Selects: Iran-Contra Affair: Shady in the 80s, Part 2

This is an iHeart podcast, Guaranteed Human. Hey, this is Hayes Davenport and Sean Clemence. We host the podcast, Hollywood Handbook. Each week we talk to someone in show business and try to help them with their careers and see what they have to offer us. Everyone has a good time and no one gets mad at their publicists for letting them do our show. We've had a lot of great guests like Sarah Sherman, Adam Scott, Danny McBride, Ben Stillert and a lot of other big shots that wouldn't be where they are without us. Listen to Hollywood Handbook on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. On the new podcast, Solita, we share the messy reality of traveling alone as a woman. I can wait four hours for the next bus or this random dude is offering me a ride on his motorcycle. I choose option B. I'm Julie Pignero and I travel by myself because it's a rare space where I can say yes without asking anyone else first. I'm on a mission to reclaim the word Solita, trading the pity for possibility. Listen to Solita on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Munga Shategatherer and I'm back with a new season on my podcast Skyline Drive. This time I talk to scientists, biopunks, cormugins, blues owners, super seniors and go us top cryotherapy lab to try to understand this obsession with living forever and what it means for all of us. And I get into a bit of trouble along the way. I'd say probably start bone smashing but it doesn't work make you look more defined. They say it works. I don't know. Listen to Skyline Drive, how to live forever on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay everyone buckle up for the thrilling conclusion of a Ron Contra Shady in the 80s, part 2. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey and welcome to the podcast, I'm Josh Clark, there's Charles to be Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry over there and this is Stuff You Should Know, a Ron Contra part 2 starting now. Go. Maybe we should do a quick catch up. Oh okay. Well we're still going. You looked like it just went to sleep, no it's true. So what's going on here is the United States is, Congress has decided that we cannot fund the Contras to fight the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, shut off funding. So the Reagan administration makes a deep covert push to continue doing so through a bunch of fun and shady ways. Right. They're fundraising, they're directly arming the Contras, they're training them, doing all sorts of crazy stuff. Yes, but if you know that this is about Iran Contra and you're like, what about Iran? What's going on here? I haven't heard anything about Iran. Keep your socks on. Well here we go. This is where Iran enters the picture. Right. You can take your socks off. All right. Go. Are you your socks on? I've got a little footy socks. Yeah. I do too. Cool. It is too sweet. It's the way to go. Jerry has those true footies where you can't even see him at all. I can see him. Mine peek out just a little, which I'm not a huge fan of. Oh, check out mine. Yeah, no see him. No, see him. Okay. Enter Iran. We really, that was a great intro and it just went away. That's right. So on the other side of the world from Nicaragua, there was another foreign policy disaster simmering that Reagan head going and it was in the form of Iran. And specifically, it wasn't even in the form of Iran. It was in the form of a problem that America had. It doesn't really have much these days but definitely did in the 70s and 80s where Americans would be taken hostage around the world. But specifically almost exclusively by Lebanese terrorists who were, if not working on behalf of Iran, were definitely sponsored by Iran. And regardless of who was president, the fact that they were hostages being held by another country and there was anything we could do about it, that was a real blemish on the presidency. It was not a very proud thing to think about for America, but that was this reality for a while there. Yeah. So we ran at the time. This is the early 80s. This is just a few years removed from the Iranian Revolution of 1979. And this is where we've talked about it before. Go look up photos of Iran in the mid 70s, pre-revolution and it looks like London in the swinging 60s and 70s, very kind of hip-placed to be. Iranian revolution happens, fundamentalists take control of the government. There was previously the Shah of Iran who was friendly to the West, friendly to America generally and the Ayatollah Khomeini, Khomeini. I've always heard Khomeini installed Islamic theocracy and bad things started happening pretty quickly. Yeah. It was about as quick a turn about face politically and socially as you could imagine for a whole country. Yeah. But not everyone in the country as we'll learn, like the whole country didn't just change overnight. But the Islamic theocracy was in power very much so one of the things that happened was they were not very fond of America or Americans and the American embassy was famously stormed and 66 Americans working there were taken hostage and held for more than a year. Man, that was. This is stuff I really remember. Like 440 days or something. Yeah, 444 days. The Iranian hostage crisis, I remember this is a nine-year-old very clearly. Really? Oh yeah. I have no recollection of it. Yeah, it was a big deal. Yellow ribbons and it was on the news constantly. I remember entering the room and being like, what does this have to do with rainbow bright? Turn this news cast. I even remember, so what happened was Jimmy Carter did not get these hostage free during his, I was about to say rain, but not as sort of the opposite of Jimmy Carter was. That's what everybody thinks of during his administration, his iron-fisted rain. Days of terror. But within a few days, and that may have cost me election, but within a few days of or hours even of Reagan's inauguration, the hostages were freed. And I remember as a nine-year-old hearing kids parroting their parents' conversations, it was really Carter