Jump to content

Edward Jay Epstein

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by AnomieBOT (talk | contribs) at 18:31, 12 January 2024 (Dating maintenance tags: {{Cn}}). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Edward Jay Epstein
Epstein in 2017
Born(1935-12-06)December 6, 1935
New York City, U.S.
DiedJanuary 9, 2024(2024-01-09) (aged 88)
New York City, U.S.
Academic background
EducationCornell University (BA, MA)
Harvard University (PhD)
Academic work
DisciplineGovernment
Political science
Journalism
Institutions

Edward Jay Epstein (December 6, 1935 – January 9, 2024) was an American investigative journalist and a political science professor at Harvard University, the University of California, Los Angeles, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.[1][2]

Early life and education

Edward Jay Epstein was born in New York City on December 6, 1935. He earned a Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts in government from Cornell University.[3] One of his professors at Cornell was Vladimir Nabokov, for whom Epstein worked part-time advising the writer on which recently released films he should see. In 1973, he received his PhD in government from Harvard University. He completed his master's thesis on the search for political truth which later became a top-selling book.[4]

Career

Epstein taught courses at these universities for three years.[4] While a graduate student at Cornell University in 1966, he published the book Inquest, an influential critique of the Warren Commission probe into the John F. Kennedy assassination. After teaching at Harvard, UCLA, and MIT, Epstein decided to pursue his writing career back in New York City.[1]

Epstein wrote three books about the Kennedy assassination, eventually collected in The Assassination Chronicles: Inquest, Counterplot, and Legend (1992). His books Legend (1978) and Deception (1989) drew on interviews with retired CIA Counterintelligence Chief James Jesus Angleton, and his 1982 book The Rise and Fall of Diamonds was an exposé of the diamond industry and its economic impact in southern Africa.[5]

In Have you ever tried to sell a diamond (1982), Edward Jay Epstein detailed the heavy marketing strategy used by the diamond company De Beers to turn tiny rocks of transparent crystallized carbon into highly demanded, high-priced mass market items.[6]

In his 1996 book The Secret History of Armand Hammer, the author revealed, among other things, how the prolific businessman laundered money to finance espionage for the Soviets in the 1920s and 1930s.[7][8]

In 2017, Edward Jay Epstein was the subject of a documentary, Hall of Mirrors, directed by the sisters Ena and Ines Talakic[9][10] and which premiered at the 55th New York Film Festival.[11] This covered his most notable articles and books, including close looks at the findings of the Warren Commission, the structure of the diamond industry, the strange career of Armand Hammer, and the inner workings of big-time journalism itself. These were interwoven with an in-progress investigation into the circumstances around Edward Snowden's 2013 leak of classified documents, resulting in Epstein's book How America Lost Its Secrets: Edward Snowden, the Man and the Theft.[citation needed]

Despite false claims of both the documentary and the book affirming that Snowden was a Russian spy,[12] neither did so. On the contrary, in his book, Epstein concludes that there is no evidence that Snowden was employed by the Russian Intelligence service while in the United States. What he did say in his book "How America Lost Its Secrets: Edward Snowden, the Man and the Theft," was that Snowden, a former civilian contractor at the National Security Agency, as the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence unanimously confirmed in its December 2016 report,[13] removed digital copies of 1.5 million classified files from the NSA. Epstein also said that Edward Snowden went to Hong Kong, where he secretly contacted Russian government officials,[9] which Vladimir Putin revealed in a September 3, 2013, televised press conference[14][15] and that the House Intelligence Committee found, based on its access to U.S. intelligence, that "Since Snowden's arrival in Moscow [on June 23, 2013], he has had, and continues to have, contact with Russian intelligence services."[16][15][17] A conclusion that Epstein confirmed with Representative Adam Schiff, the committee's ranked Democrat, and Representative Mike Rogers, its ranking Republican, all the Democrat as well as Republican signed the report.[17][18] The fact that a defector to Moscow had contact between 2013 and 2016 with an adversary's intelligence service does not make him a spy, and therefore Epstein never claimed that Edward Snowden was a spy in the film Hall of Mirrors or in his book. Nonetheless, he said "Other whistleblowers have gone to their respective service’s inspector general with their concerns; by contrast, Snowden 'got in touch with' agents of the Russian government."[17]

Death

Epstein died from COVID-19 at his apartment in Manhattan, New York City, on January 9, 2024, at the age of 88.[19]

