And as a result of these telephone calls, they got all of them into the True Blue campus, a very substantial number of them, so they could all be protected.

The CHAIRMAN. Before we have a quorum call, I would like to hear from Mr. Dellums. He hasn't had an opportunity to say anything.

STATEMENT OF HON. RONALD V. DELLUMS, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM CALIFORNIA

Mr. DELLUMS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I don't know how much time we have, but I will try to move as expeditiously as possible.

As to any inquiry there is an extraordinary amount of agreement with respect to a broad range of the facts and then there are subtleties and nuances and substantial differences as one hears the facts and as one interprets the facts. I would like to begin at this point: with the exception of maybe one or two Members, each person on the delegation that proceeded to the island of Grenada had already taken a political position. Some Members had spoken out very strongly in support of the actions that had been taken on the part of this administration vis-a-vis Grenada.

Some of us had taken a position in opposition, a minority of course, but those two points of view existed, which means that we did not travel to the island of Grenada as virgins. We had taken a political position. We took our ideological and philosophical frame of reference with us.

I took an initial position. My initial position was to oppose in the strongest of terms this military intervention on the grounds that it was an effort to use the students and tiny Caribbean countries in a thinly veiled effort to mask further militarization of American foreign policy. That was my initial position.

So I did not go there without a position, without an ideological frame of reference, but I agreed to be a part of the factfinding mission to determine, based upon broader inquiry, closer inquiry whether my initial position was correct or incorrect. Upon return people's obvious question is: Has your position now changed as a result of the visit? My response was unequivocally "no" for several

reasons.

As far as I am concerned, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, this inquiry is not over. We have only touched the surface of this inquiry. There are a number of questions that must be answered, it seems to me, if we are going to look at the totality of this situation to internalize the gestalt of this whole issue.

First, the question of a role of an independent press in a free and democratic society is terribly important. The fact that a military person made a decision to deny access to an independent press to thwart that capacity, acquiesced in by all of the civilian leadership up to the Presidency of the United States, has in my estimation enormous_implications for the whole concept and principle of democracy. I believe it was a major threat to the whole principle of an independent press. One of the cornerstones of American democracy is that an independent press shall always have the opportuni

ty to convey information directly to the American people as to what its government is doing in its name.

These are issues that have to be looked at: the military's role, civilian acquiescence and the whole question of whether we shall struggle valiantly and diligently to protect and preserve the delicate nature of an independent press and a free and open society. That issue has to be addressed.

Second, as most of you know, anytime there is a use of force, my response is to challenge the use of force because I came here as an advocate of peace to challenge the madness of war and to challenge the insanity of violence and force as a way of addressing a human problem. So my initial response is to oppose it and after 13 years you all know that.

And so I believe that those of us who are the advocates of peace have a responsibility to look at the use of force and raise the following questions: Were the objectives articulated by the President of the United States truly the reason for this military incursion into Grenada? Second, were there peaceful alternatives to achieving the objective even if you accept the efficacy of the objectives as stated by the President of the United States and were those peaceful alternatives fully explored? If they were, and they were rejected, we need to know upon what basis these peaceful alternatives were rejected.

If alternatives were not evaluated, enunciated, evaluated, and looked at fully and comprehensively, then we ought to know why they were not looked at. And finally, we need to explore the shortand long-term implications of having moved away from peaceful alternatives to the use of force.

I would like to know, as one Member and a Representative of a substantial number of people in the country, whether or not the use of force is a preferred method on the part of this administration for solving international disputes as opposed to a last resort and if there is any justification for the use of force. So as far as I am concerned, these questions have to be raised and the inquiry is not over.

Third, I did return feeling that I can say to you without equivocation but to a moral certainty that the safety of the students was not the primary objective of this mission; it was ancillary. I say that because we received no testimony that the students at any time were in danger. Fear is a subjective state of mind. Danger is an objective external reality that poses a threat to an individual or individuals. So I make the distinction between fear and danger and I do not suggest that fear was not a reality in the situation, but the question of danger has not been answered.

If we were interested in the safety of the students, why did it take us 3 days to get to Grand Anse? Why were we in telephone communication with the people at Grand Anse and said put a mattress up by the door and we will see you in a couple of days. When I talked with the Special Forces people, I did not hear any Special Forces mission that was specifically and unequivocally dedicated to the liberation of the students, although at least one of the missions was dedicated to the security of Sir Paul Scoon.

If we had a Special Forces mission that was dedicated to his safety, why did we not have a Special Forces mission dedicated to

the safety of the students? Over 200, as I recall in my memory, 207 students were located at Grand Anse on a beach that is less than 20 meters from the water. You could have walked up on the beach and liberated Grand Anse without one shot being fired. The students said to us that in the 3 days from the time the Americans hit the ground in Grenada to the time that they liberated them from Grand Anse, they saw one Grenadian soldier casually walking up the beach in 3 days. So they posed no threat and it still took them 3 days. I raise that question.

