Cracktoberfest Part Two: How The CIA Became Drug Dealers

Robert and Prop talk about the CIA's secret heroin program and the beginning of the Ollie North saga.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome back to Behind the Hood Politics Bastards. Um, that's
the one. That is the one. So we left off
talking about Gary Webb's Dark Alliance article series. Um. And
the primary gotcha that the story had was that it
connected to right wing drug dealing Nicaraguans to the f

(00:23):
d N, which is a group of what the Reagan
administration called freedom fighters fighting against the left wing government
of Nicaragua. And it showed that these these guys tied
to the f d N had somewhat inexplicably escaped prosecution
for a weird number of crimes, all involving cocaine while
they were moving a bunch of cocaine into the US.
And boy, that seems a little bit sketchy, right, Um,

(00:47):
Now this is the point again where we have to
start talking about Nicaraguan history. So I'm gonna I'm gonna
peel us back a little bit from the swing in eighties,
well from the swinging nineties, I guess too, the also
swinging nineteen sixties. Um. This is the this is the
intersection of the two yes, other episodes we've done. Here's
where it. Yeah, yeah, this is where it intersects with

(01:07):
all well, all the norths coming up. But this is
the bad story towards what all these winds up doing.
And because episodes, Yeah yeah, because our episode starts in Iran.
Yeah yeah. So starting in nineteen thirty six, Nicaragua is
run by a family called the Samosas. Who is it's
one of these dictatorship families. It's essentially like royalty, right,

(01:28):
like that's what it is. They are right wing um.
They exist to help a lot of different foreign companies
extract Nicaraguan wealth h and hand some of it to
them while none of it goes to the people. And
they're in power forty three years. And the last Samosa
who is in power is an Astasio Samosa, who's around
from nineteen sixty seven is to nineteen seventy nine, is

(01:50):
the dictator um in total. Again, there Samoses are there
for like half a century, so you might think about
the Samosas is kind of like the Assad's right, and
Anastasia is a little bit like Bashar that he has
groomed to inherit the kingdom. Now, like most dictators, Samosa
assassinated political rivals, which included newspaper editors and people who
attempted to engage in Nicaragua was free and opened elections

(02:13):
in a way that he didn't like. As The Times
wrote in a contemporary article, quote, the machinery of government
was essentially geared to building up and ensuring the perpetuation
of the family's wealth and power. As a result, the
Samosa is not only control much of the Nicaraguan economy
with interest in construction, shipping, airlines, television and newspapers, farming, fishing, breweries,
and mining, but the president's uncle's brother, cousins, sons, and

(02:35):
nephews occupy key posts throughout the administration. Um. It's a kleptocracy, right,
we all, we're all familiar with this thing. Um. And eventually,
you know, people, what people really don't like is when
a specific family or a few families of assholes take
all of the money and run everything and murder anyone
who talks bad about it. Eventually, across the board in

(02:59):
every culture and time, people don't like this. People really
don't like that. And in in Nicaragua, once the people
decided they had had enough of this, there's a revolution
and a group of leftists known as the Sand and East.
As you know, starting is these kind of like guerilla
fighters and whatnot overthrow his ass and take power themselves. Now,
these guys are leftists, right, so being leftists? Who are

(03:22):
you being leftists in Nicaragua? What is a country You're
probably gonna want to have a good relationship with Cuba? Right? Um?
Pretty natural. Cuba has a similar history of this kleptocratic
dictator getting overthrown by a left wing revolution. Right. Um,
Cuba's familiar, you know, friendly ideologically, They've got access to
weapons and stuff through the Soviet Union sometimes that and

(03:42):
it's all of which and it is pretty close, all
of which is real good for the Sand and East.
Is so any normal person would be like, well, yeah,
of course they're kind of cozy up with Cuba. The
US security establishment loses their god damned minds when this
happens in like nineteen seventy nine. Um, they don't see
this is like, well, yeah, they just overthrew this government

(04:03):
who was friendly with I mean, the US had a
mixed relationship with Samosa. It's not entirely like but anyway, Yeah,
we've just overthrown this dictator. These guys are our best
friends in the area. They can give us the stuff
we need to help kind of rebuild and take our
country back um. The US security establishment, these these paleo
conservatives who were fucking taken over with the Reagan administration

(04:23):
are like, this is communism taking hold in America's backyard.
It's one of the things people will talk about in
this period. There's this domino theory, right, that's why we
Vietnam people are so fucking committed. It's same thing with Korea.
Is this idea that like, well, if you let one
country become communists, then everyone around them will fall which
a couple of things. Number one, I don't think this

(04:46):
is actually true of state communism. But if there's an
ideology that's so attractive that once one country does that,
everyone around them starts doing it, perhaps that's a good thing.
Maybe it's not that bad, or maybe that's not the
way it because that's not the way it worked. Right Famously,
Vietnam the communists one, and you know what didn't happen

(05:07):
is all of Southeast Asia do exactly the same thing
as Vietnam in a lot of ways. Actually, Vietnam became
a stabilizing force because they're the ones who move into
fucking Cambodia and stuff. After the Kaimarus lose their minds.
So it's one of those things where the actual lived
history shows that this is a terrible way to think
of things because it leads you to commit to stuff
like the Vietnam War, which is a fucking disaster and

(05:28):
it's not accurate because countries can have left wing regimes
go into place and Vietnam big trading partner with the US,
biased weapons and stuff from US. Now, like it's not
you know, it's not that's but it's nothing contagious, It's fine.
It's like, yeah, nothing about this theory of how domino

(05:49):
like this, Nothing about this is right. And by nineteen
eighty it's obvious to everyone that it's not right because
there's a lot of Again, Vietnam are the ones who
like put an into the fucking Khmer rouge um whatever.
So the Reagan administration doesn't take it this way, and
they're like, no, no, no, we were never The only
thing that was wrong about Vietnam is that we didn't
stay in their love, which no, we just was good.

