Catch and Kill: The Podcast Tapes (2021) s01e04 Episode Script

It was a couple days before
we were gonna go to LA
to interview a woman with a credible
allegation of rape against Harvey.
And we were about to book
our flights
and then the decision was handed
down to me.
You are to stand down.
We're done here.
In that moment,
I realized a couple of things.
One, the story was dead at NBC.
But also, there was another story now
that I had a certain responsibility
to pay attention to,
which is the NBC killing the story.
Much of my reporting on Harvey
Weinstein has become synonymous
with The New Yorker magazine.
That's where the story ultimately ran.
But the reporting actually started
at NBC News,
where I was working
with producer Rich McHugh.
Rich lives in suburban New Jersey
with his wife, Danie,
and their four daughters.
Rich grew up in the suburbs too,
outside Chicago.
The youngest of four kids,
Irish-Catholic family,
I went to Jesuit schools,
played ice hockey most
of my childhood.
Rich loves ice hockey.
So actually I wanted to pursue
ice hockey,
that was what I thought
I was gonna do with my life.
But I quickly realized I wasn't as good
as the top players in the country.
And so I pivoted from there
and ultimately wound up at Columbia
in New York,
studying English literature and writing.
I never actually thought about
being a journalist until,
and you're gonna find this interesting,
I was at Columbia
and I watched The Insider.
You won't be satisfied unless
you're putting the company at risk.
Are you a businessman
or are you a newsman?
Al Pacino plays reporter
Lowell Bergman,
a 60 Minutes producer who convinces
a big tobacco whistle blower
to go public about a massive cover-up
at his company.
Bergman's problem though is that
executives at CBS are worried
they'll get sued,
and so Bergman winds up fighting
his bosses at the network.
And I was like, Lowell Bergman,
that guy's amazing.
So, Rich went into broadcast news.
He started out producing
at Fox News, then MSNBC,
then he spent nearly a decade
at ABC's Good Morning America.
When I met him he was trying
to settle into a new role,
at the Investigative unit
at NBC News.
I was trying to find my spot.
I was working with several
correspondents
and enjoying some of the work.
I went overseas,
but I hadn't found a lane.
I didn't have a correspondent that I was
gelling with particularly, and then
- And then we met.
- And then you come into the picture.
- Do you wanna tell
- Tell me your side, be honest.
My first Impression I was like,
I'm not sure I'm gonna like this guy.
- Gee, thanks Rich.
- You asked me to be honest.
I just remember
you were texting all the time.
"Is this right,
what are we doing?"
I hadn't been used
to that level of hands-on.
I actually wonder if they thought
we would just cancel each other out,
then they could just put us over
in the corner.
I don't know what the expectation was,
but I doubted
that we would develop
good work together.
But we did find a way,
and in our first year together,
we wrote and produced numerous
investigative stories for NBC,
traveling the country in rental cars
and progressively taking
on tougher topics.
NBC investigative correspondent
Ronan Farrow has been examining
some of the challenges facing a new
generation of college students.
There is someone out there
who has attacked me
and will probably attack someone
else and I live with that.
Do you blame Harvard for that?
I do.
That was my first experience
with that type of story.
I don't think you could watch that piece
and not have a different opinion
on the matter after it.
That was a precursor
to the Weinstein story for sure.
That year I pitched a series about
bad behavior in Hollywood,
and for months I got a crash course
in how hard a sell that topic is.
A story on pedophilia was deemed
too dark,
one on race was also rejected,
but I held onto a green light
on one tough story I'd pitched,
the casting couch.
It's a euphemism in the industry,
it's when powerful people seek
sexual favors from newcomers
trying to get a foot in the door.
And that fall, the term
was coming up again
because of something the actress
Rose McGowan had Tweeted.
Rose McGowan claims
she was sexually assaulted
by a well-known Hollywood executive.
She used the hashtag,
#whywomendontreport,
and wrote, quote,
because it's been an open secret
in Hollywood slash media,
and they shamed me
while adulating my rapist.
