Grenada Documents – Introduction -format

GRENADA DOCUMENTS: AN OVERVIEW AND SELECTION Released by the Department of State and the Department of Defense September 1984 Washington, D.C. Some of the Grenada documents reproduced in this book are marked Confidential, Secret, or Top Secret. These classifications were put on the documents by the Marxist-Leninist governments of Grenada, Cuba, the Soviet Union, or other Communist countries. These documents were not classified by the U.S. Government or its allies. GRENADA DOCUMENTS: AN OVERVIEW AND SELECTION INTRODUCTION BY MICHAEL LEDEEN AND HERBERT ROMERSTEIN The military action by the United States and the members of the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) in October 1983 brought to a close the four-year rule of the New Jewel Movement ( NJM ) on the island of Grenada. During their stay on Grenada, the combined forces found a considerable body of documents, constituting an extensive archive of the NJM regime. There were roughly 35,000 pounds of material, ranging from official government treaties, orders, minutes, and correspondence to personal diaries, telexes to and from many foreign countries, and bank documents concerning the finances of government and party leaders. Rarely has such a complete documentary picture of a Communist state been available to Western students. The entire lot is being made available to scholars and other interested parties through the National Archives in Washington. Pending completion of the Grenada archive, we were asked to assemble a cross-section of documents to give a preliminary picture of Grenada during the rule of Maurice Bishop and the NJM, from April 1979 to October 1983. It was a daunting task, for the richness of the material made selection difficult. The collection presented here could easily have been replaced almost in its entirety by other, equally significant material. Nonetheless, we have striven to provide representative samples from areas likely to be of interest to students of communism and of international relations. We expect that in the future other scholars will produce more detailed studies using the substantial documentation in the archive. We judged the area we selected to be most important for a first look at the Grenada documents. To these we added some material dealing with life on the island during the NJM period, particularly documents illustrating human rights abuses by the Bishop regime. These include reports of treatment of prisoners and legal proceedings, as well as the attempts by the regime — with the help of its international allies — to deal with political opponents, particularly the churches. Finally, while this work was authorized and paid for by the Government of the United States [Ledeen worked as a consultant to the Department of State; Romerstein is an official of the United States Information Agency], we are entirely responsible for the selection of the documents and for the introductory material. We did our work without any pressure from anyone, except insofar as we were urged to work as fast as was reasonably possible. We are grateful for freedom to make the selections we deemed most representative and for the patient support throughout the many months we worked on the documents. We are grateful above all to the two senior officials who authorized the project; the then Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, Lawrence Eagleburger, and the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, Fred Ikle. – 2 – We believe that the documents in this collection give , an accurate albeit incomplete picture of Grenada under the NJM. ‘In ^i; choosing a few hundred pages out of tens of thousands, the best can be hoped for is that the selection was done fairly, with an >;^e| to! understanding. We believe that we have done this. r^! U- .HIS ■ | ■k It:; ■J.. if. ip Ilf -3- THE NEW JEWEL MOVEMENT • The revolution that overthrew the Gairy regime in Grenada’in ” April 1979 was designed to create a Communist society and to bring Grenada into the Soviet orbit. While the leaders of the New’ Jewel Movement recognized that they needed to feign respect for political pluralism and a desire for good relations with all neighboring countries (above all the United States), the actual direction that Maurice Bishop and his NJM colleagues wished to take was clear from the outset. The close working relations the regime established with the Government of Cuba — both in Grenada and in Cuba i tself –showed that Bishop intended to model his revolution on that of the Soviet Union and, more immediately, of Cuba. The attention shown to delegations from the Soviet bloc and from such radical regimes as Qadaffi’s Libya and Kim-il Sung’s North Korea, along with the lack of exchanges with traditional friends such as Great Britain, indicated the NJM’s real intentions. By September 1982, Bishop could give an extended “now it can be told” speech to the leaders of the Party and the Government, aptly entitled “Line of March for the Party” (Document 1). In that key presentation, Bishop flatly stated that the goal of the NJM was to “ensure the leading role of the working class through its Marxist/Leninist Party backed by some form of the dictatorship of the proletariat.” Copies of the “Line of March” were closely held; each copy was marked confidential and consecutively numbered by hand. Many had been read, marked, and dog-eared, then returned. The minutes of the NJM Political