(06:13):
If if the American public would have been chill it
just let us do to ship, we'd be I. Yeah.
And again this is not to whitewash anybody involved it's
just to point out that the theory of sucking the
domino theory is fucking nonsense, and they know it at
this point. Um. So that's the justification for why we

(06:33):
are need to back the group of kind of right
wing militias that start forming up in Nicaragua after the
Sandinistas take over. This is not a lot of guys, um,
there's really just a handful of different bands of right
wing you know, revolutionaries. A lot of them are trained
by the CIA and getting aid from the CIA. So
the CIA has dudes in there who were helping to

(06:55):
train these guys up and kind of broadly, these different
groups are known as the Contrast, which I think I
don't think I need to explain why they're called it, Like,
that's why they're called the contrast is because they're against
the fucking the Santinistas. So, which is the same year
that CRACK made its debut in the West Coast, members
of the Nicaraguan Revolutionary Democratic Alliance we're meeting with CIA

(07:16):
officers to plot the overthrow of their new government. One
of these officers sent a cable to CIA headquarters to
explain that the nation's new allies had opted to quote
engage in drug smuggling to the United States in order
to finance it's anti Sandinista operations. An initial trial run
had taken place in July of that year, with cocaine
being flown from to Miami from Nicaragua via plane. Now

(07:39):
this cable, this is not like a hey, great, our
plan worked, cable, right, this is framed as a warning.
So they're not saying, hey, this is awesome. They're saying like, hey,
by the way, you should know, Uh, Nicaraguan revolutionaries are
smuggling cocaine in the United States, and we have evidence
that this plane got sent there. Right. Um, it's it's
basically allegations of a wrongdoing within the intelligence establishment of

(08:01):
an ally of the CIA. So of course the CIA
does not do anything about these allegations, right because they
are fine with it, or at least there's factions. The
CIA is not a monolith. There's people, which is not
to say that there's people who don't like it because
they're good people. They don't like it because of other reasons.
But there's broadly speaking, because we're we'll talk about this
more later, but the CIA is kind of having a

(08:22):
culture crisis and this period to due to some ship
that's happened in the seventies. And so there's two big
broad groups within the agency at this point that are
kind of opposed to each other. One of them are
what the other group kind of call derogatorily the desk jockeys,
And they're the people who are like, ship can be
done remotely. We don't need to have fucking we shouldn't

(08:42):
be sending in people and specialists, we shouldn't be boots
on the ground, right, Like, there's other ways to influence ship,
Like that's how we'll do it. And then there's the
the cowboys, right, And I think it's obvious the cowboys
are the guys who want to do like James Bond shit, right,
they want to be machine gunning people and like having Yeah,
those are the two different kind of factions within the CIA,
and they are so again, this this warning isn't like

(09:06):
someone being coy. It's someone in the agency who's like,
I don't think this is good, and other people in
the agency are like, yeah, we're not going to do
shit about that, right, Like that's what's happening here. Yeah,
and you know, uh, how much was how many moving
parts was happening in the story around this time, it's
like some fools just didn't even know she was going

(09:26):
on well, and and and and it's also we'll talk
about this more. It's a strategic decision to make sure
some fools don't know what's going on, because you want
people who are honestly ignorant that you can trot out
to answer questions, right, that's how you do this. So
there there are other allegations that start to filter out
around the same time. Five members of a group called
ADRIN a d R E N it's a it's an

(09:48):
acronym um. This is like a right wing group are
accused of working directly with Jorge Morales, who's a major
drug trafficker. Adrian is this kind of democratic alliance. That's
what they're framed as right as democratic. So the sanitist
des aren't whatever who carried out the mission are disbanded
in like nineteen eighty two, but a lot of the
core people there joined the f d N, which we've
talked about before. That's the Nicaraguan Democratic Force, which makes

(10:11):
up the core of the contrast, Four of the five
ADREN members who had worked directly with cocaine smuggler Charles
Morales or Jorge Morales remain associated with him and the
CIA until nineteen eight seven. Right, So we're talking about
the kind of links. It's not as simple as like
this organism. It's not always as simple as this organization
has this relationship with the CIA. It's well, these guys

(10:33):
are in this organization that's backed by the CIA, and
they know this guy, and then they leave to this
other organization that's also backed by the CIA, and they
take their connection with him there, right, and he's moving
cocaine and like they're getting money through it. So in
the summer of nineteen eighty four, Marte Healey, who was
a wealthy Nicaraguan exile, she had she supported Samosa, She
was a big fan of that dictator. She holds a

(10:53):
meeting at her home in Miami with two CONTRA representatives
and or Hey Morales, who, by this point is to
indictment in the United States. I'm gonna quote from the
Washington Post here. The Contra representatives were Octaviano Saysar and
Adolpho Popo Tomorrow, Haley's ex husband. Both were working with
Eden Pastora, a Maverick revolutionary, trying to open a Southern

(11:14):
front and the Contra's guerrilla war from a base in
Costa Rica. In addition to the Contrast based in Honduras
and Nica, rob was northern border. The CIA had run
out of money to support either group of contrasts, and
Congress refused to provide more until the next year. Despite
their rift with the spy agency, Tomorrow and Czar said
they asked the CIA official if they could accept the
offer of airplanes and cash from the drug dealer. Morales,

(11:38):
I called our contact at the CIA. Of course I did,
Tomorrow said. Recently. The truth is we were still getting
some CIA money under the table, they said. Morales was fine. Yes,
I was like like yes, read like please if y'all
I don't know what order y'all here in these episodes.
I keep coming back to that, but like I think
this will be too and then yours will be three

(12:00):
in four and okay, cool, so then so then yeah,
so then y'all will see as we as we uh,
as this episode unfolds or this series unfolds, he has
he saying, yeah, you know the c I is, you know,
we getting money from them. We're not like we're not
supposed to be funding them yet. Like this like this
is all under the two Yeah, yeah, this is illegal,

(12:22):
Like get she in illegal? Was? Fuck? Yes? Has it
literally made loss? That said you can't fund him? All right?
I was like, no, we get the money. Yeah, so
that's fine, but we're not supposed to be paying them anyway.
So I mean, what the difference is it they passed
back and cry and the way this happens, it's like
there's this lady and she's rich and and she's got

(12:43):
some money and maybe she gets kicked some money on
the side by the CIA to help fund these guys
at a private party at her house, and you know
that's the way all this flows. Again, it's never as
they like. These guys are One of the things you
have to keep in mind, and we'll talk about this
in our Oliver North episodes. Prop is that a lot
of this is being done like the drug business, and

(13:05):
I'm talking about outside of the drugs. I'm talking about
the funding a militants where you've got all these different
streams and you want a lot of ship done in
cash and and your land laundering and filtering. One of
the main differences is that because these guys are the government,
they're all much worse at it than people in the
drug game are, which is why we know all of
this right, because they they do the thing that Stringer
Bell says you don't ever do, is they take they

(13:26):
all take notes on their criminal conspiracy. I just don't understand, Like,
how y'all just writing all his ship down. Well, I mean,
it's because they a lot most of them. You have
to one thing you have to keep in mind. And
this is again something I think that folks on the
left don't think about enough when they think about why
the CIA is the way it isn't what it does.

