The Jamboree in Jamba

Speaker 1 This is an iHeart podcast.

Speaker 2 I couldn't even believe it was real.

Speaker 6 Join me, Tatiana Siegel, executive editor of film and media at Variety, for a four-part tale of youthful ambition, artistic integrity, and the dark side of fame.

Speaker 7 Just like my parents talk about they knew where they were when John F.

Speaker 8 Kennedy was killed.

Speaker 9 Pretty much everyone I know knows exactly where they were when River died.

Speaker 10 Featuring new interviews with Samantha Mathis, Dr.

Speaker 11 Drew Pinski, Corey Feldman, and more.

Speaker 13 Listen to Variety Confidential on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 15 Time for a sofa upgrade?

Speaker 16 Visit washable sofas.com and discover Anibay, where designer style meets budget-friendly prices, with sofas starting at $699.

Speaker 23 Anibay brings you the ultimate in furniture innovation with a modular design that allows you to rearrange your space effortlessly.

Speaker 18 Perfect for both small and large spaces, Anibay is the only machine-washable sofa inside and out.

Speaker 26 Say goodbye to stains and messes with liquid and stain resistant fabrics that make cleaning easy.

Speaker 28 Liquid simply slides right off.

Speaker 27 Designed for custom comfort, our high resilience foam lets you choose between a sink-in feel or a supportive memory foam blend.

Speaker 15 Plus our pet-friendly stain-resistant fabrics ensure your sofa stays beautiful for years.

Speaker 30 Don't compromise quality for price.

Speaker 22 Visit washablesofas.com to upgrade your living space today with no risk returns and a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Speaker 29 Get up to 60% off plus free shipping and free returns.

Speaker 25 Shop now at washable sofas.com.

Speaker 34 Offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply.

Speaker 35 What does Zinn really give you? Not just smoke-free nicotine satisfaction, but also real freedom to do more of what you love, when and where you want to do it. Why bring Zinn along for the ride?

Speaker 35 Because America's number one nicotine pouch opens up all the possibilities of right now.

Speaker 35 With Zinn, you don't just find freedom. You keep finding it.
Find your Zen. Learn more at zinn.com.

Speaker 35 Warning, this product contains nicotine. Nicotine is an addictive chemical.

Speaker 36 Look, school is starting and I'm just a kid. And let's be honest, I'm not going to shop for myself.
But we can get up to 40% off back-to-school essentials on Uber Eats.

Speaker 36 Did I mention I need poster board for my science fair, lunch for my field trip, and unlined note cards for my history quiz tomorrow?

Speaker 14 Or were they lined?

Speaker 36 Anyway, Uber Eats has like all the back-to-school stuff on there. So come on, let's order now on Uber Eats and get up to 40% off.

Speaker 14 We're cool, right? Cool. Not literally everything.
Promotion ends 916 is subject to change or cancellation. Exclusions may apply.
Check out for availability.

Speaker 14 Cool Zone Media.

Speaker 14 A very strange meeting took place in June of 1985.

Speaker 14 This was long before the days of email and video conferencing. If you wanted to hammer out an agreement, you had to get everyone in the same room.

Speaker 14 Perhaps you could invite everyone to your office or rent a conference room at the Marriott.

Speaker 14 But the attendees at this meeting would have had a hard time booking flights to Washington, D.C.

Speaker 14 So they settled on something a little less orthodox. And they couldn't exactly just call up the men on their invite list either.
The logistics were going to be a nightmare.

Speaker 14 Dana Rorabacher, President Ronald Reagan speechwriter, personally flew to a safe house in Tegusagalpa to hand-deliver an invitation to Adolfo Calero, leader of the Nicaraguan Contras.

Speaker 14 Anti-communist activist Jack Wheeler was in touch with the Mujahideen in Afghanistan and Laotian rebel leader Pau Kaher.

Speaker 14 And Grover Norquist had plenty of contacts who could get him in touch with Jonas Savimbi, leader of the Angolan insurgent force UNITA.

Speaker 14 Given the guest list, They had pretty limited options when it came to finding a venue.

Speaker 14 State Department officials made calls.

Speaker 14 Only two governments were willing to offer their public support for such a summit,

Speaker 14 Israel and South Africa.

Speaker 14 Politically, that was a minefield. So one of the attendees offered to host.

Speaker 14 They could hold the meeting at the UNITA base camp in the Angolan town of Jamba.

Speaker 14 American Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, Chester Crocker, arranged for the South African military to handle security.

Speaker 14 It was all coming together.

Speaker 14 With funding from the President of Right Aid, Jack Abermoff was going to get the world's leading anti-communists into one room.

Speaker 14 I'm not sure this meeting accomplished much in terms of advancing the Reagan doctrine.

Speaker 14 But at that rebel base in southern Angola, Jack Abermoff reconnected with an old friend, a South African military intelligence operative he'd first met on a visit to Johannesburg in 1983.

Speaker 14 And while Oliver North met with armed men in the sweltering heat, Abramoff was brainstorming his next project and meeting with the man who would fund it.

Speaker 14 Whether or not Jack Abramoff's strange summit had any impact on the course of the Cold War is a question for someone else.

Speaker 14 I can only tell you about the time the South African government secretly paid an ambitious young American lobbyist to make one of the worst movies I've ever seen.

Speaker 14 I'm Molly Conger,

Speaker 14 and this is Weird Little Guys.

Speaker 14 This is a side

Speaker 14 I really couldn't resist it. I think you'll understand.

Speaker 14 I've been writing this story, this story about Monica Huggett, about South Africa, about the apartheid international. I've been writing it for so long that I'm having trouble letting it go.

Speaker 14 So I will try to wrap it up next week. I know there are so many other weird little guys I've promised to tell you about, and we'll get to them.

Speaker 14 But I've invested so much in this story that I want to make sure I end it properly. And I could tell I just didn't have that this week.

Speaker 14 I don't talk a lot about my personal life in public, online, because as an expert on weird little guys, I really hate to think about them thinking about my personal life.

Speaker 14 But I guess I'm going to have to let you all in on this one eventually anyway. I'm actually getting married in a couple of weeks, and it turns out that having a wedding is kind of a whole ordeal.

Speaker 14 I'm not really the arts and crafts type.

Speaker 14 I really would rather be watching grainy videos of old Aryan nations World Congress meetings than making place cards and seating charts and trying to figure out how to do floral arrangements.

Speaker 14 But here we are, nevertheless.

Speaker 14 Honestly, I'm really lucky that I have a job where I can just follow my heart. and let my curiosity lead me wherever we happen to end up.

Speaker 14 Because if I have to write a 7,000 word research project every week, my heart's got to be in it. And this week, I could not resist the siren song of a bad 80s action movie.

Speaker 14 It was just too weird to only mention in passing. It had to be its own episode.

