The Armstrong Op

Scientology's fair game on Gerry Armstrong

Introduction 

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Tony Ortega quoting Mike Rinder… (July 29, 2014)

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From Tony Ortega’s blog post of July 29, 2014:

Hana joined Scientology in 1965, became Clear number 60, then went to sea with L. Ron Hubbard, who made her captain of one of his ships. Increasingly disillusioned by what she saw of Hubbard up close, and especially after the material released in “OT 3,” she eventually left Scientology in 1984 and then became one of the most well known critics and intervention specialists. By 1991, she was probably the biggest “SP” on the planet, and the attention paid to her by the church’s private eyes proved it…

During her interview, Hana says, “I think that if Marty Rathbun and Mike Rinder ever decide to talk about this, they will talk about some of the operations that were launched against us, because they were extensive.”

We talked to Rinder, who said that between 1986 and 1993, he wasn’t working with OSA except for a period regarding Gerry Armstrong and some other specific matters. In 1991, when Hana’s surveillance was so heavy, Rinder says he was working on the LRH Life Exhibition as LRH PPRO Int (personal public relations international) after a stint in the Rehabilitation Project Force, the Sea Org’s prison detail. He says he had no experience in or oversight of the operations against Hana and Jerry Whitfield.

“But I have no doubt that they underwent the same things that were done to Vaughn and Stacy Young, or Graham Berry, or others I am familiar with” he says. “Private eyes following them, calling in complaints against them, moving in next door, listening in on cordless phone calls, the whole thing,” Rinder says. 1

Gerry wrote Marty Rathbun and Mike Rinder many times and asked them to debrief about the extensive operations that were launched against him. He has made no secret of what was wanted, and what it was for, but have published openly. From March 2014:

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

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

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

I am just requesting the narrow, relevant truth about a clear and active matter: Marty, Mike, Hubbard, Miscavige, et al. v. Armstrong & friends. Marty and Mike are two individuals with a great deal of information, who are now presenting as fighters for justice who have told the truth about their part in victimizing others. Since they have not told the truth, and do not seek justice, even in correcting injustices they perpetrated and can help correct, the logical conclusion is that they are “Loyalists” mispresenting themselves.2

See also this note that includes Rinder’s clarification of why, as Graham Berry wondered, he had “not done anything to assist redeem, or apologize, those others of us who were damaged and/or destroyed by OSA’s intimidation, litigation and defamation activities.” It’s his timelessness.3

Notes

GA Letter to Clayton C. Ruby (1) (February 17, 2014)

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February 17, 2014

Clayton C. Ruby, Esquire
Ruby Shiller Chan Hasan
11 Prince Arthur Avenue
Toronto, Ontario M5R 1B2
By: Canada Post
Fax 416-964-8305
Email ruby@rubyshiller.com
Dear Mr. Ruby:

There is another point concerning the Scientologists’ unlawful covert operation against me that you refer to in your letter to Ms. Yingling1, and your perverse defamation of me.

You wrote that an October 1984 entry in Sergeant Ciampini’s diary stated that Michael Flynn called Ciampini and said that he has 30 – 35 people inside the cult who are going to take physical control and turn over all documents to IRS CID for their investigation.

The people inside the Scientology cult were not Flynn’s. They were your people. They were your clients. To lay your covert agents on Flynn is conscienceless beyond belief.

Here’s what I wrote about your covert agents in a 1994 declaration:

4. During the 1984 trial of the organization’s case against me, Church of Scientology of California and Mary Sue Hubbard v. Gerald Armstrong, Los Angeles Superior Court no. C420153 (“Armstrong I“), Sherman told me that one of these friends, whom he called “Joey,” had told him that there was an actual group inside the organization who were dedicated to reforming it because management had become suppressive. They called themselves the “Loyalists,” claiming to be “loyal” to the preservation of the ideals of Scientology, “what worked.” They also recognized that its leaders were criminal, crazy, dangerous, and not dedicated to those ideals but were acting to destroy them. The “Loyalists” wanted to take control in a well-planned, effective and peaceful action before some tragedy happened. They claimed to know of criminal activities and a key part of their plan was the documenting of these activities.

