WEBVTT - The Jamboree in Jamba 0:00:01.680 --> 0:00:06.519 Cool Zone Media. 0:00:08.160 --> 0:00:11.559 A very strange meeting took place in June of nineteen 0:00:11.600 --> 0:00:15.600 eighty five. This was long before the days of email 0:00:15.680 --> 0:00:19.560 and video conferencing. If you wanted to hammer out an agreement, 0:00:20.160 --> 0:00:23.840 you had to get everyone in the same room. Perhaps 0:00:23.840 --> 0:00:26.799 you could invite everyone to your office or rent a 0:00:26.800 --> 0:00:31.080 conference room at the Marriott, But the attendees at this 0:00:31.200 --> 0:00:34.839 meeting would have had a hard time booking flights to Washington, 0:00:34.960 --> 0:00:39.000 d C. So they settled on something a little less orthodox. 0:00:40.240 --> 0:00:42.559 And they couldn't exactly just call up the men on 0:00:42.600 --> 0:00:45.920 their invite list either. The logistics were going to be 0:00:46.000 --> 0:00:52.840 a nightmare. Dana Rohrabacher, President Ronald Reagan's speechwriter, personally flew 0:00:52.880 --> 0:00:55.880 to a safe house into Gusagalpa to hand deliver an 0:00:55.880 --> 0:01:01.440 invitation to Adolfo Calero, leader of the Nicaraguan Contras. Anti 0:01:01.480 --> 0:01:04.399 communist activist Jack Wheeler was in touch with the Mujahadeen 0:01:04.440 --> 0:01:09.520 in Afghanistan and Laotian rebel leader Pauka Her and Grover 0:01:09.560 --> 0:01:11.840 Norquist had plenty of contacts who could get him in 0:01:11.840 --> 0:01:16.000 touch with Jonas Savimbi, leader of the Angolan Insurgent Force UNIDA. 0:01:17.720 --> 0:01:21.039 Given the guest list, they had pretty limited options when 0:01:21.080 --> 0:01:26.679 it came to finding a venue. State Department officials made calls. 0:01:28.080 --> 0:01:31.240 Only two governments were willing to offer their public support 0:01:31.680 --> 0:01:38.600 for such a summit, Israel and South Africa. Politically, that 0:01:38.720 --> 0:01:42.600 was a minefield, so one of the attendees offered to host. 0:01:43.640 --> 0:01:46.000 They could hold the meeting at the UNITA base camp 0:01:46.240 --> 0:01:51.040 in the Angolan town of Jamba. American Assistant Secretary of 0:01:51.080 --> 0:01:54.720 State for African Affairs, Chester Crocker arranged for the South 0:01:54.760 --> 0:01:59.800 African military to handle security. It was all coming together. 0:02:01.520 --> 0:02:05.320 With funding from the President of Right Aid, Jack Abramoff 0:02:05.520 --> 0:02:08.840 was going to get the world's leading anti communists into 0:02:08.880 --> 0:02:14.280 one room. I'm not sure this meeting accomplished much in 0:02:14.400 --> 0:02:17.959 terms of advancing the Reagan doctrine. But at that rebel 0:02:17.960 --> 0:02:21.960 base in southern Angola, Jack Abramoff reconnected with an old friend, 0:02:23.000 --> 0:02:26.000 a South African military intelligence operative he'd first met on 0:02:26.040 --> 0:02:30.160 a visit to Johannesburg in nineteen eighty three, and while 0:02:30.200 --> 0:02:32.960 Oliver North met with armed men in the sweltering heat, 0:02:33.800 --> 0:02:37.840 Abramoff was brainstorming his next project and meeting with the 0:02:37.880 --> 0:02:42.480 man who would fund it. Whether or not Jack Abramoff's 0:02:42.520 --> 0:02:45.200 strange summit had any impact on the course of the 0:02:45.240 --> 0:02:50.000 Cold Wars A question for someone else. I can only 0:02:50.000 --> 0:02:53.119 tell you about the time the South African government secretly 0:02:53.120 --> 0:02:56.640 paid an ambitious young American lobbyist to make one of 0:02:56.639 --> 0:03:04.720 the worst movies I've ever seen. I'm Molly Conger, and this. 0:03:05.480 --> 0:03:21.240 Is weird Little Guys. 0:03:23.360 --> 0:03:27.240 This is a side story. I really couldn't resist it. 0:03:27.280 --> 0:03:32.079 I think you'll understand. I've been writing this story, this 0:03:32.120 --> 0:03:36.440 story about Monica Huggett, about South Africa, about the Apartheid International. 