One Nation Under Blackmail, Vol. 1 Quotes

“In addition, Cohn’s ability to manipulate the press, politics and much more may have been partially due to his ability to wield blackmail in a way similar to that practiced by his close associate and friend, J. Edgar Hoover. This particular relationship, aspects of which were discussed in Chapter 2, may explain why, long after Cohn’s death in 1986, much of the FBI file on Cohn – believed to be over 4,000 pages long in total – has still not been made publicly available despite efforts by Cohn biographers and others over the years.2 Cohn’s background and the earlier parts of his career serve as a useful window into how the world of “above-board” and “legitimate” business and politics has intermingled with the criminal underworld throughout the decades and how blackmail was critical to Cohn’s ability to successfully navigate those murky, grey areas between the legal and the illegal.”
― Whitney Alyse, One Nation Under Blackmail - Vol. 1: The Sordid Union Between Intelligence and Crime that Gave Rise to Jeffrey Epstein, VOL.1

“By 1947, as Truman’s embargo began to be enforced, Nicaragua started providing arms to the Haganah. Somoza reportedly profited directly from this venture: he “received 3.5. percent commission on all arms purchases made by the Haganah under Nicaraguan aegis.”18 A decade later, Israel returned the favor when Shimon Peres negotiated an arms deal with Somoza that transformed Israel’s emergent military-industrial complex into the primary supplier of weapons for Nicaragua.19 As will be discussed in Chapter 7, Israel was active in arming and training the Nicaraguan Contras, the US-backed paramilitary forces that opposed the Sandinista government, which had toppled the Somoza regime in the late 1970s. The entry of Israel into this conflict was guaranteed by this precise history – and the Reagan administration, as part of its propaganda campaign, was quick to paint the new, Sandinista-led government as violently anti-Semitic.”
― Whitney Alyse, One Nation Under Blackmail - Vol. 1: The Sordid Union Between Intelligence and Crime that Gave Rise to Jeffrey Epstein, VOL.1

“The most obvious, and troubling, symptom of this symbiosis was Hoover’s reluctance to tackle organized crime as FBI director. Hoover repeatedly declined to use the Bureau to target organized crime networks, referring to organized crime as a “local” problem in which the FBI did not need to intervene for most of his nearly fifty year stint as the top law enforcement administrator in the country.72”
― Whitney Alyse, One Nation Under Blackmail - Vol. 1: The Sordid Union Between Intelligence and Crime that Gave Rise to Jeffrey Epstein, VOL.1

“Further evidence for this comes from journalist and author Burton Hersh who alleges in his book Bobby and J. Edgar: The Historic Face-Off Between the Kennedys and J. Edgar Hoover That Transformed America that Hoover had also been tied to Sherman Kaminsky, who helped run a sexual blackmail operation in New York that involved young male prostitutes.67 Kaminsky claimed to have been New York-bred, but federal investigators later stated he was originally from Baltimore. Some reports claim Kaminsky had ties to Israel, having served in the Israel Defense Forces.68 The ring, which was called “The Chickens and the Bulls” by the NYPD, targeted prominent men who were closeted homosexuals throughout the United States, many of them married with families. Among those who had been blackmailed were a Navy admiral, two generals, a US congressman, a prominent surgeon, an Ivy League professor and well-known actors and television personalities.69 That operation was busted and investigated in a 1966 extortion probe led by Manhattan District Attorney Frank Hogan, though the FBI quickly took over the investigation and photos showing Hoover and Kaminsky together soon disappeared from the case file.70 Kaminsky successfully avoided arrest for 11 years, having “disappeared” from a New York courthouse undetected during his sentencing hearing.71 Why would Hoover have been involved with the activities of Kaminsky? There are only a few possibilities. One possibility is that Hoover had been blackmailed by Kaminsky, though it’s more likely that Kaminsky instead had ties to figures in organized crime that had already blackmailed Hoover long before. Another possibility is that Hoover was cozy to a second sexual blackmail operation targeting closeted homosexual men because he sought to pad his own library of blackmail for personal and professional gain.”
― Whitney Alyse, One Nation Under Blackmail - Vol. 1: The Sordid Union Between Intelligence and Crime that Gave Rise to Jeffrey Epstein, VOL.1

