#file_1#
Mark: First I want to talk a bit about your life. Find out a few things about your life in
general and then talk more about the actions and philosophy. I read this new book
about you and your brother, Disarmed and Dangerous, and it talks about you leaving
Catholic Peace Fellowship and Clergy Concerned for the War in Vietnam and turning
more to direct action. I'm kind of wondering what made you turn to direct action.

Phil: Well, do you want any background first?

Mark: Oh yeah, that would be great.

Phil: Well, I'm a World War Two veteran, I was in over in Northern Europe during the
war. Fifteen months over there. And ended up commissioned as a platoon officer,
second lieutenant. And then came back home, because we were slated for the
invasion of Japan in 1945. And then the bomb was dropped and we didn't have to go
because Japan capitulated. And I was separated from the service in 1946 and went to
college at Holy Cross and entered the seminary after college. I trained to be a
Josephite priest. We worked exclusively with African-American people, mostly in the
deep south. I was stationed in New Orleans for seven years teaching at a black high
school. And got involved with the civil rights movement down there. I'm trying to be
very very brief. Finally did civil disobedience with my brother at Selma, Alabama. Did a
whole variety of major marches with the civil rights people. And learned something
about Gandhi and nonviolence and also the nonviolence of Jesus. The New
Testament, the Gospels. And then we graduated to the war in Vietnam because of the
involvement of Black Americans in that war. Black Americans served as one third of
the combat troops there even though they were only ten percent of the population.
Because economic conditions were very very bad for their families at home. They
joined high risk outfits like the airborne, like the air cavalry, right at the line. Of course,
the casualties were very very heavy. The purpose was to send the money back home.
And I began to bury these guys once they came back in tin boxes. I was stationed at a
Black church on the West End here, on Pennsylvania and (unintelligible.) So I began to
return them not only to Arlington National Cemetery but Baltimore has a national
cemetery also. So that was part of my education. And I think that turned me against
the war in Vietnam. Partly because it was fought under a nuclear blanket. There were
three nuclear powers involved; Russia, China, and ourselves. And we threatened
nuclear weapons against them. So I finally got into serious trouble with the government
in 1967. We made a raid on Selective Service here in Baltimore, downtown Baltimore.
We went to a kangaroo trial. Everything was pretty much suppressed. Did we do it or
didn't we do it - that was the only question. And of course we admitted openly that we
did it. All the eyewitnesses testified that they saw us there and we did such and such
and such and such. So we were awaiting trial and we went to Catonsville and raided
Selective Service out there and this time burned them because the symbol of blood was
misunderstood. We this time burned 1-A draft records with home made napalm. And
then I was sentenced with Tom Lewis for six years and became children of the media.
So that's pretty much by way of facts. I've been at this for 35 years now. I've been in
and out of jail, I've served about eleven years in jail. I've given my life, I think I can say
that honestly, to bring this government back from the brink of terrorizing the world.
#file_2#

Mark: Talking about jail, Howard Zinn poses a question about civil disobedience. He
says why agree to go to jail and be punished for something that you think is right. What
is the importance of going to prison for your actions?

Phil: Well, they say when you're in prison you're doing a hearts and minds. That is to
say there are tens of thousands of people, maybe more, outside who realize that you've
acted nonviolently, for one, and you've acted with integrity, that you're in for justice, that
you're against war, that they understand this. And they're inspired to do more because
you're in jail. You've given the second most precious thing to you, and that's your
physical liberty. The first would be your life. It's next in line, your personal liberty. And
you've donated that. But there's no option to this at all. So the Wobblies, the
International (sic) Workers of the World, and Dorothy Day, and a lot of other leaders of
the peace movement would say we have to fill up the jails in order to change the course
of this government. Because it's so entrenched, it's so defended by not only brains and
scientific genius, but also money. And Dorothy changed that, you know. Day's
sacrifices demanded that, particularly of the people. Because the institutions are duck
tailed and they're pretty much submissive to the government, all of them, including the
church and synagogue.

Mark: What initially attracted you to the Josephites?

Phil: My brother Dan was already studying to be a Jesuit, close to ordination, but he
had been in training for something like twelve years before ordination. A very, very long
course of studies. I wasn't able to, I didn't want that. It would make me too old.
Because I was something like 26, 27 when I graduated from college, so I couldn't afford
that much time. I could gain ordination from the Josephites since I got credit in college
in philosophy in five years. So I chose that. Another influence was my brother Jerry
who was in the same year of seminary as I was. He was a World War Two veteran.
He was deeply involved in the invasion of Africa, Sicily and Italy, the three southern
invasions. (Inaudible.)
#file_3#

Mark: When Cardinal Shehan spoke out against your actions, and I'm not sure what
the Josephites did, but weren't they judgmental of your actions?

