August 29, 2023 • 45 mins
Cookie saves the world from a nuclear holocaust, then saves her boys from their own personal disasters.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
This is a production of Journalista Podcast LLC and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Play Bye Bye, Say.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
Six fie O free.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Why here?
Speaker 3 (00:30):
These are the stakes to make a world in which
all of God's children can live. Are to go into
the dark. We must either love each other or we
must dive. Vote for President Johnson on November third.
Speaker 4 (00:49):
The stakes are too high for you to stay home.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Welcome back to the Journalista Podcast. I'm your host, Steve A. Step.
That was the campaign commercial that scared America into re
electing Lyndon Baines Johnson to the presidency. Back in nineteen
sixty four, A little girl is counting the pedals on
a daisy as the atom bomb explodes in the background.
The Cold War was real. The US and the Soviet
(01:16):
Union were on a collision course to destroy the world.
It was terrifying. It was also our normal. I remember
my elementary school running drills and practicing getting under our
desks in case San Diego is hit with a nuclear warhead.
I'm not sure it would have made much of a difference.
Of course, today our kids practice hiding from a lone
gunman with an AR fifteen. You told me once that
(01:41):
you might have saved the world from nuclear holocaust.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Well, maybe not the world and maybe not nuclear, but
for sure we averted what could have been a devastating
war for a poor country in Latin America.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
Well, tell me about that.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
First, we had gone on a junket, very memorable junket.
I remembered one Tomo from the Miami Herald was there,
another journalist myself, and we all got back to Monagua,
and we all got sick. And of course we always
attributed to dirty water, not the right food, and so
I was starting to get very sick, nauseous. Was it
(02:20):
feeling right? I think? The day after we got back,
there were some rumors about some possible Russian armament and
particular MiG aircraft that could quite possibly be headed to Nicaragua,
and of course that was a very dangerous premise.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
The New York Times wrote this about the rumors.
Speaker 4 (02:45):
US warned Soviets it won't tolerate MiGs in Nicaragua. The
United States, concerned that a Soviet freighter that has reached
Nicaragua might be carrying advanced fighter aircraft, warned Musco on
Tuesday that it would not tolerate the delivery of such planes.
President Reagan said that if the Nicaraguans took delivery of
advanced aircraft, it would quote indicate that they are contemplating
(03:06):
being a threat to their neighbors here in the Americas.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
It wasn't Defcon one, but this wasn't the first time
a Russian shipment threatened the balance of power in the
Western Hemisphere.
Speaker 5 (03:20):
Good evening, my fellow citizens. This government has promised has
maintained the closest surveillance of the Soviet military build up
on the island of Cuba. Within the past week, unmistakable
evidence has established the fact that a series of offensive
(03:41):
missile sites is now in preparation on that imprisoned island.
The purpose of these bases can be none of us
than to provide a nuclear strike capability against the Western Hemisphere.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
That was President John F. Kennedy. You may have heard
of the Cuban missile crisis. The United States put a
naval blockade around Cuba, stopping the Soviets from delivering nuclear
warheads to Fidel Castro. US military leaders were pushing for
a full on invasion of Cuba, a fucking terrible idea.
Kennedy opted for diplomacy, and after thirteen tenth days in October,
(04:19):
he and the Soviet leader Nikita Krushev agreed to back down.
It was the closest the world has ever come to
nuclear war that we know of. Scary shit in Nicaragua.
History seemed to be repeating itself.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
So of course everybody wants to find out is the
rumor true? You know, how do you find out about that?
I mean you have to literally see the aircraft coming in.
At that point, I had already gone to see a doctor.
The doctor had told me your gallbladder has to come out.
We need to do surgery on you. And I'm like,
you know, I'm not comfortable with that. We're in a
(04:56):
war torn zone, We're in a third world country. I'm
just uncomfortable. And by the way, I'm working on this story,
as I'm getting sicker, the doctor says, well, we'll have
to treat you somehow, and he hooks me up to
an IV and the IV he's hooked up to a
wooden hat rack that I had gotten my driver to
(05:16):
put wheels on it so I could be wheeling myself
back and forth. And I'm thinking this is going to
make me feel better. Well, it didn't. I of course,
let New York know and Miami know this possibility of
Russian weaponry coming in. We don't know how, but the
State Department had called CBS. CBS obviously knew that I
(05:38):
had close contacts with the Sandinista government, the hierarchy, but
we still don't know how. The State Department knews. So
the State Department calls New York, tells New York and
you get in touch with Cookie, have her call or
take us people and see if we can avert this problem,
possibly a major problem. So CBS calls me, can you
(05:58):
get in touch? I s at sure, in touch with
Ortega's press guy, Manuel Spinoza, and I tell him, listen,
there's rumors about this big aircraft coming in. The State
Department of the US is not happy with this, and
I think that you should know that they're saying there
will be a problem if this weaponry makes it into Nicaragua.
(06:21):
And Manuel's like, well, let me talk to the president.
I'll get back to you. I'm talking to New York.
New York's talking to the State Department. And this went
on for hours.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
If there are legitimate fears that the United States is
looking for a reason to invade Nicaragua, we attack the
island of Grenada. In nineteen eighty three, for far Less,
a Marxist newspaper called The Spartacist wrote that the invasion
was imminent.
Speaker 6 (06:48):
As USSR seventy one blackbirds smash the sound barrier over Manawa,
Nicadawens have good reason to believe the bombing will begin
in five minutes. The imperialist invasion plans are already worked
out in detail. Nicaraua leader Daniel Lortega said at the
UN in October, the winds now blowing over Central America
foretell of holocaust for our peoples.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
The stakes are very high for Nicaragua, and some officials
in the US government fear this could lead to another Vietnam.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
I'd been doing this the whole night, thinking I'm gonna
get a nice exclusive here, I'm gonna get a great
little story here. Well, the MiGs never came in. I
like to think that I helped avert a bigger problem,
which would have been a war of sub sort.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
Like a missiles in October type thing.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
Yeah, like the Cuban missile crisis. Probably not as dangerous
as that was, but it could have been. We did
all of that, we averted it all, and I still
didn't get the story because we couldn't broadcast because the
State Department was involved, CBS was involved, where Tega's people
are involved, and I'm in the middle of the whole thing.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
But he wants that story to come out anyway except.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
You I would have loved it. There was no way
that New York or Miami was ever going to allow
that because it would look like we were all accomplices.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
You know, what's the State Department doing dealing with CBS
And what's CBS doing telling me to go talk to insiders?
So even though I did it to get the big story,
I never got the big story.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
Did anybody get it?
Speaker 2 (08:27):
No, because no one knew what happened? The problem had
been averted.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
Wow.
Speaker 7 (08:32):
Oh.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
And then CBS, as good as they are to their journalists,
flew me to Miami. Ambulance waiting at the airport, wheeled
me in into Mount Sinai Hospital and the receptionist says
to me, girl, you sure look yellow. You must have
a bad case of hepatitis. And at that point I
realized I could have died because if I would have
(08:54):
allowed them to operate on me in Nicaragua, you cannot
perform surgery on a hypatha patient because they die. I
would have died, and no one would have been the wiser.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
So is this one of those stories that everybody decides
to never talk about again.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
It never happened.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
So basically the story is there is no story. It
never happened.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
It never happened.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
That would have been huge, too, It would have been huge.
The Washington Post reported this about the confrontation.
Speaker 4 (09:23):
US officials said yesterday that no Soviet fighter jets have
been unloaded from a Soviet ship now docked in a
Nicaraguan port, and that they now believe the ship may
not contain any of the MEG aircraft. At the same time,
officials at the Pentagon and State Department sought to quiet
rumors that the United States was preparing to invade Nicaragua.
While the United States would consider various options to quote
(09:44):
unquote neutralize any megs, a State Department official said, the
idea of a general offensive is quote unquote nonsense.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
Years later, I realized the gravity of what could have
happened and what we averted day.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Did it ever cross your mind that some o the
State Department determined that you were someone they could talk to.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
Yeah, Well, we always kind of wondered how they knew that.
But we know how our government works, and I'm sure
they were very well versed in my activities. You know
what I was up to at any given moment.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
It's kind of scary in a way.
Speaker 8 (10:20):
It was.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
So the US State Department used Cookie to stave off
a major Cold War confrontation in Central America. Her power
and influence are at an all time high. The question
is what will she do with it.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
I knew I was a powerful person, just personality wise,
even before all of this, through the drug days, through
the modeling days, through all of it. As far as
wielding power, yes, I started to realize that I could
get anything I wanted. I could get in and out
(10:59):
of anything I want wanted. If Dan Rather or Mike
Wallace or Don Hewett wanted something, they knew Cookie was
going to get it for them one way or another.
I could charm the shit out of anybody.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
One person told me that you were like a mob
bus who was collecting favors.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
Not intentionally, and I never really had to say, look,
I did this for you, you got to do this
for me. It was just sort of understood because it
wasn't just contacts, and it just wasn't powerful government people
on either side and in different countries. I also helped
my own crews and colleagues whatever had to be done,
(11:42):
whether it was carrying tripods, carrying equipment, helping them if
they had a hangover, bringing them to the airport, picking
them up from the making their lives just out and
out comfortable. You know, happy wife, happy life. Well my
motto was happy cruise, happy journalists, happy Cookie, and happy
(12:05):
New York. And I will take that a step further.
Obviously the networks were all competitors. I wasn't like that.
Of course, I'm not going to give away my exclusives,
but I helped other crews in other networks. You could
always count on Cookie giving us a ride, or if
we don't have tapes, she can give us tapes. If
our machines went down, She'll let us choose her machines.
