The Damage Done

The wild life catches up with Cookie, and she finally faces her own revolution.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
This is a production of Journalista Podcast LLC and iHeartRadio.
See this cute little vial here.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
That's crack rock cocaine, the most addictive form. You think
it's the glamour drug of the eighties. Well that's the
point of this front and little reminder. It can kill you.
And if you've got to die for something this sure
as hell ain't it.

Speaker 3 (00:32):
Say no to drugs and say yes to life.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
What would I do if someone offered me these drugs?
I tell them to take.

Speaker 1 (00:40):
A hike, punk, Welcome to the Journalista Podcast. When we
first met Cookie, she had just picked up a pound
of wheat and stood in front of a firing squad.
She survived. Her Missus Scarface Era got her job at
CBS because she partied and the party never stopped. In

(01:02):
this episode, it might just kill her. I want to
warn you some of the things you'll hear in this
story might be hard to listen to. I know it
was for me. Well before we get to that, did
you ever think to yourself? For my next vacation, I

(01:24):
want to go see a bloody civil war in Nicaragua.
They called it revolution tourism.

Speaker 3 (01:30):
Any dignitary, any famous person throughout the whole war years,
anyone that came to town, whether it's to make a movie,
to check out the revolution, just to be a tourist,
because it was a tourist destination during the war, because
the war never made it to the capitol, it never
went into Monagua.

Speaker 1 (01:50):
Well, since you're talking about that, let's just go with
that for a minute and talk about some of the
crazy people that you got to meet up on that floor,
from presidents.

Speaker 3 (01:58):
To prime ministers, people in Reagan's cabinet, rock stars, movie stars, actors, writers, directors.
We had Jackson Brown staying there with Daryl Hannah.

Speaker 1 (02:13):
Cookie just got me and my wife third row seats
to his concert in New Orleans. Great time until my
car got booted.

Speaker 3 (02:20):
Richard Gear came through, Peter Gabriel came through. President Jimmy
Carter and Ms. Rosalind stayed on that floor with the
Secret Service. Jesse Jackson came, Chris Christoffers and different actors.
We had ed Harris Marley, Mattlin. The funny thing is
that everyone was there doing something, but at nighttime, everybody

(02:41):
also heard that the place to be was at that
CBS office on the seventh floor. At the end of
the hall, and so people would just show up. We
had US newspapers Miami Harold, Washington Post, New York Times.
We had direct dial telephones to the US, all the
things that the rest of the country and the rest

(03:02):
of the people did not have access to. We had
the famous new fax machine. We had balconies where people
would come and lay out sunbathe in the middle of
the war. So it was a very eclectic crowd during
the day would mostly be journalists coming in and out.

Speaker 1 (03:20):
With CBS unique in that way. At NBCA, they didn't
have that kindry.

Speaker 3 (03:24):
NBC had their offices in the same hotel, a floor
above us, but they weren't the cool people. At six
the office is closed. Even the NBC people came down
to hang out at the CBS office. I think it's
because I was running it.

Speaker 1 (03:39):
I bet you had a nice bar and.

Speaker 3 (03:41):
I had a setup bar. I had something new that
had just come out. Well, we started the war with
Walkman's and then CD players came out with little bitty
speakers and that little setup could cost five six hundred dollars.
I was the first one to bring it to the
country with all the latest music. Oh, we even had
cable TV. I don't know how they rigged that up,

(04:02):
but we had that. It was just the place to
be come six o'clock, you know, everybody would come down
for cocktails or come up for cocktails.

Speaker 1 (04:11):
Did you go out at night with some of these
people or go to bars and clubs?

Speaker 3 (04:14):
There were bars, there were clubs, there were discos at
the time. Sure we went out.

Speaker 1 (04:20):
Well, what was the craziest experience you had with somebody
who'd come to visit?

Speaker 3 (04:23):
It's so many of them. One night were out there
by the pool and U two was there. They were
on a fact finding mission. A lot of people would
come just fact finding missions. They wanted to see what
the revolution was all about. That's how I wanted them there.
I was just graduated from Loyola and I wanted to
see what the revolution was about. It was a common occurrence,

(04:45):
just like congressmen and senators would come to their fact
finding missions. And so you two was there, and I
sent the tables some drinks, and then they asked me
over and we started to talk, and even though it
was nighttime, they wanted to pick a tour of the city.
We went around with my driver in Nicaragui's points of direction,

(05:09):
up meant towards the airport, down meant towards the cemetery,
east west, north south, and then points of direction where
the coffee house used to be, ten blocks north, three
blocks south. I still don't understand it to this day.
I kept telling that the streets had no names. Bono

(05:30):
just really couldn't understand it. How do you not have
names on the streets? And I said, I don't know.
It's called pod points of direction. He just got the
biggest kick out of it. Many months later, you know
that song came out streets with no name. I don't
know if there's any connection, but I just thought it
was funny because he was really just thrown for a

(05:51):
loop that how could you have a whole city with
no street names?

Speaker 1 (05:56):
The debate still rages about that song and what city
you two was referring to, not much doubt. In Monagua,
Time magazine weighed in with the story titled Postcard from Monagua,
How far are you from the place Bono sang about.

Speaker 4 (06:11):
A year after Irish rocker Bono visited Nicaragua in nineteen
eighty six in an effort to raise awareness about Central
American war refugees. You too, released its smash hit album
The Joshua Tree, and Nicaraguans immediately recognized that one of
the songs was written about their country. Twenty years later,

(06:31):
most people here still hold his fact that Where the
Streets Have No Name was written about Monagua, a squat
and sprawling capital city where well the streets are unnamed.
Stephen Kinzer, a former New York Times bureau chief based
in Monagua in the nineteen eighties, accurately describes the fine
art of giving directions in Monagua as a Socratic technique

(06:55):
based on first determining what the direction asker knows, then
working backward from there. The funniest part about giving directions
in this corner of the world is that some streets
actually do have names, but no one knows what they are.

Speaker 1 (07:09):
In a press release, ad agency McCain Nicaragua said, this
unique and unreal aspect of Monagua's life caught the attention
of an inspired Bono, the lead singer of global supergroup
U two, to compose the hit song Where the Streets
Have No Name, after visiting Managua in nineteen eighty six.
The campaign is focused on adding street signs to Monagua streets,

(07:29):
identifying these locations on Google Maps by tagging them with
historical information. You told me about a one particular friend
that has become famous in the news in the last
few years, Randy Cretico. For people who are listening to this,
Randy Cretico is now known for being the go between
between Roger Stone and Julian Massage correct and getting Hillary's

(07:53):
emails and that.

