The Franklin Scandal

The Franklin Scandal: A Story of Powerbrokers, Child Abuse & Betrayal
By Nick Bryant
Published in January 2012
648 Pages
Thibault’s Score: 3/5

This book is a well written blend between a true crime book and a government coverup book.

In the early 1990s, a child sex trafficking ring implicated many powerful players in the republican party. This sex trafficking scandal, in many ways, echoes Jeffrey Epstein’s own ring. The FBI covered it up - and many police officers, private investigators, witnesses, and journalists investigating the case died under mysterious circumstances.

Only a single arrest was ultimately made - of a republican banker called Larry King (no relationship to the famous talk show host).

With the benefit of hindsight and two decades for things to calm down, award winning journalist Nick Bryant tracks down many of the surviving victims to fact check their stories. He then explains, day by day, what happened during the period from 1982 - 1991 when the Larry King sex trafficking ring unfolded.

Bryant gathers significant amounts of credible evidence that the sex trafficking ring was much larger than the one that was ultimately shut down by the FBI. He theorizes (with the benefit of both hindsight and significant evidence) that the FBI covered up the case. There are many reasons for a possible FBI coverup. First, the sex trafficking ring implicated many republicans during a 12 year long period of republican control of the US government. Second, some of the perpetrators seem like they may have had intelligence ties. Finally, US intelligence agencies have a long history of using sexual blackmail as a tool.

The book extensively describes how young girls from broken homes were found and groomed. First, they started by dating older guys who did illegal but mostly harmless activities such as smoking marijauna with them. Later, they were convinced to have sex with someone at parties. After that they would be blackmailed, threatened, and pimped out. The girls convinced themselves that they wanted to be prostitutes. Brainwashing and drug addiction did the rest. 

The most terrifying part of the book is not the actual sex trafficking. I think that everyone understands that horrible things happen and that there is evil in this world. The worst part was the degree to which the FBI at best was complacent, and at worst, helped cover up the crimes of powerful and wealthy people.

Reflecting on this book has made me think of a major historical problem that many governments have faced. Although Bryant doesn’t go into this, it is worth exploring. Sex trafficking in elite circles is one of the most important and underreported issues. People think of it in terms of sex and a small handful of crazy people. However, it goes much deeper. There is a sort of prisoner's dilemma that all political systems have - how do you get the most powerful people in a country to all coordinate to keep a secret. States have used many different tactics. When the cause seems righteous, states have used ideology. This worked well to keep the Manhattan Project as a secret - everyone implicated truly believed that Nazi Germany and Japan were threats. When the state had a secret police, they used fear. This worked well in the Soviet Union. Sometimes, states have used outright torture. The Byzantine Empire would gouge out the eyes of nobles who spread lies. But what if what is being covered up is mundane, clearly morally wrong, and very damaging to the state (something along the lines of insider trading). The solution is to implicate key elites in various crimes then blackmail them.

I discussed this with my boomer parents, and found the conversations to be somewhat frustrating. Their perspective likely reflects what normal educated Americans might believe. To understand why sex trafficking among the elites is relevant, you need a lot of additional context which can take years of study to truly start to understand. This context would include information about why secrecy is so important in the first place, why intelligence agencies don't just collect information about foreign adversaries (but actually play a significant role in controlling the population at home), how government psyops and coverups work, etc... My parents who lack this context fully concede that these sex trafficking rings are likely real, maybe even at a somewhat large scale. But they incorrectly assume it has no relevance to global geopolitics, the economy, and the life of ordinary people. Sex trafficking among the elites is as relevant to the outcome of state affairs as is NSA surveillance or CIA torture camps. It is a powerful - and misunderstood - tool.


The writing style is very good. I would recommend the book to someone interested in understanding the realities of deep state sex trafficking. I didn’t finish the book. It was just too much. Too many graphic depictions of sex, too many long winded interviews, etc… It was interesting but it was just a little but too much. After reading roughly 75% of the book, I had gotten what I hoped to get from it.

One thing that makes the book tedious is the extensive discussion of evidence, sources, etc… Books that make serious allegations require serious evidence. But it can also make the reading experience a little bit drab. Include it, and the book is boring. Exclude it, and the author goes from a credible journalist to a schizophrenic Qanon conspiracy theorist. If you read this book, I would recommend that the readers appreciate rather than downplay the extensive discussion of research methods.

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