Biography
John LaForge was arrested on August 10, 1984.
On August 10, 1984 LaForge and Barbara Katt walked into the Sperry Defense Systems plant at Eagan, Minnesota dressed as corporate quality-control inspectors, damaged two prototype guidance computers intended for Trident submarines and F-4G aircraft with household hammers, poured blood over the equipment and delivered a citizens indictment accusing the company of violating international law. A jury convicted them on October 11, 1984 of felony destruction of government property; on November 8 Judge Miles W. Lord suspended the entire six-month sentence in favour of six months of unsupervised probation, in a sentencing speech attacking nuclear-weapons production and the contrast with Sperry’s own overbilling of the government. Neither served prison time for the action. John LaForge has been a coordinator of Nukewatch in Luck, Wisconsin since the mid-1980s and has been one of the longest-running U.S. anti-nuclear organizers, focused first on Project ELF (the Navy's extremely-low-frequency submarine command system in northern Wisconsin and Michigan, which Nukewatch helped force the Navy to shut down in 2004) and later on the U.S. nuclear arsenal stationed at Büchel Air Base in Germany. In 2018 he traveled to Germany and entered Büchel multiple times in symbolic disarmament actions; in January 2023 he reported to Billwerder to serve a 50-day sentence for refusing to pay fines over Büchel protests. His first-person account describes an initial week at Billwerder followed by Glasmoor open prison, with furloughs and work release; the newspaper reports that he completed the sentence on February 28, 2023.
The March 9, 1983 Nuclear Resister reports that LaForge spent much of his Offutt-related Leavenworth imprisonment in the maximum-security prison hospital rather than the adjacent farm camp. He had refused the physical-examination X-ray and was being held in what the report calls protective custody. This describes conditions within the existing imprisonment and creates no additional served duration.
The Winter 1996 Pathfinder reports that LaForge joined Bonnie Urfer as a Nukewatch staff member after helping edit the quarterly since 1994, as Nukewatch moved to Anathoth Community Farm near Luck, Wisconsin. Its masthead names him with Urfer on the newsletter staff and on the Nukewatch board. This adds dated organizational context, not a new arrest or imprisonment interval. Source: https://www.laka.org/docu/magazines/nukewatch_pathfinder/1996-4-winter.pdf#page=7
Offutt August 1982 detention separated from later prison term
The August 9 protest detention ended the same day. The December 14 sentence and later March 9, 1983 release are a different custody episode. The previously displayed 212 days were computed from the initial arrest, despite an intervening release; that false continuous span is removed. Exact later admission is still unknown. The initial arrest remains preserved in its own record.
Sources: Nuclear Resister 12, PDF9; 14, PDF9; 15, PDF12 and PDF16.
Contemporary anti-nuclear custody report
The SAC update distinguishes the March 16, 1982 verdict from future sentencing in the December 28, 1981 Offutt/Strategic Air Command protest. Brent Vanderlinden, Wayne Siebleman, Nancy LaMusca, Barb Katt, John LaForge and Kristen Layng were found guilty; Bill Balsinger was acquitted; Joyce Glenn and Frank Cardiello pleaded no contest. The six-month figure was maximum exposure, not actual served time. This March verdict does not replace the separately sourced later April 27 sentencing date or ten-day custody evidence.
National No-Nukes Prison Support Collective newsletter No. 11, April 15, 1982, original pages 5.
1995 custody evidence and limits
The Fall 1995 Pathfinder describes John LaForge physically jailed in northern Wisconsin for anti-nuclear civil trespass: the printed-page 3 author footnote calls the term seven and one-half months and names Bayfield County Jail; printed-page 6 calls it a beginning eight-month term related to ELF. These are nominal descriptions, not completed time served. Neither gives an exact intake or discharge. This is not his separate 2023 German custody, and it must not be joined to his old generic enclosing case.
