Selects: Iran-Contra Affair: Shady in the 80s, Part 1

Summary

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Podcast Summary

Stuff You Should Know:

"Selects: Iran-Contra Affair: Shady in the 80s, Part 1"

Main Theme / Purpose:

This episode dives deep into the Iran-Contra Affair, a complex and shadowy episode of American history in the 1980s where the Reagan administration was involved in secret and illegal operations supporting anti-communist rebels in Nicaragua. Josh and Chuck break down the origins of the scandal, the political context, the players involved, and the lengths the U.S. government went to circumvent law and public scrutiny.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Setting the Stage: 1980s America and Reagan’s Anti-Communist Crusade

• Reagan's Rise:
  • Ronald Reagan’s strong anti-communist stance shaped by his Hollywood background and political career.
  • "[Reagan] had this idea that it was impossible for capitalist democracy and communism to coexist, even peaceably on earth." – Josh (07:18)
• The Reagan Doctrine:
  • Policy: U.S. will support any opposition to communism worldwide, including rebels fighting communist governments.
  • Methods: financial aid, arms, training, and covert operations.
  • "[The Reagan Doctrine was:] If you're fighting against a communist revolution, we'll support your country. If you're a rebel... we'll help you overthrow." – Josh (07:57)

2. U.S. Involvement in Nicaragua

• Historical Context:
  • Sandinista government in Nicaragua took power in the '70s, named after Augusto Sandino, who resisted U.S. occupation.
  • The U.S. had a long history of intervention in Central America ("Banana Wars," 1912–1933).
• Rise of the Contras:
  • The Contras: Right-wing, loosely federated groups fighting the Sandinistas, funded and trained by the CIA and U.S. military.

3. Congressional Backlash & the Boland Amendments

• Initial Support, Then Reversal:
  • Early 1980s: Congress supports funding the Contras.
  • 1982: Democrats gain House majority; Newsweek exposes U.S. covert operations ("America's Secret War: Nicaragua").
• Boland Amendments:
  • Congress passes amendments overwhelmingly (411–0), banning use of government funds to support Contras in Nicaragua.
  • Notable Quote: "That's when you know Congress is mad, right? When they unanimously agree on something." – Chuck (20:34)

4. The Administration’s Workarounds: Going Deeper Underground

• CIA Harbor Mining Scandal:
  • Despite the Boland Amendment, the CIA mined Nicaraguan harbors (1983), damaging ships from multiple countries, exposed by the Wall Street Journal.
• Further Amendments:
  • Congress tightens legal restrictions, but the Reagan administration persists, moving operations out of CIA jurisdiction and deeper into secrecy.
  • "If you guys are going to outlaw this stuff, we're just going to have to go get even more illegal." – Josh (22:06)

5. Reagan’s Two-Pronged Strategy: Public Pressure and Secret Aid

• Public Campaign:
  • Reagan pushes PR, portraying the Contras as "the moral equals of our founding fathers." – Chuck (22:32)
  • Warnings of "feet people" (refugee influx), stoking public fear.
• Secret Operations:
  • Reagan instructs advisors to keep the "Contra movement alive, body and soul."
  • National Security Council (NSC) and private fundraising take over, circumventing congressional oversight.

6. Fundraising, The “Enterprise,” and Black Market Arms

• Private, International Funding:
  • Nonprofits like the “National Endowment for the Preservation of Liberty” receive donated funds for the Contras; donors get tax write-offs.
  • Saudi Arabia donates $32 million; funds funneled through shell corporations and Swiss accounts (Stanford Technology Trading Group, a.k.a. "the Enterprise").
  • "[They could] write their donations off on their taxes." – Josh (30:32)
• Arms Dealing Network:
  • Richard Secord and Albert Hakim (ex-military, ex-CIA) manage illegal arms procurement.
  • Markups were as high as 300%, with significant funds made by intermediaries.
  • "[Secord’s group would] sell to whoever, whether you were an enemy or a friend to America, it didn't matter." – Josh (34:01)

7. Collapse of Legality and Direct U.S. Involvement

• Escalation:
  • U.S. intermediaries begin directly procuring, delivering, and even airdropping weapons over Contra camps.
  • Legality’s "veneer" is dropped—American citizens, officials, and military are intimately engaged.

8. Propaganda Machine on the Home Front

• Office of Public Diplomacy:

  • Set up and run by Otto Reich (Cuban-American), orchestrated with CIA guidance despite laws baring such activities on U.S. soil.
  • The office waged psychological warfare, sought to manipulate media coverage, and engineered "sting" operations and disinformation against the Sandinistas.
  • Example: Smuggling drugs into Nicaragua, photographing officials (to suggest Sandinista drug trafficking), and then smuggling it back to Florida.
  • "So when you say sting operations, we mean literally the United States and Oliver North smuggling cocaine into Nicaragua..." – Chuck (47:44)

• Targeting the Media:

  • U.S. officials pressured or attempted to discredit journalists, accusing those reporting favorably on Sandinistas of accepting sexual favors arranged by Nicaraguan officials—part of a broader character assassination strategy.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “I look like a chubby Thomas Magnum.” – Josh, on his 80s attire, tying in the era’s feel (03:01)
• “This is one of the shadiest things America’s ever done.” – Josh (05:12)
• "[The Contras] were doing so through means that the founding fathers probably would not have approved of, like, murder and torture and rape and mutilation, kidnapping..." – Chuck (23:36)
• “He tells his people he wants the Contra movement to be kept alive, body and soul, is how he put it.” – Josh (25:58)
• “If we can’t get the real taxpayer money and like official funds, we’ll just go and raise funds on the side in secret...” – Chuck (29:26)
• “It’s orchestrated by the CIA’s foremost expert on psychological warfare. And this was the state of America in the mid-80s.” – Josh (51:48)
• “[On the media:] If you were a journalist who reported favorably on the Sandinista government, the reason you reported favorably on him was because the Sandinista government was furnishing you with sex workers.” – Chuck (51:24)

