Iran-Contra Affair: Shady in the 80s, Part 1

I'm gonna Labor Day weekend. I'm gonna stay the whole weekend. I'll be all over Maine. That's great, man. Where else. We're gonna be in Orlando on October nine, and then on October t we're going to be in New Orleans, Man. And then later on that month we're doing a three night stand at the Bellhouse in Brooklyn. That's right. Is sold out, but you can still get tickets for the and we will see you then. Check it out at

s y s K live dot com. Welcome to Stuff you should Know, a production of My Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W Chuck Bryant with Jerry over there eating with chopstick. As a matter of fact, you know what, Jerry pulls up the chopsticks. It's time to record. That's right. Yeah, he's got she's got Facebook open and she's sitting there with her chopsticks. So it's we're recording. Jerry's been fork

free since eighty three. Speaking of eighty three, your shirt, I guess it's kind of eighty three ish. It looks very Thomas Magnum. It does chuck. It does not just the shirt, the whole outfit. Look at the jeans, the shoes. Yeah, yeah, you got the Ferrari out back. Thank you for noticing, man, I look like a chubby Thomas Magnum. It's funny because I just finished Stranger Things three, and um, I saw that there was Have you seen it yet? Are you into that? No? I I like the first season. I

never really got back into it after that. No, no offense to anybody. Sure, Uh, the main the sheriff guy, yeah, Hop wears a shirt kind of like that through most of this season. And so someone did a cut of a like a Magnum p I intro and had him running around and shooting things and jumping into cars. I'll set to the Magnum thing and it really fits at that song with the guy with a shirt like that and it's magnum. Of course he has a mustache too. Well,

I'm a mustache less chubby. You should wear a mustache. That's look interesting. I don't know. I do solve a lot of mysteries, though. Nothing can change a look like mustaches, Oh dude, especially spontaneously, right, especially a fake mustache, because you just put it on and bam, you're done. So uh, I tried. I'm gonna go back to the eight three segue. Yeah we're here, right, We're right in the middle of the eighties. Yeah, like this is super eighties. This is

as eighties as it gets. I wrong. Contra fair, that's what we're talking about. Some people call it irong gate poo poo, that name iron contra sure um. I remember this going on at the time too. I remember watching Oliver North testify too, and my sister was like, he's so dreamy. Look at how much poise he has. He had his dress greens on, had his boy scout three

fingers up like swearing. I really think he did do that. Um, but even as an adult, like everything I knew about Iron Contra, like until researching this, it was just the glossiest version. Well, I mean I was like ten and eleven, so you were like seven and eight. Sure, sure, but I mean like still over time, as you age, you're like, oh, that's what was going on or oh I understand that even as an adult, my conception of it was not very thorough at all. And as I dug into I'm like,

this is one of the shadiest things has ever done ever. Yeah, and it was really great to do this and like now I know it. Now I have a full understanding of what happened. And if it ever comes up at a party and people like, oh what was that all about? Anyway, and be like, well, please sit down for an hour and I'll just pull up my smartphone and play our episode. Actually maybe an hour and a half. We'll see how

this goes. Yeah, by the way, everyone, this is a two parter buckle up and so, uh, this is part one. I figured we'd start with the beginning. I think that's a really good idea. That reminds me of my friend in college watched the movie. Uh, which one was it? Shortcuts. The movie that was on two video cassettes. It was so long, you know, they had to split them up. Was it Magnolia A Bridge too far? I can't remember.

My friend in college, very very famously among our friends, watched the second tape first and then watch the first tape second and didn't really put it together. She was just like, I thought it was a little confusing, really, so it was accidental. Oh yeah, And then she was like and then she showed up in the and the second part, and I was like, she's already dead. She was kind of country. This is kind of funny movies,

one of them anachronisms. Yeah, well, this is not anachronism, because we're gonna be normal, smart, singing people and start at the beginning. And there's really no better place to start than the election of Ronald Reagan. In Ronald Reagan, if you weren't familiar with him already when he was president, he had already been governor of California. But even before that,

he had a pretty extensive career in Hollywood. And while he was a pretty big star in Hollywood at least B plus list if not a list actor, I mean, he was a medium sized star, but definitely way more famous as president than he ever was as a movie star. Um. He learned to detest communism. And at the time, communism was a really big thing in Hollywood, like it was

very fashionable, um, especially among the intellectuals of Hollywood. And he learned to hate it so much so that by the time he got to be president, he had this idea that there was it was impossible for capitalist democracy and communism to coexist even peacefully on Earth. You couldn't have both. You had to have one or the other. And by god, Ronald Reagan was going to see to it that the one that we had was a capitalist democracy. Yeah.

