REPORTERS: Harvey!
Harvey! Harvey!
This Sunday the 90th Academy Awards will take place.
For the first time in many years, one power figure
will not be welcome.
More than 100 women have now come forward with stories
of sexual harassment, assault and rape going back decades.
I just remember feeling so small.
And so inconsequential, and so powerless.
Had me groped.
Very tired.
I was trying to resist and say no.
You know in that moment that you may not make it.
It's not about sex.
It's not about sex, it's always about power.
It's part and parcel of doing business in Hollywood.
This is a filthy stables and Harvey is merely the guy who has taken
the biggest dump in it.
This is the inside story of how one of Hollywood's most powerful men
suppressed allegations of sexual abuse for decades.
Harvey Weinstein had an incredibly complex machine designed to maintain
silence around this.
We got very angry and said, I've investigated you,
and you're not so clean, so be careful.
It saddens me that everyone woke up because of Harvey Weinstein.
On the other hand, thank God we've woken up.
I was just out of acting school, going on auditions
and pounding the pavement.
The first time I met him was in his office.
It was at a meeting set up by my agents.
The first moments of that meeting were very easy, breezy, casual.
And I felt very much like he was going to take care of me.
It was 1994.
Actress Katherine Kendall thought she was about to get her big break.
She'd been invited by Harvey Weinstein to a movie screening.
He sent his driver to collect her.
Once I got there, I realised it wasn't a special screening
with cast and crew.
It was just a movie.
I knew I'd been had. I mean, I knew I'd been tricked.
I wanted to leave.
He said, I'll take you home.
We ended up stopping at his house.
And then I ended up going up, probably against my better judgment.
Once I was in there, we had an hour-long conversation
about movies and film and books.
It was almost like he had my playlist.
And he knew exactly what book to talk about.
And he knew that book, the way I knew that book.
And he knew who to quote and what passage to quote.
And he knew the author, and he had the rights
to that book, actually.
He was going to make a movie of that book.
I kind of got up to leave, or get my stuff.
And he went into the other room and he came back with a robe on.
And the robe was just an open robe.
I didn't even look to see, you know...
I was just so stunned.
There was no, like, suave moves or anything.
There was just a really weird, awkward, "Will
you give me a massage?"
I had to say, just no.
He said, well, a lot of other people do it.
I mean, so-and-so does it all the time, and she's one
of my really good friends.
I said no, I'm not comfortable.
At one point he said...
If you won't let me kiss you or touch you or something, God,
I don't know, will you at least lift up your shirt and show me your tits?
He left the room and he came back.
And this time when he came back, he was just fully naked.
I thought, he's coming after me.
You know in that moment that you may not make it.
I said, you know, I can't believe you're doing this to me.
You are undermining me in a way that is so painful, you know?
And he...
I mean...
I don't know if he heard me, but he may have.
I was able to finally get a way out.
I knew that if I went up against Harvey Weinstein,
just instinctually, I would be squashed.
So, I was scared.
So, I didn't say anything.
To the people that might have been able to help me.
It began in Buffalo.
It all began in Buffalo.
It was a brash young fellow from Flushing, Queens,
who arrived here as an 18-year-old freshman at the
University of Buffalo.
I believe he only put in a year before he was just kind
of mesmerised by all of the opportunities
that awaited him here.
In Buffalo, Harvey Weinstein built up a successful career
in the music business.
Then, in 1980, he made his first film.
24-year-old Paula Wachowiak applied to be an intern.
And he said, how would you like to work on a movie I'm making?
So, I was excited.
I thought, yeah.
It was a gory film about a guy that comes back for revenge
and murders people.
During filming, Paula says she was asked to take some cheques
to Harvey Weinstein's hotel room for him to sign.
I opened the door.
He was standing there, and he had a hand towel around his waist.
So, all these things started flying through my head, how calm
he was without his clothes on.
Which to me seemed unusual.
I handed him the folder, and he dropped the hand towel.
And all the while he's asking me questions about cheques.
And he sat down on the bed.
And he plopped the folder on his lap.
And then he started saying, what about this one?
And he's pointing.
And I'm not going to look down.
So I say, which one is that, Harvey?
Then he said, I have a crick in my shoulder.
He said, could you give me a massage, could
you rub it out for me?
And at that point I looked at him and I said, Harvey,
I don't think that's in my job description.
