On the Emails Between Jeffrey Epstein and Noam Chomsky

by Vijay Prishad
CounterPunch, February 3, 2026

Excerpt...

But of course, it was impossible to ignore the emails between my friend and collaborator Noam Chomsky and Epstein. I have read what I can, and I have seen what I need to see. Noam has been a great mentor for me, and we have made two books together (the last one, his final book). Both books were written around the time that he was in correspondence with Epstein. But nothing in our many discussions brought up any of the themes in that correspondence or of the fact that he was meeting Epstein. Noam and I talked about US imperialism and its crimes, and then about Cuba. The only personal other thing we talked about other than these political matters was our love of dogs and the Arabic language.

Since Noam cannot speak or write and explain his relationship with Epstein, the matter is fraught. There is nothing to say on his behalf. When the photos and emails appeared, I was immediately disgusted by Epstein’s paedophilia, and so by Noam’s friendship with him. There is no defence for this, in my view, no context that can explain this outrage.

I asked Jeffery St. Clair, the editor of CounterPunch, what our common friend Alexander Cockburn would have made of these revelations. ‘Alex would have been troubled, I think’, Jeffrey wrote, ‘about Noam having such a close relationship with an ultra-Zionist, and probable Israeli agent…Seriously bad judgment from someone who usually makes such considered and thoroughly reasoned decisions’. Epstein was a man of the Far Right and a Zionist – an accumulator of men of power and influence who want to turn the world into their paradise and our hell. He introduced Noam to Ehud Barak, a man who had faced corruption allegations in the early 2000s and who had committed war crimes during his tenure as Israeli Prime Minister. In 2009, Barak conducted a terrible war against the Palestinians in Gaza, murdering about 1500 Palestinians in cold blood. The United Nations investigation committee, chaired by Richard Goldstone, found in its report that the Israeli government – led by Barak – had committed war crimes. When Barak visited the United Kingdom that year, solicitors took a case to the City of Westminster to ask for a warrant under the 1988 Criminal Justice Act, which provides for universal jurisdiction in war crimes cases. No such warrant materialised. Why would Noam meet a war criminal in 2015, six years after these events? When I asked Noam in 2021, for our first book The Withdrawal, if he would have gone to meet with Henry Kissinger, he laughed and said, no. And yet, he had earlier – unbeknownst to me, met with a war criminal.

Why consort so freely with a person of that disposition? Why provide comfort and advice to a paedophile for his crimes?

Source: https://www.counterpunch.org/2026/02/03/on-the-emails-between-jeffrey-epstein-and-noam-chomsky/

The Strange Tale of a Pedophile in the U.S. Justice Department

Legal Schnauzer, WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 2010

The U.S. Department of Justice generated plenty of strange stories during the George W. Bush years. But one of the strangest involved John David "Roy" Atchison, an assistant U.S. attorney in Pensacola, Florida, who committed suicide after being caught in a pedophilia sting in Detroit.

Atchison's sad story has many connections to Birmingham and Alabama. And it raises this question: How did a guy with a shaky work record and a history of run-ins with the law get hired by the world's supposedly foremost crime-fighting organization? Did Atchison attain his lofty position because he had connections to powerful figures in the Alabama legal world?

Investigative journalist Margie Burns examines these questions, and much more, in a series of posts about the Atchison case at her blog, margieburns.com.

Burns begins with the actions that turned Atchison into a national figure in fall 2007:

This is not the story of a man who engaged in pedophilia for years or decades before being caught. It is the story of a man whipsawed by the strain of living up to a high-achieving family rooted in Birmingham, Ala., whose high-functioning connections assisted him for years in developing a career for which he turned out not to be suited. On Sept. 16, 2007, Assistant U.S. Attorney John David Roy Atchison, serving as a federal prosecutor in the Northern District of Florida, was arrested on credible charges of basically pedophilia. Atchison committed suicide in federal prison Oct. 5.

A dead pedophile might not sound like a tragedy. But Atchison was thought to be participating in a pedophile ring, and his death removed a useful informant from law enforcement resources. The question of how he was enabled to kill himself rather than being preserved for justice is one of the loose ends left hanging in his case.

CONTINUED 'though I wish it didn't...

http://legalschnauzer.blogspot.com/2010/09/strange-tale-of-pedophile-in-us-justice.html

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Margie Burns detailed how the guy rose up through the GOP ranks, warts and all. When former wife beating Judge Fuller and pedophile Atchison are given authority to put people behind bars on behalf of Uncle Sam, these are worse than NAZI times.