“With thick dossiers on friend and foe alike, Hoover’s office contained “secret files” on numerous powerful people in Washington and beyond, files he used to gain favors and protect his status as FBI director for as long as he wished. Even former OSS veterans like Richard Helms have made such claims, alleging that Hoover “played ‘a very skillful game’ with knowledge of the sexual habits of prominent people.”66”
― Whitney Alyse, One Nation Under Blackmail - Vol. 1: The Sordid Union Between Intelligence and Crime that Gave Rise to Jeffrey Epstein, VOL.1

“Lansky was credited with obtaining compromising photos of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover sometime in the 1940s, which showed “Hoover in some kind of gay situation,” according to a former Lansky associate, who also said that Lansky had often said of Hoover, “I fixed that sonofabitch.” Meyer Lansky’s widow also later claimed that her husband had acquired “hard proof of Hoover’s homosexuality and used it to neutralize the FBI as a threat to his own operations.”59 The photos showed Hoover engaged in sexual activity, specifically oral sex, with his long-time friend, FBI Deputy Director Clyde Tolson.60 There is considerable, separate evidence from the period that the close, professional relationship between Hoover and Tolson was also intimate and that this was an “open secret” in Washington.61”
― Whitney Alyse, One Nation Under Blackmail - Vol. 1: The Sordid Union Between Intelligence and Crime that Gave Rise to Jeffrey Epstein, VOL.1

“Cohn’s job was to run the little boys. Say you had an admiral, a general, a congressman, who did not want to go along with the program. Cohn’s job was to set them up, then they would go along. Cohn told me that himself.57 Rothstein later told Paul David Collins, a former journalist turned researcher, that Cohn had also identified this sexual blackmail operation as being part of the anti-communist crusade of the time.58”
― Whitney Alyse, One Nation Under Blackmail - Vol. 1: The Sordid Union Between Intelligence and Crime that Gave Rise to Jeffrey Epstein, VOL.1

“However, federal Prohibition also came with a loophole, which allowed alcohol to be sold for “medicinal purposes.” This prompted Harry Bronfman to create a wholesale drug company that permitted him to import alcohol in bulk and provide it to area pharmacies. He placed its offices next door to one of the family’s ritzier hotels, the Balmoral, and its business model involved offering doctors a bonus for each liquor prescription they wrote if that prescription was fulfilled by a pharmacy whose liquor was furnished by the Bronfmans.11”
― Whitney Alyse, One Nation Under Blackmail - Vol. 1: The Sordid Union Between Intelligence and Crime that Gave Rise to Jeffrey Epstein, VOL.1

“The Bronfmans had saved enough money to lease their first Canadian hotel, the Anglo-American Hotel in Emerson, Manitoba, by 1903.5 Soon, they acquired several more hotels in Yorkton, Saskatchewan and later in Winnipeg and beyond, building a small yet profitable network of hotels prior to the onset of World War I. The dramatic shift in the family’s fortune was largely thanks to the business acumen of Sam’s brother Harry, who managed to stave off the financial damage and legal trouble caused by the gambling and other “unseemly” habits of their older brother, Abe.”
― Whitney Alyse, One Nation Under Blackmail - Vol. 1: The Sordid Union Between Intelligence and Crime that Gave Rise to Jeffrey Epstein, VOL.1

“These dynastic-corporate structures not only influenced the shape of the international drug trade during the twentieth century, but also the evolution of Western intelligence services during and after World War II.”
― Whitney Alyse, One Nation Under Blackmail - Vol. 1: The Sordid Union Between Intelligence and Crime that Gave Rise to Jeffrey Epstein, VOL.1

“The overarching imperative of the League’s efforts for global drug regulation was to rationalize the production of opium and other precursors and to consolidate drug refining and distribution within a series of select major pharmaceutical corporations.”
― Whitney Alyse, One Nation Under Blackmail - Vol. 1: The Sordid Union Between Intelligence and Crime that Gave Rise to Jeffrey Epstein, VOL.1