Bureau reflect the use of the “Line of March” document in study classes attended by every member and candidate for membership. The “Line of March” contains Bishop’s reflections on the tactics he adopted shortly after seizing power. People from all social strata were included in the original ruling council and, according to Bishop, “this was done deliberately so that imperialism won’t get too excited and would say ‘well they have some nice fellas in that thing; everything allright.’” This little deception was abandoned by the time of Bishop’s speech, when the NJM was in complete control, and Bishop was quite explicit about the way in which control was exercised: Consider how people get detained in this country. We don’t go and call for no votes. You get detained when I sign an order after discussing it with the National Security Committee of the Party or with a higher Party body. Once I sign it — like it or don’t like it — it’s up the hill for them. Candidates for “the hill” were identified through a clandestine system that monitored the population and foreign visitors (even the predominantly American student body at the medical school). The Special Branch (Secret Police) divided the island into regions for – 4 – j ifeirf surveillance; potential opponents of the regime were identified ]«$ | j (generally on a class or religious basis) and closely watched. InT’rJ addition, major institutions were targeted for surveillance: ,thd ; sf c | government, the trade union, the police, the medical school, arid |feKe|S| churches. That this represented a departure from previous practdf;cepi ;| is indicated by a statement made by the . head of the Special Bfianci^r Michael Roberts, in a May 1980 report to the Prime Minister drid Minister of National Security (Document 9): “the old MI -5 –(:Bni^t!?ii^^”;: counterintelligence) methods of work, after experimentation, have /[*ft . proven to be not effective enough.” THE CHURCHES J; Church leaders were subjected to particularly close . vfe-bi i. surveillance, and the Grenadans received considerable help from tliefi .1 Cubans and Nicaraguans in countering religious activities. • ; 1 document outlining the basic counterintelligence operations of h Interior Ministry (Document 9), the scope of the NJM’s concern r.*w‘ii©0 p. H the churches is evident from a list of duties of the Special Braril^Vi^ which included: . , ll!Hf r — “Monitoring all sermons by the various parish priests and . ! preachers in the society? . – — The controlling of all hirachy [sic) meeting of the \ church in particular the Catholic and Anglicans? ^ j. Controlling all elements of the society that pay visits . j . Wji I to the hirachy [sic]; – ij — Tapping of the Hirachy [sic] of all the leading counter churches phones.” ‘ -t’ : (“Counter” was used as shorthand for “counterrevolutionary” by Ur 1 virtually all Grenadans.) | / | The NJM took these security measures against church leaders | because they believed that all major religious institutions on tjhe*l£ island were opposed to the revolution. In a top secret report written in March 1983 (Document 4), Michael Roberts of the Spe^cdiaiy^ ‘ : Branch stated that the Roman Catholic, Anglican, Methodist,- antfR : Seventh Day Adventist churches were all hostile to the NJM, and4fehiji|i , the Catholic Church was the most important because of. its si.zje >! internal discipline. Roberts was concerned about the Catholics , | ! fu?s^e! •>* of the Jerusalem Bible because “this bible is written as a novel’ WM is very easy to understand not being written in, old English This 1 ‘ means that the Church in understanding the struggle … has 1 k • Revolutionized 1 is [sic] main ideological weapon — the bible.” ; I Moreover, the Church distributed the Pope’s New Year’s me.ssager,*i|.ain;#’ j., Roberts considered it to be “the Church’s foreign policy documdridj .’if ,i J ; and no doubt will be used to criticize our foreign policy.” Similar concerns were expressed about the other churchesy to the . Il point where, by July 1983, Interior Minister Keith Roberts couJ;d^dt’^ I. write that “in the medium term, if serious measures are no/t takefifrjt M-k -5- we can find ourselves faced with a Poland situation. •• .we see the Church in the immediate period as being the most dangerous sector for the development of internal counter revolution” (Document 5). But perhaps most indicative of the great concern about the churches was the interest shown by the Cuban Communist Party (PCC). The Americas Department of the Cuban Communist Party prepared an extensive analysis of “the religious situation in the country, and the contacts for further cooperation between the PCC and the NJM regarding the question” (Document 2). The Cubans concurred that the churches were “in harmony with the campaigns carried out by the reactionary governments in the Caribbean” and were distressed at the lack of effective action by the NJM. For example, the Cubans lamented that the Grenadans had not infiltrated the churches (“there are no signs of systematic progressive projections within the Grenadian clergy”), and, as of the time of the report (August 1982), the Grenadans had not even appointed a person to take charge of religious questions. This was remedied forthwith, as Selwyn Strachan was named to this position, and was supposed to spend nearly three weeks training in Cuba before starting work. The Cubans foresaw that Strachan* s job would ■basically include the information work at the beginning