Epstein Files: Is This the Real-Life Christmas Adventurers Club?

The unfolding Jeffrey Epstein saga has galvanized the public for the breadth of its revelations into elite power, from the financial to the political, the cultural to the sociological. One email in the latest batch of case files the U.S. Department of Justice has released provides a rare look at the old-line social striving recently dramatized, to satirical effect, in the Oscar-nominated One Battle After Another.

An unidentified correspondent wrote to Epstein in August 2010, just as the financier emerged from house arrest for his child prostitution conviction, that they “just got a note from bob pirie who asked me if i thought murray gell man [sic] would make a good candidate for the zodiac.” To translate: This is in reference to the Zodiac Club, a 158-year-old Manhattan-based private members’ society. Murray Gell-Mann was a Nobel-winning astrophysicist and Epstein friend who signed his infamous birthday book. And Pirie was a prominent Wall Street investment banker and former head of Rothschild Inc.

Epstein’s correspondent continued, in rambling fashion, “as you know it’s one of those last secret type socieities [sic]. the zodiac is one of the really cool ones there are 12 members at any one time and it is still very secret. they do really cool stuff — but mostly since they are all very old — it’s just dinners in exotic locations. i can’t tell you all the 12 members bc i don’t know who they all are but i know [former Federal Reserve chair, now deceased] paul Volker [sic] is one. some guy named howdy whose family owns stuyvusent [sic] town, bob pine and i think tom brokaw. bob represents cancer (the sign not the month). you are a member until your death but if you get senile they can put you into ‘eccentric orbit’ and not invite you to meetings etc. anyway the only way to get in is if someone dies. there are obviously no minoroities [sic] or women allowed.”

This sounds quite a bit like the fictional Christmas Adventurers Club which Sean Penn’s villainous Col. Steven J. Lockjaw longs to join in OBAA. The film makes clear that the organization is exclusively the province of white, Anglo-Saxon men, and possible initiates are only tapped when the small, fixed group of existing members die.

Pirie, Volcker and Gell-Mann have since died. (It’s unclear how Gell-Mann’s ancestry may have affected a possible candidacy at the Zodiac Club, circa 2010, since such echt-establishment social clubs historically excluded Jews.) Brokaw couldn’t be reached for comment. In 2018, after the vaunted NBC newsman was accused of sexual misconduct, the far-right political strategist Steve Bannon sent a news story detailing the claim to Epstein with the comment, “Make sure woody sees this,” referring to Epstein’s friend Woody Allen.

New York City-focused media outlet Gothamist examined the history of the Zodiac Club in 2013 through historical records on hand at the Morgan Library & Museum. It found that the dozen members, who each took on a zodiacal sign, attended dinners on the final Saturday of each month between November and May. The “Signs,” as they referred to themselves, were leaders in business and politics. Nelson Aldrich, a Republican senator and key architect of the Federal Reserve Act, was a Sign.

Gothamist reached Pirie during its reporting. He declined to speak but offered a motto for the Zodiac Club: “Never secret, only private.”