a bronze statue of harry truman to the u.s. capitol rotunda. at 1:30 p.m. eastern to mark the 50th anniversary of the return of american pow from vietnam in 1973 author alvin talks about their harrowing experience and the work of the national league of pow mia families. on saturday cspan2 watch online anytime at c-span.org book tv every sunday feature's leading authors discussing their latest nonfiction books agreed 8:00 p.m. eastern, former republican south carolina governor a un ambassador nikki haley shares her book if you want something don she talks about the women she's drawn inspiration from throughout her life. 10:00 p.m. eastern on after

words, university professor chris miller traces the history of microchip technology and how it has become the most critically needed technology globally in his book chip or priest interviewed by democratic congressman jim hines. why should book tv every sunday on cspan2 and find a full schedule on your program guide or watch any time at booktv.org. ♪ likes it is a real treat to be hosting ken who has covered that media world for the new yorker for many years. and has been ranked as america's top media critic. he started in journalism nearly 50 years ago first as a political correspondent for the "new york post" and the staff writer in a weekly columnist for the village voice and a contributing editor at new yorko magazine. for aham decade and a half froe late 1970s to early '90s he

wrote a weekly political column for the new york daily news and also during that period started writing for the new yorker. and in 1990 into the annals of communication profiles for the magazine. over the yearsrs ken has profild in many of the leading figures of the information age she has reported on many important developments in theio media business. he has also authored a dozen previous books ranging with subjects from network television, to the ad business. from microsoft to google. five of those works reach the national bestseller list. the hollywood ending, tenant chronicles harvey weinstein's of volatile and tragic career from his rise one of hollywood's biggest powerbrokers in the pioneering producer and distributor of the many great movies to his highly publicized

fall after scores of women came forward with their stories of sexual abuse by it weinstein. the watershed trope two years ago he was convicted of third-degree rapene and another sex felony in new york and sentenced to 23 years in prison. he is waiting at trial and further charges in california. and it profiled wayne sena new yorker 20, years ago and portrs him as a bullying, even violent at time. and collaborators. he was unable at that time to confirm the darker rumors of his behavior as a sexual predator truth finally improved in 2017 and stories like jodi kantor megan and the "new york times". and in the new yorker. now, revisiting weinstein saga, a comprehensive biography that

adds more revealing detail and insightful context. he examines the raging impulses the unconscionable need to dominate the warp weinstein's actions which explores the culture of silence that allowed says a monster snowstorm go unchecked for so long. and he looks at how much of weinstein's tail is also a larger story about hollywood and about power. and so i think we are in for a very informative and interesting discussion this evening. please join me in welcoming ken auletta. [applause]an 's thank you. i thought i would begin by picking up something bradley said. i did not know harvey weinstein very wellin 2002 when i agreed to profile him for the new yorker. and i spent four months doingy

that profile. we spent many hours together including about 12 hours of taped interviews some of the chai use the book. and ato one point, people i talked to all would say who were different or in hollywood said we know harvey cheats on his wife. very few people said he they knew he was a rapist. that was not out there the way we now assume it was. but, i heard from a woman producer of an incident that98 took place at the venice film festival in 1998 with two women one named rowena the other is zelda they were his lenten assistance. in this story was that harvey attempted to rape rowena and that zelda led the fight to lead to prosecute him to bring it to the police. no one had ever in all of the

previous years had ever brought harvey to trial or to ever threaten him or her head he signed as he did later on many disclosure none to the agreements was they threatened him and he got nervous. he flew over too london with his business affairs person who was an enabler for a few read the nondisclosure agreement is quite obvious he knew what was going ony . and in any case harvey suppress them from speaking out. got them to sign nondisclosure agreements for the note to the courts in london on the courts of new york. i said why can't i find any evidence of criminal trial evidence or filings, losses et cetera about this case? then i learned why. and the answer was what harvey would do when 70 brought a claim against him privately, usually he would say -- mckevitt's

