Danny Jones Podcast - #219 - How CIA Created the Cocaine Militias of Central America | Cookie Hood

Episode Date: January 15, 2024

Cookie Hood grew up in the center of Nicaragua's revolution & helped break the Iran-Contra affair. Support on Patreon: https://patreon.com/dannyjones SPONSORS https://ketobrainz.com/pages/djp - Use code "DANNY20" at checkout. Visit https://betterhelp.com/dannyjones today to get 10% off your first month. EPISODE LINKS https://journalistapodcast.com FOLLOW DANNY JONES https://www.instagram.com/jonesdanny https://twitter.com/jonesdanny OUTLINE 00:00 - Why doesn't Cookie Hood exist on the internet? 05:26 - Reporting on Contra revolution 10:48 - Mindset of the rebel fighters in Nicaragua 12:51 - Becoming numb to death 15:58 - Who paid the Contra rebels? 20:24 - How the US created the problem of the Sandinistas 24:01 - Why no US journalists died with the Sandinistas 25:06 - Surviving a helicopter shoot down 34:30 - Marrying a Medellín Cartel boss 43:45 - Pablo Escobar at Cookies wedding 45:40 - Murder of American ABC journalist 58:14 - Did Samosa kill a Nicaraguan Journalist? 01:03:16 - Mistaken for William Randolph Hearst daughter 01:10:13 - Interviewing Eugene Hasenfus after the crash 01:14:30 - Cookie blew up Iran-Contra 01:17:57 - Iran hostage / weapons exchange 01:24:32 - Barry Seal & Roger Reaves 01:29:15 - Cookie's relationship with Pablo Escobar 01:32:50 - Interviewing Mother Theresa 01:39:45 - Is it safe for Americans to visit Nicaragua? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

So you have a new podcast that's called Journalista. Correct. And it's all about your life story. What is the premise of that podcast? Well, the premise is I was a war correspondent for CBS News for a couple of decades. And the majority of the story takes place in Nicaragua in the 80s. But the first couple of episodes we touch upon pre-journalism. I was a model in New York City.

I then married a cartel guy, so I was in the game for a few years. And then I got out of that and wound up in Nicaragua covering a revolution. So it isn't just about war. War is sort of the backdrop. It's also about the insanity that was Cookie, the CBS office, the people rolling in and out, the partying. So is your real name Cookie Hood? No, it's Courtney Hood. But I've been called Cookie since the day I was born.

Because I've been scouring the Internet all day and I couldn't find a damn thing. I was on the DL for many years, so you're not going to find anything, really. So if we Google Courtney Hood, will we find something? No. No. No. A Muppet comes up when you Google Cookie Hood, I think. Yeah.

Yeah. And then there's a hit piece that comes up that they did on me. I'm not sure if it's under Cookie Hood or Courtney Hood. But I think those are the only two things. We're working to remedy that now. So were you scrubbed from there? Were you just completely just never did anything on the internet? And I was off the grid, you know, when I was.

So on your website, it says that you were responsible for breaking the Iran-Contra scandal. I was one of the people. I made it clear in the podcast that there were many people involved in that. You had print journalists, photographers, researchers, people in New York, Washington, obviously Miami. And then myself, news, because of my access to Nicaraguan officials at the time, I had complete, total, exclusive access to a lot of things that led to the Iran-Contra, a scandal being, you know, broken. But I was one of the main people that did it,

and you'll hear the story if you want to hear it or, you know, if you listen to the podcast. What was your specific role in breaking the story? Well, as a journalist, and specifically a CBS News journalist, I was based in Nicaragua. I had the best relationship of any journalist with the Sandinista government. So I pretty much kicked everybody's ass for over a decade, a dozen plus years.

And it all came about, and that's the end of the podcast, where for, you know, almost a decade, people have been trying to prove that the U.S. was involved in overthrowing the Sandinista government by way of the Contras, which was, they were a rebel forced, forced being financed by the U.S. And since it was illegal to do that, our government, unbeknownst to me at the time, had to find ways to get money quietly. And so they did that by, we didn't know it. at the time by selling arms to our mortal enemy, Iran, taking that money and using that slush money, hush money to fund the Contras.

When that part of the scandal broke, then they had to find another way to fund the Contras, which was then they made deals with drug dealers and drug people, most of them, of mine from my past so that they were allowed to bring in cocaine, continue their business, bring it into the U.S., which at the time, you know, my friend Rick Ross, Ricky, out in L.A., they were getting the Coke from the drug dealers and then converting it into crack cocaine. So that was another stream of revenue, revenue stream, to fund the rebel forces that were going to overthrow. So they were trying to overthrow the Sandinista government. Right.

So what were you specifically doing? Were you embedded with the Contras? Were you embedded with the Sandinistas? No, I was embedded with the Sandinistas. Okay. Nicaragua was Sandinistas, obviously. So I covered the war from their side. But of course, as any good journalists, I was also sent to El Salvador, Honduras.

So I did cover the Contra side sometimes. How did CBS approach you and contract you to do this stuff? Well, it's funny because I had just gotten out of the game, moved to New Orleans to take care of my mom until she died, went back to Loyola. I had a kid with my husband, the cartel guy. I said, I'll be back, and I never went back. When my mother died, I was like, let me go check out this, you know, revolution that's, going on and so packed up my bags and packed up my one-year-old son and moved to Nicaragua. So, you know, I still had a lot of friends and family there. And after about three months,

I kind of had it, you know, being in a war zone. Wasn't fun. Everything was scarce, you know, from food to electricity to anything you could think of. So after three months, I said, well, let me throw myself a going away party. And I'll head back to New Orleans and see what I do after that. So I threw myself this huge party, which had military people, friends of mine from the wealthy society, journalists, you name it. Everyone was there. Black, white, Latino, rich, poor, straight, gay, very eclectic, that's what my parties were like. So at the party, I get approached by this lady from NBC, Cecilia Alvillard, she asked me if I'd be interested working for NBC as a, you know,

fixer translator. It sounded interesting. But at the same, party was this CBS guy, major producer, major partier. Larry Doyle comes up to me, and we're partying at the party. He makes the same offer to me. Would you like to work for me at CBS? Translator Fischer, you seem to be plugged into a lot of people by the guest list here. You speak both languages fluently. You know both cultures. and so I went with the party guy. He says, I'll go to the Intercontinental Hotel tomorrow. You'll get interviewed by Carla Farrell, and we'll see where it goes from there.

So I showed up the next morning. She, you know, interviews me, two questions. How do you feel about roadblocks? I said, no problem. I can get in and out of anything. She says, what is your biggest asset? For that one, I thought of about 30 seconds. and I said, adaptability.

I can sleep in the jungle, in the shack on top of coffee beans, like I could sleep at the plaza, hotel in New York City. She says, you got the job. Come here tomorrow morning, 8 o'clock, you're going up north. I thought I was going to Miami.

So I dressed, you know, in heels, a suit. I walked in, she goes, what the fuck are you wearing? I said, well, you said I'm going north. I assumed it was Miami. She goes, no. you're going to the jungles up north with a camera crew.

You got to understand, Danny. I didn't study journalism. I studied, you know, liberal arts education at Loyola University in New Orleans. So I just kind of bullshitted my way into being thrown into the jungle with a camera crew. and that was how I started. Wow. Yeah. So once you got to the jungle, what was your objective?

Well, looking for war. Looking for war. Look what we call bang bang. And so that's what we did. And you guys were taking photos. Well, no, video. Just video. Yeah, we were TV, CBS News.

So I had a camera crew, cameraman, sound man, and a driver, and they thought I knew what I was. was doing. I had no clue. And so I confessed to the crew. I'm like, dude, I've never done this before. And they're like, follow our lead. You'll be okay. And it turned into, you know, the gig of a lifetime. I quickly adapted and became one of the top war correspondents, war journalists of the decade and the stories were many that I kicked ass, kicked all the network's asses, and I got a great career out of it and a lot of fun, a lot of partying. And I started off as a model, went into the game, and then wound up breaking one of the

biggest stories of the decade. So when it comes to, yeah, you can drink. When you got into the jungle and you started reporting and filming some of these guys that were in the middle of the war zone, what was your sort of heat check situation? How did you, like, evaluate the situation of the ideology between the Contras and the Sandinistas? Well, what a lot of people don't understand is that by then it was a civil. war so it was brother fighting brother so the Contras were Nicaraguan's the Sandinistas

were Nicaraguans and there would even be battles where they're yelling at each other with the same street slang and you know some of them knew each other so it was insane because you know like any good civil war it was you know, people fighting their relatives, their neighbors. And it was, it was crazy. But my objective always, CBS is objective as the rest of the other two networks. There were only three networks at the time, CBS, NBC, ABC. CNN was just starting out.

