So I come in the next day, all dressed up in pearls and heels, and she says, “Why are you dressed that way?” I said, “Well, you said, I’m going north. I’m going to Miami. Right?” She goes, “No, you’re going to the jungles today with a camera crew by yourself.”

Steven Esteb: Welcome back to the Journalista Podcast. Cookie is embarking on her first gig for CBS News—the beginning of an era that will put her in the middle of the biggest scandal of the 1980s. But before she starts this new adventure, I want to introduce you to another character in the story, someone you’ve already met. Actually, it’s not a person, it’s a place at the epicenter of history—literally. Steven Kinzer, former bureau chief for the New York Times, wrote about the significance of the InterContinental Hotel in Managua back in 1987.

Steven Kinzer: It was in a pyramid shape and stood on top of a hill. The Somoza family, which ran the country like a private enterprise, also ran the InterContinental, of course. The family controlled every business that was really lucrative. I remember hearing that in 1972, at the end of the year, the staff was told, you can’t come out today. They’re locking everyone in the basement. There’s a special guest coming. They sealed off two entire floors: The seventh and eighth floors. Nobody was allowed up there. It finally emerged that the guest was Howard Hughes, that famous, reclusive, eccentric billionaire.

Steven Esteb: Howard Hughes was worth by some estimates as much as $4 billion, making him the richest man in the world at the time. He made his fortune in engineering, aviation, and massive defense contracts. He even owned a movie studio.

News Anchor: For years, he was fascinated with Hollywood; a rich playboy, dating a bevy of starlets, Lana Turner, Catherine Hepburn, and Ava Gardner. Hughes signed a personal check for almost $24 million to buy himself the RKO Studios. He became a star maker. Jane Russell was a hit in the Hughes Picture, The Outlaw. It was frowned on because of Russell’s famous cleavage. Hughes dubbed Jean Harlow “the platinum blonde” and catapulted her to fame in a film called Hell’s Angels.

Steven Esteb: He was also eccentric as hell. Notorious germaphobe, suffering from extreme OCD. It’s said that he only cut his nails and hair once a year.

Steven Kinzer: He was interested in making some investments in Nicaragua, and of course, the Somozas were thrilled with this. They felt they had hooked a really big fish. He might’ve even wanted to buy the hotel. He said he wanted to buy the national airline, but he was in the hotel on that terrible night, in December of 1972 when the earthquake happened.

Steven Esteb: The InterContinental is one of the few buildings left standing after the earthquake.

Steven Kinzer: So the whole city, of course, exploded in fire and rumble and dust. It turned out that Howard Hughes had this tremendous phobia about germs, and that’s why they had to seal off these floors for him and had special ways to purify the air. Suddenly he’s surrounded by germs and smoke. He immediately fled the country and never came back.

Steven Esteb: After the earthquake. The hotel was suddenly everything everywhere, all at once. Yeah, I said it.

Steven Kinzer: Many countries that find themselves in civil conflicts and draw a lot of journalists, develop a kind of a place where the journalists hang out, and that tends to be the place where other people hang out, like intelligence agents and arms dealers and politicians. In a smaller country, it’s more likely that there’ll be just one such place. In Managua, as the war there exploded, that place was the InterContinental Hotel, the lobby of the InterContinental Hotel and the Breakfast Room, and the other salons down there on the first floor were alive all the time. There were a thousand stories unfolding. Right in that lobby, that’s where you’d trade rumors with other journalists over lunch. You could find bass guerillas and guerillas from El Salvador plotting strategy. There were diplomatic receptions there at night. There were all sorts of adventurers in that place—some Nicaraguan, but many from the outside. And everybody who arrived in Nicaragua for the first time would always go there. It really didn’t take long before you were immersed in the whole story. The guests there, were such a variety. You had world leaders like Jimmy Carter, who I spent an hour with. You had assassins. There were movie stars, there were athletes. Every star who came there came to the InterContinental. That’s where I met Susan Sarandon and Bianca Jagger. It was really at the center of national life. Then of course, it played a role in the national politics of that era. That was a very turbulent period in the late seventies and early eighties. When there was a revolution, government changed. And since the InterContinental was the center of everything, it was right at the middle of all these changes. One guy tried to assassinate Somoza.

