On February 16, 1997, the National Security Agency intercepted a telephone call from the Israeli embassy in Washington to a Mossad supervisor in Tel Aviv. The call was in Hebrew. An intelligence officer told his superior that the Israeli ambassador wanted him to obtain a copy of a classified letter from Secretary of State Warren Christopher to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. The letter contained assurances about the withdrawal of Israeli troops from the West Bank city of Hebron, part of a fragile agreement signed one month earlier between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization. To get a copy, the officer said, he would need to "go to Mega."
The supervisor in Tel Aviv shut him down. "This is not something we use Mega for."
The FBI had never heard the code name before. The bureau narrowed the search for the identity of Mega to someone who either worked at or had access to a senior official employed by the National Security Council, the body that advises the president on intelligence and defense matters. Its offices are in the White House. Its members include the vice president, the secretaries of state and defense, the director of Central Intelligence, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The investigation went nowhere. Mossad claimed "Mega" was merely code for the CIA, a claim pushed by Rafi Eitan, the Israeli intelligence operative who had captured Adolf Eichmann in Buenos Aires, orchestrated the theft of enriched uranium from a U.S. facility in Pennsylvania, handled Jonathan Pollard, and run the PROMIS software operation documented earlier in this series. Neither the FBI nor the NSA accepted his explanation. They believed Mega was a senior U.S. government official who had been involved in running Pollard, the naval intelligence analyst convicted of spying for Israel. The FBI had recently reinterviewed Pollard in prison, and he had admitted that even his high security clearance hadn't been enough to obtain some of the documents his Israeli handler requested. Yet the handler had seemed to know the access codes within hours, sometimes on a daily rotation. The FBI wanted to know: who was providing them?
Then the story leaked. The Washington Post published the intercept details. The mole hunt stalled. And roughly a year later, in 1998, the Wall Street Journal published a short report about a previously unknown organization: a private gathering of twenty of the wealthiest Jewish businessmen in North America. They had been meeting twice a year since 1991. No press had covered the group's existence for seven years. The group's founders called it the Study Group. The press called it the Mega Group.
Whether the code name intercepted by the NSA referred to this organization, to an individual, or to something else entirely has never been resolved. But what the documented record does show is that the people in that room had the access, the connections, and the infrastructure to obtain virtually any document in Washington, and that several of them had spent decades operating in exactly the spaces where intelligence and organized crime intersect.
The Founders
The Mega Group was created in 1991 by Leslie Wexner and Charles Bronfman. If you've read the previous two briefs, you already know what those names carry.
Wexner: the retail billionaire who granted Jeffrey Epstein power of attorney, transferred a $77 million Manhattan townhouse for $0, and whose company's distribution network was served by a CIA-linked airline.
Bronfman: the heir to a Prohibition-era bootlegging fortune built in partnership with Meyer Lansky, whose family provided financial backing for illegal arms shipments to the Haganah, the paramilitary force that became the Israel Defense Forces, and whose brother Edgar sat on the board of the B'nai B'rith lodge that honored Roy Cohn in 1983.
Per the Wall Street Journal, the group's stated purpose was Jewish philanthropy. But the Journal also reported that the members' primary concerns were declining support for Israel's policies among American Jews and rising rates of intermarriage. One journalist at the time described the group's ambition as creating a "Mafia" of Jewish philanthropy.
The Members
The Mega Group's twenty members included men whose family histories, business empires, and institutional positions spanned organized crime, intelligence, media, and political power. Max Fisher, Wexner's mentor, had served as a diplomatic liaison between the U.S. and Israel across multiple presidential administrations, with documented organized crime ties dating back to Detroit's Prohibition era. In that role, one investigative journalist described him as a "private Middle East diplomat," the kind of person who would have had routine access to exactly the sort of classified correspondence the intercepted Mossad call was seeking. Lester Crown was the son of Henry Crown, a Chicago figure whose associates included political fixers allied with Al Capone.
But the member who best illustrates the pattern is Michael Steinhardt, a hedge fund manager whose father, Sol "Red McGee" Steinhardt, was Meyer Lansky's preferred jewel fence and a major figure in New York's criminal underworld. Steinhardt wrote about this openly in his autobiography. His father was also his first client on Wall Street.
