WEBVTT - Behind the Bastards' Robert Evans & The Iran-Contra Arms Dealing Scandal (Part I) 0:00:01.040 --> 0:00:05.559 I guess Congress has just become a strongly worded letter apparatus. 0:00:05.680 --> 0:00:07.680 It's a bad Yelp review for the President. 0:00:11.240 --> 0:00:14.840 Yes, it carries all the gravitas of a bad Yelp review. 0:00:25.160 --> 0:00:28.760 Welcome to Snapfoo, the show about history's greatest screw ups, 0:00:28.760 --> 0:00:31.520 where we delve into all the MESSI mayhem and then 0:00:31.560 --> 0:00:35.360 try to figure out what it says about us as 0:00:35.640 --> 0:00:39.760 human beings and spoiler alert, it's usually not very good things. 0:00:39.920 --> 0:00:42.440 I'm at Helm's your host, and today I'm joined by 0:00:42.440 --> 0:00:47.360 the host of the insanely popular and entertaining podcast Behind 0:00:47.680 --> 0:00:51.159 the Bastards, which examines the lives and legacies of history's 0:00:51.200 --> 0:00:54.480 worst people. After first establishing his writing jobs at humor 0:00:54.480 --> 0:00:59.600 website Cracked, this guest worked for the Investigative Journalism Group. 0:01:00.480 --> 0:01:04.240 He also reported from conflict zones around the world, including Iraq, Syria, 0:01:04.319 --> 0:01:10.240 and Ukraine, writing extensively on extremism, disinformation, and political violence. 0:01:10.800 --> 0:01:13.920 In addition to his podcasting work, he is the author 0:01:13.959 --> 0:01:17.880 of the novel After the Revolution, a speculative story about 0:01:17.880 --> 0:01:21.600 a fractured future America. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the 0:01:21.640 --> 0:01:24.320 incomparable Robert Evans. 0:01:24.240 --> 0:01:26.880 That was such a nice introduction. Thank you. That's the 0:01:26.920 --> 0:01:29.520 whole podcast. After all the terrible things I've told you, 0:01:30.800 --> 0:01:31.640 all I do is. 0:01:31.640 --> 0:01:35.240 Just give these lovely, glowing introductions and then we call 0:01:35.280 --> 0:01:37.920 it today. No, I am, I'm so glad to have 0:01:37.959 --> 0:01:41.000 you on. I of course have been a guest on 0:01:41.080 --> 0:01:45.840 your podcast Behind the Bastards, not once, but twice. Right, 0:01:46.080 --> 0:01:48.520 I'm still waiting for my third invite. Not going to 0:01:48.560 --> 0:01:51.720 hold it against you yet, but just putting that out there. 0:01:52.160 --> 0:01:55.560 I mean to have you back, but I'm super excited 0:01:55.760 --> 0:01:57.240 to play host to you this time. 0:01:57.400 --> 0:02:00.760 I'm excited to be on Snaffoo. I've been listening season one, 0:02:01.560 --> 0:02:05.160 and yeah, I'm glad to get to actually participate in 0:02:05.200 --> 0:02:05.760 the show now. 0:02:05.760 --> 0:02:07.520 I can't wait to hear what you're going to tell 0:02:07.560 --> 0:02:10.040 me about you are in it now. It's funny our 0:02:10.080 --> 0:02:16.280 shows have some thematic similarities. You focus on bad people 0:02:16.400 --> 0:02:20.600 throughout history. I focus on bad events or incidents or 0:02:20.639 --> 0:02:23.799 mistakes throughout history. Why are we so drawn to the 0:02:23.880 --> 0:02:25.440 dark side, Robert Evans? 0:02:25.919 --> 0:02:28.520 I mean, I think there's part of it's just like 0:02:28.560 --> 0:02:31.800 this little piece in all of us that's encoded by 0:02:31.800 --> 0:02:34.160 evolution to where like if somebody else screws up in 0:02:34.200 --> 0:02:36.280 a major way you want to pay attention to see. 0:02:36.320 --> 0:02:37.800 It's like if you see a car wreck, it's like, 0:02:38.000 --> 0:02:39.920 what happened there? Can I avoid that? Can I make 0:02:39.919 --> 0:02:41.640 sure I don't get into that kind of problem. 0:02:41.760 --> 0:02:43.480 It's funny you put it that way, because I feel 0:02:43.480 --> 0:02:46.160 like that's a well intentioned or it's sort of a 0:02:46.200 --> 0:02:49.280 positive spin on why we're drawn to these things. I 0:02:49.320 --> 0:02:52.280 feel like there's a darker impulse in all of us, 0:02:52.600 --> 0:02:55.440 Like why we look at car crashes. It's not because 0:02:55.680 --> 0:02:58.679 it's like we're looking for ways to avoid that. It's 0:02:58.680 --> 0:03:01.560 because I think, what, what is it? It makes us 0:03:01.560 --> 0:03:04.919 feel safer to see other people injured or something. 