Transcripts For CSPAN2 Jodi Kantor And Megan Twohey She Said 20240713

Author and Journalist Bob Woodward at an event hosted by politics and prose at the synagogue. This is one hour and a half. [cheering and applause] good evening. [inaudible] on behalf of everybody and those folks here welcome and thank you very much for coming. We had tnt always enjoy joining forces with six and i for author events and the synagogue and Cultural Center is now 15 years old and founder and staff deserve credit. [applause] they deserve a lot of credit for transforming the space into the vibrant Community Institution it is today. We are delighted to be hosting jodi and megan. [applause] they are two New York Times reporters who reported on Harvey Weinsteins extensive sexual abuse in their book is the riveting revealing account of how they developed their blockbuster story and its consequences in spurring the Metoo Movement. As a note in their preface in the wake of the weinstein expoee which broke in october 2017 it wasnt if it was is a dam wall had come down. Many women not just in this country but around the world stood forward to tell their own stories of mistreatment. In addition to the purple impact the jodi and megans reporting has the way they went about confirming a story that others before them had tried to nail provides terrific case studies of what goes into firstrate investigative journalism. People often think such scoops fall into the laps of reporters. In reality what is involved is a lot of painstaking reporting pursuing all sorts of leads and running into dead ends and coaxing details out of reluctant sources and ferreting out documents, substantiating information, dealing with skeptical inpatient editors, all while in doing often intense efforts by the subjects being investigated to thwart and even sometimes to threaten. The example set by jody and megan of tough and exacting journalism and the effect this kind of reporting can have stands as a powerful counterargument to the skepticism about the denigration of news media today. Both jody and megan brought to the task years of experience in jodi who joined the times 15 years ago spent a while is the political reporter wrote a book about barack and Michelle Obama that came out in 2012. More recently her reporting is focused on workplace particularly the treatment of women. Megan is country didnt much of her attention on the treatment of women in children. In 2014 as a reporter with reuters she was the finalist for the pulitzer for investing in reporting for exposing an underground network where parents give away adopted children they no longer wanted to strangers met on the internet. Megan and joeys work on the weinstein story led to the New York Times winning the pulitzer for Public Service last year. [applause] susan in her review she said of the New York Times remarked that the book reads a bit like a feminist altar president spent so its particularly fitting the jodi and megan would be in conversation here this evening with bob woodward. [applause] bob, hes observing and reporting the list of elements in washington for nearly half a century. He has shared into Pulitzer Prizes first for coverage of the watergate scandal and the second in 2003 as the lead reporter of the Washington Post coverage of the 911 terrorist attacks but the prices alone hardly begin to reflect bobs enormous journalistic legacy. Fear is devastating look inside the Trump Presidency came out last year and was his 19th book. All have been National Bestsellers and i would not bet against another one coming out in a nottoodistant future please join me in welcoming jody, megan and bob. [cheering and applause] [cheering and applause] thank you, brad. Its great to be here. Lets get right to it. First of all this book is a masterpiece. Its a landmark. [cheering and applause] is a landmark of journalism but as people who are not journalists should read it because its about how you sort out information and decide to publish and share it with others and i would love it and i have my marked up copy here so the first question is what was the origin of the collaboration between you two . Listen, we would just like to start by thinking everybody. This is the launch of our book to her so we are so [cheering and applause] we are so thrilled to be here tonight starting here and we are grateful we got not only friends and family but also sources in the audience tonight. We want to thank them for being here to. [applause] introduce your family. I think that when it comes to the question and answer time if people want to identify themselves they be happy to do that. Thats a good question. The truth is that in 2017 the New York Times more broadly the newsroom decided it wanted to dive in to reporting on Sexual Harassment so the weinstein story or investigation was one of absolutely many reporting projects started that year and Silicon Valley in the Restaurant Industry and the comedy industry and an auto plant in chicago and we were moved by the work of our colleagues, emily and mike schmidt had done something remarkable in 2000 earlier had broken the bill oreilly story and showed how oreilly had put out millions of dollars to silence women would come forward with allegations of Sexual Misconduct against them. Lets pretend its a movie. Is it in the newsroom of the New York Times where did you know each other . We were acquaintances. She was new at the paper and i saw this woman like in 2016 who i could tell was pretty formidable because she was doing these difficult trump stories and i saw her really going like this as the story got more difficult. What was happening to her body and i have had two kids at the time so i knew what she was doing was not easy but we did not know each other well. It only met a couple of times and megan was on Maternity Leave in the 2017 when i started working on the weinstein story is part of the [inaudible] to this question that the editors asked are there other powerful men in American Life who have perhaps abused women and covered it up and i was trying very hard to get people on the phone and engage them. Getting these actors numbers was like an investigation onto itself. There is the question of once you have them on the phone what you actually do to earn trust and sometimes in that first 45 seconds that you know so i called megan for advice and she was like on full on Maternity Leave and had just put the baby down for nap and was telling me about the reporting on obligations by women against donald trump and she was saying that the argument she often made to them was look, i cant change what happened to you in the past but together if we work and if we work arm in arm we may be able to take your pain and put it to cut some constructive purpose. This was the standard line you use this is the outreach line. This is the first real conversation that jody and i had while on Maternity Leave so i dont reporting on sex crimes and started my career in chicago and it was something i found had actually but listen, what reason does woman have to open up abou when did you know you were a team or when did the editors think of you . Its funny when rebecca my editor told me to call megan i do not think that much of it but now i realize that she works in deep ways and understands the newsroom and i understand she was feeling out a potential partnership. You were tricked into. When people said that line on the phone something in the changed and what i do not