ASKS HER TO IDENTIFY HERSELF.

My name is Susan Beckwith Dutson, and I'm the publisher of the Millard County Chronicle Progress, and we're located in Delta but we serve Millard County.

ASKS HOW SHE FIRST HEARD OF MX COMING.

Well we were in the midst of another boom situation with the power plant and so it, it kind of came in kind of like a surprise, I mean we were focusing our attention on other things. And a meeting was scheduled and some people came in that were going to the meeting and came and alerted us.

ASKS HER TO REPEAT.

My name is Susan Beckwith Dutson. I am the publisher of the Millard County Chronicle Progress, located in Delta, Utah. And we serve all of Millard County.

HOW DID SHE HEAR ABOUT MX COMING IN?

Well we were in the midst of a power plant coming in so most of our attention was focused there. And the meeting that was scheduled was kind of, I don't know, quietly. But some people came in that heard about the meeting and alerted us, and so we started, you know, we went to the meetings.

WHAT WAS THE MEETING?

Well it was just kind of a...

AIR FORCE INVOLVED?

Apparently. But I don't remember that they ever sent us a notice on it. They may have done, but they may have just scheduled the meeting and allowed it to, you know, alerted the public officials.

EXPLAINS ANSWER FORMAT. ASKS ABOUT MEETING.

Well, they came in, it's been along time but...they came in and were explaining what they were going to do and it was so wonderful and so exciting and so forth. And people who had been aware of meetings they'd had in other places that were here were immediately voicing opposition. And so seeds of doubt were planted right away which was, you know, helpful. If they didn't get that, the Air Force didn't get a real toehold, before we really knew what was going on.

HOW DID SHE FIND OUT WHAT WAS GOING ON?

Well by going to the meetings and then we linked up with people from other areas who had been studying it for quite some time and--

ASKS HER TO DISCUSS AIR FORCE COMING.

Well we had lots of meetings. So they kind of run together. I don't, I don't remember if that first meeting was when the TV cameras, you know, from up around the Wasatch Front, had been alerted, so they were down. Because I remember that meeting fairly distinctly because Gen. Hecker and I kind of got into it after the meeting. And the cameras, they were so close, but they didn't, pick up, they didn't do the sound, they just did the picture. And so I would have friends call me from other areas that had seen it and they could tell by the expressions on the face what was going on.

WHAT WERE YOU SAYING TO HIM?

I don't really remember. There was so much that went on at that time. Because I didn't, I didn't really have my temper up at that time. I was probably being a, kindly mean at that time.

WHAT GOT HER TEMPER UP?

Well I think because we got lied to so much, things just, nothing would fit. You know, they would tell us, the Air Force would tell us one thing and then if you studied into it it was entirely the opposite. And the access to the desert was one of the biggest things, that they never could get their stories straight on it. And if you, if you didn't have any problems with missiles, you wouldn't want the desert being used. It is one of the last frontiers in the continental United States where mining activity is going on. We have the only Free World deposit of beryllium out here. There was uranium exploration going on at that time because we do have some uranium, and things change, you know, as the needs of the country. Right now gold, other precious minerals, calcium carbonate, potash, that type of thing is getting very active. And the thoughts of closing off an area that provides such vital material, you know, to keep the United States alive and strong and not have to depend on Third World countries, that was a real frightening thing.

ASKS ABOUT GEN. HECKER.

I really liked Gen. Hecker, you know, as a person. He was friendly and personable but I think where he got into trouble was he came in and he said things that inferred things that had happened that had not happened. Such as he described his meeting with the general authorities of the LDS church and how warm they had received him, and etc., etc. Making it sound like the Mormon Church had said, "Yes, we endorse your project, we will help you to the ends of the earth." When actually that had not happened. And he, he did this quite a bit. I mean he was quite a salesman. That was what he was sent to do. But it all caught up with him.

ASKS HER TO REPEAT ANSWER.

I rather enjoyed Gen. Hecker on a personal basis. He was a very friendly, personable man. But I think where he got into trouble with his salesmanship of the MX was the...he had a tendency to word things in a way that inferred things that were not fact. And it caught up with him very quickly. The one thing that I remember distinctly that got him in trouble was he described his meeting with the general authorities of the Mormon church and said how gracious they had been and how kind. And he insinuated that they had totally endorsed the project and given their stamp of approval which was not the case. And that sort of gave him his demise as far as being the spokesperson out here.

ASKS HER TO REPEAT.

