Biography
Father Frank Cordaro is a former Catholic priest, longtime Des Moines Catholic Worker, and Plowshares activist who has been arrested more than 100 times across his life. On August 6, 1998 — the Hiroshima anniversary — he and three others carried out the Minuteman III Plowshares disarmament action at a North Dakota intercontinental ballistic missile silo. He was convicted and served multiple federal sentences for that and many subsequent actions including SOA Watch line-crossings and STRATCOM/Offutt AFB protests.
Des Moines Catholic Worker and Plowshares peace activist arrested repeatedly over decades for nonviolent disarmament actions against nuclear weapons, including SAC headquarters at Offutt Air Force Base. Convicted multiple times of federal trespass and related charges. Documented in PFOC Breakthrough magazine.
The March 9, 1983 Nuclear Resister individually places Frank Cordaro in Leavenworth serving a sentence stemming from the August 9, 1982 Offutt Air Force Base civil-disobedience action. May 1 was an expected release, not a confirmed discharge. The report does not establish a precise later admission or completed served total.
The Winter 1998–99 Nukewatch Pathfinder names Kathy Shields Boylan, Carol Gilbert, Ardeth Platte, Frank Cordaro and Larry Morlan as the Gods of Metal Plowshares participants who hammered and poured blood on a B-52 at an Air Force weapons display in May 1998. Their Maryland trial began September 22. The report explicitly states that all five were convicted and jailed before sentencing. January 4 was the announced future sentencing date, and a possible year in prison was exposure rather than completed service. Source: https://www.laka.org/docu/magazines/nukewatch_pathfinder/1998-4-winter.pdf#page=5
Birth-date source
- New American Dream biographical profile — identifies Des Moines Catholic Worker co-founder and repeatedly imprisoned peace activist Frank Cordaro and gives February 16, 1951 as his date of birth.
Earlier Offutt prosecution and federal charges
The May 9, 1981 support newsletter, page 3, reports Cordaro, William Douglass and John Hutchens arrested after the December 28, 1980 sign-painting protest at Offutt Air Force Base. State felony criminal-mischief charges were dismissed March 31, 1981 for lack of jurisdiction; federal misdemeanor property-damage charges followed April 15. Cordaro, Jim Dubert and Brett Vanderlinden were also charged April 17 with violating ban-and-bar orders. All five were free on recognizance by the report, which gives no individual physical-release day. June 10 was a scheduled trial. This earlier prosecution is not uninterrupted confinement or an extension of the later Minuteman case; no short-stay case or speculative endpoint is created.
An earlier 1982 SAC-related custody report
The Nuclear Resister No. 13, November 30, 1982, page 5, reports Frank Cordaro arrested October 27 during events around Gary Eklund's Des Moines trial and transferred to jail in Omaha. It reports a November 12 six-month sentence for refusal to pay damages arising from the December 1980 SAC sign action, and continued custody at Douglas County Jail. Bill Douglass and John Hutchins are also named, but a later self-report by Hutchins is only prospective. The editors explicitly caution that they had conflicting accounts. This attributed contemporary report supplies an earlier custody lead, not a verified final-release date or a claim of uninterrupted imprisonment extending into later cases.
1981 SAC probation disposition, distinct from later jail custody
Original page 3 reports that Frank Cordaro, John Hutchens and Bill Douglas received one year of probation and an order to pay for the SAC headquarters sign repainted in the December 28, 1980 action. Cordaro ultimately received unsupervised probation after refusing regular reporting. The article describes neither a new prison term nor a physical remand at that disposition, and does not give the sentencing day. This fills the earlier proceeding’s outcome between the May 1981 charging report and the separate attributed November 1982 nonpayment custody report; it is not a continuous December 1980–1982 prison interval. Printed Hutchens/Douglas names are retained as source context, not silently resolved into aliases.
National No-Nukes Prison Support Collective newsletter No. 9, December 12, 1981, original page 3.
Separate 1983 custody evidence and limits
The SAC/Omaha item individually reports Frank Cordaro and Carl Kabat actually released in early May 1983 after imprisonment associated with the August 1982 Offutt action. This supplies an actual month-level release lead, not a precise day or a proof of uninterrupted custody since August. Cordaro’s existing November 1982 account concerns disputed sign-damage nonpayment and must be reconciled before assigning this release to a particular missing structured episode. No existing case date is overwritten and no duplicate case is created without that bridge.
The March 9, 1983 Nuclear Resister individually places Frank Cordaro in Leavenworth serving a sentence stemming from the August 9, 1982 Offutt Air Force Base civil-disobedience action. May 1 was an expected release, not a confirmed discharge. The report does not establish a precise later admission or completed served total.
The Nuclear Resister No.15, March 9, 1983, PDF pages 12, 16.
