August 8, 2023 • 41 mins
Cookie heads into the jungle looking for the war. Unfortunately…she finds it.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
This is a production of Journalista Podcast LLC and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
So I come in the next day all dressed up
at pearls and heels, and she says, why are you
dressed that way? I said, well, you said I'm going
north and going to Miami, right, She goes, no, You're
going to the Jungles today with a camera crew by yourself.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Welcome back to the Journalista Podcast. Cookie is embarking on
her first gig for CBS News, the beginning of an
era that will put her in the middle of the
biggest scandal of the nineteen eighties. But before she starts
this new adventure, I want to introduce you to another
character in the story, someone you've already met. Actually it's
(00:50):
not a person, it's a place at the epicenter of history.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
Literally.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
Stephen Kenser, former bureau chief for The New York Times,
wrote about the significance of the Intercontinental Hotel in Managua
back in nineteen eighty seven.
Speaker 4 (01:07):
It was in a pyramid shape and stood on top
of a hill.
Speaker 5 (01:11):
The Somosa family, which ran the country like a private enterprise,
also ran the Intercontinental. Of course, the family controlled every
business that was really lucrative.
Speaker 4 (01:22):
I remember hearing that. In nineteen seventy two, at.
Speaker 5 (01:26):
The end of the year, the staff was told, you
can't come out today. They're locking everyone in the basement.
There's a special guest coming. They sealed off two entire floors,
the seventh and eighth floors. Nobody was allowed up there.
It finally emerged that the guest was Howard Hughes, that famous, reclusive,
eccentric billionaire.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
Howard Hughes was worth, by some estimates, as much as
four billion dollars, making him the richest man in the
world at the time. He made his fortune in engineering, aviation,
and massive defense contracts. He even owned a movie studio.
Speaker 6 (02:03):
For years, he was fascinated with Hollywood. A rich playboy,
dating a bevy of starlets Lana Turner, Catherine Hepburn and
Ava Gardner, Hughes signed a personal check for almost twenty
four million dollars to buy himself the Rkos Studios. He
became a starmaker. Jane Russell was a hit in the
Hughes picture of the Outlaw. It was frowned on because
of Russell's famous cleavage. Hughes dubbed Gene Harlow the Platinum
(02:25):
Blunde and catapulted her to fame in a film called
Hell's Angels.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
He was also eccentric as hell, a notorious germaphobe, suffering
from extreme OCD. It's said that he only cut his
nails and hair once a year.
Speaker 5 (02:38):
He was interested in making some investments in Nicaragua, and
of course the Samosas were thrilled with this. They felt
they had hooked a really big fish. He might have
even wanted to buy the hotel. He said he wanted
to buy the National Airline. But he was in the
hotel on that terrible night in December of nineteen seventy
two when the earthquake happened.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
The Intercontinental is one of the few buildings left standing
after the earthquakes.
Speaker 5 (03:00):
So the whole city, of course exploded in fire and
rubble and dust.
Speaker 4 (03:04):
It turned out that Howard Hughes had.
Speaker 5 (03:06):
This tremendous phobia about germs, and that's why they had
to steal off these floors.
Speaker 4 (03:12):
For him and had special ways to purify the air.
Suddenly he's surrounded by germs and smoke. He immediately fled
the country and never came back.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
After the earthquake, the hotel was suddenly everything everywhere all
at once.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
Yeah, I said it.
Speaker 5 (03:27):
Many countries have find themselves in civil conflicts and draw
a lot of journalists, develop a kind of a place
where the journalists hang out, and that tends to be
the place where other people hang out, like intelligence agents
and arms dealers and politicians. In a smaller country, it's
more likely that they'll be just one such place in
(03:49):
Managua as the war they are exploded. That place was
the Intercontinental Hotel. The lobby of the Intercontinental Hotel, and
the breakfast room and the other salons down there on
the first floor were alive all the time. There were
a thousand stories unfolding right in that lobby. That's where
you trade rumors with other journalists. Over lunch. You could
(04:13):
find Basque gorillas and gorillas from El Salvadora plotting strategy.
Speaker 4 (04:18):
There were diplomatic receptions there at night.
Speaker 5 (04:20):
There were all sorts of adventurers in that place, some Nicaraguan,
but many from the outside, and everybody who arrived in
Nicaragua for the first time would always go there. It
really didn't take long before you were immersed in the
whole story.
Speaker 4 (04:34):
The guests there were such a variety.
Speaker 5 (04:37):
You had world leaders like Jimmy Carter, who I spent
an hour with you had assassins.
Speaker 4 (04:43):
There were movie stars, there were athletes.
Speaker 5 (04:46):
Every star who came there came to the Intercontinental. It's
where I met Susan Sarandon and Bianca Jagger. It was
really at the center of national life. Then, of course,
it played a role in the national politics of that era,
the very turbulent period in the late seventies and early
eighties when there was a revolution, government changed, and since
the Intercontinental was the center of everything, it was right
(05:08):
at the middle of all these changes. One guy tried
to assassinate Somosa.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
In his New York Times article, Kinzer writes, a flamboyant
rebel named Fernando Chimorro Rapaccioli quietly checked into rooms seven sixteen,
closed the door behind him, and began assembling a mortar.
He had selected a room that overlooked the military headquarters
of President Anastasio Simosa, hoping to assassinate him by firing
a rocket into his office. Soldiers immediately converged on the hotel.
(05:39):
As employees dived for cover, the soldiers sprayed the building
with gunfire for a full ten minutes. Samosa survived the attack,
but the handwriting was already on the wall.
Speaker 5 (05:49):
As the government of Somosa collapsed, many of the cabinet,
ministers and generals sent their families out of the country
and rather than live at home, since there was no
one there or anymore, they moved into the Intercontinental Hotel.
So essentially the entire power elite of Samosa, Nicaragua was
living in the Intercontinental Hotel in the first months of
(06:11):
nineteen seventy nine.
Speaker 4 (06:11):
Really, there were no staff there. It was open. We
had the run of the place.
Speaker 5 (06:15):
It was mostly journalists and Samosa government officials, so there
was nobody manning the front desk. There were no food,
there were no employees, nobody cleaned the rooms, but somehow
they kept the place open. At that time, the hotel
really reflected what was happening in the country as a whole.
Speaker 4 (06:31):
It was no authority, nobody was in charge.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
July nineteenth of seventy nine, Samosa flees Nicaragua and the
government falls A.
Speaker 4 (06:41):
Few days later.
Speaker 5 (06:42):
The Santanistas had won the revolution and they were in Monagua. Now,
if they're in Managua, what does that mean. It means
they're in the Intercontinental Hotel.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
They're all in the lobby and they said, now what
And one of them says, well, let's form a government.
Why dodn't it be nine? And Dante's each one the
head of something. Okay, So you're going to be the
head of interior ministry, you're going to be the head
of education, you're going to be And that's how they
(07:11):
did it, just like that, one afternoon. You're gonna be this,
You're gonna be Oh, you're gonna be the head of defense,
You're going to be the head of economics.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
It was a total clusterfuck. Steven Kinzer has one more
quick story to tell about the hotel, and this one
will last forever.
Speaker 4 (07:32):
I hadn't been in Nicaragua very long.
Speaker 5 (07:34):
I was in the lobby of the Intercontinental Hotel and
a lot of reporters are around.
Speaker 4 (07:39):
Somebody came along with a sign up sheet.
Speaker 5 (07:42):
If you wanted to get on a bus that was
going somewhere the next morning to go out and visit
someplace where something had happened, you had to sign up
and that sheet would be posted a little bit later.
So I was going to sign up and then this
the young, attractive, tall, very thin woman comes up to me, says,
put my name on it too. Can you just add
my name on the list when it comes out? And
I said sure. And then I turned to me. I said,
(08:03):
wait a minute, what is your name? And she said Cookie?
And I said Cookie. What she said, don't worry about
bad just put Cookie. Everybody's gonna know. So at that
moment began our long friendship.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
Years later, Kinser wrote this about Cookie's impact on the
news during the nineteen eighties and nineties. Cookie hood was
the driving force behind the most successful television coverage of
Central America that appeared anywhere in the United States. Things
are changing in Nicaragua, but they are also changing in
the US.
Speaker 7 (08:36):
Mister Chairman, mister Vice President, to be this convention, my
fellow citizens of this great nation, with a deep awareness
of the responsibility conferred by your trust, I accept your
nomination for the presidency of the United States.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
Ronald Reagan beats Jimmy Carter in the nineteen eighty election
and becomes the fortieth President of the United States. There's
a new sheriff in town, and he doesn't like the Sandinistas.
I asked Tulane Professor Justin Wolfe about the consequences of
this election to the future of Nicaragua.