5. Sherman said they were 35 in number, or at least there were 35 who knew they were “Loyalists,” all smart, reasonable and not fanatics. Some of them were his old friends from B-1. Such persons tended to be smart, reasonable and often were not fanatics. The people whom I knew to be, including Hubbard, the organization leaders, prided themselves on their recognition of unreasonableness as a virtue, and maintained an abiding fanaticism to justify their abuses and keep their positions of power. Sherman was smart and gave every appearance of being reasonable and unfanatical. He said the Loyalists knew he was in communication with me and wanted to talk with me but were afraid for their lives. This was not surprising to me because I knew from my own experiences that the organization had a brutal side and its leaders were dangerous, armed and desperate. Thus the first communications with the Loyalists were a few messages relayed by Sherman. They said that I had a proven record against the organization, that my integrity had been unshakable and they wanted my help.2

They were not Flynn’s 35 people, or my 35 people. They were your 35 people, your criminal client’s people. You lied for the Scientologists, and to the detriment of the Scientologists victims around the world, and everyone else around the world. You lied and hurt people unlawfully for money. And people are still being hurt by you.

Please fix it now.

Yours importunately,

Gerry Armstrong

Notes

Mark Rathbun: The Juggernaut (May 28, 2013)

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Chapter Twenty-One

THE JUGGERNAUT  1 2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tom Doughty – DOJ associate of Greenberg

Al Ciampini – Ontario Provincial Police

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Notes

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

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

Declaration of Gerry Armstrong (February 22, 1994)

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I, Gerald Armstrong, declare:

1. I am over 18 years of age and a resident of the State of California. I have personal knowledge of the matters set forth herein and if called upon to testify thereto I competently would.

2. I am making this declaration in response to certain statements, principally those concerning me, made by David Miscavige in his declaration executed February 8, 1994, and filed in the case of Scientology v. Fishman & Geertz, United States District Court for the Central District of California, Case No. CV 91-6425 HLH(Tx).

3. Mr. Miscavige states that I am a proven liar because he has found a discrepancy between a finding of Judge Paul G. Breckenridge Jr. in his decision rendered June 20, 1984 in the case of Scientology v. Armstrong, Los Angeles Superior Court No. C 420153 (Armstrong I), and a statement allegedly made by me and secretly recorded by Mr. Miscavige’s covert intelligence operatives in the fall of 1984. (Miscavige dec. p. 31, l. 22 – p. 32, l. 5). Mr. Miscavige is employing one of Scientology’s confusion techniques the organization’s founder L. Ron Hubbard dubbed “dropped out time.” Mr. Miscavige’s incidents, which he has linked for purposes of confusion, are years apart.

4. In this civilization fear is generally accepted to be an emotion or state of mind which can either be present or not present, or perhaps present in degrees. It is fairly well accepted that a not abnormal person can be afraid one

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day, when, for example there are a couple of unidentified men at four a.m. outside the person’s bedroom window where no men ought to be at four a.m., and not afraid on another day, when the person is, for example, watching the Dodgers beat the Giants. That the person claimed to be afraid at four a.m. Sunday and not afraid at the Wednesday ballgame does not make that person a proven liar. In my case there were more than two years between one time when I was afraid and the next occasion when Mr. Miscavige says I said I was not afraid.

5. In his decision, a true and correct copy of which is appended hereto as Exhibit [A] , Judge Breckenridge states:

“From his extensive knowledge of the covert and intelligence operations carried out by the Church of Scientology of California against its enemies (suppressive persons), Defendant Armstrong became terrified and feared that his life and the life of his wife were in danger, and he also feared he would be the target of costly and harassing lawsuits.”