0:03:36.480 --> 0:03:39.160 I've been writing it for so long that I'm having 0:03:39.200 --> 0:03:42.680 trouble letting it go, so I will try to wrap 0:03:42.680 --> 0:03:45.680 it up next week. I know there are so many 0:03:45.760 --> 0:03:48.200 other weird little guys I've promised to tell you about, 0:03:48.240 --> 0:03:52.000 and we'll get to them, but I've invested so much 0:03:52.040 --> 0:03:54.040 in this story that I want to make sure I 0:03:54.200 --> 0:03:58.040 end it properly. And I could tell I just didn't 0:03:58.120 --> 0:04:01.800 have that this week. I don't talk a lot about 0:04:01.800 --> 0:04:06.440 my personal life in public online because as an expert 0:04:06.440 --> 0:04:09.040 on weird little guys, I really hate to think about 0:04:09.080 --> 0:04:13.360 them thinking about my personal life. But I guess I'm 0:04:13.360 --> 0:04:14.680 going to have to let you all in on this 0:04:14.720 --> 0:04:18.440 one eventually. Anyway, I'm actually getting married in a couple 0:04:18.440 --> 0:04:20.839 of weeks, and it turns out that having a wedding 0:04:20.920 --> 0:04:24.360 is kind of a whole ordeal. I'm not really the 0:04:24.520 --> 0:04:27.760 arts and crafts type. I really would rather be watching 0:04:27.839 --> 0:04:31.760 grainy videos of old Area Nations World Congress meetings than 0:04:32.279 --> 0:04:36.040 making place cards and seating charts and trying to figure 0:04:36.080 --> 0:04:42.919 out how to do floral arrangements. But here we are. Nevertheless, honestly, 0:04:42.960 --> 0:04:44.960 I'm really lucky that I have a job where I 0:04:45.000 --> 0:04:48.000 can just follow my heart and let my curiosity lead 0:04:48.040 --> 0:04:51.240 me wherever we happen to end up. Because if I 0:04:51.240 --> 0:04:54.599 have to write a seven thousand word research project every week, 0:04:55.279 --> 0:04:57.960 my heart's got to be in it. And this week 0:04:58.200 --> 0:05:02.000 I could not resist the siren song of a bad 0:05:02.000 --> 0:05:06.920 eighties action movie. It was just too weird to only 0:05:06.920 --> 0:05:09.440 mention in passing. It had to be its own episode. 0:05:10.640 --> 0:05:13.719 Because as I was writing the conclusion to this long, 0:05:13.960 --> 0:05:18.159 strange saga of Monica Huggett Stone, I had originally planned 0:05:18.200 --> 0:05:19.960 to devote just a little bit of time to the 0:05:19.960 --> 0:05:22.760 political connections of the far right in the United States 0:05:23.480 --> 0:05:27.720 and the pro apartheid activist movements in South Africa. But 0:05:27.800 --> 0:05:31.000 I was wrapping up my research connecting Monica to David 0:05:31.080 --> 0:05:35.520 Duke's nineteen ninety six Senate run when I realized I'd 0:05:35.560 --> 0:05:37.920 overlooked something massive. 0:05:39.279 --> 0:05:40.040 It wasn't just. 0:05:40.040 --> 0:05:43.359 The likes of David Duke who were terribly interested in 0:05:43.400 --> 0:05:47.960 the continuing success of apartheid. No, it wasn't just the 0:05:48.040 --> 0:05:52.160 extreme fringes at all. There were large swaths of Reagan 0:05:52.240 --> 0:05:57.520 Conservatives who were deeply embedded in this. The deeper I dug, 0:05:57.600 --> 0:05:59.880 the more obvious it became that a lot of the 0:06:00.560 --> 0:06:04.760 very big names in American conservative politics are tied up 0:06:04.760 --> 0:06:10.440 in this story. Not with Monica, not directly. Like I said, 0:06:10.440 --> 0:06:14.279 this is a side story. But in the nineteen eighties, 0:06:14.960 --> 0:06:17.760 Sub Saharan Africa was a battleground in the Cold War, 0:06:18.600 --> 0:06:20.880 and the South African government was a big player in 0:06:20.880 --> 0:06:25.520 this perceived fight against Soviet influence on the continent. So 0:06:25.640 --> 0:06:30.120 even as public discussed with apartheid complicated having open dealings 0:06:30.160 --> 0:06:34.440 with the country, American conservatives saw South Africa as a 0:06:34.480 --> 0:06:40.719 critical partner in the ideological struggle against communism. And we'll 0:06:40.720 --> 0:06:43.680 get into some more about those connections in the next episode, 0:06:43.720 --> 0:06:47.279 because they continue into present day politics. In the time 0:06:47.320 --> 0:06:50.040 it's taken me to write these episodes, that situation has 0:06:50.279 --> 0:06:53.919 continued to evolve, and there's certainly some strange connections to 0:06:53.960 --> 0:06:57.160 the past in the story of South African Ambassador Ibrahim 0:06:57.240 --> 0:07:03.280 Razul's recent expulsion from the United States. But today we're 0:07:03.279 --> 0:07:08.440 not talking about Ibrahim Razul. We're talking about Red Scorpion, 0:07:09.600 --> 0:07:15.680 the nineteen eighty eight action movie starring Dolph Lundgren. I 0:07:15.720 --> 0:07:18.960 guess we have to do a little background first. I'm 0:07:18.960 --> 0:07:21.360 not too proud to admit that when I started poking 0:07:21.360 --> 0:07:24.360 around the edges of this story, I only knew enough 0:07:24.360 --> 0:07:28.640 about Jack Abramoff to tell you that's that lobbyist who 0:07:28.640 --> 0:07:31.920 got into trouble when I was in high school. I think, 0:07:33.400 --> 0:07:35.040 and we don't really have to get into the thing. 