that had him freed, all the work he did up until then and then other kids saying, are you kidding me? As soon as Reagan got in office, they knew that they were toast and that Reagan wasn't going to be a patsy like Carter. And I was like, what's a patsy? Who are these dudes? No, but I remember very distinctly, it's weird, like, on the playground hearing the stuff. That's funny. Yeah, like a little nine-year-old. I definitely didn't hear this when I was a kid, but I remember hearing later on as a grown-up, still in a rainbow bright, that it was Reagan's campaign was somehow in touch with Iran. Yeah. And that they brokered this, it also got them to wait to release the hostages until after Reagan was in office. But the timing was not at all. Hours after his inauguration, there's no accident. It's a little fishy, you know what I mean? But whether it was, that's funny, I'm sure somebody's parents were like, yeah, it's because they were so scared of Reagan, they knew that they better release these guys. That's totally not the case because there were other hostages taken by other, by actual Lebanese terrorists who were probably sponsored by Iran and that were, they were held throughout Reagan's presidency. Yeah. And that's sort of a big part of this, the second half of the story was the fact that that was very embarrassing for Reagan. He didn't like hostages being held on his watch. But he had campaigned against negotiating with terrorists under any circumstances. So he's stuck now. Yeah. Because he's basically saying, if you get taken hostage, I mean, you're on your own, we'll use our rhetoric and whatever we can to influence you being released, but we're not going to negotiate for your release. Yeah. That's just the way it is. And that's a long-standing American policy. Right. And it makes sense because if you negotiate with terrorists, then that's just going to lead to more kidnappings because they know that you're open for business. Like anywhere in the world, there was a kidnapping of TWA flight 847, very, very famous one. You know the picture of like the pilot leaning out of the cops here and the guys in the picture with the gun behind them. That was 847. Right. And that was, I mean, that was, I remember that one, that was probably nine then. And that was just scary because they were flying all over the place. Yeah. No idea what was going to happen. People were being beaten on the plane when Navy guy was beaten and shot and throw his body thrown on the tarmac. Yeah. The 80s, like it seems comparatively tame now in a lot of ways compared to the things that used to go on. Tank McDonald's. Hi, Jackins and kidnappings and hostages. It's like the 80s were nuts. They were nuts. But Pac-Man. Right. You know. Pac-Man TV. Pac-Man. Rapp and Rodney. It was crazy. Right. Yeah. Yeah. No respect. What about the icky shuffle? That was a little crazy. Oh, was that 80s? Sure. Late 80s. I guess so. Okay. I got one for you. Okay. The bears. What was their thing? Oh, the Super Bowl shuffle. Super Bowl shuffle, right? Yeah. That was pretty 80s. I think they were. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 84. Yeah, we're putting, you know, my band every year plays, for sure, one gig at Decatur's porch vest. And every year we try to do a theme. And this year we're doing 80s sort of new wave and a jokingly suggested Pac-Man fever at the end of rap and Rodney. Are you guys going to do it? No, it's so enjoyable. Do you have a synth player playing with you? I bought Emily a keyboard and she's learning. Awesome. Yeah. She's going to be like, wait, hold on. That's cool, man. No, she's practicing. I've heard her do that. I mean, she played piano when she was a kid, so it's not the biggest stretch. I've heard that one, that her do that one blondie song. She just brought the house to her. Yeah, we might one way or another. Yes, we might bring that back because that's 80s. Yeah. Or was that 70s? It was so close on the cusp. I seriously doubt anybody's going to throw a beer can't answer for it. Anyway, porch vest, everyone. I'll publicize it in October. Nice. So, Reagan's hands are tied in every way possible because he can't negotiate with terrorists. The only option is to send in a covert Delta Force team, which they carter tried that and it didn't work. It didn't always work. You could lose your own men and I think that's what happened in Carter's case, right? Yeah, for sure. So, what he can do, though, without anyone knowing is totally negotiate with terrorists. Yeah, just as long as the American public does it, no, sure. Yeah. And that's what happened. And he followed that Reagan playbook where it's like, okay, I said this. Well, if I just change this one little part, right? It makes it all fine. That's right. Again, as long as the American public doesn't know. So, while Reagan said America will never negotiate with, with hostages, they didn't say Israel will never negotiate with terrorists for hostages, right? Yeah. So actually, Israel had a long standing policy of negotiating with terrorists. They would kidnap people from the other side. And then they'd be like, all right, I'll give you five guys. I've only got two. Let me kidnap a few people. Okay, now I have five. Like, there would be negotiations for hostages exchanges all the time between Israel and Palestine. Right. They would say they just knew what they were doing. So they said, okay, well, if Israel goes to Iran and says, hey, you know this American over there, why don't you get them released? We can help you out with some stuff. Well, you think about this. Yeah. So earlier, when I mentioned the fact that Iran, as whole cloth, did not change overnight as a country, the government did, but there were still some plenty of people there that were a little more moderate in their views. And the Reagan administration had a channel to them. Right. So he was talking to them, these more moderate factions and making a little headway. And they were like, by the way, will totally give you these hostages if you give us arms. Yeah, because Iran was fighting the