DECLARATION OF MICHAEL J. FLYNN¹

I, Michael J. Flynn, hereby depose and state under the pains and penalties of perjury that I have personal knowledge or information and belief as to the following:

1. The purpose of this affidavit is to respond to charges made by the Church of Scientology and its counsel against me and my colleagues in connection with our activities and conduct in Scientology-related litigation. An additional purpose of the affidavit is to place in perspective our role in the commencement, prosecution and defense of Scientology cases, particularly in the context of (1) alleged personal harassment of ourselves and our clients, (2) the alleged tactics of the Church of Scientology to inundate various courts with massive docket filings, (3) the filing of allegedly frivolous and malicious lawsuits, bar complaints, and distribution of defamatory publications on the streets and in the media, (4) allegedly engaging in a systematic pattern to infiltrate our law offices, steal documents therefrom, disrupt our law practice, and (5) generally engaging in an assortment of abusive and unlawful conduct to deprive our clients of their legal rights and access to the courts. The affidavit will demonstrate to the court that in light of the facts, we have acted with professional restraint, diligence and within the bounds of the canons of ethics in seeking to prosecute the claims of our clients in the face of extensive, malicious, personal harassment as well as legal harassment through the filing of frivolous lawsuits, bar complaints, etc. Although Scientology and its counsel have, to some degree, succeeded in creating the impression in various courts throughout the United States that Scientology litigation in general is the product of a personal campaign between the lawyers on both sides to use the judicial system to vindicate personal animosities, it has always been our intention to obtain legal redress for our clients. We submit that the Church of Scientology is engaged in an elaborate and concerted plan to
create that impression by besieging each of the courts with such a massive amount of paperwork together with incessant charges against me that a true and just adjudication of the rights of the victims have become secondary. An examination of the dockets in virtually every case will reveal that we have been required to continually respond to personal attacks which have cluttered the docket entries. These continued personal attacks, such as motions for disqualification, depositions of counsel, lawsuits against counsel, contempt proceedings against counsel, bar complaints against counsel, and personal harassment of counsel, have resulted in a cluttering of the court dockets and the misdirection of the subject cases. The foregoing approach adopted by the Church pursuant to its written policies has been designed to confuse and obfuscate the legitimate factual and legal issues in the subject litigation. The attack by the Church of Scientology has been uncalled for, distorted, and unlawful.

2. In late June or early July, 1979, La Venda Van Schaick engaged me to obtain a refund of funds paid by her to the Church of Scientology in the amount of approximately $12,800.00. At that time, I knew nothing about the Church of Scientology, and was reluctant to undertake Van Schaick’s request because she informed me about the operating practices of the Church towards its so called “enemies”. However, at the request of several individuals and after preliminary investigation, I sent a letter to the Church dated July 17, 1979 requesting a refund of all funds paid by Van Schaick. (Exhibit 1 attached.) After sending Exhibit 1, I received a letter from the Church stating that no refund would be paid. (Exhibit 2 attached.) During the pendency of the aforestated correspondence, an individual holding himself out to be one “Chuck North” contacted me and asked to be engaged as a private investigator/
consultant in connection with “researching and investigating cults.” North specifically asked and requested to have access to any “cult files” in my office for the purpose of assisting
his research and investigation. I became suspicious about the coincidental mailing of the Van Schaick correspondence and the solicitations of North. As it later turned out, North was in
fact an agent of the Church seeking to infiltrate our offices. (Exhibit 3, Affidavit of Warren Friske, attached.)

3. During the period between July to September, 1979 when the correspondence concerning Van Schaick refund was being exchanged, I began to receive telephone calls from clients,
relatives, and friends stating that they had received strange telephone calls from various individuals requesting information about me. During the same period of time, in connection with numerous telephone calls and correspondence involving non-Scientology related clients and cases, many strange and suspicious incidents occurred which suggested that my telephone calls and office affairs were either being monitored, intercepted, or knowledge about them otherwise obtained. For example, an individual called one of my clients and told her that I should be reported to the bar because I had not turned over all of the funds I had received in the trial of a case. In fact, the client was present at the trial, received a trial judgment upon a jury verdict, and was paid in full. During the same period of time, namely between July and September, 1979, Van Schaick alleges that she began to be followed, her apartment kept under surveillance, her employment activities monitored, and numerous strange and suspicious circumstances occurred in connection with her daily life, too numerous for purposes of this affidavit. The only activity of mine involving the Church at that point in time had been to send one letter requesting a refund!

