Speaker 1: This is a production of Journalista Podcast LLC and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: He's dropping five hundred pound bombs on the city because
Speaker 2: by that time, his philosophy is, if we just kill everybody,
Speaker 2: we don't have a revolution.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to the Journalista Podcast. I'm Steve Vestev, your host.
Speaker 1: We've talked a lot about Nicaragua and the events that
Speaker 1: make Cookie who she became, and I mentioned that she
Speaker 1: always seemed to be at the crossroads of history. But
Speaker 1: the story you're about to hear is absolutely insane, a
Speaker 1: dangerous secret that most of her friends and her news
Speaker 1: colleagues never knew. Yes, everybody knows she partied, but did
Speaker 1: they know she parted with Pablo Escobar? Okay, so all
Speaker 1: this shit's going down, and Nicaragua's changing, and all these
Speaker 1: things are happening, but you're not You're not there. Where
Speaker 1: are you?
Speaker 2: I am in New York City, I'm modeling, I'm having
Speaker 2: a very successful career and partying.
Speaker 3: Obviously, where did you like to go fifty four?
Speaker 2: Of course, this was a club that you had to
Speaker 2: book a certain way and obviously have a certain lifestyle.
Speaker 2: And in fifty four they had the dance floor, the bars,
Speaker 2: But then downstairs was the Special Room, and that's where
Speaker 2: VIPs were doing all kinds of drugs, crazy things. At
Speaker 2: any given night, you could be with David Bowie, Calvin Klein.
Speaker 2: And one of my best friends was a celebrity, Bianca Jagger.
Speaker 3: Mick Jagger's wife was She from Nicaragua.
Speaker 2: From Nicaragua, That's where I knew her from. She took
Speaker 2: me with her and we went on the whole tour.
Speaker 1: Yeah you do.
Speaker 3: Rules.
Speaker 2: I took a quick trip to Miami and ran into
Speaker 2: an old childhood friend, Gino, and we hooked up.
Speaker 3: I never went back.
Speaker 2: What I didn't know is that he was already deep
Speaker 2: in the game, the drug game, part of the mede
Speaker 2: ying Columbia cartel.
Speaker 1: What was his job? What would you say?
Speaker 2: He did fly to Colombia, you know, meet with the
Speaker 2: big wigs, place the orders, have the orders shipped. There
Speaker 2: were many different ways of getting product here to the
Speaker 2: United States. And then once here we had his slew
Speaker 2: of clients that he would sell to in bulk. He
Speaker 2: didn't have to get his hands dirty, but he liked to.
Speaker 2: You know, I would tell him, why are you, you know,
Speaker 2: hanging out with these low level drug dealers? You know,
Speaker 2: We'd be in my home, I'd open up a closet
Speaker 2: and kilos would fall out, and I'm like, why is
Speaker 2: this even in our home? Get a safe house, do
Speaker 2: things differently. No, he just never thought anything would ever
Speaker 2: happen to him, which every criminal thinks at the beginning.
Speaker 2: They're different, They're never going to get in trouble.
Speaker 1: Did you ever go to Columbia?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 2: I was smart, never never got my hands dirty. I
Speaker 2: was just having fun at the parties and the shady
Speaker 2: characters and a couple of hit men here and there.
Speaker 3: Pablo Escobar, what was he like?
Speaker 1: Just one on one at the.
Speaker 2: Time, we only called him ilhefe the boss, and he
Speaker 2: wasn't Pablo Escobar like everyone knows him now. He was
Speaker 2: kind of quiet. Sometimes he would get a little boisterous.
Speaker 2: He wasn't a very book smart guy. He was It's interesting,
Speaker 2: just like when you're doing blow the co crap and
Speaker 2: you know, talking. He was sort of protective over me.
Speaker 1: When Cookie meets Pablo Escobar. He's not yet a household name.
Speaker 1: He doesn't have a Netflix series about his life or
Speaker 1: even much of a criminal profile. He had a mansion
Speaker 1: near Miami in his own freaking name, he was selling cocaine,
Speaker 1: lots of it. At his peak, he was making four
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty million dollars a week, and his net
Speaker 1: worth was estimated at more than thirty billion, making him,
Speaker 1: by all accounts, the wealthiest person in the world. Of course,
Speaker 1: it's hard to measure since it was all illegal and
Speaker 1: much of it was smuggled through Nicaragua. That's where Chino
Speaker 1: and his partners come in. You told me once that
Speaker 1: you thought of yourself as Missus Scarface.
Speaker 3: I was Missus Scarface.
Speaker 2: When you have that much product and that much money,
Speaker 2: it gives you power.
Speaker 1: When you were with Chino in that time period, did
Speaker 1: you feel like you were partners in the game or
Speaker 1: was it his thing and you were just along for
Speaker 1: the ride.
Speaker 2: Well, I was the one calling the shots because he
Speaker 2: was very bright, and he had a very bad habit
Speaker 2: that if he started doing blow, he started to drink
Speaker 2: and he would get stupid drunks.
Speaker 1: So it's kind of like managing a multi million dollar.
