St. Petersburg Times, August 3, 1994
A BATTLE OF BELIEFS WAGED IN MEGABYTES - By WAYNE GARCIA
Scientologists and their critics are colliding in cyberspace.
The critics started the fight, creating an electronic bulletin board dubbed
alt.religion.scientology on the Internet, a worldwide web of computer
networks with an audience pushing 25-million.
Then they downloaded their knowledge and opinions in e-mail messages that
just about anyone with a computer, a little money and a modem can view.
"As you will see, Scientology is astronomically prohibitive," one
anonymous writer said on a.r.s in
a message that reprinted the church's price list for counseling and training.
"If you're not a celebrity or a very rich businessman, you'll be in for a
few surprises."
Another, code-named "The Squirrel," chimed in"I am plotting,
for the umpteenth time, how I can reveal that yet another "Scientology
Truth' is just one of the many strange and somewhat stupid utterances that
came from the lying lips of L. Ron Hubbard."
Scientologists were appalled when they found out about this bashfest three
months ago. A church staff member in Los Angeles electronically deputized a
posse of the faithful to counter the naysayers. Within days, the Internet was
flooded with testimonials praising Scientology and with texts written by
Hubbard, the late science fiction writer who founded Scientology in the 1950s.
Hundreds of pages of dogma hit the computer screens, including a
chapter-by-chapter serialization of an 863-page Scientology book.
From Largo, the manager of a software company threw in glowing weekly
accounts of goings-on at the Fort Harrison in Clearwater, Scientology's
international spiritual headquarters. The message throughout Try Scientology,
it works.
Watching from afar, and laughing at both sides, is a splinter group calling
itself the Free Zone. Its members love Hubbard's teachings and
technology but reject the organization that is the church.
It's no surprise that Scientology is a hit on the Internet. For many
religions, computer networks have become a place to pray, debate dogma, study
the Bible, read the Koran and recruit new members.
But Scientology's niche is busier than most, and certainly more
entertaining, say some of the 77,000 Internet "surfers" a month who
run across the Scientology-related bulletin boards, called newsgroups.
The explosive growth of the Internet - and Scientology's presence on it -
caught church officials by surprise. Scientology has always met its critics
head on and spent time and money dealing with dissent. That was easier when
the critics were earthbound, warm bodies with identifiable faces.
In the world of computer networking, the critics float unfettered, as
anonymous as they want to be, connected to millions of others at the push of a
button, disconnected and hidden just as easily.
Kurt Weiland, who heads Scientology's legal and public affairs
branch, dismissed much of the Internet traffic as irrelevant and a waste of
time. In the next breath, though, he acknowledged that "we asked our law
firm to look into what was going on."
A private investigator working for Scientology posed as a journalist to
quiz a computer user in Bloomington, Ind., who is believed to have started the
anti-Scientology newsgroup.
"These people are welcome to speak their minds," Weiland said.
But he added a caveat "It is clear that some of this is written to be
derisive of and libel the church."
And, as Weiland acknowledged, the Church of Scientology doesn't stand still
in the face of what it believes is derisive, incorrect data.
Every few days, someone posts a message on the Internet asking, "Where
is Elaine Siegel?"
They worry that Siegel, a staff worker in Scientology's Office of Special
Affairs in Los Angeles, has been punished for letting a copy of her now
infamous letter fall into the wrong hands - the critics' quick hands.
They have not received a response from her.
Siegel's letter has been posted more than a dozen times on Internet. It
details a plan for Scientologists to counter their cybercritics.
"If you imagine 40-50 Scientologists posting on the Internet every
few days, we'll just run the SPs (suppressive persons) right off the
system," Siegel wrote. "It will be quite simple, actually."
She added "Basically, as a group, we will NO longer put up with our
religion being criticized, harassed and denigrated on the Internet. There will
also be some legal actions, which you will be further briefed on."
Scientology is going to get its own link to Internet, Siegel said. She
called the critics "jerks."
The critics went ballistic, half-upset at the takeover attempt,
half-tickled at the impossibility of such a task. They began the "Where
is Elaine Siegel?" e-mail campaign, its sinister-sounding question about
her fate sure to tweak Scientology officials.
