Speaker 1: Welcome back to Behind the Hood Politics Bastards. Um, that's
Speaker 1: the one. That is the one. So we left off
Speaker 1: talking about Gary Webb's Dark Alliance article series. Um. And
Speaker 1: the primary gotcha that the story had was that it
Speaker 1: connected to right wing drug dealing Nicaraguans to the f
Speaker 1: d N, which is a group of what the Reagan
Speaker 1: administration called freedom fighters fighting against the left wing government
Speaker 1: of Nicaragua. And it showed that these these guys tied
Speaker 1: to the f d N had somewhat inexplicably escaped prosecution
Speaker 1: for a weird number of crimes, all involving cocaine while
Speaker 1: they were moving a bunch of cocaine into the US.
Speaker 1: And boy, that seems a little bit sketchy, right, Um,
Speaker 1: Now this is the point again where we have to
Speaker 1: start talking about Nicaraguan history. So I'm gonna I'm gonna
Speaker 1: peel us back a little bit from the swing in eighties,
Speaker 1: well from the swinging nineties, I guess too, the also
Speaker 1: swinging nineteen sixties. Um. This is the this is the
Speaker 1: intersection of the two yes, other episodes we've done. Here's
Speaker 1: where it. Yeah, yeah, this is where it intersects with
Speaker 1: all well, all the norths coming up. But this is
Speaker 1: the bad story towards what all these winds up doing.
Speaker 1: And because episodes, Yeah yeah, because our episode starts in Iran.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah. So starting in nineteen thirty six, Nicaragua is
Speaker 1: run by a family called the Samosas. Who is it's
Speaker 1: one of these dictatorship families. It's essentially like royalty, right,
Speaker 1: like that's what it is. They are right wing um.
Speaker 1: They exist to help a lot of different foreign companies
Speaker 1: extract Nicaraguan wealth h and hand some of it to
Speaker 1: them while none of it goes to the people. And
Speaker 1: they're in power forty three years. And the last Samosa
Speaker 1: who is in power is an Astasio Samosa, who's around
Speaker 1: from nineteen sixty seven is to nineteen seventy nine, is
Speaker 1: the dictator um in total. Again, there Samoses are there
Speaker 1: for like half a century, so you might think about
Speaker 1: the Samosas is kind of like the Assad's right, and
Speaker 1: Anastasia is a little bit like Bashar that he has
Speaker 1: groomed to inherit the kingdom. Now, like most dictators, Samosa
Speaker 1: assassinated political rivals, which included newspaper editors and people who
Speaker 1: attempted to engage in Nicaragua was free and opened elections
Speaker 1: in a way that he didn't like. As The Times
Speaker 1: wrote in a contemporary article, quote, the machinery of government
Speaker 1: was essentially geared to building up and ensuring the perpetuation
Speaker 1: of the family's wealth and power. As a result, the
Speaker 1: Samosa is not only control much of the Nicaraguan economy
Speaker 1: with interest in construction, shipping, airlines, television and newspapers, farming, fishing, breweries,
Speaker 1: and mining, but the president's uncle's brother, cousins, sons, and
Speaker 1: nephews occupy key posts throughout the administration. Um. It's a kleptocracy, right,
Speaker 1: we all, we're all familiar with this thing. Um. And eventually,
Speaker 1: you know, people, what people really don't like is when
Speaker 1: a specific family or a few families of assholes take
Speaker 1: all of the money and run everything and murder anyone
Speaker 1: who talks bad about it. Eventually, across the board in
Speaker 1: every culture and time, people don't like this. People really
Speaker 1: don't like that. And in in Nicaragua, once the people
Speaker 1: decided they had had enough of this, there's a revolution
Speaker 1: and a group of leftists known as the Sand and East.
Speaker 1: As you know, starting is these kind of like guerilla
Speaker 1: fighters and whatnot overthrow his ass and take power themselves. Now,
Speaker 1: these guys are leftists, right, so being leftists? Who are
Speaker 1: you being leftists in Nicaragua? What is a country You're
Speaker 1: probably gonna want to have a good relationship with Cuba? Right? Um?
Speaker 1: Pretty natural. Cuba has a similar history of this kleptocratic
Speaker 1: dictator getting overthrown by a left wing revolution. Right. Um,
Speaker 1: Cuba's familiar, you know, friendly ideologically, They've got access to
Speaker 1: weapons and stuff through the Soviet Union sometimes that and
Speaker 1: it's all of which and it is pretty close, all
Speaker 1: of which is real good for the Sand and East.
Speaker 1: Is so any normal person would be like, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: of course they're kind of cozy up with Cuba. The
Speaker 1: US security establishment loses their god damned minds when this
Speaker 1: happens in like nineteen seventy nine. Um, they don't see
Speaker 1: this is like, well, yeah, they just overthrew this government
Speaker 1: who was friendly with I mean, the US had a
Speaker 1: mixed relationship with Samosa. It's not entirely like but anyway, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we've just overthrown this dictator. These guys are our best
Speaker 1: friends in the area. They can give us the stuff
Speaker 1: we need to help kind of rebuild and take our
Speaker 1: country back um. The US security establishment, these these paleo
Speaker 1: conservatives who were fucking taken over with the Reagan administration
Speaker 1: are like, this is communism taking hold in America's backyard.
Speaker 1: It's one of the things people will talk about in
Speaker 1: this period. There's this domino theory, right, that's why we
Speaker 1: Vietnam people are so fucking committed. It's same thing with Korea.
Speaker 1: Is this idea that like, well, if you let one
Speaker 1: country become communists, then everyone around them will fall which
Speaker 1: a couple of things. Number one, I don't think this
Speaker 1: is actually true of state communism. But if there's an
Speaker 1: ideology that's so attractive that once one country does that,
Speaker 1: everyone around them starts doing it, perhaps that's a good thing.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's not that bad, or maybe that's not the
Speaker 1: way it because that's not the way it worked. Right Famously,
Speaker 1: Vietnam the communists one, and you know what didn't happen
Speaker 1: is all of Southeast Asia do exactly the same thing
Speaker 1: as Vietnam in a lot of ways. Actually, Vietnam became
Speaker 1: a stabilizing force because they're the ones who move into
Speaker 1: fucking Cambodia and stuff. After the Kaimarus lose their minds.
Speaker 1: So it's one of those things where the actual lived
Speaker 1: history shows that this is a terrible way to think
Speaker 1: of things because it leads you to commit to stuff
Speaker 1: like the Vietnam War, which is a fucking disaster and
Speaker 1: it's not accurate because countries can have left wing regimes
Speaker 1: go into place and Vietnam big trading partner with the US,
Speaker 1: biased weapons and stuff from US. Now, like it's not
Speaker 1: you know, it's not that's but it's nothing contagious, It's fine.
Speaker 1: It's like, yeah, nothing about this theory of how domino
Speaker 1: like this, Nothing about this is right. And by nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty it's obvious to everyone that it's not right because
Speaker 1: there's a lot of Again, Vietnam are the ones who
Speaker 1: like put an into the fucking Khmer rouge um whatever.
Speaker 1: So the Reagan administration doesn't take it this way, and
Speaker 1: they're like, no, no, no, we were never The only
Speaker 1: thing that was wrong about Vietnam is that we didn't
Speaker 1: stay in their love, which no, we just was good.
