April 7, 2025 • 41 mins
How a crew of amateur spies from Long Island helped the Reagan administration set the stage for Iran-Contra.
For a list of books, documentaries and resources we used to research this episode visit: bit.ly/fiascopolitics
Subscribe to Pushkin+ to hear the entire season of Fiasco: Iran Contra, ad-free, right now. Find Pushkin+ on the Fiasco show page in Apple Podcasts or at Pushkin.fm.
Subscribe on Apple: apple.co/pushkin
Subscribe on Pushkin: pushkin.fm/plus
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Pushkin quick housekeeping notice. Before we get to the episode,
I want to let you know that you can binge
the entire season of Fiasco Iran Contra right now ad
free by becoming a Pushkin Plus subscriber. Sign up for
Pushkin Plus on the Fiasco Apple podcast show page or
visit Pushkin dot fm slash Plus Now onto the show.
(00:47):
On October thirteenth, nineteen eighty three, a Long Island dad
named Kevin Katke spent his day at work dealing with bullshit.
Katki was a maintenance engineer at a Macy's department store
in Bayshore, a down on its luck hamlet, about an
hour and a half east of New York City. Kaki
came home exhausted from a series of disasters at the store. First,
(01:09):
the escal had broken down, Then someone poured a vat
of grease down a drain, which caused the pipes to
back up all over the building. Then the elevator stopped working.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
He was really tired, in a terrible mood when he
got home and his wife was making a racket in
the kitchen.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
This is Nita Renfrew, a former journalist who got to
know Kevin Katke while reporting on the Iran Contra scandal.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
He said it was the worst day he'd ever had
at Macy's.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
As Renfrew later wrote in a story for New York Magazine,
Kaki walked into his house that night to find his
wife mad at him for being late for dinner and
his ten year old daughter doing her homework in front
of the TV. Then a little after seven point thirty,
the phone rang. On the line was Katkei's other life.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
And all of a sudden he got this phone call
from the White House.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
The person calling from the White House was a career
CIA officer who had recently joined the staff of Ronald
Reagan's National Security Council.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
And he says to Kevin, I'm turning you over to
Colonel North, and he gives him North's number, and he
says call him in the morning. He's waiting to hear
from you.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
Colonel North was waiting to hear from him. Now, if
you know anything about Iran Contra, it's probably the name
Oliver North. But back in October of nineteen eighty three,
North was not yet the star witness in an international scandal.
He was not yet a poster child for unencumbered American patriotism.
(02:35):
He was just an obscure figure in the White House bureaucracy.
Neither Kevin Katkey nor anyone else had ever heard of him. Still,
Katkey was excited at the prospect of making himself useful
to someone so high up in the government. He had
been trying to make himself useful in this way for years.
As documented in Nita Renfrew's New York Magazine story, as
(02:56):
well as pieces in Newsday and Mother Jones, Katkey was
the leader of a kind of homegrown anti communist club.
It was him and three friends, a stockbroker, a building inspector,
and a carpenter, all from the same part art of
Long Island. They weren't vigilantes exactly, and they weren't quite spies.
They were more like intelligence gathering volunteers. They traveled abroad,
(03:20):
they made contacts with people who gave them information about
foreign governments, and they tried to get important people in
Washington to listen to their findings.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
They were like a troop of boy scouts, you know,
they were out there. They wanted to have an adventure
and do positive things while they were doing it. You know,
that's what boy scouts do.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
Oliver North would later tell Iran Kantra investigators that Kevin
Katki was a right wing ideologue and compared him to
a rogue CIA agent. I doubt Kaki would have taken
it as an insult. He was a self professed patriot,
an enthusiastic foot soldier America's Cold War with the Soviet Union.
When Nita Renfrew interviewed him, Kaki told her that if
(04:00):
there was ever anything he could do to set the
Soviets Backupeg, he would do it no matter what.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
He believed that Communism needed to be defeated in the world,
and that we had pulled out of Vietnam and when
we should have won the war. He felt that the
government needed a lot of help, that we as citizens
of the country needed to help the government.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
Kevin Khaki and Oliver North, his new contact at the
National Security Council, had a lot of that in common.
North had been an unwavering believer in the Vietnam War
since his days at the US Naval Academy in the
late nineteen sixties.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
Each man who wears the Academy ring embarks upon a splendid,
worthwhile career in the highest traditions of the United States Navy.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
He had looked forward to deployment, and when he was
injured in a car accident during his first year, he
worried that it would delay his graduation and cause him
to miss the war entirely. During his recovery, North was
so focused on getting better in time that, according to
a neighbor, he took to jumping off the roof of
a garage over and over again in an effort to
strengthen his legs.
Speaker 4 (05:07):
In the war, today, American B fifty two bombers dropped
tons of expose he was on dense jungles near at Cambodia.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
North ended up fighting in Vietnam for about a year.
While overseas, he wrote letters home to his parents expressing
his frustration with Washington lawmakers who were unwilling to fully
get behind the war. Most of all, he wrote, I
wish the politicians would get off their fat, soft posteriors
and come through with something one way or the other
to clear this mess up.
Speaker 5 (05:34):
I think that reflects a frustration comment among military guys
with Congress or the administration for tying their hands in battle.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
That's journalist Ben Bradley Jr. He's the author of Guts
and Glory, The Rise and Fall of Oliver North, which
was published in nineteen eighty eight, two years after North
became a household name as a result of the Iran
Contra scandal.
Speaker 5 (06:01):
And you know, these guys would typically feel, you know, shit,
if they could just unleash us, we'd have this thing
wrapped up sooner rather than later.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
The Vietnam War dragged on for years after North returned home. Finally,
after losing nearly sixty thousand men, the United States pulled
out its troops in nineteen seventy three.
Speaker 5 (06:22):
In Saigon.
Speaker 3 (06:23):
Today, the last of the American troops got on airplanes
and flew out of Vietnam and in the longest military
involvement in the country's history.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
As far as North was concerned, the politicians who had
ordered an end to the war had committed a grave sin,
both against American forces, who had been prevented from fulfilling
their mission, and against the soldiers in South Vietnam who
had been counting on the US and their struggle against communism.
The politicians had caved to pressure from an uninformed public.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
They raised their voices, their placards, and they march against
the government.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
As North later put it, America lost the war in Washington,
not in Vietnam. When North went to work for President
Ronald Reagan teen eighty one, he carried with him a
single minded resolve to never let his country abandon its
values again. And though he was part of the government now,
he was not going to be precious about accepting help
(07:21):
from like minded outsiders. It was that openness to collaboration,
not just with department store engineers, but with arms dealers, mercenaries,
and shady international fixers that would later drive North and
the rest of the Reagan White House headlong into Iran Contra.
But first North needed to talk to Kevin katke He
(07:42):
wanted his help overthrowing a communist regime. I'm Leon Nafak
from prologued Projects and Pushkin Industries. This is fiasco Iran Contra,
the story of a secret war, a secret deal, and
a scandal that threatened to destroy Ronald Reagan's presidency until
(08:04):
it didn't.
Speaker 6 (08:06):
Washington's Still in Shock Bill, the secret diversion of funds
to the country.
Speaker 4 (08:10):
To shuffer about secret sales of missiles to.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
Iran, questions of illegality and cover up. I do not
use the word cover up I would use the word protect.
They were lying to the press, they were lying to
the public. They lied incessantly to each other.
Speaker 3 (08:23):
They did it out of loyalty and anti communism.
Speaker 4 (08:26):
That's why the government of the United States gave me
a shredder.
Speaker 7 (08:29):
How could the president have no.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
Episode one?
Speaker 5 (08:35):
Get me?
Speaker 1 (08:35):
Kevin Katki, the first tremor of the Iran contra affair,
in which Oliver North and a gang of amateur spies
helped the Reagan administration turn the page on Vietnam. We'll
be right back. Kevin Katke's wandering path into Oliver North's
(08:59):
orbit began in the early nineteen seventies when an eccentric
neighbor clocked him as a fellow anti communist and started
bending his year about the political situation in Jamaica, which
at the time was governed by a socialist prime minister.
Katke's neighbor said he knew some right wing dissidents who
were trying to overthrow the left wing government. Maybe Katki
(09:20):
wanted to help. Here again, is Nita Renfrew.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
Kevin was very charismatic, so he could get people to
do things that nobody else could get them to do.
You know, It's like he could walk into places and
you know, it's like he just had an air about
him that he was in charge.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
Katkei was intrigued by the Jamaica opportunity. He started taking
time off from work so that he could make regular
trips to the island with his neighbor. They hung out
on the beach, developed relationships with dissidents, and gathered intel. Eventually,
Jamaica elected a right wing prime minister and no longer
needed Katkei's help, but spending time on the island had
(09:59):
activated him politically. When Iran was taken over in nineteen
seventy nine by religious extremists who professed to hate America,
Katki went to Wall Street and sold t shirts that
said Iran Sucks. He spent the money organizing an anti
Iran rally on Long Island. Then, in nineteen eighty one,
Katki turned his attention to the tiny Caribbean nation of Grenada.
