I want to briefly gloss some political economic and imperialist covert action history basics to situate this research within a broader understanding. The CIA has exerted undue influence in Ecuador since the end of WWII, essentially, and with Correa’s decade long DemSoc rule being the primary exception to an unbroken chain of American-backed juntas, neoliberal right-wingers, and a couple populist centrists or center-leftists (one of whom may have been the recipient an infamous, black box-less, unexplained plane crash death that some believe to be the trademarked calling card of the CIA).
A perfecta prelude to the CIA’s iron grip on the country is found in the following anecdote… Feb. 12, 1949, a Radio Quito announcer breathlessly interrupted a pop music program to hastily declare that the nearby town of Cotocollao, nestled in the Andes to the north of Quito, was under siege by Martians (The CIA in Ecuador, Marc Becker, Duke University Press). So convincing was the Spanish-language adaptation of Orson Welles’ The War of the Worlds broadcast that a motorcade of police streamed away to help the townsfolk in repelling the alien invaders and people took screaming to the streets. By broadcast’s end, a bilious mob enraged by the trick, set fire to the building the station shared with its parent company El Comercio, Quito’s oldest paper. 15 charred cremains were found in the rubble (Ibid). The CIA’s Quito Station promptly set about investigating the incident, hoping to exploit it by blaming it on the Ecuadorian Communist Party, and was only thwarted by the fact that multiple sympathizers were among the dead. Becker takes this tale at face value (Ibid), but the deep politics-head in me is inclined to wonder if the riots weren’t the result of intentional skullduggery.
Fast forwarding a few decades, we know by way of CIA officer Phillip Agee’s Inside the Company: CIA Diary that the Company endeavored to keep agents and paid infiltrators embedded at basically every organizational level on both the left and the right, with the agency sometimes going as far as erecting counterfeit orgs like the Ecuadorean Anti-Communist Front—which initially existed in letterhead name only—for their sheepdogging means (Killing Hope, William Blum). We know this because Agee spent the early ‘60s stationed in the Andean country. During these JFK years, American policy towards Ecuador was strictly double faceted: the State Department’s priorities were for Ecuador to break ties with Cuba and break up their domestic Communists. The Fifth Column that consisted of everyone from two senior colonels in the National Police (they were arrested for the part they played in massacring pro-democracy protesters under the direction of Company man Bob Weatherwax), the Postmaster-General, the President’s physician, and the Vice President of the Senate was marshalled against the populist President José María Velasco Ibarra over his unwillingness to fulfill the CIA’s vision. After Velasco’s ouster, his VP Arosemena was soon deposed in short order as well due to his similar reluctance to adopt an adversarial stance towards Cuba, this time to be replaced by the Military Junta of 1963, which would rule for the succeeding three years. During this period, the CIA employed basically the totality of its dirty tricks arsenal: electronic eavesdropping, the formation of fake unions to wrangle syndicalists away from anti-Americanism, propaganda stations seeding news distortion about the commies, and nothing short of GLADIO-esque false flag bombings of churches and RW orgs to frame Ecuadorian leftists (Ibid).
One of the historical impacts of the Correa government was namely that: historical. The 2013 documentary The Death of Jaime Roldós, an exploration of the unsolved plane crash demise of Ecuador’s human rights hardliner President (“human rights hardliner”? gasp), caused the Correa government to reopen the state archives & revise the official record. Jaime Roldós, until his recent supplanting as Ecuador’s youngest ever president by Noboa, was seen as a youthful idealist and Jimmy Carter protege by his LatAm contemporaries, his seemingly steadfast liberal principles and social justice convictions placing him at odds with the Reagan admin. This was largely because he was resistant to kowtowing to their foreign policy objectives, of course, and had committed the gravest offenses: Roldós, Ecuador’s first post-junta president, positioned himself as a “moral compass” in Latin America during the height of Operation Condor, critiquing the human rights abuses of Sudamerican dictators, and accused US-backed Salvadoran proxy President of running a government “perched atop a mountain of corpses”. The documentary about the uncertainties surrounding the ill-fated night when the Beechcraft Super King Air twin turboprop slammed into Huairapungo Hill in inclement weather and the Zurich Police’s unusual determination that the plane’s motors were shut down at time of impact (sabotage) caused Correa’s Attorney General Galo Chiriboga to release declassified CIA docs showing that Ecuador joined Operación Condor in 1978, the year prior to Roldós’s election, which would have seen the intel services of the Armed Forces secretly cooperate with the Southern Cone countries and Argentine general would have visited Quito to install the “Condortel” telecoms system. In turn, these revelations seemingly supported the documentary’s insinuation that Roldós’s May 24, 1981 death may have been the result of an Operación Condor conspiracy by the Ecuadorian Armed Forces and their Chilean and Argentine counterparts to take Roldós out because he was seen as overly sympathetic towards the left.
Less than two decades after Roldós fell from the sky, the Clinton administration struck a bilateral agreement with the Ecuadorian government of Jamil Mahuad that permitted the U.S. military to establish a Forward Operating Location (FOL) at Eloy Alfaro Air Base in the port city of Manta. I’ll remind you that the Clinton administration was arguably the high point of Epstein’s direct access to the White House and that Manta is one of the cities that has been the site of rampant cocaine smuggling. The U.S. was given a 10 year lease in Manta, meaning that Epstein’s visits to the country were coincident with this American military presence. Acting as the armed forces’ launchpad for Plan Colombia counterinsurgent & Drug War ops in the confines of Ecuador’s neighbors,
…the FOL was designed to enhance U.S. capabilities in monitoring and interdicting drug trafficking routes, particularly those linked to Colombian cocaine production.
Furthermore, if you read the last essay, you’ll remember that I cobbled together a fairly compelling case that Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell were emissaries of the AmerIsraelis and the former Clinton admin in Colombia, potentially even playing a direct oversight role of arms shipments and doing war tourism sorties firing on FARC rebels from copters clipping the Amazonian canopy. And now, having mapped the instrumentality of the American military presence in Ecuador and its relationship to Plan Colombia, this section will lend an even darker complexion to Epstein’s underage modeling competitions concurrently held in the Andean nation in the next. These revelations also draw a clear parallel to the return of the Estados Unidos’s stormtroopers in Manta, as Trump’s Southcom beds in, consulting with Noboa’s military and holding joint operations, one plank of the larger anti-narcoterrorism campaign that’s culminating in a new Condor era throughout Latin America. In short, the Epstein Class has taken Ecuador back, as they consolidate their hold on the illicit markets once again.
For much of the 20th century, Ecuador was one of the more rigidly stratified countries in Latin America, with the rural population condemned to intergenerational poverty in the post-independence economy by the continued implementation of a peonage system where the indigenous worked on the properties of plantation owners, a vestige of colonialism. William Blum describes it thus in the 2004 revised edition of Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II:
The tiny nation of Ecuador in the early 1960s was, as it remains today, a classic of banana-republic underdevelopment; virtually at the bottom of the economic heap in South America; a society in which one percent of the population received an income comparable to United States upper-class standards, while two-thirds of the people had an average family income of about ten dollars per month—people simply outside the money economy, with little social integration or participation in the national life; a tale told many times in Latin America.
As the 20th century progressed, the economy modernized & became slightly more prosperous with the prospecting of crude oil in the Andes and natural gas in the Gulf of Guayaquil, but the fortunes derived from this resource extraction were distributed highly unevenly indeed. Quantitative metric tracking of Ecuadorian poverty and income inequality seems to have begun in earnest in 1987 circa the devastating earthquake that ruptured the Trans-Ecuadorian Pipeline, the arterial flow of the Ecuadorian economy, forcing the government to take out an $80 million loan from the World Bank to help finance its repairs.
The Gini index plots how the distribution of income amongst individuals / households deviates from perfect equality, measured as values between 0 and 1, with 1.0 representing total wealth disparity, i.e. one individual owning everything and the rest of the populace being money-less, if I understand correctly. The World Bank’s Gini index data for Ecuador shows values hovering around .50 and then experiencing a sharp increase around 1998-1999, rising to nearly .60 and remaining above .50 for the next handful of years, before steadily decreasing to its lowest—meaning more equal—points in recorded history during Correa’s leadership. The late ‘90s was concurrent with the economic crisis that led the Mahuad and Gustavo Noboa regimes to dollarize.
Speaking of which, Epstein associate / lawyer / possible Mossad handler Alan Dershowitz taught former Ecuadorian President Jamil Mahuad at Harvard Law School. Mahuad was inaugurated in 1998 and deposed in 2000 by a coup that was precipitated by his supremely unpopular decision to dollarize the economy during the severe “Asian economic crisis” caused by the global commodity and oil collapse, coupled with a torrential El Niño season that wreaked havoc on Andean agriculture, all of which resulted in Ecuador’s most precarious recession in modern history. In 1999, the GDP dropped by 7.5%. Unemployment doubled. Annual inflation hit 60% and the sucre depreciated by the same amount before its pegging to the dollar. Banks failed en masse. The bourgeois and their capital took flight offshore in response. The rate of poverty rocketed above 50%, which led to a mass emigre exodus of 2% of the workforce and approximately 400k people in total who sought greater fortunes in the States. The Epstein Nexus made their move on Ecuador off the back of this unprecedented economic hardship and at a time when the job market was still in total disarray, likely intentionally. One of the many things I’ve learned over the past 8 months of spending an inordinate amount of time with the Epstein Files is that his trafficking ring frequently targeted countries under extreme duress, whether because they’re war torn or undergoing economic pangs caused by regime change, recession, and/or colonial extraction.
