[indistinct chattering]
Mr. Schlesinger has an announcement.
We will hand out copies momentarily
so you won't have to write down what he said.
He'll take questions afterwards.
The Atomic Energy Commission is now planning to proceed
with the Cannikin test.
We have now received the requisite authority
to go ahead, including detonation.
♪
On the windswept island of Amchitka,
final preparations for the test go on.
Filling the 6,000-foot deep hole with sand.
The five megaton nuclear bomb rests at the bottom.
Since childhood, when I started making
science fiction comics in my school scribblers,
I loved to draw.
♪
But by the time I got a place at art school,
Uncle Sam and Comrade Ivan were pointing
56,000 nuclear warheads at each other
and boys my age were coming back
in body bags from Vietnam.
♪
The American dream was turning into
a planetary nightmare.
AEC scientists say they are not worried.
The blast will set off a large earthquake
or a tidal wave.
♪
Drawing comics didn't seem to be enough.
So I burned my college acceptance letter
on the steps of my high school,
and set off to change the world.
♪
Young people demonstrated their opposition
to the nuclear blast by closing
the main highway crossings at the U.S./Canadian border
between Seattle and Vancouver.
No more Amchitkas!
I don't think this particular demonstration
can necessarily stop it, but, it reflects
a level of awareness that wasn't here,
say, five years ago.
[typewriter clicking]
By the fall of 1971,
I am a columnist for The Vancouver Sun
and had volunteered to chronicle a voyage
into a bomb.
♪
The protest ship, the Greenpeace,
is heading for Amchitka, hoping to anchor offshore
and stop the test.
The boat is one more factor for Richard Nixon
to have to consider,
the possibility of some international incident
involving Canadians.
Until that fateful journey, nothing has seemed
so absolutely essential to write about.
♪
But heading into the bomb,
there is only this antique wooden tub
between us and the icy seas.
♪
Suddenly, I am very frightened.
Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four,
three, two, one.
[rumbling]
[typewriter clicking]
[sounds of the street]
Ninety percent of history is being in the right place
at the right time.
In Vancouver in 1971, we have the biggest concentration
of tree-huggers, draft dodgers,
shit-disturbing unionists, radical students,
garbage dump stoppers, freeway fighters,
pot smokers, vegetarians, nudists, Buddhists,
fish preservationists, and back-to-the-landers
on the planet.
♪
And we are all haunted by the specter
of a dead world.
♪
These are the people who will shape
the next ten years of my life.
♪ Well, now deep in my heart
♪ Baby, I know that you care
♪ Deep in my heart, babe, the feelin' is there ♪
♪ 'Cause I got somethin' money can't buy ♪
♪ I got somethin' that you oughta try ♪
♪ I got love, love, I said, love, sweet love ♪
♪ I got love, baby
♪
The idea was simple, send a boat to bear witness
in the Quaker tradition
of going to the scene of the crime.
Patrick Moore has just finished
his PhD in Ecology.
He's a bit psychedelic-looking
for a scientist.
But when he speaks, it sounds like he knows
what he's talking about.
Well, the committee's position is that it's opposed
to all testing of all nuclear weapons
anywhere in the world by any country.
♪ Now deep in my heart, baby, I know that you care ♪
Paul Watson is a 19 year old sailor,
who gets bored easily.
Take a picture of you guys taking a picture.
He has North Vietnamese flags stitched to his Army jacket,
wears Red Power buttons, Black Power buttons,
and just about any kind of anti-establishment button
that can be imagined.
No, that's Bob's interpretation of it.
I don't recall wearing all these patches.
The thing is is that everybody has their own view
of what went down and I was considered
probably a little more radical than the others.
♪ Yeah
♪ Well, I can tell by your smile
what you wanna do ♪
Change happens where things are mixed up,
and things were mixed up in Vancouver.
There was this ex-patriot American community,
there was a Buddhist community,
there were fishermen,
and there was this talk about ecology.
Rex Weyler is the Texan photographer
who fled the Vietnam draft and has been chased
by the FBI up to Vancouver.
Bob Hunter was writing in The Vancouver Sun.
He was talking about ecology and peace and social change
and the consciousness revolution.
And it really was the best journalism in Vancouver.
But he was more than just being a writer.
Bob saw himself as helping to bring about
a cultural revolution.
It's just such madness that it's almost
a logical area to attack because two different kinds
of madness have come together there.
There's the Cold War madness
and there's the "Let's pollute,
it doesn't matter, the main thing
is to make a buck."
Conservationists are making a last ditch attempt
to stop the Amchitka nuclear test.
Donations have been received and are continuing
to come in from all over British Columbia,
and from many parts of the northwestern United States.
Bob just realized that if you wanna do a protest,
you have to make a story that's going to travel well,
an event that would impact millions of people
in every corner of the world.
♪
The plan is a good one.
Ours is a Canadian vessel so the Americans
cannot seize it in international waters
without committing an act of piracy.
I think we oughta really mind fuck each other
on this trip.
[laughing]
[chatter]
The fathers of this adventure are Jim Bohlen, Irving Stowe,
and Ben Metcalfe,
veterans of the peace movement
who've recruited a younger generation of eco freaks,
myself included.
♪
The youngest of us all, Bill Darnell,
has accidentally given the boat its new name.
At the end of the meetings, Irving would always say,
"Peace," and flash the peace sign,
and I said, "We should make that a green peace."
♪
By putting those two things together,
Bill symbolized the union of the peace movement
with the environmental movement,
and that was a new idea.
That is, in a way, what gave Greenpeace
its power from the start.
It has been no easy task to find someone willing
to sail out to the Bering Sea as winter approaches
and park their vessel
uninsured next to a nuclear explosion.
But chance has led us to John Cormack.
Well, yeah, okay, we'll get into action,
'cause I know this guy's ready to go--
Should I take my hat off, and my glasses off,
and smile for ya?
John did it for money.
And he had that sense of adventure.
Yeah, we're going to check into that.
He had the nickname "Hard Luck Cormack,"
and his boat was in some disrepair.
I just looked at it and said, "Bob, we are all gonna die."
[water crashing]
[wind howling]
It is really rolling.
Some of the boys, they feel pretty sick.
Apart from Captain Cormack, between us we have almost
no practical experience with the sea.
Gravity drags our stomachs into pulpy collision
with our lungs.
The cold grey boil of the waves
wagging over our heads.
This trip is going to be at least 100 times as heavy
as I thought.
[waves crashing]
This little 99-ton halibut boat
has stayed on her keel so far,
but the fall and winter storms
up here are fantastic.
Winds of 120 miles an hour are not unusual.
Last night, the whole--
We realized that we can send a 20-second voice clip
from the ship over the telephone system
and it'll appear on the radio in Australia, New Zealand,
and other places.
That verified that this was a real global story.
Back on land, Rod Marining, the self-styled non-leader
of the Northern Lunatic Fringe of Yippie,
stokes the fires of public opinion.
Hey, you know what it's all about?
It's putting on a good show.
People in Alaska, down the Pacific coast,
Canada and Japan have protested.
The people fear earthquakes, damage to wildlife--
The theory of electronic communication
was just being developed at that time.
You know, the fax hadn't been invented yet.
Bob coined the term "mind bomb"
for what today we would call "going viral,"
where an idea gets into the electronic media
and just spreads like ripples on the water instantly.
♪
Image is everything.
The boat is an icon.
A mind bomb sailing across an electronic sea
into the front rooms of the masses.
Blast Nixon, not Amchitka.
10,000 students showed up in downtown Vancouver
in front of the American Consulate.
You know, for us on the boat, that was really a huge lift.
That gave us a real sense of accomplishment.
Power to the people!
The Nixon administration said today
that the five megaton nuclear explosion
planned for Amchitka Island in the Aleutians
will not be set off before October 27th.
It wouldn't say just when it will take place
and the President is still making up his mind on that.
[waves crashing]
Like a seesaw, the battle swings back and forth.
But it is possible that the test has been delayed
just to shake us off.
[splashing]
We knew we shouldn't just take off and go to Amchitka,
and be there a month early in what could be
terrible hurricane weather.
So, John decided that we would go into Akutan Harbor.
[indistinct chattering]
Reaching Akutan is a relief.
An Alaskan fishing village with a small Aleut community,
and an abandoned whaling station.
John told us we weren't supposed to go ashore,
but, we went ashore.
[water lapping]
[whale vocalizing]
In the remains of the whaling station
huge bones thrust out of the moss like thickets.
[whale moaning]
We are intent on trying to prevent
a nuclear holocaust,
but for this other race of giant creatures,
the holocaust has already come.
♪
As though we've been given a glimpse of our own future.
[birds chirping]
We walk up into the hills where it's kind of rocky
and other-worldly.
I think a few people were a bit
on the psychedelic side.
♪
We all sort of lay face down in this moss
and immersed ourself in nature.
And we started to talk.
As Dr. Patrick gives us
the ultimate lecture in ecology,
in a leaping flash we all connect with the idea
that all life is interwoven.
The whales, the moss...us.
We are all one.
A flower is your brother.
♪
You know, we just sort of felt our power.
Whether we were doing this as a team of men, warriors.
♪
There on Akutan Island, we bonded in a way
that I'd never really experienced before.
