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- [00:00]
Zach Goldbaum
Wondry subscribers can listen to new episodes of Lawless Planet early and ad free right now. Join Wondry in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts. Early in the morning on March 1, 1954, the residents of a remote Pacific island atoll called Rongelap were awakened by a blinding white light. The ground shook, the walls rattled, and the Rongelapis looked out their windows to see a gigantic mushroom cloud on the horizon, seven miles wide and 47,000ft high. Then it began to snow. It fell on the tongues of giddy children who had heard stories of snow from visiting Westerners. What the Rongelapese didn't know was that the flakes that blanketed their land were of course, not snow at all, but pulverized radioactive coral. It had been blasted into the sky by a 15 megaton hydrogen bomb detonated on nearby Bikini Atoll, less than 100 miles away, a thousand times larger than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. No one had worn the Rungelapis, but the Americans had just carried out a nuclear test called Castle Bravo. Within days, the islanders experienced vomiting, diarrhea and skin burns. Then came hair loss, deformities, miscarriages, stillbirths, cancer and other long term health defects. The most common, jellyfish babies. Infants born with no bones and translucent skin. They would die within a day or two. The United States had briefly evacuated the residents, then sent them home once they declared the island to be safe for decades, the islanders begged the US to move them elsewhere, but the United States refused. After nearly three decades of waiting, the population's only political representative, Senator Jetton Anjujain, turned to an unlikely ally. The fledgling seafaring environmentalists of Greenpeace.
- [02:27]
Bunny McDiarmid
My name is Bunny McDiamid. I spent most of my professional life working for the Greenpeace organization, starting as a deckhand on the Rainbow Warrior.
- [02:41]
Zach Goldbaum
The Rainbow Warrior was an old trawler built in 1957. It was the first boat that Greenpeace owned and operated itself. And at the end of 1984, when Bunny was in her mid-20s, the boat became her home.
- [02:55]
Bunny McDiarmid
If I close my eyes, I can still smell the tar on the deck when the sun is really shining.
- [03:02]
Zach Goldbaum
At the time, Greenpeace was engaged in daring escapades on the high seas to battle things like pollution and commercial whaling. And now Bunny and her crew were spearheading a series of anti nuclear actions across the Pacific that would bring the group even more notoriety. Their newest was Operation Exodus.
- [03:22]
Bunny McDiarmid
Greenpeace had never done anything like this before. Most of the kind of actions that Greenpeace did was putting ourselves in the way of some harm to try and stop it and tell a story about why it was wrong that it was happening. But to move a whole community out in the middle of the Pacific and to go against the US which was one of the nuclear superpowers at the time, was a brave thing for their senator to ask to do. And in the Marshalls, like in many Pacific countries, land is like your middle name. It's your identifier. It's where you come from. Everyone has a right to live there. It's an extraordinary thing to do. To agree to give up your land, it's like giving up part of your soul. In the Marshalls, they say if your land goes, your spirit goes too. So it was a big deal.
- [04:17]
Zach Goldbaum
On May 17, Bunny and the crew of the Rainbow Warrior approached the island.
- [04:22]
Bunny McDiarmid
It's beautiful. It's like an idyllic Pacific island. It's an atoll, so it's got lots and lots of small islands that surround a massive lagoon. And when we arrived into this huge lagoon, there was a small motorboat that came out to meet us with a lot of the older women on it. And one of them was holding up a small handkerchief that had written on it, we love the future of our kids.
- [04:52]
Zach Goldbaum
The Rongelapese had already begun disassembling their homes. Tin roofs, plywood floors, everything. The crew of the Rainbow Warrior loaded their inflatable dinghies with nearly the entire contents of the island. 100 tons of wood, corrugated metal, and other materials they would need to rebuild. They moved 304 people in total, hoisting ailing women with thyroid scars and children with deformed limbs onto the ship.
