The 1st Prime Minister of Grenada was Eric Mathew Gairy, an energetic, charismatic, and ultimately egomaniacal leader with personal interest in self-aggrandizement and unidentified flying objects. The opposition of Gairy's movement to increase his own wealth appeared with the foundation in 1972 of a movement called JEWEL, Joint Endeavor for Welfare, Education, and Liberation of people, combined with the Movement for the Assemblies of the People, MAP, to create the "New Jewel Movement," NJM, led by Maurice Bishop and Bernard Courd. In the late 1970's NJM began to promote a vague Marxist-Leninist ideology. While Gairy was in New York attempting to persuade the UN to establish an agency for investigation of UFO's, the New Jewel Movement seized power in a near bloodless takeover. Bishop became Prime Minister in what came to be known as People's Revolutionary Government, PRG; Courd became Minister of Finance. Bernard Courd became increasingly critical of Bishop and his national-democratic, reformist, and anti-imperialist PRG. He, along with a number of military advisors and their troops, placed Bishop under house arrest and eventually executed him.
The Reagan administration watched these events with mounting interest.