The Armstrong Op

Scientology's fair game on Gerry Armstrong

Introduction 

  • about the Armstrong Op
  • The Documents
    • Legal documents
    • IRS
    • FBI
    • Media articles
    • Cult documents
    • Correspondence
    • Other writings
  • The Loyalist Program
    • The Illegal Videos
  • Check Forgery Frame
    • Michael J. Flynn
You are here: Home / Archives for FAMCO

Mark Rathbun: on John G. Peterson (May 28, 2013)

May 28, 2013 by Clerk1

Hubbard had sent a memo to our unit, advising that we develop what he called a “punitive defense.” Hubbard reasoned that if Flynn and company could take a bunch of false plaintiffs and use the litigation process to inflict vast expense and chaos within the church, well, we could just as easily use the process more effectively in the same wise against Flynn. The end product of the punitive defense was to make the process too painful for any plaintiff to carry on.

We hired a coordinating attorney in Los Angeles named John Peterson. John had an amiable personality which helped get more recalcitrant attorneys to cooperate with our plans. John and I played an effective good guy/bad guy routine. I would rough up our attorneys with over-the-top demands for aggressive action, then John would follow up by hearing their objections, expressing his understanding of their concerns and then more gently obtaining their agreement to compromise and do something far more aggressive than they normally would do.

We had an office built for John within the complex. He worked for us full time, until his untimely death in 1987. John was in constant communication with our lawyers across the country. John and I worked out several tactical plans to inconvenience Flynn and his co-counsel. We forced him into a series of errors over the next several months. We overloaded him with paper, hearings and depositions. The FAMCO boys started missing filing deadlines, and not properly preparing witnesses we were deposing daily. Within months we had reversed the tide of the litigation; FAMCO finding itself in the state of disarray as we had been when we entered the war. By the end of summer we had chipped away at a number of cases, with portions being dismissed. More importantly, we had Flynn’s back against the wall, defending two contempt
proceedings for misrepresentations to courts, which we had flustered him into. Finally, in August, Flynn was held in contempt by a judge in a remote jurisdiction.

Rathbun, Mark (2013-05-28). Memoirs of a Scientology Warrior (pp 191-2).

Notes

Filed Under: Other writings Tagged With: FAMCO, John G. Peterson, L. Ron Hubbard, Michael J. Flynn, Michael J. Rinder

Mark Rathbun: on All Clear, Joey Deciccio, and the Flynn problem (May 28, 2013)

May 28, 2013 by Clerk1

One of the most memorable encounters occurred after one of Ingram’s associates located a New York mafioso named Joey Deciccio, who claimed to have the information and power to bring Flynn’s FAMCO scheme to a halt in an instant. Geoff Shervell went to Atlantic City , New Jersey to meet Deciccio, to determine whether he was for real. He called in to ASI to debrief so that Miscavige could be in on it. Shervell said that Deciccio claimed to know the holder of enormous, accumulated gambling debts of Flynn. Deciccio was in a position to buy the debt, at which point he would effectively own Flynn. Miscavige was under so much pressure to produce an “all clear” for Hubbard that he had me booked on the next available flight to Philadelphia, to meet with Deciccio myself.

I took the redeye and was sleepless and wired on coffee when my flight arrived at 6:00 the next morning. I was picked up by a long, stretch red Lincoln limo, courtesy of Deciccio. I was barely able to stay awake during the long drive to Atlantic City. I met Shervell in a casino. He was electrified with excitement at the prospect of the danger of the folks we were dealing with, along with the hope we might be able to attain instant All Clear.

Deciccio and an associate greeted us. Both were archetypical Hollywood mobsters. Deciccio was middle-aged, with a grey pompadour, an open gaudy shirt and even gaudier gold pendant and chain across his white-haired, tanned chest. He wore a polyester suit, gold sunglasses, and talked like a seasoned wise guy. He was charming and friendly, but rough cut. His sidekick was a six-foot-four, three-hundred -pound refrigerator with no neck, introduced as Hank Lamotta. Joey said we needed to go up to their hotel room to discuss the business at hand. We took the elevator far up the hotel tower. We were led into a room and sat around a small round table overlooking the Atlantic City boardwalk. Hank immediately closed the drapes.

