A Wray of Light Through the Memory Hole: Lisa Monaco from FISA Files to Epstein

Lisa Monaco isn’t just a legal official—she’s an institutional architect of the post-9/11 surveillance state. Her fingerprints are etched into some of the most consequential decisions in U.S. national security: the legal architecture of FISA abuse, the suppression of classified information, the criminalization of journalism, and the unprecedented synchronization of health crises and executive power. From the shadows of FBI backrooms to the apex of pandemic enforcement, Monaco didn't merely enforce the system—she helped build it.

Lisa Oudens Monaco (born February 25, 1968, in Boston, Massachusetts) is an American attorney and national security expert whose career has been deeply rooted in public service, particularly within the U.S. Department of Justice. Raised in Newton, Massachusetts, Monaco developed a longstanding reputation for her leadership in counterterrorism, cybersecurity, and federal law enforcement policy. By July 2025, she will hold dual roles as a distinguished scholar in residence at NYU Law and a senior national security analyst for CNN.

Educated at Harvard University, where she earned her bachelor’s degree in 1990, and the University of Chicago Law School, where she received her Juris Doctor in 1997, Monaco quickly rose through the ranks of government service. Her most prominent appointment came in 2021, when President Joe Biden nominated her as Deputy Attorney General. Following her confirmation by the U.S. Senate on April 20, 2021, she assumed office the next day as the Department's second-highest official.

Lisa Monaco’s rise through the upper echelons of the U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI was marked by a steady accumulation of influence, trust, and responsibility during some of the nation’s most critical moments in counterterrorism and national security. From 2007 to 2009, as Chief of Staff to FBI Director Robert Mueller, Monaco embedded herself in the nerve center of America’s counterterrorism strategy—directly managing post-9/11 operations and legal coordination at the highest level. That proximity to intelligence infrastructure paved the way for her return to the DOJ, where she swiftly ascended from Associate Deputy Attorney General to become, by 2011, the first woman to lead the National Security Division. She became deeply embedded in the Bureau’s internal operations at a time when the agency was undergoing significant transformation following the 9/11 attacks. Her work involved shaping strategic decisions on intelligence, counterterrorism policy, and operational coordination, earning her a reputation for analytical rigor and discretion at the intersection of law enforcement and national security.

Following her tenure at the FBI, Monaco transitioned back to the Department of Justice, where she was appointed Associate Deputy Attorney General in 2009. In that capacity, and later as Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General, she played a central role in the DOJ’s oversight of national security investigations and criminal enforcement strategy. Her portfolio spanned an array of sensitive areas, including intelligence oversight, cybercrime, and interagency legal coordination, positioning her as one of the most trusted legal advisors within the department’s senior leadership circle.

In 2011, President Obama appointed Monaco as Assistant Attorney General for the National Security Division, making her the first woman ever to hold the post. Intense operational demands and high-stakes decisions defined her tenure. She oversaw all federal efforts to combat terrorism, espionage, and proliferation threats. Monaco also had jurisdiction over matters involving the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), giving her substantial influence over the legal architecture underpinning domestic surveillance. Under her leadership, the DOJ expanded and strengthened its cyber-prosecutor network, enabling more effective responses to state-sponsored hacking, digital espionage, and infrastructure attacks. She presided over several classified and high-profile national security cases during a volatile period in global security, solidifying her role as a key architect of the post-9/11 security state.

Between 2009 and 2013, Lisa Monaco held two of the most powerful roles in the Department of Justice related to national security and cyber enforcement—first as Associate Deputy Attorney General and then as Assistant Attorney General for National Security. In these positions, she not only helped shape the DOJ’s cybercrime and counterespionage strategy but also directly oversaw the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) process, intelligence coordination, and legal responses to the unauthorized disclosure of classified material. Her tenure coincided precisely with the rise of WikiLeaks and Julian Assange, whose publication of U.S. diplomatic cables and war logs in 2010 prompted the DOJ to begin building a legal framework for potential Espionage Act charges.

They let you pick the music, sure—but the steps were already written. What you call freedom is just rehearsed obedience in someone else’s routine.~Tore Maras

This quote of mine will make sense by the end of this reading.

PLANDEMIC “EXPERTISE”

Lisa Monaco played a significant role in the U.S. government's Ebola response in 2014–2015, working closely with Ron Klain, who had been appointed by President Obama as the official Ebola Response Coordinator, often referred to as the “Ebola Czar.” Their collaboration was both operational and strategic, unfolding during one of the most high-pressure public health crises of the Obama administration.

At the time, Monaco was serving in the White House as the Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Advisor to the President—a position that made her the top official responsible for coordinating national preparedness and response for pandemics, terrorism, natural disasters, and biosecurity threats. When the Ebola outbreak began to escalate internationally in 2014, particularly in West Africa, Monaco was among the first senior officials to raise internal alarms about the virus potentially reaching the United States. She briefed President Obama directly on the growing threat. She was instrumental in shaping the decision to elevate the crisis to a national security priority rather than treating it solely as a public health matter.

Monaco's role intensified after the first Ebola case was diagnosed on U.S. soil in Dallas, Texas, in September 2014. She was tasked with overseeing interagency coordination, ensuring that the CDC, HHS, DoD, and DHS were synchronized in their messaging, resource deployment, and emergency response planning. Media reports at the time show her working behind the scenes, urging the administration to establish a more centralized command structure to counter fragmented responses across agencies. It was under her guidance and urging that Obama appointed Ron Klain as the Ebola Czar in October 2014—a move designed to streamline communication between agencies and offer a unified front to the public and the world.