He wanted to stamp out communism wherever it reared its head. Uh, and it was rearing its head close to home, which we'll see here in a second, but all over the world. Oh yeah, for sure. He it was called the Reagan Bits, and pieces of it were right, and he came up with the Reagan doctrine. And the Reagan doctrine was, um, we will aid any any opposition to communism wherever it's spouts, Like if you're if you're fighting against a communist revolution,

will support your country. If you're a rebel fighting against a leftist communists, Um government will help you overthrow. That's the Reagan doctrine. Yeah, via money, via arm via training, via covert operations that we carried out ourselves. There were all kinds of ways that we could and did help

stem the flow of communism. So there was, as you were saying, there was a place pretty close to home where communism had sprouted up, and that was Nicaragua down in Central America, and in Central America in the thirties, the Sandinista government had taken power and had held onto power well into the seventies and by this time the early eighties, and it drove Ronald Reagan nuts that there was a communist power right there that was being supported

by the Soviet Union through Cuba. Ostensibly. I've never gotten the impression that this was ever conclusively proven. They definitely got support from Cuba. But whether it was the Soviet Union who was really calling the shots of nick Nicaragua or not, I I don't know. Yeah, And I think you know, to go even further back and draw the lines a little even more clear. The Sandinistans were named for Augusto Sandino, who led the Nationalist rebellion against what

the US occupation of Central America. That's where it started. That's where it all started. And from nineteen you know, the US occupied This is all part of the Banana Wars. So we occupied Nicaragua from nineteen twelve to nineteen thirty three, Uh, for a lot of reasons, but one was like, hey, no one's going to build a canal here unless it's US.

That was sort of one of the main reasons. And uh, that all ceased in nineteen thirty three with Roosevelt's Good Neighbor Policy, which is basically like, we're gonna pull out of Nicaragua. Yeah, okay, So but we we had our fingers all over Central America for many, many, many years.

And that's why when people forget or choose not to remember when people flee horrible situations in Central America to come to the United States now like kind of where all these horrible situations started years and years ago because of things that we did well. When when Reagan became president, UM intervening in Nicaragua, Nick Man, I'm going to have a hard time if I can't say Nicaragua. UM intervening in Nicaragua became like a like first and foremost priority

for them. Almost immediately they started UM funding the Contras. The Contra rebels are the groups who were fighting against the Santainista government. They were right wing groups, UM, and they were funding them, they were training them, like you were saying, and they're doing all this secretly. There was an operation called Operation Black Eagle, that one that was something else. So we were already funding them and at the time, Congress was on board. Congress was on board,

especially at first because the Republicans controlled the House. Well, you know how when somebody comes in andto steamrolls over the other party, usually in a presidential election, very frequently there's in the mid terms, the congressional mid terms, there's like a backlash against that flip. Believe it or not, That happen to Ronald Reagan inwo Yeah, and the House

did flip. They flipped over to the Democrats, and UM that Democrat controlled House, combined with a Newsweek cover story that came out, kind of turned the tide against UM Reagan's policy on helping out in Nicaragua. Yeah, there was a CIA director named William Casey who was UM. He was kind of telling Congress what they needed here, here and there, uh you have been here vague briefings that that was probably um a generous way to say it.

Sometimes Casey would send another guy though, named Dwyane Dewey Clarridge. And this is where things really went south because Claridge did not present well to Congress UM. And anytime Congress feels like they're being subverted or ignored or like kept out of the loop or like not able to offer their checks and balances on the executive branch, they really get mad. They do. And like we're seeing that today. This is like history just repeats itself over and over again, exactly. Yeah.