(12:29):
But then it also extended to outside the TV network circle.
Anybody that was in my life, friends, relatives, if I
needed them to work, I made sure they got work.
The drivers. I spread the wealth.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
Meet Alejandro Belly, one of Cookie's best friends and her
assistant at the CBS office in Managua aka Chillin.
Speaker 9 (12:55):
She would get quite a bit of money. It would
always come in cash in dollars. A driver would get
one hundred dollars a day when normally, you know, if
they were hired by a private family, he maybe would
be making twenty dollars a month. So it was this
huge gap. I was graduated from American University working in
(13:16):
the health ministry, I started making fourteen I ended up
making seventeen dollars a month, and I was making one
hundred dollars with Cookie in a day. In that same way,
she would have, I don't know, somebody takes care of Chicho,
somebody that does our nails and does you know, manicures
and petticures and come there at the office. You know,
you know she'll tip her well and she's very generous.
Speaker 2 (13:39):
I had a cousin worked for me. I had close friends,
but I wasn't paying them to do nothing. They pulled
their own weight. Sure, I spread the wealth, but they
had to report for duty.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
Yeah, Selene said that you had it figured out where
you could have three or four or sometimes five drivers
working consistently and they were getting paid one hundred dollars
a day for the.
Speaker 2 (14:03):
Moment in dollars, which was like as if I was
paying them in goal bars.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
The way he put it, though, it was almost calculated
how you could help as many people as possible.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
Many people as possible, And people like Chilean people like
my cousin Hilda, people like my brother Jimmy. They all
worked for their money. But I just made sure that
that money was spread as far as I could. You're
in a war zone, people are hurting. Everybody could use money.
(14:33):
I made sure everyone, drivers and helpers and maids were
raising whole families. And that was my go to amount,
one hundred dollars a day.
Speaker 9 (14:44):
She keeps her allies in a way, you know, she
was able to really reward them. She doesn't buy them,
but she rewards her loyalties.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
That was just an extension of the way I've always
been in my life. I think she called it comfortable scam.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
A comfortable scam. I love that.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
And of course my theme song was comfortably.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
Numb for obvious reasons.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
For obvious reasons.
Speaker 9 (15:10):
In terms of what this meant for the drivers, it's
they were able to send kids to education and have
it changed schools, have a better car, have its in house,
keep another mistress.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
You know, listen, Steve, everybody around me made money halfway
for altruistic reasons and halfway because these are people that
are helping me do my job. Their payback to me
was helping me get the best stories and the best
(15:41):
work coming out of CBS Latin America as possible.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
We can talk about all the good things with journalism
and all the things like that that you you were
able to accomplish and help other people accomplish. And I
know you you had your reasons for paying people well
and that that's good business. But when you look back
at that and think about how many people you affected
in a positive way, how does that feel?
Speaker 2 (16:04):
Let's put it to you this way. Two things I'm
going to say. They all hated seeing the war end,
because they all really made their lives because of war.
And number two, how did I feel? It felt good? Steve?
Just like it felt good before the war, Just like
it feels good even today. It makes you feel good.
(16:26):
So many lives were able to be touched in such
a positive way. I still hear from these people thirty
and forty years later.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
If they all say, every one of them I've interviewed,
they all say, they still get a birthday card, they
still get a Christmas card, they still get a note,
they still get a thought sympathy card. I want to
go on record right now saying that if my cat
goes to the vet, I send you a card, sometimes
with a gift certificate. Cookie takes care of her people.
(16:58):
I know because I'm want to them. After the break,
she takes it to another level. We'll be right back,
(17:22):
welcome back. This story is fucking insane. There are several versions,
all of them dangerous, all of them hilarious. I'm going
to tell you the funniest version. Remember that time at
the airport when you forgot you at a joint in
your backpack and you're sweating bullets watching it go through
the TSA scanner and you just know you're going to
freaking jail. It's like that, except you're in a third
(17:46):
world country in the middle of a civil war. You
talk a lot about security going in and out of
these buildings and that type of thing. Do you ever
have any close calls?
Speaker 2 (17:56):
Yes, we had a great close call, I could say great.
Now we're being summoned with all the other journalists to
a press conference, not a big one, A dog and
Pony Show, which we used to call him. I'm sure
the San Denisas thought it was going to be a big,
important press conference. We knew it wasn't and it was
(18:17):
going to be held at the Ministry of Defense. And
then after the press conference, I had been given the
okay for an exclusive interview with the Defense Minister, which
was President Ortega's brother, Umberto Ortego. And this guy didn't
give interviews. He, you know, was a very quiet guy,
(18:38):
secretive obviously because he's the head of defense and they're
at war.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
Was there a purpose for the interview, No, we.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
Were just wanted an interview with him. Whenever I thought
that I wanted something extra or exclusive, it didn't hurt
to ask because all they could do is say no.
But most of the time they said yes. It would
always give CBS the per hand, so we knew we
were going to do that after So we're there, I'm
with my favorite Cuban American crew Manny and George Bosa.
(19:10):
I loved working with these guys.
Speaker 8 (19:12):
It was one of those where it was the big
press conference. Everyone was invited, you know, and those were
very few and far between. So when they did that,
everyone showed up. They would take us into a room
and they'd make us drop all year. And then they
had the dogs, the German shepherds and their you know,
secret police, and they would go through your stuff.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
They searched the equipment, they searched the journalists, make sure
there are no bombs or weapons that you know, something
unexpected could.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
Happen, so standard operating proceeds SOP.
Speaker 8 (19:44):
So we all filed in and I had a journalists
vest where I carried my tapes and my microphones and
some cables, my passport, cash and all that.
Speaker 3 (19:55):
George wore this little vest that was a photographer vest.
I'm sure you've seen the one to have his little pockets.
He wore that thing every day. That thing, if you
were to set it down, it would have walked away
by itself.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
So we had been up the night before, we'd been partying.
We just thought we'd just work all the way through
from partying, go straight to equipment check, which was we
had to be there around six in the morning. They
always keep you for hours. We knew we could take
a nap and sleep while we're waiting.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
So you're saying that you were you guys were up
partying all night and went straight to their defense.
Speaker 2 (20:29):
Mid yeah, because it was across the street from the hotel.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
Literally, you never slept that night.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
We did sleep, which is not not normal. It was
pretty you know, normal for us to do.
Speaker 8 (20:40):
The night before, I had been with a friend of
mine that had gotten me some some weed. And to
get weed and monogua is not an easy thing to do,
you know. It's it's hard. It's not bad, but it's
not the greatest either, So it's rare, and it's he
treated like like gold, you know, it's it's very u valuable.
Speaker 3 (20:59):
I remember sitting up in his little bed, putting a
cigarette in his mouth, lighting that, and then rolling a
joint while he smoked that sick and it was kind
of one of those one went where you go, oh shit, Sey,
you know, I mean, I didn't take anything of it.
Whatever we had many hours before we had to do this.
Speaker 8 (21:19):
We all filing and we walked into this giant room
and the cameramen put their cameras and tripods down. I
put down my recorder. I put down my backpack with
all my batteries and stuff, and then I dropped my
best because the soldier said to me, we need to
see the best too, because you can put a lot
of stuff in it. So I drop it and we
all file out. And as soon as we file out,
(21:39):
George comes up.
Speaker 3 (21:40):
To me and he's literally pale, like why does this
ghost man? And I said, what's up? Man?
Speaker 5 (21:45):
What you know?
Speaker 3 (21:46):
And he says, manny I forgot to take the weed
out of my little vest.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
Boja looks at me with this look of fear, and
I was like, oak, hey, now you have to understand.
They were always scared because being Cuban Americans, they were
fearful that the sandinisas if they ever got in trouble,
you know, would throw them in jail and throw away
(22:15):
the key.
Speaker 8 (22:16):
The reason it was so scary for me is because
my passport says born in Cuba. Okay, not born in
the US. It's a US passport, but it says born
in Havana. And the first time I landed there, the
Sandinista soldier at the airport, when he took my seventy
five bucks attacks to come in, he said, you left
Cuba to laugh at the revolution.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
If they catch us with drugs, we're done. You know,
I get to Miami, Cubans with drugs. You know that
would have been headline news in Nicarago.
Speaker 8 (22:46):
Cookie's like, wow, let me see what I can do.
So she disappears behind the door and then she cracks
the door opened a bit and says, post get in
here and get it really quick. So I slide in.
I may believe that I'm looking through my vest and
I grabbed a battery and then I grabbed that and
I crushed it in my hand so nobody could see it,
and I walk out.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
I said to Boza, we got to get rid of it.
So I take the bag. I put it down my pants.
Manny also knows what's going on. He's not scared, because
Manny is pretty fearless, but he knew that this could
be a problem. It could be a brujaha. Somebody could
lose their job, and I just wasn't going to let
that happen.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
You Like, CBS wouldn't be happy about it.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
Of course not. Here's one of their crew caught with drugs.
We don't know what type of scandal that would be.
I'm gonna take care of it. Put it in my pants,
ask where's the bathroom to one of the security police there,
and I go in the bathroom and I start to
flush it down the toilet. Weed. You got to understand
(23:50):
we're in a third world country. I know, I keep
repeating this, it's during the war. The facilities are not
top notch like here in the United States.
Speaker 3 (24:00):
I don't know how many third world bathrooms that you've
been to. I have been to quite a few, and
that was one of the worst.
