Iran Contra: Episode 1 - Get Me Kevin Kattke

Summary

Fiasco: Iran-Contra – Episode 1: "Get Me Kevin Kattke"

In the inaugural episode of Fiasco: Iran-Contra, host Leon Neyfakh delves into the intriguing and often overlooked role of Kevin Katke, a seemingly ordinary maintenance engineer, in the tumultuous events leading up to the Iran-Contra scandal that threatened to dismantle President Ronald Reagan’s administration. Through meticulous storytelling and compelling interviews, this episode uncovers how Katke became an unlikely pawn in one of the Cold War’s most clandestine operations.

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Introduction to Kevin Katke

The episode opens on a fateful day, October 13, 1983, where Kevin Katke, a maintenance engineer at a Macy's department store in Bayshore, Long Island, experiences a series of workplace disasters. Exhausted and frustrated, Katke returns home to an irate wife and the usual familial chaos. However, his mundane troubles are abruptly interrupted by a phone call that will change the course of his life.

Kevin Katke (02:33): "He was really tired, in a terrible mood when he got home and his wife was making a racket in the kitchen."

The Call from the White House

At approximately 7:30 PM, Katke receives a call from a career CIA officer associated with Ronald Reagan's National Security Council. The officer directs Katke to contact Colonel Oliver North the following morning, marking the beginning of Katke's involuntary plunge into the shadowy world of intelligence and covert operations.

Kevin Katke (03:05): "And all of a sudden he got this phone call from the White House."

This unexpected communication sparks Katke’s enthusiasm, as he had long aspired to contribute to America's anti-communist efforts alongside his friends—a stockbroker, a building inspector, and a carpenter—all forming a makeshift intelligence-gathering group.

Kevin Katke (04:42): "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."

Intersecting Paths with Oliver North

Oliver North, at the time a staff member on the National Security Council, was dedicated to strengthening America's stance against the Soviet Union. Katke’s fervent anti-communist ideology made him an attractive collaborator for North, who was seeking unconventional allies to execute covert operations without direct governmental oversight.

Kevin Katke (05:20): "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."

North, characterized as an unwavering anti-communist, found in Katke a passionate, albeit amateur, operative willing to take risks to further the administration's objectives.

The Grenada Crisis and Operation Urgent Fury

The narrative shifts to the geopolitical crisis in Grenada, a small Caribbean nation whose Marxist government had aligned with Soviet interests. As tensions escalate, President Reagan authorizes a secretive military intervention known as Operation Urgent Fury to oust the communist regime and evacuate American citizens, primarily medical students.

Katke is assigned a critical task: to mobilize Grenadian exiles in New York to form a government-in-exile, thereby legitimizing the invasion and smoothing the transition post-occupation.

Kevin Katke (31:28): "When the US Government wants to get rid of a government overseas because we don't like it... you fly them into the country and make a coup."

Despite his enthusiasm, Katke's lack of governmental support and his inability to take time off from his job lead to the failure of his first mission. Nevertheless, North remains undeterred, repositioning Katke for subsequent operations.

Operation Sky Red and the Invasion’s Execution

As the invasion commences on October 25, 1983, Katke is tasked with "Sky Red"—a diversionary tactic intended to create chaos on the island by setting fires, thereby masking the U.S. military’s movements. However, this plan never materializes due to Katke’s prior commitments, illustrating the disorganized and improvisational nature of the operation.

Ben Bradlee Jr. (33:56): "Sky red was North's term for a diversion that he wanted Katke to help create."

The lack of coordination and inadequate intelligence lead to a swift military takeover but also result in significant casualties, including the accidental bombing of a mental hospital and the loss of 19 American soldiers’ lives.

Aftermath and the Road to Iran-Contra

Following the successful yet bloodstained invasion, Katke continues his involvement with North, now shifting focus towards funding the Contras in Nicaragua. His next venture involves a wealthy Saudi prince promising $14 million to support the anti-communist rebel group—only to discover the prince was a con artist, exacerbating the funding crisis for the Contras and propelling the administration into the Iran-Contra debacle.

Kevin Katke (44:53): "And of course North was running that operation."

