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The tangled web 3: CMI's responses to a February 2008 AiG letter with much misleading content (posted March 2008)(A letter worded like this was sent out by AiG-USA’s Mark Looy in February 2008 to an enquirer whose name has been deleted—and later, we saw several almost identically worded letters to others indicating that the same ‘information’ was being routinely utilized to discredit CMI)
Our information is that the person concerned has not resiled from that view.
Proverbs 18:17 refers to being able to question someone’s story — it has been used extensively by AiG in this dispute to ‘come and hear our side’ — but, curiously, never with CMI allowed to be present so we can do what this Bible passage actually indicates! In fact, prior to holding them legally accountable, all our efforts to achieve open discussion and open presentation of the evidence, with cross-examination, have been rejected/frustrated by AiG, unfortunately, as the Briese Chairman’s report ably documents.
AiG would have much to lose from the sort of transparency we have exhibited. Tens of thousands of former Creation magazine subscribers who were deceived into believing the magazine was no longer available would be very likely to find out. (Those few who have just happened to find out are almost universally angry, and believe they have been misled, deceived, lied to (their words)—we have dozens of their distressed emails on file.
As indeed there have been, though much of it not via the front door; it includes the ‘generic’ articles with substantial half-truths and crucial omissions. We in fact expected that AiG would not come out openly, for the reasons stated earlier—they would have too much to lose from people finding out that they had not been open and honest to former subscribers about the Creation magazine.
We have seen evidence of substantial anger from AiG-US. Not the least in the total refusal for years to discuss the matter as civilized Christian gentlemen ought to, instead expressing their anger and contempt to others ‘behind closed doors’, and in a libelous letter sent out widely to various folk in creation ministries, accusing this ministry of unspecified ‘spiritual problems’ — a veritable hand grenade to invite gossip, slander and rumour. Spiritual-sounding words do not improve or mitigate these realities — if anything, the opposite.
The timing of the suit, as we pointed out to AiG many times, was not of our doing. In fact, we asked for service to be delayed when we realized that it could coincide with the museum opening. But it clearly makes a useful emotional tool.
First, as the Briese committee report makes clear, and as many of us know from firsthand experience, it is incredible to expect folk to accept that somehow the US Board dreamed up this idea themselves — or more importantly, that they were responsible for wording the information to subscribers that was so misleading. We have seen drafts of letters purporting to be from the US Chairman, but that were actually formulated by US management, and sent to the Chairman for on-sending in his name as purporting to represent the Board. The only reason we got to see that was that they were accidentally sent to one of our staff.
Ken Ham is joined in the lawsuit because it is claimed by the CMI corporation that he misused his position as a former director of the Australian corporation under Australian company law. That is a serious matter of law, ethics and biblical morality (Romans 13 — believers have an obligation to keep the law of the land, except where doing so would violate a biblical commandment).
This seeks to wrap AiG in the mantle of victim, when in fact it has acted as the ruthless predator. We pleaded for months with them to talk and sort things out so that the lawsuit would not have to go ahead. And we issued that offer for binding Christian arbitration which, had they accepted, would have instantly bound us to its terms. The details are all on our website. All we got was rejection, and then the innuendo/libel letter, which we asked them to withdraw, but they failed to even answer.
Is this a case of ‘Hint, hint — please don’t send this to CMI, it might give them the chance to tell you things we don’t want you to know!’?
The facts tell a different story. Furthermore, Philip Bell, the man who is now CEO of CMI-UK was deputy CEO of AiG-UK after the split for some time, was actually in a high-level AiG meeting at which the intent was announced as to exactly when the Answers magazine would be launched, and that the intent was to allow Creation subscriptions to ‘die on the vine’ by ceasing to promote it. Philip is a man of high integrity and resigned on conscience grounds, first from his high management position, and then from AiG altogether. We had not approached him at all, it was on the basis of what he had himself seen and experienced. See creationontheweb.com/bell
Interesting, because we and others were previously told it was 50%. Grows in the telling. It’s worth recalling that while AiG-US distributed Creation magazine, Creation magazine subscriptions were almost always their number one best-selling product on their webstore, and renewal of this subscription was also almost always in the top-10, sometimes more than once (1 year, 3 year) — as shown in automated top-10 tallies on their own website.
