The following is apparently a very old Internet document. It is somewhat difficult to read, but you can still parse it out:
http://www.shields-research.org/Critics/EarlyH.html
Here is the text of the document, with my commentary interspersed:
Area # 31 Mormon 04-20-95 18:00 Message # 12822
From : Doug Marshall [former LDS]
To : Ron Hathcock
Subj : Anonymous
RH-> DM> 3. Ignoring the opposition is effective. UMI's stories
DM> (nearly a dozen about me and my partner and our
DM> organization)
RH-> Because I only read messages to myself or to ALL, I've
RH-> missed out on this.
-> What is your organization doing to earn UMI's attention?
A bit of backstory: Doug Marshall (as John Larsen explained in a recent post) was one of the founders of SHIELDS. He has since abandoned the LDS faith, and in fact he has expressed a great deal of regret and embarrassment over his involvement in SHIELDS. I should add that UMI=Utah Missions Inc., headed by Mopologetic arch enemy Rev. Dennis Wright. (There is a lot of correspondence at SHIELDS between various UMI people and the apologists. Much of it is quite nasty.)
In terms of this excerpt, I'd like to draw your attention to "RH"'s question, "What is your organization doing to earn UMI's attention?" Notice the cloak-and-dagger tone of this, as if there is some nefarious "plot" to interfere with UMI's activities. (UMI, by the way, is responsible for publishing the rather well-known Evangel, which our very own CKSalmon has been associated with, If I recall correctly.)
In any event, the communique continues:
Uh.... it didn't happen here, so ya' really didn't miss anything.
I had the audacity to actually question what Mike Reynolds had to say, in public and with documentation... and then to print the information and Reynolds' **documented** lack of response in front of a roomful of witnesses... Reynolds and McKay are EXPERTS and they ARE NOT to be questioned... they also have rules against Mormons ignoring the Strawman named "Mormon Belief" that they build and going after their statements.
This is a bit puzzling, but it sounds as if Marshall very publicly confronted these UMI people in an effort to embarrass them. It sounds as if he turned up at some public event, waving around this "documentation," all in the hopes of attacking them and making them look bad. But, it gets worse. Given the fact that Marshall & et al. are/were LDS apologists, the following will no doubt strike many as being unbelievably hypocritical and low:
THEN I read the political stories in the Evangel... follow this:
a) UMI is a 501(c)3 organization, so they are not to endorse political candidates.
b) UMI publishes the Evangel, a tabloid-style newspaper that talks about the UMI version of Mormon Doctrine **and** that makes a point in every issue to show that Mormons are morally, mentally and spiritually inferior and maybe even unAmerican.
c) UMI, in a typical Mormon-bashing issue, published a story about a local (Marlow, Oklahoma) political race in which one candidate was a Mormon and one went to Church with a member of UMI's staff.
d) I felt it was a political endorsement **when taken in context of UMI's stated purpose and typical issue of the Evangel.**
e) I called a local Oklahoma paper (The Duncan Banner) to find out what I could find out about the race... They ended up interviewing me and running a couple of stories on UMI that were not full of fawning praise for these intrepid experts.
f) I called several organizations for an opinion of the legality of UMI's stories vis-a-vis their 501(c)3 status... all of them told me that they would advise a 501(c)3 organization to NOT do as UMI had done as it got very near the line, and that the IRS were the only ones who could say if it was legal or not.
g) so I sent the information to the IRS.
Wow! Let's pause a moment here to gather our bearings. This communique reveals that:
1. The apologists wanted to destroy UMI's non-profit status.
2. The apologists had been closely monitoring UMI's activities, including "political" commentary.
3. The apologists were stepping outside the boundaries of critical exchange and actually contacted the IRS, all in an effort to attack UMI.
4. All of this was "plotted" out and discussed by way of this skinny-l-esque network.
As you can expect, there was an immediate round of gloating:
To say the least, UMI went ballistic.
One of the most interesting comments they made was that I should have asked **them** if they had done anything illegal..... (When I pointed out that that would be like asking Mrs Clinton if she had done anything against they law, they got really abusive...)
Our organization is SHIELDS, the Scholarly & Historical Information Exchange for Latter-day Saints... we are an informal network of regular Mormons who do some research and reading and responding to the antimormonoids. We developed the name, and the structure, because sometimes having an organization is a benefit, but we do not have membership or anything like that.
I've posted our address several times, but will do it again...
SHIELDS
[NOTE: address removed as no longer valid for the current SHIELDS. The SHIELDS name was donated to us by Doug Marshall and Doug Yancey.]
Thanx for asking,
Doug
I believe that this is a very important, early Internet Mopologist document. It shows that, practically from the start, the apologists were going to use the Internet as a weapon against critics. That is, they would use the fast communication and information-sharing that it offered as a way to stage in real life assaults on critics and critical organizations. And all the foundations are right here in this 1995 document: the nastiness, the penchant for cheap shots, the gloating, the invitation to join in on the assaults, and so on.
I can only wonder if this document was circulated among other Mopologetic groups, but my sense is "yes, it did." Probably, the members of skinny-l were treated to this, or perhaps this was even a precursor to the Skinny List. (Revealingly, the list was called the "Mormon FIDONet BBS echo," with "MORMONFIDO" clearly referring to the "attack-dog" mentality embraced by many apologists.) Very interesting, in any case.