Well...Gen. Hecker's inference that the LDS church, Mormon church had endorsed it, not only I did not feel it was right but most people didn't because that's not Mormon policy, that is just not the way they operate. To...to either endorse or, unless they feel very strongly they don't, you know, they just, they don't take a stand.

HOW DID SHE FEEL ABOUT THE MISSILES?

It was just ludicrous. Anybody that knows the desert knew it was just ludicrous, for just various, various reasons. The desert, I just can't imagine what kind of structures that they would put that would stabilize. I mean we have flash floods, land that gets wet, gets boggy. Just a multitude of things that would make construction just more monumental than they were claiming which was pretty monumental. And the desert is multipurpose use. Cattlemen graze out there, that's their livelihood. Sheep men graze out there. That's their livelihood. The mining people. Such a frontier for mining. New things discovered all the time, or things that we already know are out there and then the demand comes into the point where it's worthwhile to go out and utilize it. Plus it's recreation area. The House Range is one of the finest fossil beds in the world. It's just, just too many constructive uses for the desert as opposed to a destructive use of making it inaccessible and a target.

HOW DID SHE FEEL ABOUT AIR FORCE COMING OUT HERE?

The West is traditionally, large pieces of the land is federal owned. It's a real sore point with the West because this doesn't happen in the East, which, the government seems to feel it has the right to come and tell you what you can do with your land. And as they own about 67 percent I believe of Utah, you know, should they have wanted to just say, this is going to be our land, it probably would have been possible if, if the citizenry, you know, hadn't been real united to oppose them.

WHAT MOTIVATED PEOPLE TO OPPOSE IT?

I think everybody had their own reasons. Some people just totally opposed to proliferating nuclear arms which is a position I went into later. Some were, they don't want their livelihood taken away. The scary part of not being able to get on that desert was just terrifying to people even though the Air Force repeatedly said oh, there won't be, you'll be out there all the time, no big deal, you know, you can come and go like you always have. And all the time they were saying that I just happened to be sitting next to a man on an airplane who told me his company had been asked to give them a bid on video surveillance for the entire system on the desert.

WHAT WOULD THAT MEAN?

Well the desert is very...primitive, it is a place where you go to get away from civilization. The thoughts of being out there picnicking with your family, with a video camera trained on you was just, just bizarre.

ASKS IF THAT MEANT SHE'D ALWAYS FEEL WATCHED.

Right, and they also tried to sneak some legislation through that said that...the military would have this ultimate power that they could stop, search, detain, do anything they wanted to do with any citizen that they felt, felt was threatening, or, or was just there and they didn't want them there.

WHAT WOULD IT DO TO DELTA?

Well having had the experience of the Inter-Mountain Power Project here, the construction phase of these things is just, it's hard to describe. And this is traditionally an agricultural community. We like being here because it's quiet, it's relatively safe. Anything that we want that we don't have is within 100, 150 miles. But you can have a quality of life that there's no way you can buy it. You just have a quality of life. So the construction phase, if that hadn't wiped out the community entirely, having a military installation would have finished it off.

WHY DID THE AIR FORCE CHOOSE HERE?

I think they got out a road map and said there's the least roads out there and there's the least population, and they probably won't care, you know, they're very conservative, they always go along with the government, and so on. Made sense to me. I don't have any idea why they chose it except that we are so sparsely populated.

REMINDS HER IT'S OUT OF CHARACTER FOR MORMONS.

Yes, Mormons are very noted for supporting the government, whatever they want to do. They were the first ones that will take up arms, you know, if that's required. They feel the military service is all part of their life. They are fairly hawkish because they're conservative. And to oppose it was really kind of out of character for Utah which I think says a lot for how just ludicrous the project was.

WAS SHE SUPPORTIVE OF NATIONAL DEFENSE NEEDS BEFORE THIS HAPPENED?

Well, probably not, because the old war movies of World War II were great but I was, you know, too, I had looked too much at the Vietnam War. I lost too many friends, and I saw the results of it. And though at that particular time it wasn't my style to jump in and oppose something like that, I always questioned in my mind why are we taking the finest, you know, to be butchered, mentally and physically maimed? What purpose are we serving, you know. So I had some problems with that. And then the military, even though their policies have changed a lot over the years, at the time that I paid, I guess, a lot of attention to the military it was a dumping grounds for people who, Do you want to go to jail or do you want to go to the Service? And I know that they have, you know, they have upped their standards considerably. But you think of a missile system that is untried, untested, so you know, so fantastic in its scheme, you know, the Rube Goldberg. And then you're going to put it in the hands of maybe not our finest? You know, that just kept running through my mind, like I say, the military has upped their standards since then but, and then, at one time I got into a discussion with Senator Hatch. And I says, I said I think we're going entirely, you know, the wrong way. You have tanks that don't run, they leak, you have those airplanes that the wings fall off. I said what good does it do to have a big, you know, missile system if you do not have the surrounding things to tend it. And he said, well we're going more toward that type of warfare. And that just scared me to death. Because if you've got to face to face somebody to kill them, you may figure out a little bit more civilized way to work out your differences. But if you can push a bottom and just blow people you don't even know or care about off the face of the earth, that gets real scary because that gets too easy.