Speaker 2: Corporation given my two cents, which once he was drunk
Speaker 2: he wouldn't listen to. But guys like Pablo Escobar and
Speaker 2: other people in the game, they would listen to me.
Speaker 2: Because they knew that what I was saying made.
Speaker 1: Sense in those days when you were rolling with Chino
Speaker 1: and those guys. But did you ever run up against
Speaker 1: any you know, bullshit, anything bad that was happening you.
Speaker 2: Mean with the cartel guys.
Speaker 1: Exactly.
Speaker 2: Let's put it to you this way. These cartel guys
Speaker 2: were my friends. Obviously I must have had an inkling
Speaker 2: of what kind of people they were, what they were
Speaker 2: capable of. But as long as I had a seat
Speaker 2: at the table and allowed to party and had unlimited
Speaker 2: amounts of blood, it was pretty standard friendship relationships.
Speaker 1: Well, you talk about having a seat at the table,
Speaker 1: did that ever go wrong?
Speaker 2: You know, I'm a local girl from New Orleans. I
Speaker 2: would always insist to Chino and to others, You've got
Speaker 2: the whole country to do business in. Please don't go
Speaker 2: to New Orleans, and please don't go to Louisiana. That's
Speaker 2: where I'm from. My dad is very well known, my
Speaker 2: family is a prominent family there. Can we just leave
Speaker 2: my stomping grounds out of the business. And for the
Speaker 2: most part, Gino would listen, But as soon as he'd
Speaker 2: start having a cocktail or two and then doing blow all,
Speaker 2: you know, rational thinking went out the window. I had
Speaker 2: heard that they were going to do some sort of
Speaker 2: business with one of our people who happens to be
Speaker 2: from New Orleans, and he was going to come back
Speaker 2: to New Orleans with the product. And his connection was
Speaker 2: the son of a top state government official.
Speaker 1: So basically they're doing a drug deal, of.
Speaker 2: Course, and I begged them don't do it. So sure enough,
Speaker 2: something goes wrong.
Speaker 1: Are you talking about a big chunk of product?
Speaker 2: Big chunk of product? Not only my local friend got popped,
Speaker 2: but the son of the top government official got popped
Speaker 2: and he's in jail. So at that point, the top
Speaker 2: state government official decides he's going to run his own
Speaker 2: private investigation so he could save his son's future, get
Speaker 2: him out, and find out who was behind this huge
Speaker 2: drug deal. And he's getting close. So this one particular evening,
Speaker 2: we're at my house, we're talking, and one of our
Speaker 2: employees decides, you know what, let's just get rid of
Speaker 2: this guy. We're not only going to get rid of
Speaker 2: the kid in jail, but we're going to get rid
Speaker 2: of his father. I could see some people at the
Speaker 2: table sort of nodding their head. I'm sitting next to Pablo,
Speaker 2: and I'm just saying, if you do this, this could
Speaker 2: blow up in everybody's faces, not just myself and my family.
Speaker 2: I got so upset. I stood up and I said,
Speaker 2: no one is getting killed in my city on my watch.
Speaker 2: And at that point I turned to Pablo and he
Speaker 2: leaned over and sort of whispered in my ear, and
Speaker 2: it says, you know you should be running this show,
Speaker 2: to which I replied, I am.
Speaker 1: Were you aware of the DEA the FBI?
Speaker 2: All, Oh, yes, immensely. I mean we had all these gadgets,
Speaker 2: you know that you'd plug into your phone and it
Speaker 2: would tell you if they were listening in a red
Speaker 2: light would start beeping. We had all the latest gadgets.
Speaker 1: So you had the highest tech that could be had.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And security in our homes, you know, because we
Speaker 2: had several homes, you know, one in Miami, one in
Speaker 2: La what is San Francisco. We had boats, racing cars,
Speaker 2: we had race horses, we had everything. As much as
Speaker 2: we had, we wouldn't hesitate in a second to leave
Speaker 2: it and move on to the next city.
Speaker 1: Because the money was gonna come anyway.
Speaker 2: Always you could lose it, throw it away, flush it down,
Speaker 2: the toilet didn't matter. You'd have it all back the
Speaker 2: next day. He would get a car Mercedes, bring it
Speaker 2: in from Miami. It would be San Francisco, and then
Speaker 2: they didn't need it, they would send it on fire.
Speaker 2: The money was just never ending. I remember that my
Speaker 2: allowance quote unquote was ten to grand a week, and
Speaker 2: that was it to pay rent or bills. That was
Speaker 2: just fun money, fun money I could do with as
Speaker 2: I please. There were always suitcases full of cash. There
Speaker 2: were always suitcases full of kilos. And sometimes when the
Speaker 2: suitcases would come in from Columbia, they would throw in
Speaker 2: emeralds and pills and you never knew what was coming.
Speaker 1: Was there danger constant? So you get pregnant? Was that
Speaker 1: good news to me?