want to get off the phone with her and to have the same effect on sources but megan still had a couple of weeks for maternity and she had some choice in terms of what she would cover when she came back. Go back to covering trump or join jody in the weinstein investigation and i had to take a day to think about it. We had been covering trump up till having this baby and i watched for four months as i saw using investigative work land with a thud and not have an impact. This was a question is whether or not as investigative journalists you not just out to write interesting stories but write stories that will have why lots of people have not heard of him . I myself had i barely knew who he was and i myself had doubts. I wondered when jody started to tell me about the allegations she had heard the stories of ashley judd and Gwyneth Paltrow i had a hard time conceiving of these famous actresses and i had a hard time combating as in the skin of journalists were looking to give voice to the voices and i had a hard time wrapping around the jody said the fact that this happened to these women allegedly suggest that nobody is immune and if we can crack this story we might be able to help make a difference here. When was the first real breakthrough . In your book you got the chronology and so many characters and so forth when was the moment when you said this is different and this is something that has legs as we say in the News Business. We had a breakthrough early on the left us in a bad position because three really prominent actresses rose mcgowan, ashley judd, Gwyneth Paltrow not take medication with one another barely knew each other and totally separately tell us these terrible weinstein hotel room stories back at this point they were on the record. They were so far from the record. So that is what led us , one. It immediately, what. [inaudible conversations] pr highvalue sources and stories are convincing and their stories match but on the other hand none of them are ready to go on the record so what do we do. What did you do . We realized that the stories would have to be broken with evidence and not just with look, we have this theory that maybe we could persuade actresses to hold hands and jump together and their safety in numbers but because we couldnt tell the actresses who else we were talking to it was hard to get them to do that and then also if we did that it may have still created a traditional he said she said dynamic where the stories wouldve sparked a debate about what weinstein what made this a different or making it provable because thats your goal . We realize right away we would need records and evidence and that it went beyond these accounts that we were hearing in so this is one of the ways in which we turned to emily and mike schmidt who had broken the bill oreilly story and they had done something remarkable there. They basically helped teach us how to basically try to track down secret settlements that have been paid. The key here is a settlement or some sort of agreement to be silent, an nda . Exactly but there were women who were reluctant to tell us their experiences with weinstein and also women at least eight who were legally prohibited from telling us what happened because weinstein had forced the great settlements on the fed is something that happens not in the case of weinstein but in cases of Sexual Harassment and Sexual Assault across the country and women are often told their best option in these cases is to accept money in exchange for silence but the restrictive clauses are remarkable. What you think of that . It seems your big breakthrough is rose mcgowan where she had 100,000 settlement and that was concrete and weinstein or the company had paid her right . We were basically able in the course of our reporting to show that we were able to trace the financial trail of payoff that had been made so the secret settlements that have been used to basically hide the truth to allow people like weinstein to cover his tracks we realize if we could on earth the fact that the settlement had been paid over the years that that would be evidence into itself so we were able to track down settlements that had stress from 1990 and 2015 and a variety of ways in which we were able to document. Rose mcgowan was just one of many. Among the wonderful lines in the book you say knowing about documents is good but having seen documents is excellent but actually having copies is a celebration. You know what that feels li like. [laughter] when was the first time you actually got or saw documents that showed women had been paid off to be quiet . I go to london that summer to meet a former miramax assistant who had a settlement and megan is like basically emoji texting me as i leave for the plane and she is like you will see the papers jody. You know that. Youll see the papers. Shes the coach. Well,. Even in the scenes where the book where its one of us doing something we are both really there because we are preparing beforehand and strategizing et cetera and so when i lead, the causes were so shocking. They went beyond a standard settlement agreement. These very young women were in this case legally overpowered and they were essentially prohibited from talking about their own life experiences. If they wanted to tell a therapist they needed special permission. They wanted to talk to an accountant they needed special permission. One of these women could not tell her future husband about what had happened to her. The women were not even allowed to retain copies of the settlement papers. Perkins had cleverly hatched some of them together but imagine being told you have to abide by in agreement that you cannot even have your own copy of. How do you break that . Zelda was very brave. You know, from the beginning she was thinking of just breaking her settlement which was a courageous thing to do because it wouldve exposed her to potential legal and financial liability but and i felt that i couldnt push her into that because it was such a big risk and remember we act now like me too was inevitable but it was not foreordained at all at any of these played out the way he did but we thought we might be publishing a really controversial story and that our sources might be vulnerable to attack. What we basically set his look, zelda, even if you cant go on record there are so many other people who know about the settlement and there are other people at miramax who know you disappeared and you know you got money and there are lawyers and people we can talk to. What if we write about this and document everything we can that happened and you dont go on record finance which he agreed to. Did you ever use the argument if you are silent your enabling this . I think the truth is that for women who have experienced Sexual Harassment and Sexual Assault they have already undergone so much pain in their lives that we are not trying to show we dont want to bully anybody into doing. Two coming forward thats not an effective strategy and we dont think thats the right thing to do. Its worth noting that there are women who have [applause] that there are women who have entered the settlements who still have not gone on the record and are still terrified. Its one thing to be asking us sources to speak about something that people from the past but its another death to break something in which a legally binding document in which weinstein can come after them for serious money. Dont you think they are