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Exclusive: 4 Years After BP Disaster, Ousted Drilling Chief Warns U.S. at Risk of Another Oil Spill
Four years after BP’s Deepwater Horizon drilling platform exploded and killed 11 workers, causing more than 200 million gallons of oil to spew into the Gulf of Mexico, the Environmental Protection Agency has lifted a ban that excluded BP from new federal contracts. In a broadcast exclusive, we speak with Elizabeth Birnbaum, who was director of the Minerals Management Service in the Interior Department at the time of the Deepwater Horizon blowout. She was forced out soon after. In her first broadcast interview since her departure, Birnbaum warns the risk of another offshore oil drilling blowout is real. We are also joined by Jaclyn Lopez, staff attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity.TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: Sunday marked the fourth anniversary of what’s been called the worst man-made environmental disaster in U.S. history. It was April 20th, 2010, when an explosion and fire on BP’s Deepwater Horizon drilling platform killed 11 workers and caused more than 200 million gallons of oil to spew into the Gulf of Mexico. Today, oil continues to wash up on some of the beaches of Louisiana, despite claims made by Gulf Coast residents featured in BP’s television advertisements like this one.
GULF COAST RESIDENT 1: Yeah, last summer I saw certain spots where oil would pool up on the beaches, on the shores. And we saw cleanup crews every day, in my opinion, doing a good job.
GULF COAST RESIDENT 2: It’s as good as it’s ever been. I’ve been here since 1991, and I’ve never seen our beaches look better.
GULF COAST RESIDENT 3: I honestly kind of expected it, our beach, to be messed up for a while and really to see the effects of it. But, I mean, it’s nice and clean, as you can see.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s an ad by BP. The oil company says it spent more than $14 billion responding to the spill and cleaning the coastline, and it recently announced it’s ending its "active cleanup" in Louisiana. Similar operations ended last summer in Alabama, Florida and Mississippi.
Meanwhile, last month the Environmental Protection Agency lifted a 2012 ban excluding BP from new federal contracts. The ban was put in place after the EPA found the company failed to fully correct problems that led to the well blowout in 2010. BP had sued to have the suspension lifted. The consumer advocacy group Public Citizen said in a statement the settlement, quote, "lets a corporate felon and repeat offender off the hook for its crimes against people and the environment." Just days after the ban was lifted, during an auction in New Orleans, BP bid $42 million to win 24 new leases in the Gulf of Mexico.
Well, in a broadcast exclusive, we’re joined now by Elizabeth Birnbaum. She was director of the Minerals Management Service at the time of the Deepwater Horizon blowout. She’s now a consultant at SEB Strategies. She recently co-wrote an op-ed for The New York Times headlined "The Deepwater Horizon Threat," where she expresses concern that, quote, "The risk of another blowout is real. Offshore wells have lost control several times in the [past] year," she said. This is Birnbaum’s first broadcast interview since she left the Department of Interior shortly after the BP spill. She’s joining us from Washington, D.C.
Liz Birnbaum, welcome to Democracy Now! Talk about this risk you have written about four years after the BP spill.
ELIZABETH BIRNBAUM: Well, after the spill, there were a number of investigative reports by various experts looking at what had caused the spill and how it might be prevented in the future. One of the key reports was done by the National Academy of Engineering. Experts on engineering looked at all aspects of what had caused the spill, and they looked at the decision making on the oil rig which had led to loss of control of the well. But they also looked at what happened with the blowout preventer. The blowout preventer is a huge piece of equipment that sits on the seafloor, and it’s designed to do what its name says: stop a blowout as it comes up the well, be able to cut off any oil and gas coming out of the well. What the National Academy of Engineering found was that the blowout preventers aren’t actually well engineered to do that, and they found a number of failings within the blowout preventers. The administration has several times indicated that they were going to adopt new regulations to require blowout preventers that would actually prevent this kind of an accident, but in fact they’ve never even put out a draft regulation, and it’s now two-and-a-half years since we heard from the National Academy of Engineering.
AMY GOODMAN: And your response, Liz Birnbaum, to the EPA lifting that 2012 ban on BP getting new federal contracts? They just bid for a bunch more.
