Speaker 1: This is a production of Journalista podcast LLC and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: When the Nicaraguan port of Corinto was bombed in October,
Speaker 2: it was the Contrast who took the credit, but CBS
Speaker 2: News has learned it was Americans who led the raid.
Speaker 2: Military sources confirm it was Americans who took two boatloads
Speaker 2: of Honduran commandos from the Salvadoran coast to Corinto to
Speaker 2: place time bombs in the port, Americans from the CIA,
Speaker 2: and Americans from regular military service. Publicly, the Pentagon won't
Speaker 2: talk about those actions, and privately, the American military just
Speaker 2: keeps doing them. Jane Wallace, CBS News to Gusigalpa, Honduras.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to the Journalista podcasts. Cookie is becoming a
Speaker 1: rock star for CBS. But after the CIA is exposed
Speaker 1: mining harbors and blowing up ships in Nicaragua, folks back
Speaker 1: home in the United States are starting to wonder what
Speaker 1: in the hell are we doing in Central America.
Speaker 3: The success of communism in Central America poses the threat,
Speaker 3: but one hundred million people from Panama to the open
Speaker 3: border on Arshall could come under the control of pro
Speaker 3: Soviet regimes.
Speaker 1: President Reagan made his case to the American people, but
Speaker 1: Congress wasn't buying it. Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy called it stupid.
Speaker 1: Republican Senator Barry Goldwater said I'm pissed off. Former President
Speaker 1: Jimmy Carter called it disgraceful. Justin Wolfe, Tulane history professor,
Speaker 1: explains what happened next.
Speaker 4: In nineteen eighty two, there's an amendment put forward by
Speaker 4: Representative Boland to a Military Appropriations Act. It's a rider.
Speaker 4: The Democrats are in a weaker position. They don't have
Speaker 4: the votes to outright forbid any US funding for the
Speaker 4: Contras or US support for the Contras, but they're able
Speaker 4: to put in limits because it's a military bill that
Speaker 4: the Reagan administration desperately wants. Basically, they're not going to
Speaker 4: veto it. It's a unanimously passed military appropriations bill, but
Speaker 4: they're stuck with this. The language in the press, the
Speaker 4: language of US officials becomes more violent, more aggressive about
Speaker 4: the need to remove the Sananistas and the growing questions
Speaker 4: in the US, the growing anti war movement. But I
Speaker 4: think really importantly, the growing uncertainty that this will be
Speaker 4: another Vietnam. There's no appetite for US interventions there's no
Speaker 4: appetite for US involvement in a war that doesn't seem
Speaker 4: like our war. And so in eighty three and eighty four,
Speaker 4: the bowl And Amendment is expanded through a series of
Speaker 4: other amendments and laws that basically limit all funding and
Speaker 4: all overt and covert funding right including the CIA to
Speaker 4: the contrast. And so this places the Contras in a
Speaker 4: difficult position. They need supplies, they need new weapons, they
Speaker 4: need ammunition, they need you name it, they need the
Speaker 4: supplies of war. The Reagan administration, particularly members of Reagan's
Speaker 4: National Security Council, are trying to figure out how to
Speaker 4: get funding there that doesn't look like it's coming directly
Speaker 4: from the US.
Speaker 1: The Reagan administration decides to go rogue. They come up
Speaker 1: with a secret plan to go around the Bowland Amendments,
Speaker 1: the beginning of the Iran contrast story that would rock
Speaker 1: the world and become the biggest scandal of the eighties.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, Cookie is just doing work. She has
Speaker 1: a story for Ed Bradley at sixty minutes about one
Speaker 1: of the most badass women in Central American history. Did
Speaker 1: you ever do any big stories with some of those
Speaker 1: big sixty minutes people, did anyone come in and do
Speaker 1: a story?
Speaker 5: Oh, all the time. Don Hewett, you know he's the
Speaker 5: creator of sixty minutes. He was the most aggressive motherfucker
Speaker 5: to get a story. All of them were just dirty,
Speaker 5: old fucking men. I'll fit right in. Sixty minutes rolls
Speaker 5: on a whole different plane. It's what I used to
Speaker 5: call working with the big boys, the elite. Sixty Minutes
Speaker 5: wouldn't come in to just do day to day stories.
Speaker 5: I would have to come up with something extremely interesting,
Speaker 5: one of a kind for them to be interested. I
Speaker 5: was always communicating with them. I developed some very good
Speaker 5: contacts and friendships there. It's funny because Ed had a
Speaker 5: fixation and obsession with somebody that you also have, and
Speaker 5: that was with Nora Aga exactly. She was a lady
Speaker 5: that came from a well to do family and educated family.
Speaker 5: She was one of these rich kids that were in
Speaker 5: the underground for the San Denistas, way before anybody even knew.
Speaker 5: She was also a fighter, a warrior. You've seen pictures
Speaker 5: that you fell in love with with her in her
Speaker 5: uniform and always looking fabulous.
Speaker 1: Like a fabulous badass, like.
Speaker 5: A fabulous warrior. I called her others called her Matahari.
Speaker 5: At least is as good as that I like to
Speaker 5: hear it, or maybe it's too bad.
Speaker 3: For me to hear it.
Speaker 5: No, no, no, oh, poor friend, Dubrey.
Speaker 6: Says that you are spy.
Speaker 1: That was the legendary movie star Greta Garbo from the
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty one film Matahari, who is the real Matahari,
Speaker 1: one of the world's most notorious spies, known for her
Speaker 1: beauty and seductive charms. Her real name was Margaretha Gertruda MacLeod,
Speaker 1: a Dutch exotic dancer who was convicted of being a
Speaker 1: spy for Germany during World War One. Before the war,
Speaker 1: she had performed as Matahari several times for the Crown
Speaker 1: Prince Wilhelm, eldest son of Kaiser Wilhelm the Second, who
Speaker 1: was the Emperor of Germany. She was recruited by France
Speaker 1: to seduce the Crown Prince to steal military secrets they
Speaker 1: could use in the war. That didn't work out too well.