lawyer meet them and say here's x number of dollars. in this case is almost $500,000, 250 each. in return you signed this nondisclosure agreement. the nondisclosure group means you cannot tell anyone. you cannot tell your parents, you cannot tell your husband you cannot tell your psychiatrist for you break the nondisclosure your to get the money back i'm going to still use wasas going o be more expensive. though i had that information but i cannot get either woman to speak to me. in my source i tell the book was donna was an academy award-winning producer, she refused to speak unless the women would speak and they wouldn't. but i said if i could figure out some way of showing the corporate parent or miramax his company paid for the nondisclosure agreement someone's going toto jail and gt

my story i do not need the women to talk to me. so i confront harvey in the small conference room in there ensued one of the most amazing experiences i've ever had as a journalist business in harvey, tellu me about rowena and zelda perkins. he said what he want to know? i said i want to know did you attempt w to rape and actually e time i was told he actually raped her which was inaccurate if i publish it would have been false didn't he attempted and she escaped. he got it from a small conferencee table's or bradley would be and i was here. he came over here and stood above me. and he clenched his fists in this lip trembled and he said if you publish that it will destroy the lives of my three teen daughters. it will destroy my marriage. you cannot do that. so att that point i thought i'm not going to sit down with the sky take a poke at me i'm going to stand up.

and face him face-to-face. as soon as i did this is the amazing thing, harvey started to cry. and i do not mean small tears rolling down his cheek. i mean he was sobbing out of control sobbing. this was going to finally expose him. no one had ever exposed them before, but i couldn't expose him because i didn't have anyone on the record. and the new yorker is not the national enquirer. we can't publish rumors. and so next. but i kept in mind, harvey and and knew he was a predator. and in 2015, when the italian model this is the first time it was ever public, it was in the press that harvey abuse woman literally he'd been doing for decades. it never got in the press until that she the police wired her she had a tape of harvey acknowledged saying he grabbed her breasts and but then the

d.a. thinking she was she might not be a credible witness because they were questions about about her decided credibleno witness decided not o file charges. she then got a nondisclosure agreement and changed the testimony basically exonerating harveyey but she did something clever. she kept the tape and she would give that. i saw in variety that ashley judd claimed that islam studio executive asked her for a massage. that was harvey's ammo. he would say i've got a kink in my neck would you give me a

rubdown andol the second person was angelina jolie. the third was an aspiring actress that wrote a column that i did talk to. this woman i that claimed in grt detail wouldn't go on the record so i i didn't have the story. switch two years later. all i know as a journalist i had a question on my mind was he a zealot or a journalist, was he trying to square things out. he called me and after talking to me and i gave him information on where he was, i was confident that he really was careful, judicious was the word i would

later use but he said can i have access i to your papers, so he gave him access to them. but anything off the record, he couldn't use. he called me up, can you interview. he comes out and we spent about four hours together and i said so what have you got. i have three women on camera who acknowledge that harvey attempted or did read them. i have five womenn on camera tht say the same thing and the audiotape of the italian model and i said great, you broke the case. what's the next step and he said i meet with the president of nbc news on august 8th.

august 9th i call and say so how did you do it. he calls me and says nbc basically fired him. they don't think he has the goods but he's free to take it anywhere. he didn't ask the question. i said give me a number let me call you back and i didn't tell him why. i called a friend and liana in the world of journalism and i said this kid finally has broken the case. it's unbelievable he and he is judicious and careful. he said have him call me on monday morning. he went off and i had one initial meeting with him but essentially it was all grown in.

nbc then claimed he didn't have the goods,rk only after he wento the new yorker which is baloney. he had the goods at the time. in any case, two sets of reporters did an amazing job. they got women comfortable enough to talk and broke the story early october and a weekr later the story in the new yorker and what they did successfully they realized you've got to get the woman not alone to talk but to talk so they would feel comfortable. etbut the seat of getting who we women who were assaulted and afraid to come out and speaking is an extraordinary feat. people say you have the cosby case and well it did in some ways but we shouldn't minimize what these reporters did what

they did they were looking from the outside. i said can i write a book going on the inside looking out from his head and what he went through and experienced in his career.re one question i wanted to address is what made harvey the monster he became and in reporting i found some interesting things. i found for instance his mother was a very volatile personality, nothing like harvey as an adult yelling all the time, yelling so much that his friends play poker on the weekends.