Speaker 14 Because as I was writing the conclusion to this long, strange saga of Monica Huggett Stone, I had originally planned to devote just a little bit of time to the political connections of the far-right in the United States and the pro-apartheid activist movements in South Africa.

Speaker 14 But I was wrapping up my research connecting Monica to David Duke's 1996 Senate run when I realized I'd overlooked something massive.

Speaker 14 It wasn't just the likes of David Duke who were terribly interested in the continuing success of apartheid.

Speaker 14 No, it wasn't just the extreme fringes at all. There were large swaths of Reagan conservatives who were deeply embedded in this.

Speaker 14 The deeper I dug, the more obvious it became that a lot of the very big names in American conservative politics are tied up in this story.

Speaker 14 Not with Monica, not directly. Like I said, this is a side story.

Speaker 14 But in the 1980s, sub-Saharan Africa was a battleground in the Cold War. And the South African government was a big player in this perceived fight against Soviet influence on the continent.

Speaker 14 So even as public disgust with apartheid complicated having open dealings with the country, American conservatives saw South Africa as a critical partner in the ideological struggle against communism.

Speaker 14 And we'll get into some more about those connections in the next episode because they continue into present-day politics.

Speaker 14 In the time it's taken me to write these episodes, that situation has continued to evolve.

Speaker 14 And there's certainly some strange connections to the past in the story of South African Ambassador Ibrahim Razul's recent expulsion from the United States.

Speaker 14 But today, we're not talking about Ibrahim Razul.

Speaker 14 We're talking about Red Scorpion, the 1988 action movie starring Dolph Lundgren.

Speaker 14 I guess we have to do a little background first.

Speaker 14 I'm not too proud to admit that when I started poking around the edges of this story, I only knew enough about about Jack Abramoff to tell you that's that lobbyist who got into trouble when I was in high school, I think.

Speaker 14 And we don't really have to get into the thing Abramoff is most famous for. His 2006 conviction for mail fraud, tax evasion, and conspiracy to bribe public officials.

Speaker 14 He did a little time in federal prison for crimes he committed in connection to his work as a lobbyist for Native American tribes, seeking to influence legislation on gambling.

Speaker 14 That happened later in his life, but I did want to mention it because that's the only thing I knew about him. And I just want to reassure you, yes, that Jack Abramoff.

Speaker 14 And obviously you have to start somewhere in politics. You don't just find yourself in the center of a web of corruption involving multiple sitting congressmen right out of the gate.

Speaker 14 And Abramoff got his start in politics in college.

Speaker 14 working as a volunteer on Ronald Reagan's 1980 presidential campaign and serving as the chairman of the Massachusetts Alliance of College Republicans.

Speaker 14 After graduation, he was elected as the chair of the College Republican National Committee with the help of a man who had become his close friend and longtime collaborator, Rover Norquist.

Speaker 14 Together, the pair made it their mission to transform the College Republicans from a resume-padding social club into a vicious, militant political tool.

Speaker 14 They pushed out the old guard, the men they considered wishy-washy country clubbers, and they remade the organization into what Abramoff called the sword and the shield of the Reagan Revolution.

Speaker 14 And he was a busy man in the early 80s. In addition to his duties as the chair of the College Republicans, he was the frontman of a group called the USA Foundation.

Speaker 14 And that group mainly appears in a couple of news stories in 1984 in connection to a series of rallies that he organized celebrating the anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Grenada.

Speaker 14 And maybe it's because the name is so generic, but it's hard to find old news articles about the USA Foundation.

Speaker 14 They don't really seem to have done much public-facing work.

Speaker 14 That was perhaps by design.

Speaker 14 The foundation seems to have mostly existed to raise money.

Speaker 14 Traditionally, the college Republicans had relied almost exclusively on the Republican National Committee for their budget. But Abramoff had something bigger in mind.

Speaker 14 He wanted autonomy, and he wanted immunity from the nagging oversight of the old guard.

Speaker 14 So he made his own money.

Speaker 14 I once again find myself appreciating the work of an unsavory source.

Speaker 14 The archivists at the Liberty University Jerry Falwell Library have done a really phenomenal job of digitizing their collection of old documents related to the Conservative Caucus, a lobbying group whose board Abramoff served on.

Speaker 14 And one of the documents in that collection is a memo that Abramoff sent to a big donor listing off his accomplishments as chair of the College Republicans in 1984 in hopes of securing a big check.

Speaker 14 And he says the USA Foundation, under his leadership, had hosted a delegation of South African student leaders on a trip to Washington in January of 1984.

Speaker 14 And at that meeting, they'd made plans with those South African students from a group called the Students Moderate Alliance to co-host an international student conference later that year at a resort in the South African Bantustan of Bofutaswana.

Speaker 14 That same archive contains a 1984 letter from one of Abramoff's colleagues, a right-wing think take veteran named Amy Moritz. And it's a letter to William F.
Buckley.

Speaker 14 And in that letter, Moritz openly admits to operating multiple front groups. And then she opines on the effectiveness of various other right-wing groups operating around the country.

Speaker 14 And one of the groups she offers an opinion on is Abramoff's USA Foundation.

Speaker 14 And she describes it as operating out of the Heritage Foundation, which is an intriguing aesthetic that I can't offer you any explanation for.

Speaker 14 But through his USA Foundation, it seems that Abramoff had finally found a way to pair his ideological inclinations with personal profit.

Speaker 14 The USA Foundation took in hefty donations from corporations in exchange for sicking the college Republicans on student groups that were bad for business.

Speaker 14 So landlords in San Francisco paid to have student groups organizing for rent control pushed off California campuses.

Speaker 14 Campbell's Soup paid them to undermine student support from migrant farm workers unions.

Speaker 14 It was, I guess, another front group, with the added bonus of being able to solicit tax-exempt contributions, which he could then use to fund the political activities of the College Republicans.

Speaker 14 So these companies, they're not just donating to some think tank. They're not donating to awareness raising or policy papers.
They're investing.

Speaker 14 They were buying fake grassroots organizing to compete in the marketplace of ideas on their behalf.

Speaker 14 But Jack Abramoff wasn't content to sit in Washington and hold fundraisers. He was, after all, the sword and shield of the Reagan Revolution.

Speaker 14 And in the early 80s, that meant getting out there and fighting Soviet influence wherever it existed, or wherever it was imagined to exist.

Speaker 14 For some conservatives, the growing bad press about apartheid was just a highly effective KGB propaganda operation.

Speaker 14 And so it was as chair of the College Republican Committee that Jack Abramoff first visited South Africa in 1983.

Speaker 14 The trip was an effort to strengthen ties between student groups internationally.

Speaker 14 And as part of that mission, he met with Russell Crystal, the leader of a group calling itself the Students' Moderate Alliance.