WAS IT SCARY WHEN THE AIR FORCE JUST CAME HERE AND SAID YOU'D BE SURROUNDED BY NUCLEAR MISSILES?

I don't know if I had enough sense to be scared at that time, I mean scared in the scared sense. I think I was more angry that we were so insignificant. And even if we were insignificant, the prevailing winds would take radiation right across the rest of the United States. But I don't remember being particularly scared. I don't think that was my emotion.

DID SHE FEEL PEOPLE WERE JUST EXPENDIBLE?

Yeah we did, we really did. And I thought they also thought we were stupid. People always get the idea that if you want to live in a small town, you can't make it in big time. They don't understand that we have discovered quality of life and we will sacrifice a lot of things for quality of life.

ASKS ABOUT DUMPING GROUND FEELINGS?

Yeah I think Utah has. We have, we're still in the midst of all the problems caused by the open air testing. And under the Freedom of Information Act, people have come up with the documents that show that they would watch the winds and when it was blowing up over St. George and Cedar City and up toward this way, they would say "Go ahead with the tests. There's least population there." So there are still people trying to get that sorted out, dying of cancer, and so on. We have a big, the Big Hill Air Force Base which because it, it is what it is, makes it a target if you want to consider that. Then you have the Tooele Ordnance Depot with the chemical weapons. And you have Dugway. So the military has used this for ugly things for a lot of, you know, for a long time. And then as soon as they come up with nuclear waste they don't know what do with it, they immediately think of Utah. Doesn't matter that we have so many national parks and things like that and we have positive things to offer the country. That if you tie them up with negative things, they're lost forever.

CITES "LUNATIC FRINGE" EPITHET.

We were often referred to as a lunatic fringe and that that amused me because I had never seen any project, anything that had united more factions of the population. And yes there were some that I guess you'd call lunatic fringe, but there were people who were very very dedicated anti-missile. We did not need to proliferate. There were farmers and ranchers and mining people and environmentalists and housewives and professional people. It touched every segment of the population. And if you can refer to every segment of the population as lunatic fringe, I guess we were.

ASKS WHAT SHE DID TO PROTEST.

To do our protesting, the methods that we used were very, they were varied. We would attend meetings and we did flyers, we did mailings, we did posters. We called people. We made ourselves available for any media or speaking engagements, anything, you know, that...because when you're so small and what the nation considers insignificant, you have to be fairly loud to get peoples' attention. And we tried to, see this would have affected everyone in the United States. Either by money or by...

(INTERRUPTIONS)

The missile system would have affected everyone in the United States. And one of the things that we tried to do was to bring it home to everyone. And we knew when cartoons started appearing in...excuse me...magazines like The New Yorker that says, "I don't care where they put it as long as they don't put it in the subway," then we knew, you know, people were starting to think about it. Economically it would have put the country on its knees. It wouldn't have mattered what kind of a missile system we had because it would have tied up so many natural resources, construction projects, and they, the figures that they put out on it, of course, were about a fifth of what it really would have cost, had they ever have completed it. That was another scary thing. They, the military has started many projects and then abandoned them later on, leaving areas just in worst shape than they were to begin with because they have all this garbage around. And they ruined the esthetics of the area. And so there was a lot of things to take into consideration, but the expense alone, what it would have done to the taxpayer was just phenomenal.

DID SHE USE THE PAPER TO PROTEST?

Very much. I'm very small, have very small circulation, but I figured the readers that I was reaching I was going to do the best I could to keep them informed on what was going on.

WHAT DID SHE DO?

Well we had something in about every week, but of course there was something going on every week. And if other publications had something fairly good we would get permission and reprint it and we would cover the meetings and just keep it constantly out and constantly describing the different factions of population that it would affect.

DID ANYONE COME WHO "HELPED?

