GA Letter to IRS (March 8, 1997)

3/8/97¹

Department of the Treasury
Internal Revenue Service
5045 E. Butler Ave
Fresno, CA 93888

Re:     Gerald D. Armstrong
SS# 265-81-2049
Tax Year 1994

Dear Sir/Madam:

I apologize for not writing you by your, I believe it was, January 8, 1997 deadline, and for not writing you before today, a good two months late. My reasons are stated in this letter, which will also serve as my response, at least for now, to your question about my 1994 tax return.

I explained in my earlier communications that I did not have possession of nor access to all my records from 1994, and, as further explained below, I still do not. Moreover, because of events which have transpired since I last wrote you, I now do not even have possession of your demands and other correspondence. Nevertheless, I understand what you asked for, and I will provide that information herein.

My history since approximately 1984 is quite well known to certain people in the IRS, and I would request that my records and history with the Service be retrieved and examined in order to put my 1994 taxes, as well as my present situation, in a context, beyond what I am able to provide in this letter, which will make them understandable. I would direct your attention particularly to my submission in April, 1990 concerning my 1987 tax return. I have had what in human terms is understandably called an odd life.

I have been a target of Scientology ever since 1981 when I left the organization, which has its own very well known and even longer history with the IRS. My history with Scientology became part of the Scientology vs. IRS war as a result of the first lawsuit in which the organization sued me in 1982, LA Superior Court No. C 420153. That case went to trial in 1984 and resulted in the famous and globally cited “Breckenridge decision.”²

By 1993 Scientology had sued me four times and carried out a world wide “black propaganda” campaign against me. “Black propaganda” or “black PR” is Scientology’s term, used by its former leader L. Ron Hubbard in organization directives – or as Scientology insists they be called, “scriptures” – for its policy and practice of character assassination, the destruction of a target’s reputation and credibility by lies and covert operations.

Scientology’s attacks on me, and its other targets, are pursuant to its basic, and infamous, policy Hubbard termed fair game,” its doctrine of opportunistic hatred, which has been judicially condemned since the 1970’s. See, e.g., appellate opinions in Scientology v. Allard, Wollersheim v. Scientology, Scientology v. Armstrong (1991), Scientology v. Yanny (2 cases), US v. Hubbard, US v. Heldt, US v. Zolin. The purpose underlying all of the organization’s legal actions against me was and is to silence me and destroy me financially, emotionally and in any other way possible, since I am “fair game.”

Along life’s path, but certainly by 1993, it had become clear to me that I had been given a role by God, both in persevering through the years of unholy persecution by Scientology, and participating in His Resolution of this “church’s” global war on its innocent victims and equally innocent critics, and on religion itself. This is what my calling, my life and my job became. All my activities, every day, were devoted to that job, or doing what was essential to the support of that job. Although I am professionally, inter alia, a writer, artist and philosopher, and have other commercially intended projects, I have curtailed or shelved all of these activities, except as they are needed for my Scientology job, until the conflict and threat have been reduced or eliminated.

From 1991 through 1995, the activity which consumed much of my time, and in relationship to which I received, as you know, some remuneration, was in assisting sole practitioner, attorney Ford Greene. It is clear that God led me to Mr. Greene, who was through those years one of perhaps only a half dozen attorneys around the world involved in seeking redress through the legal system for people victimized by Scientology.

Mr. Greene is himself a target of fair game, one of the central mechanisms of which is a heavily financed and aggressive litigation machine, complete with bad private investigators and corrupt attorneys. Working in a justice system already compromised by and beholden to the kind of money Scientology has to spend, this litigation machine has been extremely effective in L. Ron Hubbard’s stated policy of “us[ing] the law to harass,” and in the resulting denial of due process and justice to its victims.

I did whatever I could to help Mr. Greene survive and keep helping cult victims, and he defended me in the three lawsuits Scientology brought against me while working with him. One of these lawsuits’ goals, which I believe is illegal, was to prevent my continuing to work with him. I also did whatever else I could to defend other targets of fair game, at some risk. Because of an order Scientology was able to obtain from a Marin County judge, whose rulings I believe are illegal and indicate malfeasance, it became impossible in 1995 for me to continue to work with Mr. Greene.

