STATUS OF EFFORTS TO EXPLOIT GRENADA DOCUMENTS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP86M00886R001500020004-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 34
• Document Creation Date: December 21, 2016
• Document Release Date: October 31, 2008
• Sequence Number: 4
• Publication Date: June 1, 1984
• Content Type: MEMO

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SECRET
The Director of Central Intelligence
Washington, D.C. 20505
National Intelligence Council
MEMORANDUM FOR: Director of Central Intelligence
Deputy Director of Central Intelligence
NIC-03239-84
1 June 1984
Assistant National Intelligence Officer for Latin America
SUBJECT: Status of Efforts to Exploit Grenada Documents
1. The exploitation of the Grenada documents is essentially being
handled by a Grenada Working Group chaired by Deputy Assistant Secretary
Gillespie. I attended a meeting of the Group on 1 June at which the following
was discussed:
a. Transfer of copies of the documents from DIA custody to the
National Archives would begin as soon as possible. It was hoped that enough
copies of the documents would be transferred and catalogued by 1 August 1984
to allow a formal opening of them to the general public.
b. The US Army has prepared an unclassified study of the documents
based on some 17 themes. (see attachment A). A Task Force was formed to
produce short public releases of this material as soon as possible.
c. Walt Raymond of the NSC will head a working group to prepare a
major academic conference on the documents based on several themes, including
Grenada as a prototype of Marxist revolution and Soviet use of proxy regimes
to spread revolution.
d. Tony Gray of DOD ISA will head a group to expedite production of
an unclassified study of the documents written by Michael Leeden under
contract to State and DOD. (see attachment B).
2. A group working under contract to DDI/ALA has completed screening all
the available documents for intelligence value and has nearly completed
summaries of key documents. The Intelligence Community will then produce an
updated Memorandum to Holders of the IIA Grenada: A First Look at Mechanisms
of Control and Foreign Involvement, hopefully by the end of July.
CL BY: SIGNER
DECL: OADR
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SECRET
3. A relatively large number of key documents have already been released
for public review or to selected audiences, including those dealing with
attempts to influence the Socialist International. A draft letter from Austin
to Andropov requesting KGB help in training intelligence officers is one of
those documents already released to the general public.
SECRET
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THEME A: That the revolutionary government in Grenada routinely violated human
rights.
THEME B: That the revolutionary government in Grenada practiced and condoned
discrimination against and exploitation of women.
THEME C: That the revolutionary government in Grenada practiced and condoned
racial discrimination.
THEME 0: That the revolutionary government in Grenada attempted as a matter
of policy to control or suppress religion.
THEME E: That the revolutionary government in Grenada was developing a one-
party state which was to become a one-party dictatorship.
THEME F: That the revolutionary government in Grenada was so dominated by
Cuban involvement as to effectively lose its independence.
THEME G: That the revolutionary government in Grenada was so dominated by
agents of other nations as to effectively lose its independence.
THEME H: That the revolutionary government in Grenada adopted an active
program of exporting revolution and subversion.
THEME I: That the revolutionary government in Grenada asked for and received
military assistance far beyond reasonable defense requirements.
THEME J: That the revolutionary government allowed Grenada to be used as an
intelligence collection base for foreign powers.
THEME K: That the revolutionary government in Grenada deliberately adopted
a specifically pro-Soviet and pro-Cuban foreign policy, without
regard to Grenada's own interests.
THEME L: That the revolutionary government in Grenada embarked on a program
of collectivization and expropriation without regard to Grenada's
needs.
THEME M: That the revolutionary government in Grenada adopted active propaganda
measures aimed at its own people.
THEME N: That the revolutionary government in Grenada attempted to socialize
Grenadans into a blind adherence to official policy.
THEME 0: That the revolutionary government in Grenada was manipulated by
1v~ specific Cuban or other foreign persons.
THEME P: That the revolutionary government in Grenada deliberately mounted
a propaganda campaign intended to oppose US national interests.