(13:47):
There's a lot of people, there's people, particularly at the top,
who are like soulless nightmare bureaucrats, but a lot of
them believe in what they're doing. A lot of these
agents believe they're fighting communism they're doing and so they're
taking notes and writing it down because they don't think
they're doing anything wrong, and they think that as government employees,
you are supposed to document the good things that you're doing. Um. Yeah, yeah.

(14:11):
So anyway, uh US officials who took part in joint
CIA contra operations argued against the version of events that
I have just related to you without actually refuting it right,
because they specifically can't argue against the facts. They just
argue that this does not mean that the CIA had
any role in the drug trade. Dwyane Clarridge, at the time,

(14:32):
the head of the CIA's Latin American division, said that
he quote certainly never dealt with Popo Chamorrow, but might
have met him and definitely didn't know Morales. When Congress
investigated this in nine seven, the CIA claimed that just
after this meeting, they decided never to work again with
Costa Rican based contrast, because they figured out they were
involved in the coke industry. So once it comes out

(14:54):
that there's these these very clear ties, they're like, oh,
and then we decided not to work with them anymore. Um,
you all really know that, dude. But he so we
we bounced ye yeah. So I was like no. Once
I found out, I was like, no, I gotta go
where yeah yeah. Which, again, the CIA are liars. It

(15:14):
is literally their job, right they are. The CIA know
it should be surprised by this, but it's worth delving
into precisely why they decided to get involved in cocaine now,
as we're going to discuss later. The agency has a
long history of using drug money to fund their sketchy
black opshit. They much preferred to get cash directly from
the federal government. The CIA doesn't like doing sketchy drug

(15:37):
things to fund stuff, because that's a lot harder than
the Congress just saying here's billions of dollars to do
sketchy ship. Right. The CIA was way happier after, for example,
nine eleven, when suddenly they just get this like pile
of funds. That's much better than doing fucking the coke
coke dealing. Yeah, but it is. They have a fucking
older than a lot of the people alive, you know,

(15:58):
making these decisions on the ground when the entra ship
comes up. The CIA has a very long history of
funding their operations with drug money. UM. So obviously um.
When Reagan took office, he called the death squatters of
the contrast the moral equivalent of the founding Fathers. Um.
And he made the argument again that like you've got

(16:18):
to you've got to stop the spread of communism by
supporting anti communist insurgencies. This becomes known as the Reagan doctrine,
which is just a repackaged uh fucking what you call it? More?
Uh No, the things that fall over. Yeah, I mean
it's that too. It is. It is kind of a
continuation of Monroe doctrine, but it's a domino theory theory.
It's just a repackaging of that um. And he does over.

(16:40):
He does argue for direct open aid rather than drug
like trying to fund the ship through drug money. Reagan
and the CIA want this ship to come straight through Congress.
But after he gets elected in nineteen eighty, the GOP like,
he has those first couple of years, which is when
a lot of this stuff starts to ramp up, right,
and the CIA is pumping a lot of money into
the contrast. But then in two the Republicans lose the

(17:03):
Senate in the House in the midterms, it goes really
fucking badly for them, and they immediately stick a big
rubber why did I say, a big rugger rubber cock
in the in the Reagan White House. They they immediately
decided to like stymy the Reagan White House, and they
passed something called the BOLB. I don't know, I was

(17:23):
the immediately the way I wrote this at like three
in the morning, the Lion as I originally wrote it was,
they immediately stuck a big rubber cock in the Reagan
White House plugged. I'm gonna be honest with holes, just
would a big old rubbery. I'm sure I had a
bit to extemp on this, but I have forgotten what

(17:45):
that was. Oh my lord, but theories to us on Twitter,
I would yeah, I mean I think I meant like
they fucked they fucked the Reagan White House. That's a
bad way to do it. God, what alaud what a
tragic funk? Up? I am? Um. So, so the bowl

(18:08):
in the minium, Yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll talk about that
more later, but basically for now, what you know, it
restricts the activity of the CIA and the d O
D in Foreign Wars Department of the Fifth So the
amendment is written with the Nicaragua, with Nicaragua specifically in mind, um,
and it makes it harder to fun things um. And
the justification for this is again the fact that at

(18:30):
the time, the justification as they're passing the Bowl in
Amendment is that contra funding comes in large part from
the Nicaraguan cocaine trade. And this is, as we talk
about in Part one two, this is when the crack
epidemic starting, right. So that's all very much tight into
this um and yeah, this is the stew of affairs
that in nineteen five, which is the first year that

(18:52):
the big study on crack babies is published, we get
the Iran contrast candle, and we're going to talk about
that in in your episodes problem, which you're gonna start
hearing tomorrow. I am going to peel back from that
for now. So again we're a little bit not completely
going along chronologically here because I Ran Contra deserves to
be talked about separately. We're going to get to that

(19:13):
in the next couple of episodes. What I want to
talk about now on our show is the CIA's history
dealing drugs to support their black ops, because this is
fucking cool ship. Actually yes, but you know what else
is cool ship? Prop Oh? Man, tell me what else?
The products and services that support this podcast less than
twenty percent of which are the CIA. I'm trying to

(19:35):
tell you, man, maybe maybe not much less. I'm gonna
be honest with you. I mean it might be a
percentage of uh, rubber, Reagan clogging Cox maybe well. And look,
you know there's a lot of things that that that
the CIA gets their hands and including the VP. Well,

(19:55):
actually it was the FBI who created that VCS and
all those people. Uh, it is fun that they just
get to do all that kind of ship anyway, good,
good reason, but fly to that job. Look, nobody, nobody's
going to try to sell you a mattress to fund
the c I A, you're good on that one. Oh

(20:21):
we are be a que That's how you spell back
when you're feeling saucy. So like, if you have any
any analysis on what's going on with Robert, please please
please feeling Randy some of us, some of us are artists,
Sophie honestly, honestly is quite a word. Smith and I