January 1986 Grand Forks sentence and custody limits
The January 15, 1986 Grand Forks AFB report individually names Greg Klave and John LaForge among twelve adults held overnight after the protest. Klave and, the next day, LaForge received thirty-day sentences with ten days suspended and fines. The account provides the imposed terms but not actual completed twenty-day service or a physical discharge date. The initial overnight custody is not inflated into twenty actual days, nor extended into other separately stored cases.
The Nuclear Resister No.38, March 10, 1986, original PDF pages 4.
The March 9, 1983 Nuclear Resister reports that LaForge spent much of his Offutt-related Leavenworth imprisonment in the maximum-security prison hospital rather than the adjacent farm camp. He had refused the physical-examination X-ray and was being held in what the report calls protective custody. This describes conditions within the existing imprisonment and creates no additional served duration.
The Nuclear Resister No.15, March 9, 1983, PDF pages 12.
The retrospective chronology reports a May 1993 release from Ashland County jail after discovery that the county trespass ordinance used against ELF protesters did not exist.
After the July 16, 1982 Bemidji verdict, LaForge was held until sentencing and actual release August 2. This seventeen-day stay is separate from the Omaha SAC prosecutions; the six-month and ninety-day terms were suspended.
The August 2022 report describes a €600 fine or 50-day jail alternative arising from two 2018 Büchel actions, and dates the court’s reporting order to July 25, 2022. Attorney Anna Busl of Bonn appealed to Germany’s Constitutional Court, challenging the exclusion of the crime-prevention defense and expert testimony. The originally proposed September 25, 2022 admission was superseded in the same report by a January 10, 2023 schedule; the later independently documented actual custody, rather than either forecast alone, determines the recorded admission and release. This judgment is not an additional fifty days to add to that later imprisonment.
Source: The Nuclear Resister, source account.
In testimony signed John Michael La Forge and dated May 31, 2021, LaForge described entering Büchel air base on July 15 and August 6, 2018 and being detained by soldiers. He disputed factual allegations in the penalty order. He separately recalled 45 days in jail following a 1990 protest against Ground Wave Emergency Network construction in Wisconsin, and a week after interfering with a Marine Corps mock invasion in 2000. These recollections do not supply complete admission and release timelines. His testimony identifies Miles Lord as the judge at his November 8, 1984 sentencing.
The contemporary report and John LaForge’s firsthand account individually identify John LaForge among five activists taken into custody after entering Büchel Air Base to oppose deployment of U.S. B61 nuclear weapons in July 2017. The group entered after nightfall on July 17; the narrative then describes events around 1 a.m. and a meeting with the base commander at 3 a.m. They were searched, photographed and released without charges after about an hour in detention. Because the chronology crosses midnight, no exact calendar arrest or release day is assigned. The reported temporary base detention does not establish a prison admission or completed day in jail. Contemporary report, The Nuclear Resister.
The August 2018 roundup reports that Susan Crane and John LaForge entered Büchel air base on August 6, were detained by military personnel and were released at 8:45 p.m. that evening. Their action concerned U.S. nuclear weapons stored in Germany; this brief military detention is not a measured prison term. Contemporary report, The Nuclear Resister.
In a retrospective account, John LaForge says that he was among four defendants acquitted by a Minneapolis jury in 2004 after a trespass protest at Alliant Techsystems. He describes a successful crime-prevention defense. The account supplies neither an exact arrest or verdict day nor a completed custody period for that prosecution. Contemporary report, The Nuclear Resister.
The April 2015 U.S. Mission to the United Nations report names John LaForge among twenty-two people arrested, processed at the Seventeenth Precinct and released by early afternoon. Its introductory April 27 date conflicts with Art Laffin’s participant account and John LaForge’s separate first-person account, both dating the action April 28. Accounts also differ in their descriptions of summons charges. These differences are preserved rather than silently replacing existing case dates or charges; the planned June 24 hearing is not an eventual court outcome.
Sources: Contemporary report; Contemporary report.
