Matthew Smith

Oct 24, 2025

Hey everyone!

Episode 4 of The Suriname Contra Affair is now live, and this one reveals what happens when the system we’ve been documenting goes operational.

Last week, we showed you the Brazil blueprint – the six-track model for regime change that the CIA perfected in 1964 and then exported across Latin America.

This week? We’re watching it deploy in real-time across three continents on a single day.

Transcript

December 17, 1981

The episode opens with a date: December 17, 1981.

On that day, three crises erupted simultaneously across three continents. And if you’ve been following this series, you’ll recognize that this wasn’t coincidence – it was the Reagan administration’s crisis response system going live.

In Rome, Italy: Brigadier General James Dozier – the highest-ranking American officer at NATO’s Southern European Command – is locked in a cage. Red Brigades terrorists kidnapped him that morning from his apartment in Verona. At the White House, Marine Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North is working every phone line he can reach. He’s calling Italian police, the Pentagon, the CIA.

But he’s also calling Texas billionaire H. Ross Perot, asking if Perot will personally wire half a million dollars to an Italian bank account for a private ransom attempt.

In Nicaragua: MISURA Contra forces are three days into what they’re calling “Operation Red Christmas.” They’ve just killed seven Sandinista soldiers in the village of San Carlos. In eleven days, they’ll kidnap Dr. Myrna Cunningham, a Miskito doctor. What they do to her – what they tell her while they’re doing it – will expose the direct connection between CIA training camps and the atrocities happening on the ground.

In Paramaribo, Suriname: Men with cameras are photographing Fort Zeelandia. They’re mapping routes from the airport to the capital. They’re checking out communication towers, power stations, government buildings. When locals ask what they’re doing, they smile and point to their binoculars. “We’re birdwatchers,” they say. “Studying tropical species.”

They’re not birdwatchers. They’re scouts from the Joint Special Operations Command – JSOC – the military unit created specifically to handle terrorist threats.

December 17, 1981 is the day when the Reagan administration tested a new kind of warfare across three continents at once.

And Suriname was next.

What’s in This Episode

The Terrorist Relabeling: How the 14th Conference of American Armies at the Watergate Hotel got Latin American militaries to agree that Soviet-aligned revolutionary movements would no longer be called “revolutionary governments” – they would be labeled “terrorists.” This wasn’t semantic. It changed which legal authorities applied, which military units could deploy, and how much Congress needed to know.

Nicaragua’s Forty-Three Years: The Somoza family dictatorship that owned a quarter of Nicaragua’s farmland, looted earthquake relief funds, and ruled through the National Guard’s terror. When the Sandinistas won in 1979 after a revolution that killed 50,000 people, Washington saw another Cuba being copied.

The Miskito Strategy: How the CIA found Steadman Fagoth – a charismatic Miskito leader with real grievances against the Sandinistas – and transformed indigenous autonomy demands into a proxy war. This was the same playbook the CIA used in Laos during Vietnam: recruit ethnic minorities with legitimate complaints, weaponize their struggle, then use them to justify direct U.S. military intervention.

Operation Red Christmas: The December 1981 military offensive designed to seize enough Nicaraguan territory to declare a provisional government and trigger open American military support. The plan was ambitious. The execution was brutal. What happened to those seven soldiers in San Carlos, what happened to Dr. Cunningham – the full details are in the primary sources linked below, because some of this material is too graphic for YouTube’s content policies.

The Propaganda Collapse: How the Reagan administration tried to use Miskito suffering for Cold War propaganda, only to have the story fall apart when journalists actually investigated. Secretary of State Alexander Haig’s “smoking gun” press conference. The photographic “evidence” that turned out to be recycled images from other conflicts. The way legitimate Miskito grievances got exploited by both sides until nobody could tell truth from propaganda anymore.

Oliver North’s Private Ransom Network: The backstory of how North built a system where Texas billionaire H. Ross Perot would wire ransom money for hostage rescue attempts – starting with Dozier in December 1981. This is where North perfected the private funding networks he’d later use for the Contras.

The JSOC Deployment: How Joint Special Operations Command scouts arrived in Suriname in December 1981, photographing infrastructure and mapping invasion routes under the cover of “birdwatching.” The same teams that would later execute Operation Urgent Fury in Grenada were doing reconnaissance in Paramaribo.

Primary Sources You Can Verify

This episode is built on documents you can check yourself. Here’s what we’re citing (full sources and footnotes in the transcript):

Holly Sklar, Washington’s War on Nicaragua (1988): Pages 102-103 contain Dr. Myrna Cunningham’s testimony about her assault by MISURA forces and what her attackers told her about their American training and support. I’m not describing these details in the video because of YouTube’s content policies. You need to read her testimony directly.

U.S. Department of State, “Sandinista Repression of Indians,” Publication 9471 (March 1986): Documents the Sandinista government’s forced relocation of 42 Miskito communities and approximately 12,000 Miskito who fled to Honduras. Also documents the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights findings of detentions, torture, and disappearances of hundreds of Miskitos.

“’Smoking Gun’ Backfires,” The Herald-Times (March 14, 1982): Documents how Secretary of State Alexander Haig’s press conference using photos as “evidence” of Sandinista atrocities collapsed when journalists discovered the images were recycled from other conflicts and didn’t show what Haig claimed.

“H. Ross Perot Put Up Ransom for Hostages,” The Roanoke Times (December 2, 1986): Bob Woodward’s reporting on how Oliver North arranged for Perot to wire $500,000 to an Italian bank in January 1982 for a private ransom attempt to free General Dozier. The money was converted to lire, taken to the U.S. Embassy in Rome, but the exchange never worked out and the money was eventually returned to Perot.

Sean Naylor, Relentless Strike: The Secret History of Joint Special Operations Command (2015): Pages 22-23 document how JSOC reconnaissance teams were deployed to Suriname in late 1981 under cover, gathering intelligence for potential intervention operations.

Ben Bradlee Jr., Guts and Glory: The Rise and Fall of Oliver North (1988): Page 130 documents North’s role in coordinating the Dozier rescue efforts and his development of private funding networks during this period.

All source documents and citations are included in the full transcript below.

The Tragedy of Dr. Myrna Cunningham

December 28, 1981. Eight days into Operation Red Christmas.

Dr. Myrna Cunningham was a Miskito doctor – one of the few from her community who had earned a college degree. She was heading to a remote clinic to provide healthcare to her people.