At the end of the shoot, he said to me, just in this tone...
IN A SMUG AND FLIRTATIOUS TONE: So, was it the high point
of your internship to see me naked?
And I looked at him and I was like, Harvey, no, you disgust me.
And he laughed.
Harvey Weinstein soon left Buffalo for New York City.
Here, with his brother Bob, he grew the company that
would make them famous - Miramax.
They saw themselves as artists.
Outsiders to the Hollywood system.
At Miramax we are not under that corporate pressure to say, Jesus,
we've got to go up each year.
We can do what we think is good, and if our profits are lower next
year than they were the year before, so what.
So what, as long as we did good work.
I first met Harvey when he started to come over to the UK.
What made Harvey so successful is there is nobody around
who works harder than him.
Seemed to be able to speed read, could consume books,
articles, films, scripts, at a phenomenal rate.
Seems to have a photographic memory.
And he used that to power this kind of insatiable lust for success.
Miramax's niche became making the kind of movies that mainstream
Hollywood studios had ignored.
With a script or a book, I try to do what would appeal to me.
And I'm not here to do the mainstream movies.
I want to take the audience on an incredible journey.
He became, basically, the quality judge for a lot
of independent cinema for many, many years.
At least two decades.
And it was because he had an instinct for intense emotions.
And he could understand the basic nature of drama in ways that many
business people wouldn't.
Come on, we got 'em.
Miramax was working with some of Hollywood's top talent.
In 1992, Sean Young starred in their new film, Love Crimes.
Who are you?
District attorney, asshole.
It was about a man who poses as a photographer so he
could prey on women.
I play a character who discovers this sexual predator
and then tracks them down.
The wire went out, I wanted to get him on a felony
and I needed him on tape.
I was sitting in Harvey's office after the picture.
And this is the only time this has ever happened
to me, he pulled his...
Thing out, and my response was, you know, Harvey.
I really wouldn't be pulling that thing out,
because it's really not pretty.
And I got up and I left.
Actresses are expected to be obedient, talented, and,
depending on the person, available.
But I upset a few important men.
And the trajectory of my career went wooo...
The reason I didn't get another movie with Harvey Weinstein was that
I made him feel foolish.
In 1993, Harvey Weinstein cut a deal that gave Miramax
massive financial clout.
They were now being bankrolled by the Disney company.
Miramax was one of the hottest production companies in the world.
And Harvey Weinstein was its leading man.
Working at Miramax was like being in a cult.
The cult of Harvey.
I took the job in 1995 as president of production for Miramax.
It was a long process of seduction from Harvey.
I knew I was making a deal with the devil.
I knew he was a bully.
I knew he was a dangerous character.
But I knew also that he was at the epicentre
of where I wanted to be.
Once the deal was done, everything changed.
In one of my first production meetings at Miramax,
Harvey was getting angrier and angrier, as he often did.
He turned to me, his president of production and said,
"Well, what do you think, Mr President of production?!"
So, immediately shrinking me to kind of micro size.
And then he proceeded to say something else.
I said, Harvey, that's not true.
And that was a cue for a tirade of abuse, basically.
Which, you know...
I still remember with horror.
People that I knew within the company were afraid.
They all knew that they had the potential to work
on great movies, OK?
And the question was always, is that worth it?
Oh, my love.
I thought you were dead.
A part in a Miramax film could mean artistic
credibility, fame and awards.
In 1998, 26-year-old Gwyneth Paltrow appeared in Shakespeare In Love.
The movie propelled her to international stardom
and won both Paltrow and Harvey Weinstein an Oscar.
This is a movie about life and art.
And art and life combining is called Magic.
However, an ugly story had begun to circulate around Hollywood.
We had heard that Gwyneth Paltrow had been assaulted.
We heard it from a director who was very upset about it.
And we thought, well, yeah, we've got to try and do this.
Kim Masters was a journalist working in Hollywood
with contacts inside Miramax.
Intermittently we would call someone we knew who worked
there, someone who left.
But it was just, there was no path forward at that point at all.
If you called their publicist and said I want to talk
to Gwyneth Paltrow because I heard she was attacked by Harvey
Weinstein, you can imagine how that phone call would go.
It would be short.
Last year, Gwyneth Paltrow went on the record about the rumours.
She didn't accuse Harvey Weinstein of assault but told reporters that
when she was 22 years old he had sexually harassed her.
