2008 Investigation Into Anonymous’ Project Chanology Released by FBI

Thanks to journalist Emma Best (@NatSecGeek), a trove of FBI documents tied to the Church of Scientology’s complaints about Anonymous’ Project Chanology has been released to the public. Tony Ortega reported:

“We have two FBI files for you to pore through now, at 268 and 180 pages they’re additional releases that we’re getting thanks to journalist Emma Best, who is suing the FBI over a number of document requests she has made.”

Best is one of the most prolific FOIA requesters in the country — the FBI has described them as sitting at or near the top of its list of “vexsome” requesters, even weighing prosecution over their use of public-records law — and in 2017 Best also helped put the CIA’s roughly 13-million-page CREST archive of declassified documents online. The Scientology files came out of a FOIA lawsuit Best filed against the bureau that same year.

To understand why the FBI had a file at all, it helps to revisit how Project Chanology began. On January 14, 2008, a Church of Scientology promotional video featuring an intensely earnest Tom Cruise was posted to YouTube and quickly went viral. The church moved to scrub it from the internet, issuing a copyright claim against YouTube on January 16, and the clip was pulled — but the site Gawker refused to take its copy down, with editor Nick Denton calling it newsworthy. That attempt at suppression is exactly what drew the attention of Anonymous, who framed it as internet censorship. Ortega has laid out the backstory of the incident here.

On January 21, 2008, Anonymous launched the campaign publicly with a now-iconic YouTube video, “Message to Scientology” — a two-minute production of time-lapsed clouds and robotic text-to-speech narration that branded the church a “dangerously insane cult” and ended with the words that became the movement’s signature: “We are Anonymous. We are Legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us.” Created by activist Gregg Housh, the clip racked up hundreds of thousands of views within days and helped make the video manifesto a permanent fixture of Anonymous communications. A second video, “Call to Action,” followed on January 27, calling for protests outside Scientology centers, and on February 10, 2008, an estimated 6,000 to 8,300 masked demonstrators turned out in cities across the U.S. and Europe — the moment Project Chanology pushed Anonymous out of imageboard culture and into real-world activism, and cemented the Guy Fawkes mask from V for Vendetta as the collective’s public face.

Although the church initially dismissed Anonymous as a “pathetic” collection of “computer geeks,” it complained to the FBI that it was under attack by a “terrorist” organization. That framing was tied in part to a series of letters containing a mysterious white powder that were mailed to church facilities. The powder turned out to be harmless starch, and Anonymous denied sending the letters.

The newly released documents show the FBI took the church’s complaints seriously. The bureau opened its investigation in San Diego, where church offices had been receiving harassing emails, phone calls, and faxes.

“The San Diego church offices have also received black facsimiles. The church has received 20 to 30 of these facsimiles. They incorporated photos of Guy Fawkes (17th-century Englishman notorious for plotting to blow up Parliament as part of an extremist Catholic campaign against Protestant rule), numerous cartoons, etc., all of which had the effect of consuming a substantial quantity of ink.”

What would America do without the FBI here to guard against domestic threats — and protect our ink supplies?

Ortega’s report walks through additional incidents the bureau looked into, all of which led to dead ends. Taken together, the files offer a fascinating — and frequently comical — glimpse into how the FBI approached the Anonymous movement in its early days, and into the Church of Scientology’s “inner snowflake.”

The bureau poured considerable time, funding, and energy into investigating Anonymous, even as it struggled to get the church to produce any witnesses to interview. In the end, the case fizzled:

“After approximately two years, no investigative leads of worth have been developed. Based upon the age of the case, lack of an articulated threat, and the lack of any additional investigative leads, writer requests that this matter be closed.”

That quiet closure is its own kind of footnote to history. Project Chanology eventually wound down by around 2010, but it had already done something lasting — it transformed Anonymous from a loose troll collective into a recognizable force in digital activism, and the tactics, imagery, and “Expect us” ethos forged in the fight with Scientology would echo through nearly every Anonymous operation that followed.

For more, see Ortega’s full report, which presents the documents in an easy-to-read format with sources. For more of our coverage of the collective, visit our Anonymous News section.