By Joe Saunders July 30, 2025 at 5:30am
A former covert operations officer for the CIA suggested that the late sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein’s activities could have attracted attention from intelligence agencies for the United States’ biggest global foes.
In an interview on “The Joe Rogan Experience” podcast published Saturday, CIA spook-turned-security-businessman Mike Baker said Epstein’s combination of illicit activities and high-powered associates would have made for a tempting target for Chinese or Russian intelligence officers.
It was “complete speculation,” Baker said, but it made sense.
The goings-on surrounding Epstein and his private island, the activities of his now-imprisoned procurer Ghislaine Maxwell, and his all-star list of acquaintances in politics and business — such as former President Bill Clinton and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates — would be a magnet for intelligence operations, Baker said.
“If you see a guy like this, who’s super-connected… and you know that he’s engaged in a variety of things — as an example, if I’m Chinese intel and I just read g**damn entertainment news and there’s these rumors and allegations of high-level people flying off to his island, I’m going to think, ‘That’s interesting.’
“Because, potentially, if I can get an accessed source there, if I can get somebody, right, inside that operation — whether it’s Ghislaine Maxwell, whether it’s Epstein himself, whether it’s somebody who’s just on the outskirts of it — maybe I’ll start picking up some pretty interesting leverageable information on people that maybe I want to influence.”
It’s not the first suggestion that Epstein was linked to international intelligence work, of course. Rogan himself has noted that the CIA or the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad could have been involved.
But Baker, who hosted the “Black Files Declassified” program on the Discovery Channel, is speaking from the rare perspective of an intelligence operations veteran who’s become a public figure.
Do you think Epstein worked for a foreign country?
“I can’t speak to the rumors about him working for one intel agency or another, but I will say, if I’m working for an intel agency and I see something like that, yeah, I might find that of interest and I would definitely go after somebody to see what’s going on,” he said. “If, for no other reason, again, maybe there’s an opportunity there.”
Then he brought in the Kremlin, headed by former KGB agent Vladimir Putin. While Baker acknowledged that the use of blackmail to recruit an intelligence source has its weaknesses, he said the Russians especially like that approach.
“Chinese intel, they’re do whatever works from their perspective,” he added.
Baker noted that “some services” will use blackmail “much quicker than others do.”
“Which services?” Rogan asked.
“Again, the Russians are primary users of something like that,” Baker said.
“The Israelis?” Rogan prompted.
“The Israelis have been known to do that,” Baker acknowledged. “But the Russians throw a lot of s**t at the wall and see what sticks. It’s very much a shotgun approach. And, you know, honestly, sometimes that can work.”
Joe has spent more than 30 years as a reporter, copy editor and metro desk editor in newsrooms in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Florida. He’s been with Liftable Media since 2015.
Joe has spent more than 30 years as a reporter, copy editor and metro editor in newsrooms in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Florida. He’s been with Liftable Media since 2015. Largely a product of Catholic schools, who discovered Ayn Rand in college, Joe is a lifelong newspaperman who learned enough about the trade to be skeptical of every word ever written. He was also lucky enough to have a job that didn’t need a printing press to do it.
Birthplace
Philadelphia
Nationality
American
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