August 1, 2023 • 41 mins
Cookie’s early life as Mrs. Scarface. She parties her way into a job with CBS News bureau in Nicaragua.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
This is a production of Journalista Podcast LLC and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
He's dropping five hundred pound bombs on the city because
by that time, his philosophy is, if we just kill everybody,
we don't have a revolution.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
Welcome back to the Journalista Podcast. I'm Steve Vestev, your host.
We've talked a lot about Nicaragua and the events that
make Cookie who she became, and I mentioned that she
always seemed to be at the crossroads of history. But
the story you're about to hear is absolutely insane, a
dangerous secret that most of her friends and her news
(00:52):
colleagues never knew. Yes, everybody knows she partied, but did
they know she parted with Pablo Escobar? Okay, so all
this shit's going down, and Nicaragua's changing, and all these
things are happening, but you're not You're not there. Where
are you?
Speaker 2 (01:12):
I am in New York City, I'm modeling, I'm having
a very successful career and partying.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
Obviously, where did you like to go fifty four?
Speaker 2 (01:22):
Of course, this was a club that you had to
book a certain way and obviously have a certain lifestyle.
And in fifty four they had the dance floor, the bars,
But then downstairs was the Special Room, and that's where
VIPs were doing all kinds of drugs, crazy things. At
(01:43):
any given night, you could be with David Bowie, Calvin Klein.
And one of my best friends was a celebrity, Bianca Jagger.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
Mick Jagger's wife was She from Nicaragua.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
From Nicaragua, That's where I knew her from. She took
me with her and we went on the whole tour.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
Yeah you do.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
Rules.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
I took a quick trip to Miami and ran into
an old childhood friend, Gino, and we hooked up.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
I never went back.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
What I didn't know is that he was already deep
in the game, the drug game, part of the mede
ying Columbia cartel.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
What was his job? What would you say?
Speaker 2 (02:36):
He did fly to Colombia, you know, meet with the
big wigs, place the orders, have the orders shipped. There
were many different ways of getting product here to the
United States. And then once here we had his slew
of clients that he would sell to in bulk. He
didn't have to get his hands dirty, but he liked to.
(02:58):
You know, I would tell him, why are you, you know,
hanging out with these low level drug dealers? You know,
We'd be in my home, I'd open up a closet
and kilos would fall out, and I'm like, why is
this even in our home? Get a safe house, do
things differently. No, he just never thought anything would ever
(03:19):
happen to him, which every criminal thinks at the beginning.
They're different, They're never going to get in trouble.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
Did you ever go to Columbia?
Speaker 3 (03:27):
No?
Speaker 2 (03:28):
I was smart, never never got my hands dirty. I
was just having fun at the parties and the shady
characters and a couple of hit men here and there.
Speaker 3 (03:41):
Pablo Escobar, what was he like?
Speaker 1 (03:43):
Just one on one at the.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
Time, we only called him ilhefe the boss, and he
wasn't Pablo Escobar like everyone knows him now. He was
kind of quiet. Sometimes he would get a little boisterous.
He wasn't a very book smart guy. He was It's interesting,
just like when you're doing blow the co crap and
you know, talking. He was sort of protective over me.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
When Cookie meets Pablo Escobar. He's not yet a household name.
He doesn't have a Netflix series about his life or
even much of a criminal profile. He had a mansion
near Miami in his own freaking name, he was selling cocaine,
lots of it. At his peak, he was making four
hundred and twenty million dollars a week, and his net
(04:32):
worth was estimated at more than thirty billion, making him,
by all accounts, the wealthiest person in the world. Of course,
it's hard to measure since it was all illegal and
much of it was smuggled through Nicaragua. That's where Chino
and his partners come in. You told me once that
you thought of yourself as Missus Scarface.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
I was Missus Scarface.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
When you have that much product and that much money,
it gives you power.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
When you were with Chino in that time period, did
you feel like you were partners in the game or
was it his thing and you were just along for
the ride.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
Well, I was the one calling the shots because he
was very bright, and he had a very bad habit
that if he started doing blow, he started to drink
and he would get stupid drunks.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
So it's kind of like managing a multi million dollar.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
Corporation given my two cents, which once he was drunk
he wouldn't listen to. But guys like Pablo Escobar and
other people in the game, they would listen to me.
Because they knew that what I was saying made.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
Sense in those days when you were rolling with Chino
and those guys. But did you ever run up against
any you know, bullshit, anything bad that was happening you.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
Mean with the cartel guys.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
Exactly.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
Let's put it to you this way. These cartel guys
were my friends. Obviously I must have had an inkling
of what kind of people they were, what they were
capable of. But as long as I had a seat
at the table and allowed to party and had unlimited
amounts of blood, it was pretty standard friendship relationships.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
Well, you talk about having a seat at the table,
did that ever go wrong?
Speaker 2 (06:08):
You know, I'm a local girl from New Orleans. I
would always insist to Chino and to others, You've got
the whole country to do business in. Please don't go
to New Orleans, and please don't go to Louisiana. That's
where I'm from. My dad is very well known, my
family is a prominent family there. Can we just leave
(06:31):
my stomping grounds out of the business. And for the
most part, Gino would listen, But as soon as he'd
start having a cocktail or two and then doing blow all,
you know, rational thinking went out the window. I had
heard that they were going to do some sort of
business with one of our people who happens to be
(06:51):
from New Orleans, and he was going to come back
to New Orleans with the product. And his connection was
the son of a top state government official.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
So basically they're doing a drug deal, of.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
Course, and I begged them don't do it. So sure enough,
something goes wrong.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
Are you talking about a big chunk of product?
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Big chunk of product? Not only my local friend got popped,
but the son of the top government official got popped
and he's in jail. So at that point, the top
state government official decides he's going to run his own
private investigation so he could save his son's future, get
(07:34):
him out, and find out who was behind this huge
drug deal. And he's getting close. So this one particular evening,
we're at my house, we're talking, and one of our
employees decides, you know what, let's just get rid of
this guy. We're not only going to get rid of
the kid in jail, but we're going to get rid
(07:55):
of his father. I could see some people at the
table sort of nodding their head. I'm sitting next to Pablo,
and I'm just saying, if you do this, this could
blow up in everybody's faces, not just myself and my family.
I got so upset. I stood up and I said,
no one is getting killed in my city on my watch.
(08:19):
And at that point I turned to Pablo and he
leaned over and sort of whispered in my ear, and
it says, you know you should be running this show,
to which I replied, I am.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
Were you aware of the DEA the FBI?
Speaker 2 (08:36):
All, Oh, yes, immensely. I mean we had all these gadgets,
you know that you'd plug into your phone and it
would tell you if they were listening in a red
light would start beeping. We had all the latest gadgets.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
So you had the highest tech that could be had.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
Yeah. And security in our homes, you know, because we
had several homes, you know, one in Miami, one in
La what is San Francisco. We had boats, racing cars,
we had race horses, we had everything. As much as
we had, we wouldn't hesitate in a second to leave
it and move on to the next city.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
Because the money was gonna come anyway.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
Always you could lose it, throw it away, flush it down,
the toilet didn't matter. You'd have it all back the
next day. He would get a car Mercedes, bring it
in from Miami. It would be San Francisco, and then
they didn't need it, they would send it on fire.
The money was just never ending. I remember that my
allowance quote unquote was ten to grand a week, and
(09:36):
that was it to pay rent or bills. That was
just fun money, fun money I could do with as
I please. There were always suitcases full of cash. There
were always suitcases full of kilos. And sometimes when the
suitcases would come in from Columbia, they would throw in
emeralds and pills and you never knew what was coming.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
Was there danger constant? So you get pregnant? Was that
good news to me?
Speaker 2 (10:03):
It wasn't, because I just said, I can't bring a
kid into this environment. You know, this constant partying. We'd
stay up for days and there was a constant flow
of cocaine people coming in and out any given house
that we owned. You know, I'd wake up and these
strangers walking around in my house.
Speaker 4 (10:24):
You know.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
I remember once in Beverly Hills somebody coming up to
me asking me where the bathroom was, and I said, well,
who are you. He goes, well, who are you? I said,
I'm the damn owner of this house. Get the fuck
out of my house. So it was sort of that
kind of thing. I was not happy about it. I
was still partying pregnant. I'm not proud of it, but
(10:44):
I did.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
For the record, her baby boy was born healthy and happy.
