Interview with Paul Colbert, July 12, 2004

Nevada Test Site Oral History Project University of Nevada, Las Vegas Interview with Paul Colbert July 12, 2004 Las Vegas, Nevada Interview Conducted By Suzanne Becker © 2007 by UNLV Libraries Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews conducted by an interviewer/ researcher with an interviewee/ narrator who possesses firsthand knowledge of historically significant events. The goal is to create an archive which adds relevant material to the existing historical record. Oral history recordings and transcripts are primary source material and do not represent the final, verified, or complete narrative of the events under discussion. Rather, oral history is a spoken remembrance or dialogue, reflecting the interviewee’s memories, points of view and personal opinions about events in response to the interviewer’s specific questions. Oral history interviews document each interviewee’s personal engagement with the history in question. They are unique records, reflecting the particular meaning the interviewee draws from her/ his individual life experience. Produced by: The Nevada Test Site Oral History Project Departments of History and Sociology University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 89154- 5020 Director and Editor Mary Palevsky Principal Investigators Robert Futrell, Dept. of Sociology Andrew Kirk, Dept. of History The material in the Nevada Test Site Oral History Project archive is based upon work supported by the U. S. Dept. of Energy under award number DEFG52- 03NV99203 and the U. S. Dept. of Education under award number P116Z040093. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in these recordings and transcripts are those of project participants— oral history interviewees and/ or oral history interviewers— and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U. S. Department of Energy or the U. S. Department of Education. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 1 Interview with Paul Colbert July 12, 2004 Conducted by Suzanne Becker Table of Contents Introduction: born Louisville, KY, work and travels as environmental engineer, move to Las Vegas, NV to work for Franciscan homeless project and NDE ( 1999) 1 Monastic journey: foreign travels, social action, joins Order of the Holy Cross, participation in Lenten Desert Experience ( LDE) at the NTS ( 1991) 2 First impressions of the NTS ( 1991) 4 Involvement with Nevada Desert Experience ( NDE), Las Vegas, NV ( beginning 1999) 5 Background: education ( engineering, North Carolina State University and University of North Carolina), work in Africa, pursuit of monastic vocation 6 Decision to leave the monastery, philosophy of the NDE and faith- based opposition to weapons testing 7 Dialogues with Robert Nelson, Episcopal priest and test site official, NDE and NTS protest movement 8 Relationships with test site law enforcement 9 Western Shoshone passports to enter NTS during protests 13 The impact of being arrested for the first time for nonviolent protest 15 Nonviolent protest at various sites across the country 17 Challenges: the NTS and NDE protest movement, NTS workers, community opposition to protest movement 19 Details of scheduled NTS protest ( August 2004) 25 Thoughts on the future of the NTS and testing, resurgence of protest movement 26 Impact of the protest movement on the NTS 28 Thoughts on the NTS from an engineering standpoint: infrastructure, environmental cleanup, waste disposal, alternate use, Area 51 29 The NTS: secrecy vs. informing the public 32 Thoughts on Yucca Mountain project and involvement of NDE 34 NDE and involvement with environmental efforts 36 Conclusion: final thoughts on the NDE 37 UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 1 Interview with Paul Colbert July 12, 2004 in Las Vegas, NV Conducted by Suzanne Becker [ 00: 00: 00] Begin Track 2, Disk 1. Suzanne Becker: If you want to start with something about yourself, some background, where you’re from, where your family’s from, where you grew up, and maybe how you eventually ended up here in Nevada. Paul Colbert: OK. Well, given that some claim that I haven’t grown up, that may be difficult but I’m Paul Colbert. Born in Louisville, Kentucky. I’m a migrant worker. I’ve got six countries and seven states to my name at this point. Lived in the north of Ireland and in the Yemen Arab Republic, the Sudan, Tanzania, Kenya, doing various types of engineering work. I’ve been in several different states. I came to Las Vegas in 1999 to work primarily with Brother David [ Buer] of the Franciscans and his project for the homeless, but that also gave me the opportunity to work with Nevada Desert Experience [ NDE], preparing for the millennial event at New Year’s 1999. We had about five hundred people involved with the Nevada Desert Experience for a program in town, and then greeted the New Year out at the test site, alternative to what’s going on, on the Strip. Right. Little bit of a different scene. Some of my background. I’m an environmental engineer by training, registered engineer still in North Carolina and also was registered for a while in California. So what does that mean specifically, environmental engineer? I’m curious. Water supplies, sanitation, public health types of engineering, which is focusing on public health for developing countries. That was part of what took me