Kevin Kattke

Kevin Kattke (b. February 18, 1949) was a maintenance engineer at Macy's. He was known for his anti-communist intelligence-gathering and relationship with Oliver North, who involved Kattke in covert operations. Kattke's off-the-books work for the US Government highlighted the increased privatization of government activities during the Reagan years, bypassing normal channels and accountability. Oliver North referred to Kattke as a "right-wing ideologue," operating "like a rogue CIA agent."

Early life and education Kattke was born in Rockaway, Queens to Bill and Elsie Kattke. His father was a German-American engineer and his mother was an Irish-American homemaker. They both worked for the Republican party and Kattke grew up with an interest in politics. He was briefly in the Army in 1968 after which he got married and moved to Freeport, New York. He got a degree in air conditioning and heating ducts from a technical school.

The three men continued their intelligence-gathering in the Caribbean, cultivating a large number of contacts there and elsewhere, and became interested in the political situation in Iran. Hebert occasionally would call the FBI to report on the activities of Kattke and Harris, and told people he worked for the CIA. In 1981 the three men met Michael Sylvester, the former assistant attorney general for Grenada, who was working with other exiled Grenadians to try to overthrow Maurice Bishop. Kattke let Sylvester live on the boat he had stored in his yard. A building inspector, Sal Imburgio, sent to check out neighbor complaints of a man living on the boat, became interested in the cause and joined the three men. The four men and Sylvester created the Grenadian Movement for Freedom and Democracy. They wrote position papers and lobbied elected Republicans in Washington, D.C. to overthrow Bishop and his government. The group began getting information sent to them from a Grenadian police commissioner who had been stripped of his authority by the Bishop regime. Kattke tried to share this information with his contacts at the Pentagon but claimed he did not get much interest. After the US invasion of Grenada, Kattke and his friends were seen as a reputable source for intelligence. Kattke claimed that North sent him to Grenada as North's personal emissary.

Kattke was now moonlighting as a stockbroker to support his activities.

Veracity of claims It's not known which of Kattke's activities resulted in concrete actions and which were exaggerated. He would claim, for example, that he was testifying before a prestigious Senate committee when he had only spoken to a single member. Most of the group's active work was about making introductions to the right people; Kattke would often meet refugees living in exile in New York, or they would seek him out. He moved out of Long Island and ran unsuccessfully for some small local political offices. The National Freedom Institute was officially dissolved in 2010.

Kattke was featured in a podcast about the Iran-Contra scandal by Leon Neyfakh in 2020. The first episode of the eight episode series was titled "Get Me Kevin Kattke." Neyfahk had read about Kattke in a lengthy New York magazine profile in 1987 titled "Ollie's Army: How a Macy's Engineer and His Pals Became Rogue American Agents." Neyfahk became interested in Kattke the "schlubby semi-spy" and the idea that "the government, at the end of the day, is really just a bunch of people. The fact that they've been temporarily put in charge of institutions that are much bigger than them doesn't change that."