- When three nuns cut down fences around a missile silo in
Weld County in October, they say they were doing what the German people didn't
do before World War II: standing up against a government with evil intent.
The three Dominican sisters - Carol Gilbert, 55, Jackie Hudson, 68, and
Ardeth Platte, 66 - say they are engaging in civil resistance against a U.S.
policy that promotes world domination. They believe the country is bent on
controlling the earth, water and sky by military force.
This month, the three are scheduled to appear in U.S. District Court in
Denver for pretrial hearings on charges that could send them to prison for 30
years in connection with the Weld County raid.
They said they raided the silo northeast of Greeley on Oct. 6, the first
anniversary of what they said was the illegal bombing and invasion of
Afghanistan by the United States.
For decades, Platte and Gilbert demonstrated in Michigan to close down two
Strategic Air Command bases that had missile-carrying B-52 bombers.
At Peterson Air Force Base near Colorado Springs in September 2000, the trio
took hammers to an $18 million F/A-18 Hornet and a Milstar mobile receiver, part
of the $32 billion Milstar receiver communications system. All charges were
dropped because the damage was minor.
And on Oct. 6, inside the silo grounds just off of Colorado 14 near the
former town of Buckingham, the nuns, wearing white mop-up suits identifying them
as the "Citizen Weapon Inspection Team," took hammers and banged on the
Minuteman III silo lid and its tracks.
They also poured their own blood on silo walls and on the tracks, the rails
along which the silo lid is moved to expose the missile.
For Gilbert, the tracks are similar to the tracks that led to the Nazi death
camps of World War II.
"For us, it was like ... people in Hitler's Germany who knew those tracks
were taking people to camps to be burned, to be gassed," Gilbert said during a
recent telephone interview from the Georgetown jail where she's being held until
trial.
The tracks represent a missile system, Gilbert said, which if fired would
mean "the destruction of planet Earth as we now know it."
"Once we were inside we took down three big sections of the wire fence and
then pushed the fence over from inside outwards to expose it," Gilbert said. "We
were saying to the public, 'This is an open site, the crime exists here, the
crime must end. This is a violation of international law, it is a violation of
treaties."'
Then they prayed. "Oh God, teach us to be peacemakers in a hostile
world."
Then they sang. "Sacred the land, sacred the water, sacred the sky, holy and
true. Sacred all life, sacred each other. All reflect God who is good."
The federal government isn't fond of raids on its missile defense system,
which includes silos in northeastern Colorado and southeastern Wyoming. There
are 49 Minuteman III sites in northeastern Colorado; 84 in southwestern Nebraska
and 17 in southeastern Wyoming.
"These military installations contain some of the most sensitive and
sophisticated weaponry in the country," said Bill Taylor, chief of the
major-crimes unit for the U.S. attorney's office in Denver. "They are a critical
part of our national defense and must be protected. Those who interfere with
these installations must be prosecuted."
The nuns are charged with obstruction of the national defense of the United
States and injuring the property of the United States. Conviction of the first
charge carries a maximum sentence of 20 years and the second, 10 years.
Hudson said a maximum sentence will be a "life sentence" for her.
"I won't be living to 98," said the 68-year-old Hudson.
But the women say they have a duty to protest the buildup of military weapons
of first-strike capability.
They claim international law prohibits any country, including the U.S., from
having "first-strike, high-alert weapons of mass destruction," including the
Minuteman III.
The Nuremberg defense protects them in this situation, the nuns said. They
claim that the international war crimes tribunal at Nuremberg recognized that an
individual has an obligation under international law to violate domestic law to
prevent his country's continuing crimes against humanity.
They believe, therefore, that all Americans have a responsibility to denounce
Minuteman-type weapons, which they say could vaporize every person within 50
square miles of impact.
"What we're doing is participating in acts of resistance," Hudson said. "We
are resisting our government's travel on a road to crime. We are trying to stop
the criminal activity of the United States."
But Hudson knows that federal judges have repeatedly rejected the
international law and Nuremberg defenses.
"What they do is discount the whole concept of international law," she said.
"I think they primarily call it irrelevant because they know they would lose if
international law actually were abided by."
Jeff Dorschner, spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office in Denver, said the
international law and Nuremberg defenses have been shot down in Colorado
before.
That happened in the case of the Rev. Carl Kabat. On Aug. 6, 2000, Kabat
climbed over a fence near New Raymer that enclosed a Minuteman III missile silo
and placed bread, wine and a hammer on top of a silo and prayed. Kabat was
dressed as a clown.
Walter Gerash, the prominent Denver lawyer who often represents peace
activists for free, tried to use the international law and Nuremberg defenses at
Kabat's trial.
But U.S. Magistrate Judge Boyd Boland wouldn't permit it.
Dorschner said Boland decided federal law superceded international law and
the Nuremberg defense. Kabat was convicted of trespassing and served 83 days in
prison. When sentenced in 2001, Kabat had spent 14 of the past 20 years in
prison as a result of his protests.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Brown, who is prosecuting the nuns in the Weld
County incident, said federal judges who have looked at the issue have ruled
those defenses aren't available to defendants.
Brown said the nuns are wrong to believe they have such defenses where civil
disobedience crosses into criminal conduct.
Dorschner and Brown say the women simply want a soapbox to espouse their
views.
"Clearly, they had no hope of changing American policies by cutting a lock on
a gate and cutting down fences protecting one active nuclear missile site in
northeastern Colorado, given their failures to change policies they oppose on at
least 15 instances where they were previously arrested over the past 19 years,"
Brown said in court motions.
Federal courts have held that if protesters like the nuns want to change
policy, they must do it through the democratic, decision-making process,
specifically through their elected representatives.
And the courts have found that people of a country do not commit war crimes
simply because they are citizens of countries whose governments committed
international violations.
Rather, they are guilty of war crimes only if they helped the government
further violations of international principles by their direct actions.
All three nuns entered the Dominican Order in Grand Rapids, Mich. (Hudson in
1952, Platte in 1954 and Gilbert in 1965).
They've been actively engaged in resistance for decades - an outgrowth they
say of their immersion in social issues surrounding poverty, racial injustice
and the Vietnam War.
Gerash said ordinary citizens have a duty to act. And that's exactly what the
nuns have done, he said.
"Their action was to prevent a nuclear war and to declare what they (the
missiles) are and they don't want any part of it," Gerash said. "That's an
obligation all citizens have."
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