Judge OKs Bail After 2 Agree to Guilty Pleas

A federal judge approved bail for a Santa Cruz man Monday after he and a fellow anti-war activist agreed to plead guilty to damaging a military satellite at the Rockwell International complex at Seal Beach.

Peter A. Lumsdaine, 37, will probably be released today on $50,000 bond, according to his attorney, Leonard I. Weinglass. Lumsdaine’s co-defendant, Keith Joseph Kjoller, 31, was freed Friday on $30,000 cash and property bond.

Both men were ordered by U.S. District Judge Gary L. Taylor to appear in court July 13, when they are expected to change their pleas on the one-count felony from not guilty to guilty.

The charge, destroying property being manufactured for the U.S. government, carries with it a sentence of about 24 to 36 months in prison. Neither side would comment on what the sentence might be.

Weinglass, one of the attorneys for the Chicago 7 trial, said his client agreed to plead guilty because the government made him a “fair” offer.

Lumsdaine and Kjoller were arrested May 10 after they scaled an eight-foot chain-link fence at Rockwell, broke into a building with axes and attacked a Navstar Global Position satellite. Windows in a sealed “clean room,” where a number of other satellites were stored in a dust-free environment, were also shattered. Damage was estimated at $2 million by Rockwell.

The pair and their supporters said later that the attack was an effort to follow the Book of Isaiah’s mandate to “beat their swords into plowshares,” because one of the purposes of the satellite was “to give the United States a nuclear first-strike capacity.”

A company spokeswoman said that the $50-million satellite, which was to be delivered to the Department of Defense in August, has both military and civilian uses.

In addition to the cash bail, federal judges have restricted the travel of the two men, approved the use of electronic monitoring devices and ordered the men not to come within 100 feet of any military contractor or military base.

Kjoller, who was also in the courtroom Monday, said later that he agreed to plead guilty because “all parties were ready and willing to settle.”