They were all there. A glittering occasion in the Four Seasons Hotel in Ballsbridge, Dublin 4.
Bill Clinton, Henry Kissinger, Mikael Gorbachev, Hamid Karzai - newly installed as Afghan president. The late Tony Ryan, founder of Ryanair and of Ireland's huge aircraft leasing industry was honoured, as was the late Peter Sutherland, Chairman of Goldman Sachs International.
Nobel prize winning scientists, political leaders, the biggest of big business bosses, the cream of the arts and music world - all assembled for the June 2002 Academy of Excellence awards being held in Dublin that year. It was chaired by the then taoiseach Bertie Ahern.
Quincey Jones presented the music award to Bono. Chuck Berry performed. Enya was inducted into the academy. The awards council included luminaries like Star Wars creator George Lucas, writer Edna O'Brien and former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak.
Bill Clinton met Nobel peace prize winners and fellow honorees David Trimble and John Hume to catch up on Northern Ireland. Mr Clinton’s peace envoy Senator George Mitchell was also honoured for his pivotal role in the Good Friday Agreement.
Jeffrey Epstein was there too. Not to be honored, but just to be there.
Epstein had flown into Dublin on his private jet - at that stage the Boeing 727 that came to be known as the 'Lolita Express’.
Fast-forward a quarter of a century and Mr Clinton and his wife Hillary are trying to set the terms of engagement for their forthcoming appearance later this month at the House Oversight Committee to answer questions about the Epstein files and what the former president and former secretary of state know about the nefarious activities of the disgraced financier.
They say they saw nothing untoward. US President Donald Trump’s Chief of Staff Suzy Wiles told Vanity Fair magazine that she had seen nothing in the Epstein files to suggest the Clintons were aware of any wrongdoing by Epstein.
Mr Clinton will become the first former president since 1983 to testify to Congress in Committee. His spokesman said it will set a precedent for others to be compelled to appear - taken to be a reference to Mr Trump.
Senator Mitchell has had his name removed from the scholarship programme named in his honour and the Colin Davidson-sculpted bust unveiled three years ago outside Queens University Belfast - where he served as chancellor from 1999 to 2009 – was removed and put in storage.
Senator Mitchell has also stepped down as honorary chairman of the Mitchell Institute at the University of Maine.
In a statement to RTÉ News, a spokesman for Senator Mitchell said: "In the recently released documents, an allegation involving Senator Mitchell by Ms Virginia Giuffre is repeated.
"It was first made public in 2020 and denied at the time. That allegation is based on a case of mistaken identity. In 2021, Ms Giuffre supplied a photograph to OK Magazine, which incorrectly captioned it as depicting Senator Mitchell standing behind Jeffrey Epstein.
"The individual in the photograph was not Senator Mitchell. The publisher acknowledged the incorrect caption and removed it. Senator Mitchell reiterates unequivocally that he never met, spoke with, or had any contact of any kind with Ms Giuffre or with any underage women.
"At no time did Senator Mitchell observe, suspect, or have any knowledge of Epstein engaging in illegal or inappropriate conduct with underage women.
"He learned of Epstein’s criminal activity only through media reports related to Epstein’s Florida prosecution and declined or deflected the few invitations to events extended by Epstein’s office in the years that followed.
"Senator Mitchell profoundly regrets ever having known Jeffrey Epstein and condemns, without reservation, the horrific harm Epstein inflicted on so many women."
Files highlight Epstein's vast network of influential people
As more of the Epstein files are brought to light, so too is the vast network of important and influential people Epstein worked hard to cultivate - because he was a phenomenal networker.
It is clearer with every drop of Department of Justice files that Epstein's financial success was due to his indefatigable, carefully targeted networking. Collecting a wide range of contacts, high achievers from all over the world, travelling endlessly in private jets.
Merely being mentioned in the Epstein files is of course no indication of any kind of wrongdoing. There are thousands of names in there, mostly related to Epstein’s business operations - emails from colleagues, business associates, bankers, investors and potential business associates.
Many names only crop up in the form of media articles, stockbroker notes and other banal mentions: UFC fighter Conor McGregor’s name is there - but only because Epstein bought a subscription to the McGregor v Mayweather fight in 2017, and got a lot of promotional emails from YouTube as a result.