Speaker 8 (09:18):
Ronald Reagan comes into power hardline anti communist American cowboy
vision right of a robust conservatism and a robust cold
war hawk. Very quickly, the Reagan administration is trying to
figure out how to oust the Santinista government, how to
frame this as a US Soviet proxy struggle and one
(09:42):
that we need to win. An opposition to the Saninistas emerges,
but the US sees them as groups to be unified,
to be trained, to be financed, and to be armed
to carry out a proxy war to overthrow the Saninistas.
This seems perfect for the Reagan minus, with people who
are willing to do the fighting. Freedom fighters as Reagan
(10:04):
would call them, or they're going to fight this communist
revolution in Nicaragua. But there is a deep ambivalence within
the United States. A lot of people think that this
is a quagmire that the US is going to get
caught in. They're not certain what the strategic value of
it is. They're not sure what we're going to get
out of it, or even if we could win, that
(10:27):
this could be another Vietnam.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
On December one, nineteen eighty one, President Ronald Reagan signs
a presidential finding which authorizes covert operations in Nicaragua. The
plan is to train and fund what is essentially a
terrorist group in Nicaragua known as the Contrasts. So it
begins a decade long obsession with a tiny Central American
country with an economy one fourth the size of Vermont.
(10:58):
When we last saw Cookie, she was standing in front
of CBS News producer Carla Ferrell.
Speaker 9 (11:04):
She says, you got the job.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
I need you to come in tomorrow and you're going
up north. I thought she was sending me to Miami.
So I come in the next day all dressed up
in pearls and heels, and she says, why are you
dressed that way? I said, well, you set up going
north and going to Miami, right. She goes, no, You're
going to the Jungles today with the camera crew by yourself.
(11:31):
And I could see the camera crew off to the
side and they're laughing. They're just enjoyed the shit about this.
I said, Okay, give me five minutes.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
I asked Carlo why she hired Cookie and what made
her special.
Speaker 10 (11:47):
Cookie was so sociable, so tenacious, she was just so
full of life. She had an amazing personality, gregarious, spicty
when she needed to be, diplomatic when she needed to
be She always had the personality, the kind that could
break through the camera. She was wonderful, whether it was
in social situations or in work situations, to help bring
(12:10):
people together. From the beginning. Impressed me as someone who
would always work hard to get things done.
Speaker 9 (12:17):
Thank goodness.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
I had a change of clothes put on the tennis
shoes to jeans, and everything was introduced to the Mexican
Cammebra crew, him and Roberto. Of course they're looking at
me also like does she know what she's doing? But
at the same time, she really is pretty. You know,
this could be fun. Carla said goodbye, and we went
downstairs and blowed it up into the jeep. They're assuming
(12:42):
that I know what I'm doing. They are assuming that
I'm a journalist, and I wasn't. I was being thrown
into the colosseum to the lions.
Speaker 9 (12:51):
I had not a clue.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
Did you get any instruction from Carla what you were
looking for or anything?
Speaker 9 (12:56):
None?
Speaker 2 (12:57):
Carla thought I was a journalist too. Job was you're
a fixer. We need you to translate, We need you,
you know, to help the crews whenever they need to
be helped.
Speaker 9 (13:07):
That was it. Bye.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
So Cookie is hired as a fixer and interpreter for
CBS News. War is Hell. Cookie is about to find
out what it really looks like. We'll be right back,
(13:33):
Welcome back. Cookie sets off on her next great adventure
working for CBS freaking News. She has no idea what
she's doing, but how hard can it be? At least
she's not running from the dea with a couple of
tons of cocaine. Reality is about to punch her in
(13:53):
the face.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
As we're driving to the Jungles to look for the war.
We're getting to know each other and they're liking me
and I'm liking them. We could see that it was
going to work between us, the three of us. So
I'm asking questions. They're telling me, this is what we're
gonna do.
Speaker 9 (14:15):
We're gonna go here.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
At that point, you know, we need you to help
us with the equipment, and I'm like, no sweat, I
can carry my own weight.
Speaker 9 (14:23):
I Am not going to be a burden to you guys.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
But obviously I'm going on this great adventure, which I
think is if I'm great adventure, I have literally no
idea what I'm getting into. So we proceed to drive
and drive and drive.
Speaker 9 (14:39):
And we're getting deeper into the jungle.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
I'm being told, you know, Cookie, sometimes it's not so
easy for us to find what we're looking for.
Speaker 9 (14:47):
We've actually called this war the ever elusive war.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
We can hear it, we just have a hard time
finding it. And I said, hey, no sweat, we'll find it.
As we we got in deeper and deeper, the camera
crew got less funny, less upbeat. They got very serious,
and you know, they said, these are certain things that
you're gonna have to know.
Speaker 9 (15:11):
We tell you to be quiet. Be quiet when we
tell you to.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
Hit the ground, hit the ground, win in doubt, just
do what we do.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
So hit the ground, meaning in case you're getting shot at,
in case there's danger, in case we.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
Run into the enemy. Whatever we do, you do it.
Whatever we whisper it to you to do, you do it.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
Did they give you any positive Does your mind start
racing about what you're getting into?
Speaker 2 (15:37):
Well, I'm still thinking, great adventure, How hard can this be?
I can follow instructions. I still really didn't have a clue.
Even if I would have been told you're going into
a war. You're going to see dead people. Even if
I had been told that, it's one thing to be
told it, it's another thing to actually see it and
(15:59):
live through it.
Speaker 9 (16:00):
And that happened, And that's what happened.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
We could hear some fighting, we could hear weapons, we
could hear shots, but we.
Speaker 9 (16:10):
Knew that it was far away.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
At one point we got out of the g to
cover some ground see what we could find. I know
what gunfire sounds like, but what struck me is I
kept hearing yelling like one side yelling to the other side.
Come get me, you son of a bitch. No, you
come get me, you son of a bitch. Oi in
(16:35):
abuta Benita Paraka to mother day Benita off Paraka.
Speaker 9 (16:40):
You come here, No fuck your mother, you come here.
You know, trash talk, and.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
It all sounded the same, same accent, same lingo, same
street talk. And that's when I first started to realize, Wait,
this is a civil war.
Speaker 9 (16:56):
This is brother fighting brother.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
Fire stops, there's an eerie quiet. Cookie and her crew
make their way toward the battle scene.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
All of a sudden, we could see ahead of us
what looked like a big pile of something.
Speaker 9 (17:15):
I didn't know what it was. Obviously.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
I think the crew knew what it was. They were
very seasoned war journalists. It was a pile of dead bodies.
I've seen dead people before, but not like that. I
was not prepared for that. It was at that moment
I started to lose a little of my faith.
Speaker 3 (17:39):
Describe what you saw.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
Men, women, children, all in a pile. Looked like civilians
to me, I didn't see soldiers. The emotions just like, fuck,
what have I gotten myself into here? The Mexicans at
that point said to me when they saw that, I
was kind of shocked at what I was seeing. This
(18:04):
is your first but it's not going to be your
last time seeing what you're seeing right now.
Speaker 9 (18:09):
And honestly, this is nothing.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
Compared to what you're going to see in the future
if you last with us, if you stay with us,
So get ready because this is what it's all about.
This really is war, This really is dead people, this
really is massacres.
Speaker 9 (18:32):
Am I going to be able to pull this off? Fuck? Yeah,
I could pull this.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
Off for Cookie. It was first blood, but it wouldn't
be the last. Back in the CBS office, there was
another kind of war.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
So I was hired to sort of be a grunt
because the guy that was running the office, his name
was Martin Barretto, was a nice guy. I grew up
with him. He was part of the Oligark families. But
he didn't like to get his hands dirty, and so
he would have all these little minions to do all
his dirty work, you know, the drivers, the fixers, which
(19:14):
was what I became.
Speaker 9 (19:15):
And then he wanted me to go with the camera.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
Crews, with or without a correspondent and just go and
get material for stories. Martine was a very disagreeable person.
You could be on good terms with the correspondents and
the producers, but if the crews and the drivers dislike you,
you've got a problem because those are the people that
(19:39):
are going to get you the story.
Speaker 9 (19:40):
And if they don't like you, then you're up shit's creek.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
You've got nothing to offer the correspondent or the producer.
Speaker 9 (19:47):
Or the editor.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
Well when did it change?
Speaker 9 (19:50):
Larry Doyle comes to town.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
He was the gentleman that we spoke about at the
party who offered.
Speaker 9 (19:57):
Me the job.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
We went out into the boon docs and you know,
we just got along famously. I remember that we stopped
in some you know, shack to get something to eat.
Larry said, well, what's on the menu, and there was
no menu. The lady said, it's a roscomboyo chicken and rice.
Next thing, you know, we hear the chicken being killed,
(20:21):
you know, and plucked and to make the lunch. And
then the jukebox wasn't working, and so I went to
it and I kicked it. Larry Doyle screams out, you
are my kind of broad. I was right in bringing
you in. He hated the guy that was running the
CBS office because that guy did like to get his
hands dirty or go out or do anything. He just
(20:44):
kept saying, you should be running this office, you should
be doing this.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
Larry Doyle was a force of nature and he always
got what he wanted.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
Martine was becoming less interested in getting the job done,
more interested in entertaining and you know, partying in a
different way than I partied.