Speaker 14 It wouldn't be officially revealed until 1992, so nine years after this meeting, that the Students' Moderate Alliance had been entirely a project of the South African Security Police, designed to discredit and disrupt student organizing by groups like the National Union of South African Students, or NUSAS, a primarily English-speaking anti-apartheid group on university campuses.

Speaker 14 But even more than a decade before the truth was exposed, Student groups in South Africa saw right through Russell Crystal.

Speaker 14 I found newspapers and zines put out by college students dating as far back as the organization's founding in 1980, mocking the obvious charade of this organization calling itself moderate.

Speaker 14 They immediately spotted what was obvious National Party propaganda.

Speaker 14 Old issues of a Nusis-aligned student newspaper published by the South African Students' Press Union don't hold back.

Speaker 14 A 1980 issue covering the student council election at the University of Wittwater's Rund in Johannesburg, usually just shortened to Witts University,

Speaker 14 calls the Students' Moderate Alliance a neo-fascist group, and it dismisses them as joke candidates.

Speaker 14 Although one of those joke candidates did win, Russell Kristol's brother Lance.

Speaker 14 By 1983, the same paper reported that Russell Kristol, also a student at Wittwater's Rund, had offered to help right-wing student groups at other schools pay the cost of printing their anti-Nusis pamphlets.

Speaker 14 It was also widely believed that Crystal's Students Moderate Alliance was behind some mysterious pamphlets that had been popping up at campuses all over the country.

Speaker 14 The pamphlets were made to appear as though Nusis had authored them. They bore the organization's name at the bottom and they mimicked the style of real Nusis flyers.

Speaker 14 But they misrepresented the group's views and attempted to link the group to illegal activity.

Speaker 14 They were such an obvious attempt to discredit the group that the vice chancellor at Bitts University issued a statement that whoever had created the flyers, quote, does not have the best interest of students or of the country at heart.

Speaker 14 The university administration also noted that, quote,

Speaker 14 the nature and countrywide method of their distribution suggests that the persons responsible for them command resources beyond those typically available to student organizations.

Speaker 14 And throughout the 1980s, student newspapers in South Africa ran stories about the impossible level of funding the Students' Moderate Alliance seemed to have access to.

Speaker 14 They had unlimited numbers of these glossy, expensive-looking, professionally made pamphlets. And in one case, there was even proof that the pamphlets had been printed in a national party office.

Speaker 14 In 1982, a student newspaper obtained a sworn statement from someone who had been detained under Section 22.

Speaker 14 That's the provision that allowed for preventive detention without charges, largely a tool used to harass and intimidate anti-apartheid activists.

Speaker 14 And on this particular occasion, this detainee was taken up to the 10th floor of the Johannesburg police station to be questioned.

Speaker 14 The 10th floor was occupied by the security branch of the police, the police who were tasked with intelligence gathering, handling informants, and running death squads.

Speaker 14 And there on the 10th floor, this detainee saw a familiar face.

Speaker 14 It was Russell Crystal.

Speaker 14 And the sworn statement read in part: quote,

Speaker 14 I saw Crystal on the 10th floor of John Forster Square. He was neither handcuffed nor accompanied by the security police.
He appeared calm and under no duress.

Speaker 14 When his brother Lance Kristol was elected to the Witt Student Council in 1980, he refused to sign a statement that all student representatives were asked to agree to, that they would not involve themselves in espionage on campus.

Speaker 14 Lance Kristol reportedly said,

Speaker 14 I do not want to be held responsible. for any patriotic urge that might occur during my term of office.

Speaker 14 An official university inquiry from the mid-80s determined that the Students' Moderate Alliance clearly had, quote, lavish funding from anonymous sources.

Speaker 14 In addition to his Students' Moderate Alliance, Russell Crystal also founded the National Students' Federation.

Speaker 14 The WITS student newspaper sent a reporter to the group's conference in 1984.

Speaker 14 It was held at a luxury hotel in downtown Johannesburg. with little finger sandwiches served on silver platters.

Speaker 14 Russell Crystal was elected as the group's president, And the leader of the Students Moderate Alliance chapter at the University of Cape Town was elected to the group's executive board and named its media officer.

Speaker 14 That student, a young Arthur Kemp, is someone whose name might sound familiar if you listen carefully. He would later author the hit list found in the possession of Chris Haney's assassin in 1993.

Speaker 14 That student newspaper reporter in 1984 concluded the article about the conference with a quote from a NUSA student leader.

Speaker 14 They aren't just making wild accusations when they speculate about possible state funding for Crystal student groups.

Speaker 14 Just a few years earlier, something called the information scandal had broken, and the government had been forced to admit to the existence of something called Project Anne-Marie.

Speaker 14 A years-long propaganda campaign aimed at undermining anti-apartheid activism at home and anti-apartheid opinion abroad.

Speaker 14 Four high-ranking government officials were forced to resign in disgrace, including Prime Minister Forster.

Speaker 14 The Secretary of Information not only resigned, but fled the country, only to be extradited back from France to face fraud charges.

Speaker 14 It turned out that throughout the 70s, millions of dollars had been spent from the defense budget to do in part exactly what these students feared was happening again.

Speaker 14 Form front groups to disseminate propaganda and disrupt and discredit anti-apartheid groups like NUSIS.

Speaker 14 And so that student organizer told the paper, quote,

Speaker 14 while we would want to shy away from individualizing political differences, where the true motives of people are being obscured, it has at times been necessary.

Speaker 14 to draw the links between such individuals and the National Party and security police.

Speaker 14 We We believe that the NSF represents a growing attempt to stifle opposition to apartheid.

Speaker 14 It would take almost a decade to get the government to admit it, but she was right.

Speaker 14 Russell Crystal's National Student Federation and Students' Moderate Alliance were both entirely the creation of the apartheid government.

Speaker 2 I couldn't even believe it was real.

Speaker 6 Join me, Tatiana Siegel, executive editor of film and media at Variety, for a four-part tale of youthful ambition, artistic integrity, and the dark side of fame.

Speaker 7 Just like my parents talk about they knew where they were when John F.

Speaker 8 Kennedy was killed.

Speaker 9 Pretty much everyone I know knows exactly where they were when River died.

Speaker 10 Featuring new interviews with Samantha Mathis, Dr.

Speaker 12 Drew Pinski, Corey Feldman, and more.

Speaker 14 Listen to Variety Confidential on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 15 Time for a sofa upgrade?

Speaker 16 Visit washable

Speaker 19 and discover Anibay, where designer style meets budget-friendly prices, with sofas starting at $699.

Speaker 23 Anibay brings you the ultimate in furniture innovation with a modular design that allows you to rearrange your space effortlessly.

Speaker 18 Perfect for both small and large spaces, Anibay is the only machine-washable sofa inside and out.

Speaker 26 Say goodbye to stains and messes with liquid and stain-resistant fabrics that make cleaning easy.