abroad, was doing engineering work in UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 2 those countries. Worked in a refugee camp in the Sudan for a while, the Ethiopian famine relief. Very basic public health, in that regard. I first came out here and first got involved with Nevada Desert Experience in 1991. At that point, I was in the Order of the Holy Cross, which is an Episcopal Benedictine monastic community. I was in Berkeley, California and I came down for the Lenten Desert Experience in 1991, which was the tenth anniversary of Nevada Desert Experience. So prior to coming out here, you’d been involved with the test site. I had been for, well, that would be about eight years off and on that I’d been out here, probably about four or five times, before moving out here and getting more directly involved with [ the] organizing and planning unit. What initially spurred that involvement? It was kind of a crazy combination of things. In some ways, I still haven’t figured it out. Back in 1981, I was in the Yemen Arab Republic, involved overseas, and I was aware of mounting opposition worldwide against nuclear weapons. Those were the days that Reagan was proposing the neutron bomb and making things even worse by way of nuclear escalation. Even while the SALT [ Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty] talks were going on, there was still talk of new generations of weapons and so on. So I was aware of some of that aspect, but a lot of it was complex enough that I didn’t have time to sort through all the details myself. While I was in the refugee camp in the Sudan, that was ’ 85, ’ 86, one of my coworkers there was taking a sabbatical from the SALT talks, where she was one of the primary translators, Russian and English translators, and had her picture in the paper that she was one that the State Department and Ronald Reagan had in mind, when they’d do the translation, she was one of the chief translators for summit talks. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 3 Who was that? Her name was Carolyn Smith. I’ve lost touch with her, don’t know where she is. I think she’s back at work doing some of that type of work, but don’t know for sure. But it was interesting to hear from her perspective in terms of just the drudgery of translating documents. They’d take Russian documents, translate it into English, and then back into Russian, and vice versa, just to make sure that things were accurately being translated. Because a lot of the [ 00: 05: 00] language of these documents is very technical and can make or break a treaty, you know, based on one false interpretation. So that was an intriguing aspect of it. But I think part of what happened in my monastic journey, as I was entering more deeply into prayer and contemplation, was also a call to be more involved actively. So I was still kind of at the center but the margins were widening, from my perspective. I came to the test site the first time with some Episcopal seminarians who were in Berkeley at the time, and we came down to see what was happening at the test site and to be involved with the Lenten Desert Experience. And as an aside, that was the year Dom Helder Camara was here for that event, a Brazilian Roman Catholic cleric. And amongst other quotes on his involvement in the Church, he’s been quoted as saying, When I fed the hungry, they called me a saint. When I asked why they were hungry, they called me a Communist. But he was here and speaking at the event. Dan Berrigan was out here at that time. And I mention those two because a couple years later, in ’ 93 on Good Friday at Lawrence Livermore labs, I crossed the line there, and was wearing my monastic habit, my white habit— stood out from the brown Franciscan habits— and Martin Sheen looked at me as I had crossed the line. He says, Oh, Brother, he says, I remember you. We were in the desert together a couple years ago, Dom Helder Camara and Dan Berrigan. So he was here in ’ 91 as well, and in some ways, thinking of that story is part of what helped bring me to Las Vegas, was saying, I don’t hang out with UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 4 those folks often enough. There have been a number of prominent people who’ve come out here to protest at the test site. That’s what I’ve heard. So that’s some of what got me out here. My monastic journey, where I was getting more involved with the social action as well as the prayer life, and this has been a way to blend the two. It’s been a matter of being out here in the desert to pray for the restoration of the land, and it’s one of those things where the science and the religion almost are kind of counterintuitive and almost oppose each other that, you know, this radiation is going to be around forever. Nevertheless, to be called to pray for the restoration of the land, to pray to overcome the desecration of the land. So I guess I couple of questions. I’m just wondering first when you actually got out to the test site? What were your first impressions and what were your thoughts, I guess, when you were out there that time? Well, several aspects. One is the sheer beauty of the land. This country, it’s something you have to have lived in the desert for a while to appreciate certain desert landscapes and so on. I mean, a good part of Tanzania, the Yemen, those were all different aspects of desert landscapes. Some