Speaker 8 (10:23):
Grenada, Carriacoup and Patimmartinique make up a small country in
the Caribbean Sea.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
Grenada had a population of about one hundred thousand people.
Since nineteen seventy nine, it had been run by a
political party of young Marxist revolutionaries.
Speaker 8 (10:38):
They took control of their lives and their future through
a revolution on March thirteenth, nineteen seventy nine, for the
first revolution in the English speaking Caribbean.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
Despite its small size, Grenada was a top concern for
the Reagan administration. They were aware that the Marxists who
ruled the island had sought the help of Fidel Castro,
the communist leader of Cuba. Together, they were building an
ambitious new airport in Grenada. The theory in the White
House was that this airport would be used as base
(11:10):
for Soviet reconnaissance plans. To Reagan, Grenada was part of
a Red triangle that included Cuba to the north and
Nicaragua to the west. In March of nineteen eighty three,
Reagan gave a televised address from the White House advocating
for an expansion of the defense budget. In making his case,
he emphasized the emerging communist threat in the Western Hemisphere.
Speaker 3 (11:33):
On the small island of Grenada, at the southern end
of the Caribbean Shine, the Cubans, with Soviet financing and backing,
are in the process of building an airfield with a
ten thousand foot runway. Grenada doesn't even have an air force.
Who is it intended for.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
By the time Reagan gave that speech, Kevin Kaki was
already in contact with several Grenadian dissidents who had emigrated
to New York. Among them was a lawyer who'd worked
for the Grenadian government before the revolution in seventy nine.
The lawyer told Kaki that he wanted to get the
Marxist and Grenada out of power, and Katki, along with
his neighbor and two of their friends from town, decided
(12:10):
to help him in his quest. Together, they created a
think tank style organization that they christened the Grenadian Movement
for Freedom and Democracy. Kaki also let the lawyer live
in a boat docked behind his house.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
And they went and they bought clothes at strift shops
for him so he'd have some nice suits and ties
and so on, and then they would drive him and
other people down to Washington to talk to the Congress
and so on.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
It was during one of these trips to Washington that
Kaki met the man who would later call him at
home at the end it was very bad day at Macy's,
and put him in touch with Oliver North. His name
was Constantine.
Speaker 7 (12:48):
Mengus.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
He was an ideal audience for a group of guys
advocating for the overthrow of the left wing government in Grenada.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
Constantine Mengus was he was an idealist, very much like
Kevin was, you know, like Kevin. I mean, he believed
the communism was taking over and that they had to
combat this for the good of those people.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
The night Mangus called kat Key and connected him with
Oliver North. The White House was keeping an especially watchful
eye on Grenada.
Speaker 6 (13:18):
There's a real power struggle going on tonight in the
tiny island country of Grenada and the Caribbean.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
It appeared that a radical faction of the Grenadian government
had staged a military coup in the capital city of
Saint George. These radicals seemed to be closely aligned with
the Soviet Union, and they had placed Grenada's Prime minister,
who was comparatively moderate, under house arrest.
Speaker 4 (13:38):
Diplomatic sources warned that the situation in Grenada is still
confused and uncertain. They say it's still not clear exactly
who will emerge as the new prime minister of Grenada.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
The coup in Grenada touched off a series of meetings
within the National Security Council. You've almost certainly heard of
the NSC, but it's worth stopping to provide a bit
of background on it because it ended up becoming the
central staging ground for the Irankantra affair. Basically, the NSC
was created after World War II as an arm of
the Executive Branch that advised the president on foreign policy.
(14:10):
Its members included the head of the CIA, the Secretary
of State, and the Secretary of Defense. It also included
the National Security Advisor, who oversaw a staff that worked
specifically for the National Security Council. For the most fervent
anti communists on the NSC staff, like Constantine, Mengus and
Oliver North, the coup and Grenada required immediate attention. If
(14:31):
the radical leftists who had started the coup were allowed
to take over, it would only be a matter of
time before Moscow started using Grenada as a base for
its planes and nuclear submarines. But first there was a
more immediate problem to deal with. Grenada was home to
about a thousand American citizens, the majority of whom were
students enrolled at the Saint George's University School of Medicine.
Speaker 4 (14:54):
There is concern for some one thousand Americans already there.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
It seemed possible that amid the chaos, the Communists would
take the medical student's hostage.
Speaker 4 (15:02):
Medical students like Jonathan Beck, whose mother has not been
able to reach him by telephone, I have.
Speaker 7 (15:08):
Known now as exactly of what it going on, and
I'm quite apprehensive.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
Jeff Geller, who had enrolled at Saint George's after getting
waitlisted at med schools in the US, remembers the first
indication that a military coup was underway.
Speaker 9 (15:21):
One day, we're anatomy class, in fact, we're having an
anatomy exam, and the exam finishes, and we're all ready
to go back to the dorms and the bus doesn't come.
To wait a while, and they announced it's going to
be a little late. They don't tell us what's going on.
Finally the bus does come and we're head back to the
dorms and the tank comes by us, and another tank
(15:42):
and another tank and another tank, and we're all going
towards Saint George's, the capital.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
The tanks cut through the lush tropical paradise where Geller
had just started school a few weeks earlier.
Speaker 9 (15:54):
We were ordinary college students and so you know, seeing
a tank up close, you know, not in the parade
and not you know, as a museum exhibit was very
different for us. You know, we could barely fit the
bus and the tank on the road. These are very
small country roads there, just earthed.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
It was against this backdrop that Kevin Katke got the
phone call from NSC staffer Constantine Mengus. Mengus had been
working with Oliver North on a plan to intervene in
Grenada ever since the Prime Minister's ouster a few days earlier.
Mengus and North had two goals. One get the medical
students home, and two turned the crisis into an opportunity
(16:36):
by restoring democracy in Grenada. Mengus thought Katke and his
contacts within the Grenadian exile community could be of some use,
and he wanted Katke to call North the following morning
in order to receive his marching orders. Nita Renfrew describes
this as the moment Katki had been waiting for.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
Well. He was elated that he was being taken seriously,
that he could really help the government now because he
had all the Grenadian contacts, the White House didn't have them.
He felt, you know that what he had been doing,
was was bearing fruit. You know that somebody had listened
to him, you know, after they'd been working so hard.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
After the conversation with Mengus, Katki called his friends and
told him to come over the following morning. He wanted
them to be there when he spoke to North so
they wouldn't think he'd gone crazy when he told him
the White House wanted their help. I get why he
was concerned. When I first read Nita Renfrew's story about
Katki in New York Magazine, my first question was, why
on earth did anyone in the government give this random
(17:38):
guy the time of day. It was something Katki himself
wondered about in one of his interviews with Renfrew. He said,
you know, there's something wrong if the government has to
use us. Even so, Kaki seemed to make a consistently
good impression on the government officials he came into contact with.
In an article published in Newsday after the Iran Kantra
affair became public, an unnamed intelligence staffer described Kaki as
(18:02):
an idiot savant on foreign affairs. The staffer said that
even though Katki had no background and no training, distantly
stumbled onto interesting things.
Speaker 7 (18:13):
Unlike lots of other people who drifted across the stage
in these investigations, everything Kevin said more or less checked out.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
This is Jack Blum, a lawyer who worked for the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee before getting hired by then Senator
John Kerry to investigate Iran contra. Blum got to know
Kaki in the course of that investigation and came to
rather like him.
Speaker 7 (18:37):
There are people who get involved in things like this
who are evil. There are people who get involved in
things like this where you have a sense that the
motivation is ugly. None of that applies to Kevin. What
you get is what you see, and that's that.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
Blum told me, I shouldn't be so surprised that Kaki
could be useful to someone in Washington on the subject
of Grenada. If you were looking for intelligence in the
Caribbean in nineteen eighty three, he said, you could do
a lot worse than spending time in New York.
Speaker 7 (19:10):
Brooklyn has any number of these expat communities from places
all over the world, and frequently, if you want to
know what's going on in one of these places, the
best place to go is a saloon in Brooklyn where
there are expats who are talking to the family back home,
or we're communicating and who know, you know, this is
(19:33):
what's happening.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
Blum said there was another even more important reason why
foreign policy officials in the Reagan administration might have found
Katki to be an appealing collaborator. His very anonymity and
the fast distance separating him from the corridors of power
were exactly what made him valuable.
Speaker 7 (19:50):
So when you have people like Katki in company, they're
kind of perfect people to put to work on the
project because they're motivated, they go in, they think they're
doing the right thing. Yet they're not government employees, you know,
they're strictly volunteers, and that makes it that was perfect
(20:11):
because there's no attribution, no fingerprints left on whatever they do.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
Later, when Khaki's adventures in foreign affairs came to light
amid the Iran Contra scandal, they were written about both
as a comic diversion and as a tragic sign of
the times. On one hand, Kaki and his crew were
quote oddball operatives and a bunch of nutcases. On the
other hand, they were a symptom of the Reagan administration's
privatization of foreign policy. On the morning of Friday, October fourteenth,
(20:47):
Khaki and his friends crowded around a phone and listened
as Oliver North told them what he wanted them to do.