Speaker 3 (21:05):
So everybody's pitching about Martine.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
Yeah, well, bitching or complaining or just making an observation,
because not everybody had a problem with him. They wanted
more of Cookie and less of Martine. Sure we could
have Cookie out in the jungle, but we also want
to deal with Cookie directly in the offices at the
Inner Collin and Larry was also behind my back and
(21:33):
obviously behind Martine's back, was making sure that Martine was
on his way out. And when he started to get
paranoid and jealous, things got worse. At one point he
called somebody either in New York or Miami and said,
it's me or her. We can't both work in this office.
(21:54):
And unfortunately they chose me and he was out. And
so Larry's says, you're going to be the one running
the show here. So he got rid of our team
quick and put me in charge. Now, everyone assumed that
I was a journalist. To this day, there are former
colleagues that still think I studied journalism. I didn't know
(22:16):
anything about journalism, but I was a fast learner, and
having a mentor like Larry Doyle who taught me everything everything,
And then the mere fact that I would get my
hands dirty and go with the crews and I was
a grunt like them and go into the jungles and
rough it.
Speaker 9 (22:36):
I learned from them too.
Speaker 3 (22:38):
Well, let's talk a little bit about Larry. Now.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
From what I understand, Larry had quite a colorful career already.
Speaker 3 (22:44):
He had been in Vietnam.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
Yes, and he had made quite a name for himself
as a war correspondent.
Speaker 2 (22:49):
Yes, and he was the epitome of a war correspondent.
He didn't know the word danger. He just plowed through
anything with anybody.
Speaker 3 (23:02):
You didn't give a shit about the rules.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
Nothing, And CBS knew that he was breaking rules, but
they didn't care because he always brought home the story.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
In researching Larry, he gets fired all the time, all
the time, but they'd always bring him back and always ask.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
For him to come back because he was the epitome
of a war correspondent.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
So would you say that he taught you what?
Speaker 3 (23:28):
You know?
Speaker 9 (23:28):
He took me under his wing.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
He would not do a story unless I was right
there with him, and Larry was one of many that
would not go to cover any story unless I was
with them.
Speaker 9 (23:41):
He taught me everything, he knew everything.
Speaker 2 (23:45):
Being a woman at that time, especially being a war correspondent,
you had to be one of the guys. You couldn't
be frail, you couldn't be a chick. You just had
to be one of the guys. And that didn't just
mean carrying your own weight, being able to carry the
equipment it meant hiking up through jungles, hiking up mountains
(24:06):
just meant being one.
Speaker 9 (24:07):
Of the guys.
Speaker 3 (24:08):
Was there sexual harassment.
Speaker 2 (24:10):
I'm gonna say yes to that, but at the time
I didn't know that that's what that was.
Speaker 9 (24:14):
I grew up with five brothers.
Speaker 3 (24:16):
I was always you were harassed your whole life.
Speaker 2 (24:19):
I was harassed my whole life. And I was always
more of a guy than a girl.
Speaker 9 (24:23):
You know.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
I was a tomboy and that comes, you know, from
my father dynamic. I always had to prove that I
could do anything as well as or better than any man.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
Were you intimidating to some of these guys.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
Oh oh yes, oh yes, and on any level, not
just as a correspondent, but as a female. Yes, I
was quite overwhelming. But I've always been that way, so
it wasn't anything new for me. It was something brand
new for humble soldiers that have never experienced strong women.
Speaker 9 (24:59):
I remember going.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
Through roadblocks getting out of the jeep wearing a little
wife beater T shirt, no bra walkmen, being stopped by
the soldiers and they'd say, you can't go past this roadblock,
and I would bullshit my way, saying, oh, I've got
orders from the Minister of Interior, and you don't want
to call him because if you call him, you're gonna
(25:22):
get in trouble.
Speaker 9 (25:23):
You might as well just let me through.
Speaker 2 (25:25):
And you know what, here you hold on to my walkman,
here's some American cigarettes.
Speaker 9 (25:30):
Will be back.
Speaker 2 (25:31):
I could get in and out of any roadblock. Larry
loved that. Larry loved it. He would just sit back
and laugh. He would let me do all the work.
He didn't have to do all the work anymore.
Speaker 3 (25:46):
Yeah, yeah, wow, man, amazing.
Speaker 9 (25:49):
It was fun.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
Okay, so this is happening, and you see your star
rising in terms of getting in on the stories, people
wanting to work with you. You right, demanding de Manning to
work with you. When does it change from that to hey,
I'm running this show now?
Speaker 2 (26:06):
Fairly quickly, within a year, I had camera crews that
the only way they would come is if I was there.
There would always be a camera crew in residence, different ones,
but they would come and stay for six weeks, two months.
Speaker 9 (26:19):
Then they'd rotate them. But none of these crews wanted
to come in unless.
Speaker 1 (26:23):
I was there because if you weren't there, who would
they go with? Exactly Cookie was in charge. Now if
they only knew who was running the news in Nicaragua.
But her future would be shaped by two very important stories,
one a tragedy and one a triumph.
Speaker 3 (26:48):
We'll be right.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
Back, Welcome back. Cookie may be in charge, but this
job is about to get a lot harder. Just another
(27:10):
day looking for the ever elusive war. This time she's
going to find it, and something terrible has happened.
Speaker 3 (27:25):
Where are you?
Speaker 9 (27:26):
Deep in the jungles of Nicaragua, in the middle.
Speaker 1 (27:29):
Of nowhere, a little farming town.
Speaker 9 (27:31):
Or no, not even a town. You wouldn't even call
it a village. It was that remote.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
No paved streets, all dirt roads, shacks, shanties.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
You just rolled into the aftermath of a horrible crime.
Speaker 3 (27:47):
What did you see?
Speaker 2 (27:49):
Well, I saw dead civilians, some dead soldiers, but a
lot of civilians, children massacred, women massacred like that famous
bat Vietnam.
Speaker 11 (28:00):
Melai Asafia Themese official. The military chief of Kueng Nai
Province today denied charges that American soldiers on the ground
executed several hundred villagers in March of nineteen sixty eight.
The province chief said the civilians died in air and
artillery strikes. That leveled the village after a number of
Americans had been killed there by Vietcong snipers. The villager's
(28:24):
version of the incident was given by survivors yesterday. They said,
a patrol of one hundred Americans stormed into the hamlet,
drove all the residents out of their huts, then opened
fire with automatic weapons. Two American soldiers, one an officer,
the other an enlisted man, are being held in this
country in connection with the case, but neither has been
brought to trial.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
It was one of the darkest days of the Vietnam War.
More than five hundred unarmed civilians were killed, some were
raped and mutilated. Twenty six soldiers were charged, but only
thee tenant, William Cally Junior, was convicted. He was sentenced
to life in prison, but spent only three and a
(29:06):
half years under house arrest. His sentence was commuted by
President Nixon. The story prompted worldwide outrage, especially in America,
and caused the tide of popular opinion to turn against
an already unpopular war. Back in Nicaragua, Cookie faces the
consequences of another unnecessary American intervention.
Speaker 2 (29:28):
People that didn't deserve to die or had nothing to
do with it.
Speaker 9 (29:33):
They were just all killed.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
The concures were ruthless though, even though some were Nicaragua
and some were from Honduras, they were trained by the CIA.
Speaker 9 (29:43):
CIA. Don't play.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
The women are wailing, their children have been killed, their
husbands have been killed. I'm told, go record them wailing
and crying. Wait, how can I just start filming and
recording these women wailing without first comforting them?
Speaker 9 (30:06):
So I put down the microphone.
Speaker 2 (30:08):
I'd comfort them a little bit, you know, hog them
it's going to be okay, and then ask them permission,
can I record you?
Speaker 3 (30:17):
So you basically just cried with them.
Speaker 2 (30:19):
I didn't cry, but I comforted them. Obviously, I was
crying and dying on the inside.
Speaker 1 (30:26):
The story played on the CBS Evening News with Dan Rather.
Speaker 12 (30:30):
David Dick in Nicaragua reports tonight on a tragedy of war,
a massacre yesterday that has changed one village forever.
Speaker 13 (30:37):
Some of the bodies from the massacre began arriving here
early this morning. In Hinotega, about one hundred miles south
of the Honduran border, a mother grieved for her seventeen
year old son. She said he was the only one
of her children who had not left her, but now
he was gone. A young woman nineteen years old lost
her husband. He was also nineteen. She is pregnant. Her
(30:57):
child will be born in December. She said, this is
all I have left of him.
Speaker 2 (31:02):
As a journalist, you're supposed to remain neutral. You're supposed
to be objective. You're not supposed to integrate yourself into
the story. And I remember being pulled aside several times,
not just on that trip, but throughout my first years
of my career.