Speaker 1: If if the American public would have been chill it
Speaker 1: just let us do to ship, we'd be I. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And again this is not to whitewash anybody involved it's
Speaker 1: just to point out that the theory of sucking the
Speaker 1: domino theory is fucking nonsense, and they know it at
Speaker 1: this point. Um. So that's the justification for why we
Speaker 1: are need to back the group of kind of right
Speaker 1: wing militias that start forming up in Nicaragua after the
Speaker 1: Sandinistas take over. This is not a lot of guys, um,
Speaker 1: there's really just a handful of different bands of right
Speaker 1: wing you know, revolutionaries. A lot of them are trained
Speaker 1: by the CIA and getting aid from the CIA. So
Speaker 1: the CIA has dudes in there who were helping to
Speaker 1: train these guys up and kind of broadly, these different
Speaker 1: groups are known as the Contrast, which I think I
Speaker 1: don't think I need to explain why they're called it, Like,
Speaker 1: that's why they're called the contrast is because they're against
Speaker 1: the fucking the Santinistas. So, which is the same year
Speaker 1: that CRACK made its debut in the West Coast, members
Speaker 1: of the Nicaraguan Revolutionary Democratic Alliance we're meeting with CIA
Speaker 1: officers to plot the overthrow of their new government. One
Speaker 1: of these officers sent a cable to CIA headquarters to
Speaker 1: explain that the nation's new allies had opted to quote
Speaker 1: engage in drug smuggling to the United States in order
Speaker 1: to finance it's anti Sandinista operations. An initial trial run
Speaker 1: had taken place in July of that year, with cocaine
Speaker 1: being flown from to Miami from Nicaragua via plane. Now
Speaker 1: this cable, this is not like a hey, great, our
Speaker 1: plan worked, cable, right, this is framed as a warning.
Speaker 1: So they're not saying, hey, this is awesome. They're saying like, hey,
Speaker 1: by the way, you should know, Uh, Nicaraguan revolutionaries are
Speaker 1: smuggling cocaine in the United States, and we have evidence
Speaker 1: that this plane got sent there. Right. Um, it's it's
Speaker 1: basically allegations of a wrongdoing within the intelligence establishment of
Speaker 1: an ally of the CIA. So of course the CIA
Speaker 1: does not do anything about these allegations, right because they
Speaker 1: are fine with it, or at least there's factions. The
Speaker 1: CIA is not a monolith. There's people, which is not
Speaker 1: to say that there's people who don't like it because
Speaker 1: they're good people. They don't like it because of other reasons.
Speaker 1: But there's broadly speaking, because we're we'll talk about this
Speaker 1: more later, but the CIA is kind of having a
Speaker 1: culture crisis and this period to due to some ship
Speaker 1: that's happened in the seventies. And so there's two big
Speaker 1: broad groups within the agency at this point that are
Speaker 1: kind of opposed to each other. One of them are
Speaker 1: what the other group kind of call derogatorily the desk jockeys,
Speaker 1: And they're the people who are like, ship can be
Speaker 1: done remotely. We don't need to have fucking we shouldn't
Speaker 1: be sending in people and specialists, we shouldn't be boots
Speaker 1: on the ground, right, Like, there's other ways to influence ship,
Speaker 1: Like that's how we'll do it. And then there's the
Speaker 1: the cowboys, right, And I think it's obvious the cowboys
Speaker 1: are the guys who want to do like James Bond shit, right,
Speaker 1: they want to be machine gunning people and like having Yeah,
Speaker 1: those are the two different kind of factions within the CIA,
Speaker 1: and they are so again, this this warning isn't like
Speaker 1: someone being coy. It's someone in the agency who's like,
Speaker 1: I don't think this is good, and other people in
Speaker 1: the agency are like, yeah, we're not going to do
Speaker 1: shit about that, right, Like that's what's happening here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know, uh, how much was how many moving
Speaker 1: parts was happening in the story around this time, it's
Speaker 1: like some fools just didn't even know she was going
Speaker 1: on well, and and and and it's also we'll talk
Speaker 1: about this more. It's a strategic decision to make sure
Speaker 1: some fools don't know what's going on, because you want
Speaker 1: people who are honestly ignorant that you can trot out
Speaker 1: to answer questions, right, that's how you do this. So
Speaker 1: there there are other allegations that start to filter out
Speaker 1: around the same time. Five members of a group called
Speaker 1: ADRIN a d R E N it's a it's an
Speaker 1: acronym um. This is like a right wing group are
Speaker 1: accused of working directly with Jorge Morales, who's a major
Speaker 1: drug trafficker. Adrian is this kind of democratic alliance. That's
Speaker 1: what they're framed as right as democratic. So the sanitist
Speaker 1: des aren't whatever who carried out the mission are disbanded
Speaker 1: in like nineteen eighty two, but a lot of the
Speaker 1: core people there joined the f d N, which we've
Speaker 1: talked about before. That's the Nicaraguan Democratic Force, which makes
Speaker 1: up the core of the contrast, Four of the five
Speaker 1: ADREN members who had worked directly with cocaine smuggler Charles
Speaker 1: Morales or Jorge Morales remain associated with him and the
Speaker 1: CIA until nineteen eight seven. Right, So we're talking about
Speaker 1: the kind of links. It's not as simple as like
Speaker 1: this organism. It's not always as simple as this organization
Speaker 1: has this relationship with the CIA. It's well, these guys
Speaker 1: are in this organization that's backed by the CIA, and
Speaker 1: they know this guy, and then they leave to this
Speaker 1: other organization that's also backed by the CIA, and they
Speaker 1: take their connection with him there, right, and he's moving
Speaker 1: cocaine and like they're getting money through it. So in
Speaker 1: the summer of nineteen eighty four, Marte Healey, who was
Speaker 1: a wealthy Nicaraguan exile, she had she supported Samosa, She
Speaker 1: was a big fan of that dictator. She holds a
Speaker 1: meeting at her home in Miami with two CONTRA representatives
Speaker 1: and or Hey Morales, who, by this point is to
Speaker 1: indictment in the United States. I'm gonna quote from the
Speaker 1: Washington Post here. The Contra representatives were Octaviano Saysar and
Speaker 1: Adolpho Popo Tomorrow, Haley's ex husband. Both were working with
Speaker 1: Eden Pastora, a Maverick revolutionary, trying to open a Southern
Speaker 1: front and the Contra's guerrilla war from a base in
Speaker 1: Costa Rica. In addition to the Contrast based in Honduras
Speaker 1: and Nica, rob was northern border. The CIA had run
Speaker 1: out of money to support either group of contrasts, and
Speaker 1: Congress refused to provide more until the next year. Despite
Speaker 1: their rift with the spy agency, Tomorrow and Czar said
Speaker 1: they asked the CIA official if they could accept the
Speaker 1: offer of airplanes and cash from the drug dealer. Morales,
Speaker 1: I called our contact at the CIA. Of course I did,
Speaker 1: Tomorrow said. Recently. The truth is we were still getting
Speaker 1: some CIA money under the table, they said. Morales was fine. Yes,
Speaker 1: I was like like yes, read like please if y'all
Speaker 1: I don't know what order y'all here in these episodes.
Speaker 1: I keep coming back to that, but like I think
Speaker 1: this will be too and then yours will be three
Speaker 1: in four and okay, cool, so then so then yeah,
Speaker 1: so then y'all will see as we as we uh,
Speaker 1: as this episode unfolds or this series unfolds, he has
Speaker 1: he saying, yeah, you know the c I is, you know,
Speaker 1: we getting money from them. We're not like we're not
Speaker 1: supposed to be funding them yet. Like this like this
Speaker 1: is all under the two Yeah, yeah, this is illegal,
Speaker 1: Like get she in illegal? Was? Fuck? Yes? Has it
Speaker 1: literally made loss? That said you can't fund him? All right?
Speaker 1: I was like, no, we get the money. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: that's fine, but we're not supposed to be paying them anyway.
