Speaker 1: This is a production of Journalista Podcast LLC and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: They are the moral equal of our founding fathers and
Speaker 2: the brave men and women of the French Resistance.
Speaker 3: We cannot turn.
Speaker 2: Away from them for the struggle here.
Speaker 4: Smuggle.
Speaker 2: Here is not right versus left, It is right versus wrong.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to the Journalista Podcast. That was President Reagan
Speaker 1: comparing the Nicaraguan contrast to our founding fathers. I think
Speaker 1: George Washington just turned over in his grave. This episode
Speaker 1: is about terror as it pertains to Central America in
Speaker 1: the eighties. Who did it, where it came from, who
Speaker 1: funded it, and who bore the brunt of the evil
Speaker 1: that was unleashed, told primarily through the eyes of two journalists.
Speaker 1: You already know Cookie, but you're about to meet one
Speaker 1: of the rising stars of CBS News. Boy does she
Speaker 1: have a story to tell. But first, Cookie makes an
Speaker 1: insidious discovery.
Speaker 5: You worked with Larry Doyle and you worked with Richard Wagner.
Speaker 6: You were the krem de la creb.
Speaker 5: They were both highly respected in their field. They had
Speaker 5: seen it all everywhere in the world. And by the way,
Speaker 5: rest in peace Richard Wagner. He was a wonderful, wonderful
Speaker 5: correspondent to work with. So I think we're on a junket.
Speaker 5: We're heading to the jungles for something, some story, or
Speaker 5: we're just looking for a story. We had several vehicles
Speaker 5: in our convoy and then all of a sudden, in
Speaker 5: between two of the vehicles, a mortar blows up. Exit
Speaker 5: the vehicles, get in the dirt and start crawling. We're
Speaker 5: whispering to each other because we don't know where the
Speaker 5: enemy is, who was responsible for the mortar attack, And
Speaker 5: all of a sudden I hear on the side of
Speaker 5: me some soldier whispering.
Speaker 6: Cookie, Cookie, is that you?
Speaker 5: And Richard Wagner and Larry Doyle both turn around in
Speaker 5: the dirt look at me, and Richard Wagner says, I
Speaker 5: cannot believe that someone knows you right here where we are.
Speaker 5: This soldier helped guide us to safety. We eventually got
Speaker 5: back to our vehicles to continue.
Speaker 6: On our junket.
Speaker 5: We took him back with us, so we sort of
Speaker 5: saved him from whatever was going on in that mortar
Speaker 5: attack because a few more mortars went off, but we
Speaker 5: got out safely. And if I'm not mistaken, I think
Speaker 5: it was this guy. He was a Sandinista soldier, not
Speaker 5: very educated, probably a grunt doing grunt work.
Speaker 6: Had come across a book.
Speaker 5: It was in English, and he really didn't know what
Speaker 5: it meant. He says, I have something. I don't know
Speaker 5: if it means anything, but I'd like to give it
Speaker 5: to you.
Speaker 6: Can you tell me what it means?
Speaker 5: And so I'm reading it, and I'm like on the
Speaker 5: inside freaking out.
Speaker 6: I'm acting like it's no big deal.
Speaker 5: I turned to Richard Wagner and I said to him,
Speaker 5: can you look at this and confirm what I think
Speaker 5: it is? So Richard's reading it and I could see
Speaker 5: He's getting the same visceral reaction that I did. And
Speaker 5: he says, this is a goddamn CIA torture manual.
Speaker 1: The manual was compiled in nineteen eighty three by a
Speaker 1: CIA advisor to the Contra rebels, instructing them and the
Speaker 1: techniques of political assassination, guerrilla warfare, and torture. According to
Speaker 1: the Washington Post, US Army intelligence manuals were used to
Speaker 1: train Latin American military officers advocating the use of executions, torture, blackmail,
Speaker 1: and other forms of coercion. The same brutal techniques used
Speaker 1: successfully by Honduran and Salvadoran desk squads.
Speaker 5: What it was, basically was a manual that the CIA
Speaker 5: had put out, obviously, you know, hush hush, teaching them
Speaker 5: how to torture Sandinistas so they could stop them from
Speaker 5: going over to the Sandinista side and get them to
Speaker 5: come over to the contryside.
Speaker 6: It was horrific.
Speaker 5: It was a how to peeling off faces, peeling off
Speaker 5: the soles of feet, beheading, putting the head on a stake.
Speaker 6: It was a torture manual.
Speaker 1: What's the purpose of that?
Speaker 5: To create terror among the civilians and even probably to
Speaker 5: some of the soldiers to come to our side, come
Speaker 5: to our way of taking This is.
Speaker 1: What President Reagan had to say about the CIA manual.
Speaker 3: Mister Reagan said the dispute over a manual on guerrilla
Speaker 3: warfare prepared for Nicaraguan rebels by the Central Intelligence Agency
Speaker 3: was quote much ado about nothing. I have had some
Speaker 3: information on it and have been assured that there's not
Speaker 3: one word in there that refers to assassination.
Speaker 1: By the way, anyone who's listening to this, you can
Speaker 1: actually access it online. Really, yes, it's available online. I'm
Speaker 1: just telling them right now.
Speaker 6: Can I say I did not know that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, So America was teaching torture and terror not totally surprising.
Speaker 1: We had similar revelations revealed during the insanity following the
Speaker 1: attack on nine to eleven in Iraq and Afghanistan. Cookie
Speaker 1: introduces us to the amazing Jane Wallace, former CBS news
Speaker 1: correspondent who finds another piece of the puzzle quite by accident.
