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Reporters also learned for the first time the true dimensions of the massacre on what the residents call "Bloody Wednesday." This event proved pivotal; it turned Grenadians against the revolution and soured them on Cuba, since many believed that the Cubans, despite Castro's proclaimed fondness for Bishop, had been behind Bishop's arrest and death. His supporters had carefully organized a rally to free him on that fateful day. The crowd had swelled to about 25,000 people, nearly a fourth of the island's entire population. They had swept past the guards holding him prisoner at his house, snake-danced up a winding hill, carrying Bishop along, and rushed into the limestone-walled Fort Rupert, an army stronghold renamed after Bishop's father.
There, Bishop pleaded with the soldiers to put down their weapons, shouting, "For God's sake, don't point guns at your own people."
Taking charge, he ordered that the fort's canteen be opened and cold drinks served to the hot, dust-choked people. Suddenly, a Soviet-built, eight-wheel, mud-colored armored personnel carrier pointed its turret at the throng. A recoilless machine gun, powerful enough to knock aircraft out of the sky, opened fire randomly into the crowd. Some fled over the walls. Many others died. The bodies piled up in the fort's yard. Bishop, who was out of the line of fire, and Education Minister Jacqueline Creft (the two had a four-year-old son, Vladimir) were seized, taken deeper into the fort and executed with single pistol shots to their heads. Two other Cabinet ministers and two union leaders were also murdered.
For days, Grenadian families did not know how many people had died. The bodies had been quickly carried away by General Austin's soldiers and burned, probably at Camp Calivigny, later the site of an invasion battle at the island's southern tip. But the families began totaling up their missing members, mostly young supporters of the revolution. Their first count reached more than 70. Last week, moving more freely about the island to compare reports, most thought the death toll would reach about 140.
TIME also learned that the plotters against Bishop had first hatched a different scheme: they had intended to poison him and blame the murder on the CIA. A period of mourning would have been used hypocritically by the poisoners to stir fury against the U.S. But Bishop's delayed return from a trip to Cuba apparently disrupted the timing of the plot. Instead, he was held captive in a back room of his house, clothed only in his underwear.
At least two years earlier, a Western intelligence officer had tried to tell Washington that U.S. pressure against Grenada was only strengthening the hand of the leftist militants who were trying to push Bishop aside. The man arranged a rendezvous in Canada with CIA agents and warned that the U.S. had only three options: 1) leave Grenada alone, 2) support the island's businessmen as a rival source of power against the Communists, 3) continue to pressure and isolate Grenada. If Washington pursued the third course, he claims to have told the CIA, Grenada would turn increasingly toward Cuba, which would dominate the island, and the only way to save it would be "to send in the Marines in five years." The CIA reply, he said, was "You must be joking."