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Remembering Father Daniel Berrigan, a Prophet of Peace
n this Memorial Day special, we begin today’s broadcast remembering the life and legacy of the legendary antiwar priest Father Daniel Berrigan. He died on April 30, just short of his 95th birthday. Berrigan was a poet, pacifist, educator, social activist, playwright and lifelong resister against what he called "American military imperialism." Along with his late brother Phil, Dan Berrigan played an instrumental role in inspiring the antiwar and antidraft movement during the late 1960s, as well as the movement against nuclear weapons. Today we air Father Berrigan in his own words, including previously unaired sections of his 2006 interview on Democracy Now!
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: We begin today’s special broadcast remembering the life and legacy of the legendary antiwar priest, Father Daniel Berrigan. He died April 30th, just short of his 95th birthday. Berrigan was a poet, a pacifist, an educator, asocial activist, a playwright and a lifelong resister against what he called "American military imperialism." Along with his late brother Phil Berrigan, Father Dan played an instrumental role in inspiring the antiwar and antidraft movement during the 1960s, as well as the movement against nuclear weapons in the early '70s. He became the first Catholic priest to land on the FBI's most wanted list. Georgetown University theology professor Chester Gillis once said of Father Berrigan, quote, "If you were to identify Catholic prophets in the 20th century, he’d be right there with Dorothy Day or Thomas Merton."
In early 1968, Father Dan Berrigan made international headlines when he traveled to North Vietnam with historian Howard Zinn to bring home three U.S. prisoners of war. In the documentary Holy Outlaw, Father Dan recalled spending time in Vietnamese shelters while being bombed by U.S. jets.
FATHER DANIEL BERRIGAN: So we were in this shelter and very unexpectedly came on three children, who were crouching in there, too, against all expectations, and one of the elder children feeding rice to one of the younger ones. And I wrote this little verse within a couple days and tried to read it later at our trial, to the great anger and discomfiture of the judge. But it seemed to sum up for me everything that Catonsville was about in one image, one reality. It’s called "Children in the Shelter."
Imagine; three of them.
As though survival
were a rat’s word,
and a rat’s death
waited there at the end
and I must have
in the century’s boneyard
heft of flesh and bone in my arms
I picked up the littlest
a boy, his face
breaded with rice (his sister calmly feeding him
as we climbed down)
In my arms fathered
in a moment’s grace, the messiah
of all my tears. I bore, reborn
a Hiroshima child from hell.
AMY GOODMAN: On May 17, 1968, Father Dan Berrigan, his brother Phil Berrigan and seven others took 378 draft files from the draft board in Catonsville, Maryland. Then, in the parking lot of the draft board office, the activists set the draft records on fire, using homemade napalm, to protest the Vietnam War. They became known as the Catonsville Nine. The act of civil disobedience was chronicled in the 2013 documentary Hit & Stay: A History of Faith and Resistance. This begins with Dan Berrigan.
FATHER DANIEL BERRIGAN: We make our prayer in the name of that god whose name is peace and decency and unity and love. We unite in taking our matches, approaching the fire. We’re all part of this.
GEORGE MISCHE: While people throughout the world, and especially Vietnam now, are suffering from napalm, that these files are also napalmed, to show that these lives can fall on the same fate as the Vietnamese.
FATHER DANIEL BERRIGAN: Amen.
DAVID DARST: Napalm, which was made from information and from a formula in the United States Special Forces handbook published by the School of Special Warfare of the United States. We all had a hand in making the napalm that was used here today.
JIM HARNEY: Napalm is a very old weapon. It goes back to the Byzantines. But it really came to public attention during the war in Vietnam, in the pictures of napalmed people. So that was the kind of quintessential symbol of the war: We were burning babies, literally, in Vietnam. So that’s why we wanted to come up with something symbolic and also something that would really destroy the files.
TOM MELVILLE: Our church has failed to act officially, and we feel that, as individuals, we’re going to have to speak out in the name of Catholicism and Christianity. And we hope our action to inspire other people who have Christian principles or a faith similar to Christianity will act accordingly, too, to stop the terrible destruction that America is wreaking on the whole world.
FATHER DANIEL BERRIGAN: We regret very much, I think all of us, the inconvenience and even the suffering that we’ve brought to these clerks here.
FATHER PHIL BERRIGAN: We sincerely hope we didn’t injure anyone.
PRIESTS: Our father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.
FATHER DANIEL BERRIGAN: We have chosen to be powerless criminals in a time of criminal power. We have chosen to be branded as peace criminals by war criminals.
AMY GOODMAN: Father Dan Berrigan and other members of the Catonsville Nine were arrested on the spot. Dan Berrigan wrote, quote, "Our apologies, good friends, for the fracture of good order, the burning of paper instead of children," unquote. The draft board raid invigorated the antiwar movement by inspiring over a hundred similar acts of protest. It also shook the foundation of the tradition-bound Catholic Church. Father Dan would eventually serve time, about two years, in a federal prison in Danbury, Connecticut.
