Facts About Scientology

L. Ron Hubbard: COAT HANGER ABORTIONIST

2005-12-22T13:03:00.000-07:00

In 1950, Dianetics by L. Ron Hubbard was published. The book contains an curiously high number of references to abortion and attempted abortion. Here are a few samples:

"And in the case of the ulcers, here was baby poked full of holes (Mama is having a terrible time trying to abort him so she can pretend a miscarriage, and she uses assorted household instruments thrust into the cervix to do it)..."

"Fathers, for instance, suspicious of paternity, sometimes claim while trouncing and upsetting mothers that they will kill the child if it isn't like Father."

"The standard attempted abortion case nearly always has an infanthood and childhood full of Mama assuring him that he cannot remember anything when he was a baby. She doesn't want him to recall how handy she was, if unsuccessful, in her efforts with various instruments..."

"Attempted abortion is very common. And remarkably lacking in success. The mother, every time she injures the child in such a fiendish fashion, is actually penalizing herself."

"The basic proved to be a mutual abortion attempt by the mother and father. The mother said she would die if anyone found out.... The father said the baby was probably like her and he didn't want it. Eighteen penetrations of the head, throat and shoulders with a long orange-wood stick - probably in third month. "

One would think that Hubbard was a man who was opposed to abortion, until evidence surfaced that showed Hubbard was writing from his PERSONAL experiences performing abortions on his own wife. In 1983 an interview with L. Ron Hubbard Jr. was published, and it contained this horrorific description of Ron Jr.'s witnessing his father attempting an abortion on his mother:

"Hubbard: ... I have a memory of this that goes back to when I was six years old. It is certainly a problem for my father and for Scientology that I rememoer this. It was around 1939, 1940, that I watched my father doing something to my mother. She was lying on the bed and he was sitting on her, facing her feet. He had a coat hanger in his hand. There was blood all over the place. I remember my father shouting at me. "Go back to bed!" A little while later a doctor came and took her off to the hospital. She didn't talk about it for quite a number of years. Neither did my father.

Penthouse: He was trying to perform an abortion?

Hubbard: According to him and my mother, he tried to do it with me. I was born at six and a half months and weighed two pounds, two ounces. I mean, I wasn't born: this is what came out as a result of their attempt to abort me. It happened during a night of partying --he got involved in trying to do a black-magic number. Also, I've got to complete this by saying that he thought of himself as the Beast 666 incarnate."

If Ron Jr.'s memory was accurate, Hubbard was a hypocrite. While he was denouncing abortion in public, privately he was busy jabbing at his wife's uterus with coathangers -- and it is my conclusion based on the evidence presented here that he had apparently been doing so for years. It was a miracle she survived.

Sadly, even after his death, Hubbard's preoccupation with abortions has left a tragic, brutal, and bloody legacy. Women who become pregnant while serving in the Sea Org are told that the Church cannot afford to raise children. They are either forced to give their children up for adoption, or are coerced into having an abortion. From Mary Tabayoyon's sworn affidavit:

" While at the base, I knew of several instances of staff getting pregnant and being coerced to get an abortion."

" I told the Medical Officer (Martine Collins) of my pregnancy. She immediately went into action to arrange for my abortion. She told me, that I would naturally be expected to pay for it myself, since it was considered Out Ethics to get pregnant."

" A friend of mine, Betty Hardin, who works in the treasury division of Golden Era Productions, told me that she used to transport the pregnant women at the base to Riverside, California for their abortions. For about a year, she transported women almost weekly to the Planned Parenthood Center, in Riverside, so that they could have their abortions and follow up check ups that were needed. She said it just became routine. Pregnant Sea Org members were sent to the Planned Parenthood Center to get their abortions. When they returned to the base they went to Ethics."

Mary Tabayoyon then goes on to describe TEN instances where women working for Scientology were coerced, if not forced, to get abortions.

If I have omitted anything pertinent, please alert me with a follow-up post. Suggestions and omissions may be incorporated into future versions of this article.

"Dianetics" by L. Ron Hubbard, copyright 1950.

Interview with L. Ron Hubbard Jr., by Penthouse, copyright 1983
http://www.rickross.com/reference/scientology/scien240.html

Mary Tabayoyon Affidavit, 1994
http://www.whyaretheydead.net/krasel/aff_mt.html

L. Ron Hubbard : BIGAMIST
http://www.clambake.org/archive/ronthenut/bigamy.htm

L. Ron Hubbard : THIEF
http://www.ronthenut.org/thief.htm

L. Ron Hubbard DIED ON PSYCH DRUGS
http://home.earthlink.net/~snefru/deathoflrh/

L. Ron Hubbard : PARANOID AND SCHIZOPHRENIC
http://www.lermanet.com/cos/morejud.html

L. Ron Hubbard : CONVICTED OF FRAUD
http://www.lermanet.com/cos/LRHfraud.html

L. Ron Hubbard and BLACK MAGICK
http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Library/Shelf/wakefield/us-02.html

L. Ron Hubbard : COLLEGE DROPOUT
http://www.bible.ca/scientology-hubbard-grades.htm

L. Ron Hubbard : RACIST
http://thingy.apana.org.au/~fun/scn/racism/

L. Ron Hubbard 's FAKE WAR RECORD
http://www.ronthewarhero.org/

L. Ron Hubbard : IMPOTENT
http://www.ronthenut.org/limpwhat.htm

L. Ron Hubbard : WHORE MONGER
http://www.ronthenut.org/payforit.htm

L. Ron Hubbard : DRUG ADDICT
http://www.ronthenut.org/dope.htm

L. Ron Hubbard : SATANIST
http://www.ronthenut.org/antichri.htm

L. Ron Hubbard and ADOLF HITLER
http://www.ronthenut.org/hubbard-.htm

L. Ron Hubbard the PSYCH PATIENT
http://www.ronthenut.org/beg.htm

Did L. Ron Hubbard really believe his 2nd wife was a Russian spy named "Komkosadamanov" ?

2005-12-22T13:02:00.000-07:00

In his Scientology Intelligence Tech issue, 'Intelligence Actions - Covert Intelligence Data Collection', Hubbard described his 2nd wife, Sara Northrup, as having been a Russian spy, whose actual name was "Sara Komkosadamanov."

This was December 1969. Clearly, Hubbard knew better, and was simply applying his "Propaganda tech," by identifying his 2nd wife as a Communist. Shortly afterwards, having surveyed public opinion, he shifted over to calling his perceived enemies "Nazis," rather than "Communists."

In the early 1970s, when Sara's redheaded daughter, Alexis, was visited by an agent of Hubbard, that agent read a prepared statement describing her mother as having been a prostitute, and also a spy for the Nazis.

The details of this bizarre visit can be found in a letter from Sara Northrup to Paulette Cooper.

How much of Scientology's view of the world - and the universe - did Hubbard actually believe; and how much was knowing and deliberate fabrication?

Scientology prisoner liberated by hope

2005-12-22T12:59:00.000-07:00

Just found this one, interesting site, a collection of ex-scientologist interviews:

http://alley.ethercat.com/door/index.html

Random excerpt:

Q: Why did you leave the "Church" of Scientology? Was there a "final straw"?

A: Hope is a strange animal. It can keep you company and warm on cold nights. It can even talk to you when you're starting to doubt and wonder and skoff (to yourself naturally - less you wind up dealing with the 'Correct Perception Enforcement people' [ethics]. Let's just say, my 'truth spark' never truly died and it started a warm and then bigger fire and hope ultimately merged into this fire realizing that the true path of wisdom lies within and not 'out there'...and a new real future appeared...and it included the FREEDOM TO THINK FREELY!!!!!!!!!! and THINK FOR MYSELF!!!!!!

This new hope and faith in myself returned thanks to others who graciously reminded me of my real Self. Also....to be more real, there were too many organizational lies, criminal actions, money grabbing attempts, and the last straw I'd have to say was the repeated denial of treating people honestly....staff to public, public to public, public to staff. After a while, one just wants to throw up when someone asks 'what;s your next step?' instead of 'how are you - nice to see you again - how's your son?' etc. You know NORMAL HUMANOID BEHAVIOUR instead of hell bent on going free from ???? mania talk. Lastly....this group of Planet Savers are anti-1st amendment....the part about FREEDOM OF SPEECH. Too many examples of this to even begin to list. They totally want to control WHO you talk to, what you say, and in fact actually prohibit you from speaking....do your own homework. This, sad to say, is also true of many "religious" and political zealot groups.

THUS the Founding Fathers made it Bill of Rights NUMERO UNO!!!!

It's nice to read about the experience of former scientologists, and the reasons they were in, and the reasons of why the left scientology.

Ray.

Scientologist facing class action lawsuit

2005-12-22T12:56:00.000-07:00

http://www.pahrumpvalleytimes.com/2005/11/25/news/frontsight.html
Others come forward in Front Sight litigation

The Pahrump Valley Times
25.11.2005

By GINA B. GOOD

Editor's note: This is the second installment of our ongoing series on Front Sight. The owners [mostly Scientogists] of the firearms training facility and residential subdivision are the targets of a class-action lawsuit.

A home on the range in an upscale resort sounds good.

For firearms enthusiasts offered a home-site complete with a state-of-the-art shooting facility, it sounds even better.

Add a lifetime of professional instruction - with free shooting, hunting and martial arts classes - and that's a dream come true.

But like the old adage says, if it sounds too good to be true it probably is. A class action lawsuit filed against Front Sight Nov. 7 alleges that the organization used false and misleading statements in order to sell memberships.

From Front Sight's earliest days in 1998, the organization's president, former chiropractor Dr. Ignatius Piazza, sold firearms training and the prospect of living in a gated community on the grounds of Front Sight, which he deemed would become "The safest community in America."

The unique concept of a community based on firearms training keeps Front Sight in the news.

In fact, Piazza's mastery of marketing has netted worldwide recognition for Front Sight with television coverage, as well as newspaper and magazine articles appearing throughout the U.S. and Europe.

Piazza's offer to train commercial pilots after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in 2001 resulted in mentions in the Washington Post, World Net Daily and on CNN.

While students grumble about the seemingly endless mailings and special offers generated from Front Sight, few, if any, question the validity of the facility's firearms training.

However, Piazza's frequent mailer program could lead to his downfall, according to litigants. He has reportedly made a lot of promises in writing.

In an Associated Press article dated April 26, 1999 reporter Angie Wagner wrote: '"Piazza expects Front Sight's first phase completed by year's end. New residents will be welcome by the end of 2000, he says."'

To date, only a security guard and a firearms instructor live on-site, in recreational vehicles.

In July 2002, a mailer sent to students from Front Sight read, "Electricity and water supply was completed some time ago, so we are now beginning the development of all underground utilities and sewer to be completed on phase one of the facility before the fall courses."

The flyer further stated: "Yes, this means real bathrooms - about 20 separate, multi stall bathroom buildings!"

Three years after receiving that notification, students in 2005 are still using portable toilets supplied and serviced by Joe's Sanitation of Pahrump. They are kept clean and well equipped, but they are a far cry from the promised "real bathrooms."

Pahrump Sanitation, the company originally supplying portable toilets to the firing ranges, removed its equipment after Front Sight fell substantially behind in payments for rental and servicing fees.

With hundreds of students attending classes on a weekly basis, Pahrump Sanitation owner Phil Hibdon had purchased a number of new portable toilets to place near the ranges and classroom areas. The facility required more than 20 units on a permanent basis.

"I did a lot of things for them," Hibdon said. "It's a long story. They owed me $20,000 and after about six months I got fed up with them."

Eventually, Hibdon prevailed and was paid. "I thought I better get out while I was ahead," he said, explaining why he removed his equipment.

Four former Front Sight construction workers who live in Pahrump asked not to be identified at this time; however, they say it is true the water and sewer lines were trenched and pipes were installed. However, they maintain Piazza could not - or would not - come up with the funds to finish either job.

One of the men also revealed another obstacle that must be addressed before flush toilets could be installed. An engineering soil report found the site slated for a septic tank and leach field was not acceptable due to tough ground conditions.

The former employees further allege waterlines underneath phase one have never been connected to the facility's well. To this day, water coolers used on the ranges during classes are filled from a water hose connected to the well. It is the same water used to fill the facility's water truck for dust suppression.

The men claimed no sand or other bedding material was placed under the water or sewer pipes and allege the fire hydrant in front of the impressive 8,300 square foot classroom has never been hooked up to the well.

The State Fire Marshal's Office has not yet commented on the fire hydrant, but a spokesman did say the classroom - which is currently in use - has not been issued a certificate of occupancy.

The flyer was correct in saying electricity had been extended to the facility. The construction office and classroom, as well as most ranges have power, although the outdoor lighting for night classes is run on gas-powered generators.

In addition to announcing electricity, water and real bathrooms, the July 11, 2002 mailing from Piazza to members announced the beginning of construction of phase two and development of roads into phase three, where home parcels had been assigned to platinum members.

Pete Wallace of Pahrump, a former employee who ran the bulldozer and grader on the construction crew, said there is only one roughly graded road into the home sites.

More than three years ago, KLAS TV in Las Vegas aired a two-part feature on Front Sight. The Eye Witness news team reported: "...in two to three years, this will be home to hundreds. There will be homes, a shopping center, even a K through 12 school."

There is no sign of water being brought into phase three. No lots are graded. Former staff members, at least one of whom is part of the class represented in the federal lawsuit, say a wastewater treatment plant must be built, yet they wonder if talks have been initiated with the Public Utilities Commission.

Adding to the confusion, information on Front Sight's Web site this week includes a statement beginning with these words: "When Phase 1 is completed later this year ..."

Editor's note: The class action lawsuit filed against Front Sight Firearms can be accessed online at www.frontsightlitigation.com.

Scientology's Feline Butcher

2005-12-22T12:53:00.000-07:00

COPS EYE TOM'S MEDICAL GURU

December 20, 2005 -- TOM Cruise's onetime alternative medicine consultant --- a "Church" of Scientology member and advocate --- is the subject of a six-month investigation by Los Angeles police, who are asking the district attorney to indict her and a colleague for fraud, grand theft and malpractice.

The LAPD's Health Authority Law Enforcement Task Force, which investigates illegal medical practices, presented its case against Scientologist Feline Butcher to the local DA for review yesterday. The findings involve liver cancer patient Clive McLean --- a veteran staff photographer for Hustler founder Larry Flynt --- who died in March at age 60 after receiving allegedly bogus "treatment" from the unfortunately named Butcher and an unlicensed physician to whom she had referred him, David Chua.

"We didn't at first know that she was a Scientologist, but then we heard that she made her employees take courses in it," Erica McLean, Clive's widow, tells PAGE SIX's Steve Garbarino. Neither McLean belonged to the "church."

"She said that Chua could cure my husband with these magic drops and potions and vitamin drips --- and this silly machine," Erica says. "We spent at least $150,000 on all this, and my husband's health was not improving. They told him to not take chemo-therapy, and so we didn't.

"I eventually threw [Chua] off our property when I realized we were being had, but he still was billing us for these magic pills," Erica says.

According to detectives, the alleged pill-purveyor vanished after hearing of the investigation. The LAPD task force's Sgt. Steve Opferman says, "The McLeans were led to believe that the man was a licensed practitioner." If indictments are handed up, Opferman said charges would include fraud, grand theft and malpractice against both Butcher and Chua.

Butcher could not be reached for comment, but has previously said the charges are unfounded. Greg LaClaire, vice president of the Scientologist's Celebrity Centre in Hollywood, said he was not familiar either with the case or with Butcher.

Meanwhile, this past weekend, Cruise and preggers Katie Holmes celebrated her 27th birthday in Miami, keeping the visibly exhausted Holmes out until 2:30 a.m. at the nightspot Snatch.

...

David Miscavige and the zipper assault

2005-12-22T12:52:00.000-07:00

[Comments from a former Int Base staffer, a momentary incident of DM's [David Miscavige] crass tastelessness and disrepect of another person's creative efforts.]

I interacted with dm a number of times over several years. My impression was never positive and a few of them were downright ugly.

One time in particular shows, I think, the kind of person he is.

This was one halloween in 1994 or 1993. The movie "Interview with the Vampire" had recently come out. (By the way, the whole Int base had to go see that movie one Friday night, when a whole theater had been booked.)

The Int Base galley crew were trying to make Halloween special for the base staff. These crew were hard working and really did their best to make good food and a pleasant environment for meals. So for Halloween they put on a skit with a vampire theme.

As a part of the skit, a coffin had been propped against the wall right by dm's table, where the senior execs sat, and a Gold staff member, who was in the skit was in the coffin pretending to be a vampire. He stood in this coffin totally motionless for like 15 or 20 minutes while the base staff got their food. The idea was that the skit would start at a certain time, at which point this guy would awaken as a vampire and walk up to the spot in the room where the skit took place.

Now, this was all done for the entertainment of the base staff.

So, dm saw this guy in this coffin by his table and for some reason that only he can fathom, dm decided to bullbait him and pull him out of his pretended sleep. To do this dm got Maria Starkey, Norman's wife, to go over to the guy and open up his pants -- she undid the belt buckle, undid and unzipped his pants, and pulled the pants open so the guy's underwear were clearly visible. I guess dm thought this was funny.

Amazingly, this Gold staff member did not react at all. This prank by dm would have ruined the skit that these staff had obviously put a lot of work into (including making the fake coffin, costumes, rehearsing, etc.). Despite that, they pulled off the skit.

Most of the staff in the room (the large dining area in MCI) did not see this. They only saw the skit. But I happened to be sitting where I saw dm do this.

At the time, still trying to be a true believer, I could only try to not-is it. Now, I am appalled how dm could have so little respect for others.

[former Int Base staffer]

Cult victims denied escape by automobile

2005-12-22T12:49:00.000-07:00

Recent info on travel too and from the Int Base offices at the Gilman Hot Springs Golden Era Productions facility to the berthing apartments in Hemet was limited only to the church busses. Staff were at one point in 2005 disallowed using their personal cars which usually are used by many many staff to go home. Personal car use was banned in 2005 at some point.

It's not known if the "no personal car driving" is still being enforced. One person thought that that rule would NOT last long.

Anyone with recent Int Base staff knowledge of the travel to and from the staff berthing apartments, the Kirby and other apartements, please share their info. Are they still disallowing personal car driving? (One wild guess for disallowing the driving, is that personal car driving is an obvious method of "blowing.")

Cult victims denied medical care

2005-12-22T12:47:00.000-07:00

Posted: 19 Dec 2005 20:48=A0=A0 =A0

It's pretty remarkable to discover how much one sign can accomplish. One side read "Remember Lisa McPherson" and the other "Find out xenu.net".

Two of us arrived at about 4:20pm. The sidewalk in front of CCHR was blocked off to foot traffic, and barriers had been set up to make Sunset Blvd only two lanes (one each way) for that block so that events could occur outside.

There may have been as many as 300-400 people in attendance, but it was hard to know how many were die-hard scienos, and how many were just curiosity-seekers of foot traffic (some of whom we chatted with near the end). A nearby parking lot with "CCHR Parking" temporary signs seemed to be less than one-quarter full.

CCHR is on the south side of Sunset. We arrived from the east, and were met at the corner by some rather stern-faced gentlemen who told us this was a private event. (Non-sign carrying folks seemed able to walk in unhindered)

"Are you here to disrupt this event?" "Disrupt?

Oh, no not at all."

"Then why are you here?"

"To engage in the civitas. To bear witness. I think it's important that people should be able to look at an issue from several angles."

We decided to cross the street, to see what the west side of the event might look like. The traffic cop gave us a big smile when he saw our sign.

Many more stern-faced people with cameras clicking were to be seen on Sunset's north side. ("That's the thousand yard stare!" I commented on one to my friend).

We'd stop and make sure they got both sides of the sign. Another minute, and two people with bundles of helium balloons showed up, attempting to block view of our sign. We found this highly amusing, and turned it into an impromptu game of tag, moving the sign about, letting them give chase. A guy in a van with a video camera drove by at least twice and caught some of the action.

The west end of the block was boring-- no entrance to the event, no crowds. We walked on a bit past CCHR's block, then turned around. The balloon-people had apparently received different instructions and were not interfering with our sign during our eastbound journey.

Instead, a few others walked with us to ask our intentions, and had a partial success of 'body routing': we walked past the crosswalk point by about a half block before noticing we had done so. No problem-- we turned around and went back. One of our companions for this leg of the jorney was unusually tall, but it didn't occur to me until much later that he may have been attempting to be intimidating. Big-guy, balloon people and the other north-side interrogators and photographers did not follow when we returned to the south side.

We chatted pleasantly with the security guy who eventually admitted to someone else in our presence that he was a scieno. From this vantage point, we could see the speakers, the audience, and by the same token be seen quite well, too.

Some non-scienos came and chatted, wanting to know about Lisa McPherson ("Ohhh, yeah, now I remember hearing about that...") and listen to our exchange with the security guy.

"So, you're in favor of psychiatry?"

"Conditionally."

A little before 6pm a well-dressed woman in her 50s approached us with a notepad and demanded to know our names, where we lived, etc. We told our first names, then asked hers. She asked for our last names.

"She didn't answer our question, did she?" "No, she didn't. I noticed that."

Eventually she said her name was Lynne. She wanted to find out what our secrets were, what we were hiding. We were amused and uncooperative.

The CCHR event ended at 6pm, and audience members had a pretty good opportunity to look at our sign as they left. Some balloon-people had emerged to attempt a discreet (read: ineffective despite obviousness of intent) screen.

Two attendees had come by to say "I love that website!" and share comments about the outrageousness of some of the statements made by some of the speakers ("We want to euthanize psychiatry.")

The audience had pretty much left by about 6:15, so we decided it was time to head off. One guy followed us wanting to talk, claiming to just be a guy out on a walk. He said he was a computer programmer and thought that might be what I might be. "Sorry, but I have to assume you might be a Scientology mole, so I'm not going to answer that." We parted ways at the next intersection.

CNN Covers Scientology flying saucer cult at Trementina

2005-12-22T12:44:00.000-07:00

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0512/02/acd.01.html

COOPER: Well, the other night, we told you about a vault in the New Mexico desert and some mysterious land markings nearby, markings that can only be seen from the sky. Both are part of a compound built by the "Church" of Scientology. And inside the vault are said to be writings by L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of the "church".

Many who live in New Mexico are simply unaware the vault even exists and don't -- they have never seen the markings. And the "church" itself isn't talking.

So, we sent CNN's Gary Tuchman to investigate.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GARY TUCHMAN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The land is rugged on the south end of the Rocky Mountain range, a panoramic view of northeastern New Mexico, under clear skies, which makes it easier to see an unusual sight.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is it. TUCHMAN: Two huge interlocking circles, markings on the desert soil that cannot be seen from the ground, but can be seen from the heavens.

MICHAEL PATTINSON, EX-SCIENTOLOGIST: I think they're not designed to be seen by human beings, but by alien beings.

TUCHMAN: Michael Pattinson says he was a member of the "Church" of Scientology for 23 years. Now he's a disgruntled ex-member, who says the circles are signposts for reincarnated Scientologists who come from outer space.

PATTINSON: They're markings to show the location of one of the vaults which Scientology has prepared to safeguard the technology of L. Ron Hubbard.

TUCHMAN: Hubbard, who died in 1986, was a science fiction writer who started the "Church" of Scientology. And, indeed, next to the circles and a private runway is a building with a vault built into the mountain. Current Scientologists do say archives are held in the vaults, just as other [sic] "religion"s safeguard their sacred texts.

They say the vault is overseen by a Scientology corporation called the "Church" of Spiritual Technology.

(on camera): "Church" of Scientology officials denied CNN's request for a tour of the compound. They say the markings are simply a logo of the "Church" of Spiritual Technology and that this is a non- story. But from what we have experienced, "church" officials are extremely sensitive about this nonstory.

(voice-over): A pilot we hired to fly us over the compound backed out, saying he got a call from the Scientologists asking him not to go with us. Other pilots said they would not fly us because they didn't want to make the Scientologists angry. But we did finally get a pilot.

(on camera): What do those circles look like to you?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They look like a branding symbol a rancher might have put out there.

TUCHMAN (voice-over): The closest town to the desert etchings is Las Vegas, New Mexico. The county sheriff there is one of few non- Scientologists who have visited the compound. Chris Nahar (ph) did so just last month, for the first time.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Every time that there -- an incident that happens, that there's, say, for instance, Waco or the World Trade Center incident, every time something like this happens, there seems to be some rumblings that it's a training ground for militia or a terrorist training ground, that kind of thing. So, they have been inviting me out there, so we can go out there and try to dispel those rumors.

TUCHMAN (on camera): Have you dispelled those rumors? UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, we went out there. I didn't see anything of the sort.

TUCHMAN (voice-over): The sheriff says the Scientologists told him, this is where L. Ron Hubbard's writings, saved on titanium plates, will be preserved for thousands of years.

He says many people were there, lots of farm animals and a large cache of food supplies.

(on camera): Did it strike you as a place for survivalists?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Quite possibly, yes. I definitely want to go there if it hit the fan.

TUCHMAN: If it hits the fan?

(LAUGHTER)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

TUCHMAN (voice-over): The sheriff says the notion of spacecraft returning here was not discussed with him, but former members say that's part of Scientology teachings.

PATTINSON: I know it sounds very, very bizarre, but this is where reality is stranger than fiction.

TUCHMAN: So, are the circles a landing pad for extraterrestrial vehicles? The "church" is not commenting to us.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

TUCHMAN: Scientology officials are generally not gung-ho about talking to reporters, believing they have been unfairly dumped upon. But they do tell us, they do not think it was necessary for us to cover this story. They say that, either way, they didn't want to talk to us, after they made that comment -- Anderson.

COOPER: And, Gary, I mean, every "church" wants to protect the -- the texts that they believe are sacred. I mean, what I have heard is that they're using sort of titanium plates that the -- the -- the writings of L. Ron Hubbard are etched into. Is that -- is that what you were hearing?

TUCHMAN: Yes.

And that's one thing that everyone agrees upon in the story, the former Scientologist, the current Scientologist, the sheriff who went there, that there are archives, sacred texts, inside. Titanium protects those texts. But it's still not exactly clear what those circles are in the New Mexico desert.

COOPER: Gary Tuchman, thanks.

The "Church" of Scientology reportedly only allows very high- ranking members inside the vault. In a moment, you are going to hear from a former "church" member, a former member of the Sea Org, the super-secret organization within the "church". He will explain what it's like inside the "Church" of Scientology.

Plus, it used to be simple. Christmas trees were Christmas trees. But nothing seems simple anymore. 'Tis the season for semantic folly -- coming up next on 360.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: A New Mexico police chief tells us what he saw inside a top- secret Scientology vault. That's coming up.

But, first, here is what is happening at this moment.

Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito says, if he gets the job, he will put his personal views aside when ruling on abortion. Alito assured Senator Arlen Specter, the man who will head his confirmation hearings, that he will give weight to legal precedent.

New changes to what you can and cannot take on an airplane -- transportation officials say scissors and small tools are now OK. The tradeoff is more -- the prospect of more pat-downs and extra security checks. Officials say the new rules are aimed at catching terrorists with explosives.

A federal judge says random bag searches on the New York City subway are constitutional. He's ruled that the searches deter terrorism and fall under the special-needs exception to the Fourth Amendment, which requires reasonable suspicion before a search. The New York Civil Liberties Union brought the suit, says it is planning to appeal.

And, on the loose in Vero Beach, Florida, two possibly armed and dangerous prisoners -- the sheriff's office of Indian River County says that Edward Roberson and Marty Finney escaped overnight. A third inmate has been recaptured.

Before the break, Gary Tuchman showed us what some mysterious markings in the New Mexico desert look like from the sky. They are two giant interlocking circles that some former Scientologists say are meant to be signposts that will one day guide reincarnated Scientologists to a special vault -- inside that vault, an archive of the writings that define the "church".

Very few outsiders have been inside the vault. Tim Geigos [Gallegos] has. He's chief of the Las Vegas, New Mexico Police Department, and is not a Scientologist. I spoke to him earlier about what he saw.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: This is for the writings of L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of the "Church" of Scientology. I understand they're written or etched into what's been described as either stainless steel or titanium tablets. Did you see that? CHIEF TIM GEIGOS, LAS VEGAS, NEW MEXICO POLICE: Yes, and that's only one form of recording. They have CDs, if you will, and I don't remember what the type of etching is on CDs. They had a recording, a tape-driven cassette or something similar. They had special writing, special paper, special inks, you know, these type of things. If I remember correctly, they were using five formats to store each of the, whatever it is that they were saving.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: We were curious to talk to former Scientologists or current Scientologists, but they wouldn't speak with us tonight, about what is the appeal for the "Church"? Bruce Hines, my next guest, was a Scientologist for 30 years. During that time he had access to another "church" vault in California. I talked to him earlier tonight. I began by asking him to describe that vault.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BRUCE HINES, FMR. CHURCH OF SCIENTOLOGY MEMBER: I'd estimate it was about 15 feet in diameter, circular, on the inside, had a sort of a flat bottom, and it was, as I recall, it was maybe about 100 feet long, and it was well-lit. It was metallic.

COOPER: And the purpose of the vault, as I understand it, is to preserve the writings of L. Ron Hubbard. Why is that so important in the "Church" of Scientology?

HINES: You're taught in the "church" that L. Ron Hubbard is the only person who has worked out man's salvation, you could say. And he says outright, there's a particular writing that one has to study and just about any course you do, and he says outright that no other route to freedom or to enlightenment or whatever you call it, works. And, this is the only one that works, and so he considered it so important that he felt it was worth millions of dollars to put this in indestructible form, and put it in a place where it couldn't be destroyed.

COOPER: And, is there a belief in Scientology that there is -- and many "religion"s have sort of an "End of the World" scenario. Is there that in Scientology? Is that the reason why these things are written on steel or titanium tablets and buried in the ground?

HINES: There is, continually, while you're in the "Church", there's a threat that if we don't succeed in our mission, meaning the "Church" of Scientology's mission, the consequences could be really bad. And, such things as a nuclear war, or -- it's a bit vague. It's all left a bit vague. But the idea is definitely that there could be a really bad end.

COOPER: And the mission is what, as you saw it?

HINES: The catch phrase was "clear the planet," which basically means get everybody on the planet to the state of clear, and above, and what this supposedly would do is rid the word of aberration, you'd get rid of war and insanity and various other ills. COOPER: And, "getting clear," that's -- I've heard Scientologists talk about that. That's what? That's getting to a point where you're perfected? What does it mean?

HINES: Well, sort of. The definition is that you no longer have your own reactive mind, and the reactive mind is labeled as the thing that makes people act irrationally, destructively, the source of psychosomatic illnesses and such things. And, supposedly at the state of clear you have gotten rid of this thing altogether.

COOPER: In this facility in New Mexico, there are sort of symbols in the ground, circles with diamond shapes in the center of them. To you, what does that mean? What do those symbols mean?

HINES: The symbol is very definitely the logo for one of the entities within the "Church" of Scientology or it's related corporately somehow. It's called the "Church" of Spiritual Technology. And the only reason it could be etched into the ground like that, so large, is so that it could be recognized from a great distance.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: Well, not all Scientologists keep a low profile. Many celebrities have joined the "Church". Why though? What draws them to the secretive "religion"? A look at that coming up. Plus, this video shows drug gang hit men allegedly confessing to terrible crimes. But, check out the tape. These men appear to have been beaten. The question is by whom, and what has happened to them since? We'll investigate.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: For 24 years Bruce Hines was a member of a Group called the Sea Organization. It's inside the "Church" of Scientology. And the "Church" describes it as a "religious" order made up of the most dedicated Scientologists in the world; individuals who have dedicated their lives to the service of their "religion". I asked Bruce Hines to give me his description of Sea Org.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

HINES: It's very much a military organization. You wear a uniform, there's saluting, marching, standing at attention.

COOPER: And what was the appeal of it for you? What did it give you?

HINES: Well, at the time when I joined it, it was an opportunity to, I thought, contribute to this great purpose, which is sort of like save the planet, sort of thing. And, if you're a believer in their teachings, then you're helping to bring about a better society, a better world, and you sort of dedicate yourself to that.

COOPER: How do you see it now? I mean, you were a member for 30 years. HINES: I see it totally differently now. I left in 2003. And since I've been out, I've -- have a whole other view of it now. And I do not see that the "Church" of Scientology can accomplish what they say they will, and what they convince people that they are capable of. And in a sense I felt like I was duped or tricked into it, and I feel like I've woken up since I've been out.

COOPER: Was it hard to get out?

HINES: Oh, I had -- definitely had to go through some soul- searching, and decide if I wanted to keep doing that or, um, or just terminate my relationship with that organization. I just packed my bags and went to Port Authority and got on a bus.

COOPER: You didn't tell them. You just disappeared?

HINES: Right, I just disappeared. Because, I know that it's a bit of an ordeal otherwise.

COOPER: What do you think people should know about the "Church" of Scientology?

HINES: I think that they just need to know everything that they teach and they believe up front. And, that they do have policies such as disconnection. Like the fact I left and now my family, they won't even talk to me.

COOPER: Why won't they talk to you? I mean, what is it that they feel that you have done?

HINES: It's more just the rule.

COOPER: Why do you think it is that so many celebrities seem to be interested in Scientology?

HINES: I don't know the full answer to that. Partly they do promote to celebrities directly. They have the Celebrity Center in Los Angeles.

COOPER: Is there something about sort of empowering the individual, and are those lessons somehow particularly suited to Hollywood celebrities? Is it a message that they somehow, they want to hear that helps them in their career?

HINES: Well, I think so. It does empower the individual, that's one of the big things that's taught. And, it also teaches you to you deal with stresses in life. And you take courses in this, and you learn how to recognize certain kinds of people and how to deal with them, and there are drills in how to communicate with people. And, I can imagine that, for a celebrity, who -- there probably is quite a bit of stress in that sort of lifestyle, I would think, that they find that helpful.

COOPER: It does seem to be kind of a master form of therapy and kind of a long process of therapy. I mean, taking classes and, you know, these e-meters and kind of looking back at childhood incidences. I mean, that sounds very much like therapy, but they're so opposed to therapy.

HINES: And I agree. I think it's just a paradox and I think it's hypocritical.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: Well, as always, we don't take sides. We like to examine all sides of the story. We called the "Church" of Scientology yesterday, they declined to comment. We called them again today and we haven't heard back from them yet. To the violent world of gangs now where drug trafficking and retribution murder are not exactly novelties along the Texas border. Nor is it so rare to find Mexican police officials on the wrong side of the law. It takes a particularly brazen instance of corruption to get noticed here in the U.S. or, in the case, under federal investigation tonight, a disturbing videotape. CNN's Thelma Gutierrez has the tape.

This is what Scientology does to a person

2005-12-22T12:40:00.000-07:00

BARBARA SCHWARZ,

Plaintiff,

v.

UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF TREASURY, et al.,

Defendants.

Civil Action 98-2406 (HHK)

MEMORANDUM

This is an action brought under the Freedom of Information Act, 5 U.S.C. 552 ("FOIA"), and the Privacy Act, 5 U.S.C. 552a. Plaintiff, proceeding pro se, sues 79 entities of the federal government, [1] seeking records regarding herself, Mark Rathbun (de Rothschild), members of his family, President Dwight David Eisenhower, Rosemarie Bretschneider, L. Ron Hubbard, Sarah Hubbard, the Church of Scientology, alleged German Nazi-conspiracies infiltrating the United States Government, and any Independent or Special Counsel who has investigated the alleged wrongful incarceration of MarkRathbun. [2]

Presently before the court is Defendants' motion to dismiss or, in the alternative, for summary judgment. Upon consideration of the motion, the opposition thereto, and the record of this case, the court concludes that Defendants' motion should be granted. [3]

I. BACKGROUND

It appears that Plaintiff believes that Rathbun is her husband and is incarcerated because he was framed by a German-controlled Nazi conspiracy of having raped and murdered her. Plaintiff alleges that she is a witness to Rathbun's wrongful incarceration and that he continues to be wrongfully held because he cannot find her and she cannot find him. Plaintiff also contends that she is the grand-daughter of President Eisenhower and was kidnaped by the Germans when she was a child, in retaliation for his defeat of the Nazis in World War II. [4]

Plaintiff's numerous FOIA requests of each defendant entity were slightly different. In many instances Plaintiff asked for all requests for information regarding herself made by or on behalf of Mark Rathbun or an Independent or Special Counsel. Plaintiff objects that the Defendants have not produced the requested records and have not given her declarations as to their systems of records and the scope of the searches made pursuant to her requests. She also objects to the refusal of certain Defendants to waive the usual fee for copies of records of previous FOIA cases she has filed. She suggests that one can infer that these Defendants are withholding the records she seeks because these Defendants initially sent her only a printout of her previous cases rather than copies of all documents related to those cases.

II. LEGAL STANDARDS

The many documents submitted by the parties have been reviewed under the following legal standards and principles. The court may dismiss a complaint on the ground that it fails to state a claim upon which relief can be granted if it appears that the plaintiff can prove no set of facts in support of his or her claim that would warrant relief. Fed.R.Civ.P.12(b)(6); Conley v. Gibson, 355 U.S. 41 (1957); Kowalv. MCI Communications Corp., 16 F.3d 1271, 1276 (D.C. Cir. 1994); Thomas v. District of Columbia, 887 F. Supp. 1, 5 n.2 (D.D.C. 1995).

A motion for summary judgment should be granted if the moving party demonstrates, when the facts are viewed in the light most favorable to the opponent, that there are no genuine issues of material fact and that the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(c); Celotex Corp. v. Catrett, 477 U.S. 317, 322 (1986). In considering whether there is a triable issue of fact, the court must draw all reasonable inferences in favor of the non-moving party. Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, 477 U.S. 242, 255 (1986). The party opposing a motion for summary judgment "may not rest upon the mere allegations or denials of his pleading, but... must set forth specific facts showing that there is a genuine issue for trial." Id. at 248. Moreover, "any factual assertions in the movant's affidavits will be accepted as being true unless [the opposing party] submits his own affidavits or other documentary evidence contradicting the assertion."Neal v. Kelly, 963 F.2d 453, 456 (D.C. Cir. 1992) (quoting Lewis v. Faulkner, 689 F.2d 100, 102 (7th Cir. 1982)).

The Privacy Act, 5 U.S.C. 552a, provides a procedure under which individuals can obtain access to information about themselves maintained by federal government agencies, but which protects individuals against unrestricted disclosure of such information without their consent. The information that may be disclosed is only that which is "maintained by an agency" (Section 552a(a)(4)) in a system of records, that is, "a group of any records . . . from which information is retrieved by the name of the individual or by some identifying number, symbol, or other identifying particular assigned to the individual." Section 552a(a)(5). Of special relevance to Plaintiff's request for information regarding individuals other than herself is the firm prohibition against disclosure "to any person . . . except pursuant to a written request by, or with the prior written consent of, the individual to whom the record pertains." Section 552a(b). [5] There are certain exceptions to this prohibition, however. The only one that might arguably be relevant here is Exception 8, "pursuant to a showing of compelling circumstances affecting the health or safety of an individual.. .."

In a FOIA case, the Court may grant summary judgment solely on the basis of information provided in a declaration, when the declaration describes "the documents and the justifications for nondisclosure with reasonably specific detail, demonstrate[s] that the information withheld logically falls within the claimed exemption, and [is] not controverted by either contrary evidence in the record nor by evidence of agency bad faith." Military Audit Project v. Casey, 656 F.2d 724, 738 (D.C. Cir. 1981). See also Vaughn v. Rosen, 484 F.2d 820, 826 (D.C. Cir. 1973), cert. denied, 415 U.S. 977 (1974). The agency must prove that "each document that falls within the class requested either has been produced, is unidentifiable, or is wholly exempt from the Act's inspection requirements." Goland v. Central Intelligence Agency, 607 F.2d 339, 352 (D.C. Cir. 1978), cert. denied, 445 U.S. 927 (1980).

III. ANALYSIS

Preliminarily, the Court notes that Plaintiff is under the misapprehension that an agency responding to a Privacy Act or FOIA request must provide a "search certificate" and a "Vaughn" index. Many of her complaints in correspondence to the agencies, as well as in her court documents, are that the agencies responded generally to her requests and did not provide an affidavit containing a detailed list of the records searched, the documents withheld, and the reasons for withholding those documents. Plaintiff is advised that there is no requirement that an agency provide a "search certificate" or a "Vaughn" index on an initial request for documents. The requirement for detailed declarations and Vaughn [6] indices is imposed in connection with a motion for summary judgment filed by a defendant in a civil action pending in court. See, e.g., Weisbergv. United States Dep't of Justice, 745 F.2d 1476, 1485 (D.C. Cir. 1984).

The declarations filed on behalf of Defendants and Plaintiff's own declaration have been reviewed carefully. In all instances, Defendants have shown either that (1) no responsive documents exist or (2) all responsive documents have been produced and that there is appropriate justification for any excisions made, or (3) the documents sought are exempt from disclosure. Plaintiff has not shown that there is a genuine issue of material fact to contradict the Defendants' statement of material facts submitted with their motion. It is not necessary to engage in an extensive discussion of the facts relating to each Defendant. Reference to a representative sample of the different kinds of responses will suffice.

To reiterate Plaintiff seeks documents regarding persons other than herself, including Mark Rathbun, but has not provided consents from those individuals. With respect to her document requests regarding Rathbun, Plaintiff contends that compelling circumstances affecting the health and safety of Rathbun bring her requests within the"health and safety" exception to the prohibition against disclosure of documents concerning persons other than the requester. The court disagrees. The United Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit has specifically held that Plaintiff's unsubstantiated allegations alone do not constitute a "showing of compelling circumstances." Schwarz v. Interpol, No. 94-4111, 1995 U.S. App. LEXIS 3987, at * 6 n.2 (Feb. 28, 1995). Accordingly, Plaintiff is not entitled to release under the Privacy Act of information regarding Mark Rathbun or any of the other individuals about whom she has sought information.

Offices within the White House whose functions are limited to advising and assisting the President do not come within the definition of an "agency" within the meaning of FOIA or the Privacy Act. This includes the Office of the President (and by analogy the Office of the Vice President) and undoubtedly the President and Vice President themselves. See Kissinger v. Reporters Comm. for Freedom of the Press, 445 U.S. 136, 150-55 (1980); McDonnell v. Clinton, No. 97-1535, slip op. at 1-2 (D.D.C. July 3, 1997), aff'd, 132 F.3d 1481 (D.C. Cir. 1997) (unpublished table decision), cert. denied, 525 U.S. 853 (1998). Plaintiff has been so advised in a previous case filed by her, Schwarz v. Clinton, No. 96-1462 (D.D.C. July 2, 1996), aff'd, No. 96-5209 (D.C. Cir. Nov. 29, 1996). Consequently, Defendants' motion regarding information sought from these entities is well taken. Any future attempt to name this entity in an action under the FOIA or Privacy Act may be subject to dismissal as malicious. See 28 U.S.C. 1915(e)(2)(B)(i).

Plaintiff's claim regarding documents maintained by INTERPOL has already been resolved against her in a case she filed previously in this court, Schwarz v. United States Dep't of Justice, No. 95-2162, slip op. at 4 (D.D.C. May 31, 1996), as well as in a case she litigated in the District of Utah and the Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, Schwarz v. INTERPOL, 48 F.3d 1232 (10th Cir.), cert. denied, 515 U. S. 1146, reh 'g denied, 515 U. S. 1180 (1995). Any further attempt to litigate this claim is also subject to dismissal as malicious.

In some instances Plaintiff failed to exhaust her administrative remedies. Three offices of the United States Marshals' Service named as Defendants never received any requests from Plaintiff for documents. Although only the Department of Justice is properly named as a Defendant on behalf of all its branches, courts have upheld agency requirements that a request for records be made in the first instance to the individual office in which the records may be kept. See Judicial Watch, Inc. v. United States Dep't of Justice, No. 97-2089, slip op. at 9-11 (D.D.C. July 14, 1998). In the case of NASA and the Defense Logistics Agency (part of the Department of Defense), Plaintiff failed to respond when sent a copy of the agency's fee schedule. Exhaustion of administrative remedies, a prerequisite to suit, includes payment of required fees or an appeal within the agency from a decision refusing to waive fees.