“Look , this Flynn bastard is in some bad kind of trouble. Seems he’s addicted to playing the numbers and ponies,” Deciccio started in. “I can get his debt transferred to me for a discount. Then Flynn has to play by Brooklyn rules.” Deciccio paused for effect.

“What are the Brooklyn rules?” I asked. Deciccio traded grins and chuckles with Hank. Hank never sat down. Aside from the grin on cue, he just stood behind my chair with a menacing look on his face and his arms crossed – apparently to add some fear to the mix.

“Well , the first level is when a guy don’t pay his debt, he gets a visit from some of our boys. They hold him by his feet and dangle his head in the sewer till the rats start gnawing on his face. Usually that brings out the entrepreneur in him and he finds a way to start paying down.”

“What if that doesn’t work?”

“Well, then we up the ante. We start by taking a finger , starting with the finger that has a rock on it.”

“What’s next if that doesn’t work?”

“We take the rest of his fucking fingers,” Deciccio boomed , as if frustrated that my questioning was ruining the effect of his rehearsed intimidation play.

“Well , I don’t see how that makes the Flynn problem go away.”

“That’s easy. Rather than exercise the Brooklyn rules for the collection of the debt, we do them to make the litigation go away.”

“ There is a problem with all this. We will not engage in or condone any illegal acts.”

“Well, too late for that, pal. We had a deal.”

“You can’t have a deal, because I am the only one who is authorized to make any deals.” Suddenly, from behind me Hank’s ham of a hand slammed the small table, THWAPP! “This is bullshit!” yelled Hank. “Oh, no, now you’ve done it,” Deciccio said, as Hank stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind him.

“You really screwed the pooch, pal,” Deciccio said to me with a great deal of concern.

“What are you talking about?” I asked.

“He’s gone to get his gun.”

Deciccio and I looked one another in the eye for thirty seconds. Then we heard a key in the door and Hank lumbered back in. I turned and looked Hank in the eye as he stormed toward me. I reckoned if I made a move to resist him, the laws of physics would not be in my favor. So I decided to simply confront the situation I was in – do nothing else but face it as comfortably as I could. Hank stopped in front of me and looked down while biting his lower lip, as if restraining himself from beating me to a pulp. Once it was clear that I was not retreating and they were not killing, the discussion resumed between Deciccio and me. Now it was more civil, and Deciccio retreated by appealing to my sense of fairness. After a while it became evident to Deciccio that they misestimated their encounter and played the wrong hand . He started making a pitch for the future.

“Listen, stay in touch, maybe we can come up with some more legally acceptable ways of doing business.” Hank was assigned to drive Geoff and I back to New York La Guardia airport. Now that the intimidation game was over, Hank was a big old pussycat. We talked sports and politics all the way back and punctuated our trip with a pleasant lunch stop.1

Notes

  1. Rathbun, Mark (2013-05-28). Memoirs of a Scientology Warrior (p. 224-226). Amazon Books. Kindle Edition. ↩

Filed Under: Other writings Tagged With: All Clear, David Miscavige, FAMCO, Geoffrey Shervell, Hank Lamotta, Joey Deciccio, Mark C. Rathbun, Michael J. Flynn, Michael J. Rinder

Mark Rathbun: on mounting the offensive against Flynn and FAMCO (May 28, 2013)

May 28, 2013 by Clerk1

In early May, 1982 I was busily mounting the offensive against Flynn and his FAMCO scheme to bankrupt and destroy Scientology. Up to that point in time, several people had served as buffers between me and David Miscavige. All that changed one morning when Miscavige called me over to his offices at Hubbard’s newly-formed personal services corporation, Author Services Incorporated (ASI). Miscavige was the chairman of its board. As such he was recognized as the most senior and powerful person in the Scientology hierarchy. It was understood by then that all communication to or from L. Ron Hubbard went through Miscavige’s hands. I hopped into the small Japanese car that came with the job of Special Unit Litigation Director and sped over to see Miscavige. I brought Geoff Shervell with me. Geoff was my opposite number for the intelligence/ investigation function of the church. He was a short, portly fellow from New Zealand. He was handsome and friendly in looks and manner. Geoff had worked at the Guardian’s Office Worldwide in England for years. The Special Project had investigated him thoroughly and concluded that he had not engaged in any illegal acts while in the Guardian’s Office. His amiable demeanor and his training and understanding of intelligence had resulted in Miscavige tapping him to run all intelligence for the church. Up to that day Shervell had been reporting directly to Miscavige.

