Larry Cloud-Morgan: Speaking Truth to Power 

Larry Cloud-Morgan: Speaking Truth to Power 

Extract of an Interview with John LaForge by Mary Ebeling in January 2003

EBELING: You were, however, involved in some specific actions out at missile silo sites as a result of your effort there. I'm wondering if there's any that you found
particularly notable or striking and would describe for us?

LAFORGE: Yeah, there have been several very dramatic actions at missile silos, indeed the first one ever was probably the most dramatic and it sort of threw the doors open to everything that came afterward. The Silo Pruning Hooks in November, Armistice Day in November of 1984, involved four people who took a
compressor driven jackhammer to a silo in Missouri and did damage to the gigantic concrete lid that covers up the top of the silo. They were Helen Woodson, Carl and Paul Kabat both brothers and both Catholic priests and Larry Cloud Morgan.

The four of them were tried in Kansas City, Missouri on charges of destruction of federal property, sabotage and a lower charge of trespass, I believe. And because of the circumstances of their actions the judge they happened to draw the political atmosphere at the time they ended up getting the harshest sentences ever meted out to civil disobedience in the history of the United States. The were initially given an eighteen year sentence by a Judge D. Brook Bartlett. Those sentences were later reduced on appeal to twelve, ten, and eight years. And because of the notoriety of their action they brought a lot of attention to the missile silos and to the question of the legality of the weapons.

You know, ever since Colorado lawyer Bill Durland starting arguing about illegal status of nuclear weapons there've been protests at these places based on the legal argument that binding international and domestic law forbids the use of these weapon systems. The Nuremberg Charter and the Geneva Conventions and the Hague Regulations of war on land make it illegal to plan and prepare indiscriminate war. So these arguments were brought to the trial in Kansas as a rationale known as an affirmative defense which is to say, yes we trespassed and yes we did damage to the system, but it's, it's not a crime because what we did was in furtherance of crime prevention, that is, our minor offense was done to prevent a greater harm and that argument has been brought to bear at at least half a dozen missile silo actions that are subsequent to that one in 1984.

There was another Missouri action that involved Jean and Joe Gump, grandparents from Michigan, in 1985, I believe, also Father Larry Moorland was part of that action and the CBS 60 Minutes television crew was on the scene to record their entry into the site. In fact, the whole CBS crew was arrested along with the protesters that day and held in jail until they posted a big bail. That action was well publicized too in part because Jean and Joe Gump were such ordinary mom and pop types with twelve of their own children and grandparents at the time that they did this demonstration.

Other actions that have taken place at silos have involved varying degrees of damage to the site which has always been a symbolic sort of damage and based on the biblical prophesy that's written up in the Old Testament Isaiah's prophecy the
beating swords into Plowshares so that's why these demonstrations have been
dubbed Plowshares actions. The ones involving a symbolic damage to the
missile silos and other nuclear weapons facilities have been called Plowshares
actions and there have been actions involving less risk no damage whatever at
the silos. I, myself, have participated in several of those in the North Dakota
area in the Grand Forks missile field before that missile field was demolished as
well. In the '80's after Barb and I finished this work we focused for quite a
number of years on the Grand Forks Air Force Base and the missile field
attached to it where 150 Minuteman III's used to be kept on hair trigger alert
status. And we had many demonstrations at the air base itself where we
simply blocked the road or held banners during one of their open houses so
thousands of the visitors there would see our banners and be reminded that
the place isn't just a carnival ride it's actually preparations for nuclear war,
nuclear winter mass extermination.

The missile silo actions we conducted were, I think, three all together. One involved a sit down in front of a launch control center in Steele County, North Dakota and we were convicted of trespass there and sentenced to a simple five days in jail or something. Another time we brought blood to a missile silo and poured blood all over the thing as a symbol of the wasted lives that go into maintenance and threatened use of these weapons as well as the lives lost through poverty and starvation when money is spent on weapons instead of health care and human needs. And that demonstration involved a Canadian citizen, a student from Winnipeg, and I think because we had a Canadian with us the charges were dropped the day before trial and we never were able to argue our case at trial or see what the consequences were going to be. Another reason that case might have been dropped was that we found a statute in the North Dakota statute books that allows for the prevention of a public offense or interference with a public
offense which was a statutory way of saying crime prevention is a legitimate
excuse for breaking a minor law and we were going to make full use of that
statute at trial and it could be that the federal government didn't want to see
that argument publicized or any attention brought to the question of the
legality or the illegality of these weapons systems. That's an argument that still
needs to be made, I guess. There's a long answer for you.

