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Speaker 1: On October thirteenth, nineteen eighty three, a Long Island dad
Speaker 1: named Kevin Katke spent his day at work dealing with bullshit.
Speaker 1: Katki was a maintenance engineer at a Macy's department store
Speaker 1: in Bayshore, a down on its luck hamlet, about an
Speaker 1: hour and a half east of New York City. Kaki
Speaker 1: came home exhausted from a series of disasters at the store. First,
Speaker 1: the escal had broken down, Then someone poured a vat
Speaker 1: of grease down a drain, which caused the pipes to
Speaker 1: back up all over the building. Then the elevator stopped working.
Speaker 2: He was really tired, in a terrible mood when he
Speaker 2: got home and his wife was making a racket in
Speaker 2: the kitchen.
Speaker 1: This is Nita Renfrew, a former journalist who got to
Speaker 1: know Kevin Katke while reporting on the Iran Contra scandal.
Speaker 2: He said it was the worst day he'd ever had
Speaker 2: at Macy's.
Speaker 1: As Renfrew later wrote in a story for New York Magazine,
Speaker 1: Kaki walked into his house that night to find his
Speaker 1: wife mad at him for being late for dinner and
Speaker 1: his ten year old daughter doing her homework in front
Speaker 1: of the TV. Then a little after seven point thirty,
Speaker 1: the phone rang. On the line was Katkei's other life.
Speaker 2: And all of a sudden he got this phone call
Speaker 2: from the White House.
Speaker 1: The person calling from the White House was a career
Speaker 1: CIA officer who had recently joined the staff of Ronald
Speaker 1: Reagan's National Security Council.
Speaker 2: And he says to Kevin, I'm turning you over to
Speaker 2: Colonel North, and he gives him North's number, and he
Speaker 2: says call him in the morning. He's waiting to hear
Speaker 2: from you.
Speaker 1: Colonel North was waiting to hear from him. Now, if
Speaker 1: you know anything about Iran Contra, it's probably the name
Speaker 1: Oliver North. But back in October of nineteen eighty three,
Speaker 1: North was not yet the star witness in an international scandal.
Speaker 1: He was not yet a poster child for unencumbered American patriotism.
Speaker 1: He was just an obscure figure in the White House bureaucracy.
Speaker 1: Neither Kevin Katkey nor anyone else had ever heard of him. Still,
Speaker 1: Katkey was excited at the prospect of making himself useful
Speaker 1: to someone so high up in the government. He had
Speaker 1: been trying to make himself useful in this way for years.
Speaker 1: As documented in Nita Renfrew's New York Magazine story, as
Speaker 1: well as pieces in Newsday and Mother Jones, Katkey was
Speaker 1: the leader of a kind of homegrown anti communist club.
Speaker 1: It was him and three friends, a stockbroker, a building inspector,
Speaker 1: and a carpenter, all from the same part art of
Speaker 1: Long Island. They weren't vigilantes exactly, and they weren't quite spies.
Speaker 1: They were more like intelligence gathering volunteers. They traveled abroad,
Speaker 1: they made contacts with people who gave them information about
Speaker 1: foreign governments, and they tried to get important people in
Speaker 1: Washington to listen to their findings.
Speaker 2: They were like a troop of boy scouts, you know,
Speaker 2: they were out there. They wanted to have an adventure
Speaker 2: and do positive things while they were doing it. You know,
Speaker 2: that's what boy scouts do.
Speaker 1: Oliver North would later tell Iran Kantra investigators that Kevin
Speaker 1: Katki was a right wing ideologue and compared him to
Speaker 1: a rogue CIA agent. I doubt Kaki would have taken
Speaker 1: it as an insult. He was a self professed patriot,
Speaker 1: an enthusiastic foot soldier America's Cold War with the Soviet Union.
Speaker 1: When Nita Renfrew interviewed him, Kaki told her that if
Speaker 1: there was ever anything he could do to set the
Speaker 1: Soviets Backupeg, he would do it no matter what.
Speaker 2: He believed that Communism needed to be defeated in the world,
Speaker 2: and that we had pulled out of Vietnam and when
Speaker 2: we should have won the war. He felt that the
Speaker 2: government needed a lot of help, that we as citizens
Speaker 2: of the country needed to help the government.
Speaker 1: Kevin Khaki and Oliver North, his new contact at the
Speaker 1: National Security Council, had a lot of that in common.
Speaker 1: North had been an unwavering believer in the Vietnam War
Speaker 1: since his days at the US Naval Academy in the
Speaker 1: late nineteen sixties.
Speaker 3: Each man who wears the Academy ring embarks upon a splendid,
Speaker 3: worthwhile career in the highest traditions of the United States Navy.
Speaker 1: He had looked forward to deployment, and when he was
Speaker 1: injured in a car accident during his first year, he
Speaker 1: worried that it would delay his graduation and cause him
Speaker 1: to miss the war entirely. During his recovery, North was
Speaker 1: so focused on getting better in time that, according to
Speaker 1: a neighbor, he took to jumping off the roof of
Speaker 1: a garage over and over again in an effort to
Speaker 1: strengthen his legs.
Speaker 4: In the war, today, American B fifty two bombers dropped
Speaker 4: tons of expose he was on dense jungles near at Cambodia.
Speaker 1: North ended up fighting in Vietnam for about a year.
Speaker 1: While overseas, he wrote letters home to his parents expressing
Speaker 1: his frustration with Washington lawmakers who were unwilling to fully
Speaker 1: get behind the war. Most of all, he wrote, I
Speaker 1: wish the politicians would get off their fat, soft posteriors
Speaker 1: and come through with something one way or the other
Speaker 1: to clear this mess up.
