our top story: the impeachment of president trump has formally got under way in the us senate, with democrats setting out nine pages of allegations against him. president trump is accused of high crimes and misdemeanors including trying to get ukraine to meddle in this year's presidential elections. he has once again described the claims as a hoax. and this story is trending on bbc.com: the world has reached the point of climate change crisis, the naturalist sir david attenborough has told the bbc. he added that it is palpable nonsense for politicians to suggest the australian fires are nothing to do with global warming. a billionaire art collector has been jailed for 18 months for trying to smuggle a picasso out of spain. the painting, called head of a young woman, was deemed a national treasure, meaning it could not be taken out of the country.

now on bbc news, hardtalk. welcome to hardtalk, i'm 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 it's 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 it's 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 that's 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 wouldn't know if i was the only one investigating this, or if i was one of many other operatives involved, because it's a very cell like structure, a bit like in the army. you're told what you need to know, and that's 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 aren't 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? what's 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, i've 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 i'm a journalist, i'm 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, they're 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 there's 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 you're a journalist. well, i am a journalist. ok, but you were not interested in herfor a story you were writing, were you? well, it's ambiguous. because on the one hand, i don't deceive her and say i'm someone that i'm 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 it's catering staff, actors, actresses, executives, and i'm doing a broad—strokes piece on life in the industry now, compared to when people started out. but let's be clear. you weren't doing that. i wasn't 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,

it's 75 minutes long. i obviously don't bring up weinstein at all, because then you're 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, there's a natural back—and—forth. at some point she brings up her allegations against weinstein. ijust listen to it like i'm 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 we're talking about other matters. presumably at that stage, if you didn't 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, there's a plot against me. her name, rose mcgowan‘s 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 there's 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 couldn't make here. i mean, you couldn't 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 who's saying i'm going to write this book and it's 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 she's really making powerful enemies. notjust him, she's 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 doesn't. 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, i'm on holiday the moment. can i speak with you when i come back from holiday? when i contacted her again, she didn't want to talk. she wasn't scared, she wasn't intimidated. all these things are easy to say because no—one is allowed to come back and defend themselves. i don't 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 he's been accused of sexual assault, or whatever else. no, but the people you're speaking to are saying that. so i'm 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. i'm not here sitting there saying... myjob isn't to moralise about it, in the same way that if you've got a defence lawyer, they have to get on and do theirjob. this is litigation support. that's all it is. that's 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. it's 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? you're talking about what i said to myself internally? yes. i mean, iam hearing these allegations. he's had a reputation decades—old which people didn't want to speak out about when the going was good. everyone knew these were open secrets anyway, so it didn't 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 doesn't 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 couldn't care less. ok, but let's put aside those words about human trafficking. the argument is you're just saying, look, i was effectively a hired gun, which i use as a metaphor. it's interesting, if you're 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, it's not even the tip of the iceberg. it's 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 don't 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 it's for personal reasons, sometimes it's for business reasons. i've 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 don't 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 — it's amoral, in that sense. it's not about judgement. but you yourself are quoted

in ronan farrow‘s 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, there's no way we're 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... it's 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" ? it's not myjob to be comfortable, any more than the lawyer's job to be comfortable. nothing has been proven in court. it i don't take a position. it's 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? you're choosing to do this job. what i'm not going to do is sit here and say, "do you know what...?" it's 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 we're 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 didn't keep anything hidden. i just found someone who wants to publish a book who's 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 company's advisory board, once pitched its services saying, "i can find a personal mossad