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Important Segment Timestamps

| Timestamp | Segment / Topic | |-----------|-------------------------------------------------------------| | 04:09 | Introduction of the Iran-Contra Affair, setting the era | | 06:33 | Reagan’s election, background, and anti-communist worldview | | 08:20 | Explanation of the Reagan Doctrine | | 09:40 | Historical U.S. involvement in Nicaragua | | 11:43 | Congress switches stance, Newsweek's exposé | | 14:27 | Passage of the Boland Amendment | | 15:03 | Continued covert operations, CIA harbor mining incident | | 20:34 | Congress’s anger and further Boland Amendments | | 22:20 | Shift to “underground” operations/NSC involvement | | 23:36 | "Founding Fathers" rhetoric vs. Contra atrocities | | 25:58 | Reagan’s standing order: “Contra movement alive...” | | 29:26 | Move to private fundraising; formation of the “Enterprise” | | 32:34 | Entry of black market arms network, Richard Secord | | 37:16 | Establishment of Stanford Technology Trading Group | | 39:46 | Enterprise scaling operations; Contra air-drops | | 43:29 | Propaganda campaign in the U.S. (Office of Public Diplomacy)| | 47:44 | Sting operations, drugs, and PR deception | | 51:24 | Attacks on journalists, disinformation | | 52:09 | End of Part One; preview of cliffhanger for Part Two |

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Tone & Style

Josh and Chuck maintain their signature conversational, slightly irreverent, and highly accessible style throughout, balancing deep historical research with wry asides and pop culture references (“chubby Thomas Magnum,” “the best benefits, all the Contras had really nice teeth…”). They avoid overly academic language while conveying detailed information and historical nuance.

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For the Listener

• This episode (Part 1) covers the Iran-Contra Affair’s backstory, the steady escalation of law-breaking, the creative (and illegal) means used to fund and arm the Contras, and the domestic propaganda operation to win American support or suppress dissent.
• The story concludes with the U.S. government’s own psychological warfare and “black hat/white hat” campaign, setting up Part 2 for revelations on how these covert operations unraveled.

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If you want to understand how modern U.S. foreign policy controversies can trace their roots to "shady in the 80s" behavior, this episode’s deep, funny, and thorough breakdown is essential Stuff You Should Know.

Transcript

[A]

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[A]

Welcome to Stuff youf Should Know, a production of iHeartradio.

[B]

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. There's Jerry over there eating with chopstick. As a matter of fact, you know

[C]

when Jerry pulls out the chopsticks it's time to record. That's right.

[B]

Yep. She's got Facebook open and she's sitting there with her chopsticks. So it's. We're recording now.

[C]

Jerry's been fork free since 83.

[B]

Speaking of 83, your shirt. I guess it's kind of 83ish.

[C]

Looks very Thomas Magnum.

[B]

It does, Chuck. It does. Not just the shirt, the whole outfit. Look at the jeans, the shoes.

[C]

Yeah, yeah. You got the Ferrari Outback.

[B]

Thank you for noticing, man. I look like a chubby Thomas Magnum.

[C]

It's funny because I just finished Stranger Things 3 and saw that there was a. Have you seen it yet? Are you into that?

[B]

No. I liked the first season. I never really got back into it after that. No offense to anybody.

[C]

Sure. The sheriff guy Hopper wears a shirt kind of like that through most of this season.

[B]

Is that right?

[C]

And so someone did a cut of, like, a Magnum PI Intro and had him running around and shooting things and jumping into cars all set to the Magnum thing.

[B]

Very cool.

[C]

And it really fits. All you gotta do is throw that song with a guy with a shirt like that. And it's Magnum.

[B]

Yep.

[C]

Of course, he has the mustache, too.

[B]

Well, I'm a mustacheless, chubby Magnum.

[C]

You should wear a mustache. That look interesting?

[B]

I don't know. I do solve a lot of mysteries, though.

[C]

Nothing can change a look like mustaches.

[B]

Oh, dude.

[C]

Especially instantaneously.

[B]

Right. Especially a fake mustache because you just put it on and bam, you're done. That's right. So I tried. I'm gonna go back to the 83 segue.

[C]

Yeah. We're here, right? We're right in the middle of the 80s.

[B]

Yeah. Like, this was super 80s. This is as 80s as it gets. The Iran Contra affair. That's what we're talking about. Some people call it Iran Gate. I poo poo that name.

[C]

Iran Contra.

[B]

Sure. I remember this going on at the time.

[C]

Me, too.

[B]

I remember watching Oliver north testify.

[C]

Me, too.

[B]

And my sister was like, he's so dreamy. Look at how much poise he has.

[C]

He had his dress greens on, all those medals.

[B]

Had his Boy Scout three fingers up, like, swearing. I really think he did do that. But even as an adult, like, everything I knew about Iran Contra was hard. Like, until researching this, it was just the glossiest version.

[C]

Well, I mean, I was like 10 and 11. So you were like 7 and 8?

[B]

Sure, sure. But I mean, like, still, over time, as you age, you're like, oh, that's what was going on. Or, oh, I understand that. Even as an Adult. My conception of it was not very thorough at all. And as I dug into it, I'm like, this is one of the shadiest things America's ever done.

[A]

Ever.

[C]

Yeah. And it was really great to do this. And, like, now I know it. Now I have a full understanding of what happened. And if it ever comes up at a party and people are like, oh, what was that all about? Anyway, I'm gonna be like, well, please

[B]

sit down for an hour, and I'll

[C]

just pull up my smartphone and play our episode.

[B]

Right. Actually maybe an hour and a half. We'll see how this goes.

[C]

Yeah. By the way, everyone, this is a two parter.

[B]

Yeah. Buckle up.

[C]

And so this is part one. I figured we'd start with the beginning.

[B]

I think that's a really good idea.

[C]

That reminds me of my friend in college, watched the movie. Oh, which one was it? Weekend at Bernie Shortcuts? Weekend at Bernie Sand. It was a movie that was on two video cassettes.

[B]

What?

[C]

It was so long, you know, they had to split them up. Was it Magnolia?

[B]

A Bridge Too Far?

[C]

I can't remember. My friend in college, very famously, among our friends, watched the second tape first and then watched the first tape second and didn't really put it together. She was just like. I thought it was a little confusing.

[B]

Really? So it was accidental?

[C]

Oh, yeah. And then she was like. And then she showed up in the. In the second part, and I was like, she's already dead. She was kind of country. This is kind of funny.

[B]

This movie's one of them anachronisms. Yeah, well, this is not an anachronism because we're gonna be normal, smart, sane people and start at the beginning.

[C]

That's right.