It turned out the Medical School in Grenada was headquartered
on Long Island. In fact, its offices were in Bayshore,
the same town as the Macy's whe Kaki worked. North
wanted Kaki to go over to the medical school office
and ask the administrators to formally call back their students
(21:11):
from Grenada, essentially to put it on the record that
an evacuation was needed. Kaki wasted no time before showing
up with one of his friends at the Saint George's
office and requesting a meeting with the school's chancellor, Charles Modica.
Here is how Modica remembers it.
Speaker 10 (21:27):
Two visitors came into the US headquarters of the school
and ended up speaking with our attorney and professed to
be involved with the United States government. But it never
got to the level where I even wanted to meet them.
We thought there was something fishy about the whole thing, frankly.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
And so Kaki and his friend were turned away. They
had failed to complete their first mission for Oliver North,
but that did not stop North from coming back to
them with another task. When the situation in Grenada took
a turn for the worse.
Speaker 8 (22:01):
This is NBC Mikey News, reported by Tom.
Speaker 6 (22:04):
Brokaw Good Evening. There's been a brutal and body coup
on the time any Caribbean island of Grenada.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
On October nineteenth, six days after the Grenadian Prime minister
was put under house arrest, he was executed by a
firing squad along with several members of his cabinet. Then
the leader of the coup announced the twenty four hour curfew,
warning that anyone who was caught violating it would be
shot on site.
Speaker 11 (22:29):
Grenada has shut down its airport to all visitors.
Speaker 6 (22:32):
Military troops are patrolling the streets with orders to shoot
to kill.
Speaker 1 (22:42):
The violence was a turning point in the crisis. It
convinced Reagan administration officials once and for all that the
American medical students had to be evacuated or else they
really might be taken hostage by the communists. And while
it's hard to assess how much danger the students were
actually in, they could hear gunshots outside their windows, and
the feeling inside the compound where they were staying was
(23:04):
tense and fearful. Here again is Jeff Geller.
Speaker 9 (23:08):
You know, as a progression, First you like, what's going on?
Everyone's worried. You know, you're again, you're in a foreign country.
I have no idea. You can't call up Joe down
the road and say, hey, what's happening. You know, there's
not twenty apps on your phone telling us in news
every five seconds like we have now. And you get
progressively worried. First you hear the shots, and then you're
quarantined in your area, and initially you can speak on
(23:29):
the phone. Then all of a sudden you can't speak
on the phone, so you completely isolated. And then you
hear gunshots in the distance, and then you hear that,
you know, people that you knew were being wished at
the house. I not heard from that. The government was
completely toppled, and we didn't feel protected at all.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
The day after Grenada's prime minister was killed, Constantine Mengus,
all over North and other members of the NSC staff
met to discuss their options. Mengus made the case for
invading the island, getting the students to safety, and permanently
removing Grenada's communist government. After the meeting, Mengus went to
North's office. There they worked with North Secretary Vaughn Hall
(24:08):
on a proposal to Vice President George HW. Bush, as
well as the Secretary of Defense and the head of
the CIA. According to Mengus's memoir, North was relieved that
the invasion seemed to becoming to fruition. Mengus quotes him saying,
when you showed me the plan last week, I never
thought it would get this far. Maybe we'll really do
something for a change. The invasion of Grenada would be
(24:31):
the first major US military operation since the Vietnam War,
and if it was successful, it would be the first
instance of the US actually ousting a communist regime. As
Mengus and North envisioned it, the mission would set an
inspiring example for other anti communist freedom fighters throughout the
Caribbean and Latin America. At least that was the plan.
(24:56):
We'll be right back. On Saturday, October twenty second, two
days after the NSC meeting about Grenada, North once again
enlisted Kevin Katke in a covert operation. This time, he
asked Katke to do something more substantial than just meet
(25:18):
with the administrator of a medical school here again is
Ben Bradley Jr.
Speaker 5 (25:24):
Another assignment that North gave Katkey was to see if
he could organize a government in exile among the Grenadians
living in New York, so that if and when the
invasion proceeded and obviously anticipated success, a government would then
(25:48):
be ready to step in.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
The idea was that Katke could call up his Grenadian associates,
including the lawyer living on the boat behind his house,
and have them form a political body that could swoop
in once the radical leftists and Grenada were removed from power.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
When the US government was to get rid of a
government overseas because we don't like it, you know, we
get a group of exiles to declare themselves a government,
you know, to sort of agree with themselves. Okay, So
and so he's going to be the president or the
prime minister or something, and these other three people are
going to be whatever, you know, and then you fly
(26:23):
them into the country and make a coup.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
Kaki gainly said he would do it, and according to Renfrew,
he succeeded at gathering a group of Grenadian exiles in
Brooklyn the next day, but in the end Katki once
again couldn't deliver in part because he couldn't take time
off from his job at Macy's.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
Kevin had to be at work that day, so he
couldn't be there, so they couldn't agree on anything, so
they didn't form the government in exile, and Kevin felt
really badly because he knew that if he'd been there,
he would have told him how to do it, and
they would have done it.
Speaker 1 (26:58):
When Katki called to inform North of his latest failure,
North sounded frustrated, but by this point he hit other
things on his mind. Reagan had signed off on the invasion,
and a fleet of ships, including an aircraft carrier, was
streaming toward Grenada carrying nearly two thousand soldiers.
Speaker 3 (27:16):
Ten American warships are sailing toward Grenada.
Speaker 1 (27:18):
On board are two thousand combat marine.
Speaker 4 (27:21):
Ships and marines left their East coast ports earlier this week,
bound for Lebanon, but were given a change of orders
out of concern for the safety of the eleven hundred
Americans on the island of Grenada.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
Operation Urgent Fury had been set in motion in total secrecy.
In fact, when reporters who were hearing rumors about the
invasion asked the White House spokesman about it. He passed
on a comment from Deputy National Security Advisor John Poindexter,
who called the idea preposterous. The ships that have been
sent toward Grenada, the White House said, had no intentions
(27:51):
to land. They were quote just swinging by in case
a rescue operation to save the Americans on the island
became necessary. This misdirection was paired with the total media
blackout of the invasion itself, which one critic later called
unprecedented in modern American history. That weekend, Oliver North once
again spoke to Kevin Katke by phone. He asked his
(28:15):
fellow anti communists to take on his most high stakes
mission yet. With the American landing imminent, North wanted Katke's
contact in Grenada to distract local authorities by lighting a
bunch of fires. North referred to it as sky red.
Speaker 5 (28:31):
Sky read was a North's term for a diversion that
he wanted Katki to help create. North had this idea
to have operatives on the island who were secretly supporting
the United States to set a series of fires in
(28:52):
order to create chaos throughout the island, which would divert
the official attention away from the beaches, where the Marines
and other US soldiers started to land.
Speaker 1 (29:06):
The invasion was scheduled for the early morning hours of Tuesday,
October twenty fifth. Constantine Mengus worked late the night before.
On his way out, he stopped by room two oh
eight of the old Executive Office building, where he and
North had spent a very long week planning for the invasion.
According to his memoir, Mengus found North asleep on the couch,
(29:27):
and before heading home, he covered him with an overcoat. Meanwhile,
Kaki got in touch with a Grenadian autoworker in Brooklyn
who had a lot of contacts on the island. Kaki
told him about North's idea for sky red, and the
guy seemed confident that he could make it happen. But
the next morning, as helicopters carrying American troops flew over Grenada,
(29:50):
the sky was not red. No one had set any fires.
Speaker 11 (29:54):
The invasion started before dawn this morning.
Speaker 4 (29:56):
About one thousand, nine hundred US Army rangers and Marines
this morning assaulted the small island. Our paratroopers have fanned
out and are now in Saint George's, the capitol, and
other commune views around Saint George's and the Port Selinas airport.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
How the invade of Grenada went depends on what you emphasize.
On the one hand, the Americans made relatively quick work
of the communist resistance, setting the stage for elections to
be held about a year later. On the other hand,
the operation was marred by abysmal intelligence. According to a
Miami Herald reporter who was able to make it onto
the island despite the media blackout, a Marine platoon leader
(30:32):
asked him during the first hours of the invasion whose
side the Grenadian army was on. Later, there were reports
that the mapping agency the Department of Defense, had not
been asked to provide maps of the island until the
absolute last minute, which meant that some troopers arrived carrying
photocopies of maps intended for tourists. In the end, the
invasion cost nineteen American soldiers their lives. It also resulted
(30:56):
in the accidental bombing of a Grenadian mental hospital that
left eighteen civilians dead.
Speaker 4 (31:02):
The U. S.
