Latest / Conspiracy! The Show / The Iran-Contra Affair

Transcript

The Iran-Contra Affair · Conspiracy! The Show

0:10
Speaker 1: Welcome to Conspiracy The Show, the world's most trusted conspiracy
0:16
Speaker 1: theory podcast, with your hosts Adam Todd Brown and Olivia Hidar.
0:32
Speaker 2: Hey, everybody, welcome to Conspiracy The Show. I'm your host
0:37
Speaker 2: Adam Todd Brown joining me. His co host Conor's here
0:41
Speaker 2: this week. Connor, how's it going on? What?
0:45
Speaker 3: Gay? Onda? What's up?
0:46
Speaker 2: Oh? Is that? What that means? Which language?
0:48
Speaker 3: What do we Spanish? I don't know why I went Spanish.
0:51
Speaker 3: I was trying to go for a choice I hadn't
0:52
Speaker 3: made before as a Conspiracy The Show co host and
0:55
Speaker 3: some of them are going to be does folks.
0:57
Speaker 2: I'm in the process of learning Spanish so as to
1:00
Speaker 2: better enjoy the Shakira concert I'm going to in November,
1:05
Speaker 2: but I haven't made it to the podcast section of
1:07
Speaker 2: Duo Lingo.
1:08
Speaker 3: Got him is a real white ally this is what
1:11
Speaker 3: Ali ship looks like.
1:12
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've lived in la for more than a decade,
1:15
Speaker 2: so at any point learning Spanish would have been the
1:18
Speaker 2: cool thing to do.
1:19
Speaker 3: But you were like, I want to feel Shakira. That
1:22
Speaker 3: was what puts you over the edge. It was like
1:24
Speaker 3: I could talk to twenty eight percent of the probably
1:26
Speaker 3: more that live in my community way easier, or hips
1:30
Speaker 3: don't lie could hit even harder somehow.
1:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, what if I enjoy the Spanish language version
1:36
Speaker 2: of She Wolf just as much? You never know, we're
1:40
Speaker 2: about to find out. Hope.
1:42
Speaker 3: I got to say, there was the only good TV
1:44
Speaker 3: show on like bunny Or's TV when I was a
1:46
Speaker 3: kid between like three and four was Dragon ball Z
1:49
Speaker 3: on Telemundo and Dragon ball Z on Telemundo. Ze, it
1:55
Speaker 3: just goes way fucking harder. It was, I don't know.
1:57
Speaker 3: The voice acting was better, it was shit was tight.
1:59
Speaker 3: I didn't know. I need to know the words that
2:01
Speaker 3: guys shouldn't like the reames of that guy, so they're complicated.
2:04
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's also an app that teaches you Spanish or
2:08
Speaker 2: several languages that way, just by watching Spanish language TV.
2:13
Speaker 2: And then there's dual subtitles and you can pause it
2:16
Speaker 2: and click on words that you don't understand.
2:18
Speaker 3: That actually seems extremely useful and like a very intuitive
2:22
Speaker 3: way to learn languages.
2:24
Speaker 2: I wish I remember the name of the app so
2:26
Speaker 2: I could tell people.
2:28
Speaker 3: Sorry, we'll put it in a post.
2:30
Speaker 2: So we're talking about a doozy of a government scandal
2:34
Speaker 2: this week.
2:35
Speaker 3: This is like one of the big ones.
2:37
Speaker 2: It is one of the big ones. We're talking about
2:39
Speaker 2: the Iran Contra affair, which right off the bat, I
2:43
Speaker 2: love how romantic that makes it sound.
2:47
Speaker 3: Yeah, it does give it a kind of a Casablanca
2:49
Speaker 3: feel of like I was just the I RN like,
2:52
Speaker 3: you know, all the good old boys in the White
2:53
Speaker 3: House are in the rose Garden going those are the
2:55
Speaker 3: days man, the Iran Contra affair.
2:58
Speaker 2: Two diplomatic needs happened to be in the same cafe
3:01
Speaker 2: at the same time, crossed paths.
3:04
Speaker 3: You just you gotta love real politique. It brings together
3:07
Speaker 3: the strangest bedfellows that the Barbie movie and Oppenheimer. Who
3:11
Speaker 3: would have thought, you know.
3:12
Speaker 2: Yeah. One of the things that I thought about when
3:16
Speaker 2: I was researching this is people complain a lot about
3:20
Speaker 2: how Watergate gets all the attention when this is the
3:23
Speaker 2: bigger scandal, and I agree with that. But even then,
3:27
Speaker 2: in the big scheme of things, this is kind of
3:31
Speaker 2: small beings compared to a lot of things the United
3:34
Speaker 2: States has done, even the acknowledged stuff. I think MK
3:39
Speaker 2: Ultra is massively underrated in terms of government scandals. And
3:43
Speaker 2: we did confirm that was real. We conducted a decade's
3:47
Speaker 2: long human experimentation project.
3:49
Speaker 3: You can go read all about it, you know, in
3:51
Speaker 3: their own words.
3:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's so much information out there about it. But
3:55
Speaker 2: people clutch their pearls over the Iran Contra affair with LTRA.
4:00
Speaker 3: There's no final finished product that no one came out
4:03
Speaker 3: with Bobby Kennedy those in culture pretty cool, huh. They
4:06
Speaker 3: never spiked the football on it as far as American
4:10
Speaker 3: scandals go. At least we are trying to free some
4:11
Speaker 3: hostages this time.
4:13
Speaker 2: Yeah, at least there was some good.
4:16
Speaker 3: It's not even usually slightly noble.
4:19
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.
4:20
Speaker 3: We need to kill this dictator because sugar futures are
4:23
Speaker 3: fucked up right now.
4:25
Speaker 2: As the name implies, it's two different foreign policy matters
4:30
Speaker 2: coming together. Iran and the Contras are not related. They're
4:35
Speaker 2: only related in that we needed something out of both
4:39
Speaker 2: of them, and we just did this mashup of government
4:44
Speaker 2: abuse to make it happen.
4:47
Speaker 3: Yes, there are strange bedfellows for this play, this affair.
4:51
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're going to see that a lot in this,
4:54
Speaker 2: especially when we get into Israel agreeing to be the
4:57
Speaker 2: one to sell arms to Iran. Don't think that would
5:00
Speaker 2: happen today. Maybe it would. I'm giving his real a
5:04
Speaker 2: little too much credit.
5:05
Speaker 3: I think it's not like that isn't exactly our move
5:08
Speaker 3: of Hey, you guys want these weapons, and then it's
5:10
Speaker 3: like we wait thirty years until that becomes the weapon
5:13
Speaker 3: version of like a Motorola sidekick and we come in
5:16
Speaker 3: with an iPhone fourteen pro and we go, hey, what's
5:19
Speaker 3: that oil doing? We got to get that out of there.
5:22
Speaker 2: Yeah, even with this, we're going to get to a
5:25
Speaker 2: point where publicly we're saying Iran is the enemy and
5:29
Speaker 2: we are not going to sell arms to Iran, and
5:31
Speaker 2: behind the scenes that's exactly what we're trying to do
5:34
Speaker 2: at the highest levels of government. It's just like blatant
5:38
Speaker 2: propaganda and lying to the public.
5:42
Speaker 3: Did you see the net and Yahoo speech today? A
5:44
Speaker 3: lot of Iran talk.
5:45
Speaker 2: I did not watch it. I had to record. I
5:49
Speaker 2: kind of regret not watching it.
5:51
Speaker 3: Full disclosure. I watched about a third of it, half
5:53
Speaker 3: paying attention. But it was like this guy was jacking
5:55
Speaker 3: off to going to war with Iran. It was pretty hardcore.
5:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, and no, we're not going to go to war
6:02
Speaker 2: with the Iran.
6:03
Speaker 3: We're running out of places to go to war. At them.
6:06
Speaker 3: You know this. What are we going to do? Go
6:07
Speaker 3: settle an Inuit tribe in Antarctica and then hyper accelerate
6:11
Speaker 3: their cultural development so that we can come and decide
6:14
Speaker 3: that it's controversial to ours. There's like ten twelve good
6:16
Speaker 3: targets left.
6:17
Speaker 2: Yeah, and there's also the project for a New American
6:21
Speaker 2: Century thing, where we were supposed to take out all
6:24
Speaker 2: these specific targets or at least go to war with them.
6:27
Speaker 2: And I think Iran and China are the last two.
6:30
Speaker 3: Everything is so interconnected with China and iron it it
6:33
Speaker 3: just seems so goddamn inconvenient to go to war with them.
6:35
Speaker 3: It's hard to imagine it happening, but peep are really
6:38
Speaker 3: questioning important.
6:39
Speaker 2: Yeah. I would appreciate if we didn't. It feels like
6:43
Speaker 2: that would be perilous, but I'm sure we'll find out.