….

“It was thereafter, in the summer of 1982, that Defendant Armstrong asked Mr. Garrison for copies of documents to use in his defense and sent the documents to his attorneys, Michael Flynn and Contos

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& Bunch.

After the within suit was filed on August 2, 1982, Defendant Armstrong was the subject of harassment, including being followed and surveilled by individuals who admitted employment by [Scientology]; being assaulted by one of these individuals; being struck bodily by a car driven by one of these individuals; having two attempts made by said individuals apparently to involve Defendant Armstrong in a freeway automobile accident; having said individuals come onto Defendant Armstrong’s property, spy in his windows, create disturbances, and upset his neighbors.” (Ex. A. Appendix p. 14, l. 6 – p. 15, l. 3)

6. It is clear that Judge Breckenridge in his statements about my fear of organization legal and extra-legal attacks is referring to my state of mind in the period between the organization’s publication of its “Suppressive Person Declares” on me in early 1982 and its filing of Armstrong I in August, 1982. This fear was not irrational or unfounded as the organization itself proved when it harassed my wife and me as Judge Breckenridge found, and did file harassing and costly lawsuits against me. All of these harassing and criminal acts were carried out during Mr.

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Miscavige’s control of such activities, which he claims to have wrested from the Guardian’s Office, which, itself, just as he himself, according to Mr. Miscavige, “used unscrupulous means to deal with people they perceived as enemies of the Church.” (Miscavige dec. p. 17, l. 17).

7. Mr. Miscavige’s new Guardian’s Office, the Office of Special Affairs, did not end its criminal and abusive tactics with the incidents listed by Judge Breckenridge, but has added ten more years of “fair game” attacks since the 1984 decision, including, but not limited to:

a. attempted framing by entrapment and illegal videotaping;

b. filing false criminal charges with the Los Angeles District Attorney;

c. filing false criminal charges with the Boston office of the FBI;

d. filing false declarations;

e. bringing contempt of court proceedings on three occasions based on false charges;

f. making false accusations in internationally published media of crimes, including crimes against humanity;

g. culling and disseminating information from my supposedly confidential auditing (psychotherapy) files;

h. relentlessly attacking my attorney, Michael Flynn of Boston, Massachusetts with some 15 lawsuits, baseless bar complaints, theft of office

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documents, infiltration of his law practice, framing him with the forgery of a $2,000,000 check, an international black PR campaign, threats to him and his family, and, according to him, attempted assassination; all for the purpose of driving him out of the organization-related litigation in order to leave his clients undefended against the organization’s attacks;

i. fraudulently promising to discontinue “fair game” against me if I settled my cross-complaint against the organization, knowing full well that it would continue to attack me in the courts and the marketplace of ideas once I signed its settlement contract, which I did in December, 1986, and once it had contracted with Mr. Flynn to not defend me in future litigation;

j. following the settlement, publishing a false and unfavorable description of me in a “dead agent” pack relating to writer and anti-Scientology litigant Bent Corydon;

k. filing several affidavits in the case of Church of Scientology of California v. Russell Miller and Penguin Books Limited, case no. 6140 in the High Court of Justice in London England which falsely accused me of violations of court orders, and falsely labeled me “an admitted agent provocateur of the U.S. Federal Government”;

l. delivering copies of an edited version of an

5

illegally obtained 1984 videotape of me to the international media;

m. threatening me with lawsuits on six occasions if I did not abet its obstruction of justice in the Miller case, in the case of Bent Corydon v. Scientology, Los Angeles Superior Court No. C 694401, wherein Corydon had subpoenaed me as a witness, and in the case of Scientology v. Yanny, Los Angeles Superior Court No. C 690211;

n. threatening to release my confidences, which it had stolen from a friend, and which had been specifically sealed by Judge Breckenridge in Armstrong I if I did not assist it in preventing Corydon from gaining access to the Armstrong I court file;

