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Speaker 1: Welcome back to the Journalista Podcast. I'm your host, Steve A. Step.
Speaker 1: That was the campaign commercial that scared America into re
Speaker 1: electing Lyndon Baines Johnson to the presidency. Back in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty four, A little girl is counting the pedals on
Speaker 1: a daisy as the atom bomb explodes in the background.
Speaker 1: The Cold War was real. The US and the Soviet
Speaker 1: Union were on a collision course to destroy the world.
Speaker 1: It was terrifying. It was also our normal. I remember
Speaker 1: my elementary school running drills and practicing getting under our
Speaker 1: desks in case San Diego is hit with a nuclear warhead.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure it would have made much of a difference.
Speaker 1: Of course, today our kids practice hiding from a lone
Speaker 1: gunman with an AR fifteen. You told me once that
Speaker 1: you might have saved the world from nuclear holocaust.
Speaker 2: Well, maybe not the world and maybe not nuclear, but
Speaker 2: for sure we averted what could have been a devastating
Speaker 2: war for a poor country in Latin America.
Speaker 1: Well, tell me about that.
Speaker 2: First, we had gone on a junket, very memorable junket.
Speaker 2: I remembered one Tomo from the Miami Herald was there,
Speaker 2: another journalist myself, and we all got back to Monagua,
Speaker 2: and we all got sick. And of course we always
Speaker 2: attributed to dirty water, not the right food, and so
Speaker 2: I was starting to get very sick, nauseous. Was it
Speaker 2: feeling right? I think? The day after we got back,
Speaker 2: there were some rumors about some possible Russian armament and
Speaker 2: particular MiG aircraft that could quite possibly be headed to Nicaragua,
Speaker 2: and of course that was a very dangerous premise.
Speaker 1: The New York Times wrote this about the rumors.
Speaker 4: US warned Soviets it won't tolerate MiGs in Nicaragua. The
Speaker 4: United States, concerned that a Soviet freighter that has reached
Speaker 4: Nicaragua might be carrying advanced fighter aircraft, warned Musco on
Speaker 4: Tuesday that it would not tolerate the delivery of such planes.
Speaker 4: President Reagan said that if the Nicaraguans took delivery of
Speaker 4: advanced aircraft, it would quote indicate that they are contemplating
Speaker 4: being a threat to their neighbors here in the Americas.
Speaker 1: It wasn't Defcon one, but this wasn't the first time
Speaker 1: a Russian shipment threatened the balance of power in the
Speaker 1: Western Hemisphere.
Speaker 5: Good evening, my fellow citizens. This government has promised has
Speaker 5: maintained the closest surveillance of the Soviet military build up
Speaker 5: on the island of Cuba. Within the past week, unmistakable
Speaker 5: evidence has established the fact that a series of offensive
Speaker 5: missile sites is now in preparation on that imprisoned island.
Speaker 5: The purpose of these bases can be none of us
Speaker 5: than to provide a nuclear strike capability against the Western Hemisphere.
Speaker 1: That was President John F. Kennedy. You may have heard
Speaker 1: of the Cuban missile crisis. The United States put a
Speaker 1: naval blockade around Cuba, stopping the Soviets from delivering nuclear
Speaker 1: warheads to Fidel Castro. US military leaders were pushing for
Speaker 1: a full on invasion of Cuba, a fucking terrible idea.
Speaker 1: Kennedy opted for diplomacy, and after thirteen tenth days in October,
Speaker 1: he and the Soviet leader Nikita Krushev agreed to back down.
Speaker 1: It was the closest the world has ever come to
Speaker 1: nuclear war that we know of. Scary shit in Nicaragua.
Speaker 1: History seemed to be repeating itself.
Speaker 2: So of course everybody wants to find out is the
Speaker 2: rumor true? You know, how do you find out about that?
Speaker 2: I mean you have to literally see the aircraft coming in.
Speaker 2: At that point, I had already gone to see a doctor.
Speaker 2: The doctor had told me your gallbladder has to come out.
Speaker 2: We need to do surgery on you. And I'm like,
Speaker 2: you know, I'm not comfortable with that. We're in a
Speaker 2: war torn zone, We're in a third world country. I'm
Speaker 2: just uncomfortable. And by the way, I'm working on this story,
Speaker 2: as I'm getting sicker, the doctor says, well, we'll have
Speaker 2: to treat you somehow, and he hooks me up to
Speaker 2: an IV and the IV he's hooked up to a
Speaker 2: wooden hat rack that I had gotten my driver to
Speaker 2: put wheels on it so I could be wheeling myself
Speaker 2: back and forth. And I'm thinking this is going to
Speaker 2: make me feel better. Well, it didn't. I of course,
Speaker 2: let New York know and Miami know this possibility of
Speaker 2: Russian weaponry coming in. We don't know how, but the
Speaker 2: State Department had called CBS. CBS obviously knew that I
Speaker 2: had close contacts with the Sandinista government, the hierarchy, but
Speaker 2: we still don't know how. The State Department knews. So
Speaker 2: the State Department calls New York, tells New York and
Speaker 2: you get in touch with Cookie, have her call or
Speaker 2: take us people and see if we can avert this problem,
Speaker 2: possibly a major problem. So CBS calls me, can you
Speaker 2: get in touch? I s at sure, in touch with
Speaker 2: Ortega's press guy, Manuel Spinoza, and I tell him, listen,
Speaker 2: there's rumors about this big aircraft coming in. The State
Speaker 2: Department of the US is not happy with this, and
Speaker 2: I think that you should know that they're saying there
Speaker 2: will be a problem if this weaponry makes it into Nicaragua.
Speaker 2: And Manuel's like, well, let me talk to the president.
Speaker 2: I'll get back to you. I'm talking to New York.
Speaker 2: New York's talking to the State Department. And this went
Speaker 2: on for hours.