The contemporary report documents a separate custody episode: Six months imposed; current confinement confirmed in Jackson County Jail.
Dennis Apel’s court update individually names Catherine Morris, Jeff Dietrich, Frank Cordaro and Dimitri Kadiev as pleading guilty to trespass at their November 21, 2024 federal arraignment for the August 10 Vandenberg action. All four received two years of unsupervised probation, with no prison term or fine, and were allowed to return to the designated protest area. This update does not assign that outcome to the fifth August arrestee, Nuri Ronaghe.
Source: The Nuclear Resister, report 58.
Frank Cordaro’s contemporary account names Frank Cordaro and the other participant as arrested on August 9, 2019 after blocking the Des Moines Drone Command Center entrance. Police handcuffed them, transported them by van and booked them into Polk County Jail. After a night in a holding cell, both pleaded guilty to trespass the next morning, were fined $200 plus jail and court costs and were released at 2 p.m. on August 10. This overnight detention was separate from their earlier protest cases.
Frank Cordaro’s May 2019 account names Frank Cordaro among five people arrested, handcuffed and taken to Polk County Jail following the May 18 Armed Forces Day protest at the Des Moines Drone Command Center. The group spent the night in holding cells and appeared before a judge the following morning. Four pleaded guilty and received fines; the separately named not-guilty participant was Ruth Hart. All five were physically released by 2 p.m. on May 19. This source does not identify the specific charge, judge, fine amount or a jail sentence; the documented overnight detention is separate from the August 2019 action.
The contemporary Kansas City report identifies Frank Cordaro among those arrested on May 2, 2011 while blocking the nuclear-weapons plant construction entrance. Police took the group to headquarters and charged trespassing. The report says the last detainees were released by the following dawn, without assigning Cordaro an individual discharge time. It does not establish an additional completed jail term from the earlier fines or the future court date.
National Catholic Reporter, May 3, 2011, by Joshua J. McElwee.
The March 21, 2019 Des Moines Catholic Worker report individually names Frank Cordaro among eight people arrested while blocking the Iowa Air National Guard Drone Command Center entrance on Sunday, March 17. All eight were taken to Polk County Jail. The account distinguishes Al Burney, who bailed out, from the other seven, who remained overnight, pleaded guilty before a jail judge on Monday morning and were fined and released. The reported fines ranged from $100 to $1,000; it does not assign a particular fine amount to Frank Cordaro, name the judge or specify the legal charge.
Frank Cordaro physically left federal prison on August 23, 2006, according to the contemporary update. The report describes six months served for trespass at the Strategic Command headquarters at Offutt Air Force Base. The report explicitly confirms six months actually served, recorded as months without conversion to days. This also supplies the release day for the existing case; the first prison admission is not independently dated. Source: The Nuclear Resister No.143, September 20, 2006, printed page7.
In his first-person account of the July 19, 2011 Kansas City Municipal Court hearing for the May 2 nuclear-weapons-plant protest, Cordaro describes his guilty plea and statement to Judge Elena Franco. He reports a $500 fine plus court costs, payable within 90 days. His discussion of an active warrant and possible future contempt was not a report that he was newly jailed at that hearing. The ten-day suspended sentence and two-year probation explicitly described for Steve Jacobs are not allocated to Cordaro. Contemporary source.
The contemporary report identifies Frank Cordaro and Elliott Adams as the two people arrested for trespass at the Des Moines drone-command protest on May 19, 2018. Both spent the night in jail, pleaded guilty, received fines and were released the following day. The fine amounts are not specified. Contemporary report, The Nuclear Resister.
The August 2018 roundup reports that Frank Cordaro and Jakob Whitson were arrested for trespass after attempting to enter the Des Moines drone-command center on August 9. They were released with citations and an initial court date. Contemporary report, The Nuclear Resister.
In his first-person retrospective, Frank Cordaro describes the institution-to-institution route during his 2006 Offutt prosecution custody: initial confinement in Pottawattamie County, about three weeks in Jackson County at Holton, an Oklahoma City transfer stop and Federal Prison Camp Yankton. These were movements within a case, not separate new prosecutions. His approximate lifetime totals and repeated six-month sentence pattern do not establish a new exact aggregate or an additional three-week whole-case term.
Sources: Contemporary report.
A separate Kansas City trespass prosecution
The October 8 compilation distinguishes the August 16 plant-site trespass prosecution from the later City Council disruption. It says Judge Franco found Frank Cordaro and Ed Bloomer guilty at the October 7 morning hearing and imposed a fine and costs, which they refused to pay. Their subsequent overnight City Council detention was a separate incident; the threatened warrants for unpaid fines are not treated as completed custody. Contemporary compilation.
