You're listening to a podcast from the BBC World Service. This is Hard Talk with me, Sarah Montague.

Thanks for downloading this edition of the programme and I hope you enjoy it.

My guest today freely admits to being a spy, not for any government, but for the private investigators, Black Cube.

It's one of the companies Harvey Weinstein hired to gather information on those who had accused him of sexual assault.

Seth Friedman was employed by BlackCube and posed as a journalist to gather that 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 Friedman joins me now. Welcome to Hard Talk. 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 Megan Tui and Jody Cantor

all variously outed me in their books about the Harvey Weinstein case and my role in it.

And that was their investigation into those women who had allegations of sexual assault against Harvey Weinstein,

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 these things that help sell books, which is what they've 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

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