Speaker 1: I guess Congress has just become a strongly worded letter apparatus.
Speaker 2: It's a bad Yelp review for the President.
Speaker 1: Yes, it carries all the gravitas of a bad Yelp review.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Snapfoo, the show about history's greatest screw ups,
Speaker 1: where we delve into all the MESSI mayhem and then
Speaker 1: try to figure out what it says about us as
Speaker 1: human beings and spoiler alert, it's usually not very good things.
Speaker 1: I'm at Helm's your host, and today I'm joined by
Speaker 1: the host of the insanely popular and entertaining podcast Behind
Speaker 1: the Bastards, which examines the lives and legacies of history's
Speaker 1: worst people. After first establishing his writing jobs at humor
Speaker 1: website Cracked, this guest worked for the Investigative Journalism Group.
Speaker 1: He also reported from conflict zones around the world, including Iraq, Syria,
Speaker 1: and Ukraine, writing extensively on extremism, disinformation, and political violence.
Speaker 1: In addition to his podcasting work, he is the author
Speaker 1: of the novel After the Revolution, a speculative story about
Speaker 1: a fractured future America. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the
Speaker 1: incomparable Robert Evans.
Speaker 2: That was such a nice introduction. Thank you. That's the
Speaker 2: whole podcast. After all the terrible things I've told you,
Speaker 2: all I do is.
Speaker 1: Just give these lovely, glowing introductions and then we call
Speaker 1: it today. No, I am, I'm so glad to have
Speaker 1: you on. I of course have been a guest on
Speaker 1: your podcast Behind the Bastards, not once, but twice. Right,
Speaker 1: I'm still waiting for my third invite. Not going to
Speaker 1: hold it against you yet, but just putting that out there.
Speaker 1: I mean to have you back, but I'm super excited
Speaker 1: to play host to you this time.
Speaker 2: I'm excited to be on Snaffoo. I've been listening season one,
Speaker 2: and yeah, I'm glad to get to actually participate in
Speaker 2: the show now.
Speaker 1: I can't wait to hear what you're going to tell
Speaker 1: me about you are in it now. It's funny our
Speaker 1: shows have some thematic similarities. You focus on bad people
Speaker 1: throughout history. I focus on bad events or incidents or
Speaker 1: mistakes throughout history. Why are we so drawn to the
Speaker 1: dark side, Robert Evans?
Speaker 2: I mean, I think there's part of it's just like
Speaker 2: this little piece in all of us that's encoded by
Speaker 2: evolution to where like if somebody else screws up in
Speaker 2: a major way you want to pay attention to see.
Speaker 2: It's like if you see a car wreck, it's like,
Speaker 2: what happened there? Can I avoid that? Can I make
Speaker 2: sure I don't get into that kind of problem.
Speaker 1: It's funny you put it that way, because I feel
Speaker 1: like that's a well intentioned or it's sort of a
Speaker 1: positive spin on why we're drawn to these things. I
Speaker 1: feel like there's a darker impulse in all of us,
Speaker 1: Like why we look at car crashes. It's not because
Speaker 1: it's like we're looking for ways to avoid that. It's
Speaker 1: because I think, what, what is it? It makes us
Speaker 1: feel safer to see other people injured or something.
Speaker 2: I don't know. That is a good one because like
Speaker 2: one of my favorite ways to relax, like when my
Speaker 2: friends and I a couple of years ago, we all
Speaker 2: got laid off at the website we've been working for,
Speaker 2: and I had everyone over to the house and I
Speaker 2: just put on hours with a footage of like people
Speaker 2: injuring themselves trying to cut down trees. Because it'll be
Speaker 2: like a guy and his kid and like a three
Speaker 2: hundred year old oak tree and he's got like a
Speaker 2: forty dollars sauce that you bought from home depot, and
Speaker 2: he's like, I can take this tree. And I just
Speaker 2: love watching like the Hubris meet with physics. But there
Speaker 2: is a darkness to it as well.
Speaker 1: I think we all have a sort of schadenfreud of
Speaker 1: gene in us. That's sort of like it can be
Speaker 1: soothing to just know we're not alone in our pain
Speaker 1: and misery in this world. Yeah, it's pretty universal.
Speaker 2: And someone always has it worse than you do pretty much.
Speaker 1: Now you have a background in investigative journalism with some
Speaker 1: pretty serious chops in that area. What drew you into
Speaker 1: that space?
Speaker 2: You know, I've always been fascinated by conflict. I came
Speaker 2: into it sort of as like a military history nerd,
Speaker 2: someone who was interested in that. But really what kind
Speaker 2: of like broke me into like a significant role in
Speaker 2: media was I just happened to be paying attention to
Speaker 2: these weird little corners of the internet right as like
Speaker 2: the alt right erupted and you know, eight chan, four
Speaker 2: chan kind of like became major things in terms of
Speaker 2: like people were carrying out attacks and stuff based on
Speaker 2: you know, having been radicalized in these little fascist corners
Speaker 2: of the Internet, And I just kind of been watching
Speaker 2: them for a couple of years, and so I've realized
Speaker 2: at a certain point, like, oh, there's not a lot
Speaker 2: of other people who understand how these communities work. I
Speaker 2: should probably explain them to people, because members of those
Speaker 2: communities are now killing people.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: It was a mix of like accident and I guess happenstance.