of this was highlighted one year when I took a tour of the test site, I think in ’ 93— it might’ve been ’ 94— that I took a tour of the test site, and that was organized as part of an NDE event, and there were a couple on there who were from the East Coast and had never been to the desert before, and overhearing their comments on it, Look at all this desecration. This is all because of the bomb. There are no trees. There’s no nothing. And I was sort of saying, Well, you know, much as the land’s been desecrated, this is as good as it gets. This is the rainy season. The belly flowers are in bloom. I mean, you’ve got to have an eye to see it, but, you know, the lack of vegetation UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 5 wasn’t due to the bomb. I’ve got to admit that. But the sheer [ 00: 10: 00] beauty of the landscape out there is a very powerful witness. And that’s part of the aspect in terms of setting up Nevada Desert Experience, was to help people have the experiential element to see the beauty of the land and recognize what it is that’s happening to Mother Earth. Right. Yes. So it was fairly powerful. It was a powerful experience. It was good to encounter that. At the same time, I chose not to risk arrest at that time, and part of that got into the aspect of societal demands of being a proper Episcopalian, not to enter into these things. Actually, I returned from that first experience and found out that I was in the process of transferring my professional engineering license to California, and that meant I had to take a seismic engineering exam and a survey exam, on top of the national standards. So for practical reasons, it just wasn’t a good time to be arrested. Actually, when I got back, I found out that I had not passed the seismic test that first time and I needed to take it away [ again?], and at the bottom of the reapplication, it said to certify that I had not been arrested. And I said, Oh, OK. I dare say that from an engineering point of view on protecting the health and safety of the public, I can make a strong case for protesting as a way of trying to protect the public safety and health. That’s disputed by many other engineers who work for the government, most of whom are not in fact licensed. Right. Interesting. So eventually, how did you come to be involved with the Nevada Desert Experience? I mean, you came out here in ’ 91 and— I’d been out here several times in the meantime. Back in ’ 98, I’d been away from the monastery. I’d left the monastery about two years previously, and had taken some simple jobs, just trying to figure where in the world that I want to be and what in the world that I need to be doing at that UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 6 point. And the director’s position for Nevada Desert Experience was open, and I applied for that. Actually came in second on that; somebody else got the job. But that’s when Brother David offered me the position to help him with the homeless project he’s doing here at this location, actually. The building we’re in, this was the Franciscan friary. The Franciscans lived here from about 1980 until early this year, and the three buildings on this property at present are being used for three of the different ministries they had started. One was Nevada Desert Experience, one is Pace e Bene Franciscan Nonviolence Center, the other is Poverella House, which is the house of hospitality for the homeless. And so that’s what I had come out here to do directly at that time, and then had the opportunity to start working with NDE for the millennium event, and then helping out from time to time since then. And I guess, going back to about 2001 at this point, that I’d worked as office manager and tried to keep some things going at various times when NDE’s struggled for finances, so it’s sort of been on again, off again, depending on how the funding’s been available. And so you are now currently the director? I’m a program director and office manager, just part time work. The youth director up in Berkeley is a full time position. Outreach director and youth director. I guess a couple questions, and I’ll start here first. I want to just back up a little bit, because you mentioned being at the monastery and I’m wondering what the progression was. Obviously, you went to school for engineering? Yes. And where did you do that? I was at North Carolina State for undergraduate and University of North Carolina for graduate school. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 7 OK. And then what was the progression from there that led you—? Oh, I don’t know that anything’s been direct. Part of it, in doing the engineering work, I felt [ 00: 15: 00] called to ordination, which I pursued in North Carolina. That didn’t happen at that point. I felt drawn to do overseas missionary work, which people didn’t seem to understand very much. They said, Well, just do the engineering. And so some of my additional work in Tanzania and the Sudan were sort of, in some ways, an attempt to show that they were wrong. I was trying to do the engineering work, but it really was not fully satisfying in that aspect, and ordination would’ve proved very fruitful in that realm. And then entering the monastery to pursue the monastic vocation, which I’d always had in the back of my mind, and it became obvious that wasn’t where I needed to spend