0:07:35.160 --> 0:07:38.960 Abramoff is most famous for his two thousand and six 0:07:39.080 --> 0:07:42.520 conviction for mail fraud, tax evasion, and conspiracy to bribe 0:07:42.560 --> 0:07:46.560 public officials. He did a little time in federal prison 0:07:46.640 --> 0:07:48.880 for crimes he committed in connection to his work as 0:07:48.880 --> 0:07:52.560 a lobbyist for Native American tribes seeking to influence legislation 0:07:52.600 --> 0:07:56.480 on gambling. That happened later in his life. But I 0:07:56.520 --> 0:07:59.000 did want to mention it because that's the only thing 0:07:59.000 --> 0:08:00.920 I knew about him, And I just want to reassure you, 0:08:01.480 --> 0:08:06.960 yes that Jack Abramoff. And obviously you have to start 0:08:07.200 --> 0:08:10.640 somewhere in politics. You don't just find yourself in the 0:08:10.640 --> 0:08:14.239 center of a web of corruption involving multiple sitting congressmen. 0:08:13.840 --> 0:08:14.520 Right out of the gate. 0:08:16.000 --> 0:08:19.360 And Abramoff got his start in politics in college, working 0:08:19.400 --> 0:08:22.480 as a volunteer on Ronald Reagan's nineteen eighty presidential campaign 0:08:22.560 --> 0:08:24.920 and serving as the chairman of the Massachusetts Alliance of 0:08:24.960 --> 0:08:29.280 College Republicans. After graduation, he was elected as the chair 0:08:29.320 --> 0:08:32.440 of the College Republican National Committee with the help of 0:08:32.440 --> 0:08:36.000 a man who had become his close friend and longtime collaborator, 0:08:36.720 --> 0:08:41.000 Rover Norquist. Together the pair made it their mission to 0:08:41.040 --> 0:08:45.680 transform the College Republicans from a resume padding social club 0:08:45.800 --> 0:08:50.640 into a vicious, militant political tool. They pushed out the 0:08:50.679 --> 0:08:55.120 old car the men they considered wishy, washy country clubbers, 0:08:55.840 --> 0:08:59.880 and they remade the organization into what Abramoff called the 0:09:00.200 --> 0:09:04.960 sword and the Shield of the Reagan Revolution. And he 0:09:05.000 --> 0:09:08.480 was a busy man in the early eighties. In addition 0:09:08.520 --> 0:09:10.800 to his duties as the chair of the College Republicans, 0:09:11.520 --> 0:09:15.200 he was the frontman of a group called the USA Foundation, 0:09:16.760 --> 0:09:19.320 and that group mainly appears in a couple of news 0:09:19.320 --> 0:09:22.319 stories in nineteen eighty four in connection to a series 0:09:22.360 --> 0:09:25.280 of rallies that he organized celebrating the anniversary of the 0:09:25.400 --> 0:09:30.360 US invasion of Granada. And maybe it's because the name 0:09:30.480 --> 0:09:33.760 is so generic, but it's hard to find old news 0:09:33.800 --> 0:09:38.200 articles about the USA Foundation. They don't really seem to 0:09:38.200 --> 0:09:43.280 have done much public facing work that was perhaps by design. 0:09:44.840 --> 0:09:49.760 The foundation seems to have mostly existed to raise money. Traditionally, 0:09:49.840 --> 0:09:53.160 the College Republicans had relied almost exclusively on their Republican 0:09:53.240 --> 0:09:57.520 National Committee for their budget, but Abramov had something bigger 0:09:57.520 --> 0:10:01.960 in mind. He wanted autonomy, and he wanted an immunity 0:10:02.000 --> 0:10:06.120 from the nagging oversight of the old guard, so he 0:10:06.160 --> 0:10:12.280 made his own money. I once again find myself appreciating 0:10:12.320 --> 0:10:16.280 the work of an unsavory source. The archivists at the 0:10:16.320 --> 0:10:21.760 Liberty University Jerry Folwell Library have done a really phenomenal 0:10:21.840 --> 0:10:25.240 job of digitizing their collection of old documents related to 0:10:25.320 --> 0:10:29.720 the Conservative