liberated from that . Weinstein has is for perry to go on trial for criminal charges so hes got i think hes been attention to other issues right now. Hes busy and seems to be sued now by victims were seeking financial compensation for what theyve gone through so he has not gone after anybody but anyone would be mistaken to think its not a serious risk. You say there are 80 women who have charges against weinstein. How many of those are public now and how many of them are off the record for the next volume . I believe after the public account there are other women including a few we read about in the book will not come forward about weinstein but the really key thing to remember, especially as the trial comes up is that the accusations vary. Some of them are accusations of rape and assault the fall within the purview of the criminal Justice System or should but a lot of them are charges of Sexual Harassment and thats illegal but a civil violation. The sort of restitution for that is a lawsuit. You consume for that but you cant have someone arrested so thats part of why the question of whether weinstein will essentially face any accountability at all is so fraught because the terminal trial is a big . In the sort of combined civil lawsuit of these women is also a big . This is an important question. You two are experts on interviewing and going down really explaining peoples experience and all of your work to define any women who actually made up allegations . In the case of or the course of our reporting on weinstein we have not come across any fabricated allegations but what i can tell you thats very important. Its important. [inaudible conversations] as you know, our book starts with reporting i did on jump in 2016 and the many women looking bored with allegations and so while we are not come across fabricated allegations we also included in the book some of the instances in which we did not report allegations because i because we didnt believe the person but because we had not been able to obtain cooperation and there was one woman, former beauty pageant contestant who told me a story about being sexually harassed and groped by donald trump when she was in the ms. Universe pageant and she provided what steered me toward potential cooperation that the minute materialize. It didnt mean i didnt believe her but he meant it wasnt we go to painstaking details to describe all the Due Diligence that we do to move forward with publishing a story like this. Okay. Talk about Rebecca Corbin who was your roll up the sleeves editor because theres a marvelous scene in the book where she takes you to a quiet bar as you described it and tell us what she said to you. This is in the summer of 2017 we been reporting for weeks and weeks and we know so many thin things. Weve spoken to several actresses through a very convincing accounts and a done cooperation of those accounts we know about a whole bunch of settlements and at that point we also have talked to miramax employees who have said yes this was a terrible problem and i had some knowledge of it at the ti time. Your feeling good at the bar. We were not. We are feeling nervous. Tell what she had to say. We are feeling nervous because we have the feeling of responsibility and we want to know if we can land the story. She listens to everything we have and she says is any of it on the record and we said no. She said you do not have a publishable story. How did you feel . We feel felt pretty devastated. It was definitely one of the more minimal moments and one we worked so hard in there so much that goes on. There was a lot of drama in the pages of the articles on weinstein that came out but also so much, that played out behind the scenes. We were grateful to finally show readers what its like when your working with resources but also in the newsroom and your editor is telling you wake up but you dont have a story. Whats the strategy for getting out of the hole. She is saying, not publishable and as we all know in the News Business thats what counts. Thats the job. How do you navigate out . We kept calling former miramax and Weinstein Company employees and we finally called the sky and we figured he is talk about him. He was very important. You know, one thing you never know in journalism is who will end up helping and who isnt. Its almost impossible to protect. I find that there are lots of surprises in this book and people who helped expose the truth and the people who helped conceal it. This was a surprising hero figure. Erwin ryder has essentially been Harvey Weinsteins Company Accountant for dirty years. Hes done the books on all these famous movies we have seen and is a relatively honest guy in short and in his late 50s and has an outer borough accent and he had been described to me as like this rough loyalist and i thought he been very unlikely to help but finally someone said to me erwin ryder hates Harvey Weinstein. [laughter] that was our opening. Did you tell that to rebecca . Yeah, so i called the sky and he gets up doesnt that also make you nervous though . That somebody im sorry. Well, heres what i was nervous about. I was worried he could be a spy. As you know to get information you have to give at least a little information, at least in terms of what you are writing about. I worried that urban was a set up to try to we now know a lot about what Harvey Weinstein was doing to try to stop the story but at this point megan and i are imagining it in one of the things weinstein could have done is could have positioned a Company Insider to play a source but actually be a spy or even worse plant fake information in the story which wouldve been the most devastating of all. Writer gets off the phone quickly and gives me his email address and we start corresponding and i mean even just the fact hes writing back and we are sort of answering over emails said he would take the weekend to decide so i this is not in the book but he and i kept emailing and since were in a synagogue maybe i should say erwin is the child of Holocaust Survivors and im the grandchild of Holocaust Survivors. It turns out we grew up in the same places and our families even spent summers in the same modest catskill bungalow colonies were Holocaust Survivors who do not have money spend their summers. Does anyone know the word [inaudible] in yiddish . He and i were [inaudible] and so we were answering over the weekend and im waiting to see if hes willing to meet in person. Low and behold he says hes willing to meet and on a monday or tuesday night in september we had our first those are great days for reporters. If not monday where everyone is running around and its not the end of the week and i always have found the best time which you did knock on the door strategy without an appointment and 8 17 on a tuesday night is about the best. We will keep that in mind. Yes. [laughter] lo and behold, to answer your question i started asking ryder about the things that happened in the 90s and he looked like he had a little bit information but not that much and then he finally said why arent you asking me about more recent offenses and so im like, recent offenses and it turns out that unbeknownst or only a tiny part of this comes public for two years within the Weinstein Company in 2014 and 2015. There was a series of problems that had become more and more visible to the Company Leadership and i did not know it was writer but i was talking to somebody who had tried to stop things