Speaker 1: She did seduce him, but ended up changing sides and
Speaker 1: spying for the Germans. She was eventually captured and executed
Speaker 1: by firing squad. She was the original fem fatale. She
Speaker 1: inspired dozens of books, stage plays, TV shows, and films,
Speaker 1: as recently as twenty twenty one as a character in
Speaker 1: The Kingsman, which grossed over one hundred and twenty five
Speaker 1: million dollars at the box office. So, calling Nora Astorga
Speaker 1: the Madihari of Nicaragua was both a compliment and a curse,
Speaker 1: depending on who you listened to. But it was a
Speaker 1: moniker that would follow her for the rest of her life.
Speaker 5: She was Madahari because of who she was in society.
Speaker 5: She could get in and out of things and get
Speaker 5: information for the underground. So a spy a spy, yes.
Speaker 5: What put her on the map was before any of this,
Speaker 5: before the Civil War, before the revolution, before any of
Speaker 5: those things, when the Sandinistas were still very much under
Speaker 5: Obviously the Samosa people knew about them and tried at
Speaker 5: every point to crush them. The plan was to kidnap
Speaker 5: a Sumosa general, hold him hostage, hold him for ransom,
Speaker 5: get some money out of it. I'm not quite sure,
Speaker 5: but I don't think their intention was to kill this guy.
Speaker 1: What was his name is?
Speaker 5: Vega?
Speaker 1: Perez Vega was deputy commander of Anastasio Simosa's National guard
Speaker 1: considered one of the most brutal generals in Nicaragua, responsible
Speaker 1: for the torture and murder of hundreds of Nicaraguans. He
Speaker 1: was also a womanizer and went after the women he wanted,
Speaker 1: for better or worse, whenever he felt like it. He
Speaker 1: was a really bad man. His nickname the dog.
Speaker 5: He actually grew up with my mother, and he had
Speaker 5: a different nickname, remolacha, which means beat because he would
Speaker 5: get very red in the face. So your nickname that
Speaker 5: you discovered came years later.
Speaker 1: And the dog in Spanish is at pedro.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah. Well, so Nora was with the group that kidnapped him.
Speaker 5: It was herself and two others, and she used her
Speaker 5: womanly whiles to set him up and hold him hostage.
Speaker 1: Nora was a lawyer at the time and it crossed
Speaker 1: Vegas path in the normal course of business. He decided
Speaker 1: he wanted her, not what she wanted, but it created
Speaker 1: an opportunity. This is Nora Astorga in her own words.
Speaker 7: The plan was to make a date for him to
Speaker 7: come to my house. In the house, there would be
Speaker 7: three compagnos, one in a big closet that opened into
Speaker 7: the main room, another in the room opposite and another
Speaker 7: in a very small room. We had a signal. I
Speaker 7: was to disarm him while he suspected nothing. I would
Speaker 7: then have him totally defenseless and would hold him well.
Speaker 7: I gave the countersign for my compagnitos to move into action.
Speaker 1: My understanding is she was working this for a while.
Speaker 1: It was a seduction too.
Speaker 5: Yeah, all of this stuff had to be You couldn't
Speaker 5: just do it because you were dealing with the ruthless regime.
Speaker 1: And she was just sort of playing him, stringing him
Speaker 1: along for a while, sucking him.
Speaker 5: In absolutely, and then something went wrong.
Speaker 7: He arrived ready to simply get on with it. No
Speaker 7: little drinks or conversation first, none of the subtlety or
Speaker 7: the delicacy menus from time to time. No, he just
Speaker 7: arrived and said, here I am, let's do it.
Speaker 5: So it began.
Speaker 7: We went straight to the bedroom. I disarmed him and
Speaker 7: I took off all of my outer clothes. The compans
Speaker 7: came into the room and immobilized him. He put up qualified.
Speaker 7: He was very strong. He began to shut to his guard,
Speaker 7: but the guard didn't hear him. It was when I
Speaker 7: went to the garage to get a car that they
Speaker 7: had to kill El Perro. He resisted too much and
Speaker 7: they had to execute him.
Speaker 5: I remember my mother telling me, oh, one of my
Speaker 5: childhood friends was murdered. We don't know how it happened
Speaker 5: or who did it, because you have to understand this
Speaker 5: is all still very underground. This isn't public knowledge. It
Speaker 5: was years later that it came out that she was
Speaker 5: involved with that.
Speaker 7: I never felt guilty. The plan was to kidnap him,
Speaker 7: but he fought back and had to be killed. It
Speaker 7: was something you had to do for a revolutionary justice.
Speaker 7: He had killed so many, he was a monster.
Speaker 1: They slit his throat. His body was later found wrapped
Speaker 1: in the Sandinista flag. A. Storica became the most wanted
Speaker 1: woman in Nicaragua. The subject of a national manhunt, she
Speaker 1: escaped to the Jungles and joined the Sandinista revolutionaries, where
Speaker 1: she became a warrior and a leader in the war
Speaker 1: against the Mosa.
Speaker 5: The one thing the Sandinesas were good at was treating
Speaker 5: women not only with respect, but equally. They could be
Speaker 5: equal partners on the field, equal partners as soldiers, equal
Speaker 5: partners on missions, and so when the Sandinistas won the revolution,
Speaker 5: she obviously had good standing, and she had held several
Speaker 5: high positions.
Speaker 1: Astorga eventually became Nicaraguan Ambassador to the United Nations. She
Speaker 1: was a controversial choice, opposed vehemently by the US government,
Speaker 1: but she was effective, mingling with the elite and scoring
Speaker 1: major aid packages for Nicaragua. Strident in her beliefs, always
Speaker 1: a warrior for her country, yet always the center of
Speaker 1: controversy and gossip. A female diplomat from Latin America at
Speaker 1: a Security Council debates said, the moment Nora Astorga crossed
Speaker 1: her legs, all the eyes in the room were off
Speaker 1: the speaker and on her. One male Western ambassador said,
Speaker 1: she wears her past like other women wear perfume. She
Speaker 1: was one of a kind. Sixty minutes agreed.
