Lanky, 85-year-old Ramsey Clark, a former U.S. Attorney General during the LBJ administration, traveled from New York to Knoxville to argue nuclear policy yesterday on behalf of protesters facing serious federal charges for breaking into the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant last summer. He praised their work and said they did the U.S. a favor in exposing vulnerabilities in the nuclear enterprise.
Clark testified Tuesday that production of weapons components at Y-12 could be considered unlawful, if not illegal, because it violates some tenets of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty aimed at eliminating the nuclear arsenals. The treaty was signed in 1968 during his tenure at the Justice Department, which spanned the entirety of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. The trial for Sister Megan Rice, Michael Walli and Greg Boertje-Obed, known as the Transform Now Plowshares, is set to begin May 7.
The hearing in U.S. District Court was a last-chance opportunity for defense attorneys to gain approval to use a “justification” defense in the case. They want to argue that the protesters’ actions were for the greater good and necessary to prevent the imminent harm of nuclear weapons. Clark said that argument and others put forth by the Plowshares protesters were reasonable because of the increased possibility of nuclear weapons use. “These weapons are a threat to life on this planet,” he said. U.S. District Judge Amul R. Thapar quizzed Clark on the legal issues behind his statements on the reasonableness of the protesters’ thoughts and actions. Thapar said he would release an opinion within a week regarding what legal arguments will be permissible in the upcoming trial.