HARRY THIBEDEAU TO THE RESCUE

...But even Seafarer was too much, so the Navy came up with still another version, dubbed Project ELF, which it decided could do the communications job just as well...

...I remember that after he spoke at one county board meeting, he was reading the news about it on the radio the next morning...

...Every time you find a little pocket of conservatism, you also find they have the power and money to convey an attitude that may not be the attitude of the people," says Kronstedt...

...I voted for Barry Goldwater...

...Bromberg recalls that when Kronstedt addressed the Bayfield County Board on a recent occasion, one supervisor leaned over to him and murmured, "I hear they have a lot of communists living there in Marengo...

...We aren't supposed to be a war-oriented country, but saying so when you're up against the veterans is an uphill climb...

...But somehow, it just seems like too little, too late...

...But some of Thibedeau's other political beliefs might come as a jolt to the supervisors, to say nothing of the U.S...

...traversing the wilderness and resort country between Clam Lake, Wisconsin, and K.I...

...Thibedeau, or somebody he's working with, is very astute, and it may seem that he's got everything going for him right from the beginning...

...Plank by plank, Thibedeau subscribes to the classic platform of the Democratic Party, and even voices support for progressive issues, like abortion and the Equal Rights Amendment, that party moderates find too touchy...

...I probably spend 90 per cent of my waking time thinking about Project ELF, planning tactics, talking to people about it," he says...

...Laboratory rats developed bone tumors when given long-term ELF exposure, and dogs showed altered blood pressure and heart rates...

...If the funding cutbacks for ELF are an indication of the current mood in Congress, it seems few legislators feel the project is needed...

...He has the inside line on it, and so he gets the story in...

...In other words, that submarine must be moving very slow: it must be close to the surface in order to receive messages...

...In recent years, the Navy has been receiving less and less money for its beleaguered scheme...

...But now his thoughts range far beyond the technical...

...The program has been packaged and repackaged, named and renamed, and shuffled around the United States, but each new version has been about as welcome as a stale fish...

...other research showed that a four-hour ELF field application made cell division rates triple...

...Will Harry Thibedeau's campaign spur anti-ELF forces to rally and finish off the project for good...

...I was very conservative...

...why should we feed the fires?' show on the road, county board meeting rooms become stages featuring the Navy's role in a world split by communism and democracy, Soviet threat and American deterrence, war and peace...

...The coup de grace for Project ELF seemed to have come this year when the General Accounting Office (GAO) audited the project and concluded that the system was unnecessary and probably wouldn't work...

...For them, the dubious promise of "national security" does not offset the long list of environmental and health risks that go with the project...

...ELF does not seem ready to die...

...I wouldn't call what Thibedeau's doing a mass movement," says one legislative assistant...

...Last June, thanks to Harry Thibedeau^ the Wisconsin Northwest Regional Planning Commission joined the ranks of ELF supporters...

...Bayfield County approved Thibedeau's resolution thirteen-tofive, putting the supervisors on record against "the Soviets, [who] may already have an operational Project ELF system," against "nuclear fallout coming down in buckets upon northern Wisconsin," and against "total world destruction with nuclear weapons going off all over the place...

...Kronstedt, who has been watching Thibedeau for a long time, has a different explanation for the maverick crusade...

...He's clean-cut, and he manages to get the scare of communism into people...

...Thibedeau insists that Project ELF, an unlikely bridge to anything, holds no political, or financial, rewards for him...

...What has sold him on the system today is its purported strategic value...

...He says he is in it just for public service...

...It cost each and every taxpayer in this country an enormous amount of money — over $ 1 billion — to develop that Trident submarine...

...I make no bones about it," he says, his voice soft and earnest...

...The margins ran as high as ten-to-one against the project, prompting Jimmy Carter to promise that it would not be built in the region against the people's wishes if he were elected President...

...Project ELF, if fully constructed, would consist of 158 miles of antenna Mary Williams is an editorial intern at The Progressive...

...One of the first things I remember very vividly from that open house was going through the laboratory and seeing the bank of telephones, which rang until the mitigator was switched on their line, and all the telephones went off," he recalled recently...

...Since last April, Thibedeau has engineered the passage of a resolution supporting Project ELF by six northern Wisconsin county boards...

...missile-carrying submarines that provides for an antenna any deeper than ten to twenty feet in the ocean," he tells local officials, echoing the Navy's promotional statements...

...It isn't because there aren't people who are opposed to what he's doing...

...They don't want to admit that the time they spent was wasted, or that it might have been in the cause of war rather than the cause of peace...

...Project ELF is not dead at all — not if Harry Thibedeau has anything to say about it...

...One of those whom Thibedeau has failed to convince is Craig Kronstedt, a Marengo, Wisconsin, psychologist who has looked into electrophysiology research which shows that ELF radiation alters the chemistry of the brain...

...We have no capability today to communicate to U.S...

...He gives himself really good press...

...They have a vested interest in the project...

...And I guess it clicked in my mind that, gee, the Navy said they were working on the mitigation procedure to alleviate this problem, and they've come through on it...

...Thibedeau's current push for Project ELF reflects his boyhood confidence in the Navy's promises...

...And he has talked the Sawyer County Democratic Party, which he heads, into bucking the state party by going on record in support of the system...

...Sawyer Air Force Base in Michigan's Upper Peninsula...

...Next came Project Seafarer, scaled down to 4,700 square miles, about the size of Connecticut...

...Could Project ELF be his bridge to the region's Republican majority...

...His presentation is smooth, even-toned, delivered with the confidence of a college debater turned small-time radio announcer...

...When he can, Kronstedt debates Thibedeau at his county board appearances...

...it's because we have no way of knowing where he's going to strike...