0:03:05.160 --> 0:03:06.800 I don't know. That is a good one because like 0:03:06.880 --> 0:03:08.920 one of my favorite ways to relax, like when my 0:03:08.960 --> 0:03:10.400 friends and I a couple of years ago, we all 0:03:10.440 --> 0:03:12.440 got laid off at the website we've been working for, 0:03:12.480 --> 0:03:14.280 and I had everyone over to the house and I 0:03:14.440 --> 0:03:16.960 just put on hours with a footage of like people 0:03:17.040 --> 0:03:19.720 injuring themselves trying to cut down trees. Because it'll be 0:03:19.800 --> 0:03:21.880 like a guy and his kid and like a three 0:03:22.000 --> 0:03:24.360 hundred year old oak tree and he's got like a 0:03:24.440 --> 0:03:26.920 forty dollars sauce that you bought from home depot, and 0:03:26.919 --> 0:03:29.240 he's like, I can take this tree. And I just 0:03:29.320 --> 0:03:33.560 love watching like the Hubris meet with physics. But there 0:03:33.639 --> 0:03:35.440 is a darkness to it as well. 0:03:35.880 --> 0:03:38.080 I think we all have a sort of schadenfreud of 0:03:38.160 --> 0:03:41.760 gene in us. That's sort of like it can be 0:03:41.920 --> 0:03:44.920 soothing to just know we're not alone in our pain 0:03:45.000 --> 0:03:48.680 and misery in this world. Yeah, it's pretty universal. 0:03:48.200 --> 0:03:50.840 And someone always has it worse than you do pretty much. 0:03:51.240 --> 0:03:55.680 Now you have a background in investigative journalism with some 0:03:55.720 --> 0:03:58.680 pretty serious chops in that area. What drew you into 0:03:58.680 --> 0:03:59.320 that space? 0:03:59.480 --> 0:04:03.680 You know, I've always been fascinated by conflict. I came 0:04:03.880 --> 0:04:06.440 into it sort of as like a military history nerd, 0:04:06.520 --> 0:04:09.880 someone who was interested in that. But really what kind 0:04:09.920 --> 0:04:13.800 of like broke me into like a significant role in 0:04:14.160 --> 0:04:17.120 media was I just happened to be paying attention to 0:04:17.160 --> 0:04:19.839 these weird little corners of the internet right as like 0:04:19.920 --> 0:04:23.520 the alt right erupted and you know, eight chan, four 0:04:23.600 --> 0:04:26.839 chan kind of like became major things in terms of 0:04:26.880 --> 0:04:29.320 like people were carrying out attacks and stuff based on 0:04:30.160 --> 0:04:33.640 you know, having been radicalized in these little fascist corners 0:04:33.640 --> 0:04:36.040 of the Internet, And I just kind of been watching 0:04:36.080 --> 0:04:38.279 them for a couple of years, and so I've realized 0:04:38.320 --> 0:04:40.000 at a certain point, like, oh, there's not a lot 0:04:40.000 --> 0:04:42.479 of other people who understand how these communities work. I 0:04:42.480 --> 0:04:45.560 should probably explain them to people, because members of those 0:04:45.600 --> 0:04:47.080 communities are now killing people. 0:04:47.360 --> 0:04:47.600 Right. 0:04:47.720 --> 0:04:52.400 It was a mix of like accident and I guess happenstance. 0:04:52.560 --> 0:04:56.520 Sure, well, it was a product of your own curiosity, right, 0:04:56.720 --> 0:04:58.000 And I think I feel like that's one of the 0:04:58.000 --> 0:05:01.280 traits of the great journalists out there, is like this 0:05:01.360 --> 0:05:05.000 relentless curiosity and that it's coming from a genuine place. 