THIS FAR AND NO FURTHER
A Timeline of Events Surrounding the Radical Right's Attempt to Subvert American Democracy
Written and Compiled by Black Max
1983
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Highlights of This Page
Promis/Inslaw scandal. 241 Marines killed in Lebanon by a suicide bomber. US invades Grenada, overthrows government, and installs US-friendly regime. Reagan envoy Donald Rumsfeld meets with Hussein to shore up US-Iraqi relations.
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Promis/Inslaw scandal
- The Department of Justice purloins a sophisticated database program called PROMIS from Inslaw, the company that created the software. Copies are later provided to Israel and as many as 80 other foreign and domestic agencies by Dr. Earl Brian, a businessman with a criminal history of computer theft who has close ties with Ronald Reagan and Edwin Meese. Meese may have profited from the sales of the stolen property, and Brian may have been involved in the "October Surprise" of 1980 (see above). Monies from illegal sales of PROMIS may have gone to support the Reagan administration's covert and illegal government programs in Nicaragua. The CIA and other intelligence agencies, including Israel's Mossad, were provided copies modified for use in intelligence gathering; both the Washington Times and Fox News will report that Osama bin Laden may have received a copy from Russian intelligence. Colonel Oliver North will use the program to track dissidents and potential troublemakers within the United States as part of a domestic emergency preparedness program, commissioned under Reagan's Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). (This operation is so sensitive that when Rep. Jack Brooks asks North about it during the Iran-Contra hearings, the hearing is immediately suspended pending a secret executive conference. When the hearings are reconvened, the issue of North's FEMA dealings is dropped.) A number of banks, including the Arab-owned BCCI, will use modified versions of the software to track financial transactions around the globe. Attorney General Richard Thornburgh refuses to open an investigation; in 1992, Bush attorney general William Barr will also refuse to investigate. Neither Thornburgh or the Department will cooperate with a subsequent House investigation. Two journalists, Danny Casolaro and Paul Wilcher, will die under suspicious circumstances in the 10-year attempt to expose the story; boxes of documents relating to the case have been destroyed, stolen, or "lost" by the Department; Inslaw has been driven into bankruptcy by the Justice Department. Israeli intelligence agent Ari Ben Menashe says, "PROMIS was a very big thing for us guys, a very, very big thing...it was probably the most important issue of the '80s because it just changed the whole intelligence outlook. The whole form of intelligence collection changed." PROMIS, Ben Menashe said, was perfect for tracking Palestinians and other political dissidents. (Wired, The Octopus)
- The US Defense Intelligence Agency gives its conditional support for Hussein's plans on using chemical weapons (mustard gas, mostly) against the Iranians, and provides military support against Iran. (US/Iraq Relations Timeline, Consortium- News)
- Republican congressman Dick Cheney takes part in a "codel," a Congressional delegation, to Moscow to discuss detente and the nuclear standoff with senior Soviet official Sergei Akhromeyev. Akhromeyev stuns the American delegation with an offer to reopen discussions of mutual weapons cuts in Europe, and a one-year ban on testing the Soviet SS24 missile. In return, he asks the US to refrain from testing the new MX "Peacekeeper" mobile nuclear missile. Democratic congressman Thomas Downey is excited about the proposal, but Cheney shuts it down flat, even later denying Akhromeyev ever made such an offer. "Cheney did not want to allow the Russians to appear to be in any way reasonable," Downey later recalls. "He doesn't believe in negotiations. He's completely rigid, states his position and concedes nothing. There would be no negotiations when his position was 'my way or the highway.'" Downey, who likes and respects Cheney even though they disagree on virtually everything, asks Cheney, "You can't expect them to accept all our terms? You can't expect them to surrender?" Cheney's answer: "Yes, I can." Downey recalls one chilling visit to Red Square with Cheney during the trip, where Downey, impressed with what he recalled as a "spectacular night," asks what Cheney is thinking. "He said, 'I think we're standing on Ground Zero.'" To Cheney's way of thinking, there are only two possibilities -- complete capitulation by the Soviets, or nuclear war. (Lou Dubose and Jake Bernstein)
- Former Citicorp bank official Elaine Chao becomes a Special Assistant in the Office of Policy Development in the Pentagon. As the Republicans become more focused on winning Asian-American voters, Chao becomes one of its key figures on the campaign trail, and in 1988 will serve as the chair for Asian-Americans in the Bush-Quayle campaign. (Laura Flanders)