4. After receiving the letter denying the request for a refund, I received a letter dated September 11, 1979 from the “Church of Scientology of Boston”. (Exhibit 4 attached) This letter, together with the other prior strange occurrences, together with the allegations made to me by Van Schaick as to the nature and operating practices of the Church, resulted in the decision by me to initiate an investigation into the entire matter. The September 11 letter stated that the Church would be willing to pay approximately 50% of the funds paid to the  Church by Van Schaick and at the same time suggested that Van Schaick should not sue the Church for the balance of the funds because she had an extensive drug history, had “three abortions”, had “attempted suicide”, had severe marital problems, and had signed an agreement never to sue the Church or the Hubbards. I had been informed by Van Schaick that all of the foregoing information came from her confidential, “auditing” or “confessional files” and that it was a regular practice of the Church to send such a letter to any person claiming refunds or to their counsel. Van Schaick stated that the auditing information had been given in strict confidence but that the Church, pursuant to written policy, regularly utilized such information to block legal recourse and for other purposes including blackmail and extortion even though it also had a written policy covering refunds.

5. Shortly after the receipt of the foregoing letter, I received several anonymous telephone calls suggesting that representation of Van Schaick was a dangerous matter, that no one “messes with the Church”, that if I had any doubts about this issue, to contact other people who had sought to “interfere” with the Church. During September and early October, 1979, I, as a result of all of the foregoing, was involved in an active and extensive investigation of the allegations made by Van Schaick in order to determine the propriety of a lawsuit against the Church. Because of the many strange events that occurred during this period of time in connection with this investigation, I concluded that the Church or its agents were monitoring my activities, telephone calls, and my investigation. Among the numerous incidents that confirmed this were several occasions when I observed individuals following me, defamatory calls were made to various clients shortly after I had called these clients on the phone, and an employee at the small airport where I maintained any airplane observed unidentified individuals viewing the airplane and seeking information about it.

6. Between that date and the ensuing several months, Van Schaick, was allegedly subjected to numerous incidents of personal harassment involving the surveillance of her home and her child, being run off the road in her car, numerous telephone calls to her neighbors suggesting that she was an unfit mother, calls to her employer resulting in the loss of her job as a
waitress, attempts to convince her that I was engaging in harassive conduct against her, attempts to separate her from her husband, and other forms of harassment. In one instance, she
states that the Church sent an agent from Los Angeles to convince Van Schaick that the “harassive things” being done to her were initiated by me! (A copy of that agent’s note is  attached as Exhibit 5.)

7. In November 1979, nine of the highest officers of the Church of Scientology were convicted of a variety of crimes, and approximately 30,000 documents seized by the F.B.I. from the
Church were released to the general public. I sent an employee to the Federal Court in Washington to copy thousands of these documents. These documents in large part verified the
allegations of Van Schaick and validated my belief that the Church was responsible for the numerous inexplicable and harassive incidents that had occurred in the prior several months.
The documents revealed a 15-year pattern of infiltration, burglary, bugging, harassment, and elaborate policies and operations to commit the foregoing pursuant to specific and detailed training manuals. The documents also contained hundreds of documents pertaining to the use of auditing information by the Church against individuals such as Van Schaick for the purpose of blocking and frustrating their legal rights, even specifying the use of extortion and blackmail. In fact, the specific written operations authorized by Mary Sue Hubbard to conduct this type of operation were among these documents.

8. During the same period of time, I conducted an extensive legal analysis and case research involving the Church of Scientology and learned that the publications of the Church of Scientology had been declared fraudulent in the case of United States v. Article or Device, 333 F.Supp. 357 (D.D.C., 1971) and that the Church had never complied with the decree in said case. Further, I learned that the Church had brought in excess of 100 cases against a variety of individuals and entities for the purposes of frustrating the legal rights of those parties and for the purpose of harassing them pursuant to a specific written policy of the Church which calls for the use of the judicial system to harass and destroy critics.

9. Finally, after approximately six months of research and investigation at a cost in excess of $20,000.00, we decided to bring a class action suit against the Church of Scientology to recover not only for the damages inflicted on Van Schaick, but also to seek relief for the class as a whole, for the failure of the Church to comply with the Article or Device decree. That suit was initiated on December 13, 1979, resulting in unsolicited contact by the news media to Van Schaick and me. After the news relative to the class action suit was disseminated in the press, the floodgates unexpectedly and surprisingly opened. My office was literally swamped in a period of weeks with hundreds of telephone calls by a variety of individuals and organizations including parents whose children had committed suicide while in the Church, individuals who had been hospitalized as a result of Church involvement, authors, reporters, individuals who had been allegedly defrauded by the Church, various law enforcement agencies, and other assorted contacts.