internally and failed so if you know that is the best whistleblower because they feel like theyve already taken action and that it hasnt come to fruition so talking to the press becomes a last resort but i think a very principled decision on their part. Okay so talk about [inaudible] the editor of the times because he has a very thin appearance in about three or four scenes in the book. Yeah, we were so glad we had an opportunity to show what a True Team Effort this product was. From the beginning dean had been the second editor of the times and had set us down in his office and basically said he had exchanges with weinstein in the past and that is down basically said watch out. This guy who, you and expect him to put the detectives on your tail we do not expect they would be former israeli spies who were promised 300,000 if they could put us off the investigation and that came out later but he basically really was useful and had experience with him was able to help us spell out serious ground rules. One assume youre being followed so to be careful about how we handled ourselves every single step of the way but also to make sure we do not have any conversations with weinstein off the record. They just flat out said. He said no conversations. He also said. Until we were ready to go to him and he said dont engage him off the record. When we go to him when you got the goods and ready to go to him with your findings that has to be in on the record conversation because if hes allowed to go off the record and come in and do his im an important mirror teen and want to share with you the real truth that he will smear this will smear your sources and he will engage in a lot of dirty spirit and you said act as if every conversation is being secretly taped. Thats right. Did that surprise you . The investigation of the near times we and our colleagues are working on secret investigations of powerful figures and institutions all the time. We werent surprised by that but it was useful to us in will be showed was you have to make sure the reporters and editors and even all the way up to the publisher because weinstein would try to call publisher of the New York Times to make his case, import demand to imported man and everybody from all those tough guys would basically say talk to the reporters. They do not give him any opportunity to come in the back door and try to intimidate or bully us out of the story. Okay. It sounds at a time i can ask this question. Tell us about the biggest fight you two had. [laughter] we didnt or never had a big fight over the course spirit or disagreement that. Will tell you about it big conceptual it wasnt even so much a discriminant as it worry. It was that in august of 2172 months before we publish the story megan find out about this really regular series of transactions that weinstein has had with this aids charity he had been involved in four years and things looked questionable to her. I will tell you something about my partner. When you get into something you dont really let go. Very quickly there was the suggestion which turned out to be true that weinstein had improperly used a fancy aids Charity Auction and that the money that the owners thought they were getting to aids was really going to help weinstein in the business capacity and so this was like waving red in front of megan and the dip disagreement we had was that i certainly thought it was interesting but on the other hand these women are telling us the stories about the hotel room and the settlements and you have to remember at this point in the weinstein investigation we are getting a new tip a day. There were so many rumors that are coming at us and we are hearing a lot of the things to not be true but Angelina Jolie had a story but we cant nail it down and you have to talk to selma hayek because she has a story and cant nail it down. The story, innocent, hearty felt too big for only two reporters and megan couldnt pull herself away from looking at this aids charity. I also found out was under invitation by the new York Attorney Generals Office and weinstein and all his people were trying to cover up. [laughter] so it worked out in a way we never could have integrated which is that did take time to go ahead and do her aids story and it ended up being a way of first of all swearing off with weinstein in person and i wont ruin the scene in the book for you but the stuff he says in that meeting was externally surprising. Second of all it became a guide to his playbook but weinstein was very successful in creating his own reality and in getting a lot of prestigious people to march behind him when he wanted to do something. Also, megan nil what happened in that story and published that before the investigation about the women was published and so it was like laying down a marker that we will hold you to accou account. And showing our sources that there was a sense that we were on to this and weinstein had come into the times and engage with us that we had to basically show our sources of people in his company that we met business and would report the truth when we found it and we would not be bullied or intimidated. But you spend all this time on him and you have to ask the question which you really dont address in the book and that is why he behaves this way and i know youre not a psychiatrist or psychologist but share with us the why and whats driving him because there are so many strange things he does and comes to the New York Times and at one point he says to you do you think im bad and im worse and its almost like hes waiting the red flag or theres a fatalism almost like you will catch me so. Listen, thats a good question and i think we can spend days or weeks or even months trying to get to the bottom of his psychology. Give me the twominute version. Let me tell you was more important than the psychology of the people around him got glimpses of his alleged misconduct and what they were thinking and how did they respond and what to do when you get a glimpse of wrongdoing and especially his brother, Bob Weinstein, who was his only sibling and someone would been in business with him and run two companies for decades during the time he was involved in the alleged predatory behavior and we came out of that for story wanting to know what did bob know and when did he know it and what did he do and he finally opened up to us in a series of interviews for this book is an interesting psychology we saw time and time again. Harvey hit him. My reading is that was a turning point that he crossed the line and so theres that long letter from Bob Weinstein sent to harvey in which he lays out the parade of deplorable. What we learned over the course of our interviews and less letter he provided to us that he had sent to his brother the cd letter in 2015 were two years before the truce put out into the public he basically said i was aware of allegations of Sexual Conduct against her brother going back to the 90s and into cases are provided money that was used to silence women but i, like a lot of other people in his orbit chose to believe him when he said they were attempted shakedowns and was only engaged in extramarital activities like combat as an it to my wife but in the case of Bob Weinstein he had had a rash not rooted in his own battles and he chose to believe his brother was a sex addict. Your artfully dodging the question. Of harvey . Why . There is something. I will tell you what we know is that the