Weiland said Siegel's letter was distributed without her superior's
approval and doesn't represent an official position.
She has not been punished, he said. Weiland said he agreed with her basic
message of countering negative news with positive but denied wanting to push
anyone off the Internet, saying the critics' response suggests it is they who
want to dominate the medium.
"That just shows that these people wanted a free-for-all on a forum
that is meant for everyone," Weiland said.
Through Weiland, Siegel declined to talk to the Times for this story.
The man who exposed Siegel's private letter to the Internet is Chris
Schafmeister, a third-year biophysics graduate student at the University of
California in San Francisco. He posted the Siegel letter after receiving it
from a Scientologist whom he said he befriended on Internet. Before tripping
across the Scientology newsgroup, he had no experience with the organization.
He is now a caustic critic.
"My role is to make sure they're never going to be comfortable on the
Net," Schafmeister said.
Now, he is the one getting uncomfortable. After being interviewed for this
story, Schafmeister said, he learned that someone claiming to be a reporter
from Orange County, Calif., was checking up on him with other computer users.
The "reporter" refused to identify his newspaper. In a second
incident, someone claiming to be a parcel delivery worker phoned Schafmeister
to get his home address. Schafmeister never got a delivery.
Weiland said he doesn't know of any Scientology inquiry into Schafmeister
but acknowledged that a private investigator did pose as a reporter and
question the Bloomington man who is believed to have founded the
anti-Scientology bulletin board.
Weiland said that was done because the person who started the board used
the name of David Miscavige, the current leader of Scientology.
Scientologists on the Net
Stu Sjouwerman is vice president of a software company in Largo.
The Dutch native has been a Scientologist for 12 years and is known to
Internet users for his "Warm Regards" Stu closing on his weekly
reports about what's happening in Clearwater Scientology.
Sjouwerman (pronounced Shauw-er-min) uses his Internet time to spread the
word from Scientology's Clearwater-based Flag Service Organization, mainly
detailed accounts of the speeches given at the Friday night graduation
ceremonies at the Fort Harrison Hotel.
Sjouwerman, 38, also guides people on Internet to Clearwater, where the top
Scientology courses and processing are available.
Sjouwerman said his motivation is to tell how Scientology has helped his
life, how it keeps his marriage alive, how it helped him get the best job he
has ever had.
"... I'd like my fellow beings on this planet to experience this same
absolutely wonderful feeling of spiritual freedom," Sjouwerman said in a
written statement. "That is why I am here on the Net."
Others get similarly involved, posting lengthy passages from Scientology
books, a list of every Scientology organization in the world and lists of
available books and tapes.
On the Internet, they describe how Scientology has helped them become
better people.
"Ever wonder why the critics can't just let you do Scientology, while
they simply not do it, since it's obviously not for them?" wrote one
person who identified himself as a Scientologist. "What would be wrong
with people getting better?"
Weiland said the Scientologists on Internet are individuals, not part of
any church plan. Scientology's marketing branch, he added, is looking at the
possibility of using the Internet.
The Free Zone lives
All the benefits of Scientology at a fraction of the cost. That is the
promise of the Free Zone, located on an Internet bulletin board called
alt.clearing.technology.
Neither fish nor fowl, not Scientologist or basher, the United Free Zone
Alliance and its estimated 3,000 adherents trade variations on Hubbard's
theme, and some continue his research, an idea that is blasphemous to the
Church of Scientology.
It also attracts believers in alternative mind-clearing technologies or
religions outside of Scientology, people who practice processes aimed at
ridding the mind of harmful, painful memories.
That kind of dissension and continued research, coupled with the freedom of
choice to learn mind-clearing outside official channels, makes the Free Zone
Scientology's "worst nightmare," said alt.clearing.technology
founder Homer Wilson Smith, a computer artist from upstate New York.
"Scientifically this is very fertile ground," said Smith, 43.
"Dogmatically, it sows the seeds of war."