0:05:05.040 --> 0:05:06.800 It's not just like how do I get the next 0:05:06.800 --> 0:05:09.880 big scoop? You know, it's like, yeah, I really my 0:05:10.040 --> 0:05:12.120 sense and I'm not a journalist at all, but my 0:05:12.200 --> 0:05:15.160 sense of it is that the journalists, the great ones, 0:05:15.440 --> 0:05:19.240 really have like a personal, like unquenchable thirst to know 0:05:19.960 --> 0:05:24.279 and this curiosity that drives through because investigative journalism is tedious, 0:05:24.560 --> 0:05:27.880 it is incredibly time consuming, it can be it can 0:05:27.920 --> 0:05:32.880 be dangerous a lot of times, and uh, and that 0:05:33.160 --> 0:05:36.200 thirst for for the truth or for knowledge or for 0:05:36.200 --> 0:05:40.599 for clarity on something is really powerful. I think it's 0:05:40.640 --> 0:05:43.400 such an admirable space to be in do you see 0:05:43.680 --> 0:05:47.640 great investigative journalism happening today? Like, who are the people 0:05:47.720 --> 0:05:50.080 shit that you think are really standing out or doing 0:05:50.080 --> 0:05:53.599 great work? I mean besides Tucker Carlson, of course, of 0:05:53.640 --> 0:05:56.159 course Tucker. You and I are both big fans of 0:05:55.880 --> 0:05:56.760 of Tucker. 0:05:57.960 --> 0:06:00.960 You know, my old colleagues at Ballet Cat continue to 0:06:00.960 --> 0:06:04.480 do great work. You know, the New York Times Visual 0:06:04.520 --> 0:06:09.640 Investigations desk has done some really impressive open source reporting 0:06:09.839 --> 0:06:13.120 on conflicts, I mean all over the world over the 0:06:13.160 --> 0:06:17.720 last like several years. I find myself really interested in 0:06:17.880 --> 0:06:21.839 BBC Africa Eye, which is their kind of open source covering, 0:06:22.000 --> 0:06:25.680 like particularly like war crimes in places like Cameroon. So 0:06:25.720 --> 0:06:29.200 there's a lot of really interesting nuts and bolts work 0:06:29.320 --> 0:06:32.680 being done by folks who are willing to do things 0:06:32.720 --> 0:06:36.479 like spend hundreds of hours combing through like footage that 0:06:36.880 --> 0:06:38.640 we know is a war crime but we don't know 0:06:38.960 --> 0:06:41.320 what militia was responsible or where it was done, and 0:06:41.360 --> 0:06:44.719 like laboriously matching, like you can kind of see a 0:06:44.760 --> 0:06:47.560 mountain in the background, and so they'll just spend weeks 0:06:47.600 --> 0:06:50.000 going through Google Maps and like it's this mountain and 0:06:50.080 --> 0:06:52.080 because of where it is in the frame, of the shot. 0:06:52.160 --> 0:06:55.760 We can like now locate this exact point geographically, and 0:06:55.800 --> 0:06:58.120 we know that these militant groups were acted Like that's 0:06:58.279 --> 0:07:00.640 really impressive work to make so much more of a 0:07:00.640 --> 0:07:02.680 pain in the butt than what I did, you know, 0:07:02.720 --> 0:07:05.799 when I was covering that stuff. So I have tremendous 0:07:05.800 --> 0:07:09.760 admiration for that and anybody who's doing like financial crimes 0:07:10.360 --> 0:07:16.080 investigative journalism. This the wonkiness required, the ability to dig 0:07:16.200 --> 0:07:19.400 deep into like the financials of a company that's doing 0:07:19.400 --> 0:07:22.520 something wrong, is so labor intensive. 0:07:22.760 --> 0:07:25.720 I can barely balance my check book. I can't. I 0:07:25.760 --> 0:07:28.000 can't even wrap my head around that stuff. And then 0:07:28.080 --> 0:07:31.160 it's not not only the digging into it and the 0:07:31.200 --> 0:07:34.040 figuring it out, it's the it's then the ability to 0:07:34.560 --> 0:07:38.160 translate it into English and then an interesting way that 0:07:38.160 --> 0:07:42.480 that lay people can understand. Well, kudos to you and 0:07:41.720 --> 0:07:45.560 your your colleagues and all the people out there doing 0:07:45.600 --> 0:07:53.640 great investigative journalism. So let's dig in for today's snafu. 0:07:53.760 --> 0:07:56.280 I chose something that I think is kind of in 0:07:56.320 --> 0:07:59.560 both of our wheelhouses because it features both bad people 0:07:59.720 --> 0:08:05.120 and bad events, which makes it, you know, it's kind 0:08:05.120 --> 0:08:08.960 of a it's a mashup of behind the Bastards and Snaffou. 0:08:09.240 --> 0:08:09.800 I like it. 0:08:10.000 --> 0:08:10.920 What would we call that? 0:08:10.960 --> 0:08:12.600 Behind the snaffs? 