From bobpenny@delphi.com Sat Apr 15 17:42:49 BST 1995

THE SCIENTOLOGY CULT'S CONTINUING EFFORTS TO DESTROY THE FACTNet
ELECTRONIC LIBRARY AND HISTORIC PRESERVATIONAL ARCHIVE

April 14, 1995

In national library week, it is appropriate to update the Internet 
on the ongoing and escalating attack on FACTNet, a nonprofit 
501(c)(3) electronic library and historic preservational archive.  
FACTNet provides and preserves electronic and non-electronic public
information and research on dangerous cultic groups such as Jonestown,
the Branch Davidians (Waco), the Swiss Solar Temple, and Scientology.

I will begin by listing some of the secret "sacred scriptures," policies,
and tactics employed by Scientology.  This will help put Scientology's
actions against our library and archive into an understandable frame
of reference.

"[An enemy] may be deprived of property or injured by any means by any
Scientologist without any discipline of the Scientologist...  may be
tricked, sued, lied to, or destroyed." 
-- from the words of L. Ron Hubbard, founder of Scientology, in the 
organization's HCO policy letter of 18 October 1967, known as the
"Fair Game Policy."

"The purpose of a lawsuit is to harass and discourage rather than to
win...  Don't ever defend.  Always attack.  Find or manufacture enough
threat against them to cause them to sue for peace.  Originate a black
PR campaign to destroy the person's repute and to discredit them so
thoroughly that they will be ostracized.

"The law can be used very easily to harass, and enough harassment on
somebody who is simply on the thin edge anyway, well knowing that he is
not authorized, will generally be sufficient to cause his professional
decease...  If possible, of course, ruin him utterly."
-- from "A Manual on the Dissemination of Material" (1955)
by L. Ron Hubbard

"It is my specific intention that by the use of professional PR [black PR]
tactics any opposition not only be dulled but permanently eradicated."
-- from a confidential Board Policy Letter of 30 May 1974, titled
"Handling Hostile Agents/Dead Agenting"

"Threat and mystery are the lot of intelligence."
-- from HCO Policy Letter of 11 May 1971

"The purpose of the legal officer is to help LRH [L. Ron Hubbard]
handle every legal, government, suit, accounting and tax contact or
action for the organization and by himself or employed representative,
to protect the organization and its people from harm and to bring the
greatest possible confusion and loss to its enemies."
-- from Vol. 7 of Scientology's OEC, titled "Executive Division"

For more information on Scientology's notorious overt and covert
operations against its perceived enemies, read our 144 page report
called "Scientology's Policies Toward its Adversaries."  This
document can be downloaded from FACTNet's BBS (303-530-1942) or
ftp site at rmii.com (ftp/pub2/factnet). The filename is APP3.TXT.

ABOUT SCIENTOLOGY'S ATTACK ON FACTNet

1.  Scientology has threatened FACTNet as a corporation with four
lawsuits using three different law firms.  The threatened suits cover
everything from copyright infringement to libel and slander.
Scientology's actions have thus far consisted only of intimidation;
they have not followed up on ANY of these suits.  We believe their 
intent is to scare our insurance companies into dropping us or
raising our rates far beyond the $1,000 a month we already pay.

2.  Scientology is suing a current member of FACTNet's Board of
Directors, Jon Atack, in England, trying to drive him bankrupt with
legal expenses in a frivolous and malicious lawsuit.

3.  Scientology is suing a former member of FACTNet's Board of
Directors, Gerald Armstrong, in the US, to prevent him from saying
anything about Scientology in the future.  Scientology has asked
the court for a preposterous and over-broad court order that would
remove ALL information about Scientology "from any and all databases,
electronic or otherwise, within the possession, custody or control
of FACTNet."  We believe that Scientology's purpose in requesting
this over-broad order is preparation for approaching a different and
uninformed judge to rush to authorize a raid on FACTNet's library and
archive to enforce the order (in the way that they did in the case of
Dennis Erlich and Netcom).  The Erlich case is discussed in the Internet
newsgroup alt.religion.scientology.

4.  Scientology appears to be buying up the 10-15 year old debts of
another current member of FACTNet's Board of Directors, debts that
Scientology itself was completely or partially responsible for causing
according to a court decision against Scientology almost 10 years ago. 
It appears Scientology is trying to repeat a tactic it used recently
against two other critics, buying up and forclosing on outstanding
debts to threaten the critic with bankruptcy.

5.  Scientology agents have stalked, intimidated and continued
to "fair game" harass our staff in spite of repeatedly being warned
to stay away from everyone in our organization and their families
and friends.

6.  Scientology agents or members have called potential FACTNet
financial donors and threatened that if they support FACTNet they
could get in trouble.  The potential donors were also told that any
money they gave would be misused personally by one of FACTNet's
directors.

7.  Scientology agents or members may have attempted to infiltrate
our electronic library and hardcopy archive to sabotage our
organization by hacking through our BBS's security system or
by surreptitiously placing incriminating documents into our archive.