Speaker 1: If there are legitimate fears that the United States is
Speaker 1: looking for a reason to invade Nicaragua, we attack the
Speaker 1: island of Grenada. In nineteen eighty three, for far Less,
Speaker 1: a Marxist newspaper called The Spartacist wrote that the invasion
Speaker 1: was imminent.
Speaker 6: As USSR seventy one blackbirds smash the sound barrier over Manawa,
Speaker 6: Nicadawens have good reason to believe the bombing will begin
Speaker 6: in five minutes. The imperialist invasion plans are already worked
Speaker 6: out in detail. Nicaraua leader Daniel Lortega said at the
Speaker 6: UN in October, the winds now blowing over Central America
Speaker 6: foretell of holocaust for our peoples.
Speaker 1: The stakes are very high for Nicaragua, and some officials
Speaker 1: in the US government fear this could lead to another Vietnam.
Speaker 2: I'd been doing this the whole night, thinking I'm gonna
Speaker 2: get a nice exclusive here, I'm gonna get a great
Speaker 2: little story here. Well, the MiGs never came in. I
Speaker 2: like to think that I helped avert a bigger problem,
Speaker 2: which would have been a war of sub sort.
Speaker 1: Like a missiles in October type thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like the Cuban missile crisis. Probably not as dangerous
Speaker 2: as that was, but it could have been. We did
Speaker 2: all of that, we averted it all, and I still
Speaker 2: didn't get the story because we couldn't broadcast because the
Speaker 2: State Department was involved, CBS was involved, where Tega's people
Speaker 2: are involved, and I'm in the middle of the whole thing.
Speaker 1: But he wants that story to come out anyway except.
Speaker 2: You I would have loved it. There was no way
Speaker 2: that New York or Miami was ever going to allow
Speaker 2: that because it would look like we were all accomplices.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: You know, what's the State Department doing dealing with CBS
Speaker 2: And what's CBS doing telling me to go talk to insiders?
Speaker 2: So even though I did it to get the big story,
Speaker 2: I never got the big story.
Speaker 1: Did anybody get it?
Speaker 2: No, because no one knew what happened? The problem had
Speaker 2: been averted.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 7: Oh.
Speaker 2: And then CBS, as good as they are to their journalists,
Speaker 2: flew me to Miami. Ambulance waiting at the airport, wheeled
Speaker 2: me in into Mount Sinai Hospital and the receptionist says
Speaker 2: to me, girl, you sure look yellow. You must have
Speaker 2: a bad case of hepatitis. And at that point I
Speaker 2: realized I could have died because if I would have
Speaker 2: allowed them to operate on me in Nicaragua, you cannot
Speaker 2: perform surgery on a hypatha patient because they die. I
Speaker 2: would have died, and no one would have been the wiser.
Speaker 1: So is this one of those stories that everybody decides
Speaker 1: to never talk about again.
Speaker 2: It never happened.
Speaker 1: So basically the story is there is no story. It
Speaker 1: never happened.
Speaker 2: It never happened.
Speaker 1: That would have been huge, too, It would have been huge.
Speaker 1: The Washington Post reported this about the confrontation.
Speaker 4: US officials said yesterday that no Soviet fighter jets have
Speaker 4: been unloaded from a Soviet ship now docked in a
Speaker 4: Nicaraguan port, and that they now believe the ship may
Speaker 4: not contain any of the MEG aircraft. At the same time,
Speaker 4: officials at the Pentagon and State Department sought to quiet
Speaker 4: rumors that the United States was preparing to invade Nicaragua.
Speaker 4: While the United States would consider various options to quote
Speaker 4: unquote neutralize any megs, a State Department official said, the
Speaker 4: idea of a general offensive is quote unquote nonsense.
Speaker 2: Years later, I realized the gravity of what could have
Speaker 2: happened and what we averted day.
Speaker 1: Did it ever cross your mind that some o the
Speaker 1: State Department determined that you were someone they could talk to.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, we always kind of wondered how they knew that.
Speaker 2: But we know how our government works, and I'm sure
Speaker 2: they were very well versed in my activities. You know
Speaker 2: what I was up to at any given moment.
Speaker 1: It's kind of scary in a way.
Speaker 8: It was.
Speaker 1: So the US State Department used Cookie to stave off
Speaker 1: a major Cold War confrontation in Central America. Her power
Speaker 1: and influence are at an all time high. The question
Speaker 1: is what will she do with it.
Speaker 2: I knew I was a powerful person, just personality wise,
Speaker 2: even before all of this, through the drug days, through
Speaker 2: the modeling days, through all of it. As far as
Speaker 2: wielding power, yes, I started to realize that I could
Speaker 2: get anything I wanted. I could get in and out
Speaker 2: of anything I want wanted. If Dan Rather or Mike
Speaker 2: Wallace or Don Hewett wanted something, they knew Cookie was
Speaker 2: going to get it for them one way or another.
Speaker 2: I could charm the shit out of anybody.
Speaker 1: One person told me that you were like a mob
Speaker 1: bus who was collecting favors.
Speaker 2: Not intentionally, and I never really had to say, look,
Speaker 2: I did this for you, you got to do this
Speaker 2: for me. It was just sort of understood because it
Speaker 2: wasn't just contacts, and it just wasn't powerful government people
Speaker 2: on either side and in different countries. I also helped
Speaker 2: my own crews and colleagues whatever had to be done,
Speaker 2: whether it was carrying tripods, carrying equipment, helping them if
Speaker 2: they had a hangover, bringing them to the airport, picking
Speaker 2: them up from the making their lives just out and
Speaker 2: out comfortable. You know, happy wife, happy life. Well my
Speaker 2: motto was happy cruise, happy journalists, happy Cookie, and happy
Speaker 2: New York. And I will take that a step further.
Speaker 2: Obviously the networks were all competitors. I wasn't like that.
Speaker 2: Of course, I'm not going to give away my exclusives,
Speaker 2: but I helped other crews in other networks. You could
Speaker 2: always count on Cookie giving us a ride, or if
Speaker 2: we don't have tapes, she can give us tapes. If
Speaker 2: our machines went down, She'll let us choose her machines.