They sent quite a few people here and in a way it got to be amusing after a while. The potency of the people they were sending to Delta. It was, I mean when William Perry came in, flew in and brought his wife, and I can't remember. There was a man named Zieberg with him and Metgoff and they were pretty potent people, pretty high up in the whole project and they came to Delta? To meet with a few public officials? They tried to sneak into town but by that time there was always someone who would let me know when they were coming. So they sent some pretty high powered people in.

HOW DID THEY COME IN?

Well, sometimes, it would depend, some didn't make it, like the time that Antonia Chayes was supposed to come down to one of the meetings and she was in a helicopter and they got as far as Tooele and got lost. So she had the helicopter pilot put her down there and she hitched a ride with a trucker and went back to Salt Lake so he never made the meeting. This was a little scary. The Undersecretary of Defense, of the Air Force cannot find a little place to have a meeting, you know, that was, was rather interesting.

WHY WAS IT SCARY?

If the military can't find Delta, how are they going to find their target if we ever get into anything?

ASKS ABOUT JUNKET TO OMAHA.

Yeah, they, the Air Force conducted several punch and cookie tours, I wasn't a very nice person so I didn't get invited a lot of times. But at one time they did take us to the SAC Air Force Base in Omaha. And they had all these meetings scheduled up that we were to sit through. And then they'd wine us and dine us. And I thought it was interesting that immediately they said "The speaker will speak. Do not interrupt the speaker. And then you may ask questions after it's all over with.” And I thought, why can't you ask questions as they go along? I mean, have they got them so robot that, that they just, will we make them lose their place? Or what's the problem here? You know, but that's the way it was always set up. They must give their speech and then we could ask questions afterwards.

ASKS HER IMPRESSIONS OF OMAHA?

All I saw was, you know, the base. I thought it was very shabby and the time that I went to be on the Donahue show and I had a conversation with MacCarthy, I think his name was, I told him that I felt bad that the military had gotten so shabby. And that if they wanted to do some lobbying and some efforts to get some money put into upgrading their bases, and that sort of thing, I would help them. But that I felt when the bases looked so shabby that, and maybe looks aren't everything, but they just, they just really looked shabby. I don't expect it to be plush. A military is not. The cracks in the wall and things like that. That I would fight him on the missile but I would help him if it was to get better quarters for the little troopies.

DID PEOPLE IN UTAH FEEL THEY WERE TARGETS FOR MISSILES COMING IN?

Utahans that give it any thought, we are a target, we have always been a target. Having the MX missile here would have just been an increased target, it would have been the ultimate target. But I guess under mutual assured destruction, that's the whole plan. You know, we target you and you target us and neither one of us are going to hit each other because we're targeting each other. Which doesn't make any sense to me because accidents do happen and I just don't think civilization has come along very far if that's the best you can do.

WHAT WOULD YOU HAVE SAID TO CARTER?

Well, I think he was just a pawn, like I think the Air Force...

INTERRUPTS.

President Carter, I think, was just a pawn, the same as the Air Force was a pawn. I think it always felt very clear to me that defense contractors think these things up. And then they sell them to the military and so, when people would say if this is what the military wants they they should have it, I just never felt it was what the military wanted. I just felt it was something that a defense contractor had thought up for them.

REPEATS QUESTION.

I always felt that Pres...

DISCUSSION IN BACKGROUND.

I always felt that President Carter and the Air Force were pawns in this whole fiasco. It seemed very clear that defense contractors think these things up to make money and then they sell them to the military. So, I, I could never buy the statement that if the military wants this and needs this we should support it, because I never...and I often got the feeling talking to some of the Air Force people, that they didn't buy it either. They were just doing what they were told to do. I just didn't feel sincerity, we need this, we have to have it. So, I don't really think that as far as military strategy goes it was playing any part. It was just a monumental money project.

WOULD IT HAVE BROUGHT JOBS IN?

Having the system this...

INTERRUPTS

Having a system like that this close to us would have brought jobs and that in. That was not a primary concern here because we already the power project coming in and we knew we were going to have jobs. But sometimes people forget that if you trade quality of life for standard of living, you don't have anything in the end. And one of the beautiful things about a rural area is that you don't have a lot of rules because everybody's neighbors, everybody's friends, you expect, respect rights pretty much. And as soon as you start getting your population increasing, there has to be a lot of rules. So progress sometimes means loss of freedom. And the jobs in that that it would have brought in, it wouldn't have employed that many of the locals, you know, it would not have made a lot of difference for people living here, it would just have transported more people in.

ASKS ABOUT PUBLIC MEETINGS.

