August 15, 2023 • 44 mins
Cookie’s son talks about growing up in a war zone, then his mom faces her own death.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
This is a production of Journalista podcast LLC and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
When the Nicaraguan port of Corinto was bombed in October,
it was the Contrast who took the credit, but CBS
News has learned it was Americans who led the raid.
Military sources confirm it was Americans who took two boatloads
of Honduran commandos from the Salvadoran coast to Corinto to
place time bombs in the port, Americans from the CIA,
and Americans from regular military service. Publicly, the Pentagon won't
(00:31):
talk about those actions, and privately, the American military just
keeps doing them. Jane Wallace, CBS News to Gusigalpa, Honduras.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
Welcome back to the Journalista podcasts. Cookie is becoming a
rock star for CBS. But after the CIA is exposed
mining harbors and blowing up ships in Nicaragua, folks back
home in the United States are starting to wonder what
in the hell are we doing in Central America.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
The success of communism in Central America poses the threat,
but one hundred million people from Panama to the open
border on Arshall could come under the control of pro
Soviet regimes.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
President Reagan made his case to the American people, but
Congress wasn't buying it. Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy called it stupid.
Republican Senator Barry Goldwater said I'm pissed off. Former President
Jimmy Carter called it disgraceful. Justin Wolfe, Tulane history professor,
explains what happened next.
Speaker 4 (01:31):
In nineteen eighty two, there's an amendment put forward by
Representative Boland to a Military Appropriations Act. It's a rider.
The Democrats are in a weaker position. They don't have
the votes to outright forbid any US funding for the
Contras or US support for the Contras, but they're able
to put in limits because it's a military bill that
(01:51):
the Reagan administration desperately wants. Basically, they're not going to
veto it. It's a unanimously passed military appropriations bill, but
they're stuck with this. The language in the press, the
language of US officials becomes more violent, more aggressive about
the need to remove the Sananistas and the growing questions
in the US, the growing anti war movement. But I
(02:12):
think really importantly, the growing uncertainty that this will be
another Vietnam. There's no appetite for US interventions there's no
appetite for US involvement in a war that doesn't seem
like our war. And so in eighty three and eighty four,
the bowl And Amendment is expanded through a series of
other amendments and laws that basically limit all funding and
(02:36):
all overt and covert funding right including the CIA to
the contrast. And so this places the Contras in a
difficult position. They need supplies, they need new weapons, they
need ammunition, they need you name it, they need the
supplies of war. The Reagan administration, particularly members of Reagan's
National Security Council, are trying to figure out how to
(02:58):
get funding there that doesn't look like it's coming directly
from the US.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
The Reagan administration decides to go rogue. They come up
with a secret plan to go around the Bowland Amendments,
the beginning of the Iran contrast story that would rock
the world and become the biggest scandal of the eighties.
In the meantime, Cookie is just doing work. She has
a story for Ed Bradley at sixty minutes about one
(03:24):
of the most badass women in Central American history. Did
you ever do any big stories with some of those
big sixty minutes people, did anyone come in and do
a story?
Speaker 5 (03:33):
Oh, all the time. Don Hewett, you know he's the
creator of sixty minutes. He was the most aggressive motherfucker
to get a story. All of them were just dirty,
old fucking men. I'll fit right in. Sixty minutes rolls
on a whole different plane. It's what I used to
(03:55):
call working with the big boys, the elite. Sixty Minutes
wouldn't come in to just do day to day stories.
I would have to come up with something extremely interesting,
one of a kind for them to be interested. I
was always communicating with them. I developed some very good
contacts and friendships there. It's funny because Ed had a
(04:18):
fixation and obsession with somebody that you also have, and
that was with Nora Aga exactly. She was a lady
that came from a well to do family and educated family.
She was one of these rich kids that were in
the underground for the San Denistas, way before anybody even knew.
(04:42):
She was also a fighter, a warrior. You've seen pictures
that you fell in love with with her in her
uniform and always looking fabulous.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
Like a fabulous badass, like.
Speaker 5 (04:54):
A fabulous warrior. I called her others called her Matahari.
At least is as good as that I like to
hear it, or maybe it's too bad.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
For me to hear it.
Speaker 5 (05:05):
No, no, no, oh, poor friend, Dubrey.
Speaker 6 (05:08):
Says that you are spy.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
That was the legendary movie star Greta Garbo from the
nineteen thirty one film Matahari, who is the real Matahari,
one of the world's most notorious spies, known for her
beauty and seductive charms. Her real name was Margaretha Gertruda MacLeod,
a Dutch exotic dancer who was convicted of being a
(05:33):
spy for Germany during World War One. Before the war,
she had performed as Matahari several times for the Crown
Prince Wilhelm, eldest son of Kaiser Wilhelm the Second, who
was the Emperor of Germany. She was recruited by France
to seduce the Crown Prince to steal military secrets they
could use in the war. That didn't work out too well.
(05:53):
She did seduce him, but ended up changing sides and
spying for the Germans. She was eventually captured and executed
by firing squad. She was the original fem fatale. She
inspired dozens of books, stage plays, TV shows, and films,
(06:13):
as recently as twenty twenty one as a character in
The Kingsman, which grossed over one hundred and twenty five
million dollars at the box office. So, calling Nora Astorga
the Madihari of Nicaragua was both a compliment and a curse,
depending on who you listened to. But it was a
moniker that would follow her for the rest of her life.
Speaker 5 (06:33):
She was Madahari because of who she was in society.
She could get in and out of things and get
information for the underground. So a spy a spy, yes.
What put her on the map was before any of this,
before the Civil War, before the revolution, before any of
(06:55):
those things, when the Sandinistas were still very much under
Obviously the Samosa people knew about them and tried at
every point to crush them. The plan was to kidnap
a Sumosa general, hold him hostage, hold him for ransom,
get some money out of it. I'm not quite sure,
but I don't think their intention was to kill this guy.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
What was his name is?
Speaker 5 (07:20):
Vega?
Speaker 1 (07:22):
Perez Vega was deputy commander of Anastasio Simosa's National guard
considered one of the most brutal generals in Nicaragua, responsible
for the torture and murder of hundreds of Nicaraguans. He
was also a womanizer and went after the women he wanted,
for better or worse, whenever he felt like it. He
was a really bad man. His nickname the dog.
Speaker 5 (07:44):
He actually grew up with my mother, and he had
a different nickname, remolacha, which means beat because he would
get very red in the face. So your nickname that
you discovered came years later.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
And the dog in Spanish is at pedro.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (07:59):
Yeah. Well, so Nora was with the group that kidnapped him.
It was herself and two others, and she used her
womanly whiles to set him up and hold him hostage.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
Nora was a lawyer at the time and it crossed
Vegas path in the normal course of business. He decided
he wanted her, not what she wanted, but it created
an opportunity. This is Nora Astorga in her own words.
Speaker 7 (08:25):
The plan was to make a date for him to
come to my house. In the house, there would be
three compagnos, one in a big closet that opened into
the main room, another in the room opposite and another
in a very small room. We had a signal. I
was to disarm him while he suspected nothing. I would
then have him totally defenseless and would hold him well.
(08:50):
I gave the countersign for my compagnitos to move into action.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
My understanding is she was working this for a while.
It was a seduction too.
Speaker 5 (08:58):
Yeah, all of this stuff had to be You couldn't
just do it because you were dealing with the ruthless regime.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
And she was just sort of playing him, stringing him
along for a while, sucking him.
Speaker 5 (09:09):
In absolutely, and then something went wrong.
Speaker 7 (09:14):
He arrived ready to simply get on with it. No
little drinks or conversation first, none of the subtlety or
the delicacy menus from time to time. No, he just
arrived and said, here I am, let's do it.
Speaker 5 (09:31):
So it began.
Speaker 7 (09:33):
We went straight to the bedroom. I disarmed him and
I took off all of my outer clothes. The compans
came into the room and immobilized him. He put up qualified.
He was very strong. He began to shut to his guard,
but the guard didn't hear him. It was when I
went to the garage to get a car that they
had to kill El Perro. He resisted too much and
(09:58):
they had to execute him.
Speaker 5 (10:00):
I remember my mother telling me, oh, one of my
childhood friends was murdered. We don't know how it happened
or who did it, because you have to understand this
is all still very underground. This isn't public knowledge. It
was years later that it came out that she was
involved with that.
Speaker 7 (10:18):
I never felt guilty. The plan was to kidnap him,
but he fought back and had to be killed. It
was something you had to do for a revolutionary justice.
He had killed so many, he was a monster.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
They slit his throat. His body was later found wrapped
in the Sandinista flag. A. Storica became the most wanted
woman in Nicaragua. The subject of a national manhunt, she
escaped to the Jungles and joined the Sandinista revolutionaries, where
she became a warrior and a leader in the war
against the Mosa.
Speaker 5 (10:54):
The one thing the Sandinesas were good at was treating
women not only with respect, but equally. They could be
equal partners on the field, equal partners as soldiers, equal
partners on missions, and so when the Sandinistas won the revolution,
she obviously had good standing, and she had held several
(11:18):
high positions.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
Astorga eventually became Nicaraguan Ambassador to the United Nations. She
was a controversial choice, opposed vehemently by the US government,
but she was effective, mingling with the elite and scoring
major aid packages for Nicaragua. Strident in her beliefs, always
a warrior for her country, yet always the center of
controversy and gossip. A female diplomat from Latin America at
(11:43):
a Security Council debates said, the moment Nora Astorga crossed
her legs, all the eyes in the room were off
the speaker and on her. One male Western ambassador said,
she wears her past like other women wear perfume. She
was one of a kind. Sixty minutes agreed.