Speaker 2: But then it also extended to outside the TV network circle.
Speaker 2: Anybody that was in my life, friends, relatives, if I
Speaker 2: needed them to work, I made sure they got work.
Speaker 2: The drivers. I spread the wealth.
Speaker 1: Meet Alejandro Belly, one of Cookie's best friends and her
Speaker 1: assistant at the CBS office in Managua aka Chillin.
Speaker 9: She would get quite a bit of money. It would
Speaker 9: always come in cash in dollars. A driver would get
Speaker 9: one hundred dollars a day when normally, you know, if
Speaker 9: they were hired by a private family, he maybe would
Speaker 9: be making twenty dollars a month. So it was this
Speaker 9: huge gap. I was graduated from American University working in
Speaker 9: the health ministry, I started making fourteen I ended up
Speaker 9: making seventeen dollars a month, and I was making one
Speaker 9: hundred dollars with Cookie in a day. In that same way,
Speaker 9: she would have, I don't know, somebody takes care of Chicho,
Speaker 9: somebody that does our nails and does you know, manicures
Speaker 9: and petticures and come there at the office. You know,
Speaker 9: you know she'll tip her well and she's very generous.
Speaker 2: I had a cousin worked for me. I had close friends,
Speaker 2: but I wasn't paying them to do nothing. They pulled
Speaker 2: their own weight. Sure, I spread the wealth, but they
Speaker 2: had to report for duty.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Selene said that you had it figured out where
Speaker 1: you could have three or four or sometimes five drivers
Speaker 1: working consistently and they were getting paid one hundred dollars
Speaker 1: a day for the.
Speaker 2: Moment in dollars, which was like as if I was
Speaker 2: paying them in goal bars.
Speaker 1: The way he put it, though, it was almost calculated
Speaker 1: how you could help as many people as possible.
Speaker 2: Many people as possible, And people like Chilean people like
Speaker 2: my cousin Hilda, people like my brother Jimmy. They all
Speaker 2: worked for their money. But I just made sure that
Speaker 2: that money was spread as far as I could. You're
Speaker 2: in a war zone, people are hurting. Everybody could use money.
Speaker 2: I made sure everyone, drivers and helpers and maids were
Speaker 2: raising whole families. And that was my go to amount,
Speaker 2: one hundred dollars a day.
Speaker 9: She keeps her allies in a way, you know, she
Speaker 9: was able to really reward them. She doesn't buy them,
Speaker 9: but she rewards her loyalties.
Speaker 2: That was just an extension of the way I've always
Speaker 2: been in my life. I think she called it comfortable scam.
Speaker 1: A comfortable scam. I love that.
Speaker 2: And of course my theme song was comfortably.
Speaker 1: Numb for obvious reasons.
Speaker 2: For obvious reasons.
Speaker 9: In terms of what this meant for the drivers, it's
Speaker 9: they were able to send kids to education and have
Speaker 9: it changed schools, have a better car, have its in house,
Speaker 9: keep another mistress.
Speaker 2: You know, listen, Steve, everybody around me made money halfway
Speaker 2: for altruistic reasons and halfway because these are people that
Speaker 2: are helping me do my job. Their payback to me
Speaker 2: was helping me get the best stories and the best
Speaker 2: work coming out of CBS Latin America as possible.
Speaker 1: We can talk about all the good things with journalism
Speaker 1: and all the things like that that you you were
Speaker 1: able to accomplish and help other people accomplish. And I
Speaker 1: know you you had your reasons for paying people well
Speaker 1: and that that's good business. But when you look back
Speaker 1: at that and think about how many people you affected
Speaker 1: in a positive way, how does that feel?
Speaker 2: Let's put it to you this way. Two things I'm
Speaker 2: going to say. They all hated seeing the war end,
Speaker 2: because they all really made their lives because of war.
Speaker 2: And number two, how did I feel? It felt good? Steve?
Speaker 2: Just like it felt good before the war, Just like
Speaker 2: it feels good even today. It makes you feel good.
Speaker 2: So many lives were able to be touched in such
Speaker 2: a positive way. I still hear from these people thirty
Speaker 2: and forty years later.
Speaker 1: If they all say, every one of them I've interviewed,
Speaker 1: they all say, they still get a birthday card, they
Speaker 1: still get a Christmas card, they still get a note,
Speaker 1: they still get a thought sympathy card. I want to
Speaker 1: go on record right now saying that if my cat
Speaker 1: goes to the vet, I send you a card, sometimes
Speaker 1: with a gift certificate. Cookie takes care of her people.
Speaker 1: I know because I'm want to them. After the break,
Speaker 1: she takes it to another level. We'll be right back,
Speaker 1: welcome back. This story is fucking insane. There are several versions,
Speaker 1: all of them dangerous, all of them hilarious. I'm going
Speaker 1: to tell you the funniest version. Remember that time at
Speaker 1: the airport when you forgot you at a joint in
Speaker 1: your backpack and you're sweating bullets watching it go through
Speaker 1: the TSA scanner and you just know you're going to
Speaker 1: freaking jail. It's like that, except you're in a third
Speaker 1: world country in the middle of a civil war. You
Speaker 1: talk a lot about security going in and out of
Speaker 1: these buildings and that type of thing. Do you ever
Speaker 1: have any close calls?
Speaker 2: Yes, we had a great close call, I could say great.
Speaker 2: Now we're being summoned with all the other journalists to
Speaker 2: a press conference, not a big one, A dog and
Speaker 2: Pony Show, which we used to call him. I'm sure
Speaker 2: the San Denisas thought it was going to be a big,
Speaker 2: important press conference. We knew it wasn't and it was
Speaker 2: going to be held at the Ministry of Defense. And
Speaker 2: then after the press conference, I had been given the
Speaker 2: okay for an exclusive interview with the Defense Minister, which
Speaker 2: was President Ortega's brother, Umberto Ortego. And this guy didn't
Speaker 2: give interviews. He, you know, was a very quiet guy,
Speaker 2: secretive obviously because he's the head of defense and they're
Speaker 2: at war.
