One of the earliest profiles of Craig Spence is in the New York Times, in 1982. It says he is a mysterious figure whose power stems in part from being able to bring together powerful people at parties. Notable given what we learn about Spence in 1989.

https://www.nytimes.com/1982/01/18/us/have-names-will-open-right-doors.html

Articles available here to read along - https://keybase.pub/benfranklin2018/

Now, in June 1989 the Washington Times breaks a story about a "Homosexual Prostitution Ring." - Professional Services Inc. This is a euphemism, as is clear from the article that this involves minors and blackmail.

At the center of PSI is Spence, a man so well connected that he was able to arrange after hours tours of the Reagan White house for his friends. Interviews capture Henry Vinson, one of the operators of PSI, saying that the investigation will be squashed due to the people invovled

The subsequent article gets to the heart of what's going on - Spence is throwing parties with drugs and prostitutes at locations that are wired with cameras, mirrors, and recording equipment. In short, he is running a honeypot operation on the Washington DC elite very openly.

In many ways, this is almost identical to what Jeffrey Epstein was doing. Both were well connected, moved in high society, trafficked in blackmail and sex crimes as an open secret among their peers yet faced no expulsion from their social class in consequence.

Now, there are several other important items in this article
1) Former CIA director William Casey is in Spence's orbit.
2) Spence threw a birthday party for Donald Trump's mentor, Roy Cohn (birthday parties were a very big deal to Cohn), which William Casey attended

3) Spence boasts of working for the CIA, also saying that the CIA might kill him and make it look like a suicide. (Spence dies later in 1989 from what is reported as a suicide)
4) Note the appearance of Joe diGenova, who you may recall from the attempt to overturn the election

Spence is mingling with a lot of the key characters from major American scandals both past and present. He is very much part of the world of Donald Trump, Roy Cohn, and Jeffrey Epstein even if he does not temporally overlap with all the characters we're dealing with today.

This story is breaking in 1989, when Bush Sr was president - the reaction from the white house is mostly silence and avoidance.

From the Wall Street Journal. There's an interesting dynamic in which the Washington Times is breaking the story and the
Washington Post is downplaying it. In part, the WSJ says, because the Post is connected to the same people as Spence is connected to.

For those of you asking for reporting from sources other than the Washington Times to buttress this research, I would point you to a July 15, 1989 article from the AP which covers the same topic. https://apnews.com/article/ae7e4e95320d50fbc28747ac5b87ffaa

Here is a July 18, 1989 Washington Post Article that covers the story as well. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1989/07/18/the-shadow-world-of-craig-spence/2837e91e-49ce-4121-9416-8e0c7a2debf6/

Here's a, August 1, 1989 Washington Post story which seems to be downplaying the scandal as a nothingburger (remember the WSJ article from earlier in the thread) https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1989/08/01/the-bombshell-that-didnt-explode/ff09cdb0-7d64-428b-8415-a6998b9f0c65/

By August, Spence has descended into a drug fueled meltdown that leads to his arrest. He makes more references to suicide, drops hints to his connections to major security officials, and lashes out at the DC insiders who are now turning their backs on him as pressure mounts.

In November, Spence is found dead in a Ritz Carlton hotel room leaving behind a news clipping about CIA operatives and enigmatic suicide note starting "Chief, consider this my resignation notice, effectively immediately." (Link to full articles attached)

https://keybase.pub/benfranklin2018/Craig%20Spence%20-%20Spence%20Dead%20Articles%20-11-13-1989.pdf

Some links to other papers that covered this https://www.nytimes.com/1989/11/12/us/lobbyist-linked-to-sex-case-is-found-dead.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1989/11/12/craig-spence-figure-in-dc-sex-case-found-dead-in-boston/c8993a55-6895-488f-8adf-19cb45c0fb6b/

In many ways, we members of the public almost know nothing more about this man and who he really was than what we knew when he started. He died before there were full investigations of his conduct, his contacts, and his crimes, much like Jeffrey Epstein.

Who was Craig Spence? Who was he working for or with? What was the end goal of operating a party house wired for blackmail? Who has the tapes and recordings he made? Who are the people taped and recorded? And why did all coverage of Epstein ignore this similar story?

Anyway, this was a lot of information and even for the handful of you who are interested in this stuff, it's realistically probably going to take several days to read through it all. For those following along, an outline of the forces driving our political crisis is emerging.

I think we have to be open to the hypothesis that Epstein, Spence, and other scandals are not isolated incidents but part of a continuous operation by a network meant to keep the rich and powerful under control through blackmail, corruption, and other forms of compromise.

Somewhere out there, there are people in possession of a tremendous amount of compromising information on the most powerful people in our country. And I am starting to think that this may explain why everything is so fucked up, why no one is stopping the collapse of our system.

This isn't ancient history, it's still going on, and I think when you look at the big picture you'll see there are an endless number of Matt Gaetz's with suspicious connections to sex traffickers and weird Nestor like stuff.