Stuff You Should Know - Selects: Iran-Contra Affair: Shady in the 80s, Part 1

Episode Date: August 8, 2026

When Ronald Reagan was president, America got involved in some deeply shady stuff, not the least of which was the Iran-Contra scandal – a convoluted operation that managed to combine an illegal covert war in Nicaragua with secretly selling arms to Iran. Learn all about it with Josh and Chuck in this classic episode.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Listen to Hollywood Handbook on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey guys, it's me, Josh, and for this week's Select, I've chosen our 2019 episode on the Iran-Contra Affair. We called it shady in the 80s for two good reasons. One, it took place in the 80s, and two, it was probably the shadiest. thing the U.S. government has ever done, and that's really saying something. Anyway, if you like your Stuff You Should Know episodes eye-popping, then prepare for this one.

Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of IHeart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. There's Jerry over there eating with chopsticks, as a matter of fact. You know when Jerry pulls out of chopsticks. It's time to record. That's right. Yeah. She's got Facebook open, and she's sitting there with her chopsticks, so we're recording now. Jerry's been fork-free since 83.

Speaking of 83. Your shirt? I guess it's kind of 83-ish. It looks very Thomas Magnum. It does, Chuck, it does. Not just the shirt, the whole outfit. Look at the jeans, the shoes. Yeah?

Yeah. You got the Ferrari out back? Thank you for noticing, man. I look like a chubby Thomas Magnum. It's funny because I just... finished Stranger Things 3 and saw that there was a have you seen it yet are you into that No, I like the first season. I never really got back into it after that. No offense to anybody Sure. The main the sheriff guy. Yeah Hopper wears a shirt kind of like that through most of this season. Is that right?

And so someone did a cut of like a Magnum PI intro and had him running around and shooting things and jumping into cars all set to the Magnum thing. Very cool. And it really fits. All you got to do is throw that song with a guy with a shirt like that, and it's magnum. Yep. Of course, he has the mustache, too. Well, I'm a mustacheless chubby magnum. You should wear a mustache.

That look interesting. I don't know. It do solve a lot of mysteries, though. Nothing can change a look like mustaches. Oh, dude. Instantaneously. Right, especially a fake mustache because you just put it on and bam, you're done. That's right.

So I tried, I'm going to go back to the 83 segue. Yeah, we're here. We're right in the middle of the 80s. Yeah, like, this was super 80s. This is as 80s as it gets. Yeah. The Iran-Contra affair. That's what we're talking about.

Some people call it Aran Gate. I poo-poo that name. Iran-Contra. Sure. I remember this going on at the time. Me too. I remember watching all over North testify. Me too.

And my sister was like, he's so dreamy. Look at how much poise he has. He got his dress greens on. Right, exactly. All those medals. Had his Boy Scout three fingers up, like swearing. I really think he did do that. But even as an adult, like everything I knew about Aranconra,

like until researching this, it was just the glossiest version. Well, I mean, I was like 10 and 11, so you were like 7 and 8? Sure, sure. But I mean, like, still, over time as you age, you're like, oh, that's what was going on. Or, oh, I understand that. Even as an adult, my conception of it was not very third. at all. And as I dug into, I'm like, this is one of the shadiest things America's ever done. Ever.

Yeah, and it was really great to do this. And like, now I know it. Now I have a full understanding of what happened. And if it ever comes up at a party. Right. And people are like, oh, what was that all about anyway? I'd be like, wow. Please sit down for an hour.

And I'll just pull up my smartphone and play our episode. Right. Actually, maybe an hour and a half. We'll see how this goes. Yeah, by the way, everyone, this is a two-parter. buckle up and so this is part one

I figured we'd start with the beginning I think that's a really good idea that reminds me of my friend in college watched the movie uh...

Oh which one was it Weekend at Burns shortcuts It was a movie that was on two video cassettes What? It was so long You know they had to split them up

Was it Magnolia? The bridge too far I can't remember my friend in college Very famously among our friends Watch the second tape first and then watched the first tape second and didn't really put it together

she was just like I thought it was a little confusing really so it was accidental oh yeah oh okay and then she was like and then she showed up in the in the second part and I was like she's already dead

she was kind of country this is kind of funny this movie's one of them anachronisms yeah well this is not an anachronism because we're going to be normal smart sane people

and start at the beginning that's right and there's really no better place to start than the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. Ronald Reagan, if you weren't familiar with him already, when he was president, he had already been governor of California, but even before that, he had a pretty extensive career in Hollywood. Yeah.

And while he was a pretty big star in Hollywood, at least B-plus list, if not A-list actor. Yeah, I mean, he was a medium-sized star. Sure. But definitely way more famous as president than he ever was as a movie star. Sure. he learned to detest communism. Yeah. And at the time, communism was a really big thing in Hollywood.

Like it was very fashionable, especially among the intellectuals of Hollywood. Yeah. And he learned to hate it so much so that by the time he got to be president, he had this idea that it was impossible for capitalist democracy and communism to coexist. even peacefully on earth. You couldn't have both. You had to have one or the other. And by God, Ronald Reagan was going to see to it that the one that we had was a capitalist democracy.