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Although I had become a renunciant in August 1990, and sometime thereafter understood that whatever I received in truth came from God, I continued to believe that the company I had created, The Gerald Armstrong Corporation (“TGAC” – pronounced “Teegeeack) was a great idea, with seriously commercial potential. But Scientology sued TGAC as well three times through 1993, attacked it with its black PR nastiness, and intimidated other people associated with it. My associates who had become TGAC’s major shareholders as a result of my renunciation returned their shares to me, my two other directors resigned, and I had no choice but to allow the corporation to be suspended. I continued to do my job as guided by God in the form of an independent contractor.

In the fall of 1993 I, and the rest of the world, received the unexpected and alarming news that the IRS had surrendered in its many year war with Scientology, granting tax exemption to the organization’s various components. With this capitulation, the IRS – and, by extension, the US Government – effectively abandoned the people being attacked and victimized by Scientology.

These people were left by the US to defend themselves against the very organization which had brought the nation, by whatever legal or illegal means, to its knees. That’s really when it became impossible for me to step away from what God had called me for, which only with Him would be possible. If the world’s remaining superpower had surrendered in the war against evil, Who else was there to prevent evil’s ultimate triumph; and who but those He guided would He use for the job?

My 1994 tax return reflects what funds I received for that work, and the expenses incurred in performing that work. I may have filled out the form then thinking that I could still make TGAC work, I’m not sure. My expenses include the sort of thing anyone else doing this work would have, such as rent, utilities, telephone, gas, oil, paper, photocopies, travel expenses, and so forth; as well as expenses for maintaining my shelved projects, which only I can do. I have receipts for all these expenses, but, as I’ve said, I am not able to get to these records. I will make at least one change in the return when I’m able to get to my records, expensing my car use by mileage rather than by gas and oil receipts.

Using the same judge who ordered that I could not assist Mr. Greene in his Scientology litigation practice, the organization obtained a liquidated damages “award” and drove me into bankruptcy in early 1995. It then brought a bogus lawsuit in the Bankruptcy Court in an effort to seize my art, writings, and any other assets. Although defending myself in that litigation, and really over my head procedurally, and emotionally, I was finally successful at trial in 1996 in preventing Scientology’s hoped for wholesale seizure.

The organization was also able to get the Marin County judge to issue an order which prevents me from saying one word about Scientology or my 28 years of experiences in relation to it to anyone except my immediate family, prevents me from

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responding to any attack on me by Scientology, either in court filings or in its black PR publications, and prevents me from assisting its victims. If I do communicate about Scientology, even to respond to its attacks, or in any way assist anyone it designates an “enemy,” in addition to being subject to a $50 thousand liquidated damages penalty per utterance, I can be jailed. Although this sounds unbelievable, it is completely and tragically true. Scientology has attempted at least a dozen times through the years to have me prosecuted and jailed on its false or manufactured charges.

I believe that this judge’s orders are illegal, against public policy, obstructive of justice, and in violation of the constitutional rights to due process, free speech, freedom of religion, freedom of association, and freedom from slavery. The basis for these orders is not that I ever libeled or slandered Scientology, or said one untrue word in or out of court about it or my experiences. The basis for the orders is a December 1986 “settlement agreement” which was part of the “settlement” of my first case with Scientology.³

The organization obtained my signature on this “settlement agreement,” which is itself and on its face illegal, obstructive of justice and in violation of basic “inalienable” rights, by fraud, duress and the vitiation of my attorney Michael Flynn. Scientology’s outrageous fair gaming of Mr. Flynn from 1980 through 1986 is widely known, and includes suing him or his law firm more than a dozen times, stealing documents from his office, threatening his family, making bogus bar complaints, framing him with the forgery of a $2 million check, paying known felons to attack him, and black PRing him around the world.

The fraud was Scientology’s promise that with the signing of this “agreement” it would end all fair game activities against me and everyone else. The threat was that if I didn’t sign, everyone, myself included, would continue to be fair gamed. The vitiation manifested in November/December, 1986 when Mr. Flynn, by then so desperate to have the personal attacks on him end, went along with whatever the organization wanted, and essentially acted in the “settlement,” not as my attorney, but as Scientology’s agent. Although expressing to me, when pressuring me to sign the unconscionable “agreement,” how the cult had ruined his marriage and his life, thus making me responsible for ending the attacks and threat to him, he also stated, also to get me to sign, that the various prohibitions, the threat of judicial enforcement, the liquidated damages provision, the obstruction of justice, the conceivably total exposure, were “not worth the paper they’re printed on.” He stated to me, “You can’t sign away your constitutional rights.” “It (the “agreement”) is unenforceable.”

