Beginning in late 2023, a series of startling and unsettling allegations against Sean Combs –– a record executive and rapper known over the years by stage names like “Puff Daddy,” “P. Diddy” and presently “Diddy” –– have emerged. As the allegations and lawsuits facing Combs have snowballed, so, too, has public interest in the case. The sheer amount of accusations suggests that Combs, in addition to being very sexually and physically violent, filmed many assault encounters and orgies that occurred at his now notorious “Freak Off” parties, sometimes with hidden or security cameras. He also now stands accused of “operating an empire of sexual crimes,” with federal agents having alleged that several of Combs’ victims were of “barely legal” or “barely illegal” age at the time of their abuse. Combs’ apparent documentation of these events strongly suggests that he was interested in keeping these records for more than his perverse enjoyment, as either a form of a protection or as a means to control those who appeared in these films, i.e. blackmail.

As a result, speculation has grown about who is allegedly on the “list” of people filmed by Combs in this way, prompting comparisons to the alleged “list” of sex trafficker, pedophile and intelligence asset Jeffrey Epstein. The comparisons between Epstein and Combs have only grown, with even the homeland security agents who raided Combs’ Miami home suggesting that Combs was “as bad as Epstein.”

However, as has long been a theme of Unlimited Hangout’s Epstein-related reporting, including the book One Nation Under Blackmail, the Jeffrey Epstein case has been poorly explored by the federal government, mainstream media outlets, and even many independent media outlets. A deeper examination of the Epstein case makes it clear that Epstein was not the sole mastermind or sole beneficiary of the sex trafficking and blackmail operation in which he engaged. Instead, Epstein served as an operator for a larger, monied network of oligarchs with extensive organized crime connections in addition to significant affiliations with intelligence agencies. He was also more than a sex trafficker for this group, having aided this network extensively in arms trafficking, money laundering and other crimes (many financial) that fall outside of the focus on his sex-related offenses.

It should come as no surprise upon closer examination of Sean Combs that, like Epstein, he was operating on behalf of a larger network that he did not ultimately control. Instead, it arguably controlled him. As this three-part series from Unlimited Hangout will endeavor to show, Combs was acting on behalf of an oligarch network that directly overlaps with that of Epstein. However, Combs used to influence a different industry and a different community for the benefit of these intelligence and organized crime-connected oligarchs. 

In Part I of this series, we will examine the often overlooked early years of Combs and his entrance into the music industry. While Combs’ own rise (from birth to the founding of Bad Boy Records in 1993) is certainly chronicled, a major focus of this piece is on the mentors and figures who facilitated his rise into the upper echelons of hip hop celebrity, especially Andre Harrell and Clive Davis, as well as other figures who had a significant influence on Combs’ early career into the music industry, like Russell Simmons. Not only did these figures bring Combs into the music industry, they also stand accused of initiating Combs into the types of activities he is now in prison for, awaiting trial. 

Also explored in this piece are the corporations behind the success of Combs’ mentors and later Combs himself, namely the Music Corporation of America (MCA) and Arista Records. When taken together with other claims from the period, namely about efforts to manipulate hip hop for the benefit of the private prison industry in the early to mid-1990s, it appears that this network’s interest in Combs, as well as his mentors, was part of something much larger that sought to target not just the hip hop industry itself, but the African-American community at large.

Subsequent installments of this series will examine Combs’ activities –– in music, in retail and beyond –– and how the same network detailed in Part I also enabled those activities, which notably parallel Combs’ deeper descent into acts of sexual violence and abuse. Another installment will examine how one close associate of Combs also connects very directly with the sex trafficking activities of Jeffrey Epstein, indicating that the overlap between the two cases is more significant than previous reporting and the current cases against Combs have suggested.

Sean Combs was born in Harlem, NY on November 4, 1969 to a schoolteacher and ex-model named Janice Combs (née Smalls) and Melvin Earl Combs, an Air Force serviceman and sometimes associate of American Gangster heroin kingpin Frank Lucas. Melvin Combs helped make ends meet by running a number of legal and less-than-legal operations; including a cab and limousine chauffeuring company, multiple bars Combs owned, and a portion of Harlem drug traffic.ⁱ A toddler-aged Combs tagged along with Melvin on visits to Lucas’ home, even playing with his daughter. According to an interview prior to his death, the aged gangster alleged that Combs didn’t share his toys.

A Bad Boy from Birth

“I learned early in life that there’s only two ways out of that [lifestyle]: dead or in jail,” explained Combs in 2013, speaking of his father’s lifestyle. “It made me work even harder… I have his hustler’s mentality.” According to contemporaries, Melvin was an immaculate dresser. While less flashy than Lucas, who once attracted the attention of the feds by sitting ringside at a Muhammad Ali –Joe Frazier bout in a $100,000 fur coat, Melvin still pulled out enough stops to be granted the street nickname “Pretty Melvin.”

When Sean Combs was 3 years old, Melvin Combs was gunned down while sitting in a loitering car near Central Park West. Per Susan Traugh, Melvin was shot in the head, likely at point blank range considering he was seated in his Mercedes-Benz—this manner of a hit is consistent with an enforcer killing.ⁱⁱ According to an interview conducted by author Zack O’Malley-Greenburg, someone in Melvin Combs’ circle believed he was about to inform on a sensitive business deal to law enforcement and that this is what precipitated his murder.ⁱⁱⁱ From this, former associates and law enforcement have speculated that Melvin Combs was a federal informant. If allegations from incarcerated contemporaneous label heads like Suge Knight and former bodyguards are to believed, Sean Combs may have done the same, allegedly informing for the FBI over the course of his career.

A recent article from journalist Legs McNeil lays out the Lucas-Combs criminal enterprise in greater detail than previously reported. It also shows that Melvin Combs, in addition to his dealings with Lucas, had an arguably deeper affiliation with the Gambino crime family near the end of his life. The Gambinos may have even put out his hit. McNeil writes:

Melvin Combs, a small-time hustler, was introduced to selling heroin when Lucas fronted him several kilos from his Golden Triangle connection. He joined the crew of Willie Abraham, the 42-year-old owner of the Harlem Gold Lounge and a convicted heroin dealer who’d already spent five years in jail. Unlike Lucas, Abraham was getting his heroin from the Mafia—specifically, the Gambino crime family.

In 1971, Melvin was arrested for possession of heroin and $45,000 in cash. When Abraham’s heroin‐cutting mill was raided later that year, and Abraham was charged with participating in an extensive conspiracy to distribute $5 million a year in heroin at the wholesale level in Harlem, the Bronx, and Westchester County, Melvin was suspected by Alphonse “Funzi” Sisca, head of the Gambinos’ New Jersey crew, of being a rat.

McNeil also noted that “The New York Times reported that the prosecutor in the Abraham case told the judge that law enforcement believed Melvin’s murder ‘might ultimately be traced to members of the heroin‐distributing conspiracy.’” A newspaper clipping from the Saturday, February 24th, 1973 edition of the New York Daily News reveals that the Gambino-backed Willie Abraham crew had plenty or reason to suspect Combs of informing or at least blamed him for the arrests. The article notes that their relationship to Combs appears to have led directly to Abraham and his collaborators’ convictionson conspiracy charges, including Gambino man Alphonso Sisca of New Jersey:

Willie Abraham […] was found guilty in Manhattan Federal Court yesterday of being a kingpin narcotics wholesaler whose ring flooded the metropolitan area with more than 1,000 pounds of drugs in 2 1/2 years.

A task force of federal, state and local cops smashed the ring in a series of raids in December 1971 as the result of information obtained through the court approved wiretaps on another big time narcotics dealer’s phone. The dealer, Melvin Combs, 31, of 1853 Central Ave., Yonkers, was found shot to death in January 1972 on Manhattan’s West Side.

This evidence of a reported “wiretap” supports the claim that Abraham and his Gambino Family backers had Combs murdered because they blamed him for the arrests, regardless of whether Combs had actually an informant. Throughout this article, connections to the Gambino crime family, as well as the Genovese crime family, are a recurring theme.

In the earliest years of his life, Sean Combs lived in Esplanade Gardens. His mother Janice recognized the performative, attention-hungry character her son possessed early on. This led to Combs’ first advertising gig at the age of 2, when he starred in a Baskin-Robbins TV commercial. Later, Combs modeled alongside The Wiz actress Stephanie Mills in Essence magazine. Following in his mother’s footsteps, these early modeling jobs presaged Combs’ lifelong relationship with the modeling industry, which in comparable fashion to Jeffrey Epstein, would eventually become the hunting grounds which Combs would scour for victims for his orgiastic sexual blackmail parties and pathological predation.^iv

During his middle school years, Combs’ mother Janice relocated the family to Westchester, a middle-class suburb of Mount Vernon. Combs enrolled in the prestigious Mount Saint Michael Academy (MSMA), a Catholic school located in the Bronx, where his popularity eventually soared due to his exploits on the varsity football team, which won a division title during his time there. Combs’ hopes of receiving a scholarship to play D1 in college came crashing down when he broke his leg during his senior year. Yet, it was already too late for his confidence. He was reportedly given the nickname “Puffy” due to the way he strutted around with his chest puffed out.^v

Throughout his middle and high school years, Combs also exhibited an entrepreneurial streak, reportedly selling T-shirts and ties at Macy’s while working multiple newspaper routes simultaneously. This early relationship with Macy’s prefigures both his later merchandising deals with the department store, which saw his fragrance line Sean John stock the shelves nationwide, and the recent lawsuit filed by a John Doe from Ohio who alleges that Combs “orally raped” him in the stockroom of the flagship Macy’s in New York in 2008. His accuser alleges that Macy’s even endeavored to cover up the crime in order to preserve their lucrative business relationship. While speculative, there is a possibility that this may have even been the same Macy’s that had employed Combs as a minor.

Notably, while Combs attended the all-boys Mount Saint Michael’s Academy, a major sex abuse case involving minor victims that led to the indictments of two faculty members was brewing at the institution. Marist Brother Timothy Brady –– the principal of MSMA for the entirety of Combs’ high school career — was arrested, charged, and sentenced to prison in 1988for the abuse of three minor boys at the Catholic Academy in the Bronx over the course of 1987, Combs’ senior year. Following the ‘86/’87 academic year, Br. Brady was quietly removed from his position and shipped off to a Marist retreat in Arizona. Despite his crimes, Brady was reinstated as a hockey moderator at a separate Marist Brothers institution in the 1990s, once again providing him access to minors, and was listed on the Marist Brothers website until 2010. For some inexplicable reason, the court records pertaining to Brady’s conviction and incarceration remain sealed.

Accusations of sexual impropriety appear to have been a constant in MSMA’s history. In 2011, a former assistant principal received a sweetheart no-jail sentence after pleading guilty to possession of child porn on an electronic device at the school. From 2009 to 2012, a lawsuit filed by Brian Elliott sought monetary damages for the routine abuse and rape he alleges he suffered at the hands of an MSMA employee named Br. Galligan between the ages of 8 and 13 over the years of 1977 through 1983. The case wound its way through various Delaware, New York, and appellate courts. If factual, Elliott’s victimization by Galligan would have ended around the time of Combs’ freshman year in high school, meaning Elliott and Combs were close in age. 

More recently, multiple cases seeking redress of child sexual abuse suffered at the hands of the MSMA faculty have been filed pursuant to New York’s Child Victims Act and the “look-back window” that has enabled past victims previously barred from filing complaints by the statute of limitations to now pursue them. These include a torts CVA complaint filed on behalf of a John Doe suing the Academy & the Marist Brothers of the Schools for having enabled his abuse at the hands of Principal Brady, who allegedly fondled the plaintiff in the nurse’s office in 1985 when Doe was 16. It appears this unnamed potential victim would have been in the same class as Combs. Quoting from the complaint, “Upon information and belief, at all relevant times, Defendants knew that priests and brothers of the Catholic Church and within the Marist Brothers, under their supervision and control, were grooming and sexually molesting children with whom the priests and brothers would have contact in their ministry and pastoral functions.”

