Caribbean Time Bomb: The United States' Complicity in the Corruption of Antigua

The story of Antigua, its ruling family, and the corruption that has swept over the island since 1978 provides the core of this penetrating investigation of the Caribbean's dirtiest little secret. But surrounding that core is the equally disturbing account of the United States indifference to, and deep involvement with, that corruption. First brought to public light in author Robert Coram's lengthy New Yorker article about Antigua and Barbuda, these shocking truths about a presumed island paradise are now fully revealed for the first time: • Despite its tourist-based economy, Antigua presents the greatest large-scale health hazard of any Caribbean island. Raw sewage from more than a dozen hotels and restaurants is pumped into the sea in the middle of the island's two most popular beaches. • Since 1978, the United States has spent nearly $200 million in Antigua to maintain and expand virtually useless air force and naval bases to support a friendly but bloodsucking regime. • On at least three occasions the United States Navy smuggled arms to South Africa by transshipment through Antigua, in defiance of the United Nations embargo. • The United States Embassy in Antigua, its smallest in the world, has been presided over by a charge d'affaires who has twice been investigated by the State Department. Among the many notorious, celebrated, and shady personages who appear in the book are Robert Vesco, the fugitive capitalist who cheated investors out of more than $200 million and who is still wanted in this country for an illegal campaign contribution to Richard Nixon; Gerald Bull, the mysterious arms-building genius who was assassinated in Brussels; Rodriguez Gacha of the Medellin drug cartel; Donald and Ivana Trump; Saddam Hussein; and Rosanno Brazzi, the 1950s movie star of South Pacific, who was indicted for gunrunning. And overriding them all are the members of Antigua's ruling family, the Birds, most particularly Prime Minister Vere Cornwall Bird and two of his sons, Lester and Vere, Jr. V. C. Bird has held power longer than any other ruler in the world; and the unfolding of his descent into ruthlessness, greed, and venality is especially dismaying. For it was he who led his people's movement for freedom from the yoke of colonialism, only to destroy the dream he helped create.