Well. Probably one of the events that stands out in my mind the most was the Bill Moyer event that they held at the Salt Palace. And all of us fringe lunatics, the ranchers, the farmers, the businessmen, the housewives, got together for a little rally in the courtyard and the supposedly, the FBI or someone was over in the Howard Johnson filming all of us. Because we were so dangerous to the country. And then the debate was just great. It really was great. And I, I sometimes also felt that when the Air Force or whoever they sent into speak for it came in, they expected us to be so stupid we'd swallow about anything. And Antonia Chayes was just notorious for making ridiculous statements. She drew out some big figures in that debate about how much land it takes to sustain so many head of sheep and so on and so forth. And she just had sheepmen rolling on the floor, I mean, you've got to do your homework if you're going to come onto somebody's ground and try to tell him how things are. And the Moyer debate was very good and of course Cecil Garland who was so wonderful through all this, very bright, very articulate, and a wonderful sense of humor. He just brought the house down with his suggestions on the basing modes.

ASKS FOR MORE ABOUT ANTONIA CHAYES THEY DISCUSS.

They always were patronizing, yes definitely. Yes, they talked to us like children. Because we live out here, we prefer this kind of a lifestyle, that means we're not too bright, which is not true at all.

ASKS ABOUT PERRY AND ZIEBERG.

I only saw them in person that one time. William Perry and his wife and Zieberg and that guy flew in. It seems to me there was a political person with them at that time. But I don't remember who. And they wanted to meet just with the mayors and the county commissioners and so on. And I don't know what they thought they were going to accomplish by that. I would think that if they wanted to really impress the citizenry they would have wanted a bigger meeting. I don't know. They were very nice people but you could tell that they had made a mistake, wasting their time coming out because they just didn't get that warm of a reception. I mean everyone was cordial but nobody said yeah, it's great you came out here, we'll jump on your bandwagon. Nobody did that.

ASKS REACTION TO THE MAP.

The reaction to the map was just...hor...horror. Everybody was horrified. The Great Basin is so unique. One of the few frontiers left in some sort of natural state. And so fragile. It has so many wonderful things about it and the thoughts of tying that up with a missile system was ...as it's multiple use land in both Utah and Nevada, it was just horrifying, the thoughts of using something so destructive, that would, it would cut off anything that's productive. Even though they guaranteed us continually, oh you'll have access. Oh, nobody will stop you. And then they'd get into these heavy debates about how the Russians could put monitoring devices on sheep collars and the sheep would get too close to the fence and the Russians would all know what we were doing. It was just craziness.

BUT THEY SAID IT WAS NEEDED FOR SECURITY. AND IT NEEDED TO BE PUT SOMEWHERE.

So? I...I...Like I said, I just never always felt that the Air Force felt real sincere about this. They kept talking about the three legs. That nothing could operate without the three legs. You can use the argument for two legs, for four legs, for five legs. It made no sense. They kept saying "The Strategic Air Command takes care of the air, we got the Tridents for the sea, now we got to have a land basing mode. Now just the fact that the others have it doesn't mean the Air Force had to have something different. And why did the Air Force need that if they had the Strategic Air Command? Why wasn't the Army complaining that they didn't have their piece of it. I mean it was, that was just thin, thin, kind of an argument. And everyone knew, knows the missiles are getting old, but they play these games and they leave them sitting there until they just fall apart. Like the ones did in Arkansas that they dropped a wrench on. So what difference does it make what your system is if you're not tending what you've got?

ASKS ABOUT DEBATE WITH DONAHUE.

The...I was invited to be on that small segment of the Donahue show, I think it's on another channel or something, I'm not home at the time to catch these things. But it was the result of an article done in the Chicago Tribune. And I didn't really know exactly what they wanted, and Donahue started the show by saying to the Air Force, now explain this button, button theory that you've come up with for these missiles. Which kind of put me at ease because I felt that the show was not taking the missile system as seriously as the Air Force. And they went through a really nice run down about how the system would work and they asked what it would mean to this area and what we thought about it. And then they took all of that and edited it down to just a few minutes, so there was really not a lot that ever got put out as a result of that.

WHAT WOULD YOU THINK IF THE AIR FORCE CAME BACK AND SAID WE HAVE SMALLER MISSILES, USING LESS LAND AREA, AND WANT TO PUT THEM HERE? WHAT WOULD YOU SAY?

Probably early on in the opposition to the MX, had things been scaled down and more reasonable, I might have not been so much opposed. But as the thing drug on and the fight drug on and you became a little bit more aware of what the whole nuclear system means, I would oppose any missile, anywhere, at any time.