o. on February 4, 1992, filing a lawsuit, Scientology v. Gerald Armstrong, Marin Superior Court Case No. 152229 (” Armstrong II”), transferred to Los Angeles Superior Court and given Case No. BC 052395, alleging contract breaches, which it itself precipitated, for the purposes of, inter alia, obstructing justice, suppressing evidence, assassinating my reputation, retaliation and intimidation;

p. on July 8, 1993, filing a lawsuit Scientology v. Gerald Armstrong & The Gerald Armstrong Corporation, Los Angeles Superior Court Case No. BC 084642 (” Armstrong III“) for the same purposes

6

as in o. above;

q. on July 23, 1993, filing a lawsuit, Scientology v. Gerald Armstrong, Michael Walton & The Gerald Armstrong Corporation, Marin Superior Court Case No. 157680 (“Armstrong IV“) for the same purposes as in o. above;

r. twice more bringing contempt of court charges against me based on false sworn statements.

8. The videotapes from which Mr. Miscavige claims to quote were made in November, 1984. In order to provide a context for how I came to be involved with his operatives who set up the videotaping and to clarify the words of both the operatives and myself which were recorded, and a few of which Mr. Miscavige claims to quote, I am appending hereto as Exhibit [B] a copy of a declaration/screenplay outline I have just completed and called “Find a Better Basket.”

9. When I state on the 1984 videotape that I am not afraid, I am answering one of the operatives’ questions or challenges which he has been drilled to state. In responding the way I did I am honestly communicating one of the changes I had perceived in my psyche over the almost three years since I left the organization. Because the organization teaches its members to put their faith in what cannot protect them; e.g., data, wins, attacks, hatred, disconnection, leverage, lawsuits, private investigators, fair game, L. Ron Hubbard or David Miscavige; it leaves them with a seemingly irreducible fear. Those who put their faith in God, Wherein lies perfect protection, give up their

7

fear. There will still be times when fear will arise, but the reestablishing of faith in God will every time cause that fear to disappear into the nothing it is. I was beginning to learn that wisdom by the time of the 1984 videotaping. In fact it was that learning which seemed to move me to associate with the operatives who only sought my destruction. I have stated many times that I have an undeniable concern that before it comes to its senses or saner minds prevail in the organization its power structure headed by Mr. Miscavige will have me assassinated or do something else diabolical and dangerous, and this has produced in me an awareness of threat and is a fact of my present psychological condition. The power structure is quite capable of violent and criminal acts, or of purchasing such acts. The power structure is armed, and its head PI Eugene M. Ingram has threatened to kill me. The power structure makes a religion of terrifying countless vulnerable and innocent people who do not have my certa inty and do not have my skills to fight the organization’s tyranny. For these reasons I oppose its tyranny and its suppressive doctrines and practices. Mr. Miscavige should not be pointing out imagined inconsistencies in whether one of his victims in one year or another was afraid or not of his vicious organization, but should be eliminating all of its viciousness so that no one ever again is made afraid by it.

10. Mr. Miscavige calls the videotaping of me “a police-sanctioned investigation.” (Miscavige Dec. p. 31, l. 8 28) This is a lie Mr. Miscavige must tell as if his life depends on it. I provided the truth in “Find a Better Basket.”

“Organization lawyers, Earle Cooley and John Peterson, claimed (during the 1985 trial of Julie Christofferson v. Scientology, Circuit Court of the State of Oregon, Multnomah County, No. A7704-05184, that) the Armstrong operation had been authorized by the Los Angeles Police Department, and they produced a letter dated November 7, 1984, ….. signed by an officer Phillip Rodriguez, directing organization private investigator Eugene M. Ingram to electronically eavesdrop on me and Michael Flynn. On April 23, 1985, Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl F. Gates issued a public statement, ….. denying that the Rodriguez letter was a correspondence from the Los Angeles Police Department, denying that the Los Angeles Police Department had cooperated with Ingram, and stating emphatically that all purported authorizations directed to Ingram by any member of the Los Angeles Police Department are invalid and unauthorized. On information and belief, the officer, Phillip Rodriguez, who signed Ingram’s letter was paid $10,000.00 for his signature. Also on information and belief, following a Los Angeles Police Department Internal Affairs

