I think your reading of the Manifesto misses the forest for a tree. Scientific papers or the even smaller set of 'public documents' were not the whole program,

I think your reading of the Manifesto misses the forest for a tree. Scientific papers or the even smaller set of 'public documents' were not the whole program, just a useful (and especially moderate and academically respectable) 1st step. The whole program is opposing all "laws that restrict what bits I can put on my website". As the wordplay joke at the bottom of the "Bits are not a bug" page notes, "Attorney General's Warning: This page advocates advocacy of the violent overthrow of the United States Government."