Caucus, a lobbying group whose board Abramof served on, 0:10:31.280 --> 0:10:33.200 and one of the documents in that collection is a 0:10:33.240 --> 0:10:36.719 memo that Abramof sent to a big donor listing off 0:10:36.720 --> 0:10:39.680 his accomplishments as chair of the College Republicans in nineteen 0:10:39.679 --> 0:10:43.800 eighty four in hopes of securing a big check, and 0:10:43.880 --> 0:10:47.200 he says the USA Foundation, under his leadership, had hosted 0:10:47.200 --> 0:10:50.520 a delegation of South African student leaders on a trip 0:10:50.559 --> 0:10:54.320 to Washington in January of nineteen eighty four, and at 0:10:54.360 --> 0:10:57.439 that meeting they'd made plans with those South African students 0:10:57.480 --> 0:11:01.240 from a group called the Students Moderate Allay Alliance to 0:11:01.320 --> 0:11:04.679 co host an international student conference later that year at 0:11:04.679 --> 0:11:08.480 a resort in the South African Bantustan of both with 0:11:08.600 --> 0:11:13.680 the Swana. That same archive contains a nineteen eighty four 0:11:13.760 --> 0:11:16.520 letter from one of Abramoff's colleagues, a right wing think 0:11:16.559 --> 0:11:19.920 take veteran named Amy Moritz, and it's a letter to 0:11:20.000 --> 0:11:25.120 William F. Buckley, And in that letter, Moritz openly admits 0:11:25.160 --> 0:11:29.400 to operating multiple front groups and then she opines on 0:11:29.440 --> 0:11:32.640 the effectiveness of various other right wing groups operating around 0:11:32.679 --> 0:11:35.480 the country. And one of the groups she offers an 0:11:35.520 --> 0:11:40.400 opinion on is Abramoff's USA Foundation, and she describes it 0:11:40.920 --> 0:11:45.000 as operating out of the Heritage Foundation, which is an 0:11:45.120 --> 0:11:48.520 intriguing aside that I can't offer you any explanation for. 0:11:50.640 --> 0:11:53.760 But through his USA Foundation, it seems that Abramoff had 0:11:53.760 --> 0:11:57.160 finally found a way to pair his ideological inclinations with 0:11:57.800 --> 0:12:02.760 personal profit. The USA Foundation took in hefty donations from 0:12:02.800 --> 0:12:08.240 corporations in exchange for seeking the College Republicans on student 0:12:08.240 --> 0:12:11.959 groups that were bad for business. So landlords in San 0:12:11.960 --> 0:12:15.480 Francisco paid to have student groups organizing for rent control 0:12:15.920 --> 0:12:21.080 pushed off California campuses. Campbell's Soup paid them to undermine 0:12:21.120 --> 0:12:26.600 student support from migrant farm workers unions. It was, I guess, 0:12:27.080 --> 0:12:30.640 another front group with the added bonus of being able 0:12:30.720 --> 0:12:34.600 to solicit tax exempt contributions, which he could then use 0:12:34.640 --> 0:12:39.000 to fund the political activities of the College Republicans. So 0:12:39.040 --> 0:12:42.680 these companies, they're not just donating to some think tank. 0:12:42.720 --> 0:12:48.880 They're not donating to awareness raising or policy papers. They're investing. 0:12:50.040 --> 0:12:54.120 They were buying fake grassroots organizing to compete in the 0:12:54.120 --> 0:12:59.800 marketplace of ideas on their behalf. But Jack Abramoff wasn't 0:13:00.440 --> 0:13:04.440 to sit in Washington and hold fundraisers. He was, after all, 0:13:04.640 --> 0:13:09.160 the sword and shield of the Reagan Revolution, and in 0:13:09.200 --> 0:13:12.280 the early eighties that meant getting out there and fighting 0:13:12.280 --> 0:13:16.600 Soviet influence wherever it existed or wherever it was imagined 0:13:16.640 --> 0:13:21.839 to exist. For some conservatives, the growing bad press about 0:13:21.840 --> 0:13:27.760 apartheid was just a highly effective KGB propaganda operation. And 0:13:27.800 --> 0:13:30.280 so it was as chair of the College Republican Committee 0:13:30.559 --> 0:13:36.359 that Jack Abramaw first visited South Africa in nineteen eighty three. 