Speaker 1: Sure, well, it was a product of your own curiosity, right,
Speaker 1: And I think I feel like that's one of the
Speaker 1: traits of the great journalists out there, is like this
Speaker 1: relentless curiosity and that it's coming from a genuine place.
Speaker 1: It's not just like how do I get the next
Speaker 1: big scoop? You know, it's like, yeah, I really my
Speaker 1: sense and I'm not a journalist at all, but my
Speaker 1: sense of it is that the journalists, the great ones,
Speaker 1: really have like a personal, like unquenchable thirst to know
Speaker 1: and this curiosity that drives through because investigative journalism is tedious,
Speaker 1: it is incredibly time consuming, it can be it can
Speaker 1: be dangerous a lot of times, and uh, and that
Speaker 1: thirst for for the truth or for knowledge or for
Speaker 1: for clarity on something is really powerful. I think it's
Speaker 1: such an admirable space to be in do you see
Speaker 1: great investigative journalism happening today? Like, who are the people
Speaker 1: shit that you think are really standing out or doing
Speaker 1: great work? I mean besides Tucker Carlson, of course, of
Speaker 1: course Tucker. You and I are both big fans of
Speaker 1: of Tucker.
Speaker 2: You know, my old colleagues at Ballet Cat continue to
Speaker 2: do great work. You know, the New York Times Visual
Speaker 2: Investigations desk has done some really impressive open source reporting
Speaker 2: on conflicts, I mean all over the world over the
Speaker 2: last like several years. I find myself really interested in
Speaker 2: BBC Africa Eye, which is their kind of open source covering,
Speaker 2: like particularly like war crimes in places like Cameroon. So
Speaker 2: there's a lot of really interesting nuts and bolts work
Speaker 2: being done by folks who are willing to do things
Speaker 2: like spend hundreds of hours combing through like footage that
Speaker 2: we know is a war crime but we don't know
Speaker 2: what militia was responsible or where it was done, and
Speaker 2: like laboriously matching, like you can kind of see a
Speaker 2: mountain in the background, and so they'll just spend weeks
Speaker 2: going through Google Maps and like it's this mountain and
Speaker 2: because of where it is in the frame, of the shot.
Speaker 2: We can like now locate this exact point geographically, and
Speaker 2: we know that these militant groups were acted Like that's
Speaker 2: really impressive work to make so much more of a
Speaker 2: pain in the butt than what I did, you know,
Speaker 2: when I was covering that stuff. So I have tremendous
Speaker 2: admiration for that and anybody who's doing like financial crimes
Speaker 2: investigative journalism. This the wonkiness required, the ability to dig
Speaker 2: deep into like the financials of a company that's doing
Speaker 2: something wrong, is so labor intensive.
Speaker 1: I can barely balance my check book. I can't. I
Speaker 1: can't even wrap my head around that stuff. And then
Speaker 1: it's not not only the digging into it and the
Speaker 1: figuring it out, it's the it's then the ability to
Speaker 1: translate it into English and then an interesting way that
Speaker 1: that lay people can understand. Well, kudos to you and
Speaker 1: your your colleagues and all the people out there doing
Speaker 1: great investigative journalism. So let's dig in for today's snafu.
Speaker 1: I chose something that I think is kind of in
Speaker 1: both of our wheelhouses because it features both bad people
Speaker 1: and bad events, which makes it, you know, it's kind
Speaker 1: of a it's a mashup of behind the Bastards and Snaffou.
Speaker 2: I like it.
Speaker 1: What would we call that?
Speaker 2: Behind the snaffs?
Speaker 1: Behind? I feel like there's a good portmanteau with with
Speaker 1: snaffoo and bastards, and I want to call it snastards.
Speaker 2: Sure, that's the best. There we go, There we go.
Speaker 2: We're gonna cut all that.
Speaker 1: All right. Today's episode is peak Reagan era Cold War insanity,
Speaker 1: A true international pickle of the extra spicy variety. This
Speaker 1: is the Ran Contra Affair.
Speaker 2: Beautiful.
Speaker 1: Do you remember anything about this? I think I'm a
Speaker 1: little older than you. I'm not sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was born in eighty eight, so I don't
Speaker 2: like have first hand memories of it, but I do remember.
Speaker 2: I remember my first because I grew up in a
Speaker 2: very conservative household and we watched Fox News a lot,
Speaker 2: and Olliver North had a television show, The Bush Years,
Speaker 2: Sure Story, which.