Published work

  • Inquest: The Warren Commission and the Establishment of Truth (1966)
  • Counterplot (1968)
  • News from Nowhere. Television and the News (1973)
  • Between Fact and Fiction: The Problem of Journalism (1975)
  • Agency of Fear: Opiates and Political Power in America (1977)
  • Cartel (1978)
  • Legend: The Secret World of Lee Harvey Oswald (1978)
  • The Rise and Fall of Diamonds: The Shattering of a Brilliant Illusion (1982)
  • Deception: The Invisible War Between the KGB & the CIA (1989)
  • The Assassination Chronicles: Inquest, Counterplot, and Legend (1992)
  • Dossier: The Secret History of Armand Hammer (1996)
  • The Big Picture: Money and Power in Hollywood (2000)
  • The Hollywood Economist: The Hidden Financial Reality Behind the Movies (2010)
  • The Annals of Unsolved Crime (2013)
  • The JFK Assassination Diary: My Search for Answers to the Mystery of the Century (2013)
  • How America Lost Its Secrets: Snowden, the Man and the Theft (2017)[20][21]

References

  1. ^ a b "Edward J. Epstein". Karws. Archived from the original on January 21, 2013. Retrieved April 22, 2013.
  2. ^ Jackson, David. "Follows Oswald's Track, Finds Lot of 'Maybes'" (PDF). Chicago Sun-Times. Retrieved August 17, 2012.
  3. ^ "Edward J. Epstein". www.kenrahn.com. Retrieved December 30, 2020.
  4. ^ a b "Edward Jay Epstein's Web Log". Ed Jay Epstein. Retrieved April 22, 2013.
  5. ^ Nocera, Joe (August 9, 2008). "Diamonds Are Forever In Botswana". The New York Times. p. C1. Retrieved June 29, 2012.
  6. ^ Epstein, Edward Jay (February 1982). "Have You Ever Tried to Sell a Diamond?". The Atlantic. Retrieved July 16, 2019.
  7. ^ Dossier: The Secret History of Armand Hammer, publishersweekly.com
  8. ^ Joseph E. Persico, The Last Tycoon, Nytimes.com, October 13, 1996
  9. ^ a b Lang, Brent (October 16, 2017). "'Hall of Mirrors': Edward Jay Epstein on the Trail of Edward Snowden". Variety. Retrieved December 4, 2022.
  10. ^ Scheck, Frank (October 4, 2017). "'Hall of Mirrors': Film Review | NYFF 2017". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved October 3, 2021.
  11. ^ "Hall of Mirrors". Film at Lincoln Center. Retrieved October 3, 2021.
  12. ^ Greenwald, Glenn (March 21, 2017). "Newly Obtained Documents Prove: Key Claim of Snowden's Accusers Is a Fraud". The Intercept. Retrieved September 23, 2021.
  13. ^ "Report on the Activity of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence for the 114th Congress". irp.fas.org. Retrieved October 3, 2021.
  14. ^ "Interview to Channel One and Associated Press news agency - President of Russia". September 3, 2013. Archived from the original on July 13, 2015. Retrieved December 4, 2022. Mr Snowden first went to Hong Kong and got in touch with our diplomatic representatives. I was informed that there was such a man, agent of special services.
  15. ^ a b Epstein, Edward Jay (March 21, 2017). "The Compromising of America". Lawfare. Retrieved December 4, 2022.
  16. ^ "Snowden still has contacts with Russian intelligence: U.S. House report". Reuters. December 22, 2016. Retrieved December 4, 2022.
  17. ^ a b c Epstein, Edward Jay (December 4, 2019). "For Whom the Whistleblower Blows". City Journal. Retrieved December 4, 2022.
  18. ^ Epstein, Edward Jay (January 17, 2017). How America Lost Its Secrets: Edward Snowden, the Man and the Theft. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-451-49457-3.
  19. ^ "Edward Jay Epstein, Author and Stubborn Skeptic, Dies at 88". The New York Times. January 11, 2024. Retrieved January 11, 2024.
  20. ^ "Why President Obama can't pardon Edward Snowden". Newsweek. January 5, 2017. Retrieved January 11, 2017.
  21. ^ Savage, Charlie. "Was Snowden a Russian Agent?". The New York Review of Books. Retrieved February 6, 2017. Epstein gets many facts about surveillance issues wrong, calling into question his competence to serve as a guide to thinking seriously about the Snowden saga. He gets dates wrong, calls an important technology by the wrong name, and inaccurately describes various programs and a presidential directive Snowden leaked. ( Syndicated copy without paywall
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Edward_Jay_Epstein&oldid=1195189844"