Category: Harvey Weinstein

Private Investigators aren't buying Black Cube's apology

11/14/2017

By Susanna Speier
Denver Private Investigator Blogger

On November 9th we covered Ronan Farrow's New Yorker story revealing Harvey Weinstein's connection to the Israeli private investigative agency, Black Cube. A Black Cube board member had just apologized and promised to donate money earned from working on the Weinstein case to women's organizations. So we asked private investigators what they thought of Black Cube's apology, expecting to gather a range of reactions. Here's what we got:

Not only did all PIs we heard from doubt the sincerity of Black Cube's mea culpa apology --- some were even dubious of their promise to donate the profits from the Weinstein case to women's organizations. Other raised doubts regarding the firm's ethics and legalities.

As the PI community was weighing in, the Wall Street Journal published an article about Stella Penn Pechanac an Israeli actress and one of the Black Cube operatives involved in the attempted cover up.

According to Mark Maremont, Jacquie McNish and Rob Copeland, the three person team of Wall Street Journal reporters, Pechanac met with Ben Wallace, a writer who had been researching the Weinstein allegations.

Claiming to be a spurned ex mistress named, "Anna." Pechanac -aka- Anna delivered a tearful expose of the consensual affair she had with Harvey Weinstein and the hunger for revenge it was now fueling. Could this have succeed in steering some of the nations top investigative reporters off the trail? Of Black Cube's litany of attempts to misdirect reporters and reinforce Weinstein's claim “it is a fiction to suggest that any individuals were targeted or suppressed at any time,” this was one of the flimsier ones.

As Wallace recalled, Anna was welling up with emotion at one of their meetings, her story, "''didn't ring true."

"It makes sense she went into private investigating, not acting" he concluded "because I found her acting skills not stellar'."

Harvey Weinstein, Black Cube and victims of sexual assault

11/9/2017

By Susanna Speier
Denver Private Investigator Blogger

It is not surprising that Harvey Weinstein hired a team of spies and private investigators to gather information about and intimidate his victims given the severity of the crimes, the money and power at his disposal and the fact his entire career was at stake. Black Cube, the international former Israeli intelligence officer run agency he hired, was even instructed to dig stuff up on the journalists trying to expose stories of Weinstein's sexual misconduct. Enter, the apology.

According to ABC, "Prof. Asher Tishler, a Black Cube advisory board member, said in an interview with Israel's Channel 2 TV network that the company was unaware of Weinstein's intentions, and had they known, 'we would never – God forbid – have taken this job.' Tishler also apologized to anybody who was impacted by the investigation."

"People were wronged because someone was helped who maybe planned to hurt these women in one way or another," he said. "In this context, something went wrong. And I'm sorry this job was taken. At the time we took the job, we didn't know this was happening.”

A CBS update posted from Jerusalem stated that proceeds from the Weinstein assignment will be donated to women's groups. "Of course we apologize to those hurt by this. Of course women were hurt. Now, in retrospect, it's a shame this we took this job," Tishler even acknowledged.

Ethics experts weigh in on NBC detailing how Black Cube employed former Israeli spies for its information-gathering operations and how information was not only gathered on the accusers but attempts were made to dig up embarrassing stories on the journalists, presumably to blackmail them into silence.

Ronan Farrow's New Yorker story revealed how how David Boies, a high-profile trial attorney and partner at the law firm of Boies, Schiller and Flexner, signed off on a contract with the international investigative agency, Black Cube. The agency is run by former Israeli intelligence officers.

A follow-up NPR story to Farrow's NPR story delved into thehigh-level, corporate espionage tactics Farrow discussed in the article and includes an interview with an Israeli journalist that provides great supplementary material on Black Cube's strengths as well as its limitations.

Are you buying black cubes apology? We would like to hear from private investigators and intelligence experts. Please tweet us your thoughts or post responses in the comment below for possible inclusion in a follow up post.