Herbert W Armstrong

Since the beginning of the year, the Attorney General has resisted in court all of our efforts to obtain a list of the various Church documents that have Seen in 5is possession. Finally, several weeks ago the Attorney Genera1 was ordered by the court to produce such a list! Consequently, Friday afternoon we did receive the court ordered list. The papers furnished by the Attorney General revealed that he has had in his possession some 818 different documents, some of which are 24 to 50 pages in length! Others, of course, amount only to a one-page letter or interoffice memorandum. But please note that there are more than eight hundred documents (not just pages).

It is obvious to any reasonably informed individual that no greater amount of information should be necessary for the Attorney General to glean than what has already found its way by stealth, and in some cases by outright theft, to the Attorney General. For example, the Attorney General has copies of the Work's certified financial statements going back more than 10 years. He also has copies of various tax returns and information returns filed by the Church, College or Foundation going back ten years or more. In addition, the Attorney General has copies of all of Mr. Jack Kessler's audit working papers which go into great detail for each of the years that Mr. Kessler [the Church's outside auditor] and/or others have audited the Work. The documents include many, many highly confidential ecclesiastical materials as well as letters from Mr. Herbert Armstrong to other members of the ministry, and letters from members of the ministry to Mr. Armstrong.

Hence, I believe it is important for all of you to realize that not only has the Attorney General been a receiver of stolen property, as we have stated on more than one occasion, but has in essence lied repeatedly to the public as well as to the courts when he has said that he needs an audit. The Attorney General never was entitled to an audit under any law, as he well knows. But more important, he was never entitled to trespass upon the property of the Church and/or the College in his effort to seize control of Church property and Church records, to convert the property to his own purposes and to allow his handpicked receiver — the ex-judge Steven S. Weisman — and any henchmen that he would appoint, to rip off the Work of the living God at a cost of over $350,000 for the short time the Receiver was here. The Attorney General is now, by the way, "hanging on by his teeth," as they say, or "by his fingernails," desperately trying to convince someone that he had a right to proceed in the manner that he did even if he cannot prove, as he cannot, of course, that any of the outrageous allegations of his lawsuit were true.

In the meantime, it appears that the California Supreme Court in San Francisco; has been hearing our appeals for help. Friday afternoon I received a "stay" and my petition for a hearing before the California Supreme Court was granted on a Tatter involving my personal suit against Hillel Chodos and Lawrence Tapper for defamation in their public statements about me made to the media. In the matter that was taken to the California Supreme Court, I had argued that I should not be legally compelled to cause the Church or the College to produce for Tapper's and Chodos' benefit copies of television tapes of any remark that I might have made about them. (Actually, the video tapes are so favorable to my lawsuit that I would probably want to show them as evidence myself!) As you can readily see, my action against both of them is as an individual and there should be no burden — no burden of any kind — imposed upon the Church or the College merely for their convenience.

Stanley R. Rader