Abstract
The dramatic events of “Bloody Wednesday” in Grenada took Washington by surprise and forced officials to focus on the situation as concern about US citizens was “raised to the highest level.”1 The Restricted Inter-agency Group’s (RIG) chairman, Tony Motley, later clarified the situation: “After October 19, our primary task regarding the safety of U.S. citizens was to determine whether the situation on the ground was likely to improve by itself. Without clear indication of a return to civil stability, an evacuation would be prudent.”2 Momentum for a military action had been mounting with RIG recommending a nonpermissive evacuation operation and several Eastern Caribbean leaders making individual invitations to Washington to participate in a collective military action.
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Notes
Jay Mallin, “Army Controls Grenada; Caricom Nations Shocked,” Washington Times, October 21, 1983, 5. At a morning White House press briefing, White House principle deputy Press Secretary Larry Speakes reported that “we’ve seen nothing to indicate that they were having particular problems.” “Press Briefing by Larry Speakes, 9:17 A.M., October 21, 1983,” no. 882–10/21, Container 33, The White House: Office of the Press Secretary (WHOPS), Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, 4.
F. A. Hoyos, Tom Adams: A Biography (London: Macmillan, 1988), 115.
Mark Adkin, Urgent Fury: The Battle for Grenada (London: Leo Cooper, 1989), 97.
Gregory Sandford and Richard Vigilante, Grenada: The Untold Story (New York: Madison Books, 1984), 3.
Robert Pastor, “The Invasion of Grenada: A Pre- and Post-Mortem,” in The Caribbean after Grenada: Conflict and Democracy, ed. Scott MacDonald, Harald Sandstrom, and Paul Goodwin (New York: Praeger, 1988), 94. Clarke conveyed this message to other regional statesmen.
Cuban Party, “Statement by the Cuban Party and Revolutionary Government on the Events in Grenada,” in Statements by CUBA on the Events in GRENADA, ed. Nora Madan (La Habana, Cuba: Editora Politica, 1983), 42.
Jonathan Kwitny, Endless Enemies: The Making of an Unfriendly World (New York: Congdon and Weed, 1984), 412. Bourne told them the True Blue campus only had water for one night and within a couple of hours water trucks were sent there.
Mitchell Leventhal, “Entrepreneurship and Nation Building: Proprietary Medical Schools and Development in the Caribbean, 1976–1990” (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 1995), 290.
Duane Clarridge, with Digby Diehl, A Spy for All Seasons: My Life in the CIA (New York: Scribner, 1997), 250.
John Walton Cotman, The Gorrion Tree: Cuba and the Grenada Revolution (New York: Peter Lang, 1993), 219.
Patrick Tyler, “The Making of an Invasion: Chronology of the Planning,” Washington Post, October 30, 1983, A14.
Intelligence reports offered two interpretations: “valid assurances, or a move to make it easier to hold the students hostage.” CIA Memo, “Grenada Chronology 7–25 October 1983,” Document no. 002449. Declassified Documents Catalog IV, no. 5 (1988): 2.
George Skelton and David Wood, “U.S. to Post Task Force Off Grenada,” Los Angeles Times, October 22, 1983, section 1, 3.
Robert Beck, “The McNeil Mission and the Decision to Invade Grenada,” Naval War College Review 44 (Spring 1991): 98.
Paul Scoon, Survival for Service: My Years as Governor General of Grenada (London: Macmillan, 2003), 130.
John Dickie, Special No More: Anglo-American Relations—Rhetoric and Reality (London: Weidenfield and Nicolson, 1994), 186.
See also Gary Williams, “‘A Matter of Regret’: Britain, the 1983 Grenada Crisis, and the Special Relationship,” Twentieth Century British History 12 (2001): 208–230.
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© 2007 Gary Williams
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Williams, G. (2007). Days of Decision. In: US-Grenada Relations. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230609952_7
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