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Chasing Eris: The Case of Steve Jackson Games, or how Discordianism helped the U.S. Secret Service inspire the birth of the Electronic Frontier Foundation

Loyd Blankenship, troublemaker.
Courtesy of Wikipedia.

The following is a draft excerpt from my forthcoming book Chasing Eris. The book documents my worldwide adventure to experience modern Discordian culture, meet its personalities, and discover elusive Erisian mysteries.
—Brenton Clutterbuck

 
 
Discordia has long been immersed deeply in copyright liberation and geek culture. What you may not know though is the surprising role it played in the birth of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, whose history begins in Austin, Texas.

Robert Anton Wilson, who I’m sure you will recall as one of the Early Discordians, released his popular The Illuminatus! Trilogy in 1975. In 1981, Steve Jackson, who published the “black cover” Principia Discordia, held discussions with freelance artist Dave Martin about adapting Illuminatus! into a game. Instead of taking on the book, due to the complexity (and, one might speculate, perhaps payment for creative rights), his company, Steve Jackson Games, began to make a game built instead on the concept of the Illuminati generally, throwing in a couple of explicit Discordian references. To play with their interest in conspiracies and Discordianism, Steve Jackson Games had on their BBS the tongue-in-cheek announcement:

Greetings, Mortal! You have entered the secret computer system of the Illuminati, the on-line home of the world’s oldest and largest secret conspiracy. 5124474449300/1200/2400BAUD fronted by Steve Jackson Games, Incorporated. Fnord.

In 1990, Steve Jackson Games was also working on another project, GURPS (Generic Universal RolePlaying System), a system allowing players to develop role-playing scenarios of their choice. The company was developing materials for a GURPS Cyberpunk role-playing game, written predominantly by recent hire Loyd Blankenship.

In other circles, Blankenship was known as +++The Mentor+++, an experienced computer hacker. He’d moved to Austin in 1976, in grade five or six. Without knowing anyone, he began to get into computers, mostly just for the gaming. At his mother’s workplace he met a number of the system operators who maintained the PDP Mainframe, who showed him a text-based game called Star Trek, which he then convinced the operators to printout the BASIC code for him. It was through porting the game over to a CompuColor computer in the college library where he used to hang out that he first began to teach himself BASIC.

He began to break into computers when his guest password expired on the university computers he’d been using.

By 1988, Blankenship was fairly established as a hacker and attended Summercon, the longest running hacking convention in the U.S., where he spent time with The Leftist, Doom Prophet, Phantom Phreaker, Control C and Urvile/Necron 99 amongst others. Together, they became the second incarnation of a group known as the Legion of Doom.

Summercon was arranged by a hacking magazine called Phrack, established in 1985.

We jump to 1989: As well as writing the GURPS manual, Blankenship was running a Bulletin Board System called The Phoenix Project which helped to distribute Phrack, as well as participating in the Steve Jackson Games completely unrelated Bulletin Board, Illuminati.

Computers were a big thing; a new forefront for industry and crime. The government was busy with Operation Sundevil, an operation to crack down on hackers. The U.S. Secret Service also had another target in mind for an operation, technically unrelated, but still after those wascally hackers: Phrack magazine.

In 1989, the 24th edition of Phrack published the contents of a text file giving information on the E911 system. E911 is an enhanced service for handling emergency calls. These calls take place ordinarily on the public phone lines, but are managed so as to take priority over all other calls. According to a Secret Service affidavit, the file had been stolen from Atlanta telecommunications giant BellSouth by Robet J. Riggs, and was edited into a hacker tutorial by one of the Phrack founders, Craig Neidorf (Knight Lightning).

March 1, 1990: Steve Jackson Games is unexpectedly raided by members of the United States Secret Service, accompanied by Austin police and at least one civilian expert from “the phone company.” The Steve Jackson Games webpage says agents cut locks, tore open boxes, and forced open footlockers. They confiscated four computers containing GURPS Cyberpunk files, two printers, and other hardware and files.