Oglesby v. United States Dep't of the Army, 920 F.2d 57, 66 (D.C. Cir. 1990); Truebloodv. United States Dep't of Treasury, 943 F. Supp. 64, 68 (D.D.C. 1996). The counts as to these Defendants will be dismissed for failure to state a claim on which relief can be granted. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6).

Several Defendants provided declarations explaining either that the agency is not the type of agency that would have the records Plaintiff seeks (e.g., the Defense Logistics Agency, Declaration 56) or that no responsive records were located. (e.g., the Department of the Army, United States Army Intelligence and Security Command, Declaration 58, and the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, Declaration 64). Plaintiff refuses to accept a response that the agency has no responsive records. Even when a declaration describes the details of an extensive search, Plaintiff insists that the agency has responsive records that it is hiding from her in bad faith, often pursuant to the alleged German Nazi conspiracy. ( compare Declaration 65 from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, with Plaintiff's Affidavit in Opposition to Defendants' Motion at 358ff.

As this Court stated in a previous case filed by Plaintiff, Schwarz v. National Security Agency, etal., No. 98-0066 (D.D.C. July 20, 1998),

The FOIA .. . does not require an agency to conduct an exhaustive search for all documents responsive to a request, but rather a reasonable search for requested records using "methods reasonably expected to produce the information requested." Oglesby v. United States Dep't of the Army, 920 F.2d 57, 58 (D.C. Cir. 1990). "[I]n the absence of countervailing evidence or apparent inconsistency of proof, affidavits that explain in reasonable detail the scope and method of the search conducted by the agency will suffice to demonstrate compliance with the obligations imposed by the FOIA." Perry v. Block, 684 F.2d 121, 127 (D.C. Cir. 1982). The affidavit need not "set forth with meticulous documentation the details of an epic search for the requested records," Perry, 684 F.2d at 127, but must show only "that the search method was reasonably calculated to uncover all relevant documents." Weisberg v. United States Dep't of Justice, 745 F.2d 1476, 1485 (D.C. Cir. 1984).

Moreover, "[m]ere speculation that as yet uncovered documents may exist does not undermine the finding that the agency conducted a reasonable search for them." SafeCard Servs., Inc. v. SEC, 926 F.2d 1197, 1201 (D.C. Cir. 1991). Accord Steinberg v. United States Dep't of Justice, 23 F.3d 548, 552 (D.C. Cir. 1994). The district court in this earlier case concluded that the defendants' affidavits were sufficient and that Plaintiff had offered no evidence that responsive records existed and no evidence of bad faith. The grant of summary judgment for the Defendants was affirmed by the Court of Appeals in Schwarzv. National Security Agency, etal., No. 98-5364 (D.C. Cir. 1998). The memorandum opinion of the Court of Appeals emphasized that "[t]he fact that no documents were found does not mean that the government failed to perform an adequate search." Citing Meeropolv. Meese, 790 F.2d 942, 952-53 (D.C. Cir. 1986), the court pointed out that "the government can never conclusively refute a claim that yet unproduced records exist." These principles are valid and apply to the "no records" responses provided by the agencies in this case.

Even when documents have been produced, Plaintiff is not satisfied. She argues without any factual basis that there are additional documents that have not been produced. Compare Declaration 61 from the Army Claims Service, with Plaintiff's Affidavit in Opposition to Defendants' Motion at 325 ff.). She asserts that any misspelling of her name, any mail delay, any failure to acknowledge her request is done deliberately and in bad faith. There is no reasonable basis for such assertions. The courts review of the declarations provided by the dozens of Government agencies shows that each has sought diligently to satisfy Plaintiff's repetitive requests. For example, although the Civil Division of the Department of Justice denied Plaintiff's request for a fee waiver, [7] it did produce certain documents from her earlier cases in response to her FOIA request, being careful to avoid sending documents that Plaintiff herself had generated.

Some agencies that produced records invoked various FOIA/Privacy Act exemptions to delete portions of the records. In every instance the agency has shown that application of the exemption was proper. For example, the response of the Justice Department's Office of Intelligence and Policy Review points out that records regarding Plaintiff herself are exempt from production under Privacy Act exemption (k)(1), 5 U.S.C. 552a(k)(1), incorporating FOIA exemption 1. The Office properly refused to confirm or deny that it had any responsive records maintained under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA) and in non-FISA files relating to various intelligence techniques. This response, known as a "Glomar" response, [8] was entirely correct for the reasons stated in the supporting declaration of Frances Townsend. See Hunt v. CIA, 981 F.2d 1116, 1119-20 (9th Cir. 1992); Miller v. Casey, 730 F.2d 773, 776 (D.C. Cir. 1984); Gardels v. CIA, 689 F.2d 1100, 1103 (D.C. Cir. 1982).

The Secret Service produced a number of documents relating to an investigation of Plaintiff in 1986 after she was detained in the District of Columbia in 1986. See supra note 5. The Secret Service invoked Exemptions 2 and 7(E) to withhold portions of those records such as a code name for a Secret Service vehicle, White House gate numbers, information concerning personal characteristics used by the Secret Service in evaluating the dangerousness of a subject and the threat potential to individuals protected by the Secret Service. This kind of material is clearly exempt from disclosure. See Crooker v. ATF, 670 F.2d 1051, 1073-74 (D.C. Cir. 1981)(en banc). Portions of other documents were withheld under the deliberative process privilege, Exemption 5. These consist of preliminary evaluations by Secret Service personnel of a potential threat to a person protected by the Service and were properly excised from the documents produced to Plaintiff.

The identities of certain federal employees were withheld from other documents pursuant to Exemption 6, covering "personnel and medical files and similar files the disclosure of which would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy." 5 U.S.C. 552(b)(6). Disclosure of these names could subject the individuals to unwanted harassment but would not contribute to the public understanding of government functions. Excision was, therefore, justified. See, e.g., United States Dep't of Justice v. Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, 489 U.S. 749, 763-65, 774, 776 (1989); Beckv. United States Dep't of Justice, 997F.2d 1489, 1494 (D.C. Cir. 1993).

Certain offices of the Department of Justice employed a "Glomar" response in connection with Exemption 7(C) to decline to admit or deny the existence of documents responsive to Plaintiff's requests. [9] These are the departments that would most likely have documents regarding the alleged conviction and imprisonment of Mark Rathbun. The courts have, however, upheld the use of the "Glomar" response in connection with a request for law enforcement records of a third party. See, e.g., Enzinna v. United States Dep't of Justice, No. 97-5078, 1997 WL 404327, at *2 (D.C. Cir. 1997); Beck, 997 F.2d at 1494. Plaintiff does not have consent to disclosure from any of the third parties. The Court finds that disclosure of any records that might exist would not be informative of the performance of the respective agencies. [10]

The Secret Service, the FBI, and the Bureau of Prisons invoked Exemption 7(C) to withhold from certain documents the names and other identifying information of individuals involved in law enforcement investigations. On balance, the privacy interest of the individuals outweighs Plaintiff's interest in obtaining their names and identifying information. Therefore, application of the exemption was justified.

IV. CONCLUSION

After reviewing the documentation provided by Defendants and Plaintif the court concludes that Defendants have conducted appropriate searches to determine whether responsive records exist and have produced all relevant non-exempt documents or non-exempt portions thereof. Consequently, the complaint will be dismissed for failure to state a claim against the United States Marshals Service, the Office of the President, INTERPOL, NASA, and the Defense Logistics Agency, and those defendants who are named in the caption but against whom no claim is stated in the body of the complaint. The complaint will be dismissed as to the remaining defendants because there are no material facts in dispute and they are entitled to judgment as a matter of law.

An appropriate order and judgment accompanies this memorandum.

HENRY H. KENNEDY, JR.

United States District Judge DATE:

[Footnote 1: Plaintiff names 18 subdivisions of the Department of Justice, 7 United States Attorneys' Offices, 5 branches of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the main office of the United States Marshals' Service and 9 branch offices, the Secret Service of the Department of the Treasury, the Department of State, the National Military and National Civilian Personnel Records Centers, the Executive Office of the President, the Vice President, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the National Records Center in Suitland, Maryland, and several branches of the Department of Defense.]

[Footnote 2: Letters from Plaintiff submitted with the Declarations supporting the motion for summary judgment indicate that she also sought information about an individual named Claude de Rothschild, who she alleges was a General in the U.S. Army and was renamed Rathbun by the U.S. Secret Service.]

[Footnote 3: Defendants' motion is accompanied by 83 declarations of persons with appropriate knowledge of Plaintiff s requests. The declarations describe the record keeping procedures of the agencies and the agencies' responses to Plaintiff's requests. In some instances copies of the disclosed documents are attached. For example, the United States Secret Service produced documents relating to Plaintiff's visit to Washington in April, 1986, her detention for causing a disturbance at a restaurant, her arrest for unlawful entry at the White House, and her evaluation at Saint Elizabeth's Hospital. INTERPOL produced copies of telegrams from 1988 indicating that German authorities sought assistance in locating Plaintiff, who had disappeared and was described as "confused" at times. The Secret Service records suggest that Plaintiff had come to the United States from Germany to warn President Reagan of danger from the KGB and also to find either her brother Frank (who had been kidnaped by the KGB) or Frank E. Brown, described as the father of her brother Frank. Defendants' Motion, Declaration 1. One Defendant, the Adjutant General of the Montana National Guard, sent Plaintiff two pages of records regarding L. Ron Hubbard. Plaintiff claims this is inadequate because Hubbard allegedly served in the Montana National Guard and the office must have more papers relating to him. (Count 57).

Plaintiff's response consists of a declaration of 519 pages with 1643 paragraphs (plus copies of some of her requests) and 328 additional pages of copies of her correspondence with the agencies, many of which are duplicates of documents provided by Defendants in their motion papers. The Court notes that in her request to the Army's Intelligence and Security Command, Plaintiff sought records of a Frank Eugene Brown from Oklahoma who she claimed might have been sent to Germany in 1960 to "bring her back." The search did not locate any records of this individual. Defendants' Motion, Declaration 58. The Army Claims Service, however, did locate records indicating that in 1995 Plaintiff and Rosemarie Bretschneider filed a claim seeking back child support from Frank Brown for Frank Nikolaus Schubert, allegedly ordered by a German court in 1965. The claim and a related civil suit in Oklahoma were dismissed. Defendants' Motion, Declaration 61.]

[Footnote 4: From a Declaration dated October 8, 1997, provided by Plaintiff to several agencies and submitted by both Plaintiff and Defendants with their declarations, it appears that Plaintiff contends that President Eisenhower was the father of L. Ron Hubbard, that Plaintiff is Hubbard's daughter Sarah and was born in Salt Lake City, Utah in August, 1955, that she was kidnaped three times between 1955 and 1960 and taken to Germany where she was renamed Barbara or Barbel Bretschneider and raised by a German citizen named Rosemarie Bretschneider. She claims that in the early 1970's her father "got hold of" her and they lived together in the United Kingdom. She married Mark Rathbun but they were "ambushed by the Germans in Europe." The Germans aborted her child and "mind controlled us with hypnosis and laser proceedings were done to our memory banks of our brains, with the result that we forgot our past." Their memories returned when she "[ran] into Mark or Marty again in 1984." Defendants' Declaration 53, Attachment 3; Declaration 57, First Attachment.

Some of Plaintiff's documents identify Rathbun as a high official in the Church of Scientology and name Rosemarie Bretschneider the moving party in Rathbun's prosecution.

Plaintiff was advised in response to her request to the National Personnel Records Center that records show no connection between Eisenhower and Hubbard, that Eisenhower had two sons who were John and a child who died in infancy, that John has four children, none of whom are named Sarah and none of whom was ever kidnaped, that Hubbard had two children who were a son and a daughter Catherine, and there was no evidence that Hubbard had a daughter Sarah or a kidnaped child. See Appendices to Declaration of David Petree, Declaration 46 in support of Defendants' Motion for Summary Judgment.]

[Footnote 5: Plaintiff does not provide consents from any of the individuals about whom she sought records.]

[Footnote 6: Vaughn v. Rosen, 484 F.2d 820, 826 (D.C. Cir. 1973), cert. denied, 415 U.S. 977 (1974).]

[Footnote 7: This denial was proper. Plaintiff did not, and does not now, show that production to Plaintiff of additional documents at public expense "is likely to contribute significantly to public understanding of the operations or activities of the government." 5 U.S.C. 552(a)(4)(A)(iii). Despite Plaintiff's contention that the public interest is furthered by her search for wrongly imprisoned Mark Rathbun, which would disclose a German Nazi conspiracy, there is sound basis for the conclusion that the search is fruitless simply because Rathbun has not been convicted of raping and murdering Plaintiff and is not being held incommunicado. Cf. Neitzke v. Williams, 490 U.S. 319, 327 (1989). See also Ely v. United States Postal Serv., 753 F.2d 163, 165 (D.C. Cir.), cert. denied, 471 U.S. 1106 (1985).]

[Footnote 8: See Phillippi v. CIA, 546 F.2d 1009, 1013 (D.C. Cir. 1976) (relating to requests for records of the submarine retrieval ship "Glomar Explorer").]

[Footnote 9: These are the Office of Professional Responsibility, the Criminal Division, the United States Marshals Service, and the FBI.]

[Footnote 10: Although an impartial observer might doubt that any records exist anywhere showing that Rathbun was convicted of raping and murdering Plaintiff as the victim of a Nazi conspiracy provoked by Rosemarie Bretschneider, it is conceivable that the Defendant agencies have records referring to Rathbun in connection with a different criminal investigation. Rathbun clearly would have a privacy interest in those records, whether he is mentioned as a victim, a witness, or a subject of the investigation.]

Crime Cult does not act like a religion

2005-12-22T12:32:00.000-07:00

Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2005 16:13:30 -0800
From: barb
Message-ID: <437fc0d0$1@news2.lightlink.com>

I am one person. I have my own few stories about my relationship with the cult of Scientology.

Since protesting their abuses, they have accused me of planning to blow up the Scientology facility in San Diego.

They distributed libellous fliers in my building, falsely stating I went to Florida "to harass a peaceful religious group," which was unnamed. They stalked me and my parents.

They have posed as potential employers, calling my friends and family trying to get personal information on me.

They have parked outside my house, until it worried the neighbors, who have children. Neighbors told me, I went out, cult ops went away.

Not a whole lot of stuff, true. But I am one person. They try this crap with everyone they see as a potential threat.

Honestly, it's like playing Man From U.N.C.L.E.

Spy vs. Spy

Only stupider. But, they hope they can use their operatives to scare you away from criticising their cult.

This is one person's experiences. Add em up with everyone else's, and you start seeing a pattern of... Well, it's not the behavior you would expect from a "religion," is it?

--
--barb
Chaplain,ARSCC
xenubarb@netscape.net

"Imagine a 'church' so dangerous, you must sign a release form before you can receive its 'spiritual assistance.' This assistance might involve holding you against your will for an indefinite period, isolating you from friends and family, and denying you access to appropriate medical care. You will of course be billed for this treatment - assuming you survive it. If not, the release form absolves your caretakers of all responsibility for your suffering and death. Welcome to the 'Church' of Scientology." -- Dr. Dave Touretzky
and Peter Alexander

Battlefield Tilden

2005-11-19T17:01:00.000-07:00

BATTLEFIELD TILDEN

St. Petersburg Times
May 11, 1997

By MIKE WILSON

TILDEN, NEB. - In a no-stoplight town on the American plain, in a house where the King James Version lies open in the entryway, a woman unfolds her newspaper and begins to read.

The headline in the Tilden Citizen announces, "New Park Groundbreaking Ceremony Held.'' A picture shows 13 people posed shoulder to shoulder, their grins as frozen as the February soil. The mayor, a construction foreman on his afternoon break, has the familiar job of holding the shovel.

A banner in the background says, "L. RON HUBBARD PARK."

L. Ron Hubbard? The woman pauses in her reading, searches her mental files, retrieves a few scant details: Born in Tilden a long time ago, wrote something called Dianetics, founded the Church of Scientology. The woman read some Scientology pamphlets once, and found them vaguely troubling.

Now she wonders: Is Hubbard the kind of person his hometown should make immortal?

That afternoon, after tidying the kitchen, she fastens her infant son into a stroller and pushes him three blocks to the Tilden Public Library. There, she begins her research, which continues for days.

She copies the 1991 Time magazine cover story describing Scientology as "a hugely profitable global racket" that operates "in a Mafialike manner." She samples the Web sites where critics rage about "the cult of $cientology" and its history of harassing its enemies with lawsuits and dirty tricks. She absorbs a 1995 court opinion that denounces a Scientology legal blitz as "reprehensible," and another that dismisses the church's founder as "a pathological liar."

Among Hubbard's own writings, she finds the Scientology Code of Honor and goes cold at No. 12:

Never fear to hurt another in a just cause.

L. Ron Hubbard Park? The name won't do, Marcie Sextro decides. She has a husband, a house to keep up, three children besides the baby boy, and no experience as an activist. But she knows the park must not keep that name.

Back at the house, the Bible is open to the Gospel of John, and she is certain that Jesus doesn't say anything about just causes.

LOVE AND HELP CHILDREN

A couple of years ago, the city of Tilden, Neb., conducted a survey to see what the town needed most. One thing was a doctor. Dr. Bill Barr was getting along in years, and would eventually retire. Doctors named Barr - Bill Barr's grandfather, then his father and uncle, and now Bill himself - have been taking Tilden's temperature since 1910.

The other thing people wanted was a new park with a ballfield, walking trails, picnic areas, and so on. If Tilden - population 895, according to the sign - was to survive, it had to attract families. A civic group had already given the land. Twenty-two acres.

The City Council created the Friends of the Park Foundation to raise money for the park, build it and maintain it. The park foundation - a feed salesman, a florist, some insurance agents, a few others - decided to seek donations from former Tilden residents who had become famous.

Two people qualified. One was Richie Ashburn, who was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1995. Ashburn's mother, who is in her 90s, still lives in town, and shovels her own front walk when it snows.

The other was Lafayette Ronald Hubbard, who was born at 405 S Oak St. on March 13, 1911. Hubbard's birth was the beginning and the end of his association with Tilden. His family left town when he was an infant, and he died in 1986 without ever having gone back.

The park foundation sent a letter to Los Angeles and quickly got a response from a group called the Friends of L. Ron Hubbard. This group - which said it was made up of people, mostly Scientologists, who admired Hubbard - was so eager to help that the park foundation never got around to approaching Ashburn.

The Friends of L. Ron Hubbard pledged $50,000 to help build a biking-and-walking trail in the park. Later, they said they'd pay for the whole park, whose cost exceeded $800,000 as the park foundation's vision for it grew grander.

The Friends reached an agreement with the park foundation to name the park after Hubbard and to call the bike path The Way To Happiness Trail.

Hubbard published a pamphlet called The Way To Happiness in 1981. Some of the 21 Ways To Happiness echo the Ten Commandments: "Honor and Help Your Parents," "Do Not Steal," "Do Not Murder." Some offer fatherly advice: "Be Worthy of Trust," "Take Care of Yourself," "Love and Help Children." One recasts the Golden Rule in a curiously relaxed way: "Try To Treat Others As You Would Want Them To Treat You."

Try?

This was the deal: The people of Tilden could have their park, complete with an ice-skating pond, wildflower meadow and baseball field. All they had to do was name it after Hubbard and post his moral precepts on markers along the Way To Happiness Trail, one every 190 feet.

All this might have happened if Marcie Sextro hadn't picked up her copy of the Tilden Citizen and seen the picture of the groundbreaking.

After she did, Tilden began to experience some of the same fear and confusion that befell Clearwater when the Church of Scientology quietly began buying property there 22 years ago. Clearwater is now Scientology's spiritual headquarters.

Tilden, a cluster of silos, barns and two-story brick buildings 150 miles northwest of Omaha, straddles two counties, Madison on the east and Antelope on the west. Scientology divided the town a second time, with the park foundation people on one side and the Concerned Citizens Coalition - Marcie Sextro and friends - on the other.

People who had known each other since the first grade didn't speak when they met at the bank. Karen Decker, a park foundation member, would not pass through the doors of the Johnsons' grocery store because the Johnsons were aligned with the coalition.

In the midst of all this, strangers arrived from California, people whose religious leader spoke of engrams and thetans and the galactic ruler, Xenu.

The Church of Scientology says its members got involved in the park project on their own, not at the behest of the church. "The fact is that the "church' was never in Tilden," president Heber C. Jentzsch, said in a letter to the Times.

He'd have a hard time convincing Tilden of that.

SEEK TO LIVE WITH THE TRUTH

Three Scientologists visited Tilden in September 1995 as guests of the park foundation. One said she was the director of the L. Ron Hubbard Office of Public Relations International in Los Angeles. The others represented the Friends of L. Ron Hubbard. This, they said, was the private foundation that would give the money for the park.

The Scientologists stayed several days. They took a hayride to the park site. They talked about the kind of tribute they would like to see there. They had lunch. They handed out copies of The Way To Happiness.

They gave some books to the Tilden Public Library. One was called What Is Scientology? That what was the question Tilden had to answer before it decided what to do with the park.

What is Scientology? The church Web site says it is an "applied religious philosophy" that seeks to help the individual "solve his own problems and so better his own life." The church - which in 1993 was declared tax-exempt by the IRS - says Scientology has helped countless people quit drugs and alcohol and live happier and more productive lives.

Here's how: Hubbard said every human being has a "thetan" inside. He once said thetans were sent to Earth, which he called "Teegeeack," by the cruel king Xenu. This was 75-million years ago. Thetans go to Venus when their hosts die.

The trouble with thetans is that they carry "engrams," lingering images of past psychic injuries. Engrams confuse and sicken the beings they inhabit. To overcome these painful memories - to "go clear" - one must receive "auditing."

Auditing is a conversation between a trained Scientologist and the "preclear," or subject. The auditor operates a device called an Electropsychometer, or E-meter, which looks like a futuristic radio with two tin cans attached by cords.

According to What Is Scientology?, the device "measures the mental state or change of state of a person, helping the auditor and preclear locate areas of spiritual distress or travail so they can be addressed."

Scientologists who go clear can become Operating Thetans. OTs can progress through eight levels, with the highest known as Truth Revealed. The church won't say what all this costs, but former members say they have had to pay tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Marcie Sextro, 32, came across much of this information during her research. The things she read did not make her a friend of L. Ron Hubbard.

She learned that 11 Scientologists, including Hubbard's wife, Mary Sue, went to prison in the 1980s for infiltrating and burglarizing the IRS, the Justice Department and other agencies to thwart their investigations of Scientology.

And that Hubbard was suspected of stealing millions from the church and socking the money away in Swiss banks.

And that federal authorities were seeking to charge him with tax fraud when his thetan went to Venus in 1986.

The source for much of this was the 1991 Time magazine cover story, "Scientology: The Cult of Greed." The church says the article is full of lies and errors. It filed a $416-million libel suit against the magazine, but a federal judge dismissed the suit last year, saying that "no reasonable jury" could conclude that the statements in the article were published with malice.

There was one other thing that disturbed Sextro. The church says Scientology can be used to supplement other religions, but Christianity apparently isn't one of them. Hubbard said Christ is a myth and heaven "is a very painful lie."

Sextro - who goes to a foot-stomping, hand-waving, tongue-speaking Christian church - took offense at that. So did the Catholics, Lutherans, Methodists, and Church of Christ members who were helping her with her research. These people didn't want anybody's religion in the park. And they wanted Hubbard's there least of all.

Sextro and her friends - including another housewife, a teacher at the Lutheran preschool, a bull rancher and an auto mechanic - took their case to the mayor and City Council.

Which, it turned out, couldn't be bothered with it.

BE WORTHY OF TRUST

About the time the Sextro group was doing its research - the spring of 1996 - four members of the park foundation flew to Los Angeles to pick up a $50,000 check from the Friends of L. Ron Hubbard. The money was to be used for the Way To Happiness Trail.

Why didn't the park foundation ask the Scientologists to put the check in the mail?

"It is our responsibility as citizens of Tilden to find out more about L. Ron Hubbard," park foundation leader Dave Decker told the Tilden Citizen.

The park foundation people fulfilled this responsibility by spending three days in a Scientology hotel at the expense of Scientologists. They attended a reception at the Way To Happiness Foundation, toured the Scientology publishing house and enjoyed a day at Disneyland.

Decker's wife, Karen, received a free auditing session in Los Angeles. Scientology says the purpose of auditing is to improve one's "beingness." Mrs. Decker reported that her beingness was about the same after the session as it was before.

Dave Decker used to have a feed store on Center Street, but that didn't work out. Now he's building a small shopping center and - like a lot of people in Tilden - raising a few hogs. But mostly he works on the park.

"It's going to be something nice for our children," he says.

Decker, fiftyish, has a broken halo of brown hair, fingers like kielbasas, half-glasses on his nose. His checks bear pictures of Daffy Duck, Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd. "Most people, when I write a check, figure it's a Looney Tune anyway," he says.

Decker says the town needs tourism for economic development. Including his.

The state of Nebraska is laying a 300-mile bike path that will run through Tilden. Decker backed the park plans in hopes that tourists - including Scientologists - would bicycle into town, veer off into the park and then visit his shopping center.

He has heard that people using the state bike trail will spend $83 a day.

"They gotta spend that someplace," Decker says.

BE COMPETENT

The Concerned Citizens Coalition first approached the Tilden City Council last August. The council usually meets in a room the size of a one-car garage, but so many people came that the meeting had to be held in the gymnasium, between the basketball hoops and beneath the Nebraska state flag. The townspeople sat in the bleachers.

After voting to let the fire department buy a ventilation fan for $850, the council took up the park issue.

Stan Grubb said the Scientologists had to be stopped "before they get a foothold in the community." Jean Marie Shermer waved a copy of the Time magazine story, which the Concerned Citizens had provided to the council. She said she didn't want a tribute to Hubbard in Tilden.

Scott James said Scientology is a religion, not a cult, and everybody should calm down. Council member Darrell Wyatt said Scientologists do some pretty darned good work.

The council took no action. This turned out to be what the council did best. Most of the council members did not read the Time article, or any of the other materials the Concerned Citizens gave them. Some still haven't.

"We have people refusing to be informed," Sextro says.

Not refusing, exactly. Declining. The mayor of Tilden, Steve Rutjens, is the foreman of his family business, Rutjens Construction. He wears a baseball hat that says "Ditch Witch," the name of a company that makes trenchers and plows.

"I don't have time to sit down and read books to figure out what this stuff is. I told them I wished they had an audiocassette," he says. L. Ron Hubbard, Tilden's most famous son, may have been a genius. Or maybe he was a demented liar. Rutjens really can't say.

The mayor and council members weren't prepared for such a contentious issue. They serve mostly because nobody else wants to, and get paid a couple hundred dollars a year for their trouble. Normally they make easy decisions such as whether to spend $1,000 to replace the brooms on the street sweeper, which they did, but then it broke down again.

When the park controversy started and people demanded that they take a stand, they were taken aback. They hadn't signed up for anything like this.

The Concerned Citizens Coalition didn't let up. It hired a lawyer, a clear indication that things in Tilden had gotten out of hand.

Attorney Mark Albin, whose office is in Norfolk, 22 miles east, made the council members uncomfortable. He pointed out that the City Council had no control over the park foundation. It had no idea how much money the foundation had, where the money came from, or how the foundation was spending it.

This was important because the park foundation had used the $50,000 from the Friends of L. Ron Hubbard to get state matching funds for the Way To Happiness Trail. If the City Council decided not to approve a trail by that name, and if the Scientologists took their money and went home, Tilden would have to come up with $50,000 to make good on its deal with the state.

Albin had another point: What if the city built the trail and somebody sued on the grounds that Tilden had violated the Constitutional separation of church and state?

Not to worry, the Friends of L. Ron Hubbard said. The Way To Happiness is "a common-sense moral code," not Scientology scripture.

Call it religion or call it common sense, the Way To Happiness was making the Tilden City Council miserable.

Finally, Mayor Rutjens came up with a solution. It wasn't exactly Churchillian, but it would have to do.

TRY TO TREAT OTHERS AS YOU WOULD WANT THEM TO TREAT YOU

The members of the Concerned Citizens Coalition measure their words carefully when they talk about Hubbard and the Church of Scientology. They don't call it a cult of greed or a racket; they let Time magazine do that. They don't mention that Hubbard falsified his military record, claiming honors he didn't have; they leave that to the Los Angeles Times.

And they don't speculate about what happened to 36-year-old Lisa McPherson, who died under mysterious circumstances after spending 17 days in the Fort Harrison Hotel, the Scientology spiritual retreat in Clearwater. Instead, the Concerned Citizens point to coverage of the case in the St. Petersburg Times and the Tampa Tribune.

Sextro and the others don't speak ill of Hubbard or the church because they know what happens to people who do. They read about Paulette Cooper, the author of The Scandal of Scientology, who was framed by Scientologists on charges that she made bomb threats against the church. Cooper was indicted by a federal grand jury in 1973, only to be exonerated after the FBI raided Scientology's offices and uncovered the plot against her.

The church says that's ancient history.

Just 18 months ago, a federal judge in Virginia ruled that a church lawsuit against the Washington Post was "reprehensible" because its purpose was to "(stifle) criticism and dissent of the religious practices of Scientology and (destroy) its opponents." The church's Web site says the judge's decision was "erroneous."

Even Dave Decker, Scientology's best ally in Tilden, is frank about the church's tactics. "If you have ever defamed the church, you better be careful, because they'll come after you," he says.

Still, he sees no reason not to honor Hubbard. The Los Angeles City Commission did. If Los Angeles can have an L. Ron Hubbard Way, Decker asks, why can't Tilden have an L. Ron Hubbard Park?

Decker says the park wasn't meant to promote Scientology, and the Friends of L. Ron Hubbard took pains to distance themselves from the church that Hubbard founded. The articles they wrote for the Tilden Citizen never mentioned the word "Scientology."

Early on, Nebraska's Norfolk Daily News (circulation 21,000) published a story saying the Church of Scientology was contributing to the park project. The park foundation demanded a correction, and the paper published one that said the Friends of L. Ron Hubbard are "not associated with the church."

Maybe not, but they certainly were dedicated. One day, Marcie Sextro got a phone call from Dave Decker. Would it be all right if someone from the Friends of L. Ron Hubbard called to talk about the park?

When Kaye Conley called, Sextro switched on her answering machine and said she was recording the conversation. "I didn't trust her," she said. Yes, things had changed in Tilden.

Conley said she didn't know why people were suspicious of the Friends of L. Ron Hubbard. "It appears that it is considered that we have some vested interest," she said.

BEEP! Sextro's answering machine emitted a loud, shrill sound, its way of announcing that it was still recording. Conley gathered herself and went on. But the sound interrupted her again, and then again, and then again, at 15-second intervals. The sound was a distraction at first, then an annoyance, and finally a form of torture.

"Let's just forget that I'm a Scientologist . . ."

BEEP!

"Our children can't be educated because they're so drug-inflicted . . ."

BEEP!

"I don't know where this idea comes from that we worship some kind of devil . . ."

BEEP!

Conley mentioned Scientology's opposition to psychiatry - especially electroshock therapy. "We don't believe you can make a person better by frying his brain . . ."

BEEP!

Conley gave up.

SUPPORT A GOVERNMENT DESIGNED AND RUN FOR ALL THE PEOPLE

This is what Mayor Steve Rutjens told the people of Tilden: I'll do whatever you tell me to do.

If bending to the will of the majority doesn't sound like leadership, the people didn't mind. In a place like Tilden, it's more important to be neighborly than it is to be sure of yourself. A City Council vote on the issue was scheduled for March 11 of this year.

Rutjens' "stand" turned the park issue into a numbers game: Whichever side got the most signatures would get its way, at least with him. In the days before the decisive City Council meeting, just about everybody in Tilden was asked to sign a petition for one side or the other.

Both sides delivered their stacks to the city office before the meeting. Most of the coalition's petitions were signed by longtime residents of Tilden. Some of the names on the park foundation petitions were less familiar: Rivera. Portillo. Morales. Ponce. Perez. Guajardo. These were Mexican immigrants who live in a trailer park on North Elm and work in the meat-packing plant in Norfolk.

In a city where second-generation families are seen as new blood, the Mexicans are all but invisible. Some people might be inclined to discriminate against them, but they'd have to notice them first.

Some in Tilden didn't appreciate the park foundation bringing the Mexicans into the controversy. "They know nothing about the park and trail," City Clerk Pat Borgelt says. Decker seized the opportunity to cry bigotry.

Borgelt finished tallying the petitions on the day of the big meeting. If the council deadlocked, the mayor would know how to vote.

The council held the first part of the meeting in the garage-size room. After voting to solicit bids for the shingling of the fire house roof, the council members got up and walked to to the city gym, where 200 people in a town of 900 sat waiting.

Tilden had a lot at stake. Business people who had taken a position were suffering for it now. Old friends had stopped talking to each other. The mayor had received two letters demanding that he accept the money from the Friends of L. Ron Hubbard. The letters were from his mother and his niece.

Tilden - which had struggled to raise even a few thousand dollars - was now being offered an $800,000 park. All the council had to do was say yes.

The meeting lasted until midnight. The park foundation spoke. The Concerned Citizens Coalition spoke. Mayor Rutjens repeatedly asked the Friends of L. Ron Hubbard what they would do if the city decided not to honor Hubbard. Would they take back the money? The mayor could not get a straight answer.

By a 4-2 vote, the council decided not to name the park for Hubbard, and not to build the Way To Happiness Trail. The mayor didn't have to vote.

After the meeting, the Friends of L. Ron Hubbard took back their $50,000 and left town.

FULFILL YOUR OBLIGATIONS

A lot of people in Tilden don't want to talk about Scientology now. The Lutheran pastor has no comment. Jeannene Kerkman, of the park foundation, doesn't return calls. The wife of park foundation member Duane Eggers says, "He isn't available." As in, ever.

But few people don't want to talk about Scientology as much as Jerry Fields doesn't want to talk about it. Something, or someone, has made this Nebraska insurance man as edgy as a little boy in the dark. He sits behind the desk in his office, not talking. He won't even talk about why he won't talk.

"I really don't want to be in this," he says, meaning this newspaper story. Or this office, this town, this area code.

Fields is the only person in Tilden who was on both the park foundation and the City Council. As a park foundation member, he seconded the motion to make a deal with the Friends of L. Ron Hubbard. Later, in a City Council meeting, he voted against holding a public referendum on the park issue. Clearly, the Hubbard people had him on their side.

Then some of the coalition members cranked up the heat. They told him they would take their business elsewhere if he didn't vote their way. He could lose his livelihood. The Scientologists pressured him, too, he says. But he doesn't want to talk about it.

Jerry Fields empties his lungs with a long, shrinking sigh.

"People are cruel," he says.

He was among those who ultimately voted against honoring Hubbard. Soon after, he quit the City Council and focused on selling insurance.

Hanging on the wall of Fields' waiting room is a plaque that the Friends of L. Ron Hubbard gave him before he turned on them. It is inscribed with a quotation from Hubbard:

"On the day when we can really trust each other, there will be peace on Earth."

Federal lawsuit targets Front Sight gun "resort"

2005-11-19T16:59:00.000-07:00

http://www.pahrumpvalleytimes.com/2005/11/18/news/frontsight.html
LAWYERS, GUNS AND MONEY

Federal lawsuit targets Front Sight gun "resort"

RICO ACT TAKES AIM AT FACILITY NEAR PAHRUMP; FOUNDER PIAZZA SAYS ALLEGATIONS WITHOUT MERIT

The Pahrump Valley Times
18.11.2005

By GINA B. GOOD

The staccato of controlled bursts from Uzi submachine guns was mixed with the excited laughter of children climbing 200 feet up a rock wall. In a scenario revisited on a regular basis at Front Sight Firearms Training Institute, 300 students of all ages converged at the desert playground for active families and firearms enthusiasts.

Students from New York to California spent four days taking courses in rappelling, defensive handgun, tactical shotgun and practical rifle, unaware that just a few days earlier a federal lawsuit that could prove potentially disastrous to this planned firearms community was filed in federal court.

Front Sight, a resort-in-the-making located 30 miles south of Pahrump near the Spanish Trail, is in the crosshairs of at least three of its members who filed a class action against founder Ignatius Piazza and Front Sight Management Incorporated on Nov. 7.

Stacy James and Michael Schriber of Southern California and Bill Haag, who maintains a residence in Pahrump, filed the suit in California, where Front Sight is headquartered. The action demands a jury trial under the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act.

When Congress passed the RICO Act in 1970, its intent was to eliminate organized crime. However, according to attorney Jeffrey Grell, an expert in RICO Act law who has written books on the subject, civil suits began to emerge in the 1980s. Today, RICO is almost never applied to the Mafia, but is used against individuals, businesses, political protest groups and even terrorist organizations. On his Ricoact.com Web site, Grell reports "RICO has become one of the most complicated and unpredictable areas of the law."

The 26-page complaint against Front Sight centers on membership benefits and promises. At the organization's inception in 1998, memberships were sold to fund construction of shooting ranges. Free classes for life with memberships that could be willed to family members were attractive to gun owners who sought professional training. Additional benefits - like home sites - were promised for higher priced memberships.

Whether promises have been kept depends upon who is doing the talking.

Students firing 800 rounds down range at paper targets during a four-day handgun course have one viewpoint - it's fun. They also say it is essential training.

"Mostly, I just want to be safe," said first-time student Wayne Taylor, an engineer from Ridgecrest, Calif. "I love it here. It exceeds my expectations."

Taylor attended the $1,200, 4-day defensive handgun course at no cost. Fellow engineer H. Sam Edwards gave Taylor a certificate to take the course that Edwards received as part of the membership package he purchased after taking his first course earlier this year.

Certificates to give away to family and friends or sell at discounted prices have always been part of the allure for joining the Front Sight First Family membership program. In fact, it is possible to recoup the full cost of a basic membership by selling certificates. However, Bill Haag paid $175,000 for a platinum VIP membership that includes a one-acre home site and has waited years to build his home on the range on property that as yet has no road, power, water or sewer service - and he is mad enough to file suit on behalf of any one of the 3,000 students who feel they have been deceived by Front Sight.

"It's time someone stepped up on behalf of the members," was all Haag felt he could say about the court case.

However, Piazza - the founder and president of Front Sight Management - had plenty to say about the allegations contained in the complaint.

"I have been keeping my nose to the grindstone and working 12 to 16 hours a day, six to seven days per week on Front Sight ever since we broke ground in 1998," he stated. "I wish the project had moved faster, but this type of unique resort has never been built before - anywhere. That presents a number of problems that simply must be overcome with time."

Speaking about several development deals for the planned community that he has nixed or that have fallen through in the past, Piazza says, "If we had completed the project a few years ago on our own, it would never have been as beautiful or complete as it can be now. The delays have been a blessing in disguise."

Editor's note: The Pahrump Valley Times will continue to investigate this issue. Any parties who believe they've been harmed - or helped - by Front Sight are encouraged to contact the newspaper.

[Caption:]

A first-time student from New York shoots a fully automatic M-16 rifle from a Robinson R-44 helicopter. She was firing at steel targets in the desert, set up in various tactical scenarios - depicting one person to a group of terrorists holding hostages.

[Caption:]

Front Sight occupies 550 acres, 30 miles south of Pahrump off Tecopa Road. Aerial views show 15- to 400-yard shooting ranges, as well as rope and rappelling towers and classrooms.

Brainwashed - A Bristol man man is suing an organisation which he claims taught him to lie and reject his family

2005-11-19T16:56:00.000-07:00

Subject: Brainwashed - A Bristol man man is suing an organisation which he claims taught him to lie and reject his family - 1994

Front page article : The Bristol Journal - UK
BRAINWASHED

http://www.lermanet.com/scientologynews/england/bristoljournal.htm

29th April 1994

"BRAINWASHED"

Bristol man to sue cult for over UKP10,000
By Emily Compston

A BRISTOL man is suing an organisation which he claims taught him to
lie and reject his family, whilst charging him over UKPo7,00 for the
pleasure.

John Simpson, aged 24, (not his real name) is a former member of the
controversial cult of the Church of Scienlology or Dianetics, as it is
otherwise known.

He finally escaped last month after seven months in the group.

If you had quizzed him last year about his involvement with
Scientology, he would probably have told you a few "acceptable
truths".

He explained: "For example, if your parents ask you how much you have
spent on Scientology courses and you don't want them to know that
you've spent UKPo2,00, you would say'more than UKP500'. They taught us
to say that they were acceptable truths."

WARNING

John, of Headley Park, is neither stupid or naive and yet within a few
months he was spending every weekend at the cult's UK headquarters in
Poole, taking part in self-improvement and PR courses.

In all, he spent over UKP 10,000 on courses andis now warning other
Bristolians about the cult which is currently promoting itself in the
city.

The cult boasts famous pupils such as film stars Tom Cruise and John
Travolta.

According to John, one of the reasons he was first attracted to the
centre in Poole was because of the people. "The people there were
intelligent, there were dentists, architects, lawyers and these are
the kind of people that Scientology want. They are bright and have
inquiring minds."

Within an afternoon he had signed up for a UKPo90 Success Through
Communiation course and he returned the following weekend.

He says the techniques used by the centre to enrol candidates are
subtle.

"I went into an office and had an interview. I really thought they had
my best interests to heart. By about 2am I was tired, I had work the
next day. They kept on saying 'just a few more minutes', but it was
more like an hour."

By the time he had set off back to Bristol, in the early hours of that
September morning, he had parted with a further UKPo400 an was
enrolled in another two courses.

John was elated - he felt more confident and his life became a cycle
of work in the week and intense sludy at Poole at the weekends. Soon
John was learning the Scientology language. He stopped having chats
with his friends, but instead was in 'com' (communicating) with them.

His parents began getting worried around December last year, but any
attempts to talk to their son ended in an argument and tears - "never
mine" wrote John a few months later.

In desperation they sought help from an ex-Scientologist Gary Fryer
who is now committed to. 'exposing' Scintology for what he believes it
really is.

PERSUADED

John was persuaded to visit him too and slowly he came oul of his
~brainwashed' slate and began to question all he had learnt.

John left the church in March and managed to persuade five olther
people to leave.

"I'm not very popular tbere, I have cost them around UKP5o0,000 alread
and I could cost them millions if I persuade any others to leave." He
is now suing the church for over UKP 10,200 -the amount he spent,
after loan interest, on courses at Poole.

A couple of months ago, he was paid a visit by an American private
investigator, employed by the church to discredit members of the
anti-Scientology fraternity.

"I applied scienlology to every side of my life. I really went for it.
Now I just want to get other people out of it."

Belgian girl killed by scientologist

2005-11-19T16:51:00.000-07:00

From: Mike Gormez
Subject: Belgian girl killed by scientologist
Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 11:04:41 +0100
Organization: Scientology, the pedophile protecting cult
Message-ID: <3u32l5FveerbU1@individual.net>

Here's some points from a news item lifted from the Belgian daily Het Nieuwsblad -- 17.11.2005

On 29 December 2003 scientologist Willem Van Rompay killed 23 year old Katrijn Borré, a girl he had met/dated for five times but she had enough and ended it. He went to her shop and shot her twice.

Willem gave lots of conflicting statements prior of what he had in mind when he drove to the shop. At one time it was to talk at another time to shoot her and yet at another moment he went there thinking in a flash that perhaps he might would rape and kill her. Though during court appearance he said he would never have raped her.

'Scientology

Van Rompay and his family are members of the Church of Scientology and that aspect was touched upon frequently during the court appearance. The young man says he couldn't find help for his problems because that is not done in the Church of Scientology. Help needs to come from within and he hadn't any money for that. "My father had all ready paid 40.000 euro in bills for several [Scientology] treatments."