Speaker 1: I've always on CNN. Was it on I think his
Speaker 1: shirt was on CNN. Yeah, he had like a war
Speaker 1: history show. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I forget which network it was on, but I know
Speaker 2: it was on a lot. And I asked my parents, like,
Speaker 2: who is Who's that guy? They were like, well, he
Speaker 2: got in some trouble a few years back, but it
Speaker 2: was totally Yeah, that was my parents.
Speaker 1: We'll learn a lot about Oliver North today. It's funny
Speaker 1: I remember, I feel like and maybe it's just because
Speaker 1: I've read so much about it, but I I feel
Speaker 1: like I remember seeing these hearings and news coverage as
Speaker 1: a kid. I was born in seventy four, so this
Speaker 1: was all sort of I was around ten twelve when
Speaker 1: a lot of this stuff was breaking. But let's get
Speaker 1: right into it. So I think it's important to start
Speaker 1: any conversation about the Iran contra affair with a quick warning,
Speaker 1: which is that this can get a little confusing. While
Speaker 1: the name sounds like one neat, tidy little package, the
Speaker 1: Iran contra affair is actually a very complicated web of
Speaker 1: deceit and absurdity, involving completely different American adversaries into completely
Speaker 1: different crises in completely different hemispheres, and they all get
Speaker 1: tangled up in a beautiful knot. As we'll see, these
Speaker 1: crises were initially so fundamentally unrelated that it's hard to
Speaker 1: fathom how they mix up. That's part of the fun
Speaker 1: of this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it really says a lot about how widely
Speaker 2: we were screwing around with the rest of the world. Yeah,
Speaker 2: those years that like a great point, Nicaragua and Iran
Speaker 2: went up tied together in a scandal through us.
Speaker 1: Exactly. Yes, these two countries so far.
Speaker 2: Apart, couldn't have less to do with each other.
Speaker 1: The United States manages to just tie them into this
Speaker 1: beautiful Gordian knot, which we're going to try to unravel
Speaker 1: a little bit. So let's begin our snapfoo in the
Speaker 1: summer of nineteen seventy nine, a famously chill, uneventful period
Speaker 1: in global history. Just kidding, not at all. The Vietnam
Speaker 1: War had ended just four years prior, the psychic wounds
Speaker 1: were still very fresh in America. Jimmy Carter was president,
Speaker 1: and the year's headlines included Vietnam invading Cambodia, China subsequently
Speaker 1: invading Vietnam because of course, Margaret Thatcher becoming the UK's
Speaker 1: first female prime minister, and the Iranian Revolution, which will
Speaker 1: become very important later in our story. Now, let's jump
Speaker 1: to a tiny country in Central America called Nicaragua, roughly
Speaker 1: the size of New York State, nestled right between Honduras
Speaker 1: and Costa Rica. Their leader was dictator Anastasio Somosa, whose
Speaker 1: family had spent decades running the country with corruption, repression,
Speaker 1: and a lot of support from good old Uncle Sam.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, we're just propping this dictator right on up.
Speaker 1: But on July nineteenth, nineteen seventy nine, so Moso was
Speaker 1: overthrown by Nicaragua's socialist Sandinistas. Almost immediately, Ronald Reagan came
Speaker 1: into office in nineteen eighty, and good Old Ronnie had
Speaker 1: a very clear worldview communism wasn't something to manage, it
Speaker 1: was something to beat. This became known, of course, as
Speaker 1: the Reagan Doctrine, which basically said, we're not just going
Speaker 1: to try to contain communism around the world. We're going
Speaker 1: to actively try to roll it back. And one of
Speaker 1: the ways that we're going to do that is by
Speaker 1: supporting anti communist forces around the world, as we'll soon see,
Speaker 1: by pretty much any means necessary. So when Nicaragua was
Speaker 1: socialist Sandinistas overthrew a US backed dictator in seventy nine,
Speaker 1: to many Nicaraguans this felt like liberation. But to Washington,
Speaker 1: it basically felt like Karl Marx had just moved into
Speaker 1: the guest bedroom.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, we went to all this trouble to give
Speaker 2: you guys a nice dictator and up with rocket launchers
Speaker 2: and machine guns. And this is how you repay us, yeah,
Speaker 2: forgiving this guy guns to kill you with exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 2: what the heck?
Speaker 1: Come on? So, yeah, these Sandinistas are socialists, communism adjacent
Speaker 1: close enough that it just was not feeling good because
Speaker 1: this wasn't communism bubbling up in Eastern Europe or Southeast Asia,
Speaker 1: you know, oceans away. This was Central America. It's basically
Speaker 1: a nine iron chip shot from Texas. And now add
Speaker 1: in the Sandinista's explicit ties to the Soviet Union, and
Speaker 1: suddenly Reagan's team is looking at Nicaragua like it's the
Speaker 1: Cold War's new front line. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's very much like the attitude they had
Speaker 2: at the time, right, this like if it spills over
Speaker 2: into one country, it will ineviatively spread into you know,
Speaker 2: the neighboring countries. And even though, like you know, we
Speaker 2: saw like it during the Korean War, you've got a
Speaker 2: communist North Korea. After the or after the ceasefire, you
Speaker 2: have South Korea, which is not a communist state, and
Speaker 2: North Korea didn't inevitably spread to its neighbors right, Like
Speaker 2: this kind of domino theory already had proved to be
Speaker 2: not totally accurate, but they still really like it's the
Speaker 2: easiest justification for doing whatever you want, right if you're
Speaker 2: just like, if we don't take a handle on this,
Speaker 2: they're going to spread everywhere. There will be communists in
Speaker 2: marching into Texas.