A witness to the Briese enquiry, a former senior employee of AiG-USA and a committed Bible-believer, informed us of what we already knew from other evidence, that the decision to make a new magazine was a ‘done deal’ prior to the survey (which was incidentally carried out in secret from its sister ministry that produced the magazine they were distributing) — the survey’s purpose was ‘windowdressing’. And as soon as we saw the ‘survey’, the incredibly leading nature of the questions made it clear what was intended — only one outcome of the ‘survey’ was possible. (For example, imagine people asked whether they would like to see more articles by writers A, B, C or D — all of which were not then-current writers of Creation magazine. The only possible outcome of such a question is that readers ‘would like more articles’ of a type that was not then being offered. Ergo — ‘readers are telling us that they want change’. But if the survey had been more honest and said, ‘Do you want the ceasing of articles by authors such as Russell Grigg, Drs Wieland, Batten, Sarfati, Walker, Catchpoole, etc., i.e. the effect of their bait-and-switch, the result would have been hugely different.) More significantly, those doing the survey were told in writing that it related to the possibility of a ‘revamp’ of Creation magazine. This is a deception in its own right, since they knew that, not being the publishers, they could not revamp it, only replace it. It also served to make those people more likely to think, when the replacement then came along, that this new magazine was the ‘revamped’ version — an impression that is almost inevitable unless they were told simultaneously that Creation continued to be available.
For anyone familiar with the Creation magazine, to suggest that it was lacking in biblical worldview, or practical appplication, or biblical and scientific articles is very unconvincing, to put it mildly. But the issues are not whether one should have two, or even three magazines — it is ethical and moral, pure and simple — subscribers should have been told plainly what their ongoing options were.
See the earlier comments which make it clear that this is simply misleading. Especially when at high-level UK meetings of AiG attended by senior AiG-US officials, not only was the true intended date given, but it was made cynically plain that the plan was most definitely to hurt the circulation of Creation magazine, by no longer promoting it, thus it would ‘die on the vine’. (Natural attrition means that any magazine will gradually wither, and the new magazine, no matter whether it was ‘better’ or not, would soon replace it. The fact that this was in relation to the UK , too, is especially significant because there is a frequently-repeated claim that the new magazine had to happen because a ‘US-friendly’ magazine had to be made. But British culture would be more likely to find that less acceptable in fact. We also note that Ken Ham used to lead ‘Down Under’ tours for North Americans, who were thrilled to see where Creation magazine was produced in the then AiG–Australia HQ in Brisbane, so it is quite unbelievable that an Americocentric magazine was needed or even wanted. The pursuit of AiG’s commercial interests would be understandable if it were not for a) the ruthlessness with which it was carried out; b) the cynical nature of the plan that emerges when all the facts are on the table; c) the deceptive and misleading nature of the way information was given to US Creation subscribers at the time of the dropping; and d) the repeated sanctimonious-sounding smokescreens denying these realities and making it sound as if it had something to do with ‘expanding outreach’.
We certainly believe that they made a judgement call that it was in their commercial interests to drop it sooner than they would have liked — they had to omit an entire issue because the production team was not yet ready. But AiG was not ‘forced’ into failing to be open to its subscribers about the ongoing availability of the Creation magazine, which is the issue that is continually sidestepped. The reasons they dropped it precipitously are not hard to understand, even partly sympathize with — the coming issue announced to 35,000 of their US supporters the rebranding of 4 out of 6 of the ministries in the AiG stable—and it also meant that people who wanted to keep getting the magazine would be able to know that we existed and that the magazine was still available through us — which would mean that CMI would be the recipient of at least a good proportion of those names and addresses. Thus AiG had good reason to fear a loss of revenue.
This is again a part-truth that misleads by omission, as it does not say that BEFORE the magazine was dropped, we had already agreed to show them, subject only to an assurance that nothing negative about us would appear on our joint website that AiGUS controlled — see later in this paragraph. But first, we had never, ever, in all the many years of the arrangement had to show a pdf. Second, Mr Ham had seen every one of the articles, as was usual — AND we had given written, legally binding assurances that there was nothing in the magazine that was derogatory to AiG in any way — and neither there was. Most importantly, as Mr Looy has had explained to him more than once, under the terms of the devious legal noose that AiG-USA’s lawyers placed around our ministry’s neck (manipulating our former directors into signing something they did not understand, and possibly even the US directors did not understand, but which led the Australian directors to resign en masse shortly afterwards, after asking for and obtaining indemnity from penalties for their actions1) we could not let AiG see our rebranding until our lawyers had completed the open letter rejecting this noose — or else we would be irrevocably bound by this odious document. The reality which Mr Looy cleverly omits (see Briese Chairman’s report) is that after a few days of deliberately ‘stalling’ so that our formal ‘open letter’ could be ready, and BEFORE AiG dropped the magazine, we had already flagged that we would relent and show them the pdfs — which we knew we could within a day or two from that relenting, because the open letter was nearly ready. We asked for a simple assurance as earlier, but instead of responding, or waiting to see the pdfs now that we had said we would, they dropped the magazine. So to put forward THE reason for dropping it as being due to pdfs not being provided is, to put it mildly, seriously misleading.