[…]

Miscavige seemed somberly unnerved, an attitude he rarely showed to anyone. He wore a dirty blonde mustache and glasses then. He stood about five feet, five inches, solidly built. He looked at me with piercing, intense blue eyes. “Marty, Geoff’s a nice guy, but he doesn’t have the confront for this job.” With that succinct statement, Miscavige put the intelligence function, and Geoff, under my supervision. “Does the GO have any PIs you can trust?” “I haven’t worked with any, sir.” “Well, you need to find a PI that has a pair of balls and won’t be compromised.” “Ok, I’ll get right on it.” “Look, somebody tried to pass a forged check on LRH’s account at Bank of New England. Some Arab guy named Aquil Abdul Amiar shows up at Middle East Bank in New York City with an LRH check with a forged signature. The check is from LRH’s account at BNE. BNE calls us and we tell them LRH never signed any check made out to any Arab, and no check for two million dollars to anybody . They stopped payment. We keep LRH’s check registers. There are no checks missing. We write all of LRH’s checks and submit them to him for signature. He signs them. We mail them and every one of them is accounted for. Norman can show you all that.” I looked at Norman. Norman gave a serious nod back. Miscavige continued, “We asked BNE for more particulars. BNE won’t give any. We have Sherman Lenske (LRH’s corporate and finance attorney ) call MEB and BNE and nobody will cooperate with him. BNE says they want to hear from LRH directly. We have all the proper powers of attorney on his accounts, but they won’t recognize them. They tell us the FBI is investigating. And the FBI won’t tell Sherman anything either. This whole thing smells . These fucking bankers are supposed to be working for LRH, and it looks like they are doing the work of Flynn and the FBI. You need to get a PI onto this and get to the bottom of it.” “Yes, sir.” “Okay, Norman , show him the documents we have, like the POA (power of attorney) and all. Marty, you report direct to me on this . Tell the finance people this is top priority if they give you any flack on the PIs.” “Yes, sir.” “Nobody in the GO or Special Unit or anywhere else needs to know about this, get it?” “Yes, sir.”  1

Notes

  1. Rathbun, Mark (2013-05-28). Memoirs of a Scientology Warrior (p. 216-218). Amazon Books. Kindle Edition. ↩

Filed Under: Other writings Tagged With: Ala Fadili Al Tamimi, Aquil Abdul Amiar, Check Forgery Frame, David Miscavige, Eugene M. Ingram, FAMCO, Geoffrey Shervell, Mark C. Rathbun, Michael J. Flynn, Michael J. Rinder, Norman Starkey

Mark Rathbun: on Michael Flynn, Geoffrey Shervell and Gerry Armstrong (May 28, 2013)

May 28, 2013 by Clerk1

Sure enough, right in alignment with Sun Tzu’s Art of War – which was a Hubbard-recommended read , Flynn became very resourceful once we had his back against the river. Just as it appeared he could not keep up with the mountain of paper under which our now-coordinated team was burying him, he was saved by an angel of sorts. Wayne B. Hollingsworth, recently-resigned Assistant U.S. Attorney in Boston, came on board. Hollingsworth, though not well-heeled after years of government work, outfitted Flynn’s offices with the latest in computer equipment. He brought on more attorneys and support staff. And all of these new troops apparently were not asking for a dime to devote their next several years to the FAMCO plan (or, as we suspected, they were being paid by some vested interest that was inimical to Scientology). Flynn also received a windfall, care of the fruits of Miscavige’s enemy-making proclivities. Gerry Armstrong, the archivist whom Miscavige and Starkey nearly hung for trying to protect Hubbard and the church against the very claims Flynn had been making , had made contact with Flynn. We knew this because for several months Miscavige had been directly supervising surveillance of Armstrong, through a former GO intel staff member named Geoff Shervell. Shervell utilized teams of private eyes to shadow Armstrong everywhere. Shervell reported directly to Miscavige through all those months, just as I had on litigation matters from our Special Unit. On more than one occasion, Shervell groused to me about the incessant, obsessive pressure Miscavige put on him, demanding to know Armstrong’s every move. He said, “Marty, he knows we’re on him, which kind of defeats the purpose of the surveillance .” Thinking for a moment, Geoff added, “Unless the purpose is to drive him crazy.”