(20:44):
still and also as as as just stated, I think
Randy needs to come back, as I agree as an
adjective Randy. And so I've made a big change. I
think now that we've come back from break, I can
talk about this because this is going to affect everybody,
both in my personal life and who listens to the podcast.
Probably I've decided I'm going to start using the phrase

(21:05):
cash money more often, particularly when people do something that's
not cool. I'm gonna be like, that's not very cash money,
of you, like, that's not very cash money, Sophie. Now Now,
what is your definition of that, because my definition of
that is not what you think it is. When you
say cash money, I think of like Lil Wayne Nicki

(21:29):
Mina was like cash money millionaire. That's that's like that
that that title has been taken, is what I'm telling you.
You really reigned on my parade here, Sophie, and that's
not very cash money of you. Wow wow, he used it. Agrees. Incredible.
So let's talk about the CIA's history selling drugs. From

(21:52):
nineteen forty seven to nineteen fifty one in France, the
c i A sent weapons and money to Corsican criminal
syndicates so that they would use violence and murder to
take control of labor unions in Corsica from the Communist
party center World War One end. Or they sent them huh,
they sent them cash money. They did send them cash

(22:13):
money and cash gunnates. Anyway, these Corsicans wound up in
total control of the city's docks. And when you run
the docks, what what happens when you can run the docks?
Who here remembers the Wire Season two, Right, you can
move a shipload to yoh right, you can get that
fucking blow rolling. It's very easy. So well, not just blow.

(22:35):
This is actually not blow in this case. But the
CIA is like, hey, we just funded these violent right
wing gangs to murder all of the labor unions in
order to take control of these docks. What if we
started moving a shipload of heroin? What if we partnered
with the Italian mob to move a bunch of heroin
through these docks, and then we made Marseilles the heroin

(22:56):
capital of all of Europe and maybe the world for
a while. Right, So the CIA is doing specifically because
there's a lot of fucking money in that and they've
just become an agency. They want to get that black
budget rolling. They got governed, they got fucking Patrice Lamumba
to murder in the Congo, They got all these things
to do. Um, we got we got a lot of
crime and to do, and we need to run our
crime syndicate in the same way crime syndicates run a

(23:19):
crime syndicate because there are literal business partners. Yes like this,
I cannot stress this enough. Behind the bastards listeners, Yeah,
these are the angel investors. Honestly, the the the heroin
trade that starts up in the late forties early fifties.
It's kind of the same thing as like, Okay, this
is going on before the CIA gets involved, but it's

(23:40):
a little bitty. It's like Facebook looking at Instagram and
going like, yeah, we're gonna buy us and make it big,
you know, like that that's what's happening here. Um, And like,
I mean, I should I want to apologize to the CIA.
Actually it's really unfair of me to compare them to
Mark Zuckerberg. Um, so I do, I do. I do
feel bad about that. That's a little bit unfair, just
kind of brutal, just lowering that. I'm not apologizing because

(24:07):
that was a joke. Apology anyway. So Marseille gets its
first heroin lab at that same time. That same year,
the Nationalist Chinese Army, which is a right wing military
force in China fighting in that whole thing, which the
CIA had helped to build. An arm becomes the primary
opium distributor for the Golden Triangle, right, which is this

(24:28):
chunk of Southeast Asia that at that point is the
source of the world's largest source of opium. So they've
got again when I say they're running this, they are
controlling everything from supply through the nationalist Chinese Army, which
they have an interest in, to smuggling, which the fucking
mafia that they have an interest in is doing. To distribution,

(24:50):
which they run the fucking docks, right or at least
there people do, right. So, in order to make this
even more direct and obvious, the CIA uses Air America,
which is an air line they own, to fly the
drugs through Burma, Thailand, Lao, etcetera, right and and into
other places. Right. So again this isn't just like they
have an interest. They're not just helping like a Nicaragua.

(25:11):
They're helping shift along right there, smoothing things, They're making
problems go away. At this point, they're just straight up
loading drugs with hair or loading planes with heroin, right,
look like just what their logo on the side. And
this is just this is also a bit part of
why they're doing this is this is how they're funding
this national Chinese force they're funding, right Like, this is
how they're funding I think a lot of Operation Gladiol,

(25:32):
which we'll talk about one day. All of this drug
money is being sprinkled out along a bunch of stuff.
But so things that this this does make a lot
of money for their black ops. But things don't go
really well for the nationalist Chinese army. Um that if
you might notice, that's not who winds up winning that
that whole conflict. Um. And over the next twenty years,
the U S steadily increased a series of disastrous military

(25:55):
commitments in the region, which is you know, Vietnam, Korea,
all that good stuff is kind of what happens after this,
this this false apart. So while many US soldiers became
hero heroin attics during their tours, that's a big thing
that happens in Vietnam. Right, You've got all these soldiers
go into the Golden Triangle, where the CIA had been
moving heroin out of in order to fund the nationalist

(26:17):
Chinese army. Now that's not a factor so much. But
you've got a shipload of US and other foreign soldiers
in Southeast Asia fighting, a lot of them are getting hurt,
and they're being given opium. And when when the morphine
runs out, when the docks aren't going to give them
any more of that, well, they're in the heroin capital
of the world. Um. And the CIA was not just
kind of a passive like overseer of that. They operated

(26:40):
a lab in law that refined heroin for profit, the
heroin that was being sold to US soldiers who came
back to the United States addicted. By the time we
pulled out of the region under Nixon, Southeast Asia was
the source of seventy of the world's opium and the
primary material driver of the US heroin market. And the
CIA had never been involved, right, they were, they were,

(27:02):
They were guys every step of the way. Now we
could talk about Afghanistan and heroin and how boy howdy,
the same thing happened there a few decades later. Huh,
that's wild. But I think the point is made. The
CIA does not what they're not doing. They're not introducing
drugs to populations in a concerted manner. The drugs are
not being used consciously as weapons. The drugs are being

(27:25):
produced and brought into places in order to buy weapons
that they then give to people who do other series
is of crimes. The fact that populations are getting addicted
and stuff is kind of a byproduct of the fact
that they're trying to fund all of these revolutions and assassinations.
So obviously all this ship we've talked about doesn't work
out great in China, where they don't win. Doesn't work