10. After the commencement of the Van Schaick action, the Church immediately attempted to infiltrate the class with an agent posing as a prospective client (see affidavit of Garrity attached as Exhibit 6), intensified its harassment of individuals associated with me, attempted to disrupt non-Scientology cases I was involved in, and generally initiated a campaign of
unrelenting personal and legal harassment. This campaign included the following:

a) Approximately three weeks after the commencement of the Van Schaick case, without filing a counter-claim in that action, and without filing a Motion to Dismiss within the time allowed by the rules, the Church initiated a lawsuit in the Federal District Court in Nevada against Van Schaick, Kevin Flynn, (my brother and an employee of my office), Thomas Hoffman, Esq., (a colleague), and Edward Walters, (a client). That suit alleged a conspiracy by these individuals to deprive the Church of its First Amendment rights. The suit was
dismissed by the Federal Court within 120 days.

b) At the same time as the filing of this action, the Church filed in succession four separate bar complaints against me alleging a variety of things including conspiracy to violate the Church’s First Amendment rights, the unlicensed practice of law by Kevin Flynn, and a variety of other charges. The first three complaints were filed on January 15, 1980, February 7, 1980 and April 3, 1980, all of which were dismissed on April 10, 1980 by the Massachusetts Board of Bar Overseers. (See Exhibit 7 attached.) On November 19, 1980, the Church filed yet another complaint which was dismissed on May 4, 1981. (See Exhibit 8 attached.)

c) After the dismissal of the Federal Nevada action, the Church then commenced an action against Van Schaick, Kevin Flynn, Edward Walters, and other clients of mine in the state court in Nevada, which was nearly identical to the federal action. As to Van Schaick and Kevin Flynn, this suit was also dismissed.

d) The Church also filed an action against me and four of my clients in the Massachusetts Suffolk Superior Court alleging that the clients had stolen materials from the Church of Scientology of Boston and turned them over to me. These materials primarily included the auditing files of the four clients who had left the Boston Church and taken their auditing files with them because they were aware the Church used them for purposes of blackmail. Also allegedly taken were some financial graphs and some Sea Org organizations. I  stipulated in open court to filing the voluminous auditing files under seal with the court, returning the financial graphs, and maintaining possession of the Sea Org communications. The court adopted this offer and issued an injunction based upon it. In subsequent litigation around the United States, particularly in the recent case of the Church of Scientology v. Gerald Armstrong, California Superior Court, Los Angeles, C420153, the Church has attempted to use this litigation and the stipulated injunction to misinform and mislead the court into the belief that I had behaved unethically as reflected by the injunction, when in fact, I stipulated to the injunction, and the suit was prosecuted for the purpose of harassing me pursuant to the written policy of the Church.

e) Subsequently, the Church filed an additional action against me in the Las Vegas state court alleging essentially that I was engaged in a conspiracy against the Church and abusing judicial process. Church counsel attempted to procure a false affidavit from an ex-member to support the case. (See Exhibit 6 at page 8.) The court granted my Motion Judgment in that action.

f) Between January and May, 1980, for Summary I was subjected to hundreds of instances of personal harassment, which I believe, based upon the Friske and Garrity affidavits and other information, to have been conducted by the Church. These included inter alia, contacting my insurance agent and informing the agent that I had murdered the husband of one of my clients, making a bomb threat to my building resulting in its evacuation, throwing rocks at my building, sending a post card threatening to poison me, harassive telephone calls at and night to me, my wife, and my children, phone calls to neighbors and suggesting in all hours of the day making obscene telephone calls to neighbours and suggesting in these calls that I was making them, and process servers arriving at my home at all hours disturbing my wife and children. (See generally, Exhibit 9.)

g) Between approximately November, 1979 and up to and including at least May, 1982, the Church allegedly stole approximately 20,000 documents either directly from my office or from a trash dumpster in my private office condominium compound. This theft is established by the following evidence. Kevin Tighe formerly of the Guardian’s Office has testified under oath that he stole documents from my law office garbage. (Exhibit 10.) Warren Friske, former head of B-2 in Boston, admits he sorted the stolen documents and sent the materials to the U.S.G.O. and to CSC’s attorneys. (Exhibit 11.) Joe Lisa, former head of the U.S.G.O., has admitted in a sworn deposition that he ordered the document theft operation. (Exhibit 12.)