And and in this particular case, the place where UM where the administration, the regular administration, and Congress just started budding heads over Nicaragua, it was Duyne Clarridge. You know, he just that's how poor job he did. But in his defense, he was coming from a place where he was a CIA man through and through. And this is less than ten years after Congress had just basically rooted

out the CIA held public hearings. That's when like the um MK ultra came out and the fact that they've been dosing unsuspecting Americans with LSD so that's his defense. He was mad because they uncovered all the awful things that he'd been doing, right, right, right, true compassion, Chuck, that's true compassion. So um, So Congress is starting to

get a little unhappy with this. And there was one congress Man in particular named Edward Boland, I believe, and he was from Massachusetts, and he said, hey, I just read about this cover story in Newsweek has a title America's Secret War colon Nicaragua. Seems like they should have flip flopped that, you know, Nicaragua colon America's Secret War. I think they both had the same end goal. It's fine. But he was like, wait, why am I reading about

this in a magazine? And I'm a member of Congress, right because at this time, like Congress is like, well, okay, we think we're just kind of funding things, we're maybe helping out a little bit. This Newsweek magazine was like, no, no, no, it's way more than that. Like there's way more American involvement down in Nicaragua than than you've been led to believe Congress, like actual covert CIA ops like blowing up bridges and blowing up buildings and uh, you know, direct

saboteur type ops. Yeah, not just here's some arms and then you know, you you close this one eye, believe this eye open when you're shooting. There was way more involved than that. Or we could just do the shooting basically here, just let me do it. So Congress, uh, in the guys of Edward Bowland said nope, we're not doing that, and they passed the Bowling Amendment, which basically said, if if you cannot use CIA funds or depart Defense Department funds to aid the contras in Nicaragua, it's done.

Good night. Congress went to sleep, and so that should have been the that's the end of it, right, because Congress passed a well it was at a loft now passed an amendment enact enact yea, and so everyone just stopped. Right, that's how it works. All right, what's part two going to be about. We're just gonna see here quietly. So, um, this did not stop anything. Uh. Here's what happened. In nine. The CIA had this one operation where they went into

the commercial shipping harbors of Nicaragua. Oh boy, I know it's it's I said it right in my head all morning. Nicaragua. Uh,

and they put mines there. You know, I was about to say land mines, but they were c mines, floating mines, and uh, the idea here was we're gonna plant these mines that we're gonna whip up our own press releases for the Contras where they take credit for it, like, we don't even trust them to write a good press release, wrote the press release for so where the contrasts are saying that they did it, and Uh, the overall effect it's going to have is they're not gonna be able

to ship arms via the seaport, at least into Nicaragua. Plus it also makes the Contras look way more together and with it than they actually were, right, Like, all we need to do is give them some money, and they got it covered. Right. So the CIA does this and and they're thinking, Okay, so, um my shipping in the Nicaraguan harbors is going to stop. It does not stop. Um. As a matter of fact, there there were there was damage. So they used little firecracker mines which make a big

blast and a lot of water everywhere. But the big ship. It's not gonna hurt the ship. Well, it's sunk a lot of small fishing vessels, but it also damaged ships from the Netherlands, Great Britain, Japan, and the USSR commercial ships. So um. The Wall Street Journal broke this story and said, hey, you guys, you Congress, You remember how you pass this amendment saying there could be no CIA involvement in in Nicaragua. Well, they mind the harbor of the sovereign nation, and it

blew up a bunch of other other country ships. In Congress once again, it's like, man, you keep doing secret things behind their back. That really makes us mad. Should we take a break. All right, let's take a break. Stuff you should know. Gosh, stuff you should know. Stuff you should know. Okay, let's keep going. So what does Congress do? They're like, all right, they're mad. We passed one bowl in amendment, which I don't think we said, chuck.

The first Bowling Amendment was passed four hundred and eleven to zero, unanimously saying do not mess around in Nicaragua anymore. That's when you know Congress is mad when they unanimously agree on something. And then then the Wall Street Journal breaks the story about the harbor mining long after the Bowling Amendment was passed. And now Congress is even madder, right,

So they passed two more amendments, bowling amendments. Uh, because there were loopholes basically that allowed you know, the the US to sort of do these things semi legally. So it was like, well, here's a loophole, so it wasn't really fully illegal that we did this stuff. That's like the Reagan Administration's way, all right, they close ease loopholes and uh, now this was like it was pretty iron clad. I don't know about iron clad, but it was pretty

tight amendment wise. At the very least, Congress walked away thinking it's done. It's we made ourselves quite clear. Ronald Reagan signed these into law. Yeah he didn't. He didn't. He accepted these things. I think he even said like, yeah, this is a good idea, great way to go, Congress and signed it. Um I'm not gonna do a Reagan impression, but um so the Congress thought that the matter was settled,

but it wasn't settled. Like this is how laser focused Reagan was on overthrowing the Santinista government down in Nicaragua. He just took a CIA operation and took it even further underground than it had been before. Basically, he was like, Okay, if you guys are gonna outlaw this stuff, um, we're just gonna have to get even more illegal. Yeah. So

