N.H. Town Hopes for End of Standoff

Reporters get ready for a news conference with Ed and Elaine Brown in Plainfield, N.H., Monday, June 18, 2007. The Browns have been staying in their home since being convicted of tax evasion. Residents want the Browns' circus to end before their small Connecticut River town becomes the next Ruby Ridge or Waco. (AP Photo/Jim Cole) (Jim Cole - AP)

The Browns' home on an isolated dirt road includes a turret that offers a 360-degree view of the property and a driveway that is sometimes barricaded with sport utility vehicles.

Ed Brown, a retired exterminator, and his wife, a dentist, have bragged that the compound is self-sufficient and capable of running entirely on solar, wind and geothermal energies.

While saying repeatedly that he has no interest in harming the Browns or their supporters, Monier has not said what he does plan to do.

He says the massive law enforcement turnout on June 7, complete with roadblocks and planes, was for surveillance of the compound while agents seized the Lebanon building that housed Elaine Brown's dental practice.

But Ed Brown and many residents believe it was a botched raid that apparently had to be called off when someone walking a dog stumbled onto federal agents in camouflage near the home.

"We were much better off before the federal government tried to take him into custody and it didn't go well," fumed town administrator Steve Halleran. "The fervor had died down. That was one of the things we were hoping, that people would go on to other things. But that's all by the wayside."

Weaver's news conference with the couple only added to local frustrations.

"That must've been a first. We've never really seen convicted felons just be able to hold press conferences," Halleran said. "There has to be a restriction of access to and from their property. If people can continue to visit them, to bring them supplies, with diesel fuel and food, they can stay there for a long time."

Brown neighbor David Grobe, a former patient of Elaine Brown, just wants the dirt road to be silent again. He said satellite news trucks parked at a softball field for Monday's news conference at the same time residents wanted to play.

"This used to be a very quiet street," he said.

Sitting in lawn chairs around the Browns' long gravel driveway, the couple's supporters rail against Freemasons, the Illuminati, the Federal Reserve, the Vatican and the mainstream media.

Some defend the Browns' claim _ repeatedly rejected by courts _ that no law authorizes the federal income tax and that the 1913 constitutional amendment permitting it was never properly ratified.

"The income tax can take more than the Mafia can with a machine gun. Believe me," said Alfred Liseo of Meriden, Conn.

"The Mafia doesn't have popular support," interrupted Bill Walker. "The government has support of millions of ignorant people who have the wool pulled over their eyes. They think they need to pay. They don't."