Grenada—No Bishop, No Revo: U.S. Crushes Caribbean Jewel

In retrospect the tragic and horrifying events in Grenada were almost predictable. They will one day provide yet another historical perspective of the devastating outcome when an imperialist intelligence system penetrates an internally divided, fledgling socialist government, unable to defend itself, and brings down upon it the might of a massive military machine.

In the case of Chile, the country‘s military was used by U.S. intelligence before and during the overthrow of Salvador Allende, and enjoys its backing to this day. In Grenada such backing may have been the expectation of at least some of the members of the Revolutionary Military Council which plotted the coup against Maurice Bishop, leading to his brutal death. Those collaborators, however, were used and doublecrossed by the Reagan administration.

In both Chile and Grenada, the leadership of the regimes which were toppled did not have enough trust in the people to arm them, a fatal mistake. (In Grenada, the People’s Militia, established under Bishop, had been dismantled by his opponents while he was off the island on a trip shortly before the coup.)

Where Is the CIA?

The most curious aspect of the coverage of the coup against Bishop and the subsequent U.S. invasion Operation Urgent Fury is the near absence in the press of any mention of the CIA or speculation about a CIA hand in the events. One would think William Casey was not present at George Bush’s National Security Council meetings deciding to divert the fleet after the death of Bishop, advancing the incursion plans at a frenzied pace after the Beirut bombing, plotting each step of the invasion. One would think there were no CIA agents on Grenada after four and a half years of urgent and persistent endeavors to place them there. One would think there were no intelligence officers on the island directing the Marines and Rangers, or aboard the U.S.S. Guam directing part of the invasion operation itself.

And yet we know that from the moment of the March 13, 1979 revolution in Grenada the CIA has relentlessly used every trick in its dirty bag to destroy that tiny island’s government and to eliminate that great threat to the U.S.—a charismatic black leader, loved by his own people and respected by all who knew him.

Indeed, in looking for comparisons to the murder of Bishop and his supporters and the destruction of the New Jewel Movement and the Grenadian Revolution, one thinks not so much of Chile as the liquidation of the Black Panther Party and its leaders during the late 1960s and early 1970s. This was accomplished not simply from internal political or personal disputes, but by a scientifically executed operation known as COINTELPRO, through the combined efforts of the FBI, military intelligence, local police forces, and in some instances, the CIA itself. Ironically it was the Black Power movement in the United States which had been an inspiration for most of the leaders of the New Jewel Movement, when they were university students, labor leaders, and political activists.

It is hard, and it is painful, to try to understand how sophisticated, politically conscious people who aspire to revolutionary leadership fall prey time and again to the machinations of those bent on their destruction. It is not as if there had been no warning. It is now clear that for more than two years the U.S. government had been moving inexorably toward the military overthrow of the People’s Revolutionary Government of Grenada. Early on, President Reagan’s advisers recognized that a simple continuation of the Carter administration’s destabilization campaign would not suffice.

The Carter Destabilization Campaign

Within days of the overthrow of the autocratic Eric M. Gairy, the New Jewel Movement government was bluntly told by the U.S. not to establish diplomatic relations with Cuba, to stay out of the socialist camp or else. At the same time, the paltry sum of $5,000 was offered to counter the open threat of invasion by Gairy, who was recruiting mercenaries in the Cuban exile community in Miami. Bishop not only rebuffed the insulting proposals of Frank Ortiz, the U.S. Ambassador based in Barbados, but he described his discussions in detail in a radio broadcast to the Grenadian people.

Less than two months later Grenada was subjected to the opening salvo in what was to be an unending U.S. campaign of economic, psychological, and openly violent destabilization. Two fires, both of suspicious origin, broke out simultaneously in the heart of the tourist area, a direct attack on Grenada’s economy.

Bishop again went to the people in a broadcast which explained the events, in language poignantly prophetic:

Sisters and brothers of Free Grenada:… Destabilization is the name given the most recently developed or newest method of controlling and exploiting the lives and resources of a country and its people by a bigger and more powerful country through bullying, intimidation, and violence… Today more and more the new weapon and the new menace is destabilization…. Destabilization takes many forms; there is propaganda destabilization, when the foreign media, and sometimes our own Caribbean press, prints lies and distortions against us; there is economic destabilization, when our trade and our industries are sabotaged and disrupted; and there is violent destabilization, criminal acts of death and destruction, such as we have witnessed on Sunday night with the fires.

Escalating Attacks and Covert Operations

In late 1979 an actual coup attempt was nipped in the bud when mercenaries’ boats were sighted and prevented from landing the same day that an unsuccessful, AIFLD-inspired power plant strike was intended to paralyze the island.

In June 1980 a bomb was planted under the grandstand at Queens Park just before a rally at which Bishop and the rest of the NJM leadership were to appear. The powerful bomb went off, but due to inaccurate placement, its force was directed downward. Three young girls were killed and scores were injured. A recent item in the Periscope column of Newsweek magazine (November 7, 1983) claimed the U.S. had no agents based in Grenada due to Carter-era cuts, yet the frequency of these sophisticated attacks suggests otherwise.

Just before these attacks, a new U.S. ambassador replaced Ortiz in Barbados—Sally Shelton. She sent in her place a political officer, Ashley Wills, whom Bishop soon suspected of involvement in CIA activities. Wills later turned up on the U.S.S. Guam assisting the invasion force with his extensive knowledge of the island.

The Changing Plan of Reagan

Shortly after Reagan took office, he embarked on a game plan which would lead to the actual use of force. Promising to shore up the CIA and stop the “Marxists” in Grenada, he sent Jeane Kirkpatrick to South America to urge security treaties among right-wing countries. This eventually culminated in the formation of the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) and the revival of the Central American Defense Council (Condeca).

Steps Toward Invasion:

• April 1981: Ten Ku Klux Klansmen and Nazis were arrested in New Orleans with a plan to invade Dominica (originally targeting Grenada).
• Summer 1981: CIA Director Casey proposed a covert action plan against Grenada and Suriname.
• Fall 1981: Seven incidents of sabotage occurred on the island.
• October 1981: A massive U.S. naval exercise, Ocean Venture 81, included a mock invasion of “Amber and the Amberdines,” a transparent reference to Grenada.
• April 1982: Reagan visited Barbados to discuss the “spread of the virus of communism” from Grenada.