Armstrong became increasingly paranoid under pressure and finally got spooked enough to go to Flynn for help. Armstrong also brought with him several boxes of biography archives he had lifted from the church; documents that demonstrated to him that Hubbard’s personal biography, promoted by the church, was full of holes. I did not connect the dots until years later, but Miscavige had essentially chased Armstrong right into the enemy camp. In September, 1982, all I knew was that Shervell had evidence of Armstrong lifting the documents, and I had direct, urgent orders from Miscavige to sue Armstrong back to the stone ages. We sued, and obtained an injunction which impounded the files with the Los Angeles Superior Court pending trial (which would occur years later). But that did not stop Armstrong from – in fact it drove him to – writing long, detailed declarations claiming L. Ron Hubbard was a fraud and that the church would stop at nothing to prevent him from proving so. Flynn now had a fresh, inside witness who knew Hubbard’s personal archives better than anybody on Ron’s side. 1

Notes

  1. Rathbun, Mark (2013-05-28). Memoirs of a Scientology Warrior (pp. 193-194). Amazon Books. Kindle Edition. ↩

Filed Under: Other writings Tagged With: FAMCO, Geoffrey Shervell, Gerry Armstrong, L. Ron Hubbard, Loyalist Program, Mark C. Rathbun, Michael J. Flynn, Michael J. Rinder, Wayne B. Hollingsworth

Declaration of William C. Walsh (February 8, 1994)

February 8, 1994 by Clerk1

Timothy Bowles
Kendrick L. Moxon
BOWLES & MOXON
6255 Sunset Blvd., Suite 2000
Hollywood, CA 90028
(213) 953-3360

Jonathan W. Lubell
MORRISON COHEN SINGER & WEINSTEIN
750 Lexington Avenue
New York, New York 10022
(212) 735-8600

Attorneys for Plaintiff
CHURCH OF SCIENTOLOGY INTERNATIONAL

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

FOR THE CENTRAL DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA

CHURCH OF SCIENTOLOGY
INTERNATIONAL, a California Non-
Profit Religious Organization,Plaintiff,vs.

STEVEN FISHMAN and UWE GEERTZ,

Defendants.


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CASE NO.
CV 91-6426 HLH (Tx)

DECLARATION OF WILLIAM C. WALSH1

I, WILLIAM C. WALSH, declare and say:

1. I am over the age of eighteen and a citizen of the District of Columbia. I have personal knowledge of the matters set forth herein and, if called upon to do so, could and would competently testify thereto.

2. I have been an attorney admitted to practice law in the District of Columbia since 1976. I am admitted to practice law in the Supreme Court of the United States, the District of Columbia Court of Appeals, and the United States Court of Appeals

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for the D.C. Circuit.

3. I have represented several Churches of Scientology and various members of the Scientology religion since 1978, primarily in matters concerning the federal government, including access to government records under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and the Privacy Act, and expungement and correction of inaccurate and derogatory information in records regarding or relating to Scientology, its members or leaders maintained in government files. I have extensive experience in federal records access and correction issues and I am a recognized expert in this field. I have been consulted by clients around the world and have been sought out by the media and other access professionals as an authoritative spokesperson on access issues. I also am very familiar with the actions taken by the Church and Scientology parishioners to assert and protect their rights under the FOIA and Privacy Act record retention statutes and the United States Constitution.

4. I am familiar with a program written by L. Ron Hubbard called the Snow White Program. In this declaration I will describe this program and its history, and demonstrate that the characterization of this program by Robert Vaughn Young as having an “intelligence arm” which was directed at the ” enemies” of Mr. Hubbard is a mischaracterization which is contrary to judicial opinions on the purpose of the Snow White Program as written by Mr. Hubbard. Young also claims that the Snow White Program was based on what he calls the “Fair Game doctrines,” and attempts to portray this as a personal vendetta by Mr. Hubbard against his opponents. As will be shown in more detail below, this

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description is completely inaccurate.

