[4] Komisaruk earned a degree from Reed College in classics, and began an MBA program at the University of California, Berkeley[3] but was conflicted about the content, "We started doing all these case studies about things that were really immoral—clear-cutting forests, selling baby formula to people in the third world,” she says, “and I realized that the entire corporate structure works against any notion of social responsibility.
On June 2, 1987 Komisaruk broke into the Vandenberg Air Force Base and destroyed a mainframe computer that she believed to be part of a U.S. first-strike nuclear launch system, NAVSTAR.
[3] From a Los Angeles Times article that year:She broke into the building and for two hours trashed a million-dollar mainframe IBM 3031 computer, hacking away at it with crowbar, bolt cutters, hammer and cordless drill.
She danced on the computer chips she had pried loose, spray-painted the casing walls with slogans such as "International Law," "Nuremberg" and "Defense of Necessity," and climbed to the roof to take similar action against a satellite dish.She left behind a bouquet of flowers, a box of Mrs. Fields cookies, and a poem: "I have no gun / You must have lots.
Komisaruk walked off the base, hitched a ride to the Bay Area, got some legal advice and gave herself up after holding a news conference at the Federal Building in San Francisco.In her defense, she attempted to cite the Nuremberg Principle against starting wars of aggression, although the court was not allowed to hear that argument.
[9] As a volunteer for Direct Action Network, she suggested a solidarity tactic in which the alleged protestors clog the courts by insisting on a jury trial, unless the City Attorney Mark Sidran agree to a blanket deal in which all defendants are given the same treatment.