ABSTRACT
This chapter traces a thirteen-day period in October 1983. During this brief span, the Ronald Reagan administration decided to launch the invasion of Grenada, code-named Operation "Urgent Fury." In the years since Ronald W. Reagan's decision to launch "Urgent Fury," commentators have justifiably criticized his administration for the insufficiency of its pre-invasion intelligence. The paucity of reliable "human intelligence" on the evolving Grenada situation would prove significantly to influence Reagan administration decisionmaking. Computer-enhanced satellite images could reveal something of Grenada's physical topography, but nothing of its shifting political landscape. Ronald Reagan, whose principal foreign policy focus remained on Lebanon, had just returned to Washington from a weekend at Camp David, Maryland. Caspar Weinberger reiterated his position to the President but failed to alter Reagan's initial reaction that prompt military intervention in Grenada was politically desirable. The President "was very unequivocal," Robert McFarlane would later remember.
