This video, made by YouTuber Jabsy Joe, is a pretty thorough review of the history of the failed invasion and its bizarre cast of characters. My only quibble with it is the narrator can’t pronounce “Dominica” correctly. (it’s DOM-in-EE-ka).
I’ve queued the video past its opening ad for your convenience.
As Jo Thomas wrote in The New York Times on July 7, 1981:
The plot was so bizarre and the conspirators so ill-assorted that the newspaper here called it a ”comic-book escapade.” In New Orleans, where even the Federal judge hearing the case isn’t sure how to pronounce ”Dominica,” they call the affair the ”Bayou of Pigs.”
Rightist white mercenaries drawn from the Ku Klux Klan in the United States and Canada planned to join black terrorists and disgruntled soldiers in taking over the small, poor Caribbean island of Dominica and setting up what investigators have described as a drug, gambling and offshore banking empire under a left-of-center prime minister.
The invaders had automatic weapons, a Nazi flag, a rubber raft and bad luck: A Dominica army officer inadvertently gave away the plot in a note he tried to smuggle out of jail, and a disabled Vietnam veteran, the only hero of this story, helped Federal agents trap the invaders before they left Louisiana.
Time magazine covered the coup that wasn’t on May 11, 1981:
A coup that fizzled
It sounded like a sitcom version of The Dogs of War, after rewrites by V.S. Naipaul and Woody Allen. Even the feds joked about a “Bayou of Pigs.” Ten men, mostly Southerners and mostly Ku Klux Klan members, were arrested last week by federal agents at a marina near New Orleans and charged with organizing an expedition against a friendly nation.
The cast of characters in the plot was, well, odd. The conspirators included a gay vigilante, a mystery-man gunrunner with the novelish name of Sydney Burnett-Alleyne, a nurse cum spy with Irish Republican Army connections, and an ousted Prime Minister with alleged ties to South African industrialists. The gang, it appears, was intent on a coup to capture the impoverished Caribbean island of Dominica (pop. 81,000), a true banana republic (70% of exports) that is physically no bigger than Lexington, Ky.
The roots of the fiasco stretch back to last July, when Eugenia Charles, 61, was elected Prime Minister of all-black Dominica. Among those she defeated was a predecessor, Patrick John, 44, driven from office in 1979 after a BBC documentary charged that his plans for island industrialization included an oil refinery that would benefit South Africa. John’s go-between was said to be Burnett-Alleyne, a convicted smuggler who once recruited mercenaries to invade Barbados. The Charles administration believes the ten Americans, who were apprehended with an arsenal of automatic weapons and plastic explosives, were to enforce a government takeover by John—in cahoots, perhaps, with the island’s marijuana growers.
YouTube channel “Dive in Canada” details the long history of various Canadians’ interest in the annexation of a Caribbean territory going back to the 1800s and into the 2010s, as well as the growth of the Canadian Klu Klux Klan leading up to Operation Red Dog.
Here is some archival footage of the plot and arrests from WVUE-TV in New Orleans:
From the You Tube notes:
The plan was to charter a boat to Dominica and rendezvous via rubber boats with Patrick John and his makeshift army. The genesis of the idea came from long-time Klan member Perdue, who was introduced in 1979 to Droege. That summer, Perdue outlined his plan to overthrow the government of Grenada and set up several lucrative businesses. After their meeting, it was established that Droege would locate funds and resources. Croatian-Canadian Don Andrews was initially involved, but after Perdue changed the target island to Dominica, Andrews withdrew. Klansmen Arnie Polli and Roger Dermee were paid US$3,000 to visit Dominica and make a preliminary reconnaissance. German-Canadian neo-Nazi Martin K. Weiche was allegedly a financial backer of the plot along with James White of Houston and L. E. Matthews of Jackson, Mississippi.[5]
In February 1981, the captain and crew backed out. Perdue then approached a local boat captain and Vietnam War veteran, Michael S. Howell. Perdue said that the Central Intelligence Agency needed his boat for a covert operation. Howell then contacted the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF). On April 25, John was arrested in Dominica. When Perdue learned of the arrest and that their plans were no longer secret, he insisted that the mission should continue. On April 27, the group, including three ATF agents, met at the predetermined location, loaded the van and proceeded to the marina. Local police were waiting for them at the marina.