THEME Q: That specific members of the revolutionary government were of unsavory
character.
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General Introduction
by Michael Ledeen and Herber;. Romerstein
The military action by the United States and the members of
the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States in October, 1983,
brought to a close the four-year rule of the New Jewel Movement
on the island of Grenada. In the course of the brief occupation
of Grenada, the combined armed forces found a considerable body
of documents, composing an extensive archive of the NJM regime.
All in all, 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, video tapes, films from the Soviet Union, and
bank documents concerning the personal finances of government and
party leaders. Rarely has such a complete documentary picture of
a Communist state been available to Western students, and the
entire lot will shortly be available to scholars and other
interested parties.
Pending the 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 Bishope and the NJM
from April, 1979 to October, 1983. It was a daunting task, for
the richness of the material made our selection difficult; the
present selection could easily be replaced almost in its entirety
by other material of similar interest. Nonetheless, we have
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striven to give representative samples from areas likely to be of
concern to students of communism, on the one hand, and of
international relations on the other. These were the areas we
judged 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 those documents
illustrating the question of human rights. These include reports
of treatment of prisoners, legal proceedings and the like, as
well as the attempts by the regime--and its international allies-
-to deal with political opponents. This latter subject
necessarily includes the ongoing conflict with the churches.
We believe that the documents in this collection give an
accurate picture of Grenada under the NJM, although it is
certainly not a complete picture. When one chooses a few hundred
pages out of tens of thousands, the best that can be hoped is
that the selection was done fairly, with an eye to understanding
rather than in an effort to argue a thesis. Whether we have
succeeded will eventually be judged by those who work their way
through the full archives.
Finally, while this work was done for, and paid 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), the selection. of the documents and
the introductory material is entirely ours, and we did our work
without any pressure from anyone, except insofar as we were urged
to work as fast as was reasonably possible. For this freedom to
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make the selections we deemed most representative, and the
patient support throughout the many months we worked on the
documents, we are grateful indeed, above all to the two senior
officials who authorized the project: the Undersecretary of State
for Political Affairs, Lawrence Eagleburger, and the
Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, Fred Ikle.
The New Jewel Movement:
The Grenadan Revolution that overthrew the Gairy regime 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 pretend to respect political
pluralism, and to feign a genuine desire for good relations with
all neighboring countries (above all the United States), the
actual direction that Maurice Bishop and his colleagues in the
government wished to take was clear from the outset. The close
working relations with the Government of Cuba--both in Grenada
and in Cuba itself--showed that Bishop intended to model his
revolution on-the Soviet Union's and, more immediately, that of
Fidel Castro; the attention showed to delegations from the Soviet
bloc and from such radical regimes as Qadaffi's Libya and Kim it
Sung's North Korea, along with the lack of exchanges with such
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traditional friends as Great Britain demonstrated the NJM's real
intentions. By September, 1982, Bishop himself 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".
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 numbered by hand, and Party
members were expected to keep its contents confidential.
The Line of March contains Bishop's personal reflections on
the tactics he adopted shortly after the seizure of power.
People from all social strata were included in the original
ruling council, and "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
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like it--it's up the hill for them.
Candidates for "the hill" were identified through a
clandestine system that tacnitored the population, the
predominantly American students at the Medical School, and
foreign visitors. The Special Branch divided the island into
regions for surveillance, potential opponents of the regime were
identified (generally on a class or religious basis), and closely
watched. In addition, major institutions were targetted for
surveillance: the government, the trade union, the police, the
Medical School and the churches. That this represented a clear
departure from previous practices is indicated by the statement
from the head of the Special Branch, Michael Roberts, in a report
to the Prime Minister and the Minister of National Security in
May, 1980 (Document IV): "The old MI 5 methods of work, after
experimentation, have proven to be not effective enough..."
Church leaders were subjected to particularly close
surveillance, and the Grenadans received considerable help in
countering religious influence from the Cubans and Nicaraguans.