He'd suggested a massage in his hotel bedroom,
which she'd refused.
I remember one executive saying that there are people
who are famous, and there are people who are not famous.
And I was, like, OK the famous people are not going to want to go
there, but what about those who are not famous.
So, the question was who were they, and we never got a name.
I mean, we never got a single name.
Harvey Weinstein had a small army of assistants,
usually young women.
Bright and ambitious, but with little experience
in the world of work.
For four years, Zelda Perkins was employed in Miramax's London office.
He had a repertoire that included constant requests of massage,
constantly appearing in the room undressed.
His first meeting would usually be 8:30 in the morning,
and generally when you turned up he would still be in bed.
So, he would have a habit of trying to grab you from the bed
and say come on, you know, come and have a cuddle,
come and lie down.
The first time that I travelled alone abroad with him,
he insisted that I went into the bathroom while he had a
sauna because he needed to do work.
And he was reeling off names of all the actresses that he had had
some sort of sexual relations with, or had given him
massages, or whatever.
And I remember looking round at him and saying,
how do you look at yourself in the mirror?
How do you do that?
I can remember him looking back at me utterly nonplussed,
and saying I have no problem at all.
The Venice Film Festival in 1998 was when things
really came to a head.
I had a new colleague with me who was there to assist with Harvey.
She came to me in a very distressed state, and told me
that he had assaulted her, that he had attempted to rape her.
I was completely sideswiped by this, because I honestly never
believed that Harvey would physically overpower anybody.
I went straight to Harvey and confronted him, and he swore
on the life of his wife and children that absolutely
nothing had happened.
I was very aware of his tactics, and swearing on the life of his wife
and children was a very familiar get out of jail card.
Back in the UK, Zelda and her colleague quit Miramax
and took legal advice.
There didn't seem to be any recourse in terms
of bringing Harvey to justice.
We had no physical proof, we hadn't gone to the police in Venice.
Really the only option that we were given was to request damages.
During the negotiations, Zelda and her colleague agreed
a payment of £125,000 each.
They were asked to sign a nondisclosure agreement,
common in many media organisations.
But her agreement went further than most.
This wasn't a normal confidentiality agreement.
This wasn't us saying that we weren't going to give
away corporate secrets.
This was a deeply personally binding agreement.
Harvey Weinstein has admitted that over the last 30 years he's
settled up to nine claims of harassment against him.
When he settled with Zelda Perkins, it was his brother and Miramax
co-founder Bob Weinstein who provided the money.
He has said that he believed it was to conceal affairs.
The use of NDAs on behalf of Weinstein was an enabling factor.
It allowed him to silence complaining victims and just see it
as a cost of doing business.
And learning that he could successfully use NDAs to buy
silence, he also knew that he had nothing to fear from continuing
with the behaviour that led to the problem in the first place.
And again, and again, and again.
Zelda had been silenced, but she was determined to fight back.
She wanted better protection for women in the company
and a clause in the agreement that could see him fired
if he paid off anyone else.
And that wasn't all.
We insisted that he had to go to therapy, and I had to be present
in the first therapy session to make sure that he talked
about the issues, and that there had to be a big new HR policy that
informed all employees of their rights.
Zelda successfully pushed through most of her demands,
but when it came to the therapy sessions there was a stalemate.
They kept holding us off and holding us off,
and to be honest I was exhausted and pretty broken from
the whole experience.
And I gave up, I gave up pushing, and I actually...
I went abroad for a while.
And so I have no idea whether he complied
with the therapy or not.
So you take your cheque, and you try to deal
with it as best you can.
He got away with it for years just on the strength of that.
Only a small circle of people knew about the allegations being levelled
against Harvey Weinstein.
However, some of those who worked for him were beginning
to connect the dots.
I think we were all complicit because you were in there,
you are in the company, it was part of doing
business at Miramax.
My memory is that I was fully aware that Harvey was a serial womaniser,
that there would be times when you'd be kicked out of the suite
of the Savoy or the Peninsula Hotel in LA, and he would entertain.
But I think it didn't take too much brain power to put it together that
a man who was so abusive and bullying in every aspect
of his life would bring that abuse into the sexual arena.
I think, looking back, that I did know and I chose to suppress it.
I chose to hide from that fact.
Could I have done anything at the time?