MISURA fighters captured her and her colleague Regina Lewis.

What happened next is documented in Dr. Cunningham’s own testimony to international human rights organizations. I’m not going to describe it here – even reading her words aloud would risk this video being removed from YouTube. But you need to read what she said.

Because during those hours, her attackers didn’t just assault her. They bragged about it. They told her about their American training in camps deep in Honduras. They showed her American cigarettes and American food rations as proof of their backing. They chanted Christian slogans – “Christ yesterday, Christ today, Christ tomorrow” – while doing what they did.

They wanted her to know: we have American support. We can do whatever we want.

They told her they were going to kill her and leave her body as an example to others who worked with the Nicaraguan government.

Dr. Cunningham survived. She testified. Her words are in Holly Sklar’s Washington’s War on Nicaragua, pages 102-103. They’re linked in the show notes.

Years later, one of the men who trained MISURA forces would say in an interview: “As somebody who has helped plan coups – you know, other places – it takes a lot of work.”

That man’s name was John Bolton. And in December 1981, he was in Suriname.

The Propaganda War Nobody Won

By early 1982, the Reagan administration needed to justify its Nicaragua policy. Operation Red Christmas had failed to seize enough territory for a provisional government. But it had provoked the Sandinista government into a harsh crackdown – forcibly relocating 8,500 Miskito people from the war zone along the Rio Coco.

Secretary of State Alexander Haig saw an opportunity.

On March 10, 1982, Haig held a press conference with photographic “evidence” of Sandinista atrocities. He called it his “smoking gun.” The photos would prove the Sandinistas were committing genocide against the Miskito people.

But journalists did something inconvenient: they fact-checked.

The photos turned out to be recycled images – some from other conflicts, some showing things that contradicted Haig’s claims. The “smoking gun” backfired spectacularly. Even publications that opposed the Sandinistas had to run corrections.

Here’s what made this tragedy worse: there were real Miskito grievances. There was real Sandinista repression. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights documented it – arrests, torture, disappearances of hundreds of Miskito people.

But by the time the propaganda machinery on both sides finished with the story, nobody could separate truth from manipulation anymore.

The Miskito people – who had legitimate demands for autonomy and indigenous rights – became pawns in a Cold War chess game. Their suffering got weaponized for propaganda that nobody believed. Their complaints got dismissed as CIA manipulation. Their genuine struggle for self-determination disappeared into the noise.

When you exploit indigenous movements for geopolitical purposes, when you provoke violence to manufacture the justification you need, when you promise support but deliver abandonment – people die.

And they die in ways we have to document, not because we want to shock anyone, but because we need to understand what was actually done.

Oliver North’s Private Network

The Dozier kidnapping on December 17, 1981 was Oliver North’s first major test in crisis management.

Within hours of the Red Brigades seizing the general, North was on the phone with H. Ross Perot – the Texas billionaire who’d made his fortune with Electronic Data Systems and who had a history of private rescue operations.

Perot immediately agreed. By early January 1982, he’d wired $500,000 to an Italian bank. The money was converted to lire and delivered to the U.S. Embassy in Rome.

The ransom exchange never happened. Italian anti-terrorism police rescued Dozier on January 28, 1982 after 42 days in captivity. The money was returned to Perot.

But North had proven something important: he could mobilize private wealth for covert operations. He could create deniable funding streams outside congressional oversight. He could build networks that operated in the gray zone between official policy and private action.

This was the template North would later use for the Contras. For the Iran arms deals. For everything that became Iran-Contra.

It started in December 1981 with a kidnapped general and a Texas billionaire willing to write checks.

The Birdwatchers

While North was coordinating Dozier’s rescue and MISURA forces were executing Operation Red Christmas, something else was happening in Suriname.

Men with cameras were photographing Fort Zeelandia – the colonial fortress in central Paramaribo. They were mapping routes from the airport to government buildings. They were studying communication towers and power stations.

When locals asked what they were doing, they smiled. “We’re birdwatchers. Studying tropical species.”

Suriname does have incredible biodiversity – over 700 bird species. But these weren’t ornithologists from the Audubon Society.

They were JSOC reconnaissance teams. The same units that would plan and execute Operation Urgent Fury – the 1983 invasion of Grenada.

In December 1981, they were in Suriname gathering intelligence for a similar operation.

They were mapping targets. Identifying choke points. Assessing Bouterse’s military capabilities. Building the tactical intelligence needed for an invasion that would come… if the right trigger event occurred.

The reconnaissance was done. The legal authorities were signed. The crisis response teams were deployed.

They just needed a pretext.

The System in Action

This is what the system looked like when it went operational.

In Rome: Oliver North building private funding networks to circumvent congressional oversight.

In Nicaragua: CIA officers exploiting indigenous movements to manufacture justification for military intervention.

In Suriname: JSOC teams gathering intelligence for an invasion they were ready to execute.

And at the center of it all: the semantic trick we started with. When you relabel a revolutionary government as a “terrorist threat,” different authorities apply. JSOC can deploy. The counterterrorism teams can engage. Congress doesn’t need to be notified in advance.

Three weeks earlier, at the 14th Conference of American Armies at the Watergate Hotel, U.S. military intelligence officials had gotten every Latin American military to agree: Soviet-aligned movements weren’t revolutionary governments anymore. They were terrorists.

This wasn’t just playing word games. This changed which laws applied, which units could operate, and how much the American public would ever know about what was being done in their name.

December 17, 1981 was the test run. Three crises, three continents, one system.

And they were about to test it in Suriname.

What’s Coming

In January 1982, two men arrive at the U.S. Embassy in Paramaribo.

Richard LaRoche – who’d been the first American diplomat to meet with Maurice Bishop in Grenada, and whose intelligence reports helped plan that island’s invasion.

And Edward Donovan – a psychological warfare specialist who’d worked in Vietnam and Brazil.

They’re not coming to do diplomacy. They’re coming to find Surinamese willing to fight.

And they’re about to meet a university professor, a group of businessmen, and some military officers who think the Americans are on their side.

What none of them understand is that they’re about to become part of another Red Christmas – one that will end with fifteen people executed in a fortress courtyard, and a country changed forever.