In 1980, the Berrigan brothers and six others began the Plowshares Movement when they broke into the General Electric nuclear missile facility in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. The activists hammered nuclear warhead nose cones and poured blood onto documents and files. They were arrested and charged with over 10 different felony and misdemeanor counts. They became know as the Plowshares Eight. I want to turn to a clip from the film In the King of Prussia. This scene features Dan Berrigan reciting what he told the judge and jury during the trial.
FATHER DANIEL BERRIGAN: You’ve heard about hammers and blood in this room. These are the hammers of hell. These are the hammers that will break the world to bits. These are the hammers that claim the end of the world. The judge knows it. The prosecutor knows it. We’ve seen people walk away from these things. We’ve seen them disclaim them. We’ve seen them say they are not responsible for them. We’ve seen all sorts of language circling them like a dance of death. They are murder. He knows it. He knows it. You must know it. We have been trying—we eight—to take responsibility for these things, to call them by their right name, which is murder, death, genocide, the end of the world. Their proper use is known to the judge and the prosecutor and to you. ...
We would like you to know the name of our crime. We would like to assume responsibility for a world, for children, for the future. And if that is a crime, then it is quite clear that we belong in their jails. Where they belong is something else. But in the name of all the eight, I would like to leave with you, friends and jurors, that great and noble word, which is our crime: "responsibility."
AMY GOODMAN: That’s an excerpt from the film In the King of Prussia, the film directed by Emile de Antonio. We turn now to one of Father Dan Berrigan’s last appearances on Democracy Now! It was June 8th, 2006, shortly after his 85th birthday.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about that first decision you made in Catonsville, before Catonsville, to do it, what you were doing at the time, and how you made the decision?
FATHER DANIEL BERRIGAN: Yeah. I was teaching at Cornell, and Philip came up. He was awaiting sentencing for a prior action in '67 in Baltimore, where they poured their blood on draft files in the city. And he came up to Cornell and announced to me, very coolly, that he and others were going to do it again. I was blown away by the courage, and the effrontery, really, of my brother, in not really just submitting to the prior conviction, but saying, "We've got to underscore the first action with another one." And he says, "You’re invited." So I swallowed hard and said, "Give me a few days. I want to talk about pro and cons of doing a thing like this." And so, when I started meditating and putting down reasons to do it and reasons not to do it, it became quite clear that the option and the invitation were outweighing everything else and that I had to go ahead with him. So I notified him that I was in. And we did it.
AMY GOODMAN: Now, this was after you had been to North Vietnam.
FATHER DANIEL BERRIGAN: Right. This was May of ’68, and I had been in Hanoi in late January, early February of that year.
AMY GOODMAN: With historian Howard Zinn.
FATHER DANIEL BERRIGAN: Right.
AMY GOODMAN: Freeing prisoners of war?
FATHER DANIEL BERRIGAN: Yes, we brought home three flyers who had been captured and imprisoned. It was a kind of gesture of peace in the midst of the war by the Vietnamese, during the so-called Tet holiday, which was traditionally a time of reunion of families, and so they wanted these flyers to be reunited with their families.
AMY GOODMAN: In Catonsville, was this the first time you were breaking the laws of the United States?
FATHER DANIEL BERRIGAN: No, I had been at the Pentagon in ’67 in—I think it was in October. And a great number of us were arrested after a warning from McNamara to disperse. And we spent a couple of weeks in jail. It was rather rough. And we did a fast. And we were in the D.C. jail, which was a very mixed lot. So I had had a little bit of a taste during that prior year.
AMY GOODMAN: You and your brother, Phil Berrigan, had an unusual relationship with Secretary of Defense McNamara. You actually talked to him, wrote to him, met him?
FATHER DANIEL BERRIGAN: Yes. I met him at a social evening with the Kennedys in about '65 and after this very posh dinner, which was welcoming me home from Latin America. One of the Kennedys announced that they would love to have a discussion between the secretary of war and myself in front of everybody, which we did start. And they asked me to initiate the thing, and I said to the secretary something about, "Since you didn't stop the war this morning, I wonder if you’d do it this evening." So he looked kind of past my left ear and said, "Well, I’ll just say this to Father Berrigan and everybody: Vietnam is like Mississippi. If they won’t obey the law, you send the troops in." And he stopped. And the next morning, when I returned to New York City, I said to a secretary at a magazine we were publishing—I said, "Would you please take this down in shorthand? Because in two weeks I won’t believe that I heard what I heard. The secretary said, in response to my request to stop the war, quote, 'Vietnam is like Mississippi: If they won't obey the law, you send the troops in.’" And this was supposed to be the brightest of the bright, one of the whiz kids, respected by all in the Cabinet, etc., etc., etc. And he talks like a sheriff out of Selma, Alabama. Whose law? Won’t obey whose law? Well, that was the level at which the war was being fought.
AMY GOODMAN: So you went to Catonsville, you went into the draft office.
FATHER DANIEL BERRIGAN: Right.
AMY GOODMAN: We hear about draft card burnings. But this was draft file burnings.
FATHER DANIEL BERRIGAN: Files.
AMY GOODMAN: You went in with a group of people. Now, some of them—you talked about having been in exile in Latin America, and some of them were there more about treatment of what was going on, the U.S. government, in places like Guatemala than Vietnam, is that right?
