The Jewish Billionaire Circle Hiding in Plain Sight
Most Americans have never heard of the Mega Group. Yet this quiet consortium of Jewish billionaires has drifted back into public view because of renewed scrutiny of Jeffrey Epstein. His name dominates headlines again, and with it a strange supporting cast of oligarchs, intelligence veterans, and philanthropic power brokers.
At the center of this cast of shadowy figures stands Leslie Wexner, one of the most influential patrons of the Zionist project. In 1991, he joined Canadian liquor heir Charles Bronfman to create what they called the Mega Group, also known in some accounts as the Study Group. A profile in the Wall Street Journal from 1998 described it as “a loosely organized club of 20 of the nation’s wealthiest and most influential Jewish businessmen” focused on “philanthropy and Jewishness,” yet even early reporting hinted at something more profound. One overview at Miftah portrayed the Mega Group as an informal but potent club of Jewish American billionaires and entrepreneurs that quickly attracted attention in Jerusalem and Washington alike.
Israeli intelligence sources later described the Mega Group as a vehicle for influence operations in the United States. Analysts pointed to the group’s contacts with the Israeli Mossad, its alignment with the broader Israel lobby, and its habit of operating behind closed doors. What looked like philanthropy on the surface increasingly resembled a private political machine beneath it.
The Architects of a Jewish Network of Oligarchs
The official story holds that Wexner and Charles Bronfman co-founded the Mega Group in 1991 to coordinate large scale Jewish philanthropy. A later sketch of the network placed its origins with about 20 members, almost all billionaires or near billionaires. By 2001. the membership reportedly grew to nearly 50, according to coverage in Executive Intelligence Review and other sources, with annual dues around $30,000 as reported by the Wall Street Journal.
The roster reads like a map of elite Jewish institutional power. Among the central figures were
- Leslie Wexner, founder of The Limited and Victoria’s Secret.
- Charles and Edgar Bronfman, heirs to the Seagram liquor empire and longtime leaders of the World Jewish Congress.
- Michael Steinhardt, pioneering hedge fund manager described in Hedge Fund Alpha and MicroCapClub as one of Wall Street’s most successful investors.
- Max Fisher, Detroit oil magnate and Republican powerhouse who advised presidents from Eisenhower through George W Bush on Jewish and Middle Eastern affairs.
- Ronald Lauder, heir to the Estée Lauder fortune and later president of the World Jewish Congress.
- Harvey Meyerhoff, Baltimore real estate magnate and founding chairman of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, profiled by his own charitable foundation and Pi Lambda Phi.
- Laurence Tisch, chairman of Loews Corporation, whose son James later led United Jewish Communities.
Various investigations, including an in depth dossier at MintPress News, have argued that this circle functioned as far more than a charity club. In effect, the Mega Group served as a central node in a network where money, media, intelligence, and Zionist lobbying fused into a single oligarchical venture that bypassed the traditional legislative process.
Wexner, Epstein, and the Manhattan Townhouse
Leslie Wexner may be the most important figure in this story, not only because of his corporate empire but because of his unique relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. Wexner built his fortune through The Limited beginning in 1963, later expanding to Victoria’s Secret, Bath and Body Works, Abercrombie and Fitch, and other brands under L Brands. His net worth in the early 2020s generally ranged between $4.5 billion and $7 billion dollars, making him one of the richest men in the United States and the longest serving chief executive of a Fortune 500 company.
Then there is Epstein. A former high school math teacher with no college degree somehow became Wexner’s financial manager in the early 1980s. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported that Wexner granted Epstein control of “all of his money.” Vanity Fair later revealed that Wexner transferred his 51,000 square foot Manhattan townhouse to Epstein, along with a private jet originally belonging to The Limited, a transfer that turned Epstein’s residence into one of the largest private homes in New York City.
Former Victoria’s Secret executives described a strange dynamic. They recalled seeing Wexner defer to Epstein in meetings and one remembered that “Les would put his hand on Epstein’s shoulder.” In his 2019 letter to his own foundation after Epstein’s arrest, Wexner claimed he had been financially manipulated and insisted that he knew nothing of Epstein’s criminal behavior. The explanation only deepened the mystery. Epstein’s fortune reached an estimated $559 million, according to Vanity Fair. Wexner was his only fully documented client. No public record explains how those numbers add up.