Steve Jackson Games was told they would get their computers back “tomorrow.” In later statements, a judge said that the Secret Service could have duplicated the material they needed in between a couple of hours and eight days. Rather than the next day as promised, or eight days, the majority of confiscated material wasn’t returned for a whole four months. The majority of the GURPS Cyberpunk manual had to be reconstructed from snippets, planning and memory. Steve Jackson Games was impacted by the raid, and had to lay off nearly half their staff. Later, Judge Sam Sparks would seek to dispute the assertion that Steve Jackson Games had been nearly bankrupted by the raid.

Why did Secret Service agents target Steve Jackson Games?

The key was Loyd Blankenship. Agent Timothy Golden had based the raid of Steve Jackson Games on the fact that Loyd Blankenship was working there, ran a bulletin board system popular with hackers from his home, and also ran a completely separate BBS at Steve Jackson Games.

In response to the Steve Jackson Games case and other similar cases, John Gilmour, John Perry Barlow, and Mitch Kapor founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation in 1990. They would later, in 1993, support Steve Jackson Games in a legal battle seeking damages from the Secret Service.

When Steve Jackson Games sued the Secret Service, the judge’s comments concluded, amongst other things, that Foley had seen the “Greetings, Mortal!” message on a printout of the Illuminati BBS, and concluded, without further investigation, that this was evidence that the Illuminati BBS was a hacking space. Judge Sam Sparks added in his comments that it would have taken only hours to determine that Steve Jackson Games was a legitimate publisher, who would have been willing to cooperate with Foley’s investigation. The judge was critical of Foley, who despite being an attorney, was led to violate the Privacy Protection Act, simply by not being aware of it. Fellow Agent Golden was also unaware of this act, and when informed in the process of the seizure, that Steve Jackson Games was a gaming publishing company, did not place importance on the fact, or realize this meant his actions were illegal.

Judge Sam Sparks was scathing of the Secret Service, whose warrant, he said, did not even meet the standards set by the Secret Service itself. He criticized Foley for not creating copies of the computer content to be made available to the company, and for the impact of the case on Steve Jackson’s personal reputation.

He asked a direct question of Foley: had he considered that his actions could harm Steve Jackson economically?

Foley replied with “No, sir.”

“You actually did, you just had no idea anybody would actually go out and hire a lawyer and sue you,” replied Sparks.

Steve Jackson Games was awarded over $50,000 for damages sustained by the raid and the retention of property belonging to the company.

Riggs was sentenced to 21 months in prison for his part in stealing the E911 code.

Craig Neidorf, aka Knight Lightning, was charged, though these charges were dismissed after only 4 days with no conviction, incurring $100,000 in legal costs. This dismissal was in part due to the revelation that the stolen document which was estimated by BellSouth at a value of over $70,000, was in fact available from BellSouth unedited at a cost of $13.

Loyd Blankenship, for his part, was never charged.

 

[Edit 02/19/14: Jackson didn’t state himself that the choice to adapt the concept of the Illuminati mythos rather than adapting the Wilson and Shea book Illuminatus! was related to royalty costs. I’ve adapted the article to reflect this. —Clutterbuck]

Further reading:
EFF.org: Steve Jackson Games v. Secret Service Case Archive.

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book camden benares discordianism

Camden Benares: Riding Buddha’s Bicycle

Camden playing the role of 'Trinidad John' sometime in the 1950s in Los Angeles.
Photo courtesy of John F. Carr.
In the 1950s, John Albert Overton attended Georgia State University, where he earned an engineering degree, and—according to one source—“chased more black tail than anybody I ever heard of.” (This in a state where at the time black/white sexual relations were punishable by imprisonment.)

During the Korean War, Overton served in the Navy and somehow finagled a tour of duty in Jamaica, spending most of his time, during the conflict, romancing beautiful black women. Due to these pursuits, Overton developed such an excellent Jamaican accent that when he returned to the states he hosted a local African-American sponsored radio show in Los Angeles, appearing as “Trinidad John.”