Speaker 5: Jane Wallace was an extraord is an extraordinary person. She
Speaker 5: was on air talent, whether it be morning news, evening news,
Speaker 5: weekend news, West fifty seventh, she did it all. She
Speaker 5: was CBS's golden girl. She was someone you could rely
Speaker 5: on in battle, in the hard times. You knew she
Speaker 5: had your back. She was funny, she was brilliant. She
Speaker 5: was a grunt, which she needed to be a grunt.
Speaker 5: She got down and dirty when she needed to get
Speaker 5: down and dirty. She was never a prima donna. The
Speaker 5: crews loved her, the suits loved her. She was one
Speaker 5: of us.
Speaker 1: Jane wanted to go to Old Salvador, but the CBS
Speaker 1: patriarchy had other ideas.
Speaker 4: I had to fight to get sent to Central America
Speaker 4: by CBS because I was a girl. I was supposed
Speaker 4: to go to Salvador and then at the last minute
Speaker 4: somebody says, oh, no, you're going to Honduras treat me.
Speaker 4: But El Salvador was because I couldn't imagine. I just
Speaker 4: could not imagine any place where they would actually murder
Speaker 4: and rape nuns.
Speaker 3: It is reported today from L Salvador that four Americans
Speaker 3: have been killed there. This was the first time that
Speaker 3: Americans seem to have been singled out by a desk squad.
Speaker 7: They were shot execution style bullets to the back of
Speaker 7: the head.
Speaker 4: Later, their bodies were found in a shallow grave.
Speaker 1: The New York Times said this about the crime.
Speaker 3: The churchwomen were arrested after two of them went to
Speaker 3: Como Lapa International Airport to meet the other two who
Speaker 3: were arriving on a flight from Nicaragua. After members of
Speaker 3: the security corps took the women to a remote location,
Speaker 3: they were given the order quote unquote to liquidate them,
Speaker 3: to kill them. Robert White, who was the American ambassador
Speaker 3: to L Salvador at the time of the killing, said,
Speaker 3: when the act was done, I knew immediately it was
Speaker 3: the military.
Speaker 1: That would be the same military funded and supplied by
Speaker 1: the United States of America.
Speaker 4: Remember being stunned in my early twenties, I covered it
Speaker 4: as part of a local news story in New York.
Speaker 4: I just honestly couldn't imagine the kind of evil that
Speaker 4: would murder and rape nuns and then toss them by
Speaker 4: the side of a road. But that was Salvador. I
Speaker 4: didn't come into Honduras with any preconceptions except I'd rather
Speaker 4: be in El Salvador. And then it turned out any
Speaker 4: information that was really to be had about Nicaragua or
Speaker 4: information about what was going on in Central America usually
Speaker 4: originated in Honduras, which I found out by accident by
Speaker 4: having been stuck there, because they thought they'd put the
Speaker 4: girl where nothing was going on. There is no war there,
Speaker 4: allegedly there. It's just a country. You get there and
Speaker 4: it's like, well, for a country with no war, there's
Speaker 4: sure a lot of people who look like professional warriors
Speaker 4: or something. I mean, it was supposed to be a
Speaker 4: civilian country, and they sent me to Honduras because they
Speaker 4: assumed nothing was happening there. Okay, we'll let her go,
Speaker 4: we'll shut her up, and we're sending her to the
Speaker 4: backwater of history. So I end up in Honduras. You
Speaker 4: could smell it in retrospect. You could just smell it
Speaker 4: the minu you got on the ground in this country.
Speaker 4: What was going on in front of your eyes and
Speaker 4: what was supposed to be happening did not match. And
Speaker 4: so I get off a plane. I've never done anything
Speaker 4: like this. I just bugged them to go. But no,
Speaker 4: it is a very sleepy I mean, Honduras is the
Speaker 4: original Banana Republic. The banana companies ran the country. It
Speaker 4: was a piece of real estate basically claimed by various
Speaker 4: people over the years, but a soulless backwater and I
Speaker 4: land and Jesus, there's just way too many beefy Americans
Speaker 4: in type T shirts who are a foot taller than
Speaker 4: the locals. Even if they tried to dress the same
Speaker 4: way and they couldn't even button those local shirts, they
Speaker 4: stood out. And there's too many of them. Okay, So
Speaker 4: you're saying there's some indigenous band of fighters that's on
Speaker 4: the border out there, who's booking all the rooms over
Speaker 4: there at the big hotel. Because it didn't match. Right
Speaker 4: off the top. No, it just screamed spooks. And if
Speaker 4: you did something so bold to say, oh, excuse me,
Speaker 4: where are you from Ohio? What are you doing here?
Speaker 4: You never got a straight answer out of anyone, and
Speaker 4: it was just really smelly off the top. It took
Speaker 4: me a while to for you this out, but someone
Speaker 4: finally told me that that Honduran set up was the
Speaker 4: third largest CIA station in the world, the second largest
Speaker 4: outside of Moscow. I'm sorry, in this country, what are
Speaker 4: we doing here? Exactly? Because I'm asking that question because
Speaker 4: there's too many beefy white guys and nobody will tell
Speaker 4: you what they do for a living. And oh, by
Speaker 4: the way, what industry do we have here? Exactly? Sides
Speaker 4: government propaganda and dirty wars. The contrasts had been formed
Speaker 4: out of the old Samosa horses, and those guys were
Speaker 4: seriously bad news, these alleged fighters, even before the big
Speaker 4: Regan showdown with them. These guys were, as the kids say, now, sus.
Speaker 4: These guys were sus from Jump Street. They were dubious.
Speaker 4: No one ever walked in the room and said these upstanding,
Speaker 4: fine guys who are clean soldiers from No one ever
Speaker 4: said that about the contrast. Nothing's ever established as a truth.