Speaker 2 (24:10):
So as I'm flushing it down the toilet, and it's
several times I'm flushing because I've got to make sure
it goes, the toilet gets backed up and the weed
starts coming back up and overflowing. And anyone that's overflowed
a toilet knows what I'm talking about, but it's usually
not for weed in a military state. And it is
(24:33):
now all over the floor and I'm trying to pick
it up. The toilet is backed up. I know, I
can't get anything else down there. Whatever got down and
went fine, but there's a lot of it out floating
in the toilet and floating on the floor. So I
stick my head out door and tell the security guy, look,
(24:55):
I'm sick. I've got a bad stomach. I said, I'm
having an accident in here. I need you to get
me some towels. I don't think there were paper towels
in those days. Just get me some brags, anything you can,
so I can clean up this mess. Of course, he
doesn't want to go in because he figures it's another
kind of mess. So I clean up as much as
(25:16):
I can, and I take it all and put it
back in my pants, because I figure, Okay, if anybody's
going to get caught, it's going to be me. The
crew they're okay, they're safe. I had already told them,
you admit to nothing. Anything happens. I'm going to take
the fall because Cookie, as you know by now, can
get in and out of anything. I'm kind of damp
(25:39):
down there, but of course I attributed to being sick.
By this point, I'm in that bathroom thirty minutes, maybe
more so. Security's getting a little not nervous, but they're
kind of like wondering, what the hell's going on? How
sick is this girl? The guy sticks his head in,
Knox Forverd sticks his head in. Are you okay in there?
I'm okay, I'll be out in a minute. So I
(26:01):
come out. I got it back in my pants. I
just continue to tell Manny and George no worries. I
got this, I got you. You admit to nothing. If
anything happens, you just you're shocked. I'll take the fall,
no worries. And even if they would have been caught
with it, I would have never allowed anything to happen
(26:22):
to them either, because that's just the way I was
with my guys. You know, I just took care of everybody.
We went on to do the press conference, we went
on to do the interview with Roberto Ortega, and nobody
was the wiser.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
But y'all got shit faced after that.
Speaker 2 (26:40):
I'm sure we did. I'm sure we did. That was
a close call.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
I know that George, he'll never forget it. He thinks
that you saved his ass that day, and.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
I've let him think that. But again, I would have
never let anything bad happen to him. I would have
taken the blame before I would have let anything happen,
because maybe they did have a viable fear.
Speaker 5 (27:02):
You know.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
Yet again, Cookie got away with it and got the
story and got the story. Didn't you tell me that
that scene reminded you of something?
Speaker 1 (27:11):
Yeah, when you tell me that story, it always reminds
me of Lucy in the Chocolate factory.
Speaker 3 (27:17):
Oh right, girls, now this is your last chance.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
If one piece of kind it gets past you and
into the packing room unwrapped, you're fired, you.
Speaker 1 (27:26):
Know, trying to grab the chocolates and then keep coming
and coming, and I can just see you over the
toilet trying to grab the weed, stick it back in flush.
It is coming back up, over and over. I just
see that in my head. To me, if that's not
a scene in a movie or a TV series, I
don't know what will be.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
And you're right, it was like that insanity.
Speaker 1 (27:49):
It's fucking hilarious.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
But at the moment I knew it was insanity, but
I wasn't laughing. I laughed later, but not at the moment.
Speaker 1 (27:56):
I can only imagine the look on Bosa's.
Speaker 2 (27:58):
Face when I came out in front of my pants.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
I mean, he probably said, what hell happened?
Speaker 2 (28:07):
I couldn't go into details. Yeah, I said, you don't
want to know.
Speaker 8 (28:10):
Yeah, it was bad, but again, it was funny. Now,
Cookie and I laugh about that, and we laugh until
our side's hurt. But in the moment, it wasn't a
good time.
Speaker 3 (28:20):
One of those things that you never never forget another
day in the lives of the camera crew for CBS
News and the.
Speaker 1 (28:27):
Aragua coming up. The after party blows up on her
favorite cameraman, and a good friend from another news agency
faces an unthinkable tragedy. We'll be right back. Combat news
(28:49):
is a dangerous business. It's life or death that takes
its toll on the men and women who bring it
to our evening news far from home, and their families
have to deal with it day after day, one way
or another. It can be a lot of fun, but
can also be heartbreaking. It's like going to a company
(29:09):
convention in Vegas, but people are shooting at you, so
forgive me. But what happens in Managua stays in Managua.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
We've already said it before. We worked hard, we partied
harder within the Foreign War Correspondence Group. I'm gonna throw
these numbers out there. Three four selves partied hard.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
By partying, you mean like heavy drinking.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
And drugs and drugs.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
Manny Alvarez, CBS cameraman, weighs in on the party culture
at CBS News Managua.
Speaker 3 (29:43):
The hotel was party central, so after we were done working,
we would all go to the office and whatever jobs
had to be done there, screening the change whatever, and
the party would begin.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
When Manny would come to town, it would just make
my existence wonderful because I had my brother, my friend,
my colleague all rolled up into wine and we'd always
get the story done. We were all very professional getting
the story. And so come end of story and back
(30:18):
at the hotel, you know, we'd start the partying.
Speaker 3 (30:20):
And I remember could he had a little kidnt get pass.
I think it was instead of little sandwiches, she had
bottles of you know, voxa or whatever it was wine,
and you know, we got high. And if not every night,
several nights a week.
Speaker 2 (30:35):
Manny would always be the life of the party. Extraordinary
and he was funny, silly, you know, all the adjectives
that go with somebody that's a little too inebriated.
Speaker 3 (30:48):
Usually did not get out of hand. I mean, if
you got shit faced, you went to your room, no
big deal. Somebody would take you to your room.
Speaker 2 (30:55):
He would paint his face, or he would let us
paint his face, and would sing, we'd dance, and then
Manny would always take it just a little bit further.
Speaker 3 (31:05):
That one night and it was myself, Rob Luchet, who
was an edit, and I think there was a third person,
if I remember correctly, not that I should remember, because
I was completely out of my mind. We decided that
we were going to have a fight with the fire
extinguishers that were in the hallways of the hotel. And
the fire stinguishers were those big, giant ones like from
(31:26):
back in the day, with the wheel on top, and
they had a rubber hose, you know, probably a couple
of feet long, and they had what seemed to be
water in it, so there was some kind of liquid
that squirted like water, and with that hose you could
squirt that ten feet I don't know, eight feet twelve feet.
So we were running up and down the hallways squirt
(31:47):
each other.
Speaker 2 (31:48):
And he was spraying guess doors guests.
Speaker 3 (31:53):
At one point find myself right in front of the elevator.
The door's open, there's a couple dressed up to go out.
I swoardled him, and I mean I heard some up
and down. They screamed the elevator clothes and I have,
of course work running down the hallway to do whatever
to whoever else, And at some point somebody called the cops.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
There had been too many complaints and enough complaints that
the hotel couldn't keep it quiet because the hotel, you
got to remember, was our ally because they're making millions
off of all the journalists and especially CBS, because not
only we had our offices, but I lived there. I
had my own slew of sweets.
Speaker 1 (32:32):
Turns out the well dressed couple Manny super soaked in
the elevator, was the Russian ambassador and his wife. Kind
of a big deal, possibly an international incident.
Speaker 2 (32:44):
We don't know what's gonna happen, if they're gonna put
him in jail, if they're gonna deport him. Whatever, we
grab Manny, I take him to my personal suite, you know,
I hide him and I tell him, Manny, for once,
please just listen to me and shut the fuck up.
Please don't say anything, no matter what happens, just follow
my lead.
Speaker 3 (33:03):
And again I was gone, and I had literally war paint.
I had pain in my face and a shirt with
CBS on it.
Speaker 2 (33:11):
So the cops showed up. We still don't know if
the intent was to arrest him or deport him or both.
So they come up and we're talking to the police.
They come to my living quarters. They said, we're going
to search You're not searching my quarters. I said, you
could search CBS offices, but you're not searching my personal quarters.
(33:32):
There's no one in there. My children are sleeping. They weren't.
They weren't there. They had their own rooms with their nannies.
Many stayed quiet. As soon as they left, Rob and
myself said, we're going to get him out of here.
We're going to take him to the Camino Reale, which
was the other hotel where journalists stayed.
Speaker 1 (33:51):
This is where George Bosa, the CBS sound man, enters.
Speaker 8 (33:54):
The story The Redsux in the Mets nineteen eighty seven
World Series.
Speaker 3 (34:00):
In the shit.
Speaker 9 (34:02):
Free and two, the Looky Wilson a little roller up
along first behind it.
Speaker 8 (34:14):
The ball goes through Butckner's legs. I was at the
Camino Many, was with Cookie. Manny isn't a baseball fan,
so everyone was in my room. We had the bathtub
full of Tonia's and you know, and he petiales and
we're drinking and having a great time. That game was
up and down the whole way. Like about one of
the last innings, Cookie calls me. She's like, hey, Bosa, listen,
(34:35):
Manny's out of control here at the hotel. Man I mean,
I don't know what to do with them. Okay, I'm
gonna send them over to the Camino because they're gonna
kick him out of the hotel. And this was just
typical back then, you know. She snuck him down the elevator,
snuck him out of the back door. Cookie put him
in a cab and he gets to the Camino and
I go out to the drive up Man he gets
out in his underwear, Man with like Cookie's lipstick all
(34:57):
over his face, and he's like, I don't understand why
they slew me out of the hotel. So we threw
a blanket on them and put them in our room.
And this was just typical back then, you know, because yeah,
when you got friends and you got people that are dying,
you know, and you're risking your life every day, you
tend to really medicate heavily. That was one of those
nights that Manny medicated.