Speaker 28 Liquid simply slides right off.

Speaker 27 Designed for custom comfort, our high-resilience foam lets you choose between a sink-in feel or a supportive memory foam blend.

Speaker 15 Plus, our pet-friendly, stain-resistant fabrics ensure your sofa stays beautiful for years.

Speaker 30 Don't compromise quality for price.

Speaker 22 Visit washablesofas.com to upgrade your living space today with no risk returns and a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Speaker 29 Get up to 60% off plus free shipping and free returns.

Speaker 25 Shop now at washablesofas.com.

Speaker 34 Offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply.

Speaker 37 It was an unimaginable crime.

Speaker 38 It's four consecutive life terms for Brian Koberger who killed the four University of Idaho students.

Speaker 2 The defense are on a sinking ship.

Speaker 39 It was clear at that point he was out of options.

Speaker 37 Nearly 30 months of silence until

Speaker 40 bombshell development Brian Koberger appearing set to accept a plea deal just five weeks before his quadruple murder trial was set to start.

Speaker 37 No trial, no testimony.

Speaker 41 He has pleaded guilty to five criminal counts, one of burglary and then four counts of murder.

Speaker 37 In this final season, we returned to Moscow with interviews from those still searching for answers.

Speaker 42 Why did the prosecution take this? They were holding all the cars.

Speaker 14 How on earth could you make a deal?

Speaker 43 What message does that send?

Speaker 37 Listen to season three of the Idaho Massacre on the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 44 This is Bethany Frankel from Just Be with Bethany Frankl. Here's my summer tip: don't overthink your dog's meals.

Speaker 44 My pups love Just Fresh from Just Food for Dogs, complete, balanced, fresh, shelf-stable meals that go everywhere from New York City to weekends in the Hamptons.

Speaker 44 I mean, you can have real food ready to go for your pup anywhere. No cooler, no hassle, just grab and go.
I've seen the difference. Healthier coats, more energy, tails wagging at mealtime.

Speaker 44 Biggie and smalls love it, and I'm all about stuff that just makes sense when life is busy. Go to justfoodfordogs.com and get 50% off your first order right now.
No code needed.

Speaker 14 While I was researching this segment, I found a small collection of old issues of the Wits Student, that student newspaper at the University of the Wittwaterstrand.

Speaker 14 It's such a fascinating window into the past. It's It's just a college newspaper.
It's written by 20-year-olds.

Speaker 14 And there are articles about how to get more information about university-sponsored insurance.

Speaker 14 There are articles about the tennis team's latest matchups and reviews of David Bowie albums and John Irving novels.

Speaker 14 There's gossip about student groups and classified ads for bicycles and piano lessons.

Speaker 14 But in those same pages, those same student journalists are writing stories about the editor of another student paper disappearing at the hands of the security police, held in detention without charges.

Speaker 14 There are headlines like, 20th Wits student detained, and the police won't say why, and they don't know when they'll be back.

Speaker 14 Mixed in with these write-ups about student theater productions, there are images of riot police with dogs and shotguns marching through campus.

Speaker 14 Anyway, all that to say, it's possible that Jack Abramoff didn't know he was meeting with a government-funded front group led by an intelligence asset when he visited Johannesburg in 1983.

Speaker 14 Again, the actual facts wouldn't come out until 1992.

Speaker 14 Maybe he didn't know.

Speaker 14 It was sort of an open secret, though, and he would have been able to figure it out had he spent five minutes doing his due diligence.

Speaker 14 But if we take his word for it, he never had any idea.

Speaker 14 It was obvious to those teenagers in Johannesburg and to the university administrators.

Speaker 14 Crystal himself never refuted allegations that he was connected to the security police, even allegations that surfaced in 1982.

Speaker 14 But maybe Abramoff never asked. Maybe he's just an idiot.
But despite his later insistence to the contrary, there are some clues here that might lead you to suspect that he did know.

Speaker 14 Not long after returning from this trip, the National College Republican Committee formally adopted a resolution pledging their support to the Students' Moderate Alliance in their fight against communism.

Speaker 14 The resolution condemned Soviet aggression and claimed that South Africa was plagued by deliberate KGB propaganda.

Speaker 14 But it didn't actually mention apartheid at all.

Speaker 14 When Abramoff gave a speech at the Republican National Convention in August of 1984,

Speaker 14 that was his parting message: that he's mobilizing college-age voters to re-elect Ronald Reagan because America can only be free if Ronald Reagan is free to fund the anti-communist death squads.

Speaker 45 Today, students know that support of anti-Soviet freedom fighters and victory over communism guarantees us security for our nation.

Speaker 45 And so it is to our party that they come.

Speaker 45 It is with us that they trust our dreams.

Speaker 45 And it is in us that they place their hopes.

Speaker 45 And so it is for them that we must win in November.

Speaker 45 It is for them that we must re-elect Ronald Reagan.

Speaker 45 And it is for them that we must restore liberty and righteousness throughout the world. Thank you.

Speaker 14 By 1985, Jack Abramoff had a new gig.

Speaker 14 He was the executive director of Citizens for America, a lobbying group funded by Rite Aid heir Louis Lehrman.

Speaker 14 This was very explicitly just a privately funded mouthpiece for Ronald Reagan.

Speaker 14 Lehrman was the founder, funder, and leader of CFA, but it hadn't actually been his idea.

Speaker 14 It was Reagan mega donor and producer of most of the world's instant mashed potatoes, a man named Jack Hume, who approached Reagan in 1983 with the idea of forming a group that could shape public opinion in his favor.

Speaker 14 But they needed the right man for the job.

Speaker 14 It was President Reagan himself who called up Lehrman and sold him on the idea.

Speaker 14 Lehrman later described the call, saying,

Speaker 14 Our first purpose is to induce a mutation in the climate of opinion in America among opinion leaders.

Speaker 14 So about a year and a half into the existence of CFA, Lehrman hired Jack Abramoff as its executive director. And in that role, Jack Abramoff was meeting almost daily with Oliver North.

Speaker 14 You see, Ronald Reagan very much wanted to fund the anti-communist forces in Nicaragua.

Speaker 14 But because of their horrific and ongoing human rights abuses, Congress had passed a series of ever-tightening restrictions on the kind of U.S. aid that they could receive.

Speaker 14 And by 1985, Ronald Reagan couldn't legally send the Contras any U.S. money at all.

Speaker 14 So they put their heads together and they found what they thought was a creative little loophole.

Speaker 14 Congress didn't actually say that they couldn't send the Contras any money.

Speaker 14 They said that they couldn't send them any U.S. government money, money that had been appropriated by Congress, money from the budget of a U.S.
agency.

Speaker 14 There are other kinds of money.

Speaker 14 And so the Reagan administration illegally sold weapons to Iran. And they used that money, money that had never been appropriated by Congress, to fund the Contras.