Another lawsuit accusing the Marist Brothers of protecting a pedophile faculty member named Brother Lee advanced in the Supreme Court of Bronx County in 2023, surviving multiple motions for dismissal & summary judgment, seemingly indicating that multiple members of the school’s faculty –– including its principal –– were perpetrating sex crimes against minors during Combs’ high school career. And once again, the complainant alleges that he was abused by Brother Lee between the years of 1984 and 1985, when he was 15-16 years of age, conclusively indicating that he also would have been in Combs’ class of 1987. Taking all of this information into account, it appears that sexual abuse was endemic and widespread at MSMA during Combs’ time there. While impossible to confirm, there is a possibility that Combs was groomed or among the victims or else somehow connected to these aforementioned cases. Certainly, those type of experiences early in life are statistically associated with a person offending in similar ways later in life.

Also, as an aside, the FBI and DA’s office appear to have used the fraught climate at MSMA to initiate a COINTELPRO-inspired smear and lawfare campaign against Fr. Bernard Lynch, the first gay married priest and Fordham-trained Irish psychotherapist, who inspired a “witch-hunt” organized by the Vatican, archdiocese, and the FBI in retaliation to his outspoken advocacy for gay rights. More specifically, Lynch had founded Dignity NY, the first gay ministry in New York City in 1982, bringing him to the attention of Mayor Ed Koch, who drafted him onto his AIDS Task Force.^vi

While attending Mount St. Michael’s, a teenage Combs began frequenting several New York nightclubs, which reportedly led to his first encounter with the music industry and famous musicians like Michael Jackson. As detailed in an interview, given in 1994 shortly after launching Bad Boy Records, Combs seemingly claimed he was cast as a background dancer in one of Jackson’s videos as a teen:

“Around the age of 16 or 17, I started dancing, going to the various clubs, and that was during the time when somebody—(if) a big artist like Diana Ross, Fine Young Cannibals, or even Michael Jackson had a video—the directors would come into the clubs and see all the kids that were dancing and pick various dancers to be in the videos. So I got picked to be in some of those videos, and, um, as I was dancing in videos and stuff like that, I would see the behind the scenes. I was about to go to college at Howard University and I didn’t know what I wanted to do. So I saw the people behind the scenes, and I was like, ‘that’s maybe something I wanted to do’, so I started like asking questions and getting information on the music industry…”

Combs’ apparent encounter with Michael Jackson, while still only a teenage dancer on the NY club circuit, presages the significant relationship that later emerged between the music mogul and the King of Pop, which lasted for decades until Jackson’s premature and suspicious death. These interlocks between Combs and Jackson are worth mentioning for a few reasons: both artists have grappled with accusations of sexual abuse; both men have spent years surrounded by Zionist powerbrokers (within and outside of the music industry) who ingratiated themselves into their good graces or insinuated their way into their circles; and both Combs and Jackson cultivated close friendships with billionaire Epstein affiliate and Bill Clinton associate, Ron Burkle. For instance, Burkle, who will be a focus of Part II of this series for his ties to Combs, was close to Jackson and later purchased Jackson’s infamous Neverland Ranch estate for $22 million in 2020. Burkle is also reportedly the godfather to Combs’ children. While developing his ties to both Jackson and Combs, Burkle was a frequent flier on Jeffrey Epstein’s infamous private jet –– the “Lolita Express” –– particularly on flights including former President Bill Clinton, who he employed as an advisor to his firm, the Yucaipa Companies around the same period.

Moving Uptown

Following his graduation from Mount St. Michael Academy, Combs enrolled at the prestigious Howard University in Washington, DC to study business in 1987. He promptly set about further inflating his street cred as he expanded his horizons into a new popularity-maximizing enterprise ––  party planning and promotion. His parties were described by classmates as offering a “once-in-a-lifetime type of vibe” and Combs spared no expense in spreading the word, driving around campus in his convertible to pass out fliers for events. Author Susan Traugh wrote that some of Combs’ collegiate parties attracted thousands of guests.

Comb’s entrance onto the hip hop scene began during his freshman year when Combs scored a side-gig as rapper-beatboxer Doug E. Fresh’s valet, where he “shuttl[ed] Fresh’s clothes to and from the dry cleaner in his Volkswagen Rabbit convertible.”^vii All the while, Combs organized parties in and around the Beltway as well as back home in New York City on the weekends. He was also a background dancer in one of Fresh’s music videos around this time.

While at Howard, the darker, predatory side of Combs’ reputation also began to take shape, with accusations of belligerence, sexual harassment, and domestic violence followed in his wake. Contemporaneous accounts provided by sources to Rolling Stone tell of Combs beating a girlfriend with his belt in full view of the public on the Howard quad. Another time, he tapped on the glass window of an English class in session to try and coax a woman into skipping. On another occasion, he non-consensually caressed a woman’s back and asked her if he could introduce her to “one of his friends.”

By age 20, Combs had begun focusing more of his attention on his nascent internship and career at Uptown Records, a job he had first secured in 1990 via his Mount Vernon neighbor, the rapper Heavy D. Combs’ initiative soon saw him become former Def Jam recordman Andre Harrell’s intern. He commuted from Howard to NYC via Amtrak in the mornings, stowing away in the bathroom to avoid paying fare. He also shadowed party promoter Jessica Rosenblum during the planning stages for Heavy D’s platinum-album celebration. Rosenblum “obliged his requests to take him to all the ‘freaky’ nightspots on the Lower East Side.”^viii Rosenblum takes credit for having introduced Combs to some of the biggest names among NY scenesters and club kids — as well as updating his eyewear fashion. Rosenblum graduated from her hip hop party promoter career to become a NYC interior designer wedded to Steve Young, head of global litigation for one of the Big 4 Accounting firms, Ernst & Young.

In the late 1980s, while still a student at Howard, Combs learned that Uptown Records’ A&R (artists and repertoire) executive had vacated the company. Combs took his boss Andre Harrell out to lunch to press for the job and, after a successful schmooze, soon transformed himself into one of the youngest talent scouts in the industry.^ix Combs later told Rolling Stone that, after joining Uptown, “Andre became like my big brother. He bought a mansion, gave me a room [. . .] Not a mansion, a big house. It was a mansion to me, though, and he had gave [sic] me a room in the house.”

Uptown’s Secret to Success: Andre Harrell & MCA 

Prior to his mentorship of Sean Combs, Uptown’s Andre Harrell first broke into the nascent hip hop industry by way of his rap duo Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, which he and a friend had formed in high school. Harrell withdrew from Lehman College in 1983 to focus on his career as an account executive selling airtime for New York all-news AM station WINS. WINS was previously owned by radio pioneer J. Elroy McCaw, an ex-OSS agent and member of the Advisory Council to the US National Security Council.^x McCaw hired trailblazing disc jockey Allan Freed to man the mic at the station, a deal that was brokered by record executive Morris Levy.^xi 

Per Potash, a US Assistant Attorney later claimed that Levy’s jazz label Roulette Records, boosted by his relationship with WINS’ Freed ––  the most popular DJ in the country in the 1950s and 1960s –– was a “way station for heroin trafficking.” Levy and Roulette were also linked to organized crime, specifically the Genovese crime family. Levy was notably the main financier behind the first hip hop record label, Sugar Hill. The zenith of Freed’s celebrity was exemplified by Paramount Pictures hiring him at a rate of $29,000 per day to make a teen movie in 1957. Shortly thereafter, Freed was targeted by a smear campaign, resulting in him being unceremoniously and inexplicably fired by McCaw in 1958. Freed was singled out by Orrin Hatch’s Congressional committee during the first “payola” scandal involving the bribing of radio stations in return for singles plays. As a result, Freed became the face of the scandal, his career in shambles. As Potash writes regarding Freed’s downfall, “Morris Levy, the source of much of the payola bribe money, was never called to testify.”^xii 

Months after joining WINS, Harrell’s job prospects experienced a dramatic upswing when he met Russell Simmons, co-founder of the Def Jam record label, who would later become very close to Sean Combs. Simmons soon offered Harrell a job with Def Jam. Within two short years (a rapid ascent mirroring Combs’ own), Harrell worked his way up to VP and general manager of the label. Def Jam’s early success was due in part to its 1984 distribution deal with CBS and its subsidiary Columbia Records. At the time, the label was run by Walter Yetnikoff, a close associate and friend of Clive Davis –– the man who would later become Sean Combs’ second mentor after Harrell that is a later focus of this piece. Appointed by Paley, Yetnikoff is heavily implicated in the Payola scandals of the 1980s that involved the “independent promotion” syndicate known as The Network, for which CBS Records was one of the biggest clients.^xiii Yetnikoff went to some ends to protect the established payola system, firing his deputy president Dick Asher in 1983 and, per UPI, even quashing an investigation by the Recording Industry Association of America. By 1986, CBS Records had come under the control of Laurence Tisch, the billionaire head of Loews Corporation and a founding member of the Leslie Wexner and Charles Bronfman-brokered “Mega Group.”

Harrell’s success in management, contrary to music-making, seemed to have clarified things for Harrell, as his short-lived stint as a Profile Records artist came to a close when his high school rap duo with Alonzo Brown split up in 1986. That same year, Harrell struck out on his own to create Uptown.

However, before leaving Def Jam, Harrell was responsible for Def Jam’s hiring of Israeli-American Lyor “Little Lansky” Cohen, who would later force out Def Jam co-founder Rick Rubin in order to co-run the label with Simmons. Years later, upon leaving Def Jam, Cohen would team up with the family who had taken control of Def Jam in the 1990s, the Bronfmans, to become the top executive at Warner Music, an event that will be revisited in Part II of this series.

Not unlike Def Jam, Uptown’s early success (and the furtherance of Harrell’s career in the industry) was due to its distribution deal with a major entertainment conglomerate. In Uptown’s case, the company in question was the Music Corporation of American (MCA), an entertainment giant that dominated the American music and movie industry for many decades. Uptown’s early distribution deal with MCA began in 1987 and soon expanded into a formal partnership with the company a year later in 1988. Their ties grew even deeper in 1992, when MCA offered Uptown a $50 million deal whereby Uptown expanded into film and television.

In a Vanity Fair obituary for Andre Harrell, screenwriter and journalist Barry Michael Cooper describes an anecdote involving Harrell and a bust-up at the MCA Records Conference in Midtown Manhattan that demonstrates how Harrell employed street enforcers and drug dealers at Uptown, and that they even procured him a gun for protection: 

There was a rumor going around the streets of New York that Teddy’s manager, former drug dealer and karate enthusiast Gene Griffin, had smacked Andre in the conference of MCA Records in Midtown Manhattan. Journalist and author Nelson George, gave me Andre’s telephone number, so I could confirm the story. I called Andre and identified myself, and asked him about the confrontation with Griffin. I also asked him about the story of two of his Uptown Record executives—Jimmy “Luv” Jenkins and George Harrell (no relation), two of the most respected street dudes from the Highbridge neighborhood of the Bronx, and 116th Street in Harlem, respectively—giving him a .45 automatic to keep for protection. Andre tried to place the gun in the back of his waistband. However, the .45 slipped through and down his pants, and landed on the floor of the elevator. Andre, Jimmy, and George jumped back, but the gun didn’t discharge. Andre didn’t respond for almost a minute, and then said to me, “Who are you supposed to be? Ed Bradley? Things happen.” We cracked up laughing, and became fast friends after that.

In addition to MCA being critical to Harrell’s career and MCA’s success, Uptown’s relationship with MCA also appears to align with one of Combs’ earliest known sex crimes. For instance, one of the earliest allegations against Combs asserts that Combs sexually assaulted a victim after an MCA event in New York in 1990 or 1991, a time when Combs was still an Uptown employee.