they wouldn't play at weinstein's home because they said she yells too much. if you look throughout the company, he was basically his mother had normalized yelling and that is what he was doing at the office. i also learned harvey did not to my knowledge abuse women, girls in high school or junior high school at the university of buffalo. he only started to abuse women when he had a power, and he had a power when he dropped the university of buffalo after his first year. he started, so rock promotion company that was wildly successful. they go to sinatra, the rolling stones, all these top performers

to come and perform in the buffalo stadium and other places. so he was a really powerful guy and he had a woman work there by the name of hope who i interviewed pat now lives in san antonio. i think and i have a picture in the book i think hope was the first woman, an assistant to him but he raped many other women and the more power he got, the more the abuse escalated throughout his life. so that is one thing i wanted to explore and one of the things that made him who he was is power. his brother wasn't raping women so you can't blame miriam weinstein for that. but i also came to think that harvey was a sociopath and even

that. the second thing i was interesting in exploringon is hw did this guy get away with this for four decades without anyone blowing the whistle, and it was hollywood, the people that work there, it was reporters who got the benefit of these tips and came to the screening or go to book contracts. it was quite extraordinary his use of power to keep the secret and when people say we know he cheated on his wife but we didn't know he raped women. i interviewed a woman by the name of hilary silver who was an agent who was going to move back, very attractive young woman. she came up for a job interview in tribeca and gets on the elevator and who is on the

elevator, harvey weinstein and he looks her up and down and says what are you doing here. i have an interview with human resources. come and see me when you're done. so hilary goes and has the interview and the human resources head walks her back to harvey's office. they walked in together. he points his finger andre says you are hired. he didn't consult with the human resources. of course so she had to go off on a trip, a vacation and was coming back in three or four weeks. the day before she is to start work,t for executives reach out to her and say we would love to take you and she said what a great place, what a great culture. people are welcoming me, et cetera. what they said to her over drinks was you don't want to comeyo to work here.

you're an attractive woman. he will assault you. and she didn't go to work. she basically didn't take the job. that level people knew, how many others knew orul should have knn that he was doing this, the agents, actresses look to hotel ysuites and the young actors ce back and in some cases they were career advancements but many came back wounded, hurt, abused. they issued a statement at one point after harvey was exposed in the fall of 2017 saying we should have done more. so i was interested in the culturece of silence and tried n the book to identify how that happened and who some of the culprits were. one of the great things is you

get a treasure trove of all these e-mails that are submitted as evidence. you go to the office at the end of the day and read these e-mails many of them were incriminating to people. i mentioned briefly power. how did harvey, who had amazing power when he published the magazine and talk books. unlike the studio with the sql movies they were making. so he was a magnet in hollywood in 1993. he was producing more than any

other studio. he screamed. then the governor of new york and michael bloomberg. so he was basically parceling up money. harvey started this w business. they will are equal partners and in many ways he was more

successful. he made more money than miramax movies and they work together. they were very close and if you work for miramax you would know the only decision-makers were the two brothers yet by 2015, bob is complaining incessantly harvey is spending like a bandit. this is crazy and when he would divorce in 2005 saying he's too difficult to work with and he was. he got a billion dollars of investment money and he lost ali of it. all of it. harvey is a terrible businessman.ot his movies were not as successful as they were inn the '90s and early 2000's. so, bob would complain stop spending money, stop flying on private planes all the time, stop buying your wife gallons,

or someone he wants to get to invest money in. and one day they are in a meeting in 2015 and harvey sucker punches his brother and breaks his nose and blood is flowing all over. everyone is saying what is going on, this is awful. and june 2nd, 2015, several members of the board meet with harvey on the phone and i have a tape of this that i transcribe and share the transcription in the book. harvey starts screaming at the board members. i want you to fire my brother. harvey, we can't fire your brother, you have to do it. you're the ceo of the company. you should fire him, he's losing all this money.

