Journalista is about the dangerous and improbable life of party girl, Cookie Hood, who is hired by CBS NEWS in Nicaragua for a weekend gig, and ends up breaking the IRAN- CONTRA scandal, and almost takes down the Reagan administration.
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Episode Transcript
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 no, we're going down? And I said,
what do you mean? We're going down? And then the
other one's right up, We're gonna die. And then we
started to go down.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Just another day in the dangerous and improbable life of
Cookie hood, party girl, mus mother, journalist, warrior American history,
jammed in a mortar show and blowing the fuck up.
Cookie's a classic broad right out of a boat. She's
not famous, but she did break the biggest story of
the nineteen eighties. You've probably heard of, the Iran concert scandal.
(00:42):
It was like Watergate nine to eleven January sixth, all
rolled into one big clusterfucker. But that's not the good part.
It's the journey. Cookie's journey always at the crossroads of history,
one way or another. So how does a half American,
half Nicaraguan party girl from New Orleans with that absolutely
no journalism experience break the biggest story of the eighties.
(01:05):
That's what journalista is all about.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
Mike Wallace once said to me, Cookie, I'm gonna give
you the best piece of advice. Always cover the story,
never be the story, and as you'll be able to tell,
I was the story.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
You told me once that you thought of yourself as
missus scarface.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
I was just having fun the parties, a couple of
hit men here and there. Pablo Escobar I was asked
two questions, how do you feel about roadblocks? I can
get in and out of anything. What would you say
is your main quality? Adaptability? I could sleep at the
Plaza Hotel in New York as easily as I can
(01:44):
sleep in a shack on top of coffee beans. She says,
you got the job within six months. I was running
the CBS bureau. I'm a woman wife beater T shirt,
not wearing a bra, curses like a sailer. I got
balls bigger than any man. That's what made it different.
(02:04):
That's what made it special, and that's what CBS knew.
Dan Rather used to call me his secret weapon. How
CBS hats so lucky as to find and hire her?
Speaker 2 (02:15):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
The moment, I can't feel emotional about the story or
help these people. I'm out. I was a crazy bitch
and I was living in the asshole of the world.
We work hard, but we party even harder. You never
knew if the next day's battle was going to be
the one that killed you.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
During the nineteen eighties and nineties, Cookie Hood was the
driving force behind the most successful television coverage of Central
America that appeared anywhere in the United States.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
I'm amazed and I did what I did and got
away with doing it just from bullshitting.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
Listen to Journalista every Tuesday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
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