Next week: Episode 5 – The Wolf Pack

THE SURINAME CONTRA AFFAIR – EPISODE 4

Operation Red Christmas

Complete Transcript with Citations

© Matthew Smith | The Suriname Contra Affair
Runtime: ~50 minutes (including content warning)

CONTENT WARNING (0:00-1:00)

Before we begin: this episode discusses Operation Red Christmas, a military offensive that happened in December 1981. The episode includes references to violence, including sexual violence against civilians.

For the most graphic material, I’m going to refer you to our primary source documents back on Substack, rather than describing them in great detail here, which may risk this video getting taken down. These subjects are important historical matters. They also contain very disturbing content.

The documentation, including the testimony from their survivors, can be found on Substack, and the link to those is all below.

COLD OPEN: THREE CRISES, ONE SYSTEM (1:00-3:00)

December 17th, 1981.

Three crises, three continents, one system being tested in real time.

In Rome, Italy, U.S. Brigadier General James Dozier is locked in a cage. Red Brigades terrorists have kidnapped him this morning. At the White House, Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North is working all the phones. He’s calling Italian police. He’s calling the Pentagon, the CIA, but he’s also calling Texas billionaire H. Ross Perot. He’s asking Perot if he will help him by personally wiring a half a million dollars into an Italian bank account for a private ransom attempt.¹

In Nicaragua, something brutal is unfolding. The MISURA Contra forces are three days into what they’re calling Operation Red Christmas. They’ve killed seven Sandinista soldiers in the village of San Carlos. In 11 days, they’ll capture a Miskito doctor named Mirna Cunningham. What they’ll do to her, what they’ll tell her while they’re doing it will expose the direct connection between the CIA’s training camp and the atrocities going on on the ground.²

The goal isn’t just terror, it’s territory. Grab enough land to declare new government and then trigger direct U.S. military action.³

And in Paramaribo, Suriname, men with cameras are photographing Fort Zeelandia. They’re mapping the routes from the airport to the capitol. They’re checking out communication towers and power stations and government buildings. When the locals ask them what they’re doing, they just smile and they point to the binoculars. “We’re birdwatchers,” they say, “studying tropical species.”⁴

But they’re not birdwatchers. They’re scouts from the Joint Special Operations Command, the JSOC, their military unit specifically created to handle terrorist threats.⁵

December 17th, 1981 is the day when the Reagan administration’s crisis response system went live across three continents all at once.

They were testing a new type of warfare and Suriname was up next.

[TITLE CARD: THE SURINAME CONTRA AFFAIR – EPISODE 4: OPERATION RED CHRISTMAS]

ACT I: THE SYSTEM GOES LIVE (3:00-17:20)

PART 1: THE SYSTEM GOES LIVE (3:00-5:00)

My name is Matthew Smith and I grew up in Suriname, just next door to the dictator that this story is about.

In our previous three episodes, we showed you how Reagan’s administration built a shadow government—new crisis management structures with the legal power to wage secret wars without asking Congress.

By December 1981, that system was ready to go live.

Three weeks earlier, at the 14th annual conference of the American armies at the Watergate Hotel in the United States, U.S. military intelligence officials got everybody to agree on something very important.

Soviet-aligned revolutionary movements would no longer be called revolutionary governments. They would be labeled terrorists.⁶

This wasn’t just playing word games. This changed everything because revolutionary governments require diplomacy. Congress has to know about them. International law applies.

But terrorist threats, different rules kick in. Crisis response operations. Fast action. Fewer questions.

The Joint Special Operations Command—JSOC—had been created specifically to handle terrorist incidents after the failed Iran hostage rescue attempt during the Carter administration.⁷

But here’s the trick. When you label a revolutionary government as a terrorist group, suddenly JSOC can get involved. The counter-terrorism teams can deploy. And in December 1981, those teams were being sent across the Caribbean basin.

But to truly understand what was being planned in Suriname, you have to understand what they were testing out in Nicaragua. Because Operation Red Christmas wasn’t just a military attack. It was a blueprint. It was a test run for a new kind of warfare.

PART 2: NICARAGUA – THE DOMINO (5:00-8:00)

For 43 years, Nicaragua had been ruled by the Somoza family, one of Latin America’s most brutal dictatorships.⁸

The Somozas owned a quarter of all of Nicaragua’s arable farmland. They controlled airlines and shipping and cement factories and banks. When an earthquake hit the country and destroyed the capital city of Managua in 1972, Somoza’s National Guard looted the city while international aid money disappeared into the family’s bank accounts.⁹

The National Guard wasn’t a professional army per se. They were the Somoza family’s private militia. They stayed in power through torture and terror and making people disappear in murders.¹⁰

In July of 1979, the Sandinistas—the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional—marched into Managua. They built a broad group of supporters: students, workers, business leaders, Catholic priests. They practiced a new type of Christianity or an emerging type called liberation theology. Even parts of the National Guard started to switch sides.

After months of urban warfare that killed almost 50,000 people, they won against insurmountable odds. A popular revolutionary movement had overthrown a U.S.-backed dictatorship.¹¹

And that terrified the Reagan administration.

Because Nicaragua wasn’t alone. It was part of a pattern.

Remember we talked about how Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia in 1975 and then Angola in ‘75, Ethiopia in ‘77, Iran in ‘79, Grenada in ‘79, followed by the Suriname sergeant’s coup in 1980 of February.¹²

From Washington’s point of view, the dominoes were falling. Nicaragua was the latest domino, and it was only 1,200 miles from the Texas border.¹³

By 1981, Reagan and his team had decided that Nicaragua would not be allowed to succeed. The Sandinistas were accepting Cuban advisors. They were building relationships with the Soviet Union. They were supporting leftist movements in El Salvador and Guatemala.¹⁴

To the Reagan administration, they looked exactly like Cuba being copied all over again.

So the CIA began building the Contras, which was short for “contrarrevolución,” the counter-revolution.¹⁵

The core of the contra movement were the former National Guard soldiers. So Somoza’s henchman, his thugs, now being recycled and rebranded as Freedom Fighters against Communism.¹⁶

But there was a problem, which was nobody liked these guys. They had no popular support. Everybody reminded them that they were Somoza’s men.¹⁷

And that’s where the Miskito people came in.