Iran-Arrak war, at least half of it. Yeah. And this is just where stuff is just totally crazy because we were funding both sides. At the very least, we were advising both sides. Well, I mean, we directly gave money to Iraq. Oh, you're right. No, you're right. We sold them weapons and we provided training and intelligence. Right. And this was, this wasn't secret. This was like a real deal thing. We were publicly supporting Iraq, but then we were secretly arming Iran. Yeah. I think what they never proved beyond a doubt was that we went to Saddam Hussein and said, hey, why don't you go in there and overthrow Iran? Oh, really? Yeah. There was never, like we started it. I don't think that was ever, there was a lot of circumstantial evidence that that was the case, but never like the smoking gun that we actually encouraged Saddam Hussein to do so. Gotcha. But it's just man, when you look at how all this played out over the years, it's just maddening. Yeah. You know, yeah, it's a show. Yeah. So Iraq and Iran are fighting, we're supplying both playing both sides of the coin. Right. And we offered arms to Iran and who are you going to call? Israel. Not Ghostbusters. Oh, Gorbanafar. Well, you're going to call Ali North. Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah. I would have gotten there eventually. Yeah, because okay. So remember, all in north is this total novice when it comes to covert operations, but by that time, yeah, he's been running the Nicaragua up for years now. Yeah. Just doing a bang up job of it. So they're like, well, sure, we'll have him do this incredibly illegal, super sensitive arms sale to Iran too. Why don't you come on over here, Ali? And Ali said, well, okay, that's fine, but I need to go get the lay of the land. And he actually traveled to Iran with a fake passport under an assumed name. William P. Good was a knee. And when he went, it was, it was a dangerous enough that William Casey supposedly, Oliver North later testified, gave him cyanide pills so that he could take his own life rather to be tortured by the Iranians if this were, in fact, like some sort of setup. Again, right out of a movie. Yeah. But Oliver North went to Iran with cyanide pills and a fake passport. Yeah. Bealy good. Yeah. So everything went great though. It did. He didn't need the cyanide pills after all. He did not. He dealt with, like you mentioned early, this Iranian businessman name, Gorbana far. And this guy was 10 shades of shady so much so that the CA wouldn't even deal with them. No, they issued a burn notice on him in 1983, which is, I don't even know what that is. That means just he's dead to us. It's basically stay away. Okay. It's putting him on blast to all the other intelligence agencies in the world. Gotcha. Persona non-grata. Yeah. I won't even deal with this guy. And so all the North is like, I'll deal with this guy. All right. So with his help, Oliver North set up a deal where it is so simple to look at, like Israel, you give them your missiles and then we'll just replace those missiles for you with our missiles. Yep. So we're not given the missiles you are. And because no American explicitly said to Iran, hey, we're doing this so that you guys will get these hostages released. It wasn't an arms for hostages deal. And so Reagan's vowed to never negotiate with terrorists remained intact. That's right. 508 TOW toe missiles. What's that stand for? You launched optically tracked wireless guided missile, which is like it's like a the two launched, there's a tube and it can be like mounted on the ground, mounted on a Jeep. It's super portable, but they are they'll blow some stuff up. I think I've seen these. You have. So 508 of these made it from Israel to Iran. And then in very short order, a couple of days later, one of the hostages, Benjamin Weir minister, who was held by Lebanese terrorists for 16 months was released. So it worked. It did work. Because it was a big deal around the White House, too. But they said, let's try it again. But this time, it seemed a little messy to get Israel involved. Let's just do this ourselves. Ali, you think you can handle this? And he said, sure. Me and Gurbana for have this. So rather than Israel giving arms to Iran, Richard C. Cord got brought in just like with Nicaragua. And again, this isn't like years after Nicaragua. Nicaragua is at full bore in full swan. It's still going in. And all in north is running both operations simultaneously. And so the new setup was the Department of Defense would sell the CIA missiles for 3,700 bucks a pop. The CIA would sell them to Richard C. Cord at cost. And then C. Cord would sell them to Gurbana far for 10 grand a piece. And then Gurbana far would go sell them to Iran for whatever he charged. Iran. Oh, it can you imagine. I can't guarantee it was more than the 10 grand. Yeah. And this happened multiple times over the course of a little over a year. America secretly transferred 2,000 missiles and missile parts to Iran in eight shipments. Yeah, for the release of hostages. Yeah. Ultimately, there were three hostages that got released out of seven that had been taken hostage total. Yeah. And didn't you say ultimately there were three more hostages taken. So they netted out at zero at zero. Yeah. So, but that was that was the whole Iran operation. Yeah, but here's the deal. This price markup means that that shell company and those Swiss bank accounts were making a lot of money. And so much so that I think one of them had a three million dollars made an interest alone. Yeah. So at some point someone's like, Hey, this is a money making operation now. Why don't we tie a little bow on all this and use some of that money to fund the Contras because you guys are doing both of these things. And you need money. Congress won't give it to you. Forget the fundraising omelettes. Right. We'll just use the money from these illegal arm sales to fund the Contras. Yeah. And that's exactly what happened. So to put it in plain terms, America illegally and secretly sold missiles to Iran, use the proceeds from those missile sales