Phil: Oh, sure. On both occasions.

Mark: How did that affect you?

Phil: I had to understand what were their priorities. And when you study institutions,
you find their first priority is survival. Survival. Not doing what is right or proper or just.

Mark: How did the planning go for those first raids. You guys really hadn't done
anything of this magnitude before. Was there nervousness or fear?

Phil: You had to weigh the consequences. And you had to plan very, very meticulously
and hopefully, with a great deal of prayer and meditation, spiritual preparation.

Mark: When did you move on to the Plowshares actions?

Phil: 1980.

Mark: When did you move on to the Plowshares actions?

Phil: 1980.

Mark: When did the idea of that start out?

Phil: Well, we began when we were rejected from Vietnam in April of 1975. This
country was facing the USSR on a first strike basis. In case of nuclear war, we'd strike
first. (Unintelligible.) All of this time, between 1975 and 1980, we did drastic civil
disobedience, and getting a lot of jail time for it. Usually six months every stretch.

Mark: What did you do at those actions?

Phil: Well, the most serious of them was (HAVRE DE GRACE?) And that comes into
the policy of the government which. . . Here we are (unintelligible.) The population of
major cities (unintelligible) in abandoned mine shafts. Outside of Kansas City Missouri
there's an enormous granite mine that could accommodate seven hundred thousand
people. And this idiot plan was about the evacuation of people into this mine. And
there were others. There were six other sites that were prepared for this around the
country. Gold mines, stone mines, rhinestone. So we realized they would become
mass graveyards. People would come back to the surface and be dead because of
radiation. When you go into first strike you can't completely avoid retaliation. You can't
completely do it. And so all these sites would be contaminated, all be targeted by the
Russians. And if they emerged intact and alive, there would be disaster. So we did
that. We dug a grave behind the White House lawn. Got six months for that. We went
and dug graves at the Pentagon, we dug several graves there. And, you know, got jail
time. Just trying to expose the idiocy and the complete irresponsibility of this program.
By 1981, friends of ours from the Brandywine Peace Initiative (?) in West Philadelphia
approached one of our people and said, Look, we know what first strike weapons are
being produced because we demonstrated at this General Electric plant all the time.
And we believe that we can go in and use the prophecy of Isaiah, beat the swords into
plowshares, and do some disarmament of these first strike vehicles. So that seemed
like a damn good idea for us, and myself and another priest from Jonah House and
John (?), a lawyer we went with this group and began to organize and my daughter
joined us. (?) So anyway, in a rather miraculous fashion, and we learned something
about God's intervention. We knew nothing but the floor plan of the plant. We found in
ten seconds time these vehicles. And we disarmed two of them. (Unitelligible.)

Mark: Is it possible to disarm warheads?

Phil: Well, these aren't warheads yet. They were (unintelligible.) To give a longwinded
explanation, they were re-entry vehicles from an ICBM missle. And they
were all independently targeted. Somewhere, the trajectory targetted would spin off.
So each of them of course was very very heavy. Thity times more possible than the
hydrogen bomb. Each of them. So they stood about four feet tall, they were nose
cones. And we knew that they were being shipped to the Pantex Plant in Amarlo Texas
(?) to be stuffed with bomb material and make their visit to some of our big birds,
(unintelligible.) So we disarmed two of them. (Unintelligible.)

Mark: What is depleted uranium?

Phil: Depleted uranium is nuclear 38 (?). That will go through heavy tank armor like
butter. It burns its way right through it. And that's not the main threat. Even though the
shell hits into the tank and kills the crew, no one gets out of that tank alive. But that's
not the main problem at all. The main problem is when hits the armor, it oxidizes. And
it oxidizes in a cloud of radioactive material. And it can be circulated by air up to 25
miles away. And people breath it in, and they ingest it with their food, and it gets in the
food and water. And Southern Iraq is infested with this stuff. Tons of it.

Mark: Has it been used before?

Phil: Well we used it first of all in Iraq and then in Yugoslavia and now in Afghanistan.

Mark: Really?

Phil: Oh sure. Absolutely. If they have a weapon, they're going to use it. Because it's
there. And it's associated with power. They want to be in control.

Mark: How has your religious faith changed over the years, and how has jail effected it?