YOU BECAME OPPOSED TO NUCLEAR DETERRENT FORCE?

The fact that seven strategically placed bombs, according to Dr. Helen Caldicott, who I have great respect for, would totally wipe out the planet. And right now we have in excess of 6,000, I would oppose any more missiles, anywhere, anytime. Because I think we are already in a position of totally destroying the planet earth and I don't think we need to build any more to assure it.

THE DEFENSE DEPARTMENT THINKS THERE IS A BIG DISADVANTAGE THE US HAS AGAINST THE SOVIET UNION BECAUSE THEY DON'T PROTEST MISSILES. THE AIR FORCE HERE IS FRUSTRATED WITH PROTESTS. THEY THINK THE USSR WILL GET AHEAD OF US. IS THERE ANY WAY YOU AGREE WITH THIS?

I don't really worry about America being in an inferior position to the Soviets. And the fact that somebody is boobing around that the American public has the right to protest as opposed to the Russians, -they can move to Russia if they like that system better. You know, that's why we're here. That's why that system's in place. And a very wise man that lives here that has been in political life told me, voters get what they deserve. So, if we want to protest things and that's not the right way to go, we get what we deserve, but that's the great American way. That's why, that's what the whole missile system is to preserve, supposedly. So, I don't, I don't care any about their boobing around about... that we have the ability to protest and it makes life so tough. The only person that it's making life tough on is the defense contractor. And that is the least effective way to spend the tax dollar. You get less return.

POINTS OUT THAT NO ONE PROTESTS IN USSR AND THEY'RE BUILDING MORE FASTER. REPEATS THE QUESTION ABOUT US SECURITY INTERESTS IN LETTING THEM GET AHEAD OF US.

I don't worry about the Soviets getting ahead of us. I really believe the Soviets are fairly well levelheaded. If we have someone to fear it is not the Russians—it is other countries that are not so level headed. And the fact that we can protest in the United States is wonderful. -That's what democracy is all about. And if people don't like the idea of protesting missile systems, then they can move to Russia and build their missile systems because they won't get any protests. The whole idea of making the United States strong is to preserve our rights and our freedoms which we are rapidly losing as it is. But the right to protest and have a voice in your government is what the United States is all about.

ASKS WHAT IT WAS LIKE FIGHTING IT.

Being involved in something like the MX protest for two years was just devastating. It just wiped you out. You'd eat, ate, slept and, and breathed the protest. I don't know how we functioned here in the business at that time because it was chaotic. There was newspaper reports and foreign...Der Spiegel came in, Australian TV came in. ABC Nightline came in. It was nothing for the door to open and in came a whole new batch of them. You know, sometimes they'd let you know they were coming, sometimes they didn't. I must have had a good staff at that time because I was not doing much of anything. Often times we were referred to as communists. I was accused of receiving money to protest this. And I kept waiting for the check cause it was getting mighty expensive. For out of pocket to do the traveling—we were doing the printing, we were doing, taking time out of my life just to go to meetings and so on. It was, we were so busy I guess we didn't have time to really think about the frightening aspects. Because I remember my mother suggested to me that possibly the government would get even, that there were many things that they could do to get even. And I thought about that a little bit and then I thought, well, I still have to do what I believe or why am I here? You know, I have to do what I believe. And it was so exhausting. It's been years now and I still am tired from what it took out of us.

WHAT IF THEY CAME IN AGAIN WITH A SMALLER VERSION?

If they came in and wanted to do it again, I'd fight them again. I don't care if it's smaller, larger, or in between, I'd fight them again. We do not need more missiles and we are not going to take something as valuable as this desert and make it a dead zone.

ASKS ABOUT PUBLIC OFFICIALS.

We didn't really get a lot of assistance from elected officials. I remember one time there was a hearing in Salt Lake and some of our local people went up and smoke. And Dr. Henry came home and said, "We are so lucky to have two very good representatives looking out for our best interests, Cy Berling from Ohio and Santini from Nevada." We did not get help from our, our state officials. I don't mean state state, I mean like representatives, senators, so on. They were very hawkish and very supportive of the thing and they did not help us at all.

ASKS ABOUT LAXALT AND GARNETT, OTHERS.