Speaker 14 It's a lot more complicated than that. Don't email me to explain it.

Speaker 14 I know I just don't want to write a thousand words about the Iran-Contra affair, but I don't think anyone wants to hear that anyway.

Speaker 14 So, if this story is new to you, all you need to know right now is that Ronald Reagan was absolutely unwilling to let Congress stand in the way of his desire to overthrow the Nicaraguan government.

Speaker 14 And a lot of people eventually got into some trouble when that loophole idea turned out to be pretty illegal.

Speaker 14 And here's where we finally pick back up with that strange story we opened with.

Speaker 14 As director of the CFA, Abramoff convinced his boss, Louis Lehrman, that this summit of anti-communist rebel leaders would be a public relations victory for Ronald Reagan.

Speaker 14 Congress had just shut down the last bit of U.S. aid to the Contras in Nicaragua, and they'd soon be hearing a bill on aid to Jonas Savimbi's UNITA forces in Angola.

Speaker 14 Reagan insisted that arming what he called freedom fighters was actually self-defense for the United States.

Speaker 14 The idea was that these rebel groups are fighting Soviet influence abroad, and that's a necessary thing in these last days of the Cold War.

Speaker 14 So Abramoff's plan was to get them all in one room and brainstorm a strategy for convincing the world that these notorious human rights abusers are indeed Reagan's freedom fighters.

Speaker 14 And that's how Jack Abramoff ended up on a South African charter plane to Angola to spend four days in a tent with Oliver North, Grover Norquist, and the leaders of the Contras and the Mujahideen.

Speaker 14 The whole affair sounds like it would make for a darkly funny comedy, and apparently someone did make a movie about Jack Abramoff in 2010. It's called Casino Jack.

Speaker 14 I think Kevin Spacey plays Jack Abramoff. I didn't watch it, but apparently there is a scene in that movie depicting this event.

Speaker 14 On their flight from Johannesburg to Angola, the plane they took had to fly very low and change course frequently to avoid detection by the Cubans who were in Angola.

Speaker 14 And this left the entire delegation just miserably airsick.

Speaker 14 There were several reporters along for the ride, and I found multiple accounts that Almost everyone on the plane spent the entire flight taking turns vomiting in the plane's filthy toilet.

Speaker 14 And after they landed on a makeshift airstrip somewhere in the bush in southern Angola, they endured a two-hour car ride in old jeeps over unpaved roads before arriving at the secret location of the UNIDA base camp.

Speaker 14 Jack Abramoff later wrote that because he couldn't travel on the Sabbath, he had actually departed for Jamba a day earlier than the rest of the delegation.

Speaker 14 And so he wouldn't have to travel alone, Adolfo Calero volunteered to go with him.

Speaker 14 And that just seems so thoughtful, doesn't it? I'm sure he was just being polite.

Speaker 14 He was just trying to make a new friend.

Speaker 14 There's no source that indicates a reporter was on that flight.

Speaker 14 I can't find anything written about what they might have talked about.

Speaker 14 So we can only guess what a rabid Reaganite and the leader of the Nicaraguan Contras might have talked about during five hours alone in May of 1985.

Speaker 14 As bad as the journey was, it wasn't much better after they'd arrived.

Speaker 14 This was Jamba, not DC.

Speaker 14 There was no Ritz-Carlton. There was no plumbing.
There was no air conditioning. They slept on cots in thatched huts.

Speaker 14 The delegation from the Mujahideen was using Abdulrahim Mardak's son as a translator, and Abramoff would later claim that he seemed to be struggling, often offering only a few words in translation for very long statements.

Speaker 14 A write-up in the New York Times says the Laotian translator kept referring to their Angolan host, Jonas Savimbi, as Mr. Zimbabwe.

Speaker 14 And when the group's wealthy patron, Louis Lehrman, presented these rebel leaders, each with their own framed copy of the United States Constitution,

Speaker 14 they didn't even pretend to be impressed.

Speaker 14 When the group sat down to get to business, Lehrman read them a letter from Ronald Reagan, appearing to endorse the summit.

Speaker 14 And it read in part,

Speaker 14 We have to be moved by the example of men and women who struggle every day at great personal risk for rights that we have enjoyed since birth. Their goals are our goals.

Speaker 14 But in reading this letter aloud, Lehrman omitted a pretty important line. in the president's letter.

Speaker 14 It wasn't addressed to this group. It was addressed to Lehrman alone, and it was not intended to convey the president's endorsement of or promise of aid to anyone there.

Speaker 14 In Jack Abramoff's memoirs, though, he claims, quote, there wasn't a dry eye in the house at the end of the letter.

Speaker 14 He goes on to say, the words of Ronald Reagan meant the world to this group.

Speaker 14 That particular characterization of this moment is notably absent from every other account I read.

Speaker 14 One account published in the conservative Washington Examiner says there wasn't even enough food for everyone there.

Speaker 14 Jack Abramoff keeps kosher, so he packed an entire suitcase with his own provisions for the trip. And he departed from Angola a little bit early before the event was entirely over.

Speaker 14 And the Washington Examiner reports that as he's leaving, he's auctioning off his remaining cans of tuna fish, reportedly for as much as $20 a can.

Speaker 14 Grover Norquist dubbed the event the Democratic International.

Speaker 14 The press called it the Jamboree in Jamba.

Speaker 14 And the attendees signed a pact that read,

Speaker 14 We free peoples fighting for our national independence and human rights assembled at Jamba declare our solidarity with all freedom movements in the world and state our commitment to cooperate to liberate our nations from these Soviet imperialists.

Speaker 14 In a later piece in Harper's magazine, columnist Thomas Frank called the Declaration a bit of high-flown falderall written by Grover Norquist that aimed for solemnity, but sounded more like the work of a fifth grader who'd been forced to memorize the Gettysburg Address and the Declaration of Independence and has gotten them all jumbled up somehow.

Speaker 14 I mean, honestly, sick burn on Grover Norquist.

Speaker 14 Adolfo Calero, the representative from the Contras, clarified to reporters that the pact didn't call for any exchanges of troops or weapons.

Speaker 14 It was kind of just vibes.

Speaker 14 When the American delegation got home, Lewis Lehrman discovered that Abramoff and Norquist had been blowing through money with reckless abandon, and they'd spent nearly $3 million out of the budget of Citizens for America.

Speaker 14 Lehrman claims he fired them. Abramoff says he quit.

Speaker 14 Who knows?

Speaker 14 But by the end of the summer of 1985, Jack Abramoff and Grover Norquist no longer worked at Citizens for America.

Speaker 14 But luckily for Abramoff, he'd used his time in Angola to reconnect with an old friend.

Speaker 14 That summit had also been attended by representatives from right-wing student groups from South Africa, led by none other than Russell Crystal.

Speaker 2 I couldn't even believe it was was real.

