Non-disclosure agreement (NDA)

A Non-disclosure agreement (NDA) is a contract that restricts what its signers may reveal. In the book’s accounts of workplace-harassment settlements, confidentiality provisions went far beyond keeping a payment private: they could bar people from discussing their own experiences, sharing evidence, assisting others with similar claims, or answering journalists. The agreements could offer a route to compensation and privacy, yet also remove information that might help expose repeated misconduct or protect future employees.

How the agreements worked

The investigation into Bill O’Reilly and Fox News examined settlement terms that required women to hand over evidence, including recordings, diaries, emails, and backup files. Some provisions restricted the women—and, in one case, their attorneys—from helping others with similar claims. If a subpoena required testimony, a woman had to notify O’Reilly’s side, giving his team an opportunity to contest her being called. One lawyer agreed to provide O’Reilly legal advice on sexual-harassment matters. Another woman was barred from making disparaging statements about O’Reilly or Fox News, responding to journalists, or disclosing the matter, and confirmed that she had not filed a complaint with government agencies.

The financial stakes reinforced the restrictions. One alleged victim received about $9 million and another $3.25 million; violating the clauses could mean losing the money. The settlement thus did not simply compensate a claimant. It made continued silence part of the bargain and placed a substantial financial penalty on breaking it.

The book also describes NDAs as a tool for containing information outside individual employment settlements. Tom Ajamie, investigating a financial transaction for amfAR, told Megan Twohey that David Boies had used NDAs to muzzle members of the charity’s board. That account places the agreements within a broader contest over who could speak about allegations and investigations involving Harvey Weinstein, not only what a claimant could say after receiving a settlement.

Why people signed

The lawyers interviewed by the reporters described restrictive terms as standard practice, not an exceptional feature of a few cases. Women might sign because they needed money, wanted privacy, saw no better option, or wanted to move on without being labeled a tattletale, a liar, a flirt, or a habitual litigant. A confidential settlement could seem more predictable than going to court.

The legal alternatives could be daunting. The federal protections described in the book left some workers outside their reach, including freelancers and people at workplaces with fewer than fifteen employees. A federal complaint could face a limitations period as short as 180 days, while damages were capped at $300,000—potentially too little to replace lost earnings or attract a capable lawyer. Attorneys working on contingency generally received at least a third of a client’s award and could receive nothing if the case failed in court. Settlements therefore served the financial interests of lawyers as well as clients; some attorneys challenged severe terms, while others accepted them to secure a larger award.

The institutional information environment could reproduce the same secrecy. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission often kept settlements confidential and had limited enforcement authority; its mandate required it to settle when possible. Although the agency knew which companies faced the most charges, it could not make that information public, leaving prospective employees unable to check an employer’s record through the agency. Information collected with public resources could remain inaccessible to the people who might use it to assess workplace risk.

Perkins and Chiu’s settlement

The account of Zelda Perkins and Rowena Chiu gives the restrictions a specific human and documentary form. After the two former Miramax employees sought legal advice about an incident in Venice, their lawyers steered them away from the criminal proceedings they had expected and toward a settlement. The women did not want money and proposed donating it to charity, hoping to create a public warning; they were told that Weinstein’s attorneys were unlikely to negotiate without a financial demand. Perkins then sought terms intended to constrain future behavior, including therapy for Weinstein and a company harassment policy. After difficult negotiations, each woman received £125,000, subject to extensive restrictions.

When Perkins later showed Jodi Kantor portions of the agreement, the language illustrated how far confidentiality could reach. She could not speak about her time at Miramax; a medical professional she consulted would have to sign a confidentiality agreement; and she was not permitted to be truthful with her own accountant about the payment. The paperwork recorded, in anonymized form, whom she had already told about leaving and what she had disclosed. It prohibited her from speaking to any media, including media that might exist in the future, and required her to help take steps to prevent or mitigate further disclosure if the matter became public.

The agreement constrained even Perkins’s ability to consult the document governing her. She was not allowed to retain a complete copy, only to view one at her lawyer’s office; the papers she brought to lunch were fragments her lawyer had given her after Perkins asked how she could comply with an agreement she could not consult. Perkins and Chiu had matching agreements whose terms implied that they could never discuss the matter with each other again. Dated October 23, 1998, the papers formalized silence within weeks of the events in Venice.

The consequences continued beyond the signing. Perkins found it difficult to explain her abrupt departure when applying for other jobs and concluded that her film career was over. She went to Guatemala to train horses. Although she had negotiated for the right to attend Weinstein’s therapy sessions and selected a therapist, she struggled to make the sessions happen and eventually gave up. The contract’s terms thus shaped not only what she could tell others, but also how she understood and managed her professional future.

Secrecy and its wider costs

The book’s central finding is that settlements could mute claims without stopping the conduct they concerned. Women surrendered the right to describe their experiences; evidence and accounts that might connect separate complaints were harder to bring together; and alleged harassers could continue in workplaces where others lacked the information to recognize a pattern. The agreements were rarely examined in law-school classrooms or open court, helping keep their common terms and wider effects outside public understanding.

This does not make every settlement a simple choice between money and truth. The accounts show people seeking privacy, financial security, or a chance to move on in a legal system they regarded as punishing and uncertain. But the distribution of information and risk was unequal: a claimant might receive compensation while future colleagues, regulators, and the public remained unable to see the history behind it. The NDA emerges as both a private contract and a mechanism with public consequences—a way to resolve one claim that could leave the conditions for another in place.