Now on bbc news, hardtalk. Welcome to hardtalk, im sarah montague. My guest today freely admits to being a spy. Not for any government, but for the private investigators black cube. It is one of the companies Harvey Weinstein hired to investigate his accusers. Seth freedman posed as a journalist to gather information for mr weinstein, and says he was just doing his job, and that someone has to do it. But do they, and who polices this billion dollar, shadowy world of private intelligence . Seth freedman, welcome to hardtalk. Hi. Now, spies would normally want secrecy, but you started the year by writing an article in the sunday times talking about your work for black cube. Why go so public . I was quite happy to stay in the shadows, and then ronan farrow and jodi kantor and megan twohey outed me in their books about the Harvey Weinstein case and their role in it. And it was their investigation into those women who had allegations of Sexual Assault against Harvey Weinstein, who of course is on trial in new york at the moment. He denies the allegations. But you did, with this article, decide actually to be perhaps much more open than you might otherwise have been. Can you explain your thinking . I think its important for people to demystify this sector. And rather than the lurid headlines of ronan farrow claiming he needed to get a gun for his own protection, and all the things that helped sell books, which is what they have been doing in the last few months, instead to actually talk about what the industry is, how actually mundane it is, often, and also to talk about its reach into everyday life. So rather than just focusing on hollywood and the weinstein allegations, and so on, just to actually talk about the industry, and say its as run of the mill as having a defence team, or any other Litigation Support that you might require in a case. Ok, so people understand the Harvey Weinstein case, and you were employed to work for him. He was the client. Can you explain to us what it was that you did for him . So originally black cube had been contacted by Harvey Weinstein through his lawyers, and he claimed that there was a plot to oust him from his company. He thought his brother was behind it. He thought that various other high executive level people were scheming to get rid of him. And thats quite a standard job in the corporate intelligence space. You have a dispute between powerful businesspeople, and ourjob to find out, actually, is there a problem going on . So the original list of names that he came to black cube, that were fed to me, was around six or seven people, most of them men, a couple of women in there as well, and they were all very high level people in the weinstein company, or close to it. And what was yourjob . Myjob was to find out what people are saying. And i wouldnt know if i was the only one investigating this, or if i was one of many other operatives involved, because its a very cell like structure, a bit like in the army. Youre told what you need to know, and thats it. Ok, because it has since been reported that the contract that he paid black cube was 1. 3 million, which would have involved quite a lot of people working, one imagines. My rates arent that high. And what you were doing was what . Myjob was to find out, is person x talking about Harvey Weinstein, colluding with person y . Are they talking to the press . Whats going on . He wants to understand, is there a plot against him . How did you go about doing that . So because i have a journalism background, i used to write for the guardian, and i was a whistleblower in financial markets, ive had experience of writing, and also of investigative work. So i am good at getting close to people and extracting a piece of information that is required. And my cover was being myself, because if i called someone and say im a journalist, im looking into a story about life in hollywood, they immediately would check do i exist . And i do exist, and i have to, because at that level, theyre not going to talk to a random stranger who appears. So they could find your byline in places like the guardian, but also online. Correct. And you had previously worked in the commodities market, where you had been wiretapped because there was an Energy Market manipulation. You were the whistleblower in that. So i was wearing a wire for the regulators. So, in effect, that was my debut at actually getting close to someone without them knowing theres an ulterior motive, which is to extract the information on behalf of the regulators, in that case, or Harvey Weinstein in this. Ok, so for example, someone who is well known in connection with the Harvey Weinstein story is the actress rose mcgowan. You contacted her saying youre a journalist. Well, i am a journalist. Ok, but you were not interested in herfor a story you were writing, were you . Well, its ambiguous. Because on the one hand, i dont deceive her and say im someone that im not. I say i used to write for the guardian. I go through identifying myself, and i tell her that i am interested in doing a story on life in hollywood, that i have been contacting people, whether its catering staff, actors, actresses, executives, and im doing a Broad Strokes piece on life in the industry now, compared to when people started out. But lets be clear. You werent doing that. I wasnt doing that, no. You were wanting information, and you were successful. Correct. And you were successful because when you spoke to her, you were asking her lots of questions, during which she told you about her allegation against Harvey Weinstein. Yes, and if you listen to the tape, its 75 minutes long. I obviously dont bring up weinstein at all, because then youre going to tip someone off. Ijust say, tell me your life and times. And, to be honest, we got on very well. If you listen to the tape, theres a natural back and forth. At some point she brings up