FATHER DANIEL BERRIGAN: That’s right.
AMY GOODMAN: Why were you exiled to Latin America?
FATHER DANIEL BERRIGAN: Well, there was a lot of controversy and a very hot scene here in New York City, beginning about '67 into ’68. And I think the occasion of my being kicked out was the immolation of a young Catholic Worker in the city here, named Roger LaPorte. He went to the U.N. and burned himself. And, of course, the young Catholic Worker community was devastated by this terrifying event. And they wanted to hold a memorial service, and I was invited to officiate. And in the course of it, I cast doubt upon the judgment of the cardinal that this had been suicide. I said, "I don't think we know. I think this could have been some kind of misguided heroism that said, ’I’m going to give my life rather than take life.'" And that word, of course, got out, and there was panic. There was panic, in the authorities of the Archdiocese of New York and in my order. And they said we've got to—he’s got to—"He’s become a very hot item. We’ve got to get him out of town."
AMY GOODMAN: Where were you exiled to?
FATHER DANIEL BERRIGAN: Well, it was a one-way ticket to Latin America. And so, I was down there, I think about five months. And I was in at least 10 countries purportedly reporting back to my editorial people in New York about conditions down there. It was a wrong move. It generated huge publicity not just in the Catholic community but across the country. And they were forced to call me back. So I came back with a stipulation that I go on with my peace work. And they said, "OK, OK."
AMY GOODMAN: And so, you certainly did in force. And from Catonsville, you served how many years in prison for that?
FATHER DANIEL BERRIGAN: Well, I think it was about two years.
AMY GOODMAN: And then, with your brother Phil, you founded the Plowshares Movement, your first action in 1980?
FATHER DANIEL BERRIGAN: ’80.
AMY GOODMAN: King of Prussia, Pennsylvania.
FATHER DANIEL BERRIGAN: Right.
AMY GOODMAN: Explain what you did at the GE plant.
FATHER DANIEL BERRIGAN: Well, we had had meetings, I recall, all that spring and autumn with people about the production of an entirely new weapon, the Mark 12A, which was really only useful if it initiated a nuclear war. It was a first-strike nuclear weapon and was being fabricated in this anonymous plant, huge, huge factory in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. And there had never been an attempt in the history of the antinuclear movement—there had never been an attempt to interfere with the production of a new weapon. And with the help of Daniel Ellsberg and other experts, we were able to understand that this was not a Hiroshima-type bomb. It was something totally different. It was opening a new chapter in this chamber of horrors. So, we decided we will go in there in September of ’70 [sic]. And we did.
AMY GOODMAN: September of ’80?
FATHER DANIEL BERRIGAN: ’80, excuse me.
AMY GOODMAN: And what does that mean, you did?
FATHER DANIEL BERRIGAN: Well, we didn’t know exactly where in that huge factory these weapons were concealed, but we had to trust in providence that we would come upon the weaponry, which we did in short order. We went in with the workers at the changing of the shift and found there was really no security worth talking about, a very easy entrance. In about three minutes, we were looking at doomsday. The weapon was before us. It was an unarmed warhead about to be shipped to Amarillo, Texas, for its payload. So it was a harmless weapon as of that moment. And we cracked the weapon. It was very fragile. It was made to withstand the heat of re-entry into the atmosphere from outer space, so it was like eggshell, really. And we had taken as our model the great statement of Isaiah 2: "They shall beat their swords into plowshares." So we did it, poured our blood around it and stood in a circle, I think, reciting the Lord’s Prayer until Armageddon arrived, as we expected.
AMY GOODMAN: And you were tried?
DANIEL BERRIGAN: We were tried and convicted in short order and sentenced, eventually, to three to 10 years. And we were out on appeal for 10 years. The trial was such a farce that the state of Pennsylvania really didn’t know what to do with it. And it went on and on and on. And finally, in 1990, a retired judge, kind of weary of the whole game, gave us both time served.
AMY GOODMAN: Father Dan Berrigan, speaking on Democracy Now! in June of 2006. We’ll return to the interview in a minute.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman. Today, a special broadcast remembering the lives of two champions of social justice: Father Daniel Berrigan and attorney Michael Ratner. In a moment, we’ll return to my 2006 interview with Dan Berrigan, but first let’s go back to the documentary Hit & Stay, looking at the time Father Berrigan spent living underground as a fugitive from the FBI while his conviction in the Catonsville Nine case was under appeal.
INTERVIEWER: During the time he was in hiding, Father Berrigan changed his location often. He stayed with 37 different families in 10 Eastern and Midwestern cities. Well, Father Dan, you’ve been underground for some time now. What’s it like to be underground in the United States of America?
FATHER DANIEL BERRIGAN: Well, I’d say that it looks as though it could go on forever. It looks good enough, looks useful enough, for the movement.
LIZ McALISTER: So there were some, what, four months that they looked for Dan, everywhere. And he was everywhere and available to everyone, except the FBI.
AMY GOODMAN: That was an excerpt from the documentary Hit & Stay. That last voice was peace activist Liz McAlister, Phil Berrigan’s wife. On May 6, Liz gave the eulogy at Dan Berrigan’s funeral. We return now to my 2006 interview with Father Dan Berrigan.