In 1984, during an interview by Barbados’s daily Nation Newspaper, Sydney Burnett-Alleyne, one of the leaders of the plot, was asked if the group had planned to overthrow the government of Barbados and install John as prime minister there as well.
He responded: He could have become prime minister, although that was not the real reason behind my plan of action. I wanted to add the land mass of Dominica to that of Barbados and also to be able to undertake an industrial project of considerable size. South African resources, millions of dollars, were available to me to be used for such a project. But Patrick John didn’t do what was supposed to have been done. But more than that, I became incensed when I found out he was giving away Dominican land to Americans. He lost an important opportunity to be a central figure in the history of the Caribbean.[6]
Another interesting historical note related to the plot is the alleged link to then-Texas Rep. Ron Paul, as reported by Casey Gane-McCalla at News One in 2013:
In 1981, a lawyer tried to subpoena Ron Paul to testify in the trial of Don Black, a Grand Wizard for the Ku Klux Klan who would later go on to found the white supremacist, neo-Nazi website, Stormfront. Black was charged along with two other Klansmen with planning to violently overthrow the small Caribbean country of Dominica in what they called Operation Red Dog. While a judge refused to subpoena Paul, Don Black would come back to haunt him many years later.
[…]The leader of the group, Michael Perdue, would plead guilty to planning the coup and turned state’s evidence. Perdue would testify that several other people helped organize and fund the coup and that two Texas politicians were aware of the plan. Among those Perdue implicated were infamous white supremacist, David Duke, former Texas Governor, John Connally and Congressman, Ron Paul whom he claimed knew about the plot. Connally was credited with helping Paul win his first congressional election.
A judge refused to subpoena Paul and Connally despite the fact that Perdue had claimed that both of them were aware of the plot. Don Black’s friend and fellow KKK Grand Wizard, David Duke was called to testify before a grand jury but claimed that he would take the Fifth Amendment and never testified. While Duke was never charged with a crime, several books point to Duke as the organizer who connected Perdue to the other mercenary Klansmen and the people who funded their endeavor. (1 2 3) Everyone else implicated by Perdue was charged with the plot.
In 2020, Andrew Milne documented the end results for All That’s Interesting:
Most of the mercenaries involved, including Michael Perdue, were found guilty of conspiracy and violating the US Neutrality Act by attempting to overthrow a foreign government. Perdue pointed fingers at establishment conservative figures, claiming they knew all about their invasion.
Former Texas Governor John Connally and Representative Ron Paul were nearly subpoenaed in connection to the plot, but the presiding judge refused and claimed the high-ranking politicians had no connection to Operation Red Dog. Stephen Don Black served three years in prison and went on to found the notorious Neo-Nazi website Stormfront. Patrick R. John was sentenced to 12 years in prison for conspiracy to overthrow the government, but he was acquitted of treason. He ended up serving only five years.
The legacy of his betrayal followed him, as the judge who sentenced him stated, “You could not take the idea of not being leader of Dominica, so you went to the limit to put yourself back into power.”John later became a soccer administrator embroiled in a FIFA elections scandal in the 2010s.
Despite the stunning failure of Operation Red Dog, it inspired a sequel in 1986. Another set of self-styled mercenaries conspired to overthrow the government of Suriname from a marina in Louisiana. The would-be invaders were clad in business attire but packed the same kind of firepower as the earlier invaders, including shotguns and revolvers.
Like Operation Red Dog, this second invasion attempt failed before it even began.
I hope you’ve found this obscure historical journey of interest. Given the utter lunacy of the current MAGA/Republican/far-right/white supremacist conspiracy nuts who walk among us, there is no guarantee that this sort of bizarre adventurism may not happen again. If it should, I predict the end result will be another failure.
Join me in the comments for more on Operation Red Dog and Dominica, and for the weekly Caribbean News Roundup.