0:08:12.640 --> 0:08:16.400 Behind? I feel like there's a good portmanteau with with 0:08:16.560 --> 0:08:20.720 snaffoo and bastards, and I want to call it snastards. 0:08:21.040 --> 0:08:25.080 Sure, that's the best. There we go, There we go. 0:08:25.200 --> 0:08:26.080 We're gonna cut all that. 0:08:27.800 --> 0:08:33.120 All right. Today's episode is peak Reagan era Cold War insanity, 0:08:34.160 --> 0:08:37.840 A true international pickle of the extra spicy variety. This 0:08:38.040 --> 0:08:40.720 is the Ran Contra Affair. 0:08:41.160 --> 0:08:41.679 Beautiful. 0:08:42.280 --> 0:08:44.480 Do you remember anything about this? I think I'm a 0:08:44.520 --> 0:08:45.920 little older than you. I'm not sure. 0:08:46.640 --> 0:08:48.520 Yeah, I was born in eighty eight, so I don't 0:08:48.559 --> 0:08:51.400 like have first hand memories of it, but I do remember. 0:08:51.520 --> 0:08:54.040 I remember my first because I grew up in a 0:08:54.120 --> 0:08:57.760 very conservative household and we watched Fox News a lot, 0:08:57.800 --> 0:09:00.760 and Olliver North had a television show, The Bush Years, 0:09:00.920 --> 0:09:02.000 Sure Story, which. 0:09:01.800 --> 0:09:04.920 I've always on CNN. Was it on I think his 0:09:05.000 --> 0:09:07.280 shirt was on CNN. Yeah, he had like a war 0:09:07.440 --> 0:09:08.679 history show. Yeah. 0:09:08.720 --> 0:09:10.280 I forget which network it was on, but I know 0:09:10.320 --> 0:09:11.880 it was on a lot. And I asked my parents, like, 0:09:11.880 --> 0:09:14.880 who is Who's that guy? They were like, well, he 0:09:14.960 --> 0:09:17.120 got in some trouble a few years back, but it 0:09:17.160 --> 0:09:22.600 was totally Yeah, that was my parents. 0:09:23.000 --> 0:09:26.280 We'll learn a lot about Oliver North today. It's funny 0:09:26.280 --> 0:09:29.760 I remember, I feel like and maybe it's just because 0:09:29.800 --> 0:09:32.679 I've read so much about it, but I I feel 0:09:32.679 --> 0:09:36.679 like I remember seeing these hearings and news coverage as 0:09:36.720 --> 0:09:40.440 a kid. I was born in seventy four, so this 0:09:40.600 --> 0:09:43.319 was all sort of I was around ten twelve when 0:09:43.360 --> 0:09:45.840 a lot of this stuff was breaking. But let's get 0:09:45.920 --> 0:09:48.360 right into it. So I think it's important to start 0:09:48.840 --> 0:09:51.720 any conversation about the Iran contra affair with a quick warning, 0:09:52.240 --> 0:09:55.800 which is that this can get a little confusing. While 0:09:55.800 --> 0:09:58.320 the name sounds like one neat, tidy little package, the 0:09:58.360 --> 0:10:01.600 Iran contra affair is actually a very complicated web of 0:10:01.679 --> 0:10:08.000 deceit and absurdity, involving completely different American adversaries into completely 0:10:08.480 --> 0:10:13.520 different crises in completely different hemispheres, and they all get 0:10:13.520 --> 0:10:18.640 tangled up in a beautiful knot. As we'll see, these 0:10:18.679 --> 0:10:23.840 crises were initially so fundamentally unrelated that it's hard to 0:10:24.040 --> 0:10:26.920 fathom how they mix up. That's part of the fun 0:10:27.000 --> 0:10:27.280 of this. 0:10:27.920 --> 0:10:30.280 Yeah, and it really says a lot about how widely 0:10:30.360 --> 0:10:33.120 we were screwing around with the rest of the world. Yeah, 0:10:33.200 --> 0:10:37.280 those years that like a great point, Nicaragua and Iran 0:10:37.440 --> 0:10:40.240 went up tied together in a scandal through us. 0:10:40.640 --> 0:10:45.520 Exactly. Yes, these two countries so far. 0:10:45.360 --> 0:10:47.320 Apart, couldn't have less to do with each other. 