Speaker 5: So Ed Bradley was sort of entranced with her mystique
Speaker 5: and everything about it, much like you are. I told
Speaker 5: him that I could get an interview with her. Was
Speaker 5: he interested? And he was like, tell me when and
Speaker 5: where I'll be there. She was a very striking woman,
Speaker 5: very intelligent. I got everything set up, Ed flew in
Speaker 5: and we got the interview. He loved it. He brought
Speaker 5: up her past. He brought up her present, and he
Speaker 5: brought up what's in the future. None of us knew
Speaker 5: at the time that she had breast cancer and she
Speaker 5: was dying. There was not going to be much future
Speaker 5: left for her. That evening we celebrated. Of course, we
Speaker 5: asked Nora to join us at the hotel.
Speaker 1: Was he flirting with her?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 5: Ed was a flirt Ed was a charmer. He could
Speaker 5: charm the pants off, literally off anybody. Yeah, he was
Speaker 5: very taken with her. You didn't see the Madahari side
Speaker 5: of her. You could see how she was able to
Speaker 5: do it, but you just didn't see that side of her.
Speaker 5: You think you know people, but you don't know everything
Speaker 5: about them.
Speaker 1: She was tough.
Speaker 5: She was tough, and I believe she was fighting at
Speaker 5: the time the Port of Corinto being mined by the US,
Speaker 5: because that was breaking we spoke of earlier the Geneva convention.
Speaker 5: She was a tough lady. Tough lady.
Speaker 1: When she left the party just raiged on.
Speaker 5: Yeah. Ed could hold his own Yeah, and I was
Speaker 5: getting producing credits in sixty minutes, which was amazing. So yeah,
Speaker 5: it was a night to celebrate.
Speaker 1: Do you want to say anything about having a fling ed.
Speaker 5: And I got close.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 5: He came back to Nicaragua a couple of times. We
Speaker 5: would also see each other in New York and he
Speaker 5: was also a big jazz Fest fan, so when he
Speaker 5: would come here we would have deluxe treatment. It was
Speaker 5: always fun to run with Ed, working or not working. Yeah,
Speaker 5: we had a fling. He was fun. He was interesting,
Speaker 5: but again and maybe he was a little more interested
Speaker 5: in me than I was in him.
Speaker 1: Interesting and not surprising either. Yeah, after the break, we'll
Speaker 1: meet the man in Cookie's life, and after forty years,
Speaker 1: he has a lot to say about it. We'll be
Speaker 1: right back. Welcome back. We've talked a lot about Cookie's
Speaker 1: many adventures, some crazy, some scary, some just plain ridiculous.
Speaker 1: But now we meet the man in her life, her
Speaker 1: forever dude. Some when you met back in her missus
Speaker 1: scarface days. Here we are back again with the beautiful
Speaker 1: and talented Cookie hood, and today we have a very
Speaker 1: special guest, her son Patrick, who everyone knows is Chico.
Speaker 6: Hey, Steve, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: We know each other a little bit, but I'd like
Speaker 1: to know what it was like growing up in a
Speaker 1: hotel suite in Monagua with this crazy woman in the
Speaker 1: middle of a war.
Speaker 8: You know, here in other people's childhoods and how they
Speaker 8: grew up, and I always think, man, that was not
Speaker 8: my child. I did not have that same experience. It
Speaker 8: was different. Instead of having a front yard in a backyard,
Speaker 8: I had a hotel lobby in a pool area.
Speaker 5: You know, so your friends used to call Yeah.
Speaker 8: My friends used to call it a chi Cho's big house.
Speaker 8: So it was it was interesting, you know, because my
Speaker 8: friends can come over and they knew that, you know,
Speaker 8: we could stay up all night.
Speaker 9: What was it?
Speaker 5: One rule though?
Speaker 6: What there are no rules.
Speaker 5: There's only one rule in this big house. There are
Speaker 5: no rules. And the kids friends would all be like, wow,
Speaker 5: your mom is cool, and they could do whatever the
Speaker 5: fun they wanted. But that did Chiecho was just another day.
Speaker 8: It was a great experience in that piece, but the
Speaker 8: pieces that, you know, maybe fell through the cracks where
Speaker 8: you know, maybe at times, you know, I loved having
Speaker 8: a best friend, but you know, at times I needed
Speaker 8: a mother as well, and she just wasn't good at that.
Speaker 1: You grew up with this crazy, amazing person. Her mission
Speaker 1: to party, her driving force was to party. And she
Speaker 1: became a journalist to party and she changed the world
Speaker 1: in her way.
Speaker 6: Party party.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that sounds really fun and cool. Then you realize
Speaker 1: that's your mom.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 8: There was a few times where I would encounter her
Speaker 8: or her coworkers, you know, maybe like out of their minds,
Speaker 8: messed up. Maybe she's like going off the deep end
Speaker 8: and what her perception of what reality is at the moment,
Speaker 8: you know. And same thing with some of her coworkers.
Speaker 8: I remember there being like lines, yeah, lines or weed
Speaker 8: or pipes or whatever everywhere around me, and because you're
Speaker 8: a kid, you see them, but you don't make two
Speaker 8: sense of it. Obviously I didn't grab anything or do
Speaker 8: anything like that, but it was all, yeah, it was
Speaker 8: all nearby, and I was interacting with all these people
Speaker 8: that are completely fucked up, out of their minds, you know.
Speaker 5: So I used to think you were from the CIA,
Speaker 5: and he was seven. Look at his eyes, those are cameras.
Speaker 5: That's the ciabe. He's seven. He's seven years old. He's
Speaker 5: not from the CIA.
Speaker 8: From an early age, I knew what drugs were and
Speaker 8: how they affected people. It's funny. It wasn't until I
Speaker 8: was in high school going through a DARE class that
Speaker 8: I realized that all these things were bad.
Speaker 1: Your mom's friends, some of these people that she ran
Speaker 1: with at the time, were they like uncles to you? Basically?