Among those Epstein met in Dublin in 2002 was Andres Pastrana, the then president of Colombia. According to Mr Pastrana’s account later to the Miami Herald, it was that Dublin meeting that led to him flying with Epstein in the Lolita Express to visit another Caribbean Island: Cuba.
Epstein picked up the Colombian president and flew him to Havana in 2003 where they both got to spend time with Fidel Castro. The super narrow election win for then US president George W Bush had come down to a handful of votes in Florida, where the Cuban exile community had largely backed Mr Bush.
As a thank you, Mr Bush tightened restriction on travel to Cuba from the US, especially after the 9/11 attacks, so Epstein’s visit wasn't exactly 100% legal.
But there does not appear to have been any blowback. In the jet set world, it seems you can get away with more if you are the guy with the jet.
Again, fast-forward a quarter of a century, and another glittering event - the opening of the Winter Olympic Games in Milan-Cortina on Friday.
But even there the ghost of Epstein casts a shadow.
Trying to keep a low profile was Casey Wasserman, a sports rights and talent mogul and more importantly, the chairman of the next summer Olympics in Los Angeles in 2028.
The Epstein files disclosed a number of flirty emails Mr Wasserman exchanged with Ghislaine Maxwell in the early 2000s, including one from March 2003 in which he wrote "so what do I have to do to see you in a tight leather outfit?"
Several local politicians in LA have called for Mr Wasserman to resign - even though he is not accused of any wrongdoing. The charge is rather the "distraction" of the chairman being in any way associated with Epstein and Maxwell.
"I deeply regret my correspondence with Ghislaine Maxwell [from] long before her horrific crimes came to light… I never had a personal or business relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.
"As is well documented, I went on a humanitarian trip as part of a delegation with the Clinton Foundation in 2002 on the Epstein plane. I am terribly sorry for having any association with either of them," Mr Wasserman said in a statement.
It is another example of the huge haul of mostly wealthy and powerful figures who have been caught up in the net that Epstein cast across the world.
He set out to make connections that would be useful to him in his investment and wealth management business. Part of that networking involved philanthropic activities.
Only a tiny proportion of the names in the Epstein files appear to have had any links to Epstein’s sexual activities. But such is the public revulsion at Epstein that it has been enough to taint many.
Just having been a passenger on one of Epstein's aircraft is enough to get people into hot water, like Mr Wasserman or Mr Pastrana or Mr Clinton.
An occasional traveller on the jet in the 1990s was of course Mr Trump, who had a close friendship with Epstein from the mid 1980s until around 2004, when the two fell out, apparently over a bidding war for a Palm Beach, Florida, mansion.
And it was Mr Trump’s Department of Justice that brought federal charges against Epstein in 2019.
US President Trump seems to have come under remarkably little additional pressure over the past few days from the massive document release by the Department of Justice a week ago.
Quite unlike the British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who is engulfed in a political storm over his appointment of Peter Mandelson as UK Ambassador to Washington, where he cut a 10% tariff deal with Mr Trump.
Mr Starmer accepts that he took a risk with Mr Mandelson, knowing about his association with Epstein.
The same must be true of the Trump administration, because ambassadors must be agreed in advance with the receiving country - which in this case happens to have one of the biggest intelligence gathering apparatuses in the world.
But in truth by that stage - late 2024 and early 2025 - it only took a Google search to know that Mr Mandelson and Epstein had a past.
Epstein's original conviction in 2008 - by way of a plea bargain to plead guilty to the lesser state charge of soliciting a minor for prostitution in return for avoiding far more serious federal charges - saw him serve 13 months of an 18-month sentence in a county jail.
Though the story was not heavily reported at the time, it did make national and local media - particularly in Palm Beach, the playground of billionaires - and the Associated Press news agency carried the story to newspapers nationwide.
ABC television, the most watched national network, also reported the case.
It would take a little bit of digging, but the information was there for those who wanted to know more about Epstein.
So people that met him after that point knew or were in a position to find out. Especially the rich and powerful people he tended to associate with for business or pleasure (or both).