Speaker 9 (31:18):
You cannot do that. You have to be objective. And
I said, look, the moment I can't.
Speaker 2 (31:24):
Feel the story, feel emotional about the story, or help
these people.
Speaker 9 (31:29):
I'm out.
Speaker 2 (31:30):
So CBS didn't want to lose me, so they'd give
me a little rope, and then that little bit of
rope became more rope and more rope, and finally they
knew my methods. My stories were always exclusives. They always
got on the air, whereas the other networks they wouldn't
(31:52):
get exclusives. Their stories may not lead on the evening news,
but mine always did.
Speaker 1 (31:59):
When you saw this and you had this experience, did
that change you, Did that make you look at the
world differently.
Speaker 2 (32:06):
I just rolled with the punches I've always throughout that
whole career of mine. I just was rolling with it
because I knew that the moment I no longer felt anything,
and that I could.
Speaker 9 (32:19):
Just cover a story, just get the story, go in and.
Speaker 2 (32:22):
Go out, then I knew it would be over for
me as a human being. So the fact that I
was feeling for these people and that the emotions were coming,
I was dying on the inside and knowing that my
own country.
Speaker 1 (32:37):
Was doing this and this is one place, one place,
God knows what's going on.
Speaker 2 (32:44):
And my Nicaraguan side felt for these people, and then
my US side is so angry.
Speaker 9 (32:51):
I'm a part of that.
Speaker 2 (32:52):
And the one thing about the Nicaraguans, the poor, the humble,
the ones that were the victims of war, never held
it against us that we were American. Obviously because I'm
speaking Spanish like they do, they think I'm one of them.
But I'm with camera crews that are Americans, I'm speaking English.
(33:13):
They never once held it against us. Oh, your country's
the one that's do it.
Speaker 9 (33:21):
Never.
Speaker 3 (33:22):
That says a lot about the people.
Speaker 9 (33:23):
Never. Never.
Speaker 2 (33:26):
They would feed us if we were hungry, they would
give us something to drink from their meager shacks. If
we were thirsty, they would give us their.
Speaker 9 (33:35):
Bed that was on a floor.
Speaker 2 (33:38):
The spirit was just overpowering, overwhelming to me. What I
did come to realize, no matter where war is in
the world, no matter where war is in history, the
people that get fucked, or the poor people, whether it
be because they're victims or they're massacred, or because they're
(34:01):
sent to the front line, they're always the ones that
get fucked.
Speaker 1 (34:09):
As the Contra war gathers momentum, the US gets deeper
and deeper into the quagmire of Central America. But so
are the Russians sending advisors, arms, and economic support. The
Sandinistas deny it. But Cooking and the journalists covering the
war or looking for the smoking gun, tell me about
that first big scoop.
Speaker 2 (34:31):
Well, we did a lot of little stories, things that
we weren't expecting to find. But then there came some
rumors that the Sandinistas were getting help from the Russians,
from the Cubans, from a rand from anybody that the
US didn't like.
Speaker 1 (34:49):
From what I read, the Nicaragua was really locked down.
So if they didn't want you to see something it
was very hard to see.
Speaker 3 (34:55):
It is that true?
Speaker 9 (34:56):
That is correct.
Speaker 2 (34:57):
For instance, we'd heard that they were possibly some Russian
ships at the port of Corinto. I remember myself, the
crew and maybe some other journalists driving to Corinto to
see what was going on, because we had also heard
about possibly these ports having been mined by the US,
(35:20):
which is pretty much against the Geneva Convention you can't
put mines in foreign ports.
Speaker 1 (35:27):
According to The Washington Post, the CIA played a direct
role in the laying of underwater mines in Nicaraguan ports,
damaging at least eight ships. The CIA did this without
the approval of Congressional intelligence committees, as the law required,
eventually leading to Congress cutting off funding for the contrast.
Speaker 2 (35:45):
That sort of sets up the story. And I remember
we tried to get to the port and we weren't
allowed even within a mile of it.
Speaker 9 (35:54):
People are being turned back.
Speaker 2 (35:56):
One of the few times I couldn't talk myself into
getting through.
Speaker 9 (36:00):
Nicaragua had journalists from.
Speaker 2 (36:03):
All over the world, not just regular journalists like myself
and networks and you know, ap UPI and photographers, but
also there were journalists from countries that were mortal enemies
of the us. The camaraderie between all journalists, no matter
(36:23):
where they were from, was the same. We're all in
this together. So I had become friends with some Cuban
nationals from the island, which is different from Cuban Americans
from Miami. This one particular guy and I we really
kind of hit it off. We started to see each
other here and there, and I was sort of kind
(36:43):
of done with him, and then one day he comes
up to me at a press conference in the city
and says, you know, I've got something that you know
you may be interested in, and I'm like, what is it?
He says, I'm just going to give you this tape.
Don't look at it here, don't open it here. It's
something that you've been looking for. And so I put
(37:04):
it away, didn't give it a second thought, got back
to the hotel a few hours later and we opened
it up, and it's video of a Russian ship at
the Port of Corinto that myself and many other journalists
had been warning.
Speaker 9 (37:18):
To get proof of.
Speaker 2 (37:19):
Showed it to Carla, who was in town at that
particular time, and I said, you're not going to believe this,
but I've got Cuban TV footage of the proof that
there's a Russian ship in port, and she couldn't believe it,
and the crew couldn't believe it, So sure enough we
put it in and there it was.
Speaker 1 (37:39):
The story played on the CBS evening News that very night.
Speaker 12 (37:42):
A US naval battlegroup headed by the carrier Ranger has
been maneuvering off Nicaragua's west coast for fourteen days. This
had been officially described repeatedly as routine exercises. Today, the
Pentagon confirmed a warship confrontation with the Soviet Crater. One
of the destroyers escorting the Ranger Ute questioned the Russian
cargo ship in international waters, then followed it to Nicaragua's
(38:05):
twelve mile territorial limit.
Speaker 14 (38:07):
The Alexander Uljanov, shown passing through the Panama Canal last
week on its way to Nicaragua, has been the object
of much attention since President Reagan said it was carrying
helicopters and other military equipment. Coarnto is this country's major
port city. These scenes from the purchased videotape show East
German and Soviet vessels at the main pier. Again, only
(38:27):
non military cargo was seen, despite the denials. It's clear
the Nicaraguan army has lots of Soviet military hardware.
Speaker 3 (38:35):
How it gets here is less clear.
Speaker 14 (38:37):
Richard Wagner, CBS News, Managua.
Speaker 1 (38:40):
The Nicaraguan government denied it, of course, but for the
first time the US had proof that the Russians were
supporting the Sandinistas. It was huge. The Managua CBS office
received a telex the next day. It read clean Kill, Congratulations,
thanks courage, signed by SEB News icon Dan Rather.
Speaker 9 (39:03):
That was very satisfying and.
Speaker 3 (39:06):
What did it tell you about yourself?
Speaker 2 (39:08):
What I felt initially was I hope nobody thinks I
got this story because I slept with the guy.
Speaker 9 (39:15):
That's not what happened.
Speaker 3 (39:16):
But you did sleep with him.
Speaker 9 (39:17):
But I did sleep.
Speaker 2 (39:18):
With him, But I never dreamed that he was going
to throw this in my laugh. And I think he
kind of threw it in my lap because I had
kind of, you know, dumped it. It was one of
my first major scoops. And then, of course the Dan
Rather congratulatory telex was just icing.
Speaker 9 (39:37):
On the cave. I knew at that moment that I
had made It's.
Speaker 1 (39:41):
Kind of a validation of the relationships that you.
Speaker 2 (39:45):
Create and that even though I wasn't quite sure if
I was a journalist, everyone else around me was damn
sure that I was.
Speaker 1 (39:56):
So Cookie finds a smoking gun an esta a bona fides,
But in war sometimes that gun is shooting at you.
Next time on Journalista.
Speaker 2 (40:09):
All I know is that we were up in the air.
I heard three somethings. I looked at one soldier and
I said, that's not a.
Speaker 9 (40:17):
Good sound, is it? And he went white and he said, no,
We're going down. What do you mean We're going down?
Speaker 1 (40:30):
The Journalista podcast features the stories and voice of Cookie Hood.
Narrated by Steven Esteb, Produced by Sean J.
Speaker 3 (40:38):
Donnelly.
Speaker 1 (40:39):
Executive producers Jason Wagensback, Roy Laughlin and Ellen k iHeart.
Executive producer Tyler Klang. Written and edited by Steven Esteb.
Music by Jay Weigel, Associate producer in sound design Steven Tanti,
Sound mixing by Jesse Solan Snyder. Special guest Stephen Kinzer
(40:59):
Tulain history Professor Justin Wolfe, Carla Ferrell. Special thanks to
Esplanade Studios, The Ranch Studios, Jason Gerwitz, Kyle Frederick, Zach Slaff.