Yeah, he wanted to stamp out communism wherever it reared its head. And it was rearing its head close to home, which we'll see here in a second. But all over the world. Oh, yeah, for sure. It was called the Reagan. Yeah, bits and pieces of it were. Right. And he came up with the Reagan doctrine.

And the Reagan doctrine was, we will aid. any any opposition to communism wherever it sprouts. Like if you're fighting against a communist revolution, we'll support your country. If you're a rebel fighting against a leftist communist government, we'll help you overthrow. That's the Reagan doctrine. Yeah, via money, via arms, via training, via covert operations that we carried out ourselves. There were all kinds of ways that we could and did help. stem the flow of communism.

Yeah. So there was, as you were saying, there was a place pretty close to home where communism had sprouted up. And that was Nicaragua, down in Central America. And in Central America in the 30s, the Sandinista government had taken power

and had held on to power well into the 70s and by this time the early 80s. And it drove Ronald Reagan nuts that there was a communist power right there that was being supported by the Soviet Union through Cuba, ostensibly.

I've never gotten the impression that this was ever conclusively proven. They definitely got support from Cuba, but whether it was the Soviet Union who was really calling the shots in Nicaragua or not, I don't know. Yeah, and I think, you know, to go even further back

and draw the lines a little even more clear, the Sandinistas were named for Augusto Sandino who led the nationalist rebellion against what? The U.S. occupation of Central America. Oh, that's where it started, huh? That's where it all started.

And from 19, you know, the U.S. occupied, this is all part of the Banana Wars. Right. So we occupied Nicaragua from 1912 to 1933 for a lot of reasons. But one was like, hey, no one's going to build a canal here unless it's us. Right. That was sort of one of the main reasons. And that all ceased in 1933 with Roosevelt's good neighbor policy, which is basically like we're going to pull out of Nicaragua. Oh, really?

Yeah. Okay. So. But we had our fingers all over Central America for many, many, many years. And that's why when people forget or choose not to remember when people flee horrible situations in Central America to come to the United States now, like kind of where all these horrible situations started years and years ago. Right. Because of things that we did. Right.

Well, when Reagan became president intervening in Nicaragua, man, I'm going to have a hard time if I can't say Nicaragua. intervening in Nicaragua became like a first and foremost priority for them. Yeah, for sure. Almost immediately they started funding the Contra's. The Contra rebels are the groups who were fighting against the San Anista government. They were right-wing groups. And they were funding them. They were training them like you were saying.

And they were doing all this secretly. There was an operation called Operation Black Eagle. Man, that one. That was something else. Yeah. So we were already funding them. And at the time, Congress was on board. Congress was on board, especially at first because the Republicans controlled the House.

Well, you know how when somebody comes in and just steamrolls over the other party, usually in a presidential election? Yeah. Very frequently, there's in the midterms, the congressional midterms, there's like a backlash against that. Yeah, like a house flip. Believe it or not, that happened to Ronald Reagan in 1982. Yeah. And the House did flip. They flipped over to the Democrats.

And that Democrat-controlled house, combined with a Newsweek cover story that came out, kind of turned the tide against Reagan's policy on helping out in Nicaragua. Yeah, there was a CIA director named William Casey who was, he was kind of telling Congress what they needed to hear here and there. You have been here of vague briefings. That was probably a generous way to say it. But sometimes Casey would send another guy, though, named Dway Dewey Clarege. And this is where things really went south because Clarege did not present well to Congress. And anytime Congress feels like they're being subverted or ignored or, like, kept out of the loop or, like, not able to offer their checks and balances on the executive branch, they really get mad. They do.

Like we're seeing that today. Right. This is like history just repeats itself over and over again. Exactly. Yeah. And in this particular case, the place where the administration, the regular administration and Congress just started budding heads over Nicaragua, it was Dwayne and Claridge. Yeah. You know, he just, that's how poor a job he did. But in his defense, he was coming from a place where he was a CIA man through and through. And this is less than 10 years after Congress had just basically rooted out the CIA, held public hearings.

Yeah. That's when, like, the M.K. Ultra came out and the fact that they've been dosing unsuspecting Americans with LSD. Yeah, so in his defense, he was mad because they uncovered all the awful things that he'd been doing. Right, right. True compassion, Chuck. Yeah. That's true compassion.

So Congress is starting to get a little unhappy with this. And there was one congressman in particular named Edward Boland, I believe. And he was from Massachusetts. And he said, hey, I just read about this. story in Newsweek. It has a title, America's Secret War, colon Nicaragua. Seems like they should have flip-flop that, you know, Nicaragua colon America's Secret War. I think they both had the same end goal.

It's fine, right. But he was like, wait, why am I reading about this in a magazine? Yes. And I'm a member of Congress. Right. Because at this time, like, Congress was like, well, okay, we think we're just kind of funding things. We're maybe helping out a little bit. this Newsweek magazine was like, no, no, no, it's way more than that. Yeah.

