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Selects: Iran-Contra Affair: Shady in the 80s, Part 1
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The Cocaine Sting and the 'Just Say No' Hypocrisy
At 50:25 · chapter starts 47:35
The propaganda office didn't stop at press releases and media pressure. One sting operation involved smuggling cocaine into Nicaragua, arranging a photograph of a Sandinista official next to the shipment, then quietly removing the drugs and flying them back to Florida. The photograph was published widely, with Reagan holding it up as proof that the Sandinistas were poisoning American youth — a message tailor-made for the cultural moment of Nancy Reagan's 'Just Say No' campaign. The DEA subsequently stated it had no evidence whatsoever that the photographed official had ever engaged in drug trafficking, but that retraction arrived weeks after the original splash and received a fraction of the attention. A second sting operation involved Manuel Noriega — a CIA asset and, as the Iran-Contra investigators put it, the head of a 'narco-kleptocracy' — who was asked to arrange a staged arms interception in El Salvador. Noriega agreed, then kept the shipment for himself after a New York Times piece annoyed him.
The Reagan administration staged a cocaine photo-op — smuggling drugs into Nicaragua, photographing a Sandinista official with them, then smuggling the cocaine back out — all during Nancy Reagan's 'Just Say No' campaign.
The Reagan administration staged a cocaine sting operation: smuggle drugs in, photograph a Sandinista official next to the shipment, then take the cocaine back to Florida. The photo went everywhere. The DEA quietly said they had zero evidence the official had ever trafficked drugs — but the retraction got none of the splash.
If a journalist wrote favorably about the Sandinista government, the Office of Public Diplomacy spread the rumor that the Sandinistas had paid for the positive coverage with sex workers — and they tailored the sex worker to the reporter's perceived sexual orientation. This was CIA psychological warfare, deployed on American journalists.