0:13:36.720 --> 0:13:39.440 The trip was an effort to strengthen ties between student 0:13:39.480 --> 0:13:43.000 groups internationally, and as part of that mission, he met 0:13:43.040 --> 0:13:46.520 with Russell Cristel, the leader of a group calling itself 0:13:46.880 --> 0:13:52.600 the Student's Moderate Alliance. It wouldn't be officially revealed until 0:13:53.000 --> 0:13:57.080 nineteen ninety two, so nine years after this meeting that 0:13:57.120 --> 0:14:00.400 the Student's Moderate Alliance had been entirely a project of 0:14:00.440 --> 0:14:04.439 the South African Security Police designed to discredit and disrupt 0:14:04.440 --> 0:14:07.400 student organizing by groups like the National Union of South 0:14:07.440 --> 0:14:12.719 African Students or NUSAS, a primarily English speaking anti apartheid 0:14:12.760 --> 0:14:17.520 group on university campuses. But even more than a decade 0:14:17.520 --> 0:14:21.440 before the truth was exposed, student groups in South Africa 0:14:21.600 --> 0:14:26.280 saw right through Russell Crystal. I found newspapers and zines 0:14:26.280 --> 0:14:28.440 put out by college students dating as far back as 0:14:28.480 --> 0:14:33.400 the organization's founding in nineteen eighty. Mocking the obvious charade 0:14:33.440 --> 0:14:38.600 of this organization calling itself moderate, they immediately spotted what 0:14:38.640 --> 0:14:44.320 was obvious National Party propaganda. Old issues of a NUSAS 0:14:44.320 --> 0:14:47.760 aligned student newspaper published by the South African Students Press 0:14:47.840 --> 0:14:52.560 Union Don't Hold Back. A nineteen eighty issue covering the 0:14:52.600 --> 0:14:56.280 student council election at the University of viitvatersrund And Johannesburg 0:14:56.840 --> 0:15:00.800 usually just shortened to Vits University, it calls the Student's 0:15:00.880 --> 0:15:04.760 Moderate Alliance a neo fascist group, and it dismisses them 0:15:04.760 --> 0:15:10.040 as joke candidates, although one of those joke candidates did win, 0:15:10.960 --> 0:15:15.320 Russell Cristel's brother Lance. By nineteen eighty three, the same 0:15:15.320 --> 0:15:18.800 paper reported that Russell Cristel, also a student at Fitfadder's Front, 0:15:19.440 --> 0:15:21.920 had offered to help right wing student groups at other 0:15:22.000 --> 0:15:26.560 schools pay the cost of printing their anti NUSUS pamphlets. 0:15:28.400 --> 0:15:31.800 It was also widely believed that Cristel's Student's Moderate Alliance 0:15:31.880 --> 0:15:35.560 was behind some mysterious pamphlets that had been popping up 0:15:35.560 --> 0:15:39.320 at campuses all over the country. The pamphlets were made 0:15:39.360 --> 0:15:43.080 to appear as though NUSUS had authored them. They bore 0:15:43.200 --> 0:15:45.800 the organization's name at the bottom, and they mimicked the 0:15:45.840 --> 0:15:50.280 style of real NUSIS flyers, but they misrepresented the group's 0:15:50.400 --> 0:15:54.920 views and attempted to link the group to illegal activity. 0:15:55.320 --> 0:15:58.040 They were such an obvious attempt to discredit the group 0:15:58.720 --> 0:16:02.040 that the vice chancellor at its university issued a statement 0:16:02.080 --> 0:16:05.880 that whoever had created the flyers quote does not have 0:16:05.920 --> 0:16:09.480 the best interest of students or of the country at heart. 0:16:10.880 --> 0:16:15.200 The university administration also noted that quote the nature and 0:16:15.280 --> 0:16:19.960 countrywide method of their distribution suggests that the persons responsible 0:16:20.040 --> 0:16:26.240 for them command resources beyond those typically available to student organizations, 0:16:28.120 --> 0:16:32.040 and throughout the nineteen eighties, student newspapers in South Africa 0:16:32.600 --> 0:16:36.600 ran stories about the impossible level of funding the Student's 0:16:36.640 --> 0:16:40.520 Moderate Alliance seemed to have access to. They had unlimited 0:16:40.600 --> 0:16:45.920 numbers of these glossy, expensive looking, professionally made pamphlets, and 0:16:46.000 --> 0:16:48.840 in one case, there was even proof that the pamphlets 0:16:48.840 --> 0:16:53.760 had been printed in a National Party office. In nineteen 0:16:53.800 --> 0:16:57.520 eighty two, a student newspaper obtained a sworn statement from 0:16:57.520 --> 0:17:00.960 someone who had been detained under Section twenty two. That's 0:17:01.000 --> 0:17:06.439 the provision that allowed for preventive detention without charges largely 0:17:06.440 --> 0:17:09.760 a tool used to harass and intimidate anti apartheid activists, 0:17:10.800 --> 0:17:13.600 and on this particular occasion, this detainee was taken up 0:17:13.600 --> 0:17:16.760 to the