WEINSTEIN’S SPIES
FILM PRODUCER ALLEGEDLY HIRED PRIVATE SECURITY AGENCIES TO HELP HIM STOP ACCUSERS
Harvey Weinstein hired former spies and military personnel to stop his accusers going public with allegations of sexual misconduct.
The private detectives are said to have used fake identities and recorded conversations to build a picture of those making the claims, according to The New Yorker in a 5,300- word article published on its website Monday.
Titled Harvey Weinstein’s Army of Spies, journalist Ronan Farrow described a shadowy and elaborate intelligence operation commissioned by Weinstein to silence his accusers and suppress stories about his alleged serial abuse of actresses and other women. Actress Rose McGowan, who ultimately accused Weinstein of rape, was among those who said she was targeted by Weinstein’s cadre of private investigators.
Starting last fall, Farrow reported, Weinstein hired private security firms to gather information on McGowan and other women, as well as several journalists looking into his conduct. One of the companies was Kroll, the corporate i nvestigations and risk consulting firm based in Manhattan. The other was Black Cube, a Tel Aviv- based intelligence firm whose leaders include former officers of Mossad, Israel’s spy agency.
Weinstein monitored their work, the aim of which was, in effect, to bully people out of going public with the allegations, according to Farrow. “Weinstein had the agencies ‘ target,’ or collect information on, dozens of individuals, and compile psychological profiles that sometimes focused on their personal or sexual histories,” Farrow wrote. “He also enlisted former employees from his film enterprises to join in the effort, collecting names and placing calls that, according to some sources who received them, felt intimidating.”
The article says Weinstein tried to hide the effort by routing contracts with the firms through his lawyers, including the litigator David Boies.
Boies’ firm, Boies Schiller Flexner LLP, has represented The New York Times on other matters, and the newspaper released a stern statement about Boies’ involvement in the effort to undermine its reporting on Weinstein.
The New York Times says it’s i nexcusable that Boies’ firm tried to halt the newspaper’s investigation into the Hollywood mogul while it was also working on other matters for the newspaper.
Times spokeswoman Danielle Rhoades Ha called it a “grave betrayal of trust.” A spokesman for the firm did not immediately return a request for comment.
The Times first reported in early October that Weinstein faced sexual harassment and assault allegations stretching back nearly three decades and had reached at least eight settlements with women. Days later, The New Yorker ran Farrow’s first story, which described, among other things, conversa- tions with three women who claimed to have been raped by Weinstein. Dozens of other women have since come forward with similar claims.
Weinstein has denied allegations of nonconsensual sex. A spokeswoman told The New Yorker that he never retaliated against women for refusing his advances, and said later it was a “fiction to suggest that any individuals were targeted or suppressed at any time.”
Farrow’s story suggests that Weinstein’s intelligence- gathering operation was carried out in large part by Black Cube. The story detailed how an agent from the firm, posing as an executive of a wealth management company, had duped McGowan into meeting with her on several occasions. The woman, who called herself Diana Filip, said she was starting a women’s advocacy group and asked McGowan to help launch it, according to Farrow.
In reality, the woman was a former officer in the Israeli Defense Forces, Farrow wrote, citing anonymous sources. During their meetings, the woman appeared to have surreptitiously recorded McGowan and turned over more than 100 pages of transcripts to Weinstein. Weinstein’s spokesperson denied the claim.
Farrow reported t hat t he same woman contacted other reporters investigating Weinstein but identified herself as “Anna.” Cellphone numbers the woman provided McGowan have since been disconnected, and a website for the woman’s purported wealth management firm has gone dark, Farrow reported.
Black Cube was founded in 2010 by two former Israeli military intelligence officers, and most of i ts employees come from the country’s spy community. It specializes in intelligence gathering in white- collar criminal cases and litigation between large companies.
“Black Cube is a different breed of investigative company,” the Financial Times wrote of the firm in 2015. “It does not just gather information for its clients, the company builds a body of evidence focused on a particular lawsuit, corporate attack or threat, and is known for its tenacity.”
According to the Farrow’s story, Black Cube signed a contract agreeing to “provide intelligence which will help the Client’s efforts to completely stop the publication of a new negative article in a leading N.Y. newspaper” and to “obtain additional content of a book which ( is) currently being written and includes harmful negative information on and about the Client.”
The client was identified as Weinstein i n multiple documents, the newspaper was the Times, and the book was Brave, a forthcoming memoir by McGowan, Farrow reported.
Black Cube declined to comment on the story.
Ultimately, Weinstein’s efforts fell apart. More than 50 women have accused him of sexual misconduct. He has denied many of the claims.