in any case i was able to get llhim to cooperate and tell the story and we probably did 20, 25 interviews. it was hard to get him to talk and it took a while but eventually he did. one of the things you learn is that after he was exposed in october. they used those shares to fire and then he met with his brother i think you are a sex addict and you should go to this place in arizona and get ,help. harvey went in there and listened to his brother, he went there but he didn't seek help,

he didn't stay in the dormitory with the other patients where several other famous, tiger woods went there and he spent all this time on his cell phone hanging out on a diner. atro that point he stopped talkg to his brother and hasn't talked to him since 2017 through today. so, harvey then enter early 18 is endangered of getting indicted. he needsi a criminal lawyer ani want to end with this story because i think it encapsulates something. he meets with ben roffman who arguably is the best criminal attorney in new york city. they meet at the landis club and he sees this guy walk in with a huge stomach that he had on a

otbeautiful linen shirt worn out not tucked in. he comes over, sits down and orders a cheeseburger and extra large portion of french fries. he shuffles that in his mouth repeatedly and suddenly there areok bloodstains. then catch up french fries falls down the front of his shirt and he says, he starts to reach in arand he says harvey, what are u

doing, stop that. but harvey couldn't stop. people were afraid tot sit acrs from him because projectiles would come. the harvey that abused women is the same man he was sitting across in the restaurant. he couldn't control himself and he couldn't with his temper and his sex drive. he had severe diabetes and always insisted a bowl of peanut covered, chocolate covered m&ms be in his hotel suite or his officeag and again with diabete.

the interesting thing for me was to spend so much time reporting on the monster and get being able hopefully to step back and describe the movies he made a come of the talent he had to make those movies without negating the fact that he was a monster, but it was hard. thank you. he would berate people in public and commented on his behavior at

the oscars. how long did it take to say enough. he was abusive to his assistance, i just don't understand it. >> look at this town today. look at republicans. they know that donald trump is lying about winning the election. he lost by 7 million votes. they know that but they are afraid to say anything. they don't want him to come out. the third reason i think is a lack of character.

my brother -- he couldn't control his urge but he said i didn't know he was raping women. the brother in the case of the two women i mentioned from the festival, the $500,000 i said i need to see how you paid for it, thinking if disney or miramax paid, someone is going to jail and the night he protested he said i need to see you tomorrow and he slid across the table and bob said to me he said he's

being blackmailed by these women. do i know he knew? he says he didn't know. i can ask the uncomfortable questions, which is what i did. >> any other questions? the fact that this change into a monster happened in my hometown interests me. do youe know why? was it partly being away from his home?

the power went to his head. they are surrounded by young and beautiful women that are ambitious and unlike the automobile companies you don't have attractive, sexy women working side-by-side with the ceo or other people and i think

one of the things that happened is that a woman would say i love your movies they are so good how dodo you do it. people like bill clinton did the same. it's not uncommon to see that happening. he was out of college. he droppede out after his junir year when he got power. he was doing that for ten years and they were really successful. i think then this happened. >> i think they are really creative people and i read the portion of your book that talked about the contest between shakespeare and love and saving

private ryan. harvey never directed a movie as far as i recall. >> he and his brother directed a movie with alan brewer a childhood friend and it was a total flaw and it wasn't based on harvey and corky's experience. was he jealous of the creativity and the fact it made money hand over fist. what he said about saving private ryan he would say this

publicly though he denied it to me and others. the first 17 minutes of saving private ryan was brilliant but then the movie dissolved into nothing and that's what he was telling the press and the academy voters. he came to congratulate him at the end which was 88 based on the 89 movies. spielberg just ran away and wouldn't talk to them. >> they were raising money for women to meet with lawyers.