♪
The next day though, there in the distance
was a U.S. Coast Guard ship steamin' straight for us.
♪
The U.S. Navy was monitoring our voyage.
♪
This commander gets out and says,
"Where's your captain?" and he goes up
and talks to John Cormack.
District Director of Customs asked Coast Guard
to notify Master Phyllis Cormack
that he has incurred penalty with the U.S. Customs
for failure to report on the Tariff Act of 1930.
We're all subject to fines because we hadn't
cleared Customs.
We entered the U.S. illegally.
As the captain was up reading the Riot Act to John,
the three crewmembers in the boat handed up to us
this crumpled up piece of paper.
Listen, you guys.
From the crew.
Due to the situation we are in,
we, the crew of the Confidence, feel that what you are doing
is for the good of all mankind.
If our hands weren't tied by these military bonds,
we would be in the same position you are in
if it were at all possible.
Good luck, we are behind you 100 percent.
Hey, that's really great!
[laughing]
We only just started out, we heard about it, man.
It's far out, I dig it, man.
[laughing]
It just completely blew our minds.
Wow.
Signed by 16 members of the crew.
I think everybody except the captain.
If vessel does not make formal entry to Custom
before he departs Akutan, then he will be in violation--
Up in the wheelhouse, the commander told us
that we had to go back to U.S. Customs,
which wasn't any further out the Aleutian chain
towards Amchitka,
it was the opposite direction.
And they had us.
The Coast Guard says it has disciplined an officer
and 17 enlisted men for supporting a protest
against the planned nuclear test
on Amchitka Island in the Aleutians.
The men were all on the Cutter Confidence
when its skipper boarded the Canadian yacht,
the Greenpeace, which was sailing
in the Aleutians to protest the big test.
We retreat to clear Customs at Sand Point.
The battle isn't lost but Amchitka is now
a thousand miles away and slipping out of reach.
And in the Bering Sea, ice packs are congealing
and winter is on the wind.
No, I wouldn't sail across the Gulf of Georgia
in that boat, you guys are crazy.
Don't let 'em bullshit you, you know.
We could've gone back out into international waters
and headed straight for Amchitka.
We're liable to die if we do that.
Even huge steel boats get broken in half up there
in the winter in the Bering Sea.
I'm just trying to clarify it.
And Metcalfe was arguing we'd accomplished our purpose,
we'd got it into the mainstream media,
Trudeau was calling Nixon.
But Bob really wanted to go on.
And I was in that same camp.
Here's another case in point that's coming up right now.
I am sick and goddamn well-tired of this fight
that's going on between you and you.
I think Bob would've gone off the boat,
got on the island, run directly for ground zero,
and gone down the hole to where the bomb was
if he could've.
He wasn't afraid at all, of anything, Bob,
he was fearless.
This has gone on just too far,
there's too many snide remarks
and backhand statements in the whole business
and I just don't like it one goddamn bit.
Bob lived his ideas.
If we're gonna change the world,
are we gonna risk something?
If it's at all possible, let's do it.
After seven days of arguing and not being able to
come to any kind of a consensus,
Bob just pinned this piece of paper on his undershirt
one day that just said "Fuck off," you know like,
don't talk to me, you know, I've had it, I'm done.
We all were and I think that's kind of when
Jim Bohlen stepped in and said,
"Look, we're going back."
♪
Bob felt abject failure.
He was angry, he was sad, he was beside himself
that we weren't continuing.
It broke his heart.
♪
It's sickening for me to realize that a revolution
can go no faster or further than people themselves
who are supposedly saving the world
through our moral example.
But in reality, we spent most of our time
at each other's throats.
Egos clashing, turning resistance into psychodrama.
♪
When we were almost back to Vancouver,
they announced November the 4th
was the day for the bomb.
♪
This afternoon on hearing that the Atomic Energy Commission
will proceed with the Amchitka test
crewmembers said that, "President Nixon has clearly
circumvented all legal procedure
in sanctioning the blast."
♪
On Amchitka, the last workers are hustled away
from the test site into a concrete bunker
twenty miles away.
And the Chair of the Atomic Energy Commission
plans a family picnic.
I will be on the island during the test.
I did bring along two of the girls and my wife.
And I think that that should indicate the high degree
of confidence that we have in the safety of that test.
♪
As a neighbor to a person who was doing something
potentially dangerous, I might call the cops.
Uh, yes, well there are no cops to call.
♪
Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four,
three, two, one, zero.
[indistinct transmission]
[rumbling]
[intense rumbling]
[crumbling]
[wind howling]
[beeping]
And that was it, seven minutes and three seconds
after Cannikin was detonated on Amchitka,
the first readout in Vancouver.
The seismic readings translated into an earthquake
registering 7.0 on the Richter scale.
We all came home feeling like we'd failed.
[clapping]
But, we sort of were treated like heroes
which was a little bit disconcerting, like,
"No, no, we didn't actually do it,
you got the wrong guys," you know.
[clapping]
Many of the Coast Guard people we talked to,
apart from the officers, were completely on our side.
-Were they? -Oh yeah...
As it turns out, my post-trip despair
is utterly mistaken.
Political pressure generated by our voyage succeeds
beyond anybody's wildest dreams.
Five months later, the nuclear testing program
at Amchitka was quietly cancelled.
In the next year and a half,
they'll clean up most of this debris.
After that, Amchitka will become
what it once was, a wildlife refuge.
And deep down beneath it,
a cavern full of trapped radiation
that will endure for perhaps 20,000 years.
♪
There was definitely an unfinished feeling
after Amchitka.
It was gnawing away at the back of our minds
that humanity could do tremendous harm to this world
even without war.
The name on the sail of our little boat
has earned some media capital.
And I suggest we reinvent ourself
as The Greenpeace Foundation.
Bob felt that there needed to be an ecology movement
on the same scale as the civil rights movement,
the women's movement, the peace movement.
How do you take hold of the global mind,
as it were?
Because the globe in the '70s,
was not thinking globally at all.
It was the question of where do you start
with such a huge number of problems?
Where do you start?
It only slowly dawned on Hunter that he probably
should be giving direction here.
He was struggling with the question
of whether he was still a journalist
writing about this movement
or whether he was an activist leading this movement.
♪
And then, of course, Paul Spong came along.
Paul Spong is a young psychologist who landed a job
studying a whale named Skana at the Vancouver Aquarium.
He's just been fired for stating publicly
that the whale wants to be free,
which has made him a bit of a legend among eco freaks.
Are you sure about that?
This is a kind of a surprise to the people
of Vancouver and district.
We didn't know that we were going to get a whale
and all of a sudden we have one.
I devised an experiment to try to understand
what her vision was like.
[whale squealing]
Once she got it,
she was very, very consistent.
She would perform at 90 percent or above
day after day after day.
And then on one day, from one trial to the next,
she reversed her behavior.
♪
She kept on doing it, but she always got
the answer wrong.
Kind of ruined my experiment.
Paul knew the whale was playing with him.
But now he was the subject,
and the whale was doing its research on him.
It was really the first time that I started to think about,
"Who is this whale?"
[dinging]
Dr. Spong, you are, at the moment,
protesting the captivity of Skana the whale
in its present environment.
It's a very dull environment.
It's plain concrete walls, nothing from the ocean in it.
Not a seashell in it.
Not a seashell.
During the last 50 years, it has been estimated
that two million whales had been slaughtered.
[gunshot]
An 80-foot whale weighing 100 tons
can be converted into easily replaceable ingredients
for industrial lubricants, margarine, cat food,
and cosmetics.
Paul learned about what was going on
in the whale world outside.
He wanted to do something about it
so he came to us.
♪
I was actually aware of Bob, listening to the stories
about the Amchitka voyage.
This method of direct, non-violent confrontation
was a method that actually could succeed
at making change.
I invited Bob to come down and visit Skana.
At one point, she opened her jaws wide
with a clear invitation to him
to put his head inside.
And he did that.
♪
She takes my whole head in her jaws and holds me
like a crystal goblet in a vice.
♪
I can feel her teeth making the slightest indentation
at the back of my neck.
Terror explodes in my chest.
She could snap my head like an eggshell,
but chooses not to.
♪
[gunshot]
Suddenly, I get it.
She's shown me exactly where my courage ends
and my fear begins.
[bubbling]
Then, as though satisfied, she lets go...
and sinks away.
I think everything that he was struggling with
coalesced and he realized at that moment
what he had to do.
♪
This is my farewell column.
I have quit The Vancouver Sun.
Not in anger. Not under pressure.
Not for any good reason
except that, to me, it seems clear
that the time has come to commit myself fully
to what has loosely been called
the environmental movement.
I've cut my hair, trimmed my beard,
and somewhere along the line, I lost my headband.
There used to be 4.5 million whales on this planet.
What we've done is we've removed 90 percent
of the whales already.
Like there are already about five species
they're not allowed to hunt any longer
because they have reached a point called
"commercial extinction."
If there is intelligent life on this planet,
it ain't necessarily us.
I remember being at a meeting and supporting the efforts
to stop the French testing in the atmosphere.
Everybody's very earnest and intense.
And then Hunter said,
"Well, here's what we're gonna do.
We're gonna save the whales."
I thought he was just nuts.