Speaker 5: I think that reflects a frustration comment among military guys
Speaker 5: with Congress or the administration for tying their hands in battle.
Speaker 1: That's journalist Ben Bradley Jr. He's the author of Guts
Speaker 1: and Glory, The Rise and Fall of Oliver North, which
Speaker 1: was published in nineteen eighty eight, two years after North
Speaker 1: became a household name as a result of the Iran
Speaker 1: Contra scandal.
Speaker 5: And you know, these guys would typically feel, you know, shit,
Speaker 5: if they could just unleash us, we'd have this thing
Speaker 5: wrapped up sooner rather than later.
Speaker 1: The Vietnam War dragged on for years after North returned home. Finally,
Speaker 1: after losing nearly sixty thousand men, the United States pulled
Speaker 1: out its troops in nineteen seventy three.
Speaker 5: In Saigon.
Speaker 3: Today, the last of the American troops got on airplanes
Speaker 3: and flew out of Vietnam and in the longest military
Speaker 3: involvement in the country's history.
Speaker 1: As far as North was concerned, the politicians who had
Speaker 1: ordered an end to the war had committed a grave sin,
Speaker 1: both against American forces, who had been prevented from fulfilling
Speaker 1: their mission, and against the soldiers in South Vietnam who
Speaker 1: had been counting on the US and their struggle against communism.
Speaker 1: The politicians had caved to pressure from an uninformed public.
Speaker 3: They raised their voices, their placards, and they march against
Speaker 3: the government.
Speaker 1: As North later put it, America lost the war in Washington,
Speaker 1: not in Vietnam. When North went to work for President
Speaker 1: Ronald Reagan teen eighty one, he carried with him a
Speaker 1: single minded resolve to never let his country abandon its
Speaker 1: values again. And though he was part of the government now,
Speaker 1: he was not going to be precious about accepting help
Speaker 1: from like minded outsiders. It was that openness to collaboration,
Speaker 1: not just with department store engineers, but with arms dealers, mercenaries,
Speaker 1: and shady international fixers that would later drive North and
Speaker 1: the rest of the Reagan White House headlong into Iran Contra.
Speaker 1: But first North needed to talk to Kevin katke He
Speaker 1: wanted his help overthrowing a communist regime. I'm Leon Nafak
Speaker 1: from prologued Projects and Pushkin Industries. This is fiasco Iran Contra,
Speaker 1: the story of a secret war, a secret deal, and
Speaker 1: a scandal that threatened to destroy Ronald Reagan's presidency until
Speaker 1: it didn't.
Speaker 6: Washington's Still in Shock Bill, the secret diversion of funds
Speaker 6: to the country.
Speaker 4: To shuffer about secret sales of missiles to.
Speaker 2: Iran, questions of illegality and cover up. I do not
Speaker 2: use the word cover up I would use the word protect.
Speaker 2: They were lying to the press, they were lying to
Speaker 2: the public. They lied incessantly to each other.
Speaker 3: They did it out of loyalty and anti communism.
Speaker 4: That's why the government of the United States gave me
Speaker 4: a shredder.
Speaker 7: How could the president have no.
Speaker 1: Episode one?
Speaker 5: Get me?
Speaker 1: Kevin Katki, the first tremor of the Iran contra affair,
Speaker 1: in which Oliver North and a gang of amateur spies
Speaker 1: helped the Reagan administration turn the page on Vietnam. We'll
Speaker 1: be right back. Kevin Katke's wandering path into Oliver North's
Speaker 1: orbit began in the early nineteen seventies when an eccentric
Speaker 1: neighbor clocked him as a fellow anti communist and started
Speaker 1: bending his year about the political situation in Jamaica, which
Speaker 1: at the time was governed by a socialist prime minister.
Speaker 1: Katke's neighbor said he knew some right wing dissidents who
Speaker 1: were trying to overthrow the left wing government. Maybe Katki
Speaker 1: wanted to help. Here again, is Nita Renfrew.
Speaker 2: Kevin was very charismatic, so he could get people to
Speaker 2: do things that nobody else could get them to do.
Speaker 2: You know, It's like he could walk into places and
Speaker 2: you know, it's like he just had an air about
Speaker 2: him that he was in charge.
Speaker 1: Katkei was intrigued by the Jamaica opportunity. He started taking
Speaker 1: time off from work so that he could make regular
Speaker 1: trips to the island with his neighbor. They hung out
Speaker 1: on the beach, developed relationships with dissidents, and gathered intel. Eventually,
Speaker 1: Jamaica elected a right wing prime minister and no longer
Speaker 1: needed Katkei's help, but spending time on the island had
Speaker 1: activated him politically. When Iran was taken over in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy nine by religious extremists who professed to hate America,
Speaker 1: Katki went to Wall Street and sold t shirts that
Speaker 1: said Iran Sucks. He spent the money organizing an anti
Speaker 1: Iran rally on Long Island. Then, in nineteen eighty one,
Speaker 1: Katki turned his attention to the tiny Caribbean nation of Grenada.
Speaker 8: Grenada, Carriacoup and Patimmartinique make up a small country in
Speaker 8: the Caribbean Sea.
Speaker 1: Grenada had a population of about one hundred thousand people.
Speaker 1: Since nineteen seventy nine, it had been run by a
Speaker 1: political party of young Marxist revolutionaries.
Speaker 8: They took control of their lives and their future through
Speaker 8: a revolution on March thirteenth, nineteen seventy nine, for the
Speaker 8: first revolution in the English speaking Caribbean.