As Strictly Business scriptwriter Nelson George intimated in a Substack post eulogizing his friend Andre Harrell, Harrell was a known “party animal” who frequently threw house parties in the “work space/social club/temporary housing” that served as the nascent Uptown Records’ offices. In fact, one of these parties in 1990 served as the source of inspiration for Strictly Business, the film that George co-wrote with Pam Gibson and which Andre Harrell executive produced for Island World Pictures (a company then affiliated with Polygram, which took a significant stake in Def Jam in 1992). It was Harrell’s role in the film that reportedly led MCA to enter into its $50 million multimedia deal with Uptown 1992 that saw Harrell’s company expand into film. Strictly Business concerns a young mail room clerk setting up a black middle manager at a real estate firm with a club chick played by the emerging starlet Halle Berry. Bobby the mail clerk is a party boy with aspirations of graduating from the trainee broker program, and so he agrees to help Waymon navigate seducing the attractive woman in return for his higher-up’s sponsorship of his candidacy. While the plot may seem like normal rom-com fare and relatively benign, when viewed within the context of the kinds of sexual quid pro quos that occur within the music industry and Harrell’s close ties to figures like Combs, Simmons, and their broader social networks, it starts to take on a distinctly different slant. Speaking of sexual quid pro quos in the music industry and questionable label romances, Andre Harrell left an indelible influence on Combs’ love life. He hired Uptown R&B singer Al B. Sure’s model girlfriend Kim Porter to work as a receptionist at the label. Combs’ was immediately smitten with her, loving what he couldn’t have. They would go on to have an on-and-off again relationship spanning the years from 1994 to 2018, the time of her mysterious death after contracting a virulent case of lobar pneumonia. We will return to Porter and Combs’ ties to the modeling industry in Part III of this series.

Andre Harrell was also a consultant for the film New Jack City. New Jack City’s screenwriter Barry Michael Cooper recalls how he and producer George Jackson called his close friend Andre Harrell into Robert De Niro’s Tribeca Productions compound to watch the dailies from New Jack Citya week before production wrapped. Cooper and Jackson wanted to gauge Andre Harrell’s reaction to New Jack City’s narrative and the depictions of street life as it related to the crack epidemic. Per Cooper’s retelling, apparently Harrell raved and affectionately called the film “The Black Godfather.” 

New Jack City’s narrative revolves around a Harlem gang called the Cash Money Brothers who ascend to the top of the drug-dealing food chain in the borough once crack cocaine is introduced to the streets. The film featured gangster rap mainstay Ice-T in a prominent role and christened the careers of Wesley Snipes and Chris Rock, seeing a healthy return of nearly $50 million on a budget of $8 million. 

The controversial film was developed by Warner Brothers, which was then run by Steve Ross. Ross was able to build up his business empire, Kinney National Company (which later became Warner), largely through his association with New York crime lords Manny Kimmel and Abner “Longy” Zwillman. Zwillman was a close associate of Meyer Lansky and Sam Bronfman. Ross, as a Warner executive, later frequented Robert Maxwell’s yacht in the late 1980s, a time when Maxwell was deeply associated with a litany of organized crime figures across the globe. In addition, top Warner executives close to Ross personally were convicted for their roles in a mob-tied racketeering scheme that was also allegedly involved Ross, though he somehow evaded charges. 

Considering his informal consultation on the film and the fact that Harrell had underwritten “new jack swing” — Uptown’s claim to fame and the genre from which the film took its name, which fused streetwise hip hop beats and melodic R&B for the first time — Harrell’s influence over the New Jack City production is clear. This is an important point, as it relates to mob-linked entertainment companies (in this case Warner Brothers) financing the glorification of drug dealing around 1991, a topic that we will return to in much greater detail near the end of this piece.

MCA: Mob Corporation of America

While MCA undoubtedly dominated much of American entertainment for decades, it was also deeply connected to organized crime and political power. In terms of MCA’s political power, this arguably peaked under the Reagan administration, which boasted extremely close ties to the company. MCA even played a role in covert operations that brought together organized crime interests and intelligence agencies during this period.

The most iconic executive in MCA’s history, Lew Wasserman, joined the company in 1936. By that point, Wasserman had established longstanding, close ties to Jewish mobster and Meyer Lansky-associate Moe Dalitz, having allegedly initiated those ties by having first served as the publicist for the Dalitz-controlled Mayfair Casino. However, some sources contend that Wasserman had joined Dalitz’s Mayfield Road Gang before working at the Mayfair. Wasserman later married the daughter of Dalitz’s long-time lawyer Henry Beckerman, who he had first met through his work at the casino.

Wasserman and MCA were also the forces chiefly responsible for the political career of former president Ronald Reagan. Reagan, previously an actor before becoming a politician, had been represented by MCA since 1940. Soon after, he became Wasserman’s first “million dollar client.” Wasserman later engineered Reagan’s campaign to lead the Screen Actors Guild, where Reagan made significant policy changes designed to give MCA an edge over other entertainment companies. Wasserman and other top MCA executives, such as Taft Schreiber and Jules Stein, played an intimate role in Reagan’s successful gubernatorial bid, as well as financing his later campaign for president of the United States. When Reagan was president, his Attorney General Edwin Meese notably quashed what had been an ongoing investigation into MCA’s organized crime ties. Meese later resigned following his involvement in the Bronx-based Wedtech scandal (see end note vi).

That probe was initiated when evidence was found that MCA was engaged in business relations with the Gambino crime family. More specifically, MCA had hired a high-ranking Gambino associate, Salvatore Pisello, as an official representative of the company, even though Pisello had no experience in the music or movie business. At the time Pisello was doing business with MCA, he was also simultaneously a partner of Morris Levy, the Genovese family-linked record executive behind Roulette Records who financed the early hip hop label Sugar Hill. Levy’s connection to Andre Harrell’s early employer WINS was noted earlier in this article.

MCA kept Pisello around even though they lost money on every deal where Pisello had represented them and continued to work with him after his mob ties became publicly known. This was done at the behest of Wasserman, then chairman of the board of MCA, and Sidney Sheinberg, then president of MCA Inc., despite protests from other board members. One of the main MCA executives that had been closely involved with the company’s Pisello dealings, Irving Azoff, was subsequently promoted to become head of MCA’s Music Entertainment Division, the division that –– shortly thereafter –– entered into a distribution agreement with Andre Harrell’s Uptown Records. Azoff has long publicly praised Harrell and later eulogized him at his 2020 funeral. Irving Azoff was also Combs’ neighbor in the exclusive Beverly Hills enclave known as “Billionaires’ Row” up until Combs put the $60 million estate on the market in September 2024, not long after DHS raided the property.

The shuttered federal investigation into MCA also turned up evidence that the company was tied to the Genovese crime family. As noted earlier, the Genovese crime family had also been linked to Morris Levy (Levy was also involved with some of Pisello’s dealings with MCA). In addition, during this same period, the mob-style murder of retail billionaire Leslie Wexner’s then-tax attorney, Arthur Shapiro, led Columbus police investigators to link both Shapiro’s death and Wexner himself to Genovese criminal interests. Shortly after Shapiro’s death, Jeffrey Epstein entered into Wexner’s inner circle, “tasked with getting [Wexner’s] finances in order.”

MCA also has connections to a significant, yet largely forgotten scandal of the 1980s involving many of the same players from the Iran-Contra network, as well as figures like Robert Maxwell. The scandal, known as the PROMIS software scandal, saw operatives tied to US and Israeli intelligence team up with organized crime elements to both steal and then repurpose PROMIS –– a then-revolutionary software product for data management –– as a back-door surveillance system that was marketed to other intelligence agencies, sensitive government research laboratories, and a litany of banks around the globe. One of MCA’s top executives, Eugene Gianquinto, who then led MCA’s Home Entertainment Division, was intimately involved in major aspects of the scandal and its illegal activities. Gianquinto later took credit for the closure of the Department of Justice’s investigation into MCA’s mob ties. 

More specifically, MCA and Gianquinto were connected to the elements of the PROMIS scandal based within the mob-linked joint venture between the Cabazon Indian Reservation and the Wackenhut Corporation to develop weapon systems –– some of which were intended for the CIA-backed Nicaraguan Contras. Journalist Danny Casolaro, who died in connection with his efforts to expose the network ultimately behind the PROMIS scandal, had stated before his death that he was writing about a network he called “the Octopus,” which –– oddly enough –– was a longstanding nickname for MCA.

Between 1994 and 1995, MCA was acquired by the Bronfman family company, Seagrams. A few years later, the Bronfmans also took control of Def Jam. The Bronfmans, like MCA itself, have an extensive history of organized crime connections, which date back to the mob-brokered bootlegging of American Prohibition in the 1920s. Wasserman, a long-time associate of Edgar Bronfman Sr., got a Seagrams board seat out of the deal and became chairman emeritus of the company. Edgar Bronfman Jr. quickly brought on Hollywood powerbroker Michael Ovitz, who later became president of Disney and a Jeffrey Epstein associate. Bronfman Jr. is also listed in Epstein’s black book and his father’s alleged ties to Epstein’s Bear Stearns career likely played a role in Epstein’s ouster from the bank in 1981. Ovitz, at the time he teamed up with Bronfman Jr., was close to Herbert Allen of Allen & Co, a company with ties to organized crime as well as the aforementioned PROMIS scandal. The Bronfmans, particularly Edgar Bronfman Jr., will feature prominently in Part II of this series, with Bronfman negotiating major deals with Combs in the early 2000s.

In 1991, Edgar Jr.’s uncle, Charles Bronfman, teamed up with Leslie Wexner (then already very intimately tied to Epstein) in 1991 to create the “Study Group” or “Mega Group,” an ostensibly philanthropic organization that was chiefly focused on ethno-philanthropy and philanthropy directed at promoting Zionism and financing aspects of the state of Israel. Yet, this particular group brought together some of the most prominent corporate billionaires in the United States, the majority of whom share ties to organized crime. Wexner, as previously mentioned was tied to Genovese crime interests by Columbus police, while the Bronfmans’ own history with organized crime, specifically the Lansky-co-founded National Crime Syndicate, have been extensively documented. Other early members include other organized crime-linked families like the Crowns of Chicago (via Lester Crown) and Laurence Tisch, owner of CBS including its many influential record labels.

The Tisch family, mentioned throughout this article, has ties to organized crime as well. For instance, Laurence Tisch engaged in a suspicious sale of his shares in the struggling Franklin National Bank to Michele Sindona, the Italian mafia-linked businessman who played a major role in Operation Gladio, which brought together the CIA, Italian Mafia and the Vatican. Sindona was also a member of the infamous Italian freemasonic lodge P2. 

In addition, the Tisch family company, Loews, did extensive business with Resorts International. For instance, Loews was the long-time operator of Resorts International-owned hotel Paradise Island Hotel and Villas in the Bahamas. Senate testimony later linked Paradise Island specifically to Meyer Lansky. Resorts International itself deserves an important mention as well, given that it started as Mary Carter Paint Company, a CIA front company founded by the Dulles brothers with extensive ties to Meyer Lansky and his associates, that focused on developing businesses in the Bahamas. After the death of the company’s long-time, mob-linked head James Crosby in 1986, Donald Trump took over the company, only to lose control of it two years later.

Another member of this exclusive club, the “Mega Group,” was director Steven Spielberg. A protégé of Lew Wasserman and Sidney Sheinberg, Spielberg would later play an unusual role in king-making the future film career of director Brett Ratner, an associate of Russell Simmons, Andre Harrell, and Sean Combs who boasts of his childhood ties to Meyer Lansky and to the alleged heir to Lansky’s criminal enterprises, Al Malnik. Ratner’s significance is a focus of a later section of this piece.

A History of Violence

After becoming the A&R man at Harrell’s Uptown, Combs dropped out of Howard to pursue his dream. He then truly made a name for himself with his handling of the nascent careers of newcomers Mary J. Blige and Jodeci. His reworking of their sounds and re-styling of their images led to both debut records going multi-platinum. Combs’ success at Uptown, however, was marred by his role in planning events and parties that turned violent. In addition, more recent accusations of sexual violence, the filming of rapes and other crimes are alleged to have taken place during Combs’ later years at Uptown, making violence a noticeable and early theme in Combs’ early music industry career.