For example, what did former UK prime minster Gordon Brown know about Mr Mandelson’s relationship with Epstein before he made Mr Mandelson a lord and appointed him trade minster in October 2008 - four months after Epstein’s conviction for procuring a minor for prostitution in Florida.
Mr Brown has said he knew nothing of Mr Mandelson's relationship with Epstein at that time, though he was very aware of Mandelson’s two sackings from the cabinets in which Mr Brown had been chancellor of the exchequer (minster for finance).
And that is where the focus has been since the files were released: who associated with him after his conviction for a child sex offence.
There was in fact plenty of information about Epstein in the public domain before the federal government took up the case again during the first Trump presidency, arresting Epstein in July 2019.
That action was forced by a behind-closed-doors legal case by Virginia Giuffre, an Epstein victim, seeking to have the 2008 case re-opened, so Epstein would face more severe charges.
She argued, successfully, that federal authorities had not informed victims of the 2008 plea deal, as they were obliged to do under the Victims of Crime Act. That ruling led to the second Epstein investigation by the feds.
It and the original 2005-2008 Florida investigation generated the 6 million documents that comprise ‘The Epstein Files’.
Epstein died in prison in August 2019 awaiting trial, a month after his arrest.
Maxwell was put on trial and imprisoned in 2022.
And there the story might have ended, were it not for the continuing efforts of the victims of Epstein and their lawyers, who want the entire story to come out. They forced the Epstein Transparency Act onto the political agenda last year: when it was passed in November, just one member of Congress voted against it.
That is the law that orders the federal government to publish the Epstein files.
From Monday onwards, members of Congress will be able to view the files in their original, unredacted state.
Maxwell is also due to testify by video link before the House Oversight Committee this week.
As a result of the latest release of documents, there have been developments involving individuals in the US and Europe.
Mr Starmer’s chief of staff at 10 Downing Street Morgan McSweeney has resigned over his part in the appointment of Mr Mandelson as US Ambassador last year.
Under scrutiny is the amount of vetting and due diligence done on Mr Mandelson, both by the cabinet office, and by the security and intelligence services prior to this highly sensitive posting, which involves dealing with the highest level of classified information.
Top Manhattan lawyer Brad Karp was forced to step down as chairman of Paul Weiss, one of the biggest US law firms, under pressure from other partners in the firm because of his Epstein associations.
Emails in the Epstein files appear to show a close relationship with Epstein, including dinners at Epstein's mansion, attendance with family members at a Woody Allen premier (Mr Allen was a neighbour of Epstein and was in his social circle).
In a statement last week, announcing the changes at the top of the law firm Mr Karp said "leading Paul, Weiss for the past 18 years has been the honor of my professional life. Recent reporting has created a distraction and has placed a focus on me that is not in the best interests of the firm".
There is no suggestion of any wrongdoing on the part of Mr Karp, nor that he had any knowledge of Epstein's sexual behaviour beyond what was known of Epstein’s 2008 conviction.
On this Super Bowl weekend, another name in the spotlight is a part-owner of the New York Giants NFL team, Steve Tisch, who the files show was engaged in some sleazy correspondence with Epstein about women.
The NFL said they are going to investigate further. America’s most successful sports organisation will not want any taint of Epstein attaching to the nation’s favorite sport.
In a statement last week, Mr Tisch said of Epstein: "We had a brief association where we exchanged emails about adult women, and in addition, we discussed movies, philanthropy and investments. I did not take him up on any of his invitations and never went to his island. As we all know now, he was a terrible person and someone I deeply regret associating with."
Further afield the government of Poland has launched its own investigation into Epstein’s trafficking of young girls, many of whom appear to have originated form or transited though Poland.
And the Poles strongly suspect Russian involvement in Epstein’s sex racket.
Prime Minster and former EU council president, Donald Tusk, said during the week: "More and more leads, more and more information, and more and more commentary in the global press all relate to the suspicion that this unprecedented paedophilia scandal was co-organised by Russian intelligence services."
And in Slovakia, association with Epstein claimed a political scalp in the form of Miroslav Lajcak - the National Security adviser to prime minster Robert Fico, who resigned on Tuesday.