The eventual beneficiary of this turn of events and the coup in response to the deeply unpopular dollarization was Mahuad’s Vice President Gustavo Noboa, 12 who succeeded him in accordance with the constitution. Before he was ousted, though, Jamil Mahuad was also the President who set Guillermo Lasso’s political career on its ascendancy. Lasso first served as the governor of the Guayas Province (home to Ecuador’s largest city Guayaquil) under Mahuad and was then appointed as “Super-Minister of the Economy” on Aug. 17, 1999 in advance of dollarization, which was formally announced approximately 4 months later. Lasso’s Super-Minister position was born of Mahuad’s unorthodox reshuffling of his cabinet and merging of the Finance Ministry, Energy Ministry, National Finance Corporation, Solidarity Fund, and the privatization agency Conam, a position that ever-so-briefly gave him outsized influence as a minister in hopes he could reign the inflation and sovereign debt crisis in, cost of living and welfare net be damned. This goes to show the continuity between the peak of Ecuador’s economic struggles and the present crisis and the overlaps between the Ecuadorian ruling class and the Epstein network.
Anyways, I bring this up partly because there’s a deposition in the Files in which Alan Dershowitz is transcribed mentioning how he’d asked President Mahuad for his opinion of law Professor and former federal judge Paul Cassell, who he said Mahuad described as “stubborn”. Dershowitz was pointedly soliciting his friend Mahuad’s opinion to help him size up one of his litigative enemies during the fallout over the Virginia Giuffre allegations and his scorched earth attempts to clear his name. The deposition was part of the proceedings of a lawsuit launched by Cassell and Bradley Edwards against Dersh. Cassell represented numerous Epstein victims including Virginia Roberts Giuffre & Courtney Wild. Cassell and Edwards sued Dersh for defamation after he accused them of unethical conduct and called for their disbarment in the national media over their involvement in the putative “witch-hunt” against him. While it’s a very tangential connection to the larger Epstein Case, I find it instructive because of what comes next.
On Aug. 23rd, 2004, Ghislaine Maxwell sent a somewhat exasperated email to Mary Morrison of the Clinton Global Initiative and more recently the Atlantic Council—whose current gig focuses on assisting Brazilian companies with international business development—to request that she intercede with the Ecuadorian Ambassador on her and Epstein’s behalf.
Morrison spent one year as Bill Clinton’s Executive Assistant at the Foundation coming straight out of the West Wing before she was appointed CGI’s Director of Operations in ‘04. In the interim, she’d worked for Publicis Groupe, a French ad agency. The Epstein entourage were scheduled to fly out of Guayaquil but had been grounded due to a fuel shortage in the country, the economic imperialism-caused material conditions ironically throwing a wrench in their pleasure cruise plans. So Maxwell asked Morrison to get some 4.5k gallons of jet fuel freed up for the Lolita Express.
Well, it turns out that this brief trip to the equatorial country was undertaken so Epstein and Ghislaine could attend the 2004 iteration of the Models New Generation contest held in Guayaquil, a competition that Jean-Luc Brunel had masterminded through the agency that Epstein helped him open which was by and large a trafficking vehicle for both men. That Epstein called upon personnel employed by Clinton’s post-presidency Foundation to enable his sex trafficking in Latin America (as shown by Brunel’s lawsuit against Epstein seeking reputational & business damages in which the contest is described) and that said visit was only a year-ish on from Epstein’s gunrunning stop off at an Air Force installation in Colombia, may indicate that these very incendiary and dastardly activities were also connected to Plan Colombia somehow.
The Clinton Global Initiative (CGI), one of the landmark programs of the Clinton Foundation, 13 is a “global community” that brings together leaders from “biz, government, and civil society” to formulate measurable solutions to the world’s most pressing challenges through project commitments—blah blah blah. They have an annual meeting that gives Billary an excellent opportunity to drone on on stage, of course, and CGI started a university-centric version called CGI U in 2007, expanding the model to universities and national youth orgs. SO YOU’LL BE POSITIVELY SHOCKED WHEN I TELL YOU EPSTEIN WAS PART OF THE GROUP OF OGs THAT CONCEIVED OF THE INITIATIVE (per a letter penned by his sometimes lawyer Dersh).
This means that Epstein and Ghislaine’s victim scouring in Ecuador was practically the Initiative’s first order of business, as even the CGI website lists the org’s founding as 2005, meaning Morrison was pitching in with flights to bring girls back to the States as soon as she’d been rehired and before her new position was formally announced. Morrison’s response indicates that former Deputy Assistant to the President Doug Band, considered one of the other “originators” of CGI and the “key architect of the Clinton post-presidency”, contacted US Ambassador Kristie Kenney for help sourcing fuel. This is massive, as some log counts calculate that Doug Band took 26 flights on Epstein aircraft in the early 2000s, a few independently of Clinton, and he’s also claimed that Bill visited Little St. James in ‘03, driving home the degree to which the Clinton Foundation and the Epstein Nexus were effectively operating in tandem at this time. Another crucial point in the email that I first missed: GMax initially said that she was going BACK to Ecuador, meaning that it appears there was another trip into Ecuador airspace prior to this that wasn’t recorded, doubtlessly denoting some sort of illegality in absentia, and Band was perhaps aware of it.
While in Guayaquil, Epstein and Ghislaine stayed in the Presidential Suite of the Oro Verde Hotel, a 1,680 sq ft room outfitted with one king bed, two twins, marble bathrooms, large jacuzzi, a home theater, and a private kitchenette. Perfect for a party. Here’s a salacious detail… This was the same hotel that all 51 of the Models New Generation contestants stayed at during the competition in Guayaquil, per a contemporary write-up of the event in El Universo, which also goes into detail about the collaboration of a number of local schools and universities.
One of the main public-facing events during the multiday Models New Generation 2004 program was a parade along the boardwalk of the Guayas River with marching bands dispatched by the Guayaquil Fire Department, Civil Air Defense, etc; classic cars from which the girls could wave; and a Harley-Davidson escort. The setting for this event highlights how we can infer that there was a concerted effort amongst the ruling class to attract Modelos Nueva Generación, as 2004 was just four years after the historic renovation of the Malecón Simon Bolivar boardwalk and the recovery of the riverfront. The massive private-public urban regeneration development dubbed Malecón 2000 was completed under Mayor Jaime Nebot (who also would have played host to Brunel & Epstein in 2004) and it involved the construction of a 2.5 km concrete promenade along the Rio Guayas linking various tourist destinations like the Rotonda Hemicycle and the Palacio de Cristal. The Higher Polytechnic School of the Coast threw a fashion show featuring the contestants during the multi-day festivities. Confirming that Brunel and Epstein received the support of various municipal dignitaries:
Joseph Garzozi, Director of Tourism for the Municipality of Guayaquil, who attended the candidates' presentation, stated that the pageant will be broadcast on television to 150 countries worldwide. Several Latin American media outlets have already registered.
…
A series of meetings between the organizers, the Police and the Guayas Transit Commission has established the necessary security measures for the girls.
The gala itself was held on Aug. 25th at the site of another boardwalk, the Malecón del Salado that features a stately underlit fountain and a suspension bridge in the background.The sheer extent of the event planning involved indicates that there had to be significant cooperation and licensing assistance from the local and provincial authorities, at least. To this point, we already touched on the implications as they relate to then Mayor Jaime Nebot; similarly, the acting Governor of Guayas was Alfredo Larrea at the time of the pageant (Felipe Mantilla stepped down on Aug. 12th to run for the mayoralty and therefore could have been involved in the lead-up planning, as well).
The mother of all modeling coincidences… Miss Universe was also held in Quito, Ecuador on June 1, 2004, which is highly suspicious and illustrative of how the unprecedented enmeshment of the two economies was viewed as an open invitation to the bougie perverts of the PedoReich to come and predate. Here we see Trump sat next to Ecuador’s President Lucio Gutierrez at the event.
Solidifying the notion that there could be a direct connection between the two, Ecuador’s eponymous beauty queen representative at the pageant that June, Maria Susana Rivadeneira, was chosen to serve as host for the scores of underage aspiring models at Epstein & Brunel’s event in Guayaquil just over a month later.
The winner of Models New Generation 2004 was a 15 year old from Brazil named Aline (Alyne) Weber, a Brazilian model of German descent who went on to be managed by Brunel’s NEXT Model Management for a time and who has walked for Balenciaga, Calvin Klein, Marc Jacobs, Tommy Hilfiger, etc. Weber appeared as a student character in Tom Ford’s A Single Man only five years later in 2009. In case you’re unaware, Tom Ford was Epstein’s mesa neighbor in New Mexico, living on one of the capacious properties next to Zorro Ranch and they were friendly, having dinners together and the like, so surely there’s an element of one thing leading to the other here.
