The New Yorker, which in October published an explosive exposé detailing decades of rape and sexual assault allegations against Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein, published a follow-up story on Weinstein’s “Army of Spies” on Monday.
Investigative journalist Ronan Farrow, whose Oct. 10 New Yorker piece added to allegations against Weinstein reported in the New York Times a few days earlier, reported on an extensive network of private investigators, media figures and members of Weinstein’s own staff used by the producer in attempts to suppress the stories about him.
One firm, Black Cube, used undercover private investigators to seek out those with allegations against Weinstein and, before they went public with them, attempt to create relationships and extract information in secretly taped conversations, to then deliver to Weinstein. One agent developed such a relationship with Rose McGowan, an actress who later publicly accused Weinstein of raping her.
A reported contract with the company, signed by a lawyer representing Weinstein, specified that “the project’s ‘primary objectives’ are to ‘provide intelligence which will help the Client’s efforts to completely stop the publication of a new negative article in a leading NY newspaper’” in addition to allegations in an upcoming book by McGowan.