In December 1991, the tragedy of the Community College of New York celebrity basketball game stampede, which Combs had helped plan, forced him and his mother to lay low, leading to them hiding out in a Manhattan hotel to avoid scrutiny amid rumors of possible criminal charges for Combs. The stampede ultimately left 9 dead. Combs had promoted this game as a charity event intended to raise funds for AIDS relief over the radio and through informal channels. The massive crowd, which had gathered to watch Heavy D (one of Uptown’s main artists) and LL Cool J (one of Def Jam’s first big acts) shoot hoops, ended up breaking into a fatal stampede.

A report commissioned by the New York Mayor’s office condemned “almost all of the individuals involved in the event[, who] demonstrated a lack of responsibility” as well as NYPD officers in the scene, who were accused of “serious lapses in judgment.” The report blamed Combs in particular “for allowing two inexperienced subordinates to handle a potentially perilous event and for deceiving ticket buyers about [the event’s] charitable intent.” “City College is something I deal with every day of my life,” Combs later said in 1998. “But the things that I deal with can in no way measure up to the pain that the families deal with. I just pray for the families and pray for the children who lost their lives every day.”

During this period, when Combs was still at Uptown, his penchant for throwing wild, and allegedly violent, parties continued. However, it soon merged with new scenes, particularly those of the music industry and the New York club scene. In his memoir Notorious C.O.P., the former head of the NYPD Rap Intelligence Unit Derrick Parker (a COINTELPRO legacy program that grew directly out of interagency cooperation & the BOSS unit^xiv) writes of his first introduction to Combs:

“Even before the CCNY disaster, well before he was a tabloid fixture, I became aware of Puffy [i.e. Sean Combs]. He was hard to miss as he gallivanted around early ’90s hip-hop clubs and up the ladder of the music industry, right from the bottom rung. At the time, Puffy was little known outside music biz circles: he wasn’t even a performer yet, but a rising A&R executive at Uptown Records who threw crazy, notoriously raucous parties at a midtown club called Red Zone. I knew about Puffy even then because I’d always kept one foot in the music world. I’d been promoting parties and hitting the clubs, as well as performing and recording demos as an R&B singer.”^xv

Red Zone was a short-lived Midtown club ensconced in a former ABC filming studio at 440 West 54th Street. “Club Kids” like Michael Alig, RuPaul, and others in the late 1980s and early 1990s were known to frequent the establishment.

The establishment was first opened by Maurice Brahms, the uncrowned king of the NYC Club Scene, the former restaurateur and owner-operator of infamous, gay-catering nightlife discotheques such as Bonds, Infinity, & Underground. Brahms entered into business with his South African second cousin John Addison, a gay model who once dated Roy Cohn. Cohn was Donald Trump’s mentor who had close ties to the Reagan administration, as well as organized crime and sexual blackmail operations. Cohn was also closely linked to the Genovese and Gambino crime families, and represented their bosses, Tony Salerno and Paul Castellano, respectively. Maurice Brahms and John Addison’s former regulars, Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager (son of Lansky associate Louis “Max the Jew” Schrager, a Brooklyn gambling boss), went on to open a direct competitor — Studio 54. As fate would have it, John Addison had introduced the pair to Cohn, who would later become Studio 54’s lawyer. 

Addison’s introduction of Rubell and Schrager to Cohn set in motion a series of events that later led to Addison’s and Maurice Brahms’ incarceration. Schrager and Rubell approached Cohn for his help in blocking the opening of Brahms’ and Addison’s new club New York, New York in 1977. Cohn, in turn, enlisted then-Assistant District Attorney Peter Sudler and Special Agent Mark Britt from SDNY in a sting operation. Brahms’ and Addison’s establishment was raided under the auspices of perjured search warrants. This then led to raids at their respective homes. Agents reportedly illegally seized a ledger that showed that the pair had been skimming $1.3 million from the Infinity, the club where the cousins first encountered Schrager and Rubell (who subsequently also served prison time for similar crimes related to their nightclubs). 

Brahms and Addison were ultimately pressured into pleading guilty. Brahms was sentenced to 3 years in prison in NYC. Maurice Brahms’ final club was the aforementioned Red Zone, where Combs hosted his Uptown Record-era mixers. Given Combs’ association with these elements of the New York nightclub scene, the more recent revelation of Combs’ later bisexual “Freak Off” orgies becomes far less shocking.

While his “Freak Off” parties are now notorious, the much earlier Combs-hosted events at Red Zone also developed quite a reputation. For instance, Combs promoted a recurrent party at the Red Zone called “Daddy’s House” that explicitly catered to a hip-hop audience. Apparently violence was so endemic and frequent at these events that Combs routinely had to interrupt the DJs to talk people down and, at one point, even wrote to everyone on his mailing list in an attempt to plead with them to leave the quarrels and weapons at home. Per reports, the violence continued unabated and Red Zone ultimately lost its liquor license following a shooting that occurred outside the venue. A fellow hip hop party promoter named Toi Sojer contradicted Combs’ claims that he was not responsible for any of the violence at these events, stating that, “Puffy’s parties are scary. I was always frightened when I went to Red Zone.”

While throwing “scary” parties at venues with suspect owners, Combs is now alleged to have begun engaging in acts of sexual violence while at Uptown. Recent lawsuits additionally assert that other figures (and companies) tied to Uptown were directly related to those crimes.

On November 23, 2023, just before the expiration of the NY State Adult Survivor’s Act (which created a window free of the statute of limitations during so that adult victims could pursue justice against their abusers), attorneys representing Liza Gardner filed a lawsuit alleging that, in 1990/1991, Combs and singer Aaron Hall took turns raping her and a friend after an MCA Records event in their corporate offices. The victim was allegedly only 16 years old at the time, while Combs was still working as a talent director at Uptown. Aaron Hall, like Combs, had significant ties to the Bronx, having grown up there, and was a member of the Uptown Records-signed band Guy with Teddy Riley, thus considered one of the architects of “new jack swing.” Further illustrating the ties between New Jack City and Uptown Records, Guy had a cameo as themselves in the film. 

Per the lawsuit, the alleged assault began one night when Combs and Hall were flirtatious and handsy with the reported victims at an MCA Records event. After the fete, the pair invited the two girls back to Hall’s apartment, where the men plied them with drinks and drugs before taking turns having sex with both friends. The lawsuit also alleges that Combs visited the home in which she and her friend were staying a few days after the incident. The visit allegedly turned violent, with Combs choking out Jane Doe, physically threatening her so as to impress upon her what might happen if she or her friend chose not to stay silent regarding their experience. It’s been speculated following the announcement of Gardner’s complaint that the lyrics to Aaron Hall’s song “Don’t Be Afraid”, released by MCA as one of the singles for the official soundtrack of Juice, may obliquely refer to the rape of Gardner. It was recently reported in the press that Aaron Hall is suddenly missing. According to Gardner and her attorney Tyrone Blackburn, they have exhausted all options as far as reaching Hall at his past known addresses, and will now have to resort to serving him summons via publication in newspapers of note.

New evidence further suggests a culture of crime at Uptown and the label’s apparent enabling of Gardner’s mistreatment. Gardner recently amended her complaint after a sworn statement by the other woman who was reportedly raped at Hall’s New Jersey apartment (also a minor at the time) was entered. The unnamed woman claimed that DeVanté Swing, a member of the Uptown act Jodeci (whose career Combs was then managing) not only voyeuristically looked on as Gardner was raped by Combs, but that the two girls had been lured from North Carolina and were staying with Swing at his residence in NJ, which was allegedly “subsidized” by Uptown Records at the time. Swing was subsequently added to the lawsuit as a co-defendant. Furthermore, Swing’s alleged voyeurism of Gardner’s rape at the hands of Combs is in keeping with an abiding pattern of Combs’ sexual violence. Namely that, time and again, affiliates either watch his crimes, participate in them directly, or else view video footage of them after the fact.  

In Gardner’s filing, both MCA Records and Geffen Records are also named as co-defendants. David Geffen’s label had just been sold to MCA the same year that the assaults allegedly took place. Both Geffen and the now defunct MCA are owned by Universal Music Group (UMG) today, the major label crafted by the Bronfman family that is now overseen by Lucian Grainge, a former MCA and CBS Records executive. Both Lucian Grainge and UMG were initially named as co-defendants in Rodney Jones’ lawsuit against Sean Combs for enabling his sex trafficking activities. 

Also in November 2023, Joi Dickerson-Neal filed the second of three sexual assault lawsuits that targeted Combs in the span of that week. Dickerson-Neal had graced a music video opposite Combs in 1990. Dickerson-Neal has stated that her proximity to Combs in the video spurred a warning from Sister Soulja, who had told the young woman to keep her distance from Combs. Dickerson-Neal claims that she surrendered to Combs’ constant advances in 1991, reluctantly agreeing to a dinner date. She insisted, however, that they meet at Wells Restaurant in Harlem, her place of employment at the time, due to concerns about Combs, hoping that the presence of coworkers would help her feel more secure. 

In the filing, Dickerson-Neal contends that Combs spiked her beverage while she’d excused herself to the restroom. When they left the premises, she claims he forced her to take a hit from a blunt, and that the combined impacts of the drugging left her legs feeling “rubbery.” She alleges that Combs then drove her to a nearby “studio” (most likely affiliated with either Uptown/MCA) and then raped her at a residence in the neighborhood seemingly owned by an acquaintance of both individuals, during which he filmed her violation. Following these traumatic events, Jodeci singer DeVanté Swing allegedly revealed to the victim that Combs had filmed her rape and was playing the footage for everyone at the “studio” like some kind of perverse trophy. If true, this would mean that myriad Uptown employees saw this video. This is one of the earliest allegations the involves Combs and the non-consensual films of sexual assault and rape crimes. It also alludes to the possible collection of sexual blackmail compiled by Combs –– a pattern that would repeat in subsequent allegations in the lead up to his 2024 incarceration.

Clive Davis: The Hidden Power Behind Combs’ Bad Boy Records

Eventually, Andre Harrell felt Combs was getting too “cocky” in his position at Uptown and fired him in 1993. Nevertheless, the two remained friends, with Harrell becoming the godfather to Combs’ son Justin, who was born later that same year. Combs, shortly after leaving Uptown, created Bad Boy Records with Kirk Burrowes in 1993. Combs’ new label quickly entered into a distribution deal with Arista Records worth $15 million. Davis says he met Combs when Combs was 23 years old and that, soon after meeting, Davis “helped introduce [Combs] to the right music executives who could assist him in ushering in ‘the forthcoming Hip Hop revolution.'”

Bad Boy Records’ prolonged success was ensured by its early deal with Arista (which later expanded into a joint venture) as well as the man who would become Combs’ second record mentor in the music industry, Arista’s founder and president Clive Davis. Davis’ Arista was originally founded as part of Columbia Pictures’ music label portfolio. At the time Arista entered into its joint venture with Combs’ Bad Boys, the label had been sold by Columbia Pictures to BMG, a German media company. However, Davis controlled Arista as if it were his own personal fiefdom until 2000, when he left the label due to BMG’s age restriction policy for executives. Bad Boy Records ended what had then become a joint venture with Arista a few years after Davis’ departure. Shortly thereafter, Bad Boy attached itself to Bronfman-controlled interests in the music industry, which will be revisited in Part II of this series.

Clive Davis grew up in Crown Heights, the son of a middle-class Jewish electrician and salesman. He excelled at Erasmus Hall High School and was a member of the New York City branch of the National Honor Society dubbed Arista, which would later serve as inspiration for the name of his label at Columbia Pictures. His early academic success earned Davis a full scholarship to New York University. He then attended Harvard Law School, from which he graduated in 1956.