Speaker 5 (12:00):
So Ed Bradley was sort of entranced with her mystique
and everything about it, much like you are. I told
him that I could get an interview with her. Was
he interested? And he was like, tell me when and
where I'll be there. She was a very striking woman,
very intelligent. I got everything set up, Ed flew in
(12:21):
and we got the interview. He loved it. He brought
up her past. He brought up her present, and he
brought up what's in the future. None of us knew
at the time that she had breast cancer and she
was dying. There was not going to be much future
left for her. That evening we celebrated. Of course, we
(12:41):
asked Nora to join us at the hotel.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
Was he flirting with her?
Speaker 3 (12:45):
Oh?
Speaker 5 (12:46):
Ed was a flirt Ed was a charmer. He could
charm the pants off, literally off anybody. Yeah, he was
very taken with her. You didn't see the Madahari side
of her. You could see how she was able to
do it, but you just didn't see that side of her.
You think you know people, but you don't know everything
about them.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
She was tough.
Speaker 5 (13:06):
She was tough, and I believe she was fighting at
the time the Port of Corinto being mined by the US,
because that was breaking we spoke of earlier the Geneva convention.
She was a tough lady. Tough lady.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
When she left the party just raiged on.
Speaker 5 (13:24):
Yeah. Ed could hold his own Yeah, and I was
getting producing credits in sixty minutes, which was amazing. So yeah,
it was a night to celebrate.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
Do you want to say anything about having a fling ed.
Speaker 5 (13:37):
And I got close.
Speaker 6 (13:39):
You know.
Speaker 5 (13:40):
He came back to Nicaragua a couple of times. We
would also see each other in New York and he
was also a big jazz Fest fan, so when he
would come here we would have deluxe treatment. It was
always fun to run with Ed, working or not working. Yeah,
we had a fling. He was fun. He was interesting,
but again and maybe he was a little more interested
(14:01):
in me than I was in him.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
Interesting and not surprising either. Yeah, after the break, we'll
meet the man in Cookie's life, and after forty years,
he has a lot to say about it. We'll be
right back. Welcome back. We've talked a lot about Cookie's
many adventures, some crazy, some scary, some just plain ridiculous.
(14:28):
But now we meet the man in her life, her
forever dude. Some when you met back in her missus
scarface days. Here we are back again with the beautiful
and talented Cookie hood, and today we have a very
special guest, her son Patrick, who everyone knows is Chico.
Speaker 6 (14:43):
Hey, Steve, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
We know each other a little bit, but I'd like
to know what it was like growing up in a
hotel suite in Monagua with this crazy woman in the
middle of a war.
Speaker 8 (14:53):
You know, here in other people's childhoods and how they
grew up, and I always think, man, that was not
my child. I did not have that same experience. It
was different. Instead of having a front yard in a backyard,
I had a hotel lobby in a pool area.
Speaker 5 (15:08):
You know, so your friends used to call Yeah.
Speaker 8 (15:11):
My friends used to call it a chi Cho's big house.
So it was it was interesting, you know, because my
friends can come over and they knew that, you know,
we could stay up all night.
Speaker 9 (15:20):
What was it?
Speaker 5 (15:21):
One rule though?
Speaker 6 (15:23):
What there are no rules.
Speaker 5 (15:26):
There's only one rule in this big house. There are
no rules. And the kids friends would all be like, wow,
your mom is cool, and they could do whatever the
fun they wanted. But that did Chiecho was just another day.
Speaker 8 (15:42):
It was a great experience in that piece, but the
pieces that, you know, maybe fell through the cracks where
you know, maybe at times, you know, I loved having
a best friend, but you know, at times I needed
a mother as well, and she just wasn't good at that.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
You grew up with this crazy, amazing person. Her mission
to party, her driving force was to party. And she
became a journalist to party and she changed the world
in her way.
Speaker 6 (16:07):
Party party.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
Yeah, that sounds really fun and cool. Then you realize
that's your mom.
Speaker 3 (16:12):
You know.
Speaker 8 (16:12):
There was a few times where I would encounter her
or her coworkers, you know, maybe like out of their minds,
messed up. Maybe she's like going off the deep end
and what her perception of what reality is at the moment,
you know. And same thing with some of her coworkers.
I remember there being like lines, yeah, lines or weed
(16:33):
or pipes or whatever everywhere around me, and because you're
a kid, you see them, but you don't make two
sense of it. Obviously I didn't grab anything or do
anything like that, but it was all, yeah, it was
all nearby, and I was interacting with all these people
that are completely fucked up, out of their minds, you know.
Speaker 5 (16:49):
So I used to think you were from the CIA,
and he was seven. Look at his eyes, those are cameras.
That's the ciabe. He's seven. He's seven years old. He's
not from the CIA.
Speaker 8 (17:03):
From an early age, I knew what drugs were and
how they affected people. It's funny. It wasn't until I
was in high school going through a DARE class that
I realized that all these things were bad.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
Your mom's friends, some of these people that she ran
with at the time, were they like uncles to you? Basically?
Speaker 6 (17:20):
Yeah, it was.
Speaker 5 (17:22):
They were all like buddies.
Speaker 4 (17:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 8 (17:24):
Again, that's one of the things that was really awesome
about how she raised me was, you know, she treated
me like an equal. So even though I knew she
was my mom, you know, I could make fun of her,
or I could make jokes and feel comfortable around her.
It was the same for her crew and her friends.
Because of the way she treated me, they would do
the same thing.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
You know.
Speaker 8 (17:42):
So maybe some of the camera guys and some of
the crew guys are a little tougher, you know what
I mean.
Speaker 5 (17:46):
Because he was the mascot, you know.
Speaker 6 (17:48):
Man, there were little shits, man.
Speaker 5 (17:49):
Like it would wrap them up, Gaffer tam Man and
he would be hopping around. What time? This was a
great story. I took him to Bill Counsuler, you know.
William Kunstler, the famous attorney.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
William Kunstler was the former director of the American Civil
Liberties Union the ACLU. He made his name defending the indefensible,
taking on unwinnable cases.
Speaker 10 (18:13):
He was one of the most well known lawyers and
civil rights activists of the twentieth century. William Kunstler defended
the Chicago Seven and counted Martin Luther King, Junior, Malcolm X,
and comedian Lenny Bruce among his clients.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
The New York Times called him the most hated and
loved lawyer in America.
Speaker 5 (18:29):
Well, I took him to Bill's house for barbecue at
the same moment the JDL is outside protesting and wanting
to kill him because he was defending the first World
Trade Center bombers. You remember those first ones. Yeah, And
so even when we weren't in Nick Roger in the war,
anywhere we would go, this would be.
Speaker 6 (18:50):
His trouble was finding us. Man.
Speaker 8 (18:52):
I just remember, like we're eating and I'm like looking
at and so I'm like, what are all these people?
Speaker 5 (18:56):
He just like, why are those people protesting and angry
at us? Why do they want to hurt us? Cookie?
And like we had to book and get out the
back door and run away. His life was like that,
anywhere and everywhere that we went.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
Were you aware of the danger? Were you afraid for
your mom? Were you afraid for the world you have?
Speaker 8 (19:16):
I always knew what her job was and I understood
the dangers because I would see news footage being spliced
in front of me in their studio in the hotel.
It didn't really hit home until she would get into
these situations where I'd be like, hey, where's my mom,
And they're like, well, she can't come home right now
because of this, or she can't come home because of that.
She would never hide anything from me, and you know,
(19:37):
I could be five years old and she's telling me
the cold, hard.
Speaker 6 (19:40):
Facts, whether I understood it or not, you know, but uh.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
Yeah, well Cookie, did you ever have a moment where
you thought what am I doing to this kid?
Speaker 6 (19:48):
Every day?
Speaker 5 (19:50):
Actually? You know, you'd think that I would have thought that,
But everything was just so natural, just things that most
people would have just been horrified. We just took it
and stride was normal. I guess it was our normal.
And if we wouldn't have been in a war, we
would have been in some other crazy situation. So I
(20:10):
did try to hide certain aspects of the war from him,
you know, I wouldn't expose him to dead bodies or
people blown up. There were times when he had to
confront that kind of shit. I guess at the time,
I didn't realize how that could fuck him up or something,
which I guess just having me as a mother would
(20:31):
have been enough to fuck him up. I never really
felt guilty about putting him in those situations. My guilt
was more of I'm not always there for him. I'm
not a great mom, or a mom not on top
of his homework, or where's he going, which in later
years I felt guilty about. I didn't feel guilty at
(20:51):
the time because I was too caught up in everything
that was going on. The funny thing is that he
was everywhere, and not just myself, but all journalists, all
crews just took him for granted. He was just chi
cho hanging out. He lived in a bubble within a
(21:12):
bubble within a war. He was probably in a lot
more danger than we would care to admit or realize
at any given moment. I guess that's my bad.
Speaker 8 (21:23):
The biggest takeaway from it was being ready for anything,
and you know, whether as positive or negative. And it
really got me to be in touch with people, you know,
whether they were you know, somebody that was really important
or treated as a VIP, or you know, maybe it's
just a poor person that's begging in the street. You know,
my mom always taught me to never differentiate between class
(21:46):
and always treat people equally. I had friends these parents
are maids, and then I had friends whose parents were,
you know, national diplomats.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
When did you realize your mom was up to something
that was pretty fucking amazing.
Speaker 8 (21:59):
I would interact with my schoolmates, and I would hear
what their parents were doing and what their parents' job
was like, and none of them sounded like my mom's,
you know. And I would see different people that you know,
would recognize from film or TV or news and be like,
why what.
Speaker 6 (22:13):
Are they doing here? You know?
Speaker 8 (22:14):
And it turned into this thing where I was like, Wow,
I think my mom's got something going on here, you know.