Speaker 1: Well. I really think that, you know, getting into the
Speaker 1: national psyche a little bit. At that time, Yeah, there
Speaker 1: was a genuine sense that communism was just evil, explicitly evil,
Speaker 1: and I mean, I think there still is in some
Speaker 1: various corners. But it was not seen as just a
Speaker 1: sort of competing system of government or sociological experiment of
Speaker 1: some kind. It was seen as like a very evil enterprise.
Speaker 1: And also in that way, it was also perceived as
Speaker 1: kind of a contagion, to your point, like something that
Speaker 1: could catch hold or sort of correc to people's minds
Speaker 1: and then take hold. I don't know, if you're a
Speaker 1: regular American at this time, Robert, are you sort of
Speaker 1: buying the red scare or are you a little more skeptical.
Speaker 2: I mean, I would hope that I would be skeptical.
Speaker 2: You know, as a kid, I certainly wasn't and my
Speaker 2: parents were very much big Reaganites and very much bought
Speaker 2: in to this whole idea that like communism is this
Speaker 2: is inherently different from any other kind of system of
Speaker 2: government around the world, and so much worse even than
Speaker 2: other any kind of other authoritarian we might back, right,
Speaker 2: because there's something inherently extra dangerous about communism. And obviously
Speaker 2: I would say, like looking at the history of this
Speaker 2: period of time and looking at the history of from
Speaker 2: like the fifties up through the seventies to the eighties,
Speaker 2: I don't actually think the evidence is there to say
Speaker 2: that like these communist regimes were any kind of in
Speaker 2: any way inherently worse than any other like flawed authoritarian
Speaker 2: regimes that existed around the world. Right, Like, there's there's
Speaker 2: upsides and there's downside. There's things they did well, there's
Speaker 2: things that they did badly. We can now know that, Like, Yeah,
Speaker 2: the idea that communism, if it was allowed to spread
Speaker 2: to one country, would inevitably spread to all of its
Speaker 2: neighbors just untrue. It didn't happen in a bunch of places, right.
Speaker 2: Costa Rica did not become a communist state, right. But
Speaker 2: I also, you know, people were playing with a different
Speaker 2: set amount of information at the time too, And I'm
Speaker 2: not surprised that, given what folks were learning in school
Speaker 2: and what organizations like the John Birch Society was spreading
Speaker 2: in terms of like anti communist propaganda, that a lot
Speaker 2: of people did believe this is like a life and
Speaker 2: death thing as opposed to like, well, this is a
Speaker 2: country that's like these are regimes that are geopolitically opposed
Speaker 2: to ours, but that doesn't mean they're inherently the devil, you.
Speaker 1: Know, Yeah, I was. I grew up sort of inculcated
Speaker 1: with a sense that the Soviet Union was was evil
Speaker 1: that sort of like was a sweeping opinion of just
Speaker 1: sort of the entire population, which seems kind of.
Speaker 2: But extremely common.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what's really interesting to parse here is how much
Speaker 1: of the anti communist activity on the part of our
Speaker 1: government at the time was more of an ideological sort
Speaker 1: of crusade or was it more just about trying to
Speaker 1: control and influence various sort of geographic pockets around the world.
Speaker 1: We'll learn a little bit more, but that's a really
Speaker 1: fun sort of open debate to tap into, and I.
Speaker 2: Think it's kind of worth looking back on previous great
Speaker 2: power clashes that it happened not that long previously, including
Speaker 2: like the Great Game between Russia and the British Empire,
Speaker 2: and kind of the early chunk of the early parts
Speaker 2: of the twentieth century, very end of the nineteenth century,
Speaker 2: where you had a lot of the same language, Oh,
Speaker 2: the t Czarist Russia is this inherently, you know, like
Speaker 2: destructive spreading force that we have to counter as the
Speaker 2: British Empire or they'll be right in our backyard. A
Speaker 2: lot of the same kind of like rhetoric, hype and
Speaker 2: whatnot that obviously goes away the instant we wind up
Speaker 2: ally or the instant that Great Britain winds up allied
Speaker 2: with Zara Stretcha in a war. But it's this, I
Speaker 2: think a lot of it just is great power conflict.
Speaker 2: As if you are a great power, and if you're
Speaker 2: seeing yourself and very much are in fact fighting this
Speaker 2: kind of cold war against this other great power, they're
Speaker 2: going to be the devil right within your own country,
Speaker 2: within sort of the attitude of the ruling class in
Speaker 2: your country. That's just like the norm historically, whether they're
Speaker 2: communists or an imperial power, whatever you want to call it, you.
