Epstein Data Wiki

Neil Gershenfeld

Properties2
tagsperson, mit, science, deception-weekend, enhanced-education, 2013, 2014
aliasesNeil Gershenfeld, Gershenfeld, Neil

6 min read

⚠ what this page is about, and what it is not

The MIT physicist who organised the gathering Epstein’s office ran under the subject line “deception”, and whose travel Epstein reimbursed. No allegation against him was found anywhere in the release, and none is made here. ⚠ Taking research travel money from a donor is not an offence and this page does not present it as one.

WhoNeil Gershenfeld, physicist, of MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms1
In the releasePresent in the released material; this page rests on the documents cited in its footnotes2
⭐ The actHe organised the February 2014 gathering, set its agenda, chased the dates and wrote the line that states its purpose: “If Jeff’s goal is understanding deception, and mine is brain-building…”3
⚠ The moneyOn 13 February 2014 he sent his travel receipts to Epstein’s assistant. Epstein’s accountant asked Epstein which vehicle to pay them from: “1) STC (science related) 2) JEE personal 3) Enhanced Education”. Epstein answered: “foudation”4

Neil Gershenfeld appears in the released files, almost all of it e-mail from 2013 and 2014. He is not a name on a list: he is the person doing the organising.

The reimbursement, 13 February 2014

The receipts travelled on the same thread as the gathering. Gershenfeld to Lesley Groff, 11:43 AM, subject still “Re: deception”:

Lesley, All set, here are my receipts.

Neil

Five hours later Richard Kahn put the question to Epstein, copying Groff and Bella Klein:

please advise if we should pay from:

  1. STC (science related)
  2. JEE personal
  3. Enhanced Education

Epstein replied at 5:02 PM with one word: “foudation”, which the sheet prints unspelled.4

⚠⚠ WHAT THIS DOCUMENTS IS THE CHOICE, NOT A WRONG. Epstein maintained at least three ways of paying for things and his accountant asked which one an MIT professor’s travel should come out of. The page reports the menu and the answer. ⚠ It does not say how much, because no document read for this page gives a figure, and ⚠ it does not say what “foudation” resolved to, because the sheet does not.

⚠ Accepting reimbursement for research travel is ordinary academic practice. What the document adds is the accounting shape behind it.

The February 2014 gathering

He set it up. He canvassed dates from December 2013, wrote back “from the fog of Davos” to re-confirm, proposed “travel down evening 21st, return evening 23rd”, asked Epstein and Groff “what are the logistics of getting to/from there?”, and framed the agenda around “the broad build-a-brain direction”. The full thread and the three other invited scientists are at the “deception” weekend, and are not repeated here.3

⚠ The line that gives the gathering its name is his: “If Jeff’s goal is understanding deception…” It is his characterisation of Epstein’s purpose, not Epstein’s own words, and the distinction is stated on the topic page too.

What the documents are

The shape of the population was tested before anything was written about it.2

  • It is overwhelmingly e-mail headers, with a small remainder of calendar entries, plist records and scanned images. Not a running head and not a photographed book.
  • ⚠ The population is narrow in time: the documents that carry his name beside the word “deception” are from 2013 and 2014 only.
  • ⚠ “Center for Bits and Atoms” appears beside his name in the released material, which is how this page states his affiliation rather than taking it from outside.

What this page does not say

No allegation against him was found anywhere in the release.5

⚠⚠ NOTHING HERE SUGGESTS HE KNEW OF OR PARTICIPATED IN ANY OFFENCE. He is a scientist who took research travel money from a donor and organised an academic weekend. ⚠ Whether that donor should have been taken money from in 2014 is a question about institutions and about judgement, and this page neither asks nor answers it. ⚠ Where the weekend was to be held is not in any document read for this page, and the page does not complete it.

Footnotes

Footnotes

  1. Identification. ⚠ No document read for this page states his title. His name appears beside “Center for Bits and Atoms” in the released material, which is the basis for the affiliation given here, and his own message points the group to a computing manifesto hosted on an MIT domain. The page states that and no more. ↩

  2. Scope. ⚠ The desk did not read in full the released material that carries his name, and does not characterise it here: this page rests on the documents cited in these footnotes. ⚠ A surname-only key is used here because no other Gershenfeld was observed in the sampled documents, but the desk did not decompose the population to prove it, and that is a stated gap rather than a checked fact. ⚠ No sender-row figure is given, because the desk could not obtain one and will not print a figure it did not measure. ⚠ No deduplicated message total is stated. ↩ ↩2

  3. The gathering. Full treatment, participants and restraints at the “deception” weekend, built on EFTA01941074 p.1, read at the image at 700 dpi, with EFTA01939223 and EFTA01940279 from the text layer. ⚠ That page states, and this one repeats, that no document read names the location and that the desk declines to infer it. ↩ ↩2

  4. 13 February 2014. EFTA01937477 p.1, read at the image at 700 dpi: Richard Kahn to Jeffrey Epstein, copied to Lesley Groff and Bella Klein, Thur 2/13/2014 4:56:11 PM, subject “Re: Neil Gershenfeld’s travel receipts for reimbursement”, carrying beneath it Gershenfeld to Groff at February 13, 2014, 11:43:55 AM EST under the subject Re: deception. Kahn’s block gives HBRK Associates Inc., 575 Lexington Avenue, 4th Floor, New York, New York 10022; his telephone, fax and cell are covered and are not supplied. Epstein’s one-word reply, Thur 2/13/2014 5:02:00 PM, is at EFTA01937676 p.1, text layer, not read at the image; it prints “foudation” and is quoted unrepaired. ⚠ No document read for this page gives an amount, identifies which entity finally paid, or says whether the reimbursement was made. ⚠ “STC” and “Enhanced Education” are not expanded here, because the sheet does not expand them. ↩ ↩2

  5. Absences, each scoped. No allegation against him was found in the release read for this page. ⚠⚠ This is a shallow check against a population the desk did not read in full, and is stated as one: the desk read the reimbursement thread and the gathering thread, ran no systematic adverse sweep, searched no derived store, and opened none of the calendar entries or plist records. A subject like this is owed a deeper pass, and the gap is recorded rather than presented as a clean result. ↩

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