0:10:47.840 --> 0:10:50.720 The United States manages to just tie them into this 0:10:51.160 --> 0:10:54.760 beautiful Gordian knot, which we're going to try to unravel 0:10:54.800 --> 0:10:56.960 a little bit. So let's begin our snapfoo in the 0:10:57.000 --> 0:11:02.000 summer of nineteen seventy nine, a famously chill, uneventful period 0:11:02.040 --> 0:11:05.880 in global history. Just kidding, not at all. The Vietnam 0:11:05.920 --> 0:11:10.360 War had ended just four years prior, the psychic wounds 0:11:10.360 --> 0:11:14.760 were still very fresh in America. Jimmy Carter was president, 0:11:15.120 --> 0:11:20.120 and the year's headlines included Vietnam invading Cambodia, China subsequently 0:11:20.120 --> 0:11:24.319 invading Vietnam because of course, Margaret Thatcher becoming the UK's 0:11:24.360 --> 0:11:28.880 first female prime minister, and the Iranian Revolution, which will 0:11:29.040 --> 0:11:31.760 become very important later in our story. Now, let's jump 0:11:31.880 --> 0:11:35.640 to a tiny country in Central America called Nicaragua, roughly 0:11:35.679 --> 0:11:38.400 the size of New York State, nestled right between Honduras 0:11:38.400 --> 0:11:43.920 and Costa Rica. Their leader was dictator Anastasio Somosa, whose 0:11:43.960 --> 0:11:47.600 family had spent decades running the country with corruption, repression, 0:11:47.840 --> 0:11:51.720 and a lot of support from good old Uncle Sam. 0:11:51.960 --> 0:11:56.520 Oh yeah, we're just propping this dictator right on up. 0:11:57.080 --> 0:12:00.640 But on July nineteenth, nineteen seventy nine, so Moso was 0:12:00.760 --> 0:12:07.960 overthrown by Nicaragua's socialist Sandinistas. Almost immediately, Ronald Reagan came 0:12:08.000 --> 0:12:10.880 into office in nineteen eighty, and good Old Ronnie had 0:12:10.920 --> 0:12:16.000 a very clear worldview communism wasn't something to manage, it 0:12:16.080 --> 0:12:19.760 was something to beat. This became known, of course, as 0:12:19.800 --> 0:12:23.280 the Reagan Doctrine, which basically said, we're not just going 0:12:23.320 --> 0:12:26.160 to try to contain communism around the world. We're going 0:12:26.200 --> 0:12:29.240 to actively try to roll it back. And one of 0:12:29.240 --> 0:12:31.600 the ways that we're going to do that is by 0:12:31.640 --> 0:12:37.319 supporting anti communist forces around the world, as we'll soon see, 0:12:37.679 --> 0:12:42.120 by pretty much any means necessary. So when Nicaragua was 0:12:42.320 --> 0:12:47.080 socialist Sandinistas overthrew a US backed dictator in seventy nine, 0:12:47.360 --> 0:12:51.040 to many Nicaraguans this felt like liberation. But to Washington, 0:12:51.440 --> 0:12:54.840 it basically felt like Karl Marx had just moved into 0:12:54.840 --> 0:12:55.720 the guest bedroom. 0:12:55.920 --> 0:12:57.800 Yeah, yeah, we went to all this trouble to give 0:12:57.840 --> 0:13:01.559 you guys a nice dictator and up with rocket launchers 0:13:01.559 --> 0:13:04.360 and machine guns. And this is how you repay us, yeah, 0:13:04.440 --> 0:13:08.200 forgiving this guy guns to kill you with exactly. Yeah, 0:13:08.400 --> 0:13:08.920 what the heck? 0:13:09.000 --> 0:13:16.800 Come on? So, yeah, these Sandinistas are socialists, communism adjacent 0:13:16.920 --> 0:13:21.520 close enough that it just was not feeling good because 0:13:21.600 --> 0:13:25.240 this wasn't communism bubbling up in Eastern Europe or Southeast Asia, 0:13:25.320 --> 0:13:28.720 you know, oceans away. This was Central America. It's basically 0:13:28.800 --> 0:13:31.920 a nine iron chip shot from Texas. And now add 0:13:31.920 --> 0:13:36.760 in the Sandinista's explicit ties to the Soviet Union, and 0:13:36.840 --> 0:13:40.800 suddenly Reagan's team is looking at Nicaragua like it's the 0:13:40.800 --> 0:13:43.440 Cold War's new front line. Yeah. 0:13:43.520 --> 0:13:46.160 Yeah, and that's very much like the attitude they had 0:13:46.200 --> 0:13:49.199 at the time, right, this like if it spills over 0:13:49.240 --> 0:13:52.439 into one country, it will ineviatively spread into you know, 0:13:52.559 --> 0:13:55.719 the neighboring countries. And even though, like you know, we 0:13:55.760 --> 0:13:57.800 saw like it during the Korean War, you've got a 0:13:57.840 --> 0:14:02.080 communist North Korea. After the or after the ceasefire, you 0:14:02.120 --> 0:14:04.600 have South Korea, which is not a communist state, and 0:14:04.679 --> 0:14:07.480 North Korea didn't inevitably spread to its neighbors right, Like 0:14:08.200 --> 0:14:11.080 this kind of domino theory already had proved to be 0:14:11.200 --> 0:14:15.120 not totally accurate, but they still really like it's the 0:14:15.160 --> 0:14:17.840 easiest justification for doing whatever you want, right if you're 0:14:17.880 --> 0:14:20.000 just like, if we don't take a handle on this, 0:14:20.200 --> 0:14:22.800 they're going to spread everywhere. There will be communists in 0:14:23.480 --> 0:14:24.560 marching into Texas. 