By Sheeva Azma
Al Seckel and his friend Jeffrey Epstein both liked to “collect” prestigious scientists, says Tom McIver, whose breaking down of Seckel’s facades caused Seckel “frustration and very intense distress.”
It’s now been five months since I started researching the role of science in the Epstein files. When I just started out, I had few answers and a whole lot of questions. Now I have some answers, even more questions, a lot more readers and viewers, and, if I can say so, a bit of momentum on this project (which you can find here at our blog, on our Substack, and on our Instagram) which keeps it going despite the many obstacles that exist (time, funding, a lack of visibility…the list kinda goes on and on).
We persevere thanks mostly to the kind support of our friends across these different platforms. Thank you, dear readers and viewers, for your messages of encouragement along this journey — none of this would be possible without you.
People have also started to reach out to me with tips via email (thank you so much for that, too!). In late April, an email appeared in my inbox. It was from a man named Tom McIver, who told me that Al Seckel had sued him for libel after he began documenting Seckel’s various lies and misdeeds over several decades. I’ve already written about Seckel’s life, and his misrepresentation of it as revealed by McIver, on our blog — you can read that here.
“McIver said all sorts of things, which is WHY I WON A LIBEL AND SLANDER CASE AGAINST HIM!!!!” writes Seckel in EFTA00776672.
The Epstein files highlight Seckel’s frustration with McIver as much as it reveals some of Seckel’s lies.
Hilariously, in that same email, EFTA00776672, back in 2010, Epstein and Seckel exchange words about the fact that Stephen Kosslyn, another Epstein friend and contributor to the Epstein birthday book, has no recollection of ever meeting Seckel, even though Seckel claimed to have worked in Kosslyn’s lab at Harvard. That same email thread also purports to have a letter from Christof Koch (back then at Caltech — now, he is at Allen Institute) vouching for Seckel’s Caltech ties.
In 2012, per EFTA00702154, Seckel writes to Epstein again about McIver: “I apologize for the nature of this email, and hope that you can understand my frustration and very
intense distress in this matter,” Seckel says.
Seckel describes McIver as having spent “the past twenty-five years relentlessly stalking (offline and increasingly on-line), slandering, defaming and libeling me to just about every person, group, company, conference, foundation, or organization that I have ever come in contact with, been an invited participant of, served on the Board of, or even been remotely connected with.”
Seckel further writes, “Mr. McIver is not a person of means, and suing will have no real economic impact on him, and the criminal penalties for stalking and libel are not stiff. Nevertheless, I am compelled by necessity to stop his continuing harassment, libel, slander, and stalking of not only me, but now also of Isabel [Maxwell, Seckel’s wife and Ghislaine Maxwell’s sister], who you can imagine is intensely distressed by his actions. In this age of lightning fast communications, someone who is obsessed can do an enormous amount of damage armed with a computer, email access, and persistence. It is the world we live in…”
“Has this guy tried to contact us?” Epstein writes to his long-time accountant, Rich Kahn, in that same email chain.
“I never have been contacted by him,” replies Kahn to Epstein. “You may want to ask Cecile if he is targeting your foundation.”
Seckel was the organizer of the 2011 Mindshift Conference which was held on Epstein’s private island and was attended by Nobelists, such as the ones I have written about here. Like Epstein, he loved to collect famous scientists, and also like Epstein, he had no real scientific training, and both of them enjoyed dazzling scientists with promises of money and clout. However, Seckel was on a mission to be taken seriously as a scientist, to the point where he lied about having two different prestigious science degrees — from Cornell and Caltech!
Here’s my conversation with Tom McIver about Al Seckel. Technical issues were a theme here as he’s not on video due to one, and there’s also a 10ish-second blank space in the middle of the video around minute 19, but just ignore that. Just another day in the life of an investigative journalist, I suppose.
Joi Ito (also an Epstein science friend, who led the MIT Media Lab at its height of Epstein involvement) took Seckel’s photo which appears on Wikipedia; I’ve used that photo in the background of the YouTube thumbnail below (or you can check it out here).
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