PART 3: THE MISKITO – REAL GRIEVANCES (8:00-11:00)

So the Miskito are an indigenous group living along Nicaragua’s Atlantic Coast, a region that had always been culturally separate from the rest of Nicaragua. For centuries, they kept their own language. They had their own way of governance. They had a relationship with the land.¹⁸

And when the Sandinistas took power in 1979, they had big plans for that Atlantic Coast. They wanted to bring it into the revolution. They wanted to adopt literacy campaigns in Spanish and development programs and land reform.¹⁹

But the Miskitoes saw this as another type of cultural invasion. Here you had Spanish-speaking people from the Pacific telling them how to live and trying to replace their language in customs with revolutionary talk. Okay.²⁰

The Miskitoes wanted autonomy, self rule, recognition of their indigenous rights. They were real grievances that they had.²¹

By February of 1981, tensions exploded. The Sandinistas arrested leaders of the MISURASATA, the Miskito indigenous organization, including a charismatic young leader called Steadman Fagoth.²²

So after his release, Fagoth went into exile in Honduras, and that is where the CIA found him.²³

The Agency saw an opportunity. The Miskito had real complaints against the Sandinistas. They could claim indigenous rights. They can make the Sandinistas look like colonizers, just another modern version of Spanish conquistadors.²⁴

So the CIA helped Steadman Fagoth create MISURA, which was a new Miskito indigenous military group that was aligned with the larger Contra movement. So they provided MISURA with training camps in Honduras with weapons, with advisors, and with money.²⁵

So this was the same strategy that the CIA had used during Laos in the Vietnam War. Recruit ethnic minorities with real complaints. Use them as proxy forces, then step up U.S. direct military involvement when the proxies had established themselves a base.²⁶

So many of the CIA officers who are running the Nicaragua operation had been veterans of Laos campaign. So they knew the playbook. They’d seen it work before.²⁷

And in 1981, November, they gave the green light for something that was called Operation Red Christmas.²⁸

The plan was ambitious. MISURA forces would launch a major attack along the Atlantic Coast. They would seize territory. They would get enough land, hopefully, to declare a provisional government, and then the United States would provide open military support turning the covert war into a regular one. So direct American action would support this indigenous government fighting against the Sandinista colonialism.²⁹

What they were planning for Nicaragua in December of 1981 was a blueprint, a test of how you could manufacture the justification for U.S. military action using these indigenous proxy forces and propaganda.

PART 4: RED CHRISTMAS – THE ATROCITIES (11:00-14:00)

But what happened next was brutal.

On December 20th, 1981, MISURA fighters captured seven Sandinista soldiers in the village of San Carlos. And what they did to those men—the torture, the mutilation—was designed to send a message. When the villagers found the bodies, they understood this wasn’t just war, this was terror.³⁰

The full details about what were done are documented in the sources, listed in the show notes. I’m giving you the basic facts here, but you really should take the time to read the complete record for yourself.

Eight days later, December 28th, MISURA forces captured Dr. Myrna Cunningham and her colleague Regina Lewis. Dr. Cunningham was a Miskito doctor, one of the few from her community who had earned a college degree. She was heading to a remote clinic to practice and provide healthcare to her people.

What happened next and what those men did to Dr. Cunningham and Regina Lewis over the next few hours, and what they told them while they were doing it is documented in Dr. Cunningham’s own testimony.³¹

I’m not gonna describe it here. Even if I read those words out loud, this would get this video removed from YouTube. But you need to read it to see what she said, because over the years, Dr. Cunningham testified about exactly what her attackers told her during those hours, how they bragged about having American training in camps deep in Honduras, how they showed her American cigarettes and American food and rations as proof of their backing, how they chanted Christian slogans, “Christ yesterday, Christ today, Christ tomorrow,” while assaulting her.³²

They wanted her to know we have American support, we can do whatever we want, and they told her they were gonna kill her and leave her body as an example of other people who work with the Nicaraguan government. Okay, her testimony is in Holly Sklar’s Washington War on Nicaragua, pages 102 to 103, and it’s linked in the show notes on Substack. It’s difficult to read, but it’s necessary to understand Operation Red Christmas, what it actually was, and what was being done in the name of freedom in Christianity.

Now that two month attack failed to grab enough territory for a provisional government, but it did accomplish something else. It provoked a harsh response from the Sandinista government. And in January 1982, the Sandinista government forcibly relocated 8,500 Miskito and Sumo people away from the Rio Coco war zone. They forced 42 northern border communities to evacuate, making people walk 60 kilometers into resettlement camps in the interior called Saba Pri.³³

These relocations were brutal. About 12,000 Miskito fled to Honduras rather than go. The International Commission of Human Rights would later find evidence of arrests and prisoners held without anyone knowing they were there, tortured disappearance, hundreds of Miskito.³⁴

And the Reagan administration seized upon this opportunity, upon this crisis. As they say, let no good crisis go to waste. And they grabbed it and used it as propaganda gold.

So Secretary of State Alexander Haig, he went on television with photographs, aerial surveillance, and satellite images, claiming to show mass graves and evidence of genocide. He called it his smoking gun proof that the Sandinistas were exterminating indigenous people.³⁵

But then journalists started fact-checking. The photographs turned out to be from other conflicts. Some of the images weren’t even from Nicaragua. The State Department had to issue corrections and retractions. Even newspapers that opposed the Sandinistas had to run stories about how Haig’s smoking gun had backfired.³⁶

And here’s the tragic irony. There were real Miskito grievances. There was real Sandinista repression documented by human rights organizations—arrests, torture, forced relocations. But by the time both sides finished weaponizing the story for propaganda, nobody could tell truth from manipulation anymore.³⁷

The Miskito people, who had legitimate complaints and real suffering, became pawns in a Cold War chess game. Their struggle for autonomy got exploited by the CIA. Their pain got dismissed as propaganda by Sandinista supporters. And their genuine desire for self-determination disappeared into the noise.³⁸

ACT II: THE THREE TRACKS (14:00-30:00)

PART 5: OLIVER NORTH’S PRIVATE NETWORK (14:00-18:00)

But while Operation Red Christmas was unfolding in Nicaragua, something else was happening in Rome, Italy. And this is where we need to understand how Oliver North was building the private funding networks that would later become Iran-Contra.