6:46
Speaker 2: So Yeah. We also haven't done any Watergate episodes, which
6:50
Speaker 2: is weird because this has.
6:51
Speaker 3: Never been a hacked conspiracy show. This has been about
6:54
Speaker 3: the passion, thumbtacks and fucking post it notes with yarn
6:58
Speaker 3: on your bedroom walls. Conspiracy the show.
7:00
Speaker 2: Baby goddamn right. And I think with both of these,
7:05
Speaker 2: Watergate and the Iran contra scandal. The actual details of
7:10
Speaker 2: it are kind of boring in a lot of spots.
7:13
Speaker 3: Yeah, very bureaucratic.
7:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, and maybe that's why we haven't covered Watergate. There's
7:18
Speaker 2: at least more to this, and it does get pretty
7:21
Speaker 2: fucking wacky in spots.
7:24
Speaker 3: I think the funnest Watergate fact is they got a
7:26
Speaker 3: lot of the money from this leftovers lush front from
7:28
Speaker 3: the Milk Council, and they call it the milk money.
7:30
Speaker 2: Oh that's great. Yeah, I've never looked into Watergate that much.
7:34
Speaker 3: Rick Pearlstein Nixon Land is a fucking great Nixon Watergate book,
7:39
Speaker 3: his whole series, and he goes from the very Goldwater
7:41
Speaker 3: all the way up through Reagan, just chronicling conservatism in
7:44
Speaker 3: America from the pretty objective point of view. I guess
7:47
Speaker 3: you're not particularly partisan perspective. And it's yeah, just really
7:51
Speaker 3: good books. They're like fucking beach reads, like novels. The
7:54
Speaker 3: Roger Stone is a great character in the novel Get
7:56
Speaker 3: Out of Town.
7:57
Speaker 2: You know, yeah, yeah, I'll check that out. So the
8:00
Speaker 2: two initiatives that were at play here, he's selling of
8:05
Speaker 2: arms to Iran in exchange for the release of American
8:09
Speaker 2: hostages held by Iranian allies in Lebanon. That's number one
8:15
Speaker 2: and two the Contra half support for the Contras in
8:18
Speaker 2: the fight against the communist Sandinista government in Nicaragua, which
8:24
Speaker 2: is also the name of an album.
8:26
Speaker 3: By the Clash Great Album.
8:28
Speaker 2: It's fine Sandinista, all right, it's long.
8:31
Speaker 3: There's a great album in there, in the triple album.
8:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the thing. It's a triple album, which what
8:36
Speaker 2: am I made? A free time.
8:37
Speaker 3: It's got like ten amazing songs on it, so that's fine.
8:41
Speaker 2: Worth noting that by the time the scandal part of
8:43
Speaker 2: this happens, Congress had already cut off funding to the Contras,
8:48
Speaker 2: so Reagan and his people were trying to side step
8:50
Speaker 2: that lack of funding, which it was a scandal. Then
8:55
Speaker 2: now we just have a budget that is that it's
8:58
Speaker 2: just knowledge that we have this black ops budget where
9:01
Speaker 2: everyone in government is like, oh, oh't no, oh, I
9:04
Speaker 2: don't know what we're doing with that money.
9:06
Speaker 3: I'm sure Boeing is putting those seventeen trillion dollars to
9:10
Speaker 3: excellent use.
9:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. But at this time, I guess we still
9:15
Speaker 2: cared about if Congress signed off on what we spend
9:19
Speaker 2: taxpayer money on. But also this wasn't taxpayer money. Eventually
9:22
Speaker 2: it was just like crack cocaine sales.
9:25
Speaker 3: It's been interesting watching the American political process lose its
9:29
Speaker 3: own respect for its civic traditions. And shit, we're just
9:32
Speaker 3: slowly realizing this is just a power sharing agreement made
9:36
Speaker 3: up by farmers three hundred years ago, and we can
9:38
Speaker 3: kind of make it say whatever we wanted.
9:41
Speaker 2: Yeah, Reagan and as people, they're trying to sidestep Congress
9:45
Speaker 2: not funding their hopes and dreams. CIA always gets name
9:49
Speaker 2: checked in this, and for good reason. They're planting mines
9:52
Speaker 2: and selling cracking Los Angeles things.
9:54
Speaker 3: Like.
9:54
Speaker 2: What I didn't realize until I really dug into it
9:57
Speaker 2: is how pivotal the National Secure Council was. And I
10:02
Speaker 2: think that's because I didn't know what The National Security
10:06
Speaker 2: Council was. Vastly underrated government department as it turns out.
10:11
Speaker 3: But the CIA is coke their cab. You know, they're
10:14
Speaker 3: kind of different. They're going for a hip or angle.
10:17
Speaker 2: Yeah, I remember there was a period in history where
10:21
Speaker 2: the NSA was just a rumor and it was finally
10:25
Speaker 2: found out like twenty years after it was launched.
10:28
Speaker 3: Just Adam like flexing his old head status. Like, man,
10:32
Speaker 3: I've been asking questions since the NSA was just a
10:34
Speaker 3: fucking rumor on BBS boards. Dog, you don't know shit.
10:37
Speaker 2: I think it was revealed before I was born, but
10:39
Speaker 2: not long before. I think it was sometime in the seventies,
10:42
Speaker 2: but the National Security Council it was introduced with the
10:46
Speaker 2: same act that Truman signed the CIA into law with
10:51
Speaker 2: in nineteen forty seven, the National Security Act. But I
10:55
Speaker 2: guess over the years they have developed into basically, at
10:59
Speaker 2: least by the time ray and was in office, just
11:01
Speaker 2: sort of the President's covert operations department in that they
11:07
Speaker 2: weren't under the same kind of oversight the CIA was.
11:10
Speaker 2: So if the President needed CIA type shit done that
11:14
Speaker 2: the CIA couldn't do, the National Security Council just did it,
11:18
Speaker 2: Which why not just let CIA do it? At that point?
11:21
Speaker 2: What the fuck?
11:22
Speaker 3: It's so funny living in military industrial complex lands where
11:26
Speaker 3: we have three cias that don't talk to each other
11:29
Speaker 3: about anything, so they have no synergistic benefit from coexisting
11:33
Speaker 3: with each other. They're just bumping into one another and
11:36
Speaker 3: fucking shit up.
11:37
Speaker 2: And yeah, I think that would be an interesting series
11:40
Speaker 2: of episodes, is doing one about each intelligence letter agency? Yeah,
11:47
Speaker 2: because we have I think sixteen or seventeen in this country.
11:50
Speaker 3: Yes, sometimes you'll hear people be sneaky and they'll be like, well,
11:53
Speaker 3: only two out of our twenty six intelligence agencies that
11:57
Speaker 3: actually confirmed those early findings. You find out it's like
12:00
Speaker 3: we had the fucking Coastguard didn't have an opinion about
12:03
Speaker 3: the goddamn UFO they saw over in New Mexico. There's
12:06
Speaker 3: no water.
12:07
Speaker 2: One of the things we'll link to is Brown University
12:10
Speaker 2: has a hold no relation.
12:13
Speaker 3: By the way, I thought you were starting your own
12:15
Speaker 3: Jordan Peterson self Betterment School, the motivational videos every day
12:19
Speaker 3: from ATB.
12:20
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're fighting it out in court over the name.
12:23
Speaker 2: But in the meantime they have one of the better
12:25
Speaker 2: resources out there for information about the Iran contra affair.
12:30
Speaker 2: They have really good long overview and then it's broken
12:35
Speaker 2: down into separate sections that go into more detail. Highly recommended.
12:38
Speaker 2: We'll link to it for all the contraheads exactly. One
12:42
Speaker 2: of the key figures in the Iran contra affair, Oliver North.
12:45
Speaker 2: He was working for the National Security Council on loan
12:48
Speaker 2: from the Marines when he committed all of the acts
12:52
Speaker 2: that he ends up committing during the course of this
12:55
Speaker 2: that would eventually get him sentenced to a lifetime of
13:00
Speaker 2: being a minor television celebrity. That was kind of the
13:03
Speaker 2: only fallout for him, at.
13:05
Speaker 3: Least in prison, you get in shade, you.
13:07
Speaker 2: Know, yeah, exactly. So a little background about the United
13:12
Speaker 2: States in Nicaragua. This is where the contrasts come in
13:15
Speaker 2: to play. We, if you can believe it, have always
13:18
Speaker 2: been a little interested in political affairs in Nicaragua because
13:23
Speaker 2: we don't want them to be communists or socialists. It's
13:27
Speaker 2: our entire policy in Latin American countries and has been
13:32
Speaker 2: forever still is. As early as nineteen twelve, the United
13:36
Speaker 2: States was putting down rebellions in Nicaragua to keep ourt
13:41
Speaker 2: chosen leaders in power.
13:43
Speaker 3: Nineteen twelve, that's kind of crazy.