and regular contacts with collaborators from Christian organizations.” In other words, he would place agents inside the churches, and then attempt to manipulate them from within. The other main Cuban suggestion was to bring Grenadan religious leaders and laypersons into contact with Nicaraguan church figures “and other Latin American circles linked to the theology of liberation and, in general, to the idea of a church committed to the revolutionary positions.” THE SOVIET CONNECTION From the beginning. Bishop and the other NJM leaders sought to bring Grenada into the Soviet orbit, and there are thousands of documents showing the intimate relationship that developed between the USSR and Grenada. Sometimes relations were embodied in formal treaties between Grenada and Soviet bloc countries, and such Soviet proxies as Cuba, Vietnam, and North Korea. On other occasions there were secret agreements, such as those for providing counter- intelligence or surveillence equipment, training for agents, and so forth. We have included several of the treaties and par ty-to-par ty agreements that gave Grenada a vast quantity of armaments as well as military and political training. Thousands of weapons, far more than could have been required for the security requirements of the tiny island, were shipped by the Soviet Union and Communist-bloc countries. Overall, the documents (samples of which can be found in – 6 – this book) showed that the Soviet, Cuban, North Korean, and Czechoslovakian agreements included the following items, which were to have been delivered by 1986: — Approximately 10,000 assault and other rifles; — More than 4,500 submachine guns and machine guns? — More than 11.5 million rounds of 7.62 mm ammunition; — 294 portable rocket launchers with more than 16,000 rockets? — 84 82 mm mortars with more than 4,800 mortar shells? — 12 75 mm cannon with 600 cannon shells; — 15,000 hand grenades, 7,000 land mines, 60 armored personnel carriers and patrol vehicles? — More than 150 radio transmitters, 160 field telephone sets, approximately 23,000 uniforms, and tents for about 7,700 persons . By U.S. Department of Defense estimates, equipment found on the island (not all of it had arrived) would have been sufficient to equip a fighting force of roughly 10,000 men. Furthermore, there evidently were some plans for special forces, since the Soviets promised to provide an airplane capable of transporting 39 paratroopers, as well as other special equipment. All of this made Grenada a real military threat to its neighbors, most of whom had only local constabularies rather than standing armies. And there was little question that th€i airport was going to be used for military purposes, since General Hudson Austin’s deputy, Liam James, reported in his notebook on March 22, 1980, “The Revo has been able to crush Counter-Revolution internationally, airport will be used for Cuban and Soviet military” (Document 23). This apparently reflected a decision of the NJM leadership. The Soviets appreciated the geopolitical significance of acquiring another proxy in the Western Hemisphere, as can be seen from the picturesque account of a meeting between Major Einstein Louison, Chief of Staff of the Grenadan Army (who had gone to Moscow for military training), and his Soviet counterpart, Marshal N.V. Ogarkov. According to the Grenadan notes on the meeting (Document 24), Ogarkov told Louison, “over two decades ago, there was only Cuba in Latin America, today there are Nicaragua, Grenada and a serious battle is going on in El Salvador.” The Grenadans saw themselves as Soviet proxies. Their Ambassador to Moscow, W. Richard Jacobs, reminded his comrades in Grenada that their importance to the Soviets would eventually depend on their success in exporting revolution: “To the extent that we can take credit for bringing any other country into the progressive fold, our prestige and influence would be greatly enhansed [sic]” (Document 26). Jacobs felt that the first such project should be Suriname. -7- There was no lack of Soviet support for Grenadan intelligence and counterintelligence operations. A draft letter dated February 17, 1982, from General Hudson Austin to Yuri Andropov, then the chief of the KGB, requested training courses for three Grenadans in counterintelligence and one in intelligence work. Austin thanked Andropov for the “tremendous assistance which our armed forces have received from your party and government in the past” (Document 27). Perhaps the most intensive Soviet assistance to Grenada was in the field of indoctrination, for it was necessary to train a new. Communist generation on the island. The Soviets participated in some of the “ideological crash courses” that are referred to in the minutes of several meetings of the Politbureau and the Central Committee, and they also invited Grenada to send students to the highest level Soviet training school for foreign Communists, the Lenin School in Moscow. The Lenin School, in operation since the 1920s, has trained the leading Communists of almost every country of the world. The NJM students there reported on their training, including courses in “social psychology and propaganda” and “party organization — intelligence/security” (Document 28). The Cubans also assisted in courses in mass manipulation, offering training in journalism, crowd control, propaganda, billboard painting, newspaper and cartoon writing and drawing. A secret agreement between the Cuban