ELIZABETH BIRNBAUM: I believe that EPA is bound by some federal laws that allowed BP to go back into the business; however, there are ongoing concerns about BP’s practices over the years. They were of course involved in the major Texas chemical plant incident previously, and so there are a number of questions about their business practices, and certainly it deserves a good look.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about your controversial time, certainly, with this blowout that occurred? You left soon after, the reports then, as you were forced out just before you were to testify with Ken Salazar, who was then the head of the Department of Interior, before Congress. What happened at that time?
ELIZABETH BIRNBAUM: At that time, I left the administration at the request of the interior secretary, who asked for my resignation. Since then, I’ve been monitoring what’s been going on and trying to determine if there is a way to prevent future accidents of this kind. I thought any issues about my resignation were a distraction from the real questions at the time, which were we didn’t know why the spill had occurred, and we needed to learn about it and take the lessons from it.
AMY GOODMAN: In a press statement BP released earlier this month, the company said it’s expended $14 billion and 70 million man-hours on the cleanup effort. The statement went on to say, quote, "The large-scale cleanup effort, combined with early restoration projects and natural recovery processes, is helping the Gulf return to its baseline condition, which is the condition it would be in if the accident had not occurred." They went on to say, "From the beginning, BP worked under the Coast Guard’s direction and in cooperation with state agencies and local governments to limit the accident’s impact on the environment, and remove oil from the water and shoreline." Liz Birnbaum, are you assured?
ELIZABETH BIRNBAUM: There are continuing reports about oil along the coast, particularly in the marshes. Those are areas that are hard to reach, but those are the areas that are essential to keeping Louisiana’s coastline intact, and in fact have been deteriorating for many years. But there are certainly reports that there are still many miles of coastal marshes where you can find oil and where that’s contributing to the death of the marshes.
AMY GOODMAN: You’ve talked about the blowouts or the offshore wells that have lost control several times just in the last year. Can you talk more about that?
ELIZABETH BIRNBAUM: Certainly. A few of these have been temporary losses of control where there was unexpected pressure coming up a well and the operator was able to get it under control fairly quickly. But there was at least one incident last year in July where a natural gas well, which was not spewing oil, luckily did not pollute the Gulf, but was emitting high-pressure natural gas, actually caught on fire, caught the rig on fire, and it took them two days to put it out and to stop the flow of gas from the well. That’s the kind of incident which a blowout preventer or a similar device should be able to stop, and it’s the kind of incident that the Department of the Interior should be trying to prevent through new regulation.
AMY GOODMAN: The administration’s recent proposal to use these seismic air guns to search for oil along the Atlantic Coast?
ELIZABETH BIRNBAUM: Yeah, that’s a new proposal to search for additional oil and gas. They just completed the environmental impact statement looking at that, and they determined that the use of these seismic air guns, which basically emit huge sound explosions under sea repeatedly over miles of survey area, would have significant impacts on marine life and, in particular, would actually cause thousands of deaths among dolphins and whales. The concern about that is that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is actually in the process of issuing new guidelines for exactly this kind of activity and how to avoid impacts on dolphins and whales. That came out in draft in December, and the Department of the Interior shouldn’t be going forward with the new seismic testing until after NOAA’s new guidelines have been peer-reviewed and finalized.
AMY GOODMAN: And do you have regrets, any regrets, from your time at the Department of Interior heading up the Minerals Management Service?
ELIZABETH BIRNBAUM: I have enormous regrets. On my watch, we had the most devastating accident we’ve had offshore. Eleven men died. And we had an enormous pollution event in the Gulf of Mexico, which is perhaps the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history, as you suggested. I believe that we need to continue to work to make our regulation of offshoring oil and gas better and to make sure that we can prevent incidents like that in the future.
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, the issue of the human factor, reducing the human factor, how do you do that?
ELIZABETH BIRNBAUM: Well, there were, again, a number of reports which looked at what happened on the rig when they made poor decisions, looked at the data from the well and decided that they would ignore tests that suggested that the well wasn’t under control. Those are decisions that were made probably because of very human factors about the fact that they had discovered a huge reservoir of oil and they wanted to move forward on it very quickly. The only solution to that is to have monitoring by people who are not so integrally involved. The Interior Department has proposed having the data from the wells sent onshore to Interior Department personnel for any new wells being drilled in the Arctic. I really don’t understand why they haven’t done that for any well in deep water in the Gulf, as well. Those are ones where there are huge risks and where if you simply had somebody onshore monitoring the data, you would know whether or not there were risky decisions being made on the rigs.