Speaker 2: It wasn't, because I just said, I can't bring a
Speaker 2: kid into this environment. You know, this constant partying. We'd
Speaker 2: stay up for days and there was a constant flow
Speaker 2: of cocaine people coming in and out any given house
Speaker 2: that we owned. You know, I'd wake up and these
Speaker 2: strangers walking around in my house.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: I remember once in Beverly Hills somebody coming up to
Speaker 2: me asking me where the bathroom was, and I said, well,
Speaker 2: who are you. He goes, well, who are you? I said,
Speaker 2: I'm the damn owner of this house. Get the fuck
Speaker 2: out of my house. So it was sort of that
Speaker 2: kind of thing. I was not happy about it. I
Speaker 2: was still partying pregnant. I'm not proud of it, but
Speaker 2: I did.
Speaker 1: For the record, her baby boy was born healthy and happy.
Speaker 1: So you guys decided to get married.
Speaker 2: What we did was we were planning a wedding at
Speaker 2: the house where we were living at, which was with
Speaker 2: Nordman Manessas.
Speaker 1: I have to stop here as if this story isn't
Speaker 1: create enough. Norway Manessas, Cookie's husband Chino and another friend
Speaker 1: from Nicaragua, Danilo Blandon, were the guys smuggling cocaine into
Speaker 1: the US for Pablo Escobar and the Median cartel. Cookie
Speaker 1: was aware of that and definitely enjoying the party. But
Speaker 1: these guys would become very famous a few years later
Speaker 1: when they made a deal with the CIA to introduce
Speaker 1: crack cocaine into south central Los Angeles through a local
Speaker 1: drug dealer by the name of Freeway.
Speaker 5: Ricky Ross, facing life in prison, LA's biggest crack dealer
Speaker 5: now is saying he was a pawn in a CIA plot,
Speaker 5: and his argument was convincing enough that a federal judge
Speaker 5: postponed sentencing to consider evidence that he's a name supplier,
Speaker 5: was an agency operator.
Speaker 6: You know, his whole intentions was for me to make
Speaker 6: more money.
Speaker 1: The more money I made, the more money he made,
Speaker 1: and I guess the more money that he would have
Speaker 1: to help sponsor the war. FX made a television series
Speaker 1: called Snowfall based on some of that story.
Speaker 7: I on America accusations underscore the word accusations that are
Speaker 7: nothing short of explosives. They are that the CIA knowingly
Speaker 7: and intentionally did what amount to pump crack cocaine into
Speaker 7: Los Angeles to help fund rebels in Nicaragua. The Justice
Speaker 7: Department in Congress are investigating, and so is CBS newsed it.
Speaker 1: Was the beginning of a drug explosion that ravaged black
Speaker 1: communities all over America. Gary Webb putitur Prize winning reporter
Speaker 1: for the San Jose Mercury News, wrote a controversial three
Speaker 1: part expose and later a book called The Dark Alliance,
Speaker 1: detailing the connection between the CIA, the sale of crack cocaine,
Speaker 1: and funding the contrasts. In this clip, he's asked about
Speaker 1: the CIA involvement.
Speaker 8: Did the CIA put drugs into the black community.
Speaker 4: We don't have any evidence so far that they did
Speaker 4: it directly. And what we have evidence of is that
Speaker 4: men working for a CIA run army did.
Speaker 1: Do that with the knowledge of the CIA. That's the
Speaker 1: part we don't know. That's the part we don't know.
Speaker 4: I mean, what we know is that these guys were
Speaker 4: working for a CIA army. They were meeting with CIA
Speaker 4: agents before and during the time they were doing this.
Speaker 4: What happens from there is sort of where we ran
Speaker 4: into the wall of national security.
Speaker 1: The CIA and the mainstream media went after him, eventually
Speaker 1: destroying his career. He died from two gun shots to
Speaker 1: the head. It was ruled a suicide. Two shots. Think
Speaker 1: about it, Is it all true? I don't know for sure.
Speaker 1: Corre Pecto alescando alescandal, narco politico chemist tempro mo. In
Speaker 1: this interview from a prison in Nicaragua, Norma Manessas blames
Speaker 1: the whole scandal on the Democrats trying to use narco
Speaker 1: trafficking to win the election, and of course he says
Speaker 1: he's innocent of all accusations and then no charges him
Speaker 1: in filed canac I'm Presidentao Cargo for Romales in Miicontra.
Speaker 1: Cookie wasn't part of any of that. In fact, she
Speaker 1: was working for CBS at the time, and we'll get
Speaker 1: into that later. What she will tell you is that
Speaker 1: Norwen Maness is a someone she has known since childhood
Speaker 1: and that she cares about him to this very day.
Speaker 1: Back to her wedding. So you were married in Norway's home.
Speaker 2: In Norwen's home. He was going to be the one
Speaker 2: that walked me down the aisle. Chapito d As from
Speaker 2: Satana was the best man. I flew in some people
Speaker 2: from New Orleans, not a lot. It was just going
Speaker 2: to be a small gathering and we initially wanted a
Speaker 2: judge to come. Well, judges don't come, so we found
Speaker 2: Mark de Wolf Gay minister perfect. Chipito pulled out his rolls.