tenth floor of the Johannesburg Police station to 0:17:16.800 --> 0:17:21.240 be questioned. The tenth floor was occupied by the security 0:17:21.280 --> 0:17:24.760 branch of the police, the police who were tasked with 0:17:24.880 --> 0:17:30.840 intelligence gathering, handling informants and running death squads. And there 0:17:30.840 --> 0:17:34.840 on the tenth floor, this detainee saw a familiar face. 0:17:36.200 --> 0:17:40.119 It was Russell Cristel, and the sworn statement read, in 0:17:40.200 --> 0:17:45.040 part quote I saw Cristel on the tenth floor of 0:17:45.119 --> 0:17:49.280 John Forster Square. He was neither handcuffed nor accompanied by 0:17:49.280 --> 0:17:53.560 the security police. He appeared calm and under no duress. 0:17:55.840 --> 0:17:58.040 When his brother Lance Cristel was elected to the VIT 0:17:58.040 --> 0:18:01.560 Student Council in nineteen eighty, he refused to sign a 0:18:01.600 --> 0:18:05.119 statement that all student representatives were asked to agree to 0:18:06.119 --> 0:18:10.760 that they would not involve themselves in espionage on campus. 0:18:11.840 --> 0:18:15.320 Lance Cristel reportedly said, quote, I do not want to 0:18:15.359 --> 0:18:18.879 be held responsible for any patriotic urge that might occur 0:18:19.000 --> 0:18:23.880 during my term of office. An official university inquiry from 0:18:23.880 --> 0:18:26.919 the mid eighties determined that the Student's Moderate Alliance clearly 0:18:26.960 --> 0:18:33.159 had quote lavish funding from anonymous sources. In addition to 0:18:33.200 --> 0:18:36.400 his Student's Moderate Alliance, Russell Cristel also founded the National 0:18:36.400 --> 0:18:40.760 Students Federation. The Vitz student newspaper sent a reporter to 0:18:40.800 --> 0:18:44.120 the group's conference in nineteen eighty four. It was held 0:18:44.160 --> 0:18:47.879 at a luxury hotel in downtown Johannesburg, with little Finger 0:18:47.960 --> 0:18:52.719 sandwiches served on silver platters. Russell Cristel was elected as 0:18:52.720 --> 0:18:56.080 the group's president and the leader of the Student's Moderate 0:18:56.080 --> 0:18:58.920 Alliance chapter at the University of Cape Town was elected 0:18:58.960 --> 0:19:02.080 to the group's executive board and named its media officer. 0:19:04.040 --> 0:19:08.320 That student, a young Arthur Kemp is someone whose name 0:19:08.400 --> 0:19:12.880 might sound familiar if you listen carefully. He would later 0:19:12.960 --> 0:19:15.440 author the hit list found in the possession of Chris 0:19:15.440 --> 0:19:20.639 Hani's assassin in nineteen ninety three. That student newspaper reporter 0:19:20.720 --> 0:19:24.040 in nineteen eighty four concluded the article about the conference 0:19:24.280 --> 0:19:28.000 with a quote from a nusa's student leader. They aren't 0:19:28.040 --> 0:19:32.200 just making wild accusations when they speculate about possible state 0:19:32.240 --> 0:19:36.520 funding for crystal student groups. Just a few years earlier, 0:19:37.000 --> 0:19:41.560 something called the Information Scandal had broken and the government 0:19:41.560 --> 0:19:44.520 had been forced to admit to the existence of something 0:19:44.560 --> 0:19:49.639 called Project Anne Marie, a year's long propaganda campaign aimed 0:19:49.640 --> 0:19:53.720 at undermining anti apartheid activism at home and anti apartheid 0:19:53.760 --> 0:19:58.800 opinion abroad. Four high ranking government officials were forced to 0:19:58.840 --> 0:20:04.520 resign in disgrace, including Prime Minister Forster. The Secretary of 0:20:04.560 --> 0:20:09.040 Information not only resigned but fled the country, only to 0:20:09.080 --> 0:20:13.399 be extradited back from France to face fraud charges. It 0:20:13.480 --> 0:20:17.600 turned out that throughout the seventies, millions of dollars had 0:20:17.640 --> 0:20:21.120 been spent from the defense budget to do, in part, 0:20:21.640 --> 0:20:25.840 exactly what these students feared was happening again, form front 0:20:25.840 --> 0:20:31.679 groups to disseminate propaganda and disrupt and discredit anti apartheid 0:20:31.760 --> 0:20:37.200 groups like NUSUS and so that student organizer told the paper. 