So you guys decided to get married.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
What we did was we were planning a wedding at
the house where we were living at, which was with
Nordman Manessas.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
I have to stop here as if this story isn't
create enough. Norway Manessas, Cookie's husband Chino and another friend
from Nicaragua, Danilo Blandon, were the guys smuggling cocaine into
the US for Pablo Escobar and the Median cartel. Cookie
was aware of that and definitely enjoying the party. But
these guys would become very famous a few years later
when they made a deal with the CIA to introduce
(11:19):
crack cocaine into south central Los Angeles through a local
drug dealer by the name of Freeway.
Speaker 5 (11:25):
Ricky Ross, facing life in prison, LA's biggest crack dealer
now is saying he was a pawn in a CIA plot,
and his argument was convincing enough that a federal judge
postponed sentencing to consider evidence that he's a name supplier,
was an agency operator.
Speaker 6 (11:42):
You know, his whole intentions was for me to make
more money.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
The more money I made, the more money he made,
and I guess the more money that he would have
to help sponsor the war. FX made a television series
called Snowfall based on some of that story.
Speaker 7 (11:56):
I on America accusations underscore the word accusations that are
nothing short of explosives. They are that the CIA knowingly
and intentionally did what amount to pump crack cocaine into
Los Angeles to help fund rebels in Nicaragua. The Justice
Department in Congress are investigating, and so is CBS newsed it.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
Was the beginning of a drug explosion that ravaged black
communities all over America. Gary Webb putitur Prize winning reporter
for the San Jose Mercury News, wrote a controversial three
part expose and later a book called The Dark Alliance,
detailing the connection between the CIA, the sale of crack cocaine,
and funding the contrasts. In this clip, he's asked about
the CIA involvement.
Speaker 8 (12:39):
Did the CIA put drugs into the black community.
Speaker 4 (12:43):
We don't have any evidence so far that they did
it directly. And what we have evidence of is that
men working for a CIA run army did.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
Do that with the knowledge of the CIA. That's the
part we don't know. That's the part we don't know.
Speaker 4 (12:56):
I mean, what we know is that these guys were
working for a CIA army. They were meeting with CIA
agents before and during the time they were doing this.
What happens from there is sort of where we ran
into the wall of national security.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
The CIA and the mainstream media went after him, eventually
destroying his career. He died from two gun shots to
the head. It was ruled a suicide. Two shots. Think
about it, Is it all true? I don't know for sure.
Corre Pecto alescando alescandal, narco politico chemist tempro mo. In
(13:34):
this interview from a prison in Nicaragua, Norma Manessas blames
the whole scandal on the Democrats trying to use narco
trafficking to win the election, and of course he says
he's innocent of all accusations and then no charges him
in filed canac I'm Presidentao Cargo for Romales in Miicontra.
Cookie wasn't part of any of that. In fact, she
was working for CBS at the time, and we'll get
(13:55):
into that later. What she will tell you is that
Norwen Maness is a someone she has known since childhood
and that she cares about him to this very day.
Back to her wedding. So you were married in Norway's home.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
In Norwen's home. He was going to be the one
that walked me down the aisle. Chapito d As from
Satana was the best man. I flew in some people
from New Orleans, not a lot. It was just going
to be a small gathering and we initially wanted a
judge to come. Well, judges don't come, so we found
Mark de Wolf Gay minister perfect. Chipito pulled out his rolls.
(14:34):
Royce Pablo gave me half a pound of cocaine for
the wedding. So I brought my girlfriend from New Orleans,
flew her in and we spent the whole day before
and the whole day of grinding it up. We started
off with one grand bottles and realized quickly that's not
going to be enough, so we went and got two
grand bottles filled up a hundred of them. When the
(14:57):
people arrived at the door, that's what they were given
with above on it. You know, this is your party favorite.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
Did Pablo come or do you just send me there? Wow?
Speaker 2 (15:13):
Of course everyone's starting to party immediately. My husband, Richino,
he was lost. He was downstairs because Freebase had started
out in Cali at that time, so he was downstairs
doing that. And I remember that at some point the
Minister comes up to me and says, look, I've got
another event. You know, I can't find my Bible. And
(15:36):
of course the people were using his Bible with the
Cooke lines on it. And I said, I think your
Bible's being used in the next room. I said, I
can give you a little something, you know, to perk
you up. He goes, oh okay. So the next thing
I know, the Minister's partying. So the time constraints were
gone by then. Also, it was my guardena era, so
(15:59):
I had to have fresh gardenias in my hair, in
my hands. The whole house smelled like gardenia's.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
I'm some serious hippie shit there, yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
But elegant hippie shit. Finally, when we get ready to
do it, I had to get Gino up from downstairs,
and he was already all fucked up nor being walked
me down the aisle. Gipito ass is crying, you know,
because he could just cry with one tear coming down
one eye.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
So you're eight months pregnant, you're walked down the aisle
by Norman Manessa's the best man.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
Is the the bongo player of said tad bongo player.
First from Nicaragua.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
It's from Nicarago, okay. And you have a non denominational minister.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
Gay gay remember where in San Francisco.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
I'm just trying to decide if this is a movie,
a TV series, or a sitcom right now, all of
the above. There's not exactly a happy ending to this
wedding story.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
I went on the honeymoon by myself because Gino, as
soon as he got married, went right back downstairs. So
I loved to win on the honeymoon by myself.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
Were you pissed off at him?
Speaker 2 (17:06):
Not really annoyed?
Speaker 1 (17:08):
Maybe back in Nicaragua, another journalist is murdered. This time
it's an American. We'll be right back, welcome back. Journalism
(17:32):
can be a very dangerous business, especially during war. I
want to warn you this segment contains graphic descriptions of
violence that are disturbing and hard to listen to. While
Cookie was playing Missus Scarface, partying her ass off and
trying to stay one step ahead of the Dea in
law enforcement, her beloved Nicaragua was exploding. The dictator Anastasio
(17:57):
Simosa is at war with his own people.
Speaker 8 (18:01):
Firing rockets to soften up antigovernment forces for ground troops.
The Nicaragua National Guard wants a major assault in Monagua
to retake poor neighborhoods or barrios held by the Gorillas.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
He's dropping five hundred pound bombs on the city because
by that time his philosophy is if we just kill everybody,
we don't have a revolution.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
Professor Wolf from Tulane University describes it like this.
Speaker 9 (18:44):
Not pinpointed bombs, not bombs that are just killing Santinistas.
They're just killing residents of the town, many of whom
are strong Santinissa support us, but they're just everyday people.
If you need to bomb your own people, you are
that afraid of them, you are that dissociated from them.
That is the beginning of the end.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
Already, kids and men are being stopped. Roll up your sleeve,
roll up your pants. If you've got scabs on your
elbows or on your knees, you were shot right there,
because that meant you were fighting.
Speaker 9 (19:20):
The press is becoming increasingly interested. I think that the
US press sees the murder of a pressman paid the
Jakin Chamoto as a kind of Canarian the coal mine.
When they're killing journalists, things are going badly. Something is happening.
Speaker 3 (19:37):
At this point.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
The networks are down there, International journalists are there, and
they're just covering this war with these rag tag revolutionaries
who even themselves knew that they would never win. Somosa
is now feeding amphetamines to all the Samosa guardsmen to
(20:00):
keep them up night and day. They're jittery. They're killing indiscriminately.
Speaker 8 (20:06):
This morning in Managua, after some of the heaviest fighting
of the war, Bill Stewart and an ABC camera crew
went into an attacked neighborhood, which.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
Was then calm.
Speaker 8 (20:16):
National guardsmen were friendly at the first checkpoint, In fact,
they were eager to talk and try to disprove reports
of low National Guard morale. But at the next checkpoint,
the attitude among the soldiers was entirely different from what
Bill and the crew had just seen.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
A future driver of mine is driving the vehicle. There's
a translator with them, there's a correspondent, and there's a
camera crew.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
And Bill Stewart is a person that Americans were used
to seeing in their evening news.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
Yes, he covered wars.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
He was at Vietnam, and eat he covered wars.