0:14:24.840 --> 0:14:27.480 Well. I really think that, you know, getting into the 0:14:28.480 --> 0:14:31.600 national psyche a little bit. At that time, Yeah, there 0:14:31.720 --> 0:14:37.200 was a genuine sense that communism was just evil, explicitly evil, 0:14:37.200 --> 0:14:38.800 and I mean, I think there still is in some 0:14:38.880 --> 0:14:42.280 various corners. But it was not seen as just a 0:14:42.320 --> 0:14:46.440 sort of competing system of government or sociological experiment of 0:14:46.440 --> 0:14:50.280 some kind. It was seen as like a very evil enterprise. 0:14:50.800 --> 0:14:54.360 And also in that way, it was also perceived as 0:14:54.400 --> 0:14:56.720 kind of a contagion, to your point, like something that 0:14:56.840 --> 0:15:01.280 could catch hold or sort of correc to people's minds 0:15:01.400 --> 0:15:04.760 and then take hold. I don't know, if you're a 0:15:04.800 --> 0:15:08.720 regular American at this time, Robert, are you sort of 0:15:08.760 --> 0:15:13.320 buying the red scare or are you a little more skeptical. 0:15:13.760 --> 0:15:16.080 I mean, I would hope that I would be skeptical. 0:15:16.120 --> 0:15:18.160 You know, as a kid, I certainly wasn't and my 0:15:18.280 --> 0:15:21.560 parents were very much big Reaganites and very much bought 0:15:21.600 --> 0:15:25.240 in to this whole idea that like communism is this 0:15:25.640 --> 0:15:27.960 is inherently different from any other kind of system of 0:15:28.000 --> 0:15:30.960 government around the world, and so much worse even than 0:15:31.000 --> 0:15:33.760 other any kind of other authoritarian we might back, right, 0:15:33.840 --> 0:15:38.440 because there's something inherently extra dangerous about communism. And obviously 0:15:38.680 --> 0:15:41.480 I would say, like looking at the history of this 0:15:41.560 --> 0:15:43.280 period of time and looking at the history of from 0:15:43.280 --> 0:15:45.480 like the fifties up through the seventies to the eighties, 0:15:45.760 --> 0:15:47.760 I don't actually think the evidence is there to say 0:15:47.760 --> 0:15:50.840 that like these communist regimes were any kind of in 0:15:50.880 --> 0:15:55.400 any way inherently worse than any other like flawed authoritarian 0:15:55.480 --> 0:15:58.600 regimes that existed around the world. Right, Like, there's there's 0:15:58.680 --> 0:16:01.520 upsides and there's downside. There's things they did well, there's 0:16:01.600 --> 0:16:04.640 things that they did badly. We can now know that, Like, Yeah, 0:16:04.680 --> 0:16:07.080 the idea that communism, if it was allowed to spread 0:16:07.080 --> 0:16:09.240 to one country, would inevitably spread to all of its 0:16:09.280 --> 0:16:12.600 neighbors just untrue. It didn't happen in a bunch of places, right. 0:16:12.720 --> 0:16:17.040 Costa Rica did not become a communist state, right. But 0:16:17.240 --> 0:16:21.920 I also, you know, people were playing with a different 0:16:22.040 --> 0:16:24.680 set amount of information at the time too, And I'm 0:16:25.320 --> 0:16:29.600 not surprised that, given what folks were learning in school 0:16:29.680 --> 0:16:32.960 and what organizations like the John Birch Society was spreading 0:16:32.960 --> 0:16:35.080 in terms of like anti communist propaganda, that a lot 0:16:35.080 --> 0:16:37.760 of people did believe this is like a life and 0:16:37.880 --> 0:16:39.960 death thing as opposed to like, well, this is a 0:16:40.000 --> 0:16:43.320 country that's like these are regimes that are geopolitically opposed 0:16:43.360 --> 0:16:46.680 to ours, but that doesn't mean they're inherently the devil, you. 0:16:46.640 --> 0:16:49.600 Know, Yeah, I was. I grew up sort of inculcated 0:16:49.640 --> 0:16:54.000 with a sense that the Soviet Union was was evil 0:16:54.240 --> 0:16:56.840 that sort of like was a sweeping opinion of just 0:16:56.880 --> 0:16:59.920 sort of the entire population, which seems kind of. 0:17:00.360 --> 0:17:01.480 But extremely common. 