Steven Esteb: In his New York Times article, Kinzer writes: “A flamboyant rebel named Fernando Chamorro Rappaccioli, quietly checked into Room 716, closed the door behind him and began assembling a mortar. He had selected a room that overlooked the military headquarters of President Anastasio Somoza, hoping to assassinate him by firing a rocket into his office. Soldiers immediately converged on the hotel. As employees dived for cover, the soldiers sprayed the building with gunfire for a full 10 minutes. Somoza survived the attack, but the handwriting was already on the wall.”

Steven Kinzer: As the government of Somoza collapsed, many of the cabinet ministers and generals sent their families out of the country, and rather than live at home—since there was no one there anymore—they moved into the InterContinental Hotel. So essentially, the entire power elite of Somoza Nicaragua was living in the InterContinental Hotel. In the first months of 1979, really, there were no staff there. It was open. We had the run of the place. It was mostly journalists and Somoza government officials. So there was nobody manning the front desk. There was no food. There were no employees. Nobody cleaned the rooms, but somehow they kept the place open. At that time, the hotel really reflected what was happening in the country as a whole. There was no authority. Nobody was in charge.

Steven Esteb: July 19th of ’79, Somoza flees Nicaragua and the government falls.

Steven Kinzer: A few days later, the Sandinistas had won the revolution and they were in Managua. Now, if they’re in Managua, what does that mean? It means they’re in the InterContinental Hotel.

Cookie Hood: They’re all in the lobby. And they said, now what? And one of ’em says, “Well, let’s form a government. Why don’t it be nine commandantes, each one the head of something”. “Okay, so you’re gonna be the head of interior ministry”, “You’re gonna be the head of education”. “You’re gonna be the…” and that’s how they did it. Just like that. One afternoon. “You’re gonna be this”, “You’re gonna be”, “Oh, you’re gonna be the head of defense”. “You’re gonna be the head of economics”.

Steven Esteb: It was a total cluster fuck. Steven Kinzer has one more quick story to tell about the hotel. And this one, will last forever.

Steven Kinzer: I hadn’t been in Nicaragua very long. I was in the lobby of the InterContinental Hotel and a lot of reporters around. Somebody came along with a signup sheet. If you wanted to get on a bus that was going somewhere the next morning to go out and visit someplace where something had happened, you had to sign up and that sheet would be posted a little bit later. So I was gonna sign up and then this young, attractive, tall, very thin woman comes up to me and says, “Put my name on it too. Can you just add my name on the list when it comes out?” And I said, “Sure”. And then I turned to her. I said, “Wait a minute, what is your name?” And she said, “Cookie”. And I said, “Cookie what?” She said, “Don’t worry about that. Just put Cookie; everybody’s gonna know”. So at that moment began our long friendship.

Steven Esteb: Years later, Kinzer wrote this about Cookie’s impact on the news: “During the 1980s and ’90s, Cookie Hood was the driving force behind the most successful television coverage of Central America that appeared anywhere in the United States. Things are changing in Nicaragua, but they’re also changing in the US.”

Ronald Reagan: Mr. Chairman, Mr. Vice President-to-be, this convention, my fellow citizens of this great nation, with a deep awareness of the responsibility conferred by your trust, I accept your nomination for the presidency of the United States.

Steven Esteb: Ronald Reagan beats Jimmy Carter in the 1980 election and becomes the 40th president of the United States. There’s a new sheriff in town, and he doesn’t like the Sandinistas. I asked Tulane Professor Justin Wolfe, about the consequences of this election to the future of Nicaragua.