Speaker 1: So I mean, what the difference is it they passed
Speaker 1: back and cry and the way this happens, it's like
Speaker 1: there's this lady and she's rich and and she's got
Speaker 1: some money and maybe she gets kicked some money on
Speaker 1: the side by the CIA to help fund these guys
Speaker 1: at a private party at her house, and you know
Speaker 1: that's the way all this flows. Again, it's never as
Speaker 1: they like. These guys are One of the things you
Speaker 1: have to keep in mind, and we'll talk about this
Speaker 1: in our Oliver North episodes. Prop is that a lot
Speaker 1: of this is being done like the drug business, and
Speaker 1: I'm talking about outside of the drugs. I'm talking about
Speaker 1: the funding a militants where you've got all these different
Speaker 1: streams and you want a lot of ship done in
Speaker 1: cash and and your land laundering and filtering. One of
Speaker 1: the main differences is that because these guys are the government,
Speaker 1: they're all much worse at it than people in the
Speaker 1: drug game are, which is why we know all of
Speaker 1: this right, because they they do the thing that Stringer
Speaker 1: Bell says you don't ever do, is they take they
Speaker 1: all take notes on their criminal conspiracy. I just don't understand, Like,
Speaker 1: how y'all just writing all his ship down. Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's because they a lot most of them. You have
Speaker 1: to one thing you have to keep in mind. And
Speaker 1: this is again something I think that folks on the
Speaker 1: left don't think about enough when they think about why
Speaker 1: the CIA is the way it isn't what it does.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of people, there's people, particularly at the top,
Speaker 1: who are like soulless nightmare bureaucrats, but a lot of
Speaker 1: them believe in what they're doing. A lot of these
Speaker 1: agents believe they're fighting communism they're doing and so they're
Speaker 1: taking notes and writing it down because they don't think
Speaker 1: they're doing anything wrong, and they think that as government employees,
Speaker 1: you are supposed to document the good things that you're doing. Um. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: So anyway, uh US officials who took part in joint
Speaker 1: CIA contra operations argued against the version of events that
Speaker 1: I have just related to you without actually refuting it right,
Speaker 1: because they specifically can't argue against the facts. They just
Speaker 1: argue that this does not mean that the CIA had
Speaker 1: any role in the drug trade. Dwyane Clarridge, at the time,
Speaker 1: the head of the CIA's Latin American division, said that
Speaker 1: he quote certainly never dealt with Popo Chamorrow, but might
Speaker 1: have met him and definitely didn't know Morales. When Congress
Speaker 1: investigated this in nine seven, the CIA claimed that just
Speaker 1: after this meeting, they decided never to work again with
Speaker 1: Costa Rican based contrast, because they figured out they were
Speaker 1: involved in the coke industry. So once it comes out
Speaker 1: that there's these these very clear ties, they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: and then we decided not to work with them anymore. Um,
Speaker 1: you all really know that, dude. But he so we
Speaker 1: we bounced ye yeah. So I was like no. Once
Speaker 1: I found out, I was like, no, I gotta go
Speaker 1: where yeah yeah. Which, again, the CIA are liars. It
Speaker 1: is literally their job, right they are. The CIA know
Speaker 1: it should be surprised by this, but it's worth delving
Speaker 1: into precisely why they decided to get involved in cocaine now,
Speaker 1: as we're going to discuss later. The agency has a
Speaker 1: long history of using drug money to fund their sketchy
Speaker 1: black opshit. They much preferred to get cash directly from
Speaker 1: the federal government. The CIA doesn't like doing sketchy drug
Speaker 1: things to fund stuff, because that's a lot harder than
Speaker 1: the Congress just saying here's billions of dollars to do
Speaker 1: sketchy ship. Right. The CIA was way happier after, for example,
Speaker 1: nine eleven, when suddenly they just get this like pile
Speaker 1: of funds. That's much better than doing fucking the coke
Speaker 1: coke dealing. Yeah, but it is. They have a fucking
Speaker 1: older than a lot of the people alive, you know,
Speaker 1: making these decisions on the ground when the entra ship
Speaker 1: comes up. The CIA has a very long history of
Speaker 1: funding their operations with drug money. UM. So obviously um.
Speaker 1: When Reagan took office, he called the death squatters of
Speaker 1: the contrast the moral equivalent of the founding Fathers. Um.
Speaker 1: And he made the argument again that like you've got
Speaker 1: to you've got to stop the spread of communism by
Speaker 1: supporting anti communist insurgencies. This becomes known as the Reagan doctrine,
Speaker 1: which is just a repackaged uh fucking what you call it? More?
Speaker 1: Uh No, the things that fall over. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: it's that too. It is. It is kind of a
Speaker 1: continuation of Monroe doctrine, but it's a domino theory theory.
Speaker 1: It's just a repackaging of that um. And he does over.
Speaker 1: He does argue for direct open aid rather than drug
Speaker 1: like trying to fund the ship through drug money. Reagan
Speaker 1: and the CIA want this ship to come straight through Congress.
Speaker 1: But after he gets elected in nineteen eighty, the GOP like,
Speaker 1: he has those first couple of years, which is when
Speaker 1: a lot of this stuff starts to ramp up, right,
Speaker 1: and the CIA is pumping a lot of money into
Speaker 1: the contrast. But then in two the Republicans lose the
Speaker 1: Senate in the House in the midterms, it goes really
Speaker 1: fucking badly for them, and they immediately stick a big
Speaker 1: rubber why did I say, a big rugger rubber cock
Speaker 1: in the in the Reagan White House. They they immediately
Speaker 1: decided to like stymy the Reagan White House, and they
Speaker 1: passed something called the BOLB. I don't know, I was
Speaker 1: the immediately the way I wrote this at like three
Speaker 1: in the morning, the Lion as I originally wrote it was,
Speaker 1: they immediately stuck a big rubber cock in the Reagan
Speaker 1: White House plugged. I'm gonna be honest with holes, just
Speaker 1: would a big old rubbery. I'm sure I had a
Speaker 1: bit to extemp on this, but I have forgotten what
Speaker 1: that was. Oh my lord, but theories to us on Twitter,
Speaker 1: I would yeah, I mean I think I meant like
Speaker 1: they fucked they fucked the Reagan White House. That's a
Speaker 1: bad way to do it. God, what alaud what a
Speaker 1: tragic funk? Up? I am? Um. So, so the bowl
Speaker 1: in the minium, Yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll talk about that
Speaker 1: more later, but basically for now, what you know, it
Speaker 1: restricts the activity of the CIA and the d O
Speaker 1: D in Foreign Wars Department of the Fifth So the
Speaker 1: amendment is written with the Nicaragua, with Nicaragua specifically in mind, um,
Speaker 1: and it makes it harder to fun things um. And
Speaker 1: the justification for this is again the fact that at
Speaker 1: the time, the justification as they're passing the Bowl in
Speaker 1: Amendment is that contra funding comes in large part from
Speaker 1: the Nicaraguan cocaine trade. And this is, as we talk
Speaker 1: about in Part one two, this is when the crack
Speaker 1: epidemic starting, right. So that's all very much tight into
Speaker 1: this um and yeah, this is the stew of affairs
Speaker 1: that in nineteen five, which is the first year that
Speaker 1: the big study on crack babies is published, we get
Speaker 1: the Iran contrast candle, and we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: that in in your episodes problem, which you're gonna start
Speaker 1: hearing tomorrow. I am going to peel back from that
Speaker 1: for now. So again we're a little bit not completely
Speaker 1: going along chronologically here because I Ran Contra deserves to
Speaker 1: be talked about separately. We're going to get to that
Speaker 1: in the next couple of episodes. What I want to
Speaker 1: talk about now on our show is the CIA's history
Speaker 1: dealing drugs to support their black ops, because this is
Speaker 1: fucking cool ship. Actually yes, but you know what else
Speaker 1: is cool ship? Prop Oh? Man, tell me what else?
Speaker 1: The products and services that support this podcast less than
Speaker 1: twenty percent of which are the CIA. I'm trying to
Speaker 1: tell you, man, maybe maybe not much less. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: be honest with you. I mean it might be a
Speaker 1: percentage of uh, rubber, Reagan clogging Cox maybe well. And look,
Speaker 1: you know there's a lot of things that that that
Speaker 1: the CIA gets their hands and including the VP. Well,
Speaker 1: actually it was the FBI who created that VCS and
Speaker 1: all those people. Uh, it is fun that they just
Speaker 1: get to do all that kind of ship anyway, good,
Speaker 1: good reason, but fly to that job. Look, nobody, nobody's
Speaker 1: going to try to sell you a mattress to fund
Speaker 1: the c I A, you're good on that one. Oh
Speaker 1: we are be a que That's how you spell back
Speaker 1: when you're feeling saucy. So like, if you have any
Speaker 1: any analysis on what's going on with Robert, please please
Speaker 1: please feeling Randy some of us, some of us are artists,
Speaker 1: Sophie honestly, honestly is quite a word. Smith and I
Speaker 1: still and also as as as just stated, I think
Speaker 1: Randy needs to come back, as I agree as an
Speaker 1: adjective Randy. And so I've made a big change. I
Speaker 1: think now that we've come back from break, I can
Speaker 1: talk about this because this is going to affect everybody,
Speaker 1: both in my personal life and who listens to the podcast.