to secretly and illegally fund the Contras to help them overthrow their government down in Nicaragua. That's what the Reagan administration did. That's right. That's why it's called Iran Contra. That's where they came together. There was a diversion of funds. Yeah. And the I think it was a by 1986 Congress finally got back on board because of this drum beat from Reagan over the years of how much we need to really do this officially. And keep in mind, Congress still didn't know any of this is going on secretly. Yeah. And then Congress said, All right, we'll give you a hundred million dollars to aid this cause. And Reagan said, How did you do? You would think that was the end of all stuff. It wasn't though. No. No. It still continued on, but now it was legitimized and had even better funding. But that was not the end of the whole thing. Like everybody didn't just get to walk ways. That was close. Because the whole thing started to come apart, actually. And I say that we take an ad break and come back and talk about it. Great. After this. Should know. All right. Hey, this is A's Davenport and Sean Clements. We host the podcast Hollywood Handbook on the big money players network. Our show is extremely accessible to first-time listeners. Each week, we talk to someone in show business, aka the biz, and try to help them with their careers and see what they have to offer us. We've had a lot of great guests like Sarah Sherman, not that great. Can you help me? Can you help me shape this? How about we flip it on his head? How about we flip this around? Okay. What is the surprise one, man? Actually, you think is the straight man is actually the one who's acting weird. Adam Scott. This entire time you've been expecting Adam Sandler to come to visit the show. I would never let go of that. I would never set expectations for something like that. If the universe allows for something like that to happen, I'm open to it. I'm always going to accept. You know, Danny McBride, fine. Yeah. It's all this fragile masculinity exuding. I could smell it walking on the hallway to be honest with you. I was like, "Is that what you need?" Nope. It's fragile masculinity. Ben Stiller, no. I think there's a lot of times out of context, people don't get it or even know what a circle is. You know what I mean? Like, you're like, "Oh, I got my life. I don't care about your life." And a lot of other big shots that wouldn't be where they are without us. Oh, and by the way, Will Ferrell told us personally he loves the show and he wants to be a guest on every episode, but he's just so busy. Listen to Hollywood Handbook on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. I choose option B. I'm Julie Beniero and I travel by myself because it's a rare space where I can say yes without asking anyone else first. Every time I try to be alone, I kept meeting people and they were like, "You smiled at us, not a lot of people smile around here." It's when you're alone that you're most receptive to the world as it is and not the lies you're sold about it. It can be a time where you push your limits, change your mind, or wake up to a new version of yourself. So whether you're a solo travel veteran or you're too nervous to book your first trip, I hope you listen to Solita on the iHurtRadio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Mungusha together and I'm back with a new season of the podcast Skyline Drive. This time I'm diving into a rabbit hole of peptides, organoids, blood boys, blue zones, and brain replacement to try to understand what this longevity obsession is all about and what it really means to live forever for all of us. I learned about some rad science. I can make a brain for you and then we can test what draw is the best for your brain, as opposed to his brain. Here's some hard truths. I would expect Indians to age faster but I did not expect it to be almost a four to five year acceleration and get myself into a world of trouble. I'd say probably start bone smashing. That doesn't work. Make you look more defined. They say it works. I don't know. Listen to Skyline Drive, how to live forever on the iHurtRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, Chuck. So 1986 Congress is back on board. I think it's worth pointing out that that's exactly four years after the Democrats took control of the House in 1982. So I wonder if the Republicans took control back in '86 and that's why the funding got turned back on to the Congress. We can solve this. I like to speculate instead. So this all might have, who knows if this ever would have even been found out, had it not been for the sharpshooting of a young Sandin Easton soldier named Jose Fernando Canalis Alman. In October 5, 1986, it was a cargo plane, a C-123 called the provider, flying 70 Soviet Kalishnikovs, 100,000 rounds of ammo, rocket grenades and other supplies. And this is one of those things where you said they would fly things over and kick them out the back of the plane. Sure. This is one of those runs. Yep, the problem with this particular run, though, is that they did this at 2,500 feet in broad daylight. They got a little lazy. Oh, it's a tad bit. Or maybe cocky. I don't even know if it's that. I think it was more like, this was just work. It was an everyday job by this time. They've been doing it for years. Yeah. You know, and the operation was just humming along so nicely that it was almost on autopilot. Yeah. So yeah, they did this one supply drop on October 5, 1986 in broad daylight. And there were four crew aboard, William J. Cooper, Wallace Buzz Sawyer, Freddie Viltjes, and a guy named Eugene Hassenfuss, who, and again, this sliding doors thing, Hassenfuss is the only guy who had a parachute. He borrowed it from his brother, a skydiver, because you know, he thought it might be smart to take a parachute. Right. No one else had parachutes. Had he not had a parachute, this man had turned out differently. It may have for sure. He was the only one that survived this plane crash because he was the only one who borrowed the parachute from his brother, and