Catch and Kill: The Podcast Tapes (2021) s01e06 Episode Script

I didn't think I was gonna be followed,
but I thought you might be.
So, just in case, we had to take some
steps to avoid being seen together.
And then we ended up
in the basement of a restaurant
which I know conveniently
has like no cell service.
Scotch is good,
single malt scotch is good.
We've been overdue for a drink.
We've got a lot to talk about.
Yeah. A little overdue.
I might say too much.
Igor and I met in a pretty unusual way.
After "The New Yorker" began
publishing my reporting on Weinstein,
I followed up with a story
called Army of Spies,
about how he'd hired a firm called
Black Cube to track his accusers.
It's based in Tel-Aviv and run
by former Mossad agents
and specializes in using undercover
operatives with false identities
working for fake front companies.
I'd started to wonder if the
surveillance extended to me, too.
I'd been getting weird calls
and texts.
I felt like I was being followed.
Then in August, 2018, I was slipping
into a hot subway car
when I got a call on my cell phone.
The caller ID showed a name,
Axiom.
I ignored the call. But a little later,
I got a text. It said
I'm trying to reach you directly
and privately.
It's regarding a fry pan
that's scratch resistant.
Sometimes I cook
and the black coating scares me.
I'd recently posted a joke on Instagram
about a brand of frying pan
called Black Cube, with the caption,
scratch resistant,
may use false identities and shell
companies to extract information.
Whoever was texting me seemed
to know something
about the intelligence firm,
not the frying pan.
And they seemed worried.
I messaged back, can you say more
about who you are?
I can say I do surveillance.
We will need to meet discreetly
and make sure we're not followed.
What happened next felt like I was in
a John le Carre novel or something.
We agreed to meet
at a Brazilian restaurant in Manhattan.
But when I got there,
the person didn't show.
Instead, my phone rang.
Again, the caller ID said Axiom.
It was a man with what sounded like
it might be a Russian accent.
He told me what I was wearing
and said he needed to make sure
we weren't followed.
He instructed me to leave
the restaurant,
walk against traffic for several blocks
and then sit down in the back
of a different restaurant.
That was when I first met
Igor Ostrovskiy
a private investigator
who'd watched me for weeks.
Igor agreed to talk to me.
If you're wondering why his face
is in shadow,
he's still working as a PI and
he's still worried about retaliation.
Let's start at the very, very beginning.
Tell me about your family
and where you grew up.
I was born in Ukraine.
Our common thing to do when I was
like eight-years old was to burn things,
blow things up, cause trouble.
This Soviet entertainment for kids?
We used to break into things.
We had this thing,
basically like a smoke bomb.
But we're not talking about like smoke
bombs you buy in the grocery store.
And not even the ones you buy
in Pennsylvania.
We're talking about like fill
the whole building with smoke.
He goofed off a lot.
But it was mostly harmless
and that was important to Igor.
He's a guy who always
had this really strong sense
of what's okay and what's not.
So, it's okay to do stupid things
to have fun.
But at that point at which you
actually could hurt somebody else,
then it becomes an issue.
Igor was ten-years old when
his family came to the US
as part of a program that resettled
Jewish refugees in America.
He had trouble making friends,
sometimes compounded
by that sense of right and wrong.
Like the time during high school
in New Jersey when he learned
that several classmates were involved
in a little light credit card fraud.
There was this one guy, Johnny.
Johnny worked in a store
that sold tools.
And he would steal the credit card
numbers off the customers
and sell them to my friends, right?
So, they send this guy who just
graduated high school to threaten me.
He said, listen, you know,
if anything happens to this guy,
if he gets caught, you're fucked.
And I decided that, you know,
if I'm gonna be threatened,
it might as well be worth it.
What'd you do?
- I called the FBI.
- You're how old at this point?
15. 14. Probably 15.
I thought the FBI, you call them and
It's like, you know, like Superman.
They just come down from the sky
and fix everything.
- You're a narc.
- Very slightly.
Only in very unethical situations.
I didn't like that somebody
was messing with me, you know?
I knew that either you gotta get
a big stick
or you win by being smart.
As smart as Igor was,
when he graduated,
he didn't have much of a plan.
Eventually, he learned that a friend
of his had an uncle
who was a private investigator.
The profession seemed to fit
with his natural curiosity.
Mostly, this was pretty mundane work,
like going undercover in warehouses
to find out if anyone was stealing.
So, they would plant me
into a warehouse
and I would just become one
of the employees.
Igor says that's mostly what he was up
to for the first several years
of his career.