This was no secret — we mentioned it in our newsletter, as Mark Looy knows.
This is highly disingenuous, because we never said that AiG ‘demanded’ it, but we did say that they forced us to change it, and they did. Because they gave us notice of evicting us from their site (graciously worded, but clear as crystal) and told us to form our own website. It is obvious that there could not be two ‘Answers in Genesis’ websites in the world. Remember that AiG-US had already given us our ‘certificate of divorce’ — despite its claims that we were the breakaways — we even have an email from Ken Ham to an Australian scientist stating ‘confidentially’ that the ministries in Australia, Canada, NZ and South Africa were no longer regarded by them as sister ministries.
We were deeply concerned (with good reason, as it turns out) that AiG would not tell the US subscribers to our magazine that it was still available (remember that we had seen their ‘survey’ which referred to the whole purpose of it to be a ‘revamping’ of Creation magazine, i.e. a replacement. We wanted to be able to tell those folk of their options in such an eventuality. Remember that these were people who were subscribers to our Creation magazine, and there were all these ominous signs that they were going to be ‘snowed’ and cut off — exactly what happened. So we made a free booklet offer to the whole world in the Creation magazine, i.e. not restricted to the US subscribers, but which we felt would at least give us the email addresses of perhaps 10 or 20% of those subscribers to forestall such an eventuality. If the US ministry did NOT drop the magazine, then we would have had no use for such email addresses, as AiG-US would have been our distributors still. (Which is exactly how we showed them in the front of that magazine.)
Our plea all along was simply that those US Creation magazine subscribers should have been openly and honestly informed of their choices. If AiG-US were to do it now, for example, after years of time had passed, the deceptive wording of the announcement would have still gained them considerable commercial benefit.
It’s stunning that we are portrayed as the breakaways, when we had already been formally broken away from, with a refusal to discuss things with us; our rebranding was a reflection of that reality. The Briese committee were able to view all the email exchanges in these matters.
Only the email address, incidentally. As mentioned earlier. And Mr Looy is here impugning an incorrect motive, when we have already informed him repeatedly of why the delay. If we did not want AiG-US to have advance knowledge, why did we say eventually that we would show the pdfs?
A ‘complete turnover’ — what a way to put it — the reality is that the four former volunteer directors, manipulated into signing an agreement prepared by AiG-US lawyers, and into breaking a promise to their staff not to sign without consultation, then consulted the ministry’s Christian lawyer in Australia (if only they had consulted him before signing), and immediately offered to resign en masse, in return for protection from the consequences of their actions.
No, of course not — but it was very cleverly worded, though, to give that very ‘impression’. We have literally dozens and dozens of emails from angry American believers who felt they were deceived and misled, even lied to, based on that clever wording. And this is from that very small percentage of the 35,000 who did find out somehow that we still existed and that the magazine was still available. If the facts were otherwise, why did AiG not do as we pleaded and let their subscribers know a few weeks subsequently, openly and honestly, what their options were? The answer is clear — because they were afraid that they would lose subscriptions. Pragmatic, commercial ruthlessness trumped principles and ethics.
The issue is whether we are justified in making the claim that the wording gave that impression, an opinion shared by the bulk of those former US subscribers who have since found out what the true situation is about the magazine’s availability—and if it should be claimed that this was wholly inadvertent, why the total refusal to correct that misleading impression soon after it occurred, in response to our pleas to do so?
That’s an easy question to answer — with another question. Read the above paragraph carefully and ask — why does Mr Looy deflect the issue to the Journal? I.e. he says that when Creation magazine subscribers asked, AiG sent a letter to the Journal subscribers. Huh? Why not to the Creation magazine subscribers? Easy — the Journal only had about 12% of the number of subscribers. Those were also more the ‘creation enthusiast types’, much more likely to find out about our existence on the web, and there was a much higher risk to not saying anything. So this letter to them could be used, as it now is, to show folk, ‘See, we’re the good guys’, even though it doesn’t give them any way to contact us to get the Journal. And thus it enables them to neatly sidestep the straightforward ethical requirement to let CREATION MAGAZINE SUBSCRIBERS know about the continuance of CREATION MAGAZINE. (Not the Journal). Even the very terminology Mr Looy uses (‘might be available somehow and somewhere in the US’) is very ‘fuzzy’ — AiG knows how simple it would be to mail it out from Australia. Of course it would be still available if US subscribers wanted it.