11. Between January and May, 1980, hundreds of former Church members contacted my office seeking legal recourse against the Church. One of these individuals, Tonja Burden, had
worked directly for L. Ron Hubbard, who had ultimate and absolute control over all Church activities. Burden, between the ages of 13 and 17, worked for the Church without receiving any education, essentially served for a long period as Hubbard’s personal slave, dressing and undressing him, and was involved in coding and de-coding telexes in double and triple codes regarding operations against the United States government, state agencies, and numerous individuals. She was defrauded of approximately five years of labor, a high school education, was made to sign promissory notes in the thousands cf dollars, she was tendered a bill in the amount of approximately $61,000.00, was subsequently kidnapped, harassed and taken over state lines when she left the Church, and was generally tortiously injured by the Church without receiving the benefits promised to her and based upon false  representations made to her. With co-counsel in Tampa, Florida, we commenced an action in the Federal District Court on or about April 25, 1980 on behalf of Ms. Burden. This was only the second suit initiated by my office in connection with Scientology litigation. Yet, most of the items referred to in paragraph 10 against my office were either in process, completed, or being planned. The Church proceeded to literally swamp the court docket with motions, pleadings, and discovery, the great bulk of which motions have been denied,
resulting in a massive amount of paper that stands approximately two feet high to date. Although ex-Scientologists have come forward and acknowledged a consistent pattern of abuses against individuals such as Van Schaick and Burden with regard to the wrongful dissemination of auditing information, fraudulent and deceptive recruitment and sales practices, campaigns of harassment pursuant to the “Fair Game Doctrine” and other such operations, and thousands of documents exist to support such allegations, the Church and its counsel have engaged in a pattern of litigation designed to wear down the plaintiffs, their counsel, and the court system rather than attempt to resolve the injury claims in a judicious and good faith approach based upon specific and extensive evidence. The latter strategy is reflected by the activities of the Church and its correspondence to me prior to the commencement of the Van Schaick action as well as the aforesaid dismissed lawsuits, bar complaints, and harassment techniques.

12. Between May, 1980 and December, 1980, my office continued to be besieged with contacts from former members, parents, state and federal law enforcement agencies, the news media, etc. with regard to the activities of the Church. During that period of time, my office brought several additional actions in the Massachusetts Superior Court on behalf of former
members who sought to obtain legal redress against the Church. During the same period of time, the continuous theft of documents from my office and compound took place and the general campaign of harassment continued. The hundreds of instances involved in this harassment are too extensive to set forth in this affidavit but they consisted of a general pattern of what has been previously described including contacts with non-Scientology clients. (See several statements of clients attached hereto as Exhibit 9.) Throughout this period of time
the Church continually attempted to take my deposition and depositions of my employees and colleagues on numerous occasions in different cases.

13. In January, 1981, after living through a year and a half of the activities and conduct previously described, I flew to Los Angeles, California, together with my colleagues, for the purpose of discussing settlement of the Scientology litigation with Church counsel. During these settlement discussions, the Church agreed to repay all of the monies paid by two claimants, Donald and Peggy Bear, in the amount of approximately $107,000.00. Although releases were signed and the Church represented to numerous courts that it had a policy to
refund monies paid to it, the Church failed to deliver a check for the proceeds, the settlement negotiations fell through, and a suit was later commenced on behalf of the Bears. (See Exhibit 14 attached.) At the time of the preparation for these settlement negotiations, my office prepared an extensive analysis of approximately 50 cases that it was considering filing on behalf of former members, which analysis related to the costs of such litigation for both sides, the factual issues involved in the various cases, peripheral issues such as probate matters, media problems, etc., That analysis was prepared specifically for these settlement negotiations. The analysis was subsequently stolen from our offices and later became the subject of an additional bar complaint and a suit brought by the Church against my colleagues and I in the Los Angeles District Court, discussed infra.

14. After the settlement negotiations failed, and after spending several weeks in Los Angeles, we returned to Boston and prepared to conduct a conference in May 1981, for the purpose of meeting with several lawyers in connection with the proposed commencement of some of the 50 cases included in the settlement analysis. Portions of the settlement analysis were included in a packet of information given to the lawyers who attended the May conference. Those documents were also subsequently stolen by the Church of Scientology from our offices or our trash dumpster. At the conference, attended by approximately eight attorneys, the nature of Scientology litigation was explained, fee relationships were discussed involving the traditional contingent fee type relationship and a sharing of the fees between the attorneys based upon the amount of work done on each case. Other peripheral issues set forth above in the settlement analysis were discussed. This meeting was infiltrated by an agent of the Church posing as a client, Ford Schwartz, on behalf of the Church. (See attached Exhibit 15.) The Church, therefore, was aware of the nature of the meeting, what was discussed, and the fee relationships that existed between the clients and the attorneys.