Like there is way more American involvement down in Nicaragua than you've been led to believe Congress. Like actual covert CIA ops like blowing up bridges and blowing up buildings and, you know, direct saboteur type ops. Yeah, not just here's some arms. Yeah. And then, you know, you close this one eye, but leave this eye open when you're shooting. There was way more involved than that. They're like, or we could just do the shooting. Basically, yeah.

That might make it easier. Here, just let me do it. So Congress in the guise of Edward Boland said, nope, we're not doing that. And they passed the Bolin Amendment, which basically said if you cannot use CIA funds or defense department funds to aid the Contras in Nicaragua. It's done. Good night. That's right.

And so that should have been the, that's the end of it, right? Because Congress passed a, what was it a law? No, passed an amendment. An act. An act. Yeah. And so everyone just stopped, right? That's how it works.

All right. What's part two going to be about? We're just going to see here quietly. So this did not stop anything. Here's what happened in 1983. The CIA had this one operation where they went into the commercial shipping harbors of Nicaragua. Oh, boy. I know.

It's contagious. I said it right in my head all morning. Nicaragua. There you go. And they put mines there, you know, I was about to say land mines, but they were sea mines. Yeah, mines. Floating mines. Right.

And the idea here was, we're going to plant these mines that we're going to whip up our own press releases for the Contras, where they take credit for it. Like, we don't even trust them to write a good press release. Right. The CIA wrote the press release for them. So where the Contras are saying that they did it. And the overall effect it's going to have is they're not going to be able to ship arms via the seaport at least into Nicaragua. Plus it also makes the Contras look way more together.

Sure. And with it than they actually were. Right. Like all we need to do is give them some money and they got it covered. Right. So the CIA does this. And they're thinking, okay, so shipping in the Nicaraguan harbors is going to stop. It does not stop.

No. As a matter of fact, there was damage. So they used a little firecracker mines, which make a big blast and a lot of water everywhere. But if it's a big ship, it's not going to hurt the ship. Well, it's sunk a lot of. lot of small fishing vessels. Right. But it also damaged ships

from the Netherlands, Great Britain, Japan, and the USSR, commercial ships. So the Wall Street Journal broke this story and said, hey, you guys,

Congress, you remember how you passed this amendment saying there could be no CIA involvement in Nicaragua? Well, they mined the harbor of the sovereign nation and it blew up

a bunch of other country ships. And Congress, once again, it's like, man, You keep doing secret things behind her back. Right. That really makes us mad. Right. Should we take a break?

All right. Let's take a break. Stuff you should know. Josh and Chuck. Stuff you should know. There's no shortcut for saving time. But saving money is simple. Just combine your car and home insurance with Bel Air Direct and save.

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We recommend some of our recent episodes with Ben Stiller. The definition of what is a movie has kind of changed anywhere too, right? What do you think it is now? It's images and words being spoken, captured by some sort of, uh, textual. Technology. Danny McBride. He loves Hobo. Oh, that's fantastic. And you make it on, you make your own. That's great. I call him Terro Reed. That's a good name.

They're all named after cast members of American Pie. Yeah. I call, I don't, I never looked up if she was in this, but I call him Leachie Sobiesky. Yeah. I don't think she was an American Pie, but I still like that. Haven't looked it up. She was prominent around the same time. Yeah. Then Mary Steenbergin. Why are you guys talking to me? I'm worried.

Why are you talking so down to me that you think I don't understand your little play game? I just really. I get it. I'm trying to set you up for success here. Listen to Hollywood Handbook on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Stuff you should know. Okay, let's keep going. So what does Congress do?

They're like, all right. They're mad. We passed one Boland Amendment, which I don't think we said, Chuck, that first Bolin Amendment was passed 411. to zero, unanimously saying, do not mess around in Nicaragua anymore. That's when you know Congress is mad. Right. When they unanimously agree on something. And then the Wall Street Journal breaks the story about the harbor mining long after the

Boland Amendment was passed. And now Congress has even madder. Right. So they passed two more amendments, Boland amendments, because there were loopholes, basically, that allowed, you know, the U.S. to sort of do these things semi-legally. so it was like, well, here's a loophole, so it wasn't really fully illegal that we did this stuff.

Yeah, that's like the Reagan administration's way. All right. They close these loopholes. And now this was like, it was pretty ironclad. I don't know about ironclad, but it was pretty tight amendment-wise. At the very least,

Congress walked away thinking it's done, it's settled. We made ourselves quite clear. Right. Ronald Reagan signed these into law. Yeah, he didn't veto him. Nope. He accepted.

accepted these things. I think he even said, like, yeah, this is a good idea, great way to go Congress and signed it. I'm not going to do a Reagan impression. But so Congress thought that the matter was settled. But it wasn't settled. Like, this is how laser-focused Reagan was on overthrowing the Sandinista government down in Nicaragua. He just took a CIA operation and took it even further underground than it had been before. basically. He was like, okay, if you guys are going to outlaw this stuff, we're just going to have to get even more illegal.