Speaker 5 (07:53):
Sort of thing in the Russia investigation. At this hour,
new details about the relationship between a long time Trump
associate and Wiki leaks. We now know the name of
the person who was the go between for Roger Stone
and Julian Assange money. Roger was out front on Capitol
Hill and Mono, you're breaking the story. What more are
you learning at this hour?

Speaker 6 (08:12):
Yeah, that's right. Roger Stone revealed to the House Intelligence
Committee the name of this intermediary, a person who had
contacts with Julian Assane during the campaign season and who
also had a conversation with Roger Stone himself, and the
name of the individuals. Randy Kredeco now Randy Credeco is
a New York radio personality who did have conversations with
both Stone and as Songe during the campaign season. In fact,

(08:34):
they were guests on both of his shows.

Speaker 1 (08:36):
He was a comedian, and we don't know him that way,
although when you did a lot of his appearances, you know,
on the news interviews.

Speaker 3 (08:42):
He tried to make jokes. Yeah, and he was almost
on the cusp of becoming successful, but he chose to
be a political comedian and his politics were always way left.
And he was thrown off to Johnny Carson Show for
telling a joke that they told them not to tell.
And the way we met, he was hanging out at

(09:04):
the Intercontinental Hotel because he always liked to be in
the middle of things, and he saw me walking through
it wearing a little hat and a pretty floral cotton dress,
and under his breath he says, where does she think
she is on the east side? And I looked at
him and I said, no, I'm in Monagua. You're on
my turf. Where are you from. That's how the friendship began,

(09:25):
and for the next twelve to fifteen years, every time
he'd come to Nicaragua, he would stay in my quarters
or the office, he'd hang out, and he became just
a fixture among all the journalists, some of them liked him,
some of them hated him, depending on your politics. He
loved to just hang out and be a part of everything.

(09:45):
He was the comedic relief during those war years. He
could make you laugh no matter what.

Speaker 1 (09:51):
He casually count.

Speaker 7 (09:52):
You had three hundred thousand Iraqis killed.

Speaker 1 (09:54):
By the Allies and you had one hundred and forty.

Speaker 8 (09:56):
Eight Allies killed by the Allies, and.

Speaker 6 (10:00):
Bush is still working on the guy's name sat Tam Hassen,
Satan Hassen, Sandino Hasidic.

Speaker 1 (10:09):
We are not at war with that people of Iraq.
We are at war with the Iraqi papal.

Speaker 3 (10:16):
He could do Impressions, he could do Reagan, he could
do Ortega, he could do anybody.

Speaker 1 (10:22):
Isn't it ironic though, that he's sort of defined himself
with the far left politics and comedy and ends up
being a tool for the right at this time of
his life.

Speaker 3 (10:33):
Because he had no idea that that's what was going on.
I told him from the beginning, I said, you're going
to get in trouble if you're dealing with Roger Stone
Julian Assange. Oh no, you don't know what you're talking about.
And here we are. Man, He's still struggling because of
all of that.

Speaker 1 (10:51):
It's important to note that before all this bullshit with
Roger Stone at Wiki Leaks, Randy Kretico had dedicated his
life to helping the poor, expanding public house fighting, mass incarceration,
criminal justice reform, and so many things that matter to
everyday Americans, and I want to honor that. You know,
one time I was sitting in a Chili's in Abbeyville, Louisiana,

(11:13):
with the wife and kids, getting ready to order some burgers.
In walked four guys dressed like commandos, carrying AR fifteen's,
you know the types. For some reason, it reminds me
of this story, another kind of tourism.

Speaker 3 (11:28):
It's a crazy story. So all these years, everybody's covering war.
Everybody wants the big story, and we all knew what
the big story was. It was just proving it. And
the big story was us involvement in trying to overthrow
a government. We all knew it, and everyone knew what

(11:49):
was going on. You can't prove it, you can't take
film of it, you can't take video, you can't take pictures.
One day we're summoned, the journalists are summoned by State security,
a US mercenary working for the CIA has been caught
trying to overthrow the Nicaraguan government. We knew it was

(12:10):
going to be a dog and pony show. You know
they're going to make a big deal about it.

Speaker 1 (12:14):
At that moment, you don't know what it's about.

Speaker 3 (12:16):
We don't know what it's about. It could be something big.
But remember we would be called to press conferences all
the time. You never knew what the story was going
to be. So when we get there, you've got this
obviously American guy looking very scared and very distraught, sitting
next to heads of State Security the Secret Police.

Speaker 1 (12:40):
Sam Hall was a silver medallist in the nineteen sixty
Olympics in Rome and a former member of the Ohio
House of Representatives, which makes the story even crazier.

Speaker 3 (12:49):
The State Security guy makes a statement and his name
was Lenine Serno. He proceeds to tell us how this
is an American that's been caught near the border try
to infiltrate and do some terrorist acts on Nicaraguan soil
at the behest of the US government. So everybody's thinking,
oh wow, this is this is big. So Lenin Serena

(13:14):
tells the guy to give some background on himself. Well,
right away, I'm like, who's told by their captors? Can
you give background on yourself? Obviously he had been questioned
and interrogated by them. So the guy starts to tell
us how he has worked covertly for the CIA and

(13:34):
for different places in the world.

Speaker 1 (13:37):
The Washington Post reported on Hall's arrest.

Speaker 4 (13:41):
Sam Hall, an American, claimed he was on a spy
mission after he was arrested last month in a restricted
military area near Managua. Nicaraguan officials said after Hall's arrest
near the punte Je Airbase, thirteen miles northeast of Managua,
that he had maps of the installation in his shoe.
Hall said at a news conference in Mina that he
was spying on military installations on behalf of three men

(14:04):
code named Tinker, Evers and Chance. He also claimed in
a CBS News interview that he was the only remaining
member of the Phoenix Battalion, which he described as a
counter terrorist paramilitary organization.

