This is an I Heart podcast. Guaranteed human. I'm Jonathan Goldstein and this spring, Heavyweight revisits some favorite episodes. Yeah, I think I want to know why she made my life so difficult, if she had some kind of thing against me. Plus, we check back in with our guests to see what's changed in the years since. How long has it been? Things have transpired. Yeah, the last 10 years, everything's changed. Listen to Heavyweight wherever you get your podcasts. Pushkin. Hey, Leon here. Before we get to this episode, I want to let you know that you can binge the entire season of Fiasco Iran Contra right now, ad free by becoming a Pushkin Plus subscriber. Sign up for Pushkin Plus on the Fiasco Apple Podcast Show page or visit pushkin.fm.com. Now, on to the show. Two days before Christmas in 1972, the capital city of Nicaragua was destroyed by an earthquake. When daylight finally came, you could still see smoke billowing over the city of Managua. The crews shook themselves and began another long day of digging out and trying to clear the city and stop the fires. Bulldozers combed the streets in search of bodies. 90% of the city has been utterly destroyed. Even the few tall buildings, which do remain, will soon be brought down by dynamite. Unofficial estimates of the dead are running as high as 5,000. As the city burned, Nicaragua's right-wing dictator, Anastasio Samosa, declared martial law. The army is now in full command of the city and the country. General Samosa is overflying the city in a US helicopter. He will personally direct the demolition operations to level the city. Samosa and his family had ruled over Nicaragua for decades, always with the full backing of the United States. But in the aftermath of the earthquake, the Samosa government was accused of stockpiling foreign aid, mismanagement and fraud. Samosa responded to the criticism by tightening the screws on all forms of dissent. The country felt increasingly militarized as a child you could feel it. Victoria Gonzalez Rivera was growing up in Nicaragua during these turbulent years after the earthquake. Today, she's a history professor at San Diego State University. Gonzalez Rivera remembers General Samosa seeming all-powerful. His control over Nicaragua was embodied by the constant presence of his armed loyalists, the National Guard. They wore their uniforms, you know, these olive green uniforms. They were everywhere. I remember, for example, at one point, a National Guard member shot someone, a civilian, you know, on my street. And I heard the shot. And of course, you know, adults just made me go inside the house. And later on, I could still see the blood on the road. And the violence just became really, really widespread. The Samosa government's increasing authoritarianism and corruption gave rise to a popular opposition movement. A socialist revolutionary group started to gain momentum. The Sandinista National Liberation Front, or FSLN, is named after the 1920s nationalist leader, Augusto Sandino. As the Samosa regime grew more brutal, the FSLN, also known as the Sandinistas, evolved into a cohesive force with real military strength. The Sandinist guerrillas have launched what they call their final offensive, with the recent development of fighting in Managua, but are now signs that Washington will start to press more openly for Samosa's resignation. In July of 1979, they deposed Samosa and declared a new government in Nicaragua. By mid-morning here in Managua, Sandinista guerrillas were coming in from every direction. Many of the tough young guerrillas were raised in the poor sections of this country, where support for the Sandinista movement has been the strongest. And it was the four people in the capital who filled the streets today to greet the winners of the 18-month old war. The Sandinista government started implementing its policy agenda, including a slate of social programs in public health and education. And for the first time in years, it felt as though peace was coming to Nicaragua. Right after the revolution, there was some euphoria, the literacy campaign, vaccination campaigns. It was really safe. You know, I remember that really clearly, like you could be out in the street really late and it felt so safe. There was a sense of there being sort of endless possibilities. But the euphoria didn't last long. The Sandinistas quickly encountered resistance from Nicaraguans who were unhappy with the new government. That included former Samoza supporters and rural laborers who were forced into collective farming. Several groups of counter-revolutionaries started popping up all over the country. Collectively, they were called the Contras. And soon, a new armed conflict was brewing in Nicaragua. The so-called Contras claim an army of 10,000 with more joining every day. The Contra war started fairly soon after 79. So it became a vicious circle of sorts where the Sandinistas justified the authoritarianism because it was wartime. They have shut down the only opposition newspaper five times. They postponed election, outlawed strikes and jailed some of their opponents. And then more people then turned away because of the authoritarianism. It just felt like never-ending war. The largest of the rebel groups has extended its control from a sliver along the Honduran border to several advanced locations in the center of Nicaragua. They say the war will continue until the Sandinistas are gone. Just as the Sandinistas were coming