Epstein Data Wiki

David Gergen

Properties2
tagsperson, harvard, media, little-st-james, 2011-2014
aliasesDavid Gergen, David R. Gergen, Gergen, David

11 min read

Named on the documents asDavid Gergen, and David in his own sign-offs; David R. Gergen in nine documents the plain form never reaches1
Size of the file749 documents on the exact phrase, 541 of which also name Epstein. ⚠ "David Gergen" AND "Maxwell" returns ZERO2
The act this page is built onOn 27 December 2012 he wrote to Epstein’s office asking to bring his brother and sister-in-law to lunch on Epstein’s island, adding: “Jeffrey kindly entertained them once before for dinner.”3
And the event that is documented as having happenedA dinner on Sunday 25 December 2011. Two days later Epstein texted that “the other night was great fun” and Gergen replied: “Yes, Sunday night was terrific fun.” Both men, in the past tense4
Where the island is namedNot by him. The island’s own management wrote to him on 28 December 2012 about the boat: “We look forward to having you back to Little St James”, from “the same location as last year”5
What the documents do NOT establishThat the 2012 lunch took place. Every sheet about it was written beforehand and nothing records it afterwards. Nor do they establish that any of three Cambridge appointments happened36
⚠ Nothing alleges anything against himNo document read for this page makes any allegation of any kind against David Gergen, and this page makes none. He also declined an invitation to an Epstein house dinner in 20107

David Gergen is an American public figure who advised four presidents and later taught at the Harvard Kennedy School. He appears in this release as a guest, a correspondent and a diary entry.

⚠ NOTHING ON THIS PAGE IS AN ALLEGATION, AND NO DOCUMENT READ FOR IT ALLEGES ANYTHING AGAINST HIM. Jeffrey Epstein’s 2008 conviction was public throughout the period covered here, and many people continued to see him. What this page does is separate, carefully, the things the documents show from the things they merely propose, because on this subject the difference turns out to be most of the file.

The dinner, and this one happened

Almost everything in this release about David Gergen and Jeffrey Epstein is an arrangement rather than an event. There is one clear exception, and it is not an email. It is a text message.

On 27 December 2011, two days after Christmas, Epstein wrote to him: “Jeffrey , sorry , the other night was great fun”. Gergen replied:

Oh, hi Jeffrey. Yes, Sunday night was terrific fun. Bob Gates would find you an excellent conversationalist.4

Both men, in the past tense, about the same evening. The Sunday in question was 25 December 2011, the date the arranging messages had proposed. This is the only completed Epstein event involving him that the documents establish.4

Two days later he declined a second invitation that week, writing that he had to “regret your kind invitation for this afternoon” because “My brother Ken and his wife are here and we have a long scheduled golf outing.”4

⚠ Where that dinner was held is not stated on any 2011 sheet read for this page. A message from Epstein about the arrangements says only “4 people foe dinner sun . David Gergen will need to be picked up in st john”: a pickup point, not a destination.8 That it was the island rests on an inference from the following year, and the page marks it as one rather than asserting it.

The lunch he asked to bring his family to

A year later the invitation was explicit about where. On 27 December 2012 an assistant to Epstein wrote that “Jeffrey is hoping you and your wife could come see him for lunch on his island”, offering two dates and adding “Jeffrey’s island is off of St. Thomas.”3

Gergen answered the same day, from his phone, having just landed:

thanks for your note. We arrives on St John an hour ago. We would love to come on Sunday — can we please bring my brother Ken and his wife Mary? Jeffrey kindly entertained them once before for dinner.3

Three things in that sentence are worth stating precisely, because they are easy to run together and they are not the same fact.

First, “them” means Ken and Mary and does not include him. He wrote them, not us, in a message where he uses the first person freely three times in as many lines. Epstein’s office read it the same way, replying that his brother Ken and his wife Mary may come.3 ⚠ So this sentence is him vouching that his brother and sister-in-law had been entertained before. It is not him attesting to his own earlier dinner. That is a different fact, from a different document, and it is in the section above.

Second, he asked. The initiative for the guests was his, and the request is in his own words.

Third, the island is named by its own staff, not by him. The next day the island’s management wrote to him about the crossing:

We look forward to having you back to Little St James. Brice will be at the National Park Dock on St John (the same location as last year) at 1pm on Sunday, he will be on Little C (White Cabin Boat)5

“Back to”, and “the same location as last year.” ⚠ That is the island’s characterisation of a return, and it is the only document read for this page that names Little St James in connection with him.5

⚠ AND THEN THE RECORD STOPS. The thread ends on Friday 28 December with a one-word acknowledgement. No document read for this page records that the lunch took place: no confirmation, no thank-you, nothing afterwards of the kind the 2011 dinner has. A calendar alert flushed the following week proves an entry existed, not that anyone sat down.3 This page therefore says the lunch was arranged in detail and does not say it happened.