Nobody gave a shit about them. Nobody gave them the time of day, except me. Because I was the type of journalist. I helped everybody. nothing was a competition for me, which is why all the journalists wound up in my office. And I helped people. Why not? Good Southern girl. But our objective obviously was finding war. And for all the years that I did it, we just covered the worst things that human beings can do to other human beings. and I'm talking about beheadings, torture victims, faces peeled off, just the worst.

Out of all the stuff that you covered, what stood out the most to you? Just the death and the senseless death and killing. And, you know, I guess you could say I lost my faith with my first pile of dead bodies. And when I say piles, I mean piles. and women, children, babies. You know, it's one thing to see dead soldiers. It's another thing to see dead civilians. And death quickly came upon me in every way, shape, or form.

And I always said to myself, I'm not going to become one of those people where it doesn't matter to me anymore, where I don't feel the shit that I'm seeing. I can curse, right? Of course. So I quickly got broken in to what war was really like. You know, I thought it was a game at first, you know.

I'll be a fixer. I'll be a translator. I became much more than that. And the guy that was running the CBS Bureau in Nicaragua, everybody hated him. So he was quickly replaced. Within six months, I was running the bureau. Within a year, I was producing. And I worked with everybody.

Morning news, evening news, weekend news. My favorite, though, was working with the big boys at 60 minutes. That was awesome. There was a show we also did called West 57th. That was awesome. but I guess my main objective was finding the war for the U.S. and, you know, the audience to see because, unfortunately, that's what sells. This episode sponsored by Forkful.

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Discover Forkful today at Forkful Meals.com. It's crazy that, you know, during the Reagan administration and all of the secret funding of the Contra rebels and all that stuff that was happening back then was, you know, it was illegal technically, right? What they were doing was hidden. They had to lie about it. But today, today you see it everywhere. Proxy wars are a normal thing. They are. They're still probably illegal.

It just depends on how they do it. But you can't legally, the U.S. legally cannot overthrow a government, you know. So like you said, by proxy, by, you know, subterfuge, yeah, they do it because that's the way they roll. I had a guy in here a couple months ago by the name of Rick Prado. He was a CIA mercenary, a CIA assassin, and he was sent down to El Salvador, I think, to train the Contras. And he was down there with those guys for a few years. El Salvador was scary. Yeah.

Scary. And one of the things that he pointed out was, you know, despite all the news coverage in the years, in the U.S. that was painting the San Dinas does as the bad guys and the Contras as the good guys. You know, he was explained to me some of the fighters in the Contras. They, like, this wasn't an ideological war for them. It was a personal thing for them. It was money. Whoever paid them the most.

That's what it was. Ideologically, the Contras, few and far between did it for ideological. ideological reasons. They were being paid and funded by the U.S. The Sandinistas, on the other hand, who were the underdogs, they were doing it for ideological reasons. Well, they were being funded by the Soviet Union as well. Well, this is what people don't understand. First you had the revolution, then you had the civil war. The revolution was when the Sandinistas overthrew the dictatorship, the Samosa dictatorship. That was in 79.

And all the years leading up to that, the war, it was a revolution. San Dino's never thought they would win. And they weren't winning. And the U.S. obviously was backing the dictator, Samosa. Because, you know, fighting for, you know, against communism and that, And up until an ABC reporter was shot and killed, that turned the tide. That told the U.S. stop. You know, by then 50,000 Nicaraguans had been killed.

But that didn't give a fuck. But one U.S. journalists killed, that's it. That turned the tide against the dictator and for the Sandinistas. Now remember, the Sandinistas were a rag-tag army, you know, and they won. They weren't expecting to win. So at the beginning, the U.S. was for the Sandinistas. They helped that government set up, you know. They were for them until the Sandinistas decided that they were going to help poor people.

Because, you know, we don't like to help the poor people. So the Sandinistas, their goal was, you know, up until that point, it was something like 90% infant mortality, 90% illiteracy. Only 1% of the country owned everything. So when the Sandinistas came in, and there were some rich kids that were part of the Sandinistas, they decided we're going to change things. We're going to make education available to everybody. We're going to make health care available to everybody.

You know, let's spread the wealth. Everybody gets a chance. And that's what they did. But when they start doing that, the U.S. doesn't like that. What made them switch? Well, they didn't switch. Well, what made them adopt that sort of more of the... Because that's what they were all about.

Since the beginning? Since the beginning, they were about overthrowing the dictatorship because poor people were just fucking... exploited and never had a chance. But when did, so when did, uh, their goal was always, first of all, they didn't think they were going to win. Right. But if they had thought they were going to win, that was going to be their plan to help people,

to create a more equal country, government. That was always the plan. When was the Cuban Revolution? That was 80, 78? No, no. The Cuban Revolution was in the 50s. the late 50s. And Castro?

Correct. That was all the late 50s, early 60s. So like I said, when the Sandinistas inadvertently won, that's when, you know, they started fulfilling their goals, which is helping people. And that's when the U.S. didn't like it so much. So the stupid thing that we always do, we want to fix a problem, and by fixing it, we create a bigger and worse problem.

So instead of just keeping along with the Sandinistas, we decide we don't want them anymore. They're communists. Well, they started working with Russia, though. No. They worked initially with the U.S. Until the U.S. cut them off. So when they get cut off, what the fuck are they supposed to do? Right.

The only people willing to help them, Cuba. Russia, Russia. Yeah. So if the U.S. wouldn't have tried to fix the problem of helping the poor, I see. Things would have just gone normally. And they would have never gone to Russia or Cuba. But once the U.S. decided, oh, we don't like these social programs. We don't like your helping the poor people. We don't like you, you know, helping infants not die after six months, you know, on us. earth. So that's what happened. We, we, trying to fix a problem, we created a bigger problem. So then, yes, the Sandinistas were being helped by Russia, Cuba, because they had no other choice. Right. And at that point, we had to start. At that point, then we got Reagan, you know, the

freedom fighters, you know, we got to overthrow this government, but quietly on the DL. nobody's supposed to know. Right. So this guy, Rick Prado, that I mentioned to you, who was, he was covertly sent down there. He was covertly sent down there. He was like a C. He was like a knuckledragger type guy. He wasn't a, he wasn't a spy. He was a, well, he was, eventually he became a spy.

But if he was originally contracted to be to train the Contras in military combat and train them how to use rifles. Well, if he was in El Salvador, he was training right wing death squad people. Yes, exactly. Yeah. He wasn't training the conchers were mostly trained in Honduras. Well, he was in some in some. He was in Honduras too. He was also training mosquito Indians.

Yeah, they came from the coast of Nicaragua. But El Salvador was a fucking scary place, dude. Yeah. For journalists, too. Not just for everybody. There's this scene in a Woody Allen movie. I don't know if you ever saw it, bananas. Yes.

And so there's a scene in it. the soldiers, U.S. soldiers are on a plane. They're going to get dropped, parachuted into this third world banana republic. So one soldier says to the other, who side are we fighting for in this one? And the other guy, the other soldier says, look, they're not taking any chances this time. Half of us are going with the rebels and the other half of us are going with the government. And it was like that. Nicaragua, we were funding the rebels in El Salas.

Salvador, we were funding the military government. So each country, it was different. So the countries where right-wing military was being funded, those were the scary ones, okay? Those were the scary governments. Nicaragua in the whole war, no journalists ever got killed, not one. El Salvador by the hundreds. because the military, right-wing military, they were after the journalists.