- [05:21]
Bunny McDiarmid
We packed the Warrior to the gills, loaded. I'm not sure we'd get away with doing it today. On one trip, probably over 100 people and people were camped out in the alleyways, on the aft deck, on the fore deck, in all our cabins. It was like, okay, here we go. Let's make it happen.
- [05:45]
Zach Goldbaum
The Rainbow Warrior traveled from Rongelap to another atoll a little over 100 miles away that Greenpeace had negotiated with to absorb the Rongelapis. It took three round trips to evacuate everyone and everything. When Operation Exodus was complete, Senator Engine thanked the activists and said, we, we will build ourselves a new home together where we can live in peace. It was a life altering experience for the 12 members of Bunny's Greenpeace crew. But there was little time to process it or celebrate with the Rongelapese. They needed to dock for a few weeks in New Zealand to get ready for their next mission.
- [06:26]
Bunny McDiarmid
And I can remember as we got closer to New Zealand, sailing down the coast. It was nighttime, I was on a night watch, and I could smell the land. I could smell New Zealand, which was beautiful to me.
- [06:43]
Zach Goldbaum
They were preparing to wage their biggest battle yet against nuclear testing. But unlike Operation Exodus, this leg of their journey would not end in triumph, but in tragedy. The Rainbow Warrior was about to set sail for the last time from Wondery. I'm Zach Goldbaum, and this is Lawless Planet. Each week we tell a new story about the true crimes fueling the climate crisis and the people fighting to save the planet or destroy it. She called me and she said, there's been a fire and an explosion on board the ship and it's sunk at the dock. Come. Greenpeace is probably the most recognizable environmental advocacy group on the planet. And with a footprint in over 55 countries, they're also one of the biggest. The organization has a long history of successful direct action protest. But their work has made them a lot of enemies. For the past few years, they've faced a dizzying number of lawsuits. Big ones, too. Shell sued them for 9 million in damages. A Canadian logging company wanted 100 million. And recently, the Texas fossil fuel billionaire behind the Dakota Access pipeline sued Greenpeace usa, alleging that they destroyed property and defamed the company. That CEO once said that environmentalists should be wiped out of the gene pool. But his lawsuit was successful and a jury decided that Greenpeace USA was liable for $660 million in damages. It has put the future of the organization in jeopardy. This week, we're bringing you a story about another chapter in the organization's history, when they faced a different kind of attack. And it all begins at 8pm on July 10, 1985. A gray inflatable Zodiac dinghy glides into a wharf in Auckland, New Sea, New Zealand, piloted by two men in sailing jackets. The captain turns off the engine and the boat drifts silently into the harbor. They unzip their jackets and underneath they're wearing black wetsuits. They scan the shore, then jump overboard and disappear underwater. Just up the coastal road, a small group of guys have gathered for a neighborhood watch. There's a boat thief terrorizing the wharf, and these vigilantes are committed to finding the culprit. One of the guys notices the dinghy bobbing unattended in the harbor. It's a nice looking boat and the group jokes that if the owner doesn't come back soon, it'll be theirs. About an hour later, a pair from the neighborhood watch is patrolling the dock when they clock the dinghy again. This time, the men in the sailing jackets are back on board, and they're cruising toward a boat ramp under the causeway. There's a Toyota camper van waiting for them, flashing its lights. The men drag the dinghy up the ramp, unload it with the help of the driver, and speed off. As the van heads toward downtown Auckland, the night watch jots down a license plate number. He thinks to himself, is this it? After weeks of tedious patrols, did he finally catch the boat thief? There's another boat in the harbor that night. Greenpeace's flagship, the Rainbow Warrior.
- [10:52]
Bunny McDiarmid
It was cold. It was really cold winter day. I remember it was a working day on the ship. So people were doing various different things that needed to be done to get the ship ready to leave again to go to French Polynesia.
