A Treasure Trove of Documents

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Captured papers provide insights into a declining regime

For more than a week the Administration had tantalized newsmen and members of Congress with hints I about what Deputy Secretary of State Kenneth Dam called a "treasure trove" of captured Grenadian documents that would put to rest any questions about U.S. motives for the invasion. Late last week the State Department finally released 196 pages of its vast stockpile. The documents did not quite represent the "smoking gun" needed to substantiate President Reagan's claim that Grenada was being transformed into a "major military bastion to export terror and undermine democracy." But the papers did offer solid evidence that Grenada's Marxist government had grown increasingly reliant on its connections with Cuba, the Soviet Union and North Korea, especially for arms. Together with other documents seen by TIME last week, the State Department's trove portrays a regime obsessed with three problems: the almost total alienation of the Grenadian population, deep divisions within the leadership itself, and counterrevolution.

Five secret arms-delivery agreements, three with the Soviet Union and one each with North Korea and Cuba, show that the government of the late Prime Minister Maurice Bishop was to receive $25.8 million in Soviet and $12 million in North Korean military aid. Cuba was to send 27 permanent and a dozen temporary military advisers.

For the most part, the treaties consist of lists of military hardware. Under an agreement signed on Feb. 9, 1981, the Soviet Union promised to ship 5 million rubles ($7.5 million) worth of arms and equipment to Grenada, including 1,000 submachine guns, 1.3 million rounds of ammunition, five jeeps, a mobile bakery, 12,600 complete infantry uniforms and thousands of pairs of "olive-colored socks." A subsequent agreement, dated July 27, 1982, lists 14 pages of equipment and supplies, including 50 secondhand armored personnel carriers, to be delivered between 1982 and 1985. Moscow also promised to train Grenadian soldiers in the Soviet Union and send specialists to Grenada. In each of its treaties, the Soviets insisted that deliveries be routed through Cuba, presumably to conceal Moscow's direct connection.

Far more intriguing were the insights into the events that led to Bishop's ouster and assassination. According to a series of mostly handwritten minutes of the Central Committee meetings of Grenada's New Jewel Movement that took place after July, Bishop proposed that the party take a more moderate stance toward the West. The idea was rejected. Warned one unidentified participant: "If the revolution is turned back now, it has regional and international implications."