there were a couple of factions here at work. One was this continued operation underground, deep deep, underground now, and then there was Reagan's public Like he still wanted to get real money from Congress so he didn't have to do this stuff, so he kept up this public PR campaign, beating this drum about communism matter doorstep. Uh. He said that the contrasts were the moral equals of our founding fathers. That's a big one to pull out, Like, that's a

direct quote of our founding fathers. Um and started in with the and again you see the stuff kind of repeating itself, the campaign of fear, where he basically said, unless we do something tough here, then there will be a tidal wave of FEAT people. I don't even know what that means, but that's that just seems super offensive, swarming into our country. He meant, you know, refugees, FEAT people seeking a safe haven. It was one word, even

I think one word. It's funny because I looked at FEAT people and that's a company that like, I think it makes shoelaces and they're like, yn't see it again, say dot com. Uh, so this is all going on and on the on the on the down low, all the operations are going on, and on the public facing side. Reagan's just continuing this PR push right basically saying like, Congress, look at these heartless old you know, gas bags, turning off the funding to these founding father moral equivalent to

our founding fathers. Go vote these guys out of office and voting some people who will turn the funding back on. Yeah. And while the contrast may have been fighting communism, they were doing so through means that the Founding Fathers probably would not have approved of, like murder and torture and rape and mutilation, kidnapping and not. You know, I mean it wasn't so widespread that it was like that's all they were doing, but they would resort to those tactics. Uh.

And that's not Founding father stuff. No, it's definitely not, not, as far as I've ever learned. Now, I don't think so. And I mean it's had a few hundred couple hundred years to come out and it still hasn't. So Yeah, I read some of the stuff too, Like some of the UM affidavits were like just brutal. Oh yeah, dude. The a war down in Nicaragua, the civil war that

the US basically fomented and supported. UM, it went on for a decade, like it was, it went on into the nineties, and it was like not just like countrymen against countrymen, Like civilians were getting murdered by the scores and just they would get kidnapped and tortured and killed, and like it was a really brutal time in Nicaragua. And the regular administration is right in the middle of this, like providing as much I eat as they can to

one side. Yeah, And it was one of the big problems was that the Contras back then were a bunch of different factions and they didn't answer to a single leader. And the one thing I got out of the affidavits, one of which this woman described them taking her children and her finding their mutilated bodies the next day, it was brutal. Um. One of the leaders said that there's there's no disciplinary system at all within the Contra groups.

So yeah, yeah, like there's no accountability, so you could do any thing you wanted, and there's no discipline set up, so it was just they were fractured and no one, you know, was talking to each other, and it was just a big mess. Right. But Reagan was doing his best to paint everything in black and white Contrast good Sandinista's bad. So anything that Contrast did was good, and stuff that couldn't be painted as good would just be

denied or glossed over, not reported on. That's right. So while while Reagan's out running around trying to drum up public support for the Contrast and thus congressional aid being turned back on, and also saying don't do drugs, he yeah, that was a big one, even though we're shipping a lot of drugs back and forth. It's awfully rich now that you know all that stuff, you know. Um, he's also secretly supporting them going in flagrant violation of what

Congress has said that that America can do. Um. He tells his people he wants the Contrast movement to be kept alive, body and soul. Is how we put it, which any basically said do it. This is what history has told us, is that Reagan basically said keep the Contra movement alive, body and soul. I'm gonna go work on Congress. I'm putting my hands over my ears from now on. Whether that's true or not, we will probably never know as far as the history books is concerned. Yeah,

that was, that's what happened, right. So, uh, here's what they did. They said, the CIA has a bad rap um for a lot of reasons, and Congress is not super friendly with them. Well, they expressly forbade the CIA from operating them. Right, So he said, here's what we're gonna do. Um, we're gonna use the National Security Council. And there the CIA chief, William Casey, he's around. He's gonna just like advise here and there. And William Casey was like, oh no, I really got to be involved

because this is really good stuff. They're like no, no, no no, we're talking like officially here. That okay exactly. So at first National Security Advisors Robert McFarlane, and then he was succeeded by John Poindexter. Very important to remember that name. Um, and then case he's still there, like you said, doing his thing on the download unofficially right. I think even in some cases kind of stepping on toes or whatever.