AMY GOODMAN: After the trial, you went underground. Why did you decide to do that?
FATHER DANIEL BERRIGAN: Well, the war had worsened, and the spring of '70, the campuses were aflame. Nixon had invaded Laos. There was secret bombing going on. The war had widened. It was a bad time to turn oneself in, and we were comparing that order to military induction. It was like saying, "Well, I'm going off to war. I’m going to obey them and go off to war. I’m going to take the penalty for what we did to make the war evidently, evidently unwinnable and unwageable. So, a group of us said, "No go," and went underground.
AMY GOODMAN: And what does that mean when you go underground?
FATHER DANIEL BERRIGAN: Well, it meant that the FBI was on your tail and that Hoover was outraged and very angry and kept marking up sheets—that we got out, Freedom of Information, later—saying, "Get him! Get him!" and scrawling all these orders around and putting extra people on our tail.
AMY GOODMAN: But you were showing up in the strangest places.
FATHER DANIEL BERRIGAN: All sorts of places, including preaching in church and getting on national television with a good interview and so on and so forth. So, it really increased the edginess of the whole thing.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you explain what happened—was it at Cornell? They almost caught you there?
FATHER DANIEL BERRIGAN: That was at the beginning of all this. In early spring of ’70, they had a big rally in our favor at Cornell. And I showed up unexpectedly and got away again, in spite of the presence of FBI all over.
AMY GOODMAN: How did you get out?
FATHER DANIEL BERRIGAN: I went out in a puppet of one of the 12 apostles. They had had a beautiful mime on stage that night showing the Last Supper. And somebody whispered in the darkness, "Wouldn’t you like to go out?" And I said, "Well, let’s try it."
AMY GOODMAN: So you went out as one of the apostles.
FATHER DANIEL BERRIGAN: Yes. Well—
AMY GOODMAN: And you slipped past the FBI.
FATHER DANIEL BERRIGAN: Got away, for months.
AMY GOODMAN: How did they catch you?
FATHER DANIEL BERRIGAN: There were letters exchanged between Philip in prison and Elizabeth.
AMY GOODMAN: Philip Berrigan, your brother.
FATHER DANIEL BERRIGAN: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: And Elizabeth McAlister.
FATHER DANIEL BERRIGAN: His fiancée or wife at that point. And they gave a kind of a hint as to the fact that I would be visiting friends on Block Island, which proved true, so we had birdwatchers out there, and they got me.
AMY GOODMAN: There was that famous picture of you with a peace sign and the—
FATHER DANIEL BERRIGAN: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: —authorities on either elbow—
FATHER DANIEL BERRIGAN: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: —taking you in. And how long did you serve then?
FATHER DANIEL BERRIGAN: I think that was two years then.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re sort of talking about this lightly, but what does it mean to serve time in jail?
FATHER DANIEL BERRIGAN: Well, at that point, it just meant—I think that we had kind of demythologized the fact that now Philip and I were under lock and key, and that there was work to be done in there as there had been good work to do on the street. So we were dealing with prisoners who had no other access. We were teaching, counseling. I was—I was leading a Bible study. There was all sorts of good work to be done with prisoners, so we did it.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Father Dan Berrigan, has probably been arrested more times than years he’s lived on this Earth, now 85 years old. Father Dan Berrigan, I was wondering if you could read some of your poetry. Your latest book is A Sunday in Hell: Fables & Poems. Why did you choose that title?
FATHER DANIEL BERRIGAN: Well, it’s the title of one of the—one of the fables in here. I talk about a preacher who suddenly has to face the fact that he hasn’t made it himself, and finds himself in very strange circumstances. I won’t give it away, because I hope everyone will get the book. But I’d like to read a poem in honor of by brother Philip, who died three years ago. And this was written when we both were in prison, around '70 to ’72, and I think the occasion was Philip's birthday. But anyway, I presented this poem to him called "To Philip." And it goes like this.
Compassionate and casual as a good face
(a good heart goes without saying)
someone seen in the street; or
Infinitely rare, once, twice in a lifetime
that conjunction we call brother or friend.
Biology, mythology cast up clues.
We grew together, stars made men
by cold design; instructed
sternly (no variance, not by a hairs-
breadth) instructed sternly in course and recourse. In the heavens
in our mother’s body, by moon and month
were whole men made.
We obeyed then, and we’re born.
So he liked it, and that was enough.
AMY GOODMAN: You survived your brother, Phil. As you reflect on that relationship you had with him, as you’re talking about this special bond, brother and friend, prison mate, activist, fellow activist, can you talk about what it meant to live with him and to lose him?
FATHER DANIEL BERRIGAN: Well, it doesn’t get easier. I’ll start with that. I think the best clue I had, let’s say, out of reading and meditating about Philip, especially around the time he died, was a statement by Augustine of Hippo, Saint Augustine, who had lost a good friend. And he said in his memoirs that he had lost, quote, "the half of my soul," "dimidium animae meae." I lost the half of my soul. So, for a while at least, after an event like that, a terrifying event, I think one feels like an amputee in the world. There’s something very disabled going on, and you’re asked to continue walking. And it’s very hard, something like that. But in time, I think one gives up that feeling, because there’s work to be done and there’s another war. And Philip would be the first to say, "Walk it." And so I keep trying.