8.  Scientology agents or members threatened to sue our Internet WWW
(World Wide Web) page provider if they continued to provide web page
services to our library (the web page was cancelled).

9.  Scientology agents or members threatened to sue our secure mail
and office services provider (Mail Boxes Ect.) if they so much as
send another fax for us.

10.  Scientology agents or members have initiated a widespread 
anonymous black PR smear mailing.  In this document, FACTNet's 
Board of Directors and network associates are called everything 
from criminals, perverts, con men, and CIA operatives, to insane. 
We recommend you view this document for yourself to see the 
level of personal and organization attack our library is under.  
The file ANTIFACT.TXT can be downloaded from our BBS or ftp site.

11.  Using the same smear tactics, Scientology has repeatedly 
written the IRS in an effort to get our nonprofit educational 
status canceled.  A Scientology training document for teaching a
person to lie effectively, called TR-L (Training Routine, Lying),
will give you further insight into how far Scientology will go
to smear a perceived enemy.  TR-L is reproduced in the FACTNet
publication cited earlier.

Scientology seems to be taking every step to destroy our ability to
archive and preserve public records and research and make those
records available to the public who want them now or who will want
this information in the future.  Their strategy against FACTNet and
its principals is everything I was told would happen.

One of Scientology's former top intelligence operatives summarized 
the essence of their intelligence strategy for unconditional victory
over any adversary.  Their "sacred scripture" in this case is a book
of military and espionage strategy by Sun Tzu called the "Art of War."
It is used as a basic training manual in the church for its intelligence
people and in most international intelligence agencies.  The following
principles come from the "Art of War."

1.  Destroy any and every type of personal or financial resource 
the adversary could use to support their attack efforts.

2.  Completely isolate the target.  Isolate, destroy or "dead 
agent" any and every ally or alliance of the adversary which 
could be of any type of support - personal, familial, financial, 
professional, etc.

3.  Destroy the adversary's reputation with black PR or
dis-information.

4.  Destroy their emotional and psychological sanity and ability 
to continue by constant hammering.

5.  Keep doing 1-4, NOT just until the attack is stopped, but
ideally until you have insured the adversary will never have
any future capacity or inclination to mount any future attack.

WHY SCIENTOLOGY IS ATTACKING FACTNet SO VEHEMENTLY

1. Lately we have focused more efforts on gathering and preserving 
the public records and research information on Scientology.  Evidence
is accumulating of the group's dangerousness, of casualties among its
members, its economic size, and its worldwide history of criminality.

2. Our library was established on two concepts that are the 
antithesis of Scientology's totalitarian structure.  Those two 
principles are:

a) A democratic society runs on the Jeffersonian concept that 
man is a rational animal and that democracy will work if citizens 
are allowed to be rational.  Thomas Jefferson wrote, "If a nation 
expects to be ignorant and free, it expects what never was and 
never will be."  John Dewey wrote, "The human power to respond 
to reason and truth protects democracy."

Democracy cannot work unless we protect the individual's capacity 
for rationality.  Good decision-making depends on the availability 
and quality of information and on free and unimpaired use of one's
rational faculties.  Our library provides and preserves information
that will be required in the future to make good choices about
Scientology.

b) FACTNet runs on a solid belief in the value and merit of the
open information and dialog process as brilliantly stated by
John Stuart Mill in the second chapter of his essay, "On Liberty."

In this chapter on freedom of thought and discussion, Mill is 
concerned with the pursuit of truth.  With truth as the ultimate 
goal to be achieved, he advocates toleration of competing doctrines
and opinions so that, when all are fairly considered and submitted
to arguments pro and con, the truth is more likely to be discovered.
Mill advocates toleration of individuals who differ in thought and
speech, but not tolerance for competing doctrines or opinions as if
they were all equally acceptable or preferable.  He does not look
upon pluralism with respect to matters of truth in the same way that
he looks upon pluralism with respect to matters of taste.

Here are some crucial passages on liberty of thought and discussion 
from Chapter 2 of Mill's essay, "On Liberty."

"But the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion 
is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as 
the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, 
still more than those who hold it.  If the opinion is right, 
they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for 
truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, 
the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced 
by its collision with error. . . . We have now recognized the 
necessity to the mental well-being of mankind (on which all 
their other well-being depends) of freedom of opinion, and freedom 
of the expression of opinion, on four distinct grounds; which 
we will now briefly recapitulate.

"First, if any opinion is compelled to silence, that opinion 
may, for aught we can certainly know, be true.  To deny this 
is to assume our own infallibility.

"Secondly, though the silenced opinion be an error, it may, and 
very commonly does, contain a portion of truth; and since the 
general or prevailing opinion on any subject is rarely or never 
the whole truth, it is only by the collision of adverse opinions 
that the remainder of the truth has any chance of being supplied.

"Thirdly, even if the received opinion be not only true, but 
the whole truth; unless it is suffered to be, and actually is, 
vigorously and earnestly contested, it will, by most of those 
who receive it, be held in the manner of a prejudice, with little 
comprehension or feeling of its rational grounds.