Speaker 6 (22:20):
So it's interesting.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
Well, let's get into some of that, because that's kind
of the one of the fun parts of this whole
journey is that hotel Suite became kind of like party central,
so everybody who was anybody was coming through there at
some point or another. So let's talk a little bit
about that. Like, what was your first essay celebrity encounter.
Speaker 8 (22:38):
Well, you know, one of my favorite anecdotes was the
time I met Daryl Hannah.
Speaker 1 (22:42):
I first saw Daryl Hannah cart wheeling into one of
my top ten films, The Original Blade Runner starring Harrison
Ford and Rucker Howard. But you might also remember her
from the tear jerker Steel Magnolias, where Tarantino's kill Bill.
She was the badass blonde wearing the black pirate patch
on her eye.
Speaker 8 (22:59):
It was funny. My mom introduced me to her, and
I was pretty young. I think I might have I
might have been three or something like that, and one
of my favorite movies at the time was Splash, you know,
the way for me to associate with who this person
I was meeting. My mom was like, hey, this is
the mermaid, you know, and I was like, oh, what
with a mermaid?
Speaker 6 (23:14):
Huh.
Speaker 8 (23:15):
My first reaction was to go find a bucket of
water so I could throw it on her.
Speaker 6 (23:19):
My mom had to stop me from all the.
Speaker 5 (23:21):
Way dragging a bucket of water. I'm like, where are
you going. Water was a very valuable thing at the time.
He goes, I'm going to go throwing on the.
Speaker 6 (23:30):
Mermaids, trying to help the mermaid out.
Speaker 5 (23:32):
Yeah. I was like, no, it's not like that. So
for him, he had blurred lines, you know, and it
wasn't just with movie stars and TV stars, with rock stars, directors,
prominent politicians from other countries.
Speaker 1 (23:47):
You met Jimmy Carter, and I know the Cookie had
a pretty special relationship with them, with yours as well.
Speaker 5 (23:52):
His relationship was hit the Secret Service because they would
try to chase him down the hall and he would
just go run straight to mister Jimmy and miss Rosalind.
Speaker 8 (24:03):
Well, you're putting the Secret Service against a kid that
knows the hotel inside and out, you know. So they're
trying to chase me and they can't catch me because
I know the intricacies of this place, you know. So
it was really cool though. He was a super super
gracious man. Same thing for his wife. You know, they're
really really nice people.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
Jimmy Carter was in Monogua to monitor of the election,
one of the many things that shaped his legacy.
Speaker 6 (24:25):
They stayed on our same floor, which was awesome.
Speaker 5 (24:28):
Presidential suite was on our personal suite floor and the
CBS News suite's offices.
Speaker 8 (24:35):
They were really really nice, really down to earth, and
he made it a point to make sure to talk
to everybody, and you know, it made everybody feel special,
whether it's talking to her whether he's talking to the
person that's bringing him a water.
Speaker 5 (24:48):
One of the Secret Services one called the front desk
and said, there's a child running a monk in this hotel.
He's lost. Who knows what could happen to him. The
guy at the front desk said, could you describe that
child to me? And they described Chicho and the guy
started laughing. He goes, sir, that child could take you
on a tour of the hotel he lives here. The
(25:09):
Secret Service they had their hands full with him because
they were on our floor. They're on my turf, they're
on his turf. Yeah.
Speaker 8 (25:16):
One of the people that I met that maybe I
didn't appreciate back then, but you know, definitely appreciate now
is Oliver Stone.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
That's the four time Oscar winner and director of films
like Platoon, Wall Street and JFK. Just in the neighborhood
making the film Salvador, about another Central American cluster fuck
the United States was involved in.
Speaker 8 (25:34):
You know, he's an incredible director, and I remember him
just having these giant hands. I got to go to
the Natural Born Killers anniversary screening two years ago, lo
and behold, he was sitting like three seats away from
me behind me, and I got a chance to meet
him again and we talked about the Nicaragua experience for
a little bit, which was really interesting.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
Then Cookie and Chicho met a little, tiny ass kicking
nun mother Teresa.
Speaker 5 (25:59):
We were told she was going to show up at
this school and she was going to meet with some
religious leaders there. Since it was out of school, I
brought a cheajolo, and I remember we were told to
set up on a balcony overlooking the courtyard.
Speaker 1 (26:12):
She received permission from the Pope to start her own
order in Calcutta, India, where she devoted her life to
caring for the poorest of the poor, even receiving the
Nobel Peace Prize in nineteen seventy nine.
Speaker 9 (26:23):
Wet us all together, thank God for this beautiful ocation
where we can all together proclaim the joy of springing peace,
the joy of loving one another, and the joy acknowledging
that the poorest of the poor are our brothers and sisters.
Speaker 5 (26:47):
I'm not a religious person at all, And I remember
we're setting up with the camera crew that did the
opening shots of that movie you like Salvador, and all
of a sudden, I just felt something and I turned
to Domingo and I said, do you feel that? He goes,
what are you talking about? I said, I just feel
something in me. And she was walking in at that moment,
(27:09):
into the courtyard. I looked down at her. She looked
up at me. She had no reason to look up.
I'm like, oh, wow, okay, this is weird. We filmed
whatever it is she was doing in the courtyard, meeting
with these religious leaders, and then we had asked to
meet with her for ten minutes. She had already said
(27:29):
no to all the journalists for some reason. Whoever we
asked to get through to her. They got us the
ten minutes. So we packed up our gear from the balcony,
went in into a room on the inside. She's sitting
there and I went up to her, you know, to
introduce myself, and I said, I'm cooking from CBS News.
We're the ones going to interview you. And she was
(27:50):
just this tiny, fragile little person. She looked up at
me and she said to me, can I tell you something?
And I said, sure, ask me anything. She says, you
and your generation thought that you guys were here to
change the world. She says, maybe what you should have
been thinking, and you still could think that maybe you
(28:14):
cookie are just here to change one person's life, and
maybe that life is your life. And I'm just so
blown away. I'm like, what the fuck that just happened here?
I mean, I've got goosebumps. I'm at a loss for words.
Where if you know me, that never happens. It took
(28:36):
me a couple of minutes to gather myself and I
turned to the crew and I said, yeah, we're going
to start the interview now. Might not have been my
best interview because I was just so thrown off by
what she said. She affected me more than the Pope
or anybody else that I had ever met, and I
interviewed the Pope three times spiritually, she was the one.
Speaker 6 (28:58):
She definitely had an energy her.
Speaker 8 (29:00):
I got a chance to meet her, and she was
really really sweet, you know, Like I met her and
she just like cupped my face with her hands, and
that's like what I mainly remember about her. She definitely
had an energy about her. I'm not even a religious person,
and I was like, man, she was amazing.
Speaker 5 (29:15):
Stop somebody like me and tell me something like that.
Speaker 6 (29:18):
I was like, whoa mind blown huh?
Speaker 5 (29:21):
Yeah, what the fuck? Just happened. Yeah, that was one
of the better moments of my career.
Speaker 11 (29:28):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
In twenty sixteen, Mother Teresa became a saint, so Cookie
had a spiritual experience. Great timing because she's about to
face her own death. We'll be right back, Welcome back.
(29:53):
When I was a kid, I used to wonder if
you were in an elevator and it was falling, you
just jump right before it crashed and survive. Cookies about
to find out sort of.
Speaker 5 (30:07):
Before journalists could go into the boonies, into the jungles,
they always had to get permissions and authorizations from whichever
commandante's region you were going into, and nothing happens without
his permission knowledge whatever. This was Commandante Roberto Calderon. We
(30:29):
needed permission to go into his region because we were
going to go on a junket with the soldiers, and
I was going to try to bullshit my way into
getting his okay, because a lot of times journalists would
go to these regions, go to the commandante in charge,
and then be turned away. So I knew I was
(30:50):
going to have to use all my weaponry to get
this permission. Well, we could call it charm bullshitting, whatever
you want to call it. And we get to the
military base. I asked to speak to the commandante. Well,
do you have an appointment? No, I don't. I'm with
CBS News. We want to get permission to go on
(31:11):
a junket with the soldiers. And he says, well, we're
not giving permissions right now. Can you just call the
commandante and I would just like to meet with him.
It's not going to do any good. He's not going
to give you permission. I'm not leaving until you get
the commandante for me. So we waited an hour or
so and we got the meeting. He was very kind
(31:33):
and I explained to him what we needed his permission
to go in and he says, well, I think my
guy's already told you that we're not giving permissions at
this time. I said, it's so important to us, you know,
we need to show what is going on in this war.
And he says, I can't protect you. I promise you
(31:54):
we will get the story and we won't get killed.
He acquiesced and he gave us permission. So the first
part of the mission, we had to be flown in
a two propeller plane to the base in the jungle.
That is where we were going to meet up with
helicopters that were going to take us in to meet
(32:15):
with the soldiers. So we're like, great, we'll get in
this two propeller plane. It's just myself and the crew.
Speaker 1 (32:21):
The military pilot was the sister of Nora Astorga, you know,
the Matahari of Nicaragua. Small world.
Speaker 5 (32:29):
I'm standing behind the plane as pilot Astorga turns it on.
The exhaust from it was so strong it lifted me
up so high like I was levitating. Then it dropped me.
The pilot realized what was going on, she turned the
vehicle off, which is what caused me to fall. She
(32:52):
knew she had messed up. I was severely wounded. I
could feel that my whole body had just been run
over by a truck. It felt like I knew I
was going to be in trouble and probably not in
good shape to go on this ten day junket walking
in the jungles. They're still going to take us to
(33:12):
the military base and have a doctor look at me there.
So we go on the two propeller plane. We get
to this base. I think it was called Nueva Guinea.
