Speaker 1: This is a production of Journalista Podcast LLC and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to the Journalista Podcast. Well, the smoking gun
Speaker 1: everyone's been looking for has just been shot down by
Speaker 1: a shoulder mounted missile, and every journalist in the Western
Speaker 1: hemisphere is after that story. So let's talk about the
Speaker 1: biggest story of the eighties, the one that sort of
Speaker 1: defines your career.
Speaker 2: Well, I would have to say it was the Hasenfu story.
Speaker 2: For those that don't know the background, we'd been covering
Speaker 2: this war for a decade maybe less, the Sandinistas always
Speaker 2: maintaining that it was the US financing the contras that
Speaker 2: were attacking Nicaragua and the Sandinistas and the civilians and
Speaker 2: everybody there, but there had never been any concrete proof.
Speaker 1: So for you guys, the journalists on the ground, everybody
Speaker 1: knows this is happening, they just can't prove it.
Speaker 2: We all know, just like the Sandinistas know, just like
Speaker 2: everybody knows, that the US is involved, but there was
Speaker 2: never any concrete proof.
Speaker 1: So the worst kept secret in Nicaragua, worst kept secret.
Speaker 2: But also all the journalists and of course all the
Speaker 2: Sandinistas wanted to get this proof to say, hey, we
Speaker 2: told you so one day I'm in Miami vacation, took
Speaker 2: my son Chico. I'm on vacation, but I'm still hanging
Speaker 2: out at the CBS bureau. It's like we can't get
Speaker 2: away from it, you know. So I believe it was
Speaker 2: a Thursday. I'm not sure Wednesday or Thursday. I get
Speaker 2: a call from someone in nicarag was saying, have you heard.
Speaker 1: That someone was Cookie's assistant Alejandro Belly aka Chilean.
Speaker 3: The day that Casimphus came down, I was in the office.
Speaker 4: Cookie wasn't.
Speaker 3: I got the phone call, and we were the first
Speaker 3: service that got the phone call. It was the Ministry
Speaker 3: of Defense and the Army.
Speaker 4: We knew very well.
Speaker 3: Rosa Plastos, who was in chargeable doing relationes Pulicas de
Speaker 3: l Hersito. Her office would call in asking for Cookie.
Speaker 3: Cooky wasn't there. So they know me, and they say,
Speaker 3: you know, we're organizing a pool of the networks. We
Speaker 3: cannot take everyone. We're asking you to lead it. But
Speaker 3: that is her connection. They trusted her, I feel, and
Speaker 3: of course she had better connections. Of course she would
Speaker 3: shmush mush, Daniella when she would be there.
Speaker 2: You know, the Sandinistas have proof now that the US
Speaker 2: is involved because they caught an American associated with the
Speaker 2: CIA kicking out supplies over Contra territory.
Speaker 1: From a plane. Correct, So basically, the back ass of
Speaker 1: the plane is open and he's kicking out the kicking.
Speaker 2: This was this guy's specialty. He kicked out supplies. He
Speaker 2: kicked out propaganda over Sandinista territory because you want to
Speaker 2: win over the Sandinistas. But he also kicked out supplies.
Speaker 5: For the Contras. The plane gets shot down.
Speaker 2: The pilot and another person on the flight didn't have parachutes,
Speaker 2: but this guy, Eugene hazard Fus, for some reason, made
Speaker 2: the decision before he left to wear a parachute, which
Speaker 2: saved his life. So when the plane gets shot down,
Speaker 2: it crashes, the pilot and the other guy were killed instantly.
Speaker 2: Hazard Fus parachuted into Sandinista territory. This poor guy, he's
Speaker 2: the low man on the totopole, you know, a grunt,
Speaker 2: a kicker, which wasn't a very big important.
Speaker 1: Job, certainly not glamorous.
Speaker 5: Not glamorous.
Speaker 2: He survives because of the parachute, but he is convinced
Speaker 2: that as soon as he's caught, he will be shot
Speaker 2: on site, so he's hiding in some shack. Of course,
Speaker 2: the Sandinistas come upon him. He's still convinced they're going
Speaker 2: to kill him, and they don't because they also knew
Speaker 2: what they had. This was the first time that these
Speaker 2: guys are going to be able to prove prove positive
Speaker 2: with the human being that the US was involved in
Speaker 2: the war.
Speaker 1: You may have seen the iconic photo of Hasenfus being
Speaker 1: let out of the jungle by Sandinistas. Lou Demataeus tells
Speaker 1: us how it came to be.
Speaker 6: So we're flying in. Of course it's out in the jungle.
Speaker 6: The hell copter's got a land at the highest point
Speaker 6: to be like a hilltop that's been cleared by the
Speaker 6: army guys, so the helicopter could land. As we're coming in,
Speaker 6: I can see down by the river some activity, and
Speaker 6: I saw a really tall guy, and there were some
Speaker 6: shorter guys and farmy fatigues, and so I thought, well,
Speaker 6: that's that.
Speaker 4: Must be the guy.
Speaker 6: So we're getting off the helicopter and the har Republic
Speaker 6: Relation guys are going we want to have a press conference.
Speaker 4: Everybody over here. We're going to have a press conference.
Speaker 6: But I mean, as I was flying in, I saw
Speaker 6: that destroyed plane and I saw it and I saw
Speaker 6: the tail section of fuselage, and I saw some soldiers
Speaker 6: over there, and I said, well, what am I going
Speaker 6: to be going to wait in the press conference?
Speaker 4: Or am I going to go get photographs?
Speaker 6: And I remember I was running towards where I had
Speaker 6: seen the plane, and I saw these boots, all these
Speaker 6: army boots, and I remember thinking, what.
Speaker 4: Are all these army boots doing.
Speaker 6: It's very strange, And of course I realized later as
Speaker 6: it was the Contra supply plane, and that was part
Speaker 6: of what they were supplying, these guys with arms and munitions,
Speaker 6: but also you know, things like army boots. I got
Speaker 6: to where the tail section was and a big part
Speaker 6: of the plane they were pulling rifles out, and then
Speaker 6: there was a guy on the tail section and he
Speaker 6: was sort of guarding with this AK forty seven. So
Speaker 6: I saw this tarp over these bodies and I could
Speaker 6: see like boots sticking out from the tarp.
Speaker 4: Those are guys who didn't make it.
Speaker 6: I took the pictures of the tarp, you know, with
Speaker 6: the boots sticking out, and I took some other stuff
Speaker 6: as soon as I got back and there was a
Speaker 6: whole line of you know, probably three TV.
Speaker 4: Crews, and there were a bunch of photographers.
Speaker 6: But then we saw from down where the river was,
Speaker 6: which was a low point, we saw them bringing Hassimpus
Speaker 6: up the hill to where the hill copters were. They
Speaker 6: had his hands tied and then they were leading him,
Speaker 6: and so I just started photographing.
Speaker 1: Low's photograph became a synonymous with the Iron Contra affair,
Speaker 1: as the one with Oliver North standing in front of
Speaker 1: Congress with his hand in the air. This moment was
Speaker 1: the beginning of the unraveling of the Reagan administration's illegal
Speaker 1: operation to fund and supply the contrasts.
Speaker 6: It turns out the guy who was in front bringing
Speaker 6: him up the hill, which you see in that photograph,
Speaker 6: he is actually the one who fired the shoulder mounted
Speaker 6: a missile, the sam that hit the plane. He was
Speaker 6: being rewarded for this incredible heat. They brought him up.
Speaker 6: They let John ask a couple of questions.
Speaker 1: That's John Seisloff, the CBS producer you've met in earlier episodes,
Speaker 1: like when Cookie was busted for having some weed, you know,
Speaker 1: the Quaker. The first question was, can you tell us
Speaker 1: your name?
Speaker 4: My name is Jeane Hausen plus Barnett, Wisconsin.
Speaker 7: If you tell a name.
Speaker 4: Shot out of the sky. He didn't know what they
Speaker 4: were going to do to him.
Speaker 6: When you see the the Conic photo, if you look
Speaker 6: at him, he looks really worried because he thought there's
Speaker 6: a good chance they were just gonna plow him away.
Speaker 6: But when he saw the journalists, then he like relaxed.
Speaker 6: I'm sure he thought, well, I guess they're not gonna
Speaker 6: kill me. Is they gonna make it out of here?