“At the same time, it was also part of a larger tendency among internationalists like the Rockefellers to seek the regulation and control of the global drug trade. After the First World War, the nascent League of Nations formed an Advisory Committee on the Traffic of Opium and Other Dangerous Drugs. It worked closely with the Rockefeller Foundation’s International Health Board, the “parent” of the China Medical Board.”
― Whitney Alyse, One Nation Under Blackmail - Vol. 1: The Sordid Union Between Intelligence and Crime that Gave Rise to Jeffrey Epstein, VOL.1

“Support for the KMT opium monopoly came from Western modernizers – including the Rockefeller Foundation, which had set up shop in China during the 1910s with the creation of the China Medical Board.29 Through this apparatus, the Rockefeller Foundation undertook efforts to promote “modern science,” develop medical education programs, and set up hospitals. It is likely that the foundation’s support for opium monopolization was intricately bound up with their health crusade, since opium had important, wide ranging medicinal applications.”
― Whitney Alyse, One Nation Under Blackmail - Vol. 1: The Sordid Union Between Intelligence and Crime that Gave Rise to Jeffrey Epstein, VOL.1

“Luciano’s deportation was the beginning of an effort to cement in place a powerful organized crime network that was transnational in scope and wedded to the American intelligence services. Indeed, even though Luciano was no longer physically in the United States, he and his ilk continued to guide organized criminal activities from abroad while also establishing new rackets during their exile in the “Old World.”
― Whitney Alyse, One Nation Under Blackmail - Vol. 1: The Sordid Union Between Intelligence and Crime that Gave Rise to Jeffrey Epstein, VOL.1

“Six years later, when he ran to secure the presidential nomination for the Republican Party, he joined forces with John Foster Dulles, the brother of Allen Dulles – best known for his role as the first civilian head of the CIA in the early years of the Cold War. Dulles, a member of the “internationalist” camp of American politics that typified the attitudes of the elite “Eastern Establishment,” impressed upon Dewey the importance of overcoming the isolationist factions of the Republican Party.6,7 What Dulles got in exchange for his steering of Dewey in pursuit of political power was his own rise through the ranks of the party, ultimately culminating in his service as President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Secretary of State.”
― Whitney Alyse, One Nation Under Blackmail - Vol. 1: The Sordid Union Between Intelligence and Crime that Gave Rise to Jeffrey Epstein, VOL.1

“Lansky was also instrumental in bringing mob groups into the world of gambling, helping set up casinos in the Caribbean that would be utilized to wash the money generated by their various vices and rackets. Perhaps most important of all was that Lansky had also helped develop the use of a complex banking network, which he adopted in an effort to avoid the fate of Al Capone. After all, Capone had not been taken down for murder or extortion, but for tax evasion.”
― Whitney Alyse, One Nation Under Blackmail - Vol. 1: The Sordid Union Between Intelligence and Crime that Gave Rise to Jeffrey Epstein, VOL.1

“Operation Underworld was the beginning of the creation of a new underworld entirely, one built on the cooperation, if not outright symbiosis, between organized crime and American intelligence.”
― Whitney Alyse, One Nation Under Blackmail - Vol. 1: The Sordid Union Between Intelligence and Crime that Gave Rise to Jeffrey Epstein, VOL.1

“Meyer Lansky, chief among them – were helping the ONI cultivate intelligence for the Allied invasion of Sicily. Lower ranking mob figures and immigrants were frequently brought to Haffendon’s offices for questioning.”
― Whitney Alyse, One Nation Under Blackmail - Vol. 1: The Sordid Union Between Intelligence and Crime that Gave Rise to Jeffrey Epstein, VOL.1