Speaker 1: Was there a purpose for the interview, No, we.
Speaker 2: Were just wanted an interview with him. Whenever I thought
Speaker 2: that I wanted something extra or exclusive, it didn't hurt
Speaker 2: to ask because all they could do is say no.
Speaker 2: But most of the time they said yes. It would
Speaker 2: always give CBS the per hand, so we knew we
Speaker 2: were going to do that after So we're there, I'm
Speaker 2: with my favorite Cuban American crew Manny and George Bosa.
Speaker 2: I loved working with these guys.
Speaker 8: It was one of those where it was the big
Speaker 8: press conference. Everyone was invited, you know, and those were
Speaker 8: very few and far between. So when they did that,
Speaker 8: everyone showed up. They would take us into a room
Speaker 8: and they'd make us drop all year. And then they
Speaker 8: had the dogs, the German shepherds and their you know,
Speaker 8: secret police, and they would go through your stuff.
Speaker 2: They searched the equipment, they searched the journalists, make sure
Speaker 2: there are no bombs or weapons that you know, something
Speaker 2: unexpected could.
Speaker 1: Happen, so standard operating proceeds SOP.
Speaker 8: So we all filed in and I had a journalists
Speaker 8: vest where I carried my tapes and my microphones and
Speaker 8: some cables, my passport, cash and all that.
Speaker 3: George wore this little vest that was a photographer vest.
Speaker 3: I'm sure you've seen the one to have his little pockets.
Speaker 3: He wore that thing every day. That thing, if you
Speaker 3: were to set it down, it would have walked away
Speaker 3: by itself.
Speaker 2: So we had been up the night before, we'd been partying.
Speaker 2: We just thought we'd just work all the way through
Speaker 2: from partying, go straight to equipment check, which was we
Speaker 2: had to be there around six in the morning. They
Speaker 2: always keep you for hours. We knew we could take
Speaker 2: a nap and sleep while we're waiting.
Speaker 1: So you're saying that you were you guys were up
Speaker 1: partying all night and went straight to their defense.
Speaker 2: Mid yeah, because it was across the street from the hotel.
Speaker 1: Literally, you never slept that night.
Speaker 2: We did sleep, which is not not normal. It was
Speaker 2: pretty you know, normal for us to do.
Speaker 8: The night before, I had been with a friend of
Speaker 8: mine that had gotten me some some weed. And to
Speaker 8: get weed and monogua is not an easy thing to do,
Speaker 8: you know. It's it's hard. It's not bad, but it's
Speaker 8: not the greatest either, So it's rare, and it's he
Speaker 8: treated like like gold, you know, it's it's very u valuable.
Speaker 3: I remember sitting up in his little bed, putting a
Speaker 3: cigarette in his mouth, lighting that, and then rolling a
Speaker 3: joint while he smoked that sick and it was kind
Speaker 3: of one of those one went where you go, oh shit, Sey,
Speaker 3: you know, I mean, I didn't take anything of it.
Speaker 3: Whatever we had many hours before we had to do this.
Speaker 8: We all filing and we walked into this giant room
Speaker 8: and the cameramen put their cameras and tripods down. I
Speaker 8: put down my recorder. I put down my backpack with
Speaker 8: all my batteries and stuff, and then I dropped my
Speaker 8: best because the soldier said to me, we need to
Speaker 8: see the best too, because you can put a lot
Speaker 8: of stuff in it. So I drop it and we
Speaker 8: all file out. And as soon as we file out,
Speaker 8: George comes up.
Speaker 3: To me and he's literally pale, like why does this
Speaker 3: ghost man? And I said, what's up? Man?
Speaker 5: What you know?
Speaker 3: And he says, manny I forgot to take the weed
Speaker 3: out of my little vest.
Speaker 2: Boja looks at me with this look of fear, and
Speaker 2: I was like, oak, hey, now you have to understand.
Speaker 2: They were always scared because being Cuban Americans, they were
Speaker 2: fearful that the sandinisas if they ever got in trouble,
Speaker 2: you know, would throw them in jail and throw away
Speaker 2: the key.
Speaker 8: The reason it was so scary for me is because
Speaker 8: my passport says born in Cuba. Okay, not born in
Speaker 8: the US. It's a US passport, but it says born
Speaker 8: in Havana. And the first time I landed there, the
Speaker 8: Sandinista soldier at the airport, when he took my seventy
Speaker 8: five bucks attacks to come in, he said, you left
Speaker 8: Cuba to laugh at the revolution.
Speaker 3: If they catch us with drugs, we're done. You know,
Speaker 3: I get to Miami, Cubans with drugs. You know that
Speaker 3: would have been headline news in Nicarago.
Speaker 8: Cookie's like, wow, let me see what I can do.
Speaker 8: So she disappears behind the door and then she cracks
Speaker 8: the door opened a bit and says, post get in
Speaker 8: here and get it really quick. So I slide in.
Speaker 8: I may believe that I'm looking through my vest and
Speaker 8: I grabbed a battery and then I grabbed that and
Speaker 8: I crushed it in my hand so nobody could see it,
Speaker 8: and I walk out.
Speaker 2: I said to Boza, we got to get rid of it.
Speaker 2: So I take the bag. I put it down my pants.
Speaker 2: Manny also knows what's going on. He's not scared, because
Speaker 2: Manny is pretty fearless, but he knew that this could
Speaker 2: be a problem. It could be a brujaha. Somebody could
Speaker 2: lose their job, and I just wasn't going to let
Speaker 2: that happen.
Speaker 1: You Like, CBS wouldn't be happy about it.
Speaker 2: Of course not. Here's one of their crew caught with drugs.
Speaker 2: We don't know what type of scandal that would be.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna take care of it. Put it in my pants,
Speaker 2: ask where's the bathroom to one of the security police there,
Speaker 2: and I go in the bathroom and I start to
Speaker 2: flush it down the toilet. Weed. You got to understand
Speaker 2: we're in a third world country. I know, I keep
Speaker 2: repeating this, it's during the war. The facilities are not
Speaker 2: top notch like here in the United States.
