Author events. This synagogue and Cultural Center is now 15 years old and its founders and staff deserve credit. [applause] they deserve credit for developing this. We are delighting to be hosting jody and megan. [applause] they are the first to your times reporters who revealed the Harvey Weinstein extensive sexual abuse and their books she said is the limiting riveting revealing account of how they develop their blockbuster story and its consequences in spurring the meeting movement. As they note in their preface in the wake of the weinstein expose which broke in october 2017 it wasnt if it was if a dam wall had come down. Many women not just in this country around the worldha spild forward to tell their own stories of mistreatment. In addition to the pivotal impact the jodyel and megans reporting has the way they went about conforming story that others before them had tried to rynail provides a terrific case study of what goes into firstrate investigatory journalism. People often say such scoops fall into the laps of reporters. In reality what is involved is a lot of painstaking reporting pursuing all sorts of leads, running into dead ends and cooking details out of reluctant sources and ferreting out documents and substantiating information in dealing with skeptical inpatient editors and all while enduring often intense efforts by the subjects of the investigation to sort and even him times to threaten the example set by jody and megan are tough and exacting journalism and the effect of this reporting can have stands as a powerful counterargument with the skepticism about an denigration of news media today. Both jody and megan brought to the task years of experience. An jody who joined the times 15 years ago spent a while as a political reporterle and spent time with brock and Michelle Obama in a book that came out in 2012. Recently she focused on the workplace specifically the treatment of women. In 2014 is a partner with writers she was a finalist for the pulitzer for investing reporting for exposing an underground network where parents give away adopted children they no longer wanted to strangers they met on the internet. Megan and jodys work on the weinstein story led to the New York Times along with the new yorker winning the pulitzer last year. [applause] susan in the review said in the New York Times remarked that the book reads a bit like a feminist all the president s men. [laughter] is particularly fitting the jody and megan will be in conversation here with bob woodward. Bob, has been observing and reporting on major developments in washington for nearly half a century. He has a shared into Pulitzer Prizes first for coverage of the watergate scandal, second in 2003 as the lead reporter for the Washington Post coverage of the 911 terrorist attacks anr the surprises alone hardly begin to reflect enormous journalistic legacy of bob woodward. Beer is a devastating look inside the Trump Presidency came out last year and was his 19th book. All have been National Bestsellers and i would not against another one coming out9t in a not too distant future. Please join me in welcoming jody and megan and bob. [applause] thank you, brad. It is great to be here. Lets get right to it. First of all, this book is a masterpiece, a landmark. [cheering and applause] of journalism and as people who are not journalists should read it because its about how you sort out information and test and decide to share it with othersre and publish it and i loved it and i have my marked up copy here so what is the origin of the collaboration between you two . We would like to start by thinking everybody. This is the launch of their book to herh. [cheering and applause] we are so great to thrilled to be here tonight. We are grateful weve got that only from the family but also forces in the audience tonight so we want to thank them for being here to. [applause]e] introduce your family. I think we when it comes to the question and answer time there may be people who want to get up and identified 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 that it wanted to dive into reporting on Sexual Harassment so the weinstein story pointing education was one of many reporting projects that started that year and Silicon Valley in the Restaurant Industry and the comedy comedy industry and auto plants in chicago and we were moved by the work of our colleagues, emily and mike, who had done something remarkable in 2000 earlier that had broken the bill oreilly story and showed how oreilly o paid out millions of dollars to silence women who had come forward with allegations of Sexual Misconduct. Lets pretend its a movie. Is it in the newsroom of the New York Times where you did you know each other . We had been acquaintances. Megan was very new at the paper and i saw this woman in 2016 who i could tell was pretty formidable because she was doing these difficult stories and i saw her belly going like thiss like as the story got more difficult and this is what was happening to her body and ive had a few kids at the time and i knew what she was doing was not easy but we do not know each other well. We only met a couple times and megan was on Maternity Leave in the spring of 2017 when i started working on weinstein story and it was part of the question that the editors asked are there other americans or 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 in getting these actresses phone numbers was like an investigation onto itself. Theres the question of once you have them on the phone what you actually do to earn trust and sometimes its 45 seconds you know so i called megan for advice and she was in full on Maternity Leave and adjust put the baby down for a nap but was