Two years following his graduation, Davis joined “…the large, white-shoe firm, Rosenman, Colin, Kaye, Petschek, and Freund. Sam Rosenman was counsel to Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman; Ralph Colin’s clients included William Paley and CBS.”^xvi Other notable clients of Rosenman & Colin LLP include two offshore banks owned by Bruce Rappaport that had served as “repositories of illicit funds from several illegal operations,” specifically related to drug trafficking. Rappaport, as noted in One Nation Under Blackmail, boasted close ties to the CIA, particularly via his close friend William Casey, as well as to Israeli intelligence and organized crime. Rappaport was particularly affiliated with organized crime networks that included Semion Mogilevich, an Eastern European mob boss who became a close business associate of Robert Maxwell in the late 1980s.

Clive Davis’ storied career in the music industry began via his earlier career at Rosenman & Colin. While working at the firm (which –– as previously noted –– counted CBS as a client), Davis was hired to become assistant counsel of the CBS subsidiary, Columbia Records. He became the label’s general counsel a year later. Davis had been hired by Harvey Schein, a former colleague of Davis’ at Rosenman & Colin. 

Schien was a protégé of William Paley, the long-time head of CBS and “father of modern broadcasting.” Paley, the son of Ukrainian Jewish immigrants, had worked building up CBS into the main network of radio and main record label in the United States, having a profound effect on mass media and the shaping of Americans’ musical tastes and political perceptions. During World War II, Paley served in the Office of War Information, becoming Chief of Radio of the U.S. military’s Psychological Warfare Division. Paley developed a very close relationship with scions of the Rockefeller dynasty, David and Nelson, as well as others close to the Rockefellers, like former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. David Rockefeller and Kissinger both later eulogized Paley at his funeral in 1990, with Kissinger also serving as the chairman of Paley’s foundation.

In the mid-1980s, Paley personally ensured that Laurence Tisch would take over CBS (including its record labels). As noted earlier in this piece, Tisch, in 1991, served as a founding member of the so-called “Mega Group” alongside Leslie Wexner, Charles and Edgar Bronfman and Lew Wasserman protégé Steven Spielberg, among others.

Clive Davis’ infamous and undeniably “revolutionary” tenure as President of CBS Records (1967-1973) is most aptly characterized by the transition from the jazz, folk, and pop ethos of the 1950s to the industry-wide embrace of rock in the 1970s. Somewhat akin to the careers of Andre Harrell or Combs, he was a relatively young label executive well-placed to take advantage of shifting cultural trends, effectively making his name synonymous with an emergent genre for a time.

In Davis’s self-hagiographizing, he had an epiphany at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival and became determined to pivot to rock music. “I sensed change. I don’t know, even now, how I knew”.^xvii Of course, this was an exaggeration, as rock had already been dominating the singles charts for more than a decade. Davis’ legacy in this period as it relates to rock music was essentially ensured after he poached an assembly of Monterey acts from their minor labels along with those who were still languishing in obscurity.^xviii During his tenure at Columbia Records, Davis managed and/or signed Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, The Electric Flag, Santana, Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel, Chicago, Loggins & Messina, Aerosmith, Earth Wind & Fire, and the Grateful Dead.

While Davis had been successful at CBS, he left the company under a cloud of scandal. Davis became a focus of an investigation led by the US Attorney’s Office in Newark, a probe that would later become known as Project Sound. As part of the investigation, “allegations began to surface in the press that CBS Records had bribed black radio stations and done business with an organized crime figure.” The scandal ultimately led to Clive Davis’ decision to make a deal in 1971 with two record producers tied to Motown Records, Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff.^xix Davis had sought out Gamble and Huff due to a desire to “conquer the R&B charts.” As part of the negotiations, Davis allowed Gamble’s and Huff’s company to promote the music that, per the deal, was produced and distributed by CBS. 

Perhaps unknown to Davis at the time, Gamble’s and Huff’s company and its promotional efforts engaged in the practice of payola, the illegal practice whereby firms pay radio stations to play singles without disclosing that payments were made. CBS was implicated in the arrangement through David Wynshaw, Clive Davis’ closest aide at CBS.^xx Press reports soon stated that CBS music subsidiaries were being investigated for bribing radio stations, not just with money, but also drugs and sex, in order “to increase use of its products on black-oriented radio stations.”

CBS, in connection with the Project Sound probe, uncovered that Davis had left a “trail of phony invoices” totaling at least $94,000 over six years that were meant to cover up Davis’ use of funds for personal parties and renovations to his properties.^xxi Davis was ultimately fired by CBS as a result.

Soon, the CBS “payola” scandal took on a darker hue. In February 1972, a few days after Davis had been fired from CBS, eight people were indicted in Newark on conspiracy and smuggling charges connected to a “multimillion dollar heroin ring operating in Italy, Canada, and the United States.” 

The connective tissue between CBS and this drug bust soon became apparent. A woman, recently fired from CBS for being “doped up” at work, had been indicted after working for a food stand that doubled as a front for the heroin ring in question. Patsy Falcone, aka Pasquale Falconio, an associate of the Genovese crime family, had also been indicted. Investigators found that Falcone also had a tie to CBS by way of his “friendship” with Davis’ protege David Wynshaw as well as via Frank Campana, a former CBS A&R man with whom Falcone had started a management company. Falcone and Campana’s company managed several acts signed to CBS. Investigators later stated that Davis’ name had been mentioned by Falcone in bugged telephone conversations and that evidence found on Falcone had listed Wynshaw as a “source for prostitutes.”

Documents incriminating Wynshaw were reportedly found on Falcone at the time of his arrest. It was later reported that, “with the help of Dave Wynshaw, Falcone bilked CBS Records. The two men set up sham companies in… New Jersey… CBS unwittingly paid more than $75,000 to these nonexistent operations.”^xxii Wynshaw figured prominently into Davis’ downfall as it was Wynshaw who had both helped facilitate the money funneled to Falcone and who had written up false invoices that obscured the payments that Davis had used for personal enrichment. It was also believed that Wynshaw’s role involved laundering money that was used for “off-the-record” items, like procuring drugs and prostitutes for CBS parties, conferences, & artists, leading him to be colloquially known as “Clive’s pimp” at the label.

As a Rolling Stone article from the period speculated based on industry rumors at the time, Davis’ unceremonious firing by CBS over personal enrichment and embezzlement of funds (of $94,000, then deemed paltry by industry insiders) may have been a strategic attempt to get ahead of the larger “Drugola” scandal and the possibility that federal investigators might pursue charges against Davis, his trusted aide Wynshaw, and others at the company. 

Despite the scandal, Davis quickly found his way back into the industry. A little over a year after having been fired from CBS/Columbia, in the summer of 1974, Davis was hired as a consultant for Bell Records, “a barely profitable subsidiary of Columbia Pictures (no corporate relation to CBS).” According to a 1977 New York Times article, “Davis’s consulting took the form of letting go most of [Bell’s] performers and the executives who had signed them, retaining only a handful as the basis for a renamed company, Arista, with himself in the president’s chair.”

Arista’s formation and success relied heavily on Alan Hirschfield, a major entertainment executive who had recently become CEO of Columbia Pictures. Hirschfield was instrumental in bringing Davis on as a consultant for Bell and who supported Davis’ formation of Arista. Davis, as well as, Hirschfield’s family have framed Hirschfield as having essentially co-founded the label with Davis.

Hirschfield had found himself serving in the top post in Columbia Pictures thanks to the same connection that saw him become at top executive at other entertainment conglomerates, like Fox and Warner Brothers. That connection was to Allen & Company, as Hirschfield’s father Norman was a close friend and associate of Charles and Herbert Allen, the founders of the company. Norman Hirschfield also worked for Allen & Co., particularly in its natural gas division and also in scouting other “business opportunities” for the firm. Later, in the 1970s and 1980s, when Allen & Co. took a stake in a major entertainment firm, Columbia included, they ensured their interests were represented through the installation of Norman’s son, Alan Hirschfield, in a top executive post.

Charles and Herbert Allen and their firm Allen & Co. have documented ties to intelligence-linked figures and scandals, as well as organized crime. As noted in One Nation Under Blackmail, the Allen brothers had significant organized crime connections, particularly via companies based in the Bahamas that were run and developed by close associates of Jewish mobster and co-founder of the National Crime Syndicate, Meyer Lansky. In addition, Allen & Co. was a client of the CIA-linked David Baird Foundation and Charles and Allen and David Baird had several dealings with an associate of mob boss Moe Dalitz, Alexander Guterma, who was a key part of the United Dye scandal that had also ensnared figures like Roy Cohn. Allen & Co. also financed Earl Brian’s efforts to buy out Inslaw Inc. as part of the PROMIS scandal (discussed in greater detail shortly) and had other close business ties to Brian, including being significant shareholders in Brian’s company Hadron.

The Allen brothers also had significant ties to Leslie Wexner’s mentors, Max Fisher and Alfred Taubman. Taubman had been close to the Allens since the 1950s. For Fisher, the connection was forged at the time he was heading up United Brands, the CIA-linked company that Fisher took over the same year that its former top executive, Eli Black, suspiciously fell to his death from the 44^th floor of the Pan Am building in Manhattan. Black was the father of Leon Black, the Drexel Burnham Lambert executive who would later found Apollo Global Management and become a very close and now notorious associate of Jeffrey Epstein. While still at United Brands, Fisher joined Taubman and the Allen brothers in a joint venture that culminated in the takeover of the Irvine Ranch in California.

The overlap doesn’t end there. Columbia Pictures’ Alan Hirschfield was a close associate of lawyer Allen Tessler and served alongside Tessler as a top executive at Data Broadcasting Corporation. Tessler was the family lawyer for the organized crime-linked Gouletas family and their real estate empire. Tessler also later joined the board of Leslie Wexner’s The Limited in 1987. Evangeline Gouletas shared an office space with Epstein during this time, which also coincides with the development of the close-knit relationship between Wexner and Epstein. 

Another key client of Tessler’s was the aforementioned Earl Brian, who had close ties to Allen & Co. and was one of the masterminds of the PROMIS scandal that involved MCA, organized crime, US intelligence and Israeli intelligence (with Robert Maxwell facilitating aspects of the scheme on behalf of Israel). Tessler’s law firm, Shea & Gould, also represented organized crime clients like Carmine de Sapio, a close friend of Roy Cohn’s, and also had significant connections to William Casey, Reagan’s CIA director. Tessler, who was chairman of Wexner’s The Limited’s Finance Committee by 1990, came into direct contact with Epstein some time around this period as well. Tessler appears in Epstein’s infamous “black book” with two addresses and four different phone numbers listed. Among the numbers listed is Tessler’s line at Data Broadcasting, where he and Hirschfield worked side-by-side. The company had been acquired by Earl Brian’s firm Infotechnology in 1987.

In other words, Clive Davis’ ascent to become a major music executive was aided largely by figures tied to same clandestine network composed of intelligence-linked and organized crime elements that also forms the basis for the network that would also later figure prominently in the rise of Jeffrey Epstein. This is also evident in Davis’ close friendship with the family of the Mega Group’s Laurence Tisch, particularly his nephew Jonathan who took over the family business Loews Corp in 1989. This connection later led Davis to donate several million to the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU, producing the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music under the Tisch School umbrella. It is also notable that the “drugola” scandal linked to Davis had ties specifically to the Genovese crime family, an organized crime network also linked to MCA, Morris Levy, Roy Cohn and Leslie Wexner, as noted earlier in this piece. 

Mentors in Crime

After the scandal around Combs began to break, Clive Davis, as well as Andre Harrell of Uptown and Russell Simmons of Def Jam/Rush Management, have been accused of propelling Combs into the patterns of criminal behavior for which he is now infamous. For instance, one-time rival (and former friend of Combs) Suge Knight has claimed that Davis, Harrell and Simmons used “alcohol, drugs” – specifically cocaine – to “compromise” Combs’ “manhood.” This is particularly significant in the case of Davis’ ties to the “Drugola” scandal, which involved using sex, drugs and bribes to specifically target “black-oriented radio stations” and music. Claims similar to those made by Knight have since been echoed by Combs’ former bodyguard Gene Deal.