AMY GOODMAN: You’ve continued to get arrested. Do you think these arrests, what you have engaged in, protests, even when people are not being arrested or jailed, have an effect? I mean, you have gone through a number of wars now. Do you think things are getting better?
FATHER DANIEL BERRIGAN: No.
AMY GOODMAN: Or do you think they’re getting worse?
FATHER DANIEL BERRIGAN: No, this is the worst time of my long life, really. I’ve never seen such a base, cowardly violation of any kind of human bond that I can respect. These people appear on television, and the unwritten, unspoken motto seems to be something about "We despise you. We despise your law. We despise your order. We despise your Bible. We despise your conscience. And if necessary, we will kill you to say so." I’ve never really felt that deep contempt before, for any kind of canon or tradition of the human.
AMY GOODMAN: What do you mean, "We despise your Bible"? It is often said it’s done in the name of the Bible.
FATHER DANIEL BERRIGAN: Well, yes, these people are—they’re making a scrapbook out of the Bible in their own favor. And they’re omitting all the passages that have to do with compassion and love of others, especially love of enemies, or the injunction to Peter, "Put up your sword. Those who live by the sword will perish by the sword," all of that. All of that gets cut out in favor of, well, a god of vindictiveness, the god of the empire, the god who is a projection of our will to dominate and to prove ourselves over your body.
AMY GOODMAN: Do you think that it means, the fact that things are getting worse, the strategy has been wrong, the strategy of peace activists?
FATHER DANIEL BERRIGAN: No, the point of—my understanding of the spirituality of nonviolence is that you cut yourself free of any kind of necessity of succeeding. You cut yourself free of the other end of the good work you’re trying to do, and concentrate upon the goodness of the work you’re trying to do.
AMY GOODMAN: What recommendation would you have for young people today?
FATHER DANIEL BERRIGAN: Well, I don’t have a great deal to say directly to young people. I have a great deal to say to their elders, their priests, their parents, their teachers, people that I’m grandfather to. And it would go very shortly like this: The young people will be different if you are different. That is to say, you elders. And people like myself are not moved by anything except example. And as a teacher, I have tried to give a good example and get arrested first and then invite the students to look more seriously at this matter of war.
AMY GOODMAN: Father Dan Berrigan, speaking on Democracy Now! in 2006. Days after that interview, hundreds gathered in New York to mark his 85th birthday. Dan recited one of his best-loved poems, "Some."
FATHER DANIEL BERRIGAN: And this poem was played before tonight, but I’d like to dedicate it to all of us, all of us who come here and who keep at it. "Some."
Some stood up once, and sat down.
Some walked a mile, and walked away.
Some stood up twice, then sat down.
"I’ve had it," they said.
Some walked two miles, then walked away.
"It’s too much," they cried.
Some stood and stood and stood.
They were taken for fools,
they were taken for being taken in.
Some walked and walked and walked —
they walked the earth,
they walked the waters,
they walked the air.
"Why do you walk?" they were asked, and
"Why do you stand?"
"Because of the children," they said, and
"Because of the heart," and
"Because of the bread,"
“Because the cause is
the heart’s beat, and
the children born, and
the risen bread."
Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: Father Daniel Berrigan reciting his poem "Some." Father Berrigan died April 30th, 2016, just shy of his 95th birthday. You can go to our website at democracynow.org for our full coverage of his death and his life. When we return, we remember the pioneering human rights attorney Michael Ratner. Stay with us. ... Read More →
From Attica to Assange, Attorney Michael Ratner Remembered as Social Justice Champion
The world lost a legal giant earlier this month with the death of Michael Ratner at the age of 72. For over four decades, the trailblazing attorney defended and spoke up for victims of human rights abuses across the world. He sued presidents and dictators. In 2002, Ratner and the Center for Constitutional Rights brought the first case against the George W. Bush administration for the indefinite detention of prisoners at Guantánamo. The Supreme Court eventually sided with the center in a landmark 2008 decision when it struck down the law that stripped Guantánamo prisoners of their habeas corpus rights. Today, in this Memorial Day special, we hear Michael Ratner in his words.
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 continue today’s special broadcast by remembering the life and legacy of the trailblazing human rights attorney Michael Ratner, who died on May 11th at the age of 72. For over four decades, Michael Ratner defended and spoke up for victims of human rights abuses across the world. He served as the longtime head of the Center for Constitutional Rights. Attorney David Cole told The New York Times, quote, "Under his leadership, the center grew from a small but scrappy civil rights organization into one of the leading human rights organizations in the world. He sued some of the most powerful people in the world on behalf of some of the least powerful," unquote.
Well, in 2002, CCR, the Center for Constitutional Rights, brought the first case against George W. Bush’s administration for the indefinite detention of prisoners at Guantánamo. The Supreme Court eventually sided with the center in a landmark 2008 decision when it struck down the law that stripped Guantánamo prisoners of their habeas corpus rights. Michael Ratner began working on Guantánamo in the 1990s, when he fought the first Bush administration’s use of the military base to house Haitian refugees.
