How the Wedge was Leaked

(Hat tip: Pharyngula via The Panda's Thumb via Talk Reason.)

The "Wedge document", detailing aims of the Discovery Institute, has circulated around the Internet for several years now. One problem I've had with it is, how do we know where it came from? Is it possible the document is taken out of context? Could it be a modern-day "Protocols of the Elders of Zion"?

Seattle Weekly has an article on the history of the Wedge document, including the story of how a secret, internal-use-only document got leaked.

What does the document say about the aims of the Discovery Institute?

Well, on page 6:

...However, we are convinced that in order to defeat materialism, we must cut it off at its source. That source is scientific materialism. This is precisely our strategy. If we view the predominant materialistic science as a giant tree, our strategy is intended to function as a "wedge" that, while relatively small, can split the trunk when applied at its weakest points. The very beginning of that stragegy, the "thin edge of the wedge", was Phillip Johnson's critique of Darwinism.... Design theory promises to reverse the stifling dominance of the materialist worldview, and to replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions.

This was one of the more telling bits of evidence presented at the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial, and is very hard to reconcile with the claim that the Discovery Institute is being guided to Intelligent Design / Intelligent Origin Theory only by the science. How did such a document escape?

The story begins, so far as the world at large is concerned, on a late January day seven years ago, in a mail room in a downtown Seattle office of an international human-resources firm. The mail room was also the copy center, and a part-time employee named Matt Duss was handed a document to copy. It was not at all the kind of desperately dull personnel-processing document Duss was used to feeding through the machine. For one thing, it bore the rubber-stamped warnings "TOP SECRET" and "NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION." Its cover bore an ominous pyramidal diagram superimposed on a fuzzy reproduction of Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel rendition of God the Father zapping life into Adam, all under a mysterious title: The Wedge.

Curious, Duss rifled through the 10 or so pages, eyebrows rising ever higher, then proceeded to execute his commission while reserving a copy of the treatise for himself. Within a week, he had shared his find with a friend who shared his interest in questions of evolution, ideology, and the propagation of ideas. Unlike Duss, the friend, Tim Rhodes, was technically savvy, and it took him little time to scan the document and post it to the World Wide Web, where it first appeared on Feb. 5, 1999.

Well, it's well known: you can learn some very interesting things from documents left behind in the copier. That's why establishments dealing with classified documents have elaborate protocols, including the use of secure copiers when copies are needed.