The Tweets came up
in our planning meetings.
We went up
to Noah Oppenheim's office
and pitched kind the stories
that we wanted to go in on.
Noah Oppenheim is the President
of NBC News.
He also had a career in Hollywood,
where he wrote screenplays,
including one for Jackie.
Oppenheim had also heard
about the Tweets.
We kinda left there with not the
mandate, but like the blessing of like,
"if you can get Rose McGowan to do
an interview, it might be a good idea".
Suddenly, we weren't just doing
a story about the casting couch,
but about one particular
and powerful individual.
It was an unspoken but open secret
that Rose was Tweeting about
movie mogul Harvey Weinstein.
So, I talked to Rose.
Rich and I would debrief
after my reporting calls.
She's in a good place.
She said it would be a painful thing
for her
and she wants to make sure
it's presented in the right way.
I don't think it's possible to overstate
what a risky move this was
for McGowan.
Weinstein had kind of reinvented the
business model for the independent film.
His movies had earned more
than 300 Oscar nominations.
Mr. Weinstein!
At awards shows he'd gotten literally
more thank yous than God.
I have to thank Harvey Weinstein.
Harvey Weinstein.
Meryl Streep once even jokingly
referred to him as God.
I just wanna thank my agent
Kevin Huvane
and God, Harvey Weinstein.
Leading up to it, we were not sure
if Rose would talk
and if anybody else would talk
and then Rose, God love her,
decided to just do it.
She felt her career had already been
derailed after the initial incident.
In mid-February, Rich and I headed up
into the Hollywood Hills
to see McGowen.
- All right, you guys good?
- Two cameras, marker.
Rolling.
Tell me about the first time you felt
the treatment of women
in this industry is problematic.
I didn't realize there was going
to be such collusion.
I didn't think there would be
so many treacherous women.
When I was assaulted I was set up
by a woman to be there.
Any woman that worked for that
perpetrator of mine knew it,
they all knew.
And the thing with trauma
is that it feels fresh
every time you think about it.
Sure, it's X amount of years ago,
but it's right there,
There's a frozen thing in your mind
and in your body.
You know it took me years
to become okay sexually again.
- Was this a physical assault?
- Yes.
Was this non-consensual?
This was
I was, for an hour, at a meeting.
And then on the way out
it turned into not a meeting.
Was this a sexual assault?
Yes.
- This was rape?
- Yes.
It was gut wrenching,
in a way that it was not like any other
interview I'd ever heard.
I thought to myself like,
holy moly, like this is real.
It got real right there.
- Have the lawyers watch this.
- They will be.
Watch it but not just read it.
And I hope they're brave too
because it's happened
to their daughter,
their mother, their sister, their aunt.
Fact.
It was April 2017,
about two months after we first
interviewed Rose McGowan.
I got a phone call.
I called Rich right after
to tell him about it.
- Hey, are you there?
- Yeah, I'm here.
So, I got another call from another
of Harvey's interlocuters.
The call was from a guy named
Matt Hiltzik.
Hiltzik is a PR strategist,
he's pretty well known in celebrity
and political circles,
works with a lot of famous clients.
For a time he was Harvey Weinstein's
flack at Miramax.
He was at an event called
Women in the World,
being headlined by Hillary Clinton.
He was calling from backstage.
Hillary's speaking and you know,
blah, blah, blah,
schmoozing, small talk and he said,
"so, you know Harvey's here,
who I've worked with for years".
And I'm like, okay.
And he's like,
Harvey just walked In actually.
"Who's this Ronan guy?
He's asking questions about me."
I told Hiltzik I don't do
ambush stories.
If this were to make it to air at all,
I'd be calling Harvey Weinstein
for comment or an interview
long beforehand.
And then, while I was relaying
all this to Rich
Hiltzik just texted me again now,
saying of Harvey,
he is sort of hilarious.
Gave your message.
He asked me to call you back.
- Right now?
- Yeah.