Speaker 1: Probably I've decided I'm going to start using the phrase
Speaker 1: cash money more often, particularly when people do something that's
Speaker 1: not cool. I'm gonna be like, that's not very cash money,
Speaker 1: of you, like, that's not very cash money, Sophie. Now Now,
Speaker 1: what is your definition of that, because my definition of
Speaker 1: that is not what you think it is. When you
Speaker 1: say cash money, I think of like Lil Wayne Nicki
Speaker 1: Mina was like cash money millionaire. That's that's like that
Speaker 1: that that title has been taken, is what I'm telling you.
Speaker 1: You really reigned on my parade here, Sophie, and that's
Speaker 1: not very cash money of you. Wow wow, he used it. Agrees. Incredible.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about the CIA's history selling drugs. From
Speaker 1: nineteen forty seven to nineteen fifty one in France, the
Speaker 1: c i A sent weapons and money to Corsican criminal
Speaker 1: syndicates so that they would use violence and murder to
Speaker 1: take control of labor unions in Corsica from the Communist
Speaker 1: party center World War One end. Or they sent them huh,
Speaker 1: they sent them cash money. They did send them cash
Speaker 1: money and cash gunnates. Anyway, these Corsicans wound up in
Speaker 1: total control of the city's docks. And when you run
Speaker 1: the docks, what what happens when you can run the docks?
Speaker 1: Who here remembers the Wire Season two, Right, you can
Speaker 1: move a shipload to yoh right, you can get that
Speaker 1: fucking blow rolling. It's very easy. So well, not just blow.
Speaker 1: This is actually not blow in this case. But the
Speaker 1: CIA is like, hey, we just funded these violent right
Speaker 1: wing gangs to murder all of the labor unions in
Speaker 1: order to take control of these docks. What if we
Speaker 1: started moving a shipload of heroin? What if we partnered
Speaker 1: with the Italian mob to move a bunch of heroin
Speaker 1: through these docks, and then we made Marseilles the heroin
Speaker 1: capital of all of Europe and maybe the world for
Speaker 1: a while. Right, So the CIA is doing specifically because
Speaker 1: there's a lot of fucking money in that and they've
Speaker 1: just become an agency. They want to get that black
Speaker 1: budget rolling. They got governed, they got fucking Patrice Lamumba
Speaker 1: to murder in the Congo, They got all these things
Speaker 1: to do. Um, we got we got a lot of
Speaker 1: crime and to do, and we need to run our
Speaker 1: crime syndicate in the same way crime syndicates run a
Speaker 1: crime syndicate because there are literal business partners. Yes like this,
Speaker 1: I cannot stress this enough. Behind the bastards listeners, Yeah,
Speaker 1: these are the angel investors. Honestly, the the the heroin
Speaker 1: trade that starts up in the late forties early fifties.
Speaker 1: It's kind of the same thing as like, Okay, this
Speaker 1: is going on before the CIA gets involved, but it's
Speaker 1: a little bitty. It's like Facebook looking at Instagram and
Speaker 1: going like, yeah, we're gonna buy us and make it big,
Speaker 1: you know, like that that's what's happening here. Um, And like,
Speaker 1: I mean, I should I want to apologize to the CIA.
Speaker 1: Actually it's really unfair of me to compare them to
Speaker 1: Mark Zuckerberg. Um, so I do, I do. I do
Speaker 1: feel bad about that. That's a little bit unfair, just
Speaker 1: kind of brutal, just lowering that. I'm not apologizing because
Speaker 1: that was a joke. Apology anyway. So Marseille gets its
Speaker 1: first heroin lab at that same time. That same year,
Speaker 1: the Nationalist Chinese Army, which is a right wing military
Speaker 1: force in China fighting in that whole thing, which the
Speaker 1: CIA had helped to build. An arm becomes the primary
Speaker 1: opium distributor for the Golden Triangle, right, which is this
Speaker 1: chunk of Southeast Asia that at that point is the
Speaker 1: source of the world's largest source of opium. So they've
Speaker 1: got again when I say they're running this, they are
Speaker 1: controlling everything from supply through the nationalist Chinese Army, which
Speaker 1: they have an interest in, to smuggling, which the fucking
Speaker 1: mafia that they have an interest in is doing. To distribution,
Speaker 1: which they run the fucking docks, right or at least
Speaker 1: there people do, right. So, in order to make this
Speaker 1: even more direct and obvious, the CIA uses Air America,
Speaker 1: which is an air line they own, to fly the
Speaker 1: drugs through Burma, Thailand, Lao, etcetera, right and and into
Speaker 1: other places. Right. So again this isn't just like they
Speaker 1: have an interest. They're not just helping like a Nicaragua.
Speaker 1: They're helping shift along right there, smoothing things, They're making
Speaker 1: problems go away. At this point, they're just straight up
Speaker 1: loading drugs with hair or loading planes with heroin, right,
Speaker 1: look like just what their logo on the side. And
Speaker 1: this is just this is also a bit part of
Speaker 1: why they're doing this is this is how they're funding
Speaker 1: this national Chinese force they're funding, right Like, this is
Speaker 1: how they're funding I think a lot of Operation Gladiol,
Speaker 1: which we'll talk about one day. All of this drug
Speaker 1: money is being sprinkled out along a bunch of stuff.
Speaker 1: But so things that this this does make a lot
Speaker 1: of money for their black ops. But things don't go
Speaker 1: really well for the nationalist Chinese army. Um that if
Speaker 1: you might notice, that's not who winds up winning that
Speaker 1: that whole conflict. Um. And over the next twenty years,
Speaker 1: the U S steadily increased a series of disastrous military
Speaker 1: commitments in the region, which is you know, Vietnam, Korea,
Speaker 1: all that good stuff is kind of what happens after this,
Speaker 1: this this false apart. So while many US soldiers became
Speaker 1: hero heroin attics during their tours, that's a big thing
Speaker 1: that happens in Vietnam. Right, You've got all these soldiers
Speaker 1: go into the Golden Triangle, where the CIA had been
Speaker 1: moving heroin out of in order to fund the nationalist
Speaker 1: Chinese army. Now that's not a factor so much. But
Speaker 1: you've got a shipload of US and other foreign soldiers
Speaker 1: in Southeast Asia fighting, a lot of them are getting hurt,
Speaker 1: and they're being given opium. And when when the morphine
Speaker 1: runs out, when the docks aren't going to give them
Speaker 1: any more of that, well, they're in the heroin capital
Speaker 1: of the world. Um. And the CIA was not just
Speaker 1: kind of a passive like overseer of that. They operated
Speaker 1: a lab in law that refined heroin for profit, the
Speaker 1: heroin that was being sold to US soldiers who came
Speaker 1: back to the United States addicted. By the time we
Speaker 1: pulled out of the region under Nixon, Southeast Asia was
Speaker 1: the source of seventy of the world's opium and the
Speaker 1: primary material driver of the US heroin market. And the
Speaker 1: CIA had never been involved, right, they were, they were,
Speaker 1: They were guys every step of the way. Now we
Speaker 1: could talk about Afghanistan and heroin and how boy howdy,
Speaker 1: the same thing happened there a few decades later. Huh,
Speaker 1: that's wild. But I think the point is made. The
Speaker 1: CIA does not what they're not doing. They're not introducing
Speaker 1: drugs to populations in a concerted manner. The drugs are
Speaker 1: not being used consciously as weapons. The drugs are being
Speaker 1: produced and brought into places in order to buy weapons
Speaker 1: that they then give to people who do other series
Speaker 1: is of crimes. The fact that populations are getting addicted
Speaker 1: and stuff is kind of a byproduct of the fact
Speaker 1: that they're trying to fund all of these revolutions and assassinations.
Speaker 1: So obviously all this ship we've talked about doesn't work
Speaker 1: out great in China, where they don't win. Doesn't work
Speaker 1: out great in Southeast Asia, where again things tend to
Speaker 1: be pretty disastrous for for u S interests during this period.