December 17th, 1981. Brigadier General James Dozier, the highest-ranking American officer at NATO’s Southern European Command, was kidnapped from his apartment in Verona by Red Brigades terrorists. They were demanding the release of political prisoners. They had photographs of Dozier locked in a cage.³⁹

At the White House, Oliver North was coordinating the crisis response. He was working with Italian authorities. He was liaising with the Pentagon and CIA. But he was also doing something unprecedented. He was calling Texas billionaire H. Ross Perot.⁴⁰

North asked Perot if he would personally wire half a million dollars to an Italian bank account for a private ransom attempt.⁴¹

And Perot immediately said yes. Why? Because as Perot would later explain, “I wouldn’t have done it unless it was the request of the United States government. Ollie didn’t operate in a vacuum.”⁴²

By early January 1982, Perot had wired $500,000 to an Italian bank. The money was converted to Italian lire and taken to the U.S. Embassy in Rome. The plan was to use it for a ransom exchange.⁴³

But the exchange never happened. On January 28th, 1982, after 42 days in captivity, Italian anti-terrorism police raided the apartment where Dozier was being held and rescued him unharmed. The ransom money was eventually returned to Perot.⁴⁴

Here’s why this matters. Oliver North had just proven he could mobilize private wealth for covert operations outside congressional appropriations. He could create deniable funding streams. He could build networks of wealthy patriots willing to write checks because a Marine officer told them it was for national security.⁴⁵

This wasn’t the first time Perot had done this kind of work. In 1969, he’d worked behind the scenes for the Nixon administration on POW issues. In 1979, when two of his Electronic Data Systems employees were held captive in Iran, Perot hired a retired army commando specialist who led a seven-member team to Iran that freed the two EDS men.⁴⁶

But the Dozier operation was different. This was North building a private rescue network that operated parallel to official channels. And North would use this exact model again and again—for the Lebanon hostages, for the Contras, for everything that became Iran-Contra.⁴⁷

The Dozier rescue attempt was the beta test for the private funding networks that would later funnel millions to the Contras and trade arms for hostages in Iran.

PART 6: THE INTELLIGENCE SUPPORT ACTIVITY (18:00-22:00)

But there was another organization involved in the Dozier operation that most people have never heard of. It was called the Intelligence Support Activity, or ISA. And in December 1981, they were also operating in Suriname.

ISA was created in 1980 as a secret army intelligence unit after the failed Iran hostage rescue attempt.⁴⁸ Their mission was to provide tactical intelligence for special operations—the kind of on-the-ground reconnaissance that Delta Force and other units needed before launching missions.⁴⁹

During the Dozier crisis, ISA operatives were deployed to Italy to gather intelligence on the Red Brigades, track down safe houses, and help locate where Dozier was being held.⁵⁰

But ISA wasn’t just operating in Italy. Throughout late 1981 and early 1982, ISA teams were being deployed across Central America and the Caribbean Basin. They were in El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua. And they were in Suriname.⁵¹

ISA’s mission in Suriname was similar to what they were doing in Italy—gather tactical intelligence for potential special operations. Map the terrain. Identify key infrastructure. Assess the capabilities of Bouterse’s military. Build the intelligence foundation for a raid or invasion if one became necessary.⁵²

This is important because ISA operated in the shadows of the shadows. They weren’t regular CIA. They weren’t even regular military intelligence. They were a secret unit that reported directly to the Pentagon’s most sensitive operations, and most of Congress didn’t even know they existed.⁵³

So when we talk about reconnaissance teams in Suriname in December 1981, we’re not just talking about military attachés doing normal embassy work. We’re talking about elite intelligence operatives from a unit specifically created to prepare the battlefield for special operations forces.⁵⁴

PART 7: JSOC IN SURINAME (22:00-26:00)

And that brings us to the birdwatchers.

In December 1981, men with cameras and binoculars arrived in Paramaribo. They were photographing Fort Zeelandia. They were mapping routes from Zanderij International Airport to the city center. They were checking out the Presidential Palace, the Central Bank, communication towers, power stations.⁵⁵

When locals asked what they were doing, they would smile and point to their binoculars. “We’re birdwatchers,” they’d say. “Suriname has incredible biodiversity. We’re studying tropical species.”⁵⁶

And you know what? Suriname does have over 700 species of birds. It’s a legitimate cover story.⁵⁷

But these weren’t ornithologists. They were scouts from the Joint Special Operations Command—JSOC—the military command created after the failed Iran hostage rescue to coordinate America’s most elite counterterrorism units.⁵⁸

JSOC controlled Delta Force, SEAL Team Six, the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment. And in late 1981, they were conducting reconnaissance in the Caribbean Basin for potential intervention operations.⁵⁹

Their mission in Suriname was straightforward: gather the intelligence needed to execute a rapid military operation if ordered. That meant identifying where Bouterse lived and worked, mapping his security protocols, locating key government facilities, assessing the military’s defensive capabilities.⁶⁰

They were building target packages. Routes of ingress and egress. Helicopter landing zones. Positions for blocking forces. Everything you’d need to execute what would later be called “non-combatant evacuation operations” or “counterterrorism raids,” but what were really invasion plans with different names.⁶¹

This wasn’t paranoia on Bouterse’s part. This wasn’t him imagining CIA plots. These teams were actually there, doing exactly what he suspected—planning for an American military intervention in Suriname.⁶²

And they would use what they learned. Two years later, in October 1983, when the Reagan administration invaded Grenada, many of the same JSOC operators who’d done reconnaissance in Suriname would be part of Operation Urgent Fury. The playbook they were developing in 1981—the birdwatcher cover, the infrastructure mapping, the rapid assault planning—would be executed in Grenada.⁶³

Suriname was the dress rehearsal that never got opening night.

PART 8: THE LEGAL ARCHITECTURE (26:00-30:00)

But for JSOC to operate in Suriname, for ISA to gather intelligence, for Oliver North to coordinate private funding networks—all of this needed legal authority. And in December 1981, that authority was being put in place.

We talked in Episode 2 about how Reagan signed NSDD-3 on December 14th, 1981—just three days before the convergence of all these operations.⁶⁴ That directive formalized the crisis management structures that gave officials like Oliver North extraordinary authority to coordinate operations across agencies without going through normal channels.

But there was another piece of the puzzle. Throughout 1981, the Reagan administration had been arguing that the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, Maurice Bishop’s government in Grenada, and Desi Bouterse’s regime in Suriname weren’t revolutionary governments—they were terrorist threats supported by Cuba and the Soviet Union.⁶⁵

This wasn’t just rhetoric. It was a legal strategy. Because if these were terrorist threats rather than sovereign governments, then different authorities applied.