Justin Wolfe: Ronald Reagan comes into power: Hard-line, anti-communist, American cowboy, vision right off a robust conservatism and a robust Cold War hawk. Very quickly, the Reagan administration is trying to figure out how to oust the Sandinista government, how to frame this as a US Soviet proxy struggle, and one that we need to win. An opposition to the Sandinistas emerges, but the US sees them as groups to be unified, to be trained, to be financed, and to be armed, to carry out a proxy war, to overthrow the Sandinistas. This seems perfect for the Reagan administration. We have people who are willing to do the fighting—Freedom fighters, as Reagan would call them. They’re gonna fight this communist revolution in Nicaragua. But there is a deep ambivalence within the United States. A lot of people think that this is a quagmire that the US is going to get caught in. They’re not certain what the strategic value of it is. They’re not sure what we’re going to get out of it, or even if we could win; that this could be another Vietnam.

Steven Esteb: On December 1st, 1981, president Ronald Reagan signs a presidential finding, which authorizes covert operations in Nicaragua. The plan is to train and fund what is essentially a terrorist group in Nicaragua known as the Contras. So it begins: A decade-long obsession with a tiny central American country, with an economy one fourth the size of Vermont. When we last saw Cookie, she was standing in front of CBS news producer Carla Ferrell.

Cookie Hood: She says, “You got the job. I need you to come in tomorrow and you’re going up north.” I thought she was sending me to Miami. So I come in the next day, all dressed up in pearls and heels, and she says, “Why are you dressed that way?” I said, “Well, you said I’m going north. I’m going to Miami. Right?” She goes, “No, you’re going to the jungles today with a camera crew by yourself.” And I could see the camera crew off to the side. And they’re laughing. They’re just enjoying the shit about this. I said, “Okay, gimme five minutes.”

Steven Esteb: I asked Carla why she hired Cookie and what made her special.

Carla Ferrell: Cookie was so sociable, so tenacious. She was just so full of life. She had an amazing personality; gregarious, spicy, when she needed to be, diplomatic, when she needed to be. She always had the personality, the kind that could break through the camera. She was wonderful, whether it was in social situations or in work situations, to help bring people together; from the beginning, impressed me as someone who would always work hard to get things done.

Cookie Hood: Thank goodness I had a change of clothes; put on the tennis shoes, the jeans and everything; was introduced to the Mexican Canberra crew, Hayman Roberto. Of course, they’re looking at me also like, “Does she know what she’s doing?” But at the same time, “She really is pretty. You know, this could be fun”. Carla said goodbye, we went downstairs and loaded up into the Jeep. They’re assuming that I know what I’m doing. They are assuming that I’m a journalist. And I wasn’t. I was being thrown into the coliseum—to the lions. I had not a clue.

Steven Esteb: Did you get any instruction from Carla what you were looking for or anything?

Cookie Hood: None. Carla thought I was a journalist too. My job was, “You’re a fixer. We need you to translate. We need you, you know, to help the crews whenever they need to be helped.” That was it. “Bye.”

Steven Esteb: So Cookie is hired as a fixer and interpreter for CBS News. War is Hell. Cookie is about to find out what it really looks like. We’ll be right back.
. . .

Steven Esteb: Welcome back. Cookie sets off on her next great adventure, working for CBS freaking News. She has no idea what she’s doing; but how hard can it be? At least she’s not running from the DEA with a couple of tons of cocaine. Reality is about to punch her in the face.

Cookie Hood: As we’re driving to the jungles to look for the war, we’re getting to know each other, and they’re liking me and I’m liking them. We could see that it was going to work between us—the three of us. So I’m asking questions, they’re telling me, “This is what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna go here at that point. You know, we need you to help us with the equipment.” And I’m like, “No sweat. I can carry my own weight. I am not gonna be a burden to you guys.” But obviously I’m going on this great adventure, which I think is a fun, great adventure. I have literally no idea what I’m getting into. So we proceed to drive and drive and drive and we’re getting deeper into the jungle. I’m being told, “You know, Cookie, sometimes it’s not so easy for us to find what we’re looking for. We’ve actually called this war ‘The Ever Elusive War’. We can hear it; we just have a hard time finding it.” And I said, “Hey, no sweat. We’ll find it.” As we got in deeper and deeper, the camera crew got less funny, less upbeat. They got very serious. And you know, they said, “These are certain things that you’re gonna have to know. We tell you to be quiet, be quiet. When we tell you to hit the ground, hit the ground. When in doubt, just do what we do.”

