As newly released U.S. Justice Department documents resurface Jeffrey Epstein’s emails, a different picture begins to emerge. In 2011, while Libya was still at war and Muammar Gaddafi was alive, Epstein and his associates were already discussing frozen Libyan assets, recovery fees, intelligence contacts, and the billions expected to flow into rebuilding the country after its collapse. These weren’t post-war reflections. They were real-time calculations, made months before Gaddafi was dragged out of a gutter in Sirte and killed on camera. In this explainer, Ananya Dutta connects two timelines that rarely intersect in public debate: NATO’s intervention in Libya and Epstein’s private correspondence. What did he know about Libya’s future while bombs were still falling? How did his network speak so confidently about assets, resignations, and reconstruction plans before events played out? The Epstein files now include names that span tech, Wall Street, royalty, and political power. But this story asks a deeper question: was Epstein merely exploiting power or was he operating as power itself, moving comfortably across finance, intelligence, and geopolitics?