It is worth noting here that Davis’ protégé L.A. Reid, who took over Arista Records from Davis, has also been accused of sexual misconduct and assault. Reid, alongside Combs, were both instrumental in the success of recording artists Justin Bieber and Usher. Knight has argued that Davis, Simmons and Harrell first “compromised” Combs and then Combs went on to use alcohol, drugs, and gay sex to “control” younger artists like Usher and Bieber. Notably, Combs’ entry into the world of Andre Harell, Simmons and, shortly thereafter, Clive Davis, coincides with the development of his obsessive drive to record everything, presumably for blackmail-related purposes. For instance, music video director Cole Bennett asserted that Combs told him that he’d begun recording “footage of everything” in 1992 and even advised Bennett to do the same. 

In addition, Kirk Burrowes, the co-founder of Bad Boy Records with Combs, has claimed that Combs sought to compromise him using this same method. Burrowes has filed a lawsuit against Combs, claiming Combs subjected him to “repeated sexual harassment, physical aggression and forced compliance with degrading sexual acts” throughout the 1990s. Burrowes claims that Combs targeted him with “unwanted sexual advances” including acts of “nudity, sexual overtones, voyeurism and acts of exhibitionism,” some of which allegedly took place during business meetings, and that this was part of a larger “campaign of control.” The outcome of this campaign, per Burrowes, was the use of “physical violence, blackmail, career sabotage and financial extortion” to force Burrowes out of his 25% stake in Bad Boy Records. Though Davis was a key part of the early creation and formation of Bad Boy Records, he is not named in Burrowes’ suit.

However, Combs may have been “controlled” in a similar way by Davis, per some sources. Suge Knight, for instance, has alleged that he was told by the former head of Interscope Records, Jimmy Iovine, that Combs had regularly engaged in sexual acts with Davis, suggesting that his relationship with Davis and Davis’ early, crucial involvement with Bad Boy were built on the back of sexual favors. This is certainly possible given the well-known mechanism within the entertainment industry of sexual favors as a way to secure lucrative roles and deals –– e.g. the Harvey Weinstein scandal. In addition, Davis notably came out publicly as bisexual in a memoir published when he was 80 years old, where he writes that he began to openly engage in sex with the same gender in the 1980s. Combs’ alleged bisexuality has been a major topic of discussion in relation to the scandal leading up to his arrest last year. Knight has also claimed that Russell Simmons and Andre Harrell had also engaged in similar behavior with each other. Notably, the network behind Clive Davis, which overlaps with that behind Epstein, also involved similar “sugar daddy”-style relationships. These include rumors that Epstein and his long-time benefactor Leslie Wexner were intimate, e.g. former State of Ohio Inspector General David Sturtz telling journalist Bob Fitrakis that Epstein was Wexner’s “boyfriend.”

The Rat Pack

Given that Russell Simmons is one of the men alleged to have mentored Combs in this type of criminal behavior, it is worth taking a look also at some of the recent allegations that have been made against Simmons and some of his associates, who – like Simmons – also boasted close ties to Combs.

Beginning in 2017, Russell Simmons was hit with a slew of rape and sexual harassment lawsuits and accusations. One of Simmons’ earliest accusers, model Keri Claussen Khalighi, alleged that Simmons raped her in full view of the director Brett Ratner in 1991. Before the 2017 allegations, police had previously probed Simmons and Ratner for claims of jointly engaging in sexual battery back in 2001. Over a dozen women have since accused Simmons of sexual misconduct or crimes, while Ratner himself has been separately accused of similar crimes, including rape, by at least 10 women. Following the barrage of accusations, Simmons has laid low in Bali, Indonesia, embracing life as a “stateless” US citizen in a bid to evade the court’s jurisdiction. As will be explained in greater detail shortly, Ratner fled to Israel but is now planning a comeback, currying favor with the Trump family to that effect.

Ratner is a long-time close associate of Simmons, with some reports calling Ratner a “protégé” of Simmons. Simmons is credited with helping start Ratner’s career, as the two met while Ratner was still in film school (NYU’s Tisch School) and Ratner began filming music videos for Simmons-managed artists like Public Enemy soon after their meeting. Ratner also filmed a music video for Combs’ longtime associate Heavy D, who had first gotten Combs his internship at Uptown, in 1994. Getty images alone hosts hundreds of photographs of Ratner and Simmons partying together over the years. 

Ratner, like Simmons, was also a very close associate of Combs, bringing Combs as his guest to several premieres of his films. Ratner was also a frequent attendee of numerous Combs-hosted parties as well as charity fundraisers. They also arrived together at prominent award shows and Ratner also filmed music videos for Combs, such as his 2001 single “Diddy.” Combs selected Brett Ratner and Ron Burkle, among others, to be his guests of honor when he delivered a commencement address to his alma mater Howard University in 2014.

Ratner’s close association with both Simmons and Combs is notable for a few reasons. First, there is the fact that Ratner, as previously mentioned, was accused by several actresses of sexual misconduct, resulting in him being dropped from his agency and the “canceling” of his Hollywood career. In addition, Ratner took over directing the X-Men series from Bryan Singer, with whom Ratner is reportedly close. Singer has been accused of pedophilia and sordid affiliations with the Digital Entertainment Network (DEN), which was run by pedophile Marc Collins-Rector and also involved child star turned crypto mogul Brock Piece. (For Unlimited Hangout’s past reporting on DEN and Pierce, see here)

Second, there is the man that Ratner considers his father –– Alvin Malnik. The feeling is apparently mutual, with Malnik referring to Ratner as one of his sons. The close-knit tie is telling as Malnik has very significant organized crime ties, particularly to Meyer Lansky. Not only that, but according to a Forbes investigation cited by the LA Times, Malnik “invented the black art of money-laundering, taking mob money and routing it to legitimate ventures.”

Forbes wrote that:

In the 1960s, Miami lawyer Alvin Malnik set up the Bank of Commerce in the Bahamas. Mob money flowed into its secret numbered accounts by the hundreds of millions–[mob financier Meyer] Lansky money, most of it–and then out again into Tibor Rosenbaum’s International Credit Bank of Switzerland before returning to the United States for investment.

For those familiar with One Nation Under Blackmail, both Lansky and Rosenbaum also had significant ties to the Israeli intelligence apparatus, especially Rosenbaum who helped finance keys aspects of Israeli intelligence, including via the means that Malnik reportedly helped to develop. 

In addition, Malnik’s other ties to Lansky were considerable. For instance, Malnik had previously been banned from working in New Jersey casinos due to state regulators confirming his ties to Lansky and Sam Cohen, another mobster. Malnik had even been named Lansky’s “heir apparent” by Reader’s Digest upon Lansky’s 1983 death, while the Miami News noted that Lansky had wanted Malnik to take over all of his “legitimate enterprises” after this death. That article also cited federal agents that claimed that Malnik also stood to inherit “Lansky’s lucrative gambling, pornography, prostitution, labor racketeering and extortion operations.” Malnik also had a close association with Joel Steinger, a notorious fraud that operated a massive Ponzi scheme targeting the elderly and terminally ill. Steinger, like Malnik, had developed close ties to Lansky personally by the 1970s and married the daughter of a Miami banker alleged to be a close Lansky associate.

In addition, Malnik was involved in strange ways with Michael Jackson in his later years. As noted previously, billionaire Ron Burkle ––- who also cultivated close ties to Bill Clinton and Jeffrey Epstein, along with Combs himself –– had significant connections to Jackson during this same period. The Malnik-Burkle-Jackson connection, as well as Burkle’s significant ties to both Epstein and Combs, will be covered in Part II of this series. 

Malnik’s own “protégé,” his adopted son Brett Ratner, claims to have also fostered a close relationship early on with Meyer Lansky himself. In a 2011 interview, Ratner stated the following:

“I grew up on Miami Beach. I lived on Collins Avenue at the Carriage House on 54th Street. And two doors down was the Imperial House where every day after school I would ride my bike and I would walk down the street with an old man who would walk his dog. We would walk together and everyone at the store would kiss my ass when I was with him. He would take me to this restaurant called the Villa Capri and everybody was always treating me so nice. I didn’t realize it until I was in line at the supermarket with my mom and I opened up Rolling Stone and I saw his picture on the back. It was Meyer Lansky’s obituary. Everybody thought it was weird because he was 80 and I was 12. He was the biggest gangster in the world and he was like my best friend as a kid.” 

While some may discount this claim as fantasy on Ratner’s part, his close ties to Malnik –– Lanksy’s “heir” –– during the same period of his alleged association with Lansky lends the story credence. In addition, it is worth noting that Ratner’s “big break” that allowed him to become a famous director came somewhat unexpectedly in his “mediocre” film school career via Steven Spielberg. As previously noted, Spielberg was a protégé of Wasserman and Schienberg of MCA, a company with significant mob (and intelligence) affiliations, while Wasserman himself was connected to Lansky’s network via his long-time tie to Lansky associate Moe Dalitz. Spielberg is also a reported member of the previously mentioned “Mega Group” that unites Spielberg with organized crime-linked oligarchs like Epstein’s main benefactor Leslie Wexner, among others.

Ratner would later follow the Lansky model of evading charges and scrutiny for illegal activities by immigrating to Israel. After he was accused of extreme sexual misconduct, including alongside Simmons, Ratner fled to Israel. A week before his escape, Ratner had been Benjamin Netanyahu’s special guest, along with former Epstein defense lawyer Alan Dershowitz, at the United Nations. Articles on Ratner’s trip to the UN with Netanyahu noted that Ratner is a former close business associate of Australian media tycoon James Packer, who has been closely linked to Netanyahu. Packer’s business venture with Ratner, RatPac Entertainment was notably partnered for several years with Dune Entertainment, the film business of Trump’s former Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin. Mnuchin left the venture shortly after joining the first Trump administration, which coincided with many of the accusations against Ratner being made public, crippling the firm’s once meteoric rise.

Packer, for his part, was a key part of the corruption trial that continues to dog current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but has taken a backseat following the onset of the Israel-Gaza War in October 2023. Packer’s ties to both Netanyahu as well as former Mossad chief Yossi Cohen were deemed so extensive that they were considered a “national risk” in court testimony. Packer also once threatened to “sic” Mossad operatives on businessmen and was seeking to form a cybersecurity venture with Mossad-linked individuals around the same time he created RatPac with Brett Ratner. In addition, Packer was known to have partied with Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, including on the yacht of Australian trucking magnate Lindsay Fox in 1995 when Epstein and Maxwell were the “guests of honour” on the cruise. Furthermore, Packer has also come under scrutiny for his ties to Stanley Ho, a casino magnate with ties to Chinese organized crime and to the Clinton-era scandal “Chinagate,” which also involved Epstein. As it relates to Epstein, a star in many of Ratner’s films with close social ties to the director, Chris Tucker, would later find himself on infamous Epstein-brokered plane trips alongside Bill Clinton and Kevin Spacey.

The Combs-Simmons-Ratner clique have a history of cultivating ties to Donald Trump. For instance, one image photographed by Getty shows Ratner on stage with Combs at Russell Simmon’s “Art for Life Palm Beach” event honoring Combs in 2005. The event was hosted at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago and attended by the Trumps. The Trumps also attended some premieres of Ratner’s films. Trump became closely associated with Combs beginning in the 1990s. While those ties will be discussed in detail in Part II of this series, it is worth noting that First Lady Melania Trump has teamed up with the self-exiled Ratner, who is now directing a documentary about her life that is due to launch on Amazon Prime later this year. The First Lady is an executive producer of the film, which began production shortly after her husband’s 2024 election win.

In addition, according to New York magazine, Ratner was recently seen visiting Mar-a-Lago along with the aforementioned James Packer, where they were photographed dining with Trump and Elon Musk earlier this year. A month later, it was reported that Packer bought a Trump-owned property neighboring both Mar-a-Lago’s private club and the Trump estate there. The property was previously used by close Trump associates visiting Mar-a-Lago and by the Secret Service during his first presidential term. Ratner has reportedly been involved in “fanning” the closeness between Trump and Packer that resulted in the property sale. Notably, Packer had previously bought a property neighboring another state leader, Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, back in 2016. In addition, Ratner and the Trump family, as well as Russell Simmons, were among the guests invited to the wedding of Al Malnik’s son, Jarod Malnik, in early 2024.