Speaker 4: It's always spongy, it's always moving and the guys who
Speaker 4: fronted for the contrast in Tagusi Galpa. What a name
Speaker 4: for a city, huh. They just weren't real. There was
Speaker 4: sort of dark clouds hanging around those guys, and they
Speaker 4: had this guy fronting the PR and Tagusikalpa. He wasn't
Speaker 4: a fighter. He certainly was not a believer in anything.
Speaker 4: The whole operation in Honduras was suspect, and so early
Speaker 4: in my time of covering it, somebody had leaked the manual,
Speaker 4: the torture manual that was part of the training of
Speaker 4: the contrace. Why was anybody training people in torture? What's
Speaker 4: this about? Aren't we supposed to be done with these tactics,
Speaker 4: you know? And we were supposed to have been done
Speaker 4: with those tactics. You know. America brought some real good
Speaker 4: imports to that place.
Speaker 1: The Contras were being trained and supplied in Honduras by
Speaker 1: the CIA and leaders of the Honduran death squads.
Speaker 4: I didn't know what to think. I was so rude,
Speaker 4: but I was also young and tired and hot and
Speaker 4: naive to just be direct. Made an appointment. I got
Speaker 4: some time with the PR guy for the embassy, and
Speaker 4: I walked into his office on the embassy grounds, closed
Speaker 4: his door and said, yes, I'm Jane Wallis for CBS News.
Speaker 4: What the fuck is going on in this country? And
Speaker 4: he burst into laughter. He'd never had anybody be that direct,
Speaker 4: and he knew I was smelling exactly what they were
Speaker 4: trying to cover up all over town. And that was
Speaker 4: the beginning of my time in Honduras and the beginning
Speaker 4: of my time in Central America, because virtually everything the
Speaker 4: Americans were doing that they didn't belong doing was headquartered
Speaker 4: in Honduras and done against Nicaragua or through Salvador.
Speaker 1: Certainly the worst kept secret in Central America, that's for.
Speaker 4: Sure, you're kidding, and for good reason. They were just
Speaker 4: so obvious. But it was such a backwater they didn't
Speaker 4: figure anybody was going to notice.
Speaker 1: But Jane noticed, and she's headed to Nicaragua to cover
Speaker 1: one of the most brutal stories of her professional life.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back.
Speaker 8: For four years, we've been helping to wage the world's
Speaker 8: worst kept secret war, training and equipping a force known
Speaker 8: as the Contrast, who are trying to overthrow the government
Speaker 8: of Nicaragua, a government the Reagan Whitehouse believes is a
Speaker 8: communist threat in our own backyard. What kind of war
Speaker 8: are we paying for? And who are they killing?
Speaker 1: Welcome back? That was Jane Wallace in the opening of
Speaker 1: an episode of the CBS news magazine West fifty seventh,
Speaker 1: billed as a younger hipper version of sixty Minutes. The
Speaker 1: Christian Science Monitor called it a ditsy, disco beat documag
Speaker 1: for viewers with short attention spans. The New York Times
Speaker 1: said it isn't really television, and it certainly isn't journalism.
Speaker 1: It's as if news and entertainment fell into combat and
Speaker 1: either side one. I don't know about all that, but
Speaker 1: the show is popular in its coverage of Nicaragua and
Speaker 1: the Iran contra affair was nothing short of astonishing. I
Speaker 1: spoke with Jane about a story she did for West
Speaker 1: fifty seventh, one of the biggest stories of her career.
Speaker 1: But first she has something to say about Cookie. Was
Speaker 1: there a particular story that sent you into Nicaragua or
Speaker 1: did you just go there?
Speaker 4: Oh? God, I think I just got sent there. It
Speaker 4: was a horrible place to go to. The people were poor,
Speaker 4: they were hungry, the country was going nowhere, and the
Speaker 4: only good thing about going to Nicaragua was Cookie. She
Speaker 4: was the saving grace of being in Monagua. If she'd
Speaker 4: been what she appeared to be, sort of a party
Speaker 4: girl and just to fix her or I'll make a
Speaker 4: call and then I'm going to go get high, she
Speaker 4: wouldn't have been Cookie. The truth is that woman knew
Speaker 4: what she was doing and she was born to it
Speaker 4: as a journalist. She wasn't trained to it. How CBS
Speaker 4: got so lucky as to find and hire her, I
Speaker 4: don't know. She was the only reason anyone could cover
Speaker 4: that war. In addition to being as clever and it's
Speaker 4: completely charming and tank topped and skinny and riley and
Speaker 4: all of that. She knew what she was doing and
Speaker 4: she cared. She was never going to tell you that
Speaker 4: she didn't have to. It was unspoken.
Speaker 1: One of the big stories that came out of your
Speaker 1: tenure there was what they call the Contra atrocities story,
Speaker 1: and it involves a lot of your colleagues and a
Speaker 1: lot of people that you rolled with all the time.
Speaker 1: So tell me a little bit about how this kind
Speaker 1: of came to pass and where it went.
Speaker 5: We witnessed Coultra atrocities way before the story that I'm
Speaker 5: about to tell you massacres of women and children, massacres
Speaker 5: of soldiers, torture techniques, so all these atrocities that we
Speaker 5: had seen firsthand got But I like to call the
Speaker 5: dream team. Leslie Coburn, Producer, Jane Wallace, on air talent
Speaker 5: Manny Alvarez, camera crew with irv ran Hart, sound sometimes
Speaker 5: George Bosa and myself. We were considered the dream team
Speaker 5: at CBS. We adored each other, we worked well with
Speaker 5: each other, and we would each of us go to
Speaker 5: the ends of the earth for each other.
Speaker 6: Clearly a band of brothers.
Speaker 5: Leslie calls me and tells me, listen, we want to
Speaker 5: do a contratrocity story.
Speaker 6: We've heard about this American.