His father doesn't come visit him in jail. "As a scientologist he beliefs in re-incarnation. If it depends on my father, I should commit suicide as soon as possible. He has let me know that in my next life he would welcome me with open arms.'

http://www.nieuwsblad.be/Article/Detail.aspx?ArticleID=G25K9RSO

From: Mike Gormez
Subject: Belgian girl killed by scientologist
Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 11:04:41 +0100
Organization: Scientology, the pedophile protecting cult
Message-ID: <3u32l5FveerbU1@individual.net>

Here's some points from a news item lifted from the Belgian daily Het Nieuwsblad -- 17.11.2005

On 29 December 2003 scientologist Willem Van Rompay killed 23 year old Katrijn Borré, a girl he had met/dated for five times but she had enough and ended it. He went to her shop and shot her twice.

Willem gave lots of conflicting statements prior of what he had in mind when he drove to the shop. At one time it was to talk at another time to shoot her and yet at another moment he went there thinking in a flash that perhaps he might would rape and kill her. Though during court appearance he said he would never have raped her.

'Scientology

Van Rompay and his family are members of the Church of Scientology and that aspect was touched upon frequently during the court appearance. The young man says he couldn't find help for his problems because that is not done in the Church of Scientology. Help needs to come from within and he hadn't any money for that. "My father had all ready paid 40.000 euro in bills for several [Scientology] treatments."

His father doesn't come visit him in jail. "As a scientologist he beliefs in re-incarnation. If it depends on my father, I should commit suicide as soon as possible. He has let me know that in my next life he would welcome me with open arms.'

http://www.nieuwsblad.be/Article/Detail.aspx?ArticleID=G25K9RSO

SCIENTOLOGY SEX ASSAULT NIGHTMARE

2005-11-19T16:49:00.000-07:00

http://www.nypost.com/news/nationalnews/54587.htm

SCIENTOLOGY SEX ASSAULT NIGHTMARE

By PHILIP RECCHIAA
-----

October 2, 2005 -- A FORMER Scientology staffer is breaking her silence about being sexually assaulted 100 times at ages 16 and 17 by the church supervisor she was "ordered" to live with, and then receiving threats and intimidating phone calls when she reported the abuse. Five years ago, Gabriel Williams, then a 27-year-old chief supervisor at the Church of Scientology in Mountain View, Calif., forced then-16-year-old Jennifer Stewart to have intercourse with him on the first evening she moved in, according to her statements in court records.

After Williams was charged with rape and sodomy with a minor - and later convicted of sexual battery and sodomy - Stewart's family endured death threats, stalkers and other harassment.

"We want the world to know that when Tom Cruise calls psychiatry a 'pseudoscience,' it's all part of Scientology's plan to brainwash people," said Stewart's husband, Tom Gorman, referring to the actor's "Today" show interview in June.

Stewart believed that if she went to the police, she would not be able to avoid being sent to a psychiatrist. According to Scientology, psychiatry is a source of evil. Members who see "psychs" or take psychiatric drugs will be declared "SP" - "suppressive person" - and can't achieve spiritual freedom.

In a related civil suit brought by Stewart against Williams and the church, she recently received as part of the settlement a "generous monetary resolution," said her attorney. Although the church admitted no wrongdoing, it forked over about $700,000, sources say.

Stewart's ordeal began in 2000, when she became a supervisor under Williams at the church in the San Francisco area, where she and Gorman were raised as Scientologists. She had come to know Williams as someone who made "lots of overt sexual comments" about women, she says.

Still, she was told by a senior church staffer that the church had "ordered her" to work from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. and to live with Williams and his fianc=E9e at their San Jose flat, which was closer to the church than her home, making carpooling easier, she says.

"At the time, Williams was a highly regarded member of the church, so the arrangement seemed safe," said her father, Michael Stewart. According to court documents, the church said it "refutes any 'order' by management instructing the victim to stay with" Williams.

After Williams assaulted Stewart the first night, he did so again the next, telling her, "I'll kill you if you say anything," according to the police report.

"Williams told me everything that was happening was my fault because I'd been evil in a past life," said Stewart. "If I told anyone, I'd be sent to a psych and be taken away from my family."

Only after Gorman became suspicious of bruises on Stewart's body in May 2001 did she admit what Williams had been doing, he said.

THE next day, Gorman and Stewart told Stewart's father. Michael Stewart took his family out of the church and hid his daughter. A few days later, he told church authorities what Williams had done.

"A deputy special affairs officer told me not to go to the police," said the elder Stewart. "If we did, we'd lose Jennifer to child services."

"The church had no knowledge of the relationship between Williams and Stewart, and upon learning of the allegations and determining that Gabe and Jennifer were indeed having a relationship, Gabe was immediately fired," said Jeff Quiros, president of the Church of Scientology San Francisco.

Quiros sent The Post several testimonials from acquaintances and colleagues of Stewart and Gorman, which he said would have been entered as evidence in the criminal proceedings had Williams not struck a plea deal that settled the case without trial.

Elliot Abelson, an attorney for Quiros' church, emphasized that the church never knew about Williams' behavior, that Williams was fired within a day of them finding out about the allegations, and that there have been no other such cases within the church.

Michael Stewart finally went to the cops on his daughter's 18th birthday, when the fear of losing her to the state no longer loomed.

More than a year after his last assault on Stewart, Williams was arrested in Florida in 2002 by a San Jose detective, according to the DA in the case.

While Williams was waiting for his criminal case to be heard, Stewart, who married Gorman in 2002 and now lives with his family in San Francisco, filed a civil suit against him and the church.

That was when the threats began, they say. On one occasion, a man phoned Gorman's father and said, "SPs don't live long. Your son and his wife, Jennifer, will be dead soon," according to a police report.

"Who else would use the term 'SP'?" said the younger Gorman. Such incidents continued up until three months ago, he says.

After doing about eight months in jail, Williams was released last year. Now on probation, he lives in Clearlake Oaks, Calif., with his wife and two kids.

"I paid my debt to society in this matter, and I was not found liable in the civil action," Williams said through his attorney.

Scientology: Religion or Racket?

2005-11-15T19:08:00.000-07:00

Scientology: Religion or Racket?
http://www.uni-marburg.de/religionswissenschaft/journal/mjr/beit.html

Volume 8, No. 1 (September 2003)
(22190 words)

Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi
University of Haifa
Haifa 31905 ISRAEL
972-4-8249673
eMail: benny@psy.haifa.ac.il

The name Scientology (a copyrighted and registered trademark) brings to mind a wide array of claims, observations, impressions, findings, and documents, reflecting a complex and controversial history. The religion / not religion debate over various groups and organizations, prominent in the Western media over the past thirty years, has usually presented the public and politicians with a religion versus "sect" or "cult" dichotomy. The classification issue in this article is framed differently. Hopkins (1969) offered us the terms of the debate in the bluntest and most direct way when he asked in the title of an article in "Christianity Today" more than thirty years ago "Scientology: Religion or racket?" Read today, the Hopkins article sounds naive and charitable, but this question still stands before us, and yet deserves an answer.

The question of whether any particular organization matches our definition of religion is not raised very often, and this is true for both old and new religions (cf. Beit-Hallahmi, 1989; Beit-Hallahmi, 1998; Beit-Hallahmi & Argyle, 1997). That is because there is no shortage of religious behaviors and groups whose authenticity is never in doubt, but in some rare cases, authenticity and sincerity are put into question.

Regarding Scientology, we have two competing claims before us. The first, espoused by most NRM scholars, as well as some legal and administrative decisions, asserts that Scientology is a religion, perhaps misunderstood and innovative, but a religion nevertheless, thus worthy of our scholarly attention. The second, found in most media reports, some government documents in various countries, and many legal and administrative decisions, states that Scientology is a business, often given to criminal acts, and sometimes masquerading as a religion. Let us start our examination of the issue with a piece of recent history, reported in a newspaper article, which is reproduced here in its entirety.

'Mental health' hotline a blind lead: The televised blurb offered mental health assistance dealing with the attacks. Callers reached Scientologists.
By Deborah O'Neil (c) St. Petersburg Times, published September 15, 2001

Television viewers who turned to Fox News on Friday for coverage of the terrorist attack also saw a message scrolling across the bottom of their screens -- National Mental Health Assistance: 800-FOR-TRUTH. Unknown to the cable news channel, the phone number connects to a Church of Scientology center in Los Angeles, where Scientologists were manning the phones. Scientology officials said the number is a hotline offering referrals to other agencies, as well as emotional support. "It was entirely a good-faith attempt to help people," said Ben Shaw, a Clearwater Scientology official. Church spokesman Kurt Weiland in Los Angeles said the phrase "National Mental Health Assistance" must have come from Fox. "I can assure you it didn't come from us," he said. Scientology firmly opposes psychiatry, and church members campaign to eliminate psychiatric practices in mental health. Fox News spokesman Robert Zimmerman said the station received an e-mail about the hotline and aired the number without checking it. The e-mail, which Zimmerman faxed to the Times, reads, "National Mental Health Assistance crisis hot line now open. Call 1-800-FOR-TRUTH." It makes no reference to Scientology.

"The bottom line is we (messed) up," Zimmerman said. "Unfortunately, it didn't get vetted. We apologize." The hotline information ran for several hours -- once appearing below the image of President Bush and his wife, Laura, at the National Day of Prayer and Remembrance in Washington. The news channel yanked the information Friday after learning of the Scientology connection, Zimmerman said. Michael Faenza, president and chief executive of the National Mental Health Association, called the hotline number outrageous" and said Scientology "is the last organization" emotionally vulnerable people should call. "They just leave a wake of destruction in the realm of mental health," he said. The mental health association, based in Virginia, is the country's oldest and largest nonprofit organization addressing all aspects of mental health and mental illness.

"This is a very important and sensitive time," Faenza said. "I'd urge the Church of Scientology to stay out of the mental health side of what happens in the country now."

Church officials said no one was being recruited on the hotline and it did not attempt to disguise Scientology's involvement. "There's no attempt to hide anything," Weiland said. "Given the circumstances, it's more or less irrelevant because no one even talks about Scientology when they call." In some cases, callers were referred by the four Scientologists answering the phones to agencies compiling information about missing people. In other cases, callers were directed to agencies taking collections, Weiland said. If people called crying and upset, he said, they were told they could visit a Scientology center. "These people are grief-stricken," Weiland said. "Our people are working with them to provide help through assistance methods we have in the church to relieve spiritual suffering." When a reporter called, a volunteer said free copies of a booklet, Solutions for a Dangerous Environment, were available to callers. The booklet is a Scientology publication based on the works of L. Ron Hubbard, although that was not mentioned in the phone call. The Church of Scientology has 450 volunteers assisting cleanup and rescue efforts in New York, Weiland said.

This text can serve as a journalism textbook example of asking all sides tell their versions, and then letting the readers reach their own conclusions. What shall we make of this recent event?

THE ISSUE IN SCHOLARLY WRITINGS

Bryan Wilson (1970, p. 143) stated that "...in Scientology, though perhaps only for reasons of expedience, the style of 'church' and the simulation of religious forms has [sic] been adopted". Wilson later stated that in some religious movements "...activity that can be called worship or devotions is often very limited in time and scope (as in the cases of Christian Science, Scientology, and the Jehovah's Witnesses)" (1982, p. 110). Such an assertion reflects an apparent lack of familiarity with the actual practices of these groups. There is simply no comparison between the absence of worship or devotions in the lives of most Scientology operatives and clients and the significant presence of such acts among followers of Christian Science or Jehovah's Witnesses.

Eight years later Wilson calls Scientology "A secularized religion" (1990, p. 267) and starts his discussion of organization with a reference to the financial value of the religion label. We must note that Wilson has never mentioned finances when discussing Christian Science, the Disciples of Christ, the Salvation Army, Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, the Unification Church, or the Christadelphians (Wilson 1970, 1990). Moreover, the term "secularized religion" must strike most of us as an oxymoron, no more meaningful than "religious secularity".

Subsequently, Wilson (1990) compares Scientologists to Quakers, and also makes the quite startling claim that "early Christianity began with therapeutic practice and acquired its doctrinal rationale only subsequently" (1990, p. 283). Wilson (1990, p. 282-283) meets the question of classification and motivation head on and states that "even if it could be conclusively shown that Scientology took the title of 'church' specifically to secure protection at law as a religion, that would say nothing about the status of the belief-system". He then proceeds to test this particular belief-system by introducing a "probabilistic inventory" of 20 items against which he checks Scientology beliefs. His conclusion (p. 288) is that Scientology is a "congruous religious orientation for modern society", which sounds less like a definition and more like a promotional statement.

That Scientology should perhaps be put together with other secular self-improvement schemes was suggested by Richardson (1983): "Apparently because of considerable interest in techniques for self-improvement there is a very large market for groups like Scientology, est, TM, Silva Mind Control, and other such groups that offer courses for a fee" (Richardson, 1983, p. 73). Here Scientology is listed with est and Silva Mind Control, two groups that have never sought the religion label, as well as TM, which has actively resisted this label. Similarly, Passas (1994) classifies Scientology as offering self-improvement and self-enhancement, grouping it again together with est.

Bainbridge & Stark (1981) called Scientology a "vast psychotherapy cult" (p. 128) and ridiculed its claims about the "Clear" process and its outcome. They state that the "role demands of Clear" consist of "a confident acceptance of impossible ideas with a consequent willingness to make statements which outsiders would find incredible" (p. 131). While this assessment could easily be made about adherents to all religions, old and new, it is unheard of in the scholarly literature. One must wonder why the authors have used these mocking terms which they certainly would not use in discussing any recognized religious group, such as Jews, Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses or Roman Catholics. Bainbridge & Stark also state that the "Clear" process "... is a therapy in which patients rapidly are taught to keep silent about their dissatisfactions, and to perceive satisfaction in the silence of other members" (p. 133), which constitutes "pluralistic ignorance" (p. 132). Moreover, Bainbridge & Stark (1981, p. 132) use the occasion of their article about Scientology to remind their readers that "some quite successful contemporary cult leaders are conscious frauds".

Bednarowski (1995) cites the classification of Scientology as a racket by the media and legal scholars, and then (1995, p. 390) expresses her hope that "Scientology might choose to solicit the kind of outside critique that is essential for any religious movement to curb its own excessive traits". One must wonder whether such hopes have been expressed in any scholarly writings about any old or new religion. Can you imagine a scholar hoping that Christian Science, the Branch Davidians, or Jews for Jesus would "curb their excessive traits"?

Robbins (1988) quite clearly described the profit-oriented nature of Scientology activities, while Bromley & Bracey (1998), following Greil & Rudy (1990), called it a quasi-religion. "Quasi religions may be defined as collectives in which organizational and ideological tension and ambiguity regarding the group's worldview, perspective, and regimen are profitably used to facilitate affiliation as well as commitment" (Bromley & Bracey, 1998, p. 141; Greil & Rudy, 1990, p. 221). The use of the term 'quasi' in this context does not sound like a compliment, especially with the use of "profitably" in the same sentence. After all, Scientology demands and expects full recognition as the real thing, authentic and genuine, and not just "quasi". Bromley & Bracey (1998) also state that "ethics violations" in Scientology are actions which reduce profitability and productivity, but despite their use of 'quasi', Bromley & Bracey not only give the organization their seal of approval, but wax positively hagiographic about its "prophetic founder". Later on they refer to "prophetic revelations", "spiritual discoveries", and "theology", terms never used by Scientology itself.

Wallis (1977), in the best-known academic study of the organization, describes a long history of fraudulent activities and deceptive fronts, but still believes it is a religion. Thus, in writing about the history of the organization in the early 1950s, Wallis (1979, p. 29) claims that "...there were certainly strong arguments for declaring Scientology a religion broadly conceived".

The terms of the religion versus racket debate are framed indirectly by Eileen Barker when she states: "Unlike the Unification Church or the Hare Krishna, the Church of Scientology is not unambiguously a religion. There are, however, considerable economic advantages to be gained from being defined as a religion. Scientology has fought and, indeed, won court cases ... to the effect that it is a religion and, therefore, eligible for tax concessions"(Barker, 1994, p. 105).

SCIENTOLOGY IN COURT

Looking at the legal literature, including published court decisions, we discover that while scholars have been uniquely sympathetic to Scientology, the organization received much less sympathy from members of the legal profession. Of course, some lawyers have been generous in their praise, especially if they were being paid by Scientology. But presiding judges and jurists on commissions of inquiry worldwide have been definitely harsh and suspicious. This is not reflected in the total litigation record, where Scientology has scored some victories, but in cases where the definition of Scientology as an organization was at stake. What is significant is that courts in the United States have been even more decisive in rejecting Scientology's claim to be a religion than courts elsewhere.

If you ask legal scholars to classify Scientology, the consensus judgment is quite clear, and numerous legal scholars as well as judges clearly feel that there is something illicit and sinister about it. They are not just skeptical about its claims, but make decisive judgment calls and remain decidedly unconvinced that it is entitled to the religion label. John J. Foster, a British jurist charged with investigating it (1971), gave us the definitive study of Scientology, based solely on the organization's own writings, and nothing else. His conclusions, which seem to have been ignored by NRM scholars, were that Scientology can only claim to offer a system of psychotherapy, and as such should be regulated. Its only aim, he found, was to produce profits. Any claims of Scientology to be a religion were ridiculed, and many of its fraudulent acts were exposed in this report.

In two well-known cases, judges who encountered Scientology through cases before them volunteered a decisive diagnosis. In a 1984 ruling in London, Justice Latey : "Scientology is both immoral and socially obnoxious... it is corrupt, sinister and dangerous. It is corrupt because it is based on lies and deceit and has as its real objective money and power for Mr. Hubbard, his wife and those close to him at the top" (see http://www.demon.co.uk/castle/ ). And in the same year in Los Angeles, Superior Court Judge Paul G. Breckenridge, Jr., called Scientology "a vast enterprise to extract the maximum amount of money from its adepts by pseudo-scientific theories ... The organization clearly is schizophrenic and paranoid, and this bizarre combination seems to be a reflection of its founder, L. Ron Hubbard" (Superior Court, Los Angeles County, June 22, 1984, Church of Scientology of California v. Gerald Armstrong, Case No. C420143). Such statements are truly unique in litigation involving religious organizations.

Burkholder (1974, p. 44) concluded that court decisions had only proven the "ambiguous religious status" of Scientology. Friedland (1985, p. 589) classified Scientology among the "numerous tax-motivated religions that are frequently before the courts" and suggested that the motivation of its founder was to avoid legal and tax interference in his business (cf. Heins, 1981; Schwarz, 1976)). Passas & Castillo (1992, p. 115) stated that it was a "deviant business... its deviance is its life blood". Reviewing the legal literature in the United States, Senn (1990) presents Scientology as a prime example of religious fraud. These scholars have not found Scientology "controversial", or having any "excessive traits". They have just asserted that it is a criminal fraud.

The treatment of Scientology in United States courts has been unique for an organization claiming the religion label. If we compare the case of Scientology to the case of the Universal Life Church, we discover that the latter (a mail-order ordination business treated by scholars as such, see Melton, 1999) easily won over the IRS and received a tax-exempt status, while Scientology lost every time it tried to gain this status, and received no sympathy from the courts (Friedland, 1985; Schwarz, 1976). Court decisions since the 1960s have held that Scientology practices were secular and fraudulent (See United States v. Article or Device, Etc., 333 F. Supp. 357 (D.D.C. 1971)) and over the twenty-five years between 1967 and 1993, courts in the United States supported all IRS rulings against the organization, denying it tax-exempt status. The Supreme Court of the United States ruled (Hernandez v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue, 1989) that payments for "auditing" were not tax-deductible.

THE MEDIA ON SCIENTOLOGY

Not only judges, but several investigative journalists issued judgments which were diametrically opposed to that of NRM scholars. In 1991, Time magazine published a cover story on Scientology, authored by Richard Behar, a reporter who has specialized in writing on business and organized crime and had investigated Scientology in the 1980s (Behar, 1986). Time described the organization as "a hugely profitable global racket that survives by intimidating members and critics in a Mafia-like manner" (Behar, 1991, p. 52). The 1991 Time expose was preceded by a series of articles by Sappell & Welkos (1990), which drew attention to some of the same matters. Behar's 1991 expose won several awards, including the Gerald Loeb Award for Distinguished Business and Financial Journalism and a Conscience-in-Media Award from the Society of Journalists and Authors.

The Behar article, as summarized in one court decision, asserted "that Scientology, rather than being a bona fide religion, is in fact organized for the purposes of making money by means legitimate and illegitimate. The Article details various alleged schemes that the church allegedly uses to increase its revenues, including charging ever increasing fees to members, deceiving non-members through the use of front groups, manipulating securities and currency markets through the use of inside information, and evading taxes... These statements were either not challenged by plaintiff [the Scientology organization] or held to be non-actionable by the Court on the grounds that no reasonable jury could find that they were published with actual malice. The sole statement still at issue in the case ("one source of funds for the Los Angeles-based church is the notorious, self-regulated stock exchange in Vancouver, British Columbia, often called the scam capital of the world") merely implies that the same view which this Court has held to be non-actionable as not made with actual malice: that Scientology's purpose is making money by means legitimate and illegitimate. Accordingly, the claim based on this statement must be dismissed as subsidiary to a non-actionable view expressed in the article" (US District Court, Southern District of New York, 92 Civ. 3024 (PKL) see www.planetkc.com/sloth/sci/decis.time.html ).

The treatment of Scientology in the media is highly unusual. Time magazine has been described as a true representation of US culture (cf. Fox, 1971). It has been formed in the image of its founder Henry Luce, born to missionary parents in China who became a devout believer in conservative Republicanism, and has served as a gatekeeper to mainstream legitimacy. The magazine has never in its history denied the religion label to any other groups, however controversial. Time did not call Scientology 'controversial', it did not refer to it as 'unorthodox', as many NRMs have been described. It called it a racket and a scam.

The way The New York Times has treated Scientology is quite similar. Frantz (1997a, 1997b) exposed Scientology's secular strategies and litigation tactics, while Rich (1997) ridiculed Scientology's claims about its persecution by Nazi-like governments, and expressed serious suspicions about the way it won its tax-exempt status, in a surprising and total surrender by the IRS, under circumstances that could only be described as highly mysterious. How IRS Commissioner Herb Goldberg, Jr. was suddenly converted by the organization has never been fully investigated.

26 REASONS FOR RE-EXAMINING THE CONSENSUS

If we want to produce not just heat, but also some light in this debate, a re-assessment of the consensus is called for, and for this re-assessment more observations are needed. We should not listen to jurists, legal scholars, law school professors, or accept the judgment of some journalists. We should not even accept the judgment of our colleagues without looking at more evidence. The public record, available and easily accessible, provides us with some additional materials, which, though far from hidden, rather oddly seem to have escaped proper and adequate notice. We find that some aspects of Scientology's operations have been overlooked, and their absence from the scholarly record is troubling.

In the process of observing the organization in action, we will examine both current practices and the organization's history. These observations, anchored in authentic documents, reflect significant, representative, and symptomatic behaviors, not marginal events. The documents cited are authentic, unassailable and unchallenged. Most of them are now accessible on the Internet. In every case, I am urging you to read the original documents in their entirety and reach your own understanding of their meaning.

SECULAR OPERATIONS AND SELF-PRESENTATION

1. Self-Presentation at Recruitment: The "Oxford Capacity Analysis".

Let me introduce the concept of recruitment discourse, which refers to written and oral presentations directed at potential members as part of recruitment efforts. Groups and businesses, while attempting to recruit clients or members, use recruitment discourse or rhetoric, which defines what they claim to offer. One well-known component of the recruitment process in Scientology is the so-called "Oxford Capacity Analysis" (OCA), which is presented to the public as a "free personality test". "Your personality has everything to do with your income, your future, your personal relationships, and your life. A test of this kind would normally cost you $500.00 and up. It is offered to you here free of charge as a public service" (see http://www.scientology.org/oca.html).

The claim about cost or value of the test happens to be false, because the "test" is totally worthless. The "Oxford Capacity Analysis" has nothing to do with Oxford, capacity, or analysis. No matter how you respond to this "personality test", its interpretation will lead to only one recommendation: an immediate registration in one of Scientology's "communication courses"(Foster, 1971). What is clear from observing the OCA and the way it has been used by Scientology, is that this fictitious "test" is a purely secular dissimulation, designed to attract the unsuspecting with promises of secular self-improvement. In addition to the fraudulent nature of the presentation, what it significant is that the OCA and all claims about it are purely and totally secular (Foster, 1971).

2. Self-Presentation at Recruitment: Dianetics.

Another concept used in recruitment discourse has been Dianetics, defined as "the science of thought" and as "The Modern Science of Mental Health". "It can, in the realm of the individual, prevent or alleviate insanity, neurosis, compulsions, and obsessions and it can bring about physical well-being, removing the basic cause of some seventy percent of man's illnesses" (http://www.dianetics.org/what/index.htm).

Over the years, Dianetics has been claimed as a cure for cancer, polio, arthritis, migraines, "radiation sickness", bronchitis, myopia, and asthma. In addition, Hubbard claimed that Dianetics was "the total antidote for the eradication of brainwashing"[sic] (HCOB No. 19, December 1955). There is reportedly one case where a child was raised from the dead through "auditing". Whatever Dianetics is and does, if anything, it is always presented as a purely secular way to self-improvement, one of countless similar schemes on the market.

3. Self-Presentation at Recruitment: Cyberspace Testimonials.

Cyberspace is being inundated by Scientology testimonials, all prepared by the organization and designed to sound sincere, personal and genuine. These texts use an extremely limited vocabulary and grossly deficient syntax. They might have been produced by an intellectually-challenged computer that ate some Dale Carnegie books, and uses the words "amazed" and "wonderful" too often. Read for example http://www.our-home.org/davidtidman/myself.htm, where David Tidman, who has been an employee of the Scientology organization for 18 years, and now has a "field Auditing Practice", tells us about himself and his success in Scientology.

Often the testimonials are quite brief and can be reproduced in their entirety, preserving their original level of (il)literacy: "Hello, my name is Dr. George Springer, and here is a little bit about myself. I am a physician for 15 years turned inventor and entrepreneur. I have been in Scientology since 1986 and with this cleverness grew and my inventions is reach[sic] around the world.... With my success in Scientology being so large its[sic] hard to encapsulate it with just a few words. Overall I would say that much of what I have gained is a vastly increased awareness about life and livingness[sic] and the ability to create and expand in life" (see http://www.our-home.org/drgeorgespringer). On further inspection, "Dr." Springer, the successful Scientologist, turns out to be an impostor, who has never been a physician, and his inventions turn out to be typical rejuvenation scams (see http://www.sptimes.com/News/080600/news_pf/NorthPinellas/FDA_Risks_may_lurk_bsh"

While testimonials by scholars (see http://www.religion2000.de/ENG/index.html) emphasize the religious nature of Scientology, cyberspace personal statements emphasize purely secular success, with no hint of religion. All testimonials are by Scientology employees and franchisees who certainly owe their material success to the organization (see http://www.myhomepage.org/richardfisco/index.htm)

What we should be concerned about when reading the cyberspace testimonials is not literary quality or financial interests, but religious content. In these testimonials, Scientology's carefully selected representatives are supposedly proselytizing, i.e. teaching the faith, and we can ask what that faith is. There is simply nothing remotely religious in any of the messages.

4. Secular products and activities.

When we examine whether an activity could be construed as religious, the question to ask is if there could be a religious context or logic to it. Does it relate to any specific belief? Is it a ritual?

"The average man is up against problems. He's asking himself, how can I make more money? How can I make my wife faithful to me? ... in Scientology processing he resolves these questions"(Hubbard, 1970, cited in Passas & Castillo, 1992, p. 105). Are these humanity's two main religious concerns? I will remind you that Bromley and Bracey (1998) consider this "processing" a religious ritual, and seem to be ignorant of the fact that this religious ritual was designed by its creator to help the faithful with making more money and with avoiding wifely infidelity.

The majority of activities conducted by Scientology and its many fronts and subsidiaries involve the marketing of secular products such as the "Clear" program, Sterling Management Systems executive training, and self-improvement in scholastics. The "Clear" sales pitch is totally secular: "On the Clearing Course you will smoothly achieve the stable state of Clear with Good Memory, Raised I.Q., Strong Will Power, Magnetic Personality, Amazing Vitality, Creative Imagination" (Bainbridge & Stark, 1981, p. 128).

Another case in point is the Purification Rundown [NarConon], marketed by Scientology all over the world. "The Purification Rundown is a detoxification program which enables an individual to rid himself of drugs, toxins and other chemicals... a major breakthrough by L. Ron Hubbard that has enabled hundreds of thousands to be freed from the harmful effects of drugs and toxins" (see faq.scientology.org/puri.htm). We do know that the "Purification Rundown" includes sauna and vitamins, both offered at exorbitant prices ($1200). Officially, the Purification Rundown is a "religious program" (Mallia, 1998c), which every scientologist is required to take as the first step on the "Bridge to Total Freedom". What could be its religious context? The purification scam is similar to many products being offered all over the world by various quacks and crooks, with no claims to religion. Heber C. Jentzsch claims that he was cured of radiation sickness through the Purification Rundown, which means that it is indeed an amazing medical breakthrough, still purely secular (Mallia, 1998c).

In other cases, the same Scientology product is defined as "religious" in one setting and secular in another. Study Technology is claimed to be a religious practice, sold at a price of $600 as part of the "church" program. The same Study Tech is taught in schools and there is claimed to be secular (Mallia, 1998b).

5. The Secular "Way To Happiness".

Scientology has been offering the public a document titled The Way to Happiness, described as "a non-religious moral code, based entirely on common sense, which is having profound effects around the world". It was authored by L. Ron Hubbard and distributed by Scientology front organizations, protected by copyrights and trademarks (see http://www.thewaytohappiness.org/index.htm). The Way to Happiness Foundation is a front organization, created to operate within United States public and government-supported institutions, and so claims to be specifically nonreligious. In recent years, the Way to Happiness has been offered in other countries. In early 2003, hundreds of thousands of copies of its Hebrew version were distributed in Israel.

6. Self-Presentation as a Secular Movement.

Some Scientology representatives state that the so-called church is not a religion. When a Scientology branch opened in Japan in 1985, it was careful to present itself as a 'philosophy' and not a religion (Kent, 1999). In the United States, an article in a Maine newspaper that solicited thoughts about the "new millennium" from local church leaders reports that "Barbara Fisco, mission holder of the Church of Scientology in Brunswick, said that Scientology is not a religion and therefore not subject to the religious implications of the Year 2000" (Smith, 1999\www.timesrecord.com/main/79c6.html_).

The case of Scientology in Israel is quite instructive. In various organizational forms, Scientology has been active among Israelis for more than thirty years, but those in charge not only never claimed the religion label, but resisted any such suggestion or implication. It has always presented itself as a secular, self-improvement, tax-paying business. Otherwise, they offered the familiar products and deceptions, from the Oxford Capacity Analysis to Dianetics and Purification. The current Israeli franchise-holder told me rather proudly that he pays all required taxes. In its history as a commercial venture, the organization still got into legal trouble, and was charged with tax evasion at least once.

7. The Anti-Psychiatry Campaign.

Scientology has attracted much attention through its propaganda effort against what it calls psychiatry. This has involved great expense and organizational effort, carried out through a variety of fronts. If the book Psychiatrists: The Men Behind Hitler (Roder, Kubillus, & Burwell [aka L. R. Hubbard], 1995) is a representative example, and I believe it is, it proves decisively that the campaign is rooted in total paranoia and pathetic ignorance. Reading this book, and I will urge you not to waste too much time doing it, makes clear that the authors simply have no idea what psychiatry is. But that is the least of their problems.

What I would definitely urge you to read is a brief statement by Hubbard, titled "Constitutional Destruction" (http://freedom.lronhubbard.org).

In it you will find the rationale (if such a word can be used here) for the anti-psychiatry campaign. You will discover that the World Federation of Mental Health represents a conspiracy, directed by Communists, to destroy "the West". You will also discover that "Electric shock and brain operations to depersonalize dissident elements were developed by Hitler... The turmoil of schools and universities [the statement is dated June 9, 1969, and reflects events in the 1960s] trace back [sic] to the agents of these groups and their advice to corrupt puppet politicians... But all of these groups, whose control is uniform over the world and whose lines go straight to Russia, may be in for a terrible surprise. Since Scientology became aware of them they have lost seven of their top dozen leaders". The last sentence is puzzling, and implies physical liquidation and physical threat. This 1969 document is still presented by Scientology on its Internet sites (an earlier version is Appendix III in Wallis, 1977). Foster (1971) quotes the "Address by Beria to American Students at Lenin University", which was obviously authored by Hubbard and purports to demonstrates how "Mental Health campaigns" are run from the Kremlin. What hasn't been noticed by Scientology is that the Soviet Union has disappeared, while the worldwide "mental health" industry is still going strong.

Most of Hubbard's writings, still presented on Scientology's web sites, carry the flavor of the 1950s, or earlier. His writings about psychiatry as the handmaiden of Communism show him to be a classical 1950s right-wing paranoid. We know that The John Birch Society held the same views, and attacked the "mental health racket", run by Communists (Westin, 1963).

In 1956, in an obvious reference to the 1954 Supreme Court decision to outlaw school segregation, he attacked the "... Supreme Court Justice who does not recognize the rights of the majority, but who stresses the rights of the minority and who uses psychology textbooks written by Communists to enforce an unpopular opinion" (Wallis, 1977, p. 199). The Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision, handed down on May 17, 1954 enraged white supremacists like Hubbard. The Court considered as evidence findings of research done by Kenneth Clark (1955), an African-American [Black] psychologist, which further enraged those supporting segregation. We know that later on, Hubbard supported the apartheid regime in South Africa.

In 1957 Hubbard started the National Academy of American Psychology, which offered its own 'loyalty oath' to "prevent the teaching of only foreign psychology in public schools and universities" (Wallis, 1977, p. 200). Hubbard obviously does not know what psychology is, and sounds like a classical nativist (Higham, 1970), seeking to drive out foreign influences. He refers to psychotherapy in the US as "Euro-Russian" (Wallis, 1977, p. 200), and plans to introduce red-blooded American psychotherapy to replace it. Hubbard clearly did not know anything about the historical origins of twentieth-century psychotherapy, which had nothing to do with Russia, and much to do with German-speaking Central Europe. What is interesting is that "psychiatry", in Scientology's world, is accused of being connected to both Nazism and Communism

At a conference organized by CESNUR and others in 1991 and held in California, Heber C. Jentzstch was invited to present a history lesson. Among his many original discoveries were the composition of the participants in the Wannsee Conference, where on January 20, 1942 fifteen Nazi officials met to discuss the Final Solution (they were all psychiatrists, according to Jentzsch. For the record: no psychiatrists were present) and the origin of electroconvulsive therapy (developed in "Nazi death camps", according to Jenzstch). The assembled participants rewarded Jentzsch with a warm applause.

Ideas about the connections between psychiatrists and the Nazis can be heard every day from hospitalized schizophrenics all over the world. Jentzsch's history lessons were not the rantings and ravings of a paranoid schizophrenic. They were the crude lies of a cynic using the memory of the Nazis and the Holocaust for profit. Here we are not dealing with psychotic delusions but with cold-blooded propaganda, seeking to take advantage of our natural reaction of horror. In this case, as in others, Scientology will exploit any human sentiments to generate more profits.

Two years later, in 1993, a gathering of NRM scholars at the London School of Economics, organized by CESNUR and INFORM, was again treated to a history lesson by Jentzsch. This time the topic was the historical similarity between Germany in the 1930s and Germany in the 1990s. The way the German government was allegedly treating Scientology was said to be identical to the way Nazi Germany treated Jews. This time the audience reacted with thunderous applause.

The anti-psychiatry campaign, as far as can be told, started with a bit of reality, and then became delusional. When Hubbard first introduced his "Dianetics, The Modern Science of Mental Health", he was in apparent competition with psychotherapy, which, because of ignorance, Hubbard regarded as identical with psychiatry. The next step is the delusion that his "mental health" system would be superior to other ones, and would be perceived as a threat or competition by other "mental health" providers. That those providers were Communists and directed from "Russia" is a nice cold-war paranoid touch. The notion that Scientology has ever been a threat to psychotherapy or "psychiatry" is purely illusory. Most psychiatrists and psychotherapists in this world have never heard of Scientology, and its impact on the worldwide "mental health" or psychotherapy industry (Beit-Hallahmi, 1992) has been non-existent.

What is significant for our discussion is that this particular case of paranoia (cf. Meissner, 1978; Robins & Post, 1997), so central to Scientology's identity and public activities, is totally secular. It clearly overlaps with some of the claims made by Lyndon LaRouche, again in the framework of a totally secular paranoia (King, 1990). Despite his opposition to psychiatry, an autopsy reportedly showed that Hubbard was a user of psychiatric prescription drugs, as well as a regular user of the popular CNS suppressor ethanol, available without prescription in liquid form.

8. Challenges to the Religion Label.

Among all organizations claiming to be new religions, only Scientology's claim has so often been put into question. Most NRMs have never had to face such challenges anywhere. Since the 1960s, courts and governments have ruled that Scientology is a secular, profit-making organization, and should be treated as such. Thus, the tax-exempt status of the organization in France was revoked in 1985, after it had been determined that its aim was profit-making. Later on, Spain, Greece, Germany, and Denmark decided to treat it as a for-profit organization.

9. Solicitation of imprimatur.

Since the 1970s, in an obvious response to the challenges to its claim to be a religion, Scientology has solicited, and received, testimonials about its religious nature from recognized religion scholars. Scientology is unique in this respect.

Office of Special Affairs (OSA, earlier known as Dept. 20 or Guardian's Office) is the division within Scientology which is "responsible for interfacing with the society at large, including legal affairs, public relations, and community" (see faq.scientology.org/osa.htm). Among other things, this division is charged with intelligence and with taking care of Scientology "enemies". Scientology at some point decided to cultivate contacts with NRM scholars, and this has taken place through the OSA. Its members have registered as participants at meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion. Most recently, scholars have been invited to visit the organization's headquarters in Los Angeles, with all their expenses paid.

10. Self-presentation as a Research Enterprise.

Unlike all known religions, and very much like some secular psychotherapy systems, Scientology's claims have been couched not only in the language of self-improvement, but of research and discovery, rather than the language of revelation, prophecy, or salvation (contra Bromley & Bracey, 1998). This is the case not only in its recruitment texts, but in all publications. Hubbard first attracted public attention with Dianetics, which he himself dubbed a "Modern Science of Mental Health". In 1956, Hubbard claimed that Scientology "improves the health, intelligence, ability, behavior, skill and appearance of people. It is a precise and exact science, designed for an age of exact science" (Hubbard, 1956/1983, p. 8).

Later, Hubbard claimed that Scientology "is today the only validated psychotherapy in the world... Scientology is a precision science... the first precision science in the field of the humanities... The first science to put the cost of psychotherapy within the range of any person's pocketbook... The first science to contain the exact technology to routinely alleviate physical illness with predictable success" (The Hubbard Information Letter of April 14, 1962).

When J.L. Simmons, a well-known sociologist then acting as the spokesman for the organization, gave the official Scientology response to the Wallis (1977) study, he used terms such as "discoveries" (p. 266) and "scientifically objective" (p. 269). Not a word on revelation, divine inspiration, or theology.

COMMERCIAL NATURE OF OPERATIONS

11. Recruitment Style and Goals.

Throughout Scientology's history, recruitment has been known as "procurement actions", and handling potential clients has been driven by a sales orientation. Potential customers have always been known as "raw meat", and the goal is "to get the meat off the street". "The operative terms here are 'toughness', 'effectiveness', 'getting the job done'. There are no compunctions about hard-sell, no embarrassment about instrumental values or bureaucratic rationality" (Straus, 1986, p. 80). In the words of the founder, "... promote until the floors cave in because of the number of people--- and don't even take notice of that" (Hubbard, in Foster, 1971, p. 69).

12. Non-exclusive Membership.

Unique to the recruitment rhetoric is the official claim by Scientology that members of other religions can join its ranks, with no implications for either commitment. "It insists that membership in Scientology is not incompatible with being a Catholic, Protestant, or Jew and goes so far as to encourage dual membership" (Bednarowski, 1995, p. 389).

13. Self Presentation as a Business: Trademarks and Trade Secrets.

A trademark is legally defined as "any word, name, symbol, or device or any combination thereof, adopted and used by a manufacturer or merchant to identify its goods and distinguish them from those manufactured or sold by others" (15 U.S.C. , article 1121). Examples of trademark are Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, or Big Mac. The Scientology organization owns more trademarks than McDonald's, Disney, Microsoft, and probably the world's leading 100 corporations combined. Moreover, Scientology has claimed to own not only trademarks, but trade secrets as well (see http://www.theta.com/copyright/index.htm).

The Uniform Trade Secrets Act (1985) defined trade secrets as "information, including a formula, pattern, compilation, program device, method, technique that derives economic value, actual or potential, from not being generally known to other persons who can obtain economic value from its disclosure or use". Another definition states: "A trade secret is any information that can be used in the operation of a business or other enterprise and is sufficiently valuable and secret to afford an actual or potential economic advantage over others" (Restatement, Unfair Competition, article 39). We realize that a business engages in trade, and relies on trade secrets. Why would a religion do that?

14. Operation as a Business: Franchising.

"A franchise is a business arrangement where the developer/owner (the franchisor) of a business concept grants others (the franchisees) the licensed right to own and operate businesses based on the business concept, using the trademark associated with the business concept" (http://www.franchiseconnections.com/def1.html). The Arthur Murray Dance Studios, McDonald's, and Burger King are well-known global businesses that operate by franchising. Scientology branches (or sales outlets) are operated by franchise, just like McDonald's, with the organization receiving licensing fees, as well as a stipulated percentage of earnings. In addition, recruiters, known as "body routers", are paid commissions of 10 to 35 percent for signing up new clients (Mallia, 1998a; Passas & Castillo, 1992).

15. Operation as a Business: Profit as the Goal.

Passas & Castillo (1992) state that Scientology is "an ordinary profit-making enterprise". Wallis (1977, p. 138)) reports that "Hubbard has 'sold his name' to the Church", which is a peculiar way of describing the transmission of religious authority, but consistent with the way a for-profit operation is run. Wallis (1979, p. 29) also asserts that the motives for major changes in Scientology's history were financial. The move to England in 1959 came about because "...the success of the Church of Scientology of Washington came to the attention of tax authorities concerned about the three-quarters of a million dollars earned during this period [1955-1959] by the tax-exempt Church". Findings in Church of Scientology of California v. Commissioner (1984) showed that the organization operated only for profit, siphoning off its earnings to Swiss bank accounts controlled by Hubbard and his associates.

In the words of its founder, Scientology's governing financial policy is

"A. MAKE MONEY...

.............

J. MAKE MONEY

K. MAKE MORE MONEY

L. MAKE OTHER PEOPLE PRODUCE SO AS TO MAKE MORE MONEY (Hubbard, 1972, cited in Senn, 1990, p. 345).

Hubbard's practical advice on tax matters follows:

"Now as to TAX, why this is anybody's game of what is PROFIT. The thing to do is to assign a significance to the figures before the government can... So I normally think of a better significance than the government can. I always put enough errors on a return to satisfy their blood-sucking appetite and STILL come out zero. The game of accounting is just a game of assigning significance to figures. The man with the most imagination wins... Income does not mean profit. One can and should make all the INCOME one possibly can. But when one makes INCOME be sure it is accounted for as to its source and that one covers it with expenses and debts. Handling taxation is as simple as that" (Church of Scientology of California V. Commissioner., 83 T.C., p. 430). These statements by Hubbard, are according to Bromley & Bracey (1998), and to Hadden (http://cti.itc.virginia.edu/jkh8x/soc257/nrms/scientology.html), part of sacred scriptures.

Hubbard's financial ideals may have something to do with his estate, reportedly worth $640 million (Mallia, 1998a). They are also well reflected in the prices Scientology clients are charged, where $376,000 is the cost of reaching "total freedom" (Mallia, 1998d). Documents made public over the years show staggering profits from the operation (Behar, 1991; Passas & Castillo, 1992). Richardson (1983) reported that the estimated annual income of the Scientology organization in the US alone was $100 million [US$100,000,000]. In 1993, the last time Scientology had to report, it had $398 million in assets and $300 million in annual income (Mallia, 1998a). We can safely assume that if these are the reported figures, the real figures were even higher, as taxpayers are given to underreporting (see Hubbard's advice above). According to David Miscavige, Scientology's CEO, winning a US tax-exemption in 1993 saved Scientology from a tax bill that could have reached $1 billion [US$1,000,000,000] (Frantz, 1997b).