...All the telephones stopped ringing...

...Just about two months ago we launched the first Trident submarine...

...I think if Harry's coming across at all, it's because he's found small groups of people that like to hear what he has to say...

...But now, in Wisconsin's inhospitable northern woods, the Navy has at last found a firm friend...

...Beginning in 1975, a series of advisory referenda in eleven Upper Michigan towns and counties showed the Navy what the voters thought of Project ELF...

...And Thibedeau, a smooth-talking radio announcer from Stone Lake, Wisconsin, has been saying plenty...

...As a psychologist, I could probably give some more reasons for what he's doing," Kronstedt says...

...Decisions on any major defense system have to be made on the basis of whether we need it or not — not on the basis of this man's selective nonsense...

...It reminds me of that when he starts lifting up these pieces of paper and says, 'I have this piece of evidence and this piece of evidence.' I always think of a sophomore debater...

...In one experiment, for instance, exposure to ELF electric fields proved fatal to mice in a matter of hours...

...And it was a vote for Thibedeau himself — a native son who seems to epitomize the values of conservative 'Right now, we're pretty much laying low and letting Harry do what he wants' northern Wisconsin...

...The buried antenna would put out "extremely low frequency" (ELF) signals supposedly capable of reaching a submarine far below the surface of the water...

...Right now, we're pretty much laying low and letting Harry do what he wants," says Susan Lynch, a member of the Stop ELF Committee...

...When Thibedeau takes his one-man, one-act "He gives himself really good press...

...But some county officials seem less interested in Kronstedt's research data than in his flowing hair...

...Most of his listeners are men over forty...

...It seemed that the signal from the project was playing havoc with people's telephones, making them ring whenever it went off...

...He is fond of calling the system "a safety on the trigger of Armageddon...

...As for cash, he says he hasn't received a dime in pay from either the Navy or GTE Sylvania, the contractor for the ELF transmitter design...

...They warm quickly to Thibedeau's enthusiasm for the Navy...

...I've always been interested in politics...

...Project ELF, Thibedeau claims, would change all that...

...The Navy says that region's underlying rock mantle, the Laurentian shield, would best help reflect ELF signals into the ionosphere...

...most are veterans...

...With such a record, the prospects seemed lonely indeed for Project ELF...

...Wisconsin's Congressional delegation, most of it opposed to ELF, seems to agree...

...I just don't think the county boards represent the population...

...Away from the rostrum, he calls himself a liberal, expressing only guarded support for the very Trident submarine the ELF system would back up, and denouncing such other Pentagon favorites as the MX missile and the B-l bomber...

...Most have heard of Harry Thibedeau, but none take his "public opinion" campaign seriously...

...The Navy said it would correct the problem, and when Thibedeau visited an open house at the project's test site three years later, he was convinced that the Navy had kept its promise...

...Ten years have passed since then, and Thibedeau's enthusiasm for the Navy's transmitter has grown and blossomed...

...I guess I was a lot like him when I was his age...

...As one county board supervisor, Joel Bromberg of Bayfield County, explains, "Harry gets up and throws a lot of facts at you...

...The audit report stated, "GAO does not believe the Congress should consider any full-scale system development or construction," and "recommends that the Secretary of Defense terminate any plans to construct an extremely low frequency transmitter...

...And Thibedeau is the star...

...Another supervisor then interrupted Kronstedt, announcing that he was tired of bearded hippies, food stamp users, and welfare recipients moving into the area to "live off the land" and object to everything...

...And at no time — during any day or night, 365 days a year, even though that submarine is capable of diving over a thousand feet in the ocean — will it be allowed to go any deeper than about 200 feet, because it must always have that antenna virtually on the surface of the ocean to receive messages...

...He has the first-hand information and accessibility to the wire services...

...Why should we feed the fires...

...Until Harry Thibedeau came along...

...In one form or another, the radio grid has always come back to northern Wisconsin and Upper Michigan, much to the dismay of local residents...

...Thirteen years ago, when he was a boy of nine, Thibedeau read a news story about a technical problem with Project Sanguine...

...While others ponder that, Thibedeau is planning to make still more news, preparing speeches for other governing bodies in Wisconsin and Upper Michigan...

...Overall, research has indicated that exposure to ELF electric fields triggers a stress response in the body, much like the occupational stress experienced by high-voltage switchyard workers...

...Stop Sanguine and Stop Sanguine/ELF committees have been trying to kill it in northern Wisconsin since the late 1960s...

...At some time, I would like to run for public office...

...An early design, Project Sanguine, would have required the digging of ditches under a land area of 22,500 square miles — nearly as big as the state of West Virginia...

...It's going to be very detrimental — extremely detrimental to myself...

...To submarine warriors and Pentagon strategists, the project may seem eminently sensible, but after twenty-one years of promoting it, the Navy still hasn't managed to sell it...

...Navy has been looking for a place to put a vast underground electronic grid it says it needs to keep in better touch by radio with its far-flung fleet of nuclear submarines...

...Still, $115 million has already been spent on the system, and the Navy is still pushing for $238 million more...

...As for his political future, "If this system eventually falls by the wayside, it's certainly not going to help me," he says wryly...

...Or will his wind breathe new life into the Navy's hard-pressed project...

...It's frustrating having someone like him on the other side," she adds...

...A new group, the Stop ELF Committee, was launched last April, suggesting that Thibedeau's operations may be triggering the ELF opponents to redoubled action...

...And we don't...

...The Navy says the system will strengthen the submarine fleet by allowing it to stay deep, hidden, and in radio contact around the clock...

...It was a vote for Thibedeau's thesis that the radiation from ELF is no more harmful than the radiation from the lightbulbs in the county board meeting room...