(27:46):
out great in Southeast Asia, where again things tend to
be pretty disastrous for for u S interests during this period.
But stuff had worked out really well in France for
a while. The CIA had gotten their way there and
they've funded a bunch of shady ship with the stuff
they were moving through our a um and the drugs. Again,
even in places where you know, Vietnam doesn't work out,
we lose, see, it still makes a funkload of money

(28:07):
which they used to do a funkload of shady stuff.
And it's money that can't that they can deny, right,
so they don't have to admit they've used it for anything.
They don't have to account for it. A lot of
it presumably winds up padding pockets and stuff. It's not
like congressional money, which there's a little bit more strings
attached to. So when the Reagan administration to get back
to the Bowland Amendment, when the Reagan administration is like, boy,

(28:30):
Congress does not want to give us the money we
need to overthrow governments and destroy you know, socialist movements,
the CIA is like, hey, guys, we know how to
make money. Hey, we know how to do that kind
of ship. Yeah. Yeah, now, of course that is uh,
that is where we get all the north, where we

(28:51):
get around Contra. We're gonna talk about that more, uh
later on. I do want to note a couple of
things about Ali that we don't get into your episodes,
one of which kind of makes the point of how
incest uous the US ruling class really is. We've just
talked about the samosas. Ali North, who goes to the U. S.
Naval Academy because he's a fancy boy to become an officer,

(29:13):
is close classmates with future Navy Secretary and Senator Jim Webb,
their boxing buddies, and Web of course, is a major
political figure during all of the stuff that we're happening,
that we're talking about is happening. Um. So I don't
know that's that's nifty. Um. I also wanted to talk
we don't talk much. We don't talk in your episodes

(29:33):
about Randy Herrod do we know? We don't, Okay, So Randy.
In Vietnam, Oliver North serves as a platoon commander. He
wins a couple of different awards for gallantry under fire.
He is a pretty good actual like combat soldier, from
everything I have read, um, But he's also gonna wind
up lying when when the stuff you talk about in
your episodes happens breaks and Iran Contra happens, He's gonna

(29:56):
wind up needing to puff his background up because he's
dealing with a lot of criticism. And I want to
quote from a nineteen eight seven Washington Post article on
North that comes after the Iran Contra stuff breaks. He
was aggressive when instinct told him to take cover, he charged.
He reminded machine gunner Randy Harrod of a Viking berserker,
a fighter who would go against extreme odds and battle
until he dropped. Now that sounds like badass, right, That

(30:19):
makes him sound cool? Yes, yes, if you don't know
who Randy Harrod is. At least so the Washington Post
is just talking to this guy and being like, boy,
Randy sure loves him. In nineteen seventy, Randy Harrod participated
in the Songtang massacre, in which a five man Marine
Hunter killer patrol gunned down seven women and nine children.
They reported these dead women and children as viet Cong

(30:41):
who had been killed in a firefight. They were court
martialed over this. Eventually, and all you or I flew
down to be a character witness to his buddy slash
mass murderer Randy Um. And then, of course, when Aligue
gets in trouble, Randy goes in front of the media
to do the same thing. He was free to do
that despite murdering a bunch of people because he'd been
at it it. Now he gets acquitted. The other guys

(31:02):
in his unit, two of them gets five years sentences
and one gets sentenced to life. So again, this happened, right,
This is a massacre he and his boys do. None
of them actually serve much time, though, because the major
a major general reduces their sentences to less than a
year um, which is pretty fucked up. But whatever. Anyway,
Um all the North, good man, real, Yeah, So I

(31:27):
just wanted to get over that stuff a bit, because
you can't not read about Ali North while you're reading
about how the CIA and the crack stuff happens. And
that brings us to an important point which we do
talk about in your episodes. This is not just the
CIA right now, Gary Webbs articles focus on the CIA,
the NSC, the National Security Council just as bad, just
as involved in this specific ship right now. In brief

(31:50):
the guy running the NFC, Bob McFarlane has centralized a
lot of intelligence corps like collection, and Ali North is
the guy who's in kind of the center of this point. Man.
Um yeah, yeah, so anyway that that that's probably um.
Ali winds up working well ahead of like any of
this stuff like happening um in nineteen eighty one. Right,

(32:11):
this is kind of right as the crack trade is
sort of starting and the contracts are funding themselves, and
Ali builds a really personal relationship with a lot of
these contract He does a lot of training and advising
to them himself, and whenever opportunities pop up, he's rabid
and urging the president to throw down with these folks.
At one point in North Korean freighter of guns is
headed to Nicaragua to arm the government's forces. The Sandinista

(32:34):
is because obviously North Korea Sandinistas have some interest in common.
The CIA and the NSC guys are all debating what
to do, so like they've got this. This is a
sovereign nation. North Korea is allowed to go and sell
guns to Nicaragua. Right. Um, again, not a fan of
North Korea, bad government, but this is a thing we do.
This why wouldn't they be allowed to They're a country too,
so they're selling guns to the Sandinistas, and the CIA

(32:56):
and the NFC are like, well shit, we were not, like,
we can't let this, Like what do we what can
we do to stop this? All the suggestion is let's
attack the freighter. Let's attack the freighter of a sovereign nation,
steal their guns and give their guns. To the contrast,
other people are like, Ali, that's literally just piracy, Like
that's just being a pirate. Yeah, yeah, two, yeah, that's this,

(33:23):
This is a problem if we do this, Ali, there
will be consequences if we just attack one of their boats. Um,
So nothing happens. Ali gets overruled because people are like,
that's kind of crazy. Oliver North like, you're kind of
a maniac here, maybe calling the funk down. Yeah. But
Ali builds a really good relationship with Ronald Reagan. And
the way he does this is he's he's incredible at lying. Um.