Saving whales?
Whales?
I was not in favor.
What has that got to do with anything?
It horrified the rest of the group.
I didn't see it.
I didn't think I wanted to go
in that direction with it.
That's kind of a regret for me.
I think it's one of the things about Bob Hunter
was he was spontaneous enough to recognize
the power and the integrity of a new idea and go with it.
[indistinct chattering]
Bob always recognized that you can change the world
through a camera much easier than with a gun,
and much more effectively.
The concept was complete from the outset.
We have to get between the whales and the harpooner.
That's the image we have to get.
It was completely premeditated.
Well, I thought it was a great idea
and we could probably intercept them using Zodiacs,
which I was familiar with
because I was in the Coast Guard.
And everybody else worried about the risk,
but, I figure, you know,
that was the whole point of it.
Harpooning a whale is not really a story,
but people risking their lives to protect
the lives of a whale, that's a story.
♪
The announcement that Greenpeace intends to rescue
the last of the great whales
has released a frightening energy.
Some kind of psychic tom-tom is at work in the jungles
of the collective unconscious.
And it's brought people in droves.
You wanna grab hold of the line
and take it up the mast, you guys?
Sure, yeah, where is it?
My newfound love, Bobbi, becomes the driving energy
that fuses the parts of this kaleidoscope together.
It was a magic time.
We needed money and then money would happen.
We needed people, the right person
would come along.
I took over the treasury.
And the treasury at that time consisted of a little,
tiny lockbox with about $50 in it
and a couple of receipts, and--
and we moved from there.
♪
We have a fine, if unconventional,
blend of human talents.
For every mystic, we have at least one mechanic.
It wasn't really a lot of people,
but, boy, did we do a lot of things.
♪
Day and night, we would be making lists
of hundreds of things that we had to do.
♪
We really had fun with each other.
We laughed and joked and pushed and--
to the point that we had a whole other language
going on amongst ourselves.
♪ I'm so tired of crying but I'm out
on the road again ♪
♪ I'm on the road again
Why don't I let you just talk to Walrus, here he is.
Just hold down on that button.
Walrus is an archaeology graduate
who looks like a frontier cowboy.
Hi Walrus--I mean, hello, Rut.
Paul Watson called me and said,
"Hey, Walrus, come on out here.
We're trying to set this whale thing up."
I thought, "Well, you need a cook,
I'll just take that on."
No one ever has found out why he's changed his name
from David Garrick to Walrus Oakenbough.
As I was exploring the topic of magic mushrooms
and different psychedelic plants,
I didn't want to use my real name.
Just for logistical purposes.
♪ And my dear mother left me--
When we hoped for a film crew,
cameraman Ron Precious arrived with 20,000 feet
of Kodachrome.
♪ And my dear mother--
The crew welcomed me as the cameraman
and Fred Easton was my sound man
as well as the second camera.
We were all there for the same reason,
to get powerful, iconic images that would,
you know, resonate with everyone.
♪
And when we wanted another Zodiac inflatable,
Carlie Trueman turned up with one of her own.
Twenty-three years old
and an experienced scuba diver.
Definitely more a mechanic than a mystic.
Absolutely true.
Okay, here we go.
I mean, this was a motley group of people
if there ever was one.
And I looked at them all and I thought,
"What the hell am I getting involved with?"
[indistinct conversations]
-Maybe turn a little bit. -Turn a little bit.
Like the fashion--
A mad costume designer has wrought a uniform for me
out of green and navy blue corduroy,
with huge pirate style cuffs
featuring enough officer stripes
to rank me as the commander of some psychedelic NATO.
Hang on a sec, hang on a sec.
[indistinct chattering]
[chuckling]
But the idea of leading anything troubles me.
I've always hated leaders.
My father deserted my mother when I was still young
and it's close to nauseating to realize
I'd become group father myself.
He wasn't an organizational man,
but Bob embodied what I think of
as real true leadership.
He was visionary, he could look into the future
and imagine things that didn't yet exist,
and he could inspire
and empower people to contribute.
Groovy, man.
This was a glorious revolution,
this just wasn't about us going out and saving whales.
We were talking about a new way of being
in the world.
♪
One of the languages we're learning
to speak here is whale.
That's whale language.
Creatures of light, monsters of the deep.
Aquatic acrobats.
The biggest brains on the planet.
Is there any way we can bridge this species gap
and actually communicate with the whale?
♪
We believe that music was the way
to communicate with them.
[saxophone wailing]
I was at work one day in San Francisco,
having lunch, reading about Watergate.
My co-worker turned on the radio,
and it was a talk show
but the voices were not human,
they were whales.
So I fired off a letter.
All of a sudden I got this letter from Bob Hunter.
"Your letter arrived just in time, it's a miracle.
We needed a synthesizer player and there you were."
Now everybody's got a synthesizer these days
but in those days, in 1975,
I've never seen anything like this.
And Will could make these unworldly sounds.
[synthesizer trilling]
♪
John aggressively wanted to get rid of me
as soon as he could.
I'd never been on a boat, I wasn't a sailor,
I didn't know how to do lines or anything.
You know, boat lines.
Is there anybody there who's into hitting
that Greenpeace flag?
We groped towards mastery of the skills that we need
for the voyage.
Yeah, we should have flags on it, this is theatre.
Pardon me, this is reality.
[motor running]
Learning to handle the Zodiacs,
we were transformed from flower children
into a sea-going gang of ecological bikers.
♪
We have psyched ourselves into a sense of simmering,
sparkling power.
The plan is to put these in the water
and run along with the chaser boat
when it's actually hunting a whale,
so they can't get a shot at it.
Expecting any violence on the part of the whalers?
Um...we've been wondering about that all winter.
[whistling and cheering]
♪
On April 27th, the 80-foot ocean-going trawler,
Phyllis Cormack, set sail from Vancouver, British Columbia,
on a two-fold mission.
Number one, search out
and document Russian whaling operations
in the North Pacific...
By the time we got on the boat,
we were stunned ourselves.
♪
There were thousands of people there, thousands.
♪
That great feeling when everything
has finally come to fruition
and the show is on.
♪
But then here we are, taking off
into the middle of the Pacific Ocean,
and we have no idea how to find the whalers.
We have no idea how long it's gonna take us,
or where we're actually even going.
So, then there was that.
One, two, three, four, 2,000...
That makes it about 2,500 miles to the Hawaiian islands
from here.
Does that sound about right?
Anybody know how far Hawaii is?
We had some vague idea as to about where
the whaling fleet was, but we didn't know.
We did know that there was a lot of information
about where whales were killed
in the Bureau of International Whaling Statistics,
in Norway, in a town called Sandefjord.
♪
Paul managed to talk his way in there as a scientist.
He wasa scientist, but he didn't mention
the part about Greenpeace.
I told the director I wanted to find out
where we might do research with sperm whales.
♪
I spent several hours there looking through stacks
of log books, piled row after row after row.
And in the end, he got his secretary to help.
Paul's espionage gave us the positions
of the Soviet factory whaling fleets
going back 10 or 15 years,
and there they were every year
at the same place off California.
It's this area here,
which had the most whales in it.
So, June, July, and August.
The timing of the Russian hunt
happens to coincide with the annual meeting
of the International Whaling Commission,
which determines how many whales can be killed worldwide.
It has as many whales in that one little area taken
as there is in a combination of the whole works
around the island.
If we confront the whalers in that five-day window
at the end of June,
our mind bomb will have the maximum effect.
So, we just should be out somewhere around in there
as much as possible in June.
The problem was, is that it was early April
and we had all of May and half of June
to keep the story alive.
It's not a normal kind of battle,
it's a new kind of battle.
You know, by going out there
and concentrating people's attention
through the media and communications system,
in a way, what you do is you bring
everybody onto the boat.
You know, and at a rough calculation,
I'd say there's probably about 14 million people
on this boat at the moment.
Bob looked at our little world
as kind of making a movie.
We were creating the story line.
He had an arc; he knew where it needed to go.
♪
We were like characters.
What do we need to do
and who can best fill the role?
♪
Great movie, yeah.
♪
There was the front, the screen of the movie,
what you saw, and then there was the back,
what was behind it all.
The hidden reality of what was actually going on.
♪
You're not taking anything now, are you?
No.
Don't waste your film.
I wouldn't say Bob was directing us,
but he was certainly aware of what things were cinematic
or film-worthy.
♪
Truth: 24 frames per second.
He liked to exaggerate the extreme to make us appear
as the unwitting fools, so that the people
with real power would not take us seriously.
♪
We were like the Trojan Horse.
Really, it was all a design
to achieve the ending he was after.
But heroes often fail.
May had come and gone, it's now June.
We headed to the Mendocino Ridge
to look for them.
There's just a big, gray ocean around here
and some gray clouds, and a lot of birds.
But we haven't seen any whales yet.
♪
The days were ticking off, but the Mendocino Ridge
is a long stretch of ocean.
Well, what do you think?
I think we chased them off the whaling grounds.
Well, I'd like to know what we've done.
I don't know.
Have we got a positive identification on it?
No.
Except that we know that they're in this area,
so... I don't know,
why don't we go back to where we were last night?
Yeah.
And try again.
♪
Hello, can you hear me?
Over.
