Biography
Barbara Katt was a painter and peace activist in Bemidji, Minnesota who on August 10, 1984 walked into the Sperry Defense Systems plant at Eagan, Minnesota with John LaForge and used household hammers to damage two prototype guidance computers intended for Trident submarines and F-4G aircraft, poured blood over the equipment and delivered a citizens indictment accusing the company of violating international law. They remained at the scene and were arrested. A jury convicted them on October 11, 1984 of felony destruction of government property, and on November 8 Judge Miles W. Lord suspended the entire six-month sentence in favour of six months of unsupervised probation, delivering a sentencing speech that attacked nuclear-weapons production and the contrast between this prosecution and Sperry’s own overbilling of the government. She served no prison time for the action. In June 2000 she was held for three days at the Ashland County Jail after videotaping the Silence Trident action at the Navy’s Project ELF site near Clam Lake, Wisconsin, and was released when the court found no probable cause to charge her.