Speaker 3 (35:20):
I never got caught. I didn't get caught later. They
didn't call me later, though. I'm sure if they would
have caught me that particular night, it would have been
the end of my career at that point in time.
And it wasn't just us. It wasn't like all the
CBS people were all maniacs. It with everybody, you know,
That's kind of how we blew off steam. What we
got back from whatever missions that we would go on.
Speaker 2 (35:43):
We were just journalists suffering from PTSD, already letting it
all out, partying and covering war, death and all the
wonderful things that come with that.
Speaker 1 (35:55):
Cookie always steps up to keep her boys out of trouble,
but sometimes the war came with you. A bullshit press
conference in a bullshit border town called Lopenka changes.
Speaker 2 (36:05):
Everything under the guise of journalists. For many years, even
at the press club and everything, you had so called
journalists and they were actually part of terrorist groups, the
Red Brigade from Italy, Sandetta, Luminosos from Peru, Bader mainehoff
Gang from Germany, and we didn't know that they were terrorists.
Speaker 1 (36:29):
So they were hanging out in hanging out.
Speaker 2 (36:31):
Because they were probably fleeing somebody chasing them. They were
given safe haven in Nicaraguen. They were told to play
like they were journalists, so at any given moment, unbeknownst
to most of us, we were hanging out with these terrorists.
Speaker 1 (36:46):
So you were partying with terrorists.
Speaker 2 (36:48):
Yeah, not all the time, but they could be at parties,
you know, press parties, journalists. We found out later on,
you know, even Iranian terrorist groups they were all there.
Ira was there, the Japanese, I forget what they're called.
Speaker 1 (37:05):
Yeah, the ones who poisoned everyone.
Speaker 2 (37:07):
Yeah, I mean they were all there because Nicaragua was
a safe haven for terrorists. So anybody that was against
the US, they will welcome in Monagua.
Speaker 1 (37:18):
So the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Speaker 2 (37:20):
There you go. Now what Lapenka was all about, it
was different. It was in Costa Rica.
Speaker 1 (37:27):
Yeah, I was right off was a border.
Speaker 2 (37:28):
It was a press conference being held by Eden Pastora,
who had initially started off as the Sandinist in the
early days.
Speaker 1 (37:37):
Eden Pastora was one of the heroes of the nineteen
seventy nine Santiniastera Revolution. They called him Commander Zero, that
nickname he earned when he masterminded one of the most
daring raids ever documented. The Washington Post wrote this about
the attack.
Speaker 4 (37:50):
About twenty leftist gorillas shot their way into the National
Palace yesterday and seized about fifty senators and other officials
as hostages. At three persons were reported killed in the
firing before National Guard troops surrounded the palace. The guerrillas
lined up the hostages along the large windows of the
building to ward off fire from the National Guard.
Speaker 1 (38:11):
Among the fifteen hundred officials being held for several cabinet
members and Samosa's half brother, Jose Simosa, an off and
on journalist. Nobel Prize winning novelist Gabrielle Garcia Marquez wrote
this about the siege.
Speaker 7 (38:25):
The plans seemed too simple to be seen. Take the
National Palace, Himan, Now, what in broad daylight would a
force of only twenty six and hold the members of
the House of Deputies hostage in exchange for the release
of all political prisoners. Leadership of the Sandinista National Liberation
Front did not consider the storming of this marketplace of
(38:47):
bureaucracy insanely simple, but just the opposite, a crazy master stroke.
The plan, in fact, had been conceived and proposed initially
in nineteen seventy by the experienced militant and then Pastora,
but it was only put into effect when it became
all too clear that the US had decided to help
(39:07):
Somosa remain on his bloodstained throne until nineteen eighty one.
He has been an active revolutionary militant for the past
twenty years. Pastora's marvelous sense of humor cannot obscure his
aptitude for command. His earliest memory, from the age of
seven was the death of his father, murdered by the
National Guard of Anastasio Somosa.
Speaker 2 (39:29):
Garcia.
Speaker 1 (39:30):
If the name isn't familiar, Gabriel Garcia Marquez is a
Colombian author, best known for two of my favorite novels,
One hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time
of Cholera. He clearly had a romance with Eating Pastora Eden.
Speaker 2 (39:42):
Pastora was going to give the press conference. Many journalists
were there, not the big networks.
Speaker 1 (39:50):
We weren't there in the background. What we don't know?
There's a plot.
Speaker 2 (39:54):
There's a plot to blow up a chill Pastora. And
if a couple of journalists killed along the way, oh well.
Speaker 1 (40:02):
Peer Anchor Hanson, a Danish photographer, was introduced to a
Swedish journalist by mutual friends, asking to show him around.
They attended Pastora's press conference together. Hanson put a bomb
in his camera, back, worked his way through the journalists
covering the event, set it down under a table, then
hurried away, setting it off with a walkie talkie and
(40:23):
ripped through the gathering, killing seven people and leaving a
dozen injured. It was a bloodbath. The Washington Post covered
the story the next day.
Speaker 4 (40:32):
A bomb exploded last night during a news conference being
held by Nicaraguin rebel leader Eden Pastora along the Nicaraguan
Costa Rican border, wounding Pastora and two dozen others and
killing two journalists, including one American and two rebels. Among
the dead were Linda Fraser, thirty eight, of Portland, Oregon,
who worked for the Costa Rican English daily, The Tico Times.
(40:55):
No one claimed responsibility for the blast, which occurred shortly
after Pastora had begun an EVA news conference in his
jungle headquarters at the Nicaraguan village of Lapenka. The remote
village on the banks of the San Juan River is
not reachable by road, and the reporters had traveled by
dugout canoe from Costa Rica. Some Costa Rican officials accused
(41:15):
Nicaraguay's ruling Sandinistas of responsibility. Leaders of the rebel group
initially accused the CIA, which has been at odds with Pastora.
Speaker 2 (41:24):
Everyone assumed that it was the US behind it, that
it was the us that bombed it to make it
look like the Sandinistas that It was always a cat
and mouse game. You know, you never really knew who
was who, who was doing something, for what reasons they
were doing it. It was a very dangerous game to
be in, and of course being in dangerous games was
(41:46):
my thing. That had always been my fear, and I've
told you about that fear that I could be assassinated
or killed by one side trying to make the other
side look like they had done me in. It could
be even friends knowingly doing this. Because the Swedish dude
that did it was under the influence of dark people.
(42:07):
I don't think he was even clear who he was
working for.
Speaker 1 (42:13):
Many years later, the Sweetest Journalist revealed that he was
introduced to Hanson by Sandinista intelligence agents. He knew they
were spies, but didn't know that Hanson the bomber was
really Argentine terrorist vital Roberto Ganguin, hired by the Sandinistas
to take out Pastora. Sadness and guilt dogged him for
the rest of his life. For Cookie, the attack hit
(42:33):
close to home.
Speaker 2 (42:34):
Up until that point, journalists really had not been killed
inside of Nicaragua. It was probably the least dangerous war
to be around, unlike El Salvador or Honduras, where journalists
were regularly killed. Some of our own colleagues were killed.
Joe Frasier that worked for Associated Press, his wife was
(42:56):
there and she was one of the ones killed.
Speaker 1 (42:58):
A journalist.
Speaker 2 (42:59):
Yes, she was a journalist. He happened to be in nicaraguall,
of course in my office with me.
Speaker 10 (43:05):
She sat up with me all night long as we
tried to find out any information we could.
Speaker 1 (43:09):
She was really there when I needed somebody.
Speaker 2 (43:11):
And here's a guy six ' five, big guy. I
have to break the news to him that his wife
has been killed, and I remember him collapsing on me
and me trying to keep him up. We were up
all night crying and you know, trying to figure things out.
Speaker 10 (43:26):
She was always there when needed somebody, and she always
knew what was going on, and she would usually tell you.
Some people were officially almost paranoidally competitive down and Cookie
wasn't like that. She becomes in power and she meant it.
We were all basically on the same team. We also
just help each other out. And Cook he was right
at the top of that list. I had never forgotten
that when the University of Flanna's murderer, she always sends
(43:49):
a card.
Speaker 2 (43:50):
I had this thing, and you know by now from
several episodes that I always liked taking care of my boys,
and I took care of everybody. Can Soundman, Editors, producers,
on air, talent writers, big stars at six of us,
I took care of everybody.
Speaker 1 (44:10):
Lipenko was a wake up call for Cookie and her colleagues,
a painful reminder that war is a dangerous place and
you are never really safe, no matter how hard you
party trying to forget. Next time on Journalista, Cookie walks
into a minefield and the shrapnel is coming from every direction.
Speaker 2 (44:31):
I hear some screaming and some armed flailing from one
of the soldiers, saying stop, stop, stop, don't take another step,
don't move. When somebody tells you that in a warzone,
you stop, And one of the soldiers says, I hate
to say this, but you're in a minefield.
Speaker 1 (44:51):
The Journalista podcast features the stories and voice of Cookie
Hood narrated by Steven Esteb produced by Sean J. Donnelly.
Executive producers Jason Wagensback, Roy Laughlin and Ellen ka iHeart
Executive producer Tyler Klang, Written and edited by Stephen Esteb,
Music by Jay Weigel, Associate producer in sound design Stephen Tanti.
(45:15):
Sound mixing by Jesse Solonsnider. Special guests Lloyd sr Cindy Pohl,
Alejandro Belly, George Boza, Manny Alvarez, Jose Torres, tama As,
Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Joe Fraser. Special thanks to Esplanade Studios,
The Ranch Studios, Jason Gerwitz, Kyle Frederick, Zack Slaff. This
(45:38):
is a production of Journalista podcast LLC and iHeartRadio
This is a production of Journalista Podcast LLC and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Play Bye Bye, Say.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
Six fie O free.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Why here?
