Datelines

...Then he began filing legal motions to restrict Thompson's involvement in her care and to terminate contact between the two women...

...It's a horrifying situation...

...Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) developed experiments to track the effects of this radiation in living organisms...

...Moreover, pulsed low-frequency radiation, such as that emitted by VDTs, "may turn out to be more significant" than microwave radiation, he says...

...Rescue Vehicle" on the sides...

...Now it's through...

...The EPA resolved that there should be a nationwide guideline [for RF radiation], yet is getting rid of its entire in-house capacity to get expertise on the issue...

...One involved the lifelong exposure of rats to low-level radio-frequency radiation...

...Albert L. Huebner (Albert L. Huebner is a freelance writer in Canoga Park, California...

...Los Angeles police have entertained a wish for heavy armor ever since the Watts riot of 1965...

...Despite a finding by the Minnesota Health Department that there was no basis for the doctor's order, Thompson has been barred from visiting her lover ever since...

...We had finally, after five years, gotten all the facilities set up to support the experiment...

...Other members of King's defense committee—but not Kunstler—were also subpoenaed by the same grand jury...

...Inside, pots of grease bubble all day for quick disposal of cocaine if the police happen to knock...

...Her parents blame them on Thompson's visits, and Thompson attributes them to her own lessened involvement in Sharon's care...

...At its christening more than a year ago, Chief Gates vowed to use the ram "over and over and over again," so why has it only been used five times...

...For several years," says Jerold Mande, an assistant to Senator Albert Gore Jr...

...The ax has fallen," concludes Tell...

...From the beginning, Sharon Kowalski's ability to express her wishes and make adult decisions about her care has been hotly contested...

...She has spent twenty-three years building the trust of her community, and she just spent six months in prison for keeping that trust...

...Two years ago, after Donald Kowalski was appointed his daughter's legal guardian, he had her moved to a hospital in Duluth, 130 miles northeast of St...

...The practice is "a scary proposition, an irrational, unjustified intrusion into the sanctity of the attorney-client privilege," says Barry Wilson, a Boston attorney who last year spent four-and-a-half months imprisoned for refusing to answer grand-jury questions about a client...

...Loren Stein (Loren Stein is an associate of the Center for Investigative Reporting in San Francisco...

...But I don't know if the EPA's ready to get into that...

...To defend against possible terrorist activities, the U.S...

...The only occupants were two women and three children...

...Until recently, many scientists believed that non-ionizing radiation could not affect the body unless its electric field produced heat or an electric shock...

...I'm friends with people from all walks of life, from professionals to people on welfare," Hill says...

...But Thompson contends that Kowalski has never been properly tested for mental competency...

...Delgado's work is so exciting because of the [weakness] of the magnetic field he used," says EPA scientist Ezra Berman, who was in charge of the agency's experiment...

...And when they can see enough of us, then we're not going to be so threatening to them...

...I think there's going to be a period of time where we have to speak out about it," she says...

...An eagerly anticipated reproductive study involving 4,000 VDT operators of child-bearing age by the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health was among the casualties...

...She's excellent now, according to her doctor and parents...

...It took so much time, manpower, and money...

...the world seems to be catching up...

...Paul Pioneer Press and Dispatch...

...Most of the high-powered equipment is now gathering dust—except in Los Angeles...

...But when she told Donald and Delia Kowalski about her relationship, they denied its existence...

...As for Carol Hill, she remains free at least until the term of the current grand jury expires in September...

...Because the EPA is proposing several different options rather than one guideline, he says, technical comments will come in without the expertise to evaluate them...

...I really looked forward to this experiment," says Tell...

...The EPA research branch is no longer necessary, claim some officials, because the agency will soon publish voluntary guidelines for exposure to radio-frequency (RF) radiation...

...The case has attracted national attention in the gay community...

...Witnesses are not told what the questioning will be about, and there is no restriction on what they may be asked...