Speaker 6 Join me, Tatiana Siegel, executive editor of film and media at Variety, for a four-part tale of youthful ambition, artistic integrity, and the dark side of fame.

Speaker 7 Just like my parents talk about they knew where they were when John F.

Speaker 8 Kennedy was killed.

Speaker 9 Pretty much everyone I know knows exactly where they were when River died.

Speaker 10 Featuring new interviews with Samantha Mathis, Dr.

Speaker 12 Drew Pinski, Corey Feldman, and more.

Speaker 1 Listen to Variety Confidential on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 15 Time for a sofa upgrade?

Speaker 16 Visit washable sofas.com and discover Anibay, where designer style meets budget-friendly prices with sofas starting at $699.

Speaker 23 Anibay brings you the ultimate in furniture innovation with a modular design that allows you to rearrange your space effortlessly.

Speaker 18 Perfect for both small and large spaces, Anibay is the only machine-washable sofa inside and out.

Speaker 26 Say goodbye to stains and messes with liquid and stain-resistant fabrics that make cleaning easy.

Speaker 28 Liquid Simply slides right off.

Speaker 27 Designed Designed for custom comfort, our high-resilience foam lets you choose between a sink-in feel or a supportive memory foam blend.

Speaker 15 Plus, our pet-friendly stain-resistant fabrics ensure your sofa stays beautiful for years.

Speaker 30 Don't compromise quality for price.

Speaker 22 Visit washable sofas.com to upgrade your living space today with no-risk returns and a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Speaker 23 Get up to 60% off, plus, free shipping and free returns.

Speaker 25 Shop now at washable sofas.com.

Speaker 34 Offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply.

Speaker 37 It was an unimaginable crime.

Speaker 38 It's four consecutive life terms for Brian Koberger, who killed the four University of Idaho students.

Speaker 2 The defense are on a sinking ship.

Speaker 39 It was clear at that point he was out of options.

Speaker 37 Nearly 30 months of silence until

Speaker 40 bombshell development Brian Koberger appearing set to accept a plea deal just five weeks before his quadruple murder trial was set to start.

Speaker 37 No trial, no testimony.

Speaker 41 He has pleaded guilty to five criminal counts, one of burglary, and then four counts of murder.

Speaker 37 In this final season, we returned to Moscow with interviews from those still searching for answers.

Speaker 42 Why did the prosecution take this?

Speaker 35 They were holding all the cars.

Speaker 14 How on earth could you make a deal?

Speaker 43 What message does that send?

Speaker 37 Listen to season three of the Idaho Massacre on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 42 Hey, it's Brian Christopher. Ready to chill the summer? You're in luck.
I'm hanging out at Chumpa Casino, and you're in for a treat.

Speaker 42 Chillax with hundreds of games, daily bonuses, exciting spins, and epic prizes. It's all here, always free to play.
Kick back, have fun, and head to chumpacasino.com. Let's make this summer legendary.

Speaker 2 Sponsored by Chumpa Casino, no purchase necessary, VGW Group, void where prohibited by law, CTNC's 21 21 Plus.

Speaker 14 Abramoff soon found himself as the head of a newly founded DC-based think tank called the International Freedom Foundation.

Speaker 14 It has the same sort of nebulous, meaningless mission statement as any number of think tanks. They promoted freedom and democracy and the free market.

Speaker 14 It looked like just another slick lobbying organization designed to bring in high-dollar donations or newsletters about the evils of communism.

Speaker 14 And I guess that's kind of what it was.

Speaker 14 Except almost all of the money came directly from the South African government.

Speaker 14 It was given the code name Project Pac-Man by South African military intelligence.

Speaker 14 And Abramoff's new think tank received $1.5 million per year, every year, from 1986 through 1992, to fund Operation Babushka, the code name given to this propaganda campaign aimed at undermining the African National Congress, shaping international opinion about apartheid, and combating efforts by American politicians to impose sanctions on South Africa.

Speaker 14 The truth didn't come out until 1995.

Speaker 14 That's when former South African security policeman Paul Erasmus testified before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission about the existence of the STRATCOM unit, short for Strategic Communications, which I guess is kind of a cute name for propaganda and disinformation.

Speaker 14 Erasmus admitted to his own role in a years-long disinformation campaign smearing Winnie Mandela.

Speaker 14 And he's spoken publicly over the years about the close relationship STRATCOM had with U.S.-based conservatives, people like Edwin Fulner, one of the founders of the Heritage Foundation, and people like prominent Council of Conservative Citizens member Robert Slim.

Speaker 14 Slim, interestingly enough, is someone whose name I found twice.

Speaker 14 Once in the 1980s, when he was sending faxes to the leaders of the Conservative caucus, offering to set up meetings for them with Eugene Terre Blanche on their next trip to South Africa.

Speaker 14 And then again in 2012, his name comes up in connection with Monica Stone's South Africa Project rallies.

Speaker 14 So now I wonder how far back those two go.

Speaker 14 But in 1995, a spokesman for the South African military did confirm in a statement that, quote, the International Freedom Foundation was a former South African Defense Force project.

Speaker 14 Former South African spy Craig Williamson explained to a reporter in 1995 that the IFF was a tool of political warfare meant to undermine the African National Congress,

Speaker 14 but that they'd taken care to run the operation to prevent the people they dealt with from realizing that, quote, they were involved with a foreign government.

Speaker 14 They ran their organization, but we steered them.

Speaker 14 Craig Williamson is not a good man.

Speaker 14 He personally murdered several prominent anti-apartheid activists. and he ordered the killings of many others.

Speaker 14 One bomb he sent was meant for a married couple critical of the apartheid regime,

Speaker 14 but it only did half the job. It killed Jeanette Schoon and her six-year-old daughter.

Speaker 14 Her husband Marius Schoon returned home to find their two-year-old son had been alone in the house with their bodies for hours.

Speaker 14 No, Craig Williamson is not an honorable man.

Speaker 14 But I do think he's telling something close to the truth here. He had to if he wanted amnesty for all those murders.

Speaker 14 And he did have a rather astute observation about the particular gullibility of American conservatives, saying to a reporter in 1995,

Speaker 14 we decided that the only level we were going to be accepted was when it came to the Soviets and their surrogates. So our strategy was to paint the ANC as communist surrogates.

Speaker 14 The more we could present ourselves as anti-communist, the more people looked at us with respect.

Speaker 14 People you could hardly believe cooperated with us politically when it came to the Soviets.

Speaker 14 All they had to do was slap anti-communism on the top of the page, and Republican leaders would sign on to a project without any follow-up questions.

Speaker 14 Senator Jesse Helms served as chairman of the IFF's advisory board.

Speaker 14 But when this news came out, His spokesman claimed that Helms had never even heard of such an organization and certainly wasn't involved in it.