AMY GOODMAN: Elizabeth Birnbaum, I want to thank you for being with us in this exclusive interview, now a consultant at SEB Strategies. She was the director of Minerals Management Service at the time of the Deepwater Horizon blowout, wrote this op-ed piece in The New York Times headlined "The Deepwater Horizon Threat."
The co-author of the piece [sic] was Jaclyn Lopez. Jaclyn Lopez is a staff attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity. She’s joining us from Tampa, Florida, from PBS station WEDU.
Jaclyn, what do you think is critical for us to understand right now, on this fourth anniversary of the BP oil spill, about the state of the environment now along the coast?
JACLYN LOPEZ: Good morning, Amy. Yes, well, first I have to make a correction: I was not the co-author on that New York Times editorial. But we do have remaining concerns about the health of the Gulf. So, we all live here because of the remarkable diversity of wildlife that we have, and we have remarkable ecosystems, as well. We have marshes and coastal areas, open water and estuaries. And what we learned from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill is that these types of events can be catastrophic for the environment. We still don’t know the total damage in terms of its impact on the biodiversity of our ecosystems. And with the recent BP obtaining the recent lease sales in the northern Gulf of Mexico and now with the South Atlantic becoming available for seismic testing, what we’ve learned is that we just don’t know enough about these systems. We’re going into deeper and deeper water. And we still don’t have a proven method for preventing this type of catastrophe from happening again in the future.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about the state of wildlife, Jackie.
JACLYN LOPEZ: So, in the Gulf of Mexico, we have several different taxa. So we have five different types of endangered and threatened sea turtles. We have numerous marine mammals. We know that the bottlenose dolphins have been hit particularly hard with the spill and other activities. The brown pelican was only recently delisted from the Endangered Species Act when the BP spill hit. We have bluefin tuna, amberjack. We have a very vibrant set of fisheries. We have all kinds of reasons why people want to live here, and very few of them have to do with oil and gas development in the Gulf.
AMY GOODMAN: In 2012, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported dolphins in the Barataria Bay off Louisiana are seriously ill. Well, former Louisiana senator, current oil industry lobbyist, J. Bennett Johnston said the organization is yet to establish a connection between the sick dolphins and the BP oil spill. This is former Senator Johnston speaking on Al Jazeera.
J. BENNETT JOHNSTON: What NOAA has said is that there was damage to the dolphins before the spill, there’s damage after the spill, and they think there might be a connection between the spill and the dolphins, but it has not been established at all.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s former senator, now oil lobbyist, Bennett Johnston of Louisiana. Your response to that, Jackie?
JACLYN LOPEZ: So, in addition to the 4.9 million barrels that were spilled in the two or three months that the Macondo well went wild, we also know that there’s about a half a million to 1.5 million barrels that are spilled annually, without sort of the media attention that the Macondo well, the Deepwater Horizon, had. So we have these ongoing impacts in the Gulf of Mexico, and while perhaps the findings aren’t conclusive, it would be difficult to surmise that the cumulative effect of the different oil and gas activities aren’t harming our wildlife.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the lifting of the ban on BP applying for other drilling contracts now, the EPA doing that?
JACLYN LOPEZ: Right. So, we’ve seen that BP has this history of struggling with telling the truth in terms of the amount of oil that was spilled with the Deepwater Horizon and even more recently with the spill in Lake Michigan. BP seems to struggle with its ambition and keeping its oil and gas activities sort of within the bounds of what’s safe for the environment and for humans. And it has repeatedly demonstrated to the American public that it can’t be trusted to be acting on our best behalf. So the request to EPA to reinstate this debarment is on behalf of the American public that has recognized that BP simply can’t be trusted to continue to do business with the American government.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the petitions that you’ve delivered?
JACLYN LOPEZ: Right. So that petition is asking the EPA to reinstate this suspension against EPA—or, against the BP. So, following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, EPA temporally suspended BP while it was investigating the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. And a few months back, BP then sued EPA to lift the suspension. So they reached an agreement which resulted in a five-year probation for BP. And then, just a few weeks ago, we had this other spill up in Lake Michigan, about 1,600 gallons, that just further illustrates that BP is just unprepared to deal with the oil and gas development activities that it seeks to engage in.
