Rose McGowan Praises Ronan Farrow's Report On 'Harvey Weinstein's Army Of Spies'

Actress Rose McGowan praised Ronan Farrow for his new report in the New Yorker claiming Harvey Weinstein hired spies to silence abuse allegations. The report, titled "Harvey Weinstein's Army of Spies," claimed the Hollywood mogul spent more than a year using private investigators to track actresses and journalists in a bid to stop them from going public.

"Ronan Farrow your words will line the halls of justice," McGowan wrote on Twitter, hours after sharing the New Yorker story with the caption "I Slay Dragons." McGowan has been an outspoken critic of Weinstein and has publicly accused him of rape after The New York Times and The New Yorker published reports in October about many women coming forward to tell their respective stories about Weinstein’s predatory actions.

The article, which was published Monday, alleged Weinstein hired firms like Black Cube, which is largely made up of former officers from Mossad and other Israeli intelligence agencies, to look into women who could potentially go on the record about his sexual harassment and assault. He also asked the spies to look into journalists working on similar stories, including Farrow himself.

According to the report, Weinstein aimed to “target” and suppress anyone who might come forward to ruin his reputation.

“Weinstein had the agencies ‘target,’ or collect information on, dozens of individuals, and compile psychological profiles that sometimes focused on their personal or sexual histories,” Farrow wrote. “He also enlisted former employees from his film enterprises to join in the effort, collecting names and placing calls that, according to some sources who received them, felt intimidating.”

The New York Times first reported Weinstein faced sexual harassment and assault allegations going back nearly three decades and had reached at least eight settlements with women. Just days after the Times report, the New Yorker ran Farrow’s first story based on conversations with three women who claimed to have been raped by Weinstein. Dozens of other women have since come forward with similar allegations.

According to the New Yorker story, Black Cube signed a contract agreeing to “provide intelligence which will help the Client’s efforts to completely stop the publication of a new negative article in a leading N.Y. newspaper” and to “obtain additional content of a book which currently being written and includes harmful negative information on and about the Client.” Farrow reported the client was Weinstein, the newspaper was the Times and the book was “Brave,” a forthcoming memoir by McGowan.

The New Yorker reported Black Cube allegedly made contact with McGowan by sending an agent, posing as an executive of a wealth management company. The woman, who identified herself as “Diana Filip” apparently tried to establish a friendship with McGowan, and during several meetings the agent secretly recorded conversations with the actress.

Black Cube also stated in the agreement it would hire an “investigative journalist” to conduct 10 interviews a month for four months, for a fee of $40,000.

“In January, 2017, a freelance journalist called McGowan and had a lengthy conversation with her that he recorded without telling her; he subsequently communicated with Black Cube about the interviews, though he denied he was reporting back to them in a formal capacity. He contacted at least two other women with allegations against Weinstein, including the actress Annabella Sciorra, who later went public in The New Yorker with a rape allegation against Weinstein,” Farrow wrote, adding the same freelancer called him and another reporter.

Other agencies, which were hired by Weinstein, included Kroll, one of the world’s largest corporate-intelligence companies, and Los Angeles-based PSOPS. The agencies allegedly created psychological profiles including information of past relationships, sexual histories and evidence of positive encounters between Weinstein and his potential accusers that could later be used to discredit the women if they came forward.

“Marie Antoinette” actress Asia Argento, who also accused Weinstein of raping her, reacted to Farrow's article. The New Yorker report stated in December 2016, Weinstein asked Argento to meet in Italy with his private investigators to give testimony on his behalf.

Argento, who felt pressured to say yes, declined after her partner, the chef and television personality Anthony Bourdain, advised her to avoid the meeting.