Not getting through to you, Bob.
Just talk to us, over.
♪
Negative.
Why doesn't he just tell me the goddamn...
The ship was floundering at sea, we had no money.
Some of the rice was full of diesel,
and people were hungry onboard the boat.
I don't understand, Rod.
It was like finding a needle in a haystack.
♪
-George? -Yeah.
There's some Russians caught talking here.
Can you eavesdrop?
The radio crackles with ghostly Russian voices
which seem to come from everywhere at once.
[speaking Russian]
Our Czechoslovakian engineer, George Korotva,
tries to get a fix on their position.
Well, they must be way down there at least 150-200 miles.
[speaking Russian]
We sat on the radio for hours and hours
and hours.
And so, you got an idea,
they are there somewhere.
Cormack said to Hunter, "We have two days of fuel left."
The question was, were we gonna run
for San Francisco without an encounter
with the whalers, or were we gonna stay out
and try and find them?
And, of course, that has huge consequences
for Cormack.
If he has to have a tow-- I mean,
this is big bucks that we're talking for John.
Hunter, Pat Moore, and David Garrick come by,
and they have got The I Ching,
and they have got the coins,
the three coins.
♪
I have no idea what the The I Chingis,
I've never heard of this book,
I've never seen it.
But, of course, it's a book of divination, right?
The Chinese word, which means "approach,"
has a range of meanings.
I thought, I have joined a ship of fools.
The ancient explanations in the book of changes give,
as its first meaning, "becoming great."
♪
Hunter throws one that says "success,"
it furthers one to cross the great waters.
There are four hexagrams out of the 64 that have that,
and it just means "good fortune,"
supreme good fortune.
He's thrilled.
He thinks that we should go and keep chasing whales,
right?
Pat Moore threw it and he gets a second one
of the four hexagrams.
David throws it and he gets a third one.
I'm saying, "What the hell are you guys doing?
What, you're gonna consult
some kind of oracle for this decision?"
And they said, "You throw them."
And I went, "Oh yeah, right.
You guys, this is BS."
And I threw them and I got the fourth one.
And we went out, and the next day,
we found the Russians.
Woohoo!
Vostok is just over five miles ahead of us.
Yeah.
Rex, count those boats again, will ya?
-What? -Count those boats--
-There's nine. -There's nine boats.
One, two, three, four, five, over there.
There's one by the Vostok,
and there's three over here.
There's nine chasers altogether.
Yeah, well, Bob, what's the plan?
The problem is, a boat that size
can do about 20 knots.
We can only do 10, so they're starting to pull away.
So, we'll put the Zodiacs out
and run over and have a damn good look at it.
See whether they're our boys or not.
If they are, we'll try to hang in with them
as long as we can.
I think we better hurry-- they're way up
on the horizon now.
Yeah.
Okay, say he does 15, the Zodiac does 20.
I need five miles ahead already
and the crew aren't out on deck
in their Zodiacs...
They're on their way now.
Two miles.
John has just spotted two flags in the water.
♪
They're dead ahead of us, I can see it, too.
It's a sperm!
It's definitely a sperm.
Let's get closer to it.
Yeah, here is-- it's definitely a dead whale.
Just bleeding all over the place.
That sure doesn't look the right size.
They're too small, Bob.
They're babies.
That's a goddamn baby whale, for Christ's sake.
It's only about-- how long is that?
Is that its tale there for sure?
Twenty feet, at the most.
Twenty feet at the most.
I think we should even measure that one, Bob.
We thought they were out there killing adult whales.
We find out they're basically wiping out the whole pod,
kids and all.
George, this is a film thing,
so let's get a Zodiac and circle around this whale
and get some shots.
Yeah, he's getting a reading now.
I think we hadn't quite thought through
the mechanistic side of whaling.
The fact you could blow the carcass
and stick a radial directional finder onto it
and just leave it and come back later.
And it was just heart-wrenching.
It brings tears right now, that little whale.
Okay, that's good, get in there
before some sharks chew on it or something.
Watch for sharks!
I was very much appalled by what I saw.
Here we are, out here,
they're killing these beautifully intelligent,
socially-complex sentient beings,
and for what?
♪
I actually got on to the whale
to measure it.
And found it was illegally taken--
it was an undersized whale.
What do you say, Paul?
How long do you think it is?
What?
How long?
About 18 feet.
That was certainly a turning point in my life.
Just how warm the body was,
how hot the blood was that was coming out
of the wound.
The whale's eye was open and it just struck me
in a flash that we're insane,
ecologically insane.
♪
From that moment on, I never looked upon myself
anymore as working for people but more working for whales
and other creatures that live in the oceans.
♪
June 27th, one mile from the Vostok.
Closing in.
The Russian boats are all in motion,
I think with the Vostok at the center.
And everybody is in their wetsuits.
We've worked out who's going to be in what Zodiacs.
♪
We're just heading alongside it now
and we're going to circle around behind
on the other side.
That chaser boat is tucking in
right behind it.
♪
Blood pouring out.
♪
Hell of a mess.
Just a hell of a mess.
♪
There's a whole crowd on the stern of the Vostok.
Fucking pigs!
Hey, listen now, no-- let's not get into
overt aggression with them yet.
Look at that fucking thing move.
The guys up on top are all in uniforms
with Russian hats.
What do you call those hats, George?
Papakha.
Papakha?
Papakha.
The Dalniy Vostok is literally a slaughterhouse on water.
It was highly mechanized killing.
This was a factory.
And that was when it got very, very, very real.
Okay, Zodiac launching crew.
Zodiac launching crew!
♪
Come on, quick, quick, quick.
And there they go folks, they're off.
They're off.
♪
The idea had been that Fred Easton would film
with his Bolex 16 mm and I would take photographs
from a distance from the side,
so we could get the whaling ship
and the protestors in the shot.
I climbed to the crosstrees,
and I sit with a pair of binoculars
on the spreader bars, and I keep track
of where all the boats are.
When Hunter got on the Zodiac, I saw his cassette player
sitting there on the hatch cover,
I just grabbed the thing and I went up the mast
and I started recording the confrontation.
There's a large herd of sperm whales
off our starboard bow.
We're all going that way.
♪
The other two backup Zodiacs have been on the bow
of the chaser boat, and it's been unable
to fire on any sperms, even though there's plenty
of them around here.
Sperm whales are blowing hard and fast,
seems they're tired and they can't dive
very much at all.
Every time the whale moved, we tried to steer the boat
in order to block it.
And that worked for about 20 minutes or so.
The harpoon man appears very frustrated
through the binoculars.
He doesn't even seem to be at his post.
The skipper of the kill boat comes down the walkway
to the gun deck.
These two men argue.
He puts up his hands like this and bends to his gun,
and we know that he's gonna shoot.
George Korotva and Bob Hunter
are in the Zodiac in front of the chase boat bow,
by only a distance of about 50 feet,
and the film crew Zodiacs are on each side.
Fred Easton had a problem with his camera--
all the bouncing and jostling in the Zodiac
had frayed the battery connection--
intermittent, going on and off, on and off.
Here's the big moment and I didn't even know
if this camera was going to function.
It was going zigzag, zigzag.
Occasionally, [unintelligible].
And the sea, he was following back and forth.
♪
The harpooner then looked at us
and then the captain looked at us
and he smiled.
Then went like this across his throat.
And I always joked that, you know,
the reason we were in that position
is because we had read a lot of Gandhi at the time.
And it suddenly occurred to us that Gandhi wasn't going
to work for us anymore.
♪
They just shot the harpoon.
I don't know if they hit.
I don't see any blood.
They're coming around to port slowly.
They've cut their engines.
Sound of that harpoon was frightening.
It was like a giant cannon.
He had a clear shot right over the Zodiac
to the whale, and it went over
Hunter's head maybe 15 feet.
Well, I turned around and then I saw...
The cable snapped.
I peeled off and get the hell
out of there.
George is calling in the other Zodiacs.
There's steam rising from the blood.
There's still blow-- the whale's not dead yet.
It's still blowing, but it's not going anywhere.
They'll shoot a female whale
and then when the bull whale comes to help the female,
they'll shoot the bull whale.
Hunter's yelling at all the Zodiacs
to come in immediately.
There's a bull over there that's mad as hell,
freaking out.
Go, help, go get the rope!
There's the other one, over there.
♪
Did you get that, Rod?
Thoroughly shaken, we haul ourselves
back on deck on a wave of revulsion,
rage, and exultation.
We count eight surviving whales in the pod,
fleeing steadily to the horizon.
A few hours later, the last Russian vessel
disappears from our radar,
heading in the opposite direction.
You got it on tape?
No, unfortunately, I didn't bring
my tape recorder.
You're stupid-- how dumb can ya be?
We're back onboard, going over what had just happened,
Hunter was asking, "Did you get it?
Did you get the shot?"
We have that big moment when the harpoon shot fired.
With film, that's the problem,
you don't know until you develop the film,
whether, in fact, you captured the image.
New paragraph.
Riding upward on a wave, we found the harpoon gun
aimed directly at us. Period.
Okay.
New sentence.
As we fell with the wave, we heard a deafening bang.
Okay.
Bob's talking to our friends in San Francisco, saying,
"Make sure you tell the media that we're coming in."