On February 2nd, 2004, Weber flew from St. Thomas to Teterboro Airport in New Jersey on the Lolita Express with Epstein, Brunel, Epstein’s personal chef Brett Tindall, victim Teala Davies, Nadia Marcinkova, & a Redacted. Then on March 12th, she again accompanied Epstein, Maxwell, Brunel, and a Redacted, this time to Paris Airport - Le Bourget (LFPB). 5 days later, they returned to New York via the joint military-civilian Bangor International Airport in Maine, which seems like a somewhat curious layover for the Lolita Express to be making when returning from Europe. Make of that what you will as it could relate to Secret Service protected ex-politicians. Aline Weber’s initials again crop up on a return flight from Palm Beach to NYC on the 22nd of March. There could very well be additional trips that she took with Epstein that were simply blotted out, to boot.
This is unequivocal proof that before she participated in the contest, she was lured to New York by Epstein and Brunel. We can only conclude that there’s a high possibility that Weber’s victorious emergence from the field of 48 girls positively correlates with her unfortunate victimization by the men as a 15 year old at the time. From an archived Apr. 5th, 2004 bio on models.com, we find that Weber was already repped and managed by Brunel’s Karin NY agency at that point, months in advance.
It appears that the return leg of the Ecuador trip in 2004 was produced by the USAFLS office in the indictment against Epstein as one of the pieces of evidence in the counts of interstate commerce for the purposes of illicit sexual conduct, so we have further proof that the Quito and Guayaquil shows were practically informal auctions of Epstein girls. Like shooting fish in a barrel with your eyes wide shut. Another child victim visited Ecuador with Epstein, Maxwell, and Brunel in 2004, seemingly, albeit she would have been 18 at that point. She furnished the FBI with scrapbook pics of her with Epstein, GMax, and Brunel strolling the streets in Ecuador, sunning themselves at the island base in USVI, etc.
The CEO of Models New Generation and MC2’s recruiter on the ground. He’s reportedly Peruvian-Mexican, though some Ecuadorian coverage treats him as a local central to the operation. Per a Redacted journalist and documentarian who emailed the Feds in 2010, Sergio Cordero allegedly confirmed that he and Brunel were jointly invested, that MC2’s principal business was the transport of underage girls for sexual pleasure, and that Bill Clinton had been on a plane with Brunel and minors on multiple occasions (likely with Aline Weber based on the timing).
Thanks to more of El Universo’s trusty coverage, I can inform you that Sergio Cordero was quoted telling the underage contestants in Guayaquil that, “Where you are now, Naomi Campbell and Sharon Stone once were” (edited for clarity). This was apparently an attempt to assure or motivate them.
In the sworn statement of a Redacted (the Karin Models & MC2 bookkeeper) during a Jane Doe v. Epstein lawsuit, the woman described how Cordero once told her that Brunel was under pressure to “bring girls to Ecuador” because Epstein was coming. The statement fleshes in some of the trafficking nexus details, mentioning how she met industry figures and very “proper people” from S. America and Europe in Ecuador during Models New Generation. She also divulged that Brunel would come into the offices in Miami and New York with droplets of blood in his nostrils or a powdered nose and stated that he brought 15 year old Brazilian girls to Jeffrey’s UES townhouse (quite possibly Weber and friends again).
Sidenote: the Karin bookkeeper named Maritza Vasquez (this is non-doxx, as her name’s already been made public) is the sworn source of the revelation that Epstein was the grantor of a $1 million USD Line of Credit through Mellon Bank and JP Morgan that enabled Brunel to finance the opening of MC2. The opening party was held in NYC sometime in late 2003/04 (pin the date in your noggin). That’s right, the new modeling agency vehicle through which the Models New Generation contest in Guayaquil would be populated and staffed, was founded mere months prior to the Clinton Global Initiative’s founding, which also surreptitiously enabled the pageant through Morrison and Band’s interventions. Vasquez also revealed that Brunel and assorted underage girls were residing in the 301 E. 66th St. apartment complex that Jeff the Financier owned with his screenprinting bro Mark.
Final piece on the Cordero beat. This “Epstein Case in Ecuador” video contains a picture of Sergio Cordero disembarking from a private jet (tail number N310LJ) with a coterie of beautiful women. This is a critical piece of info as, remarkably, Noboa took this very same aircraft to the inauguration of Javier Milei in Argentina in December of 2023, and the plane is held under a trust based in Utah called TVPX ARS. Extrapolating, this could indicate that Daniel Noboa is directly acquainted with Epstein and Brunel’s former recruiter. The twin-engine Learjet 45 was the relief Ecuadorian Air Force One and was swapped in at the final moment after the usual plane suffered a malfunction, answering the call to ferry Noboa and his Foreign Minister Gabriela to Buenos Aires instead.
There have been murmurs on Ecuadorian social media alleging that Cecilia Niemes is someone who was intimately involved with the Models New Generation contests. Cecilia founded one of Ecuador’s first modeling and fashion academies, so it’s a logical assumption. This is yet another morality tale of why you can never trust AI and always have to resist the urge to even look at Google’s infuriating AI Overview, as my queries surrounding Niemes in relation to Brunel, Epstein, and Models New Generation elicited the AI’s Disinfo Czar like statement that all “claims are speculative and unsubstantiated”, that sorta thing. Well, seeing as I’m not bilingüe so much as I am a once-in-blue-moon Duolingo user, it was a little painstaking, but I can confirm Niemes was one of the Epstein-Brunel Trafficking Ring’s primary partners on the ground.
In the course of my research, I found a Sept. 2008 interview in which she bragged about how she’d worked for Karin Models (of America, presumably), one of Brunel’s outfits up until he changed the name to MC2 (Epstein = MC2) with the financiers help – also in 2004, funnily enough – under litigative pressure from the Paris office of Karin. She also states in the interview that she served as a judge for Models New Generation, meaning we can probably presume she was part of the panel in both Guayaquil and the Quito contest in ‘06. Niemes also stated that she’d served as a judge for Miss Peru, the national beauty pageant in the Andean country south of Ecuador’s border, and you shouldn’t be shocked to hear that Miss Peru holds the rights of selection to Miss Universe, meaning that Cecilia may have also been in Trump’s fashion orbit during the early 2000s, solidifying overlaps between the two competitions. I’ve also since discovered from another profile that she was Miss Ecuador 1990 herself, reinforcing the CN Modelos - Models New Gen - Miss Universe sinews.
I missed it at first upon skimming the piece, but it actually ran in Revista La Verdad, the Guayas-based magazine founded and owned by Alvaro Noboa, and the Blogspot post is only a transcription for posterity purposes. Put a pin in this potential link. Another detail I just picked up on is that Cecilia Niemes is a graduate of the Liceo Panamericano, a bilingual Catholic private school in Guayaquil that’s part of the International Schools Partnership (ISP) and which caters to the local elite with its outward, global posture. It’s not quite the same level as the American Int’l School in Vienna that Marius Fortelni attended, as in I don’t think many consular kids go there, but I still had to throw it out there because she describes how she got into modeling via charity shows at the school, before graduating to a modeling course in the US and continued training LA, San Diego, and Madrid, so apparently the Liceo got her linked up with the American fashion world somehow. Niemes proceeds to go in depth on her and her husband’s (he’s next up) many model scouting, Ecuador Fashion Week planning, TV broadcasting, and Fashion Hotel managing ventures.
Per the 21 de Agosto del 2004 issue of El Universo, we find that the only two Ecuadorian representatives chosen to walk at the Guayaquil iteration of the modeling contest / Epstein recruitment event were handled by Niemes’s company. I’ll furnish you with some additional evidence:
Sixteen-year-old María Fernanda Cornejo represented Cecilia’s academia CN Modelos in competitions trying out for contracts with agencies such as Karin Models and Elite. Meaning Brunel and Casablancas agencies specifically.
The CN Modelos website from 2004 trumpets Karin Models right on the landing page… “Models New Generation: Annual contest seeking New Faces for Karin Models in over 50 countries!”
CN Modelos still uses the Model New Generation (sic, just sans the ‘s’) name to this day, with the last teenaged victor of the competition announced 11 months ago.
By the time Brunel and Epstein’s victim scouting pageants in Guayaquil and Quito rolled around, Cecilia Niemes’s CN Modelos had been transformed from a mom-and-sis shop into a nationwide mom-and-pop dynasty with innumerable media tie-ins and parallel events. I suspect her commandeering, striver ex-husband kinda strongarmed the academy’s founder into making him president in 1997 and that the naval officer’s involvement and likely parastatal ties are partly what took the empire up a notch. I kinda preempted it, but Wladimir Vargas Anda is a retired Ecuadorian Armada naval officer who later served as an assemblyman with the current presidente’s padre Alvaro Noboa’s partido PRIAN, representing Pichincha.
On his LinkedIn profile, Wladimir touts how CN Modelos placed Ecuadorian girls with Elite Model Management (Epstein associate John Casablancas’s outfit that trafficked girls for Adnan Khashoggi) and Ford Models (another agency w/ Brunel links). 14 He credits himself with transforming CN Modelos into the largest, most prestigious modeling agency in the country, supposedly establishing 14 branches nationwide, and again boasts of taking the agency “international”, supposedly opening their first overseas office based—where else? …in Miami.