- [11:08]
Zach Goldbaum
In just a few hours, the Rainbow Warrior will set sail for Muroroa. It's a tiny, uninhabited atoll in the South Pacific, known here as the island of big secrets. Since 1966, France has been using Muroroa as its own nuclear testing playground, destroying marine life and sending radioactive fallout across scores of neighboring islands. But the crew of the Rainbow Warrior have a plan to stop it.
- [11:36]
Bunny McDiarmid
When I joined the Warrior, she was still a motorboat, and we were turning the boat from a motorboat into a sailing boat.
- [11:43]
Zach Goldbaum
With the new and improved Rainbow Warrior, Greenpeace could pester the French for months on end. As long as the Rainbow Warrior was present, the French couldn't test their bombs. The crew was scrappy and determined. There was Martini Gauche, the calm and lanky Dutch first mate Steve Sawyer, the brains behind the Rongelap evacuation and the campaign director for the forthcoming Pacific protests. And Fernando Pereira, a handsome Portuguese photographer who was there to document the actions and broadcast them to the world. And the Rainbow Warrior wasn't the only ship preparing for the protest voyage to Mururoa that night.
- [12:22]
Bunny McDiarmid
The flotilla were all private citizens. You know, a protest at sea was a really powerful signal, and in this case, it was to stop the French testing. And there was a meeting in the evening of some of the flotilla skippers.
- [12:39]
Zach Goldbaum
Around seven other ships would set sail alongside the Rainbow Warrior. For each boat that joined the cause, the French would need to divert an entire warship and platoons of soldiers. When the meeting ends, the mood turns celebratory, not only because of the excitement of the upcoming action and the successful rongelap exodus, but of the because. But because it was crew member Steve Sawyer's birthday, so in the evening there.
- [13:03]
Bunny McDiarmid
Was a bit of a party, not a huge riotous one, for Steve's birthday.
- [13:10]
Zach Goldbaum
The crew of the Rainbow Warrior gathers in the mess hall singing Happy Birthday. In the center of the room is a cake. On it, jelly beans arranged in a rainbow.
- [13:21]
Bunny McDiarmid
It was generally an upbeat, exciting sense of anticipation about the next stage of the campaign. And I left around 10:30 and we went to stay with my parents.
- [13:36]
Zach Goldbaum
Less than two hours later, the ship's captain says goodnight to the crew members still drinking in the mess hall. He heads to his room. It's almost midnight and first mate Martini Gauche is finishing his last beer of the night.
- [13:50]
Martini Gauche
I was in a mess room which is situated above the entry room and we were a couple of people. It wasn't really very busy.
- [14:01]
Zach Goldbaum
Suddenly Martini hears a blast.
- [14:06]
Martini Gauche
Light started flickering and all that business and it gets dark and I was first up on the deck and you could see, you know, the boat was leaning and it wasn't right. I went back inside to checked cabins. The water came from everywhere.
- [14:24]
Zach Goldbaum
The crew scrambles off the ship, but three people from the mess hall stay on board to make sure all of the cabins are clear. Martini and the ship's doctor head below deck, helping others evacuate. Photographer Fernando Pereira runs toward his cabin to grab his camera. Then another explosion rips through the hull.
- [14:48]
Bunny McDiarmid
I got woken up about 1:30, I think, 2:00 clock at my parents place. It was Martini, our first mate, calling us to tell us that the boat was sunk and Fernando was missing.
- [15:02]
Zach Goldbaum
By the time Bunny had arrived at Marston Wharf, the Rainbow Warrior was already at the bottom of the harbor with its bow jutting out of the water. As the crew paced the dock, their photographer was still missing. Reality began to set in. Fernando Pereira had drowned.
- [15:22]
Bunny McDiarmid
He was a father, he had two kids, a son and a daughter who were young and who he adored and talked about a lot. And he was very easygoing, charming young man who was really good at his job, took lots of really beautiful photographs and was committed to what Greenpeace was doing. But he certainly didn't want to die for it.