The most explosive interpretation comes from intelligence veterans and investigative writers who argue that Epstein operated as part of an Israeli sexual blackmail apparatus. Ari Ben Menashe, a former Israeli intelligence operative, told Electronic Intifada and other outlets that Epstein and British Jewish socialite Ghislaine Maxwell worked for Israeli military intelligence and specialized in blackmail. Ben Menashe said he saw Epstein in the office of Ghislaine’s father Robert Maxwell (well known to have been an Israeli spy) in the 1980s. The Manhattan townhouse that Wexner handed to Epstein reportedly had hidden surveillance cameras, as described by various investigative writers including those at MintPress News.
Former NSA counterintelligence officer John Schindler, writing in the Washington Times and cited in multiple summaries, argued that Epstein operated within a broader Israeli covert action framework. He stressed the link to Wexner and noted that “we know that it was co-founded by Jeffrey Epstein’s billionaire benefactor. The rest remains speculation,” and suggested that Congress or serious investigative reporters could use the Mega Group as a starting point to untangle the entire affair.
Philanthropy as Social Engineering
The Mega Group excelled at using charitable projects to reshape Jewish identity and align diaspora communities with Israeli interests. Nowhere is this clearer than in Birthright Israel, known in Hebrew as Taglit. The program provides free ten-day trips to Israel for Jewish young adults. Charles Bronfman and Michael Steinhardt launched Birthright in 1999. Reports in eJewishPhilanthropy and the Jewish Journal describe how Bronfman and Steinhardt each pledged between $8 and $10 million dollars. 12 additional donors, including Edgar Bronfman and Lynn Schusterman, committed $5 million dollars each over five years. The Israeli government matched this funding, producing an initial pool close to $140 million.
Leonard Saxe of Brandeis University called Birthright “the largest Jewish educational program ever,” as cited in the Jewish Journal. The program aims to strengthen Jewish identity, discourage intermarriage and assimilation, and deepen attachment to Israel. At its core, Birthright is a wide-ranging identity-construction initiative funded by Jewish billionaires, backed by Israel, and designed to activate Jews in America.
The Mega Group also poured money into Hillel International and Jewish education in North America. A 1998 Wall Street Journal piece on the group’s philanthropy detailed how a small cluster of members pledged a combined $1.3 million dollars annually over five years to re-finance Hillel in 1994. Later six members each provided $1.5 million to create the Partnership for Jewish Education, which funded matching grants for Jewish day schools. These moves strengthened a vast network of day schools and campus organizations that promoted a strongly Zionist worldview.
In effect this philanthropic empire did not simply fund religious or cultural work. It helped build an infrastructure that fostered unwavering support for Israel among younger generations of Jews in the United States.
Think Tanks, Conferences, and Political Messaging
The Mega Group’s reach extended deep into Washington. Multiple members sat on the board of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, known as WINEP. This think tank, which grew out of the orbit of AIPAC, has been described by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt as part of the core of the Israel lobby in the United States. As outlets like Media Bias Fact Check and Militarist Monitor note, WINEP produces research, trains military officers, and briefs government officials on Middle Eastern policy. As of the late 1990s, WINEP board members included Charles and Edgar Bronfman, Max Fisher, Harvey Meyerhoff, and Michael Steinhardt. (WINEP is now headed by Robert Satloff, referenced previously in two TOO articles, here and here; current Board of Directors are listed here.)
The network’s reach into organized Jewish leadership was equally impressive. Malcolm Hoenlein, who moved in the same circles, served as executive vice chairman and later chief executive of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. The Conference serves as the de facto public voice of the American Jewish community on international affairs.
In 2003, this already formidable apparatus added professional Republican messaging expertise. The group hired pollster Frank Luntz, famous for his focus group-driven language manuals. Luntz produced extensive guides for Israel advocates, including a document known as the Global Language Dictionary. He told his readers that settlements were Israel’s main public relations problem and urged them to shift the conversation toward “terror, not territory.” The core lesson this guide imparted was blunt, “it is not what you say that counts. It’s what people hear.”
With Luntz’s help the Mega Group and its allied institutions helped lock U.S. discourse into a frame where Israeli security trumped Palestinian rights and where criticism of Israeli policy easily slipped into accusations of extremism or bigotry.
The 1997 Mega Spy Mystery
A separate story about something called Mega exploded in Washington in 1997. The Washington Post revealed that United States signals intelligence had intercepted a phone call between two Israeli intelligence officers. One officer said, “The ambassador wants me to go to Mega to get a copy of this letter,” referring to correspondence from Secretary of State Warren Christopher to Yasir Arafat. His superior replied, “This is not something we use Mega for.”