16. Operation as a Business: Membership and Economic Interests.

The record shows that most of the loyal members of the organization, those who are willing to identify themselves in public as "Scientologists", are actually employees or entrepreneurs working with and for the organization, and whose livelihood depends on the survival of Scientology. As Wilson (1970, p. 165) put it "... the esoteric doctrines become not so much an aid to leading a normal life as a means of making a new livelihood". There may be a small minority of heavily invested clients who also identify strongly with the organization. This lopsided division of labor is very much in evidence in the well-publicized cases of litigation involving "ex-Scientologists". In the vast majority of cases, the individuals involved have been employees of the organization.

Thus, loyalty to the organization is connected to economic ties. Membership is created by either a heavy investment through fees paid (a minority of cases) or by substantial earnings (a majority). This membership pattern seems unique and unusual.

17. Operation as a Business: The 1982 Mission Holders Conference.

This document, consisting of the official minutes of a meeting between Scientology's top management and its franchise holders, is consistent with other documents and observations (see http://www.freezone.de/english/reports/e_mhcsf.htm). The occasion can be compared to a meeting between McDonald's corporate managers and its franchisees or a gathering of Buick dealers, an annual event where the retailers get a picture of company strategy and a pep talk. It could be a meeting of Coca Cola bottlers, except that I imagine the atmosphere there to be much nicer.

(Steve Marlowe: "On this team you're playing with the winning team... it's tough, it's ruthless"). We can see here some (and just some) of the internal workings of post-Hubbard Scientology (Hubbard was then alive, but in hiding from law enforcement agencies).

The internal world of Scientology as revealed here shows us an unattractive corporate culture, with management displaying no trust, and using threats and intimidation to keep the money coming in. Wendell Reynolds is introduced as "International Finance Dictator". He introduces the "International Finance Police" and warns "So if I hear one person in this room who is not coughing up 5% as a minimum you've got an investigation coming your way because you got other crimes in your mission. Questions on that?". This is a world of quotas and "stats", by which activities are measured. Guillaume Leserve: "Now you've got to double those quotas... Just take those quotas, double them for this week!". David Miscavige: "We are winning legally. We are winning statistically. And Scientology is going up." Statistically here means financially.

What is clear is that there is money to be made in Scientology, and lots of it. The atmosphere of threats, fear, and intimidation focuses on MAKE MORE MONEY, as cited above, and not on transgressions of any religious or moral codes. But there is something else in the air, something which could only be described as criminality. When describing the misdeeds of those breaking Scientology discipline and their fate, Ray Mithoff states, when he wants to express extreme disdain: "I think the only thing lower would probably be an FBI agent". This reference to the FBI and another one to the IRS express open hostility to the law. We cannot imagine such references at the Buick or Coca Cola events. These frank expressions are most damning, and could only reflect criminal intent.

The meeting deals with trademarks and their legal meaning (with a warning by an attorney!), organizational charts, and licensing. Lyman Spurlock says: "This new corporate paper are [sic] designed to make the whole structure impregnable, especially as regards the IRS. Have any of you read the religious language in these corporate papers? Before we came along and did this overhaul you couldn't tell whether you were dealing with a 7 Eleven store or Church of Scientology from corporate papers... The scriptures being defined as the recorded and written words of L. Ron Hubbard with regard to the technology of Dianetics and Scientology and the organizations". So we realize that in 1982 the Scientology Mission Holders, supposedly members of a religious organization, had to be told for the first time that they are in the business of selling scriptures, something which they could never have guessed. Other than the reference to "scriptures" there are no expressions of anything remotely resembling religious sentiments or rituals and no references to faith.

Norman Starkey mentions "a judicial statement that Scientology is a bona fide religion entitled to the protection of the free enterprise clause". This is an interesting and revealing slip, which could serve as a perfect example for Sigmund Freud's theory of parapraxes (Freud, 1915/1916). A "Freudian slip" reveals hidden intentions and thoughts, not necessarily unconscious. Whoever was taking down the minutes possibly did not know what the free exercise clause was, but clearly knew about free enterprise. That this error has not been noticed by anybody until today offers added proof of the authenticity of the document.

SCIENTOLOGY'S HISTORY AND CREDIBILITY

18. Early History: Two Stages and the Conversion to Religion.

Scientology's early history is quite well known (Foster, 1971; Malko, 1970; Miller, 1987; Passas & Castillo, 1992; Wallis, 1977; Wilson, 1970). There is universal agreement that the Church of Scientology was preceded by a "pre-religion" stage, during which first Dianetics and then Scientology were presented to the world as secular self-improvement schemes, specifically and explicitly based on "science", not religion.

Scientology itself appeared as an improvement over Dianetics, and only later did it adopt the "Church" identity. "Scientology emerged originally as a form of lay psychotherapy" (Wallis, 1979, p. 30). The year 1953 was, according to most accounts, the year of identity transformation, the transition from secular Scientology to a religion and a Church. What was the motivation for this sudden conversion? During the years 1950-1953, before the Great Conversion, Hubbard was experiencing ups and downs, mostly downs, and was desperately seeking to re-organize and relocate his operations.The years 1952-1953 are marked by extreme stress and despair. Then, in 1953, the decision to seek the religion label was made.

In a letter written from England to Helen O'Brien, who was managing his US business at the time, on April 10, 1953, Hubbard wrote: "We don't want a clinic. We want one in operation but not in name. Perhaps we could call it a Spiritual Guidance Center. Think up its name, will you... It is a problem of practical business. I await your reaction on the religion angle... A religion charter could be necessary in Pennsylvania on NJ to make it stick. But I sure could make it stick". This letter (see http://bible.ca/scientology-hubbard-1953-clinic-letter.htm; Miller, 1987) makes clear that Hubbard was only concerned with making "real money" through "practical business", and that the "religion angle" seemed useful for that. Choosing the religion cover was clearly a "practical business" consideration. It was more profitable to appear as a religion, thus avoiding taxes and other kinds of interference or scrutiny.

And so, on December 18, 1953, the Church of Scientology, the Church of Spiritual Engineering, and the Church of American Science were all incorporated in Camden, New Jersey by L. Ron Hubbard, Sr., L. Ron Hubbard, Jr., Henrietta Hubbard, John Galusha, Barbara Bryan, and Verna Greenough. Appointed as administrators of the three churches were L. Ron Hubbard, Mary Sue Hubbard, and John Galusha. The official history of the organization states that the first "Scientology church" was founded on February 14, 1954 in Los Angeles. This California outfit ordained ministers, and offered doctoral degrees in Scientology and theology, as well as certification as "Freudian psychoanalyst". It was also paying a 20% "tax" to the Church of American Science.

The 1953 conversion was apparently short-lived, because on June 12, 1954, we find the Hubbard Association of Scientologists International (HAS) writing to the Phoenix, Arizona Better Business Bureau, and presenting itself as a business "of good repute" with a "gross of about $10,000 a month". John Galusha, an administrator for the three Hubbard churches, gives a fictitious biography of Hubbard (trained in "nuclear physics and "psycho-analysis", served with distinction in the navy, etc.), goes on to tell a bizarre tale of Hubbard's misadventures since 1950, and then states: "Awakening recently to the fact that many of its interested people were ministers, the HAS has assisted them to form churches such as the Church of American Science and the Church of Scientology. Also, ... Hubbard helped finance the organization of the Freudian Foundation of America... In the latter and in the churches, the HAS has no further control or interest" (see http://www.xenu.net/archives/FBI/fbi-124.html ).

Then, in the summer of 1954, Hubbard decided that he was after all in the religion business. Some of his associates were apparently quite upset over this zigzagging, and so in August 1954, in an article titled 'Why Doctor of Theology', Hubbard wrote: "For a few this may seem like a [sic] sheer opportunism, for a few it may appear Scientology is only making itself unassailable in the eyes of the law, and for still others it may appear any association with religion would be a reduction of the ethics and goals of Scientology itself". Around the same time, Hubbard claimed to have discovered an Asian religion known as Dharma. One follower of that religion was named by Hubbard as Gautama Skyamuni. Later, Hubbard discovered Scientology's ties to Veda, "Gnosis", Tao, Buddhism, and Christianity. As we can see, a frantic search for a flag of convenience occupied Hubbard for most of the early 1950s. This search ended with the choice of religion as a the best cover.

In 1962 Hubbard made clear again his motivation for seeking the religion label: "Scientology 1970 is being planned on a religious organization basis throughout the world. This will not upset in any way the usual activities of any organization. It is entirely a matter for accountants and solicitors" (Hubbard Communications Office Policy Letter, HCOPL, 29 October 1962).

According to Bromley and Bracey (1998) Hubbard had a "conversion" after discovering the reality of the human spirit, and this led from "the religion angle" to a transformed "prophetic founder". Wilson (1970, p. 163) stated that the change occurred "when mystical and metaphysical legitimation could be provided for what had previously been a pseudo-scientific orientation". Wallis (1979, p. 33), speaking of Hubbard and Mary Baker Eddy, founder of Christian Science, wrote: "Transcendentalization permitted the founders to claim the doctrine as a direct personal revelation". However, that's exactly what Hubbard did not do.

When dealing with what seems to Bromley and Bracey (1998) like a religious idea, Hubbard claimed that his was a discovery, not a revelation: "Probably the greatest discovery of Scientology and its most forceful contribution to mankind has been the isolation, description and handling of the human spirit, accomplished in July, 1951, in Phoenix Arizona. I established, along scientific rather than religious or humanitarian lines that the thing which is the person, the personality, is separate from the body and the mind at will and without causing bodily death or derangement" (Hubbard, 1956/1983, p. 55). Hubbard expresses himself clearly and does not regard the religion label as a blessing or a great honor. Bromley and Bracey (1998) apparently are not aware of this document, and do not realize that their "quasi- religion"'s own official scriptures deny the religion label and mock its defenders.

The scholarly literature contains specific discussions of the reasons for the conversion from secular psychotherapy to a religion (Bainbridge & Stark, 1981; Wallis, 1977). There seems to be a consensus on the secular reasons for this transformation: "The switch to a religion, however, can be regarded as a managerial decision, as it was better able to retain its "clientele" and compete" (Passas & Castillo, 1992, p. 105). As Wallis (1977, 1979) shows, Hubbard used only one way of measuring his success: financial liquidity and solvency. This is the only motive and the only consideration mentioned by Wallis as Hubbard keeps changing organizations and moves across the USA from New Jersey to Arizona and back to New Jersey.

It took many years for the transformation into a "Church" to take hold, as we can see in the minutes of the 1982 Mission Holders Conference. Religious terms, such as 'scripture', 'fixed donations' instead of fees, and 'mission' instead of franchise first appeared in 1967. In 1969, Hubbard wrote: "Visual evidences [sic] that Scientology is a religion are mandatory ... Stationary is to reflect the fact that orgs are churches" (Hubbard Communications Office Policy Letter, HCOPL, February 12, 1969).

19. Early History and Motivation: Hubbard's World

Scientology is L. Ron Hubbard's personal enterprise and legacy and any explanations of its nature and development must start with that fact. The key to understanding this organization is its biography, starting with the early years and the early developments, which defined its style and operations. A group's history and the biography of its founder seem to be a key or the key to its later development and Hubbard (1911-1986) indeed created Scientology in his own image and in the image of his own paranoia (cf. Wallis, 1984).

Hubbard consistently lied about every aspect of his life. He claimed to have had a distinguished military career and decorations, which he never had. He claimed an education in engineering and physics which he never had, and so on. His failures in higher education and the navy were turned into fantasied success stories. "The evidence portrays a man who has been virtually a pathological liar when it comes to his history, background, and achievements. The writings and documents in evidence additionally reflect his egoism, greed, avarice, lust for power" (Judge Paul G. Breckenridge, Jr., Superior Court, Los Angeles County, June 22, 1984, Church of Scientology of California v. Gerald Armstrong, Case No. C420143).

But beyond that, Hubbard's actions reflected a kind of criminal megalomania, a morality of those who see themselves as above conventional moral edicts. What he consistently displayed were the components of what has been called psychopathy: selfishness, deceitfulness, and callousness. The psychopath may seem poised and articulate, but actually lies with ease to serve his own needs. Thanks to his well-developed social skills and undeveloped conscience, he can easily con others, and feels no guilt or remorse (Cleckley, 1976).

Hubbard's basic assumption was that humanity was divided into hustlers and suckers, and he was going to be one of the former. Those gullible enough and stupid to believe his claims deserved to be exploited. Identifying potential customers meant looking for hardships and vulnerability in people and preying, in Hubbard's own words on "the bereaved or injured" (Wallis, 1977, p. 158). The predatory nature of the organization is revealed in this early stage, with Hubbard searching for weaknesses and suffering in others, and using them for profit. In the polio victims story what we see is a criminal mind and a sadistic imagination at work, showing the facility with which he makes up new ploys and con games. This is Hubbard's version of Barnum's Law, which is also his Sermon on the Mount. Blessed are the polio victims, for theirs is the right to build Hubbard's empire with their money. There are millions of suckers out there, the bereaved and injured, just waiting to be exploited. Only one motive can be detected in this story, and that is profit. The basic motive is not malevolence, but profit. The commercial exploitation of suffering and despair is the Bridge to Total Freedom. Hubbard wanted very much to live beyond the reach of the law or the tax collector. This may be a common fantasy, but only a few try to turn it into reality. An illegal business wants and needs protection from any legal interference, but Hubbard wanted not just protection, but real immunity, and the religion label could give you [sic] this kind of immunity.

Hubbard's motives are apparently revealed in his fiction as well. A film based on by Hubbard's novel Battlefield Earth was produced in the late 1990s. It has won in seven out of nine categories of the Golden Rasberry Award for 2000, including the worst film category, and its lead actor, John Travolta, was nominated for the worst actor. (The film also won first place in a list of the 100 worst films in history). Bryant (2000) reports that in this film "Terl, played by John Travolta, is chief of security of the Psychlos--- an alien species driven by greed" (p. 65) and that Terl "hails from a corporation whose moral compass is set only to profitability" (p. 64). Does life imitate art, or vice versa?

During the first stage in the organization's history, Hubbard decided that he was founding a secular, "scientific", enterprise, and rejected any possibility of identification with or as a religion. Then, in a dramatic turnaround, he changed his mind and decided to found not one church, but three! In documents from the years 1950-1953 (Wallis, 1977), Hubbard emerges as a man in crisis, an ideal candidate for religious conversion (James, 1902; Beit-Hallahmi, 1992; Beit-Hallahmi & Argyle, 1997) but his crisis is practical, not spiritual. He wants and needs money and power, in that order. In the early 1950s, the Dianetics organizations Hubbard set up twice collapsed in bankruptcy, and so he was a man in search of solvency, first and foremost. Some would have us believe that there occurred a great and sudden illumination, a great transformation, a resurrection and redemption, all in one day. Other evidence shows a con man groping for new gimmicks.

The simplest explanation is the most plausible. Its early history does explain the nature of Scientology. Hubbard was a creative paranoid liar, like the founders of many groups, religious and secular, but his particular paranoia was essentially secular. Scientology started as a psychotherapy system, one among thousands. It might have been more bizarre simply because of the personality of its creator, but his unique personality, leadership, creativity, and paranoia made it into a profitable global enterprise.

The religion label was sought as a cynical ploy, like many others. Hubbard was an effective and diligent con man, possibly "the greatest con man of the century" (Gardner, 1957, p. 263) who left behind a highly successful super-scam, which still embodies his spirit.

20. Litigation, Harassment, and Deception

Scientology has become known for its aggressive way of treating anyone perceived as a critic. The strategy has been called "an ultra-aggressive use of investigators and the courts" (Frantz, 1997a). Scientology's annual legal bill amounts to $20 million or more (Behar, 1991) and it is constantly involved in aggressive litigation. This litigation strategy has been less than fully successful, and Scientology has paid out millions over the years to many plaintiffs (Horne, 1992). While a few successful litigation cases are easily remembered, in others the outcome has been traumatic, far from an easy triumph. Actually, at any given moment, Scientology is involved in scores of ongoing legal battles in the United States and elsewhere. Court proceedings in many of these cases are quite revealing, and what they reveal reminds us again that we may be dealing with a corporation characterized by both profit-making and criminality, rather than a religious movement. What has been revealed in the course of litigation included documents and acts which prove criminal intent and deception (cf. Wilson, 1990 on the unexpected costs of litigation).

Litigation is one part of the intimidation strategy, which includes harassment by various means. Most media reports on Scientology have led to harassment campaigns with journalists and jurists as targets. Richard Behar was harassed by a team of 10 lawyers and 6 private investigators (Horne, 1992; MacLaughlin & Gully, 1998). A California judge was severely harassed (Horne, 1992). Description of Scientology pressure tactics have appeared not just in the mass media, but have been noted in scholarly writings: "Scientology, for instance, employs techniques of harassment against critics" (Cole, 1998, p. 234). That threats are being directed against researchers has also been noted (Ayella, 1990). Wallis (1979) gave a detailed account of Scientology pressures and dirty tricks directed at him. Scientology wants to instill fear, and it does, all over the world. Its operations turn truly malevolent only when threatened, i.e. when profits are in danger.

Scientology's aggressive litigation strategy, which is regularly applied together with the use of private investigators to uncover hidden crimes, is also a projection of Hubbard's own objective situation of invented biography, constant lying, and many cover-ups. This objective situation has led to subjective fears and obsessions. We may call that the "skeletons in the closet" projection.

"And we have this technical fact--- those who oppose us have crimes to hide... Try this on your next critic. Like everything else in Scientology, it works.
Sample dialogue:

George: Gwen, if you don't drop Scientology I'm going to leave you.

Gwen: (savagely) George! What have you been doing?

George: What do you mean?

Gwen: Out with it. Women? Theft? Murder? What crime have you committed?

George: (weakly) Oh, nothing like that.

Gwen: What then?

George: I've been holding back on my pay...

Never discuss Scientology with the critic. Just discuss his or her crimes, known and unknown. And act completely confident that those crimes exist. Because they do" (Hubbard, in Foster, 1971, p. 147).

Hubbard assumed that we all lie about our past, present, and future. This may be true for the likes of him, but not for everybody. Most of us clearly do not have as much to hide as Hubbard did when he was alive, and as his brainchild still has.

21. The Scientology Criminal Record.

Floyd Abrams, the well-known First Amendment lawyer, once said that Scientology is "libel proof" because it has been so often held to commit evil and despicable acts (Horne, 1992). Any way you look at it, the record of Scientology involvements in what may euphemistically be called "legal difficulties" all over the world (i.e. wherever the corporation decides to open an outlet) is indeed extraordinary. It includes not just hundreds of cases of litigation and official inquiries, but scores of convictions for such crimes as burglary; forgery; obstruction of justice, and fraud (Friedland, 1985). Wilson (1970, p. 166) states that Hubbard's move to England in 1959 took place because the organization "risked prosecution in the United States in using the American mails for material and propaganda that might be deemed fraudulent".

Scientology's best known criminal case in the United States came to a legal conclusion in 1980, after 11 Scientology leaders, including Mary Sue Hubbard, were convicted of burglarizing the offices of the IRS and the Justice Department, among other targets, and went to prison. Later court decisions found that the organization burglarized IRS offices, stole government documents, and manufactured and falsified records to be presented to the IRS (USA v. Mary Sue Hubbard, 1984). Contrary to what Passas and Castillo (1992) claim, these are not "white collar" crimes.

22. Criminal Intentions and Policies.

A Scientology document dated March 25, 1977 (see http://www.holysmoke.org/cos/latey.htm) lists "Red Box Data", which should be kept in separate containers and be ready for removal. They include:

"a) Proof that a Scientologist is involved in criminal activities.

b) Anything illegal that implicates MSH [Mary Sue Hubbard], LRH [L.Ron Hubbard].

c) Large amounts of non - FOI [Freedom of Information Act] docs.

d) Operations against any government group or persons.

e) All operations that contain illegal activities.

Evidence of incriminating activities

g) Names and details of confidential financial accounts."

This document gives us an idea about the origins of the Scientology criminal record. In legal language, it constitutes clear evidence of an attempted obstruction of justice. Article c) above refers to large numbers of government documents, obtained illegally and not through the Freedom Of Information Act.

As we know, a massive destruction of documents (requiring the work of 200 individuals) did take place at least once (Sappell & Welkos, 1990). "In January 1980, fearing a raid by law enforcement agencies, Hubbard's representatives ordered the shredding of all documents showing that Hubbard controlled Scientology organizations... In a two week period, approximately one million pages were shredded" (California Appellate Court, 2nd District, 3rd Division, July 29, 1991, B025920 & B038975, Super Ct. No. C 420153). We also know that Hubbard spent the last six years of his life, 1980-1986, as a fugitive from justice, hiding in California under a false name, with the full knowledge and support of the organization (Sappell & Welkos, 1990).

23. Criminal Strategies: Infiltration

Wallis (1977) described the use of fronts and the infiltration of legitimate organizations and groups as two major Scientology strategies, and compared them to Communist Party operations. According to Wallis (1977), the infiltration of both civil society groups and government agencies was outlined by Hubbard in the 1960 document known as 'Special Zone Plan'. Legitimate organizations targeted for infiltration included the IRS and the FBI, as well as the news media. In the United States, Scientology successfully infiltrated the IRS in the 1970s (Friedland, 1985), as well as the Justice Department, and probably other government agencies and non-government organizations and corporations. We also know that Scientology had planned to plant its agents in the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the US Export-Import Bank (Behar, 1991). Media reports suggested that there has been successful infiltration of law-enforcement agencies in Canada.

24. Deception as Policy: Strategies of Masquerading.

In US politics, the use of fronts is common, but covers are easily blown. You may choose an attractive name, but you don't expect your financial backing to remain secret. We know that Citizens for Better Medicare is financed by drug companies, seeking to protect their profits, and that The Coalition to Protect Americans Now is financed by some big defense contractors, just as Americans for Job Security is a front for huge corporations acting to eliminate the rights of workers. In politics we take such actions in stride, but religions are not in the business of setting up fronts.

Scientology's use of fronts is unique in both quantity and quality, and it has been a matter of policy since its inception. This use of fronts has been a major part of the organization's activities, and it indicates an acknowledgement of having something (or more than just something) to hide. Have you ever heard of the Jewish Coalition for Religious Freedom? Will you be surprised to learn that it is a Scientology front? Scientology has operated the Alliance for the Preservation of Religious Liberty, Narconon, Crimonon, the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR), the Committee on Public Health and Safety (COPHS), American Citizens for Honesty in Government, the Committee for a Safe Environment, the National Commission on Law Enforcement and Social Justice, Concerned Businessmen's Association of America (CBAA), the Association for Better Living and Education (ABLE), the Religious Research Foundation (RRF), Applied Scholastics International, The Way to Happiness Foundation (TWTH), Social Coordination International, and World Institute of Scientology Enterprises (WISE). In Britain, Scientology started the Citizens' Press Association and the Association for Health Development and Aid, among other fronts (Wallis, 1977).

A Scientology document dated 9 March 1970 presents some ideas about the uses of fake identity card policy: "Invent letterhead of some organization that is spurious, i.e. have it printed up and use it to make queries ... Examples "Ford Foto Features" or "Council for Human Relations in Industry". If you have a letterhead of any sort you will get answers to your questions most of the time. Of these using a phoney News Agency is the most successful" (see http://www.holysmoke.org/cos/latey.htm)

This creation of fronts started early. Reading the history of early Hubbard fronts, as described by Wallis (1977) one is impressed by both the creativity and the deceit involved in this huge effort. Before 1960, Hubbard had such fronts as the American Society for Disaster Relief, The Society of Consulting Ministers, and the Constitutional Administration Party (Wallis, 1977).

One of the first fronts was The Freudian Foundation of America, set up in early 1954. It offered certification as "psychoanalyst" or "Freudian analyst" (Wallis, 1977). The letter from the Hubbard Association of Scientologists to the Better Business Bureau of Phoenix, Arizona, dated June 12, 1954, and cited above, claimed an inspiration from the "Freudian Institute in Vienna". There has never been such an institute.

We must wonder why someone starting a religion would want to adopt the guise of anything "Freudian". Sigmund Freud, as we all know, was an atheist, and the psychoanalytic interpretation of religious beliefs has not made him popular among religionists (Beit-Hallahmi, 1996). Moreover, Freud was the icon and the embodiment of "Euro-Russian" psychotherapy and of the whole "mental health" establishment, which was a major target of Hubbard's hostility. This attempted "Freudian" connection reflected both real ignorance and a desparate search for marketable products. More recently, Scientology has changed its mind about Sigmund Freud, as you can see in http://www.nopsychs.org/FRF.html where "Psycho-Analysis, the forerunner to psychiatry" is soundly denounced for its atheistic nature.

The Freudian Foundation story is pretty much the model for many Scientology operations since the early days. It is clear that for Hubbard inventing a new label, identity, guise, or disguise was a practical matter approached without any hesitation or doubt. The cynicism, speed and facility with which covers were adopted and then dropped reflect the true motivation behind them. Labels, identities, and guises were changed and adopted at will; they were all treated as gimmicks, useful at the moment and possibly dropped by the wayside soon afterwards. Just like the nuclear physicist identity of "Dr. Hubbard". The frounder and his disciples would come up with any deceptions necessary to promote their business.

This is the corporate survival strategy at work since the early 1950s. Over the past fifty years, hundreds of front organizations were started and mostly dropped. Only a few have survived for long, and those have proven some usefulness. That is why the Freudian Foundation, started in 1954, and the National Academy of American Psychology, started in 1957, are no longer with us.

For Scientology, using fronts is one way of obtaining funds from government and charity sources (Mallia, 1998c). The World Literacy Crusade is an extremely profitable front, gaining US government grants, as well as grants from private donors and school systems. The so-called drug rehabilitation program known as Narconon [http://narconon-exposed.org] has been an incredibly profitable front through federal grants and corporate donations (Mallia, 1998c). Fronts may help one another look respectable and make more money. Thus, the Association for Better Living and Education (ABLE) may come out in support of Narconon or the World Literacy Crusade (Behar, 1991). The Foundation for Advancement in Science and Education (FASE) is another example of a profitable Scientology front, earning federal money as well as donations from large corporations such as IBM and McDonald's.

The extensive use of front organizations reflects the scope of Scientology's ambitions and its desire to hide those ambitions through the use of fake calling cards. Some fronts reflect "a totalitarian ideology with world-dominating aspirations" (Kent, 1999, p. 158), but any real achievements in terms of political influence have been limited to the United States. The world is not moving any closer to Hubbard's utopia. It should be pointed out again and again that beyond their clearly deceptive and often sinister nature, Scientology fronts are totally secular in definition and action.

25. Deception Strategies: Fake Calling Cards and Vulnerable Targets.

Since the 1950s, the fake calling card strategy has been used to identify and attract potential clients. Identifying sales potential meant looking for hardships and vulnerabilities in people and preying, in Hubbard's own words, on "the bereaved or injured" (Wallis, 1977, p. 158). Specific groups of vulnerable individuals have been identified and targeted. In the early days of Dianetics, Hubbard advertised in the following way: "Polio victims. A research foundation, investigating polio, desires volunteers suffering from the after effects of that illness" (Wallis, 1977, p. 158). We cannot imagine that too many polio victims actually came to the Dianetics outlets, but what is significant is the vision behind this particular sales gimmick. This took place in the early 1950s, but we have evidence showing that this strategy has remained a major part of the Scientology deception repertoire.

The New CAN affair in the late 1990s can serve as a definitive illustration. The old CAN (Cult Awareness Network) was a notorious "anti-cult" group. One of the few good things we can say about the old CAN was that it did not hide its true identity or aims, immediately revealed by the name Cult Awareness Network. Following a vicious litigation campaign by Scientology, the old CAN went bankrupt in 1996 (Hansen, 1997). But this was not the end of its history. It did almost immediately come back to life as a Scientology front, under the name of the New Cult Awareness Network (New CAN). The New CAN "provides factual information on the dangers of cults". It uses the same logo, letterhead, and phone number as the old CAN. (see Russell, 1999, or http://www.newtimesla.com/issues/1999-0909/feature_p.html). The New CAN even advertises itself as having a phone number and address in Illinois, just like the old CAN, but even that is not true. If you dial (773)267-7777, someone [a Scientologist] in California will answer.

The New CAN represents what is known in intelligence parlance as a "false flag" operation, one of the more sophisticated things any intelligence service can be proud of. In this kind of approach to a potential agent, an intelligence officer presents himself as belonging to an ally rather than a hostile power (Polmar & Allen, 1996). Here we are not dealing with intelligence services, so what is the goal of the operation?

One must wonder why this particular act of masquerading has been designed in this way. If the old CAN was so disreputable, why use its name, logo, and phone number? If the old CAN was so notorious, and had such a bad reputation, why keep its hateful old name? The logic of this particular scam is that there are people out there looking for information on "cults", and this is a population Scientology would like to know about and penetrate. Individuals looking for information on "dangerous cults" may be among those described by Hubbard as the "bereaved and injured". To reach them, the whole facade of the "anti-cult" group is kept, and the mere use of the term 'cult' would betray immediately a deceptive intent. Why would an organization accused of being a "cult" keep alive that pejorative term? Targeting individuals who are attracted by the idea of "dangerous cults" is done by keeping all the old CAN trappings. Otherwise these trappings would have been dropped. We have no way of knowing how successful this particular deception scheme has been, and how many callers have approached the New CAN. Scientology operatives have claimed it as a great success (see http://www.newtimesla.com/issues/1999-0909/feature_p.html). We cannot imagine that New CAN has been deluged with calls, but what counts is the thought, and what is important is the idea, the fantasy, the design, behind New CAN. The design, reminiscent of the "polio research" idea, is one of targeting vulnerable individuals.

26. The Training Routine for Lying.

Scientology has its own Training Routine for Lying (TR-L), used in the preparation of its staff.

"Intelligence Specialist Training Routine-TR-L

Purpose: To train the student to give a false statement... To train the student to outflow false data effectively....

Commands: .. "Tell me a lie" ...

Training Stress: In Part 1 coach gives command, student originates a falsehood... In Part 2 coach asks questions of the student on his background or a subject. Student gives untrue data of a plausible sort that the student backs up with further explanatory data upon the coach further questions... The coach flunks... for student fumbling on question answers..." (see http://www.holysmoke.org/cos/latey.htm)

WEIGHING THE EVIDENCE

The first finding to emerge from our observations is the remarkable degree of continuity over the past fifty years. As Wallis (1977, 1979) has pointed out, the development of bureaucratic structures has created an organization that not only survived, but has been marked by relative stability in strategies and policies. It seems that we can pick up any segment of the organization's behavior, or any document, at any point in time over fifty years, and immediately tap the essential spirit of Scientology.

Our documentary base of evidence is especially solid and thorough. Relying on Scientology's own documents seems both fair and reliable (cf. Foster, 1971). My goals in reading them has been to determine motivations and look for religious content. Most of these documents are, according to NRM scholars, genuine parts of the sacred scriptures, coming from the "prophetic founder" (Bromley & Bracey, 1998). Hubbard, and some of his followers, are our very cooperative informants.

TAKING THE RELIGION LABEL SERIOUSLY

Bryan Wilson, arguably one of the most brilliant minds in the study of new religious movements, establishes the notion of a minimal definition of religion, which will justify according the religion label to Scientology (Wilson, 1990). What he clearly argues is that in deciding on the correct classification for Scientology we need to look at its beliefs and nothing else. The motivation for the creation of this belief system, or any other context, are irrelevant. Let me repeat what Wilson (1990, p. 282-283) states: "even if it could be conclusively shown that Scientology took the title of 'church' specifically to secure protection at law as a religion, that would say nothing about the status of the belief-system".

Wilson's (1990) position on the centrality of belief is something I wholeheartedly share (see Beit-Hallahmi, 1989; Beit-Hallahmi & Argyle, 1997), but his examination of Scientology beliefs chooses to ignore the history and context of those beliefs, and there can be no real interpretation without establishing a context. Some have argued that it is the attitude of current followers, rather than the original intentions of the founder, that determine the status of a group as a religion. This is what Wilson has argued, but it can be easily countered with the following example:

Let's assume that somebody managed to copy the genuine minting technology so effectively that he printed a $100 bill that looks like the one produced by the United States Engraving Office. Our social constructionist colleagues would then say that a $100 bill is genuine if its users believe it to be. Its history and the motivations of its makers would lead us to call what looks like an authentic bill a successful counterfeit. The issue before us is indeed the issue of intent and motivation. The motivation of the United States Engraving Office is not identical, or in any way similar, to that of the counterfeiter, even though the respective products may look the same to us. Our social constructionist colleagues would rightly remind us that the United States Engraving Office represents orthodoxy, monopoly, and hegemony, and is extremely sensitive to threats by competitors. The motivations which created the two products in question are distinct, and they start with an idea. Religions, of course, are not issued by the mint. A religious movement starts with an idea, taking the form of various claims on our trust and credence. How can religious motives be assessed?

CONTEXTUALIZING BELIEFS: THE ACTION CONTEXT

The belief system argument used by Wilson (1990), should be tested. Belief must be embedded and situated in an actual context. It is quite clear that traditional notions of the sacred (Otto, 1923/1950; Eliade, 1959), so central to the study of religion, are totally irrelevant to our discussion. The beliefs examined by Wilson (1990) may be "religious", but their role in the life of the organization remains unclear. Are they truly the defining feature of Scientology? We could find out who actually follows this belief system. Why would anybody express disembodied beliefs, without any corresponding behavior? We need to find actual believers who proclaim these beliefs and live them out in religious activities. Beyond the texts that propound the beliefs, do we have any other indications that anybody actually follows them? Beliefs and ideas have behavioral consequences only when they are embodied and acted upon. Has anybody ever had a conversion to Scientology? As I have noted earlier, even Scientology delusions (about "psychiatry") are secular.

What is needed for a real belief system to operate is not just the existence of a text presenting some beliefs, but a social and behavioral action context. In a genuine religion, we find beliefs in the context of ritual and the creation of a community of believers (Beit-Hallahmi, 1989). Wallace (1966) listed what he called "the minimal categories of religious behavior", which included prayer, music, physiological exercises, exhortation, reciting the code, simulation, mana, taboo, feasts, sacrifice, congregation, inspiration, and symbolism. This list is obviously irrelevant to any analysis of Scientology, because none of the behaviors covered in these categories has ever been observed within the organization. What we clearly don't have in Scientology is the religious activity context, which would include rituals, worship, and believers expressing their faith in many ways, such as individual artistic creations.

What percentage of the organization's activities reflect, specifically address, or express, its "religious" beliefs in any way? This should be compared to the percentage of activities where relevant religious beliefs are reflected, specifically addressed, or expressed in the case of Methodists, Mormons, Roman Catholics or Christian Scientists. Is there a hard core of believers in the Scientology leadership? The 1982 Mission Holders Conference minutes, reported above, show that the upper echelon of the organizartion is completely cynical about its operations. What about the clients? As Wilson himself pointed out (1970), what potential clients are interested in is self-improvement, and not religion, and later (Wilson, 1990, p. 273) stated that "the appeal is rather the promise of personal therapy", and so Scientology operates by promising self-improvement. That is why the first encounter with the organization is through the "Oxford Capacity Analysis", or through Dianetics, "The Modern Science of Mental Health". Do any of the clients hold and express religious beliefs? We have seen no evidence of that.

CONTEXTUALIZING BELIEFS: THE DECEPTION CONTEXT

While we find it hard to discover the religious activity context of Scientology's stated beliefs, what we do discover rather easily is the deception context, which must have a bearing on the issue of motivation. The use of fake calling cards not just in the operation of fronts, but in the core of the organization itself, as it approaches the public, is significant. The way a person or an organization introduces itself is always telling. What does a totally deceptive introduction mean?

That act by itself tells us something important. Anybody using a fake calling card has something to hide. Why should recruitment rhetoric be based on fraud? And why should it be based on a secular fraud if the organization offering it is supposed to be a religion? The obvious goal of recruitment rhetoric is to get the customers into the store. Another important aim of Scientology recruitment rhetoric is screening for vulnerability and gullibility. Those taking seriously the claims about the "Oxford Capacity Analysis" or the "Purification Rundown" are obvious candidates for purchasing other (fake) products.

Is the criminal record of Scientology relevant to its classification? In defining religion, the moral dimension is often ignored, and rightly so (Wilson, 1990), because the main criterion (Beit-Hallahmi & Argyle, 1997) is belief in the context of action, but criminality should have a bearing on judgments of beliefs. Evidence of a consistent pattern of fraud is relevant to judgment. A criminal record by itself should have no bearing on judging a belief system to be religious or secular, but it does have a bearing when self-serving claims create the context of such a system.

In addition to the findings around the actual motivation for seeking the religion label and re-organizing Scientology as a church in 1953-1954, the record contains much evidence regarding a consistent pattern of deception in the form of official lying, the use of fronts and fake calling cards, and various illegal acts. Hubbard's compulsive documentation, which was part of his bureaucracy-building effort (Wallis, 1977, 1979), necessitated issuing written directives. What we are facing is a modus operandi, an operational style encountered repeatedly. As we have observed above, almost every single activity and every single Scientology operation involves a deliberate fraud. We find a consistent pattern of deception, so that it's hard to find any assertion, claim or document presented by Scientology which is not a false claim. Other groups may be just as deceptive, but we do not have the same documentation for them. It is this body of evidence that is largely ignored by Bromley & Bracey (1998) and by Wilson (1990).

A genuine religion may be involved in serious crimes, as the case of Aum Shinrikyo so well illustrates. Deception by itself is not always criminal or illegal; it is always immoral [and unethical]. In the cases where deception is not strictly illegal, it still reflects a clear intent and a choice to cheat, hide, and misrepresent what the perpetrators themselves believe to be the truth. Its history of criminality and deception should affect our judgment of Scientology rhetoric. The context of deception is the most relevant to our discussion. Scientology has operated under a cloud of suspicion since its very beginnings, and this cloud of suspicion is likely to remain hanging over it because of its use of deception in every aspect of its activities.

CONTROL CASES AND THE ISSUE OF MOTIVATION

As we have seen, Scientology boasts a two-stage history, with a transition from secular psychotherapy to religion. We need a comparative framework, and the comparative method has been applied by Wallis (1977, 1979) and Wilson (1990) when they mentioned Christian Science as a similar case. Wallis (1979) and Wilson (1970) suggested a similarity between the early history of Scientology and the early history of Christian Science. This comparison is interesting and intriguing, but ignores the historical context, the characters of the founders, the recruitment rhetoric, and the nature of the membership (England, 1954). Anybody taking this comparison seriously for more than two minutes should visit the nearest Christian Science Reading Room.

What is further needed are true control groups, including more cases with differing outcomes. How can we find control cases in this kind of study? What we can find are natural groups, developing under similar conditions, and reaching different outcomes. This is not a laboratory experimental study, but an experiment of nature. What could we learn from control cases?

When does a psychotherapy movement become a religion? Has this ever happened before, or since? The first thing to realize is that every year, thousands of individuals invent self-improvement schemes and make extravagant claims about them. In modern society one encounters a great variety of private salvation and self-improvement methods ranging from psychoanalytic institutes to "voice therapy", numerous "healing" methods, various meditation techniques, Tai Chi, "Color Therapy", etc. Most of the individuals who market these schemes, like the rest of us, do not like either public scrutiny or taxation. But very few among the inventors of psychotherapy systems acted like Hubbard in his chameleon-like ability to change labels and disguises, all designed to evade scrutiny and taxes. Most private salvation groups operate as businesses. They may try to avoid taxes in practice, but not as a matter of stated principle. No psychotherapy movement that we know of has ever been transformed into an NRM.

Well, one could say, Scientology isn't just any psychotherapy system. At some point it became not any kind of psychotherapy, but a 'psychotherapy with a soul', and then it became a religion. Well, when and how often does a 'psychotherapy with a soul' become a religion? The best control case for Scientology would be a psychotherapy technique which includes a component of belief in an eternal soul which migrates from one body to another over time. Fortunately, we do have such a perfect control case.

Scientology's main "spiritual discovery", according to Bromley & Bracey (1998), is the existence of "immaterial, immortal, spiritual entities... called thetans" (p. 144). Because every human being is also the incarnation of a thetan, every human being is a "being of infinite creative potential" (p. 144). We do know about hundreds of psychotherapy systems which assume the existence of "immaterial, immortal spiritual entities", just like Scientology. This is exactly what is being claimed by thousands of psychotherapists, except they all still pay their taxes (or at least don't claim an exemption).

In Scientology, the alleged discovery of the soul occurred only after the psychotherapy method had been in place for a while. In the control cases we have before us now, the idea of the soul has either been part of the system since its inception, or is a matter of some dramatic discovery (Weiss, 1988). There have been thousands of individuals over the past fifty years (and before) offering the world psychotherapy systems based on the notion of past lives. Actually, these have become more visible and more popular over the past 30 years. But none of them ever claimed that he was starting a new religion (cf. Wilson, 1990).

Wilson does not seem to know about the burgeoning industry, all over the First World, of individuals offering some variety of psychotherapy based on the notion that traumas accumulated in past lives are the cause of present difficulties. This is known as past lives therapy, past life regression, regression therapy, soul memory retrieval, hypnotic regression, holotropic therapy, or reincarnation therapy (Weiss, 1988; Woolger, 1987). Quite logically, some practitioners now offer future life progressions, or progression therapy, for cases where problems are caused by traumas in future lives. The claims made about the success of these methods are similar to those we hear about in connection with Scientology or with some other psychotherapy techniques. Success stories illustrate cures of many difficult and persistent complaints. Claims have been made about the cure of phobias, post-traumatic stress disorders, depression, eating disorders, multiple personality disorders (MPD), arthritis, diabetes, addictions, and cancer. One of the more obscene aspects of this industry is the use of individuals' fantasies about the Holocaust as an essential part of "past lives".

The practitioners claim various identities and labels, such as psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, "healer", "psychospiritual counselor", "teacher of ancient wisdom", "transpersonal counselor", "transpersonal clinical hypnotherapist", "transpersonal psychotherapist", or medium. All these labels, and some others, are being used, but no one claiming any of them has decided to become the founder of a religion.

The connection to common religious ideas of the soul is quite obvious, and often troubling to followers of major religions (see http://www.pcts.org/soulcomb.html). Weiss (1988) claims to have received, through his work on past lives, messages from "the Masters" entities that told him about the nature of "the universe and the soul". Woolger (1987, p. 253) speaks of "unfinished karmic business". Morris Netherton, a former probation officer with Los Angeles County, is one of the global leaders of past-life therapy (Netherton, 1978), and runs The Association for the Alignment of Past Life Experience (AAPLE). "The Association encourages the integration of one's personal religious beliefs with [its] techniques and procedures ... It is the Association's belief that an expression of the religious self is both a right and a privilege inherent in the exercising of our freedom of expression and in our efforts to gain greater knowledge of ourselves"(http://www.aaple.com/aaple/). Netherton could have decided at some point that what he was running a religion, but he hasn't done that.

If motivation does not count, then maybe some of these entrepreneurs have unwittingly created NRMs, and maybe we should let them know, and include them in our NRM research. They should at least have the status of quasi-religions. As we recall, quasi religions may be defined as "collectives in which organizational and ideological tension and ambiguity regarding the group's worldview, perspective, and regimen are profitably used to facilitate affiliation as well as commitment" (Bromley & Bracey, 1998, p. 141). Why is it that so many individuals who can easily take advantage of the quasi-religion option do not utilize it? They could have easily fit into that niche, but they clearly are not interested in doing that. So we have to conclude that in this case it is the motivation, and not the content of beliefs, that counts and makes the difference between religion, quasi-religion, and non-religion.