0:17:01.920 --> 0:17:05.040 Yeah, what's really interesting to parse here is how much 0:17:05.080 --> 0:17:10.199 of the anti communist activity on the part of our 0:17:10.240 --> 0:17:14.680 government at the time was more of an ideological sort 0:17:14.680 --> 0:17:18.040 of crusade or was it more just about trying to 0:17:18.040 --> 0:17:22.040 control and influence various sort of geographic pockets around the world. 0:17:22.440 --> 0:17:25.760 We'll learn a little bit more, but that's a really 0:17:25.760 --> 0:17:29.680 fun sort of open debate to tap into, and I. 0:17:29.640 --> 0:17:32.520 Think it's kind of worth looking back on previous great 0:17:32.560 --> 0:17:35.520 power clashes that it happened not that long previously, including 0:17:35.560 --> 0:17:39.280 like the Great Game between Russia and the British Empire, 0:17:39.400 --> 0:17:42.119 and kind of the early chunk of the early parts 0:17:42.160 --> 0:17:45.040 of the twentieth century, very end of the nineteenth century, 0:17:45.440 --> 0:17:47.800 where you had a lot of the same language, Oh, 0:17:47.880 --> 0:17:51.159 the t Czarist Russia is this inherently, you know, like 0:17:51.280 --> 0:17:55.480 destructive spreading force that we have to counter as the 0:17:55.480 --> 0:17:58.000 British Empire or they'll be right in our backyard. A 0:17:58.000 --> 0:18:00.800 lot of the same kind of like rhetoric, hype and 0:18:00.800 --> 0:18:03.040 whatnot that obviously goes away the instant we wind up 0:18:03.080 --> 0:18:06.080 ally or the instant that Great Britain winds up allied 0:18:06.280 --> 0:18:10.840 with Zara Stretcha in a war. But it's this, I 0:18:10.880 --> 0:18:13.200 think a lot of it just is great power conflict. 0:18:13.240 --> 0:18:15.359 As if you are a great power, and if you're 0:18:15.760 --> 0:18:18.760 seeing yourself and very much are in fact fighting this 0:18:18.920 --> 0:18:22.120 kind of cold war against this other great power, they're 0:18:22.119 --> 0:18:24.720 going to be the devil right within your own country, 0:18:24.720 --> 0:18:26.800 within sort of the attitude of the ruling class in 0:18:26.840 --> 0:18:30.000 your country. That's just like the norm historically, whether they're 0:18:30.000 --> 0:18:33.440 communists or an imperial power, whatever you want to call it, you. 0:18:33.359 --> 0:18:37.040 Know, amen, The Reagan doctrine in a situation like this, 0:18:38.000 --> 0:18:42.720 the playbook was pretty straightforward. Find the Sandinista's enemies and 0:18:43.160 --> 0:18:46.760 back them. Support the support the people fighting the Sandiness. 0:18:46.920 --> 0:18:49.760 So in nineteen eighty one, Reagan authorized the CIA to 0:18:49.840 --> 0:18:54.720 build and train a paramilitary force of Nicaraguan exiles to 0:18:54.920 --> 0:18:59.680 destabilize and ultimately topple the government. These counter revolutionaries la 0:19:00.080 --> 0:19:06.080 Contra ReLU or what became in Washington Shorthand. The contras 0:19:06.800 --> 0:19:11.439 initially included former members of Somosa's National Guard. Over time, 0:19:11.920 --> 0:19:17.040 the CIA bulked them up with mercenaries and disillusioned ex 0:19:17.119 --> 0:19:20.639 Sandinistas who'd broken with the revolution. Quick gut check to 0:19:20.720 --> 0:19:24.480 these Do these interventions ever go according to plan? Or 0:19:24.520 --> 0:19:25.960 is it just kind of like a we'll fix it 0:19:26.000 --> 0:19:28.080 in post foreign policy? 