Well, I know that I prevented my assistant being called
to the Savoy Hotel late at night.
I said no, you can't go.
So, obviously I was aware of that.
I didn't have the guts to do anything about it,
I think the deal I'd made with the devil was to my advantage.
Harvey Weinstein was now Hollywood's most powerful
independent film producer, and a regular at film festivals.
At Cannes, his films had won the top prize three times.
A number of women also say they were harassed or assaulted
by Harvey Weinstein here.
In 1998, I was 24, modelling around the world.
I thought I was tough.
Zoe Brock joined the head of her modelling agency
on a private trip to Cannes.
She hoped it would help her career.
I flew to the south of France, and we were taken into
the Majestic Hotel to have dinner.
That was where I was sat next to Harvey.
As the evening was drawing to a close, Zoe's friends got
into a taxi and she says Harvey Weinstein offered her a lift.
Then Harvey told us that he'd spoken to everybody
and that they were going to join us at the Du Cap, where he was staying,
which is 30 minutes out of Cannes and quite remote.
My friends were never coming.
That was a blatant lie.
When they arrived at the hotel, Harvey Weinstein's
entourage also melted away.
Zoe believes that he engineered the evening so that she would
end up alone with him.
I was in this crazy old hotel in the middle of nowhere,
and I remember sobering up, fast.
And then Harvey walked back in and he was naked.
And that's a sight.
And I think Harvey knows what a sight that is,
and that's part of it.
You know?
It's stunning, it's stunning and discombobulating,
because this person has been acting like a mentor, making you feel
like you're fabulous.
And all of a sudden there's a dick in your face, literally.
So he's negotiating, he's negotiating massage.
I want a massage, come on give me a massage.
You know, let me give you a massage.
And he's rapid-fire and he takes control of the situation.
I very cautiously and unwillingly let him manoeuvre me
into his bedroom, and he started to massage my shoulders.
Within seconds I knew that there was no way this
was happening, and I got up, and I bolted into the bathroom.
And he chased me.
I remember locking the door and him being on the other
side of it and banging.
That's when I strangely channelled this weird anger,
and I was fucking furious.
I screamed at him, put your fucking clothes on you naughty fucking boy!
And I meant it.
And it worked.
I came out of the bathroom and he was apologising,
and he started to cry.
He said something that I have never forgotten,
and I never will for the rest of my days, in between his tears,
"you don't like me because I'm fat."
Harvey Weinstein has not denied Zoe Brock's allegations, but says
she is publicising her lawsuit for damages against him.
The number of women allegedly harassed by Harvey Weinstein
was growing, but it was still only industry insiders who had
heard the stories.
And if journalists got too close, Harvey Weinstein had friends
who could help him out.
Harvey liked to have a good relationship with the media.
I guess because I'm a Brooklyn guy and he's a Queens guy,
and most gossip columnists tend to be gay or women or Brits,
and I was none of those things, he took to me.
We'd spend some time on the phone shooting the breeze
about what went on last night, where were the parties,
what did you do.
You know, just a couple of guys talking.
Benza says he'd heard nothing about sexual misconduct,
but he did pick up a tip about his friend having an affair.
I called him and he said it's not true, it's not true, it's not true.
And then he called back and said OK, there's something to it.
Let's try to work this out.
And he said look, I can't afford this bad publicity,
I can't afford it.
Benza says they cut a deal.
He was paid to supply celebrity gossip to Harvey Weinstein
so he could trade it with reporters who dug up dirt on him.
The gossip industry is run on the barter system.
If I've got a story about you and you don't
want to print it you say hold it, I'll get you something better.
And I'll say, you've got an hour.
And you'll come back in 15 minutes with a better story,
and I'll print the other story and save you.
That's done every day.
So what Harvey and I were doing, it's always done.
Harvey Weinstein denies there was any such deal.
TINA BROWN: The real Harvey was a very dark, very paranoid man.
He was just obsessed with knowing where the remote glimmer of a piece
of bad press came from.
And I mean really trivial.
In 1999, Harvey Weinstein had acquired a new way
to control his public image.
He set up his own magazine and a publishing house.
It was my idea to create a magazine that was a search engine
culturally for movies, documentaries that could be a place
as a centre of thought.
That's about the best thing that I ever came up with,
the rest of it is Tina Brown's.