SCINETOLOGY AND THE NRM SCHOLARS

There is a clear skew, superficiality, or selectivity, in the way Scientology has been looked at by NRM scholars (e.g. Bromley & Bracey, 1998; Wilson, 1990). Assertions by NRM scholars may be questioned because they have consistently ignored some highly significant behaviors. If these scholars indeed do not know about these activities then the state of NRM research is pretty bad; if they do, and choose not to report, it's even worse. Have they decided that such activities are irrelevant? Then we should know about the criteria for judgment in this case.

Reading the scholarly literature one would rarely realize that Scientology is run by franchise, that it uses hundreds of secular fronts, that it offers a "free personality test" to recruit clients, that it markets such a secular scam as the Purification Rundown, that it uses hundreds of trademarks and claims trade secrets, or that it has an extraordinary criminal record. The fronts business is a major activity and a major source of income for Scientology, but is totally ignored by most NRM scholars (e.g. Wilson, 1970, 1990) or presented as humanitarian activity. This is how Scientology's fraudulent fronts are described by one scholarly source: "Another set of organizations has as its primary objective delivering Hubbard's technology, so that conventional social institutions may benefit from Scientology's knowledge" (Bromley and Bracey, 1998, p. 148). These authors also call the fronts "non-profit". One wonders whether a Scientology press release would have been worded differently.

The organization we read about in the scholarly literature is not the Scientology we know, or could get to know by simply stepping into one of its many sales outlets around the world. Wilson (1990), for example, reports in great detail on what he regards as its religious beliefs and mentions the doubts about Hubbard's 1953 conversion from secular psychotherapy to religion, but ignores most other aspects of the organization's activities.

Documents uncovered during litigation involving Scientology have impressed judges and the media. They have had no effect on scholars. What has shocked judges is of no interest to scholars, as shown by one reaction of a scholar to a judge. Wilson (1990, p. 247) criticizes "Mr. Justice Latey who, gratuitously, gave an open court judgment, following a private hearing, in which he declared Scientology to be 'corrupt, sinister and dangerous'". Wilson cites as his source The Times of 24 July 1984. Quite clearly, Wilson has not read the full text of Latey's decision, and relies on media reports.

I would urge you to read the actual text (http://www.holysmoke.org/cos/latey.htm) and then you will realize that Justice Latey was first, a) careful in preserving the privacy of the parties involved, b) extremely kind and positive in his comments about the individual members of the family, Scientologists included, and c) critical in his comments about the Scientology organization, which he encountered on that occasion for the first time ever. To back up his criticism, Justice Latey appended several authentic Scientology documents to his decision, which are cited in above. We can only assume that Wilson, and other NRM scholars, have chosen not to read the decision or the documents. While Wilson seems to get his information from The Times, and does not realize what so horrified Justice Latey, we can read the 1982 Mission Holders Conference and the TR-L document. We all know these documents by now, and if we don't, then we just haven't done our basic homework.

Our first conclusion must be that research reports which ignore such significant aspects of a phenomenon under review should not be taken too seriously, but there may be even more serious conclusions. What we see here is a strange case of professional negligence, or professional malpractice. In professional medical malpractice, misdiagnosis logically leads to the wrong treatment. We are still looking at the diagnosis, or rather the misdiagnosis stage.

|||| Let us take, for example the 1982 Mission Holders Conference. This document was made public in 1984, not very recently. It provides us with an unusual opportunity to observe the Scientology organization, but no one in the NRM research business seems to have read it. Another relevant document oddly ignored is TR-L, reviewed above. We must assume that any scholar who has ever done any research on Scientology must have noticed the Oxford Capacity Analysis (OCA). The implications in the case of the OCA, which are straightforward, have been ignored. And NRM scholars such as Bromley and Bracey (1998) seem to be totally unaware of the extensive and exceptional criminal record of this organization. NRM scholars need to be told that the use of fronts is not universal or even common among religions. In reality, it is extremely unusual. We should also recall that most NRMs or even most old religions have no criminal record.

In addition to the scholarly writings reviewed above, we know that some NRM scholars jumped with both feet into the world of action, with total mobilization in the service of the Scientology organization. They have served as character witnesses and providing covers and alibis. Their actions have been public and political.

There are situations when a public figures and organizations urgently needs an alibi. If you are Jorg Haider, of the Austrian Freedom Party, and you are being accused of neo-Nazi or proto-fascist leanings or sympathies, one way of getting yourself an alibi is to get a Jew to work for you. Jorg Haider found his Jew. He was Peter Sichrovsky, a well-known, bright, and articulate Austrian journalist of Jewish descent, who was serving for a while as secretary-general and representative in the European Parliamen for the Austrian Freedom Party. How is this related to Scientology?

On April 19, 1999 a conference was held at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California, under the heading of "The Role of Religious Pluralism in Contemporary Society". The conference was sponsored by The "International Commission on Freedom of Conscience" and hosted by H. Newton Malony. It was organized by Scientology, if you haven't guessed already, and one of the speakers at this affair was none other than the same Peter Sichrovsky, who is very concerned, like all of us, about "religious pluralism in contemporary society".

This conference was one small event, part of the far-ranging operation designed to create an aura of normality and respectability around Scientology. The aim is to build a wall of legitimacy which will serve to exonerate and exculpate Scientology when the need arises. Of course, any scholarly research on Scientology within the framework of the study of religion gives it a powerful alibi, but very few NRM scholars have actually done that.

If we look a little closer at the way Scientology has been treated by scholars we encounter two kinds of texts. In addition to scholarly books and articles, we find a second kind, made up of a variety of statements solicited by Scientology for various public uses, including legal proceedings.

These testimonials are rarely cited in the academic literature, and probably do not appear on a CV list of publications. These two kinds of texts contain two different viewpoints. While the first group of texts, published as academic works, emphasizes the organization's uniqueness, and any comparisons made refer to NRMs, the second group emphasizes its similarity to a variety of historically well-known religions, some quite ancient.

The testimonial literature supporting Scientology's claim to the religion label is unique and unprecedented. The texts are written in the form of legal depositions, stating first the author's qualifications as an academic and sometimes as a member of the mainstream Protestant clergy. Some of them cite classical sources in the fields of sociology and history, but most of those giving these statements have not published scholarly research on Scientology. When scholars address their colleagues, they express the level of doubt and reflect the level of complexity or ambiguity we expect from scholarship. Freed from the shackles of scholarship (or so they imagine) NRM experts are ready to throw all caution to the winds. In contrast to the formal academic works, which sometimes raise doubts about Scientology's authenticity as a religion and its credibility as an organization, the testimonials often sound like official press releases. They are seamless, glossy, products, and one has to search hard for nuances or discrepancies. The seal of approval is given in a clear, certain voice, with no doubts, hesitation, or ambiguity.

In this collection of statements, the question of the religion label is addressed directly. The discussion is in terms of the substantive definition of religion, and the answer is in the affirmative on substantive grounds, i.e. the content of beliefs and practices. Scientology maintains an Internet site (www.religion2000.de/ENG/index.html) where some testimonials can be found. The site includes statements by such leading academics as James A. Beckford (1981), Alan W. Black (1996), Gary D. Bouma (1979), Irving Hexham (1978), J. Gordon Melton (1981), and Geoffrey Parrinder (1977). Parrinder and Melton are presented as ordained Methodist ministers.

Melton (1981) says that Scientology is "...a religion in the fullest sense of the word. It has a well thought-out doctrine, including a belief in a Supreme Being ...a system of worship and liturgy, an extensive pastoral counseling program...Its beliefs, worship and relationship to God as a Supreme Being is further evidenced in the Church's program of pastoral care, group worship, its community life and program of spiritual growth...regularly holds Sunday worship services" (see http://www.neuereligion.de/ENG/melton/page01.htm). The famous 1983 decision which granted Scientology tax exemption in Australia stated: "The essence of Scientology is a belief in reincarnation and concern with the passage of 'thetan' or the spirit or soul of man through eight 'dynamics' and the ultimate release of the 'thetan' from the bondage of the body"(High Court of Australia, 1983, p. 58). Not a word about "God as a Supreme Being". Melton's statement clearly runs counter to most reports in the scholarly literature (e.g. Bromley & Bracey, 1998; Wilson, 1970, 1990), but there are other things to wonder about in this web site. Alan W. Black compares Scientology to the Unitarian Church, Melton compares it to the Methodist Church, and Parrinder is reminded of ancient Egyptian religion, Jainism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and even Freemasonry.

As indicated above, scholars offering their imprimatur to Scientology emphasize its commonality with well-known historical religions. The commonality discourse becomes the first line of defense, as the experts tell us with a straight face that what looks like a deviation from the norms of established religions and common decency is actually the norm, and Methodists (Jews, Roman Catholics) are just as bad, only hiding their sins more effectively. Bromely (1994, see www.scientology.org/copyright/bromley.htm ) finds a great deal of commonality between Scientology and many religions, old and new, such as Catholicism, Christian Science, Mormonism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Rosicrucianism, and Theosophy. When it comes to financial procedures, Bromley finds a commonality with Buddhist temples, Jewish synagogues, Protestant denominations, and Catholic priests (see www.scientology.org/copyright/bromley.htm ). He would have us believe that Scientology is just like Buddhism, Judaism and Catholicism in asking for fees. "In some parts of the Jewish tradition an annual fee is paid for synagogue membership". The tiny difference, which Bromley apparently has not noticed, is that in Scientology there can be no participation in any activities without a fee, unlike Judaism or Catholicism. In many real religions there are services that entail a fee, but some contacts and services are free. Does Scientology provide any services without a fee? While the practice of fee-for-service in the case of rites of passage is common in many religions, in Scientology nothing is free, and gaining membership is defined by financial contracts and payments only.

Bryan Wilson (1994, http://www.scientology.org/copyright/wilson.htm) compared Scientology to Christianity, "Gnosticism" (which probably never existed), Christian Science, LDS, Pentecostal groups, Judaism, and Buddhism (cf. Wilson, 1990). In his testimonial, Wilson goes on to suggest that Scientology's esoteric texts could be compared to the Jewish Kabbala tradition. Such claims are absurd, and indicate total ignorance (or wilfull deception) because Kabbala texts have never been claimed as "trade secrets", and were never offered by franchise.

When Jeffrey Hadden (1994) was asked to defend Scientology, he waxed mystical and produced some esoteric knowledge of his own. In his affidavit he stated that "Moses learned the secret name of God on Mount Sinai and that knowledge has been shouldered orally [sic] through the ages by a few Jewish mystics who are able faithfully to discern the Kabbalah. Christ preached to the masses, but it was to a select group of disciples that he disclosed secrets of the kingdom" (see www.scientology.org/copyright/hadden.htm).

We see that Wilson, Bromley and Hadden make the jump from esoteric knowledge to trade secrets. While esoteric knowledge is found in many religions, the "trade secrets" has never been made about them.

As mentioned above, Bromley (see www.theta.com/copyright/bromley.htm), Wilson (1994, www.theta.com/copyright/wilson.htm), and Hadden (see www.scientology.org/copyright/hadden.htm), are among the NRM scholars who have defended Scientology's interests by offering legal depositions. We now know that other scholars have either testified in court or submitted documents in support of the organization's claims to legitimacy.

I had an opportunity to appreciate how intimate the contacts between the OSA and NRM scholars were at the SSSR meeting in Montreal in 1998. The OSA sometimes sends its operatives to scholarly conferences, and I recognized two men as OSA operatives, because they were in the conference exhibit area handing out glossy Scientology literature. Later on they attended sessions and took part in discussions, identifying themselves clearly. At some point, passing through the exhibit area, I could see these two men exchanging warm hugs with a well-published NRM scholar. This was done in public, not behind closed doors, and reflected solidarity and camaraderie. What is remarkable is that the scholar involved has never publicly collaborated with Scientology in any way, such as giving expert testimony or supporting a front. Neither has this scholar published any research on the organization.

NRM scholars have supported Scientology fronts at least since the 1980s. The American Conference on Religious Movements, a Scientology front, is mentioned in the December 1989 memo by Jeffrey K. Hadden reporting on collaboration with NRMs (Hadden, 1989). Some of the names on the New CAN list of accomplices can be found n a publication issued by the Friends of Freedom, a Scientology front started by George Robertson around 1990. These Friends of Freedom were Gordon Melton, Eileen Barker, David Bromley, Jeffrey Haddon (sic), James Richardson, and Anson Shupe. Friends of Freedom soon disappeared from the scene, and later George Robertson had a role in the founding of AWARE in 1992 (Beit-Hallahmi, 2001). Scientology was actively involved in the preparation of From The Ashes (Lewis, 1994), published by AWARE.

The New CAN affair, reported above, where the identity of an "anti-cult" organization was taken over by Scientology, then offering information about "dangerous cults", brings out in all of us a reaction of revulsion, shock, and horror. This is the common reaction, but it is uncommon among NRM scholars. As it turns out, the New CAN advertises itself as having in its service a list of "professional referral sources". And these "professional referrals" include NRM scholars Dick Anthony, William Bainbridge, Eileen Barker, David Bromley, Jeffrey Hadden, Newton Malony, James Richardson, John Saliba, and Stewart Wright (check the cultawarenessnetwork.org site). Newton Malony is more than just a "professional referral source". He acts as a spok esman for Scientology when he quite naturally "sees the new CAN as doing positive work" (see www.newtimesla.com/issues/1999-0909/feature_p.html). The New CAN affair is a play in the theater of cruelty and sadism, and it takes a large measure of cruelty to take part in it.

THE SCHOLARLY POSITION ON DECEPTION

Wallis (1984, p. 129) referred to something called 'heavenly deceit', allegedly used by Scientology "to secure funds or recruits, or to defend the movement" (p. 129). The description (or justification) offered by Wallis is broad enough to cover all of Scientology's activities. "To secure funds or recruits, or to defend the movement" covers everything that has ever been done in the name of Scientology.

What is Heavenly Deceit? What is it supposed to mean or explain? What is 'heavenly' about it? The operational definition of 'heavenly deceit' seems to be that in order to promote a religious message, specific acts of deceit must be carried out. The end sanctifies the means, and the end in this case is the survival of a religious message. This is the 'heavenly' part. What about the 'deceit' part ?

The 'heavenly deceit' notion means that we should not use the normal criterion of truthfulness for certain observations and statements. Let us leave aside for the moment the question of common decency, and just focus on logic. Does anybody know when a Scientology statement or action is or isn't 'heavenly deceit'? In this specific case, can we ask when does Scientology engage or not engage in 'heavenly deceit', and how can you tell? Any 'heavenly deceit' is still deceit, and no amount of heavenliness will change that. Is there something that distinguishes 'heavenly deceit' from simple criminality? Apparently, it takes an extremely sophisticated scholar to tell where 'heavenly deceit' ends and 'earthly deceit' begins. Does Scientology engage in heavenly deceit when it presents us with the so-called Oxford Capacity Analysis, Dianetics, "auditing", or the New CAN? When do Scientologists do anything which is not 'heavenly deceit?

Should we take Scientology seriously when it offers information on "dangerous cults"? When and why should we take seriously anything coming from Scientology? When are they telling the truth? How do they decide when to tell the truth? Do we know when they are not lying? When they are not presenting a false front? Are we ever going to catch them telling the truth? The unsophisticated targets of deceit don't care if it is heavenly or earthly. It's just their money, and their lives, at stake.

Scholars want to play a role in the authentication process, which can be compared to the authentication of works of art, but they seem unwilling to challenge any group's claim for the religion label, thus creating in practice a universal scholarly imprimatur. Here NRM scholars seem to follow the self-definition or self-determination principle, a truly commendable modernist and post-modernist ideal. In the fuzzy and unregulated domain of private salvation, including religion and psychotherapy, only the identities chosen by individuals should count. This implies that we should listen to Scientology's representatives and earnestly accept what they say about themselves, suspending our tendency to doubt and analyze.

In this case, if we have to take the religion claim at face value, then we should also take at face value claims about being Freudian and about doing polio research. We know that Hubbard once claimed expertise in nuclear physics, so is he part of the history of that field too? When Hubbard was operating a Freudian Foundation, was Scientology (it was then already Scientology) part of psychoanalysis? When Hubbard called Dianetics "The Modern Science of Mental Health" (as the organization still does, fifty years later), was Dianetics part of any known science? Or of "mental health"?

We can trust what Scientology says about its religious nature as much as we can trust what it says about the "Oxford Capacity Analysis" or "Clear" or the "Purification Rundown", or the New CAN. When Scientology operatives are talking about tenets of faith (Wilson, 1990) or applied religious philosophy, or religious technology, are they speaking truthfully or "outflowing false data effectively"? Wilson (1990), of course, is happily unaware of the Oxford Capacity Analysis or the Purification Rundown, or the New CAN.

The "secular version" operation, where The Way To Happiness is offered as a secular belief system, is another Scientology original. We have looked far and wide in the history of religions, from the Antoinistes (Dericquebourg, 1993) to the Zoroastrians, and

Still not find one single case in which a religion was publicly propagating a secular version of its ethical system. If you know of any religion that offers "secular versions" of its moral creed, please let me know. Do we know any religion that tries to promote "a non-religious moral code, based entirely on common sense"? How about a secular, improved version of the Ten Commandments?

SCIENTOLOGY CLASSIFIED: REACHING A DECISION

As Greil (1996, p. 49) suggested, being considered a religious movement is "a cultural resource over which competing interest groups may vie..." giving "privileges associated in a given society with the religious label". Moreover, "the right to the religious label is a valuable commodity" (Greil, 1996, p. 52). Barker once suggested that the public religion/not religion debate, outside the ivory tower, is part of normal social discourse, and we should study it, not interfere with it: "It is not the task of social science to draw the boundaries that society will use" (Barker, 1994, p. 108). For Passas (1994), the concern about civil liberties is cause enough to give automatic immunity to any group claiming the religion label. That would be morally and intellectually irresponsible. We are not the government or the police. We do not enforce the law, but what do we tell ourselves and our colleagues?

Going back to the September 2001 deception case, we discover that questions we can raise about it are the same we have discussed all through this article. Why would a religious organization offering "to relieve spiritual suffering" use a "mental health" front?

The Scientology masquerading strategy uses two main covers. The "Mental Health" cover is more common; the religion covers much less so. Some scholars treat the masquerading strategy as merely a matter of marketing, a facade, behind which hides the true essence of the organization, which is somehow religious. I see no logical (or other) reason to privilege that interpretation. We can just as safely assume that behind the marketing facade there is just more marketing. Scientology lies about everything. Why should we assume that it is possessed by truthfulness attack when it comes to the profitable label of religion?

Using the "mental health" cover raises another question. Scientology CEO David Miscavige stated on television in 1992 that "there are a group of people on this planet who find us to be a threat to their existence, and they will do everything in their power to stop us. And that is the mental health field" (Passas, 1994, p. 227). If "mental health" is the enemy, why utilize its trademark? Moreover, this historical pattern of masquerading runs counter to another major effort on the part of the organization. At least since the 1960s, Scientology has invested money and energy in a huge campaign designed to win official recognition in its claims to be a religion. The most important victory in this campaign was won in 1993, when, quite mysteriously, the United States Internal Revenue

Service Commissioner, Herb Goldberg, Jr. suddenly changed his mind and granted it tax exemption. We would expect the organization from that point on to celebrate this victory by dropping its secular masks and presenting itself everywhere as engaging in religious activities. This has not happened.

What we have discovered is that the September 2001 incident was not isolated but rather embedded in a consistent and unmistakable historical pattern. It demonstrated again that the Scientology organization is motivated and driven solely by sales and marketing considerations. What has been experienced by all of us as a global nightmare was viewed by Scientology only as a great marketing opportunity. The pathetic lies offered by Scientology once it has been exposed were true to character.

Passas (1994) rightly advises caution when it comes to judging claims to the religion label: "...the resort to profitable endeavors and even illegal methods of financing do not ipso facto justify the rejection of religious status...By no means do I purport to defend sophisticated offenders who set up a self-proclaimed "religion" simply to flout the law. Whenever good faith can be shown to be absent, religious and other types of fraud ought to be persecuted. Bad faith must be shown, however, and not assumed" (p. 218).

What we have observed is a fifty-year history of bad faith, in which a huge amount of energy and imagination has been invested in hundreds of operations aimed at deception. This is a consistent and unmistakable historical pattern. In addition to hundreds of fronts, we have observed numerous ways of masquerading. There can be no doubt that all this has been a matter of policy and strategy. When addressing the outside world, the Scientology organization has been making various claims, presenting itself most often as engaged in the promotion of "mental health", sometimes offering prosperity and self-improvement, and only rarely claiming the religion label.

The September 2001 incident is not only a truly representative and reliable sample of Scientology behavior. It is the emblematic story of Scientology, just like the New CAN affair and the polio affair of the 1950s. It is the same sadistic and cynical attempt to exploit vulnerability and gullibility, to get "the bereaved and injured"(Wallis, 1977, p. 158). We can only quote what Hannah Arendt had to say about the leaders of some totalitarian regimes: "Their moral cynicism, their belief that everything is permitted, rests on the solid conviction that everything is possible" (Arendt, 1963, p. 387).

Scientology's own documents show an organization which is blatantly commercial, blatantly secular and blatantly predatory, as well as blatantly fraudulent. As Hubbard himself said in 1962, the religion label "is entirely a matter for accountants and solicitors" (Hubbard Communications Office Policy Letter, HCOPL, 29 October 1962). Scientology will use the religion label when it is convenient, and a secular label when it suits better. It will use the cross (as it has done in publications and displays on buildings) just like it has used Sigmund Freud's name.

The preponderance of the evidence indicates that the religion claim is merely a tax-evasion ruse and a fig leaf for a hugely profitable enterprise, where the logic of profitability and profit-making dictates all actions. Scientology is in reality a holding company, a business empire earning profits from a variety of subsidiaries. It is guided by considerations of economic consequences and benefits, a strict business strategy.

The assertion that Scientology is a misunderstood religion seems less tenable than the competing assertion, that it is a front for a variety of profit-making schemes, most of

which are totally fraudulent. The question is only whether Scientology is "an ordinary profit-making enterprise", as Passas & Castillo (1992) suggest or whether "Scientology's purpose is making money by means legitimate and illegitimate" (US District Court, Southern District of New York, 92 Civ. 3024 (PKL) see www.planetkc.com/sloth/sci/decis.time.html ). The most charitable interpretation would be that it is a profit making organization; a less charitable one that it is a criminal organization. The evidence for an explicit policy of deception makes it harder and harder to show any degree of charity.

The story of Hubbard and his brainchild deserves treatment by those who have written on famous impostors and great con men (Maurer, 1940/1999). Similar cases include the phenomenon of "psychic surgeons" in the Philippines, who prey on terminal cancer patients from the West, or the Dominion of Melchizedek (a cyberspace scam, self-described as a "recognized ecclesiastical and constitutional sovereignty, inspired by the Melchizedek Bible"). In the context of United States cultural history, Hubbard seems like a combination of the best-known qualities of Roy Cohn (Von Hoffman, 1988) and Lyndon LaRouche (King, 1990). The similarity between Scientology and the LaRouche organization in terms of ideology and activities seems far from than trivial, but has never been noted.

Some of the scholars claiming that Scientology is some kind of a religion have put their statements to an empirical test. Both Bainbridge & Stark (1981) and Passas & Castillo (1992) did suggest that Scientology would become more religious in the future, just because its claims of efficacy were absurd and unprovable. More than two decades later (for Bainbridge & Stark, 1981) and more than a decade later (for Passas & Castillo, 1992) these predictions have turned out to be totally wrong. Scientology has not become more religious in any discernible way since 1981 or 1992. It is as much a religion today as it has ever been, and as it will ever be.

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REFERENCES

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Note: This is a revised version of a paper presented to the 1999 annual meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, Boston, November 1999. The author gratefully acknowledges valuable information and critical comments provided by Eileen Barker, Anthony J. Blasi, David G. Bromley, J.R.H. Cole, Ryan Jonathan Cook, Lorne Dawson, Nilli Diengott, Michael J. Donahue, Mike Garde, Jeffrey K. Hadden, Irving Hexham, Massimo Introvigne, Stephen A. Kent, Edward C. Lehman, Jr., Harriet C. Lutzky, H. Newton Malony, J. Gordon Melton, Wayne L. Proudfoot, Bryan Rennie, Tom Robbins, Michele Rosenthal, Julius H. Rubin, Brigitte Schoen, William Shaffir, Stephen Sharot, Mark Silk, Ramzi Suleiman, Ted Daniels, and Benjamin Zablocki.

Copyright © Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi 2003 First published in Marburg Journal of Religion

Report on the 2005 IAS event

2005-11-14T13:15:00.000-07:00

The 2005 IAS event was held at Saint Hill, UK over the weekend of October 30th. The night before the IAS event, the IAS Patron's Ball/Charity event was held. That was the event reported by the media that told of Tom Cruise, Katie, John Travolta and others entertaining the guests.

The video of this event played at the US orgs the weekend of November 4th and 12th.

I really didn't want to attend this event. My husband refuses to go with me anymore and my friends have been losing interest as well. It's tough to get a date for this thing!

Since I have always been a "trooper," I decided I'd go to the event even if I had to go on my own, so I could make this report. I'm sorry I never wrote up my notes from this summer's "Freewind's Anniversary Events" but those events were so boring and so lacking of any real information that you didn't miss much.

My premeal event report is that I ate leftovers at home from the night before. Grilled salmon, with a mango salsa (to die for), asparagus and little red potatoes! Yummy indeed! I don't put in too much jalapeno pepper because I don't like breaking out into sweats!

I arrive at the event to the same old faces. I'd say attendance was about 15% down from last year.

The event starts with the classic "Crusader" looking men on horseback riding in the back fields of Saint Hill, coming to the rescue. Take a look at this so you can get an idea of what they actually look like.

http://www.iasmembership.org/#start

Next, there is this gruesome high tech, in your face, anti-psych video. It was like ars anti-psych spammers on steroids. It looks like a sci-fi short movie about what the world would be like dominated by psychiatry, as Scientology portrays it. It's 4 or 5 minutes of the most outrageous anti-psych propaganda I've ever seen and it's obvious that it was designed to scare and outrage people.

Later in the event when Mike Rinder was speaking, he gave quotes from one of the world's most evil SP's ever, Brock Chisholm, President of the World Federation of Mental Health (1957 - 1958). I don't remember the exact quotes he used but it was something like this one:

"To achieve world government, it is necessary to remove from the minds of men their individualism, loyalty to family traditions, national patriotism and religious dogmas."

Scientology freaks out about stuff like this and uses it to prove that psychiatry is the ultimate evil.

Rinder tells us that Chisholm and an evil British psych joined in a "pivotal moment in psychiatry" when they set these goals because if you look around, you can see that psychiatry has actually achieved them, and it is now up to us to take care of it and rid the world of the evil psychs once and for all.

Which brings me to the "theme" of this year's IAS event.

THE EVIL PSYCHS MUST BE TAKEN OUT! BUT THIS TIME I REALLY MEAN IT!

After the opening video, DM came out on stage wearing his crisp, perfectly fit tux and "inflowed" the thunderous applause of his adoring followers. Even if the past year was not good for Scientology's image, DM has been tightening the screws of indoctrination like never before. I'd say the applause for him was 15% up from last year.

He began the event with another of his straight-up-vertical-bullshit introductions. He explained that whatever we thought this event might be about, we were wrong. Then he launched into the psychs in a way that made last year's event, that up until then was the most in-your-face attack on psychs ever, look mamby-pamby in comparison.

DM's hyperbole impressed me. I think it would have impressed even LRH!

Now I just want to stress here that if you think the Scientologists were bat shit crazy about the evil psychs before, you ain't seen nothin' yet.

DM says, "the final product of psychiatry is death!" We are going for their heart and we're going to "tear it out!" "There will be no mo' re gradients!" "No mercy will be shown!" Tom delivered that line better at last year's event but then he is a better actor.

Creepy! Very creepy!

Maybe Tom will show a video of the event to Katie's parents. I'm sure they'll love it!

I find myself sitting there and asking myself again when the Scientologist's in the audience will start to wonder when all these grand plans and schemes are supposed to actually occur? Scientology has been "taking out the psych's" for as long as I can remember. For years Heber has been showing graphs of the number of psychs jailed and how many dollars aren't going to the psychs anymore due to CCHR's activities. But each year we are told that illiteracy in schools is getting worse, there are more drug addicts and more criminality. We're told that the social programs are expanding like mad and that more and more auditors are being made. So why do things keep getting worse instead of better? Scientologists don't ever seem to ask this question.

Scientologists are very disconnected from the real world around them. They see the world through Hubbard's and DM's eyes rather than their own. There is no comparison to the claims being made by Scientology and the actual stats and the Scientologists are unable to see it. They are completely taken in by the bullshit.

So there I am, a lowly evil SP, among the sheep. I am watching DM ranting and raving about the trillions of dollars that the psychs rake in from the government, when I finally I have a major cognition.

It's all about money. Don't get me wrong, it's always been about money, but now it's about A LOT more money. DM is serious, make that very serious, about getting his hands on government funding.

He's been having some success doing this with greedy politicians that will happily look the other way when it comes to Scientology front groups if they can get some campaign donations and lunch with a Scientology celeb.

Money talks. It talked to Sheriff Lee of New Orleans, who happened to be at this event and walked away with a check for $340,000. DM is spending money on getting their orgs to look "ideal" and expensively upstat. He is using the money they reg from Scientologists to buy their way into the mainstream. Why? Because it works. Because the mainstream is where the real money is. And because the easiest mainstream money to get is from governments. The psychs get the billions now. If DM could get his hands on this money, man he could... he would... Clear the planet!

Up until it was exposed, they had success with this strategy by donating sizeable amounts of cash to the campaign of the openly gay, NY Councilwoman, Margarita Lopez, and she in turn assisted them in getting a grant for $630,000 in city funds for the New York Rescue Workers Detoxification Project, that is nothing more than another Purification recruitment center for the "Church" of Scientology.

http://www.rickross.com/reference/scientology/programs/p rograms15.html

I mention "gay" because it goes to show that Scientology will violate their own "beliefs" and "tech" by contributing to a gay politician. Per the tech, gays are 1.1 on the "tone scale" and they are all perverts and should never be trusted.

They also have Applied Scholastics working with a wog grant writer to get government money in order to get study tech into the schools, and new recruits on the "Bridge to Total Freedom."

Like it or not, they are having some successes buying politicians and lobby governments. If you notice, they can keep it very quiet when they want to. They never announced at any event or published in any mag that they had obtained a $630,000 grant from NY City.

The money DM is spending sometimes gets them to first base. We're going to see a lot more of this unless IAS and other donations dry up.

You would think they would brag about these "wins" but I think they've stopped doing that. Would it have something do to with SP's attending events and reading their mags and blowing the whistle on them? :)

I can picture DM as his master plan moves forward. In his mind he has nothing to lose. He wants Scientology to be mainstream. He wants to replace psychiatry with Scientology and get government money and the power comm lines that go with it.

I haven't forgotten that the psychs give the loyal followers an external enemy to keep them from getting any closer to understanding the things that never get resolved in Scientology.

I haven't forgotten that they use the psychs to turn away the attention of wogs from their "sacred 'scriptures.'" Ask Mike Rinder a question on the Today show about "he who must not be named" [Lord Xenu] and he'll sidestep it and tell you all about the evil psychs.

But it's also about the money, the power comm lines and getting into the mainstream.

I believe the anti psych-spammers on alt.religion.scientology now are part of the program to push the whole anti-psych program. DM didn't wait for the IAS event to give his orders to OSA. They got the orders right before the latest psych spammers arrived on ars. If you don't like the anti-psych spamming, get used to it because it's not going to go away until the spammers have a cognition and "blow." Hint to you spammers: don't forget to take documents with you when you leave!

Whenever there was applause the cameras would pan the front row that was loaded with all the Big Scientology Celebrities wearing their "Freedom Medals." Those front row seats are ONLY for the big players like John Travolta and his wife, Kelly Preston, and Isaac Hayes and of course Tom Cruise and his pregnant and newly brainwashed girlfriend Katie Holmes. But this year there was someone new. Right beside Katie was her "best friend" and Scientology minder, Jessica Feshbach!

I've mentioned before that I tend to zone out at these events. Trying to juggle Scientology reality and real life does that to me. This event did it to me a lot faster than ever before. It wasn't just the creepiness. It was the evil. I used to love going to events but now, it's just an unpleasant experience.

I don't know how to explain what happens to me when I am at these events other than to tell you to try to imagine how a normal, unindoctrinated person might feel attending a fascist rally.

It can be extremely unpleasant to be a live witness to evil. It's not something you're reading on ars or watching on tv. You're there. And the indoctrinated are there with you. You see the evil and want to do something. But you know that if you do, you'll be taken away, turned over to "the authorities" and that will be the end of you.

It was never [before] anywhere near this bad and I believe DM is going to keep piling it on. That means Scientologists are going to keep lapping it up. If anything is expanding "straight up vertical" in Scientology, it's the fanaticism. For the first time it's beginning to worry me.

I've had a question about DM for a long time. How much of what he does is because of his indoctrination and how much of it is his own evil? I don't have the answer. To me it still looks like a head-to-head battle.

At one point during this event I asked myself how many more overts I must have committed on the track to be sitting there while the rest of the critics were sitting at home playing on their computers or having a nice time with their family. ;)

When I finally come out of these thoughts, I notice DM is announcing the first freedom medal winner who's from France. Per DM, this French guy was personally responsible for putting a bunch of French psychs into jail in the past year. "My stable datum is what LRH said about the psychs being the sole cause of decline in this universe." That was an actual quote from the Frenchman's acceptance speech. I'll say no more.

SCIENTOMOLOGY

I was looking forward to seeing how they were going to spin the Cruise media entheta. They left that task up to Mike Rinder. There was Tom Cruise, their number one boy, sitting in the front row and Rinder enlightened us by telling us that as a result of Tom's tirades on psych drugs, there were now hundreds of thousands fewer children taking some psych drug for ADHD.

That was only the beginning of the spin and later Rinder gave more of Tom's stats. He said that the day after one of Tom's anti-psych interviews, the FDA called for a black box warning on one psych drug, and two days after another of Tom's interviews, the FDA called for a black box warning on another psych drug.

If you're asking how Tom Cruise's interviews made these things happen, you're not a Scientologist and just be thankful for that.

There were two standing ovations for Tom. The first one was during DM's half hour or so at the beginning of the event. He got a much longer one during Rinder's spin. I may have been hallucinating by this point, but although I didn't see the bullshit, I swear I saw the steam that must have been rising from it blow past the front rows and go unnoticed by the celebs.

Tom looked a little uncomfortable accepting the first standing ovation but by the time he got the second one, he looked like the spin was as true for him as it seemed to be for Rinder.

During both standing ovations, Katie's unblinking stares of adoration towards Tom were something to see.

THE MUSEUM OF PSYCH HORRORS

I kid you not. In December CCHR will be having a grand opening for the Museum of Psych Horrors.

They have produced documentaries that include original video footage of Pavlov and his drooling dogs, Pavlov and drooling children, people getting electroshocked and convulsing, and other good psych stuff like that. They're doing to these documentaries to show the world that psychs and psychiatry are nothing but evil. Of course they will try to get them shown everywhere but mainly they will be pushed in their orgs. For one day of each month, the Column Tech in all orgs will show only CCHR anti-psych propaganda.

Before Rinder showed some of the footage, he said that some of the images are too gruesome to show at this event with "women and children" being present.

My TR's really went out on that one. I had to restrain myself from jumping up and saying "go fuck yourself, Mikey!" I can understand him saying "children" but "women and children"?

What the hell was that boy thinking? Was this part of the script that he was reading on his teleprompter or did he ad lib that one? That is just an incredibly stupid thing to say. And I'm going to withhold a rant about DM and his men-only inner circle.

MORE SPIN

DM's spin on all of the "interest" there is in Scientology on the Internet was highest ever. Yes, we all know how much he bullshits but it even took me by surprise. He didn't say a word about any evil SP's. He didn't say a word about there being any criticism of Scientology at all!

According to DM, there's HUGE interest in Scientology and it's all because of their fantastic dissemination! That includes TC of course. If you were a Scientologist and only looked at Scientology web sites, and if you believed DM, what would be "true for you" is that millions of people are interested in finding out about Scientology, and when they find out about it, they LOVE it!

DM says stuff like:

According to Lycos search engine, of all the searches for "ology's" (anthropology, sociology, etc) the # 1 "ology" searched is Scientology!

Big applause!

But what's the big deal?

How long was Scientology # 1? Were people searching because of DM's latest dissemination campaign or to find out more of what the Tom Cruise nut cult is all about? We've been watching DM's campaigns for years and know they NEVER work! So which is it?

Everything he said about Scientology on the Internet was nothing but spin to make a horrible downstat look like a fantastic upstat.

I'm used to Scientology propaganda but it keeps getting worse. All of their spokespeople from DM on down are lying at unprecedented levels. They lie to the media and they lie to their followers. They lie without shame or embarrassment. They lie without a conscience. While I write this report and try to maintain my sense of humor, I am still deeply pained by what I witnessed.

Alright, enough of that.

THE AGING HEBER

The aging Heber is still a favorite speaker of public Scientologists and DM dragged him out to award the other "Freedom Medals." Heber may also be one of the few "execs" that are not on the RPF or who knows where.

Heber announced two "Freedom Medal" winners from the Ukraine. They were basically credited for saving the Ukraine from the evil psychs because they were the ones responsible for making the political revolution that took place there last year go right. I don't remember if Heber said how but I'll look in the next issue of Impact to see.

The last two Freedom Medal Winners were two women from Venezuela. They got their medals for handling corruption in Venezuela, whatever that means. I'll have to wait until the next issue of Impact to see if it solves that mystery too.

Heber also announced that 130 or some such psychs lost their licenses in the past year as a result of CCHR. This was upstat from about 70 the year before.

The rest of the event went by me in a blur because I was just sitting there with my mind wandering, waiting to get the hell out and wondering if my husband ate the last of the Pralines & Cream Ice Cream.

ED Int showed up and did a boring talk on the VM's and all their "great work" during Katrina and other disasters.

And that was it.

SCIENTOLOGY EVENT WEIRD MOMENT

I wanted to end on a cheerful note so I've saved the "Scientology Event Moment" for last. It happened during the first hour when DM was rattling off the stats. You know, where he goes so fast that nobody has time to actually think about any of them, and afterwards nobody remembers what they were.

He announces that LRH has just been acknowledged by Guinness World Records as the author translated into the most languages. DM still has lots more to say about it but everybody in the audience jumps out of their seats in a truly spontaneous and noisy standing ovation for LRH.

Does DM shut up and let them enjoy their celebration?

No! He plows right on and tries to talk over them!

Does the audience shut up and let DM finish?

No! They don't care that he's still talking, stay on their feet and keep on applauding, cheering and whistling LRH loudly!

All I could think was, "This is The Battle Of The Titans!" LRH, represented by his devoted followers, versus DM, represented by himself!

Neither side gave an inch! The audience didn't stop and sit down until DM had spoken his last word!

It was a first, and a truly priceless Scientology Event Weird Moment.

LOL!!

Cerridwen

http://www.truthaboutscientology.com

Inside the Cult

2005-11-13T18:23:00.000-07:00

http://web.archive.org/web/20030624004039/www.caic.org.au/psyther/sci/cosinoz.htm

Inside the Cult

The COS is able to harass relatives and friends thousands of miles away from England in order to suppress information about how it works.

=========

The Advertiser, Adelaide, Australia
October 7, 1995
Headline: "Inside the cult"

By Alison Braund

Twenty Twenty, England

A former Adelaide journalist infiltrated the "Church" of Scientology in England. Exposed and arrested, she tells her story.

THE brief had seemed relatively straightforward - to enter the "Church" of Scientology and secretly film some of its courses, widely criticised around the world for allegedly using mind-control techniques. There was no shortage of background material on the church, as it had been shrouded in controversy for many years. The organisation had been subjected to legal and political investigations in Australia, England and its birthplace, the United States. Its activities are constantly attracting publicity across the world.

Founded by a science-fiction writer, L. Ron Hubbard, the "Church" of Scientology has its own vocabulary, hierarchy, rules, regulations and agenda. It boasts a worldwide membership of more than 4 million people and one of the biggest computer databases of personal information in existence. For my investigation, I was to be recruited into the Poole ``mission'' of the church, in South England. My producers chose Poole because it was one of the most successful Scientology operations in the world. My task was to work my way into headquarters of the elite ``Sea Organisation'' (Sea Org), where mainly young members work for the church and live in a mansion on England's South Coast. The Sea Org's stated goal is to save the world. As a result, a standard employee's contract is for one billion years - that is, your life and all your lives to come.

My story, for British television company Twenty Twenty, was to be aired in a current-affairs series, The Big Story. But I never imagined the lengths the Church of Scientology would go to in its effort to stop the program from being broadcast. Nor the way it would deal with those involved.

TRAINING

My assignment began by creating a false name, life and identity which was repeatedly tested until I knew it backwards. Past scientologists came to teach me how to avoid being hypnotised. They showed me how to keep my mind occupied during concentrated sessions, which could last for several hours, and yet appear to be affected.

I also studied how to cheat the E-Meter, a primitive lie detector widely used within the Church of Scientology for, among other things, security checks. Holding two cans in your hand, it passes an electrical current through your body and your emotional responses are assessed by a scientologist who monitors a dial with a needle. Interrogations can include questions like ``Are you or have you ever been involved in the media?'' and ``Have you ever had unkind thoughts about L. Ron Hubbard?''.

For those who make it further into the church's hierarchy, there is the ``Whole Security Check'', which demands answers to questions like ``Have you ever destroyed a culture?'', ``Have you ever bred bodies for degrading purposes?'' and ``Did you come to Earth for evil purposes?''.

I practised using a micro-camera lens hidden in a pair of spectacles. Recording and sound equipment was strapped to a corset. A psychologist came to assess my personality. His findings would be compared with those of the scientologists' well-known, 200-question personality test, ``The Standard Oxford Capacity Analysis'', which soon would be used on me. As a final safeguard, I signed a contract giving my permission to be forcibly removed from the Church of Scientology's premises in case I was brainwashed.

RECRUITMENT

The Scientology recruiter who stopped me in the Poole Mall said he was promoting a book. He said he wanted to ask me some questions. This is a standard technique. The goal is to stop people, ask them some preliminary questions and then take them to a Scientology office where they are asked to do the Standard Oxford Capacity Analysis. This test usually shows that a person is in need of what is known within the organisation as ``dianetic auditing''. I followed my recruiter to a book display centre to learn more about dianetics, which I was told could improve my life, memory and relationships. I was asked to complete the personality test and drop it off at the Scientology office, or ``college'', that evening.

The Scientology personality test asks curious questions like ``Are you a slow eater?'', ``Do you often whistle or sing just for the fun of it?'', ``When unexpected things happen, do some of your muscles have jerking motions?'', ``Do you consider too much money is spent on social security'', ``Are you opposed to the probation system for criminals?'' and ``Do you browse through railway timetables, directories or dictionaries just for pleasure?''. Its results are drawn on to a graph, which invariably shows personal problems, requiring the need to spend money on taking Scientology courses to improve one's life. As expected, the findings of my earlier, professional psychological test contrasted strongly with their results.

That evening, at the ``college'', I had my first taste of the skilful and hard-sell techniques of the church's recruiters, who are given targets to be reached at the end of each week. Most people at Poole appeared to work long days, at least six days a week. One ex-scientologist told me he earned 90 ($A180) a week. However, if targets were not met, this could fall to as low as 2.50 ($A5) a week. Graphs charting the financial and membership status of the Poole mission were pinned to walls in the building. I learnt Scientology ``missions'' compete to beat the others found throughout the world.

I arrived at the college at 9pm. By 10.30pm, I had been in the ``public contact'' secretary's office for over an hour. I was feeling vulnerable and depressed. Although I was determined not to sign up for anything during the marathon session, or hand over any money that evening, I ended up signing up just to get away. I handed over the special half-price fee of 32.25 for five hours of ``auditing''.