Then, in 2011, he came into contact
with the guy
who would eventually give him
the wildest job of his life.
I don't know why but I had this feeling
like I should find someone
who's part of my culture.
So, I Googled
Russian private investigators.
I'm not your typical investigator.
I'm the guy out in the field,
the action taker.
My name is Roman Khaykin
and I'm the founder of Infotactic Group.
Roman Khaykin ran an outfit
called Infotactic.
It was a pretty small-time operation.
He taught me how to do surveillance,
how to drive for surveillance,
how to blend in.
He taught me little tricks, you know?
How to make this job fun.
A lot of people can't figure
out where to find a bathroom
in New York. And we're talking
about clean bathrooms.
In every high-priced hotel,
there's a clean bathroom.
You walk in, you walk up to the bar
and you ask the bartender,
where can I wash my hands?
And what are your drink specials?
He goes to get you the drink specials,
he puts the menu down in front of you
and he directs you where to wash
your hands.
You use the bathroom,
you just leave.
Roman taught me that.
Every day working with Roman
was fun
cause if something was happening, it
was just action, action, action, action.
If nothing was happening, we were
watching comedy videos on YouTube.
Igor and Khaykin worked together
for years on and off
doing this kind of basic PI work,
which brings us to late 2016,
just as I started to follow the clues
that would lead to my story
on Harvey Weinstein.
Igor called Khaykin to see if he had
any new jobs lined up.
Khaykin said they should talk.
So, we met up in Brooklyn,
at Coney Island.
Told me he's into some new stuff.
He has a new client that seemed like
he wouldn't tell me who it was,
which I thought was normal because
we wouldn't tell each other
who our clients are because in this
industry, everyone steals clients.
So, I understood that he might
not wanna just openly tell me
what he's working on.
And then in the course
of that conversation,
was it you that raised the idea
of maybe being a part of this work
for this mysterious new client?
I told him, I told him straight up,
if you need help, call me.
Turns out, Khaykln did need help.
Many of these new jobs involved
what's called counter-surveillance.
Igor was supposed
to secretly follow operatives
to equally secret meetings.
Operatives sent by that mystery client.
The goal was to make sure nobody
else was following them.
I know, lots of secrets,
lots of following.
From the very beginning, nothing about
these jobs seemed normal to Igor.
He was told almost nothing about them
beforehand.
But he was picking up on clues
as he went.
Always in fancy hotels
or fancy restaurants.
And there's like couple of players
that I already learned.
- These are the agents of the client?
- Yeah.
Like the heavyset blonde lady
with glasses
or this guy that's called
The Spaniard.
I don't know why.
I guess he's from Spain.
Yeah, I was very curious.
The more you tell me
that I can't know,
the more curious I get.
I realized that something is going on
that's a little iffy.
And I just had an inkling that I should
be documenting everything.
And then one day in July 2017,
Igor got an assignment that would
force him to take a hard look
at what he was involved with.
One day, I get a call.
"We got a job tomorrow in Brooklyn."
"Gotta go. It's a New York Times
reporter. "
And I'm like, all right, that's weird.
Something I've realized through
my reporting over the last few years
that frankly kind of freaks me out
is how private intelligence
is everywhere
and just how extreme
some of the tactics can get.
This global industry,
it's like checkbook surveillance.
John Scott-Railton
is a senior researcher
for a group called The Citizen Lab
at the University of Toronto.
They investigate the tactics used
to silence journalists and dissidents,
like murdered Saudi journalist,
Jamal Khashoggi.
Tactics including various forms
of private espionage
and surveillance,
all of which has become something
of a booming business.
You can go to a kind
of a global marketplace
and find a company that will sell you
a piece of kit,
to kind of do whatever you want.
It's like NSA in a box.
The problem is that many of the players
that can pay for it
can't possibly hold themselves
accountable
and can't possibly resist
the temptation to abuse it.
And if you look at the people
who are targeted, for example,
Javier Valdez, a Mexican journalist
investigating cartels.
Is it fair to say journalists
are being hunted?
Journalists are like one of the
largest slices of the pie of victims.
And we think that this is the kind
of tool that you use to find,
fix and finish journalists.
In 2017, Igor Ostrovskiy
was suddenly thrust
into that increasingly sophisticated
world of journalist hunting.
His boss, Roman Khaykin,
started sending him assignments
to follow reporters digging into the
allegations against Harvey Weinstein.
They briefly followed Jodi Kantor,
"The New York Times" journalist who
was also investigating Weinstein
and would eventually co-write
the newspaper's powerful story
about harassment allegations
against him.