When I went to work for him, I found that the creativity
was really completely a sidebar.
The fact is that he really just wanted to control me and it.
For him to have a magazine like Talk was a way for him surround himself
in press protection.
Tina Brown believed that he was commissioning articles
from journalists who had stories about him he didn't want published.
I would be continually getting calls from journalists who would say,
"I saw Harvey last night and he commissioned a piece
for me about whatever."
And I would think, I don't want you writing for this magazine.
I mean, it was usually some gossip columnist or some kind
of somewhat nefarious writer of tabloid journalism.
Over in the publishing division, Tina Brown discovered that
Harvey Weinstein was giving out book deals to people who
had never written before.
One of them was a stewardess on a Miramax plane.
So it was, what was that for?
Was it because she'd seen things he wanted to make sure didn't come
to the light of day?
Or was she somebody that he found attractive?
I had no idea, but there was this book advance with no due date.
That was the clue.
Despite Harvey Weinstein's control of parts of the press,
journalist Kim Masters was still pursuing her story.
I met him at the Peninsula Hotel for the first time face-to-face.
I had written something he didn't like, so he comes in very
aggressive, yelling and screaming.
"Why do you write this shit about me?!
What have you heard about me?"
And I sort of had this now or never think, and I said,
"I've heard you raped women."
He did not seem shocked or outraged.
You would expect a normal person to say, what, how dare you.
There was none of that at all.
Harvey Weinstein confirms this exchange took place.
He says he denied it and wasn't shocked because he was already aware
of a rape allegation, which he says was false.
He kind of believed, as he did with reason for years to come,
that he was going to be untouchable.
In 2002, four years after leaving Miramax, Harvey Weinstein's former
assistant Zelda Perkins got a call out of the blue.
I picked up the phone and this gentleman asked me directly
about whether I had an agreement with Harvey Weinstein.
She was frightened.
And when I got her on the phone, she was really terrified.
How did you find me?
I think I might have even said, yes, when he said, do
you have an agreement with Harvey, and then panicked and said,
no, no I haven't.
Yes I have!
No I haven't!
I can't talk to you.
I just knew that one thing I absolutely, on fear of death,
I wasn't allowed to talk to a journalist.
Zelda Perkins did not say any more to Ken Auletta.
But like Kim Masters before him, he confronted Harvey Weinstein.
I said, Harvey, tell me about Zelda Perkins.
He rose and he clenched his fists and he raised his shoulders
and he said, "This is a f..."
You can imagine "..an outrage," and he started screaming at me.
So I thought, he's going to throw a punch at me.
So I stood up.
And at that point, Harvey started to cry.
It was extraordinary.
And what he said was, Ken, you're going to ruin my marriage.
These were consensual relationships and if you publish this you're
going to destroy my family.
I wish I could have nailed the guy in 2002.
The problem I had was that I couldn't prove it.
Clearly, people knew or suspected that Harvey
was a predator, a sexual predator.
And they kept their mouths shut.
Three years later, Bob and Harvey Weinstein left Miramax
and started the Weinstein Company.
There followed an award winning run of commercial and critical hits.
Thank you, Harvey Weinstein.
And of course, Harvey.
Harvey, thank you for killing whoever you had to kill
to get me up here today.
LAUGHTER.
I just want to thank my agent, Kevin Huvane,
and God - Harvey Weinstein.
LAUGHTER.
APPLAUSE.
Feted by Hollywood's A-list, he was
still able to persuade young actresses to meet him in hotel
rooms. Often here in Beverly Hills.
The Peninsula Hotel served as not just an office
for Harvey Weinstein when he was in LA, outside
of the official office for his company, but also was kind
of ground zero for his predatory behaviour.
In 2011, he invited actress Jessica Barth
for a business meeting here.
He said that there was a role in Sarah Jessica Parker's new film.
And then it very quickly shifted to asking me to give him
a naked massage in the bed.
And I was like, I'm married.
I said, you are too, right?
And he said, yes, but we have an arrangement.
I said, you know what, Harvey,
I'm about done with this conversation right now.
So I left, I shut the door, and I burst into tears.
I told my mother, and she was devastated for me.
And then I told Seth MacFarlane.
He was a close friend of mine.
Good morning.
I'm Seth MacFarlane, the host of the Oscars.
The 2012 nominees for best performance by an actress
in a supporting role are...