story is in xray into power. How power works. [applause] that is what the evidence says. Its also about sex, isnt it . Is not about sex in what i would say that part of the way is about power but its about work. These women whether their actresses or former assistance they showed up in some of them on their first day of work, first so many women in this book who allegedly harassed or assaulted on the first day of work or their first day they met weinstein and they show up with their ambitions and aspirations and hopes and dreams and what you see again and again according to these obligations is that weinstein is able to turn those against them. I think its about whether or not these women will have a shot at achieving what they want to in the workplace and whether whether those hotel room stories they are a bait and switch with women go in expecting one thin thing i understand but there are some perverted sexual drive he had, no . I think one of the things that we realize was that in 1990 when we were identified who we considered to be the patient zero of the weinstein investigation and this is womanhood on to work for miramax straight out of college was allegedly sexually assaulted by him on the job and silently one of the settlements and when we were able to start to report out what had happened around that instance we find out john schmidt was the chief Financial Officer at the company and was aware of this and this is 1990 and Harvey Weinstein went into the office and said ive done something horrible and i promise it wont happen again. It was remarkable for us to realize this is not something or someone who time and again was basically confronted with his behavior and even a. 27 years before our investigation who claim to have knowledge of what he done was wrong and promises to change. So why . Im sorry and i want to pursue on this but what is driving him because not to go too far but okay that is really important to understand that these for you in your search for his behavior and what was likely and obviously it was a compulsion but why . If we had him here with the truth serum and now might take a lot but we asked what is this about for you . I dont think it will say [inaudible] but go ahead. As a movie producer and part of what you see in the story is the way you have a nice so many everyday aspects of the workplace in pursuit of the selected quotation. I will Say Something totally gross but its important part of our reporting. It is that especially in the later years he would have a assistance, female assistance procure supplies of this penile erection drug like a viagra but its injected directly into the and these assistance tell stories of having to keep supplies especially when one of them worked in new york hand them out to him more than once a day. This was a Prestigious Company and this is a company is making movies that we all thought and what is a markable to us is the way he was able to deploy so many elements of this company and its contracts and assistance and its lawyers and sometimes its offices in pursuit of whatever that thing he wanted was. What was that . What is rosebud for harvey . I think theres im sorry but theres some kind of weird foreplay to well, ill injected this in my penis and isnt it . I think its beyond the limits of our knowledge and beyond the limits. [inaudible conversations] as investing of reporters we thought of the questions we wanted to tackle in our reporting and in this book were not the psychology of weinstein was clearly engaged in such a long pattern of predatory behavior, not just against actresses but women worked in companies that we wanted to tackle the question of complicity and how is it that individuals and companies can become seen them as enablers. [applause] those are some of those things that we are all wrestling with now that how did lisa bloom one of the most prominent feminist attorneys in the country cross over to the other side to work with weinstein in 2016 and 2017 to evade scrutiny . I understand you are dodging the question. What is really important is the behavior and the impact on these women time and time again. Tell me a little bit about the voyeurs in this. How did the lawyers come out . Yeah, lisa bloom is a i will pause on lisa bloom for a second but this was there were a variety of highpowered attorneys who came in to weinsteins orbit and held him conceal and spend and evade scrutiny so this was lisa bloom we knew she had worked for weinstein and we encounter in the course of our reporting and towards the end and she said she went to work for him because she was only aware that he had made inappropriate comments towards women and she wanted to help him apologize. In the course of reporting this book we were able to obtain confidential records that showed she had much deeper knowledge of very serious allegations against him and she played a much better role. We obtained this memo that weve reproduced in its entirety in the book the people carried themselves what this lawyer was saying to weinstein in 2016 in which he spelled out the underhanded tactics she would use to help him undermine rose mcgowan of accuser and it basically a playbook and how she will harm all her experience working with him to work against them. We obtained her billing records which are an hour by hour accounting that shows how she was working with former Israeli Intelligence official that were hired to stop us in working with them in working with david boys one of the most prominent attorneys in the country and someone would want a case of gay marriage to help with the case of gay marriage proper for the Supreme Court and had also been one of harveys biggest defenders over the course of 15 years. We thought it was important to eliminate the figures that these lawyers played and the circle that helped enable. What you think of these reputation managers . The lawyer in town, davis, one of my favorite lines in the book is when he talked to him and says im tired of this [bleep] weinstein hired so many highpriced attorneys and spinners and pr people and it was as we got to the final showdown with weinstein it was almost confusing to deal with because it was like who is representing you . Who do we even call if we want a straight answer and it was clear they do not all agree with each other but i think our experience is that the lesson for us is that all the highpowered legal help and pr help in the world does not really do anything when you have sources and when you have a lot of backs you documented when you got 25 years of allegations and when you got a brave institution is willing to stand up for the vulnerable. [applause] it didnt help him because it was the tip off, wasnt it . When [inaudible conversations] as you know the best pr people are people who help journalists and lanny did end up helping us in some ways. He was also pretty open from the beginning about the fact that his client was really difficult. You ask a really potent question and that is where we are now in the Metoo Movement and you ask and you say has there been too much change or not enough and what is your answer. The second we didnt want to stop at the publishing of the weinstein story. We wanted to push through into the year that followed as a Metoo Movement took off in earnest and so we were grateful enough to have the opportunity to report behindthescenes with Christine Ford and her pastor testified in washington which became one of the more controversial