Fuck these guys, we're going to kill them. Really? Like I said, it was scary. But the Sandinistas weren't like that towards the journalists. Why not? Because this was their goal. We have to protect these journalists, especially U.S. journalists, because not only we're fighting a war against the U.S., we don't want journalists to be killed on our watch to make.

things worse, you see? So they protected us. We didn't know how much they were protecting us. I didn't know how much they were protecting me till years later. Apparently there was always someone protecting me, whether they were dressed in a military uniform or civilian clothes, but there was always someone that was sent by the government and their job was, you die before she gets a scratch. So that's why I'm here with you today because they took care of me. Even though I was wounded many times, I was shot down in a Russian helicopter. I was taken, I was taking gap. Yeah, once you start listening to the rest of the podcast. What's that story? You're going to hear some fucking insane stories, dude. So the helicopter crash, it was on one of our junkets going to

into the, you know, 10 days, 7-day, 10-day junkets, where we get flown in and dropped into the jungles and we go with, you know, the troops to look for war. So on this particular one, it started off with a two-propeller plane that was going to fly us in to a base where we would then be flown in a helicopter even deeper. So it starts off with this two-propeller plane trip where I get caught in the exhaust of the back of the plane when the pilot went to go turn it on. I got flung up in the air, then thrown

down by the exhaust of this plane, and I was wounded. I mean, I was a hematoma from neck to my feet. So they fly me, they dump myself and the crew in this military base, and the military doctor said she can't go on the helicopter and into the second half of the junket into the jungles with the soldiers. She can't go. She's too wounded. But nobody told the doctor didn't tell anybody that. So an hour later, they're rounding up my crew and myself,

and they load us into the helicopter, Russian helicopter, to take us into the jungles. And then they dump us there. We're going to be on a 10-day junket with the soldiers. I'm so fucked up physically wounded. But I was always a good, you know, person to have because I never yelled,

ouch, ever. I was always out there proven that I could do anything as well as a better than any guy. I couldn't yell, ouch. I couldn't say, you know, I can't do it. So we went on this junket for 10 days, and after the end of it, we're going to get picked up by helicopters

and flown back to civilization. So they fly a helicopter in, the Sandinistas, pick us up, and midair we get shot down. I didn't know what was going on. I heard three somethings. And if it had been a Sam, surface-to-air missile,

I wouldn't be here with you today. It was some lowly contra soldier from the other side shooting at the helicopter because it's a Russian helicopter. They don't give a fuck if there's journalists on board. They wouldn't even know that there was journalists on board. So I remember screaming to one of the soldiers in the helicopter, that sounds not a good sound.

He goes, no, we're going down. And I'm like, what the fuck do you mean we're going down? And of course, that thing where they say that people's lives flash in front of them, not me. I was just saying to myself, you stupid fucking bitch, you're finally in a situation you cannot talk yourself out of. You can't schmooze yourself out of. I'm going to fucking die.

And boom, boom, boom, boom, like 30 seconds it took for it to come down. I grabbed my crew. I said, look, we're going to do it like in the movies. We're jumping out of this thing before it hits the ground. Because the worst thing is a journalist to cover our helicopter and plane crashes.

We called them crispy critters because you're just burned. You're just fucked. You're dead and you're burned. And so we jumped out before. How high above the ground were you? I don't know. I never found out because, you know, the rest of the crew, the soldiers, they were killed.

We jumped out and, you know, running, not even looking back, but we fell into a field, a valley. So that's even worse because we knew once the helicopter would blow, we hit the. ground and blow we're fuck as we're in a valley so I'm trying to climb up my crew's trying to climb up and right before I get to the top I cannot Danny I could not take one more breath I could I could not take that last grab to get me out of that valley and all of a sudden there's a hand that reaches out up at the top and pulls me up it was one of the soldiers that had been on the 10-day junket with us They saw the whole thing happening.

Saved my life. Save the cruise life. Next thing we know, the commandante from that region, he heard what had happened. Remember, no journalist can be killed on their watch, Sandinistas. He said three helicopters, also Russian, but smaller. All of a sudden, I see the soldier, we're wounded. We're fucked. We're fucked up.

Internal shit, internal bleeding. You name it. Remember, I was already wounded from the beginning of the trip. I see these soldiers with machetes clearing up this hilltop that we're on. They're chopping down trees. It was incredible. Next thing you know, three helicopters land. They put each of us in a different helicopter because they're not going to risk all three of us being in one helicopter. And they got us out. If you love diving into culture and comedy, like on Danny Jones podcast, playoff hockey is right up your alley.

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They'd fucking fly in a Learjet, Metavac, Learjet, get you out of the city and get you to safety and they got the three of us out once we landed in monagua the capital then cbs sent the learjet to get us out and took us to miami the three of us were in the hospital for maybe two three weeks was all a blur and then they said well you still need to recuperate more let's set you up in the best hotel in coconut grove and i'm like sure you know so We proceeded to recuperate there, partying and everything for the next few weeks. So... What year was this?

87. In Coconut Grove. Yes. No short of parties. Grand Bay Hotel. Oh, yeah. And remember my ex-husband, the cartel guy, he was living in Miami. So he was taking care of me, all, you know, myself and the crew taking care of us.

And, yeah, we threw some great parties at the hotel. Specified cartel guy. Well, my husband worked with Pablo Escobar. And my husband worked with two of the biggest dealers, I guess, at the time, Norring Manessus and Danilo Blondon, their characters were in Kill the Messenger. Do you remember that movie? So they were the two guys in that movie. They used their real names in the movie, North America.

Meneses, Danilo Blondon. They had worked for years with my husband. These were my friends. These were guys I grew up with. Danilo was my son's uncle. Norbing was the best man at my wedding. You know, and so I knew my husband and all of them from childhood, but we reconnected when I left New York City after I was modeling for a few years.

We left that part out. So I was a model in New York City. When I got tired of it, I went to Miami. That's where I remet my old friend who later became my husband. And so I got caught up in that world. How did your husband get involved in the Medellin cartel? He started, you know, they were all big guys in Nicaragua. And Nicaragua was a stopping point.

Right. So while I was out modeling, they were moving up in the ranks. And so by the time I left New York City and went down to Miami, there was full-blown operation. Wow. Yeah. So I had a lot of great, interesting, dangerous, scary to other people, not scary to me, friends. And so that's how I got involved in that. So were you guys still married when you were doing all this reporting in Nicaragua?

No. Remember, I left him when my mother got sick in New Orleans. I left him out. That's when you went down. Went down and never went back. But when I left him, I left with a shitload of blow a suitcase filled with money, about a million bucks cash, kept it under my childhood room under my mattress. because remember I'm taking care of my mom. They have no idea what's going on

or what I had been involved in. And I went back to Loyola. I got a one-year-old kid. So you brought your kid a suitcase full of cash and double bags full of blow. Yeah. And so went back to Loyola, finished getting my second degree.

What were you going to do with all the Coke? Were you to sell it? No. You were going to do it? Yeah, well, I had friends. Remember, I grew up in New Orleans. We went out every night. Oh, okay.

Oh, yeah. This was just personal. Personal use. We went out every single night. And remember, I'm taking care of my dying mother. I got a one-year-old kid. I'm still partying. It was...

How old were you? By then... 27? Oh, wow. Twenty-five, maybe, something like that. 24, 24. then my mother dies and that's when I went to Nicaragua and that's how I fell into the CBS thing

look you're going to find out when you hear that podcast and talking to me I'm always where something fucking happens it's not that I'm making things happen I just happen to be where there's always something happening my first night in New York City as a model was the night the lights all went out on the whole eastern seaboard. The black, the most famous blackout. That was my first night in New York City, you know.

And so my life's always been like that. What made you such a rugged woman? You're like your industrial strength. Well, I think it was because of the way I was raised. I wasn't raised with love so much as I was raised with survival. I had to survive. My parents had eight kids. My dad was an airline executive traveling all the time. My mother had hurt things. So we were kind of raised on survival. We kind of took care of ourselves. And I had five brothers. And so again, looking for that, you know, you hear the same story, the girl that's

looking for the father's approval. I always had to prove that I could do anything. as well as or better than any man. And I always would tell people I got balls bigger than any man, you know. And so it served me well, that survival mode that I was raised in. And of course, the traveling and speaking several languages fluently and education. I had everything. I had the white privilege, education privilege, money privilege, you name it. but I was a badass.

I liked the dark side more than the right side. So I always hung out with, you know, shady people, people that were way older than myself. The husbands were older, but they kept getting younger as I, you know, as I aged. How many husbands have you had? About four. Four? Oh, it's not bad.

Yeah. Not bad. And I'm married to one now. We've been married 20 years. How much longer he's got? No, I'm staying with him. Oh, he's for real. Yeah, he's 25 years younger.

Okay. I thought you might trade him in for a younger guy. That's what he thought. But I'm too old. You know, like CBS wanted me to go back when there was this revolution spring a few years ago. I don't know if you remember. You know, the Arab Spring. Yeah.

So CBS was like, well, you were interested in going back? I'm like, fuck now. And they're like, why not? I said, I can't run anymore. You can't cover war and not be able to run. You can't be old and not, you know, and cover wars. So I got out in the mid-90s, I guess, when the wars on this side of the world ended. Because once the wars ended, nobody gave a shit about Latin America.

So I was basically out of a job. Wow. Yeah, because war is big business. War makes the news. But once the wars ended in Latin America, you know. There's a lot of crazy shit going down in Latin America right now, though, with the cartel wars. A lot of crazy shit. Yeah, that's been consistent for decades.