He was like a an additional boss to the to the main guy, the guy everybody's heard of, the guy whose mind or whose name jumps to mind when you hear about this, Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, and in in in retrospect, especially if you went, if you live through the Iran Contra hearings and you're familiar with all the North, like you would guess that when all the North was tapped to head up this extraordinarily difficult secret operation to

go against Congress and keep the Contra movement alive and kicking that Ali North was a a a bad, a covert operator to the ninth degree. Right, that is not at all correct. No career marine, very highly decorated marine, served in Vietnam one, silver stars and purple hearts, devout Catholic, and by all accounts a stand up guy, and to many many Americans he is uh still like a top notch American hero. Sure well, he was like the president

of n r A until I think recently. Yeah, I think there's some scandal that just happened where there was it came out that he like tried to depose Wayne Lapierre or something like that. I don't know. I don't either, But but even beyond that, like even beyond whether he's a stand up guy or not, as far as you know, patriotism is concerned just job experience he had like none, He had no experience whatsoever as far as I could ever tell in covert operations. He did a pretty good

job for he did an amazing job. He was basically the the White Houses operations and intel arm of the shadiest stuff that was doing stuff that was so shady the c i A. Was even kept in the dark about it. That's how shady this stuff Alie North was doing. And he had no experience. He's learning as he went, just making it up as he went along. And he really did do a pretty good job of it if

you look at it from that angle. Just as far as like getting getting or done so um, what they basically decided was all right, if we can't get the real taxpayer money and like official funds, we'll just go and raise funds on the side and secret um through business people that you know, we can have these big parties and dinners and say, hey, listen, communism is knocking at our door. This wouldn't be good for America, wouldn't be good for your company, And why don't you give

us some money, open up the checkbook. Reagan's here, you want a photo. Yeah, sometimes he would show up to these secret fundraisers and uh it was, it was, it really worked. Like they raised a ton of money from the business elite of America to stop the sand and Easton's Nicaragua. So they actually forget this. They founded they had two private citizens found a nonprofit, the National Endow

Meant for the Preservation of Liberty. It's sole purpose was to get these funds, these illicit funds to send to the Contrast, which means that the people who are donating to the president's illegal secret proxy war could write their donations off on their taxes. It's just mind boggling hilarious in some senses. Yeah, but they were not the most stand up nonprofit because, as you point out, they raise

six point three million dollars through that organization. Uh during six about three point three million made it to the Contras. And uh so that means a fifty two program expense rate. That's pretty bad. Yeah, it's not good at all. Now, three million dollars it took supposedly to run to run that nonprofit, those fundraising breakfast for a year. Yeah, pretty bad good omelets though, so um yeah, oh yeah, the best. Yeah. So from this this idea like okay, this is this

is probably kind of legal. We're just fundraising. We're not giving any American taxpayer funds, We're just getting other people that donate. Private citizens. Saudi Arabia was a big one, and it was all the stop communism. So, like, I think their intentions were that, oh definitely, there's were yeah, and but there was this definite end justifies the means kind of thing. And and it really isn't the president

really the most powerful person in the world. Can Congress really tells the president what to do as far as foreign policy goes? Nah, that was kind of the idea, I think. So Saudi Arabia donated a bunch of money. There's all these private citizens donating money. Um, And here's the thing. The contras found themselves flush with cash, many millions of dollars over just two years. Saudi Arabia alone

donated thirty two million. To the contrast, this is a couple of loosely affiliated factions fighting in two spots of Nicaragua that suddenly have thirty plus million dollars at their disposal. The problem is they don't have the contacts in the international arms trade to buy arms with this money. They said, a bunch of money. They're like, who wants this? And they were getting crickets, got some bombs, right, you know, the cartoonist black kind, the round ones that are shiny

before Craigslist two. Right, So they're only uh, their only avenue was to go back to the Americans and Oliver North and uh he began working with a guy named Richard S. Cord. He was a retired forced retired we'll get into that in a minute, Air Force major general, and he had a lot of experience. Um, there was this group of dudes in the nineteen seventies and eighties that were uh former CIA or current CIA, former CI A former and current American military who were all had

their fingers in the illegal arms trade. So exactly what you can imagine a Hollywood writer would come up with this, the real life version of Yeah, sure, so they would. They would, Um, you could farm out assassinations to them. They could rustle up mercenaries, they could carry out sabotage operations. They could find whatever, gun, bomb, anything you need on some money laundered, right, anything that is extraordinarily illegal and