The basic contours of the Anda tale are that he parlayed his marriage into a career as a local magnate of the fashion industry. He co-hosted a morning variety show titled “Vanidades TV” on Teleamazonas beginning in June ‘99 with a former Miss Ecuador named Jessica Núñez. This same year, and presumably following his retirement from the armed forces, Anda spearheaded the development of Ecuador Fashion Week, serving as its founder and president for 8 consecutive years. He leveraged this experience into becoming host and executive producer of “Latin Fashion”, a broadcast excuse to attend Fashion Weeks and events across the Americas between 2001 - 2004. The next year, he capitalized on his notoriety to become general manager and partner of Hotel Punta Carnero aka The Fashion Place, a renovated beachside property in Salinas that also held a nightclub called Terapia. Guess what? The 2004 Modelos Nueva Generacion candidates spent some time in Salinas during their 11 day stay in the country. How much do you want to bet they were put up at The Fashion Place? Furthermore, do you think it’s sheer coincidence that the Hotel also hosted the World Harley-Davidson Convention? I’ll remind you that the Modelos were escorted by a phalanx of Harley-Davidsons in Guayaquil… Do we have a biker gang connect at play?
In 2004, Wladimir Vargas Anda cashed in on his rising fame again, getting another new TV program called “Modas, Perfumes y Algo Más” greenlit on Telerama that ran for the next 3 años. Speaking of which, I have to point out a pervasive pattern to you… Do you think it’s accidental and ancillary that all of the fashion and modeling experience of this Epstein recruiter ended as soon as Correa entered office? If you don’t believe me, look at his LinkedIn, which is publicly visible. He shacked up with Noboa’s party as an assemblyman in 2007 and then eventually became Ecuador’s Cónsul General in São Paulo from 2013 - 2017. I can think of few postings more attractive for a Brunel-type than São Paulo.
The Wladimir Vargas Anda connection gets even more intriguing when we learn that he attended the William J. Perry Center for Hemispheric Defense in 2012, what’s been viewed as a rebranded version of the School of the Americas finishing institution for future human rights violators of Latin American military men. Anda was part of a “High-Level National Security Seminar” on the “development of the decision-making process in the field of international security and defense policy”.
His military career began in the hallowed halls of the Military College at “Eloy Alfaro”, the same base in Manta that would later serve as the Plan Colombia FOL, where he studied physics & mathematics between 1979 - ‘85. During his active service, he attended the U.S. Naval War College’s “Surface Warfare Officer Department Head” training course for internationals in 1996, as well, receiving a nearly perfect score on a 4.0 grading scale. In 1998, he enrolled in and graduated from an Administrative Course at the Ecuadorian Naval War College, placing first in his class. Anda spent a grand total of 14 years as an Ecuadorian Armada officer based on-site in Guayaquil, racking up experience as a Surface Warfare Officer; Anti-Submarine Warfare Officer; Electronic Warfare and Comms Officer; and a Gunnery, Maneuvering, and Navigation Officer.
Is it a simple organic coincidence Anda attended the U.S. Naval War College in 1996, took over as president of his wife Cecilia Niemes’s modeling academy the following year while he was still active in the Navy, and then Plan Colombia was conceived and established in 1999, with the U.S. armed forces moving into the Armada base in Manta in short order, christening a period of sustained coordination with the Ecuadorian navy, particularly as it related to the worsening chaos on the northern border with Colombia, with Ecuador receiving USAID funds for “preventative development” as part of the FOL deal, some of which funded a supply of small coastal patrol craft for the Armada to aid in the counternarcotic efforts? Seems highly suspicious to me that this guy who trained at U.S. naval academies twice in the Clinton 1990s would then phase out of the military right as Plan Colombia ramped up, coincidently transitioning into the worlds of fashion, modeling, and broadcasting, and then end up co-hosting two massive modeling competitions / pedophile recruitment events in Ecuador before the Plan Colombia FOL deal renewal was turned down by the Correa admin in 2009, effectively kicking the U.S. forces out. Does that not seem highly unusual to you?
Better yet, we have direct evidence that one of the Models New Generation candidates from 2006, a girl named Sharon Cortez, was sent to Miami where she styled swimsuits by a Colombian designer named Lorena Prado during a photoshoot with Andres Gonzalez. It appears she was accompanied by at least Wladimir Vargas Anda, as his program “Modas, Perfumes, & Algo” filmed the proceedings and interviewed the stylist Rocco of Rocco & Donna and TV presenter Cristina Saralegui on “Latina success in the U.S.”.
***
Disregarding a little bit of stray ephemera and the End Notes that follow, let me wrap off the meat of this essay draft slash pupal-stage book chapter(s) by presenting you with two new figures who were instrumental in Ecuador abruptly earning newfound status as the Latin American Pageantry Destination of the early 2000s. Their inclusions may cohere an almost unignorable body of evidence pointing towards mutual coordination between the Epstein, Clinton, and Trump spheres in support of the “great men” and their predatory tomcatting, building off the tangential connections or proximity between Models New Generation and Plan Colombia, CGI, and Miss Universe that we’ve already established.
The 2003 / 2004 School Year (forgive the poor taste pun) seems to be a pivot point as it relates to the Epstein Class’s invasion of Ecuador. Rewinding to 1996, back to a time when Trump and Epstein were still outwardly in a chummy wingmen mode of “whisper in each others’ ears and point and leer” at parties together… We find that Trump purchased Miss Universe from ITT Corp during a prearranged broadcast deal with CBS. Fast forward to 2003 again, and Trump’s Miss Universe jumped ship for NBC, which outbid the other markets for the TV rights, striking a joint venture together. Again, vaguely interesting timing as it relates to everything else we’ve learned.
The coincidences are racking up and they’re augmented here as we discover that, the very same year the Miss Universe NBC deal was inked on the dotted line, the Miss Ecuador beauty pageant – the holder of the Miss Universe brand rights from 2004 on – hired a new director. This same woman was then tapped to serve as the program coordinator for Models New Generation. And her hiring appears to have been facilitated by a dear friend of Trump’s, a woman who has had periodic dealings with Clinton as well. I quote:
María del Carmen de Aguayo is a social communicator and clinical psychologist by profession, but she has been a key figure in beauty pageants since 2004, when she took on the challenge of coordinating the Miss Universe Ecuador competition.
It was that year that Ivonne A-Baki, the then-Minister of Foreign Trade, introduced her to the world of pageantry by inviting her to the Miss Universe pageant in Panama. Upon returning from that trip, she was entrusted with organizing the competition for subsequent years.
(Correction: the article incorrectly implies that they went to Miss Universe in Panama in 2004, but they were actually in attendance at the 2003 final, which was also held in the Central American country).
The sketch is penciled in further by this El Comercio article published around the time of his first shock election in 2016. You’ll have to forgive me, as this piece will sear the putrid image of Trump ordering Ecuadorian prawns through room service, slurping the entrails out of their tail carapace and dribbling remoulade sauce down his chin under the covers while CNN or Fox News blares on the TV, into your brain. There may be no getting it out, no Men In Black mindwipe, until the digital dementia frees you from the clutches of this horrific scene.
The billionaire tycoon and now President of the United States, Donald Trump, visited Ecuador in 2004 when the country hosted the Miss Universe pageant, which he owned at the time.
His stay in Quito lasted two days, according to his friend, former Ecuadorian Ambassador Ivonne Baki. She recalls that Trump arrived accompanied by his children and that one of them, Erick, even got engaged to his girlfriend in the Galápagos Islands (Ecuador's archipelago).
During his short stay in Quito, the billionaire tycoon visited the Historic Center. He enjoyed the local cuisine.
“He loved the prawns; he kept ordering them for his room, for the table, everywhere. It was his favorite food; he couldn't believe there were shrimp that big,” Baki commented.
Baki, who in 2004 served as Minister of Foreign Trade in the government of Lucio Gutiérrez, was one of the promoters of holding the contest in the country and maintained a dialogue with Trump to finalize it.
…
María del Carmen Aguayo, from the Miss Ecuador organization, also met the magnate in 2003 when she traveled to Panama at Baki's request to discuss the possibility of holding the event in Ecuador. "In Panama, he behaved excellently, a gentleman who attends to his guests. He is a good host," the businesswoman and journalist emphasizes.
Aguayo recalls that Donald Trump, in the middle of that meeting, commented: “I am taking Miss Universe (to Ecuador) because of this woman who is here,” referring to Baki, who is considered a close friend of the now President-elect of the U.S. 15
You’d have to have the incredulity of a Scopes fact-checker to think that there’s ZERO, ZILCH, NADA connective tissue between the Miss Universe held in Quito on June 1, 2004 and the Modelos Nueva Generación in Guayaquil that same summer. Let me break it down for you further.
Ivonne A-Baki is an Ecuadorian of Arab Lebanese descent whose immigrant parents became “banana entrepreneurs” in Guayaquil, where she was born. She married the deceased Lebanese millionaire Sami A-Baki at 17 and then moved to Beirut, where she was appointed as Ecuador’s Honorary Consul while raising their 3 children. They returned to Ecuador when the civil war broke out. In the 1990s, while pursuing a Masters in Public Administration & Policy at Harvard Kennedy School, she founded Harvard Arts for Peace, a program that sought to organize joint exhibitions between countries in conflict to foster dialogue. After graduating in 1993, A-Baki received an arts residency and simultaneously served as Ecuador’s Honorary Consul in Boston. She joined the Board of Directors of Prof. Roger Fisher’s “Conflict Management Group”, an outgrowth of Harvard Negotiation Project for which Fisher served as director. Roger Fisher is an intriguing figure, a First Lieutenant weather reconnaissance pilot with the Army Air Forces during WWII who then worked under Averell Harriman helping to design the Marshall Plan before returning to Harvard Law School as a professor. His wartime and short-lived litigative experiences led to his lifelong interest in the art and science of negotiation. His academic expertise and numerous authored texts on high-stakes, interest-based negotiation saw Fisher’s recruitment to consult on peace processes such as the Camp David Accords, the Iranian Hostage Crisis, and the end of Apartheid.