Communist Party (PCC) and the NJM provided for training of Grenadans in Cuba and Grenada (Document 17). The document was signed for Cuba by Manuel Pineiro, the former head of Cuban intelligence (the DGI ) , and currently the head of the Americas Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba, the covert action arm of the Castro regime. Twenty Grenadans were invited to Vietnam to study anti-chemical warfare, anti-radioactivity warfare, “reeducation of anti-social and counterrevolutionary elements,” and “Yankee tactics and the weapons used in Vietnam” (Document 18). Others were invited to Czechoslovakia, Libya, East Germany, and North Korea. We do not know whether the invitations were accepted, but the proposals show how thoroughly Grenada was integrated into the Soviet world. RELATIONS WITH THE UNITED STATES The leaders of the Grenadan Government and the New Jewel Movement consistently regarded the United States with hostility. There were several contacts between the NJM and the Communist Party U.S.A., both to raise money for Grenada and to coordinate propaganda and public relations strategies in the United States. There was also guidance from the Cubans provided by Gail Reed Rizo, the U.S.-born wife of the Cuban Ambassador to Grenada, Julian Torres Rizo. Gail Reed had been active in American radical organizations, including the Venceremos Brigade, during the 1970s. Prior to the – 8 – trip of Prime Minister Bishop to the United States in 1983, Mrs. Rizo gave him detailed suggestions on how he should conduct himself in his contacts with American officials, and recommendations on which Americans he should meet (Document 31). She also reminded him that Sanchez Parodi of the Cuban Interests Section in Washington would be available to him if needed. Most helpful to an understanding of the NJM’s attitude toward the United States are the handwritten notes, evidently written by a Grenadan participant in the conversation, describing Bishop’s meeting with National Security Adviser William Clark (Document 32). The notes reveal the NJM perception of American concern about the ideological direction of the Bishop regime (Clark at one point purportedly stressed the U.S. desire that Grenada remain within a Western legal framework), and that the main obstacle to better relations between the two countries was not political, but geopolitical. According to the notes, Washington was worried about the large numbers of Cubans and Russians on Grenada. Clark, Deputy Secretary of State Kenneth Dam, and U.S. Ambassador to the Organization of American States William Middendorf stressed that the U.S. Government wanted actions, not mere declarations of good intentions from the Grenadans. The notes indicate that Bishop was ■encouraged by [Judge Clark’s] response.” In their efforts to persuade the United States to switch from perceived hostility to support, the Grenadans exerted considerable effort to create a lobby in Washington and to organize a propaganda network throughout the country. They carefully monitored the American media (with help from the Cubans, especially Ambassador Julian Torres Rizo and Gail Reed Rizo), and responded vigorously to criticisms, attempted to identify correspondents and television producers sympathetic to their point of view, and even discussed with the Communist Party U.S. A. the possibility of starting a new radio station in New York City. (These themes are found throughout the minutes of the Politbureau and the Central Committee. See, for example, minutes for Politbureau of 13 May 1982, for their preoccupation with a CBS broadcast they did not like.) A public relations firm in New York was hired to monitor less important publications. Finally, Grenada coordinated its efforts with those of Soviet-bloc countries and international Soviet-front organizations in supporting and encouraging a worldwide “peace” movement, and in turning against U.S. policy. In April 1981, an NJM representative attended a World Peace Council Congress in Havana, and met with his counterparts from the USSR, Bulgaria, East Germany, Hungary, and the National Committee of Quebec. He reported that assistance would soon be forthcoming from the Soviets, the Hungarians, and the East Germans (Document 45). -9- THE SOCIALIST INTERNATIONAL The Declaration of the Socialist International (SI) adopted in Oslo in June 1962, states that the Communist “one-party dictatorships represent in fact tyranny, denying those freedoms of speech, religion, criticism, voluntary organization and contacts with the outside world which are the essence of a democratic society.” (See Declarations of the Socialist International , London, 1978, p. 13.) The SI was therefore a natural target for the Communists, and some of the Grenada documents show that “Active Measures”* were conducted against the SI by Grenadans and others acting under the direction of the Americas Department of the Central Committee of the Cuban Communist Party. To further the objective of subverting the SI, a , “Secret Regional Caucus” was formed by the Nicaraguan Sandinistas, the Grenadan NJM, and some parties in the Latin American Committee of the SI (Document 39). The NJM had sent observers to SI meetings even before its successful revolution, and in late 1979 Bishop applied for membership in the Socialist International. The application was accepted in November 1980 at the SI Congress in Madrid. The Grenadans, taking their cue from the Cubans and from the