It was another region Immediately, a doctor from the base
looks at me and he says to the camera crew,
she cannot go on this junket with you guys. Kmatomas
had formed all over my legs, my body. I was
(33:36):
one big hematoma and they just send me to a
cot to go to sleep. Unbeknownst to myself, they're getting
the helicopter ready that's gonna take the crew and originally
gonna take me deeper into the jungle to meet with
the platoon that I'm going with. The doctor had not
(33:56):
left instructions to anybody. They wake me up, they put
me on the helicopter with the crew and here I
am going deeper into the jungle to go into this junket,
and I'm so out of it, I'm not even saying anything.
And then they dump us, they leave us there. I
gotta suck it up. And you have to remember, when
I go on these junkets, I'm usually the only female.
(34:19):
I can't be complaining and whining and saying, oh, I
gotta be as strong as they are. The crew realizes
I'm in trouble. They're going to be in trouble if
I can't handle myself. And it was a tough one.
After ten days, it's time to be picked up and
taken back to civilization. So a helicopter comes to pick
(34:41):
us up. We get loaded on. We're all relieved. We're
going back to civilization.
Speaker 1 (34:45):
The helicopter takes off with Cookie the crew and a
couple doesn't sand Anisa soldiers.
Speaker 5 (34:50):
We were in a Russian helicopter because the Russians are
the ones helping the Sandinistans. The Russian helicopters were famous
for two things. They had no p dejective ceilings around
their gas tanks, and in this particular helicopter, they're carrying
extra tanks of unsealed fuel. This does not bode well.
(35:10):
We had taken off. I don't know how far up
we were. All I know is that we were up
in the air. I heard three somethings. I looked at
one soldier and I said, that's not a good sound,
is it? And he went white and he said, no,
we're going down. And I said, what do you mean?
We're going down? And then the other one's right, we're
(35:33):
gonna die. And then we started to go down. If
it had been a surface to air missile, we wouldn't
be here talking to you. We would have been blown
up midair. This was some lonely, fucking inexperienced soldier that
shot us down. Thank god. Everyone says that thing about
(35:54):
you know, your whole life flashes in front of you,
and that didn't happen to me. All I kept saying
was you stupid, fucking bitch. You are finally in a
situation you cannot talk yourself out of. You can't run
yourself out of it, you can't will yourself out of this.
Through the years, that was the worst story to cover.
(36:16):
Helicopter and plane crashes. We called them in the business
crispy critters because they would just be burned or pieces
of meat here and there. I'm fucked. I'm gonna be
a crispy cretter.
Speaker 1 (36:30):
So it's spinning around, spinning around, You're gonna crash.
Speaker 5 (36:34):
It's gonna crash in a valley, which is even worse.
I decide I'm gonna do like the movies. I'm gonna
get to that door and I'm gonna jump out before
we hit the ground. The camera crew was right behind me.
I jumped out still mid air. They jumped out.
Speaker 1 (36:50):
They hit the ground hard, severely injured. Helicopter filled with
soldiers spins toward the ground.
Speaker 5 (36:55):
All I know is I've got to run and just
run and not look back. But where do I have
to run? Upwards? To get out of the valley.
Speaker 1 (37:05):
The helicopter crashes into the valley, exploding in flames.
Speaker 5 (37:11):
So I'm climbing and I'm climbing and I'm climbing, and
as I get to the top, I realize I can't
take one more minute of this. I can't make it
to the top. And all of a sudden comes a
hand from above and somebody lifts me up and saves me.
And it was one of the soldiers that we had
(37:32):
been with on the ten day junket. They saw what
had happened. At that point, I don't realize that they're
getting in touch with Commandante Roberto Calderon, letting him know
what's going on. He's going to send not one, not two.
He's going to send three helicopters, one for each of us,
(37:53):
because at this point he doesn't know if there's more
attacks that are going to happen, and he doesn't want
all of us on one helicopter to be shot at
and killed.
Speaker 1 (38:05):
And at the same time, there are contraus soldiers rushing
to the crash. There's no time to waste.
Speaker 5 (38:11):
We're in a spot that's full of trees. I can
see the soldiers with their machetes chopping down trees, making
a clearing for all these three helicopters to land. Three
helicopters come, they take us away. To this day, I
have to thank that Comandante for saving my life. By
the time we got into Monogua the capitol, CBS already
(38:36):
had medevac jets waiting for us to take the three
of us to Miami. We were all injured. We had
internal injuries, we had outward injuries. And again CBS came through.
They always took care of their journalists, got us out
of there. God us medevac to Miami. We spent about
four to six weeks recovering in Miami.
Speaker 1 (38:58):
By the way, this is where Teacho story kicks in.
And that must have been terrifying. How did you hear
about it? How did it go down for you?
Speaker 8 (39:05):
Anytime that she was going to cover something that would
be in overnight, or it would be something that would
take a few days, whatever, she would tell me about
it so I would know and prepare or whatever. But
she had left to go to do one of her trips.
After a few days, she didn't come back and hadn't
heard from her, and somebody she worked with came up
to me and they were like, Hey, I need to
tell you something really important. Your mom was in a
(39:28):
helicopter accident. All I knew about helicopter accidents was what
I saw in action movies.
Speaker 6 (39:34):
You know, I'm.
Speaker 8 (39:35):
Picturing this helicopter blew up or whatever, you know, and
I just didn't really know what to think or what
the extent of her injuries were. So I just remember
being like, where is she. They were like, oh, she's
in Miami. She's in a hospital, and I was like,
all right, I'm going to Miami. I remember going to
the airport. I was flying by myself. I think I
(39:55):
was in a suit jacket and a dress shirt and
Miami Vice.
Speaker 5 (40:00):
Yeah, yeah, wearing the Miami Vice cotton suit with the pinked,
you know, lavender colors.
Speaker 6 (40:07):
It was wild. Yeah wait you had the yeah, the
spiked area for sure.
Speaker 8 (40:12):
So I was flying by myself, and you know, I
just remember that ride going to Miami and just having
that uncertainty because all I knew was, you know, a
helicopter crash. You know, so I didn't really know what
I was walking into, and you know, there was that
reality set in that, you know, I could have lost
my mom. Once I got to the hospital, I was
you know, obviously I was relieved that she was okay,
(40:33):
but man, she was banged up. Man, I've never seen
her like that. Yeah, I've never seen her like that.
Speaker 1 (40:40):
How did the experience knowing your mom could have died
right then and how did that play out going forward?
Were you Was it a different experience from that point on?
Speaker 6 (40:49):
No, Yeah, it was.
Speaker 8 (40:50):
It was a reality for me at that point. You know,
I realized that I could have lost her at that moment,
and and then that reality was there that I could
lose her in the future. You know. So it wasn't
something than I was actively thinking about every day, but
every time that she was going out to do anything,
it was something that was in the back of my head.
Speaker 5 (41:06):
Like, wow, I didn't think I was gonna live.
Speaker 6 (41:08):
Yeah, she was so banged up. It was wow.
Speaker 5 (41:12):
It was so scary, it really was.
Speaker 1 (41:15):
The Miami Herald ran this story a few days later.
Speaker 11 (41:18):
TV news crew Okay, after forced landing three members of
a CBS television crew who survived a forced landing aboard
a Soviet made Nicaraguan government helicopter over the weekend were
brought to Miami for treatment of minor injuries. Reporter Courtney Hood,
cameraman Domingo Rex, and sound man aziz A Chiavas were
(41:38):
treated for cut cintebrations. Unspecified mechanical problems brought the aircraft
down Sunday in southeast Nicaragua. CBS producer John Seislof said
Tuesday in Nicaragua, it was a bullshit story.
Speaker 5 (41:52):
He never said that he had been censored. He could
not say what had happened, or they weren't going to
allow them to get me out the country for medical treatment,
so you say this or she dies kind of thing.
So I didn't know any of that.
Speaker 1 (42:09):
It was covered up like everything during war. The truth
is also a casualty. After a few weeks, Cookie and
the crew were released from the hospital, CBS thought it
was a good idea to put him up in a
fancy hotel to continue the recovery.
Speaker 5 (42:25):
We each had our own suite, but two of us
wound up just crashing in the same suite because we
had the.
Speaker 1 (42:31):
Same Basically the party, the party was on.
Speaker 5 (42:35):
Oh, the party was on, all expense paid. Yeah, it
was a great place to recuperate. By that point, I
was like, kind of this helicopter crash wasn't so bad
after all.
Speaker 1 (42:46):
You know, Cookie survives a near death experience. But shit's
about to get real. She comes face to face with
the bloody consequences of terror.
Speaker 5 (42:58):
Next time on Joenerally, we're heading to the Jungles. We're
just looking for a story. A mortar blows up. We
all exit the vehicles, get in the dirt and start crawling,
and all of a sudden, I hear on the side
of me some soldier whispering Cookie, Cookie, is that you?
(43:24):
He says, I have something I don't know if it
means anything. A book. So I'm reading it and I'm
like on the inside freaking out. I turned to Richard Wagner,
can you look at this? He starts to read it,
and he says, this is a goddamn CIA torture manual.
Speaker 1 (43:47):
The Journalista podcast features the stories and voice of Cookie Hood,
narrated by Steven Estepp, produced by Sean J. Donnelly. Executive
producers Jason Wagensback, Roy Laughlin, and Ellen k iHeart Executive
producer Tyler Klang. Written and edited by Steven stem Music
by Jay Weigel, Associate producer in sound design Stephen Tanti.
(44:10):
Sound mixing by Jesse Solansnyder. Special Guestjulaine History professor Justin Woolf,
Cindy Pohl as the voice of Nora Estorga, Patrick Chico Hood,
Lloyd Sherr. Special thanks to Esplanade Studios, The Ranch Studios,
Jason Gerwitz, Kyle Frederick, Zach Slaff. This is a production
(44:31):
of Journalista podcast LLC and iHeartRadio
This is a production of Journalista podcast LLC and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
When the Nicaraguan port of Corinto was bombed in October,
it was the Contrast who took the credit, but CBS
News has learned it was Americans who led the raid.