to power in Nicaragua, a presidential election was getting underway in the United States. For Ronald Reagan, the Republican nominee, the spread of communism to a Central American nation looked like a serious threat. Here is Doyle McManus, who covered the Contra war for the Los Angeles Times and co-authored the book Landslide. It was only five years after the United States lost the Vietnam War. And in those five years, the perception on the American right was that the United States was in headlong retreat all over the world and that the Soviet Union was winning everywhere. And there was, in effect, a new domino theory that first Nicaragua, then El Salvador, then perhaps Guatemala Honduras, and you are on the border of Mexico. And suddenly we have a new problem of communist regimes right up to our border. At the 1980 Republican Convention, the GOP added a plank to its platform affirming the party's support for a free and independent government in Nicaragua. Reagan drove the point home when he accepted his party's nomination. The United States has an obligation to its citizens and to the people of the world, never to let those who would destroy freedom dictate the future course of life on this planet. As president, Reagan made no secret of his disdain for the Sandinistas. But most Americans were opposed to the United States getting involved in yet another proxy war abroad. One poll in 1983 found that 66% of Americans feared that a U.S. intervention in Nicaragua would turn into a repeat of Vietnam. That anxiety underpinned a lot of American politics in the 70s and 80s. It was known as Vietnam syndrome. Congressional critics warn of another Vietnam and say it's time for the U.S. to keep its hands off. Is there now a kind of Vietnam phobia, a predisposition against the use of military force, a presumption that that is wrong and has to be proved right? The old Mark Twain anecdote, a cat that jumps on a hot stove not only will not jump on a hot stove, won't jump on any stove at all. Even some of his fellow Republicans broke from Reagan on the Sandinista question. They agreed that democracy in Nicaragua would be a good thing, but they didn't want the U.S. getting its hands dirty by helping the Contras make it happen. I don't think President Reagan has convinced some of the most powerful members, even of his own party, that it is really a Marxist struggle down there and it's the U.S. versus the Commies. But Reagan and his top advisors did not harbor any doubts about what was going on down in Central America. By the same logic that would lead to the invasion of Grenada, Nicaragua looked poised to turn into a Soviet outpost in the Western Hemisphere if something wasn't done. Think about the big issues, the Middle East, the Soviet Union at the time, the Cold War. They went on endlessly and there was nothing there you could solve. But here was a theater where someone sitting in the White House or the Defense Department or the State Department could say, you know, we actually do have enough power to fix this problem if we only dare to use it. Nicaragua was a problem Reagan thought he could solve. The overwhelming opposition of the American people was an obstacle, but it wasn't insurmountable. Maybe the United States could help the Nicaraguan Contras without anyone finding out about it. Maybe Reagan could set the Soviets back a peg in Central America and nobody would ever have to know. I'm Leon Nefak. From prologue projects and pushkin industries, this is Fiasco, Iran Contra. The Reagan administration's secret war in Nicaragua. Covert activities being engaged in uncovertly cannot be justified. The administration is going into high gear to salvage its policies on Central America. We cannot turn our backs on this crisis at our doorstep. No longer can we so easily bear witness to the standards of international law. The Sandinistas can hold on forever, but the U.S. Congress cannot. Episode 3, Contra Dance. How the Reagan administration forged a secret military alliance with the Contra fighters in Nicaragua. And what happened when Congress tried to stop them? We'll be right back. I'm Jonathan Goldstein and this spring, Heavyweight revisits some favorite episodes. Yeah, I think I want to know why she made my life so difficult if she had some kind of thing against me. Plus, we check back in with our guests to see what's changed in the years since. How long has it been? Things have transpired. Yeah, the last 10 years. Everything's changed. Listen to Heavyweight wherever you get your podcasts. Anthony Quinton started his mission as the U.S. Ambassador to Nicaragua in March of 1982. Given Reagan's intense interest in Nicaragua, Quinton knew the job would put him in the spotlight. But he didn't expect the headaches to start quite as immediately as they did. When I arrived, I climbed off the plane from Miami to be greeted by cameras, Klee lights, microphones. And there were some hopes that maybe a new ambassador would bring a new approach. It turned out that while Quinton was in the air, flying from Miami to Monagua, Contra forces had blown up two bridges as part of their war on the Sandinistas. The chief reason for the imposition of the state of emergency was the sabotage of two Nicaraguan bridges by anti-government guerrillas. And according to the Sandinista government, led by Daniel Ortega, the CIA had been in on the plot. Military leaders here are telling the people they must be prepared for a U.S.