DIVIDE AND CONQUER

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DIVIDE AND CONQUER
by Greg Campbell

The Church of Scientology may have won and important battle with its
main nemesis, the Fight Against Coercive Tactics Network, without
lifting a finger. Boulder resident and co-founder of FACTNet Lawrence
Wollersheim, until recently revered as a hero in the fight against
Scientology and its attempt to censor postings to the Internet, has
lately found himself on the receiving end of a lot of vituperative
comments, personal attacks and phenomenally bad feelings - and they're
not coming from the church. Instead, Wollersheim is being severely
flamed due to critical internal shakeups at FACTNet in a forum he used
to call home: the anti-Scientology Usenet newsgroup
alt.religion.scientology. Former Wollersheim supporters-turned-critics
blame him for creating the tension that threatens to cause the
organization to self-destruct - and with it FACTNet's precedent-setting
efforts to fight censorship on the Internet.

Wollersheim and FACTNet achieved infamy outside the Internet when they
were sued last year for making the church's high-level secret teachings
available to anyone with a modem and a computer, information that could
only be obtained in the past by church members who paid, in some cases,
hundreds of thousands of dollars to progress through the hierarchical
levels of the church. Scientologists temporarily off-lined FACTNet by
seizing its equipment and materials and embroiling the organization's
directors in a legal battle that continues to rage. Internet
intellectuals reacted to the church's jackhammer blow by condemning its
actions to stem the free distribution of information. Regardless of how
the courts decide the case, the impact on the Internet will be profound.

Las month Wollersheim and Arnie Lerma, another FACTNet director, fired
both their legal team and their long-time partner Bob Penny, who suffers
from multiple sclerosis. The move has observers questioning the wisdom,
and the intentions, of FACTNet's leadership.

According to Penny, Wollersheim and Lerma cut him loose because he
disagreed with the course of defense they wished to pursue against the
copyright and trade secrets lawsuit filed by the church in response to
FACTNet's posting of Scientology teachings to the Internet. Worse,
Penny claims that should an Internet campaign to have him removed from
liability in the lawsuit due to his health prove successful, FACTNet
itself will sue him and attempt to shift the blame for its legal woes
onto his shoulders. Wollersheim and Lerma have actively denied the
threat to anyone who will listen.

According to Penny, and reported to alt.religion.scientology by Biased
Journalism, an on-line Internet magazine, he wished to fight the case as
a simple copyright matter. Wollersheim, on the other hand, was prepared
to wage an aggressive offensive to bring the church to its knees by
challenging the validity of its copyright holdings. Faegre and Benson,
the Denver law firm representing FACTNet, washed their hands of the case
last month due to the dispute, citing irreconcilable differences between
the two. And in response, Wollersheim promises to sue the firm for
malpractice. In the meantime, he is assembling what he calls the
"Magnificent 7," a team of attorneys experienced in battling the church.

"Lawrence may have left Scientology, but the Scientology hasn't entirely
left Lawrence," says Margery Wakefield, referring to "the way he treats
people, as if they're dispensable, as if there's no such thing as
friendship." She and Ann Webber, Penny's power of attorney, are de facto
spokeswomen and long-time friends of Penny, who Wollersheim and Lerma
claim was fired from the board last month due to his physical and mental
deterioration.

Wollersheim agreed that he and Penny differed in their defense
approaches, but insisted that it was Penny's flagging health that led to
his removal from the board, not their legal disagreements.

"What's happened is his memory is so bad he has the potential to make
errors not because he would do this consciously but because the MS has
caused such nerve and memory deterioration that he can't think," he
says. "With the greatest reluctance, upon numerous warnings from our
attorneys about his condition and what it means on the board of
directors, we finally had to take him off the board."

Though he's off the board, Penny is still covered by FACTNet's insurance
policies for the costs of defending his actions while he was a director.

Ron Newman, an alt.religion.scientology activist who's been following
the anti-cult movement for years, is one of many people who have posted
a plea on the Internet urging concerned observers to flood the office of
Denver U.S. District Court Judge John Kane with letters asking for
Penny's removal from the suit altogether, seeking mercy for him due to
his struggle with MS. The campaign has had a degree of success:
according to everyone involved, Kane argued with Scientology lawyers on
Penny's behalf, but the decision ultimately rests with the church.

But the possibility of Penny being let off the hook apparently doesn't
sit well with Wollersheim. In comments made to Boulder Weekly,
Wollersheim said he would support Penny's withdrawal from the suit.
But, according to Biased Journalism, he threatened to sue Penny if all
the liability for his actions were dumped on him and FACTnet in the
process. This worries Webber and Wakefield for another reason: If Penny
is excused from liability, it will cut of his access to the insurance
defense money since he's no longer on the board of directors. And
fighting a suit brought by his former partners would be financially
devastating to him.

It's a charge Wollersheim denies to Boulder Weekly.

"Real simply, the information that they have in there is false," he
says, referring to Biased Journalism. "The ...statement that I'm suing
Bob or that I threatened to sue Bob personally is completely false; it's
not what I said."

But Wollersheim is simply playing with words. The same morning he spoke
with Boulder Weekly, he also called Penny's answering machine, fuming
that his threat had gotten out of the bad and onto the Internet through
Webber and Wakefield: "I said FACTNet would sue you if you accepted any
private deal from Scientology which made you immune to liability and
forced the liability for your actions on FACTNet. Now the Boulder
Weekly may be running a story on this. You need to do something - I
mean we could carve you up right now and defend ourselves and say, look:
Bob Penny did this and this and this, which we did not do ... For the
good of the organization, you need to get on the Internet and post
something that says neither Ann nor Margie were authorized to speak, and
you and I have a good relationship and that things were stated out of
context. What's happening is that their statements are backfiring and
it's going to cause Scientology to not let you out of this trial, and
you're going to wind up being the one being individually liable for your
actions the way I'm liable for mine. If this keeps roaring on the
Internet, and Scientology get these signals of all these problems, and
you don't clean it up, I think you are fucking yourself on this one."

According to Wollersheim, Webber and Wakefield are violating
attorney/client confidentiality rules by speaking out about FACTNet
developments, an assertion they both deny: neither of them are
represented by an attorney. In a subsequent message left the same day,
Wollersheim demanded that Penny get in touch with Boulder Weekly and
exercise some spin control in the interests of preserving FACTNet's
fund-raising efforts on the Internet:

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