9

Division investigation and a Police Department Board of Rights, Officer Rodriguez was suspended from the Los Angeles Police Force.” (“Better Basket,” p. 13, paras. 22 and 23)

A copy of Officer Rodriguez’s “authorization” is appended hereto as Exhibit [C], and a copy of Chief Gates’ public announcement is appended hereto as Exhibit [D].

11. Mr. Miscavige claims that his illegal videotapes of me capture me acknowledging my real motives, to overthrow his organization’s leadership and gain control of it. (Miscavige Dec. p. 32, l.1 – l.3) This is absurd. His own people, operated by him, came to me with their idea, approved by him, as outlined in “Better Basket,” of wresting control of the organization from what they called the ” criminals” running it. I have never had a desire control the Scientology organization or Scientology, although I recognize that its leaders should be restrained from further abuse of anyone. My real motive in my day-to-day relationship with its leaders is to get it out of the litigation business and get it to cease its assault on the justice system, its abuse of innocence and its threatening of me, my friends and people of good will everywhere. I know David Miscavige personally. I know him to be a bully, a liar and a perfect replacement for L. Ron Hubbard at the controls of his empire. I also know that God is in him as He is in everyone else and that bullying and lying are just mad and useless efforts to fight that fact.

12. Mr. Miscavige states that I advise one of his

10

covert operatives to accuse the organization of various criminal acts and when I am told that no evidence exists to support those charges I respond to “just allege it.” (Miscavige Dec. p. 32, l. 5 – l. 8) “Better Basket” describes something of the context in which I make a statement differentiating between “allegations” and “proof.” The operative I’m talking to is Mike Rinder. Before this meeting I had already, on request of the “Loyalists,” provided them with a “bare bones” draft of a complaint. Complaints contain allegations. Complaints do not contain proof. Rinder, who had been represented to me as the Loyalists’ ” best legal mind” couldn’t seem to get the distinction between allegations and proof in the complaint, and I was frustrated in our conversation because he seemed so dense. Now, of course, his denseness is fully understandable. He had to appear stupid and had to deny that there was any “proof” of the sort of allegations that would be made in a complaint because he knew he was being recorded on a videotape which was going to be used to attack, and if possible destroy me. Even what the organization has done to me alone (see, e.g., crimes listed by Judge Breckenridge and the list in paragraph 7 above) is enough for actual true-hearted reformers to bring a lawsuit to take control of the organization from the criminals now in charge.

13. During Mr. Miscavige’s videotape operation a briefcase containing a book of my original drawings and writings and other documents was stolen from the trunk of my

11

car. My attorney made a demand on the organization for the return of these materials. The organization denied having them. I have recently been advised by Vicki Aznaran, a former organization executive who carried out operations against individuals on Mr. Miscavige’s orders, that he told her at the time of their theft that he had them and he described them to her. Knowing that this declaration will be seen by Mr. Miscavige, I herewith renew my demand to him for the return of my materials to me.