Speaker 5: Nun that lives in again the asshole of the.
Speaker 6: World in the jungles.
Speaker 5: We hear that she's got a lot of stories, and
Speaker 5: she's got a lot of victims that survived these atrocities
Speaker 5: that she takes care of. She was in some remote
Speaker 5: end of the earth place called Seuna. D.
Speaker 1: Coburn is an award winning producer and journalist covering wars
Speaker 1: with CBS, ABC and PBS's Frontline. While all accounts, the
Speaker 1: best there is She's also Olivia Wilde's mom, who Cookie
Speaker 1: first met as a toddler. In a chapter from her
Speaker 1: book Looking for Trouble, Leslie tells us what motivated her
Speaker 1: to do this story.
Speaker 9: My intention was to get out of the Capitol and
Speaker 9: into the remote countryside where the war was being fought.
Speaker 9: Reports filtering out from priests and nuns suggested a systematic
Speaker 9: use of classic terror tactics. New clinics docked with Cuban
Speaker 9: medicine were blown up, Volunteers carrying vaccines into the jungle
Speaker 9: had their throats slit. Even American nuns were kidnapped and
Speaker 9: threatened with rape. I wanted to establish at what level
Speaker 9: the tactics were sanctioned by Washington. Cookie was game. Her
Speaker 9: translating skills were essential because she spoke the archaic peasant's
Speaker 9: Spanish prevalent in the countryside.
Speaker 1: Jane collaborated with Leslie for years on some of the
Speaker 1: biggest stories of the eighties.
Speaker 4: Leslie with further left than I was by entry and belief.
Speaker 4: I didn't share that I didn't have the left right boloney,
Speaker 4: because it turned out to be a set of choices
Speaker 4: that didn't fit what was on the ground. Anyway, I
Speaker 4: was nervous about having to do this story. I was
Speaker 4: not anxious to do it, except that I knew there
Speaker 4: was a reality there that needed to be revealed. I
Speaker 4: knew there was ugliness, and I knew it was not
Speaker 4: at all what was being touted in the States. Oh Jee,
Speaker 4: freedom to give me a break. It was disillusioned very quickly.
Speaker 4: But the Americans really needed to know what was being
Speaker 4: done in their name. We were totally committed to trying
Speaker 4: to get to the places no one else had gotten to,
Speaker 4: to talk to people face to face, and it took
Speaker 4: more than anybody bargained for.
Speaker 1: The region had been closed off the journalists by Interior
Speaker 1: Minister Thomas Borge because it was controlled by the contrast.
Speaker 1: It was too dangerous. Leslie asked Cookie to set up
Speaker 1: a meeting with him.
Speaker 9: Cookie, Jane, and I arrived to find ourselves ushered into
Speaker 9: a private dining room at the Officers Club with a
Speaker 9: well appointed table for six. It seemed Borge, infatuated with Jane,
Speaker 9: had thoughtfully brought two friends in toe. I was paired
Speaker 9: off with a well traveled ambassador. Cookie was assigned to
Speaker 9: a Rakish general. We survived this absurd lunch without disgracing ourselves.
Speaker 9: And by the time we returned to the CBS bureau,
Speaker 9: a dozen Roses were waiting for Jane.
Speaker 1: Needless to say, they got the permission they wanted. But
Speaker 1: that was the easy part.
Speaker 4: If you're going to stage some lies like the Contras
Speaker 4: are a really great All American fighting force, you stage
Speaker 4: that line a place where no one can get to it,
Speaker 4: to hold the light up to it. That's what they
Speaker 4: had done. So these places were remote, isn't the word
Speaker 4: for it. They were inaccessible for the most party except
Speaker 4: by Donkey.
Speaker 1: Was it a long trap to get to where you
Speaker 1: were going.
Speaker 4: Everywhere we went for that story, it was a place
Speaker 4: no one was meant to go to. The logistics in
Speaker 4: these places were hideous. The roads were not meant to
Speaker 4: be driven on. The vehicles had no air conditioning. It was,
Speaker 4: you know, one hundred degrees with ninety eight percent humidity
Speaker 4: and Monovo five about eleven thirty in the morning. I
Speaker 4: never wanted to go to that country again as long
Speaker 4: as ise life.
Speaker 1: Their journey soon evolves into a dark Central American version
Speaker 1: of planes, trains, and automobiles, except with the Russian biplane.
Speaker 1: A couple of beat up old Chevy and Paula's and
Speaker 1: an indigenous canoe called a paponte. They spend the first
Speaker 1: day driving to the last vestige of civilization they would
Speaker 1: see for a couple of weeks, Rio Blanco, hooking up
Speaker 1: with a military convoy for a couple of hours, and
Speaker 1: traveling alone through the contra infested territory at night. Leslie
Speaker 1: describes it like this.
Speaker 9: Are odds of being attacked for fifty to fifty we
Speaker 9: were easy pray for ambush. The thought of who was
Speaker 9: waiting in the darkness blade my nerves. No one spoke.
Speaker 9: I steadied myself, breathed deeply, and let Bonnie raate belt
Speaker 9: through my headphones.
Speaker 4: You go through ten flat tires in a day, you
Speaker 4: couldn't count on getting anywhere. So by the time you're
Speaker 4: rolling up somewhere, a lot has gone into having those
Speaker 4: tires underneath you and any idea of where you're going.
Speaker 4: So that's how we ended up taking that canoe. The
Speaker 4: road stopped. What are you going to do? You take
Speaker 4: a canoe and try and hitch something on the other side.
Speaker 4: You can't just drive through in the car If it doesn't,
Speaker 4: I mean, nothing works like that.
Speaker 1: Where they are heading is so remote and inaccessible. The
Speaker 1: only way to get there is through the air.
