Fair Game

by Steve Cannane

  At 7.30 am on 13 February 1995, a man wearing a suit and carrying papers repeatedly rung on Dennis Erlich’s doorbell. On the porch and driveway outside Erlich’s home in Glendale, California, around 25 people had gathered. The crowd was waiting to get inside and search for information relating to posts the former Scientologist had made on alt.religion.scientology. Erlich had been a staff member at Scientology headquarters in Clearwater, where he worked as the ‘chief cramming officer’, or, as he preferred to put it, ‘the quality control engineer at the brainwashing plant’.23

  When Erlich refused to answer the door he received a call from off-duty policeman Ed Eccles, who was waiting outside on the porch. Sergeant Eccles warned Erlich that he had a writ of seizure that allowed him to enter his home by force. The former Scientologist told Sergeant Eccles he did not want so many people coming into his home. After a brief negotiation Eccles and six others entered Erlich’s home on the condition the policeman would not identify the other men until after the raid was over.24

  The search party included Warren McShane from Scientology’s Religious Technology Center (RTC), Thomas Small, a lawyer for the RTC, and Paul Wilmhurst, one of Scientology’s top computer experts. Also present were on-duty Glendale police officer Steve Eggert, off-duty Inglewood police officer Mark Fronterotta, and Robert Shovlin, a private investigator hired by lawyers for the RTC.

  The raid lasted around seven hours. Personal papers, books, financial records and over 300 floppy discs were confiscated. Files from Erlich’s hard disk were copied and then erased. As Erlich wrote at the time: ‘Potentially they copied all my personal correspondence, mailing lists, financial records and personal notes.’25 As the material was seized, Erlich was only aware of the identity of Sergeant Eccles. The representatives from the Church of Scientology were not identified until after the raid was over.

  Dennis Erlich’s home had been turned over because of posts he made on alt.religion.scientology. The Church of Scientology claimed these posts breached its copyright. From August 1994, Erlich had been an active critic of Scientology on the newsgroup. As one of the most senior defectors to be active on the site, Erlich was often asked questions relating to Scientology policy. His responses would include quotations from policies or scriptures. Scientology lawyers argued this was a violation of copyright law. Northern California District Judge Ron Whyte approved the writ of seizure, and Erlich’s home was raided.

  In the coming months, other critics got the same treatment. On a Saturday morning in August, Arnie Lerma was nursing a coffee in his living room when federal marshals knocked on his door. Holding a warrant, and accompanied by computer technicians, cameramen and Scientology lawyers, including Helena Kobrin, the marshals barged in.26 Lerma was a former Scientologist and a director of FACTnet, an online anti-cult information service. Lerma had published what was known as the Fishman affidavit on alt.religion.scientology. The documents came from a 1993 court case where Steven Fishman revealed in evidence course materials from various Operating Thetan levels, including the highly secretive Xenu myth.

  The Church of Scientology had gone to extraordinary lengths to keep the Fishman affidavit out of the public domain. As a result of the court case, the documents had to be kept in a Los Angeles court file for two years, where members of the public could borrow them. But Scientologists monopolised access to the documents by ‘alternately checking out the files each day and retaining them until the clerk’s office closed’.27

  Having his home raided traumatised Lerma. His computer, and his disks, with critical information stored on them like client lists and phone numbers, were all removed. ‘I’m one of those guys who keeps everything – my whole life – on the computer,’ Lerma told the Washington Post, ‘and now they have it all.’28 The Church of Scientology was unrepentant, arguing it had a right to protect what it called, unusually for a church, its ‘trade secrets’. ‘We take very forceful and elaborate steps to maintain the confidentiality,’ said Scientology spokesman Kurt Weiland. ‘This is not a free-speech issue. It’s a copyright issue.’29

  The Church of Scientology continued its show of force in a series of raids and lawsuits around the world. Lerma’s colleague on the board of FACTnet, Larry Wollersheim, and a former director, Bob Penny, both had their homes searched. Julf Helsingius, the operator of the anonymous remailer anon.penet.fi had his home raided in Finland. Scientology critic Zenon Panoussis had hard drives and disks seized from his apartment in Sweden. In the Netherlands, journalist Karen Spaink had her home searched for two and half hours by local police. Lawsuits often followed the raids. The Church of Scientology sued the Washington Post over the publication of its copyrighted scriptures in its reporting of the Lerma raid, and took legal action against ISPs such as Netcom and XS4ALL.