Speaker 3: I don't know how many third world bathrooms that you've
Speaker 3: been to. I have been to quite a few, and
Speaker 3: that was one of the worst.
Speaker 2: So as I'm flushing it down the toilet, and it's
Speaker 2: several times I'm flushing because I've got to make sure
Speaker 2: it goes, the toilet gets backed up and the weed
Speaker 2: starts coming back up and overflowing. And anyone that's overflowed
Speaker 2: a toilet knows what I'm talking about, but it's usually
Speaker 2: not for weed in a military state. And it is
Speaker 2: now all over the floor and I'm trying to pick
Speaker 2: it up. The toilet is backed up. I know, I
Speaker 2: can't get anything else down there. Whatever got down and
Speaker 2: went fine, but there's a lot of it out floating
Speaker 2: in the toilet and floating on the floor. So I
Speaker 2: stick my head out door and tell the security guy, look,
Speaker 2: I'm sick. I've got a bad stomach. I said, I'm
Speaker 2: having an accident in here. I need you to get
Speaker 2: me some towels. I don't think there were paper towels
Speaker 2: in those days. Just get me some brags, anything you can,
Speaker 2: so I can clean up this mess. Of course, he
Speaker 2: doesn't want to go in because he figures it's another
Speaker 2: kind of mess. So I clean up as much as
Speaker 2: I can, and I take it all and put it
Speaker 2: back in my pants, because I figure, Okay, if anybody's
Speaker 2: going to get caught, it's going to be me. The
Speaker 2: crew they're okay, they're safe. I had already told them,
Speaker 2: you admit to nothing. Anything happens. I'm going to take
Speaker 2: the fall because Cookie, as you know by now, can
Speaker 2: get in and out of anything. I'm kind of damp
Speaker 2: down there, but of course I attributed to being sick.
Speaker 2: By this point, I'm in that bathroom thirty minutes, maybe
Speaker 2: more so. Security's getting a little not nervous, but they're
Speaker 2: kind of like wondering, what the hell's going on? How
Speaker 2: sick is this girl? The guy sticks his head in,
Speaker 2: Knox Forverd sticks his head in. Are you okay in there?
Speaker 2: I'm okay, I'll be out in a minute. So I
Speaker 2: come out. I got it back in my pants. I
Speaker 2: just continue to tell Manny and George no worries. I
Speaker 2: got this, I got you. You admit to nothing. If
Speaker 2: anything happens, you just you're shocked. I'll take the fall,
Speaker 2: no worries. And even if they would have been caught
Speaker 2: with it, I would have never allowed anything to happen
Speaker 2: to them either, because that's just the way I was
Speaker 2: with my guys. You know, I just took care of everybody.
Speaker 2: We went on to do the press conference, we went
Speaker 2: on to do the interview with Roberto Ortega, and nobody
Speaker 2: was the wiser.
Speaker 1: But y'all got shit faced after that.
Speaker 2: I'm sure we did. I'm sure we did. That was
Speaker 2: a close call.
Speaker 1: I know that George, he'll never forget it. He thinks
Speaker 1: that you saved his ass that day, and.
Speaker 2: I've let him think that. But again, I would have
Speaker 2: never let anything bad happen to him. I would have
Speaker 2: taken the blame before I would have let anything happen,
Speaker 2: because maybe they did have a viable fear.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 2: Yet again, Cookie got away with it and got the
Speaker 2: story and got the story. Didn't you tell me that
Speaker 2: that scene reminded you of something?
Speaker 1: Yeah, when you tell me that story, it always reminds
Speaker 1: me of Lucy in the Chocolate factory.
Speaker 3: Oh right, girls, now this is your last chance.
Speaker 2: If one piece of kind it gets past you and
Speaker 2: into the packing room unwrapped, you're fired, you.
Speaker 1: Know, trying to grab the chocolates and then keep coming
Speaker 1: and coming, and I can just see you over the
Speaker 1: toilet trying to grab the weed, stick it back in flush.
Speaker 1: It is coming back up, over and over. I just
Speaker 1: see that in my head. To me, if that's not
Speaker 1: a scene in a movie or a TV series, I
Speaker 1: don't know what will be.
Speaker 2: And you're right, it was like that insanity.
Speaker 1: It's fucking hilarious.
Speaker 2: But at the moment I knew it was insanity, but
Speaker 2: I wasn't laughing. I laughed later, but not at the moment.
Speaker 1: I can only imagine the look on Bosa's.
Speaker 2: Face when I came out in front of my pants.
Speaker 1: I mean, he probably said, what hell happened?
Speaker 2: I couldn't go into details. Yeah, I said, you don't
Speaker 2: want to know.
Speaker 8: Yeah, it was bad, but again, it was funny. Now,
Speaker 8: Cookie and I laugh about that, and we laugh until
Speaker 8: our side's hurt. But in the moment, it wasn't a
Speaker 8: good time.
Speaker 3: One of those things that you never never forget another
Speaker 3: day in the lives of the camera crew for CBS
Speaker 3: News and the.
Speaker 1: Aragua coming up. The after party blows up on her
Speaker 1: favorite cameraman, and a good friend from another news agency
Speaker 1: faces an unthinkable tragedy. We'll be right back. Combat news
Speaker 1: is a dangerous business. It's life or death that takes
Speaker 1: its toll on the men and women who bring it
Speaker 1: to our evening news far from home, and their families
Speaker 1: have to deal with it day after day, one way
Speaker 1: or another. It can be a lot of fun, but
Speaker 1: can also be heartbreaking. It's like going to a company
Speaker 1: convention in Vegas, but people are shooting at you, so
Speaker 1: forgive me. But what happens in Managua stays in Managua.
Speaker 2: We've already said it before. We worked hard, we partied
Speaker 2: harder within the Foreign War Correspondence Group. I'm gonna throw
Speaker 2: these numbers out there. Three four selves partied hard.