Steven Esteb: So “hit the ground”, meaning, in case you’re getting shot at, in case there’s danger.

Cookie Hood: In case we run into the enemy. Whatever we do, you do it. Whatever we whisper to you to do, you do it.

Steven Esteb: Did that give you any pause? Does your mind start racing about what you’re getting into?

Cookie Hood: Well, I’m still thinking, “Great adventure. How hard can this be? I can follow instructions.” I still really didn’t have a clue. Even if I would’ve been told, “You’re going into a war, you’re going to see dead people.” Even if I had been told that, it’s one thing to be told it, it’s another thing to actually see it and lived through it.

Steven Esteb: And that happened.

Cookie Hood: And that’s what happened. We could hear some fighting, we could hear weapons, we could hear shots, but we knew that it was far away. At one point, we got out of the Jeep to cover some ground, see what we could find. I know what gunfire sounds like, but what struck me is I kept hearing yelling; like one side’s yelling to the other side, “Come get me, you son of a bitch.” “No, you come get me, you son of a bitch.” “You come here. No. Fuck your mother.” “You come here.” You know, trash talk. And it all sounded the same. Same accent, same lingo, same street talk. And that’s when I first started to realize, wait, this is a civil war. This is brother fighting brother.

Steven Esteb: The gunfire stops. There’s an eerie quiet. Cookie and her crew make their way toward the battle scene.

Cookie Hood: All of a sudden we could see ahead of us, what looked like a big pile of something. I didn’t know what it was. Obviously, I think the crew knew what it was. They were very seasoned war journalists. It was a pile of dead bodies. I’ve seen dead people before, but not like that. I was not prepared for that. It was at that moment I started to lose a little of my faith.

Steven Esteb: Describe what you saw.

Cookie Hood: Men, women, children; all in a pile. Looked like civilians to me. I didn’t see soldiers. The emotions, just like, “Fuck, what have I gotten myself into here?” The Mexicans at that point said to me—when they saw that I was kind of shocked at what I was seeing: “This is your first, but it’s not gonna be your last time seeing what you’re seeing right now. And honestly, this is nothing compared to what you’re going to see in the future, if you last with us, if you stay with us. So get ready, ’cause this is what it’s all about.” This really is war. This really is dead people. This really is massacres. And am I gonna be able to pull this off? Fuck yeah, I could pull this off.

Steven Esteb: For Cookie, it was first blood, but it wouldn’t be the last. Back at the CBS office, there was another kind of war.

Cookie Hood: So I was hired to sort of be a grunt, because the guy that was running the office, his name was Martine Barretto, he was a nice guy, I grew up with him, he was part of the oligarch families—but he didn’t like to get his hands dirty. And so he would have all these little minions to do all his dirty work; you know, the drivers, the fixtures, which was what I became. And then he wanted me to go with the camera crews with or without a correspondent and just go and get material for stories. Martine was a very disagreeable person. You could be on good terms with the correspondence and the producers, but if the crews and the drivers dislike you, you’ve got a problem. Because those are the people that are gonna get you the story. And if they don’t like you, then you’re up shit creek. You’ve got nothing to offer the correspondent or the producer or the editor.

Steven Esteb: Well, when did it change?

Cookie Hood: Larry Doyle comes to town. He was the gentleman that we spoke about at the party who offered me the job. We went out into the boondocks and you know, we just got along famously. I remember, we stopped at some, you know, shack to get something to eat. Larry said, “Well, what’s on the menu?” And there was no menu. The lady said, it’s “arroz con pollo”—chicken and rice. Next thing you know, we hear the chicken being killed, you know, and plucked to make the lunch. And then the jukebox wasn’t working. And so I went to it and I kicked it. Larry Dole screams out, “You are my kind of broad, I was right in bringing you in.” He hated the guy that was running the CBS office, ’cause that guy didn’t like to get his hands dirty or go out or do anything. He just kept saying, “You should be running this office, you should be doing this.”