he jumped out, landed, made it safely into the jungle. And I think he actually survived and evaded the Sandinistas for maybe a day or something like that before he was captured. And when he was captured, they let him out of the jungle like with a rope around his neck just about as big of a prisoner, as you can imagine, super publicized. There were billboards of him being led around by Sandinistas, and they started asking him questions. And he was like, what do you want to know? He sang like a canary. He really did. He said, this is my tenth supply mission. I presume that the CIA is running this. I don't know. And he would know, this would be something that he would, he could legitimately guess at at least because he had actually worked on CIA air drops over Vietnam or Cambodia for Air America back in the Vietnam War. Yeah, but he wasn't like, he sings like a canary because he's not very high up on the totem pole. Like his job was to get up there and shove the stuff out of the back of the plane for three grand a month. Right. He wasn't even a CIA operator. He's just former Marine who had a background working with Air America years before. But by this time, by the time he joins on doing this for the Contras, he was like working as a construction worker part time and was constantly at home. So this was like pretty good money. I think he was getting seven grand in today's dollars a month for basically kicking AK47 crates out the back of a plane over Nicaragua. Yeah. So he's not the kind of guy that's going to take the fall for anyone. So he's he's singing like a canary, even if he had kept his mouth shut. It wouldn't have mattered. That's true. Right. Yeah, because all the other guys, including Hassan Fuss had their wallets on the plane. They had all their employee ID cards. And in fact, I don't think we mentioned an episode one. The company that was set up to do these drops was set up called Southern Air Transport out of I guess Miami. So they all had their Southern Air Transport ID cards, which was a CIA front like everybody knew Southern Air Transport was a CIA front. So they might as well have had like CIA junior badges or something. Right. Like Michael Keaton and out of sight when he has the big FBI t-shirt. I haven't seen that one. Oh, you haven't seen out of sight. No, is that the one where George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez? Is he a bad guy in it? No, he's a good guy that he walks in. He plays Ray Nicolette who played same character in Jackie Brown FBI guy. Okay. But it's funny because he walks in with an FBI t-shirt on and Dennis Farina is Jennifer Lopez's dad and he's a former cop and he goes, hey, Ray, let me ask you. You got one that says undercover. Dennis Farina man class that. How many? He got to see out of sight. That's classic. All right. I'll check it out. Like one of the better minutes. I mean, I know exactly the move you're talking about. Steven sort of avoided it like the plague. It's so good. Okay. You would love it. So Southern Air Transport, CIA front, there's also a log book that connected this flight and all the other flights. And then Hassenfuss in his wallet had a business card to Robert W. Owen. This is a big one. He was working with Oliver North in Washington. Right. Which so they provided a direct line between Oliver North and some guys who were kicking Kalashnikovs out of the back of a plane. over Nicaragua. So that was a really big deal when this guy got captured and told the San Anistas as much as he knew because the San Anistas were like attention world. Listen to what we just found out. The CIA has totally been funding these country rebels who are trying to overthrow the sovereign government and we think you guys should know about it. Yeah, and it wasn't like you could totally discount that even though it was from the San Anastas like Congress and the American media were like, what? I'm sure Congress is like wait a minute. Right. This this reeks of like something that has been happening that we tried to shut down. Yeah, because remember, even if the CIA was briefing Congress, it was either Bill Casey or Dewey Clarege and they were doing a really obtuse job of this. Right. Keeping Congress at arm's link. So anytime something like this came out, almost none of Congress knew the full extent of this. And it was always in flagrant violation of whatever Congress wanted or whatever Congress had agreed to. Yeah. And this wasn't like this was sort of the straw that broke it all open or that broke the camel's back. Broke the camel's back wide open. That's correct. Poor camel. Things have been unraveling for a bit. There was a party in 1985 in Virginia thrown thrown by Soldier of Fortune magazine. Can you imagine? No. What's that party like? I don't want to know. I can't imagine. I used to read Soldier of Fortune when I was in my ninja training as like a ten year old boy. And even then I was like, this this magazine makes my stomach hurt. And it's in 1985. Like, can you imagine the amount of like blow being secretly done in the bathroom at that party? Sure. But also they were making snuff movies in the living room. And there's no telling what was going on in Soldier of Fortune. We can tell you at the very least there was a lot of boasting going on openly about this contra operation. And again, this is the time when people don't know about this stuff. Yeah, but you know what happens is like you get enough people and enough years and people start talking. People start bragging and all of a sudden you're you're you have a couple of gin and tonics at a soldier of fortune party. Sure. And you're like, hey, guess what? Somebody goes, what? Yeah. And you go, here it comes. Yeah. And they drop the, you know, they drop the bomb that what's been going on a concerned citizen. Here's this. I guess he must have been mistakenly invited to Soldier of Fortune. I don't know how that guy got invited. They just happened to talk to the wrong guy or whatever, but probably that. He was like, I am really fearful of my life for saying something about this. But