Speaker 1: Know, amen, The Reagan doctrine in a situation like this,
Speaker 1: the playbook was pretty straightforward. Find the Sandinista's enemies and
Speaker 1: back them. Support the support the people fighting the Sandiness.
Speaker 1: So in nineteen eighty one, Reagan authorized the CIA to
Speaker 1: build and train a paramilitary force of Nicaraguan exiles to
Speaker 1: destabilize and ultimately topple the government. These counter revolutionaries la
Speaker 1: Contra ReLU or what became in Washington Shorthand. The contras
Speaker 1: initially included former members of Somosa's National Guard. Over time,
Speaker 1: the CIA bulked them up with mercenaries and disillusioned ex
Speaker 1: Sandinistas who'd broken with the revolution. Quick gut check to
Speaker 1: these Do these interventions ever go according to plan? Or
Speaker 1: is it just kind of like a we'll fix it
Speaker 1: in post foreign policy?
Speaker 2: You know, it depends, I guess because like when we
Speaker 2: for example, during like Russia's invasion of Afghanistan, the initial
Speaker 2: stage of that like goes pretty well for US, and
Speaker 2: that like we back the Mushahideen to an extent, and
Speaker 2: they really do do a lot of damage to the
Speaker 2: Red Army and to just the USSR's ability. It's a
Speaker 2: contributing factor to why the Soviet Union collapses, right, is
Speaker 2: this disaster in Afghanistan. And so to that extent, like
Speaker 2: our intervention in Afghanistan worked exactly the way US war
Speaker 2: planners thought it would, then there were other knock on
Speaker 2: effects of US messing around in Afghanistan that didn't work
Speaker 2: out so well in the long run.
Speaker 1: And this Maduro situation with Venezuela is very interesting, and
Speaker 1: I think the jury's very much still out on how
Speaker 1: that would happens there, how that's going.
Speaker 2: To shake out.
Speaker 1: But yeah, this is something we like to do as
Speaker 1: a country. So as this program ramped up, reports trickled
Speaker 1: back to the US that contra paramilitaries were forming death
Speaker 1: squads and committing atrocities throughout Nicaragua. Atrocities, of course, is
Speaker 1: not a word you want associated with your team.
Speaker 2: Death squads, Yeah, death squad squads.
Speaker 1: In November nineteen eighty two, Newsweek exposed the CIA's role
Speaker 1: in all of this, which removed, of course, any semblance
Speaker 1: of plausible deniability. The article landed on the desk of
Speaker 1: Democratic Senator Edward Boland, who was, to use a technical term,
Speaker 1: extremely pissed off. The thing is Congress generally likes to
Speaker 1: be told about war stuff, and Reagan had just kind
Speaker 1: of skipped that step here. So with Boland leading the charge,
Speaker 1: Congress passed the Boland Amendment, restricting US intelligence agencies by
Speaker 1: prohibiting any funds quote for the purpose of overthrowing the
Speaker 1: government of Nicaragua en quote. The vote was unanimous four
Speaker 1: hundred and eleven to zero, which is pretty.
Speaker 2: It doesn't happen anymore.
Speaker 1: No, I mean, it's pretty rare then, And that was
Speaker 1: supposed to be the end of it, which historically speaking,
Speaker 1: is exactly the kind of sentence that guarantees it wasn't
Speaker 1: the end of it. Interesting question here, do you think
Speaker 1: that Congress's outrage was more about the human rights abuses
Speaker 1: going on in Nicaragua or more about being sort of
Speaker 1: cut out of the decision making process.
Speaker 2: I don't know enough about Boland, so I don't want
Speaker 2: to say that like, oh, he didn't give a shit
Speaker 2: about the human rights. But I think Congress on the
Speaker 2: whole it was more they're coming for like, if this
Speaker 2: is our bag, we're supposed to have influence here. You're
Speaker 2: not supposed to be able to do this and not
Speaker 2: talk to.
Speaker 1: Us, right, yeah, yeah, I mean, the right answer I'm
Speaker 1: sure is a little bit from column A and a
Speaker 1: little from columb but the but really this is a
Speaker 1: standoff of between congressional and executive branch powers, and Congress
Speaker 1: put their foot down, which was kind of kind of badass.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it doesn't happen a lot anymore with that point
Speaker 2: of stuff, or is it not? Is it not really okay?
Speaker 2: With letting the president know you?
Speaker 1: Is just they just grin and give high fives basically, So, surprise, surprise,
Speaker 1: Reagan Cia did not follow this new law. In fact,
Speaker 1: they just doubled down on what they were already doing.
Speaker 1: In early nineteen eighty four, they helped lay undersea minds
Speaker 1: at three Nicaraguan ports. This resulted in two people being
Speaker 1: killed and fifteen wounded, and this time the Wall Street
Speaker 1: Journal swooped in exposing the whole thing, and Congress was like, seriously,
Speaker 1: we just we just told you not to do this.
