Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: A very strange meeting took place in June of nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty five. This was long before the days of email
Speaker 2: and video conferencing. If you wanted to hammer out an agreement,
Speaker 2: you had to get everyone in the same room. Perhaps
Speaker 2: you could invite everyone to your office or rent a
Speaker 2: conference room at the Marriott, But the attendees at this
Speaker 2: meeting would have had a hard time booking flights to Washington,
Speaker 2: d C. So they settled on something a little less orthodox.
Speaker 2: And they couldn't exactly just call up the men on
Speaker 2: their invite list either. The logistics were going to be
Speaker 2: a nightmare. Dana Rohrabacher, President Ronald Reagan's speechwriter, personally flew
Speaker 2: to a safe house into Gusagalpa to hand deliver an
Speaker 2: invitation to Adolfo Calero, leader of the Nicaraguan Contras. Anti
Speaker 2: communist activist Jack Wheeler was in touch with the Mujahadeen
Speaker 2: in Afghanistan and Laotian rebel leader Pauka Her and Grover
Speaker 2: Norquist had plenty of contacts who could get him in
Speaker 2: touch with Jonas Savimbi, leader of the Angolan Insurgent Force UNIDA.
Speaker 2: Given the guest list, they had pretty limited options when
Speaker 2: it came to finding a venue. State Department officials made calls.
Speaker 2: Only two governments were willing to offer their public support
Speaker 2: for such a summit, Israel and South Africa. Politically, that
Speaker 2: was a minefield, so one of the attendees offered to host.
Speaker 2: They could hold the meeting at the UNITA base camp
Speaker 2: in the Angolan town of Jamba. American Assistant Secretary of
Speaker 2: State for African Affairs, Chester Crocker arranged for the South
Speaker 2: African military to handle security. It was all coming together.
Speaker 2: With funding from the President of Right Aid, Jack Abramoff
Speaker 2: was going to get the world's leading anti communists into
Speaker 2: one room. I'm not sure this meeting accomplished much in
Speaker 2: terms of advancing the Reagan doctrine. But at that rebel
Speaker 2: base in southern Angola, Jack Abramoff reconnected with an old friend,
Speaker 2: a South African military intelligence operative he'd first met on
Speaker 2: a visit to Johannesburg in nineteen eighty three, and while
Speaker 2: Oliver North met with armed men in the sweltering heat,
Speaker 2: Abramoff was brainstorming his next project and meeting with the
Speaker 2: man who would fund it. Whether or not Jack Abramoff's
Speaker 2: strange summit had any impact on the course of the
Speaker 2: Cold Wars A question for someone else. I can only
Speaker 2: tell you about the time the South African government secretly
Speaker 2: paid an ambitious young American lobbyist to make one of
Speaker 2: the worst movies I've ever seen. I'm Molly Conger, and this.
Speaker 1: Is weird Little Guys.
Speaker 2: This is a side story. I really couldn't resist it.
Speaker 2: I think you'll understand. I've been writing this story, this
Speaker 2: story about Monica Huggett, about South Africa, about the Apartheid International.
Speaker 2: I've been writing it for so long that I'm having
Speaker 2: trouble letting it go, so I will try to wrap
Speaker 2: it up next week. I know there are so many
Speaker 2: other weird little guys I've promised to tell you about,
Speaker 2: and we'll get to them, but I've invested so much
Speaker 2: in this story that I want to make sure I
Speaker 2: end it properly. And I could tell I just didn't
Speaker 2: have that this week. I don't talk a lot about
Speaker 2: my personal life in public online because as an expert
Speaker 2: on weird little guys, I really hate to think about
Speaker 2: them thinking about my personal life. But I guess I'm
Speaker 2: going to have to let you all in on this
Speaker 2: one eventually. Anyway, I'm actually getting married in a couple
Speaker 2: of weeks, and it turns out that having a wedding
Speaker 2: is kind of a whole ordeal. I'm not really the
Speaker 2: arts and crafts type. I really would rather be watching
Speaker 2: grainy videos of old Area Nations World Congress meetings than
Speaker 2: making place cards and seating charts and trying to figure
Speaker 2: out how to do floral arrangements. But here we are. Nevertheless, honestly,
Speaker 2: I'm really lucky that I have a job where I
Speaker 2: can just follow my heart and let my curiosity lead
Speaker 2: me wherever we happen to end up. Because if I
Speaker 2: have to write a seven thousand word research project every week,
Speaker 2: my heart's got to be in it. And this week
Speaker 2: I could not resist the siren song of a bad
Speaker 2: eighties action movie. It was just too weird to only
Speaker 2: mention in passing. It had to be its own episode.
Speaker 2: Because as I was writing the conclusion to this long,
Speaker 2: strange saga of Monica Huggett Stone, I had originally planned
Speaker 2: to devote just a little bit of time to the
Speaker 2: political connections of the far right in the United States
Speaker 2: and the pro apartheid activist movements in South Africa. But
Speaker 2: I was wrapping up my research connecting Monica to David
Speaker 2: Duke's nineteen ninety six Senate run when I realized I'd
Speaker 2: overlooked something massive.
Speaker 1: It wasn't just.
Speaker 2: The likes of David Duke who were terribly interested in
Speaker 2: the continuing success of apartheid. No, it wasn't just the
Speaker 2: extreme fringes at all. There were large swaths of Reagan
Speaker 2: Conservatives who were deeply embedded in this. The deeper I dug,
Speaker 2: the more obvious it became that a lot of the
Speaker 2: very big names in American conservative politics are tied up
Speaker 2: in this story. Not with Monica, not directly. Like I said,
Speaker 2: this is a side story. But in the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 2: Sub Saharan Africa was a battleground in the Cold War,
Speaker 2: and the South African government was a big player in
Speaker 2: this perceived fight against Soviet influence on the continent. So
Speaker 2: even as public discussed with apartheid complicated having open dealings
Speaker 2: with the country, American conservatives saw South Africa as a
Speaker 2: critical partner in the ideological struggle against communism. And we'll
Speaker 2: get into some more about those connections in the next episode,
Speaker 2: because they continue into present day politics. In the time
Speaker 2: it's taken me to write these episodes, that situation has
Speaker 2: continued to evolve, and there's certainly some strange connections to
Speaker 2: the past in the story of South African Ambassador Ibrahim
Speaker 2: Razul's recent expulsion from the United States. But today we're
Speaker 2: not talking about Ibrahim Razul. We're talking about Red Scorpion,
Speaker 2: the nineteen eighty eight action movie starring Dolph Lundgren. I
Speaker 2: guess we have to do a little background first. I'm
Speaker 2: not too proud to admit that when I started poking
Speaker 2: around the edges of this story, I only knew enough
Speaker 2: about Jack Abramoff to tell you that's that lobbyist who
Speaker 2: got into trouble when I was in high school. I think,
Speaker 2: and we don't really have to get into the thing.
