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Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology
Subject: An unpopular opinion
From: Margareth 
Date: Sat, 22 Feb 1997 13:32:45 -0400

Plain and simple:  I don't think Fishman is a liar.  Yes, he's 
careless in checking his facts sometimes; that's different.

But I don't believe he deliberately lies.  I also don't think he 
confuses fantasy with reality.  

Therefore, things he states from direct knowledge will most likely, 
IMO, turn out to be true when all the facts come out (with allowances 
made for human error).

I first got to know him about 9 months ago, when he wrote to thank me 
for standing up for him against Dennis (very few were).  At that time, 
I didn't know him at all.  I hadn't even read many of his posts prior 
to noticing that he was being savaged by Diane over what I thought was 
a false accusation--the Fake Lavenda trip.  At that point I was simply 
outraged that he seemed to be being railroaded by Dennis, who brought 
no *facts* to the table at all--just allegations, which were given a 
lot of weight by other posters owing to his personal clout in the 
group.

So...I didn't know Steve, and he wrote me a very nice letter, and I 
wrote back, and we hit it off, and I got some very charming letters 
from him; cause he can be very charming, when he's not being 
defensive.

However, I didn't really *know* that Dennis' insinuations regarding 
his OSA ties were false; my objection had been simply that he 
presented no evidence to back up his insinuations.  So in the back of 
my mind I had the crazy image of Steve in a back room with a couple of 
other OSA goons, smoking cigarettes and laughing at my gullibility.

I made the conscious decision that, not knowing one way or the other 
how things stood, I would give him the benefit of the doubt; and 
consider him honest unless I got evidence otherwise.  So far I have 
not.

My experience, in fact, was similar to Alec's--that Steve would 
sometimes make statements that sounded far-fetched, but they would 
then turn out to be true.

Some examples of that were with reference to Lavenda: 
that she had told him, after they reconnected in May, of more rapes 
and murders by the cult.  She later told me something about these on 
the phone, and her story was posted about a month later, confirming 
what he had said.  

He wrote that Ford Greene had become her lawyer; that seemed awfully 
sudden to me, but turned out to be true. 

He told me about the deal she had refused to sign with OSA regarding 
the Fake Lavenda posts. That was confirmed by the documents Arnie 
showed me last week, although both Arnie and Lavenda had already 
confirmed it to me verbally.

Meanwhile, Lavenda, in two phone conversations with me, confirmed the 
story of the rape in Lonesome Squirrel, and all the rest of LS that 
concerned her and her sister. 

My guess is that if Steve Fishman tells us something that sounds 
far-fetched, it's most likely true.  Time will tell, in a lot of 
cases.  I wouldn't mind having a few gentlepersonly wagers about it if 
anyone's interested. :-)

What I find far-fetched is these convoluted theories by Dennis and 
others, of what his 
"real" history with the cult supposedly was.   

With Steve, IMO, what you see is what you get.  It's very hard for 
people to accept that.  If he'd just shut up about all the shit he was 
involved in in the cult, then he'd be accepted here--but I don't think 
he's likely to.

Meanwhile, I received in the mail today the documents he promised me 
concerning some very interesting GO ops.  I'm not going to post them 
yet (except perhaps one, which is relevant to another subject here). 

I would like to wait until I get the results back from the 
psycholinguists concerning the posts Steve allegedly forged. Perhaps 
by then some of the conspiracy theories will have died down, and the 
NG can prepare itself to simply evaluate--and when possible 
investigate--the claims with an open mind.

Margaret H.