15. Between May, 1981 and July, 1981, Kevin Flynn, who had ceased being an employee of mine in mid-1980 and who had commenced working as an independent contractor, submitted a proposal to me and my colleagues whereby Kevin Flynn’s corporation, Flynn Associates Management Corporation, would perform services on behalf of the various attorneys as a researcher and investigator in consideration of receiving a percentage of the funds recovered in the cases. After research by me and my colleagues, the proposal was rejected, although ethical opinions of several states indicated that such a proposal was not improper. This proposal was also stolen from the offices of mine and/or the trash dumpster in the private office compound.

16. During the summer of 1981, as a result of the ongoing theft of documents from my office and compound, most of which constituted attorney-client communication and/or work-
product, the Church knew that I and counsel from various other states were considering the commencement of various actions in New York, Washington, and Los Angeles. It also knew that Flynn Associates Management Corporation played no role in connection with these suits, that the May meeting among counsel was ethically proper, and that I was still seeking to resolve the cases without litigation.

17. In June, 1981, Church counsel again initiated settlement discussions, this time with my co-counsel in the Burden case in Tampa, which resulted in a series of correspondence between me and Church counsel. (See attached Exhibit 16.) In fact, the Church offered 1.6 million dollars to resolve all existing and impending litigation, and I accepted their
offer on behalf of the various clients involved, in a good faith effort to resolve the entire matter. My motivation in accepting this settlement offer of the Church on behalf of my clients
involved numerous considerations including: a) the desire of clients and counsel to end the torrent of legal and personal harassment; b) the expense and time consumption inherent in the litigation for all parties; c) the promised efforts of the Church to reform and discontinue many of its unlawful practices; and, d) the financial remuneration of clients and counsel.
18. Between approximately April and June, 1981, I was contacted by the City of Clearwater to prepare a report relative to the Church of Scientology and the tax-exempt aspects of organizations such as the Church. Because of the continued theft of materials from my office, the Church was fully aware of the fact that various City officials had contacted me during that period of time. The Church therefore knew, through the acquisition of illegally obtained information, when it made its 1.6 million dollar offer to settle all Scientology-related litigation matters, that hundreds of individuals had contacted our office, that several counsel in various areas of the U.S. had agreed to undertake litigation on behalf of injured clients, that the City of Clearwater was commencing an investigation into the Church, that it had been engaged in a two-year campaign of legal and personal harassment against me and my office, that it had been engaged in at least a ten-year pattern of burglary, larceny, obstruction of justice, etc., of which its highest leaders had been convicted, and that there were thousands of people across the United States who were seeking refunds from the Church. Because of the close monitoring and surveillance of my office, the Church also knew that my colleagues and I were willing to resolve the litigation primarily because of our desire to terminate the persistent harassment of us and our clients. At this point in connection with the litigation, I had personally expended in excess of $200,000.00.

19. Upon information and belief provided by recently defected members of the Church, in the summer of 1981, when all of these matters were occurring, an internal power struggle took
place within the Church resulting in the purge of several highly-placed members and the resulting take-over of the Church by several young members of the “Commodore’s Messenger Org,” who had served personally for L. Ron Hubbard throughout their teen-age years, who were then approximately 21 or 22 years of age, and who were fanatical adherents of Hubbard. These individuals who took over the Church adopted a plan in the summer of 1981 to conduct an all-out campaign against me and my clients pursuant to the “technology” of the Church doctrine, to wit, the Fair Game Doctrine, to destroy me and all opposition to the Church. Upon information and belief, the foregoing involved a highly secretive written plan adopted by the highest members of the Church to revoke the offer of settlement, revert to “Hubbard technology,” and to attack and destroy me pursuant to the following Hubbard policies:

Don’t ever defend. Always attack. Find or manufacture enough threat against them to sue for peace. Originate a black PR campaign to destroy the person’s repute and to discredit them so thoroughly they will be ostracized. Be very alert to sue for slander at the slightest chance so as to discourage the public presses from mentioning Scientology. The purpose of this suit is to harass and discourage rather than to win.

(Level 0 Checksheet attached as Exhibit 17.)

Pursuant to this plan, the Church then embarked on a campaign beginning in August, 1981, and continuing up to the present date, to “attack”, “sue”, and “destroy” me. This campaign has included the following:

a. In August, 1981, the Church, through its counsel, Harvey Silverglate, filed a bar complaint against me and my colleagues attaching numerous documents that had been stolen from my office and compound. The thrust of this complaint was that I was unlawfully selling shares of Flynn Associates Management Corporation to finance prospective lawsuits against the Church. Although the Church knew that this allegation was false, the Church and its counsel wove together the settlement analysis prepared in January, 1931, the materials assembled for the May conference, and the proposal of Kevin Flynn, then attempted to create a false and deceptive impression with the Board of Bar Overseers and subsequently in the courts. The Church knew at the time of this bar complaint that the allegations of its counsel, Silverglate, were false, because it had agents who had attended the May conference, it had stolen the settlement analysis at the time it was prepared in January, 1981, and the Church had stolen the Kevin Flynn proposal when it had been prepared
and rejected in June, 1981.

b. In addition to this bar complaint, the Church and its counsel then proceeded to file an additional three bar complaints against myself and my colleagues, including, inter alia, the allegation that I improperly attempted to avoid service of process by one of the many process servers in connection with suits and depositions that the Church was attempting to initiate against our office. These bar complaints were filed through-out the period from August to December, 1981. Notwithstanding the foregoing complaints, I have received a letter from the Board stating that it does not consider that I have any “Complaints” presently against me. (See Exhibit 18.)

c. At the same time that the bar complaints were being filed, the Church was engaged in operations to steal documents from the trash of at least one of the members of the Board of Bar Overseers. (See affidavit of Warren Friske attached as Exhibit 3.)

d. In August, 1981, the Church commenced an action in the Los Angeles Federal District Court through one of its members, Steven Miller, against me, my brother, Kevin, a medical doctor, and several others, on the theory that the defendants had “deprogrammed” Miller and violated his civil rights. At the time of the filing of the suit, I had never heard of Steven Miller and had never had any contact with him before. The attorneys’ fees in connection with the defense of that case, upon information and belief, are currently in excess of $200,000.00, which have been paid by the parents of Steven Miller, I have also sustained attorneys’ fees and expenses in connection with the defense of that case and other litigation initiated by the Church of Scientology.

e. In August, 1981, the Church commenced an action in the Boston Federal District Court through its members, Ellen and Chris Garrison, on the same theory of deprogramming. This suit was brought against Kevin Flynn and Paulette Cooper after specific planning and meetings were held by the Church to bring this suit against these individuals for the purpose of harassing them and my office. (See Affidavit of Warren Friske attached as Exhibit 3.)

f. During the same period of time, and in the ensuing months, the Church filed motions to disqualify me in the cases of Garrity, et al. v. The Church of Scientology, Los Angeles Federal District Court, Burden v. Church of Scientology, District Court in Tampa, and in the Van Schaick case. These Motions for Disqualification were all part of the plan to personally and legally harass me and my colleagues.

g. Between August, 1981 and December, 1981, the Church literally swamped the court dockets in every case that it was involved in, including both those it had initiated and those that had been brought by claimants, with hundreds of pleadings, motions, discovery requests, etc. An examination of the dockets in almost any of the pending cases will illustrate the intense campaign of legal harassment specifically adopted by the Church during this period of time to destroy me, my office, and my clients.

h. My office utilized a long distance telephone code which unauthorized individuals, allegedly the Church, intercepted and thereafter used to charge in excess of $1,000.00 in telephone calls to our code. In a similar “operation,” it has been alleged that the Church intercepted the code of a third party in California and made telephone calls to our clients charging the calls to the third party’s code. All of these matters and many others have been turned over to the F.B.I.

i. After we spent in excess of one hundred hours  defending the Motions to Disqualify filed in the Garrity, Van Schaick, and Burden cases, the Church dropped these Motions and instead undertook a new round of lawsuits against my office. The Church commenced an abuse of process action in the Los Angeles Federal District Court in connection with the Garrity, et al. case and also brought another civil rights action against me and the City of Clearwater in the Tampa Federal District Court.

20. The Church timed commencement of the abuse of process action in the Los Angeles Federal District Court to coincide with certain hearings being conducted by the City of Clearwater involving the Church of Scientology in which our office was involved. In connection with these hearings, the Church adopted a specific operation to harass me as follows:

In the second week in March, 1982, the Clearwater hearings were scheduled to begin on April 21, 1982. On March 25, Church counsel in the case of Cazares v. Church of
Scientology, Circuit Court in Daytona, sent a letter to me scheduling my deposition for April 23, 1982 in Tampa during the middle of the hearings. Although the hearings were
subsequently continued until May 5, 1982, on April 19, 1982, while appearing in the Burden case in Tampa, I was served with a deposition subpoena. I filed a Verified Motion to Quash the Subpoena stating that the demands of my law practice prevented me from remaining in Florida throughout the “time” required for the deposition, 2:00 p.m. on Friday, April 23, to continue from day-to-day over the week-end and the following Monday, as required by the deposition subpoena. I sent a letter on two occasions to Church counsel indicating that I could not appear for the deposition, that I had no personal knowledge of the subject matter of the case in which the deposition was to be taken, but that I would be willing to schedule another date when I would voluntarily appear. Subsequently, after the Church learned that the hearings would be continued to May 5, 1982, it issued a second subpoena, from the Los Angeles Federal Court in the case of Church of Scientology v. F.B.I. I had no personal knowledge relevant to this case but the Church sought to take my deposition, again during the middle of the hearings. I communicated to counsel in that case that I would be unable to appear on that date. Subsequently, during the middle of the Clearwater hearings, the Church filed motions to hold me in contempt in the Los Angeles Federal District Court and in the Daytona Circuit Court because of my failure to appear at the depositions. In connection with the Daytona contempt proceeding, I informed the Court of the foregoing, informed the Court that under Florida law I was immune from service in Florida, under the Florida Rules of Civil Procedure my deposition had to be taken in Massachusetts, but that I was still willing to appear without need of going forward with the contempt matter. Notwithstanding the foregoing, and after the Church counsel specifically misrepresented the facts, without a trial, without any witnesses being called at the contempt matter, and without complying with Florida rules with regard to “indirect criminal contempts,” Church counsel procured a contempt finding against me from the Court. The matter was appealed and the appellate court reversed and vacated the finding of contempt by the trial court. The trial court judge has since left the bench after being implicated in an unrelated bribery scheme.

21. In the face of this harassment and abuse, the intention of our office throughout the subject litigation has been to obtain redress on behalf of our clients for alleged fraud in the taking of their money and labor and for outrageous conduct in blocking their access to judicial relief. We submit that the Church of Scientology operates based on policies such as “Fair Game” and “Attack the Attacker” because it must use such means to perpetuate its fraudulent sales and recruitment practices. These operating policies of the Church carry over to its activities and conduct in dealing with the judicial system and attorneys, such as ourselves who represent clients against the Church. We are among many attorneys and judges who have been attacked by the Church through motions for disqualification, lawsuits, bar complaints, and personal harassment. The Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Washington criminal cases, several federal judges, and the attorney for the F.D.A. are such examples. (See attached Exhibit 19.) While utilizing the operational policies such as Fair Game, the Church presents a religious front to the Court in order to frustrate legitimate claims for tortious injury and to create the appearance of a personal conflict amongst the lawyers in the swamping of the dockets with every conceivable filing. Abuse of the legal system is reflected by the massive litigation instituted by Scientology in courts throughout the United States. (See Lexis scan attached as Exhibit 20.)

22. My colleagues and I have never before been subjected to the legal harassment which has occurred in the subject litigation. Our background is not one of using the judicial system abusively or without just cause. I was ranked first in my class in law school, served as Editor-in-Chief of the Law Review, served as a law clerk to a Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, have been married for 16 years with 3 children, and I have always endeavored to practice law with discretion, professional restraint and within the bounds of the canons of ethics. In contrast, the highest officials of the Church have served time in Federal Prison, there are literally thousands of individuals and families seeking legal redress, and the fraudulent, tortious, and often times criminal activities and policies of the Church are becoming increasingly evident. These victims have come to us in the hundreds, often with substantial financial claims and evidence of overt physical and mental abuse. As a result of my assistance to these people, I have been “declared” an “enemy” by the Church and appear on its enemies list.” (See Exhibit 21 attached.)

23. It has always been the policy of my office to resolve claims against the Church of Scientology without litigation. The efforts at settlement between January and July, 1981 were such an example. The Church is now using those confidential settlement negotiations to further attack me, although the Church insisted in writing on their confidentiality, and
accepted, but later reneged upon, the settlement.

24. It is the intent of my office and clients to obtain legal redress for legitimate claims in the context of substantial supporting evidence. It is not my intent to use the judicial process to harass the Church. The fact that the Church has a written policy mandating such judicial abuse, together with a 20-year history of employing it, is evidence of the fact that the Church, not myself or my clients, is intent upon creating a distorted and false perception of the nature and purposes of each of the Scientology related cases.

25. I am not collaborating with forces who are trying to destroy freedom of religion and churches in America.

26. I am not collaborating with anyone using brutal “deprogramming” and “depersonalizing” techniques. I have never deprogrammed or depersonalized anyone.

27. I have exercised my First Amendment rights to speak out and oppose an organization whose top leaders have gone to prison. However, I have never sought to manipulate the media or use libel, forgery, or other improper means in connection with any of the litigation.