Speaker 2: Abramoff is most famous for his two thousand and six
Speaker 2: conviction for mail fraud, tax evasion, and conspiracy to bribe
Speaker 2: public officials. He did a little time in federal prison
Speaker 2: for crimes he committed in connection to his work as
Speaker 2: a lobbyist for Native American tribes seeking to influence legislation
Speaker 2: on gambling. That happened later in his life. But I
Speaker 2: did want to mention it because that's the only thing
Speaker 2: I knew about him, And I just want to reassure you,
Speaker 2: yes that Jack Abramoff. And obviously you have to start
Speaker 2: somewhere in politics. You don't just find yourself in the
Speaker 2: center of a web of corruption involving multiple sitting congressmen.
Speaker 1: Right out of the gate.
Speaker 2: And Abramoff got his start in politics in college, working
Speaker 2: as a volunteer on Ronald Reagan's nineteen eighty presidential campaign
Speaker 2: and serving as the chairman of the Massachusetts Alliance of
Speaker 2: College Republicans. After graduation, he was elected as the chair
Speaker 2: of the College Republican National Committee with the help of
Speaker 2: a man who had become his close friend and longtime collaborator,
Speaker 2: Rover Norquist. Together the pair made it their mission to
Speaker 2: transform the College Republicans from a resume padding social club
Speaker 2: into a vicious, militant political tool. They pushed out the
Speaker 2: old car the men they considered wishy, washy country clubbers,
Speaker 2: and they remade the organization into what Abramoff called the
Speaker 2: sword and the Shield of the Reagan Revolution. And he
Speaker 2: was a busy man in the early eighties. In addition
Speaker 2: to his duties as the chair of the College Republicans,
Speaker 2: he was the frontman of a group called the USA Foundation,
Speaker 2: and that group mainly appears in a couple of news
Speaker 2: stories in nineteen eighty four in connection to a series
Speaker 2: of rallies that he organized celebrating the anniversary of the
Speaker 2: US invasion of Granada. And maybe it's because the name
Speaker 2: is so generic, but it's hard to find old news
Speaker 2: articles about the USA Foundation. They don't really seem to
Speaker 2: have done much public facing work that was perhaps by design.
Speaker 2: The foundation seems to have mostly existed to raise money. Traditionally,
Speaker 2: the College Republicans had relied almost exclusively on their Republican
Speaker 2: National Committee for their budget, but Abramov had something bigger
Speaker 2: in mind. He wanted autonomy, and he wanted an immunity
Speaker 2: from the nagging oversight of the old guard, so he
Speaker 2: made his own money. I once again find myself appreciating
Speaker 2: the work of an unsavory source. The archivists at the
Speaker 2: Liberty University Jerry Folwell Library have done a really phenomenal
Speaker 2: job of digitizing their collection of old documents related to
Speaker 2: the Conservative Caucus, a lobbying group whose board Abramof served on,
Speaker 2: and one of the documents in that collection is a
Speaker 2: memo that Abramof sent to a big donor listing off
Speaker 2: his accomplishments as chair of the College Republicans in nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty four in hopes of securing a big check, and
Speaker 2: he says the USA Foundation, under his leadership, had hosted
Speaker 2: a delegation of South African student leaders on a trip
Speaker 2: to Washington in January of nineteen eighty four, and at
Speaker 2: that meeting they'd made plans with those South African students
Speaker 2: from a group called the Students Moderate Allay Alliance to
Speaker 2: co host an international student conference later that year at
Speaker 2: a resort in the South African Bantustan of both with
Speaker 2: the Swana. That same archive contains a nineteen eighty four
Speaker 2: letter from one of Abramoff's colleagues, a right wing think
Speaker 2: take veteran named Amy Moritz, and it's a letter to
Speaker 2: William F. Buckley, And in that letter, Moritz openly admits
Speaker 2: to operating multiple front groups and then she opines on
Speaker 2: the effectiveness of various other right wing groups operating around
Speaker 2: the country. And one of the groups she offers an
Speaker 2: opinion on is Abramoff's USA Foundation, and she describes it
Speaker 2: as operating out of the Heritage Foundation, which is an
Speaker 2: intriguing aside that I can't offer you any explanation for.
Speaker 2: But through his USA Foundation, it seems that Abramoff had
Speaker 2: finally found a way to pair his ideological inclinations with
Speaker 2: personal profit. The USA Foundation took in hefty donations from
Speaker 2: corporations in exchange for seeking the College Republicans on student
Speaker 2: groups that were bad for business. So landlords in San
Speaker 2: Francisco paid to have student groups organizing for rent control
Speaker 2: pushed off California campuses. Campbell's Soup paid them to undermine
Speaker 2: student support from migrant farm workers unions. It was, I guess,
Speaker 2: another front group with the added bonus of being able
Speaker 2: to solicit tax exempt contributions, which he could then use
Speaker 2: to fund the political activities of the College Republicans. So
Speaker 2: these companies, they're not just donating to some think tank.
Speaker 2: They're not donating to awareness raising or policy papers. They're investing.
Speaker 2: They were buying fake grassroots organizing to compete in the
Speaker 2: marketplace of ideas on their behalf. But Jack Abramoff wasn't
Speaker 2: to sit in Washington and hold fundraisers. He was, after all,
Speaker 2: the sword and shield of the Reagan Revolution, and in
Speaker 2: the early eighties that meant getting out there and fighting
Speaker 2: Soviet influence wherever it existed or wherever it was imagined
Speaker 2: to exist. For some conservatives, the growing bad press about
Speaker 2: apartheid was just a highly effective KGB propaganda operation. And
Speaker 2: so it was as chair of the College Republican Committee
Speaker 2: that Jack Abramaw first visited South Africa in nineteen eighty three.