Soviets, viewed the Socialist International as a potential enemy, and one unsigned document (Document 38) — apparently from the 1980-81 per iod–def ended the decision to join the SI, but made clear that it was not because of belief in the Si’s principles. Membership was supported on two grounds: ♦”Active Measures” is an expression used by the Soviets for their influence operations. Soviet Active Measures are coordinated by the International Department of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (ID), which engages in both overt and semi-overt activities. The KGB conducts the covert Active Measures in coordination with the ID. Covert Active Measures include forgeries, agents of influence, placement of false stories in the press, and so forth. Some Soviet Active Measures are carried out through surrogates (usually the intelligence service of another Communist-bloc country). In the Western Hemisphere, the Cuban Communist Party’s Americas Department conducts Active Measures on behalf of the Soviet Union. The Americas Department combines both overt and covert Active Measures by having officers of the Cuban Intelligence Service (the DGI ) operate on behalf of the Department. For more details, see hearings of the U.S. House of Representatives, Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Soviet Covert Action, 1980 and Soviet Active Measures, 1982 . – 10 – !• provided access to international movements which could be persuaded to support New Jewel Movement policies. 2. The New Jewel Movement could use its membership in the SI to “express organized support for the progressive struggles in Southern Africa, the Western Sahara, Palestine, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and other parts of Latin America, etc.” There was evidently some concern within the government of Grenada that the NJM might be violating its own principles by being a member of a social democratic organization. The author of the document responded that the Socialist International was “sufficiently flexible to permit dissention [sic]” and therefore “membership in the SI should be retained. It has proved useful and if Grenada’s foreign policy initiatives are strengthened it can prove even more useful in the future.” The most detailed documents concerning the Socialist International were apparently not written by Grenadans, but rather by Cubans. Two documents found stapled together appear to have been written by a Cuban and then translated into English. (The language is stilted and the author writes from a vantage point outside the SI. We believe they were written by the same person who wrote Document 37A, definitely a Cuban.) They contain sophisticated analyses of the SI from a Marxist/Leninist perspective. One of them — Document 35 — is a report on the 15th Congress of the Socialist International held in Madrid in November 1980. The report refers to international documents that had been circulated confidentially among the members of the SI Bureau. These confidential documents showed that there were internal conflicts on a number of questions. The author of the report complained that the “rightist and conservative sectors of the International” (who, as we shall see, included persons who are now the heads of government in Italy, Spain, and Portugal) had succeeded in including in a draft resolution references to “the Afghan problem; events in Poland •••[ and ] the USSR’s alleged arms— race policy.” The nature of the conflict between communism and democratic socialism was spelled out in detail in the other document (Document 36): in the main contradiction of our times between capitalism and socialism, led by U.S. imperialism and the USSR respectively. Social Democrats as a whole are on the imperialist side up to now.” Thus the social democrats were enemies of the Communists, and efforts by the SI to exert influence on Latin America were to be resisted: We see a dual nature in the projection of social democracy in Latin America and the Caribbean. On the one hand, it does represent a permanent enemy of the essential objectives of the communist and left movements in that this trend intends to prevent the triumph of socialist revolutions and the – 11 – materialization of the communist ideal. On the other hand, it is obvious that certain political positions of the social democracy can be used by the revolutionary and progressive forces of the continent at given junctures of the struggle against a repressive and fascist military regime and of the confrontation with U.S. imperialism. Hence, in our view, while ideological struggle is necessary, we should implement ways and methods of case-by-case treatment of the parties related to social democracy whose positions coincide with certain tactical objetives [sic] of the Latin American revolutionary movement (Document 36, page 14). DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISTS VERSUS THE MARXIST/LENINISTS Unison Whiteman, minister of external relations of the Bishop Government, attended a two-day emergency SI meeting on Latin America and the Caribbean in Panama on February 28 and March 1, 1981. Whiteman had a dispute over El Salvador with former President Carlos Andres Perez of the Venezuelan Democratic Action Party, who insisted that if the SI meeting was going to condemn the United States for supplying arms to the Salvadoran Government, the Cubans and the Soviets should also be condemned for arming the guerrillas. Whiteman responded that “the U.S. supply