Speaker 6: Because they're not gonna shoot me in front of these journalists. Yeah,
Speaker 6: it's told demeanor changed. And then like I said, I mean,
Speaker 6: it was his moment. I mean, it's a great line.
Speaker 6: He said, I got shot out of the sky. I mean,
Speaker 6: you know, it was almost like a movie moment, but
Speaker 6: it wasn't. It was reality.
Speaker 1: The Washington Post wrote this about the historic moment.
Speaker 8: Captured American put on display by Nicaragua. Eugene Haussenfuss, an
Speaker 8: American captured by Nicaraguan troops, appeared briefly at a press
Speaker 8: conference here late today, and the Sandinista military displayed credentials
Speaker 8: identifying him and the American co pilot who died in
Speaker 8: a downed plain Sunday, as US military advisors in El Salvador.
Speaker 8: A second American the pilot, also was killed, according to
Speaker 8: Nicaragua officials. The Nicaraguan government charged that the flight was
Speaker 8: operated by the CIA to resupply US backed rebels known
Speaker 8: as Contras inside Nicaragua. Osinphus is the first American prisoner
Speaker 8: of war the leftist Sandinista government is known to have
Speaker 8: captured in five years of fighting against the Contras.
Speaker 1: The Sandinista army commander who captured Hazenfus was Lieutenant Colonel
Speaker 1: Roberto Calderon. If that name sounds familiar, he was the
Speaker 1: guy that rescued Cookie after the helicopter crash. He said
Speaker 1: they recovered seventy new Soviet made assault rifles, one hundred
Speaker 1: thousand rounds of ammunition, a dozen PG seven rockets, and
Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty pairs of boots. The flo I
Speaker 1: had originated from a base in El Salvador. The US
Speaker 1: Embassy in El Salvador immediately released a statement saying Hasenfus
Speaker 1: is not part of the US military group here. We
Speaker 1: don't know who he is. The Embassy in Monagua said
Speaker 1: neither the airplane, nor its crew and cargo were financed
Speaker 1: by the US government. Hasenfus's wife, Sally, reached out for help.
Speaker 9: The next morning, I tried to call President Reagan. I thought, well,
Speaker 9: it's the only place I'm going to get answers. He's
Speaker 9: you know, I should be able to trust him. He's
Speaker 9: the president. I knew.
Speaker 10: He knew.
Speaker 9: He put me in touch with a man named Elliot Abrams.
Speaker 9: He said, I don't know who you are, and I
Speaker 9: don't know what you're talking about. I got angry, and
Speaker 9: before I hung up, he did admit that he knew
Speaker 9: what I was talking about, and he kept warning me that,
Speaker 9: you know, be careful of the press, and you know,
Speaker 9: be careful what you say, be careful what you do.
Speaker 1: Elliott Abrams was the Assistant Secretary of State. What Sally
Speaker 1: didn't know was that he was secretly involved in the
Speaker 1: whole contrast scheme. In other words, part of the problem,
Speaker 1: not the solution. You know, it's the biggest story of
Speaker 1: the decade.
Speaker 5: I know it's going to be the biggest story of
Speaker 5: the decade.
Speaker 1: And you also know that every journalist in the world,
Speaker 1: certainly in Nicaragua and all the Western journalists covering.
Speaker 5: It that was there and that I knew we're going
Speaker 5: to be flying in.
Speaker 1: Everybody wanted that. Everybody knew what it was, everyone knew
Speaker 1: what the consequences were.
Speaker 2: Of course, the first time it proof positive us has evolved.
Speaker 1: George Bosa, soundman for the CBS Dream Team, was a
Speaker 1: witness to the mayhem.
Speaker 11: There were people in the CBS chasing that. Even News
Speaker 11: was chasing them. Last fifty seventh was chasing them. We
Speaker 11: were in the office every day, and our office people
Speaker 11: are Bureau was working night and day to get that interview.
Speaker 11: So was every other journalist in the country. And there
Speaker 11: were a lot of big names there from all the
Speaker 11: other networks. Everybody and their mother was chasing that story,
Speaker 11: including the New York Times Washington Post.
Speaker 1: This brings us back to our favorite CBS News correspondent,
Speaker 1: Jane Wallace, who had been circling the story for years.
Speaker 7: I am in my office in New York City. I
Speaker 7: know exactly what this guy was doing there. I know
Speaker 7: that he's working for Ali North's network and that they're
Speaker 7: spook related. We're not sure exactly what level of the
Speaker 7: White House above Ali knows about this operation, but we
Speaker 7: know who Haus and Frus is the minute. They're pulling
Speaker 7: them around by the rope. I'm trying to get on
Speaker 7: a plane to Monogua. I'm trying to go through Miami
Speaker 7: to get to Nicaragua. CBS is not letting me fly.
Speaker 7: I owed them expense reports. Expense reports were the bane
Speaker 7: of everybody's existence, just hideously boring to do, down to
Speaker 7: the last centavo. They are not letting me put anything
Speaker 7: on my American Express card to get there.
Speaker 4: Hold on, let me, let me get this straight.
Speaker 1: The biggest story of the eighties is unfolding in front
Speaker 1: of your face, and I.
Speaker 7: Can't get on a plane because I can't buy the
Speaker 7: ticket yet. It was breath taking me, stupid. I'm sure
Speaker 7: I spoke to Manny. I'm sure as spoke to Leslie.
Speaker 7: We're all trying to get there as fast as we could.
Speaker 7: We knew exactly what the story was. I mean, you know,
Speaker 7: not the guy's details in his hometown, but we knew
Speaker 7: what he was doing there and why you fell out
Speaker 7: of that plane when he hit the ground. It was
Speaker 7: so frustrating. My eyes were bulging with a desire to
Speaker 7: get there and to get this story. We'd been waiting,
Speaker 7: we'd been taking all the Knox as if we had
Speaker 7: reported this all, because we'd reported it closer than anybody
Speaker 7: else had, at least as far as I know, And
Speaker 7: if somebody was further ahead on the story than us,
Speaker 7: I'd love to know about it now, because I would
Speaker 7: have missed it.
Speaker 11: Then.
Speaker 7: We wanted Hasenfuss, no question as CBS won't let me
Speaker 7: buy damn plane ticket, so I charged it on my
Speaker 7: own card and eventually head down there. I think someone
Speaker 7: was holding us up on permission to go too, and
Speaker 7: I just jumped it forget it. I don't remember where
Speaker 7: Manny was. I don't know if he was in country,
Speaker 7: out of country, the whole crew, Leslie, I'm not sure.
Speaker 7: We just all headed to go. We knew because the
Speaker 7: Intercontinental was sent a tiny town where everybody knew what
Speaker 7: everybody else was doing. We'd be noticed if I showed
Speaker 7: up again with Manny and Leslie and George Closa and Cookie,
Speaker 7: if the whole band gets back together, everybody's going to
Speaker 7: notice if we stayed there. We didn't have a solid
Speaker 7: book yet on Hausinfuest. We didn't have it nailed in
Speaker 7: terms of our access to him, but we decided to
Speaker 7: go to the Camino instead, so that we could at
Speaker 7: least stay low profile waiting to go interview this dude.
Speaker 7: So we get to Monagua, go to the Camino, and
Speaker 7: the next three days, I'm sitting by a pool, simmery,
Speaker 7: just simmery, waiting, waiting, waiting for a call. I'm just
Speaker 7: sitting there. Leslie is just sitting there. George and Manny
Speaker 7: are just sitting there waiting for the call to go
Speaker 7: interview Hausenfors. It was just stand by.
Speaker 2: So that Friday, I'm sitting in the CBS office in
Speaker 2: Miami and I get that called. So I get the
Speaker 2: bright idea. Wait, they're going to put this guy on trial.
Speaker 2: It's going to be a sham trial. He's going to
Speaker 2: be found guilty, you know, whether they're going to kill
Speaker 2: him or put him in prison. Was it yet quite
Speaker 2: clear to me what was going to happen. So I
Speaker 2: said to myself, let me call my friends at sixty minutes,
Speaker 2: and so I proceed to call Mike Wallace and Don Hewett.