- James and Susan McDougal open a branch of their S&L in Little Rock, Arkansas, make it the main branch, and name it Madison Guaranty. Early real estate deals through Madison are very successful, and by summer 1984 Madison is one of the strongest and most active financial institutions in Little Rock. (Susan McDougal)
- During the year, Reagan's head of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Clarence Thomas, tells his staff that affirmative action laws were the best thing that ever happened to him: "But for them, God only knows where I would be today. These laws and their proper application are all that stand between the first seventeen years of my life and the second seventeen years." Thomas, who grew up in grinding poverty in Pin Point, Georgia, was admitted to Yale Law School under a 1971 affirmative action program that aimed to ensure 10% minority representation in Thomas's class. After achieving success in Republican politics, Thomas, a future Supreme Court Justice, becomes a fiery opponent of affirmative action, later writing in one Court opinion, "There can be no doubt that racial paternalism and its unintended consequences can be as poisonous and pernicious as any other form of discrimination." Satirist Al Franken remarks, "A mean person could interpret the change of heart to reflect an 'I've got mine' attitude." -- , Al Franken
July 1983
- July 14: A scandal erupting over two US representatives' sexual liasons with underage Congressional pages comes to a head when the House Ethics Committee finds that Republican Dan Crane and Democrat Gerry Stubbs have both had improper and possibly illegal liasons; Crane with an underage female page in 1980 and Stubbs with an underage male page in 1973. Both are censured by the committee, though the House refuses to expel them as called for by Republican representative Newt Gingrich. Crane loses his bid for re-election in 1984; Stubbs refuses to apologize, and continues to win re-election until his retirement in 1996. (Wikipedia)
September 1983
- September 21: In describing his staff to the US Chamber of Commerce, Secretary of the Interior James Watt says, "We have every mixture you can have. I have a black, a woman, two Jews and a cripple. And we have talent." Watt will be forced to resign over this comment. Two years later, he will be convicted of charges related to his involvement in influence peddling during his pre-administration stint as an industry lobbyist. (Wikipedia)
October 1983
- October: The Reagan Administration begins secretly allowing Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Egypt to transfer US weapons, including howitzers, Huey helicopters, and bombs to Iraq. These shipments violate the Arms Export Control Act. (Iran Chamber Society)
241 Marines killed in Lebanon by a suicide bomber
- October 23: A suicide bomber affiliated with the Islamic terror group Hezbollah kills 241 Marines in Beirut; the Marines, there for "peacekeeping duties," were not allowed to carry loaded weapons according to US policy. Minutes later, another car bomber kills 58 French soldiers at a base nearby. Hezbollah is responding to US support for Israel in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Reagan's response, outside of a lot of speechifying, is to withdraw US troops from Lebanon (by the spring of 1984), to allow the civil war in Lebanon to rage unchecked, and to attack Grenada (see below) two days later. (ZNet, American Victims of Islamic and Arab Terrorists, Peter Irons)
US invades Grenada, overthrows government, and installs US-friendly regime
- October 25: The US launches "Operation Urgent Fury," an invasion of the tiny Caribbean island nation of Grenada. Ostensibly an attempt to protect US students and tourists during civil unrest in that country, the real reason for the invasion is to overthrow the newly installed Marxist government, mostly for fear that Grenada will begin supporting Cuba and the Nicaraguan Sandinistas. (One of the main concerns cited by the US is the building of a "military" airstrip by Cuban engineers; the airstrip was later proven to be what it was always claimed by Grenada, a commercial airstrip built to support Grenada's tourist industry. The main contractor for the airstrip was Plessey, a British firm, which supplied information showing that the airstrip could not have been used for military purposes. The US later helps complete the airstrip.) The Grenadan invasion also serves to direct attention away from the disastrous October 23 bombing of a Marine base in Lebanon, which killed 241 Marines, though the decision to invade Grenada was made well before the bombing and one source says Reagan actually hesitated to approve the invasion after the bombing. Another pretext for the invasion is a supposed request by the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States; while such a request was indeed made, it was only made at the US's behest, and the actual request was drafted by Reagan administration officials, which was given to selected conservative Caribbean leaders to sign. Many OECS members opposed the invasion.