Yeah, so there were a couple of factions here at work. One was this continued operation underground, deep, deep underground now. And then there was Reagan's public. Like, he still wanted to get real money from Congress, so he didn't have to do this stuff. Right. So he kept up this public PR campaign beating this drum about communism at our doorstep. he said that the contras were the moral equals of our founding fathers. That's a big one to pull out. Like that's a direct quote of our founding fathers. And started in with the, and again, you see this stuff kind of repeating itself.

The campaign of fear where he basically said, unless we do something tough here, then there will be a tidal wave of feat people. I don't even know what that means, but that just seems super offensive. Swarming into our country. He meant, you know, refugees. Feet people. Seeking a safe haven. It was one word even, I think. One word.

It's funny because I looked up feet people, and that's a company that, I think, makes shoelaces. And they're like, yes, say it again. Say it.com. So this is all going on, and on the down low, all the operations are going on, and on the public-facing side, Reagan's just continuing this PR push.

Right, basically saying, like, Congress, look at these heartless old gas bags, turning off the funding to these founding father, moral equivalent to our founding fathers, go vote these guys out of office and vote in some people who will turn the funding back on. Yeah, and while the Contras may have been fighting communism, they were doing so through means

that the founding fathers probably would not have approved of, like murder and torture and rape and mutilation, kidnapping, and not, you know, I mean, it wasn't so widespread that it was like that's all they were doing, but they would resort to those tactics. Right. And that's not founding father stuff.

No, it's definitely not as far as I've ever learned. No, I don't think so. And I mean, it's had a few hundred, a couple hundred years to come out. Yeah. And it still hasn't. So, yeah. I read some of the stuff, too. Like some of the affidavits were like just brutal.

Oh, yeah, dude. The war down in Nicaragua, the civil war that the U.S. basically fomented and supported, it went on for a decade. Like, it went on into the 90s. And it was like not just like countrymen against countrymen, like civilians were getting murdered by the scores. Yeah. And just they would get kidnapped and tortured and killed.

And like it was a really brutal time in Nicaragua. And the reggae administration is right in the middle of this, like providing as much aid as they can to one side. Yeah. And it was one of the big problems was that the contras back then were a bunch of different factions. And they didn't answer to a single leader. Right. And the one thing I got out of the affidavits, one of which this woman described them taking her children and her finding their mutilated bodies the next day.

It was brutal. One of the leaders said that there's no disciplinary system at all within the contra groups. Oh, yeah? Yeah, like there's no accountability. So you could do anything you wanted, and there's no discipline set up. Right. So it was just they were fractured and no one, you know, was talking to each other. and it was just a big mess.

Right. But Reagan was doing his best to paint everything in black and white. Right. Contra's good. San Anista's bad. So anything that Contra's did was good and stuff that couldn't be painted as good

would just be denied or glossed over or not reported on. That's right. So while Reagan's out running around trying to drum up public support for the Contras and thus congressional aid being turned back on. And also saying, don't do drugs. Yeah, that was a big one.

Even though we're shipping a lot of drugs back and forth. It's awfully rich now that you know all that stuff, you know. He's also secretly supporting them, going in flagrant violation of what Congress has said that America can do. He tells his people he wants the contraist movement to be kept alive, body and soul is how he put it. And he basically said, do it. This is what history has told us, is that Reagan basically said,

keep the contra movement alive, body and soul. I'm going to go work on Congress. I'm putting my hands over my ears from now on. Whether that's true or not, we will probably never know. Right, because it's all been treaded. As far as the history books is concerned, that's what happened. Right. So here's what they did.

They said the CIA has a bad rap for a lot of reasons, and Congress is not super friendly with them. Well, they expressly forbade the CIA from operating there. Right. So he said, here's what we're going to do. we're going to use the National Security Council. And the CIA Chief William Casey, he's around. He's going to just, like, advise here and there.

And William Casey was like, oh, no, no, I really got to be involved because this is really good stuff. They're like, no, no, no, we're talking like officially here. Oh, yeah, yeah, okay, yeah, sure. So at first, national security advisor was Robert McFarlane, and then he was succeeded by John Poindexter. Very important you remember that name. And then Casey's still there, like you said, doing his thing on the download.

unofficially. Right. I think even in some cases kind of stepping on toes or whatever, he was like an additional boss to the main guy. The guy everybody's heard of. The guy whose name jumps to mine

when you hear about this, Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North. Ollie North. And in retrospect, especially if you lived through the Iran-Contra hearings and you're familiar with Ollie North, like you would guess

that when Ollie North was tapped to head up this extraordinary difficult secret operation to go against Congress and keep the contra movement alive and kicking. That Alley North was a bad A covert operator to the ninth degree, right? That is not at all correct. No, career marine, very highly decorated Marine, served in Vietnam, won Silver Stars and Purple Hearts, devout Catholic. And by all accounts, a stand-up guy, and to many, many Americans, he is still, like, a top-notch American hero. Sure.

