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Doubts have been raised about the accuracy of Barettella's reports. "I'm afraid there was a tendency by ham operators to embellish a little bit during the heat of the moment," says George Naft-zinger, who runs an international amateur-radio network based in Miami. Barettella now acknowledges that he never actually saw any troops in action but "relayed what I heard from firsthand witnesses on the roof."
If information was sketchy during the military blackout, pictures were hardly better. TV tapes provided by the Pentagon were "lifeless and nondescript," according to NBC Executive Jeremy Lamprecht. "No fighting at all." The TV networks ran the military film anyway. When the Sygma photo agency offered film of the U.S. landing, taken by a French photographer who had arrived earlier in Grenada, it demanded $400,000—and got $100,000 from NBC—for pictures of what the network's Sunday evening show First Camera billed as "the first exclusive uncensored" footage.
Despite the sharp words between press and military, the invasion succeeded so quickly that the blockade against reporters was soon phased out; the story was virtually over by the time the press reached the scene. The ban, in fact, lasted only two days. Then came one day of limited pool coverage by 15 reporters. After the press clamored for more, there were two days of two-hour guided tours for press groups, ranging in size from 27 to 47.
These controlled visits, complained Los Angeles Times Foreign Editor Alvin Shuster, were "insufficient, much too short and too limited in scope." Freelance Photographer J. Ross Baughman, working for Newsweek, broke away from a military-conducted press tour on Friday for an unchaperoned personal sortie.
As a result, the magazine's photographers were barred from inclusion in further press-pool trips for 24 hours.
In New York, Newsweek Editor Maynard Parker later condemned Baughman's behavior, calling it "unacceptable and absolutely not condoned by the magazine."
Early this week the military lowered all barricades.
The brass in Grenada evidently did not know it at the time, but President Reagan had telephoned Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, ordering him to loosen up press restrictions. By 7 a.m. on Sunday, some 200 correspondents milled around in the sweltering trash-littered terminal of Barbados' Grantley Adams International Airport, jostling for places on the first plane. All those who finally got aboard the C-130 Hercules signed a standard release that waived any claim on the U.S. in case they were killed or injured.