[B]

And there's really no better place to start than the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. Ronald Reagan, if you weren't familiar with him already, when he was president, he had already been governor of California. But even before that, he had a pretty extensive career in Hollywood.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

And while he was a pretty big star in Hollywood, at least B list, if not A list actor.

[C]

Yeah. I mean, he was a medium sized star.

[B]

Sure. But definitely way more famous as president than he ever was as a movie star.

[C]

Sure.

[B]

He learned to detest communism.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

And at the time, communism was a really big thing in Hollywood. Like, it was very fashionable, especially among the intellectuals of Hollywood.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

And he learned to hate it. So much so that by the time he got to be president, he had this idea that it was impossible for capitalist democracy and. And communism to coexist, even Peacefully on earth. You couldn't have both. You had to have one or the other. And by God, Ronald Reagan was going to see to it that the one that we had was a capitalist democracy.

[C]

Yeah. He wanted to stamp out communism wherever it reared its head, and it was rearing its head close to home, which we'll see here in a second. But all over the world.

[B]

Oh, yeah, for sure. It was called the Reagan.

[C]

Yeah. Bits and pieces of it were right.

[B]

And he came up with the Reagan Doctrine. And the Reagan Doctrine was, we will aid any opposition to communism wherever it sprouts. Like, if you're fighting against a communist revolution, we'll support your country. If you're a rebel fighting against a leftist communist government, we'll help you overthrow. That's the Reagan Doctrine.

[C]

Yeah, Via money, via arms, via training, via covert operations that we carried out ourselves. There were all kinds of ways that we could and did help stem the flow of communism.

[B]

Yep. So there was, as you were saying, there was a place pretty close to home where communism had sprouted up, and that was Nicaragua down in Central America. And in Central America in the 30s, the Sandinista government had taken power and had held on to power well into the 70s and by this time, the early 80s. And it drove Ronald Reagan nuts that there was a communist power right there that was being supported by the Soviet Union through Cuba, ostensibly. I've never gotten the impression that this was ever conclusively proven. They definitely got support from Cuba. But whether it was the Soviet Union who was really calling the shots in Nicaragua or not, I don't know.

[C]

Yeah. And I think to go even further back and draw the lines a little even more clearer, the Sandinistans were named for Augusto Sandino, who led the nationalist rebellion against what, The US occupation of Central America.

[B]

Oh, that's where it started, huh?

[C]

That's where it all started. And from 19, you know, the US occupied. This is all part of the Banana wars.

[B]

Right.

[C]

So we occupied Nicaragua from 1912 to 1933 for a lot of reasons, but one was like, hey, no one's gonna build a canal here unless it's us.

[B]

Right.

[C]

That was sort of one of the main reasons. And that all ceased in 1933 with Roosevelt's good neighbor policy, which is basically like, we're going to pull out of Nicaragua.

[B]

Oh, really?

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

Okay. So.

[C]

But we had our fingers all over Central America for many, many, many years. And that's why when people forget or choose not to remember, when people flee horrible situations in Central America to come to the United States now, like kind of where all these horrible situations started years and years ago because of things that we did.

[B]

Right. Well, when Reagan became president, intervening in Nicaragua, man, I'm going to have a hard time if I can't say Nicaragua. Intervening in Nicaragua became like a first and foremost priority for him.

[C]

Yeah, for sure.

[B]

Almost immediately they started funding the Contras. The Contra rebels are the groups who were fighting against the Sandinista government. They were right wing groups and they were funding them, they were training them, like you were saying. And they were doing all this secretly. There was an operation called Operation Black Eagle.

[C]

Man, that one.

[B]

That was something else.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

So we were already funding them. And at the time Congress was on board. Congress was on board, especially at first because the Republicans controlled the House. Well, you know how when somebody comes in and just steamrolls over the other party and usually in a presidential election, very frequently there's in the midterms, the congressional midterms, there's like a backlash against that.

[C]

Yeah. Like a House flip.

[B]

Believe it or not, that happened to Ronald Reagan in 1982.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

And the House did flip. They flipped over to the Democrats and that Democrat controlled House combined with a Newsweek cover story that came out kind of turned the tide against Reagan's policy on helping out in Nicaragua.

[C]

Yeah. There was a CIA director named William Casey who was. He was kind of telling Congress what they needed to hear here and there. You have in here vague briefings. That was probably a generous way to say it. Sometimes Casey would send another guy though, named Dwayne Dewey Claridge. And this is where things really went south because Claridge did not present well to Congress. And anytime Congress feels like they're being subverted or ignored or like kept out of the loop or not able to offer their checks and balances on the executive branch, they really get mad.

[B]

They do.

[C]

Like we're seeing that today. It's like history just repeats itself over and over again.

[B]

Exactly. Yeah. And in this particular case, the place where, where the administration, the Reagan administration and Congress just started butting heads over Nicaragua, it was Dwayne Claridge. You know, he just. That's how poor a job he did. But in his defense, he was coming from a place where he was a CIA man through and through. And this is less than 10 years after Congress had just basically rooted out the CIA, held public hearings. That's when like the MK Ultra came out. And the fact that they've been dosing unsuspecting Americans with lsd.

[C]

Yeah. So in his defense, he was Mad because they uncovered all the awful things that he'd been doing. Right, right.

[B]

True compassion, Chuck. Yeah, that's true compassion. So Congress is starting to get a little unhappy with this. And there was one congressman in particular named Edward Boland, I believe, and he was from Massachusetts. And he said, hey, I just read about this cover story in Newsweek. It has a title, America's Secret War Nicaragua. Seems like they should have flip flopped that, you know, Nicaragua, America's Secret War.

[C]

I think they both had the same end goal.

[B]

It's fine. Right.

[C]

But he was like, wait, why am I reading about this in a magazine?

[B]

Yes.

[C]

And I'm a member of Congress.

[B]

Right. Because at this time, like, Congress was like, well, okay, we think we're just kind of funding things. We're maybe helping out a little bit. This Newsweek magazine was like, no, no, no, it's way more than that.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

Like there is way more American involvement down in Nicaragua than you've been led to believe. Congress.

[C]

Like actual covert CIA ops, like blowing up bridges and blowing up buildings and, you know, direct saboteur type ops.

[B]

Yeah. Not just here's some arms, and then, you know, you close this one eye, but leave this eye open when you're shooting. There was way more involved than that.