When I first saw Seth say the joke at the Academy Awards I was shocked.
Congratulations, you five ladies no longer have to pretend to be
attracted to Harvey Weinstein.
LAUGHTER
I was like, good, I'm glad he just did that.
I don't think people knew the extent of what this man was capable of.
He definitely had a reputation in Hollywood, but I guess
they still wanted to make movies and collect their awards
and go on their merry way.
Harvey Weinstein has not denied Jessica Barth's account.
Stories about Harvey Weinstein's predatory behaviour were now
well known in Hollywood.
He commanded a movie empire and was also growing a TV division,
working with broadcasters around the world, including the BBC.
His longest running show is Project Runway.
Welcome to the runway.
As you know, in fashion, one day you're in,
and the next day, you're out.
Aspiring models and designers fought it out to launch their careers.
I mean, as a man, I can tell you that I like
girls to look like that.
It's my belief that Harvey has structured his professional life
in order to have access to women.
He's used the movie industry to have access to women.
And he's done exactly the same thing with the modelling industry.
In 2014, Kadian Noble was building a career as a model.
She first met Harvey Weinstein at a Bafta party in London.
There's Oprah Winfrey, there's Naomi Campbell.
The champagne is flowing.
There is everyone just gliding across the room.
I was stood by the bar when Harvey looked at me and he called me over,
is he talking to me!
He said to me, it's going to be good for you, I have
something in mind for you.
I was just thinking, oh my god, oh my god,
this is really happening.
The next time I bumped into Harvey Weinstein was May 2014
at the Cannes Film Festival.
I was in the lobby at the Majestic Hotel.
And he approached me and again, I am, oh my God.
He said he hadn't had time to look at my showreel
but if I was willing to go up with him to have a look at it.
Of course I have it with me, why not.
We walked it up to his room, his suite.
He asked me to have a seat on the sofa.
He then looked at me and said, I want to know
that you really like me.
And I said to him, what do you mean?
I was really confused because I'm thinking, what do you mean?
Genuinely, genuinely confused.
Then he gripped my arm in a forceful way.
Really holding onto my arm.
He led me into the bathroom.
Kadian says that Harvey Weinstein then sexually assaulted her.
He pulled my dress down and I wasn't wearing a bra.
He was rubbing my breast.
He had me gripped.
Very tight.
And I was trying to resist and say no.
I was saying, why.
He was telling me to relax, relax.
He was using his leg to stroke my vagina from behind.
Pressing his leg from behind me.
He turned me around whilst he unbuckled his trousers
and exposed his penis and said to me, "Don't worry, I'm not
going to ask you to suck it."
And he started to masturbate himself.
And he forced my hand and used my hand to help him with the process,
until he ejaculated all over the bathroom floor.
He just stepped over as if nothing had happened.
And that was our moment in the Majestic Hotel, May 2014.
It's not about sex.
It's not about sex, it's always about power.
There's something particularly violent about stories about Harvey.
There's like a ritualistic humiliation quality.
It's rage, and it's anger, and it's some form of deep-seated
power grab that goes way beyond the situation in the room.
For decades, Harvey Weinstein had managed to repress the stories
For decades, Harvey Weinstein had managed to suppress the stories
about his sexual misconduct.
In 2015, that changed.
Movie mogul Harvey Weinstein's facing sexual assault
allegations this morning.
Police in New York confirmed they are investigating
an accusation against Weinstein.
The Daily Nnews broke the story initially, and it was...
You know, it was a fairly cut and dried story.
22-year-old Italian model Ambra Battilana Gutierrez.
Was invited for a business meeting with Harvey Weinstein.
Ambra shows up at the offices in Tribeca of Harvey Weinstein.
The story that she told is that shortly after she came in,
Harvey Weinstein enquired about whether her breasts
were real or not.
He groped her breasts.
He reached up her skirt and he tried to kiss her.
Very quickly, it degenerates from her coming up
there to discuss her career, to her fighting this
guy off in his office.
Ambra went straight to the police.
Detectives put a plan in place.
Ambra would meet Harvey Weinstein at a New York hotel
the following evening.
This time she would secretly record the conversation.
After I left the hotel, I was with the police.
They were super happy and saying, wow, now this person
is completely finished.
You saved a lot of women.
The NYPD arranges to speak with Harvey Weinstein.
He is denying that anything happened.
