Author Alisa Valdes (Rodriguez)
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Jeffrey Epstein Was CIA. The Communications Network at Zorro Ranch Proves It.
The DOJ’s own files show Epstein built a military-grade encrypted link to satellite orbit at Zorro Ranch. The contractor who built it now holds a Pentagon missile defense contract.
Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez for THE PUGILIST
May 19, 2026
In March 2016, a Stanley, New Mexico rancher named William sat down and wrote a straightforward technical memo. He had been asked by Brice Gordon, ranch manager at Jeffrey Epstein’s Zorro Ranch, to evaluate options for a new internet connection at the property. William knew the area, knew the terrain, and knew exactly what was available.
He laid out three options.
Plan A was ideal: tap into the Singleton Ranch’s existing fiber feed site, just a short distance away with gigabit fiber available and a clear radio shot. The Singleton negotiation was already underway. William had been in contact with Vito, the Singleton manager, who had briefed the family. CenturyLink contacts had confirmed gigabit availability in the Galisteo area. This was a clean, fast, affordable solution — estimated between $75,000 and $150,000 to build, with monthly service costs that were entirely manageable.
Plan B was a solid fallback: find any nearby property with CenturyLink gigabit fiber access, lease it, and build a short microwave hop. William had done exactly this on his own ranch. He called it the best alternative.
Plan C was Sandia Crest — the 10,620-foot peak visible from Albuquerque, 27 miles away. William was direct about it. “Difficulty of access, expense, and such a large distance makes it less than ideal for a point to point radio shot,” he wrote. It would require “incredibly expensive industrial/military grade equipment.” Signal throughput would be no better than 30%.
Within 48 hours of receiving William’s report, Jeffrey Epstein had made his choice.
He chose Plan C.
The documents recording that choice — and everything that followed — are sitting in the DOJ’s publicly available Epstein file archive. They have been there since the files were released. Almost no one has read them. What they reveal is not merely a connectivity decision. It is the operational signature of an intelligence asset building covert communications infrastructure, surrounded by the men who built him, protected by the institutions that owned him, and connected — literally, through a satellite uplink with direct-to-orbit authorization — to wherever his handlers needed the data to go.
“We Don’t Need 1g”
The email thread begins on March 22, 2016, when Brice Gordon forwarded William’s report to Epstein at jeevacation@gmail.com, copying Richard Kahn of HBRK Associates at 575 Lexington Avenue in New York. Kahn was not a ranch facilities manager. He was Epstein’s New York-based project coordinator, and his involvement in a rural New Mexico internet installation tells you everything about what this project actually was.
Epstein’s response arrived the following morning in two messages. At 7:04 AM: “we do not need a gigabit k itsl sllly.” The garbled characters are typos — he meant “it’s silly.” At 7:56 AM, a second message: “we shoot dragon wave further, makes little sense.”
DragonWave is not consumer equipment. It is carrier-grade, military-specification microwave backhaul hardware used by telecom operators and government networks. Its defining property is hardware-level AES encryption built into the radio layer — below the IP stack, invisible to standard network monitoring — combined with hardware-bound authentication that makes interception effectively impossible.
Epstein was not asking about DragonWave because he had looked it up. He was referencing existing DragonWave infrastructure he already had — at Little St. James, his private island in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
He was asking why the same architecture couldn’t simply be extended to New Mexico. And he was doing it at the moment he was moving his entire center of operations from the island to the ranch, coincident with the Southern District of New York and the Miami Herald both digging into his child sex trafficking operation. Epstein guesses, correctly, that New Mexico would never subject him to such scrutiny.
On March 25, Epstein told Gordon that if technical difficulties arose, they should bring in “the lsj guy” — Hector Cintron, who worked for Choice Communications in the U.S. Virgin Islands at hcintron@choice.vi. Cintron appears directly in the project correspondence that followed. The island infrastructure and the New Mexico infrastructure were being designed and managed as one unified system.
A man who wants high-speed internet for a vacation ranch does not call gigabit bandwidth silly. A man who wants a specific, narrow, encrypted channel for transmitting particular data to a particular destination does.
This was not, as some people have said in comments on the previous two Epstein-Zorro-Radio-Towers stories I’ve done, “rich guy internet.”