13:46
Speaker 2: Yeah, it goes way the fuck Back in nineteen thirty six,
13:50
Speaker 2: a guy we trained, Nicaragua National Guard leader Samosa Garcia,
13:55
Speaker 2: took over the government by force.
13:58
Speaker 3: He was a horrible war lord, but an excellent girl
14:02
Speaker 3: scout cookie.
14:04
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, for sure, somosas.
14:06
Speaker 3: That's a tasty treet the toga nut.
14:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, real good. And even though this show of force
14:12
Speaker 2: included killing then leader of the country Augusto Caesar Sandino.
14:18
Speaker 2: The US didn't care because we wanted the guy we
14:21
Speaker 2: trained to be in office.
14:23
Speaker 3: Let my kid play coach, it's the last standing. Put
14:26
Speaker 3: my kid in. My kid doesn't play yet.
14:29
Speaker 2: That murder marked the beginning of what's called the Samosa
14:32
Speaker 2: Dynasty that would rule for the next forty three years.
14:36
Speaker 3: And would later be adapted into a hit Netflix series.
14:40
Speaker 2: Oh, I was going to say, my favorite Indian restaurant
14:43
Speaker 2: like that? Also be a fucks.
14:45
Speaker 3: Ever been an Indian restaurant based on a Netflix original
14:48
Speaker 3: series based on the events of a crime family in
14:50
Speaker 3: South America?
14:52
Speaker 2: Don't think so? It's right. So in nineteen sixty one,
14:56
Speaker 2: the Sandinista National Liberation Front FSL and named after Sandino,
15:01
Speaker 2: formed in opposition to the Samosa dynasty. So that becomes
15:05
Speaker 2: a big conflict. Fast forward to nineteen seventy four. Sandinista's
15:09
Speaker 2: kidnap a bunch of Nicaraguan elites at a Christmas party.
15:13
Speaker 2: That's cool, and the Samosa regime and led by Samosa
15:19
Speaker 2: Garcia's son Anastasio Simosa Debail, responded with a bunch of
15:24
Speaker 2: brutal human rights violations as was the norm of the day,
15:29
Speaker 2: and that put the US in a tough spot because
15:31
Speaker 2: we wanted to pretend we cared about human rights, but
15:34
Speaker 2: we also didn't want Latin American countries to fall into
15:38
Speaker 2: the hands of the Kami's.
15:40
Speaker 3: We need to get a picture of me posing with
15:42
Speaker 3: one of those kids with the big bellies.
15:45
Speaker 2: So when Jimmy Carter took office, he cut all aid
15:50
Speaker 2: to the Nicaraguan government like a real pussy until they
15:53
Speaker 2: could improve the human rights situation. This led the Samosa
15:57
Speaker 2: regime to pull back on their attacks, and then Theistas
16:00
Speaker 2: were like, cool, time to start our attacks again, and
16:04
Speaker 2: that shit worked. By nineteen seventy nine, a Sandinista uprising
16:09
Speaker 2: led to them taking full control of the government, at
16:13
Speaker 2: which point they started doing all sorts of shit America loves,
16:17
Speaker 2: like expropriating land from rich business owners, nationalizing banks and resources,
16:25
Speaker 2: things of the like.
16:26
Speaker 3: I love that Uncle Sam is sitting at the Lincoln
16:28
Speaker 3: Monument and he just cocks his ear and he's like,
16:30
Speaker 3: what's that. I think there's somebody sharing in South America.
16:34
Speaker 2: That is exactly how it works. Though, my eagle we
16:38
Speaker 2: fly tonight. We talk about it being a Reagan thing,
16:42
Speaker 2: but look at what happened when Venezuela elected Hugo Chavez.
16:48
Speaker 2: We tried to topple that government immediately, and the people
16:53
Speaker 2: of Venezuela were so upset about it. We just let
16:56
Speaker 2: him have the country back. We apprehended him, flew him away,
17:01
Speaker 2: and it was such an unpopular move in that country.
17:05
Speaker 2: We were like, fine, have your democratically elected president.
17:09
Speaker 3: There's your fucking Hugo Shavez pussy.
17:13
Speaker 2: Oh gee, well, why don't you marry him if you
17:16
Speaker 2: love him so much? But that happened.
17:19
Speaker 3: I'm not trying to get into political theory, but you
17:21
Speaker 3: have to wonder at some point, are they just afraid
17:23
Speaker 3: that it's gonna work somewhere and then people will be like,
17:26
Speaker 3: oh shit, Venezuela suddenly number eight in education. Yeah.
17:30
Speaker 2: I think that's exactly what they're worried about, because there's
17:32
Speaker 2: so many people here that have so much money they
17:35
Speaker 2: could be sharing.
17:36
Speaker 3: They could be sharing it with like thirty eight boy dudes.
17:40
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, that's kind of how it works.
17:43
Speaker 3: Yeah, you can share them, share with us. It will
17:45
Speaker 3: share real good. I love sharing. Nice. Mineral rights. You
17:49
Speaker 3: go over there, you think you get rid of those?
17:52
Speaker 3: What are you doing with your mineral rights? Nothing did
17:55
Speaker 3: you even know you had mineral rights before I told
17:56
Speaker 3: you you had mineral rights.
17:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're just making country signed nineteen sixties lotown contracts, died.
18:05
Speaker 3: In mind with the don king of like fucking farmland
18:09
Speaker 3: in Brazil.
18:10
Speaker 2: Yeah. Like actually, if you find any other minds, we
18:13
Speaker 2: get those two. Like we own all those rights. Is
18:17
Speaker 2: right in the name of keeping the Sandinistas on our side,
18:20
Speaker 2: Jimmy Carter immediately sent them ninety nine million dollars in aid,
18:25
Speaker 2: and that did not work because.
18:28
Speaker 3: If you send one hundred million, then you have to
18:30
Speaker 3: report it on your taxes.
18:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, that's just a banking thing. The Sandinistas wanted
18:37
Speaker 2: diplomatic relations with Russia and they got it. They signed
18:43
Speaker 2: all sorts of trade agreements and cultural agreements. They started
18:48
Speaker 2: getting weapons by way of Cuba, and so we were
18:51
Speaker 2: not happy about this. And there's always an opposition party
18:55
Speaker 2: in a situation like this, and in this case, two
18:59
Speaker 2: men name Jose Cardinal and Enrique Bermudez founded what would
19:04
Speaker 2: eventually become the Nicaraguan Democratic Force aka the Contras. That's
19:10
Speaker 2: one of the other misconceptions I think about Venezuela is
19:14
Speaker 2: we've done such a good job spinning that story the
19:19
Speaker 2: point that people don't realize the opposition party there is
19:23
Speaker 2: the party that we favor and the party that was
19:27
Speaker 2: in power for years and years and years. Hugo Chavez
19:30
Speaker 2: is the first non white person to be elected president
19:35
Speaker 2: of Venezuela, which is insane.
19:37
Speaker 3: That is weird.
19:39
Speaker 2: Before that, tell me if this sounds familiar, there were
19:42
Speaker 2: two parties that were mostly aligned. They had some minor disagreements,
19:47
Speaker 2: and they just went back and forth ruling the nation
19:50
Speaker 2: for decades and decades and decades, always rich white dudes.
19:54
Speaker 2: That's the opposition party in Venezuela. Now, that's who we
19:58
Speaker 2: want to bring back. And if you look into it,
20:02
Speaker 2: they also drove the country to the point that people
20:04
Speaker 2: were starving and rioting in the streets over it. So
20:08
Speaker 2: their only advantage is that they're more beholden to us
20:12
Speaker 2: business interests. But we paint it like, oh, Maduro and
20:15
Speaker 2: Chavez are dictators and that's why this opposition party exists.
20:19
Speaker 3: No, but it's like literally just these dudes will play ball.
20:22
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, Oh, don't get me started on Venezuela or
20:26
Speaker 2: John Crasinski.
20:27
Speaker 3: Mariah Carey. In Venezuela is the things that move at him.
20:31
Speaker 2: So the Contra's form, they find a lot of support
20:35
Speaker 2: among locals who are disenfranchised by Sandinista policies, which is
20:40
Speaker 2: going to be anyone they took land from, anyone who
20:42
Speaker 2: lost jobs when they nationalized resources, anyone who lost money
20:46
Speaker 2: over that. Probably a lot of countries aligned with them,
20:50
Speaker 2: Argentina being the first, but once it became clear that
20:54
Speaker 2: they weren't going to give up on their Soviet love
20:57
Speaker 2: and ways, harder did authorize the CIA to support rebel
21:02
Speaker 2: forces in Nicaragua, but only in ways that didn't involve
21:06
Speaker 2: armed action. So propaganda mostly interesting.
21:10
Speaker 3: What was the propaganda campaign's leg.