Steven Esteb: Larry Doyle was a force of nature and he always got what he wanted.

Cookie Hood: Martine was becoming less interested in getting the job done, more interested in entertaining and you know, partying—in a different way than I partied.

Steven Esteb: So everybody’s about Martine?

Cookie Hood: Yeah, well, bitching or complaining or just making an observation, ’cause not everybody had a problem with him. They wanted more of Cookie and less of Martine. Sure, we could have Cookie out in the jungle, but we also wanna deal with Cookie directly in the offices at the InterCon. And Larry was also behind my back; and obviously behind Martine’s back, was making sure that Martine was on his way out. And when he started to get paranoid and jealous, things got worse. At one point he called somebody either in New York or Miami and said, “It’s me or her. We can’t both work in this office.” And unfortunately they chose me, and he was out. And so Larry says, “You are gonna be the one running the show here.” So he got rid of Martine quick and put me in charge. Now everyone assumed that I was a journalist. To this day, there are former colleagues that still think I studied journalism. I didn’t know anything about journalism, but I was a fast learner, and having a mentor like Larry Doyle, who taught me everything—everything. And then the mere fact that I would get my hands dirty and go with the crews, and I was a grunt like them and go into the jungles and rough it; I learned from them too.

Steven Esteb: Well, let’s talk a little bit about Larry. Now, from what I understand, Larry had quite a colorful career already. He had been in Vietnam.

Cookie Hood: Yes.

Steven Esteb: And he had made quite a name for himself as a war correspondent.

Cookie Hood: Yes. He was the epitome of a war correspondent. He didn’t know the word danger. He just plowed through anything with anybody.

Steven Esteb: Didn’t give a shit about the rules.

Cookie Hood: Nothing. And CBS knew that he was breaking rules, but they didn’t care because he always brought home the story.

Steven Esteb: In researching Larry, he gets fired all the time.

Cookie Hood: All the time.