In 1995 while out to dinner with Prof. Fisher and members of the Harvard Conflict Management Group, A-Baki was called by Pres. Sixto Durán Ballén who requested her and Fisher’s assistance with the peace deliberations to end the Cenepa War between Ecuador and Peru. This work paved the way to Ivonne A-Baki’s appointment as Ecuador’s first woman Ambassador to the U.S. by Jamil Mahuad, that fellow Harvardian and Dershowitz associate, a position that brought her into contact with President Clinton for the last few years of his presidency. In 2000, she met and befriended Trump, who invited A-Baki to a charity event, flying her out on his private jet. This led to a rare instance of generosity from Trump, as he donated to the Galapagos Conservancy Foundation that A-Baki founded after the devastating oil spill in 2001, which surely has much to do with Eric Trump’s proposal there a couple years later. 16 After her first tenure in the Beltway ended, she returned to Ecuador with a new Rolodex of American supporters and attempted to capitalize on her Ambassadorship by running for President (she lost). She was then appointed Minister of Trade, Industry, and Productivity by Lucio Gutierrez, another crack in the Ecuadorian glass ceiling.
Ecuador’s hosting of Miss Universe, possibly at a significant deficit, may have been a quid pro quo of some of these earlier Trump gifts (A-Baki faced criticism of the expenditures and claimed it was an “investment”, presumably meaning the Ecuadorian Ministry of Trade had the more significant outlay). On my 20th citation, I’m really coming to love El Universo—were it not for their digitized coverage, I wouldn’t have managed half of this. And yes, this article “Ivonne Baki, the Minister of Miss Universe” contains some revealing quotes that confirm what I intuited, that the Galapagos philanthropy and the pageant were interrelated. We’ll see in a moment how it also ties into American-Ecuadorian diplomatic and trade relations, too. Quote:
Once upon a time, there was a billionaire...
The story, as told by Ivonne Baki, the Minister of Foreign Trade, is straight out of Hollywood.
She was on the private plane of the American billionaire Donald Trump from Washington to Palm Beach to participate with him in an annual Red Cross event. She was boarding the plane. She got a call from the President's office: There was an oil spill in the Galapagos Islands.
“You know what? I have to go back,” I told Donald, Baki recounts. Trump, whose many businesses include the one that organizes Miss Universe, became interested in the idea and offered Ecuador his full support. A U.S. foundation for the protection of the Enchanted Islands emerged from that trip. So did Miss Universe Ecuador 2004.
“At one point, I spoke with such passion that he said to me: ‘Ivonne, that country is unique in the world, why don’t you hold Miss Universe there?’” Did it come from him? “It came from him,” the minister confirms.
She goes on to describe how President Lucio Gutierrez, the candidate that beat her to Carondelet and then appointed Baki to his Cabinet, was instrumental to the bidding process, claiming that they were competing with Greece and China to host the 2004 iteration of the pageant and that even though both countries offered double or even more than the $5 million USD Ecuador threw down on the barrelhead, Trump’s favoritism towards the eyes-pleasing Lebanese seems to have made the difference. Quote:
“President Gutiérrez is the one who has recognized the importance and valued the magnitude of what this means for the country. It can generate so much investment… you can’t imagine, because such a large event involves everything: trade, tourism, promotion. Everything.”
A-Baki’s reported goal as the Minister of Trade and Industry was to foster trade with the United States, as she’s revealed in career retrospectives. This included a Free Trade Agreement between the U.S., Ecuador and other Andean and Amazonian countries like Peru and Colombia that she attempted to coordinate, a larger campaign in which Miss Universe 2004 appears to have been a charm offensive. In fact, the economic component goes deeper, as it appears that Amb. A-Baki played a pivotal role in the renewal of the Andean Trade Preferential Act, which was basically the “carrot” of the U.S.’s drug policy towards Sudamerica during the 1990/00s by incentivizing an end of illicit drug production by offering signatories duty-free export benefits—meanwhile, Plan Colombia was the counterinsurgent & military coinvestment “stick”. As Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Narcotics James Mack testified before the International Relations Committee:
Renewal of the Andean Trade Preferences Act (ATPA) is perhaps the single largest short-term contribution to economic growth and prosperity in the Andes. By renewing the Act and expanding its benefits, we can continue to provide economic alternatives to narcotics trafficking in Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia. The Act has already succeeded in doing so without adverse economic impact for the United States.
In which case, can we conclude that Models New Generation, while lacking the level of global media exposure that Miss Universe entails, was directly connected to these diplomatic dealings as well? Can we conclude that the charm offensive and collaboration with AmerIsraeli organized crime and parastatal forces like Trump, Epstein, and Maxwell was interrelated to American drug policy and that the Ecuadorian neoliberal ruling class’s attempts to push through free trade between the U.S. and Ecuador hinged partly on counter-narco concessions and certain backscratches? And is it reasonable to presume that Ivonne A-Baki also had something to do with Maria del Carmen de Aguayo, this trained psychotherapist, landing the Modelos New Gen gig as well after she earlier recruited her at Trump’s behest?
Sidebar: For all his faults, credit to Correa once again, as he apparently was the “villain” who scuttled NAFTA advocate A-Baki’s long-gestating negotiations with the AmerIsraeli Epstein Class to strike free and open trade agreements with the U.S.
To finish Baki off, Trump later pulled strings to get her stationed back in the States as Ambassador once again during his first presidency and that of neoliberal-in-DemSoc-disguise Lenin Moreno. There’s also the slight possibility of other direct Epstein connections aside from shared orbit, as Ivonne A-Baki is on the board of directors of the International Peace Institute (IPI), the UN-adjacent think tank and NGO that close confidante Terje Rød-Larsen founded and which (we haven’t gotten to this yet) appears to have been another vehicle for trafficking women, occasionally connecting Epstein to interns and/or linking him up with diplomats that could assist with securing papers. In the DOJ’s Epstein Files, her name appears once in an attendance list from the 2013 World Economic Forum in Davos (the context of its inclusion in the tranche is unclear).
In the 1990s and early 2000s, Trump, the Clinton’s, Epstein, and Maxwell were all a part of the same upper crusty social circle. Ms. Maxwell in particular appears to have been the go-between who inveigled her way into the Clinton post-presidency planning, entreating Epstein for financing on the Clinton’s’ behalf, although we have to be mindful of the fact that all of the surviving players who haven’t been added to the Epstein - Clinton - Trump Body Count have been in a state of constant distancing and history revising regarding their relationships with the financier, so much of the reporting in the MSM will be unrepresentative and downplay the extent of the relationship.
Less than 2 years after he handed the WH keys over to Bush, Clinton went on that infamous Around the World in 10 Days trip to various locales in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia with Epstein (Chris Tucker & Kevin Spacey were also aboard the Lolita Express for part of it) as we’ve discussed in previous investigations. Per the NYT, Mr. President Bill left Epstein a special thank you jotted on stationery that Epstein kept framed in the cabin, expressing his appreciation that Epstein let him invade his private space “to get away from the crowd” and also made an oblique allusion to “figuring out the financial stuff” as they “forge ahead”, doubtlessly referencing conversations regarding the Foundation and the Clinton Global Initiative. Throughout this time period, GMax also had an especially flirtatious repartee with Clinton’s young aide Douglas Band, who she’d given the pet name “Booboo”.
For example, “Booboo, are you around? I am very ill and require immediate medical attention - I am suffering from boobooitis - a very serious condition. Without a booboo fix the symptoms become very pronounced”…went one of her thinly-veiled, grossly lolli-roleplay vibed come-ons. Band reciprocated with a promise to “come to Boobooville” as soon as she arrived. In April 2002, Band also relayed Clinton’s pining for his pal Epstein via Maxwell. 12/17/2002 - Band informed Ghislaine that he was going to a party at “Naomi’s” (Campbell?) with someone named Brenda and then demanded “alone time” so that he wouldn’t get “more ill than Booboo”. You get the basis gist of all their email coquetry and the nonchalant horniness of the staff of the Clinton Foundation with their pedo sex trafficking backers, so you can see why I allow myself to Enter the Speculative Zone slightly as it relates to CGI’s possible knowledge of Epstein & Ghislaine’s dastardly purposes in the Andes, the damned ecuatorial depredadores.
According to Richard Attias of the European advertising & PR firm Publicis Groupe—who the aforementioned Morrison spent two years working for before returning to the Clinton Foundation to take a leadership role with the initiative—Ghislaine and Clinton came up with the concept for CGI while at Davos together for the World Economic Forum sometime in the early 2000s, with the idea of organizing comparable conferences but with a more philanthropic and action-oriented agenda. An Oct. 2004 email between Ghislaine and Marcy Simon (a fellow CGI founder and founding member of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation who is the CEO of the PR firm Agent of Change) indicates that GMax approached Publicis Groupe to give them the Clinton Global Initiative’s early business precisely because they were her “Dad’s agency” and she has a “good relationship with the guy who runs it Maurice Levy”. This indicates that the Clinton Global Initiative wouldn’t have even happened were it not for Epstein and Maxwell, as the initial $1 million front money from Epstein that was wired to Publicis for the “Clinton Project” was the starter capital to get the ball rolling on the inaugural event. Here we see Mary Morrison sending the account details to Ghislaine on Oct. 8, 2004.