Speaker 2: Royce Pablo gave me half a pound of cocaine for
Speaker 2: the wedding. So I brought my girlfriend from New Orleans,
Speaker 2: flew her in and we spent the whole day before
Speaker 2: and the whole day of grinding it up. We started
Speaker 2: off with one grand bottles and realized quickly that's not
Speaker 2: going to be enough, so we went and got two
Speaker 2: grand bottles filled up a hundred of them. When the
Speaker 2: people arrived at the door, that's what they were given
Speaker 2: with above on it. You know, this is your party favorite.
Speaker 1: Did Pablo come or do you just send me there? Wow?
Speaker 2: Of course everyone's starting to party immediately. My husband, Richino,
Speaker 2: he was lost. He was downstairs because Freebase had started
Speaker 2: out in Cali at that time, so he was downstairs
Speaker 2: doing that. And I remember that at some point the
Speaker 2: Minister comes up to me and says, look, I've got
Speaker 2: another event. You know, I can't find my Bible. And
Speaker 2: of course the people were using his Bible with the
Speaker 2: Cooke lines on it. And I said, I think your
Speaker 2: Bible's being used in the next room. I said, I
Speaker 2: can give you a little something, you know, to perk
Speaker 2: you up. He goes, oh okay. So the next thing
Speaker 2: I know, the Minister's partying. So the time constraints were
Speaker 2: gone by then. Also, it was my guardena era, so
Speaker 2: I had to have fresh gardenias in my hair, in
Speaker 2: my hands. The whole house smelled like gardenia's.
Speaker 1: I'm some serious hippie shit there, yeah.
Speaker 2: But elegant hippie shit. Finally, when we get ready to
Speaker 2: do it, I had to get Gino up from downstairs,
Speaker 2: and he was already all fucked up nor being walked
Speaker 2: me down the aisle. Gipito ass is crying, you know,
Speaker 2: because he could just cry with one tear coming down
Speaker 2: one eye.
Speaker 1: So you're eight months pregnant, you're walked down the aisle
Speaker 1: by Norman Manessa's the best man.
Speaker 3: Is the the bongo player of said tad bongo player.
Speaker 3: First from Nicaragua.
Speaker 1: It's from Nicarago, okay. And you have a non denominational minister.
Speaker 2: Gay gay remember where in San Francisco.
Speaker 1: I'm just trying to decide if this is a movie,
Speaker 1: a TV series, or a sitcom right now, all of
Speaker 1: the above. There's not exactly a happy ending to this
Speaker 1: wedding story.
Speaker 2: I went on the honeymoon by myself because Gino, as
Speaker 2: soon as he got married, went right back downstairs. So
Speaker 2: I loved to win on the honeymoon by myself.
Speaker 1: Were you pissed off at him?
Speaker 2: Not really annoyed?
Speaker 1: Maybe back in Nicaragua, another journalist is murdered. This time
Speaker 1: it's an American. We'll be right back, welcome back. Journalism
Speaker 1: can be a very dangerous business, especially during war. I
Speaker 1: want to warn you this segment contains graphic descriptions of
Speaker 1: violence that are disturbing and hard to listen to. While
Speaker 1: Cookie was playing Missus Scarface, partying her ass off and
Speaker 1: trying to stay one step ahead of the Dea in
Speaker 1: law enforcement, her beloved Nicaragua was exploding. The dictator Anastasio
Speaker 1: Simosa is at war with his own people.
Speaker 8: Firing rockets to soften up antigovernment forces for ground troops.
Speaker 8: The Nicaragua National Guard wants a major assault in Monagua
Speaker 8: to retake poor neighborhoods or barrios held by the Gorillas.
Speaker 2: He's dropping five hundred pound bombs on the city because
Speaker 2: by that time his philosophy is if we just kill everybody,
Speaker 2: we don't have a revolution.
Speaker 1: Professor Wolf from Tulane University describes it like this.
Speaker 9: Not pinpointed bombs, not bombs that are just killing Santinistas.
Speaker 9: They're just killing residents of the town, many of whom
Speaker 9: are strong Santinissa support us, but they're just everyday people.
Speaker 9: If you need to bomb your own people, you are
Speaker 9: that afraid of them, you are that dissociated from them.
Speaker 9: That is the beginning of the end.
Speaker 2: Already, kids and men are being stopped. Roll up your sleeve,
Speaker 2: roll up your pants. If you've got scabs on your
Speaker 2: elbows or on your knees, you were shot right there,
Speaker 2: because that meant you were fighting.
Speaker 9: The press is becoming increasingly interested. I think that the
Speaker 9: US press sees the murder of a pressman paid the
Speaker 9: Jakin Chamoto as a kind of Canarian the coal mine.
Speaker 9: When they're killing journalists, things are going badly. Something is happening.
Speaker 3: At this point.
Speaker 2: The networks are down there, International journalists are there, and
Speaker 2: they're just covering this war with these rag tag revolutionaries
Speaker 2: who even themselves knew that they would never win. Somosa
Speaker 2: is now feeding amphetamines to all the Samosa guardsmen to
Speaker 2: keep them up night and day. They're jittery. They're killing indiscriminately.
Speaker 8: This morning in Managua, after some of the heaviest fighting
Speaker 8: of the war, Bill Stewart and an ABC camera crew
Speaker 8: went into an attacked neighborhood, which.