Speaker 1: By partying, you mean like heavy drinking.
Speaker 2: And drugs and drugs.
Speaker 1: Manny Alvarez, CBS cameraman, weighs in on the party culture
Speaker 1: at CBS News Managua.
Speaker 3: The hotel was party central, so after we were done working,
Speaker 3: we would all go to the office and whatever jobs
Speaker 3: had to be done there, screening the change whatever, and
Speaker 3: the party would begin.
Speaker 2: When Manny would come to town, it would just make
Speaker 2: my existence wonderful because I had my brother, my friend,
Speaker 2: my colleague all rolled up into wine and we'd always
Speaker 2: get the story done. We were all very professional getting
Speaker 2: the story. And so come end of story and back
Speaker 2: at the hotel, you know, we'd start the partying.
Speaker 3: And I remember could he had a little kidnt get pass.
Speaker 3: I think it was instead of little sandwiches, she had
Speaker 3: bottles of you know, voxa or whatever it was wine,
Speaker 3: and you know, we got high. And if not every night,
Speaker 3: several nights a week.
Speaker 2: Manny would always be the life of the party. Extraordinary
Speaker 2: and he was funny, silly, you know, all the adjectives
Speaker 2: that go with somebody that's a little too inebriated.
Speaker 3: Usually did not get out of hand. I mean, if
Speaker 3: you got shit faced, you went to your room, no
Speaker 3: big deal. Somebody would take you to your room.
Speaker 2: He would paint his face, or he would let us
Speaker 2: paint his face, and would sing, we'd dance, and then
Speaker 2: Manny would always take it just a little bit further.
Speaker 3: That one night and it was myself, Rob Luchet, who
Speaker 3: was an edit, and I think there was a third person,
Speaker 3: if I remember correctly, not that I should remember, because
Speaker 3: I was completely out of my mind. We decided that
Speaker 3: we were going to have a fight with the fire
Speaker 3: extinguishers that were in the hallways of the hotel. And
Speaker 3: the fire stinguishers were those big, giant ones like from
Speaker 3: back in the day, with the wheel on top, and
Speaker 3: they had a rubber hose, you know, probably a couple
Speaker 3: of feet long, and they had what seemed to be
Speaker 3: water in it, so there was some kind of liquid
Speaker 3: that squirted like water, and with that hose you could
Speaker 3: squirt that ten feet I don't know, eight feet twelve feet.
Speaker 3: So we were running up and down the hallways squirt
Speaker 3: each other.
Speaker 2: And he was spraying guess doors guests.
Speaker 3: At one point find myself right in front of the elevator.
Speaker 3: The door's open, there's a couple dressed up to go out.
Speaker 3: I swoardled him, and I mean I heard some up
Speaker 3: and down. They screamed the elevator clothes and I have,
Speaker 3: of course work running down the hallway to do whatever
Speaker 3: to whoever else, And at some point somebody called the cops.
Speaker 2: There had been too many complaints and enough complaints that
Speaker 2: the hotel couldn't keep it quiet because the hotel, you
Speaker 2: got to remember, was our ally because they're making millions
Speaker 2: off of all the journalists and especially CBS, because not
Speaker 2: only we had our offices, but I lived there. I
Speaker 2: had my own slew of sweets.
Speaker 1: Turns out the well dressed couple Manny super soaked in
Speaker 1: the elevator, was the Russian ambassador and his wife. Kind
Speaker 1: of a big deal, possibly an international incident.
Speaker 2: We don't know what's gonna happen, if they're gonna put
Speaker 2: him in jail, if they're gonna deport him. Whatever, we
Speaker 2: grab Manny, I take him to my personal suite, you know,
Speaker 2: I hide him and I tell him, Manny, for once,
Speaker 2: please just listen to me and shut the fuck up.
Speaker 2: Please don't say anything, no matter what happens, just follow
Speaker 2: my lead.
Speaker 3: And again I was gone, and I had literally war paint.
Speaker 3: I had pain in my face and a shirt with
Speaker 3: CBS on it.
Speaker 2: So the cops showed up. We still don't know if
Speaker 2: the intent was to arrest him or deport him or both.
Speaker 2: So they come up and we're talking to the police.
Speaker 2: They come to my living quarters. They said, we're going
Speaker 2: to search You're not searching my quarters. I said, you
Speaker 2: could search CBS offices, but you're not searching my personal quarters.
Speaker 2: There's no one in there. My children are sleeping. They weren't.
Speaker 2: They weren't there. They had their own rooms with their nannies.
Speaker 2: Many stayed quiet. As soon as they left, Rob and
Speaker 2: myself said, we're going to get him out of here.
Speaker 2: We're going to take him to the Camino Reale, which
Speaker 2: was the other hotel where journalists stayed.
Speaker 1: This is where George Bosa, the CBS sound man, enters.
Speaker 8: The story The Redsux in the Mets nineteen eighty seven
Speaker 8: World Series.
Speaker 3: In the shit.
Speaker 9: Free and two, the Looky Wilson a little roller up
Speaker 9: along first behind it.
Speaker 8: The ball goes through Butckner's legs. I was at the
Speaker 8: Camino Many, was with Cookie. Manny isn't a baseball fan,
Speaker 8: so everyone was in my room. We had the bathtub
Speaker 8: full of Tonia's and you know, and he petiales and
Speaker 8: we're drinking and having a great time. That game was
Speaker 8: up and down the whole way. Like about one of
Speaker 8: the last innings, Cookie calls me. She's like, hey, Bosa, listen,
Speaker 8: Manny's out of control here at the hotel. Man I mean,
Speaker 8: I don't know what to do with them. Okay, I'm
Speaker 8: gonna send them over to the Camino because they're gonna
Speaker 8: kick him out of the hotel. And this was just
Speaker 8: typical back then, you know. She snuck him down the elevator,
Speaker 8: snuck him out of the back door. Cookie put him
Speaker 8: in a cab and he gets to the Camino and
Speaker 8: I go out to the drive up Man he gets
Speaker 8: out in his underwear, Man with like Cookie's lipstick all
Speaker 8: over his face, and he's like, I don't understand why
Speaker 8: they slew me out of the hotel. So we threw
Speaker 8: a blanket on them and put them in our room.