- On October 13, the Grenadan military overthrew the sitting government in a bloody coup, murdering Prime Minister Maurice Bishop on October 19, and the new government is led by Marxist Bernard Coard, formerly the deputy prime minister. (Bishop, a socialist, had gained power in a near-bloodless coup in 1979, overthrowing the despotic regime of Eric Gairy, notorious for his extensive use of secret police to repress the populace and his bizarre beliefs in the occult and extraterrestrials. Bishop was quite successful in increasing the Grenadans' literacy rates and economic security, though he never held free elections as he promised. The US has long opposed the Bishop regime, and allowed Gairy to form a government-in-exile in the US. Since Bishop's installation, the US opposed any economic aid to Grenada. Beginning in 1981, the CIA was involved in engineering the downfall of Bishop's regime; in August 1981, a mock invasion was held on the island of Vieques in preparation for the real thing two years later.)
- Reagan insists that Fidel Castro's Cuba is behind the coup, though in reality, Castro opposed the coup. However, when US intervention becomes apparent, Castro tells the Cuban engineers and troops on the island to stand with the Grenadan military in resisting the US incursion. 1,200 US troops invade the island on October 25, and meet stiff resistance from Grenadan and Cuban forces; though US reports state that the resistance was largely Cuban, the reality is that less than 100 of the 700 Cubans on the island were soldiers, and the resistance the US faced was almost completely from Grenadan forces. Over the next few days, the US forces increase to around 7,000, more than enough to rout the Grenadan and Cuban resistance; heavy fighting lasts only two days. US troops reportedly find a cache of weapons that could arm 10,000 men, including automatic rifles, machine guns, rocket launchers, antiaircraft guns, howitzers, cannon, armored vehicles and coastal patrol boats; in reality, the forces find three warehouses less than a quarter full of antiquated small arms that had been confiscated days before from local militias. 19 US troops are killed in the fighting, while over 100 Grenadan and Cuban troops are killed.
- By December, US troops return home and a US-friendly government has been forcibly installed. US media coverage of the invasion is strictly censored and controlled by the Pentagon, which quarantined reporters on Barbados during the first days of the invasion, and as a result, coverage in the US is extremely friendly; one correspondant labels the invasion "a lovely little war." The invasion and overthrow of Grenada's government is the first example of military-enforced "regime change" in recent US history. One of the most memorable photos from the invasion is the shot of a US medical student kissing the ground as he disembarks from a plane bringing him and fellow students from Grenada to an American military base; what is not widely reported is that the students had every opportunity to leave the country before the US invasion (Reagan will falsely claim that Grenada had shut down its airport, making flight impossible), and that the 800 medical students were left in Grenada as part of a US justification for the invasion instead of airlifting them out beforehand. The students were never in any danger from either US or Grenadan/Cuban forces.
- An FPIF report states, "Apparently, by limiting the ability of Americans who wished to depart from leaving, the Reagan administration could then use their continued presence on the troubled island as an excuse to invade. The Reagan administration admitted that no significant non-military means of evacuating Americans was actively considered." 500 parents of the students contacted the White House asking that no "precipitous action" be taken; Grenadan and Cuban officials met with medical school officials days before the invasion and guaranteed the safety of the students, a promise they kept. 90% of the students told Chancellor Charles Modica that they did not want to be evacuated. During the invasion, Modica criticizes the invasion and says that the military intervention posed a far more severe threat to the students than any faced before the incursion. Many students chose not to leave the island even during and after the invasion; while students who left were "debriefed" and their statements of support for the invasion were made public, the students who remained behind, who largely denounced the invasion, were never featured in US press coverage. It took three days for American troops to "secure" the entire medical school campus. The FPIF report asks, "Why, then, did the United States invade? Many believe that Grenada was seen as a bad example for other poor Caribbean states. Its foreign policy was not subservient to the American government and it was not open to having its economy dominated by US corporate interests. A show of force would cause states with similar leftist nationalist ideals to think twice. If a country as small and poor as Grenada could have continued its rapid rate of development under a socialist model, it would set a bad precedent for other Third World countries. In short, Grenada under [Bishop's] New Jewel Movement was reaching a dangerous level of health care, literacy, housing, participatory democracy, and economic independence. Of particular concern was the influence Bishop and his supporters -- who were greatly inspired by the Black Power movement in the United States -- could have on African-Americans. A successful socialist experiment by English-speaking Blacks just a few hours by plane from the United States was seen as a threat.