You didn’t need a declaration of war. You didn’t need extensive congressional consultation. You could use counterterrorism units like JSOC under crisis response protocols. You could justify covert action under different legal frameworks.⁶⁶

And this is exactly what was decided at the 14th Conference of American Armies in late November 1981. U.S. military intelligence officials got Latin American militaries to agree on a unified framework for categorizing Soviet-aligned movements as terrorist organizations rather than revolutionary governments.⁶⁷

So when JSOC teams arrived in Suriname in December 1981, they weren’t there conducting espionage against a foreign government—officially, they were there conducting counterterrorism reconnaissance against a terrorist threat to regional stability.⁶⁸

When Oliver North was coordinating private funding for hostage rescue, he wasn’t circumventing congressional appropriations—he was responding to a crisis using all available resources.⁶⁹

When ISA was gathering tactical intelligence in Suriname, they weren’t preparing for an invasion—they were building situational awareness for potential non-combatant evacuation operations.⁷⁰

The semantic shifts weren’t just propaganda. They were legal architecture that made all of this operationally and legally defensible under crisis response authorities.⁷¹

ACT III: THE TRIGGER THAT NEVER CAME (30:00-45:00)

PART 9: WAITING FOR PRETEXT (30:00-35:00)

By late December 1981, all the pieces were in place.

In Nicaragua, Operation Red Christmas had failed to seize enough territory for a provisional government, but it had provoked the Sandinistas into cracking down on the Miskito, creating propaganda opportunities.

In Italy, the Dozier kidnapping had given Oliver North the chance to test his private rescue networks.

In Suriname, reconnaissance teams had mapped targets and infrastructure for a potential operation.

The crisis response system was operational. The legal authorities were signed. The tactical intelligence was gathered. The special operations forces were on standby.

But there was one thing missing: a trigger event. Something that would justify direct American military action in Suriname.

They needed what military planners call a “precipitating incident”—an atrocity or crisis so severe that immediate intervention becomes not just justifiable but necessary. Something that would allow them to activate all these authorities and execute the plans they’d been developing.⁷²

In Grenada, that trigger would come in October 1983 when Maurice Bishop was executed and American medical students were perceived to be in danger.⁷³

In Panama, it would come in December 1989 when Panamanian Defense Forces killed an American serviceman.⁷⁴

But in Suriname in December 1981? The trigger didn’t exist yet.

There was no hostage crisis. No dead Americans. No humanitarian catastrophe that could justify the cavalry riding in.⁷⁵

So the teams went home. The plans went into filing cabinets. The operation moved from active to contingent.

But the infrastructure remained. The networks North had built. The intelligence ISA had gathered. The target packages JSOC had developed. All of it stayed ready, waiting for the crisis that would justify activation.

PART 10: THE PROBLEM OF JOHN CROWLEY (35:00-40:00)

But there was another problem. And his name was Ambassador John Crowley Jr.

John Crowley was a Carter-era diplomat who’d been appointed U.S. Ambassador to Suriname in 1980. And President Carter had done something significant when he appointed his ambassadors—he’d designated every U.S. ambassador on Earth as his personal human rights representative in that country.⁷⁶

What this meant was that ambassadors weren’t just conducting diplomacy—they were monitoring and reporting on human rights conditions. And if they saw evidence of human rights abuses, they were expected to report it up through State Department channels. And those reports often made their way to Congress.⁷⁷

For the operations being planned in Suriname in late 1981, this created a problem. Because what the Reagan administration was planning wouldn’t fall under the category of human rights promotion. John Crowley, if he was doing his job as Carter had defined it, might report covert operations like ISA reconnaissance or JSOC planning to Congress.⁷⁸

He would have to be removed first.

December 10th, 1981. Seven days before Desi Bouterse stood in front of the monument of the revolution and launched the Revolutionary Front. Seven days before JSOC operators were photographing Fort Zeelandia.

On that day, Ambassador John Crowley was terminated from his post.⁷⁹

Officially, it was just a routine rotation of personnel. Ambassadors serve at the pleasure of the president. The Reagan administration was replacing Carter appointees with their own people. Nothing unusual about that.

But the timing tells a different story.

Crowley was removed exactly one week before the convergence of operations in Suriname. Exactly one week before Bouterse’s alignment with Cuba and Nicaragua became official. Exactly one week before the reconnaissance teams needed to operate without someone asking too many questions about who they were and what they were doing.⁸⁰

It was clearing the field. One last witness removed before the operation went forward.

PART 11: THE CONVERGENCE (40:00-45:00)

So let’s put it all together. December 17th, 1981.

In Nicaragua, Operation Red Christmas is in its third day. MISURA forces have killed seven Sandinista soldiers in San Carlos. In eleven days, they’ll capture Dr. Cunningham. The operation will fail to seize enough territory, but it will provoke the Sandinista crackdown that the Reagan administration needs for propaganda.

In Italy, General Dozier is locked in a cage. Oliver North is coordinating the rescue effort and building private funding networks with Ross Perot. He’s proving he can mobilize wealth outside congressional appropriations. He’s creating the template for everything that will become Iran-Contra.

In Suriname, JSOC reconnaissance teams are photographing Fort Zeelandia under the cover of birdwatching. ISA is gathering tactical intelligence. The target packages are being built. The invasion plans are being developed.

And in Paramaribo, Desi Bouterse is standing in front of the monument of the revolution announcing the formation of the Revolutionary Front—officially aligning Suriname with Cuba and Nicaragua.⁸¹

The signal was unmistakable. But it wasn’t the trigger yet. There was no hostage crisis. No massacre. No pretext for the invasion.

But within weeks, new American operatives would arrive in Suriname. Not birdwatchers this time, but wolves—political warfare specialists, men who had done this before in Chile, in Grenada, in Indonesia, all over.⁸²

Men who would find the Surinamese willing to fight, willing to create the resistance that could bring a plan that would allow the cavalry to be called off of standby.

Because the Reagan administration had just proven something in Nicaragua. When you exploit indigenous movements for geopolitical purposes, when you provoke violence to manufacture the justification that you need, when you promise support but you deliver abandonment, people die.

And they die in ways that we document for historical record. Not because we want to shock you, but because we need to understand what was actually done.

