
To be clear, the CIA’s mandate isn’t law enforcement. It is to cultivate sources to gather information and assist in foreign operations. But this is why former CIA officers insist the agency must have spoken to Epstein in some capacity. “It is inconceivable given Jeffrey Epstein’s travel record and associations that he was not approached by the NR at some point before his death,” one former CIA officer said. “It would have left the New York NR division in the lurch not to have contacted him.” And if that’s the case, there should be a paper trail. “Every walk-in, every contact, every handling, every meeting, every termination — you are supposed to document it in official cable traffic.”
To remind anyone unfamiliar with Epstein’s association, a survey of the pictures in his town house published by The New York Times includes “luminaries” like Pope John Paul II, Elon Musk, and Fidel Castro. His business relationships with former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Britain’s Prince Andrew have been thoroughly reported. His relationship with Saudi Crown Prince Muhammed Bin Salman and Emirati royal Ahmed bin Sulayem less so.
According to a former CIA operations officer, every NR officer is required to produce a quota of cables per month. “Seventy-five percent of what the NR does is debriefing guys in the C-suite and businesspeople who traveled abroad or have direct links to restricted areas.” Epstein, needless to say, checks all these boxes — and then some.
“Look no further than the agency’s National Resources Division.”
Given that many NR positions are entirely consumed with asking US citizens to voluntarily provide information about their travels and relationships, the quota system is used to make sure they keep pace while their counterparts overseas. “Nobody actually wants to be in the NR,” the second officer said.
Employees of both the CIA and FBI have maligned the NR to me in many conversations, for very different reasons. For CIA officers stationed overseas, the NR is often seen as a backwater for underperforming officers or those who are incapable or uninterested in running high-intensity and dangerous operations. NR officers’ track record of jumping ship to the private sector, especially banking, doesn’t help dispel this perspective.
The NR’s relationship with the FBI is also strained, given that the bureau is in charge of overseeing — or at least, signing off on — all domestic operations. But given the differences in culture and training, the CIA routinely shirks its deference to the bureau and often conceals assets from its domestic overseers.
This hostility between different arms of the security apparatus is another reason why members of Congress should question the CIA director directly about what documentation the agency independently maintains detailing its interaction with Epstein. There is at least some reason to suspect that the CIA isn’t apprising the FBI of what it knows, if for simple turf-war reasons.
The ire of Epstein truthers has largely been directed at Trump, FBI Director Kash Patel, and Attorney General Pam Bondi. In addition to the CIA, there are many other agencies with secrets to tell, and already, interesting lines of inquiry beyond the DOJ have opened up.
As I reported last month, Epstein’s jet shows up in Department of Defense documents that were then shared with Homeland Security Investigations. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) has demanded that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent release Suspicious Activity Reports held by the government detailing hundreds of millions of dollars in transactions that mention or involve Epstein. And surely, there are records held by the State Department given Epstein’s close relationships with multiple world leaders.
Reps. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) have done well to focus their investigation on Epstein’s abuse of his victims. Last week, they held a news conference with some of those harmed by Epstein. The two lawmakers have sought a vote compelling the attorney general to disclose more materials. And they have said they will read the names of Epstein’s implicated associates on the House floor using congressional immunity to shield accusers from potential libel threats brought by the men and women who stand accused.
This all makes for great theater and delivers a modicum of justice. But it should be clear at this point in the Epstein saga that the popular obsession with the case reveals a deeper sense of distrust about the unequal distribution of wealth and justice in America. Interrogating CIA director John Ratcliffe on whether the agency holds documents pertaining to Epstein could show that in the course of its business hobnobbing with business executives, the CIA failed to flag Epstein as a serial abuser.
In this broadening of scope emerges a parable of a security apparatus that, in part, doubles as a massive corporate-outsourcing scheme. It targets potential threats but stops short when it comes to those occupying the commanding heights of Lower Manhattan — whose valuable ability to call on presidents and prime ministers in times of trouble appears to grant them exemption from trouble they cause themselves.