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Jackie Lopez, it’s four years later. How do you think BP should be held accountable?
JACLYN LOPEZ: We think that the American people have spoke. And that petition was signed by over 50 organizations representing millions of Americans. It was independently signed by another 66,000 people who all recognize that BP needs to be held accountable by being prohibited from future contracts with the American government.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you for being with us. Jaclyn Lopez is a staff attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity, speaking to us from Tampa, Florida, from PBS station WEDU.
When we come back, Rubin "Hurricane" Carter has died. He became a symbol of racial injustice when he was imprisoned for 19 years. Ultimately, he was exonerated, and he spoke out around the world against wrongful imprisonment. Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: Woody Guthrie. Woody Guthrie singing "Ludlow Massacre." Sunday marked the hundredth anniversary of the Ludlow Massacre, when the National Guard attacked a tent colony of miners striking at a Rockefeller-owned mine in southern Colorado. That night, the Colorado National Guard and mine guards torched the camp, and women and children hiding underneath the tents were burned to death, killing dozens. "Remember Ludlow" became a battle cry of the nascent mineworkers’ movement.
Rubin "Hurricane" Carter Dies at 76: Wrongly Jailed Boxer Championed Justice After Winning His Own
The celebrated boxer and prisoner-rights activist Rubin "Hurricane" Carter has died at the age of 76. Carter became an international symbol of racial injustice after his wrongful murder conviction forced him to spend 19 years in prison before he was exonerated. Since his release, Carter championed the cause of wrongfully convicted prisoners. His ordeal was publicized in Bob Dylan’s 1975 song "Hurricane," several books and a 1999 film starring Denzel Washington, "The Hurricane." We are joined by two guests: John Artis, Carter’s co-defendant and close friend, who cared for him until his death, and Ken Klonsky, co-author of Carter’s autobiography, "Eye of the Hurricane: My Path from Darkness to Freedom," and a director of media relations for Carter’s group, Innocence International. We also broadcast an excerpt from a 1994 speech by Carter about his life’s struggles and triumphs. Says Artis about his close friend: "He was a David against the justice system’s Goliath."TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, as we spend the rest of the hour today looking at the life and legacy of Rubin "Hurricane" Carter. He became an international symbol of racial injustice after his wrongful murder conviction forced him to spend 19 years in prison before he was exonerated. Carter died on Sunday at the age of 76. Many Americans originally knew Carter as one of the most dynamic prizefighters in boxing’s golden era. From ’61 to ’66, the middleweight fighter had a record 28 wins, 11 losses and one draw. But all of that came to an abrupt end when Carter was arrested for triple murder in his hometown of Paterson, New Jersey. Even as he asserted his innocence, the African-American boxer was wrongfully convicted by an all-white jury and sentenced to three consecutive life sentences.
In 1974, Rubin "Hurricane" Carter wrote his autobiography from prison called The Sixteenth Round: From Number 1 Contender to Number 45472. Two years later, the New Jersey State Supreme Court overturned his conviction on grounds the authorities withheld material evidence from the defense. But Carter was convicted again in a second trial in 1976. In 1985, that conviction was overturned by a U.S. district court judge, who concluded the state made an unconstitutional appeal to racial prejudice. In 1988, the Passaic, New Jersey, Prosecutor’s Office dropped all charges against Carter.
While in prison, "Hurricane" Carter was fiercely outspoken, refusing to subject himself to its regimens. He shunned the prison’s food, insisted on keeping his gold watch, refused to wear prison-issued clothes. His ordeal was publicized in Bob Dylan’s 1975 song "Hurricane," several books and a 1999 film starring Denzel Washington, who received an Academy Award nomination for playing the boxer-turned-prisoner. This is a trailer from the film The Hurricane.
RUBIN CARTER: [played by Denzel Washington] Carter is the slave name that was given to my forefathers and was passed on to me. Hurricane is the professional name that I acquired later on in life. One thing I could do, and the only thing, was box.
SGT. DELLA PESCA: [played by Dan Hedaya] Can you believe that black punk? He thinks he’s champion of the world.