(33:44):
He lies about He gets Reagan to believe that he's
run a Special Operations Training Detachment UM in his like
during Vietnam and he was basically coordinating special forces. And
right this is the time Predator comes out right, all
of these movies Lionizing, the Seals, and the Green Berets
are coming out in this period. Special Forces is sexy.
Ronnie's a movie guy. So Ali is like, yeah, I

(34:06):
was running Special Forces and stuff. You see that movie
with the movie were like Rambo see the movie with
like you know his Force nigger, Like, yeah, I was.
I was in the ship man, I was over there. Bro,
those movies are about me and the homies. Yeah, that's
what he's telling Ray essentially. Yeah, And Reagan is a
guy who's very vulnerable to stories. Again, He's he's an actor, right,

(34:30):
Like this is the kind of brain that actors have.
That's not a good or it's a bad thing in
Ronnie's case, but it's just a thing. He's he's he's
a story and he just gets enraptured by all over North.
One of North's NSC colleagues later are called Ali was
about thirty to fifty bullshit. He was notorious for constantly
exaggerating his role in things. He was always coming from
a meeting with the vice president. We checked once and

(34:51):
he hadn't been to see the vice president at allow Um.
And one of the interesting things and we're talking about Ali.
We're talking to your episodes about Contra. This is about
the other smuggling he was into. That's extent, Like, that's
why I'm getting into this, yeah. Um. The Executive Secretary
of the NFC, Rodney McDaniel, described North as a man
of tremendous energy whose real talent, despite his action hero image,

(35:14):
was bureaucracy. He had quote a good voice, no self
doubts at all. You never thought about a thing. Yeah.
He was full of ship and felt great about it. Yeah.
And and knowing how many moving parts audist it has
and what he had to oversee, there's no way He's

(35:35):
not like a human Excel spreadsheet because he's it's too
much to keep it's too much to keep organized. Yeah,
and he's Ali is particularly committed to the contract ship, right.
The stuff is that he gets involved within Iran. That
secondary to what is his real motivation, which is helping
these guys. Yeah. Um. I don't know if that's because
he was tied to them and it was a career

(35:56):
thing or if he was. He's legitimately a true believer
and and sympathize with him. But North is is really
the driver of the whole administration's policy towards them. And
when Reagan takes office, there's like five contras tops, right,
very few of these dudes, not really a movement. By
the time North is in his first year at the NFC,
there were like five or six thousand of right. And

(36:17):
of course they now and now I should say this,
they're almost never very good. They're about bad, not a
good insurgent group. They're really ineffective. That sense. The amount
of money we legally and illegally pumped down there, you know,
saying over the amount of time that we was there,
they was better on a video game and they were
We didn't not get much. Yeah, yeah, uh So North

(36:42):
throws himself into the contract program. In the book Landslide
Jane Mayor, Mayor and Doyle McManus right, North's five years
at the NSC were composed of manic days, weekends at
his desk, and vacations not taken. On the fifth birthday
of his daughter dorn In, one friend called. She called
him three times at seven o'clock, at eight o'clock, and
at nine o'clock, and in essence said Daddy, when are
you coming home? And Ali said, don't worry, honey, Daddy's

(37:04):
coming home as soon as he can. I've just got
to finish this work. By the time he got home,
she was already asleep. But he was willing to take
time to get the job done. Not everyone admired this trade.
He was always scheduling meetings on Sundays just to distress
everyone else. CIA analyst John Horton grumbled. Others worried less
about his workaholic devotion than his manic intensity. I used
to keep Alie out of Reagan's office because he was dangerous,

(37:26):
Michael Deaver recalled. He scared me. He'd fly to Bay Route,
be back twenty four hours later and brief the president.
Reagan loved him, loved the style. And again, there's factions
in here, right, everybody's not on the same fucking end
of things. Um, so we're condensing a lot here. But
as the years go by, despite all this money to fight,
despite how many of these fucking dudes there are, ship

(37:47):
doesn't go well the war. They don't take any cities,
they don't take any serious territory. They're not winning battlefield victories,
and Congress keeps stopping the administration from sending the money.
They develop all sorts of fun up workarounds. At one
point they get the Saudi Royal family to cough up
a bunch of money. They convinced the Israelis to send
them arms, but it's not enough. And of course that

(38:08):
that brings us to Iran Contra, but it also brings
us to another series of decisions that all the North
makes outside of Iran Contra that are maybe sketchy here,
and we're going to talk about that. But first, prop products, props.
Maybe maybe I can't guarantee anything. I'm not the president,

(38:30):
but not the North Man. You're not delivering drugs. I'm
gonna twist some arms I've been I've been arming some
militant groups in the jungle that I'm hoping we'll be
advertising on our on our podcast soon, So check out
for that. UM, not really sure which jungle. I've just
been dropping dropping cash one of these zoom what happens? Yes, Um,

(38:52):
all right, here's ads. So we're and we have through
this meandering story. The machinery of Iran contrast we'll talk about,
is starting up in this period. But Ali, separately from
anything that's going on in Iran, is trying to figure
out how do I keep getting money to my guys,

(39:13):
and the most obvious way to do that is cocaine.
A good example of this is the case of Carlos
Albert Amadora, a former pilot for the Southern Front Contrast,
who flew secret missions for years out of the Illopango
Air Base in San Salvador. In nineteen eighty five, the
d e A becomes aware that that this guy Amador
is also transporting huge amounts of cocaine to Miami via

(39:36):
Costa Rica. A CIA cable at the time quoted a
d e A source who quote stated that Amador was
probably picking up cocaine and San Salvador to flight a
Grand Cayman and then to South Florida. So the d
e A their job is to stop drugs from entering
the country, right, Like, that's what the d e A
is supposed to do. Um again, not an agency, I like,

(39:56):
but they they they actually didn't want to take this
guy down. They want to stop this guy because he's
moving blow into the country and their job is to
stop this guy. So they announced their intent through the
different kind of um connections that law enforcement has that like,
we are going to have local police and this is
like in because he's he's flying out of San Salvador.
We're gonna have local police in San Salvador look into

(40:18):
this guy, and we're going to help them, and this
is going to be We're going to try and bust
this and stop this. Right, But the hangar in San
Salvador that Amador is flying out is Hangar number four.
Do you want to know who owns Hangar number four?
Who owns Hangar number four? Holy North? Ali North is
the guy through the NSC right, is the guy who

(40:39):
who controls hangar for Amador has to ask permission in
order to use it, which he gets. I'm gonna quote
from a rite up by PBS here when the CIA
headquarters responded to the cable, This is from the d
e A asking can we go after this guy? It
told it's local local station that it would appreciate station
advising d e A not to make any inquiries to

(41:00):
anyone ari Hangar number four at Ilopango since only legitimate
supported operations were conducted from this facility. Now, since we
know Amaur was flowing flying cocaine out of this facility
and only supported operations were conducted from this facility, what
is that mean? Hey? What does that mean. I wonder, Hey,

