Westboro Baptist Church

To Whom It May Concern:

This is a request under the Freedom of Information Act. I hereby request the following records:

Records relating to or mentioning Westboro Baptist Church, which is basically a family-based cult of personality built around its patriarch, Fred Phelps. Typified by its slogan, “God Hates Fags,” WBC is known for its harsh anti-gay beliefs and the crude signs its members carry at their frequent protests.

The Westboro Baptist Church (WBC) is made up of its leader, Pastor Fred Waldron Phelps, nine of his 13 children (the other four are estranged), their children and spouses, and a small number of other families and individuals. Phelps has maintained tight control over the group. His estranged son Nathan says the elder Phelps abused his children and his wife, cultivating an atmosphere of fear to maintain his authority.

They believe that God chooses some to be saved, and those lucky few cannot resist God's call; but God chooses not to save most, and these unfortunate souls will burn in hell forever. The "Frequently Asked Questions," or FAQ section of the WBC website explains: "Your best hope is that you are among those he has chosen. Your prayer every day should be that you might be. And if you are not, nothing you say or do will serve as a substitute."

WBC specializes in anti-gay vitriol. Its main website is titled "God Hates Fags." That website says, "The only true Nazis in this world are fags. They want to force you by law to support their filth, and they want to shut you up by law when they hate what you say." According to the group, America has damned itself through its tolerance of homosexuality, and God is punishing the country by inflicting tragedies on its citizens. For example, when two sets of twin girls drowned in Massachusetts in separate incidents in July and August 2010, the WBC blamed their deaths on the state's 2004 legalization of same-sex marriage.

The church held its first service on Nov. 27, 1955. Fred Phelps raised his family near the church and many members of the Phelps family live in houses on the WBC compound. These houses are arranged in a box formation and share a large backyard. In 1964, Fred founded Phelps-Chartered, a law firm that has come to represent the church in its civil suits. All five of the firms' attorneys are his children. The Kansas Supreme Court disbarred Phelps in 1979, stating that Phelps showed "little regard for the ethics of his profession."

The WBC came to public attention when it began its "picketing ministry," meaning their practice of holding controversial protests to raise awareness of the church and its beliefs. In line with their belief in predestination, the pickets are not aimed at winning followers, but only at warning them of their coming damnation. They began picketing in June 1991, and claim to have picketed more than 40,000 times since then. Though this works out to nearly six protests a day, the church regularly schedules that many or more daily protests on an ongoing basis, although it doesn't hold every protest it advertises. At its protests, WBC members hold inflammatory signs bearing messages like "God Hates Fags," "God Hates Jews," "Thank God for Dead Soldiers" and "Thank God for AIDS."

The church has used its right to protest to harass local businesses and individuals in Topeka, Kan. They reportedly picketed a local restaurant every day for three years because its owner knowingly employed a lesbian. Many of the group's targets seem chosen at random: the church picketed a concert by young Canadian pop star Justin Bieber because he was not using his fame to promote God. Other targets have included Bill Clinton's mother, Sonny Bono, Lady Gaga, and Bob Dole. Shirley Phelps-Roper, who is a frequent protester and one of Fred Phelps' children, will sometimes wear American flags hanging from her pants while protesting, so that they scrape against the ground as she walks. She has allowed her children to step on an American flag during protests. The WBC uses tactics like these to win media attention and spread its message.

Children in the Phelps family are raised in the church's beliefs, and their upbringing offers them few opportunities to integrate into mainstream society. It is common to see young children from the Phelps family at WBC pickets, often holding the group's hateful signs. These children casually use the words "fag" and "dyke" in interviews, and the older children report having no close friends at school. The Phelps family raises its children to hold hateful and upsetting views, and to believe that all people not in WBC will go to hell. The tenets of WBC are so strict that no other churches are taken to be legitimate. The children quickly grow alienated in school and in society, leading them to build relationships almost exclusively within the family. This helps to explain why nine of Fred Phelps' 13 children have remained members of the church.