There’s another exchange with Band three days on where he and Ghislaine share the routine e-sex foreplay and talk about scheduling a rendezvous after GMax informs Band that Epstein also wants to see him “solo”, possibly implying that Band was a source of info on the president’s doings for Jeffrey (or else he wanted to get into the nitty gritty re CGI). I’ll remind you this was just a month or two after Mary Morrison and Doug Band contacted the U.S. Ambassador in a Clinton Foundation capacity to help them secure fuel while they were in Ecuador recruiting underage models and it was only a month or two more after Clinton - Epstein buddy Donald J. Trump hosted his Miss Universe ‘04 in Quito. We find other CGI budgetary materials related to the inaugural ‘05 event in the Files, as well.
You’re catching my drift about the intriguing temporal closeness of all these happenings: Trump holding Miss Universe ‘04 in Quito, Epstein instructing Brunel to put the MC2 modeling network to work recruiting girls for a similar pageant months later in the same country, all the while Maxwell and Epstein are running some sort of operation on the Clinton Foundation and pushing the Initiative idea, extracting diplomatic favors from the President’s most trusted staffers when dealing with a trafficking snafu. Meanwhile Ecuador’s anxious to host these events because the Gutierrez government believes they’ll give them a leg up with free trade and counter-drug relations with the Bush admin, apparently.
Carrying the torch of the last PPM piece, I’ll remind you that their forays in Ecuador are occurring less than 2 years after their 2002 trip to Colombia on “Plan Colombia business”, a miniature Iran-Contra in Formal Attire (I’d argue), and their 2003 visit to Cuba with ex-President Pastrana, Clinton’s partner in orchestrating the counterinsurgent secret war. I’ll also point out that the Summer of 2004 is right before Trump and Epstein’s supposed acrimonious split over their bidding war on the Maison de L’Amitie property in Palm Beach, with Epstein’s poaching of towel girl Virginia Giuffre from Mar-a-Lago another inciting factor, although there are other grim anecdotes from the ‘90s of the pair competing over who got to “take” underage girls’ virginity—meaning they were still in each other’s good graces in June & August.
While we’re at it, I’ll refresh your memory that Epstein claimed Trump first had sex with Melania on his plane. Trump was introduced to the icy Slovene Melania at the Kit Kat Club in ‘98 by Paolo Zampolli, another Zelig of the modeling and pageantry industry who was coaxed to New York by John Casablancas of Elite after he hosted Elite’s “Look of the Year” contest in Ibiza in 1994. At one point in 2016, Melania was distraught because the press was claiming that she and Zampolli ran an escort service together. Speak of the unfashionable devils and more materialize. Trump played host and sponsor for the contract-dangling pageant in 1991 and ‘92, as well. Nothing should shock you at this point, but per The Guardian’s reportage, every single candidate they could find to interview checked out to be between the ages of 14-19 at the time, the exact same teen-age bracket of Models New Gen.
Anyways, the ID Models agent Zampolli helped hook up the First Lady with her H1-B visa. In yet another one of these weird, modeling & philanthropy industry merry-go-round synchronicities we keep noticing, Paolo Zampolli attempted to purchase Casablancas’s Elite Models Management in 2004 while his own shop was faltering somewhat. When the bid failed, Trump hired him on as his Director of International Development for Trump real estate. All in the same year. Smacking of Ivonne A-Baki, the Lebanese Ecuadorian to whom Trump took a major liking, in recent years, Zampolli has parleyed his pimping career into diplomatic appointments, currently serving as Trump’s Special Envoy for Global Partnerships and as Dominica’s UN Ambassador before it.
Quick aside regarding Casablancas: when Ivanka turned 15 in 1997, she was added to the celebrity stable of Elite models at a far too premature age. When she wasn’t posing in scantily clad outfits or getting asked on dates by “rock stars” (as Trump joked), the incestuous apple of the Donald’s eye nepotistically hosted Miss Teen USA. The long relationship between Casablancas and Trump and this judge-sharing precedent is reinforced by Elite’s president Ms. Monica Pillard sitting on the panel for Miss Universe. I’ll also point out that at least one Ecuadorian underage model who appeared in Models New Generation worked for both Casablancas and Brunel agencies at points.
When Trump was approached by an investment-seeking couple who ran another beauty contest called American Dream Calendar Girls in the early 1990s, he requested that they throw a private catwalk show for him and Epstein before he’d commit—Trump ultimately bilked them out of millions, stiffing them on the fee after holding the event in Trump Castle in Atlantic City. All of which is to say that there is a clear precedent wherein Trump and Epstein would have communicated or even connived together about their respective events in Ecuador, perhaps swapping stories about their favorite “tight little bodies” and sharing pieces of useful intel regarding the local agencies, personnel worth hiring, which politicians to lean on, so on and so forth.
If the notion that Bill Clinton and his minders would actively participate in this scandalous underworld of pageantry and sexual kompromat seems outlandish and you think that I’m taking it a step too far by implying that Morrison and Band weren’t just helping “friends of the foundation” with their political favors during Epstein’s Guayaquil trip, but that they were actually “in the know”…
Well, there’s an abiding pattern where Clinton is concerned. Epstein and Trump weren’t the only underage model connoisseurs the guy was hanging out with—matter of fact, he fraternized with another close Epstein associate with comparable tastes. So much so that, in 2006, the same year as the second Models New Generation contest held in Ecuador, a contributor at the Rupert Murdoch owned dish Page Six ended up in hot water after he attempted to shakedown Ron Burkle for $100k in exchange for catch-and-kill media protection. This was because the column had run stories about Burkle allegedly offering to buy a modeling agency for his friend Bill the President and rumors that he was swinging with Giselle Bundchen while already in a relationship. The claim really isn’t outlandish as both of the Epstein associates have a documented penchant and Clinton took a job with Burkle’s Yucaipa Companies private equity firm in 2001 that enabled him to make millions by advising three funds worth over $1 billion, raking in millions off his prestige alone while barely lifting a finger. There probably was something to the Clinton Models claim, as the federal case against Jared Paul Stern (initiated after Burkle secretly filmed him making the allegedly extortive offer) was dropped the next year over lack of evidence, seemingly confirming that Burkle was retaliating against unfavorable coverage.
In the 1990s, Trump periodically came to the defense of President Clinton in interviews where the Lewinsky Scandal or the raft of accusers that had alleged sexual mistreatment by the president were raised. Came to the defense in his characteristically boastful & misogynistic way, obsessed with how Clinton’s liaisons weren’t exactly lookers or up to snuff. Funnily enough, Epstein was similarly bemused by Lewinsky, who he thought wasn’t attractive enough for Bill. Bill allegedly confessed on the Lolita Express that the reason they had sex was because she was the only woman in the White House during the 1995 shutdown. Anyways, whether or not the supposed acrimony between Trump and Epstein that has been reported as having festered really drove them apart in late 2004, both men were still in friendly relations with the Clinton’s at that point. Besides Epstein loaning Publicis and the Clinton Global Initiative $1 mil USD for the 2005 conference, we also find that he gave another $25k from his C.O.U.Q. Foundation shell in 2006. Also in 2005, Trump invited the Clinton’s to his wedding to Melania Knauss, where the quartet were pictured together arm in arm. In 2009, Trump also gave liberally to the Clinton Foundation, a gift somewhere in the $100-250,000 bracket and in 2010, he dropped $10k on a table at the Clinton Foundation banquet.
I need to figure out a more resounding conclusion with which to close this sprawling piece, but I think we’ve effectively documented the continuities that I wanted to tease and made some startling discoveries. For example, to my limited knowledge, I don’t know of any other researcher who has even touched the body of evidence we’ve pulled together here that arguably indicates Epstein, Trump, and the Clinton’s may have all colluded on Miss Universe and Models New Generation in Ecuador in 2004 or at least the larger sexual plundering of the country that year. Furthermore, the fundamental argument I’m trying to make is that what we are witnessing play out in Ecuador now with the Trump and Noboa regimes working to consolidate control over the drug traffic rhymes with the earlier history of their sex trafficking in the country concurrent with Plan Colombia. And that the ramping up of the coke trade through a port Epstein may have helped facilitate today is a prime indicator of the Epstein bourgeoisie endeavoring to return the country to the material depredations of the post-dollarization and pre-Correa era.
Isabel was involved on the Ecuadorian business side of the Port of Posorja project. We’re talking about Alvaro Noboa’s sister and incumbent president Daniel Noboa’s aunt, as mentioned. Isabel theoretically could have encountered Epstein through Sultan bin Sulayem later in life. Isabel’s brother Alvaro Noboa, the president’s father, was also accused in 2009 of luring a model from New York to Ecuador with promises of a modeling gig to appear in his magazine La Verdad. She alleged in a lawsuit seeking $25 million in damages that she’d applied to a Craigslist ad, was selected after sending in swimsuit pics, flew to Guayaquil, at which point on her first night in the country, Alvaro materialized at her hotel with a crew of armed security toting machine guns and dragged her to a private residence under implicit threat of violence, where she claims she was raped, bit to the point of painful bruising, and forced to take a morning after pill. One can’t help but wonder if this is just routinely transgressive bourgeois sexual commodification or whether this was a learned behavior.