By the spring of 1983 the invasion plan was in high gear. Reagan fulminated over the Cuban help for the international airport construction, using “sinister” satellite photographs to claim it was a secret military installation.

The “Mystery Man” and Internal Moles

The suggestion that there were no CIA officers on Grenada at the time of the coup is preposterous. Newsweek’s reporter described an “older” medical school student, Jim Pfister, a former U.S. consul in Laos, who was in constant shortwave radio contact with advancing troops and knew their moves in advance.

Indeed it appears likely that there were one or more “moles” high in the New Jewel Movement itself. The CIA and military intelligence had four and a half years to accomplish this task. As has happened before, the collaborators in Grenada were doublecrossed by the very power they sought to appease.

This text is a historical and political analysis of the 1983 United States invasion of Grenada, focusing on the role of St. George’s Medical School and the internal collapse of the New Jewel Movement.

The Medical School

The St. George’s Medical School, established in Grenada in 1977 by Charles Modica, the son of a conservative Long Island Republican, formed immediate and close ties with the government of Eric Gairy. The vice-chancellor of the school, Dr. Geoffrey Bourne, prides himself today for having been an “adviser” to all the governments of Grenada, including that of the short-lived Revolutionary Military Council of General Austin.

In fact, members of the New Jewel Movement, particularly Maurice Bishop, were suspicious of the school from its inception. Long portrayed by the American and European press as a harmless despot interested only in flying saucers, Gairy was in reality a vicious dictator who was the only Caribbean leader to maintain diplomatic relations with Pinochet’s Chile, and who sent a dozen or more members of his notorious security forces there for training. When they returned to Grenada, “disappearances” became frequent, the best known case involving a police chief who was friendly to the NJM. And, Bishop told CAIB on a visit to the U.S. in 1978, accompanying the newly trained security forces on their return from Chile were coffins which were unloaded and shipped to the medical school. Bishop said that his movement believed the coffins contained the cadavers of “disappeared” people from Chile, and that Gairy was planning a body trade-off with the fascist Junta. He did not get the chance, however, because a few months later, on March 13, 1979, the criminal Gairy dictatorship was overthrown.

Over the next four years there occurred a series of suspicious incidents involving the medical school, but the Bishop government, unwisely as it turned out, opted to allow the school to remain. This was partly because of the revenue it represented to Grenada (20% of its foreign exchange, according to Peter Bourne, son of the school’s vice-chancellor) and partly because the new government thought it would be relatively easy to keep an eye on the overwhelmingly white, middle-class students and faculty. This was perhaps a fatal mistake of the Bishop government; the school’s presence gave perfect cover to intelligence officers who had ample time to recruit their local collaborators.

A stunning admission regarding the school’s connection with the Reagan administration appeared as a throwaway line in a long Washington Post analysis on November 23, 1983. When Bishop met with then National Security Adviser William Clark on June 7, 1983, he was informed, according to the Post’s sources, that if he did not tone down his anti-American rhetoric, Grenada could lose the school—and its foreign exchange. “Consideration was being given to providing surplus U.S. property on Antigua as another site.” So much for the private nature of the institution. And four months later, of course, the school became the excuse for the U.S. invasion.

The Fires

On May 6, 1979, less than two months after the revolution in Grenada and just a few weeks after Bishop’s confrontation over Cuba with the U.S. Ambassador, two fires were set within an hour of one another. The first burned down a tourist cottage across from the medical school’s Grand Anse beach campus. When neighbors rushed to get the school’s fire-fighting wagon, they discovered it had been sabotaged. By the time St. George’s only fire truck had driven from the center of town to the cottage, it was completely destroyed. And while the truck was at Grand Anse, a building just two blocks from the fire station downtown began to burn. It housed the leading travel agency and tour operation. When the firefighters got back to town, extensive damage had already been done—tickets and tour arrangements for the coming year had been burned. Nearby kerosene cans confirmed a case of arson.

At Grand Anse later that evening security personnel arrested a young, drug-addicted medical school student who had lived in the burned cottage. Upon questioning, he admitted he had set the fire, but first insisted the “devil” made him do it. Later he admitted that it was two men from New Jersey, possibly Cuban exiles.

Carter Administration Ties

The school itself has always had interesting ties to U.S. politics, both Democrat and Republican. One of its founders, vice-chancellor Dr. Geoffrey Bourne, is the father of Dr. Peter G. Bourne, who was a special White House adviser on drug abuse during the Nixon, Ford, and Carter administrations, until he was forced to resign in 1979 in a drug scandal. In 1978, Peter Bourne had been implicated by political activists in New York in the mysterious death of a progressive doctor working for a Lincoln Hospital drug detoxification program. Bourne was the last person known to have seen the doctor alive, but as far as is known his involvement was never investigated.

In 1977, CAIB staff members saw documentary proof that Peter Bourne provided debriefing reports to the CIA after taking trips abroad, including to Southeast Asia and Pakistan.

The Strategy Paper

The Bournes were deeply involved with the short-lived Austin regime, and after the U.S. invasion, Peter Bourne rushed to tell their side of the story. In a long piece in the November 6 Los Angeles Times and in interviews on National Public Radio, Bourne claimed he was against the invasion. He also insisted that a U.S. intelligence team on Grenada could have obtained the same information he did, information which, according to Bourne, included “the numbers of Cuban military and civilian personnel, the extent to which Grenada was being armed, and Cuba’s intentions on the island.”

While Bishop was under house arrest, Bourne claimed, his father, Dr. Geoffrey Bourne, began to meet with Bernard Coard, who guaranteed the safety of the students. Even after Bishop’s death, Bourne senior continued to meet with Coard, arranging for government vehicles so the students could travel freely. Then, curiously, the elder Dr. Bourne began to meet with Gen. Austin on government policy matters and told his son that Austin was not so bad, that he did not seem “particularly sympathetic to the Marxist cause,” and seemed to be “on the right,” wanting to “move the country back toward democracy.”

Meanwhile, the State Department and the U.S. Ambassador to Barbados, Milan Bish, began to pressure both Charles Modica and a “distinguished and conservative” trustee of the medical school (identified as New York Senator Alfonse D’Amato) to claim publicly that students in Grenada were in danger, in order to give the administration a pretext to invade.