Speaker 1 (31:02):
Army did succeed in getting the American medical students off
the island. Here's Jeff Geller again.
Speaker 9 (31:07):
You know, you get a bang on the door, opened
up the US rangers. You know, We're like, what, we
couldn't believe it, you know, And they basically got us
back into the election halls and got us all together
and woke everyone up. They were treating the wounded in
our library, you know, So they converted the library into
a little medic area, you know, and they took over
(31:28):
the place basically, And we're very, very very happy by that.
Speaker 11 (31:32):
Thirty five minutes from now, by our clock, the first
planeloads of Americans who have chosen to leave Grenada are
expected to arrive in Charleston, South Carolina.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
When Geller's plane landed on the tarmac, he and several
other students got on their knees and kissed the ground
in an apparent show of gratitude for being back on
American soil.
Speaker 11 (31:50):
There's somebody kneeling down and kissing the ground. A number
have done that as they begin to get on buses
to go and be debriefed, in part by the State
Department before they make their way to their homes.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
Later, Oliver North regaled the group of Reagan aids with
the dramatic story of the students rescue, specifically about how
he had been nervous the students would get off the
plane and say something damaging to the press about how
the invasion had been unnecessary. But North said when he
dropped by the White House living quarters to bring his
concerns to Reagan, the President wasn't worried.
Speaker 5 (32:21):
Reagan flipped on the television and there was live coverage
of the students landing, and the first kid got off
the plane and kissed the ground. Reagan looked at that
and said, see all, he was nothing to worry about.
You have to trust the Americans.
Speaker 1 (32:39):
As Bradley discovered, there was just one problem with this story.
Speaker 5 (32:43):
President Reagan's press secretary told me that North never set foot,
never set foot in the private White House residence, and
that the story was bullshit. It never happened.
Speaker 1 (32:56):
There's one other funny thing about that moment when the
students kissed the ground. Jeff Geller told me that at
least his performance on the tarmac had been partly tongue
in cheek. For him, the gesture was about sixty percent
spontane expression of patriotism in about forty percent the punchline
to a joke that he and the other students had
started making while in lockdown. Gallows humor.
Speaker 9 (33:18):
Basically, the joke for the whole time was, you know,
if I ever get off this rock, I'm going to
kiss the guy named ground.
Speaker 1 (33:25):
If it was a joke, no one watching on TV
could tell. The Grenada invasion was a huge political victory
for the Reagan administration. A Washington Post ABC News poll
in early November of nineteen eighty three found that seventy
one percent of respondents approved of Operation Urgent Fury, sixty
(33:49):
three percent approved of Reagan's overall job performance, his best
rating since his first year in office. In their book
about the Reagan Years, Landslide, journalists Jane Mayer and Doyle
McManus described the invasion as a metaphor for nothing less
than the country's willingness to overcome the paralysis that had
followed the Vietnam War. Oliver North embodied that willingness later
(34:13):
when newspapers started writing about him in the context of
the Iran Contra scandal. North's role in the planning of
the Grenada invasion was typically listed as his first major
contribution to Reagan's foreign policy agenda. Here again is Senate
Investigator Jack Blum.
Speaker 7 (34:29):
When he actually persuades people to get in line and
they're doing the Grenada invasion. He's the hero of the day,
and that puts him in position to be the guy
is Shays And this is what I think we ought
to do next. And that's where the sun began.
Speaker 1 (34:46):
Kevin Katki and his friends came out ahead too, despite
their repeated failure to carry out the missions Oliver North
assigned them. North didn't seem to hold it against them.
A week after the Grenada invasion, he invited the gang
to Washington and thanked them personally for their efforts.
Speaker 2 (35:01):
And Kevin, from that point he thought that North was
his hero. He thought that North was lily white, that
he was a complete idealist, and that he wanted to
help the world and so on. And I think North
was what Kevin would have wanted to be.
Speaker 1 (35:19):
I've been trying to put my finger on what I
find so ominous about the story of Kevin katke falling
in with Oliver North. There's something about it that just
feels wrong, like it's not how the government is supposed
to work. Ben Bradley's theory is just that Katki had
something the White House didn't.
Speaker 5 (35:36):
In some ways, he seemed to be the only game
in town. He was down on the CIA North and
didn't think that they really had any reliable, on the
ground intelligence of what was happening in Grenada. So I
think it was a question of Katki filling a vacuum,
(35:57):
as North saw it, so therefore he came to be
reliant on him.
Speaker 1 (36:03):
Jack Blum put it slightly differently.
Speaker 7 (36:06):
I think it was a time when lots of deranged
things for happening inside of the US government. I think
it was a time when people who came into the administration,
the Reagan administration believed that the world was their toy
(36:26):
and you could do anything as long as it was
all covert. Navy communists, you could go play. And I
think there were people who, you know, like that idea
and ran with it.
Speaker 1 (36:42):
Iran Contra is a story about running with it. It's
a complicated story that spans the globe, and if you've
gotten through life not knowing exactly what it was all about,
or what the Iran part has to do with the contrapart,
or what the contrapart even refers to, you're not alone.
Compared to Watergate or the Clinton Lewinsky affair, Iran Contra
is a relatively obscure scandal most people just don't have
(37:05):
a firm grasp on what happened, and there aren't that
many big iconic moments associated with it. In this season
of Fiasco, we're going to take a shot at rectifying that.
Over eight episodes, we're going to look back at the
tangled narrative of Iran Contra, and in addition to reconstructing
in a straight line what exactly happened and why, we're
(37:26):
also going to try to figure out why this scandal
failed to leave a bigger mark on American culture. Why
did a story propelled by so many audacious decisions and
tied into a knot by so many high stakes lies
end up being so easy to forget. It's a good
time to remember it. Whether you support the current administration
(37:48):
or not. It has shown Americans in dramatic fashion that
the government, at the end of the day is really
just a bunch of people. The fact that they've been
temporarily put in charge of institutions that are much bigger
than them doesn't change that. If anything, it reinforces the
need to understand them as individuals, men and women who
act on their obsessions, their ambitions, and their delusions. The
(38:11):
story of Kevin Katki and his friends in this context
feels to me like a parable in which all the
themes of the Iran Contra scandal were on full display.
The use of non governmental actors to carry out government policy,
the secrecy, the improvisation, the logistical gambles undertaken in the
name of sincere but possibly misguided ideologies. I should add,
(38:34):
by the way, that I tried really hard to get
in touch with Kevin Katki. I called, I emailed, I
couldn't find him, and when I reached people who knew him,
they declined to help me get to him. The best
I got was a former neighbor who told me Katki
once encouraged him to google his name. There are quite
a few search results. Kaki remained very much in the
mix after Grenada, and he continued cultivating relationships with people
(38:57):
he thought could help the US eradicate communism. Heading into
Reagan's second term, that meant raising money for the Untra
revolutionaries in Nicaragua, the right wing fighting force known as
the Contras. So when Katki and his friends met a
(39:19):
wealthy Saudi prince who said he wanted to donate fourteen
million dollars to the Contra cause, Katki was over the moon.
Speaker 2 (39:27):
You know. The guy was wearing these robes and he
had a ring with a lot of diamonds that he
described as being like his royal ring, and he started
taking them to dinner all the time, and he wanted
to give money to the Contras, and of course North
was running that operation.
Speaker 1 (39:45):
When Katki told North about the prince, North was apparently
so excited that he discussed the prospective donation with Ronald
Reagan himself. But the donation never came. It turned out
that Katki's prince was a con man. He wasn't a
prince at all. He wasn't even from Saudi Arabia, and
he didn't have fourteen million dollars for the Contras, and
(40:08):
that meant Oliver North would have to find the money
somewhere else. On the next episode of Fiasco, the Iran
Part of the Iran Contract, How and Why Ronald Reagan authorized
a plan to secretly provide weapons to one of America's
(40:29):
greatest enemies.
Speaker 4 (40:31):
I reminded him again that look, this may not work,
and he said, well, we don't know until we try.
Speaker 1 (40:41):
For a list of books, articles and documentaries we used
in our research, follow the link in the show notes.
Fiasco is a production of Prolog Projects and it's distributed
by Pushkin Industries. Shows produced by Andrew Parsons, Madelin kaplan
Ula Culpa and me Leon Mayfack. Our editor was Camilla Hammer.
Our researcher was Francis Carr. Additional archival research from Caitlin Nicholas.
(41:06):
Our music is by Nick Silvester. Our theme song is
by Spatial Relations. Our artwork is by Teddy Blanks at
Chips and y Audio, mixed by Rob Buyers, Michael Rayphiel
and Johnny Vince Evans. Copyright council provided by Peter Yassi
at Yass Butler Plc. Thanks to Jody Averergan Terry Baker,
Chris Barube, Nina Ernest, Stephen Fisher, Emily Gaddock, Alice Gregory,
(41:29):
Ellen Horn, Kelly Jones, Latiff Nasser, Mike Pesca, Bruce Wallace,
as well as Sam Graham Felson and Sirea Shackley. Special
thanks to Luminary and thank you for listening.