Those guys got all kinds of crazy weapons now. But it went, again, we tried to fix a problem. when we created a worse problem. It started with the Columbians. The Colombians, they at least had ethics. Okay? The Colombians were like this. You owe them 100 grand,

your buddy owes a thousand. Who are they going to kill? Who? I'm asking you. They're going to kill the guy who owes less money. Correct. Right.

So that the one that owes the hundred grand, they had a form of ethics, okay? Well, yeah. A form of ethics. Well, it's more just, you know, rationality. Correct. But it wasn't just, that's not the only example.

They went about their business in a more business-like manner. Exactly. Right. Okay. Get the fucking money. And so what happened was we decide we're going to stop that. Okay. And so we stopped in the Colombians.

It just transferred all the shit to Mexico. Right. And these motherfuckers were ruthless, like you said. The weaponry, they don't give a shit about anybody. I'll kill you. Your whole fucking family, your dog, everybody, you know. And so that was not the game part that I was in. I wasn't in with the Mexicans.

It was Colombians. The classy ones. The classy ones, yeah. The classy. Yeah. And the fact that. I was a woman and I was at the table

with these guys and women are not at the table with these guys you know it's a guy business guy run business

but I was like the little mascot you know I knew the big players Pablo was at my wedding Pablo gave me Pablo Escobar was at your wedding yeah

and he gave me Was he in the wedding? Not in the wedding but he did supply the party favors for the wedding. So I remember I flew. That was nice of them?

Yeah, I flew in my girlfriend from New Orleans. We were grinding for two days, filling up two and three grand bottles as the party favor, you know, the favors when you walked in. Chipito-Areyes from Santana, the bongo player. He was the best man.

Norbert Magnetius was big, big, big player. He gave me away at the wedding. The wedding was at his house. So, yeah. So when people showed up to your wedding, we gave them the goody bag. They got a goody bag with a little.

Three grand bottle, two grand, three grand bottles. You know. Did you at least label them with like the people's names? No, we just put bows on. Because you know at parties, you never know who's going to show up. Right. I thought like, because when you go to the reception at least, you sit down, you have your name there.

No, we just put little bows on them. Oh, that's got some amazing. Yeah. And that was a wedding for the ages, for sure. There's a lot more to that wedding, but you'll hear it in the podcast. Listen, everybody's got to go to the journalist, the podcast. You're just getting bits and pieces right now of what's in it. We've got early cookie, mid-cookie, late cookie,

and each era of cookie is as insane as the one before it. And so I really suggest to people get on board to, you know, on the journalistice to train. It's bonkers. Absolutely. It's bonkers. So explain to me what happened. I mean, you mentioned it a little bit briefly with the ABC journalist who was killed. Not necessarily like explaining me like what happened on the ground leading up to it.

How did it happen? and then how did that change the U.S. the public perspective from the U.S. and the rest of the world? So at that point, it's a revolution. San Deneasda is a fighting. The dictatorship, we already went through this. So there's journalists there. Most of my friends were there.

This is before I got, you know, I became a journalist, de facto journalist. So there had been a couple of years of fighting. Oh, remind me to tell you the firing squad story. That's before that. But anyway, it's 1979. Bill Stewart is one of many journalists there in Nicaragua. And he's with his camera crew and a driver who later became my driver for CBS. and they're out looking, you know, for bang, bang, like any good war correspondent is looking for.

He's got a translator with him, too. So they run into some trouble. They run into a neighborhood in the city, the capital. And remember, the dictator's soldiers, the Guardia, they've been up for weeks. They've been given methamphetamines. They've been up. They've got to fight. Stay awake.

So these guys are already shaky. And so Bill Stewart hops out of the van with the translator. And he goes up to, you know, where these Samosa guardsmen are. And he asks them if he can continue on to, you know, keep covering the war. Well, one of the Samosa guardsmen thinks, He recognizes the translator. He thinks wrongly, we find out later. He thinks that the translator is a Sandinista.

So they take him around the corner and they shoot him. But Bill Stewart doesn't know that. And the camera crew and the driver are still in the van. And they're filming from the van, you know, because you just roll. something might happen. Yes, exactly. So at this point, they figure, well, if this translator was a Sandinista, this Bill Stewart is up to no good. See, he doesn't speak Spanish, dude.

So they tell him to get on the ground, face down, which any war correspondent, it's happened to. You do what they tell you to do, and you're going to walk away, hopefully, and most of the time you do. So they tell him to lay down, and he does, and you'll see the video, dude. Look that up. What's it called? The Bill Stewart killing. Bill Stewart killing. So you see.

Let's pull up and look at it. Well, I'll censor it on the actual podcast. You see the soldier putting the AK to his head, shoot him, and the force of it, his body. like went up and down. So at this point, the camera crew, who are still in the van, that's it. You got it? That's it. Yeah, see, they tell him, go down, lay down.

He doesn't think anything's going to happen. And right there, he kicks him, and watch what he does. The AK, there is. Oh. So this is what happens. Now listen to this story. The camera crew is filming.

This might even be there. footage. They're filming. The driver knows better. He knows that they're next. The camera crew's freaking out. So the driver says to the crew, do not get out of this van. Shut the fuck up.

Don't talk to anybody. Let me handle it. So the driver gets out the van, goes up to the soldier, this guy, and says to him, dude, you just fucked up. We're from some

Mosa TV. You just fucked up. We're from your boss's TV station. But don't worry. We're not going to say a thing. You let us pick up this body and you let us get the fuck out of here. We're going to say that the Sandinistas killed him. And the soldier says, okay. So the driver picks up Bill's body, flings it over his shoulder, gets in the van with the camera crew at this point, they're freaking out, and he hightails it out of there, straight to the Intercontinental Hotel. It's the first time in history that a camera, that a network has exclusive, explosive video. and what did ABC do? They gave it to every journalist that was there. Every camera crew, every network from around the world, everyone got a copy of that footage.

And they knew they had to get that footage out of the country before Samosa and everybody realized what had happened. So the journalists as a group, foreign journalists from all over the world, they decide we're boycotting this fucking dictatorship. We're out. They left Nicaragua. The video got out.

That night, every network put it on the air. Same video. Every network. And remember I told you earlier, by then, 50,000 Nicaraguan's had already been killed, but nobody gave a fuck. Right. But the U.S. audience saw that. So, yeah. And it was an ABC cameraman, a very well-respected cameraman, very well-known.

That changed the course of who we were going to help. So we went from helping the dictator because, you know, fighting for communism. But then this happened, well, maybe this dictator is not such a good guy. That's when we decided to finance and help the Sandinistas win. So what we did was we stopped helping Samosa, the dictator. We started helping the Sandinistas. And this is the moment that happened. This is the moment that the tide turned.

This was the moment where the U.S. decided we got to cut our losses here with the dictator that we've been. remember the U.S. had been financing and helping this dictator for two generations. Right, right. Since like the 30s, right. His father was the first one. Franklin Roosevelt, FDR, referred to the first Samosa. He's a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch. And then it was this one, the son.

And then his son, third generation, was already. prepping, you know, to take over. So after this happens, Samosa's days are numbered. There's a movie called Last Plain Out or something like that. Anyway, he's out. He leaves the country. The Sandinistas, this rag-tag army of

revolutionaries, misfits some, come rolling into the capital, and they won. They didn't know they were going to win. They didn't know what the fuck they were going to do. So where do they all meet in the lobby of the Intercontinental Hotel? Now, episode three, the Intercontinental Hotel is a character in all this. Because that's where everything happened from the 70s when Howard Hughes, the billionaire,

stayed there, to the earthquake, to the revolution, to the Civil War, all the journalists. So they come rolling into the Capitol and they're in the lobby. Okay, now what do we do? Okay, well, you're going to be the president. You're going to be the vice president. You're going to be the minister of defense. You're going to be state department. You're going to be state security.

And that's how it happened. Nine guys. Some of them rich kids that I grew up with. Some of them, you know, lifelong revolution. from humble beginnings. And that's how it started. So that's what brought in the Sandinista regime. So going back to the killing of Bill, what was his last name again?

Stuart. Bill Stewart. What was his relationship with Samosa? What was he reporting on? He was reporting on the revolution. The Sandinista revolutionaries trying to overthrow the Samosa dictatorship. He was just a journalist. He had no relationship.

with either side. Maybe I'm thinking of a different journalist. I'm thinking of it. There was a story in your podcast. There was a journalist that was killed. And people speculate that Samosa killed him. No, that's another. That's what brought on the revolution.