This is a production of Journalista Podcast LLC and iHeartRadio,
This is a production of Journalista Podcast LLC and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
So I come in the next day all dressed up
at pearls and heels, and she says, why are you
dressed that way? I said, well, you said I'm going
north and going to Miami, right, She goes, no, You're
going to the Jungles today with a camera crew by yourself.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Welcome back to the Journalista Podcast. Cookie is embarking on
her first gig for CBS News, the beginning of an
era that will put her in the middle of the
biggest scandal of the nineteen eighties. But before she starts
this new adventure, I want to introduce you to another
character in the story, someone you've already met. Actually it's
(00:50):
not a person, it's a place at the epicenter of history.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
Literally.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
Stephen Kenser, former bureau chief for The New York Times,
wrote about the significance of the Intercontinental Hotel in Managua
back in nineteen eighty seven.
Speaker 4 (01:07):
It was in a pyramid shape and stood on top
of a hill.
Speaker 5 (01:11):
The Somosa family, which ran the country like a private enterprise,
also ran the Intercontinental. Of course, the family controlled every
business that was really lucrative.
Speaker 4 (01:22):
I remember hearing that. In nineteen seventy two, at.
Speaker 5 (01:26):
The end of the year, the staff was told, you
can't come out today. They're locking everyone in the basement.
There's a special guest coming. They sealed off two entire floors,
the seventh and eighth floors. Nobody was allowed up there.
It finally emerged that the guest was Howard Hughes, that famous, reclusive,
eccentric billionaire.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
Howard Hughes was worth, by some estimates, as much as
four billion dollars, making him the richest man in the
world at the time. He made his fortune in engineering, aviation,
and massive defense contracts. He even owned a movie studio.
Speaker 6 (02:03):
For years, he was fascinated with Hollywood. A rich playboy,
dating a bevy of starlets Lana Turner, Catherine Hepburn and
Ava Gardner, Hughes signed a personal check for almost twenty
four million dollars to buy himself the Rkos Studios. He
became a starmaker. Jane Russell was a hit in the
Hughes picture of the Outlaw. It was frowned on because
of Russell's famous cleavage. Hughes dubbed Gene Harlow the Platinum
(02:25):
Blunde and catapulted her to fame in a film called
Hell's Angels.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
He was also eccentric as hell, a notorious germaphobe, suffering
from extreme OCD. It's said that he only cut his
nails and hair once a year.
Speaker 5 (02:38):
He was interested in making some investments in Nicaragua, and
of course the Samosas were thrilled with this. They felt
they had hooked a really big fish. He might have
even wanted to buy the hotel. He said he wanted
to buy the National Airline. But he was in the
hotel on that terrible night in December of nineteen seventy
two when the earthquake happened.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
The Intercontinental is one of the few buildings left standing
after the earthquakes.
Speaker 5 (03:00):
So the whole city, of course exploded in fire and
rubble and dust.
Speaker 4 (03:04):
It turned out that Howard Hughes had.
Speaker 5 (03:06):
This tremendous phobia about germs, and that's why they had
to steal off these floors.
Speaker 4 (03:12):
For him and had special ways to purify the air.
Suddenly he's surrounded by germs and smoke. He immediately fled
the country and never came back.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
After the earthquake, the hotel was suddenly everything everywhere all
at once.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
Yeah, I said it.
Speaker 5 (03:27):
Many countries have find themselves in civil conflicts and draw
a lot of journalists, develop a kind of a place
where the journalists hang out, and that tends to be
the place where other people hang out, like intelligence agents
and arms dealers and politicians. In a smaller country, it's
more likely that they'll be just one such place in
(03:49):
Managua as the war they are exploded. That place was
the Intercontinental Hotel. The lobby of the Intercontinental Hotel, and
the breakfast room and the other salons down there on
the first floor were alive all the time. There were
a thousand stories unfolding right in that lobby. That's where
you trade rumors with other journalists. Over lunch. You could
(04:13):
find Basque gorillas and gorillas from El Salvadora plotting strategy.
Speaker 4 (04:18):
There were diplomatic receptions there at night.
Speaker 5 (04:20):
There were all sorts of adventurers in that place, some Nicaraguan,
but many from the outside, and everybody who arrived in
Nicaragua for the first time would always go there. It
really didn't take long before you were immersed in the
whole story.
Speaker 4 (04:34):
The guests there were such a variety.
Speaker 5 (04:37):
You had world leaders like Jimmy Carter, who I spent
an hour with you had assassins.
Speaker 4 (04:43):
There were movie stars, there were athletes.
Speaker 5 (04:46):
Every star who came there came to the Intercontinental. It's
where I met Susan Sarandon and Bianca Jagger. It was
really at the center of national life. Then, of course,
it played a role in the national politics of that era,
the very turbulent period in the late seventies and early
eighties when there was a revolution, government changed, and since
the Intercontinental was the center of everything, it was right
(05:08):
at the middle of all these changes. One guy tried
to assassinate Somosa.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
In his New York Times article, Kinzer writes, a flamboyant
rebel named Fernando Chimorro Rapaccioli quietly checked into rooms seven sixteen,
closed the door behind him, and began assembling a mortar.
He had selected a room that overlooked the military headquarters
of President Anastasio Simosa, hoping to assassinate him by firing
a rocket into his office. Soldiers immediately converged on the hotel.
(05:39):
As employees dived for cover, the soldiers sprayed the building
with gunfire for a full ten minutes. Samosa survived the attack,
but the handwriting was already on the wall.
Speaker 5 (05:49):
As the government of Somosa collapsed, many of the cabinet,
ministers and generals sent their families out of the country
and rather than live at home, since there was no
one there or anymore, they moved into the Intercontinental Hotel.
So essentially the entire power elite of Samosa, Nicaragua was
living in the Intercontinental Hotel in the first months of
(06:11):
nineteen seventy nine.
Speaker 4 (06:11):
Really, there were no staff there. It was open. We
had the run of the place.
Speaker 5 (06:15):
It was mostly journalists and Samosa government officials, so there
was nobody manning the front desk. There were no food,
there were no employees, nobody cleaned the rooms, but somehow
they kept the place open. At that time, the hotel
really reflected what was happening in the country as a whole.
Speaker 4 (06:31):
It was no authority, nobody was in charge.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
July nineteenth of seventy nine, Samosa flees Nicaragua and the
government falls A.
Speaker 4 (06:41):
Few days later.
Speaker 5 (06:42):
The Santanistas had won the revolution and they were in Monagua. Now,
if they're in Managua, what does that mean. It means
they're in the Intercontinental Hotel.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
They're all in the lobby and they said, now what
And one of them says, well, let's form a government.
Why dodn't it be nine? And Dante's each one the
head of something. Okay, So you're going to be the
head of interior ministry, you're going to be the head
of education, you're going to be And that's how they
(07:11):
did it, just like that, one afternoon. You're gonna be this,
You're gonna be Oh, you're gonna be the head of defense,
You're going to be the head of economics.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
It was a total clusterfuck. Steven Kinzer has one more
quick story to tell about the hotel, and this one
will last forever.
Speaker 4 (07:32):
I hadn't been in Nicaragua very long.
Speaker 5 (07:34):
I was in the lobby of the Intercontinental Hotel and
a lot of reporters are around.
Speaker 4 (07:39):
Somebody came along with a sign up sheet.
Speaker 5 (07:42):
If you wanted to get on a bus that was
going somewhere the next morning to go out and visit
someplace where something had happened, you had to sign up
and that sheet would be posted a little bit later.
So I was going to sign up and then this
the young, attractive, tall, very thin woman comes up to me, says,
put my name on it too. Can you just add
my name on the list when it comes out? And
I said sure. And then I turned to me. I said,
(08:03):
wait a minute, what is your name? And she said Cookie?
And I said Cookie. What she said, don't worry about
bad just put Cookie. Everybody's gonna know. So at that
moment began our long friendship.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
Years later, Kinser wrote this about Cookie's impact on the
news during the nineteen eighties and nineties. Cookie hood was
the driving force behind the most successful television coverage of
Central America that appeared anywhere in the United States. Things
are changing in Nicaragua, but they are also changing in
the US.
Speaker 7 (08:36):
Mister Chairman, mister Vice President, to be this convention, my
fellow citizens of this great nation, with a deep awareness
of the responsibility conferred by your trust, I accept your
nomination for the presidency of the United States.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
Ronald Reagan beats Jimmy Carter in the nineteen eighty election
and becomes the fortieth President of the United States. There's
a new sheriff in town, and he doesn't like the Sandinistas.
I asked Tulane Professor Justin Wolfe about the consequences of
this election to the future of Nicaragua.
Speaker 8 (09:18):
Ronald Reagan comes into power hardline anti communist American cowboy
vision right of a robust conservatism and a robust cold
war hawk. Very quickly, the Reagan administration is trying to
figure out how to oust the Santinista government, how to
frame this as a US Soviet proxy struggle and one
(09:42):
that we need to win. An opposition to the Saninistas emerges,
but the US sees them as groups to be unified,
to be trained, to be financed, and to be armed
to carry out a proxy war to overthrow the Saninistas.