Speaker 8: And this was just typical back then, you know, because yeah,
Speaker 8: when you got friends and you got people that are dying,
Speaker 8: you know, and you're risking your life every day, you
Speaker 8: tend to really medicate heavily. That was one of those
Speaker 8: nights that Manny medicated.
Speaker 3: I never got caught. I didn't get caught later. They
Speaker 3: didn't call me later, though. I'm sure if they would
Speaker 3: have caught me that particular night, it would have been
Speaker 3: the end of my career at that point in time.
Speaker 3: And it wasn't just us. It wasn't like all the
Speaker 3: CBS people were all maniacs. It with everybody, you know,
Speaker 3: That's kind of how we blew off steam. What we
Speaker 3: got back from whatever missions that we would go on.
Speaker 2: We were just journalists suffering from PTSD, already letting it
Speaker 2: all out, partying and covering war, death and all the
Speaker 2: wonderful things that come with that.
Speaker 1: Cookie always steps up to keep her boys out of trouble,
Speaker 1: but sometimes the war came with you. A bullshit press
Speaker 1: conference in a bullshit border town called Lopenka changes.
Speaker 2: Everything under the guise of journalists. For many years, even
Speaker 2: at the press club and everything, you had so called
Speaker 2: journalists and they were actually part of terrorist groups, the
Speaker 2: Red Brigade from Italy, Sandetta, Luminosos from Peru, Bader mainehoff
Speaker 2: Gang from Germany, and we didn't know that they were terrorists.
Speaker 1: So they were hanging out in hanging out.
Speaker 2: Because they were probably fleeing somebody chasing them. They were
Speaker 2: given safe haven in Nicaraguen. They were told to play
Speaker 2: like they were journalists, so at any given moment, unbeknownst
Speaker 2: to most of us, we were hanging out with these terrorists.
Speaker 1: So you were partying with terrorists.
Speaker 2: Yeah, not all the time, but they could be at parties,
Speaker 2: you know, press parties, journalists. We found out later on,
Speaker 2: you know, even Iranian terrorist groups they were all there.
Speaker 2: Ira was there, the Japanese, I forget what they're called.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the ones who poisoned everyone.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean they were all there because Nicaragua was
Speaker 2: a safe haven for terrorists. So anybody that was against
Speaker 2: the US, they will welcome in Monagua.
Speaker 1: So the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Speaker 2: There you go. Now what Lapenka was all about, it
Speaker 2: was different. It was in Costa Rica.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was right off was a border.
Speaker 2: It was a press conference being held by Eden Pastora,
Speaker 2: who had initially started off as the Sandinist in the
Speaker 2: early days.
Speaker 1: Eden Pastora was one of the heroes of the nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy nine Santiniastera Revolution. They called him Commander Zero, that
Speaker 1: nickname he earned when he masterminded one of the most
Speaker 1: daring raids ever documented. The Washington Post wrote this about
Speaker 1: the attack.
Speaker 4: About twenty leftist gorillas shot their way into the National
Speaker 4: Palace yesterday and seized about fifty senators and other officials
Speaker 4: as hostages. At three persons were reported killed in the
Speaker 4: firing before National Guard troops surrounded the palace. The guerrillas
Speaker 4: lined up the hostages along the large windows of the
Speaker 4: building to ward off fire from the National Guard.
Speaker 1: Among the fifteen hundred officials being held for several cabinet
Speaker 1: members and Samosa's half brother, Jose Simosa, an off and
Speaker 1: on journalist. Nobel Prize winning novelist Gabrielle Garcia Marquez wrote
Speaker 1: this about the siege.
Speaker 7: The plans seemed too simple to be seen. Take the
Speaker 7: National Palace, Himan, Now, what in broad daylight would a
Speaker 7: force of only twenty six and hold the members of
Speaker 7: the House of Deputies hostage in exchange for the release
Speaker 7: of all political prisoners. Leadership of the Sandinista National Liberation
Speaker 7: Front did not consider the storming of this marketplace of
Speaker 7: bureaucracy insanely simple, but just the opposite, a crazy master stroke.
Speaker 7: The plan, in fact, had been conceived and proposed initially
Speaker 7: in nineteen seventy by the experienced militant and then Pastora,
Speaker 7: but it was only put into effect when it became
Speaker 7: all too clear that the US had decided to help
Speaker 7: Somosa remain on his bloodstained throne until nineteen eighty one.
Speaker 7: He has been an active revolutionary militant for the past
Speaker 7: twenty years. Pastora's marvelous sense of humor cannot obscure his
Speaker 7: aptitude for command. His earliest memory, from the age of
Speaker 7: seven was the death of his father, murdered by the
Speaker 7: National Guard of Anastasio Somosa.
Speaker 2: Garcia.
Speaker 1: If the name isn't familiar, Gabriel Garcia Marquez is a
Speaker 1: Colombian author, best known for two of my favorite novels,
Speaker 1: One hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time
Speaker 1: of Cholera. He clearly had a romance with Eating Pastora Eden.
Speaker 2: Pastora was going to give the press conference. Many journalists
Speaker 2: were there, not the big networks.
Speaker 1: We weren't there in the background. What we don't know?
Speaker 1: There's a plot.
Speaker 2: There's a plot to blow up a chill Pastora. And
Speaker 2: if a couple of journalists killed along the way, oh well.
Speaker 1: Peer Anchor Hanson, a Danish photographer, was introduced to a
Speaker 1: Swedish journalist by mutual friends, asking to show him around.