Speaker 1: Despite its small size, Grenada was a top concern for
Speaker 1: the Reagan administration. They were aware that the Marxists who
Speaker 1: ruled the island had sought the help of Fidel Castro,
Speaker 1: the communist leader of Cuba. Together, they were building an
Speaker 1: ambitious new airport in Grenada. The theory in the White
Speaker 1: House was that this airport would be used as base
Speaker 1: for Soviet reconnaissance plans. To Reagan, Grenada was part of
Speaker 1: a Red triangle that included Cuba to the north and
Speaker 1: Nicaragua to the west. In March of nineteen eighty three,
Speaker 1: Reagan gave a televised address from the White House advocating
Speaker 1: for an expansion of the defense budget. In making his case,
Speaker 1: he emphasized the emerging communist threat in the Western Hemisphere.
Speaker 3: On the small island of Grenada, at the southern end
Speaker 3: of the Caribbean Shine, the Cubans, with Soviet financing and backing,
Speaker 3: are in the process of building an airfield with a
Speaker 3: ten thousand foot runway. Grenada doesn't even have an air force.
Speaker 3: Who is it intended for.
Speaker 1: By the time Reagan gave that speech, Kevin Kaki was
Speaker 1: already in contact with several Grenadian dissidents who had emigrated
Speaker 1: to New York. Among them was a lawyer who'd worked
Speaker 1: for the Grenadian government before the revolution in seventy nine.
Speaker 1: The lawyer told Kaki that he wanted to get the
Speaker 1: Marxist and Grenada out of power, and Katki, along with
Speaker 1: his neighbor and two of their friends from town, decided
Speaker 1: to help him in his quest. Together, they created a
Speaker 1: think tank style organization that they christened the Grenadian Movement
Speaker 1: for Freedom and Democracy. Kaki also let the lawyer live
Speaker 1: in a boat docked behind his house.
Speaker 2: And they went and they bought clothes at strift shops
Speaker 2: for him so he'd have some nice suits and ties
Speaker 2: and so on, and then they would drive him and
Speaker 2: other people down to Washington to talk to the Congress
Speaker 2: and so on.
Speaker 1: It was during one of these trips to Washington that
Speaker 1: Kaki met the man who would later call him at
Speaker 1: home at the end it was very bad day at Macy's,
Speaker 1: and put him in touch with Oliver North. His name
Speaker 1: was Constantine.
Speaker 7: Mengus.
Speaker 1: He was an ideal audience for a group of guys
Speaker 1: advocating for the overthrow of the left wing government in Grenada.
Speaker 2: Constantine Mengus was he was an idealist, very much like
Speaker 2: Kevin was, you know, like Kevin. I mean, he believed
Speaker 2: the communism was taking over and that they had to
Speaker 2: combat this for the good of those people.
Speaker 1: The night Mangus called kat Key and connected him with
Speaker 1: Oliver North. The White House was keeping an especially watchful
Speaker 1: eye on Grenada.
Speaker 6: There's a real power struggle going on tonight in the
Speaker 6: tiny island country of Grenada and the Caribbean.
Speaker 1: It appeared that a radical faction of the Grenadian government
Speaker 1: had staged a military coup in the capital city of
Speaker 1: Saint George. These radicals seemed to be closely aligned with
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union, and they had placed Grenada's Prime minister,
Speaker 1: who was comparatively moderate, under house arrest.
Speaker 4: Diplomatic sources warned that the situation in Grenada is still
Speaker 4: confused and uncertain. They say it's still not clear exactly
Speaker 4: who will emerge as the new prime minister of Grenada.
Speaker 1: The coup in Grenada touched off a series of meetings
Speaker 1: within the National Security Council. You've almost certainly heard of
Speaker 1: the NSC, but it's worth stopping to provide a bit
Speaker 1: of background on it because it ended up becoming the
Speaker 1: central staging ground for the Irankantra affair. Basically, the NSC
Speaker 1: was created after World War II as an arm of
Speaker 1: the Executive Branch that advised the president on foreign policy.
Speaker 1: Its members included the head of the CIA, the Secretary
Speaker 1: of State, and the Secretary of Defense. It also included
Speaker 1: the National Security Advisor, who oversaw a staff that worked
Speaker 1: specifically for the National Security Council. For the most fervent
Speaker 1: anti communists on the NSC staff, like Constantine, Mengus and
Speaker 1: Oliver North, the coup and Grenada required immediate attention. If
Speaker 1: the radical leftists who had started the coup were allowed
Speaker 1: to take over, it would only be a matter of
Speaker 1: time before Moscow started using Grenada as a base for
Speaker 1: its planes and nuclear submarines. But first there was a
Speaker 1: more immediate problem to deal with. Grenada was home to
Speaker 1: about a thousand American citizens, the majority of whom were
Speaker 1: students enrolled at the Saint George's University School of Medicine.
Speaker 4: There is concern for some one thousand Americans already there.
Speaker 1: It seemed possible that amid the chaos, the Communists would
Speaker 1: take the medical student's hostage.
Speaker 4: Medical students like Jonathan Beck, whose mother has not been
Speaker 4: able to reach him by telephone, I have.
Speaker 7: Known now as exactly of what it going on, and
Speaker 7: I'm quite apprehensive.
Speaker 1: Jeff Geller, who had enrolled at Saint George's after getting
Speaker 1: waitlisted at med schools in the US, remembers the first
Speaker 1: indication that a military coup was underway.
Speaker 9: One day, we're anatomy class, in fact, we're having an
Speaker 9: anatomy exam, and the exam finishes, and we're all ready
Speaker 9: to go back to the dorms and the bus doesn't come.