  By the mid-1990s, the Church of Scientology had, to a large degree, been able to silence the mainstream media. The US$416 million lawsuit against TIME magazine had a chilling effect on critical reporting. However, the free-spirited netizens on alt.religion. scientology were not so easily muzzled. The raids and the court cases were covered in-depth on the newsgroup. Members who received legal threats from Helena Kobrin seemed unfazed, publishing them online to the newsgroup.

  Despite all the raids and the legal threats, the Church of Scientology was losing the battle to control the information flow from defectors and the courts. Secret scriptures, court documents and testimonies were being published instantly online. The Internet was ushering in a revolution in publishing and Scientology, an organisation built around copyright and control, was caught in the crosshairs. As former Scientology spokesman Robert Vaughn Young told Wendy Grossman at the time, ‘I am thankful I’m not having to face the Net. It’s going to be to Scientology what Vietnam was to the US. Their only choice is to withdraw. They cannot win.’30

  In the month before Arnie Lerma’s home in Arlington was raided, David Gerard received his first legal letter from Helena Kobrin. Like Lerma, the Melbourne-based computer science student was accused of publishing confidential OT materials to alt.religion.scientology. Gerard had posted what he describes as ‘six stupid lines from OT VII’.31

  OT7-48

  1. Find some plants, trees, etc., and communicate to them individually until you know they received your communication.

  2. Go to a zoo or a place with many types of life and communicate with each of them until you know the communication is received and, if possible, returned.

  While Gerard argued that under fair use provisions of copyright law it was completely legitimate to quote a portion of the OT materials, the Church of Scientology thought otherwise, and Helena Kobrin threatened the student with a lawsuit. ‘These actions constitute violations of applicable copyright laws and trade secret misappropriation,’ Kobrin wrote, ‘entitling our client to damages and an injunction.’32

  Gerard had been following the Erlich case and like other members of the newsgroup was outraged by the Church of Scientology’s actions. ‘People on the Net back then took this whole thing very seriously,’ says Gerard. ‘We were very doctrinaire about it, as only young, educated, privileged geeks could be!’33

  The computer science student fired off a response to Kobrin, picking apart her legal letter with all the smartarsery an undergraduate student could muster. Gerard described Kobrin’s legal arguments as ‘utter bilge’ and ‘legal harassment’. He accused her of quoting the copyright registration number for OT II when she meant OT VII, and argued that the OT levels could not be considered trade secrets when they had already been read into publicly available court records.34

  Helena Kobrin did not end up taking David Gerard to court. But the Scientologists tried another avenue to silence the outspoken critic. According to Gerard’s account, published on alt.religion. scientology at the time, representatives from the Australian arm of the Church of Scientology made a formal complaint to Haddon Storey, the Minister for Tertiary Education in Victoria, that Gerard’s posts to the newsgroup were not part of academic usage and should be prohi
bited. Twenty years later, Haddon Storey told me he did not recall the complaint.35 A Freedom of Information request found that any documentation from that period would have been destroyed.36

  Fifteen days later Gerard received a letter from the IT department of the university notifying him that his account had been locked until further notice at the direction of the Deputy Vice Chancellor. Eventually the account was unlocked, but Gerard was outraged that his freedom of speech could be trampled on at a university – an environment that was meant to foster freedom of thought and expression. The computer science student was determined to fight back, and, like Arnie Lerma, set up a website that would document all he wanted to say about Scientology.