moments. You say in the book you interviewed her dozens of hours. Yes, thats right. Do you believe her . What i can tell you is Christine Ford is probably the most precise and diligent source subject that certainly ive ever reported on. In recreating for the readers what was happening for her by the scene she was on her way to washington and even the day before she testified when she had some of her advisers trying to culture for going before the Senate Judiciary committee and she refused to be coach and knew the answers to the questions and she even was obsessively writing and rewriting to make sure she had language just right and so all i can tell you is in the telling of her account and her experience i have not encountered somebody who appears to be as precise and obsessed with getting the truth right. [cheering and applause] she did not have precise memory on when this happened or exactly where and so forth. That has been used to undermine what she testified to and said and i think the interesting question now with all that is available about Christine Lahti ford and that allegation and kavanaugh if he would say a judge here in the district of columbia someone gave you that information is it enough to publish a story . Wasnt sufficient . Would it have met your standard at the New York Times to publish that . I think the reason the question is interesting is because its your paper Washington Post that it publish what really was exactly that story. But it was in the midst of a Supreme Court nomination. Im asking a different question. In other words, in terms of go through your book and i really mean is. Ice b2 journalism seminar and i will sign it and a manual about going through and going through a difficult case with the kavanaugh case as it unfolded was very difficult and i wonder whether everything we no, the precision and there is some precision but there is imprecision and they are not the cooperating witnesses that you wanted in your work on weinstein and im asking when you have publish that in the New York Times . I think that was part of why we wanted to write about it. Weinstein story ended up being a case in which there were so much overwhelming proof that we felt that we had to we had to take on a much harder case. The first thing i would say in answer to your question is that i dont think the fact that Christine Ford does not remember everything about that night is a sign of lack of credibility. I would say the opposite. When somebody. [inaudible conversations] i think that we when someone is willing to acknowledge what they dont remember we generally see that as a straight. I think the reason we were so drawn to this is there are basically three Big Questions that are unresolved and very controversial. Which are that number one, what is the scope of behavior under scrutiny and are we only talking about classic Sexual Assault and is it also lesser offenses like verbal abuse and included in the question about scope which is how far back are we going . Its powerful to go back a long time but the further back you go the harder it is because its harder to ascertain the truth. Number two, how do we get to the bottom of what happened especially when its this High School Era incident report many years ago. Number three what is the account ability look like and what is the punishment for this behavi behavior . You would be disappointed if i didnt press you. Im getting to the answer of your question which is from the first moment we found out about the ford allegations it was so newsworthy and this is a potential Supreme Court justice was about to be appointed and this is woman whose a Research Scientist whose business is precision so we are not the editors of the New York Times that we would not have made that final call but i will tell you we tried very hard to speak to Christine Ford and to beat your newspaper even before this became a political storm because we did feel that you would leave it up to the editors of the New York Times to decide whether to publish. What we can tell you is Christine Ford did not come forward with her allegation when kavanaugh was a lower court judge. It was really when he was being considered for one of the most powerful job in the entire country that she felt like she had a civic duty to report that. There are questions about the new judgment in terms of news organizations and when we publish stories and allegations and why. In some cases you are looking at the pattern of predatory behavior and rate that person is still going on and if you dont report the truth about them they will keep hurting other people. You almost think its a Public Safety issue and that there are other considerations when its someone in a position like this up in court. You posed this question in your book which i think is very interesting. Would she have been better off staying quiet . In her own life and you posed that question and you dont answer it. Right. We know that kavanaugh after these wrenching testimonies on both sides say hes now on the Supreme Court and Christine Ford is back in california so he will continue to be a physical, public figure and will be able to trace what happens to him but its worth people across the country continuing to ponder how shes doing and in our experience [applause] when i did the first interview of her in palo alto months after that she was still living in hiding. She was she had not, she did not feel like it was safe enough for her to go out. You also pose the question about whether she was trying to retain control of her own story and obviously she was unable to. Is that correct . Yeah, i think she became a vehicle. Twentyseven. Behind the scenes story is so much more complicated. Complicated. The last chapter of the book is the gathering when youve got a dozen of your sources and so forth together. I think it is a fascinating discussion, and i would ask from that because you were there and you did all this work, what did you learn about your cells in the course of this . That is definitely the hardest question that you have asked. You are going to think i am not answering your question, but i am. I believe in the journalistic process. I believe that we have been fortunate to do these stories, nobody more so then you. Its a tool that we describe in the book but its a tool journalists across the country and across the world use every single day and if you follow the process and use the judgment, they really do work. But i feel like fundamentally you picked the right profession. I have been a reporter for 20 years and i sent a variety of stories and i think that for me as an expert i was on Maternity Leave and that was two and a half years ago so for me i think one of the benefits is that theres also been an incredible partnership this far so i think that for me, learning to work so closely with a fellow journalist like that has been one of the most unexpected about doing this work. [applause] i think we would be remiss if we didnt ask a question or two. [applause] you are the investigative appointment editor of the universe in the scenario. What is that as an investigative journalist would you most want to know about how trump used debacles in the leadership and other foreign leaderships what do you think most needs to be investigated and what do we not understand the. Weve got to remember the ukrainian story, which theres been a lot of attention given to its looking through the keyhole at the administration. I am going