Speaker 9: To wait a while, and they announced it's going to
Speaker 9: be a little late. They don't tell us what's going on.
Speaker 9: Finally the bus does come and we're head back to the
Speaker 9: dorms and the tank comes by us, and another tank
Speaker 9: and another tank and another tank, and we're all going
Speaker 9: towards Saint George's, the capital.
Speaker 1: The tanks cut through the lush tropical paradise where Geller
Speaker 1: had just started school a few weeks earlier.
Speaker 9: We were ordinary college students and so you know, seeing
Speaker 9: a tank up close, you know, not in the parade
Speaker 9: and not you know, as a museum exhibit was very
Speaker 9: different for us. You know, we could barely fit the
Speaker 9: bus and the tank on the road. These are very
Speaker 9: small country roads there, just earthed.
Speaker 1: It was against this backdrop that Kevin Katke got the
Speaker 1: phone call from NSC staffer Constantine Mengus. Mengus had been
Speaker 1: working with Oliver North on a plan to intervene in
Speaker 1: Grenada ever since the Prime Minister's ouster a few days earlier.
Speaker 1: Mengus and North had two goals. One get the medical
Speaker 1: students home, and two turned the crisis into an opportunity
Speaker 1: by restoring democracy in Grenada. Mengus thought Katke and his
Speaker 1: contacts within the Grenadian exile community could be of some use,
Speaker 1: and he wanted Katke to call North the following morning
Speaker 1: in order to receive his marching orders. Nita Renfrew describes
Speaker 1: this as the moment Katki had been waiting for.
Speaker 2: Well. He was elated that he was being taken seriously,
Speaker 2: that he could really help the government now because he
Speaker 2: had all the Grenadian contacts, the White House didn't have them.
Speaker 2: He felt, you know that what he had been doing,
Speaker 2: was was bearing fruit. You know that somebody had listened
Speaker 2: to him, you know, after they'd been working so hard.
Speaker 1: After the conversation with Mengus, Katki called his friends and
Speaker 1: told him to come over the following morning. He wanted
Speaker 1: them to be there when he spoke to North so
Speaker 1: they wouldn't think he'd gone crazy when he told him
Speaker 1: the White House wanted their help. I get why he
Speaker 1: was concerned. When I first read Nita Renfrew's story about
Speaker 1: Katki in New York Magazine, my first question was, why
Speaker 1: on earth did anyone in the government give this random
Speaker 1: guy the time of day. It was something Katki himself
Speaker 1: wondered about in one of his interviews with Renfrew. He said,
Speaker 1: you know, there's something wrong if the government has to
Speaker 1: use us. Even so, Kaki seemed to make a consistently
Speaker 1: good impression on the government officials he came into contact with.
Speaker 1: In an article published in Newsday after the Iran Kantra
Speaker 1: affair became public, an unnamed intelligence staffer described Kaki as
Speaker 1: an idiot savant on foreign affairs. The staffer said that
Speaker 1: even though Katki had no background and no training, distantly
Speaker 1: stumbled onto interesting things.
Speaker 7: Unlike lots of other people who drifted across the stage
Speaker 7: in these investigations, everything Kevin said more or less checked out.
Speaker 1: This is Jack Blum, a lawyer who worked for the
Speaker 1: Senate Foreign Relations Committee before getting hired by then Senator
Speaker 1: John Kerry to investigate Iran contra. Blum got to know
Speaker 1: Kaki in the course of that investigation and came to
Speaker 1: rather like him.
Speaker 7: There are people who get involved in things like this
Speaker 7: who are evil. There are people who get involved in
Speaker 7: things like this where you have a sense that the
Speaker 7: motivation is ugly. None of that applies to Kevin. What
Speaker 7: you get is what you see, and that's that.
Speaker 1: Blum told me, I shouldn't be so surprised that Kaki
Speaker 1: could be useful to someone in Washington on the subject
Speaker 1: of Grenada. If you were looking for intelligence in the
Speaker 1: Caribbean in nineteen eighty three, he said, you could do
Speaker 1: a lot worse than spending time in New York.
Speaker 7: Brooklyn has any number of these expat communities from places
Speaker 7: all over the world, and frequently, if you want to
Speaker 7: know what's going on in one of these places, the
Speaker 7: best place to go is a saloon in Brooklyn where
Speaker 7: there are expats who are talking to the family back home,
Speaker 7: or we're communicating and who know, you know, this is
Speaker 7: what's happening.
Speaker 1: Blum said there was another even more important reason why
Speaker 1: foreign policy officials in the Reagan administration might have found
Speaker 1: Katki to be an appealing collaborator. His very anonymity and
Speaker 1: the fast distance separating him from the corridors of power
Speaker 1: were exactly what made him valuable.
Speaker 7: So when you have people like Katki in company, they're
Speaker 7: kind of perfect people to put to work on the
Speaker 7: project because they're motivated, they go in, they think they're
Speaker 7: doing the right thing. Yet they're not government employees, you know,
Speaker 7: they're strictly volunteers, and that makes it that was perfect
Speaker 7: because there's no attribution, no fingerprints left on whatever they do.
Speaker 1: Later, when Khaki's adventures in foreign affairs came to light
Speaker 1: amid the Iran Contra scandal, they were written about both
Speaker 1: as a comic diversion and as a tragic sign of
Speaker 1: the times. On one hand, Kaki and his crew were
Speaker 1: quote oddball operatives and a bunch of nutcases. On the
Speaker 1: other hand, they were a symptom of the Reagan administration's
Speaker 1: privatization of foreign policy. On the morning of Friday, October fourteenth,
Speaker 1: Khaki and his friends crowded around a phone and listened
Speaker 1: as Oliver North told them what he wanted them to do.