Fred Phelps and his small congregation provide WBC's funding; the group neither solicits nor accepts outside donations. In addition to this income, the church makes money by winning or settling civil lawsuits involving the church. During the 1990s, the group sued Topeka multiple times for failing to provide sufficient protection during its protests. Although they lost most of their cases, WBC did win $43,000 in legal fees in 1993. According to Shirley Phelps-Roper, they also won more than $100,000 in 1995 in a lawsuit against Kansas' Funeral Picketing Act, which they claimed violated their First Amendment rights. Because the Phelps family represents WBC in court, they can put the fees they win towards supporting the church.

As of 2007, several WBC members worked for the state, providing an additional income stream. According to Seattle-based Prison Legal News, members of the Phelps clan then in the employ of the state of Kansas included Fred Phelps' daughter Margie, the Department of Corrections' (DOC) director of re-entry planning; Fred Phelps Jr., a staff attorney with the DOC; and Timothy Phelps, a spokesman for the Shawnee County DOC. Margie Phelps was even awarded "Kansas Correctional Association Employee of the Quarter" in late 2005 — this despite her arrest at a 2004 protest at a dedication ceremony for the Brown v. Board of Education Historical Site in Topeka. Abigail Phelps, another Westboro activist, worked in the staff development office for Kansas' Juvenile Justice Authority. Lee Ann Phelps and Elizabeth Phelps both formerly held positions with the Shawnee County Sheriff's Department.

In February 2007, Prison Legal News, which monitors human-rights abuses within America's prison system, filed an ethics complaint with Kansas legal officials against Shirley Phelps-Roper. The complaint alleged that Phelps violated legal ethical canons because of the extreme vitriol she directed toward gays and lesbians on a radio show. The state's Office of the Disciplinary Administrator declined to pursue it, citing the First Amendment.

On Oct. 12, 1998, gay student Matthew Shepard died of injuries inflicted in a brutal hate crime in Laramie, Wyo. What vaulted WBC to worldwide infamy was its decision to protest Shepard's funeral held on Oct. 16, 1998. Members picketed carrying signs that read "God Hates Fags" and "AIDS Kills Fags Dead." The group also attempted without success to build a granite monument in a public park in Casper, Wyo., declaring: "Matthew Shepard, Entered Hell October 12, 1998, in Defiance of God's Warning: ‘Thou shalt not lie with mankind as with womankind; it is abomination.' Leviticus 18:22." The group's website maintains a virtual "memorial" to Matthew Shepard, which depicts him burning in hell.

In June 2005, WBC began picketing the funerals of American soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. The group maintains that God is punishing America for tolerating homosexuality and persecuting WBC. They even claimed that God had chosen to use improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, to kill American soldiers because of an August 1995 attack on the WBC compound with a small explosive device. In a June 2005 interview with Fox News, Fred Phelps said: "God is visiting the sins upon America by killing their kids with IEDs ... and the more the merrier."

On March 10, 2006, the WBC picketed the funeral of Matthew Snyder, a Marine who was killed while serving in Iraq. WBC members held signs reading "Thank God for dead soldiers" and "You're going to Hell." Matthew's father, Albert Snyder, sued WBC for defamation, invasion of privacy, and emotional distress, going to trial in 2007. He originally won a $10.9 million judgment, but it was reversed on appeal in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. On March 8, 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal. On March 19, 2010, the Fourth Circuit ordered Albert Snyder to pay more than $16,000 for the WBC's court costs. Snyder described the Fourth Circuit's order as "a slap in the face." In early March 2011, the Supreme Court ruled that the First Amendment protected WBC's right to hold protests at funerals.

On Oct. 2, 2006, five Amish girls were murdered in a Pennsylvania schoolhouse. The WBC announced plans to picket their funerals, but agreed to abstain in exchange for one hour of airtime on talk-show host Mike Gallagher's radio program. On Oct. 3, 2006, on the Fox News program Hannity and Colmes, Shirley Phelps-Roper said, "They [the Amish girls] did deserve to die."