I feel like somebody should know. So we went to a lawyer, a human rights lawyer named David she and he said, you go tell everybody, you put your life on the line. And he did. He submitted an affidavit to federal court, started doing interviews, talking to journalists, drumming up support White House was like, we don't know what you're talking about. You're a crazy man. Like this is all 100% made up. And finally, it took a Lebanese newspaper, Al Shira that reported on this deal, this arms for hostage deal, like in a legitimate newspaper. Right. So now both stories have been blown open. You've got Eugene Hassanfus captured and the contra operation is blown open. And now Al Shira is reporting on the Iran arms for hostage deal. And really crazily enough, these two separate arms of this one scandal came out within a month of each other. Yeah. Which is bizarre. But that's what happened. And now it was like, there's, it's on the table. America's media knows about it. Congress knows about it. Heads are about to roll. All right. We'll take our final break and we'll come back and talk about the aftermath of Iran contra. Well, now we're on the road driving in your truck. Why not learn a thing or two from Josh and Chuck and stuff you should know. All right. Our show is extremely accessible to first time listeners. Each week we talk to someone in show business aka the biz and try to help them with their careers and see what they have to offer us. We've had a lot of great guests like Sarah Sherman. Not that great. Can you help me? Okay. What is the surprise one then? Adam Scott. I have. If the universe allows for something like that to happen, I am open to it. I'm always going to accept, you know, Danny McBride, fine. Yeah. Saw this fragile masculinity exuding. I could smell it walking on the hallway to be honest with me. I was like, is that what you need? No, it's fragile masculinity. Ben Stiller. No. I think there's a lot of times out of context. People don't get it or even know what a circle is. Like girl, I go work just so stupid. Everyone soaked. And fake right fake and also not interested or just like, Oh, I've got my life. I don't care about your life. And a lot of other big shots that wouldn't be where they are without us. Oh, and by the way, Will Ferrell told us personally he loves the show and he wants to be a guest on every episode. But he's just so busy. Listen to Hollywood Handbook from I Heart Radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts on the new podcast Solita. We share the messy reality of traveling alone as a woman. I choose option B. I'm Julie Bignero and I travel by myself because it's a rare space where I can say yes without asking anyone else first. Every time I tried to be alone, I kept meeting people and they were like, You smiled at us. Not a lot of people smile around here. It's when you're alone that you're most receptive to the world as it is and not the lies you're sold about it. It can be a time where you push your limits, change your mind or wake up to a new version of yourself. So whether you're a solo travel veteran or you're too nervous to book your first trip, I hope you listen to Solita on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Mungus, you together and I'm back with a new season of the podcast Skyline Drive. This time I'm diving into a rabbit hole of peptides, organoids, blood boys, blue zones and brain replacement to try to understand what this longevity obsession is all about and what it really means to live forever for all of us. I can make a brain for you and then we can test what draw is the best for your brain as opposed to his brain. I don't want to make you look more defined. They say it works. I don't know. Listen to Skyline Drive, how to live forever on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, Chuck. You promised death to your math. Let's hear it. Everything is exposed. Oliver North was no longer in business doing his thing. No, he shut down shop real quick. He did, but not before very famously, he and his very 80s haired secretary, Fawn Hall. I forgot. I looked at Fawn Hall. I looked her up and as soon as I saw her, I was like right. Fawn Hall. You can forget that hair. She could barely walk through a door. No, it was ginormous for sure. It's so great. I would be fearful around a shredder of our hair. But she was not fearful at all. She and Oliver North spent a day. They call it a shredding party. I mean, we will never know the full truth behind this because of all the evidence that they shredded. As far as anyone knows, Oliver North decided on his own to shred every document he had on it. That's right. That's it. Now it's the official narrative that has been written into the history book, which you can just guarantee is not anywhere near the full story. Right. So it all comes out. The Reagan administration start looking around and they're like, well, who's going to be the patsy for this one? And Oliver North could not escape it. No. But they're like, he's small potatoes. He'll go down. Well, I think he was even willing to take the fall. Like he knew who's going to be the fall guy. I was like, okay, that's part of the job. Right. But they knew that it had the American public, and certainly Congress wasn't going to be satisfied with just Oliver North. Right. So who did they land on? So the official line became this point extra. And I guess McFarland would have started it became. fully aware of just how badly Reagan wanted to help the Contras and said, "I'm going to do something about this." And tapped all in North and said, "We need to help the Contras out. Go help them out. Figure it out." And North went off and basically went rogue on his own and set up this whole operation, created this entire network with C-Cord, decided to do the Iranian arms deal, all this stuff basically on his own. Like Reagan and Bush knew nothing about it. Nothing about it. And that the buck stopped at Point Dexter, ultimately. It didn't go any further. William Casey being CIA. He was basically out of the loop. That was the official story