her allegations against weinstein. Ijust listen to it like im listening to everything else. We probably only touched on the topic for 90 seconds or a couple of minutes, and then it moves on, and were talking about other matters. Presumably at that stage, if you didnt already know, you knew that perhaps what Harvey Weinstein was digging for was not about his brother. No, the brief never changed. The brief was, theres a plot against me. Her name, Rose Mcgowans name, rather, appeared very early in the project, after a couple of months. And still it was predominantly men that were being investigated, people like steve mnuchin, who is now the treasury secretary. But you listen to the transcript of that recording, which as you say is quite wide ranging, and theres a point in it in which you say about the allegation, so what would make you kind of call it quits, on whether she was going to go public. I genuinely took an interest in how First Amendment law in america means that people can make allegations which they couldnt make here. I mean, you couldnt publish a book here accusing someone of doing something unless it was proven in court or you had hard evidence about it. And i was just fascinated by someone whos saying im going to write this book and its a tell all not just about harvey, but about the whole industry and her experiences. And the implication that i was asking to find out what it would take for her to call it quits on behalf of him is just not true. No one feeds me what to say. They just want to know what information is there. Ok, but why would you ask that what would make you call it quits . I was just interested, genuinely interested in her, and she was going out on this crusade, and shes really making powerful enemies. Notjust him, shes taking on the whole industry, and i did find it fascinating, from my point of view. All right. You also called annabella sciorra, who later went public in the new yorker with a Rape Allegation against Harvey Weinstein, and she was immediately suspicious. She read about it and she told the new yorker it struck me as bs, and it seemed that he was testing me to see if i would talk. That is an interesting point. I have to take the call, and she doesnt. I called her up and i said, is that ms sciorra . And she said it is, and i fed her my usual story. I said, i would like to talk to you about life in hollywood. She said, ok, im on holiday the moment. Can i speak with you when i come back from holiday . When i contacted her again, she didnt want to talk. She wasnt scared, she wasnt intimidated. All these things are easy to say because no one is allowed to come back and defend themselves. I dont have to defend myself from a personal point of view, but to defend myself with what actually happened, rather than what makes good copy for the new yorker, and so on. Ok, but what i am interested in is your motivation. As you say, the brief never changed, but at some point the penny must have dropped with you about what information Harvey Weinstein was after. Well, i never spoke to harvey myself. All i knew is, here is a list, an ever growing list, admittedly, that he had put together with names of people that he thought were plotting against him, scheming. At no point in any of this are we told hes been accused of Sexual Assault, or whatever else. No, but the people youre speaking to are saying that. So im not sure what the question is. Should i stop doing myjob because of what people are saying to me . 0k, what i am wondering is what you understood, or what you thought. I heard people accuse him of all kinds of things, not just of Sexual Assault. But, again, i am a cog in the machine. Im not here sitting there saying. Myjob isnt to moralise about it, in the same way that if youve got a defence lawyer, they have to get on and do theirjob. This is Litigation Support. Thats all it is. Thats why it exists. Ok, so yourjob was not because it was perceived by some as possibly scaring off some of those who might go public. Sorry to interrupt. This line of we were hired to silence, intimidate or harass victims, all of which were illegal, none of which happened, no one can give an example in my case in particular. Rose mcgowan has one of the biggest platforms out there. Was she intimidated by me . No, we got on like a house on fire and spoke for 75 minutes. Did i harass her . No, i called her agent and asked if i can have the call, and i had the call. Its a complete myth. So as you became aware of these allegations, did you think there is a whole wealth of allegations here, and they deserve to be heard in public, or did you just reserve judgement . Youre talking about what i said to myself internally . Yes. I mean, iam hearing these allegations. Hes had a reputation decades old which people didnt want to speak out about when the going was good. Everyone knew these were open secrets anyway, so it didnt change my opinion of what Hollywood Life is like at the top. Now, rose mcgowan, who we spoke to ahead of this interview, said Seth Freedman says he doesnt mind calling himself a spy. Of course not. Being a spy sounds sexy. The reality is mr freedman was simply a recording boy for a Human Trafficking enterprise. Rest easy, mr freedman. We do not see you as a spy. We see you as a bottom feeder who does the bidding of evil. What you want me to say to that . Human Trafficking Organisation . There is no Human Trafficking going on. But, i mean, i have no response to that. I literally couldnt care less. Ok, but lets put aside those words about Human Trafficking. The argument is youre just saying, look, i was effectively a hired gun, which i use as a metaphor. Its interesting, if youre going to talk about the weinstein case, you have to put it in context of what corporate intelligence is. If you want to talk about not you personally, but if one does, i will talk about how regulators use it, and hedge funds