Black Cube: The Shadow Intelligence Firm That Stalked Harvey Weinstein's Accusers

In 2017, two journalists — Ronan Farrow at The New Yorker and Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey at The New York Times — were closing in on one of the most significant stories of the decade: Harvey Weinstein's decades of alleged sexual assault against dozens of women in Hollywood.

Weinstein knew they were coming. So he called in professionals.

BLACK CUBE: Black Cube is a private intelligence firm founded in Tel Aviv, staffed heavily with former Mossad, Israeli military intelligence, and other elite intelligence operatives. The firm offers corporate clients what it calls "discreet intelligence solutions."

In 2017, Weinstein's legal team retained Black Cube to stop the Weinstein story from breaking.

THE OPERATION: Black Cube operatives deployed sophisticated techniques drawn from intelligence tradecraft:

• Agents created false identities and posed as advocates for women's rights to gain the trust of Weinstein's accusers
• One operative, using the name "Anna," befriended actress Rose McGowan over multiple meetings, extracting information about what she planned to say publicly
• The firm attempted to identify confidential sources who had spoken to journalists
• Weinstein's attorneys received intelligence reports on the reporters' sources and timelines

One agent approached journalist Ronan Farrow directly, posing as a women's rights advocate and attempting to gather information about his sources.

THE EXPOSURE: Farrow and The New Yorker published their investigation on October 10, 2017. The Black Cube operation was exposed in the same article. The revelation of a systematic private intelligence campaign against assault victims amplified the story's impact.

THE AFTERMATH: Weinstein was convicted of rape and sexual assault in 2020. The Black Cube operation became a case study in the use of private intelligence firms to protect the powerful — and in how such operations can backfire when exposed.

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