Lisa Miller reports:

When Jeffrey Epstein said “massage” in the years after he got out of jail in 2009, what did his friends and associates think he meant? Epstein had been convicted in a Florida court of sex crimes with minors in 2008. His method, reported in The New York Times at the time, had been to recruit girls as young as 14 to his home and persuade them to undress and massage him. Then he would force them to have sex and paid them cash.

He was charged with sex crimes again in 2019, this time by the federal government, which accused him of trafficking underage girls in the early 2000s. If he committed crimes in the years between 2009 and his death in a Manhattan jail cell while awaiting federal trial in 2019, he was not charged with them. But the Epstein files show that, during that decade, he was both rebuilding and curating his vast, elite social network, while also looking at plans for a new massage room on his private island of Little St. James and choosing marble for his massage room in New York.

At the same time, he was vetting young women from all over the world for their sexual attractiveness, ranking their attributes, soliciting sex and enlisting them into his service. “Very beautiful, fresh,” one scout wrote to Epstein in 2011 of a 21-year-old woman, about 5 feet 8 inches tall. “Nice girl, but almost no English at all,” the same scout wrote of another, who was 22.

That Epstein was a registered sex offender in New York and Florida was a matter of record. That he usually traveled with an entourage of “girls” — in his correspondence he also called them “assistants” or “students” — was common knowledge. Richard Branson called this entourage Epstein’s “harem.” “As long as you bring your harem!” Branson wrote in 2013. (A representative for Branson has said that he met with Epstein only a few times, in business settings, and that he saw him only with adult women. Branson considers Epstein’s actions “abhorrent,” the representative said.)

At least some of Epstein’s friends knew what he meant when he said “massage.” In 2010, in an email to Boris Nikolic, then the science adviser to the Gates Foundation, Epstein said he was finishing one.

“With happy ending I hope,” Nikolic responded, punctuating his note with a winking emoji. (Nikolic did not respond to a request for comment.)

“I’m too impatient, happy beginning,” Epstein replied, with characteristically haphazard punctuation.

The emails also show Epstein organizing massages for friends and connecting friends with women as favors or gifts. When in 2017 Deepak Chopra complained of a “crazy” day, Epstein replied, “I’m in Florida, but would like to send two girls.” (“I am deeply saddened by the suffering of the victims in this case,” wrote Chopra in a statement earlier this month.)

Kathryn Ruemmler, former White House counsel under President Obama, implicitly acknowledged she knew the difference between a massage and what Epstein engaged in, referring to it in an email as “your kind of massage.” She also knew Epstein’s history. He sometimes sought her legal advice, and in 2015, she pointed out to him, clearly, that a minor “could not legally consent to engaging in prostitution.” But in 2017 Epstein was accompanying her as she looked at apartments.

On Feb. 3, she said through a representative, “I had no knowledge of any ongoing criminal conduct on his part, and I did not know him as the monster he has been revealed to be.” On Thursday, she resigned from Goldman Sachs, where she was the firm’s top lawyer.

Even in a world where a president can receive oral sex from an intern, lie about it, get impeached and remain in office; where a candidate for president can be heard saying that he can grab women “by the pussy” without fear of reprisal and get elected, twice, Epstein’s social prominence is astonishing. It shows how a group can collude with dark secrets if they’re sufficiently ambiguous and serve their interests. At least one friend warned Epstein of possible reputational damage from his behavior with women. His conviction had been public, after all, and “could be interpreted — indeed was — as a powerful man taking advantage of powerless young women,” the friend wrote. (The person’s name was redacted.)

What’s most shocking is that no one said anything.

How is it that “the girls,” as Epstein called them — their presence, their provenance, their role — failed to raise misgivings above the quietest whisper among the super-powerful men and women who dined at Epstein’s table? The list of boldface names availing themselves of Epstein’s hospitality is by now familiar. Elon Musk. Steve Bannon. Peter Attia. Guests like these exist within their own galaxies of assistants, advisers and hangers on. Is it possible that no one raised questions about Epstein’s treatment of women beyond a certain coy or coded admiration for what they saw as his extravagant taste?

“His lifestyle is very different and kind of intriguing although it would not work for me,” Bill Gates wrote to colleagues in 2011 after a visit with Epstein. (Gates has called his relationship with Epstein a “big mistake” and denied Epstein’s claim in a draft email that Gates engaged in extramarital sex.)

In an interview with Die Zeit on Feb. 12, the cognitive scientist Joscha Bach acknowledged that Epstein’s “relationship to women in his environment, especially some of his employees, seemed unfriendly at times and disrespectful.” In a separate email to The New York Times, Bach added that he “had some conversations” with Epstein’s assistants “in which I inquired about their well being.” He added: “Nothing they told me or what I observed gave reason for concern that anything coercive or illegal could be going on.”

Tessa West, a professor of social psychology at New York University, describes the collective silence around Epstein and his “girls” as “willful inaction.” Even if the guests at Epstein’s table were not engaging in illegal or harmful behavior, some had to have seen red flags, and “they’re doing nothing about it. They’re not saying anything. They’re not discouraging it,” West said. Given what she knows about gender dynamics in her profession, academia, “I am zero surprised by any of this,” she said. Scientists like West offer clues to why and how Epstein’s world functioned to protect him. [Continue reading…]