...What's more, he says, "The research community has not been able to come up with strong results...

...They are witch-hunting, gathering intelligence, and harassing progressive people," Hill charges...

...Here, a six-ton tank on wheels, outfitted with a fourteen-foot-long steel battering ram, is used to knock down the walls of homes purported to be "rock houses" in which cocaine in solid form is sold...

...Police say the battering ram gets into the house so fast the dealers have no time to destroy the goods...

...Gore is "extremely troubled" by the cutback's timing, says Mande...

...Now that the Federal RF guidelines are nearing completion, the need for research is lessened," says David Oster-man, the official who reviews the agency's research-and-de-velopment budget...

...Such claims are "crazy," according to ACLU attorney Joan Howarth, since cocaine is more available than ever in Los Angeles...

...Jill Elijah, Hill's attorney, explains the reasoning: Hill has demonstrated that the threat of prison does not persuade her to testify, and the only other reason to lock her up is to punish her...

...But in 1984, Spectrum, a leading engineering journal, declared that "a growing mass of evidence has virtually ended that debate...

...It has a deterrent value...

...Rock houses present a special problem to police with a search warrant...

...Eventually, Hill was charged with civil contempt and sent to prison...

...Although some of Thompson's motions are still pending—and she says she isn't giving up—she suffered a major setback when the U.S...

...Left-wing political activities are increasingly the target of grand-jury investigations, according to Jill Elijah...

...Cloud State University, says she and Kowalski had been partners since 1979 when, in 1983, a drunk driver hit Kowalski's car head-on, leaving her mentally incapacitated...

...They've been coming after people involved in the black liberation movement, the Puerto Rican independence movement...

...The lovers had exchanged rings, but they had no written contract or agreement to prove their relationship...

...Justice Department under Attorney General Edwin Meese has frequently subpoenaed defense attorneys to get information about their clients, says Richard Hayes, an attorney for the Committee for Public Counsel Services, a statewide public defenders' group...

...I think she was dominated by somebody in a position of control over her...

...Senator Gore, who has taken a special interest in RF radiation, led a one-man campaign to keep the non-ionizing radiation research going...

...Physicians and psychologists say her cognitive functions are those of a six- or seven-year-old...

...Thompson, who teaches physical education at St...

...But the latest time around, they gave up...

...I could not look people in the face...

...overexposure can raise the body temperature, which animal research indicates may be harmful to pregnant women and their unborn children...

...Another key project tried to replicate some dramatic findings from Jose Delgado's research laboratory in Madrid, Spain...

...But Thompson says Sharon was making more progress in St...

...Tell's office is issuing the soon-to-be-published RF radiation guidelines...

...Sharon Kowalski had bouts of depression after her move to Duluth...

...Elissa Dennis (Elissa Dennis is a staff reporter for the Cambridge Tab, a community weekly...

...series of politically motivated bombings of companies with holdings in South Africa, and are trying to link other people to the group...

...She's not under a lot of pressure and confused," according to Jack Fena, her parents' attorney...

...And so began a lengthy round of legal maneuvering, with Thompson seeking to transfer guardianship to either herself or a neutral third party...

...There are also differences of opinion about Sharon Ko-walski's progress...

...Kowalski was treated in a St...

...After the riots you had four-man police departments in the middle of Kansas buying armored personnel carriers in case blacks ever invaded the town," says Lawrence Sherman of the Police Foundation, a Washington-based research group...

...The ram is a little bit like a nuclear bomb," adds Deputy District Attorney Curt Ha-zell, who handles major narcotics cases...

...Grand-jury investigations are secret proceedings in which neither the witness nor the public knows what is under investigation...

...But Donald Kowalski has filed affidavits stating that his daughter does not want Thompson to visit and that she is not a lesbian...

...Courts Separate Lesbian Couple ST...

...It is against my integrity to inform on people...