Reflections and Implications

Fiasco: Iran-Contra uses Katke’s story as a microcosm of the broader scandal, highlighting themes of secrecy, improvisation, and the reliance on non-governmental actors to execute high-stakes political agendas. The episode underscores the complexities and moral ambiguities inherent in covert operations, illustrating how well-intentioned individuals can become entangled in governmental malpractices.

Jane Mayer & Doyle McManus (39:54): "Oliver north embodied that willingness."

Furthermore, the episode poses critical questions about the efficacy and ethical implications of privatizing foreign policy, suggesting that Katke’s well-meaning endeavors were emblematic of a deeper systemic issue within the Reagan administration’s approach to combating communism.

Conclusion

Episode 1, "Get Me Kevin Kattke," adeptly sets the stage for the Fiasco series by weaving a narrative that is both personal and political. Through the lens of Kevin Katke’s involvement, listeners gain insight into the machinations of the Iran-Contra affair, exploring how individual passions and governmental ambitions intersected to create one of the most controversial episodes in American political history.

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Notable Quotes:

• Kevin Katke (03:05): "And all of a sudden he got this phone call from the White House."
• Ben Bradlee Jr. (33:56): "Sky red was North's term for a diversion that he wanted Katke to help create."
• Kevin Katke (44:53): "And of course North was running that operation."
• Jane Mayer & Doyle McManus (39:54): "Oliver north embodied that willingness."

Through its detailed exploration of Kevin Katke's journey, the episode not only recounts historical events but also invites listeners to reflect on the intricate web of personal motivations and political strategies that shaped the Iran-Contra scandal.

Transcript

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[Narrator]

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 FM plus now onto the show on October 13, 1983, a Long island dad named Kevin Katke spent his day at work dealing with bullshit. Katke 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. Katki came home exhausted from a series of disasters at the store. First, the escalator 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.

[Kevin Katke]

He was really tired, in a terrible mood when he got home and his wife was making a racket in the kitchen.

[Narrator]

This is Nita Renfrew, a former journalist who got to know Kevin Katke while reporting on the Iran Contra scandal.

[Kevin Katke]

He said it was the worst day.

[Narrator]

He'D ever had at Macy's As Renfrew later wrote in a story for New York Magazine, Katke walked into his house that night to find his wife mad at him for being late for dinner and his 10 year old daughter doing her homework in front of the TV. Then a little after 7:30, the phone rang. On the line was Katke's other life.

[Kevin Katke]

And all of a sudden he got this phone call from the White House.

[Narrator]

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.

[Kevin Katke]

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.

[Narrator]

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 1983, north was not yet the star witness in an international scandal. He was not yet a poster child for unencumbered American patriotism. He was just an obscure figure in the White House bureaucracy. Neither Kevin Katke nor anyone else had ever heard of him. Still, Katke 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 Nina Renfrew's New York magazine story as well as pieces in Newsday and Mother Jones. Katke 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 of Long Island. They weren't vigilantes exactly, and they weren't quite spies. They were more like intelligence gathering volunteers. They traveled abroad, 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.

[Kevin Katke]

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.

[Narrator]

Oliver north would later tell Iran Contra investigators that Kevin Katke was a right wing ideologue and compared him to a rogue CIA agent. I doubt Katke would have taken it as an insult. He was a self professed patriot, an enthusiastic foot soldier in America's Cold War with the Soviet Union. When Nita Renfrew interviewed him, Katki told her that if there was ever anything he could do to set the Soviets back a peg, he would do it no matter what.

[Kevin Katke]

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.

[Narrator]

Kevin Katke 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 U.S. naval Academy in the late 1960s.

[Ben Bradlee Jr.]

Each man who wears the academy ring embarks upon a splendid, worthwhile career in the highest traditions of the United States Navy.

[Narrator]

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 in the war.

[Ben Bradlee Jr.]

Today, American B52 bombers dropped tons of explosives on dense jungles near Cambodia.

[Narrator]

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.

[Jack Blum]

I think that reflects a frustration common among military guys with Congress or the administration for tying their hands in battle.

[Narrator]

That's journalist Ben Bradlee, Jr. He's the author of Guts and the Rise and Fall of Oliver north, which was published in 1988, two years after north became a household name as a result of the Iran Contra scandal.