According to Bourne, his father then interceded with Austin to allow U.S. representatives onto the island to meet with the students. Two U.S. representatives sought to calm the fears of the students. They assured the students that Gen. Austin had said they could leave any time they wanted and that the airport would be open the following day. But although the airport was open the next day, U.S. officials in Barbados would not allow scheduled commercial planes to fly to Grenada, having already made final plans for the invasion.

On Monday, Peter Bourne said, his father contacted him a last time, asking him to help provide Austin with some guidance to move his country “back toward democracy.” The younger Bourne spent the day with former Carter National Security Council member Robert Pastor and former Ambassador Sally Shelton; they drafted a position paper for Austin suggesting how he could distance himself from the Bishop government and pander to U.S. demands. This never happened, as by dawn the next morning the invasion was under way.

The “Internal” Struggles

Who was “fully in charge” of the government of Grenada at the time of the coup and the invasion? Certainly not, as U.S. officials and much of the media would have it, Bernard Coard or even Hudson Austin. It was, as one State Department spokesman claimed, “a floating crap game,” but one in which the U.S. was doing the rolling.

That there was such a deep split within the leadership of the New Jewel Movement was not as well known to insiders as it was to the recipients of intelligence “leaks.” A story by Barbara Crossette in the New York Times (August 7, 1983) sought to play on racist fears and anti-communist sentiment, pointing out rumors of a rift between the Coards and Mr. Bishop.

A most fundamental mistake was made when Coard and his followers ordered Bishop placed under house arrest. Shortly before 8 p.m. on the day of his release, a huge crowd approached Bishop’s house. Bishop partisans even refused to participate in the march when they saw the nature of the crowd; well-known businessmen were leading it, as well as a truckload of demonstrators from the Coca-Cola company. Bishop allowed himself to be freed by this crowd because he felt he could control them.

Some of his followers took Bishop in a car, but because he was so weak, they decided to go to Fort Rupert. Fort Rupert was essentially an administrative post, with no more than 20 rifles in the entire installation. At the fort, Bishop, Jacqueline Creft, and others went into a “situation room.” Outside, three armored personnel carriers arrived, sent by members of the Central Committee from Fort Frederick. The soldiers opened fire on the crowd, killing and wounding large numbers.

The executions of Bishop, Jacqueline Creft, Unison Whiteman, Vincent Noel, Fitzroy Bain, and Noel Bain followed. While the initial firing might not have been premeditated, at least 15 minutes elapsed from the time Bishop surrendered to the time they were assassinated—time enough to radio for instructions.

Don Rojas, Bishop’s former press secretary, put it best:

“Perhaps the biggest historical irony is that the man considered the most developed, best ideologue in the Grenada revolution… in the end gave the Grenadian revolution on a platter to the U.S. with all the trimmings.”

The people of Grenada were done a terrible disservice by these ultra-leftists; it will take years to revivify the Grenadian Revolution and reinstate the promise of Maurice Bishop, a hero and a martyr.

Crocodile Tears Over Bishop

The hypocrisy of the U.S. government and its official media after the coup against Bishop was beyond belief, suggesting a definite method to its madness. The day after Bishop was placed under house arrest, the Voice of America broadcast to Latin America and the Caribbean profiles of Bishop and Coard, portraying Bishop as a world-renowned, moderate, civil rights hero—the same Bishop it had excoriated relentlessly for four years, and picturing Coard as a brutal Stalinist. In fact, the VOA’s report on Bishop could only be described as an obituary, an ominous suggestion of things to come. And, the reports said, there was “mounting evidence” that Cuba was behind the downfall of Bishop. The networks followed suit; both NBC and ABC referred to a “leftist” regime being overthrown by a “Marxist” regime, as Alex Cockburn noted in the November 8 Village Voice.

Don Rojas told the Washington Post that Bishop had instructed him the night of his death “to tell the world that Cuba had nothing to do with the regime’s internal dispute.” Curiously, while many journalists were printing the Reagan administration’s disinformation about the “mounting evidence” of Cuban involvement, Cuban exiles in Miami were regaling the New York Times (November 4, 1983) with the story that Cuban Colonel Tortola had flown to Grenada the day before the U.S. invasion to topple Austin’s Revolutionary Military Council.

The references to Austin were also peculiar. Hudson Austin, trained by the British in Jamaica as a prison guard and constable, is consistently referred to by the media as a “Marxist,” and as a close supporter of Bernard Coard, allegedly the most hard-line of all. Yet when the statements of the RMC are reviewed they do not appear at all hard-line. According to the summary of the RMC statements in the October 24 Washington Post, they stressed representation of “all social classes and interests” and emphasized economic development, a mixed economy, and the encouragement of foreign investment—rather bizarre goals, considering the bloodshed they had just caused.

Moreover, CAIB has learned that in 1981 the CIA viewed Maurice Bishop as an admirer of Fidel Castro who frequently consulted Cuba’s Ambassador to Grenada on matters of policy. At the same time, according to the CIA, General Hudson Austin attempted to resign from his Army post in protest over Cuban influence. Two years later the positions are supposedly reversed, with General Austin a Cuban stooge overthrowing and murdering the disenchanted Bishop.

More than hypocritical was an alleged discussion between unnamed U.S. officials and Barbados Prime Minister Tom Adams of mounting a rescue operation to take Bishop out of Grenada. Adams is quoted in the October 28 Washington Post as having said, “Whatever our difference in the past, Mr. Bishop deserved the support of the Caribbean governments.” Adams had only contempt for Bishop and was clearly perpetuating the cover for an invasion already in the works.

The day after the invasion began the hypocrisy was pointed out by John Goshko of the Washington Post: “This revisionist view of Bishop as a moderate within the context of Grenada’s internal politics appears to have provided part of the justification for the United States and six Caribbean countries to band together in the invasion against what Reagan yesterday called a ‘brutal group of leftist thugs.’”

Pre-Invasion Manipulations

There were plans for a military invasion two years before it actually occurred, and serious moves toward it many weeks before Bishop‘s assassination. A few days before the invasion, administration officials admitted that the Pentagon had been “dusting off contingency plans.” (Washington Post, October 23, 1983.) None of the facts, as it happens, is consistent with the U.S. line that an invasion was not seriously contemplated until the OECS requested it.