- [15:48]
Zach Goldbaum
The next day, the Rainbow warriors crew was still in a state of shock.
- [15:53]
Bunny McDiarmid
Everyone was trying to figure out what the hell happened, you know, how was it something that happened inside the ship? We had three engineers on board and all of them were racking their brains about what. Was there anything inside the engine room that could have made such an explosion?
- [16:12]
Zach Goldbaum
The press is already speculating wildly about suspects, anarchists, corporate sabotage, Canadians who Greenpeace had clashed with over the culling of Nova Scotia's seal pups. The Soviet Union who had battled Greenpeace's anti whaling campaigners. Was the CIA involved in connection to the Rainbow warriors actions on rongelap? Or, as one reporter asks, Greenpeace activist Steve Sawyer, could, could have been the target of Greenpeace's upcoming campaign. And they said, do you think it was the franchise? Couldn't have been the franchise. They wouldn't be that stupid. The Auckland Police Department has no murder squad, no bomb squad, and the closest thing they have to a digital database is a deputy named Glenda who claims to have a photographic memory. But after the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior and the death of Fernando Pereira, they assign the best investigator they've got. Detective Superintendent Alan Galbraith. A deadpan former beat cop with heavyset eyes and close cropped hair, Galbraith spent his career as a narcotics officer in Wellington, New Zealand, where he focused on things like stopping party drugs from entering by way of Thailand. Now he was about to lead a sprawling homicide case with international implications.
- [17:29]
Bunny McDiarmid
This was something that actually happened to New Zealand, not just to Greenpeace. So it felt, New Zealanders felt like it happened to them. The Prime Minister in New Zealand at the time was a man called David Lange, who was a kind of brilliant orator. He really had the gift of the gap.
- [17:50]
Zach Goldbaum
Within hours, Prime Minister David Lange calls a press conference. Longi's a stocky, jovial looking guy with big Coke bottle glasses, but right now he is pissed. He announces the attack was a major criminal act with political or terrorist overtones. For New Zealand, this event is unprecedented. The country consistently ranks as one of the most peaceful on earth. So who was behind this? As Galbraith converts one of the floors of police headquarters into a command center, the weight of the task begins to set in. But he catches an early break. A tip has come in with a license plate number of a white Toyota campervan that may have picked up the bombers. It's 8:30am on Friday, July 12, less than two days since the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior. Becky Hayter is working reception at a rental car company at Auckland International Airport when a pair of honeymooners from Switzerland show up. They say they want to return their vehicle early and would like a refund of $130 for the unused days on their reservation. They are cutting their honeymoon short. Becky starts going through the standard refund paperwork she's done hundreds of times. But when she enters their vehicle information, she stops short. The night Before, a detective from the Auckland Police Department had called her at her home asking to let him know if that very car had been returned. She politely asked the honeymooners to excuse her. She needs to call her manager to approve the refund. But once she's in the back, she phones the Auckland police instead. They tell Becky, whatever you do, do not let the honeymooners leave. Two officers are on the way, but it's morning rush hour. They may take a while. Becky returns with a stack of paperwork. She kills time by asking the honeymooners about their holiday. She offers them coffee. She says refunds are a bit complicated, but please bear with her. Shouldn't take long. But it does. It has to be. The honeymooners are getting increasingly impatient. They're on the verge of leaving their deposit behind when two plainclothes officers finally arrive. They sidle up to the couple and ask their names. The honeymooners tense up. Why do you want to know? Asks the man. Then the officer shows him his badge. Don't worry, he says. We just want to ask you a few questions. That afternoon at Auckland Police headquarters, the honeymooners sit in a small pastel colored office, empty except for a table and four chairs. Detective Alan Galbraith's team confronts the honeymooners with the information that they'd been seen helping the man with the dinghy. The honeymooners insist the man was simply a stranger. After 14 hours, Galbraith enters the interrogation room and tells the honeymooners he cannot hold them any longer. He seems embarrassed and apologizes profusely for wasting their time. Galbraith offers the pair a motel room near the airport ahead of their flight, paid for by the Auckland police for their troubles that night. Detective Galbraith attempts to listen to every word the honeymooners say. He's bugged the room. Now, they don't say much, but they do make a couple suspicious phone calls. And the names they use inside the hotel room do not match their passports. Galbraith comes to find that they had entered the country with fraudulent documents and that gives him enough ammunition to hold and charge them. But Galbraith's case is incomplete. Even though the couple was placed at the scene, they were never seen in the water and could not have planted the bombs themselves. So Galbraith knows they did not act alone. And when he traces the call they made from their motel room, he makes a startling discovery. The number they were calling was in France and it belonged to the French Secret service. As detectives investigating the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior set their sights on the French, the ship's crew suddenly found themselves in the center of a media firestorm.