[Jack Blum]

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.

[Narrator]

The Vietnam War dragged on for years after north returned home. Finally, after losing nearly 60,000 men, the United States pulled out its troops in 1973.

[Ben Bradlee Jr.]

In Saigon today, the last of the American troops got on airplanes and flew out of Vietnam, ending the longest military involvement in the country's history.

[Narrator]

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 in their struggle against communism. The politicians had caved to pressure from an uninformed public.

[Ben Bradlee Jr.]

They raised their voices, their placards, and they march against the government.

[Narrator]

As north later Put it America lost the war in Washington, not in Vietnam. When north went to work for President Ronald Reagan in 1981, 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 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 wanted his help overthrowing a communist regime. I'm Leon Naifak from Prologue 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 it didn't.

[Ben Bradlee Jr.]

Washington still in shock over the secret diversion of funds to the countries, the shocker about secret sales of missiles to Iran. Questions of illegality and cover up. I don't use the word cover up. I would use the word protect.

[Kevin Katke]

They were lying to the press, they were lying to the public. They lied incessantly to each other. They they did it out of loyalty and anti communism.

[Ben Bradlee Jr.]

That's why the government of the United States gave me a shredder. How could the President not have known?

[Narrator]

Episode 1 Get Me Kevin Katke 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.

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[Narrator]

Kevin Khatke's wandering path into Oliver North's orbit began in the early 1970s when an eccentric neighbor clocked him as a fellow anti communist and started bending his ear about the political situation in Jamaica, which at the time was governed by a socialist prime minister. Katki's neighbor said he knew some right wing dissidents who were trying to overthrow the left wing government. Maybe Katke wanted to help. Here again is Nita Renfrew.

[Kevin Katke]

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.

[Narrator]

Katke 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 Katki's help. But spending time on the island had activated him politically. When Iran was taken over in 1979 by religious extremists who professed to hate America, Katke 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 1981 Khatke turned his attention to the tiny Caribbean nation of Grenada. Grenada, Carriacou and Petit Martinique make up.

[Kevin Katke]

A small country in the Caribbean Sea.

[Narrator]

Grenada had a population of about 100,000 people. Since 1979, it had been run by a political party of young Marxist revolutionaries.

[Ben Bradlee Jr.]

They took control of their lives and.

[Kevin Katke]

Their future through a revolution on March 13, 1979, the first revolution in the English speaking Caribbean.

[Narrator]

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 a base for Soviet reconnaissance planes. To Reagan, Grenada was part of a red triangle that included Cuba to the north and Nicaragua to the west. In March of 1983, 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.

[Ben Bradlee Jr.]

On the small island of Grenada, at the southern end of the Caribbean chain, the Cubans, with Soviet financing and backing, are in the process of building an airfield with a 10,000 foot Runway. Grenada doesn't even have an air force. Who is it intended for?

[Narrator]

By the time Reagan gave that speech, Kevin Katke was already in contact with several Grenadian dissidents who had emigrated to New York. Among them was a lawyer who had worked for the Grenadian government before the revolution in 79. The lawyer told Katke that he wanted to get the Marxists in Grenada out of power. And Katke, along with his neighbor and two of their friends from town, decided to help him in his quest. Together they created a think tank style organization that they christened the Grenadian Movement for Freedom and Democracy. Katke also let the lawyer live in a boat docked behind his house.

[Kevin Katke]

And they went and they bought clothes at thrift 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.

[Narrator]

It was during one of these trips to Washington that Katke met the man who would later call him at home at the end of his very bad day at Macy's and put him in touch with Oliver North. His name was Konstantin Mengus. He was an ideal audience for a group of guys advocating for the overthrow of the left wing government in Grenada.

[Kevin Katke]

Constantine Menges was, he was an idealist, very much like Kevin was. You know, like Kevin I mean, he believed that Communism was taking over and that they had to combat this for the good of those people.

[Narrator]

The night Mengus called Katke and connected him with Oliver north, the White House was keeping an especially watchful eye on Grenada.

[Ben Bradlee Jr.]

There's a real power struggle going on tonight in the tiny island country of Grenada. In the Caribbean, it appeared that a.