[C]

Or we could just shooting, basically.

[B]

That might make it easier. Just let me do it. So Congress, in the guise of Edward Bolan, said, nope, we're not doing that. And they passed the Bolan amendment, which basically said, if you cannot use CIA funds or depart Defense Department funds to aid the Contras in Nicaragua, it's done. Good night. Congress went to sleep.

[C]

And so that should have been the. That's the end of it. Right. Because Congress passed a. Was it a law? No, passed an amendment.

[B]

An act.

[C]

An act.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

And so everyone just stopped. Right.

[B]

That's how it works.

[C]

All right. What's part two gonna be about?

[B]

We're just gonna sit here quietly.

[C]

So this did not stop anything. Here's what happened. In 1983, the CIA had this one operation where they went into the commercial shipping harbors of Nicaragua. Oh, boy.

[B]

I know, it's. It's contagious.

[C]

I said it right in my head all morning. Nicaragua, there you go. And they put mines there. You know, I was about to say land mines, but they were sea mines. Yeah, Mines, floating mines.

[B]

Right.

[C]

And the idea here was we're gonna plant these mines that we're gonna whip up our own press releases for the Contras where they take credit for it. Like, we don't even trust them to write a Good press release.

[B]

Right. The CIA wrote the press release for them.

[C]

So where the Contras are saying that they did it, and the overall effect it's gonna have is they're not gonna be able to ship arms via the seaport, at least into Nicaragua.

[B]

Plus, it also makes the Contras look way more together.

[C]

Sure.

[B]

And with it than they actually were.

[C]

Right. Like, all we need to do is give them some money and they got it covered.

[B]

Right. So the CIA does this and they're thinking, okay, so shipping in the Nicaraguan harbors is gonna stop. It does not stop.

[C]

No.

[B]

As a matter of fact, there was damage. So they used little firecracker mines, which make a big blast and a lot of water everywhere. But if it's a big ship, it's not going to hurt the ship. Well, it sunk a lot of small fishing vessels, but it also damaged ships from the Netherlands, Great Britain, Japan, and the ussr, commercial ships. So the Wall Street Journal broke this story and said, hey, you guys, Congress, you remember how you passed this amendment saying there could be no CIA involvement in Nicaragua? Well, they mined the harbor of the sovereign nation and it blew up a bunch of other countries ships.

[C]

And Congress, once again, like, man, you keep doing secret things behind our back. That really makes us mad.

[B]

Right.

[C]

Should we take a break?

[B]

All right, let's take a break. Stuff you should know. Josh and Chuck. Stuff you should know.

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[C]

That's when you know Congress is mad, right?

[B]

When they unanimously agree on something. And then the Wall Street Journal breaks the story about the harbor mining long after the Boland amendment was passed. And now Congress is even madder, right?

[C]

So they passed two more amendments, Boland amendments, because there were loopholes basically that allowed the US to sort of do these things semi legally. So it was like, well, here's a loophole. So it wasn't really fully illegal that we did this stuff.

[B]

Yeah. That's like the Reagan administration's way.

[C]

All right. They close these loopholes and now this was like, it was pretty ironclad. I don't know about ironclad, but it was pretty tight, amendment wise at the very least.

[B]

Congress walked away thinking, it's done, it's settled. We made ourselves quite clear.

[C]

Right.

[B]

Ronald Reagan signed these into law.

[C]

Yeah. He didn't veto him.

[B]

Nope. He accepted these things. I think he even said like, yeah, this is a good idea, great way to go. Congress and signed it. I'm not going to do a Reagan impression, but. So Congress thought that the matter was settled, but it wasn't settled. This is how laser focused Reagan was on overthrowing the Sandinista government down in Nicaragua. He just took a CIA operation and took it even further underground than it had been before. Basically he was like, okay, if you guys are gonna outlaw this stuff, we're just gonna have to go get even more illegal.

[C]

Yeah. So there were a couple of factions here at work. One was this continued operation underground, Deep, deep underground now. And then there was Reagan's public, like he still wanted to get real money from Congress so he didn't have to do this stuff.

[B]

Right.

[C]

So he kept up this public PR campaign, beating this drum about communism at our doorstep. He said that the Contras were the moral equals of our founding Fathers.

[B]

That's a big one to pull out.

[C]

Like that's a direct quote of our founding Fathers. And started in with the. And again you see this stuff kind of repeating itself. The campaign of fear where he basically said, unless we do something tough here, then there will be a tidal wave of feet people.

[B]

I don't even know what that means, but that just seems super offensive.

[C]

Swarming into our country. He meant, you know, refugees, feet people seeking a safe haven.

[B]

It was one word even, I think, one word.

[C]

It's funny cause I looked up feet people and that's a company that I think makes shoelaces.

[B]

And they're like, yes, say it again, say dot com.

[C]

So this is all going on and on the down low. All the operations are going on and on the public facing side, Reagan's just continuing this PR push, right.

[B]

Basically saying like, Congress, look at these heartless old gas bags turning off the funding to these Founding father moral equivalent to our founding Fathers. Go vote these guys out of office and vote in some people who will turn the funding back on.

[C]

Yeah. And while the Contras may have been fighting communism, they were doing so through means that the founding Fathers probably would not have Approved of, like, murder and torture and rape and mutilation, kidnapping and not, you know, I mean, it wasn't so widespread that it was like that's all they were doing. But they would resort to those tactics.

[B]

Right.

[C]

And that's not Founding Father stuff.

[B]

No, it's definitely not. Not as far as I've ever learned.

[C]

No, I don't think so.

[B]

And I mean, it's had a few hundred. Couple hundred years to come out.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

And it still hasn't. So.

[C]

Yeah, I read some of the stuff, too. Like, some of the affidavits were, like, just brutal.

[B]

Oh, yeah, dude. The war down in Nicaragua, the civil war that the US basically fomented and supported. It went on for a decade. Like, it went on into the 90s. And it was like, not just like countrymen against countrymen, like civilians were getting murdered by the scores and just they would get kidnapped and tortured and killed. Like, it was a really brutal time in Nicaragua, and the Reagan administration's right in the middle of this, like, providing as much aid as they can to one side.