Well, he was like the president of the NRA until, I think, recently. Yeah. I think there's some scandal that just happened where it came out that he, like, tried to depose Wayne LaPierre or something like that. I don't know. I don't either. But even beyond that, like, even beyond whether he's a stand-up guy or not as far as, you know, patriotism is concerned. Sure. just job experience

he had like none he had no experience whatsoever as far as I could ever tell in covert operations he did a pretty good job for a while he did an amazing job he was basically the

the white houses operations and intel arm of the shadiest stuff it was doing stuff that was so shady the CIA was even kept in the dark about it that's how shady this stuff Ollie North was doing and he had no experience

he's learning as he went yeah just making it up as he went long. And he really did do a pretty good job of it if you look at it from that angle. Just as far as like getting her done. Right. So what they basically decided was, all right, if we can't get the real taxpayer money and like official funds, we'll just go and raise funds on the side and secret through business people that, you know, we can have these big parties and dinners and say, hey, listen, communism is knocking at our door. This wouldn't be good for America. It wouldn't be good for your company.

Right. And why don't you give us some money, open up the checkbook. Right. Reagan's here. You want a photo? Yeah, sometimes he would show up to these secret fundraisers. And it really worked. Like, they raised a ton of money from the business elite of America to stop the Sandinistas in Nicaragua.

So they actually, forget this, they founded, they had two private citizens found a nonprofit, the National Endowment for the Preservation of Liberty. Its sole purpose was to get these illicit funds to send to the Contras, which means that the people who are donating to the president's illegal secret proxy war could write their donations off on their taxes. That's right. It's just mind-boggling and hilarious in some senses. Yeah, but they were not the most stand-up nonprofit,

because, as you point out, they raised $6.3 million through that organization during 85-86, about 3.3 million made it to the Contras. And so that means a 52% program expense rate. That's pretty bad. Yeah. That's not good at all. Now, $3 million it took supposedly to run that nonprofit. Those fundraising breakfasts for a year.

Yeah. Pretty bad. Good omelets, though. So, yeah, the best. Top notch. Yeah. So from this idea, like, okay, this is probably kind of legal. we're just fundraising.

Right. We're not giving any American taxpayer funds. We're just getting other people that donate private citizens. Saudi Arabia was a big one. And it was all to stop communism. So, like, I think their intentions were that. Oh, definitely. Theirs were.

Yeah. But there was a definite end justifies the means kind of thing. And really, isn't the president really the most powerful person in the world? Right. Can Congress really tell the president what to do as far as foreign policy goes? Nah. Yeah. That was kind of the idea, I think.

So Saudi Arabia donated a bunch of money. There's all these private citizens donating money. And here's the thing. The Contras found themselves flush with cash. Yeah, many millions of dollars. Over just two years, Saudi Arabia alone donated 32 million to the Contras. This is a couple of loosely affiliated factions fighting in two spots of Nicaragua that suddenly have 30 plus million dollars.

at their disposal. Yeah. The problem is they don't have the contacts in the international arms trade to buy arms with this money. They said a bunch of money and they're like, who wants this? Right. And they were getting crickets. He's got some bombs.

Right. You know, the cartoonish black kind, the round ones that are shiny? It would take 15 of those. It was before Craigslist, too. Right. So their only avenue was to go back to the Americans and Oliver North. and he began working with a guy named Richard Seacord. He was a retired, forced retired.

We'll get into that in a minute. Air Force Major General. And he had a lot of experience. There was this group of dudes in the 1970s and 80s that were former CIA, former CIA, former and current American military, who all had their fingers in the illegal arms trade. Right.

So exactly what you can imagine a Hollywood writer would come up with. Yeah. This is the real-life version of it. Yeah, for sure. So they would, you could farm out assassinations to them. They could wrestle up mercenaries. They could carry out sabotage operations.

They could find whatever gun, bomb, anything you needed. You want some money laundered? Done. Right. Anything that is extraordinarily illegal and deals in death, like these guys could get their hands on. You want some poison? Done. Sure.

A bomb disguised as a briefcase? We got it, buddy. And here's the other thing, too. They were in illegal black market arms ring. But they were also even more illegal in that they would sell to whoever. Whether you were an enemy or a friend to America, it didn't matter. These guys were operating well above any sort of national loyalty or anything like that. Yeah, this was about making money.

Sure. Like many millions of dollars. Yeah, you're right. So especially a guy like Seacord, he wasn't, he was in it to make dough. Definitely. Whereas Anali North was seemingly in it to stop the, you know, communism. Right. So that's an important point.

But the fact that they contract with Seacord to kind of swoop in and help hook the Contras up with arms means that the Reagan administration is contracting with this extraordinarily illegal black market arms ring. Yeah, one of which they took down some of these dudes over the years. One of them, one of the founders of this group was a CIA op named Edwin Wilson. He was sentenced. He served 22 years, 12 of which were in solitary confinement, but was sentenced to 52 years for illegally arming Libya with 10,000 machine guns and 20 tons of C4 that he hid in barrels of mud and flew on a chartered jet to Libya. Right, himself. It's like Hollywood stuff.