Speaker 2: We were all friends and obviously colleagues. I had them
Speaker 2: on speakerphone and I said, Mike, Don, wouldn't it be
Speaker 2: great if we get this guy to confess on sixty
Speaker 2: minutes this Sunday coming and he confesses to the whole world.
Speaker 2: Wouldn't that be great? Mike dropped the phone. He couldn't
Speaker 2: believe it. You could hear Don Hewitt screaming.
Speaker 5: In the background.
Speaker 2: Fuck yeah, fuck yeah, get this story FORX Cookie, get
Speaker 2: that interview for us. And I said, okay, got off
Speaker 2: the phone with them. Called Ortega's right hand guy said
Speaker 2: to him, look, I know who you've got.
Speaker 5: I know what he means to you guys.
Speaker 2: I also figure you're gonna put him on trial. What
Speaker 2: if you let me and sixty minutes put him on
Speaker 2: the air this Sunday and have him confess to the
Speaker 2: whole world before you put on your trial. The guy
Speaker 2: loved the idea. He says, fuck yeah, we'll make that
Speaker 2: happen for you.
Speaker 5: Cookie.
Speaker 2: I said to Mike, we got it. We're in I said,
Speaker 2: but I'm in Miami right now. I'm not in Nicaragua.
Speaker 2: He says, I don't give a fuck. We'll pick you
Speaker 2: up in the jet. In fact, we'll pick you up
Speaker 2: tomorrow morning. We'll come in, we'll do the interview, we
Speaker 2: fly back out, edit it, put it on the air Sunday.
Speaker 5: Great.
Speaker 1: Cookie gets the biggest scoop of her career, but the
Speaker 1: story just gets crazier. We'll be right back, see you
Speaker 1: on the other side, Welcome back. Before we get to
Speaker 1: the fallout from the big sixty minutes interview, let's find
Speaker 1: out how Eugene Hasenfus ended up in the skies of Nicaragua.
Speaker 1: An ex marine, he started working for an outfit called
Speaker 1: Air America during the Vietnam War. It's best known for
Speaker 1: supplying and supporting covert and mostly illegal special ops in
Speaker 1: Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War, including drug smuggling and laos.
Speaker 1: They even made a movie about it, starring Mel Gibson
Speaker 1: and Robert Downey Junior Geane.
Speaker 4: We're not here right now?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I saw Nixon on TV.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so if we're not.
Speaker 7: Actually here, then of course this didn't happen as well.
Speaker 1: Maybe it didn't happen for you, and maybe it didn't happen.
Speaker 5: For Nixon, but.
Speaker 1: I think it happened for doug Are America also played
Speaker 1: a huge part in the evacuation of Saigon in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy five. You've probably seen the footage of helicopters taking
Speaker 1: people off the rooftops as the Viet com closed in
Speaker 1: around them.
Speaker 12: On April twenty ninth and thirtieth, the United States evacuated
Speaker 12: all remaining Americans, as well as some one hundred and
Speaker 12: twenty thousand South Vietnamese. Two ships waiting off the ghosts
Speaker 12: of Vietnam. As the last American helicopter lifted off from
Speaker 12: the roof of the American Embassy, North Vietnamese tanks rolled
Speaker 12: through the city and onto the grounds of the Presidential Palace.
Speaker 1: There's a famous photo of that effort that, like the
Speaker 1: Hasenfus picture, became a symbol of the failure of another
Speaker 1: US intervention. Air America helicopters were among the last flights out.
Speaker 1: They have quite a history. Eugene Hasenfuss was proud of
Speaker 1: his service.
Speaker 13: I loved Air America, and I love for anything that
Speaker 13: our country will do and write. And whether it was
Speaker 13: CIA over there or whatever, this year was supposed to
Speaker 13: be another sequel of exactly what Air America was doing
Speaker 13: over in Southeast Asia, just be a different geographical location
Speaker 13: and a time sequence, but otherwise it'd be exactly the
Speaker 13: same working for the government.
Speaker 1: Back to our story. Last time we saw Jane Wallace,
Speaker 1: she was on pins and needles, waiting for a phone
Speaker 1: call that never came.
Speaker 7: I think three days in, three very long days in
Speaker 7: at the last minute, Manny and Georgia getting beep to go.
Speaker 7: What do you mean, Manny and Georgia getting beep to go?
Speaker 7: COOKI what's the deal?
Speaker 11: When sixty minutes calls you, it's like you're going to
Speaker 11: answer that call. The airport in Monagua was closed on
Speaker 11: the weekends, no flights in her out. So Manny and
Speaker 11: I were chilling. We're at the hotel. I think we
Speaker 11: were either by the pool or we were gonna go
Speaker 11: shopping and Messiah and they tell us say no, no, no,
Speaker 11: no no, they're opening the airport tomorrow. They're gonna be
Speaker 11: coming in and it's gonna be a Leer jet and
Speaker 11: cookies on it with Mike Wallace and Don Hewett and
Speaker 11: that they got the interview with Eugene Hoseefice and Manny
Speaker 11: and I weare Wow, what a coup.
Speaker 7: They didn't know we were in town. They were just
Speaker 7: beeping any available crew to go interview hosstive for us,
Speaker 7: and we got stumped. We got stumped. Mike Wallace came
Speaker 7: to town with his crew, took my crew and my
Speaker 7: interviewee That's how I felt. But they were two days
Speaker 7: later than us. They didn't even know what they were after.
Speaker 7: The reason we didn't get that story was because Cookie
Speaker 7: wasn't in Monogola. She knew what we were working on.
Speaker 7: We already knew they were running guns at the least,
Speaker 7: and it already had powder residue of cocaine around the
Speaker 7: edges of that story of running guns. We'd already preased
Speaker 7: it up to auber North. We knew what was going
Speaker 7: on there. I mean, the only thing we didn't have
Speaker 7: was a picture of a guy being let around by
Speaker 7: a rope in the jungle. It turned out to be
Speaker 7: a redhead from Wisconsin. We were onto them.
Speaker 2: Mike and Don fly into Miami's picked me up the
Speaker 2: next morning the lear Jet and we're flying back to
Speaker 2: Managua to do this great interview. But remember I had
Speaker 2: been on vacation. Chino, who's by then my ex husband,
Speaker 2: was there. I knew I needed some party favors to
Speaker 2: take back with me. Chico was on vacation with me,
Speaker 2: so I knew I was leaving him in Miami, and
Speaker 2: so I said to Chino, you need to bring me
Speaker 2: some supplies because I'm leaving tomorrow morning with sixty minutes,
Speaker 2: and he brought me a nice hefty supply of party material.
Speaker 1: We're talking cocaine, obviously.
Speaker 5: So imset lear jet Land.
Speaker 2: We get on fly to Monagua, and of course we're
Speaker 2: not going through customs because it's cookie and it's sixty minutes.
Speaker 2: Nothing's gonna be checked. I'm cool, nobody's gonna check anything.
Speaker 11: Low and the whole sixty minute flies in cookies coming
Speaker 11: down the steps. So the lear Jet, she says, guys,
Speaker 11: we're going right to the jail. We're gonna do this
Speaker 11: right now. Okay, the Guatemalins crew is gonna come with us.
Speaker 11: They'll be the second camera. But you guys got the
Speaker 11: ball on this. So Manny and I were like, okay, great,
Speaker 11: let's go, and she says, but first we got to
Speaker 11: stop and we gotta make peace with the local CBS guys.
Speaker 11: So we went to a restaurant. We sat down and
Speaker 11: we're eating and Don Hewitt and Mike Wallace are having
Speaker 11: lunch with our producer and our reporter people in charge
Speaker 11: of Central America for CBS for the evening years.
Speaker 1: That would be CBS News correspondent Michael O'Connor and producer
Speaker 1: on siselof who you've met several times in this series.
Speaker 11: They were not happy that sixty minutes was just flying in.
Speaker 11: And the term we use in the business is bigfooting.
Speaker 11: Mike Wallace is about as big a foot as there is.
Speaker 11: There might not be any bigger. They come in and
Speaker 11: they take the story from me and they make it theirs.
Speaker 11: So they were complaining to Mike and Don about, Hey,
Speaker 11: you know, it's not fair that we've been humping on
Speaker 11: the story and then you guys come in here at
Speaker 11: the last second and just get the interview. They were resentful.