- "This invasion was also an easy victory for the United States eight years after its defeat in the Vietnam War and just two days after the deadly attack against US forces in Lebanon. It established the precedent for 'regime change' by US military intervention and served as an ominous warning to the leftist Sandinista government in Nicaragua that the Reagan administration could go beyond simply arming a proxy army like the Contras and actually invade their country outright. It also led to a sudden rise in President Reagan's popularity, according to public opinion polls. Despite the fact that the invasion was a clear violation of international law, there was widespread bipartisan support for the invasion, including such Democratic Party leaders as Walter Mondale, who would be Reagan's Democratic challenger for the presidency the following year. (In his successful challenge of incumbent Connecticut Senator Lowell Weiker that year, Democratic Senate nominee and future vice-presidential candidate Joseph Lieberman attacked his moderate Republican opponent for having raised Constitutional objections to the invasion of Grenada.)"
- The invasion receives bipartisan support from Congress and overwhelming support from the US citizenry. World reaction to the invasion is overwhelmingly negative, though this receives little play in the American media. A UN Security Council vote to condemn the invasion is thwarted by the US, which casts the sole opposing vote. FPIF reports, "The invasion could not have been better timed. The Grenadan people were so embittered and divided by the [Coard] coup and subsequent killings that resistance was only a fraction of what it could have been had the invasion come two weeks earlier. Similarly, opposition in the United States, which could have pointed to a progressive and popular Grenadan government under Bishop, had to acknowledge that the successor regime was brutal, unpopular, and illegitimate. Public attention was focused on the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon a few days earlier that had killed 242 servicemen, so popular sympathy and support for the armed forces was unusually high. In Grenada during the ensuing months, the mass organizations were dismantled, the labor unions were re-organized, over half of all medical personnel were expelled, investment and tax codes were revised to favor foreign [primarily US] investment, and cooperatives and states enterprises were sold to private interests. Billboards that had inspired the population to work for justice, equality, development, and national sovereignty were quickly replaced by those designed to inspire them to buy American consumer products.
- The quality of life for most islanders deteriorated in the period following the invasion despite infusions of American aid. This was most apparent in the health care field, where not a single pediatrician remained in this country where 60% of the population was under 25, nor was there a single psychiatrist to care for 180 mental patients. (Seventeen patients and one staff member were killed when the U.S. bombed the mental hospital during the invasion.) The US invasion of Grenada prompted witch-hunts throughout the Caribbean for those with leftist sympathies. Countries that thought they had the right as sovereign nations to receive economic and military assistance from whomever they pleased realized they had to reconsider. The day after the invasion, for example, Suriname closed down the Cuban embassy in its capital and expelled its diplomats. Upon taking over the island, most foreign doctors, teachers, and other civilians were summarily arrested and expelled by US officials. Shortly after the invasion, US forces raided and ransacked the Pope Paul Ecumenical Center due to its supposedly 'subversive activities' of aiding the poor. Hundreds of Grenadans were held for months without charge. Some suspects were shackled and blindfolded in violation of Hague Convention standards on the treatment of prisoners of war. The island's only radio station was taken over by the US Navy. The right of free assembly was seriously curtailed, the press was censored, and writ of habeus corpus was abolished. Over the next several years, US forces loosened their grip and allowed for popular elections. Grenada has joined other small Caribbean islands under the leadership of a conservative and corrupt elite. The current center-right government, for example, has engaged in some major irregularities in awarding contracts for public works projects to foreign investors with criminal ties and has set up offshore banking operations with little oversight. Although Grenada's economy has been expanding, poverty is widespread, and it appears that the country has little choice but to follow the neoliberal orthodoxy dictated by Washington and its allied international financial institutions."