Speaker 3 (14:18):
And he says that he went to the Sixth Day
War in Israel, but he got there on the seventh day. Well,
everybody starts either laughing or they can't believe what they're
hearing or they're not understanding what they're hearing. And he
says he had been an Olympic swimmer, and I mean,
the story just kept going in all kinds of different directions.

(14:39):
But he had been caught with a map in his
shoe and he said he was just using it for
his arches. I mean, this guy was just coming across
as a bona fide kook. This is not going the
way the Sandinista government thinks it's going to go. This
guy has no connection to the CIA. This guy is

(15:00):
not working for the US government. This is some kind
of lone kook out there on a great adventure.

Speaker 7 (15:06):
You ended up in Nicaragua, inside Sandinista army base, arrested, captured,
whatever stopped held. Got to put it real bluntly, they
said you were crazy. Anybody in this business has to
be a little bit crazy. The reason they were saying
that I was never allowed to say. I had to
sign a disavowl agreement in nineteen eighty four, the CIA says,
and I've talked to them, says you weren't reporting to them.
But of course that's on the surface, but.

Speaker 3 (15:28):
That's part of the disabown.

Speaker 7 (15:29):
I knew I would be disabout I didn't care.

Speaker 3 (15:31):
I'm looking at the head of the secret Police and
I'm looking at him and I'm just shaking my head
and kind of making a motion across my neck saying cut.
This is not going the way you guys think it's going.
All of a sudden, the head of the secret Police
stands up says, that's the end of this press conference,
no more questions, no more anything. They quickly took this

(15:55):
guy away.

Speaker 1 (15:57):
So you're basically signaling to the head of the secret
police that this is fucking nuts.

Speaker 3 (16:04):
This is nuts. This is not a story you want
out there.

Speaker 1 (16:07):
And he's looking at you, going oops.

Speaker 3 (16:09):
He's looking at me the whole time for guidance, because
I don't think he spoke good English, and so when
I make the motion cut, he knew cut. He didn't
know why, but he knew cut. And then of course
he found out that this guy was a kook.

Speaker 1 (16:24):
But Mario called him a wanna be spy.

Speaker 3 (16:26):
That's what he was, A wanna be spy, A wanna
be mercenary. I wanna be That was it.

Speaker 1 (16:33):
That was kind of a thing too in Nicaragua, wasn't it.

Speaker 3 (16:35):
Yeah, just like the people would want to fly there
to check out the revolution, you know, famous people and politicians.
He also had nutcases trying to be a part of
the story, just like you had people that playing like
they were journalists. It was sort of a free for all.

Speaker 1 (16:53):
It kind of reminds me of like right now or'
is these guys that their flack jackets on and play
like they're like military and they're walking around and.

Speaker 3 (17:00):
Starbucks with the AR fifteen and yeah.

Speaker 1 (17:03):
Except it's in Nicaragua and that really is a war
going on. Yeah, how did it play out? Do you remember?

Speaker 3 (17:09):
I think that they just let him go.

Speaker 1 (17:11):
That's hilarious to me.

Speaker 3 (17:12):
It was just an insane story.

Speaker 1 (17:15):
You know. The weird thing about this particular story. It's
a very small little footnote and a very bigger story.
But the head of the secret police is taking a
cue from you.

Speaker 3 (17:25):
I thought that was funny too. I sort of felt
like you had to help him. I need to help
this guy. He's drowning here, and he doesn't even realize
that he's drowning.

Speaker 1 (17:35):
I don't know if Sam Hall was full of shit
or what the fuck he was doing in Nicaragua, but
he was a self proclaimed patriot and freedom fighter. Sound
familiar coming up. Cookie gets arrested, and that's the easy part.
We'll be right back. Welcome back. Cookie's been living the

(18:15):
highlight for a long time, always managing to stay a
couple of steps ahead of the law. Her luck is
about to run out. Obviously, you were always out in
the world. You always had your party favors with you.

Speaker 3 (18:29):
Correct. But usually when I did stories, when I was
in the field, I wasn't partying. Well. On this one trip,
I forget what crew I was with. I do remember
what producer had been flown in. John Seiseloff was his name.

Speaker 1 (18:45):
You might remember him from episode four when he had
to file a bullshit story about cookies helicopter crash under
pressure from the Sandinistas.

Speaker 3 (18:53):
We're in the middle of nowhere, in the mountains.

Speaker 1 (18:56):
Somewhere covering what, just.

Speaker 3 (18:59):
Looking for a story. It wasn't all the time a
big story or a breaking news story. The day to
day was usually just covering your ass, looking for something,
possibly stumbling into something. I don't know where. We were,
probably some shithole. And now remember I had a little
weed in one of those plastic film cases. We've been smoking.

(19:23):
You know, the crew, myself, not the producer, he was
a really straight laced kind of guy. A soldier apparently
smelled the weed, whether it was on myself or the
crew or somebody, and they decided she's got drugs on her,
which I did. It was just a little weed. So

(19:43):
when we get back to the barracks, he rats me out.
All of a sudden, I'm confronted by the head of
the battalion or whatever it was, and he says, we
know you have marijuana. Your crew was seen smoking it.
We're gonna take you in.

Speaker 1 (20:00):
Probably should remind people that they are very strict drug
laws in Sandinista, Nicaragua.

Speaker 3 (20:05):
Yeah, there are no drugs. I would have to import
drugs from the United States to Nicaragua. The next thing
I know, the commander and I guess what they call
their MPs come grab me by both arms and they're
gonna lead me away to I don't know, jail whatever
on the base. And I know at that moment, I've

(20:28):
got this plastic film case on me and I got
to get rid of it between right now and wherever
it is they're taking me. Now, remember we're in the
middle of nowhere. This is all every man for himself. Oh,
I'm in charge. No, I'm in charge kind of thing.
So as we're walking, I don't even know how far
I've got to walk, but I know I got to

(20:49):
act quickly. I play like a trip to get the
film case out of my pocket. So now it's in
my hand and I'm being held by my arms, not
by my hand, and I've got fist clenched so that
it doesn't look suspicious. And so I know that I
have to fall again and get rid of this film
container and somehow get rid of it. I can't throw

(21:11):
it because they'll see it. I make myself fall again,
and as I fall, I make sure that I take
that film case and just bury it in the mud,
because again we're in the jungles. There's no roads, there's
no highways, it's just dirt. And then I got up
and I'm acting like I hurt myself, and they're all