telling me about the reporting she had done on allegations by women against the trump. Using 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 work arm in arm we may be able to take your pain and put it to construct a purpose. This was the standard line you used in this was the outreach line. Rights. This is the first real conversation the jody and i had while on t Maternity Leave so i have been reporting also on sex crimes with men in chicago and i found that this was what reason does a woman have to open up about this when did you know you were a team or even more important when did the editors think of you as a team . When rebecca, my editor, told me to call megan i do not think that much of it but now i realize that he works in deep ways and understands the newsroom and i s understand she was filling out a potential partnership. So you are kind of tricked into literally, when megan said that line on the phone like something in me change. I do not want to get off the phone with her and of course, i had the same sources but megan still had another couple weeks of Maternity Leave and she had choice in terms of what you would cover when she came back. Go back to covering trump or join jody in the weinstein investigation. I had to take a day to think about it. I had been covering trump up until having this baby and i have watched for four months as i saw hardhitting invested work land with a thud and not have an impact in so this was the question of whether or not as investigative journalists are not just out to write interesting stories but you want to write stories that will have an impact. Why weinstein . Lots of people have not heard of him. I myself i myself had doubts. I wondereded this is when jody started to tell me about the allegations she had heard the stories of ashleyud judd and Gwyneth Paltrow i had a hard time conceiving these famous actresses as victims and to comprehend as investigative journalists were looking to give voice to the voiceless andhe i d a hard time wrapping my head around, but but jody said listen, the fact this is happened to these women allegedly is suggest that nobody is immune and if we can i crack the storyry we might be able to help make a difference here. When was the first real breakthrough . In your book you got the chronology in so many characters and so forth when was the moment when you said this is different, this is something that has, like we say in the news business. We had a breakthrough early on that left us in a bad position because three prominent actresses, rose mcgowan, ashley judd, Gwyneth Paltrow not medication with one another really knew each other totally separately tell us these terrible weinstein hotel room stories. At this point they were not on the record. They were so far from it and so thate that is what left us in a bad position because immediately it created substance because on oe hand wow, these are highvalue sources and the stories are convincing and the stories matcd 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 basically realize the story would have to be broken with evidence and not just wit with we had this theory that maybe we can persuade actresses to all hold hands and jump together and safety in numbers but because we cannot tell the actresses walls we were talking to it was hard to get them to do that and then as we did that it may have created a traditional he said she said dynamic where the story would have sparked a debate about what weinstein t hd or had not done. What made this different or making it provable because that was your goal. We realized right away we would need records and evidence and that it would be on these accounts we were hearing and so this is one of the ways in which we turn to emily steele and mike schmidt who would broken the bill oreilly story. They had done something remarkable there. They basically help teach us how to try to track down the secret settlement that had been paid. The key here is a settlement or some sort of agreement to be osilent, nda. There were women who were reluctant to tell us their experience with pointing and there were also women, at least eight, who were legally prohibited from telling us what had happened because weinstein had forcedeg fg great settlemenn them. This was something that happens not just in case pointing but in cases of Sexual Harassment and Sexual Assault across the country. Women are often told the best option in these cases is too accept money in exchange for silence but 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. 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 payoffs that have been made so the settlements that had been used to hide the truth to allow people like weinstein to cover his tracks we realized if we could basically on earth the fact the settlements have been paid over the years that would be evidenceha in itself so we we able to track down settlements that had stretched from 1990 19902015 in a variety of ways in which we are able to document. Rose mcgowan was one of many. Among the wonderful lines in the book you say im a knowing about documents is good s but having seen documents is excellent but actually having copies is a celebration right . You know what that feels like. [laughter] when was the first time you actually got or saw documents that showed women had been paid off to be quiet connect. I go to london that summer to meet with Zelda Perkins, former miramax assistant who had a settlementnt and megan is like basically emoji texting me as i leave for the plane is like you will see the papers. Go get them. I note you will see the papers because so shes the coach . Even in the scenes in 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 