Speaker 1: It turned out the Medical School in Grenada was headquartered
Speaker 1: on Long Island. In fact, its offices were in Bayshore,
Speaker 1: the same town as the Macy's whe Kaki worked. North
Speaker 1: wanted Kaki to go over to the medical school office
Speaker 1: and ask the administrators to formally call back their students
Speaker 1: from Grenada, essentially to put it on the record that
Speaker 1: an evacuation was needed. Kaki wasted no time before showing
Speaker 1: up with one of his friends at the Saint George's
Speaker 1: office and requesting a meeting with the school's chancellor, Charles Modica.
Speaker 1: Here is how Modica remembers it.
Speaker 10: Two visitors came into the US headquarters of the school
Speaker 10: and ended up speaking with our attorney and professed to
Speaker 10: be involved with the United States government. But it never
Speaker 10: got to the level where I even wanted to meet them.
Speaker 10: We thought there was something fishy about the whole thing, frankly.
Speaker 1: And so Kaki and his friend were turned away. They
Speaker 1: had failed to complete their first mission for Oliver North,
Speaker 1: but that did not stop North from coming back to
Speaker 1: them with another task. When the situation in Grenada took
Speaker 1: a turn for the worse.
Speaker 8: This is NBC Mikey News, reported by Tom.
Speaker 6: Brokaw Good Evening. There's been a brutal and body coup
Speaker 6: on the time any Caribbean island of Grenada.
Speaker 1: On October nineteenth, six days after the Grenadian Prime minister
Speaker 1: was put under house arrest, he was executed by a
Speaker 1: firing squad along with several members of his cabinet. Then
Speaker 1: the leader of the coup announced the twenty four hour curfew,
Speaker 1: warning that anyone who was caught violating it would be
Speaker 1: shot on site.
Speaker 11: Grenada has shut down its airport to all visitors.
Speaker 6: Military troops are patrolling the streets with orders to shoot
Speaker 6: to kill.
Speaker 1: The violence was a turning point in the crisis. It
Speaker 1: convinced Reagan administration officials once and for all that the
Speaker 1: American medical students had to be evacuated or else they
Speaker 1: really might be taken hostage by the communists. And while
Speaker 1: it's hard to assess how much danger the students were
Speaker 1: actually in, they could hear gunshots outside their windows, and
Speaker 1: the feeling inside the compound where they were staying was
Speaker 1: tense and fearful. Here again is Jeff Geller.
Speaker 9: You know, as a progression, First you like, what's going on?
Speaker 9: Everyone's worried. You know, you're again, you're in a foreign country.
Speaker 9: I have no idea. You can't call up Joe down
Speaker 9: the road and say, hey, what's happening. You know, there's
Speaker 9: not twenty apps on your phone telling us in news
Speaker 9: every five seconds like we have now. And you get
Speaker 9: progressively worried. First you hear the shots, and then you're
Speaker 9: quarantined in your area, and initially you can speak on
Speaker 9: the phone. Then all of a sudden you can't speak
Speaker 9: on the phone, so you completely isolated. And then you
Speaker 9: hear gunshots in the distance, and then you hear that,
Speaker 9: you know, people that you knew were being wished at
Speaker 9: the house. I not heard from that. The government was
Speaker 9: completely toppled, and we didn't feel protected at all.
Speaker 1: The day after Grenada's prime minister was killed, Constantine Mengus,
Speaker 1: all over North and other members of the NSC staff
Speaker 1: met to discuss their options. Mengus made the case for
Speaker 1: invading the island, getting the students to safety, and permanently
Speaker 1: removing Grenada's communist government. After the meeting, Mengus went to
Speaker 1: North's office. There they worked with North Secretary Vaughn Hall
Speaker 1: on a proposal to Vice President George HW. Bush, as
Speaker 1: well as the Secretary of Defense and the head of
Speaker 1: the CIA. According to Mengus's memoir, North was relieved that
Speaker 1: the invasion seemed to becoming to fruition. Mengus quotes him saying,
Speaker 1: when you showed me the plan last week, I never
Speaker 1: thought it would get this far. Maybe we'll really do
Speaker 1: something for a change. The invasion of Grenada would be
Speaker 1: the first major US military operation since the Vietnam War,
Speaker 1: and if it was successful, it would be the first
Speaker 1: instance of the US actually ousting a communist regime. As
Speaker 1: Mengus and North envisioned it, the mission would set an
Speaker 1: inspiring example for other anti communist freedom fighters throughout the
Speaker 1: Caribbean and Latin America. At least that was the plan.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back. On Saturday, October twenty second, two
Speaker 1: days after the NSC meeting about Grenada, North once again
Speaker 1: enlisted Kevin Katke in a covert operation. This time, he
Speaker 1: asked Katke to do something more substantial than just meet
Speaker 1: with the administrator of a medical school here again is
Speaker 1: Ben Bradley Jr.
Speaker 5: Another assignment that North gave Katkey was to see if
Speaker 5: he could organize a government in exile among the Grenadians
Speaker 5: living in New York, so that if and when the
Speaker 5: invasion proceeded and obviously anticipated success, a government would then
Speaker 5: be ready to step in.
Speaker 1: The idea was that Katke could call up his Grenadian associates,
Speaker 1: including the lawyer living on the boat behind his house,
Speaker 1: and have them form a political body that could swoop
Speaker 1: in once the radical leftists and Grenada were removed from power.
