Jeffrey Epstein’s calendar is revealing secrets years after the billionaire’s death in a New York prison. The now head of the Central Intelligence Agency, a college president, a former Obama White House counsel, and scholar Noam Chomsky are all listed in the financier’s private date book, according to a new report from the Wall Street Journal.
The private calendar is different from other Epstein documents, such as his flight logs or his “black book,” both of which have been made public. None of the names reported by the paper on Sunday appeared in either of those documents, though Epstein has been previously tied to high-powered figures including the U.K.’s Prince Andrew and prominent Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz. The scheduled meetings, not all of which could be confirmed as having taken place, were planned for the years after 2008, when Epstein served time in jail for a sex crime involving a teenage girl and after he had registered as a sex offender.
The calendar showed that in 2014, while current CIA director William Burns was deputy secretary of state, Burns had three meetings scheduled with Epstein, first meeting in Washington and then at Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse. Rumors and accusations have long swirled around Epstein that he was some kind of intelligence asset.
CIA spokesperson Tammy Kupperman Thorp issued a statement to the paper denying that Burns knew “anything” about Epstein at the time beyond his expertise in finance. “The director did not know anything about him, other than that he was introduced as an expert in the financial services sector and offered general advice on transition to the private sector,” she said. “They had no relationship.”
Chomsky, a political activist and public intellectual who was a longtime professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, had several meetings scheduled with Epstein between 2015 and 2016. When the Journal contacted Chomsky to ask about the meetings, he responded in an email, “First response is that it is none of your business. Or anyone’s. Second is that I knew him and we met occasionally.”
One of Chomsky’s meetings with Epstein involved former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. Chomsky said they discussed “Israel’s policies with regard to Palestinian issues and the international arena.”
In another scheduled meeting with Chomsky, Epstein planned to fly the scholar in to dine with director Woody Allen and his wife, Soon-Yi Previn. “If there was a flight, which I doubt, it would have been from Boston to New York, 30 minutes,” Chomsky told the paper. “I’m unaware of the principle that requires that I inform you about an evening spent with a great artist.”
Chomsky went on to say that when he met with Epstein, “what was known about Jeffrey Epstein was that he had been convicted of a crime and had served his sentence. According to U.S. laws and norms, that yields a clean slate.” Epstein also had a close relationship with MIT, making several donations to the university while he was alive.
Another figure listed in Epstein’s calendar is Leon Botstein, the president of Bard College. According to the Journal, Epstein was invited to Bard’s campus, and he brought with him a group of “young female guests.” Botstein said that cultivated a relationship with Epstein in the hopes he would make a donation, and in 2012 the college president met up with Epstein to thank him for donating 66 laptops to Bard’s high schools. The calendar reveals approximately two dozen meetings between Botstein and Epstein over the course of four years, with most taking place at Epstein’s townhouse.
“I was an unsuccessful fundraiser and actually the object of a little bit of sadism on his part in dangling philanthropic support,” Botstein told the Journal. “That was my relationship with him.”
Discussing Epstein’s criminal record, Botstein said, “We looked him up, and he was a convicted felon for a sex crime. We believe in rehabilitation.”
Kathryn Ruemmler, who served as a White House counsel to President Obama, had “dozens” of meetings with Epstein between leaving the federal government and joining Goldman Sachs Group Inc. as a top lawyer. She was also scheduled to join Epstein in Paris in 2015 and a 2017 trip to his private Caribbean island.
A Goldman Sachs spokesperson told the Journal that Ruemmler had a professional relationship with Epstein related to her job at law firm Latham & Watkins LLP. She did not travel with him, the spokesperson said.
“I regret ever knowing Jeffrey Epstein,” Ruemmler told the paper.