Speaker 6: Yeah, it was.
Speaker 5: They were all like buddies.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 8: Again, that's one of the things that was really awesome
Speaker 8: about how she raised me was, you know, she treated
Speaker 8: me like an equal. So even though I knew she
Speaker 8: was my mom, you know, I could make fun of her,
Speaker 8: or I could make jokes and feel comfortable around her.
Speaker 8: It was the same for her crew and her friends.
Speaker 8: Because of the way she treated me, they would do
Speaker 8: the same thing.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 8: So maybe some of the camera guys and some of
Speaker 8: the crew guys are a little tougher, you know what
Speaker 8: I mean.
Speaker 5: Because he was the mascot, you know.
Speaker 6: Man, there were little shits, man.
Speaker 5: Like it would wrap them up, Gaffer tam Man and
Speaker 5: he would be hopping around. What time? This was a
Speaker 5: great story. I took him to Bill Counsuler, you know.
Speaker 5: William Kunstler, the famous attorney.
Speaker 1: William Kunstler was the former director of the American Civil
Speaker 1: Liberties Union the ACLU. He made his name defending the indefensible,
Speaker 1: taking on unwinnable cases.
Speaker 10: He was one of the most well known lawyers and
Speaker 10: civil rights activists of the twentieth century. William Kunstler defended
Speaker 10: the Chicago Seven and counted Martin Luther King, Junior, Malcolm X,
Speaker 10: and comedian Lenny Bruce among his clients.
Speaker 1: The New York Times called him the most hated and
Speaker 1: loved lawyer in America.
Speaker 5: Well, I took him to Bill's house for barbecue at
Speaker 5: the same moment the JDL is outside protesting and wanting
Speaker 5: to kill him because he was defending the first World
Speaker 5: Trade Center bombers. You remember those first ones. Yeah, And
Speaker 5: so even when we weren't in Nick Roger in the war,
Speaker 5: anywhere we would go, this would be.
Speaker 6: His trouble was finding us. Man.
Speaker 8: I just remember, like we're eating and I'm like looking
Speaker 8: at and so I'm like, what are all these people?
Speaker 5: He just like, why are those people protesting and angry
Speaker 5: at us? Why do they want to hurt us? Cookie?
Speaker 5: And like we had to book and get out the
Speaker 5: back door and run away. His life was like that,
Speaker 5: anywhere and everywhere that we went.
Speaker 1: Were you aware of the danger? Were you afraid for
Speaker 1: your mom? Were you afraid for the world you have?
Speaker 8: I always knew what her job was and I understood
Speaker 8: the dangers because I would see news footage being spliced
Speaker 8: in front of me in their studio in the hotel.
Speaker 8: It didn't really hit home until she would get into
Speaker 8: these situations where I'd be like, hey, where's my mom,
Speaker 8: And they're like, well, she can't come home right now
Speaker 8: because of this, or she can't come home because of that.
Speaker 8: She would never hide anything from me, and you know,
Speaker 8: I could be five years old and she's telling me
Speaker 8: the cold, hard.
Speaker 6: Facts, whether I understood it or not, you know, but uh.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well Cookie, did you ever have a moment where
Speaker 1: you thought what am I doing to this kid?
Speaker 6: Every day?
Speaker 5: Actually? You know, you'd think that I would have thought that,
Speaker 5: But everything was just so natural, just things that most
Speaker 5: people would have just been horrified. We just took it
Speaker 5: and stride was normal. I guess it was our normal.
Speaker 5: And if we wouldn't have been in a war, we
Speaker 5: would have been in some other crazy situation. So I
Speaker 5: did try to hide certain aspects of the war from him,
Speaker 5: you know, I wouldn't expose him to dead bodies or
Speaker 5: people blown up. There were times when he had to
Speaker 5: confront that kind of shit. I guess at the time,
Speaker 5: I didn't realize how that could fuck him up or something,
Speaker 5: which I guess just having me as a mother would
Speaker 5: have been enough to fuck him up. I never really
Speaker 5: felt guilty about putting him in those situations. My guilt
Speaker 5: was more of I'm not always there for him. I'm
Speaker 5: not a great mom, or a mom not on top
Speaker 5: of his homework, or where's he going, which in later
Speaker 5: years I felt guilty about. I didn't feel guilty at
Speaker 5: the time because I was too caught up in everything
Speaker 5: that was going on. The funny thing is that he
Speaker 5: was everywhere, and not just myself, but all journalists, all
Speaker 5: crews just took him for granted. He was just chi
Speaker 5: cho hanging out. He lived in a bubble within a
Speaker 5: bubble within a war. He was probably in a lot
Speaker 5: more danger than we would care to admit or realize
Speaker 5: at any given moment. I guess that's my bad.
Speaker 8: The biggest takeaway from it was being ready for anything,
Speaker 8: and you know, whether as positive or negative. And it
Speaker 8: really got me to be in touch with people, you know,
Speaker 8: whether they were you know, somebody that was really important
Speaker 8: or treated as a VIP, or you know, maybe it's
Speaker 8: just a poor person that's begging in the street. You know,
Speaker 8: my mom always taught me to never differentiate between class
Speaker 8: and always treat people equally. I had friends these parents
Speaker 8: are maids, and then I had friends whose parents were,
Speaker 8: you know, national diplomats.
Speaker 1: When did you realize your mom was up to something
Speaker 1: that was pretty fucking amazing.
Speaker 8: I would interact with my schoolmates, and I would hear
Speaker 8: what their parents were doing and what their parents' job
Speaker 8: was like, and none of them sounded like my mom's,
Speaker 8: you know. And I would see different people that you know,
Speaker 8: would recognize from film or TV or news and be like,
Speaker 8: why what.
Speaker 6: Are they doing here? You know?
Speaker 8: And it turned into this thing where I was like, Wow,
Speaker 8: I think my mom's got something going on here, you know.
Speaker 6: So it's interesting.