Speaker 5: I've got to set up a plane, which is one
Speaker 5: of these rinky dig two propeller clopboard planes that once
Speaker 5: you get on you're not sure if you're going to
Speaker 5: get to where you're going. And we all head to
Speaker 5: see you to meet the nun. Yeah, this is a
Speaker 5: town that has no paved roads, shacks, they didn't even
Speaker 5: have electricity.
Speaker 4: It's hard for me to describe the kind of desolation
Speaker 4: of these places, and like something was there once that
Speaker 4: got ruined. All it is a difference slightly in the
Speaker 4: vegetation or a pile of graves somewhere.
Speaker 5: So we go, we meet with the nun sister something,
Speaker 5: and we proceed to do our story.
Speaker 4: And with that Gal, the none we spoke to first.
Speaker 4: I remember sitting on her porch trying to do an interview.
Speaker 4: This port was so small. I'm chewing my knees across
Speaker 4: from this woman who has an equally small space because
Speaker 4: there's nowhere else with any shade to shoot an interview.
Speaker 4: Man fell asleep on my shoulder because he'd taken so
Speaker 4: much gramamine in anticipation of this Russian biplane. The guy
Speaker 4: is such a great cameraman that he never went out
Speaker 4: of focus. Never, not once I heard him snoring. Yeah,
Speaker 4: never lost focus.
Speaker 1: What does she tell me about?
Speaker 5: She's telling us about all these atrocities and how she's
Speaker 5: keeping the faith helping these survivors, which were mostly children
Speaker 5: that we were getting ready to meet.
Speaker 1: The Nine introduces them to Guadalupe da Vila, a fourteen
Speaker 1: year old girl who survived a recent Contra attack.
Speaker 10: Family was murdered by the Contra in November when the
Speaker 10: baby was six days old.
Speaker 4: The parents were murdered.
Speaker 10: Yes, a brother of the mother, his girlfriend, the four
Speaker 10: year old brother of this baby. Contra attacked about twenty
Speaker 10: of them and one night.
Speaker 1: In this interview with Guadeloupe, you can hear Cookie translating
Speaker 1: her story. Is hard to listen to.
Speaker 4: Did they shoot them?
Speaker 3: You see, young Papaguya.
Speaker 6: They split us through? How about your mother? They killed
Speaker 6: her and then they took her clothes off?
Speaker 8: And what happened that when like.
Speaker 4: To burn her clothes?
Speaker 2: Lily pure graph of faith?
Speaker 4: Oh God, we are you know. It's one thing to
Speaker 4: sort of think people are behaving in that kind of
Speaker 4: almost pure evil. It's another thing to hear that through
Speaker 4: the mouth of a child who's lost her parent or
Speaker 4: who's had to witness something like this that's almost on
Speaker 4: fathomable as a human being.
Speaker 1: They interviewed a priest with a similar.
Speaker 2: Story rape a girl of fourteen years old because her
Speaker 2: father was a member of a committee, cut off her
Speaker 2: head and put her head along the trail. So that
Speaker 2: the rest of the Compassino's get the idea that in
Speaker 2: no way should they be participating in some kind of
Speaker 2: government sponsored organization.
Speaker 1: Jane spoke to twin brothers who witnessed contra Atrocity's firsthand.
Speaker 8: The twins survived the killing that let their father and
Speaker 8: friends get in a ditch. La Contrell jakeamar Alianri, one
Speaker 8: of the countries, said let's set all of these dead
Speaker 8: people on fire, and their boss said no, let's just
Speaker 8: throw them all in the ditch and let him be
Speaker 8: there and there and.
Speaker 6: What happened then the pass.
Speaker 4: There.
Speaker 8: Then they finished off a couple of kids that were
Speaker 8: just wounded. They finished them off. They killed them, Yes,
Speaker 8: in front of your kids, in front see what happened
Speaker 8: to your.
Speaker 4: Daddy, Pierre.
Speaker 8: He pulled off the skin off his face and his feet.
Speaker 4: When you're standing there in Nicaragua and you're looking into
Speaker 4: a child's face. It's other worldly dark. It is hard
Speaker 4: to grasp it as a reality because it's so damn dark.
Speaker 4: Who would do this to another human being in front
Speaker 4: of the child? To do this by design? To people
Speaker 4: who are campasinos. These are simple folks. These are the
Speaker 4: people that will share their tortillas with you. If that's
Speaker 4: all anybody's got, they'll give them to you. And they
Speaker 4: aren't political. It's overwhelming that this is real human experience
Speaker 4: and someone did that to this person or a group
Speaker 4: of people with power, for whatever reason, did that to
Speaker 4: these people who didn't have any which is why they
Speaker 4: were stuck for it. And it still overwhelms me what
Speaker 4: they did, what the countries did to some of these people.
Speaker 1: In listening to the interview, the one thing that I
Speaker 1: was taken by, other than the obvious horror that they're describing,
Speaker 1: there's a solemn quality of just talking to someone. I
Speaker 1: was hearing your words, I was hearing the children or
Speaker 1: the victims speaking about what happened, and I was hearing
Speaker 1: cookies translation, and there was like this kind of a
Speaker 1: strange respect, something very powerful happening in that three way exchange.
Speaker 4: Yes, there's not a lot of extra jabber or talk.
Speaker 4: I mean, all of us were just tuned in. There's
Speaker 4: a real deep respect for somebody having been so badly treated.