  Setting up a website in Australia at the time was easier said than done. There was no real marketplace for cheap website hosting. Gerard had heard that the non-profit Suburbia had solid freedom of speech credentials. He got in contact with its systems administrator, Julian Assange. Gerard told him he wanted to build a webpage that was critical of Scientology and that ‘it was certain to attract a considerable amount of trouble’.37 Assange did not need his arm twisted. ‘That sounds like fun,’ he said.38

  David Gerard began building what became known as The Australian Critics of Scientology Resource Collection. The website still exists today and includes Australian newspaper reports on Scientology going back to the 1950s and information for journalists on how to deal with the cult. Gerard published personal testimonies of exScientologists and maps and photos of all the Scientology organisations operating in Australia. He had a special section that documented all protests against Scientology in Australia and exposed how the Scientologists were using private investigators to harass critics. Pulling together the website was a painstaking process. ‘With the old newspaper reports, I typed in every one of them, from a folder of smudgy photocopies and microfilm scans,’ says Gerard.39

  Julian Assange had started running Suburbia when its founder, Mark Dorset, moved to Sydney. That meant he was now in the firing line as the man who was responsible for hosting Gerard’s website. ‘Helena Kobrin started to attack us and several of our upstreams and Telstra, trying to cut us off,’ recalls Assange. ‘They were not successful in doing that. I had given a commitment to publish that material and proceeded to do so.’40

  Assange was far more than just a sympathetic host of an anti-Scientology website. He started reading up about Hubbard and his OT levels and soon found himself campaigning against the cult. ‘Julian is a person who deeply investigates a topic,’ says Suelette Dreyfus, who was collaborating with Assange on the book Underground at the time. ‘He would say you can tell a lot about someone’s character from what they said early on in their life.’41 Assange thought Hubbard’s comments that ‘the easiest way to make money would be to start a religion’42 said it all about Scientology.

  Through alt.religion.scientology, Assange gained further knowledge about the Scientology raids going on at the time. ‘He was deeply offended by the dirty tricks campaigns they would use to try to repress any critics,’ says Suelette Dreyfus. ‘I remember Julian reading articles about the raids in the US and him being outraged about what was in effect the privatisation of a public police force for Scientology’s gain.’43

  The raids may have outraged Assange, but they also underlined the risks he was taking in hosting David Gerard’s anti-Scientology website. Not only were all his files and computers at risk, he would not have wanted to have his young son exposed to police raids. But in his mind, the risks were worth it. Instead of retreating, he began agitating against Scientology and turning up at protests organised by David Gerard.

  Assange distilled his thoughts about Hubbard and Scientology into a call to arms he sent out to the Cypherpunks email list on 15 March 1996. He urged his fellow free speech advocates to attend a rally outside the Church of Scientology in Melbourne the following morning:

  The Church of Scientology was founded by the late L. Ron Hubbard in the United States some 30 years ago. To followers, Hubbard is their profit [sic], and his prolific writings are the sacred word. The Church’s hierarchy and financial viability revolve around Hubburd’s [sic] verbose scriptures. Each new level gained by a church follower brings to them, among other rights and privileges access to a new and previously verboten set of the works of Ron. But to the Church it brings something else. Revenue. A very sizeable revenue. Ron’s works are a required element in order for the follower to progress through the many of successive levels the Church has – and they cost hundreds or thousands of dollars each.

  In fact, by the time a devote of the Church has realized the highest OT level, the Church has usually had them for over five figures. But revenue isn’t the only reason for keeping the works of Ron occulted away. A common technique used by cults to brainwash their followers is gradual immersion in cult mythology and philosophy. To put it bluntly, it is often advisable to keep the more wacko beliefs and practices out of your new recruit’s faces until they are sufficiently wacko themselves.

  Now, the problem for the Church of Scientology is that on the wacko scale the higher level works of Ron hover somewhere near the figure 10. To an outsider it is an immediate farse [sic]. But to a follower who has become psychologically dependent on the Church’s philosophy & society and invested thousands and thousands of dollars in doing so, it is just another step on the road to mental subservience.

