(On May 10, 2007, I was one of eight co-defendants on trial for trespassing at the Johnston County Airport near Smithfield, North Carolina. We had visited the airport on April 9^th and attempted to deliver ‘warrants’ to the offices of Aero Contractors, a company that mounting evidence indicates is participating in a program of torturing people suspected of terrorist links, in violation of the laws of North Carolina, the United States and international agreements. We attempted on April 9^th to gain Aero’s cooperation with a legal investigation of these activities. The following is a revision of what I had prepared for my testimony but due to circumstances did not present in court. Five of the eight of us were found not guilty, not due to the merits of our case but because the state did not show that we were at the scene of the ‘crime.’ The evidence of crimes being committed by Aero is still not being investigated, but we’re still working on it!)

Testimony and Statements for Aero 8 Trial – May 10, 2007

My name is Samuel Scott Bass. I’m 45 years old. I’m married and have two nearly-adult sons. I live in Raleigh and am a native of neighboring Sampson County and I care very much about this part of the state. I was ordained as a Baptist minister in 1985 and have worked in various ministry capacities, including serving as interim pastor of Sharon Baptist Church right here in Smithfield from early in 2002 until early in 2004. I also have worked as a Marriage and Family Therapist since 1994. My wife and I now attempt to live in a way that is devoted to what Jesus Christ taught and modeled, including giving food and shelter to those in need and living simply. April 9^th was the first time I’ve been arrested.

I’m here to testify that what we did on April 9^th was an expression of responsible citizenship, of moral and ethical decency, and for me it was a compelling need to openly and clearly exercise my Christian faith. I will testify today as to how these things are true and why the court should consider these things in its deliberations today. My testimony today is on my own behalf and that of my co-defendants. The best way I can describe why I participated in the April 9^th action is to use the language of my Christian faith. This group’s motivations can be described in other ways, but in order to understand what compelled me most deeply to join this action it has to be expressed through the language of my faith. On the day I was arrested, I wore a t-shirt on which I had written, “Torture Endangers Us All” and “Torture Dishonors Christ.”

First, I want to testify that what we did was an expression of good, responsible citizenship. There is mounting evidence that our country is torturing people and that our doing so has increased atrocities against US citizens; we are in essence giving our enemies reason or excuse to torture citizens of the United States, whether they be military personnel, civilian contractors, journalists or others. For example, the people who beheaded American citizen Nicholas Berg three years ago this week in Iraq, claimed that his death was carried out to avenge torture of Iraqi prisoners by US soldiers.

Since torturing others is being shown to endanger US citizens, good citizenship requires that we insist that my government stop it – that they stop engaging in practices that endanger both our own citizens and other human beings.

Secondly, doing what we did on April 9^th was an expression of our high regard for human life and dignity, for moral decency and ethics. Moral decency requires that when one has as strong evidence as we do that a terrible wrong is being committed, especially one that endangers human life, we must make it known.

This kind of moral law is reflected in human institutions and laws, such as ethics guidelines and statutes say that I as a North Carolina Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist have a duty to warn and even to break confidentiality if I learn information about someone being a danger to himself or others. Those ethics guidelines come from a basic sense of moral decency.) And these kinds of things don’t only apply to the ethical requirements of professionals. For example, the laws of the State of North Carolina mandate that citizens report suspected child abuse. I would submit that that same sense of moral decency requires that if I had strong evidence that someone was being kidnapped and tortured, I would have an obligation to report it even if not required by the letter of the law but in order to uphold the intent of the law which reflects our sense of moral decency. And I would have an obligation to report more and more persistently and vehemently and even to go to more extreme means to be heard if authorities did not take my report seriously and did not investigate. Again, I’m not talking about when I simply have a hunch that kidnapping and torture are happening, I’m talking about when I have come to know substantial evidence of kidnapping and torture.

Too often I’ve remained silent or spoken up in too quiet a voice when I observed wrong. I have often felt haunted by statements of the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.. King said:

“He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.”

He also said:

“History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.”

I have often wondered if I had lived in the midst of the early civil rights struggle, would I have been guilty of passivity and silence or would I have protested as loudly as was necessary to be heard? Would I have spoken up for my brothers and sisters of African descent even when it meant risking the violation of unjust and/or lesser laws?

Had I lived in Germany as the Nazis rose to power, would I have cooperated through my silence and passivity with the wrongs that arose in the name of patriotism or would I have opposed wrong with whatever consequences that might have brought me. Would I have spoken up for my persecuted neighbors?