Speaker 1: So in nineteen eighty four they came back with an
Speaker 1: even stricter, more explicit law and they're like, guys, we
Speaker 1: really mean it this time, no more meddling in Nicaragua.
Speaker 2: Stop it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, at this point, is it are they
Speaker 1: really doing anything than just writing a strongly worded letter.
Speaker 2: No, this is a series destroyed the Bowland Amendment amendment Like.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, this is a I guess Congress has just
Speaker 1: become a strongly worded letter apparatus that's kind.
Speaker 2: Of a review review for the president.
Speaker 1: Yes, it carries all the gravitas of a bad YELP review. Well,
Speaker 1: Q Reagan's team finding a loophole yet again. The National
Speaker 1: Security Council or NSC basically said, hey, the Boland Amendment
Speaker 1: only strict intelligence agencies, and we're not technically an intelligence agency,
Speaker 1: which is a bit like a casino saying, like, we're
Speaker 1: not a massive gambling operation. We're just a little mom
Speaker 1: and pop motel with some card games in the line.
Speaker 2: This is a bar with sts.
Speaker 1: Quick little bit of context. The National Security Council is
Speaker 1: the president's inner circle on foreign policy. Usually it will
Speaker 1: contain the Vice President, the Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense,
Speaker 1: national Security Advisor, all the heavy hitters coordinating military, intelligence
Speaker 1: and diplomacy. So they're kind of overseeing the intelligence agencies.
Speaker 1: But they're technical. I guess they're sort of excusing themselves like,
Speaker 1: we're technically not an intelligence agency, so the working doesn't
Speaker 1: apply here. Right right. But if there is a giant
Speaker 1: global move on the on behalf of the United States,
Speaker 1: like it's because of this group.
Speaker 2: Right right, And there's certainly like orders are going out
Speaker 2: to intelligence agencies as a result stuff the NSC is
Speaker 2: doing exactly Yeah.
Speaker 1: But by declaring themselves not an intelligence agency, wink wink, nudge, nudge,
Speaker 1: they effectively sidestepped the law and kept on covertly operating
Speaker 1: in Nicaragua and beyond. There's something so incredible about how
Speaker 1: bullshittable our legal system is it really is, or not
Speaker 1: just our legal system, but like our system of laws
Speaker 1: like or bills, amendments, congressional sort of mandates and so forth.
Speaker 1: Like lawyers who have mastered the like crawling between the
Speaker 1: cracks of language in order to justify and carve out things.
Speaker 1: It's really a wild way that our it's almost like
Speaker 1: our language fails us because it doesn't address the most
Speaker 1: obvious and intellectually honest take on something.
Speaker 2: I think part of the problem is that like we're
Speaker 2: raised and we grow up in schools, we're educated with
Speaker 2: this understanding about like the Constitution and the Bill of
Speaker 2: Rights and the way in which like separation of power
Speaker 2: works that is very much taught to us as like
Speaker 2: and these are like the pillars of our society, and
Speaker 2: these are like hard rules about how things are supposed
Speaker 2: to work. And the reality is that like all of
Speaker 2: the rules that govern what our leaders have the power
Speaker 2: to do are like the monopoly rules in that like, yeah,
Speaker 2: there's rules, and if you catch someone doing something wrong,
Speaker 2: sometimes you can make them like put the money they
Speaker 2: stole back in the in the bank or whatever. But
Speaker 2: the name of the game is to get away with
Speaker 2: what you can get away with. There's people who spend
Speaker 2: their whole lives figuring out how much can we get
Speaker 2: away with? And some of those people happen to now
Speaker 2: be Supreme Court Justice Sis, so they're getting away with
Speaker 2: a lot more. But like, yeah, that's.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh boy. All of this brings us to a
Speaker 1: man named Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, and he's the one
Speaker 1: who's going to sort of rope in Iran to this mess.
Speaker 1: So who is Oliver North? He was born in nineteen
Speaker 1: four forty three in San Antonio, Texas and raised in
Speaker 1: a middle class family in New York. He entered the
Speaker 1: Naval Academy in nineteen sixty three and graduated as a
Speaker 1: second lieutenant in the US Marine Corps in nineteen sixty eight.
Speaker 1: After serving in Vietnam, he continued his military career in
Speaker 1: various roles, and by June nineteen eighty one, Reagan assigned
Speaker 1: him to the National Security Council staff. Now that this
Speaker 1: was a bit unusual. The NFC is typically staffed by
Speaker 1: civilians to keep the military from getting too entangled in
Speaker 1: shaping foreign policy, but Reagan blurred that line, bringing in
Speaker 1: military officers like Oliver North, who wound up serving as
Speaker 1: an aid to Deputy National Security Advisor Admiral John Poindexter. Okay,
Speaker 1: so how does Oliver North drag Iran into a story
Speaker 1: that started in Nicaragua. Well, let's take a little detour
Speaker 1: and then we'll sort of circle back. Remember when Nicaraguan
Speaker 1: revolutionaries were overthrowing a US backed dictator in nineteen seventy nine.
