The Armstrong Op

Scientology's fair game on Gerry Armstrong

Heber C. Jentzsch

Heber C. Jentzsch

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Heber C. Jentzsch
Heber C. Jentzsch

To Mike Rinder (April 14, 2010)

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Dear Mike:

Your message “Where Is Heber?” inspired me to write. He’s my ex-stepfather-in-law, of course, and we go back to the 70’s, about as long as you and I go back.

I wanted to communicate civilly, because it is important to me that something be done about the Scientology v. Armstrong, et al. war. Lies maintain the war. You remember, I’m sure, when I spoke to you about your black PR, saying to me that you — meaning you, Miscavige, Scientology, the attorneys, the PIs, et al. — were going to keep right on black PRing me until I shut up. Okay, I’ll shut up and you start your message:

WHERE IS HEBER?

by Mike Rinder

After watching the AC 360 series many have wondered: “Where is Heber?”

Not me. I wondered, and outright asked, “Where is an honest Scientologist?” LFBD

And I again ask, where is an honest Scientologist? LFBD

Or at least, where is a Scientologist courageous enough to want and seek to be honest? LFBD

A Scientologist could start off as a fully loaded liar, I suppose, and then start throwing the lies away on a gradient, or lie-by-lie, when, for example, confronted with a lie, or reminded of a lie. I think though that conducting a mental examination for the lies in the load and getting rid of them en masse, or at least getting rid of chunks or chains of lies, is probably the process by which both homo sapiens and homo scientologicus get honest, if getting honest is possible. I think of the Damascus Road when imagining some Scientologist getting honest.

In any case, I’m asking where’s an honest Scientologist? And I’m asking you, Mike, and every Scientologist. Heber seems about as unlikely to be the first honest Scientologist, as Tommy Davis or David Miscavige. But the invitation goes out to Heber as well, and Davis and Miscavige.

To be honest, I realize, a Scientologist would have to be reborn as a wog, or somehow successfully make it through to the wog state or species. Being an honest wog, the person, naturally, couldn’t be an honest Scientologist, which, so far has been shown to be a perfect oxymoron. 8 million to 0.

Although they can’t be truly honest, virtually any Scientologists, I’m certain, while still Scientologists, can understand the concept of honesty, and understand what I’m looking and asking for.

Scientologists truly know, moreover, how to become honest, which is inarguably simple: just by dumping or shedding their load of lies. And Scientologists, I’m also certain, except, acknowledgedly, possibly the certifiably deranged, know when they’re lying. They know when they’re lying just as, acknowledgedly, virtually all uncertifiable wogs know when they’re lying. Scientologists, just like wogs, know when they’re adding to their lie load, know all the lies in the load, and know they’re all lies.

That means, Mike, I’m treating you as a knowledgeable equal. I’m not inviting pretended ignorance, although I’ll probably know it when I see it. It is principally Scientology in their lives that Scientologists are loaded with lies about, including Scientology’s effect on their lives and others’ lives. Because of this demonstrable fact, rejection of the entire subject from their lives is the most rational handling. It is, of course, reasonable to retain and employ Scientology, as I have, as a completely rejected subject.

His absence was magnified by who Miscavige did send forth as cannon fodder to respond to his crimes: four obviously rehearsed ex-wives who made fools of themselves by repeating lines given to them by Miscavige and received unanimous derision on the AC 360 blog; “Teflon” Tommy Davis who has been caught in more lies than Baghdad Bob and looks more and more like (dare I say this, after he made such a big point about me selling cars for a living) a sleazy used car salesman; and a bored, disinterested looking NON Scientologist tax attorney there to field the “tough” questions about Scientology tech and policy that Tommy couldn’t handle. As everyone knows, Heber is far more accomplished, competent and likeable than any of Miscavige’s new puppets.

At what is Heber far more accomplished? LF

Telling lies.LFBD F/N

In Heber’s and Tommy’s position, what were you accomplished at? LF

Telling lies. LFBD F/N

So you’re saying forked tongued and silver spoon mouthed Tommy Davis is far less accomplished at telling lies than the more silver tongued, and, yes, silver haired, Heber.

I’m sure that with your acknowledgement of Tommy as a lying failure, who’d been caught in a stack of lies, you were hoping that you’d be thought of as a more accomplished liar than Tommy. From your message, it’s pretty clear you hoped you’d be seen as closer to Heber in your lying accomplishment and competence, and your likeableness.

To be a competent liar, in the paradigm you’re positing, your lies would have to be accepted as the truth, or appear to be the truth, or at least not sound like outright lies. To be a competent liar for Scientology you couldn’t get caught in your lies, as you observe about Tommy.

If you’re a really accomplished liar, and, unlike Tommy Davis, don’t get caught in a load of lies, it’s likely you also come across as more likeable than he does. Heber’s either unwilling now to tell the required lies, or he’s being kept from telling them. That makes him perhaps more likeable, certainly to Scientology’s victims, than Tommy, who’s out here lying his forking tongue off.

I’m sure it seems to feel better to postulate that under Miscavige Scientology’s spokespersons have degraded or degenerated, or become less accomplished, less competent, and less likeable. But that is, I believe, a ridiculous proposition that has no real support in known facts and statistics.

It is abundantly clear that wogs’ knowledge of Scientology and Scientologists has increased, arguably dramatically, over the Heber-Davis and Hubbard-Miscavige periods. It has to also be evident that the number of wogs possessing and sharing that increased knowledge has increased.

I also believe it can be shown that the actual issues are being asked about more frequently, indicating an increasing understanding by more wogs of these issues. It’s also observable, I believe, that there’s an increasing intention and ability among many wogs to bypass Scientology spokespersons’ avoiding and cloaking of these actual issues.

Scientology spokespersons have always done what they could to hide and cloak the issues, of course, and all the reporter TRs give them the tech for that purpose. I’m sure you’d agree that Heber, besides appearing to be a far more accomplished and competent liar, also appeared far more accomplished and competent than Tommy at hiding, cloaking and avoiding the issues. Being able to avoid the actual issues certainly makes a spokesperson likeable to people who want the issues avoided, that is, their Scientology bosses.

Successful avoidance of the actual issues also means you don’t have to lie about them. Or at least you don’t have to continue to lie about the issues beyond the lies you told in order to get the issues avoided. Lying is often present during Scientologists’ efforts to avoid the issues, of course, because lying about the issue to be avoided is how most issues are avoided. Tommy’s walking out of an interview when asked about an issue – Xenu – without saying anything, is not an issue avoidance practice that will work for many issues with many interviewers.

Despite all Scientology spokespersons’ avoidance tech, however, disconnection is being probed. So are coerced abortions. So is Miscavige pummeling people. Tommy can’t now avoid these actual issues, because he has to talk to media people who know the issues, and some will probably have the courage to bypass his reporter TRs. Not being able to avoid the issues, Tommy can only lie: disconnection as such doesn’t exist; coerced abortions are voluntary; so’s the RPF; and Mr. Miscavige has never punched, kicked, choked, bashed, battered, beat, boxed, bruised, buffeted or butted anyone; in fact here are dozens of affidavits swearing that Mr. Miscavige is the most compassionate person in the universe and wouldn’t hurt a fly.

The most important issue that is beginning to be looked at and asked about, and I would argue is spreading into wog society consciousness, is the “Suppressive Person” doctrine. All the world’s Scientologists hiding, cloaking and avoiding the issue will not now keep the SP doctrine from being raised and probed, and probably pilloried for the indefensible evil it is. What do the most accomplished, competent and likeable Scientology reps do when an issue can’t be avoided? LF

They lie. LFBD F/N

Just like when Tommy can’t avoid the issue of Miscavige battering people. Tommy lies. F/N

I submit that your conclusion that Tommy (if you’re being honest in this matter) is far less accomplished, competent and likeable than Heber, or the ex-wives, Norman, Guillaume, Monique, or the other DM puppets as you call them, is erroneous. Tommy and the others are made to appear less accomplished, competent and likeable than prior spokespersons because wogs and wog society have advanced in their relationship with Scientology and Scientologists, whereas the Scientologists who interface with wogs have not advanced or evolved, but have been kept retarded.

I believe that if you went back to the cult, Mike, and were again the spokesperson, you would come across as a hopelessly unaccomplished, incompetent and unlikeable liar. I think the same is true of Heber if he was put back on post dealing with wog media.

The whole time you were Scientology’s spokesperson, I knew you were a liar, and of course a crumby cloaker and avoider of the issues. I’ve known from before I left the cult that Scientology’s spokespersons, Heber included, were willful liars, and bullies and manipulators in the service of monstrous men. But now there are millions of wogs with a clue, including people, in media and elsewhere, that Scientology’s spokespersons have to talk to.

I think there isn’t a devolutionary dwindling spiral in society, as all Scientologists postulate (making themselves, by the way, basic chaos merchants), but an evolutionary expansion. Relevantly, this is eminently observable in the field of human knowledge. Putting their efforts into being right about the dwindling spiral requires that the postulating Scientologists “experience” the dwindling. It has to be what’s true for them. They therefore ignore the overwhelming data supporting wogs’ evolution, wogs’ genius, and wog’s holiness, and project onto the wogs their own ignorance of the truth they ignored. Projection of the same chaos, and the same ignorance of the truth, onto the same people – all the wogs – is essential to performing the devotion called keeping Scientology working.

Another, and vital, devotion in Scientology, among all Scientologists, is projecting their most terrifying thoughts, the evilest of intentions they can, with all their mental tech and power, project, onto the class of wogs called SPs. I represent the SP class. The SP doctrine that creates by scripture the SP class, is in issue, Mike. So far, you’ve successfully avoided it.

In order to constantly “prove” that Scientology works (at reversing the dwindling spiral for them at least, or whatever) Scientologists constantly postulate, or project really, an increasing separation between themselves and wogs. In their postulated increasing separation, the Scientologists are becoming increasingly intelligent, able and powerful, and the wogs, not having LRH’s tech, and spiraling dwindlingly, are becoming decreasingly intelligent, able and powerful.

This mental mechanism of projection, which Scientologists call “clear” or “OT,” shields them, they’re taught, from acknowledging that all sorts of wogs are more intelligent, able and powerful than they are. The Scientologists also do what they can to shield themselves from acknowledging that some wogs have turned their excellent intelligence and ability to understanding Scientology and its actual issues.

No Scientologists acknowledge that wogs have their number, simply because it is impossible for Scientologists to be honest. The lie that wogs don’t have their number is one of the most numbing lies in Scientologists’ entire lie load. Consequently, Scientologists like you and Marty instead conclude, or project, that the cult’s current crop of spokespersons are less accomplished, competent and likeable.

So, where is Heber? Why isn’t he out there representing the C of M?

X – No read.

The answer is simple: Miscavige hates Heber. He has said many times that Heber portrays the wrong image of “his” Church. Heber is too old (but not too old to send to the Hole….). Heber doesn’t feel the need to dress like a window mannequin for Barney’s. Heber is “stupid”. And Heber knows too much. Unlike Teflon Tommy, who was never at Int, Heber has not only witnessed Miscavige brand physical and mental abuse ™, he has experienced it firsthand. Miscavige cannot afford to put Heber front and center because he might just tell the truth.

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?

And I know how that goes – me having to lie to the BBC about Miscavige beating people was the straw that broke the camel’s back and I walked out while in London.

In your metaphor, you’re clearly the camel. You’d been loaded up with lies over time, and when one more was dumped on you to tell – about Miscavige beating people – your back broke.

Everyone knows now that your lie that Miscavige never beat you, or beat anyone, is a lie. But what are all the other lies in that load of lies under which you were lumbering, before that one’s added mass broke your back and you walked out in London?

Presumably, you’re talking about walking out from under the whole load of lies, not carrying them around with you with your broken back and all.

I’m serious, Mike. You were involved in intel ops against me, litigation fair game against me, and you loaded me down with a pack of your lies about me. You did it all, moreover, in the service of evil. So how about if you unload those lies from both of us?

(So much for me being removed from all positions of authority and kicked out by Miscavige when he found out all the terrible things I had done – I was the International Spokesperson for the Church and on the Board of CSI when I blew. It is true, I didn’t have a post – but then again NOBODY in management did, and it appears to be that way still as Guillaume Lesevre was presented at the “Barnum and Bailey” March 13th spectacle as “from International Management” rather than “ED International” because he hasn’t been on post for at least 5 years!).

That’s funny. Norman Starkey chairmanned a comm ev on me at WHQ in 1978, found me guilty of Joking and Degrading, confirmed Hubbard’s assignment of me to the RPF, and wrote in the Findings and Recommendations:

The shot was commentated by Jerry [sic]Armstrong who assumed the beingness of a Barnham [sic] and Bailey circus ring master, making the shot into a quality degrade.

[…]

Crimes Charge 1

Pleaded guilty. The Committee found him guilty. Gerry was the announcer in the shot and originated playing his part as a Barnham [sic] and Bailey circus ring master announcer which introduced and communicated a quality degrade of the shot.

Charge 2

Pleaded not guilty. The Committee however found him guilty of the charge due to his originating and introducing the Barnum and Bailey Beingness into the shot which brought about a joking and degrading communication of the Cine drills. Even though the the [sic] interested party stated that it was not his intention to communicate a joke/degrade of the shot and that he himself had made good gains from the drills themselves, the shot did communicate a Joke and Degrade and this is what caused the extreme upset to command.

http://www.gerryarmstrong.org/50grand/cult/findings-recs-1978-10-04.html

What a pathetic excuse for command, for a leader of any kind, that he experienced extreme upset from a simple, cheerful video of a lighting drill he ordered. Or worse, if the sick and gutless wonder didn’t really experience extreme upset but just had his thuglet elementals report his extreme upset so he and they had a good reason and a golden opportunity to victimize good people. From reports I’ve read, Miscavige does the same thing, dramatizing extreme upset to victimize people and get others to victimize people.

Both Hubbard and Miscavige are Scientology leaders issuing and enforcing Scientology’s leadership policies. Having people, they use them. They’re users of people, as their Scientology scripture mandates. They’re real leaders, so, per their scripture, they consider their enemies, the SPs, need killing. Being real powers, Hubbard and Miscavige make Scientologists dependent on their power, and make those power-dependent Scientologists push more power to them.

Pursuant to their scripture, and by their orders and behavior, what Hubbard and Miscavige wanted or want from Scientologists includes more money, more ease, a snarling defense to their critics or the killing of their enemies. Being extremely upset, obnosisly, is not the more ease Hubbard and Miscavige are owed as “powers,” so these super sensitive dear leaders get to victimize the people who caused them the extreme upset. Hubbard and Miscavige also say in their scripture that they’d like their enemies’ properties conflagrated, or potentially the whole wog camp, conflagrated, as a birthday surprise.

Although their intention is the murder of their enemies, which Hubbard and Miscavige have made in spades, and the torching of their enemies’ encampments, these Scientology leaders have not been able to fully execute that intention, or get others to execute it. An important reason is that Hubbard and Miscavige are not the real powers they say they are. Miscavige is a not quite bright bully. Hubbard was a much brighter bully. They have bully power. But they are also pathetic and cowardly, and countless wogs have their number.

Even though their leaders are being clear bullies and cowards, however, not one Scientologist to my knowledge has ever communicated to Hubbard or Miscavige that the Scientologist wouldn’t kill their wog enemies for them, or burn their wog enemies’ camps, or hurt another in the Scientology cause. In fact, as you know, it is considered a point of honor among Scientologists to not fear hurting people in Scientology’s cause. Scientology’s cause, as you well know, is dishonest and unjust.

Heber bore the brunt of much of Miscavige’s ire over the years. I have seen Miscavige strike Heber on at least 10 occasions. Miscavige had dolls made in the likeness of Heber (and me). These were very elaborate reproductions that looked like ventriloquists dolls. Miscavige would make Heber sit with the doll on his lap and Miscavige would address himself to the doll instead of talking to Heber directly. This was to demonstrate the “fact” that Miscavige thought Heber “wooden” and “unresponsive.” (Anyone who knows Heber can attest to how ridiculous this is). It is all part of Miscavige’s Joking & Degrading and constant denigration of people around him, especially those he considered were some form of threat (and Heber’s popularity with staff and public was a very real threat in Miscavige’s eyes).

I cannot believe that Heber’s popularity with staff and public was a very real threat in Miscavige’s eyes. Heber was for years an accomplished and competent liar for Hubbard, and for even more years an accomplished and competent liar for Miscavige. It was Heber’s accomplished and competent execution of command intention to avoid issues and lie that made him likeable or popular with Hubbard’s and Miscavige’s staff and public.

Accepting that a person’s place on the popularity scale can be a very real threat in Miscavige’s eyes, it would be Heber’s unpopularity with staff and public, rather than his popularity, which would be the real threat. I’m a very real threat in Miscavige’s eyes, and Scientology staff and public universally hate me. I’m not popular with any Scientologist. In fact, Scientologists cannot even grant me credence, let alone grant me popularity.

I think, however, that Scientologists’ popularity with staff and public, to sociopaths like Hubbard and Miscavige, is neither good nor bad, but a fact or circumstance, to be used. The people who stood up to Hubbard and stand up to Miscavige are never good, but always bad, because they refuse to be used. I will always be a very real threat in Miscavige’s eyes, and I will always be unpopular with his staff and public because I tell the truth, don’t avoid the actual issues, and don’t lie about them.

The dolls were even flown to the UK for the IAS event where Heber endured endless cruel bullbaiting at the hands of Miscavige. I only saw Heber snap once, when after hours of Miscavige brand taunting and belittling ™, Miscavige squirted Heber’s face and glasses with contact lense fluid and then blew powdered coffee creamer into his face. This is the level of behavior of the so called “leader” of Scientology.

Can you please provide the details of Heber’s snapping?

But that wasn’t all that happened at IAS event time. Heber, along with myself and Guillaume Lesevre were assigned to MEST work. It was surreal, donning a tuxedo to do an international event and then a boilersuit to do MEST work in the woods next to the Saint Hill Manor lake. And then being thrown fully clothed in the lake (in November). Miscavige then decided it wasn’t good enough to be “hidden” by the lake and moving us to do MEST work next to the Stables where all Saint Hill staff walked to eat their meals. It was there that Heber slipped on a log, fell and quite badly injured himself. Of course, Miscavige blamed that on Heber’s “out ethics”.

If Heber was not looking at where he was planting his feet, he wasn’t clear.

But most importantly, Heber, Guillaume, you, and every Sea Org member or Scientologist take the abuse from Miscavige in order to continue to push power to him and to continue to execute his command intention. His command intention has two related basic requirements: 1. to get away with what he’s gotten away with, and 2. to victimize people. Hubbard had the same basic needs and intentions. What Hubbard wanted, and Miscavige wants, to get away with is all the victimizing they’ve done as Scientology leaders. Pretty well whatever you’ve done in the Sea Org or Scientology, except for leaving and telling the truth, pushes power to the leaders’ evil intentions.

(And just a final note on the UK, not really on topic – Guillaume Lesevre and I were assigned to clean the toilets and sweep the halls in AOSHUK , watched over by Security Guards – plenty of public witnessed this).

Heber is banned by Miscavige from making any public appearances and isn’t allowed to be in Int events any longer. So, he has become a “non-person” and is kept out of sight at the Int base.

Heber was the first person from outside the Int base to be sentenced to the Hole. He was there when I left in March 2007, and for all I know, is still there. I do know NOBODY has heard from him for years. And while he was in the Hole, regardless of his years of service and his progressing age, he was treated like everyone else: living in the CMO Int trailer along with 100 others, sleeping on the floor, eating standing up in an office with no tables and chairs and only leaving for 20 minutes once a day for a communal shower in the garage (unless DM was around, in which case some days there were no showers as nobody wanted to risk DM seeing the SPs in the Hole being frog-marched by security to the garage because it would “enturbulate” him – though he demanded daily reports to keep track of “juicy” admissions coerced out of people). Heber was stood in front of the 100 people and “forced” to confess (an activity which I am ashamed to say I took part in) and then derided about his Mormon upbringing and his relationships with other religious leaders (he was labeled a squirrel). Heber never complained though he was the most senior person in the Hole and the living conditions took a greater toll on him than anyone.

Is Heber never complaining Scientology working or being kept working? Or is Heber not applying Scientology by never complaining?

If Heber was applying Scientology by not complaining, was Miscavige also applying Scientology by giving Heber something to not complain about?

And like everyone else, he was not allowed to communicate with anyone outside the Hole at all. Not even his own family. And that for Heber was perhaps the hardest thing to endure.

But he did endure it. And he endured it so that evil could triumph; so that the Scientology power he pushed power to could victimize all the people the power wanted to victimize and get away with all the victimizing.

You did a lot of victimizing, Mike. You victimized me for more than 20 years. Don’t you, exactly like Hubbard and Miscavige, want to get away with what you’ve gotten away with? Isn’t that why you haven’t contacted me and helped me end the victimization?

Marty too has the same evil intention as Hubbard and Miscavige: to get away with all the victimizing he’s done for Scientology. That’s why Marty doesn’t grant me credence and continues to victimize me.

Anyone who knows Heber knows above all else his high communication level and how many friends he has made over many years. He is loved by so many because it is impossible to know him and not see the goodness in his heart and his real concern for the well-being of others.

He is so good he’d lie his head off in the service of evil. Was it charm?

Note that these are the same words a huge Scientology faction is saying about the littlest dictator: Mister Miscavige is loved by so many because it is impossible to know him and not see the goodness in his heart and his real concern for the well-being of others. A high communication level in Scientology means the most accomplished, competent liar.

What if both Miscavige and Heber are sociopaths, grotesquely willful liars, and that goodness you say you saw in what you thought was their hearts is standard sociopath’s charm? And what if what you say you saw as real concern for the well-being of others cloaks the sociopaths’ frightful cowardice and evil purposes?

I believe the cutting of his comm lines was the greatest penalty Miscavige could impose on him.

I’m reminded of your cutting my comm line to Mike Douglas by threatening him. http://www.gerryarmstrong.org/50grand/writings/michael-douglas.html
Now that I think about it, you threatened a bunch of people to try to cut my comm lines with everyone. You black PRed me all over the world to cut my communication lines. http://www.gerryarmstrong.org/50grand/cult/rinder-ltr-1994-05-09.html

Scientologists paid you to cut my comm lines, and you were very popular with your fellow SO members for doing as much evil to me as you could get away with.

And I must also note that while virtually every prominent executive left in Scientology has put their name on perjured declarations saying that all that has been exposed about Miscavige’s reign of terror ™ is lies, there has been no word from Heber. When you stoop to the bottom of the rotten barrel to trot out ex-wives to respond to allegations of mental and physical abuse by Miscavige, isn’t it odd that the person with perhaps the most credibility with Scientologists and with the media ISNT heard from?

Credibility with Scientologists? The best, most accomplished liar has the most credibility with Scientologists? That makes sense. But the most credibility with wog media? That’s ludicrous.

Accepting for the moment that you’re not lying about your evaluation of Heber as the Scientologist with the most credibility with the media, this evaluation evidences Scientologists’ postulated separation between themselves as superior beings and wogs, including wog media, as inferior beings.

To be honest, I’d rethink that evaluation, and that demonstrably delusionary postulate.

So, why is he still there? Well, read the excellent blog by “Back to Life” recently posted on Scientology-cult which incisively explains the circumstances and mindset that keeps good people chained inside a bad scene.

Scientology is the answer. LFBD F/N That’s what Scientology does. F/N That’s a vital Scientology VFP. F/N

Scientologists applying Scientology make a bad scene. Scientologists applying Scientology keep good people inside the bad scene. Scientologists applying Scientology generate the circumstances and mindset necessary to get people to keep good people in the bad scene. Yes, Scientology is the answer. LFBD F/N

And beyond that, Heber is getting extra-special attention. Because of his popularity and credibility, he has to be kept out of sight. Imagine the nightmare for Miscavige if Heber was ever freed and able to speak his mind?

I suppose that would be interesting. But his mind could be full of lies. Or delusions. And there’s no nightmare for Miscavige if Scientologists tell lies, or wogs tell lies, or they spout delusions. What he can’t handle is Scientologists or wogs telling the truth about Scientology.

Since Scientologists cannot tell the truth about Scientology, it falls to wogs to tell it. And those are the people that give Miscavige nightmares. They’re the same people that give all Scientologists nightmares, you and Marty included. You share the identical nightmares with Miscavige: honest wogs speaking their minds.

That is why you don’t see Heber.

And yes, something DOES need to be done about it. He is 76 years old, has served LRH and Scientology with distinction and dedication for many decades and in the winter of his body’s life should be living a peaceful existence, pursuing activities that give him pleasure.

Remember, for Heber, serving Hubbard and Scientology with distinction and dedication, was lying. Serving Miscavige and Scientology is the same thing. You can’t serve Hubbard and tell the truth.

For decades, getting away with what he’d gotten away with – avoiding issues, lying, bullying, victimizing good people – was what gave Heber pleasure. It’s the same with every Scientology spokesperson. It was pleasure because, to Scientology spokespersons, successful lying, victimizing, etc. meant the avoidance of the pain that Hubbard, Miscavige or their enforcers inflicted if the spokespersons failed to avoid the issues, failed to get away with their lies, or failed to bully or victimize their targets.

So, if you have an opportunity, ask Scientologists, the media, law enforcement or anyone else who may have an interest: “Where is Heber Jentzsch, the President CSI?”

But infinitely more importantly, ask everyone, “Where is an honest Scientologist?” LFBD

Transcript: The Truth Rundown: From renovation to IRS Rathbun rises through the ranks (June 21, 2009)

by

Informal transcript of Tampa Bay Times Interview with Mark Rathbun
Chapter “From renovation to IRS Rathbun rises through the ranks.”1

[…]

2:04

Rathbun: And then after that, in 1981, I went on to what was called the Special Project, which was a small group headed by David Miscavige. He was actually called “The Operator,” so he… You know, everybody from the unit answered to him and there was four other people in it. And our job was to find out ah, really investigate and get to the bottom of ah, why there was so many lawsuits naming L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, and um, come up with a solution as to how to get rid of those lawsuits cuz he was getting on in years and um, he… the idea was he wanted to come back to um, what is now called the International Headquarters or the Int Base in… just outside of San Jacinto, California, um, where films…dissemination and um, educational are made.

And he wanted to get those, those films done, and get them done. So our job was to try to, the… get rid of all these lawsuits that were outstanding against him so that he could come back there, ah, harassment-free and live out his days working on what he wanted to work on.

Reporter: Okay. Okay, and how long were you in this position?

Rathbun: Well, I guess I was on it for the rest of my career in, in a way. I mean there was different permutations of it. It was first called the Special Project, and then it was called the Special Unit, and then it was called… then we, we established the Office of Special Affairs to, to, um, replace the Guardian’s Office. And then I was at Author Services which was L. Ron Hubbard’s ah, personal literary agency, that handled all his personal business. And I was the legal executive there.

But again I was, I was still working on clearing away anything that might embroil L. Ron Hubbard in legal matters or external-facing matters. All the way up… that’s all the way up through ’86 now, so this is a, you know, five year, five year period through there.

3:56

Reporter: Okay. And when you first started this post, this is when you first encountered David Miscavige?

Rathbun: 1981. June of 1981…Well I actually knew him earlier, casually, but not…First time I ever worked with him.

Reporter: I see. Okay. All right, ah, and so thereafter you– Tell us about… there’s some highlights of your career, ah, that we’ve talked about, ah, ah, where you did some major things for Scientology. Can you talk about that? Ah, I guess the early 1990’s, ah, when there were problems with the IRS?

Rathbun: Well, yes. The IRS, was um, really an extension of this “All Clear” concept of getting rid of all the legal matters or external-facing matters that are hindering Scientology. It was tied in with the lit-, with ah, about a couple of dozen lawsuits that were brought around the country naming L. Ron Hubbard. Um, some ground… grand juries that were outstanding from the old Guardian’s Office activity that were… there was one in Tampa, one in D.C., and I believe one in New York that were still trying to get indictments against ah, Mr. Hubbard. You know, even after the Guardian’s Office people had been indicted and convicted in Washington.

So all these things sort of tied together with one another. And um, it was always perceived that the IRS was the most important thing to handle because if you have tax exemption you have ah, religious… religious recognition, you’re treated differently in courts, you know, there’s, there’s a, you know, some, some level of almost immunity, First Amendment immunity, to a lot of the type of allegations that were being made.

5:36

So, the IRS was the big thing to handle. I mean, when, when I was involved in that in the late ’80s, we had calculated that they, the IRS, considered that the churches had upward of a billion dollars in liability.

And the total reserves of the church were a f… were a fraction of that. Maybe in the 200 million range. So, literally, they could have wiped Scientology out five times through.

So um, between having got rid of a lot of the civil suits in the mid ’80’s and ’93, when we ultimately got exemption, I mean the number one mission was to obtain ah, tax exemption from the IRS and…

Reporter: Hm-mm.

Rathbun: ..you know, that was the bulk of what my attention was on and what I worked on.

Reporter: And you were right at the center of that IRS effort, right? Ah, you, ah, worked with Mr. Miscavige. Can you tell us about that, with the IRS people?

Rathbun: Yeah, okay. Well, um, in the late ‘9… late ’80s, ah, and going into the early ’90s, ah, you know, I was tasked with the, with, with, um, implementing um, strategies to try to overwhelm the IRS like they were attempting to overwhelm us. [chuckles] And it was sort of like a “fight fire with fire” situation.

Um, we brought FY… Freedom of Information Act lawsuits, um, in numerous different jurisdictions. We had legal, ah, litigation strategies to um, counteract their strategies to deny certain churches exemption and that sort of thing. But it, it was, it was a huge battlefield. It was nation-wide. It was literally twenty-seven hundred suits at one point.

And I was very much involved in coordinating and coming up with strategies and then executing a lot of that between the late ’80s and the early ’90s.

7:23

And then in ah, late ’91, ah Dave Miscavige and myself were in Washington. And Miscavige kept bringing it up with the attorneys, you know, “Why don’t we just sit down with the Commissioner and get this thing straightened out?” because there’s so much, you know, there’s so, there’s so much insanity that goes on when you have this kind of institutional fight going on for so long. And you know you’re fighting over issues that are anachronistic in a lot of cases. They’re just, they’re, they’re not, they’re not even–. You know we’re, we’re fighting over– For example we were fighting over the years ’70 through ’72. That’s as far as the litigation had reached, and here we are twenty years later in ’90, ’91.

So he kept pressing that you know, “Why don’t we just go straight to the top and talk to the Commissioner.”

And we had a lot of expensive attorneys from D.C. and Washington who were, you know, attempting at different levels to start negotiations. And that went in fits and starts and one day we were in Washington, and finally ah, Dave said to one of the attorneys there, he said, you know, “We’re going to go…just go straight down there and go see Fred.” And he… and of course the attorney was laughing. And he turned to me and he said, “Right?” And I said, “Yeah!” And then you know…they all thought it was a joke. And we ah, right afterwards, we just got up from lunch, got in a cab and went straight down there and opened the door. You know, opened the door to, to, to get negotiations going. We didn’t get in a meeting, ah, as has been reported. We didn’t just walk in to the Commissioner’s office. We walked in and said, “We’d like to bury the hatchet.” Couple of assistants, assistants of the Commissioner came down and saw us, took all our information, said he would get…said they’d get back to us. And they did, I think it was even later that day, to set up a meeting with the Commissioner for the following week.

Reporter: This was Fred Goldberg?

9:10

Rathbun: Yeah, Fred Goldberg.

Reporter: Uh-hmm, okay. And that began a process, ah, after that?

Rathbun: That began a process. I mean, all Fred Goldberg did was open up the door to creating a f, a forum where we could make a case for exemption. Um, and what he did that was, that was ah, was so positive and unique was is he tried to bring somebody in who was fresh, who, who knew exempt organizations but didn’t have a long history with Scientology.

Reporter: Mm-mm.

9:40

Rathbun: Ah, cuz there was some real haters, some real Scientology haters within, that you know, had an attitude of, no matter what you said, they were going to, you know, they were going to deny the exemption.

And um, so all he did was put, give us the ability to, to, to meet with a team that didn’t really have a, a long track record on this, yet knew exempt organizations, knew what the requirements were. And said, “Okay, prove you’re exempt.”

10:08

And then that process went on for at least two years. I mean we were literally commuting to Washington D.C. almost every week. It was Monday, or Sunday out to D.C., see the IRS, present the answers to their, their set of questions, get another set of questions, go back to L.A., get the information together, get the, you know, some would entail audits of certain units, or this sort of thing, you know, you have to account for different things, [Scratching left ear] in, in operations, in finances, and that sort of thing. Boom! Next Sunday, back on a plane, back to D.C., another meeting with– That went on for two years.

10:43

Reporter: And this process is, is it, is it you and Mr. Miscavige primarily?

Rathbun: Primarily. Um, at one point attorneys came in, started coming with us. We were really starting to get into more technical audit issues. Ah, Mike Rinder ah, attended several of the meetings. Heber Jentzsch attended several of the meetings. And then we would sometimes bring in experts on different fields. Like Rick Moxon came in to one on FOIA.

Um, Bill Walsh was another FOIA attorney who came in and attended one or two meetings. But primarily, ah, the two constants through the, from the beginning to the end were ah, Dave and myself.

11:19

Notes

  1. Original video: http://www.tampabay.com/specials/2009/reports/project/rathbun.shtml ↩︎

The Boston Herald: Scientology Unmasked: Church of Scientology probes Herald reporter : Investigation follows pattern of harassment (March 19, 1998)

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By Jim MacLaughlin and Andrew Gully
Boston Herald
Date of Publication:3/19/19981

The Church of Scientology, stung by a five-part series in the Boston Herald that raised questions about its practices, has hired a private investigator to delve into the Herald reporter’s private life.

The Rev. Heber Jentzsch, president of the Church of Scientology International, confirmed that the church’s Los Angeles law firm hired the private investigative firm to look into the personal life of reporter Joseph Mallia, who wrote the series.

“This investigation will have to look at what’s riving this” coverage, said Jentzsch.

Herald Editor Andrew F. Costello Jr. said, “What’s driving this coverage is simply the public interest. Nothing more, nothing less.”

The investigator, Steve Long of Vision Investigative Services in Rohnert Park, Calif., contacted Mallia’s ex-wife in Berkeley, Calif., March 3.

Long told the woman he was looking for derogatory information, according to the former wife, whose name is being withheld for reasons of privacy.

“I’m looking for the ‘scorned wife’ story,” she said Long told her. She said she declined to provide information about her divorce, which took place more than 15 years ago.

The Church of Scientology is the only religious organization in the U.S. that uses private investigators to look into the private lives of reporters, several academic experts said.

“The question is not ‘Do they investigate,’ the question should be ‘Do they harass?’ ” said the Rev. Robert W. Thornburg, dean of Marsh Chapel at Boston University and a recognized expert on destructive religious practices. “And Scientology is far and away the most notable in that.

“No one I know goes so far as to hire outsiders to harass or try to get intimidating data on critics,” said Thornburg. “Scientology is the only crowd that does that.”

The Rev. Richard L. Dowhower, a Lutheran minister and an adviser on cult activity at the University of Maryland, College Park, said, “I’ve been in the cult-watching business since the early ’70s and I don’t know of any other group, other than Scientology, that targets journalists.”

And Hal Reynolds, student affairs officer at the University of California, Berkeley, and director of the campus Cult Education Center, also said Scientology investigates journalists.

“I’ve been collecting files on these groups for 10 years, and I have not heard of that for any other group,” Reynolds said.

The March 1-5 Herald series described how the Church of Scientology recruited an MIT student, persuaded him to drop out of school and sign a billion-year contract to serve the church, and asked him to spend student loan money on Scientology courses.

The series also described how two Scientology-linked groups, Narconon and the World Literacy Crusade, have used anti-drug and learn-to-read programs to gain access to public schools without disclosing their Scientology ties.

Earle Cooley, a Church of Scientology lawyer from Boston, recently publicly defended the church’s policy of investigating journalists.

“I don’t know where it says anywhere in the world that it’s inappropriate for the investigators to be investigated,” Cooley said during a WGBH-TV talk show two weeks ago.

In a written statement, Cooley said he played no part in hiring private investigators to look into Mallia’s personal life.

Here is how Scientology is reported to have dealt with other journalists:

  • Nov. 1997: In England, a Scientology detective obtained a BBC television producer’s private telephone records to conduct a noisy investigation” by spreading false criminal allegations about the producer, the Daily Telegraph newspaper reported.
  • 1990-1991, New York: Scientology used at least 10 lawyers and six private detectives to “threaten, harass and discredit” Time magazine writer Richard Behar, who wrote an article titled “Scientology: the Cult of Greed.”
  • 1988: A St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times reporter who wrote articles about Scientology said his credit report was obtained without his consent, his wife got obscene phone calls, and a private investigator followed him.
  • 1983: Scientology defectors admit they stole documents from The Boston Globe’s law firm, Bingham Dana & Gould, in late 1974 to gain information about a planned Globe article on Scientology.

Notes

  1. Document source: https://web.archive.org/web/20021203192939/http://www.bostonherald.com/scientology/sci31998.html ↩︎

The Boston Herald: Scientology Unmasked: Sacred teachings not secret anymore (March 4, 1998)

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By JOSEPH MALLIA
Boston Herald
Date of Publication: 3/4/981

Scientology teaches that humans first came to the earth from outer space 75 million years ago, sent into exile here by an evil warlord named Xenu, according to church documents.

The church also teaches its members to communicate with plants and zoo animals – and with inanimate objects such as ashtrays, former members say.

But these esoteric secrets have only recently been revealed publicly, because the Church of Scientology for decades used copyright lawsuits and other measures to keep them under wraps.

“When people hear the secret teachings of Scientology, they think, ‘How could anyone believe such nonsense?”‘ said cult expert Steve Hassan.

“The fact is that the vast number of Scientologists don’t know those teachings. Scientologists are told that they will become ill and die if they hear them before they’re ready,” Hassan said.

MIT student Carlos Covarrubias told the Herald that while he studied Scientology at its Beacon Street church, he was instructed to tell ashtrays to “Stand up,” and “Sit down” – ending each command with a polite “Thank you.”

The same ashtray techniques were documented by a BBC reporter’s hidden camera at a Church of Scientology chapter in Britain.

Covarrubias – who left the church and now considers it a cult – spent about $2,000 to reach a particular level of church teachings. But longterm members must pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to entirely cross what Scientology calls the “Bridge to Total Freedom.”

More advanced students are taught to do the following:

“Find some plants, trees, etc., and communicate to them individually until you know they received your communication.”

“Go to a zoo or a place with many types of life and communicate with each of them until you know the communication is received and, if possible, returned.”

Once-hidden beliefs like these are being made public through the Internet, in books and articles about the church, and in courtroom documents.

Among the most attention-getting of the revelations is church founder L. Ron Hubbard’s description of “the Xenu incident.”

Human misery can be traced back 75 million years, when the evil Galactic Federation ruler, Xenu, transported billions of human souls to Teegeeack (now known as Earth), according to Hubbard, who started out as a science fiction writer.

Xenu then dropped the souls – called “Thetans” – in volcanoes on Hawaii and in the Mediterranean, and blew them up with hydrogen bombs, Hubbard said in his writings and lectures.

Xenu then implanted these disembodied souls with false hypnotic “implants” – images of “God, the devil, angels, space opera, theaters, helicopters, a constant spinning, a spinning dancer, trains and various scenes very like modern England,” Hubbard said in his characteristic freewheeling style.

These invisible souls still exist today, Scientology teaches: called “Body Thetans,” they cling to every human body, infecting people with their warped thoughts.

And only hundreds of hours of costly Scientology “auditing” – a process critics have likened to exorcism – can convince the harmful Body Thetan clusters to detach.

The auditor’s tool is an “E-Meter,” or Electrometer – a type of lie detector that sends a mild electric current through the body while a trainee holds a metallic cylinder in each hand. The E-Meter can detect Body Thetans and past emotional disturbances (known as “engrams”) whether they happened yesterday or in a past life millions of years ago, Scientologists believe.

For most Scientology recruits, however, the first step toward spiritual advancement is a course in “Study Technology” – a learn-to-read technique – or the “Purification Rundown” – a detoxification method using vitamins and saunas.

Although they deny any connection to the Church of Scientology, there are groups operating in Massachusetts that teach these two “religious” practices to the public: Narconon in Everett, the Delphi Academy in Milton, and the World Literacy Crusade with a post office box in Brighton.

After initiation, church members first strive to reach a spiritual stage called “Clear.” Then they try to reach a series of “Operating Thetan” levels – up to level VIII and beyond.

John Travolta, a longtime Scientologist, reportedly has reached at least level VII, and church celebrities Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman, Kirstie Alley, and Lisa Marie Presley have also reached high levels, according to critics and ex-members.

Advanced students of Scientology are also taught to heal people with the touch of a hand. Travolta told The Observer newspaper of London in January that his touch healed the rock musician, Sting.

“He was under the weather and he had a sore throat and flu symptoms. I did two or three different types of assists, and he felt better,” Travolta said.

Scientology officials object when critics highlight some of Hubbard’s more unusual teachings.

It’s like mocking the Christian view of Jesus’ virgin birth, or indicting Jews on the basis of a few obscure Old Testament passages, church President Rev. Heber C. Jentzsch said.

Instead, the Church of Scientology emphasizes the practical benefits of its “applied religious philosophy.”

Scientology programs make people smarter and more alive, Jentzsch said. Scientologists believe they have the only path to human salvation.

“With the dawn of a new year, it is vital that all Scientologists take an active role in the movement that is bringing salvation to Planet Earth. That means moving more and more people up the Bridge,” Commander Sherry Murphy of the Church of Scientology’s Fields Executive International division said in a Dec. 29, 1997, memo to all new Scientology recruits.

And to preserve that path forever, they have built nuclear-bomb-proof vaults in New Mexico and California to store Hubbard’s original manuscripts and tapes.

Critics and scholars point out, however, that many of L. Ron Hubbard’s ideas are not original. He took many ideas from Freud and Buddhism – Hubbard also taught that he was a reincarnation of Buddha – then renamed them, adding his own science fiction-inspired vision, scholars say.

Notes

  1. Document source: https://web.archive.org/web/20030212115325/http://www.bostonherald.com/scientology/sci34a98.html ↩︎

The Boston Herald: Scientology Unmasked: Milton school shades ties to Scientology (March 2, 1998)

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 Milton school shades ties to Scientology

By JOSEPH MALLIA
Boston Herald
Date of Publication: 3/2/981

A Church of Scientology school in Milton is enrolling large numbers of children from middle-class and professional black families in what critics say is part of the church’s nationwide plan to recruit minorities.

Officials at Delphi Academy do not tell parents that the school is part of the Church of Scientology, and that they are trying to recruit blacks for Scientology’s costly programs.

Yet they do admit that all staff members are Scientologists and they use Scientology materials.

A Herald review of the school has found that Delphi Academy:

Used precisely the same “Study Tech” as the Boston Church of Scientology on Beacon Street, where the methods are considered religious scriptures.

Sent up to 10 percent of each child’s tuition money to the Association for Better Living and Education, a Scientology organization in Los Angeles, according to its federal tax returns.

Got “referral” income of 10 percent to 15 percent of any Scientology course or book bought by a Delphi Academy parent, according to the school’s federal tax returns and ex-members of the church.

Has used an “E-Meter” – a device like a lie detector that measures emotional reactions – on Delphi children, according to a former student, Sabriya Dublin of Jamaica Plain. The E-Meter – the same device used by the church in counseling- sends a mild electric current through the child’s body, with fluctuations in a gauge showing emotional reactions, as a child answers questions while holding a shiny metal tube in each hand. A former Delphi student from Oregon, however, said the E-Meter was not used at his school.

Created a Delphi Parents Association so parents could pay for playground repairs and two new computers through fund-raising events – while Delphi made royalty payments to Scientology’s ABLE organization.

Promoted Scientology outside the school. Delphi’s headmistress, Ellen Garrison, helped establish a Scientology tutoring program for ninth-grade teachers at the Randolph Public Schools, said former Scientology church spokeswoman Kit Finn.

And a “Homework Club” sent older Delphi students to teach Scientology methods at the Tucker Elementary School, a Milton public school, a Delphi official said.

Attracted so many students in recent years that the school, in a converted gatehouse off a quiet stretch of Blue Hill Avenue, had to build two new classrooms. School spokeswoman Joanne List said most of the new students were black.

Critics of Scientology say the real motive of Delphi is to increase church membership, and make money by selling high-priced Scientology courses to parents, according to Priscilla Coates, an anti-cult activist in Los Angeles.

One parent, Harvard Dental School instructor Dr. E. Leo Whitworth, had just such an experience with Delphi Academy.

Whitworth said his son, L.V., was taught basic Church of Scientology methods like Study Technology during the four years he was enrolled at Delphi Academy.

The dentist said he did not learn that Delphi was linked to Scientology until after his son was enrolled, and then they recruited him for a variety of programs at the Church of Scientology on Beacon Street in Boston.

“I took two courses at the church,” Whitworth said. “It cost in the hundreds. They wanted me as a member. And they did try to get my wife. She started a course but she didn’t finish,” the dentist said.

During a vacation in California, Whitworth visited the offices of Sterling Management, a for-profit business linked to the Church of Scientology. There, Scientologists tried to sell him a dental office management program, Whitworth said.

“They were trying to get me to use their business techniques,” he said, but he didn’t like the program and it was too expensive. “It was too much like car salesman techniques. It cost a lot – around $ 10,000.”

Whitworth, who is also a Northeastern University trustee, said he knew of “several” non-Scientologist parents who enrolled their children in Delphi Academy and later became members of the church.

In retrospect, he said, Delphi Academy appears to be deceptive.

“I would rather they did say, up front, that they are part of Scientology. There are certain ways they could be more open,” he said. He also warned parents who enroll their children at Delphi to “be aware there are other aspects to it – the Scientology.”

Whitworth’s son, now 15, asked to be taken out of Delphi, the father said. “He didn’t want to stay there anymore. He was just uncomfortable.”

Several other black parents, however, said they were pleased with how well their children were learning at the school. And Delphi officials say students got high marks on the annual California Acheivement Tests.

New students to the $ 6,200-a-year school are recruited for Delphi and its summer camp by word of mouth, and through bulk mailings that do not mention Scientology. The school first opened in Belmont in 1980 under the name Apple School.

The 1,000-student network of Delphi academies in Oregon, Florida, California – and Milton – has recruited unsuspecting families for many years, Coates said.

But the interest in black citizens is new, because Scientology has few non-white members, she said. “They are looking for new niches for people and money,” Coates said.

A Herald reporter visited the 104-student Milton school twice, and found that the majority of its younger students are black. It enrolls children ages 3-13.

Parents who have enrolled their children at the school include professionals like Brockton obstetrician Dr. Dawna Jones and government workers like Barbara Hamilton, youth activities aide to Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino.

Dr. Jones did not return calls seeking comment, but Hamilton said her son is doing well at Delphi.

“I would say he’s just generally improved,” including better reading skills, Hamilton said.

Other black, non-Scientologist parents include a top manager at Lexington-based Stride Rite Corp., an investment analyst, a nurse, a Massachusetts state trooper, Boston police officers, computer executives at Digital Equipment Corp. and Lotus Development, and an MBTA welder, according to Delphi officials.

Several other black parents are medical doctors, one owns a Roxbury air-conditioning company, one is a Christian minister, while another is a Catholic religious education director, Delphi officials said.

“The Scientology thing, that was one thing I had to clear up. At first I didn’t know it was a religious school, and I wasn’t looking for a religious school,” said Lee Jensen, a Massachusetts Water Resources Authority official, who enrolled her daughter, Nicole, at Delphi. “I told them, ‘I need to know exactly what you’re teaching my child, because you have her for nine hours a day.’ “

Not every parent is middle-class, and Delphi gives no financial aid or scholarships, so some parents just scrape by, said List. “We have a lot of single mothers who eat peanut butter sandwiches, and don’t drive fancy cars,” she said.

The school does not require its students to convert to Scientology, said former student Sabriya Dublin, who said she attended the school for eight years.

The founder of the Delphi Academy schools, Alan Larson, said in an interview from Oregon that they succeed because they require every child to learn everything – without exception – before moving on to the next task.

And the Rev. Heber C. Jentzsch, president of the Church of Scientology International, said Delphi students’ Scholastic Aptitude Tests are “400 points above the national average.”

But Dennis Erlich, a former Scientology trainer in California, said his two daughters had to spend two years in remedial math and English courses after he transferred them to public school from a Scientology-run school, where he said instruction was poor.

Another church defector, Robert Vaughn Young, said Scientology’s leaders do not care about traditional education. They only care about getting people to buy Scientology courses, he said.

Notes

  1. Document source: https://web.archive.org/web/20030212112310/http://www.bostonherald.com/scientology/sci32a98.html ↩︎

The Boston Herald: Scientology Unmasked: Church keys programs to recruit blacks (March 2, 1998)

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Church keys programs to recruit blacks

By JOSEPH MALLIA
Boston Herald
Date of Publication: 3/2/981

The Church of Scientology has targeted black families in Massachusetts with a learn-to-read program that critics say is just a rehash of old methods that leans heavily on the church’s religious teachings.

The learn-to-read program – the World Literacy Crusade – is part of a nationwide effort by the church to entice blacks into Scientology and then convince them to take other, expensive programs, according to critics and former members of the church.

A Herald review has found that Scientologists have:

  • Targeted a literacy campaign at inner-city Boston programs for minority children, including Red Sox slugger Mo Vaughn’s Youth Development Program, the Roxbury YMCA and the Roxbury Youth Works.
  • Attracted dozens of middle class and professional black families to Delphi Academy in Milton. This Scientology-run school uses E-Meters – devices akin to lie detectors – on children, according to a former Delphi student.
  • Taught Scientology methods to ninth-grade teachers at Randolph High School – which has many black students – after persuading headmaster James E. Watson that their techniques work.
  • Taught Scientology’s study techniques to Boston Public Schools students at Brighton High School through teacher Gerald Mazzarella, who is also a church member.
  • Created 26 World Literacy Crusade programs – in Boston, New York, Los Angeles, Denver, Miami, Memphis, Tenn., and a host of other U.S. cities in the wake of the 1992 Los Angeles riots.
  • Gained the endorsements of prominent local blacks such as Georgette Watson, co-founder of Drop-A-Dime and former anti-drug aide to Gov. William F. Weld.

The teachings

Scientologists say the literacy campaign is nonreligious, and therefore doesn’t violate laws separating church and state.

But critics say the church plays fast and loose with definitions, calling identical programs “religious” in one context and “secular” in another.

Church documents and books show that Scientology clearly identifies Study Technology as a religious practice. It is taught at the church’s local headquarters on Beacon Street in Boston in the $600 Student Hat program, as a first step into church membership.

This learn-to-read “technology” – or Study Tech as the church calls it – teaches children to distrust their own intelligence and rely passively on what the church teaches, said high-ranking church defector Robert Vaughn Young.

“Study Tech is an extremely dangerous technique,” Young said. “Critical thinking? There is no critical thinking. Criticism is the part that is not allowed,” said Young, who once directed Scientology’s worldwide public relations effort.

The Rev. Heber C. Jentzsch, president of the Church of Scientology International, denied that black children or families are being recruited through the literacy program.

“We’ve found that African-American families are as interested as everyone else in what works . . .. They might not necessarily join the church but the quality of their lives has been improved by it,” he said.

Scientologists say the literacy techniques offer the only way to end gang violence, teen pregnancy and other inner-city problems. “I think parents are being driven to find answers. They want their kids to be educated, for heaven’s sake. God bless the World Literacy Crusade,” Jentzsch said.

He said Scientology’s study techniques are so effective they raised his own IQ by 34 points, and helped his children read far above their grade levels.

The Herald asked Harvard University literacy expert Victoria Purcell-Gates to assess the World Literacy Crusade’s learn-to-read book, the “Basic Study Manual,” written by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. “This is all `old stuff,’ and has been taught in the schools for at least 30 years (probably more) now,” the Harvard professor wrote in an assessment for the Herald.

“Basically, there is nothing new in this text that is not known by reading/study specialists at a very basic level,” she added. “The only thing really `different’ is that Mr. Hubbard has renamed basic concepts to fit into his overall scheme of things.”

Steve Hassan of Cambridge, a cult deprogrammer, warned that the way Scientologists use the book, in one-on-one tutorials, is a first step toward hypnotic mind control. And the literacy materials are the same as church scriptures – except the schoolbooks leave out the word “Scientology,” Hassan said.

For example, the “Basic Study Manual” teaches children about the Scientology practice of “disconnecting” – used to separate new recruits from non-Scientologists, including parents. ” `Experts,’ `advisers,’ `friends,’ `families’ . . . indulge in all manner of interpretations and even outright lies to seem wise or expert,” the manual says.

The manual also promotes Scientology’s anti-psychology agenda, linking psychology to German fascism and saying psychotherapists reduce humans to the level of animals.

Scientology spokesman Bernard Percy, however, defended the World Literacy Crusade, saying it has no harmful agenda, and that its study principles can turn a child’s life around. For example, Percy said, the program requires children to look up in a dictionary each and every unfamiliar word – and that becomes a lifelong habit with tremendous benefits.

Scientologists also claim the literacy campaign is not controlled by the Church of Scientology – so they are not breaking the laws prohibiting religion in the schools.

But that is a false claim, because the campaign is funded and directed by the Church of Scientology, Hassan said.

The connections

Although local Scientologists deny that the World Literacy Crusade is directed by the Church of Scientology, anyone who uses L. Ron Hubbard’s name, or his trademarked Study Technology techniques, is strictly controlled by licensing contracts with Scientology groups in Los Angeles, in particular the Religious Technology Center, according to Young and church materials obtained by the Herald.

The World Literacy Crusade’s independence from Scientology is a “fiction,” Young said.

A World Literacy Crusade videotape, viewed by the Herald, clearly states that it has a licensing agreement with RTC – Scientology’s most powerful organization – allowing it to use L. Ron Hubbard’s name.

Also, Scientologists get a 10 percent to 35 percent commission on any church course bought by someone they recruit through the literacy programs, according to Church of Scientology documents dated last month.

Once Scientology attracts a new recruit, its staff applies skillful, high-pressure sales tactics, Hassan said. Members must pay more than $300,000 in “fixed donations” – or barter their full-time labor – to achieve complete salvation.

When the Mo Vaughn group or another agency buys Scientology’s literacy books – which cost about $35 each – most of the money goes to several Scientology organizations in Los Angeles: Bridge Publications, the church’s in-house publisher; Author Services Inc., Scientology’s literary agency; and RTC, which owns the rights to the trademarked name L. Ron Hubbard. Also, church members sometimes get government funding.

Scientologists got a federal grant for the literacy program in Memphis, former church spokeswoman Kit Finn said.

Federal money was also spent in Boston on Scientology materials, said Gerald Mazzarella, a Scientologist who teaches at Brighton High School. Mazzarella told the Herald he used part of a $5,000 federal grant to buy Scientology textbooks and checklists during the 1980s, which he then used at Brighton High.

Hub beginnings

Boston’s kickoff of Scientology’s literacy program was an April 22, 1995, reception at Roxbury Community College.

The guest of honor was Isaac Hayes, the first black musician ever to win an Academy Award.

The “Shaft” composer impressed a few prominent local blacks – including James E. Watson, the Randolph Junior/Senior High School headmaster. “It obviously helps kids improve their learning. It seemed to be a positive,” Watson said.

Watson toured Delphi Academy in Milton about three years ago, then asked the school’s headmistress, Ellen Garrison, to begin teaching Study Technology to his ninth-grade teachers at the Randolph school in December.

“It’s at its infancy stage, and what it would cost isn’t clear yet,” the headmaster said at the time. Watson, who has been praised for easing racial tensions in Randolph, recently said there is no longer any connection between the two schools.

The head of a youth program founded by one of Boston’s most-admired black athletes was also interested.

“I think they’re right on when they say illiteracy is a problem that leads to other problems,” said Roosevelt Smith, executive director of the Mo Vaughn Youth Development Program.

“We contracted with the World Literacy Crusade to bring seven kids up to speed,” Smith said. Five of the children, who were 13-16 years old, improved their reading ability using the “Basic Study Manual,” he said.

Most of the stuff is free. They only asked us to pay for books and materials,” Smith said.

Mo Vaughn himself knew about the Scientologists’ program, but “he hasn’t met with them directly,” Smith said.

But the Scientology religion “is not a part of what we’re doing,” Smith said. “I don’t think the kids even know what Scientology is.”

Roxbury Youth Works, however, allowed World Literacy Crusade workers to tutor teenagers there three years ago, but had second thoughts after learning more about the group’s links to Scientology, said Roxbury Youth Works administrator Dave Wideman.

“We as an organization were a little apprehensive. It seems like they were trying to recruit people,” Wideman said. “The target group was the particular population we serve, predominantly young black men and women.”

But if the Randolph High School literacy program succeeds, Scientologists hope to teach the same “tech” in Boston classrooms, said Finn, the Scientologist.

“That’s definitely the plan,” Finn said. “It’s like Mr. Watson. Somebody has to be bright enough to want it.”

Virtually every top Scientology official is white, according to ex-members and photographs of church leaders. But the new literacy campaign shows Scientology wants to attract blacks and Hispanics, said Priscilla Coates, formerly of the Cult Awareness Network in Los Angeles – an anti-cult group that was bankrupted by Scientology lawsuits and then taken over by the church.

Any non-Scientologist youth who is taught Study Technology is ripe for recruitment, Coates said. “The child has a possibility of becoming a Scientologist,” she said.

Elsewhere in the United States, the World Literacy Crusade has installed its programs at a New York City police athletic league, a Los Angeles probation department, and the Tampa (Fla.) Housing Authority. Other programs are in Washington, D.C., Denver, and throughout California.

In Memphis, Tenn., public officials were angered to learn that the World Literacy Crusade had run a pilot program – with federal grant money – for 75 students in a public school building, without getting a needed permit and without disclosing its ties to Scientology. The church was not allowed to use the school facilities again.

In the inner-city Los Angeles neighborhood of Compton, more than 700 black children, including gang members, participated in the World Literacy Crusade and the program saved their lives by giving them an alternative to street life, Jentzsch said.

“If you know what the statistics are in Compton, (it is) just miraculous,” Jentzsch said. “I’ve seen kids from the Crips and the Bloods sitting there working with other kids to get them educated.”

Study Tech

Larry Campbell brought his daughter to the Scientologists at the Roxbury YMCA because she was having reading problems in a public school outside Boston, which he would not name.

“I brought my daughter here because these guys help,” Campbell said. The father acknowledged that he also enrolled himself in the literacy program, to improve his reading skills.

“This is what the public schools should be doing,” the father said. “It should be attended to not next year but now.”

So for two hours on Tuesday and Thursday nights, and each Saturday morning, Campbell, a deacon at St. John’s Missionary Baptist Church in Roxbury, brought his elementary school aged daughter to a neon-lit YMCA room furnished with an old sofa, two foldout tables and a stack of plastic chairs.

There, she and other black children were coached in Scientology’s study methods by church members Simaen Skolfield and Cliff Dufresne.

During one session observed by a Herald reporter, neither tutor had a spontaneous conversation with a child, but read from a script.

Dufresne, who dropped out of Boston College Law School to work on the literacy program, helped Doug Walker, a pupil at the William Monroe Trotter Elementary School in Dorchester.

Doug Walker’s mother said the school wanted to solve her son’s problems by giving him medication such as Ritalin, Dufresne said. But, he added, the mother wanted to try drug-free Scientology lessons first.

Meanwhile Skolfield, a bearded British emigre, helped Tanzania Campbell – whose ambition is to be a schoolteacher in Atlantic City, N.J. – with a Study Technology lesson.

Campbell and others at the Roxbury YMCA literacy program were expected to pay nothing at first. “Not yet,” Dufresne said.

But Dufresne hopes his students will, in turn, teach their friends the Scientology techniques. “That’s the whole idea. They learn this and then they circle back and teach somebody else. Because there’s not enough of us,” he said.

Scientology literacy sessions are no longer allowed at the Roxbury YMCA, after officials there learned that the program is associated with the church.

But, an official at Dennison House in Dorchester said Dufresne met with house representatives last year and Dennison House invited World Literacy Crusade workers to come in as tutors. The tutoring has not yet started.

Notes

  1. Document source: https://web.archive.org/web/20030212112838/http://www.bostonherald.com/scientology/sci3298.html ↩︎

The Boston Herald: Inside the Church of Scientology: Powerful church targets fortunes, souls of recruits (March 1, 1998)

by

INSIDE THE CHURCH OF SCIENTOLOGY; Powerful church targets fortunes, souls of recruits

By JOSEPH MALLIA
Boston Herald
Date of Publication: 3/1/981

MIT student Carlos Covarrubias had signed a contract to serve the Church of Scientology for the next billion years – in effect, pledging his eternal soul.

Now two Scientologists were helping him stuff underwear and socks into a suitcase at his Back Bay fraternity house while others sat outside on Beacon Street in a car with its engine running.

They were preparing to take the 19-year-old to Logan Airport, and from there to the church’s Los Angeles headquarters.

“His parents were coming up from Florida to save him, so the Scientologists were rushing to get him out of here,” said Marcus Ottaviano, president of the Pi Lambda Phi fraternity, recalling the May 1995 events.

Covarrubias’s interest in the church was first piqued by “Dianetics,” the Scientology book advertised on late-night TV and at national events like the Boston Marathon.

It wasn’t long before Covarrubias began skipping his MIT classes to spend the day studying at the church, Scientology’s four-story stone building on Beacon Street, a block from the Charles River and next door to his fraternity.

The church recruiters befriended him, promising that one day he would become “clear” – with a perfect memory and a higher IQ. Covarrubias paid for the Purification Rundown, a $ 1,200 detoxification program that required him to drink vegetable oil, take vitamin megadoses, and sweat in a sauna for several hours a day.

He also took a course that required him to talk to inanimate objects like dolls and ashtrays. “You had an ashtray, and you’d say, ‘Stand up.’ You’d lift it up and say, ‘Thank you.’ And then you’d say, ‘Sit down,’ and ‘Thank you.’ You’d try to have the intention for it to move on its own,” Covarrubias said.

Altogether, he paid about $ 2,000 to the Church of Scientology. But they wanted more.

“They asked me about student loans, bank loans, and they asked me, ‘What’s the limit on your credit cards? What’s your overdraft protection?’ “Covarrubias said. “They said, ‘There’s always a way to get money.’ “

It is just such tactics that cause critics to call the church – founded in 1953 – a cult and a money-grabbing machine that separates thousands of ordinary church members like Covarrubias from their free will and their money.

It is also just such tactics that have the church in the midst of an international and highly public feud with the German government – which steadfastly refuses to grant Scientology the tax-exempt status of a religion – a status the church holds in this country.

While high-profile celebrity members, including John Travolta, Tom Cruise, Kirstie Alley, Chick Corea, Lisa Marie Presley and others, earn goodwill for the church, ex-members and critics say there is a dark underside to Scientology.

Some of that underside was allegedly laid bare in the 1995 death in Clearwater, Fla., of church member Lisa McPherson, 36, according to Florida state police, who recommended in December that Pinellas-Pasco State Attorney Bernie McCabe bring criminal charges against the church. The county medical examiner said she died of a blood clot due to dehydration, after being denied water for at least her last five to 10 days.

The church says McPherson died accidentally of a pulmonary embolism and denies that its members caused the death.

McPherson’s family filed a wrongful-death suit against the Church of Scientology last year, saying she wanted to leave the church but was held against her will during a 17-day church “retreat.”

Former insiders told the Herald that the Church of Scientology is a wealthy and powerful organization strictly controlled by its reclusive leaders at the Religious Technology Center in California.

In 1993 – the last year the church had to declare its income for federal tax purposes – it had $ 398 million in assets and took in $ 300 million a year. It claims to have 8 million members, though opponents put that number at only 200,000 or so – with about 40,000 in the United States.

In Massachusetts, there are several groups – an Everett drug-rehab office, a Brighton literacy program, private schools in Milton and Somerville and an anti-psychiatry group in Boston – that deny they are controlled by the Church of Scientology.

The groups share a primary goal with all other Scientology organizations, critics say: To recruit for the church and sell its programs.

But the president of the Church of Scientology International, the Rev. Heber Jentzsch, objected in a telephone interview from Los Angeles to allegations of abuse or deception.

Church members are sincerely motivated to bring happiness to mankind, Jentzsch said. They work in prisons and among the poor to eradicate gang violence, teen pregnancy and drug abuse, he said.

Scientology is thriving in 115 countries, Jentzsch said, despite the venom of what he said were only a few critics. It thrives, he said, because “it is the path to total freedom.”

And Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard’s books and lectures are popular, selling more than 140 million copies – including more than 17 million copies of “Dianetics” – in 34 languages, Jentzsch said.

Long before Hubbard died in 1986, he was accused of creating the Church of Scientology only to make money. His lectures and writings – totaling more than 100,000 pages – still generate millions of dollars in income every year. That stream of money is now controlled by Hubbard’s heir, Religious Technology Center board chairman David Miscavige, 37, who has worked for the church since he was a teenager.

Jentzsch said Scientology is attacked – as Mormonism was in its early years – because it is a new religion with a unique and vital message. “A person who is a Scientologist – he wakes up,” he said.

Recruiting

Local Scientologists recruit on college campuses in Boston and on the street.

A favorite spot is outside the front door of the Boston Architectural Center at Newbury and Hereford streets, where church recruiters regularly hand out free tickets for “personality and IQ tests” at the “Hubbard Dianetics Foundation.” The tickets – “a $ 30 value” – list the address and telephone number but not the name of the Church of Scientology at 448 Beacon St.

And for several months there was an outpost in Watertown’s Arsenal Mall where a vendor’s cart offered free stress tests on an an “Electropsychometer” or “E-Meter” – a kind of lie detector used for Scientology training.

Potential members are routed to the Beacon Street church where high-pressure “registrars” sell costly church programs.

In the church’s vocabulary, the recruiter is a “body router,” and potential converts are “wogs” or “raw meat.”

An offer of a free personality test enticed Reem Rahim, 31, who said in a Herald interview that she was recruited to Scientology in 1991.

New to Boston, unhappy with her job as an immunology researcher at Children’s Hospital, Rahim accepted when a man on the street offered the church’s personality test.

Within six weeks she had paid the Boston church $ 82,000 for Scientology courses – money from an insurance settlement she got after nearly losing her legs in a 1987 car accident. Church salespeople promised Scientology would give Rahim happiness and advanced mental powers, including the ability to remove from her legs the scars caused by the auto accident, she said.

Rahim’s family helped her leave Scientology. And she later got all her money refunded, but not before she hired lawyers who threatened to sue the church for fraud.

“I used to feel sorry for them, because there were some nice people there. Now I feel angry with the whole organization. What a bunch of creeps – stealing money from people,” Rahim recalled.

Another Boston resident, John Wall, was recruited when he found a Yellow Pages “career counseling” listing for the Scientology group Hubbard Dianetics Research Foundation, according to a fraud complaint he filed against the church on Dec. 8, 1992, in Suffolk County Superior Court.

“The personality test is the gimmick routinely used by Scientology missions, orgs (organizations) and front groups . . . (to) identify the emotional sore spots of the targets for recruitment,” said the lawyers for Wall, who was recruited soon after graduating from college.

In a little more than two years, Wall claimed, he gave $ 17,000 to the church but never got career counseling.

“He was bombarded with contacts” from Scientologists pressuring him to take more courses, Wall’s lawyers said in the court documents. “He was told that Scientology was every bit a scientific discipline as physics or chemistry,” they said.

“Defendants continued to utilize mind control techniques which pervade Scientology pursuant to the boast of (L. Ron) Hubbard, the founder of Scientology,” Wall’s lawyers said in the documents, and then quoted Hubbard as saying: ” ‘We know more about psychiatry than psychiatrists. We can brainwash faster than the Russians.’ “

After buying courses for 18 months from the Beacon Street church, Wall became a full-time Scientologist and moved to Los Angeles in October 1990.

Seven months after moving to California, Wall quit Scientology. He settled his lawsuit in 1993, and could not be reached for comment.

The critics

Skillful techniques induce even highly educated people like Wall, Covarrubias and Rahim to join groups like the Church of Scientology, said Steve Hassan of Cambridge, author of the book “Combatting Cult Mind Control.” Hassan was hired by Rahim’s family to help persuade her to leave Scientology.

Scientology is clearly a destructive cult, said Hassan, who has established a new local resource center to educate people about coercive religions.

“This group is unlike legitimate religions which tell what their beliefs and practices are in the beginning,” said Hassan, 43,a one-time member of the Unification Church.

“Scientology systematically deceives, hypnotizes, indoctrinates and exploits people for its own purposes,” he said.

First, Scientologists find a new recruit’s “ruin” – the thing that bothers him or her the most, according to Hassan, court documents and former members.

Then they promise to fix it, said former members who sued the church for fraud.

Whether the problem is psychosis or cancer, illiteracy or insanity – or legs scarred from an auto accident – Scientology is the answer. That’s the enticement offered to new recruits by church salespeople who are paid a 10 percent to 35 percent commission on every course they sell, defectors said.

The cost

Covarrubias, Rahim and Wall spent far less than the $ 300,000-plus cost of completing Scientology’s “Bridge to Total Freedom.”

Former Scientologist Gloria Neumeyer of Glendale, Calif., who owns a solar heating company, told the Herald she spent $ 200,000 for herself and another $300,000 for family members and employees to take Scientology courses.

“I donated $ 500,000 to Scientology. I was the kind (of recruit) who had money and paid for everything,” said Neumeyer, a former Lexington resident who left the church in 1991 and then decided to expose what she says are the church’s destructive practices.

Scientology counseling can create a feeling of well-being or even ecstasy, and that can become addictive, according to cult experts. It can also be expensive, costing up to $ 520 an hour, they said.

For the money, Scientologists are promised extraordinary powers – like controlling the weather and flying without their bodies, according to critics and former members.

Scientologists “claim with confidence that trillions of years ago they knew each other on other planets, that they had the power to see at submicroscopic levels and leave their bodies at will,” said Jim Siegelman and Flo Conway, authors of “Snapping,” a book on personality change in cults.

Like all Scientology churches worldwide, the Boston organization is required to send a percentage of its income to top church groups in California, which own all rights to the use of L. Ron Hubbard’s name, said Robert Vaughn Young, a former high-ranking Scientology official.

Many of Scientology’s more idealistic members sign billion-year contracts with the Sea Organization, the church’s quasi-military corps based in Clearwater, Fla.

Dressed in blue mock-Navy uniforms with gold braid and ribbons, it was two Sea Org officers who visited Boston and convinced Covarrubias that he should wear the same nautical garb while learning to save the world.

Even today, the church still considers Covarrubias a member, because his billion-year contract is irrevocable.

His friends and family disagree.

The rescue

When his Pi Lambda Phi brothers saw Covarrubias become more and more immersed in Scientology, they alerted his parents in North Palm Beach, Fla.

Using the Internet, they found ex-Scientologists who volunteered to meet Covarrubias face-to-face.

The defectors told Covarrubias that he would sink more and more deeply under the mental control of the church, completely cut off from family and non-Scientology friends.

Meanwhile, on that day in May 1995, his parents’ plane was approaching Boston. The church had learned – from Covarrubias during a counseling session – of the plot to rescue him. That’s when the Scientologists came into the Pi Lambda Phi house to help Covarrubias pack his suitcase, Ottaviano said.

But before the Scientologists could take Covarrubias to Los Angeles, his friends blocked the frat house door, Ottaviano said.

“The only reason they didn’t leave that second is that there were 40 of us and two of them,” he recalled.

After Covarrubias was safe with his parents, the Pi Lambda Phi wanted to alert other college students. So they picketed the church next door.

“All the neighbors came out to support us. We were joined by a common enemy – we all hated Scientology,” Ottaviano said.

After a year with his family in Florida, Covarrubias felt strong enough to come back to Boston, rejoin the fraternity and re-enroll at MIT. He is scheduled to graduate with a philosophy degree this spring. Raised Catholic, he has a deep interest in spiritual matters.

But he said he does not consider Scientology a spiritual group.

“It’s an organization. Any other word, like religion, doesn’t seem to fit. It’s not a religion because they don’t ask for faith,” he said. “I would actually call it a cult.”

Notes

  1. Document source: https://web.archive.org/web/20010413225624/http://www.bostonherald.com/scientology/sci31a98.html ↩︎