Most telling were the Ranger exercises which came to light in early November. It was then reported that from September 23 to October 2, the 2d Battalion of the 75th Rangers Division, stationed at Fort Lewis, Washington—one of the two Ranger units which participated in the actual invasion—spent six days practicing taking over an airport, complete with parachute jumps onto runways, capturing airport buildings, taking captives, and liberating hostages. Although an Army spokesman referred to the exercises as occurring “regularly” at Ephrata Municipal Airport—which happened to have a runway the same length as the Point Salines runway—an airport official told reporters, “It would be pretty farfetched to say it’s done on a regular basis. They‘ve done it twice to my knowledge in 1981 and this time.” (Cleveland Plain Dealer, November 3, 1983.) The 1981 exercise can only refer to the CIA plans and military maneuvers postponed that year by the opposition of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Moreover, the Pentagon had requested that the recent practice not be given any publicity. This dry run, and the discussions with various Caribbean officials, all took place before the overthrow of Bishop, added proof that the Americans knew that events in Grenada were coming to a head. (As noted above, a congressional source has said the Pentagon admitted in a secret briefing that it knew of the coup against Bishop two weeks in advance.)

The reported “slip of the tongue” of the U.S. Ambassador to France, Evan Galbraith, is further evidence. He said on French television on October 26 that the invasion was “an action which had begun two weeks ago,” leading many to suspect that the administration thought of bringing France into the plan. When later confronted, Galbraith said that he had “misspoken,” that it would be “ridiculous to suggest” that the invasion had been planned before the overthrow of Bishop. (New York Times, November 6, 1983.)

Another interesting report, noted earlier, was in the October 1983 issue of Caribbean Contact, the newspaper of the Caribbean Council of Churches, published in Barbados. An article by editor Ricky Singh discussed at length opposition charges that the government of Prime Minister Tom Adams was having a contingent of the fledgling Barbados Defense Force trained in Washington by the CIA. Adams did not directly deny the charges, but simply responded glibly that, “So far as I know, the Central Intelligence Agency is not a military organization.” Errol Barrow, leader of the opposition, countered this with a caustic reference to the Bay of Pigs invasion and the Nicaraguan counterrevolutionaries. Additionally, a month before the invasion, Barrow complained that the stockpiling of medical supplies suggested ominous preparations for war. In a move which only gave more credence to the reports, Singh, a Guyanese exile, was told by the Adams government on November 1 that his work permit was revoked “immediately” and that he had to leave Barbados, unless he recanted his outspoken opposition to the U.S. invasion.

The Imminent Invasion

As the time for the invasion approached, pressures from the U.S. intensified to the point that Caribbean leaders who were opposed to it, such as Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister George Chambers and Guyana Prime Minister Forbes Burnham, were being excluded from meetings and kept misinformed. Ironically, Chambers, a conservative, is facing criticism from his even more conservative rivals for failing to support the invasion, and there is talk of U.S. economic retaliation, including the threatened removal of U.S. oil refineries.

State Department spokesmen, such as Deputy Assistant Secretary James H. Michel at an October 28 briefing, insisted that the decision to invade was made by the OECS, who “came to us.” But the suggestion is fatuous. Reported incidents clarify who was calling the shots.

The urgency of timing was underscored when Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Charles Gillespie (now “Ambassador” to Grenada) surfaced in Barbados at meetings between OECS leaders and Prime Minister Seaga of Jamaica and Adams of Barbados—meetings at which those countries allegedly decided to ask for U.S. aid. The Washington Post noted that Gillespie was in Barbados “on a previously scheduled visit” when the regional talks turned to the discussion of invasion. The “previously” scheduled visit, according to Newsday, was “a trip to the region with Vice President George Bush on the weekend of October 15,” just after Bishop was placed under house arrest, and the same time that Adams said “a U.S. official” approached him with the idea of a “rescue” mission for Bishop.

The U.S. line surely strains credulity. Ironically, as the Post also reported, even as these top level officials were later pressuring and dictating to their Caribbean allies, “diplomatic efforts by Caribbean nations were under way that were aimed at lifting the island’s curfew and allowing planes to come in and evacuate anyone who wanted to leave.” These efforts did not square with the U.S. scenario, of course. Yet spokesman Michel, with little regard for his credibility, reiterated, “I will say to you categorically, we did not propose action to the Eastern Caribbean nations. They proposed it to us.” Such is the spineless nature of the Washington media that although not a single journalist believed this, no one would call Michel a liar.

Stage Managing the Invasion

The almost unbelievably strict press censorship imposed by the U.S. for the first several days of the invasion was clever on two accounts. As could be expected, it prevented anyone from confirming or refuting whatever official statements issued forth from the Pentagon, the State Department, and the White House, many of which, it later transpired, were outright lies. But it also deflected media scrutiny by making the censorship as big a story for the media as the invasion. Half the precious minutes on the nightly TV news programs were devoted to the adventures of small bands of correspondents trying by air and water to break the blockade. Media pundits waxed self-righteous over the Pentagon spokesman’s gaffe that “we learned a lesson from the British in the Falklands,” where independent reporters were kept completely away from the operation.

What is so disturbing is that despite the blustering about censorship, most of the U.S. media accepted supinely every tidbit they were handed, and rarely concerned themselves with what they were not being told. It was a war of images, and the first images to reach the American public were controlled by the administration: a gaggle of groveling medical school students kissing an airport runway, instead of a mental hospital blasted to smithereens, patients and all.

A few reporters who did get on the island during the invasion were taken by American forces to the U.S.S. Guam and held incommunicado for a day to prevent them from filing stories. After their release, the American reporters seemed to toe the U.S. line. The London Observer’s Hugh O’Shaughnessy told quite a different story. He found out what the U.S. thought of his presence as he was flown out a few days later to Barbados and working telephones. The U.S. public affairs officer remarked, “You really threw a wrench in the works. We were expecting to have the story to ourselves.”

The only contemporaneous reporting of the invasion came from two American ham radio operators on the island, one a medical school student, Mark B. Barettella, the other a 12-year resident, Don Atkinson. As the newspapers, which made Barettella a hero and virtually ignored Atkinson, noted, they “transmitted dramatically different views of the situation on Grenada.” Atkinson was a vocal critic of the Reagan administration’s position and he stressed that the students had not been in any danger until the U.S. invaded. During the transmissions, Atkinson’s house was strafed in an apparent attempt to destroy his antenna. Barettella referred repeatedly to sniper fire near the school campus, asking that helicopters divert around the school to draw the fire, and reporting that the students were lying low, waiting to be rescued. Interestingly, as was noted in the October 28 New York Times, hams monitoring the transmissions “puzzled… over the cryptic, coded responses Mr. Barettella made about troop movements.” There was no explanation of this reference to code, but it should be remembered that Barettella was at the same medical school complex as Newsweek’s “mystery man,” the “retired” Foreign Service officer who had served in Laos.