That's what the revolution was about. The revolution. Oh, that was before this. That was before this. That's why I always, there was this Nicaraguan editor, newspaper man. And he was always like the. rival of Samosa. He was more left wing and he, you know,

help the people, not help just the rich, even though he was rich. And so not Samosa, but Samosa's son. My speculation is Samosa's son, the third generation with

his buddies that were mercenaries, Mike the mercenary. These guys would be rolling in the Capitol in tanks with the bullets here. And I suspect it was the son that had this guy killed, the journalist killed, the Nicaraguan journalist, because Samosa wouldn't have been that stupid. He had this rivalry that was, he could say, well, look, I'm not a dictatorship.

I allow this guy to be, you know, the opposition with his opposition newspaper. Okay, so was it a situation to where this guy sort of reported on negative things that Samosa would do, but not too bad. Absolutely. He would report stuff. And Somosa, they were friends at one point. Like, look, your job is to paint me in a bad light, but not, don't go over. No, it wasn't like that.

Okay. They had been friends, but then later, their ideologies just were too far apart. So, Chamorro did what he had to do, calling out the Somosa regime, and Somosa did what he had to do. But it was a. rivalry that... But it was useful for Samosa. Right. Exactly. That's it exactly.

Right. Most people don't get it. Right. So when he gets killed, that's when, you know, all hell breaks loose and the revolution. I always say that it's a revolution that started off with the death of a journalist and ended with the death of a journalist, which was Bill Stewart. That was the end of the revolution. So what happened with Samosa after that journalist got killed?

The first journalist. It's war. It's war. The Sanda East is a fighting. That got my brain spinning. Once that story came out that that journalist got killed, people said, oh, it's obviously Samosa, because this guy reports on all the negative shit. He calls out Samosa. Some people still think it was Samosa.

Other people think it was, you know, someone else. I've always been of the belief that Samosa was. He was a dictator, but he was a very smart. smart man. Right. And he was too smart to kill this guy. So that's why my brain automatically went to, okay, that guy's murder was a covert op. And he had his Achilles heel, his weakness was family and friends. This episode of the podcast is brought to you by BetterHelp. What are some of the things you want to keep the same about yourself or your life in 2024? What part of your life are you already grateful for or what is something that you're already proud of? Around New Year's, we all get obsessed with how to

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and you can switch therapists at any time for no additional charge. Celebrate the progress you've already made. Visit betterhelp.com forward slash Danny Jones to get 10 months off your first month. That's B-E-T-T-E-L-P dot com forward slash Danny Jones to get 10 months off your first month. It's linked below. Now back to the show. Now, let's go back to when I'm 19. and there's skirmishes.

This is before the revolution. The Sandinistas are way, way underground. Okay? Rich kids were underground. They were also fighting in the mountains. So I go on a junket, a road trip with some friends, to the mountains, and we come back December 27, 1974. And remember, the earthquake destroyed.

Managua in 72. So Samosa, instead of rebuilding the city, he's buying up all the land. So the city's crumbled. They never rebuilt it. So 74, remember, I'm one of the rich kids. My family was part of the society. I'm one of the rich kids. I'd go to school.

I was in Loyola, in New Orleans, and go back and forth vacation. So we come back from the mountain. And we're coming into our neighborhood, myself with three guys. And as we're passing in front of one of the houses in my neighborhood, two taxis are coming this way. Poor people taxis. Doors fly open. Masked gunmen. AK, do, do, do, do, kill all the bodyguards and the drivers that are outside of this party.

It was a party where my relatives are at. Killed everybody. They killed the people outside. Okay. They go in to take the people inside hostage because they know Samosas Achilles heel. There's friends of Samosa in the party, relatives of mine. So we're like seeing this shit. What the fuck just happened?

It's like a movie. So we parked the vehicle. I don't know that one of my friends brought a pound of weed for New Year's Eve, and it's in the car. So after a few hours, by then, Samosa had said the guardsmen, they're fighting with the Sandsaniistas that are inside. Nobody really knows what the fuck's going on. So the driver, my friend says to Samosa guardsman,

can we just move our car to our house, which is across the street? He said, yes, but we'll have to check the vehicle. So I'm just standing there and look, and they find a pound of fucking weed in the car. So the Samosa guardsmen immediately assume we're Sandoistas and we're there to distract them from what's going on in the house. Next thing I know within two minutes, we're loaded up in a military vehicle and we're taken to the prison. Now, this had never happened to any of them.

Who's taken to the prison again? Somosa guardsmen. Samosa guards. Because they think we're Sandozistas. Okay? Because we got a pound of weed. They think we're a distraction. We're, you know, here, come look at this, come look at us,

while something could happen in the house, the party that they took over. The Sandinistas took over. Next thing I know, I'm heading to the fucking prison. Where people are tortured and killed, not people like us, poor people. Right. So my friend says, don't speak Spanish. We're just going to say you're an American.

We'll get you out. another one of my buddies he's crying we're now going to get out of this alive and so they take us to the prison big fat commandante he gets it in his head that I'm Patricia Hurst you remember her she was the girl William Randolph

Hurst daughter that was missing at the time for like two years and I can hear him saying I got Patricia Hurst so at that point I couldn't stop myself so I start speaking in Spanish and I'm speaking his kind of Spanish.

I'm not Patricia Hurst. I'm an American from New Orleans. I go to Loyola. But by then, they threw us in the prisons. I'm thinking they're going to torture us. We don't know. But the San Dinosters knew that Samosas Achilles' heel was his friends and family. So he wants to save his friends that are in that party.

A good dictator would say, fuck him. Let him kill him. We're going to kill everybody. He didn't. That was his weakness, we want to say. And we can't get out of the prison because nobody could give orders but him. And he knows that we're safer in the prison than out on the street. Next thing I know, I don't know that my family's getting us all out.

But the guardsmen in the prison, they know that we're going to be released, but they want to fuck with us one last time. So they put the four of us against the wall with six soldiers, weapons. And I'm like, and the three guys I'm with their cry. I'm going to be, I'm like, y'all shut the fuck up. I'm looking at the soldiers. I said, I'm going to act like in the movies. You know when they say you get some relationship with the guy with the gun,

look them in the eyes, start talking to him. Then he can't pull the trigger. Right? So that's what I'm doing. I'm convincing these guys. Look, guys, my whole family knows I'm wild and crazy, but no one is going to believe firing squad. Okay? I'm from New Orleans. I go to Loyola. I'm a sophomore. And I just keep them talking. They weren't going to kill us, but we thought they were going to kill us because they're aiming at us. And we got released a couple hours later. They never shot them. They never shot the guns off? No. But they were aiming. And we didn't know, I mean, we thought we were going to be killed.

So that was what led up to that party that the Sandinistas, you know, took over because Samosa was always had that weakness. So what happened when they finally, how did they come to finally release? So what happened? was the Sandinistas, so Samosa's got his friends in there, so he's not going to get them killed. Right. So the San Deneistas want all San Dena political prisoners released.

They want $2 million in cash. They want a bus and they want the bishop so-and-so to be, you know, the intermediary to get them out. So as we're being brought back in the next day, released from the prison and we're going back that same route that we did you know the night before there's a bus coming out and it's got all the political prisoners it's got the sandinistas that were in hoods that had killed and it's got the bishop it's got not two million i think it's got one million in cash money and i remember seeing this one guy in the bus and he kept looking at me

I kept looking at him. Turns out years later, he became the president of Nicaragua, Ortega. President Ortega, he's still president. President for life now. So everything that they fought against that dictator, they have now become. So now San Denisters, Ortega's in power, he has so much more money than Samosa ever had. He controls the whole country. And it's like, do they not know.

how this story's going to end? He's going to be killed one day. He'll be assassinated. Really? By who? He's now got this whole country. He's president for life. This episode sponsored by Forkfull. Most meal delivery services promise healthy food, but look closer, and you'll often find

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Restaurant quality meals, real ingredients, no seed oils. Discover Forkful today at Forkful Meals.com. Like that's the legitimate, like he is, there's no elections planned. Well, when they do have the elections, he always wins. Okay. Okay. Right. So he has become now what he fought against.

He's the new dictator. Okay. So listen, I always tell people, history just keeps repeating itself. The only things that change are the faces and the names. But the history just keeps repeating itself. Power vacuums always get filled. And now you've come to realize that I'm always where something happens, right? I've given you right now from 72 to the helicopter crash, 87, and all the different

things that I was involved in. So, I don't know if that's a good thing or it's a bad thing, but I'm always fall right into something, whether it be a war, a revolution, a scandal. And you ask how the Iran-Contra thing came about. What was my big piece of blowing that? So the Sandinistas for 10 years want to prove to the world that it's the U.S. that's funding these contras to overthrow them. But there's no proof.

