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This is Later with Lee Matthews,
The Lee Matthews Podcast, More What You

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Here, Weekday Afternoon's on the Drive. He's an award winning director who's worked

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as a Hollywood screenwriter and made features, commercials, music videos, documentaries,

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and also a professor at Loyal and
University of New Orleans teaching film and screenwriting.

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Stephen stab has teamed up with his
partner for an extraordinary project. Her

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name is Courtney cookie Hood, a
former model and ex wife of Columbian drug

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cartel and journalista. Is what they
have teamed up for. It is the

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dangerous and improbable life of cookie Hood, who ended up cracking the Iran Contra

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scandal Wide open. Greetings guys reading, Good morning, Hey Lee. I

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want to tell you something before we
get into all the journalisa things that I

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graduated from Yukon High School. Oh
well, as a kinky dinky would just

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happen to appear. I was born
and raised in New Iberia, Louisiana,

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just west of New Orleans. We
know it well, we know it well,

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we do. We also went to
Western Oklahoma State. You know,

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so I'm swasso. You are a
swassoo alum. Yeah, Okay, enough

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of that. I just wanted to
say that. Well, let's start with

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you. What brought this story to
your doorstep? Well, I'm a filmmaker,

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a screenwriter, and I get a
lot of people approaching me with crazy

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stories. This story was the craziest
one anyone ever approached me with. And

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I literally thought it was BS when
I heard it. And the craziest part

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of this the next day, she
brought me the receipts. Cookie brought me

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this box. We call us the
the box, and in that box was

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passports, press passes, pictures with
celebrities and well, first day for clippings,

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Yeah, letters from Dan rather go. You know you know Ed Ed

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Bradley, Mike waf even Lee Carter. She was a penpower with Jimmy Carter

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and Courtney Cookie Hood You what your
I mean, what's your story? What

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got you involved? First of all
with a Columbian drug cartel and then that

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led to being the manager of CBS
sixty minutes field office in Managua. H

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called me Cookie Lee, but my
mother was from Nicaragua. I was raised

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in both countries. I know both
cultures extremely well. And I started off

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as a model in my younger years
in New York City, then rekindles a

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friendship I had with a childhood friend
from Nicaragua in Miami, not knowing that

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he was very deep into the drugs
worlds and the drug games. And that

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happened, of course, and then
and I left him, I found myself

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back in Nicaraguo, tried to check
out the revolution, so to speak,

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and that's when I was approached by
NBC and CBS to run their bureau.

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For the reasons I mentioned earlier,
I spoke both languages, I knew both

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cultures, and my contacts on every
side were just so numerous to even uh

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name. And that's how my career
started. Cookie Hood by the way,

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as Studio West Louisiana. Oh okay, lady, necessary mass practica. But

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what I what I was getting at
is the Journalista is the name of the

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podcast. You can hear it on
the iHeartRadio app and everywhere you get podcasts,

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this remarkable story of cookie Hood along
with Stephen StEB Now, Stephen,

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when this story came to you,
did you instantly think touching podcast or did

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you have something else in mine?
Oh? Absolutely, I had something else

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in mind. We've written a script, I've got a big pitch deck.

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We are out there pitching this in
La getting really far, and this iHeart

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thing showed up out of nowhere.
We and they and they offer us a

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really great deal to make the podcast. And I told everybody I was working

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with in La, stop the press, to stop everything. We're doing this

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podcast because this podcast is going to
be our opportunity to tell her story,

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like in this really personal, intimate
way that I think has you know,

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that's aspirational on a lot of levels, obviously on personal levels, but also

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on a business level. So I
think, no, I was not thinking

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podcasts, but I think this podcast
is the best thing I've ever done.

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I'm so proud of it. Cookie
Hood mentioned getting away from the Colombian drug

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cartel, Kingpan. How'd you manage
to do that without having to have somebody

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constantly taste your food? It was
easy. We were childhood friends. I

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came back to New Orleans to take
care of my mother, who was ill

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at the time. I had a
one year old son, and we parted

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as friends and we remained friends until
the day he died, so that was

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never an issue. And the fact
that I had made some deep friendships within

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the cartel, including Pablo Escobar,
Freeway Rick Ross out in La It was

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all just another day in the life
of Cookie. I have a friend who

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enjoyed the nose candy, if you
will, and I used to tease him.

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I used to tease him that he
gets he does so much cocaine.

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He gets critic he gets Christmas cards
from Pablo Escobar. But Steven, she

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really did at Christmas cards from Bambo
Escamar. Oh. Yeah, and she

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understalls that he was at her wedding. I mean, it's crazy. He

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provided all the party favors. Yeah, and the best man at the wedding

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was the bongo player for Santana.
It's crazy. Well, Cookie, at

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what point did you realize the Iran
Kantra thing was starting to spill out before

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you? Well, we as journalists
in Latin America, specifically in Nicaragua,

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we knew there was some funny business
going on. We didn't know what was

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going on or how it was going
on, but we always knew there was

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something shady happening in the background.
And what happened was literally like manna falling

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from heaven. Sandinista soldiers shot down
a CIA plane. Everyone was killed except

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the kicker, and his name was
Eugene hasitt Bus. He survived, and

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all the evidence they had on the
plane survived. I had access, exclusive

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access to the evidence that was confiscated
by the Sandinistas, and one of them

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was a business card of a vice
president of a Swiss bank, and on

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the back there was a series of
numbers that the Sandinistas had labeled as a

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phone number. I knew it wasn't
a phone number. I knew at the

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time that it had to be a
Swiss bank account. And I also had

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to ask myself, what are these
lowly pilots kickers doing with a Swiss bank

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account? So I called CBS in
New York, CBS in Washington. I

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told him, look, guys,
I don't know what I have here,

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but I have something big. This
is what I've got. You guys,

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run with it and let's see what
comes of it. The rest is history.

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Well it's quite a bit of history, and there's a lot of details

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and it Steven esteb when this all
started to leak out, the Reagan administration

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just kept saying, I don't remember, I don't remember. I mean,

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comedians were actually saying, hey,
if we ever sell guns to people who

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hate us, maybe out to jot
it down. We had a joke with

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a comedian friend of mine, Randy
Kretico, and the joke was, how

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do you know you have counture cocaine
when you buy a Graham half of its

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stare and the other half is out
accounted. Well, Steve, it's a

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big story and everybody then knew it, and I you know, I tell

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people all the time, like a
lot of younger people who've heard of Iron

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Country but have no idea what it
is. Yeah, it literally was as

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scandal as big or bigger than water
Gate. Oh yeah, nine to eleven

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and January six, everything that we're
going through now. It's remember eleven different

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Reagan administration of inials were convicted,
including the Secretary of Defense and the National

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Security Advisor. That is a massive
problem, and of course they were pardoned,

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but it is a huge This was
a big lawbreaking situation, and I

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think it really connects us to where
we are now. I mean, these

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scandals come up, basically, there's
one every decade, and this was the

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biggest one of the eighties for sure. Well and Steve, I don't have

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a lot of time left, but
it seems like the scandals of today have

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learned from the scandals of like Iran
Contra, what to do and what not

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to do? You would think great. The name of the podcast is Journalista.

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It's available everywhere you get podcast,
including the iHeartRadio app. A fascinating

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story Cookiehood along with her partner Stephen
StEB Well. Thank you for bringing the

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story to us. I could talk
to you all day. Yeah. Thanks

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for having the gong y. Thank
you so much. Thanks for listening to

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Later with Lee Matthews, The Lee
Matthews Podcast. Remember to listen to The

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Drive Live weekday afternoons from five to
seven and iHeartMedia Presentation