Speaker 4: Those kids. Oh my god. You know, I looked at
Speaker 4: these pieces again and thought, wonder how she grew up
Speaker 4: with that. I wonder what happened. I wonder who raised
Speaker 4: that baby. I mean happen you looking to wonder what
Speaker 4: kind of an effect that had on their lives. To remember,
Speaker 4: in the larger world, they're still talking about how to
Speaker 4: figure out if your husband's cheating on talk shows. But
Speaker 4: there you are. You're looking in the face of a
Speaker 4: baby who lost both parents and some days when we'll
Speaker 4: tell them this terrific story about why they're dead. Yes,
Speaker 4: you know, you're doing important work, and the only reason
Speaker 4: to do that work is to try and find out
Speaker 4: what the hell went on there.
Speaker 11: The tactics are what we call terrorist tactics. They are
Speaker 11: not military tactics.
Speaker 8: Edward Chimorrow was one of the top political leaders of
Speaker 8: the Countra Group FDN. He was fired last November. The
Speaker 8: FDN says foreign competence.
Speaker 9: Neither Jane nor I expected them to be nearly so
Speaker 9: forthcoming about the contra army that he had helped run.
Speaker 8: How much did and does the CIA know of the
Speaker 8: abuses taking place? How long have they known of those abuses?
Speaker 11: They knew everything. They were all the time with us,
Speaker 11: very close to us. They were monitoring all the action.
Speaker 11: They were briefing. They briefing. They were in close contact
Speaker 11: in our basis with our men. They were exposed to
Speaker 11: all autrocities abuse.
Speaker 8: Did the White House know about these abuses?
Speaker 11: We talked only to high people in the CIA, and
Speaker 11: those people used to say that the White House knows
Speaker 11: very well what's going on.
Speaker 1: In her book, Leslie sums us up in one horrible nutshell.
Speaker 9: A CIA field manual was the bible of the camps.
Speaker 9: With the manual, they were condoning the practical use of terror.
Speaker 4: I had never heard of people peeling other people's skins,
Speaker 4: or some will be headed in there, head put on
Speaker 4: a pole for others to see the brutality of it,
Speaker 4: or that your government had a hand in this actually
Speaker 4: happening to people. It's just beyond the panel.
Speaker 1: I want to finish with a great piece of journalism,
Speaker 1: something we don't see much of these days. Jane Wallace
Speaker 1: doing her thing old school sweating out a contra military
Speaker 1: leader and.
Speaker 11: I had the commandant. Is that they have executed people
Speaker 11: in cold blood because they were part of this machinery.
Speaker 8: Is someone who teaches reading a legitimate target. Someone who
Speaker 8: teaches reading for the government is someone who works on
Speaker 8: a cooperative for the government. A legitimate target, listen, is
Speaker 8: someone who gives vaccinations. A legitimate target is somebody whose
Speaker 8: relative is in the army or the militia.
Speaker 6: A legitimate target.
Speaker 8: Are you saying you only attack military targets and military people, Yes,
Speaker 8: for sure. Why do these civilians they have to be
Speaker 8: in uniform or they have to be armed.
Speaker 1: I guess the Contraus soldiers that slaughtered these families didn't
Speaker 1: get the memo. In the next segment, the dream Team
Speaker 1: is invited by Contraus soldiers to witness an actual war crime.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back, welcome back. I'll be honest. There
Speaker 1: are several accounts of the story, all a little bit different.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure how it actually went down. All I
Speaker 1: know is that it actually happened, and they all agree
Speaker 1: on how it ended. After days and days traveling difficult terrain,
Speaker 1: trying to track down the most despicable stories of terror.
Speaker 1: The crew is approached by a Contra soldier. He wants
Speaker 1: them to see something.
Speaker 5: We were approached by someone that said, we'd like you
Speaker 5: to come take pictures of something that's going to happen
Speaker 5: in a few days or in a day or so.
Speaker 6: We didn't know who this person was.
Speaker 5: We found out later that he was playing like he
Speaker 5: was a Sandinista, but he was in league with the Contras,
Speaker 5: and so we were taken out to this remote area
Speaker 5: where these Contras had a pow. A Sandinista prisoner.
Speaker 1: Manny Alvarez, the cameraman for the Dream Team, sets it
Speaker 1: up for us.
Speaker 12: The Cultures had captured a spy who they called the
Speaker 12: spy a peasant.
Speaker 5: They wanted us to not film, but to take pictures
Speaker 5: of what was about to happen.
Speaker 6: And it was this poor guy.
Speaker 5: Digging and digging and digging, and it didn't take us
Speaker 5: long to realize they're making him dig his own grave.
Speaker 5: And at this point we're getting a little nervous because
Speaker 5: we're taking pictures. We obviously see what is going to
Speaker 5: be the inevitable result of this, And then are they
Speaker 5: going to kill us for witnessing.
Speaker 6: And taking pictures.
Speaker 5: But these were again a group of conscious that were
Speaker 5: very educated, didn't even realize, you know, what they were
Speaker 5: letting us witness how it could affect the grand scheme
Speaker 5: of things. And sure enough, the poor guys digging and digging.
Speaker 5: I think that maybe he even realized that he was
Speaker 5: digging his own grave, but hoping against hope, they.
Speaker 12: Put him in the grave and they stopped them.
Speaker 13: They killed them with a bait a knife.
Speaker 3: Why didn't you shoot the guy?
Speaker 4: I have no idea.
Speaker 13: I mean, they certainly had enough bullets.
Speaker 8: The victim was a civilian accused by the countries of
Speaker 8: collaborating with the Sandinistas.
Speaker 11: When I went to FDN, I found out the I mean,
Speaker 11: this thing that CIA used to give us was a
Speaker 11: big knife. You know, it's called commander knife. Everybody wanted
Speaker 11: to have a knife like that, and the Knight was
Speaker 11: to kill people, to cut their throats.
Speaker 5: So we've got these still photos and they're gonna let
Speaker 5: us walk away, which we did. Still photos don't do
Speaker 5: much for video. People like news like news. How are
Speaker 5: we gonna post still shots on the news?
