Reagan’s national security team and his chief military advisers meant to keep this operation under wraps until the last possible moment. Reagan had stuck to his announced public schedule, making many of the crucial decisions about Urgent Fury from the Eisenhower Cottage at Augusta National during a presidential golf weekend. Less than twenty-four hours before the operation began, key planning officers gave up valuable hours to attend an annual military ball. Not going to the dance, commanders reckoned, would be a big red flag that something was up. At least one member of the Air Force planning team suspected that nobody had requested pre-invasion intelligence on Grenada from the National Security Agency, which monitored international phone calls and radio traffic (“probably the richest source of intelligence” on the island). Planners feared that operatives at the NSA, the most secretive agency in government, would leak. And apparently nobody in the chain of command had asked the Defense Mapping Agency for detailed tactical maps of Grenada, which is why planning teams were occasionally working with maps dating from 1895, and commanders on the ground ended up depending on fold-out tourist maps like “Grenada: The Isle of Spice.”
President Reagan did not even risk alerting British prime minister Margaret Thatcher of the operation until after Urgent Fury was under way, despite the compelling fact that Grenada was a member of the British Commonwealth. And the American press corps? They were getting nowhere near Operation Urgent Fury. No provisions were made to attach pool reporters to the mission, a remarkable break from traditional US policy. And Reagan officials did more than simply evade the press. Onthe eve of the invasion, when asked point-blank to confirm an NBC reporter’s question about an impending military action in Grenada, Deputy National Security Adviser John Poindexter flat-out lied. “Preposterous,” he said.
Team Reagan also made the executive decision that it would be imprudent to bring Congress into the loop too early. Somebody on the intelligence committee was sure to leak if informed, the president and his closest advisers believed, and that would jeopardize the entire mission. As far as the White House was concerned, there was simply too much at stake. Secrecy!
As soon as the Boston Whalers went out the rear door of the lead C-130, eight SEALs followed into the unexpected darkness … and into a squall. Clear skies forecast notwithstanding, windswept rain pelted the jumpers, and they hit the water a lot faster than they had expected. A few later estimated that instead of their planned 1,200-foot drop, they’d gone out of the planes at a dangerously low height of about six hundred feet. The first eight SEALs hit the water so hard that fins and equipment pouches sheared off. The swells were as high as ten feet, and the wind on the water so stiff that the parachutes would not deflate.
“It … started dragging me through the water, almost from wave to wave, dragging me facedown, swallowing water rapidly,” one SEAL said later. “I reached up and grabbed the lines of the parachute and started dragging them in, trying to collapse the parachute.… I had a lot of lines all around me.… But I had time to get to my knife and start cutting lines and got enough of them cut so it didn’t start dragging me again.”
The second team of eight had been flung out of its C-130 well away from the assigned drop point, and the scattered men had trouble finding the Boston Whalers on the dark and stormy seas.After a long scramble through the dangerous waters, a few managed to get into one of the boats, but the other SEALs finally gave up and swam toward the lights of the
Sprague
. Twelve of the sixteen men were fished out of the Atlantic that night; they could hear one of their teammates shouting and firing off shots in hopes of bringing help. After hours of frantic searching for their lost teammates, the
President Reagan did not even risk alerting British prime minister Margaret Thatcher of the operation until after Urgent Fury was under way, despite the compelling fact that Grenada was a member of the British Commonwealth. And the American press corps? They were getting nowhere near Operation Urgent Fury. No provisions were made to attach pool reporters to the mission, a remarkable break from traditional US policy. And Reagan officials did more than simply evade the press. Onthe eve of the invasion, when asked point-blank to confirm an NBC reporter’s question about an impending military action in Grenada, Deputy National Security Adviser John Poindexter flat-out lied. “Preposterous,” he said.
Team Reagan also made the executive decision that it would be imprudent to bring Congress into the loop too early. Somebody on the intelligence committee was sure to leak if informed, the president and his closest advisers believed, and that would jeopardize the entire mission. As far as the White House was concerned, there was simply too much at stake. Secrecy!
As soon as the Boston Whalers went out the rear door of the lead C-130, eight SEALs followed into the unexpected darkness … and into a squall. Clear skies forecast notwithstanding, windswept rain pelted the jumpers, and they hit the water a lot faster than they had expected. A few later estimated that instead of their planned 1,200-foot drop, they’d gone out of the planes at a dangerously low height of about six hundred feet. The first eight SEALs hit the water so hard that fins and equipment pouches sheared off. The swells were as high as ten feet, and the wind on the water so stiff that the parachutes would not deflate.
“It … started dragging me through the water, almost from wave to wave, dragging me facedown, swallowing water rapidly,” one SEAL said later. “I reached up and grabbed the lines of the parachute and started dragging them in, trying to collapse the parachute.… I had a lot of lines all around me.… But I had time to get to my knife and start cutting lines and got enough of them cut so it didn’t start dragging me again.”
The second team of eight had been flung out of its C-130 well away from the assigned drop point, and the scattered men had trouble finding the Boston Whalers on the dark and stormy seas.After a long scramble through the dangerous waters, a few managed to get into one of the boats, but the other SEALs finally gave up and swam toward the lights of the
Sprague
. Twelve of the sixteen men were fished out of the Atlantic that night; they could hear one of their teammates shouting and firing off shots in hopes of bringing help. After hours of frantic searching for their lost teammates, the
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