Phil: Well if anything, it's become more intense. Increasingly I fall back on the
Scriptures. When I went to Seminary, we had very, very good Scripture studies. And I
got a faint taste of what it said. I was helped a lot by my brother who has always been
in touch with those. He has written a whole series of books about the major Hebrew
prophets of the Old Testament. And that helped by (unintelligible)

Mark: I was talking to John Dear, and he brought up that Gandhi said that Jesus was
the most radical practicioner of nonviolence and the only people who don't know it are
the Christians. Do you feel that not many Christians or Catholics know about Jesus's
pacifism?

Phil: They're not taught. And they're not taught because the preacher's not taught.

Mark: How's Jonah House run? What's the community like?

Phil: (unintelligible) And they left everything, including their families, at least temporarily
or often enough. So if he did it and you respect him as the son of God and the perfect
human being then what needs to be done. So we drafted this out in prison.
(Unitelligible) The cops were right on to us. The cops sent out what we called rats.
They're looking for a better parole, or they're looking for a lot of stuff. So you have to
be extremely careful who you talk to. So we were scrutinized for maybe three years by
these spies. Some of them were ex convicts. So it was very valuable training for all of
us. So when I was released from prison, Elizabeth and myself--we were already
married--we started with four other people Jonah House in early 1973. According to
the model offered by Scripture, you live in voluntary poverty. This house, we built it
ourselves, and we got all volunteer help. We live in voluntary poverty nonetheless.
That's one thing. Voluntary poverty is part of a lifestyle of nonviolent people. So
nonviolence is your creed, it's the nonviolence not so much of the secular but it's the
nonviolence of the Gospel. It's the nonviolence of Christ our Lord. And you better be
practicing that. And you better be working out the conflicts and you better be taking a
stand publicly for peace. For the bombed and the starved and the downtrodden. So
techniquely that means you own everything in common, you own all property in
common. So we don't profess to own anything. This house we gave to the
archdiocese of Baltimore. It was not in our vision to own property. So we turned it over
to that and it works out that we live here and we work in the cemetery. We work on the
cemetery six months out of the year. The rest of the time we work with our hands. We
build houses. And we run around lecturing for peace and justice. So that's the picture
pretty much. Now we have eight adults and two college kids. And all our
Plowshares veterans are veterans of jail with the exception of one. And she's a veteran
of jail but she hasn't done any Plowshares actions. I have done six. Most of the
Plowshares get out of jail, we go do another action, we get back in the revolving door,
you go back into jail, you come out. And a couple of times we've had to face a ban
from the government to even live there. When we came out of jail, they wouldn't allow
us to live there. They'd say, no, you can't associate with felons. And that's a rule
conditional on your release. You don't associate with felons, and this house is full of
felons. So you can't live there. Sorry about that. So we did a big demonstration
downtown, on Pratt Street, against the probation law. The jailed two of our people for
returning here. But they go to further lengths than that. I'm surprised they haven't so
far.

Mark: Didn't Jonah House used to be in Reservoir Hill?

Phil: Yeah.

Mark: Wasn't there an FBI raid there?

Phil: Oh yeah. Yeah.

Mark: What was that all about? What happened there?

#file_4#
Phil: Well, it was connected with what we called the Year of Election, 1980. That was
the same year that we did the first Plowshare action. And the fact of the matter is that
the FBI had learned that we were planning this year's presence at the Pentagon. Now
the Pentagon employees were highly irritated by our presence there because we said
your paycheck is a reflection of blood. You shouldn't be working there. It's true, they
shouldn't be, anyone, including the military. So they complained vert strenuously to the
hiearchy of the Pentagon who got the FBI. They began a campaign of what we called
dirty tricks against us. And it began with the rape of a young woman, a law student
from Philadelphia, who came to our base in Washington DC. She came in order to
inquire when she could bring a group from Philadelphia down there in order to take
responsibility for a week at the Pentagon. She would have 42 states represented in the
campaign against the Pentagon, from as far away as Alaska. And invariably they did
civil disobedience on the Friday of their week. So, they started in, they raped this
young woman at nightfall.

Mark: The FBI?