Speaker 1: Yeah, like CBS, isn't Life magazine, right?
Speaker 6: You're showing your age there with Life magazine.
Speaker 5: So we decided we're just gonna send these pictures to
Speaker 5: New York and let them see what they can do
Speaker 5: with it, because obviously this is a contra atrocity.
Speaker 6: They took those still.
Speaker 5: Photos and they made it work like with cartoons. You
Speaker 5: know when you animation, you shuffle the papers so quickly
Speaker 5: it looks like it's moving.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they just animated the photos.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Do you remember the moment this is happening where you
Speaker 1: think you guys are kind of in danger in this moment.
Speaker 6: Oh, we all thought that what's to stop them from
Speaker 6: killing us?
Speaker 1: Are you just sort of stuck in there? Like you
Speaker 1: can't leave, you can't go forward, You're just sort.
Speaker 5: Of we're stuck in there. But at the same time,
Speaker 5: we know way we need this.
Speaker 6: This is great.
Speaker 5: This is some sort of exclusive and that's what war
Speaker 5: correspondents are all about, the risk to.
Speaker 6: Get the story. But yeah, there was some fear of that.
Speaker 5: But then again, if they killed us, then their story
Speaker 5: wouldn't get out.
Speaker 1: Can you imagine being someone who thinks this would be
Speaker 1: a good story for the news come see?
Speaker 6: Yeah, insane, insanity.
Speaker 8: The photograph show a man whom the other troops had
Speaker 8: determined was spy being murdered, forced to dig his own
Speaker 8: grave cut up?
Speaker 6: What do you think of that?
Speaker 7: Well, I think it was necessary to do it in
Speaker 7: the way they did.
Speaker 8: It was not necessary.
Speaker 7: Not because they could be shot at.
Speaker 6: That's all. I shieved.
Speaker 8: No problem with people being murdered at the whim of
Speaker 8: the troops.
Speaker 7: He was a spy, according to what the report said,
Speaker 7: and in war despite had to be ponies in that way.
Speaker 1: One of the strangest things about war, as we've talked
Speaker 1: about it over this podcast and in just in general,
Speaker 1: is like what becomes okay to.
Speaker 5: People soldiers, victims and journalists alike. Everybody gets to a
Speaker 5: point that they're numb. Now, that was one thing I
Speaker 5: tried to fight against my whole career, not getting so
Speaker 5: numb to the point where things didn't affect me or
Speaker 5: matter to me anymore.
Speaker 6: And for the most part it worked.
Speaker 1: There was one story that didn't make it to the
Speaker 1: West fifty seventh broadcast.
Speaker 4: What happened was that after days and days and days
Speaker 4: of either trying to get to these remote places and
Speaker 4: I mean scraping it out, whether it's changing tires for
Speaker 4: the fifteenth time, and could anybody have a coke in
Speaker 4: this town. That's maybe you know, less than eighty degrees.
Speaker 4: After days and days of that, and then you finally
Speaker 4: interview somebody and you're hearing about this horrific stuff, just
Speaker 4: horrific human experience. You still have to get up the
Speaker 4: next morning and keep trying to find the next one
Speaker 4: and see what's going on.
Speaker 1: After all they've seen and heard, they get one more interview.
Speaker 4: It wasn't even like a farmer, like, you know, some
Speaker 4: guy that he did have his own house of some sort,
Speaker 4: but houses there are kind of limited deals. This is
Speaker 4: not a two story ranch with a couple of cars
Speaker 4: out front. Most of these places didn't have a TV.
Speaker 4: Radio was a big deal. But it was that isolated
Speaker 4: and that remote and that hard.
Speaker 12: We were kind of in I want to say it
Speaker 12: was a sugarcane area or so. We were kind of
Speaker 12: outside amongst the trees. This guy was a little old guy,
Speaker 12: little peasant, dark skinned, typical Niclauguan peasant. And he starts
Speaker 12: telling us the story of his encounter with the cultures.
Speaker 12: You know, I'm shooting James in front of me, Leslie's
Speaker 12: off to the side, and IRV is right behind me
Speaker 12: running the body.
Speaker 4: So we're listening to this guy's story and I think
Speaker 4: his property had been torched. He was being attacked. His
Speaker 4: wife was there, and he was relaying his story about
Speaker 4: having some god Ah. I believe he was describing. We're
Speaker 4: out in this field, you know, like a sideyard of
Speaker 4: a place that once existed, you know, Central America began
Speaker 4: to feel like it was a sideyard of a place
Speaker 4: that once existed more than once. But this guy had
Speaker 4: shown us around this tangled property. But it's not even
Speaker 4: like you can tell the edge of the yard. This
Speaker 4: really is not easy to discern. This guy is telling
Speaker 4: us about watching someone else be attacked, like but someone
Speaker 4: close in his family. And he lifts up his hand
Speaker 4: like he's got a dagger in it, and for some reason,
Speaker 4: the move he makes is very animated. He makes a
Speaker 4: gesture like he's being stabbed in the throat, but it
Speaker 4: looks like all of a sudden, it could have come
Speaker 4: out of a road Runner cartoon. And I hear cookies
Speaker 4: start to go. She's right down below me because I'm standing,
Speaker 4: I'm talking to the guy she's trying, so I'm hearing
Speaker 4: the sound come up, but I don't know why. But
Speaker 4: without looking down. I can feel her back starting to
Speaker 4: go up and down, and I knew when he made
Speaker 4: this gesture that she'd lost it. She was gone. She
Speaker 4: was starting to laugh.
Speaker 5: Something triggered us, like on a Saturday Night Live skit
Speaker 5: when somebody starts laughing and they all start laughing and
Speaker 5: can't control the laughter.