Speaker 1: Was then calm.
Speaker 8: National guardsmen were friendly at the first checkpoint, In fact,
Speaker 8: they were eager to talk and try to disprove reports
Speaker 8: of low National Guard morale. But at the next checkpoint,
Speaker 8: the attitude among the soldiers was entirely different from what
Speaker 8: Bill and the crew had just seen.
Speaker 2: A future driver of mine is driving the vehicle. There's
Speaker 2: a translator with them, there's a correspondent, and there's a
Speaker 2: camera crew.
Speaker 1: And Bill Stewart is a person that Americans were used
Speaker 1: to seeing in their evening news.
Speaker 2: Yes, he covered wars.
Speaker 1: He was at Vietnam, and eat he covered wars.
Speaker 3: He was a well known journalist.
Speaker 1: Well well thought of. Yeah, a pro in every way.
Speaker 2: Roadblocks are an everyday occurrence. So the ABC crew gets
Speaker 2: stopped at a roadblock. Bill Stewart says, let me get out.
Speaker 2: I'll go talk to.
Speaker 3: The soldiers like he's done a one.
Speaker 2: Hundred times in many different battle situations, and the translator
Speaker 2: gets down with him.
Speaker 1: In the news van. The cameraman turns on his camera
Speaker 1: to film Stuart's interaction with the Samosa guardsmen.
Speaker 2: The Samosa guardsmen had been up for weeks with these amphetamines,
Speaker 2: and they were jumpy and not thinking straight.
Speaker 8: Bill showed he was unarmed and presented his press identification. Still,
Speaker 8: he was forced to kneel and then lie down on
Speaker 8: the pavement.
Speaker 2: One of the soldiers thinks he recognizes the translator he
Speaker 2: was wrong, but he thinks he recognizes him as being
Speaker 2: a revolutionary. This guy was a sport schmuck translator making
Speaker 2: a few bucks. They get nervous. They take the translator
Speaker 2: around the corner and he's shot.
Speaker 8: Bill showed he was unarmed and presented his press identification. Still,
Speaker 8: he was forced to kneel and then lie down on
Speaker 8: the pavement.
Speaker 2: The camera crew is still filming. They're looking at what's happening,
Speaker 2: as is the driver who warned Bill Stewart not to
Speaker 2: get out of the vehicle. All of a sudden, the
Speaker 2: guardsman aims the weapon at Bill Stewart and shoots him
Speaker 2: in the head with such force that his body kind
Speaker 2: of jumped. At that point, the Nicaraguan driver knows we're fucked.
Speaker 2: He doesn't even know that the camera crew filmed it.
Speaker 2: The camera crew at this point doesn't even care that
Speaker 2: they filmed it. They're just scared their next and they
Speaker 2: would have been next.
Speaker 1: The ABC sound man Jim Cephalou describes them ament, they.
Speaker 6: Had us get out shore identification. While we were out,
Speaker 6: I noticed on the left hand side of the building
Speaker 6: the interpreter's body. He had been shot in the head.
Speaker 2: So the driver, Pablo Pablo, with no fear at all,
Speaker 2: goes up to these guys and said, damn, y'all made
Speaker 2: a mistake. Dude, We're from Samosa TV. We were on
Speaker 2: the same.
Speaker 1: Side, lying his ass off.
Speaker 2: Lying his ass off, not just to save his life,
Speaker 2: but the crew whatever.
Speaker 1: Balls of stone right there.
Speaker 2: But look, I'm gonna make a deal with y'all. What
Speaker 2: happened here didn't happen the way it happened. I am
Speaker 2: gonna say that it was the sand Denistas that killed him.
Speaker 2: Just let us go, you know, We'll go straight back
Speaker 2: to Samosa TV. And they let him go.
Speaker 1: We got back into the van.
Speaker 6: The driver asked if we wanted to take bills by
Speaker 6: back to the hotel, said we did so. He and
Speaker 6: I backed up, put Bill's body in the van, came
Speaker 6: back here to the hotel.
Speaker 1: Chuck Gomez, a young CBS correspondent, was at the hotel
Speaker 1: when they brought his body back.
Speaker 10: When Bill Stewart's body arrived at the Intercontinental Hotel, there
Speaker 10: was a mixture of incredible sadness and sorrow and also
Speaker 10: incredible fear. We didn't know at that moment if journalists
Speaker 10: were being specifically targeted, for example, as Somosa himself had
Speaker 10: ordered the wounding and the killing of American reporters and
Speaker 10: camera crews, or if it was something that the soldiers
Speaker 10: themselves decided to do because they had been you know,
Speaker 10: they were on patrols for days on end. We were
Speaker 10: all hugging each other and in Greece and kind of
Speaker 10: shaking our heads in disbelief. And then soon after all
Speaker 10: the reporters thought, we had to report this story. We
Speaker 10: have to let the world know what's happened here.
Speaker 2: It was the first time that a network had the
Speaker 2: biggest exclusive video of all time, and they shared it
Speaker 2: with all the networks and all the journalists that were there.
Speaker 2: New York Times, Washington Post.
Speaker 3: They were all there, to BBC and some of.