According to Discordian mythology—or at least Kerry Thornley’s version—it was following Overton’s first acid trip in the mid-60s that he decided to change his name to Camden Benares, the idea of which was to bring the teachings of the East into the West: “Camden” for Camden, New Jersey, and Benares after Benares, India, paying allegorical homage to the city where the Buddha delivered his first sermon.

In Europe, Camden is still considered a leading authority on Zen, and his books have been published in German, Dutch, and several other languages. He wrote a total of three books in his Zen series which included Zen Without Zen Masters, A Handful of Zen and his final—and as yet unpublished memoir—Riding Buddha’s Bicycle, finished shortly before his death in 1999.

Camden in the role of his Discordian persona, The Count of Fives.
Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.
As Camden explains in Riding Buddha’s Bicycle, his name change was prompted not so much to escape his past, but to re-invent himself into the type of person he envisioned becoming, and which to some extent he ultimately became; an enlightened being tuned to the emotions of others; a teacher without a strict formula to follow on a path of Zen Without Zen Masters. As Discordianism was a disorganized religious practice where each Discordian became pope and overseer of their own self-styled church, likewise was Camden’s Zen Buddhist approach.

Throughout Riding Buddha’s Bicycle, Benares stressed that his method of peddling might work for some in some instances, but most likely not for everyone in all instances and that it’s incumbent upon each and every prospective Zen peddler—who mounts Buddha’s bicycle—to chart their own course of discovery as they move along at different speeds and vectors. Camden simply encouraged his readers to consider his methods and to either use them or discard them, as they saw fit. There are many paths up the mountain…

At the outset of his studies, Camden deeply contemplated the two schools of Zen thought, and which would be the most appropriate for him to pursue: 1) The School of Gradual Enlightenment, as opposed to: 2) The School of Sudden Enlightenment, accompanied by that blinding flash of satori that leads to illumination.

Camden decided the former—Gradual School of Enlightenment—was a more practical and attainable approach for him personally, and “would consist of gaining knowledge by seeing into one’s own nature and having a series of insights that would produce an enlightened state equivalent to the experience of sudden enlightenment…”

While Benares’ aforementioned LSD trip may have certainly been a catalyst to his mounting of Buddha’s bike, other episodes in his life were of equal or greater importance, such as a pivotal life-after-death experience, followed not long after by an ill-fated love affair. Each of these episodes set Camden forth on a quest of self-examination and personal exploration, to ultimately cultivate his own self-styled Samadhi, and to make himself a more tuned-in soul.

For Camden, it was more about the journey than arriving at any ultimate destination, for who really knows, among us, if there truly comes an end to consciousness, human or otherwise? It was what he discovered along the way, and living life to its fullest, that was forefront in Camden’s consciousness, as such seemingly trite maxims as “being in the now” and “living for the moment” truly came into focus for him—due to a health crisis he experienced in his early 20s—when given just mere months to live. My guess is that, at least in the back of his mind, Camden must have felt he was living on borrowed time, and that it was critical he make the most of each precious moment at his disposal, however fleeting they may have been, while riding Buddha’s bicycle.

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book discordian timeline discordianism greg hill jfk jim garrison kerry thornley lane caplinger lee harvey oswald warren commission

DS Documents A-Plenty!

Official Discordian Business.
Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.
The times they were a changin’ back in ‘64. JFK had just been takin’ out and shortly after The Beatles emerged on the landscape to breathe a little positive vibe into the National Downer that’d just gone down the rabbit hole. Against this backdrop, Greg Hill and Kerry Thornley entered into perhaps their most productive collaborative period, sowing the seeds of what would become the 1st edition of Principia Discordia: Or How The West Was Lost.