How did they know? Because the contras are Nicaraguans. And they know that they're being trained in Honduras. In fact, someone being trained here in Florida, you know, it was sort of common knowledge. but because the government's not going to say they're doing it, there's no proof of it. So even the journalists, we all knew what was going on, but nobody could prove it. So in 86 October, I think it is, I'm in Miami on R&R, but I'm still hanging out at the CBS office. I get a call from my assistant.

He says, you're not going to fucking believe this. The San D'inistas shot down a plane. It had to be a CIA plane. because one, every, the two, the pilot and another guy were killed, but the kicker, the guy that would kick the stuff out the plane. The cargo guy in the back. And he's kicking out, you know, propaganda. He's kicking out boots, supplies for the contras.

He happened to bring a parachute with him. So he parachutes out. Plane crashes. He parachutes out. and he's hiding in the jungles. He's in San D'Nista territory. He knows he's going to be killed eventually. So the San D'Nistas find him.

And again, it was a plane that was shot by a lowly soldier. It was a shoulder-held missile. This pilot was killed. The other guy was killed. Eugene Hazzifu survives. There's a famous picture of him being, you know, caught. They bring him in. again, he thinks he's going to be killed.

Yeah, the look on his face in that phone. You saw, yeah, you heard episode 9. He looks like he knows he's a dead man. He knows he is. Until he sees that there's journalists. But the journalists aren't there that day. So I get a call from Nicaragua and I'm like, dude, you got to come back. They caught this guy, you know, proof positive, blah, blah, blah, blah.

So what do I do? I call 60 minutes. I call my boys there. Don Hewitt, the creator, Mike Wallace. I said, listen, this just happened. Why don't we go into Monagua, interview this guy, put him on the air confessing Sunday night because Monday they putting him on trial.

And we all know he's going to be found guilty. Come pick me up. And let's do it. Donned you at Mike Wallace Fuck yeah Let's go get her They get the Learjet Come pick me up in Miami

I get some supplies from the ex-husband Because you know me I gotta get my supplies Some blow Get the blow Because the San Distas Had wiped out drug use

And I would have to fly to the U.S. To get blow And bring it back To the third world country The San Distas were on board With the drugs So That's another story

So these guys look like kids. They were all kids, dude. They were teenagers. They were kids. And so 60 Minutes picks me up. We fly into Nicaragua. If you heard episode 9, you know what happened. They got poor Eugene.

They put him in a safe house, military safe house. Cookies in the bathroom doing blow in the military. safe house of state security. I remember saying to myself, this is the best blow I've ever done because I got state security, the head of state security outside the door of the bathroom, and I'm in a safe

house. Anyway, that's cookie. So anyway, we interview this guy. He confesses it all. Whatever. So you'll hear the story. I'm not going to tell that whole story. But

afterwards... What stood out the most? that interview. Well, he confessed that he worked for the CIA, which of course the CIA said, we don't know who he is. The airline was a CIA-owned. Air America. He was completely disavowed by the CIA, by the U.S. government, by the U.S. embassy. They completely denied him. We don't know him. But he's got everything. So the pilot has a briefcase, the dead pilot. So the San Diniz has gathered up all this evidence. The Hazid Fu story, that's separate. I'm just going to tell you about the Iran-Contra and the evidence. So they've got all this evidence, and they've got it all logged in

from the parachute that saved his life to the pilot has a briefcase, full of documents, papers, all this kind of shit. They had already logged it in. He said, Cookie, I said, can I look at some of this evidence? I didn't realize I was going to to be the only person to have access to this evidence. One of the pieces of papers was a business card that was in this pilot's briefcase. And it's a Swiss bank. It's a vice president of the Swiss bank. And on the back is a series of numbers. But the San Dinesas put business card and on the back a phone number. I knew it wasn't a phone number, Danny. Danny, it was a huge. bunch of numbers.

I knew this had to be a Swiss bank account. So I'm saying to myself, what is this lowly pilot doing with a Swiss bank account? Okay? Eugene didn't know anything about it because he was just a kicker. So I take the card.

I ganked the card. I put it in my pocket. What? Yeah, well, I gank it. Well, I wouldn't have gotten in trouble even if they would have known. But they thought it was a phone number. So I go back to my office.

I call the Swiss bank. I ask for the vice president whose name is on the card. And I'm like, look, I know you can't give me any information on, you know, bank accounts or names or anything. But would it be okay if I read you a series of numbers if you could just tell me yes or no, it could be a bank account? So I read off the numbers. He goes, yes, and slams down the phone. Now, I've got a Swiss bank account number. Still don't know what I've got.

Call CBS New York, Foreign Desk. They get Washington in, Miami in. It's a Swiss bank account. That was how Cookie blew up Iran-Contra. Not a year later, congressional hearings are being held on all the Swiss bank account,

the money, why was what was up with that money? It was to secretly fund the conscious. So yes, I did blow up the story. So it was a CIA bank account. Well, but they did the smart thing. It wasn't in any government person's name. It was in the

pilot's name. No way. Way, dude. Way. Did we ever find any more information about that bank account? Like, how much money was in it or Swiss bank account no but there were hearings that later it got blow blown up you know that this was what was happening and there was a committee a commission and they realized that 30 million dollars had been accrued but 18 million of it was missing of course that 18

million had been said to the conscience right 18 million that 18 million is peanuts. But at that time, didn't with the Iran-Contra scandal, I know the story with the hostages, but didn't we like, didn't we do it through Israel? This is how it happened. This is how it happened. Reagan, there's, first there's that hostage situation in Iran, remember? Right. But that's over. So then while Reagan is president, another set of hostages were being held by Hezbollah. Okay? Yes. So Reagan wants to do that. to get them out, but we don't have the money or anything to get these guys out. And he said that he won't negotiate with terrorists.

He says that publicly. Right. So that's when they come up with the scheme. Let's sell weapons to our mortal enemy Iran from already the other hostage situation. Let's sell them weapons. We'll take that money and we'll secretly fund the Contras. So that happens. But they ended up getting more money from Congress than they needed.

They got like 30 million. No, no. They didn't get money from Congress. Where do they get the money? To fund the conscience. They got the money from selling the weapons to Iran. So that scandal blows up. So Reagan's fucked.

So correct me if I'm wrong here. I want to make sure my understanding it is correct. See, there's two pieces to that. They went through. So the Reagan administration went through, this is my understanding, went through the Department of Defense to get funding to pay full. the weapons through Israel to give the weapons to Iran. And they got $30 million. The $30 million was sent through.

To free those hostages that Hezbollah is holding, okay? But 18 million of the money disappears. Right. Which was later found out that it went to the contras. So once that's blown up, now Reagan and the government need to come up with another revenue stream. And that's when... Once they burn through the $18 million. And everybody finds out publicly.

So then that's when somebody comes up with a brilliant idea. Hey, let's take these drug dealers away from the DEA. And let's let them continue doing their business. We're never going to bust them. They can fly, bring as much coke as they want to this country. And who are these drug dealers? My old buddy. from back in the day.

So they're allowed to bring in all this cocaine. From where? From Columbia. Okay. Bring it all in. And to their dealers in this country, main one was my good friend, Rick, Rick Ross, out in L.A.

Right. And of course, they didn't know that Rick and crew were then turning the Coke into crack. So now the second stream of revenue is coming from the Coke that the U.S. government is allowing to come in to this country. What happens to that Coke when it gets here is the crack. Rick and all his people start saying we can make more money if we turn this into crack, into rock.

So the money that was made not from the crack, but the money that was made not from the crack, but the money that was made from the Coke that was being delivered to Rick and friends. So Rick was paying for it? Well, yeah, he had to buy it from my friends. But he got it dirt cheap, you see? So now you got a new stream of hush money from the Coke to fund the Contra's. See, people think the Iran Consulate was just one thing, the weapons. The weapons got blown open.

So that's why they had to turn to the cocaine. So they just capitalized on this amazing, amazing drug sales system that was going on between South America and the United States. They didn't necessarily, they didn't, it wasn't any of their money, it wasn't their drugs. They just knew it was happening. They let it happen. And who was the one bringing it in? Is this when Barry Seal started coming on the scene? He was one of my husband's employees.

Barry Seal was. Yeah. So who's bringing in the Coke? Who's being allowed to bring in the Coke? My old buddies. The guy that gave me away at my wedding. My son's uncle. My son's father.

