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Chequamegon National Forest, Wisconsin.
Saws in hand, Tom and Donna Howard-Hastings went to the woods and cut down three forty-foot antenna poles at the Navy's Project Extremely Low Frequency (ELF) transmitter in northern Wisconsin. Their Earth Day action temporarily shut down the facility, which military experts have described as a "bell-ringer" for launching a military attack.
Project ELF has been a target of activists for nearly thirty years.
Located deep inside the Chequamegon National Forest, the system beams a
secret, encoded radio message into the Earth. Radio waves bounce off the
underlying granite bedrock and 
back
to the twenty-eight miles of antenna cables strung above ground. The antenna
directs a signal upward, 250 miles into the atmosphere, where it encircles
the globe before it plunges into the oceans.
Special radio receivers aboard the Navy's Trident nuclear submarines link them to ELF They can decode the signals, while remaining deep under water. The Trident fleet, to which the Pentagon is still adding subs, carries 100,000 times the firepower that vaporized Hiroshima in 1945.
When Tom and Donna Howard-Hastings entered the woods at 5 A.M. On April 22, hey had to slog through snow. They established a work site away from the road and next to the antenna system's right-of-way. They posted an Earth flag and drove several stakes topped with photos of children into the ground.
Several hours later, their cutting complete, they pushed hard on one of the poles. With several loud cracks, three poles-antenna cables twanging and vibrating-struck the ground and shorted out the ELF transmitter. The couple next cut a chunk from one of the poles, attached an indictment charging the U.S.. government with violating international law, and lugged the wood a mile to the transmitter compound. They then turned themselves in to authorities.
"My knees are shaking and I'm happy," Donna Howard-Hastings said at the site. "It's a high and a scare. I've wanted to do this for so long."
The couple has been charged in an Ashland County court with felony sabotage and criminal damage to property. They face a maximum punishment of fifteen years in prison. Both have refused to post a $500 bond for release that stipulates they not go near the ELF site.
The more serious charge of sabotage carries a maximum penalty of ten
years in prison.
"We have invested eight months of our lives in this," says Donna Howard-Hastings,
who has given up her job to fight ELF "The truth for me is so much more
immediate." Living with ELF, she says, "is like seeing someone aim a gun
at a child. It's aimed and ready. It's got to come down."
Barry A. Briskman, 59, of suburban North Hollywood, was sentenced on Friday. He will serve the time concurrently with a 10-year child molestation sentence he currently is serving in Nevada for using the same ruse to seduce a 12-year-old runaway, a prosecutor said.
Detective John Vannerson called Briskman, who pleaded guilty to sexually molesting minors, "a classic pedophile."
Court records show that Briskman claimed to be an alien from the planet Cablell, recruiting girls with superior beauty and intelligence for a female dominated utopian society led by a Queen Hiternia.
One victim recalled that they had intercourse so he could
inject the Earth girls with "IRFs," immunities to ward off space diseases.
Ira Einhorn, 57, was arrested without incident Friday at his converted windmill home in France's Bordeaux region, the FBI said in a statement this morning.
He had been using the alias Eugene Mallon, the name of an Irish friend, officials said.
Einhorn was captured in part with leads developed after a story about him on the syndicated television program ``Unsolved Mysteries,'' officials said. His Swedish girlfriend's application for a French driver's license also alerted authorities to Einhorn's whereabouts.
``I feel a tremendous (sense) of gratification and relief,'' District Attorney Lynne Abraham said at a news conference this morning. She said she looked forward to seeing him come before the judge who sentenced him.
``I guess persistence pays off,'' said Richard DiBenetto, a district attorney's office investigator on the case since 1981.
A judge in 1993 sentenced Einhorn to life in prison for murdering Helen ``Holly'' Maddux in 1977 and hiding her body in a trunk, which he put in a closet of his apartment.
Police found Maddux's mummified remains in Einhorn's apartment in 1979, 18 months after they say she was killed. The remains were discovered after the stench filtered into neighboring apartments.
Witnesses testified that Maddux, 31, had been trying to break off the relationship with Einhorn.
Einhorn's attorney, Norris Gelman, said this morning that his client would challenge extradition to the United States.
``That may prevent him from coming back because the European courts don't like trials in absentia,'' Gelman said. ``I think that essentially what one would look for in this kind of case, he would be sent back (only) if he gets a new trial. ... That's the best scenario.''
Challenges could delay extradition up to a year, officials said.
Gelman said he had not spoken to Einhorn since 1981, when his client disappeared just before he was to stand trial.
Before making the arrest, French police put Einhorn under surveillance and reported that he was ``very cautious, almost wary and suspicious,'' said FBI Special Agent Bob Reutter. After the arrest, he said, Einhorn was ``cool, cold.''
A brilliant and charismatic bear of a figure, Einhorn was a ladies' man and counterculture oddball given to such habits as answering his door stark naked.
Though he dressed in a dashiki and dirty jeans, sported shoulder-length hair and frequently smelled bad, Einhorn established a successful place as a New Age corporate guru-consultant in the 1970s with a global network of scientists, corporate sponsors and wealthy benefactors.
At his preliminary hearing in 1979, the courtroom was packed with professors, lawyers, civic leaders and other prominent Philadelphians who wanted to testify about his good character.
Several hearings were held before Einhorn, free on $40,000 bail, boarded a plane for London with a new girlfriend.
Steven Levy, who wrote a biography of Einhorn, said Einhorn had befriended celebrities, local business and religious leaders, and counterculture figures, including the late Abbie Hoffman.
``Ira ingratiated himself to these folks they would buy him lunch and he would tell them about the future,'' Levy said.