Speaker 3 (20:50):
He was a well known journalist.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
Well well thought of. Yeah, a pro in every way.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
Roadblocks are an everyday occurrence. So the ABC crew gets
stopped at a roadblock. Bill Stewart says, let me get out.
I'll go talk to.
Speaker 3 (21:06):
The soldiers like he's done a one.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
Hundred times in many different battle situations, and the translator
gets down with him.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
In the news van. The cameraman turns on his camera
to film Stuart's interaction with the Samosa guardsmen.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
The Samosa guardsmen had been up for weeks with these amphetamines,
and they were jumpy and not thinking straight.
Speaker 8 (21:32):
Bill showed he was unarmed and presented his press identification. Still,
he was forced to kneel and then lie down on
the pavement.
Speaker 2 (21:40):
One of the soldiers thinks he recognizes the translator he
was wrong, but he thinks he recognizes him as being
a revolutionary. This guy was a sport schmuck translator making
a few bucks. They get nervous. They take the translator
(22:05):
around the corner and he's shot.
Speaker 8 (22:09):
Bill showed he was unarmed and presented his press identification. Still,
he was forced to kneel and then lie down on
the pavement.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
The camera crew is still filming. They're looking at what's happening,
as is the driver who warned Bill Stewart not to
get out of the vehicle. All of a sudden, the
guardsman aims the weapon at Bill Stewart and shoots him
in the head with such force that his body kind
(22:39):
of jumped. At that point, the Nicaraguan driver knows we're fucked.
He doesn't even know that the camera crew filmed it.
The camera crew at this point doesn't even care that
they filmed it. They're just scared their next and they
would have been next.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
The ABC sound man Jim Cephalou describes them ament, they.
Speaker 6 (23:01):
Had us get out shore identification. While we were out,
I noticed on the left hand side of the building
the interpreter's body. He had been shot in the head.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
So the driver, Pablo Pablo, with no fear at all,
goes up to these guys and said, damn, y'all made
a mistake. Dude, We're from Samosa TV. We were on
the same.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
Side, lying his ass off.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
Lying his ass off, not just to save his life,
but the crew whatever.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
Balls of stone right there.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
But look, I'm gonna make a deal with y'all. What
happened here didn't happen the way it happened. I am
gonna say that it was the sand Denistas that killed him.
Just let us go, you know, We'll go straight back
to Samosa TV. And they let him go.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
We got back into the van.
Speaker 6 (23:58):
The driver asked if we wanted to take bills by
back to the hotel, said we did so. He and
I backed up, put Bill's body in the van, came
back here to the hotel.
Speaker 1 (24:10):
Chuck Gomez, a young CBS correspondent, was at the hotel
when they brought his body back.
Speaker 10 (24:17):
When Bill Stewart's body arrived at the Intercontinental Hotel, there
was a mixture of incredible sadness and sorrow and also
incredible fear. We didn't know at that moment if journalists
were being specifically targeted, for example, as Somosa himself had
(24:38):
ordered the wounding and the killing of American reporters and
camera crews, or if it was something that the soldiers
themselves decided to do because they had been you know,
they were on patrols for days on end. We were
all hugging each other and in Greece and kind of
shaking our heads in disbelief. And then soon after all
(25:00):
the reporters thought, we had to report this story. We
have to let the world know what's happened here.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
It was the first time that a network had the
biggest exclusive video of all time, and they shared it
with all the networks and all the journalists that were there.
New York Times, Washington Post.
Speaker 3 (25:22):
They were all there, to BBC and some of.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
The BBC you had international journalists. So it was the
first time that a network willingly gave their exclusive to everybody.
They wanted to make sure it got out. They didn't
even bother to edit. They just needed to get to
Samosa TV station and satellite that bitch out of there
(25:45):
before Samosa and these people realized what had happened and
the video got out.
Speaker 8 (25:53):
ABC News correspondent Bil Stewart, thirty seven years old, was
killed today in Nicaragua.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
I'll tell you this. I saw that footage in a
Walter Cronkite broadcast and he showed the entire thing in total,
every networked and no one ever showed anything like that,
no one.
Speaker 3 (26:11):
You could see the body.
Speaker 1 (26:12):
Yeah, you could see it, and it was horrific.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
The journalists that were in Nicaragua decided, we can't take
this anymore. We're boycotting this. It didn't bother the US
government tomorrow had been assassinated. That up until that point,
fifty thousand innocent and maybe some not so innocent revolutionaries
had been murdered. That didn't matter. But one American journalist
(26:38):
being killed. That mattered, and that's what turned the tide.
The public was outraged at that point. The US government
made the decision we can no longer back Simosa.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
President Carter said this when he heard the news. The
murder of Bill Stewart was an act of barber that
all civilized people condemned. Within a month, some Mosa flees
to Florida and the dictatorship falls, but not before looting Nicaragua.
After he left. The San Denis has found less than
(27:15):
two million dollars in the national treasury. Samosa is denied
asylum by President Carter and takes refuge in Paraguay. Only
one year later, he's assassinated by a Sandinista commando team
four men and three women. The mission was called Operation
Reptile seems appropriate. According to Reporters Without Borders, nearly seventeen
(27:38):
hundred journalists have been killed in the last twenty years
in some conflicts that are actually targeted, and in the
last few years, some despicable politicians in the United States
have actually encouraged violence against news reporters covering elections. It
was no different in Central America in the seventies and eighties.
Carla Ferrell, for news producer stationed in Nicaragua and El
(28:02):
Salvador and other war zones in the region, describes the
life of wartime journalists this way.
Speaker 11 (28:08):
You didn't do that kind of work unless you thought
you were invincible, which in some ways doesn't make much sense,
because all of us, pretty much all of us went
through losing colleagues or spouses, family members. But somehow, no, no,
that could never happen to us.
Speaker 1 (28:35):
Against all odds, the Sandinistas have won the revolution. The
Nicaraguan people are celebrating, But Cookie was looking for her
own Revolution. We'll be back in a minute. Welcome back.
(29:05):
The last time we saw Cookie, she was eight months pregnant,
a newlywed and hanging out with Pablo Escobar Nicaragua. Is
having a rebirth a Cookie. He was just having a
berth What could go wrong? But where the hell is Chino?
Speaker 2 (29:23):
That was crazy because the night that night was a
half hour night.
Speaker 10 (29:29):
You know.
Speaker 2 (29:29):
We called him the half hour guy. You know. He says,
I'll be back in half an hour, and that half
hour could be a week to four months. I start
having contractions and going into labor at dawn. He shows
up at six seven in the morning, completely high and
(29:50):
drunk and passes out. And I got to get to
the hospital. I'm, you know, way him up. He can't drive,
so we jump in the car. I'm driving and having
to pull off on the expressway every time a contraction
would hit, you know, and I'm yelling at him in
(30:12):
the back seat, you stupid motherfucker. Now I knew this
was gonna happen.
Speaker 3 (30:16):
I knew it.
Speaker 2 (30:17):
We get to the hospital, I'm screaming, get this motherfucking
kid out of me. It's a Catholic hospital and the
nuns are trying to quiet me down, Can you please
use different language. I don't give a fuck what's going on.
I need to get this kid out. I was asking
for the last rites, asking for a priest she knows
(30:38):
passed out. And he did go in to see the
birth and proceeded to just faint when he saw what
he saw. So they had to attend to him and
not to me. So and we got the rolling stones
playing high in the delivery room. Yeah it was.
Speaker 3 (30:56):
It was a trip.
Speaker 1 (30:57):
And now you have this beautiful boy.
Speaker 2 (30:59):
Oh yeah, I mean it was worth it.
Speaker 1 (31:01):
He's your best friend now.
Speaker 2 (31:03):
He always was my best friend. He was my partner
in crime and my best friend.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
Happy times for Cookie and China. But the thug life
is starting to get to her.
Speaker 2 (31:12):
Well. It started slowly for me. At first, nothing bothered me.
I wasn't scared of anything. And then it just slowly.