When I got the job at CBS, I told them. I will cover any story you send me to except drug stories. And only one person ever asked me why. Because the rest of CBS, they're like, oh, okay. only one person said to me, why will you not do drug stories? I said, I got kind of a shady past. And I didn't want to be one of those people on the other side when they're going in, bust into people, because I used to be on the other side.

Were you afraid of getting whacked? No, because I would never do that. I would never cover that story. Right. So when the drug thing comes out, who's involved and who's in charge? charge of it, my old childhood friends, my son's father.

You know, it's like it came back to bite me. Not in a bad way because I was still getting blow from them. You know, it's like I still had ways of getting anything that I wanted.

Yeah. That guy from that smuggler book behind you, his name was Roger Reeves. Yeah. And he was an airplane pilot. I know. He wanted to be a missionary pilot. He wanted to fly and support missionary groups and stuff like that, religious, big religious guy, Southern guy. And he explained to me how easy it was to make money back then.

It didn't pay well. He was like a teenager. And they were like, hey, you want a million bucks for the weekend? Just fly this weed down to Mexico. And they would throw shit. Or go pick up this weed from Mexico and bring it back. I remember they would throw in the kilos. We didn't deal with weed.

It was all blow. And they would throw in pills. Remember the quailudes? Oh, yeah. That. And they throw in emeralds, just a bunch of emeralds. You know, I had a bunch of emeralds. You had made it to jewelry.

But. So back to my story with Roger real quick, I'll finish it up. But Roger, basically, he eventually met Barry Seal, and he hired him to be one of his pilots and let Barry fly one of his planes. And at one point. Barry talked. At one point. He had a big mouth. Right, right, right.

Boom. That's a crazy story, too. And I told him, you're going to be. killed if you keep talking like this. I warned him. So there's a, Stephen, if you can search for this clip on YouTube, it's a short, it's one of the short clips on the clips channel. If you search for Roger Reeves, Barry Seal story, it's a quick video clip I'd like to show you. Okay.

Anyways, so Barry told Roger, he said, I have a, basically a hall pass to land my plane in Mina, Arkansas anytime I want. Oh, yeah. It cost us a million bucks, and we fly in and out scot-free. And by the way, I'm going to dinner with the governor next weekend. It was big business. I mean, I had unlimited amounts of blow, money. So it's a crazy story about how Barry basically asked him to meet him for dinner in Santa Barbara. But anyways, so he met him at a restaurant when Barry was trying to get him to testify.

And he was like, and Roger was like, there's no way, Barry. No fucking way. He goes, he goes, Barry, they're going to kill you. And then Roger sat down and he like, paused for a minute. He's like, something's off here. And he looked around, looks at the people all next to him. And he goes, Barry, are those all agents?

And Barry goes, every single one of them. Fucking asshole. And then he said, Barry just like tears kept coming down his face. Fucking asshole, man. And then the agent came down and sat at their table with both of them with Barry and Roger. And then the FBI agent said, or the DE agent, whatever kind of, whatever kind of spooky was. he said, Roger, he's like, you have two choices. He's like, you can fly with us to Miami tomorrow in chains

or you can fly first class with your wife. The choice is yours. Crazy. He ended up not testifying. But he went to prison for like 18. Of course. Or no, like 40 something years. I was never, fortunately, I was never confronted with that.

I never got in trouble. I was never arrested. We did go on the lamb a few times. from Miami to San Francisco, from San Francisco, L.A., but they were looking to speak to me, okay? But I was the wife, you know, and then what does a woman know, you know, kind of thing? Well, I do everything, but there was never a moment where any of these guys ever doubted me. And that's why I had a seat at the table.

the only woman. And there's a great story you're going to hear, I think, in episode two. Episode two is all about Pablo, right? Yeah, well, there was a thing that happened. Some indictments came out against my husband and my brother-in-law, and it was in the paper in New Orleans. And they, you know, they weren't even in New Orleans. That's another story.

But what basically happened was we'd had to disappear. We went on the lamb and never ever did they doubt me. But one time in Miami, we're all at a table. Pablo, he's at my house. And a kid from New Orleans got busted, one of our employees. because I always told my husband, don't have a deal in New Orleans. Stay out of New Orleans. That's my stomping grounds.

Stay out of it. He didn't listen to me. So this kid gets busted and he's in jail. He happens to be, and I'm not going to, and I will never say who it was. Suffice to say he was the son of a very high-ranking government official in Louisiana. Anna. So the next thing that happens, this kid won't talk. He won't name names. So his father, who's a very powerful man, sees that his son is throwing away his life. So he starts his own investigation to see who supplied the blow that got his kid in prison. And the kid kept telling

him, Dad, they're going to kill me. They're going to kill me. And there was a night. We're all at a table and somebody comes up with the brilliant idea, let's get the kid killed and the father killed. And I stood up and I said, nobody's getting killed in Louisiana on my watch. It's my stomping grounds. Next thing we know, it isn't just drug charges, it's murder. And Pablo was there. And Pablo was quiet. Told me to sit down, calm down, and he whispered in my ear.

you're right we're not going to do it and you'll hear what he says in episode two he says something in episode two you know you should be running this show something like that and i said i already am dude not dude i didn't say dude i wish you would have said dude but there was no dude then but that's the relationship i had with these guys they knew that they could trust me They knew I wasn't like that chick that, oh, my boyfriend, he gets all kinds of blow and I get all kinds of money. Women have big mouths, big mouths. You wouldn't hear me say one peep about anybody to anybody. What was he like in person?

I liked him. But I didn't know it was Pablo Escobar, the Pablo Escobar that we all know of now. He was just my friend. And we called him El Jaffe, the boss. I didn't call him Pablo. I called him the boss. El Jaffe. Oe, Hefe, passame la Mierda for ca.

And he loved the shit out of me because I was pretty. I was really hot. He liked young, hot women. But he never treated me that way. I was one of the guys. I was one of the guys, okay? And he always respected me. There you go.

He always respected me. There you go. Never was inappropriate with me. I mean, they were, you know, bad boy jokes and shit like that. But they always believed in me and trusted me. And there was no way I would ever say anything to anybody about any of them. Pablo was not, I liked him. He was quiet.

He didn't party that much. He liked it. drink more than anything else. But he was just my friend. Like Rick? Ricky, he was just my friend. I didn't know it was Rick Ross, you know, Freeway, Rick Ross. He was just my friend. And I met Rick while I was working with CBS because when I'd go to the U.S. for vacation, I'd always meet up with my ex-husband so he could give me some blow. And one of the times I was in Miami said, Oh, Chino, he's in L.A. You got to go to L.A. if you want to see him.

So I flew out to L.A. And that's how I met Ricky. Just partying. And I just always loved hanging out with the bad boys, you know. The seedier, the shadier the situation, the more comfortable I was. And nobody would suspect it because I looked so normal, I guess. You know, and I could say the right things. That's where the education privilege and that kind of thing helped.

I could talk myself in and out of anything. Remember how I got the job? Didn't you party with Mother Teresa? Well, no party. And she didn't party. Oh, you guys didn't do blow together? No. She came to Nicaragua and we met.

We did an interview with her. What was she doing down there? Just coming to, you know, help the poor and meet with church people and stuff. like that and so is this part of one of your reporting gigs it was and it turned out to be a real emotional one for myself and my son and she was that kind of type of person she just kind of moved you don't get me wrong i'm not religious or anything but i could feel shit coming from her you know like this i don't know and she said some things to me privately that really affected me.

Like what? We're getting ready to do an exclusive interview with her. She'd already kind of, her spirit, her presence had already kind of gotten to me. And so, but the camera crew is setting up and she looks at me and she's like, come here. And I said, so what's up? I didn't say what's up, but she says, you know, can I tell you something? I said, sure. She said, I think she's going to tell me something about, you know, what we're going to do.

in the interview and she says, I want to tell you something. Your generation thought that y'all were here to change the world, to change a bunch of people who changed the world. She goes, maybe you were just here, put here, to change one life, and that life is yours. Whoa. Like even now telling you the story, the hair stands on, the goosebumps.

And my son was there, and she took my son and cradled his face. her little tiny hands. It was just really like a spiritual shit, you know? And I'm not religious. I don't get into all that. I'd already interviewed the Pope three times. He never did anything for me, you know, spiritually. But she kind of affected me.

She had that effect on people. And if you go to my site, the journalista site, that's pictures. I'll send you some good pictures. of her. How did this whole journalista thing come about? Well, I've been talking about this shit for 30 years.