This seems perfect for the Reagan minus, with people who
are willing to do the fighting. Freedom fighters as Reagan
(10:04):
would call them, or they're going to fight this communist
revolution in Nicaragua. But there is a deep ambivalence within
the United States. A lot of people think that this
is a quagmire that the US is going to get
caught in. They're not certain what the strategic value of
it is. They're not sure what we're going to get
out of it, or even if we could win, that
(10:27):
this could be another Vietnam.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
On December one, nineteen eighty one, President Ronald Reagan signs
a presidential finding which authorizes covert operations in Nicaragua. The
plan is to train and fund what is essentially a
terrorist group in Nicaragua known as the Contrasts. So it
begins a decade long obsession with a tiny Central American
country with an economy one fourth the size of Vermont.
(10:58):
When we last saw Cookie, she was standing in front
of CBS News producer Carla Ferrell.
Speaker 9 (11:04):
She says, you got the job.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
I need you to come in tomorrow and you're going
up north. I thought she was sending me to Miami.
So I come in the next day all dressed up
in pearls and heels, and she says, why are you
dressed that way? I said, well, you set up going
north and going to Miami, right. She goes, no, You're
going to the Jungles today with the camera crew by yourself.
(11:31):
And I could see the camera crew off to the
side and they're laughing. They're just enjoyed the shit about this.
I said, Okay, give me five minutes.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
I asked Carlo why she hired Cookie and what made
her special.
Speaker 10 (11:47):
Cookie was so sociable, so tenacious, she was just so
full of life. She had an amazing personality, gregarious, spicty
when she needed to be, diplomatic when she needed to
be She always had the personality, the kind that could
break through the camera. She was wonderful, whether it was
in social situations or in work situations, to help bring
(12:10):
people together. From the beginning. Impressed me as someone who
would always work hard to get things done.
Speaker 9 (12:17):
Thank goodness.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
I had a change of clothes put on the tennis
shoes to jeans, and everything was introduced to the Mexican
Cammebra crew, him and Roberto. Of course they're looking at
me also like does she know what she's doing? But
at the same time, she really is pretty. You know,
this could be fun. Carla said goodbye, and we went
downstairs and blowed it up into the jeep. They're assuming
(12:42):
that I know what I'm doing. They are assuming that
I'm a journalist, and I wasn't. I was being thrown
into the colosseum to the lions.
Speaker 9 (12:51):
I had not a clue.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
Did you get any instruction from Carla what you were
looking for or anything?
Speaker 9 (12:56):
None?
Speaker 2 (12:57):
Carla thought I was a journalist too. Job was you're
a fixer. We need you to translate, We need you,
you know, to help the crews whenever they need to
be helped.
Speaker 9 (13:07):
That was it. Bye.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
So Cookie is hired as a fixer and interpreter for
CBS News. War is Hell. Cookie is about to find
out what it really looks like. We'll be right back,
(13:33):
Welcome back. Cookie sets off on her next great adventure
working for CBS freaking News. She has no idea what
she's doing, but how hard can it be? At least
she's not running from the dea with a couple of
tons of cocaine. Reality is about to punch her in
(13:53):
the face.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
As we're driving to the Jungles to look for the war.
We're getting to know each other and they're liking me
and I'm liking them. We could see that it was
going to work between us, the three of us. So
I'm asking questions. They're telling me, this is what we're
gonna do.
Speaker 9 (14:15):
We're gonna go here.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
At that point, you know, we need you to help
us with the equipment, and I'm like, no sweat, I
can carry my own weight.
Speaker 9 (14:23):
I Am not going to be a burden to you guys.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
But obviously I'm going on this great adventure, which I
think is if I'm great adventure, I have literally no
idea what I'm getting into. So we proceed to drive
and drive and drive.
Speaker 9 (14:39):
And we're getting deeper into the jungle.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
I'm being told, you know, Cookie, sometimes it's not so
easy for us to find what we're looking for.
Speaker 9 (14:47):
We've actually called this war the ever elusive war.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
We can hear it, we just have a hard time
finding it. And I said, hey, no sweat, we'll find it.
As we we got in deeper and deeper, the camera
crew got less funny, less upbeat. They got very serious,
and you know, they said, these are certain things that
you're gonna have to know.
Speaker 9 (15:11):
We tell you to be quiet. Be quiet when we
tell you to.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
Hit the ground, hit the ground, win in doubt, just
do what we do.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
So hit the ground, meaning in case you're getting shot at,
in case there's danger, in case we.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
Run into the enemy. Whatever we do, you do it.
Whatever we whisper it to you to do, you do it.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
Did they give you any positive Does your mind start
racing about what you're getting into?
Speaker 2 (15:37):
Well, I'm still thinking, great adventure, How hard can this be?
I can follow instructions. I still really didn't have a clue.
Even if I would have been told you're going into
a war. You're going to see dead people. Even if
I had been told that, it's one thing to be
told it, it's another thing to actually see it and
(15:59):
live through it.
Speaker 9 (16:00):
And that happened, And that's what happened.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
We could hear some fighting, we could hear weapons, we
could hear shots, but we.
Speaker 9 (16:10):
Knew that it was far away.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
At one point we got out of the g to
cover some ground see what we could find. I know
what gunfire sounds like, but what struck me is I
kept hearing yelling like one side yelling to the other side.
Come get me, you son of a bitch. No, you
come get me, you son of a bitch. Oi in
(16:35):
abuta Benita Paraka to mother day Benita off Paraka.
Speaker 9 (16:40):
You come here, No fuck your mother, you come here.
You know, trash talk, and.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
It all sounded the same, same accent, same lingo, same
street talk. And that's when I first started to realize, Wait,
this is a civil war.
Speaker 9 (16:56):
This is brother fighting brother.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
Fire stops, there's an eerie quiet. Cookie and her crew
make their way toward the battle scene.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
All of a sudden, we could see ahead of us
what looked like a big pile of something.
Speaker 9 (17:15):
I didn't know what it was. Obviously.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
I think the crew knew what it was. They were
very seasoned war journalists. It was a pile of dead bodies.
I've seen dead people before, but not like that. I
was not prepared for that. It was at that moment
I started to lose a little of my faith.
Speaker 3 (17:39):
Describe what you saw.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
Men, women, children, all in a pile. Looked like civilians
to me, I didn't see soldiers. The emotions just like, fuck,
what have I gotten myself into here? The Mexicans at
that point said to me when they saw that, I
was kind of shocked at what I was seeing. This
(18:04):
is your first but it's not going to be your
last time seeing what you're seeing right now.
Speaker 9 (18:09):
And honestly, this is nothing.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
Compared to what you're going to see in the future
if you last with us, if you stay with us,
So get ready because this is what it's all about.
This really is war, This really is dead people, this
really is massacres.
Speaker 9 (18:32):
Am I going to be able to pull this off? Fuck? Yeah,
I could pull this.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
Off for Cookie. It was first blood, but it wouldn't
be the last. Back in the CBS office, there was
another kind of war.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
So I was hired to sort of be a grunt
because the guy that was running the office, his name
was Martin Barretto, was a nice guy. I grew up
with him. He was part of the Oligark families. But
he didn't like to get his hands dirty, and so
he would have all these little minions to do all
his dirty work, you know, the drivers, the fixers, which
(19:14):
was what I became.
Speaker 9 (19:15):
And then he wanted me to go with the camera.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
Crews, with or without a correspondent and just go and
get material for stories. Martine was a very disagreeable person.
You could be on good terms with the correspondents and
the producers, but if the crews and the drivers dislike you,
you've got a problem because those are the people that
(19:39):
are going to get you the story.
Speaker 9 (19:40):
And if they don't like you, then you're up shit's creek.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
You've got nothing to offer the correspondent or the producer.
Speaker 9 (19:47):
Or the editor.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
Well when did it change?
Speaker 9 (19:50):
Larry Doyle comes to town.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
He was the gentleman that we spoke about at the
party who offered.
Speaker 9 (19:57):
Me the job.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
We went out into the boon docs and you know,
we just got along famously. I remember that we stopped
in some you know, shack to get something to eat.
Larry said, well, what's on the menu, and there was
no menu. The lady said, it's a roscomboyo chicken and rice.
Next thing, you know, we hear the chicken being killed,
(20:21):
you know, and plucked and to make the lunch. And
then the jukebox wasn't working, and so I went to
it and I kicked it. Larry Doyle screams out, you
are my kind of broad. I was right in bringing
you in. He hated the guy that was running the
CBS office because that guy did like to get his
hands dirty or go out or do anything. He just
(20:44):
kept saying, you should be running this office, you should
be doing this.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
Larry Doyle was a force of nature and he always
got what he wanted.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
Martine was becoming less interested in getting the job done,
more interested in entertaining and you know, partying in a
different way than I partied.