Speaker 2: The trip was an effort to strengthen ties between student
Speaker 2: groups internationally, and as part of that mission, he met
Speaker 2: with Russell Cristel, the leader of a group calling itself
Speaker 2: the Student's Moderate Alliance. It wouldn't be officially revealed until
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety two, so nine years after this meeting that
Speaker 2: the Student's Moderate Alliance had been entirely a project of
Speaker 2: the South African Security Police designed to discredit and disrupt
Speaker 2: student organizing by groups like the National Union of South
Speaker 2: African Students or NUSAS, a primarily English speaking anti apartheid
Speaker 2: group on university campuses. But even more than a decade
Speaker 2: before the truth was exposed, student groups in South Africa
Speaker 2: saw right through Russell Crystal. I found newspapers and zines
Speaker 2: put out by college students dating as far back as
Speaker 2: the organization's founding in nineteen eighty. Mocking the obvious charade
Speaker 2: of this organization calling itself moderate, they immediately spotted what
Speaker 2: was obvious National Party propaganda. Old issues of a NUSAS
Speaker 2: aligned student newspaper published by the South African Students Press
Speaker 2: Union Don't Hold Back. A nineteen eighty issue covering the
Speaker 2: student council election at the University of viitvatersrund And Johannesburg
Speaker 2: usually just shortened to Vits University, it calls the Student's
Speaker 2: Moderate Alliance a neo fascist group, and it dismisses them
Speaker 2: as joke candidates, although one of those joke candidates did win,
Speaker 2: Russell Cristel's brother Lance. By nineteen eighty three, the same
Speaker 2: paper reported that Russell Cristel, also a student at Fitfadder's Front,
Speaker 2: had offered to help right wing student groups at other
Speaker 2: schools pay the cost of printing their anti NUSUS pamphlets.
Speaker 2: It was also widely believed that Cristel's Student's Moderate Alliance
Speaker 2: was behind some mysterious pamphlets that had been popping up
Speaker 2: at campuses all over the country. The pamphlets were made
Speaker 2: to appear as though NUSUS had authored them. They bore
Speaker 2: the organization's name at the bottom, and they mimicked the
Speaker 2: style of real NUSIS flyers, but they misrepresented the group's
Speaker 2: views and attempted to link the group to illegal activity.
Speaker 2: They were such an obvious attempt to discredit the group
Speaker 2: that the vice chancellor at its university issued a statement
Speaker 2: that whoever had created the flyers quote does not have
Speaker 2: the best interest of students or of the country at heart.
Speaker 2: The university administration also noted that quote the nature and
Speaker 2: countrywide method of their distribution suggests that the persons responsible
Speaker 2: for them command resources beyond those typically available to student organizations,
Speaker 2: and throughout the nineteen eighties, student newspapers in South Africa
Speaker 2: ran stories about the impossible level of funding the Student's
Speaker 2: Moderate Alliance seemed to have access to. They had unlimited
Speaker 2: numbers of these glossy, expensive looking, professionally made pamphlets, and
Speaker 2: in one case, there was even proof that the pamphlets
Speaker 2: had been printed in a National Party office. In nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty two, a student newspaper obtained a sworn statement from
Speaker 2: someone who had been detained under Section twenty two. That's
Speaker 2: the provision that allowed for preventive detention without charges largely
Speaker 2: a tool used to harass and intimidate anti apartheid activists,
Speaker 2: and on this particular occasion, this detainee was taken up
Speaker 2: to the tenth floor of the Johannesburg Police station to
Speaker 2: be questioned. The tenth floor was occupied by the security
Speaker 2: branch of the police, the police who were tasked with
Speaker 2: intelligence gathering, handling informants and running death squads. And there
Speaker 2: on the tenth floor, this detainee saw a familiar face.
Speaker 2: It was Russell Cristel, and the sworn statement read, in
Speaker 2: part quote I saw Cristel on the tenth floor of
Speaker 2: John Forster Square. He was neither handcuffed nor accompanied by
Speaker 2: the security police. He appeared calm and under no duress.
Speaker 2: When his brother Lance Cristel was elected to the VIT
Speaker 2: Student Council in nineteen eighty, he refused to sign a
Speaker 2: statement that all student representatives were asked to agree to
Speaker 2: that they would not involve themselves in espionage on campus.
Speaker 2: Lance Cristel reportedly said, quote, I do not want to
Speaker 2: be held responsible for any patriotic urge that might occur
Speaker 2: during my term of office. An official university inquiry from
Speaker 2: the mid eighties determined that the Student's Moderate Alliance clearly
Speaker 2: had quote lavish funding from anonymous sources. In addition to
Speaker 2: his Student's Moderate Alliance, Russell Cristel also founded the National
Speaker 2: Students Federation. The Vitz student newspaper sent a reporter to
Speaker 2: the group's conference in nineteen eighty four. It was held
Speaker 2: at a luxury hotel in downtown Johannesburg, with little Finger
Speaker 2: sandwiches served on silver platters. Russell Cristel was elected as
Speaker 2: the group's president and the leader of the Student's Moderate
Speaker 2: Alliance chapter at the University of Cape Town was elected
Speaker 2: to the group's executive board and named its media officer.
Speaker 2: That student, a young Arthur Kemp is someone whose name
Speaker 2: might sound familiar if you listen carefully. He would later
Speaker 2: author the hit list found in the possession of Chris
Speaker 2: Hani's assassin in nineteen ninety three. That student newspaper reporter
Speaker 2: in nineteen eighty four concluded the article about the conference
Speaker 2: with a quote from a nusa's student leader. They aren't
Speaker 2: just making wild accusations when they speculate about possible state
Speaker 2: funding for crystal student groups. Just a few years earlier,
Speaker 2: something called the Information Scandal had broken and the government
Speaker 2: had been forced to admit to the existence of something
Speaker 2: called Project Anne Marie, a year's long propaganda campaign aimed
Speaker 2: at undermining anti apartheid activism at home and anti apartheid
Speaker 2: opinion abroad. Four high ranking government officials were forced to
Speaker 2: resign in disgrace, including Prime Minister Forster. The Secretary of
Speaker 2: Information not only resigned but fled the country, only to
Speaker 2: be extradited back from France to face fraud charges. It
Speaker 2: turned out that throughout the seventies, millions of dollars had
Speaker 2: been spent from the defense budget to do, in part,
Speaker 2: exactly what these students feared was happening again, form front
Speaker 2: groups to disseminate propaganda and disrupt and discredit anti apartheid
Speaker 2: groups like NUSUS and so that student organizer told the paper.
Speaker 2: While we would want to shy away from individualizing political
Speaker 2: differences where the true motives of people are being obscured,
Speaker 2: it has at times been necessary to draw the links
Speaker 2: between such individuals and the National Party and Security Police.
Speaker 2: We believe that the NSF represents a growing attempt to
Speaker 2: stifle opposition to APARTHEIPE. It would take almost a decade
Speaker 2: to get the government to admit it, but.
Speaker 1: She was right.
Speaker 2: Russell Crystal's National Student Federation and Student's Moderate Alliance were
Speaker 2: both entirely the creation of the apartheid government. While I
Speaker 2: was researching this segment, I found a small collection of
Speaker 2: old issues of the Student, that student newspaper at the
Speaker 2: University of the vit vadders Rund. It's such a fascinating
Speaker 2: window into the past. It's just a college newspaper. It's
Speaker 2: written by twenty year olds and there are articles about
Speaker 2: how to get more information about university sponsored insurance. There
Speaker 2: are articles about the tennis team's latest matchups and reviews
Speaker 2: of David Bowie albums and John Irving not There's gossip
Speaker 2: about student groups and classified ads for bicycles and piano lessons.