Phil: Mercenaries. We lived in a poor Black neighborhood. They wanted us to think
that the people who were oppressing us there were from the neighborhood. So they
either had Black agents, or else they hired mercenaries who terrorized us for an entire
year. And it started with the rape of that woman and they continued. They vandalized
our cars. They ruined a couple cars with sugar in the gas tank. They hid in our church
and terrorized people in the middle of the night. They'd start running through the damn
church up to three in the morning. And they'd invade this tiny apartment we had. We
had a stove there to do some cooking and poeple slept on the floor, a lot of them.
They'd invade this apartment and sometimes nuns would be there sleeping on the floor.
And they would grope them. They'd fondle them, they'd grope them up, they'd rob
them, they'd point guns at them. Stuff like that. And when we were walking around
through the neighborhood, these mercenaries would confront our people and rob them.
And this went on a whole year, and we were able to find out about it.

Mark: Is the government more scared of nonviolence than violence?

Phil: They're terrified of it. And the tragedy is that we don't take it seriously. And we
don't practice it seriously. As my brother would say, we do it with half a heart.

Mark: What do you mean?

Phil: Oh, we don't want to take any risks. We don't want to sacrifice our private
agenda. Our careers, our schooling, on and on and on. There are a lot of Americans
who understand and are intelligent enough to understand how very wrong it is to fight.
But they can't fight against the government in power.

Mark: How do you respond to people who say full out war is the only way we can
respond to the attacks of September of 11th?

Phil: Well, I would say they are either very deep in denial, or they are deep in what we
call (uninteliigible) Because September 11th has absolutely nothing to do with the war in
Afghanistan, despite their mobilizing the entire American public to fight a war against
terrorism. And the press is helping them out. The fact of the matter is, the war was in
preparation for four or five years. That's one thing. Another point is that around
September 11th, we had 60,000 troops with adequate naval support, in either the Middle
East or South Asia poised to move in for a war in Afghanistan which was revealed to
the British Broadcasting System. Back in July, ABC reported that high standing
American officials revealed to them that the war was going to start in October. And
September 11th hadn't even happened yet. So, the Bush administration, they have a
real problem of legitimacy because Bush stole the election from Gore. In addition to
that, his approval rating was very, very low on September 11th, the lowest of any
president in recent history. Another thing was the struggle against globalization of large
American corporations, was going on ahead. And the demonstrations in Genoa, they
started in Seattle, and in Washington, culminating in Genoa, Italy. 200,000 people. It
was going well. And the distraction of war. . . . So, in many ways, this was just a
windfall for Bush. We do a vigil every Tuesday night. We go out to AFSC for a vigil against the war.
And a large number come by that support the war.

Mark: When I was in high school, I was taking an engineering class, a
mechanical engineering class, and we went to visit Northrup Gruman and NSA. And it
was one of the eeriest experiences I ever had. They took us onto a war plane at
Northrup Gruman.

Phil: For many, many years, in fact, decades, even their budget was classified, at NSA.
And Congress people couldn't learn what it was. And now they have a cluster of 19 to
20 buildings out there, and they have the most powerful security in the world, and they
also have what is estimated as about 45,000 people all over the world, who are
professionals who are working for the NSA. So lawyers, doctors, university professors,
people of every category are working for the NSA and who are reporting on troubled
areas. So if you stick your head out in the Phillipines, you'll have something recorded
on you, that goes back to Maryland. We have to watch the Philipines, because this
insurgent group, they might be doing this, they might be nonviolent, it doesn't make any
difference. They're creating some hell against the order of things. And American
control might slip. And they also monitor all international calls. If I were to call
Germany, for example, and the NSA would pick up on a number of catchwords which
they view as being explicit, they monitor the calls. My wife will tell you that our email
has been wiped out by the NSA several times. Gone. They're reading our mail.

Mark: How important has the internet been for organizing?

Phil: You'd have to talk to my wife. I don't use computers. I guess I should. There is
all sorts of evidence that there was complete foreknowledge of September. That the
CIA knew about it, and intelligence agencies in Russia, Germany, and Israel, had
warned the government that this was going to happen. But they knew. And Bush's
conduct at that elementary school down in Florida indicates that. Because he was told
the second plane went into one of the towers at the World Trade Center, and he did
nothing. And then the plane crashed into the Pentagon and then he didn't even leave
the school. Didn't make any statement. While all four planes, including the one that
crashed in Pennsylvania, all four planes were on FAA autopilot. (?) And all of them
could have been tampered with, or they could have sent out fighter bombers to
intercept them. They did nothing. So his conduct in the elementary school is highly
suspect. And then he seizes on the situation, thousands dead, did, billions were lost in
those two buildings. It was a banking center among other things. But that's all lost
now. They seized on that and then created the war on terrorism. They don't even have
circumstantial evidence that points to Bin Ladin, who is a real bastard, you know, who is
a CIA clone. And I've read commentator after commentator say, look, we warned you
about that. The Saudi Arabians are pissed off because we're maintaining troops in
Saudi Arabia, and they've got the two shrines there, Medina and Mecca. And they (the
United States) have been asked, including by Bin Ladin, to get your troops out of here,
which you agreed to do after the (Gulf) war.

