Iran Contra: A New Introduction from Leon Neyfakh

Host Leon Neyfakh transports listeners into the day-to-day reality of our country’s most pivotal historical events, bringing to life the forgotten twists and turns of the past while shedding light on the present. Fiasco: Iran-Contra tells the story of a secret war, a secret deal, and a foreign policy scandal that threatened to destroy Ronald Reagan’s presidency — until it didn’t.

For a list of books, documentaries and resources we used to research this season visit: bit.ly/fiascopolitics

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:16):
Pushkin. Hey everyone, it's Leon Nafok. Before we get into
the show, I wanted to say a few introductory words
about the Iran Contra scandal and about this season of Fiasco,
which originally came out five years ago. It was February

(00:36):
of twenty twenty, the final year of the first Trump administration.
It was also right before COVID hit, and once it did,
I remember thinking that the events of Iran Contra felt
a little remote the Cold War, Ronald Reagan, the Ayatola
Homani in the midst of a pandemic. It felt like

(00:57):
a dispatch from a different universe, and it just didn't
hit the same as say, a podcast about Watergate released
of the height of the Mower investigation. I hadn't read
listen to this season since we turned it in, and
when I started working with Pushkin on this new edition,
I was a little nervous to revisit it. But then

(01:18):
I did, and to my surprise, what I heard made
so much more sense to me in twenty twenty five
than it did the first time around. Now, if you've
listened to any of my other history podcasts, you know
I don't like to lay it on super thick when
it comes to pointing out the echoes between then and now.
It's usually unnecessary, at least if you're doing it right.

(01:39):
But after going back and listening to these eight episodes
earlier this year, I was moved to try and sound
out what it is that makes this story feel so
deeply familiar in this moment. One thing is that the
events that make up Iran Contra moved both incredibly fast
and slow. The whole thing unfolded over the course of

(02:01):
more than a decade. It wasn't fully put to bed
until nineteen ninety three, a long time, but I think
you'll agree as you make your way through this season
that the daisy chain of cause and effect that got
the Reagan administration from point A to point B involved
a lot of quick cuts. It was one thing after another.

(02:21):
It was hard to keep up. Even people who lived
through it are often fuzzy on the details. If you're
one of those people, or if you're younger and you've
heard of Iran Contra but you've never really known who
did what and why, this is the podcast for you.
At the same time, I think there's a lot here
for the history junkies too, in part because we interviewed

(02:42):
so many of the actual people who hatched the Iran
Contra plot and carried it out. John Poindexter, Bud McFarlane,
Richard Secord, George Schultz, all of whom except Poindexter died
in the years since we spoke to them. All those
names will mean something to you soon if they don't already.
And I will warn you there are a lot of

(03:03):
names in this one, and a lot of different countries
and several government agencies with three letter acronyms. I'll just
say you don't have to remember every name. There's no
other way to put this as a story. Iran Contra
is kind of a bitch. In fact, we made a
whole episode, it's the one called Ollywood, about the rush
to try and make a movie out of the scandal

(03:25):
after it first broke. The problem was no one could
really explain the scandal simply enough for audiences to follow it,
which is why there was no all the President's men
about Iran Contra. I don't mind telling you someone tried
to make a TV show out of this podcast, but
spoiler alert, it didn't make it past a couple pilot scripts.

(03:47):
Iran Contra was a relay race of ideas and money
turning into action at the hands of so many different
government officials, so many middlemen, so many random private citizens.
It's that last category of characters that really jumped out
at me when I re listened to this show. You
meet one right off the bat in episode one, Kevin,

(04:10):
a department store maintenance guy from Long Island who got
politically activated by the Cold War and kind of enlisted
himself along with a bunch of friends in the cause
of anti communism. Kevin Katke was just a guy that
he wanted to defend America and to be involved in
its foreign policy. And what's crazy is he got pretty far. Again.

(04:34):
I don't want to lay it on too thick, but
we're living through a time now when extremely motivated, politically
engaged eccentrics have had amazing success penetrating the halls of power.
I remember when this season first came out, even before COVID,
we struggled a little bit to articulate what it told
us about the moment we were living through. We thought

(04:55):
maybe it was an interesting corollary to Trump's Ukraine scandal
because they both involved let's say, foreign policy shenanigans and
the sale of weapons. But five years later we are
in a different moment. That Ukraine Scane, even though it
got Trump impeached, feels almost quaint. I think you'll agree

(05:15):
that Iran Contra doesn't. As you hear, the stakes were
unmistakably high, and the decisions being made had consequences around
the world more than anything. That's what makes Iran Contra
feel particularly resonant in twenty twenty five. It's a story
about a bunch of guys moving the levers of history

(05:36):
in a way that seems like it really shouldn't be allowed,
but apparently it is. Binge the entire season of Fiasco
Iran Contra ad free by subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Sign

(05:59):
up on the Fiasco show page on Apple Podcasts, or
at pushkin dot fm, slash Plus. Pushkin Plus subscribers can
access ad free episodes, full audiobooks exclude of Bing's and
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