they came out with. That's right. And America went, "You're kidding, right? This is a joke." Yeah, I mean, I remember these hearings, even as a little kid watching these and then watching the news coverage of it. And like we mentioned, Oliver North strolling in there with his dress uniform and, you know, by all accounts being a pretty stand-up guy, like he didn't rat anyone out. He didn't, but he also, he was like, "There's no way the President didn't know about this." He said, "I don't have any direct evidence that the President didn't know about it, but it's my understanding that the President was fully aware of what was going on." Yeah, what was the deal with this missile supply shipment, though? That's the one thing I didn't quite get. So, North got rid of all the documents that he could, right? Well, North didn't have any control over CIA documents. And at that first missile resupply, where they were resupplying Israel, he had a CIA, he basically said, "Hey, CIA, do you know anybody I can use to ship these things? I've got an emergency here. I need to get these to Israel fast." Yeah. And the CIA, being CIA is still a bureaucracy, they had to document this event. So there was a document out there now, and he couldn't get his hands on that he couldn't shred. And so this led to Reagan taking responsibility or saying, "Okay, I was aware of this Iran missile deal." By backdating an order to William Casey saying, "I order you not to tell Congress about this, even though you're supposed to." So Reagan basically said, "On paper, I know about this Iran, this one missile transfer to Iran, had no idea about the Contras." Right. Okay. And at first they started out denying everything. Oh, yeah. Like, after this, I'll share a story that we talked about. He went on television, Reagan did, and denied everything. He said, "All this is just total BS." Yeah, exactly. No, let's stop talking about it, everybody. 10 days after that, Reagan had another press conference where he talked about the Iran operation, and he acknowledged it, but said, "What we're really doing here is just trying to sort of send a signal to Iran that we want friendlier relations." Right. And it was not arms for hostage. Exactly. And then, so that was 10 days after the 1st and 9th. And then, four months after that, because the reporting would not stop, he basically said, "Okay, yeah, whatever it started out as I admit that it devolved into an arms for hostage deal." That's right. Which, even that, even that admission, which is the closest he ever came to admitting, you know, responsibility for it. Yeah. Even that's just total BS in fantasy. It was from the outset in arms for hostages deal. Right. The whole thing was set up to get hostages released, and that was it. So there was no other way to put it. Yeah. But he denied that to his dying day. As far as fallout, point extra resign, Oliver North was fired, Casey died in a hospital not too long after this whole thing was exposed. I mean, like weeks. Yeah. So the press was all over the president. He appointed the tower commission to look into this. The president appointed a commission to investigate. Yeah. The president's own administration's wrongdoing. That's right. And it was determined that Reagan's disengagement from the management of his White House created conditions such that it was possible that he did not know about this. Which that is the absolute best official finding he could have hoped for because it basically says, Reagan didn't know he had a rogue guy working for him, a true believer, a patriot, but Reagan didn't know about this. And yeah, he should have he should have had a closer watch on his executive branch, but he didn't. What are you going to do? Let's get Mr. T in here for a photo op with Nancy. There was a criminal investigation and what they were really honing in on was the $18 million in profits. That that were made and what happened to that money where it went, 14 people were charged. Oliver North was tried and found guilty on three counts. Yeah. One of the counts was for getting a $16,000 security system installed in his home courtesy of Seacord with that money. There was a rumor that his he's there was a bounty on his head from terrorists. Right. Seacord hooked him up. Right. Now that was a big problem for North because North's whole bag was I was following orders that I assume were coming from the president ultimately. And I was doing it out of my patriotic duty and a sense of, you know, I was a true believer that we need to get rid of communism. And the American public loved it. They're like, great, make this man a saint. Right. Congress started to love it too and he got off, but that was a real problem because it's saying, well, you took this gift. Right. From funds, from the illicit arms sale. Right, but it was a gift of a security system to help protect his family. Right. So it's not like, you know, it was a gift of 10 pounds of blow. Right. And a Nicaraguan sex worker from the San and Eastern government. Exactly. Seacord was convicted of one count of lying to Congress and the investigators. He basically denied that North received any funds for many of this. So it's still kind of hinged on that security system I guess. Right. And so everybody went to jail forever after that point, right? No, that's not true at all. What? Hakeem got two years probation. A $5,000 fine. Seacord got two years probation. Is that what he got? Two years probation. So the two guys who were actually running the company that ran this whole thing, each got two years probation. North's conviction was overturned on a technicality and President Bush, the senior Bush, on Christmas Eve. And this was Christmas Eve as he was leaving office, right? Yep. He issued six pardons. Basically, a lot, let everyone off the hook, including Casper Weinberger, who hadn't even gone to trial yet. No, and neither had Duane Claridge. Duy Claridge was going to stay in trial, too. Both of them received preemptive pardons. And a lot of people are like, that was about the shadiest set of pardons anyone's ever