Speaker 1: Well, let's get into some of that, because that's kind
Speaker 1: of the one of the fun parts of this whole
Speaker 1: journey is that hotel Suite became kind of like party central,
Speaker 1: so everybody who was anybody was coming through there at
Speaker 1: some point or another. So let's talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about that. Like, what was your first essay celebrity encounter.
Speaker 8: Well, you know, one of my favorite anecdotes was the
Speaker 8: time I met Daryl Hannah.
Speaker 1: I first saw Daryl Hannah cart wheeling into one of
Speaker 1: my top ten films, The Original Blade Runner starring Harrison
Speaker 1: Ford and Rucker Howard. But you might also remember her
Speaker 1: from the tear jerker Steel Magnolias, where Tarantino's kill Bill.
Speaker 1: She was the badass blonde wearing the black pirate patch
Speaker 1: on her eye.
Speaker 8: It was funny. My mom introduced me to her, and
Speaker 8: I was pretty young. I think I might have I
Speaker 8: might have been three or something like that, and one
Speaker 8: of my favorite movies at the time was Splash, you know,
Speaker 8: the way for me to associate with who this person
Speaker 8: I was meeting. My mom was like, hey, this is
Speaker 8: the mermaid, you know, and I was like, oh, what
Speaker 8: with a mermaid?
Speaker 6: Huh.
Speaker 8: My first reaction was to go find a bucket of
Speaker 8: water so I could throw it on her.
Speaker 6: My mom had to stop me from all the.
Speaker 5: Way dragging a bucket of water. I'm like, where are
Speaker 5: you going. Water was a very valuable thing at the time.
Speaker 5: He goes, I'm going to go throwing on the.
Speaker 6: Mermaids, trying to help the mermaid out.
Speaker 5: Yeah. I was like, no, it's not like that. So
Speaker 5: for him, he had blurred lines, you know, and it
Speaker 5: wasn't just with movie stars and TV stars, with rock stars, directors,
Speaker 5: prominent politicians from other countries.
Speaker 1: You met Jimmy Carter, and I know the Cookie had
Speaker 1: a pretty special relationship with them, with yours as well.
Speaker 5: His relationship was hit the Secret Service because they would
Speaker 5: try to chase him down the hall and he would
Speaker 5: just go run straight to mister Jimmy and miss Rosalind.
Speaker 8: Well, you're putting the Secret Service against a kid that
Speaker 8: knows the hotel inside and out, you know. So they're
Speaker 8: trying to chase me and they can't catch me because
Speaker 8: I know the intricacies of this place, you know. So
Speaker 8: it was really cool though. He was a super super
Speaker 8: gracious man. Same thing for his wife. You know, they're
Speaker 8: really really nice people.
Speaker 1: Jimmy Carter was in Monogua to monitor of the election,
Speaker 1: one of the many things that shaped his legacy.
Speaker 6: They stayed on our same floor, which was awesome.
Speaker 5: Presidential suite was on our personal suite floor and the
Speaker 5: CBS News suite's offices.
Speaker 8: They were really really nice, really down to earth, and
Speaker 8: he made it a point to make sure to talk
Speaker 8: to everybody, and you know, it made everybody feel special,
Speaker 8: whether it's talking to her whether he's talking to the
Speaker 8: person that's bringing him a water.
Speaker 5: One of the Secret Services one called the front desk
Speaker 5: and said, there's a child running a monk in this hotel.
Speaker 5: He's lost. Who knows what could happen to him. The
Speaker 5: guy at the front desk said, could you describe that
Speaker 5: child to me? And they described Chicho and the guy
Speaker 5: started laughing. He goes, sir, that child could take you
Speaker 5: on a tour of the hotel he lives here. The
Speaker 5: Secret Service they had their hands full with him because
Speaker 5: they were on our floor. They're on my turf, they're
Speaker 5: on his turf. Yeah.
Speaker 8: One of the people that I met that maybe I
Speaker 8: didn't appreciate back then, but you know, definitely appreciate now
Speaker 8: is Oliver Stone.
Speaker 1: That's the four time Oscar winner and director of films
Speaker 1: like Platoon, Wall Street and JFK. Just in the neighborhood
Speaker 1: making the film Salvador, about another Central American cluster fuck
Speaker 1: the United States was involved in.
Speaker 8: You know, he's an incredible director, and I remember him
Speaker 8: just having these giant hands. I got to go to
Speaker 8: the Natural Born Killers anniversary screening two years ago, lo
Speaker 8: and behold, he was sitting like three seats away from
Speaker 8: me behind me, and I got a chance to meet
Speaker 8: him again and we talked about the Nicaragua experience for
Speaker 8: a little bit, which was really interesting.
Speaker 1: Then Cookie and Chicho met a little, tiny ass kicking
Speaker 1: nun mother Teresa.
Speaker 5: We were told she was going to show up at
Speaker 5: this school and she was going to meet with some
Speaker 5: religious leaders there. Since it was out of school, I
Speaker 5: brought a cheajolo, and I remember we were told to
Speaker 5: set up on a balcony overlooking the courtyard.
Speaker 1: She received permission from the Pope to start her own
Speaker 1: order in Calcutta, India, where she devoted her life to
Speaker 1: caring for the poorest of the poor, even receiving the
Speaker 1: Nobel Peace Prize in nineteen seventy nine.
Speaker 9: Wet us all together, thank God for this beautiful ocation
Speaker 9: where we can all together proclaim the joy of springing peace,
Speaker 9: the joy of loving one another, and the joy acknowledging
Speaker 9: that the poorest of the poor are our brothers and sisters.
Speaker 5: I'm not a religious person at all, And I remember
Speaker 5: we're setting up with the camera crew that did the
Speaker 5: opening shots of that movie you like Salvador, and all
Speaker 5: of a sudden, I just felt something and I turned
Speaker 5: to Domingo and I said, do you feel that? He goes,
Speaker 5: what are you talking about? I said, I just feel
Speaker 5: something in me. And she was walking in at that moment,
Speaker 5: into the courtyard. I looked down at her. She looked
Speaker 5: up at me. She had no reason to look up.