deals in death. Like these guys could get their hands on some poison, sure, a bomb disguised as a briefcase. We got it, buddy, and they would. Here's the other thing too. They were an illegal black market arms ring, but they were also even more illegal in that they would sell to whoever. Whether you were an enemy or a friend of America, it didn't matter. These guys were operating well above any sort of national loyalty or anything like. Yeah,

this was about making money, like many millions of dollars. Yeah, you're right. So, especially guy like se Cord, he wasn't He was in it to make dough definitely, whereas an Ali North was seemingly in it to stop the you know, communism. Right. So that's that's an important point. But the fact that they that they contract with c Cord to kind of swoop in and help um hook the contrasts up with arms means that the Reagan administration is contracting with this

extraordinarily illegal black market arms ring. Yeah, one of which they took down some of these dudes over the years from one of them. One of the founders of this group was a c I A OP named Edwin Wilson. He UH was sentenced He served twenty two years, twelve of which were in solitary confinement, but was sentenced to fifty two years for illegally arming Libya with ten thousand machine guns and twenty tons of C four that he hid in barrels of mud and flew on a charter

jet to Libya. Hollywood stuff. I know, it really is, like this really happened crazy, And it wasn't just Libya. This guy was funding or Um outfitting Momar Kadafi Da Mean was another customer. Like, whoever, if you need to keep a strangle old on power in your country, were the people to help you do that? Yeah? And when I teased earlier about Richard c. Cord being forced into retirement,

that was due to his connection with UH, with Edwin Wilson. Right, so he was forced to retire from the Air Force. They couldn't pin anything on him, but there was enough of a connection there where he had to step down. Yeah. They're like, you can do this the hardway or the easy way. We're going to give you the option, and he took the easy way and then he went on to make a lot of money. Right. He was like Okay, well, I'll just do the armstealing thing full time now, and

he did so. When they brought him in. At first, s Cord was basically acting as like a very las a Fair intermediary. He was basically the guy who on behalf of all the North was like, yeah, I can introduce the Contrast to my friends in the arms ring in Canada, of all places. Yeah. He introduced the Conscious to some Canadian arms dealers. So now the setup was this the friendliest arms arms stealers, right, They're like, all

these bullets will really put a hold in somebody. A. Yeah, oh sorry, I meant to include get launchers on that order. Sorry sorry. Um, that's pretty good. So U s Cord was just there to make some introductions, make sure things went smoothly. Um. And then it was up to the Contrast to use these funds that were coming in from other people and to buy weapons from the Canadians. Easy pac Right, You'd think, Okay, that's fine, that's done. It's still has like a slight veneer of arms length legality

as far as America's concerned. Yeah, and we should mention too that he to do this, he set up a shell company. Uh, the Stanford Technology Trading Group with an Iranian American businessman named Albert Hakim who knew how to get around certain official procedures and stuff like that. He's another guy who could get things done. So he set up Swiss bank accounts, untraceable accounts because that's what you do to run the funds through. And this became known

as the Enterprise. Yeah, there's Stanford Technology Trading Company or or Group starting Group a k a. The Enterprise. Yeah, that was like everybody called it that because they're like this sounds way cooler, the enterprise, right, all right, but like you were alluding to, you think it would have been going great. But the contrast in the North, who was the f d N. They were the largest, by far, the largest group. They were the better organized from what

I understand. Yeah, they were doing a pretty good job. But in the South they were not doing a very good job. No. Somehow they were like, we don't have the arms and equipment. They're like, what are you talking about. You have the same amount of money, you have the same contact, just by the weapons, and they're like no't know. So ali North is like, okay, all right, here's what

we're gonna do. He called the leaders of the f d N and the fsl N to Miami to meet with him, and he said, here's here's how it's going to be. From now on, any venner of legality is going out the window. From now on, I'd like you to meet your new boss, Richard C. Court. Not only is he going to make sure you have arms, he's going to take the funnel money himself by the arms himself, and then he's going to have it kicked out of

a plane over your camps. So now America is directly involved in supporting and arming and training the Contra rebels in the north and the south of Nicaragua. And if there was any again, if there's any kind of legality, it's totally gone at this point. Yeah. And in the meantime, uh c Cord and Acheam were marking up their stuff as much as like dude. They made a lot of money off of this, They made a ton, but they put it, they put a lot back into the enterprise.

