Helen Woodson in Kansas City Federal Court

With only one day's notice, Helen was brought before the federal court in Kansas City on June 18, 2004 where she pled guilty to five counts of sending threatening communications, and one count of destruction of government property.

She told the judge that she considered her actions to be truthful, factual, and not a threat, but a warning.

At this time, Helen is still at the Bates County Jail in Missouri.
You may still write to her at
Helen Woodson
03231-045
Bates County Jail
P. O. Box 60
Butler, MO 64730

Helen Woodson: Statement for Sentencing

The theme of my witness on March 11 was, "The Truth Bears Repeating."
It has been said that the first casualty in war is the truth, and it was my intention to recover the truth about weapons of mass destruction, the subject of letters and a phone call for which I will be sentenced today.

We know that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but closer to home, the story is different. This past Good Friday, Fr.
Carl Kabat, my co-defendant in this court in 1984, went looking in a nearby state and announced, "I found some! Right here in Colorado!"
For his faithful presence at a Minuteman 3 missile silo, my dear friend is now in prison.

But I would like to move beyond the narrow definition promulgated by the government. The term "weapons of mass destruction" is new, but human beings have been seeking bigger and better ways to kill each other for thousands of years. The Roman, Lucretius, wrote of "the horrible weapons increasing day by day the terror of war. They even tested bulls in the thick of battle and drove wild boars against the enemy." He described the panicked animals trampling friend and foe alike into a slurry of tissue and blood.

In modern times our weapons of mass destruction have become more sophisticated. We can speak of the firebombings of Dresden and Tokyo, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the napalm and Agent Orange of Vietnam. And now the Depleted Uranium widely used in Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Many Gulf War veterans are ill, and in Iraq cancer rates are soaring. One obstetrician said that birth defects are so common, parents no longer ask about the baby's sex; they ask only, "Is it normal?"

500,000 Iraqi children dead of starvation and disease caused by U.S.
economic sanctions. That also was a weapon of mass destruction.

200 million have died in the last century's wars, but we should not stop with the human casualties. The noted Indian writer Arundhati Roy, reminds us, "Never counted in the costs of war are the dead birds, the charred animals, the murdered fish, incinerated insects, poisoned water sources, destroyed vegetation. Rarely mentioned is the arrogance of the human race toward other living things. This arrogance will probably be the ultimate undoing of the human species."

I was literally a child of war. My father, the late Carl Strauch, was my mentor, and he taught me reverence for life against the backdrop of WWII and the Korean War. I came of age during the Vietnam War, and my two oldest sons were born during the years that young men of my generation were coming home maimed or in body bags.
So I stand today in spirit with courageous veterans like my friends George Vesey, Louie de Benedette, and Cal Robertson who returned from Vietnam to oppose all war.

They speak eloquently about the lingering pain of both physical disabilities and mental anguish, and I repeat Cal's simple declaration on behalf of those dying in Iraq, "This is not ok."
(Show large photo from Time Magazine of flag-draped coffins.)

For the victims on both sides, military and civilian, warfare itself is a weapon of mass destruction and so I wrote to the Commander at Whiteman telling him that there were such weapons on his Air Force base. That was and is the truth, and "The Truth Bears Repeating."

I began with war, but I cannot end there, for this nation's weapons of mass destruction exist in many forms. After WWII, national leaders encouraged the conversion of military products to civilian use, and thus was born the age of chemical agriculture. In 1998 and
’99 alone, the U.S. used 5 billion pounds of pesticides and herbicides. Since the late 1950's more than 750 million tons of toxic chemical waste have been discarded. We all know the results, both in nature and in the human population. Is there anyone who has not lost a loved on to cancer? Our nation's pesticides are truly weapons of mass destruction.

Another non-military weapon of mass destruction is abortion. I realize that this is a sensitive issue, and I do not judge those who make that choice. But surely there is something wrong when the wealthiest nation on earth has seen the loss of more than 40 million unborn children to abortion since its legalization.

And with that word "legalization" I come to the letters and phone call which I addressed to the judges of this court, warning that there was a weapon of mass destruction in this building. The weapons of war, the millions of tons of toxic chemicals, the tens of millions of abortions, and capital punishment which is condemned throughout the civilized world - all are legal. The laws of the United States upheld by the federal courts are thus themselves weapons of mass destruction, and so my warning was and is the truth. I poured red paint on the security counter in this building and said, "the government has blood on its hands." That also was the truth and "The Truth Bears Repeating."

--end-

Fri, Jun. 18, 2004
Peace activist pleads guilty to vandalism and threats
By MARK MORRIS
The Kansas City Star
A peace activist who has spent 20 years in prison pleaded
guilty in Kansas City today to vandalism and threatening federal
judges and Air Force personnel.
Helen Woodson, 60, was detained by deputy U.S. marshals on
March 10 after she threw a mixture of red paint and cranberry juice,
which resembled blood, on a security desk and screening device at the
U.S. District Courthouse.
The day before she had mailed threatening letters to the
judges and the commander of Whiteman AFB Base in Knob Noster. She
followed those the next morning with similar letters entitled "Second
Warning." And before coming to the courthouse March 10, she called a
courthouse employee, who remembered her saying, "This is a warning,
there is a weapon of mass destruction in your office, get out now!"
At her hearing today, Woodson recalled the statement differently.
"I said, 'This is a warning. There is a weapon of mass
destruction in your building. Choose life,'" Woodson recalled.
Woodson and three others received long prison sentences in
1985 for using a jackhammer to chip the concrete lid of a nuclear
missile silo near Whiteman AFB. The four identified themselves as the
Silo Pruning Hooks, in reference to the Biblical admonition to beat
swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks.
Three days after her parole in 1993, Woodson walked into a
Illinois bank and used an unloaded starter pistol to get $25,000 from
a teller.
According to press reports, she then piled the money on the
floor, burned it and told witnesses: "Money is evil. You don't
believe in God; you only worship money."
She subsequently was convicted of bank robbery and other
violations and was sentenced to more than nine years in prison. After
her release March 9, she had been instructed to return to Kansas City
and meet with a probation officer to review the terms of her
probation.
"I will never abide by the terms of supervised release," Woodson said.
Her lawyer, Henry Stoever, said Woodson considers herself a
"soldier for peace," and deeply opposes nuclear weapons and abortion.
Woodson's moral convictions were reflected in her answers to
questions posed by Chief U.S. District Judge Dean Whipple. Asked what
she considers to be her home, Woodson replied: "Right now, I live in
this courtroom. I live wherever God takes me."
She also asked Whipple to sentence her quickly so she can
return to prison, which has been her home for all but five days of
the last two decades.
"I don't believe in the court process because of my religious
beliefs and don't wish to participate in it," Woodson said.
"Therefore, a speedy resolution is good for me."
Stoever described Woodson's commitment to peace protests as a
"witness."
"She doesn't worry about whether it's effective or not,"
Stoever said. "She just believes she needs to do this."