- In 2003, Phillys Bennis of the Institute for Policy Studies compared the invasion of Iraq with the invasion of Grenada, saying "I think what we're dealing with now is Grenada on steroids. This is Reagan on steroids. This is a doctrine out of something that was viewed as shocking. There was international outrage, and now there's international outrage but it's muted by fear. ...The invasion of Grenada was in some ways a symbolic act, to everyone but the people of Grenada. It was designed to show that the US was going to be the biggest and toughest kid on the block." (History Guy: The Invasion of Grenada, PBS, Foreign Policy in Focus, Democracy Now)
- One unreported story concerning the Grenada invasion is later told by CIA operative Mike Timpani. Timpani, then in the US Army, leads a team from Fort Bragg, North Carolina, to the Grenada airport, where six AH-6 Black Hawk attack helicopters are to leave the belly of Timpani's C-130 and launch the first attack of the invasion just before dawn. Unfortunately, a Homestead AFB official mistimes the flight, forgetting the time difference between Eastern time and Grenada's own time zone, and the helicopters are not launched until well after sunrise. The invasion begins badly, with Navy SEALs pinned down on the beach by Cuban defense positions that should have been taken out by the AH-6s, and US Rangers forced to parachute under heavy fire onto the airfield to secure the position. Intelligence that there would be little serious resistance was also wrong; unexpectedly heavy fire takes down several Black Hawks, and Timpani's own AH-6 rescues two SEALs who are forced to swim away from the island. Timpani later joins the CIA. (Larry Kolb)
Winter 1983
- Winter: Archival researcher David Dodge and former police investigator Tom Dunn find evidence of what they call a "missing 13th amendment to the US Constitution" from an 1825 copy of the Constitution in a Maine library. Over the next seven years, they will claim to find numerous other copies of the Constitution with this missing amendment. In 1991, they learn that all 13 original states had ratified the amendment; according to their research, the amendment may well have been officially ratified in 1819 and somehow removed during the Civil War. The text of the missing amendment is as follows: "If any citizen of the United States shall accept, claim, receive, or retain any title of nobility or honour, or shall without the consent of Congress, accept and retain any present, pension, office, or emolument of any kind whatever, from any emperor, king, prince, or foreign power, such person shall cease to be a citizen of the United States, and shall be incapable of holding any office of trust or profit under them, or either of them." It appears to ban US citizens from holding any titles of nobility or receiving gifts from foreign princes of any kind. Their historical analysis of the wording of the amemdment also suggests to them that the amendment is designed to ban lawyers from holding elected power. Although the existence, and the possible ratification, of the missing amendment seems solid, Dodge and Dunn's interpretation of the meaning of the amendment is open to dispute. The home page of this site does not inspire confidence. (David Dodge/Gospel Plow)
- Winter: Neil Bush, younger brother of George W., is named president of JNB Exploration, a Houston-based oil company. His partners contribute $160,000; Neil contributes $100. "Neil knew people because of his name," one partner, Evans Nash, later says. Among the people Neil knows are two high-powered Denver real estate barons, Bill Walters and Ken Good. Walters is a flamboyant Rolex-wearing, Rolls-driving mogul known as "the Donald Trump of Denver." Good owned the largest home in Colorado, a $10 million mansion with a special plumbing system that pumped Scotch, gin and vodka throughout the house. After listening to Bush's sales pitch, Walters invests $150,000 and set up a $1.75 million line of credit for JNB at a bank he owned. Good invests $10,000 and pledged loans worth $1.5 million. Good also lends Bush $100,000 to gamble in the commodities market and said Neil didn't have to pay it back unless he made money. "It was," Bush later recalls, "an incredibly sweet deal." He sets up an office, decorates it with a bust of his father and pays himself $66,000 a year, double his Amoco salary. But JNB flounders; in five years, the company will drill 26 wells in four states, but never finds a drop of exploitable oil. JNB would have gone bankrupt if not for the money from Walters and Good. Jeb Bush, another brother, experiences business problems when his partner, Alberto Duque, is convicted of fraud and sentenced to 15 years in prison. Jeb manages to dodge any criminal charges. A year later, Jeb will lobby the Department of Health and Human Services on behalf of Cuban-American businessman Miguel Recarey Jr, a close friend of mobster Santos Trafficante. Recarey later disappears with $12 million in federal funds. (Bushwatch, Washington Post)