This assessment sounds good, and we do not wish to offer any disrespect to their persons. How is it supposed to be derogatory to their competence to point out the reality that they, as lay (non-legal) people signed two documents largely prepared by lawyers whose legal ramifications they clearly did not have a full grasp of, a grasp which no reasonable person would expect every such lay/volunteer director of a non-profit organization to have as a matter of course? They would have, understandably, operated on trust, as would the bulk of the AiG-US directors who signed the same document. In short, we are being compassionate and respectful in assuming that they could not have understood what they were signing — especially since part of it contained a palpable falsehood (as will be shown by researching the links from creationontheweb.com/dispute. Furthermore, under Australian law, directors must not act recklessly or exceed their powers. If they did not want to consult their own senior management, we maintain that their obligation was at least to consult their own legal advice before making their own corporation vulnerable, signing over assets, etc. The simple fact is that after seeking and obtaining advice from the ministry’s lawyer in Australia, they all resigned after seeking protection/indemnity.
There is a large disconnect between this stated intent and what they signed, especially the document prepared by an Australian law firm at the request of AiG-US (they signed two documents, not just the MOA mentioned below).
This is astonishing — Mr Looy makes it sound as if our claim is incorrect. But it is not — senior management did have this promise given to them, in the presence of eyewitnesses, that they would not sign anything without consultation. Senior management in Australia was fearful that something like this would happen, that volunteer directors with limited understanding of the ministry operations would be manipulated into signing something without the chance to have it analyzed and its impact on the ministry explained.
This is not false at all, it is pure, shocking fact. Despite Mr Looy’s denials (and Ken Ham’s vehement denial in front of eyewitnesses recently), we have an actual email from Mr Ham to this man (for details about the excommunicant, see creationontheweb.com/mackay) urging him to carry out such actions. Because, as is plain, there is so much patent falsehood floating around, sadly, we knew we had to have something like the Briese committee to review the evidence. AiG refused to participate — the conditions were that all evidence would be subject to cross-examination. That has always been the proper biblical approach (Prov. 18:17 ), not this ‘Let me tell you our side, but only without the other guys there’ that has been an AiG staple, unfortunately.
This is unalloyed falsehood, as the above-mentioned documentation in our possession demonstrates. Unfortunately, what this all shows is many desperate attempts to muddy the waters, making it clear that unless some radical change of heart takes place, only the spotlight of truth under cross-examination, where ALL EVIDENCE is on the table, will bring healing and just doing to the fore. We would have hoped that this would occur with straightforward Christian arbitration, but it appears that it will only be Caesar’s court that achieves this, regrettably.
This is not misleading at all. Note first that Mr Looy does not deny the content of the letter — a shocking thing. But let’s assume that their number of ‘about 40’ is correct. First, we have never been told this. (When we pleaded with AiG to withdraw this letter, they did not deign to even reply.) Second, once you release a letter on the internet to even a handful of people, it is to all intents and purposes public — 40 people is an astonishing number, especially considering that many were apparently (from emails received) representatives of prominent ministries. And the contents were like a spiritual ‘hand grenade’, a devastating way of ‘sweet badmouthing’ a fellow Christian ministry. And to say that all the recipients were ‘involved’ is incorrect — many were dragged into it by AiG via this letter or by deliberate approaches by AiG. Many were previously our friends.
We knew about this one, it was in fact Mr Mackay, the excommunicant mentioned earlier. We saw this in an email newsletter to his supporters — it is hard to imagine that we are expected to believe that it only went to a ‘few dozen’ when considering:
Again, when you send out a letter to dozens of people (as AiG admits doing) on the internet, that is about as public as it gets — it can get redistributed at the click of a mouse. Worse, though, we have a written document from Mr Ham URGING Mr Mackay to send it to all his supporters and ‘to pastors’. It is disturbing to see such serious distortions of fact as this letter.
This is very distressing to read, given the arrogant rejection, over and over again, as documented in the Briese committee report, of attempts to meet and settle. They only began talking to us after it was made clear to them that we would hold them accountable for lawbreaking.
This makes it sound so simple — as if they offered, we rejected, period. How different from the facts, which is that we offered first, a binding straightforward model. And since then several other models.