Michael Ratner’s activism and human rights work dated back to the ’60s. He was a student at Columbia Law School during the 1968 student strike there. Michael was a clerk for the legendary Federal Judge Constance Baker Motley. When he graduated from law school, she was the first African-American woman judge and protégé of Thurgood Marshall. In a 2004 letter, Constance Baker Motley wrote, "Michael Ratner was in retrospect, the ablest law clerk I have had in my tenure on the bench."
Michael Ratner would join the Center for Constitutional Rights in 1971. His first case centered on a lawsuit filed on behalf of prisoners killed and injured in the Attica prison uprising in upstate New York. Michael Ratner was deeply involved in Latin America and the Caribbean, challenging U.S. policy in Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Puerto Rico and elsewhere. In 1981, he brought the first challenge under the War Powers Resolution to the use of troops in El Salvador, as well as a suit against U.S. officials on behalf of Nicaraguans raped, murdered and tortured by U.S.-backed contras. In 1991, Michael Ratner led the center’s challenge to the authority of President George H.W. Bush to go to war against Iraq without congressional consent.
A decade later, he would become a leading critic of the George W. Bush administration, filing lawsuits related to Guantánamo, torture, domestic surveillance and the 2003 invasion of Iraq. He also helped launch the group Palestine Legal to defend the rights of protesters in the U.S. calling for Palestinian human rights. In recent years, Ratner was the chief attorney for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and became a leading critic of the U.S. crackdown on whistleblowers, including Chelsea Manning and Ed Snowden. Michael Ratner also was the husband of Karen Ranucci, longtime member of the Democracy Now! family.
Today we spend the rest of the hour looking at the life and legacy of Michael Ratner. We begin by going back to [ 2005 ], when Michael appeared on Democracy Now! to talk about the U.S. torture program, Guantánamo, his effort to sue Defense Secretary Donald Rumseld, and the nomination at the time of Alberto Gonzales to become the U.S. attorney general. I began by playing for Michael Ratner a clip of President George W. Bush being questioned about torture.
REPORTER: But there are some written responses that Judge Gonzales gave to his Senate testimony that have troubled some people, specifically his allusion to the fact that cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment of some prisoners is not specifically forbidden, so long as it’s conducted by the CIA and conducted overseas. Is that a loophole that you approved?
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: Al Gonzales reflects our policy, and that is we don’t sanction torture. He will be a great attorney general. And I call upon the Senate to confirm him.
MICHAEL RATNER: I think the clip you played of President Bush being asked, "What about cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment? Isn’t there a loophole where you can still do that basically inhumane treatment to foreigners overseas?" and he answers, "We have a policy against torture," really says a lot of it, because what Gonzales said here is that, "Yes, I’m against torture,"—and we can talk about that in a second—"but I don’t think that the prohibition of the torture convention prohibiting cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment applies to foreigners held overseas." Well, you can drive a huge truck through that. That’s basically saying if you’re a noncitizen held outside the United States, you can be treated inhumanely. What does it mean? It’s defined in the law. All this kind of stuff—stress positions, stripping, hooding—all that kind of stuff is considered cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, violates international law, violates treaty commitments of United States. So this is not just about what Gonzales and this government has done in the past. This is about what they’re doing right now and currently. So that’s the first thing I want to say about Gonzales.
The second thing is we’re putting in someone who really has his hands deep in the blood of the conspiracy of torture in this country. He is the one who wrote the memo saying the Geneva Conventions shouldn’t apply. He is the one who asked for the memo redefining torture so narrowly that the worst abuses we’ve seen would not constitute torture under his definition. And here’s what they’ve done to this guy. Not only has he basically said he agreed with those conclusions, but they’ve put him in as the chief law enforcement officer of the United States. That means that there’s now a conspiracy to continue the cover-up so that this does not go to the higher-ups at all, so that nobody—not Rumsfeld, not down from him, not Cambone, not Gonzales—will obviously ever be investigated. These are the people responsible. These are the people who lower-level soldiers are really angry at, because they’re the ones who got led into this by these guys at the top.
AMY GOODMAN: What about these guys who have been released from Guantánamo? Four men from Britain have just returned home, and an Australian, as well.