- [22:47]
Bunny McDiarmid
The news on the television and the radio was constant. So it was like living in this oppressive sort of atmosphere. I mean, it's a fascinating story. It's tragic, it's criminal, it's state terrorism, it's murder. And it's also a story of a small country's dogged policeman who just refused to give up.
- [23:17]
Zach Goldbaum
The plan to bomb the Rainbow Warrior was set in motion four months earlier by the French, but not for the reasons you might think. On Tahiti, the fallout from French nuclear testing has resulted in cancer deformities and death and is fueling a growing protest movement. So a few weeks later, on March 4, 1985, four months before the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior, the head of France's nuclear testing program presents a dossier to the Minister of Defense. It contains information culled from intercepted letters in Tahiti. Greenpeace is planning a protest campaign. And they won't be alone. Five boats intend to prevent France's next round of nuclear tests from taking place. Among them, Polynesian independence activists. So why is the almighty French government afraid of a little protest flotillation? Well, it isn't just because they wanted their nuclear tests to continue unimpeded. They're terrified that the Greenpeace voyage will incite revolutionaries across their Pacific territories. French Polynesia, a patchwork of 121 islands and atolls, is a crucial part of the empire. They offer trade routes, naval bases, and economic exploitation of the island's resources. Maintaining control of these far flung outposts is vital to French interests. And now Greenpeace has given the disparate groups from these islands common cause. To President Micherin and his government, this band of hippies and misfits represents an existential threat. They have to be stopped. And to do that, the French secret service needs someone on the inside. On April 24, 1985, three months before the bombing, a woman calls the Greenpeace offices from a youth hostel in Auckland and asks if they need volunteers. She's a French geologist named Frederic Banloo, and her timing is fortuitous. Greenpeace is protesting the French government, so they need the help of a native French speaker. Banlieu's French skills may be helpful for Greenpeace's letter writing campaign, but she doesn't do much else to win friends around the office. She's a loner who often wanders the harbor map in hand. But it turns out Banlieu is neither lost nor aloof. She isn't even Frederic Banloo in fact, she's a spy for the French secret Service. Frederic Banlieue isn't with Greenpeace long before she packs up and leaves, she tells people she's heading to an archaeological dig. On June 28, just under two weeks before the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior, a 38 foot single masted sailboat called the Uvea approaches a city in the north of New Zealand. On board, a crew of four Frenchmen in tow, a Zodiac dinghy. As it pulls into port, the sailboat immediately crashes into a sandbar. The crew had been given a map by none other than Frederic Banlieu, but they'd seen nothing about a sandbar. They stop in town to have a sit down meal at a pizza place. The owner asked the foreigners if they could sign her guest book. Among notes complimenting her pizza and particularly their famous Polynesian slice, there's a full page entry that does not talk about food at all. The author brags about his heroic journey at sea. It is signed Xavier Maniguet, the real name of yet another member of French intelligence. The next day, the crew of the Uvea set sail for Auckland. But their troubles aren't over yet. They encounter a customs official at a routine immigration check. The sailors produce perfect uncreased passports. The customs officials instincts tell him something is amiss. He boards, but he doesn't discover anything to prevent them from docking. So the bedraggled crew of the Ovea is allowed to disembark and head to their next stop, a Motel 6. That evening, a Maori cleaning lady walks into room 1A and is surprised to see this group of four Frenchmen crammed in with two guests she'd met earlier, the honeymooners. By the time the Rainbow Warrior blows up a week later, the French have left a trail of clues and witnesses that would be a gift for any good detective.