Steven Esteb: But they’d always bring him back.
Cookie Hood:
They’d always ask for him to come back, because he was the epitome of a war correspondent.
Steven Esteb:
So would you say that he taught you what you know?
Cookie Hood:
He took me under his wing. He would not do a story unless I was right there with him. And Larry was one of many that would not go to cover any story unless I was with them. He taught me everything he knew—everything. Being a woman at that time, especially being a war correspondent, you had to be one of the guys. You couldn’t be frail, you couldn’t be a chick, you just had to be one of the guys. And that didn’t just mean carrying your own weight, being able to carry the equipment, it meant hiking up through jungles, hiking up mountains; it just meant being one of the guys.
Steven Esteb:
Was there sexual harassment?
Cookie Hood:
I’m gonna say yes to that, but at the time I didn’t know that that’s what that was. I grew up with five brothers. I was always-
Steven Esteb:
You were harassed your whole life?
Cookie Hood:
I was harassed my whole life. And I was always more of a guy than a girl, you know. I was a tomboy. And that comes, you know, from my father dynamic. I always had to prove that I could do anything as well as, or better than, any man.
Steven Esteb:
Were you intimidating to some of these guys?
Cookie Hood:
Oh yes. Oh yes. And on any level, not just as a correspondent, but as a female, yes, I was quite overwhelming, but I’ve always been that way. It wasn’t anything new for me. It was something brand new for humble soldiers that have never experienced strong women. I remember going through roadblocks, getting out of the Jeep, wearing a little wife-beater T-shirt, no bra, Walkman, being stopped by the soldiers. And they’d say, “You can’t go past this roadblock.” And I would bullshit my way saying, “Oh, I’ve got orders from the Minister of Interior. And you don’t want to call him because if you call him, you’re gonna get in trouble. You might as well just let me through. And you know what here? You hold onto my Walkman. Here’s some American cigarettes. We’ll be back.” I could get in and out of any roadblock. Larry loved that. Larry loved it. He would just sit back and laugh. He would let me do all the work. He didn’t have to do all the work anymore. Yeah.
Steven Esteb:
Yeah. Wow, man. That must have been amazing.
Cookie Hood:
It was fun.
Steven Esteb:
Okay, so this is happening, and you see your star rising in terms of getting in on the stories, people wanting to work with you-
Cookie Hood:
Demanding.
Steven Esteb:
Demanding to work with you. When does it change from that to, “Hey, I’m running this show now.”
Cookie Hood:
Fairly quickly, within a year. I had camera crews that the only way they would come is if I was there. There would always be a camera crew in residence—different ones, but they would come and stay for six weeks, two months, then they’d rotate ’em. But none of these crews wanted to come in unless I was there.
Steven Esteb:
Because if you weren’t there, who would they go with?
Cookie Hood:
Exactly.
Steven Esteb:
Cookie was in charge now; if they only knew who was running the news in Nicaragua—but her future would be shaped by two very important stories. One a tragedy and one a triumph. We’ll be right back.
. . .
Steven Esteb:
Welcome back. Cookie may be in charge, but this job is about to get a lot harder. Just another day looking for the ever elusive war. This time she’s going to find it, and something terrible has happened.
Where are you?
Cookie Hood:
Deep in the jungles of Nicaragua, in the middle of nowhere.
Steven Esteb:
A little farming town?
Cookie Hood:
No, not even a town. You wouldn’t even call it a village. It was that remote. No paved streets, all dirt roads, shacks, shanties.
Steven Esteb:
You just rolled into the aftermath of a horrible crime. What did you see?
Cookie Hood:
Well, I saw dead civilians, some dead soldiers, but a lot of civilians. Children massacred, women massacred like that famous battle in Vietnam, “My Lai”.
News Anchor:
A South Vietnamese official, the military chief of Quang Ngai province today denied charges that American soldiers on the ground executed several hundred villagers in March of 1968. The province chief said the civilians died in air and artillery strikes that leveled the village after a number of Americans had been killed there by Viet Cong snipers. The villagers’ version of the incident was given by survivors yesterday. They said a patrol of 100 Americans stormed into the hamlet, drove all the residents out of their huts, then opened fire with automatic weapons. Two American soldiers—one an officer, the other, an enlisted man—are being held in this country in connection with the case. But neither has been brought to trial.
Steven Esteb:
It was one of the darkest days of the Vietnam War. More than 500 unarmed civilians were killed. Some were raped and mutilated. 26 soldiers were charged, but only Lieutenant William Calley Jr. was convicted. He was sentenced to life in prison, but spent only three and a half years under house arrest. His sentence was commuted by President Nixon. The story prompted worldwide outrage, especially in America, and caused the tide of popular opinion to turn against an already unpopular war. Back in Nicaragua, Cookie faces the consequences of another unnecessary American intervention.
Cookie Hood:
People that didn’t deserve to die or had nothing to do with it, they were just all killed. The Contras were ruthless though, even though some were Nicaraguans and some were from Honduras, they were trained by the CIA. CIA don’t play. The women are wailing, their children have been killed, their husbands have been killed. I’m told, “Go record them wailing and crying.” “Wait, how can I just start filming and recording these women wailing without first comforting them?” So I put down the microphone, I’d comfort them a little bit, you know, hugged them, “It’s going to be okay,” and then asked them permission, “Can I record you?”
Steven Esteb:
So you basically just cried with them.
Cookie Hood:
I didn’t cry, but I comforted them. Obviously I was crying and dying on the inside.
Steven Esteb:
The story played on the CBS evening news with Dan Rather.
Dan Rather:
David Dick in Nicaragua, reports tonight on a tragedy of war, a massacre yesterday that has changed one village forever.
David Dick:
Some of the bodies from the massacre began arriving here early this morning in Jinotega, about 100 miles south of the Honduran border. A mother grieves for her 17-year-old son. She said he was the only one of her children who had not left her, but now he was gone. A young woman, 19 years old, lost her husband. He was also 19. She is pregnant. Her child will be born in December. She said, “This is all I have left of him.”
Cookie Hood:
As a journalist, you’re supposed to remain neutral. You’re supposed to be objective. You’re not supposed to integrate yourself into the story. And I remember being pulled aside several times, not just on that trip, but throughout my first years of my career, “You cannot do that. You have to be objective.” And I said, “Look, the moment I can’t feel the story, feel emotional about the story or help these people, I’m out.” CBS didn’t wanna lose me, so they’d give me a little rope. And then that little bit of rope became more rope and more rope. And finally they knew my methods. My stories were always exclusives. They always got on the air, whereas the other networks, they wouldn’t get exclusives, their stories may not lead on the evening news, but mine always did.
Steven Esteb:
So when you saw this and you had this experience, did that change you? Did that make you look at the world differently?
Cookie Hood:
I just rolled with the punches. I’ve always, throughout that whole career of mine, I just was rolling with it because I knew that the moment I no longer felt anything and that I could just cover a story, just get the story, go in, go out, then I knew it would be over for me as a human being. So the fact that I was feeling for these people and that the emotions were coming, I was dying on the inside and knowing that my own country was doing this.
Steven Esteb:
And this is one place-
Cookie Hood:
One place.
Steven Esteb:
Out of God knows what’s going on.
Cookie Hood:
And my Nicaraguan side felt for these people. And then my US side is so angry, I’m a part of that. And the one thing about the Nicaraguans, the poor, the humble, the ones that were the victims of war, they never held it against us that we were American—obviously ’cause I’m speaking Spanish like they do; they think I’m one of them. But I’m with camera crews that are Americans. I’m speaking English. They never once held it against us. “Oh, your country’s the one that’s doing…” Never.
Steven Esteb:
That says a lot about the people.
Cookie Hood:
Never. Never. They would feed us if we were hungry. They would give us something to drink from their meager shacks, if we were thirsty. They would give us their bed that was on a floor. The spirit was just overpowering, overwhelming to me. What I did come to realize, no matter where war is in the world, no matter where war is in history, the people that get fucked are the poor people, whether it be because they’re victims or they’re massacred or because they’re sent to the front line, they’re always the ones that get fucked.
Steven Esteb:
As the Contra war gathers momentum, the US gets deeper and deeper into the quagmire of Central America—but so are the Russians, sending advisors arms and economic support. The Sandinistas deny it, but Cookie and the journalists covering the war are looking for the smoking gun. Tell me about that first big scoop.
Cookie Hood:
Well, we did a lot of little stories—things that we weren’t expecting to find, but then there came some rumors that the Sandinistas were getting help from the Russians, from the Cubans, from Iran, from anybody that the US didn’t like.
Steven Esteb:
From what I’ve read, Nicaragua was really locked down. So if they didn’t want you to see something, it was very hard to see it. Is that true?
Cookie Hood:
That is correct. For instance, we’d heard that they were possibly some Russian ships at the Port of Corinto. I remember myself, the crew and maybe some other journalists driving to Corinto to see what was going on, ’cause We had also heard about possibly these ports having been mined by the US, which is pretty much against the Geneva Convention—you can’t put mines in foreign ports.
Steven Esteb:
According to the Washington Post, the CIA played a direct role in the laying of underwater mines in Nicaragua ports, damaging at least eight ships. The CIA did this without the approval of Congressional Intelligence Committee, as the law required, eventually leading to Congress cutting off funding for the Contras.
Cookie Hood:
That sort of sets up the story. And I remember we tried to get to the port and we weren’t allowed even within a mile of it; people are being turned back. One of the few times I couldn’t talk myself into getting through. Nicaragua had journalists from all over the world. Not just regular journalists like myself and networks and you know, AP, UPI, and photographers, but also there were journalists from countries that were mortal enemies of the US. The camaraderie between all journalists, no matter where they were from, was the same. We’re all in this together. So I had become friends with some Cuban nationals from the island, which is different from Cuban Americans, from Miami. This one particular guy and I, we really kind of hit it off. We started to see each other here and there and I was sort of kind of done with him. And then one day he comes up to me at a press conference in the city and says, “You know, I’ve got something that, you know, you may be interested in.” And I’m like, “What is it?” He says, “I’m just gonna give you this tape. Don’t look at it here. Don’t open it here. It’s something that you’ve been looking for.” And so I put it away, didn’t give it a second thought; got back to the hotel a few hours later and we opened it up; and it’s video of a Russian ship at the Port of Corinto that myself and many other journalists had been wanting to get proof of; showed it to Carla who was in town at that particular time. And I said, you’re not gonna believe this, but I’ve got Cuban TV footage of the proof that there’s a Russian ship in port. And she couldn’t believe it. And the crew couldn’t believe it. So sure enough, we put it in and there it was.