Speaker 1: But stuff had worked out really well in France for
Speaker 1: a while. The CIA had gotten their way there and
Speaker 1: they've funded a bunch of shady ship with the stuff
Speaker 1: they were moving through our a um and the drugs. Again,
Speaker 1: even in places where you know, Vietnam doesn't work out,
Speaker 1: we lose, see, it still makes a funkload of money
Speaker 1: which they used to do a funkload of shady stuff.
Speaker 1: And it's money that can't that they can deny, right,
Speaker 1: so they don't have to admit they've used it for anything.
Speaker 1: They don't have to account for it. A lot of
Speaker 1: it presumably winds up padding pockets and stuff. It's not
Speaker 1: like congressional money, which there's a little bit more strings
Speaker 1: attached to. So when the Reagan administration to get back
Speaker 1: to the Bowland Amendment, when the Reagan administration is like, boy,
Speaker 1: Congress does not want to give us the money we
Speaker 1: need to overthrow governments and destroy you know, socialist movements,
Speaker 1: the CIA is like, hey, guys, we know how to
Speaker 1: make money. Hey, we know how to do that kind
Speaker 1: of ship. Yeah. Yeah, now, of course that is uh,
Speaker 1: that is where we get all the north, where we
Speaker 1: get around Contra. We're gonna talk about that more, uh
Speaker 1: later on. I do want to note a couple of
Speaker 1: things about Ali that we don't get into your episodes,
Speaker 1: one of which kind of makes the point of how
Speaker 1: incest uous the US ruling class really is. We've just
Speaker 1: talked about the samosas. Ali North, who goes to the U. S.
Speaker 1: Naval Academy because he's a fancy boy to become an officer,
Speaker 1: is close classmates with future Navy Secretary and Senator Jim Webb,
Speaker 1: their boxing buddies, and Web of course, is a major
Speaker 1: political figure during all of the stuff that we're happening,
Speaker 1: that we're talking about is happening. Um. So I don't
Speaker 1: know that's that's nifty. Um. I also wanted to talk
Speaker 1: we don't talk much. We don't talk in your episodes
Speaker 1: about Randy Herrod do we know? We don't, Okay, So Randy.
Speaker 1: In Vietnam, Oliver North serves as a platoon commander. He
Speaker 1: wins a couple of different awards for gallantry under fire.
Speaker 1: He is a pretty good actual like combat soldier, from
Speaker 1: everything I have read, um, But he's also gonna wind
Speaker 1: up lying when when the stuff you talk about in
Speaker 1: your episodes happens breaks and Iran Contra happens, He's gonna
Speaker 1: wind up needing to puff his background up because he's
Speaker 1: dealing with a lot of criticism. And I want to
Speaker 1: quote from a nineteen eight seven Washington Post article on
Speaker 1: North that comes after the Iran Contra stuff breaks. He
Speaker 1: was aggressive when instinct told him to take cover, he charged.
Speaker 1: He reminded machine gunner Randy Harrod of a Viking berserker,
Speaker 1: a fighter who would go against extreme odds and battle
Speaker 1: until he dropped. Now that sounds like badass, right, That
Speaker 1: makes him sound cool? Yes, yes, if you don't know
Speaker 1: who Randy Harrod is. At least so the Washington Post
Speaker 1: is just talking to this guy and being like, boy,
Speaker 1: Randy sure loves him. In nineteen seventy, Randy Harrod participated
Speaker 1: in the Songtang massacre, in which a five man Marine
Speaker 1: Hunter killer patrol gunned down seven women and nine children.
Speaker 1: They reported these dead women and children as viet Cong
Speaker 1: who had been killed in a firefight. They were court
Speaker 1: martialed over this. Eventually, and all you or I flew
Speaker 1: down to be a character witness to his buddy slash
Speaker 1: mass murderer Randy Um. And then, of course, when Aligue
Speaker 1: gets in trouble, Randy goes in front of the media
Speaker 1: to do the same thing. He was free to do
Speaker 1: that despite murdering a bunch of people because he'd been
Speaker 1: at it it. Now he gets acquitted. The other guys
Speaker 1: in his unit, two of them gets five years sentences
Speaker 1: and one gets sentenced to life. So again, this happened, right,
Speaker 1: This is a massacre he and his boys do. None
Speaker 1: of them actually serve much time, though, because the major
Speaker 1: a major general reduces their sentences to less than a
Speaker 1: year um, which is pretty fucked up. But whatever. Anyway,
Speaker 1: Um all the North, good man, real, Yeah, So I
Speaker 1: just wanted to get over that stuff a bit, because
Speaker 1: you can't not read about Ali North while you're reading
Speaker 1: about how the CIA and the crack stuff happens. And
Speaker 1: that brings us to an important point which we do
Speaker 1: talk about in your episodes. This is not just the
Speaker 1: CIA right now, Gary Webbs articles focus on the CIA,
Speaker 1: the NSC, the National Security Council just as bad, just
Speaker 1: as involved in this specific ship right now. In brief
Speaker 1: the guy running the NFC, Bob McFarlane has centralized a
Speaker 1: lot of intelligence corps like collection, and Ali North is
Speaker 1: the guy who's in kind of the center of this point. Man.
Speaker 1: Um yeah, yeah, so anyway that that that's probably um.
Speaker 1: Ali winds up working well ahead of like any of
Speaker 1: this stuff like happening um in nineteen eighty one. Right,
Speaker 1: this is kind of right as the crack trade is
Speaker 1: sort of starting and the contracts are funding themselves, and
Speaker 1: Ali builds a really personal relationship with a lot of
Speaker 1: these contract He does a lot of training and advising
Speaker 1: to them himself, and whenever opportunities pop up, he's rabid
Speaker 1: and urging the president to throw down with these folks.
Speaker 1: At one point in North Korean freighter of guns is
Speaker 1: headed to Nicaragua to arm the government's forces. The Sandinista
Speaker 1: is because obviously North Korea Sandinistas have some interest in common.
Speaker 1: The CIA and the NSC guys are all debating what
Speaker 1: to do, so like they've got this. This is a
Speaker 1: sovereign nation. North Korea is allowed to go and sell
Speaker 1: guns to Nicaragua. Right. Um, again, not a fan of
Speaker 1: North Korea, bad government, but this is a thing we do.
Speaker 1: This why wouldn't they be allowed to They're a country too,
Speaker 1: so they're selling guns to the Sandinistas, and the CIA
Speaker 1: and the NFC are like, well shit, we were not, like,
Speaker 1: we can't let this, Like what do we what can
Speaker 1: we do to stop this? All the suggestion is let's
Speaker 1: attack the freighter. Let's attack the freighter of a sovereign nation,
Speaker 1: steal their guns and give their guns. To the contrast,
Speaker 1: other people are like, Ali, that's literally just piracy, Like
Speaker 1: that's just being a pirate. Yeah, yeah, two, yeah, that's this,
Speaker 1: This is a problem if we do this, Ali, there
Speaker 1: will be consequences if we just attack one of their boats. Um,
Speaker 1: So nothing happens. Ali gets overruled because people are like,
Speaker 1: that's kind of crazy. Oliver North like, you're kind of
Speaker 1: a maniac here, maybe calling the funk down. Yeah. But
Speaker 1: Ali builds a really good relationship with Ronald Reagan. And
Speaker 1: the way he does this is he's he's incredible at lying. Um.
Speaker 1: He lies about He gets Reagan to believe that he's
Speaker 1: run a Special Operations Training Detachment UM in his like
Speaker 1: during Vietnam and he was basically coordinating special forces. And
Speaker 1: right this is the time Predator comes out right, all
Speaker 1: of these movies Lionizing, the Seals, and the Green Berets
Speaker 1: are coming out in this period. Special Forces is sexy.
Speaker 1: Ronnie's a movie guy. So Ali is like, yeah, I
Speaker 1: was running Special Forces and stuff. You see that movie
Speaker 1: with the movie were like Rambo see the movie with
Speaker 1: like you know his Force nigger, Like, yeah, I was.
Speaker 1: I was in the ship man, I was over there. Bro,
Speaker 1: those movies are about me and the homies. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: what he's telling Ray essentially. Yeah, And Reagan is a
Speaker 1: guy who's very vulnerable to stories. Again, He's he's an actor, right,
Speaker 1: Like this is the kind of brain that actors have.
