When Bernthal arrived in Russia in 1999, there were shootings at the Duma and Chechen apartment building bombings happening in the city. He considered himself street-smart and a boxer, but nothing prepared him for a place with a completely different alphabet, language, and a jarring blend of brutality and profound reverence for the arts — statues of playwrights and poets on every corner.
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At 15:00 · chapter starts 12:20
Bernthal was a football and baseball player in college who was 'running into every wall' and getting in all kinds of trouble. Athletes told him he needed an arts credit, so he signed up for what he thought was a lecture hall full of 600 kids watching movies. It was an intimate class of 10 serious theater students. The first assignment: bring in something deeply important and share it. Bernthal had nothing, but he had his catcher's glove in his bag for practice. So he invented an elaborate story about his mother giving him the glove on her deathbed. His mother was alive and well in D.C. He cried. The class cried. Snot ran. [1] — Jon Bernthal "Bernthal signed up for an intro theater class thinking it was 600 kids watching movies in the back of a lecture hall. Instead it was 10 peo…" 19:30 Teacher Alma Becker cleared the room, tore into him for violating the sanctity of her studio — and then told him he had something. His punishment was to audition for the play. When he eventually got in trouble and couldn't finish school, it was Becker who told him there was no conventional pathway: go to Moscow, study at the Art Theatre. [2] — Jon Bernthal "Bernthal's first theater teacher, after catching him fabricate that deathbed story, sent him to the Moscow Art Theatre as both a punishment…" 17:30 That blind faith in one teacher changed everything.
When Bernthal was in Russia in 1999, there were shootings at the Duma (the Russian Senate) and Chechen apartment building bombings — conditions he describes as 'the Wild West.'
Bernthal's first theater teacher, after catching him fabricate that deathbed story, sent him to the Moscow Art Theatre as both a punishment and a revelation. His teachers there had performed illegal plays in subway tunnels and abandoned buildings during times when public gatherings were outlawed, risking prison for art they believed in religiously. That combination of danger, reverence, and masculine cultural respect for the arts hit Bernthal differently than anything America could have offered him at that age.
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Lebanese terrorists backed by Iran were holding American hostages throughout the Reagan presidency. Reagan had loudly campaigned against negotiating with terrorists — putting him in an impossible position that his team quietly decided to ignore.
During the Iran-Iraq War, the US openly supplied Iraq with weapons, training, and intelligence. At the same time, Oliver North was secretly funneling missiles to Iran. The US was playing both sides of a shooting war.
Oliver North traveled to Iran under the alias 'William P. Goode' with a fake passport. CIA Director William Casey allegedly gave him cyanide pills so he could kill himself rather than be tortured if captured. He returned safely and the deal moved forward.
The Pentagon sold missiles to the CIA for $3,700 each. The CIA sold them to Richard Secord at cost. Secord sold them to Iranian middleman Ghorbanifar for $10,000 each. Ghorbanifar charged Iran even more. The profit — including $3 million in interest in one Swiss account — was diverted directly to fund the Nicaraguan Contras.
America secretly transferred 2,000 missiles and missile parts to Iran in 8 shipments over more than a year. Only 3 of 7 hostages were released. Three more were taken. The net result was zero freed hostages and a full-blown constitutional scandal.
On October 5, 1986, a CIA Contra supply plane flew a weapons drop at 2,500 feet in broad daylight. A Sandinista soldier shot it down. The only survivor, Eugene Hasenfuss, had borrowed a parachute from his skydiving brother. He was captured, paraded in front of cameras, and told the Sandinistas everything he knew.
The CIA supply operation used a front company called Southern Air Transport, widely known to be a CIA cover. Crew members of the downed plane carried their Southern Air Transport employee IDs in their wallets. One also had a business card directly linking him to Oliver North's office in Washington.
When the scandal broke, Oliver North and his secretary Fawn Hall conducted what became known as a 'shredding party,' destroying a day's worth of documents. The full truth of Iran-Contra may never be known because of what was fed through that shredder.
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