You know, I'd open up a closet and kilos would
fall out. You know, there'd be a box I'd open
it was filled with a million dollars in cash, And
(31:32):
so slowly I started to get paranoid. It was so
slow that I didn't know that it was happening. It
would present itself as soon as I would start partying,
I would do a line. I'd be fine. I'd do
a second line, I'd be fine. By the third or
fourth line, the paranoia would creep in. And the reason
(31:55):
that happened it wasn't just because of the amounts and
the quantities of everything. It was because no one else
was paranoid. No one else was being careful, because again
you're dealing with Latin American people that have no conception
of the law in the United States. So it was
(32:16):
almost like I was having to be paranoid for everyone,
not just myself. Every day it was like, this is
the day, this is the day. They're here, They're coming,
They're coming to get me. Every single day was like that,
and so I just needed to get out.
Speaker 1 (32:35):
Okay, so you're beset by paranoia. Yeah, yeah, it's starting
to get to you.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
It's starting to get to me.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
Is there a moment that you can recall that you said,
I got to get the fuck out of here.
Speaker 3 (32:48):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (32:49):
My mother got sick, she got cancer, and she was
here in New Orleans. I remember saying to my husband, Tochino, listen,
I gotta go visit my I don't think my intention
was to leave and never come back, because that would
have never been part of my mo my playbook. I
(33:10):
had to come back to get more blow, but I
remember telling him that I was going to leave. I
grabbed all my first editions, all my jewelry, all my furs,
I think a million in cash packed it took my baby,
he was six months old. I think came back to
New Orleans under the guise of taking care of my mom,
(33:33):
moving back home with a mother and father that knew
nothing about my life. And I don't think I meant
to never come back. I meant to get out, at
least for that moment. I needed to get the fuck out.
And so I got to New Orleans, got home. I'd
been home for years with a newborn baby in my arms.
(33:55):
My parents didn't even know about that. Went upstairs to
my old bedroom, took the million dollars in cash, put
it under the mattress. Oh, and I also brought a
shitload of blow. Might have been a couple of ounces
or more. It had to be more for me at
that time. She said, don't worry. If you need more money,
I'll send you more money. And that's how I got out.
Speaker 1 (34:19):
Did they try to get you to come back.
Speaker 2 (34:20):
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (34:21):
Were they worried about you being a risk?
Speaker 2 (34:24):
Oh no, no, no, no no. If anybody would have
been worried that I was a risk, I would have
been erased.
Speaker 1 (34:34):
Cookie takes care of her mom until she passes and
finishes her degree at Loyola, still parting her ass off
with unlimited supplies of cocaine. She's getting restless again though
Nicaragua is calling her name.
Speaker 2 (34:50):
I said, well, let me go check out the revolution,
And so I went and got to Nicaragua, living with
some friends, and sufficed to say, war time was tough.
Speaker 1 (35:02):
Who were you rolling with when you went back?
Speaker 2 (35:05):
All my old gang friends, all partiers. I'm still a
good girl in the eyes of my aunts and uncles,
an older family, to.
Speaker 1 (35:15):
All the old contacts, all the old people you always
hung with their own.
Speaker 2 (35:18):
Yeah, and I'm meeting new people, poor people, because now
the Sandinistas have made it possible for a middle class
to emerge. They're fighting infant mortality, they're fighting illiteracy. But
the scarcity of things water was scarce, you know, toilet paper,
which we can all relate to.
Speaker 7 (35:39):
Now.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
I want to ask you a question about the Sandinistas
and what they were bringing to the table. When you
look back at that time and you think about the
changes that were happening in nicarag where you mentioned the
emerging of a middle class. The Santanisas were doing a
lot of things.
Speaker 2 (35:53):
Good things that anybody would want. Medical care for everybody,
education for everybody, jobs for people, just what normal human
beings want.
Speaker 1 (36:06):
If I remember, they were building rural hospitals.
Speaker 3 (36:08):
And hospitals schools.
Speaker 2 (36:11):
Yeah. But once the Countral War started and the scarcity
of things and roughing it, electricity would go out all
the time, and you know, it's tough to be in
a war in a third world country. So after about
three months, I said, you know what, I've had enough
of this. I've seen the revolution. I'm ready to go back.
Speaker 3 (36:33):
Home to New Orleans.
Speaker 2 (36:35):
So I threw myself a going away party. And at
this going away party, which was what all my parties
were like, so would call it a very eclectic crowd.
You'd have poor people, you'd have rich people, you'd have young,
(36:57):
you'd have old, you'd have gay, straight journalists were there, soldiers,
a little bit of everything, and of course it was
a big party with party favors. Had my bag's packed
and I was ready to go back to New Orleans.
Speaker 1 (37:14):
Were any of your old friends there, like Chino, any
of those.
Speaker 2 (37:17):
People in Sheino wasn't there, but all the Chino characters
were there, people we grew up with.
Speaker 1 (37:23):
Cookie doesn't know it yet, but her future is already
At this party, an.
Speaker 2 (37:27):
NBC producer, Cecilia Alviar approached me and she said, you know, Cookie,
I like the vibe I get from you. You know
the US culture, you know the Nicaraguan culture. It seems
to me like you know everybody who's anybody. She still
didn't know that I also knew the elite rulers of
(37:51):
the enemy, the Contras at the time, who were also
rich kids.
Speaker 1 (37:55):
So she's saying this to you while you were just partying.
Speaker 3 (37:57):
Well I'm partying. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (37:59):
She says, you know, would you be interested in working
for NBC and running our operations here? You know, translator fixer?
And I said, you know, that sounds interesting. And at
the same time, there was another journalist there from CBS
named Larry Doyle, a producer.
Speaker 1 (38:20):
Doyle did two tours in Vietnam, the epitome of an
old school combat news. Producer Dan Rather called him the
soul of CBS, one of the all time greats, one
tough son of a bitch.
Speaker 2 (38:34):
He was my kind of guy, my kind of partier,
and he made the same offer to me. He says, Look,
the guy we got is a schmuck, never gets his
hands dirty, he never goes out into the field. Would
you like to have a job working with him, being
that fixer translator going out with the cruise, you know,
(38:55):
into the boondocks and my party and you know you
And I said, you know, this offer sounds a lot
better than the NBC offer, And I said, sure, well
that sounds good.
Speaker 1 (39:08):
So basically you took the CBS offer because they partied.
In this NBC offer, they didn't.
Speaker 2 (39:14):
Party, and it was the same job, same job description,
and good money. Larry says, well, can you come in
for an interview at the Intercontinental Hotel, And remember it's
the same hotel that the journalists stayed at in seventy
nine and then boycotted and left after Bill Stewart was assassinated.
I said, sure, I'll come in for an interview.
Speaker 3 (39:41):
So I went in for an interview.
Speaker 2 (39:43):
The next day was another producer, Carlo Farrell, and I
was asked two questions, how do you feel about roadblocks
and I've never counted roadblocks, but I said roadblocks. Oh,
I can get in and out of anything. And the
second question, what would you say is your main quality?
And I said adaptability And she said, well, you know,
(40:07):
give me an example. I said, well, I could sleep
at the Plaza Hotel in New York as easily as
I can go into the Jungles and sleep in a
shack on top of coffee beans. And she says, you
got the job.
Speaker 1 (40:22):
Next time on Journalista.
Speaker 2 (40:25):
So I come in the next day all dressed up
at pearls and heels, and she says, why are you
dressed that way? I said, well, you said I'm going north.
I'm going to Miami, right She goes, no, You're going
to the Jungles today with a camera crew by your side.
Speaker 1 (40:45):
The Journalista podcast features the stories and voice of Cookie Hood.
Narrated by Steven Esta, Produced by Sean J. Donnelly, Executive
producers Jason Wagensback, Roy Laughlin and Ellen k iHeart. Executive
producer Tyler Klang. Written and edited by Steven Estev. Music
by Jay Wichel, Associate producer in sound design Stephen Tunt.