I knew at this point that the goal
was to isolate and identify
Jodi Kantor's sources,
if she meets with any.
When I was in high school, I used
to go to the library before school
and just look at "The New York Times".
So, when we were following
Jodi Kantor,
I thought probably a little bit iffy
on the morals side.
And then we're supposed to follow you.
It felt to Igor like increasingly the
mystery client was turning its focus
away from "The Times" and toward me
and my reporting.
So, we ended up hanging out in front
of your building a couple times.
- Ended up seeing your super a lot.
- He's outside a lot.
Yeah, he's outside.
I ended up getting a bagel
around the corner.
Actually just passed by there
like I went
It's a lovely neighborhood.
I want to take a picture and send it
to you. "This is the bagel shop."
The aim appeared to be to figure out
what was happening to my reporting.
From the beginning,
the intensity was there.
We were like kinda going over things,
like how are we gonna control the
situation where if he goes this way,
what are we doing? If he goes
that way, if he gets a cab
Well, if he gets in a cab,
jump on the fucking hood
so I have time to get around
the block and then you're burned.
But, you know, make the cab stay.
Maybe if we do that, then you're gonna
think something crazy's going on.
If you jump on the hood,
I'm gonna notice.
We're going over
all these possibilities.
It's more important
to get this one right.
At times, the operation could be
a little hapless.
They even spent some time following
a neighbor who kinda looked like me.
But I'll be honest. It was also scary,
growing increasingly convinced
I was being followed,
hearing from sources who said
I needed to be armed,
eventually putting my reporting
materials in a safety deposit box.
And the operation was getting more
intrusive and sophisticated.
On the last day,
when we have to follow you,
Roman tells me that he's gonna try
to find out where you are.
And I asked how,
and he said that he's gonna do the
geo location thing with the phone.
The geo location thing
is a new technology that allows
someone in Igor's job to track
a target by pinging their cell phone.
Roman told me that it's called
weather alerts. And I asked, why?
And he said, well, it works great.
You send someone a text message,
do you want weather alerts?
If you want, press yes.
If you don't want, reply no.
And once they reply yes or no,
we get the location.
I was like, that's brilliant. Whether
they want it or not, they still get it.
Well, as it turns out,
at this very same time,
my phone gets a barrage
of hundreds and hundreds of texts
that are not asking for alerts on the
weather, which I had also gotten.
But asking if I wanted to participate
in a survey on politics.
Politics for you,
weather alerts for Joe.
There were sports alerts
for somebody else.
It's interesting because I'm actually
that day headed
to my very first meeting
at "The New Yorker"
and it sounds like as that's happening,
you start getting maps
that show you exactly that.
I look at it, there's a pin drop.
I know it's on the westside highway
by World Trade,
by where the Goldman Sachs
building is.
And Roman comes to meet me.
And we get some more information
that you're like in that area.
So, what's going through your mind
as these tactics escalate?
At this point, I was already like,
all right, we gotta figure out
what's going on because
might have to take some actions.
Because it looks like something
I believe in,
the freedom of press,
is being possibly attacked.
In November 2017, I finally published
my story on Black Cube
and its efforts to track sources
and reporters
on Harvey Weinstein's behalf.
Harvey Weinstein's story and new
revelations about the great lengths
he allegedly went to in order
to quash stories
The disgraced Hollywood mogul hired
this elite team of spies
to secretly collect information
on dozens of actresses and journalists.
Igor read that article.
It was the first time he had heard
of Black Cube.
But the operation sounded familiar.
I saw your article in "The New Yorker"
and I called Roman. I'm like listen,
this is clear who we're working for
and this is clear that this is what
they were trying to do
because this is like the story about us
without mentioning our tactics
or our names directly.
Because the targets that I described
Black Cube having in that article
were also your targets?
Right. Something like that.
We'll leave it at that.
Igor's suspicions were right.
The mysterious client that had hired
Roman Khaykin as a subcontractor
was Black Cube.
This, it turned out, is how Black Cube
operates in cities across the globe,
hiring PI's with local licenses
to provide legal cover
and a better lay of the land.
The realization didn't sit well
with Igor.
Remember, as he put it,
it's okay to do something stupid
until it hurts someone else.
When I read it,
I said, this is horrible.
And this guy is doing it systematically.
There's no way I'm gonna continue
to be part of this.
Like there is no way I'm gonna
walk away from this situation
knowing that I'm helping someone
suppress the truth,
suppress the press and to get away
from taking responsibility
for these actions.
Igor decided he had to expose
the operation.
