[UntoHim]

Here's another doozy from the same chapter in the same book Vessels Useful to the Lord:
"During the lawsuit over the book The Mindbenders, the opposing party questioned me five mornings a week for three weeks. They had prepared to question me concerning one hundred and nineteen items, but eventually they could question me concerning only nine of them. That was truly the best defense of the truth."

What Witness (and LSM editors) conveniently left out was where Witness was also asked "Do you consider yourself an apostle, and have you ever taught others to consider yourself as an apostle" (close paraphrase) Lee then criminally perjured himself and claimed "No I do not consider myself an apostle, and I never taught others to consider myself as an apostle. Any time others have proclaimed that I am an apostle, I asked them not to do this!" (close paraphrase)

Not many years later, during the "turmoil" of the late 1980s, Gene Gruhler, Francis Ball and others wrote a tract proclaiming the Witness Lee was "an apostle of the first kind" - just as the apostle Paul was an apostle of the first kind. While some claimed to be shocked and taken aback by such a claim, the simple truth is that Witness Lee was considered an apostle of the Local Church for many decades before. Lee was hiring and firing elders and co-workers for many decades before. Lee was in full control of the finances and direction of the Local Church movement for many decades before.

"The day after they questioned me about this matter, all of the main responsible ones among them examined the questions and answers given during the depositions. Soon after this they accepted the settlement agreement, and we won a complete victory."

This is another abject distortion. The fact is that the authors of The Mindbenders simply ran out of funds to pay their lawyers and were forced into bankruptcy. Lee and LSM had the deep pockets of the saint's hard earned money and were able to outspend the other side.
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From Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_..._controversies
Seeking relief from libel
In 1980, after all attempts to communicate with the authors and publishers were rebuffed, groups of local churches and individual church members filed libel actions concerning The Mindbenders in four jurisdictions—Anaheim, Dallas, Atlanta, and Cleveland. The lawsuits named Nelson, Sparks, Braun, Dick Ballew (an EOC bishop and close associate of Braun), and Gillquist as defendants. The discovery process was subsequently consolidated to expedite the cases. A separate libel action was filed by the Church in Anaheim, Witness Lee, and William T. Freeman against Neil Duddy, the principal author of The God-Men; Spiritual Counterfeits Project; and Schwengeler-Verlag, publisher of a German translation of the same Duddy manuscript which was the basis for the second edition of The God-Men. Although the local churches strongly protested that both The Mindbenders and The God-Men misrepresented their teachings, the issues raised in the lawsuits were not theological but were based on the books’ false and defamatory accusations of sociological deviance.[51]

Discovery in The Mindbenders case revealed that Gillquist had used his position within Nelson to push for publication of the book over objections from internal staff and outside reviewers of the pre-publication proofs.[52][53][54] After two years of discovery, the case was settled out of court. All defendants signed an agreement that stipulated financial recompense for damages and that Nelson issue a retraction[55] to be published in major newspapers and Christian periodicals nationwide.[56]

Early in The God-Men case Neil Duddy and SCP had a rancorous split stemming from Duddy's claims of SCP's financial mismanagement.[57] Duddy moved to Denmark to avoid entanglement in The God-Men proceedings.[58] Depositions showed that Duddy failed to document his accusations against the local churches with credible evidence and that SCP, despite having misgivings about Duddy's research, had not fact-checked his work or sought independent verification.[59]

On the day the court was to schedule the trial, SCP's attorneys, in anticipation of a judgment against SCP, announced that their client had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.[60] Neither Duddy nor representatives of Schwengeler-Verlag made an appearance. The court granted the plaintiffs’ petition for permission to present their evidence despite the SCP bankruptcy and the other defendants’ default. The local churches retained six experts to testify on their behalf.[61] During the proceedings Judge Leon Seyranian questioned the witnesses and experts in the absence of defense counsel. At the end of those proceedings, he stated that he was satisfied that the evidence presented was sufficient to decide the case without cross examination.

The court awarded damages in the amount of $11.9 million, which at the time was the largest final libel award in American history.[64] Only a small fraction of the judgment was ever paid. SCP later claimed that the only reason they lost the litigation was that a protracted discovery process had drained their financial resources.[65] However, a recent publication has challenged the veracity of this claim using SCP's own financial reports.[66]
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