For 30 years, I've been saying, oh, we've got to do something with this. You know, maybe a movie. I had the idea in my head. I had a different title. It was going to be called well-informed sources. You know, well-informed sources

have just told CBS News. And my well-informed sources could be the prostitute on the corner to a military guy, to my gardener, my sources were everywhere. So about 13 years ago, a mutual friend introduced me to my brilliant partner, narrator, creator, creator of journalist to Steve Esteb. And he gets told the story about me, and he says, that's bullshit. So we set up a meeting and I'm telling him more stories.

And he says to me at the end of the meeting, you know, I'm going to be honest with you. I think you're full of shit. I don't believe anything you're saying. I'm like, okay, meet me here tomorrow at noon. So the next day I showed up with, now we infamously called the box. And that box had everything in it. press passes, newspaper articles, books that I'm in, pictures, you name it, it was in there. He took it home.

I said, just don't look at it here. Take it home. Give me a call when you're ready to talk. And it didn't take him but 24 hours. And he still hadn't gotten through everything. He says, we got to talk. So it was like, we got to do something with this. And at the time, podcasts were starting to come out.

We didn't know we were going to do a podcast. We went from movie to TV. We don't know what we're going to do. We even thought about a book. And that's how it started, 13 years ago. Wow. It took Tarantino 15 years from the moment he conceived of Big Kill Bill to the moment he made it.

This shit takes a long time, dude. It takes a long time. And now that we've been so successful and the reviews and the ratings have just been off the charts, now people are calling us. We're not pitching shit to anybody. People are calling us. Have any of your old friends reached out to you since you released them? I'm still friends with my old friend.

Do you still talk to them all? I still talk to me. What do they think about you? Now, you're talking about the drug people or the Sandinista people? Any of them. All of them. I'm still in touch with everybody. What do they think about your podcast?

I was scared that some people, the San Dena says they don't care because they think it makes them look good. Okay. But my friends from Nicaragua, they were scared that I might be naming names because I know all these people's secrets. I'm like, it's not that kind of podcast. okay? Because, you know, Ortega has really clamped down on people. Even rich people are being thrown into prison, okay? And then you had my drunk friends, because I'm talking about them. But I let them know. I said, look, I'm going to mention your name. It's nothing that hasn't already been said publicly. Can he bring up Norving Manessas?

Yeah. How do you spell it? N-O-R-W-I-N-N-E-N-E-S-E-S-E-S-E-N-E-S-M-E-N-E-S-E-N-E-S. Department of Justice. Norman Manestas conducted large-scale drug trafficking in Nicaragua in the United States for many years. That's who gave me away at my wedding, and my wedding was at his home in San Francisco. Oh, wow. Yes. That's the wedding Pablo was at.

That's the wedding Pablo was at. It was in San Francisco? San Francisco. And Norbing and I are still friends. Where's he at now? Down south? Can't say. Wow.

Can't say. Do you ever go down to Nicaragua? Of course. How often do you go down there? Well, I haven't been down since the pandemic because that kind of threw. I was there in 2020. My daughter's wedding. And some people.

might have been at that wedding that we've talked about today. And I haven't been there since, but I plan on going next year. But more beach type thing. Yeah. I had a lot of fun. And I'm still untouchable. Are you? I'll always be untouchable, no matter what side is in power, because I still know everybody from everywhere.

And, you know, some people think it's a journalist thing, but it started way before that since I was a kid. Is it safe for Americans to go down there to hit the go to the beach? Absolutely. They don't get stuck. I've got a friend right now at the beach in Nicaragua wearing a journalist to T-shirt, doing this, sending pictures the last couple of days. I had a friend that went down there a couple of years ago on a surf trip,

and they said that they had a lot of trouble with the cops there, like having to pay off the cops trying to stop them. Well, the stopping, yeah. But once you're at the beach, you're home free. Yeah. But you have to pay these cops.

They don't make a lot of money. So it's almost like you're helping them. So they'll pull you over and they'll threaten to detain you and... But they won't. They won't. Because you're going to give them a couple of bucks. But it's very safe.

A couple of bucks. How much? 100 bucks? 10 bucks? Oh, wow. Whatever you give them. Dollars rule. Dollars rule.

Wow. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah, but I plan on going next year. But we got a friend there right now in America, he's on the surf beach wearing the journalist a T-shirt. That's amazing. It's amazing.

That's cool. And it's amazing because that's the way Cookie's life's been. My life has been like that from the day I was born. It's always been crazy, exciting. Now I've become, or I am the person I always fought not to be. quiet in the background. Well, not since journalista. Did you ever meet any of the Ochoa brothers?

Roger was telling me one of them. I think it was George. He's down in somewhere right now. Columbia, maybe? Yeah, I did not. He's got like a big horse breeding operation. He's making tons of money. You mean Ochoa or Ochoa? Ochoa. The guys. Yeah, I know the Ochoas. The Ochoas, yeah. The guys are responsible for

for Wack and Barry. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I know him. Apparently those guys are just living, like the one guy, George, he's just living it up right now. All my friends are doing just fine. The ones that aren't dead are doing just fine. There was a lot of money to be made in the 80s. But they started making the money in the late 60s, 70s as local in Nicaragua, you see? And then they diversified and went out of the country.

Because Nicaragua's always been a stopping point for drugs going in and out. The only difference was that during the Sandinistas, you couldn't get any drugs as civilians, even though it was still coming through. I told you I had to fly to the U.S. and bring the shit into Nicaragua, man. Who does that? And nobody was ever... I do have a great story, a drug story, though, during the Sandinistas. You want to hear it real quick? Yeah, let's hear it.

So I'm in my office one day at the Intercontinental Hotel. Not only the CBS offices were there, but also my private quarters. And you've got to understand, Danny. I was raising two kids. I had two kids there. You know, Chino's son, the drug dealer's son, and my daughter from another father, another husband. So I got a knock on the door one day. And it's this, you know, unassuming guy.

And he says, you're cookie. I said, yeah, I know I'm cookie. He says, can I talk to you? And I said, sure, come on in. He says, look, I'm from state security. And I'm like, and what? He says, well, we got a problem. He says, we got about 20 society kids in jail right now.

We rounded them up, you know, for drugs. And what? What does that have to do with me? He says, well, the problem. them is they're all mentioning your name. They all know you. They all party with you. I know a lot of people. But if they're saying I party with them, they're lying. I do not party. He goes, you don't understand what I'm saying here. I said, I don't care what you're fucking saying. If you're accusing me of something, I'm denying it. He says, calm down. You don't understand what I'm about to

tell you. Okay. What? He says, I work for state security. We don't care what you do. You can do whatever you want. In fact, if you ever need anything, we will supply it. What we don't want is for you to be partying publicly with people who can say your name. We want you to keep your partying private in your room. in your office

and we'll help you with whatever you need. I'm like, wait, let me get this straight. You are telling me that you are going to give me government-sanctioned party favors. For me to do as long as I'm discreet,

he says yes. And I will be around. From what government? San Denaise. I will be around and I'll be watching, taking care.

care of you. If you ever need anything, here's my number. And I'm like, wait, is this guy for real? Is this an ambush? Is this a trap? He was for real. Unfortunately for him, six months in, we had him corrupted too. He was doing blow and everything. But this is how it was. This is how my life has always been. Never had to fly back to the states to get my shit again. That's amazing. Holy shit. Right? It was like, are you serious?

But look, anything that goes up must come down. Episode 8 is Cookie's dark and epic downfall because I came down. I came crashing down. And we're not going to talk about it because I want people to hear, listen to it. But I'm here today. I survived all that shit. you're hearing the shit I'm still sort of living it because I'm reliving all my

PTSD is back but it's been cathartic talking about it and I just want everybody to know we're everywhere now we're on Iheart radio we're on Amazon music Apple podcast Spotify Stitcher you name it Pandora we're everywhere we need you to listen there's nine episodes Each episode is better than the last one. You're not going to believe it.

You're going to say, man, that was an episode. The next one's better. The crazy stories you've heard me tell today, it's the tip of the iceberg. You've got to listen to this shit. And I'm telling all your listeners, this is the shit. This podcast is the shit. Well, thank you for coming on and telling your story. I really appreciate it.

And I'll make sure to link your podcast below. And shout out to Steve Esteb, the creator, my partner, Sean Donnelly, and Jason Wagon's Back. I couldn't have done it without these guys. Again, it's cooking with all the guys, you know. Yeah. But it's been a trip, Danny. It's been a trip, getting this out there. and I've always been honest about who I am

and I think that's what the audience has loved you know, that no holds barred. Very interesting woman, very interesting life you've lived and thank you. Thanks for sharing it. I really appreciate it. Awesome. All right. Goodbye, everybody. Sweet.

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