What was done to people like Dr. Cunningham. What was done to those seven soldiers, some of whom were buried alive in San Carlos. What would soon be done to 15 men in a colonial fortress in the capital city of Suriname.⁸³

All of it needs to be documented. All of it in sources. All of it was done in the name of freedom.

And in Suriname, a lot of people were about to die.

OUTRO (45:00-50:00)

Thanks again for joining us on this week’s episode of the Suriname Contra Affair. As always, I know some of this is tough material to listen to, but I think we’re making some really good progress here.

I also wanted to thank those of you who’ve recently joined and subscribed both here and on Substack. We’ve added another 500 members or 500 subscribers in the last week, which is a lot of fun for me to see the growth of this channel. So continue to share this for us. Go ahead and like and subscribe if you haven’t already. That way, you’ll get notifications when new episodes drop.

Go ahead and subscribe back on Substack so you can read the original research material, get links to the original newspaper articles and other types of research videos, things like that that we put in the transcript notes for each episode.

Additionally, if you know anybody who was part of the missions that were down in Suriname in 1981, ‘82, ‘83, members of these ISA or Delta Force or other units that would be willing to talk and share their experience, that would be invaluable in understanding parts that we may have missed that might need some clarifications or any other people that were involved with this, whether it’s politicians or funding sources, both on the American side of the house and down in Suriname as well or other countries because this is a large web down in Latin America and the Caribbean basin.

So until then go ahead and like and subscribe and you see all the links here and we will catch you next week with another exciting episode of the Suriname Contra Affair.

Thanks for your support.

ENDNOTES

¹ Ben Bradlee Jr., Guts and Glory: The Rise and Fall of Oliver North (New York: D.I. Fine, 1988), 130; “H. Ross Perot Put up Ransom for Hostages,” The Roanoke Times (Roanoke, Virginia), December 2, 1986, https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-roanoke-times-h-ross-perot-put-up-r/183360122/.

² Holly Sklar, Washington’s War on Nicaragua (Boston: South End Press, 1988), 102-103. https://archive.org/details/washingtonswaron0000skla/page/102/mode/2up.

³ Ibid., 102.

⁴ Sean Naylor, Relentless Strike: The Secret History of Joint Special Operations Command (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2015), 23. https://archive.org/details/relentlessstrike0000nayl/page/22/mode/2up

⁵ Ibid., 22.

⁶ Matthew Smith, “The Suriname Contra Affair (Part 3): The Brazil Blueprint,” By Matthew Smith (Substack newsletter), October 16, 2025.

⁷ Naylor, Relentless Strike, 3-15.

⁸ Sklar, Washington’s War on Nicaragua, 15-17.

⁹ Ibid., 17-18.

¹⁰ Ibid., 18-20.

¹¹ Ibid., 23-26.

¹² Matthew Smith, “The Suriname Contra Affair (Part 2): The Deep State is Born (Again),” By Matthew Smith (Substack newsletter), October 7, 2025.

¹³ Sklar, Washington’s War on Nicaragua, 1-2.

¹⁴ Ibid., 35-40.

¹⁵ Ibid., 55-60.

¹⁶ Ibid., 60-65.

¹⁷ Ibid., 65-70.

¹⁸ Ibid., 100-101.

¹⁹ Ibid., 101.

²⁰ Ibid.

²¹ Ibid.

²² Ibid.

²³ Ibid., 101-102.

²⁴ Ibid., 102.

²⁵ Ibid.

²⁶ Ibid., 89-95.

²⁷ Ibid.

²⁸ Ibid., 102.

²⁹ Ibid.

³⁰ Ibid., 102.

³¹ Ibid., 102-103.

³² Ibid., 103.

³³ U.S. Department of State, “Sandinista Repression of Indians,” Publication 9471, March 1986. “Approximately 12,000 Miskitos fled sporadically to Honduras after the Sandinista government evacuated some 42 northern border communities, obliging the inhabitants to march to camps located 60 kilometers in the interior.”

³⁴ Ibid. “Sandinista repression of Nicaragua’s indigenous Indians–including detentions, incommunicado imprisonment, torture, and disappearance of hundreds of Miskitos–is documented by the 1984 report on the Miskitos by the Inter-American commission on Human Rights.”

³⁵ Sklar, Washington’s War on Nicaragua, 104.

³⁶ “’Smoking Gun’ Backfires; Credibility at Stake,” The Herald-Times (Bloomington, Indiana), March 14, 1982, https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-herald-times-smoking-gun-backfires/183355265/.

³⁷ “Details of Miskito Atrocity Charge against Sandinistas Unclear,” The Houston Chronicle (Houston, Texas), May 3, 1982, https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-houston-chronicle-details-of-miskito/183356932/.

³⁸ Petra T. Sharruk, “Opinion | The Use and Abuse of the Miskito Indians,” The Washington Post, March 28, 1982, https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1982/03/28/the-use-and-abuse-of-the-miskito-indians/f6312215-cafc-44b5-97de-4d9c7ea4bc0c/.

³⁹ “H. Ross Perot Put up Ransom for Hostages,” The Roanoke Times.

⁴⁰ Ibid.

⁴¹ Bradlee, Guts and Glory, 129.

⁴² “H. Ross Perot Put up Ransom for Hostages,” The Roanoke Times.

⁴³ Ibid.

⁴⁴ Ibid.

⁴⁵ Bradlee, Guts and Glory, 128-129.

⁴⁶ “H. Ross Perot Put up Ransom for Hostages,” The Roanoke Times.

⁴⁷ Bradlee, Guts and Glory, 110-115.

⁴⁸ Jeffrey Richelson, “’Truth Conquers All Chains’: The U.S. Army Intelligence Support Activity, 1981-1989,” International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence 12, no. 2 (June 1999): 174-175.

⁴⁹ Ibid., 168-170.

⁵⁰ Martin Catino, review of Relentless Strike: The Secret History of Joint Special Operations Command, by Sean Naylor, Journal of Strategic Security 9, no. 1 (March 2016): 142-143.

⁵¹ Ibid.

⁵² Ibid.

⁵³ Bradlee, Guts and Glory, 130-131.

⁵⁴ Malcolm Byrne, Iran-Contra: Reagan’s Scandal and the Unchecked Abuse of Presidential Power (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2014), 153-178.

⁵⁵ Naylor, Relentless Strike, 22-23.

⁵⁶ Ibid., 23.