use it, and oligarchs, businesspeople, whoever it is. This is an outlier case, and i said to someone before, its not even the tip of the iceberg. Its a totally separate iceberg, this weinstein case. What we were doing, day in, day out, is always the same brief. Someone has some information that client wants to know about, in order to defend themselves or build their business or whatever it is. If this obsession with the metoo story dominates it, i dont have much more to add. I have said quite happily that. But you have made the point that private intelligence, you have said, is the new normal. In recent years, it has exploded in size and scope, pointing out, actually, it is down to huge technological advances. Sure, but i think spying is as old as humanity, basically. People want to have an edge, and we have prurient natures, and we want to know what people are doing sometimes. Sometimes its for personal reasons, sometimes its for business reasons. Ive said this before, and i think this is absolutely key. If rose mcgowan had hired black cube to look into Harvey Weinstein, and we had uncovered all this information, we would be the heroes of the day. Now, i dont care if i am a hero or villain, personally, but the idea that only the powerful can hire them and they prey on people is its amoral, in that sense. Its not about judgement. But you yourself are quoted in ronan farrows book, and i know there is no love loss between you. But he says when you were speaking to him in his book catch and kill, it turned out that it was actually about Sexual Assault. We pulled back and said, theres no way were getting involved in this. How do we extricate ourselves . Because he has hired us. So at some point, it sounds, if this quote is accurate. Its not accurate. Quite frankly, i saw ronan on your show, and he always puts this point out about the new yorker fact checker. And i have the tapes of that fact checker fact checking, supposedly, with me, and they cut out most of the quotes. So there is no point when you thought, i am not comfortable being here . Its not myjob to be comfortable, any more than the lawyers job to be comfortable. Nothing has been proven in court. It i dont take a position. Its not myjob to take a position. You took a position when you were in the Energy Markets. You decided to be a whistleblower. But that was a personal thing. Your work is personal, is it not . Youre choosing to do this job. What im not going to do is sit here and say, do you know what. . Its something that at the time no one knew about this. There was no metoo movement, none of this. All this people had sat on this open secret for years and done nothing with it because it might harm their careers. The only people who knew about it, were us at black cube, and suddenly were the bad guys. This has been out there for years and years, these allegations. People joked about it at oscars acceptance speeches and on the red carpet and so on. But you do not accept that by working for black cube and what they, and others were doing, was part of a machinery that was keeping this sort of stuff hidden . Absolutely not keeping it hidden. In what way . I didnt keep anything hidden. I just found someone who wants to publish a book whos going to say x. So when we talk about the private intelligence world, i mean, the former director of mossad, meir dagan, who was on the companys advisory board, once pitched its services saying, i can find a personal mossad for you, the Israeli Intelligence agency. The argument being that, effectively, youre employing spies. Thats the way it works, is it . That is something that its proud to be . That i am proud to be . Well, black cube, or whichever Intelligence Private intelligence company. Im wondering about this world and how it sells itself and, perhaps, the legality with which it operates. Because its one thing to say, look, governments are doing something on our behalf, its when its private companies that people might wonder about the controls in place. Why is it one thing if its governments . We dont just say that all governments are legit and therefore theyre allowed to spy, i think we take the opposite view. I would say, actually, there are governments out there who are driven by radical, whether religious agendas or communist, marxist agenda, whatever it is, that also shouldnt be able to have state apparatus that spies on people. So i dont im not sure what the distinction is. I think the fact is that, for example, and this is a very key example, the dean of Harvard Law Schooljoined Harvey Weinsteins defence team, more or less a year or 18 months ago, and theres suddenly this furore about him. How dare hejoin Harvey Weinsteins defence team . Everyones triggered on campus, all these protests, and in the end he gets forced to resign from his post at Harvard Law School for having joined weinsteins defence team. Had hejoined el chapos defence team you wouldnt even have heard of him and this is a guy responsible for the deaths of millions of people. Its the double standards about due process and whether people have the right to defence teams and whether they have the right to investigators. People have the right to them. Theres no law saying that those investigators cant go and break the law, once you break the law its open season. But you have the right to hire them. But the reason im pushing you on personality is that you have an extraordinary life story, really. Mm hmm. I mean, youve written in the past, when you were writing, you wrote i would propose those who pay for sex should be castigated, demonised, and shunned in exactly the same as society does a rapist. Your personal view is very tough on people who pay for prostitutes. With and then when theree something youre involved with which youre being paid for. Youd like to believe, because the narrative as preached by, the gospel preached by the likes of ronan and jodi