Iran-Contra Pt. 2

Does nature or nurture shape who we are? Does our personality come from our genes, or the environment we live in? Countless scientific studies on the subject have been published. But one such study – a collaboration between a psychoanalyst and a New York adoption agency – was ins ...  Show more

James Angleton ran counterintelligence for the CIA for 20 years. His job was to find Soviet spies hiding inside Western intelligence. He was brilliant, obsessive, and almost certainly right that the threat of a mole was real. But the hunt he launched tore the CIA apart from the i ...  Show more

In the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan’s administration secretly — and illegally — traded weapons of war to Iran in exchange for the release of American hostages, then used the proceeds to fund a Nicaraguan rebel army known as the Contras. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit p ...  Show more

Warmonger or nuclear disarmer? Ronald Reagan’s presidency survived an assassination attempt, the AIDS epidemic and the Iranian hostage crisis. He powered through the 1980s, creating his own truth and narrative, in a series of events that read like a Hollywood screenplay.  Tom an ...  Show more

He saw himself as an enigmatic spy and went so far as to try to play both sides of the FBI and the CIA. Richard Cain’s later career in international espionage in the 1960s nearly crossed paths with Fidel Castro before once again returning to the mayhem of Chicago—and the mob. Lea ...  Show more

If you enjoy the true stories told in Dictators, check out this episode from our series Kingpins: How did Manuel Noriega rise from nothing to become the drug-smuggling, secret-selling, military dictator of Panama in the 1980s? He had a great deal of help from the American CIA. Le ...  Show more