Chris Miller: A Case Study

Chris Miller tries.

When he's not lying in posts to soc.women and trying to "enturbulate the SP's" with his slanderous taunts against Tom Klemesrud and others, he's desperately trying to insist that, really, scientologists don't do that kind of thing any more, Gene is the _good_ guy, the arrest warrant he picked up on church business in Florida was just a misunderstanding, and really the church has _never_ harassed _anyone_. Honest.

Well, to that end, Chris was well and truly pasted over the Paulette Cooper affair--sentencing memoranda and seized church documents show clearly that Operation Freakout _was_ church policy and Chris lied famously when he claimed it was "just an individual" who framed Paulette Cooper.

The next bit was the "oh, but scientologists really _have_ been seriously injured by bombs" routine.

Well, if Chris had simply said "look here, two bombings of French church property in four years, and one person was hurt," he would have gained a lot of kudos for an honest and factual report that buttressed his point that the church, like many other institutions, is a target for nutters and the politically motivated, amongst others.

But could he do that? No.

It had to be "seriously injured." Problem was, he seems to have nothing to back this up: no police report, no hospital register, apparently. The newspaper report posted here says someone was "legerement blesse," or "slightly hurt." Chris can't just shut up at this point--he has to wade in with a claim of third degree burns. The further he gets from a chance of being supported the louder his shouts get.

Then there is the mysterious case of X, allegedly a Black War member who was once associated with Liberation and wrote anti-scientology articles, _and_ was involved in deprogramming. So says Chris Miller.

Evidence? A little.

What evidence there is, unfortunately, counts _against_ Chris. As far as Chris himself is able to ascertain, in French judicial history, there have been _no_ convicted cases of kidnapping cult members (or even people thought to be cult members).

The Liberation connection? Your guess is as good as mine. Perhaps Chris just threw that in to muddy the waters, as he has done so much recently in the Tom Klemesrud affair, about which the LAPD's failure to press charges against Tom speaks volumes.

Or perhaps it went like this: Chris made the claim on the erroneous assumption he would not be challenged, so exaggerated the plausible "former journalist who wrote anti-cult articles and is believed to support Black War" to

"former journalist who is involved in deprogramming (wrote a favorable article about someone Chris believed to be a deprogrammer) and is now involved with Black War."

Of course, there's also the possibility that what Chris says is perfectly true.

Unless Chris is prepared to offer further material evidence, one must evaluate this possibility on the basis of his past record on USENET.

I leave this as an exercise for the reader.

-- Tony Sidaway SUPPORT DENNIS ERLICH, US CRITIC SUED BY $CIENTOLOGY CULT

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