Back in ‘61, Thornley and Hill moved to New Orleans where they engaged in a number of early Discordian activities, some of which were covertly copied on New Orleans D.A. Jim Garrison’s mimeograph machine by a friend who worked in the D.A.’s office, Lane Caplinger, who just happened to be the sister of Grace Caplinger, later to become known to the world as actress Grace Zabriskie, none other than Laura Palmer’s mother among other notable roles. Garrison, of course, would play a larger and much weirder role in Thornley’s consciousness in the years to come, to be covered in greater depth in my forthcoming book, Caught In The Crossfire: Kerry Thornley, Oswald and Garrison’s JFK Investigation, coming later this year from Feral House.

In ’63 — after JFK’s assassination — Kerry moved from New Orleans to Arlington, Virginia for a number of reasons, one of which included being in closer proximity to D.C. where the Warren Commission had recently convened, and Kerry — looking for an angle to promote his novel in the works, The Idle Warriors (the main character of which was modeled on Oswald before the Kennedy assassination) — was hoping to wrangle an appearance before the Commission. The rest, as we know, is a weird slice of history.

The documents I’ve posted here would — in the following year, 1965 — greatly influence the 1st edition of the PD, which will soon appear in its entirely for the first time in 50 “odd” years in our forthcoming book project Historia Discordia: The Origins of the Discordian Society, coming soon from RVP Publishers.

In these early years, Hill and Thornley spent an inordinate amount of time developing a Discordian Society hierarchical structure that would eventually dissolve into nothingness when Greg Hill later decided to forgo any type of formal Discordian structure and turn the whole thing into an art collage project without rules and regulations, which led to a more free form approach to later editions of the Principia Discordia.

Some items to note include Kerry’s (Omar’s) mention that he sent a copy of “Why We Think The DS Is A Hot Item” to Grace Caplinger (Zabriskie), as well as what is perhaps the first formal mention of the fabled Law Of Fives, a document lovingly adorned with a slew of Greg Hill stamps, as he was wont to do.

 
Discordian Documents, April 1964 and May 1965

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An Illuminating Day With Robert Anton Wilson

In 1976, pioneering underground newspaper the Berkeley Barb published the below article on a then 44-year-old Robert Anton Wilson written by Ray Ramsay. The article posted below contains some interesting history on the writing and publication of The Illuminatus! Trilogy.

Greg Hill was thoughtful enough to stash a copy into the Discordian Archives.

Hail Eris!

Berkeley Barb article on Robert Anton Wilson, March 12-18, 1976 edition. Click to Embiggen.
Courtesy of the Discordian Archives.
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Discordian Culture Jamming: ANARCHO-SURREALISM by Mordecai Zwack

The following review of Illuminatus! entitled “Anarcho-Surrealism” was among the Discordian Archives I was first turned onto by Bob Newport in the early 2000s. At first blush, the document appeared to have been composed by Greg Hill — under the pseudonymous moniker of “Mordecai Zwack” — circa 1974-ish during the period he was living in NYC.

Later, while combing through correspondence between Robert Anton Wilson and Greg Hill from the period, I soon discovered that they actually collaborated on the piece. This would explain the Mordecai moniker in the byline, as Mordecai — it just so happens — was the first name of RAW’s Discordian persona, Mordecai Malignatus aka Mordecai the Foul.

In retrospect, “Anarcho-Surrealism” seems a prime example of Discordian Culture Jamming, in the sense that RAW was writing his own clandestine review of Illuminatus! with the covert aid of Discordian Society co-founder Greg Hill, aka Malaclypse the Younger, Omnibenevolent Polyfather of Virginity in Gold (K.S.C.).

Get yourself Discordian Culture Jammed:

Continue reading “Discordian Culture Jamming: ANARCHO-SURREALISM by Mordecai Zwack”
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The Origins of “Historia Discordia”: A Flashback Review of The Prankster and the Conspiracy

Back in 2004, Brian Doherty of Reason Magazine reviewed The Prankster and the Conspiracy (Amazon Kindle, Paperback) and titled his review “Historia Discordia,” a title that, with Brian’s consent, I’ve decided to use for this website, as well as the forthcoming book Historia Discordia: The Origins of the Discordian Society coming soon from RVP Publishers.