for you," the israeli intelligence agency. the argument being that, effectively, you're employing spies. that's the way it works, is it? that is something that it's proud to be? that i am proud to be? well, black cube, or whichever intelligence — private intelligence company. i'm wondering about this world and how it sells itself and, perhaps, the legality with which it operates. because it's one thing to say, look, governments are doing something on our behalf, it's when it's private companies that people might wonder about the controls in place. why is it one thing if it's governments? we don't just say that all governments are legit and therefore they're 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 shouldn't be able to have state apparatus that spies on people. so i don't — i'm 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 weinstein‘s defence team, more or less a year or 18 months ago, and there's suddenly this furore about him. how dare hejoin harvey weinstein‘s defence team ? everyone‘s 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 weinstein‘s defence team. had hejoined el chapo‘s defence team you wouldn't even have heard of him and this is a guy responsible for the deaths of millions of people. it's — 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. there's no law saying that those investigators can't go and break the law, once you break the law it's open season. but you have the right to hire them. but the reason i'm pushing you on personality is that you have an extraordinary life story, really. mm—hmm. i mean, you've 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 there'e something you're involved with which you're being paid for... you'd like to believe, because the narrative — as preached by, the gospel preached by the likes of ronan and jodi and megan, is that everyone involved with harvey weinstein, whether you sold him a sandwich, whether you filled his car up with petrol, anyone who worked for him is somehow implicated by what he may or may not have done. because it's not... no, it's purely that information becomes public... thisjob was... ..so that individuals who feel that they have, who want to make an allegation, should feel able to do so. ok, so let's say that you knew a story was coming out next week about you in the press and you knew who was speaking and who they were speaking to and your lawyers wanted a heads up so that they could prepare you for the storm that's coming. what is the issue? the story is broke. no—one was suppressing the stories. i mean, this is the myth that was propagated. i never suppressed a story. i just found out who's talking and people were prepared to tell me, "i'm saying this in my upcoming book". do you recognise that one

of the effects, though, of the black cube agents in this case might been to silence people? it may not have been your intention, but phone calls... sorry, if you can explain how they were trying to silence, i can weigh that up. well, so, if you make a phone call to somebody who later realises that you are not doing what you say you're doing, and they are fearful of, perhaps, being got at, they might not then make an allegation public. i don't accept that in this case, it might be the case in other situations. i think that rose mcgowan has a very powerful platform. she had already signed her book deal, she said, "i'm going to publish this book." and she did publish this book. so the whole story arc doesn't show any silencing or intimidation at all. if you want to sell more books you say i was so terrified, i had mossad after me, this, that, i needed a gun. but when it's just drilling down, it doesn't actually — none of that actually happened. can we turn to other cases then, other stories where private intelligences operated to give a sense of the sort of ways in which it operates?

black cube has denied it, but nbc and the observer newspaper have said that they were hired to target advocates of the iran deal, the iran deal that was struck by president obama. was that a job that you knew anything about or were involved with? i know some details of it. i wouldn't go too deep into it, because of the actors who are involved in it. certainly there were officials from the obama administration were targeted and that's on the public record and... targeted in what way? from the documents i have seen and from what i understand of the case, whoever hired them and the general assumption is it's the trump administration, wanted not only to — the iran deal was being torn up anyway. trump had always made no bones about the fact that he hated this deal and that he would tear it up. but if it was him and if he hates obama so much, and his legacy, he wants to show that even the fomenting of the deal in the first place was done

with corrupt practices in mind. so therefore if you find the architects of this deal and two of the characters are ben rhodes and colin kahl, who were in the obama administration and key to this, if you can show that they were acting somehow for financial gain or some other impropriety was going on, then you can say, see, this deal, not only am i tearing it up, but it was instigated in the first place for bad reasons. and with those who were looking for that information be looking for facts and therefore that it was absolutely the case that there was some form of kickback or benefit, or are they looking for information that might in insinuate that? i think they'd be looking for both. i think obviously the ultimate prize is if you can prove something. but then the secondary layer is if people are talking about it and you canjoin dots. ultimately you're still looking to — to, um... it could just be a smear rather than. . ? yeah, i don't think they're employed to smear people, because i think if you start lying you stray into the area breaking the law.

ok, so the strangeness you're talking about is you said you presume it was president trump, but president trump was sitting in the white house, why wouldn't he has his own — the government's, the us intelligence services? he's got the whole government system at his disposal. because could you imagine if they were caught spying on their own previous administration? and, you know, outsourcing something like this, and, again, these arejust allegations, but it's been pretty carefully tracked over the years, is that hungarian government were using firms like black cube, the nigerian opposition. various government actors across the world do outsource things. in the same way that — they don't have to keep it all in house — if someone says these guys are brilliant at what they do and they will get the job done... so did you know of governments around the world that were the clients of black cube? i know governments around the world who are clients of companies like black cube, yeah, yeah. because they can't go