Speaker 1: Boza told me that Michael Connell was leading the charge
Speaker 1: and he respected him for it, but standing up against
Speaker 1: big foot was probably not a good idea.
Speaker 11: Mike and Don they didn't like that. They didn't like
Speaker 11: hearing that. And I remember that they said, you could
Speaker 11: have come with us today and gotten one question. We
Speaker 11: would have asked one question and you could have used
Speaker 11: that one question for Tonight's evening used broadcast. But since
Speaker 11: you got an attitude you're not coming. You can come,
Speaker 11: They told the you can come and you can take notes,
Speaker 11: but that's it. I was like, Wow, this is like
Speaker 11: the big leagues. This is stuff that usually you know,
Speaker 11: get the witness. And then we went to the jail.
Speaker 5: I was furious.
Speaker 7: They were just trying to move our pieces off the
Speaker 7: board and take what we had. They were way behind us.
Speaker 7: I'd gotten all kinds of heat for why are you
Speaker 7: putting this garbage on the air? You know it's not true,
Speaker 7: And I'd gotten that inside from the head of CBS News,
Speaker 7: like you know, what is this hot air? Are you
Speaker 7: kidding me? So then the proof is in this redheaded guy,
Speaker 7: and the proof goes to someone who didn't even have
Speaker 7: the story. Oh god, Mike Wallace was a nasty man
Speaker 7: and a very sexist guy, a horribly sexist guy. It
Speaker 7: wasn't just that he beat you on your own story,
Speaker 7: it was that he didn't take you belonged there in
Speaker 7: the first place.
Speaker 2: Every journalists that had been in Monagua based in Managua,
Speaker 2: flown into Monogua for the story. They're all outside at
Speaker 2: the bottom of the stairs in the street, and of
Speaker 2: course everyone wants hasidfoos and nobody's getting hasid foods except yours, truly,
Speaker 2: And when we get there, you know, it's like all
Speaker 2: the journalists had to part like the Red Sea to
Speaker 2: let us through.
Speaker 5: And I remember there was one.
Speaker 2: Journalist from ABC who kind of whispered to me and said, well,
Speaker 2: we know how you got this story. I whispered back
Speaker 2: to him, Well, in l Salvador, we know how you
Speaker 2: get your stories.
Speaker 1: That ABC News correspondent was Peter Collins, one of the
Speaker 1: biggest stars of that network. As far as what Cookie
Speaker 1: is referring to, I'll just leave that there.
Speaker 11: Super competitive. Everyone wanted that story. That's a career story.
Speaker 11: That's one that makes your career. You know, you get
Speaker 11: the exclusive on that one, and your life is going
Speaker 11: to change. Yeah, there's a lot of jealousy involved, Dad,
Speaker 11: and you had a lot of veteran reporters there, the
Speaker 11: La Times, the AP you know upm all right, Cookie
Speaker 11: out scooped them all. That hurts, you know, especially when
Speaker 11: your boss in New York is calling and going, hey,
Speaker 11: what happened? You know, why didn't you get it?
Speaker 2: We go upstairs, there's State security all over, there's the
Speaker 2: head of State Security there. So while they're all setting
Speaker 2: up for the interview, I of course asked the head
Speaker 2: of State security, where's your bathroom? Because you know what,
Speaker 2: I'm getting ready to go do. So I go to
Speaker 2: the bathroom and I swear to this day I say
Speaker 2: that was the best lines of coke that I ever did,
Speaker 2: because I'm being escorted by the head of State security
Speaker 2: to the bathroom in State security.
Speaker 5: It was just surreal.
Speaker 11: The Sandinistas are always uncomfortable when it comes to journalists,
Speaker 11: especially American journalists, especially American TV cameras, and when you
Speaker 11: have a star like Mike Wallace there, the detention level
Speaker 11: just goes through the roof. So everything is being done
Speaker 11: very methodically. They're searching, they're questioning, they're talking about where
Speaker 11: is the most secure place to do this? So we
Speaker 11: finally hammer out everything. Cookie was a big part of that.
Speaker 11: Cookie was handling most of the negotiations, interpreting, and we
Speaker 11: find the spot, we put all the lights up. It
Speaker 11: took us half an hour to get it all ready.
Speaker 11: Two crews, two cameras, one camera on Geen No one camera.
Speaker 2: On Mike Pozardfus is still just panicked because now he
Speaker 2: thinks that after he does this interview, he's going to
Speaker 2: be shot. First he looks over at me and I'm
Speaker 2: wearing two different color rebox tennis shoes. I'm wearing two
Speaker 2: different color socks. I'm wearing two different earrings in each
Speaker 2: ear and he kind of looks over at me in
Speaker 2: the nervous humor says to me, Wow, I've never seen
Speaker 2: anybody dressed like that, and we kind of laughed. His
Speaker 2: was a nervous laugh. I leaned over and I whispered
Speaker 2: to him. I said, you're not going to be killed
Speaker 2: after this interview.
Speaker 1: Did you feel like the interview itself was going to
Speaker 1: be sort of a layer of protection for him?
Speaker 5: No, not at all.
Speaker 2: That interview was going to be him admitting to all
Speaker 2: his quote unquote sins, which is what the Sandinistas we're
Speaker 2: going to put him on trial for. So no, he
Speaker 2: was convinced he would be shot after our interview because
Speaker 2: he would be admitting to everything that the Sandinistas wanted
Speaker 2: him to admit.
Speaker 1: So why would he admit to it?
Speaker 2: Because he's around Americans, he's with sixty minutes. I'm convincing
Speaker 2: him that everything's going to be okay. If and when
Speaker 2: you do this interview, it could be some protection because
Speaker 2: now the world will know that you exist. So I
Speaker 2: think I sort of allayed his fears, got him a
Speaker 2: little comfortable.
Speaker 11: Door opens. Then comes hasin first and shackled. They walk
Speaker 11: him around to the front of the chair. As soon
Speaker 11: as hozin First's but hits the chair, the lights go
Speaker 11: out right out. Que I mean, it couldn't have happened
Speaker 11: in a more timely fashion.
Speaker 2: All hell broken and then precedes what we call Murphy's law.
Speaker 2: Everything that could go wrong starts to go wrong. The
Speaker 2: electricity goes out. Remember we're in a third world country.
Speaker 2: One of the camera crews, one of their pieces of
Speaker 2: equipment goes out, and just slowly everything is going wrong.
Speaker 11: It's dark, you can see a little bit, but immediately
Speaker 11: the Sandinistas are on full alert. They grab hazard for us.
Speaker 11: They got their guns up. I think that they actually
Speaker 11: thought that there was a rescue attempt going to happen,
Speaker 11: like Chuck Norris was out there with the Delta Force
Speaker 11: and they were gonna come in and snatch them. So
Speaker 11: they're moving a mile a minute, and in the meantime,
Speaker 11: Hewitt is standing up and he's saying.
Speaker 14: Everybody's stay put, stay hut, stay hut.
Speaker 11: Nobody moved.
Speaker 14: Wallace is yelling, let's move everything outside, dice everything, let's
Speaker 14: just grab it. We'll do it outside. We don't need lights,
Speaker 14: let's just go. So we're all there like frozen. Manny
Speaker 14: and I are looking at each other like, who do
Speaker 14: we listen to? Do we listen to you with the
Speaker 14: creator of sixty minutes? Or do we listen to Mike Wallace?
Speaker 14: It's a death sentence. Wherever you listen to the other,
Speaker 14: one's gonna get pissed off. So we're frozen and we're
Speaker 14: trying to see what's gonna be next.
Speaker 11: And somebody I don't remember if it was Cookie or
Speaker 11: it could have been Manny, that said, let's just do
Speaker 11: it outside. And we went outside and we set it up,
Speaker 11: and the Sandinistas were cool about the whole thing. They
Speaker 11: held on for him until we were ready. Literally we
Speaker 11: set up in seven minutes, like bam, bam, bam, bam bam.
Speaker 11: Put the chair on the ground, they brought him, They
Speaker 11: sat him, and Don Yue It stepped in between both
Speaker 11: cameras like he used to do in the good old
Speaker 11: days of film. He looked and he said, okay, guys,
Speaker 11: we're gonna roll. Here's the slate and he slapped his hands.