Speaker 14 Congressman Dan Burton led a delegation to observe the 1989 elections in Namibia, and that trip was paid for by the IFF.

Speaker 14 Both Burton and Congressman Robert Dornan frequently attended and spoke at and wrote for IFF events and publications.

Speaker 14 They too denied. having any idea that their tabs had been paid by the South African government.

Speaker 14 Congressman Philip Crane served on the organization's board for three years.

Speaker 14 But when the news broke in 1995, his spokesman claimed that he'd never actually attended any meetings.

Speaker 14 And honestly, it is kind of possible that those congressmen just never asked where the money came from. Maybe they had a feeling they didn't want to know the answer.

Speaker 14 They probably could have figured it out if they tried.

Speaker 14 An article written written in 1989 in Covert Affairs, a magazine founded by a former CIA officer turned critic of the agency, noted that the International Freedom Foundation managed to establish itself very quickly.

Speaker 14 And in under two years, they were very clearly well-funded and had well-established ties to both the international extreme right wing and to the intelligence communities in multiple countries.

Speaker 14 The group's support for both the South African government and the Nicaraguan Contras earned them the designation of quote, an organization to watch from the magazine's editors.

Speaker 14 And the author is careful here. He doesn't make any outright allegations, but the implication is very strong that this isn't a grassroots organization.

Speaker 14 But maybe they didn't know. I can accept that that's possible.

Speaker 14 But Jack Abramoff would also vehemently deny that he'd had any clue that money wasn't clean.

Speaker 14 And I find that a lot harder to believe.

Speaker 14 Russell Crystal, the South African intelligence asset who'd helped Abramoff start the IFF in the first place, ran the organization's branch office in Johannesburg.

Speaker 14 And Crystal would later admit that the Johannesburg office was less of a branch and more of a nerve center.

Speaker 14 It was really the center of the operation, and he was the one deciding how much money would get sent to DC.

Speaker 14 And sometimes when the bookkeeping got a little sloppy, he would just have the military intelligence office make those wire transfers directly.

Speaker 14 In 1989, the state of New York asked the nonprofit to just provide an accountant statement that their financial records were accurate.

Speaker 14 That's not terribly unusual for a nonprofit bringing in a lot of money.

Speaker 14 But they couldn't do it. Or

Speaker 14 wouldn't.

Speaker 14 And they were subsequently legally barred from soliciting donations in the state of New York.

Speaker 14 Financial records that were produced later show that in 1992, the organization's revenue dropped to half of the level in prior years.

Speaker 14 That was, not coincidentally, the year that South African President de Klerk ended funding for such programs as a show of good faith during negotiations with the African National Congress.

Speaker 14 The end of that official funding didn't end the IFF right away.

Speaker 14 In 1993, the IFF commissioned a report that was designed to paint the ANC as the true villains. You know, things are really almost over in 1993.
The election is coming. Apartheid is falling.

Speaker 14 But they commissioned this report to say, well, aren't those the bad guys? Should we really be compromising with these people who are doing these terrible things?

Speaker 14 And the funding for that report was funneled through a slush fund operated by Lucas Mengope,

Speaker 14 the apartheid collaborationist president of the semi-sovereign Bantustan of Bofu Totswana.

Speaker 14 The IFF would close its doors for good later that year.

Speaker 14 But that's really quite enough about old memos buried in the archives of conservative think tanks. I promised you I was going to tell you about the 1988 cinematic abomination, Red Scorpion.

Speaker 14 To give you a brief idea of what the movie is about, it stars Dolph Lundgren as a Soviet special forces operative assigned to assassinate the leader of an anti-communist guerrilla force in the fictional African country of Mombaka.

Speaker 14 And the movie opens with Lundgren called before this sinister cabal of communist military leaders from Cuba and the Soviet Union, and they show him this slideshow of these evil freedom fighters.

Speaker 14 It's tonally very odd because the movie is from the perspective of Dolph Lundgren's character, a Soviet special forces soldier, and he is a communist and he is our protagonist and he is going to kill these anti-communists.

Speaker 14 But Aborov has trouble sort of settling into a perspective because he's writing this derisively, it's satirically, right? Because the anti-communists are the heroes in his world.

Speaker 14 So it's a little difficult to tell what the movie is trying to achieve because he doesn't successfully write satire.

Speaker 14 For much of the movie, Dolph Lundgren is just sort of roaming the African bush dressed in a rather striking manner.

Speaker 14 He's removed his outer shirt and he's ripped his khaki pants into these tiny little shorts.

Speaker 14 And on the surface level, this is just that sort of 80s action movie aesthetic where you're seeing the sort of shining, sweaty pecks of this enormous muscle man.

Speaker 14 But I think there's more to this particular choice.

Speaker 14 We have this gigantic blonde Swede and he's been outfitted in what I have to assume is a very intentional recreation of the iconic uniform of the Silu Scouts, the notoriously brutal Rhodesian Special Forces.

Speaker 14 And when I sat down to watch this movie, I realized almost immediately that Abramoff had based the film on his own experience in Angola. Just backwards, right?

Speaker 14 The man he paid to write the actual screenplay based on his notes, a man named Arne Olson,

Speaker 14 later said that Abramov explicitly told him that Mumbaka is supposed to be Angola, and he'd written the character of the rebel leader Sundata to represent Jonas Savimbi.

Speaker 14 So Abramov obviously came up with the plot of this movie in 1985. when he met with those anti-communist leaders.

Speaker 14 So he just took that story and he inverted it.

Speaker 14 Because we know now for a fact that South African operatives assassinated leaders of the Soviet-supported socialist state of the People's Republic of Angola throughout that conflict.

Speaker 14 So he just took what he knew and he reversed it to make the bad guys in his mind the bad guys of his movie, regardless of who the bad guy was in real life.

Speaker 14 Some of the actions taken in the film by these villainous Cuban soldiers are things that we know South African special forces did in multiple conflicts throughout the region.

Speaker 14 Russian soldiers in the movie dropped some sort of toxic chemical from a plane on innocent civilians of Mumba.

Speaker 14 And in real life, there were later revelations about something called Project Coast,

Speaker 14 South Africa's chemical and biological warfare program.

Speaker 14 There were horrific tales of chemical agents being tested on detainees, specifically detainees from the Angolan conflict.

Speaker 14 And they use biological weapons to wipe out villages in Mozambique, Angola, and Namibia spanning years.

Speaker 14 But in the movie, these anti-communist rebels, led by this Savimbi stand-in,

Speaker 14 are noble freedom fighters, and this Soviet killing machine has been sent to destroy them, but he has second thoughts and etc.

Speaker 14 I don't know why it's an hour and 40 minutes long. There is an extended sequence with no no dialogue where a Kalahari Bushman is teaching Dolph Lundgren to hunt warthogs.

Speaker 14 I don't know, I was kind of looking at my phone at that point.