This again makes it sound as if this was during the actual negotiations, but it was in fact after these had broken down — the context was that this invitation was issued by AiG AFTER they reneged on their handshake agreement in Hawaii, a shocking betrayal, and we had said that we would now no longer trust them and they needed to come here to show good faith, or accept the model of arbitration without delay. This invitation to fly to the US was their alternative, and implicit in it was a REJECTION of our inviting them to come here. Given the enormous emotional energy and stress expended in the Hawaii journey, only to end up in a shifting of the goalposts by AiG, should CMI’s directors make the much more strenuous journey to the continental United States after such a breaching of trust? If the US directors were willing to fly here, or Singapore, even, it would give some cause for hope that perhaps they were serious about settling. Remember that in Hawaii , the opening message from their delegation was, in effect, ‘We’ve done nothing wrong, we won’t concede a thing nor make any settlement.’ To go all the way to the US just to hear the same message would not be rational, especially when our alternative permitted them to show that they were prepared to go back to the Hawaii handshake agreement. Had such an offer come up earlier, especially since unlike a previous such offer it did not exclude the Managing Director, it would have been gratefully accepted. But I hope it is understandable that to us, it was like someone agreeing to a set of conditions, then saying “I want to change them, let’s talk about how I can break my word”.
Note that this faxing was NOT serving them legally, it was doing AiG a courtesy, to tell them of the coming suit so they would not be caught off balance in the midst of the museum openings, etc. We also know that the AiGUS board only meets face-to-face once a year, whereas they would be present for the museum opening, so this would be a rare opportunity for them to properly discuss the matter—hence our courtesy fax (it was not a public thing).
This would be convincing if the evidence was that AiG truly believed this exegesis, but we have written evidence of their threat to litigate against us, and also their representatives in Hawaii strongly threatened us verbally with litigation, including a ‘$5m lawsuit’.
We could expend much ‘ink’ explaining why we referred to the process by using the shorthand term ‘fuzzy’, as opposed to a straightforward arbitration under law by a Christian arbitrator/judge, to be FOLLOWED by a lengthy process of genuine attempts to restore relationships (all this was rejected by AiG). CMI was the first to offer binding Christian arbitration — and mean it, with all the straightforward terms there in writing on our website. Suffice to say that we have had long discussions with experienced Christian barristers, judges and senior counsel as to why AiG rejects straightforward arbitration, but then pushes for this model, and we believe we know why they are so keen to reject any arbitration other than their chosen one. (Note that this was not meant to be an arbitration per se, but a mediation/arbitration). Note again that they only talked arbitration AFTER we indicated to them that we were definitely going to hold them accountable at law.
We asked AiG to tell us if anything on our website was inaccurate or misleading, and we would correct it. Our wording did give that (incorrect) impression, but rather than tell us, they seem to revel in ‘catching CMI out’ in a deliberate lie. But a moment’s thought should reveal that to clarify this potentially misleading impression (as we have done the minute we saw this — see below) is very simple and does not weaken our case one iota — so why would we have deliberately used such clumsy, easily refutable wording which only serves to give AiG a convenient club with which to beat us? It’s no wonder they didn’t want this letter to get to us, because they would be aware that as soon as it did, we would be able to correct this inadvertently misleading wording. Note how we have now modified the paragraph below (via the editor’s note in parentheses) in that web posting, clarifying it so that it could not give that misleading impression anymore:
Plea? It was the only option they would consider. They even launched the Peacemakers process unilaterally, prior to our approval. Our request to meet and sort things out, and later to use binding arbitration, went on for months; it was totally ignored. Note that we never ignored their correspondence, as often happened to ours. We always took pains to respond, carefully explaining our reasoning concerning the fairness and appropriateness of all matters.
We never said it was a fuzzy letter; this is disingenuous, seemingly hoping the reader is not too bright. The word ‘fuzzy’ was a way of describing a process which would make it easier for AiG to muddy the waters, rather than submit to a straightforward process of settling the claims of right and wrong by Christian judgement based on fact, on law, not emotion, and THEN — once the legal monkeys were off of everyone’s backs — having mediation for ‘as long as it takes’ in a genuine effort to restore relationships. (This was never even responded to by them, and in fact, in Hawaii, they actually said they wanted nothing more to do with us after the legal settlement. This reinforced our concern that talk of ‘mediation’ was a way to try to get them off the hook of the legal wrongdoing by invoking the same sorts of tactics as in Hawaii — talking to the onlookers about such a ‘great Christian leader’ being ‘attacked’ and similar emotive side issues. Whereas by committing to settling the legal (which are by definition also ethical) issues, and THEN having mediation, it would show that the mediation was genuinely being partaken of in order to seek to restore fellowship, and not for dragging out the process to maximize the chance of evading accountability).