...After the Games, the department outfitted one with a steel nose and painted "L.A.P.D...

...It piqued everyone's interest...

...Hill's troubles began last July...

...There is hope that non-ionizing radiation may get some research funding in 1988, but "that's so far away," he adds...

...They've helped us tremendously...

...They often have double-reinforced steel doors to impede entry...

...Charging that the battering ram is "an immediate threat to the precious and irreplaceable constitutional rights of privacy, security, and freedom from harm at the hands of the police," the American Civil Liberties Union brought suit...

...Cloud and is not receiving adequate care where she is now...

...Especially in light of the AIDS crisis, it has major implications for gay men who want to participate in decisions about their partners' medical care...

...But the latest round of budget cuts brings this research to an untimely end...

...Only minutes before police arrived, the children—two five-year-olds and a nine-year-old— had been playing in the room where the ram broke through...

...He succeeded only in keeping a skeleton team of scientists intact for the remainder of this year...

...In 1982, associates at this lab discovered that extremely weak-pulsed magnetic fields—only one-five-hundredth the strength of the Earth's natural magnetic field—caused chick embryos to develop malformed hearts and central nervous systems...

...If the police are wrong about the house, however, innocent people may have their homes flattened—perhaps while they are in them...

...Two of the EPA's most important experiments in nonionizing radiation—now shelved—underwent years of detailed preparation and were on the verge of actual testing...

...Not convicted, charged, or even accused of any crime, Hill was incarcerated for refusing to testify before a Federal grand jury that subpoenaed her last summer...

...The Army's offer of the indefinite loan of an armored vehicle," recalls police financial planner Wendell Nichols, was turned down because "the authorities didn't like its sniper-vulnerable tires, and it wasn't air-conditioned...

...As controversy over possible hazards heated up...

...What we're against is using reckless means and recklessly driving into walls...

...She has appealed to the court to find Donald Kowalski in contempt for failing to place his daughter in a rehabilitation facility rather than a nursing home...

...The police found less than one-tenth of a gram of cocaine—so little that the district attorney's office refused to file charges...

...CLOUD, MINNESOTA Lesbians have learned a bitter lesson at the hands of Minnesota courts, which have all-but-permanently separated Karen Thompson from Sharon Kowalski, the woman she says was her lover...

...Elijah reports that more than a hundred people have been jailed since 1980 for refusing to testify...

...Effective with the 1986 budget, the Reagan Administration has cut off$ 1.5 million in funds for the non-ionizing radiation research program in North Carolina's Research Triangle Park, a program in operation since EPA's birth in 1971...

...Anyone imprisoned for punishment has a right to a judge and a trial, which Hill did not get...

...Before its maiden use, Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl Gates christened the ram with a bottle of wine a few blocks away from an alleged rock house in Pacoima, a minority community in the San Fernando Valley...

...Howarth thinks the ram is kept out of action not because of its so-called success, but because the police "don't want to risk another botch" like the one in Pacoima until the California Supreme Court decides whether use of the ram is constitutional...

...the U.S...

...Department of Energy offered the city a pair of surplus V-100 armored carriers, the kind the Energy Department uses to guard nuclear warhead factories and power plants...

...Evidence of the effects [of non-ionizing radiation] on the nervous system and the immune systems of animals was already well-established by the end of the 70s," wrote Eric Lerner, a former contributing editor of Spectrum, "while evidence of effects on the genetic material has accumulated most rapidly over the past few years...

...Hill's case is one illustration of a frightening trend, according to some attorneys and political activists—frightening because of the unchecked power of prosecutors to jail people without trial, and "trend" because cases like Hill's are becoming more common...

...The cutbacks mean that "a very considerable research team has been pulled out of the field," says EPA scientist Berman...

...She refused to answer...

...They criminalized my life...

...I don't know if the EPA is moving fast enough...