(41:08):
Sound mixing by Jesse Solnsnyder Special guest, Juline History professor
Justin Woolf, Chuck Gomez, Carla Ferrell, Lloyd Sherwan Special Thanks
to Esplanade Studios, The Ranch Studios, Jason Gerwitz, Kyle Frederick,
Zach Slaugh. This is a production of Journalista podcast LLC
(41:29):
and iHeartRadio
This is a production of Journalista Podcast LLC and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
He's dropping five hundred pound bombs on the city because
by that time, his philosophy is, if we just kill everybody,
we don't have a revolution.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
Welcome back to the Journalista Podcast. I'm Steve Vestev, your host.
We've talked a lot about Nicaragua and the events that
make Cookie who she became, and I mentioned that she
always seemed to be at the crossroads of history. But
the story you're about to hear is absolutely insane, a
dangerous secret that most of her friends and her news
(00:52):
colleagues never knew. Yes, everybody knows she partied, but did
they know she parted with Pablo Escobar? Okay, so all
this shit's going down, and Nicaragua's changing, and all these
things are happening, but you're not You're not there. Where
are you?
Speaker 2 (01:12):
I am in New York City, I'm modeling, I'm having
a very successful career and partying.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
Obviously, where did you like to go fifty four?
Speaker 2 (01:22):
Of course, this was a club that you had to
book a certain way and obviously have a certain lifestyle.
And in fifty four they had the dance floor, the bars,
But then downstairs was the Special Room, and that's where
VIPs were doing all kinds of drugs, crazy things. At
(01:43):
any given night, you could be with David Bowie, Calvin Klein.
And one of my best friends was a celebrity, Bianca Jagger.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
Mick Jagger's wife was She from Nicaragua.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
From Nicaragua, That's where I knew her from. She took
me with her and we went on the whole tour.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
Yeah you do.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
Rules.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
I took a quick trip to Miami and ran into
an old childhood friend, Gino, and we hooked up.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
I never went back.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
What I didn't know is that he was already deep
in the game, the drug game, part of the mede
ying Columbia cartel.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
What was his job? What would you say?
Speaker 2 (02:36):
He did fly to Colombia, you know, meet with the
big wigs, place the orders, have the orders shipped. There
were many different ways of getting product here to the
United States. And then once here we had his slew
of clients that he would sell to in bulk. He
didn't have to get his hands dirty, but he liked to.
(02:58):
You know, I would tell him, why are you, you know,
hanging out with these low level drug dealers? You know,
We'd be in my home, I'd open up a closet
and kilos would fall out, and I'm like, why is
this even in our home? Get a safe house, do
things differently. No, he just never thought anything would ever
(03:19):
happen to him, which every criminal thinks at the beginning.
They're different, They're never going to get in trouble.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
Did you ever go to Columbia?
Speaker 3 (03:27):
No?
Speaker 2 (03:28):
I was smart, never never got my hands dirty. I
was just having fun at the parties and the shady
characters and a couple of hit men here and there.
Speaker 3 (03:41):
Pablo Escobar, what was he like?
Speaker 1 (03:43):
Just one on one at the.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
Time, we only called him ilhefe the boss, and he
wasn't Pablo Escobar like everyone knows him now. He was
kind of quiet. Sometimes he would get a little boisterous.
He wasn't a very book smart guy. He was It's interesting,
just like when you're doing blow the co crap and
you know, talking. He was sort of protective over me.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
When Cookie meets Pablo Escobar. He's not yet a household name.
He doesn't have a Netflix series about his life or
even much of a criminal profile. He had a mansion
near Miami in his own freaking name, he was selling cocaine,
lots of it. At his peak, he was making four
hundred and twenty million dollars a week, and his net
(04:32):
worth was estimated at more than thirty billion, making him,
by all accounts, the wealthiest person in the world. Of course,
it's hard to measure since it was all illegal and
much of it was smuggled through Nicaragua. That's where Chino
and his partners come in. You told me once that
you thought of yourself as Missus Scarface.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
I was Missus Scarface.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
When you have that much product and that much money,
it gives you power.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
When you were with Chino in that time period, did
you feel like you were partners in the game or
was it his thing and you were just along for
the ride.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
Well, I was the one calling the shots because he
was very bright, and he had a very bad habit
that if he started doing blow, he started to drink
and he would get stupid drunks.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
So it's kind of like managing a multi million dollar.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
Corporation given my two cents, which once he was drunk
he wouldn't listen to. But guys like Pablo Escobar and
other people in the game, they would listen to me.
Because they knew that what I was saying made.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
Sense in those days when you were rolling with Chino
and those guys. But did you ever run up against
any you know, bullshit, anything bad that was happening you.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
Mean with the cartel guys.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
Exactly.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
Let's put it to you this way. These cartel guys
were my friends. Obviously I must have had an inkling
of what kind of people they were, what they were
capable of. But as long as I had a seat
at the table and allowed to party and had unlimited
amounts of blood, it was pretty standard friendship relationships.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
Well, you talk about having a seat at the table,
did that ever go wrong?
Speaker 2 (06:08):
You know, I'm a local girl from New Orleans. I
would always insist to Chino and to others, You've got
the whole country to do business in. Please don't go
to New Orleans, and please don't go to Louisiana. That's
where I'm from. My dad is very well known, my
family is a prominent family there. Can we just leave
(06:31):
my stomping grounds out of the business. And for the
most part, Gino would listen, But as soon as he'd
start having a cocktail or two and then doing blow all,
you know, rational thinking went out the window. I had
heard that they were going to do some sort of
business with one of our people who happens to be
(06:51):
from New Orleans, and he was going to come back
to New Orleans with the product. And his connection was
the son of a top state government official.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
So basically they're doing a drug deal, of.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
Course, and I begged them don't do it. So sure enough,
something goes wrong.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
Are you talking about a big chunk of product?
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Big chunk of product? Not only my local friend got popped,
but the son of the top government official got popped
and he's in jail. So at that point, the top
state government official decides he's going to run his own
private investigation so he could save his son's future, get
(07:34):
him out, and find out who was behind this huge
drug deal. And he's getting close. So this one particular evening,
we're at my house, we're talking, and one of our
employees decides, you know what, let's just get rid of
this guy. We're not only going to get rid of
the kid in jail, but we're going to get rid
(07:55):
of his father. I could see some people at the
table sort of nodding their head. I'm sitting next to Pablo,
and I'm just saying, if you do this, this could
blow up in everybody's faces, not just myself and my family.
I got so upset. I stood up and I said,
no one is getting killed in my city on my watch.
(08:19):
And at that point I turned to Pablo and he
leaned over and sort of whispered in my ear, and
it says, you know you should be running this show,
to which I replied, I am.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
Were you aware of the DEA the FBI?
Speaker 2 (08:36):
All, Oh, yes, immensely. I mean we had all these gadgets,
you know that you'd plug into your phone and it
would tell you if they were listening in a red
light would start beeping. We had all the latest gadgets.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
So you had the highest tech that could be had.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
Yeah. And security in our homes, you know, because we
had several homes, you know, one in Miami, one in
La what is San Francisco. We had boats, racing cars,
we had race horses, we had everything. As much as
we had, we wouldn't hesitate in a second to leave
it and move on to the next city.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
Because the money was gonna come anyway.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
Always you could lose it, throw it away, flush it down,
the toilet didn't matter. You'd have it all back the
next day. He would get a car Mercedes, bring it
in from Miami. It would be San Francisco, and then
they didn't need it, they would send it on fire.
The money was just never ending. I remember that my
allowance quote unquote was ten to grand a week, and
(09:36):
that was it to pay rent or bills. That was
just fun money, fun money I could do with as
I please. There were always suitcases full of cash. There
were always suitcases full of kilos. And sometimes when the
suitcases would come in from Columbia, they would throw in
emeralds and pills and you never knew what was coming.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
Was there danger constant? So you get pregnant? Was that
good news to me?
Speaker 2 (10:03):
It wasn't, because I just said, I can't bring a
kid into this environment. You know, this constant partying. We'd
stay up for days and there was a constant flow
of cocaine people coming in and out any given house
that we owned. You know, I'd wake up and these
strangers walking around in my house.
Speaker 4 (10:24):
You know.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
I remember once in Beverly Hills somebody coming up to
me asking me where the bathroom was, and I said, well,
who are you. He goes, well, who are you? I said,
I'm the damn owner of this house. Get the fuck
out of my house. So it was sort of that
kind of thing. I was not happy about it. I
was still partying pregnant. I'm not proud of it, but
(10:44):
I did.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
For the record, her baby boy was born healthy and happy.
