Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators

by Ronan Farrow

“That kind of silence isn’t just wrong. It’s dangerous,” I wrote. “It sends a message to victims that it’s not worth the anguish of coming forward. It sends a message about who we are as a society, what we’ll overlook, who we’ll ignore, who matters and who doesn’t.”

“One more thing,” he said, after I thanked him for his time. “Watch your back. This guy, the people protecting him. They’ve got a lot at stake.” “I’m being careful.” “You don’t understand. I’m saying be ready, in case. I’m saying get a gun.” I laughed. He didn’t.

After the encounter with Weinstein, she remembered shaking, stopping by a bathroom, and beginning to weep. She caught a cab to her agent’s office and cried there, too. Then she and the agent went to the nearest police station. She remembered arriving, and telling the officers Weinstein’s name, and one saying, “Again?”

Weinstein wheedled and menaced and bullied and didn’t take no for an answer. But more than that, it was a smoking gun. It was inarguable. There he was, admitting not just to a crime but to a pattern. “I’m used to that.” “Ambra,” I said, slipping off the headphones. “We need to make this public.” I produced a USB drive from my pocket and slid it toward her across the countertop. “I can’t tell you what to do,” I said. “The decision is yours.” “I know that,” she replied. She closed her eyes, seemed to sway for a moment. “I will,” she said. “But not yet.”

“This is the most important story I’ve ever been on,” I texted her. “If I am late it’s because I have absolutely no choice.” After journalism, drama and being late were my great passions.

A former assistant who had been assigned to Weinstein part-time during his trips to London, and told me he’d sexually harassed her, initially felt talking wasn’t worth the risk of retribution. Her fears deepened as Weinstein’s associates began calling her “quite ferociously,” after twenty years of radio silence. “It’s very unsettling,” she told me. “He is on your tail.” But, paradoxically, the calls had made her want to help. “I didn’t want to talk,” she said. “But then, hearing from him, it made me angry. Angry that he still thinks he can silence people.”

Weinstein, he said, was “predatory,” and “above the law that applies to most of us and should apply to all of us.”

Auletta hadn’t captured all of the details of the story, but he’d gotten the bones of it right. I looked at his meticulously organized notes and felt, for a moment, emotional about the dusty boxes and the old secrets they held. I wanted badly to believe that news didn’t die, even when it was beaten back for so many years.

tried to think how to underline the stakes while conveying that I was a team player. “My sense is this is gonna come out,” I said, “and the question is whether it comes out with or without us sitting on the evidence we have.” A long silence. “You’d better be careful,” he said at last. “’Cause I know you’re not threatening, but people could think you’re threatening to go public.” I knew what he meant, but the choice of words struck me as odd. Weren’t we in the business of going public?

In hindsight, it’s clear. But in the moment, you don’t know how important a story is going to be. You don’t know if you’re fighting because you’re right, or because of your ego, and your desire to win, and to avoid confirming what everyone thought—that you were young, and inexperienced, and in over your head.

“Say,” he said, fumbling through a stack of AV paraphernalia and producing a silver rectangle, “you did have the interviews.” He slid across the desk a USB hard drive, with “Poison Valley” written in black Sharpie on one corner. “Rich…,” I said. He shrugged. “Backup.” I laughed. “They’re gonna fire you.” “Let’s be honest, neither of us is going to have a job after this.”

Remnick and Foley-Mendelssohn listened. Their reaction was the polar opposite of Oppenheim’s. There was a stunned quiet afterward. “It’s not just the admission,” Foley-Mendelssohn said finally. “It’s the tone, the not taking no for an answer.” “And NBC is letting you walk away with all this?” Remnick asked.

Weinstein laughed. “You couldn’t save someone you love, and now you think you can save everyone.” He really said this. You’d think he was pointing a detonator at Aquaman.

“You know, the press is as much part of our democracy as Congress or the executive branch or the judicial branch. It has to keep things in check. And when the powerful control the press, or make the press useless, if the people can’t trust the press, the people lose. And the powerful can do what they want.”