Reprinted with permission, here’s Brian’s article from Reason Magazine:

Continue reading “The Origins of “Historia Discordia”: A Flashback Review of The Prankster and the Conspiracy”
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Kenneth and Daisy Eris: A Campbell Clan Discordian Continuum

Illuminatus! poster for the Science Fiction Theatre of Liverpool production, 1976.
On November 23rd, 1976 (which just so happens to be a high holy day in Discordianism, both due to the mystical manifestation of the number 23 and because it’s Harpo Marx’s birthday) an Englishman named Kenneth Campbell premiered a ten-hour stage production of Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea’s Illuminatus! (Amazon Kindle, Paperback, Hardcover) at the Science-Fiction Theatre in Liverpool. In true Discordian fashion, the production consisted of five plays of five acts each, with each act 23 minutes in length. As Wilson wrote in Cosmic Trigger (Paperback):

Ken Campbell’s adaptation was totally faithful to this nihilistic spirit and contained long unexpurgated speeches from the novel explaining at sometimes tedious length just why everything the government does is always done wrong. The audiences didn’t mind this pedantic lecturing because it was well integrated into a kaleidoscope of humor, suspense, and plenty of sex (more simulated blow jobs than any drama in history, I believe.)

Working with the National Theatre (under the Patronage of Queen Elizabeth, no less!), Campbell arranged for the two Bobs, Wilson and Shea, to be flown across the pond for the London production premiere. In appreciation of Her Majesty’s largesse, Wilson made a cameo appearance: “The cast dared me to do a walk-on role during the National Theatre run. I agreed and became an extra in the Black Mass, where I was upstaged by the goat, who kept sneezing. Nonetheless, there I was, bare-ass naked, chanting ‘Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law’ under the patronage of Elizabeth II, Queen of England, and I will never stop wondering how much of that was programmed by Crowley before I was even born.” According to Michael Coveney’s Ken Campbell bio, RAW was so nervous about his nude cameo that he dropped some acid before going on stage, as well as doling out hits to other actors in the play.

At some point, during the course of the production (if I got the story straight), Kenneth Campbell’s daughter, Daisy Eris Campbell, was conceived backstage. More on the adventures of Daisy Campbell in a bit….

A year after of the Illuminatus! stage production, a Discordian reunion of sorts took place that included Bob and Arlen Wilson, Louise Lacey, Greg Hill, Bob and Rita Newport, as well as several other friends of the Wilson’s who traveled to Seattle to take in the Illuminatus! stage production during its stateside run.

‘Twas a chilly Seattle night (as the story goes), so someone (who shall remain nameless) produced enough MDMA for Wilson and all his colleagues (ingested between the second and third acts) which in due time took the chill from the bones of the assembled Discordians—and cranked up the glow surrounding their collected auras—as they sat entranced by the spectacle which unfolded.

Wilson (l) and Shea (r) during the Illuminatus! publication period.
The MDMA notwithstanding, Louise Lacey recalls the Illuminatus! stage production as a “sublime experience” which had one and all rolling in the aisles.

In the spirit of the Illuminatus! stage play—and filled with the same sort of Erisian inspiration as her dearly departed father—Daisy Eris Campbell has taken on the task of creating a stage adaption of Wilson’s Cosmic Trigger, which you can find out more about in the YouTube video to follow.

Here’s a great article on Ken Campbell, Illuminatus! and other Liverpool romps.

And this just in! An update from Daisy Eris!

UPDATE: January 8, 2014: More on the 1978 Seattle Stage Production of Illuminatus!.

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book camden benares discordianism john f. carr

The Discordian Sci-Fi Series That Almost Never Was

Left to right: Camden Benares and John F. Carr at Camden's cabin in Tujunga, California circa late-70s. Photo courtesy of John F. Carr.
John F. Carr has just recently published the long ago written and much anticipated (at least by me!) first book in the Crying Clown series, A Certain Flair For Death (Amazon Kindle, Hardcover), a collaboration with his good friend and fellow Discordian, the late, great Camden Benares, a result of their many “pot and plot” sessions of the mid-70s through late-90s.