MICHAEL RATNER: You know, I got called just as Mamdouh Habib arrived in Australia, and I have to tell you, it was incredible to me and incredibly moving. After three years in a prison where this man, Habib, was—first he was sent to Egypt and tortured for six months in Egypt, electroshocked, the whole thing, and then recent revelations by Mr. Habib about the use of women and even, whether it was real or fake, menstrual blood, rubbing it on his face as a way of making him unclean, taking away water from him so that he couldn’t wash himself and that therefore he couldn’t communicate with God in any sense at all. These are recent revelations that have come out. And, in fact, recently there’s—the last couple of days, there are some revelations about one of the people who was in Guantánamo, one of the interrogators or a soldier, trying to write a book about this and revealing how women were used in this way. That’s Mr. Habib’s story.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Michael, there have also been reports in the past week that the conditions at Guantánamo got so bad for some of the detainees that there were attempts and a protest in terms of suicide hangings. Do you have any information on that or any speculation about that particular—
MICHAEL RATNER: Yeah, there’s been—there’s been attempts at suicide throughout the Guantánamo period, and serious ones. And the United States decided they don’t like the word "suicide," so they call them self-injurious behavior or, you know, words that don’t use that. But this one happened about a year ago. It was 23 people who attempted to commit a mass suicide, got stopped. Some of them had to be hospitalized. But that is about the conditions. When we talk about Alberto Gonzales, we cannot separate him from Guantánamo. Guantánamo is where this stuff began. It’s where they—it’s an experiment in torture, in cruel and inhuman and degrading treatment. And it’s not just Habib in Australia. You know, the other people who were released, the other four British people, also subject to all of this kind of stuff, from dogs to stripping to the whole range of stuff. And the sad thing is, it’s still going on. It’s still going on, whether it’s in Guantánamo or Iraq.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: But it seems that the more that the revelations come out about how systemic this kind of treatment was, the less attention it is getting in the U.S. corporate media compared to obviously when the Abu Ghraib scandal first broke. You’re getting less and less actual coverage, or even outrage, about how systemic this has been.
MICHAEL RATNER: You know, I don’t get it. It’s not only systemic. I mean, you had Gonzales essentially admitting it, I mean, essentially saying, "This is the way we do it. This is what we’re willing to do." And these guys are going to confirm this guy. I mean, I think almost anybody who votes for him could conceivably be, if this were Germany, part of a conspiracy to commit and cover up war crimes that are being committed at the highest-level officials. We’re having that vote next week. We have a Senate that’s 55 to 45 in favor of the Republicans. I don’t know what the vote will be like. That eight Republicans—that eight Democrats finally voted against him—I think had there been a screaming outcry in the beginning against Gonzales by all these—all human rights organizations, all the Democrats, it’s possible the guy could have been beaten. But I agree with you: The media has been a disaster here. I’m saying to you right now, no one is complaining in any of the major media about the fact that we are saying we can inhumanely treat people right now, as we speak, who are noncitizens all over this globe.
AMY GOODMAN: Speaking of Germany, Michael Ratner, you went to Berlin. We spoke to you when you filed a suit against Donald Rumsfeld, the war secretary, the defense secretary. He is now not going to a conference in Germany in February because the German government did not quash this suit. Can you explain?
MICHAEL RATNER: There’s actually a lot going on here in Germany right now. There was an article in The Washington Post today that said that the Pentagon denies he isn’t going because of the lawsuit. What I think has really happened here is they floated a—not a rumor, it may be true he’s not going—but floated it as a way of putting pressure on the German government to say, "Get rid of this lawsuit. This is serious business. We’re considering not sending Rumsfeld there." But on the high—on the level of calling them, "No, no, no, this isn’t what this is about." And I think what—the conference is February 11th and 12th. It’s the major security conference for Europe. The secretary of defense has gone for 40-some years. My view is, we’re reaching a point in this lawsuit in Germany where something’s going to give.
We’re filing major new papers, actually, today and Monday. One of them, of course, names Alberto Gonzales now as an additional defendant in the case. I mean, his testimony is one that really they could have put into a war crimes trial in Germany and said, "You’re convicted." Someone told me this incredible story about Germany and what happened with torture. One of the key people, Keitel, who got a death sentence in Germany, was the man who scrawled on a memo to the high command about Russian soldiers, that said, "Geneva Conventions? Obsolete rubbish." Remember the words that Gonzales used to describe Geneva: "obsolete." And when they sentenced Keitel to death, what they said was, "One of the reasons we’re giving you the death penalty is for writing—is for basically saying the Geneva Conventions are obsolete." So, this is a very serious issue in Germany.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Michael Ratner speaking in 2006 on Democracy Now! I last interviewed Michael on the program on July 20th, 2015, in Washington, D.C., at the reopening of the Cuban Embassy after it was closed for more than half a century. It was boiling hot. Michael was drenched in sweat. But it was one of the happiest I had ever seen him. Michael talked about the significance of this historic day.
MICHAEL RATNER: Well, Amy, let’s just say, other than the birth of my children, this is perhaps one of the most exciting days of my life. I mean, I’ve been working on Cuba since the early ’70s, if not before. I worked on the Venceremos Brigade. I went on brigades. I did construction. And to see that this can actually happen in a country that decided early on that, unlike most countries in the world, it was going to level the playing field for everyone—no more rich, no more poor, everyone the same, education for everyone, schooling for everyone, housing if they could—and to see the relentless United States go against it, from the Bay of Pigs to utter subversion on and on, and to see Cuba emerge victorious—and when I say that, this is not a defeated country. This is a country—if you heard the foreign minister today, what he spoke of was the history of U.S. imperialism against Cuba, from the intervention in the Spanish-American War to the Platt Amendment, which made U.S. a permanent part of the Cuban government, to the taking of Guantánamo, to the failure to recognize it in 1959, to the cutting off of relations in 1961. This is a major, major victory for the Cuban people, and that should be understood. We are standing at a moment that I never expected to see in our history.