Military sources confirm it was Americans who took two boatloads
of Honduran commandos from the Salvadoran coast to Corinto to
place time bombs in the port, Americans from the CIA,
and Americans from regular military service. Publicly, the Pentagon won't
(00:31):
talk about those actions, and privately, the American military just
keeps doing them. Jane Wallace, CBS News to Gusigalpa, Honduras.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
Welcome back to the Journalista podcasts. Cookie is becoming a
rock star for CBS. But after the CIA is exposed
mining harbors and blowing up ships in Nicaragua, folks back
home in the United States are starting to wonder what
in the hell are we doing in Central America.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
The success of communism in Central America poses the threat,
but one hundred million people from Panama to the open
border on Arshall could come under the control of pro
Soviet regimes.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
President Reagan made his case to the American people, but
Congress wasn't buying it. Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy called it stupid.
Republican Senator Barry Goldwater said I'm pissed off. Former President
Jimmy Carter called it disgraceful. Justin Wolfe, Tulane history professor,
explains what happened next.
Speaker 4 (01:31):
In nineteen eighty two, there's an amendment put forward by
Representative Boland to a Military Appropriations Act. It's a rider.
The Democrats are in a weaker position. They don't have
the votes to outright forbid any US funding for the
Contras or US support for the Contras, but they're able
to put in limits because it's a military bill that
(01:51):
the Reagan administration desperately wants. Basically, they're not going to
veto it. It's a unanimously passed military appropriations bill, but
they're stuck with this. The language in the press, the
language of US officials becomes more violent, more aggressive about
the need to remove the Sananistas and the growing questions
in the US, the growing anti war movement. But I
(02:12):
think really importantly, the growing uncertainty that this will be
another Vietnam. There's no appetite for US interventions there's no
appetite for US involvement in a war that doesn't seem
like our war. And so in eighty three and eighty four,
the bowl And Amendment is expanded through a series of
other amendments and laws that basically limit all funding and
(02:36):
all overt and covert funding right including the CIA to
the contrast. And so this places the Contras in a
difficult position. They need supplies, they need new weapons, they
need ammunition, they need you name it, they need the
supplies of war. The Reagan administration, particularly members of Reagan's
National Security Council, are trying to figure out how to
(02:58):
get funding there that doesn't look like it's coming directly
from the US.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
The Reagan administration decides to go rogue. They come up
with a secret plan to go around the Bowland Amendments,
the beginning of the Iran contrast story that would rock
the world and become the biggest scandal of the eighties.
In the meantime, Cookie is just doing work. She has
a story for Ed Bradley at sixty minutes about one
(03:24):
of the most badass women in Central American history. Did
you ever do any big stories with some of those
big sixty minutes people, did anyone come in and do
a story?
Speaker 5 (03:33):
Oh, all the time. Don Hewett, you know he's the
creator of sixty minutes. He was the most aggressive motherfucker
to get a story. All of them were just dirty,
old fucking men. I'll fit right in. Sixty minutes rolls
on a whole different plane. It's what I used to
(03:55):
call working with the big boys, the elite. Sixty Minutes
wouldn't come in to just do day to day stories.
I would have to come up with something extremely interesting,
one of a kind for them to be interested. I
was always communicating with them. I developed some very good
contacts and friendships there. It's funny because Ed had a
(04:18):
fixation and obsession with somebody that you also have, and
that was with Nora Aga exactly. She was a lady
that came from a well to do family and educated family.
She was one of these rich kids that were in
the underground for the San Denistas, way before anybody even knew.
(04:42):
She was also a fighter, a warrior. You've seen pictures
that you fell in love with with her in her
uniform and always looking fabulous.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
Like a fabulous badass, like.
Speaker 5 (04:54):
A fabulous warrior. I called her others called her Matahari.
At least is as good as that I like to
hear it, or maybe it's too bad.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
For me to hear it.
Speaker 5 (05:05):
No, no, no, oh, poor friend, Dubrey.
Speaker 6 (05:08):
Says that you are spy.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
That was the legendary movie star Greta Garbo from the
nineteen thirty one film Matahari, who is the real Matahari,
one of the world's most notorious spies, known for her
beauty and seductive charms. Her real name was Margaretha Gertruda MacLeod,
a Dutch exotic dancer who was convicted of being a
(05:33):
spy for Germany during World War One. Before the war,
she had performed as Matahari several times for the Crown
Prince Wilhelm, eldest son of Kaiser Wilhelm the Second, who
was the Emperor of Germany. She was recruited by France
to seduce the Crown Prince to steal military secrets they
could use in the war. That didn't work out too well.
(05:53):
She did seduce him, but ended up changing sides and
spying for the Germans. She was eventually captured and executed
by firing squad. She was the original fem fatale. She
inspired dozens of books, stage plays, TV shows, and films,
(06:13):
as recently as twenty twenty one as a character in
The Kingsman, which grossed over one hundred and twenty five
million dollars at the box office. So, calling Nora Astorga
the Madihari of Nicaragua was both a compliment and a curse,
depending on who you listened to. But it was a
moniker that would follow her for the rest of her life.
Speaker 5 (06:33):
She was Madahari because of who she was in society.
She could get in and out of things and get
information for the underground. So a spy a spy, yes.
What put her on the map was before any of this,
before the Civil War, before the revolution, before any of
(06:55):
those things, when the Sandinistas were still very much under
Obviously the Samosa people knew about them and tried at
every point to crush them. The plan was to kidnap
a Sumosa general, hold him hostage, hold him for ransom,
get some money out of it. I'm not quite sure,
but I don't think their intention was to kill this guy.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
What was his name is?
Speaker 5 (07:20):
Vega?
Speaker 1 (07:22):
Perez Vega was deputy commander of Anastasio Simosa's National guard
considered one of the most brutal generals in Nicaragua, responsible
for the torture and murder of hundreds of Nicaraguans. He
was also a womanizer and went after the women he wanted,
for better or worse, whenever he felt like it. He
was a really bad man. His nickname the dog.
Speaker 5 (07:44):
He actually grew up with my mother, and he had
a different nickname, remolacha, which means beat because he would
get very red in the face. So your nickname that
you discovered came years later.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
And the dog in Spanish is at pedro.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (07:59):
Yeah. Well, so Nora was with the group that kidnapped him.
It was herself and two others, and she used her
womanly whiles to set him up and hold him hostage.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
Nora was a lawyer at the time and it crossed
Vegas path in the normal course of business. He decided
he wanted her, not what she wanted, but it created
an opportunity. This is Nora Astorga in her own words.
Speaker 7 (08:25):
The plan was to make a date for him to
come to my house. In the house, there would be
three compagnos, one in a big closet that opened into
the main room, another in the room opposite and another
in a very small room. We had a signal. I
was to disarm him while he suspected nothing. I would
then have him totally defenseless and would hold him well.
(08:50):
I gave the countersign for my compagnitos to move into action.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
My understanding is she was working this for a while.
It was a seduction too.
Speaker 5 (08:58):
Yeah, all of this stuff had to be You couldn't
just do it because you were dealing with the ruthless regime.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
And she was just sort of playing him, stringing him
along for a while, sucking him.
Speaker 5 (09:09):
In absolutely, and then something went wrong.
Speaker 7 (09:14):
He arrived ready to simply get on with it. No
little drinks or conversation first, none of the subtlety or
the delicacy menus from time to time. No, he just
arrived and said, here I am, let's do it.
Speaker 5 (09:31):
So it began.
Speaker 7 (09:33):
We went straight to the bedroom. I disarmed him and
I took off all of my outer clothes. The compans
came into the room and immobilized him. He put up qualified.
He was very strong. He began to shut to his guard,
but the guard didn't hear him. It was when I
went to the garage to get a car that they
had to kill El Perro. He resisted too much and
(09:58):
they had to execute him.
Speaker 5 (10:00):
I remember my mother telling me, oh, one of my
childhood friends was murdered. We don't know how it happened
or who did it, because you have to understand this
is all still very underground. This isn't public knowledge. It
was years later that it came out that she was
involved with that.
Speaker 7 (10:18):
I never felt guilty. The plan was to kidnap him,
but he fought back and had to be killed. It
was something you had to do for a revolutionary justice.
He had killed so many, he was a monster.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
They slit his throat. His body was later found wrapped
in the Sandinista flag. A. Storica became the most wanted
woman in Nicaragua. The subject of a national manhunt, she
escaped to the Jungles and joined the Sandinista revolutionaries, where
she became a warrior and a leader in the war
against the Mosa.
Speaker 5 (10:54):
The one thing the Sandinesas were good at was treating
women not only with respect, but equally. They could be
equal partners on the field, equal partners as soldiers, equal
partners on missions, and so when the Sandinistas won the revolution,
she obviously had good standing, and she had held several
(11:18):
high positions.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
Astorga eventually became Nicaraguan Ambassador to the United Nations. She
was a controversial choice, opposed vehemently by the US government,
but she was effective, mingling with the elite and scoring
major aid packages for Nicaragua. Strident in her beliefs, always
a warrior for her country, yet always the center of
controversy and gossip. A female diplomat from Latin America at
(11:43):
a Security Council debates said, the moment Nora Astorga crossed
her legs, all the eyes in the room were off
the speaker and on her. One male Western ambassador said,
she wears her past like other women wear perfume. She
was one of a kind. Sixty minutes agreed.