[C]

Yeah. And it was. One of the big problems was that the Contras back then were a bunch of different factions and they didn't answer to a single leader. And the one thing I got out of the affidavits, one of which this woman described them taking her children and her finding their mutilated bodies the next day, it was brutal. One of the leaders said that there's no disciplinary system at all within the Contra groups. Oh, yeah, yeah. There's no accountability, so you could do anything you wanted and there's no discipline set up. So it was just. They were fractured and no one was talking to each other, and it was just a big mess.

[B]

Right. But Reagan was doing his best to paint everything in black and white.

[C]

Right.

[B]

Contra's good. Sandinista is bad. So anything that Contras did was good. And stuff that couldn't be painted as good would just be denied or glossed over, not reported on.

[C]

That's right.

[B]

So while. While Reagan's out running around trying to drum up public support for the Contras and thus Congressional aid being turned back

[C]

on and also saying, don't do drugs.

[B]

Yeah, that was a big one.

[C]

Even though we're shipping a lot of

[B]

drugs back and forth, it's awfully rich now that you know all that stuff, you know.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

He's also secretly supporting them, going in flagrant violation of what Congress has said that America can do. He tells his people he wants the Contra movement to be kept alive, body and soul, is how he put it. And he basically said, do it. This is what history has told us is that Reagan basically said, keep the Contra movement alive, body and soul. I'm going to go work on Congress. I'm putting my hands over my ears from now on. Whether that's true or not, we will probably never know.

[C]

Right.

[B]

Because it's all been shredded as far as the history books is concerned. That's what happened.

[C]

Right. So here's what they did. They said the CIA has a bad rap for a lot of reasons and Congress is not super friendly with them.

[B]

Well, they expressly forbade the CIA from operating there.

[C]

Right. So he said, here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna use the National Security Council and the CIA chief, William Casey, he's around, he's going to just like advise here and there. And William Casey was like, oh no, I really got to be involved because this is really good stuff.

[B]

They're like, no, no, no, we're talking like officially here. He's like, oh, yeah, yeah, okay, yeah, sure.

[C]

Exactly. So at first, National Security Advisor is Robert McFarlane, and then he was succeeded by John Poindexter. Very important you remember that name. And then Casey's still there, like you said, doing his thing on the down low unofficially.

[B]

Right. I think even in some cases, kind of stepping on toes or whatever, he was like an additional boss to the main guy, the guy everybody's heard of. The guy whose name jumps to mind when you HEAR about this Lt. Col. Oliver North, Ollie North. And in retrospect, especially if you went, if you lived through the Iran Contra hearings and you're familiar with Ollie north, like you would guess that when Ollie north was tapped to head up this extraordinarily difficult secret operation to go against Congress and keep the Contra movement alive and kicking, that Ollie north was a bad. A covert operator to the ninth degree, Right? That is not at all correct.

[C]

No. Career Marine, very highly decorated Marine, served in Vietnam, won silver Stars and Purple Hearts, devout Catholic and by all accounts a standup guy. And to many, many Americans he is still like a top notch American hero.

[B]

Sure. Well, he was like the President of the NRA until I think recently. Yeah, I think there's some scandal that just happened where it came out that he tried to depose Wayne Lapierre or something like that.

[C]

I don't know.

[B]

I don't either. But, but even beyond that, like even beyond whether he's a stand up guy or not, as far as, you know, patriotism is concerned, just job experience, he had like None. He had no experience whatsoever, as far as I could ever tell, in covert operations.

[C]

He did a pretty good job for a while.

[B]

He did an amazing job. He was basically the White House's operations and intel arm of the shadiest stuff. It was doing stuff that was so shady the CIA was even kept in the dark about it. That's how shady. The stuff Ollie north was doing. And he had no experience. He's learning as he went, just making it up as he went. And he really did do a pretty good job of it, if you look at it from that angle.

[C]

Just as far as like getting her done.

[B]

Right.

[C]

So what they basically decided was, all right, if we can't get the real taxpayer money and like official funds, we'll just go and raise funds on the side in secret through business people that, you know, we can have these big parties and dinners and say, hey, listen, Communism is knocking at our door. This wouldn't be good for America. It wouldn't be good for your company. And why don't you give us some money? Open up the checkbook. Reagan's here. You want a photo?

[B]

Yeah. Sometimes he would show up to these

[C]

secret fundraisers and it really worked. Like they raised a ton of money from the business elite of America to stop the Sandinistans in Nicaragua.

[B]

So they actually forget this. They had two private citizens found a nonprofit, the National Endowment for the Preservation of Liberty. Its sole purpose was to get these illicit funds to send to the contras. Which means that the people who are donating to the President's illegal secret proxy war could write their donations off on their taxes.

[C]

That's right.

[B]

It's just mind bogglingly hilarious in some senses.

[C]

Yeah. But they were not the most standup nonprofit because as you point out, they raised $6.3 million through that organization during 85, 86. About 3.3 million made it to the Contras. And so that means a 52% program expense rate.

[B]

That's pretty bad.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

That's not good at all.

[C]

No. $3 million it took supposedly to run

[B]

that nonprofit, those fundraising breakfasts for a year. Yeah. Pretty bad.

[C]

Good omelets though.

[B]

So. Yeah. Oh yeah, the best.

[C]

Top notch.

[B]

Yeah. So from this idea, like, okay, this is probably kind of legal. We're just fundraising, right. We're not giving any American taxpayer funds. We're just getting other people to donate private citizens. Saudi Arabia was a big one and

[C]

it was all to stop communism. So like, I think their intentions were that. Oh, definitely theirs were.

[B]

Yeah. But there was this definite end justifies the means kind of thing. And really, isn't the President really the most powerful person in the world?

[C]

Right.

[B]

Can Congress really tell the President what to do as far as foreign policy goes? Nah. Yeah, that was kind of the idea, I think. So Saudi Arabia donated a bunch of money. There's all these private citizens donating money. And here's the thing. The Contras found themselves flush with cash.

[C]

Yeah. Many millions of dollars over just two years.

[B]

Saudi Arabia alone donated 32 million to the contras. This is a couple of loosely affiliated factions fighting in two spots of Nicaragua that suddenly have 30 plus million dollars at their disposal. The problem is they don't have the contacts in the international arms trade to buy arms with this money. They said a bunch of money. And they're like, who wants this? And they were getting crickets.

[C]

And he's got some bombs.

[B]

Right? You know the cartoonish black kind, the round ones that are shiny. It's like 15 of those.