Speaker 2: Show it.
Speaker 1: Well, it turns out that kind of the same thing
Speaker 1: was happening at the exact same time in Iran. So
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy nine, we're back. In nineteen seventy nine,
Speaker 1: the Iranian revolution overthrew the US backed Shah Mohammad Reza Paulavi,
Speaker 1: and of course brought Ayatola Komani to power, turning Iran
Speaker 1: into an Islamic republic which was openly hostile to the
Speaker 1: United States. This is the same rupture still driving US
Speaker 1: Iran tensions today. It's what Donald Trump and pe Hegseth
Speaker 1: are relentlessly referring to as they are beating their war drums.
Speaker 1: It's so crazy to me that we're talking about nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy nine revolutions and Cold War fears and it's all
Speaker 1: knotted up in today's headlines. Right, is this history repeating
Speaker 1: or is it just sort of a story that has
Speaker 1: never finished.
Speaker 2: You know, it's a story that's never finished because people
Speaker 2: liked you. I think history repeating is certainly a way
Speaker 2: you can look at it. I tend to think of
Speaker 2: it as like if you have like an issue with
Speaker 2: like your pipes, and like you have to like get
Speaker 2: the plunge you'r in or whatever, like snake your drain,
Speaker 2: but you don't actually like clean it all the way.
Speaker 2: You just get it enough to get it working again.
Speaker 2: They're like, it's good for now, I'll fix it later,
Speaker 2: And then you don't fix it for years and you
Speaker 2: have another Like that's like I tend to look at
Speaker 2: especially stuff with like our relationship to Iran that way
Speaker 2: because like a lot of what's happening. The guy who,
Speaker 2: like the father of the Shah who gets overthrown in
Speaker 2: seventy nine was like an aggressive, violent secularist to where
Speaker 2: like he was saying, Okay, we're doing a way with
Speaker 2: like all the religious you know, the headscarfs and stuff
Speaker 2: that women wear, all the religious and traditional clothing that
Speaker 2: people have worn, but not in like now, you can
Speaker 2: wear modern clothes if you want, but in my cops
Speaker 2: will beat you up on the street if they see
Speaker 2: you like wearing the stuff you used to wear. And
Speaker 2: so people get like really angry about that, and like likewise,
Speaker 2: you get this chunk of the country that is really
Speaker 2: angry because from the previously the British and than the
Speaker 2: United States are just kind of extracting oil wealth from
Speaker 2: Iran and bribing these authoritarian leaders who are then like
Speaker 2: brutal to the populace, and it creates a lot of
Speaker 2: fuel for reaction. And then once the once come any
Speaker 2: takes over and once you get this as lomest hardline
Speaker 2: government in Iran because there's so much anger and because
Speaker 2: they're so hostile to the West, you get this like
Speaker 2: horrible hostage situation, which is a big part of why
Speaker 2: Carter loses to get there.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it starts the relate. So I think it's
Speaker 2: like it's a problem we never fixed, and so that's
Speaker 2: why the problems seem similar every time they crop up, right,
Speaker 2: like the conflict.
Speaker 1: You're getting at this other thing that I'm so fascinated by,
Speaker 1: which is that as a population, we ever settle into
Speaker 1: the sort of calm center of things, just we just
Speaker 1: always go. We just swing back and forth. So like
Speaker 1: the reaction to an oppressive religious government is like an
Speaker 1: oppressive secular government, right, it's not just sort of like, hey,
Speaker 1: can we just chill? And I do think that that
Speaker 1: is America at its best, is when we're sort of
Speaker 1: at our most like let's all just chill. Let's just
Speaker 1: be chill. And that's what that's sort of where I
Speaker 1: don't know that to me is how I interpret the
Speaker 1: origin of America as being like, hey, everybody's too extreme.
Speaker 1: We're going to figure out a way to kind of
Speaker 1: dial in and like codify a government that that is
Speaker 1: stays in the middle. And it might and it'll swing,
Speaker 1: but it's not going to go to these extremes.
Speaker 2: Right, We're supposed to avoid that, Like that was at
Speaker 2: least part of the idea. But I think part of
Speaker 2: the problem is that when it comes to these countries
Speaker 2: where we're like backing a leader, we don't care about
Speaker 2: like the the priority was never that Iran would have
Speaker 2: a stable, functional government that like worked for most Iranians.
Speaker 2: The priority was, well, we need a lot of fuel
Speaker 2: and we want to make sure that the Soviets don't
Speaker 2: wind up having too much influence here. So we didn't like,
Speaker 2: we never cared about the Iranian meant like functioning well.
Speaker 2: And so it's the same thing with Simosa right in Nicaragua.
Speaker 2: When we were supporting him, it was not because, well,
Speaker 2: this guy's legitimately the best pick for the Nicaraguan people, right.