of arms to the Junta is a notorious fact, that the U.S. officially and publicly stated this; that SI should not speculate on where the freedom fighters are getting arms from; that in any event we should not equate arms for the oppressors with weapons to defend the people in their just struggle.” Whiteman worked for a compromise resolution that named no names, and he implied that the tone of the resolution was hostile only to the United States (Document 41). Whiteman’s position was that of the Cubans. In this regard, an illuminating document is a Spanish-language report on an SI committee meeting held in Nicaragua on June 25, 1981 (Document 33). The report was signed by Manuel Pineiro Losada, head of the Americas Department of the Cuban Communist Party. In this document, Pineiro complained of efforts by the democratic socialists to urge the Nicaraguan regime to move in a more moderate direction. Pineiro was particularly upset with the actions of Carlos Andres Perez and Felipe Gonzales, the head of the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) and now the Prime Minister of Spain. Attached to Pineiro’s report were two documents: an account in Spanish of the discussion between Bayardo Arce (a member of the Sandinista National Directorate in Nicaragua) and Felipe Gonzales and Carlos Andres Perez for the SI; and an apparently intercepted telex from Hans Eberhard of the German Social Democratic Party to Walter Hacker, the International Secretary of the Austrian Social Democratic – 12 – Party. There was also a poor English translation (we have made a fresh translation, included here as Document 33A). Evidently, the Cubans’ distrust of the Social Democrats was so intense that they carefully watched the behavior of their principal enemies within the SI. Conflicts between the democrats and the Communists within the Socialist International emerged at virtually eVery meeting of which the Grenadans had a record. At a meeting in Bonn on April 1 and 2, 1982 (Document 37), for example, NJM representative Fennis Augustine found that while there was considerable support for Grenada within SI ranks, “some have reservations on what they see as a Marxist thrust of the NJM. I believe that close relationship with Cuba will continue. Nicaragua’s position is a little more difficult, although there was a great degree of understanding and sympathy for them by the time the meeting was finished” (Document 37). Augustine noted that some of the social democratic parties were worried about the actions of the Sandinistas, and cited in particular Carlos Andres Perez* party’s criticisms of the Nicaraguans. Augustine was also disturbed to encounter SI support for greater democracy in Nicaragua, including elections, a two-party system, human rights, freedom of religion, and freedom of speech. and press. The same meeting was the subject of another report, this one unsigned (Document 37a). Internal evidence (a reference to Cuba as “us”) suggests that it was written by a Cuban, and it is quite similar to Documents 35 and 36. It would not be surprising to have a Cuban report of an SI meeting, since the Cubans were almost always present at the site of such meetings, even though they were not permitted to attend. But they gave instructions to the Grenadans (and perhaps also to the Nicaraguans), and were thus able to get detailed reports on what transpired. In any event, the author of the report, while disturbed that the democratic socialists were attempting to neutralize the “revolutionary” countries in the region so as to limit Cuban influence, boasted that the “right-wing” forces within the SI (identified as Felipe Gonzales of Spain, Mario Soares of Portugal, and Carlos Andres Perez of Venezuela, two of whom are now prime ministers and one a former president of their respective countries) were effectively neutralized. But Cuban and Grenadan optimism turned out to be misplaced. At a meeting of the Socialist International European Bureau in Basle, Switzerland, on November 3 and 4, 1982, there was outspoken criticism of both the NJM and the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua. According to a report of the meeting submitted by Chris DeRiggs, a member of the NJM Central Committee and Minister of Health, there was strong opposition to a resolution expressing solidarity with Grenada and Nicaragua. Leading critics included Mario Soares, Bettino Craxi of the Italian Socialist Party, and Rita Freedman of Social Democrats USA. According to DeRiggs, “their major line of attack was that Grenada was a one-party state and, therefore, could not be considered a democracy” (Document 40, page 4). Both DeRiggs and Paul Miller of the Peoples National Party (PNP) of Jamaica tried to justify the lack of an opposition party in Grenada, but apparently their rhetoric was not convincing, and so they pondered ways in which the Socialist International could be turned to their own purposes. DeRiggs suggested that the forces of the Latin American left within the SI could be used to lobby the European Socialists, and he observed that Guillermo Ungo of the Salvadoran National Revolutionary Movement ( MNR ) — affiliated with the Revolutionary Democratic Front (FDR), the political wing of the guerrilla movement-had achieved a certain degree of success along those lines. Thus, in DeRiggs’s words, “it is felt that similar efforts from other SI members in the region can help to exploit contradictions existing even within the