Some even use the medium to discuss auditing techniques and tips,
Scientology's confessional process that is used to locate and discharge areas
of mental strife. The most expensive Scientology auditing costs $1,000 an
hour. Free Zoners are doing it for nothing, or next to nothing.
Weiland called the Free Zoners "squirrels," a term
for those who take Hubbard's teachings and use them outside the officials
channels of the church or who alter them into something else.
Scientology has pursued countless lawsuits against squirrels, aimed at
ridding the religion of squirrel tech, as they call it.
Scientology has known about the Free Zone for years, long before it went on
the Internet. As long as no Scientology copyrights or trademarks are violated,
Weiland said, no legal action will be taken.
But what the Free Zone is doing is wrong nonetheless, he said.
"We are not tolerant of any alterations or deviations from the
standard technology. If you alter it, you may get some benefit, but it won't
be the benefit you could get by following it."
Out in cyberspace, the skirmish for souls continues.
A man who identifies himself as a Russian writes "My name is
Alexander. I live in Moscow and I'm interested in Scientology very much. I'd
like to know if it is possible to have your information in Russian?"
A Scientologist responds that most of the literature has been translated
and that there are even several Scientology organizations in Russia. He offers
to mail him more information.
That's too tempting for a critic in Arizona, who posts the last word.
"My critique of Scientology has been translated into Russian,"
Jeff Jacobsen writes, "in case you want a copy of that."
- Times researchers Kitty Bennett and Debbie Wolfe contributed to this
report.
New York Times, 10/13/94
Officials in Germany Denounce Sect as a Menace to Democracy
Leading members of the German Government and
oppostition parties have attacked the American-based Scientology movement as a
danger to democracy, and called on the next government to ban it.
The interior ministers of the 16 German states last spring
called Scientology "an organization that combines elements of business
crime and psychological terror against its own members with economic
activities and sectarian traits, under the protective cover of a religious
group."
On Tuesday, Renate Rennebach, a member of Parliament
from the opposition Social Democratic Party, asserted that Scientology
was not a religion but a conspiratorial movement with global political aims.
"At present Scientology is misusing international
concern about right-wing radical attacks in the Federal Republic to cause
serious damage to the reputation of the country abroad, with an advertising
campaign in influential American newspapers," Mrs. Rennebach said.
Full-page advertisements paid for by the British-based International
Association of Scientologists appeared in The New York Times and The
Washington Post last month. The advertisements recounted the rise of militant
right-wing violence against foreign asylum-seekers and immigrants in Germany
since unification four years ago and said "fascism is on the rise again,
condoned and encouraged by the German Government."
Labor Minister Norbert Blum denounced the
advertisements today as a campaign of defamation against the German
Government, which has strongly condemned the attacks against foreigners and
since 1992 has outlawed five neo-Nazi parties that it maintained had inspired
the attacks.
"Scientology is not a church or a religious
organization," Mr. Blum said. "Scientology is a machine for
manipulating human beings."
Asserting that the movement's real aims were political and
transcended national boundaries, Mrs. Rennebach, her party's spokesman on
sects, said the new German federal government that will be elected next Sunday
should put the group under surveillance.
With an estimated two million members in Germany alone,
Scientology has aroused considerable controversy since it first came here in
1970 and stimulated the production of at least six books denouncing it for
defrauding adherents of their savings, threatening opponents with violence and
seeking to infiltrate companies and entire branches of commerce, such as
commercial real estate, in major German cities.
Ursula Caberta, who heads a department of the
Hamburg state Ministry of the Interior that is devoted exclusively to dealing
with complaints about Scientology, supported Mrs. Rennebach's call to outlaw
the movement here and said the Hamburg authorities would pursue legal action
against it all the way to the German supreme court.
"Scientology is by far the most dangerous and the most
widespread of these psycho-technical groups," she said.
Scientologist documents made available by Mrs. Rennebach today included a
"Call-to-Arms Germany" complaining of bomb threats and violence
against Scientology churches. "We can prove beyond any doubt that this is
the exact same pattern which was used to start the hate campaign against the
Jewish people in 1935," said the document, signed by Klaus Buchele,
from the group's office of special affairs.
