Operation Clambake
Operation Clambake, also referred to by its domain name, xenu.net, is a website that published criticism of the Church of Scientology. It was launched in 1996 by Norwegian Andreas Heldal-Lund, and maintained by him until his death in 2024. Operation Clambake has referred to the Church of Scientology as "a vicious and dangerous cult that masquerades as a religion". The website includes texts of petitions, news articles, exposés, and documents. The site has been ranked as high as the second spot in Google searches for the term "Scientology".
The term for the organization refers both to a traditional clam bake as well as the notion from L. Ron Hubbard's Scientology: A History of Man that humans follow a "genetic line" which includes clams, and that the psychological problems afflicting humans are impacted by past experiences. The domain name xenu.net is a reference to the character Xenu from secretive "OT III" Scientology documents.
In 1996, the site was one of the first locations on the internet to host secret Scientology documents pertaining to Xenu and OT III. Shortly thereafter, the Church of Scientology attempted to get this material removed from Operation Clambake, and other internet sites, through letters written by counsel and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. After receiving a DMCA takedown notice, Google removed many Xenu.net pages from its indexes, which decreased the site's page rank in searches for "Scientology". The incident inspired vocal Internet users and groups to complain to Google, and links to the Clambake site were restored. Google subsequently began to contribute its notices to Chilling Effects, archiving the Scientology complaints and linking to the archive.
Operation Clambake has been consulted by news media organizations and other groups for information on Scientology and related organizations. Dateline NBC cited the organization in a 1998 investigative journalism piece, as have other publications including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and the Associated Press. During the Spring 2002 semester, Xenu.net was included as required reading in a New York University course on "Copyright and Censorship", and in 2003 webmaster Andreas Heldal-Lund received the 2003 Leipzig Human Rights Award by the European-American Citizens Committee for Human Rights and Religious Freedom in the US, an organization opposed to the Church of Scientology.
Foundation
Operation Clambake was founded in 1996 by Andreas Heldal-Lund, an information technology manager in Stavanger, Norway, who administered the site at www.xenu.net. This domain name has been described as provocative, because it is seen by some as a caricature of the character Xenu from Scientology cosmogony. Operation Clambake is registered in Norway as a non-profit organization.Heldal-Lund chose the name "Operation Clambake" for the organization as a reference to statements made by L. Ron Hubbard in which Hubbard wrote that the problems of human beings today are a result of traumatic events experienced by them as spiritual beings when they inhabited the bodies of clams during Earth's evolution. In Hubbard's Scientology: A History of Man, he asserts humans follow his notion of the "genetic line" of the "genetic entity", which include clams, and certain human psychological problems descend from difficulties these clams experienced. Hubbard defined "genetic line" as a collection of the total "incidents" which occurred during the evolution of what Scientology refers to as the "MEST body".
Conflict
OT III documents
Prior to its own direct conflict with the Church of Scientology, Operation Clambake had described on its site how Amazon.com had pulled Jon Atack's book A Piece of Blue Sky, a work critical of Scientology. The site later became one of the focal points of what some have termed "the war between Scientology and the Internet". On November 8, 1996, Operation Clambake was one of the first sites to host the secretive OT III documents describing the story of Xenu. Operation Clambake maintains the position that posting these internal Church of Scientology documents is permitted under "fair use" allowance of internationally recognized copyright law. The Church of Scientology threatened legal action against various Internet service providers that host the site, demanding it be removed from the Internet for hosting information copyrighted by the Church of Scientology.In 1998 Salon reported that Scientologists were now blocked from viewing sites critical of Scientology including Operation Clambake and alt.religion.scientology, through the use of a content-control software program referred to by critics as Scieno Sitter. The Church of Scientology was unable to shut down Operation Clambake's internet service provider in Norway. The organization succeeded in shutting down the upstream connection to the site's internet service provider, Netherlands-based Xtended Internet. In November 2002, Xtended Internet's upstream provider, Cignal Global Communications received a letter from Church of Scientology counsel alleging copyright and trademark infringement involved with Xenu.net. This letter led to Cignal Global Communications, a United States–based company, terminating its service with Xtended Internet, which had to move their company to a new backbone provider.