Epstein dismissed bandwidth twice because bandwidth was never the point.
Spying was.
The Company That Built It
The company selected to design and build the Zorro Ranch to Sandia Crest system was Future Technologies Venture, LLC, headquartered in Suwanee, Georgia. As with the architects and the builders of the ranch’s main house, they are primarily military industrial contractors, and among their largest clients is the pentagon. As I said before when writing about the architect and builder, I will say again now about Future Technologies Venture, LLC: If Epstein were merely a rich eccentric creep raping kids on video for fun, he would not likely have run the operation through major proxies for the United States government.
The lead contact at Future Technologies Venture was Chris Cappiello, then Director of Business Development, now Chief Revenue Officer. Between April and May of 2016, Cappiello personally ran the link budget calculations, verified the Sandia Crest tower coordinates, designed the 11GHz HAAM system, and coordinated with Hector Cintron at Little St. James and with Richard Kahn throughout the buildout. His brother Peter Cappiello is CEO, based in the New York City metropolitan area.
The April 15, 2016 engineering calculation preserved in the DOJ archive is precise: Sandia Crest tower to ZDC Main tower, 26.8 miles, 99.997% reliability at 227 Mbps. ZDC Main tower to Main Residence, 2.17 miles, 99.999% reliability at 297 Mbps. Cappiello also flagged a direct option: Sandia Crest tower to Main Residence, bypassing the intermediate tower entirely, at 27.53 miles. Epstein chose the direct link.
Future Technologies’ connection to the Epstein operation predated Zorro Ranch. Between 2009 and 2010, the company had built DragonWave microwave backhaul infrastructure across the U.S. Virgin Islands for Choice Communications — Hector Cintron’s employer. When Zorro Ranch needed the same architecture, both Cintron and Future Technologies were the natural call. This was not a new vendor relationship. It was an existing network being extended.
The company describes itself as a specialist in “mission-critical connectivity infrastructure” for “extremely remote outdoor sites” and government environments. “Critical Connectivity. Built Right.” reads the banner on their LinkedIn page. In December 2025, Future Technologies announced it had been selected for the Missile Defense Agency’s SHIELD IDIQ contract — the Scalable Homeland Innovative Enterprise Layered Defense program, a multiple-award vehicle with a $151 billion ceiling covering next-generation missile defense systems under the Golden Dome initiative. Chris Cappiello, the man who designed Epstein’s encrypted link to Sandia Crest, now oversees Future Technologies’ Federal sales segment.
The Signal Mirror
On May 21, 2016, Future Technologies conducted a physical site visit at Zorro Ranch. The findings were forwarded to Richard Kahn, who relayed them to Epstein on May 23.
Line of sight from Sandia Crest to the main house had been confirmed by flashing a signal mirror toward the peak. Conditions were too hazy for any other method.
The dish on the Sandia tower was to be placed at 72 feet. The main house dish was to be set at approximately 30 feet — requiring either a new pole or an extension of the existing one. The report flagged that at 30 feet, the pole “will extend past the apex of the mechanical building roof and will be visible from the back parking area.” This, the report stated, “will need to be brought to Jeffrey’s attention.”
Epstein was personally managing the visual concealment of a satellite dish installation at his New Mexico ranch. Future Technologies was instructed to contact Sierra Nevada Property Management directly to coordinate installation on the Sandia Crest tower — the tower controlled by Dennis Vanderhoof, whose FCC licenses THE PUGILIST has previously reported.
To Orbit
Those licenses matter because of what they authorized.
TeleBEEPER of New Mexico, Inc., headquartered at 4545 McLeod NE in Albuquerque, held satellite earth station license E940533 with direct-to-orbit uplink capability. In November 2011, TeleBEEPER filed with the FCC’s International Bureau — file number SES-STA-20111130-01406 — for Special Temporary Authority to extend that license pending permanent authority. The FCC granted the extension on December 6, 2011. The uplink capability was being actively maintained and renewed approximately four years before the Zorro Ranch buildout began.