EBELING: It's a good answer. I think I had read one of the articles posted on your website that one of your stances is that these are in violations of treaties, am I?

LAFORGE: Yeah, that's right.

EBELING: Okay.

LAFORGE: The Geneva Conventions in particular and the Hague Regulations which are laws of war even older than the Geneva Conventions both forbid attacks on civilians or civilian objects for any reason. They also forbid retaliation against
civilians for any reason so that the, you know, the Air Force's entire rationale
for the missile fields and the nuclear arsenal so called deterrents are the
position that if we're attacked we can respond in kind is illegal under these
treaties that the U.S. is a party to. In fact the Geneva Conventions are written
right into the Air Force Manual of International Law which we have obtained
through the offices of the Senator Conrad from North Dakota. The Air Force
acknowledges that the Geneva Conventions and the Hague Regulations are
binding on Air Force personnel not just civilian leadership in the White House
and the Pentagon but Air Force personnel per se. So whenever we did one of
these demonstrations we'd bring with us, I brought you a copy too, a copy of
our so called caution and appeal to the military personnel warning them of
their, you know, legal responsibility to refuse participation in planning and
preparation for indiscriminate warfare. That's the language of the Nuremberg
Charter.

In the Nuremberg Principles and the Nuremberg Tribunal were established after World War II to prevent a repetition of what happened in Germany, that is the deliberate attempt to annihilate whole populations and the U.S. was principally influential in establishing the Nuremberg Tribunal and in fact the lead prosecutor was U.S. Supreme Court Justice Jackson. And so we put a lot of stock in the Nuremberg Charter in conjunction with the Geneva Conventions when arguing that these weapons are an ongoing criminal conspiracy to commit war crimes. That's strong language, but if you consider the effects of nuclear weapons which has been done by scholars from all over the world and the fact that you can't limit or control the effects of nuclear weapons in any way then you're left inescapably with the conclusion that these weapons are indiscriminate and that they are going to kill civilians regardless of your attempt to target them on military sites.

As a result of that understanding the military and the military personnel themselves are, in our estimation, obligated not to cooperate or participate with maintenance and threatened use of these machines, because it involves them in illegal war
preparations. Likewise the Nuremberg Principles were applied to civilians explicitly, even the ordinary civilians not just industrialists but especially them, and mandated that people in Germany practice civil disobedience before going along with the illegal orders of this German state.

EBELING: We were talking about that notice that you provided to military personnel when you went to a missile silo site, I can see that it's pretty lengthy.

LAFORGE: Yeah.

EBELING: I was wondering if there were a couple like highlights or key points that you could read for the interview?

LAFORGE: Okay. Yeah, most statute books have two or three pages explaining affirmative defenses which is to say a fire fighter isn't going to be charged with breaking and entering if they break down a door or smash windows to save people
inside. The affirmative defense in that case is that the fire fighter was working to prevent harm to individuals and the harm he or she committed was minor compared to that which was being prevented. In North Dakota that statute says any person in aid or defense of a person about to be injured by a public offense may make resistance sufficient to prevent the offense.

And so we acted on, I think January 7, 1990, based on that and these other principles. The U.S. Constitution that Article Six says that all treaties made shall be the supreme law of the land that every judge in every state shall be bound thereby
and that anything in the Constitution to the contrary you can ignore. So then you have to look at these treaties that are made and affirmed by the U.S. Senate and they include the Geneva Conventions, the U.S. Uniform Code of Military Justice, the Army Field Manual, the U.S. Law of Naval Warfare and, the book I mentioned earlier, Air Force International Law Conduct of Arm to Conflict in Air Operations.

And then the Geneva Conventions themselves, as I said, prohibit warfare directed at civilians or civil objects and our argument is that you can't use nuclear weapons without directing them at civilians, the Air Force and the Navy of course even the Army with its so called tactical or close range nuclear weapons will say that they're going to target a military site only, but because of radioactive fallout there's no way to limit the affects of nuclear weapons, particularly the radiation and the firestorms that spread out from the epicenter. So since nuclear weapons are going to indiscriminately kill civilians you have to consider the Hague Convention which says here, especially prohibits the employment of poison or poisoned arms, the killing or wounding treacherously of individuals belonging to a hostile nation or army or the
employment of arms, projectiles or materials of nature to cause superfluous injury.

