From: clewis@ferret.ocunix.on.ca (Chris Lewis)
Subject: Re: Do the police have Fabrikant's postings?
Originator: clewis@bwdlh118
Organization: me?
Distribution: na
Date: Thu, 27 Aug 1992 17:22:42 GMT

In article <1992Aug26.023507.19275@csi.uottawa.ca> cbbrowne@csi.uottawa.ca (Christopher Browne) writes:
>In article <1992Aug25.211931.12120@reed.edu> orpheus@reed.edu (P. Hawthorne) writes:
>>I sided with him, totally. I believed his evidence.

Should be a little more careful.  *I* believe his evidence too, but his evidence
doesn't bear out the charges he made.

>>    Now that I hear what
>>he's done... Should we have done something right away, like notifying some
>>authority, after seeing the parts of the posts where he talks about fearing
>>for his life and being willing to die? I'd really like to get my mind off
>>the subject, but it's a sticky one.

It's interesting to note what one of the CBC radio journalists originally
on the scene remarked.  He had been called in on Fabrikant's request
(I believe some months earlier) to investigate his allegations, and
he had decided that they were without basis and no story was run.

Fabrikant's material clearly indicate that the ME department *did* start
considering him dangerous long before Fabrikant published the material.
I can only assume, given that campus security was involved, that other
authorities had been contacted, but there was insufficient (or was
felt to be insufficient) proof of intent to take it further (ie: psychiatric
assessments).  And even if there was, the law has evolved into a state
where it is practically impossible to incarcerate someone, even temporarily,
on the basis of threats alone.  Generally such things go through a phase
of court orders banning a person from contact with others, and stronger
action isn't taken until the person attempts to act out the threats - which
in cases like this is often too late.  [Which is a particular problem with
domestic confrontations.]

So I think anything "we" could have done had already been done.
Nobody should be so foolish to claim that they could have predicted
what was going to happen from the material Fabrikant published.

>Even after hearing the news of the shootings, I tend to believe that
>the information that he posted is _in part_ correct.  I doubt that he
>could make up the letters by faculty without the whole train of
>evidence getting terribly convoluted/internally contradictory.  I
>wouldn't be surprised if the chain of letters were actually sent by
>the various parties.  The conclusions that he reaches are certainly
>questionable.

I don't think that a suggestion that the material had been forged
could possibly be viable.  On the other hand, there are serious
contradictions between the evidence he gives and the conclusions
he draws.  A couple of examples:

He charges the professors with "theft" of his work - by having their
names included on his publications.  The transcripts he includes
contradict that.  The professor who was the brunt of most of the charges
clearly never asked, let alone demanded, that Fabrikant include his
name on Fabrikant's papers.  Ie: how can it be "theft", if Fabrikant
"gave it away" on his own initiative?

That conversation went on to discuss the professor's views on when
his name *should* be included in Fabrikant's work.  Namely, when the
professor was actively guiding Fabrikant, but he said (and Fabrikant
acknowledged) that Fabrikant had been actively encouraged to work independently
without guidance.  That doesn't really sound like a professor trying
to steal something.

Fabrikant "refused" to include the name of another professor on his work.
I wonder who he was refusing?  Himself?

There are many others.  And demands that seem unreasonable to me.  And
missing pieces.

I have no question that some event set Fabrikant off a couple of years
ago.  Possibly quite minor.  It may very well be that his attempts
to get redress (for a possibly imaginary slight) simply got out of hand.

I've seen similar things happen to people who seem entirely reasonable
people.  I've called it "activist's syndrome".  Somebody starts
with a completely reasonable cause, but they run against a
bureaucracy (usually the government) who refuses to let them have their
way.  Such people can lose their perspective, and things turn into
a "us" versus them.  Then the rest of "us" turns into "them",
the person lapses into something closely approaching paranoia - claims
of betrayal, "no friends" etc., attacking everybody and everything that
disagrees in the slightest (or even no opinion).

Fabrikant's posting has all of those elements.

I was administrative vice-chairman of an environmental group.  Not that
I particularly *wanted* to be.  A very successful group.  One whose chairman 
had well advanced into activist's syndrome (along with his then fiance).
The books were a mess (one would immediately have suspected fraud, but
it was just incompetance).  And our relationships with the organizations
we had to work with (governments, other environmental groups) were
deteriorating fast - our Chairman simply couldn't interact
with others in anything approaching good faith.  Including municipal
governments that were bending over backwards to help us - even our
own employees or volunteers.  Conspiracy stories abounded.  We were
our own worst enemy.

The political infighting was utterly incredible, screaming fits, threats of
lawsuits and physical violence and all sorts of other crap - all coming
from the chairman or his fiance.  Just trying to get the books in order
or correct administrative mistakes was considered to be virulent personal
attacks on the chairman or his fiance (who was Executive Director).

What happened?  My wife and I fixed it.  Took over a year.  Many resignations,
and volunteers quitting in disgust over the wars (which is the only thing I
regret).  Along with our chairman cashing in on his private deals with
the government.  But at least we were rid of him.  And we resigned as soon
as it was "done".  We're proud of what we did - the organization is now
even more successful in getting things accomplished, acts professionally
and is quite pleasant to work with, but we still bear the scars of the
nightmare that went before.   And we're *not* going to fall into a situation
like that again.

But after all is said and done, the Chairman *was* a nice guy...  He had just
lost his perspective.

But I do take a certain pleasure that the chairman's deal with the government
lost its sweetness after that government got clobbered in elections only
a month or two later.
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