The Catch and Kill Podcast with Ronan Farrow

Igor Ostrovskiy is a private investigator in New York. In 2017, he was contracted to surveil Ronan Farrow on behalf of a secret client. Igor would eventually learn that the secret client was Black Cube, an Israel-based agency with roots in the Mossad, and they were working on behalf of Harvey Weinstein. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Rich McHugh was a veteran TV news producer when he teamed up with Ronan Farrow, then a correspondent at NBC News, as he began reporting on Harvey Weinstein. McHugh didn’t expect that the assignment would lead to him witnessing what he believes to be a historic example of a major news outlet killing a story—when executives ordered him and Farrow to stand down. Now, McHugh tells a new part of his story, about what happened when Farrow took the investigation to the New Yorker and McHugh stayed behind to watch from the inside as NBC dealt with the fallout. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In 2015, Ambra Gutierrez agreed to do something that terrified her. A day after she told police that Harvey Weinstein had assaulted her, she decided to participate in a sting operation designed to extract a confession from the Hollywood executive. But those hours of dodging and weaving to escape Weinstein’s advances—and the threat he'd discover the wire she was wearing—would turn out to be just the beginning of a multi-year saga that pitted Gutierrez against powerful interests in Hollywood and law enforcement that seemed to want her evidence buried. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In 2017, Rowena Chiu declined requests for interviews from Ronan Farrow and other reporters. Chiu was 24 years old when she took a job as an assistant to Harvey Weinstein. It was only a matter of weeks before she found herself in a situation that would change the course of her life. In this episode, Chiu recounts her alleged assault, the effort to silence her through a non-disclosure agreement, and the forces that kept her from speaking to journalists for 20 years. She and others with allegations against Weinstein discuss the complex pressures that prevent sources from coming forward. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Harvey Weinstein’s criminal trial is underway in New York City. While the allegations against him were finally made public in October 2017, whispers of Weinstein’s alleged abuse go back decades. And so does the reporting on it. In this episode, we look at the small but dogged community of journalists who spent years trying to break the story open, including two who got tantalizingly close, The New Yorker's Ken Auletta and The Hollywood Reporter's Kim Masters. Taken together, their stories represent a decades-long, cross-country hunt for the hardest truth in Hollywood. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices