The Armstrong Op

Scientology's fair game on Gerry Armstrong

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No do it Mike Rinder. Tell the truth. (December 10, 2016)

December 10, 2016 by Clerk1

10th December 2016, 05:20 AM #41

CommunicatorIC

Re: Mike Rinder posted something important today

Originally Posted by programmer_guy

Mike made a general apology.
Gerry wants Mike (and others) to admit to specific details that can stand up in a court of law.

Which Mike cannot do without potentially exposing himself to civil and criminal liability — and thus threatening his family.

As I noted above, Mike cannot rely on any statute of limitations defense because of legal doctrines that suspend the running of the statute of limitations such as fraudulent concealment, equitable tolling, equitable estoppel, minority, incapacity, or simply being physically outside a particular jurisdiction.

My advice to Mike would be not to do it. If, hypothetically, I had a wife and child I would not endanger their futures and our family to do it.

If Gerry didn’t like that, I would completely understand. I would not, however, engage in an action that could threaten my family just because he is not satisfied with a “general” apology and wants “specific details that can stand up in a court of law.”

Honestly, I think that if Mike didn’t have a wife and child, then there *might* be some chance that Gerry would get what he wants. Given that Mike does have a wife and a small child, I think the probability of Gerry getting what he wants is precisely zero.

I understand that there are many people who, like Communicator IC, do not want Rinder to do what I have asked him to do, and even, like this poster, advise him not to do.

What I have consistently asked Rinder for is to tell the truth. What I have consistently, in many public communications, said I wanted from Rinder is the truth.  I simply want him to tell the truth.

In psychopathic logic, I am supposed to stop wanting him to tell the truth because he won’t, or hasn’t, or refuses. That isn’t the way such wanting works. One doesn’t want peace in the world, and then stop wanting it because there isn’t peace. In the choice between war and peace, I choose peace. In the choice between Rinder telling the truth or not telling the truth, I want the truth.

Wanting him to tell the truth, as I do, can exist as a life choice and nothing is done about it. Like a million other choices perhaps we all have made over our lives. My wanting him to tell the truth only arose when he claimed to be doing so, and because I had real and legitimate reasons to want him to tell the truth. The Scientologists and their collaborators, clearly, do not want him to tell the truth.

I did act on what I wanted, of course, and he knew right after he started presenting as telling the truth that that was exactly how he could help me and so many other people. It was exactly what I was wanting from him. I did have a brief email exchange with him, which, because of recent events, I’ve assembled here: http://gerryarmstrong.ca/archives/1919 I have not bothered him at all with correspondence.

I have communicated things that have helped keep alive the issue of Rinder not telling the truth, which at this time is serious.This obviously has upset the people who want him to not tell the truth yet be seen as telling the truth. But it’s fake upset, and the efforts to keep Rinder from telling the truth, and bestow celebrity status on him for telling the truth are perverse and logically puerile.

Although I want Rinder to tell the truth, and have made this known to him, I have also accepted that he probably won’t. I have long ago accepted his decisions to hate me, make me his enemy, black PR me, and side with the people who want me dead. I’ve accepted that all the Scientologists and their collaborators in the world hate me, consider me an enemy, and would welcome my death.

Despite accepting that Rinder, unless he has a Damascus Road moment, is not going to tell the truth, there is still a need to get the fact known that he is not telling the truth. The same was true with Hubbard: he didn’t tell the truth but claimed to be telling the truth; he was not going to start telling the truth, but there was still a need to get the fact known that he is not telling the truth. Fraud should be exposed, and Rinder’s pretense of telling the truth should be exposed just as Hubbard’s should be.

The truth has to be told in a way that means or does something toward reconciliation and justice, so his telling the truth to his priest or psychiatrist or his pillow or his personal demon wouldn’t suffice. The truth to be told is his experiences with and knowledge of Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard, Scientology corporations, organizations, and affiliated entities, and their officers, agents, representatives, employees, volunteers, directors, successors, assigns and legal counsel. (This is the language of what Rinder, et al. sought to silence me about by their contract1

Rinder knows exactly who and what needs to have the truth told about them. It is very simple. Nobody wants Rinder to tell the truth about what he said in his auditing sessions, or about his dreams, or about his wins. The truth he must tell, if truth be told, is his experiences and knowledge of fair game, what was done to wogs in furtherance of the criminal conspiracy against persons and rights in which he was a key member for many years.

That criminal conspiracy still exists. Rinder still serves its criminal purposes. He can only stop serving its purposes by telling the truth about it. Otherwise, he will, until his death, serve that diabolical criminal conspiracy. Scientolomerta. And that will be his legacy. Except for his desire to keep serving this conspiracy and keep the conspiracy working, the choice, I would think would be obvious.

It is this conspiracy against persons and rights that needs to be taken down, not Scientology or the Church of Scientology or some named corporation.

Rinder admittedly has his reason or reasons for not telling the truth. He had ample reasons for more than twenty years, he says, as Miscavige’s Fair Game IC. As I said, he knows what the truth is that he has reasons to not tell. This could be described as criminal and depraved actions planned or taken against members of the SP class, black propaganda, which is also depraved, and ongoing injustices and fraud. That is a huge and understandable, but completely unacceptable, reason not to tell the truth about it.

That is also the reason Communicator IC gives for advising Rinder to not tell the truth. What he should tell the truth about is so criminal, so depraved, so unjust and involves so much criminal fraud, in Communicator IC’s reasoning, he shouldn’t tell the truth about it. The details of Rinder’s fair gaming good people for Scientology — for pay, for prestige, which still serves him, and for fun and for joy, because he had to have been uptone about it all those years — are so criminal, so depraved, and so unjust and the fraud he promoted and defended with fair game so noxious, that telling truth about them would threaten his family, so Communicator IC says.

Obviously, what it will take for Rinder to tell the truth — even if the contemplation of the shame of it all is crushing, even if it might open him up to liability for his actions to someone, even if he is honoring a contract to not tell the truth and his coconspirators might murder him, even if he’s still on Miscavige’s payroll, and even if he hates me beyond human endurance — is courage. He should be encouraged to tell the truth and advised to be courageous, rather than encouraged to be cowardly, and provided spurious justifications for his continued cowardice. I think he should opt for courage. He certainly learned cowardice in Scientology in spades. His bluster, I think, is rooted actually in the Scientology cowardice condition, which makes it misplaced bluster. But perhaps all bluster is.

Now is the time for Rinder to get courageous, to do the right thing, and tell the truth that can free people – the truth about his experiences and knowledge of actions by the Scientologists and their collaborators against members of the SP class.

Communicator IC’s assertion that Rinder cannot tell the truth without potentially exposing himself to civil and criminal liability, which is provided as a lead-pipe justifier for advising him not to do so, is clarifying on three issues. 1. It acknowledges, finally, that Rinder has not told the truth. 2. It acknowledges that the truth to be told is relevant and important, and concerns criminal and tortious actions against victims; in this case me personally. 3. It acknowledges that Rinder could not have told the truth to the FBI.

I have seen it claimed that, since apparently leaving the Sea Org and presenting himself as telling the truth about his Scientology-related experiences and knowledge, Rinder, along with Mark Rathbun, has been to the FBI, talked to the FBI, been interviewed by the FBI. I have no actual knowledge of their “going to the FBI,” but there are multiple reports of them doing so. If Rinder had told the truth to the FBI; if the FBI had been the Constitution-obeying federal law enforcement entity it publicly purports to be, operating by its motto Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity, and not cowardly collaborating with the Miscavige-Rathbun-Rinder, et al. conspiracy against persons and rights; and if the FBI has not prosecuted him, which they have not, then there is zero risk that Rinder would face criminal liability if he told that truth to me or my lawyer.

Rinder and Rathbun do not merit the defense or excuse that telling the truth will expose them to criminal liability, when they are claiming they’re telling the truth to the FBI — of all law enforcement entities — without the slightest hint of criminal liability.

When the FBI got the truth of the Scientologists’ fair game actions against Paulette Cooper during the GO period, the FBI contacted Cooper. Since Rathbun and Rinder, after supposedly leaving the Miscavigeite sect, went to the FBI, and supposedly told all, which had to include their years of fair game actions against me, the FBI has not contacted me. I have reason to believe, in fact, that Rathbun and Rinder continued their adherence to the conspiracy line in their communications with the FBI, which included the continued black PRing and criminal framing of me.

I wrote last year about Rathbun and Rinder’s visits to the FBI since claiming to have left the Miscavigeite sect, and explained that it is a virtual certainty they did not tell the truth:

This scenario of Rathbun and Rinder talking to the FBI or going to the Feds has been brought up several times over the past few years. It is used as evidence of them doing the right thing, or how effective they are as critics, as it has been assumed that whatever they told the Feds helped the Scientologists’ victims.

In view of the known facts, however, this assumption is illogical. It is illogical to think that Rathbun and Rinder would lie about me in Memoirs, continue the criminal framing of me and Mike Flynn, black PR me and other persons he victimized, and yet tell the truth about what they did to fair game us to the Feds.

Rathbun went to the Feds all sorts of times while working inside the cult and in charge of fair game under Miscavige. Rathbun went to the Feds, and had others go to the Feds, about Flynn and me. Rathbun lied to the Feds then, and there is no reason to believe he is not lying to them now. Until he tells the truth to his victims about his victimizing them, his talking to the FBI is just like Kendrick Moxon talking to the FBI.

All the “Indies” talking to all the FBI had the effect of ending any investigation into the cult. All Rathbun’s followers would have black PRed me and others similarly positioned SPs to the Feds.

It must be understood, of course, that the Feds conspired with the Scientologists against the Scientologists’ victims.2 When Scientologist conspirators like Rathbun and Rinder talk to the Feds, they are talking to their coconspirators. The cure is the public exposure of the conspirators and breaking of the conspiracy, not the conspirators talking in secret. That keeps the conspiracy working, which appears to be Rathbun and Rinder’s purpose.2

If civil or criminal liability would exist should Rinder tell the truth, then it must exist now, without his telling the truth. Arrangements are very often made that provide immunities of various kinds if witnesses, or even participants in crimes, tell the truth about their experiences and knowledge, or allocute. Consequently, his telling the truth could actually reduce his criminal and civil liability. Therefore criminal and civil liability for telling the truth is not really a good excuse for Rinder not doing so, certainly regarding the Scientology v. Armstrong evils. In my case, the principal crime or offense against me is continuing, rendering statutes of limitation inapplicable, so Rinder’s liability increases every day he keeps serving his conspiracy’s purposes.

From the very earliest efforts I made to get Rathbun and Rinder to communicate to me, I have provided them with the best opportunity to tell the truth, to have it be meaningful, to put it to tremendous and dramatic use. It is disgraceful that people, presenting themselves as opposing the Scientologists’ malign purposes, advise Rathbun and Rinder to not take this golden opportunity, and smear the very person with whom the opportunity exists. Advising Rinder to not tell the truth but keep serving the Scientologists’ malign purposes serves the same people’s same purposes.

Communicator IC forks up a strawman that it’s my satisfaction that weighs or argues against endangering Rinder’s wife and child and family. I had never used, relied on or referred to my satisfaction in any of my requests to Rinder or arguments to anyone that he tell the truth. My satisfaction is unrelated to Rinder telling the truth. Reconciliation, justice, peace, honor, in fact the elimination of an endangerment to his child, wife and family — those are on the other side of Rinder growing a spine and telling the simple truth, not my satisfaction.

Legal and social issues relating directly to the truth of Rinder’s experiences and knowledge also exceed and transcend my satisfaction, including, e.g., human rights; religious freedom; contracted religious silence; a light on black propaganda; the IRS crimes;  those who would act in concert with me. It is completely understandable that the Scientologists and their collaborators do not want Rinder to tell the truth, because it would affect, and could correct these issues. They do not want the Scientologists’ criminally obtained and legally undeserved IRS tax exemption to be lost or challenged.

If child, wife or family endangerment is a factor, then it should be observed that Rinder endangered, and continues to endanger his children, wives and family by being Hubbard or Miscavige’s Fair Game IC for twenty years, committing acts that even Communicator IC says subject him to criminal liability. Now Rinder keeps adding his refusal to help his victims, as does Rathbun, when he could have done so much with nothing more than the simple truth, all of which will be the legacy he leaves his children.

What a burden on them also to discover that their father used them as his excuse not to help his victims, not to end injustices. Rathbun also has been using his wife and child as human shields for much the same purpose and his supporters too validate that use.

The Scientologists and their collaborators seek to present my relationship with Mike Rinder and Rathbun as one of equal opponents equally empowered, equally right, and equally deserving of public scrutiny and criticism. If this can be accepted, of course, my few requests of both of them to communicate to me and tell the truth can be made to sound unfair. After all, they are not requesting that I  speak up and tell the truth about their and their fellow Scientologists’ fair gaming of SP class members.

Even though I see the equality, and also the unity, of all Homo sapiens, however, the clear relationship this past thirty-five years is of victimizer and victim. It is our essential equality that makes this unholy relationship of victimizer and victim what it is.

As can be seen, I did not know that Rinder was targeting me until 1985 when the Scientologists proclaimed the shocking truth that he was conning me about being my friend, about understanding where I was coming from, and about coming to me for my assistance, because he and his “Loyalists” sought fairness, truth and justice.

Rinder knew that he was targeting me from the first minute he knew I had left, which was thirty-five years ago today. Through every minute of his OSA career he targeted me. I had no idea. I did nothing about him.

I naturally testified as necessary thereafter about what had been revealed in 1985 of what he had done, but that was only because he had done it and it was relevant in various legal proceedings

Rinder had the whole OSA apparatus and used it to sue me, black PR me around the world, frame me, bankrupt me, stalk me, op me, threaten me, betray me, destroy my relationships, get me enjoined and sentenced to jail, and drive me to the edge of death, all in execution of his conspiracy’s criminal purposes and programs. I had no such apparatus, and did none of those things to Rinder.

Rinder and his fellow Scientologists and their collaborators have sought for thirty-five years, and paid millions of dollars, and corrupted courts, to silence me. I never tried to silence him or them. In fact it is quite clear that I urge them to communicate.

Rinder, et al. seek to have me jailed and fined for truthfully expressing my sincere religious experiences and knowledge. I don’t seek to have them jailed, but seek to have them truthfully express their sincere religious experiences and knowledge.

In last week’s Scientology and the Aftermath program, Rinder said:

Part of my job was to discredit and destroy critics who spoke out against the Church. If the Church believed that someone was an enemy and needed to be silenced or destroyed, it was my job and I did it.

[…]

I was the guy.

I feel bad about the people who got hurt as a result of my actions. But I feel it’s important to tell the truth of what really goes on behind the scenes. What really is happening in Scientology.

I had no such job to destroy Rinder.

Rinder’s conjunction “but” is confusing here, but his implication is clear that because he says telling the truth of what really goes on behind the scenes in Scientology is important, he must be telling such truth. Obviously he is not telling such truth; or there would be no need to advise him to not tell the truth or supply him with justifications to keep him from telling the truth. What really goes on behind the scenes is the criminal conspiracy against persons and rights in which Rinder has been such a key conspirator.

Notes

  1. See “Mutual Release And Settlement Agreement“. ↩
  2. From http://gerryarmstrong.ca/archives/1332 ↩

Filed Under: Correspondence Tagged With: Communicator I/C, David Miscavige, ESMB, FBI, Mark C. Rathbun, Michael J. Rinder

No truth from Rinder? No reconciliation (December 08, 2016)

December 8, 2016 by Clerk1

Churchill on ESMB wrote:

I have much respect and admiration for Mike Rinder, and am a regular reader of his blog which I appreciate immensely.
I hope that Mike and Gerry Armstrong can find it in their combined hearts, to reach out to one other, if they have not yet done so, and reconcile.
I feel that Gerry deserves the peace of mind, and sense of closure that this would bring, as does Mike. 1

Gerry has written and spoken quite a bit about Mike Rinder, because he was Rinder’s biggest fair game target for so long, and he continues to be a key fair game target. Below are links to some of the materials that inform their relationship, and to the small amount of correspondence between them.

Over all the years Rinder fair gamed Gerry for Scientology, and had been paid by Scientology for that purpose, he wrote and spoke a great deal about Gerry. Almost all of what Rinder has written or said was in secret. Much was black PR. He has never publicly, or to Gerry, disclosed or acknowledged what he did to fair game Gerry or what he has written or said about him.

Since Rinder in recent years has been portraying himself as Scientology tamer or exposer, the absence of his public statements concerning Gerry is actually a revealing factor in their relationship. Rinder is identified as editor of Rathbun’s 2013 book, and Gerry says it forwards the cult’s black PR on him and his attorney Mike Flynn. Rinder was briefly recorded by the German filmmaker Markus Thoess black PRing Gerry. (Video below) He has taken no action that I am aware of to correct the black PR he promulgated, even to the highest levels of government.

Rinder and Gerry really have an extraordinary relationship, which is similar to Gerry’s with Mark Rathbun: the long unrepentant victimizer and his common undying victim. Gerry is not seeking a sense of “closure.” His requests of Mike Rinder are the same as his requests of Mark Rathbun, which are essentially to tell the truth toward correcting ongoing injustices and black propaganda. It very well may be that “closure” is not obtained, but at least justice would have been sought. Right now, Mike Rinder and Mark Rathbun do not seek justice for their victims and do not support the people who do seek such justice. The “closure” they apparently seek is our acceptance of the decades long injustices and other crimes they perpetrated against their victims. “Public apologies” without real willingness to do what’s possible to correct the wrongs reduces the “apologies” to further acts of fair game. “May be tricked, sued, or lied to or destroyed.”

No Truth from Rinder? No reconcilation.

Originally Posted by Gerry Armstrong to Mike Rinder (2010-04-14):

To Mike Rinder

Okay, so it isn’t really because Miscavige hates Heber. It’s because Heber might just tell the truth. You’ve got it. It’s why Miscavige, and Marty, and you, and all Scientologists hate me: because I tell the truth about Scientology.
Now, will you tell the truth about Scientology’s ops, black PR, the hatred, the threats on me for all those years? Are you going to be the honest Scientologist? Or, since that hasn’t been possible, will you be an honest born again wog?2

Originally Posted by Gerry Armstrong (2012-06-03):

Mike Rinder black PRs Gerry Armstrong and Graham Berry to German film makers

I had the copyright owner’s authorization to publish this video, and the copyright infringement claim was made in bad faith. 3

Originally Posted by Gerry Armstrong in a letter to Graham Berry (2014-03-27):

Gerry to Graham Berry on Honey Tech

I am not asking Marty or Mike for a deep psycho-philosophical shift, when, for example, a person changes from lying as a pro-survival activity and way of life and starts to value and desire truth telling and that becomes a way of life. I am also not denying that such a shift could perhaps occur, or be related. I think testifying seventy-some days in Scientology litigations might have altered me psycho-philosophically, and certainly being M & M & every other Scientologist’s target for all these years has.

I believe, however, that the testimony or truth that Marty and Mike can provide me, which would assist in correcting injustices, can be provided in a couple of days. They know how to debrief, know how to tell the truth, and have always had the ability. The idea that Scientologists cannot tell the truth or do not know truth from lies is a ruse that some Scientologists use to escape responsibility and natural consequences for the bad acts they know they’ve committed against their victims, or are still committing.

Marty and Mike are at cause over their refusal to now assist the people they helped to damage or destroy by intimidation, litigation and defamation activities. Their condition or their place in their long or short path of waking, recovery and healing is not why they have not assisted their victims. They had the ability to assist people while inside Scientology and the Sea Org, and the idea that they have lost that ability since leaving is ridiculous. They also have the same reasons for refusing to assist their victims that they had while in the SO. They did not acquire a new set of reasons for doing what they had always done: something or anything other than assisting their victims, giving justice, telling the truth.

I am just requesting the narrow, relevant truth about a clear and active matter: Marty, Mike, Hubbard, Miscavige, et al. v. Armstrong & friends. Marty and Mike are two individuals with a great deal of information, who are now presenting as fighters for justice who have told the truth about their part in victimizing others. Since they have not told the truth, and do not seek justice, even in correcting injustices they perpetrated and can help correct, the logical conclusion is that they are “Loyalists” mispresenting themselves. My communications that you call mercilessly attacking and condemning Marty and Mike have been useful and valuable in establishing these facts.
Not everyone gets to tell the truth that matters to someone. My request has been appropriate and the truth I’m requesting is relevant in ongoing legally cognizable injustices. Sometimes a request for the truth can be by subpoena. In my case it is the earnest, free request of a knowledgeable and known victim in a long legal and extralegal campaign of victimization and injustice.4

Originally Posted by Gerry Armstrong to Mike Rinder (2014-04-4th to 8th):

Reaching Mike Rinder

Your inimical, contemptuous communication contained within it the implicit license to me to do what I want with your email, because we are enemies. In reality, your communication only confirmed the inimical condition you were in with me. It did not cause the condition.

A communication from you could end the condition. In fact communication is what I want from you, just as I want it from Marty. I want you both to communicate about the Scientology v. Armstrong injustices and black PR over 32 years. I will know the communication that ends the condition, and neither of your two emails to me is it.5

Originally Posted by Gerry Armstrong (2015-03-01):

About Rathbun and Rinder talking to the FBI or going to the Feds

This scenario of Rathbun and Rinder talking to the FBI or going to the Feds has been brought up several times over the past few years. It is used as evidence of them doing the right thing, or how effective they are as critics, as it has been assumed that whatever they told the Feds helped the Scientologists’ victims.

In view of the known facts, however, this assumption is illogical. It is illogical to think that Rathbun and Rinder would lie about me in Memoirs, continue the criminal framing of me and Mike Flynn, black PR me and other persons he victimized, and yet tell the truth about what they did to fair game us to the Feds. 6

Originally Posted by Gerry Armstrong to Alex Gibney (2015-03-06 ):

Letter to Alex Gibney on the IRS deal, public policy, and calling out Rathbun and Rinder

Dear Mr. Gibney:

[…]

Calling out Cruise and Travolta to stand up and say it’s time for Miscavige to answer his accusers is logical because Cruise and Travolta are celebs, and they have contact and influence with him. Now I am urging you, and Wright and Paul Haggis, to call out Mark Rathbun and Mike Rinder to answer their accuser, me. What I am accusing them of includes, most crucially, crimes and torts they committed against me personally to unlawfully obtain the IRS tax exemption, which is clearly a focus of your film.

Rathbun and Rinder, under L. Ron Hubbard and Miscavige, fair gamed me more than they fair gamed any other person during their time as fair gamers for Scientology. If they fair gamed someone else more than me, they have never said, and I have never heard of that person. The one person they fair gamed somewhat equivalently was my attorney Michael Flynn. 7

Since Rathbun and Rinder have apparently left the Scientology cult, and portray themselves as exposers of the Scientologists’ abuses and crimes, I have many times asked them to come forward and tell the truth about fair gaming me. I have asked them many times to come forward and tell the truth about what they did to me to obtain their cult’s unmerited tax exemption. 8

Yet neither of them has answered me, their accuser, other than with contempt and further fair gaming.9

Originally Posted by Gerry Armstrong (2015-03-11):

Response to Rinder re Disconnection

Rinder’s assertion that “disconnection,” which is one application of the SP doctrine, is merely a relatively simple theory, and, as he says on his blog, “is based on common sense,” is also false and malignant. His claim on his blog that when disconnection “is used for the benefit of the individual, it can be a helpful practice” is a lie to cloak an evil and indefensible practice.3

The other, even more evil, application of the SP doctrine is the “fair game” policy. Rathbun and Rinder have not told the truth about fair game, and have in fact continued to fair game and support the fair gaming of the wogs they most egregiously fair gamed while working directly for the Scientology cult. While disconnection is antisocial, it is arguably lawfully permissible, but fair game constitutes a criminal conspiracy against rights and is judicially punishable.10

____

3. http://www.mikerindersblog.org/scien…olicy-exposed/

Originally Posted by Gerry Armstrong (2016-11-07):

Speaking up about Fair Game

Rinder personally participated in and directed criminal acts against me. See for example, my introduction to the Armstrong Op http://armstrong-op.gerryarmstrong.ca/about ; see also documents relating to Rinder’s part in it: http://armstrong-op.gerryarmstrong.ca/archives/19 . He knows about his criminal acts, and knows that I have confronted him on his refusal to tell the truth about them. Although the book is about “fair game,” and Rinder is a major contributor to the book, there is no mention of his fair game against his victims. There is no evidence he was asked about such actions, no challenge to his assertion or intimation that he and the new regime did not engage in illegal activities, and no question of his aghastness.11

Notes

  1. http://www.forum.exscn.net/showthread.php?43095-Mike-Rinder-posted-something-important-today&p=1125006&viewfull=1#post1125006 ↩
  2. http://gerryarmstrong.ca/archives/315 ↩
  3. I have written and executed a declaration to support this counter-notification, and posted the declaration with evidence at http://gerryarmstrong.ca/archives/230 ↩
  4. http://gerryarmstrong.ca/archives/1108 ↩
  5. http://gerryarmstrong.ca/archives/1919 ↩
  6. http://gerryarmstrong.ca/archives/1332 ↩
  7. See, e.g., http://www.gerryarmstrong.org/50grand/cult/ ↩
  8. See, e.g., this 2009 letter to Rathbun regarding black propaganda to the IRS. http://gerryarmstrong.ca/archives/304 ↩
  9. http://gerryarmstrong.ca/archives/14881 ↩
  10. http://gerryarmstrong.ca/archives/1344 ↩
  11. http://gerryarmstrong.ca/archives/1893 ↩

Filed Under: Other writings Tagged With: Alex Gibney, fair game, FBI, Mark C. Rathbun, Markus Thoess, Michael J. Rinder

Public Policy (January 25, 2015)

January 25, 2015 by Clerk1

by Gerry Armstrong 1

Caroline on ESMB: Gerry concluded some time ago that the key to the IRS decision and its cancellation is the “public policy” issue, or actually public policy violations issue. This explains why neither Rathbun nor Rinder have told the truth about their fair gaming of Gerry, Mike Flynn, etc., and have not told the truth about false statements to and dealings with the IRS. From the Introduction to the Armstrong Operation: […]

Wildcat on ESMB: This is good information, thank you! Can you provide a link or clarification about the “public policy” issue? I’m not sure what that is, but am very interested to know more.

Public policy. That principle of the law which holds that no subject can lawfully do that which has a tendency to be injurious to the public or against the public good. The principles under which the freedom of contract or private dealings is restricted by law for the good of the community. The term “policy,” as applied to a statute, regulation, rule of law, course of action, or the like, refers to its probable effect, tendency, or object, considered with reference to the social or political well-being of the state. Thus, certain classes of acts are said to be “against public policy,” when the law refuses to enforce or recognize them, on the ground that they have a mischievous tendency, so as to be injurious to the interests of the state, apart from illegality or immorality. — Black’s Law Dictionary, Fifth Edition

To see how “public policy” fits into the Scientologists’ IRS scheme, start with the September 1984 judgment in Church of Scientology of California v. Commissioner of IRS.2

The US was very aware of the Scientologists’ public policy violations against government, organizations and individuals because of the documents seized in the 1977 FBI raids, and because of testimony of Exscientologists. A broad statement reflecting the US’s knowledge of such public policy violations is provided in the December 1980 Sentencing Memorandum in the US v. Jane Kember & Mo Budlong case.

Thus, as the evidence shows, these defendants orchestrated an elaborate cover-up, beginning in June 1976 and continuing through   June 1977 and, no doubt, thereafter.  In fact, a significant part of the defense they presented at trial — their attack on the integrity and reliability of Michael Meisner — was foreshadowed in the “obstruction documents.”  They presented this Court with a shabby attempt at impeaching Meisner’s credibility by claiming that he stole money from the Church — the same false claim they made against another former Scientologist who had the courage to expose their crimes and thus fell victim to their fair game doctrine. Allard v. Church of Scientology of California, 58 Cal. App. 3d 439, 129 Cal. Rprtr. 797 (Ct. App, 1976), cert. denied, 97 S. Ct. 1101 (1977).

[…]

Other Crimes Committed by These Defendants

The defendants’ contention that they committed the crimes of which they stand convicted in order to protect their Church from Government harassment collapses when one reviews a sample of the remaining documents seized by the FBI during the execution of the two Los Angeles search warrants.  If anything, these documents establish beyond doubt that the defendants, their convicted co-defendants, and their unindicted co-conspirators, as well as their organization, considered themselves above the law.  They believed that they had carte blanche to violate the rights of others, frame critics in order to destroy them, burglarize private and public offices and steal documents outlining the strategy of individuals and organizations that the Church had sued. These suits were filed by the Church for the sole purpose of financially bankrupting its critics and in order to create an atmosphere of fear so that critics would shy away from exercising the First Amendment rights secured them by the Constitution. [ ] The defendants and their cohorts launched vicious smear campaigns, spreading falsehoods against those they perceived to be enemies of Scientology in order to discredit them and, in some instances, to cause them to lose their employment. Their targets included, among others, The American Medical Association (AMA) which had branded Scientology’s practice of “dianetics” as “quackery”; the Better Business Bureau (BBB), which sought to respond to private citizens’ inquiries about the courses offered by Scientology, newspapers which merely sought to report the news and inform the public, law firms which represented individuals and organizations against whom Scientology initiated law suits (often for the sole purpose of harassment); private citizens who attempted to exercise their First Amendment rights to criticize an organization whose tactics they condemned; and public officials who sought to carry out the duties for which they were elected or appointed in a fair and even-handed manner. To these defendants and their associates, however, anyone who did not agree with them was considered to be an enemy against whom the so-called “fair game doctrine” could be invoked. [cite]  That doctrine provides that anyone perceived to be an enemy of Scientology or a “suppressive person”  “[m]ay be deprived of property or injured by any means by any Scientologist without discipline of the Scientologist.  [He m]ay be tricked, sued, lied to, or destroyed.” [cite] This policy, together with the actions of these defendants who represent the very top leadership of the Church of Scientology, bring into question their claim that their Church prohibited the commission of illegal acts.

[…]

Conclusion

The above recitation of evidence establishes beyond dispute the massive and insidious nature of the crimes these two defendants engaged in over the years.  It also puts to rest their protestation, articulated by Mary Sue Hubbard from the witness stand, that they only burglarized Government offices and stole Government documents because of some imaginary Governmental harassment campaign against them.

The brazen and persistent burglaries and thefts directed against the United States Government were but one minor aspect of the defendants’ wanton assault upon the laws of this country.  The well-orchestrated campaign to thwart the federal Grand Jury investigation by destroying evidence, giving false evidence in response to a Grand Jury subpoena, harboring a fugitive, kidnapping a crucial witness, preparing an elaborate cover-up story, and assisting in the giving of false statements under oath shows the contempt which these defendants had for the judicial system of this country.  Their total disregard for the laws is further made clear by the criminal campaigns of vilification, burglaries and thefts which they carried out against private and public individuals    and organizations, carefully documented in minute detail.  One can   only wonder about the crimes set forth in the documents secreted in their “Red Box” data.  That these defendants were willing to frame their critics to the point of giving false testimony under oath against them, and having them arrested and indicted speaks legion for their disdain for the rule of law.  Indeed, they arrogantly placed themselves above the law meting out their personal brand of punishment to those “guilty” of opposing their selfish aims.

The crimes committed by these defendants is of a breadth and scope previously unheard.  No building, office, desk, or files was safe from their snooping and prying.  No individual or organization was free from their despicable scheming and warped minds. The tools of their trade were miniature transmitters, lock picks, secret codes, forged credentials, and any other devices they found necessary to carry out their heinous schemes.  It is interesting to note that the Founder of their organization, unindicted co-conspirator L. Ron Hubbard, wrote in his dictionary entitled “Modern Management Technology Defined” that “truth is what is true for you,” and “illegal” is that which is “contrary to statistics or policy” and not pursuant to Scientology’s “approved program.”  Thus, with the Founder-Commodore’s blessings they could wantonly commit crimes as long as it was in the interest of Scientology.

These defendants rewarded criminal activities that ended in success and sternly rebuked those that failed.  The standards of human conduct embodied in such practices represent no less than the absolute perversion of any known ethical value system.  In view of this, it defies the imagination that these defendants have the unmitigated audacity to seek to defend their actions in the name of “religion.”  That these defendants now attempt to hide behind the sacred principles of freedom of religion, freedom of speech and the right to privacy — which principles they repeatedly demonstrated a willingness to violate with impunity — adds insult to the injuries which they have inflicted on every element of society.

These defendants, their co-conspirators, their organization, and any other individual or group that might consider committing similar crimes, must be given a clear and convincing message: criminal activities of the types engaged in here shall not be tolerated by our society.3

In July 1987, the Ninth Circuit of the US Court of Appeals affirmed the Tax Court’s 1984 judgment in CSC v. Commissioner. Because the Ninth Circuit affirmed on the ground of inurement to L. Ron Hubbard, it did not address the public policy issue.

We conclude that the Church failed to establish that “no part of the net earnings … inures to the benefit of any private shareholder or individual….” 26 U.S.C. Sec. 501(c)(3). Because we may affirm the Tax Court on this ground, we do not reach the questions of whether the Church operated for a substantial commercial purpose or whether it violated public policy. 4

Because the Ninth Circuit affirmed the Tax Court judgment only on the ground of inurement, it did not mean that the IRS could ignore the other grounds for denial of tax exemption if the Scientologists cured their inurement problem. Hubbard’s death solved inurement. The Scientologists solved their public policy problem by committing more public policy violations against the people who were already victims of the Scientologists’ public policy violations. For corrupt reasons, the US abetted the Scientologists, indeed required such public policy violations.

The Scientologists’ strategy, as has long been known, became to blame their Guardian’s Office for everything off-public policy the Scientologists had been caught doing, disband the GO as a rogue operation, and swear that public policy violations were no longer committed or permitted. The Scientologists, of course, first under Hubbard and then under Miscavige, continued violating public policy unabated, and probably even escalated public policy violating by having the GO to scapegoat.

The blaming of the GO, and the smearing of the Scientologists’ public policy violation victims by association with the GO, is a key theme in the Scientologists’ negotiated submissions to the IRS upon which tax exemption was granted in 1993. The Scientologists, and the IRS, had to deal with the public policy issue that is so prominent in the 1984 Tax Court judgment. These submissions, negotiated to demonstrate that public policy violations had ended with the GO, are actually irrefutable, and astonishing, proof that Scientologists continued violating public policy, directed by the very top leadership of Scientology. 5

There are, naturally, many years of evidence of the Scientologists’ public policy-violating activities since their exemption-reaping submissions. Their actions against me in violation of public policy started during the Hubbard regime and have not stopped throughout the Miscavige regime. In significant part, the Scientologists’ actions targeting me as an SP or enemy comprise a conspiracy against rights (18 USC 241), which clearly is against public policy. The Scientologists’ public policy violations in targeting me in their submissions to the IRS are stunning. In negotiating with the Scientologists to file this material targeting me, by requiring or permitting this material to be filed, and by interference of any kind against me on behalf of the Scientologists ever since, the US has been participating in their criminal conspiracy, and vice versa.

Although in his 2013 book Memoirs Mark Rathbun did not confront his participation in the Scientology-IRS conspiracy, which defrauded Americans and criminally prejudiced the SP class, he did disclose a number of things that are useful in examining certain of the Scientologists’ fact statements in their IRS submissions. Comparing the public policy sections of these submissions with the US’s knowledge of public policy violations as shown in the 1980 US v. Kember sentencing memorandum, and analyzing both fact sets with what Rathbun has disclosed or what is known from other sources, would be a logical next step.

 Notes

  1. Posted to gerryarmstrong.ca on 25 Jan, 2015. ↩
  2.  http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Cowen/essays/irslegal/240984.html ↩
  3. Source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0e/Usa-v-kember-budlong-sentencing-memo-1980-01-72.pdf ↩
  4. Source: https://law.resource.org/pub/us/case/reporter/F2/823/823.F2d.1310.85-7324.html ↩
  5. See http://armstrong-op.gerryarmstrong.ca/documents/irs ↩

Filed Under: Other writings Tagged With: Caroline Letkeman, ESMB, FBI, IRS, Jane Kember, L. Ron Hubbard, Mark C. Rathbun, Mary Sue Hubbard

Mark Rathbun: The Juggernaut (May 28, 2013)

May 28, 2013 by Clerk1

 

Chapter Twenty-One

THE JUGGERNAUT  1 2

Juggernaut:   in colloquial English usage is a literal or metaphorical force regarded as mercilessly destructive and unstoppable.   – Wikipedia

For all of his alleged faults, L. Ron Hubbard was a keen observer and writer on the human condition. He once noted that “the bank follows the line of attack.”   “Bank” is Scientologese for the reactive mind, the stimulus-response portion of the mind that seeks destruction of others for survival of self.   With the devastating strike upon Ron and Scientology delivered in Los Angeles, all roads to L. Ron Hubbard’s bunker led through Flynn and Armstrong. It seemed that anyone with a score to settle was drawn like a magnet to the duo. Those combined forces took on the appearance of an overwhelming juggernaut.

The DOJ duplicated Flynn’s latest legal tactic: ask courts in Scientology litigation to order the church to produce L. Ron Hubbard as the “managing agent” of the mother church. Flynn assisted the DOJ to procure sworn declarations from his growing stable of former high-level official witnesses in support of the move.

David Mayo, the expelled former auditor to L. Ron Hubbard and erstwhile top technical authority in Scientology, had created a thriving Scientology splinter operation in Santa Barbara, California. Former high-level messengers – including two former Commanding Officers of CMO Int (Commodore’s Messenger Organization International) served as executives of his operation.   Until the Armstrong affair, they had steered clear of the L. Ron Hubbard-bashing Flynn/ FAMCO circles. But by 1984 they were supplying declarations to the DOJ and Flynn in support of their motions to compel Hubbard into depositions in lawsuits across the country.

Breckenridge’s Armstrong case decision, bolstered by a dozen declarations by former Hubbard messengers and aides, made the allegation of Hubbard’s “managing agent” status virtually uncontestable. Miscavige and Broeker were clearly established as the last links to Hubbard, but they could not provide countering declarations because it would subject them to depositions – which would lead Hubbard’s enemies directly to him.

Worse, the Breckenridge decision destroyed any chance of winning, in courts across the U.S., our vast array of pending motions to dismiss Flynn’s lawsuits on the basis of First Amendment rights to freedom of religion. The twenty-one-page Breckenridge indictment was devastating to our three years of expensive efforts at positioning much of the Flynn litigation for pre-trial dismissal.

Worse still, the decision pumped new life into what we thought by then to be criminal investigations losing steam. The Internal Revenue Service’s Criminal Investigation Division (CID) had been actively investigating the church, as well as LRH, Pat and Ann Broeker, David Miscavige and other church officials as named targets for criminal charges. Until the Breckenridge decision we had kept the CID somewhat at bay through litigation combatting their summons power, and a team of lawyers attempting to negotiate with IRS counsel and DOJ officials. But our intelligence lines were reporting that the LA-based CID group was once again gearing up to indict Hubbard and his aides.

The Ontario Provincial Police had, after their March, 1983 raid, steered clear of targeting Hubbard. Now they were reconsidering, in light of the outcome of the Armstrong case.

Our intelligence network reported that Gerry Armstrong was feeling drunk with power, given the sudden attention he’d received and his new importance in the anti-Scientology community. It seemed Armstrong and Flynn had worked their way up to being the axle to which all anti-Scientology spokes were linked. Per reports, Armstrong was talking of bringing all Scientology’s enemies together in a concerted effort to take over the church. The man who had prevailed in his case because of his alleged “fear for his life” was beating his chest and promising to take the very life of our church, and convert all its assets to outside control.

Our only shot at staving off indictments against LRH across North America, and of keeping him out of the couple of dozen pending lawsuits was to take out the axle and so depower its spokes. It was this desperate state of affairs that drew me directly into the shadowy world of intelligence. Throughout his litigation Armstrong had remained in periodic communication with a Scientologist who knew a thing or two about intelligence. Dan Sherman had published a number of spy novels, and had struck up an acquaintance with Armstrong. Armstrong looked up to Sherman and envied his literary success and intelligence acumen. Armstrong believed that Sherman – like so many other Scientologists during the tumultuous early eighties – was disaffected with the church and no longer considered himself a member. In fact, Sherman was cultivating a friendship with Armstrong in order to glean intelligence from him about the enemy camp. Up through the trial their communications were infrequent and mundane.   All that changed when Armstrong became an overnight anti-Scientology sensation. Because of Armstrong’s newly won stardom, Sherman began giving him more face time. Armstrong began sharing some of the details of his activities as a coordination point for all camps inimical to the church, from the Ontario Provincial Police, to the IRS CID, to the DOJ, to the Mayo splinter movement. Armstrong asked Sherman to see whether he could locate some church insiders who might aid in a take-over coup inside the church.

Gene Ingram and I concocted a rather elaborate game plan.   Gene would tap one of his old LAPD comrades to obtain written permission to covertly video record conversations with Gerry Armstrong. Technically, it was a lawfully given permission since we had a witness attesting that Armstrong was suggesting taking over and destroying the church by questionable means.

Gene obtained a recreational vehicle which had a wide rear window with reflective coating, making it one-way vision. A high-powered camera could record what was going on outside without being seen. We planned to record meetings with Armstrong to obtain evidence showing that not only was he not afraid for his life, he in fact was a well-backed aggressor and an operative of government agencies out to get Scientology. After taking circuitous routes to lose any possible tails, Sherman and I met Ingram in the RV in Long Beach. We worked out every detail of Sherman’s cover. We would bring in a former GO operative and have Sherman introduce him to Armstrong as a church insider, plotting the overthrow of the Miscavige regime and willing to play ball with Armstrong, Flynn and their government allies. That would hopefully prompt Armstrong to repeat and elaborate on some of the provocative takeover and take-down ideas he had alluded to in earlier conversations.

The chosen venue for the meetings was Griffith Park, inside LAPD jurisdiction and with plenty of opportunities for positioning the RV to capture the action. Sherman met with Armstrong and whetted his appetite. He told him he had made contact with an ally who had a number of well-placed contacts, currently on staff in the church. He told Armstrong he could only be identified by his first name, Joey, for security purposes. Joey was formerly of the Guardian’s Office and was connected to a number of former GO people who were bitter about being ousted by Miscavige, and sympathetic to Armstrong and the Mayo splinter movement.   Armstrong was visibly overjoyed at this opportunity gratuitously falling into his lap.

Sherman arranged a meeting between Armstrong and Joey to take place on a park bench in Griffith Park. Joey wore an audio wire which transmitted the conversation back to the RV, parked a hundred yards away and video recording the event. Armstrong and Joey both wore sunglasses; both attempted to look as nonchalant as could be, as they introduced themselves.

Joey explained that there was serious disaffection within the church, and a forming cabal of veteran staff ready to take out Miscavige and the current management. He called this cell the Loyalists. Armstrong was clearly excited, and believed Joey’s cover – no doubt because of Sherman’s story-telling skills and credibility with Armstrong.

Armstrong shared with Joey the master plan, which he represented as his brainchild, along with Michael Flynn. He explained that the plan was backed by the Ontario Provincial Police, the DOJ and the IRS. Flynn would prepare a lawsuit on behalf of the Loyalists, asking the Attorney General of California to take the church into receivership on their behalf. The DOJ, FBI, and IRS would conduct a raid on church premises to get fresh evidence of illegalities, in support of the Loyalist action. The raid would be coordinated to coincide with the filing of the receivership action.   The public relations fallout and the possible arrests of leaders would all but cripple the church.

Joey played his role well, feigning fear and nervousness that Armstrong could make good on the government back-up. In order to prove his representations, Armstrong opened a notebook and started naming his government contacts, representing that each was briefed, coordinated and ready to roll with the plan. He cited the following agents as close personal friends and in constant contact and coordination with him and with Flynn:

Al Ristuccia – Los Angeles office of the IRS Criminal Investigation Division

Al Lipkin –  Los Angeles office of the IRS Criminal Investigation Division

Richard Greenberg – U.S. Department of Justice, lead counsel in defending civil litigation brought by the church against DOJ, FBI and IRS

Tom Doughty – DOJ associate of Greenberg

Al Ciampini – Ontario Provincial Police

Armstrong provided Joey with phone numbers for each, including home numbers for some – and urged Joey to get in touch with his team members from these agencies.

Over time, Armstrong told Joey that the IRS CID was the most active government participant, and served as the main coordination point between agencies. He told Joey the CID agents had been briefed about Joey and the Loyalists, and were excited and supportive. The CID would grant them informant status, offer immunity for any crimes they might commit in assisting the government, and had even talked of providing safe houses for insiders. Armstrong then asked   Joey to get his contacts to go into church files and find evidence of illegalities, so that the IRS and DOJ would know where to search. Joey then brought into the mix someone whom Gerry had known from his Sea Org days.   Mike Rinder was a Commodore’s Messenger who had once worked directly with Ron.   He was then heading up the U.S. branch of the Office of Special Affairs.   Joey introduced Mike to Gerry.   Mike reported to Gerry that the files were relatively clean – there were no big smoking-gun documents being created after the 1977 FBI raids. At this point Armstrong’s macho bravado provided what would be our greatest defense against the indictments being issued against Hubbard, Miscavige, et al.   Armstrong suggested that the Loyalists create evidence of illegalities and plant them in church files for the IRS and DOJ to find in a raid, and use against church officials.

All of Armstrong’s representations about government conspiracies to take down church leadership and close down the operation were duly recorded.

David Miscavige was ecstatic with the results. He had me make a presentation of the evidence to a team of criminal lawyers, assembled to represent L. Ron Hubbard, Miscavige, Pat Broker and Lyman Spurlock (Hubbard’s accountant at ASI) to prevent IRS CID indictments and convictions – the potential charges we took most seriously. These attorneys – most from white-shoe Washington, D.C. law firms – were scaring the hell out of Miscavige. They were suggesting the IRS CID case was so serious that they recommended working a deal with the IRS for Miscavige and Spurlock to do time in halfway houses, so as to prevent indictment of Hubbard.   At the root of the IRS CID case was the evidence of millions of dollars of church monies being funneled to Hubbard through fraudulent means. And at the heart of the case would be the infamous MCCS taped conference in which church attorneys and staff acknowledged the fraudulent nature of the transfers.

My presentation horrified the team of criminal attorneys. They were hired because of their conservative, Reagan administration contacts. They did not want anything to do with such an aggressive investigative move.   They were concerned about the propriety of the means Ingram and I had utilized to obtain the evidence, and thought it would reflect badly on their own reputations. One attorney who represented Miscavige personally took me aside, though. He said he did not know how to use it at the moment, but that the evidence I had obtained would ultimately save the day for Hubbard, Miscavige and the church.   Gerald Feffer was the former Assistant Deputy Attorney General for taxation during the Carter administration. He was becoming a dean of white-collar criminal case dismissal prior to indictment. He would become a senior partner in the venerable D.C. law firm Williams & Connally.   Gerry told me to work with some of our more aggressive civil counsel to figure out a way to make the information public, and he would use it to make the IRS criminal case go away.

Another disclosure from the Griffith Park meetings cut to the quick with both Miscavige and me. Armstrong had told Joey that another Department of Justice player was in on the grand plan to close down Scientology: Bracket Deniston III. Armstrong said that Deniston was not investigating to find out who attempted to pass Hubbard’s check, and he was not investigating the evidence we had provided to him.   Instead Deniston was out to nail our investigator, Gene Ingram. Deniston had represented to Armstrong that he was setting traps to nail Ingram and the church for attempting to frame Flynn with purchased evidence.

This was particularly disconcerting, given events in the check investigation while all this Armstrong business was going down.   After I had been ordered out of Boston by Deniston, I had been lured back in by a man being prosecuted by his office. Larry Reservitz had been charged in a case very similar to the one involving LRH’s check. One of Reservitz’s connections who had access to Bank of New England records had used his access to fraudulently transfer money from random accounts to Reservitz. While under indictment, Reservitz reached out to me for the $ 10,000 reward we had previously advertised in the New York Times, claiming he had inside information on the Hubbard case and could identify the inside man at BNE. We had a number of phone calls and several meetings attempting to negotiate the deal. The jockeying was due to my suspicion that Reservitz was shaking us down, and I was searching for facts that would indicate he knew what he was talking about. Reservitz was continually attempting to characterize my questioning as an attempt to make the deal an exchange of cash for handing us Flynn.

In the meantime, Robert Mueller, Denniston’s superior and head of the Boston U.S. DOJ office fraud division, had flown to Italy to visit Ala Tamimi. He bought Tamimi’s retraction of his original statement in exchange for dropping a number of outstanding indictments the DOJ had pending against Tamimi for a variety of fraudulent schemes he had previously executed. I attempted to confront Mueller with what we had learned, but he refused to meet with me. Deniston outright denied that any visit or deal had been carried out by Mueller. In either event, Tamimi’s retraction caused Miscavige to turn up the heat to get me to turn up fresh evidence of Flynn’s involvement in the crime.

I was caught between a rock and a hard spot. Miscavige wanted Flynn at any cost.   Yet I felt that Reservitz might be attempting to frame me for attempting to frame Flynn.   I walked a tight rope between pursuing the investigation to Miscavige’s required degree of aggressiveness, and not stepping over the line with Reservitz. I even visited the Boston FBI agent in charge of the Hubbard check investigation, Jim Burleigh.   I pointedly accused Burleigh of having covertly made a deal with Reservitz to attempt to sting me.   Burleigh brought in another FBI agent to witness his categorical denial that the FBI or DOJ had made a deal with Reservitz: “We would never cooperate with the likes of Larry Reservitz.” Deniston likewise denied that Reservitz was working for the DOJ.   Still, I had my suspicions, particularly when we learned Deniston had become pals with Armstrong and Flynn.

With the sharks circling in and our waning confidence in our civil lawyers (having their heads handed to them in the Armstrong case) and criminal lawyers (advising Miscavige that he resign himself to doing time, at least in a halfway house), Miscavige ordered I find a new breed of lawyer. He wanted someone tough as nails, not some nervous Nellie.   He wanted someone who could figuratively kick Flynn’s butt in court, and scare the hell out of his DOJ and IRS backers. After an exhaustive nationwide search and many candidates eliminated, I thought we had finally found our man – in, of all places, Boston.

Earle Cooley was bigger than life.   He was a big, red-haired knock-off of L. Ron Hubbard himself. His gravelly voice was commanding. His wit was sharp. He was perennially listed in The Best Trial Lawyers in America.   He could spin a yarn that charmed judges and juries and took easy, great pleasure in viciously destroying witnesses on cross examination.   After I had interviewed Earle and reported to Miscavige, I arranged for us to watch Earle in action.   Miscavige and I flew out to Boston to see Earle perform in a high-profile art theft trial. We saw him decimate a seasoned criminal government informant so thoroughly on cross examination that the fellow, in a trademark Cooley expression, “didn’t know whether to shit or wind his watch.” Earle’s client – whom the government had dead to rights, and who was as unsympathetic a defendant as could be – was acquitted by the jury.   We had found the horse for the course.

Earle was like a breath of fresh air to Miscavige.   He took a similar black-and-white view of matters – we are right and good, the enemy is wrong and bad. Miscavige had long since lost his patience and his tolerance for our teams of civil lawyers and the civil-rights-experienced civil-rights-experienced opinion leaders among them. He referred to them as the “pointy heads,” short for “pointy-headed intellectuals.”   To him, our only problem was our counsels’ timid, second-guessing, defensive frames of mind.   And Earle reinforced that view.   Cooley attended a few civil litigation conferences with our other counsel. He ruffled their feathers by readily agreeing with Miscavige’s simplistic sum-up of what was wrong and the solution to it, aggression. The existing lawyers’ nervous objections and eye-rolling reactions to Earle’s sermons only reinforced Miscavige’s view.   “They are nothing but a pack of pussies,” he regularly groused to me; “what we need is for Earle to sink his teeth into those Flynn witnesses and that’ll be the end of this nonsense.”

Miscavige was nothing if not resilient. While never giving a hint that the overridingly important goal was the attainment of All Clear, by late 1984 it was quite evident to all involved that we were fighting an entirely different battle now. It was a fight for survival. We were desperately staving off the barbarians storming the walls of whatever compound L. Ron Hubbard might reside behind. It was evident too that Hubbard himself might have quit fighting – we no longer received any dispatches from him about the legal front. He was only sporadically sending ASI advices concerning his personal business, and to the church about Scientology matters. Miscavige had a team feverishly marketing Hubbard’s new science fiction books, the Mission Earth series. He was putting just as much pressure on church marketing folks to market Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, the broad public re-release of the 1950 book that had launched the entire movement.   All titles were making it back onto the New York Times bestseller lists.   So the incongruity created another level of cognitive dissonance. How could government officials across the continent be so feverishly pursuing a man who was so wildly popular with the public at large?   It would be years before I would find out that the sales were given a mighty boost by teams of Scientologists sent out to bookstores to buy them in bulk.   In the meantime, Miscavige was adept at keeping me and the troops motivated, inferring that we were buying Ron time to bail out the church’s disastrous public image and to complete his final researches at the highest levels of Scientology.

With Miscavige’s solving of the “why” behind our failures to attain an All Clear – i.e., the outside lawyers’ blatant counter-intention to Hubbard’s advices on using the enemies’ tactics against them, only more cleverly and more aggressively – our defeat-battered hopes were rehabilitated. Earle Cooley, the great Scientology hope, would soon be unleashed.