I mean, they took this job very seriously. If you are if you were all the North, you were quite happy with the work you were getting from Richard C. Cord and Albert Hakim because the shipments went out on time. They got everything they needed. They had so much money they had it left over, but they were also investing it into the enterprise. They bought UM planes, they rented airstrips, they hired him employees. They contracted with other like UM airlines,

like a Cia front UM. I can't remember the name of it right now, but they were. They were doing the work for sure. Great healthcare, yeah, the best benefits, all of the all of the Contras had really nice teeth. After Richard Scorn took over work from home. All right, so let's take another break here and we'll come back and bring it home for part one with a little bit about the propaganda machine that was set up. Stuff you should know, Gosh, stuff you should know. Stuff you

should know, alright, Chuck. So things are in full swing. America is unknowingly totally hooking up the cow basically running this proxy war that the Contras are fighting against the Santaista government. Um. The enterprise is working full boar. And if it if it couldn't get any more illegal, if you thought it couldn't get any more illegal, prepared to just be knocked right over. Yeah. So here on the home front, Um, it was decided that there needed to

be a pretty massive and dense um propaganda campaign. And it's we're not talking about Reagan just going on the news talking about communism being at our doorstep. We're talking about a real deal propaganda campaign. Uh. And they even set up an office, the Office of Public Diplomacy for Latin America and the Caribbean, that was founded and managed by a Cuban American named Otto Reich. Uh. And this was all exposed later on by the Miami Herald by

the reporting of a guy named Alfonso Chardi. Yeah. I just want to interject your real quick So do you remember when we've done, you know, historic stuff in the pass And I'm like, go read the contemporary articles. There was some really good reporting going on because the story was so huge and multifaceted. Oh yeah, I mean Newsweek broke it before Congress knew, right, The Washington Post broke it in the All Street Journal, Yeah, Wall Street Journal, and then the Miami Herald Lly Times did a lot

of really good going on, like in Miami's backyard. But it was back when it wasn't like oh, think piece, think peace, think piece, actual I think piece think piece. You know, it's like real reporting, and even then it still didn't wasn't up to snuff in the end, But they were actual journalists, like actually paying attention in writing

about this stuff and informing the public about it. And this is when you and I were kids, and I think like maybe even the seeds of us, because we both kind of had desires to be real deal journalists in our lives at one point. Yeah, what got us? Now? Speaking of what a joke? R I p Mad magazine? Oh yeah, what a shame. Yeah, they tried that reboot. It didn't work. Stuff it is. It's it's tough bizin

these days. And I got friends that worked for him too, Like in this recent reiteration, yeah or iteration, I guess I know. One of their illustrators is the stuff you should know fan from years back. Yeah. Yeah, it's very sad to see it go. So uh it's very eighties reference though it really wasn't up track. So um, all right, this is going on. They set up this office run by autoke and this whole thing was designed and orchestrated by the CIA. But here's the deal. The CIA wasn't

supposed to be doing this. They were barred from doing this. Yeah, there was a long standing like prohibition on the CIA from operating in the US. Basically like we know who you are, and we know you're so good. You can't use that stuff on us. You can only use it overseas. It's fine if you go overthrow other countries in on your mind tricks. Yeah, it used those on other groups,

but you can't use them here in the States. And actually Reagan himself also had his own executive order explicitly banning the CIA from, let's see um, doing any activity that was intended to influence United States political processes, public opinion, or media. This is Reagan's executive Order twelve three thirty three. And he at least his administration was like, forget about that. We'll just get around that. Yeah, And who was this um?

It says here that they the CIA's uh, like the biggest foremost psychological warfare expert retired from the agency officially and then was hired as a consultant. I guess to this Office of Public Diplomacy was that Auto Reich? Was that someone else? That's the whole point, right, Yeah, But that was how That's why I was saying earlier, like Reagan that's the Reagan administration way, just like here's the

letter of the law. Well, let's change this letter in our sentence, and now we're following the letter of the law, you know. And that's what they did. So the CIA psychological warfare guy retired, came on as a console and said, oh, here's what you do. You need to basically start setting up some sting operations because the the point of this is too I can't remember who said this, but to paint or to glue black hats on the Sandinistas and

white hats on the contrast in the public mind. Right, So when you say, uh, sting operations, we mean literally the United States and all over north smuggling cocaine into Nicaragua, photographing Sandinistan officials with this shipment, and then smuggling the cocaine back to the United States back to Florida. Back to Florida, They're like, we told you we'd bring it back. Chill man, unbelievable, give us our driver's licenses back. So

this photo is published. This is during the middle of the Just Say No movement um champion by Nancy Reagan. So it all, it all fit on the surface, But what was going on behind the scenes is just unconscionable. It is unconscionable, unconscionable both but that so, but this gave Reagan this photograph that got published all over the place. Yeah, and he's like, look what's going on. Look what these guys are doing. These are they're bringing this stuff into America.