Speaker 2: But it's starting to get late in the afternoon. We're
Speaker 2: going to lose the natural light. We're under a time constraight,
Speaker 2: we need to get this interview done. So the interview proceeds.
Speaker 2: Poor guy is admitting to everything. He's admitting that he
Speaker 2: worked for the CIA. You know, he's former military or
Speaker 2: still military. He's a kicker. It wasn't his first mission.
Speaker 2: He'd been doing that throughout the Sandinista conflict. It's not
Speaker 2: that this guy really knew any kind of you know,
Speaker 2: secret information or top secret things, but he knew enough
Speaker 2: to admit that he was guilty of what he had done.
Speaker 5: And we finished up the interview. It was great. He
Speaker 5: confessed to everything here.
Speaker 2: We know he's going to confess to the US audience
Speaker 2: on sixty minutes. And then as we're wrapping up, Don
Speaker 2: Hewitt looks at me and says, can we get anybody else,
Speaker 2: you know in the government to add to this peace?
Speaker 2: And I said, well, would you like to talk to
Speaker 2: the president? He says, you mean Ortega? I said sure,
Speaker 2: He says, can you get him? So I called my
Speaker 2: guy in you know, Ortega's inner circle, and I said
Speaker 2: to him, look, we've just wrapped up this hazardfous interview
Speaker 2: went well, he confessed to everything. You guys are gonna
Speaker 2: like what he said, can we possibly get the president
Speaker 2: to be in this piece and weigh in on what
Speaker 2: we've accomplished here. He said, you got it. I turned
Speaker 2: to Dunn and said we got it. He says, fuck yeah.
Speaker 2: So we all packed up. We went to where the
Speaker 2: president was going to meet us, and we're setting up. Mike, Wallace,
Speaker 2: Don myself, everybody's there. The interview begins and some lull.
Speaker 2: I leaned over to Mike and I said, Mike, ask
Speaker 2: the President if it's possible that Hazifus could be home
Speaker 2: for Christmas, because of course they had been asking ortego,
Speaker 2: you're going to put this.
Speaker 5: Guy on trial.
Speaker 2: He said, yes, obviously he's going to be found guilty
Speaker 2: or take us says, well, we don't know that. We're
Speaker 2: gonna let justice take its course. Of course, he already
Speaker 2: knew that Hazifusa had confessed to us.
Speaker 5: Mike's like, no, I'm not going to ask him that.
Speaker 5: I said, Mike, ask him if he's going to be.
Speaker 2: Home for christ and Don Hewitt overheard that and he
Speaker 2: liked that, and he says, Mike asked the question semi begrudgingly.
Speaker 2: Mike says to the President, mister President is it possible
Speaker 2: after the trial that this guy, obviously he could be
Speaker 2: thrown in prison, he could be shot.
Speaker 5: Is it possible that he could be home for Christmas?
Speaker 2: And Ortega smiles and he says, anything is possible, mister Wallace.
Speaker 5: We knew we had it.
Speaker 2: We knew this guy was going to be home for Christmas,
Speaker 2: but that was still a few months away.
Speaker 5: We got the story on both sides.
Speaker 2: It was perfect, and of course we're getting ready to
Speaker 2: fly out back to New York to edit the piece, and.
Speaker 11: It aired the next day on sixty minutes on Sunday,
Speaker 11: and it was earth shattering. It was a tremendous crew
Speaker 11: for CBS who came maneuver the government to accommodate us
Speaker 11: in this fashion, not only accommodate us with the interview,
Speaker 11: which was brilliant. For shoot inside a secure facility in
Speaker 11: a carnalist country where there's other prisoners is unheard of.
Speaker 11: This all happened because, of course it's sixty minutes, but
Speaker 11: it's the diplomacy and the tactfulness of Cookiehood that was
Speaker 11: able to make it all happen. Without her, that interview
Speaker 11: would have never happened, not in a million years.
Speaker 1: You think that's where this story ends. Not a chance.
Speaker 1: Cookie's just getting started. Pasen Fus was the smoking gun,
Speaker 1: but she's about to find the missing link, the money.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back, Welcome back. Cookie should have been
Speaker 1: heading back to Miami to finish your vacation with Chiico.
Speaker 1: But she wasn't done, not by a long shot.
Speaker 4: Oh.
Speaker 2: A stipulation that the Sandinista government made. They wanted a
Speaker 2: copy of our interview because they wanted to air it.
Speaker 2: Our stipulation was that it air after the sixty minutes
Speaker 2: broadcast aired. So I was going to be the one
Speaker 2: carrying back the copy. But of course I'm not going
Speaker 2: to fly back to Monagua and the lear jet because
Speaker 2: the big boys were already back home.
Speaker 5: So I was going to fly commercial. I get on
Speaker 5: the flight and there's a.
Speaker 2: Ton of journalists on the flight that were flying in
Speaker 2: for this big story.
Speaker 1: Because Miami is the direct connection too there you have
Speaker 1: to go to Miami to get there.
Speaker 2: Almost right, I flew back from New York to Miami
Speaker 2: and then Miami. I'm going to fly to Nicaragua and
Speaker 2: I get winn because I have family connections with the
Speaker 2: airline Tacka Airlines, and I get winned that Hazidfuss's wife,
Speaker 2: Sally is on the flight, but she didn't want to
Speaker 2: be harassed, so she's in the cockpit with the pilots.
Speaker 2: So not only myself gets wind of it, all the
Speaker 2: other journalists get.
Speaker 5: Wind of it.
Speaker 1: Everybody's talking about it.
Speaker 5: Everybody's talking about it. But since I have the family
Speaker 5: connection with the airline, I go up to the front to.
Speaker 2: At that time, we're called stewardesses, and I go up
Speaker 2: to one that I actually knew in person because of
Speaker 2: all my year's fly tackle, because of our family connection,
Speaker 2: And I said to her, I know that there's someone
Speaker 2: in the cockpit, and I know you can't say it
Speaker 2: or agree with me that there is, but is it
Speaker 2: possible for you to give a note to the person
Speaker 2: that's not in the cockpit? And she says, Cookie, I'll
Speaker 2: do it because it's you. I said the note to Sally,
Speaker 2: saying my name is Cookie. I'm with CBS, I was
Speaker 2: with Eugene yesterday, your husband, can I speak to you
Speaker 2: in the cockpit?
Speaker 5: Flight attended takes it up. I don't know what's going
Speaker 5: to happen. Next thing.
Speaker 2: I know she's coming back looking for me, saying come on,
Speaker 2: you're going to the cockpit. And you could just see
Speaker 2: the journalists in the flight. They're all, oh, you know,
Speaker 2: everybody's revolting. Why does she get to go up?
Speaker 5: Whatever? I don't care.
Speaker 2: So I'm in the cockpit with Sally and I said, Sally,
Speaker 2: I was with Eugene yesterday. We did a segment for
Speaker 2: sixty minutes. He did a great interview. I just want
Speaker 2: to tell you he's okay. And she says to me, well,
Speaker 2: how do I.
Speaker 5: Know that you were with Eugene? I said, well, he
Speaker 5: said something funny.
Speaker 2: I was wearing two different color Tendi shoes, two different
Speaker 2: color pair of socks, two different types of earrings.
Speaker 5: In each ear and he looked over at me and
Speaker 5: he made.
Speaker 2: A comment, a funny comment, saying I've never seen anybody
Speaker 2: dressed like that before. And for some reason, that let
Speaker 2: her know, and she believed that I had been with Eugene,
Speaker 2: and so she was at that.
Speaker 5: Point, Oh, please tell me. Is he okay?
Speaker 2: I said, he's okay, And I want to tell you something.
Speaker 2: I tried to comfort him, and I'm going to tell
Speaker 2: you the same thing.
Speaker 5: I told him. He's going to be put on trial.
Speaker 2: He's going to be found guilty, but he will not
Speaker 2: go to prison, and he will not be shot.
Speaker 5: He will be going home with you. I don't know when.
Speaker 5: I said, maybe Christmas, but he will be going home
Speaker 5: with you.
Speaker 2: And she just grabbed my hand and in tears said, oh,
Speaker 2: I'm so grateful, you know, I'm so grateful that you
Speaker 2: were able to see him and give him some hope.