Mr. Flynn’s representations about the unenforceability of the “agreement” sounded completely reasonable because it was inconceivable to me that such a “contract,” so completely one-sided in favor of a dangerous cult with a known criminal history, and violating so many basic rights, could, in the US and pursuant to its Constitution, possibly be legally enforceable. It was also inconceivable that Mr. Flynn

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would sign a similar “contract” with Scientology which would prevent him from assisting, me if the organization attacked me in the future. But he did, and the cult did.

*****

In, I believe it was, the last week of 1996 or the first week of 1997, I obtained an internet account and began to read the newsgroup alt.religion.scientology and check out various Scientology related web sites. One of my first discoveries was a person’s web page containing a large portion of Scientology’s IRS Form 1023 submission from 1992. Included in that portion is a section concerning me and the Breckenridge decision. The statements about me were factually, and in substance and conclusion, false. They are a repetition of the black PR Scientology had spread about me around the world since the “settlement”.

The 1023 response also contained black PR on other individuals; e.g., my attorneys Michael Flynn and Toby Plevin, my friends Lawrence Wollersheim and Laurel Sullivan, and other Scientology “enemies” Gene Allard and attorney Charlie O’Reilly.

I was shocked, hurt and frightened by what I read. It suddenly made understandable why Scientology had attacked me so violently for so many years, and it made it clear that the organization was going to continue the attack, and that I was in more danger than I had already imagined. The organization used its fair game attack on me to obtain its tax exemption, and to retain its tax exemption, with perhaps untaxed billions at stake, must continue the attack and destroy me.

Being a net novice I didn’t know to bookmark the site at that time, and wasn’t able to find it again until a few days ago. I think that, along with the way all of this saga has unfolded, is proof of God’s Sense of Timing.

In the next few days after the 1023 shock, however, I made some additional discoveries, which, among other things caused me to not write you earlier. I learned that Tax Analysts had brought an action against the IRS alleging improprieties in the procedures the Service had followed in dealing with Scientology’s tax exemption. I learned that the IRS itself had distributed a promotional statement about Scientology on behalf of the organization, I believe to governments in other countries. I also learned that the US State Department had publicly defended Scientology’s practices against critics in Germany, and had criticized the German government for its efforts to restrain Scientology’s abuses.

I recalled some letters I had recently seen from one or another Scientology OSA operative to the IRS’s James McGovern. The Office of Special Affairs, is the organization arm which took over the Guardian’s Office (“GO”) functions in 1982. It continues the GO legal, PR and intelligence bureaus, the organization’s fair game channels. 11 GO personnel, including Mary Sue Hubbard, I’m sure you recall, received federal jail sentences for offenses stemming from the GO’s burglarizing of IRS offices in

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Washington, D.C., not to mention the penetration of more than a hundred other state or federal offices, in the 1970’s. The sentencing memorandum in the plea-bargained US v. Scientology case also is a good primer on fair game.

The operative letters to Mr.McGovern were principally an attack on the Cult Awareness Network, an organization with the mission of educating the public about dangerous groups like Scientology, a cult which was ultimately able, with its litigation machine and unknown other factors, to drive CAN into bankruptcy. The operative also took the opportunity in his letters to attack me for my economic theories, in an effort it is clear to cause me even more problems with the IRS than the ones the organization had already caused me. It was revealing when I first read these letters, and more so now, that the OSA writer, with the approval of the approvers, used the friendly salutation, “Dear Jim.”

My economic theories are no threat to the IRS, nor to the United States, but are intended and designed to save the US, and the rest of the world for that matter, from economic and social disaster which flow from avoidable stupidity. These ideas have been perverted and attacked by David Miscavige and his agents in various black PR libels. It is situations like and including this organization’s use of its great monetary wealth for unarguably evil purposes, and this great country’s sale of Lady Justice to any high roller, which make my economic ideas timely and utterly workable.

There were other facts I couldn’t ignore; like recent unjustifiable rulings in Scientology’s favor in key state and federal cases; and glimpses of a something different from mutually wary relationship between organization people and Justice Department people. There has been much voicing since 1993 of the bet that some organization someone had something on someone in some government connected position of power and authority.

There has also been some speculation for some time of perhaps in a working relationship, perhaps in a framework of not unacceptable mutual wariness, between Scientology’s intelligence apparatus and a piece of the US intelligence “community.” There was a recent mention of OSA documents suggesting some such relationship being found by Greek government personnel in a raid on the organization in perhaps Athens. Scientology had even hired a “former” military intelligence colonel as an “expert witness” in its litigation against me.