And they thought this was a prosecutable case,
which leads us then to the Manhattan district attorney's office.
Before it got to the district attorney, Harvey Weinstein hired
a corporate intelligence firm called K2.
A former K2 employee agreed to speak on condition of anonymity.
Harvey Weinstein came to K2 initially with a matter
that they probably wouldn't take on if it was somebody else.
Nobody likes to develop information on somebody who is accusing a client
of sexual misconduct.
But Harvey Weinstein being Harvey Weinstein,
exceptions were made.
K2 says it won't comment on client matters.
Harvey Weinstein says he is entitled to defend himself
against allegations he knows to be false.
K2's brief was to find information that might undermine Ambra.
What they found was useful to Harvey Weinstein.
Stuff started leaking out of the Weinstein
camp about her past.
The New York Post then went after the Italian model
with a story, secret life of Harvey's shy accuser.
The paper says that she once filed a sexual assault suit
against a 70-year-old, quote, sugar daddy.
It lasted for, like, a week.
Everything was about me being a blackmailer,
me being a prostitute.
The press reports were based on evidence she had given
in an Italian court case.
She said she had been sexually exploited as
a teenager by an older man.
The district attorney asked her about the reports.
They were asking me questions like are these news real, like,
you're a prostitute.
I was asking them, did you hear the recording?
They were like, yes, I heard it, but you have
to explain this situation.
In Italy it's very confusing.
The district attorney needed to be sure she would be a credible
witness, but she had given conflicting accounts
of what had happened in Italy.
They were questioning me like I was a predator or something.
Like, guys, I mean, I'm the victim.
Journalists were briefed that Ambra would be a problematic witness
and that the tape didn't prove criminal intent.
There would be no charges.
Harvey Weinstein was off the hook.
You know, when I look back at that time, nobody seemed to take a really
hard look at Harvey Weinstein, but everybody just focused
on Ambra and nobody focused on the guy that she accused.
With no prospect of a prosecution, Ambra's lawyers thrashed
out a settlement.
Harvey Weinstein would pay her $1 million.
It came with a nondisclosure agreement.
There is a list of different things I can't do,
and first of all is silence.
Even today, Ambra feels she has to remain silent on what happened
in Harvey Weinstein's office and the hotel the following day.
Step back, step back, step back.
Harvey Weinstein's reputation was intact.
Thank you, Harvey.
And he still had his powerful friends.
Harvey Weinstein was protected by the liberal political system.
He rallied a lot of money in that community and was known
for supporting good causes.
Over the years he had helped raise millions for Aids research.
I'd like to open the bidding at $50,000.
But in 2015, at the charity where he was a patron,
there was a problem.
A dispute over the proceeds of a fundraising auction.
The charity hired a lawyer to look into precisely
what happened to the money.
During the course of our investigation we had
to interview people.
We would say to them, why did it go here,
why did it go there?
The response we would get would be, well, before we get into that,
do you know that Harvey Weinstein rapes women?
Do you know that Harvey Weinstein is a sexual predator?
Now, we had no proof of that, but this is what we were hearing.
It was very disturbing.
Word about this got back to Harvey Weinstein.
He asked Ajamie to meet.
He said to me, Tom, you're spreading rumours about me raping women.
And my response was Harvey, I'm not saying that,
the community is saying that about you.
And at some point he got very angry and said,
you'd better be careful, Tom, because I've investigated
you and you're not so clean, so be careful.
When the meeting ended, he ran up to me and got very close
to my face and said please, please don't tell anyone.
Man-to-man, don't tell anyone what you've learned about me.
And I said Harvey, I can't do that.
He walked out, he got into the elevator, and I saw a very
sad and desperate man who was now sticking his fingers in various
parts of the dyke and trying to prevent the water from leaking
out and the entire dam from falling and crashing down on him.
By now, the rumours had reached the ears of magazine
and newspaper editors.
They set their reporters to turn what had been Hollywood gossip
into publishable fact.
Harvey Weinstein was deploying extreme countermeasures.
I encountered more fear really than I'd encountered
with any other story.
I needed women who were willing to go on the record,
and I just couldn't get them to do that.
One woman, calling herself Anna, seemed unusually willing to talk.
I was approached by a woman who claimed to be a victim
of Harvey Weinstein's, but it was very unusual
because I didn't know her last name.