Speaker 1: That's not a good or it's a bad thing in
Speaker 1: Ronnie's case, but it's just a thing. He's he's he's
Speaker 1: a story and he just gets enraptured by all over North.
Speaker 1: One of North's NSC colleagues later are called Ali was
Speaker 1: about thirty to fifty bullshit. He was notorious for constantly
Speaker 1: exaggerating his role in things. He was always coming from
Speaker 1: a meeting with the vice president. We checked once and
Speaker 1: he hadn't been to see the vice president at allow Um.
Speaker 1: And one of the interesting things and we're talking about Ali.
Speaker 1: We're talking to your episodes about Contra. This is about
Speaker 1: the other smuggling he was into. That's extent, Like, that's
Speaker 1: why I'm getting into this, yeah. Um. The Executive Secretary
Speaker 1: of the NFC, Rodney McDaniel, described North as a man
Speaker 1: of tremendous energy whose real talent, despite his action hero image,
Speaker 1: was bureaucracy. He had quote a good voice, no self
Speaker 1: doubts at all. You never thought about a thing. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He was full of ship and felt great about it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And and knowing how many moving parts audist it has
Speaker 1: and what he had to oversee, there's no way He's
Speaker 1: not like a human Excel spreadsheet because he's it's too
Speaker 1: much to keep it's too much to keep organized. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he's Ali is particularly committed to the contract ship, right.
Speaker 1: The stuff is that he gets involved within Iran. That
Speaker 1: secondary to what is his real motivation, which is helping
Speaker 1: these guys. Yeah. Um. I don't know if that's because
Speaker 1: he was tied to them and it was a career
Speaker 1: thing or if he was. He's legitimately a true believer
Speaker 1: and and sympathize with him. But North is is really
Speaker 1: the driver of the whole administration's policy towards them. And
Speaker 1: when Reagan takes office, there's like five contras tops, right,
Speaker 1: very few of these dudes, not really a movement. By
Speaker 1: the time North is in his first year at the NFC,
Speaker 1: there were like five or six thousand of right. And
Speaker 1: of course they now and now I should say this,
Speaker 1: they're almost never very good. They're about bad, not a
Speaker 1: good insurgent group. They're really ineffective. That sense. The amount
Speaker 1: of money we legally and illegally pumped down there, you know,
Speaker 1: saying over the amount of time that we was there,
Speaker 1: they was better on a video game and they were
Speaker 1: We didn't not get much. Yeah, yeah, uh So North
Speaker 1: throws himself into the contract program. In the book Landslide
Speaker 1: Jane Mayor, Mayor and Doyle McManus right, North's five years
Speaker 1: at the NSC were composed of manic days, weekends at
Speaker 1: his desk, and vacations not taken. On the fifth birthday
Speaker 1: of his daughter dorn In, one friend called. She called
Speaker 1: him three times at seven o'clock, at eight o'clock, and
Speaker 1: at nine o'clock, and in essence said Daddy, when are
Speaker 1: you coming home? And Ali said, don't worry, honey, Daddy's
Speaker 1: coming home as soon as he can. I've just got
Speaker 1: to finish this work. By the time he got home,
Speaker 1: she was already asleep. But he was willing to take
Speaker 1: time to get the job done. Not everyone admired this trade.
Speaker 1: He was always scheduling meetings on Sundays just to distress
Speaker 1: everyone else. CIA analyst John Horton grumbled. Others worried less
Speaker 1: about his workaholic devotion than his manic intensity. I used
Speaker 1: to keep Alie out of Reagan's office because he was dangerous,
Speaker 1: Michael Deaver recalled. He scared me. He'd fly to Bay Route,
Speaker 1: be back twenty four hours later and brief the president.
Speaker 1: Reagan loved him, loved the style. And again, there's factions
Speaker 1: in here, right, everybody's not on the same fucking end
Speaker 1: of things. Um, so we're condensing a lot here. But
Speaker 1: as the years go by, despite all this money to fight,
Speaker 1: despite how many of these fucking dudes there are, ship
Speaker 1: doesn't go well the war. They don't take any cities,
Speaker 1: they don't take any serious territory. They're not winning battlefield victories,
Speaker 1: and Congress keeps stopping the administration from sending the money.
Speaker 1: They develop all sorts of fun up workarounds. At one
Speaker 1: point they get the Saudi Royal family to cough up
Speaker 1: a bunch of money. They convinced the Israelis to send
Speaker 1: them arms, but it's not enough. And of course that
Speaker 1: that brings us to Iran Contra, but it also brings
Speaker 1: us to another series of decisions that all the North
Speaker 1: makes outside of Iran Contra that are maybe sketchy here,
Speaker 1: and we're going to talk about that. But first, prop products, props.
Speaker 1: Maybe maybe I can't guarantee anything. I'm not the president,
Speaker 1: but not the North Man. You're not delivering drugs. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna twist some arms I've been I've been arming some
Speaker 1: militant groups in the jungle that I'm hoping we'll be
Speaker 1: advertising on our on our podcast soon, So check out
Speaker 1: for that. UM, not really sure which jungle. I've just
Speaker 1: been dropping dropping cash one of these zoom what happens? Yes, Um,
Speaker 1: all right, here's ads. So we're and we have through
Speaker 1: this meandering story. The machinery of Iran contrast we'll talk about,
Speaker 1: is starting up in this period. But Ali, separately from
Speaker 1: anything that's going on in Iran, is trying to figure
Speaker 1: out how do I keep getting money to my guys,
Speaker 1: and the most obvious way to do that is cocaine.
Speaker 1: A good example of this is the case of Carlos
Speaker 1: Albert Amadora, a former pilot for the Southern Front Contrast,
Speaker 1: who flew secret missions for years out of the Illopango
Speaker 1: Air Base in San Salvador. In nineteen eighty five, the
Speaker 1: d e A becomes aware that that this guy Amador
Speaker 1: is also transporting huge amounts of cocaine to Miami via
Speaker 1: Costa Rica. A CIA cable at the time quoted a
Speaker 1: d e A source who quote stated that Amador was
Speaker 1: probably picking up cocaine and San Salvador to flight a
Speaker 1: Grand Cayman and then to South Florida. So the d
Speaker 1: e A their job is to stop drugs from entering
Speaker 1: the country, right, Like, that's what the d e A
Speaker 1: is supposed to do. Um again, not an agency, I like,
Speaker 1: but they they they actually didn't want to take this
Speaker 1: guy down. They want to stop this guy because he's
Speaker 1: moving blow into the country and their job is to
Speaker 1: stop this guy. So they announced their intent through the
Speaker 1: different kind of um connections that law enforcement has that like,
Speaker 1: we are going to have local police and this is
Speaker 1: like in because he's he's flying out of San Salvador.
Speaker 1: We're gonna have local police in San Salvador look into
Speaker 1: this guy, and we're going to help them, and this
Speaker 1: is going to be We're going to try and bust
Speaker 1: this and stop this. Right, But the hangar in San
Speaker 1: Salvador that Amador is flying out is Hangar number four.
Speaker 1: Do you want to know who owns Hangar number four?
Speaker 1: Who owns Hangar number four? Holy North? Ali North is
Speaker 1: the guy through the NSC right, is the guy who
Speaker 1: who controls hangar for Amador has to ask permission in
Speaker 1: order to use it, which he gets. I'm gonna quote
Speaker 1: from a rite up by PBS here when the CIA
Speaker 1: headquarters responded to the cable, This is from the d
Speaker 1: e A asking can we go after this guy? It
Speaker 1: told it's local local station that it would appreciate station
Speaker 1: advising d e A not to make any inquiries to
Speaker 1: anyone ari Hangar number four at Ilopango since only legitimate
Speaker 1: supported operations were conducted from this facility. Now, since we
Speaker 1: know Amaur was flowing flying cocaine out of this facility
Speaker 1: and only supported operations were conducted from this facility, what
Speaker 1: is that mean? Hey? What does that mean. I wonder, Hey,
Speaker 1: look everybody, when you when you all research and do
Speaker 1: your background checks on all the hangars, just skipped number
Speaker 1: four because it's already cool. Yeah number five. Look into
Speaker 1: that ship. It's like mambo number five and a little
Speaker 1: bit of rita. Yeah, do auditories every well before, it's
Speaker 1: cool to worry about it. Anyway. I think it would
Speaker 1: be so funny and like I'm imagining like an SNL
Speaker 1: style like roundtable sort of just stupid, like weekly office meeting.