5. While others in the past have also mischaracterized the Snow White Program to suit their own ends, the term “Snow White” in reality only refers to the program written by Mr. Hubbard in 1973 for the purpose of correcting and expunging the plethora of false governmental reports about the Church of Scientology, its leaders and members through strictly legal means. Moreover, contrary to Young’s statement that this program was aimed at Mr. Hubbard’s enemies, it was actually directed only at obtaining legal access to false information which was disseminated internationally, and which in turn led to adverse action against Mr. Hubbard and other Scientologists.

6. Mr. Hubbard wrote the Snow White Program because several countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea had denied entry to their ports to the ship Apollo, which at that time housed the Church’s senior ecclesiastical management bodies, as a result of false and derogatory reports concerning Scientology which were being distributed by certain government agencies and officials in England, the United States and other countries. Mr. Hubbard wanted to clear these files to ensure that accurate and unbiased information on Scientology was maintained and disseminated. This program did not remotely deal with or involve anything illegal whatsoever. Indeed, Mr. Hubbard expressly stated that the “Ideal Scene” he wished to achieve was: “All false and secret files of the nations of operating areas brought to view and legally expunged ….” (Emphasis added.)

7. In the course of my representation of the Church, I have I viewed hundreds of thousands of pages of records from the files

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of government agencies concerning the Scientology religion, the Church, Mr. Hubbard and Scientology leaders and members. These records contain overwhelming and unequivocal evidence that the concerns which led Mr. Hubbard to write the Snow White Program were completely justified. Indeed, subsequent Congressional Oversight Hearings confirmed that both Mr. Hubbard and the Church were targeted for discriminatory treatment and for illegal and politically motivated information gathering designed to stigmatize and set a group apart as somehow inherently suspect under the law.

8. For example, between 1969 and the first half of 1974, the Apollo frequently docked at ports in Portugal with no problems and good relations with the people and local governments. In July 1973 a rumor was first heard in the port of Oporto that the Apollo was a “CIA ship.” Although the rumor continued to surface in 1973 and 1974 in Portugal, the Apollo nonetheless continued to be welcome in Portuguese ports without major incident. On October 3, 1974, when the Apollo was docked at the port of Funchal on the island of Madeira, Portugal, it was attacked by a large crowd throwing rocks and shouting “CIA ship.” The local police and army stood by and watched, doing nothing to hold the crowd back. As a result some Church staff aboard the ship were injured and property was damaged or destroyed. Cars and motorcycles belonging to the Church and Church staff were thrown off the dock into the bay. The ship crew had to fight off the attackers with fire hoses while the ship made an emergency departure to escape the violence, without being able to take on food, fuel or water. The Apollo and her crew were forced to wait

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offshore for over a day while order was restored so she could return to load fuel, food and water and sail to a safe country.

9. Documents obtained from the U.S. State Department through the Freedom of Information act pursuant to the Snow White Program traced the “CIA ship” rumor to a State Department telex in April of 1972 sent to various European countries. Following the Snow White Program procedure of locating and expunging false reports and seeking redress for religious persecution, a suit was filed in Lisbon by the company that owned the Apollo, Operation Transport Corporation (“OTC”), against the government of Portugal seeking damages as a result of this riot. In June of 1985, the Administrative Court of Lisbon awarded damages to OTC finding that the riot in October of 1974 had been sparked by the CIA ship rumor, and that this rumor was false.

10. There have been countless other instances over the years where extremely damaging and completely false information has been circulated from one agency to another. This information inevitably impairs and impedes the religion’s growth because it bears another agency’s imprimatur and is relied upon to take adverse action against the Church. It has been through the application of the principles in the Snow White Program that the Church has used the Freedom of Information Act to uncover such information. For example, a letter circulated by Interpol in the 1960s falsely accused Mr. Hubbard of having been charged with drug smuggling. Other government documents made the false and absurd claim that the Church and its members used LSD and other drugs. Although the Church is renowned internationally for its

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strong anti-drug stance and its widespread efforts to overcome the effects of drug abuse, this information was disseminated by the Department of Labor as well as other agencies and relied upon by foreign governments to take adverse action against members of the religion.