I know, it really is. Like, this really happened. It's crazy. And it wasn't just Libya. This guy was funding or outfitting Omar Gaddafi. Oh, yeah. Ediamine was another customer. Like, whoever, if you need to keep a stranglehold on power in your country,

we're the people to help you do that. Yeah, and when I teased earlier about Richard Seacord being forced into retirement, that was due to his connection with Edwin Wilson. Right. So he was forced to retire from the Air Force. They couldn't pin anything on him, but there was enough of a connection there where he had to step down. Yeah. They're like, you can do this the hard way or the either.

way we're going to give you the option. And he took the easy way. And then he went on to make a lot of money. Right. He was like, okay, well, I'll just do the arm stealing thing full time now. Right. And he did. So when they brought him in, at first, Seacord was basically acting as like a very laissez-faire intermediary. He was basically the guy who, on behalf of Oli North, was like, yeah, I can introduce the Contras to my friends in the Arms Ring. Yeah. In Canada, of all places. Yeah, he introduced the Contras to some Canadian arms dealers. So now the setup was this? The friendliest arm steel.

Right. They're like, oh, these bullets will really put a hole in somebody, eh? Yeah, oh, sorry.

I meant to include rocket launchers on that order. Sorry, sorry. That's pretty good. So, Seacord was just there to make some introductions,

make sure things went smoothly. And then it was up to the Contras to use these funds that were coming in from other people and to buy

weapons from the Canadians. Easy, peasy, right? You'd think, okay, fine, that's done. It still has like a slight veneer of arms-length legality as far as America's concerned. Yeah, and we should mention, too, that he, to do this, he set up a shell company, the Stanford Technology Trading Group with an Iranian-American businessman named Albert

Hakeem, who knew how to get around certain official procedures and stuff like that. He's another guy who could get things done. So he set up Swiss bank accounts, untraceable accounts, because that's what you do. Right. to run the funds through, and this became known as the Enterprise. Yeah, they're at Stanford Technology Trading Company or group, sorry. Trading group, aka the Enterprise. Yeah, that was like everybody called it that, because they're like, this sounds way cooler, the Enterprise.

Right? All right, but like you were alluding to, you think it would have been going great, but the Contras in the North, who was the FDN, they were the largest, by far, the largest group. They were the better organized from what I understand. Yeah, they were doing a pretty good job, but in the South, they were not doing a very good job.

No, somehow they were like, we don't have the arms and equipment. They're like, what are you talking about? You have the same amount of money. You have the same contacts. Yeah. Just buy the weapons. They're like, I don't know. So, Ollie North is like, okay, all right, here's what we're going to do.

He called the leaders of the FDN and the FSLN to Miami to meet with them, and he said, here's how it's going to be from now on. Yeah. any veneer of legality is going out the window. From now on, I'd like you to meet your new boss, Richard Seacord. Not only is he going to make sure you have arms, he's going to take the funneled money himself by the arms himself, and then he's going to have it kicked out of a plane over your camps.

Right. So now America is directly involved in supporting and arming and training the contra rebels in the North and the South. south of Nicaragua. And if there was any, again, if there's any kind of legality, it's totally gone at this point. Yeah. And in the meantime, Seacord and Akeem were marking up their stuff as much as like 300%. Dude, they made a lot of money off of this. Yeah, they made a ton. But they put it, they put a lot back into the enterprise. I mean, they took this job very seriously. Oh, yeah, it was a company. Like, if you are, if you were Ollie North, you were quite happy with the work you were

getting from Richard Seacord and Albert Haqim. Because the shipments went out on time. They got everything they needed. They had so much money, they had it left over. But they were also investing it into the enterprise. They bought planes. They rented airstrips. They hired employees.

Yeah. They contracted with other, like, airlines, like a CIA front. I can't remember the name of it right now. But they were doing the work for sure. Great health care. Yeah, the best benefits. All of the contras had really nice. Keith after Richard Seacord took over.

Work from home. All right, so let's take another break here. And we'll come back and bring it home for part one with a little bit about the propaganda machine that was set up. Stuff you should know. Josh and Chuck. Stuff you should know. There's no shortcut for saving time. But saving money is simple.

Just combine your car and home insurance with Bel Air Direct and save. Get a quote at Bell Air. Our town is small taters by most standards, right? But to the people who grew up here, it's everything. What happens when a quiet Tennessee town becomes the front line in a battle over the future of America? Developers with right-wing ties have purchased hundreds of acres of land in the area. The first thing you see when it pops up is pioneers in Appalachia. But they weren't just planning houses.

We need cities on a shining hill that exemplify and embody the Christian way of life. Stop right there. Is that normal? A podcast about what happens when a small town becomes the site of a social experiment. God need men to rule. Great. And decides to fight back. Do not use my hard work to sell your bull-h-h-h-h-h-hoc. They're not just opposing what's being planned for here. Our hometown is not a test tube. They feel like they're standing in opposition to an entire administration. Guess you didn't move in on a bunch of dumb hillbillies now, did you? Listen to our town on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, this is Hayes Davenport.

And Sean Clements. We host the podcast, Hollywood Handbook. Every episode we're trying to help our guests improve their careers by mainly focusing on how they can help us improve our careers. The show's famously super accessible so you can easily jump into any of our 650 episodes and understand what's going on. We recommend some of our recent episodes with Ben Stiller. The definition of what is a movie has kind of changed anywhere too, right?

