ENEMY — SP Order. Fair game. May be deprived of property or injured by any means by any Scientologist without any discipline of the Scientologist. May be tricked, sued or lied to or destroyed.

– L Ron Hubbard, HCOPL 18 October 67 Issue IV, Penalties for Lower Conditions

Every time we talk to a critic of Scientology you within hours come up and say “That’s an extortionist, that’s a sexual pervert.” It’s as if you are terrified of anyone criticising your organisation. It’s as if there’s something that you’ve got to hide.

- BBC Reporter John Sweeney to Scientologist spokesman Tommy Davis, “Panorama: Scientology and Me”

In Scientology doctrine, those who criticise the cult are described as “Suppressive Persons,” or SPs. According to L Ron Hubbard, SPs account for around 2.5% of the world’s population, and are the lowest of the low – the Hitlers and Khans of history. And, apparently, those who criticise Scientology. Being close to an SP – such as a friend or family member critical of Scientology – can make a Scientologist a Potential Trouble Source, or PTS. This forms the basis of the cult’s notorious Disconnection policy.

If necessary, the Church of Scientology will deploy the Fair Game policy against critics. This policy consists of the use of harassment, intimidation, private investigation, propaganda and misinformation against those who criticise the cult. Perhaps the most widely known example of this policy is Operation Freakout, the Church of Scientology’s campaign of harassment against Paulette Cooper. This included the staging of bomb threats in her name against the church, the distribution of sensitive pages from her diary to friends and family members, false allegations that she had a sexually transmitted disease, and an occasion of being threatened with a gun. Details of the campaign were revealed following FBI raids on Scientology premises during the 1970s.

Scientologists often claim the Fair Game policy to have been cancelled, citing HCOPL 21 Oct 68, Cancellation of Fair Game:

“The practice of declaring people FAIR GAME will cease. FAIR GAME may not appear on any Ethics Order. It causes bad public relations. This P/L does not cancel any policy on the treatment or handling of an SP.”

Reading the policy letter in question, however, it is quite explicit that this did not cancel the practice of Fair Game, only the term itself, and that for public relations reasons.

In the 1990s, Brighton-based journalist Paul Bracchi infiltrated the Church of Scientology and wrote reports on them for the Argus. Following the publication of his report, the cult went to work:

The voice at the end of the line was trembling. “Is that Mr Bracchi?”
“Yes, it is,” I replied. The caller could not have been more relieved. I was supposed to be dead. Someone had started a rumour that I had been killed in a fire.
The same people who had tried to obtain my ex-directory phone number, handed out pamphlets attacking me and dispatched an American private detective – an ex-Los Angeles police officer – to Britain to frighten and smear the source who had helped me expose their activities.
Almost daily threatening letters arrived by fax and post at The Argus where I used to work.
Messages were left on the answer machine at the home of the managing director. Strangers turned up in his village asking questions about him.
And the culprits behind this campaign of intimidation? Step forward the Church of Scientology.

Last year, BBC reporter John Sweeney became the subject of his own documentary when he investigated the Church of Scientology for Panorama. During the investigation he was followed from town to town by Scientology representative Tommy Davis, who also appeared in Sweeney’s hotel unannounced and interrupted interviews with Scientology critics. The harassment did not stop there, however, as Sweeney would later write:

While making our BBC Panorama film “Scientology and Me” I have been shouted at, spied on, had my hotel invaded at midnight, denounced as a “bigot” by star Scientologists and been chased round the streets of Los Angeles by sinister strangers.
Back in Britain strangers have called on my neighbours, my mother-in-law’s house and someone spied on my wedding and fled the moment he was challenged.

Earlier this year, a personnel file was leaked from the Church of Scientology’s Office of Special Affairs, the KGB-like intelligence service which collects data on, and carries out Fair Game against, perceived enemies of the Church. Documents included in the file included OSA training materials (revealing, among other things, that “The Art of War” is required reading for OSA agents), instructions on how to gather intelligence on a target, and a series of manuals and essays by L Ron Hubbard justifying whatever needed to be done for the preservation of the cult.

In spite of Scientologists’ claims, the Fair Game policy is alive and well and continues to collect victims, such as Sean Carasov, anti-Scientology protestor set up for arrest by the cult following protests earlier this year. On 10th May Anonymous will be holding pickets at Scientology buildings around the world in protest of the cult’s treatment of its critics and dissenters.

Links:
- Fair Game @ Operation Clambake
- Scientology is not a church or charity. It is, in fact, a cult, Paul Bracchi looks back on his investigation in the Argus.
- John Sweeney on “Scientology and Me”
- Office of Special Affairs Agent File
- Sean Carasov
- 10th May forum at Enturbulation.org
- Operation Freakout
- Fair Game in the Scientology FAQ
- Fair Game at ScientologyMyths.info