He was trying to put you
on the phone with Harvey?
I don't know, I think
it's a distinct possibility.
I haven't responded.
I could see arguments
on both sides of that.
Is he gonna send a PI to go
through my trash
and try to build a narrative against me,
I don't know.
I think if they know
that it's a long way out,
then they'll probably just try
and go above us
and try and kill it in some capacity.
Right.
He's just gonna try to find ways
to sabotage it.
This was the first time
we had confirmation
that Harvey Weinstein knew
I was investigating him.
The stakes were about to get
much higher.
I could hear applause in the background
as yet another luminary went onstage
to discuss women's empowerment.
We have to make a pledge that
we are going to raise our children
respecting gender with the hope
that in the next generation,
we start to move on out the predators.
Hiltzik did call me back later,
though not with Weinstein on the line.
He said Weinstein was upset, agitated,
that he'd dealt with this kind
of reporting before.
He also implied that Weinstein would
likely be taking some kind of action,
though wasn't clear exactly
what that meant.
The very next day, I got a call from
my boss, Richard Greenberg,
the head of the investigative unit
at NBC.
He started off with small talk,
asking about a book I was working on.
I called Rich again to update him.
He was sort of like, so I think,
where we stand now,
let's just kinda give it a rest.
I'm not saying don't work on it,
but just keep it on the back burner.
I don't know, you know me,
I'm super cynical. I don't know.
And soon,
Rich was getting the same signals.
Rich and I were both worried.
We decided we needed
to work quietly,
without alerting our bosses.
I was getting more and more interviews
with women with allegations
and with people around Weinstein
who had seen abuse.
But I'd heard about one piece
of evidence
that might blow the whole thing open,
an audio recording of Weinstein
made by an Italian model
named Ambra Gutierrez,
who was wearing a wire.
Five minutes.
Don't ruin your friendship with me
for five minutes.
I'll never forget the first time
I heard the audio.
You played it for me.
His voice was like so monstrous
and it was like chilling.
In that moment you saw,
at least I heard for the first time,
what all these other women
had talked about.
It was the first time
in my producing anything
that fear kinda just all of a sudden
injected itself into it.
Like the thought I had
at that moment was
this is the beginning of the end
of Harvey Weinstein.
In the middle of summer 2017,
five women had directly described to me
how Harvey Weinstein had harassed
or assaulted them.
Two were willing to be fully named
in the NBC story at that point,
McGowan and Gutierrez.
I'd also interviewed 16 former
and current employees
who said they'd witnessed harassment.
Five executives had gone on camera
to talk about Weinstein's
alleged predation.
Was it common knowledge that he was
being predatory around women?
Yes, absolutely. Everybody knew.
There's a large volume of these type
of meetings that Harvey would have
with aspiring actresses and models.
He would have them late at night,
usually at hotel bars
or in hotel rooms,
and in order to make these women
feel more comfortable,
he would ask a female executive
or assistant to start those meetings
and he would often dismiss them.
You'd get a phone number handed
to you and say call this person,
set up a meeting at this hotel.
And you'd call and set the meeting
and then it suddenly would be,
let's do the meeting in the room.
And then you'd walk someone up
and then close the door.
There was no one any of these
young women could go to?
If they did they were paid off.
They were encouraged
to not make this a big deal,
otherwise their career may end.
Anyone who was questioning
his behavior
or trying to show a spotlight
on his behavior,
he would use whatever resources
possible to stop them.
Each of them made a decision
to put themselves at risk,
like Rose did
and all these other women,
and talk to us.
They knew they were at great risk
because they knew Harvey had
private investigators,
and anybody kinda floating
around us in the story orbit
was kind of in a danger.
Rich and I, we felt confident
in what we had,
so did every other journalist
we consulted.
We brought it to our bosses. At first,
they had the same reaction.
The reaction was
- Am I allowed to swear here?
- Yeah.
The reaction was like, holy shit.
You guys got a lot of stuff.
