The Catch and Kill Podcast with Ronan Farrow · Pineapple Street Studios and Audacy

Episode 1: The Spy

November 26, 2019·36 min·3 clips

Ronan Farrow was riding the subway when a call from a number labeled 'Axiom' turned out to be the private investigator who had been following him for weeks.

Igor begins with unease. He sees unfamiliar figures around the work, catches only scraps about who they are, and gets more curious each time someone tells him less. So he starts keeping records. By July 2017, a Brooklyn assignment sounds strange enough to make him watch harder. Roman says the subject is a New York Times reporter, and that one detail makes the job feel wrong. The episode lets the alarm rise slowly. It stays with Igor's account, then widens to the business around it: private intelligence for hire. John Scott Railton, a senior researcher at Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, gives that part its shape. Citizen Lab investigates tactics used to silence journalists and dissidents, including private espionage and surveillance. His warning is blunt. There is now a global market for surveillance capabilities, and some customers may have little restraint, oversight, or accountability. The phrase lands cold: NSA in a box. Intelligence power, packaged for buyers with money and the will to use it. Igor's off-kilter Brooklyn job starts to look like one piece of a larger story about secrecy, surveillance, and journalist hunting. The reporting keeps its feet on the ground: calls, assignments, and the people asked to do the work. It ends by turning toward 30 Rockefeller Plaza and NBC's killing of Farrow's initial reporting on Harvey Weinstein.

As heard by us

A serious opening on surveillance, abuse, and the people caught in both.

This episode starts with a warning about sexual violence and language, then moves into an August 2018 subway call before widening into reporting on private intelligence.

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Why you'd press play

Press play if you want one strange phone call to open onto a global private-surveillance market.

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