Speaker 3 (00:30):
These are the stakes to make a world in which
all of God's children can live. Are to go into
the dark. We must either love each other or we
must dive. Vote for President Johnson on November third.
Speaker 4 (00:49):
The stakes are too high for you to stay home.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Welcome back to the Journalista Podcast. I'm your host, Steve A. Step.
That was the campaign commercial that scared America into re
electing Lyndon Baines Johnson to the presidency. Back in nineteen
sixty four, A little girl is counting the pedals on
a daisy as the atom bomb explodes in the background.
The Cold War was real. The US and the Soviet
(01:16):
Union were on a collision course to destroy the world.
It was terrifying. It was also our normal. I remember
my elementary school running drills and practicing getting under our
desks in case San Diego is hit with a nuclear warhead.
I'm not sure it would have made much of a difference.
Of course, today our kids practice hiding from a lone
gunman with an AR fifteen. You told me once that
(01:41):
you might have saved the world from nuclear holocaust.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Well, maybe not the world and maybe not nuclear, but
for sure we averted what could have been a devastating
war for a poor country in Latin America.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
Well, tell me about that.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
First, we had gone on a junket, very memorable junket.
I remembered one Tomo from the Miami Herald was there,
another journalist myself, and we all got back to Monagua,
and we all got sick. And of course we always
attributed to dirty water, not the right food, and so
I was starting to get very sick, nauseous. Was it
(02:20):
feeling right? I think? The day after we got back,
there were some rumors about some possible Russian armament and
particular MiG aircraft that could quite possibly be headed to Nicaragua,
and of course that was a very dangerous premise.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
The New York Times wrote this about the rumors.
Speaker 4 (02:45):
US warned Soviets it won't tolerate MiGs in Nicaragua. The
United States, concerned that a Soviet freighter that has reached
Nicaragua might be carrying advanced fighter aircraft, warned Musco on
Tuesday that it would not tolerate the delivery of such planes.
President Reagan said that if the Nicaraguans took delivery of
advanced aircraft, it would quote indicate that they are contemplating
(03:06):
being a threat to their neighbors here in the Americas.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
It wasn't Defcon one, but this wasn't the first time
a Russian shipment threatened the balance of power in the
Western Hemisphere.
Speaker 5 (03:20):
Good evening, my fellow citizens. This government has promised has
maintained the closest surveillance of the Soviet military build up
on the island of Cuba. Within the past week, unmistakable
evidence has established the fact that a series of offensive
(03:41):
missile sites is now in preparation on that imprisoned island.
The purpose of these bases can be none of us
than to provide a nuclear strike capability against the Western Hemisphere.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
That was President John F. Kennedy. You may have heard
of the Cuban missile crisis. The United States put a
naval blockade around Cuba, stopping the Soviets from delivering nuclear
warheads to Fidel Castro. US military leaders were pushing for
a full on invasion of Cuba, a fucking terrible idea.
Kennedy opted for diplomacy, and after thirteen tenth days in October,
(04:19):
he and the Soviet leader Nikita Krushev agreed to back down.
It was the closest the world has ever come to
nuclear war that we know of. Scary shit in Nicaragua.
History seemed to be repeating itself.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
So of course everybody wants to find out is the
rumor true? You know, how do you find out about that?
I mean you have to literally see the aircraft coming in.
At that point, I had already gone to see a doctor.
The doctor had told me your gallbladder has to come out.
We need to do surgery on you. And I'm like,
you know, I'm not comfortable with that. We're in a
(04:56):
war torn zone, We're in a third world country. I'm
just uncomfortable. And by the way, I'm working on this story,
as I'm getting sicker, the doctor says, well, we'll have
to treat you somehow, and he hooks me up to
an IV and the IV he's hooked up to a
wooden hat rack that I had gotten my driver to
(05:16):
put wheels on it so I could be wheeling myself
back and forth. And I'm thinking this is going to
make me feel better. Well, it didn't. I of course,
let New York know and Miami know this possibility of
Russian weaponry coming in. We don't know how, but the
State Department had called CBS. CBS obviously knew that I
(05:38):
had close contacts with the Sandinista government, the hierarchy, but
we still don't know how. The State Department knews. So
the State Department calls New York, tells New York and
you get in touch with Cookie, have her call or
take us people and see if we can avert this problem,
possibly a major problem. So CBS calls me, can you
(05:58):
get in touch? I s at sure, in touch with
Ortega's press guy, Manuel Spinoza, and I tell him, listen,
there's rumors about this big aircraft coming in. The State
Department of the US is not happy with this, and
I think that you should know that they're saying there
will be a problem if this weaponry makes it into Nicaragua.
(06:21):
And Manuel's like, well, let me talk to the president.
I'll get back to you. I'm talking to New York.
New York's talking to the State Department. And this went
on for hours.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
If there are legitimate fears that the United States is
looking for a reason to invade Nicaragua, we attack the
island of Grenada. In nineteen eighty three, for far Less,
a Marxist newspaper called The Spartacist wrote that the invasion
was imminent.
Speaker 6 (06:48):
As USSR seventy one blackbirds smash the sound barrier over Manawa,
Nicadawens have good reason to believe the bombing will begin
in five minutes. The imperialist invasion plans are already worked
out in detail. Nicaraua leader Daniel Lortega said at the
UN in October, the winds now blowing over Central America
foretell of holocaust for our peoples.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
The stakes are very high for Nicaragua, and some officials
in the US government fear this could lead to another Vietnam.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
I'd been doing this the whole night, thinking I'm gonna
get a nice exclusive here, I'm gonna get a great
little story here. Well, the MiGs never came in. I
like to think that I helped avert a bigger problem,
which would have been a war of sub sort.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
Like a missiles in October type thing.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
Yeah, like the Cuban missile crisis. Probably not as dangerous
as that was, but it could have been. We did
all of that, we averted it all, and I still
didn't get the story because we couldn't broadcast because the
State Department was involved, CBS was involved, where Tega's people
are involved, and I'm in the middle of the whole thing.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
But he wants that story to come out anyway except.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
You I would have loved it. There was no way
that New York or Miami was ever going to allow
that because it would look like we were all accomplices.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
You know, what's the State Department doing dealing with CBS
And what's CBS doing telling me to go talk to insiders?
So even though I did it to get the big story,
I never got the big story.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
Did anybody get it?
Speaker 2 (08:27):
No, because no one knew what happened? The problem had
been averted.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
Wow.
Speaker 7 (08:32):
Oh.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
And then CBS, as good as they are to their journalists,
flew me to Miami. Ambulance waiting at the airport, wheeled
me in into Mount Sinai Hospital and the receptionist says
to me, girl, you sure look yellow. You must have
a bad case of hepatitis. And at that point I
realized I could have died because if I would have
(08:54):
allowed them to operate on me in Nicaragua, you cannot
perform surgery on a hypatha patient because they die. I
would have died, and no one would have been the wiser.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
So is this one of those stories that everybody decides
to never talk about again.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
It never happened.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
So basically the story is there is no story. It
never happened.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
It never happened.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
That would have been huge, too, It would have been huge.
The Washington Post reported this about the confrontation.
Speaker 4 (09:23):
US officials said yesterday that no Soviet fighter jets have
been unloaded from a Soviet ship now docked in a
Nicaraguan port, and that they now believe the ship may
not contain any of the MEG aircraft. At the same time,
officials at the Pentagon and State Department sought to quiet
rumors that the United States was preparing to invade Nicaragua.
While the United States would consider various options to quote
(09:44):
unquote neutralize any megs, a State Department official said, the
idea of a general offensive is quote unquote nonsense.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
Years later, I realized the gravity of what could have
happened and what we averted day.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Did it ever cross your mind that some o the
State Department determined that you were someone they could talk to.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
Yeah, Well, we always kind of wondered how they knew that.
But we know how our government works, and I'm sure
they were very well versed in my activities. You know
what I was up to at any given moment.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
It's kind of scary in a way.
Speaker 8 (10:20):
It was.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
So the US State Department used Cookie to stave off
a major Cold War confrontation in Central America. Her power
and influence are at an all time high. The question
is what will she do with it.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
I knew I was a powerful person, just personality wise,
even before all of this, through the drug days, through
the modeling days, through all of it. As far as
wielding power, yes, I started to realize that I could
get anything I wanted. I could get in and out
(10:59):
of anything I want wanted. If Dan Rather or Mike
Wallace or Don Hewett wanted something, they knew Cookie was
going to get it for them one way or another.
I could charm the shit out of anybody.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
One person told me that you were like a mob
bus who was collecting favors.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
Not intentionally, and I never really had to say, look,
I did this for you, you got to do this
for me. It was just sort of understood because it
wasn't just contacts, and it just wasn't powerful government people
on either side and in different countries. I also helped
my own crews and colleagues whatever had to be done,
(11:42):
whether it was carrying tripods, carrying equipment, helping them if
they had a hangover, bringing them to the airport, picking
them up from the making their lives just out and
out comfortable. You know, happy wife, happy life. Well my
motto was happy cruise, happy journalists, happy Cookie, and happy
(12:05):
New York. And I will take that a step further.
Obviously the networks were all competitors. I wasn't like that.
Of course, I'm not going to give away my exclusives,
but I helped other crews in other networks. You could
always count on Cookie giving us a ride, or if
we don't have tapes, she can give us tapes. If
our machines went down, She'll let us choose her machines.