The system build this creates is not a ranch internet connection. Data transmitted from the Zorro Ranch main house travels 27.53 miles by encrypted military-grade microwave to the Sandia Crest tower. From there it reaches Vanderhoof’s satellite earth station. From there it goes to orbit. From orbit it can reach anywhere on the planet, untraceable to Zorro Ranch.
William, the local rancher who wrote the original memo, described Sandia Crest as yielding “30% of the bandwidth thru.” That was precisely the point. Epstein was not moving large files. He was not streaming video. He was transmitting something specific, something narrow, something that required hardware-level encryption below the IP stack and a pathway to orbit. He called gigabit bandwidth silly because he didn’t need gigabit bandwidth. He needed something that couldn’t be found.
The Men Who Built Him
William, the Stanley rancher who wrote the technical memo, is Bill Patterson. His phone number — 505-832-6236 — appears in both the Patterson Ranch Airport FAA registry and the business listing for Komtek Communications, located at 3762 NM-41 in Stanley, New Mexico. Komtek Communications was incorporated in New Mexico in 1977, revived in 1993 — the year Epstein purchased Zorro Ranch — and permanently shuttered in 2001, when Epstein’s legal exposure began. Patterson Ranch Airport was permanently closed with the FAA in September 2008, the same year Epstein’s federal prosecution concluded. Survivors of Epstein’s child sex trafficking ring have reported being flown into a nearby neighboring ranch. Epstein’s Zorro Ranch had a runway, but it was grass. Patterson’s runway was paved, and flight records over the years show the most traffick coming and going from White Sands Missile Range, where the first atomic bomb was detonated and where the United States military has continuously tested weapons ever since.
The name Komtek bears a striking resemblance to Commtouch, the Israeli email infrastructure company co-founded by Isabel Maxwell — daughter of Robert Maxwell, sister of Ghislaine — a company with documented ties to Israeli Unit 8200 intelligence alumni. Whether that naming parallel is coincidence, homage, or signal is a question this reporter cannot yet answer.
What is not in question is that Bill Patterson, operator of a communications company whose corporate timeline mirrors Epstein’s New Mexico presence precisely, was the man who laid out the three options and watched Epstein choose the covert one. Also noteworthy, a small dirt road near Zorro Ranch is named Komradt.
The only things that show up today when you search for Zorro Ranch on Google Maps are these — “Young Place” on the San Cristobal Ranch, today owned by the heirs of OSS officer and Teledyne founder Henry Singleton; “Hidden Art,” a public art piece hidden in an abandoned gas station in the middle of nowhere by artist Robert Harkness, who died shortly after making it; “Patterson Ranch Airport” on William “Bill” Patterson’s Ranch; and his company, “Komtek Communications” — which means someone secretly geotagged them as a breadcrumb trail. (Image below. I had to add the Zorro Ranch location myself.)
The Singleton Ranch (San Cristobal Ranch) was Plan A. Henry Singleton, who died in 1999, founded Teledyne — one of the most significant defense electronics conglomerates in American history, whose subsidiaries included the largest producer of military reconnaissance drones, missile guidance systems, and classified NASA and Defense Department engineering programs.
He built his ranching empire in the Galisteo Basin beginning in the 1970s. He and his son Will appears in Epstein’s black book. Epstein had the modem number for Singelton’s San Cristobal Ranch in the book, too. Singleton’s ranch manager Vito was in active negotiation to provide Epstein with access to the ideal communications relay point. Singleton served in the Office of Strategic Services — the OSS, predecessor to the CIA — in Europe in 1944 and 1945.
Donald Barr also served in the OSS, at headquarters in Washington, D.C., during the same final year of the war. After the war, Barr became headmaster of the Dalton School in New York. In 1973 — the same year he published Space Relations, a science fiction novel about oligarchs who traffic children on a distant planet — he hired a young Jeffrey Epstein, who had no college degree, to teach mathematics. Investigative reporter Kait Justice has reported that Barr likely identified and began cultivating Epstein for intelligence recruitment years earlier, possibly when Epstein was as young as ten years old. Donald Barr is the father of William Barr, who served as Attorney General of the United States during Epstein’s 2019 arrest, incarceration, and death in federal custody.
Two OSS veterans. One recruited Epstein as a child and installed him in elite institutions. The other owned the ranch next door and employed the man whose fiber site was Epstein’s first choice for his covert communications relay.