-backed invasion. I was confronted with questions which began more or less as follows. Mr. Ambassador, Daniel Ortega has declared a state of emergency because the CIA has blown up the bridges connecting Nicaragua and Honduras. What do you think about this start to your ambassadorship? Quinton didn't quite know what to say. He didn't know anything about a CIA operation to blow up bridges in Nicaragua. Officially, the Reagan administration was exercising restraint in its opposition to the Sandinistas. Officially, they were holding back from joining the Contra war. And I had to think very quickly because I had not been briefed on the operation, nor did I expect any particular clandestine operation would be timed with my arrival. So I don't know whether I mumbled. I tried not to mumble. But to suggest these were very difficult issues and I looked forward to discussing them with Comedante Ortega and others. The newly appointed U.S. Ambassador, Anthony Quinton, is now in Nicaragua. He says he wants to try to decrease the level of tension. That was only the first time Quinton would find himself caught between the Reagan administration he was supposed to be representing and the Nicaraguan leaders he was supposed to be working with. The awkwardness was never more palpable than when the Sandinistas sang their anthem in Quinton's presence. The hymn of the Sandinistas was sung at nearly every official function and referred to the Yankee enemy of mankind. So every time they sang, En emigo de la humanidad, enemy of humanity. It was a dilemma. I mean, at what point should I be, was I expected to be, visibly in opposition? It was a constant question for me. The tension over the Contra War escalated in the fall of 1982, when Newsweek ran a blockbuster cover story about CIA covert operations being coordinated out of Honduras along the Nicaragua border. Newsweek's cover story this week is an extraordinary exclusive report on the Reagan administration's secret war in Nicaragua. There are a number of different types of operations in what is generally perceived to be a war of nerves. Newsweek reported that some 50 CIA operatives were working in Central America to undermine the Sandinistas. The Contras only had about 12,000 guerrilla soldiers, but according to Newsweek, Reagan had approved a CIA plan to help them. It entailed relatively modest activities like repairing equipment and disrupting Sandinista supply chains. But it also involved training Contra forces and helping them plan attacks. According to many of the US officials quoted in the Newsweek story, these efforts were ineffective, risky, and deeply embarrassing. One official said, this is our Bay of Pigs. The Contras didn't come across well in the article either. One Contra officer was quoted saying that, come the counter-revolution, there will be a massacre in Nicaragua. We have a lot of scores to settle and there will be bodies from the border to Monagua. Here's one of the authors of the Newsweek story giving a radio interview about her piece. The policy may in fact have the opposite effect of that which is intended. In other words, it may consolidate what little support remains for the Sandinistas. As one person told me in Monagua earlier this summer, just because we want these bastards out doesn't mean we want the old bastards back. The Newsweek story put a lot of heat on Reagan and the CIA. The covert operation in Central America has drawn sharp criticism on Capitol Hill. I've told the president, I feel he makes a foreign policy mistake if he wants to substitute covert activity for a good foreign policy. Opposition to Reagan's secret meddling in Nicaragua was led by Democratic Congressman Edward P. Boland. The President Intelligence Committee Chairman Edward Boland has made it almost a personal crusade to cut off CIA financing for guerrillas in Nicaragua. Boland was appalled that the administration was trying to avoid congressional oversight in order to pursue a secret agenda. Boland wanted to rein in the rogue executive branch. He argues the Reagan administration is trying to overthrow the Nicaraguan government with the guerrillas and that U.S. support for them makes this country the meddler, the bully in the region. Another congressman had proposed a blanket ban on all military aid to the Contras, but Boland wanted to find a compromise that Reagan would be willing to sign. So he suggested an amendment to the defense budget that would specifically forbid the CIA from sending military aid to anyone seeking to overthrow the Sandinista government, which is to say the CIA could help the Contras as long as they weren't doing it with the intention of bringing about regime change. The law came to be called the Boland Amendment and it passed the House unanimously with overwhelming support from both Democrats and Republicans. Here again is LA Times reporter Doyle McManus. As long as they said the purpose of this operation, the purpose of this arms shipment is not to overthrow the government of Nicaragua. They figured they were in the clear. So the CIA saw that as the biggest loophole that they could drive arms trucks through that they had ever seen. And that's exactly what they did. So for now the administration feels free to pursue what some here feel are rather uncovert covert activities in Nicaragua. The debate over the Boland Amendment coincided with a major PR push by the Reagan administration. They wanted to galvanize support for the Contras among American