Speaker 2: And I said, well, we have a caveat here. I'm
Speaker 2: going to ask you for one favor. I am not
Speaker 2: going to follow you around for how many months you're
Speaker 2: in Monagua. I am not going to bother you and call.
Speaker 5: You for interviews.
Speaker 2: You won't even see me except in the background. But
Speaker 2: the day your husband gets released, I'm going to call
Speaker 2: you and you're going to be mine that day. You're
Speaker 2: not going to give anyone else to tom of day.
Speaker 2: You're not going to give any interviews, You're not going
Speaker 2: to give any soundbites to anybody. You're going to be
Speaker 2: with me, She says, cookie, anything, anything.
Speaker 1: Meanwhile, the sixty minutes Hazen food story runs that Sunday night.
Speaker 1: The New York j Times wrote this about the historic interview.
Speaker 8: Eugene Hasenfus, The American survivor from the aircraft that was
Speaker 8: shot down over Nicaragua on October fifth, said yesterday that
Speaker 8: he believed Vice President Bush was well aware of the
Speaker 8: private operation to resupply the Nicaraguan rebels. In the interview
Speaker 8: with Mike Wallace on the CBS news program Sixty Minutes,
Speaker 8: Hassenphus said he was told the resupply effort for the rebels,
Speaker 8: or contrast, was similar to CIA sponsored operations in which
Speaker 8: he took part in Southeast Asia. He estimated that about
Speaker 8: fourteen Americans operating out of El Salvador were engaged in
Speaker 8: the underground effort to resupply the contries with arms and ammunition.
Speaker 8: Hassenfas said twenty four to twenty six company people, a
Speaker 8: term commonly used in connection with the CIA, were involved.
Speaker 8: Hassenfas said he believes the Reagan administration quote is backing
Speaker 8: this resupply operation one hundred percent. Asked by Wallace if
Speaker 8: he had felt that you were working for the US government, applied, yes, sir.
Speaker 1: You think this story is crazy, wait till you hear this.
Speaker 1: So you got access to what was found in the.
Speaker 5: Wreckage, right, I was thinking I was going to get
Speaker 5: first access. I didn't know.
Speaker 2: I got only access every piece of evidence that was
Speaker 2: found in the wreckage was logged in by number, by picture,
Speaker 2: and an explanation of what each item was. So I asked,
Speaker 2: can I, you know, get a look at all this stuff?
Speaker 2: And I'm told Jess, you can, but you'll be the
Speaker 2: only one, and we don't want you sharing the information
Speaker 2: with other journalists or anybody for that matter. We don't
Speaker 2: really want anybody to know we're giving you access to
Speaker 2: all this high level secret stuff.
Speaker 5: So I spent the.
Speaker 2: Whole day going through you know, little things, big things, minutia.
Speaker 1: What kind of stuff was.
Speaker 2: Well, some of it it said that it was from
Speaker 2: the pilot, some of it was from the second victim
Speaker 2: of the crash, and some of it was Hasenfusa stuff.
Speaker 2: I think like they had his parachute and maybe some
Speaker 2: of the things that he was kicking out and hadn't
Speaker 2: yet completed. Apparently the pilot had a briefcase with him,
Speaker 2: you know, he didn't think he was going to get
Speaker 2: shot down and killed. And in this briefcase is just
Speaker 2: a slew of paperwork and business cards and just a
Speaker 2: ton of stuff that who knows what it was. So
Speaker 2: I come across this business card, and this business card
Speaker 2: on the front was from a Swiss bank. The business
Speaker 2: card belonged to the vice president of this Swiss bank,
Speaker 2: and of course it had his phone number.
Speaker 1: What bank?
Speaker 2: And on the back of the card was a slew
Speaker 2: of numbers and the Sandinistas had logged this in as
Speaker 2: a business card, and that on the back was.
Speaker 5: A phone number.
Speaker 2: I knew that was not a phone number. It was
Speaker 2: too damn long of a sequence of numbers. I said
Speaker 2: to myself, what if this is a Swiss bank account?
Speaker 2: But would this pilot have been stupid enough to be
Speaker 2: carrying that information? Because I think he was in charge
Speaker 2: of the Swiss bank account he had access to it.
Speaker 5: I actually took the card with me.
Speaker 2: I wasn't supposed to, but I took the card with
Speaker 2: me and went back to the office called Switzerland and
Speaker 2: asked to speak to the vice president of this bank.
Speaker 2: I identified myself, I said, in one of your cards
Speaker 2: was found in the wreckage in Nicaragua by I assume
Speaker 2: one of the people that could access an account. I said,
Speaker 2: I know you can't tell me if somebody has an
Speaker 2: account in your bank. I know you can't tell me
Speaker 2: anything about anything, but would it be okay if I
Speaker 2: read you a sequence of numbers and all I want
Speaker 2: you to say is yes or no? Could this be
Speaker 2: a Swiss bank account? And I read the sequence of numbers,
Speaker 2: he said yes and hung up the phone. Okay, what
Speaker 2: is this pilot doing with a Swiss bank account? I
Speaker 2: just knew there was a lot more to the story
Speaker 2: because we still don't know about the Iran Contra connection
Speaker 2: at this point, but we now know there's a Swiss
Speaker 2: bank account that this guy that obviously worked for the
Speaker 2: CIA has access to. So I remember calling Miami, and
Speaker 2: I remember calling New York. I said it may be nothing,
Speaker 2: but I think it's something big, and I explained to
Speaker 2: him what I had. New York and Miami were beyond disbelief.
Speaker 2: What could this possibly be? So at that point, not
Speaker 2: knowing that I had Iran Contra proof, I passed it
Speaker 2: then on to Miami and then obviously New York Foreign Desk,
Speaker 2: and I think that went on to Washington CBS Foreign
Speaker 2: Desk in Washington, let them figure it out.
Speaker 1: About a year later this happened.
Speaker 8: More than two thousand pages of Swiss bank records considered
Speaker 8: crucial to the criminal investigation of the Iran Contra affair
Speaker 8: were turned over in Switzerland yesterday to AIDS to Independent
Speaker 8: Council Lawrence E.
Speaker 1: Walsh.
Speaker 8: The records are expected to provide Walsh's office its first
Speaker 8: direct access to the secret Swiss bank accounts used by
Speaker 8: fired National Security Council AID Lieutenant Colonel Oliver L. North
Speaker 8: and his assistants to divert funds to the Nicaraguan countries
Speaker 8: from the sale of US arms to Iran.
Speaker 2: Now I've got to say, yes, I was a part
Speaker 2: of this blowing the whistle on Iran contra. But there
Speaker 2: were many journalists based in Nicaragua. There were people in Washington.
Speaker 5: In fact, a very.
Speaker 2: Close friend of mine, Leslie Coburn, was at the time
Speaker 2: writing a book about this whole Iran Contra connection. Everybody
Speaker 2: was coming at it from a different angle. People were
Speaker 2: coming at it from different countries. So I want to
Speaker 2: make it quite clear I'm not the only one. Everybody
Speaker 2: was involved.
Speaker 1: So all this goes down. So whatever happened with Sally
Speaker 1: and Eugene.
Speaker 5: Okay, So for the next few months there's the trial.
Speaker 2: Everybody knew it was going to be a sham, that
Speaker 2: he was going to be found guilty and now they've
Speaker 2: got the sixty minutes peace as evidence because he's confessing
Speaker 2: to everything.
Speaker 5: So the trial goes on. It's every day, sweltering heat.
Speaker 1: Sally Hasenfus was just trying to get through it.
Speaker 9: It's hard, it's really hard. We've gone through one trial
Speaker 9: and I think we're looking forward to another trial. Not literally,
Speaker 9: but I think it's something that has to be done.
Speaker 9: We need to get through this, get it over with.
Speaker 2: Senator Christopher Dodd had flown in at some point to
Speaker 2: try to broker Eugene Hazfuz's release with the Sandinistas, and
Speaker 2: I don't think he was getting anywhere the talks were ongoing.
Speaker 2: I don't think he knew where they stood at this particular.
Speaker 5: Moment that we're going to talk about.
Speaker 2: So I get a call before dawn for Mortega's right
Speaker 2: hand guy and he tells me today's the day it's
Speaker 2: going to happen. And I'm like, what's going to happen?