The Cambridge appointments

Between 2012 and 2014 Epstein’s office arranged at least three appointments with him in Cambridge, Massachusetts, around the institute of the Harvard mathematician Martin Nowak: a Sunday afternoon in April 2012, for which he was asked to bring a research assistant; a Sunday in January 2013; and a nine o’clock morning appointment in April 2014.6

For the January 2013 one his own reply survives. Epstein had written that morning “if you can’t do 2 today,, no worry,, we’ll do it another time. hope you had fun at Davos”, and Gergen answered:

I can come shortly after 2. Where?9

Epstein named the place twelve minutes later.9 For the April 2014 one, Epstein’s assistant reconfirmed on the morning itself: “Just reconfirming Jeffrey will see you this morning at 9am… He looks forward to visiting with you.”6

⚠ NONE OF THE THREE IS DOCUMENTED AS HAVING TAKEN PLACE. Every sheet about them was written before the appointment. A reconfirmation is still an arrangement. The desk looked for an afterwards and did not find one.6

The invitation he declined

One document places him on a guest list for an Epstein house rather than the island, and it records a refusal. A tracking sheet for a dinner at Epstein’s New York house for Ehud Barak, then Israel’s defence minister, lists invitees and their answers. The row for David Gergen reads: LM & Emailed 9-16 | No- very disappointed.7

⚠ The sheet carries no year. The day-and-date combination points to 2010, but that is arithmetic rather than something the document says, and the page gives it as such.7

Identification

Floor 749 on the exact phrase, and it is a floor.

formdocumentsoutside the base set
"David Gergen"749base
Gergen (bare surname)915166
"Gergen, David"410
"David R. Gergen"99
"Mr. Gergen"00

⚠ THE MOST INFORMATIVE NUMBER ON THIS PAGE IS THE ZERO. "Mr. Gergen" returns nothing. Nobody in this release is discussing him; he appears in correspondence he is party to and in diaries that expect him, and not in anyone’s account of events. That is a different shape from a subject who is talked about, and the page is built accordingly.1

⚠ The bare surname was not used as an identifier. It returns 915 with 166 outside his set, and at least one of those is a different person entirely, a Samantha Gergen of an unrelated company, who would contaminate any sweep that dropped the forename.2

Footnotes

  1. Counts on the authoritative pages_fts route, scoped text_content, each form run as an exact phrase, count(distinct efta_number), identifier sets compared by set difference against the "David Gergen" base. ⚠ The tokeniser splits on . and ,, so "Gergen, David" and "Gergen David" are one query and are not treated as two corroborating forms. ↩ ↩2

  2. Same route. Base 749; intersection with Epstein 541; intersection with Maxwell 0; bare surname 915, not used as an identifier for the reason given on the page. ↩ ↩2

  3. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA02151884, an e-mail from David Gergen of 27 December 2012 to an assistant to Epstein, quoting her invitation of the same day. VERIFIED AT THE IMAGE at 400 dpi, and this copy carries the message whole, signature included. ⚠ Several other copies of this message in the release break across a page inside the quoted sentence and would amputate it. ⚠ The header stamp of 9:45:39 PM is UTC; a forwarded copy prints it as 4:45:39 PM Eastern. ⚠ His own address is ABSENT from the From: line rather than redacted, and the page does not describe it as redacted. His typing is reproduced as printed. The assistant’s reply approving the two additional guests is in the same thread. Ken and Mary Gergen are private individuals who appear only as names in a family party and nothing whatever is alleged against them. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6

  4. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA01620694 pp. 1-2, an extraction report of text messages, timezone stated on the report as UTC. VERIFIED AT THE IMAGE at 400 dpi. Carries the exchange of 27 December 2011 and the declined invitation of 29 December 2011. ⚠ The report attributes one short line to him immediately after a line of his own that reads as a logging artefact rather than his words; it is not quoted here. ⚠ The identity of the other two of the “4 people” is NOT recorded in any document read for this page, and this page does not guess at it. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  5. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA02151630, a message of 28 December 2012 from the island’s management to David Gergen giving the dock, the time and the boat. VERIFIED AT THE IMAGE at 400 dpi. This is the only document read for this page that names Little St James in connection with him, and the words “back to” and “the same location as last year” are the island’s own. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  6. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA01873509 (the April 2012 appointment, confirmed by Epstein’s office), https://epstein-data.com/EFTA01873848 p. 2 (a schedule line and an assistant’s note), https://epstein-data.com/EFTA01927789 (the itinerary for 22 April 2014) and https://epstein-data.com/EFTA02108384 (the reconfirmation on the morning itself). VERIFIED AT THE IMAGE at 400 dpi. ⚠ The date of the April 2012 appointment comes from the covering message, not from the schedule, which is headed only SCHEDULE:. ⚠ The text layer of the first of these renders the sender as Riley Epstein; the image reads Jeffrey Epstein, and no such person exists. A telephone number appears on the itinerary and is not reproduced. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  7. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00298515, an invitation-tracking sheet for a dinner at Epstein’s New York house for Ehud Barak. VERIFIED AT THE IMAGE at 400 dpi. ⚠ The sheet carries no year; the weekday-and-date combination indicates 2010, which is the desk’s arithmetic and not the document’s statement. ⚠ The text layer collapses this sheet’s three columns, so no name can be matched to its answer without the image, and the row quoted here was read at the image. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  8. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA01772818, a message from Epstein about the arrangements for the December 2011 dinner. VERIFIED AT THE IMAGE at 400 dpi. The message is from Epstein. The sheet has no subject line and names no destination, which is the only reason it is cited here. ↩

  9. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA02032107, his reply of 27 January 2013, quoting Epstein’s message of that morning. VERIFIED AT THE IMAGE at 400 dpi. ⚠ The 5:50:07 PM stamp is UTC; read as local it would have him saying at 5:50 in the evening that he could come “shortly after 2”. ⚠ A From: line bearing his name is NOT by itself proof of authorship in this release: another sheet in the same family is headed with his name and was written by his assistant, who signs it. Authorship here rests on the content, the first-person sign-off and the device footer. ↩ ↩2

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