Neither connection has been seriously investigated by any official body.
I am guessing none ever will, because at the bottom of it is the entire reason the full Epstein files have never been released.
What This Is
The standard framing of Jeffrey Epstein as a Mossad asset is well-supported. Robert Maxwell, Ghislaine’s father, sold Israeli-backdoored PROMIS software to Sandia National Laboratories in 1985. His eldest daughter, Christine Maxwell, built the FBI’s post-9/11 counterterrorism data warehouse through her company Chiliad. Isabel Maxwell, Christine’s twin sister, co-founded Commtouch with Israeli Unit 8200 alumni. Ghislaine ran the human intelligence operation. The Israeli intelligence network around both Maxwell and Epstein is documented and substantial.
But the intelligence infrastructure supporting Epstein (and Maxwell) at Zorro Ranch points somewhere else, or somewhere additional. It points the United States military intelligence, plain and simple. The contractor who built his encrypted link to orbit is American, headquartered in Georgia, and now holds a Missile Defense Agency contract.
The satellite uplink was authorized by an American FCC license. The project was managed out of a New York office. The man who recruited Epstein as a child served in the American OSS, and his own son was in charge of the federal justice department when Epstein died (or didn’t?) in its custody. The man whose ranch provided the ideal relay point was OSS, built American missile guidance systems and military drones. And just up the road, another former OSS guy, Karl Ingwer, sold his New Mexico ranch to the strangest duo of all time: Donald Rumsfeld and Dan Rather.
Intelligence operations of this type — long-running, multigenerational, protected across multiple administrations by the children of the men who built them — do not belong to one agency or one country. They belong to the network.
The network has Israeli components and American components and private-sector components, all of them running simultaneously, all of them providing institutional protection to each other because exposure of any one thread risks unraveling the rest. And in its middle and later years, the same network had Soviet/Russian components.
Jeffrey Epstein was not a financier who stumbled into intelligence work. He was an asset identified in childhood by an OSS veteran, cultivated through elite institutional access, funded through the Mega Group (private capital in the United States in support of Israel), equipped with Israeli surveillance infrastructure, given American defense-contractor communications architecture, embedded between a CIA-lineage defense titan’s ranch on a ranch sold to him by the then sitting governor of New Mexico, and protected unto death by the son of the man who first found him.
The files were always public. The documents were always there. The story was always visible to anyone who looked.
But those who would cover up the most damning truth have been banking on Americans focusing only on the horrific stories of the abuse that happened under Epstein’s watch. They’ve counted on Americans blaming only two people, two individuals — Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell — and leaving it at that. The powers that be have enacted a massive narrative control project, using their own assets and helpers in the media and government, to convince us all that there’s nothing to see here expect a couple of rich, depraved individuals and their handful of similar friends, who hurt kids and now must pay.
They have kept the network and who it served completely out of the story. And for the most part, they’ve been successful.
Until now.
Please note: The FCC licenses for the industrial/military grade microwave radio network Epstein built are still active, and the system is still up and running under the ranch’s new ownership.
The owners are Mary Catherine and Donald Huffines. Donald Huffines is currently running to be state comptroller of Texas. He is endorsed by Donald Trump. Mary Catherine and Donald Huffines secretly met with top Russian official in 2018, to help Rand Paul hand-deliver a letter to Vladimir Putin from Trump, and to negotiate for the release from US custody of Maria Butina, a Russian spy. If Donald Huffines wins the comptroller’s race, he will be in control of the 8th-largest economy in the world.
Texas’ economy is larger than Russia’s. And just a few steps from the entrance to “San Rafael” Ranch (formerly Zorro Ranch) in New Mexico, “Komradt” road leads to the ranch still owned by the family of Bruce King, the governor who sold Zorro to Epstein.
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Source documents: DOJ Epstein file archive, EFTA00831005-6, EFTA00830845-8, EFTA00702637-644, EFTA_R1_00025477-25482. FCC International Bureau filing SES-STA-20111130-01406. GlobeNewswire, Future Technologies Venture LLC, December 23, 2025. Kait Justice, investigative reporting on Donald Barr and Epstein recruitment.