``Auditing'' sessions typically would start with understanding and friendship from the Scientology staff as they discussed problems and offered solutions. Then they would question the effectiveness of outside forms of help, and suggest that only by undertaking a Scientology course would an improvement be achieved.

COURSES

There are many types of Scientology ``auditing'' courses. The object is to ``clear'' the person - to cancel all their ``engrams'' left behind by negative experiences. A promotional video explains ``engrams'' by showing a woman who falls to the floor. While unconscious, a tap is running in the kitchen and her husband comments she looks terrible. As a result, every time a tap runs she thinks she looks terrible.

To cancel all one's ``engrams'' usually takes at least 200 hours, although it can take thousands. Each session costs money. The evidence of a ``clear'' person is apparently someone with near-perfect memory and glowing health: radiant personalities free from disease. My ``auditing'' entailed describing a negative event in my life to my auditor over and over again, in order that I could talk about the event free from any emotion connected with it.

The auditor spoke in a slow, soothing monotone in a method similar to that used in hypnosis. He wrote down everything I said. After my auditing was completed, I was congratulated before it was recommended I do a ``Purification Rundown''. Through massive doses of vitamins and an average of five hours of sauna a day, along with running activities, the program is claimed to release you from all legal and illegal drugs and alcohol which otherwise would linger forever in your system.

I refused to do this course so it was suggested I do the ``Success Through Communications'' course, as my personality test had shown I had problems communicating. I agreed to this, paid 58 and endured three days of inane work and drills. I spent two, boring hours sitting, staring at a scientologist. There are other strange drills, including ignoring anything your partner is saying, pretending to sound interested, changing the subject and answering a question by ignoring it.

PUNISHMENT

Any criticism of courses or the church was strictly forbidden. Church members told me it was part of a plot by the ``suppressive or anti-social'' person to stop any good being done in the world. Even among members, nothing critical was ever said, although it appeared obvious to me some people were unhappy about work conditions. I got the impression that the feeling within the cult is like that of a dictatorial regime - you never know who your friends are and you were always being watched. Every scientologist is expected to report anything they hear which is contrary to the church teachings. Anyone who does anything rebellious or fails substantially could be sent on the infamous ``Rehabilitation Project Force'' (RPF). Stories from ex-cult members describe cramped sleeping arrangements, hard manual labor and security checks (or ``evil purpose editing'').

COSTS

After a handful of courses, my future worth to the church was to be determined. I was sent to the head of the mission to have my finances assessed. I said I had very little money left but hinted I would have access to an inheritance in a few weeks.

The mission head suddenly was interested. He persisted with suggesting ways I could get the money as soon as possible, so I could get started with future courses. One costing 2000 was deemed best for me. I was lucky though and ended up paying only half of another course which cost only about 100. It has been well documented by the media that other people who have become involved with the Church of Scientology have not been so fortunate.

PERSUASION

It may seem incredible that otherwise intelligent people can fall victim but they are given little time to think, have other interests or see their friends. As a new recruit, I was seldom left alone and would be personally escorted from room to room - even if I knew where to go.

Sometimes I was even followed into the toilet and asked questions. On my second visit, when I went to move my car, I was escorted there and back.

When I decided it was time to make my run for the church headquarters, the Sea Org, I entered on the pretext of visiting a mansion formerly owned by L. Ron Hubbard. After discussions, I was asked if I'd be interested in joining the staff. There, I found members were working and studying from 8am to 10pm.

I had become used to filling out questionnaires, surveys, writing testimonies and being asked security questions. But at Sea Org headquarters, I was introduced to the ``Life History'' questionnaire, which topped them all.

I was asked to list all people I knew who had expressed any opinion against Scientology. I had to detail all my friends; their jobs and previous jobs and the communication I'd had with them since joining Scientology; to list all the drugs and medicine I'd taken, when and for how long; to give a complete sexual history, from the earliest experience, of both heterosexual and homosexual activities and the names of all involved, the number of times of the activity and any perversions engaged in. I objected but was told the information was totally confidential and would be used only by my counsellors to help me. I do not believe this is the case.

ARREST

Then, as my assignment continued, there was a tip-off. I apparently was followed one evening to the house of the producer of my program, whose address already was noted by the Scientology ``Special Affairs'' office.

When I returned to the Sea Org headquarters, I was left alone in a room. It was there I saw a pile of photocopied documents marked ``strictly confidential''. They included the names of some ex-members who had been involved in litigation with the church. I wanted to read the material and film it, so I put one of the papers in my bag. Meanwhile, the ``Special Affairs'' director was filming my activities with two concealed cameras. The police were called and I was arrested for suspicion of theft.

As I left the building, the corridors were suddenly lined with scientologists, some of whom photographed and videotaped me. I was taken to the local police station and later released on bail. My main fear was that the scientologists would get hold of my real name. It is widely documented that people who have spoken out against the church and its activities have been harassed. Although the police assured me they didn't release my name, it wasn't long before the cult was visiting my family in rural South Australia.

THE AFTERMATH

After my arrest, I rang my family in Australia to warn them the church may contact them. I heard someone, claiming to be a journalist, had called my former high school asking for information about my background. He told my father I was involved in a cult and wanted to help me. When my father refused to tell him anything, a woman visited him the next day.

She admitted she was from the Church of Scientology and said I had been arrested, that I would get a criminal record and never be able to work again. She urged him to contact me and convince me not to proceed with the program. Meanwhile, the man had been at my primary school, masquerading as the husband of one of my friends, looking through my school records. The campaign to stop the program from being aired gathered momentum. This involved demonstrations and the distribution of a Scientology magazine called Freedom. An article in Freedom accused me and my producers of dishonesty, deceit, violating codes of television journalistic ethics and committing criminal acts.

Everything built up to broadcast night. Predictably, Carlton TV had many phone calls the evening the program was aired, complaining about biased reporting. But one of the most telling things of all, was that many of them were made before the broadcast even went to air.

CHARGES

After a protracted legal wrangle, charges for suspicion of theft were dropped by the Crown Prosecution Service. The scientologists unsuccessfully sought an injunction against the program going to air. They also issued civil writs against me and Twenty Twenty, claiming damages for trespass to goods, trespass and breach of confidences. These proceedings have yet to be heard.

The Church of Scientology also issued summonses for ``obtaining services by deception''. My lawyers applied to the London Magistrates Court for a hearing to halt these proceedings.

The case hit the media spotlight. My lawyers argued the summonses should be dismissed as they were issued solely to prevent the broadcast of the program, to punish and embarrass the defendants for making the program and to dissuade other journalists from publishing any material critical of the church. The case ended in the withdrawal of the summonses late last month, although the church still has the right to appeal.

-sidebar-

Behind Scientology

Described as the study of knowledge, it was invented by the science-fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard in the 1950s. Although innocent on the surface, dealing with self improvement, the movement has quite strange undertones. As a member moves up the various levels, by completing courses, he or she discovers its belief in reincarnation. When a member reaches the highly classified OT3 level (Operating Thetan), he or she is ready to learn the secret of the history of the universe, which is so powerful and dangerous that if one is not ready for its revelation, it will result in their death. The revelation is that billions of years ago, the Earth was called the planet Creteon and the ruler of the galaxy, Prince Xenu, living in another galaxy which was over-populated, sent some of his subjects to Earth, stored them in volcanoes and blew them up with atom bombs. Their souls, or "thetans" clustered together and now form us.

Source:
The Advertiser, Adelaide, Australia
October 7, 1995

SCIENTOLOGY, A COERCIVE PSYCHOLOGICAL SYSTEM

2005-11-13T18:20:00.000-07:00

http://web.archive.org/web/20030624013316/www.caic.org.au/psyther/sci/sci-cult.htm

SCIENTOLOGY, A COERCIVE PSYCHOLOGICAL SYSTEM

Criteria for determining if a group is a dangerous and destructive cult

I have been associated with the subject matter of Scientology and its many organizations for twenty nine years. In this time, I have had extensive administrative and technical training and worked at various organizations in addition to doing some of its more advanced "Upper" levels. In this essay I have made liberal, and sometimes verbatim, use of the materials that FACTNET has developed in its research of coercive psychological systems.

This essay is limited to an analysis of Scientology as an coercive psychological system, its policies and procedures, and does NOT include independent groups or individuals using scientological materials, in whatever form, outside of the ORGANIZATION.

Anybody can unfairly accuse or attack an organization or group they disagree with or dislike by calling it a "cult" or saying that they are using coercive mind control or coercive psychological systems as you call it. FACTNET uses specific criteria to determine if a coercive psychological system has been used. It does not imply organizations or individuals are using coercive pyschological systems or are destructive or dangerous cults without careful research and determination that the evidence fits definite criteria.

The FIRST set of criteria comes from the description of "A technical overview of Psychological Coercion" derived from a report by Singer and Ofshe, Apr 1990. A summary of this report was presented to the U.S. Supreme Court as an educational Appendix on coercive psychological systems in the case of Wollersheim vs Church of Scientology 89-1367 and 89-1361. The Wollersheim case was being considered related to issues involving abuse in this area.

The SECOND set of criteria have to do with defining common elements of destructive and dangerous cults.

COMMON PROPERITIES

OF POTENTIALLY DESTRUCTIVE AND DANGEROUS CULTS

* The cult is authoritarian in its power structure. The leader is regarded as the supreme authority. He or she may delegate certain power to a few subordinates for the purpose of seeing that members adhere to the leader's wishes and roles. There is no appeal outside of his or her system to greater systems of justice. For example, if a school teacher feels unjustly treated by a principal, appeals can be made. In a cult, the leader claims to have the only and final ruling on all matters.

L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, was considered the "Source" of all materials published by the organization. He personally approved the appointment of all key leaders and they served at his pleasure. He hand-picked and indoctrinated his present successor, Captain David Miscavige, when Miscavige was 22 years old. Church members seeking a redress of grievances outside of the Scientology "Justice" system are automatically expelled from the organization and declared "Suppressive persons". Hubbard was the final authority on all petitions on grievances.

* The cult's leaders tend to be charismatic, determined and domineering. They persuade followers to drop their families, jobs, and careers, and friends to follow them. They (not the individual) take over control of their follower's possessions, money, and lives.

* The cult's leaders are self-appointed, messianic persons who claim to have a special mission in life.

Hubbard was a prolific writer of science fiction. In his many lectures he spoke of his adventures in para-military space organizations prior to his coming to Earth. He claimed to be Guatama Siddharta, the founder of Buddhism, in a previous life. He stated his mission was to create a New Civilization by the Scientologization of the Earth.

* The cult's leaders center the veneration of members upon themselves. Priests, rabbis, ministers, democratic leaders, and leader of genuinely altruistic movements keep the veneration of adherents focused on God, abstract principles, and group purposes. Cult leaders, in contrast, keep the focus of love, devotion and allegiance on themselves.

In compliance with Hubbard's directive, pictures or busts of Hubbard are in almost every room in the organizations. At the end of every staff meeting, members face an oversized picture of Hubbard and give a three-cheers chant and a rousing round of applauses to the icon. The organization built a multi-million dollar museum/shrine in memory of Hubbard after his death in 1986. All organizations maintain a unused office space for Hubbard, in anticipation of his future return.

* The cult tends to be totalitarian in its control of the behaviour of its members. Cults are likely to dictate in great detail what members wear, eat, when and where they work, sleep, and bathe - as well as what to believe, think, and say.

* The cult tends to have a double set of ethics. Members are urged to be open and honest within the group, and confess all to the leaders. On the other hand, they are encouraged to deceive and manipulate outsiders or nonmembers. Established religions teach members to be honest and truthful to all, and to abide by one set of ethics.

Organization staff members are compelled to submit to interrogations called "security checks" and to write statements detailing their transgressions against the organization and its leaders, called "Overts/Witholds Writeups". Critics of the organization and dissident former members are considered "Suppressives" and a policy called "Fair Game" exempts Church members from dealing fairly and ethically with them. "Suppressive" can be lied to, cheated, tricked, sued, or destroyed, without any consequences from the organization.

* the cult has basically only two purposes, recruiting new members and fund-raising. Established religions and altruistic movements may also recruit and raise funds. However, their sole purpose is not to grow larger; such groups have the goals to better the lives of their members and mankind in general. The cults may claim to make social contributions, but in actuality these remain claims, or gestures. Their focus is always dominated by recruiting new members and fund-raising.

The Scientology organization has developed sophisticated techniques for gaining new members. "Personality" testing and "dissemination" drills and high-pressure sales techniques are used extensively. Field Staff Members (FSMs) earn 15% commissions for new members they sign up for Church services. The weekly gross income of the organization is considered its highest priority and the organization reported a yearly worldwide annual income of about 300 million dollars in the early 1990's. The cost for members to achieve its full services and highest "Upper Levels" is over $250,000. The organization has incorporated numerous shell organization that maintain a facade of social reform groups, but they are merely a vehicle for Public Relations ploys and rabble rousing against groups the organization considers antipathetic to its activities.

* The cult appears to be innovative and exclusive. The leader claims to be breaking with tradition, offering something novel, and instituting the only viable system for change that will solve life's problems or the world's ills. While claiming this, the cult then surreptitiously uses systems of psychological coercion on its members to inhibit their ability to examine the actual validity of the claims of the leader and the cult.

Scientology calls itself a "Religion" and a "Science of Life" and states as its goals the creation of a "World without War, Crime, or Insanity".

THE THIRD SET OF CRITERIA

The third set of criteria has to do with defining other common elements of coercive psychological systems. If most of Robert Jay Lifton's eight point model of thought reform ("Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism" by R. Lifton, W.W. Norton & Co., 1963) is being used in a cultic organization, it is most likely a dangerous and destructive cult. These eight points are:

1. ENVIRONMENTAL CONTROL*

* Limitations of many/all forms of communication with those outside the group. Books, magazines, letters and visits with friends and family are taboo. "Come out and be separate".

At the Scientology "Flag Land Base" married staff members are only allowed one hour a day with their children. Visits or personal calls from "non-Scientologist" family members are strongly frowned on. Dependents do not attend public schools. Staff members are forbidden to have TVs in their living quarters. Private mail for staff members was frequently opened by senior staff members to check for disturbing news about the organization from friends or relatives. . Reading of newspapers or non-Scientology materials is strongly frowned on. Staff members are forbidden from reading or discussing any material critical of the organization or its leaders. Members are forbidden communication with disaffected members.

2. MYSTICAL MANIPULATION*

* The potential convert to the group becomes convinced of the higher purpose and special calling of the group through a profound encounter/experience, for example, through an alleged miracle or prophetic word of those in the group.

In 1968, Hubbard announced to all the organizations that he had traversed the "Wall of Fire" and discovered the long buried secret reasons for the degradation of the Earth and 76 nearby planets. This discovery is commonly called the "OT3" materials. Hubbard claimed the mystery had been buried for 76 million years and he was the first to discover the secret without dying. Hubbard developed a methodology which he claimed would liberate the planet and create a New Civilization. He formed a elite organization of devoted members called the "Sea Organization" to carry out this personal mission. He bought a fleet of ships and called himself the "Commodore" of the flotilla and Sea Organization members dressed in naval uniforms and formed a para-military, quasi-religious organization and started a massive world-wide recruitment effort to build the group that would "Clear" the planet.

3. DEMAND FOR PURITY*

* An explicit goal of the group is to bring about some kind of change, whether it be on a global, social, or personal level. "Perfection is possible if one stays with the group and is committed."

Hubbard claimed that "Total Freedom" was only possible within Scientology and Sea Organization members sign ONE BILLION year contracts as a symbol of their committment to Hubbard's mission.

4. CULT OF CONFESSION*

* The unhealthy practice of self disclosure to members in the group, often in the context of a public gathering in the group, admitting past sins and imperfections, even doubts about the group and critical thoughts about the integrity of the leaders.

Electronic interrogations, called "Security Checking" are used extensively within the organization to assure group conformity and to detect and stifle dissenting members. Members are required to write detailed descriptions of their shortcomings and dissident thoughts about the organization's leaders or policies. These writeups and security check session reports are maintained and are used by the organization to compel silence if the member becomes disaffected and leaves. "Ethics" conditions are assigned to deal with non-productive members, or members manifesting indications of disloyalty or disaffection. It is a Hubbardian maxim that members expressing criticism of the organization, leaving the organization, or failing to make "spiritual" progress are manifesting undisclosed transgressions against the organization. This insidious manipulative device remains intact in the minds of many former members and serves as a constant reminder of their "undisclosed" trangressions against the organization and their "real reason" for leaving it.

5. SACRED SCIENCE*

* The group's perspective is absolutely true and completly adequate to explain EVERYTHING. The doctrine is not subject to amendments or question. ABSOLUTE conformity to the doctrine is required.

Hubbard called his ideology "The Science of Knowing How To Know". He called his essays "STANDARD TECH". NO amendments were allowed and the materials had to be LITERALLY interpreted, without ANY verbal explainations. Hubbard developed a "Study Tech" and anyone questioning or disagreeing with his essays was considered to be suffering from "Misunderstood Words". Any person who amended his procedures was labeled a "Squirrel" and expelled from the organization and branded a "Suppressive Person". The organization calls Hubbard's essays its "Sacred Scriptures" and copyrighted it and obtained "Trade Secret" status on Hubbard's mystical experiences, its "Most Sacred Scriptures", the "Upper Levels". The organization has severe sanctions for members who publically disclose the contents of its "Upper Levels".

6. LOADED LANGUAGE*

* A new vocabulary emerges within the context of the group. Group members "think" within the very abstract and narrow parameters of the group's doctrine. The terminology sufficiently stops members from thinking critically by reinforcing a "black and white" mentality. Loaded terms and cliches prejudices thinking.

Hubbard wrote several thick volumes containing Scientology jargon and members are forbidden to use terminology from "earlier practices" before they came into the organization. The organization uses derisive terms for non-Scientologists (Wogs), and critics and dissident former members (Suppressive Persons). Hubbard was especially harsh in his vilification of mental health professionals and medical doctors, and considered them in league with a world-wide conspiracy against him and his organization.

7. DOCTRINE OVER PERSON*

* Pre-group experience and group experience are narrowly and decisively interpreted through the absolute doctrine, even when experience contradicts the doctrine.

8. DISPENSING OF EXISTENCE*

* Salvation is possible only in the group. Those who leave the group are doomed.

The Hubbardian view that Scientology is the ONLY "Road to Total Freedom" is constantly stressed. The threat of expulsion and denial of the "Upper Levels" is an effective method in maintaining group conformity and discouraging internal dissidence. Even amongst many expelled members, the emotional distress and consideration that one has been "Condemned to Hell" by denial of access to the "Upper Levels" lingers for a long time.

From: harringtonj-smtc

Date: Fri, 20 Jan 1995 17:11:00 -0500

Mary Sue Hubbard Dead at 71

2005-11-13T14:40:00.000-07:00

Mary Sue Hubbard, third wife of L. Ron Hubbard, died on November 25th, 2002, at 5:25PM. She was born in Milam County, Texas, on June 17th, 1931, to Ms. Mary Cathrine Hill and Mr. Harry Whipp. She died from metastatic breast carcinoma with pulmonary complications. She died in her place of residence on Chislehurst Drive, Los Angeles, California. Her death was not reported to the coroner. The body was cremated.

Mary Sue Hubbard is best known as the director of the Scientology corporation's Guardians Office: the department within the Scientology business that committed crimes and human rights abuses, and that is now called the Office of Special Affairs.

In 1979 Ms. Hubbard and ten other top Scientology management officials were tried in a court of law (Criminal Case No. 78-401 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA v. MARY SUE HUBBARD, et al.) and convicted by uncontested stipulation of brazen, systematic and persistent burglaries of United States Government offices in Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles, California, over an extended period of at least some two years.

Crimes included the harboring of a fugitive; the forceful kidnapping of a federal witness; submitting false evidence to the Grand Jury; destroying other evidence which might have been of valuable aid to the Grand Jury's investigation; preparing a cover-up story; and encouraging and drilling a crucial witness to give false testimony under oath to that Grand Jury.

Crimes also stipulated and uncontested were: infiltration and theft of documents from a number of prominent private national and world organizations, law firms and newspapers; the execution of smear campaigns and baseless law suits to destroy private individuals who had attempted to exercise their First Amendment rights to freedom of expression; the framing of private citizens who had been critical of Scientology, including the forging of documents which led to the indictment of at least one innocent person (Paulette Cooper); violation of the civil rights of prominent private figures and public officials.

Other defendants found guilty via uncontested stipulation were Henning Heldt; Duke Snider; Richard Weigand; Gregory Willardson; Mitchell Hermann a/k/a Mike Cooper; Cindy Raymond; Gerald Bennett Wolfe; Sharon Thomas; Morris "Mo" Budlong; and Jane Kember.

According to the second-in-command of Scientology, Jesse Prince, Ms. Hubbard was forced by from twelve to seventeen men to sign away all of her rights to Scientology copyrights, trademarks, and bank accounts for the sum of $100,000; the estimated value of the Scientology corporation was estimated to be worth from $400,000,000 to $700,000,000.

Mary Sue Hubbard's spouse, Lafayette Ronald "Ron" Hubbard, Senior, died at the age of 74 years allegedly on January 24, 1986, in his mobile home near San Luis Obispo. Mr. Hubbard, a convicted felon, spent the last dozen years of his life a fugitive from justice and died in hiding. He left behind a pseudo-religious commercial empire worth nearly one billion dollars.

An open letter to a Scientologist from an OT8

2005-11-13T08:23:00.000-07:00

From: "Michael Pattinson"
Subject: An open letter to a Scientologist from an OT8
Date: 12 Nov 2005 23:41:13 -0800
Message-ID: <1131867673.719007.101500@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com>

12 November 2005

Dear Scientologist,

I completed New OT8 in February 1990 after being in Scientology since 1973. During that period I was mainly "public" but did several years as a staff member in Paris Org as Qual Sec. I trained up to be a C/S, FPRD and Confessional auditor and solo auditor. I was a Scientology celebrity as an international fine artist, creating beautiful paintings of "visualized" music. Many Scientologists (thousands) knew me personally from my art tours of orgs and missions in the early 1980s. Samples of my art can be seen at www.mpattinson.photosite.com

Though you may read about how and why I actually left Scientology on the internet (you would probably have to use a non-Scientologist's computer, however) and see the data at www.lermanet.com/michaelpattinson, I wanted to address a simple letter of "Truth Revealed" to you here. After all, that is the very name of the OT8 level.

As I read the lists of many Scientology staff names and addresses so recently published on the world wide web (though I don't know how that came about) I was filled with compassion at the fact of your commitment and devotion to Scientology and its basic aims. I was also a proud trooper for decades and was utterly convinced that Scientology was really everything I read it was and heard it was. Peer agreement (group ARC) was also a strong re-enforcement of my convictions and my unrelenting in-KSW attitude that I applied very well despite it sometimes coming back at me with counter-emotions and counter-efforts.

Like you, I too have made things go right when things looked very bleak. I, too have spent a lot of money on services and donations that I really could not afford. I have done the "yo-yo" exercise and stood and applauded and cheered LRH's photo over and over again at events.

Like you I have also held back the tears of protest and dismay when "handlings" went wrong or were off-target and waited endless frustrating hours in waiting rooms for folders, C/s"s and D of P interviews. I have, maybe like yourself, had serious doubts as to the unexplainable mysterious "outnesses" in the Scientology lines and terminals that seemed to be so quickly smothered, hurried away or blanket-defined as "entheta". I quietly "wondered" (but better not say anything) at seeing the sudden painful hostilities towards and upsetting disappearances of staff members, the sadness of the RPFers or the black hole money pit my money got sucked into so fast.

I have also had the personal wins from auditing, feelings of group ARC in the briefings and in courses in LRH tech, admin and ethics training, though in retrospect I could wish that they had been as permanent as my payments were to purchase them. I have also seen the F/Ns and the VGIs from my pc's and (in cramming) auditors from applying tech. Without those wins along the way I would never have made it all way up the Bridge to New OT8, as you know. Going OT is an uphill battle all the way.

I have been in your position when my own ethics handlings went both well or badly, when conditions were applied both to eventual wins and to the strained "E.P" of satisfying the fixed ideas of tech or ethics terminals who were aiming at a specific result I had to attain. I have done conditions formulas till they were coming out of my ears, and tons and tons of other ethics, tech and admin applications. I personally knew the Flag Class 12 auditors from the Apollo as I trained with them at Flag, I have known the Int Execs since they were teenagers, I have personally known all LRH's children. I have known and frequented many of the Scientology celebrities too.

I WENT ALL THE WAY UP THE BRIDGE (there is no available level above New OT8).

What happened then is why I am writing this letter. I wish it was not necessary to write this but it is. I firmly believe that Truth is a friend to, and that lies are an enemy of survival. Yes, feel free to investigate what I write about here...

It is truly heartbreaking for me to have to inform you that you have been lied to, and not just in a small way. I am so, so sorry to have to tell you this, but please bear with me.

You have been lied to regarding the "Bridge to Total Freedom" as it does not arrive at Total Freedom. I know this because I have been there and experienced it. OT8 is NOT Total Freedom, yet there is no more Bridge to travel.

You may have wondered why OTs still behave in "strange" or weird ways and still exhibit aberrated behaviors. They are on the big secret missed withhold of not having received what LRH promised. Every non-OT "misses" the withhold.

You have been lied to about O.T.powers. I will not go into any case data or OT level data as it is not necessary, but I can tell you that the advertised and promised O.T powers LRH writes about such as telekinesis (moving objects as a thetan), perfect total recall, "clear" of any and all aberrations, permanently Cause over Life, real-life Cause over MEST, etc are NOT in reality delivered by Scientology (in my direct experience and in that of many others).

You have been lied to about LRH's death, and the lies were criminally false. The "story" about LRH deciding to causatively but regrettably depart his body, go off to research further OT levels, etc. was very likely a pack of lies. The coroner's report found a psychiatric drug (Vistaril") in LRH's body after death as well as many needle marks. The surrounding circumstances of LRH's death such as a very unkempt body, changing his Will a day before he died, the hurried cremation, the refusal of autopsy, all make for a very suspicious situation. LRH had been hiding out at the Creston ranch under the false name "Jack Mitchell" so as not to be served with lawsuits, as those who knew have revealed.

You have been lied to about LRH's biography, and in many aspects of it, not just a few.

Though this may seem to be shocking enough or upsetting already there are many other big and awful lies you have been told and false data you have been fed. In fact enough false data to fill books which expose and clarify them. Such books as "A Piece of Blue Sky" by Jon Atack, Bare Faced Messiah by Bent Corydon and L.Ron Hubbard Jr., L.Ron Hubbard:Messiah or Madman?" are full of truths revealed and internal Scientology mysteries unfurled.

The internet is a source for you to explore the truths that hundreds of former Scientologists, some from Int Exec strata, have written and revealed.

Truth, being made of pure Life itself can never be "entheta". It is pure theta, even if shocking in its first impact ;like the sunshine that dazzles the eyes of someone emerging from a deep and dark cavern, having followed a closely taped path to nowhere but blind obedience.

But why, you may ask, not let us down slowly? Well, we who "found out" were not let down slowly and we survived the truth and its powerful re-orientations. So can you.

I invite you to explore the internet and finding your own freeing truths. I ask that you open your eyes and see for yourself. I invite you to see both sides of the Scientology coin.

For example;
www.lemanet.com
www.xenu.net
and other linked sites.

BEWARE of those who say "Do NOT look!" or try to label the truth or me,
or other brave ex-members who have the integrity to seak out despite
personal dangers as "entheta" or SP's. To my knowledge I have NOT been
declared SP, and have even asked Scientolgy terminals if there was such
a "declare" on several occasions to no avail, so I would welcome you to
be in communication with me.

I am proud to have been a companion of many, many Scientologists along
the way and I am equally proud of those who have had the guts to speak
out publicly. I regret the lies we were told and the fraud that took
advantage of our trusting good nature. I believe they must be fully
exposed and dealt with appropriately.

In closing, I salute your positive goals, your will to survive, your
bravery in facing new viewpoints and especially the divine spirit
within you that is immortal, beautiful and full of the Light that
shines as bright as the Sun. This inner Light is your real Source.

Michael Pattinson

mpattinson AT gmail DOT com

Anderson Report Chapter 19-Healing Claims of Scientology

2005-11-13T08:17:00.000-07:00

http://web.archive.org/web/20030624002607/www.caic.org.au/psyther/sci/andrep19.htm

THE ANDERSON REPORT
Report of the Board of Enquiry into Scientology
by Kevin Victor Anderson, Q.C.
Published 1965 by the State of Victoria, Australia

CHAPTER 19
THE HEALING CLAIMS OF SCIENTOLOGY

A very important phase of the Inquiry was whether scientology

(a) claimed to heal or cure ills or ailments,

(b) practised the healing or curing of ills or ailments.

Williams and other executive scientologists from time to time asserted in evidence that scientology neither claimed to cure nor practised curing, that the practising of scientology to cure any ailment was forbidden and that auditors would be decertificated if they were found doing so or promising to cure any ailment. It was said that the curing of ailments had been a dianetic activity and that, because of troubles associated with non-qualified persons purporting to cure ailments, dianetics was put aside and scientology developed in such a way that specifically no claim was made to heal.

Certain bulletins and other documents emanating from Hubbard likewise state that the curing of ailments is not the role of scientology, but these are quite at variance with many other bulletins and similar publications, which describe scientology in terms which are consistent only with a claim that scientology can and does effect cures of the most remarkable kind.

The official attitude advanced at the Inquiry that scientology did not claim to heal was, and is, only a camouflage. The real intention of scientology is to inculcate in the minds of anyone who becomes interested in it the impression or belief that, as well as being a panacea for all problems, worries and aberrations, it is a gateway to sure cures for a great variety of mental and physical ills. And it is at the vary basis of scientology teaching that mental and physical well-being is assured to those who have sufficient scientology processing.

A fundamental principle of scientology is that a rehabilitated thetan is capable of caring for the body and the mind of the human being which it possesses and, therefore, if the thetan is rehabilitated and all its abilities are restored, it will be able to cure the ills of the body and mind. The only way to rehabilitate a thetan is said to be by scientology processing.

The belief that scientology is a cure for many illnesses, both mental and physical, is propagated by Hubbard consistently and deliberately. No opportunity is missed of claiming for scientology the credit of a cure, and in his books and other writings repeated claims are made and cases quoted of alleged cures, many of them said to be miraculous.

Campaigns are planned for enticing people into scientology because of what it offers in the way of alleviation and cure of illnesses. From time to time there is a protest by Hubbard and the HASI that they are not concerned with cures of bodily ills, and that their only goal is to make the able more able. But these protestations are hollow-sounding in the light of the calculated deception which is consistently practised in the drive for more and still more adherents to scientology. Sometimes the attitude adopted is, in effect, "We don't claim to cure, curing is not our concern. Of course, if you look at our record, look at the miraculous cures we have effected, look what dianetics, which is a branch of scientology, can do and has done, you will see that scientology does cure; but we don't claim to cure". This is a cunning and effective pose, its effectiveness being best judged by the great number of ardent scientologists who firmly believe, as their evidence before the Board and a perusal of their files s how, that scientology possesses remarkable curative powers, and that in many cases they are "in scientology" partly at least because of such beliefs.

Mindful of this technique, one well understands why Hubbard insists that his million copy best-seller, Dianetics: MSMH, is essential reading at all stages of scientology study, even though the book was written in 1950, before scientology was founded, and notwithstanding that dianetics was said by witnesses not now to be practised.

The claims for dianetics, as appearing on the dustcover of Dianetics: MSMH and in the text, include assertions that cases of "Psychosomatic ills such as arthritis, migraine, ulcers, allergies, asthma, coronary difficulties (psychosomatic - about one-third of all heart trouble cases), tendonitis, bursitis, paralysis (hysterical), eye trouble (non-pathological) have all responded .... without failure"; in fact, the claim made is that with the techniques mentioned in Dianetics: MSMH, "The psychiatrist, psycho-analyst and intelligent layman can successfully and invariably treat all psychosomatic ills and inorganic aberrations," and that it can cure 70 per cent. of all man's illnesses and aberrations.

In various places Hubbard has written to the effect that arthritis, eye conditions, heart conditions, cancer, all psychosomatic illnesses, morning sickness, ulcers, tuberculosis, the common cold, the common cough, illness from bacterial or virus infections, alcoholism and a multitude of other complaints and conditions are engramic and respond to processing.

In Com. Mag. Vol. 1, No. 10, the official publication of the Melbourne HASI, the statement is made that " All that you have read about in scientology and dianetics can be achieved by you with processing from the Hubbard Guidance Centre".

In Com. Mag. of December, 1963, Hubbard writes,

"The psychologist could not change intelligence quotient or personality at will. The Scientologist can. The psychologist could not restore sanity and happiness to the insane. The Scientologist can .... Scientology will inherit the hospitals, the clinics, the asylums, the halls of learning where humanity was abused. Scientology will inherit the task of sign-posting Man upon a better road. There are only two reasons why this is so: they had their chance and did not do their job; we have our chance and are doing ours".

That Hubbard and scientology specifically claim to heal, and attract people in the belief that they do heal, is obvious from HCO Pol. Lr. of the 1st September, AD 12 (1962), entitled "Healing Promotion". That letter reads:

"By healing you can graduate a pc up to clearing interest and thus we have a lower level feeder line, capable of successful accomplishment with normal HCA/HPA training. That programme has the following thought major: Maybe you're not sick. Maybe you're just suppressed. See us and find out.

"The phrasing can be more elegant, the message remains the same.

"Legally, this permits us to heal without engaging in healing as, in actual fact, we address no illnesses and indeed, deny people are ill - they are only suppressed. Sickness occurs, we say, where suppression has been too great. The argument is - have you been sick? Did you go to doctors to be cured? Did they cure it? Then (as they didn't) maybe you're not sick, maybe you're just suppressed. So take some processing and find out. And the person gets well! We use on him the exact button he came to us on. So he's never dismayed at any change of tack on our part. Then we interest him in clearing.

"This, I am sure, is the long sought gradient. This, used right, will build our new buildings, use our Academy Graduates and give us a chance to train up auditors to clearing.

"The legal argument is simple, we don't believe in sickness, we do not address illness, we do not diagnose, we believe that freeing the human spirit also incidentally prevents sickness. We are doing prevention. We also find people do not have to be crazy to be suppressed, that nearly everybody is suppressed. We do send acutely ill people to doctors. We advertise to cure no diseases! That last is important legally. We only infer that people who think they are sick are really not, but only suppressed."

A circular issued by the Melbourne College of Personal Efficiency, the Hawthorn scientology organization, claimed

"Tens of thousands of case histories (reports on patients' individual records) all sworn to (attested before public officials) are in the possession of the organization of scientology .... Scientology in the words of an expert can cure 70 per cent. of Man's illnesses .... It is valid. It has been tested .... Scientology does things for people which have not been done before. It makes them well from illnesses which were once considered hopeless. It increases their intelligence by actual measurement, it ch anges their competence, and betters their behaviour. In addition to these things it brings them a better understanding of life. One outstanding thing which it does - it alleviates burns received from atomic bombs. Scientology is the only specific cure for atomic bomb radiation flash burns. Scientology processing given to persons burned by radiation can eliminate the majority of difficulty."

HCO Pol. Lr. of the 12th October, 1962, states that the purpose of the Hubbard Guidance Centre is to "do more for people's health and ability than has ever before been possible."

A letter dated the 6th October, 1962, from the Melbourne HASI to a preclear contained a specific offer to treat physical complaints, in the following terms, "If you suffer from physical complaints which have not been cured by usual medical methods--why not call in and let us find out if you are just suppressed? We have special methods of handling such difficulties.

In HCO Pol. Lr. of the 2nd August, 1963, Hubbard wrote,

"Scientology for use in spiritual healing. This is a healing strata .... The target is human illness. We have never entered this field but as we are not thanked for staying out of it, we might as well dominate it. It is a good procurement area."

The claims made for curing are so numerous and consistent that it is impracticable to refer to all of such instances but a selection will indicate the general nature of them.

In A History of Man, Hubbard wrote: "Cancer has been eradicated by auditing out conception and mitosis". In Scientology: The Fundamentals of Thought, Hubbard claimed that "Scientology is the only specific (cure) for radiation (atomic bomb) burns". In Scientology: issue 15-G, Hubbard writes,

"Leukaemia is evidently psychosomatic in origin and at least eight cases of leukaemia had been treated successfully by dianetics after medicine had traditionally given up. The source of leukaemia has been reported to be an engram containing the phrase 'it turns my blood to water'."

The 1957 edition of Hubbard's Scientology: 8-80 contained a new introduction by a "doctor of scientology", stating, "how an auditor trained in this material by the Academy of Scientology can handle with precision even the insane or a few days' old baby"; and the editorial note reads,

"The discovery and isolation of Life Energy in such a form as to revive the dead or dying has been an ambition as old as Man himself. In the last two thousand years a few individuals have claimed the ability without explaining it. With this book, the ability to make one's body old or young at will, the ability to heal the ill without physical contact, the ability to cure the insane and the incapacitated, is set forth for the physician, the layman, the mathematician, and the physicist."

In the early days of scientology in Victoria, advertisements by the HASI appealing for asthma sufferers were published in the press. That scientologists generally believed in the healing powers of scientology is evident from the facts

(a) that many preclears set as their goals, to be obtained through processing, physical health and well being, and

(b) that auditors consistently audited preclears in an effort to improve their health.

One scientology witness who was for a time the director of processing at the HASI believed scientology would aid his deafness. Various scientologists believed that scientology would improve their eyesight or their hearing. Others believed that it would cure stomach pains. One dedicated scientologist did an HPA course in order to be able to audit and, so he believed, cure his father who was suffering from Parkinson's disease. Hubbard wrote in Science of Survival that a process called "straight memory" had alleviated Parkinson's disease. One practising scientologist woman, whose daughter was a highly placed scientologist, believed that had she been processed in scientology for a bad arm, a cancer for which she had received medical attention would not have developed.

Individual scientology witnesses left no doubt that they believe that scientology could cure physical ills. Highly placed scientologists believed that well trained auditors could handle all psychosomatic illnesses and that processing could proof a person against polio, hepatitis, malaria, &c. Mrs Williams believed processing cured a cancer of the abdomen. Gillham thought that processing could cure blood pressure cases. His wife thought that illnesses such as colds, 'flu and heart trouble and some mental disorders could be cured by scientology, and that it was possible to proof against the strain of physical and mental illness.

During 1959-1960, over a period of about five months, one unfortunate man was audited at the Melbourne HASI for more than 200 hours in an endeavour to cure him of cancer from which he was dying and did die. At a time when it was known at the HASI that he had been under medical treatment and was suffering from a malignant growth in his lower abdomen, the HASI quoted him 200 hours' auditing for a stable case gain. He embarked on such a course, and processing ceased only a few weeks before he died, one of the last auditor's reports on his case being that the preclear was about to drop the body. This case is typical of the callous disregard which the scientologist practitioners are trained to have for their preclears. It is a sign of weakness in an auditor to feel pity for a victim, and the auditing processes in this case, as in very many others, were applied quite brutally. During the five months over which this preclear's processing was spread, he had such pitiful goals as "to be certain that I have lost this tumour", "to get rid of this tumour", to "drop off this tumour-cancer-growth", "to make my stomach a bit more comfortable", "to reduce this growth in size", "my health to start to improve, to find the cause of this growth quickly". With these and similar goals, the processes on which he was run included the following and other similar commands, which would be repeated time and time again, for periods of 2 to 3 hours at a sitting, sometimes for six hours a day, and sometimes extending over several days: "What stomach could you confront?", "What stomach would you rather not confront?", "Think of a stomach you could confront, think of a stomach you would rather not confront", "What part of a stomach could you be responsible for?", "What about a victim could you be responsible for?", "What could you admit causing a victim?", "What could you withhold from a victim?". It is morally certain that this preclear was accepted for this processing only after the HASI had consulted Hubbard or Mr. or Mrs. Halperin (or similar name), all of whom were then touring Australia the Halperins being extremely close associates of Hubbard.

During this preclear's auditing, he suffered severely from "somatics" or pains in various parts of the body, frequently "doped off" and had hallucinations about murder, rape and other acts of violence, as well as recalls of death and hanging in past lives. At one stage towards the end of this unhappy life, his condition inspired the endorsement of his file: "Good, pc is coming up to apathy", the significance of which is appreciated by reference to the tone scale, apathy being the lowest of the emotions o n the scale at 0.05, and only slightly above death.

HCO Bull. of the 24th July, AD 10 (1960), contained "Special Project Australia", which was reprinted in various scientology magazines. In a campaign to publicise scientology and discredit the medical profession, Hubbard wrote,

"This is our offered programme:

"(1) In every letter, communication and broad statement, insert as well the fact that Scientology works. Scientology is the only fully validated science of human behaviour. Scientology is a good, reliable science. Any positive statement. Always add it to anything else we say.

"(2) No longer wait for permission from the government or anyone else to take a positive action to help our fellow man overcome his susceptibility & sickness;

"(3) Let us make of every man, woman and child in Australia a 'disease-proof person' "

"... It is within our power to proof Australia against mental and physical illness... You can advertise all you want to 'eradicates disease proneness', to 'proof Australians against illness' since all law applies to healing sicknesses, and could never be extended to preventing prevention."

And the form of advertisement he recommends is: "Prevent illness. Scientologists are seldom sick. Join a Scientology group and be able".

The HASI repeatedly claims to be the "World's largest organization in the field of mental health". Receipts issued by the Melbourne HASI carry the statement "Scientology proofs people against mental and physical illness".

Last updated 21-3-96 by Chris Owen

This page has not been endorsed, produced or commissioned by the Church of Scientology and does not represent the opinions of the Church. All quotations from copyrighted works are made under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Coercive Persuasion and Scientology

2005-11-13T08:14:00.000-07:00

http://web.archive.org/web/20030624004458/www.caic.org.au/psyther/sci/cp-scn.htm

COERCIVE PERSUASION AND SCIENTOLOGY

Scientology's auditing is inherently a coercive persuasion technique. Auditing is a standardized process which is designed to induce trance states and increased suggestibility in its recipients. This deceptive undue influence tactic is then used by Scientology for its direct profit.

Auditing is the central practice of Scientology and can be accurately thought of as a psuedo scientific psychotherapy which has been cloaked in deliberate layers of counterfeit religiosity which is meant to resemble traditional religious terminology and trappings.

On June 14, 1985 Eric Lieberman the head attorney for Scientology stated:

". . .The Supreme Court has emphasized that the courts may not engage in "an evaluation of religious practice," that is in the Walz case, or inquire into matters of ecclesiastical customs or laws. And the resounding words of the Supreme Court over a century ago, this is in the Walz case, which governs this issue, the court said the judiciary cannot penetrate the veil of the church for the forbidden purpose of vindicating the alleged wrongs of excised members. When they became members they did so upon the conditions of continuing or not as they in their churches might determine. And they thereby submit to the ecclesiastical power and cannot now invoke the supervisory power of the civil tribunals. . ." R.T. Page 17 (A165)

100 years ago there was no coercive persuasion technology. 100 years ago the Walz case was an appropriate precedent for the time and technology it inhabited.

That is simply no longer the case. With this new technology, imprisonment, pain, physical torture, and threat of physical pain are no longer needed, and in many cases are not nearly as effective as a comprehensively applied program of coercive persuasion. Often misunderstood, the reason for this is in the situation of physical detention, pain, or threat such as in a POW camp you know who your enemy is. Your ego guard and defences are up. With coercive persuasion this is not the case, it is far more devastating and effective when your apparent "friends" or organizational allies are surreptitiously applying coercive persuasion techniques to gain control of an individuals behavior and independent decision making abilities. You have no or few ego defences up for which pain or torture would be needed to breakdown.

Coercive persuasion is not a religious practice it is a control technology. It is antiethical to the First Amendment AND free will in a bonafide religion. It is the unfair manipulation of biological and psychological weaknesses and susceptibilities. It is a technology not of free society but a criminal or totalitarian society.