Speaker 2: When the US government was to get rid of a
Speaker 2: government overseas because we don't like it, you know, we
Speaker 2: get a group of exiles to declare themselves a government,
Speaker 2: you know, to sort of agree with themselves. Okay, So
Speaker 2: and so he's going to be the president or the
Speaker 2: prime minister or something, and these other three people are
Speaker 2: going to be whatever, you know, and then you fly
Speaker 2: them into the country and make a coup.
Speaker 1: Kaki gainly said he would do it, and according to Renfrew,
Speaker 1: he succeeded at gathering a group of Grenadian exiles in
Speaker 1: Brooklyn the next day, but in the end Katki once
Speaker 1: again couldn't deliver in part because he couldn't take time
Speaker 1: off from his job at Macy's.
Speaker 2: Kevin had to be at work that day, so he
Speaker 2: couldn't be there, so they couldn't agree on anything, so
Speaker 2: they didn't form the government in exile, and Kevin felt
Speaker 2: really badly because he knew that if he'd been there,
Speaker 2: he would have told him how to do it, and
Speaker 2: they would have done it.
Speaker 1: When Katki called to inform North of his latest failure,
Speaker 1: North sounded frustrated, but by this point he hit other
Speaker 1: things on his mind. Reagan had signed off on the invasion,
Speaker 1: and a fleet of ships, including an aircraft carrier, was
Speaker 1: streaming toward Grenada carrying nearly two thousand soldiers.
Speaker 3: Ten American warships are sailing toward Grenada.
Speaker 1: On board are two thousand combat marine.
Speaker 4: Ships and marines left their East coast ports earlier this week,
Speaker 4: bound for Lebanon, but were given a change of orders
Speaker 4: out of concern for the safety of the eleven hundred
Speaker 4: Americans on the island of Grenada.
Speaker 1: Operation Urgent Fury had been set in motion in total secrecy.
Speaker 1: In fact, when reporters who were hearing rumors about the
Speaker 1: invasion asked the White House spokesman about it. He passed
Speaker 1: on a comment from Deputy National Security Advisor John Poindexter,
Speaker 1: who called the idea preposterous. The ships that have been
Speaker 1: sent toward Grenada, the White House said, had no intentions
Speaker 1: to land. They were quote just swinging by in case
Speaker 1: a rescue operation to save the Americans on the island
Speaker 1: became necessary. This misdirection was paired with the total media
Speaker 1: blackout of the invasion itself, which one critic later called
Speaker 1: unprecedented in modern American history. That weekend, Oliver North once
Speaker 1: again spoke to Kevin Katke by phone. He asked his
Speaker 1: fellow anti communists to take on his most high stakes
Speaker 1: mission yet. With the American landing imminent, North wanted Katke's
Speaker 1: contact in Grenada to distract local authorities by lighting a
Speaker 1: bunch of fires. North referred to it as sky red.
Speaker 5: Sky read was a North's term for a diversion that
Speaker 5: he wanted Katki to help create. North had this idea
Speaker 5: to have operatives on the island who were secretly supporting
Speaker 5: the United States to set a series of fires in
Speaker 5: order to create chaos throughout the island, which would divert
Speaker 5: the official attention away from the beaches, where the Marines
Speaker 5: and other US soldiers started to land.
Speaker 1: The invasion was scheduled for the early morning hours of Tuesday,
Speaker 1: October twenty fifth. Constantine Mengus worked late the night before.
Speaker 1: On his way out, he stopped by room two oh
Speaker 1: eight of the old Executive Office building, where he and
Speaker 1: North had spent a very long week planning for the invasion.
Speaker 1: According to his memoir, Mengus found North asleep on the couch,
Speaker 1: and before heading home, he covered him with an overcoat. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: Kaki got in touch with a Grenadian autoworker in Brooklyn
Speaker 1: who had a lot of contacts on the island. Kaki
Speaker 1: told him about North's idea for sky red, and the
Speaker 1: guy seemed confident that he could make it happen. But
Speaker 1: the next morning, as helicopters carrying American troops flew over Grenada,
Speaker 1: the sky was not red. No one had set any fires.
Speaker 11: The invasion started before dawn this morning.
Speaker 4: About one thousand, nine hundred US Army rangers and Marines
Speaker 4: this morning assaulted the small island. Our paratroopers have fanned
Speaker 4: out and are now in Saint George's, the capitol, and
Speaker 4: other commune views around Saint George's and the Port Selinas airport.
Speaker 1: How the invade of Grenada went depends on what you emphasize.
Speaker 1: On the one hand, the Americans made relatively quick work
Speaker 1: of the communist resistance, setting the stage for elections to
Speaker 1: be held about a year later. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: the operation was marred by abysmal intelligence. According to a
Speaker 1: Miami Herald reporter who was able to make it onto
Speaker 1: the island despite the media blackout, a Marine platoon leader
Speaker 1: asked him during the first hours of the invasion whose
Speaker 1: side the Grenadian army was on. Later, there were reports
Speaker 1: that the mapping agency the Department of Defense, had not
Speaker 1: been asked to provide maps of the island until the
Speaker 1: absolute last minute, which meant that some troopers arrived carrying
Speaker 1: photocopies of maps intended for tourists. In the end, the
Speaker 1: invasion cost nineteen American soldiers their lives. It also resulted
Speaker 1: in the accidental bombing of a Grenadian mental hospital that
Speaker 1: left eighteen civilians dead.
Speaker 4: The U. S.
Speaker 1: Army did succeed in getting the American medical students off
Speaker 1: the island. Here's Jeff Geller again.