So you guys decided to get married.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
What we did was we were planning a wedding at
the house where we were living at, which was with
Nordman Manessas.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
I have to stop here as if this story isn't
create enough. Norway Manessas, Cookie's husband Chino and another friend
from Nicaragua, Danilo Blandon, were the guys smuggling cocaine into
the US for Pablo Escobar and the Median cartel. Cookie
was aware of that and definitely enjoying the party. But
these guys would become very famous a few years later
when they made a deal with the CIA to introduce
(11:19):
crack cocaine into south central Los Angeles through a local
drug dealer by the name of Freeway.
Speaker 5 (11:25):
Ricky Ross, facing life in prison, LA's biggest crack dealer
now is saying he was a pawn in a CIA plot,
and his argument was convincing enough that a federal judge
postponed sentencing to consider evidence that he's a name supplier,
was an agency operator.
Speaker 6 (11:42):
You know, his whole intentions was for me to make
more money.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
The more money I made, the more money he made,
and I guess the more money that he would have
to help sponsor the war. FX made a television series
called Snowfall based on some of that story.
Speaker 7 (11:56):
I on America accusations underscore the word accusations that are
nothing short of explosives. They are that the CIA knowingly
and intentionally did what amount to pump crack cocaine into
Los Angeles to help fund rebels in Nicaragua. The Justice
Department in Congress are investigating, and so is CBS newsed it.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
Was the beginning of a drug explosion that ravaged black
communities all over America. Gary Webb putitur Prize winning reporter
for the San Jose Mercury News, wrote a controversial three
part expose and later a book called The Dark Alliance,
detailing the connection between the CIA, the sale of crack cocaine,
and funding the contrasts. In this clip, he's asked about
the CIA involvement.
Speaker 8 (12:39):
Did the CIA put drugs into the black community.
Speaker 4 (12:43):
We don't have any evidence so far that they did
it directly. And what we have evidence of is that
men working for a CIA run army did.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
Do that with the knowledge of the CIA. That's the
part we don't know. That's the part we don't know.
Speaker 4 (12:56):
I mean, what we know is that these guys were
working for a CIA army. They were meeting with CIA
agents before and during the time they were doing this.
What happens from there is sort of where we ran
into the wall of national security.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
The CIA and the mainstream media went after him, eventually
destroying his career. He died from two gun shots to
the head. It was ruled a suicide. Two shots. Think
about it, Is it all true? I don't know for sure.
Corre Pecto alescando alescandal, narco politico chemist tempro mo. In
(13:34):
this interview from a prison in Nicaragua, Norma Manessas blames
the whole scandal on the Democrats trying to use narco
trafficking to win the election, and of course he says
he's innocent of all accusations and then no charges him
in filed canac I'm Presidentao Cargo for Romales in Miicontra.
Cookie wasn't part of any of that. In fact, she
was working for CBS at the time, and we'll get
(13:55):
into that later. What she will tell you is that
Norwen Maness is a someone she has known since childhood
and that she cares about him to this very day.
Back to her wedding. So you were married in Norway's home.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
In Norwen's home. He was going to be the one
that walked me down the aisle. Chapito d As from
Satana was the best man. I flew in some people
from New Orleans, not a lot. It was just going
to be a small gathering and we initially wanted a
judge to come. Well, judges don't come, so we found
Mark de Wolf Gay minister perfect. Chipito pulled out his rolls.
(14:34):
Royce Pablo gave me half a pound of cocaine for
the wedding. So I brought my girlfriend from New Orleans,
flew her in and we spent the whole day before
and the whole day of grinding it up. We started
off with one grand bottles and realized quickly that's not
going to be enough, so we went and got two
grand bottles filled up a hundred of them. When the
(14:57):
people arrived at the door, that's what they were given
with above on it. You know, this is your party favorite.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
Did Pablo come or do you just send me there? Wow?
Speaker 2 (15:13):
Of course everyone's starting to party immediately. My husband, Richino,
he was lost. He was downstairs because Freebase had started
out in Cali at that time, so he was downstairs
doing that. And I remember that at some point the
Minister comes up to me and says, look, I've got
another event. You know, I can't find my Bible. And
(15:36):
of course the people were using his Bible with the
Cooke lines on it. And I said, I think your
Bible's being used in the next room. I said, I
can give you a little something, you know, to perk
you up. He goes, oh okay. So the next thing
I know, the Minister's partying. So the time constraints were
gone by then. Also, it was my guardena era, so
(15:59):
I had to have fresh gardenias in my hair, in
my hands. The whole house smelled like gardenia's.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
I'm some serious hippie shit there, yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
But elegant hippie shit. Finally, when we get ready to
do it, I had to get Gino up from downstairs,
and he was already all fucked up nor being walked
me down the aisle. Gipito ass is crying, you know,
because he could just cry with one tear coming down
one eye.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
So you're eight months pregnant, you're walked down the aisle
by Norman Manessa's the best man.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
Is the the bongo player of said tad bongo player.
First from Nicaragua.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
It's from Nicarago, okay. And you have a non denominational minister.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
Gay gay remember where in San Francisco.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
I'm just trying to decide if this is a movie,
a TV series, or a sitcom right now, all of
the above. There's not exactly a happy ending to this
wedding story.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
I went on the honeymoon by myself because Gino, as
soon as he got married, went right back downstairs. So
I loved to win on the honeymoon by myself.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
Were you pissed off at him?
Speaker 2 (17:06):
Not really annoyed?
Speaker 1 (17:08):
Maybe back in Nicaragua, another journalist is murdered. This time
it's an American. We'll be right back, welcome back. Journalism
(17:32):
can be a very dangerous business, especially during war. I
want to warn you this segment contains graphic descriptions of
violence that are disturbing and hard to listen to. While
Cookie was playing Missus Scarface, partying her ass off and
trying to stay one step ahead of the Dea in
law enforcement, her beloved Nicaragua was exploding. The dictator Anastasio
(17:57):
Simosa is at war with his own people.
Speaker 8 (18:01):
Firing rockets to soften up antigovernment forces for ground troops.
The Nicaragua National Guard wants a major assault in Monagua
to retake poor neighborhoods or barrios held by the Gorillas.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
He's dropping five hundred pound bombs on the city because
by that time his philosophy is if we just kill everybody,
we don't have a revolution.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
Professor Wolf from Tulane University describes it like this.
Speaker 9 (18:44):
Not pinpointed bombs, not bombs that are just killing Santinistas.
They're just killing residents of the town, many of whom
are strong Santinissa support us, but they're just everyday people.
If you need to bomb your own people, you are
that afraid of them, you are that dissociated from them.
That is the beginning of the end.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
Already, kids and men are being stopped. Roll up your sleeve,
roll up your pants. If you've got scabs on your
elbows or on your knees, you were shot right there,
because that meant you were fighting.
Speaker 9 (19:20):
The press is becoming increasingly interested. I think that the
US press sees the murder of a pressman paid the
Jakin Chamoto as a kind of Canarian the coal mine.
When they're killing journalists, things are going badly. Something is happening.
Speaker 3 (19:37):
At this point.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
The networks are down there, International journalists are there, and
they're just covering this war with these rag tag revolutionaries
who even themselves knew that they would never win. Somosa
is now feeding amphetamines to all the Samosa guardsmen to
(20:00):
keep them up night and day. They're jittery. They're killing indiscriminately.
Speaker 8 (20:06):
This morning in Managua, after some of the heaviest fighting
of the war, Bill Stewart and an ABC camera crew
went into an attacked neighborhood, which.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
Was then calm.
Speaker 8 (20:16):
National guardsmen were friendly at the first checkpoint, In fact,
they were eager to talk and try to disprove reports
of low National Guard morale. But at the next checkpoint,
the attitude among the soldiers was entirely different from what
Bill and the crew had just seen.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
A future driver of mine is driving the vehicle. There's
a translator with them, there's a correspondent, and there's a
camera crew.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
And Bill Stewart is a person that Americans were used
to seeing in their evening news.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
Yes, he covered wars.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
He was at Vietnam, and eat he covered wars.