Steven Esteb:
The story played on the CBS evening news that very night.
News Anchor:
A US Naval Battle Group headed by the Carrier Ranger, has been maneuvering off Nicaragua’s West Coast for 14 days. This had been officially described repeatedly as routine exercises. Today the Pentagon confirmed a warship confrontation with the Soviet freighter. One of the destroyers escorting the Ranger, “questioned the Russian cargo ship in international waters, then followed it to Nicaragua’s 12-mile territorial limit.”
News Anchor:
The Alexandra Oriana, shown passing through the Panama Canal last week on its way to Nicaragua has been the object of much attention since President Reagan said it was carrying helicopters and other military equipment. Corinto is this country’s major port city. These scenes from the purchased videotape show East German and Soviet vessels at the main pier. Again, only non-military cargo was seen.
News Anchor:
Despite the denials, it’s clear the Nicaraguan army has lots of Soviet military hardware. How it gets here, is less clear. Richard Wagner, CBS News, Managua.
Steven Esteb:
The Nicaraguan government denied it, of course, but for the first time, the US had proof that the Russians were supporting the Sandinistas. It was huge. The Managua CBS office received a telex the next day. It read: “Clean kill. Congratulations. Thanks. Courage.” Signed by CBS News icon, Dan Rather.
Cookie Hood:
That was very satisfying.
Steven Esteb:
And what did it tell you about yourself?
Cookie Hood:
What I felt initially was, “I hope nobody thinks I got this story because I slept with a guy. That’s not what happened.”
Steven Esteb:
But you did sleep with him.
Cookie Hood:
But I did sleep with him, but I never dreamed that he was gonna throw this in my lap. And I think he kind of threw it in my lap because I had kind of, you know, dumped him. It was one of my first major scoops. And then of course the Dan Rather congratulatory telex was just icing on the cake. I knew at that moment that I had made it.
Steven Esteb:
It’s kind of a validation of the relationships that you create.
Cookie Hood:
And that even though I wasn’t quite sure if I was a journalist, everyone else around me was damn sure that I was.
Steven Esteb:
So Cookie finds a smoking gun and establishes her bona fides. But in war, sometimes that gun is shooting at you.
Next time on Journalista:
Cookie Hood:
All I know is that we were up in the air. I heard three somethings. I looked at one soldier and I said, “That’s not a good sound, is it?” And he went white. And he said, “No, we’re going down.” “What do you mean we’re going down?”
Steven Esteb:
The Journalista Podcast features the stories and voice of Cookie Hood. Narrated by Stephen Esteb. Produced by Sean J. Donnelly. Executive Producers: Jason Waggenspack, Roy Loughlin and Ellen Kay. iHeart Executive Producer: Tyler Klang. Written and edited by Steven Esteb. Music by Jay Weigel. Associate Producer and Sound Design: Stephen Tonti. Sound Mixing by Jesse Salon Snyder. Special guests: Steven Kinzer, Tulane History Professor Justin Wolfe, Carla Ferrell. Special thanks to Esplanade Studios, The Ranch Studios, Jason Gurvitz, Kyle Frederick, Zach Slaff.
This is a production of Journalista Podcast, LLC and iHeartRadio.