I can go into a number of other issues, but even if you accept as I do not, even if you accept that liberation of the students was the objective of this invasion, why are the troops still there? Everybody has been taken out. And each day that the American forces, and I think this is important for the Armed Services Committee members, each day that the American military is on that island, the role changes. The role changes from liberator of students to peacekeeper and away from peacekeeper to occupying force.

Fourth, I am going to lay out one issue that I think is going to become a serious political problem if we continue to have the troops there. Our American troops granted authority by Sir Paul Scoon, who takes his authority from the constitution and the emergency powers of the constitution and his legal status, in my estimation, is extremely questionable. But you have now American military forces engaging in weeding out subversives on the island of Grenada. Military people cannot do that in this country. They cannot walk into my home and determine on the basis of the literature that I have in my home and the books that I possess in my home whether I pose a threat to the state or not.

But you have American military forces now on that island engaged in weeding out subversive elements on the island. One person testified before us and said that the military went to his mother's home and took his books. And his statement was, "As far as I know, my books are at war with no one." And so now we have the military looking at the books. If these books now are considered Marxist or considered controversial, then Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, these people can be brought in and interrogated. So I think that this is a very dangerous role.

Finally, for those persons who justified American intervention on the basis of the fact that Maurice Bishop was killed, I would suggest that there are many people who denounced, opposed and oppressed and challenged the Bishop regime at the very time that Bishop was reaching out with an olive branch to this country. It seems to me it is the height of hypocrisy for us to use that as a justification. At a time when the gentleman was alive and well, we brought him right here before the committee at that table and we sat and talked for a long time over the whole range of questions. A number of people walked away writing Maurice Bishop off as some kind of a Marxist puppet and did not reach out to provide any assistance.

Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, for the two or three remaining members, it just points out that no one wants to hear the other side. We have taken our political views. We operate on the basis of politics by poll-taking. If the American people, 85 percent say they approve, then my colleagues will approve because it

takes much less courage to go along with the polls than it is to begin to try to raise some significant and serious questions.

Let me conclude with this warning. I hope that people understand that Grenada was clearly a unique situation. Where could the President of the United States find an island where you could liberate white middle class students, capture some "bad blacks," beat up some Cubans, humiliate some Soviets, rid the island of communism, and have the majority of black people on the island say, "Thank you, Uncle Sam." Only on the island of Grenada.

And if anyone believes that we can take this incredible application of military force and apply it somewhere else in the world, then we are taking the world to the brink of total disaster. If we attempt to impose force into Lebanon, we are flirting with world war III and all of the enormous implications for escalation to thermonuclear war.

If we attempt to impose our will in Central America with the use of force in Nicaragua, we will cause the death of tens of thousands of human beings and blood will flow across Central and South America beyond our comprehension. So I think that while people feel this euphoria, I believe that it is terribly important that we not attach the prestige of a nation as powerful as the United States on its capacity to invade the tiny island of 90,000 to 100,000 human beings. There is no great prestige in that.

It seems to me that our strength lies in our capacity to provide peaceful alternatives to the solution of human problems. The example that we have given to the world is to use force. I think that that is very dangerous example and a very dangerous message to send. So I came back with a very different set of conclusions, Mr. Chairman.

To conclude, I took my initial position in opposition. I have maintained that position: One, because the inquiry is not ended; and, two, the facts that I was able to determine and evaluate on that island only underscore that we used the situation. We used the situation to do what this country had wanted to do since we implemented Ocean Venture II 2 years ago. Maurice Bishop went to the United Nations and in that international arena protested Ocean Venture II as an American effort to practice an invasion of the island of Grenada 2 years ago.

It is interesting, I find, that the majority of this cache of weapons-the date on the boxes were 1981, 2 years ago at the very same time or around the very same time that Maurice Bishop was protesting in the United Nations. So I think one can make another set of interpretations about these weapons, but I raise this question: How much of it was the elephant and the flea? How much of it was our intimidation of this tiny island to the point where they saw the need to escalate these armaments beyond reality and then once we knocked them out, we say, "See, they were dangerous."

And so I wonder how much of that was involved. We need to, in a sober reflective reasoned way, begin to look at what we did on the island of Grenada and I believe that when the American people look at it carefully and we answer all these issues, it would seem to me that they will come down on the side that we did not need to use this incredible display of force. A superpower with all of its capacity to annihilate human life shows its strength not in its capac

ity to run over tiny nations, but in its capacity to use the wisdom of our creative thinking and not the bizarre nature of our military armaments.

And I thank you very much for those of you stayed to hear another point of view and I appreciate the opportunity.

[Whereupon, at 12:12 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.]

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