When Richard Greenberg, the head
of the investigative unit,
heard the tape, he said of Weinstein,
fuck it, let him sue.
He and Susan Weiner, the NBC News
General Counsel, decided
we were ready to seek comment
from Harvey Weinstein.
We all went to Noah Oppenheim,
the President of NBC News.
We went into his office,
we were all excited,
and we played the audio tape for him.
I remember watching him
and thinking like
He almost looked like ashen,
like the blood was like draining out
of his face or something.
Instead of, like, holy moly,
this is incredible,
it was like: "Hold on, what is this
we got here? Is there a story here?"
And I was like, what nonsense is this?
This is crazy.
He said,
I'll have to bring this to Andy.
I remember we went in the elevator
and you and I looked at each other
like, what just happened in there?
Did we witness the death
of our story right there?
A few days after that,
I was told by Noah Oppenheim
to pause our reporting.
He said the company was worried
about the legal implications
of me talking to sources who had
signed non-disclosure agreements
with Weinstein.
He cited a legal concept, tortious
interference with contract.
It refers to when someone deliberately
tries to mess up a contract
between two parties, usually to gain
some kind of business advantage.
It was baffling 'cause it was like
the script of the movie
playing out for us in slow motion.
Does he go on television
and tell the truth?
Yes. Is it newsworthy? Yes.
Are we gonna air it?
Of course not.
I remember Jonathan, my partner,
at one point just sort of shouting,
frustrated like, has no one
in this building seen The Insider?
Here's what I can tell you now that I
didn't know was happening at the time.
According to sources with direct
knowledge of the conversations,
as I was working on this story,
three top executives at NBC
conducted at least 15 calls
with Harvey Weinstein.
In several of those,
they had assured him
that the reporting had been stopped,
before I knew it had been.
In the same timeframe, Steve Burke,
the CEO of NBC Universal,
spoke openly about being in touch
with Weinstein
and about killing the story.
We can't run it, Burke told
one fellow executive,
I'll be getting these calls from Harvey
for the next year.
On August 8th, Oppenheim told me
the story was dead.
That day at 30 Rock,
Rich and I struggled to make sense
of what was happening.
This is why this guy continues
to get off.
Good God.
It's amazing man,
that he can win,
or at least hold this off and get
a news organization full of journalists
and producers to like just cave
on the story. It's just amazing.
When I told my sources that the
reporting wouldn't be going forward
at NBC, a lot of them felt like it was
yet another sign
that Weinstein would always succeed
in killing this story.
But they also decided to take another
leap and keep working with me.
I took the evidence
to The New Yorker,
and they looked at the same reporting
NBC had sent away,
and ran on all cylinders
to build on it and get it out.
Joining us once again
is Ronan Farrow,
a contributor for The New Yorker,
who broke this explosive story today.
NBC executives asked me not
to talk about why the story didn't run
on the network.
I told them I wouldn't bring it up,
but also wouldn't lie.
But, let me tell you folks,
that Rachel Maddow,
she's got a nose for a good story.
NBC says that the story
wasn't publishable,
that it wasn't ready to go by the time
that you brought it to them,
but obviously it's ready to go by the
time you got into The New Yorker.
I walked into the door
at The New Yorker
with an explosively reportable piece
that should have been public earlier
and immediately The New Yorker
recognized that
and it is not accurate
to say that It was not reportable.
There were multiple determinations
that it was reportable at NBC.
You sent me a text saying,
boom, I told the truth, I guess that's
former NBC correspondent now.
That was my last appearance
on MSNBC for a while.
Rich however, still had to go
into work the next day.
He and the investigative team were
called into a meeting with Oppenheim,
where Oppenheim largely
went on the defensive.
We tried and we wanna correct
the noise out there,
and we supported this story,
and we've been putting Ronan
on our air.
He tried to go down this road.
It was like the second-most mad
I've ever been in my life.
And people in the room described
it like we could feel
like the back of your neck
getting red.
I'm witnessing them rewriting
my history. I just went in.