Speaker 5 (12:00):
So Ed Bradley was sort of entranced with her mystique
and everything about it, much like you are. I told
him that I could get an interview with her. Was
he interested? And he was like, tell me when and
where I'll be there. She was a very striking woman,
very intelligent. I got everything set up, Ed flew in
(12:21):
and we got the interview. He loved it. He brought
up her past. He brought up her present, and he
brought up what's in the future. None of us knew
at the time that she had breast cancer and she
was dying. There was not going to be much future
left for her. That evening we celebrated. Of course, we
(12:41):
asked Nora to join us at the hotel.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
Was he flirting with her?
Speaker 3 (12:45):
Oh?
Speaker 5 (12:46):
Ed was a flirt Ed was a charmer. He could
charm the pants off, literally off anybody. Yeah, he was
very taken with her. You didn't see the Madahari side
of her. You could see how she was able to
do it, but you just didn't see that side of her.
You think you know people, but you don't know everything
about them.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
She was tough.
Speaker 5 (13:06):
She was tough, and I believe she was fighting at
the time the Port of Corinto being mined by the US,
because that was breaking we spoke of earlier the Geneva convention.
She was a tough lady. Tough lady.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
When she left the party just raiged on.
Speaker 5 (13:24):
Yeah. Ed could hold his own Yeah, and I was
getting producing credits in sixty minutes, which was amazing. So yeah,
it was a night to celebrate.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
Do you want to say anything about having a fling ed.
Speaker 5 (13:37):
And I got close.
Speaker 6 (13:39):
You know.
Speaker 5 (13:40):
He came back to Nicaragua a couple of times. We
would also see each other in New York and he
was also a big jazz Fest fan, so when he
would come here we would have deluxe treatment. It was
always fun to run with Ed, working or not working. Yeah,
we had a fling. He was fun. He was interesting,
but again and maybe he was a little more interested
(14:01):
in me than I was in him.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
Interesting and not surprising either. Yeah, after the break, we'll
meet the man in Cookie's life, and after forty years,
he has a lot to say about it. We'll be
right back. Welcome back. We've talked a lot about Cookie's
many adventures, some crazy, some scary, some just plain ridiculous.
(14:28):
But now we meet the man in her life, her
forever dude. Some when you met back in her missus
scarface days. Here we are back again with the beautiful
and talented Cookie hood, and today we have a very
special guest, her son Patrick, who everyone knows is Chico.
Speaker 6 (14:43):
Hey, Steve, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
We know each other a little bit, but I'd like
to know what it was like growing up in a
hotel suite in Monagua with this crazy woman in the
middle of a war.
Speaker 8 (14:53):
You know, here in other people's childhoods and how they
grew up, and I always think, man, that was not
my child. I did not have that same experience. It
was different. Instead of having a front yard in a backyard,
I had a hotel lobby in a pool area.
Speaker 5 (15:08):
You know, so your friends used to call Yeah.
Speaker 8 (15:11):
My friends used to call it a chi Cho's big house.
So it was it was interesting, you know, because my
friends can come over and they knew that, you know,
we could stay up all night.
Speaker 9 (15:20):
What was it?
Speaker 5 (15:21):
One rule though?
Speaker 6 (15:23):
What there are no rules.
Speaker 5 (15:26):
There's only one rule in this big house. There are
no rules. And the kids friends would all be like, wow,
your mom is cool, and they could do whatever the
fun they wanted. But that did Chiecho was just another day.
Speaker 8 (15:42):
It was a great experience in that piece, but the
pieces that, you know, maybe fell through the cracks where
you know, maybe at times, you know, I loved having
a best friend, but you know, at times I needed
a mother as well, and she just wasn't good at that.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
You grew up with this crazy, amazing person. Her mission
to party, her driving force was to party. And she
became a journalist to party and she changed the world
in her way.
Speaker 6 (16:07):
Party party.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
Yeah, that sounds really fun and cool. Then you realize
that's your mom.
Speaker 3 (16:12):
You know.
Speaker 8 (16:12):
There was a few times where I would encounter her
or her coworkers, you know, maybe like out of their minds,
messed up. Maybe she's like going off the deep end
and what her perception of what reality is at the moment,
you know. And same thing with some of her coworkers.
I remember there being like lines, yeah, lines or weed
(16:33):
or pipes or whatever everywhere around me, and because you're
a kid, you see them, but you don't make two
sense of it. Obviously I didn't grab anything or do
anything like that, but it was all, yeah, it was
all nearby, and I was interacting with all these people
that are completely fucked up, out of their minds, you know.
Speaker 5 (16:49):
So I used to think you were from the CIA,
and he was seven. Look at his eyes, those are cameras.
That's the ciabe. He's seven. He's seven years old. He's
not from the CIA.
Speaker 8 (17:03):
From an early age, I knew what drugs were and
how they affected people. It's funny. It wasn't until I
was in high school going through a DARE class that
I realized that all these things were bad.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
Your mom's friends, some of these people that she ran
with at the time, were they like uncles to you? Basically?
Speaker 6 (17:20):
Yeah, it was.
Speaker 5 (17:22):
They were all like buddies.
Speaker 4 (17:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 8 (17:24):
Again, that's one of the things that was really awesome
about how she raised me was, you know, she treated
me like an equal. So even though I knew she
was my mom, you know, I could make fun of her,
or I could make jokes and feel comfortable around her.
It was the same for her crew and her friends.
Because of the way she treated me, they would do
the same thing.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
You know.
Speaker 8 (17:42):
So maybe some of the camera guys and some of
the crew guys are a little tougher, you know what
I mean.
Speaker 5 (17:46):
Because he was the mascot, you know.
Speaker 6 (17:48):
Man, there were little shits, man.
Speaker 5 (17:49):
Like it would wrap them up, Gaffer tam Man and
he would be hopping around. What time? This was a
great story. I took him to Bill Counsuler, you know.
William Kunstler, the famous attorney.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
William Kunstler was the former director of the American Civil
Liberties Union the ACLU. He made his name defending the indefensible,
taking on unwinnable cases.
Speaker 10 (18:13):
He was one of the most well known lawyers and
civil rights activists of the twentieth century. William Kunstler defended
the Chicago Seven and counted Martin Luther King, Junior, Malcolm X,
and comedian Lenny Bruce among his clients.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
The New York Times called him the most hated and
loved lawyer in America.
Speaker 5 (18:29):
Well, I took him to Bill's house for barbecue at
the same moment the JDL is outside protesting and wanting
to kill him because he was defending the first World
Trade Center bombers. You remember those first ones. Yeah, And
so even when we weren't in Nick Roger in the war,
anywhere we would go, this would be.
Speaker 6 (18:50):
His trouble was finding us. Man.
Speaker 8 (18:52):
I just remember, like we're eating and I'm like looking
at and so I'm like, what are all these people?
Speaker 5 (18:56):
He just like, why are those people protesting and angry
at us? Why do they want to hurt us? Cookie?
And like we had to book and get out the
back door and run away. His life was like that,
anywhere and everywhere that we went.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
Were you aware of the danger? Were you afraid for
your mom? Were you afraid for the world you have?
Speaker 8 (19:16):
I always knew what her job was and I understood
the dangers because I would see news footage being spliced
in front of me in their studio in the hotel.
It didn't really hit home until she would get into
these situations where I'd be like, hey, where's my mom,
And they're like, well, she can't come home right now
because of this, or she can't come home because of that.
She would never hide anything from me, and you know,
(19:37):
I could be five years old and she's telling me
the cold, hard.
Speaker 6 (19:40):
Facts, whether I understood it or not, you know, but uh.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
Yeah, well Cookie, did you ever have a moment where
you thought what am I doing to this kid?
Speaker 6 (19:48):
Every day?
Speaker 5 (19:50):
Actually? You know, you'd think that I would have thought that,
But everything was just so natural, just things that most
people would have just been horrified. We just took it
and stride was normal. I guess it was our normal.
And if we wouldn't have been in a war, we
would have been in some other crazy situation. So I
(20:10):
did try to hide certain aspects of the war from him,
you know, I wouldn't expose him to dead bodies or
people blown up. There were times when he had to
confront that kind of shit. I guess at the time,
I didn't realize how that could fuck him up or something,
which I guess just having me as a mother would
(20:31):
have been enough to fuck him up. I never really
felt guilty about putting him in those situations. My guilt
was more of I'm not always there for him. I'm
not a great mom, or a mom not on top
of his homework, or where's he going, which in later
years I felt guilty about. I didn't feel guilty at
(20:51):
the time because I was too caught up in everything
that was going on. The funny thing is that he
was everywhere, and not just myself, but all journalists, all
crews just took him for granted. He was just chi
cho hanging out. He lived in a bubble within a
(21:12):
bubble within a war. He was probably in a lot
more danger than we would care to admit or realize
at any given moment. I guess that's my bad.
Speaker 8 (21:23):
The biggest takeaway from it was being ready for anything,
and you know, whether as positive or negative. And it
really got me to be in touch with people, you know,
whether they were you know, somebody that was really important
or treated as a VIP, or you know, maybe it's
just a poor person that's begging in the street. You know,
my mom always taught me to never differentiate between class
(21:46):
and always treat people equally. I had friends these parents
are maids, and then I had friends whose parents were,
you know, national diplomats.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
When did you realize your mom was up to something
that was pretty fucking amazing.
Speaker 8 (21:59):
I would interact with my schoolmates, and I would hear
what their parents were doing and what their parents' job
was like, and none of them sounded like my mom's,
you know. And I would see different people that you know,
would recognize from film or TV or news and be like,
why what.
Speaker 6 (22:13):
Are they doing here? You know?
Speaker 8 (22:14):
And it turned into this thing where I was like, Wow,
I think my mom's got something going on here, you know.