Speaker 9: You know, you get a bang on the door, opened
Speaker 9: up the US rangers. You know, We're like, what, we
Speaker 9: couldn't believe it, you know, And they basically got us
Speaker 9: back into the election halls and got us all together
Speaker 9: and woke everyone up. They were treating the wounded in
Speaker 9: our library, you know, So they converted the library into
Speaker 9: a little medic area, you know, and they took over
Speaker 9: the place basically, And we're very, very very happy by that.
Speaker 11: Thirty five minutes from now, by our clock, the first
Speaker 11: planeloads of Americans who have chosen to leave Grenada are
Speaker 11: expected to arrive in Charleston, South Carolina.
Speaker 1: When Geller's plane landed on the tarmac, he and several
Speaker 1: other students got on their knees and kissed the ground
Speaker 1: in an apparent show of gratitude for being back on
Speaker 1: American soil.
Speaker 11: There's somebody kneeling down and kissing the ground. A number
Speaker 11: have done that as they begin to get on buses
Speaker 11: to go and be debriefed, in part by the State
Speaker 11: Department before they make their way to their homes.
Speaker 1: Later, Oliver North regaled the group of Reagan aids with
Speaker 1: the dramatic story of the students rescue, specifically about how
Speaker 1: he had been nervous the students would get off the
Speaker 1: plane and say something damaging to the press about how
Speaker 1: the invasion had been unnecessary. But North said when he
Speaker 1: dropped by the White House living quarters to bring his
Speaker 1: concerns to Reagan, the President wasn't worried.
Speaker 5: Reagan flipped on the television and there was live coverage
Speaker 5: of the students landing, and the first kid got off
Speaker 5: the plane and kissed the ground. Reagan looked at that
Speaker 5: and said, see all, he was nothing to worry about.
Speaker 5: You have to trust the Americans.
Speaker 1: As Bradley discovered, there was just one problem with this story.
Speaker 5: President Reagan's press secretary told me that North never set foot,
Speaker 5: never set foot in the private White House residence, and
Speaker 5: that the story was bullshit. It never happened.
Speaker 1: There's one other funny thing about that moment when the
Speaker 1: students kissed the ground. Jeff Geller told me that at
Speaker 1: least his performance on the tarmac had been partly tongue
Speaker 1: in cheek. For him, the gesture was about sixty percent
Speaker 1: spontane expression of patriotism in about forty percent the punchline
Speaker 1: to a joke that he and the other students had
Speaker 1: started making while in lockdown. Gallows humor.
Speaker 9: Basically, the joke for the whole time was, you know,
Speaker 9: if I ever get off this rock, I'm going to
Speaker 9: kiss the guy named ground.
Speaker 1: If it was a joke, no one watching on TV
Speaker 1: could tell. The Grenada invasion was a huge political victory
Speaker 1: for the Reagan administration. A Washington Post ABC News poll
Speaker 1: in early November of nineteen eighty three found that seventy
Speaker 1: one percent of respondents approved of Operation Urgent Fury, sixty
Speaker 1: three percent approved of Reagan's overall job performance, his best
Speaker 1: rating since his first year in office. In their book
Speaker 1: about the Reagan Years, Landslide, journalists Jane Mayer and Doyle
Speaker 1: McManus described the invasion as a metaphor for nothing less
Speaker 1: than the country's willingness to overcome the paralysis that had
Speaker 1: followed the Vietnam War. Oliver North embodied that willingness later
Speaker 1: when newspapers started writing about him in the context of
Speaker 1: the Iran Contra scandal. North's role in the planning of
Speaker 1: the Grenada invasion was typically listed as his first major
Speaker 1: contribution to Reagan's foreign policy agenda. Here again is Senate
Speaker 1: Investigator Jack Blum.
Speaker 7: When he actually persuades people to get in line and
Speaker 7: they're doing the Grenada invasion. He's the hero of the day,
Speaker 7: and that puts him in position to be the guy
Speaker 7: is Shays And this is what I think we ought
Speaker 7: to do next. And that's where the sun began.
Speaker 1: Kevin Katki and his friends came out ahead too, despite
Speaker 1: their repeated failure to carry out the missions Oliver North
Speaker 1: assigned them. North didn't seem to hold it against them.
Speaker 1: A week after the Grenada invasion, he invited the gang
Speaker 1: to Washington and thanked them personally for their efforts.
Speaker 2: And Kevin, from that point he thought that North was
Speaker 2: his hero. He thought that North was lily white, that
Speaker 2: he was a complete idealist, and that he wanted to
Speaker 2: help the world and so on. And I think North
Speaker 2: was what Kevin would have wanted to be.
Speaker 1: I've been trying to put my finger on what I
Speaker 1: find so ominous about the story of Kevin katke falling
Speaker 1: in with Oliver North. There's something about it that just
Speaker 1: feels wrong, like it's not how the government is supposed
Speaker 1: to work. Ben Bradley's theory is just that Katki had
Speaker 1: something the White House didn't.
Speaker 5: In some ways, he seemed to be the only game
Speaker 5: in town. He was down on the CIA North and
Speaker 5: didn't think that they really had any reliable, on the
Speaker 5: ground intelligence of what was happening in Grenada. So I
Speaker 5: think it was a question of Katki filling a vacuum,
Speaker 5: as North saw it, so therefore he came to be
Speaker 5: reliant on him.
Speaker 1: Jack Blum put it slightly differently.
Speaker 7: I think it was a time when lots of deranged
Speaker 7: things for happening inside of the US government. I think
Speaker 7: it was a time when people who came into the administration,
Speaker 7: the Reagan administration believed that the world was their toy
Speaker 7: and you could do anything as long as it was
Speaker 7: all covert. Navy communists, you could go play. And I
Speaker 7: think there were people who, you know, like that idea
Speaker 7: and ran with it.