A Conspiracy Hiding in Plain Sight

Ultimately, in tracing the network in which Combs had become deeply enmeshed by the early and mid-1990s, we are left with deep connections to intelligence-linked elements of organized crime. This same network of organized criminals also played a key part in enabling the activities of sex criminal and intelligence asset Jeffrey Epstein, from at least the 1970s onward, as detailed in the book One Nation Under Blackmail. 

With such connections established, the question then becomes –– what did this group seek in someone like Sean Combs, and more broadly, in exerting its influence over the entertainment industry and specifically African-American music? 

While speculative, it appears that various connections leading back to MCA and its influence can help us arrive at one unsettling possibility. During this period, not only was MCA a dominant force in entertainment (and early hip-hop specifically), but Laurence Tisch –– through his 1985 takeover of CBS –– controlled another key branch of the music industry through 1995. With the Bronfmans taking over MCA, and later Def Jam and Warner Music (as will be noted in Part II), the influence of the so-called “Mega Group” billionaires over the music industry became extremely significant during the 1990s. With Combs teaming up with Clive Davis, with significant ties to this same network, to form his own label Bad Boy Records in 1995, this tiny group of billionaires had the ability to shape hip-hop, the cultural engine of the African-American community, in major ways.

The same year that the Bronfman and Tisch clans formally joined forces with Leslie Wexner and others like MCA-linked Steven Spielberg via the “Mega Group,” American record labels had allegedly begun to conspire to promote crime in hip-hop lyrics with the ostensible goal of facilitating the filling of private prisons, as those that ran the record labels were allegedly deeply connected to private prison firms. An account from an anonymous industry insider details how, in 1991, he was invited to a clandestine meeting where he was forced to sign a non-disclosure agreement. He recounted the events of that meeting as follows: 

Quickly after the meeting began, one of my industry colleagues (who shall remain nameless like everyone else) thanked us for attending. He then gave the floor to a man who only introduced himself by his first name and gave no further details about his personal background. I think he was the owner of the residence but it was never confirmed. He briefly praised all of us for the success we had achieved in our industry and congratulated us for being selected as part of this small group of “decision-makers”. At this point, I begin to feel slightly uncomfortable at the strangeness of this gathering.

The subject quickly changed as the speaker went on to tell us that the respective companies we represented had invested in a very profitable industry which could become even more rewarding with our active involvement. He explained that the companies we work for had invested millions into the building of privately owned prisons and that our positions of influence in the music industry would actually impact the profitability of these investments. I remember many of us in the group immediately looking at each other in confusion. At the time, I didn’t know what a private prison was but I wasn’t the only one. Sure enough, someone asked what these prisons were and what any of this had to do with us. We were told that these prisons were built by privately-owned companies that received funding from the government based on the number of inmates. The more inmates, the more money the government would pay these prisons. It was also made clear to us that since these prisons are privately owned, as they become publicly traded, we’d be able to buy shares.

Most of us were taken back by this. Again, a couple of people asked what this had to do with us. At this point, my industry colleague who had first opened the meeting took the floor again and answered our questions. He told us that since our employers had become silent investors in this prison business, it was now in their interest to make sure that these prisons remained filled. Our job would be to help make this happen by marketing music that promotes criminal behavior, rap being the music of choice. He assured us that this would be a great situation for us because rap music was becoming an increasingly profitable market for our companies, and as employees, we’d also be able to buy personal stocks in these prisons. Immediately, silence came over the room. You could have heard a pin drop.

While efforts have been made over the years to dismiss this account as fantasy and/or conspiracy (despite it being deemed credible and promoted by prominent figures in hip-hop), other accounts from this period suggests that it should not be so easily discounted. For instance, Portia Maultsby, Professor Emerita of Folklore and Ethnomusicology at Indiana University, has been quoted as stating that:

In the early 1990s, a former graduate student, then keyboardist for Stevie Wonder, called me upset that some record labels were actively recruiting Black men with criminal records to record rap. He believed that they were encouraging criminal acts among this group.

In addition, prominent rappers have claimed, from the 1990s onward, that the music industry is financially entangled with the private prison industry and encourages “criminal behavior” through hip-hop due to those entanglements.

While some outlets have noted that private prison companies and record labels share major index managers like Vanguard among their top shareholders, the ties between the two industries are significantly deeper and directly involve organizations mentioned throughout this article.

Clinton, not unlike Ronald Reagan, was very “under the thumb” of MCA’s Lew Wasserman. Wasserman began backing Clinton’s presidential campaigns in 1992, but had first met Clinton back when he was governor of Arkansas, where his administration notoriously enabled illicit Iran-Contra-linked activities. Lew Wasserman would later broker the close ties between Clinton and his grandson, Casey Wasserman (who like Clinton, was an Epstein associate). This led to the Wasserman Foundation becoming one of the main donors to the controversial Clinton Foundation. Wasserman, as well as his protégé Steven Spielberg, were major donors to Clinton’s 1996 re-election campaign, so much so that it earned them overnight stays in the White House’s Lincoln bedroom. In addition, other Mega Group figures like Edgar Bronfman were also major donors to Clinton. Bronfman and Wasserman both received the Presidential Medal of Freedom during Clinton’s presidencies. Notably, companies tied to Bronfman and Wasserman, i.e. MCA/Universal, played a major role in lobbying for the passage of the 1996 Telecommunications Act, which Clinton signed into law and which allowed extreme industry consolidation and the formation of de facto monopolies in entertainment and beyond.

A few years earlier, in 1994, Bill Clinton had signed a controversial crime bill which enacted several “funding incentives blamed for driving mass incarceration.” Though mass incarceration existed before the 1994 crime bill (largely beginning in the administration of the MCA-controlled Ronald Reagan), that bill is blamed with exacerbating the crisis, which has disproportionately impacted the African-American community and benefited two companies in particular. Those two companies were the biggest private prison companies in the United States at the time, and they still are today. One was the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), now known as CoreCivic, while the other was Geo Group, formerly Wackenhut Corrections Corporation (WCC). Notably, WCC’s IPO took place the same year as the passage of the crime bill, 1994, which notably coincides with the account of the 1991 clandestine meeting where it was claimed that the private prison companies would go public once the music industry had began to promote violence and crime in hip-hop lyrics for the benefit of private prison companies like Wackenhut.

WCC was formed in 1984 as a subsidiary of the Wackenhut Corporation. WCC’s parent company, Wackenhut, developed significant ties to MCA during the 1980s. As detailed earlier, Wackenhut had entered into a joint venture with the Cabazon Reservation to covertly develop weapon systems for CIA-backed paramilitaries that also repurposed the PROMIS software for espionage purposes. Top MCA executive Eugene Gianquinto was directly involved with companies that later joined the Cabazon-Wackenhut operation and later took credit for quashing the federal investigation into MCA’s mob ties. In addition, Allen & Company and Earl Brian, who were connected with the PROMIS scandal, were also significantly tied to Alan Hirschfield, who is said to have co-founded Arista Records with Clive Davis, which spawned Combs’ Bad Boy Records in 1993.

Evidence of MCA’s close ties to the CIA, beyond those indicated by the PROMIS scandal, were noted by Lew Wasserman biographer Dennis McDougal. McDougal received a response from the CIA, in response to a FOIA request, “that seventeen separate computer searches revealed MCA did work with the CIA. The CIA refused to release any of its MCA documents on grounds that it might endanger national security.” Melanie Carlson, writing for Covert Action Magazine, also thoroughly detailed MCA’s ties to the mob, the CIA, the PROMIS scandal and the death of journalist Danny Casolaro in a 2024 investigation.

Like MCA, Wackenhut also had ties to the CIA. Between that point and the passage of the 1994 crime bill, figures like Frank Carlucci and Bobby Ray Inman, both former CIA deputy directors, served on Wackenhut’s board. Carlucci also had unusual connections to the network around Robert Booth Nichols, the organized crime-linked figure who had brought together Wackenhut, the Cabazon Indian reservation and MCA as part of the PROMIS scandal. In addition, before becoming Reagan’s CIA director William Casey, one of the October Surprise/Iran-Contra architects, had been Wackenhut’s outside legal counsel. In 1992, two years before the Clinton crime bill was passed, SPY Magazine reported on extensive ties between Wackenhut and the CIA, citing CIA operatives and former Wackenhut executives who noted that Wackenhut allowed the CIA to use its offices as fronts for its activities. The SPY investigation also noted how many of the figures who connected Wackenhut to the CIA were also key cogs in the Iran-Contra affair, which is also indicated by Wackenhut’s role in the PROMIS scandal.

This is significant as some of those same figures tied directly to the CIA-Wackenhut connection, like Richard Secord, were also tied to Leslie Wexner and Jeffrey Epstein’s efforts to relocate the Iran-Contra airline of infamy, the CIA-linked Southern Air transport, to Columbus, OH for the express benefit of Wexner and his clothing empire. After Wexner and Epstein’s efforts were successful, the airline’s main flights were between Columbus and Hong Kong. As noted in One Nation Under Blackmail, that effort, which also coincides with Epstein’s most of his 17 visits to the Clinton White House, was explicitly considered by some Ohio law enforcement officials to be tied to clandestine and criminal activities, most likely arms trafficking given Epstein’s background in covert arms trafficking networks in the 1980s. In addition, Epstein’s main contact at the White House during that time, Mark Middleton, was a central part of the “Chinagate” scandal, one major aspect of which involved the smuggling of cheap Chinese weapons into American urban areas after Chinese gun imports were banned early on in the Clinton administration. Prior to that ban, the US had been China’s top market for guns.

A significant cache of weapons being smuggled by this network into Oakland, CA was intercepted by the FBI in what is now remembered as Operation Dragon Fire, which was – at that point – the largest seizure of illegal automatic assault weapons in US history. The main individuals behind the illicit gun smuggling were tipped off and managed to flee the US prior to the FBI’s planned sting operation. However, the main company involved – China’s Norinco – had notable ties, not just to the “Chinagate” scandal itself, but also to Epstein’s former mentor and weapons dealer, Douglas Leese. The company was also allegedly involved with past arms deals that had involved both Leese and Epstein. In addition, when Clinton was serving as governor of Arkansas, he had significant connections to Iran-Contra-linked arms and drug trafficking, meaning he had a prior, documented history of enabling illicit arms smuggling operations while in public office and just prior to becoming US president. 

At the same time that Wackenhut and CIA-connected figures were apparently helping repurpose Iran-Contra assets for the sake of flooding the US black market with cheap yet illicit weapons, the same network was also littering US urban areas with drugs, specifically crack cocaine. As reported by the late Gary Webb in his iconic Dark Alliance series (and subsequent book of the same name), a massive drug ring in California was peddling crack cocaine specifically to Latino and African-American urban communities during the 1990s, with millions in profits being used to finance CIA-backed paramilitary groups in Nicaragua. It was argued at the time that this represented a continuation of the Iran-Contra nexus that came under scrutiny in the 1980s and the CIA’s clandestine efforts to finance the Nicaraguan “Contras” through illicit means. After Webb’s Dark Alliance series concluded, the outlet that had run it –– the San Jose Mercury News –– published an editorial noting that Webb’s work “can only feed longstanding rumors in black communities that the U.S. government ‘created’ the crack cocaine epidemic to kill and imprison African-Americans and otherwise wreak havoc in inner cities.”