And our friend in San Francisco just laughed,
he says, "Oh, don't worry about that.
Everybody knows about it, everybody's talking about it,
everybody will be there."
The 80-foot ecology ship, Phyllis Cormack,
steamed into San Francisco Bay today
after its weekend encounter
with nine Russian whaling vessels...
♪
Could you explain the incident when the Russians fired
the harpoon over your head?
Chasing right behind us, say, 500 feet behind us,
right dead on our stern, going much faster
than we were...
We were mobbed by the media.
What have American authorities said about your chasing
these Russian whalers?
We've got no response from the authorities.
Suddenly, we became celebrities.
Could become an international incident.
I think it has become an international incident already--
Both Fred and I are immediately escorted
to CBS station's headquarters to have the footage developed.
♪
We start hand winding the film through a Moviscop,
it's about a four-inch screen.
Fred pans the camera to the right
and he comes upon a Zodiac.
Pans it a little further to the right,
and there are the whales.
And as he panned back, the harpoon entered the frame.
We got the shot.
Fred got the shot.
And that was the moment that launched
the modern environmental movement.
A Canadian ecology organization claims a boat it operates
chased a nine ship Russian whaling fleet
for 250 miles off the California coast
this weekend in order the save the whale.
A lot of ecologists are worried about whales,
and one group has gone to war with the Russians.
Thirteen people on an 80-foot boat
have taken on a whole Russian whaling fleet
in the Pacific Ocean.
"And God created great whales," from that rolling passage
in the book of Genesis.
Right down to the present day,
the world's largest mammal has created awe,
terror, and reverence.
Members of the Cormack's crew sailed a small rubber boat
into the path of a Russian whaler.
The Greenpeace managed to save eight whales
by using this tactic.
But finally, the Russian harpooner,
whale in his sights, fired.
The harpoon flashing only 15 feet
above the heads of the Greenpeace crew,
and moments later, a dying whale
thrashes in the water.
♪
We had really expected that they would not shoot
if there were human beings in the way,
and they did.
He actualized a dream.
If you don't think of these things,
nothing's gonna happen.
To think of it, go out and do it,
that's remarkable.
In the meantime, evidence obtained
during this last mission will be submitted
to the International Whaling Commission,
and the United Nations, with a plea
that something be done to curb the wholesale slaughter
of the world's largest mammal.
What Bob said we could do, we did.
And now, looking at this,
oh boy, this is something.
That footage proved out the mind bomb theory
that you could do a dramatic action
and actually connect viscerally with people
in their own minds.
That galvanized the United States,
it really did.
I mean, the whole place
just became whale conscious.
And pretty soon, we had volunteers.
They wanted to set up Greenpeace offices
all the way down the coast.
It really was on a trajectory skyward.
[chatter]
You can get fucked up pretty fast
if you start thinking the money's the deal.
Are we running?
Okay.
Bob, it seems like just a few days ago--
for me, at least--
that I was talking with you at Jericho
and you were headed out to sea.
What does it seem like to you, Bob?
It was either two hours ago or 10,000 years.
I think not only did the moment
of confronting the whalers change the world,
in the sense that it helped
launch an environmental movement,
it changed all of us individually,
and it changed the organization.
Fear success because success can poison
the essence of what it was you were trying to do.
♪
[cheering and applause]
♪
By the time we get back to Vancouver,
our lives have irrevocably changed
without us realizing it.
♪
The North Pacific odyssey cost over $120,000,
three times the original estimates.
But as one crewman told me,
as long as they're butchering whales,
Greenpeace won't rest.
Everything worked out well.
Almost no return.
The weakest link was always going to be ourselves.
The threat of our own egos getting in the way
of what we were trying to do,
our personal relationships with each other.
And I think if you look at the history
of social change movements,
that's always the weakest link.
♪ Why can't we live in harmony? ♪♪
Despite global fame, our little group
is now $40,000 in debt.
Our bank tells us that we have to learn
the arcane arts of cash flow
and bookkeeping, which we know nothing about.
I really don't have much to say.
Thank goodness.
The chief advocate of fiscal responsibility
is one of the worst flipped-out mystics of all.
Namely, myself.
And we're gonna try and save them all
by next year.
There's no reason why we can't.
[applause]
Hunter would refer often to a question
he asked of Allen Ginsberg once, "How do you deal with power?"
And Ginsberg advised him, "Let go of it
before it freezes in your hands."
♪
We've got offices being set up
in about 20 different places,
ranging from France, through the United States.
There's one being set up in Japan.
So, it's a growth situation.
Still coming in?
Oh yes, Bob.
Bob said, "Let 1,000 Greenpeace offices blossom."
Why not?
It was just like Johnny Appleseed.
There'd be a little bit of Greenpeace here,
and a little bit of Greenpeace there.
Do it.
Just set up and we'll stay in touch
and we'll make a movement.
When there are visions involved,
and dreams, and ideals,
and ethics, and changed values,
that all basically implies a revolution.
And when you get down to it,
that's what we're talking about.
Bob thought it was fine for Greenpeace groups
to just start up all over the world,
without any control, and basically,
to take our name and our deeds
and exploits, and raise money themselves,
and not have to give any to us.
We didn't own the environmental movement.
Our goal was not to start an organization
and make the organization famous.
Our goal was to make ecology famous,
make nature famous, make whales and seals famous,
that's what we wanted to do.
Money is raised by any means possible--
sales of t-shirts, bumper stickers,
buttons, and lottery tickets.
Walk-a-thons, cycle-a-thons,
swim-a-thons, telethons.
And Greenpeace memberships,
10 dollars for an individual.
As soon as you had different cities saying,
"We're leaping on this bandwagon
and we're calling ourselves 'Greenpeace,'"
at that point, there is a necessity
for some kind of organizational structure.
And the people that organize structures like that,
are not the same kind of people that say,
"Well, I don't know, let's just put a little boat
in front of a whaler and take a picture of it."
They think completely differently.
The winter is full of ambition.
We're already planning the next whale voyage
when Walrus and Paul have an idea to interfere
with the annual Newfoundland seal hunt.
Paul Watson, freelance writer,
ex-sailor, a longtime dedicated member
of the Greenpeace foundation.
He and his companions are in bizarre rehearsal
for their next grand adventure.
It's the blackest mark on the whole Canadian
national identity.
I mean, people all over the world
know about Canada's seal slaughter.
We just didn't have the resources
and people and energy to do
two major campaigns.
Bob and everybody said, "Well, you know,
we haven't got the funding for that."
I said, "Well, that's okay,
I've raised the money independently."
So then they sort of reluctantly let me go ahead with it.
We'll be applying some dye to the coats of the seals.
They kill the baby seals because they want the white fur.
Well, they won't be getting white fur,
they'll be getting green and white fur.
One of the problems was that this was Paul's idea
and he was happy to create a confrontation.
♪ I'm going up the country
♪ Baby, don't you want to go ♪♪
Paul wanted Hunter to come along,
he didn't want Patrick to come along.
Bob brought Patrick.
Pat Moore and Paul Watson clashed,
and they clashed continuously.
Well, I didn't take to Pat Moore at all.
I thought he was a bit of a pompous ass,
really, you know?
He had his private school education
and looked down on everybody else
who didn't have that background.
Paul is a bit of a know-it-all.
That's, to me, that's a problem.
♪
It was not good for everybody.
It just began a downward spiral
in the relationship between those two.
♪
The battle lines are drawn again between conservationists
and Canadian government officials.
Up till then, we'd been perceived
as the little David going out against
the vast Russian whaling fleet,
or against nuclear tests.
But now we were coming after the little Newfoundland
seal hunters.
This is a new situation for us and for Canada,
because we're attacking our own culture.
The more coverage we had, the more political it became.
It was gonna be a battle
like we've never experienced before.
Local fishermen, many of them out of work,
angry that anyone would consider the welfare
of seals above their own.
Blocking the entrance to St. Anthony
is as mean looking a gang as any of us has ever seen.
They surrounded us, and tried to roll us over
and all that kind of stuff, unsuccessfully.
They had a noose in this pickup truck,
and they're just pointing at it
and us behind it.
"We're gonna string you guys up."
Nice way to enter a Canadian town, eh?
The people in New York or the people down--
little old ladies in the running shoes,
who just have their compassion and concern for the seal,
and not realize that in this part of the world,
there's a whole way of life that's threatened by the...
Bob being Bob, he found out who the leaders were
and went and tried to make a deal with them.
The reception we got in St. Anthony's
didn't surprise me.
I was raised in the maritime,
so I knew they were gonna be angry.
What surprised me was, Bob and Pat and others
backing down.
There are 900 species on the endangered list
and Greenpeace is concerned with all of them.
But one of the species that's on the endangered list
is the Newfoundland fisherman,
and we're concerned with him, too.
He's such a convincing speaker.
He managed to convince them to allow us to enter the town
and then meet that evening in the high school
and plead our case, basically.
I'd like to place a resolution before this meeting tonight,
that these people be given until tomorrow morning
to place themselves back on their bus,
remove themselves from St. Anthony
and the province of Newfoundland.
[applause]
Well, I'm 67 years of age and we have suffered our life.
And it's high time we stop this right now.