have eyes on these papers the causes were so shocking, bob. They went beyond the standard settlement agreement. These very young women were, in this case, they were legally overpowered and they were essentially prohibited from talking about their owny life experiences. If they wanted to tell a therapist they needed special permission. If they wanted to talk to an accountant they needed special permission. One of these women cannot tell her future husband about what had happened to her. The women were not even allowede to retain copies of these settlement papers with Zelda Perkins had very cleverly catch some of them together but imagine being told o you have to abide by an agreement that you cannot even have your own copy of . How do you break that . Zelda was brave. We basically you know, from the beginning she was thinking of just breaking her settlement which was a courageous thing to do because it would have exposed her to potential legal and wfinancial liability. I felt that i cannot push her into that because it was such a big risk. Remember, we act not like b2 was inevitable but it was not foreordained at all that any of this played out the way it did. We thought we might be publishing a really controversial story and that our sources might be vulnerable to attack. We basically said look, zelda even if you cant go on record there are so many other people who know about the settlement and others appear next who know you disappeared and got money. There are lawyers and people we can talk to. What if we write about thiss and document everything we can thatx happened and you dont go on the record. Thats what she agreed to. 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 there are women who have still not got a record. Its one thing to be asking the source for those to speak about something that is painful from theet past but its another thig to be asking them to break something in which a legally binding document in which, they can come after them for serious money. Bob but now, do you thank they are liberated from that. Criminal charges, hes paying attention to other issues right now. He is busy. He seems to know by victims who are seeking financials and compensations for what theyve gone through. He is the god after anybody but i thank we would be mistaken to thank otherwise. Bob there are other women who have charges against weinstein. How many of those are public now and how many are off the record or for the next volume. I believe thats the public count. There are other women who have not comehein forward. But the really key thing to remember especially as this trial comes up, is that the accusations really vary. Some of them are accusations of rape and assault. Within the purview of the criminal Justice System or shed. But a lot of them, are charges of Sexual Harassment. Its not legal but a civil violation. The sort of restitution forme tt is that you can see for that but you cant have somebody arrested so that is part of why the question of both of weinstein will essentially see any accountability at all is fraud. Because this criminal trial is the big . In the sort of combined civil lawsuit of these women is also still big . Bob you two are experts on interviewing and going down, really explaining peoples experience in in all of your, did you find any women who actually made up allegations . Jodi weor have not come across any fabricated allegations but i can tell you, its very important. Bob we had to tweak that to donald trump. [laughter] [applause] jodi as you know our book actually starts with donald trump and the allegations that women have told. We havent came across any fabricated. Some in which we didnt report allegations not because we didnt believe the person but because we hadnt been able to obtain collaboration or cooperation. One woman, a former beauty pageant contestant who told a story about being select sexually harassed by donald trump. Oo when she was in the ms. Miss pageant. She had provided some and steer me towards some potential collaboration that did it materialize. So do mean i didnt believe her, just method wasnt. We really go to painstakingas details and Due Diligence to move forward to publishing a story like this. Bob talk about rebecca, who was your role at the sleeves, editor because theres a marvelous scene in the book where she takes you to a part of why its bar. As you described it. Tell us what she said to you. Jenny this was in the summer ofhi 2017, we been reported for weeks and weeks we know so many things. We have spoken to several actresses who were very convincing accounts, collaboration of those accounts, we know about a whole bunch of settlements. At that. We also talked to miramax,s employees who have sad yes this was a terrible problem. I had some knowledge of it at the time. Bob you are feeling good at the bar. We have okay. Tell what she had to say. Jenny feeling nervous because we have this responsibility and we want to know if we can land the story. And she listens to everything we have, and she said, is any of it on the record. And we said no. And she said you do not have a publishable story. Bob how did you feel. Megan we felt devastated. It was deafly one of the more memorable moments and were the one we worked so and there is so much that goes on and there was a lot of drama in the pages of the articles and one sign but there is also so much drama played out behind the scenes. As we were grateful to finally be able to show readers what its like when you are not just with working with sources but also in the newsroom and when your editor is telling you to wake up kids. So you dont have a story. Bob what is the strategy for getting out of the hole. She isto staying not