Harvey Weinstein used a private army of ex-Mossad agents, former employees, and lawyers to collect information on actresses and journalists who were preparing to come forward with allegations of sexual harassment and assault, a new story by Ronan Farrow in The New Yorker reports. Though Weinstein has expressed (convoluted) remorse for his actions, checking himself into rehab in Arizona, witness accounts show that the disgraced movie mogul was willing to use aggressive tactics—assailing accusers’ characters, directing agents to infiltrate accusers’ lives, gathering information on journalists’ families—to keep his crimes from coming to light, and relied on the aid of some very high-profile people to do so.

Weinstein enlisted at least three private investigation firms, including one called Black Cube, which was founded by former officers from Israel’s national intelligence agency, Mossad. They gathered negative information on actresses including Rose McGowan and Annabella Sciorra, and such journalists as reporter Ben Wallace and New York magazine editor in chief Adam Moss. Farrow obtained a copy of a contract Weinstein had with Black Cube, which clearly states that it would seek “intelligence which will help the client’s efforts to completely stop the publication of a new negative article in a leading NY newspaper.”

Weinstein enlisted female agents who used pseudonyms to insinuate themselves into potential accusers’ lives. One such agent was someone calling herself Diana Filip, who claimed she was starting a women’s advocacy initiative and who met with McGowan multiple times and surreptitiously recorded her in order to extract information about her accusations against Weinstein; McGowan eventually publically said that she was raped by him. The same operative, posing as a woman named Anna, contacted reporters investigating Weinstein. Another firm Weinstein hired, PSOPS, investigated New York Times journalist Jodi Kantor, as well as Farrow and McGowan, on whom they produced long briefings, including one with a subhead that read “Past Lovers,” according to The New Yorker.

In addition, Weinstein enlisted former employees of Miramax to put together a list of previous employees who could become involved with the press, under the guise of writing a “fun book on the old times.” Instead, they used the list to make intimidating phone calls to those who might have been preparing to come forward with information about allegations or allegations of their own against Weinstein. McGowan told Farrow that the persistence of Filip, among other intimidation tactics, made her feel paranoid, and Sciorra said it made it all the more difficult to finally come forward. “Everyone lied to me all the time,” McGowan said. And of the past year, “I’ve lived inside a mirrored fun house.”