Speaker 1: Right, All right, Well, we're near the end of nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy nine and things are getting extra spicy. Iranian militants
Speaker 1: stormed the US embassy in Tehran and took fifty two
Speaker 1: American hostages. They held them for four hundred and forty
Speaker 1: four days. It dominated the news, It wrecked Jimmy Carter politically,
Speaker 1: and it cemented ran in the collective American psyche as
Speaker 1: a full blown adversary. Right, this is all that everything
Speaker 1: you were referring to a minute ago. Now, this is
Speaker 1: kind of cool. If you've seen the movie Argo, you know,
Speaker 1: a very wild slice of this story about a fake
Speaker 1: sci fi movie production that was created as a cover
Speaker 1: to help extract six US diplomats from TEHRANI eazy story.
Speaker 1: I loved that movie. I thought it was so cool.
Speaker 1: Part of what I loved about it obviously it was
Speaker 1: just a beautifully executed movie with tons of humor and
Speaker 1: tension and drama. But it's also to me, sort of
Speaker 1: Hollywood at its best, when there's like a great collision
Speaker 1: of storytelling and history. Who knows how accurate it was,
Speaker 1: but anything that kind of sparks public interest in history
Speaker 1: is so fun and exciting.
Speaker 2: It's a perfect thing piece of history for Hollywood to
Speaker 2: cover because it's also inherently a very Hollywood story. Like
Speaker 2: the whole reason that plan worked is because everywhere has
Speaker 2: like an understanding of like what Hollywood is like, even
Speaker 2: these places that we're really massive conflicts with, So like, yeah,
Speaker 2: it provided this this It's a fascinating story.
Speaker 1: Anyway, go watch our go on your on your own
Speaker 1: time listeners and then circle back. So we're going to
Speaker 1: flash forward now once again, back to nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 1: If you remember, we left the nic Roguin story in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty four with the Bowland Amendment and all of
Speaker 1: that fallout, And now the NSC has decided, of course,
Speaker 1: that it is not an intelligence agency. And Reagan was
Speaker 1: eager to avoid any repeats of this hostage situation that
Speaker 1: ruined Carter's presidency, which is why he did not respond
Speaker 1: well to the news that hes Belah, which was supported
Speaker 1: by Iran, had now taken twenty five American hostages in
Speaker 1: Lebanon in nineteen eighty four. Now eager to protect his reputation,
Speaker 1: Reagan tasked our friend Ali North with figuring out how
Speaker 1: to bring those Americans home. The problem, the Iran backed
Speaker 1: Hesbla militants were designated terrorists, which makes them off limits
Speaker 1: to direct contact or negotiation. What's more, the US had
Speaker 1: placed Iran under an embargo because they sponsored Hesbela, so
Speaker 1: negotiating or directly dealing with Iran in any way was
Speaker 1: supposed to be a huge no no.
Speaker 2: I grew up on enough nineties movies to know the
Speaker 2: United States does not negotiate with terrorists since like five
Speaker 2: different fake presidents told me in action movies, isn't it?
Speaker 1: So that's so great, that's so true. I feel like
Speaker 1: it emerged in some actual presidential addresses as well. But yeah, no,
Speaker 1: the nineties movie discourse nailed that. We're gonna hit the
Speaker 1: brakes right there, and we're going to bring you the
Speaker 1: final part, the grand conclusion of the Iran contra affair
Speaker 1: next week on SNAFU, So keep an eye out. Robert
Speaker 1: Evans will be returning to hear out the rest of
Speaker 1: this and thanks so much for listening. We'll be back
Speaker 1: with Robert Evans next week for part two of this
Speaker 1: insane story. Snafu is a production of iHeart Podcasts and
Speaker 1: Snaffo Media, a partnership between Film Nation Entertainment and Pacific
Speaker 1: Electric Picture Company. Post production and creative support from good
Speaker 1: Egg Audio. Our executive producers are me Ed Helms, Mike Falbo, glennaer,
Speaker 1: Andy Kim, and Dylan Fagan. This episode was produced by
Speaker 1: Alyssa Martino and Tory Smith. Our managing producer is Carl Nellis.
Speaker 1: Our video editor is Jared Smith. Technical direction and engineering
Speaker 1: from Nick Dooley. Additional story editing from Carl Nellis. Our
Speaker 1: creative executive is Brett Harris. Logo and branding by Matt
Speaker 1: Gosson and the collected works. Legal review from Dan Welsh,
Speaker 1: Meghan Halson and Caroline Johnson. Special thanks to Isaac Dunham,
Speaker 1: Adam Horn, Lane Klein, and everyone at iHeart Podcasts, but
Speaker 1: especially Will Pearson, Kerrie Lieberman and Nikki Atoor. While I
Speaker 1: have you, don't forget to pick up a copy of
Speaker 1: my book, Snaffoo, The Definitive Guide to History's Greatest screw Ups.
Speaker 1: It's available now from any book retailer. Just go to
Speaker 1: Snaffoo dashbook dot com. Thanks for listening, and see you
Speaker 1: next week.