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In a document?outlining the basic counterintelligence operations
of the Interior Ministry (Document I), the scope of the NJM's
cdncern with the churches is amply demonstrated, for Government
agents were instructed to:
--Monitor 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;
--Controlling all elements of the society that pay
visits to the hirachy;
--Tapping of the Hirachy of all the leading counter
churches phones.
(The term "counter" was used as shorthand for
"counterrevolutionary" by virtually all Grenadians).
The NJM took these security measures against Church leaders
because they believed that all major religious institutions on
the island were opposed to the-revolution. In a Top Secret
report written in March, 1983 (Document VIII), Michael Roberts
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found that the Roman Catholic, Anglican, Methodist and Seventh
Day Adventist Churches were all hostile to the NJM, with the
first being the most important because of its size and internal
discipline. Roberts was concerned at the use of the Jerusalem
Bible by the Catholics, because "this bible is written as a novel
and is very easy to understand not being written in old
English ...This means that the Church in understanding the
struggle...has 'revolutionized' is (sic) main ideological weapon-
-the bible." Moreover, the Church distributed the Pope's New
Year's message, and Roberts considered it to be "the Church's
foreign policy document and no doubt will be used to criticize
our foreign policy." Similar concerns were expressed about the
other churches, to the point where by July, 1983, Keith Roberts,
the Interior Minister, could write that "in the medium term, if
serious measures are not taken, 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 IX)
But perhaps most indicative of the great concern about the
churches was the interest taken by the Cuban Communist Party.
The Cubans played a major role in this, as in virtually all
aspects of life on the island, and the America 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."
The Cubans concurred that the churches were "in harmony with the
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campaigns carried out by the reactionary governments in the
Caribbean..." and were distressed at the lack of effective action
by the NJM. For example (Document VII), the Cubans lamented that
the Grenadans had not infiltrated the churches ("there are no
signs of systematic prcgrassive projections within the Grenadian
clergy"), and indeed 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 Tosition, and was supposed to spend
nearly three weeks training in Cuba before starting work. The
Cubans foresaw that Strachan 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 the latter 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
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From the beginning, Bishop and the other NJM leaders sought
bring Grenada into the Soviet orbit, and there are thousands
of documents showing the intimate relationship that came to exist
between the USSR and Grenada. Sometimes the relations were
embodied in formal treaties between Grenada and Soviet bloc
countries, as well as with such Soviet proxies as Cuba, Vietnam
and North Korea. On other occasions there were secret
agreements, as for providing counterintelligence materiel,
training for agents, and so forth. We have included several of
the treaties and party-to-party 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 showed that the Soviet, Cuban, North
Korean and inferred Czechoslovakian agreements included the
following items, that were to have been delivered by 1986:
--Approximately 10,000 assault and other rifles;
--Over 4,500 submachine guns and machine guns;
--More than 11.5 million rounds of 7.62 mm
ammunition;
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--294 portable rocket launchers with more than
16,000 rockets;
--84 82 mm morta:o with more than 4,800 mortar
shells;
--12 75 mm cannon with 600 cannon shells;
--60 antiaircraft funs of various sizes, along with
nearly 600,000 rounds-of ammunition;
--15,000 hand grenades, 7,000 land mines, 60 armored
personnel carriers and patrol vehicles;
--156 radio stations, more than 20,000 uniforms and
tents for more than 5,000 persons.
In the estimation of the Department of Defense, this
equipment would have been sufficient to equip a fighting force of
roughly 10,000 men, with half of that number actually in the
field. Furthermore, there was evidently some thought given to
special forces, since the Soviets promised to provide an airplane
capable of transporting 39 paratroopers.
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All of this made Grenada a real military threat to its
neighbors, most of whom had only local constabularies rather than
stahding armies. And there was little question that Grenada was
going to be used for military purposes, since General Hudson
Austin's deputy, Liam James, noted in his notebook on March 22,
1980, "airport will be used for Cuban and Soviet military."