(21:32):
trying to help me, the soldiers, so they take me
to the Comandante. I of course call the guy that
turned me in a liar. You know, he must hate Americans.
When I'm with the commandante and he's searching me and everything,
I said, listen, all you need to do is make
a call to the president. What president, President Ortega and

(21:53):
he'll vouch for me. And they're like, listen to this
one and saying, what call the president? I said he
would be who of you guys to get in touch
with someone that can get in touch with the president.
And they're like, yeah, right, I need you to contact
President Danielle or Tega. And I just kept saying it
over and over, and I remember one of them said,

(22:16):
she's still high. She's claiming she knows Danielle Ortega, the president,
our president. And I just kept saying it over and over,
and finally somebody must have said to themselves, there must
be something to this. Maybe there is, Maybe there is it,
but it would behoove us to follow up on it.
And I saw a couple of guys leave where they

(22:37):
were holding me, and I would say, about forty minutes later,
comes walking in the producer and we're being escorted out
and set free. Guess what they did. They contacted President
Danielle or Tega's people, and he told them to immediately,
if not sooner, let her out. You guys are in trouble,

(23:00):
in trouble for doing the right thing.

Speaker 1 (23:03):
That was probably the only time in that guy's life
that he talked to those kind of people.

Speaker 3 (23:07):
Yes, yes, and then John seiselof and I thank him
till this day also rest in peace. You know. I
begged him, please don't turn me in to CBS because
I'll lose my job. He also knew that he could
lose his job because he allowed these shenanigans to go on.
He never said anything, obviously, the crew never said anything

(23:29):
after that. They treated me with kid gloves.

Speaker 1 (23:32):
The producer you're with, he obviously didn't smoke weed. He wasn't. No,
he wasn't the kind that you were partying.

Speaker 3 (23:37):
No, he was a Quaker in fact, or a Mormon
or something like that.

Speaker 1 (23:42):
Oh my god, I just found my new sitcom idea
Cookie and the Quaker.

Speaker 3 (23:45):
Yeah, but he didn't turn me in. And the reason
I think I could get away with all of these things,
especially with CBS people, is because I made them all
look good. The stories I got for them made them
look good. So why get rid or risk getting rid
of the one person that always comes through for them

(24:07):
and make them look good?

Speaker 1 (24:09):
Yeah? What did Dan rather say?

Speaker 3 (24:10):
My secret weapon in Central America?

Speaker 1 (24:13):
That says it all. Really, nothing else can be said.

Speaker 3 (24:16):
Yeah, that was it?

Speaker 1 (24:17):
Nice to know people.

Speaker 3 (24:19):
It was very nice to know people, and to this
day I still know people there, and he's still the president.

Speaker 1 (24:27):
Cookie talks her way out of another jam, but her
wild ways are getting noticed. The Sandinista government is watching her.

Speaker 3 (24:38):
So one day I'm in my office. There's a knock
at the door and it's this guy. I've never seen
him before, and he's not dressed in a military uniform.
He's dressed as a civilian. And he says he needs
to speak to me about what. And he says, well,
can I come in? This is a very delicate situation.
I need to speak to you about. Sure, come on in.

(25:01):
And he proceeds to tell me that he works for
state security, that there's problems with drugs, and I freak out.
I said, I am not involved with drugs. I do
not party, I do not do drugs. Here, take my
blood sample now, you can have it tested. If he
had done that, it would have fit off the charts.

(25:23):
He says, no, no, no, you don't understand. I said,
I understand. You're accusing me of something. He goes, I
am not accusing you of anything. You need to calm
down and let me explain why I'm here. I said, okay.
He says. By the way, my nom de guere is
jughead in Spanish doroomlo, that's what you could call me.

(25:46):
And he says, this is the problem we are having
right now with you. We have rounded up about twenty
of these society kids, you know, for drugs, dealing while partying, whatever.
They became too obvious. So we've got about twenty of
these people in jail. Well, what does that have to

(26:07):
do with me? He says, Well, you know them? I said, well,
I know a lot of people. He says, yeah, But
they're all saying your name, that they hang out with you,
that they party with you. I said, I know a
lot of people. I grew up with a lot of
these people. They could say whatever they want to say.
Maybe they think it's going to get them out of trouble.
He says. I still think that you don't understand why

(26:30):
I'm here. The reason I am here is that we
as the government have no problem with you partying. And
I'm just like slowly going into shock here. Is this
some sort of ambush? Is this some sort of test?
He says, we know what you do. We don't have
a problem with it. In fact, if you need supplies.

(26:53):
We could furnish you with party favors whenever you need.
And I'm like, whoa, whoa, This does not sound right
to me. He says. The other part of the problem
is that besides these people saying your name, we can't
have that. We cannot have people in jails saying your

(27:15):
name and that they party with you. So what we're
asking you is a couple of things. To please be
more discreet. Stop partying with known people that could possibly
get in trouble with us. Just party quietly. Party with
your journalist friends, stop partying with the society kids. And

(27:39):
again he says, I reiterate, if you ever need anything
so you don't have to go out there publicly looking
for merchandise, contact me and I will supply you with
whatever you want. And I'm like, are you serious?

Speaker 2 (27:55):
Is that?

Speaker 3 (27:55):
Are you basically telling me government sanction drug use and
you'll supply it. He says, that's exactly what I mean.
And I am your contact, and I will be around
keeping an eye on you from a distance, and you
could call me anytime, night or day for anything. And

(28:16):
we became very close friends. Within six months, he was
partying two We drew him over to the dark side.

Speaker 1 (28:24):
So you corrupted him.

Speaker 3 (28:26):
Absolutely. I tend to have that effect on people. I
corrupted him. He was my guy for years.

Speaker 1 (28:35):
You said a lot of crazy things in this podcast.
That's insane, right, That's that's pretty far out there.

Speaker 3 (28:41):
That is I mean. And I couldn't have asked for
anything better. Okay, Well, yeah, anything I wanted, weed, coke, anything.
I did know that they had wiped out drugs and
drug use in the country.

Speaker 1 (28:58):
Well, it's kind of funny because you know you're in Nicaragua.
You think you'd be able to get a.

Speaker 3 (29:02):
Great drugs nothing impossible.

Speaker 1 (29:05):
How did you How did you I would have to fly.