They're killing our kids, exactly right. So these are the people that were fighting or where the contras are fighting. How can you keep the funding turned off for the contrast, Congress, you jerks? And that was the only evidence too. Yeah, the somehow came out and said, by the way, I don't know if anybody cares or not, but we have no evidence whatsoever that this Santinistan official has ever engaged

in drug trafficking aside from this photograph. But this was a follow up, probably weeks after the big splash of the original photograph came out. So that was one sting operation. There's another one that involved Manuel Noriega, the dictator of Panama, who actually was selling drugs to America's youth. But he was also a friend of the CIA exactly so much so that he was a CIA operative for a very long time. Yeah, I don't know about a friend, but

he was at least an asset, right. So, um, this seeing operation was they were going to through Panama, have Panama arranged for a shipment of arms to be seized in um, Honduras, Salvador, Al Salvador on its way to Honduras, or maybe just in Al Salvador, ostensibly arms from Nicaragua. Basically saying, you're arming Salvadorians, you're arming Hondurans, you're exporting

your revolution. This is exactly the kind of thing that Ronald Reagan has been saying, we need to contain, We need to pluck this sprout of communism out from Nicaragua because they're trying to spread out of the region. Totally made up, complete sting operation, and it didn't even work because Manuel Noriega was like, I didn't like that New York Times piece you guys just published about me. I'm going to keep this shipment of arms from myself. Yeah, but I love it. First he was like I can

do that, Oh yeah, sure, send me the arms. And then we were like, okay, there would be uh. I think it's from the Iran Contra investigation. The description of Manuel Noriega was that he ran a narco kleptocracy, that was the government that he ran. He was about down that word. He was as shady as they come. That just means drugs fevery yeah, exactly. Yeah. So, um, this is what's going on in the United States in the

in the mid eighties. And here's the deal. If you were a reporter at the time and you were reporting on this stuff, uh, the NSC didn't like that very much. So they would meet with editors and reporters themselves and be like, hey, can you, like, can you report on the sand anistance that they're really not good people? Like, can you help us out a little bit? Well, but

here's the thing. If you didn't play ball, then didn't they cook up some story that they would uh that they would send like Sandinistan sex workers there to the like pleasure of the reporters. That was the rumor was that if if you were a journalist who reported favorably on the Santinista government, the reason you reported favorably on him was because the Santinista government was furnishing you with sex workers. Right. That was that was directly from the

Office of Public Diplomacy. And I read the thing about it, and they said. The guy was like, and we're not just talking women either. If they were gay men, then they would we would send gay sex workers, so totally discredit them. It's like a complete page right out of the Edward Burnet's playbook. It's orchestrated by the CIA's foremost expert on psychological warfare. And this was the state of America in the mid eighties. But that was just one dimension of this whole thing. And I say, this is

the end of part one. What do you think. I think that's great, And uh, we're gonna make this a hanger. That's right, and is uh per tradition. We are not going to do a listener mail, but uh instead we'll do a call, which we rarely do. Um a little just a little marketing call everyone, if you like stuff. You should know. We've been doing this so long. We're so bad at this, yet we've managed to grow. Anyway, it's crazy. Tell a friend, share an episode with a

friend right now that they don't have to. You don't have to explain what a podcast is, right, it's a lot cleaner now. Maybe start with a good one like ballpoint Pens or something. Yeah, tell a friend about the show. Leave a nice review or just any kind of review at all on iTunes that would help us out. Yeah. Yeah, that's how classy Chuck and I are. He even corrected himself from good review to just any review whatever you want to leave. We're not going to try to influence,

you know, like the rigging White House. That's all right. Uh so, Yeah, we'd really appreciate it. Spread a little of try and turn one person onto our podcast this week, and that really helps us out. Nice Chuck, how about that. It sounds like a good pyramid. We'd like to do this once every five or six years. Well, thank you for joining us this week. If you want to get in touch with us, you can go on to stuff you Should Know dot com and check out our social links.

You can also send us an email two stuff podcast at i heeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H