i have no sense of her relationshipro with harvey at a. i noticed that. [laughter] >> thanks for your presentation. given the contact and communications about a sexual predator what do you have to say about woody allen? >> i didn't talk to rohan in about woody allen. whatas i did as i mentioned i ws skeptical because the reporter and i watched the hbo documentary and i thought it was pretty convincing that woody allen was guilty.

to interview him on the podcast and he said that's false. the attorney general of connecticut whoid said he should have prosecuted was having an affair. i had no idea and i shouldn't have said that, by the way because i'm spreadingno rumors that may not be true. in any case, woody allen has some supporters on that one. to have to inhabit this because

you want to talk about it from the inside. so it is different from reporting. you did have to kind of get inside his head. what wouldie this that experiene like, did you want to take a shower at the end of the day? what happens? >> i did take a shower at the end of the day but i'm not sure that it was causal. i found it as i suggested a really interesting discipline challenge for me made easier by the fact because when you probe people about the talent, you learn he really had immense talent. he understoodd the key to the successful movie was a good screenplay. it wasn't the actor were the director you can have a good actor and director so long as the screenplay it's going to flop. he understood that and is a voracious reader. he really reads a lot.

second, he is a brilliant marketing guy. you look at what he did in the crying game. you learn that the ex- prisoner that was killed into the ira guy that meetsts or discovers she ia he. it opens in england and the movie failed. harvey figured out a way to do a survey, pay for the gallup poll that showed thec public didn't want to know and he called editors and he said you cannot destroy your audiences experiences by coming out and telling what the ending is and they just, there was a huge success, so much that came out in 1993 that disney decided they were going to acquire the weinstein company.

so he's a brilliant marketing guy. and also, harvey, and you just noticed from talking to him, he knew a lot about movie history. he wasn't just a suit, which is how actors and people talk about those in the studio business. harveyan really new stuff and oe of the stories i tell is when ben affleck and matt damon did good will hunting, the script for that. mike turned it down because he said it was too violent and it really wouldn't work. harvey read it and said i understand something. he said it's a really good script, but on page 170 or 150,

the matt damon character has sex with a man and totally out of character where did that come from and they said to him harvey, we put that in to see whether you read the book. [laughter] and he did. i am interested in the politicians who took money from harvey weinstein. what is your take on how much they knew and that would have you motivate them. >> i know hillary was warned by lena dunham. n hillary's person who she told

that to, the press secretary, she claims she was never told that. the governor is one of the people who called harvey and one of the first clues he had who he'd raised several thousand dollars for. so did i dwell on talking to politicians, no but i had access to an amazing array of e-mails from pataki. i couldsh have talked to them ad d maybe i should have talked to them and said why did you do what you did, why did you continue to keep touch and that is a fair criticism that i could have done more than that. >> thank you.

>> the boss asked a question. >> we were talking before about your efforts to interview all these conversations for your original profile but obviously you were interested in talking to him for the book. my question is now you've written about others, so many profiles for the magazine about a number. how important is it or not when you are doing these profiles or biographies to be able to talk person you're writing about? >> a very esteemed reporter i

said what are you doing next and they said i'm doing a biography of a very prominent figure. i said is the figure cooperating with you and he says who the hell cares. he should have cared. it's a terrible book. your job is to get inside that person. i'm not looking to play gotcha i'm trying to understand first and say to them my task is to try to understand you.

he agreed to let me interview him. the first four hours i spent, my questions were all tell me about her childhood, your father, your mother, how you became a lawyer, tell me how you went to work for the nixon reelection campaign in 1972. as judge jackson talked about his experience and his revulsion at richard nixon, who he said i it was one of the worst experiences of my life. this man my father had been in government and i wanted to be in government but he lied and he is

an awful man. then i thought back to the trial and in the trial there were 20 hours of taped interviews and you saw him refusing to answer zequestions and misleading et cetera. i think learning about his brother is incredibly revealing to him and i asked his brother i said, who was very candid about the mother. it becomes very important and i said what do you see of your