“Luciano, at the time, was locked away in prison, having been put there by Thomas Dewey. A delicate series of negotiations were subsequently launched in what is now known as “Operation Underworld.” This operation, which the government was forced to reluctantly acknowledge after decades of public denials, involved the recruitment of high-level organized crime figures for work with American intelligence services, justified by war-time necessity. Not long after Operation Underworld had been given the go-ahead, Luciano agreed to the ONI’s requests, and his prison cell soon became a hub for meetings between him and his criminal associates, meetings in which they would coordinate counter-intelligence activities with the Navy.”
― Whitney Alyse, One Nation Under Blackmail - Vol. 1: The Sordid Union Between Intelligence and Crime that Gave Rise to Jeffrey Epstein, VOL.1

“They abhor sunlight and love darkness. They deal in innuendo and character assassination, and planted stories, the incomplete thought and sentence. They burn and shred files if caught, they commit perjury, and when caught they have guaranteed sinecures with large US corporations. If you let them, they will take over not only [the] CIA but the entire government and the world, cutting off dissent, free speech, a free media, and they will cut a deal with anyone, from [the] Mafia to Saddam Hussein, if it means more power and money. They stole $600 billion from the S & L’s and then diverted our attention to the Iraqis. They are ripping off America at a rate never before seen in history. They flooded our country with drugs from Central America during the 1980s, cut deals with Haro in Mexico, Noriega in Panama, and the Medillin and Cali cartels, and Castro, and recently the Red Mafia in the KGB. They ruin their detractors and they fear the truth. If they can, they will blackmail you. Sex, drugs, deals, whatever it takes.” –Former CIA officer and Iran-Contra whistleblower Bruce Hemmings, circa 1990”
― Whitney Alyse, One Nation Under Blackmail - Vol. 1: The Sordid Union Between Intelligence and Crime that Gave Rise to Jeffrey Epstein, VOL.1

“Joe Socks” Lanza. Lanza was officially a “business agent for the United Seafood Workers Union.” He was also a mobster in his own right and was known as the “rackets boss of the Fulton Fish Market … in downtown New York City.”3 Yet, compared to the stature of other criminal figures in the city, Lanza was a small-fry, and he knew it. As a result, he ended up telling the ONI that they would have better luck higher up the food chain. He suggested either Meyer Lansky, who controlled the longshoreman’s”
― Whitney Alyse, One Nation Under Blackmail - Vol. 1: The Sordid Union Between Intelligence and Crime that Gave Rise to Jeffrey Epstein, VOL.1

“Who are these people? They are the group that is popularly called the Enterprise. They are in and outside [the] CIA. They are mostly Right Wing Republicans, but you will find a mix of Democrats, mercenaries, ex officio Mafia and opportunists within the group. They are CEOs, they are bankers, they are presidents, they own airlines, they own national television networks. They own six of the seven video documentary companies of Washington, DC and they do not give a damn about the law or the Constitution or the Congress or the Oversight committees except as something to be subverted and manipulated and lied to.”
― Whitney Alyse, One Nation Under Blackmail - Vol. 1: The Sordid Union Between Intelligence and Crime that Gave Rise to Jeffrey Epstein, VOL.1

“Indeed, it was later stated by Cindy McCain, wife of former Senator John McCain, that “we all knew what he [Epstein] was doing” at an event in January 2020, where she also claimed that authorities were “afraid” to properly apprehend him. If he was such an anomaly and a stand-alone con artist – how was he singlehandedly able to intimidate the law enforcement apparatus of an entire nation for decades? The claim that Epstein did not have powerful backers and benefactors stands on incredibly”
― Whitney Alyse, One Nation Under Blackmail - Vol. 1: The Sordid Union Between Intelligence and Crime that Gave Rise to Jeffrey Epstein, VOL.1

“This became apparent when it emerged that Alex Acosta, then-serving as Secretary of Labor in the Trump administration, had disclosed to the Trump transition team that he had previously signed off on Epstein’s “sweetheart deal” because Epstein “had belonged to intelligence.” Acosta, then serving as US attorney for Southern Florida, had also been told by unspecified figures at the time that he needed to give Epstein a lenient sentence because of his links to “intelligence.” When Acosta was later asked if Epstein was indeed an intelligence asset in 2019, Acosta chose to neither confirm nor deny the claim.”
― Whitney Alyse, One Nation Under Blackmail - Vol. 1: The Sordid Union Between Intelligence and Crime that Gave Rise to Jeffrey Epstein, VOL.1