the rest of my life. That wasn’t the group of people that I needed to spend the rest of my life with, so I left the monastery. So it’s been a progression, a lot of social action that I’ve been involved with in various phases, various levels, but it’s part of my Christian baptismal covenant. So these are just values that are part of your upbringing and that have been present in your life throughout. Yes. Exactly. Yes. And the second thing, I’m just wondering if you could just briefly lay out the, I guess you’d call it the philosophy of Nevada Desert Experience and what the group itself— sort of a condensed version of what you guys do. Well, yeah, we’re faith- based opposition to nuclear weapons in general, nuclear testing in particular, the idea being that the testing is a key component in nuclear weapons, and by eliminating the testing phase, that would start eliminating the weapons and new generations weapons. Now, obviously, there’s a new generation of weapons on the drawing board right now UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 8 and plans going ahead to build mini- nukes and bunker busters that have just recently been approved. But the faith- based opposition, following in the tradition of Gandhi and Martin Luther King and, I mean, ultimately of Jesus in terms of nonviolent confrontation, so it’s been a series of witnessing against weapons and trying to engage the opponent. Various times there have been engagements with the test site workers and dialogues going on with them about various activities that have gone on there. Can you talk a little bit about that? I’m curious how the test site received you guys and types of interactions you’ve had. Some of this is getting oral history before my time, but it’s been a variety of aspects. Some of that came about by holding signs outside the entrance so that workers would see it as they went by. Other times there were blockades— people getting off the buses and having a chance to interact with the workers out there. There have been interactions with people, and I understand it wasn’t well received by a lot of workers, but one of the safety directors, later the test site director, Bob Nelson, helped to encourage dialogue. Now, this is the dynamics of things in acting. Bob is an ordained Episcopal priest, as am I, and I had to get his approval to get ordained, as a matter of fact. Right. I believe we talked about Nelson. But he helped promote some of the dialogue, and I gather that he was better received by the Nevada Desert Experience than he was by some of his coworkers in doing that. But many who just didn’t want to have any dialogue whatsoever and, We’re right and they’re wrong. Attitudes which you find on both sides of any issue. So he helped to organize various times when there could be dialogues. There were times, I think, he invited folks to come and make presentations at the church where he was based, which was the church home to a number of test UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 9 site workers, so it wasn’t just matter of getting in the church, but it was actively where the test site workers were worshipping. So what have your experiences been? Have you had, I guess, dialogue with test site folks or test site workers? Not directly. My contact in my position has been more with the sheriff, in terms of organizing the protests better. OK. [ James] Merlino? [ 00: 20: 00] I met him, but I’ve mainly worked with Captain Mike Bordner, has been my primary contact. He’s the current person in charge out at the Mercury substation. So how does that generally work? Actually, it’s gotten to the point, I don’t know if we’ve got them trained too well or if he’s trying to work on duty rosters two months in advance, but he usually ends up calling me before I get to calling him. But we usually indicate that— because part of our nonviolent principles to which we subscribe is that we share our activities with the— I mean, the basics. We don’t go into all the details, but we share the basics with the sheriff and let them know. For instance, this August, we will be out there on Sunday, August the eighth. We plan to be out there for liturgy about eight o’clock, which means we’d be starting to head down to the line somewhere around nine o’clock, and we give them an idea of roughly how many we’re expecting. That helps him with his manpower report, so that he can determine how many people are coming and, being a Sunday, he’ll probably take the day off if it’s a small enough group. If there’s too many coming out there, then he’ll be more directly involved. So it’s been a matter of coordinating some of those efforts, and periodically I’ll get a phone call. I think, for instance, there were big protests in San Francisco against Bechtel. Now, of course, this is partially Bechtel Nevada, so on that group’s UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 10 website, they said, you know, We’re going to do things against all the Bechtel sites. Well, I think they were thinking San Francisco when they said that. They were going to all the places in San Francisco, but since this is a Bechtel site, he called up to find out, were we part of this group? Did I know anything about it? And that was the first I had heard about it, as a matter of fact, so there was nothing going on at this site, to my knowledge; certainly nothing that involved us. So