On June 5, 2007, Shirley Phelps-Roper was arrested while protesting in Bellevue, Neb. Shirley had allowed her son to stand on an American flag, while she wore a flag around her waist, allowing it to drag along the ground as she walked. Shirley was charged under a Nebraska flag desecration law. She was also charged with negligent child abuse, disturbing the peace, and contributing to the delinquency of a minor (because she allowed her son to violate the flag law.) On July 27, 2010, the city of Bellevue dropped the charges of flag desecration and contributing to the delinquency of a child, due to a federal judge declaring the flag desecration law unconstitutional. The city also paid Phelps-Roper $17,000 in a settlement agreement, in exchange for her dropping a pending lawsuit against the city. However, the city did not drop the charges of disturbing the peace and negligent child abuse.

WBC members have been banned from other countries because of their hateful views. In August 2008, WBC announced its plans to protest the funeral of a man beheaded on a Greyhound Bus in Canada. In response, Canada barred the group's members from entering the country, and the funeral was conducted uninterrupted. In February 2009, the group planned to travel to Britain to protest a staging of "The Laramie Project," a highly respected play that documents the hate murder of gay student Matthew Shepard and how the incident impacted the community. In response, Britain banned Fred Phelps and Shirley Phelps-Roper from traveling to the United Kingdom.

Please conduct a search of the Central Records System, including but not limited to the Electronic Surveillance (ELSUR) Indices, the Microphone Surveillance (MISUR) Indices, the Physical Surveillance (FISUR) Indices, and the Technical Surveillance (TESUR) Indices, for both main-file records and cross-reference records of both HQ and all field offices for all relevant names, agencies, organizations, companies and events including but not limited to those cited in the previous paragraphs and/or links as well as a cross-reference with the Southern Poverty Law Center to include any information provided by the SPLC. My request includes but is not limited to 137, 157, 176, 177, 183, 184, 188, 214 and 266 files. If previously released records are available, then I request a rolling release consisting of those records while additional records are located and processed for release.

I am a member of the news media and request classification as such. I have previously written about the government and its activities for AND Magazine, MuckRock and Glomar Disclosure and have an open arrangement with each. My articles have been widely read, with some reaching over 100,000 readers. As such, as I have a reasonable expectation of publication and my editorial and writing skills are well established. In addition, I discuss and comment on the files online and make them available through the non-profit Internet Archive, disseminating them to a large audience. While my research is not limited to this, a great deal of it, including this, focuses on the activities and attitudes of the government itself. As such, it is not necessary for me to demonstrate the relevance of this particular subject in advance. Additionally, case law states that “proof of the ability to disseminate the released information to a broad cross-section of the public is not required.” Judicial Watch, Inc. v. Dep’t of Justice, 365 F.3d 1108, 1126 (D.C. Cir. 2004); see Carney v. U.S. Dep’t of Justice, 19 F.3d 807, 814-15 (2d Cir. 1994). Further, courts have held that "qualified because it also had “firm” plans to “publish a number of . . . ‘document sets’” concerning United States foreign and national security policy." Under this criteria, as well, I qualify as a member of the news media. Additionally, courts have held that the news media status "focuses on the nature of the requester, not its request. The provision requires that the request be “made by” a representative of the news media. Id. § 552(a)(4)(A)(ii)(II). A newspaper reporter, for example, is a representative of the news media regardless of how much interest there is in the story for which he or she is requesting information." As such, the details of the request itself are moot for the purposes of determining the appropriate fee category. As such, my primary purpose is to inform about government activities by reporting on it and making the raw data available and I therefore request that fees be waived.

The requested documents will be made available to the general public, and this request is not being made for commercial purposes.

In the event that there are fees, I would be grateful if you would inform me of the total charges in advance of fulfilling my request. I would prefer the request filled electronically, by e-mail attachment if available or CD-ROM if not.

Thank you in advance for your anticipated cooperation in this matter. I look forward to receiving your response to this request within 20 business days, as the statute requires.

Sincerely,

Michael Best

I am appealing the decision to not perform the cross-reference searches and field office searches explicitly requested.