Harvey Weinstein Hired Private Investigators, Former Spies to Discredit Accusers, Journalists

When Ronan Farrow appeared opposite Stephen Colbert on his The Late Show Friday night, the investigative journalist promised that a new Harvey Weinstein piece was coming, one that would explore "this machine that was so instrumental in keeping this quiet as long as it was quiet — I think there is much more to be said about just how far that went." On Monday, The New Yorker, home to Farrow's two other investigations into Weinstein's history of sexual misconduct, published a new explosive investigation on its website Monday night titled "Harvey Weinstein's Army of Spies."It's a 5,300 word intricately woven report with details examining just what Farrow teased — the "machine" of private investigators and attorneys who worked for months to suppress allegations that Weinstein had acted improperly with women.It is known that Weinstein has for years leaned on an aggressive team of lawyers, confidentiality agreements, financial settlements and bullying tactics in attempts to keep women from coming forward, but what has not been made public until today, through this story, is that he also employed two intelligence companies Kroll and Black Cube, the latter of which promotes itself as "a select group of veterans from the Israeli elite intelligence units."According to Farrow's story, Weinstein began engaging the firms in the fall of 2016, showing how long the now-disgraced mogul had been working to silence or scare his accusers and the journalists investigating the long whispered about claims.Farrow writes that he reviewed "dozens of pages of documents" and confirmed with seven people involved in the effort that Weinstein had hired the companies.He also reports that Weinstein, or the firms, also employed freelance journalists to conduct "interviews" with various women, including Rose McGowan and Annabella Sciorra, and report back information that could help Weinstein."The explicit goal of the investigations, laid out in one contract with Black Cube, signed in July, was to stop the publication of the abuse allegations against Weinstein that eventually emerged in The New York Times and The New Yorker," Farrow reports."Over the course of a year, 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.Weinstein monitored the progress of the investigations personally.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." Rose McGowan, who has said she was raped by Weinstein in a hotel room during the 1997 Sundance Film Festival, figures prominently in Farrow's story and the actress-turned-activist goes on the record to describe her troubling interactions with operatives from Black Cube who used false identities to secure information from her, including details and/or pages from her forthcoming memoir, titl