Investigators in the United States suspected that Mega referred to a high level informant inside the government. Some believed this figure might be connected to the Jonathan Pollard espionage case, possibly the mysterious Mr X who guided Pollard on which documents to request. Israel claimed at first that Mega was just a codeword for the Central Intelligence Agency.
Former NSA counterspy John Schindler later noted that Israeli intelligence officials viewed MEGA as a vehicle for espionage and influence operations in the United States. When the public finally learned that there was a separate entity known as the Mega Group, co-founded by Wexner and Bronfman, speculation about those two stories intensified. No official investigation has fully clarified whether there was any direct link. The timing and overlapping actors have kept the question alive.
Robert Maxwell, PROMIS, and the Surveillance Backdoor
If Epstein and Wexner form one pole of this saga, Robert Maxwell forms another. The British media tycoon and father of Ghislaine Maxwell has long been described as a Mossad asset. Gordon Thomas and other researchers chronicled his activities in works like Robert Maxwell Israel’s Superspy.
Maxwell maintained close business ties to Charles Bronfman, as highlighted by MintPress News. He allegedly helped Israeli intelligence distribute a modified version of the PROMIS software, originally developed by Inslaw for the United States Justice Department as a case management tool that could integrate separate databases and track individuals.
Israeli operatives then allegedly added a secret backdoor to PROMIS and distributed it to foreign governments and sensitive institutions, including nuclear laboratories like Los Alamos, using Maxwell as a salesman. This backdoor allowed covert access to the data of clients who believed they were simply modernizing their information systems. Former intelligence figures, including Ari Ben Menashe, testified that Maxwell brokered deals to sell the enhanced software to Israeli intelligence and other clients.
Maxwell died in 1991 after falling from his yacht under highly suspicious circumstances. Official accounts called it an accident or possible suicide. Many observers suspected a clean-up operation once his role became too visible.
When one places Maxwell’s activities alongside the rise of the Mega Group, the Epstein saga, and Mossad’s documented aggression in the United States, the pattern that appears is less a string of coincidences and more a coherent architecture of covert influence.
Organized Crime and Media Control
Several Mega Group members carried legacies that touched organized crime. Michael Steinhardt’s father, Sol “Red McGee” Steinhardt, was a mob associate of the Jewish criminal kingpin Meyer Lansky, one of the most powerful figures in twentieth-century organized crime. Accounts of these connections appear in various profiles and analyses of Steinhardt’s life, including critical takes such as the Instagram essay that explores the “Mega Group mafia” idea. The Bronfman empire grew in part through liquor distribution during Prohibition, a sector heavily intertwined with bootlegging networks.
The Mega Group also possessed direct media power thanks to its extensive ties in the English-speaking media world. Wexner served on the board of Hollinger Corporation, which owned the Jerusalem Post, the Chicago Sun Times, and British papers such as the Daily Telegraph. The Bronfmans held a major stake in AOL Time Warner, one of the largest media conglomerates of its day. Ronald Lauder controlled influential outlets in Israel and Eastern Europe.
These holdings did more than shape public opinion. They protected the network itself. Critical coverage of Epstein’s ties to Israel remained rare for years, a pattern noted by Electronic Intifada and others who studied how mainstream outlets avoided serious scrutiny of his alleged intelligence connections.
From Philanthropy to Oligarchy
From its founding in 1991 until its last confirmed meeting in 2001 at Edgar Bronfman’s Manhattan mansion, the Mega Group functioned as a private council of oligarchs. At its biannual meetings, wealthy Jewish donors made critical decisions affecting United States policy regarding Israel. Altogether, the group functioned as a de facto informal policymaking body.
After 2001, the Mega Group receded from public view. It may have dissolved. Or, more likely, it may have become even more discreet. What clearly remains is the infrastructure it helped build. Birthright Israel continues to be one of the most successful Jewish educational programs in the world. United Jewish Communities, the umbrella structure created out of earlier federations, still channels billions in annual funds. The World Jewish Congress, now led by Ronald Lauder, remains a major player in global diplomacy.
In the end, the Mega Group’s public footprint may have faded, but the power structures it assembled continue to operate out of sight. The deeper one looks, the less America resembles a self-governing republic and the more it resembles a stage managed by private Jewish networks that answer to no electorate. The greatest mystery is not what the Mega Group once was, but what its successors may now be quietly directing in the shadows.