Speaker 3 (29:08):
To the US, buy by drugs, import them into Nicaragua.

Speaker 1 (29:14):
I heard you had a couple of little clever ways
of getting them in.

Speaker 3 (29:17):
Well, sure, if it wasn't myself literally flying to the
States and bringing them in myself, I would get other journalists.
They would bring their own and share. You know, I
would get family and friends in Miami to drop off
clothes and videos and dolls to the CBS office and

(29:40):
CBS unnoingly with ship stuff to me, not knowing that.

Speaker 1 (29:45):
So you were you were sneaking cocaine in through clothes, dolls, tapes.

Speaker 3 (29:49):
And when I say tapes, I don't mean the CBS tapes.
I'm talking about MTV, you know, stuff that I would
get people to tape for me.

Speaker 1 (29:58):
Here's the thought. Do you think to Moss poor hey
he knew about that?

Speaker 3 (30:03):
I would probably think he did.

Speaker 1 (30:05):
Is it easier to smuggle coke out of the United
States than it is to smuggle it in?

Speaker 3 (30:09):
Absolutely? Because I knew that nothing could happen to me. Nothing.
And then let's say I got caught. You think I
would have spent one moment in trouble. I had jugad.

Speaker 1 (30:23):
She has jugaad. Why doesn't that sound comforting, Well, it
certainly sounds like Cookie has it all under control. Nope,
her life is about to change and she might just
lose everything she's fought for, including her life. We'll be
right back, welcome back. Cookie is about to meet one

(30:54):
of the great loves of her life. The question is
will she survive it? Buckle up. So I know you've
been married a few times. You've had many romantic adventures
in your life.

Speaker 3 (31:07):
I've found mister Wraich thirty three times.

Speaker 1 (31:12):
But there was one guy in Nicaragua and Central America
that you spent a lot of time with that you
were very close to. Let's talk about John Basco. Tell
me about who he was, what he did, and how
you guys got together.

Speaker 3 (31:24):
John worked as a cameraman for NBC. His specialty was war.
He was always being shipped to war zones and then
for a time he was constantly in Nicaragua and El
Salvador as well. You know, he had been told when
you get to Nicaragua, you have to go to the
CBS office. That's the chick that is going to be

(31:44):
your best connection, not just for business and the news,
but she's going to be your best connection for anything else.
She and her office are the place to be and
to be seen. He came down and introduced himself one
day to the CBS office. I thought he was cute.
I'm going to say right now. He kind of couldn't

(32:06):
take his eyes off me. And I could tell she was.

Speaker 8 (32:09):
Running the CBS office and so she was a hot Tamali.
You know what drew me to her was her great
physical beauty, really, and she was tall and slender, and
she was real pretty. She was crazy and wild and everything.
You know, she was smart, she had all the connections,
she had all the power. She was a lot of

(32:31):
fun to hang out with, So I mean, how could
you not be attracted to her?

Speaker 1 (32:36):
You know what I mean?

Speaker 8 (32:37):
I think everybody was attracted to her.

Speaker 3 (32:39):
We sort of started flirting back and forth, and no
matter what job or junket or peace that we would
all be working on, he'd always wind up every day
in my office end of business. We had a lot
of the same likes. We like to drink, we like
to party, we like to do drugs. So we hit

(33:01):
it off immediately. Even though he was a quiet, shy
kind of guy, but he had a presence and I
was the complete opposite. Not shy, not quiet, and I
had a big presence. He told me later that he
had been told stay away from her. She'll like the
songs that she'll eat you, chew you up and spit

(33:23):
you out.

Speaker 1 (33:23):
Yeah, what was your nickname?

Speaker 3 (33:24):
Man eater? My crews always knew that if I set
my sights on someone, that was the end of them.
He had been told that he had been mourned, so
he kept his kind of cautious distance from me in
that aspect. But then it was inevitable. We got together.
It was fabulous. It was a world win relationship. We

(33:46):
simply adored each other in all aspects, not just because
we would help each other out in the news. I
always made and got stuff that we both needed to party.
It was just inevitable that we would get together.

Speaker 8 (34:01):
And it was always a lot of fun to hear.
We were going to be as signed to go to
Monagua because Cookie would be there. So here you go, Great,
we'll see Cookie. That's how it worked, not because she's
my friend and she's you know, my girlfriend, but besides that,
even other people, you're gonna go to Monogua, Great, we'll
see Cookie.

Speaker 3 (34:20):
And I think he actually pushed for assignments in Monagua.

Speaker 1 (34:24):
He said he didn't really like Nicaragua. Of all the
places he went to, he wanted to go there because
he knew he was gonna have so much fun.

Speaker 3 (34:31):
I can't stress enough that it wasn't just about the partying.
It was the camaraderie that we all had.

Speaker 8 (34:39):
In a war zone. You need to have love, you know,
you need to have friendship. It's very very important because
you don't have anything else. So the spiritual thing between
me and Cookie was like that. It was a desperate
spiritual connection to make it through what we were going through.
We were together for putting sab on the wounds. I

(35:00):
needed that and she provided it.

Speaker 9 (35:02):
You know.

Speaker 8 (35:03):
I think maybe I provided it to her too in
a way.

Speaker 3 (35:05):
Maybe we said the word love, maybe we didn't, But
I always thought of him as that love interest in
my life there and it was different. And I think
he was also surprised because he was also a very
kind of slam bam, thank you ma'am kind of guy,
which is why surprisingly we didn't even jump into bed

(35:26):
together for months. You know, we'd sleep in the same bed.
It was almost as if we were going to do
things differently, which made it that much more exciting. I
looked at him as my soulmate. He also had that
feeling for me.

Speaker 1 (35:43):
Things were heating up between them, but they're already starting
the spiral. They decided they needed to get away from Anagua.

Speaker 3 (35:51):
We decided we were going to go on R and
R to Honduras. It's funny that we would think that
going to another war toward country would be R and R.
But yeah, we went to a beach called Roatan in Honduras.
John didn't even remember the end result of that trip.
He remembered something bad happened.

Speaker 1 (36:12):
Do you remember the incident.

Speaker 3 (36:13):
That's well, we were just partying, and we were loud,
and we weren't your normal variety tourist partier.

Speaker 1 (36:23):
Okay, here we go. This is where it starts to
get weird.

