This article is a Q&A with an author who has been on the Epstein beat for a long time.
As a reporter, Bryant has spent the past two decades researching and writing about child trafficking, a beat that has put him outside of the journalistic mainstream (and one that inevitably intersects, at times, with the conspiracy realm).In 2009, before he turned his attention to Epstein, Bryant published a small-press book called The Franklin Scandal, about an alleged power broker pedophile ring in Nebraska that garnered national media attention in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Bryant’s pal David Carr, the late Times media columnist, was a fan, and the book was optioned by Magnolia Pictures in 2016. Three years later, the project still hasn’t found a home, but Magnolia boss Eamonn Bowles thinks that may very well change given all of the renewed exposure on the Epstein case.
“There are some stories that are just too wild to be reckoned with while they’re happening,” he said. “You kind of need a historical perspective.”
With Jeffrey Epstein denied bail and prosecutors building their case in his sex trafficking indictment, one of the next shoes to drop—possibly many shoes—will invariably be: Who within Epstein’s social orbit might be implicated in the scandal one way or another? As someone involved in litigation against Epstein told my colleague Gabriel Sherman earlier this week, “It’s going to be staggering, the amount of names. It’s going to be contagion numbers.”
Ever since Epstein’s arrest on July 6, there’s been growing scrutiny of his vast network of rich and/or famous and/or powerful friends and acquaintances—or former friends and acquaintances, as it were. There’s a road map to that network in Epstein’s now-infamous black book, filled with many bold-faced names, phone numbers, and addresses, from Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, and Ehud Barak to Alec Baldwin, Ralph Fiennes, Mick Jagger, and even Courtney Love. “It is a mosaic of Epstein’s social contacts,” the investigative journalist Nick Bryant told me.
Vanity Fair: You started digging into Jeffrey Epstein after writing The Franklin Scandal. What are some of the similarities you found?
Nick Bryant: That book is a template for what’s happening now and how high up it goes. A major parallel between the two stories is that Lawrence King, who was one of the primary pimps of this pedophile network I wrote about, and Jeffrey Epstein, they were both flying children interstate, and they had both done it with impunity for a number of years.
In both instances you have officials who were unwilling to back down. In Epstein, you had the Palm Beach Police Department that was unwilling to back down, and in Lawrence King, you had the Nebraska Senate that was unwilling to back down.
Epstein had an island, and I’m sure he had these parties also at his place in Manhattan and elsewhere, and there were hidden cameras. In this particular venue in Washington, DC, where the Nebraska victims were trafficked, there were also hidden cameras.
The individual who owned the house in Washington, DC, he had intelligence affiliations. We’re seeing with Epstein that he also had alleged intelligence connections.
King and Epstein collected children in the same type of fashion. King would have kids conscript other kids, just like Epstein would have kids conscript other kids. In both cases the victims were threatened and hassled. Both Jeffrey Epstein and Lawrence King had lavish lifestyles, but there wasn’t an obvious explanation for their wealth, and both were prominently associated with power brokers of the highest order. [Editor’s note: A grand jury concluded there was no evidence to charge King with any sex crimes.]
VANITY FAIR: What was your first impression when you read through it and saw all the names?
I’d seen this exact same thing before with The Franklin Scandal. It was like déjà vu. I felt like, well, here’s another power broker pedophile network. Definitely.
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/567746.The_Franklin_Cover_Up
The Franklin Cover-Up: Child Abuse, Satanism, and Murder in Nebraska
by John W. DeCamp
4.15 · Rating details · 441 ratings · 43 reviews
The shut-down of Omaha, Nebraska’s Franklin Community Federal Credit Union, raided by federal agencies in November 1988, sent shock waves all the way to Washington, D.C. $40 million was missing. The credit union’s manager: Republican Party activist Lawrence E. “Larry” King, Jr., behind whose rise to fame and riches stood powerful figures in Nebraska politics and business, and in the nation’s capital.
In the face of opposition from local and state law enforcement, from the FBI, and from the powerful Omaha World-Herald newspaper, a special Franklin committee of the Nebraska Legislature launched its own probe. What looked like a financial swindle, soon exploded into a hideous tale of drugs, Iran-Contra money-laundering, a nationwide child abuse ring, and ritual murder.
Nineteen months later, the legislative committee’s chief investigator died - suddenly, and violently, like more than a dozen other people linked to the Franklin case.
Author John DeCamp knows the Franklin scandal from the inside. In 1990, his “DeCamp memo” first publicly named the alleged high-ranking abusers. Today, he is attorney for two of the abuse victims.
Using documentation never before made public, DeCamp lays bare not only the crimes, but the cover-up - a textbook case of how dangerous the corruption of institutions of government, and the press, can be. In its sweep and in what it portends for the nation, the Franklin cover-up followed the ugly precedent of the Warren Commission.