[C]

It was before Craigslist too.

[B]

Right.

[C]

So their only avenue was to go back to the Americans and Oliver north and he began working with a guy named Richard Secord. He was a retired. Forced. Retired. We'll get into that in a minute. Air Force major general and he had a lot of experience. There was this group of dudes in the 1970s and 80s that were former CIA or current CIA. Former CIA, former and current American military who all had their fingers in the illegal arms trade.

[B]

Right. So exactly what you can imagine a Hollywood writer would come up with. Yeah, this is the real life version of it.

[C]

Yeah, for sure.

[B]

So you could farm out assassinations to them. They could rustle up mercenaries. They could carry out sabotage operations. They could find whatever, gun, bomb, anything you needed.

[C]

You want some money laundered, done.

[B]

Right. Anything that is extraordinarily illegal and deals in death like these guys could get their hands on.

[C]

You want some poison done?

[A]

Sure.

[B]

A bomb disguised as a briefcase. We got it, buddy. And they would. Here's the other thing too. They were an illegal black market arms ring, but they were also even more illegal in that they would sell to whoever, whether you were an enemy or a friend, to America, it didn't matter. These guys were operating well above any sort of national loyalty or anything like that.

[C]

Yeah. This was about making money.

[B]

Sure.

[C]

Like many millions of dollars. Yeah, you're right. So especially a guy like Secord, he wasn't. He was in it to make dough.

[B]

Definitely.

[C]

Whereas Inali north was seemingly in it to stop the, you know, Communism.

[B]

Right. So that's an important point. But the Fact that, that they contract with Secord to kind of swoop in and help hook the Contras up with arms means that the Reagan administration is contracting with this extraordinarily illegal black market arms ring.

[C]

Yeah. One of which, they took down some of these dudes over the years. One of them, one of the founders of this group, was a CIA op named Edwin Wilson. He was Sentenced, he served 22 years, 12 of which were in solitary confinement, but was sentenced to 52 years for illegally arming Libya with 10,000 machine guns and 20 tons of C4 that he hid in barrels of mud and flew on a chartered jet to Libya.

[B]

Right. Himself.

[C]

It's like Hollywood stuff.

[B]

I know. It really is. Like this really happened.

[C]

It's crazy.

[B]

And it wasn't just Libya. This guy was funding or outfitting Muammar Gaddafi.

[C]

Oh, yeah.

[B]

IDI Amin was another customer. Like, whoever. If you need to keep a stranglehold on power in your country, were the people that help you do that.

[C]

Yeah. And when I teased earlier about Richard Secord being forced into retirement, that was due to his connection with Edwin Wilson.

[B]

Right.

[C]

So he was forced to retire from the Air Force. They couldn't pin anything on him, but there was enough of a connection there where he had to step down.

[B]

Yeah. They're like, you can do this the hard way or the easy way. We're going to give you the option. And he took the easy way.

[C]

And then he went on to make a lot of money.

[B]

Right. He was like, okay, well, I'll just do the arm stealing thing full time now.

[C]

Right.

[B]

And he did. So when they brought him in, at first Secord was basically acting as like a very laissez faire intermediary. He was basically the guy who, on behalf of Ollie north, was like, yeah, I can introduce the Contras to my friends in the arms ring.

[C]

Yeah. In Canada, of all places.

[B]

Yeah, he introduced the Contras to some Canadian arms dealers. So now the setup was this.

[C]

The friendliest arms dealers.

[B]

Right. They're like, oh, these bullets will really put a hole in somebody, eh?

[C]

Yeah. Oh, sorry, I meant to include rocket launchers on that order.

[B]

Sorry.

[C]

Sor.

[B]

That's pretty good. So Secord was just there to make some introductions, make sure things went smoothly. And then it was up to the Contras to use these funds that were coming in from other people and to buy weapons from the Canadians. Easy peasy, right? You'd think, okay, that's fine, that's done. It still has like a slight veneer of arm's length legality as far as America's concerned. Yeah.

[C]

And we should mention too, that to do this, he set up a shell company, the Stanford Technology Trading Group, with an Iranian American businessman named Albert Hakim, who knew how to get around certain official procedures and stuff like that. He's another guy who could get things done. So he set up Swiss bank accounts, untraceable accounts, because that's what you do to run the funds through. And this became known as the enterprise.

[B]

Yeah, they're Stanford Technology Trading Company Group.

[C]

Sorry, Trading group, AKA the enterprise.

[B]

Yeah, that was like. Everybody called it that because they're like, this sounds way cooler. The enterprise. Right.

[C]

All right. But like you were alluding to, you think it would have been going great, but the Contras in the north, who was the fdn, they were the largest, by far the largest group.

[B]

They were the better organized, from what I understand.

[C]

Yeah, they were doing a pretty good job. But in the south, they were not doing a very good job.

[B]

No. Somehow they were like, we don't have the arms and equipment. They're like, what are you talking about? You have the same amount of money, you have the same contacts. Just buy the weapons. And they're like, oh, no. So Ollie north is like, okay, all right, here's what we're going to do. He called the leaders of the FDN and the FSLN to Miami to meet with them, and he said, here's how it's going to be from now on. Yeah. Any veneer of legality is going out the window from now on. I'd like you to meet your new boss, Richard Secord. Not only is he going to make sure you have arms, he's going to take the funneled money himself, buy the arms himself, and then he's going to have it kicked out of a plane over your camps. So now America is directly involved in supporting and arming and training the Contra rebels in the north and the south of Nicaragua. And if there was any. Again, if there's any kind of legality, it's totally gone at this point.

[C]

Yeah. And in the meantime, Secord and Akeem were marking up their stuff as much as like, 300%.

[B]

Dude, they made a lot of money off of this.

[C]

Yeah, they made a ton, but they

[B]

put a lot back into the enterprise. I mean, they took this job very seriously.

[C]

Oh, yeah. It was a company.

[B]

If you were Ollie north, you were quite happy with the work you were getting from Richard Secord and Albert Hakim, because the shipments went out on time. They got everything they needed. They had so much money they had it left over, but they were also investing it into the enterprise. They bought planes, they rented airstrips, they hired employees, they contracted with other airlines. Like a CIA front. I can't remember the name of it right now, but they were doing the work for sure.

[C]

Great healthcare.

[B]

Yeah. The best benefits. All of the Contras had really nice teeth after Richard Secord took over.