Mr Lajcak was a two times foreign minister of Slovakia. The emails show him bantering with Epstein about women, and about his meetings with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
Mr Lajcak had also suggested to Epstein that Steve Bannon should meet with prime minster Fico, as they shared similar political views - though he denied any such meeting ever took place.
Mr Fico has become increasingly aligned with Hungarian Prime Minster Victor Orban in his opposition to EU support for Ukraine.
Mr Lajcak denies any knowledge of Epstein's sex crimes or other impropriety.
In France, the government has accepted the resignation of Jack Lang as chair of the Arab World Institute over his links to Epstein, which he told Politico in a 2020 interview were mainly financial.
Mr Lang, a former culture and education minister, has also been placed under investigation by French finance police, examining an offshore fund in the Virgin Islands jointly held by Mr Lang’s daughter, a movie producer, and Jeffrey Epstein.
Mr Lang has previously denied all knowledge of Epstein's sex crimes. In a resignation letter to French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barot, Mr Lang said: "The accusations against me are inaccurate, and I will prove it, beyond the noise and fury of the media and digital courts".
There were more revelations about the relationship between Epstein and Noam Chomsky, famed linguist and left-wing political commentator.
They appear to have met, travelled together on a private jet and corresponded during the final six years of Epstein's life.
Emails also show Mr Chomsky corresponding with Mr Bannon, and stating he got Mr Bannon’s contact details from Epstein.
Just months before Epstein’s arrest in 2019, Mr Chomsky wrote an email offering PR advice to Epstein, recommending that he stay silent: "what the vultures dearly want is a public response, which then provides a public opening for an onslaught of venomous attacks, many from just publicity seekers or cranks of all sorts".
He has not commented on the latest disclosures by the Department of Justice but has said in the past that their relationship was primarily about financial advice.
Mr Chomsky, now aged 97, suffered a stroke in 2023 and has not commented publicly since.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s name is back in the spotlight too.
Last October he told the New York Post that he cut ties with Epstein, his then next door neighbour, in 2005 after a visit to Epstein's mansion in 2005, telling the Post in a video interview that he vowed to his wife "I will never be in the same room as that disgusting person ever again".
But on Friday night CBS News found documents in the Epstein files showing that Mr Lutnick had been in business with Epstein as late as 2014.
It published documents signed by both men in December 2012 on behalf of limited companies agreeing to buy stakes in a now defunct advertising business AdFin.
Other e-mails show invitations to Mr Lutnick for drinks, and Mr Lutnick and his family planned a visit to Epstein’s island, Little St James for lunch in 2012.
Later on, according to CBS, Epstein donated $50,000 to a dinner in honor of Mr Lutnick in 2017, organised by hedge fund billionaire John Paulson.
Epstein declined to take the table at the event a donor of that caliber was entitled to, telling Paulson that Mr Lutnick could fill the seats.
The following year, 2018, Mr Lutnick wrote to his next-door neighbor urging him to object to expansion plans by a nearby art gallery, the Frick Museum.
Again, nothing in this correspondence suggests any wrongdoing on Mr Lutnick's behalf.
But it does not support his earlier claims of distancing from Epstein even before his criminal conviction in Florida in 2008.
A spokesperson for the US Commerce Department said questions about the contacts between Epstein and Mr Luttnik were a "failing attempt by the legacy media to distract from the administration's accomplishments".
The statement clarified that Mr Lutnick had only "limited interactions" with Epstein and emphasised he has never been accused of wrongdoing.
This illustrates one of the chief arguments against releasing the Epstein files: they contain a lot of entirely innocent information that link a lot of people to Epstein just by virtue of knowing or being in some kind of contact with or proximity to him.
Most of his contacts were business, not pleasure.
But there is so little trust or faith in the government to release all the relevant information on Epstein’s sexual activities - and the names of any powerful men who may have been involved - that the US government has been forced by law to make it all public.
They have still not done so yet, by the government's own admission.
So, the clamour for more documents, photographs and videos will continue.
But the avalanche of emails from the Epstein files has largely buried from public view the original point of all this - the plight of the women and girls who were Epstein’s victims.
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