Coercive persuasion is also antiethical to sincerity and good faith. Any organization using coercive persuasion as a central practice that also claims to be a religion is a contradiction of terms.

Scientology's head attorney Eric Lieberman implies we dare not push back the threshold and examine his clients behavior because it is protected by legal "paradoxes" or by the smoke he creates surrounding the new technology advances in coercive persuasion.

". . .The Katz court went on to note that what really happens when you engage in an examination as to whether these nonphysical coercive processes amount to mind manipulation or faith, that you are inviting courts and juries to make an ultimate determination as to the value and truth of the religious practice.

As the court said rhetorically, when the court is asked to determine whether a change of lifestyle was induced by faith or by coercive persuasion, is it not in turn investigating and questioning the validity of that faith~ And on that basis, on the basis that the court cannot do that the court struck down that statute. . ." R.T. June 14, 1985, Page 20 (A168)

". . .And in striking the Statute down as unconstitutional the court of appeals stated in an age of subliminal advertising, television exposure and psychological salesmanship in which everyone is exposed tv artful and designing persons at even turn, it is impossible to measure the degree or likelihood that some will succumb in the field of beliefs. And, particularly, religious beliefs. It is difficult, if not impossible, to establish a universal truth against which the deceit and imposition can be measured. . ."R.T. June 14, 1985, Page 20 (A-168)

Well, Mr. Lieberman has probably avoided, for his clients survival sake, reading much, if anything, about coercive persuasion. If he had he could not in good faith compare it to such benign peaceful persuasion practices as salesmanship or general non-coercive persuasion using psychological "edges". He would have clearly seen there are technological procedures that can locate the imposition of coercive persuasion technologies applied against individuals. What is being located are processes not beliefs or ideologies. These PROCESSES can be examined completely separate from and idea or belief content as simply as separating the process of hypnotic induction from the hypnotic suggestion.

These are simply technological processes not ideas or beliefs. No ideas or beliefs have to be examined as to their truth or falsity to determine if an individual was unfairly subjected to coercive persuasion processes.

When one realizes the before mentioned about coercive persuasion and Scientology's auditing procedures one begins to see that Scientology's auditing originally was and really is a "religiously" cloaked form of a highly profitable psuedo psychotherapy. So structured, liability insurance claims and financial damages can be almost totally illuminated. Even lawsuits of undue influence over the patients assets can be cloaked behind the paradoxical use of the First Amendment protections.

But the real paradox is that due to Scientology's central use of coercive persuasion practices in the form of auditing, Scientology is not using its religious immunities to settle or protect RELIGIOUS ISSUES, BELIEFS OR PRACTICES but to protect a reprehensible new technology of human manipulation and its commercial and political "edge". What you really have concerning Scientology's central practice called auditing is an ethics and new technology issue not a religious issue.

What you also have is totalitarian and despotic thought manipulation technology creeping in the back door of our great free country via a counterfeit and bogus "religious" group.

Scientology II: CCHR and Narconon

2005-11-13T08:12:00.000-07:00

http://web.archive.org/web/20030624014843/www.caic.org.au/psyther/sci/west2.htm

"Scientology II: CCHR and Narconon"
by L. J. West, M.D.

Originally printed in "The Southern California Psychiatrist"

May 1991, pp. 6-13.

Dr. West has granted permission to upload this article to computer networks and bulletin boards

In a previous article (SCPS Newsletter, July, 1990) I provided an historical account of the Church of Scientology. It is a pseudo-scientific healing cult that was formed in the 1950s, and has grown, with the help of extravagant lies and deliberate deception, into a multimillion dollar, international enterprise. Through its many publications, but especially through its newspaper "Freedom," Scientology regularly defames its critics (such as myself) and praises its friends (such as Thomas Szasz).

Scientology conducts sophisticated intelligence operations and campaigns of misinformation both directly and through a variety of front organizations. One such entity is the citizen's Commission on Human Rights (CCHR), the main purpose of which apparently is to attack psychiatry, especially in its biological aspects, and to harass, discourage, and intimidate private organizations and individual critics classified as enemies of Scientology. Established in 1969, the CCHR's central office is in Los Angeles with local offices throughout the United States and abroad. The CCHR is frequently behind both personal and legal undertakings directed against members of the American Psychiatric Association and also, of course, against he specialty as a whole. The attempts (and sometimes) successes of the CCHR to discredit the psychiatric specialty are documented in its publications such as "Psychiatric Abuse Bulletin" and "Psychiatry Update." These efforts have included number of lawsuits accusing doctors of negligence in prescribing methylphenidate (Ritalin) for children who, it is alleged, suffered side effects including violent and assaultive behavior, stunted growth, hallucinations, suicidal depression, head aches and nervous spasms. Interestingly enough the two companies that market methylphenidate (Ciba Geigy of Summit, New Jersey, and M.D. Pharmaceuticals of Santa Anna, California) are not names as defendants. The president of CCHR is Dennis Clarke. He is neither a scientist nor a clinician, but nevertheless is an oft-cited "expert" on Ritalin.

The CCHR is also behind recent attempts to force fluoxetine Prozac) off the market, including letter-writing campaigns to a number of U.S. senators and congressmen and support of the Prozac defense" in which defendants claim their violent behavior was caused by Prozac. Similar tactics by CCHR aimed against electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) have had their effect: or example they have prompted members of the FDA to reconsider he classification of ECT devices from Class II (the category or trustworthy medical devices that require performance standards, such as x-ray machines) to Class III (reserved for devices presenting a considerable risk and requiring premarket approval, such as artificial heart valves). The CCHR sponsored California's present anti-ECT statutes, which have imposed rigid restrictions on the use of ECT and in many cases have resulted in the needless and prolonged suffering of patients thus denied appropriate and necessary treatment. (A small group of ECT patients grateful for the treatment's benefits, their family members, and the Association for Convulsive Therapy, have filed lawsuit, Doe v. O'Connor, to overturn this regulation on constitutional grounds.)

With Clarke often visibly in charge, the CCHR frequently stages demonstrations at the annual APA meetings to protest ECT, Ritalin, and psychiatry in general. At these rallies, seismologists and also disgruntled mental patients recruited for he purpose, picket, carry signs and dispense leaflets enouncing psychiatry, and may disrupt session to which they ain admission. Sometimes they wear t-shirts that declare Psychiatry Kills." Occasionally, airplanes fly overhead towing banners that proclaim the same. Similar demonstrations are sometimes held outside psychiatric facilities, such as the UCLA neuropsychiatric Institute and Hospital. Such a picketing exercise is often covered by the local media, who are notified and invited in advance by those who have planned the scenario.

Another Scientology front group that impacts psychiatry is Narconon, an international enterprise that claims to rehabilitate drug addicts but which is primarily a recruitment program for Scientology. Narconon was founded in the late 1960s y William C. Benitez, while he was in Arizona State Prison. Benitez avowedly based his program on the writings of L. Ron Hubbard. After prison officials granted permission for inmates o participate in the new program, Benitez contacted Hubbard, ho saw the potential to increase Scientology revenues and membership, and who offered the resources of the Church of Scientology to expand the program to other prisons and to the public. Soon thereafter, Narconon was incorporated (in 1970), under the direction of Benitez and two high-ranking Scientology staff members, Arthur J. Maren and Henning Heldt. Narconon's ain headquarters is now in Los Angeles, but it has centers throughout the United States and elsewhere in the world. In the last few years, some of its facilities in Italy and Spain have been closed and their staff members arrested on charges ranging rom fraud and medical malpractice to criminal conspiracy to extort money and unlawful detention. In North America, however, t is still considered business as usual for Narconon.

The five steps in the Narconon program include withdrawal,

detoxification, sauna sweat-out, a communication course, and treatment courses in "learning improvement," "gaining control of life" and "living an ethical life," which are identical with Scientology courses compiled from the works of L. Ron Hubbard and taught in Scientology organizations and missions. Each treatment course is really a succession of dianetic auditing sessions, which claim to rid the individual of unwanted attitudes, emotions and behaviors, but which usually lead to contracts for more "advanced" courses costing more and involving he patient more and more deeply in the Church of Scientology.

As noted in the article last July, dianetic auditing offers a series of supposedly therapeutic courses based on Hubbard's science fiction amalgam of pop-psychology, hypnosis and cybernetics. Auditors themselves receive training through courses of their own. This works as a pyramid scheme, with people auditing those at levels below them while being audited y others at levels above them. The courses that make up the Narconon program, like those for other recruits to the Church of Scientology, represent the introductory or lowest level of the pyramid. Jerry Whitfield, a Narcononer-high-ranking staff ember of Narconon El Paso, tells how he was pressured to direct Narconon patients onto the BRIDGE from Narconon to the Church of Scientology (a process diagrammed in procedural manuals) and was required to transmit statistics weekly on the number of new Scientology recruits. Potential recruits are lured by promises hat upon completion of all series of courses, they will gain permanent relief from unpleasant emotions and the sufferings of life, be ensured freedom from all past limitations, be immune to psychosomatic disorders, and even to the harmful effects of thermonuclear radiation, etc., etc.

The Scientology detoxification procedure, called the "Hubbard method" within Narconon or the "purification rundown" within Scientology, is supposed to dislodge toxins and drugs from fatty issues through a rigorous regimen of exercise saunas (up to five hours a day, for up to 30 days), and megavitamins. Aspects f this procedure can be dangerous. For example, the sweat-out" component requires individuals to perspire up to five hours per day, seven days a week, for approximately 30 days. The risk of dehydration is obvious. At least one death s said to have occurred during "the purification rundown." while the supposed rationale for the sweat-out is to rid the body of fat-stored drugs and chemicals, there is no scientific asis for the technique. Most drugs of abuses are removed from he body by detoxification and excretion through the liver, the kidneys and (in some instances) through the lungs. Although minute quantities of some drugs may be found in sweat, the mount represent such a small fraction of drug elimination that o matter how much an individual is forced to perspire through exercise and saunas, the clearance of most drugs of abuse would not be significantly increased. Nevertheless, Scientologists re aggressively promoting the Hubbard method to public and private employers for use with employees exposed to toxic substances on their jobs.

Narconon is now attempting to license its Chilocco/New Life facility near Newkirk, Oklahoma. This is its second residential rug-treatment center in the united States; all others are for ambulatory cases. In 1989, the Church took over the Chilocco Indian School, with a 25-year lease from the five Indian tribes hat share the reservation. At a staged ceremony, local residents were impressed when a "benefactor" -- The Association or Better Living and Education (ABLE) presented Narconon a 200,000 check. In fact, ABLE shares Narconon International's os Angeles address and is another Scientology front. Licensure f the Narconon facility at Chilocco has been vigorously opposed y community and professional groups. Narconon officials at Chilocco have strenuously denied any link with Scientology.

Narconon is widely touted by its vendors with advertisements going to health professional of all kinds, and with heavy promotional activities on college campuses. Because of its name probably contrived for this purpose), Narconon is often confused with Narcotics Anonymous (NA) which is a reputable elf-help group similar to Alcoholics Anonymous. Narconon's striving for an appearance of respectability is typical of cult-related ventures. Many such cults, like the Church of Scientology, the Unification Church, the Church Universal and triumphant, and others with plenty of money to employ public relations experts and top law firms, are dangerously close to succeeding in their claims to legitimacy.

"Dr. West is professor of psychiatry, School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles.

How Scientologists Think and Fool themselves.

2005-11-13T08:10:00.000-07:00

From: dennis.l.erlich@support.com
Organization: Los Angeles Valley College BBS (818)985-7150

CULT-THINK

(Certainty vs. Reality)

The scariest thing about scientology is the subtle, imperceptible, yet totally encompassing mindset I had for the fourteen years I was under its influence. The cult "teaches" a person how to know with certainty, so those who ascribe to its world-view exist in a completely different reality than the rest of society.

I remember talking to my teacher after a night school class. I explained to him, proudly, that I was a scientologist. We had already spoken quite a bit and he had formed the opinion that I was a pretty "together" person. Upon hearing of my cult membership, he pronounced: "Well, I thought people in Scientology were mindless robots, but you're obviously not a mindless robot!".

He was gravely mistaken.

I didn't look or act like a mindless robot, but I was so programmed it had become my total identity. I had been completely taken over by the scientology personality and didn't even know it!

When among non-scientologists -- "Wogs", we called them -- I didn't look or act like a cult member. But I was.

I was totally certain scientology was the only answer for Mankind. I knew that the Wog world was composed of lost and messed-up people who were wasting their lives -- just waiting to be "gotten in" to scientology and "handled" so that they too could attain Total Freedom.

I had been indoctrinated and fully believed that I should..."Never fear to hurt another in a just cause.." and I was prepared to do anything, legal or not, to further the expansion of scientology. I was certain that Ron Hubbard was an totally sane individual who had "risen above the bank" (reactive mind) and I had unquestioning trust in his teachings and dictates. I knew that I was a member of an elite group of people who were in possession of all the answers to the world's problems and questions. Ron had said so.

He also said there were many people in the world whose sole purpose in life was to bring harm and sickness to others and I believed him. These people were "suppressives". Suppressives were psychotic. I knew that people who opposed scientology were always suppressive. If you were "connected" to a suppressive you were likely to become ill or have accidents. Therefore I was very careful to stay far away from anyone critical of scientology.

I knew there were world-wide, evil organizations opposed to scientology. These organizations were run by suppressives. I was certain all psychiatrists were suppressive. It was obvious to me that psychiatrists, psychologists and quite a few medical doctors were against scientology because it threatened their right to cause harm and illness to their patients. Scientology was, after all, the only technology of the mind that worked "One Hundred Percent of the Time". No wonder psychiatrists felt threatened.

I also knew if you criticized something or someone (except scientology's enemies), it was because you had done something unethical or immoral. I was certain anyone who was critical of scientology or L. Ron Hubbard was either suppressive or had committed unethical, immoral or illegal acts. I was therefore very careful not to be critical of anything about scientology. If I felt critical, however, I knew I had done something wrong, so I made sure I discovered and confessed whatever it was. I knew if I didn't keep "clean" with regards to any wrongdoings, my progress toward "Total Freedom" would be blocked.

I knew scientology worked. It worked "One Hundred Percent of the Time". But when it didn't work, I knew it was because the person was either suppressive (scientology doesn't work on suppressive persons) or because the person was in communication or contact with a suppressive. Oh yes, it also doesn't work on people who commit unethical or immoral acts. So, on those occasions when scientology didn't work on me, I knew it was because I was either in communication with a suppressive or because I had done something wrong. Therefore I made sure whenever I communicated with anyone who might be a suppressive or did anything I thought might be wrong, I always confessed it. I suspected from time to time that I might be suppressive, since that would really explain why the "tech" didn't always work on me.

But don't get me wrong. The tech "worked" on me quite a bit. I had many realizations and understandings about life and about myself. I was certain these were only possible because of the scientology auditing I was getting. I was sure they could never be obtained from finding out about the world, from learning about myself, or from experiencing new points of view.

I was also sure if I ever left scientology, the benefit I had gotten from these realizations would be completely lost, and I would go insane and probably commit suicide. Ron had said so.

In spite of the realizations and understandings I had, I knew I was still "really messed up" and I would need lots and lots of auditing and training and the "upper levels" before I could become a true "OT".

When I finally became OT, I knew I would have god-like abilities and I would be "totally aware".

Although I did not know anyone in scientology who demonstrated god-like abilities or seemed totally aware, I knew I would attain these abilities when I was ready because that was what Ron said.

If I was learning about scientology or administering it to others and I became critical because it was not making sense or working, I knew it was because of something I didn't understand about it. Probably I had skipped words I didn't understand or did not make it "my own" by demonstrating the principles with clay models. Or perhaps I had not drilled the procedures enough. But whatever the cause, I knew it was my own fault. Because of this, when studying, I looked up every word I didn't understand and even quite a few I did. I really made the text "my own" by studying it and restudying it with total resolve. I knew that if I "felt good" about the text I was studying, I had probably studied it long enough and could go on to study something else. It would have been highly unethical to not ensure I "felt good" about what I was studying.

I knew that true ethical conduct consisted of doing the "greatest good for the greatest number". Scientology was the greatest good you could do. Therefore, any actions which ultimately furthered scientology's aims were good actions.

I knew there were people working "under cover" in the government for scientology. I really admired these people because they were leading such a romantic life and they were doing work for the "ultimate good".

I also knew that it was the "ultimate good" for scientologists to be charged hundreds of dollars an hour to confess to their ministers. Sure, scientology's prices were high. But then you can't put a price on freedom. Ron said if you didn't charge a person a great deal for something the person would not consider it valuable.

Also I knew scientology had a lot of expenses -- especially lawyers fees.

I knew it was important for scientology to have lots of money because we were going to "Clear the Planet". Since there were so many suppressive and psychotic groups and people out there opposing scientology, it would take lots of money and work to ensure that scientology was accepted by everyone.

I knew the practices of scientology were not ever supposed to be mixed up with any other practice. This included yoga, meditation, "bathing in light", or anything else that was intended to affect a person mentally or spiritually. I knew that scientology would not work if you were doing any other practice at the same time.

I knew there were past lives and we all had a "time track" going back trillions and trillions of years. The time track involved earlier civilizations where there was space travel and exciting galactic adventures. Ron told us so.

He also told us that people could be members of other religions and be good scientologists. But, I knew they had better not practice any religion because if they did, it would be considered "mixing practices". I could not fathom how a good Christian could possibly stay a Christian and get auditing (which always involves past lives). Still, we were told to tell "raw meat" they could remain faithful to their religion and still be good scientologists. I couldn't imagine why anyone would remain faithful to their religion. They would see the obvious errors in it as soon as they began studying scientology in ernest.

Although scientology worked with religions to protect their freedom to practice, I knew that true freedom was obtainable only through scientology. As soon as scientology had a firm foothold in society, all the other religions would become obsolete or would have to be abolished.

I was totally certain the upper levels of scientology dealt with "mystical things" and techniques for becoming more aware and more spiritual. I suspected "OT's" could travel at will outside of their bodies, read minds and always felt compassion for other, lesser beings.

At that time I didn't know scientology practiced exorcism. That information was on the confidential "upper levels" and I wasn't quite ready for it yet. It was kept confidential because if you had not completed all the lower levels and found out about it, you would probably go insane or die and get into real trouble with the Ethics Officer. I was certain of that.

I was really afraid of getting into "ethics trouble" and being sent to Ethics to confess and make amends for my transgressions. Amends usually consisted of working extra hours (often missing sleep) doing tedious tasks like cleaning floors, painting walls or filing papers. Many people did amends that involved taking risks in order to "deliver an effective blow to the enemies of scientology despite personal danger" as was often required.

But if I confessed to the Ethics Officer, I might be treated with more lenience than if I was reported for doing something wrong.

People were always getting into ethics trouble and I knew it was important to write reports to the Ethics Officer if I suspected someone was doing something unethical. If I failed to report someone, it was just as bad as doing the unethical thing myself. I had to be careful to confess all my transgressions and those of others (especially those pertaining to scientology). I knew if I didn't "take responsibility" for these "sins" and do the correct amends for them, scientology would not work on me. Then I would be denied the "Road to Total Freedom" and my immortal soul would be lost forever.

I knew that mankind had been cheated and tricked in the past by various religions promising to cure of all their ills and provide all the answers but, this time, I was totally certain, it was "for real." Ron said so.

Although sometimes I felt doubts about scientology, I knew they were coming from my "reactive mind" and that I should simply ignore them. The reactive mind, I knew, has a self-protecting mechanism which creates doubts and opposes scientology. Scientology creates certainty and wants to destroy the reactive mind.

So, if you wanted to achieve certainty, you should never try to make sense of the doubts that came from your reactive mind; it would drive you crazy . . . I knew that was true because Ron said so.

And if you know something with total certainty, that makes it true . . . doesn't it?

Sure it does! Ron said so.

And if you know something with absolute certainty, that makes it true, doesn't it?

Author Anonymous

"Church" of Scientology: A "Religious" Mafia?

2005-11-13T08:05:00.000-07:00

NOTICE: Copyrighted by the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society.

"Church" of Scientology: A "Religious" Mafia?
By Craig Branch

Controversy continues to rage around Scientology, due mostly to the totalitarian and abusive nature of its practices. The evolution and history of Scientology raises serious and fundamental questions about freedoms and protections of religion and even what or who defines a religion. Scientology is an anomaly on even a diverse religious landscape. It does, in fact, involve religious belief (in what most outsiders would regard as science fiction). But that belief appears to have been built chiefly as a cover for exploitive commercial operations.

Scientology's history of terror and abuse appears to be the result of its founder's delusion and paranoia. Evidence of L. Ron Hubbard's delusional character was well documented in court where the trial judge concluded, "The organization [Scientology] clearly is schizophrenic and paranoid, and this bizarre combination seems to be a reflection of its founder, LRH [L. Ron Hubbard]. The evidence portrays a man who has been virtually a pathological liar when it comes to his history, background and achievements." (Church of Scientology v. Armstrong, No. C420153, California Supreme Court, 1984).

Scientology is governed by inviolate policies or "Scriptures" of L. Ron Hubbard which, when followed, have produced an extraordinary record of institutionalized abuse, financial exploitation, harassment, intimidation, civil and criminal convictions of its members, leaders, and even the church itself. One critic, Reader's Digest senior editor Eugene Methvin, experienced serious harassment by Scientology. He has aptly charged, "Scientology is far more than mere religion...[it is] a multi-national racket masquerading as a religion." ("Scientology: the Sickness Spreads," Reader's Digest, September, l981, reprint, p.2). Scientology believes that it alone has the solution to mankind's problems. This is not different from many religions, including Christianity, but the similarity stops there. Scientology officials have repeatedly taunted that "it is not a turn the other cheek religion" (e.g., Leisa Goodman, "New Religions: The Cult Question," MTV News and Specials, June, 1995). Not turning the other cheek may involve subjecting followers or critics to involuntary servitude, hard labor in "rehabilitation" camps, slander, hiring private detectives to harass and intimidate, dirty tricks, and lawsuits.

Scientology has a twisted view of "ethics," believing that anything is permissible which advances the goals of Scientology. Those goals include doing whatever needs to be done "to bring the government and hostile philosophies or societies into a state of complete compliance with the goals of Scientology. This is done by a high level ability to control... to overwhelm. Introvert such agencies. Control such agencies" (HCO Policy Letter of August 15, 1960).

Scientology's objective is to "clear the planet." This can only be accomplished through recruiting people, often by deception, into taking a multitude of expensive "counseling" courses in order to be rid of "aberrations" from present and past lives (reincarnation) and arrive at a state of "clear." One then learns that one must continue to advance through the levels of Hubbard's bizarre science fiction cosmology of "Operating Thetans," in order to survive. The whole process can involve billion-year contracts, but $200,000 - $400,000 in this lifetime. Involvement has proven even more costly for many people. There have been losses of marriages, possessions, life savings, family relationships, and sanity. And, the most tragic from the Christian point of view, Scientology leads to an eternity separated from God.

A recent episode of 60 Minutes exposed some of the corrupt and deceptive tactics of Scientology (CBS, December 28, 1997). Interviewer Leslie Stahl asked former Cult Awareness Network executive director Cynthia Kisser if she still stood by her statement ("Scientology: The Cult of Greed," Time, May 6, 1991) that "Scientology is quite likely the most ruthless, the most classically terrorist, the most litigious and the most lucrative cult the country has ever seen." Ms. Kisser responded, "Oh, more than ever... everything they've done since just proves that quote." (Transcript on file)

Abusing the Legal System Two recent and protracted cases clearly demonstrate how Scientology assiduously carries out the policies initiated by L. Ron Hubbard for intimidating and harassing its "enemies." Scientology's target in the first case was a former Scientologist, Larry Wollersheim. In 1986, Wollersheim won a $30 million jury verdict in compensatory and punitive damages against the Church of Scientology California mother church in a case that began in 1980. This was later reduced on appeal to $2.5 million. The courts found that Scientology was guilty of intentional and negligent infliction of severe emotional harm. They wrote "Any one of these acts [against Wollersheim] exceeds the 'bounds usually tolerated by a decent society' so as to constitute outrageous conduct.... the Church's actions... unquestionably constituted reckless disregard for the likelihood of causing emotional distress. The policy of fair game, by its nature, was intended to punish the person who dared to leave the Church. Here, the church actively encouraged its members to destroy Wollersheim's business. Further, by physically restraining Wollersheim from leaving the Church's ship, and subjecting him to further auditing despite his protests, the Church ignored Wollersheim's emotional state and callously compelled him to continue in a practice known to cause him emotional distress" (Daily Appellate Report, July 1, 1989, p. 9270).

This account bears striking parallels to the recent account of Lisa McPherson, whose struggle ended in death (See The Watchman Expositor, Vol. 14, No. 5).

Scientology continues its insistence that the fair game policy was canceled in 1968. But the Daily Appellate Report shows the Court found that, "despite the Church's public rejection of the fair game practice, it continued to use fair game against targeted ex-Scientologists throughout the 1970s" (p. 9274; emphasis added).

Scientology, true to form, attempted every legal maneuver they could to escape this judgment, regardless of merit. The case went up to the California Supreme Court twice and even to the US Supreme Court. Scientology counter-sued Wollersheim and the California appellate court has thrown out that suit and awarded Wollersheim his attorney fees. The judgment now stands at $6,025,857 including accrued interest. Wollersheim's attorneys have won another significant amended judgment. They proved to the Court's satisfaction that the Church of Scientology had conducted a pattern of systematically shuffling their assets between various Church owned or affiliated corporate entities to avoid payment to Wollersheim. The court found that the Religious Technology Center run by David Miscaviage and Church of Scientology International were all "alter egos" of the Church of Scientology California. The court ruled that Scientology "acted in bad faith which would result in an injustice to plaintiff..." (Los Angeles Daily Journal, December 12, 1997).

Attorney Dan Leipold, who has been a very successful litigator against Scientology, observes that Scientology "believes they can do no wrong...that any finding against them is injustice and that everybody is conspiring against them to destroy them...They only use the law as a tool, and it is a tool to 'utterly destroy' their enemies" (Ibid.). The courts agree. The California appellate court found Scientology's counter-suit of Wollersheim was "consistent with a pattern of conduct by the Church to employ every means, regardless of merit, to frustrate or undermine Wollersheim's petition activity...[the church's lawsuit was] (a) in retaliation for his 1980 lawsuit against the church; (b) to punish him economically for bringing that lawsuit, and (c) to obliterate the value of any victories over the Church by forcing him to abandon his efforts..." (Church of Scientology v. L. Wollersheim, Nos. B084686, B086063).

Scientology's target in the second case was David Mayo, also a former Scientologist. Mayo won big in the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Mayo was suing Scientology and in typical fashion, Scientology sued him back. The court dismissed Scientology's suit and awarded Mayo $2.9 million in attorney's fees. The court applied the tough sanctions against Scientology saying the Church had been playing "fast and loose with the legal system" by filing countless frivolous motions, employing "evasions, misrepresentations, broken promises and lies... destruction and concealment of documents" (Los Angeles Daily Journal, April 18, 1996, p. 3).

The validity of the courts' findings concerning the continuation of Scientology's fair game policy and other abusive directives was dramatically demonstrated in two other major criminal convictions of Scientology leaders and even the church itself.

The first of these, as reported in The Watchman Expositor (Vol. 14, No. 5), followed a 1977 FBI raid on Scientology headquarters that produced comprehensive evidence of stolen government documents, spies planted in the IRS and Justice Department, planted bugging devices, and 48,000 documents detailing smear campaigns orchestrated against critics of the church. Hubbard's wife, Mary Sue, and ten other Scientologists were convicted and received prison terms.

One of the more egregious clandestine attacks uncovered in evidence obtained in the raid was carried out against Paulette Cooper, author of the 1972 book, The Scandal of Scientology. Following Hubbard's directive of, "If possible, of course, ruin him utterly," Scientologists smeared Cooper's reputation, then framed her for a felony. Using stationary she had touched, which therefore contained her fingerprints, they forged a bomb threat against the Church. Upon discovering the plot, called "Operation Freakout," the prosecutors dropped all charges against Cooper. Besides the emotional anguish and disruption of her life, Scientology's outrageous, fraudulent persecution of her cost Cooper $26,000 in legal and psychiatric fees. (Los Angeles Times, June 24, 1990, A39).

Another such "attack and destroy" campaign uncovered by the FBI raid was carried out against the then-mayor of Clearwater, Florida, Gabe Cazares. Documents revealed that "Scientology agents staged a fake hit-and-run accident" against Cazares (Washington Post, April 28, 1978, p. A-1). Furthermore, Scientology attorney Merrell Vanier persuaded Cazares to use his services in a lawsuit against Scientology. From this undercover position Vanier was able to provide inside information to Scientology, as well as gain access to sensitive files in the State Attorney General's office "which was conducting an investigation of the local Scientology organization." After the facts became known Vanier was disbarred by the Florida Supreme Court (Tampa Tribune, November 27, 1986, p. 15-B; Opinion, 498 So. 2d 896; 11 Fla. Law W. 621 [Fla. 1986]).

The Scientologists also planted spies in the Clearwater Sun and St. Petersburg Times newspapers, the Clearwater Chamber of Commerce, and engaged in various efforts to frame their critics (St. Petersburg Times, November 27, 1979; Clearwater Sun, Nov. 27, 1979). Eventually "a federal judge ruled the cult's suit 'frivolous, unreasonable and groundless,' and made the Scientologists pay Cazares's legal costs of $36,022" ("Scientology: the Sickness Spreads," Reader's Digest, September 1981, reprint p. 4).

The second major court case resulting in criminal conviction occurred in Canada where the Church of Scientology and three of its members were found guilty of breach of trust for conducting espionage against the government, similar to what they did in the U.S. It was the first time in Canada that a church had been found guilty of criminal activity. The church was also found guilty of libel against the Canadian prosecuting attorney and was fined a record $2.1 million. (The Globe and Mail, June 27, 1992; Toronto Star, March 12, 1992, p. D26).

According to the Toronto Sun report on the case, Marion Envoy, former Canadian head of Scientology's Guardian Office, was asked "how she reconciled her criminal activities with some of Scientology's statements of principles regarding honesty and freedom." She replied, "'It was the way I was trained... whatever was necessary to protect'... Hubbard and Scientology.... Criminal acts of that kind were 'not considered against any code or moral in Scientology because you were protecting Scientology'" (May 15, 1992). As is so often the case in Scientology, the end (i.e. Scientology's vindication and success) justified the means.

Other Cases of Abuse Harassment and Tragedy Watchman has on file many records of Scientology's institutionalized pattern of harassment and abuse of those it perceives as an enemy, and its tragic consequences - too many to print here, for lack of space. The following are but a few representative examples.

1. Respected British biographer, Russell Miller, wrote a quite revealing book, Bare Faced Messiah: The True Story of L. Ron Hubbard. Following Hubbard's attack policies, Scientology not only sued him in Britain and the United States but hired their chief "private investigator," Eugene Ingram, to discredit him. Miller soon found himself being questioned by the police as a suspect for a murder because of "an anonymous tip-off from someone who used an extensive knowledge of Miller's work and private life to try to frame him" (Sunday Times, October 25, 1987, p. 3).

2. Scientology has a history of using private investigators to pursue and harass critics. Eugene Ingram, fired from the Los Angeles Police Department in 1981, is one of the most notorious. Warrants for Ingram's arrest are still outstanding in Florida and Oklahoma, for impersonating a police officer, and for carrying a concealed weapon (copies of warrants on file at WFI).

3. Scientology claims to "always deliver" through its alleged "total freedom" technology. Yet, Noah Lottick, 24, "jumped to his death from the 10th floor of a Manhattan building," after paying Scientology $3,000, and earlier, most of his savings, for their courses (The Times Leader, May 2, 1991, pp. 1, 12A).

4. L. Ron Hubbard's own son committed suicide from a hose hooked from the tailpipe in his car. There are a great number of Scientology associated suicides or attempted suicides listed on the website
5. Many out-of-court settlements have been paid to plaintiffs and defendants in cases involving Scientology. In most of the settlements the parties are barred from disclosing the amount. It has been revealed, however, that Julie Titchbourne received $100,000, Gerald Armstrong received $800,000. Court documents in a U.S. district court also revealed that Scientology had been willing to pay $650,000 to four of at least 10 plaintiffs who all later settled for an undisclosed amount. The church also "settled four multi-million dollar suits" as well as with 11 other plaintiffs and "others with claims against the church" for $2.8 million in 1986 (William Horne, "The Two Faces of Scientology," American Lawyer, July, 1992, p. 5, Cult Awareness Network News, March, 1987, p. 4).

6. Watchman has on file many published accounts of intense harassment and abuse of former members, media reporters, television companies, newspapers and magazines, lawyers, and even trial judges who had anything to do with either criticizing or bringing Scientology to justice. Two American Lawyer articles detail the extraordinary and chilling accounts of consistent harassment and acts of intimidating experienced by various judges assigned to significant lawsuits against Scientology ("Scientology's War Against Judges," December, 1980; "Two Faces of Scientology," July/August, 1992).

One tactic most often used against those who dare to expose abuse in Scientology is a pattern of slanderous information distribution in the critic's neighborhood or workplace. (The Sunday Times [London], April 3, 1994). Recently, when participants in a peaceful demonstration over Lisa McPherson's death at Scientology headquarters in Clearwater arrived home they discovered fliers distributed around their neighborhoods accusing the Scientology critics as religious bigots, a threat to families or worse (Philadelphia Inquirer, December 13, 1997; The Event (Salt Lake City), December 18, 1997).

The respected professional writers journal, The Quill, details the extent of the horrendous intimidation and smear tactics of Scientology against the Los Angeles Times, Time magazine, Reader's Digest, and other major publishers and their reporters (November/December, 1991, pp. 36-39). But some of the most chilling are the stories of personal abuse including people being held against their will unless they complied with more Scientology processing, or being told that they would commit suicide or harm their children if they didn't take more expensive Scientology courses etc. (Gadsen Times, May 4, 1991, pp. A1, A6; Cherokee County Herald, December 12, 1990; personal testimonies on file).

Reader's Digest senior editor Eugene Methvin quotes former Scientology leader Lorna Levett, whose conscience would not allow her to continue in what she came to recognize as "an international conspiracy." "Psychological coercion by dangerous mind-bending cults under cover of religion can only occur, like diseases, when there is no immunization against it," she declared. "In this case, the immunization is freedom speech. The cults, using tax-free dollars, can violate human rights only when the truth is allowed to go unpublished" ("Scientology: The Sickness Spreads," Reader's Digest, September, 1981, reprint, p. 6).

Methvin himself says it well, "Above all, the 20th Century record of leader-cults demonstrates that such collectives need watching. Nothing in our legal tradition requires us to shut our eyes to a racket religion simply because it masquerades and claims immunity under our First Amendment" ("Scientology: Anatomy of a Frightening Cult," Reader's Digest, May, 1980, reprint, p. 6).

Americans rightly appreciate the special Constitutional religious freedoms enjoyed in their country. They should not be deceived, however, by Scientology's repeated efforts to wrap its practices in the cloak of the Constitution and First Amendment protections by claiming bigotry and persecution. Actually, it is Scientology's own heinous and nefarious activities of individual abuse, and abuse of the legal system, which jeopardize everyone's religious and personal freedoms.

It is Watchman Fellowship's biblical mission to warn others to "have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove [expose and rebuke] them. For it is a shame even to speak of those things which are done by them in secret. But all things that are reproved are made manifest by the light..." (Ephesians 5:11-13). Jesus warns "For everyone that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved [exposed and rebuked]. But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God" (John 3:20-21).

Not surprisingly, Scientology policy is "NEVER agree to an investigation of Scientology" (HCO Policy Letter of 25 February 1966).

These issues are brought forward out of love and compassion for those still in Scientology, in hopes that they will escape. But the Scripture also bears a grave warning, "He, that being often reproved hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy" (Proverbs 29:1). No doubt Jesus had such a penalty in mind when He said, "And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear Him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell" (Matthew 10:28).

Gold Base (Int, - golden era-Hemet,) personnel list

2005-11-10T10:41:00.000-07:00

The following names use Gold Base as their address

Please Credit: "A crack team of SP Operatives."

Scientology's "Gold Base" Headquarters Location:

Crime Syndicate of Scientology
19625 Highway 79,
Gilman Hot Springs, CA
92583

Alexander, Julia
Al-Jibouri, Scheherazade H
Allcock, Annie Taskev
Allcock, Erica Marie
Armstrong, Thomas C.
Atwood, Vivien Cecelia
Azevedo, Cheryl Lynn
Baker, Lynnea Marie
Benndorf, Corinne Fax
Black, Brenda Eileen
Blake, Cynthia Ann
Blecha, Kathleen Terese
Blecha, Peter Montgomery
Bourke, Thomas Gerard
Brousseau, Mary Clarisse
Brown, Mike R
Brown, Rosemary
Brumer, Charles Philip
Buglewrez, Pat Lawrence
Butler, Matt James
Caetano, Kevin
Campleman, Kenneth James
Cancilla, Lori Carol
Cancilla, Nicholas Mark
Champagne, Jennifer Lee
Chaney, Vikki Dene
Cifarelli, Nicholas V.
Cifarelli, Nicole A.
Cifarelli, Patricia Ann
Cifarelli, Tony Vincent
Clark, Jo Anne Lynn
Clark, Kerry R
Clifford, Amelia
Clifford, Ronald Fredric
Conley, Amy Lynn
Cook, Carrie Ann
Cook, Ronald Paul
Cook, Steven Dale
Cruzen, Cynthia Marie
Cruzen, Richard Gilman
Dowswell, Elizabeth A
Drake, Robert Sherwood
Dunagin, Daniel Alan
Dunagin, Lia Herdani
Eastment, John George
Eastment, Margaret E.
Eisenman, Megan
Ellis, Julia Stewart
Engen, Kiplan Rolf
Eriksen, Andrea Kay
Ferris, Beverly Ann
Ferris, Robert Forrest
Feschbach-Charbonneau, K.
Fisher, Natalie
Ford, Stefanie Diane
Ford, Thomas G.
Foster, Barbara Lynn
Fraser, Catherine Nairn
Fullmer, Carol Lynn
Gahwiler, Shannon Christy
Geisler, Erick Jerome
Gilbert, Jesse
Gilbert, Linda Elaine
Gilbert Richard Sasse
Gilchrist, Michael Anthony
Gillion, Deborah Gail
Goodison, James Arthur
Goodwin, Kathleen Diane
Gouessan, Luanda Maria
Grannis, Edward Turner
Grannis, Monica
Greilich, Linda Nichols
Greilich, Russ Lyle
Griffin, Jerome Bostwick
Griffin, Karen Jean
Gross, Naomi H.
Habscheld, Marjorie Shaw
Hall, James Anthony
Hall, Stephen Wallace
Hall, Sue Anne
Hanlon, Christine Lee
Harris, Mary Frances
Hartley, Charlyne Ruth
Hasslberger, Deva Flora
Hawkins, Jefferson Bolles
Headley, Marc Morgan
Hemphill, Gladys Anne
Herrera, Humberto
Hill, Sharon Gay
Hollon, Paul Christian
Home, Rebecca Herndon
Home, Richard Bradley
Home, Robert Lee
Horwich, Stephanie Diane
Huber, Lisa Dawn
Hughes, Deborah Dianne
Hughes, Gregory Kenneth
Hughes, Greg Kenneth Jr.
Hunter, Gary Lloyd
Hunter, Patricia Ann
Ingber, Mark Allen
Jacobs, Laurence Neil
Jansen, Belinda Dawn
Johnson, James Allen
Kannisto, Yvonne Rina
Kaprielian, Anna Elizabeth
Karbroski, Theresa Jean
Kline, Lelanya Arisha
Knapmeyer, Jason Matthew
Knight, Coburn Haile
Konneus, Diane Irene
Koon, Donald C.
Koon, Susan Jane
Kotric, Zara S.
Kunen, Constance May
Kunen, Neil Thomas
Laner, Margaret Jane
Lantz, Roberta Carol
Laplaine, Susan M.
Larsen, Timothy Alan
Larsson, Jean Louise
Leach, Carl Edgar Jr.
Leach, Kim
Lemmer, Charles Joseph
Lenarcic-Butler, Jennifer
Lew, Janet Kay
Lewis, Alan
Lewis, Sandra Renee
Lochner, Claire Jeanne
Lucas, James Mathew
Lucas, Jane
Lundeen, Ella Tamara
Lundeen, Michelle Yvonne
Maifeld, Sadie Ana
Maio, Chris
Manasse, Beverly J.
Martinez, Stepheny Spring
McElveen, Serena Renee
McKay, Tori Lynn
McMurray, Tom
McShane, Carli Ann
McShane, Marcella A.
McShane, Sean Raymond
McShane, Taryn Kelly
McShane, Warren Lee
Meadors, James R.
Medina, Aldona Mary
Miller, Jason Edward
Miscavige, Becky Bea
Miscavige, David
Miscavige, Michele Diane
Miscavige, Ronald Thomas
Mithoff, Raymond H.
Moniz, Paula Kanani
Moritz, Joy Jeanette
Morrison, Shawn Walker
Morton, Becky Ann
Morton, Clark E II
Mousell, Bonnie M.
Muller, Ralphine C.
Mullins, Christine Sylvia
Mullins, Jeffrey Winn
Musselman, Francine Marie
Newton, Barbara Lynne
Norton, Alison Foster
Norton, Janet Elaine
O'Hare, Kevin James
O'Hare, Leah Beth
Olander, Christopher M.
Oldfield, Megan
Palewsky, Sadie Anna
Paquette, Thomas Edmund
Paransky, Judith
Parselle, Corinna
Paulson, Wendy J.
Pearson, Vicki
Ploetz, Bruce Roland
Porter, Lane
Potter, James Simon
Pratt, Ronald Williams
Press, Gary Leland
Press, Paula Ruth
Price, Paula Kanani
Price, Seth Chester
Priester, Urd
Priv, Misha
Profittlich, Marissa Lynn
Radstrom, Jesse Ivor
Ramer, Alison Foster
Rathbun, Aaron Calvert Jr.
Reid, Martin Edward
Reuveni, Adam Elliott
Reuveni, Erin Michelle
Reynolds, Wendell A.
Rieser, Ray S.
Rinder McShane, Taryn K.
Rinder, Catherine Albertina
Rinder, Taryn Kelly
Roper, Jennifer Megan
Russo, Kim
Ryan, Diana Hubbard
Ryerson, C. Camille
Salinas, Guillermo Refugio
Sargeant, Trevor Reed
Schermerhorn, Faith E.
Schian, Jack Anthony
Schless, Julie Rose
Schless, Peter Harrison
Schroer, Paul Arthur
Seltzer, Barbara Dawn
Seybold, Kenny R.
Shackleton, Megan Brooke
Sherlock, Philip W.
Shishido, Bonb Akira
Shishido, Carol Dillon
Sierra, Mary Magdeline
Silcock, Stephanie Emma
Simmons, Krystal Gayle
Simmons, Tiffany M.
Sommerville, Ronald Dean
Spector, Darrell Edward
Spencer, Nathan Lawrence
Sproule, Caroline Elizabeth
Spurlock, Carol Nash
Spurlock, Lyman Doyle jr.
Stave, Alan Bradford
Stein, Barry
Suarez, Paco
Suarez, Timoteo Villa
Sukkestad, Linda Joyce
Sukkestad, Roberta V II
Sutter, Michael Russell
Swartz, Fredric Samuel
Thomas, Nicole
Tidman, Ann Marie
Tompkins, Angela Suzette
Tompkins, Barbara Ann
Tompkins, Sterling William
Turner, Byron Leon
Une, Terrance Toshio
Wagoner, Robert Bruce
Waldmann, Robert Beny
Walker, Cebron
Walker, Sue G.
Webb, Jocelyn Ann
Webb, Thomas Arthur
Weber, Ann Marie
Webster, Janela Pharr
West, David Carlyle
West, Karen Margaret
Whitcher, Karl Arthur
Wiese, Gary Stephen
Wiese, Susann J
Wikoff, Tammy Celeste
Wilhere, Darius Stevens
Wilhere, Gregory Thomas
Wilkens, Jane Janney
Williams, Diane Marie
Williams, Herbert D.
Williams, Mary Ramona
Williams, Stewart Preston
Wilson, Christine Ann
Wold, Christina Hans
Wolfe, Laura
Wolfe, Milton D.
Woodard, Jessica Grace
Wooderson, Sandy-Lee
Yager, Marc A.
Yager, Michelle Lynette
Yamaguchi, Todd
Young, Georgianna Lane
Young, Steven Lowell

L. Ron Hubbard's insane temper tanrums

2005-11-10T10:38:00.000-07:00

"He didn't get out of that red chair for three months," said Doreen Smith (one of his young aides in the Commodore's Messenger Organization). "He'd sleep for about forty-five minutes at a time, then be awake for hours, screaming and shouting. It was impossible to get him comfortable. None of us got any sleep. I was better with a cushion. Someone else was better with a footstool, someone else with cotton padding, so every time he woke up we all had to be in there, fussing around him while he was screaming at us that we were all `stupid fucking shitheads' ... he was out of control...." (36)

According to another aide, after the accident at Tenerife, conditions aboard the ship took a turn for the worse:

"His actions definitely became more bizarre after the motorcycle accident. You could hear him throughout the ship screaming, shouting, ranting and raving day after day. He was always claiming that the cooks were trying to poison him and he began to smell odors everywhere. His clothes had to be washed in pure water thirteen times, using thirteen different buckets of clean water to rinse a shirt so he wouldn't smell detergent on it. (37)"

ScienTOMogy breaks OVER 10 MILLION HITS!