Speaker 14 Dolph Lundgren is basically just playing Ivan Drago again. He's fresh off playing that Russian boxer in Rocky IV.

Speaker 14 I guess he's just kind of a one-note guy.

Speaker 14 The only interesting character in the whole movie is that Kalahari Bushman who rescues our protagonist from certain death in the desert.

Speaker 14 He's played by Rekobstan, an elder in the Komani clan of the San people.

Speaker 14 He was 95 years old when the movie was filmed.

Speaker 14 And I was kind of curious about who they got to play this role, and so I looked him up.

Speaker 14 Rekhobstan's son David would years later, after the fall of apartheid, successfully win a legal battle for the return of their ancestral lands.

Speaker 14 So the movie sucked, but at least it gave me the opportunity to read a little bit about this rightful restoration of the Komani lands, which are now protected as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Speaker 14 It is hard to say exactly how Red Scorpion came to be.

Speaker 14 Abramoff's version of events doesn't pass the smell test.

Speaker 14 He was outraged at the allegation that the South African government had played any part in his movie.

Speaker 14 But Craig Williamson, that South African spy, is on record claiming the film was absolutely, quote, funded by our guys.

Speaker 14 And it would certainly be hard to explain away everything about the film if that's not true.

Speaker 14 Extras are played by South African soldiers. South African military hardware is used for props.
Vehicles with South African military license plates were seen on set by cast and crew and reporters.

Speaker 14 The South African military provided the production with an old Soviet tank that they'd captured earlier in the Angolan conflict.

Speaker 14 And South Africa allowed Abramov to film the entire movie in Namibia in 1988.

Speaker 14 And 1988 was the last year that the South African military was actively occupying much of Namibia.

Speaker 14 Before the UN arrived in 1989 to facilitate the ceasefire and the transition to Namibian independence,

Speaker 14 Carmen Argenziano, the American actor cast as the Cuban Colonel, later told reporters that actors knew during filming that most of the extras in the movie were South African soldiers.

Speaker 14 And during filming, there were rumors on set that there was some kind of intelligence operation.

Speaker 14 Argenziano called it very fishy, quote, We heard that very right-wing South African money was helping fund the movie. It wasn't very clear.
We were pretty upset about the source of the money.

Speaker 14 We thought we were misled. We were shocked that these brothers, who we thought were showbiz liberals, Beverly Hills Jewish kids, were doing this.

Speaker 14 Argenziano recounted one incident at the hotel where all the actors were staying.

Speaker 14 Some black Namibian children were playing on the escalator, and the South African soldiers working for the production were shouting racial slurs at the children, chasing them away.

Speaker 14 Unnamed sources close to Apramoff told Ken Silverstein, writing for Harper's in 2006,

Speaker 14 quote,

Speaker 14 yes, some people were duped by the IFF,

Speaker 14 but Jack wasn't one of them. As chairman, he understood where the money was coming from.
He knew exactly who he was playing with.

Speaker 14 Another source told Silverstein that Red Scorpion had absolutely been a propaganda project, and Abramoff certainly knew it.

Speaker 14 Asked in 1987 by the New York Times if the film, which was still in production at that point, was being financed by the South African government, Abramoff gave the incredibly normal-sounding answer that he had raised the money from, quote, normal film investors.

Speaker 14 In his own memoirs, Abramoff repeats his claim that the film had been financed by private investors.

Speaker 14 But the only investor he names is, quoting from the book,

Speaker 14 Robert Hall, a retired physician-turned investor who owned a vineyard on the Cape of South Africa.

Speaker 14 And that's true. Robert Hall was a retired doctor of sorts who was now an investor of sorts and did own a vineyard on the Cape of South Africa.
That's true.

Speaker 14 But Abramoff neglects to include that Robert Hall was actually an American oral surgeon. He'd invented a variety of high-speed drills used in dental and orthopedic surgical procedures.

Speaker 14 But he fled the United States in the late 1970s to avoid paying millions of dollars to the IRS.

Speaker 14 It's a little hard to Google a generic sounding name like Robert Hall. There are a lot of guys called Robert Hall who might be a doctor and might live in South Africa.

Speaker 14 But luckily for us, this Robert Hall unsuccessfully sued a South African magazine in the 1990s.

Speaker 14 A judge in the Cape of Good Hope ruled that the magazine had in fact only been reporting the facts, not defaming Hall, when they reported, among other things, that he'd pressured a South African bank in 1983 to allow him to engage in currency exchange transactions that would be illegal for someone who is a permanent resident of South Africa.

Speaker 14 And as part of his strategy to convince the bank to let him keep doing these transactions, he told the bank manager that he was a personal friend of President Ronald Reagan.

Speaker 14 So, yeah, just normal investors. He raised money the normal way.

Speaker 14 Jeff Pandon, who worked under Abramoff at the International Freedom Foundation, says that Abramoff hired Russell Kristol as an executive producer on the film.

Speaker 14 And Kristol, in addition to being a state intelligence asset running front groups throughout the 1980s, was at this time serving on President de Klerk's presidential council.

Speaker 14 And Abramoff absolutely would have known that.

Speaker 14 There's just no good faith explanation that can possibly leave you believing that Jack Abramov had no idea that his movie was South African state propaganda.

Speaker 14 The film flopped. Warner Brothers pulled out of the agreement to distribute it after pressure from anti-apartheid activists, led mainly by tennis legend Arthur Ashe.

Speaker 14 Shooting delays left the movie wildly over budget, and several actors claim they never got paid.

Speaker 14 The International Freedom Foundation folded in 1993 when the South African funding dried up.

Speaker 14 Apartheid ended.

Speaker 14 And by 1995, Jack Abramoff was working as a lobbyist for the Mississippi Ban of Choctaw Indians, one of the clients that he would eventually go to prison for defrauding out of millions of dollars.

Speaker 14 And that, I guess, is the story of how apartheid funded a bad action movie. And Jack Abramoff ate canned tuna with the Mujahideen.

Speaker 14 And half the conservative think tanks in Washington, D.C.

Speaker 14 secretly collaborated with South African military intelligence.

Speaker 14 Weird Little Guys is a production of Coolzone Media and iHeartRadio. It's researched, written, and recorded by me, Nellie Conger.
Our executive producers are Sophie Lichterman and Robert Evans.

Speaker 14 The show is edited by the wildly talented Rory Gagan. The theme music was composed by Brad Dickert.

Speaker 14 You can email me at weirdlittleguyspodcast at gmail.com. I will definitely read it, but I almost certainly will not answer it.
It's nothing personal. I don't answer any of my emails.

Speaker 14 You can exchange conspiracy theories about the show with other listeners on the Weird Little Guys subreddit.

Speaker 14 Just don't post anything that's going to make you one of my Weird Little Guys.

Speaker 16 This is an iHeart Podcast.