(Document llb).
The Soviets duly appreciated the geopolitical significance of
acquiring a proxy in the Western Hemisphere, as can be seen from
the picturesque account of a meeting between Major Einstein
Louison, the 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 12), 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 in the same context, and
their Ambassadow 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)." Jacobs felt that the first such project
should be Suriname.
There was certainly no lack of Soviet support for Grenada
intelligence and counterintelligence operations. A draft letter
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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 14).
Perhaps the most intensive Soviet assistance to Grenada came
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 has
been in operation since the 1920s, and has trained the leading
communists in 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." (Documents 15 and 16). And of course
the Cubans did a lot of this work, offering training in
journalism, crowd control, propaganda, billboard painting and
newspaper and cartoon writing and drawing. A secret agreement
between the Cuban Communist Party and the NJM provided for
training of Grenadans in Cuba and on Grenada. The document was
signed for Cuba by Manuel Piniero, the former head of Cuban
intelligence (the D.G.I.), and currently the head of the America
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Department of the Central Committee, which is the covert action
arm of the Communist Party.
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 themselves show how thoroughly Grenada was
integrated into the Soviet world.
Relations with the United States
The leaders of the Government and the Party regarded the
United States with constant 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 the
usual guidance from the Cubans, in the person of Gail Rizo, the
wife of the Cuban Ambassador to Grenada. Gail Rizo, nee Reed,
was an American herself, and had been active in American radical
organizations, including the Venceremos Brigade, during the
nineteen sixties. Prior to the trip of Prime Minister Bishop to
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the United States in 1983, Mrs. Rizo gave him a list of detailed
suggestion on how he should conduct himself in his contacts with
American officials, as well as recommendations of which Americans
he should meet. In addition, she reminded him that Parodi of the
Cuban Interests Section in Washington would be atia&.lable to him
if needed.
One of the most useful documents in understanding the
Grenadans' attitude toward the United States is the set of
handwritten notes, evidently written by one of the Grenadan
participants in the conversation, describing Bishop's meeting
with National Security Advisor William Clark. (Document 20). The
notes reveal that while there was some American concern about the
ideological direction of the Bishop regime (Clark at one point
stresses the American desire that Grenada remain within a Western
legal framework), the main obstacle to better relations between
the two countries was not political, but geopolitical: Washington
was worried about the large numbers of Cubans and Russians on
Grenada. Clark, Deputy Secretary of State Kenneth Dam, and the
United States Ambassador to the Organization of American States,
William Mittendorf, stressed that the American Government wanted
actions, not mere declarations, of good intentions from the
Grenadans. ,
In their efforts to convince the United States to leave them
alone, 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
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media--often with help from the Cubans, especially Gail Reed
Rizo--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 raaio 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 watch the less important publications.
Finally, Grenada coordinated its efforts with those of other
Soviet bloc countries and proxies in supporting and encouraging
the world-wide peace movement, and in turning its emotions
against the United States. In April. 1981, a 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.
The Socialist International
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The Socialist International was founded in 1889 by those
socialist organizations that objected to the control of the First
International by anarchist elements (it was therefore often
referred to as the Second International). In 1919 those groups
supporting the Russian Bolsheviks left the Second International
to form the Third (Communist) International. The primary
differences between the communists and the democratic socialists
were on such questions as single-party dictatorships, human
rights and the communist belief in the necessity for violent
revolution. The Socialist International has existed for many
decades as a democratic force, and includes democratic socialist
leaders who are active participants in the international
dialogue.
In the words of the Declaration of the Socialist
International adopted in Oslo in June, 1962, 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, pg. 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 direction from the
America 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
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Sandinistas, the Grenadan NJM and others in the Latin American
Committee of the SI. The NJM had sent observers to SI meetings
even before their successful revolution, and Bishop applied for
membership in the Socialist International in late 1979. The
application was accepted the following November at a Congress in
Madrid.
