In 1997, Barry Levinson brought to cinemas Wag the Dog — a cynical political thriller about a presidential spin doctor who hires a Hollywood producer to stage a fictitious war and divert voters’ attention from a sex scandal in the White House. At the time, the film was regarded as an exaggerated satire. Nearly thirty years later, nothing about it seems exaggerated at all.
The United States stands before one of the greatest domestic scandals in modern political history. The release of documents connected to Jeffrey Epstein — or rather, their selective disclosure and repeated suppression — casts a shadow over dozens of names from the highest echelons of power. Politicians, financial magnates, media figures. Names that were long whispered only behind closed doors are slowly coming to light. And it is precisely at this moment that American aircraft carriers have begun to gather in the Persian Gulf.
A coincidence? Perhaps. But Wag the Dog theories never emerge from a vacuum.
What the Epstein Files Are — and Why They Are So Dangerous
Jeffrey Epstein, a financier convicted of sexually abusing minors, died under unexplained circumstances in a New York prison cell in August 2019. Authorities ruled it a suicide. Skeptics — and there are many — do not believe that. But Epstein’s death was only the beginning of the story, not its end.
At the heart of the entire affair are the so-called Epstein files — an extensive body of documentation encompassing flight logs from his private jet nicknamed the “Lolita Express,” guest lists from his Caribbean island of Little Saint James, victim testimonies, correspondence, and internal materials that spent years concealed behind a seal of judicial confidentiality. The gradual declassification of these materials, occurring over recent months, reveals Epstein’s connections to political and economic elites on both sides of the Atlantic.
This is not merely about names. It is about a system. A network of ties, favors, and silence that protected powerful men for decades. And that is precisely the kind of scandal that cannot survive a news cycle pointed elsewhere.
Iran as the Traditional Lifeline
Iran is not an arbitrarily chosen target of potential American military attention. It is a well-worn instrument. Whenever Washington finds itself in domestic trouble, Tehran becomes a convenient bogeyman. Rhetoric escalates, sanctions tighten, fleets multiply in the Strait of Hormuz. The mechanism is so well-oiled that almost no one names it aloud — at least not in the mainstream.
The current situation carries all the hallmarks of a classic diversionary maneuver. The administration faces mounting pressure from the opposition and from within its own party to explain why portions of the Epstein documentation remain under lock and key. Special investigative committees in Congress are issuing subpoenas. Investigative journalists are digging deeper. And it is precisely then that intelligence agencies arrive with warnings about Iran’s weapons program, about threats to American bases in the Middle East, about the necessity of sending a “strong signal.”
War — or even just its convincing threat — can consume all the oxygen in the media space. News channels switch into crisis mode. Editors prioritize maps of military movements over investigative overviews. Political talk shows debate red lines instead of red-listed names.
The Logic of Media as an Ally of Power
It would be naive to attribute media failure exclusively to malicious intent. A far more prosaic mechanism is at work: the attention economy. An explosion, an aircraft carrier on the horizon, a presidential address on national security — all of this generates clicks, viewership, and shares. Complicated court documentation about abuse from the nineties, entangled with names that part of the audience dismisses as conspiracy theory, cannot win that competition.
The result is a structural asymmetry: a scandal that under normal circumstances would dominate front pages for months gets pushed into the lower third of the screen — or disappears entirely. Journalists who cover it are labeled partisan. Sources retreat. Publishers hesitate.
Every skilled communications strategist understood this logic long before the era of social media. Today, when the news cycle runs twenty-four hours and audience attention is measured in seconds, the effect is many times stronger.
Who Has an Interest in Forgetting
It would be a mistake to reduce the entire situation to a single actor or a single political party. Epstein’s network was bipartisan in the most literal sense. His circles were frequented by Democrats and Republicans alike, by liberals and conservatives, by Europeans and Americans. The interest in ensuring that the full depth of the affair is never properly examined is shared by people across the political spectrum.
That is also why resistance to the release of documents does not manifest as open obstruction — that would be too conspicuous. Instead, it takes the form of a series of technical delays, appeals to the privacy of still-living individuals, jurisdictional disputes between the courts and the executive branch, and vague references to security interests. Each step is defensible on its own. Together, they form a solid wall.
And if we add geopolitical developments that divert the public eye elsewhere, the wall becomes stronger still.
Wag the Dog as a Method of Governance
Wag the Dog was a satire, but its central thesis — that war can be staged as a political act — draws on a very real tradition. Historians are well acquainted with cases in which domestic crises correlate suspiciously with a rise in foreign aggression. There is no need to assume intent where opportunism suffices. A government does not need to explicitly plan a war as a distraction. It is enough if, in a moment of domestic trouble, it accepts the offer of military advisors who would otherwise be ignored.
The system allows for it. A president has considerably more room to maneuver on matters of national security than on domestic policy. Congress rallies in moments of crisis. The opposition fears appearing weak against a foreign enemy. The media switches into patriotic mode. Critics are silenced by the rhetorical instrument most effective in American politics: they are accused of allowing personal politics to override national security.
What Should Happen — But Probably Won’t
In an ideal world, the parallel unfolding of a geopolitical crisis and a domestic scandal would lead to intensified investigative coverage — not to its weakening. Journalists would recognize that it is precisely in the moments when a government speaks loudest about security threats that it is most important to watch what is happening at home.
Some of them are indeed doing that. Investigative desks, independent platforms, and foreign media — particularly those not burdened by dependence on the American advertising economy — continue their work. Documents are slowly being processed. Names are being verified. Victims are speaking.
But the mainstream news space? It is preparing to watch maps of military movements.
Epilogue: The Dog That Wags Its Master
The Wag the Dog metaphor assumes that the dog — that is, the public — is a passive, manipulable object. But that is not the whole truth. Social networks, alternative media, and the global accessibility of information mean that stories are harder to bury today than they once were. The Epstein documents have survived burial attempts repeatedly. Each time it seemed that interest had faded, a new batch of information arrived, a new testimony, a new lawsuit.
A scandal of this magnitude simply cannot be permanently hidden behind a war. It can only be delayed. And every delay, every geopolitical distraction, every news cycle devoted to missiles instead of names on a list — all of it will one day become part of the story itself.
History is full of wars that began at just the right moment. And full of journalists who figured it out too late.