What do you think it is now? It's images and words being spoken, captured by some sort of technology. Danny McBride. He loves mouth. Oh, that's fantastic. And you make it on, you make your own. That's great. I call him Terro Reed.

It's a good name. They're all named after cast members of American Pie. Yeah. I call, I don't, I never looked up if she was in this, but I call him Leachie Sobieski. Yeah. I don't think she was an American Pie, but I still like that. Haven't looked it up. She was prominent around the same time.

Yeah. Then Mary Steenbergin. Why are you guys talking to me? I'm worried. I'm worried. Why are you talking so down to me that you think I don't understand your little play game? I just really. I get it.

I'm trying to set you up for success here. Listen to Hollywood Handbook on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Stuff you should know. All right, Chuck. So things are in full swing. America is unknowingly. totally hooking up the Contras. Now basically running this proxy war

that the Contras are fighting against the Sandinista government. Right. The enterprise is working full bore. And if it couldn't get any more illegal, if you thought it couldn't get any more illegal, prepared to just be knocked right over. Yeah, so here on the home front,

it was decided that there needed to be a pretty massive and dense propaganda campaign. And we're not talking about Reagan just going on the news, talking about communism being at our doorstep. We're talking about a real deal propaganda campaign. And they even set up an office, the office of public diplomacy for Latin America and the Caribbean that was founded and managed by a Cuban American named Otto Reich. And this was all exposed later on by the Miami Herald by the reporting of a guy named Alfonso Chartie. Yeah, I just want to interject here real quick. So do you remember when we've done, you know, historic stuff in the past and I'm like,

go read the contemporary articles? There was some really good reporting going on because the story was so huge and multifaceted. Oh yeah. I mean Newsweek broke it before Congress knew. Yeah, the Washington Post broke it. Yeah, Wall Street Journal. Yeah, Wall Street Journal and then the Miami Herald. Yeah, LA Times did a lot of really good reporting. It was going on like in Miami's backyard. But it was back when it wasn't like, oh, think piece, think piece, think piece. article, think piece, think piece, you know. It was like real reporting. And even then it still wasn't up to snuff in the end.

Yeah. But there were actual journalists like actually paying attention and writing about this stuff and informing the public about it. And this is when you and I were kids and I think like maybe even the seeds of us, because we both kind of had desires to be real deal journalists in our lives at one point. Yeah. Look at us now. Speaking of RIP Mad Magazine.

Oh, yeah. What a shame. Yeah, they tried that reboot. Didn't work. Yeah. It's tough. It's tough biz these days. Yeah, and I got friends that worked for them, too.

Like in this recent reiteration. Oh, really? Yeah, or iteration, I guess. Well, I know one of their illustrators is a stuff you should know fan from years back. Yeah. Yeah. It's very sad to see it go. Yeah.

So, it was very 80s reference, though. It was. It really wasn't off track. So, all right, this is going on. They set up this office. Run by auto, bike. And this whole thing was designed and orchestrated by the CIA. But here's the deal.

The CIA wasn't supposed to be doing this. They were barred from doing this. Yeah, there was a longstanding prohibition on the CIA from operating in the U.S. Basically, like, we know who you are and we know you're so good. You can't use that stuff on us. You can only use it overseas. It's fine if you go overthrow other countries. On your mind tricks.

Yeah, it used those. on other groups, but you can't use them here in the States. And actually, Reagan himself also had his own executive order explicitly banning the CIA from, let's see, doing any activity that was intended to influence United States political processes, public opinion, or media. This is Reagan's executive order, 12333. And he, at least his administration was like, forget about that. We'll just get around that. Yeah. And who was this?

It says here that the CIA's, like, biggest, foremost psychological warfare expert, retired from the agency officially and then was hired as a consultant, I guess, to this office of public diplomacy. Was that Otto Reich? Was that someone else? I don't know. Oh, well. Maybe that's the whole point. Right, yeah.

But that was how, that's why I was saying earlier, like Reagan, that's the Reagan administration way, just like, here's the letter of the law. Well, let's change this letter in our side. sentence and now we're following the letter of the law. Right. You know? And that's what they did. So the CIA's psychological warfare guy retired came on as a consultant and he said, oh, here's

what you do. You need to basically start setting up some sting operations because the point of this is to, I can't remember who said this, but to paint or to glue black hats on the San Anistas and white hats on the contras in the public mind. Right. So when you say sting operations, we mean literal. the United States and Oliver North smuggling cocaine into Nicaragua,

photographing San Dinoisan officials with this shipment, and then smuggling the cocaine back to the United States. Back to Florida. Back to Florida. They're like, we told you we'd bring it back. Chill, man. Unbelievable.

Give us their driver's licenses back. So this photo is published. This is during the middle of the Just Say No movement, championed by Nancy Reagan. Yeah. So it all fit on the surface. But what was going on behind the scenes is just unconscionable. It is unconscionable.

Unconscionable. Both. But this gave Reagan, this photograph that got published all over the place. Oh, yeah. And he's like, look what's going on. Look what these guys are doing. Right. They're bringing this stuff into America.