membership of SI parties like the Socialist Party of Portugal” (Document 40, page 8). In other words, it was necessary to work within the member parties to produce a shift in outlook. By January of 1983, these ideas had taken a more concrete form. THE “SECRET REGIONAL CAUCUS ” January 6-7, 1983, a Secret Regional Caucus was held in Managua, consisting of five parties affiliated with the Socialist International, and the Communist Party of Cuba (See Document 39). The five SI parties were: — The FSLN of Nicaragua, represented by Antonio Jarquin (misspelled as Marguin and Harguin in the document), the chairman of the meeting; —The Salvadoran MNR, represented by Hector Oqueli (this party is one of the groups composing the guerrilla movement, and Oqueli is the Secretary of the Socialist International Committee for Latin America and the Caribbean, which has given a patina of respectability to the Salvadoran insurgents); — The Chilean Radical Party, represented by “Freda” (the leadership of the party later denied that it had sent a representative) ; — The Jamaican PNP, represented by Paul Miller; — The New Jewel Movement, represented by Chris DeRiggs. The Socialist International was the main topic of the meeting. In DeRiggs’s words, they considered “initiatives to neutralize forces within SI that are against us.” And what were these forces? “Our principal enemies are to be found among the parties of Soares and Horgo [sic, Pietro Longo, the leader of the Italian Social Democratic Party] in Portugal and Italy respectively — the Social Democrats of the USA are also our sworn enemies.” DeRiggs boasted that of the 14 members of the SI Committee for Latin America and the Caribbean, “there are seven parties that are generally progressive and some within a Mar xist-Leninist trend.” The Secret Regional Caucus report shows that a resolution on Latin America and the -14- Caribbean drafted by Hector Oqueli of the Salvadoran MNR, subsequently submitted to the SI, was actually based on guidelines laid down at the meeting. A decision was made to maintain the Secret Regional Caucus, and to “review membership in the future.” This document shows that the NJM was fundamentally opposed to the democratic ideals of the Socialist International, that the Grenadans, along with others in the region, worked in lockstep with the Cubans to undermine the Si’s effectiveness, and that the Grenadans’ greatest objection to the SI was its insistence on democratic institutions and democratic elections. In fact, on February 3, 1982, Benny Langaigne, the permanent secretary in Maurice Bishop’s office, showed the Prime Minister a draft letter addressed to the official magazine of the SI, Socialist Affairs (Document 42). The letter protested a story in the magazine stating that Grenada would have elections in the near future. In fact, the NJM had no such intention. CONCLUSION The documents selected for this volume constitute, in our opinion, a representative sample of the total archive. We believe that those who take the time to study them will find a remarkable consistency, a single-minded dedication to the NJM’s objective of creating, over time, a Communist society on the Soviet model. Bishop and his colleagues not only wished to establish communism in Grenada; they wanted to be active members of the Soviet Empire. To this end, they sought ways to curry favor with the Soviets and other bloc countries, and loyally followed the instructions that came to them through Cubans. Thus, on both the domestic and international levels, the Grenadans emulated the USSR and tied their destiny to the Kremlin. Nonetheless, and despite considerable assistance from the USSR and its proxies, the People’s Revolutionary Government was a failure, and the failure led to intense internal conflict, and eventually to the overthrow and murder of Bishop. The several documents that recount the internal crisis that led to the fall and murder of Maurice Bishop in the autumn of 1983 do not indicate any strong divergence of views between Bishop and those who replaced him? rather, the struggle appears to have been almost exclusively personal. The complaints against Bishop involved inefficiency, insufficient ideological coherence, and lack of strong leadership and guidance, not political deviation or betrayal of the goals of the revolution. We saw no evidence that Bishop was removed because the Cubans or the Soviets were dissatisfied with his political orientation? as far as we have been able to discover. -15- there is no reason to think that his conversation with Judge Clark and other American officials earlier in the year led his colleagues to believe that he was “soft on imperialism.” An archive of the dimensions and richness of this one from Grenada will provide scholars with a wealth of information about Communist activities in the Caribbean, Soviet and Cuban foreign policy, and the problems encountered by Soviet-oriented Communists in their attempts to mold a new generation of Grenadans who had had little contact with Marxism/Leninism before the NJM took power. Of particular interest is the material related to international organizations, including negotiations with the International Monetary Fund and attempts to manipulate the Socialist International. We have given here only a brief overview of a few of the themes that most interested us. We will be pleased if this serves to whet the appetites of a wide audience for this collection of documents, and for