Scientology 101: How the Church of Scientology uses ‘lawfare’ to silence its critics

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In the post 9/11 era, new terms and new ideas to describe how war is being fought today have emerged in the media. One such term is “lawfare”. On page 55 of the book Unrestricted Warfare, authors Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui call for the use of “international law warfare” (seizing the earliest opportunity to set up regulations) along with a set of other types of warfare that an enemy with more firepower cannot withstand for long. Since 2001, the term has been used to describe how individual supporters of terrorism have tried to silence those who expose them. Take the case of Khalid bin Mahfouz, the Saudi Arabian billionaire who sued American author Rachel Ehrenfeld for libel in the UK because in her book Funding Evil she named him as a major financial contributor to terrorist organisations. British libel laws place the burden of proof on the defendant, and given Dr. Ehrenfeld’s limited resources - even with government documents as proof - she lost. By contrast, in 2008, Governor George Pataki of New York signed Rachel’s Law, which grants protection to American citizens being sued by ”libel tourists”. The laws of the USA and the UK differ radically when it comes to freedom of speech.

“Lawfare” is the use of a country’s legal system by an individual or corporation to utterly crush their adversaries. The term is currently used in the context of the War on Terror, but the definition can be broadened to include any other individual or group who tries to ruin an adversary in court - including the “Church” of Scientology.

“We are going to sue your ass… and your balls!”

Earlier this year, the Canadian magazine Maisonneuve published an article on long-time Scientology critic Gerry Armstrong, detailing the sustained harassment campaign against him. The author of the article goes so far as to call him Scientology’s Salman Rushdie because of the severity of the Church’s harassment. Armstrong was once in the inner circle of Scientology’s founder, L. Ron Hubbard, and was asked to help author Omar Garrison to compile a biography of Hubbard. When he found out the innumerable “discrepancies” in the official version of Hubbard’s life story, Armstrong declined to continue work on the project.

When he left the cult in 1981, Armstrong did so in possession of “boxes of material” on L. Ron Hubbard. In 1986, he signed a gag agreement with the Church of Scientology, but couldn’t remain silent. Since he has broken that agreement, the Church has sued him many times in the state of California. He fled to his hometown of Chilliwack, Canada but, even there, Gerry Armstrong gets no rest.

“To get PC incarcerated in a mental institution or jail, or at least to hit her so hard that she drops her attacks”

In 1968, a young author from New York wrote an expose about Scientology, which later was expanded into her 1971 release The Scandal of Scientology. At the time, Paulette Cooper could not have known that this would bring about a campaign to destroy her. The Church of Scientology even went so far as to frame her for bomb threats the Church is thought to have itself with stationary stolen from Cooper’s apartment. Forensic evidence cleared her of any crime, but then, in the 1970s, the Scientologists did a pretty good job in framing her for another crime she did not commit: this time, she faced 15 years in prison. (In 1977, the FBI raided Scientology offices around the country, and discovered Operation Freak Out, a plan that expanded on their success with the previous forged bomb threat. After that discovery, Cooper was finally exonerated of all charges.)

Cooper later wrote: “As for me, I often wish I had never ever heard the word ‘Scientology’. But given the same situation, I would still do it all over again. I would not have been capable of remaining quiet, because I learned too many scary things and talked to too many people who were being hurt.” Cooper paid a huge price to expose Scientology, not just through her book but also through what happened in her life for more than a decade. That is lawfare. For the entire decade, they did not let her go on with her career or her life, and she paid a price for it.

The wolves in watchmens’ clothing

Where previously Scientologists who wanted to leave the Church could call the Cult Awareness Network (CAN) hotline to get help, since 1996 the Church of Scientology has operated CAN as another of its “front groups”. The Church of Scientology launched a massive lawsuit against CAN and its former director Cynthia Kisser, and in 1996 the CAN declared bankruptcy. As part of the ruling against the CAN, it had to turn over boxes of confidential files on all the cults it tracked, including Scientology. Nowadays if one visits the website for the new CAN, one can see how different it is from the old CAN: there is no section on Scientology, and all the sections on other cults blame psychiatry for the actions of those cults. The scapegoating of psychiatry should be a dead give-away for those familiar with the Church of Scientology.

This is lawfare: crippling an adversary through lawsuits and then administering a hostile takeover.

Pleading the First in court

The Church of Scientology is well known for relying on the “religious freedom” defence; specifically, the right to practice a religion other than Christianity. They claim this is covered by the First Amendment. In 1989, the Church of Scientology appealed the initial ruling for the Wollersheim vs. Church of Scientology of California case, saying the practice of “fair game” against critics and former Scientologists is “a core practice of Scientology and therefore protected as religious expression”.

Think what a heinous precedent that would set. Other groups and individuals that wage lawfare on their opponents could easily argue that it’s a “religious practice”. Lawfare would become more prevalent in American - and other countries’ - courtrooms than ever.

[Author's note: An earlier version of this article on a celebrity gossip blog called Glosslip but this article is still relevant today. In this article, I wrote mainly about how the "Church" used the American legal system to their advantage, but the same can be said of the UK's legal system as well, especially in light of the suppression of the book The Complex by John Duignan. Additional comments made in this article are in italics]