Speaker 13: I don't know why I started laughing, but I found
Speaker 13: it just I couldn't hold it it.
Speaker 4: Then I heard Manny behind me. He'd seen the same thing.
Speaker 4: It was just out of nowhere. We all noticed this
Speaker 4: hysterically cartoonish gesture in the middle of this catch on
Speaker 4: this horrible story, but it was funny, and so Manny
Speaker 4: started to lose it behind me, I felt last we go,
Speaker 4: and by the time I started laughing, I was the
Speaker 4: most ashamed in the world and uncontrollable laughter.
Speaker 5: We're all giggling, we're trying to hide it, we're trying
Speaker 5: to act normal, and the poor guy just had no
Speaker 5: idea what he had said. Why it triggered us that way,
Speaker 5: and we didn't want him to think that we were
Speaker 5: laughing at him.
Speaker 1: Do you remember the look on his face when you were.
Speaker 6: I just didn't know what was going on.
Speaker 5: You know he was an uneducated, humble peasant that had
Speaker 5: no clue why we were laughing, and he didn't take
Speaker 5: it personally.
Speaker 6: It was horrifying for us.
Speaker 4: Nothing had been funny in so many days. Everything had
Speaker 4: just been done offul and all of a sudden, this
Speaker 4: one little gesture like the guy is stabbing him something
Speaker 4: the throat struck all of us as that funny.
Speaker 13: And meanwhile, this guy's sitting there looking at us, like,
Speaker 13: are you people insane?
Speaker 4: Cookie's down below, she doesn't have to look him right
Speaker 4: face man, He's behind me with a lens to his eye.
Speaker 4: Astley's off turning around on one side, and I'm stuck
Speaker 4: looking the guy in the face, and I have tears.
Speaker 4: I'm laughing so hard that there are tears running down
Speaker 4: the side of my face. I'm trying to lie, I'm
Speaker 4: not a liar or nature, but I'm like, oh no,
Speaker 4: you know, we're laughing because she got something in her eye.
Speaker 4: And I've never ever felt that ashamed as they did
Speaker 4: that day, laughing in this man's face, never And I
Speaker 4: can still see him doing this gesture, and all of
Speaker 4: us were mortified that we lost it, all of us.
Speaker 13: It was kind of one of those moments where you know,
Speaker 13: in the middle of all the horror, for whatever reason,
Speaker 13: you know, we found a moment where something ended up
Speaker 13: at least seeming to be one of those indescribable moments
Speaker 13: where you wish that had never happened.
Speaker 5: The most embarrassing, horrifying moment of my career, and of course,
Speaker 5: of Jane's career, of Manny's career. We cannot stop laughing.
Speaker 1: That is such a terrible and funny story all mixed.
Speaker 4: Together, funny and got awful. But that was Central America.
Speaker 4: It was funny and got awful, got awful and funny,
Speaker 4: full eyes full of beans, full of oh my god.
Speaker 4: But if you didn't laugh, you would just not be
Speaker 4: able to get up and work again and again and again.
Speaker 1: Every time I'm talking to somebody about that story, like
Speaker 1: I talked to Manny, he goes, oh, that was the
Speaker 1: That might have been my worst day ever in the field.
Speaker 1: That was one of the worst. I'm so ashamed. You're
Speaker 1: not going to put that in there, are you. And
Speaker 1: I'm like, well, everybody keeps bringing it up, So I
Speaker 1: think it's a tale that feels like a part of something,
Speaker 1: not its own standalone thing. It's not like you're laughing
Speaker 1: at some poor peasant. It's a result of the whole experience.
Speaker 5: It was pent up nervousness on our end. Maybe it
Speaker 5: was because we had witnessed so many horrible things on
Speaker 5: that trip, heard about so many horrible things, saw the
Speaker 5: results of survivors.
Speaker 1: One of those kind of things where it's just all
Speaker 1: of the anxiety and all of the agony that you've
Speaker 1: witnessed it just sort of all comes up in this
Speaker 1: really wrong way.
Speaker 5: Yeah, like if you're at a funeral and you just
Speaker 5: start getting the giggles and you don't know why.
Speaker 1: The Contra Atrocity story aired on West fifty seventh in
Speaker 1: August of nineteen eighty five. Americans were finding out for
Speaker 1: the first time what was really happening in Nicaragua what
Speaker 1: their own government was paying for. Next time, on Journalista
Speaker 1: Cookie Saves the World from Mutually Assured Nuclear Destruction.
Speaker 5: There were some rumors about some possible Russian big aircraft
Speaker 5: headed to Nicaragua. The State Department of the US is
Speaker 5: not happy with this, and I think that you should
Speaker 5: know that they're saying there will be a problem if
Speaker 5: this up and remakes it into Nicaragua.
Speaker 1: The Journalista Podcast features the stories and voice of Cookie Hood.
Speaker 1: Narrated by Steven Estev, Produced by Sean J. Donnelly. Executive
Speaker 1: producers Jason Wagensback, Roy Laughlin, and Ellen k iHeart Executive
Speaker 1: producer Tyler Klang. Written and edited by Steven Estev. Music
Speaker 1: by Jay Weigel, Associate producer in sound design Stephen Tanti.
Speaker 1: Sound mixing by Jesse Solan Snyder. Special guest Lloyd Sherr,
Speaker 1: the Amazing Jane Wallace, Rachel Whitman Groves as the voice
Speaker 1: of Leslie Coeburn Manny Alvarez Special thanks to Esplanade Studios,
Speaker 1: The Ranch Studios, Jason Gerwitz, Kyle Frederick, Zach Slaff. This
Speaker 1: is a production of Journalista Podcast, LLC and iHeartRadio. They
Speaker 1: Never