- [28:03]
Bunny McDiarmid
The French treated New Zealand like it was this little Pacific backwater and they could just do whatever they liked and no one would really notice. Well, people noticed. People noticed these things that were out of the ordinary and it really helped the police kind of put things together. And slowly the French connection became more and more obvious.
- [28:26]
Zach Goldbaum
After Detective Alan Galbraith announces the homicide investigation, a flurry of tips come into the office. His team can barely handle them all. One call stands out. A customs officer who had reported a suspicious boat called the Uvea. Detective Galbraith interviews the customs official. People from the Greenpeace office, the restaurant owner, the housekeeper. The dominoes are beginning to fall, and there are a staggering amount of dominoes. But by the time he tracks down the Uvea, he learns it departed on July 9, the day before the bombing. Galbraith raises the alarm and within a few hours the Royal New Zealand Air Force takes off into the Pacific to find it. The yacht turns up three days after the bombing on Norfolk island, about half the distance from New Zealand to Australia. A team of New Zealand detectives fly there to interview the four man crew. They're interrogated at length while the Air Force scours the ship looking for clues.
- [29:32]
Bunny McDiarmid
The New Zealand police, together with the Australians, couldn't find a way to hold the Uvea longer in Norfolk island and so it left Norfolk Island.
- [29:44]
Zach Goldbaum
Then the smoking gun. The results of the search of the Uvea returned from the Auckland crime lab with traces of plastic explosives. The Auckland Police Department believe they found the boat that delivered delivered the weapons. But their evidence has taken off into the ocean and is getting further with each passing moment. Galbraith convinces the Royal New Zealand Air Force to send a surveillance aircraft out into the Pacific to track down the yacht. But it seems to have vanished into thin air. Later, Galbraith will learn that the crew deliberately sunk the ship deep in the middle of the Pacific. The four French agents disembarked from their sinking ship and were retrieved by a French submarine. Then they vanished. So while Galbraith could connect the Uvea to the honeymooners, there was still one missing who had planted the bombs.
- [30:44]
Bunny McDiarmid
The cops were really decent. They were really decent to us. They were kind and they got on with doing their job. They got no help from anyone outside of New Zealand. The Nuclear Powers Club just closed ranks. I can remember the US Secretary to the UN at the time said it couldn't be called terrorism because they didn't mean to hurt anyone. And then the French tried to cover it up, but that was all bullshit.
- [31:17]
Zach Goldbaum
Meanwhile, the French claim they have nothing to do with the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior, releasing a statement that reads the French government does not deal with its opponents in such ways. It's the beginning of a cover up. It's early September 1985, roughly two months after the bombing, and a scandal is unfolding at the Elysee Palace. President Francois Mitterrand sits behind his desk and opens Le Mans, the country's most influential newspaper. There's a dogged young investigative journalist with sources inside the palace named Eduit Pleinel. He's becoming a thorn in Mitterrand's side, publishing daily reports about the bombing. His articles are paired with political cartoons, making a mockery of Mitterrand's entire security apparatus. The all powerful French military looks like the keystone cops. To make matters worse, they're being humiliated by a police force in a tiny country that the French thumbed their noses at to quell the simmering crisis. Mitterrand's administration admits that that the Honeymooners had been in New Zealand collecting intelligence on Greenpeace, but they were not involved in the bombing. Inconvenient timing, nothing more. But New Zealand's Prime Minister David Lange is not convinced.
