Clowns confront nuke silo

A Roman Catholic priest and two veterans dressed in clown suits went to a Minuteman III silo on June 21 and began to disarm a nuclear weapon using hammers. Reverend Carl Kabat, 72, Gregory Boertje-Obed, 51, and Michael Walli, 57, entered the E-9 missile silo on the Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara Nation reservation in North Dakota. Using a sledgehammer and household hammers, they disabled the lock on the personnel entry hatch that provides access to the warhead and hammered on the silo lid that covers a 300 kiloton nuclear warhead. The activists painted "It's a sin to build a nuclear weapon" on the face of the silo cover and poured their blood on the missile lid. After being arrested by McLean County Sheriffs, the three were charged with criminal trespass and criminal mischief. Speaking from jail, Boertje-Obed, from Duluth, MN, explained: "I believe Jesus led us to do this... based on his teachings of intervening for the sake of the poor.... I believe this plowshares action is a natural extension of our Catholic Worker mission which is hospitality, providing for the needs of the poor, and defending the poor." "We bombed and strafed in Iraq based on lies that the Iraqis' possessed nuclear weapons," said Kabat, from St. Louis, MO. "We have the weapons here." The Minuteman III missile is armed with a warhead that carries 27 times the heat, blast and radiation of the bomb dropped by the US on Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945. The activists say that they are following in the nonviolent tradition of Jesus Christ and that the money used for these weapons of mass destruction is a theft from the poor that should be used for food, housing, medical care and rebuilding infrastructure in the US. In a statement, the three men explained that "we dress as clowns to show that humor and laughter are key elements in the struggle to transform the structures of destruction and death." The activists are affiliated with Nukewatch, an antinuclear organization headquartered in Luck, WI. Nukewatch co-director Bonnie Urfer said that the arrested men "feel as if the building of nuclear weapons is a sin against God." Urfer said she thinks the United States should set an example for other nations, but with having "7,000 ready to go–not a way to set an example." McLean County Sheriff Don Charging said the FBI is involved in the case and federal charges are pending.