28. I have made no fraudulent representations of any nature or description but have merely sought to expose the misrepresentations made by the Church of Scientology.

29. Dr. John Clark has never been part of any operations of FAMCO of any nature or description, nor has Kevin Flynn through FAMCO or otherwise, attempted to involuntarily kidnap or brutalize anyone.

30. The charge that I have solicited an individual named “Jim Gray” to enlist him to sell shares in FAMCO is totally false. Gray was never offered any position, no shares were ever offered to him, and I have no idea why he would make such allegations in a so-called “sworn affidavit.”

31. The charge that I have solicited clients in connection with the Church of Scientology is absurd. Indeed, the reverse is true. There are thousands of Scientologists throughout the United States seeking to obtain legal counsel to obtain redress against the Church. The problem is that it is very difficult to get lawyers to take on such cases. I have been unfortunately refusing clients, not soliciting them. Although my law firm has endeavored to help all of these people, and has never solicited any of them, we are, in fact, incapable of representing the thousands of people who desperately need representation.

32. The Church of Scientology claims that I “resorted to the use of force and coercion in the form of psychiatric…not unlike the insidious, painful brainwashing techniques on American servicemen by Chinese Communists during the Korean War.” First of all, I have never advocated nor would I ever participate in any such activity. Second, “brainwashing” is a technique used and taught by the Church in its G.O. intelligence courses. (Exhibit 22.) Third, as explained above, I never met nor even heard of Steven Miller prior to his filing a Church sponsored lawsuit against me which has since been dismissed.

33. The probate case relating to Ronald DeWolf and the “missing person status” of L. Ron Hubbard was brought for the simple reason that L. Ron Hubbard’s own attorney, Alan Goldfarb, stated that L. Ron Hubbard was missing, and that he could not appear in one of the many suits that had been brought against him because no one knew where he was and no one from the Church of Scientology had communicated with him since February 1980. It was the conduct of Hubbard’s own lawyers and the group that now run the RTC (Religious Technology Center) and the failure of Hubbard to appear and defend himself in Court or even to appear and defend or assist his wife for that matter, which resulted in the
Hubbard filed a to be appointed Ron Hubbard was probate case being brought. It was only after legal declaration, the day before a trustee was in the probate case, that the Court held that L. Ron Hubbard was not a missing person.

34. The finding of contempt against me was one of the numerous legal proceedings brought against me at the same time. The Church of Scientology fails to state that I did not even appear and defend the contempt proceeding because of the onslaught of other harassment brought against me by the Church, and, later when I moved to vacate the order, the judge stated that no bad faith or misconduct was involved, but merely a technical violation of one of the court orders regarding disclosure of information about Hubbard.

35. The allegations contained in Paulette Cooper’s affidavit are perhaps the most absurd portion of the Church of Scientology’s charges. Since I was Ms. Cooper’s attorney, I feel ethically bound to hold inviolate the communications we had regarding L. Ron Hubbard, other than to say that Ms. Cooper’s declaration is totally false. The accompanying declaration of Joseph Flanagan² explains how Ms. Cooper came to testify for CSC.

36. The idea that Kevin Flynn, Thomas Hoffman, or I, or anyone associated with us, had anything to do with the forgery of one of L. Ron Hubbard’s checks, is simply too fanciful to warrant extensive discussion. Suffice it to say that I brought to the attention of the public and the courts the fact that one of L. Ron Hubbard’s checks, in the possession of individuals controlling the RTC, was forged and an attempt to pass it was made at the time in May-June, 1982 when Hubbard wrote a will and in the will turned over control of Scientology to the RTC. It was at the same time that the RTC began to assert total dictatorial control throughout the Church of Scientology. Any intelligent observer can put two and two together to conclude that I would not participate in the forgery of a two-million dollar check and then do everything in my power to investigate it.

37. Recently, I received a letter and telegram from Mr. Tamimi, whose sworn declaration was procured by Eugene Ingram, an investigator employed by Church of Scientology, who has been removed from the L. A. Police Force for his purported involvement in assisting narcotic dealers, pimping, and other criminal activities. In the note and telegram Tamini states that the declaration procured by Ingram is false and that he is now prepared to tell the truth. Tamini’s declaration, attached to Peterson’s declaration, should be viewed with great scepticism in light of Tamini’s letter and telegram. (A copy of this letter and telegram is attached as Exhibit 23.) This letter has been turned over to law enforcement authorities to permit further investigation. This letter was the first communication of any type which I have ever had with Mr. Tamini.

Signed under the pains and penalties of perjury  this ____ day of July, 1985 in Boston, Massachusetts.

______________
Michael J. Flynn

Notes