Let me tell you, as someone said to me here, if Obama wants to solve Guantánamo and the prisoners at Guantánamo, give it back to Cuba. There will be no prisoners left in Guantánamo. Easy way to do it, satisfy the Cubans, satisfy Guantánamo. Let it happen now.
Think about Cuba’s place in history, when we think about it for young people, not just for the fact that it leveled a society economically, gave people all the social network that we don’t have in the United States, but think about its international role. You think about apartheid in South Africa, and the key single event took place in Angola when 25,000 Cuban troops repulsed the South African military and gave it its first defeat, which was the beginning of the end of apartheid. It had an internationalism that’s just unbelievable. And I remember standing in front of—in the 100,000 people in front of a square in Havana in 1976. I was on a Venceremos Brigade. And Fidel gave a speech, and he said, "There is black blood in every Cuban vein, and we are going into Angola." I’m telling you, I still cry over it.
AMY GOODMAN: Michael Ratner, speaking on the grounds of the Cuban Embassy in Washington, D.C., at its reopening after more than half a century last July. Michael was diagnosed with cancer just weeks later. We end today’s program with a speech Michael Ratner gave in 2007 when he was awarded the Puffin/Nation Prize for Creative Citizenship.
MICHAEL RATNER: Over the last few years, I’ve become acquainted with a man named Henri Alleg. Henri Alleg is a French Algerian in his eighties who was water-tortured—or, as this administration says, waterboarded—by the French. Here is how Henri Alleg described his water torture, a practice that goes back to the Inquisition: "The rag was soaked rapidly. Water flowed everywhere: in my mouth, in my nose, all over my face. ... I tried, by contracting my throat, to take in as little water as possible and to resist suffocation by keeping air in my lungs ... as long as I could. But I couldn’t hold on for more than a few [moments]. I had the impression of drowning, and a terrible agony, that of death itself, took possession of me."
Think about Henri Alleg when you hear the CIA talk about enhanced interrogation techniques. Or think about a terrible agony, that of death itself—that of death itself—taking over you when you hear our new attorney general refuse to condemn waterboarding, or when you hear that some of our Democratic leaders were briefed and made not a peep—not a peep—of objection.
Let there be no doubt, the Bush administration tortures. It disappears people. It holds people forever in offshore penal colonies like Guantánamo. It renders them to be tortured in other countries. This is what was done to CCR’s client Maher Arar, who was rendered to Syria for torture. And sadly, a majority of our Congress, our courts and our media have given Bush a free hand—and, in fact, worse, have been the handmaidens of the torture and detention program. But it has not been given a free hand by the Center for Constitutional Rights. It has not been given a free hand by The Nation. It has not been given a free hand by Jeremy or Naomi.
Today we’re in the midst of a pitched battle, a pitched rattled to put this country back, at least ostensibly, on the page of fundamental rights and moral decency. The battle is difficult, and the road is long and hard. On occasion, I get pessimistic. Sometimes I and my colleagues feel like Sisyphus. Twice—not just once, twice—we pushed the rock up the hill and won rights for Guantánamo detainees in the Supreme Court, and twice the rock was rolled back down by Congress over those rights. So we pushed it back up again. Five days ago, we were in the Supreme Court for the third time. It was difficult, more difficult than before, because the justices have changed. Four are antediluvians, lost forever to humanity.
But before I get us all depressed, we’ve had our victories. We’ve gotten lawyers to Guantánamo, stopped the most overt torture and freed half of the Guantánamo detainees—over 300. We have gotten Maher Arar out of Syria. Canada has apologized for his torture, given him a substantial recovery—in Canadian dollars, which is no embarrassment anymore. They said he was an innocent man, but he remains on the U.S. terror list. We have slowed, but not yet stopped, a remarkable grab for authoritarian power.
I also don’t look hope—I also don’t lose hope, because I think about the early days of Guantánamo. At first, we were few. But now, we are many. At first, when CCR began, we were the lonely warriors taking on the Bush administration at Guantánamo. Now we are many. Now we, just on Guantánamo alone, are over 600 lawyers, most from major firms of every political stripe. These lawyers have an understanding of what is at stake: liberty itself. This struggle—this struggle will be seen as one of the great chapters in the legal and political history of the United States.
Today, war, torture, disappearances, murder surround us like plagues. Most in this country go on their way oblivious. Some don’t want to know and are like ostriches. Some want to justify it all. Some want to make compromises. But be warned: We are at a tipping point, a tipping point into lawlessness and medievalism. We have our work to do. For each of us, the time for talking is long, long over. This is no time for compromise, no time for political calculation. As Howard Zinn admonishes us, it is the job of thinking people not to be on the side of the executioners. The Puffin/Nation Prize reminds us all that the job for each of us is not to be on the side of the executioners. Thank you all.
AMY GOODMAN: Michael Ratner, speaking in 2007 when he was awarded the Puffin/Nation Prize for Creative Citizenship. Michael died May 11th, 2016, at the age of 72. You can visit our website at democracynow.org for our full coverage looking at the lives and legacies of Michael Ratner and Father Dan Berrigan. ... Read More →
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