Yoni Koren

Lt. Col. Yoni Koren was a career Israeli military intelligence officer who conducted covert operations alongside the Mossad and served as Ehud Barak's chief aide and security coordinator for decades, remaining in reserve duty as a lieutenant colonel after formally leaving active service. He died on January 8, 2023. Drop Site News, drawing on leaked emails from Barak's inbox published by Distributed Denial of Secrets in October 2024 after being obtained by the Palestinian hacking group Handala, identified Koren in November 2025 as an individual who made at least three documented stays at Epstein's Manhattan apartment: in February 2013 (while serving as a senior aide to Barak, then Israeli Minister of Defense), in October 2014 (for approximately two weeks), and in September 2015 (for approximately ten days). Al Jazeera expanded the reporting in February 2026.

Epstein appears to have financed Koren's cancer treatment in 2012. Barak's emails show Epstein wiring funds directly to Koren's personal bank account for this purpose, an arrangement that placed Koren in a direct financial relationship with Epstein during a period when Barak was receiving tens of millions of dollars in investment funding from Epstein-connected vehicles. After leaving active duty, Koren functioned as an unofficial Washington fixer, brokering Barak's access to former CIA Director Leon Panetta and Panetta's senior adviser Jeremy Bash at the Panetta Institute for Public Policy. Drop Site News reported that Barak-Koren communications included language that researchers interpreted as potentially coded, possibly referencing intelligence-related activity in New York.

His role connects Epstein's residential infrastructure directly to both Israeli military intelligence and the upper tier of American intelligence leadership.