lawmakers and to get regular Americans excited about the Contra cause. To that end, the CIA set about finding a group of counter-revolutionaries who could represent Nicaragua's anti-communist movement. And if they couldn't find one, they would settle for creating one. There was in the Reagan administration a kind of generalized search for good guys we could back. That if you wanted to organize and mobilize American public support for this great crusade against Soviet communism, you needed some heroes. You needed some good guys. And so that was an important part of the narrative. Selecting members for this contra-organization was kind of like putting together a boy band. The perfect number of people to serve in the group was seven. It would include a businessman, a politician, and a doctor. The CIA was looking for Nicaraguan anti-communists with good reputations, people who weren't associated with the brutality of the Samosa National Guard. The new seven-person directorate was going to be the public face of an entity called the Nicaraguan Democratic Force, the FDN. Well, my life had many, many ups and downs or ins and outs. Edgar Chamorro moved to Miami from Managua in the midst of the Sandinista Revolution. Chamorro was born to one of Nicaragua's most powerful and well-connected families. There were multiple former presidents of Nicaragua on the Chamorro family tree, but Edgar never felt the pull of politics. After a short stint as a Jesuit priest, he founded an advertising agency and made ads for breweries, rum distilleries, and car dealerships. After he moved to Miami, Chamorro became more interested in his home country's politics. He didn't doubt that the Sandinistas genuinely wanted to help people, but he thought their plans for transforming the country were too radical. He started attending meetings in the homes of other Nicaraguan expats who were critical of the Sandinista government. When I started attending groups that were interested in what was going on, I followed very closely. I went to many meetings and I heard things that people were sending weapons or even hunting rifles. I heard stories like that. The meetings were pretty informal. What could a bunch of people sitting in the living room in Miami really do about a government a thousand miles away? But then, at the end of 1982, Chamorro got a mysterious phone call. He spoke with a very solemn or gravitas, like somebody who has power or something. He said he was speaking on behalf of the high authority of the government. The man said his name was Steve Davis and he invited Chamorro to lunch. He already had chosen a restaurant, we went there, but he looked like a very sharp, well-dressed, like a politician or Washington executive or business executive. He was well-dressed. Chamorro came to believe that Steve Davis was an agent of the CIA. He invited Chamorro to join the new FDN directorate, and Chamorro accepted the offer. About a month later, he and the other members of the directorate gathered for a press conference at a hotel near Fort Lauderdale. There, they would introduce the new Contra brand to the world. It was a long table with a podium. We were all very dressed up. I had my best suit and my best shoes. You know, everybody looked very sharp. It was like a meeting for something in Hollywood or something. The Americans overseeing the directorate briefed Chamorro and the others on what they should say to the public. And, more importantly, what they absolutely should not say. The main thing was to never, under any circumstances, let it slip, they had received help or even been in contact with anyone from the American government. At one point during the press conference, a reporter asked whether the group had any supporters who were physically in Nicaragua. We do have people, Chamorro said, many. I knew that I was not telling them the truth. I mean, it was so fake in that sense. But that's the way the American one knows to do it. Soon, Chamorro moved to Honduras to be closer to where most of the Contras were based. At a salary of $2,000 per month, plus expenses, he was put in charge of communications and PR. Among his responsibilities was giving interviews to international newspapers and TV reporters. He also worked on propaganda. One of the most consequential projects Chamorro helped with was an 88-page guide called Psychological Operations in Guerrilla Warfare. It was intended for distribution among Contra leadership on the ground. But when Chamorro looked over the final draft of the text, he was deeply disturbed. Under the heading Selective Use of Violence for Propagandistic Effects, he read the following line. It is possible to neutralize carefully selected and planned targets, such as court judges, police and state security officials. And I started reading the booklet and I got very upset. It says very clearly, neutralize a word that sounds neutral, but it's not neutral at all. It means eliminating people who are capable or leaders of unions or whatever. So it wasn't recommended selective assassination. Chamorro knew from that very first FDN press conference in Florida that American agents might ask him to bite his tongue or even lie in service of the Contra cause. Now, Chamorro just felt like a puppet of the U.S. government. That feeling was reinforced when in the middle of the night on January 5th, 1984, he was awakened by a call from a CIA operative. It was late at night. I was called and I was told it was