“Nelson [Rockefeller] headed his own agency, the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs.”13 David Rockefeller, Nelson’s brother, also reportedly ran his own intelligence apparatus during the war.14”
― Whitney Alyse, One Nation Under Blackmail - Vol. 1: The Sordid Union Between Intelligence and Crime that Gave Rise to Jeffrey Epstein, VOL.1

“We cannot properly address the crimes of Jeffrey Epstein, nor prevent them being committed by others in the future, unless we grapple with the covert power structures that have long wielded blackmail, bribes and assassinations as their weapons of choice to corrupt and control public institutions while manipulating and looting the public. Jeffrey Epstein was not an anomaly and his activities represent just the tip of the veritable iceberg. Whitney Webb, 8/14/22”
― Whitney Alyse, One Nation Under Blackmail - Vol. 1: The Sordid Union Between Intelligence and Crime that Gave Rise to Jeffrey Epstein, VOL.1

“Consider a statement made in 2009 by Antonio Maria Costa, who was then the head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime. According to Costa, proceeds from the drug trade were an important source of liquidity for cash-starved banks at the height of the 2008 economic crisis. The amounts absorbed by the banking system were enough to prevent some banks from collapsing: “Inter-bank loans were funded by money that originated from the drugs trade and other illegal activities…. There were signs that some banks were rescued that way.”66”
― Whitney Alyse, One Nation Under Blackmail - Vol. 1: The Sordid Union Between Intelligence and Crime that Gave Rise to Jeffrey Epstein, VOL.1

“MK-ULTRA, saw the CIA become the largest consumer of LSD, which it used to experiment on witting and unwitting subjects. The subjects included soldiers, patients in psychiatric hospitals, prisoners (sometimes organized crime figures), and private citizens. Under Gottlieb’s directions, CIA-run “safehouses” were established in New York City and San Francisco, where unsuspecting people were dosed with hallucinogenic substances while being monitored from behind two-way mirrors.”
― Whitney Alyse, One Nation Under Blackmail - Vol. 1: The Sordid Union Between Intelligence and Crime that Gave Rise to Jeffrey Epstein, VOL.1

“and ‘Edgar.’”79 The “official” story also holds that the only bond initially shared between Rosenstiel and Cohn, as it is alleged with Hoover and Cohn, was a shared commitment to anti-communism, which has similarly left biographers and observers of their relationship puzzled by “improbable” anecdotes similar to that described above. Yet, in an era where the Red Scare raged alongside the so-called Lavender Scare (which targeted homosexuals with the same fervor as the Red Scare targeted communists), the bonds forged between a group of men who shared their forbidden passions in a milieu of secretive orgies, blackmail, and organized crime, would have fostered a much stronger sense of camaraderie.”
― Whitney Alyse, One Nation Under Blackmail - Vol. 1: The Sordid Union Between Intelligence and Crime that Gave Rise to Jeffrey Epstein, VOL.1

“At some point, these photos fell into the hands of CIA counterintelligence chief James J. Angleton, who later showed the photos to several other CIA officials, including John Weitz and Gordon Novel.62 Both Weitz and Novel later stated that the pictures they had seen showed Hoover engaged in oral sex on a man who Angleton identified as Tolson; however, only Hoover’s face was recognizable in the photographs.63 Angleton also claimed that the photos had been taken in 1946.64 Angleton was in charge of the CIA’s relationship with the FBI as well as Israeli intelligence until he left the agency in 1972. Angleton was also a CIA figure who had pushed for the Agency to forge ties with Meyer Lansky, raising the possibility that Angleton could have received the photo from Lansky.”
― Whitney Alyse, One Nation Under Blackmail - Vol. 1: The Sordid Union Between Intelligence and Crime that Gave Rise to Jeffrey Epstein, VOL.1