Speaker 8 (36:28):
I thought it was going to be very funny if
Cookie got in the baby crip in our hotel room.

Speaker 3 (36:34):
This is a little embarrassing. We would role play a lot.
I think the crib was supposed to be like a jail.

Speaker 8 (36:41):
Can you imagine her squatting down a baby crib, looking
out of the bars like she's in prison or something.
I said, Cookie, you should get in that crib. This
is where you belong.

Speaker 3 (36:51):
This tells you how high we were.

Speaker 8 (36:53):
This is gonna be good for you. And she said, no, no, no,
I'm not doing that. I'm not doing that. Come on, Cookie,
get in the crib.

Speaker 3 (37:00):
I still didn't get it. You know why that would
be eternal.

Speaker 1 (37:04):
He said, you wouldn't do it.

Speaker 3 (37:05):
Well, yeah, but eventually I did.

Speaker 1 (37:07):
He said he was kind of yelling and acting crazy
to get you to do it.

Speaker 3 (37:11):
Yeah, and I eventually I did.

Speaker 1 (37:13):
Early that's the night where a lot of complaints came in, a.

Speaker 3 (37:16):
Lot of complaints came in and believe me, we had
the top of the line accommodations. We were throwing money
around like there was no tomorrow.

Speaker 8 (37:25):
And then it ended up with you guys should leave
here and never come back.

Speaker 1 (37:29):
Were you being pretty boisterous in there?

Speaker 8 (37:31):
I guess we were.

Speaker 3 (37:32):
So we got escorted out of the country. He thought
that we had just been escorted out of the hotel.
I said, no, John, it was the hotel, the city,
and the country.

Speaker 8 (37:42):
You know, sometimes when you're really really been like partying
or doing war, I mean that goes along with it,
you just get kind of whacked out of your head.
You know, you don't really relate the way you should
in a normal world, you know what I mean. So
even on a big you don't act the way you
should act, and you don't realize that you're being so

(38:04):
weird or so strange, you know, But that's what it was.
It was like a big wake up calling, Wow, you're
telling us to leave this island.

Speaker 3 (38:14):
It took I think about a year or two before
we could go back to Honduras.

Speaker 1 (38:19):
Funny story, but it was getting harder and harder for
Cookie to hide her demons, and it was becoming all
too public.

Speaker 3 (38:26):
In Nicaragua, there's this huge mansion on a hill. It's
called La Casona, the Big House. This was property that
Roosevelt least for one hundred years, so it was US
soil and it was part of the embassy in a
different location. So every Fourth of July or any kind

(38:47):
of American holiday, the US Embassy would throw big shin digs.
Local people, local journalists, international journalists, government dignitaries would all
be invited. There's one particular Fourth of July, big celebration,
always lots of great.

Speaker 1 (39:05):
Food and fireworks and all.

Speaker 3 (39:07):
That fireworks, hot dogs, anything you can imagine for you know,
a Fourth of July party. Well, myself and two NBC
crew members were there with me, cameraman John Basco and
sundman Juan Caldera, whose sister ran the NBC office in Nicaragua.

(39:29):
A stroke of midnight, the party's over. Well by that time,
I'm so paranoid. I can't move. I'm in full riga mortis.
I'm sitting on a sofa. I cannot move. I know
that if I stepped foot off the US property, I'm
going to be arrested.

Speaker 1 (39:44):
And why are you so paranoid?

Speaker 3 (39:45):
Because I'm partying.

Speaker 1 (39:47):
I'm doing cocaine, like massive quantities.

Speaker 3 (39:51):
Obviously enough to make me not be able to get
up off the sofa. And here's John Basco and here's
Juan Caldera saying, Cookie, you know they're closing up. You
got to go. We've got to get you out of here.
It's starting to look weird. You know.

Speaker 8 (40:08):
She goes to embassy party, she does a lot of coke,
gets too hot and freezes until you like calm down
a little bit and then you can like kind of
shuffle out of the room hopefully and nobody notices too much.

Speaker 1 (40:20):
How long were you sitting there?

Speaker 3 (40:22):
Hours? Hours? And then the party ended and I must
have sat there another hour. And the Marines they need
to go, they need to empty out the place.

Speaker 1 (40:32):
Is this one of those things where the lights are
going off and.

Speaker 3 (40:34):
The lights are going off, you know? Last call was
an hour ago. Oh I'm not feeling well. I can't move,
but my two friends finally got me off the sofa
and out.

Speaker 1 (40:45):
Happy fourth of July.

Speaker 3 (40:46):
Happy fourth of July.

Speaker 1 (40:51):
I asked Alejandro Belly, Cookie's close friend and CBS assistant,
if he was worried about her.

Speaker 9 (40:57):
I was concerned especially when she was she was with Vascal,
I mean, Vasco was not very good news for her
because she was totally She loved that disaster. She loved
that chaos, and he was, you know.

Speaker 3 (41:11):
Sexy for her.

Speaker 9 (41:14):
She had all the danger written all around and she
loved that.

Speaker 1 (41:18):
Did it become to define your relationship too much? Were
you good for each other? Were you bad for each other?
Was it both both?

Speaker 3 (41:25):
We were great for each other because we were so made,
we had so much in common. We kind of thrived
off of each other. The partying did get to be excessive.

Speaker 1 (41:37):
Did you kind of go farther with him than you
probably were used to?

Speaker 3 (41:41):
Yes, and farther with him than I had ever and
to this day never have repeated some of the things
that we did.

Speaker 1 (41:48):
Was it scary?

Speaker 3 (41:49):
Of course it was, I mean it was. It was great.
It was intense because our relationship was intense on every
fucking level. It wasn't the normal dating, It wasn't the
normal party. Every aspect of our relationship was the most
intense that you could be in any relationship.

Speaker 1 (42:15):
He told me he was worried about you at one point.

Speaker 3 (42:17):
As any good attic, we each thought we had it
under control.

Speaker 1 (42:22):
Well, that's why I ask if maybe you weren't always
good for each other.

Speaker 3 (42:25):
Was it to the level of toxic? But it was
heading in that direction.

Speaker 8 (42:32):
Look, I was crazy and I was doing this shit
I was doing, but I didn't have it that deep.
It seemed to me like Cookie had that element of
her personality was deep, so she would just die and
I could see that, and it scared me.