I have known ever since I was posted as the Intelligence Officer on board the organization’s flagship with the Hubbards in 1974 and 1975 that Scientology’s quintessence, what time is devoted to in the places where “wog world” decisions are made, is the activity of intelligence. Hubbard as idol, the “technology,” legal or PR are all preempted by the intelligence game. There are things a cult might possess that a government more than likely would not; e.g., a litigation machine which was taking litigation where it had never gone before, and for sure where no JD litigator dared to tread; its own private court reporter firm; a lot of people’s innermost personal secrets; yet

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another computer system and data base; instant mobilization in any country; plenty of foreigners to cross any border; well hatted money launderers; fanatics. It is not inconceivable that a cultic intelligence partner might pay its own way, or even pay to deliver its product for free. Conjecture, which has been around for a long time, as you can imagine, goes far beyond that.

It is not conjecture, however, but certain fact that the IRS had not contacted me to verify Scientology’s statements about me in its 1023 response. It was also certain that the IRS had ample knowledge of Scientology’s history of lying and obstruction of justice to justify, after decades of legal battles, probably millions in legal costs, and, I believe, an unbroken string of important legal victories in the Service’s favor, a telephone call. My guess, given the other known facts, is that none of the other people the organization black PRed in the 1023 response were called as well.

Scientology’s 1023 black PR should also be viewed along with the fact that the organization held at least three of its targets therein gagged with its “contracts.” On the threat of $50 thousand in liquidated damages and legal prosecution, we – Mike Flynn, Laurel Sullivan and I – were prohibited from telling the IRS the truth even if we were contacted. These “contracts” require that we “not assist or advise anyone, including [ ] governmental agencies contemplating any claim or engaged in litigation or involved in or contemplating any activity adverse to the interests of [Scientology, its personnel, agents or lawyers].” (E.g., Armstrong “settlement agreement” at para. 10, p. 1.3) The “settlement agreements” also require that we say not one word to anyone, “other than members of [our] immediate family.” (Id. para. 7H, pp. 10, 11).³

I have been “successful” in my litigations at least in getting “governmental organ[s] or entit[ies]” specifically excluded from the Marin Superior Court order enjoining me from “assisting” anyone (else) against Scientology. I cannot, of course, assist the government against Scientology or its personnel, agents or lawyers without communicating about them; although the organization insists that I must. I am risking criminal prosecution and jail by sending you this communication. Mr. Flynn and Ms. Sullivan are still “prohibited” from assisting the government at all.

There was the fact of David Miscavige’s public admission, or boast, that he had walked unannounced into former IRS Commissioner Goldberg’s office in Washington and arranged the “settlement” which resulted in Scientology’s tax exemption. And there were the facts that this “settlement” is secret, and that the IRS is opposing efforts to bring the secret settlement to light.

*****

As I mentioned above, what Scientology, under David Miscavige’s direction, had written about me in its 1023 response was frightening; and I knew that although I had to communicate something like this letter to someone I couldn’t do so until I was a lot safer than I then was.

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While in the process of getting safer before communicating, as God’s Timetable would have it I was served with a subpoena for the production of documents by defendant Grady Ward in the case of Scientology v. Ward, USDC Nor. Cal. No. C-96-20207 RMW. Organization attorney Andrew Wilson immediately wrote me threatening prosecution if I responded to Mr. Ward’s subpoena. Since such prosecution would be at the gavel of the Marin County judge who had given Scientology the illegal orders enjoining me, and who had studiously ignored all my evidence in opposition, the threat of conviction, incarceration or worse was very real.

I did, however, respond to Mr. Ward’s subpoena by sending the original of the declaration which accompanies this letter, along with my production of documents, to the presiding judge in that  case. I have not included those exhibits here, but they are available. In this declaration I refer to the IRS’s 1993 ruling and provide a number of details which I have not provided in this letter.

It would have been silly to write to you about my 1994 tax year, for which, I trust you’re now certain, I do not owe any taxes or penalties, and  pretend that my real and actual situation with the IRS didn’t exist. Nor could I communicate this situation to the very people in the US Government who appeared to be assisting Scientology in its persecution of me and other innocent targets, unless, as I said, I first made myself somewhat safer. I thus packed a bag of clothes, left my home in San Anselmo and am in Canada.