2005-11-10T10:34:00.000-07:00

Since October 1 2005 http://www.scienTOMogy.info has had the following;

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The truth is getting out there guys - maybe that's why Tom's fired his PR agent!? (well, we'd like to think so!)

Now updated again (daily) with almost 30 vids!!

http://www.scienTOMogy.info - More Tom Cruise than HBO

US court ruled in favor of 'gripe website' owner

2005-11-10T10:32:00.000-07:00

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/11/09/gripe_site/

Penn Warranty took objection, and filed a defamation action in relation to eight statements contained on the site [PennWarrantyLitigation.com], including descriptions of the firm as "crooked" and "blatantly dishonest".

In response, DiGiovanni argued that the comments were truthful and his personal opinion.
In a ruling, published in late October, Judge Judith Gische [of the Supreme Court, New York County] agreed with the latter argument.

"Competing with an individual's right to protect one's own reputation, is the constitutionally guaranteed right to free speech," she wrote. "Consequently, statements that merely express opinion are not actionable as defamation, no matter how offensive, vituperative or unreasonable they may be."

"Moreover, in the context of statements pertaining to issues of consumer advocacy, courts have been loath to stifle someone's criticism of goods or services," she added. "The courts have recognised that personal opinion about goods and services are a matter of legitimate public concern and protected speech."

===

Opinion
http://www.courts.state.ny.us/reporter/3dseries/2005/2005_25449.htm
Decided on October 24, 2005Supreme Court, New York County
Penn Warranty Corporation, Plaintiff,
against
Ronald DiGiovanni and NETWORK SOLUTIONS, INC., Defendants.
600659/04
Judith J. Gische, J.

Defendant, pro se, brought a motion for summary judgment dismissing the complaint (motion sequence number 005). Plaintiff subsequently brought its own motion for summary judgment (motion sequence number 006). The motion and cross-motion are so integrally intertwined that the court is considering them and all papers submitted thereon together.
A preliminary issue raised in defendant's motion is his claim that the court lacks personal jurisdiction over him. This issue was raised in previous motion practice. By decision and order dated October 4, 2004, made by the Hon. Saralee Evans, the motion to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction was denied. Justice Evan's decision is law of the case and the issues decided therein may not be revisited by this court. People v. Evans, 94 NY2d 499 (2000).
This action was commenced by a summons and complaint dated March 11, 2004. Defendant Ronald DiGiovanni served his answer on or about June 28, 2004. Plaintiff has discontinued its action against Network Solutions, Inc. Issue has been joined among the remaining parties and this motion has otherwise been timely brought.
CPLR § 3212; Brill v. City of New York, 2 NY3d 648 (2003).
Plaintiff, a Pennsylvania corporation in the business of providing extended warranties on used cars, has asserted six causes of action against defendant. They are as follows: [1] intentional interference with prospective economic advantage (first cause of action); [2] coercion, harassment, extortion (second cause of action); [3] defamation/trade libel (third cause of action); [4] civil RICO (fourth cause of action); [5] infringement/false designation of origin and unfair competition (fifth cause of action); and [6] a permanent injunction against the publishing of a certain web site and otherwise publishing certain speech (sixth cause of action).
Defendant claims that now that discovery has been competed he is entitled to summary [*2]judgment dismissing each and every asserted cause of action. Plaintiff's separate motion for summary judgment seeks a determination that as a matter of law it is entitled to summary judgment on its third cause of action for defamation/trade libel and its sixth cause of action enjoining the future publication of the allegedly defamatory material.
It is undisputed that plaintiff, a Pennsylvania company, contracts with individuals to provide service warranties on used cars. On May 20, 2000 plaintiff provided a "standard contract" to cover a 1994 GMC Sonoma truck. The contract was made in New Jersey, where defendant lived at the time.
Defendant filed a claim under the service contract, that plaintiff denied. Defendant then brought a small claims action in the State of New Jersey, based upon breach of contract. It was eventually settled for the sum of $2,500.
Defendant, thereafter, composed a web site claiming that plaintiff engaged in deceptive business practices. This type of web site, which criticizes a company's products or services, is commonly known as a "gripe site". See: Hey, You, Get off of my Trademark!, NYLJ 1/24/05, p 10 (col 1).
Plaintiff claims that after the web site was designed and sent to a limited audience, they were contacted by defendant who threatened to publish the web site on the world wide web and go to the media. Defendant also threatened to go to the Pennsylvania Attorney General. Defendant stated he would expose the unfair practices of plaintiff corporation, unless they did the "right thing." Plaintiff claims that the references to the "right thing" were a veiled attempt to extort money out of them, over and above the small claims settlement previously made. Plaintiff claims that when it did not accede to defendant's demands, he published the web site on the world wide web.
Defendant denies he sent the letters relied upon by plaintiff to prove the so called extortion plot. He claims that plaintiff is relying on letters he did send which plaintiff's representatives subsequently altered. In any event, defendant argues that the letters, which ask plaintiff to "do the right thing", can hardly be construed as extortion.
Defendant denies that the web site was actually published on the world wide web. He does admit, however, that it was available on the web from at least mid to late January 2004 to anyone who happened to know the actual URL of "www.pennwarrantylitigation.com". He does not deny sending copies of the content of the site to plaintiff's employees. Defendant asserts the defense of "truth," claiming that plaintiff did engage in the unfair practices he has accused them of on the web site. Alternatively, defendant claims that the content of the web site is protected as his opinion.
Discussion
The movant seeking summary judgment has the initial burden of setting forth evidentiary facts to demonstrate its entitlement to judgment in its favor as a matter of law, without the need for a trial. Zuckerman v. City of New York, 49 NY2d 557, 562 (1980). Only if the burden is met does it then shift to party opposing the motion to establish the existence of disputed material issues of fact that would require a trial of the action. Zuckerman v. City of New York, supra . When the issues raised in the action are clearly ones of law, then the court may and should resolve them without the need for a testimonial hearing. See: Hindes v. Weisz, 303 AD2d 459 (2nd dept. 2003).
A. Defamation/Trade Libel
Since each of the parties believes that they are entitled to summary judgment on the third cause of action, the court considers the relief requested as to such cause of action first. The third cause of action, relying upon the web site created by defendant, alleges that defendant has defamed and engaged in "trade libel" of plaintiff. In its motion, plaintiff claims that the defamation constitutes libel per se, because defendant's statements directly pertain to its business practices and trade. Plaintiff further claims that defendant's web site is libelous per se because it accuses plaintiff of criminal conduct, to wit: fraud. [*3]
The content of the web site is not disputed. It is a 45 page document. There are some generally negative comments about the car service warranty industry, the auto insurance industry, and New Jersey judges. Most of the web site is devoted to the New Jersey small claims action between the parties. Defendant offers conclusions about how plaintiff's answers to interrogatories in the New Jersey small claims action prove Penn Warranty's pervasive deceptive business practices.
While plaintiff alleges that the document is filled with defamatory statements, in the complaint and in this motion plaintiff identifies only approximately eight (8) specific statements. CPLR § 3016 (a) requires that the particular words complained of be set forth in a complaint alleging defamation. Thus, in evaluating plaintiff's claim, only the words alleged in the complaint as constituting the libel may be considered by the Court as the actionable language. Plaintiff's claims of other unidentified defamations contained in the web site may not be relied upon in support of this action. Kahn v. Reade, 7 AD3d 311 (1st dept. 2004). In this case, the hard printed copy of the web site was never made part of the original complaint. Consequently, plaintiff is specifically bound by the alleged defamatory words contained in the four corners of the complaint. See: Sassower v. Finnerty, 96 AD2d 585 (2nd dept. 1983) app dismd 61 NY2d 756 (1984).
The actual language in the web site that plaintiff claims constitutes the libel is as follows:
[1] Plaintiff "cleverly" interprets its standard automobile warranty contracts;
[2] Plaintiff is a "blatantly dishonest company";
[3] Plaintiff is a "crooked company";
[4] Plaintiff has "been ripping off its contract holders for quite a while";
[5] The public has been a victim of plaintiff's "greed";
[6] Plaintiff has committed "fraud";
[7] Plaintiff "has been committing fraud on a grand scale"; and
[8] Plaintiff has been "running scams".
Defendant does not dispute that such language is contained on a web site he developed. He claims that he never posted it on the world wide web. He further claims that it is the truth and/or that it is his personal opinion.
Defamation is the injury to one's reputation, either by written expression (libel) or oral expression (slander). Morrison v. National Broadcasting Co., 19 NY2d 453 (1967). The elements of libel are: [1] a false and defamatory statement of fact; [2] regarding the plaintiff; [3] which are published to a third party and which [4] result in injury to plaintiff. Idema v. Wager, 120 FSupp2d 361 (SDNY 2000); Ives v. Guilford Mills, 3 FSupp2d 191 (NDNY 1998). Certain statements are considered libelous per se. They are limited to four categories of statements that: [1] charge plaintiff with a serious crime; [2] tend to injure plaintiff in its business, trade or profession; [3] plaintiff has some loathsome disease; or [4] impute unchastity. Liberman v. Gelstein, 80 NY2d 429 (1992); Harris v. Hirsh, 228 AD2d 206 (1st dept. 1996). Where statements are libelous per se, the law presumes that damages will result and they need not be separately proved.[FN1]
"Trade libel", although closely related to libel per se is not the same. Trade libel is the knowing publication of false and derogatory material regarding one's business, that is calculated to prevent others from doing business with the defamed party or otherwise interferes with one's business relationships. The party alleging trade libel must establish that the publication of the false material was a substantial factor in inducing others not to have business dealings with it. [*4]Waste Distillation Technology v. Blasland & Bouck Engineers, PC, 136 AD2d 633 (2nd dept. 1988); United States Luggage Co. L.P. v. Vormittag Associates Inc., 5 Misc 3d 1019(A); 2004 WL 2683637 (Sup. Ct. Nassau Co.). Trade libel requires proof of special damages; while libel per se, even if based on disparagement in business, requires no such proof of special damages.
As with any claim for defamation, both libel per se and trade libel are defeated by a showing that the published statements are substantially true. Newport Service & Leasing v. Meadowbrook Distributing Corp., 18 AD3d 454 (2nd dept. 2005). They are also subject to a defense that the material, when read in context, would be perceived by a reasonable person to be nothing more than a matter of personal opinion. Immuno AG v. Moor-Jankowski, 77 NY2d 235 (1991).
It is the court's responsibility in the first instance to determine whether a publication is susceptible to the defamatory meaning ascribed to it. Golub v. Enquirer/Star Group, Inc., 89 NY2d 1074 (1997); Rejent v. Liberation Publications Inc., 197 AD2d 240 (1st dept. 1994). A court should neither strain to place a particular construction on the language complained of, nor should the court strain to interpret the words in their mildest and most inoffensive sense, to hold them non-libelous. Rejent v. Liberation Publications, Inc., supra .
Competing with an individual's right to protect one's own reputation, is the constitutionally guaranteed right to free speech. One of the staples of a free society is that people should be able to speak freely. United States Constitution v. New York State Constitution, Article I § 8. Consequently, statements that merely express opinion are not actionable as defamation, no matter how offensive, vituperative or unreasonable they may be. Immono AG v. Moore-Jankowski, supra . Moreover, in the context of statements pertaining to issues of consumer advocacy, courts have been loathe to stifle someone's criticism of goods or services. Tzougrakis v. Cyveillance, Inc., 145 FSupp2d 325 (SDNY 2001); Themed Restaurants, Inc. v. Zagat Survey, LLC, __ AD2d __, 801 NYS2d 38 (1st dept. 2005); Frommer v. Abels, 193 AD2d 513 (1st dept. 1993); Behr v. Weber, 172 AD2d 441 (1st dept. 1991). The courts have recognized that personal opinion about goods and services are a matter of legitimate public concern and protected speech.
Preliminarily the court rejects defendant's defense that the allegedly defamatory statements were never published because he never posted the web site to the World Wide Web. Even were his claim true, defendant has admitted that, for a brief time in January 2004, it was available on the internet to those possessing a certain URL address. Moreover, defendant does not dispute that he sent a hard copy of the web site to many of plaintiff's employees. "Publication" is a term of art, signifying communication of the defamatory statement to a third party. Ostrowe v. Lee, 256 NY 36 (1931); Rossignol v. Silvernail, 146 AD2d 907 (3rd dept. 1989). Moreover, a communication to an agent of the person defamed is considered a publication to a third party. Teichner v. Bellan, 7 AD2d 247 (4th dept. 1959). Here defendant admits communication of the web site to third parties. The parties' dispute about the extent of such publication does not detract from the conclusion that there was publication, as that term is used, in the context of a defamation claim.
The court holds that the cause of action for libel, however, whether based upon libel per se or trade libel, should be dismissed because the challenged speech is merely a statement of defendant's personal opinion about the quality of services provided by plaintiff company.
In deciding whether the challenged language constitutes statements of fact or opinion, the court's role is to determine whether the reasonable reader would have believed that the statements were conveying facts about the plaintiff. Millus v. Newsday, 89 NY2d 840 (1996); Brain v. Richardson, 87 NY2d 46 (1995). The analysis requires the court to look at the content of the whole communication, its tone and apparent purpose, in order to determine whether a reasonable person would view them as expressing or implying facts. Immuno AG v. Moor-Jankowski, supra .
The New York Court of Appeals has held that the following factors should be considered [*5]in distinguishing fact from opinion: [1] whether the language used has a precise meaning or whether it is indefinite or ambiguous; [2] whether the statement is capable of objectively being true or false, and [3] the full context of the entire communication or the broader social context surrounding the communication. Brain v. Richardson, supra . Moreover, the Court of Appeals makes a distinction between a statement of opinion that implies a factual basis that is not disclosed to the reader and an opinion that is accompanied by a recitation of facts on which it is based. Gross v. New York Times, 82 NY2d 146 (1993). The former is actionable, the later is not.
Here the web site presents to others as a personal statement by its maker. The facts on which the maker bases his conclusions are his personal small claims law suit with plaintiff. Facts from that New Jersey file are disclosed and they are the "facts" on which defendant reaches his conclusions stated in the web site.
The alleged defamatory statements in the complaint are susceptible to ambiguous meanings. Indeed, in the complaint the plaintiff had to frame or augment the allegedly defamatory words with its own words in order to even allege that the language was defamatory. Loose, figurative or hyperbolic statements, even if deprecating to the plaintiff, are not actionable. Dillon v. City of New York, 261 AD2d 34 (1st dept. 1999).
Perhaps most compelling however, is the fact that the web site, when viewed in its full context, reveals that defendant is a disgruntled consumer and that his statements reflect his personal opinion based upon his personal dealing with plaintiff. They are subjective expressions of consumer dissatisfaction with plaintiff and the statements are not actionable because they are defendant's personal opinion.
Since the statements are protected opinion, the third cause of action is dismissed, regardless of whether it is based on libel per se or trade libel. In the context of the trade libel, however, the complete absence of any proof of special damages provides an additional basis for dismissal. This is a required element of trade libel.
Based on the above reasoning, the court holds that defendant's motion for summary judgment dismissing the third cause of action is granted and that plaintiff's motion for summary judgment on its third cause of action is denied.
B. Intentional Interference with Prospective Economic Advantage
The tort of intentional interference with prospective economic advantage, requires a showing that through the intentional and wrongful acts of defendant, identified third parties were prevented from entering into a business relationship with plaintiff. Levy v. P&R Dental Strategies, Inc., 302 AD2d 255 (1st dept. 2003); Joan Hansen & Company, Inc. v. Everlast World's Boxing headquarters Corp., 296 AD2d 103 (1st dept. 2002). Once defendant makes out his prima facie case, plaintiff is required to raise a triable issue of fact by submitting evidence that there is a "reasonable certainty" that a contract would have been entered, but for defendant's wrongful interference. Long Island University v. Grucci for Congress, Inc., 10 AD3d 412 (2nd dept. 2004).
Defendant has shown that during discovery he asked plaintiff to identify for him those people plaintiff is claiming would have entered into service contracts with it, but were prevented or dissuaded from doing so after reading defendant's web site. Defendant has asserted that not a single possible customer was identified by plaintiff. It is on this basis that defendant seeks summary judgment dismissal of the claim.
Plaintiff, in opposition to summary judgment, has not identified even one lost customer. Since one of the elements of this cause of action is an identification of the lost business with reasonable certainty, and defendant has not adduced a scintilla of proof of lost business on this motion for summary judgment, the cause of action must be dismissed.
C. Coercion, Harassment, Extortion
This combined cause of action is based upon plaintiff's claims that it received letters from [*6]plaintiff that he would publish the web site he created, and disparage plaintiff to the press and the Pennsylvania Attorney General, unless they did the "right thing". Defendant denies that he authored the letters in the form plaintiff claims. In any event he claims that asking the company to do the "right thing" cannot be construed as an extortionate demand.
It is well established that no civil cause of action for coercion (or related causes of action) will lie if the threatened conduct is something that the defendant has a right to do anyway. Wehringer v. Standard Sec. Life Ins. Co., 57 NY2d 757 (1982); Niagara Mohawk Power Corp. v. Testone, 272 AD2d 910 (4th dept. 2000).
At bar the defendant clearly had to right to make complaints to the Pennsylvania Attorney General's office and the press about what he perceived was unfair treatment at the plaintiff's hands. He has to right to lodge complaints, regardless of whether they are ultimately found to have merit.
The court has already held in this decision that the web site constitutes constitutionally protected opinion. Since defendant has the right to express his opinion to the public about plaintiff's services, the "threat" to express such personal opinion cannot be actionable as coercion, extortion or any related tort.
The court does not need to reach the issue of whether defendant's ambiguous request that plaintiff "do the right thing" constitutes an implied threat for money in order to find that this cause of action lacks merit.
D. Civil Rico
The RICO statutes make it unlawful to use income from a pattern of racketeering activity: (1) to acquire an interest in, establish or operate an enterprise involved in interstate commerce; (2) to acquire or maintain an interest in such enterprise through a pattern of racketeering activity; (3) to conduct or participate in the conducting of such enterprise through racketeering activity; and (4) to conspire to do any of the foregoing acts. Simpson Electric Corp. v. Leucadia, Inc., 72 NY2d 450 (1988). The RICO statutes provide a civil cause of action for those injured by such prohibited activity. Plaintiff claims a civil right to recovery under RICO.
The elements of civil RICO are: [1] conduct [2] of an enterprise [3] through a pattern [4] of racketeering activity. 18 USCA § 1961, 1962 1964; Podraza v. Carriero, 212 AD2d 331 (4th dept. 1995). Under RICO the person held liable and the enterprise must be different entities. Yellow Bus Lines v. Drivers, 883 F2d 132 (1989). The definition of racketeering includes any one of a number of predicate offenses, including wire and mail fraud. While there need not have been a successful criminal prosecution of such offenses, they must be factually supportable in the civil action. In order to establish a "pattern" there must be at least two racketeering activities within a ten (10) year period. Simpson Electric Corp. v. Leucadia, supra ; Podraza v. Carriero, supra .
Defendant moves to dismiss this cause of action, claiming that RICO has no application to the facts alleged. Plaintiff raises nothing in opposition to dismissal of the RICO claim.
There is no basis for a RICO claim under the facts of this case, even when giving plaintiff the most favorable interpretation of the facts. No enterprise is identified. Nor is any racketeering activity shown, let alone a pattern, as required to establish the claim.
The motion to dismiss the fourth cause of action is, therefore, granted.
E. Infringement/ false designation of origin and unfair competition
It is undisputed that plaintiff has created a web site and it copyrighted and registered a domain name of www.pennwarranty.com. It is also undisputed that defendant has created a web site under the name of www.pennwarrantylitigation.com. Plaintiff's claims for infringement, etc. are derived from the Lanham Act (15 USC § 1125) which makes misleading statements using a registered trade name subject to recovery of damages in a civil action.
Under the Lanham Act a cyber-squatter is potentially liable to a trademark owner if: (1) there is a bad faith intent to profit from the mark, and (2) the domain named used is identical or confusingly similar to a distinctive or familiar trademark or legally protected trademark. Profit [*7]includes the commercial use of the trademark. Mere use of another's name on the internet, however, is not per se commercial use. School of Visual Arts v. Kuprewicz, 3 Misc 3d 278 (Sup. Ct. NY Co. 2003). It does not refer to a consumers desire to pursue an agenda undermine the trademark holders business. Bosley Med Inst Inc. v. Kremer, 403 F3d 673 (9th Cir. 2005). Where a domain name and site is used to inform consumers about the maker's experience with a company and there is no misleading information about the source of the site, no private right of action exists. Lucas Nursery & Landscaping Inc. v. Grosse, 359 F3d 806 (6th Cir. 2004).
What is fatal to the cause of action at bar is that defendant's web site is not being used for any commercial purpose. The web site is not selling competing products or any goods whatsoever. The Lanham Act cannot be use as a pretext to stifle critics of goods or services by someone, such as a consumer advocate, who is not engaged in marketing or promoting a competitive product or service. Tzougrakis v. Cyvelillance, Inc., 145 FSupp2d 325 (SDNY 2001).
In addition, the names of the web sites are not confusingly similar. The two web names, (www.pennwarranty.com and www.pennwarrantylitigation.com) are not identical. While defendant's web site name contains the words "Penn Warranty", the use of the additional word "litigation," in itself suggests that the site contains information about a court proceeding where Penn Warranty is pitted against someone or something else. The use of the word "litigation" would hardly serve as a "come on" or a "promotion" of Penn Warranty and/or its products.
Even, however, were there the slightest confusion about whether someone initially finding defendant's web site would think that he or she had actually reached on plaintiff's own web site, that mistaken belief would be dispelled immediately. Defendant's web site clearly and unmistakenably indicates an unfavorable view of plaintiff and its business practices.
Summary judgment dismissing the fifth cause of action is, therefore, granted.
F. Permanent Injunction
The permanent injunction requested in this case is against the future making of defamatory statements by defendant. This cause of action is entirely dependant upon plaintiff establishing, at a minimum, its cause of action for defamation in the first place. See: Rombom v. Weberman, 2002 WL 146 1890 (Sup. Ct. Kings Co. 2002); Trojan Electric & Machine Co. v. Heusinger, 162 AD2d 859 (3rd dept. 1990). Since the court has dismissed the underlying cause of action for libel, there is similarly and for the same reasoning, no basis to enjoin the making of such challenged statements in the future.
The court grants defendant's motion for summary judgment dismissing the sixth cause of action and denies plaintiff's motion seeking summary judgment on the sixth cause of action.
Conclusion
In accordance herewith the court grants defendant's motion for summary judgment dismissing the complaint and denies defendant's motion for summary judgment on the third and sixth causes of action. It is hereby:
ORDERED that the complaint is hereby dismissed in its entirety, and it is further
ORDERED that plaintiff's cross motion seeking summary judgment on the third and sixth cause of action is denied.
Any requested relief not expressly granted herein is denied.
This shall constitute the decision and order of the Court.
Dated: New York, New York
October 24, 2005 So Ordered
__________________________
HON. JUDITH J. GISCHE, J.S.C. [*8]
Footnotes
Footnote 1:There is some concern that the doctrines of per se defamation may not withstand first amendment constitutional scrutiny. See: Liberman v. Gelstein, 80 NY2d 429, 434 (1992), supra , footnote 1. Since this argument has not been raised at bar, the court does not reach it.

Scientology Inc. tampering with a jury

2005-11-08T18:28:00.000-07:00

[Stamp] FILED
LOS ANGELES SUPERIOR COURT
NOV 3 2005

JOHN A. CLARKE, CLERK
BY MARTIN GODDERZ, DEPUTY

SUPERIOR COURT OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA
FOR THE COUNTY OF LOS ANGELES
WOLLERSHEIM v. CHURCH [sic] OF SCIENTOLOGY

ORDER C332027

NOTICE TO: [handwritten] ELLEN MARIE FARNY. Pursuant to theirobligations under C.C.P. §§ 611 and 1209(a)(10), members of the jurypool have informed the Court that you have communicated or attemptedto communicate with jurors regarding the substance of the above-entitled action. You are hereby notified that this conduct, if true,is contemptuous and punishable as such. Further, this conduct maysubject you to arrest and prosecution for a violation of PenalCode § 95.

Under the Court's inherent authority to control itsproceedings, and in furtherance of protecting the integrity of thejury process, you are hereby ordered as follows:

1. You shall not communicate or attempt to communicate inany manner with any person known to you to be a member of the jurypool in this case. 2. You shall not enter the Stanley Mosk Courthouse at 111North Hill Street, Los Angeles at any time during the pendency of thisaction unless required to conduct official court business andthen only upon the advance written permission of the Presiding Judge.

Any violation of this Order is punishable as contempt and maysubject you to arrest and criminal prosecution.

IT IS SO ORDERED.

Dated: November 3, 2005

[Signed] William A. McLaughlin

WILLIAM A. MACLAUGHLIN Presiding Judge

****************************

California Penal Code § 95 states:

95. Every person who corruptly attempts to influence a juror, orany person summoned or drawn as a juror, or chosen as an arbitratoror umpire, or appointed a referee, in respect to his or her verdictin, or decision of, any cause or proceeding, pending, or about to bebrought before him or her, is punishable by a fine not exceeding tenthousand dollars ($10,000), or by imprisonment in the state prison,if it is by means of any of the following: (a) Any oral or written communication with him or her except inthe regular course of proceedings. (b) Any book, paper, or instrument exhibited, otherwise than inthe regular course of proceedings. (c) Any threat, intimidation, persuasion, or entreaty. (d) Any promise, or assurance of any pecuniary or other advantage.

http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=pen&group=00001-01000&file=92-100

Stress? Wait 'Till You Get The Final Bill!

2005-11-08T13:41:00.000-07:00

Stress? Wait 'Till You Get The Final Bill!

By DANIEL RUTH
Published: Oct 17, 2005

Somehow, it seemed poetically fitting that the Church [sic] of Scientology finally has been reduced to pitching its theological hooey stuck among a mall's kiosks hyping facial creams inspired by the Dead Sea, Metallica T-shirts and sunglasses.

After all, Scientology has always been sort of the tchotchke of religious [sic] cults.

How perfect. How sublime. How convenient.

Patrons of the University Square Mall now can go window-shopping while munching on a corn dog and get a phony stress test, too.

For months, Scientology acolytes have been hustling mall visitors with a carnyesque come-on to receive a "Free! Free! Free!" e-meter reading, gauging whether they are wound tighter than Kirstie Alley trying to squeeze into a size 4 wetsuit.

Hail Marys

Ever since H.G. Wells-ultra-lite science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard cooked up Scientology, the Rosetta Stone of the cult has been its reliance on the e-meter, a sort of psychobabble confessional only without all those Hail Marys.

Passers-by at the mall -- perhaps en route to the gourmet taste treats awaiting them at the food court -- are set upon by Scientology missionaries [sic] with the offer of a gratis e-gizmo test reading to determine if their stress level is somewhere between Hitler's food taster and Joe Torre's agent discovering George Steinbrenner is on Call Waiting.

The e-meter is little more than a couple of cans hooked up to some wires, which in turn are attached to a whatchamacallit thingy [oah meter] that looks like a cable box. Come to think of it, the e-gee-gaw is probably more reliable.

Unsuspecting rubes are then asked a series of questions by the Scientology recruiters relating to their possible stress levels, such as how are things at work, at home, in one's relationship.

Here's a simple question: Unless you are dead, isn't 99.99999999 percent of the population under some form of stress at any given moment?

Indeed, if you have a teenager under your roof, you are probably already wound tighter than Jon Gruden actually meeting Chucky.

So it is probably fair to say the Scientologists could rightfully claim their Campbell's soup can stress test has a remarkable level of reliability.

There's More!

Interestingly enough, the Scientologist Tom Cruise's Elmer Gantry-like rant against the so-called evils of psychiatry to the contrary, Hubbard's sect is engaged is very much the same sort of activity -- offering psychological counseling to troubled people.

Freud had his couch. Hubbard has his kiosk.

Ultimately, the objective of Scientology is to achieve a "clear" state, which, of course, involves clearing you of your cash.

For once the Scientology huckster does indeed determine you are under stress, the University Mall visitor will be encouraged to purchase L. Ron Hubbard's "Dianetics," which represents some 600 pages of unmitigated gibberish that makes the Unabomber's manifesto read like "How To Win Friends and Influence People."

But wait! There's more!

Put another way, in addition to the $8 for "Dianetics," the New Age Bible of balderdash, think of L. Ron Hubbard as sort of the Ron Popeil of pop piety.

The University Mall marks who take the bait after having their stress level measured by a Budweiser can can also start taking Scientology courses (therapy?) beginning at $75 and going all the way up to until you've cleared out your bank account -- all in the memory of a crazy nut who liked sailor hats and believed space aliens inhabit humans.

Yeah, you could say that would cause a smidgen of stress.

http://www.tampatrib.com/MGBT7MJYVEE.html

Scientology III

2005-11-08T13:34:00.000-07:00

Southern California PSYCHIATRIST
Guest Editorial

Scientology III
by Louis Jolyon West, M.D., Professor of Psychiatry, UCLA School of Medicine

In previous articles in this newsletter (July, 1990 and May, 1991), I described how the Church of Scientology strives constantly to gain the appearance of respectability and to attract new members, as well as to discredit its critics. What follows is a continuation of that account, with special emphasis on Scientology's front groups, the purposes of which are to improve its credibility with the public, and to create new avenues for recruitment of members and generation of income.

L. Ron Hubbard long believed that celebrities could be useful in helping to promote Scientology. He dictated special efforts to recruit the most viable and successful people. In the 1950s Scientology tried unsuccessfully to recruit such public figures as Marlene Ilietrich, Edward R Murrow, Ernest fiemingway, Greta Garbo and Howard Hughes. Finally in the 1970s the actor John Travolta and the football star John Brodie credited their success to Scientology.

Since then other performers such as Tom Cruise and Kirstie Alley have publicly praised the Church. A network of "celebrity centres" has been established throughout the world for such members to gather and to help in the recruitment of new members. The most famous of these is Hollywood's CelebrityCentre International, formerly the Manor Hotel, an enormous and magnificent mansion built in the 1920s.

One of Scientology's latter-day developments has been its putative detoxification procedure, called "the purification rundown [NarConon]." Within Scientology proper it is employed along with the continual "dianetic" psychotherapy procedures as a health enhancement process. By NarConon (Scientolog's drug rehabilitation front group) this is called "the Hubbard method." It is supposed to dislodge toxins and drugs from fatty tissues through a rigorous regimen of exercise, saunas (up to five hours a day, for up to 30 days), and progressively larger doses of various vitamins. There is no scientific basis for the claims about it. In fact, as noted in the previous article, the prolonged saunas can cause serious dehydration, and the high doses of certain vitamins may also pose a health hazard.

Nevertheless, the Los Angeles-based Scienbology front organization named the "Foundation for the Advancement of Science and Education" (FASE), sponsors "scientific" studies (which are mostly conducted by Scientologists and/or Foundation officers) that predictably validate the Hubbard method. One beneficiary of FASE is the HealthMed Clinic, which is also run by Scientologists, and which administers the Hubbard treatment from its offices in LosAngeles and Sacramento. By using FASE-sponsored research findings to legitimize its treatment, HealthMed is able to attract new clients and thus carry out more "studies", to generate more income, and to steer more people into various Scientology courses from which still more money is harvested.

There are a number of other "front" enterprises through which the Church of Scientology attempts to gain influence in society, and even in the health-professional and scientific communities. For example, a branch of Scientology known as WISE (World Institute of Scientology Enterprises) has been pushing selected Scientologists to serve as "management consultants" to various professional entities. The plan calls for these consultants to promote the "management training techniques" of L. Ron Hubbard, and of course at the same time to recruit new members. This is done first by distributing a Scientology personality test (which inevitably detects major personality flaws) to businessmen and their employees, and later by encouraging clients to purchase progressively expensive Scientology courses that will correct those flaws.

Two such management consulting firms are located in the Los Angeles area. One, called The Advisory, operates out of Burbank. Its head, Arthur J. Maren, is also one of Scientology's three signatories on Narconon's Articles of Incorporation. The Advisory solicits physicians through advertisements mailed to their offices, with mailing labels purchased from the Los Angeles County Medical Association. The other, and much larger company, is called Sterling Management Systems Sterling targets dentists, optometrists, podiatrists, physicians, veterinarians, optomotrists, and other health care professionals.

Its main offices are in Glendale, but it reaches nationwide through attractively packaged seminars and mailings of expensive brochures. It has been expanding rapidly. A recent issue of the Los Angeles Business Journal ranked Sterling among the 35 largest management consulting firms in Los Angeles County. Sterling distributes slick promotional materials to health care professionals in private practice, such as Today's Professional: the Journal of Successful Practice Management, which contains (inter-alia) articles by Hubbard excerpted from Scientology documents.

Sterling was founded in 1983 by a Scientologist Gregory K Hughes, a dentist in Vacaville, California. Dr. Hughes presents himself at "Winning With Dentistry" seminars as an example of how well the Hubbard technique works. He doesn't discuss the fact that a number of lawsuits have been brought against him and his dental associates by former patients charging them with negligence and malpractice, or that he has been under investigation by the California Board of Dental Examiners.

Sterling begins by offering a three hour introductory seminar to members of various health care professions in localities across the nation. At these seminars, attendees receive basic "management" advice and are strongly encouraged to sign up (along with their spouses) for a week-long array (at a cost of $12,000 - $14,000) of courses at Sterling's California facility. The program consists of daily 12-bour sessions (including the Communication Course, an entry level course in Scientology) and a menu of self-taught courses from which to select.

Clients are pressured to discuss their personal lives. Personal information divulged during auditing sessions has been used later to pressure clients into paying additional money. Pressure is also excerted on clients to enroll in dianetic auditing courses (starting at $3,000), aimed at correcting the problems inevitably revealed by the personality test, and to purchase Scientology text-books, framed prints of text from Hubbard's science fiction novels ($2,000), an $800 schedualing ststem, and other items, The additional courses can cost as much as $5,000 to $18,000 a piece, and the bookscan cost several hundred dollars. A case in point follows.

Dr. and Mrs. Robert Geary, a dentist and his wife from Ohio, claim that during a five month period in 1988 they paid Scientology $200,000. Under constant pressure in the context of a Sterling program, the couple was unable to resist signing checks and arranging for loans to pay for additional seminars. When Dr. Geary tried to break away, Scientologists allegedly kidnapped his wife and held her for two weeks while supposedly helping her to become a "Clear" (a Scientology term for someone without any remaining "engrams" or psychological problems). When Scientology officials refused to give Dr. Geary information about his wife or her whereabouts, he contacted the family lawyer, who promptly called the FBI in Ohio and California. Within a day Mrs. Geary was returned home, but she was "a physical and emotional wreck:" The Gearys are now warning fellow professionals to stay away from Sterling and Scientology.

Other traumatized victims of Sterling are also beginning to speak out about their experiences, and to warn of the harms and costs that are never imagined at the outset.

Interest in Scientology has recently been whetted by cover stories in TIME (May 6, 1991) and other periodicals such as CALIFORNIA magazine (June, 1991). However, the cult reacts by greatly increasing its expenditures on public relations and advertising, with full-page ads in USA Today and costly television commercials.

As a psychiatrist, who has for many years studied the practices of totalist cults, and noted the often harmful effects of these depredations upon cult membersand their families, I continue to observe the actions of the Church of Scientologv to recruit new members, silence critics, and gain political and economic influence through deliberate deception, misinformation, concealment, distraction, and harassment. It seems to me that there should be potent social and legal remedies to combat the Church of Scientology, deriving both from the recent evolution of a consumer protection tradition (as exemplified in the health field) and from the older legal matrx of redress for damages and civil wrongs.

Our laws and codes of ethics accept the vulnerability of people to intimidation and deception. They also accept the possibility that relationships of special trust (such as those enjoyed by physicians, nurses, psychologists, social workers, attorneys, ministers, etc.) may be improperly exploited. Disillusioned and damaged "consumers" of the Hubbard method should be able to sue not only the Church of Scientology but also Narconon, Sterling Management, and other Scientology front organizations for damages done and losses endured.

Of course, in order to win a recovery for such damages or losses, plaintiffs must develop proof, which necessarily requires investigations, witnesses, and courtroom procedures. Nevertheless, if proof is forthcoming, then such lawsuits should lead to recovery of damages from which Scientology's claims of exemption as a religion should not make it immune.

Ten years ago such suits were very rare. Recently, however, they are on the increase, and some have been successful. Needless to say, Scientology's efforts to discredit expert witnesses for plaintiff's in these cases have been vicious in the extreme.

If lawsuits of this type increasingly lead to recovery of damages, the harms done by Scientology may begin to subside, as victims and their families are provided greater protection under the law. Unfortunately, it is often extremely difficult for people thus damaged to initiate tort actions. However, on behalf of those few who do seek legal remedies, and on behalf of their families, and also on behalf of all those still in bondage, or not yet recruited but currently exposed to risk, I hope that the legitimacy of such legal sanctions will increasingly be affirmed by the courts with the help of knowledgeable experts from the health-related professions. Progress in this field depends heavily on the prospect that psychiatrists and other mental health workers will take a greater interest in the psychopathology and psychotherapy of cult victims, as these unfortunate people and their families increasingly turn to us for help.

(END)

==================

Summer Bruin - UCLA No 6 82nd Year:

Scientologist response remains true to form

...it is precisely because of my outspoken criticism of Scientology's deceptive, manipulative, exploitive dangerous and even brutal practices, which have diminished the freedom and individuality of untold thousands of people, that they have long since identified me as "fair game" for their perennial harassment, vilification and character assassination. Your July 26 "Counterpoint" gave space to L.S. Hight international media coordinator for the "Church" of Scientology, who criticized an excellent Bruin article by Nancy Hsu ("Church , Members File Suit Against Pro-fessor," May 17) in characteristic Scientology fashion: with a vicious personal attack upon me. Hight's diatribe was filled with lies and misrepresentations from beginning to end.

My track record on human rights is far superior to that of Hight, L. Ron Hubbard or any other Scientology official past or present, and has been so for nearly half a century.

I have put my job, my reputation and even my life on the line for human rights causes ranging from fascism in Europe to racism in America to apartheid in South Africa; from punitive policies against gays in the military (published in 1958'), to victims of terrorism and torture, to neglect and mistreatment of the poor, the mentally ill and children everywhere.

In fact, it is precisely because of my outspoken criticism of Scientology's deceptive, manipulative, exploitive; dangerous, and even brutal practices, which have diminished the freedom and individuality of untold thousands of people, that they have long since identified me as "fair game" for their perennial harassment, vilification and character assassination.

The Center for Study of Life Threatening Behavior which was proposed in the early 1970s by me and two dozen faculty colleagues at UCLA was extensively reviewed and approved by objective committees both within and outside the University. No such "experiments" as "chemical castration" or "implanting electrodes into people's brains" were proposed except perhaps in L. Ron Hubbard's science fiction stories.

The only project (among 17) in which minorities would have been over-represented was one in which model programs to diminish violence among students through peer-counseling techniques were to be tested at two Los Angeles inner-city schools at their request.

As America's epidemic of interpersonal violence has continued to grow in the last 20 years, many knowledgeable people have expressed regret that the proposed center was never funded.

Contrary to Hight's allegations (which Scientology has repeated ad nauseam in Goebels' tradition of the Big Lie), I have never taken part in "mind-control"experiments funded by the CIA or anybody else. It is Scientology itself that has become wealthy and powerful by using mind-control techniques to exploit innocent seekers of self-improvement

That I employ medications and teach about their proper use - in the practice of psychiatry is no secret, but Hight's implications about any impropriety in this are totally false.

Finally. the "elephant story" is always thrown in by Scientologists in their attacks upon me as though it were some sort of shameful secret which they have exposed. You can read all about it and judge for yourself. (Lysergic Acid Diethylamide: Its Effects on a Male Asiatic Elephant, Science, December 7,1962,138: 34545, 1100-1103.) My co-authors were the distinguished African-American psychiatrist, Dr. Chester Pierce, now a professor at Harvard, and Dr. Warren Thomas, longtime director of the Los Angeles Zoo.

Beware of Scientology. It is basically a science-fiction psychotherapy cult concocted by one of our century's most extravagant liars (a cross between the Baron Munchausen and Rev. Jim Jones) and practiced by amateurs unrestricted by any code of professional ethics, any peer review or any respect for the content of modern behavioral science, clinical psychology or scientific medicine.

Dr. Jolyon West, M.D. is a professor in the School of Medicine.

(END)

NarConon booted out of U.K. school system

2005-11-08T13:25:00.000-07:00

In response to an article in the Manchester Evening News, The Trafford Metropolitan Borough (U.K.) issued a news release announcing that a certain drug education group had been booted out of their school system. A copy of the news release is reproduced below; you can view the actual release, on borough letterhead, here:

http://Stop-Narconon.org/Documents/trafford-2005-09-30.doc

Although Narconon isn't mentioned by name in the release, a knowledgeable source informs me that Narconon was indeed the group that was booted.

=====================================

TRAFFORD METROPOLITAN BOROUGH News Release
Date: 30 September 2005Ref: KG/NR/171/05

STATEMENT IN RESPONSE TO MANCHESTER EVENING NEWS ENQUIRY

Trafford Council's Executive Director of Children and Young People's Service Chris Pratt said: "Schools work under delegated powers, meaning they are able to bring in a variety of organisations of their choice as appropriate to support the educational curriculum.

"The Local Education Authority would advise schools if they were aware of any concerns about individual organisations. Information recently brought to our attention has resulted in advice being issued advising schools not to work with a particular organisation," he said.
Trafford North Primary Care Trust and Trafford South Primary Care Trust said: "The Trusts, in conjunction with the Council's Children and Young People's Service have advised that schools seek advice from the Drug and Alcohol Action Team (DAAT) and from the Healthy Schools Drug Education Worker, with regard to the delivery and commissioning of drug education services in schools, to ensure that high quality and consistent information is received by pupils.

The Healthy Schools Scheme addresses the issue of drug education in both primary and secondary schools in line with guidance from the DfEs, which encourages all schools to "respond to drugs effectively by having a well-planned drug education programme which takes account of the needs of pupils." (Drugs: Guidance for Schools, 2004).

The safety of children and the appropriate handling of child protection issues is of fundamental importance to the PCTs and the Healthy Schools scheme and we will continue to work in partnership with the Council and the DAAT to ensure this is achieved."

Ends

For more information about this press statement please contact: Karen Galvin, Press Officer, on 0161 912 1136