(12:29):
But then it also extended to outside the TV network circle.
Anybody that was in my life, friends, relatives, if I
needed them to work, I made sure they got work.
The drivers. I spread the wealth.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
Meet Alejandro Belly, one of Cookie's best friends and her
assistant at the CBS office in Managua aka Chillin.
Speaker 9 (12:55):
She would get quite a bit of money. It would
always come in cash in dollars. A driver would get
one hundred dollars a day when normally, you know, if
they were hired by a private family, he maybe would
be making twenty dollars a month. So it was this
huge gap. I was graduated from American University working in
(13:16):
the health ministry, I started making fourteen I ended up
making seventeen dollars a month, and I was making one
hundred dollars with Cookie in a day. In that same way,
she would have, I don't know, somebody takes care of Chicho,
somebody that does our nails and does you know, manicures
and petticures and come there at the office. You know,
you know she'll tip her well and she's very generous.
Speaker 2 (13:39):
I had a cousin worked for me. I had close friends,
but I wasn't paying them to do nothing. They pulled
their own weight. Sure, I spread the wealth, but they
had to report for duty.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
Yeah, Selene said that you had it figured out where
you could have three or four or sometimes five drivers
working consistently and they were getting paid one hundred dollars
a day for the.
Speaker 2 (14:03):
Moment in dollars, which was like as if I was
paying them in goal bars.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
The way he put it, though, it was almost calculated
how you could help as many people as possible.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
Many people as possible, And people like Chilean people like
my cousin Hilda, people like my brother Jimmy. They all
worked for their money. But I just made sure that
that money was spread as far as I could. You're
in a war zone, people are hurting. Everybody could use money.
(14:33):
I made sure everyone, drivers and helpers and maids were
raising whole families. And that was my go to amount,
one hundred dollars a day.
Speaker 9 (14:44):
She keeps her allies in a way, you know, she
was able to really reward them. She doesn't buy them,
but she rewards her loyalties.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
That was just an extension of the way I've always
been in my life. I think she called it comfortable scam.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
A comfortable scam. I love that.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
And of course my theme song was comfortably.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
Numb for obvious reasons.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
For obvious reasons.
Speaker 9 (15:10):
In terms of what this meant for the drivers, it's
they were able to send kids to education and have
it changed schools, have a better car, have its in house,
keep another mistress.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
You know, listen, Steve, everybody around me made money halfway
for altruistic reasons and halfway because these are people that
are helping me do my job. Their payback to me
was helping me get the best stories and the best
(15:41):
work coming out of CBS Latin America as possible.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
We can talk about all the good things with journalism
and all the things like that that you you were
able to accomplish and help other people accomplish. And I
know you you had your reasons for paying people well
and that that's good business. But when you look back
at that and think about how many people you affected
in a positive way, how does that feel?
Speaker 2 (16:04):
Let's put it to you this way. Two things I'm
going to say. They all hated seeing the war end,
because they all really made their lives because of war.
And number two, how did I feel? It felt good? Steve?
Just like it felt good before the war, Just like
it feels good even today. It makes you feel good.
(16:26):
So many lives were able to be touched in such
a positive way. I still hear from these people thirty
and forty years later.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
If they all say, every one of them I've interviewed,
they all say, they still get a birthday card, they
still get a Christmas card, they still get a note,
they still get a thought sympathy card. I want to
go on record right now saying that if my cat
goes to the vet, I send you a card, sometimes
with a gift certificate. Cookie takes care of her people.
(16:58):
I know because I'm want to them. After the break,
she takes it to another level. We'll be right back,
(17:22):
welcome back. This story is fucking insane. There are several versions,
all of them dangerous, all of them hilarious. I'm going
to tell you the funniest version. Remember that time at
the airport when you forgot you at a joint in
your backpack and you're sweating bullets watching it go through
the TSA scanner and you just know you're going to
freaking jail. It's like that, except you're in a third
(17:46):
world country in the middle of a civil war. You
talk a lot about security going in and out of
these buildings and that type of thing. Do you ever
have any close calls?
Speaker 2 (17:56):
Yes, we had a great close call, I could say great.
Now we're being summoned with all the other journalists to
a press conference, not a big one, A dog and
Pony Show, which we used to call him. I'm sure
the San Denisas thought it was going to be a big,
important press conference. We knew it wasn't and it was
(18:17):
going to be held at the Ministry of Defense. And
then after the press conference, I had been given the
okay for an exclusive interview with the Defense Minister, which
was President Ortega's brother, Umberto Ortego. And this guy didn't
give interviews. He, you know, was a very quiet guy,
(18:38):
secretive obviously because he's the head of defense and they're
at war.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
Was there a purpose for the interview, No, we.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
Were just wanted an interview with him. Whenever I thought
that I wanted something extra or exclusive, it didn't hurt
to ask because all they could do is say no.
But most of the time they said yes. It would
always give CBS the per hand, so we knew we
were going to do that after So we're there, I'm
with my favorite Cuban American crew Manny and George Bosa.
(19:10):
I loved working with these guys.
Speaker 8 (19:12):
It was one of those where it was the big
press conference. Everyone was invited, you know, and those were
very few and far between. So when they did that,
everyone showed up. They would take us into a room
and they'd make us drop all year. And then they
had the dogs, the German shepherds and their you know,
secret police, and they would go through your stuff.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
They searched the equipment, they searched the journalists, make sure
there are no bombs or weapons that you know, something
unexpected could.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
Happen, so standard operating proceeds SOP.
Speaker 8 (19:44):
So we all filed in and I had a journalists
vest where I carried my tapes and my microphones and
some cables, my passport, cash and all that.
Speaker 3 (19:55):
George wore this little vest that was a photographer vest.
I'm sure you've seen the one to have his little pockets.
He wore that thing every day. That thing, if you
were to set it down, it would have walked away
by itself.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
So we had been up the night before, we'd been partying.
We just thought we'd just work all the way through
from partying, go straight to equipment check, which was we
had to be there around six in the morning. They
always keep you for hours. We knew we could take
a nap and sleep while we're waiting.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
So you're saying that you were you guys were up
partying all night and went straight to their defense.
Speaker 2 (20:29):
Mid yeah, because it was across the street from the hotel.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
Literally, you never slept that night.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
We did sleep, which is not not normal. It was
pretty you know, normal for us to do.
Speaker 8 (20:40):
The night before, I had been with a friend of
mine that had gotten me some some weed. And to
get weed and monogua is not an easy thing to do,
you know. It's it's hard. It's not bad, but it's
not the greatest either, So it's rare, and it's he
treated like like gold, you know, it's it's very u valuable.
Speaker 3 (20:59):
I remember sitting up in his little bed, putting a
cigarette in his mouth, lighting that, and then rolling a
joint while he smoked that sick and it was kind
of one of those one went where you go, oh shit, Sey,
you know, I mean, I didn't take anything of it.
Whatever we had many hours before we had to do this.
Speaker 8 (21:19):
We all filing and we walked into this giant room
and the cameramen put their cameras and tripods down. I
put down my recorder. I put down my backpack with
all my batteries and stuff, and then I dropped my
best because the soldier said to me, we need to
see the best too, because you can put a lot
of stuff in it. So I drop it and we
all file out. And as soon as we file out,
(21:39):
George comes up.
Speaker 3 (21:40):
To me and he's literally pale, like why does this
ghost man? And I said, what's up? Man?
Speaker 5 (21:45):
What you know?
Speaker 3 (21:46):
And he says, manny I forgot to take the weed
out of my little vest.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
Boja looks at me with this look of fear, and
I was like, oak, hey, now you have to understand.
They were always scared because being Cuban Americans, they were
fearful that the sandinisas if they ever got in trouble,
you know, would throw them in jail and throw away
(22:15):
the key.
Speaker 8 (22:16):
The reason it was so scary for me is because
my passport says born in Cuba. Okay, not born in
the US. It's a US passport, but it says born
in Havana. And the first time I landed there, the
Sandinista soldier at the airport, when he took my seventy
five bucks attacks to come in, he said, you left
Cuba to laugh at the revolution.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
If they catch us with drugs, we're done. You know,
I get to Miami, Cubans with drugs. You know that
would have been headline news in Nicarago.
Speaker 8 (22:46):
Cookie's like, wow, let me see what I can do.
So she disappears behind the door and then she cracks
the door opened a bit and says, post get in
here and get it really quick. So I slide in.
I may believe that I'm looking through my vest and
I grabbed a battery and then I grabbed that and
I crushed it in my hand so nobody could see it,
and I walk out.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
I said to Boza, we got to get rid of it.
So I take the bag. I put it down my pants.
Manny also knows what's going on. He's not scared, because
Manny is pretty fearless, but he knew that this could
be a problem. It could be a brujaha. Somebody could
lose their job, and I just wasn't going to let
that happen.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
You Like, CBS wouldn't be happy about it.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
Of course not. Here's one of their crew caught with drugs.
We don't know what type of scandal that would be.
I'm gonna take care of it. Put it in my pants,
ask where's the bathroom to one of the security police there,
and I go in the bathroom and I start to
flush it down the toilet. Weed. You got to understand
(23:50):
we're in a third world country. I know, I keep
repeating this, it's during the war. The facilities are not
top notch like here in the United States.
Speaker 3 (24:00):
I don't know how many third world bathrooms that you've
been to. I have been to quite a few, and
that was one of the worst.
