Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hey everyone, it's Leon Nafok. Before we get into
Speaker 1: the show, I wanted to say a few introductory words
Speaker 1: about the Iran Contra scandal and about this season of Fiasco,
Speaker 1: which originally came out five years ago. It was February
Speaker 1: of twenty twenty, the final year of the first Trump administration.
Speaker 1: It was also right before COVID hit, and once it did,
Speaker 1: I remember thinking that the events of Iran Contra felt
Speaker 1: a little remote the Cold War, Ronald Reagan, the Ayatola
Speaker 1: Homani in the midst of a pandemic. It felt like
Speaker 1: a dispatch from a different universe, and it just didn't
Speaker 1: hit the same as say, a podcast about Watergate released
Speaker 1: of the height of the Mower investigation. I hadn't read
Speaker 1: listen to this season since we turned it in, and
Speaker 1: when I started working with Pushkin on this new edition,
Speaker 1: I was a little nervous to revisit it. But then
Speaker 1: I did, and to my surprise, what I heard made
Speaker 1: so much more sense to me in twenty twenty five
Speaker 1: than it did the first time around. Now, if you've
Speaker 1: listened to any of my other history podcasts, you know
Speaker 1: I don't like to lay it on super thick when
Speaker 1: it comes to pointing out the echoes between then and now.
Speaker 1: It's usually unnecessary, at least if you're doing it right.
Speaker 1: But after going back and listening to these eight episodes
Speaker 1: earlier this year, I was moved to try and sound
Speaker 1: out what it is that makes this story feel so
Speaker 1: deeply familiar in this moment. One thing is that the
Speaker 1: events that make up Iran Contra moved both incredibly fast
Speaker 1: and slow. The whole thing unfolded over the course of
Speaker 1: more than a decade. It wasn't fully put to bed
Speaker 1: until nineteen ninety three, a long time, but I think
Speaker 1: you'll agree as you make your way through this season
Speaker 1: that the daisy chain of cause and effect that got
Speaker 1: the Reagan administration from point A to point B involved
Speaker 1: a lot of quick cuts. It was one thing after another.
Speaker 1: It was hard to keep up. Even people who lived
Speaker 1: through it are often fuzzy on the details. If you're
Speaker 1: one of those people, or if you're younger and you've
Speaker 1: heard of Iran Contra but you've never really known who
Speaker 1: did what and why, this is the podcast for you.
Speaker 1: At the same time, I think there's a lot here
Speaker 1: for the history junkies too, in part because we interviewed
Speaker 1: so many of the actual people who hatched the Iran
Speaker 1: Contra plot and carried it out. John Poindexter, Bud McFarlane,
Speaker 1: Richard Secord, George Schultz, all of whom except Poindexter died
Speaker 1: in the years since we spoke to them. All those
Speaker 1: names will mean something to you soon if they don't already.
Speaker 1: And I will warn you there are a lot of
Speaker 1: names in this one, and a lot of different countries
Speaker 1: and several government agencies with three letter acronyms. I'll just
Speaker 1: say you don't have to remember every name. There's no
Speaker 1: other way to put this as a story. Iran Contra
Speaker 1: is kind of a bitch. In fact, we made a
Speaker 1: whole episode, it's the one called Ollywood, about the rush
Speaker 1: to try and make a movie out of the scandal
Speaker 1: after it first broke. The problem was no one could
Speaker 1: really explain the scandal simply enough for audiences to follow it,
Speaker 1: which is why there was no all the President's men
Speaker 1: about Iran Contra. I don't mind telling you someone tried
Speaker 1: to make a TV show out of this podcast, but
Speaker 1: spoiler alert, it didn't make it past a couple pilot scripts.
Speaker 1: Iran Contra was a relay race of ideas and money
Speaker 1: turning into action at the hands of so many different
Speaker 1: government officials, so many middlemen, so many random private citizens.
Speaker 1: It's that last category of characters that really jumped out
Speaker 1: at me when I re listened to this show. You
Speaker 1: meet one right off the bat in episode one, Kevin,
Speaker 1: a department store maintenance guy from Long Island who got
Speaker 1: politically activated by the Cold War and kind of enlisted
Speaker 1: himself along with a bunch of friends in the cause
Speaker 1: of anti communism. Kevin Katke was just a guy that
Speaker 1: he wanted to defend America and to be involved in
Speaker 1: its foreign policy. And what's crazy is he got pretty far. Again.
Speaker 1: I don't want to lay it on too thick, but
Speaker 1: we're living through a time now when extremely motivated, politically
Speaker 1: engaged eccentrics have had amazing success penetrating the halls of power.
Speaker 1: I remember when this season first came out, even before COVID,
Speaker 1: we struggled a little bit to articulate what it told
Speaker 1: us about the moment we were living through. We thought
Speaker 1: maybe it was an interesting corollary to Trump's Ukraine scandal
Speaker 1: because they both involved let's say, foreign policy shenanigans and
Speaker 1: the sale of weapons. But five years later we are
Speaker 1: in a different moment. That Ukraine Scane, even though it
Speaker 1: got Trump impeached, feels almost quaint. I think you'll agree
Speaker 1: that Iran Contra doesn't. As you hear, the stakes were
Speaker 1: unmistakably high, and the decisions being made had consequences around
Speaker 1: the world more than anything. That's what makes Iran Contra
Speaker 1: feel particularly resonant in twenty twenty five. It's a story
Speaker 1: about a bunch of guys moving the levers of history
Speaker 1: in a way that seems like it really shouldn't be allowed,
Speaker 1: but apparently it is. Binge the entire season of Fiasco
Speaker 1: Iran Contra ad free by subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Sign
Speaker 1: up on the Fiasco show page on Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 1: at pushkin dot fm, slash Plus. Pushkin Plus subscribers can
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