Speaker 2: But in those same pages, those same student journalists are
Speaker 2: writing stories about the editor of another student paper disappearing
Speaker 2: at the hands of the security police, held in detention
Speaker 2: without charges. There are headlines like twentieth vis student detained
Speaker 2: and the police won't say why and they don't know
Speaker 2: when they'll be back. Mixed in with these write ups
Speaker 2: about student theater productions, there are images of riot police
Speaker 2: with dogs and shotguns marching through campus.
Speaker 1: Anyway.
Speaker 2: All that to say, it's possible that Jack Abramoff didn't
Speaker 2: know he was meeting with a government funded front group
Speaker 2: led by an intelligence asset when he visited Johannesburg in
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty three. Again, the actual facts wouldn't come out
Speaker 2: until nineteen ninety two. Maybe he didn't know. It was
Speaker 2: sort of an open secret, though, and he would have
Speaker 2: been able to figure it out had he spent five
Speaker 2: minutes doing his due diligence. But if we take his
Speaker 2: word for it, he never had any idea. It was
Speaker 2: obvious to those teenagers in Johannesburg and to the university administrators.
Speaker 2: Crystal himself never refuted allegations that he was connected to
Speaker 2: the security police, even allegations that surfaced in nineteen eighty two.
Speaker 2: But maybe Abramoff never asked. Maybe he's just an idiot.
Speaker 2: But despite his later insistence to the contrary, there are
Speaker 2: some clues here that might lead you to suspect that
Speaker 2: he did know. Not long after returning from this trip,
Speaker 2: the National College Republican Committee formally adopted a resolution pledging
Speaker 2: their support to the student's Moderate alliance in their fight
Speaker 2: against communism. The resolution condemned Soviet aggression and claimed that
Speaker 2: South Africa was plagued by deliberate KGP propaganda, but it
Speaker 2: didn't actually mention apartheid at all. When Abramov gave a
Speaker 2: speech to the Republican National Convention in August of nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty four, that was his parting message that he's mobilizing
Speaker 2: college age voters to reelect Ronald Reagan because America can
Speaker 2: only be free if Ronald Reagan is free to fund
Speaker 2: the anti communist death squads.
Speaker 3: And a students know that support of anti Soviet freedom
Speaker 3: fighters and victory over communism guarantees us security for our nation.
Speaker 3: And so it is to our party that they come.
Speaker 3: It is with us that they trust our dreams, and
Speaker 3: it is in us that they place their hopes, and
Speaker 3: so it is for them that we must win in November,
Speaker 3: So them that we must re elect Ronald Reagan, and
Speaker 3: it's for them that we must restore liberty and righteousness
Speaker 3: throughout the world. Thank you.
Speaker 2: By nineteen eighty five, Jack Abramoff had a new gig.
Speaker 2: He was the executive director of Citizens for America, a
Speaker 2: lobbying group funded by Write eight Heir, Lewis Lherman This
Speaker 2: was very explicitly just a privately funded mouthpiece for Ronald Reagan.
Speaker 2: Lahirman was the founder, funder, and leader of CFA, but
Speaker 2: it hadn't actually been his idea. It was Reagan, mega
Speaker 2: donor and producer of most of the world's instant mashed potatoes,
Speaker 2: a man named Jack Hume, who approached Reagan in nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty three with the idea of forming a group that
Speaker 2: could shape public opinion in his favor. But they needed
Speaker 2: the right man for the job. It was President Reagan
Speaker 2: himself who called up Lahirman and sold him on the idea.
Speaker 2: Lherman later described the call saying, quote, our first purpose
Speaker 2: is to induce a mutation in the climate of opinion
Speaker 2: in America among opinion leaders. So about a year and
Speaker 2: a half into the existence of CFA, Lherman hired Jack
Speaker 2: Abramoff as its executive director, and in that role, Jack
Speaker 2: Abramoff was meeting almost daily with Oliver North. You see,
Speaker 2: Ronald Reagan very much wanted to fund the anti communist
Speaker 2: forces in Nicaragua, but because of their horrific and ongoing
Speaker 2: human rights abuses, Congress had passed a series of ever
Speaker 2: tightening restrictions on the kind of US aid that they
Speaker 2: could receive, and by nineteen eighty five, Ronald Reagan couldn't
Speaker 2: legally send the Contras any US money at all. So
Speaker 2: they put theirs together and they found what they thought
Speaker 2: was a creative little loophole. Congress didn't actually say that
Speaker 2: they couldn't send the Contrasts any money. They said that
Speaker 2: they couldn't send them any US government money, money that
Speaker 2: had been appropriated by Congress, money from the budget of
Speaker 2: a US agency. There are other kinds of money, and
Speaker 2: so the Reagan administration illegally sold weapons to Iran, and
Speaker 2: they used that money, money that had never been appropriated
Speaker 2: by Congress, to fund the Contrasts. It's a lot more
Speaker 2: complicated than that. Don't email me to explain it.
Speaker 3: I know.
Speaker 2: I just don't want to write a thousand words about
Speaker 2: the Iran Contra affair. But I don't think anyone wants
Speaker 2: to hear that anyway. So if this story is new
Speaker 2: to you, all you need to know right now is
Speaker 2: that Ronald Reagan was absolutely unwilling to let Congress stand
Speaker 2: in the way of his desire to overthrow the Nicaraguan government,
Speaker 2: and a lot of people eventually got into some trouble
Speaker 2: when that loophole idea turned out to be pretty illegal.
Speaker 2: And here's where we finally picked back up with that
Speaker 2: strange story we opened with. As director of the CFA,
Speaker 2: Abramoff convinced his boss, Lewis Lherman that this summit of
Speaker 2: anti communist rebel leaders would be a public relations victory
Speaker 2: for Ronald Reagan. Congress had just shut down the last
Speaker 2: bit of USA to the contras in Nicaragua, and they'd
Speaker 2: soon be hearing a bill on aid to Jonas Savimbi's
Speaker 2: unit of forces in Angola. Reagan insisted that arming what
Speaker 2: he called freedom fighters was actually self defense for the
Speaker 2: United States. The idea is that these rebel groups are
Speaker 2: fighting Soviet influence abroad, and that's a necessary thing in
Speaker 2: these last days of the Cold War. So Abramov's plan
Speaker 2: was to get them all in one room and brain
Speaker 2: storm a strategy for convincing the world that these notorious
Speaker 2: human rights abusers are indeed Reagan's freedom fighters. And that's
Speaker 2: how Jack Abramoff ended up on a South African charter
Speaker 2: plane to Angola to spend four days in a tent
Speaker 2: with Oliver North, Grover Norquist, and the leaders of the
Speaker 2: Contras and the Mujahadeen.