To rescue our campaign, we must persuade this room
to allow us onto the ice floes.
There's nothing to be gained
from pitting ourselves against the local landsmen,
when most of the cull is done by commercial
and Norwegian fleets.
As any general knows, if you drive a wedge
between your opponents, you are that much closer
to winning the battle.
I would like to call upon Mr. Hunter,
if you will respond.
Thank you.
[booing and jeers]
The reason we're here is not to harass Newfoundlanders,
and not to try and tell you to change your life,
and not to take food out of your mouths.
We're here primarily because there is a Norwegian
fleet operating, and they're out there
doing something that they did off the coast of Russia
over a decade ago, so that finally the Russian
landsmen had nothing to hunt any longer.
They chased-- the Russians chased
the Norwegians out at that point,
but by that point, it was too damn late.
I think he had a strong sense of empathy,
and he would flow with the situation.
We had a common saying back in those days that,
you know, let the guru
be the situation, or the situation is the guru.
I have stated that we did not realize
that it would interfere with your livelihood.
Now that we understand that, we are prepared not to do it.
[applause]
The deal that he made was that they would
hand over the dye.
We take that to be a firm commitment
that you definitely will not use the paint,
or that you are going to look further into it.
No, you can take that as a firm commitment
that we will not use it and we will bring
the dye down to Roy tomorrow.
[applause]
Bob unilaterally decided to give it up,
and Paul and I weren't going to give it up.
But he announced it to everybody
that we would give it up.
So that, that was not a good thing to do.
The campaign to save the seals
and the rescuers decide not to spray them green.
Hello again.
And there are new developments in the campaign
by animal lovers in Canada to save thousands
of young seals from the hunters.
The Greenpeacers are coming across
lots of problems.
Here's the dye.
We spent months digging that stuff up together,
so maybe keep it as a souvenir.
To Paul, I've sold out to the sealers,
and I'm basically a traitor.
But this is the only way I can see
to reverse the tide that's moving against us,
and continue our protests out on the ice.
You know, in retrospect,
I think it was fair to say that Bob
was just trying to be strategic.
It's politics.
Bullshit--you know, if you're gonna take a stand,
you have to take a stand,
and you can't retreat, you can't back down,
and you can't compromise.
♪
The Greenpeace Foundation has every intention
of carrying on with its opposition to the hunt.
Paul and myself and Walrus were starting
to critically look at Bob and say, look at, you know,
he's not an omnipotent god that we thought he was.
He's got his frailties and we have to counter that.
♪
It's so easy for people to be critical,
but what that allowed them to do
was to be out on the seal floes,
and the campaign was able to carry on.
♪
[wind howling]
♪
The Canadian government made it illegal
for us to keep the helicopters
within three nautical miles
of any seal on the ice.
We had to go at least three miles across ice
to get to a seal on foot.
A very dangerous thing to do.
♪
[seals grunting]
♪
It's a brutal thing to witness.
To go after a baby seal
and club it and then drag it
by the hakapik,
dug into its brain area,
it's gut-wrenching.
Take that off, take that one off.
It's not respectful of the natural world.
♪
Sadly, we kept our word that we didn't have
any spare dye to use out there.
♪
And I think we succeeded
in getting our message out
just as well as we would have
if we'd sprayed them with green dye.
Bearing witness is a powerful concept.
Making it clear that you are--
you are watching it happen.
Oh, bearing witness.
You know, you don't walk down the street
and see a woman being raped
and stand there and take pictures.
Bearing witness to me is cowardice.
It's a non-intervention.
I never understood it.
We should not be submissive to these people
who are destroying the planet.
We should be aggressive.
We should stand up and stand tall,
and get in their face.
Goddamn disgusting mess.
Then when you're out of jobs, you know,
the guys that are making all the money out of this,
they'll just go and invest it in real estate
and you'll be out of jobs.
We're trying to help you, too, you know?
Making a living, boy, [unintelligible].
Yeah, but you're gonna be out of a living
in five years if you don't stop here.
♪
It's my bright idea to stand in front of the ship
that collects the seal skins.
Look out, the boat's moving!
I'm in the grip of this insane fantasy
that I can hold it back by sheer force of will.
Blocking the boat.
The moment I do...
Paul Watson joins me.
♪
The ice is cracking under our feet.
I turn to Bob and I said, uh,
"Okay, when the ice breaks,
I'll jump this way, you jump that way."
He said, "I ain't moving."
♪
I said, "Oh, shit, Bob.
If you don't move, I can't move."
♪
They ran at us a couple of times,
and they stopped.
♪
When you're under fire,
you don't have time for debating.
You just have to act.
And people put aside differences quickly.
♪
You know, I felt so incapable
of doing anything to stop it.
I could-- we could only do
what we did.
And, uh, you know...
we did our best.
♪
That was a dramatic image.
It certainly got a lot of coverage.
But Bob had taken away my major tactic,
and I just wanted to be free
to handle my campaigns without being
or interfered with.
♪
It got bigger and bigger and bigger.
And the bigger it got...
the harder it was to keep cohesion together.
By 1976, we were feeling a tremendous amount
of strain and pressure.
And in the meantime, we wanted to pull off
another whale campaign.
Now with a bigger boat.
It was a lot more expensive,
and we went through a lot more fuel.
The Greenpeace VII, 153-foot minesweeper
capable of going all the way to Tokyo.
It's gonna leave from out here,
and then when we go out on that boat,
everybody goes out on that boat with us,
and this is something that they can't stop now
'cause we're not just a bunch of hippies
paddling around in a row boat
in English Bay any longer.
[cheering]
Suddenly we found ourselves
struggling with competing opinions
about how the organization was gonna be pulled together.
We can put it up a little more if you want.
People wanting credit.
People wanting to be a big shot,
or people wanting to be in charge.
Holding the end of the rope.
Yes!
♪
You don't need that.
♪
Pat Moore sort of saw himself
as somebody who was second in command,
so to speak.
And Paul Watson also saw himself
as sort of second in command.
This is ironic because the last thing
Bob wanted to be was first in command.
Those boats are gonna stay in that position.
Good enough!
Man, we could've hired a psychologist
to come in and say, "Guess what?
You're gonna be fighting each other for a while."
"Guess what? You're gonna have hurt feelings."
This isn't an individual game,
and it isn't an ego game.
It's, uh--we do, in fact, represent
a powerful force that is trying
to hold this planet together.
Bob was trying to preserve
the tribe, the family spirit
of what we had,
and he was slowly watching it turn into
this kind of Shakespearean tragedy.
And so, he took to wearing this brush
that we used to clean the latrine.
And he had assigned himself the role
of latrine officer.
He would keep it in grand order,
and he'd proudly walk around,
and people were going, "What is with Hunter?"
You can still see the Zodiac in front of you, can you? Over.
Can still see the Zodiac--
I mean, it was sort of an internal mind bomb.
Bob, in his own way,
modeling modesty in the face of this,
sort of, unrelenting ego.
♪
I felt like he's giving this
everything he has.
♪
But I think he felt a little bit alone.
♪
Because he was so stressed,
he was prescribed valium to calm him down.
♪
Kind of a daily combination
of valiums, and nicotine,
and alcohol, and pot.
And so, he was making bad decisions.
We've got to make some decisions here
that I do not want to communicate
back to Vancouver.
I think at that point we became a little
sideline to the Cold War.
A toy for the CIA.
♪
Suddenly we had somebody
inside the United States government
feeding us information regarding the position
of the Russian whaling fleet.
♪
And accepting fuel from somebody who has
a close association with the US Central Intelligence Agency.
♪
Now, of course, they were doing that
because they loved the fact that we were
harassing the Russians.
♪
So, suddenly we're seeing all these
strange bedfellows.
We got a coordinate that had gone all the way
to Washington, come back to Vancouver, to here,
and it is an old Greenpeace slogan
that used to appear on the walls.
I know you heard this a hundreds times, Bobbi,
wherever you are, but it used to be,
"With enemies like this, who needs friends?"
We couldn't get the coordinates
for the Japanese fleet,
but we could get the coordinates
on the Russian fleet because that was
in the interest of the United States Government,
to embarrass the Russians.
The whole fleet is apparently now moving west.
When that got out, that caused a huge dissention
on the crew.
♪
You know, I really didn't wanna become
a strong-arm for psychological war
on behalf of the American government.
Paul Watson blamed Pat Moore and Bob Hunter
for not being more aggressive
in going after the Japanese.
So, that's-- we're adopting
a fine ancient strategy
of hanging loose until the last possible second.
We just barely made it to Hawaii
and things started breaking apart.
Paul left.
Paul Watson left the boat.
Uh, if you're on standby,
that makes things a lot easier.
Many times, I was on his right shoulder
and Bobbi was on his left shoulder
because Bob was completely wrecked.
♪
He was moody and he was causing problems.
Come on, let's go, guys.
Let's go!
The new members of the crew
kind of rebelled against Bob's authority
on the boat.
I would call it a full-on mutiny.
The crew was just saying,
"You guys have-- you've lost us completely."
Bob's become a babbling idiot,
we don't have any confidence
that you guys are-- are making the right decisions.
♪
I brewed darkly over my failings as a leader.
The greater our influence,
the messier and more obstinately human
things become.