For decades, Steinhardt maintained a close relationship with Marc Rich, a commodities trader who had been indicted in 1983 on 65 criminal counts including tax evasion, wire fraud, and illegally trading with Iran during the U.S. oil embargo. Rich fled to Switzerland before arrest and spent 17 years on the FBI's Most Wanted list. His worldwide offices frequently served Mossad agents. His foundation was run by former Mossad agent Avner Azulay. He maintained a relationship with BCCI, the international bank later shut down for laundering money for drug cartels and intelligence agencies, which lent him tens of millions throughout the 1980s. In the late 1990s, Steinhardt enlisted other Mega Group members, including Edgar Bronfman, to lobby for Rich's presidential pardon. On Clinton's last day in office, after heavy lobbying from Israeli intelligence officials, Israeli politicians including Prime Minister Ehud Barak, and Mega Group members, Clinton granted it. The New York Post reported that Rich's ex-wife Denise had donated $450,000 to the Clinton Library and over $1 million to Democratic campaigns.
The Pattern
The Mega Group was founded the same year that Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell are believed to have begun their sexual blackmail operation.
And while this private group was meeting behind closed doors, Israeli espionage against the United States was escalating. Israeli telecommunications company Amdocs helped install new telephone lines in the White House in 1997. A senior-level Amdocs employee maintained a separate data line from outside St. Louis connected directly to Israel, with what investigators believed was a "real time" capacity to intercept phone calls from the White House and other government offices. FBI agents sought an arrest warrant, but Clinton Justice Department officials blocked it.
In March 1997, one month after the NSA intercepted the "Mega" call, Mossad dispatched a surveillance team to Washington to intercept phone calls between President Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. There is no evidence in the record that Lewinsky was a foreign intelligence asset or part of a ‘honeypot’ operation. It appears to have been an organic relationship that Mossad identified and exploited. The recordings were couriered by diplomatic bag to Tel Aviv. On March 27, Clinton told Lewinsky he believed a foreign embassy was tapping his phone conversations, a detail later confirmed in her sworn testimony to the Starr investigation. Nine months later, in January 1998, the Drudge Report broke the story of the affair publicly, based on recordings made by Linda Tripp, a Pentagon employee who had taped her own conversations with Lewinsky and provided them to independent counsel Kenneth Starr. There is no verified evidence that Mossad played a role in making the affair public.
What the Israeli recordings were used for, according to multiple sources, was leverage. During the October 1998 Wye Plantation peace talks, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who had been elected as Israel's youngest prime minister two years earlier on a platform skeptical of the peace process, allegedly told Clinton he had obtained recordings of the sexually explicit phone conversations and attempted to use them to secure a pardon for Jonathan Pollard. This claim comes from two independent sources: author Daniel Halper, relying on on-the-record interviews with former officials and hundreds of pages of documents compiled for potential Lewinsky litigation, and Gordon Thomas in Gideon's Spies, citing Israeli intelligence sources. Netanyahu's spokesman called the claims "drivel." Clinton considered the pardon but ultimately declined only when CIA Director George Tenet threatened to publicly resign.
Former Israeli military intelligence officer Ari Ben-Menashe has made an even more direct allegation: that Epstein's sexual blackmail operation was created specifically to target Bill Clinton on Israel's behalf. "The Israelis feared that Mr. Clinton, when he was campaigning for President, will be a repeat of Mr. Carter," Ben-Menashe said. The comparison was specific: Jimmy Carter had brokered the 1978 Camp David Accords, personally pressuring Israel into territorial concessions that Israeli intelligence viewed as a strategic threat. "They feared Clinton wasn't that, but they feared he was that. And I think Mr. Epstein was sent early on to catch up with President Clinton." Ben-Menashe's claims are treated seriously by some investigative journalists and dismissed by Israeli officials. PRCDNT presents them as allegations, not as verified facts.
The Question
A private group of twenty billionaires was created in 1991 by the man who bankrolled Jeffrey Epstein. That same year, Epstein's blackmail operation reportedly began. At least five of the group's members had documented generational ties to organized crime, verified connections to Israeli intelligence, or direct access to the highest levels of American political power. Within six years, the NSA intercepted a Mossad communication using a code name that matched the group's name, seeking classified documents from the White House. The investigation was shut down before it produced an answer.
Was the Mega Group the coordination mechanism for these operations? Or was it simply a philanthropy club whose founders happened to occupy the exact same networks as the people running intelligence and blackmail operations? That question has never been investigated. Not by the FBI. Not by Congress. Not by anyone.
What Comes Next
The Mega Group did not build this system from scratch. They inherited it. A decade before Wexner and Bronfman founded their private club, a covert network was running operations out of the White House basement. Arms to Iran. Cocaine into American cities. Money through offshore banks that answered to no government. When it was exposed, fourteen people were indicted. Six were pardoned before they could testify. The people who built it called it the Enterprise. The public called it Iran-Contra.
Forward this to someone who wonders why certain investigations go nowhere.