The Lies

Of course the censorship was not imposed by the administration and the military merely to suppress information. It was also used to peddle lies and half-truths, while they were complacent in the knowledge that no one on Grenada could reach the media effectively to expose the nature and extent of the disinformation. (A good review of much of the “official misinformation” can be found in Stuart Taylor’s full page piece on the subject in the November 6 New York Times.)

The first lies surfaced even before the invasion had begun and censorship been imposed. When the fleet bound for Lebanon was diverted after the murder of Bishop, it was described as a “precautionary move,” and as late as the night before the invasion reporters were told by the President’s press secretary, Larry Speakes, that the fleet was to “monitor” the situation, that there were “no plans for U.S. military action in Grenada,” that rumors of an invasion were “preposterous.” Yet the fact of the invasion was hardly a secret to anyone except the American people. Detailed rumors were flying at the Caricom and OECS meetings; and Radio Free Grenada was denouncing an imminent attack.

Official lies about the composition of the attacking force abounded. Both President Reagan and Eugenia Charles referred to a “multinational force.” But every single soldier involved in the invasion was American. After the island was occupied, the other members of the “multinational” force were flown in and comfortably ensconced in police jobs. As Hugh O’Shaughnessy pointed out, “It was clear to anyone on the island however that no Jamaican or Barbadian or St. Lucian or Antiguan or Dominican or Vincentian, whether in military uniform or dressed as a policeman, had had any part in the fighting whatsoever. We saw nothing but U.S. troops.” And, he was told, “Admiral Metcalf commands the ships, the island, and the aircraft.”

The Cubans on Grenada

Some of the most outrageous lies concerned the Cubans on Grenada. The first was the notion that the Rangers parachuted into heavy Cuban fire. As the Cuban government statements published here, and common sense, demonstrate, the Cubans did not fire upon the descending Rangers. They had orders not to fire unless attacked. (See sidebar.)

The Cubans were sandbagged twice. Even before the invasion, they had made it clear to the world in general and the U.S. Interests Section in particular that they were appalled by the actions of the Revolutionary Military Council, and that they did not intend to get involved in internal Grenadian affairs. They wished to cooperate in ensuring the safety of U.S. residents on Grenada and, later, in the return of their own people. The Cuban government had refused to supply arms or reinforcements to the RMC, but had determined that it would be dishonorable to evacuate its citizens just as an invasion was imminent. Cuba even tried to advise the RMC how to prevent an invasion. They suggested that the area around the airport and the medical school be completely demilitarized so that a pretext of danger to the students would be eliminated, a suggestion which was not followed, but which shows the falsity of U.S. suggestions that the Cubans were planning to take students hostage.

The fact is that the Cubans did not even obstruct the Ranger landings. They were in their barracks at the far end of the site, assuming they would not be involved in the subsequent battle. The Rangers did meet some hostile fire as 350 of them parachuted onto the field from a low 500 feet, but that was Grenadian anti-aircraft fire. Returning Rangers who were interviewed by the media spoke only of anti-aircraft fire, not of any shooting from the Cuban construction workers at the other end of the field. And, given the Cubans’ position there, it is impossible that, had they been trying to shoot the descending Rangers, none would have been hit. Yet, shortly after landing and clearing the runway for additional troop landings, the Rangers attacked the Cubans, commencing a day’s fierce fighting.

That night the Cubans and the Americans exchanged diplomatic notes again and the Cubans were assured that they were “not a target” and that their ultimate evacuation would not be considered a “surrender.” The following morning, the reassured Cubans remaining in defensive positions were directly attacked by helicopter gunships.

The Numbers Game

The numbers game played by the U.S. was audacious. Though the Cuban government had always admitted there were between seven and eight hundred Cubans on Grenada, almost all of them construction workers, the U.S. insisted, even two days after the invasion was launched, that there were at least 1,100 and perhaps 2,000 Cubans on the island, and that they were all trained soldiers, most of them “impersonating” construction workers. As late as the 28th, Vice Admiral Metcalf said that “several hundred Cubans had escaped into Grenada’s hills and could cause problems for U.S. troops in the coming weeks.” (Washington Post, October 30, 1983.) He also said that a search party had been sent to the tiny island of Carriacou, north of Grenada, to hunt for missing Cubans. None was ever found.

The next day the U.S. admitted that a “closer reading” of captured documents, which had supposedly led to the high estimates, actually confirmed the figures released by the Cuban government. Moreover, they finally admitted that the construction workers appeared to be construction workers. Other similar errors were made. During the first week of the invasion the U.S. said there were 30 Soviet and an unspecified number of East German military advisers on the island. None ever materialized.

The President’s speech to the nation, while fighting was in progress, stressed the inflated figures. He spoke of documents which indicated an imminent influx of thousands of Cubans. The next day Pentagon officials reiterated this, noting that 4,341 troops from Cuba were expected. “We got there just in time,” the President said. Later it transpired that the documents related to a proposed expansion of the Grenadian army and had nothing to do with Cuba.

The President also referred to warehouses “stacked to the ceiling” with weapons and ammunition, “enough to supply thousands of terrorists.” This was typically perverse Reagan rhetoric. The weapons were sufficient to supply the militia too, the purpose for which virtually all observers now admit they were intended. Moreover, as Stuart Taylor noted, “the warehouses were no more than half-full, and many weapons were antiquated.” The arms merchant and ex-CIA employee, Sam Cummings, whose Virginia and Britain-based Interarms operation commands a corner on 90% of all “private” weapons trade in the world, called the Pentagon’s captured materiel “a very mixed and relatively miserable bag.” The Christian Science Monitor (November 7, 1983) was more specific: “Administration officials had said there were enough Cuban arms in Grenada to maintain a 14,000 to 17,000 man expeditionary force. But the U.S. government’s own figures show: 6,323 rifles, 13 antiaircraft guns, 111 machine guns, 78 RPGs (shoulder rocket launchers), and 12 Soviet-made armored personnel carriers.” And of the 6,000 rifles, only about 400 to 800 were “reasonably modern;” the rest were very old, including many “antiques,” some from the Nineteenth Century.

