The arrest scene was very typical.  Excited young men and women barking orders,  but eventually settling down. Peter was handcuffed for some time. Donna and Bill were not. We were held for 2 hours before the Colorado Springs Police got there.

We repeatedly offered our materials to a series of AF personnel and read the documents aloud several times  At one point a Sgt Morgan who identified himself as General Eberhart's personal aide appeared and wanted to know more about us and our purpose. He took copies of our material  and said he would share it with his boss.

He seemed to want to know if we were planning to do something like "pieing" the general.  (ha)  We assured him that we were dead on serious about our international law allegations and we looked forward to seeing the  general in court.  Not that pieing is a bad idea either (Hmmm)

We have been ordered to appear on August 30 at 1:30  in Colorado Springs Municipal Court. We do expect to receive help preparing legal arguments. And I suspect there might be more Citizens' arrests down the road. There is video footage of the arrest and some still photos.

Bill Sulzman, August 9, 2001

(See Results of Sentencing - March 12 2002)

With copies of the statement below and a Citizens Arrest  Warrant,  Donna Johnson, Peter Sprunger-Froese and Bill Sulzman entered Peterson AFB this morning at 7:30 to find and notify General Ralph (Ed) Eberhart of his arrest for the crime charged in the warrant. There is a tribunal currently in session prosecuting high ranking officials such as Slobadan Milosevic and Bosnian and Serbian generals for war crimes.  If we wait until after the fact to charge and prosecute nuclear war criminals it will be too late.  If international law and U.S. law are to be effective in this matter they must be invoked now before a nuclear holocaust happens. That is why we are acting today.

One of the worst criminal acts of all time occurred on August 9, 1945. Even that small minority of moralists and legalists who find some small justification for the dropping of the Hiroshima bomb on August 6, 1945 can find no justification whatsoever for flattening Nagasaki, Japan three days later. It was strictly a show of force to the Russians and a chance to test the plutonium bomb and compare its destructive force to that of the Uranium bomb used in the earlier sortie. Similarly there is no moral or legal  justification for current U.S. nuclear policy and nuclear war plans.

We are here today to continue the legacy of recent actions by Daniel Sicken and Sachio Ko Yin  (August 6, 1998) and Fr. Carl Kabat (August 6, 2000). Their protests at nuclear missile silo N-7 in our state are part of the inspiration for our action here today. 550 nuclear missiles each armed with from 1 to 10 bombs twenty times as powerful as the Nagasaki bomb are deployed in several western states.  49 are in Colorado. All are controlled by the Air Force Space Command located at Peterson AFB.  The Natural Resources Defense Council  estimates that: “A single warhead flattens buildings and kills most people in a 2.5 mile ring from ground zero and starts fires in an area twice that size.” And as we know with nuclear weapons that is only the beginning. Radiation poisoning would kill thousands more in the short term and the long term.

The arrogance shown in the actions of August 1945 is alive 56 years later. Our government has recently taken a series of steps to withdraw from international cooperation on the world economy, on the world’s ecology and in the arms regime affecting nuclear weapons and the peaceful uses of outer space. The traditional isolationism of withdrawal has been replaced by an isolationism of domination. Our country is not choosing to remain on the sidelines. The administration and congress are just setting a unilateral agenda and demanding everyone else’s acquiescence.

When such an abuse of power occurs both moral and legal tradition demand a response from the individual citizen.  It is time for us to rebuke the immoral and illegal actions of our own government. If we do not act world domination will surely lead to world destruction.  Apathy is no excuse. Being too busy is no excuse. Waiting for others to take the lead is no excuse.  56 years of nuclear insanity is enough. No more!  Not in our name!  We must act today in our small way to stop the momentum of destruction before it is too late. We must join those other groups who have chosen protest during this time of remembering the shame of August 1945.

Pursuant to the authority granted in Section 166-3-202 of the Colorado Revised Statutes (1973), we hereby place you under arrest for criminal acts as defined in the international rules of war as contained in several treaties to which the United States of America is a party.  These include the Hague Convention of 1907, the Geneva Convention of 1925, The Nuremberg Principles of 1946, U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10 The Law of Land Warfare (1956), the Outer Space treaty of 1967, the anti-ballistic missile treaty of 1972 and the International Court of Justice ruling of 1996.

Until further notice you are hereby enjoined to stand down from any orders concerning the launching of the 550 nuclear-armed missiles in Colorado, Nebraska, Wyoming, Montana and North Dakota and from any actions that violate the terms of the 1972 anti-ballistic missile treaty.