[Narrator]

Radical faction of the Grenadian government had staged a military coup in the capital city of St. 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.

[Ben Bradlee Jr.]

Diplomatic sources warn 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.

[Narrator]

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 Iran Contra affair. Basically, the NSC was created after World War II as an arm of the executive branch that advised the President on foreign policy. 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 in Grenada required immediate attention. If 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 1,000American citizens, the majority of whom were students enrolled at the St. George's University School of Medicine.

[Ben Bradlee Jr.]

There is concern for some 1,000Americans already there.

[Narrator]

It seems possible that amid the chaos, the Communists would take the medical students hostage.

[Ben Bradlee Jr.]

Medical students like Jonathan Beck, whose mother has not been able to reach him by telephone. I have no knowledge exactly of what is going on, and I'm quite apprehensive.

[Narrator]

Jeff Geller, who had enrolled at St. George's after getting wait listed at med schools in the US remembers the first indication that a military coup was underway.

[G]

One day we're in 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. So we wait a while and they announce 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 headed back to the dorms and a tank comes by us and another tank and another tank and another tank, and we're all going towards St George's the capital.

[Narrator]

The tanks cut through the lush tropical paradise where Geller had just started school a few weeks earlier.

[G]

We were ordinary college students, and so, you know, seeing a tank up close, you know, not in a 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. They're just earth.

[Narrator]

It was against this backdrop that Kevin Katke got the phone call from NSC staffer Konstantin Mengus. Menges had been working with Oliver north on a plan to intervene in Grenada ever since the Prime Minister's ouster a few days earlier. Menges and north had two One, get the medical students home, and two, turn the crisis into an opportunity 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 Kapke had been waiting for.

[Kevin Katke]

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 bearing fruit, you know, that somebody had listened to him, you know, after they'd been working so hard.

[Narrator]

After the conversation with Mengus, Katki called his friends and told them 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 them the White House wanted their help. I get why he was concerned. When I first read Nita Renfrew's story about Katke in New York magazine, my first question was, why on earth did anyone in the government give this random 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, Katke 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 Contra affair became public, an unnamed intelligence staffer described Katke as an idiot savant on foreign affairs. The staffer said that even though Katki had no background and no training, he consistently stumbled onto interesting things.

[H]

Unlike lots of other people who've drifted across the stage in these investigations, everything Kevin said more or less checked out.

[Narrator]

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 Katke in the course of that investigation, and he came to rather like him.

[H]

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.

[Narrator]

Blum told me I shouldn't be so surprised that Katki could be useful to someone in Washington on the subject of Grenada. If you were looking for intelligence in the Caribbean in 1983, he said, you could do a lot worse than spending time in New York.

[H]

Brooklyn has any number of these expat communities from places, 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, who are communicating and who know this is what's happening.

[Narrator]

Blum said there was another, even more important reason why foreign policy officials in the Reagan administration might have found Khadke to be an appealing collaborator. His very anonymity and the vast distance separating him from the corridors of power were exactly what made him valuable.

[H]

When you have people like Khadke and 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. They're, you know, they're strictly volunteers. And that makes it just perfect because there's no attribution, no fingerprints left on whatever they do.

[Narrator]

Later, when Katki'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, Katki 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 14, Katke and his friends crowded around a phone and listened as Oliver north told them what he wanted them to do. It turned out that the medical school in Grenada was headquartered on Long Island. In fact, its offices were in Bayshore, the same town as the Macy's where Katke worked. North wanted Katke to go over to the medical school office and ask the administrators to formally call back their students from Grenada, essentially to put it on the record that an evacuation was needed. Katke wasted no time before showing up with one of his friends at the St. George's office and requesting a meeting with the school's chancellor, Charles Modica. Here is how Modica remembers it.

[Ben Bradlee Jr.]

Two visitors came in to the US Headquarters of the school and ended up speaking with our attorney and professed to be involved with the United States government.

[G]

But it never got to the level.

[Ben Bradlee Jr.]

Where I even wanted to meet them. We thought there was something fishy about the whole thing, frankly.

[Narrator]

And so Katki 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.

[Ben Bradlee Jr.]

This is NBC Nightly News reported by Tom Brokaw. Good evening. There's been a brutal and bloody coup on the tiny Caribbean island of Grenada.