11. Not only have government agencies disseminated false information concerning the Church, they have also engaged in other actions to impair and impede the religion. In some cases, these actions were conducted in collusion with or in reliance upon information supplied by civil litigants and their attorneys. In a few instances this involved infiltration of the Church. For example, in 1959, a captain of the Washington, D.C. Police Department induced his own daughter to infiltrate the Church, pretending to be pregnant. She was supposed to procure the assistance of the Church in obtaining an abortion, but was, of course, unsuccessful as the Church refused to condone this (at the time illegal) act.

12. Civil litigants and their attorneys have often worked closely with government agents to achieve their mutual ends to the detriment of the Church. For example in the early 1980s a Boston personal injury lawyer, Michael Flynn, formed a corporation to promote his business of suing the Church. Flynn Associates Management Corporation (“FAMCO”) was formed, in the words of a FAMCO document, to promote four basic goals: “1. Closing Scientology organizations (Churches) 2. Adverse media 3. Adverse public reaction 4. Federal and state attacks.” Documents later released to the Church pursuant to the FOIA and other access statutes demonstrate that Flynn and certain government

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officials cooperated in their “attacks,” sharing tactics, documents and witnesses.

13. Flynn was also involved in assisting Gerry Armstrong, a Flynn client and government informant, who plotted a take-over of the Church. Armstrong’s plan included planting phony documents that would then be seized in a raid by federal agents.

14. In numerous instances, false and derogatory information maintained in government files regarding the Church, Mr. Hubbard or Church leaders has been provided by disaffected Scientologists engaged in civil litigation with the Church who have a substantial monetary stake in convincing the government to rely on their false allegations to take adverse action against the Church. A recent example of this tactic is the false and derogatory allegations contained in a mailing by an organization calling itself “Factnet” which include unsupported accusations of murder and suicide. This mailing appears to be the same “mail survey” referred to by Graham Berry in his declaration dated January 3, 1994, filed in the Fishman case. Among other highly inflammatory and absurd and baseless allegations, the mailing states that the recognition as a bona fide nonprofit religious organization the Church of Scientology recently received after unprecedented IRS scrutiny of every aspect of its operations is being “challenged” by a coalition of “ex-members” who are undoubtedly attempting to convince the government to once again rely upon false information. Interestingly, this tactic may have run its course as recently evidenced by an order issued by Judge Manuel L. Real in Spurlock v. FBI, Case No. CV 91-5602-R (C.D. Cal.) dated January 31, 1994. In that order, Judge Real ordered

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the FBI to meet and communicate with plaintiff’s counsel to “determine what information in the records at issue in this case may constitute evidence that false statements were made by Joseph Yanny, Richard Aznaran and/or Vicki Aznaran” to the FBI.

15. The Church’s goal of correcting government files was not a matter of stopping “international criticism” by the Church, as is alleged by Robert Vaughn Young. On the contrary, I have personal knowledge based on my review of the records that the false information in government files on the Church resulted in substantial harm to the Church and its members and in severe violations of their rights. Indeed, there was a pattern and practice of maintaining and disseminating such information to the Church’s detriment.

16. Although the legal correction of this false information was the heart of the Snow White Program and its sole purpose as conceived by Mr. Hubbard, during the 1970s a handful of misguided individuals in the now defunct Guardian’s Office of the Church improperly applied the term “Snow White” to various illegal activities for which they were convicted. Moreover, the individuals who committed these crimes were subsequently removed from their positions on Church staff and the Guardian’s Office was disbanded by the current leadership of the Church because this unit was not following Church ethical and legal policies and was misusing and misinterpreting these policies. The true and only purpose of Snow White was the corrective purpose put forward by Mr. Hubbard as the Supreme Court of Ontario noted in a well-reasoned decision.

17. Justice Osler of the Supreme Court of Ontario, Canada,

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reviewed the Snow White Program in 1985 to determine whether an Ontario Provincial Police officer should be cross-examined regarding an affidavit he had filed, which characterized the Snow White Program as calling for illegal actions. In an opinion dated January 23, 1985, after reviewing the Snow White Program document and other related evidence, Justice Osler noted that:

“[I]t is not without significance that the affidavit of Fletcher Prouty, appearing in Volume 8A of the record at tab KK, makes it appear that he formed the conclusion, as a highly placed official of the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States that since 1950 there has been a.definite campaign of harassment against this organization (Scientology) for nearly thirty years primarily by means of the dissemination of false and derogatory information around the world to create a climate in which adverse action would be taken against the Church and its members. Defense against this type of activity was, of course, the stated objective of the SNOW WHITE program.”