Pushkin quick housekeeping notice. Before we get to the episode,
I want to let you know that you can binge
the entire season of Fiasco Iran Contra right now ad
free by becoming a Pushkin Plus subscriber. Sign up for
Pushkin Plus on the Fiasco Apple podcast show page or
visit Pushkin dot fm slash Plus Now onto the show.
(00:47):
On October thirteenth, nineteen eighty three, a Long Island dad
named Kevin Katke spent his day at work dealing with bullshit.
Katki was a maintenance engineer at a Macy's department store
in Bayshore, a down on its luck hamlet, about an
hour and a half east of New York City. Kaki
came home exhausted from a series of disasters at the store. First,
(01:09):
the escal had broken down, Then someone poured a vat
of grease down a drain, which caused the pipes to
back up all over the building. Then the elevator stopped working.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
He was really tired, in a terrible mood when he
got home and his wife was making a racket in
the kitchen.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
This is Nita Renfrew, a former journalist who got to
know Kevin Katke while reporting on the Iran Contra scandal.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
He said it was the worst day he'd ever had
at Macy's.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
As Renfrew later wrote in a story for New York Magazine,
Kaki walked into his house that night to find his
wife mad at him for being late for dinner and
his ten year old daughter doing her homework in front
of the TV. Then a little after seven point thirty,
the phone rang. On the line was Katkei's other life.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
And all of a sudden he got this phone call
from the White House.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
The person calling from the White House was a career
CIA officer who had recently joined the staff of Ronald
Reagan's National Security Council.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
And he says to Kevin, I'm turning you over to
Colonel North, and he gives him North's number, and he
says call him in the morning. He's waiting to hear
from you.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
Colonel North was waiting to hear from him. Now, if
you know anything about Iran Contra, it's probably the name
Oliver North. But back in October of nineteen eighty three,
North was not yet the star witness in an international scandal.
He was not yet a poster child for unencumbered American patriotism.
(02:35):
He was just an obscure figure in the White House bureaucracy.
Neither Kevin Katkey nor anyone else had ever heard of him. Still,
Katkey was excited at the prospect of making himself useful
to someone so high up in the government. He had
been trying to make himself useful in this way for years.
As documented in Nita Renfrew's New York Magazine story, as
(02:56):
well as pieces in Newsday and Mother Jones, Katkey was
the leader of a kind of homegrown anti communist club.
It was him and three friends, a stockbroker, a building inspector,
and a carpenter, all from the same part art of
Long Island. They weren't vigilantes exactly, and they weren't quite spies.
They were more like intelligence gathering volunteers. They traveled abroad,
(03:20):
they made contacts with people who gave them information about
foreign governments, and they tried to get important people in
Washington to listen to their findings.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
They were like a troop of boy scouts, you know,
they were out there. They wanted to have an adventure
and do positive things while they were doing it. You know,
that's what boy scouts do.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
Oliver North would later tell Iran Kantra investigators that Kevin
Katki was a right wing ideologue and compared him to
a rogue CIA agent. I doubt Kaki would have taken
it as an insult. He was a self professed patriot,
an enthusiastic foot soldier America's Cold War with the Soviet Union.
When Nita Renfrew interviewed him, Kaki told her that if
(04:00):
there was ever anything he could do to set the
Soviets Backupeg, he would do it no matter what.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
He believed that Communism needed to be defeated in the world,
and that we had pulled out of Vietnam and when
we should have won the war. He felt that the
government needed a lot of help, that we as citizens
of the country needed to help the government.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
Kevin Khaki and Oliver North, his new contact at the
National Security Council, had a lot of that in common.
North had been an unwavering believer in the Vietnam War
since his days at the US Naval Academy in the
late nineteen sixties.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
Each man who wears the Academy ring embarks upon a splendid,
worthwhile career in the highest traditions of the United States Navy.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
He had looked forward to deployment, and when he was
injured in a car accident during his first year, he
worried that it would delay his graduation and cause him
to miss the war entirely. During his recovery, North was
so focused on getting better in time that, according to
a neighbor, he took to jumping off the roof of
a garage over and over again in an effort to
strengthen his legs.
Speaker 4 (05:07):
In the war, today, American B fifty two bombers dropped
tons of expose he was on dense jungles near at Cambodia.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
North ended up fighting in Vietnam for about a year.
While overseas, he wrote letters home to his parents expressing
his frustration with Washington lawmakers who were unwilling to fully
get behind the war. Most of all, he wrote, I
wish the politicians would get off their fat, soft posteriors
and come through with something one way or the other
to clear this mess up.
Speaker 5 (05:34):
I think that reflects a frustration comment among military guys
with Congress or the administration for tying their hands in battle.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
That's journalist Ben Bradley Jr. He's the author of Guts
and Glory, The Rise and Fall of Oliver North, which
was published in nineteen eighty eight, two years after North
became a household name as a result of the Iran
Contra scandal.
Speaker 5 (06:01):
And you know, these guys would typically feel, you know, shit,
if they could just unleash us, we'd have this thing
wrapped up sooner rather than later.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
The Vietnam War dragged on for years after North returned home. Finally,
after losing nearly sixty thousand men, the United States pulled
out its troops in nineteen seventy three.
Speaker 5 (06:22):
In Saigon.
Speaker 3 (06:23):
Today, the last of the American troops got on airplanes
and flew out of Vietnam and in the longest military
involvement in the country's history.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
As far as North was concerned, the politicians who had
ordered an end to the war had committed a grave sin,
both against American forces, who had been prevented from fulfilling
their mission, and against the soldiers in South Vietnam who
had been counting on the US and their struggle against communism.
The politicians had caved to pressure from an uninformed public.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
They raised their voices, their placards, and they march against
the government.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
As North later put it, America lost the war in Washington,
not in Vietnam. When North went to work for President
Ronald Reagan teen eighty one, he carried with him a
single minded resolve to never let his country abandon its
values again. And though he was part of the government now,
he was not going to be precious about accepting help
(07:21):
from like minded outsiders. It was that openness to collaboration,
not just with department store engineers, but with arms dealers, mercenaries,
and shady international fixers that would later drive North and
the rest of the Reagan White House headlong into Iran Contra.
But first North needed to talk to Kevin katke He
(07:42):
wanted his help overthrowing a communist regime. I'm Leon Nafak
from prologued Projects and Pushkin Industries. This is fiasco Iran Contra,
the story of a secret war, a secret deal, and
a scandal that threatened to destroy Ronald Reagan's presidency until
(08:04):
it didn't.
Speaker 6 (08:06):
Washington's Still in Shock Bill, the secret diversion of funds
to the country.
Speaker 4 (08:10):
To shuffer about secret sales of missiles to.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
Iran, questions of illegality and cover up. I do not
use the word cover up I would use the word protect.
They were lying to the press, they were lying to
the public. They lied incessantly to each other.
Speaker 3 (08:23):
They did it out of loyalty and anti communism.
Speaker 4 (08:26):
That's why the government of the United States gave me
a shredder.
Speaker 7 (08:29):
How could the president have no.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
Episode one?
Speaker 5 (08:35):
Get me?
Speaker 1 (08:35):
Kevin Katki, the first tremor of the Iran contra affair,
in which Oliver North and a gang of amateur spies
helped the Reagan administration turn the page on Vietnam. We'll
be right back. Kevin Katke's wandering path into Oliver North's
(08:59):
orbit began in the early nineteen seventies when an eccentric
neighbor clocked him as a fellow anti communist and started
bending his year about the political situation in Jamaica, which
at the time was governed by a socialist prime minister.
Katke's neighbor said he knew some right wing dissidents who
were trying to overthrow the left wing government. Maybe Katki
(09:20):
wanted to help. Here again, is Nita Renfrew.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
Kevin was very charismatic, so he could get people to
do things that nobody else could get them to do.
You know, It's like he could walk into places and
you know, it's like he just had an air about
him that he was in charge.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
Katkei was intrigued by the Jamaica opportunity. He started taking
time off from work so that he could make regular
trips to the island with his neighbor. They hung out
on the beach, developed relationships with dissidents, and gathered intel. Eventually,
Jamaica elected a right wing prime minister and no longer
needed Katkei's help, but spending time on the island had
(09:59):
activated him politically. When Iran was taken over in nineteen
seventy nine by religious extremists who professed to hate America,
Katki went to Wall Street and sold t shirts that
said Iran Sucks. He spent the money organizing an anti
Iran rally on Long Island. Then, in nineteen eighty one,
Katki turned his attention to the tiny Caribbean nation of Grenada.
Speaker 8 (10:23):
Grenada, Carriacoup and Patimmartinique make up a small country in
the Caribbean Sea.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
Grenada had a population of about one hundred thousand people.
Since nineteen seventy nine, it had been run by a
political party of young Marxist revolutionaries.