Speaker 5: I'm like, oh, wow, okay, this is weird. We filmed
Speaker 5: whatever it is she was doing in the courtyard, meeting
Speaker 5: with these religious leaders, and then we had asked to
Speaker 5: meet with her for ten minutes. She had already said
Speaker 5: no to all the journalists for some reason. Whoever we
Speaker 5: asked to get through to her. They got us the
Speaker 5: ten minutes. So we packed up our gear from the balcony,
Speaker 5: went in into a room on the inside. She's sitting
Speaker 5: there and I went up to her, you know, to
Speaker 5: introduce myself, and I said, I'm cooking from CBS News.
Speaker 5: We're the ones going to interview you. And she was
Speaker 5: just this tiny, fragile little person. She looked up at
Speaker 5: me and she said to me, can I tell you something?
Speaker 5: And I said, sure, ask me anything. She says, you
Speaker 5: and your generation thought that you guys were here to
Speaker 5: change the world. She says, maybe what you should have
Speaker 5: been thinking, and you still could think that maybe you
Speaker 5: cookie are just here to change one person's life, and
Speaker 5: maybe that life is your life. And I'm just so
Speaker 5: blown away. I'm like, what the fuck that just happened here?
Speaker 5: I mean, I've got goosebumps. I'm at a loss for words.
Speaker 5: Where if you know me, that never happens. It took
Speaker 5: me a couple of minutes to gather myself and I
Speaker 5: turned to the crew and I said, yeah, we're going
Speaker 5: to start the interview now. Might not have been my
Speaker 5: best interview because I was just so thrown off by
Speaker 5: what she said. She affected me more than the Pope
Speaker 5: or anybody else that I had ever met, and I
Speaker 5: interviewed the Pope three times spiritually, she was the one.
Speaker 6: She definitely had an energy her.
Speaker 8: I got a chance to meet her, and she was
Speaker 8: really really sweet, you know, Like I met her and
Speaker 8: she just like cupped my face with her hands, and
Speaker 8: that's like what I mainly remember about her. She definitely
Speaker 8: had an energy about her. I'm not even a religious person,
Speaker 8: and I was like, man, she was amazing.
Speaker 5: Stop somebody like me and tell me something like that.
Speaker 6: I was like, whoa mind blown huh?
Speaker 5: Yeah, what the fuck? Just happened. Yeah, that was one
Speaker 5: of the better moments of my career.
Speaker 11: Wow.
Speaker 1: In twenty sixteen, Mother Teresa became a saint, so Cookie
Speaker 1: had a spiritual experience. Great timing because she's about to
Speaker 1: face her own death. We'll be right back, Welcome back.
Speaker 1: When I was a kid, I used to wonder if
Speaker 1: you were in an elevator and it was falling, you
Speaker 1: just jump right before it crashed and survive. Cookies about
Speaker 1: to find out sort of.
Speaker 5: Before journalists could go into the boonies, into the jungles,
Speaker 5: they always had to get permissions and authorizations from whichever
Speaker 5: commandante's region you were going into, and nothing happens without
Speaker 5: his permission knowledge whatever. This was Commandante Roberto Calderon. We
Speaker 5: needed permission to go into his region because we were
Speaker 5: going to go on a junket with the soldiers, and
Speaker 5: I was going to try to bullshit my way into
Speaker 5: getting his okay, because a lot of times journalists would
Speaker 5: go to these regions, go to the commandante in charge,
Speaker 5: and then be turned away. So I knew I was
Speaker 5: going to have to use all my weaponry to get
Speaker 5: this permission. Well, we could call it charm bullshitting, whatever
Speaker 5: you want to call it. And we get to the
Speaker 5: military base. I asked to speak to the commandante. Well,
Speaker 5: do you have an appointment? No, I don't. I'm with
Speaker 5: CBS News. We want to get permission to go on
Speaker 5: a junket with the soldiers. And he says, well, we're
Speaker 5: not giving permissions right now. Can you just call the
Speaker 5: commandante and I would just like to meet with him.
Speaker 5: It's not going to do any good. He's not going
Speaker 5: to give you permission. I'm not leaving until you get
Speaker 5: the commandante for me. So we waited an hour or
Speaker 5: so and we got the meeting. He was very kind
Speaker 5: and I explained to him what we needed his permission
Speaker 5: to go in and he says, well, I think my
Speaker 5: guy's already told you that we're not giving permissions at
Speaker 5: this time. I said, it's so important to us, you know,
Speaker 5: we need to show what is going on in this war.
Speaker 5: And he says, I can't protect you. I promise you
Speaker 5: we will get the story and we won't get killed.
Speaker 5: He acquiesced and he gave us permission. So the first
Speaker 5: part of the mission, we had to be flown in
Speaker 5: a two propeller plane to the base in the jungle.
Speaker 5: That is where we were going to meet up with
Speaker 5: helicopters that were going to take us in to meet
Speaker 5: with the soldiers. So we're like, great, we'll get in
Speaker 5: this two propeller plane. It's just myself and the crew.
Speaker 1: The military pilot was the sister of Nora Astorga, you know,
Speaker 1: the Matahari of Nicaragua. Small world.
Speaker 5: I'm standing behind the plane as pilot Astorga turns it on.
Speaker 5: The exhaust from it was so strong it lifted me
Speaker 5: up so high like I was levitating. Then it dropped me.
Speaker 5: The pilot realized what was going on, she turned the
Speaker 5: vehicle off, which is what caused me to fall. She
Speaker 5: knew she had messed up. I was severely wounded. I
Speaker 5: could feel that my whole body had just been run
Speaker 5: over by a truck. It felt like I knew I
Speaker 5: was going to be in trouble and probably not in
Speaker 5: good shape to go on this ten day junket walking
Speaker 5: in the jungles. They're still going to take us to
Speaker 5: the military base and have a doctor look at me there.
Speaker 5: So we go on the two propeller plane. We get
Speaker 5: to this base. I think it was called Nueva Guinea.