Decision of Supreme Court of Ontario, Osler, J., pp. 33-34. (Attached as Exhibit 1.)

18. Concluding that the document on its face called for actions to “legally” expunge files and that the word ” legally” appeared to have been purposely left out of the officer’s affidavit, Justice Osler ordered that the cross-examination of the officer go forward. Following the cross-examination, on February 7, 1985, Justice Osler issued a second opinion stating that while he did not believe that the officer’s

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mischaracterization of the Snow White Program rose to the level of a fraudulent misrepresentation, he did find that the officer had made “errors in judgment” in characterizing the program as calling for “illegal actions.”

19. The activities of the Church under the Snow White Program have consisted of filing Freedom of Information Act requests with Federal governmental agencies and public record requests at the state and local level, filing record inspection requests in foreign countries that provide citizen access to records, pursuing litigation to compel disclosure of significant records withheld by an agency, and the filing and prosecution of lawsuits such as a class action lawsuit in 1978 in the United States against a number of federal agencies for the purpose of expunging false reports on the Church, Mr. Hubbard, Scientology leaders and parishioners. Indeed, the Church’s requests have resulted in disclosing substantial numbers of records regarding activities specifically found to be improper by Congress.

20. Through its actions connected with the Snow White Program, the Church has become an acknowledged leader in the field of rights to access of information from government agencies. I have personal knowledge of most of these actions. The Church has obtained numerous precedents under the FOIA, paving the way for others who want to hold the government accountable for its actions through public record access. Some of these precedents include Church of Scientology of California v. Department of Army, 611 F.2d 738 (9th Cir.1979), Founding Church v. National Security Agency, 610 F.2d 824 (D.C.Cir. 1979), and, more recently, Church of Scientology of San Francisco v.

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IRS, 911 F.2d 560 (9th Cir.1993). Scientologists have also strengthened the rights of individuals to correct improper information in the files of agencies, where it is needed to protect their Constitutional rights. Smith v. Brady, 972 F.2d 1095 (9th Cir. 1992).

21. Indeed, the Church has been in the forefront of the FOIA since its passage in 1966 and has developed landmark decisions that benefit all who use the FOIA. The FOIA is the linchpin of the free flow of government information and one of the most important tools we have to ensure “an informed citizenry vital to the functioning of a democratic state.” NCRB v. Robbins, 437 U.S. 214 (1978). It is not something sinister but an essential tool of an informed citizenry and a precious right. The Church’s efforts as a result of the Snow White Program to support that right and to educate the public on the FOIA should be commended, not condemned, as they serve the public interest.

22. The Snow White Program concerned a series of legal actions to locate and correct false information in the files of government agencies. In that regard, the Church’s legal bureau, working with Church counsel, have successfully utilized the Freedom of Information Act and similar statutes around the world. If false and derogatory information is contained in such records, the Church seeks the cooperation of the agencies involved in expunging and/or correcting such reports. Litigation to obtain relief has become necessary only as a last resort. That is the totality of the Snow White Program as conceived by Mr. Hubbard

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and that is all that it has ever been — a proper and legal mechanism for the Church to protect its First Amendment rights.

I declare under penalty of perjury under the laws of the United States of America that the foregoing is true and correct.

Executed this 8th day of February, 1994 at Los Angeles, California.

Signature William C. Walsh Declaration 02-08-1994

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Notes

  1. This document in PDF format. ↩

Filed Under: Legal Tagged With: CIA, fair game, FAMCO, Fltecher Prouty, FOIA, Gerry Armstrong, Graham Berry, IRS, Jonathan W. Lubell, Judge Manuel L. Real, Justice Osler, Kendrick L. Moxon, L. Ron Hubbard, Michael J. Flynn, Robert Vaughn Young, Snow White Program, Steven Fishman, Timothy Bowles, Uwe Geertz, William C. Walsh

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