- [32:49]
David Lange
I think that there is in fact a little bomb ticking away for the French administration and the sands of time are running out. There are other pieces of evidence which will come out.
- [33:02]
Zach Goldbaum
Late in the night on September 16, 1985, French investigative journalist Eduis Plesnel is sitting across from his bosses. They are signing off on Plesnel's bombshell report before it goes to print. So far, two teams of French intelligence agents have been identified by investigators. The crew of the Uvea and the Honeymooners. Still missing an attack team who could have planted the bombs. But the next morning, the COVID of Le Mans goes to press with the headline Rainbow Warrior was sunk by a third team of French military. Now that Plesnel had revealed the names of the men who steered the dinghy into the harbor that night, the French government can no longer deny the obvious. They had been involved. But the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior in the fall of 1985. L' affaire Greenpeace is the biggest story in France. It threatens to take down Mitterrand's entire administration. Mitterrand had fallen prey to a sort of Cold War mania. His predecessor had once said that France could never lose le grandeur. He meant that they simply could not exist if they were not a world superpower. And in the nuclear age, Mitterran believed that having one of the world's greatest arsenals of nukes ensured that power. But for Mitterran, clinging to that civilization, destroying weaponry was now hastening his demise. Even the Wall Street Journal ran the Bomb that sank Rainbow Warrior Threatens to SINK French Regiment regime Something drastic had to be done before Mitterran's government collapsed. 48 hours after Planell's story hits newsstands, Mitterran's Minister of Defense and the head of his secret service are fired. Then, two and a half months after the bombing, on September 22, 1985, 200 journalists gather around French Prime Minister Laurent Fabius, the second most powerful person in France behind the President Mitterrand. The mood is somber. Television cameras point in his direction. The truth about this affair is cruel, he says, but it is essential that it be clearly and thoroughly established. Agents of the French Secret Service sank this boat. They acted on orders. This does not quell New Zealand Prime Minister David Langhi's fury.
- [35:50]
David Lange
It is all inconceivably unacceptable behaviour.
- [35:56]
Martini Gauche
How would you describe relations between France.
- [35:59]
Zach Goldbaum
And New Zealand now?
- [36:00]
David Lange
Well, they were good until recently. But now, of course, with this acknowledgement by France that it's in France, spies to our sovereign country, the relationship is bad.
- [36:09]
Zach Goldbaum
By their unilateral act, Lange's government sees an opportunity.
- [36:15]
Bunny McDiarmid
Amidst the chaos, the movement for stopping nuclear testing, at least in the environment and in French Polynesia, grew. And it was kind of unstoppable. It was already a global movement, the nuclear disarmament movement. But the bombing of the Warrior ensured that New Zealand passed nuclear free legislation. So that's the only silver lining in all of this, really.
- [36:42]
Zach Goldbaum
Longi gathers the nations of the South Pacific Forum, New Zealand, Cook Islands, Australia, Western Samoa and others. They sign the historic Rarotonga Treaty and the South Pacific Nuclear Free Treaty which banned the use of nuclear explosives and the dumping of radioactive waste in the Pacific. The concept of a nuclear free zone had been raised two years prior, but the Rainbow Warrior incident added renewed urgency.
- [37:09]
Bunny McDiarmid
I feel very proud that New Zealand did that and has stood by it for as long as they have.
- [37:17]
Zach Goldbaum
But not everyone in the Pacific joined. No French territories were permitted to sign. Same goes for the three island nations under American influence, including the Marshall Islands, home of Senator Angine and the Rongelapese. The treaty was a massive victory, but it came at a cost. Photographer Fernando Pereira was gone and the Rainbow Warrior was irreparable. It was transported to a nearby bay and scuttled. Today it's a diving site and fish sanctuary. The story amongst all the French agents has remained consistent. The first bomb was intended to clear the ship of passengers. The second was to sink the ship. We may never know the truth, but what we do know is that the French did everything in their power to protect their spies. The Honeymooners were imprisoned briefly before New Zealand was pressured to remand them into French custody. They served less than two years in prison before they were released and were the only part of the bombing team to face any sort of justice for the murder of Fernando Pereira.