Speaker 1: They attended Pastora's press conference together. Hanson put a bomb
Speaker 1: in his camera, back, worked his way through the journalists
Speaker 1: covering the event, set it down under a table, then
Speaker 1: hurried away, setting it off with a walkie talkie and
Speaker 1: ripped through the gathering, killing seven people and leaving a
Speaker 1: dozen injured. It was a bloodbath. The Washington Post covered
Speaker 1: the story the next day.
Speaker 4: A bomb exploded last night during a news conference being
Speaker 4: held by Nicaraguin rebel leader Eden Pastora along the Nicaraguan
Speaker 4: Costa Rican border, wounding Pastora and two dozen others and
Speaker 4: killing two journalists, including one American and two rebels. Among
Speaker 4: the dead were Linda Fraser, thirty eight, of Portland, Oregon,
Speaker 4: who worked for the Costa Rican English daily, The Tico Times.
Speaker 4: No one claimed responsibility for the blast, which occurred shortly
Speaker 4: after Pastora had begun an EVA news conference in his
Speaker 4: jungle headquarters at the Nicaraguan village of Lapenka. The remote
Speaker 4: village on the banks of the San Juan River is
Speaker 4: not reachable by road, and the reporters had traveled by
Speaker 4: dugout canoe from Costa Rica. Some Costa Rican officials accused
Speaker 4: Nicaraguay's ruling Sandinistas of responsibility. Leaders of the rebel group
Speaker 4: initially accused the CIA, which has been at odds with Pastora.
Speaker 2: Everyone assumed that it was the US behind it, that
Speaker 2: it was the us that bombed it to make it
Speaker 2: look like the Sandinistas that It was always a cat
Speaker 2: and mouse game. You know, you never really knew who
Speaker 2: was who, who was doing something, for what reasons they
Speaker 2: were doing it. It was a very dangerous game to
Speaker 2: be in, and of course being in dangerous games was
Speaker 2: my thing. That had always been my fear, and I've
Speaker 2: told you about that fear that I could be assassinated
Speaker 2: or killed by one side trying to make the other
Speaker 2: side look like they had done me in. It could
Speaker 2: be even friends knowingly doing this. Because the Swedish dude
Speaker 2: that did it was under the influence of dark people.
Speaker 2: I don't think he was even clear who he was
Speaker 2: working for.
Speaker 1: Many years later, the Sweetest Journalist revealed that he was
Speaker 1: introduced to Hanson by Sandinista intelligence agents. He knew they
Speaker 1: were spies, but didn't know that Hanson the bomber was
Speaker 1: really Argentine terrorist vital Roberto Ganguin, hired by the Sandinistas
Speaker 1: to take out Pastora. Sadness and guilt dogged him for
Speaker 1: the rest of his life. For Cookie, the attack hit
Speaker 1: close to home.
Speaker 2: Up until that point, journalists really had not been killed
Speaker 2: inside of Nicaragua. It was probably the least dangerous war
Speaker 2: to be around, unlike El Salvador or Honduras, where journalists
Speaker 2: were regularly killed. Some of our own colleagues were killed.
Speaker 2: Joe Frasier that worked for Associated Press, his wife was
Speaker 2: there and she was one of the ones killed.
Speaker 1: A journalist.
Speaker 2: Yes, she was a journalist. He happened to be in nicaraguall,
Speaker 2: of course in my office with me.
Speaker 10: She sat up with me all night long as we
Speaker 10: tried to find out any information we could.
Speaker 1: She was really there when I needed somebody.
Speaker 2: And here's a guy six ' five, big guy. I
Speaker 2: have to break the news to him that his wife
Speaker 2: has been killed, and I remember him collapsing on me
Speaker 2: and me trying to keep him up. We were up
Speaker 2: all night crying and you know, trying to figure things out.
Speaker 10: She was always there when needed somebody, and she always
Speaker 10: knew what was going on, and she would usually tell you.
Speaker 10: Some people were officially almost paranoidally competitive down and Cookie
Speaker 10: wasn't like that. She becomes in power and she meant it.
Speaker 10: We were all basically on the same team. We also
Speaker 10: just help each other out. And Cook he was right
Speaker 10: at the top of that list. I had never forgotten
Speaker 10: that when the University of Flanna's murderer, she always sends
Speaker 10: a card.
Speaker 2: I had this thing, and you know by now from
Speaker 2: several episodes that I always liked taking care of my boys,
Speaker 2: and I took care of everybody. Can Soundman, Editors, producers,
Speaker 2: on air, talent writers, big stars at six of us,
Speaker 2: I took care of everybody.
Speaker 1: Lipenko was a wake up call for Cookie and her colleagues,
Speaker 1: a painful reminder that war is a dangerous place and
Speaker 1: you are never really safe, no matter how hard you
Speaker 1: party trying to forget. Next time on Journalista, Cookie walks
Speaker 1: into a minefield and the shrapnel is coming from every direction.
Speaker 2: I hear some screaming and some armed flailing from one
Speaker 2: of the soldiers, saying stop, stop, stop, don't take another step,
Speaker 2: don't move. When somebody tells you that in a warzone,
Speaker 2: you stop, And one of the soldiers says, I hate
Speaker 2: to say this, but you're in a minefield.
Speaker 1: The Journalista podcast features the stories and voice of Cookie
Speaker 1: Hood narrated by Steven Esteb produced by Sean J. Donnelly.
Speaker 1: Executive producers Jason Wagensback, Roy Laughlin and Ellen ka iHeart
Speaker 1: Executive producer Tyler Klang, Written and edited by Stephen Esteb,
Speaker 1: Music by Jay Weigel, Associate producer in sound design Stephen Tanti.
Speaker 1: Sound mixing by Jesse Solonsnider. Special guests Lloyd sr Cindy Pohl,
Speaker 1: Alejandro Belly, George Boza, Manny Alvarez, Jose Torres, tama As,
Speaker 1: Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Joe Fraser. Special thanks to Esplanade Studios,
Speaker 1: The Ranch Studios, Jason Gerwitz, Kyle Frederick, Zack Slaff. This
Speaker 1: is a production of Journalista podcast LLC and iHeartRadio