She arrived three days before "the 1st and 2nd battalions of the US Army's 75th Ranger Regiment, the 82nd Airborne Division, and elements of the former Rapid Deployment Force, U.S. Marines, US Army Delta Force, Navy SEALs, and ancillary forces, totaling 7,600 troops, together with Jamaican forces and troops of the Regional Security System (RSS)." She is the one who took photographs of the airport and other assault sites, and smuggled day-glo spraypaint to the hostage students somehow so that they could mark the roof of their building for the SEALs.
(Relevant to current events also involving hostages, the UN was hotly opposed to this rescue mission. "The invasion was criticized by many countries.... The United Nations General Assembly condemned it as "a flagrant violation of international law" on 2 November 1983, by a vote of 108 to 9.")
I met her shortly after 9/11, when I was still young and highly adventurous. She taught me a great deal, and trusted me enough to introduce me to her old friends, who taught me more yet. My life would have been very different without that friendship and trust. The last time I saw her was at the deathbed of one of those old friends, Dewey Clarridge.
These Reagan-era spies that I've met were all intensely patriotic, and conservative politically in spite of the wild tales they found themselves involved in over their careers. The Agency is not what it was in their day; a lot of reforms were made starting in the Clinton years to try to turn it into something else. Too bad: it used to draw some of the good ones, and put them into service of a nation that still deserved it.
