Magnetic Weapon?

About 7 years ago, many people in the Perth (Western Australia) metropolitan area reported seeing a brightly coloured object traverse the sky near the city. Apparently it came from the direction of the South-South West, came to a halt roughly over Moore River, split into 4 equal glowing parts which seemed to stand still and throb in the sky. People on the ground near Moore River said it made the ground shake.
Everyone who saw it suffered the usual official explanations like it was just Venus, or just a metiorite etc.
There were a lot of extremely puzzled people.
About 6 months after the event there was a small article in the Western Australian newspaper that made some mention of a missile being fired from the sea - as if everybody knew that - and regarded it as nothing out of the ordinary.
For people unfamiliar with events in W.A. around that time - there was reported to have been a secret Japanese Doomsday Cult operating in the Moore River area. It seems they bought an isolated farm and used it as a base to create chemical weapons. There was a bit of a fuss about it in the papers and questions were asked as to how they were able to import the raw materials into Australia. There was also mention of a number of dead sheep found on the property.
I am wondering - and this is just a supposition on my part - if there was something else going on out there as well as chemical weapons manufacture.
Maybe, just maybe the cult had come up with some sinister bit of equipment, software or technology that had to be destroyed by magnetic methods in some kind of blackmail scenario that made a ground assault too risky?
Has anyone got any information or theories that could explain it?

Sorry folks - this post ended up in the wrong place. Obviously it has nothing to do with Katrina.