In both these historical examples – the civil rights struggle in the US and the rise of Nazi oppression, many citizens and authorities cooperated by remaining silent. Most appalling to me the Church by and large chose to cooperate sometimes explicitly and sometimes implicitly with the wrongs being committed.

The most basic human morality and ethics, as well as the teachings of my Christian faith, would have demanded in those settings that I speak up and that I endure whatever consequences might have come in those times and places (Nazi Germany and the US in the 1950s and 1960s.) In those times and places, the government – not recognizing protections of exercise of religion or free speech - would have cooperated with the doers of wrong and would have placed consequences on me for doing what morality and decency and my Christian faith required me to do.

I take my Christian religious convictions very seriously. I also live in a country where I am constitutionally protected in my practice of my faith, which practice includes acting when I see moral wrongs and also when the Christian faith is misrepresented. We live in a time when for several years the most powerful and visible official of the United States government – President Bush - has been held up as a model for the Christian leader and a model for moral values. President Bush has openly claimed his devotion to Christ and he has claimed God’s approval for his administration, even for his warmaking authority and his methods. Evidence has mounted that his methods include not only the ‘normal’ atrocities of war, but also torturing people. Evidence also continues to mount that our government’s torturing people is being carried out with the active cooperation of pilots under the auspices of Aero Contractors and based in the Johnston County Airport, a facility for which local and state citizens are responsible.

President Bush has grossly misrepresented Christian faith – a faith whose founder is called the Prince of Peace. Jesus taught that love of neighbor is tantamount to love of God, and expected his followers to put into practice love of those we most despise and even of our enemies. Within the practice of my Christian faith, I have a responsibility to respond with actions and words to correct these gross misrepresentations put forth by President Bush and his allies. I am required by my faith to do so even if I must break human law to do it.

What’s interesting is that in this country, I’m supposed to enjoy protections of my religious practice and expression! So I’m wondering whether today this court will say that I committed a criminal act in entering an open gate to go onto someone else’s property to help stop human beings from being kidnapped and tortured. Or maybe the court will see that I was exercising Christian faith and doing so in a way that caused no harm or impediment to anyone, did no damage and infringed on no one else’s freedoms.

While I had contemplated this decision for some time, I made my final decision to participate in the action one day prior – on Easter Sunday. That means that the previous week most Christians, including me, sat in Churches and read about and mourned and remembered the torture of Jesus Christ through whippings, beatings and ultimately being hung in what modern military lingo might call a “stress position” on a cross. In Matthew 25 we find Jesus saying, “Whatever you did to the least of my brothers and sisters, you did to me.”

As I prayed on Easter Sunday, April 8^th, still trying to make a final decision as to whether I would participate in the April 9^th action – an attempt to deliver notices to gain the cooperation of Aero Contractors with an investigation of torture being facilitated by its personnel - I came to the conclusion that I had to act. I had to act. To have stayed home would have been condoning the torture of people, and in a spiritual and mystical sense it would have been condoning the torture of Jesus, who said, “Whenever you did it to the least of my brothers and sisters, you did it to me.” Knowing what I know about torture, knowing what I know about Aero Contractors and Johnston County airport and knowing what I know about my Christian faith, I felt convicted that simple, straightforward practice of my Christian faith essentially required me to try to call attention to what’s happening out there and get it investigated and stopped.

There’s another Martin Luther King, Jr. quote that haunts me. King said:

“The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state. It must be the guide and the critic of the state and never its tool. If the church does not recapture its prophetic zeal, it will become an irrelevant social club without moral or spiritual authority.”

My understanding of Christian faith and of what following Christ is all about leads me to agree with Dr. King. I am asking the court to agree that free exercise of religion in this particular case is protected and warranted in the way that we did it and that we were also acting in accordance with good citizenship and moral decency.

In closing, I must mention that Scripture readings for the Sundays following April 9^th included passages from the Book of Acts about the Apostle Peter and others being thrown into jail and brought before the authorities for exercising their faith and telling truths that people did not want to hear. In one instance Peter and John said to the authorities, “Whether it is right in God’s sight to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge; for we cannot keep from speaking about what we have seen and heard.” The next time they were arrested and brought before the authorities, the apostles explained, “We must obey God rather than any human authority.”

I ask this court to agree with us that in attempting to gain the cooperation of Aero Contractors and Johnston County authorities in an investigation of the evidence that Aero is participating in torture, that we were obeying the highest demands of both God and human authority.