Posted on 04/13/2004 5:46:32 AM PDT by Theodore R.
Protest puts priest back behind bars
By Cara Eastwood rep4@wyomingnews.com Published in the Wyoming Tribune-Eagle
CHEYENNE - A Catholic priest with a flair for dramatic civil disobedience was arrested Friday in Weld County, Colo., for scaling the fence around a Minuteman III missile site near New Raymer, Colo.
Using two ladders to scale each side of the towering chain-link fence, the 71-year-old Rev. Carl Kabat wore his signature clown suit for the demonstration and carried signs protesting the United States' nuclear arsenal.
"The nuclear bomb that is on the ground here is more than 20 times more powerful than the atomic bombs we dropped on the Japanese 59 years ago," Kabat said in a statement. "Each of those bombs killed 100,000 people."
Air Force security guards apprehended Kabat at the scene and turned him over to the Weld County Sheriff's Office, said 1st Lt. Matthew Bates of the F.E. Warren Air Force Base Public Affairs Office.
Bates could not confirm that the missile site is active.
Charged with second-degree criminal trespassing and second-degree criminal tampering, it remains to be seen if Kabat will be tried by the state of Colorado or the federal government, said Jeff Dorschner, a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Denver.
"If the feds take the case, most likely state charges will be dropped, but it's up to the district attorney," said public information officer Margie Martinez of the Weld County Sheriff's Office.
Although Kabat inflicted no damage on the site, Martinez said there doesn't have to be any damage caused to be charged with criminal tampering.
National security was never compromised by Kabat's demonstration, Bates said, but the Air Force took the action seriously.
"We can never, ever afford to take something like this lightly," Bates said. "Anyone who enters Air Force property without the express consent of the Air Force or the wing commander will be turned over to law enforcement."
The silo is part of the network of nuclear installations overseen by Air Force personnel based at F.E. Warren Air Force Base here. Those people monitor 200 missile silos spread over 12,600 square miles. Colorado is home to 49 of them, Air Force officials said.
Kabat has a long history of expressing his political views by tangling with the law and has spent the better part of the last 20 years in prison.
He co-founded the anti-weapons of mass destruction group called the Plowshares Movement and has gained international attention for his anti-nuclear missile actions.
His first demonstration, which he called "Pruning Hooks," involved using a jack-hammer on a concrete slab at a missile site in Missouri. Ten years later, after his release from prison, Kabat joined two other priests in using hammers to knock on missile nose cones at a General Electric plant in King of Prussia, Pa.
Fellow activist Bill Sulzman said Kabat sees his activism as a way to express a prophetic message.
"In the letters of Paul, it says, 'If you're a Christian, you might look like a fool - so look like a fool for Christ's sake,'" Sulzman said.
Kabat believes that more people might take notice of his action if he makes it more of a spectacle.
Although he has experienced fewer than two years of freedom since his last incarceration for a similar action at the same missile site, Kabat feels it's what he's called to do, Sulzman said.
"He has a tremendous stoic sense in enduring (imprisonment)," said Sulzman, who was arrested along with Kabat in 2000 but spent less time in prison.
After being released in the summer of 2002, Kabat lived in the St. Louis, Mo., area, working with the poor at a Catholic worker house, Sulzman said.
The impassioned priest uses his sense of humor to get through his prison time, seeing it as part of his Christian mission.
"I spoke to him on the phone yesterday," Sulzman said, "and he was laughing. It was Easter Sunday, and he's a priest in jail, and we joked about that. It's how he deals with the serious side of this."
Bill Strabala recently included Kabat's story in a book, "Prophets Without Honor: A Requiem for Moral Patriotism," which chronicles the stories of activist clergy and nuns.
"I consider people like Carl not only prophets, but patriots. They're trying to tell the secular side of our world what is a good way to proceed without dictating politics."
The writer met Kabat in seminary in Mississippi, where they trained to minister to the "poorest of the poor."
Kabat thinks that poverty is propagated by the dedication of most of our resources to war, Strabala said.
The recent controversy over weapons of mass destruction in Iraq is bringing about a new opposition to nuclear weapons among the American public, Sulzman said.
"People in America are beginning to question this huge arsenal that the U.S. still has on alert," he said. "Three Catholic sisters were arrested at this very silo last year. People are starting to wonder, why are these (weapons of mass destruction) good if somewhere else they can be the cause of war?"
How appropriate.
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