Maria Susana Rivadeneira, Miss Ecuador 2004 (placed in the Top 10 at the year’s Miss Universe in Quito) and Host of the Girls. She’s seemingly a podcaster and philanthropist today who’s still routinely featured in fashion publications like Harper’s Bazaar Ecuador (March 2026 - “Inside My Beauty Bag” write up).
Canadian-Québécois actress Chantal Fontaine, who posed in a photoshoot with the girls
Argentine singer-songwriter Diego Torres
Spanish singer Bertin Osborne
Jorge Coello (unsure who this is exactly, possibly a Mexican technology executive who worked for HP)
Sisi, a model from the TV show 'Sábado Gigante’
María Fernanda Cornejo - after competing in Models New Generation, she was crowned Miss Ecuador 2011. Cornejo also signed a contract with Casablancas’s outfit Elite Models, becoming one of the most highly sought models in Ecuador, working for Chloé, DKNY, and Dior in the process.
Rima Yudilevich, an Israeli, which is germane as MC2 has an Israeli branch that’s still extant and in operation. An irradiated to the point of glowing, member-only “Autograph Community” website lists Rima as the Playboy Coed of the Month for December 2006.
Claudia Fekete, a Brazilian of German descent from the southernmost state Rio Grande do Sul. A 16 year old at the time of the pageant in 2004, Fekete avoided victimization because of the strictness of her parents, who insisted the family doctor accompany her. She claims that Brunel’s “girlfriend” was an underage Brazilian at the time and that said child lied about her age in the presence of others (despite it being a pageant for teenagers). She also recalled that the “couple” were constantly flanked by a posse of Brazilian minors, reminiscences she reported to the Miami Herald in December 2020. Most damning is Fekete’s recollection that she was lured to Ecuador with the explicit promise that she’d be declared victorious just for attending. She’s also noted that many of the Latin American girls were from poorer backgrounds, highlighting the economic coercion component.
Cordula Pfeugl, who works as a marketing director, public speaker, and Substacker with a psychology background. She is based in Rotterdam, Netherlands today and was a founder of some org called “Future Females Europe” that empowers women entrepreneurs in Africa. Pfeugl similarly was one of the 2004 contestants who went on record with the Herald. She described the diminutive impish Brunel as very “touchy” and corroborated that he went around with a posse made up of his underage Brazilian “girlfriend” and her friends.
“All the Brazilian girls talked about ‘the island’”, said Pfeugl…who now sees the time with Brunel and his behavior with more clarity.
Cinthya Romero, Paraguay
Sanela Seferic, Croatia
Sandra Marinovic, Croatia
Estefania Realpe, another Ecuadorian from Quito
Alba Clave, Spain
Kjell Bracke, Belgium
Villavicencio claimed in an interview that the Correa government arranged Assange’s ambassadorial safe haven in advance because he possessed cables proving that the Correa government had received monies from Chavez and FARC. Villavicencio also accused Correa of embezzling billions from pre-sold oil trades during the Petrochina Case.
And to be clear, that’s not to paper over very real fraud among the political class during Correa’s rule or to pretend that Correa was infallible—obviously I’d have rather seen Ecuador led by a communist government during that time frame and we’re currently witnessing the fruits of the failures and limitations of the Pink Tide, as the Estados Unidos’s parastatal revanchism in the Americas is leading to the installation of comprador governments in places like Ecuador and Venezuela and the internationalism that was once cultivated by Castro and Cuba is at its nadir, which is a large part of why I characterize this present geopolitic as an Operacion Condor 2.0.
An Incomplete Timeline of Epstein’s Interest In and Interactions Surrounding Assange, Snowden, WikiLeaks, and the ICIJ:
Nov. 17, 2009 - Daniel Dubno reported to Epstein about his meeting with Vint Cerf & Assange—who he described as paranoid but with the caveat that he derived handy lessons regarding “web-based whistleblowing” & “government efforts to thwart that” from him.
Nov. 29th, 2010 - David Stern sent Epstein an article about how a Wikileaks drop revealed allegations of “inappropriate conduct” against Prince Andrew.
Sometime in 2011 - Epstein met with Bitcoin “Donald” re the crypto and Donald told him he’d be attending a Julian Assange hearing.
Sept. 4th, 2011 - Karim Wade (Sultan’s friend and son of the Senegalese president) requested Epstein’s recommendation of an U.S. law firm to hire for a defamation case against Wikileaks. A second email explained that the leak was a cable by the former U.S. Ambassador claiming Wade tried to sell a “28pct equity stake” of the government of Senegal to “France Telecom” to launder money he stole during the organization of the Islamic Conference. The Ambassador also alleged Rothschild Bank helped him in this.
Apr. 4, 2013 - Epstein sent IDF-linked “Bond Girl”, the German Countess Nicole Junkermann, a link to a Guardian write-up about an ICIJ offshore emails release.
July, 2013 - Joi Ito sent Epstein a clipping of an Op-Ed by Julian Assange in The Guardian in which he describes how “liberated cryptography” can be used by smaller states like Ecuador, Venezuela, Colombia, etc to combat imperial subversion (emphasis added) by larger countries. Ito funneled a lot of technical info and stories Epstein that would find germane to his interests over the years, so there could be interesting implications…
June 28th, 2013 - Edward Jay Epstein sent Jeffrey a copy of his forthcoming WaPo piece speculating about whether Snowden had assistance from Wikileaks’ Sarah Harrison, Glenn Greenwald, and Laura Poitras when preparing to blow the whistle on the classified info in his possession. Other emails in the files paint a picture in which Edward Jay kept Epstein apprised of his writings on various leaks and/or may have even deferred to his editorial input in this specific area. The day prior to the WaPo article’s publication, he sent Jeffrey a hastily composed timetable of Snowden’s movements, a preliminary version of what was ultimately run, with comment implicitly requested. Six years on, Edward Jay wrote a think piece in the City-Journal interrogating the double standard applied to Snowden in comparison to the treatment of Monica Witt, the former USAF Technical Sgt. with Counterintel experience who also worked at Booz Allen Hamilton as a defense contractor like Snowden before defecting to Iran in the same year (and who also solicited the defection advice of WikiLeaks). He sent the article to Epstein for his approval in an email with the header “the spy concept”, to which Epstein perfunctorily replied “Good work”, implying that Epstein had coached him somewhat on how to approach such a comparison. This is in keeping with the basic thrust of Edward Jay Epstein’s nonfiction book How America Lost Its Secrets, a critique of the hero-worship of Snowden that repositions him as an “intelligence asset” who irrevocably damaged the American intelligence community and national defense. Point being, we seem to be learning that Epstein exerted some influence over Ed Jay Epstein’s attempted deconstruction of the popular narrative surrounding the Snowden Affair and his framing of the former NSA agent as a dangerous subversive enamored with “hacktivism” from the very start. It therefore comes as no surprise that Edward Jay messaged Epstein on Oct. 15, 2016 to thank him for his help with the book, a double advance copy attached (“2nd_pass.pdf”).
June 23, 2015 - Epstein sent Olivier Colom a Wikileaks press release detailing intercepted comms from French President Chirac showing how he was pushing for Epstein associate Terje Rød-Larsen to be appointed Deputy UNSYG.
Apr. 5, 2016 - Epstein to Landon Thomas Jr.: “you are one of the few reporters that have not asked me about the panama papers.”
Apr. 6, 2016 - Obama WH Counsel Kathy Ruemmler emailed Epstein a link to a Panama Papers article digging into Edmond de Rothschild’s inclusion.
May 6, 2016 - Jeff Brodsky of Ernst and Young’s Private Client Services sent Epstein the URL for the ICIJ website where the consortium would be posting “names” the following Monday.
June 15th, 2016 - Vincenzo coyly told Epstein he’d have to wait for Wikileaks to get his hands on the “Hillary secret” docs.
Oct. 15th, 2016 - Vincenzo Iozzo forwarded Epstein, Reid Hoffman, and Joshua Cooper Ramo one of Assange’s writings on “How to Defeat an Organization” or power clique, which he thought they’d find instructive.
Oct. 30, 2016 - Epstein and Richard Kahn corresponded about Assange’s promised disclosure of a 50k tranche of Hillary Clinton emails that could see her imprisoned and Epstein speculated about the prospect that Assange’s team could release fake emails that purport to show quote-unquote really bad stuff. “What a trick could be played…”
March 7, 2017 - Kahn forwarded an email about how the CIA’s spying tools were “dumped” on Wikileaks
Mar. 9, 2017 - Epstein to Anil Ambani - “the wikileaks CIA leak , suggests that there are zero exploits in the arsenal that are circulating without being turned over to companies. it is soooo wild.”
Mar. 19, 2018 - Epstein texted Bannon - “They are trying to tie Cambridge (Analytica) Russians and Assange”
2018 - A screenshot of the ICIJ’s Contact page dated 2018 that was later added to document productions in the Epstein - Maxwell court cases, seemingly due to Etienne Binant’s cameo in the Offshore Leaks database.