(41:22):
look everybody, when you when you all research and do
your background checks on all the hangars, just skipped number
four because it's already cool. Yeah number five. Look into
that ship. It's like mambo number five and a little
bit of rita. Yeah, do auditories every well before, it's
cool to worry about it. Anyway. I think it would
be so funny and like I'm imagining like an SNL

(41:45):
style like roundtable sort of just stupid, like weekly office meeting.
And it's like the N S C, C I A
D A right and Oliver North they're just sitting down
going through like fine items, just like yep, uh we
got anything. He's like, yeah, actually, man um, we noticed

(42:07):
this plane coming in from Salad, Salvador and uh I
was carrying gang of drugs stopped in Florida, soult a
cocaine actually a little cocaine and that thing. So I
think we got a guy. We're probably gonna announce on Monday.
You know that this is the guy's face and we're
looking for him. You guys cool with that? And then
the c I A going yeah wait what yeah that
that's actually gonna be a problem. Yeah, wait wait nah,
and they're like what what uh you know what I'm saying,

(42:29):
And it was like, yeah, it's in hanging number four.
You guys know who hanger number four is it is?
That guy's wait what, No, it's not mine? Well yet
wait number four in Florida. Yeah oh no, no, no, yeah,
no you don't go in there. Yeah yeah no, I
don't know, man, I think that's mine. But yeah, we're
gonna take down crime. Wait what like just like no,

(42:50):
you can. He gets to one of the things. One
of the things that's important to understand about the U. S.
Security establishment, right, is that um again kind of it's
often aimed as this there's there's this unified conspiracy to
like do all of this fund up ship. These guys
a lot of them hate each other because their their
interests are contra to each other. Right. The d A
lot of the information we have about how the CIA

(43:14):
and the NSC helped fuel the crack epidemic and how
they brought drugs in and to the United States, a
lot of that comes from d E A agents who,
like some of them, wrote books. Some of those books
are questionable, but like it's a bunch of d E
agents go and like blow the whistle on this, not
because they're heroic individuals, but because their careers and success
relies on bringing in cocaine and the CIA was stopping

(43:36):
them for busting people resources. It takes time and money
to track to figure out who's doing it, where the
where they like it. They spend resources and sometimes even
lives going after this stuff and then kind of at
like the last moment, get told no, no, no, don't
go do that because this guy. Yeah, you're at the
street level. You're in shootouts, your under loose friends that

(43:59):
help ste like again, but you get why they're angry. Yes,
you're trying to get this ship off the street. You're
in shootouts with these dudes. And then you're like wait, wait, wait, wait,
you to plug. You didn't tell me the whole time
you to plug. Yeah, oh yeah that was us. Sorry
about your best friend, but like, yeah, that's been us
the whole time. Anyway. So the job, the job got great. Great,

(44:23):
we're catching our guy. We thought he was pretty well
but now you you found him. We just locked up
a thousand melanated people. You're doing a great job. Um. Now,
of course, the CIA denies any of this field agent
Needs in I E v E s, who We're gonna
hear about a little later tells PBS, you know later
when this article I just quoted from has written that

(44:44):
there is no way that the CIA would ever have
overruled the d e A on something like this quote
this is this is from Needs. I was given carte
blanche to do my job. Never once did anybody say
anything to me about anything I was doing that was
nothing but supportive. There was no interference, there was no
there was no overriding priority, there was no competition, there
was no anything except for support of the d e
a's mission. And that's a fact. That's a d e

(45:07):
A guy being like no. There was never anohing like
I'm sorry, that's a CIA giving like no. There was
never anything but support for the c I We we
never did anything like that. D e A agent Hector Barrella's,
who was also a field agent in the area at
the same time, says this is bullshit. Votes I know
specifically that some of the CIA contract workers, meaning some
of the pilots, were in fact bringing drugs into the

(45:28):
US and landing some of these drugs in the government
air bases. I know so because I was told by
some of these pilots that in fact they had done that.
It's like I'm telling you been, tell you uses, what
you gotta, what you gotta, netta, what you gotta plenty,
I'll bringing in US cocaine. Wait, well a cocaine, c
I S s coke. Yeah, ce I A sent me

(45:48):
down there, you know. Let me just came out a
few weeks since Salvador took the kids that came in.
Now I'm on my way back. Yep, yep. Now we're
gonna hear a number of very entertaining denials from c
I agent over the course of this in the next
episode that I do, but one of the best comes
from the specific story the tale of Ali North's Hangar.
Former US Assistant Secretary of State for International Narcotics Matters

(46:11):
Jonathan Weener Winer told PBS, if it's your job to
check out food at the supermarket, you're not worrying about
the person who's supposed to be stocking the shelves. It's
not your job, right, That's why he's saying, no, there
was no conspiracy here, right, Like they just you just
missed stuff. Right. If you're as the as the c
I A we didn't know this guy was flying crack cocaine.
He was also flying other stuff for us, and we

(46:33):
just didn't realize he was flying cocaine out of the
same facility that he was flying guns for us from. Right, Yeah,
we and we were our job. It's the CIA. We're
not a drug interdiction agency. It's not our job to
know about that. How could we have possibly been aware? Right,
that's literally what he's saying. Um, I was supposed to
know that. Other How could I have known? Wasn't guns? Yeah?
Now there was a knox that said guns and there

(46:56):
was a box that said other M. I'm looking for
the gun and box. What did you expect from me?
We are we are here? Or the seafood? Yeah? The
beef that's somebody else's department. Yeah. How could I know
that there's beef there? Um? Just because it's next to
the seafood and both of them are very clearly visible

(47:16):
in the hangar that I own. That's okay for This
is not the only fun all the North plot that
involves moving Hella blow. Jose bi Rosa was a general
from Honduras who had helped make things easier for the contrast, because, again,
a lot of the Contras are based out of Honduras
and based out of Costa Rica because it's it's easier
because the Sandinista is a pretty good at keeping their
own ground. Anyway, he had also while he was helping

(47:39):
out the Contras and giving them space to operate, and
shipped a truly titanic amount of cocaine into the United States.
And again he's like running the Honduran military, right, that's
that's that's Boissa Rosa, which is getting funding from the
United States. In nineteen eighty four, he's caught trying to
assassinate the president of Honduras. Was a plot which was