Speaker 2: The BBC you had international journalists. So it was the
Speaker 2: first time that a network willingly gave their exclusive to everybody.
Speaker 2: They wanted to make sure it got out. They didn't
Speaker 2: even bother to edit. They just needed to get to
Speaker 2: Samosa TV station and satellite that bitch out of there
Speaker 2: before Samosa and these people realized what had happened and
Speaker 2: the video got out.
Speaker 8: ABC News correspondent Bil Stewart, thirty seven years old, was
Speaker 8: killed today in Nicaragua.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you this. I saw that footage in a
Speaker 1: Walter Cronkite broadcast and he showed the entire thing in total,
Speaker 1: every networked and no one ever showed anything like that,
Speaker 1: no one.
Speaker 3: You could see the body.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you could see it, and it was horrific.
Speaker 2: The journalists that were in Nicaragua decided, we can't take
Speaker 2: this anymore. We're boycotting this. It didn't bother the US
Speaker 2: government tomorrow had been assassinated. That up until that point,
Speaker 2: fifty thousand innocent and maybe some not so innocent revolutionaries
Speaker 2: had been murdered. That didn't matter. But one American journalist
Speaker 2: being killed. That mattered, and that's what turned the tide.
Speaker 2: The public was outraged at that point. The US government
Speaker 2: made the decision we can no longer back Simosa.
Speaker 1: President Carter said this when he heard the news. The
Speaker 1: murder of Bill Stewart was an act of barber that
Speaker 1: all civilized people condemned. Within a month, some Mosa flees
Speaker 1: to Florida and the dictatorship falls, but not before looting Nicaragua.
Speaker 1: After he left. The San Denis has found less than
Speaker 1: two million dollars in the national treasury. Samosa is denied
Speaker 1: asylum by President Carter and takes refuge in Paraguay. Only
Speaker 1: one year later, he's assassinated by a Sandinista commando team
Speaker 1: four men and three women. The mission was called Operation
Speaker 1: Reptile seems appropriate. According to Reporters Without Borders, nearly seventeen
Speaker 1: hundred journalists have been killed in the last twenty years
Speaker 1: in some conflicts that are actually targeted, and in the
Speaker 1: last few years, some despicable politicians in the United States
Speaker 1: have actually encouraged violence against news reporters covering elections. It
Speaker 1: was no different in Central America in the seventies and eighties.
Speaker 1: Carla Ferrell, for news producer stationed in Nicaragua and El
Speaker 1: Salvador and other war zones in the region, describes the
Speaker 1: life of wartime journalists this way.
Speaker 11: You didn't do that kind of work unless you thought
Speaker 11: you were invincible, which in some ways doesn't make much sense,
Speaker 11: because all of us, pretty much all of us went
Speaker 11: through losing colleagues or spouses, family members. But somehow, no, no,
Speaker 11: that could never happen to us.
Speaker 1: Against all odds, the Sandinistas have won the revolution. The
Speaker 1: Nicaraguan people are celebrating, But Cookie was looking for her
Speaker 1: own Revolution. We'll be back in a minute. Welcome back.
Speaker 1: The last time we saw Cookie, she was eight months pregnant,
Speaker 1: a newlywed and hanging out with Pablo Escobar Nicaragua. Is
Speaker 1: having a rebirth a Cookie. He was just having a
Speaker 1: berth What could go wrong? But where the hell is Chino?
Speaker 2: That was crazy because the night that night was a
Speaker 2: half hour night.
Speaker 10: You know.
Speaker 2: We called him the half hour guy. You know. He says,
Speaker 2: I'll be back in half an hour, and that half
Speaker 2: hour could be a week to four months. I start
Speaker 2: having contractions and going into labor at dawn. He shows
Speaker 2: up at six seven in the morning, completely high and
Speaker 2: drunk and passes out. And I got to get to
Speaker 2: the hospital. I'm, you know, way him up. He can't drive,
Speaker 2: so we jump in the car. I'm driving and having
Speaker 2: to pull off on the expressway every time a contraction
Speaker 2: would hit, you know, and I'm yelling at him in
Speaker 2: the back seat, you stupid motherfucker. Now I knew this
Speaker 2: was gonna happen.
Speaker 3: I knew it.
Speaker 2: We get to the hospital, I'm screaming, get this motherfucking
Speaker 2: kid out of me. It's a Catholic hospital and the
Speaker 2: nuns are trying to quiet me down, Can you please
Speaker 2: use different language. I don't give a fuck what's going on.
Speaker 2: I need to get this kid out. I was asking
Speaker 2: for the last rites, asking for a priest she knows
Speaker 2: passed out. And he did go in to see the
Speaker 2: birth and proceeded to just faint when he saw what
Speaker 2: he saw. So they had to attend to him and
Speaker 2: not to me. So and we got the rolling stones
Speaker 2: playing high in the delivery room. Yeah it was.
Speaker 3: It was a trip.
Speaker 1: And now you have this beautiful boy.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I mean it was worth it.
Speaker 1: He's your best friend now.
Speaker 2: He always was my best friend. He was my partner
Speaker 2: in crime and my best friend.