Mark: What do you think the most important struggle is now, for pacifsts?

Phil: I'm dealing very, very heavily with a couple of studies which were made by Rosalie
(?). And she's a public health person. She looks at what was has done to public
health. And what has it done all over the world? She studied them all over the world.
She has a new book out called Planet Earth: The Greatest Weapon of War. It is a
great book. I went through this book three times in the joint. Anyway, she said in a
separate study that the nuclear club, lead by the United States, has killed or maimed
1.3 billion people since 1945, which was the date of our first nuclear testing out in New
Mexico. Now 1.3 billion people. So then you compute, since the United States lead it
all the way, devoted more money to it and more laboratories and geniuses and
everything else, lead it all the way. What's our responsibility? It's at least half. But let's
deal with that figure for a moment and say its 650 million people that we have either
killed or maimed or diseased with our nuclear adventure, mostly through testing. Now,
divide that by 56 or 57 years and you've got a holocaust of 12 to 15 million, which the
Nazis killed in the camps. Over 13 million every year since 1945. We have saturated
the planet through these years. From testing and from other sources, like we have 144
power plants. And studies have shown time and time again, not only Three Mile Island
but also, Burmy outside of Detroit, Francosisco in California, which is now closed.
Studies have indicated that incidents of cancer, birth deformities, death of infants, is
immeasurably higher close to these plants because the earth and water are saturated
with radiation. You can't bring scrubbers into the stacks. That doesn't help any. So
other sources as well. I'm trying to work with it now. This is an unprecedented crime
that far eclipses any war crime. We've created the Holocaust every year for 56 or 57
years. Nobody knows about it. People are dying on a broad scale of cancer. We have
a cancer epidemic in the world right now. And our people right here in the United
States are heavily hit. Nobody is looking into, what's the cause of this? Why is this so
unprecedented? Why was it different 50, 60 years ago when I was born? I had one
aunt die of cancer, and she was a rarity. Nowadays, every family in the United States
knows somebody who has a relative who has died from cancer. And why is this?
Nobody is looking into this, including the medical people. So this courageous woman
goes ahead and goes over all this terrible data, and I'm trying to figure out with a bunch
of friends what an adequate nonviolent response should be.

Mark: How have you spent your time in jail over the years?

Phil: Well, I usually had more to do than time to do it. That is, you have to conduct
heavy correspondence, an awful lot of folks send you letters. I used to devote a whole
weekend to writing letters. Then you've got to talk to the guys, because they have no
one who believes in listening to them, no one listens to them, because they don't
respcet them. And I'm in jail for different reasons, and they respect that. And then I
say, well I'm a Catholic priest, and then they'll say, ok, I need to talk to you about this.
So, you got to spend an enormous amount of time outside just listening. And then I
conducted a bible course study, and we went through John's Gospel, and read the
Scriptures three times a week. And then I was in solitary three times. Once, it was a
jailbreak, and one of my cellmates helped two Latin Americans get over the razor wire.
And they figured I was implicated with him. Since he helped them plan it, and I was
living with him, and my background was such and such and such, so they locked me
up. Then after September 11th they locked me up again. And the community here got
me out. They started calling and saying, what's this all about? Why's he in solitary?
Why can't we have a phone call and communicate with him? And how is he, anyway.
How is his health? He's an old guy, he's in the stir, you know? Is he making it or isn't
he making it? So after twelve days they sprung me. Other guys, foreign nationalists
and so one that they had locked up, were in twenty days. Not a word of explanation.
Not one bloody word. One was Lebanese, one was from the Carribean, he was
Jamaican. Not one word.

Mark: How do you react to police, or to people at the jail, or what is faced by my
generation, police using teargas at protests? How do you keep a clear head about
that?

Phil: You look at them as victims. They're doing their job. They need a job. They're
probably lower-middle class people. Some of them are poor Black cops. You look at
them as victims and you treat them nonviolently as well as you can because they're
going to humiliate you. And they're going to treat you unjustly, and maybe worse,
maybe worse. If you resist, or they think that you're resisting, they get very, very scared
and they start using the armaments that they are carrying on their person. Like the billy
club, the tear gas, pepper spray, they're going to use that. Your response ought to be
nonviolent.