21:12
Speaker 2: I'm not sure. I feel like that could probably be
21:16
Speaker 2: its own bus episode of all this, because we're going
21:20
Speaker 2: to talk in one second about how the Reagan administration
21:25
Speaker 2: handled propaganda surrounding Nicaragua. But first we got to talk
21:29
Speaker 2: about the CIA finessing Reagan into office by way of
21:34
Speaker 2: definitely not brokering a deal for hostages to be released
21:39
Speaker 2: if Reagan got elected.
21:41
Speaker 3: This is a great one. Were you on that episode
21:44
Speaker 3: if I wasn't unfamiliar with it.
21:46
Speaker 2: Yeah, we did an episode recently called The October Surprise,
21:49
Speaker 2: and that is about a famed incident where it's alleged
21:54
Speaker 2: Reagan's election team broke her to deal with Iran, who
21:59
Speaker 2: was keeping a mayor and hostages at the time. They
22:02
Speaker 2: brokeer this deal that basically was if you keep those
22:06
Speaker 2: hostages and don't release them, aka, don't give Jimmy Carter
22:11
Speaker 2: the publicity win of releasing these hostages, because Carter had
22:15
Speaker 2: a deal in place that was really close to being
22:18
Speaker 2: done and then they just pulled out. And the speculation
22:22
Speaker 2: is that Reagan's team went to them and was like, hey,
22:25
Speaker 2: if you just wait until Reagan gets elected, you'll get
22:28
Speaker 2: a better deal to release the hostages. Those hostages were
22:31
Speaker 2: released five minutes after Reagan was inaugurated, five minutes and
22:37
Speaker 2: people are like, did it happen though? Was that a
22:39
Speaker 2: real thing?
22:40
Speaker 3: Fuck?
22:41
Speaker 2: And of course it was a real thing.
22:42
Speaker 3: So the TV monkey man will give more money if
22:45
Speaker 3: we release.
22:46
Speaker 2: Late Okay, yeah, yeah. Reagan ends up getting elected, the
22:51
Speaker 2: former director of the CIA is his running mate at
22:55
Speaker 2: a time when the government is cracking down on the CIA,
22:58
Speaker 2: and then Reagan almost gets assassinated. All coincidences in like
23:04
Speaker 2: very mk ultra fashion coincidence. Reagan, he gets in office
23:08
Speaker 2: and we take a hard pivot on Nicaragua, and we
23:13
Speaker 2: decide that since they're helping with arming rebels in El Salvador,
23:17
Speaker 2: they're not going to change their mind about Russia. Fuck it.
23:20
Speaker 2: We want that government toppled, which was never the stated goal,
23:25
Speaker 2: but it becomes the goal eventually, but not at first.
23:29
Speaker 3: Taylor Rummy I said top of it.
23:32
Speaker 2: In December eighty one, Reagan signs in order allowing the
23:34
Speaker 2: CIA to support the Contras in a more military way,
23:38
Speaker 2: support meaning weapons and training, equipment, money, things like that.
23:43
Speaker 2: And it's said that this is the point where we
23:46
Speaker 2: shifted into topple the government mode, because at first we
23:49
Speaker 2: were just sort of doing this to supply arms to
23:53
Speaker 2: the Contras and see what would happen. But now we're
23:56
Speaker 2: all in, We're going to give you arms, and we're
23:58
Speaker 2: going to help you topple this fucking government.
24:00
Speaker 3: At first, we were just feeding the bugs so it
24:02
Speaker 3: could fight the other bugs, but now we have introduced
24:05
Speaker 3: more bugs.
24:06
Speaker 2: Interesting detail here, We just mentioned propaganda, even though the
24:11
Speaker 2: government always tells us the truth in all situations and
24:15
Speaker 2: conspiracy theories aren't real. This is the point in history
24:18
Speaker 2: when the United States set up its first ever peace
24:22
Speaker 2: time Propaganda Department. In January eighty three, Reagan signed a
24:27
Speaker 2: National Security Decision Directive and I don't think I need
24:30
Speaker 2: to explain what that is, titled Management of Public Diplomacy
24:35
Speaker 2: relative to National Security. This created a special group within
24:39
Speaker 2: the National Security Council that was meant to quote coordinate
24:43
Speaker 2: public diplomacy campaigns end quote around what we were doing
24:49
Speaker 2: in Nicaragua.
24:51
Speaker 3: I'm pretty good spin taking propaganda and getting public diplomacy
24:55
Speaker 3: campaigns like this. Good copywriting.
24:59
Speaker 2: Yeah, I wonder how many hours they sat in a
25:02
Speaker 2: room just tossing out words until they landed on that.
25:05
Speaker 2: Because that is good. That's really good.
25:07
Speaker 3: No, No, it's not public the diplomacy campaigns. It's freedom messages, movements. Man.
25:15
Speaker 2: Fuck So on my birthday in nineteen eighty five, and
25:19
Speaker 2: for my birthday, Oliver North sent a fourteen page memo
25:23
Speaker 2: to nationalists that.
25:24
Speaker 3: Adam doesn't give the day because he as soon as
25:26
Speaker 3: we all know his birthday, of course.
25:27
Speaker 2: Yeah. He sends his memo to National Security Advisor Robert
25:31
Speaker 2: McFarlane that listed more than eighty publicity stunts and things
25:36
Speaker 2: of the like that the CIA and the National Security
25:40
Speaker 2: Council had pulled off in Nicaragua in the run up
25:43
Speaker 2: to various votes involving the contrast along with propaganda, Reagan administration,
25:50
Speaker 2: in his ilk would strategically release information too or declassified
25:56
Speaker 2: documents for journalists who had favorable opinions of the administration
26:01
Speaker 2: and what they were doing in Nicaragua. But again, this
26:05
Speaker 2: is all just conspiracy theory because the government actually never
26:09
Speaker 2: lies to us.
26:10
Speaker 3: We're just talking about how access is such a huge
26:13
Speaker 3: chip the government has to play, because if you're in
26:15
Speaker 3: the business of breaking news and you want to get
26:17
Speaker 3: straight from the tap, maybe you have to play ball
26:19
Speaker 3: a little bit.
26:20
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I still don't understand how people don't see
26:24
Speaker 2: the conflict there. You're supposed to be our last line
26:28
Speaker 2: of defense against the government lying to us. That's what
26:31
Speaker 2: the media in a society that fucking works is supposed
26:35
Speaker 2: to do, and they're supposed to be free to do that. Meanwhile,
26:38
Speaker 2: I mentioned on a recent episode, I mentioned it all
26:41
Speaker 2: the time. United States fifty fifth on the Press Freedom Index.
26:47
Speaker 2: We are behind some absolute fucking nightmares of a country
26:52
Speaker 2: where they are way more lenient in what you can
26:55
Speaker 2: report on. That's not nothing.
26:58
Speaker 3: I found out myself last night that you can't write
27:00
Speaker 3: a bird scooter down the hill through the grass in
27:02
Speaker 3: the public park at five in the morning in this
27:04
Speaker 3: country anymore.
27:06
Speaker 2: Well, that's fucked up.
27:08
Speaker 3: Shame, That is crazy. That is like finding that our
27:10
Speaker 3: national debt bond rating is behind Switzerland and shit, we're
27:14
Speaker 3: losing to Switzerland.
27:14
Speaker 2: Guys, Come on, yeah, yeah, we're in a bad way.
27:17
Speaker 3: What the fuck? How do we blow the Breton Woods conference?
27:20
Speaker 3: We had the lead of the century, literally.
27:23
Speaker 2: So despite all of the Reagan Administration's efforts, stories about
27:28
Speaker 2: our excursions in Nicaragua did start making their way to
27:32
Speaker 2: the American media. In late nineteen eighty two, Newsweek published
27:36
Speaker 2: a story called America's Secret War Nicaragua that was about
27:41
Speaker 2: everything that title implies, and that was in response to
27:44
Speaker 2: them finding out that the CIA had taken an even
27:47
Speaker 2: more active role in training and funding the Contras and
27:51
Speaker 2: people at home. Boy, does that story take a turn.
27:55
Speaker 2: Check out the FX original series Snowfall for more details
28:00
Speaker 2: about that. What I mean is the CIA eventually starts
28:02
Speaker 2: selling crack to fund all this shit.
28:05
Speaker 3: I always loved that they were like the CIA's version
28:07
Speaker 3: of When I was broke and I lived in the
28:09
Speaker 3: crackhouse with my thlug buddies and we all needed to
28:11
Speaker 3: pack of cigarettes to share for the day. We'd go
28:13
Speaker 3: to the fucking couch behind my room and we would
28:16
Speaker 3: dig through the cushions and we could find five dollars
28:18
Speaker 3: to go get a pack of fucking for two to
28:20
Speaker 3: one hundreds. When the CIA is like, shit, we just
28:23
Speaker 3: need seven thousand more ak forty seven, just let's just
28:26
Speaker 3: make some crack. We'll flip it quick in and out.
28:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's exactly like that. And I didn't put it
28:33
Speaker 2: in the notes, but if you read any of the
28:37
Speaker 2: articles that we linked to, even this Iran contrast stuff,
28:42
Speaker 2: it's such a small amount of the money that they
28:45
Speaker 2: actually were able to raise to do this. They were
28:48
Speaker 2: getting it from private donors. That's a big part of it.
28:50
Speaker 2: But the most scandalous part of this, which we'll talk
28:53
Speaker 2: about later, which is the diversion scheme, it's not that
28:57
Speaker 2: much money. It's a small amount of money. It was
28:59
Speaker 2: just the shadiest thing they did to get money that
29:02
Speaker 2: will actually admit to in the public, like crack thing
29:06
Speaker 2: we're never gonna admit to as a government. But the
29:09
Speaker 2: diversion scheme we know happened here is where I'm going
29:13
Speaker 2: to put the conspiracy had on. I mean, it's been
29:17
Speaker 2: on this whole time. It's always on for me, the
29:19
Speaker 2: Boland amendments.
29:22
Speaker 3: You know, some guy in his mother's basement right now.
29:24
Speaker 2: I just meant, throughout the entirety of the Iran contra affair,
29:30
Speaker 2: Congress was seemingly trying to stop Reagan and the CIA
29:36
Speaker 2: from toppling the government of Nicaragua through violence. But I
29:41
Speaker 2: also think that might have been a little bit of
29:43
Speaker 2: k fabe and just the government putting on a good
29:47
Speaker 2: show knowing that they were actually fucking unified behind what
29:51
Speaker 2: was happening in Nicaragua. Because for one thing, think about
29:55
Speaker 2: how much support Reagan had. I don't remember what he
29:59
Speaker 2: wanted the first election by, but I remember the second
30:04
Speaker 2: Reagan election. I was eight when it happened, so I'm
30:07
Speaker 2: old enough to have been watching it on TV. Motherfucker
30:10
Speaker 2: won forty nine states, so crazy one California. People are like, oh,
30:16
Speaker 2: a Republican would never win California. Yeah, it can happen,
30:20
Speaker 2: It can happen. Reagan had so much support. I don't
30:24
Speaker 2: think Congress was actually trying to stop this. I think
30:28
Speaker 2: Congress was trying to put in writing that they tried
30:31
Speaker 2: to stop it, but I don't think that was actually
30:33
Speaker 2: the intent.
30:34
Speaker 3: I just get the feeling over the years that one
30:36
Speaker 3: half of the government's job is always to just be
30:38
Speaker 3: the Washington generals for the other half and just roll
30:42
Speaker 3: over and allow them to both fuck up the country
30:44
Speaker 3: and whatever complimentary but opposite direction is advantageous to them.
30:48
Speaker 2: Yeah, we act like the government being so split down
30:53
Speaker 2: party lines makes it hard to get shit done, when
30:56
Speaker 2: it really just makes it so the government can do
30:59
Speaker 2: whatever they want and also not do the shit they
31:01
Speaker 2: don't want to do. Because there's some things we seem
31:04
Speaker 2: to be completely unified on, like immigration, like one side
31:08
Speaker 2: talks about it a little rougher than Israel.
31:10
Speaker 3: There's fucking full room standing ovations throughout the whole. Then
31:14
Speaker 3: Yahoo speech like crazy. I couldn't believe there wasn't one
31:17
Speaker 3: grump doing one of these, you know, like crossing his
31:20
Speaker 3: arms sitting there.
31:21
Speaker 2: Which is another great example of a thing I say
31:23
Speaker 2: all the time. When both sides of the government are
31:26
Speaker 2: unified on something, fucking watch out that's bad times behind
31:30
Speaker 2: the scenes, Like yeah, because that's so rare.
31:34
Speaker 3: We turned like mountain dew and fucking Budweiser. We turned
31:38
Speaker 3: beverages into cultural fucking dividing lines in the sand.
31:42
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, in December nineteen eighty two, Congress passed the
31:46
Speaker 2: first Boland Amendment, which prohibited using Congressional funds for the
31:51
Speaker 2: purpose of overthrowing the government of Nicaragua or inciting a
31:55
Speaker 2: war between Nicaragua and Honduras, Which how fucking specific is that, man?
32:00
Speaker 2: And the thing is, for one, the Reagan administration had
32:03
Speaker 2: already committed to doing this, whether they had to sidestep
32:07
Speaker 2: Congress or not.
32:08
Speaker 3: As we made the crack already, what are we going
32:11
Speaker 3: to smoke it ourselves? I mean, come on now, it's
32:13
Speaker 3: just yeah, some of it an idea? What you have
32:16
Speaker 3: any idea? What the half life of crack is? I don't.
32:18
Speaker 3: Let's fucking move.
32:20
Speaker 2: Yeah, we might lay some cigarettes with it, see what
32:22
Speaker 2: effects it has on the battlefield, But we're not going
32:24
Speaker 2: to smoke at all.
32:27
Speaker 3: Hw ripping the crack laced cigarette and see.
32:30
Speaker 2: The thing that makes me feel like the Bowl and
32:32
Speaker 2: Amendment was just Congress putting on a show for the people.
32:37
Speaker 2: Is they left this loophole in place that the US
32:42
Speaker 2: could still support the contras. We just either one had
32:46
Speaker 2: to do it for different reasons like humanitarian aid, or
32:50
Speaker 2: we could do it by soliciting funds from third parties
32:54
Speaker 2: in the private sector. And boy does that story take
32:58
Speaker 2: a turn. People listening at home check out the twenty
33:01
Speaker 2: fourteen Jeremy Renner film Killed a Messenger for more details.
33:05
Speaker 2: It's about the CIA selling crack in Los Angeles. Anyway,
33:09
Speaker 2: because of that loophole, the Bowl and Amendment did nothing
33:13
Speaker 2: to stop the US from funding Contras, and I think
33:16
Speaker 2: that part was intentional. It seems like, oh no.
33:19
Speaker 3: Our amendment didn't work. I guess we have to go
33:22
Speaker 3: back to not caring.
33:23
Speaker 2: Even when they amend it again, they somehow leave that
33:27
Speaker 2: loophole in. What's the point.
33:29
Speaker 3: We totally wanted it to work.
33:32
Speaker 2: So the CIA, they definitely helped to arm and train
33:35
Speaker 2: the Contras, but they were also active participants in a
33:38
Speaker 2: lot of what happened, including two separate incidents on January
33:42
Speaker 2: seventh and February twenty ninth, nineteen eighty four, where CIA
33:46
Speaker 2: planted mines destroyed several ships in Nicaraguan Harbor's. Not only
33:52
Speaker 2: did news of that make it to the press, but
33:54
Speaker 2: the Wall Street Journal went so far as to name
33:57
Speaker 2: Oliver North as the person who had knowledge of that
34:01
Speaker 2: and encouraged that kind of shit in Nicaragua. And this
34:05
Speaker 2: is at a time when we're supposed to not even
34:07
Speaker 2: be funding the Contras in any public way.
34:10
Speaker 3: They must have got those AK forty sevens from a friend.
34:13
Speaker 3: I don't know, I was literally in my room.
34:17
Speaker 2: What's crazy is they amend the Bowl and Amendment again.
34:21
Speaker 2: They amend it in response to this story making it
34:25
Speaker 2: out to the press. They amend it again. But not
34:28
Speaker 2: only do they leave that same loophole in place where
34:31
Speaker 2: you can still solicit funds from third parties and private donors,
34:35
Speaker 2: but now they add another one that says, also, you
34:39
Speaker 2: can do any of this shit if you just go
34:41
Speaker 2: through the National Security Council, which deal they were already
34:45
Speaker 2: doing it through the National Security Council. So, unless I'm
34:47
Speaker 2: reading something incorrect, it seems like Congress was actually just
34:52
Speaker 2: writing these bills in a way that gave a path
34:56
Speaker 2: for funding Contras without making it look like an actual
35:01
Speaker 2: government effort.
35:02
Speaker 3: There are two patsy bills to land on your desired
35:05
Speaker 3: conclusion of legalizing the crime we were committing already.
35:09
Speaker 2: Yeah, and to make it seem like there's some dissent
35:12
Speaker 2: among the two sides.
35:13
Speaker 3: Yeah, so you can go on fucking whatever the TV
35:16
Speaker 3: show is and show a guy in the red ty
35:17
Speaker 3: talk and a guy in the blue ty talking and
35:19
Speaker 3: go well. There was after much debate, we decided yeah.