Robert Anton Wilson once described A Certain Flair For Death as “The best psychological science-fiction novel since The Demolished Man… the tension mounts and mounts… I couldn’t put it down… it might do your head as much good as an Encounter Group with the Marx Brothers!”

I recently contacted John to get some background about how and when the Crying Clown series were written, and he was kind of enough to share the following response.
—Adam Gorightly

Continue reading “The Discordian Sci-Fi Series That Almost Never Was”
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book discordianism illuminet press jfk kerry thornley lee harvey oswald ron bonds warren commission writings

A Christmas Story: Excerpt from Kerry Thornley’s THE IDLE WARRIORS

What was Lee Harvey Oswald really like?

In 1962, Marine Corps Pvt. Kerry W. Thornley (and Discordian Society co-founder with Greg Hill) finished writing his first novel based on a friend and fellow Marine buddy, Lee Harvey Oswald, who strangely ended up defecting to the U.S.S.R. in the middle of the Cold War.

Little did Thornley know that his former friend, Oswald, who he used as a template for his main character Johnny Shellburn in his oh-so-hot-new-first novel, The Idle Warriors, would soon become the most-hated-man-in-America, unbelievably accused of assassinating President John F. Kennedy. As a founder of Discordianism, perhaps a young Kerry should have expected some turn-about-is-fnord-play from his sweetheart Eris, the Goddess of Discord, in this matter.

Through the book’s fictional Oswald-based character Johnny Shellburn, The Idle Warriors gives a rare and first-hand insight into the mind of the man who allegedly committed the most infamous crime of the 20th Century.

The Idle Warriors is Thornley’s fictional book written about Lee Harvey Oswald before the John F. Kennedy Assassination, making the work the only unique and pre-assassination artifact completely free of later events and their subsequent biases regarding Oswald and the JFK Assassination. Unfortunately, after the events on 11/22/63 in Dallas, Texas and the subsequent Warren Commission investigation which ended-up hauling Thornley into testify about his personal relationship with Oswald in the Marines and included interest of Thornley’s own pre-Assassination writings about America’s First Lone Nut Assassin, the original type-written manuscript was somehow lost by Kerry Thornley to his eternal dismay.

Believed by Thornley himself and others to be forever misplaced and forgotten, a copy of the The Idle Warriors‘ original manuscript was miraculously rediscovered and rescued from the National Archives in the early 1990s by an unlikely pair of fellows attending a Dairy Queen Christmas-time franchisee convention in Washington, DC, who happened to have a side-interest in JFK Assassination lore, research, and materials.

Thornley gave his a copy of The Idle Warriors manuscript to the Warren Commission as background information to Oswald’s life and motives, and it languished as an obscure evidence item in the National Archives. Originally submitted as exposition to his testimony, the manuscript by Thornley had mostly been forgotten. Over the years, Thornley came to misplace his only other copy of The Idle Warriors and came to believe he had lost all copies of the manuscript.

By some Discordian Xmas miracle, the Dairy Queen franchisee amateur researchers requested, and were oddly granted, special permission by the National Archives to deconstruct the Warren Commission’s copy of the manuscript page-by-page and allowed to photocopy Thornley’s type-written The Idle Warriors pages.

Eventually this photocopy was handed over to infamous conspiracy and innovator publisher Ron Bonds of IllumiNet Press who immediately published The Idle Warriors, in conjunction with Kerry Thornley with a new introduction by Best Evidence author David S. Lifton, in 1991 under the IllumiNet Press imprint, launching the Ron Bonds conspiracy publishing empire.

The only book about Oswald before the JFK Assassination was finally published. Hail Eris and Dairy Queen dip cones!

Here’s your Christmas miracle fnord excerpt from The Idle Warriors:

Continue reading “A Christmas Story: Excerpt from Kerry Thornley’s THE IDLE WARRIORS”