Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power by Rachel Maddow Page B

to fall in step. When the House Intelligence Committee chairman learned from press reports in November 1982 that Reagan’s ambassador in Honduras was secretly training rebels to overthrow the popular but Marxist-leaning government in Nicaragua, he pointedly introduced legislation (which passed) that specifically prohibited the Department of Defense or the CIA from allocating any of their approved budgets to assist and foment a coup in Nicaragua. The usually unflappable Reagan was visibly angered by what he thought was congressional interference. “The Sandinistas have openly proclaimed Communism in their country and their support of Marxist revolutions throughout Central America,” he blurted in evident exasperation in a meeting with Democratic Speaker of the House Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill. “They’re killing and torturing people! Now, what the hell does Congress expect me to do about that?”
    Reagan went on one of his signature public relations offensives. In a speech to the nation from the Oval Office in March 1983, wherein the president warned that his record-breaking defense budget had been “trimmed to the limits of safety” bythe soft-on-Communism Congress, Reagan revealed some hazy satellite photos of an airfield under construction. “On the small island of Grenada, at the southern end of the Caribbean chain,” he’d said, “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?”
    Reagan meant this as an ominous rhetorical question, but it did have rather less ominous empirical answers. To wit: there were airfields of similar size and capacity already dotting the Caribbean; the Grenadian government wanted to build a new modern airport to increase tourism, which was their only source of income outside nutmeg, bananas, and servicing those medical students at St. George’s University. The Grenadian government had asked the United States for money to help build it so they could bring in big jetfuls of tourists directly from Miami and New York and Dallas; the tourists wouldn’t have to wait around Bridgetown, Barbados, to catch a puddle-jumper connection. The United States had said no to the aid request, but Great Britain and Canada had been happy to help. The main contractor for construction of the Point Salines airfield was a British company underwritten by a grant from the British government. None of this was secret. But according to Reagan there was a much more nefarious plot afoot. The president said he wanted to reveal more to the American people on TV that night, but, alas, he claimed, the stakes were too high. “These pictures only tell a small part of the story. I wish I could show you more without compromising our most sensitive intelligence sources and methods.”
    Here’s what he could say: “The Soviet-Cuban militarization of Grenada, in short, can only be seen as power projection into the region. And it is in this important economic and strategicarea that we’re trying to help the governments of El Salvador, Costa Rica, Honduras, and others in their struggles for democracy against guerrillas supported through Cuba and Nicaragua.
    “This is why I’m speaking to you tonight—to urge you to tell your senators and congressmen that you know we must continue to restore our military strength. If we stop in midstream, we will send a signal of decline, of lessened will, to friends and adversaries alike.”
    Reagan’s national plea did not shake loose the cash he’d desired from the legislature, so a month later he called a rare and dramatic joint session of Congress to ask members to stop resisting his budget requests for fighting the Commies in Central America. “The national security of all the Americas is at stake in Central America. If we cannot defend ourselves there, we cannot expect to prevail elsewhere. Our credibility would collapse, our alliances