KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Catholic priest Paul Kabat testified Wednesday he and three fellow defendants are patriots for damaging a Minuteman 2 missile silo last November with a jackhammer.
A second defendant, Helen Woodson, drew loud applause from the gallery when she denounced the trial as an extension of nuclear arms violence and said, 'I'm withdrawing my active participation in these proceedings.'
Kabat, 46; his brother, the Rev. Carl Kabat, 51; Catholic lay worker Woodson, 41, and Indian activist Larry Cloud Morgan, 46, are on trial on counts of conspiracy, destruction of government property, destruction of property with the intent to injure, interfering with the national defense and trespassing for the Nov. 12, 1984m break-in at the western Missouri missile site.
The defendants call themselves the Silo Pruning Hooks, a reference to the biblical mandate to 'beat swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks.' They have refused use of lawyers and said their defense would be based entirely upon conscience and the right to civil disobedience.
They face a possible sentence of more than 25 years in prison and $33,500 in fines.
Assistant U.S. Attorney General Robert Ulrich called a parade of witnesses -- many of them military men -- in support of the indictment.
Among them was 1st Lt. Craig Lymus, who is responsible for monitoring the security equipment at the silo.
'Brother,' Carl Kabot said during cross examination, 'Do you know what would happen if you obeyed the order to launch?'
'The missile would launch,' Lymus responded. 'And when it landed, presumably there would be a nuclear detonation.'
'How many would be killed?'
'I don't know that. I've never known that.'
'You know, however, that the missile is 98 times more powerful than the one dropped on Hiroshima.'
'Yes,' Lymus said. 'I know that.'
In his opening statement to the jury, Kabat said the issue was not the fact that the four had damaged the silo, but rather their intent.
'If you saw children playing with a loaded revolver, you would intervene and take away the revolver so that they would not hurt themselves,' he said. 'That is what we were doing. Our intent was based upon our religion, our moral and ethical background.'
Kabat told the jury they must 'decide whether we are criminals or patriots like George Washington and those at the Boston Tea Party.'
'The U.S. calls us criminals,' he said, 'but we are patriots.'
Federal prosecutors interrupted Kabat's statement three times with objections, but U.S. District Judge Brook Bartlett allowed the defendant to continue.
Trial testimony began after three days of rallies and demonstrations by supporters that have resulted in at least six arrests and two other attempted break-ins at missile silos.
Outside the courtroom Wednesday supporters burned copies of the indictments and other court documents, then used the ashes to mark crosses upon their foreheads.
The charges stem from a Nov. 12, 1984, invasion by the four of Minuteman Missile Silo N5, located in a cornfield about 35 miles east of Kansas City.