something very important that I have to do right now or it was an urgent matter. The agent told Chamorro that bombs had been placed in Nicaraguan harbors. The idea had been to scare off commercial ships from other countries that were doing business with the Sandinistas. Chamorro had to get on the radio right away and announce on air that the Contras had been behind the operation. And then he gave me this this pay that I was supposed to read. I was asked to cover up, you know, basically. Three months later, the Wall Street Journal told the world who was actually responsible for planning the harbor bombing operation. U.S. government sources confirmed tonight that the Central Intelligence Agency is actively directing the mining of Nicaraguan harbors. The government of Nicaragua opened Puerto Corinto to foreign journalists today. Military leaders at the port say it was done to show the world that the U.S. is involved in so-called terrorist acts. The mines have been removed. This was an enormous story. The harbor bombings were evidence of direct military action taken by Americans in a foreign country. Suddenly the law and order president is being attacked around the world and even by members of his own party as a man who has no respect for law and order. The backlash was swift and broad. Nicaragua and some Democratic congressmen are saying that U.S. involvement with that mining of the Nicaraguan harbors constitutes an act of war. Even Barry Goldwater, the Republican senator, was furious. Here's Doyle McManus again. Goldwater hit the ceiling. Goldwater wrote a letter to the director of the CIA to express his frustration that Congress had not been informed of the operation. It gets down to one little simple phrase Goldwater wrote, I am pissed off. This was not just about the Contras and whether they deserved America's support. It was about the separation of powers between the executive branch and Congress. The Nicaraguan government's lawmakers had used the power of the purse to impose restrictions on the president's foreign policy objectives. The president had gone ahead and pursued those objectives anyway. The controversy would have been a major headache under any circumstances. But this was erupting during Reagan's reelection campaign. My fellow Americans, much has been made of late regarding our proper role in Central America and in particular toward Nicaragua. We cannot turn our backs on this crisis at our doorstep. The story of the guerrilla warfare manual became public. A few days before Reagan was set to debate his Democratic opponent, Walter Mondale, the story of the guerrilla warfare manual became public. Controversy mounted over a CIA manual that offers advice to rebels on killing officials in Nicaragua. In other words, that means assassination. It was reported that pages explaining how to carry out political assassinations have been part of the original document. The same pages that had horrified Edgar Chamorro. Chamorro defended the manual in front of the cameras. Rebel leader Edgar Chamorro says in a guerrilla war sometimes there's no choice. For us, it's legal in our Catholic tradition to assassinate tyrants. This prompted another flood of outrage. Here was documentary proof that the U.S. had a grand strategy to destabilize Nicaragua, a strategy that encouraged contra-fighters to commit war crimes. Nicaraguan rebel leaders have now acknowledged that some of the manual's tactics, including political assassination, were followed by the commandos. And the CIA officials not only knew about it, they encouraged it. During the debate with Mondale, Reagan was caught off guard by a question about the CIA's operations in Nicaragua. In response, the great communicator made a slip-up that you really have to hear to believe. Is this not in effect our own state-supported terrorism? No, I'm glad you asked that question because I know it's on many people's minds. We have a gentleman down in Nicaragua who is on contract to the CIA advising, supposedly, on military tactics, the Contras. And he drew up this manual. It was turned over to the agency head of the CIA in Nicaragua to be printed. And a number of pages were excised by that agency head there, the man in charge. Mr. President, you are implying then that the CIA in Nicaragua is directing the Contras there. I'm afraid I misspoke when I said a CIA head in Nicaragua. There's not someone there directing all of this activity. The Reagan campaign's internal polling numbers that night were a disaster. But by the end of the week, nearly every poll showed that Reagan had won the debate. In part because the CIA exchange had been overshadowed by a much more memorable one. I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit for political purposes my opponent's youth and inexperience. In the end, Reagan was re-elected by an astounding margin. He won 49 out of the 50 states. A jubilant president, Reagan today is savoring a reelection mandate of near record proportions. Mr. Reagan came just shy of the 50 states sweep his... But by this point, lawmakers had already made their displeasure with Reagan known. In response to the harbor bombing operation, Congress had strengthened the Bowland Amendment for the upcoming fiscal year. The Second Bowland Amendment basically said, no money, no weapons, no indirect aid, no advice, no nothing. The intelligence agencies of the United States cannot get involved in this war. And that presented the Reagan administration