Enduring Words from Sam Day.

• Author: Rothschild, Matthew
• Position: Interview

Five years ago, I interviewed Sam Day for my now-defunct radio show, Second Opinion. Here is an excerpt from that conversation. For more information on the life of Sam Day, see "Sam Day, 1926-2001".

Q: You just got out of prison. What were you in for?

Sam Day: I was in for six months for crossing the line at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska, the headquarters of the U.S. Strategic Command, which controls the launching and targeting of every long-range missile in the nuclear arsenal.

Q: Why did you decide to trespass there?

Day: To try to lift the veil of secrecy and numbness which covers that and other nuclear installations in our country, and to help the people of Omaha and the people of America understand that this is a very, very dangerous facility having control of some 8,000 nuclear warheads, all of them still aimed at targets all over the world and ready to go just as surely now as they were at the height of the Cold War.

Q: A lot of people assume that the threat of nuclear war has passed. Why is that not the case?

Day: Because, while it's true that there's no longer a confrontation between two nuclear superpowers, one of those superpowers--namely the United States--continues using nuclear weapons and the threat of the use of nuclear weapons as the basis for projecting power. And by doing that, we set an example for other countries to say that nuclear weapons are the way for them to protect their interests, too.

Q: How has the United States used this threat to protect its interests?

Day: Ever since the beginning of the nuclear era, we have been using our nuclear weapons as a way of reinforcing our economic and diplomatic positions. First of all, in a dispute over Iran way back in 1946, we directly threatened the Soviet Union with a possible nuclear strike. And as late as the Persian Gulf War, President Bush directly threatened Saddam with a nuclear strike. Now, the United States is saying that only it and the small group of nuclear powers can legitimately have these weapons of mass destruction. That's a way of keeping our dominance in perpetuity. And it's maintaining the double standard of a few privileged countries having nuclear weapons, while the rest of the world either doesn't have them or pretends not to have them.

Q: You're referring to Israel, India, and Pakistan?

Day: The most notorious example is Israel, which is a major nuclear weapons power now, with at least 200 sophisticated warheads. And it has acquired these with the...