Since radiation affects the gene pool, causes cancer, lymphomas and leukemias it's no stretch to call nuclear weapons poison or poison arms. In fact, General George Lee Butler, former head of the Strategic Arm Command, has said himself that these nuclear weapons that he was once in charge of are biological time bombs and it's no exaggeration to say that nuclear weapons are biological weapons because they damage the genes of the people exposed to the fallout.

And now the Geneva Gas Protocol which was adopted in 1925 and ratified by the U.S. Senate in 1949 prohibits the use not just of gas but of all analogous liquids, materials and devices. Now that's a phrase directly from the protocol which in our estimation encompasses the affects of nuclear weapons.

There's also a convention on the prevention and punishment of genocide and
the Nuremberg Principles, that I mentioned before, which really are ultimately
the Nuremberg Tribunal Judgment is what cinches or closes the argument.
Because the Nuremberg Principles were applied to ordinary German citizens by
the U.S. prosecutors who said, and this is a quote, "international as such binds
every citizen just as does ordinary municipal law. Acts when adjudged criminal
when done by an officer of the government are criminal when done by a
private individual." The fact that a person acts pursuant to the order of his
government, that's a quote, you know, say stop protesting this nuclear weapon
there's an order of the government, you know. The fact that you act pursuant
to the order of the government or your superior does not relieve you from
responsibility under international law provided a moral choice was in fact
possible. So there's the dilemma we're stuck with when we know that these
weapons are in existence and that we have a moral choice in our own lives
whether or not to protest against their existence, deployment and threatened
use. Then we have this terrible choice to make whether to ignore our
responsibility or not really.

EBELING: I was actually going to ask about this a little bit later but it seems pretty topical right now, it's at least obvious to me, my interpretation, when I read through
things like Nuclear Heartland and then listening to you talk, that there seems to be a fairly strong or involved component of religious organizations or religious component in the resistance movement. And we talked, I think, already in a fair amount of detail about the types of organizations and the religious groups that were involved, but I'm wondering if you can maybe expand on it a little bit if you have any thoughts moral end or spiritual component that revolves around this obligation as you say to protest and take a stand against these things. I'm thinking about it's not just the missile pruning hook damage, there's the Easter lily that was placed on a South Dakota silo, prayer services, vigils that were held and those seem to loom large in the history of the protest. Am I right in that and is there anything you think should be expanded on?

LAFORGE: Oh, you're right about that, yeah. Most of the major churches and church organizations issued serious condemnations of nuclear weapons and deterrence theory in the 1980's. And that helped motivate their congregations all over the country and in Canada. I think in particular of a demonstration we had in
Grand Forks, North Dakota where one hundred Mennonites came down from
Winnipeg and we completely, there's a photograph of it, completely encircled one of the missile silos holding hands and that organized in large part by the
Mennonite church in Winnipeg, that's just one example. As you say there's a
couple of approaches personally I'm taken by the legal argument that so clearly
places these weapons outside the realm of legitimacy. They almost are in a
category with other contraband like cocaine or assault rifles, you know, which
nobody is supposed to be allowed to have. But that's just one argument.

There's an entirely moral or religious perspective that was outlined by the, well as I said, all the major denominations during the 1980's with their statements regarding nuclear weapons and which found, you know, the arsenals have been reduced in size since then but they're still large enough to bring down nuclear winter on the Earth and end life as we know it. Back then the two superpowers had up to 60,000 warheads deployed against one another and all the churches understood that this was sort of a suicidal position since a small fraction of that number could have destroyed either side's major cities. So it wasn't a big moral leap for these churches to come out against this; it was just strictly a look at the New Testament in the case of the Christian churches and statements of all the founders of the other major religions regarding how to treat one another which moved these organizations to condemn plans and preparations for nuclear war. So the book and in our scrapbook that we collected produced as a result of the work are full of pictures of demonstrations conducted by church groups and people motivated by a religious and moral principles primarily against killing. In the case of fundamental Christian ethics, but against indiscriminate warfare in particular generally because there isn't a major religion in the world that endorses indiscriminate warfare. Even the religions that somehow are able to endorse modern war based on this archaic
just war theory aren't able to come up with a rationale that would justify nuclear weapons use because their affects are so indiscriminate.

EBELING: What kind of response did you encounter when you were involved in these protests at the missile sites? I'm thinking specifically first, this is obviously a
multi-part question as most of them are, first by the military or local police forces. I understand that a lot of people were arrested at part of these, but what was the general tenor of the protest, were they normally allowed to occur and then people were arrested, was there intervention right away?

Click here to continue this interview with John LaForge

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