"And not only this, but fourthly, the meaning of the doctrine 
itself will be in danger of being lost, or enfeebled, and deprived 
of its vital effect on the character and conduct: the dogma 
becoming a mere formal profession, inefficacious for good, but 
encumbering the ground, and preventing the growth of any real 
and heartfelt conviction, from reason or personal experience."

FACTNet's library encourages the process of open dialog.  Thousands
of former members, media people, lawyers, family members, and
government investigators have used our library to gather critical
competing information to balance against whatever information
Scientology reveals about itself.

THE RESULT OF SCIENTOLOGY'S TOTAL ATTACK ON US

We are concerned that any day our library and archive may be made 
unavailable to the public.  We have reason to believe that we may
be raided and our equipment seized OR that we will have to shut
down because it will be impossible to survive much longer under
such all-out warfare on every aspect of our organization.

This raid-and-seizure expectation is not at all paranoid.  This 
just happened to Dennis Erlich, an outspoken critic of Scientology.
For full details on the Scientology raid against Dennis Erlich, see
the Internet newsgroup alt.religion.scientology or e-mail your
questions to "dennis.l.erlich@support.com".

FACTNet (Fight Against Coercive Tactics Network, Inc.) will continue
to fight on as long as we can, but we need your help and we need it
now!

WHAT YOU CAN DO

1.  Our organization is expendable.  Our staff have come to grips with
the possibility of organizational demise and personal harassment.
But the information in our library is NOT expendable and much of it
is NOT replaceable.  We urgently need you to help us frustrate this
new "electronic book and library burning."

Download as much of our library as you can to safe places around the
world.  Help us get our story out.  Since our first request for help,
several other libraries and archives have contacted us to help preserve
our documents but much more needs to be transferred out while we are
still in operation.

We thank those of you who are putting our library on other ftp sites
and on other web pages.  You can downloading either individual files
or a variety of packages in .ZIP file (compressed) format.  Call our
BBS at (303) 530-1942 and follow the instructions on the screen.  For
a limited time, we will maintain a ftp site at rmii.com 
(ftp/pub2/factnet). There is no downloading charge and the downloading
is unlimited.

The above refers to text files.  In compressed form, all of the text
can be downloaded as a single 14 Mb .ZIP file.  But most of our data
is in IMAGE FILE format (multi-page group 4 .TIF).  We have more than
three GIGABYTES of image files.	 We look forward to someone's solution
to the problem of how to make this quantity of multi-page .TIFs (which
is only a beginning) accessible on a web page.  When the time comes,
this data will be available on CD ROM.

2.  Tell the Internet and non-Internet world what is happening to us.
Pass and copy this message to other BBS's, other libraries and library
associations, and other Internet newsgroups so that everyone who should
know will be informed about Scientology's electronic book and library 
burning and intimidation on the Net.  Some major media have contacted us 
and are beginning to tell what is happening, but it may be too little
too late unless these and other stories break soon.

3.  Some unsolicited donations have come in to help with our legal,
security, and data transfer expenses but much more is needed.  We are
trying to get what could be millions of pages of materials into new
archives and quickly scan the most important for secure preservation.

If you are going to help, you must act now!  We have only a little 
time left before we may lose our insurance and be forced to go offline
because of Scientology's activities.

In closing, I ask you to think of how you would cope without help if
everything that was happening to us was happening to you and your
organization.  Consider the secret goals of Scientology as described
in their own documents which were seized by the F.B.I. in its authorized
search of Scientology's headquarters.

"The vital targets on which we must invest most of our time are:
(T1) Depopularizing the enemy to the point of obliteration.
(T2) Taking over the control or allegiance of the heads or proprietors
     of all news media. 
(T3) Taking over the control or allegiance of key political figures.
(T4) Taking over the control or allegiance of those who monitor
international finance and shifting them to a less precarious standard."
-- from Guardian Order 060971, titled "Targets"

"The goal of the department [of government affairs] is to bring the
government and hostile philosophies or societies into a state of complete
compliance with the goals of Scientology.  This is done by a high level
ability to control and in its absence by a low level ability to OVERWHELM.
Introvert such agencies.  Control such agencies...." 
-- from Hubbard's OEC Vol. 7 titled "Executive Division" (caps added for
emphasis)

"Intelligence is not concentrating on what they should be - the WFMH
[World Federation of Mental Health], the NAMH [National Association of
Mental Health] - These are the groups I want destroyed...

"Thus in the case of Scientology Orgs [organizations] one should attack
with the end view of taking over the whole field of mental health...

"Our war has been forced to become, to take over absolutely the field
of mental healing on the planet in all forms..."
-- from Hubbard Communications Office Policy Letter of 14 Jan 1969

Please copy and forward this message to all Internet groups which deal
with library associations and archives.  Also inform groups which deal
with free speech, legal issues and journalism and media issues on the
Internet.

Thank you in advance for your help, ideas and courage.  

Lawrence Wollersheim
"lawrence@factnet.org"
for the Board of Directors of FACTNet Inc.

This document is available on FACTNet's BBS and ftp site under the
name LIBRARY.TXT