  What you have then is a Church based on brainwashing yuppies and other people with more money than sense. This may not concern you. If Nicole Kiddman [sic], Kate Cerbrano [sic], John Travolta, Burce [sic] Willis, Demi Moor [sic] and Tom Cruise want to spend their fortunes on learning that the earth is in reality the destroyed prison colony of aliens from out of space then so be it.

  However, money brings power and attracts the currupt [sic]. Money is something the Church has a lot of. Not all of the Church’s beliefs and practices are so out of it as to be completely as irrelevant as the previous example. Some are quite insidious. For instance, L. Ron Hubbard devised a range of methods that could be used against critics and other ‘enemies of the Church’. Among the list was manipulation of the legal/court system. To the Church the battle isn’t won in the court room. It is won at the very moment the legal process starts unfolding, creating fear and expense in those the Church opposes.

  Their worst critic at the moment is not a person, or an organisation but a medium – the Internet. The Internet is, by its very nature a censorship free zone. Censorship, concealment and revelation (for a fee) is the Church’s raison d’etre. The Church, via its manipulation of the legal system has had computer systems seized, system operators forced to reveal their users personal details, university accounts suspended and radio stations, such as RRR cut their programs.

  It has sued ex-cult members, newspapers, and many others for copyright infringements, loss of earnings and trade secret violation. Trade secret violation? Yes, the Church of Scientology claims its religious works are trade secrets. The fight against the Church is far more than the Net vs a bunch of wackos with too much money. It is about corporate suppression of the Internet and free speech. It is about intellectual property and the big and rich versus the small and smart. The precedents the Church sets today the weapons of corporate tirany [sic] tomorrow.44

  Julian Assange saw the battle against Scientology as being much bigger than taking on one cult that was trying to harass and silence its critics. As essayist Robert Manne put it, ‘Assange’s main political preoccupation seems to have been the extraordinary democratic possibilities of the information-sharing virtual communities across the globe created by the Internet, and the threat to its freedom and flourishing posed by censorious states, greedy corporations and repressive laws.’45 Assange knew this battle would set important precedents for Internet freedom.

  In the end Assange was not sued by the Church of Scientology, his home was not raided by the police like other free speech advocates around the world. But the experience of taking on Scientology proved formative. He
would later claim that Suburbia acted as the prototype for WikiLeaks more than any other project he had been a part of.46 In March 2008, 15 months after WikiLeaks published its first leaked document, and over a decade after his first skirmish with Scientology’s lawyers, Assange published a 208-page file relating to a former intelligence agent in the Office of Special Affairs (OSA), Frank Oliver.

  Included in the documents were the former OSA operative’s billion-year contract and a whole range of Scientology policy documents relating to black propaganda, how to attack enemies and how to choose appropriate Scientologists for covert operations. The leak also included the policy on how to conduct a ‘noisy investigation’, something Assange had been subjected to in 1997.47 Scientology’s secrets about how it conducted surveillance programs were online for all to see.

  Two weeks later, Assange had an even bigger scoop. WikiLeaks published a 612-page manual that included course materials for all eight OT levels. The documents included handwritten notes from Hubbard laying out his OT research. Given that Scientology lawyers sent legal threats to David Gerard for repeating just six lines from OT VII on a fledgling newsgroup, the publication of 612 pages’ worth of OT secrets must have sent Scientology’s Religious Technology Center into a state of apoplexy.

  The following day, a legal letter from Ava Paquette of Moxon and Kobrin lawyers arrived in the WikiLeaks inbox. It asked the whistleblowing website to remove its copyrighted materials and preserve any documents relating to the matter including ‘logs, data entry sheets, applications – electronic or otherwise, registrations forms, billings statements or invoices, computer print-outs, disks hard drives, etc’.48 The Church of Scientology not only wanted the documents taken down, they wanted to find out who had leaked them.