Olivia: Most people think investigative journalism is about finding a source and writing a story. The truth is, sometimes it's about realizing your source is a spy, your phone is being tracked, and your own network might be trying to kill the story before it's even born. Jackson: Whoa. That sounds less like journalism and more like a John le Carré novel. Are we talking about chasing down state secrets here? Olivia: You'd think so, but we're talking about Hollywood. And that's the world Ronan Farrow plunges us into in his book, Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators. Jackson: Ronan Farrow, right. I know his reporting on this was a huge deal. It basically supercharged the #MeToo movement. Olivia: It did. He won a Pulitzer Prize for it. And what's wild is that Farrow was partly driven by his own family's very public history with abuse allegations. It gives this professional crusade a deeply personal, almost inescapable, weight. Jackson: That adds a whole other layer to it. Okay, so where does this spy-novel stuff begin? You mentioned tracking phones... that feels like a huge leap for a story about a movie producer. Olivia: It is. And it begins in a place you'd least expect: a Russian cafe in Brooklyn, over plates of kebab.

Jackson: A Russian cafe? Not a shadowy back alley in Vienna? I'm almost disappointed. Olivia: (Laughs) The reality is often more mundane, but the implications are just as terrifying. In the book's prologue, Farrow introduces us to two private investigators, Roman Khaykin and Igor Ostrovskiy. They're meeting at this cafe, and Khaykin, the boss, tells Ostrovskiy, "I’m into some cool shit. Some dark stuff." Jackson: "Dark stuff." That's not exactly subtle. What did he mean? Olivia: He meant he had a new, very wealthy, very powerful client who needed more than just basic P.I. work. Khaykin was talking about illegally obtaining bank records, credit reports, and, most importantly, real-time phone geolocation data. When Ostrovskiy asks, "Isn't that illegal?" Khaykin just shrugs, "Ehhhh." Jackson: Wow. So this is a private, for-hire surveillance operation. Who was the client? It was Harvey Weinstein, right? Olivia: It was. But it gets so much bigger than just a couple of local P.I.s. Weinstein didn't just hire a few guys; he hired an army. He contracted a firm called Black Cube. Jackson: Hold on, Black Cube? That name sounds familiar. Aren't they... serious players? Olivia: Very serious. Black Cube is an Israeli private intelligence agency run by former officers of Mossad and other Israeli intelligence units. They market themselves as a "select group of veterans from the Israeli elite intelligence units." Jackson: Wait, ex-Mossad agents? For a Hollywood producer? How is that not a massive international incident? What were they even doing on U.S. soil? Olivia: That's the million-dollar question Farrow's book poses. They were running a full-blown counterintelligence operation. They weren't just digging for dirt; they were actively running deception campaigns to trick, intimidate, and silence Weinstein's accusers and the journalists investigating them. Jackson: Can you give an example? Because that sounds almost too cinematic to be real. Olivia: Absolutely. Take the case of Ben Wallace, a reporter for New York magazine who was also working on a Weinstein story. He starts getting calls from a woman calling herself "Anna," who claims to be a victim and wants to share her story. She's charming, builds rapport, and they meet several times. Jackson: Okay, seems normal so far. A source reaching out. Olivia: Except "Anna" was a Black Cube operative. Her real mission wasn't to give information, but to get it. She was trying to find out who Wallace's sources were, what he knew, and what his motivations were. She was a spy posing as a victim to infiltrate and sabotage an investigation. Jackson: That is horrifying. The level of manipulation is just... staggering. It weaponizes the very trust that journalism is built on. Olivia: Exactly. And they did the same thing to the actual victims. They targeted actress Rose McGowan, one of Weinstein's most vocal accusers. Another Black Cube operative, posing as a women's rights advocate from a London investment firm, befriended McGowan over months, all while secretly recording their conversations and feeding intelligence back to Weinstein. Jackson: This is a conspiracy. It’s not just one man trying to cover his tracks. It's a sophisticated, international intelligence operation deployed against private citizens. How did Farrow even verify all this? It sounds like something that would be impossible to prove. Olivia: Here's the incredible twist in the story. One of the spies, the P.I. from the prologue, Igor Ostrovskiy, eventually had a crisis of conscience. He saw what was happening—this powerful machine being used to crush victims and reporters—and he flipped. He became one of Farrow's key sources, providing documents and inside information that exposed the entire operation. Jackson: The spy who came in from the cold! So one of the people hired to enforce the silence ended up being the one to break it. Olivia: Precisely. And as the epilogue reveals, Ostrovskiy, an immigrant from the former Soviet Union, said he did it because he'd seen what a state-controlled press looked like and he never wanted to see that happen in America. He saw the press as a pillar of democracy and felt he had to protect it. Jackson: That's an incredible turn. But it also shows how fragile that pillar is. If one man hadn't had a change of heart, this whole spy network might have remained a secret. Olivia: Completely. And this army of spies wasn't Weinstein's only weapon. He had allies in the one place you'd hope would expose him: the media.