0:20:39.000 --> 0:20:42.160 While we would want to shy away from individualizing political 0:20:42.200 --> 0:20:45.840 differences where the true motives of people are being obscured, 0:20:45.920 --> 0:20:49.240 it has at times been necessary to draw the links 0:20:49.280 --> 0:20:53.240 between such individuals and the National Party and Security Police. 0:20:54.440 --> 0:20:57.840 We believe that the NSF represents a growing attempt to 0:20:58.000 --> 0:21:03.480 stifle opposition to APARTHEIPE. It would take almost a decade 0:21:03.880 --> 0:21:06.320 to get the government to admit it, but. 0:21:06.359 --> 0:21:06.920 She was right. 0:21:08.160 --> 0:21:12.040 Russell Crystal's National Student Federation and Student's Moderate Alliance were 0:21:12.080 --> 0:21:30.399 both entirely the creation of the apartheid government. While I 0:21:30.440 --> 0:21:33.080 was researching this segment, I found a small collection of 0:21:33.200 --> 0:21:36.920 old issues of the Student, that student newspaper at the 0:21:37.000 --> 0:21:41.359 University of the vit vadders Rund. It's such a fascinating 0:21:41.400 --> 0:21:46.080 window into the past. It's just a college newspaper. It's 0:21:46.080 --> 0:21:49.960 written by twenty year olds and there are articles about 0:21:50.000 --> 0:21:53.560 how to get more information about university sponsored insurance. There 0:21:53.600 --> 0:21:57.840 are articles about the tennis team's latest matchups and reviews 0:21:57.880 --> 0:22:01.679 of David Bowie albums and John Irving not There's gossip 0:22:01.720 --> 0:22:05.760 about student groups and classified ads for bicycles and piano lessons. 0:22:07.119 --> 0:22:11.040 But in those same pages, those same student journalists are 0:22:11.080 --> 0:22:15.000 writing stories about the editor of another student paper disappearing 0:22:15.520 --> 0:22:18.840 at the hands of the security police, held in detention 0:22:19.000 --> 0:22:25.000 without charges. There are headlines like twentieth vis student detained 0:22:25.840 --> 0:22:28.480 and the police won't say why and they don't know 0:22:28.520 --> 0:22:32.400 when they'll be back. Mixed in with these write ups 0:22:32.440 --> 0:22:36.040 about student theater productions, there are images of riot police 0:22:36.280 --> 0:22:40.200 with dogs and shotguns marching through campus. 0:22:41.760 --> 0:22:42.160 Anyway. 0:22:42.240 --> 0:22:46.640 All that to say, it's possible that Jack Abramoff didn't 0:22:46.680 --> 0:22:49.440 know he was meeting with a government funded front group 0:22:49.560 --> 0:22:52.800 led by an intelligence asset when he visited Johannesburg in 0:22:52.840 --> 0:22:56.600 nineteen eighty three. Again, the actual facts wouldn't come out 0:22:56.680 --> 0:23:01.720 until nineteen ninety two. Maybe he didn't know. It was 0:23:01.840 --> 0:23:05.040 sort of an open secret, though, and he would have 0:23:05.040 --> 0:23:07.440 been able to figure it out had he spent five 0:23:07.480 --> 0:23:10.919 minutes doing his due diligence. But if we take his 0:23:10.960 --> 0:23:15.080 word for it, he never had any idea. It was 0:23:15.119 --> 0:23:18.920 obvious to those teenagers in Johannesburg and to the university administrators. 0:23:19.840 --> 0:23:23.159 Crystal himself never refuted allegations that he was connected to 0:23:23.160 --> 0:23:30.280 the security police, even allegations that surfaced in nineteen eighty two. 0:23:30.440 --> 0:23:34.719 But maybe Abramoff never asked. Maybe he's just an idiot. 0:23:35.800 --> 0:23:39.640 But despite his later insistence to the contrary, there are 0:23:39.720 --> 0:23:43.840 some clues here that might lead you to suspect that 0:23:43.920 --> 0:23:48.439 he did know. Not long after returning from this trip, 0:23:48.720 --> 0:23:52.360 the National College Republican Committee formally adopted a resolution pledging 0:23:52.400 --> 0:23:55.640 their support to the student's Moderate alliance in their fight 0:23:55.720 --> 0:24:01.959 against communism. The resolution condemned Soviet aggression and claimed that 0:24:02.000 --> 0:24:07.760 South Africa was plagued by deliberate KGP propaganda, but it 0:24:07.800 --> 0:24:13.560 didn't actually mention apartheid at all. When Abramov gave a 0:24:13.600 --> 0:24:16.240 speech to the Republican National Convention in August of nineteen 0:24:16.280 --> 0:24:21.080 eighty four, that was his parting message that he's mobilizing 0:24:21.160 --> 0:24:25.200 college age voters to reelect Ronald Reagan because America can 0:24:25.280 --> 0:24:28.600 only be free if Ronald Reagan is free to fund 0:24:28.640 --> 0:24:30.240 the anti communist death squads. 