Speaker 2: And he says, you know what I'm talking about, Today's
Speaker 2: the day. So I put down the phone. I call
Speaker 2: Senator Dodd, wake him up. I tell him today's the
Speaker 2: day he's getting out. He goes, what do you mean
Speaker 2: I said, they're letting him out today. Of course, I
Speaker 2: wanted him to feel like he had been the one
Speaker 2: that accomplished the release. I said, whatever you did, whatever
Speaker 2: you said, it worked. They're letting him out today. So
Speaker 2: I hung up with him, and then my final call
Speaker 2: was to Sally hazard Fuchs. I wake her up and
Speaker 2: I said, Sally, hate to wake you up, but today's
Speaker 2: the day.
Speaker 5: What what day? I said, Sally, Remember I.
Speaker 2: Told you that I didn't know when, didn't know how,
Speaker 2: but that you were going to be taking Eugene home.
Speaker 2: She says, yes, I said, today's the day. And do
Speaker 2: you remember the promise you made me? And she says,
Speaker 2: I think so. I said, you promised me that you
Speaker 2: were going to be mine. I'm going to be with
Speaker 2: you the whole day till the release. You speak to
Speaker 2: no one, give you give no interviews, you give no quotes.
Speaker 5: Your mind, she says, Cookie.
Speaker 2: Of course, that was the fateful day that Eugene Hasenfus
Speaker 2: was released. Released It to the care Senator Christopher Dodd
Speaker 2: with his wife by his side, and guess what he
Speaker 2: was going.
Speaker 5: Home for Christmas?
Speaker 1: Mission accomplished, Mission accomplished. Our good friend Stephen Kinzer wrote
Speaker 1: this in the New York Times.
Speaker 8: Eugene Hassenphuss, the American air cargo handler captured when his
Speaker 8: arms laden plane was shot down over Nicaragua in October,
Speaker 8: was pardoned and freed today. Mister Hassenphus, who had been
Speaker 8: sentenced to a thirty year jail term by a Nicaraguan
Speaker 8: people's tribunal, was turned over to Senator Christopher J. Dodd,
Speaker 8: Democrat of Connecticut, and left the country aboard a jet
Speaker 8: with mister Dodd. We want to turn citizen Hausentphus over
Speaker 8: to the American people, and we are doing so through
Speaker 8: the person of Senator Dodd. President Daniel Ortega Savedra said
Speaker 8: as he made the announcement, this is a Christmas and
Speaker 8: New Year message to the American people. It is a
Speaker 8: very concrete message of peace.
Speaker 5: So the whistle was blown.
Speaker 2: I would like to think that I sort of got
Speaker 2: that ball rolling with that Swiss Bank account number. What
Speaker 2: we came to find out was the US government in
Speaker 2: order to finance the contrast, because it's against you know,
Speaker 2: I guess the Geneva Convention.
Speaker 1: To it's against the law. In the United States. They
Speaker 1: passed law saying you can't fund the contrast the.
Speaker 2: Way they went around That is, the US then began
Speaker 2: to secretly sell weapons to our mortal enemy at the time, Iran,
Speaker 2: how crazy is this. We're selling our mortal enemy weapons
Speaker 2: so that we could take that money, invest it and
Speaker 2: finance drug dealers, some of them my friends, working kahoots
Speaker 2: with the DEA to give them the oka to bring
Speaker 2: in crack cocaine into the US so as to make.
Speaker 5: More money to finance this army.
Speaker 2: Known as the Contras, or as Reagan referred to them,
Speaker 2: the freedom fighters.
Speaker 1: I think he really did believe that. But what they
Speaker 1: were doing was illegal, probably a war crime.
Speaker 15: My fellow Americans, I thought long and often about how
Speaker 15: to explain to you what I intended to accomplish the
Speaker 15: fact of the matter is that there's nothing I can
Speaker 15: say that will make the situation right. I was stubborn
Speaker 15: in my pursuit of a policy that went astray. The
Speaker 15: other major issue of the hearings, of course, was the
Speaker 15: diversion of funds to the Nicaraguan Contres. Colonel North and
Speaker 15: Admiral Poindexter believed they were doing what I would have
Speaker 15: wanted done. Yet the buck does not stop with Admiral Poindexter,
Speaker 15: as he stated in his testimony, it stops with me.
Speaker 15: I am the one who is ultimately accountable to the
Speaker 15: American people.
Speaker 1: As I said in the first episode, eleven Reagan administration
Speaker 1: officials were convicted in this scandal, all pardoned when Bush
Speaker 1: took office in nineteen eighty nine, So not much accountability.
Speaker 1: This is Sally hasenfuss on the men and women behind
Speaker 1: the scandal.
Speaker 9: I've found out things through this that are going on
Speaker 9: that are wrong. Some of these people may start out
Speaker 9: on the right foot with the right beliefs. Somewhere along
Speaker 9: the line here money, profit took over. Profit became more
Speaker 9: important than Jean's life, mister Sawyer's life, mister Cooper's life.
Speaker 1: That pretty much sums it up. Were you ever contacted
Speaker 1: by authorities officials to possibly testify.
Speaker 2: Or to Oh, that happened years later once I was
Speaker 2: out of the business and I was back in New
Speaker 2: Orleans trying to lead a quiet normal.
Speaker 1: But it did happen. It happened, And your response I.
Speaker 2: Got whined that they were looking to get me to
Speaker 2: testify before a committee about my knowledge of the US
Speaker 2: government introducing or facilitating the introduction of crack cocaine into
Speaker 2: this country. I just at that point went underground again
Speaker 2: because I'm not going to go and testify against the
Speaker 2: US government and about drugs.
Speaker 1: It did not happen, all right. So Cookie lived somehow
Speaker 1: to tell her story, and what a fucking story it is.
Speaker 1: She has a few more things to say. We'll be
Speaker 1: right back. Welcome back. It's been a hell of a ride.
Speaker 1: Before Cookie finishes telling her story, we have one more guest,
Speaker 1: justin Wolf. You remember the two Lane history professor who
Speaker 1: looks like the bass player from zz Top.
Speaker 16: Hey, Steve, how are you doing?
Speaker 1: How you doing? Resident expert on Nicaraguan history in Central
Speaker 1: America and professor at Tulane University. Oz and Fuz falls
Speaker 1: from the air and changes everything. Tell us about that.
Speaker 16: Yeah, I like that Osiphus falls from the air and
Speaker 16: everything falls apart. I think about Hassamphus. It's like thread
Speaker 16: or pc yarn in the sweater's just kind of starting
Speaker 16: to come out, you know. And I think the Reagan
Speaker 16: administration and everyone involved like, just pull that and clip
Speaker 16: it off and will be done. But they kept pulling
Speaker 16: and pulling, and the whole thing just fell apart. I
Speaker 16: think in Nicaragua, Hassimphos was just like icing on the cake.
Speaker 16: It just confirmed everything that they already knew. I think
Speaker 16: for the Sandinistas, it was really hard to figure out
Speaker 16: where an end game could come. I think that they
Speaker 16: really wanted to gain the moral high ground, and Hassimphus
Speaker 16: gave them an opportunity to do that. I think for
Speaker 16: Nicaragua that's really the primary consequence. It gave them breathing room.
Speaker 16: It shifted the focus in the US back to kind
Speaker 16: of the US government playing the kind of cold war
Speaker 16: games that it had long been doing, and allowed them
Speaker 16: to come back in the US, if not as the
Speaker 16: good guy, at least as the beleaguered small nation that
Speaker 16: they were.
Speaker 1: What do you think Iran Contra ranks in the big
Speaker 1: scandals of the recent Hey, the last fifty years. You
Speaker 1: have Iron Contra, you have Trump Russia, you have Watergate, you.
Speaker 16: Have January sixth, January sixth. Where does it rank in
Speaker 16: terms of the effort and its illegality and how deeply
Speaker 16: it went. It's actually one of the worst. Right when
Speaker 16: you think about Watergate, I mean it was small potatoes, right,
Speaker 16: a break in. You know, they always say it's never
Speaker 16: the crime, it's the cover up this It was the crime.
Speaker 16: The CIA is breaking the law. The Reagan administration all
Speaker 16: up and down the chain is breaking the law.
Speaker 1: And they knew it right.