November 1983
- November: Banca Nazionale del Lavoro of Italy and its branch in Atlanta begin to funnel $5 billion in unreported loans to Iraq. Iraq, with the blessing and official approval of the US government, will purchase computer controlled machine tools, computers, scientific instruments, special alloy steel and aluminum, chemicals, and other industrial goods for Iraq's missile, chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs. (Iran Chamber Society)
- November: Reagan reluctantly signs into law a bill making Martin Luther King, Jr's birthday a national holiday. Republican senator Jesse Helms mounts a lone filibuster against the holiday, during which he accuses King of being a Communist spy. New York representative Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman elected to Congress, is instrumental in getting the legislation passed. (123Holiday)
- November 26: National Security Decision Directive 114, which remains classified, is signed by Reagan. The directive mandates US support for the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq, particularly against Iran in the war between the two countries, and says that the US will do "whatever was necessary and legal" to ensure that Iraq wins the war. Both US intelligence and Secretary of State George Shultz are aware that Iraq is using chemical weapons against Iranian forces. (Asia Times, Iran Chamber Society)
December 1983
- December 16: Presidential spokesman Larry Speakes dismisses Reagan's penchant for telling tall tales and passing them off as fact: "If you tell the same story five times, it's true." (Lars-Erik Nelson/Paul Waldman)
Reagan envoy Donald Rumsfeld meets with Hussein to shore up US-Iraqi relations
- December 19 - 20: Reagan sends a special envoy, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, to Iraq with a handwritten letter for Saddam Hussein asking for the resumption of diplomatic relations. Rumsfeld tells him that to ensure US support, he has to keep his nose clean in the court of world opinion. Rumsfeld says to the New York Times, "[Hussein] made it clear that Iraq was not interested in making mischief in the world. ...It struck us as useful to have a relationship, given that we were interested in solving the Mideast problems." He says that Iraq isn't interested in becoming a threat to anyone else. Rumsfeld says at the time that he warned Hussein about using chemical weapons; that assertion has later been proven to be a lie, though he did mention the issue in a later meeting with other Iraqi officials. What he doesn't say is that the Reagan administration has come to a secret decision to back Hussein; he tells Hussein that the administration views "any major reversal of Iraq's fortunes as a strategic defeat for the West."
- On January 1, only 12 days after the meeting, the US informs several Middle East governments that the defeat of Iraq in the war with Iran would be "contrary to US interests." Later, the State Department reports almost daily use of chemical weapons by Iraq. Instead of slapping Saddam's hand, Reagan OK's the direct sale of dual-use technology to Iraq, an illegal decision that will be acknowledged by a January 14, 1884 memo from the State Department. Reagan officials even help Iraq plan one of their military offensives against Iran. Within a year, the US will fully normalize ties with Hussein, and even suggest that the dictator has become a full-fledged "Arab moderate," ready to make peace with Israel. Howard Teicher, who worked on Iraq as a member of Reagan's National Security Council, says it was a choice made to support the lesser of two evils between Iran and Iraq. "You have to understand the geostrategic context, which was very different from where we are now," he said in 2003. "Realpolitik dictated that we act to prevent the situation from getting worse." Both Hussein and Iraqi foreign minister Tariq Aziz were "obviously pleased" with Rumsfeld's visits: "Aziz had gone out of his way to praise Rumsfeld as a person." A State Department memo tells of Hussein's "obvious pleasure" with Rumsfeld's visit, especially over Rumsfeld's statement that the US "had successfully closed off US-controlled exports by third countries to Iran." The specific statement from Reagan that so pleased Hussein is still classified. Rumsfeld will later resign as Reagan's Middle East envoy, feeling that peace in the region was impossible to achieve. (US/Iraq Relations Timeline, Consortium News, Common Dreams/Rumsfeld's Iraq Connection, Asia Times, National Security Archive, Iran Chamber Society, PBS, Greg Palast)