...Fate of an Unwilling Witness CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS Carol Hill, a forty-three-year-old lifelong resident of Cambridge, is well-known and respected in her Riverside neighborhood for her community work—Head Start, after-school programs, adult education, and the neighborhood council...

...The research program," says Tell, "provides us with quality information relevant to actual biological effects...

...One of those is Christopher King, who is in a Massachusetts prison for gun possession...

...Meanwhile, Karen Thompson reflects on the bitter lesson she says she learned too late: Lesbians and gay men should not hide their relationships...

...Jeann Linsley (Jeann Linsley is a reporter for the St...

...They are intimidating people, dividing the community...

...Not till 1984's Olympic Games did the police department get its wish...

...We're not against law enforcement using careful means to get into suspected rock houses," she says...

...he says, "Obviously, we need biological experiments...

...These discoveries may mean that our bodies are far more sensitive to non-ionizing radiation than previously thought, so research in this area could have important implications for the large part of the population exposed to it...

...due mostly to luck, no one was hurt...

...I will not collaborate with the Government under any circumstances," she says, so her freedom may only be temporary...

...After two months in a Rhode Island facility, she was transferred to the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York, where she stayed until her attorney obtained her release by use of a "Grumbles motion," a device that asks the court to release a recalcitrant witness on grounds that "the coercion is not working...

...Cloud, and finally to a nursing home in nearby Hibbing...

...When a Minnesota district court denied her request in July 1985, Donald Kowalski, armed with an order by a physician alleging that visits by Thompson exposed Sharon to a risk of sexual abuse, barred her from his daughter's presence...

...She has used an electric typewriter to write that she is gay, that Thompson is her lover, and that she wants Thompson to visit her and take part in decisions affecting her life...

...The U.S...

...It has never been used to rescue anyone, but on five occasions, as a battering ram, it has gone up against alleged rock houses...

...Radiation Research Drops by the Wayside RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, NORTH CAROLINA Most Americans know enough about the hazards of ionizing radiation to avoid unnecessary x-rays, which can cause sterility, cancer, and other health problems...

...Other experts disagree, saying the EPA's proposed guidelines will suffer from the dismantling of the agency's nonionizing radiation research team...

...There's no smoking gun, if you will...

...The tank has been successful beyond our expectations," says Noel Cunningham of the narcotics division...

...When she appeared before the grand jury, she says, the Federal prosecutor asked her if she knew certain people who had lived in Riverside...

...Funding for non-ionizing radiation research has been slashed in other Government programs as well...

...Cloud hospitaland then moved to a nursing home where Thompson was permitted to visit her and participate in her care and rehabilitation...

...The EPA, in fact, will not participate in an international effort to verify Delgado's findings—an effort made possible by the EPA's development of equipment that is being shipped to Canada, Sweden, and three other places to create identical test environments...

...But a new grand jury can start the whole procedure again...

...They have to see that we're college professors, that we're doctors, we're nurses, that we're their brothers, their sisters, their mothers, their fathers...

...The program's demise "is a crying shame," says Richard Tell, chief of the Electromagnetics Branch of the Office of Radiation Programs at EPA's Las Vegas facility...

...However, much less is known about the weaker forms of radiation, called non-ionizing, that are emitted by home appliances, video display terminals, power lines, and broadcast towers...

...of Tennessee, "the Administration has tried to eliminate the program, and each year the House has defended it...

...With each day that passes," says Thompson, "Sharon is being condemned to a lesser quality of life for a lifetime because if she doesn't recover within two to three years following the accident, chances are she'll never recover...

...Then, with news photographers along, Gates rode shotgun as the ram pushed through a wall of the house...

...Supreme Court recently refused to hear one of the appeals on Sharon Kowalski's behalf...

...We don't have to use it any more...

...Hill had volunteered as a paralegal for King's attorney, William Kunstler...

...But Hill believes Federal prosecutors are seeking information on the Ohio Seven, a group of people accused of a Reluctant witness Carol Hill...