Speaker 1: The whole affair.
Speaker 2: Sounds like it would make for a darkly funny comedy,
Speaker 2: and apparently someone did make a movie about Jack Abramoff
Speaker 2: in twenty ten. It's called Casino Jack. I think Kevin
Speaker 2: Spacey plays Jack Abramoff. I didn't watch it, but apparently
Speaker 2: there is a scene in that movie depicting this event.
Speaker 2: On their flight from Johannesburg to Angola, the plane they
Speaker 2: took had to fly very low and change course frequently
Speaker 2: to avoid detection by the Cubans who were in Angola,
Speaker 2: and this left the entire delegation just miserably sick. There
Speaker 2: were several reporters along for the ride, and I found
Speaker 2: multiple accounts that almost everyone on the plane spent the
Speaker 2: entire flight taking turns vomiting in the plane's filthy toilet.
Speaker 2: And after they landed on a makeshift airstrip somewhere in
Speaker 2: the bush and southern Angola, they endured a two hour
Speaker 2: car ride and old jeeps over unpaved roads before arriving
Speaker 2: at the secret location of the United Base camp. Jack
Speaker 2: Abramoff later wrote that because he couldn't travel on the Sabbath,
Speaker 2: he had actually departed for Jamba a day earlier than
Speaker 2: the rest of the delegation, and so he wouldn't have
Speaker 2: to travel alone. Adolfo Colero volunteered to go with him,
Speaker 2: and that just seems so thoughtful, doesn't it. I'm sure
Speaker 2: he was just being polite, he was just trying to
Speaker 2: make a new friend. There's no source that indicates a
Speaker 2: reporter was on that flight. I can't find anything written
Speaker 2: about what they might have talked about, so we can
Speaker 2: only guess what a rabid Reaganite and the leader of
Speaker 2: the Nicaraguan Contras might have talked about during five hours
Speaker 2: alone in May of nineteen eighty five. As bad as
Speaker 2: the journey was, it wasn't much better after they'd arrived.
Speaker 2: This was Jamba, not DC. There was no Ritz Carlton,
Speaker 2: There was no plumbing, there was no air conditioning. They
Speaker 2: slept on cots in thatched huts. The delegation from the
Speaker 2: Mujahadeen was using Abdul Rahim Mardak's son as a translator,
Speaker 2: and Abramoff would later claim that he seemed to be struggling,
Speaker 2: often offering only a few words in translation for very
Speaker 2: long statements. A write up in The New York Times
Speaker 2: says the Laotian translator kept referring to their Angolan host,
Speaker 2: Jonas Savimbi as mister Zimbabwe. And when the group's wealthy patron,
Speaker 2: Lewis Lherman, presented these rebel leaders, each with their own
Speaker 2: framed copy of the United States Constitution, they didn't even
Speaker 2: pretend to be impressed.
Speaker 1: When the group was sat down.
Speaker 2: To get to business, Lherman read them a letter from
Speaker 2: Ronald Reagan appearing to endorse the summit, and it read,
Speaker 2: in part, we have to be moved by the example
Speaker 2: of men and women who struggle every day at great
Speaker 2: personal risk, for rights that we have enjoyed since birth.
Speaker 2: Their goals are our goals. But in reading this letter aloud,
Speaker 2: Lherman omitted a pretty important line. In the President's letter,
Speaker 2: it wasn't addressed to this group. It was addressed to
Speaker 2: Lahirman alone, and it was not intended to convey the
Speaker 2: President's endorsement of or promised of aid to anyone there.
Speaker 2: In Jack Abramoff's memoirs, though he claims quote there wasn't
Speaker 2: a dry eye in the house at the end of
Speaker 2: the letter, he goes on to say the words of
Speaker 2: Ronald Reagan meant the world to this group. That particular
Speaker 2: characterization of this moment is notably absent from every other
Speaker 2: account I read. One account published in the conservative Washington
Speaker 2: Examiner says there wasn't even enough food for everyone there.
Speaker 2: Jack abramof keeps kosher, so he packed an entire suitcase
Speaker 2: with his own provisions for the trip, and he departed
Speaker 2: from Angola a little bit early before the event was
Speaker 2: entirely over, and the Washington Examiner reports that as he's leaving,
Speaker 2: he's auctioning off his remaining cans of tuna fish, reportedly
Speaker 2: for as much as twenty dollars a can. Grover Norquis
Speaker 2: dubbed the event the Democratic International. The press called it
Speaker 2: the Jamboree in Jamba, and the attendees signed a pack
Speaker 2: to read, we free peoples fighting for our national independence
Speaker 2: and human rights assembled at Jamba declare our solidarity with
Speaker 2: all freedom movements in the world and state our commitment
Speaker 2: to cooperate to liberate our nations from these Soviet imperialists.
Speaker 2: In a later piece in Harper's Magazine, columnist Thomas Frank
Speaker 2: called the declaration a bit of high flown foldol written
Speaker 2: by Grover Norquist that aimed for solemnity, but sounded more
Speaker 2: like the work of a fifth grader who had been
Speaker 2: forced to memorize the Gettysburg Address and the Declaration of
Speaker 2: Independence and has gotten them all jumbled up somehow, I mean,
Speaker 2: honestly sick burn On Grover Norquist. Adolpho Kolero, the representative
Speaker 2: from the Contras, clarified to reporters that the pact didn't
Speaker 2: call for any exchanges of troops or weapons. It was
Speaker 2: kind of just vibes. When the American delegation got home,
Speaker 2: Lewis Lherman discovered that Abramoff and Norquist had been blowing
Speaker 2: through money with reckless abandon and they'd spent nearly three
Speaker 2: million dollars out of the budget of Citizens for America.
Speaker 2: Lherman claims he fired them. Abramoff says he quit. Who knows,
Speaker 2: But by the end of the summer of nineteen eighty five,
Speaker 2: Jack Abramoff and Grover Norquist no longer worked at Citizens
Speaker 2: for America. But luckily for Abramoff, he'd used his time
Speaker 2: in Angola to reconnect with an old friend. That summit
Speaker 2: had also been attended by representatives from right wing student
Speaker 2: groups from South Africa, led by none other than Russell Crystal.
