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The Seaspray operatives and ISA agents, however, proved uneasy partners. They worked together out of a house in a small Honduran town, bickering over who was to be in charge. The feuding led to a formal ISA complaint about loose Seaspray security. Seaspray agents had set up a small military satellite dish outside the Honduran house, hiding it with only a plastic garbage bag. An operations security team, Yellow Fruit, flew a large commercial satellite dish to Honduras so that the Queens Hunter team could more convincingly play the part of rich Yanqui tourists. &
Longhofer's operations units racked up some other successes. In 1983, one branch set up a helicopter surveillance project in Korea to monitor North Korean agents crossing the demilitarized zone at night. The same year, they supplied Bushmaster rapid-firing cannons to the CIA, which mounted them on speedboats and used them to blow up a Nicaraguan oil refinery. Also Seaspray transferred some of its special helicopters to the CIA; several Seaspray pilots left the Army and were hired by the CIA as civilian employees. They then flew the choppers in direct attacks on the Sandinistas.
Nonetheless, the conventional military never felt comfortable with either King's or Longhofer's units. Seaspray and ISA were deliberately excluded from the 1983 invasion of Grenada by a Navy commander who claimed that he was not familiar with what they were or what they could do. Defenders of the secret groups retort that he refused a proffered briefing on those subjects.
Both ISA and the special operations group quickly got into trouble over questions of accountability. ISA, indeed, had to fight for its bureaucratic life almost from the moment of its creation. In mid-1981, James ("Bo") Gritz, a retired Green Beret colonel, planned to lead a small group of Americans on a foray into Laos to search for MIAs. Despite warnings, Jerry King insisted on helping him; ISA supplied Gritz with two cameras, plane tickets, parts for a lie detector and, Gritz claimed, $40,000 in cash. The preparations for Gritz's raid are said to have crossed wires with an ultrasecret plan by the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff to send American military forces into Laos to hunt for MIAs.
Congressional investigators looking into the Gritz fiasco were furious that they had not been told about ISA's existence. The Pentagon conducted its own investigation, which apparently convinced Secretary Weinberger that ISA was already spinning out of control. In early 1982, only a year after ISA's formation, Weinberger ordered the unit disbanded.
ISA continued to operate, however, while Army commanders and Weinberger's office engaged in protracted negotiations about its future. In mid-1983 the National Security Council approved a so-called charter that kept ISA around, but under strict control. The agents are currently said to be forbidden to travel outside the Washington area without specific permission from the Secretary of the Army.