We met at a cafe, and the main dynamic of our conversation
was her pumping me for information and revealing almost
nothing about herself.
Two weeks later she says she's going to be back in New York.
I met with her, and she leaned forward the entire time.
I was immediately suspicious that she was
surreptitiously recording me.
Months later we find out that she works for the Israeli
intelligence firm Black Cube, and her name is
Stella Penn Pechanac.
One of the firms behind those undercover agents was Black Cube,
an Israeli firm that on their website touts the fact
that there are former Mossad agents in their chain of command.
They really pride themselves on being the most elite
at this kind of work.
False identities, front companies, really the most elaborate kind
of human intelligence work in the world.
Harvey Weinstein had hired Black Cube to stop negative stories
about him being published.
They contacted former employees, journalists and an actress who had
accused Harvey Weinstein.
Rose McGowan said he'd raped her.
A woman named Diana Filip reached out to Rose McGowan,
and over the ensuing months infiltrated herself
into Rose McGowan's life, became her friend, they had ice
cream together, and it was all completely fake.
This woman, Diana Filip, secretly recorded tens
of hours of audio of her, and routed back to Weinstein.
Diana Filip was in fact Stella Penn Pechanac,
the same Black Cube agent who had tried to find out what
Ben Wallace was up to.
Harvey Weinstein denies raping Rose McGowan,
and says hiring Black Cube wasn't an attempt to cover up abuse
but to investigate facts to show that no abuse occurred.
Harvey Weinstein had now deployed all the weapons at his disposal,
but journalists were still coming for him.
This was Harvey Weinstein's last stand.
In those frantic final days, a war room of sorts started to assemble.
Anyone who could be useful in forestalling
publication was brought in.
He used everything at his disposal.
Every contact, money, relationship, favour that had been owed.
He called in every chit.
He was fighting like hell.
Things were really amped up, and it seemed like it was coming
apart at the seams.
And then it did.
NEWSREADER: The New York Times is reporting bombshell allegations...
A scorching expose detailing decades of rape, sexual assault...
Nearly 60 women now accuse of misconduct ranging
from sexual harassment to rape.
I never thought there was ever going to be a day
where I would have ever had a voice.
I felt this man had such high walls built up around him,
I thought he was untouchable.
Realising that he was a serious predator, and he had been
seriously abusing people, abusing them with total
impunity for all this time.
And to have any part of your life linked
with that is deeply upsetting.
The New York Times published allegations of sexual misconduct
against Harvey Weinstein.
More serious allegations would follow in the New Yorker magazine.
In a statement he said listen, I'm going to take a leave of absence
and go and work on myself.
But simultaneously he was also threatening to sue
the New York Times for our story.
In the full glare of the media spotlight, he was fired
from his own company.
Then, the Attorney General of New York launched legal action.
Had there been a cover up inside the Weinstein Company?
There were lots of complaints, not one formal investigation
by human resources, by the corporation
into Harvey's conduct.
It's sort of unfathomable.
It is very difficult for anyone who looks at the documents that
we've seen to believe that there wasn't at least some
knowledge that he was engaged in sexual misconduct.
We've never seen anything as despicable as this.
Harvey Weinstein's PR people say he's in therapy.
He's said he still hopes to make a comeback.
I've got to get help, guys.
You know what?
We all make mistakes.
Second chance, I hope.
OK?
He doesn't sound sad and dejected.
He sounds a little bit...
..A little bit humiliated, but I think he's gearing up for the fight.
I would not bet against him, I really wouldn't.
I think Hollywood is a toxic place.
This is a filthy stables, and Harvey is merely the guy who's
taken the biggest dump in it.
I think Harvey's career is over.
But, you know, who knows?
Anything can happen.
HE CHUCKLES.
Police in LA, New York and London are now investigating allegations
made by 16 women of sexual assault, including rape, stretching
back to the 1980s.
Harvey Weinstein has denied all claims of
nonconsensual sexual conduct.
The concentric spreading circles from the stone dropped into the pond
are spreading into British politics, into American politics.
It's such an old story.
Women have been putting up with this stuff for years.
Since I started speaking out about this, I actually have been
so moved by how many people have come forward.
Like, something's changing, and I think we all feel it,
and the time is now.
But it wasn't then.
It saddens me that everybody woke up because of Harvey Weinstein.
On the other hand, thank God we've woken up.