Garnett and I had a real go around one day. It was one of the tours to the area and he was coming here and going to the radio station and that, and we had quite a go around about it. Ended up screaming at each other out front. He told me if I didn't, if this missile system didn't go in I had better learn to speak Russian and I said "Well that would be acceptable to me as opposed to speaking Air Force, which is not the truth. At least I know where the Russians stand." And that was the end of that conversation. But I think toward the end as things got, I think we had finally got our point across, that it would cost too much. There was a lot of former employees from the HDR who were insisting, absolutely standing up on street corners and insisting that they were falsifying the soil studies out here. And...you know, to make it work. Because if you studied the soil and were honest about it, it wouldn't support that kind of a system. And surface water is so close and it's so mineralized. You know, it's not usable water.

NOISE INTERRUPTS.

But I think as the protest went along we were finally getting our points across of all the fallacies in it. The scary thing of not completing it, using so much money, using so many natural resources. Are they going to take a system that it would take over ten years to get into position, barring no complications whatsoever. Then does that put us ahead or does that put us ahea...behind, don't we find something that can be done in a year or two because obviously ten years down the road, what they're doing right now is going to be obsolete. So I think finally politics fell out of the situation about who was going to support who and scratch each other's back and common sense finally took over. And I think particularly when the Mormon Church stepped particularly out of...you know, out of their usual realm to do put a strong protest out. I think the Mormon Church is the dominant influence in Utah. And that would affect Garnett, Hatch and Marriott and all of them because they're all Mormon and they would listen to their leaders.

SO WHAT WAS THE EFFECT OF MAY 5TH?

I think we knew then it was dead. I don't think we even had to wait for Reagan's announcement. There's just, you know, things you know, and the potency of religious leaders, particularly Mormons, is just unquestioned, even on a national scene.

AND THIS WAS SURPRISING?

It's...it's not characteristic of the Mormon Church, the leadership, to take stands like that. So the fact that they did, you know, really snapped a lot of heads, because they thought, well, if leadership that doesn't ordinarily takes these kind of stands takes this kind of a stand, obviously, you know, they've given it some thought and they feel very strongly about it.

WHAT MORMON TRADITION DOES SHE MEAN?

Well the, the Mormon doctrine is that you, you uphold your leadership. That's Mormon doctrine. That's part of being a good Mormon is you, you are supportive of your leadership whether it's kings, presidents, rulers or whatever it is, you are supportive. And to oppose them is just, just not in the doctrine.

WHAT DID IT MEAN FOR DELTA?

Well, it wasn't just us protesting or it probably would have been, I mean it would have really been. Milford down the road from us was very supportive of it. They just begged them to come in. They were traditionally a railroad town and the railroad didn't stop there any more and they were in bad economic trouble. And they felt that that would bail them out. That's the scary thing, that people will, will make those kind of tradeoffs. But we weren't the only ones protesting. This seemed to become a focal spot, I really don't know why. But there was large groups in Salt Lake and Cedar City and St. George and Las Vegas, all around the fringes of it. There were, you know, many groups of people protesting. So.

DID UTAHANS THINK THE REST OF THE COUNTRY WAS FORCING THEM INTO ACCEPTING IT?

Yup. We, in Utah we definitely felt that the rest of the nation considered us too insignificant to even give a second thought to what it might do to us. Just take this and be glad.

IN SUMMER OF 1980 DID YOU THINK REAGAN WAS OPPOSED TO THE SYSTEM?

That was, I remember as...as we watched the political scene, we were always trying to, you know, to read which, which political leaders or potential political leaders, how their views would be on that. And I don't really remember if I, if I gave much thought to what Reagan wanted. Because I felt that it was going to be in Congress and it was going to be more important in the Senate and the Congress.

ASKS HER REACTION TO OCT. 2ND WHEN HE ANNOUNCED HE WOULD CANCEL IT.

I think we all just gave a big sigh of relief. And...but earlier on, you know, we really felt it was going down. It was just a matter of time for the announcement, it was winding down. But...and we were so exhausted. So exhausted.

DID SHE FEEL ELATED AT VICTORY?

Well you can always feel a sense of elation when the small is able to stand up to the big and be successful. And our government has become so top heavy and so dictatorial that it was a nice feeling, that the small person, the citizenry, could still have a say. Because you don't always get that sense of the feeling anymore.

ASKS LESSONS SHE DRAWS FROM IT.

Oh I think the lesson we learned from it is, is our rights still work. I think, I think they would, the Air Force, the government, whoever, would like to put out the word that they cancelled it on their own accord, that they found out it wasn't exactly what they wanted. But I don't believe that. I think it was the protest that did it.

IF REAGAN HAD NOT CANCELLED IT, WOULD IT HAVE BEEN IMPLEMENTED?