Speaker 2: Abramoff soon found himself as the head of a newly
Speaker 2: founded DC based think tank called the International Freedom Foundation,
Speaker 2: the same sort of nebulous, meaningless mission statement as any
Speaker 2: number of think tanks. They promoted freedom and democracy and
Speaker 2: the free market. It looked like just another slick lobbying
Speaker 2: organization designed to bring in high dollar donations for newsletters
Speaker 2: about the evils of communism, and I guess that's kind
Speaker 2: of what it was, except almost all of the money
Speaker 2: came directly from the South African government. It was given
Speaker 2: the code name Project pac Man by South African military intelligence,
Speaker 2: and Abramov's new think tank received one point five million
Speaker 2: dollars per year every year from nineteen eighty six through
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety two to fund Operation Babushka, the code name
Speaker 2: given to this propaganda campaign aimed at undermining the African
Speaker 2: National Congress, shaping international opinion about apartheid, and combating efforts
Speaker 2: by American politicians to impose sanctions on South Africa. The
Speaker 2: truth didn't come out until nineteen ninety five. That's when
Speaker 2: former South African security policeman Paul Erasmus testified before the
Speaker 2: Truth and Reconciliation Commission about the existence of the strapcom
Speaker 2: unit short for Strategic Communications, which I guess is kind
Speaker 2: of a cute name for propaganda and disinformation. Erasmus admitted
Speaker 2: to his own role in a year's long disinformation campaign
Speaker 2: smearing Winnie Mandela, and he's spoken publicly over the years
Speaker 2: about the close relationships traccom had with US based Conservatives,
Speaker 2: people like Edwin Fulner, one of the founders of the
Speaker 2: Heritage Foundation, and people like prominent Council of Conservative Citizens
Speaker 2: member Robert Slim. Slim, interestingly enough, is someone whose name
Speaker 2: I found twice, once in the nineteen eighties when he
Speaker 2: was sending faxes to leaders of the Conservative Caucus offering
Speaker 2: to set up meetings for them with Eugene terre Blanche
Speaker 2: on their next time trip to South Africa, and then
Speaker 2: again in twenty twelve. His name comes up in connection
Speaker 2: with Monica Stone's South Africa Project rallies. So now I
Speaker 2: wonder how far back those two go. But in nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety five, a spokesman for the South African Military did
Speaker 2: confirm in a statement that quote the International Freedom Foundation
Speaker 2: was a former South African Defense Force project. Former South
Speaker 2: African spy Craig Williamson explained to a reporter in nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety five that the IFF was a tool of political
Speaker 2: warfare meant to undermine the African National Congress, but that
Speaker 2: they'd taken care to run the operation to prevent the
Speaker 2: people they dealt with from realizing that quote. They were
Speaker 2: involved with a foreign government. They ran their organization, but
Speaker 2: we steered them. Craig Williamson is not a good man.
Speaker 2: He personally murdered several prominent anti apartheid activists, and he
Speaker 2: ordered the killings of many others. One bomb he sent
Speaker 2: was meant for a married couple critical of the apartheid regime,
Speaker 2: but it owing to have the job. It killed Jeanette
Speaker 2: Shun and her six year old daughter. Her husband, Marius Shun,
Speaker 2: returned home to find their two year old son had
Speaker 2: been alone in the house with their bodies for hours. No,
Speaker 2: Craig Williamson is not an honorable man, but I do
Speaker 2: think he's telling something close to the truth here. He
Speaker 2: had to if he wanted amnesty for all those murders,
Speaker 2: and he did have a rather astute observation about the
Speaker 2: particular gullibility of American conservatives saying to a reporter in
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety five, we decided that the only level we
Speaker 2: were going to be accepted was when it came to
Speaker 2: the Soviets and their surrogates. So our strategy was to
Speaker 2: paint the A and C as Communist surrogates. The more
Speaker 2: we could present ourselves as anti communist, the more people
Speaker 2: looked at us with respect. People you could hardly believe
Speaker 2: cooperated with us politically.
Speaker 1: When it came to the.
Speaker 2: Soviets, all they had to do was slap anti communism
Speaker 2: on the top of the page, and Republican leaders would
Speaker 2: sign on to a project without any follow up questions.
Speaker 2: Senator Jesse Helms served as chairman of the iff's advisory board,
Speaker 2: but when this news came out, his spokesman claimed that
Speaker 2: Helms had never even heard of such an organization and
Speaker 2: certainly wasn't involved in it. Congressman Dan Burton led a
Speaker 2: delegation to observe the nineteen eighty nine elections in Namibia,
Speaker 2: and that trip was paid for by the IFF. Both
Speaker 2: Burton and Congressman Robert Dornan frequently attended and spoke at
Speaker 2: and wrote for IFF events in publications. They too denied
Speaker 2: having any idea that their tabs had been paid by
Speaker 2: the South African government. Congressman and Philip Crane served on
Speaker 2: the organization's board for three years, but when the news
Speaker 2: broke in nineteen ninety five, his spokesman claimed that he'd
Speaker 2: never actually attended any meetings, And honestly, it is kind
Speaker 2: of possible that those congressmen just never asked where the
Speaker 2: money came from. Maybe they had a feeling they didn't
Speaker 2: want to know the answer. They probably could have figured
Speaker 2: it out if they tried. An article written in nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty nine in Covert Affairs, a magazine founded by a
Speaker 2: former CIA officer turned critic of the agency, noted that
Speaker 2: the International Freedom Foundation managed to establish itself very quickly
Speaker 2: and in under two years. They were very clearly well
Speaker 2: funded and had well established ties to both the international
Speaker 2: extreme right wing and to the intelligence communities in multiple countries.
Speaker 2: The group's support for both the South African government and
Speaker 2: the Nicaraguan contras earned them the designation of quote an
Speaker 2: organization to watch from the magazine's editors, and the author
Speaker 2: is careful here he doesn't make any outright allegations, but
Speaker 2: the implication is very strong that this isn't a grassroots organization,
Speaker 2: but maybe they didn't know. I can accept that that's possible,
Speaker 2: But Jack Abramoff would also vehemently deny that he'd had
Speaker 2: any clue that money wasn't clean, and I find that
Speaker 2: a lot harder to believe. Russell Kristel, the South African
Speaker 2: intelligence asset who'd helped Abramov start the iff in the
Speaker 2: first place, ran the organization's branch office in Johannesburg, and
Speaker 2: Crystal would like to admit that the Johannesburg office was
Speaker 2: less of a branch and more of a nerve center.
Speaker 2: It was really the center of the operation, and he
Speaker 2: was the one deciding how much money would get sent
Speaker 2: to DC, and sometimes when the book keeping got a
Speaker 2: little sloppy, he would just have the Military Intelligence Office
Speaker 2: make those wire transfers directly. In nineteen eighty nine, the
Speaker 2: state of New York asked the nonprofit to just provide
Speaker 2: an accountant statement that their financial records were accurate. That's
Speaker 2: not terribly unusual for a nonprofit bringing in a lot
Speaker 2: of money, but they couldn't do it or wouldn't, and
Speaker 2: they were subsequently legally barred from soliciting donations in the
Speaker 2: state of New York. Financial records that were produced later
Speaker 2: showed that in nineteen ninety two, the organization's revenue dropped
Speaker 2: to half of the level in prior years. That was
Speaker 2: not coincidentally the year that South African President to Clerk
Speaker 2: ended funding for such programs as a show of good
Speaker 2: faith during negotiations with the African National Congress. The end
Speaker 2: of that official funding didn't end the IFF right away.