Speaker 1: Happy times for Cookie and China. But the thug life
Speaker 1: is starting to get to her.
Speaker 2: Well. It started slowly for me. At first, nothing bothered me.
Speaker 2: I wasn't scared of anything. And then it just slowly.
Speaker 2: You know, I'd open up a closet and kilos would
Speaker 2: fall out. You know, there'd be a box I'd open
Speaker 2: it was filled with a million dollars in cash, And
Speaker 2: so slowly I started to get paranoid. It was so
Speaker 2: slow that I didn't know that it was happening. It
Speaker 2: would present itself as soon as I would start partying,
Speaker 2: I would do a line. I'd be fine. I'd do
Speaker 2: a second line, I'd be fine. By the third or
Speaker 2: fourth line, the paranoia would creep in. And the reason
Speaker 2: that happened it wasn't just because of the amounts and
Speaker 2: the quantities of everything. It was because no one else
Speaker 2: was paranoid. No one else was being careful, because again
Speaker 2: you're dealing with Latin American people that have no conception
Speaker 2: of the law in the United States. So it was
Speaker 2: almost like I was having to be paranoid for everyone,
Speaker 2: not just myself. Every day it was like, this is
Speaker 2: the day, this is the day. They're here, They're coming,
Speaker 2: They're coming to get me. Every single day was like that,
Speaker 2: and so I just needed to get out.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you're beset by paranoia. Yeah, yeah, it's starting
Speaker 1: to get to you.
Speaker 2: It's starting to get to me.
Speaker 1: Is there a moment that you can recall that you said,
Speaker 1: I got to get the fuck out of here.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 2: My mother got sick, she got cancer, and she was
Speaker 2: here in New Orleans. I remember saying to my husband, Tochino, listen,
Speaker 2: I gotta go visit my I don't think my intention
Speaker 2: was to leave and never come back, because that would
Speaker 2: have never been part of my mo my playbook. I
Speaker 2: had to come back to get more blow, but I
Speaker 2: remember telling him that I was going to leave. I
Speaker 2: grabbed all my first editions, all my jewelry, all my furs,
Speaker 2: I think a million in cash packed it took my baby,
Speaker 2: he was six months old. I think came back to
Speaker 2: New Orleans under the guise of taking care of my mom,
Speaker 2: moving back home with a mother and father that knew
Speaker 2: nothing about my life. And I don't think I meant
Speaker 2: to never come back. I meant to get out, at
Speaker 2: least for that moment. I needed to get the fuck out.
Speaker 2: And so I got to New Orleans, got home. I'd
Speaker 2: been home for years with a newborn baby in my arms.
Speaker 2: My parents didn't even know about that. Went upstairs to
Speaker 2: my old bedroom, took the million dollars in cash, put
Speaker 2: it under the mattress. Oh, and I also brought a
Speaker 2: shitload of blow. Might have been a couple of ounces
Speaker 2: or more. It had to be more for me at
Speaker 2: that time. She said, don't worry. If you need more money,
Speaker 2: I'll send you more money. And that's how I got out.
Speaker 1: Did they try to get you to come back.
Speaker 2: Absolutely.
Speaker 1: Were they worried about you being a risk?
Speaker 2: Oh no, no, no, no no. If anybody would have
Speaker 2: been worried that I was a risk, I would have
Speaker 2: been erased.
Speaker 1: Cookie takes care of her mom until she passes and
Speaker 1: finishes her degree at Loyola, still parting her ass off
Speaker 1: with unlimited supplies of cocaine. She's getting restless again though
Speaker 1: Nicaragua is calling her name.
Speaker 2: I said, well, let me go check out the revolution,
Speaker 2: And so I went and got to Nicaragua, living with
Speaker 2: some friends, and sufficed to say, war time was tough.
Speaker 1: Who were you rolling with when you went back?
Speaker 2: All my old gang friends, all partiers. I'm still a
Speaker 2: good girl in the eyes of my aunts and uncles,
Speaker 2: an older family, to.
Speaker 1: All the old contacts, all the old people you always
Speaker 1: hung with their own.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I'm meeting new people, poor people, because now
Speaker 2: the Sandinistas have made it possible for a middle class
Speaker 2: to emerge. They're fighting infant mortality, they're fighting illiteracy. But
Speaker 2: the scarcity of things water was scarce, you know, toilet paper,
Speaker 2: which we can all relate to.
Speaker 7: Now.
Speaker 1: I want to ask you a question about the Sandinistas
Speaker 1: and what they were bringing to the table. When you
Speaker 1: look back at that time and you think about the
Speaker 1: changes that were happening in nicarag where you mentioned the
Speaker 1: emerging of a middle class. The Santanisas were doing a
Speaker 1: lot of things.
Speaker 2: Good things that anybody would want. Medical care for everybody,
Speaker 2: education for everybody, jobs for people, just what normal human
Speaker 2: beings want.
Speaker 1: If I remember, they were building rural hospitals.
Speaker 3: And hospitals schools.