Jackson: Right. This is the "Catch and Kill" part of the title. I've heard the term, but can you break down what it actually means? Olivia: It's a practice, most famously used by tabloids, where a publication buys the exclusive rights to a damaging story about a powerful person, not to publish it, but to bury it forever. They "catch" the story to "kill" it, protecting their powerful friend. Jackson: So it's a journalistic protection racket. Olivia: A perfect way to put it. And the book details how the National Enquirer, run by David Pecker, a close friend of Donald Trump, had this down to a science. They had a production deal with Harvey Weinstein and allegedly worked hand-in-hand with him. The book describes how Dylan Howard, the Enquirer's editor, would actively seek out dirt on Weinstein's accusers, like Rose McGowan, and then share that information with Weinstein's team. Jackson: So the Enquirer was acting like an extension of Weinstein's intelligence-gathering operation. Olivia: Exactly. They were part of the same machinery of silence. But the most explosive part of the book, and the most controversial, is Farrow's claim that this "kill" mentality wasn't just at the tabloids. He argues he saw it happen at his own network, NBC News. Jackson: Okay, this is the part that gets messy, right? Because NBC's official line is that Farrow's story just wasn't ready, that he didn't have enough on-the-record sources or corroborating evidence. Is it possible they were just being legally cautious and he's painting it as a conspiracy? Olivia: That's the central tension, and Farrow lays out his case meticulously. He says that initially, his bosses, including NBC News President Noah Oppenheim, were supportive. He was getting somewhere. He had former Miramax executives on camera describing a slush fund for Weinstein's "indiscretions." He had multiple women telling him their stories. Jackson: But that's not enough to go to air with rape allegations against one of the most powerful men in Hollywood. You need more. Olivia: And then he got it. He found Ambra Battilana Gutierrez, a model who had gone to the NYPD in 2015 after Weinstein allegedly groped her. She agreed to participate in a police sting and wore a wire. Farrow managed to get a copy of that audio. Jackson: He had a tape? An audio recording of Weinstein? Olivia: Yes. On the tape, Gutierrez confronts Weinstein, saying "Why did you touch my breast yesterday?" and he admits it, saying "I'm used to that." He then pressures her to come into his hotel room while he showers. It's incredibly damning. Jackson: So he has an admission on tape. That sounds like a smoking gun. Why on earth would NBC not run that? Olivia: This is where Farrow's narrative of a conspiracy kicks in. He claims that as soon as he had this explosive evidence, the resistance from NBC executives intensified. He was told to "pause," to put the story "on the back burner." He alleges that the goalposts for what constituted a "reportable" story kept moving. He was told by one executive to "give it a rest." Jackson: But why? What was their motivation? Fear of Weinstein's lawyers? Olivia: Farrow argues it was something deeper. He suggests NBC was terrified of the subject of sexual assault because of their own skeletons in the closet, namely, the storm that was brewing around their star anchor, Matt Lauer. The book alleges that Weinstein knew about the Lauer problem and was using it as leverage, making calls to top NBC executives to pressure them. Jackson: So the theory is, NBC killed the Weinstein story to avoid drawing attention to their own powerful predator. Olivia: That's Farrow's claim. NBC, of course, vehemently denies this. They call it a conspiracy theory and maintain the story simply wasn't ready for air by their standards. They say Farrow was a rookie reporter who went to another outlet because he was impatient. Jackson: It's a classic he-said, they-said, but with massive stakes. A major news network versus its own Pulitzer-winning reporter. It really makes you question who to believe. Olivia: It does. And the book doesn't give you an easy answer. It just lays out the timeline, the phone calls, the increasingly strange meetings, and lets you connect the dots. Whether it was a deliberate conspiracy or a case of institutional cowardice, the outcome was the same: a story of monumental importance was stopped in its tracks at one of the biggest news organizations in the world.

Jackson: So when you put it all together—the private Mossad-trained spies, the tabloid protection rackets, the alleged stonewalling at a major news network—what's the big takeaway here? What does this whole saga really tell us? Olivia: It tells us that for a very long time, the systems we trust to protect us—journalism, the law, corporate oversight—were co-opted and weaponized to protect predators. Catch and Kill isn't just a story about one monster. It's a blueprint of how power protects itself. It's a network of complicity, built on money, fear, and secrets. Jackson: It’s a system. And Weinstein was just the master of pulling its levers. Olivia: Exactly. The chilling reality is that it took a reporter with Ronan Farrow's unique combination of privilege, family name, legal background, and relentless drive to even begin to crack the code. And even he almost failed. It took that, plus the incredible courage of dozens of sources—women like Rose McGowan and Ambra Gutierrez, and whistleblowers like Igor Ostrovskiy—risking their careers and their safety to bring it to light. Jackson: That's the part that sticks with me. The sheer bravery of the sources. They were going up against a machine designed to destroy them, and they spoke anyway. Olivia: They did. And in the end, the book is as much a tribute to their courage as it is an indictment of the system that failed them. It’s a testament to the fact that even the most sophisticated machinery of silence can be broken by determined individuals who refuse to be quiet. Jackson: It makes you wonder, though, how many other stories like this are successfully 'caught and killed' and we never hear about them. How many other "armies of spies" are out there operating in the shadows? Olivia: It's a sobering thought. The book is a victory, but it's also a warning. It shows us what we're up against. We'd love to hear your reactions to this. What part of this conspiracy shocked you the most? Find us on our socials and let's talk. Jackson: This is Aibrary, signing off.