Speaker 3 (20:50):
He was a well known journalist.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
Well well thought of. Yeah, a pro in every way.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
Roadblocks are an everyday occurrence. So the ABC crew gets
stopped at a roadblock. Bill Stewart says, let me get out.
I'll go talk to.
Speaker 3 (21:06):
The soldiers like he's done a one.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
Hundred times in many different battle situations, and the translator
gets down with him.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
In the news van. The cameraman turns on his camera
to film Stuart's interaction with the Samosa guardsmen.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
The Samosa guardsmen had been up for weeks with these amphetamines,
and they were jumpy and not thinking straight.
Speaker 8 (21:32):
Bill showed he was unarmed and presented his press identification. Still,
he was forced to kneel and then lie down on
the pavement.
Speaker 2 (21:40):
One of the soldiers thinks he recognizes the translator he
was wrong, but he thinks he recognizes him as being
a revolutionary. This guy was a sport schmuck translator making
a few bucks. They get nervous. They take the translator
(22:05):
around the corner and he's shot.
Speaker 8 (22:09):
Bill showed he was unarmed and presented his press identification. Still,
he was forced to kneel and then lie down on
the pavement.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
The camera crew is still filming. They're looking at what's happening,
as is the driver who warned Bill Stewart not to
get out of the vehicle. All of a sudden, the
guardsman aims the weapon at Bill Stewart and shoots him
in the head with such force that his body kind
(22:39):
of jumped. At that point, the Nicaraguan driver knows we're fucked.
He doesn't even know that the camera crew filmed it.
The camera crew at this point doesn't even care that
they filmed it. They're just scared their next and they
would have been next.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
The ABC sound man Jim Cephalou describes them ament, they.
Speaker 6 (23:01):
Had us get out shore identification. While we were out,
I noticed on the left hand side of the building
the interpreter's body. He had been shot in the head.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
So the driver, Pablo Pablo, with no fear at all,
goes up to these guys and said, damn, y'all made
a mistake. Dude, We're from Samosa TV. We were on
the same.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
Side, lying his ass off.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
Lying his ass off, not just to save his life,
but the crew whatever.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
Balls of stone right there.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
But look, I'm gonna make a deal with y'all. What
happened here didn't happen the way it happened. I am
gonna say that it was the sand Denistas that killed him.
Just let us go, you know, We'll go straight back
to Samosa TV. And they let him go.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
We got back into the van.
Speaker 6 (23:58):
The driver asked if we wanted to take bills by
back to the hotel, said we did so. He and
I backed up, put Bill's body in the van, came
back here to the hotel.
Speaker 1 (24:10):
Chuck Gomez, a young CBS correspondent, was at the hotel
when they brought his body back.
Speaker 10 (24:17):
When Bill Stewart's body arrived at the Intercontinental Hotel, there
was a mixture of incredible sadness and sorrow and also
incredible fear. We didn't know at that moment if journalists
were being specifically targeted, for example, as Somosa himself had
(24:38):
ordered the wounding and the killing of American reporters and
camera crews, or if it was something that the soldiers
themselves decided to do because they had been you know,
they were on patrols for days on end. We were
all hugging each other and in Greece and kind of
shaking our heads in disbelief. And then soon after all
(25:00):
the reporters thought, we had to report this story. We
have to let the world know what's happened here.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
It was the first time that a network had the
biggest exclusive video of all time, and they shared it
with all the networks and all the journalists that were there.
New York Times, Washington Post.
Speaker 3 (25:22):
They were all there, to BBC and some of.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
The BBC you had international journalists. So it was the
first time that a network willingly gave their exclusive to everybody.
They wanted to make sure it got out. They didn't
even bother to edit. They just needed to get to
Samosa TV station and satellite that bitch out of there
(25:45):
before Samosa and these people realized what had happened and
the video got out.
Speaker 8 (25:53):
ABC News correspondent Bil Stewart, thirty seven years old, was
killed today in Nicaragua.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
I'll tell you this. I saw that footage in a
Walter Cronkite broadcast and he showed the entire thing in total,
every networked and no one ever showed anything like that,
no one.
Speaker 3 (26:11):
You could see the body.
Speaker 1 (26:12):
Yeah, you could see it, and it was horrific.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
The journalists that were in Nicaragua decided, we can't take
this anymore. We're boycotting this. It didn't bother the US
government tomorrow had been assassinated. That up until that point,
fifty thousand innocent and maybe some not so innocent revolutionaries
had been murdered. That didn't matter. But one American journalist
(26:38):
being killed. That mattered, and that's what turned the tide.
The public was outraged at that point. The US government
made the decision we can no longer back Simosa.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
President Carter said this when he heard the news. The
murder of Bill Stewart was an act of barber that
all civilized people condemned. Within a month, some Mosa flees
to Florida and the dictatorship falls, but not before looting Nicaragua.
After he left. The San Denis has found less than
(27:15):
two million dollars in the national treasury. Samosa is denied
asylum by President Carter and takes refuge in Paraguay. Only
one year later, he's assassinated by a Sandinista commando team
four men and three women. The mission was called Operation
Reptile seems appropriate. According to Reporters Without Borders, nearly seventeen
(27:38):
hundred journalists have been killed in the last twenty years
in some conflicts that are actually targeted, and in the
last few years, some despicable politicians in the United States
have actually encouraged violence against news reporters covering elections. It
was no different in Central America in the seventies and eighties.
Carla Ferrell, for news producer stationed in Nicaragua and El
(28:02):
Salvador and other war zones in the region, describes the
life of wartime journalists this way.
Speaker 11 (28:08):
You didn't do that kind of work unless you thought
you were invincible, which in some ways doesn't make much sense,
because all of us, pretty much all of us went
through losing colleagues or spouses, family members. But somehow, no, no,
that could never happen to us.
Speaker 1 (28:35):
Against all odds, the Sandinistas have won the revolution. The
Nicaraguan people are celebrating, But Cookie was looking for her
own Revolution. We'll be back in a minute. Welcome back.
(29:05):
The last time we saw Cookie, she was eight months pregnant,
a newlywed and hanging out with Pablo Escobar Nicaragua. Is
having a rebirth a Cookie. He was just having a
berth What could go wrong? But where the hell is Chino?
Speaker 2 (29:23):
That was crazy because the night that night was a
half hour night.
Speaker 10 (29:29):
You know.
Speaker 2 (29:29):
We called him the half hour guy. You know. He says,
I'll be back in half an hour, and that half
hour could be a week to four months. I start
having contractions and going into labor at dawn. He shows
up at six seven in the morning, completely high and
(29:50):
drunk and passes out. And I got to get to
the hospital. I'm, you know, way him up. He can't drive,
so we jump in the car. I'm driving and having
to pull off on the expressway every time a contraction
would hit, you know, and I'm yelling at him in
(30:12):
the back seat, you stupid motherfucker. Now I knew this
was gonna happen.
Speaker 3 (30:16):
I knew it.
Speaker 2 (30:17):
We get to the hospital, I'm screaming, get this motherfucking
kid out of me. It's a Catholic hospital and the
nuns are trying to quiet me down, Can you please
use different language. I don't give a fuck what's going on.
I need to get this kid out. I was asking
for the last rites, asking for a priest she knows
(30:38):
passed out. And he did go in to see the
birth and proceeded to just faint when he saw what
he saw. So they had to attend to him and
not to me. So and we got the rolling stones
playing high in the delivery room. Yeah it was.
Speaker 3 (30:56):
It was a trip.
Speaker 1 (30:57):
And now you have this beautiful boy.
Speaker 2 (30:59):
Oh yeah, I mean it was worth it.
Speaker 1 (31:01):
He's your best friend now.
Speaker 2 (31:03):
He always was my best friend. He was my partner
in crime and my best friend.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
Happy times for Cookie and China. But the thug life
is starting to get to her.
Speaker 2 (31:12):
Well. It started slowly for me. At first, nothing bothered me.
I wasn't scared of anything. And then it just slowly.