[Narrator]

On October 19, 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 a 24 hour curfew, warning that anyone who was caught violating it would be shot on sight.

[Ben Bradlee Jr.]

Grenada has shut down its airport to all visitors. Military troops are patrolling the streets with orders to shoot to kill.

[Narrator]

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 tense and fearful. Here again is Jeff Geller.

[G]

You know, it's a progression. First you're like, what's going on? Everyone's worried. You know, again, you're in a foreign country, you have no idea. You can't call up Joe down the road and say, hey, what's happening? You know, there's not 20 apps on your phone telling us your news every five seconds like we have now. And you get progressively worried. First you hear the shots and then you quarantine in your area. And initially you can speak on the phone, then all of a sudden you can't speak on the phone. So you're completely isolated. And then you hear gunshots in the distance and then you hear that, you know, people that you knew were being whisked out of the house and not heard from that the government was completely toppled and we didn't feel protected at all.

[Narrator]

The day after Grenada's prime minister was killed, Constantine Mengus, Oliver 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's secretary, Fawn hall, on a proposal to Vice President George H.W. bush, as well as the Secretary of Defense and the head of the CIA. According to Menges memoir, North was relieved that the invasion seemed to be coming 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 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. We'll be right back.

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[Ben Bradlee Jr.]

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[Narrator]

We're prohibited by law 21/plus terms and conditions apply. On Saturday, October 22nd, 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 with the administrator of a medical school. Here again is Ben Bradley Jr. Another.

[Jack Blum]

Assignment that north gave Khatke 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 be ready to step in.

[Narrator]

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 in Grenada were removed from power.

[Kevin Katke]

When the US Government wants 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 is 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 them into the country and make a coup.

[Narrator]

Katki gamely 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, Katke once again couldn't deliver, in part because he couldn't take time off from his job at Macy's.

[Kevin Katke]

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 them how to do it and they would have done it.

[Narrator]

When Katke called to inform north of his latest failure, north sounded frustrated. But by this point, he had 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 2,000 soldiers.

[Ben Bradlee Jr.]

Ten American warships are sailing toward Grenada. On board are 2,000 combat marines. The ships and Marines left their east coast ports earlier this week bound for Lebanon, but were given a change of orders out out of concern for the safety of the 1,100Americans on the island of Grenada.

[Narrator]

Operation Urgent fury had been set in motion in total secrecy. In fact, when reporters who were hearing rumors about the invasion asked a 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 to land. They were just swinging by in case a rescue operation to save the Americans on the island became necessary. This misdirection was paired with a 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 fellow anti communist to take on his most high stakes mission yet. With the American landing imminent, north wanted Katke's contacts in Grenada to distract local authorities by lighting a bunch of fires. North referred to it as sky red.

[Jack Blum]

Sky red was North's term for a diversion that he wanted Katke 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 order to create chaos throughout the island, which would divert the official attention away from, you know, the beaches where the Marines and other US Soldiers started to land.

[Narrator]

The invasion was scheduled for the early morning hours of Tuesday, October 25th. Konstantin Mengus worked late the night before. On his way out, he stopped by room 208 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 and before heading home, he covered him with an overcoat. Meanwhile, Katke got in touch with a Grenadian autoworker in Brooklyn who had a lot of contacts on the island. Katki 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, the sky was not red. No one had set any fires.

[Ben Bradlee Jr.]

The invasion started before dawn this morning. About 1,900 U.S. army Rangers and Marines this morning assaulted the small island. Our paratroopers have fanned out and are now in St. George's the capital and other communities around St. George's and the port Salinas airport.

[Narrator]

How the invasion 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 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 19American soldiers their lives. It also resulted in the accidental bombing of a Grenadian mental hospital that left 18 civilians dead. The U.S. army did succeed in getting the American medical students off the island. Here's Jeff Geller again.

[G]

You know, you get bang on the door, open up. This the US Rangers, you know, we're like, what? We couldn't believe it, you know, and they basically got us back into the lecture halls and got us all together, 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, they took over the place basically, and we're very, very, very happy about that.

[Ben Bradlee Jr.]