DMCA and Google delisting
In various incidents documented in such publications as The New York Times, Slashdot and Wired, the Church of Scientology has also used the controversial Digital Millennium Copyright Act to force notable Web sites to remove the Operation Clambake homepage, and several leaflets containing copyrighted information, from their indices. Because the Xenu.net site itself is based in Norway, it does not fall under the jurisdiction of the DMCA.In March 2002, Google agreed to limit access to material critical of the Church of Scientology on www.xenu.net, after it was sued by the Church of Scientology for copyright infringement. Information the Church of Scientology had objected to included an internal report on the death of Lisa McPherson and images of L. Ron Hubbard. Google received criticism for its actions, and The Guardian reported that Operation Clambake suspected the Church of Scientology was mainly concerned about secret documents where "L Ron Hubbard is said to describe how an alien galactic ruler called Xenu is the root of all human woe". After Operation Clambake was delisted by Google, free-speech advocates besieged Google, complaining that the company was censoring search results. Prior to Google's delisting of the Operation Clambake site, CBC News reported that the site was listed fourth in a search for "Scientology". After Google's actions, Xenu.net did not appear in searches for "Scientology".
Aftermath
Though Google removed links to Operation Clambake for a short time, in place of the links Google posted a notice explaining the links were removed due to the DMCA and where an internet surfer could go to find more information. In April 2002 the International Herald Tribune reported that the net effect of the copyright controversy actually drove up the number of links to www.xenu.net, which improved its search results in searches for "Scientology" on Google to number two on the results page—just below the official site of the Church of Scientology. Reflecting on the controversy in a February 2003 interview in The Boston Globe Magazine, Google founder Sergey Brin stated: "Ultimately where we ended up was the right conclusion, but we didn't initially handle it correctly." Some groups critical of the Church of Scientology's actions have later used the Google bomb technique to increase Operation Clambake's Google rankings to the number three slot in a search for "Scientology" on the search engine, by linking the term "Scientology" on their Web pages to www.xenu.net. The Church of Scientology itself has also been accused of an attempt at Google bombing for making a large number of websites linking terms "Scientology" and "L. Ron Hubbard" to each other.The publicity stemming from this incident was the impetus for Google contributing to the Chilling Effects archive, which archives legal threats of all sorts made against Internet users and Internet sites. Chilling Effects contains the original complaint letter from the law firm used by the Church of Scientology, Moxon & Kobrin. Helena Kobrin, lawyer for the Church of Scientology, stated she took offense at the name of the Web site, saying: "It implies that the First Amendment gives people some special right to infringe copyrights." Sergey Brin and Larry Page were both questioned on Google's response to the Church of Scientology's complaints in a 2004 interview in Playboy Magazine, and they appreciated Chilling Effects as a "nice compromise". Brin explained the new scenario: "So now, if you do a generic search on Scientology, you get a link to a site that discusses the legal aspects of why the anti-Scientology site isn't listed."
Also in 2002, Internet Archive removed all Wayback Machine archival pages of Xenu.net at the request of lawyers for the Church of Scientology. Initially queries reported that the pages had been removed "per the request of the site owner", which Andreas Heldal-Lund denied. This was later changed to a generic "Blocked Site Error" message.
Reception
Awards and recognition
Operation Clambake is included as part of the Library of Congress "September 11 Web Archive," and in Spring 2002 www.xenu.net was listed as required reading for the course "Computers in Principle and Practice" at New York University, under a section on "Copyright and Censorship".On May 17, 2003, Operation Clambake webmaster Andreas Heldal-Lund received the 2003 Leipzig Human Rights Award from the European-American Citizens Committee for Human Rights and Religious Freedom in the US, an organization which states it is composed of "Scientology opponents from all over the world". Operation Clambake was cited by the Committee for exposing what it referred to as "fraud and human rights violations" of the Church of Scientology in the United States. The former Secretary of State of France, Alain Vivien, presented Heldal-Lund with the Award and stated that his work had revealed the actions of Scientologists with "respect and intelligence". In his acceptance speech, Heldal-Lund spoke about freedom of speech and emphasized the role of the individual citizen.