35:22
Speaker 2: And I also feel like they were trying to set
35:25
Speaker 2: some people up throughout the course of this. We're going
35:27
Speaker 2: to talk about some flights later where I feel like
35:31
Speaker 2: they were trying to get Portugal in trouble. But we'll
35:34
Speaker 2: get there. So the Wall Street Journal was onto something
35:38
Speaker 2: when they reported on Oliver North because he was indeed
35:41
Speaker 2: the guy within the National Security Council who oversaw all
35:44
Speaker 2: of our shady dealings with the contras. He worked alongside
35:48
Speaker 2: a retired Air Force general named Richard Seacord and an
35:52
Speaker 2: Iranian businessman named Albert Hakim, and among their efforts, they
35:57
Speaker 2: built a private airstrip in coast Rica. I don't know
36:00
Speaker 2: if the three of them did it by hand, which
36:03
Speaker 2: maybe I like.
36:04
Speaker 3: To imagine that they did, and then they bunked heads
36:06
Speaker 3: together like the Three Stooges and it was a good time.
36:08
Speaker 2: That's how Jones Doown worked.
36:10
Speaker 3: I just fucking hope that the people that are fucking
36:13
Speaker 3: manipulating the world and destroying people's I hope they're having
36:16
Speaker 3: fun with it, you know too, I have They are
36:18
Speaker 3: out there digging, like, well, it's a groundbreaking for the airstrip.
36:21
Speaker 3: We're gonna move a lot of drugs, fellas. I hope
36:24
Speaker 3: they're enjoying the moments.
36:25
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've had a job I hate. I don't wish
36:28
Speaker 2: that on anyone. I hope everyone's happy in their employment.
36:30
Speaker 3: You know. Dick Cheney's like, when he was walking down
36:32
Speaker 3: the hall and day it's some fucking Democrat guy was
36:34
Speaker 3: coming up, and he wanted to be snarky, so he's like,
36:36
Speaker 3: how you doing, Dick? Could you blow any small countries
36:39
Speaker 3: off the map today? And Dick Cheney just paused, very
36:42
Speaker 3: thiughtfully and said, you know, that's one of the things
36:44
Speaker 3: about this job I really enjoy. And I was like,
36:48
Speaker 3: you know, at least they're funny, you know, at least
36:50
Speaker 3: they're funny.
36:51
Speaker 2: Building this private airstrip worked for a while. But it's
36:54
Speaker 2: also one of the ways the Iran contra affair was
36:57
Speaker 2: exposed because the Sandinista shot one of those planes down
37:01
Speaker 2: and captured the pilot, guy named Eugene sent Fuss.
37:06
Speaker 3: Been a big day in Sandinista town.
37:08
Speaker 2: I bet so. Unfortunately, private donations and proceeds from definitely
37:14
Speaker 2: not selling crack in Los Angeles weren't bringing in enough
37:18
Speaker 2: money to topple the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua. And that's
37:22
Speaker 2: when Oliver North came up with the diversion scheme. This
37:27
Speaker 2: somehow is one of the most explosive revelations in all this,
37:31
Speaker 2: and I think it's because it involves us really just
37:34
Speaker 2: breaking the law like three times at least in the
37:37
Speaker 2: course of one transaction. It's really simple. We're selling arms
37:41
Speaker 2: to Iran by this point, which we're not supposed to
37:44
Speaker 2: be doing, and we're doing that in order to make
37:47
Speaker 2: money to give the Contras. Oliver North's idea is, oh,
37:50
Speaker 2: what if we just way overcharge Iran and that way
37:54
Speaker 2: we can give more money to the Contras. And that's
37:57
Speaker 2: what they did. They sent two shipments of arms to Iran,
38:01
Speaker 2: way inflated the prices and sent money to the Contras
38:07
Speaker 2: as a result, and very helpfully, Oliver North wrote a
38:11
Speaker 2: memo about this and sent it to Reagan and his
38:17
Speaker 2: National security advisor John Poindexter nice name that outlined how
38:22
Speaker 2: the entire scheme worked. Came to be known as the
38:26
Speaker 2: Diversion memo. So we were selling arms to Iran because
38:30
Speaker 2: there's actually a second hostage crisis. In eighty four, the
38:35
Speaker 2: US started publicly talking about in arms embargo on Iran
38:39
Speaker 2: and it was called Operations Staunch.
38:42
Speaker 3: My dream job is naming black op projects, you know,
38:45
Speaker 3: being in the writer's room for DARPA.
38:47
Speaker 2: In response to this crackdown on Iran, a group called
38:50
Speaker 2: Islamic Holy War took more US hostages.
38:54
Speaker 3: What are they all about?
38:55
Speaker 2: I think they were just aligned with Iran. They were allies,
38:59
Speaker 2: if I'm not mistaken. They were based in Lebanon. They
39:02
Speaker 2: were not in Iran, but they were friendly to the
39:05
Speaker 2: Iranian government. At some point American hostages are taken in Lebanon,
39:10
Speaker 2: and what ends up happening is Reagan already knows the
39:14
Speaker 2: value of a good hostage release when it comes to
39:18
Speaker 2: public opinion, so he's hungry to get these hostages released.
39:23
Speaker 2: And Iran, on the other hand, is involved in a
39:26
Speaker 2: war with the Iraq and they need arms, they need weapons.
39:30
Speaker 2: But we're publicly talking about how well we have an
39:34
Speaker 2: embargo on selling arms to Iran, So we're not going
39:36
Speaker 2: to do that. And meanwhile, President Reagan's like, well, i'd
39:40
Speaker 2: like to.
39:41
Speaker 3: It's like it's like a guy that's only got one move.
39:43
Speaker 3: It's like, Reagan, you're going to play a song on
39:45
Speaker 3: the acoustic guitar again, come on, switch it up.
39:49
Speaker 2: And so that's when a Saudi arms dealer named Odd
39:53
Speaker 2: non Koshogi nice mashup of pop culture references in that name,
39:58
Speaker 2: and Iranian businessman who was friendly to the US named
40:02
Speaker 2: Manu cher or Banafar devised a scheme to make those
40:07
Speaker 2: arm sales happen. And at the same time Reagan is
40:11
Speaker 2: telling the press that we're not gonna cowtow to terrorists
40:14
Speaker 2: holding these hostages. These two bring in a third guy,
40:19
Speaker 2: an Israeli man named David Kimchi, to act as a
40:22
Speaker 2: conduit through which Israel would sell the weapons to Iran
40:26
Speaker 2: for US. I E. We don't break that embargo.
40:31
Speaker 3: I was holding it for a friend, Mom. Excuse Yeah,
40:34
Speaker 3: it's real.
40:34
Speaker 2: I'm not touching you energy where it's like, yeah, you're not,
40:38
Speaker 2: but you're doing the same thing. And they met with
40:41
Speaker 2: National Security Advisor Robert McFarlane and discussed these arm sales
40:46
Speaker 2: in exchange for hostages. McFarlane then visited Reagan in his
40:52
Speaker 2: hospital bed. Reagan was recovering from abdominal surgery for some reason,
40:56
Speaker 2: and Chief of staff Donald Reagan was there.
41:00
Speaker 3: Nancy spit too much of my own jiz back into
41:02
Speaker 3: my mouth. I had to have my stomach pumped.
41:06
Speaker 2: And during that meeting, he definitely did not tell Reagan
41:10
Speaker 2: about this arms deal for hostages, except he did obviously.
41:16
Speaker 2: Reagan himself even eventually admitted that this at the very
41:22
Speaker 2: latest is when Reagan found out about this arms deal,
41:27
Speaker 2: which is an important thing because the entire Iran Contra
41:30
Speaker 2: hearings kind of centered around that idea. Did Reagan know?
41:33
Speaker 3: I'm realizing that the Reagan campaign did with the Biden
41:36
Speaker 3: campaign failed to do timing wise, which was hit the
41:39
Speaker 3: sweet spot of dementia where he was highly impressionable, still coachable,
41:44
Speaker 3: at losing memories every day, you know. So it's like
41:48
Speaker 3: every day that passes is like you have a more
41:51
Speaker 3: credible liar on your hand, because maybe he fucking maybe
41:54
Speaker 3: doesn't remember talking about that in the hospital Dad, You
41:56
Speaker 3: know what I mean at this point, Yeah.
41:58
Speaker 2: Because he did several times when asked about this. There
42:02
Speaker 2: were a few times where he was like, I don't
42:03
Speaker 2: even remember meeting with that guy. But I think part
42:06
Speaker 2: of it is because Oliver North sent that memo, and
42:13
Speaker 2: that memo somehow was never destroyed, So that's probably why
42:17
Speaker 2: Reagan had to admit it eventually. So the deal involved
42:22
Speaker 2: Israel selling missiles to Iran, and then what we did
42:25
Speaker 2: is we just sent those same missiles to Israel. So again,
42:29
Speaker 2: I'm not touching you. I'm just what I'm sending. I'm
42:32
Speaker 2: sending missiles to Israel. That's our ally what what.