Speaker 1: And it's like the N S C, C I A
Speaker 1: D A right and Oliver North they're just sitting down
Speaker 1: going through like fine items, just like yep, uh we
Speaker 1: got anything. He's like, yeah, actually, man um, we noticed
Speaker 1: this plane coming in from Salad, Salvador and uh I
Speaker 1: was carrying gang of drugs stopped in Florida, soult a
Speaker 1: cocaine actually a little cocaine and that thing. So I
Speaker 1: think we got a guy. We're probably gonna announce on Monday.
Speaker 1: You know that this is the guy's face and we're
Speaker 1: looking for him. You guys cool with that? And then
Speaker 1: the c I A going yeah wait what yeah that
Speaker 1: that's actually gonna be a problem. Yeah, wait wait nah,
Speaker 1: and they're like what what uh you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: And it was like, yeah, it's in hanging number four.
Speaker 1: You guys know who hanger number four is it is?
Speaker 1: That guy's wait what, No, it's not mine? Well yet
Speaker 1: wait number four in Florida. Yeah oh no, no, no, yeah,
Speaker 1: no you don't go in there. Yeah yeah no, I
Speaker 1: don't know, man, I think that's mine. But yeah, we're
Speaker 1: gonna take down crime. Wait what like just like no,
Speaker 1: you can. He gets to one of the things. One
Speaker 1: of the things that's important to understand about the U. S.
Speaker 1: Security establishment, right, is that um again kind of it's
Speaker 1: often aimed as this there's there's this unified conspiracy to
Speaker 1: like do all of this fund up ship. These guys
Speaker 1: a lot of them hate each other because their their
Speaker 1: interests are contra to each other. Right. The d A
Speaker 1: lot of the information we have about how the CIA
Speaker 1: and the NSC helped fuel the crack epidemic and how
Speaker 1: they brought drugs in and to the United States, a
Speaker 1: lot of that comes from d E A agents who,
Speaker 1: like some of them, wrote books. Some of those books
Speaker 1: are questionable, but like it's a bunch of d E
Speaker 1: agents go and like blow the whistle on this, not
Speaker 1: because they're heroic individuals, but because their careers and success
Speaker 1: relies on bringing in cocaine and the CIA was stopping
Speaker 1: them for busting people resources. It takes time and money
Speaker 1: to track to figure out who's doing it, where the
Speaker 1: where they like it. They spend resources and sometimes even
Speaker 1: lives going after this stuff and then kind of at
Speaker 1: like the last moment, get told no, no, no, don't
Speaker 1: go do that because this guy. Yeah, you're at the
Speaker 1: street level. You're in shootouts, your under loose friends that
Speaker 1: help ste like again, but you get why they're angry. Yes,
Speaker 1: you're trying to get this ship off the street. You're
Speaker 1: in shootouts with these dudes. And then you're like wait, wait, wait, wait,
Speaker 1: you to plug. You didn't tell me the whole time
Speaker 1: you to plug. Yeah, oh yeah that was us. Sorry
Speaker 1: about your best friend, but like, yeah, that's been us
Speaker 1: the whole time. Anyway. So the job, the job got great. Great,
Speaker 1: we're catching our guy. We thought he was pretty well
Speaker 1: but now you you found him. We just locked up
Speaker 1: a thousand melanated people. You're doing a great job. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: of course, the CIA denies any of this field agent
Speaker 1: Needs in I E v E s, who We're gonna
Speaker 1: hear about a little later tells PBS, you know later
Speaker 1: when this article I just quoted from has written that
Speaker 1: there is no way that the CIA would ever have
Speaker 1: overruled the d e A on something like this quote
Speaker 1: this is this is from Needs. I was given carte
Speaker 1: blanche to do my job. Never once did anybody say
Speaker 1: anything to me about anything I was doing that was
Speaker 1: nothing but supportive. There was no interference, there was no
Speaker 1: there was no overriding priority, there was no competition, there
Speaker 1: was no anything except for support of the d e
Speaker 1: a's mission. And that's a fact. That's a d e
Speaker 1: A guy being like no. There was never anohing like
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, that's a CIA giving like no. There was
Speaker 1: never anything but support for the c I We we
Speaker 1: never did anything like that. D e A agent Hector Barrella's,
Speaker 1: who was also a field agent in the area at
Speaker 1: the same time, says this is bullshit. Votes I know
Speaker 1: specifically that some of the CIA contract workers, meaning some
Speaker 1: of the pilots, were in fact bringing drugs into the
Speaker 1: US and landing some of these drugs in the government
Speaker 1: air bases. I know so because I was told by
Speaker 1: some of these pilots that in fact they had done that.
Speaker 1: It's like I'm telling you been, tell you uses, what
Speaker 1: you gotta, what you gotta, netta, what you gotta plenty,
Speaker 1: I'll bringing in US cocaine. Wait, well a cocaine, c
Speaker 1: I S s coke. Yeah, ce I A sent me
Speaker 1: down there, you know. Let me just came out a
Speaker 1: few weeks since Salvador took the kids that came in.
Speaker 1: Now I'm on my way back. Yep, yep. Now we're
Speaker 1: gonna hear a number of very entertaining denials from c
Speaker 1: I agent over the course of this in the next
Speaker 1: episode that I do, but one of the best comes
Speaker 1: from the specific story the tale of Ali North's Hangar.
Speaker 1: Former US Assistant Secretary of State for International Narcotics Matters
Speaker 1: Jonathan Weener Winer told PBS, if it's your job to
Speaker 1: check out food at the supermarket, you're not worrying about
Speaker 1: the person who's supposed to be stocking the shelves. It's
Speaker 1: not your job, right, That's why he's saying, no, there
Speaker 1: was no conspiracy here, right, Like they just you just
Speaker 1: missed stuff. Right. If you're as the as the c
Speaker 1: I A we didn't know this guy was flying crack cocaine.
Speaker 1: He was also flying other stuff for us, and we
Speaker 1: just didn't realize he was flying cocaine out of the
Speaker 1: same facility that he was flying guns for us from. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we and we were our job. It's the CIA. We're
Speaker 1: not a drug interdiction agency. It's not our job to
Speaker 1: know about that. How could we have possibly been aware? Right,
Speaker 1: that's literally what he's saying. Um, I was supposed to
Speaker 1: know that. Other How could I have known? Wasn't guns? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Now there was a knox that said guns and there
Speaker 1: was a box that said other M. I'm looking for
Speaker 1: the gun and box. What did you expect from me?
Speaker 1: We are we are here? Or the seafood? Yeah? The
Speaker 1: beef that's somebody else's department. Yeah. How could I know
Speaker 1: that there's beef there? Um? Just because it's next to
Speaker 1: the seafood and both of them are very clearly visible
Speaker 1: in the hangar that I own. That's okay for This
Speaker 1: is not the only fun all the North plot that
Speaker 1: involves moving Hella blow. Jose bi Rosa was a general
Speaker 1: from Honduras who had helped make things easier for the contrast, because, again,
Speaker 1: a lot of the Contras are based out of Honduras
Speaker 1: and based out of Costa Rica because it's it's easier
Speaker 1: because the Sandinista is a pretty good at keeping their
Speaker 1: own ground. Anyway, he had also while he was helping
Speaker 1: out the Contras and giving them space to operate, and
Speaker 1: shipped a truly titanic amount of cocaine into the United States.