[C]

Work from home.

[B]

Yep.

[C]

All right, so let's take another break here, and we'll come back and bring it home for part one with a little bit about the propaganda machine that was set up.

[B]

Stuff you should know, Josh and Chuck. Stuff you should know.

[A]

On Solita, we share the messy stories of traveling alone as a woman. Your duolingo is not going to come back to you when a man is inside of you.

[B]

Oh, no.

[A]

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[B]

Not a lot of people smile around here.

[A]

And I can wait four hours for the next bus or this random dude is offering me a ride on his motorcycle. 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. 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 iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

[B]

Hey, Portlandia fans.

[A]

Kerry Brownstein and Fred Armisen here, you

[B]

know us, or rather, you know them. Tony and Candace, Nina and Lance, Spike and yes, the chicken.

[A]

We've played a lot of iconic characters over the years, but today we're showing up as ourselves to tell you about Podlandia. AO rewatch our brand new podcast.

[B]

Each week, we'll revisit an episode of Portlandia from the very beginning, Breaking down the sketches, exploring the backstories of our most iconic characters, revisiting the Portland locations you know and love, and opening up about our creative process.

[A]

How did any of this get made? Why do we think that was a good idea? We're ready to talk about it.

[B]

And we'll also be joined by the people who helped bring it all to life, guest stars, collaborators, and friends, including

[A]

director Jonathan Krisel, the mayor himself, Kyle

[B]

McLaughlin, legendary musician Amy Mann, and many more.

[A]

Kyle is going for it here you fully improvise. Not of just words, but a song about.

[C]

I thought he was gonna write. I thought you were all gonna write a song.

[A]

I remember you thinking that.

[B]

Listen to Podlandia Ayo rewatch on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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[B]

Stuff you should know. All right, Chuck, so things are in full swing. America is unknowingly, totally hooking up the Contras. Now basically running this proxy war that the Contras are fighting against the Sandinista government.

[C]

Right.

[B]

The enterprise is working full bore. And if it couldn't get any more illegal, if you thought it couldn't get any more illegal, prepare to just be knocked right over.

[C]

Yeah. So here on. On the home front, it was decided that there needed to be a pretty massive and dense propaganda campaign. And we're not talking about Reagan, just going on the news talking about communism being at our doorstep. We're talking about a real deal propaganda campaign. And they even set up an office, the Office of Public Diplomacy for Latin America and the Caribbean that was founded and managed by a Cuban American named Otto Reichstag.

[B]

Okay.

[C]

And this was all exposed later on by the Miami Herald, by the reporting of a guy named Alfonso Charti.

[B]

Yeah, I just want to interject here real quick. So do you remember when we've done historic stuff in the past and I'm like, go read the contemporary articles. There was some really good reporting going on because the story was so huge and multifaceted.

[C]

Oh, yeah. I mean, Newsweek broke it before Congress knew.

[B]

Yeah, right.

[C]

The Washington Post broke it.

[B]

Yeah. Wall Street Journal.

[C]

Yeah. Wall Street Journal. And then the Miami Herald.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Louisiana.

[B]

Times.

[C]

Did a lot of really good work in Miami's backyard.

[B]

But it was back when it wasn't like, oh, think piece, think piece, think piece. Actual article, think piece, think piece. You know, it was like real reporting. And even then, it still wasn't up to snuff in the end. But there were actual journalists, like, actually paying attention and writing about this stuff and informing the public about it.

[C]

And this is when you and I were kids and I think, like, maybe even the seeds of us. Because we both kind of had desires to be real deal journalists in our lives at one point. Look at us now.

[B]

Speaking of.

[C]

What a joke.

[B]

RIP MAD magazine. Oh, yeah, What a shame.

[C]

Yeah, they tried that reboot. Didn't work.

[B]

Yeah, it's tough. It is. It's tough biz these days.

[C]

Yeah. And I got friends that worked for them, too, like in this recent reiteration.

[B]

Oh, really?

[C]

Yeah. Or iteration, I guess.

[B]

I know one of their illustrators is the stuff you should know. Fan from years.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

It's very sad to see it go.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

So it was a very 80s reference, though.

[B]

It was.

[C]

It really wasn't off track. So, all right, this is going on. They set up this office run by Otto Mike, and this whole thing was designed and orchestrated by the CIA. But here's the deal. The CIA wasn't supposed to be doing this. They were barred from doing this.

[B]

Yeah. There was a long standing, like, prohibition on the CIA from operating in the U.S. basically, like, we know who you are and we know you're so good. You can't use that stuff on us. You can only use it overseas. It's fine if you go overthrow other countries on your mind tricks. Yeah. Use those on other groups, but you can't use them here in the States. And actually, Reagan himself also had his own executive order explicitly banning the CIA from, let's see, doing any activity that was intended to influence United States political processes, public opinion or media. This is Reagan's executive order 12333. And he, at least his administration was like, forget about that. We'll just get around that.

[C]

Yeah. And who was this? It says here that they, the CIA's, like, biggest, foremost psychological warfare expert, retired from the agency officially and then was hired as a consultant, I guess, to this Office of Public Diplomacy. Was that Otto Reich? Was that someone else?

[B]

I don't know.

[C]

Oh, well, that's the whole point, right?

[B]

Yeah, but that was how. That's why I was saying earlier, like, Reagan. That's the Reagan administration, Wade. Just like, here's the letter of the Law. Well, let's change this letter in our sentence. And now we're following the letter of the law.

[C]

Right.

[B]

You know, and that's what they did. So the CIA's psychological warfare guy retired, came on as a consultant. He said, oh, here's what you do. You need to basically start setting up some sting operations because the point of this is to. I can't remember who said this, but to paint or to glue black hats on the Sandinistas and white hats on the Contras in the public mind.

[C]

Right. So when you say sting operations, we mean literally the United States and Oliver north smuggling cocaine into Nicaragua, photographing Sandinistan officials with this shipment, and then smuggling the cocaine back to the United States.

[B]

Back to Florida.

[C]

Back to Florida.

[B]

They're like, we told you we'd bring it back. Chill, man.

[C]

Unbelievable.

[B]

Give us our driver's licenses back.

[C]

So this photo was published. This is during the middle of the Just say no movement championed by Nancy Reagan.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

So it all fit on the surface, but what was going on behind the scenes is just unconscionable.