42:36
Speaker 3: We just keep adding more middleman to the like destruction.
42:39
Speaker 3: It's like, okay, we'll go through the NSC and we'll
42:41
Speaker 3: sond Israel first, and you know, it's like they just like,
42:43
Speaker 3: like how many I can I can bring more fucking
42:46
Speaker 3: deep state gouals into this.
42:49
Speaker 2: And so in this big, long, sprawling story, that's kind
42:53
Speaker 2: of the crux of it. What did Reagan know? Did
42:56
Speaker 2: he know?
42:56
Speaker 1: You know?
42:57
Speaker 2: Of course he fucking knew. Even when we talk about
43:00
Speaker 2: all the committees that investigated this, no one was ever
43:03
Speaker 2: willing to just blatantly say, yeah, Reagan knew, but he knew.
43:07
Speaker 2: It's been said, just not in an official acknowledgment kind
43:11
Speaker 2: of way.
43:12
Speaker 3: He's such a himbo. I could see him totally forgetting.
43:15
Speaker 3: He probably thought of it as like the South America thing,
43:18
Speaker 3: you know, like it wasn't like some specific things. He'd
43:21
Speaker 3: be like, oh, yeah, how are we paying for that?
43:24
Speaker 3: Like I could see him being not that even interested.
43:26
Speaker 3: But yeah, no way, he wasn't on his fucking radar.
43:29
Speaker 2: It's like Nancy handles that I have no idea.
43:31
Speaker 3: Yeah, our astrologer mostly so fucking cool that they had
43:36
Speaker 3: an astrologer.
43:37
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that's so comforting. There were so many alarming
43:40
Speaker 2: things about Reagan. One of my favorites is that one
43:43
Speaker 2: of his actual beliefs, one of his religious beliefs, this
43:47
Speaker 2: was part of his religious beliefs, is that the US
43:51
Speaker 2: was destined for a nuclear war with Russia, but that
43:54
Speaker 2: we were going to survive it, and so it would
43:57
Speaker 2: be fine. I don't know who we is. I don't
43:59
Speaker 2: know if means just the president and his cabinet.
44:02
Speaker 3: And side underneath the mountain, you know, somewhere.
44:05
Speaker 2: Under the Denver airport. So there were two shipments of
44:08
Speaker 2: arms to Iran in nineteen eighty five. Funds from the
44:11
Speaker 2: second were diverted to support the contrast. To hide the
44:15
Speaker 2: money from Congress, a company called Stanford Technology Trading Group
44:20
Speaker 2: International is set up, and they just funneled the money
44:24
Speaker 2: through that. I think there's a word for sending money
44:27
Speaker 2: through a business to make it look legitimate, but I
44:31
Speaker 2: can't think of what that might be.
44:33
Speaker 3: Companies are washing currency, yeah.
44:37
Speaker 2: Like cleaning. Is it cleaning? Do they call it? I
44:40
Speaker 2: don't know, I don't know. It's a big crime. I'm surprised.
44:42
Speaker 2: I can't think of the name.
44:43
Speaker 3: It's almost like a scrubbing process.
44:45
Speaker 2: Yeah, on the tip of my tongue. This company was
44:47
Speaker 2: also referred to as the Enterprise which that's cool, and
44:50
Speaker 2: now they weren't. It would be great if that is
44:53
Speaker 2: actually Enterprise Card. It's just that what they have just
45:00
Speaker 2: listening devices in rental cars across the nation.
45:03
Speaker 3: That was like a little taste of the joy in
45:05
Speaker 3: my heart when I find out that the Bush family
45:07
Speaker 3: literally dealt with Nazi gold like in no uncertain terms whatsoever.
45:12
Speaker 3: Like wow, think to myself on the load.
45:17
Speaker 2: So it's that second arm shipment where things really start
45:21
Speaker 2: going haywire in the Iran contra scandal, because remember we
45:27
Speaker 2: are in the midst of operations Staunch, which is an
45:30
Speaker 2: arms embargo against Iran, and if you're an ally of
45:33
Speaker 2: the United States, and we put something like that in place.
45:36
Speaker 2: One thing you know is that if you violate that,
45:39
Speaker 2: we're gonna fucking violate you, and in like a street
45:43
Speaker 2: than violate kind of way, we will fuck you up
45:46
Speaker 2: if you do that.
45:46
Speaker 3: We do have this like prison bitch relationship with these
45:50
Speaker 3: countries where it's like, we'll protect you unconditionally, but not
45:54
Speaker 3: for your best interest and only completely conditionally.
45:57
Speaker 2: Right, and we're gonna get rich off of it, but hey,
46:00
Speaker 2: you have our protection. And so what happens is this
46:03
Speaker 2: second flight where they're shipping arms to the contrast, it
46:07
Speaker 2: was set to land in Portugal.
46:09
Speaker 3: Nice country, you got here. It'd be a real shame
46:11
Speaker 3: if someone were to introduce democracy.
46:15
Speaker 2: So this plane is due to land in Portugal, and
46:19
Speaker 2: authorities in Portugal are like, all right, what's on the plane,
46:23
Speaker 2: And some fucking knucklehead just straight up tells them, oh,
46:26
Speaker 2: these are arms that are being shipped to Iran. And
46:30
Speaker 2: there's a retired American general on the plane. And so
46:34
Speaker 2: someone in Portugal was familiar enough with American foreign policy
46:38
Speaker 2: to be like, so, you mean this is an American
46:40
Speaker 2: shipment of arms to Iran? And whoever was on the
46:44
Speaker 2: plane was like, well yeah, and Portugal stuck to their
46:50
Speaker 2: guns and were like, no, if we're letting this flight leave,
46:54
Speaker 2: you are giving us some sort of official written proof
47:00
Speaker 2: the American government that they are signing off on us
47:03
Speaker 2: letting an arm shipment to Iran go through our country.
47:07
Speaker 2: We are not trying to get fucking invaded by you
47:09
Speaker 2: six months from now.
47:10
Speaker 3: Fair enough.
47:11
Speaker 2: My favorite part is Oliver North was like, all right, fine,
47:15
Speaker 2: we'll just use one of the CIA's private airlines. They
47:19
Speaker 2: were running a commercial airliner that when they didn't need it.
47:23
Speaker 3: For would Jeffrey Epstein zero wasn't using it.
47:26
Speaker 2: Like exactly And that worked like a charm in this
47:31
Speaker 2: second arms deal.
47:33
Speaker 3: Except shout out to that guy who just worked for
47:37
Speaker 3: the fucking plane company that was like, Oh this yeah, dude,
47:40
Speaker 3: it's fucking crazy. Bro, these are weapons, bro, get this shit?
47:44
Speaker 3: Did you just totally spilled the beans? Much love to
47:46
Speaker 3: that guy.
47:47
Speaker 2: That's why when people bring up the idea that the
47:50
Speaker 2: government was involved in what happened at Jonestown, one of
47:53
Speaker 2: the very, very very valid questions is how did Jim
47:57
Speaker 2: Jones get all those guns and all those drugs from
48:02
Speaker 2: the United States to Guyana? If he didn't have some
48:06
Speaker 2: kind of government cover or help.
48:08
Speaker 3: I want to know how he got all the fucking
48:10
Speaker 3: Coca Cola down there. He's drinking a fucking big glass
48:13
Speaker 3: bottle of coke every fucking video.
48:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, and a lot of people their argument is, oh, well,
48:18
Speaker 2: you could just bribe someone at customs, and it's like, yeah,
48:22
Speaker 2: you're gonna roll the dice on that, hoping that some
48:26
Speaker 2: motherfucker is like, hey, you keep your fifty dollars. I'm
48:29
Speaker 2: about to make my fucking career on this goddamn story.
48:33
Speaker 2: You can't rely on adoint everyone being able to be bribed,
48:38
Speaker 2: and I think this Portugal story proves that because you know,
48:42
Speaker 2: at some point they were like, what if we give
48:44
Speaker 2: you like a million dollars? The guy was like, no,
48:46
Speaker 2: that's not going to cover what it's going to cost
48:48
Speaker 2: when America invades over this in a few months. So yeah, eventually, yeah,
48:55
Speaker 2: we just went through our private CIA airlines.
48:58
Speaker 3: That is hilarious. Someone kind of sort of nobly somewhat
49:02
Speaker 3: stands up to this thing and then they're like, well,
49:05
Speaker 3: I guess we're going to take the PJ.
49:07
Speaker 2: And then ciaair just lands right next to them.
49:10
Speaker 3: The Sammy Hagar solo place.
49:12
Speaker 2: And it gets funnier actually, because that part worked really well,
49:17
Speaker 2: getting the arms to the Contras. It's just that we
49:21
Speaker 2: landed and realized we had delivered the wrong kind of missiles.
49:25
Speaker 2: Like we delivered them like outside, they were not capable
49:28
Speaker 2: of using the.