issued. Because there's a lot of people out there who say Bush really walked away from the Scott free. But there is no way he wasn't even more involved in this than Reagan was. Yeah, I mean, George Bush withheld his subpoena diary entries that basically indicated that he had full knowledge of this the entire time. Eventually in 1992, Independent Council of Lawrence Walsh asked for these again. And Bush, like I said, I asked you for these diary entries. And Bush was like, I didn't, you did? I didn't fully understand. It was inadvertent. Like you asked me for a lot of stuff. I didn't know you asked me for the diary entries. Right. And Walsh was really upset. And he said, the Iran Contra, Contra cover up has now been completed. And George Bush is a president who has such a contempt for honesty and arrogant disregard for the rule of law. Yeah. And I mean, the fore stalling that the Reagan White House, and then later on the Bush White House did in allowing these investigations to go forward and trying to keep Congress that arms linked after everything came out, it worked. Because there were articles of impeachment introduced in the House against Ronald Reagan. And they managed to stave him off to where it was like while he's leaving office anyway, forget about it. This investigation took years and years and years and then finally when Bush pardoned everybody, that was it. There was nothing else to do. Everybody who was involved was implicated was was off Scott free. And then the fact that Oliver and North had shredded all those documents, they were all lost to history. Like the actual truth is lost to history. Yeah. Reagan, his reputation took a hit, a temporary hit. For a while there, he went from 63% in the span of a couple of months to 43% to 47% depending on which poll you looked at on his approval rating. And he would get it back though, despite in the 1990 deposition, the very, very famous deposition where Ronald Reagan said, I don't remember or I don't recall 88 times. That was very big deal. It was all over the news. Yeah, it was. Almost as famous or just as famous as Bill Clinton's very famous depends what your definition of is is. Right, exactly. But Reagan rebounded. He did, man, to the most popular presidency since FDR, right? Yeah, upon his exit, his approval rating had bounced all the way back up to the early 60s. Mr. T famously carried him out of the White House on his shoulders on his last day in office. Oh, man. So that's a wrong contra, man. What a story. The heck of a story. Where's this movie? I don't know. Hopefully we'll get some rights to it after this episode. I want to play Fawn Hall. That's great. You get Jerry to play Fawn Hall. That would be great, Jerry. Well, in the meantime, while we find a suitable wig for Jerry, you can find out more about Iran country by going and reading contemporary art. articles on it. I'm telling you, it's really awesome. And since I said that, it's time for Listener Mail. I'm going to call this follow-up on the moon landing thing. Hey guys, in my opinion, the Apollo missions and moon landings are the most significant events in the history of life on Earth. On the question why the command module and lunar lander were launched separated, I think the reason was to allow the command module to be ejected in case of an emergency. The very top of the Apollo stack was the launch escape system, like an ejector seat on steroids. I imagine they had to keep things as light and nimble as possible for the LES to be effective. I don't think you mentioned something that's really significant. The Apollo 8 mission was the very first time humans went to the moon, on top of being the first time we broke free of Earth's gravity. Like 11, the stakes were incredibly high. They had to first insert the correct trajectory to make it to the moon, then do a burn to enter the orbit around the moon, then perform another burn to break free of the moon's gravity and head back toward Earth. If any piece was not in place, those astronauts would have spent the rest of their lives either orbiting the sun or orbiting the moon. Apollo 8 also gave us the Earthrise photo. Oh yeah. I've been hearing a lot about Apollo 8 lately too, so this person has hats off to you. Jim Lovell was born both Apollo 8 and Apollo 13. He traveled to the moon twice but never had the opportunity to land. That is so sad. "Signed a space geek, Noah Aloy." Nice work Noah Aloy. Aloy Aloy. Great name too. Thanks a lot for getting in touch with us. We love space geeks. We love to put you guys in headlocks and rub your heads with our knuckles until you go stop. It's called a nookie, right here on Earth. That's right. If you want a nookie from me and Chuck, send us a space geeky or any kind of geeky thing. We love that kind of stuff. You can go on to stuffyoushanow.com and follow our social links and you can send us a good old fashioned email. Wrap it up, spank it on the bottom and send it off to [email protected]. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts of my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Hey, this is Hayes Davenport and Sean Clements. Each week, we talk to someone in show business and try to help them with their careers and see what they have to offer us. We've had a lot of great guests like Sarah Sherman, Adam Scott, Danny McBride, Ben Stillert, and a lot of other big shots that wouldn't be where they are without us. I can wait four hours for the next bus or this random dude is offering the ride on his motorcycle. I choose option B. Listen to Solita on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Munga Shategatherer and I'm back with a new season of my podcast Skyline Drive. This time I talk to scientists, biopunks, cormugians, blues owners, super seniors, and go as top cryotherapy lab to try to understand this obsession with living forever and what it means for all of us. I'd say probably start bone smashing, that doesn't work. They say it works. I don't know. Listen to Skyline Drive, how to live forever on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.