- [38:27]
Bunny McDiarmid
I don't abide by this. While they were soldiers, they were just following orders. I still think you're a human being. You still make a decision if this is the right thing to do or not. And they decided to put a really powerful bomb on the side of a ship with people on board it in the middle of the night. So I don't forgive those guys for what they did.
- [38:54]
Zach Goldbaum
In 1987, Greenpeace won an $8 million settlement with the French government and received an outpouring of international support and hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations. For another decade, Greenpeace kept protesting French nuclear tests. They regularly clashed with the French navy, had their equipment confiscated and their crews arrested. Then in 1992, after Greenpeace's activism bubbled over into six months of protests in France, French President Francois Materrand announced the suspension of France's nuclear testing program. Greenpeace had won.
- [39:41]
Bunny McDiarmid
It was a huge relief, not just for Greenpeace, but for the Pacific community in Tahiti, the communities all across the Pacific that had waged an anti nuclear campaign for many, many years.
- [40:01]
Zach Goldbaum
But for all of its victories, the the future of Greenpeace and frankly, a lot of environmental activism is pretty uncertain. Governments and big business are finding new ways to criminalize and penalize environmental activism just when it's needed most. And now, with Greenpeace USA on the hook for over half a billion dollars in damages in relation to their protests of the Dakota Access Pipeline, the entire movement may be in jeopardy.
- [40:30]
Bunny McDiarmid
I take heart in the fact that Greenpeace is an idea and that's impossible to kill with a lawsuit.
- [40:40]
Zach Goldbaum
I want to ask you one last question. What, what advice would you have for people who are feeling hopeless about the fight to save the planet?
- [40:52]
Bunny McDiarmid
Yeah, I was going to make me cry. There's enough good people out there to make a difference. There's enough people that recognize that we are part of nature, we're not separate. And there's a mori, which is the indigenous people of New Zealand saying that says, I am the river and the river is me. And I think there's enough people that recognize that and recognise the connection and will continue to fight for it. There's enough people who will never give up. There's always someone, someone in a crowd who will put their hand up and say, I disagree, and someone else will choose to stand with them.
- [42:14]
Zach Goldbaum
On the next episode of Lawless Planet. When an illness once thought to be eradicated in the US is discovered in Alabama, one woman takes the fight for environmental justice to the White House.
- [42:26]
Bunny McDiarmid
I'm a black female in America. I've overcome lots and I will continue to overcome.
- [42:33]
Zach Goldbaum
For today's episode, we relied heavily on Death of the Rainbow Warrior by Michael King and Rainbow Warrior by the Sunday Times Insight team. Also, thank you to the Pacific Media center for Steve Sawyer and Martini Gautier's interviews. Lawless Planet is written, produced and hosted by me, Zach Goldbaum. Our Senior Producer and Senior Story Editor is Derek John. Senior producers for Wondry are Andy Herman and Mandy Korenstein. Our senior Managing Producer is Nick Ryan. Our Managing Producer is Sarah Kenny Corrigan Our Associate Producer is Lexi Perry Sound design by Kyle Randall music by Kenny Kuziak. Our music Supervisor advisor is Scott Velasquez for Farzan Sync Fact checking by Brian Poignant Our legal counsel is Deb Droze. Executive producers are Marshall Louie, Aaron o', Flaherty, n' Jeri Eaton and Jenny Lauer. Beckman for wondering. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week. Wondry Follow Lawless Planet on the Wondry app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to new episodes of Lawless Planet early and ad free right now by joining Wondry plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey@wondry.com survey.