Speaker 8 (10:38):
They took control of their lives and their future through
a revolution on March thirteenth, nineteen seventy nine, for the
first revolution in the English speaking Caribbean.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
Despite its small size, Grenada was a top concern for
the Reagan administration. They were aware that the Marxists who
ruled the island had sought the help of Fidel Castro,
the communist leader of Cuba. Together, they were building an
ambitious new airport in Grenada. The theory in the White
House was that this airport would be used as base
(11:10):
for Soviet reconnaissance plans. To Reagan, Grenada was part of
a Red triangle that included Cuba to the north and
Nicaragua to the west. In March of nineteen eighty three,
Reagan gave a televised address from the White House advocating
for an expansion of the defense budget. In making his case,
he emphasized the emerging communist threat in the Western Hemisphere.
Speaker 3 (11:33):
On the small island of Grenada, at the southern end
of the Caribbean Shine, the Cubans, with Soviet financing and backing,
are in the process of building an airfield with a
ten thousand foot runway. Grenada doesn't even have an air force.
Who is it intended for.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
By the time Reagan gave that speech, Kevin Kaki was
already in contact with several Grenadian dissidents who had emigrated
to New York. Among them was a lawyer who'd worked
for the Grenadian government before the revolution in seventy nine.
The lawyer told Kaki that he wanted to get the
Marxist and Grenada out of power, and Katki, along with
his neighbor and two of their friends from town, decided
(12:10):
to help him in his quest. Together, they created a
think tank style organization that they christened the Grenadian Movement
for Freedom and Democracy. Kaki also let the lawyer live
in a boat docked behind his house.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
And they went and they bought clothes at strift shops
for him so he'd have some nice suits and ties
and so on, and then they would drive him and
other people down to Washington to talk to the Congress
and so on.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
It was during one of these trips to Washington that
Kaki met the man who would later call him at
home at the end it was very bad day at Macy's,
and put him in touch with Oliver North. His name
was Constantine.
Speaker 7 (12:48):
Mengus.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
He was an ideal audience for a group of guys
advocating for the overthrow of the left wing government in Grenada.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
Constantine Mengus was he was an idealist, very much like
Kevin was, you know, like Kevin. I mean, he believed
the communism was taking over and that they had to
combat this for the good of those people.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
The night Mangus called kat Key and connected him with
Oliver North. The White House was keeping an especially watchful
eye on Grenada.
Speaker 6 (13:18):
There's a real power struggle going on tonight in the
tiny island country of Grenada and the Caribbean.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
It appeared that a radical faction of the Grenadian government
had staged a military coup in the capital city of
Saint George. These radicals seemed to be closely aligned with
the Soviet Union, and they had placed Grenada's Prime minister,
who was comparatively moderate, under house arrest.
Speaker 4 (13:38):
Diplomatic sources warned that the situation in Grenada is still
confused and uncertain. They say it's still not clear exactly
who will emerge as the new prime minister of Grenada.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
The coup in Grenada touched off a series of meetings
within the National Security Council. You've almost certainly heard of
the NSC, but it's worth stopping to provide a bit
of background on it because it ended up becoming the
central staging ground for the Irankantra affair. Basically, the NSC
was created after World War II as an arm of
the Executive Branch that advised the president on foreign policy.
(14:10):
Its members included the head of the CIA, the Secretary
of State, and the Secretary of Defense. It also included
the National Security Advisor, who oversaw a staff that worked
specifically for the National Security Council. For the most fervent
anti communists on the NSC staff, like Constantine, Mengus and
Oliver North, the coup and Grenada required immediate attention. If
(14:31):
the radical leftists who had started the coup were allowed
to take over, it would only be a matter of
time before Moscow started using Grenada as a base for
its planes and nuclear submarines. But first there was a
more immediate problem to deal with. Grenada was home to
about a thousand American citizens, the majority of whom were
students enrolled at the Saint George's University School of Medicine.
Speaker 4 (14:54):
There is concern for some one thousand Americans already there.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
It seemed possible that amid the chaos, the Communists would
take the medical student's hostage.
Speaker 4 (15:02):
Medical students like Jonathan Beck, whose mother has not been
able to reach him by telephone, I have.
Speaker 7 (15:08):
Known now as exactly of what it going on, and
I'm quite apprehensive.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
Jeff Geller, who had enrolled at Saint George's after getting
waitlisted at med schools in the US, remembers the first
indication that a military coup was underway.
Speaker 9 (15:21):
One day, we're anatomy class, in fact, we're having an
anatomy exam, and the exam finishes, and we're all ready
to go back to the dorms and the bus doesn't come.
To wait a while, and they announced it's going to
be a little late. They don't tell us what's going on.
Finally the bus does come and we're head back to the
dorms and the tank comes by us, and another tank
(15:42):
and another tank and another tank, and we're all going
towards Saint George's, the capital.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
The tanks cut through the lush tropical paradise where Geller
had just started school a few weeks earlier.
Speaker 9 (15:54):
We were ordinary college students and so you know, seeing
a tank up close, you know, not in the parade
and not you know, as a museum exhibit was very
different for us. You know, we could barely fit the
bus and the tank on the road. These are very
small country roads there, just earthed.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
It was against this backdrop that Kevin Katke got the
phone call from NSC staffer Constantine Mengus. Mengus had been
working with Oliver North on a plan to intervene in
Grenada ever since the Prime Minister's ouster a few days earlier.
Mengus and North had two goals. One get the medical
students home, and two turned the crisis into an opportunity
(16:36):
by restoring democracy in Grenada. Mengus thought Katke and his
contacts within the Grenadian exile community could be of some use,
and he wanted Katke to call North the following morning
in order to receive his marching orders. Nita Renfrew describes
this as the moment Katki had been waiting for.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
Well. He was elated that he was being taken seriously,
that he could really help the government now because he
had all the Grenadian contacts, the White House didn't have them.
He felt, you know that what he had been doing,
was was bearing fruit. You know that somebody had listened
to him, you know, after they'd been working so hard.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
After the conversation with Mengus, Katki called his friends and
told him to come over the following morning. He wanted
them to be there when he spoke to North so
they wouldn't think he'd gone crazy when he told him
the White House wanted their help. I get why he
was concerned. When I first read Nita Renfrew's story about
Katki in New York Magazine, my first question was, why
on earth did anyone in the government give this random
(17:38):
guy the time of day. It was something Katki himself
wondered about in one of his interviews with Renfrew. He said,
you know, there's something wrong if the government has to
use us. Even so, Kaki seemed to make a consistently
good impression on the government officials he came into contact with.
In an article published in Newsday after the Iran Kantra
affair became public, an unnamed intelligence staffer described Kaki as
(18:02):
an idiot savant on foreign affairs. The staffer said that
even though Katki had no background and no training, distantly
stumbled onto interesting things.
Speaker 7 (18:13):
Unlike lots of other people who drifted across the stage
in these investigations, everything Kevin said more or less checked out.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
This is Jack Blum, a lawyer who worked for the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee before getting hired by then Senator
John Kerry to investigate Iran contra. Blum got to know
Kaki in the course of that investigation and came to
rather like him.
Speaker 7 (18:37):
There are people who get involved in things like this
who are evil. There are people who get involved in
things like this where you have a sense that the
motivation is ugly. None of that applies to Kevin. What
you get is what you see, and that's that.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
Blum told me, I shouldn't be so surprised that Kaki
could be useful to someone in Washington on the subject
of Grenada. If you were looking for intelligence in the
Caribbean in nineteen eighty three, he said, you could do
a lot worse than spending time in New York.
Speaker 7 (19:10):
Brooklyn has any number of these expat communities from places
all over the world, and frequently, if you want to
know what's going on in one of these places, the
best place to go is a saloon in Brooklyn where
there are expats who are talking to the family back home,
or we're communicating and who know, you know, this is
(19:33):
what's happening.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
Blum said there was another even more important reason why
foreign policy officials in the Reagan administration might have found
Katki to be an appealing collaborator. His very anonymity and
the fast distance separating him from the corridors of power
were exactly what made him valuable.
Speaker 7 (19:50):
So when you have people like Katki in company, they're
kind of perfect people to put to work on the
project because they're motivated, they go in, they think they're
doing the right thing. Yet they're not government employees, you know,
they're strictly volunteers, and that makes it that was perfect
(20:11):
because there's no attribution, no fingerprints left on whatever they do.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
Later, when Khaki's adventures in foreign affairs came to light
amid the Iran Contra scandal, they were written about both
as a comic diversion and as a tragic sign of
the times. On one hand, Kaki and his crew were
quote oddball operatives and a bunch of nutcases. On the
other hand, they were a symptom of the Reagan administration's
privatization of foreign policy. On the morning of Friday, October fourteenth,
(20:47):
Khaki and his friends crowded around a phone and listened
as Oliver North told them what he wanted them to do.