Notes

  1. Rathbun, Mark (2013-05-28). Memoirs of a Scientology Warrior (pp. 255-64). ↩
  2. GA: I mentioned Rathbun’s Chapter 21, which he titles “The Juggernaut,” in a recent letter to Dan Sherman. http://gerryarmstrong.ca/archives/1082 The whole chapter is Rathbun’s spin on the Armstrong Op, or more specifically the 1984 Griffith Park videotaping part of the op. The operation, which was clearly concocted to use or misuse the videos for nefarious purposes after the videotaping, still continues. Rathbun’s book shows the op continues by continuing it. Even though he calls it a memoir, and recounts different events or incidents in his Scientology career that appear unrelated to the op, the whole book is his spin on it. The book is also a fantastic late act, one more contemptuous fair game nastiness in the same old sick op.

    Most importantly at this time, Rathbun’s spin, and his facts propelling it, are virtually identical to the spin and facts the Miscavige Scientologists give to their description of these events in their black propaganda publications, in their filings in their legal proceedings, in their submissions to the IRS, or to governments and people around the world. The difference is that Rathbun says Miscavige ran and runs it all, and Miscavige and his corporate underlings either do not say or say the same thing. ↩

Filed Under: Cult documents Tagged With: Al Ciampini, Al Lipkin, Al Ristuccia, Ala Fadili Al Tamimi, Brackett B. Denniston III, Christofferson v. Scientology, David Kluge, David Miscavige, Earle C. Cooley, FBI, Gerald Feffer, Gerry Armstrong, IRS, IRS CID, Jim Burleigh, L. Ron Hubbard, Larry J. Reservitz, Loyalist Program, Loyalists, Lyman Spurlock, Mark C. Rathbun, MCCS, Michael J. Flynn, Michael J. Rinder, Pat Broeker, Richard Greenberg, Robert Mueller

Tampa Bay Times: Scientology vs. The IRS ( June 21, 2009)

June 21, 2009 by Clerk1

Scientology: The Truth Rundown, Part 1 of 3 in a special report on the Church of Scientology
By Joe Childs and Thomas C. Tobin, Times Staff Writers
Sunday, June 21, 2009 1:06am

This account comes from executives who for decades were key figures in Scientology’s powerful inner circle. Marty Rathbun and Mike Rinder, the highest-ranking executives to leave the church, are speaking out for the first time.

[…]Now they provide an unprecedented look inside the upper reaches of the tightly controlled organization. They reveal:

[…]

  • With Miscavige calling the shots and Rathbun among those at his side, the church muscled the IRS into granting Scientology tax-exempt status. Offering fresh perspective on one of the church’s crowning moments, Rathbun details an extraordinary campaign of public pressure backed by thousands of lawsuits.

[…]

Scientology vs. the IRS

By the late 1980s, the battle with the IRS had quieted from the wild days of break-ins and indictments. But Miscavige was no less intent on getting back the church’s tax exemption, which he thought would legitimize Scientology.

The new strategy, according to Rathbun: Overwhelm the IRS. Force mistakes.

The church filed about 200 lawsuits against the IRS, seeking documents to prove IRS harassment and challenging the agency’s refusal to grant tax exemptions to church entities.

Some 2,300 individual Scientologists also sued the agency, demanding tax deductions for their contributions.

“Before you knew it, these simple little cookie-cutter suits … became full-blown legal cases,” Rathbun said.

Washington-based attorney William C. Walsh, who is now helping the church rebut the defectors claims, shepherded many of those cases. “We wanted to get to the bottom of what we felt was discrimination,” he said. “And we got a lot of documents, evidence that proved it.”

“It’s fair to say that when we started, there was a lot of distrust on both sides and suspicion,” Walsh said. “We had to dispel that and prove who we were and what kind of people we were.”

Yingling teamed with Walsh, Miscavige and Rathbun on the case. She said the IRS investigation of Miscavige resulted in a file thicker than the FBI’s file on Dr. Martin Luther King. “I mean it was insane,” she said.

The church ratcheted up the pressure with a relentless campaign against the IRS.

Armed with IRS records obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, Scientology’s magazine, Freedom, featured stories on alleged IRS abuses: lavish retreats on the taxpayers’ dime; setting quotas on audits of individual Scientologists; targeting small businesses for audits while politically connected corporations were overlooked.

Scientologists distributed the magazine on the front steps of the IRS building in Washington.

A group called the National Coalition of IRS Whistleblowers waged its own campaign. Unbeknownst to many, it was quietly created and financed by Scientology.

It was a grinding war, with Scientology willing to spend whatever it took to best the federal agency. “I didn’t even think about money,” Rathbun said. “We did whatever we needed to do.”

They also knew the other side was hurting. A memo obtained by the church said the Scientology lawsuits had tapped the IRS’s litigation budget before the year was up.

The church used other documents it got from the IRS against the agency.

In one, the Department of Justice scolded the IRS for taking indefensible positions in court cases against Scientology. The department said it feared being “sucked down” with the IRS and tarnished.

Another memo documented a conference of 20 IRS officials in the 1970s. They were trying to figure out how to respond to a judge’s ruling that Scientology met the agency’s definition of a religion. The IRS’ solution? They talked about changing the definition.

Rathbun calls it the “Final Solution” conference, a meeting that demonstrated the IRS bias against Scientology. “We used that (memo) I don’t know how many times on them,” he said.

By 1991, Miscavige had grown impatient with the legal tussle. He was confident he could personally persuade the IRS to bend. That October, he and Rathbun walked into IRS headquarters in Washington and asked to meet with IRS Commissioner Fred Goldberg. They had no appointment.

Goldberg, who did not respond to interview requests for this story, did not see them that day, but he met with them a week later.

Rathbun says that contrary to rumor, no bribes were paid, no extortion used. It was round-the-clock preparation and persistence — plus thousands of lawsuits, hard-hitting magazine articles and full-page ads in USA Today criticizing the IRS.

“That was enough,” Rathbun said. “You didn’t need blackmail.”

He and Miscavige prepped incessantly for their meeting. “I’m sitting there with three banker’s boxes of documents. He (Miscavige) has this 20-page speech to deliver to these guys. And for every sentence, I’ve got two folders” of backup.

Miscavige presented the argument that Scientology is a bona fide religion — then offered an olive branch.

Rathbun recalls the gist of the leader’s words to the IRS:

Look, we can just turn this off. This isn’t the purpose of the church. We’re just trying to defend ourselves. And this is the way we defend. We aggressively defend. If we can sit down and actually deal with the merits, get to what we feel we are actually entitled to, this all could be gone.

The two sides took a break.

Rathbun remembered: “Out in the hallway, Goldberg comes up to me because he sees I’m the right-hand guy. He goes: ‘Does he mean it? We can really turn it off?’ ”

“And I said,” turning his hand for effect, ” ‘Like a faucet.’ ”

The two sides started talks. Yingling said she warned church leaders to steel themselves, counseling that they answer every question, no matter how offensive.

Agents asked some doozies: about LSD initiation rituals, whether members were shot when they got out of line and about training terrorists in Mexico. “We answered everything,” Yingling said, crediting Miscavige for insisting the church be open, honest and cooperative.

The back and forth lasted two years and resulted in this agreement: The church paid $12.5 million. The IRS dropped its criminal investigations. All pending cases were dropped.

On Oct. 8, 1993, some 10,000 church members gathered in the Los Angeles Sports Arena to celebrate the leader’s announcement: The IRS had restored the church’s tax exemption, legitimizing Scientology as a church, not a for-profit operation.

“The war is over,” Miscavige told the crowd. “This means everything.”

Retrieved on 16 March 2014 from http://www.tampabay.com/news/scientology-the-truth-rundown-part-1-of-3-in-a-special-report-on-the/1012148.

Filed Under: Media articles Tagged With: David Miscavige, FBI, Fred T. Goldberg Jr., Freedom, IRS, Mark C. Rathbun, Monique Yingling, William C. Walsh

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