Their partnership was highly complementary. Klain, who came from a political and legal background and had previously served as Chief of Staff to Vice President Biden, was brought in for his management acumen and ability to coordinate rapidly. Monaco remained the senior-most national security official in the loop, translating the public health emergency into actionable policy frameworks, managing the risk matrix across borders, and providing the President with daily updates. Reports indicate that while Klain handled the logistics and operational execution of the U.S. response, Monaco continued to offer the overarching threat analysis and ensured the response aligned with homeland security protocols.

One well-documented moment of their coordination occurred during the drafting and implementation of travel protocols for passengers arriving from West Africa. Monaco worked with Klain, CDC Director Tom Frieden, and DHS to implement enhanced airport screenings and to develop a tracking system for individuals potentially exposed to the virus. She also coordinated the DOJ’s role in ensuring quarantine and isolation procedures could be enforced legally, should the need arise.

Lisa Monaco became Deputy Attorney General (DAG) on April 21, 2021. She entered a Biden administration where her former colleague, Ron Klain, was serving as White House Chief of Staff, and the U.S. was still deeply entangled in the COVID-19 pandemic. Their collaboration, once forged during the 2014 Ebola crisis, now reemerged in a more powerful and entrenched form—this time with Monaco overseeing core components of the Justice Department’s operational response, and Klain orchestrating White House pandemic policy at the executive level.

Although the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the White House COVID-19 Response Team led much of the public-facing medical guidance and vaccine distribution infrastructure, Lisa Monaco played a critical role in the legal, regulatory, and enforcement apparatus behind the scenes. As DAG, she was responsible for overseeing the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, Criminal Division, and Office of Legal Counsel, and coordinating with federal law enforcement agencies, including the FBI and the Bureau of Prisons. Her influence extended over pandemic-related civil enforcement actions, fraud prosecutions, data privacy concerns related to vaccine records, and guidance on mandatory vaccination enforcement within federal institutions and contractors.

Monaco’s DOJ formally supported the Biden administration’s controversial vaccine mandates for federal workers and federal contractors, which were implemented via executive order in September 2021. DOJ attorneys under her authority defended the mandates in court, arguing for the federal government’s power to impose such requirements under public health and administrative law. In internal briefings and published memos, DOJ maintained that vaccine enforcement efforts—especially regarding compliance within the federal workforce—were to be carried out with support from agencies under Monaco’s supervision, including the U.S. Marshals Service and the Bureau of Prisons. She also directed resources toward prosecuting pandemic relief fraud, a growing area of white-collar crime that emerged from abuse of the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and Economic Injury Disaster Loans (EIDL).

Her role wasn’t limited to enforcement. Monaco also helped shape the DOJ’s position on how pandemic-related data—such as vaccination status and digital health credentials—should be handled under existing privacy laws, including HIPAA and federal data-sharing protocols. She oversaw cybercrime units tracking ransomware attacks against hospitals and health systems, many of which were carried out by foreign actors during the height of the pandemic. In essence, Monaco navigated the legal and operational terrain that enabled the Biden White House, under Klain's direction, to implement and enforce its pandemic response through legal channels.

Their previous working relationship during the Ebola outbreak meant that Monaco and Klain already understood each other’s roles in public health crisis management. The difference in 2021 was scale: instead of tracking inbound travelers from West Africa, they were now co-managing the largest vaccine rollout in American history under layers of executive authority, federal contracting, digital recordkeeping, and civil enforcement. While Monaco rarely appeared in public COVID-19 briefings, her fingerprints were evident in everything from the DOJ’s defense of vaccine mandates to the investigative frameworks behind pandemic fraud, the enforcement of OSHA rules, and the intersection of biometric surveillance and public health policy.

This seamless coordination between Lisa Monaco and Ron Klain—refined during the Ebola outbreak and scaled during the COVID-19 pandemic—did more than manage a crisis; it established a new framework of control. Through their entwined roles, they demonstrated how legal authority, health policy, and federal enforcement could be synchronized and executed with surgical precision, largely shielded from public scrutiny. What emerged was not merely a response to a pandemic, but the activation of a governing model—one that blurred the line between public mandate and private enforcement, federal power and corporate infrastructure.

Monaco’s command over the DOJ’s machinery ensured that every legal obstacle to executive pandemic authority was preemptively neutralized, while Klain’s White House served as the operational nerve center. Behind the scenes, the mechanisms they refined relied heavily on private entities operating with government access, but without government constraints. In the days ahead, I will show how this model—rooted in quasi-public privatization—enables a select few to wield federal authority without federal accountability. Through hybrid entities that masquerade as private while functioning as public extensions, they impose policies, control infrastructure, and surveil populations behind a corporate veil. This is not governance in the traditional sense—it is control through delegation, disguised as innovation, and reinforced by plausible deniability.

ASSANGE LEAD

While Monaco did not personally sign the final indictment against Assange, which came years later under the Trump administration, the legal theories at the core of that prosecution—alleging that the act of publishing, or assisting in the acquisition of classified material, constituted a national security threat—were forged under her leadership. Under Monaco’s direction, the DOJ laid the legal foundation for redefining investigative journalism as espionage and an Orwellian threshold that continues to chill press freedom to this day. As the DOJ's top national security official at the time, she would have reviewed and likely shaped internal arguments regarding whether and how to treat Assange as a prosecutable figure, blurring the line between journalism and espionage. Years later, as Deputy Attorney General under President Biden, Monaco had the apparent authority to reevaluate or terminate the Assange extradition effort. Instead, the DOJ, under her guidance, continued to pursue his extradition aggressively, reaffirming the prosecutorial posture that her earlier work had helped construct. Her work helped codify a chilling precedent: journalism could be redefined as treason if it embarrassed the state.