[B]

It is unconscionable.

[C]

Unconscionable.

[B]

It was both. But this gave Reagan this photograph that got published all over the place.

[C]

Oh, yeah. And he's like, look what's going on. Look what these guys are doing. They're bringing this stuff into America. Killing our kids.

[B]

Exactly right. So these are the people that were fighting or the Contras are fighting. How can you keep the funding turned off for the Contras? Congress, you know. Jerks.

[C]

And that was the only evidence too.

[B]

Yeah. The D in that case somehow came out and said, by the way, I don't know if anybody cares or not, but we have no evidence whatsoever that this Sandinistan official has ever engaged in drug trafficking, aside from this photograph. But this was a follow up probably weeks after the big splash of the original photograph came out. So that was one sting operation. There was another one that involved Manuel Noriega, the dictator of Panama who actually was selling drugs to America's youth.

[C]

Yeah, but he was also a friend of the CIA.

[B]

Exactly. So much so that he was a CIA operative for a very long time.

[C]

Yeah. I don't know about a friend, but he was at least an asset, right?

[B]

Yeah. So this seeing operation was they were going to, through Panama, have Panama arrange for a shipment of arms to be seized in Honduras, El Salvador. El Salvador, Yeah. On its way to Honduras or maybe just in El Salvador. Ostensibly arms from Nicaragua.

[C]

Yeah. Basically saying, you're arming Salvadorians, you're arming Hondurans, you're exporting your revolution.

[B]

This is exactly the kind of thing that Ronald Reagan has been saying. We need to contain. We need to pluck this sprout of communism out from Nicaragua because they're trying to spread out of the region. Totally made up complete sting operation. And it didn't even work because Manuel Noriega was like, I didn't like that New York Times piece you guys just published about me. I'm gonna keep this shipment of arms for myself.

[C]

Yeah. But I love. At first he was like, I can do that.

[B]

Oh yeah.

[C]

He's like, sure, send me the arms.

[B]

And then we were like, okay. There would be. I think it's from the Iran Contra investigation. The description of Manuel Noriega was that he ran a narco kleptocracy. That was the government that he ran.

[C]

He was about as break down that word.

[B]

He was as shady as they come.

[C]

That just means drugs.

[B]

Yeah, exactly. So this is what's going on in the United states in the mid-80s.

[C]

Yeah. And here's the deal. If you were a reporter at the time and you were reporting on this stuff, the NSC didn't like that very much. So they would meet with editors and reporters themselves and be like, hey, can you, like, can you report on the Sandinistians that they're really not good people? Like, can you help us out a little bit? Well, but here's the thing. If you didn't play ball, then didn't they cook up some story that they would send like Sandinista sex workers there to the like pleasure the reporters?

[B]

That was the rumor was that if you were a journalist who reported favorably on the Sandinista government, the reason you reported favorably on him was because the Sandinista government was furnishing you with sex workers.

[C]

Right. That was directly from the Office of Public Diplomacy.

[B]

Right.

[C]

And I read the thing about it and they said the guy was like. And we're not just talking women either. If they were gay men, then we would send gay sex workers.

[B]

Right. So totally discredit them. It's like a complete page right out of the Edward Bernays playbook. It's orchestrated by the CIA's foremost expert on psychological warfare. And this was the state of America in the mid-80s. But that was just one dimension of this whole thing. And I say this is the end of part one. What do you think?

[C]

I think that's great.

[B]

And we're gonna make this a cliffhanger.

[C]

That's right. And as per tradition, we are not going to do a listener mail, but instead we'll do a call, which we rarely do.

[B]

A little.

[C]

Just a little marketing. Call everyone if you like stuff, you should know. We've been doing this so long. We're so bad at this, yet we've managed to grow. Anyway, it's crazy. Tell a friend. Share an episode with a friend. Now that they don't have to. You don't have to explain what a podcast is.

[B]

Right.

[C]

It's a lot cleaner now.

[B]

Maybe start with a good one like ballpoint pens or something.

[C]

Yeah. Tell a friend about the show. Leave a nice review. Or just any kind of review at all on itunes. That would help us out.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. That's how classy Chuck and I are. He even corrected himself from good review to just any review. Whatever you want to leave. We're not going to try to implement.

[C]

No.

[B]

Like the Reagan White House.

[A]

That's right.

[C]

So, yeah, we'd really appreciate it. Spread a little love. Try and turn one person onto our podcast this week and that really helps us out.

[B]

Nice, Chuck.

[C]

How about that?

[B]

That sounds like a good pyramid.

[C]

We like to do this once every five or six years.

[B]

Well, thank you for joining us this week. If you want to get in touch with us, you can go on to stuffyouchouchouchouknow.com and check out our social links. You can also send us an email to stuffpodcastio.com

[A]

Stuff youf Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

[B]

I'm Nick Turturro. You probably know me from NYPD Blue, the Longest Yard, or Spike Lee's blackkklansman. And on my new podcast, Delivering Happiness with Nick Turturro, I deliver pizza to a new guest. I've shared a slice with everyone from Seth Rollins.

[A]

What are you doing?

[B]

My belt.

[C]

To Bill Burr.

[B]

I don't think I've ever met somebody so exactly out of their mind as I am.

[A]

And now we even have more great

[B]

guests coming up, including the great John Turturro. It's called Happiness, Delivering Happiness and many, many more. Open your free iHeartradio app search delivering Happiness with Nick Turturro. And listen now.

[A]

Hey, Portlandia fans, Kerry Brownstein and Fred Armisen here.

[B]

The dream of the 90s is alive in podcast form.

[A]

We're launching Podlandia AO Rewatch our brand new podcast where we revisit every episode of Portlandia together, breaking down sketches going deep on our iconic characters and pulling back the curtain on how it all got made.

[B]

And we'll also be joined by the people who helped bring it all to life, guest stars, collaborators and friends including

[A]

director Jonathan Krisel, the mayor himself, Kyle

[B]

McLaughlin, legendary musician Amy Mann, and many more.

[A]

Kyle is going for it. Here you fully improvised not just words, but a song about.

[C]

Well, I thought you were all gonna write a song.

[A]

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And now get early access to our biggest sale of the year. Save 25% on the new Comfort Next Luxe for a limited time only at a Sleep number store or sleepnumber.com

[A]

this is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.