Speaker 5: It was another region Immediately, a doctor from the base
Speaker 5: looks at me and he says to the camera crew,
Speaker 5: she cannot go on this junket with you guys. Kmatomas
Speaker 5: had formed all over my legs, my body. I was
Speaker 5: one big hematoma and they just send me to a
Speaker 5: cot to go to sleep. Unbeknownst to myself, they're getting
Speaker 5: the helicopter ready that's gonna take the crew and originally
Speaker 5: gonna take me deeper into the jungle to meet with
Speaker 5: the platoon that I'm going with. The doctor had not
Speaker 5: left instructions to anybody. They wake me up, they put
Speaker 5: me on the helicopter with the crew and here I
Speaker 5: am going deeper into the jungle to go into this junket,
Speaker 5: and I'm so out of it, I'm not even saying anything.
Speaker 5: And then they dump us, they leave us there. I
Speaker 5: gotta suck it up. And you have to remember, when
Speaker 5: I go on these junkets, I'm usually the only female.
Speaker 5: I can't be complaining and whining and saying, oh, I
Speaker 5: gotta be as strong as they are. The crew realizes
Speaker 5: I'm in trouble. They're going to be in trouble if
Speaker 5: I can't handle myself. And it was a tough one.
Speaker 5: After ten days, it's time to be picked up and
Speaker 5: taken back to civilization. So a helicopter comes to pick
Speaker 5: us up. We get loaded on. We're all relieved. We're
Speaker 5: going back to civilization.
Speaker 1: The helicopter takes off with Cookie the crew and a
Speaker 1: couple doesn't sand Anisa soldiers.
Speaker 5: We were in a Russian helicopter because the Russians are
Speaker 5: the ones helping the Sandinistans. The Russian helicopters were famous
Speaker 5: for two things. They had no p dejective ceilings around
Speaker 5: their gas tanks, and in this particular helicopter, they're carrying
Speaker 5: extra tanks of unsealed fuel. This does not bode well.
Speaker 5: We had taken off. I don't know how far up
Speaker 5: we were. All I know is that we were up
Speaker 5: in the air. I heard three somethings. I looked at
Speaker 5: one soldier and I said, that's not a good sound,
Speaker 5: is it? And he went white and he said, no,
Speaker 5: we're going down. And I said, what do you mean?
Speaker 5: We're going down? And then the other one's right, we're
Speaker 5: gonna die. And then we started to go down. If
Speaker 5: it had been a surface to air missile, we wouldn't
Speaker 5: be here talking to you. We would have been blown
Speaker 5: up midair. This was some lonely, fucking inexperienced soldier that
Speaker 5: shot us down. Thank god. Everyone says that thing about
Speaker 5: you know, your whole life flashes in front of you,
Speaker 5: and that didn't happen to me. All I kept saying
Speaker 5: was you stupid, fucking bitch. You are finally in a
Speaker 5: situation you cannot talk yourself out of. You can't run
Speaker 5: yourself out of it, you can't will yourself out of this.
Speaker 5: Through the years, that was the worst story to cover.
Speaker 5: Helicopter and plane crashes. We called them in the business
Speaker 5: crispy critters because they would just be burned or pieces
Speaker 5: of meat here and there. I'm fucked. I'm gonna be
Speaker 5: a crispy cretter.
Speaker 1: So it's spinning around, spinning around, You're gonna crash.
Speaker 5: It's gonna crash in a valley, which is even worse.
Speaker 5: I decide I'm gonna do like the movies. I'm gonna
Speaker 5: get to that door and I'm gonna jump out before
Speaker 5: we hit the ground. The camera crew was right behind me.
Speaker 5: I jumped out still mid air. They jumped out.
Speaker 1: They hit the ground hard, severely injured. Helicopter filled with
Speaker 1: soldiers spins toward the ground.
Speaker 5: All I know is I've got to run and just
Speaker 5: run and not look back. But where do I have
Speaker 5: to run? Upwards? To get out of the valley.
Speaker 1: The helicopter crashes into the valley, exploding in flames.
Speaker 5: So I'm climbing and I'm climbing and I'm climbing, and
Speaker 5: as I get to the top, I realize I can't
Speaker 5: take one more minute of this. I can't make it
Speaker 5: to the top. And all of a sudden comes a
Speaker 5: hand from above and somebody lifts me up and saves me.
Speaker 5: And it was one of the soldiers that we had
Speaker 5: been with on the ten day junket. They saw what
Speaker 5: had happened. At that point, I don't realize that they're
Speaker 5: getting in touch with Commandante Roberto Calderon, letting him know
Speaker 5: what's going on. He's going to send not one, not two.
Speaker 5: He's going to send three helicopters, one for each of us,
Speaker 5: because at this point he doesn't know if there's more
Speaker 5: attacks that are going to happen, and he doesn't want
Speaker 5: all of us on one helicopter to be shot at
Speaker 5: and killed.
Speaker 1: And at the same time, there are contraus soldiers rushing
Speaker 1: to the crash. There's no time to waste.
Speaker 5: We're in a spot that's full of trees. I can
Speaker 5: see the soldiers with their machetes chopping down trees, making
Speaker 5: a clearing for all these three helicopters to land. Three
Speaker 5: helicopters come, they take us away. To this day, I
Speaker 5: have to thank that Comandante for saving my life. By
Speaker 5: the time we got into Monogua the capitol, CBS already
Speaker 5: had medevac jets waiting for us to take the three
Speaker 5: of us to Miami. We were all injured. We had
Speaker 5: internal injuries, we had outward injuries. And again CBS came through.
Speaker 5: They always took care of their journalists, got us out
Speaker 5: of there. God us medevac to Miami. We spent about
Speaker 5: four to six weeks recovering in Miami.
Speaker 1: By the way, this is where Teacho story kicks in.
Speaker 1: And that must have been terrifying. How did you hear
Speaker 1: about it? How did it go down for you?
Speaker 8: Anytime that she was going to cover something that would
Speaker 8: be in overnight, or it would be something that would
Speaker 8: take a few days, whatever, she would tell me about
Speaker 8: it so I would know and prepare or whatever. But
Speaker 8: she had left to go to do one of her trips.