We don’t know exactly which letters AiG is referring to, but we are so used to ‘spin’ that we just shake our heads. If all this were true without qualification, CMI would look bad indeed — and foolish for ‘scuttling things’. We did, in desperation, try to get former subscribers to let their friends know that the magazine was still available. Of course, whatever we might do to avoid rancour, by definition telling people about the magazine’s ongoing existence makes them aware of AiG’s actions — which may have angered them and be what they interpret as ‘attacking AiG’s integrity’. But that begs the question of whether their actions were ones of integrity. If they had openly and honestly notified their subscribers, they would have acted with integrity — but then our comment would not have been made. No objective, uninvolved outside observer sees the wording of any communication we have made in this respect to our subscribers as fitting the emotive description Mr Looy gives here.
The facilitator agreed upon by both parties was a man recommended and trained by Peacemakers USA . As indicated, it was indeed not the Peacemakers process.
This is misleading — a very wideranging agreement was determined with great goodwill at the end, and all the points were covered, only there was insufficient time to put it all into writing (many of the clause wordings had been worked on through the course of the days of negotiations, so it is not as if there was no written substance at all to go on). Our counsel was given the task of making the first draft. His draft was not even addressed, but instead we received a virtual rewrite which reneged on major points that had been agreed upon. Mr Looy was not in Hawaii, incidentally. It is hard to imagine the sense of betrayal felt by ALL the CMI delegation in Hawaii, three directors, one in senior management and one staff member.
Misleading again. The agreement/understanding we had was very clear, namely that if it looked like we were not going to get it done in time, we would meet in Hawaii again IN 60 DAYS. Not that if we couldn’t get it done in 60 days, we would meet again sometime later. This sounds like a trivial difference without further thought, but is in fact profound. The whole bit about ‘reconvening’ was NOT to keep negotiating the terms — that had been done — but to put pressure on each other to ensure that the agreement we ALREADY HAD was put in writing in a timely manner, since meeting in Hawaii again was going to cost each ministry tens of thousands of dollars. But this was made impossible by AiG, as they only got back to us the first time AT THE 60-DAY MARK. How was it then possible to reconvene AT 60 DAYS in Hawaii? Note that this could not be a simple misunderstanding, because we had in fact urged them, as the time drew on, to get back to us promptly, pointing out that the time for being able to organize a meeting in Hawaii at the 60-day mark was rapidly evaporating. Furthermore, the draft that did come back from them at that point was such a blatant reneging, not just some tweaks/suggestions, etc., (it did not even use the original draft, it was a rewrite, in effect) that they were clearly no longer wanting to stick to their original agreement, but to ‘keep negotiating’. There was also a subsequent contact between one of their directors and one of ours, in an attempt to ‘try to get Hawaii back on course’. While it would not be fair to reveal details of that ‘meeting by phone under white flags’, it gave very strong reasons to reinforce this view, namely that after their delegation returned from Hawaii, the others who were not there (including Mr Ham, who failed to show up) were not exactly happy with the terms, and that this was in fact an attempt to renegotiate some of them.
Our counsel believes we did not contravene the confidentiality provisions. And ‘numerous’ statements substantially misleads — on our website we had already said that we were going to Hawaii, so now that this had clearly happened, many people were asking us what happened in Hawaii — we simply posted on our site a positive statement about the fact that there was an agreement, and that it needed to be put into writing, and asked supporters to pray. As far as the press is concerned, an Australian reporter approached our managing director and asked ‘on the fly’ what was happening; given that the statement above was on our website, he decided not to sound ‘cloak and dagger’ but to say a similar thing about the likely positive outcome — without revealing details at all and being very cautious. In short, all of this in this letter comes across as excuse-making to the extreme to cover up AiG’s major reneging.
Knowing the serious way in which the agreement terms (a handshake, and solemn promises between believers, are very important matters of honour) were reneged upon, how can we trust them unless there is a radical show of seriousness? That’s why we said to them that they are welcome to come here and we will talk to them, providing all hospitality. But we have wasted enough of our supporters’ time and money to engage in one more ‘charade’. The ‘big picture’ in all of this is important, and is summarized in the Clarrie Briese report. All the spiritual smoothsounding words cannot hide the reality of actions:
END OF CMI RESPONSES
Footnotes
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