So, I thought, you know, again,
like from my childhood, call the FBI.
They'll solve everything.
So, 45 minutes later, a guy picks up.
I'm telling him there's
a foreign private intelligence agency
acting in New York,
possibly doing things against
the United States.
I don't know. But it's like I'm involved
in this thing.
He goes, so what do you do?
I said, I do surveillance.
He goes, nothing illegal. Click.
- He hung up on you?
- Yes.
I said, all right, well if I can't get
the government involved,
at least I can help this guy
and at least I should let him know
that this is what's happening.
That's when I got the coded text
about the scratch resistant pan
called Black Cube.
And how we wound up meeting
at that basement restaurant.
Igor showed me photos
he'd taken while following me.
My street, my front door,
my superintendent.
It was a huge risk for him.
I could see it in his face.
I didn't know if they're gonna
come after me
if my name comes out, if I have
to worry about getting ran off the road
into a ditch or some kind
of freak accident.
I was a little bit worried.
So, I didn't want my name out there.
But if I allow this to happen and I walk
away and I don't do anything,
then I'm complicit in allowing
the media,
the way of life I believe in,
to be attacked and to be changed.
And that could be irreversible.
I would later find out that Igor's
spy work was a lot bigger than me.
He was also helping Black Cube
gather intelligence
on John Scott-Railton,
that researcher at Citizen Lab,
to try to undermine his investigations
into private espionage companies.
This all came to a head
in January 2019
when a Black Cube agent set up
a meeting with Railton
at the Peninsula Hotel in Manhattan.
So, it seems fishy to you
from the get-go?
Yeah. Not too far into the conversation,
there's a guy who sits
down at a table in my sightline.
And is sort of holding his cell phone up
at me
while kind of consulting the menu
with one hand.
And I'm like, man, this guy's just
recording me on his cell phone.
That man was Igor, who was doing
countersurveillance for Black Cube.
So, while Igor was watching,
this Black Cube agent was pumping
Railton for incriminating statements.
Michel? Very nice to meet you.
But, then, Igor watched in amazement
as the tables turned
on the Black Cube agent.
Skeptical of the meeting, Railton
had arranged for a news crew
to capture the exchange.
So, it was a case of Citizen Lab
spying on spies.
- Do you work for Black Cube?
- Leave me alone.
Black Cube is one of many private
intelligence companies
that Citizen Lab investigates.
One thing fueling this growing industry
is high tech spyware.
A leading manufacturer of that type
of spyware is NSO,
an Israeli cyber firm.
NSO's flagship product
is something called Pegasus,
which is a suite of technology that
enables its user to reach out
and hack a telephone
without any interaction
from the phone's owner
and turn that phone
into basically a spy in your pocket.
It can listen to what's happening
in the room around you.
Obviously, it can snoop on your calls,
siphon off your messages
and your personal photographs.
More trouble for Facebook.
This time it's at WhatsApp.
Hackers were able to inject phones
with Israeli-made spyware
allowing them to access
users' information.
Citizen Lab discovered that NSO's
Pegasus software was used
to target Jamal Khashoggi,
the "Washington Post" columnist
who was murdered by Saudi agents.
So, we had found that one of Jamal
Khashoggi's close contacts
was targeted with Pegasus
and we think infected as well,
which is pretty explosive because
this guy had been in close contact
with Jamal during the period
right before he was assassinated.
And this, obviously,
was a black eye for NSO Group
and for the Saudi government.
NSO, for the record,
denies hiring Black Cube
and says its software is sold to
governments and other entities
that wanna catch criminals,
not journalists.
An entire system of international
espionage and hacking,
targeting journalists and researchers,
is still going strong to this day.
And there are also people
fighting back.
For his part, Igor got a whistleblower
attorney and started the process
of volunteering to help prosecutors
if they needed it.
And he decided to go on the record
for my book.
He says he's glad
to have come forward,
to stand up to the increasingly
elaborate machine
that ensnares journalists
around the world.
I wanted to do the right thing
because this country gave my family
a life.
So, I have an obligation to defend
the constitution of this country.
Those threats to the free press
continue.
But as long as whistleblowers
like Igor and the others who helped
the reporting on Black Cube
are willing to take risks,
and as long as survivors
of terrible crimes are willing
to break through a culture of silence,
truth and accountability will always
have a fighting chance.
To tell the truth is always powerful.
This shouldn't happen to other women.
I kept repeating in my mind
that word, again.
That gave me strength to do everything.
The courage of those voices
can't be stamped out.
And stories, the big ones,
the true ones,
can be caught, but never killed.