Speaker 3 (21:05):
So everybody's pitching about Martine.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
Yeah, well, bitching or complaining or just making an observation,
because not everybody had a problem with him. They wanted
more of Cookie and less of Martine. Sure we could
have Cookie out in the jungle, but we also want
to deal with Cookie directly in the offices at the
Inner Collin and Larry was also behind my back and
(21:33):
obviously behind Martine's back, was making sure that Martine was
on his way out. And when he started to get
paranoid and jealous, things got worse. At one point he
called somebody either in New York or Miami and said,
it's me or her. We can't both work in this office.
(21:54):
And unfortunately they chose me and he was out. And
so Larry's says, you're going to be the one running
the show here. So he got rid of our team
quick and put me in charge. Now, everyone assumed that
I was a journalist. To this day, there are former
colleagues that still think I studied journalism. I didn't know
(22:16):
anything about journalism, but I was a fast learner, and
having a mentor like Larry Doyle who taught me everything everything,
And then the mere fact that I would get my
hands dirty and go with the crews and I was
a grunt like them and go into the jungles and
rough it.
Speaker 9 (22:36):
I learned from them too.
Speaker 3 (22:38):
Well, let's talk a little bit about Larry. Now.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
From what I understand, Larry had quite a colorful career already.
Speaker 3 (22:44):
He had been in Vietnam.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
Yes, and he had made quite a name for himself
as a war correspondent.
Speaker 2 (22:49):
Yes, and he was the epitome of a war correspondent.
He didn't know the word danger. He just plowed through
anything with anybody.
Speaker 3 (23:02):
You didn't give a shit about the rules.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
Nothing, And CBS knew that he was breaking rules, but
they didn't care because he always brought home the story.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
In researching Larry, he gets fired all the time, all
the time, but they'd always bring him back and always ask.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
For him to come back because he was the epitome
of a war correspondent.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
So would you say that he taught you what?
Speaker 3 (23:28):
You know?
Speaker 9 (23:28):
He took me under his wing.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
He would not do a story unless I was right
there with him, and Larry was one of many that
would not go to cover any story unless I was
with them.
Speaker 9 (23:41):
He taught me everything, he knew everything.
Speaker 2 (23:45):
Being a woman at that time, especially being a war correspondent,
you had to be one of the guys. You couldn't
be frail, you couldn't be a chick. You just had
to be one of the guys. And that didn't just
mean carrying your own weight, being able to carry the
equipment it meant hiking up through jungles, hiking up mountains
(24:06):
just meant being one.
Speaker 9 (24:07):
Of the guys.
Speaker 3 (24:08):
Was there sexual harassment.
Speaker 2 (24:10):
I'm gonna say yes to that, but at the time
I didn't know that that's what that was.
Speaker 9 (24:14):
I grew up with five brothers.
Speaker 3 (24:16):
I was always you were harassed your whole life.
Speaker 2 (24:19):
I was harassed my whole life. And I was always
more of a guy than a girl.
Speaker 9 (24:23):
You know.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
I was a tomboy and that comes, you know, from
my father dynamic. I always had to prove that I
could do anything as well as or better than any man.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
Were you intimidating to some of these guys.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
Oh oh yes, oh yes, and on any level, not
just as a correspondent, but as a female. Yes, I
was quite overwhelming. But I've always been that way, so
it wasn't anything new for me. It was something brand
new for humble soldiers that have never experienced strong women.
Speaker 9 (24:59):
I remember going.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
Through roadblocks getting out of the jeep wearing a little
wife beater T shirt, no bra walkmen, being stopped by
the soldiers and they'd say, you can't go past this roadblock,
and I would bullshit my way, saying, oh, I've got
orders from the Minister of Interior, and you don't want
to call him because if you call him, you're gonna
(25:22):
get in trouble.
Speaker 9 (25:23):
You might as well just let me through.
Speaker 2 (25:25):
And you know what, here you hold on to my walkman,
here's some American cigarettes.
Speaker 9 (25:30):
Will be back.
Speaker 2 (25:31):
I could get in and out of any roadblock. Larry
loved that. Larry loved it. He would just sit back
and laugh. He would let me do all the work.
He didn't have to do all the work anymore.
Speaker 3 (25:46):
Yeah, yeah, wow, man, amazing.
Speaker 9 (25:49):
It was fun.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
Okay, so this is happening, and you see your star
rising in terms of getting in on the stories, people
wanting to work with you. You right, demanding de Manning to
work with you. When does it change from that to hey,
I'm running this show now?
Speaker 2 (26:06):
Fairly quickly, within a year, I had camera crews that
the only way they would come is if I was there.
There would always be a camera crew in residence, different ones,
but they would come and stay for six weeks, two months.
Speaker 9 (26:19):
Then they'd rotate them. But none of these crews wanted
to come in unless.
Speaker 1 (26:23):
I was there because if you weren't there, who would
they go with? Exactly Cookie was in charge. Now if
they only knew who was running the news in Nicaragua.
But her future would be shaped by two very important stories,
one a tragedy and one a triumph.
Speaker 3 (26:48):
We'll be right.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
Back, Welcome back. Cookie may be in charge, but this
job is about to get a lot harder. Just another
(27:10):
day looking for the ever elusive war. This time she's
going to find it, and something terrible has happened.
Speaker 3 (27:25):
Where are you?
Speaker 9 (27:26):
Deep in the jungles of Nicaragua, in the middle.
Speaker 1 (27:29):
Of nowhere, a little farming town.
Speaker 9 (27:31):
Or no, not even a town. You wouldn't even call
it a village. It was that remote.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
No paved streets, all dirt roads, shacks, shanties.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
You just rolled into the aftermath of a horrible crime.
Speaker 3 (27:47):
What did you see?
Speaker 2 (27:49):
Well, I saw dead civilians, some dead soldiers, but a
lot of civilians, children massacred, women massacred like that famous
bat Vietnam.
Speaker 11 (28:00):
Melai Asafia Themese official. The military chief of Kueng Nai
Province today denied charges that American soldiers on the ground
executed several hundred villagers in March of nineteen sixty eight.
The province chief said the civilians died in air and
artillery strikes. That leveled the village after a number of
Americans had been killed there by Vietcong snipers. The villager's
(28:24):
version of the incident was given by survivors yesterday. They said,
a patrol of one hundred Americans stormed into the hamlet,
drove all the residents out of their huts, then opened
fire with automatic weapons. Two American soldiers, one an officer,
the other an enlisted man, are being held in this
country in connection with the case, but neither has been
brought to trial.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
It was one of the darkest days of the Vietnam War.
More than five hundred unarmed civilians were killed, some were
raped and mutilated. Twenty six soldiers were charged, but only
thee tenant, William Cally Junior, was convicted. He was sentenced
to life in prison, but spent only three and a
(29:06):
half years under house arrest. His sentence was commuted by
President Nixon. The story prompted worldwide outrage, especially in America,
and caused the tide of popular opinion to turn against
an already unpopular war. Back in Nicaragua, Cookie faces the
consequences of another unnecessary American intervention.
Speaker 2 (29:28):
People that didn't deserve to die or had nothing to
do with it.
Speaker 9 (29:33):
They were just all killed.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
The concures were ruthless though, even though some were Nicaragua
and some were from Honduras, they were trained by the CIA.
Speaker 9 (29:43):
CIA. Don't play.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
The women are wailing, their children have been killed, their
husbands have been killed. I'm told, go record them wailing
and crying. Wait, how can I just start filming and
recording these women wailing without first comforting them?
Speaker 9 (30:06):
So I put down the microphone.
Speaker 2 (30:08):
I'd comfort them a little bit, you know, hog them
it's going to be okay, and then ask them permission,
can I record you?
Speaker 3 (30:17):
So you basically just cried with them.
Speaker 2 (30:19):
I didn't cry, but I comforted them. Obviously, I was
crying and dying on the inside.
Speaker 1 (30:26):
The story played on the CBS Evening News with Dan Rather.
Speaker 12 (30:30):
David Dick in Nicaragua reports tonight on a tragedy of war,
a massacre yesterday that has changed one village forever.
Speaker 13 (30:37):
Some of the bodies from the massacre began arriving here
early this morning. In Hinotega, about one hundred miles south
of the Honduran border, a mother grieved for her seventeen
year old son. She said he was the only one
of her children who had not left her, but now
he was gone. A young woman nineteen years old lost
her husband. He was also nineteen. She is pregnant. Her
(30:57):
child will be born in December. She said, this is
all I have left of him.
Speaker 2 (31:02):
As a journalist, you're supposed to remain neutral. You're supposed
to be objective. You're not supposed to integrate yourself into
the story. And I remember being pulled aside several times,
not just on that trip, but throughout my first years
of my career.