Binant represented Epstein as a buyer, purchasing artwork directly from studios contrary to the traditional gallery & art fair market, and he was also involved in an administrative capacity during dealings between Epstein’s Southern Trust Co. and Prytanée LLC, the “art investment” vehicle behind said purchases that was co-owned by the daughter of Mitterand’s former French Minister of Culture Jack Lang, long time associates of Epstein and the Maxwell Family, maneuvers that were all presumably for markup, money laundering, and art-based tax fraud purposes.
June 30, 2018 - A Deutsche Bank employee named Vijay Sawant triggers a “Know Your Customer” (KYC) case and compliance check in response to his inability to extract Prytanée LLC’s Secretary of State certification of good standing (a piece of paper that validates an LLC as actually existing) from the USVI registry site and also notes that the IDs for officers Indyke, Kahn, and Caroline Lang are expired. The Prytanée and Southern Trust accounts were already flagged as high risk (meaning higher risk of legal culpability for DB due to their use for fraud, money laundering, or illegal money flows) prior to this. The memo was also produced in Epstein - Maxwell case federal trials and is tagged in connection to Etienne Binant’s entries in the ICIJ’s database. Stewart Oldfield of DB’s reply was unperturbed, writing that Epstein is a trusted client who’s been through high risk clearance on multiple occasions and seemingly indicating that he should be hastened through the hoops. Further communiques.
Jan. 25, 2019 - Richard Kahn linked Epstein an article purporting to show that Bannon was the “high-ranking” Trump official who asked about future WikiLeaks releases in 2016, again proving that he was keeping tabs.
July 19, 2019 - FBI agent Mark Lubin of the NY Field Office received an email linking to the ICIJ’s investigation into Epstein’s offshore structure as revealed through the Paradise Papers.
Aug. 14th, 2019 - A screenshot of a comment left by Assange’s mother throwing cold water on rumors that he was dead and stating that, while unfounded, unscrupulous actors may spread them to try and gum up the struggle for his freedom (this was 4 days after Epstein’s supposed suicide; the reason for its inclusion in the Files remains unclear).
May 29, 2020 - While there’s an obvious reliability issue, federal informant Chuck Johnson reported to the FBI on Epstein, Bannon, and Assange during an interview in which he both alleged that “suspected Israeli spy” Epstein was funneling Steve Bannon money from the Israelis and that this possibly had something to do with Stingray equipment found around the White House, which he speculated could have been used for surveillance purposes. He also claimed to have met with Assange at the Ecuadorian Embassy on behalf of the CIA and speculated that Assange was getting his leaks from the Israelis.
June 25, 2020 - Another Chuck Johnson report regarding his visit with Assange, which he alleges was partly enabled by his past employer Alan Dershowitz. “Johnson recalled discussing Bitcoin”. He also claimed that Assange informed him that an Israeli group had been involved in the hacking of emails.
There’s so much grist for the PPM mill as far as Assange is concerned, beginning with his familial connections to the Aussie pedo-cult known as The Family; his 1991 hacking of the DoD’s MILNET and its unclassified traffic; his digital vigilante work on behalf of Victoria Police Child Protection Unit, reportedly bringing distributors of child pornograpjy to justice; a strange reversal—a community organization called Parent Inquiry into Child Protection that he founded prior to WikiLeaks & which some have dubbed a “low tech rehearsal”, a campaign that grew out of his custody dispute with his ex and his frustration over Aussie CPS’s reluctance to intervene in getting his son away from his ex’s new boyfriend that he believed to be a danger… Assange and his cult-adjacent mother recruited “internal dissidents” to leak Child Protection’s laundry, trying to gin up a firestorm to pressure the service into remanding his son into Assange’s custody. And more besides, more than we could possibly tangle with here. Just know I’m not studiously ignoring that background.
See: my last essay for Epstein and Maxwell’s prospective involvement in drug-and-gun running connected to this stage of the longstanding secret war against Colombia’s left guerrilla groups.
While I haven’t found any evidence of a direct connection between Lasso & Epstein yet, his investment in the Southeastern American capital of organized criminality, trafficking, and espionage arches the eyebrow.
I’m trying to avoid getting too granular and in the weeds about this, but the vague relationship between the Encuentro Case and the Lion of Troy investigation before it, Tannya Varela’s dismissal, and the earlier dismissal of 4 police generals under the auspices of a sham promotion review (which they contested on constitutional grounds) could also theoretically be parsed as the Ecuadorian ruling class’s rolling back of the Correa socialist government’s purging of the ranks of the Policia Nacional following the Uprising and/or as an attempt to consolidate control of the brass-level enablers of the drug trade by replacing them with trusted loyalists. For example, one of the Generals who had his visa withdrawn, Victor Araus, alleged that he and three other generals had been unjustly terminated by Varela, claiming that she’d falsified meetings with an ailing, pancreatically-cancerous minister to oust him. He’d previously held a relatively high level position under the Correa government as the director of DINASED (what is basically the National Police’s violent crimes unit), and had been appointed as the Police’s CFO before his second dismissal, so the fact he’d survived the post-coup purges and continued to rise in the ranks could subvert the narrative or explain why they’d try to hang Araus and his cohort as secret narcos. Varela, meanwhile, seems likelier to be allied to the comprador faction of Lasso and Noboa from my vantage, but I don’t really have the wherewithal to fully come to grips with this as it’s somewhat outside the scope. That said, it seems at present somewhat like Varela, Col. José Luis Erazo (Antinarcóticos head of Trojan Lion), and Cpt. Rodney Rengel, who have all been grouped together by the Ecuadorian DOJ as they stand accused of “filtration” or passing restricted info on the investigation to Oderbrecht journo Andersson Boscan (bringing us back to the hacktivism heyday of the 2010s and how some disclosures were weaponized against the Pink Tide, like in Oderbrecht’s case which lead to Lula’s imprisonment and accusations of Chavez & Maduro taking bribes), may be being enduring retaliation or some sort of coverup pressure.
In the 2017 email, bin Sulayem tells Epstein that he’s staying in Vegas and rattles off the following, verbatim, “I having a feast on SA site amazing selection of 18 all willing clean and nice”… Make of that what you will.
Like Guillermo Lasso, she spent time as one of the national representatives of Coca-Cola early in her business career, which really accelerated concurrent to the economic crisis in the late ‘90s. Haven’t checked yet, but wouldn’t be shocked if Lasso and the Noboa’s were brought closer by Isabel and Guillermo’s mutual Coca-Cola work.
Posorja achieved a record breaking “throughput” of 955k Twenty-Foot Equivalent Units aka TEU, a standard cargo unit of measurement denoting the volume of one metal container, which represented an 87% increase from the year prior in 2024.
Can’t lie, and not coming from a place of disrespect or callousness towards her loss, but I inherently distrust most of the direct players in this saga to one degree or another, her included.
There’s either no relation between the banana Noboa’s and Gustavo or – at most – they are distant relatives from separate branches. Jamil Mahuad’s most fearsome opponent in the 1998 race was Daniel Noboa’s father Alvaro, though, a perennially thwarted candidate, who came second in the runoff behind the Mahuad - Noboa ticket by approx 100k votes.
In 2017, Clinton returned to Medellin, Colombia himself on Clinton Foundation business to visit the once fearsome drug dealing barrio of Comuna 13, the supposed peacefulness of which his media team celebrated as one of the fruits of the $1.3 billion earmarked for counter-narco operations in 2000 as part of Plan Colombia—after which, he joined a roundtable with President Juan Manuel Santos at the World Coffee Producers Forum.
Here’s potential evidence that Epstein had a recruiter at Ford and another account of a Ford Model that was groomed by Epstein.
Some additional choice cuts from the piece about Ivonne Baki and Maria del Carmen de Aguayo’s relationship with the Donald in which the two women are called to give their opinion as to whether they think Trump is genuinely a xenophobe towards Latin Americans in the light of the election:
Donald Trump visited Ecuador in 2004 when the Miss Universe pageant was held there. In this image, he is seen arriving at the Swissôtel for dinner. Photo: Archive / EL COMERCIO
…
In Quito, Trump also attended the launch of 'The Galapagos Book,' of which Baki was one of the main promoters. “He really liked the Islands; I understand that he and Ivonne talked a lot about developing conservation and nature projects with him,” Aguayo says.
Donald Trump also left a memento of Ecuador. An orange Ecuadorian rose was named after him, in gratitude for the country's selection as host of the 2004 Miss Universe pageant.
The 'Trump' rose was produced by the international company Kordes-Plantador. On May 31, 2004, the magnate christened the new flower with champagne at a ceremony held at the Ecuadorian Ministry of Commerce.
Following the results of the US elections, former Ecuadorian President Lucio Gutiérrez congratulated Donald Trump on his victory this morning, November 9th. He did so via his Twitter account.
“Congratulations to @realDonaldTrump. I remember him as a visionary and a great businessman. He has fond memories of #Ecuador,” Gutiérrez posted, along with a photograph with the now U.S. president-elect.
We’ve run out of parchment space to tackle it here, but Epstein and Maxwell were also involved in conservancy efforts related to the Galápagos Islands and went on various voyages to the Darwinian origin story locale with scientific luminary friends and the like.
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