0:24:33.119 --> 0:24:36.720 And a students know that support of anti Soviet freedom 0:24:36.800 --> 0:24:41.960 fighters and victory over communism guarantees us security for our nation. 0:24:47.520 --> 0:24:49.800 And so it is to our party that they come. 0:24:50.880 --> 0:24:53.919 It is with us that they trust our dreams, and 0:24:53.960 --> 0:24:56.639 it is in us that they place their hopes, and 0:24:56.680 --> 0:24:59.080 so it is for them that we must win in November, 0:25:00.000 --> 0:25:02.800 So them that we must re elect Ronald Reagan, and 0:25:02.840 --> 0:25:06.159 it's for them that we must restore liberty and righteousness 0:25:06.240 --> 0:25:07.919 throughout the world. Thank you. 0:25:15.960 --> 0:25:18.760 By nineteen eighty five, Jack Abramoff had a new gig. 0:25:19.720 --> 0:25:23.520 He was the executive director of Citizens for America, a 0:25:23.560 --> 0:25:28.159 lobbying group funded by Write eight Heir, Lewis Lherman This 0:25:28.359 --> 0:25:33.280 was very explicitly just a privately funded mouthpiece for Ronald Reagan. 0:25:34.960 --> 0:25:38.919 Lahirman was the founder, funder, and leader of CFA, but 0:25:40.040 --> 0:25:43.720 it hadn't actually been his idea. It was Reagan, mega 0:25:43.720 --> 0:25:47.359 donor and producer of most of the world's instant mashed potatoes, 0:25:47.880 --> 0:25:50.920 a man named Jack Hume, who approached Reagan in nineteen 0:25:50.920 --> 0:25:53.520 eighty three with the idea of forming a group that 0:25:53.600 --> 0:25:58.000 could shape public opinion in his favor. But they needed 0:25:58.040 --> 0:26:01.840 the right man for the job. It was President Reagan 0:26:01.920 --> 0:26:04.520 himself who called up Lahirman and sold him on the idea. 0:26:05.960 --> 0:26:09.720 Lherman later described the call saying, quote, our first purpose 0:26:09.920 --> 0:26:13.200 is to induce a mutation in the climate of opinion 0:26:13.200 --> 0:26:18.320 in America among opinion leaders. So about a year and 0:26:18.359 --> 0:26:22.480 a half into the existence of CFA, Lherman hired Jack 0:26:22.520 --> 0:26:27.120 Abramoff as its executive director, and in that role, Jack 0:26:27.160 --> 0:26:33.679 Abramoff was meeting almost daily with Oliver North. You see, 0:26:33.880 --> 0:26:37.960 Ronald Reagan very much wanted to fund the anti communist 0:26:38.040 --> 0:26:43.000 forces in Nicaragua, but because of their horrific and ongoing 0:26:43.080 --> 0:26:46.640 human rights abuses, Congress had passed a series of ever 0:26:46.720 --> 0:26:49.679 tightening restrictions on the kind of US aid that they 0:26:49.720 --> 0:26:54.200 could receive, and by nineteen eighty five, Ronald Reagan couldn't 0:26:54.240 --> 0:26:59.439 legally send the Contras any US money at all. So 0:26:59.480 --> 0:27:02.200 they put theirs together and they found what they thought 0:27:02.480 --> 0:27:07.560 was a creative little loophole. Congress didn't actually say that 0:27:07.600 --> 0:27:12.080 they couldn't send the Contrasts any money. They said that 0:27:12.080 --> 0:27:15.679 they couldn't send them any US government money, money that 0:27:15.720 --> 0:27:18.879 had been appropriated by Congress, money from the budget of 0:27:18.920 --> 0:27:23.919 a US agency. There are other kinds of money, and 0:27:23.960 --> 0:27:28.919 so the Reagan administration illegally sold weapons to Iran, and 0:27:28.960 --> 0:27:31.879 they used that money, money that had never been appropriated 0:27:31.920 --> 0:27:37.440 by Congress, to fund the Contrasts. It's a lot more 0:27:37.480 --> 0:27:40.760 complicated than that. Don't email me to explain it. 0:27:40.840 --> 0:27:41.119 I know. 0:27:41.240 --> 0:27:43.240 I just don't want to write a thousand words about 0:27:43.280 --> 0:27:47.160 the Iran Contra affair. But I don't think anyone wants 0:27:47.160 --> 0:27:49.840 to hear that anyway. So if this story is new 0:27:49.880 --> 0:27:52.240 to you, all you need to know right now is 0:27:52.280 --> 0:27:57.040 that Ronald Reagan was absolutely unwilling to let Congress stand 0:27:57.040 --> 0:28:00.000 in the way of his desire to overthrow the Nicaraguan government, 0:28:00.880 --> 0:28:04.000