Epstein, WikiLeaks and Snowden: power laid bare

Rather, they provided an additional window—perhaps the most stark—into the deep structure of the international system that governs the world. A system that is not sustained solely by states, armies and treaties, but by networks of influence, blackmail, the exchange of secrets and the careful management of dirt under elegantly decorated tables. 

What these documents reveal is no less dangerous than what was exposed by the WikiLeaks leaks or Edward Snowden's files; on the contrary, it complements it from another angle: that of the body, desire and scandal as tools of government. 

From the moment fragments of Epstein's files began to come to light, it was clear that the matter transcended a single person or an isolated island. We are faced with a file of complex relationships that intertwines money with politics, intelligence services with the media, and global elites with grey areas beyond any form of accountability. 

The names of presidents, princes, billionaires, celebrities and senior officials—past and present—appear in these documents, not always as direct defendants, but as part of a contaminated global landscape where proximity to power generates tacit immunity. 

It is precisely here that Epstein converges with WikiLeaks and Snowden. The latter two cases revealed the face of the global security system: mass surveillance, widespread espionage, the conversion of privacy into an illusion and democracy into a technical facade. 

Epstein's documents reveal the other side of the same structure: how elites are managed based on their weaknesses, how moral deviance is transformed into an instrument of pressure and, at times, into an internal language of communication within closed circles inaccessible to ordinary citizens. 

WikiLeaks exposed diplomacy; Snowden exposed the surveillance state; Epstein exposes human beings at the top of the hierarchy. All three cases convey the same message in different ways: the world is not governed according to the values taught in textbooks, but through murky balances, undeclared red lines and agreements that never go through parliaments or the ballot box. 

The international elite, as revealed by these documents, is not necessarily rational or moral, but deeply pragmatic, to the point of brutality. What binds it together is not faith in democracy or human rights, but the protection of interests, the guarantee of the system's continuity and the prevention of its internal collapse. When ethics become an obstacle, they are discreetly sidestepped or transformed into discourse intended for media consumption. 

In this context, the question is no longer why laws were violated, but why public opinion is still surprised. The international system was not designed to be transparent, but to appear so. 

Leaks are not the exception, but a temporary malfunction within a gigantic machine that is controlled with extreme precision. That is why those who reveal the truth often pay a high price: exile, judicial persecution, smear campaigns or isolation, as happened with Snowden, with the founders of WikiLeaks, and as is now being attempted with the Epstein case, which is being reduced to a simple matter of ‘private immorality’ rather than being addressed as a structural and political issue. 

The most disturbing thing about the Epstein documents is not what has been revealed, but what remains hidden: the gaps, the censored pages, the deleted names and the incomplete contexts remind us that the truth is also managed. The document, however compelling it may seem, is not necessarily innocent; it can be used to settle scores within the elite itself or to rearrange positions of power, not to bring down the system. 

Hence the need to link these leaks in order to understand the nature of contemporary global power. We do not live under a ‘conspiracy’ in the simplistic sense of the term, but within a relatively closed and extremely complex system that feeds on secrecy and reproduces itself through crises. When a scandal erupts, the system does not collapse: it adapts, sacrifices some of its members and continues to function. 

The paradox is that, despite their seriousness, these revelations did not provoke political revolutions in the centres of decision-making, but they did open a deep rift in individual consciousness. Those who read Snowden's leaks no longer look at their phones in the same way; those who accessed diplomatic discourse so easily; and those who followed the Epstein case understood that the ‘elite’ is far from being an ethical model. 

Therein lies the true value of these documents: not in overthrowing governments, but in shattering illusions. In exposing the distorted relationship between power and human beings, and in demonstrating that the international system, however solid it may seem, is based on a profound moral fragility. A fragility that does not necessarily threaten its continuity, but does lay bare its true nature. 

We are not faced with a completely secret world, nor with one that is fully transparent. We are faced with a system that sometimes governs through documents, sometimes through scandals and, most of the time, through silence. Between Epstein, WikiLeaks and Snowden, an unwritten map of power is thus drawn: a map that reveals that those who govern the world do so not because they are the best, but because they are the most capable of hiding their own corruption... or of managing it intelligently. 

Abdelhay Korret, Moroccan journalist and writer