Speaker 9 (31:18):
You cannot do that. You have to be objective. And
I said, look, the moment I can't.
Speaker 2 (31:24):
Feel the story, feel emotional about the story, or help
these people.
Speaker 9 (31:29):
I'm out.
Speaker 2 (31:30):
So CBS didn't want to lose me, so they'd give
me a little rope, and then that little bit of
rope became more rope and more rope, and finally they
knew my methods. My stories were always exclusives. They always
got on the air, whereas the other networks they wouldn't
(31:52):
get exclusives. Their stories may not lead on the evening news,
but mine always did.
Speaker 1 (31:59):
When you saw this and you had this experience, did
that change you, Did that make you look at the
world differently.
Speaker 2 (32:06):
I just rolled with the punches I've always throughout that
whole career of mine. I just was rolling with it
because I knew that the moment I no longer felt anything,
and that I could.
Speaker 9 (32:19):
Just cover a story, just get the story, go in and.
Speaker 2 (32:22):
Go out, then I knew it would be over for
me as a human being. So the fact that I
was feeling for these people and that the emotions were coming,
I was dying on the inside and knowing that my
own country.
Speaker 1 (32:37):
Was doing this and this is one place, one place,
God knows what's going on.
Speaker 2 (32:44):
And my Nicaraguan side felt for these people, and then
my US side is so angry.
Speaker 9 (32:51):
I'm a part of that.
Speaker 2 (32:52):
And the one thing about the Nicaraguans, the poor, the humble,
the ones that were the victims of war, never held
it against us that we were American. Obviously because I'm
speaking Spanish like they do, they think I'm one of them.
But I'm with camera crews that are Americans, I'm speaking English.
(33:13):
They never once held it against us. Oh, your country's
the one that's do it.
Speaker 9 (33:21):
Never.
Speaker 3 (33:22):
That says a lot about the people.
Speaker 9 (33:23):
Never. Never.
Speaker 2 (33:26):
They would feed us if we were hungry, they would
give us something to drink from their meager shacks. If
we were thirsty, they would give us their.
Speaker 9 (33:35):
Bed that was on a floor.
Speaker 2 (33:38):
The spirit was just overpowering, overwhelming to me. What I
did come to realize, no matter where war is in
the world, no matter where war is in history, the
people that get fucked, or the poor people, whether it
be because they're victims or they're massacred, or because they're
(34:01):
sent to the front line, they're always the ones that
get fucked.
Speaker 1 (34:09):
As the Contra war gathers momentum, the US gets deeper
and deeper into the quagmire of Central America. But so
are the Russians sending advisors, arms, and economic support. The
Sandinistas deny it. But Cooking and the journalists covering the
war or looking for the smoking gun, tell me about
that first big scoop.
Speaker 2 (34:31):
Well, we did a lot of little stories, things that
we weren't expecting to find. But then there came some
rumors that the Sandinistas were getting help from the Russians,
from the Cubans, from a rand from anybody that the
US didn't like.
Speaker 1 (34:49):
From what I read, the Nicaragua was really locked down.
So if they didn't want you to see something it
was very hard to see.
Speaker 3 (34:55):
It is that true?
Speaker 9 (34:56):
That is correct.
Speaker 2 (34:57):
For instance, we'd heard that they were possibly some Russian
ships at the port of Corinto. I remember myself, the
crew and maybe some other journalists driving to Corinto to
see what was going on, because we had also heard
about possibly these ports having been mined by the US,
(35:20):
which is pretty much against the Geneva Convention you can't
put mines in foreign ports.
Speaker 1 (35:27):
According to The Washington Post, the CIA played a direct
role in the laying of underwater mines in Nicaraguan ports,
damaging at least eight ships. The CIA did this without
the approval of Congressional intelligence committees, as the law required,
eventually leading to Congress cutting off funding for the contrast.
Speaker 2 (35:45):
That sort of sets up the story. And I remember
we tried to get to the port and we weren't
allowed even within a mile of it.
Speaker 9 (35:54):
People are being turned back.
Speaker 2 (35:56):
One of the few times I couldn't talk myself into
getting through.
Speaker 9 (36:00):
Nicaragua had journalists from.
Speaker 2 (36:03):
All over the world, not just regular journalists like myself
and networks and you know, ap UPI and photographers, but
also there were journalists from countries that were mortal enemies
of the us. The camaraderie between all journalists, no matter
(36:23):
where they were from, was the same. We're all in
this together. So I had become friends with some Cuban
nationals from the island, which is different from Cuban Americans
from Miami. This one particular guy and I we really
kind of hit it off. We started to see each
other here and there, and I was sort of kind
(36:43):
of done with him, and then one day he comes
up to me at a press conference in the city
and says, you know, I've got something that you know
you may be interested in, and I'm like, what is it?
He says, I'm just going to give you this tape.
Don't look at it here, don't open it here. It's
something that you've been looking for. And so I put
(37:04):
it away, didn't give it a second thought, got back
to the hotel a few hours later and we opened
it up, and it's video of a Russian ship at
the Port of Corinto that myself and many other journalists
had been warning.
Speaker 9 (37:18):
To get proof of.
Speaker 2 (37:19):
Showed it to Carla, who was in town at that
particular time, and I said, you're not going to believe this,
but I've got Cuban TV footage of the proof that
there's a Russian ship in port, and she couldn't believe it,
and the crew couldn't believe it, So sure enough we
put it in and there it was.
Speaker 1 (37:39):
The story played on the CBS evening News that very night.
Speaker 12 (37:42):
A US naval battlegroup headed by the carrier Ranger has
been maneuvering off Nicaragua's west coast for fourteen days. This
had been officially described repeatedly as routine exercises. Today, the
Pentagon confirmed a warship confrontation with the Soviet Crater. One
of the destroyers escorting the Ranger Ute questioned the Russian
cargo ship in international waters, then followed it to Nicaragua's
(38:05):
twelve mile territorial limit.
Speaker 14 (38:07):
The Alexander Uljanov, shown passing through the Panama Canal last
week on its way to Nicaragua, has been the object
of much attention since President Reagan said it was carrying
helicopters and other military equipment. Coarnto is this country's major
port city. These scenes from the purchased videotape show East
German and Soviet vessels at the main pier. Again, only
(38:27):
non military cargo was seen, despite the denials. It's clear
the Nicaraguan army has lots of Soviet military hardware.
Speaker 3 (38:35):
How it gets here is less clear.
Speaker 14 (38:37):
Richard Wagner, CBS News, Managua.
Speaker 1 (38:40):
The Nicaraguan government denied it, of course, but for the
first time the US had proof that the Russians were
supporting the Sandinistas. It was huge. The Managua CBS office
received a telex the next day. It read clean Kill, Congratulations,
thanks courage, signed by SEB News icon Dan Rather.
Speaker 9 (39:03):
That was very satisfying and.
Speaker 3 (39:06):
What did it tell you about yourself?
Speaker 2 (39:08):
What I felt initially was I hope nobody thinks I
got this story because I slept with the guy.
Speaker 9 (39:15):
That's not what happened.
Speaker 3 (39:16):
But you did sleep with him.
Speaker 9 (39:17):
But I did sleep.
Speaker 2 (39:18):
With him, But I never dreamed that he was going
to throw this in my laugh. And I think he
kind of threw it in my lap because I had
kind of, you know, dumped it. It was one of
my first major scoops. And then, of course the Dan
Rather congratulatory telex was just icing.
Speaker 9 (39:37):
On the cave. I knew at that moment that I
had made It's.
Speaker 1 (39:41):
Kind of a validation of the relationships that you.
Speaker 2 (39:45):
Create and that even though I wasn't quite sure if
I was a journalist, everyone else around me was damn
sure that I was.
Speaker 1 (39:56):
So Cookie finds a smoking gun an esta a bona fides,
But in war sometimes that gun is shooting at you.
Next time on Journalista.
Speaker 2 (40:09):
All I know is that we were up in the air.
I heard three somethings. I looked at one soldier and
I said, that's not a.
Speaker 9 (40:17):
Good sound, is it? And he went white and he said, no,
We're going down. What do you mean We're going down?
Speaker 1 (40:30):
The Journalista podcast features the stories and voice of Cookie Hood.
Narrated by Steven Esteb, Produced by Sean J.
Speaker 3 (40:38):
Donnelly.
Speaker 1 (40:39):
Executive producers Jason Wagensback, Roy Laughlin and Ellen k iHeart.
Executive producer Tyler Klang. Written and edited by Steven Esteb.
Music by Jay Weigel, Associate producer in sound design Steven Tanti,
Sound mixing by Jesse Solan Snyder. Special guest Stephen Kinzer
(40:59):
Tulain history Professor Justin Wolfe, Carla Ferrell. Special thanks to
Esplanade Studios, The Ranch Studios, Jason Gerwitz, Kyle Frederick, Zach Slaff.
This is a production of Journalista Podcast LLC and iHeartRadio,
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