Why Are We in Vieques? (Cont.)

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Outside Magazine October 2001

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Why Are We in Vieques? (Cont.)

DURING THE BOAT TRIP to Roosevelt Roads, I found myself talking to Petty Officer Roberts, the sailor who captured me. He said he aspired to become a Navy SEAL. He asked about President Kennedy and was aware of his commitment to the Special Forces and the SEALs. Looking westward from our slow-moving transport, I could see El Yunque, the mountainous Puerto Rican rainforest that had once been home to an American Special Ops jungle warfare school, which I visited when my Uncle Jack was in the White House. I was eight years old, and I'd gone with my Uncle Sarge Shriver and cousin Bobby to watch the Green Berets run the obstacle course.

Ours was a Navy family. My father admired every species of war hero, but especially the elite units. During my childhood, Hickory Hill, our family home in Virginia, was frequently filled with commando types, Cuban guerrillas, and members of the Green Berets, the unit President Kennedy was instrumental in founding. Behind our home, the Green Berets built an obstacle course and a zip-line parachute jump, which for 30 years my mother required her house guests, including George H. W. Bush, to ride.

I listened with admiration as Roberts spoke about how badly he wanted to make the SEALs, and I experienced a familiar sting of ambiguity about opposing the service that was such an important icon of my childhood. But I was also thinking that those who love an institution most should be the first to criticize it when it does wrong. Every nation has a right to ask its citizens to sacrifice their lives during time of war. But on Vieques the Navy is endangering the lives of children, women, and men for a dubious military exercise without their consent.

Prison guards ordered us to strip naked, lift our private parts for inspection, and then turn, bend, and spread our cheeks. Eddie Olmos turned to us: "Hey guys, lose my number."

We landed at Roosevelt Roads and were taken to the stockade in a tropical downpour. There we were turned over to U.S. Marshals and federal prison guards, most of whom were Puerto Rican. They treated us more like heroes than criminals. At midnight a bus carried us to the maximum-security federal prison in Guaynabo, a San Juan suburb. We packed ourselves into a holding cell with a good view of the galvanized toilet in its center. Eddie and I signed a zillion autographs for prisoners and guards.

Then the processing began. Outside the holding tank, Eddie, Dennis, and I were ordered to stand abreast, facing three prison guards. They told us to strip naked, to lift our private parts for visual inspection, and then to turn, bend, and spread our cheeks. It was in this position that Eddie seemed to experience second thoughts about having answered my call. He turned to Dennis and me and said, "Hey guys, lose my number."

We were photographed, fingerprinted, decked in khaki, and marched to our cell block. Two days later, on April 30, a magistrate released each of us on $3,000 bail.

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