I always had the feeling that even if we were you know, totally beat down and they went ahead with the system, it would never be completed. I was just thoroughly convinced that it was going to take too long and if what the former employees were saying about the soil studies was true, they were going to run into all kinds of problems out there that were going to have to require all kinds of moder...you know, modifications and changes and I just never envisioned it would ever have been finished. Ever. And in the meantime they would have set back mining and, and probably wiped out a lot of ranchers and sheepmen because they would not have had access to the desert. They would set the country back economically. If your country is hungry, and your country is on their knees, it doesn't matter how many missiles you have. Because people worry more about being fed. And that project would have really economically devastated the United States. When, when you talk about a whole mountain range which is, we have large mountain ranges here, that it would require that much gravel, and then you have to think of cement to go along with it. And where do you get the water to mix all this stuff? And if it was going to be on the train track, where do you get all the steel for these miles and miles and miles of train track? I mean it would have been, economically it would have killed them. And it wouldn't have mattered if they'd had a missile in everybody's back yard. If they were hungry they wouldn't have cared.

CITES AIR FORCE STUDIES PRIOR TO THIS DECISION. WHO ARE YOU TO OPPOSE THE SYSTEM THEN?

If the Air Force had their best minds working on this and this was the best that they could come up with, that's scary, that's absolutely scary. Because it is a ridiculous system and the reason why we could protest and feel good about it is because this is our desert, we have spent generations on this desert. The Air Force, some of them were seeing it for the first time. So they knew nothing about what they were talking about, about the terrain.

ASKS HOW SHE FELT ABOUT DIFFERENT BASING MODES.

Well it was interesting that the greatest minds had supposedly come up with this concept and then they continually changed it. They were going to pop them out of the ground, they were going to have them on trucks, and they were going to have them on trains and it was going to be a railroad track, and then it wasn't going to be a railroad track, it was going to be on the trucks. And they, you know, were continually changing their ideas. It kind of gave you a clue that they were a little worried about what they were actually doing.

REPEATS QUESTION.

It was interesting that the greatest minds had come up with this racetrack idea but then they continually changed it. They were going to pop them out of the ground and then they were going to have underground silos and they were going to have... on railroad tracks or on trucks. And they just kept continually changing. Which of course gave us hope because we could see that they were running into problems and they were trying to modify.

WERE THE BASING MODES RIDICULOUS?

Yeah they just got worse and worse, it was just wonderful. They were so bad. The basing modes just...We finally realized that what was really going to be the teller of the tale was the humor out of this thing. So we finally started working on the humor aspect and I think that was a big help in its demise.

WHAT WAS SO HUMOROUS?

Well, you know, you get to a point where all you can do is laugh. Everything is so bad that all you can laugh. Everything is so bad that all you can do is laugh. But cartoonists started picking up on it and doing some real fun things.

WHAT WAS FUNNY?

Well they...I can't think of any right off but political cartoonists were doing great things. I have a book at home…

WHAT DID PEOPLE FIND FUNNY ABOUT IT?

Well it was, how do you describe it? It wasn't really funny, funny. It was just ridiculous and you started playing off of the ridiculous.

WHAT WAS RIDICULOUS? THEY DISCUSS.

Well Barry did such a good cartoon on the dense pack, you know, putting them all like a six-pack and calling it the dense pack. And there was a cartoonist out of Cedar City that did wonderful things, but I can't think of any of the specifics right off.

ASKS ABOUT WASHINGTON PHONE CALL.

I was in Washington, D.C., at, in March, I go every year in March to our convention. And while I was gone my foster daughter and her family were living at my house. And she received a phone call, an anonymous phone call. The man was looking for me and she told him the he could reach me there. And he said well he would just tell her some things and she kept saying, well you ought to call her. But anyway he went into great detail about how he had been involved in the concept from the start and it must be stopped. It was ridiculous, it wouldn't work. But he could not do it himself because he would be just, you know, they would discredit him. And so he wouldn't get any...I mean it wouldn't serve any purpose. And I never thought it was a crank call because a lot of the things that she took notes on that he talked about was not really public yet. It was later that these things became more and more public and then I referred back to those notes of what she'd given me. And so I'm sure it was a legitimate call but he never called back and I have no idea of who it was.

WHAT WAS HE TRYING TO TELL YOU?

Just, he just said, tell her to keep fighting. He kept saying, tell her to keep fighting, it's got to be stopped. He said "I've been in on it from the start, it won't work, it's ridiculous, it's just ludicrous. Tell her to keep fighting. Tell them to keep fighting."