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Deep Background with Noah Feldman

Iran Contra: Episode 4 - Diverted

Deep Background with Noah Feldman

Pushkin Industries

News Commentary, Government, News

4.4848 Ratings

🗓️ 21 April 2025

⏱️ 49 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

How Oliver North decided to do a little multitasking -- and ended up on a plane to Tehran.

For a list of books, documentaries and resources we used to research this episode visit: bit.ly/fiascopolitics


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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

What are the consequences of getting on Europe's bad side?

0:03.6

The rationale is more like, fuck those guys.

0:06.2

How is stealth wealth changing retail?

0:09.2

You can have taste and steal by dupes.

0:11.7

What does a $6.2 million banana have to do with any of us?

0:16.4

People don't like the attribution of serious financial value to comedy.

0:21.5

Join me, Felix Salmon and my co-hosts Emily Peck and Elizabeth Spires

0:25.4

as we talk about the most important and obscure stories in business and finance.

0:30.1

Follow Slate Money wherever you like to listen.

0:40.3

Pushkin. North had no formal training in covert operations.

0:55.6

He had never seriously studied diplomacy either, or international relations, or political science.

1:01.6

He was a soldier.

1:03.3

So when he found himself in charge of two top-secret foreign policy programs, one in Nicaragua,

1:09.0

the other in Iran, he kind of had to make it up as he went along.

1:14.0

In Nicaragua, North was counting on Contra rebel leaders to allocate the millions of dollars

1:19.3

he was raising on their behalf.

1:21.6

Remember, the CIA had been forced by Congress to stop helping the Contras.

1:26.6

Now, in their absence, it seemed like a lot of money was being wasted or worse, stolen.

1:33.2

The problem was the Contras didn't know how to run their war.

1:38.6

They were very bad managers.

1:41.1

This is journalist Doyle McNanis.

1:43.5

You've heard from him before. He covered the Contra

...

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