The invasion of Grenada in 1983 is the episode John Kiriakou returns to when he is asked how thoroughly he once accepted his own government’s account of itself.
What he thought at the time
Kiriakou was nineteen and at George Washington University. He remembers a debate inside the College Democrats — six freshmen and sophomores deciding whether to issue a statement condemning the invasion, “like anybody cared” — in which he argued against a statement, because he supported the invasion. He says he cannot now recall exactly why, beyond a feeling that it demonstrated a robust foreign policy and a willingness to go out and protect American citizens.[1] The reason he gives in his later telling is the one the administration gave: American medical students had to be rescued, so the thing was noble.[2]
The position sat oddly with the rest of his politics. He described himself then as a social democrat, liberal on social and economic questions and hawkish on foreign policy and defence, and in September 1984 he introduced George McGovern’s presidential announcement with a speech praising him for standing up to an illegal and immoral war in Vietnam.[3][4] Pressed on the contradiction he does not defend it: he was a kid, nineteen, still figuring it out. He and his friends would walk up to the White House gate at night — you could, then — and shout “Fuck you, Reagan” over something they had seen on the news, and he would then go back to the College Democrats and say he had to go with Reagan on this one.[5]
What he takes from it
What unified the two positions was an underlying conviction that America could do no real wrong — mistakes and errors, perhaps, but hearts in the right place, and a country that genuinely was the shining city on a hill. He says he believed that then and for many years afterwards, right up until September 11.[6] Grenada is the case he uses to show how the mechanism works: the government said the students had to be rescued, and it must therefore be true.[2]
The statement that was not issued
Kiriakou uses the episode to date his own hawkishness. The College Democrats at George Washington University debated whether to condemn the invasion — “these are, like, six college freshmen and sophomores debating whether we should issue a statement, like anybody cared” — and he opposed the condemnation.[1]
His reasons he can no longer reconstruct, and says so: “I remember opposing a statement, because I supported the invasion of Grenada. I don’t recall why, but I did. I felt, I guess, that it showed a robust foreign policy and it showed that we were willing to go out and protect our citizens.” Offered his interviewer’s gloss — that the country needed a win — he takes it: “Yeah, we needed a win. It had been a while since we had had a win.”[1][7]