35 minutes from now, by our clock, the first plane. Loads of Americans who have chosen to leave Grenada are expected to arrive in Charleston, South Carolina.

[Narrator]

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.

[Ben Bradlee Jr.]

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.

[Narrator]

Later, Oliver north regaled the group of Reagan aides with the dramatic story of the students rescue, specifically about how he had been nervous that 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 the President wasn't worried.

[Jack Blum]

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, Ollie, there's nothing to worry about. You have to trust Americans.

[Narrator]

As Bradley discovered, there was just one problem with this story.

[Jack Blum]

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.

[Narrator]

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 60% spontaneous expression of patriotism and about 40% the punchline to a joke that he and the other students had started making while in lockdown. Gallows humor.

[G]

Basically, the joke for the whole time was, you know, if I ever get off this rock, I'm gonna kiss the goddamn ground.

[Narrator]

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 1983 found that 71% of respondents approved of Operation Urgent Fury. 63% 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 describe 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, 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.

[H]

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 who says, and this is what I think we ought to do next. And that's where the fun began.

[Narrator]

Kevin Katke 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.

[Kevin Katke]

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.

[Narrator]

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 Bradlee's theory is just that Katke had something the White House didn't.

[Jack Blum]

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 Katke filling a vacuum as north saw it. So therefore he came to be reliant on him.

[Narrator]

Jack Blum put it slightly differently.

[H]

I think it was a time when lots of deranged things were happening inside 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 and you could do anything as long as it was all covert and anti communist, you could go play. And I think there were people who, you know, liked that idea and ran with it.

[Narrator]

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 Contra part, or what the Contra part 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 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 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 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 story of Kevin Katke 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, by the way, that I tried really hard to get in touch with Kevin Katke. 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 Katke once encouraged him to Google his name. There are quite a few search results. Katke remained very much in the mix after Grenada, and he continued cultivating relationships with people he thought could help the US eradicate Communism. Heading into Reagan's second term, that meant raising money for the counter revolutionaries in Nicaragua, the right wing fighting force known as the Contras. So when Katki and his friends met a wealthy Saudi prince who said he wanted to donate $14 million to the Contra cause, Khatki was over the moon.

[Kevin Katke]

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.

[Narrator]

When Katke 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 Katke'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 $14 million for the contras. And that meant Oliver north would have to find the money somewhere else. On the next episode of Fiasco, the Iran Part of Iran Contra how and why Russia. Ronald Reagan authorized a plan to secretly provide weapons to one of America's greatest enemies.

[Ben Bradlee Jr.]

I reminded him again that, look, this may not work. And he said, well, we don't know until we try.

[Narrator]

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 prologue projects and it's distributed by Pushkin Industries. Show is produced by Andrew Parsons, Madeline Kaplan, Ula Culpa, and me, Leon Nayfak. Our editor was Camilla Hammer. Our researcher was Frances Carr with additional archival research from Caitlin Nicholas. Our music is by Nick Sylvester. Our theme song is by Spatial Relations. Our artwork is by Teddy Blanks at chipsny. Audio mix by Rob Byers, Michael Rayfield and Johnny Vince Evans. Copyright counsel provided by Peter Yossi at Yossi Butler, pllc. Thanks to Jody Avergam, Carrie Baker, Chris Berube, Nina Ernest, Steven Fisher, Emily Gaddock, Alice Gregory, Ellen Horn, Kelly Jones, Latif Nassar, Mike Pesca, Bruce Wallace, as well as Sam Graham Felson and Soraya Shockley. Special thanks to Luminary and thank you for listening. Do you own a business that's ready to thrive? It's time to let Intuit QuickBooks take things like unpaid invoices and tracking expenses off your plate so you can take things to the next level. Intuit QuickBooks is an all in one business platform that can help with those day to day tasks like invoicing and expenses. Manage and grow your business all in one place. Intuit QuickBooks your way to Money Money movement services are provided by Intuit Payments, Inc. Licensed as a money Transmitter by the New York State Department of Financial Services. Amazon Pharmacy presents painful thoughts 20 more minutes to kill in the pharmacy before my prescription is ready. Maybe I'll grab some deeply discounted out of season Halloween candy. I never had a chocolate pumpkin with raisins before. Those were raisins, right?

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