⁵⁷ “Suriname – Birds,” Avibase – The World Bird Database, accessed October 17, 2025, https://avibase.bsc-eoc.org/checklist.jsp?region=SR.

⁵⁸ Naylor, Relentless Strike, 3-15.

⁵⁹ Ibid., 22.

⁶⁰ Ibid., 23.

⁶¹ Ibid.

⁶² Ibid.

⁶³ Ibid.

⁶⁴ National Security Decision Directive 3, “Crisis Management,” December 14, 1981, Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, https://irp.fas.org/offdocs/nsdd/nsdd-003.htm.

⁶⁵ Sander Peeters, Tropic Thunder in Suriname: Volume 1 – From Independence to “Revolution” and Countercoups, 1975-1982 (Helion and Company, 2023), 103.

⁶⁶ Smith, “The Suriname Contra Affair (Part 3): The Brazil Blueprint.”

⁶⁷ Ibid.

⁶⁸ Naylor, Relentless Strike, 22-23.

⁶⁹ Bradlee, Guts and Glory, 130.

⁷⁰ Richelson, “’Truth Conquers All Chains,’” 174-175.

⁷¹ National Security Decision Directive 3.

⁷² Naylor, Relentless Strike, 22-23.

⁷³ Ronald H. Cole, Operation Urgent Fury: The Planning and Execution of Joint Operations in Grenada, 1983 (Washington, D.C.: Joint History Office, Office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 1997), https://history.army.mil/Portals/143/Images/Publications/Publication%20By%20Title%20Images/R%20Pdf/CMH_Pub_55-2-1.pdf.

⁷⁴ Naylor, Relentless Strike, various.

⁷⁵ Ibid., 23.

⁷⁶ Jonathan Rickert, interview by Charles Stuart Kennedy, 2002, Foreign Affairs Oral History Collection, Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, https://adst.org/OH%20TOCs/Rickert,%20Jonathan%20B.toc.pdf.

⁷⁷ Ibid.

⁷⁸ Ibid.

⁷⁹ Ibid.

⁸⁰ Ibid.

⁸¹ U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, “Revolutionary Front to be Announced 27 November,” Cable PA091618, November 9, 1981, CIA Freedom of Information Act Electronic Reading Room, https://web.archive.org/web/20210608135905/https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP82-00850R000400070056-9.pdf.

⁸² Naylor, Relentless Strike, 23.

⁸³ Sklar, Washington’s War on Nicaragua, 102-103; Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, “Second Report on the Human Rights Situation in Suriname,” OEA/Ser.L/V/II.66, doc.21 rev. 1, October 2, 1985.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Sources

Government Documents

U.S. Department of State. “Sandinista Repression of Indians.” Publication 9471, March 1986.

National Security Decision Directive 3. “Crisis Management.” December 14, 1981. Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. https://irp.fas.org/offdocs/nsdd/nsdd-003.htm.

National Security Decision Directive 17. “Cuba and Central America.” January 4, 1982. Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/public/archives/reference/scanned-nsdds/nsdd17.pdf.

U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. “Revolutionary Front to be Announced 27 November.” Cable PA091618, November 9, 1981. CIA Freedom of Information Act Electronic Reading Room. https://web.archive.org/web/20210608135905/https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP82-00850R000400070056-9.pdf.

Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. “Second Report on the Human Rights Situation in Suriname.” OEA/Ser.L/V/II.66, doc.21 rev. 1, October 2, 1985.

Oral Histories

Rickert, Jonathan. Interview by Charles Stuart Kennedy, 2002. Foreign Affairs Oral History Collection, Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training. https://adst.org/OH%20TOCs/Rickert,%20Jonathan%20B.toc.pdf.

Newspaper Articles

“’Smoking Gun’ Backfires; Credibility at Stake.” The Herald-Times (Bloomington, Indiana), March 14, 1982. https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-herald-times-smoking-gun-backfires/183355265/.

“Details of Miskito Atrocity Charge against Sandinistas Unclear.” The Houston Chronicle (Houston, Texas), May 3, 1982. https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-houston-chronicle-details-of-miskito/183356932/.

“H. Ross Perot Put up Ransom for Hostages.” The Roanoke Times (Roanoke, Virginia), December 2, 1986. https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-roanoke-times-h-ross-perot-put-up-r/183360122/.

Sharruk, Petra T. “Opinion | The Use and Abuse of the Miskito Indians.” The Washington Post, March 28, 1982. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1982/03/28/the-use-and-abuse-of-the-miskito-indians/f6312215-cafc-44b5-97de-4d9c7ea4bc0c/.

Secondary Sources

Books

Bradlee, Ben, Jr. Guts and Glory: The Rise and Fall of Oliver North. New York: D.I. Fine, 1988.

Byrne, Malcolm. Iran-Contra: Reagan’s Scandal and the Unchecked Abuse of Presidential Power. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2014.

Cole, Ronald H. Operation Urgent Fury: The Planning and Execution of Joint Operations in Grenada, 1983. Washington, D.C.: Joint History Office, Office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 1997. https://history.army.mil/Portals/143/Images/Publications/Publication%20By%20Title%20Images/R%20Pdf/CMH_Pub_55-2-1.pdf.

Naylor, Sean. Relentless Strike: The Secret History of Joint Special Operations Command. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2015.

North, Oliver, and William Novak. Under Fire: An American Story. New York: HarperCollins, 1991.

Peeters, Sander. Tropic Thunder in Suriname: Volume 1 – From Independence to “Revolution” and Countercoups, 1975-1982. Helion and Company, 2023.

Sklar, Holly. Washington’s War on Nicaragua. Boston: South End Press, 1988.

Scholarly Articles

Catino, Martin. Review of Relentless Strike: The Secret History of Joint Special Operations Command, by Sean Naylor. Journal of Strategic Security 9, no. 1 (March 2016): 142-143.

Richelson, Jeffrey. “’Truth Conquers All Chains’: The U.S. Army Intelligence Support Activity, 1981-1989.” International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence 12, no. 2 (June 1999): 168-200.

Web Resources

“Suriname – Birds.” Avibase – The World Bird Database. Accessed October 17, 2025. https://avibase.bsc-eoc.org/checklist.jsp?region=SR.

Thanks for reading. If you found this valuable, please share it. The more people who understand this history, the better equipped we are to recognize these patterns when they repeat.

And they always repeat.

— Matthew