POLICE OFFICER: We’re looking for two Negroes in a white car.
RUBIN CARTER: Any two will do?
DETECTIVE: Look carefully, sir. Are these the two men who shot you?
RUBIN CARTER: He said no.
SGT. DELLA PESCA: Take another look, sir.
JUDGE SAMUEL LARNER: [played by Merwin Goldsmith] Rubin Carter, you are sentenced to be imprisoned for the remainder of your natural life.
RUBIN CARTER: I’m innocent. I’ve committed no crime. A crime has been committed against me. I’m dead. Just bury me, please.
PROTESTERS: The people, united, will never be defeated! The people, united, will never be defeated!
LISA PETERS: [played by Deborah Kara Unger] Oh, your first book, huh?
LESRA MARTIN: [played by Vicellous Reon Shannon] The Sixteenth Round.
LISA PETERS: Rubin "Hurricane" Carter.
SAM CHAITON: [played by Liev Schreiber] You know what, Les, sometimes we don’t pick the books we read; they pick us.
LESRA MARTIN: Dear Mr. Carter, I’ve read your book. I would like to come and visit you.
RUBIN CARTER: You think I killed those people, son?
LESRA MARTIN: No, no. I know you didn’t.
SAM CHAITON: Two juries found him guilty, Les.
LESRA MARTIN: But the man’s innocent. That he’s been in jail 15, 16 years, it’s just not right.
RUBIN CARTER: It’s very important to transcend the places that hold us.
SAM CHAITON: Did he see us?
RUBIN CARTER: Yeah.
LISA PETERS: You could understand we’re not leaving without you.
RUBIN CARTER: I’m 50 years old.
MYRON BEDLOCK: [played by David Paymer] Your Honor, this case was built on a foundation of lies.
RUBIN CARTER: Twenty years I’ve spent locked up in a cage. Justice, that’s all I ask. Hate put me in prison. Love is going to bust me out.
AMY GOODMAN: The trailer for the film The Hurricane. Rubin "Hurricane" Carter died in his home in Toronto on Sunday following a battle with prostate cancer. To discuss his legacy, we go to Toronto, where we’re joined by John Artis, Rubin "Hurricane" Carter’s co-defendant and friend. He’s been living with and caring for Carter since he fell ill.
We welcome you to Democracy Now!, John. Condolences to you, as you were with Rubin Carter to the end. Talk about the significance of Rubin Carter’s struggle against wrongful incarceration.
JOHN ARTIS: Well, good morning, and thank you for the condolences. Rubin primarily was a David against a Goliath of the judicial system. He abhorred injustice, unfairness, and any type of behavior or action that people who could not afford to speak out or fight up against, he felt like he had to champion their causes.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about how you met Rubin "Hurricane" Carter.
JOHN ARTIS: Oh, I met him because we happened to know the same family in Paterson, New Jersey, and I was at the home one evening with my friend when he arrived. And I was briefly introduced to him at that time. But he wasn’t one that—a person that I palled around with. He was in a different ilk. He was a professional athlete. I was a well-known high school athlete. And we chose different sports. He boxed, and I played football, basketball and ran track. Actually, I had won a track scholarship to Colorado State prior to our arrest.
AMY GOODMAN: And talk about what happened on that night in 1986 when you and "Hurricane" Carter were stopped by police.
JOHN ARTIS: 1966.
AMY GOODMAN: 1966.
JOHN ARTIS: Yes. And this was shortly, maybe two weeks, after I initially met Rubin. And I saw him in town, and I asked him to give me a ride the Nite Spot, which he did, which was a popular club in Paterson. And at the conclusion of the evening, I asked him to give me a ride home. He said OK. But if I—if he was going to take me home, I would have to drive. On the way out of the club, another individual asked Rubin if he could get a ride home. So the three of us got into his car. But first, Rubin wanted to go to his home. So, while he was directing me how to get to his home, which is on the east side of Paterson, we were stopped by the Paterson police.
And as you see in the film, an officer walked up and looked inside the car and wanted to see my license and registration. And when he noticed Rubin, he said, "Oh, champ, I didn’t see you there." So Rubin said, "Well, what’s the problem?" He says, "Well, we’re looking for two Negroes." But there were three of us in the car. So they permitted us to leave.