Everyone involved, being flawed human beings
after all...
Thank God for the valium.
♪
We speak for the 70 countries
that have begged you to stop whaling!
There are not many whales left.
These whales belong to all the people of the Earth,
not just those proud and mighty
and successful nations like yours,
which have the machinery to be able to kill them.
They also belong to me,
they belong to my children,
they belong to the children of Africa,
South America, of North America,
and of Europe.
Our confrontations with the Russians succeed
because they, too, have become aware
of the power of images.
Whenever we appear,
they shut their whole operation down.
We stayed in front a couple of times,
they started up, and each time they start up,
we get back in front of them and they stop,
and right now they're stopped.
Stopped.
But to what end?
Eventually we will have to go home.
I have borne witness to the point of nausea,
yet nothing in the world has really changed.
Maybe we should buy some explosives
and sink the bastards.
♪
♪ There's only one cause of action ♪♪
On the second seal hunt,
I didn't invite Bob or Pat on the campaign.
Since Bob had interfered the year before,
I, uh, didn't want him interfering again.
[applause]
I think Bob felt just frustrated
that he couldn't be there
because it became a kind of media circus.
We have to talk about what happened today with the...
Paul Watson was the name of your friend,
and isthe name of your friend and colleague
who was injured on the floes.
He handcuffed himself to one of the cables
that is attached to the pile of seal pelts.
♪
They dragged him across the ice, into the water,
smashed him against the side of the boat
with him sort of hanging by one arm,
and they dunked him four times,
which is, of course, Arctic temperature water
in the North Atlantic.
Take him to the hospital.
And get our helicopters permission
to land here right away.
I can't, I have no contact
with your helicopters.
Well, go on and get a contact.
Say, "Yes, I'll do something!"
Those guys tried to kill me!
I have no authority.
I don't care if you have no authority.
Do something, what the hell are you...
Okay, let's put him in the...
♪
Four of our other people had to go in to rescue him.
He's now onboard one of the icebreakers
with a broken arm, back damage,
and suffering from exposure.
♪
[screaming]
♪
I was flown back, and I remember
getting out of the helicopter
and this woman came and started
hugging and kissing me,
and I didn't know who that was.
And, uh, and I left and I said to Bob Cummings,
I said, "Who the hell's that?"
And he said, "Oh, that's Brigitte Bardot."
Brigitte Bardot turned the pages
in our favor so dramatically
that it was never turned back.
You know, the Canadian government
hated her for it, but she's sort of like me,
she doesn't give a damn.
♪
Are you willing to die for a seal?
If I die for a seal, I die for a seal,
but I don't think I'm going to have
to die for a seal.
I don't think it will come to that.
That was when you discovered
just how male dominated Greenpeace was,
because guys were absolutely smitten with Brigitte Bardot.
♪
Bob wanted to take a break,
and so he designated me to go as the representative
of the organization while Paul Watson
was the leader of the campaign.
♪
Patrick was there as vice president of Greenpeace
to watch-dog me.
At one point, Pat Moore said
he was going out to the ice with Brigitte Bardot,
and I said, "No, you're not."
I said, "I don't have room for you,
because I need every seat
for somebody with a camera.
And what am I gonna do with you?"
Paul had invited 80 European journalists
and only had two helicopters.
And he said, "Well, let me just
put it this way...
if we're not in that helicopter,
you're out the door."
I said, "Well, let me put it this way...
you're not getting in the helicopter."
They think had Bob been there,
he was always the glue, the mediator,
he was always the person who could
bring calm and sanity to the group,
and he wasn't there to do that.
Officials from the Department of Fisheries
have been closely monitoring the activities
of the Greenpeace Foundation.
The officials also have exhibits against
the foundation which could be used
for possible charges.
The exhibits include the handcuffs
used by one member to attach himself to a ship.
And he did it without telling anybody
he was going to do it.
He was part of a team,
and all of a sudden he's gone off
like a loose canon.
It wasn't part of the plan.
And that was, like, the fourth or fifth
or sixth time that he had behaved
in that way towards the rest of us.
Pat saw this as an opportunity
to kick Paul out of the organization.
♪
He was condemned by others in Greenpeace
for destroying property.
Well, give me a break.
[laughs]
I was never one to condemn
some material rearrangement
of molecules of something...
even though it might be called "property destruction."
No one doubts Paul's courage for a moment.
But he seems possessed by too powerful a drive.
We all feel we've got trapped in a web
no one wants to see develop.
There is nothing to do but bring down the axe,
even if it means bringing it down
on the neck of our brother.
And by an 11 to 1 vote,
him being the one,
that was decided.
I think everybody understood
that that would be better for everybody.
Bob felt excruciatingly torn
over letting Paul go.
That's the last thing he really wanted to do.
But it was only as a result
of putting those two young lions
together on one hill.
And I say to the Greenpeace Foundation
that when they undertook saving the seals
that they did not do their homework properly.
Do the members of Greenpeace get paid anything?
How many contributors do you have?
How much money did you take in in dues last year?
Do you think that at 34 you could be doing
better things with your life?
[overlapping questions]
He needed a break, really needed a break.
Uh, here's Bob Hunter from Greenpeace.
Well, basically, as far as I can see,
it's all over.
It's just a 200 year mop-up operation now.
[audience cheering]
Yeah!
Is there a point simply in life
where everything you believe
turns inside out?
You begin to doubt it all.
What is leadership?
Tricking other people into
your own hallucinations.
Can I start again?
[mumbling]
♪
He lost heart.
♪
He looked at me and said,
"It's time."
And that was it,
and then he put his resignation in.
♪
In the middle of the spring of '77,
Bob handed the reigns over to me.
♪
Within a year, the conflicts that arose
because of that had virtually torn
the organization apart.
The challenge that we faced
was the proliferation of Greenpeace offices
that had no cohesive management.
By the time I took over from Bob
in early '77,
the horses were well out of the barn.
You could never have 50 Greenpeace groups
all operating simultaneously
and wanting to be independent and anarchistic.
Pat always thought that he knew
exactly what was right and what was
the best way to do things,
and he was somewhat dictatorial.
All the organizations outside of Vancouver revolted.
We were $150,000 or more in debt,
and San Francisco office,
which we had created,
was now making 10 times as much money
as we were able to raise,
yet they didn't want to pay our debt.
It has to be eventually resolved
who is the ultimate authority
over the name "Greenpeace."
It started in Vancouver, we're in charge,
all these outfits out here,
they're supposed to send money to us,
and we'll call the shots.
Well... that wasn't gonna work.
This was a social movement.
It wasn't a corporation where the new president
suddenly lays down the law
and everybody goes along with him.
Next thing we know, Pat Moore started a lawsuit
against our group in San Francisco.
We're willing to go through with it,
and we're willing to be candid with people
about the fact that even in the environmental movement
there are corporate takeover bids and rip-offs,
and people who are trying to steal our name,
and all the rest of it going on.
That didn't go over well with--with hippies.
It wasn't an easy time for Eileen and I.
San Francisco, in turn,
sent a bailiff to our house
with a personal lawsuit against us
for a million dollars for defamation.
♪
Uh, we lost a lot of friends
during that time because they didn't think
what we were doing was right.
♪
It was enough to make you lose a fair amount
of hair off the front of your head,
as you may notice.
Ding, ding, ding, ding.
Da-dum, da-dum, da-da, da-da.
♪
♪ I finally
broke into the prison ♪
We moved away soon after
into the countryside.
♪ I found my place
in the chain ♪
We started a family.
Every time anyone would be speaking
about Greenpeace, I would, you know,
that was it, I said,
"No 'G' word in this house."
♪ ...rainbow
I was tired of it all.
♪ All the brave young men ♪
I think Bob was
discouraged and heartbroken.
We didn't object to the fact
that Greenpeace had to be organized and managed,
but organizing and managing
should not become the purpose,
that the purpose was still
a cultural revolution.
♪
And Bob felt betrayed by Patrick,
that this deeper ecological purpose
was in danger of being lost.
♪ I fought in the old
revolution ♪
I realize I've committed the paramount sin
of quitting my earthly duty.
The hole of guilt has opened in my soul.
It's either time for someone to escort me away,
or for one last push for unity.
How can we save the planet
if we cannot save ourselves?
♪
♪ I can't pretend ♪
Bob got back involved
to pull the organization together.
I said to Bob, you know,
"You said you were leaving, you're out of it,
you haven't been part of this.
So, why-- why would you, uh...
try to dictate what's going to happen?"
Bob decided that, really, the best thing to do
was for Greenpeace to get out of the hands
of the local grassroots,
and move into the international arena.
He decided to find a new leader, essentially.
The most obvious choice was David McTaggart.
David McTaggart, who was the head of Greenpeace Europe,
had got every other Greenpeace office
in the world to be against us.
I was perceived as the enemy
by all the rest at this time, though.
Uh, all those in favor of these two flowers
continuing their voyage along the river of life...
I describe Bob as my best friend
and my best enemy.
I mean, he fought dirty,
uh, but he was a worthy opponent.
[laughing]
♪
It was not pleasant for any of us,
displacing Patrick, 'cause we were still friends.
♪
But we couldn't let him stay on in that leadership role.