Forgive me, but I have to correct you
on some things.
And it got messy.
A few weeks later,
more news broke at NBC.
Breaking News involving
a major media figure.
Matt Lauer has been fired.
After what was at the time called
an allegation of inappropriate
sexual behavior in the workplace,
Matt Lauer, the network's
biggest star, was fired.
And again, NBC executives went
to confront a room full of journalists.
Noah calls this meeting and walks
through how it's a sad day at NBC
and Matt Lauer is now fired
and a brave young woman
came forward, etcetera,
and described allegations against him
that were serious
and so we took action and fired him.
Does anybody have any questions?
I said, has anybody ever raised
any sort of sexual misconduct
claims against Matt Lauer?
We've all heard stuff about
Matt Lauer,
everybody in the building hears
that there's affairs and such,
but has anybody ever raised
like, sexual misconduct?
And he was like no, nobody.
And we went back
and looked in all the files
and there was nothing
about Matt Lauer.
In that meeting with
the investigative unit
and others over the ensuing months,
Oppenheim and Kim Harris,
the NBC Universal lawyer,
would swear that the company
hadn't been aware
of any complaints about Lauer,
and more broadly, hadn't reached
any sexual harassment settlements
with anyone in the prior six
or seven years.
Eventually I'd learn that
in that timeframe,
they'd actually reached
at least seven with women
who said they'd experienced
harassment of some sort at NBC News.
The network euphemistically
called them enhanced severance,
agreements that tied
non-disclosure provisions
with staggering amounts of money,
as women left or were forced out
of their jobs.
So, as NBC was arguing that it was
impossible for us to report
on Harvey Weinstein's sexual
harassment settlements,
they were upholding their own.
Going to work each day became
a little bit more soul crushing
because I was like, holding this in.
And it took over my life,
as my wife can attest.
You were kind of difficult to live with
for a little while.
But you start looking at someone's life
and it's gonna kill you internally,
you're gonna be miserable.
Your children
are gonna be miserable
seeing their dad is so unhappy
hitting this job every day.
You're never gonna be able to live
with yourself. So, you gotta go.
She's like, you're never gonna
be happy if you stay here
and if you don't just do your part
to say what you need to say.
Why did you feel it was your
responsibility to speak up?
Honestly it goes back
to the women in the story.
There was a tremendous responsibility
we shared
to move the ball forward,
because they risked a hell of a lot.
So when your own network says
no, you can't,
even though you've worked
on this for eight months,
I knew in my gut that was just wrong.
Rich resigned from NBC News
in August, 2018.
Soon after, he went
to The New York Times
and spoke out publicly about what
he saw happen inside the network.
So what made you wanna come
forward with this explosive piece?
I knew, after being in the news
business for 20 odd years,
this is wrong and I can't live
with myself
if I just kind of be quiet about this.
How did having four small daughters
weigh on these ethical decisions
that you were making?
It was a huge part of the decision.
What kind of world do I want them
to grow up in?
It wasn't just in that decision,
but even just the story as we were
going along.
I wanted them to look at me
when they were 18
and reading all this stuff eventually
to be like, my dad acted honorably.
Had I not done what I did,
I don't think I would be happy
with myself.
Rich left network news
and ultimately became
an investigative journalist himself.
I was grateful to have found a home
for the story,
but a battle lay ahead.
Weinstein and his lawyers
had pressured NBC,
and they were about to try
the same thing with The New Yorker.
At one point he seemed to make
an admission and the line went dead.
The reason that call got cut off
was that Harvey's lawyers
pressed the button to do so.
They knew he was going too far.
After Rich resigned, NBC News
released a memo asserting
that none of the women who had come
forward about Weinstein
had offered to go on the record
and denying that it obstructed
the reporting at any point.
NBC News has forcefully denied
killing the Weinstein reporting
to prevent details about Matt Lauer's
behavior from becoming public.
They have further denied
having any agreement
with Harvey Weinstein's legal
team or ever assuring him
the reporting was dead.