it’s a matter of coordinating on these things. Some that ties in with the fact that a lot of it’s very ritual[ ized]— the protests— and there’s been a varied history in terms of how much has gone on with prosecution of various charges. That’s varied over the years and there seem to be a variety of experiences on that, but for the basic actions that go on right now, that are more ritual, where we cross the line, the sheriff does what I call the sports fisherman approach of catch and release: Basically, as we cross the line, we’re detained in the holding cages that are out there at the entrance to the test site. You’ve seen those? Yes. Yeah, you’re familiar with those. And then after everybody has crossed the line, everybody that they’re aware of at that point that has crossed the line, then they’ll start processing and booking. They write a citation that says, “ Court date to be notified.” And then they never actually even file the charges. So they go through the motions. It goes through the motions. And do they just process you right there? Right there, yeah. Basically, they’ll bring the police car over, write the citation, and then people walk back across the line. So it’s very simple catch- and- release aspect at this point. If people were to do a backcountry action to try to walk in, deep into the test site, that would be a more UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 11 serious situation in their eyes that charges would probably be filed. There was a group that was in Mercury, oh, probably about eighteen months ago who was caught in the town of Mercury, and again, it’s one of those dilemmas that, for whatever reason, DOE [ Department of Energy] has contracted with Nye County to protect the test site, by and large. At certain levels, Wackenhut [ Services, Incorporated] private security force does a lot of the other levels of security. If you’re out on the grounds, it’s generally treated as a county offense. A state offense. If you’re caught in a building, this is generally considered a federal offense at that point. So this is really organize— almost a hierarchical order for this. They’ve kind of developed it, and part of that is in response to protesters, part of that was developed over the years in terms of what they’re going to contract for. One of the suspicions on [ 00: 25: 00] why they don’t want to prosecute is Nye County doesn’t get a huge amount of money to do their work out there, and the more they prosecute, the less profit they get out of it, so they’ve got a monetary issue of not prosecuting, and that’s been considered from time to time by protesters. If it seems like an appropriate time to up the ante and draw attention to the issue, forcing prosecutions by increased presence could be a strategy that might get more media attention, might draw attention to it. And Nye County may or may not— it depends on what their strategy is in terms of following through on that. Do they have enough money to prosecute? Right. [ It] doesn’t seem like there’s much of a need for that right now, is that—? No, things are kind of mixed right now. Part of this gets into the global strategy, the weapons of mass distraction, you know. The sleight of hand that the weapons we’ve been searching for are over there, whereas in fact they exist in this country and are on hair trigger alert, you know, so that’s a part of the aspect. And as time goes on, certainly with the sixtieth anniversary of the bomb next year and with increased funding for new generations of weapons, the intention is to UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 12 increase publicity around nuclear weapons in this country over the course of the next year. That ought to increase media attention, but may or may not be anything increased by way of strategy and arrests. OK. I mean, that’s really interesting. It just supersedes it. Way too early to tell at this point. Right. I’d like to go back to something you mentioned just a little earlier about the things that are fairly ritualized right now, and I’ve read this book by Ken [ Butigan]. You’ve seen that one. OK. I wasn’t sure if you had seen that or not. And in there, he talks a lot about the different rituals and what different things mean. I’m wondering if you could expand on that or share your experiences with me. I know that crossing the actual cattle guard or the line, I guess, what it is now, has a very significant meaning to— Well, yeah, I asked Captain Mike one day, I said, Now, you’ve replaced the cattle guard with a line. How do you guys refer to it, just so that we’re clear in our communications? He says, That’s still the cattle guard. The line is down halfway to Mercury, which is where the old camp was, and that used to be where the protests were held. And so when they talk among themselves about crossing the line, they think somebody’s down in there a ways. It’s good to get that language clarified. So communications are important there. They still refer to it as the cattle guard. It would be interesting to go out there with a GPS [ global positioning system] system and determine, is that actually NTS property, or what they claim to be NTS property, because I think the Shoshone issue still needs to be addressed on the whole thing, who really owns the land. They don’t have title to it. But that’s a different level of issue and protest. It’s become at least