Speaker 1 (42:47):
Cookies demons have finally caught up with her. Is the
party over? We'll be right back, Welcome back. Cookie's facing

(43:07):
the biggest challenge of her life. I know she's a badass,
but so is addiction.

Speaker 3 (43:14):
So obviously I had problems with drugs. We all know
this by now. As I've said before, war journalists they're
always partying. They work hard, they party harder because you
never know when you're going to die, when it's going
to be your last story, your last day on earth.
It's not like I was the only person. And that's
not to detract from my failings. Everyone partied drinking drugs.

(43:40):
Not everybody did everything. I of course did everything. Some
of us could just stop and not continue all night.
Some of us couldn't. I was one of the ones
that they couldn't. I thought my problem was drugs. What
I didn't realize is that I was also an alcoholic.
I had all the telltale signs, drinking a lot, drinking

(44:00):
in my room, drinking with the guys, and drinking them
under the table. CBS decided that something needed to be done.
It's funny because you met her in an earlier episode.
Carla Farrell, producer extraordinaire who hired me, was now being
sent to Nicaragua to confront me and tell me if

(44:24):
you don't go, you will be fired. And I was like,
go where. She says to rehab. You've got a problem. No,
I don't have a problem. You know, maybe I do
this or that every now and then. No, you've got
a problem. And we've got people that are concerned about you.
Because my colleagues were also my friends, and we all

(44:45):
loved and cared for each other. So it wasn't someone
pointing a finger and out of jealousy, oh we need
to get written out. It wasn't like that.

Speaker 1 (44:54):
Were you fucking up a little bit?

Speaker 3 (44:56):
Yeah? I knew that at any moment, this whole house
of car arts could come tumbling down. I mean, I
hadn't done any major fucked up that caused a big problem.
But I'm sure there were incidents that could have been disastrous,
not just for myself but for others.

Speaker 1 (45:15):
You think this was a long time coming.

Speaker 3 (45:16):
In a way, it was probably coming before I was
at CBS. As you remember, I was married to Chino,
the cartel guy, and so that was a whole era.
I was partying even before that, you know, when I
was a model in New York City. My life has
been partying since I was fourteen. But what people don't
realize about addiction is that you first start out whatever

(45:40):
substance you're using, it's your friend, you love the way
it makes you feel, and then slowly it becomes your
enemy and you're always searching for that first high, which
you'll never get that one again.

Speaker 1 (45:52):
Do you think that part of the I'll say abuse
of alcohol and or drugs is related to the PTSD
consequences of being out there.

Speaker 3 (46:00):
Covering war is a very very hard motherfucking thing to do.
It's one thing watching shit on TV. It's one thing
living in its city like this where there's a lot
of crime, but it's another thing living in a war,
and it's day to day war, war, war, and everything
that comes with it. Assassinations, torture, you name it. Everything

(46:25):
bad that another human being could do to a human
being is being done in that time. I'm sure PTSD
contributed to it. But I was doomed from the moment
I was born.

Speaker 1 (46:38):
Were your parents' alcoholics?

Speaker 3 (46:40):
My daddy loved to drink. My mother did socially accepted
prescriptions from doctors. You know valume. She had eight kids.
She took valume three times a day. So I was doomed.
But we didn't know that back then.

Speaker 1 (46:54):
Were you angry when she confronted you?

Speaker 3 (46:57):
When I wasn't angry. I was defensive. Oh come on on, Carla,
you know me. You know how we all operate.

Speaker 10 (47:05):
When I first knew Cookie, I sure knew she was
a partier. I took part in some of those parties
at the time. I never thought it was a problem
in the beginning. As I recall later on, her level
of partying was was concerning.

Speaker 3 (47:20):
Yes, the reason she was sent is because she wasn't
like that. She wasn't a big drinker, She never did drugs.
She was always level headed and she was always business.

Speaker 1 (47:31):
Did you feel betrayed by somebody like often is the.

Speaker 3 (47:34):
Case, No, because the way it was still to me,
it was a lot of people had talked about it.

Speaker 1 (47:38):
God it you just have to picture that. There was
a discussion at the New York office.

Speaker 3 (47:43):
No, the discussion was in Miami.

Speaker 1 (47:45):
In Miami, Okay.

Speaker 3 (47:46):
Miami cleared it with New York because they were going
to do something different. They were going to pay and
they were going to put me in rehab. It wasn't
going to be on my dime because obviously they felt
like you just said, oh, it's the war, it's the PTSD.
They obviously didn't know my complete background. I mean by

(48:07):
that time, what I'd already been twenty years into the game.

Speaker 1 (48:11):
It's almost like getting in trouble for your own superpower.

Speaker 3 (48:14):
Yeah. Yeah, I got defensive with Carla. She said, cookie,
don't fight it. If you don't do it, they're going.

Speaker 10 (48:22):
To fire you.

Speaker 1 (48:23):
Well, when you hear those words.

Speaker 3 (48:25):
That's what did it.

Speaker 1 (48:26):
You have your whole life wrapped up in this. You're
at the peak of your powers.

Speaker 3 (48:29):
Too, exactly, And at this point people didn't really understand
everything about addiction like they do now, especially Carla. She
had no clue about addiction. So in her mind, it
was due to me being alone in the war, raising kids,
just a lot of pressure. She says, Cookie, take the gift.
They're going to pay for it. But where am I

(48:50):
going to go? Anywhere you want to go, she says,
I recommend Betty Ford, and I'm like, okay, that sounds good.
So I proceeded to drink two bottles of wine, packed
my suitcase, and I was on a flight the next
morning with Carla. She didn't take me all the way,
but she took me to Miami and made sure that

(49:11):
in Miami I got on the flight to California. Because
addicts are always ah, let me get off here, I'll
go next week. They weren't going to take that chance,
so she flew with me to Miami and made sure
I got on the flight to California. I owe my
life to Carla because she really cared for me. She
was really a good friend, and I recently thanked her

(49:33):
for saving my life. I would not have had all
the life that I had after CBS in the war
had it not been for her.

Speaker 1 (49:42):
Before Cookie gets to the Betty Ford clinic, I want
to introduce you to a true American hero. On April
twenty second, nineteen seventy eight, The Washington Post wrote this
about the former first Lady. President Gerald Ford's wife.