Speaker 16: They thought, we're the executive.
Speaker 1: We know best.
Speaker 16: These guys are, you know, either fools or pansies or
Speaker 16: whatever it is, and we're just going to do what
Speaker 16: needs to be done.
Speaker 1: There is one person that we haven't talked too much
Speaker 1: about in this podcast. Tell me about your daughter.
Speaker 2: Well, Ellie Lexandra very special. She and Chicho, who you
Speaker 2: guys all know, were ten years apart, and she was
Speaker 2: born after our story is told. A second child being
Speaker 2: raised in a war zone definitely unique, dangerous, not easy.
Speaker 2: I've never thought about it in this way, but I
Speaker 2: can say it now. Having my two kids with me
Speaker 2: during these hard times was a life at vest being
Speaker 2: thrown out to me. When things would be dark, horrible, heinous, unthinkable.
Speaker 2: I could always go back to my hotel, to my
Speaker 2: living quarters, and there were my children.
Speaker 1: How does she feel about the podcast?
Speaker 5: She loves it.
Speaker 2: At first, I was a little scared that it was
Speaker 2: going to be a little too much for because she's
Speaker 2: a little more conservative.
Speaker 5: Than I am.
Speaker 2: But she has just relished in the fact that her
Speaker 2: mom did all these things, and I'm going to taking
Speaker 2: a step further. She's proud of mommy and she tells
Speaker 2: me so every single day.
Speaker 1: So we've just done nine episodes of the Journalist of Podcasts.
Speaker 1: How does that feel?
Speaker 2: At once exhilarating because the job is done, But at
Speaker 2: the same time, I'm quite sad because the job is done.
Speaker 2: The people that we've worked with, all the people that
Speaker 2: have been on the podcast, my former colleagues, my still friends,
Speaker 2: it's a sad feeling for me personally.
Speaker 1: Was it fun getting to know them again in a
Speaker 1: different way?
Speaker 5: Yes and no.
Speaker 2: For so many years I kept a lot of these
Speaker 2: bad memories buried deep down for obvious reasons, PTSD all
Speaker 2: of that. So working with you bringing up all those
Speaker 2: stories again has obviously brought up the PTSD again, some
Speaker 2: bad memories, bad feelings. But touching base again with my
Speaker 2: band of brothers has just been wonderful. When you have people, friends,
Speaker 2: colleagues that you go through these imminent death experiences also
Speaker 2: some fun experiences, you don't let that go. We were
Speaker 2: a band of brothers then, we're a band of brothers now,
Speaker 2: and we will be a band of brothers till we die.
Speaker 1: Now, with the benefit of history and taking this journey
Speaker 1: through your life and the podcast, how do you feel
Speaker 1: about your life then, the world you were part of,
Speaker 1: and how does it apply to you now?
Speaker 2: I think the way I look at it now. First,
Speaker 2: I'm lucky that I survived it. No shit, it was
Speaker 2: an honor to do what I did with the people
Speaker 2: that I did it with and the audience that I
Speaker 2: did it for. If I was a badass warrior bish
Speaker 2: back then, if I was a bad ass as warrior
Speaker 2: bish back then.
Speaker 1: You're saying bish.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's the new way of saying bitch.
Speaker 16: Fuck.
Speaker 1: I didn't even know that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you don't say bitch anymore because, OK, so you
Speaker 2: say bitch.
Speaker 5: Do you want me to not say no, just bitch?
Speaker 4: Just start over.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. I just hadn't heard. I thought you were
Speaker 1: like having some sort of tongue twister.
Speaker 2: No, that's how you say bitch without disrespecting a woman.
Speaker 1: Damn, I'm so disrespectful. Then go ahead.
Speaker 2: So it took me being a fierce badass bish back
Speaker 2: then to reminding me that I'm still a fierce badass
Speaker 2: bish now. I may not be doing the dangerous memorable
Speaker 2: things that I used to do. But I can see
Speaker 2: the end result of a lot that I did back then.
Speaker 1: You know, we've been getting messages and comments from women
Speaker 1: all over the world and they're saying you're an inspiration.
Speaker 1: How does that make you feel and what do you
Speaker 1: think that means?
Speaker 2: Well, obviously it makes me feel good, and I'm grateful,
Speaker 2: especially to you, for helping me get that story out
Speaker 2: there to where we can influence and help change women's lives.
Speaker 2: Nobody's better than the other person, as you and I
Speaker 2: have come to realize, and of course that's the way
Speaker 2: we think. If we just change one person's life, I
Speaker 2: think we've accomplished what we've set out to do.
Speaker 1: You might remember Cookie called the search for war footage
Speaker 1: Looking for Bang Bang. Chuck Gomez, former CBS News correspondent
Speaker 1: and forever friend of Cookie, wrote a play about his
Speaker 1: time in Central America, The Bang Bang Blues.
Speaker 10: It's about a reporter who's stratening to cover the war
Speaker 10: in the midst of these confers arriving and in the
Speaker 10: end he becomes the casualty of the war himself. At
Speaker 10: the very beginning of the play, there's a song Now
Speaker 10: I can't sing, but it's something like this. I got
Speaker 10: the Bang Bang blues wearing out my shoes, sitting dusty
Speaker 10: highways for the network news. I got the Bang Bang blues.
Speaker 10: I'm paying my blues, taking big chances, and I hope
Speaker 10: I don't lose.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah.
Speaker 1: I want to give a shout out to journalists everywhere
Speaker 1: for giving so much, including their lives, in the pursuit
Speaker 1: of truth around the world. It can be a very
Speaker 1: dangerous calling, and we can't thank you enough for what
Speaker 1: you do in these crazy times. We need you now
Speaker 1: more than ever. Before we go, I just want to
Speaker 1: say something. I've known Cookie for a long time. She
Speaker 1: is one of a kind, generous, loving, courageous, hilarious, insane,
Speaker 1: the lover of animals and collector of amazing people. It's
Speaker 1: been one of the great honors of my life to
Speaker 1: help bring her story to you. I hope you've enjoyed
Speaker 1: it as much as I have. Thanks for listening. The
Speaker 1: Journalist of pot Cast features the stories and voice Cookie Hood,
Speaker 1: narrated by Steven step produced by Sean J. Donnelly. Executive
Speaker 1: producers Jason Wagetsback, Ellen Ka and Roy Laughlin. iHeart executive
Speaker 1: producer Tyler Klang, Written and edited by Steven step Music
Speaker 1: by Jay Weigel, Associate producer in sound design Stephen Tanti.
Speaker 1: Sound mixing by Jesse Sallon Snyder guest sound mixer, Jack Mealy,
Speaker 1: Web design and social media coordinator Sarah Rodolpho. Special guests
Speaker 1: Jane Wallace, Stephen Kinzer, George Boza, Alejandro Belly Manny Alvarez,
Speaker 1: Chuck Gomez, Carla Ferrell, John Basco, Patrick Hood, Lou Demetaeus,
Speaker 1: Joe Frazier, and Tulaine history professor Justin Woolf. Podcast includes
Speaker 1: the voices of Lloyd scherr, Ellen k Cindy Pohle, Rachel Wan,
Speaker 1: Casey Groves, Pablo Sovalla, Jose Torres, Thomas, and Stephen Tonti.
Speaker 1: Thanks to the talented New Orleans Dream team of musicians
Speaker 1: that contributed to our score Shane Terrio guitar, Doug Below drums,
Speaker 1: Alexe Martis percussion, Beaux Saint Pierre keyboards, Alan Maxwell bass,
Speaker 1: and Dana b violin. Also Lindsay ze Orski composer assistant.
Speaker 1: And a very special thanks to Beth Anne Macaluso, Will
Speaker 1: Pearson and Alison Kantor Graber from My Heart Radio. Jason Gerwitz,
Speaker 1: Christoph SAPARi, Kyle Frederick, Zach Slap, Jacob Meyer, Misha kashkash Ishveli.
Speaker 1: I also want to thank CBS News, sixty Minutes West,
Speaker 1: fifty seven, ABC News, NBC News, CNN, PBS, the BBC,
Speaker 1: The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Miami Herald,
Speaker 1: the Los Angeles Times, the Associated Press, Fox Television, and FX.
Speaker 1: This is a production of Journalista podcast LLC and iHeartRadio