Speaker 1: Iran Contra is a story about running with it. It's
Speaker 1: a complicated story that spans the globe, and if you've
Speaker 1: gotten through life not knowing exactly what it was all about,
Speaker 1: or what the Iran part has to do with the contrapart,
Speaker 1: or what the contrapart even refers to, you're not alone.
Speaker 1: Compared to Watergate or the Clinton Lewinsky affair, Iran Contra
Speaker 1: is a relatively obscure scandal most people just don't have
Speaker 1: a firm grasp on what happened, and there aren't that
Speaker 1: many big iconic moments associated with it. In this season
Speaker 1: of Fiasco, we're going to take a shot at rectifying that.
Speaker 1: Over eight episodes, we're going to look back at the
Speaker 1: tangled narrative of Iran Contra, and in addition to reconstructing
Speaker 1: in a straight line what exactly happened and why, we're
Speaker 1: also going to try to figure out why this scandal
Speaker 1: failed to leave a bigger mark on American culture. Why
Speaker 1: did a story propelled by so many audacious decisions and
Speaker 1: tied into a knot by so many high stakes lies
Speaker 1: end up being so easy to forget. It's a good
Speaker 1: time to remember it. Whether you support the current administration
Speaker 1: or not. It has shown Americans in dramatic fashion that
Speaker 1: the government, at the end of the day is really
Speaker 1: just a bunch of people. The fact that they've been
Speaker 1: temporarily put in charge of institutions that are much bigger
Speaker 1: than them doesn't change that. If anything, it reinforces the
Speaker 1: need to understand them as individuals, men and women who
Speaker 1: act on their obsessions, their ambitions, and their delusions. The
Speaker 1: story of Kevin Katki and his friends in this context
Speaker 1: feels to me like a parable in which all the
Speaker 1: themes of the Iran Contra scandal were on full display.
Speaker 1: The use of non governmental actors to carry out government policy,
Speaker 1: the secrecy, the improvisation, the logistical gambles undertaken in the
Speaker 1: name of sincere but possibly misguided ideologies. I should add,
Speaker 1: by the way, that I tried really hard to get
Speaker 1: in touch with Kevin Katki. I called, I emailed, I
Speaker 1: couldn't find him, and when I reached people who knew him,
Speaker 1: they declined to help me get to him. The best
Speaker 1: I got was a former neighbor who told me Katki
Speaker 1: once encouraged him to google his name. There are quite
Speaker 1: a few search results. Kaki remained very much in the
Speaker 1: mix after Grenada, and he continued cultivating relationships with people
Speaker 1: he thought could help the US eradicate communism. Heading into
Speaker 1: Reagan's second term, that meant raising money for the Untra
Speaker 1: revolutionaries in Nicaragua, the right wing fighting force known as
Speaker 1: the Contras. So when Katki and his friends met a
Speaker 1: wealthy Saudi prince who said he wanted to donate fourteen
Speaker 1: million dollars to the Contra cause, Katki was over the moon.
Speaker 2: You know. The guy was wearing these robes and he
Speaker 2: had a ring with a lot of diamonds that he
Speaker 2: described as being like his royal ring, and he started
Speaker 2: taking them to dinner all the time, and he wanted
Speaker 2: to give money to the Contras, and of course North
Speaker 2: was running that operation.
Speaker 1: When Katki told North about the prince, North was apparently
Speaker 1: so excited that he discussed the prospective donation with Ronald
Speaker 1: Reagan himself. But the donation never came. It turned out
Speaker 1: that Katki's prince was a con man. He wasn't a
Speaker 1: prince at all. He wasn't even from Saudi Arabia, and
Speaker 1: he didn't have fourteen million dollars for the Contras, and
Speaker 1: that meant Oliver North would have to find the money
Speaker 1: somewhere else. On the next episode of Fiasco, the Iran
Speaker 1: Part of the Iran Contract, How and Why Ronald Reagan authorized
Speaker 1: a plan to secretly provide weapons to one of America's
Speaker 1: greatest enemies.
Speaker 4: I reminded him again that look, this may not work,
Speaker 4: and he said, well, we don't know until we try.
Speaker 1: For a list of books, articles and documentaries we used
Speaker 1: in our research, follow the link in the show notes.
Speaker 1: Fiasco is a production of Prolog Projects and it's distributed
Speaker 1: by Pushkin Industries. Shows produced by Andrew Parsons, Madelin kaplan
Speaker 1: Ula Culpa and me Leon Mayfack. Our editor was Camilla Hammer.
Speaker 1: Our researcher was Francis Carr. Additional archival research from Caitlin Nicholas.
Speaker 1: Our music is by Nick Silvester. Our theme song is
Speaker 1: by Spatial Relations. Our artwork is by Teddy Blanks at
Speaker 1: Chips and y Audio, mixed by Rob Buyers, Michael Rayphiel
Speaker 1: and Johnny Vince Evans. Copyright council provided by Peter Yassi
Speaker 1: at Yass Butler Plc. Thanks to Jody Averergan Terry Baker,
Speaker 1: Chris Barube, Nina Ernest, Stephen Fisher, Emily Gaddock, Alice Gregory,
Speaker 1: Ellen Horn, Kelly Jones, Latiff Nasser, Mike Pesca, Bruce Wallace,
Speaker 1: as well as Sam Graham Felson and Sirea Shackley. Special
Speaker 1: thanks to Luminary and thank you for listening.