0:19:28.240 --> 0:19:30.480 You know, it depends, I guess because like when we 0:19:30.880 --> 0:19:35.200 for example, during like Russia's invasion of Afghanistan, the initial 0:19:35.240 --> 0:19:37.719 stage of that like goes pretty well for US, and 0:19:37.760 --> 0:19:41.040 that like we back the Mushahideen to an extent, and 0:19:41.200 --> 0:19:43.800 they really do do a lot of damage to the 0:19:43.840 --> 0:19:47.600 Red Army and to just the USSR's ability. It's a 0:19:47.680 --> 0:19:50.520 contributing factor to why the Soviet Union collapses, right, is 0:19:50.520 --> 0:19:53.679 this disaster in Afghanistan. And so to that extent, like 0:19:53.720 --> 0:19:56.920 our intervention in Afghanistan worked exactly the way US war 0:19:56.960 --> 0:20:00.480 planners thought it would, then there were other knock on 0:20:00.520 --> 0:20:03.280 effects of US messing around in Afghanistan that didn't work 0:20:03.320 --> 0:20:04.600 out so well in the long run. 0:20:05.400 --> 0:20:11.399 And this Maduro situation with Venezuela is very interesting, and 0:20:11.440 --> 0:20:13.680 I think the jury's very much still out on how 0:20:13.720 --> 0:20:15.440 that would happens there, how that's going. 0:20:15.359 --> 0:20:15.960 To shake out. 0:20:16.040 --> 0:20:20.560 But yeah, this is something we like to do as 0:20:20.600 --> 0:20:25.440 a country. So as this program ramped up, reports trickled 0:20:25.440 --> 0:20:29.040 back to the US that contra paramilitaries were forming death 0:20:29.080 --> 0:20:34.239 squads and committing atrocities throughout Nicaragua. Atrocities, of course, is 0:20:34.280 --> 0:20:37.480 not a word you want associated with your team. 0:20:38.119 --> 0:20:43.119 Death squads, Yeah, death squad squads. 0:20:44.480 --> 0:20:49.040 In November nineteen eighty two, Newsweek exposed the CIA's role 0:20:49.119 --> 0:20:51.800 in all of this, which removed, of course, any semblance 0:20:51.840 --> 0:20:55.439 of plausible deniability. The article landed on the desk of 0:20:55.480 --> 0:20:59.440 Democratic Senator Edward Boland, who was, to use a technical term, 0:21:00.000 --> 0:21:04.600 extremely pissed off. The thing is Congress generally likes to 0:21:04.640 --> 0:21:07.320 be told about war stuff, and Reagan had just kind 0:21:07.320 --> 0:21:10.960 of skipped that step here. So with Boland leading the charge, 0:21:11.000 --> 0:21:16.120 Congress passed the Boland Amendment, restricting US intelligence agencies by 0:21:16.160 --> 0:21:20.639 prohibiting any funds quote for the purpose of overthrowing the 0:21:20.680 --> 0:21:25.120 government of Nicaragua en quote. The vote was unanimous four 0:21:25.240 --> 0:21:27.920 hundred and eleven to zero, which is pretty. 0:21:27.560 --> 0:21:28.600 It doesn't happen anymore. 0:21:28.800 --> 0:21:33.639 No, I mean, it's pretty rare then, And that was 0:21:33.680 --> 0:21:36.040 supposed to be the end of it, which historically speaking, 0:21:36.119 --> 0:21:38.720 is exactly the kind of sentence that guarantees it wasn't 0:21:39.119 --> 0:21:42.840 the end of it. Interesting question here, do you think 0:21:42.920 --> 0:21:47.800 that Congress's outrage was more about the human rights abuses 0:21:47.840 --> 0:21:50.119 going on in Nicaragua or more about being sort of 0:21:50.119 --> 0:21:52.240 cut out of the decision making process. 0:21:52.440 --> 0:21:54.240 I don't know enough about Boland, so I don't want 0:21:54.280 --> 0:21:55.520 to say that like, oh, he didn't give a shit 0:21:55.520 --> 0:21:57.399 about the human rights. But I think Congress on the 0:21:57.400 --> 0:22:00.199 whole it was more they're coming for like, if this 0:22:00.280 --> 0:22:02.959 is our bag, we're supposed to have influence here. You're 0:22:02.960 --> 0:22:04.560 not supposed to be able to do this and not 0:22:04.640 --> 0:22:05.160 talk to. 0:22:05.119 --> 0:22:08.480 Us, right, yeah, yeah, I mean, the right answer I'm 0:22:08.480 --> 0:22:11.080 sure is a little bit from column A and a 0:22:11.080 --> 0:22:14.840 little from columb but the but really this is a 0:22:14.880 --> 0:22:21.760 standoff of between congressional and executive branch powers, and Congress 0:22:22.080 --> 0:22:25.840