to send a copy and i hope that you will find this to adam schiff was running the investigation because this is how to run an investigation. [applause] you cant do it in two weeks or two months you cant say we found three women who were assaulted or harassed. You have to look at the whole of the total universe and that is the obligation and thats what you did in this case and hopefully in this internet age there is a way to slow down for everyone including trump and the people that work for him they are entitled to and investigation of listening to what you did knocking on doors, crosschecking the ups and downs. You went on one of the most wonderful that anybody has. That i dont think that you are answering my question. [applause] what do you most one to know . Part of the question is why. I think one of the big issues, ive written books on nine president s from nixon to trump and thats 20 of the president s weve had. I once went to a Junior High School for a friend and one of the students raised her hand and said what was Calvin Coolidge like . [laughter] all president s are isolated and trump may be the most isolated. He has because he had no political office, because he has had no government experience, he has experienced a self validation no one here does. He made it to the top and you see this confidence that he shows publicly and when he meets in the oval office with advise advisers, people can have advice and ideas and i am here and you are here because of me, i did it all by myself, so she has got as far as he is concerned she is in control and what happens this is unfortunate for him and the country. Thats what the founder of the containment doctrine called the treacherous curtain of deferen deference. It comes down we agree with you and he, by reality thats out there thats why he hates the Washington Post and the New York Times for so much because we are bringing reality into that. You want to know what he did acting out of all of the selfconfidence that wasnt due to the deference of other people. But i want to know what we are facing the major issues in the middle east. 99 out of 100 economists will say that this makes no sense at all. The north korean policy, he almost got us into a war with north korea. There are all of the basic economic and foreignpolicy issues. How did we get there, what is the impact and what might be the outcome of some of this . My wife and i were in south korea last week and you talk to people in south korea and if they are next to the nuclear weapons. We went in with a certain amount of trepidation quite frankly and they are worried what is going on, whats the strategy, how do we not to overblow on this, but the issue in one of these meetings he has i was recount for National Security Council Notes when he is on this about why are we spending all of this money on allies with nato we would be so rich if we didnt do this. The secretary of defense says we are doing all of these things to prevent world war iii. The president has to be told this is why we have these alliances and the defense syst system. That is one of my chilling moments as a reporter. I look forward to finding out what else you find out. [applause] i will come here and you can interview me. [applause] i really appreciate your journalism, thank you for what you have contributed. If you want to look at what happens to two people who stand up to the Supreme Court justices you need to study me that anita hill. The thing three times is a charm and what will happen if we say this again . One of the things worth pointing to is when christine did come forward when she was made public and there was a determination that there would be a hearing she wrote this pretty incredible opinion piece about the time when they were trying to negotiate with the rules were going to be and she noted that so many years after her experience of coming forward this Committee Still havent come up with a protocol on how to field the allegation and what did i say not onl that say not y years after she came forward about one year into the meat to movement and so i think thats whats clear is you are tracking shifts in cultural attitudes. There is no question that anita hill while Clarence Thomas was ultimately confirmed on the Supreme Court she did play a huge role in how things shift cultural attitudes and i think that we are going to be watching to see the impact. Meanwhile, how about the Senate Judiciary committee get some protocols in place if this does happen next time [applause] thank you for all the work youve done. You are one of the legends of the profession of hearing you repeatedly interrupt women all night has been one of the frustrating experiences. On the assumptions of what they were about to say she was going to respond to a question with a discussion and i think you assumed she was going to Say Something about the justice and you wouldnt let her finish so that was frustrating. In any event, im interested in hearing your experiences as women doing this work, how have you emotionally dealt with information youve been receiving . I know when ive kind of looked through the hearings i couldnt breathe for three weeks and statistically we know that you have been victims and certainly know personally many people who have so what has it been like for you living through this . We have a firm rule which is we never discussed what has or has not happened to us personally and that is because it is all about our sources. We want to be a blank slate for the women we talked to and we want to do our job when we talk to them which is a very unique relationship. We are not their friend, we are journalists who are trying to bring the stories to light so when you are doing that work you are trying to be very steady because the victims want to feel compassion but they also want to feel that they are in very firm and steady hands. If i were in that situation i wouldnt want to speak to a reporter that is an emotional mess falling apart and believe me weve had a lot of feelings and reactions to doing this work but we try to hold them in reserve and i think its also what is so valuable about having each other as part nurse because we can be very professional and then we can turn around and call each other and say oh m zero my. We tend to trade off the emotions. We are lucky enough to trade off and be able to help lift each other up behind the scenes. I think the final answer to your question is doing this reporting has ultimately been in power in. There was material during the investigation that was very, very difficult and you feel that you are standing in a river of pain as you are doing this reporting but i think we felt such responsibility and force of desire to air these stories but it always felt like it was moving in the right direction. Somebody recently asked me if it was fun and i said fun wouldnt be the right word given the level of pain but it was galvanizing. [applause] i am a journalist from india and i was part of the team in my newspaper but last year we did the story is reporting about it. The change that happened then was previously if there is a report only then we write about it but we saw fiery parting and if there was a discussion on what happened to us about how we draw the line. Now you opened the door and where do you see the future of reporting . First of all, congratulations to you. [applause] maybe we will have the chance to hear more about that specific reporting that you did and what i