“spook agencies” don’t make prosecutorial or law enforcement investigation decisions (outside of those within their own investigative jurisdiction where they are also law enforcement agencies, which US ones, other than FBI to the extent you consider that a “spook agency”, aren’t) directly. If they were involved, they would be an example of a powerful actor exerting influence on law enforcement / prosecutorial agencies. Which would be consistent with the possibly I said had some grounds to suspect.
OTOH, there are other actors (including many of the individual reputed clients) that also might have, on their own and through their own connections, significant ability to sway law enforcement decisions if it was important to them, and significant motive to do so if they really were Epstein’s clients. “Spook agencies” make good targets for weakly-evidenced conspiracy theories, because people take suspicious events plus the lack of clear evidence of a particular actor as evidence that clandestine professionals are involved.
I am genuinely interested in your views on ‘how’ would we ever obtain “clear evidence” regarding matters that involve intelligence agencies acting well outside of the law. “14,342 JFK assassination records still contain redactions in 2022” according to a cursory search.
I’m not sure how that inference is drawn, but that is absolultely not part of my world-view, in general or as it pertains to this case; intelligence agencies could either be a source of influence in pursuit of their legal mission, or vehicles of informal influence for other parties.
> I am genuinely interested in your views on ‘how’ would we ever obtain “clear evidence” regarding matters that involve intelligence agencies acting well outside of the law.
Often, we wouldn’t, short of someone inside who knows where evidence is to be found preserving and revealing it, and even then validating that it is genuine might be difficult.
> The Foreign Office suspected that Maxwell was a secret agent of a foreign government, possibly a double agent or a triple agent, and "a thoroughly bad character and almost certainly financed by Russia". He had known links to the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), to the Soviet KGB, and to the Israeli intelligence service Mossad.[52] Six serving and former heads of Israeli intelligence services attended Maxwell's funeral in Israel, while Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir eulogised him and stated: "He has done more for Israel than can today be told."[53]
For this reason, espionage has often been something of a family business — the children meet the contacts of the parent, and thereby essentially inherit the store.
You should instead be thinking: She's purveying wildly illegal services for rich and high-profile people, and her father worked for an intelligence agency. In the unlikely event the IC wasn't involved in the beginning, why would they not approach her post-hoc?
You don't need "cover" to be a good spy. You just need information and contacts. Cover is a tool to get those, because most people aren't as dumb as Bill Gates.