Killing our kids. Exactly. Right. So these are the people that were fighting or the contras are fighting. How can't. can you keep the funding turned off for the Contras Congress? You jerks. And that was the only evidence, too.

Yeah, the D&A somehow came out and said, by the way, I don't know if anybody cares or not, but we have no evidence whatsoever that this San Anastin official has ever engaged in drug trafficking aside from this photograph. But this was a follow-up probably weeks after the big splash of the original photograph came out. So that was one sting operation.

There was another one that involved, Manuel Noriega, the dictator of Panama, who actually was selling drugs to America's youth. Yeah, but he was also a friend of the CIA. Exactly. So much so that he was a CIA operative for a very long time. Yeah, I don't know about a friend, but he was at least an asset. Right. Yeah.

So this seeing operation was they were going to, through Panama, have Panama arranged for a shipment of arms to be seized in Honduras. El Salvador. El Salvador. Yeah. on its way to Honduras or maybe just in El Salvador, ostensibly arms from Nicaragua. Yeah, basically saying you're arming Salvadorians, you're arming Hondurans.

You're exporting your revolution. This is exactly the kind of thing that Ronald Reagan has been saying we need to contain, we need to pluck this sprout of communism out from Nicaragua because they're trying to spread out of the region. Totally made up, complete sting operation, and it didn't even work because Manuel Noriega was like, I didn't like that New York Times piece you guys just published about me. I'm going to keep this shipment of arms for myself.

Yeah, but I love it at first. He was like, I can do that. Oh, yeah. He's like, sure. Send me the arms. And then we were like, oh, okay. There would be a, I think it's from the Iran-Contra investigation. The description of Manuel Noriega was that he ran a narco-cleptocracy.

That was the government that he ran. Yeah, just break down that word. He was as shady as they come. That just means drugs, fevery. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So this is what's going on in the United States in the mid-80s. Yeah, and here's the deal.

If you were a reporter at the time and you were reporting on this stuff, the NSC didn't like that very much. So they would meet with editors and reporters themselves and be like, hey, can you report on the sand in any sense that they're really not good people? like, can you help us out a little bit? Right. Well, but here's the thing. If you didn't play ball, then didn't they cook up some story that they would send, like,

Sandinistan sex workers there to, like, pleasure the reporters? That was the rumor was that if you were a journalist who reported favorably on the San Dena government, the reason you reported favorably on them was because the San Annesa government was furnishing you with sex workers.

Right. That was directly from the Office of Public Diplomacy. Right. And I read the thing about it, And the guy was like, and we're not just talking women either. If they were gay men, then we would send gay sex workers. Right. So totally discredit them.

It's like a complete page right out of the Edward Bernay's playbook. It's orchestrated by the CIA's foremost expert on psychological warfare. And this was the state of America in the mid-80s. But that was just one dimension of this whole thing. And I say this is the end of part one. What do you think? I think that's great. And we're going to make this a cliff hangar.

That's right. And as per tradition, we are not going to do a listener mail. But instead, we'll do a call, which we rarely do, a little marketing call, everyone. If you like stuff you should know. Right. We've been doing this so long. We're so bad at this. Yet we've managed to grow anyway.

It's crazy. Tell a friend. Share an episode with a friend. Right. Now that they don't have to, you don't have to explain what a podcast is. Right. It's a lot cleaner now. Maybe start with a good one, like ballpoint.

point pens or something. Yeah, tell a friend about the show, leave a nice review, or just any kind of review at all on iTunes. That would help us out. Yeah, yeah. That's how classy Chuck and I are. He even corrected himself from good review to just any review. Whatever you want to leave. We're not going to try to influence you.

No. Like the Reagan White House? That's right. So, yeah, we'd really appreciate it. Spread a little love. Try and turn one person on to our podcast this week, and that really helps us out. Nice, Chuck. How about that?

That sounds like a good pyramid. We like to do this once every five or six years. Well, thank you for joining us this week. If you want to get in touch with us, you can go on to Stuff You Should Know.com and check out our social links. You can also send us an email to Stuff Podcast at iHeartRadio.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of IHeartRadio. For more podcasts to My Heart Radio, visit the Iheart Radio app.

Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Hey, this is Hayes Davenport. And Sean Clements. We host the podcast, Hollywood Handbook. Every episode we're trying to help our guests improve their careers by mainly focusing on how they can help us improve our careers. The show's famously super accessible so you can easily jump into any of our 650 episodes and understand what's going on. We recommend some of our recent episodes with Ben Stiller, Danny McBride, Riz Ahmed, and Mary Steenberg. Listen to Hollywood Handbook on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

On Solita, we share the messy reality of traveling alone as a woman. Your duolingo is not going to come back to you when a man is inside of you. Oh, no. I'm Julie Pinero, and I travel by myself because it's a rare space where I can say yes without asking anyone else first. I'm on a mission to reclaim the word Solita, trading the pity for possibility. Listen to Solita on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Nick Tuturo. You probably know me from NYPD Blue, the longest yard.

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