Speaker 2 (24:10):
So as I'm flushing it down the toilet, and it's
several times I'm flushing because I've got to make sure
it goes, the toilet gets backed up and the weed
starts coming back up and overflowing. And anyone that's overflowed
a toilet knows what I'm talking about, but it's usually
not for weed in a military state. And it is
(24:33):
now all over the floor and I'm trying to pick
it up. The toilet is backed up. I know, I
can't get anything else down there. Whatever got down and
went fine, but there's a lot of it out floating
in the toilet and floating on the floor. So I
stick my head out door and tell the security guy, look,
(24:55):
I'm sick. I've got a bad stomach. I said, I'm
having an accident in here. I need you to get
me some towels. I don't think there were paper towels
in those days. Just get me some brags, anything you can,
so I can clean up this mess. Of course, he
doesn't want to go in because he figures it's another
kind of mess. So I clean up as much as
(25:16):
I can, and I take it all and put it
back in my pants, because I figure, Okay, if anybody's
going to get caught, it's going to be me. The
crew they're okay, they're safe. I had already told them,
you admit to nothing. Anything happens. I'm going to take
the fall because Cookie, as you know by now, can
get in and out of anything. I'm kind of damp
(25:39):
down there, but of course I attributed to being sick.
By this point, I'm in that bathroom thirty minutes, maybe
more so. Security's getting a little not nervous, but they're
kind of like wondering, what the hell's going on? How
sick is this girl? The guy sticks his head in,
Knox Forverd sticks his head in. Are you okay in there?
I'm okay, I'll be out in a minute. So I
(26:01):
come out. I got it back in my pants. I
just continue to tell Manny and George no worries. I
got this, I got you. You admit to nothing. If
anything happens, you just you're shocked. I'll take the fall,
no worries. And even if they would have been caught
with it, I would have never allowed anything to happen
(26:22):
to them either, because that's just the way I was
with my guys. You know, I just took care of everybody.
We went on to do the press conference, we went
on to do the interview with Roberto Ortega, and nobody
was the wiser.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
But y'all got shit faced after that.
Speaker 2 (26:40):
I'm sure we did. I'm sure we did. That was
a close call.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
I know that George, he'll never forget it. He thinks
that you saved his ass that day, and.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
I've let him think that. But again, I would have
never let anything bad happen to him. I would have
taken the blame before I would have let anything happen,
because maybe they did have a viable fear.
Speaker 5 (27:02):
You know.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
Yet again, Cookie got away with it and got the
story and got the story. Didn't you tell me that
that scene reminded you of something?
Speaker 1 (27:11):
Yeah, when you tell me that story, it always reminds
me of Lucy in the Chocolate factory.
Speaker 3 (27:17):
Oh right, girls, now this is your last chance.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
If one piece of kind it gets past you and
into the packing room unwrapped, you're fired, you.
Speaker 1 (27:26):
Know, trying to grab the chocolates and then keep coming
and coming, and I can just see you over the
toilet trying to grab the weed, stick it back in flush.
It is coming back up, over and over. I just
see that in my head. To me, if that's not
a scene in a movie or a TV series, I
don't know what will be.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
And you're right, it was like that insanity.
Speaker 1 (27:49):
It's fucking hilarious.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
But at the moment I knew it was insanity, but
I wasn't laughing. I laughed later, but not at the moment.
Speaker 1 (27:56):
I can only imagine the look on Bosa's.
Speaker 2 (27:58):
Face when I came out in front of my pants.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
I mean, he probably said, what hell happened?
Speaker 2 (28:07):
I couldn't go into details. Yeah, I said, you don't
want to know.
Speaker 8 (28:10):
Yeah, it was bad, but again, it was funny. Now,
Cookie and I laugh about that, and we laugh until
our side's hurt. But in the moment, it wasn't a
good time.
Speaker 3 (28:20):
One of those things that you never never forget another
day in the lives of the camera crew for CBS
News and the.
Speaker 1 (28:27):
Aragua coming up. The after party blows up on her
favorite cameraman, and a good friend from another news agency
faces an unthinkable tragedy. We'll be right back. Combat news
(28:49):
is a dangerous business. It's life or death that takes
its toll on the men and women who bring it
to our evening news far from home, and their families
have to deal with it day after day, one way
or another. It can be a lot of fun, but
can also be heartbreaking. It's like going to a company
(29:09):
convention in Vegas, but people are shooting at you, so
forgive me. But what happens in Managua stays in Managua.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
We've already said it before. We worked hard, we partied
harder within the Foreign War Correspondence Group. I'm gonna throw
these numbers out there. Three four selves partied hard.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
By partying, you mean like heavy drinking.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
And drugs and drugs.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
Manny Alvarez, CBS cameraman, weighs in on the party culture
at CBS News Managua.
Speaker 3 (29:43):
The hotel was party central, so after we were done working,
we would all go to the office and whatever jobs
had to be done there, screening the change whatever, and
the party would begin.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
When Manny would come to town, it would just make
my existence wonderful because I had my brother, my friend,
my colleague all rolled up into wine and we'd always
get the story done. We were all very professional getting
the story. And so come end of story and back
(30:18):
at the hotel, you know, we'd start the partying.
Speaker 3 (30:20):
And I remember could he had a little kidnt get pass.
I think it was instead of little sandwiches, she had
bottles of you know, voxa or whatever it was wine,
and you know, we got high. And if not every night,
several nights a week.
Speaker 2 (30:35):
Manny would always be the life of the party. Extraordinary
and he was funny, silly, you know, all the adjectives
that go with somebody that's a little too inebriated.
Speaker 3 (30:48):
Usually did not get out of hand. I mean, if
you got shit faced, you went to your room, no
big deal. Somebody would take you to your room.
Speaker 2 (30:55):
He would paint his face, or he would let us
paint his face, and would sing, we'd dance, and then
Manny would always take it just a little bit further.
Speaker 3 (31:05):
That one night and it was myself, Rob Luchet, who
was an edit, and I think there was a third person,
if I remember correctly, not that I should remember, because
I was completely out of my mind. We decided that
we were going to have a fight with the fire
extinguishers that were in the hallways of the hotel. And
the fire stinguishers were those big, giant ones like from
(31:26):
back in the day, with the wheel on top, and
they had a rubber hose, you know, probably a couple
of feet long, and they had what seemed to be
water in it, so there was some kind of liquid
that squirted like water, and with that hose you could
squirt that ten feet I don't know, eight feet twelve feet.
So we were running up and down the hallways squirt
(31:47):
each other.
Speaker 2 (31:48):
And he was spraying guess doors guests.
Speaker 3 (31:53):
At one point find myself right in front of the elevator.
The door's open, there's a couple dressed up to go out.
I swoardled him, and I mean I heard some up
and down. They screamed the elevator clothes and I have,
of course work running down the hallway to do whatever
to whoever else, And at some point somebody called the cops.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
There had been too many complaints and enough complaints that
the hotel couldn't keep it quiet because the hotel, you
got to remember, was our ally because they're making millions
off of all the journalists and especially CBS, because not
only we had our offices, but I lived there. I
had my own slew of sweets.
Speaker 1 (32:32):
Turns out the well dressed couple Manny super soaked in
the elevator, was the Russian ambassador and his wife. Kind
of a big deal, possibly an international incident.
Speaker 2 (32:44):
We don't know what's gonna happen, if they're gonna put
him in jail, if they're gonna deport him. Whatever, we
grab Manny, I take him to my personal suite, you know,
I hide him and I tell him, Manny, for once,
please just listen to me and shut the fuck up.
Please don't say anything, no matter what happens, just follow
my lead.
Speaker 3 (33:03):
And again I was gone, and I had literally war paint.
I had pain in my face and a shirt with
CBS on it.
Speaker 2 (33:11):
So the cops showed up. We still don't know if
the intent was to arrest him or deport him or both.
So they come up and we're talking to the police.
They come to my living quarters. They said, we're going
to search You're not searching my quarters. I said, you
could search CBS offices, but you're not searching my personal quarters.
(33:32):
There's no one in there. My children are sleeping. They weren't.
They weren't there. They had their own rooms with their nannies.
Many stayed quiet. As soon as they left, Rob and
myself said, we're going to get him out of here.
We're going to take him to the Camino Reale, which
was the other hotel where journalists stayed.
Speaker 1 (33:51):
This is where George Bosa, the CBS sound man, enters.
Speaker 8 (33:54):
The story The Redsux in the Mets nineteen eighty seven
World Series.
Speaker 3 (34:00):
In the shit.
Speaker 9 (34:02):
Free and two, the Looky Wilson a little roller up
along first behind it.
Speaker 8 (34:14):
The ball goes through Butckner's legs. I was at the
Camino Many, was with Cookie. Manny isn't a baseball fan,
so everyone was in my room. We had the bathtub
full of Tonia's and you know, and he petiales and
we're drinking and having a great time. That game was
up and down the whole way. Like about one of
the last innings, Cookie calls me. She's like, hey, Bosa, listen,
(34:35):
Manny's out of control here at the hotel. Man I mean,
I don't know what to do with them. Okay, I'm
gonna send them over to the Camino because they're gonna
kick him out of the hotel. And this was just
typical back then, you know. She snuck him down the elevator,
snuck him out of the back door. Cookie put him
in a cab and he gets to the Camino and
I go out to the drive up Man he gets
out in his underwear, Man with like Cookie's lipstick all
(34:57):
over his face, and he's like, I don't understand why
they slew me out of the hotel. So we threw
a blanket on them and put them in our room.
And this was just typical back then, you know, because yeah,
when you got friends and you got people that are dying,
you know, and you're risking your life every day, you
tend to really medicate heavily. That was one of those
nights that Manny medicated.