49:30
Speaker 3: Missiles are USB C Bro, we have USBA mother fuck dude.
49:37
Speaker 2: It had to be something like that.
49:39
Speaker 3: Look at this. It is way too fucking It is
49:41
Speaker 3: like rolling around in the tube. I don't I'm not
49:43
Speaker 3: a fucking missile expert, but I know it's supposed to
49:45
Speaker 3: be snug in the tube. Bro.
49:47
Speaker 2: And so eventually we made nice enough with the Iran
49:51
Speaker 2: that we started going public with our arms deals. And
49:54
Speaker 2: then even then we were diverting money to the Contras
49:57
Speaker 2: behind Congress's back, allegedly. But the story of the Iran
50:01
Speaker 2: arms deal makes it to the press by way of
50:04
Speaker 2: two Lebanese newspapers in November nineteen eighty six, and by
50:09
Speaker 2: December it's all over American media. Reagan went public, gave
50:14
Speaker 2: a bunch of press conferences where he told a bunch
50:16
Speaker 2: of lies about how the US does not condone other
50:20
Speaker 2: countries shipping arms to Iran either, completely forgetting that his
50:25
Speaker 2: own Chief of Staff, Donald Reagan had already admitted publicly
50:29
Speaker 2: that we signed off on Israel sending arms to Iran.
50:33
Speaker 2: Oliver North took to shredding a bunch of documents in
50:37
Speaker 2: November eighty six when the story broke, and somehow just
50:41
Speaker 2: failed to shred the Diversion memo, the most important memo.
50:47
Speaker 3: Until you said that. I was actually kind of getting
50:49
Speaker 3: nostalgic for the Deep State of old hearing this. I
50:52
Speaker 3: feel like I never watched basketball during the Contact era
50:54
Speaker 3: or something like that, because I only got to see
50:57
Speaker 3: this somewhat competent Bush regime, where they've had me competent
51:00
Speaker 3: actor and a somewhat united cadre of spooky individuals behind
51:05
Speaker 3: the scenes pulling the strings. But here it's like you've
51:08
Speaker 3: got a great fucking mouthpiece in Ronald Reagan, one of
51:11
Speaker 3: the best of all time. You've got the King Supreme
51:13
Speaker 3: of the Deep State, George HW. Bush is number two,
51:16
Speaker 3: and then you've got some of the funniest ghules that
51:18
Speaker 3: Republican politics have ever produced in your cabinet. And they
51:21
Speaker 3: just fucking ran numbers man. They had to shit down.
51:24
Speaker 3: They're like, we'll fucking tell them a couple lives over here.
51:26
Speaker 3: We'll say some inspiring shit over there, sitting on a hill,
51:29
Speaker 3: blah blah blah. It's kind of amazing to watch them work.
51:32
Speaker 2: I always wonder if that part would be the deep state,
51:35
Speaker 2: or was the deep state the person who somehow managed
51:38
Speaker 2: to not get the diversion memo shredded, because I refuse
51:42
Speaker 2: to believe that that box of mk Ultra documents that
51:46
Speaker 2: eventually broke that story they were just accidentally put in
51:50
Speaker 2: the wrong storage facility, because that's what happened. That's how
51:53
Speaker 2: we found them.
51:54
Speaker 3: They would put wrong, like a filing error.
51:56
Speaker 2: Yeah, so when we shredded everything, that one box didn't
52:00
Speaker 2: get shredded, was that a filing error or was someone
52:03
Speaker 2: like fuck this, people need to know and just move
52:06
Speaker 2: That part is interesting. I don't know. Yeah, I'd love
52:09
Speaker 2: to know how Oliver North fucked up on not shredding
52:12
Speaker 2: the diversion memo. I'm sure that details out there.
52:15
Speaker 3: Oh you think there might have been someone with a conscience,
52:18
Speaker 3: that's an interesting theory.
52:19
Speaker 2: Yeah, there was a whistleblower very recently who that was
52:25
Speaker 2: his whole thing. He just found some shit in the
52:27
Speaker 2: course of his NSA job and was like, fuck that
52:30
Speaker 2: i'mone to upload this to the Internet and he's probably
52:32
Speaker 2: in Guantanamo now, but still, that's the spirit, kid.
52:36
Speaker 3: They're feeding the streets content at the end of the day,
52:39
Speaker 3: which I support. We conspiracy heads need some togoon over
52:42
Speaker 3: and you know, when there's a fucking wiki league, you know,
52:45
Speaker 3: that's our time. Yeah.
52:46
Speaker 2: And so Oliver North learns he might be facing criminal
52:50
Speaker 2: charges over all of this on television with the rest
52:53
Speaker 2: of the world, which I love that part because he
52:56
Speaker 2: assumed he was working under the direction of the press.
53:00
Speaker 3: And you got to feel like your bulletproof at that point,
53:03
Speaker 3: and what the fun?
53:05
Speaker 2: Oh shit, Yeah, I'll testify, you bet. And I think
53:10
Speaker 2: we're gonna do a separate episode about the actual Iran
53:14
Speaker 2: contra hearings because they are fascinating. I remember watching a
53:19
Speaker 2: lot of it on TV. Oliver North comes out the
53:22
Speaker 2: other end a legitimate TV star. My mom fucking loved
53:26
Speaker 2: Oliver North. She was so enchanted by Oliver North. It's crazy,
53:33
Speaker 2: and I have been unable to find it ever since
53:36
Speaker 2: the first time I read it and was like, huh,
53:40
Speaker 2: that's a curious thing. I'm going to bring up on
53:41
Speaker 2: an episode another time. I think it's during the Iran
53:44
Speaker 2: Contra hearings, at one point, this really crucial witness is
53:50
Speaker 2: rendered unable to speak before he gives his testimony, and
53:54
Speaker 2: that was the explanation. They were just like, sorry, guy,
53:57
Speaker 2: can't talk anymore for the rest of time.
54:00
Speaker 3: Like someone shot him with some kind of can't talk gun.
54:03
Speaker 2: Yeah, like they fucking debarked him or something like, what
54:06
Speaker 2: the fuck.
54:10
Speaker 3: Is a hypersonic signal that only he can hear.
54:12
Speaker 2: I'm gonna try and find that shit. But yeah, I
54:15
Speaker 2: think next episode we'll talk about the Contra hearings. Connor,
54:20
Speaker 2: if you would like to do the Iran Contra Hearings episode,
54:24
Speaker 2: please do.
54:25
Speaker 3: The people would love Let's have some continuity.
54:28
Speaker 2: Here, goddamn right, And just like the Reagan administration did
54:32
Speaker 2: eight solid years.
54:34
Speaker 3: Of I mean twelve really, you know, basically once, How
54:38
Speaker 3: did you, George, like the longest outside of FDR to Truman,
54:41
Speaker 3: that's like the longest streak in the twentieth century. For sure.
54:44
Speaker 2: I'm still shocked George H. W. Bush lost that second election,
54:50
Speaker 2: like you got the full weight of the CIA behind you.
54:53
Speaker 2: Maybe by that point they were like, all right, we
54:55
Speaker 2: need some division in this country. Let's get a Democrat.
54:58
Speaker 3: Almost like almost like when people saw Elvis like shaking
55:02
Speaker 3: his hips back and forth a little bit for the
55:03
Speaker 3: first time, they were like, oh my god, this is
55:06
Speaker 3: wildly sexual. I think when suburban mom saw Bill Clinton,
55:10
Speaker 3: they were like, oh, I haven't felt I haven't felt
55:13
Speaker 3: like this in a long time.
55:14
Speaker 2: Now they know what he feels like when he sees
55:16
Speaker 2: a suburban mom. Ooh all right, that guy fucked. So yeah.
55:23
Speaker 2: On part two of this, there's probably going to be
55:26
Speaker 2: a bonus episode in between, but we'll talk about the
55:29
Speaker 2: Iran Contra hearings and until then. What do we got
55:33
Speaker 2: to plug? Please check out my solo podcast at Adam
55:36
Speaker 2: Todd Brown Comedy on YouTube or at Adam Toddbrown dot
55:39
Speaker 2: substack dot com called him Broad Daylight. I talk about
55:43
Speaker 2: the government a lot there also, so check that out. Connor,
55:46
Speaker 2: what do you got to plug?
55:47
Speaker 3: Oh Boy? Scripted comedy podcast Mean Boys is available to
55:52
Speaker 3: listen everywhere, and I have seven comedy albums out on
55:56
Speaker 3: streaming and YouTube. YouTube channel. You can watch me YouTube
55:59
Speaker 3: special jokes about fucking. Henrick Speden jokes about fucking on YouTube.
56:03
Speaker 2: Pray and I think that's it. Let's get the funk
56:06
Speaker 2: out of here Connor say goodbye bye everybody. We love you.
56:15
Speaker 2: People of a finely just has to be Australia.