can tell you is after we broke the story, our email accounts and phones were flooded with tips and women coming forward with their accounts of what happened to them and we had to kind of come up with a triage system to figure out how to yield all of these stories that were coming to us and it became like a Group Project the Sports Department was involved, the culture desk was involved and we were even doing brownbag sessions with reporters to explain what we used in the course of the data so it was one thing to watch it spread across the newsroom but to watch it spread across the country and around the world has been so exciting. We cant be sure of where everything is headed but as journalists we cant enact policy reforms were changed the Hr Department or the law. But you know that there are news organizations, not only for us to know that but for companies to know there is a Group Project on this issue you it makes me sleep better at night. It has been really fulfilling to watch. [applause] i would like to just thank you for all of your years and decades of searching for the truth. [applause] when i knew i was coming here, i took out from the Washington Post [inaudible] you have a question for them . No, but i want to thank you. [applause] i have a question for you. I wanted to say thank you. Im looking forward to reading the book and i am putting both of you on my list but i want to talk about those that were the sources for your buck and an article that im sure youve read. A high profile case who had protection but theres a number in the article but have lost their jobs and run out of money, separated from their children and im just wondering why we are igniting the movie to cover the cases im hoping that theres some movement that protects these are witnesses and i know its hard to take on everything but how do we build that into the movement . I think what you are putting your finger on his butt has been frustrating about the whole discussion whether some of these men will come back or not. Because you are putting your finger on a more interesting question which is what is going to happen to these women. Some of them suffered severe consequences. I can tell you they didnt do anything to get her passport assaulted they were doing a privilege of walking down the street, they were going to their jobs, etc. So there is something very unfair about this kind of reporting because to have to tell these stories why is that the womeit thewomen that have ts process of being tortured about whether to go on the record or not in on the one hand you can never know what the cost will be so thats something we have to talk about a lot. Megan talks about how there were women that had allegations against trump she convinced some of them to go on the record. Some of them seemed pretty willing but this is what we do for a living. We tell people the telling of the truth is a publi as a publie and make the argument that will hopefully help other people in some way and then some of them were attacked. It was a tough conversation at the end of the day weekend to court on their behalf. There are things outside of our control and its these tough calculations that women make. But the last chapter in the book is theyve come forward as is so varied that some of them were treated as heroes and some of them paid a significant price. You never really know what the effects will be until you do it. Im sorry to say that we are out of time. I wrote my question on my phone so please excuse me. Im a survivor of a College Campus advocate and huge fan of everybody up on the stage for years. Thank you for everything and ensure that sent them it is shared throughout the room. The book and article changed my life as well as everybody else. I went to a small liberal arts school in the middle of kentucky and now that school is different because of the movement and the Harvey Weinstein scandal and everything. My question is do you have anything to say to the future i guess, to the young survivors, the advocates, the activists, those sitting out in the maledominated fields in those facing harassment, any words of advice or encouragement . [applause] thank you for coming tonight and for coming to the microphone. We appreciate that and good for you it sounds to me like you are somebody that has turned your private pain to working towards collective strength so hats off to you for that. [applause] there was an 11yearold girl that got up and asked what things were going to be like for her generation moving forward. I cant look into that, we cant tell you with prediction. If you told us when you were driving home before a story published we turned to each other at like 1 00 in the morning and had been so immersed in the reporting ticket to the finish line to make sure that it was airtight we were not even thinking about what the impact might be and we turned to each other and decide to d acidity yk anybody is going to read this story and i think that it was just a sign we had no idea about the impact of the story and others that they would have in the year that followed so all we can say is theres been a lot of people that have encountered the sources that have been motivated to act because they want to help protect the younger generations and that is something that has come out in the interviews that when she came away from testifying she said listen, i didnt come to washington to try to derail the nomination but my hope was if i could get up there and tell my story with integrity and might make it easier for younger generations to come forward. One of the people that worked on that case closely is here. [applause] it was almost a year ago today everybody in the room was living through that and so much of what they were talking about at the time even as they dealt with this very stressful set of hearings was that hope it was part of me being annoying and asking questions as they were trying to go about their word but even from that moment everybody was conscious of what it was going to leave for people like you. First of all, thank you all. Who do you hope the individual or group reads your buck and what do you hope they learn from its . I hope that men read it. [applause] i should also say every reader means the world to us because if anybody in this room has noticed our information in the country right now isnt helpful and the idea of the readers committing to a book and nearly 100,000 in this complicated material means so much to us so thank you to anybody that comes on that journey with us. [applause] you wanted to introduce family. I would love to. My parents are here. [applause] my nearest and dearest and oldest friends im excited to see them afterwards. [applause] final questions, alternative titles what else might you have called this because i read it a couple of times you refer to the reckoning that there has been a reckoning in this and indeed there has. There were no other course is in the running for the title. It just felt like such you quoted the judge saying it is a nice quote. They only tackle you when you are carrying the ball. Just from the sidelines coming you have. The ball and over the finish line, and i think that we owe it to you. [applause] [applause] thank you so much for joining us. If you would like to have your book signed please stay seated for a moment and if you are looking for an exit may use the main lobby or the corner lobby to my right. Thank you. [inaudible conversations] book tv on cspan2