Paedophile ‘had links to the CIA’

JEFFREY EPSTEIN appeared to have links with the CIA, according to claims by his former bodyguard in the bombshell new book.

The minder said he was sent to the spy agency’s HQ in Virginia to attend classes for a week where he was introduced as a ‘special operative’.

His other 44 classmates were from the CIA or ‘some other government unit with top secret clearance’. Afterwards the bodyguard, a Russian mixed martial arts fighter, was told to deliver a book with a personalised note ‘to Jeffrey’.

The disclosure will fuel speculation that Epstein may have secured his shockingly lenient plea deal in 2007 because of alleged links to intelligence agencies.

The book also claims that there were ‘whispers’ as far back as the 1980s that the financier ‘was associated with the CIA, Mossad or another intelligence agency’.

The bodyguard told Bradley Edwards that he was hired because Epstein feared ‘some girl’s dad would try and kill him’.

But the ‘real-life tough guy’ also made clear that he was frightened by his boss.