Speaker 2: In nineteen ninety three, the IFF commissioned a report that
Speaker 2: was designed to paint the ANC as the true villains.
Speaker 2: You know, things are really almost over in nineteen ninety three,
Speaker 2: the election is coming, apartheid is falling, but they commissioned
Speaker 2: this report to say, well, aren't those the bad guys?
Speaker 2: Should we really be compromising with these people who are
Speaker 2: doing these terrible things? And the funding for that report
Speaker 2: was funneled through a slush fund operated by Lucas Mangope
Speaker 2: the apartheid collaboration as president of the semi sovereign Bantustan
Speaker 2: of Bofu Tatswana. The IFF would close its doors for
Speaker 2: good later that year. But that's really quite enough about
Speaker 2: old memos buried in the archives of conservative think tanks.
Speaker 2: I promised you I was going to tell you about
Speaker 2: the nineteen eighty eight cinematic abomination Red Scorpion to give
Speaker 2: you a brief idea of what the movie is about.
Speaker 2: It stars Dolph Lundgren as a Soviet Special Forces operative
Speaker 2: assigned to assassinate the leader of an anti communist guerrilla
Speaker 2: force in the fictional African country of Mombaka. And the
Speaker 2: movie opens with Lundgren called before this sinister cabal of
Speaker 2: communist military leaders from Cuba and the Soviet Union, and
Speaker 2: they show him this slide show of these evil freedom fighters.
Speaker 2: It's totally very odd because the movie is from the
Speaker 2: perspective of Dolph Lundgren's character, a Soviet Special Forces soldier,
Speaker 2: and he is a Communist, and he is our protagonist,
Speaker 2: and he is going to kill these anti communists. But
Speaker 2: Abrarov has trouble sort of settling into a perspective because
Speaker 2: he's writing this derisively. It's satirically right, because the anti
Speaker 2: communists are the heroes in his world. So it's a
Speaker 2: little difficult to tell what the movie is trying to
Speaker 2: achieve because he doesn't successfully right satire. For much of
Speaker 2: the movie, Dulph Luangren is just sort of roaming the
Speaker 2: African bush dressed in a rather striking manner. He's removed
Speaker 2: his outer shirt and he's ripped his khaki pants into
Speaker 2: these tiny little shorts. And on the surface level, this
Speaker 2: is just that sort of eighties action movie aesthetic where
Speaker 2: you're seeing the sort of shining, sweaty pecks of this
Speaker 2: enormous muscle man. But I think there's more to this
Speaker 2: particular choice. We have this gigantic blonde Swede and he's
Speaker 2: been outfitted in what I have to assume as a
Speaker 2: very intentional recreation of the iconic uniform of the Selo Scouts,
Speaker 2: the notoriously brutal Rhodesian Special Forces. And when I sat
Speaker 2: down to watch this movie, I realized almost immediately that
Speaker 2: Abramov had based the film on his own experience in Angola,
Speaker 2: just backwards right the men he paid to write the
Speaker 2: actual screenplay based on his notes, A man named arn Olsen,
Speaker 2: later said that Abramoff explicitly told him that Mombaka is
Speaker 2: supposed to be Angola, and he'd written the character of
Speaker 2: the rebel leader Sundata to represent Jonas Savimbi. So Abramoff
Speaker 2: obviously came up with the plot of this movie in
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty five when he met with those anti communist leaders.
Speaker 2: So he just took that story and he inverted it
Speaker 2: because we know now for a fact that South African
Speaker 2: operatives assassinated leaders of the Soviet supported social estate of
Speaker 2: the People's Republic of Angola throughout that conflict. So he
Speaker 2: just took what he knew and he reversed it to
Speaker 2: make the bad guys in his mind the bad guys
Speaker 2: of his movie, regardless of who the bad guy was
Speaker 2: in real life. Some of the actions taken in the
Speaker 2: film by these villainous Cuban soldiers are things that we
Speaker 2: know South African special forces did in multiple conflicts throughout
Speaker 2: the region. Russian soldiers in the movie drop some sort
Speaker 2: of toxic chemical from a plane on innocent civilians of Mombaka,
Speaker 2: and in real life there were later revelations about something
Speaker 2: called Project Coast, South Africa's chemical and biological warfare program.
Speaker 2: There were horrific tales of chemical agents being tested on detainees,
Speaker 2: specifically detainees from the Ankle And conflict, and they used
Speaker 2: biological weapons to wipe out villages in Mozambique, Angola, and
Speaker 2: Namibia spanning years. But in the movie, these anti communist rebels,
Speaker 2: led by this Savimbi stand in are noble freedom fighters
Speaker 2: and this Soviet killing has been sent to destroy them,
Speaker 2: but he has second thoughts and et cetera. I don't
Speaker 2: know why it's an hour and forty minutes long. There
Speaker 2: is an extended sequence with no dialogue where a Kalahari
Speaker 2: bushman is teaching Dolph Lundgren to hunt or hogs.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I was kind of looking at my phone at that point.
Speaker 2: Dolph Lungren is basically just playing Ivan Drego again. He's
Speaker 2: fresh off playing that Russian boxer in Rocky four. I
Speaker 2: guess he's just kind of a one note guy. The
Speaker 2: only interesting character in the whole movie is that Kalahari
Speaker 2: bushman who rescues our protagonists from certain death in the desert.
Speaker 2: He's played by rekhobstan an elder in the Komani clan
Speaker 2: of the San People. He was ninety five years old
Speaker 2: when the movie was filmed, and I was kind of
Speaker 2: curious about who they got to play this role, and
Speaker 2: so I looked him up and Rekhobe's son's son, David
Speaker 2: would years later, after the fall of apartheid, successfully win
Speaker 2: a legal battle for the return of their ancestral lands.
Speaker 2: So the movie sucked, but at least it gave me
Speaker 2: the opportunity to read a little bit about this rightful
Speaker 2: restoration of the Komani lands, which are now protected as
Speaker 2: a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is hard to say
Speaker 2: exactly how Red Scorpion came to be. Abramoff's version of
Speaker 2: events doesn't pass the smell test. He was outraged at
Speaker 2: the allegation that the South African government had played any
Speaker 2: part in his movie, but Craig Williamson, that South African
Speaker 2: spy is on record claiming the film was absolutely quote
Speaker 2: funded by our guys, and it would certainly be hard
Speaker 2: to explain away everything about the film if that's not true.