♪
McTaggart and Rod Marining and Bob Hunter
and a few others met in my basement
in Kitsilano,
and we planned the founding
of Greenpeace International 1979.
McTaggart came up with a plan,
and Bob conferred it.
If we internationalize Greenpeace
so that Vancouver is no longer considered
to be the center of it all,
but one of an equal number--
Australia, United States,
New Zealand, Amsterdam,
London, they're all gonna be separate
and equally powerful,
then we'll give Patrick Vancouver,
and then all the lawyers involved
with suits against each other
would drop their lawsuits.
Patrick was invited to receive Canada
and give up the world.
[laughs]
I gladly signed that agreement.
At that moment, when we created
Greenpeace International,
we made something bigger out of a bunch
of disparate fragments that had fallen apart, basically.
You know, we had a saying in Greenpeace,
"You can't get off the boat."
Which was just to mean that you don't wanna--
once you're in it, and you're enjoying it,
and you're succeeding, you don't wanna stop.
And, indeed, it's--it's not easy
to get off that boat.
♪
Trying to cling on to power
is a fundamental mistake.
It's something we learned from The I Ching,
It's such a hard lesson to learn.
Suddenly, Greenpeace was raising millions
of dollars worldwide by this time.
And we just gave it away.
♪
He did it.
No matter how big a movement grows,
its blueprint is found in its seed.
I think of Greenpeace from the very beginning
as a natural phenomenon.
All of us were involved because we had to be.
We were part of a reflex
summoned to action by the earth itself.
♪
I think Greenpeace is a real force in the world,
and that it accomplishes great things.
Uh, but save the planet,
you know, that's their--
that's the aim here.
Yay!
The International Whaling Commission
has imposed at least a partial ban
on factory ship whaling.
In 1982, a 10 year moratorium
on commercial whaling was finally put together.
As far as we're concerned,
it's the conservation event of the decade
in that at least 7,000 whales
have been saved per year,
because that's approximately
what they were killing each year.
The important part of that period
was the realization that a small group
of individuals can make an impact,
and that they could do it without many resources.
I believe that Greenpeace was more powerful
when it had nothing than it is today
with its hundreds of millions of dollars.
I'm very proud of Greenpeace.
The real ecology movement is a long,
multigenerational phenomenon.
It's really a lesson that nature's
going to teach humanity,
and we're just trying to help it along.
♪
We made a difference, you know?
Uh, it doesn't mean you can stop.
[laughs]
Emily!
It's too early in the morning,
I don't want to go to school.
Sorry, sweetheart.
When I grew up, my father moved away
from traditional activism
into his media, journalism role.
In many ways, he really struggled
making this new life with my family.
Anybody who thinks that the warming trend
is just a theory and not a fact
need look no further than these mountains
of salt piling up which are all the salt
that was not used on the roads in Metro last year
because there was virtually no winter.
He really knew that this would become
the defining issue of our time,
and it would surpass, really, all environmental issues,
because they were all interconnected
to this one issue of climate change.
I think he found himself again.
He found his role again
that he could be that leader again
in society.
Planet Earth.
I say love it or leave it.
I'm Bob Hunter covering ecology.
He felt like he could actually use media, again,
as his tool for change.
Hey, Skipper!
Permission to come aboard!
Permission granted, Bob.
The most exciting things after Greenpeace
was being with Paul Watson,
and the most meaningful.
I just wonder what keeps the fire in your belly.
Anger, you gotta keep anger.
Yeah.
Bob would go out with Paul's new organization,
the Sea Shepherd Society.
They were both action junkies.
It's 10 after 9.
The nearest drifter boat is just off
to our starboard here, we're closing in.
Okay, here we go.
Sea Shepherd was set up
as an anti-poaching organization.
[loud bang]
In 1979, when I hunted down and rammed
the pirate whaler Sierra,
I was brought before the port captain
and accused of, um, negligence.
I said, "Well, there wasn't anything negligent about it.
I mean, we hit the ship exactly
where we intended to hit it."
People support Paul just like they cheer
for Rambo in the movies.
It's the same kind of thing.
He is trying to create a real-life action figure image,
which he's done very successfully.
And I see him as a real-life hero
in many aspects.
I was with Greenpeace for 15 years
and helped create it.
It has turned into something I'm regretful about.
♪
Hi, are you guys media?
Help yourself to any of this literature here.
You can't become
such an anti-Greenpeace person
and still command any level of--
of love and respect, you know?
Greenpeace is back in the dark ages somewhere
against genetic science being used to make
our food and medicine better.
But they can-- if they wanna keep
that position, fine.
Patrick was able to turn his former position
into a moneymaking endeavor,
representing first the salmon farmers,
and then miners and loggers,
and the nuclear industry.
So he became a PR organization
defending all of the enemies of Greenpeace.
Bob felt quite betrayed by that
and coined the term "eco Judas."
You do concede that human-induced
carbon emissions have contributed
to global warming in the second half
of the 20th century?
No, I do not.
We do not have proof that we are the cause
of warming.
It isn't warming much anyways,
so even if CO2 is a greenhouse gas,
it's not having anywhere near the effect
that people thought it would...
This whole anti-globalization,
anti-capitalism, anti-business,
uh, orientation of the environmental movement
is extremely destructive.
Our next witness is Dr. Patrick Moore.
Please proceed with your statement.
In 1971, as a PhD student in ecology,
I joined an activist group in a church basement
in Vancouver, Canada.
We became Greenpeace.
After 15 years in the top committee,
I had to leave as Greenpeace began
to adopt policies that I could not accept
from my scientific perspective.
There is no reason to believe
that a warmer climate would be anything
but beneficial for humans
and the majority of other species.
Please see exhibit three.
I don't consider Patrick an active ecologist.
Patrick Moore is a public relations specialist
selling his affiliation to Greenpeace
to his corporate clients.
We live in different worlds now.
♪
By the time I realized that I wanted to be
an environmentalist myself,
my father shared the news with me
that he had terminal cancer.
Um, and only about a year and a half left.
In that time, I wanted to be
as close to my father as possible,
but he told me he wanted me to go
on my first campaign with Sea Shepherd
rather than just be by his side,
and so I did.
And it changed my life.
I shared the stories of every little thing,
every sea sickness event,
every arrest, uh,
at one point I was taken hostage.
I shared everything with him
in writing and in emails,
and our correspondence together.
And I could tell it just gave him
maybe one of those last little highs in life.
You know, Bob and I could never speak
about his death,
and I can't now, but um...
Bob was a real global person
and what I wanted to do to honor him
was to take him to all four corners
of the planet.
♪
He had never been able to go to Antarctica.
He really wanted to, and fight on that front.
For Paul, it was his way to get to say
goodbye to his brother.
I always thought of it as my dad's last campaign,
and it was my-- one of my first campaigns.
And it was kind of completing
both of our missions.
♪
What--what I wouldn't give just for one more day,
you know, just one--
you know if you could just have Bob back
and go to the pub.
♪
I realized something I had forgotten,
something I learned at the height of the '60s,
that my separate existence is an illusion.
Ecology is flow.
You and I are most definitely part of the flow.
Everything we do affects the flow.
And everything the flow does affects us.
♪
It doesn't really matter what I read or think or write.
Don't judge me by my words,
which are many,
but by my actions, which are few.
Because if we wait for the meek to inherit the earth,
there won't be anything left to inherit.
♪
♪ They paved paradise,
put up a parking lot ♪
♪
♪ With a pink hotel, a boutique,
and a swingin' hot spot ♪
♪ Don't it always seem to go
that you don't know what you've got till it's gone ♪
♪ They paved paradise,
put up a parking lot ♪
♪ Shoo
♪ Bop, bop, bop, bop
♪ Shoo
♪ Bop, bop, bop, bop
♪ They took all the trees,
put 'em in a tree museum ♪
♪
♪ And they charged the people a dollar and a half
just to see 'em ♪
♪ Don't it always seem to go
that you don't know what you've got till it's gone ♪
♪ They paved paradise,
put up a parking lot ♪
♪ Shoo
♪ Bop, bop, bop, bop
♪ Shoo
♪ Bop, bop, bop, bop
♪ Hey, farmer, farmer,
put away the DDT now ♪
♪
♪ Give me spots on my apples
but leave me the birds and the bees ♪
♪ Please
♪ Don't it always seem to go
that you don't know what you've got till it's gone ♪
♪ They paved paradise,
put up a parking lot ♪
♪ Shoo
♪ Bop, bop, bop, bop
♪ Shoo
♪ Bop, bop, bop, bop
♪ Late last night,
I heard the screen door slam ♪
♪
♪ And the big yellow taxi
took away my old man ♪
♪
♪ Don't it always seem to go
that you don't know what you've got till it's gone ♪
♪ They paved paradise,
put up a parking lot ♪
♪ Shoo
♪ Bop, bop, bop, bop
♪ I said, don't it always seem to go
that you don't know what you've got till it's gone ♪
♪ They paved paradise,
put up a parking lot ♪
♪ Shoo
♪ Bop, bop, bop, bop
♪ They paved paradise,
put up a parking lot ♪
♪ Shoo
♪ Bop, bop, bop, bop
♪ They paved paradise,
put up a parking lot ♪♪
[giggling]
♪