(48:01):
meant to be funded with forty million dollars in cocaine
sales to the United States. When when this guy gets
fucking caught, Ali North starts reaching out to people above
him in the White House to beg for him to
get leniency, to be like, please push on Honduras to
not punish this guy, and and yeah, well, because he's

(48:22):
gonna talk and guess what. Rosa, who has shipped a
shipload of cocaine into the United States tens a million
dollars worth, and trying to kill the president of his
country guess what his guess what his sentence is five
years at Club fed five years. Baby, that's right, baby, Listen, listen, listen,
and now think about this. If you watched Narcos on Netflix,
if you Pablo Escobar, this is all happened at the

(48:44):
same time you in Colombia. It's not like you don't
know all this ship So you like, I'm worried at all?
SENTI something. Yes, we sent in this to Miami. What
they're gonna say, yep, yep, yeah. Now thanks to the
fact that we know all of this. By the way,
most of this information comes from the fact that all
the North kept a diary which is now declassified and

(49:07):
where all of this is written in. In his attempt
to protect Boiso, we know he urged other U S
officials to quote Cabal quietly all these words to secure
him a pardon. Now, Norths focus here was nothing to
do with with loyalty. Again, Rosa knew a lot about
the CIA's funding and arming of the contrast, and Ali
wrote specifically that he was worried about Rosa spilling the

(49:29):
beans on the war and the narcotics funding behind it.
He wrote this in a diary that not a conspiracy theory.
Just a guy taking notes on his crimes. Dear Diary,
Today was a very interesting day my connecting. Honduras tried
to kill his president. Now that he's faced a trial,

(49:50):
I'm worried he's gone snitch. So I'm wishing on a star.
He doesn't tell everybody about the crimes are country has
committed in Cahos with him. Are you there, God, it's
me Ali Everything. Let me write out the crimes I'm

(50:16):
committing in detail. Um Now, everything that's happening here is
a big old deal for Ali North, Right, he has
staked his career on the contras. It's also a huge
deal for people in Nicaragua. It is intermittently kind of
a distraction for other people in the security agencies, right,
the c I a head Casey, the the NSC had McFarland.

(50:36):
They support the contrast generally, but there's also times where
they're like, look, we got other ship to do, and
like we like we we can't be focusing entirely on
this stuff. So while this is all going on, and
this is the period that the contrast stuff is starting
to spin up, and at the early stages that's more
on McFarland and Casey side than North. He's going to
be central to this, but he's managing contrast ship, right,

(50:57):
so he doesn't come in quite yet, or he's not
at least as as involved in it yet. We'll get
to that in your episodes. But one of the things
that's happening big picture here is that there's this constant
kind of trickle of stories coming out in Nicaragua coming
out about US support for the contrast, coming about how
bad they are. Crimes, they've committed, villages, they've executed, all
sorts of fund up ship. And one of the things

(51:18):
that's happening is that Reagan always very into the contrast,
um never loses his luster for these American founding fathers
like dudes in his words, but the smart guys largely
his chief of staff, Donald Reagan, recognized that the contrasts
are fucking losing proposition for the Reagan administration every they
can see in the polls. Every time he talks about
the contrast, his support goes down, right. So that's kind

(51:41):
of what's happening UM as the Reagan administration starts to
encounter other issues and realize that it's bigger fish to Fry,
which leads us into all of the stuff around kidnapped
Americans and the Rand contra, which we're gonna talk about
tomorrow on hood Politics Bastards behind. So gear up, get
Eddie to listen to hear stories from some of your

(52:02):
favorite Reagan administrations. Prop Not only are we gonna get
a little bit more all the North, we're gonna hear
from Secretary of State George Schultz future the NOS board member,
Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger. What a name, of course,
everybody's favorite guy with a name you didn't think was
his real name until you learned that it was John Poindexter.

(52:24):
John porn Dexter's a real name. M hmm you did
you did? Just call him porn Dexter. YO is about
to get so Yeah, you were standing on the wall
like you was Poindexter. You know that one? You know
that one? Right? Oh? Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely? Do you really? No? Okay,

(52:47):
I made a decision when you started doing the references
that I wasn't going to get to try to try
to hold up under screw. I shattered. I shattered like
the wall underneath because what kid? What what teenager? Has
not pretended and full ground adult has not pretended to

(53:08):
know the obscure band you're talking about. We absolutely the
dire Straits or Strokes or whatever. Yeah, for sure. Bands.
Yeah you have. You have multiple times names some bands
that I was like, Nope, no, there's there's there's too
many bands, look, yeah, too many bands. Yeah, we gotta
gotta trim it down to four. Yes, I was giving

(53:29):
you a little bus to move, bust, a little young
MC bus to move. You're standing on the wall like
you was point dexter next. Now I have heard of
herk Um the guy who does the first hip hop
Yeah yeah cool h yeah yeah cool horse. Yes, I
think for a cracked article that I wrote, which is
the nerdiest way to know Pip. I was like, wow,
don't okay you told me? Okay, God damn it prop

(53:53):
speaking of hip hop history. Yes, let's talk about your
plug doubles. Yes, uh yeah, properly pop dot com. I
got some new music out right now, uh super dops
called the soil EP. That's a part of the terraform
uh whole universe of poetry and and send a music
units verse of poetry. Short story. It's a book. It's

(54:15):
also a coffee Um which important for Hispanic Heritage Month
or Latino Heritage Month. Um. The black and brown unity
you know coming out of when you look at the
Queen Mother on the cover of the coffee can, that's
an Indigenous woman and an African woman. You know what
I'm saying, Black brown unity is there. But you know
what I'm trying to say, Terraform, cold Brew, uh dot com,

(54:37):
and prop hit pop politics, it's all up in there.
You know what I'm saying, We out think, we out,
we out, we out this man. You know what I'm saying.
I couldn't even finish the slang reference. You know what
I'm saying, port core outside anyway, Well, check out prop,
checkout Terraform, checkout props Coffee, checkout hood politics. Tomorrow when
we talk about around Contra for two days, and then

(54:59):
we will be concluding with an episode of Bastards, your
fifth episode of our shows for the week, where we
will talk about what happens after Iran Contra, what happens
after Gary Webb's Dark Alliance series breaks into the mainstream
and all of the funked up fuccory that follows. You
can find me. I have a book called After the Revolution.

(55:20):
Google it with a K Press and you'll find my
publisher's website, or just type it into Amazon or whatever
the funk and you can buy copies of it. Buy