The Wire - September 4, 2025

//The Wire//2300Z September 4, 2025//
//ROUTINE//
//BLUF: SECOND MAJOR EARTHQUAKE STRIKES AFGHANISTAN. DUNDEE HATCHET GIRL VINDICATED AS BULGARIAN COUPLE ARRESTED FOR ASSAULT.//

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-International Events-

Afghanistan: This afternoon the USGS reported the detection of a 5.6M earthquake in the vicinity of Asadabad (a city in the eastern regions recently struck by the earlier earthquakes). 

Analyst Comment. This marks the third significant earthquake to strike the nation in a week. The recovery from the first major earthquake has continued as the fatality count tops 2,200x (and thousands more missing) over the past few days. No word yet on casualties caused by this most recent earthquake.

United Kingdom: The two individuals who were at the center of the recent Dundee "hatchet girl" scandal have been arrested. Two weeks ago, a 14-year-old Scottish girl was arrested on weapons charges following a viral video circulating, which showed the girl brandishing a knife and a hatchet to ward off a migrant who was following her. After two weeks, the migrant (who was threatening and harassing the girls) and another unidentified woman were arrested.

-HomeFront-

Washington D.C. - Several developments have taken place regarding the Epstein Scandal over the past few days. Roughly 33,000 documents were released by the House Oversight Committee yesterday on a Google Drive account. Most of the files appear to once again be files that were already released, or present significant challenges to comb through.

Analyst Comment: More time will be needed to determine exactly what was released in the latest round of Epstein documents. The choice to host these files on a regular consumer-grade Google Drive account instead of a legitimate governmental website is also an interesting decision, since Google Drive (and the backup provided, Dropbox) is not the best platform for sharing tens of thousands of files with millions of people. In short, for anyone interested in the files, what was hosted on Google Drive takes many hours to zip and download, whereas if it were hosted on a government website it would be easily downloadable in just a few minutes.

More broadly, this is really just a continuation of the current trend; various agencies and branches of government will continue to re-release the same files over and over again, in hopes that the American people will get exasperated and forget the whole thing. Or perhaps even more to-the-point, to encourage everyone to "not see the forest, for the trees". Enough documentation has *already been* released, and enough rhetoric from the highest office in the land has already been uttered, for the average American to make a decision as to what happened in this case, and what it means for the future of the nation.

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Analyst Comments: The Dundee case is a good reminder of how the benefit of the doubt often applies only one way. The knee jerk reaction of the police was to believe the Bulgarian man, who was very likely trying to traffic the children...and not the victim's testimony. When it comes to Scottish authorities, a tie goes to the unidentified migrant, so to speak. This will be a point worthy of consideration moving forward and these types of events continue.

As a reminder, the effort by all mainstream media sources to paint this girl as the aggressor was significant. Considering how serious the situation is, it is very likely that the girls' initial description of events paints a very dark picture, which is probably what led to the arrests of the adults in this case. Despite the initial details of this case largely being speculative, the wider context of these details is worthy of note for reasons that many people may not be aware of. 

The girls initially said that the Bulgarian man tried to solicit one of the three girls in the initial group. A