Speaker 3 (35:20):
I never got caught. I didn't get caught later. They
didn't call me later, though. I'm sure if they would
have caught me that particular night, it would have been
the end of my career at that point in time.
And it wasn't just us. It wasn't like all the
CBS people were all maniacs. It with everybody, you know,
That's kind of how we blew off steam. What we
got back from whatever missions that we would go on.
Speaker 2 (35:43):
We were just journalists suffering from PTSD, already letting it
all out, partying and covering war, death and all the
wonderful things that come with that.
Speaker 1 (35:55):
Cookie always steps up to keep her boys out of trouble,
but sometimes the war came with you. A bullshit press
conference in a bullshit border town called Lopenka changes.
Speaker 2 (36:05):
Everything under the guise of journalists. For many years, even
at the press club and everything, you had so called
journalists and they were actually part of terrorist groups, the
Red Brigade from Italy, Sandetta, Luminosos from Peru, Bader mainehoff
Gang from Germany, and we didn't know that they were terrorists.
Speaker 1 (36:29):
So they were hanging out in hanging out.
Speaker 2 (36:31):
Because they were probably fleeing somebody chasing them. They were
given safe haven in Nicaraguen. They were told to play
like they were journalists, so at any given moment, unbeknownst
to most of us, we were hanging out with these terrorists.
Speaker 1 (36:46):
So you were partying with terrorists.
Speaker 2 (36:48):
Yeah, not all the time, but they could be at parties,
you know, press parties, journalists. We found out later on,
you know, even Iranian terrorist groups they were all there.
Ira was there, the Japanese, I forget what they're called.
Speaker 1 (37:05):
Yeah, the ones who poisoned everyone.
Speaker 2 (37:07):
Yeah, I mean they were all there because Nicaragua was
a safe haven for terrorists. So anybody that was against
the US, they will welcome in Monagua.
Speaker 1 (37:18):
So the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Speaker 2 (37:20):
There you go. Now what Lapenka was all about, it
was different. It was in Costa Rica.
Speaker 1 (37:27):
Yeah, I was right off was a border.
Speaker 2 (37:28):
It was a press conference being held by Eden Pastora,
who had initially started off as the Sandinist in the
early days.
Speaker 1 (37:37):
Eden Pastora was one of the heroes of the nineteen
seventy nine Santiniastera Revolution. They called him Commander Zero, that
nickname he earned when he masterminded one of the most
daring raids ever documented. The Washington Post wrote this about
the attack.
Speaker 4 (37:50):
About twenty leftist gorillas shot their way into the National
Palace yesterday and seized about fifty senators and other officials
as hostages. At three persons were reported killed in the
firing before National Guard troops surrounded the palace. The guerrillas
lined up the hostages along the large windows of the
building to ward off fire from the National Guard.
Speaker 1 (38:11):
Among the fifteen hundred officials being held for several cabinet
members and Samosa's half brother, Jose Simosa, an off and
on journalist. Nobel Prize winning novelist Gabrielle Garcia Marquez wrote
this about the siege.
Speaker 7 (38:25):
The plans seemed too simple to be seen. Take the
National Palace, Himan, Now, what in broad daylight would a
force of only twenty six and hold the members of
the House of Deputies hostage in exchange for the release
of all political prisoners. Leadership of the Sandinista National Liberation
Front did not consider the storming of this marketplace of
(38:47):
bureaucracy insanely simple, but just the opposite, a crazy master stroke.
The plan, in fact, had been conceived and proposed initially
in nineteen seventy by the experienced militant and then Pastora,
but it was only put into effect when it became
all too clear that the US had decided to help
(39:07):
Somosa remain on his bloodstained throne until nineteen eighty one.
He has been an active revolutionary militant for the past
twenty years. Pastora's marvelous sense of humor cannot obscure his
aptitude for command. His earliest memory, from the age of
seven was the death of his father, murdered by the
National Guard of Anastasio Somosa.
Speaker 2 (39:29):
Garcia.
Speaker 1 (39:30):
If the name isn't familiar, Gabriel Garcia Marquez is a
Colombian author, best known for two of my favorite novels,
One hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time
of Cholera. He clearly had a romance with Eating Pastora Eden.
Speaker 2 (39:42):
Pastora was going to give the press conference. Many journalists
were there, not the big networks.
Speaker 1 (39:50):
We weren't there in the background. What we don't know?
There's a plot.
Speaker 2 (39:54):
There's a plot to blow up a chill Pastora. And
if a couple of journalists killed along the way, oh well.
Speaker 1 (40:02):
Peer Anchor Hanson, a Danish photographer, was introduced to a
Swedish journalist by mutual friends, asking to show him around.
They attended Pastora's press conference together. Hanson put a bomb
in his camera, back, worked his way through the journalists
covering the event, set it down under a table, then
hurried away, setting it off with a walkie talkie and
(40:23):
ripped through the gathering, killing seven people and leaving a
dozen injured. It was a bloodbath. The Washington Post covered
the story the next day.
Speaker 4 (40:32):
A bomb exploded last night during a news conference being
held by Nicaraguin rebel leader Eden Pastora along the Nicaraguan
Costa Rican border, wounding Pastora and two dozen others and
killing two journalists, including one American and two rebels. Among
the dead were Linda Fraser, thirty eight, of Portland, Oregon,
who worked for the Costa Rican English daily, The Tico Times.
(40:55):
No one claimed responsibility for the blast, which occurred shortly
after Pastora had begun an EVA news conference in his
jungle headquarters at the Nicaraguan village of Lapenka. The remote
village on the banks of the San Juan River is
not reachable by road, and the reporters had traveled by
dugout canoe from Costa Rica. Some Costa Rican officials accused
(41:15):
Nicaraguay's ruling Sandinistas of responsibility. Leaders of the rebel group
initially accused the CIA, which has been at odds with Pastora.
Speaker 2 (41:24):
Everyone assumed that it was the US behind it, that
it was the us that bombed it to make it
look like the Sandinistas that It was always a cat
and mouse game. You know, you never really knew who
was who, who was doing something, for what reasons they
were doing it. It was a very dangerous game to
be in, and of course being in dangerous games was
(41:46):
my thing. That had always been my fear, and I've
told you about that fear that I could be assassinated
or killed by one side trying to make the other
side look like they had done me in. It could
be even friends knowingly doing this. Because the Swedish dude
that did it was under the influence of dark people.
(42:07):
I don't think he was even clear who he was
working for.
Speaker 1 (42:13):
Many years later, the Sweetest Journalist revealed that he was
introduced to Hanson by Sandinista intelligence agents. He knew they
were spies, but didn't know that Hanson the bomber was
really Argentine terrorist vital Roberto Ganguin, hired by the Sandinistas
to take out Pastora. Sadness and guilt dogged him for
the rest of his life. For Cookie, the attack hit
(42:33):
close to home.
Speaker 2 (42:34):
Up until that point, journalists really had not been killed
inside of Nicaragua. It was probably the least dangerous war
to be around, unlike El Salvador or Honduras, where journalists
were regularly killed. Some of our own colleagues were killed.
Joe Frasier that worked for Associated Press, his wife was
(42:56):
there and she was one of the ones killed.
Speaker 1 (42:58):
A journalist.
Speaker 2 (42:59):
Yes, she was a journalist. He happened to be in nicaraguall,
of course in my office with me.
Speaker 10 (43:05):
She sat up with me all night long as we
tried to find out any information we could.
Speaker 1 (43:09):
She was really there when I needed somebody.
Speaker 2 (43:11):
And here's a guy six ' five, big guy. I
have to break the news to him that his wife
has been killed, and I remember him collapsing on me
and me trying to keep him up. We were up
all night crying and you know, trying to figure things out.
Speaker 10 (43:26):
She was always there when needed somebody, and she always
knew what was going on, and she would usually tell you.
Some people were officially almost paranoidally competitive down and Cookie
wasn't like that. She becomes in power and she meant it.
We were all basically on the same team. We also
just help each other out. And Cook he was right
at the top of that list. I had never forgotten
that when the University of Flanna's murderer, she always sends
(43:49):
a card.
Speaker 2 (43:50):
I had this thing, and you know by now from
several episodes that I always liked taking care of my boys,
and I took care of everybody. Can Soundman, Editors, producers,
on air, talent writers, big stars at six of us,
I took care of everybody.
Speaker 1 (44:10):
Lipenko was a wake up call for Cookie and her colleagues,
a painful reminder that war is a dangerous place and
you are never really safe, no matter how hard you
party trying to forget. Next time on Journalista, Cookie walks
into a minefield and the shrapnel is coming from every direction.
Speaker 2 (44:31):
I hear some screaming and some armed flailing from one
of the soldiers, saying stop, stop, stop, don't take another step,
don't move. When somebody tells you that in a warzone,
you stop, And one of the soldiers says, I hate
to say this, but you're in a minefield.
Speaker 1 (44:51):
The Journalista podcast features the stories and voice of Cookie
Hood narrated by Steven Esteb produced by Sean J. Donnelly.
Executive producers Jason Wagensback, Roy Laughlin and Ellen ka iHeart
Executive producer Tyler Klang, Written and edited by Stephen Esteb,
Music by Jay Weigel, Associate producer in sound design Stephen Tanti.
(45:15):
Sound mixing by Jesse Solonsnider. Special guests Lloyd sr Cindy Pohl,
Alejandro Belly, George Boza, Manny Alvarez, Jose Torres, tama As,
Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Joe Fraser. Special thanks to Esplanade Studios,
The Ranch Studios, Jason Gerwitz, Kyle Frederick, Zack Slaff. This
(45:38):
is a production of Journalista podcast LLC and iHeartRadio
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