with a terrible problem. The people the president wanted to support in Nicaragua had no more access to the CIA or any other American intelligence agency for help. What to do? But some members of the administration saw that as another door left slightly open. The new and improved Bowland Amendment specifically barred U.S. intelligence agencies from supporting the contrast. But what exactly was the definition of an intelligence agency? We'll be right back. I'm Jonathan Goldstein and this spring, Heavyweight revisits some favorite episodes. Yeah, I think I want to know why she made my life so difficult if she had some kind of thing against me. Plus, we check back in with our guests to see what's changed in the years since. How long has it been? Things have transpired. Yeah, the last 10 years. Everything's changed. Listen to Heavyweight wherever you get your podcasts. North was inexperienced and overextended, but he worked harder and longer than almost anyone else to get up to speed. North wanted to be the guy who could be relied on to accomplish any task his superiors put in front of him. He wanted to be indispensable. Here is Anne Rowe, the obituaries editor of The Economist, an author of the book Lives, Lies, and the Iran-Contra Affair. In his notebook, there's a rather nice little reference to Isaiah 6-8, the part where the Lord says, who am I going to find? Who shall I send? And the obedient servant says, here I am, send me. And that was something North was aware of all the time. He'd be the man who'd be available to send and he would obey. Rowe says that when North started at the NSC, he thought he'd be stuck in his office doing boring administrative work. But now, he saw how he could be involved in the exciting parts of foreign policy. He had an office set up completely like a secret agent's office with the codes on the door and the five telephones and the secure phone and the tempered glass in the windows and the huge safe and heaven knows what was in the safe. With the Second Boland Amendment about to go into effect, the Reagan administration needed someone who wasn't involved in official intelligence activities to be in charge of organizing the contras. In their narrow reading of the new Boland Amendment, the National Security Council wasn't technically an intelligence agency. So, they thought setting up shop in the NSC was the perfect way to get around the restrictions. And Oliver North seemed like the right man for the job. North had maps of Managua, maps of Nicaragua up on his wall. He would talk about how they were going to be in Managua by Christmas. He was in a way directing the battle from his desk, as he said. North was put in charge of supplying the contras with money for weapons, food and other supplies. But without congressional funding, the money had to come from somewhere else. One solution was to solicit donations from foreign countries. These efforts by the White House yielded huge piles of cash, including millions of dollars from Saudi Arabia and a $10 million donation from the Sultan of Brunei. Unfortunately for the contras, that money was accidentally sent to the wrong Swiss bank account because North Secretary wrote down the wrong routing number. Another way North got around the Boland Amendment was by soliciting funds from regular old wealthy Republicans. The US government wasn't allowed to pay for the contras' weapons, but Congress hadn't said anything about private citizens. So North set about wooing potential donors who believed in the contras' freedom-fighting cause. To that end, he worked with a non-profit called the NEPL, the National Endowment for the Preservation of Liberty. A man named Carl Spitz Channel from the NEPL made the logistical arrangements. North was the salesman. These donors were particularly an interesting group of people. There's a whole group of true believers who are generally quite elderly and female and very rich. One of those donors was Ellen Garwood, and she was indeed elderly, female and very rich. Garwood's anti-communist philanthropy was inspired by her father, who had worked in the Truman administration and was one of the architects of the Marshall Plan. They'd taken out for drinks, and North joins them in somewhere like the Hay Adams Hotel. Here's Garwood in 1987, speaking about her experience as a contra donor. I met with him at the Hay Adams Hotel in the evening after dinner. North would talk about the desperate plight of the contras. He said that they were in such a bad condition that they were out of food, medicine, other necessities, and also practically out of weapons. They might cease to exist if something weren't done about these various needs. He then decides he'll go, but before he goes, he just slides a weapons price list onto the table. The list of weapons that they needed. I love that. The list had different categories of weapons. I had hand grenades, I remember, bullets, cartridge belts, possibly surface-to-air missiles. And there were quantities opposite each category, and after that there was a sum of money that was needed in order to provide those weapons, if those weapons would cost. The idea of helping the contras was as thrilling to the donors as it was to North. I love the idea of these blue-rinced women, you know, buying weapons to give to the contras. And one of them was so enthusiastic she wanted her name put on a missile. Potential donors were invited to attend special briefings in the old executive