It turned out the Medical School in Grenada was headquartered
on Long Island. In fact, its offices were in Bayshore,
the same town as the Macy's whe Kaki worked. North
wanted Kaki to go over to the medical school office
and ask the administrators to formally call back their students
(21:11):
from Grenada, essentially to put it on the record that
an evacuation was needed. Kaki wasted no time before showing
up with one of his friends at the Saint George's
office and requesting a meeting with the school's chancellor, Charles Modica.
Here is how Modica remembers it.
Speaker 10 (21:27):
Two visitors came into the US headquarters of the school
and ended up speaking with our attorney and professed to
be involved with the United States government. But it never
got to the level where I even wanted to meet them.
We thought there was something fishy about the whole thing, frankly.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
And so Kaki and his friend were turned away. They
had failed to complete their first mission for Oliver North,
but that did not stop North from coming back to
them with another task. When the situation in Grenada took
a turn for the worse.
Speaker 8 (22:01):
This is NBC Mikey News, reported by Tom.
Speaker 6 (22:04):
Brokaw Good Evening. There's been a brutal and body coup
on the time any Caribbean island of Grenada.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
On October nineteenth, six days after the Grenadian Prime minister
was put under house arrest, he was executed by a
firing squad along with several members of his cabinet. Then
the leader of the coup announced the twenty four hour curfew,
warning that anyone who was caught violating it would be
shot on site.
Speaker 11 (22:29):
Grenada has shut down its airport to all visitors.
Speaker 6 (22:32):
Military troops are patrolling the streets with orders to shoot
to kill.
Speaker 1 (22:42):
The violence was a turning point in the crisis. It
convinced Reagan administration officials once and for all that the
American medical students had to be evacuated or else they
really might be taken hostage by the communists. And while
it's hard to assess how much danger the students were
actually in, they could hear gunshots outside their windows, and
the feeling inside the compound where they were staying was
(23:04):
tense and fearful. Here again is Jeff Geller.
Speaker 9 (23:08):
You know, as a progression, First you like, what's going on?
Everyone's worried. You know, you're again, you're in a foreign country.
I have no idea. You can't call up Joe down
the road and say, hey, what's happening. You know, there's
not twenty apps on your phone telling us in news
every five seconds like we have now. And you get
progressively worried. First you hear the shots, and then you're
quarantined in your area, and initially you can speak on
(23:29):
the phone. Then all of a sudden you can't speak
on the phone, so you completely isolated. And then you
hear gunshots in the distance, and then you hear that,
you know, people that you knew were being wished at
the house. I not heard from that. The government was
completely toppled, and we didn't feel protected at all.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
The day after Grenada's prime minister was killed, Constantine Mengus,
all over North and other members of the NSC staff
met to discuss their options. Mengus made the case for
invading the island, getting the students to safety, and permanently
removing Grenada's communist government. After the meeting, Mengus went to
North's office. There they worked with North Secretary Vaughn Hall
(24:08):
on a proposal to Vice President George HW. Bush, as
well as the Secretary of Defense and the head of
the CIA. According to Mengus's memoir, North was relieved that
the invasion seemed to becoming to fruition. Mengus quotes him saying,
when you showed me the plan last week, I never
thought it would get this far. Maybe we'll really do
something for a change. The invasion of Grenada would be
(24:31):
the first major US military operation since the Vietnam War,
and if it was successful, it would be the first
instance of the US actually ousting a communist regime. As
Mengus and North envisioned it, the mission would set an
inspiring example for other anti communist freedom fighters throughout the
Caribbean and Latin America. At least that was the plan.
(24:56):
We'll be right back. On Saturday, October twenty second, two
days after the NSC meeting about Grenada, North once again
enlisted Kevin Katke in a covert operation. This time, he
asked Katke to do something more substantial than just meet
(25:18):
with the administrator of a medical school here again is
Ben Bradley Jr.
Speaker 5 (25:24):
Another assignment that North gave Katkey was to see if
he could organize a government in exile among the Grenadians
living in New York, so that if and when the
invasion proceeded and obviously anticipated success, a government would then
(25:48):
be ready to step in.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
The idea was that Katke could call up his Grenadian associates,
including the lawyer living on the boat behind his house,
and have them form a political body that could swoop
in once the radical leftists and Grenada were removed from power.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
When the US government was to get rid of a
government overseas because we don't like it, you know, we
get a group of exiles to declare themselves a government,
you know, to sort of agree with themselves. Okay, So
and so he's going to be the president or the
prime minister or something, and these other three people are
going to be whatever, you know, and then you fly
(26:23):
them into the country and make a coup.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
Kaki gainly said he would do it, and according to Renfrew,
he succeeded at gathering a group of Grenadian exiles in
Brooklyn the next day, but in the end Katki once
again couldn't deliver in part because he couldn't take time
off from his job at Macy's.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
Kevin had to be at work that day, so he
couldn't be there, so they couldn't agree on anything, so
they didn't form the government in exile, and Kevin felt
really badly because he knew that if he'd been there,
he would have told him how to do it, and
they would have done it.
Speaker 1 (26:58):
When Katki called to inform North of his latest failure,
North sounded frustrated, but by this point he hit other
things on his mind. Reagan had signed off on the invasion,
and a fleet of ships, including an aircraft carrier, was
streaming toward Grenada carrying nearly two thousand soldiers.
Speaker 3 (27:16):
Ten American warships are sailing toward Grenada.
Speaker 1 (27:18):
On board are two thousand combat marine.
Speaker 4 (27:21):
Ships and marines left their East coast ports earlier this week,
bound for Lebanon, but were given a change of orders
out of concern for the safety of the eleven hundred
Americans on the island of Grenada.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
Operation Urgent Fury had been set in motion in total secrecy.
In fact, when reporters who were hearing rumors about the
invasion asked the White House spokesman about it. He passed
on a comment from Deputy National Security Advisor John Poindexter,
who called the idea preposterous. The ships that have been
sent toward Grenada, the White House said, had no intentions
(27:51):
to land. They were quote just swinging by in case
a rescue operation to save the Americans on the island
became necessary. This misdirection was paired with the total media
blackout of the invasion itself, which one critic later called
unprecedented in modern American history. That weekend, Oliver North once
again spoke to Kevin Katke by phone. He asked his
(28:15):
fellow anti communists to take on his most high stakes
mission yet. With the American landing imminent, North wanted Katke's
contact in Grenada to distract local authorities by lighting a
bunch of fires. North referred to it as sky red.
Speaker 5 (28:31):
Sky read was a North's term for a diversion that
he wanted Katki to help create. North had this idea
to have operatives on the island who were secretly supporting
the United States to set a series of fires in
(28:52):
order to create chaos throughout the island, which would divert
the official attention away from the beaches, where the Marines
and other US soldiers started to land.
Speaker 1 (29:06):
The invasion was scheduled for the early morning hours of Tuesday,
October twenty fifth. Constantine Mengus worked late the night before.
On his way out, he stopped by room two oh
eight of the old Executive Office building, where he and
North had spent a very long week planning for the invasion.
According to his memoir, Mengus found North asleep on the couch,
(29:27):
and before heading home, he covered him with an overcoat. Meanwhile,
Kaki got in touch with a Grenadian autoworker in Brooklyn
who had a lot of contacts on the island. Kaki
told him about North's idea for sky red, and the
guy seemed confident that he could make it happen. But
the next morning, as helicopters carrying American troops flew over Grenada,
(29:50):
the sky was not red. No one had set any fires.
Speaker 11 (29:54):
The invasion started before dawn this morning.
Speaker 4 (29:56):
About one thousand, nine hundred US Army rangers and Marines
this morning assaulted the small island. Our paratroopers have fanned
out and are now in Saint George's, the capitol, and
other commune views around Saint George's and the Port Selinas airport.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
How the invade of Grenada went depends on what you emphasize.
On the one hand, the Americans made relatively quick work
of the communist resistance, setting the stage for elections to
be held about a year later. On the other hand,
the operation was marred by abysmal intelligence. According to a
Miami Herald reporter who was able to make it onto
the island despite the media blackout, a Marine platoon leader
(30:32):
asked him during the first hours of the invasion whose
side the Grenadian army was on. Later, there were reports
that the mapping agency the Department of Defense, had not
been asked to provide maps of the island until the
absolute last minute, which meant that some troopers arrived carrying
photocopies of maps intended for tourists. In the end, the
invasion cost nineteen American soldiers their lives. It also resulted
(30:56):
in the accidental bombing of a Grenadian mental hospital that
left eighteen civilians dead.
Speaker 4 (31:02):
The U. S.
Speaker 1 (31:02):
Army did succeed in getting the American medical students off
the island. Here's Jeff Geller again.
Speaker 9 (31:07):
You know, you get a bang on the door, opened
up the US rangers. You know, We're like, what, we
couldn't believe it, you know, And they basically got us
back into the election halls and got us all together
and woke everyone up. They were treating the wounded in
our library, you know, So they converted the library into
a little medic area, you know, and they took over
(31:28):
the place basically, And we're very, very very happy by that.
