Down the Hole Gently

The Uber pulled up, which meant that American democracy—or at least what I thought I should do about it—had to wait. Jeanne had to wait as well, since getting a 68-year-old body and three shopping bags and 15 lbs of cat litter into a grey Ford Explorer took all my attention.

 

When I got home, it all looked too crazy even to contemplate.

 

Let me put it all in a list form--rungs on the ladder, perhaps, of this particular rabbit hole. You can see where you sign off.

 

1.    There’s a law enforcement guy named John Mark Dougan, who worked for the Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office (PBSO) from 2002 to 2009

2.    During that time, he alleged that the Sheriff’s Office was corrupt, as well as engaging in violent treatment of minorities. He set up a couple of websites to expose the problem and considered himself a whistleblower

3.    Dougan left the PBSO and went to work in a police department in Maine, where he faced charges of sexual harassment (which he denies, claiming to be a victim of the Deep State)

4.    Dougan is a geek who sets up fake websites

 

We good so far?

 

5.    One day in 2010, a fellow PBSO detective named Joseph Recarey called Dougan. Recarey had been the lead investigator in the Epstein case of 2005, and had a trove of 700 or so CDs as well as documents, all of which was highly incriminating against highly influential people behaving badly

6.    Recarey, according to Dougan (who cannot back up the claim), gave him the CDs / documents because he feared they would be destroyed by corrupt people in the PBSO

7.    Recarey died at the age of 50 in 2018. According to the Palm Beach Daily News, he was deeply loved and respected

 

Still hanging in there?

 

8.    Dougan put all the 700 CDs of all the big boys behaving badly onto one drive, and there it was when the FBI raided his home in 2016 

9.     The FBI was investigating Dougan for cybercrimes and computer fraud—Dougan had set up a fake website and had published personal information about his coworkers

10.Dougan said the FBI had seized his hard drive, but that he had retained a copy

11. In 2019, after Epstein had died, the Times of London reported that MI6 (a branch of British intelligence) had learned of salacious material that Dougan had had on his hard drive. This led to Prince Andrew’s subsequent retirement from his official duties as a member of the royalty

 

Right—the air is getting a little thin….

 

12. Dougan made his way to Moscow in 2016, where he became a Russian operative spreading disinformation via 150 fake websites. The New York Times reports that he essentially took over the “Internet Research Agency” or whatever it was called that operated from St. Petersburg during the 2016 campaign 

13.Dougan, realizing that he was sitting on top of a mountain of information that seriously powerful people and institutions did not want him to have, feared for his life. He showed portions of seven tapes / CDs to a journalist named Ron Chapesiuk

14.Dougan also sends another copy of the hard drive to a “friend” in the south of Russia.

 

Lastly, here are the final paragraphs from The Spider, by Barry Levine:

 

 

Right—it’s Epstein’s, not Charlotte’s web….