the symbolic boundary that the government says, You’re not allowed to be here. And by and large, UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 13 people were saying, Yes, we are. Now, one of the levels of which that claim is made is that most actions, people have a permit from the Western Shoshone to come and go on Shoshone lands. And so that’s been one of the claims that has been made over the years. And in fact, around the time that those first started being issued was around the same time that a lot of the prosecutions were being stopped. Whether it’s direct cause and effect, it seems like there are several different related issues going on at that same time, budget being one of them, media coverage being another. There were several things happening around that same time. But part of it’s a matter of saying, No, we disagree with the policies and we’re going to claim the right to be here and protest. And so it’s gone fairly well [ 00: 30: 00] in that aspect, and a fair bit of respect. A lot of people out there greet the officers by name. So it seems like you have a very good working relationship with the security out there. By and large there, yes, and part of what they’ve asked for as part of this aspect has been to let them know if there are people, unknown to us— you know, if there’s outside agitators, people who haven’t been involved with the weekend event or who are unknown in terms of trainings— because that helps them that they know that we’ve got a record of being nonviolent and treating people with respect. We don’t know about these folks. And that’s all it is, is a heads- up. And it’s a way of saying, I’m not responsible for the actions of anybody who’s out there. I’m simply trying to coordinate things, whereas they would like to deal with a hierarchy and say, Who gives the orders here? That’s not the way we operate. And that’s part of the difference between the modes of operation and the challenge to, I guess, to the federal government as a whole throughout the nation, is we’ve got two different ways of doing things that are emerging in this country. People still want this strong hierarchy to deal with, and a lot of people are saying, No, we’re wanting to be a democracy. We’re wanting to have a UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 14 say. So it’s tricky in that regard to balance, but at least in terms of trying to honor them and let them be aware how they’re going to deal with people who might be acting out or acting up in some way, that they have to have their own levels of protection for that, so it’s a way of honoring them at that level. OK. Now, how do you decide? Do you decide that morning if you’re going to go ahead and cross, or do you decide it beforehand? A lot of individuals decide— I mean a lot of people decide that morning that they cross. A lot of people come out here having a sense of what they want to do, but then, whether they get caught in the moment, to make their final decision or not on whether to cross the line or not. And then what is that symbolic representation? A lot of it has to do with, for the individuals who cross, it gets into lots of different levels of things. For some people, it’s a level of respecting authority and saying, Good people don’t get arrested. You know, the air of propriety versus dealing with, for instance, attitudes towards civil disobedience, Good people ought to be in jail rather than people ought not to be in jail, you know, looking at Walden and some of those historical aspects. So for a lot of people, that’s part of the decision. It is respectability and dealing with authority. There are some folks who come out here, we’ve had people out here who are actually on active duty in the military, that it would not be wise for them to get a jail record. But they recognize the way things are done out here, it’s a safe environment, that they are not going to appear on any record entered into a database. So it’s a way of making a stand and a witness that, even though they’re on active duty and serving in the armed forces for their country, there are some things that they disagree with, and they recognize, and this is a way that they can go ahead and express it in a relatively anonymous fashion. I mean, depending on what name they actually UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 15 give when they’re cited out, but even if they give their own name. It’s not something that’s going to appear, that the military police are going to suddenly come down on them. So it’s a way for them to deal with some of the contradictions that they’re facing in their lives and to try to get a little bit of integration out of it. Sort of reconcile things a little bit? Right. And like I say, a lot of people, the first time of being arrested here, even though the repercussions are small, psychologically it’s a big deal for them. And actually the example, talking with Steve Kelly, a Jesuit who had been out here many times, [ 00: 35: 00]— and I crossed the line with him in Livermore in ’ 93— and he did not carry any identification with him when he was arrested at Livermore. That was Good Friday. And that meant— he was bound over for the whole weekend until Monday, so he missed Easter celebrations with community and so on— that he was in jail for Easter. But his comment was, I’m just practicing. I’m practicing to know what it’s like to