And Rubin went to his home, and I took the guy that was in the car with us, I drove him home first. And then I was en route to let myself out to go home, when we were stopped by the same police officer at an intersection in Paterson, and he didn’t bother to tell his reinforcements, so the support of other police officers that arrived, that he had already seen us, and there were three people in the car, when now there were only two. And at that juncture, they took us to the scene of the crime, and that was the beginning of the nightmare.
AMY GOODMAN: And you saw this horror, the scene of the crime.
JOHN ARTIS: Well, I saw—they made us get out of the car in this crowd of people that had gathered there, and made us stand up against the wall of the tavern. And while we were standing there, they began to bring out sheet-covered bodies to be put into ambulances and such. And then a patrol wagon pulled up, and we were taken to police headquarters.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about that first trial. You ended up in jail for 15 years. And then, ultimately, talk about Judge Sarokin and his role.
JOHN ARTIS: Oh, wow, well, the first trial, I had never been in trouble, and the death penalty was the penalty that was being sought in this trial. I had been—we had been charged with three counts of first-degree murder and one count of atrocious assault and battery with intent to kill. The trial lasted for six weeks. And my name was only mentioned once, and that was by the alleged two star witnesses for the state. At the conclusion of six weeks, the jury went into the deliberation room, and they only stayed four hours and came back. And when they returned, no one was looking at us. The women were crying. And since it was a first-degree murder case, it’s the only time in New Jersey law that the jury decides your sentence. So, when the foreman stated—stood up and stated that "We, the jury, find the defendants, Rubin Carter and John Artis, guilty," my knees buckled. That’s the most afraid I’ve ever been in my entire life, because the next statement out of his mouth would determine exactly what was going to happen to us. And after staring at both of us, he finally said, "with a recommendation for mercy." Had he stated "without a recommendation for mercy," Rubin and I would have been put on death row.
AMY GOODMAN: You said in another interview, John Artis, "I was always the guy in the background, the other guy in the case that no one knew or cared about."
JOHN ARTIS: Yes. They didn’t want me. The intent and effort was to get Rubin. As a matter of fact, the police stated that "All you have to do is just say that it was Rubin Carter, and we’ll let you go." But I refused to do that. They tried the same thing 10 years later; I refused to do that. When they brought me out of prison and took me to my father’s home and prefaced a statement, when I walked through the door, that "We know that you didn’t kill anyone, but we think that you were there and/or you knew about it. So just sign a statement that says that Rubin Carter is the one that committed the crimes, and we’ll let you go. We’ll get you out of prison." And I refused to do it at that time, as well.
AMY GOODMAN: John Artis, can you talk about the day that you and Rubin "Hurricane" Carter were ultimately freed?
JOHN ARTIS: Well, I was free before Rubin. I was released on parole in 1981, which was totally unprecedented, the way that I was released. I was given an 11-day date release. And that was because during 1971 we had a riot in Rahway, New Jersey, prison, and I released the hostages that were being held, because the population was deciding whether they should release them or kill them. And I didn’t think that was too good of an idea with the parking lot teeming with all types of police officers and law enforcement from all around the state, and the only thing that was precluding them from coming in were the lives of these hostages. So the state of New Jersey, the Department of Corrections, changed my status from maximum to minimum and allowed me to attend college. I went to Glassboro State College to get a degree in business administration. So, I was released in 11 days, which normally it would have been 18 months, 24 months or 36 months, either a rehearing or release date. But Rubin got out four years later when Judge Sarokin granted a writ of habeas corpus, stating in his opinion that the case was predicated on racism rather than reason, and concealment rather than disclosure.
AMY GOODMAN: Were you in the courtroom when he was released?
JOHN ARTIS: I most certainly was.
AMY GOODMAN: Describe that moment.
JOHN ARTIS: Well, you could have heard a pin drop when Judge Sarokin came back in to read his opinion, his ruling. And the prosecutors of New Jersey were totally uncomfortable, because they weren’t prepared to deal with the case in federal court. They assumed that Judge Sarokin wouldn’t hear it, and he did. And once he told them that this case was the most egregious violation of constitutional rights that he had witnessed in all his years on the bench, I knew that a good thing was going to happen. And when he released Rubin and said that the writ of habeas corpus is granted and the defendant is released on his own recognizance, I ran and hurdled the bar that separated the audience from the defendant so I could give Rubin a hug.