Speaker 8: After a few days, she didn't come back and hadn't
Speaker 8: heard from her, and somebody she worked with came up
Speaker 8: to me and they were like, Hey, I need to
Speaker 8: tell you something really important. Your mom was in a
Speaker 8: helicopter accident. All I knew about helicopter accidents was what
Speaker 8: I saw in action movies.
Speaker 6: You know, I'm.
Speaker 8: Picturing this helicopter blew up or whatever, you know, and
Speaker 8: I just didn't really know what to think or what
Speaker 8: the extent of her injuries were. So I just remember
Speaker 8: being like, where is she. They were like, oh, she's
Speaker 8: in Miami. She's in a hospital, and I was like,
Speaker 8: all right, I'm going to Miami. I remember going to
Speaker 8: the airport. I was flying by myself. I think I
Speaker 8: was in a suit jacket and a dress shirt and
Speaker 8: Miami Vice.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, wearing the Miami Vice cotton suit with the pinked,
Speaker 5: you know, lavender colors.
Speaker 6: It was wild. Yeah wait you had the yeah, the
Speaker 6: spiked area for sure.
Speaker 8: So I was flying by myself, and you know, I
Speaker 8: just remember that ride going to Miami and just having
Speaker 8: that uncertainty because all I knew was, you know, a
Speaker 8: helicopter crash. You know, so I didn't really know what
Speaker 8: I was walking into, and you know, there was that
Speaker 8: reality set in that, you know, I could have lost
Speaker 8: my mom. Once I got to the hospital, I was
Speaker 8: you know, obviously I was relieved that she was okay,
Speaker 8: but man, she was banged up. Man, I've never seen
Speaker 8: her like that. Yeah, I've never seen her like that.
Speaker 1: How did the experience knowing your mom could have died
Speaker 1: right then and how did that play out going forward?
Speaker 1: Were you Was it a different experience from that point on?
Speaker 6: No, Yeah, it was.
Speaker 8: It was a reality for me at that point. You know,
Speaker 8: I realized that I could have lost her at that moment,
Speaker 8: and and then that reality was there that I could
Speaker 8: lose her in the future. You know. So it wasn't
Speaker 8: something than I was actively thinking about every day, but
Speaker 8: every time that she was going out to do anything,
Speaker 8: it was something that was in the back of my head.
Speaker 5: Like, wow, I didn't think I was gonna live.
Speaker 6: Yeah, she was so banged up. It was wow.
Speaker 5: It was so scary, it really was.
Speaker 1: The Miami Herald ran this story a few days later.
Speaker 11: TV news crew Okay, after forced landing three members of
Speaker 11: a CBS television crew who survived a forced landing aboard
Speaker 11: a Soviet made Nicaraguan government helicopter over the weekend were
Speaker 11: brought to Miami for treatment of minor injuries. Reporter Courtney Hood,
Speaker 11: cameraman Domingo Rex, and sound man aziz A Chiavas were
Speaker 11: treated for cut cintebrations. Unspecified mechanical problems brought the aircraft
Speaker 11: down Sunday in southeast Nicaragua. CBS producer John Seislof said
Speaker 11: Tuesday in Nicaragua, it was a bullshit story.
Speaker 5: He never said that he had been censored. He could
Speaker 5: not say what had happened, or they weren't going to
Speaker 5: allow them to get me out the country for medical treatment,
Speaker 5: so you say this or she dies kind of thing.
Speaker 5: So I didn't know any of that.
Speaker 1: It was covered up like everything during war. The truth
Speaker 1: is also a casualty. After a few weeks, Cookie and
Speaker 1: the crew were released from the hospital, CBS thought it
Speaker 1: was a good idea to put him up in a
Speaker 1: fancy hotel to continue the recovery.
Speaker 5: We each had our own suite, but two of us
Speaker 5: wound up just crashing in the same suite because we
Speaker 5: had the.
Speaker 1: Same Basically the party, the party was on.
Speaker 5: Oh, the party was on, all expense paid. Yeah, it
Speaker 5: was a great place to recuperate. By that point, I
Speaker 5: was like, kind of this helicopter crash wasn't so bad
Speaker 5: after all.
Speaker 1: You know, Cookie survives a near death experience. But shit's
Speaker 1: about to get real. She comes face to face with
Speaker 1: the bloody consequences of terror.
Speaker 5: Next time on Joenerally, we're heading to the Jungles. We're
Speaker 5: just looking for a story. A mortar blows up. We
Speaker 5: all exit the vehicles, get in the dirt and start crawling,
Speaker 5: and all of a sudden, I hear on the side
Speaker 5: of me some soldier whispering Cookie, Cookie, is that you?
Speaker 5: He says, I have something I don't know if it
Speaker 5: means anything. A book. So I'm reading it and I'm
Speaker 5: like on the inside freaking out. I turned to Richard Wagner,
Speaker 5: can you look at this? He starts to read it,
Speaker 5: and he says, this is a goddamn CIA torture manual.
Speaker 1: The Journalista podcast features the stories and voice of Cookie Hood,
Speaker 1: narrated by Steven Estepp, produced by Sean J. Donnelly. Executive
Speaker 1: producers Jason Wagensback, Roy Laughlin, and Ellen k iHeart Executive
Speaker 1: producer Tyler Klang. Written and edited by Steven stem Music
Speaker 1: by Jay Weigel, Associate producer in sound design Stephen Tanti.
Speaker 1: Sound mixing by Jesse Solansnyder. Special Guestjulaine History professor Justin Woolf,
Speaker 1: Cindy Pohl as the voice of Nora Estorga, Patrick Chico Hood,
Speaker 1: Lloyd Sherr. Special thanks to Esplanade Studios, The Ranch Studios,
Speaker 1: Jason Gerwitz, Kyle Frederick, Zach Slaff. This is a production
Speaker 1: of Journalista podcast LLC and iHeartRadio