Speaker 1: And again he's like running the Honduran military, right, that's
Speaker 1: that's that's Boissa Rosa, which is getting funding from the
Speaker 1: United States. In nineteen eighty four, he's caught trying to
Speaker 1: assassinate the president of Honduras. Was a plot which was
Speaker 1: meant to be funded with forty million dollars in cocaine
Speaker 1: sales to the United States. When when this guy gets
Speaker 1: fucking caught, Ali North starts reaching out to people above
Speaker 1: him in the White House to beg for him to
Speaker 1: get leniency, to be like, please push on Honduras to
Speaker 1: not punish this guy, and and yeah, well, because he's
Speaker 1: gonna talk and guess what. Rosa, who has shipped a
Speaker 1: shipload of cocaine into the United States tens a million
Speaker 1: dollars worth, and trying to kill the president of his
Speaker 1: country guess what his guess what his sentence is five
Speaker 1: years at Club fed five years. Baby, that's right, baby, Listen, listen, listen,
Speaker 1: and now think about this. If you watched Narcos on Netflix,
Speaker 1: if you Pablo Escobar, this is all happened at the
Speaker 1: same time you in Colombia. It's not like you don't
Speaker 1: know all this ship So you like, I'm worried at all?
Speaker 1: SENTI something. Yes, we sent in this to Miami. What
Speaker 1: they're gonna say, yep, yep, yeah. Now thanks to the
Speaker 1: fact that we know all of this. By the way,
Speaker 1: most of this information comes from the fact that all
Speaker 1: the North kept a diary which is now declassified and
Speaker 1: where all of this is written in. In his attempt
Speaker 1: to protect Boiso, we know he urged other U S
Speaker 1: officials to quote Cabal quietly all these words to secure
Speaker 1: him a pardon. Now, Norths focus here was nothing to
Speaker 1: do with with loyalty. Again, Rosa knew a lot about
Speaker 1: the CIA's funding and arming of the contrast, and Ali
Speaker 1: wrote specifically that he was worried about Rosa spilling the
Speaker 1: beans on the war and the narcotics funding behind it.
Speaker 1: He wrote this in a diary that not a conspiracy theory.
Speaker 1: Just a guy taking notes on his crimes. Dear Diary,
Speaker 1: Today was a very interesting day my connecting. Honduras tried
Speaker 1: to kill his president. Now that he's faced a trial,
Speaker 1: I'm worried he's gone snitch. So I'm wishing on a star.
Speaker 1: He doesn't tell everybody about the crimes are country has
Speaker 1: committed in Cahos with him. Are you there, God, it's
Speaker 1: me Ali Everything. Let me write out the crimes I'm
Speaker 1: committing in detail. Um Now, everything that's happening here is
Speaker 1: a big old deal for Ali North, Right, he has
Speaker 1: staked his career on the contras. It's also a huge
Speaker 1: deal for people in Nicaragua. It is intermittently kind of
Speaker 1: a distraction for other people in the security agencies, right,
Speaker 1: the c I a head Casey, the the NSC had McFarland.
Speaker 1: They support the contrast generally, but there's also times where
Speaker 1: they're like, look, we got other ship to do, and
Speaker 1: like we like we we can't be focusing entirely on
Speaker 1: this stuff. So while this is all going on, and
Speaker 1: this is the period that the contrast stuff is starting
Speaker 1: to spin up, and at the early stages that's more
Speaker 1: on McFarland and Casey side than North. He's going to
Speaker 1: be central to this, but he's managing contrast ship, right,
Speaker 1: so he doesn't come in quite yet, or he's not
Speaker 1: at least as as involved in it yet. We'll get
Speaker 1: to that in your episodes. But one of the things
Speaker 1: that's happening big picture here is that there's this constant
Speaker 1: kind of trickle of stories coming out in Nicaragua coming
Speaker 1: out about US support for the contrast, coming about how
Speaker 1: bad they are. Crimes, they've committed, villages, they've executed, all
Speaker 1: sorts of fund up ship. And one of the things
Speaker 1: that's happening is that Reagan always very into the contrast,
Speaker 1: um never loses his luster for these American founding fathers
Speaker 1: like dudes in his words, but the smart guys largely
Speaker 1: his chief of staff, Donald Reagan, recognized that the contrasts
Speaker 1: are fucking losing proposition for the Reagan administration every they
Speaker 1: can see in the polls. Every time he talks about
Speaker 1: the contrast, his support goes down, right. So that's kind
Speaker 1: of what's happening UM as the Reagan administration starts to
Speaker 1: encounter other issues and realize that it's bigger fish to Fry,
Speaker 1: which leads us into all of the stuff around kidnapped
Speaker 1: Americans and the Rand contra, which we're gonna talk about
Speaker 1: tomorrow on hood Politics Bastards behind. So gear up, get
Speaker 1: Eddie to listen to hear stories from some of your
Speaker 1: favorite Reagan administrations. Prop Not only are we gonna get
Speaker 1: a little bit more all the North, we're gonna hear
Speaker 1: from Secretary of State George Schultz future the NOS board member,
Speaker 1: Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger. What a name, of course,
Speaker 1: everybody's favorite guy with a name you didn't think was
Speaker 1: his real name until you learned that it was John Poindexter.
Speaker 1: John porn Dexter's a real name. M hmm you did
Speaker 1: you did? Just call him porn Dexter. YO is about
Speaker 1: to get so Yeah, you were standing on the wall
Speaker 1: like you was Poindexter. You know that one? You know
Speaker 1: that one? Right? Oh? Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely? Do you really? No? Okay,
Speaker 1: I made a decision when you started doing the references
Speaker 1: that I wasn't going to get to try to try
Speaker 1: to hold up under screw. I shattered. I shattered like
Speaker 1: the wall underneath because what kid? What what teenager? Has
Speaker 1: not pretended and full ground adult has not pretended to
Speaker 1: know the obscure band you're talking about. We absolutely the
Speaker 1: dire Straits or Strokes or whatever. Yeah, for sure. Bands.
Speaker 1: Yeah you have. You have multiple times names some bands
Speaker 1: that I was like, Nope, no, there's there's there's too
Speaker 1: many bands, look, yeah, too many bands. Yeah, we gotta
Speaker 1: gotta trim it down to four. Yes, I was giving
Speaker 1: you a little bus to move, bust, a little young
Speaker 1: MC bus to move. You're standing on the wall like
Speaker 1: you was point dexter next. Now I have heard of
Speaker 1: herk Um the guy who does the first hip hop
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah cool h yeah yeah cool horse. Yes, I
Speaker 1: think for a cracked article that I wrote, which is
Speaker 1: the nerdiest way to know Pip. I was like, wow,
Speaker 1: don't okay you told me? Okay, God damn it prop
Speaker 1: speaking of hip hop history. Yes, let's talk about your
Speaker 1: plug doubles. Yes, uh yeah, properly pop dot com. I
Speaker 1: got some new music out right now, uh super dops
Speaker 1: called the soil EP. That's a part of the terraform
Speaker 1: uh whole universe of poetry and and send a music
Speaker 1: units verse of poetry. Short story. It's a book. It's
Speaker 1: also a coffee Um which important for Hispanic Heritage Month
Speaker 1: or Latino Heritage Month. Um. The black and brown unity
Speaker 1: you know coming out of when you look at the
Speaker 1: Queen Mother on the cover of the coffee can, that's
Speaker 1: an Indigenous woman and an African woman. You know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying, Black brown unity is there. But you know
Speaker 1: what I'm trying to say, Terraform, cold Brew, uh dot com,
Speaker 1: and prop hit pop politics, it's all up in there.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying, We out think, we out,
Speaker 1: we out, we out this man. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: I couldn't even finish the slang reference. You know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying, port core outside anyway, Well, check out prop,
Speaker 1: checkout Terraform, checkout props Coffee, checkout hood politics. Tomorrow when
Speaker 1: we talk about around Contra for two days, and then
Speaker 1: we will be concluding with an episode of Bastards, your
Speaker 1: fifth episode of our shows for the week, where we
Speaker 1: will talk about what happens after Iran Contra, what happens
Speaker 1: after Gary Webb's Dark Alliance series breaks into the mainstream
Speaker 1: and all of the funked up fuccory that follows. You
Speaker 1: can find me. I have a book called After the Revolution.
Speaker 1: Google it with a K Press and you'll find my
Speaker 1: publisher's website, or just type it into Amazon or whatever
Speaker 1: the funk and you can buy copies of it. Buy