#"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 (I.D.), which engages in both over and semi-overt
activities. The KGB conducts the covert Active Measures in
coordination with the I.D.
Overt Active Measures include use of those communist
parties under Soviet control and the International Soviet Front
Groups (such as the World Peace Council);
Covert Active Measures include forgeries, agents of
influence to place stories in the press, or influence government
officials, and so forth.
Some Soviet Active Measures are carried out through surogates
(usually the intelligence service of another Communist bloc
country). In the Western Hemisphere, the Cuban Communist Party's
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America Department conducts Active Measures on behalf of the
Soviet Union. The America Department combines both the overt and
covert Active Measures by having officers of the Cuban
Intelligence Service (the DGI) operate on behalf of the
Department. The intimate link between the two can be seen by the
fact that the current chief of the America Department, Manuel
Pineiro Losada,formerly headed the DGI. 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.
The Grenadans, taking their cue from the Cubans and from the
Soviets, viewed the Socialist International as a potential enemy,
and one unsigned document--apparently from the 1980-1981 period--
defended the decision to join the SI, but made clear that it was
not because of enthusiastic belief in the organization's
principles. Membership was supported on two grounds:
1. It provided access to international movements
which could be convinced to support New Jewel
Movement policies.
2. The New Jewel Movement could utilize its
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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 organiztion. The author of
the document responded that the Socialist International was
"sufficiently flexible to permit dissention" 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." (Document 5, pg. 10)
The most detailed documents concerning the Socialist
Internation were apparently not written by Grenadans, but rather
by Cubans. Two documents found stapled together seem to have
been written by a Cuban and then translated into English (we
believe they were written by the same person as Document 11, who
is definitely Cuban). They contain sophisticated analyses of the
SI from a Marxist/Leninist perspective. One of them--Document 6-
-is a report on the 15th Congress of the Socialist International
held in Madrid in November, 1980. The report makes reference to
internal 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
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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 U.S.S.R.'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 7). "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 an 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
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
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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
who positions coincide with certain tactical
objetives (sice) of the Latin American revolutionary
movement.
Democratic Socialist versus the Marxist/Leninists
Unison Whiteman, minister of external relations of the Bishop
Government, attended an emergency SI meeting on Latin America and
the Caribbean in Panama in early 1981 (the meeting was held over
two days, February 28 and March 1). Whiteman had a dispute with
former Prime Minister Carlos Andres Perez 'of the Venezuelan
Democratic Action Party. The subject was El Salvador, and Carlos
Andres 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
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to the Junta is a notorious fact, that the U.S. officially and
publicly stated this; that S.I. 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 only hostile to the United States.
(Document 8).
Whiteman's position was that of the Cubans. One of the most
illuminating documents in this regard is a Spanish-language
report on a meeting of the SI in Nicaragua on June 25, 1981. The
report was signed by Manuel Pineiro Losada, former chief of Cuban
Intelligence and currently head of the America Department of the
Cuban Communist Party, which is in charge of "Active Measures."
Not surprisingly, most of the officials of the America Department
are officers of the DGI, the Cuban Intelligence Service. In this
document, Pineiro complained of efforts by the democratic
socialists to urge the Nicaraguan regime in a more moderate
direction, and Pineiro was particularly upset with the actions of
Carlos Andres Perez and Felipe Gonzales, the head of the Spanish
Socialist Party (PSOE). Attached to Pineiro's report were two
documents: an account in Spanish of the discussions between
Bayardo Arce (a member of the Sandinista regime 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
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23
Secretary of the Austrian Social Democratic Party. There was
also a poor English translation (we have made a fresh
translation, included here). Evidently, the Cubans' distrust of
the social democrats was so intense that they carefully watched
the behavior of their principal enemies within the SI.
The 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, 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."
Augustine found 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, freedom of
speech and freedom of the press.