AMY GOODMAN: And, John Artis, you gave up everything to move to Canada to care for Rubin "Hurricane" Carter as he died of cancer. Why?
JOHN ARTIS: Well, Rubin has always felt responsible for me, by me being ensnared in a trap that they had for him to incarcerate him forever. And he really wished that it had never happened. So, over the years, over the 48 years that I’ve known Rubin, we’ve cared for each other and protected each other and supported each other in anything that we had to do. To me, it’s a display of what I believed the definition of a friend is, and that’s loyalty. I’m loyal to my friends. Rubin has been loyal to me, and I have been loyal to Rubin. So, it was a no-brainer that now that he needed help, since he was always helping others, that it was incumbent upon me to go and help my partner.
AMY GOODMAN: Both of you could have been put on death row, as you said at the beginning—
JOHN ARTIS: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: —but ultimately were exonerated.
JOHN ARTIS: Yes. Yes, we could have.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re joined right now, in addition to John Artis, by Ken Klonsky, who co-wrote with Rubin the book Eye of the Hurricane: My Path from Darkness to Freedom. Nelson Mandela wrote the forward. Klonsky works for the Innocence International, founded by Dr. Rubin "Hurricane" Carter. You’ve brought the book with you, Ken. Thanks for joining us from Vancouver. You brought the book with you to read some of Hurricane’s words. I was wondering if you might do that now.
KEN KLONSKY: OK. I’m going to read a passage where he was asked what his legacy would be after his death.
“One day a few seasons ago, I had just finished speaking to a group of people at a Toronto high school when a young woman in the audience stood up and asked me how I wanted my life to be remembered. I had to pause a long moment, because I’d never given the question a moment’s thought. When I did think about it, I realized that the way people remember me doesn’t really matter. What really matters is how I remember myself, the act of self-remembering that saved me from perdition. But given the opportunity, I answered her question like this: I was a prizefighter at one point in my life. I was a soldier at one point in my life. I was a convict at one point in my life. I was a jailhouse lawyer at one point. I was the executive director of AIDWYC at one point in my life—a black angel. Today, I am the CEO of Innocence International. I have been a writer and a doctor of laws. I have been many things and have many things still yet to be. But if I had to choose an epitaph to be carved upon my tombstone, it would simply read, 'He was just enough.' He was just enough to overcome everything that was laid on him on this earth. He was just enough not to give up on himself. He was just enough to believe in himself beyond anything else in this world. He was just enough to have the courage to stand up for his convictions no matter what problems his actions may have caused him. He was just enough to perform a miracle, to wake up, to escape the universal prison of sleep, and to regain his humanity in a living hell. He was just enough. And so, my young friend, are you.
"Just enough."
AMY GOODMAN: Ken Klonsky, reading the book that he wrote with Rubin "Hurricane" Carter called Eye of the Hurricane. Nelson Mandela wrote the forward. Why Nelson Mandela, Ken Klonsky? How did he get involved with this case?
KEN KLONSKY: I think the two of them had parallel existences. I wouldn’t put Rubin in the category of Nelson Mandela, obviously, but they both were incarcerated in a sense that they were incarcerated unjustly, and they both rose above the confines that they were in, to the point where the jailers, the people who looked after them and oppressed them, had so much respect for them that they left them alone. It’s an extraordinary human integrity that both of them had. And Mandela recognized that in Rubin.
AMY GOODMAN: Ken, I want to turn to Carter’s work up until his death on behalf of David McCallum, a convicted murderer who had spent 29 years in prison. He was the focus of a piece Carter wrote just months ago in February that ran in the New York Daily News headlined "Hurricane Carter’s Dying Wish." He’s also the focus of a new documentary made by your son, Ray Klonsky, called David & Me. In this clip from the trailer, we hear from Ray Klonsky and then Carter, but first David McCallum.
DAVID McCALLUM: He was saying that they had found a body in the park. And I said, "Officer, I don’t know what you’re talking about." And it was at that moment that he slapped me in my face.
RAY KLONSKY: People do falsely confess to crimes, particularly young teenagers.