You know, I'd open up a closet and kilos would
fall out. You know, there'd be a box I'd open
it was filled with a million dollars in cash, And
(31:32):
so slowly I started to get paranoid. It was so
slow that I didn't know that it was happening. It
would present itself as soon as I would start partying,
I would do a line. I'd be fine. I'd do
a second line, I'd be fine. By the third or
fourth line, the paranoia would creep in. And the reason
(31:55):
that happened it wasn't just because of the amounts and
the quantities of everything. It was because no one else
was paranoid. No one else was being careful, because again
you're dealing with Latin American people that have no conception
of the law in the United States. So it was
(32:16):
almost like I was having to be paranoid for everyone,
not just myself. Every day it was like, this is
the day, this is the day. They're here, They're coming,
They're coming to get me. Every single day was like that,
and so I just needed to get out.
Speaker 1 (32:35):
Okay, so you're beset by paranoia. Yeah, yeah, it's starting
to get to you.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
It's starting to get to me.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
Is there a moment that you can recall that you said,
I got to get the fuck out of here.
Speaker 3 (32:48):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (32:49):
My mother got sick, she got cancer, and she was
here in New Orleans. I remember saying to my husband, Tochino, listen,
I gotta go visit my I don't think my intention
was to leave and never come back, because that would
have never been part of my mo my playbook. I
(33:10):
had to come back to get more blow, but I
remember telling him that I was going to leave. I
grabbed all my first editions, all my jewelry, all my furs,
I think a million in cash packed it took my baby,
he was six months old. I think came back to
New Orleans under the guise of taking care of my mom,
(33:33):
moving back home with a mother and father that knew
nothing about my life. And I don't think I meant
to never come back. I meant to get out, at
least for that moment. I needed to get the fuck out.
And so I got to New Orleans, got home. I'd
been home for years with a newborn baby in my arms.
(33:55):
My parents didn't even know about that. Went upstairs to
my old bedroom, took the million dollars in cash, put
it under the mattress. Oh, and I also brought a
shitload of blow. Might have been a couple of ounces
or more. It had to be more for me at
that time. She said, don't worry. If you need more money,
I'll send you more money. And that's how I got out.
Speaker 1 (34:19):
Did they try to get you to come back.
Speaker 2 (34:20):
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (34:21):
Were they worried about you being a risk?
Speaker 2 (34:24):
Oh no, no, no, no no. If anybody would have
been worried that I was a risk, I would have
been erased.
Speaker 1 (34:34):
Cookie takes care of her mom until she passes and
finishes her degree at Loyola, still parting her ass off
with unlimited supplies of cocaine. She's getting restless again though
Nicaragua is calling her name.
Speaker 2 (34:50):
I said, well, let me go check out the revolution,
And so I went and got to Nicaragua, living with
some friends, and sufficed to say, war time was tough.
Speaker 1 (35:02):
Who were you rolling with when you went back?
Speaker 2 (35:05):
All my old gang friends, all partiers. I'm still a
good girl in the eyes of my aunts and uncles,
an older family, to.
Speaker 1 (35:15):
All the old contacts, all the old people you always
hung with their own.
Speaker 2 (35:18):
Yeah, and I'm meeting new people, poor people, because now
the Sandinistas have made it possible for a middle class
to emerge. They're fighting infant mortality, they're fighting illiteracy. But
the scarcity of things water was scarce, you know, toilet paper,
which we can all relate to.
Speaker 7 (35:39):
Now.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
I want to ask you a question about the Sandinistas
and what they were bringing to the table. When you
look back at that time and you think about the
changes that were happening in nicarag where you mentioned the
emerging of a middle class. The Santanisas were doing a
lot of things.
Speaker 2 (35:53):
Good things that anybody would want. Medical care for everybody,
education for everybody, jobs for people, just what normal human
beings want.
Speaker 1 (36:06):
If I remember, they were building rural hospitals.
Speaker 3 (36:08):
And hospitals schools.
Speaker 2 (36:11):
Yeah. But once the Countral War started and the scarcity
of things and roughing it, electricity would go out all
the time, and you know, it's tough to be in
a war in a third world country. So after about
three months, I said, you know what, I've had enough
of this. I've seen the revolution. I'm ready to go back.
Speaker 3 (36:33):
Home to New Orleans.
Speaker 2 (36:35):
So I threw myself a going away party. And at
this going away party, which was what all my parties
were like, so would call it a very eclectic crowd.
You'd have poor people, you'd have rich people, you'd have young,
(36:57):
you'd have old, you'd have gay, straight journalists were there, soldiers,
a little bit of everything, and of course it was
a big party with party favors. Had my bag's packed
and I was ready to go back to New Orleans.
Speaker 1 (37:14):
Were any of your old friends there, like Chino, any
of those.
Speaker 2 (37:17):
People in Sheino wasn't there, but all the Chino characters
were there, people we grew up with.
Speaker 1 (37:23):
Cookie doesn't know it yet, but her future is already
At this party, an.
Speaker 2 (37:27):
NBC producer, Cecilia Alviar approached me and she said, you know, Cookie,
I like the vibe I get from you. You know
the US culture, you know the Nicaraguan culture. It seems
to me like you know everybody who's anybody. She still
didn't know that I also knew the elite rulers of
(37:51):
the enemy, the Contras at the time, who were also
rich kids.
Speaker 1 (37:55):
So she's saying this to you while you were just partying.
Speaker 3 (37:57):
Well I'm partying. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (37:59):
She says, you know, would you be interested in working
for NBC and running our operations here? You know, translator fixer?
And I said, you know, that sounds interesting. And at
the same time, there was another journalist there from CBS
named Larry Doyle, a producer.
Speaker 1 (38:20):
Doyle did two tours in Vietnam, the epitome of an
old school combat news. Producer Dan Rather called him the
soul of CBS, one of the all time greats, one
tough son of a bitch.
Speaker 2 (38:34):
He was my kind of guy, my kind of partier,
and he made the same offer to me. He says, Look,
the guy we got is a schmuck, never gets his
hands dirty, he never goes out into the field. Would
you like to have a job working with him, being
that fixer translator going out with the cruise, you know,
(38:55):
into the boondocks and my party and you know you
And I said, you know, this offer sounds a lot
better than the NBC offer, And I said, sure, well
that sounds good.
Speaker 1 (39:08):
So basically you took the CBS offer because they partied.
In this NBC offer, they didn't.
Speaker 2 (39:14):
Party, and it was the same job, same job description,
and good money. Larry says, well, can you come in
for an interview at the Intercontinental Hotel, And remember it's
the same hotel that the journalists stayed at in seventy
nine and then boycotted and left after Bill Stewart was assassinated.
I said, sure, I'll come in for an interview.
Speaker 3 (39:41):
So I went in for an interview.
Speaker 2 (39:43):
The next day was another producer, Carlo Farrell, and I
was asked two questions, how do you feel about roadblocks
and I've never counted roadblocks, but I said roadblocks. Oh,
I can get in and out of anything. And the
second question, what would you say is your main quality?
And I said adaptability And she said, well, you know,
(40:07):
give me an example. I said, well, I could sleep
at the Plaza Hotel in New York as easily as
I can go into the Jungles and sleep in a
shack on top of coffee beans. And she says, you
got the job.
Speaker 1 (40:22):
Next time on Journalista.
Speaker 2 (40:25):
So I come in the next day all dressed up
at pearls and heels, and she says, why are you
dressed that way? I said, well, you said I'm going north.
I'm going to Miami, right She goes, no, You're going
to the Jungles today with a camera crew by your side.
Speaker 1 (40:45):
The Journalista podcast features the stories and voice of Cookie Hood.
Narrated by Steven Esta, Produced by Sean J. Donnelly, Executive
producers Jason Wagensback, Roy Laughlin and Ellen k iHeart. Executive
producer Tyler Klang. Written and edited by Steven Estev. Music
by Jay Wichel, Associate producer in sound design Stephen Tunt.
(41:08):
Sound mixing by Jesse Solnsnyder Special guest, Juline History professor
Justin Woolf, Chuck Gomez, Carla Ferrell, Lloyd Sherwan Special Thanks
to Esplanade Studios, The Ranch Studios, Jason Gerwitz, Kyle Frederick,
Zach Slaugh. This is a production of Journalista podcast LLC
(41:29):
and iHeartRadio
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