Speaker 2: Extras are played by South African soldiers. South African military
Speaker 2: hardware is used for props. Vehicles with South African military
Speaker 2: license plates were seen on set by cast and crew
Speaker 2: and reporters. The South African military provided the production with
Speaker 2: an old Soviet tank that they'd captured earlier in the
Speaker 2: Angolan conflict, and South Africa allowed Abramoff to film the
Speaker 2: entire movie in Namibia in nineteen eighty eight and nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty eight was the last year that the South African
Speaker 2: military was actively occupying much of Namibia before the UN
Speaker 2: arrived in nineteen eighty nine to facilitate the ceasefire and
Speaker 2: the transition to Namibian independence. Carmen Aargenziano, the American actor
Speaker 2: cast as the Cuban colonel, later told reporters that actors
Speaker 2: knew during filming that most of the extras in the
Speaker 2: movie were South African soldiers, and during filming there were
Speaker 2: rumors on set that there was some kind of intelligence operation.
Speaker 2: Argenza called it very fishy quote. We heard that very
Speaker 2: right wing South African money was helping fund the movie.
Speaker 2: It wasn't very clear. We were pretty upset about the
Speaker 2: source of the money. We thought we were misled. We
Speaker 2: were shocked that these brothers who we thought were showbiz liberals,
Speaker 2: Beverly Hill's Jewish kids were doing this. Argenziano recounted one
Speaker 2: incident at the hotel where all the actors were staying.
Speaker 2: Some black Namibian children were playing on the escalator and
Speaker 2: the South African soldiers working for the production were shouting
Speaker 2: racial slurs of the children, chasing them away. Unnamed sources
Speaker 2: close to apramoff told Ken Silverstein, writing for Harper's in
Speaker 2: two thousand and six, quote, Yes, some people were duped
Speaker 2: by the iff, but Jack wasn't one of them. As chairman,
Speaker 2: he understood where the money was coming from. He knew
Speaker 2: exactly who he was playing with. Another source told Silverstein
Speaker 2: that Red Scorpion had absolutely been a propaganda project, and
Speaker 2: Abramoff certainly knew it. Asked in nineteen eighty seven by
Speaker 2: The New York Times if the film, which was still
Speaker 2: in production at that point, was being financed by the
Speaker 2: South African government, Abramoff gave the incredibly normal sounding answer
Speaker 2: that he had raised the money from quote normal film investors.
Speaker 2: In his own memoirs, Abramoff repeats his claim that the
Speaker 2: film had been financed by private investors, but the only
Speaker 2: investor he names is quoting from the book, Robert Hall,
Speaker 2: a retired physician turned investor who owned a vineyard on
Speaker 2: the cape of South Africa. And that's true. Robert Hall
Speaker 2: was a retired doctor of sorts who was now an
Speaker 2: investor of sorts and did own a vineyard on the
Speaker 2: cape of South Africa. That's true, but Abramoff neglects to
Speaker 2: include that Robert Hall was actually an American oral so virgin.
Speaker 2: He'd invented a variety of high speed drills used in
Speaker 2: dental and orthopedic surgical procedures, but he fled the United
Speaker 2: States in the late nineteen seventies to avoid paying millions
Speaker 2: of dollars.
Speaker 1: To the IRS.
Speaker 2: It's a little hard to google a generic sounding name
Speaker 2: like Robert Hall. There are a lot of guys called
Speaker 2: Robert Hall who might be a doctor and might live
Speaker 2: in South Africa. But luckily for us this Robert Hall
Speaker 2: unsuccessfully sued a South African magazine in the nineteen nineties.
Speaker 2: A judge in the Cape of Good Hope ruled that
Speaker 2: the magazine had in fact only been reporting the facts,
Speaker 2: not defaming Hall, when they reported, among other things, that
Speaker 2: he'd pressured a South African bank in nineteen eighty three
Speaker 2: to allow him to engage in currency exchange transactions that
Speaker 2: would be illegal for someone who is a permanent resident
Speaker 2: of South Africa, and as part of his strategy to
Speaker 2: convince the bank to let him keep doing these transactions,
Speaker 2: he told the bank manager that he was a personal
Speaker 2: friend of President Ronald Reagan. So yeah, just normal investors.
Speaker 2: He raised money the normal way. Jeff Pandon who worked
Speaker 2: under Abramoff at the International Freedom Foundation, says that Abramoff
Speaker 2: hired Russell Kristel as an executive producer on the film,
Speaker 2: and Krystal, in addition to being a state intelligence asset
Speaker 2: running front groups throughout the nineteen eighties, was at this
Speaker 2: time serving on President de Clerk's Presidential Council, and Abramoff
Speaker 2: absolutely would have known that there's just no good faith
Speaker 2: explanation that can possibly leave you believing that Jack Abramoff
Speaker 2: had no idea that his movie was South African state propaganda.
Speaker 2: The film flopped Warner Brothers pulled out of the agreement
Speaker 2: to distribute it after pressure from anti apartheid activists led
Speaker 2: mainly by Tennis Legend Arthur Ashe. Shooting delays left the
Speaker 2: movie wildly over budget, and several actors claim they never
Speaker 2: got paid. The International Freedom Foundation folded in nineteen ninety
Speaker 2: three when the South African funding dried up, apartheid ended,
Speaker 2: and by nineteen ninety five, Jack Abramoff was working as
Speaker 2: a lobbyist for the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, one
Speaker 2: of the clients that he would eventually go to prison
Speaker 2: for defrauding out of millions of dollars and that, I
Speaker 2: guess is the story of how apartheid funded a bad
Speaker 2: action movie and Jack abramoff Ate Cantuna at the Mujahadeen
Speaker 2: and half the conservative think tags in Washington.
Speaker 1: D C.
Speaker 2: Secretly collaborated with South African military intelligence. Weird Little Guys
Speaker 2: as a production of Kolzone Media and iHeartRadio. Its researched,
Speaker 2: written and recorded by me Nelly Conger. Our executive producers
Speaker 2: are Sophie Lichterman and Robert Evans. The show is edited
Speaker 2: by the wildly talented Rory Gagan. The theme music was
Speaker 2: composed by Brad Dickert. You can email me at Weird
Speaker 2: Little Guys podcast at gmail dot com. I will definitely
Speaker 2: read it, but I almost certainly will not answer it.
Speaker 2: It's nothing personal. I don't answer any of my emails.
Speaker 2: You can exchange conspiracy theories about the show with other
Speaker 2: listeners on the Weird Little Guys subreddit. Just don't post
Speaker 2: anything that's going to make you one of my Weird
Speaker 2: Little Guys.