The Body Counts

The reports of American casualties incurred in the invasion were total fabrications. Even at CAIB press time, weeks after the invasion, it is not known how many Americans died or were wounded. For one thing, the Pentagon does not count as casualties anyone not killed or wounded by enemy fire, and now it appears that dozens of GIs were victims of “friendly fire,” U.S. mistakes.

While President Reagan and other officials prided themselves on the “surgical precision” of the operation, what really happened was that Americans strafed other Americans; helicopters crashed into each other; landing craft overturned and sank. For example, four commandos drowned in the operation to rescue the Governor General before they even hit the shore. Early reports said that 6 or 8 Americans were killed in the fighting, a figure later amended to 18. But the London Guardian of November 10 reported that at least 42 Americans had died, and some reports suggested the figure may be as high as 70. And numbers of Americans wounded are equally inconclusive.

Official figures relating to Cuban deaths and injuries were also outrageous inflated, rather than understated. Initial reports suggested that only Cubans were resisting the invasion, which was untrue, and the first U.S. figures of Cubans captured and killed added up to more than all the Cubans on the island, as Vice Admiral Metcalf learned to his later embarrassment when he scoffed at Cuban statements that there were less than 800 Cubans on the island. “That’s patently false,” he told reporters. “If you believe that, we’ve already killed and captured more people than they have here.” And Metcalf did not make this statement in the heat of battle, but five days after the invasion.

Grenadian Resistance and Casualties

The greatest inaccuracies, lies, and coverups related to the Grenadians. From the outset, the U.S. portrayed all the resistance as Cuban, all the fighting as between Cubans and Americans. But there was considerable Grenadian resistance to the invasion, from the initial antiaircraft fire directed at the Rangers to the sniper attacks still being reported at press time. Only four days after the initial assault did Vice Admiral Metcalf admit that any of the combatants were Grenadian.

For two weeks the occupying Americans refused to provide any accounting whatsoever of Grenadian casualties. Despite reports of large numbers of deaths, of fields of bodies, of overcrowded hospitals and clinics, of heavy fighting in many locations, U.S. officials continue to deny high Grenadian casualties. On November 11 a public information officer finally chalked up on a blackboard, under “Grenadian casualties,” “21 killed in action, 111 wounded.” Reporters rushed to copy down the figures. Within a few hours the figures had been erased and a new notice was posted: “No figures at this time.” (Washington Post, November 12, 1983.) Only two days before, the deputy commander of the invasion had told reporters that “roughly” 160 Grenadian soldiers had been killed. But observers on the scene all indicated that hundreds of islanders met their deaths in the invasion.

While the Americans were announcing, and displaying, every single bullet (5,615,682), shotgun (300), and flare (24,768) allegedly captured on Grenada (United Press International, November 12, 1983), they professed no idea how many Grenadians had been killed or wounded. The excuses given ranged from the ludicrous to the morbid. Larry Speakes, the President’s press secretary, announced first that it was impossible to tell how many Grenadians had been killed because they had a religious custom of immediate burial of the dead. When it was pointed out that most Grenadians are Roman Catholics, he corrected his account, admitting the obvious, that although no religious custom was involved, the dead are buried quickly in tropical climates. However, he did not explain why no inquiries were made of priests, funeral directors and cemetery personnel, who would have had no reason to hide the number of recent burials.

Vice Admiral Metcalf was more macabre: “I know the figure will be higher when we get a final count,” he told journalists. “Why, just this morning we found a field near here full of bodies. These people have been in that field a long time, and no one feels particularly good about counting them.” Weeks after the invasion, in fact, Grenadians were still dealing with the gruesome task of locating, usually by smell, and burying the bodies which lay all over the island. The full casualty figures will never be known.

Another short-lived news story concerned the existence of a “mass grave” on the southern shore of the island, with some 100 to 200 bodies in it. The initial reports suggested that perhaps the grave contained people killed in the massacre at Fort Rupert which led to the death of Bishop. However, the next day U.S. officials were forced to admit a “mistake.” The State Department was actually holding press conferences in Washington based on rumors!

It remains unknown how many people did die in the coup before the invasion, but it has been suggested by a number of informed sources that the U.S. may be trying to inflate the number of those killed at Fort Rupert to hide the extent of deaths from the invasion.

The “Intelligence Failure”

A further lie was the so-called intelligence failure, discussed in the early aftermath of the invasion. Originally officials expressed chagrin that the military did not know there were nearly twice as many Cubans on Grenada as had been reported by intelligence sources, or that most of them were trained soldiers, not construction workers. However, since this information turned out to be false, and the original estimates correct, it is unclear how this was an intelligence “failure.” Moreover, what actually seems to have irked the Pentagon most was how tenaciously the Grenadians and the Cubans fought. The resistance was, as the Canadian magazine MacLean’s put it, “stiffer than expected.” One wonders why it was unexpected, since the Grenadians and the Cubans had always said they would fight fiercely and to the death against any Yankee aggression.

An interesting reason for the “confusion” over the number of Cubans on Grenada emerged in Canadian media, suggesting that an inflated Cuban presence was a CIA media disinformation operation planned well before the invasion which may have misled some Pentagon analysts not in on the scam. An “authoritative” article on Cubans in Grenada had been written for the November issue of Naval Institute Proceedings by Timothy Ashby, described in the Toronto Globe and Mail (October 29, 1983) as “a visiting scholar at the Hoover Institute at Stanford University who lived in Grenada on and off for 13 years.” In fact, Ashby prepared an October 26, 1983 preliminary draft report on Grenada for The Conservative Caucus Research, Analysis & Education Foundation, Inc., with much the same hysterical misinformation. An advance copy of the naval magazine article was provided to Reuters shortly before the invasion, and described in its wire service dispatches. The article not only insisted that there were more than 1,000 Cubans on Grenada, and that more than 300 of them were trained, full-time military, but also faulted anyone who did not know this for not keeping their eyes open. Much of the equipment involved, the author asserted, was on display in a March 1983 parade in Grenada.

