Biography
Rev. Carl Kabat was a Catholic priest with the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate who became widely known for decades of nonviolent anti-nuclear civil disobedience. In 1980, he helped catalyze the modern Plowshares tradition when he and seven others entered a General Electric facility in King of Prussia to symbolically “disarm” nuclear weapons components, an action carried out as religious witness against nuclear war.
Kabat was arrested in that 1980 action and in later protests. In 1984, he was again arrested after breaking into a Minuteman II missile silo site near Kansas City as part of the “Silo Pruning Hooks” action; he was convicted and received an 18‑year federal sentence (serving about a decade). He continued returning to nuclear weapons sites in later years, including an arrest connected to entering the Kansas City Plant construction area in 2012. On April 1, 1994 Kabat hammered on a Minuteman III nuclear missile silo in North Dakota — a continuation of the Plowshares disarmament tradition first set by the 1980 Plowshares Eight action. He was held at the federal prison camp at FCC Florence (Teller Unit) until August 1998. The sentencing court added 18 months to his term after determining that the 1994 ND action constituted a parole violation of his prior 1984 Plowshares action sentence.
Carl Kabat was an Oblate Catholic priest who became one of the most consistently imprisoned U.S. Plowshares activists, serving an estimated 17 years in federal and state prisons across more than 30 years of symbolic disarmament actions. He was one of the Plowshares 8 — the Catholic Left activists who on September 9, 1980 entered the General Electric Re-Entry Division in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, hammered nose cones for the Mark 12A nuclear warhead, and poured blood on weapons documents. He was convicted in February 1981 and sentenced to 5-10 years in Pennsylvania state prison. After his release he continued Plowshares actions including the 1984 Silo Pruning Hooks (Minuteman II missile silo, 18 years federal), and the 2009 Disarm Now Plowshares at Bangor Submarine Base. He died on August 4, 2022, age 88.
Separate source-documented custody episode
The October 30 prisoner roster identifies Carl Kabat at Rockview with ElmerMaas under the Plowshares Eight heading and a three-to-ten-year sentence. The enlarged original reads Carl Kabat; Rabat in the native extraction is an OCR error, not a new alias or identity. The group context also matches the existing Plowshares Eight biography. His existing structured roster lacks a specifically identified original Plowshares Eight case. This new case documents that separate earlier imprisonment with all custody endpoints unknown. The legacy undated property-damage row with a 2007 release and later 1982/1984 cases are unchanged. October 30 is an in-prison status date, not a jail admission; no sentence-derived release or served-day total is inferred.
National No-Nukes Prison Support Collective newsletter No. 8, October 30, 1981, original page 2.
Contemporary anti-nuclear custody report
The prisoner update reports Carl Kabat transferred from Rockview to Huntingdon after participating in a food strike against double-celling. This is a transfer during the earlier Plowshares imprisonment, not a first admission or a release; no custody endpoint is inferred.
National No-Nukes Prison Support Collective newsletter No. 11, April 15, 1982, original pages 2.
1995 custody evidence and limits
The Fall 1995 Pathfinder places Carl Kabat in the second year of a five-year term at North Dakota State Penitentiary for hammering a nuclear silo. The movement chronology separately documents actual April 1,1994 removal to Barnes County Jail after the North Dakota missile-field action, and a May 16,1994 five-year sentence. The five years are imposed, not completed. No release endpoint is given; do not merge this with his earlier Silo Pruning Hooks imprisonment or later parole proceedings.
Nukewatch Pathfinder, Fall 1995, printed page 6. Plowshares movement chronology, relevant1994/1995 action.
February 1985 verdict and contemporary custody limits
The original trial report individually identifies Helen Woodson, Paul and Carl Kabat, and Larry Cloud-Morgan, and dates their guilty verdict on all counts to Friday, February 22, 1985. They remained in jail pending a March 25 sentencing date that was still future; it is not entered as the actual sentencing day. This account dates the N-5 action to November 12, while the previously reviewed appellate opinion’s opening narrative gives November 9 and its quoted jury instruction says on or about November 12. The conflict is preserved rather than silently moving existing arrest/admission dates. Paul’s separately documented actual March 27 sentence and official later endpoint are unchanged; this source’s forecast does not overwrite them.
The Nuclear Resister No.29, February 27, 1985, original PDF pages 2,6.
1985 custody evidence and limits
The contemporary Silo Pruning Hooks report explicitly places sentencing on March 27, 1985 before Judge D. Brook Bartlett. This confirms the sentencing date for this already recorded missile-silo case; it does not settle the separately preserved November 1984 arrest/admission-day conflict, alter actual release, or convert the nominal sentence into time actually served.
The study identifies James Buckingham as the April 1990 resentencing judge and records time served plus twenty-three months’ probation.
In a June 1991 Associated Press interview, Kabat recalled five days actually served at Americus, Georgia, after an earlier anti-nuclear banner protest near Jimmy Carter’s home in Plains.