The same meeting was the subject of another report, this one
unsigned. But internal evidence suggests that it was written by
a Cuban, and it is quite similar to documents 5 and 6. It would
not be surprising to have a Cuban report of an SI meeting, since
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the Cubans were almost always present at the site of such
meetings, even though -.;hey 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, he 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
current prime ministers and one former president of their
countries) were effectively neutralized (Document 12).
But Cuban/Grenadan optimism turned out to be misplaced, for
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 the 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. The leaders of the
criticism 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."
Both DeRiggs and Paul Miller of the PNP of Jamaica tried to
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25
justify the lack of any opposition party in Grenada, but
apparently their rhetoric was not convincing, for 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 MNR--the political wing of the guerrilla movement--had
achieved a certain degree of success along those lines. Thus, in
DeRiggs' 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." In other words, it was necessary to work within
the member parties to produce a shift in outlook. By January of
the following year, these ideas had taken a more concrete form.
The "Secret Regional Caucus"
On the 6th and 7th of January, 1983, a Secret Regional Caucus
was held in Manaugua, consisting of five parties affiliated with
the Socialist Internationl, and the Communist Party of Cuba. The
five SI parties were:
--The FSLN of Nicaragua, represented by Antonio Jarquin
(misspelled as Marquin in the document);
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--The Salvadoran MNR, represented by Hector Oqueli (this
party is one of the groups composing the guerrilla movement, and
Oqueli is the Secretaru of the Socialist International Committee
for Latin America and the Caribbean, which has given a patent 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, reprsented by Chris DeRiggs.
The main topic of the meeting was the Socialist
International. In DeRiggs' words, they considered "initiatives
to neutralize forces within the SI that are hostile to 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 Socialdemocratic 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, seven were
generally progressive and some within a Marxist-Leninist line.
The Secret Regional Caucus report shows that a resolution on
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27
Latin America and the Caribbean drafted by Hector Oqueli of the
Salvadoran MNR, that was 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 is of considerable importance, since it 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 effectiveness of the SI, and that the Grenadans'
greatest objection to the Socialist International was the SI's
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. The letter protested a'story in the magazine
stating that Grenada would have elections in the near future. In
fact, there was no such intention.
Conclusion
The documents we have selected for this volume represent, in
our opinion, a representative sample of the total archive. We
believe that those who take the time to study them will find a
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28
remarkable consistency, a single-minded dedication to the NJM's
objectives of creating, over time, a communist society on the
Soviet model. 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 vision
between Bishop and those who replaced him; rather, the struggle
appears to have been almost exclusively personal. The complaints
against Bishop were of inefficiency, of insufficient ideological
coherence, of lack of strong leadership and guidance, not of
political deviation or betrayal of the goals of the revolution.
We do not see evidence that Bishop was removed because the Cubans
or the Soviets were dissatisfied with his political orientation;
so far as we have been able to discover, 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 the one brought
back from Grenada will provide scholars with a treasure-trove of
information about the Caribbean, about Soviet and Cuban foreign
policy, about a great variety of international organizations
(including the sometimes humorous negotiations the Grenadans had
with the International Monetary Fund), and about the problems
encountered by orthodox communists in their attempt to mold a new
generation of Grenadans who had had little contact with
Marxism/Leninism. We have given here only a brief overview of a
few of the themes that most interested us. We will be pleased if
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this serves to whet the appetites of a wide audience for this
collection of documents, and for the many more that will oe
available to the public at large within a few months.
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SECRET
Exccu- Fcyistry
84 2,,2
18 May 1984
MEMORANDUM FOR: Deputy Director of Central Intelligence
FROM: Director of Central Intelligence
SUBJECT: Grenada Archives
Sporkin is producing a report on status of Grenada archives.
Mike Ledeen is said to be analyzing them for either Defense or State.
We need to look into them to see whether there is material which ought
to be disseminated and can be released as soon as possible instead
of waiting for the full archives to be sifted and analyzed. For
example, there is supposed to be a letter from Bishop to Andropov
requesting KGB help.
William J. Casey
DCI
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