Short answers, pulled from the story.
Edward Jay Epstein was an American investigative journalist and political science professor born on the 6th of December 1935 in New York City. He taught at Harvard University, UCLA, and MIT, and wrote extensively on the Kennedy assassination, the diamond industry, Armand Hammer, and Edward Snowden. He died on the 9th of January 2024 at age 88.
In 1966, while still a graduate student at Cornell University, Epstein published Inquest: The Warren Commission and the Establishment of Truth, an influential critique of the official investigation into the Kennedy assassination. The book featured an introduction by Richard Rovere and was the first of three books Epstein wrote on the assassination, later collected in The Assassination Chronicles (1992).
Epstein concluded in his book How America Lost Its Secrets that there was no evidence Snowden was employed by Russian intelligence while in the United States. He documented that Snowden removed 1.5 million classified NSA files and made secret contact with Russian government officials before traveling to Moscow on the 23rd of June 2013, and that the House Intelligence Committee found ongoing contact with Russian intelligence services after his arrival.
In his 1982 article "Have You Ever Tried to Sell a Diamond?" and the book The Rise and Fall of Diamonds, Epstein detailed how De Beers used sustained marketing to transform small pieces of transparent crystallized carbon into high-priced, mass-market commodities. The book also examined the diamond industry's economic impact in southern Africa.
Hall of Mirrors was a 2017 documentary directed by sisters Ena and Ines Talakic that premiered at the 55th New York Film Festival. It covered Epstein's major investigations, including the Warren Commission findings, the diamond industry, the career of Armand Hammer, and the inner workings of journalism, woven alongside his then-active investigation into Edward Snowden.
Ed Epstein first met Jeffrey Epstein at a party in 1987. By early 1989, Ed Epstein had become aware of what he believed were instances of fraud connected to Jeffrey Epstein, and published an article in Manhattan, inc. identifying him as a grifter and fabulist without naming him directly. Jeffrey Epstein cut off contact after publication, and the two did not communicate again for twenty-four years.