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exhibg
---
title: "Fishman Declaration — exhibg"
source: https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Fishman/Declaration/exhibg.html
retrieved: 2026-06-28
---
## The Purpose of a Lawsuit is to Harass
Ever wonder where the famous Scientology ''purpose of a lawsuit is to
harass'' quote comes from? It's in the red volumes. Or used to
be...
I have a set of red volumes published in 1991. Volume III covers the
years 1955-56. On pp. 40-66 is reprinted a lengthy article called
"The Scientologist, a Manual on the Dissemination of Material." This
article first appeared in "Ability, the Magazine of DIANETICS and
SCIENTOLOGY from Phoenix, Arizona", Major Issue 1, published "circa
mid-March 1955". The version of the article that appears in the 1991
red volumes contains this famous quote:
The DEFENSE of anything is
UNTENABLE. The only way to defend anything is to ATTACK, and if you ever
forget that then you will lose every battle you are ever in engaged in...
However, the 1991 version does not contain this even more famous quote
from the same article:
The purpose of the suit is to harass and discourage rather than
win.
The law can be used very easily to harass, and enough harassment on
somebody who is simply on the thin edge anyway, well knowing that he
is not authorized, will generally be sufficient to cause professional
decease. If possible, of course, ruin him utterly.
What Hubbard was discussing in this passage was the measures that can
be taken to prevent people from using Scientology materials outside
the church, e.g., to deliver unapproved auditing services. Hubbard
claims the public needs to be protected from incompetent
practitioners, but his real concern was loss of income, and loss of
control over the Dianetics and Scientology movement, as had previously
occurred in New Jersey.
Why was the ''purpose of the suit'' quote deleted? The passage has
caused much bad publicity for Scientology in the past. The
unexpurgated version of that section of the article was filed as
Exhibit G in
the Fishman Declaration (reproduced below). The nastiest bits
were bracketed in the filed version, so the court could see the
evidence that Scientology's aggressively litigious nature was part of
its official doctrine.
Altering Hubbard's writing is one of the highest crimes in
Scientology. But the cult routinely edits his work by discovering
that an offending passage was actually written by some nameless
"suppressive person" and inserted somehow into Hubbard's text prior to
publication, usually as part of a "plot to destroy Scientology."
There must have been an awful of lot of these suppressive persons
working in the Hubbard Communications Office, because there have been
a lot of changes over the years, but it seems these persons only get
discovered when there is inconvenient text that needs to be disposed
of.
This article, still odious despite the minor deletion, has been cited
in various legal filings over the years, including the Fishman
Declaration, as "Magazine articles on level 0 checksheet." Here's an
explanation of where this mis-identification comes from. Each
Scientology course begins with a checksheet that lists the materials
to be read and the exercises to be done on that course, in the order
in which they are to be undertaken. "Level 0" is the first level of
the academy course, i.e., the first level of auditor training. In
1968, the Hubbard College of Scientology, a branch of the Church of
Scientology of California, published a 100 page booklet called
"Magazine Articles on Level 0 Checksheet" that contained eight
articles from Ability magazine and the Journal of Scientology. This
booklet was apparently part of the auditor curriculum at one time, but
it does not appear at all in more recent (circa 1990) versions of the
academy levels, at least in the checksheets I've examined. According
to Professor Steven Kent of the University of Alberta, who has studied
the Scientology cult since 1986, "This item is required reading in the
1991 'Department of Special Affairs, Investigations Officer, Full Hat'
course.
Elsewhere in this same magazine article, Hubbard discusses what to do
if a Scientologist encounters legal troubles. Again, an aggressive,
even vicious response is urged. Is he crazy to be concerned about
''arrest for the practice of Scientology''? I think his concerns
about legal trouble were well-founded, but he's distorting the
situation in which an arrest would be likely. The practice of the
Scientology religion is not illegal. But practicing medicine without
a license is. And so is making unjustifiable medical claims in
advertising material -- which is precisely what Scientology got into
trouble for a decade later, when the FDA seized hundreds of E-meters.
Even in this article, despite his worries about legal trouble, Hubbard
boldly states that physicians and psychologists cannot cure mental or
psychosomatic ills; only Scientologists can do that. He wants to
practice medicine and psychotherapy, but he knows it's dangerous to do