RUBIN CARTER: These two teenagers had no chance with professional interrogators.
AMY GOODMAN: And that was Rubin there at the end. Last comment, Ken, about this case?
KEN KLONSKY: David McCallum was, along with a friend of his, similar to Rubin and John Artis, who you just interviewed. They were taken in, in a case where there was no evidence whatsoever that they did the crime, and they were forced, as 16-year-old kids, to confess to something they didn’t do. Certainly, Dr. Carter’s righteous anger against prosecutors forced him, in a sense, it urged him, to get involved in this case, because he saw himself and he saw the way prosecutors can twist the truth for their own ambitions. That was the one thing in life that made him exceptionally angry.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to leave it there. Ken Klonsky, thanks for being with us. Your book with Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, Eye of the Hurricane: My Path from Darkness to Freedom. And John Artis, speaking to us from Toronto, Rubin "Hurricane" Carter’s co-defendant and friend, dropped everything to spend the last years with Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, caring for him in those last days. Ken Klonsky, speaking to us from Vancouver. When we come back from break, Bob Dylan’s song the "Hurricane," we’re going to hear Rubin "Hurricane" Carter in his own words. Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: Bob Dylan singing "Hurricane" about the late boxer Rubin Carter. Carter was wrongfully convicted of murder, served 19 years in prison before the charges against him were dismissed. The boxer passed away Sunday at the age of 76. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.
Rubin "Hurricane" Carter spoke at Queen’s University in Canada decades ago, in 1994, a few years after his release from prison. He talked about the importance of literacy, the power of reading and writing in his own life, as well as the life of Lesra Martin, the lawyer who helped secure Carter’s release from prison. This is a part of Rubin Carter’s address.
RUBIN CARTER: It’s a pleasure for me to be here at Queen’s University. It truly is. In fact, given my history, as we’ve seen, it’s a pleasure for me to be anywhere.
I’ve been invited here to speak, but I can tell you that speaking has not always been easy for me. For the first 18 years of my life, I had a terrible speech impediment. I couldn’t talk. I stuttered badly. I couldn’t say two clear words that made any sense to anybody else but me. And people laughed at me because of it. I felt stupid. You know, I really, really felt dumb. And when they laughed, the only sound they’d hear would be my fist whistling through the air. Do I hear laughter out there? My fists did my talking. Now, that stopped the laughter for a while, but it also got me into serious trouble, and it didn’t solve the problem. I still couldn’t talk.
Being stuck in a state of silence with all that frustration was my first experience of being locked away in a prison. You see, there are prisons, and there are prisons. They may look different, but they’re all the same. They’re all confining. They all limit your freedom. They all lock you away, grind you down and take a terrible toll on your self-esteem. There are prisons made of brick, steel and mortar. And then there are prisons without visible walls, prisons of poverty, illiteracy and racism. All too often, the people condemned to these metaphorical prisons—poverty, racism and illiteracy—end up doing double time. That is, they wind up in the physical prisons, as well. Our task, as reasonable, healthy, intelligent human beings, is to recognize the interconnectedness and the sameness of all these prisons, and then do something about them, because any kind of prison is no friend of mine. It brings out the hurricane in me.
So, my connection to imprisonment is obvious. But less apparent is the impact that literacy, reading and writing, books and words, have had on my life. There were years and years when books were my only friends. And because I was able to write my own book, The Sixteenth Round, and because Lesra, the young man you saw in the video, was literate enough to read it, I was literally set free. Now, that’s the awesome power of the written word.
Both Lesra and I grew up in what can only be described as war zones, the Third World in the heart of the world’s mightiest nation. Lesra’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood looked like Dresden after the Second World War—burnt-out buildings everywhere, rubble spilling out over the sidewalks, and the people’s expressions reflecting the destitution of their surroundings. The first lesson Lesra had to learn was not his ABCs, but how to duck under the nearest parked car at the first sound of a loud noise—gunfire. He never knew whether he would survive the trip to school or from school; nevertheless, he went there every day.
AMY GOODMAN: Rubin "Hurricane" Carter speaking at Queen’s University in Canada in 1994, a few years after his release from prison. The man he was talking about, Lesra Martin, was the lawyer who helped secure Carter’s release from prison. To hear the full speech, go to our website at democracynow.org.
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