Speaker 6 (22:20):
So it's interesting.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
Well, let's get into some of that, because that's kind
of the one of the fun parts of this whole
journey is that hotel Suite became kind of like party central,
so everybody who was anybody was coming through there at
some point or another. So let's talk a little bit
about that. Like, what was your first essay celebrity encounter.
Speaker 8 (22:38):
Well, you know, one of my favorite anecdotes was the
time I met Daryl Hannah.
Speaker 1 (22:42):
I first saw Daryl Hannah cart wheeling into one of
my top ten films, The Original Blade Runner starring Harrison
Ford and Rucker Howard. But you might also remember her
from the tear jerker Steel Magnolias, where Tarantino's kill Bill.
She was the badass blonde wearing the black pirate patch
on her eye.
Speaker 8 (22:59):
It was funny. My mom introduced me to her, and
I was pretty young. I think I might have I
might have been three or something like that, and one
of my favorite movies at the time was Splash, you know,
the way for me to associate with who this person
I was meeting. My mom was like, hey, this is
the mermaid, you know, and I was like, oh, what
with a mermaid?
Speaker 6 (23:14):
Huh.
Speaker 8 (23:15):
My first reaction was to go find a bucket of
water so I could throw it on her.
Speaker 6 (23:19):
My mom had to stop me from all the.
Speaker 5 (23:21):
Way dragging a bucket of water. I'm like, where are
you going. Water was a very valuable thing at the time.
He goes, I'm going to go throwing on the.
Speaker 6 (23:30):
Mermaids, trying to help the mermaid out.
Speaker 5 (23:32):
Yeah. I was like, no, it's not like that. So
for him, he had blurred lines, you know, and it
wasn't just with movie stars and TV stars, with rock stars, directors,
prominent politicians from other countries.
Speaker 1 (23:47):
You met Jimmy Carter, and I know the Cookie had
a pretty special relationship with them, with yours as well.
Speaker 5 (23:52):
His relationship was hit the Secret Service because they would
try to chase him down the hall and he would
just go run straight to mister Jimmy and miss Rosalind.
Speaker 8 (24:03):
Well, you're putting the Secret Service against a kid that
knows the hotel inside and out, you know. So they're
trying to chase me and they can't catch me because
I know the intricacies of this place, you know. So
it was really cool though. He was a super super
gracious man. Same thing for his wife. You know, they're
really really nice people.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
Jimmy Carter was in Monogua to monitor of the election,
one of the many things that shaped his legacy.
Speaker 6 (24:25):
They stayed on our same floor, which was awesome.
Speaker 5 (24:28):
Presidential suite was on our personal suite floor and the
CBS News suite's offices.
Speaker 8 (24:35):
They were really really nice, really down to earth, and
he made it a point to make sure to talk
to everybody, and you know, it made everybody feel special,
whether it's talking to her whether he's talking to the
person that's bringing him a water.
Speaker 5 (24:48):
One of the Secret Services one called the front desk
and said, there's a child running a monk in this hotel.
He's lost. Who knows what could happen to him. The
guy at the front desk said, could you describe that
child to me? And they described Chicho and the guy
started laughing. He goes, sir, that child could take you
on a tour of the hotel he lives here. The
(25:09):
Secret Service they had their hands full with him because
they were on our floor. They're on my turf, they're
on his turf. Yeah.
Speaker 8 (25:16):
One of the people that I met that maybe I
didn't appreciate back then, but you know, definitely appreciate now
is Oliver Stone.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
That's the four time Oscar winner and director of films
like Platoon, Wall Street and JFK. Just in the neighborhood
making the film Salvador, about another Central American cluster fuck
the United States was involved in.
Speaker 8 (25:34):
You know, he's an incredible director, and I remember him
just having these giant hands. I got to go to
the Natural Born Killers anniversary screening two years ago, lo
and behold, he was sitting like three seats away from
me behind me, and I got a chance to meet
him again and we talked about the Nicaragua experience for
a little bit, which was really interesting.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
Then Cookie and Chicho met a little, tiny ass kicking
nun mother Teresa.
Speaker 5 (25:59):
We were told she was going to show up at
this school and she was going to meet with some
religious leaders there. Since it was out of school, I
brought a cheajolo, and I remember we were told to
set up on a balcony overlooking the courtyard.
Speaker 1 (26:12):
She received permission from the Pope to start her own
order in Calcutta, India, where she devoted her life to
caring for the poorest of the poor, even receiving the
Nobel Peace Prize in nineteen seventy nine.
Speaker 9 (26:23):
Wet us all together, thank God for this beautiful ocation
where we can all together proclaim the joy of springing peace,
the joy of loving one another, and the joy acknowledging
that the poorest of the poor are our brothers and sisters.
Speaker 5 (26:47):
I'm not a religious person at all, And I remember
we're setting up with the camera crew that did the
opening shots of that movie you like Salvador, and all
of a sudden, I just felt something and I turned
to Domingo and I said, do you feel that? He goes,
what are you talking about? I said, I just feel
something in me. And she was walking in at that moment,
(27:09):
into the courtyard. I looked down at her. She looked
up at me. She had no reason to look up.
I'm like, oh, wow, okay, this is weird. We filmed
whatever it is she was doing in the courtyard, meeting
with these religious leaders, and then we had asked to
meet with her for ten minutes. She had already said
(27:29):
no to all the journalists for some reason. Whoever we
asked to get through to her. They got us the
ten minutes. So we packed up our gear from the balcony,
went in into a room on the inside. She's sitting
there and I went up to her, you know, to
introduce myself, and I said, I'm cooking from CBS News.
We're the ones going to interview you. And she was
(27:50):
just this tiny, fragile little person. She looked up at
me and she said to me, can I tell you something?
And I said, sure, ask me anything. She says, you
and your generation thought that you guys were here to
change the world. She says, maybe what you should have
been thinking, and you still could think that maybe you
(28:14):
cookie are just here to change one person's life, and
maybe that life is your life. And I'm just so
blown away. I'm like, what the fuck that just happened here?
I mean, I've got goosebumps. I'm at a loss for words.
Where if you know me, that never happens. It took
(28:36):
me a couple of minutes to gather myself and I
turned to the crew and I said, yeah, we're going
to start the interview now. Might not have been my
best interview because I was just so thrown off by
what she said. She affected me more than the Pope
or anybody else that I had ever met, and I
interviewed the Pope three times spiritually, she was the one.
Speaker 6 (28:58):
She definitely had an energy her.
Speaker 8 (29:00):
I got a chance to meet her, and she was
really really sweet, you know, Like I met her and
she just like cupped my face with her hands, and
that's like what I mainly remember about her. She definitely
had an energy about her. I'm not even a religious person,
and I was like, man, she was amazing.
Speaker 5 (29:15):
Stop somebody like me and tell me something like that.
Speaker 6 (29:18):
I was like, whoa mind blown huh?
Speaker 5 (29:21):
Yeah, what the fuck? Just happened. Yeah, that was one
of the better moments of my career.
Speaker 11 (29:28):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
In twenty sixteen, Mother Teresa became a saint, so Cookie
had a spiritual experience. Great timing because she's about to
face her own death. We'll be right back, Welcome back.
(29:53):
When I was a kid, I used to wonder if
you were in an elevator and it was falling, you
just jump right before it crashed and survive. Cookies about
to find out sort of.
Speaker 5 (30:07):
Before journalists could go into the boonies, into the jungles,
they always had to get permissions and authorizations from whichever
commandante's region you were going into, and nothing happens without
his permission knowledge whatever. This was Commandante Roberto Calderon. We
(30:29):
needed permission to go into his region because we were
going to go on a junket with the soldiers, and
I was going to try to bullshit my way into
getting his okay, because a lot of times journalists would
go to these regions, go to the commandante in charge,
and then be turned away. So I knew I was
(30:50):
going to have to use all my weaponry to get
this permission. Well, we could call it charm bullshitting, whatever
you want to call it. And we get to the
military base. I asked to speak to the commandante. Well,
do you have an appointment? No, I don't. I'm with
CBS News. We want to get permission to go on
(31:11):
a junket with the soldiers. And he says, well, we're
not giving permissions right now. Can you just call the
commandante and I would just like to meet with him.
It's not going to do any good. He's not going
to give you permission. I'm not leaving until you get
the commandante for me. So we waited an hour or
so and we got the meeting. He was very kind
(31:33):
and I explained to him what we needed his permission
to go in and he says, well, I think my
guy's already told you that we're not giving permissions at
this time. I said, it's so important to us, you know,
we need to show what is going on in this war.
And he says, I can't protect you. I promise you
(31:54):
we will get the story and we won't get killed.
He acquiesced and he gave us permission. So the first
part of the mission, we had to be flown in
a two propeller plane to the base in the jungle.
That is where we were going to meet up with
helicopters that were going to take us in to meet
(32:15):
with the soldiers. So we're like, great, we'll get in
this two propeller plane. It's just myself and the crew.
Speaker 1 (32:21):
The military pilot was the sister of Nora Astorga, you know,
the Matahari of Nicaragua. Small world.
Speaker 5 (32:29):
I'm standing behind the plane as pilot Astorga turns it on.
The exhaust from it was so strong it lifted me
up so high like I was levitating. Then it dropped me.
The pilot realized what was going on, she turned the
vehicle off, which is what caused me to fall. She
(32:52):
knew she had messed up. I was severely wounded. I
could feel that my whole body had just been run
over by a truck. It felt like I knew I
was going to be in trouble and probably not in
good shape to go on this ten day junket walking
in the jungles. They're still going to take us to
(33:12):
the military base and have a doctor look at me there.
So we go on the two propeller plane. We get
to this base. I think it was called Nueva Guinea.