the many documents that will be made accessible to the public with the opening of the Grenada archive. Washington, D.C. September 1984 CONTENTS Note: Documents marked A-l were Maurice Bishop’s personal copies. Notes on these documents seem to have been written by him. SECTION ONE: LIFE UNDER THE NEW JEWEL MOVEMENT 1. “Line of March for the Party” 2. Cuban Communist Party Americas Department report on Grenadan “Religious Situation,” August 13-24, 1982 3. “Top Secret” report on Catholic publications 4. “Top Secret” report on “The Church in Grenada” 5. “Top Secret Analysis of the Church in Grenada” 6. List of Persons in Detention, 1 January 1982 7. Secret Counterintelligence report on internal situation 8. Report on “Movements of Visiting Nationalities” 9. “Plan of Cl (Counterintelligence) Operations” 10. “Top Secret” report on Special Branch operations 11. List of Detainees currently before the Courts 12. Report on Detainees sent to the Prime Minister 19 September 1981 SECTION TWO: INTERNATIONAL ACTIVITIES 13. Top Secret Agreement between Grenada and the USSR, 1980 14. Top Secret Agreement between Grenada and the USSR, 1982 15. Protocol to 1980 Agreement 16. Protocol of Military Collaboration between Grenada and Cuba, n.d. 17. Secret Cooperation and Exchange Plan, Gr enada-Cuba , 1983 18. Note from Grenadan Ambassador to Cuba on Vietnamese assistance 19. Report from New Jewel Movement Branch in Havana, May 1983 20. Agreement between Grenada and North Korea, April 1983 21. Notes on Meeting between Bishop and Soviet Ambassador, May 1983 22. Bill of lading on shipment of rocket warheads from Prague to Grenada via Havana, Cuba 23. Page from notebook of Liam James referring to military use of airport 24. Louison-Ogarkov meeting in Moscow, March 1983 25. Louison’s graduation certificate from Soviet Defense Ministry 26. Report from Grenadan Embassy in Moscow on relations with USSR 27. Draft letter from General Austin to Yuri Andropov, head of KGB 28. Report from NJM Collective, at the Lenin School in Moscow, Nov. 1982 to May 1983 29. Report to Bishop from Moscow Embassy, June 1982 30. Report from Moscow Embassy, November 1982, on meeting with Soviet Ministry of Defense 31. Letter to Bishop from Gail Reed Rizo, wife of Cuban Ambassador 32. Notes on Bishop’s meeting in Washington with Judge Clark, et al. -i- 33. 33A. 34. 35. 36. 37. 37A. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. the Cuban document on Socialist International -wr itten by Manuel Pineiro . English translation of #33 1 .• Report by an NJM delegate to a Congress in Libya, June 1982 Analysis of the 1980 Socialist International Congress! in Madrid (probably written by a Cuban) Analysis of Social Democracy in Latin American and Caribbean (probably written by a Cuban) Report on Socialist International meeting in Bonn, April 1982 1 Report by a Cuban on the same meeting ’• . -*:l li Grenadan analysis of Socialist International Report on Secret Regional Caucus of the Socialist International, January 1983 j,- Report on Socialist International Bureau meeting in Basle, r ■ Nov. 1982 Report on SI meeting in Panama, March 1981 ! ’ M Draft letter to SI magazine Socialist Affairs i Report on SI meeting in the Dominican Republic, Feb. 1983 Report on SI meeting, Aug. 1983 1 Report on World Peace Council Meeting, Lisbon, 1982. I” SECTION THREE: MINUTES OF POLITICAL BUREAU and CENTRAL COMMITTEE Political Bureau 46. Dec. 8, 1980 47. Apr. 22, 1981 48. Apr. 25, 1981 49. Apr. 29, 1981 50. May 6, 1981 (2 51. May 13, 1981 52. May 20, 1981 53. May 27, ;1-981 54. June 3, 1981 55. June 10, 1981 56. June 17, 1981 57. June 24, 1981 58. July 1, 1981 59. July 8, 1981 60. July 29, 1981 61. Aug. 5, 1981 621 – Aug; 12, 1981 63. Aug. 19, 1981 64. Aug. 26, 1981 65. Sept. 2, 1981 66. Sept. 9, 1981 67. Sept. 23, 1981 68. Sept. 30, 1981 69. Oct. 14, 1981 70. Oct. 21, 1981 -■Hi ! f jib < .• i. . ‘UJ |’ ! •If:! I ‘ -ii- 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86 . 87. 88 . 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. Report to Political Bureau on meeting of World Conference of Women and Women’s International Democratic Federation ( WIDF ) , Oct. 3-30, 1981 Nov. 4, 1981 Nov. 11, 1981 Nov. 18, 1981 Dec. 9, 1981 Dec. 28, 1981 Apr. 7, 1982 Apr. 14, 1982 Report from Women’s Committee, May 11, 1982 Sept. 15, 1982 Sept. 22, 1982 Sept. 29, 1982 Oct. 27, 1982 Nov. 3, 1982 Nov. 17, 1982 Dec. 22, 1982 Dec. 29, 1982 Jan. 5, 1983 Jan. 12, 1983 Feb. 23, 1983 Apr. 20, 1983 Apr. 27, 1983 May 4, 1983 Central Committee 94. Apr. 26, 1981 95. May 27, 1981 96. Resolutions of Central Committee 97. June 24, 1981 98. Resolution to Central Committee from study groups 99. July 22, 1981 100. Aug. 19, 1981 101. Dec. 30, 1981 102. Apr. 21, 1982 103. June 26, 1982 104. Aug. 27, 1982 105. Extra-ordinary Meeting Oct 12-15, 1982 106. Foreign Relations Report to Central Committee 107. List of countries with which Grenada does not wish to develop close relations 108. Grenada’s membership in international and regional organizations 109. Draft Resolution, Mar. 21, 1983 110. July 13-19, 1983 111. Emergency Meeting, Aug. 26, 1983 112. Extra-ordinary Meeting, Sept. 14-16, 1983 113. Extra-ordinary General Meeting, Sept. 25, 1983 -iii- NOTE: The material relating to the international crisis of the NJM and the People’s Revolutionary Government, including the fall and death of Maurice Bishop, is found in Oct. 1982 to Sept. 1983 documents covering Central Committee meetings. -i v-