The disinformationists were hoist by their own petard. The article was touted in the media to demonstrate that there should not have been the intelligence failure which at the time was thought to have occurred. The irony is that the invasion provided positive proof that the so-called facts of the authoritative article were themselves untrue, deliberate disinformation intended to be part of the ongoing propaganda war against Grenada. The unfortunate author had no idea that his lies were going to be exposed so quickly.

The highly touted intelligence failure was nothing more than a smokescreen to hide the fact that a few hundred Cubans and several hundred Grenadians were fiercely resisting some 6,000 to 8,000 elite U.S. troops on the island and more than 10,000 more on ships off the coast.

International Condemnation and Domestic Accolades

Perhaps the biggest lie asserted was the contention that what the United States was doing was lawful. (See sidebar.) But the Reagan administration evidently cared nothing for international law or world opinion. More than a hundred nations condemned the invasion, including most of the United States’s closest and most important allies, and the President responded that “it didn’t upset my breakfast.” The British and West Germans were most concerned because of the impending arrival of U.S. nuclear missiles, over which they expect some share of control. The curt dismissal of Prime Minister Thatcher’s objections to the invasion led European allies to wonder about whose finger will be on the button.

What Reagan really cared about was domestic reaction, and his carefully staged and managed affair appeared to have worked, at least in the short run. Hours after the invasion, street interviewees were saying, “I hope the Marines get ’em,” without knowing who “’em” was. Polls showed a rise in the President’s popularity and support for the invasion, all of which stemmed from a steady diet of lies. As Senator Paul Tsongas (Dem.-Mass.) pointed out, “most people, once they saw the polls come out, went underground.”

The invasion of Grenada instantly unified Republicans and divided Democrats, as one pollster observed. This could hardly have been a coincidence: The President had been in trouble domestically over the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut, a political problem which almost evaporated with his invasion of Grenada. Moreover, the victory of the U.S. media operation has led to further military maneuvers in the Caribbean and deep fears in Nicaragua, Cuba, and El Salvador.

Any suggestion of self-determination for the new Grenadian “government” was quickly dispelled by the clear relationship of dependence on its U.S. mentors. It was the Americans, in the person of Ashley Wills aboard the U.S.S. Guam and Charles Gillespie waiting expectantly in Barbados, not the Grenadians, who were deciding on the makeup of the new puppet government. A “cabinet-in-exile” sat hunched over shortwave radios in Barbados as the fighting raged; the prospective quislings had been brought there by the U.S. and were staying in blocks of condominiums rented by the U.S. Embassy there.

Perhaps the only idea the Americans got from a Grenadian was how to characterize the invasion. Associated Press stringer, Grenadian Alister Hughes, a constant critic of the Bishop government, said on television, “Thank God for the Americans. I don’t regard it as an invasion. I regard it as a rescue operation.” Several days later, President Reagan, who had himself called the operation an invasion, chided reporters at a press conference: “Incidentally, I know your frequent use of the word invasion, this was a rescue mission.”

The “Liberators”

Virtually all the media have given extensive coverage to the apparent relief with which many Grenadians greeted the invaders. But as a London Sunday Times writer noted, in 1969 the Catholics in Northern Ireland welcomed the British soldiers into Londonderry, seeing them as protectors against Protestant violence. Former Grenadian U.N. Ambassador Kenrick Radix said that after the coup, the massacre at Fort Rupert, and the murder of Bishop and his supporters, the people would have welcomed the Devil himself. The Washington Times, an organ of Reverend Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church, ran a shockingly insensitive front-page interview with Maurice Bishop’s mother and Jacqueline Creft’s parents, obviously overjoyed at the U.S. overthrow of the RMC. But to infer that they therefore supported Ronald Reagan and gunboat intervention is completely unjustified. The Washington Times, incidentally, had its reporters and photographer included in the first Pentagon-sponsored flights to Grenada, bumping more experienced reporters from established newspapers. This more than suggested U.S. government cooperation in getting to Mrs. Bishop and the Crefts. (See also “Pak in the Saddle” article.)

Another major media manipulation involves the slow release of “captured” documents, some 6,000 pounds worth, according to U.S. officials, although only five pounds had been released at press time. It will be almost impossible to know for sure whether each document is genuine or altered or forged, although the few already released do not, on close reading, support the broad and sweeping generalizations which the government says they prove. Many documents released by the State Department to prove “communist interference in El Salvador” turned out to be forgeries, and the others did not say what they were alleged to say, or demonstrate the “facts” the government said they proved.

Psychological Operations

Already U.S. imperialism, aided by American intelligence agencies, is commencing a mind control operation on Grenada. Symbols of the New Jewel Movement and of the Revolution have been bombed out of existence, like Butler House, Radio Free Grenada, and even Bishop’s mother’s house (which the State Department said was hit by accident, like the mental hospital).

Army PSYOPS (psychological operations) teams are hard at work, with the CIA, interrogating everyone on the island, not merely to discover members of the Peoples Revolutionary Army or the Revolutionary Military Council, but all of Bishop’s supporters as well. The PSYOPS people are caught in a contradiction, however. Recognizing the respect and love the vast majority of the Grenadian people had for Bishop, they must give lip service to his memory at the same time they attempt to eradicate anything connected to his programs.

The suggestion that Bishop supporters have not been as suspect as anyone else in what remained of the Grenada government is belied by the massive witchhunt that went into effect immediately after the invasion. Hundreds of Grenadians including Kenrick Radix, who had been jailed by the RMC for leading a pro-Bishop demonstration were being rounded up by U.S. forces and interrogated if “suspected or accused of sympathizing or having had ties with the government of slain prime minister Maurice Bishop or the short-lived military council that replaced him.” (Washington Post, November 13, 1983.) Soldiers at roadblocks and at the airports carry notebooks filled with long lists of such alleged sympathizers. Assisting the U.S. troops in the roadblocks and in house to house searching, according to the London Guardian (November 5, 1983), are former members of Eric Gairy’s notorious Mongoose Gang, who were released from prison by the invaders, and who have an obvious axe to grind with anyone connected with the Bishop government.

The PSYOPS teams have been very heavy-handed. They are operating a radio station on the old RFG frequency, called Spice Island Radio, which alternates pure propaganda with American rock and roll. Col. Jim Ashworth, the PSYOPS commander, told the New York Times they would turn over the operation when Grenadians are “ready to resume operating the station.”