HOW WE VERIFIED THIS
NSA intercept of "Mega" communication: Webb, Whitney, One Nation Under Blackmail, Volume 2, Chapter 14 (2022), citing the Washington Post (May 1997) on the February 16, 1997 NSA intercept of the Israeli embassy phone call regarding the Christopher-Arafat letter on the Hebron Accord. Additional detail from Thomas, Gordon, Gideon's Spies: The Secret History of the Mossad (Macmillan, 2010), Chapter 5, providing context on the FBI's investigation, the Pollard connection, and the Committee of the Heads of Service response.
Rafi Eitan background and "Mega" cover story: Webb, One Nation Under Blackmail, Volume 2, Chapter 14, citing the Los Angeles Times on Eitan's claim that "Mega" derived from "Megawatt." Eitan's operational history (Eichmann capture, nuclear material acquisition, Pollard handling, PROMIS theft) documented across both ONUB volumes and Thomas, Gideon's Spies, Chapters 4-5.
Mega Group formation and membership: Webb, One Nation Under Blackmail, Volume 2, Chapter 14, citing the Wall Street Journal (1998) reporting on the group's founding in 1991 by Wexner and Charles Bronfman, $30,000 annual dues, twice-yearly meetings, and membership roster.
Michael Steinhardt and organized crime connections: Webb, One Nation Under Blackmail, Volume 2, Chapter 14, citing Steinhardt's autobiography No Bull: My Life in and out of the Markets on Sol "Red McGee" Steinhardt's role as Lansky's jewel fence. Marc Rich connections documented in same chapter citing multiple sources on Rich's Mossad ties, BCCI relationship, and the Clinton pardon lobbying. Rich pardon details citing New York Post (2016) on Denise Rich donations.
Marc Rich indictment: Webb, One Nation Under Blackmail, Volume 2, Chapter 14, documenting 65 criminal counts, flight to Switzerland, and 17 years on FBI Most Wanted list. Clinton pardon lobbied by Israeli PM Ehud Barak, Mega Group members Steinhardt and Edgar Bronfman, and Rich's attorney Jack Quinn (former Clinton White House counsel).
Lester Crown and Henry Crown: Webb, One Nation Under Blackmail, Volume 2, Chapter 14, citing Volume 1, Chapter 1 on the "Supermob" connections and Avery-Capone alliance.
Amdocs White House telephone installation: Webb, One Nation Under Blackmail, Volume 2, Chapter 14, citing Carl Cameron's December 2001 investigative report for FOX News on the T1 data line connected directly to Israel and the blocked FBI arrest warrant.
Mossad interception of Clinton-Lewinsky calls: Thomas, Gordon, Gideon's Spies (Macmillan, 2010), Chapter 5, documenting the March 1997 yahalomin team deployment, diplomatic bag courier to Tel Aviv, and Clinton's March 27 warning to Lewinsky. Corroborated by sworn testimony in the Starr Report and by Webb, One Nation Under Blackmail, Volume 2, Chapter 14, citing Insight magazine (May 2000) on Israeli penetration of White House telephone lines.
Netanyahu blackmail allegation at Wye Plantation: Webb, One Nation Under Blackmail, Volume 2, Chapter 14, citing author Daniel Halper's on-the-record interviews with former officials and documents compiled for potential Lewinsky litigation. Independently supported by Thomas, Gideon's Spies. Netanyahu's spokesman denied the claims.
Ari Ben-Menashe allegation on Epstein targeting Clinton: Webb, One Nation Under Blackmail, Volume 2, Chapter 14, direct quote from Ben-Menashe. PRCDNT notes this is an allegation from a former Israeli military intelligence officer, not a verified fact.
WINEP board membership and AIPAC pipeline: Multiple Mega Group members including Charles Bronfman, Edgar Bronfman, Max Fisher, Harvey Meyerhoff, Charles Schusterman, and Michael Steinhardt sat on the board of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, documented in WINEP records and Mearsheimer, John J. and Walt, Stephen M., The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (2007). WINEP's origin as an AIPAC-affiliated think tank documented in the same source. Elliott Brandt's remarks at AIPAC's 2025 Congressional Summit describing cultivation of current cabinet members as “lifelines,” leaked audio published by The Grayzone (April 9, 2025).
Note on sources: All historical claims are drawn from Whitney Webb's One Nation Under Blackmail, Volume 2, Chapter 14, and Gordon Thomas's Gideon's Spies, Chapter 5, both provided as source material. PRCDNT presents these as the documented record, not as proven conclusions.
THE PRCDNT BRIEF investigates the three-layer system of control: Operations (blackmail, trafficking, financial crimes), Control Systems (media, education, psychological manipulation), and Institutions (intelligence agencies, elite networks, corporate empires). Every week, one verified investigation showing how the layers connect.
All claims sourced from declassified documents, on-the-record intelligence histories, and investigative journalism. No speculation. No anonymous sources. Just the documented record.
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