Two people are in prison for sawing down three transmission poles at the Navy's E.L.F. facility in Clam Lake, Wisconsin, last summer. Mike Sprong and Bonnie Urfer's disarmament action on June 24, 2000, temporarily severed the means to signal U.S. Trident ballistic missile submarines to the surface to launch nuclear war. A jury in the court of federal magistrate Stephen Crocker convicted the two of willful damage to government property in February.

Sprong told the court, "When the prosecutor said no one has the right to act above the law, that includes the U.S. government and the Pentagon." U.S. readiness to wage nuclear war is against international law and constitutes "a war crime and a crime against humanity," he argued.

Urfer showed the court a film of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, followed by a tape of a 1999 talk by the director of the Los Alamos nuclear weapons lab: "You get people's attention when you threaten the existence of their country," claimed Dr. Steven Younger, endorsing the illicit utility of nuclear weapons.

"Project ELF is part of a system ready and waiting to unleash the equivalent of 85,000 Hiroshima-sized bombs," said Urfer. "I withdrew my consent a long time ago to this mad acceptance of mass extermination. It doesn't matter that U.S. courts legitimize our genocidal weapons of total destruction. I must and I will continue to work for complete nuclear disarmament in the spirit of nonviolence no matter the consequence because it is, for me, the decent and humane thing to do."

Urfer was sentenced to six months in prison, and Sprong got two months. Both will then face one year of supervised release and nearly $7,500 each in restitution. Urfer began serving her sentence immediately, while Sprong surrendered May 24 at a federal prison camp.

For more information, contact Nukewatch, POB 649, Luck, WI 54853; (715)472-4185; nukewatch@lakeland.ws.

Letters of support should be sent to Bonnie Urfer and Mike Sprong at their prison addresses given in Inside & Out.