Central to the CIA-Contra-Crack Cocaine nexus were Nicaraguan asset and eventual DEA informant Oscar Danilo Blandón, one of the largest importers and suppliers of cocaine at the height of the crack epidemic, and his one-time business partner Freeway Ricky Ross, who hailed from Compton and who grew to operate an interstate crack ring that helped launder and finance the covert war on the Nicaraguan Sandinistas. In 1991, during one of his prison stints, Freeway Ricky Ross was cellmates with one of the other top crack dealers in Los Angeles, Michael “Harry O” Harris. As investigative researcher John Potash details in The FBI War on Tupac Shakur, Gary Webb asserted that Ross was effectively the national point man for the trafficking operations that were remotely manipulated by former Vice President Bush and CIA Director William Casey in the 1980s.^xxiii His eventual cellmate Harry O was one of his top understudies. Potash writes:

Other findings further support the notion that Death Row Records dually worked as a front company for various U.S. Intelligence operations. Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Gary Webb was the first to link Death Row Records to the CIA from the record company’s inception. Webb quoted the probation officer of national crack trafficker Freeway Ricky Ross. That probation officer cited a silent partner of Death Row, a Michael “Harry-O” Harris, as one of Ross’ two understudies.

New Yorker magazine and other media outlets described how Vice-President George Bush helped run key components of the CIA/Contra/Crack operations with CIA Director William Casey. Webb detailed the CIA cocaine trafficking network that went from Nicaraguan Contras, such as Danilo Blandón, to Freeway Ricky Ross. A CIA Inspector General backed these findings about the CIA trafficking cocaine in 1998. Webb claimed that Ross was their national point man, trafficking “multimillion-dollar cocaine shipments across America.” This would have made Michael Harris and Death Row Records important assets for the intelligence community.

Evidence suggests that Ricky Ross worked closely with CIA-collaborating cocaine traffickers such as Danilo Blandón and Ron Lister in the ’80s. Also, at that time, Lister met regularly with former CIA Covert Operations director Bill Nelson, who had worked under George H. W. Bush at the CIA.^xxiv

Harry O would have become a silent partner in Death Row Records with Suge Knight, Dr. Dre, The D.O.C, and corrupt defense lawyer David Kenner.^xxv This is significant to this story and the Sean “Diddy” Combs investigation at large, as not only was Death Row an intelligence front, but it was also teeming with dirty cops and corrupt informants who’d been assigned to moonlight as security guards at the label for drugs/weapons dealing, informing, and COINTELPRO purposes.^xxvi This includes the intentional sabotage of the Bloods and Crips gang truce (both gangs with which Harry O intimately collaborated in his crack distribution efforts, as well as the Cali Cartel) and the fabrication and exploitation of the East vs. West rap feud that would ultimately lead to the seemingly government-sanctioned murders of both activist rapper Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls, operations in which both Sean Combs and Suge Knight seemingly played pivotal roles. In Part II of this series, we will examine the East vs. West rap feud and the deaths of Tupac and Biggie, as well as their relevance to the Sean Combs story, in greater detail. 

More recently, Freeway Ricky Ross — now once again free after he successfully appealed his life imprisonment without the possibility of parole sentence on the grounds that the three strikes law had been misapplied — appeared on the podcast of hip hop journalist DJ Vlad and revealed that not only had he and Death Row silent partner Harry O been cellmates at the time that Michael Harris introduced Suge Knight to attorney David Kenner, but that Ross was initially going to be another “silent partner” in the label. According to Ross, this partnership only dissolved when he was released from prison prior to Harry O and got in contact with Suge Knight. Seemingly in order to protect his own drug-supplying stake in the Death Row enterprise, Michael “Harry O” Harris warned Ross off from working with Suge. Ross, in deference to street codes, declined to go behind Harry O’s back and supply Knight. Per Ross, back in 1991 at the time that Death Row was formed, he used to sit in at the no-contact visit meetings between Knight, Kenner, and Harris while he and Harris were incarcerated together. Once the label was up and running, it quickly turned to cocaine trafficking, arguably a branch or mutation of the same CIA-Contra-Crack Cocaine nexus for which assets like Freeway Ricky Ross and Michael Harris had earlier been burned and for which journalist Gary Webb was excessively attacked (and as some believe, murdered) to cover up.

These music industry, organized crime, intelligence, and federal law enforcement connections are also hugely significant as Death Row ––  in conjunction with Combs’ Bad Boy Records –– was one of the primary Trojan horses by which “gangster rap” was injected into the culture, often at the expense of more radical, activist or outright revolutionary hip hop acts who, if they refused to cater to the whims of certain record executives, would see their commercial prospects suffer. One of the mechanisms for the dissemination of drug and crime glorifying culture was the cruel and deliberate coercion and corruption of conscious rappers (see: Potash’s FBI War regarding Suge Knight’s pushing of drugs on both Dr. Dre, who’d previously preached abstinence, and Tupac).^xxvii 

There is also the case of films like New Jack City, which involved Combs’ mentor Andre Harrell and arguably romanticizes crack dealing. The film was also made by Warner. Warner, as previously noted, was built out of the association of its long-time head, Steve Ross, with Meyer Lansky associates. Ross himself had become close to Robert Maxwell, an intelligence asset tied to organized crime and a key figure in the Epstein network as well as the PROMIS scandal, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, a time when Maxwell was attempting to gain a foothold in New York City. This further suggests that mob-linked or mob-adjacent entertainment companies were working to culturally engineer African-American culture for the benefit of CIA-linked crack dealing and, ultimately, CIA-linked companies like Wackenhut that dominated the private prison industry.

Given the above, all the elements of a perfect storm to perpetuate mass incarceration of African-Americans were put into place along the same timeline and by many of the same actors –– actors deeply tied to the CIA and organized crime. When we add the alleged efforts to stoke violence in hip-hop, as exemplified by Combs’ and his Bad Boy Records after he had become enmeshed in this very network as well as his West Coast rivals, we have yet another component that suggests this network used its influence over the hip-hop industry to socially engineer criminal behavior, while also ensuring that cheap, addictive drugs and cheap guns simultaneously flooded urban African-American communities. 

The MCA and CIA-connected Wackenhut would have reaped mass profits from this apparent operation, as the number of prisoners in its private prisons swelled. However, other major multi-national corporations who utilized inmate labor from these prisoners benefitted as well. A litany of American companies, like WalMart and Microsoft, are among those who have a long history of profiting handsomely from inmate labor. Several of these corporations include companies run by the “Mega Group” billionaires, like Lester Crown’s General Dynamics, a major military contractor, and Leslie Wexner’s Victoria’s Secret (though the lingerie firm claimed to have ended the contract after it became public knowledge in the late 1990s).

This context certainly zooms out significantly from the specific Combs scandal that began to unravel at the end of 2023. However, it also helps us understand the case. Combs appears to have been brought into a network where he was controlled through sex and drugs, and then made a celebrity. As a celebrity, he used his own music, his record label and his influence to control other upcoming rappers and musicians while also helping shape the future of hip-hop toward that allegedly sought by music industry executives and their clandestine partners in the CIA, the mob and the private prison industry. 

Combs, from the early 1990s onward, appears to have been a key frontman for this network and its ambitions. He was likely not the sole mastermind or beneficiary of all of the scandalous parties, sexual violence, public promotion of violence, and alleged blackmail in which he engaged. He was a product of a network and a system that –– in the case of Combs –– was seeking to target and corrupt the broader African-American community in similar ways. Ultimately, Combs, like some other prominent entertainers, was servile to his music industry masters. He worked within a system those masters controlled and attempted to expand his own influence and power within that system, but –– at the end of the day –– he was never in charge.

In the next installment of this series, we will explore Combs’ expanding influence in hip-hop and also in other industries, like retail, again all courtesy of the very same network outlined in this piece. While Combs publicly projected power and success, both of those things were conditional and, like Epstein, now exposed, he is due to take the fall in order to take the heat off of the people behind the curtain.

References: 

i. Zack O’Malley-Greenburg, 3 Kings: Diddy, Dr. Dre, Jay-Z, and Hip-Hop’s Multibillion-Dollar Rise (Little, Brown and Company, 2018), Ch. I

ii. David McGowan, Programmed to Kill: The Politics of Serial Murder (iUniverse, Inc., 2004), p. 101

iii. O’Malley-Greenburg, 3 Kings, Ch. I

iv. O’Malley-Greenburg, 3 Kings, Ch. I

v. O’Malley-Greenburg, 3 Kings, Ch. I

vi. The abuse charges against Fr. Lynch stemmed from an FBI probe launched in July 1987 (the summer prior to Combs departing for college) that was initiated after lay teachers at the academy complained about Lynch’s and Brady’s behavior with students. Fr. Lynch was jointly indicted around the same time as his boss Principal Brady, but was ultimately exonerated by the Hon. Justice Burton Roberts when a letter was produced during cross-examination that showed the FBI coerced student John Schaeffer into falsely accusing his former instructor under the false pretense that he wouldn’t be required to testify. There were also clear contradictions in the dates of the alleged abuse in Schaeffer’s testimony.

Furthermore, as contended by Fr. Lynch’s defenders, the case against him was potentially politically motivated by his activism as well as other on-going corruption investigations in NYC including the Wedtech scandal, which first broke in 1986 and was named after a DOD-contractor based in the Bronx who secured governmental contracts through fraud, bribery, and other illegal means. The numerous scandals that beset New York municipal politics in the late 1980s led to Rudy Giuliani’s successful prosecution of Bronx Democratic Party leader Stanley Friedman on federal corruption charges. Friedman was a law partner of Roy Cohn, a notorious mob lawyer also known for having been Donald Trump’s mentor. Friedman’s protege, Bronx borough president Stanley Simon, resigned amid pending criminal charges stemming from his involvement with Wedtech. In 1988, long serving US Rep. Mario Biaggi of the Bronx was ultimately convicted by Giuliani on bribery, extortion, tax evasion, and obstruction charges in connection to Wedtech, shown to have accepted bribes from the Bronx company in return for the procurement of federal contracts. Bronx congressman Robert Garcia also resigned after Giuliani convicted him on bribery and extortion charges related to Wedtech in 1989—the ruling was later reversed on appeal. Note that the Wedtech and MSMA sex abuse scandals both revolved around the Bronx and that their court proceedings overlapped. While speculative, the FBI and DA office’s willingness to use dirty tricks in pursuit of a conviction of Fr. Lynch may have meant to distract from Wedtech, which was beginning to knock on the door of the Reagan administration, posing a danger to press secretary Lyn Nofziger and ultimately leading to AG Edwin Meese’s resignation in 1988.

vii. O’Malley-Greenburg, 3 Kings, Ch. 2

viii. O’Malley-Greenburg, 3 Kings, Ch. 2

ix. O’Malley-Greenburg, 3 Kings, Ch. 2

x. John Potash, The FBI War on Tupac Shakur: State Repression of Black Leaders From the Civil Rights Era to the 1990s (Microcosm Publishing, 2021), Ch. “CIA & Time Warner’s Grip on the Music Industry”

xi. Frederic Dannen, Hit Men: Powerbrokers and Fast Money Inside the Music Business (Vintage Books, 1990), pp. 37-8, 42-6, 53

xii. John Potash, The FBI War on Tupac Shakur, Ch. “CIA & Time Warner’s Grip on the Music Industry”

xiii. Frederic Dannen, Hit Men, pp. 26-27

xiv. John Potash, The FBI War on Tupac Shakur, Ch. “Tupac’s FBI File, Republican Attacks, Harassment Arrests, & Specious Lawsuits”

xv. Derrick Parker with Matt Diehl, Notorious C.O.P. (St. Martin’s Press, 2006), Ch. “Jacking the Rapper: The ‘Puff Daddy’ Era—Rap Legends Born into Blood”

xvi. Frederic Dannen, Hit Men, p. 67

xvii. Ibid., p. 75

xviii. Ibid. p. 75

xix. Ibid., p. 87

xx. Ibid., p. 91

xxi. Ibid., p. 86

xxii. Ibid., p. 92

xxiii. John Potash, The FBI War on Tupac Shakur, Ch. “Death Row Signs Tupac”

xxiv. Ibid.

xxv. John Potash, The FBI War on Tupac Shakur, Ch. “Death Row Police & Suge Knight Work to End Gang Truce”

xxvi. Ibid.

xxvii. Ibid. 

One Label Under Blackmail: The Early Intersections of Diddy and the Epstein Network.