office building. North would give a slideshow presentation showing photographs of the contras and the conditions they faced, often including an image of a contra grave marked with a cross. Some donors were so moved that they cried, but they weren't always giving only out of the goodness of their hearts. If you gave more than $300,000, you got an audience in the Oval Office for 15 minutes, often one-on-one. And it's so interesting to read how, you know, they went in there and really told Reagan what they thought he ought to be doing on foreign policy. You know, it's the moment when citizens and complete amateurs are trying to make foreign policy and shape it themselves. They get the air of the president and they tell him what he should do. The fundraising pitch painted the Contra war as a black and white conflict, a fight between democracy and communism, good and evil. And that wasn't just a story North and Reagan told donors to try to get them to give money. It was a story they believed. Meanwhile, down in Honduras, some of the contras were making it awfully hard to root for them. Here is an American nun who lived in Nicaragua talking to a TV reporter about the lawless brutality of the contras. When we first came here, we visited 48 communities. Now we only visit 38 because the communities have been wiped out and the people are frightened as a result of contractivity in this area. Edgar Chamorro couldn't stomach these tactics. And after just a few years with the FDN, he grew profoundly disillusioned. Part of my thing was the credibility problem and we were committing atrocities. According to Chamorro, the contras were murdering civilians, raping women and destroying entire villages. I don't believe in the unjustified deans. I believe the deans and the deans has to be good. Chamorro parted ways with the FDN in 1984. He returned to his family in Miami and started sharing his experiences with the press. This policy has not worked and the record of the contra is not good. I think it's time to look for a better and cleaner approach. Chamorro later settled in Massachusetts and became a teacher. Meanwhile, Victoria Gonzalez Rivera moved to Michigan with her mother. It was hard for her to hear people in America talk about Nicaragua as some hypothetical far away place, as if the war was just part of a political argument. And she was shocked by how little Americans seemed to know about what was really going on. I felt that people in the U.S. were not just uninformed, but were just so naive, very, very naive. People wanted it to be a black and white story. They wanted it to be good guys and bad guys. Over 2% of Nicaragua's population died between the mid-70s and 1990. And what you see is just this continuous, continuous U.S. military and political and financial involvement in this tiny, tiny country. And it just makes you wonder, like, why, you know, what have Nicaraguans done to deserve this? And there is no answer. You know, as a Nicaraguan and as a historian, there is no answer. By the summer of 1985, Oliver North's secret campaign to funnel money, weapons, and supplies to the Contras was going full steam ahead. But it wasn't quite as secret as he thought. Here again is Doyle McManus. There were enough reporters in Washington following the Contra War that they began to realize that Olly North had something to do with it. They didn't know exactly what it was, but in the middle of 1985, a number of articles in newspapers said that Olly North and the White House were somehow involved with the Contras. And at that point, Congress got interested. Members of Congress started writing letters to National Security Advisor Bud McFarlane, asking what exactly was going on with Oliver North and whether the NSC was violating the Boland Amendment. And McFarlane sat down and wrote a formal reply. And it said in part, I can state with deep personal conviction that at no time did I or any member of the NSC staff violate the letter or spirit of the law. These were breathtakingly false denials. He knew that what he was writing was a lie. McFarlane met with members of the House Intelligence Committee in person, and his responses reassured the committee chairman that everything was above board. After their meeting, the chairman told McFarlane, I for one am willing to take you at your word. On the next episode of Fiasco, Oliver North and Bud McFarlane lead a U.S. delegation on a risky, secret operation into the heart of Iran. I later learned that he and McFarlane had suicide pills, and I had nothing. For a list of books, articles, and documentaries we used in our research, follow the link in the show notes. Fiasco is a production of prologue projects, and it's distributed by Pushkin Industries. The show is produced by Andrew Parsons, Madeline Kaplan, Ula Kulpa, and me, Leon Neifach. Our editor was Camilla Hammer. Our researcher was Francis Carr. Additional archival research from Caitlin Nicholas. Our music is by Nick Sylvester. Our theme song is by Spatial Relations. Our artwork is by Teddy Blanks at Chips NY. Audio mix by Rob Byers, Michael Rayfield, and Johnny Vince Evans. Copyright Council provided by Peter Yasey at Yasey Butler PLLC. Thanks to Sam Graham Felson, Saree Shackley, and Kachik Mkova. Special thanks to Luminary, and thank you for listening.� transpired. Yeah, the last 10 years, everything's changed. Listen to Heavyweight wherever you get your podcasts. This is an I Heart podcast. Guaranteed human.