to their own intelligence services? well, i mean, here's a good example. let's say, and just hypothetical, that israel wants to know what's going on in libya at the moment, what the political situation is. they're not going to — they can't call up and say, "hi, it's mossad, what's happening?" but if they can — if there's a private firm who find out there's a dispute between the two directors at the state oil company in libya and one of them turns to a firm like black cube and says, "come on, work for us," suddenly you've got people right in the heart of the libyan, you know, political system, business system, and they can be feeding it back to whoever. it's almost like a trojan horse in that sense. so is it your understanding then that president trump hired black cube to do work for him? i can't — it's what's been reported. i'm not — i wouldn't.. i can speculate but it's not proof. you said you don't regret at all being part of the weinstein project. is that true? you don't regret? you don't apologise? i'm not sure to whom i should apologise. do i regret calling someone up and saying, "tell me about your life in hollywood" in an entirely unthreatening way? i mean, literally, these are like long, drawn out

conversations, often they're two or three. and the other thing is, if people want to fixate on it was only accusers that were being — that were the targets, that's a distortion and therefore not telling the full picture. i spoke to so many male executives and people that — and it will never get reported on, because ronan doesn't want to tell that story. he wants you to think that he's the, you know, he's leading the oppressed into the promised land and that this was alljust a campaign to silence their voices. i genuinely was told at the beginning of this he thinks there's a plot to oust him from the company. and the brief never changed. the names on there, obviously, i mean we know what's come out now, but... and given that, do you not have any regret? oh, i regret being involved. it's just a pointless case to be involved in. there were plenty of other, it's — if that really was his brief, and it was neverfed back to me, but if he really had committed these crimes and then went and said i have committed them now go and silence, and that's totally different to what actually happened. so i don't have any regrets is the bottom line. seth freedman, thank you for coming on hardtalk. thanks a lot.

hello there. after all the rough weather, the wet and windy weather we've had to contend with this week, you may be pleased to hear that things are about to calm down. but it's not all plain sailing just yet. this is the earlier satellite picture — this stripe of cloud has been bringing outbreaks of rain. there are shower clouds and following on behind and this hook of the cloud is the centre of an area of low pressure bringing a swathe of very strong winds still across the far north and west of scotland through the first part

part of friday. starting the day generally between 2—9. through the day, a couple of clutches of showers to contain with, one moving across the midlands, wales and southern england and some heavy with hail and thunder mixing in and this band of showers drifting across scotland and northern ireland will contain snow over high ground in scotland, say, above 300m, more showers in the far north and staying windy in northern scotland. colder from the north—west with temperatures 7—ii degrees. as we go through friday night we will lose most of the showers from the south—east and we see more showers pushing in across scotland and these will be wintry to slightly lower levels at this stage. it stays windy in northern scotland but for many, the thing you will notice on saturday morning is a colder feel. widely around freezing and some spots will be below. an overnight frost will be a feature of the weekend but we will also see a lot of dry weather and a lot of bright weather. much calmer weather because the areas of low pressure that has been dominant

through the week get muscled out of the way by this big, strong, powerful area of high pressure that is going to build its way in on top of us and really suppress all of the shower activity for the most part. so there is going to be a lot of dry weather around. i think still some showers blowing in across scotland on saturday, some of which will be wintry. still windy in the north of scotland as well, but generally speaking, with those sunny skies overhead, after the cold, frosty start, temperatures will struggle a little but when you get lighter winds and you get more sunshine, not feeling too bad. saturday night will be a cold one, a widespread frost on sunday morning and even the towns and cities will be at freezing or a touch below and some spots in the countryside could be at —3 or “4. again, after the cold start, we will get a lot of dry weather and spells of sunshine. showers across scotland will have gone by this stage but in the far north—west, we could see extra cloud and the odd splash of rain moving into shetland.

those afternoon temperatures again, between 7—9, but not too bad where you get some sunshine. as we head through sunday night into monday, it will be chilly for many and there's the greater risk of fog.

supposedly, with me, and they cut out most of the quotes.

i'm mariko oi in singapore. the headlines: a moment in history, as donald trump's impeachment trial gets under way in the senate. the president isn't impressed by any of it. it's a hoax, it's a hoax. everybody knows that. it's a complete hoax. the world has reached the point of climate change crisis — a stark warning from one of the world's most influential environmentalists. the moment of crisis has come. we can no longer prevaricate. as i speak, south—east australia is on fire. i'm lewis vaughanjones in london.