Speaker 11 (31:32):
Thirty five minutes from now, by our clock, the first
planeloads of Americans who have chosen to leave Grenada are
expected to arrive in Charleston, South Carolina.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
When Geller's plane landed on the tarmac, he and several
other students got on their knees and kissed the ground
in an apparent show of gratitude for being back on
American soil.
Speaker 11 (31:50):
There's somebody kneeling down and kissing the ground. A number
have done that as they begin to get on buses
to go and be debriefed, in part by the State
Department before they make their way to their homes.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
Later, Oliver North regaled the group of Reagan aids with
the dramatic story of the students rescue, specifically about how
he had been nervous the students would get off the
plane and say something damaging to the press about how
the invasion had been unnecessary. But North said when he
dropped by the White House living quarters to bring his
concerns to Reagan, the President wasn't worried.
Speaker 5 (32:21):
Reagan flipped on the television and there was live coverage
of the students landing, and the first kid got off
the plane and kissed the ground. Reagan looked at that
and said, see all, he was nothing to worry about.
You have to trust the Americans.
Speaker 1 (32:39):
As Bradley discovered, there was just one problem with this story.
Speaker 5 (32:43):
President Reagan's press secretary told me that North never set foot,
never set foot in the private White House residence, and
that the story was bullshit. It never happened.
Speaker 1 (32:56):
There's one other funny thing about that moment when the
students kissed the ground. Jeff Geller told me that at
least his performance on the tarmac had been partly tongue
in cheek. For him, the gesture was about sixty percent
spontane expression of patriotism in about forty percent the punchline
to a joke that he and the other students had
started making while in lockdown. Gallows humor.
Speaker 9 (33:18):
Basically, the joke for the whole time was, you know,
if I ever get off this rock, I'm going to
kiss the guy named ground.
Speaker 1 (33:25):
If it was a joke, no one watching on TV
could tell. The Grenada invasion was a huge political victory
for the Reagan administration. A Washington Post ABC News poll
in early November of nineteen eighty three found that seventy
one percent of respondents approved of Operation Urgent Fury, sixty
(33:49):
three percent approved of Reagan's overall job performance, his best
rating since his first year in office. In their book
about the Reagan Years, Landslide, journalists Jane Mayer and Doyle
McManus described the invasion as a metaphor for nothing less
than the country's willingness to overcome the paralysis that had
followed the Vietnam War. Oliver North embodied that willingness later
(34:13):
when newspapers started writing about him in the context of
the Iran Contra scandal. North's role in the planning of
the Grenada invasion was typically listed as his first major
contribution to Reagan's foreign policy agenda. Here again is Senate
Investigator Jack Blum.
Speaker 7 (34:29):
When he actually persuades people to get in line and
they're doing the Grenada invasion. He's the hero of the day,
and that puts him in position to be the guy
is Shays And this is what I think we ought
to do next. And that's where the sun began.
Speaker 1 (34:46):
Kevin Katki and his friends came out ahead too, despite
their repeated failure to carry out the missions Oliver North
assigned them. North didn't seem to hold it against them.
A week after the Grenada invasion, he invited the gang
to Washington and thanked them personally for their efforts.
Speaker 2 (35:01):
And Kevin, from that point he thought that North was
his hero. He thought that North was lily white, that
he was a complete idealist, and that he wanted to
help the world and so on. And I think North
was what Kevin would have wanted to be.
Speaker 1 (35:19):
I've been trying to put my finger on what I
find so ominous about the story of Kevin katke falling
in with Oliver North. There's something about it that just
feels wrong, like it's not how the government is supposed
to work. Ben Bradley's theory is just that Katki had
something the White House didn't.
Speaker 5 (35:36):
In some ways, he seemed to be the only game
in town. He was down on the CIA North and
didn't think that they really had any reliable, on the
ground intelligence of what was happening in Grenada. So I
think it was a question of Katki filling a vacuum,
(35:57):
as North saw it, so therefore he came to be
reliant on him.
Speaker 1 (36:03):
Jack Blum put it slightly differently.
Speaker 7 (36:06):
I think it was a time when lots of deranged
things for happening inside of the US government. I think
it was a time when people who came into the administration,
the Reagan administration believed that the world was their toy
(36:26):
and you could do anything as long as it was
all covert. Navy communists, you could go play. And I
think there were people who, you know, like that idea
and ran with it.
Speaker 1 (36:42):
Iran Contra is a story about running with it. It's
a complicated story that spans the globe, and if you've
gotten through life not knowing exactly what it was all about,
or what the Iran part has to do with the contrapart,
or what the contrapart even refers to, you're not alone.
Compared to Watergate or the Clinton Lewinsky affair, Iran Contra
is a relatively obscure scandal most people just don't have
(37:05):
a firm grasp on what happened, and there aren't that
many big iconic moments associated with it. In this season
of Fiasco, we're going to take a shot at rectifying that.
Over eight episodes, we're going to look back at the
tangled narrative of Iran Contra, and in addition to reconstructing
in a straight line what exactly happened and why, we're
(37:26):
also going to try to figure out why this scandal
failed to leave a bigger mark on American culture. Why
did a story propelled by so many audacious decisions and
tied into a knot by so many high stakes lies
end up being so easy to forget. It's a good
time to remember it. Whether you support the current administration
(37:48):
or not. It has shown Americans in dramatic fashion that
the government, at the end of the day is really
just a bunch of people. The fact that they've been
temporarily put in charge of institutions that are much bigger
than them doesn't change that. If anything, it reinforces the
need to understand them as individuals, men and women who
act on their obsessions, their ambitions, and their delusions. The
(38:11):
story of Kevin Katki and his friends in this context
feels to me like a parable in which all the
themes of the Iran Contra scandal were on full display.
The use of non governmental actors to carry out government policy,
the secrecy, the improvisation, the logistical gambles undertaken in the
name of sincere but possibly misguided ideologies. I should add,
(38:34):
by the way, that I tried really hard to get
in touch with Kevin Katki. I called, I emailed, I
couldn't find him, and when I reached people who knew him,
they declined to help me get to him. The best
I got was a former neighbor who told me Katki
once encouraged him to google his name. There are quite
a few search results. Kaki remained very much in the
mix after Grenada, and he continued cultivating relationships with people
(38:57):
he thought could help the US eradicate communism. Heading into
Reagan's second term, that meant raising money for the Untra
revolutionaries in Nicaragua, the right wing fighting force known as
the Contras. So when Katki and his friends met a
(39:19):
wealthy Saudi prince who said he wanted to donate fourteen
million dollars to the Contra cause, Katki was over the moon.
Speaker 2 (39:27):
You know. The guy was wearing these robes and he
had a ring with a lot of diamonds that he
described as being like his royal ring, and he started
taking them to dinner all the time, and he wanted
to give money to the Contras, and of course North
was running that operation.
Speaker 1 (39:45):
When Katki told North about the prince, North was apparently
so excited that he discussed the prospective donation with Ronald
Reagan himself. But the donation never came. It turned out
that Katki's prince was a con man. He wasn't a
prince at all. He wasn't even from Saudi Arabia, and
he didn't have fourteen million dollars for the Contras, and
(40:08):
that meant Oliver North would have to find the money
somewhere else. On the next episode of Fiasco, the Iran
Part of the Iran Contract, How and Why Ronald Reagan authorized
a plan to secretly provide weapons to one of America's
(40:29):
greatest enemies.
Speaker 4 (40:31):
I reminded him again that look, this may not work,
and he said, well, we don't know until we try.
Speaker 1 (40:41):
For a list of books, articles and documentaries we used
in our research, follow the link in the show notes.
Fiasco is a production of Prolog Projects and it's distributed
by Pushkin Industries. Shows produced by Andrew Parsons, Madelin kaplan
Ula Culpa and me Leon Mayfack. Our editor was Camilla Hammer.
Our researcher was Francis Carr. Additional archival research from Caitlin Nicholas.
(41:06):
Our music is by Nick Silvester. Our theme song is
by Spatial Relations. Our artwork is by Teddy Blanks at
Chips and y Audio, mixed by Rob Buyers, Michael Rayphiel
and Johnny Vince Evans. Copyright council provided by Peter Yassi
at Yass Butler Plc. Thanks to Jody Averergan Terry Baker,
Chris Barube, Nina Ernest, Stephen Fisher, Emily Gaddock, Alice Gregory,
(41:29):
Ellen Horn, Kelly Jones, Latiff Nasser, Mike Pesca, Bruce Wallace,
as well as Sam Graham Felson and Sirea Shackley. Special
thanks to Luminary and thank you for listening.
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Therapy Gecko
An unlicensed lizard psychologist travels the universe talking to strangers about absolutely nothing. TO CALL THE GECKO: follow me on https://www.twitch.tv/lyleforever to get a notification for when I am taking calls. I am usually live Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays but lately a lot of other times too. I am a gecko.