I have since learned that Scientology did in fact obtain an order to show cause re contempt from the Marin judge for my response to Mr. Ward’s subpoena. I have also received some warnings to not let myself be jailed by Scientology because of what the organization might have happen to me while in custody. And thus, being in Canada but still in danger, I am communicating to you in this manner; and I hope that you, or someone to whom your seniors in the IRS direct this communication, will communicate back to me.

In 1984 Los Angeles CID agents Al Ristuccia and Al Lipkin made a real offer of the federal witness protection program to Scientology’s targets who claimed to be in danger. Today it is altogether possible that there are people in the Fed from whom the organization’s designated targets now need protection. I hope that you and your seniors take this possibility very seriously.

It is clear that a deal was cut between Scientology and the IRS. Whatever the deal was probably involved, and involves, other parts of the US Government. Whatever the deal was, both sides are now implicated in an evil deal. The IRS and the other federal participants in the deal knew the policies, practices, history and character of the organization with whom they were dealing. The black PR on me in the 1023 response alone is sufficient proof that the policies, practices, history and character remain unchanged.

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If there has been assistance to Scientology, someone in the US having declared it a “religion,” there is a violation of the separation of church and state. Where there is collusion, there is a state church. As fantastic as that might sound, it is not impossible, nor untrue. When secret deals are made with a known destructive and power hungry cult, there is more than an appearance of impropriety. There are many people who pray that Scientology has not been embraced by power hungry government players.

There are obvious secular things involved here – huge sums of money, laws, levels of lawyers, statements and decisions made and not made, and so forth. But there are also non-secular things – like God, faith and truth, the terrible nothingness of evil and its wake, forgiveness and grace. Evil deals, like Scientology’s evil “settlement agreement” with me, are made to be broken. That is God’s message to His Children through His Son: the contracts with evil are broken; stand up, be free and speak your peace.

Because God has moved me to break my deal with evil, I am viewed as a threat by Scientology leader Miscavige. Because of what I now know I am indeed a threat to his organization’s untaxed wealth, its power and stature. I will also be viewed as a threat by IRS people or other US agency people who have made their own unholy deal, and want that deal and the relationship it makes protected.

Back in 1984, at a time of great stress and under terrible attack and manipulation by Scientology I helped the IRS against the organization. It wasn’t because I was being operated by the IRS, as Scientology asserts in its black PR packs, nor even that the IRS asked that I do anything, other than offer protection to people who had the courage to come forward to talk to them. I did whatever I did because of my faith in God, and my knowledge that Scientology, under the same management as today, is dangerous and hurts people. I thought that the IRS, as indeed it can, could act to restrain, through its legal powers, the danger and hurt.

I may not have done the best job, although that conclusion cannot honestly be reached, because my job, for reasons contained in this letter, is not finished yet. I may also have quit prematurely in December, 1986, leaving the IRS in the lurch, but that was for the very reason I had helped the Service: to save both Scientology’s victims and the victimizers from the effects of fair game. And in any case God is merciful about all that.

I’m sure the IRS at one time wished I didn’t have such a foul mouth, and there certainly have been times I’ve wished the same. I thank God, however, not only because I’ve also been saved from that, but because He used all my raunch for His purposes. Nevertheless, my profanities have nothing to do with Scientology’s black PR, other than being its fodder. Nor do they have anything to do with the IRS’s decision, or anyone else’s decision to give the organization its tax exempt status, and, by extension, its religious status. The IRS and the US must not avoid being courageous now because of embarrassment for having been chicken in the past.

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The IRS, and US Government leaders are now protecting the bad guys just because the bad guys are the bad guys. The people who con, threaten and hurt are given, not only tax exemption to enable yet more conning, threatening and hurting, but support. This can be corrected, the deal can be broken.

I would like to receive back a communication from the IRS that honest people have read and understood this letter. I would ask that the recipient pass it on to the people as high in the IRS and in other parts of the US Government as it should honestly go. I would hope that my concern for my safety be respected, and I would also hope that the concerned people would signal their concern. I would rather, because all of us for peace and safety depend on the US Government, that we be on the same side. Obviously this whole matter will become public in one way or another, and I would hope that when that happens we will be on the same side.

I do not have an address or phone number at which I am safe, and to which anyone can communicate. If anyone in the IRS wants to communicate to me before I have a safe place, have a message posted to alt.religion.scientology, which I will try to monitor. Make the subject line “Re Midian.” Say whatever you want. No one else will know to watch for the message.

Thank you for this opportunity. May we all make wise decisions.

Yours sincerely,

Gerald Armstrong