It was another region Immediately, a doctor from the base
looks at me and he says to the camera crew,
she cannot go on this junket with you guys. Kmatomas
had formed all over my legs, my body. I was
(33:36):
one big hematoma and they just send me to a
cot to go to sleep. Unbeknownst to myself, they're getting
the helicopter ready that's gonna take the crew and originally
gonna take me deeper into the jungle to meet with
the platoon that I'm going with. The doctor had not
(33:56):
left instructions to anybody. They wake me up, they put
me on the helicopter with the crew and here I
am going deeper into the jungle to go into this junket,
and I'm so out of it, I'm not even saying anything.
And then they dump us, they leave us there. I
gotta suck it up. And you have to remember, when
I go on these junkets, I'm usually the only female.
(34:19):
I can't be complaining and whining and saying, oh, I
gotta be as strong as they are. The crew realizes
I'm in trouble. They're going to be in trouble if
I can't handle myself. And it was a tough one.
After ten days, it's time to be picked up and
taken back to civilization. So a helicopter comes to pick
(34:41):
us up. We get loaded on. We're all relieved. We're
going back to civilization.
Speaker 1 (34:45):
The helicopter takes off with Cookie the crew and a
couple doesn't sand Anisa soldiers.
Speaker 5 (34:50):
We were in a Russian helicopter because the Russians are
the ones helping the Sandinistans. The Russian helicopters were famous
for two things. They had no p dejective ceilings around
their gas tanks, and in this particular helicopter, they're carrying
extra tanks of unsealed fuel. This does not bode well.
(35:10):
We had taken off. I don't know how far up
we were. All I know is that we were up
in the air. I heard three somethings. I looked at
one soldier and I said, that's not a good sound,
is it? And he went white and he said, no,
we're going down. And I said, what do you mean?
We're going down? And then the other one's right, we're
(35:33):
gonna die. And then we started to go down. If
it had been a surface to air missile, we wouldn't
be here talking to you. We would have been blown
up midair. This was some lonely, fucking inexperienced soldier that
shot us down. Thank god. Everyone says that thing about
(35:54):
you know, your whole life flashes in front of you,
and that didn't happen to me. All I kept saying
was you stupid, fucking bitch. You are finally in a
situation you cannot talk yourself out of. You can't run
yourself out of it, you can't will yourself out of this.
Through the years, that was the worst story to cover.
(36:16):
Helicopter and plane crashes. We called them in the business
crispy critters because they would just be burned or pieces
of meat here and there. I'm fucked. I'm gonna be
a crispy cretter.
Speaker 1 (36:30):
So it's spinning around, spinning around, You're gonna crash.
Speaker 5 (36:34):
It's gonna crash in a valley, which is even worse.
I decide I'm gonna do like the movies. I'm gonna
get to that door and I'm gonna jump out before
we hit the ground. The camera crew was right behind me.
I jumped out still mid air. They jumped out.
Speaker 1 (36:50):
They hit the ground hard, severely injured. Helicopter filled with
soldiers spins toward the ground.
Speaker 5 (36:55):
All I know is I've got to run and just
run and not look back. But where do I have
to run? Upwards? To get out of the valley.
Speaker 1 (37:05):
The helicopter crashes into the valley, exploding in flames.
Speaker 5 (37:11):
So I'm climbing and I'm climbing and I'm climbing, and
as I get to the top, I realize I can't
take one more minute of this. I can't make it
to the top. And all of a sudden comes a
hand from above and somebody lifts me up and saves me.
And it was one of the soldiers that we had
(37:32):
been with on the ten day junket. They saw what
had happened. At that point, I don't realize that they're
getting in touch with Commandante Roberto Calderon, letting him know
what's going on. He's going to send not one, not two.
He's going to send three helicopters, one for each of us,
(37:53):
because at this point he doesn't know if there's more
attacks that are going to happen, and he doesn't want
all of us on one helicopter to be shot at
and killed.
Speaker 1 (38:05):
And at the same time, there are contraus soldiers rushing
to the crash. There's no time to waste.
Speaker 5 (38:11):
We're in a spot that's full of trees. I can
see the soldiers with their machetes chopping down trees, making
a clearing for all these three helicopters to land. Three
helicopters come, they take us away. To this day, I
have to thank that Comandante for saving my life. By
the time we got into Monogua the capitol, CBS already
(38:36):
had medevac jets waiting for us to take the three
of us to Miami. We were all injured. We had
internal injuries, we had outward injuries. And again CBS came through.
They always took care of their journalists, got us out
of there. God us medevac to Miami. We spent about
four to six weeks recovering in Miami.
Speaker 1 (38:58):
By the way, this is where Teacho story kicks in.
And that must have been terrifying. How did you hear
about it? How did it go down for you?
Speaker 8 (39:05):
Anytime that she was going to cover something that would
be in overnight, or it would be something that would
take a few days, whatever, she would tell me about
it so I would know and prepare or whatever. But
she had left to go to do one of her trips.
After a few days, she didn't come back and hadn't
heard from her, and somebody she worked with came up
to me and they were like, Hey, I need to
tell you something really important. Your mom was in a
(39:28):
helicopter accident. All I knew about helicopter accidents was what
I saw in action movies.
Speaker 6 (39:34):
You know, I'm.
Speaker 8 (39:35):
Picturing this helicopter blew up or whatever, you know, and
I just didn't really know what to think or what
the extent of her injuries were. So I just remember
being like, where is she. They were like, oh, she's
in Miami. She's in a hospital, and I was like,
all right, I'm going to Miami. I remember going to
the airport. I was flying by myself. I think I
(39:55):
was in a suit jacket and a dress shirt and
Miami Vice.
Speaker 5 (40:00):
Yeah, yeah, wearing the Miami Vice cotton suit with the pinked,
you know, lavender colors.
Speaker 6 (40:07):
It was wild. Yeah wait you had the yeah, the
spiked area for sure.
Speaker 8 (40:12):
So I was flying by myself, and you know, I
just remember that ride going to Miami and just having
that uncertainty because all I knew was, you know, a
helicopter crash. You know, so I didn't really know what
I was walking into, and you know, there was that
reality set in that, you know, I could have lost
my mom. Once I got to the hospital, I was
you know, obviously I was relieved that she was okay,
(40:33):
but man, she was banged up. Man, I've never seen
her like that. Yeah, I've never seen her like that.
Speaker 1 (40:40):
How did the experience knowing your mom could have died
right then and how did that play out going forward?
Were you Was it a different experience from that point on?
Speaker 6 (40:49):
No, Yeah, it was.
Speaker 8 (40:50):
It was a reality for me at that point. You know,
I realized that I could have lost her at that moment,
and and then that reality was there that I could
lose her in the future. You know. So it wasn't
something than I was actively thinking about every day, but
every time that she was going out to do anything,
it was something that was in the back of my head.
Speaker 5 (41:06):
Like, wow, I didn't think I was gonna live.
Speaker 6 (41:08):
Yeah, she was so banged up. It was wow.
Speaker 5 (41:12):
It was so scary, it really was.
Speaker 1 (41:15):
The Miami Herald ran this story a few days later.
Speaker 11 (41:18):
TV news crew Okay, after forced landing three members of
a CBS television crew who survived a forced landing aboard
a Soviet made Nicaraguan government helicopter over the weekend were
brought to Miami for treatment of minor injuries. Reporter Courtney Hood,
cameraman Domingo Rex, and sound man aziz A Chiavas were
(41:38):
treated for cut cintebrations. Unspecified mechanical problems brought the aircraft
down Sunday in southeast Nicaragua. CBS producer John Seislof said
Tuesday in Nicaragua, it was a bullshit story.
Speaker 5 (41:52):
He never said that he had been censored. He could
not say what had happened, or they weren't going to
allow them to get me out the country for medical treatment,
so you say this or she dies kind of thing.
So I didn't know any of that.
Speaker 1 (42:09):
It was covered up like everything during war. The truth
is also a casualty. After a few weeks, Cookie and
the crew were released from the hospital, CBS thought it
was a good idea to put him up in a
fancy hotel to continue the recovery.
Speaker 5 (42:25):
We each had our own suite, but two of us
wound up just crashing in the same suite because we
had the.
Speaker 1 (42:31):
Same Basically the party, the party was on.
Speaker 5 (42:35):
Oh, the party was on, all expense paid. Yeah, it
was a great place to recuperate. By that point, I
was like, kind of this helicopter crash wasn't so bad
after all.
Speaker 1 (42:46):
You know, Cookie survives a near death experience. But shit's
about to get real. She comes face to face with
the bloody consequences of terror.
Speaker 5 (42:58):
Next time on Joenerally, we're heading to the Jungles. We're
just looking for a story. A mortar blows up. We
all exit the vehicles, get in the dirt and start crawling,
and all of a sudden, I hear on the side
of me some soldier whispering Cookie, Cookie, is that you?
(43:24):
He says, I have something I don't know if it
means anything. A book. So I'm reading it and I'm
like on the inside freaking out. I turned to Richard Wagner,
can you look at this? He starts to read it,
and he says, this is a goddamn CIA torture manual.
Speaker 1 (43:47):
The Journalista podcast features the stories and voice of Cookie Hood,
narrated by Steven Estepp, produced by Sean J. Donnelly. Executive
producers Jason Wagensback, Roy Laughlin, and Ellen k iHeart Executive
producer Tyler Klang. Written and edited by Steven stem Music
by Jay Weigel, Associate producer in sound design Stephen Tanti.
(44:10):
Sound mixing by Jesse Solansnyder. Special Guestjulaine History professor Justin Woolf,
Cindy Pohl as the voice of Nora Estorga, Patrick Chico Hood,
Lloyd Sherr. Special thanks to Esplanade Studios, The Ranch Studios,
Jason Gerwitz, Kyle Frederick, Zach Slaff. This is a production
(44:31):
of Journalista podcast LLC and iHeartRadio
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