The PSYOPS teams are also plastering the island with posters and bulletin boards from which many islanders get their only local news. Posters show Bernard Coard and Hudson Austin in custody, in various states of undress, above text which reads, “These criminals attempted to sell Grenada out to the communists. Now they have surrendered. The Grenadian people will never again allow such characters to assume power and cause such hardship. Support democracy in Grenada.”

CIA interrogations are sweeping, almost unrelated to realities in Grenada, or to any security needs. Regina Fuchs, a West German nurse who had been working at a clinic in Grenada for a year and a half, told the Washington Post (November 21, 1983) that she was kept in Richmond Hill jail for two days and interrogated relentlessly about whether she had ever demonstrated against the Vietnam War, whom she knew when she attended medical school, whether she had ever met Philip Agee in Germany, and the like. She was falsely accused of harboring fugitives by two Americans, one named Ed and the other named Frank Gonzales, who identified himself to her as CIA.

It remains unclear under what authority the Americans are rounding up civilians, arresting and interrogating them. For a time, the U.S. said they were detaining people for their own safety, which strained belief. They then said that under international law they had the right to detain combatants until the cessation of actual hostilities; but they continued to arrest combatants and non-combatants long after the shooting was over. Finally they have suggested they are detaining people upon the orders and authority of Sir Paul Scoon, the Governor General. Perhaps without grasping the cruel irony of his words, Sir Paul exclaimed at one point to reporters, “The Americans have done a bloody good job.” Yet no one really believes that Sir Paul has any power but what the Americans decide he has. It was, as noted, the U.S. which brought Grenadian exiles to Barbados for eventual positions in an “interim government.”

Greatly uplifted by it all was the Grenada Democratic Movement, a small group which had opposed the NJM, picketing with its motley band every appearance in the U.S. by a Grenadian official. The president, Francis Alexis, had been in Barbados for some time; other officials, such as Keith Mitchell, were on their way to Barbados the day after the invasion began. Reactions of some well known Grenadians were less than heroic. It was one thing to “tank Gawd” for the “rescue;” but some, like former Attorney General Lloyd Noel, have taken to wearing U.S. Army shirts and calling for a permanent U.S. military base on Grenada.

The real overt power in Grenada seems to be Charles Anthony Gillespie, the U.S. “Ambassador” (even though there is no government to which he can present his credentials and be accredited). The Ross Point Inn Hotel and Restaurant, which had always been a favorite for U.S. diplomats visiting Grenada, has been taken over as the Embassy and now houses the only de facto government on the island.

Another elusive and powerful figure is Ashley Wills, who was a political officer at the U.S. Embassy in Barbados and whom Bishop accused in July of being a CIA officer. Wills has been intimately involved in Eastern Caribbean affairs for some time (see CAIB Number 10). During the invasion, Wills was seen by London Guardian reporter Greg Chamberlain on board the U.S.S. Guam, who described him as “the political adviser to the U.S. operation.” Wills told Chamberlain he had been “called away from his ‘university studies’ in the U.S. 36 hours before the invasion.”

The Airport and the Cubans

One of the more far-reaching ironies of the invasion has been the near-completed international airport. U.S. officials have “quietly” dropped their references to the Bishop government’s prospective use of it for military purposes. Only after the invasion did the U.S. media report the repeated assurances from British and American contractors that the airport was designed for civilian use, and only now are U.S. officials conceding, despite three years’ assertions to the contrary by President Reagan, that the airport is essential to the Grenadian economy.

But the greater irony is that the invasion has shown that the airport can indeed be used for military purposes—the taking off and landing of military aircraft. It could even be used by the U.S. against Central America.

It is already known that the Pentagon is allowing U.S. charter companies to join LIAT, formerly the only airline serving Grenada. One, Arrow Air, is a charter company licensed by the U.S. to fly between Miami and Havana. Within three weeks of the invasion it had added Grenada and Suriname to its territories.

The stories about the Cubans in Grenada apparently will never let up. Even after the initial fighting was over, “senior Pentagon officials” were saying that the very existence of Cuba made it unlikely that the security of Grenada could be left to a Caribbean constabulary, even though that was the theory announced at the time of the invasion. And, if all the Cubans on Grenada were gone, how could “the Cubans” pose a problem? Indeed the rush to rid the island of Cubans led to the shipment of 42 bodies to Cuba, at least 12 of which were obviously not Cuban, dressed as they were in PRA uniforms.

One of the most ludicrous rumors was taken quite seriously by the U.S. press—a State Department assertion that intelligence reports emanating from Cuba contained “death threats” against Americans “in retaliation for the invasion of Grenada.” (New York Times, November 2, 1983.) No evidence of any threats was ever produced, and the reports ceased to appear, though they indicate the depths to which anti-Cuban propaganda will stoop.

The Implications

Clearly, one of the most significant implications of the invasion of Grenada has been a dangerous flexing of U.S. military muscle in the region. New Caribbean naval maneuvers were ordered within days of the invasion and reports of the military’s heightened role in U.S. foreign policy were rife.

Directly threatened by such saber-rattling are Nicaragua, Cuba, and El Salvador. Any talk of the “impossibility” of a U.S. invasion of Nicaragua has been mooted by the fate of Grenada. Nicaragua is feverishly preparing for just such an invasion—and even before the attack on Grenada, contra activity had escalated dramatically (as described elsewhere in this issue). The U.S.-sponsored war against Nicaragua has increased both qualitatively and quantitatively in recent months. Nicaragua is arming all of its people and creating a nation-wide militia to prevent a repeat of Grenada. But it is clear the situation there is not parallel to that in Grenada. There are no splits within the revolutionary leadership, which functions far more collectively than any other socialist government. There is a universal recognition that the best defense is an armed population. And there is both widespread support for the government and widespread disgust for the U.S. policy of arming and supporting the Somocistas.

In Cuba, the fear of attack is also real; on Grenada, for the first time, U.S. troops engaged in combat with Cubans. Ever since Reagan came to power Cuba has been bolstering and reinforcing its militia, a policy which has been accelerated. One can only hope that the U.S. will study the mathematics of the situation before acting. If it took 8,000 or more trained troops to vanquish several hundred Cubans and Grenadians, it would take many more combat soldiers than the U.S. has in the world to defeat the Cubans or the Nicaraguans.