father and harvey and he said to me i don't seeee my father. i see my mother. i find when you have an intimate conversation with people about their lives. particularly if they don't think you're trying tot play gotcha, that you're interested in the questions you're asking them. it becomes a solidifying thing. i spent a lot of time doing a profile on rupert murdoch who frdoesn't talk to me for the profile but we spent enormous amounts of time and i know from the conversation about his father we revered in the early days of oxford murdoch to me i

became someone intimate with him. he knows me. i think that happens and it's one of those things that allows you to profile someone hopefully with some insight. >> if you could have been you haveed, what would asked? >> he was getting very nervous so he tells hiss pr guy he saysi will talk to ken if he agrees to ask me any negative questions, claims made against me in the book that i haven't already

answered. i went back and said i would be happy to do that butim i want te freedom to ask him any questions i want. end of negotiations. they come back and say harvey will agree to do interviews. if he had a translator to do the script, i said no i can't rely. at the end he agreed after about two months of negotiations to the terms and then his lawyer called me the day before we were supposed to do the first phone interviews. he doesn't have internet access in prison. he said i can't allow my client who's going on trial in la but among the questions i want to

ask, and there was an e-mail exchange may be 25 e-mails and one of them i asked the following question. when you put your head on a pillow at night after raping say jessica man who was one of the key defendants in the trial, how do you explain to your self what you've just done. he never answered that question and i suspect if he had, he would have said something he was always saying. it was consensual. she wanted somethingd from me d i want to do something from her. it was a fair trade. now you've really got to be skewed in the head to think that's a fair trade, but that was him. he tried to normalize the behavior. he would come into a suite in london, zelda described this, and say i gave her a list of ten

films and one when harvey comes in the sweet after dinner and takes off his clothes and parades around naked, it is normal. this is harvey. what he did with a world of women he would say i've got a kink in my neck. can you give me a massage and one of the warnings she had on a piece of paper which i have is don't eve' give him a massage and also wear two pairs of pants. so, people knew, where two pairs of pants and don't let him take any off. so,pl zelda and people who work for him knew that he was a beast. hebo wasn't just having affairs but it was about conquest, conquest of m man he yelled out and put down and women sexually.

any more questions? how did you develop your wonderful interviewing skills and if you were to advise somebody doing interviews like you've been doing, what would ooyou say? >> listen. to be a good listener. that you don't need to talk. let the silence work for you. ask a question. don't jump in and interrupt. and that confidence that you're nott some shark. you don't go into an initial interview you won't have the person's attention but listening i think is a key ingredient of journalism and one of the reasons why, one of the things that concerns me about the

nature all these pendants are expressing opinions and they are not listening. how dodo you know who's going to win, and the ability to listen disappears and that i think isk good journalism. the hollywood moguls of the 30s, 40s and 50s on the casting couch and how many of them allegedly did or enough on it.reporting how are they different? >> the casting couch, which harveyca is the defense, the casting couch was quite disgusting, the abuse of power.

the mayor may well have certainly abused judy garland. there's a brilliant autobiography in which she says one of the things the early studio heads believed and i think they were right is you don't cast a woman in the role wounless you want to sleep with her, and he didn't use the word sleep. the difference between the old moguls of hollywood, rape was his ammo but it wasn't the mo of many others. i'm not saying but they were not aware of it in the same way. they abused women and they were disgusted but you talk about physical assault. he was holding down women. annabelle, listen to her description of what he did with

her at the trial. it's unbelievable. i don't think that the mayor's and other moguls, first they were not as big as harvey to be able to do that. >> i just watched a rerun of how to succeeded in business without trying, which is a good movie. but there is a scene where one of the executives is chasing a secretary around. they played for laughs and at the time i'm sure it was funny. it's a disgusting and the woman is kind of laughing. i'm not excusing what weinstein did,on and there's a lot we dont know about what they did but it seems like maybe it was more but it was a continuation of

something that had been going on for decades in hollywood. >> there's a difference. i would argue there's a difference between chasing a woman around the couch that is sexual harassment and rape. itr just think that he was so extreme and what he did. >> they didn't show what happened. >> thank you. this was fun. [applause]