Harvey Weinstein built
his complicity machine out of the witting, the unwitting and those in
between. He commanded enablers, silencers and spies, warning others who
discovered his secrets to say nothing. He courted those who could
provide the money or prestige to enhance his reputation as well as his
power to intimidate.
In the weeks and months before allegations of his methodical abuse of women were exposed in October, Mr. Weinstein, the Hollywood producer, pulled on all the levers of his carefully constructed apparatus.
He gathered ammunition, sometimes helped by the
editor of The National Enquirer, who had dispatched reporters to find
information that could undermine accusers. He turned to old allies,
asking a partner in Creative Artists Agency, one of Hollywood’s premier
talent shops, to broker a meeting with a C.A.A. client, Ronan Farrow,
who was reporting on Mr. Weinstein. He tried to dispense favors: While
seeking to stop the actress Rose McGowan from writing in a memoir that
he had sexually assaulted her, he tried to arrange a $50,000 payment to
her former manager and throw new business to a literary agent advising
Ms. McGowan. The agent, Lacy Lynch, replied to him in an email: “No one
understands smart, intellectual and commercial like HW.”
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