Speaker 4 (49:55):
Betty Ford, said yesterday she is addicted to alcohol as
well as the medication that to her treatment at Long
Beach Naval Hospital. Missus Ford, the sixty year old wife
of former President Ford, was admitted to the California Hospitals
Alcohol and Drug Abuse Center twelve days ago. I have
found I am not only addicted to the medication I
have been taking from my arthritis, but also to alcohol,

(50:16):
missus Ford said in a statement read at the hospital
by a family spokesman. Missus Ford's candor after her operation
for breast cancer in nineteen seventy four prompted thousands of
women to seek frequent checkups and examinations. Experts in the
field of drug abuse hailed her similar candor yesterday.

Speaker 1 (50:34):
What an amazing person. Can you imagine the courage it
took for her to stand up in front of the
American people and say those.

Speaker 3 (50:41):
Words, I'm Betty Ford and I'm an alcoholic.

Speaker 10 (50:46):
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (50:48):
A few years later, she founded the Betty Ford Center,
a nonprofit residential treatment center for people with substance dependents. Look,
I'm not saying she invented rehab, but Betty Ford coming
out in such a big way paved the roads for
millions of Americans to seek the help they so badly needed.
That's a freaking hero when you get there to the

(51:09):
Betty Bard.

Speaker 3 (51:09):
Oh, it's a wonderful story. I'm dressed in a suit.
I look fabulous. I've got my briefcase with me. I
walk in at the reception desk. They think I'm the
new doctor or counselor, and they said a name. We've
been expecting you, and I'm like, well, that's not my name.
Well wait, aren't you the new counselor doctor? And I'm like, no,

(51:31):
I'm the new patient. So they checked me in and
I remember the first night, we're sort of in a
group in the wreck room or whatever you call it.
There's a TV on and it's the news, and it
happened to be on CBS. And that day Fidel Castro
had flown into Nicaragua and he was holding a rally

(51:53):
with Ortega, which I had planned to cover for weeks.

Speaker 1 (51:58):
The Washington Post this about Cashro's visit to Nicaragua.

Speaker 4 (52:02):
Sandinista leader Daniel Ortego was inaugurated as Nicaragua's president today,
in a ceremony marked by a surprise visit by Cuban
President Fidel Castro Ortego, reaffirmed the Sandinista's public commitment to
respect political pluralism and private property. He said the seven
month old dialogue with the United States represented a magnificent

(52:24):
opportunity to resolve the two countries' differences. In spite of
the situation, Nicaragua is not an enemy of the United States.

Speaker 3 (52:32):
So as I'm watching it, I'm screaming kind I'm supposed
to be there. That's my story. I'm supposed to be there.
And a couple of patients turned to each other and said, man,
is she still high? I want someone? Would she's still on?

Speaker 1 (52:47):
Did you enjoy it?

Speaker 3 (52:48):
You know what I did? And I picked up the
tricks and what I'm supposed to say. And you know,
there's this thing that says you got to write your
first step and write everything a certain way, and I
I knew exactly. So I was writing other patients first
step for them for money. It was profitable for me
in there.

Speaker 1 (53:09):
How about getting something out of it?

Speaker 3 (53:11):
I did obviously, I got sobriety. And it gets you
to the point where you don't want to leave. When
you first get there, you want to leave, you want out,
but by the time it's over, you don't want to
leave because at that point you've got your sobriety and
you're scared to go back out in the real world.
You don't know what's going to set it off, and
they tell you have to go back in the real world.

(53:33):
Anywhere you go, there's going to be temptation.

Speaker 1 (53:36):
Looking back, would you say that it worked?

Speaker 3 (53:38):
It worked for a while.

Speaker 1 (53:41):
Do you know what made you start partying again?

Speaker 3 (53:44):
I'm an attic being thrown right back into the lions
dead war, death, destruction, partying afterwards, still with all the
same people, all the same accoutermentt you know, to party
with it less maybe about nine ten months.

Speaker 1 (54:02):
That's actually pretty damn good, Yeah it is.

Speaker 3 (54:05):
It wasn't a structure in war time for AA groups,
and certainly there were no NA groups in Latin America.
It was all about the booze there. So I did
find an AA group, and I was the only female
among all these dirt, poor humble peasants that literally would

(54:27):
just be drinking and sleeping on the streets. I really
liked it. I really did. I said to myself, If
they could do it, why can't I.

Speaker 1 (54:37):
Do you believe in AA?

Speaker 3 (54:38):
I believe in that twelve step program.

Speaker 1 (54:40):
Well you've been sober verse seventeen.

Speaker 3 (54:42):
Seventeen years, now clean it sober?

Speaker 1 (54:44):
So how long did you go hard before you really
got sober?

Speaker 3 (54:48):
I mean I started at fourteen and finished in my fifties. Yeah,
my drug of choice was weed. I just like that.
But coke, you know, that was that was my high,
that was my jam. I snorted a piece of sheet
rock once, thinking it was it was a rock ouch. Well,

(55:11):
were you run out? You're kind of looking around get
off on it? No, it burned like motherfucker.

Speaker 1 (55:19):
Cookie got help and it changed her life. If you
or someone you love is struggling with drug or alcohol addiction,
there's help for you too. You can talk to someone
right now call one eight hundred sixty six ' to
two help day or night and is totally confidential. Next

(55:39):
time on Journalista, the smoking gun gets shot down flying
over Nicaragua and the race is on to get the
biggest story of the eighties.

Speaker 3 (55:48):
I'm in Miami on vacation. I get a call from
someone in Nicaragua was saying, have you heard.

Speaker 9 (55:55):
No.

Speaker 3 (55:56):
The Sandinistas have proof now that the US is involved
because they caught an American associated with the CIA kicking
out supplies over Contra territory.

Speaker 1 (56:08):
In the skies of Nicaragua. Don't miss the thrilling conclusion
of Journalista, The world will never be the same. 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 k iHeart Executive

(56:33):
producer Tyler Klang, Written and edited by Steven Esteb. Music
by Jay Weigel, Associate producer in sound design Stephen Tanti.
Sound mixing by Jesse Solon Snyder. Special guests Lloyd Sherr,
John Basco, Alejandro Belly, and Carla Ferrell. This is a

(56:54):
production of Journalista Podcast LLC and iHeartRadio.