Speaker 2: Yeah. But once the Countral War started and the scarcity
Speaker 2: of things and roughing it, electricity would go out all
Speaker 2: the time, and you know, it's tough to be in
Speaker 2: a war in a third world country. So after about
Speaker 2: three months, I said, you know what, I've had enough
Speaker 2: of this. I've seen the revolution. I'm ready to go back.
Speaker 3: Home to New Orleans.
Speaker 2: So I threw myself a going away party. And at
Speaker 2: this going away party, which was what all my parties
Speaker 2: were like, so would call it a very eclectic crowd.
Speaker 2: You'd have poor people, you'd have rich people, you'd have young,
Speaker 2: you'd have old, you'd have gay, straight journalists were there, soldiers,
Speaker 2: a little bit of everything, and of course it was
Speaker 2: a big party with party favors. Had my bag's packed
Speaker 2: and I was ready to go back to New Orleans.
Speaker 1: Were any of your old friends there, like Chino, any
Speaker 1: of those.
Speaker 2: People in Sheino wasn't there, but all the Chino characters
Speaker 2: were there, people we grew up with.
Speaker 1: Cookie doesn't know it yet, but her future is already
Speaker 1: At this party, an.
Speaker 2: NBC producer, Cecilia Alviar approached me and she said, you know, Cookie,
Speaker 2: I like the vibe I get from you. You know
Speaker 2: the US culture, you know the Nicaraguan culture. It seems
Speaker 2: to me like you know everybody who's anybody. She still
Speaker 2: didn't know that I also knew the elite rulers of
Speaker 2: the enemy, the Contras at the time, who were also
Speaker 2: rich kids.
Speaker 1: So she's saying this to you while you were just partying.
Speaker 3: Well I'm partying. Yeah.
Speaker 2: She says, you know, would you be interested in working
Speaker 2: for NBC and running our operations here? You know, translator fixer?
Speaker 2: And I said, you know, that sounds interesting. And at
Speaker 2: the same time, there was another journalist there from CBS
Speaker 2: named Larry Doyle, a producer.
Speaker 1: Doyle did two tours in Vietnam, the epitome of an
Speaker 1: old school combat news. Producer Dan Rather called him the
Speaker 1: soul of CBS, one of the all time greats, one
Speaker 1: tough son of a bitch.
Speaker 2: He was my kind of guy, my kind of partier,
Speaker 2: and he made the same offer to me. He says, Look,
Speaker 2: the guy we got is a schmuck, never gets his
Speaker 2: hands dirty, he never goes out into the field. Would
Speaker 2: you like to have a job working with him, being
Speaker 2: that fixer translator going out with the cruise, you know,
Speaker 2: into the boondocks and my party and you know you
Speaker 2: And I said, you know, this offer sounds a lot
Speaker 2: better than the NBC offer, And I said, sure, well
Speaker 2: that sounds good.
Speaker 1: So basically you took the CBS offer because they partied.
Speaker 1: In this NBC offer, they didn't.
Speaker 2: Party, and it was the same job, same job description,
Speaker 2: and good money. Larry says, well, can you come in
Speaker 2: for an interview at the Intercontinental Hotel, And remember it's
Speaker 2: the same hotel that the journalists stayed at in seventy
Speaker 2: nine and then boycotted and left after Bill Stewart was assassinated.
Speaker 2: I said, sure, I'll come in for an interview.
Speaker 3: So I went in for an interview.
Speaker 2: The next day was another producer, Carlo Farrell, and I
Speaker 2: was asked two questions, how do you feel about roadblocks
Speaker 2: and I've never counted roadblocks, but I said roadblocks. Oh,
Speaker 2: I can get in and out of anything. And the
Speaker 2: second question, what would you say is your main quality?
Speaker 2: And I said adaptability And she said, well, you know,
Speaker 2: give me an example. I said, well, I could sleep
Speaker 2: at the Plaza Hotel in New York as easily as
Speaker 2: I can go into the Jungles and sleep in a
Speaker 2: shack on top of coffee beans. And she says, you
Speaker 2: got the job.
Speaker 1: Next time on Journalista.
Speaker 2: So I come in the next day all dressed up
Speaker 2: at pearls and heels, and she says, why are you
Speaker 2: dressed that way? I said, well, you said I'm going north.
Speaker 2: I'm going to Miami, right She goes, no, You're going
Speaker 2: to the Jungles today with a camera crew by your side.
Speaker 1: The Journalista podcast features the stories and voice of Cookie Hood.
Speaker 1: Narrated by Steven Esta, Produced by Sean J. Donnelly, Executive
Speaker 1: producers Jason Wagensback, Roy Laughlin and Ellen k iHeart. Executive
Speaker 1: producer Tyler Klang. Written and edited by Steven Estev. Music
Speaker 1: by Jay Wichel, Associate producer in sound design Stephen Tunt.
Speaker 1: Sound mixing by Jesse Solnsnyder Special guest, Juline History professor
Speaker 1: Justin Woolf, Chuck Gomez, Carla Ferrell, Lloyd Sherwan Special Thanks
Speaker 1: to Esplanade Studios, The Ranch Studios, Jason Gerwitz, Kyle Frederick,
Speaker 1: Zach Slaugh. This is a production of Journalista podcast LLC
Speaker 1: and iHeartRadio