14. I will also take the opportunity to advise this Court that Mr. Miscavige’s organization considers that it has me under a contract whereby it may sue me for filing this declaration, not because it is untrue or libelous, but because that is what the organization insists its contract permits. This contract was obtained by Mr. Miscavige as the result of his organization’s years of attack on my attorney Michael Flynn, as stated in paragraph 7 subparagraph h. above. In order to get the organization to cease its fair game against Mr. Flynn I had to sign its contract, which, according to Mr. Miscavige, allows him and his agents to say whatever they want about me in any court proceeding or in the media and I may not respond. If I do respond I become subject to a $50,000.00 liquidated damages provision for every utterance, and the target in another Miscavige-ordered costly and harassing lawsuit. The three lawsuits, Armstrong II, III and IV described in paragraph 7, subparagraphs o, pand q, and the contempt of court proceedings at subparagraph r, are all pursuant to this contract. The contract is

12

against public policy and illegal. Mr. Miscavige, moreover, entered into a separate illegal contract with Mr. Flynn, which prohibits Mr. Flynn from assisting me in any litigation against the organization. If Mr. Flynn were to assist me he would again be subjected to “fair game.” Mr. Miscavige would be wise to rescind all these illegal contracts and discontinue his abuse of the legal process and totally eliminate from his organization the doctrine and practice of fair game, and not merely deny its existence.

15. Mr. Miscavige claims to know a great deal about the IRS dropping me as a witness because of his videotapes. In truth I was not dropped as a witness at all, and my credibility, despite more than twelve years of his organization’s attacks on it, is intact. One of the conditions of the 1986 “settlement” with Mr. Miscavige’s organization was that in order for the organization to discontinue the “fair game” against Mr. Flynn I had to sign a knowingly false affidavit, essentially stating that Mr. Miscavige’s new regime had discontinued the organization’s criminal activities. Mr. Flynn claimed that the organization had already tried to murder him and he felt his life and his family were in danger. I fully believed Mr. Flynn because I had myself been the target of fair game for five years by then and had likewise been threatened with murder. I, along with several other of Mr. Flynn’s clients, therefore signed these false affidavits which the organization had prepared. The organization then filed the false affidavits in its IRS litigations. Mr. Miscavige

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makes much of the IRS granting his organization tax exempt status. Our government’s turning its back on this organization’s thousands of victims and apparently ignoring its obnoxious, irreligious and criminal core nature, however, does not make this victimization and antisocial nature either right or religious.

16. Mr. Miscavige also claims that Scientology’s philosophy and practice of opportunistic hatred, called “fair game” by L. Ron Hubbard, its originator, doesn’t exist. It does. I declare under the penalty of perjury under the laws of the State of California that the foregoing is true and correct.

Executed at San Anselmo, California, on February 22, 1994.

[signed]
GERALD ARMSTRONG

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Notes

Exhibit [A]
Breckenridge Decision

Exhibit [B]
“Find a Better Basket”

Exhibit [C]
Rodriguez “authorization”

Exhibit [D]
LAPD Police Chief Daryl Gates’ Announcement

Declaration of Gerry Armstrong (February 20, 1994)

by

Find a Better Basket

I, Gerald Armstrong, declare:

1. I am making this declaration in response to allegations made by Scientology organization leaders, attorneys and agents in court proceedings and public media around the world concerning a 1984 organization intelligence operation targeting me, which has been called the “Armstrong Operation.” I am copyrighting this document prior to its use in court because it will, in addition to putting the organization’s allegations into a proper context, form an outline for a screenplay I am writing. It is my story.

2. After I left the organization at the end of 1981, the organization intelligence bureau assigned Dan Sherman, a Los Angeles spy story writer and intel operative, to get close to me and become my friend, which he did. I had been the intelligence officer on board the “Apollo” with the organization’s founder and supreme leader L. Ron Hubbard, had studied his intelligence policies and Guardian’s Office 1 intelligence materials, had an

1

appreciation for that literary genre, and I was myself a writer, so Sherman and I had a real basis for a real friendship.

3. Sherman told me he was no longer involved in Scientology, wanted nothing to do with it, saw it as a personal waste of time, and also saw that its leaders were ruthless and dangerous, and claimed to be afraid of them finding out that he was friends with me. Sometime in 1982 or 1983 he told me that he was still in communication in a limited way with some of his old friends still in the organization. He described these friends as smart, reasonable and not fanatics. They were still Scientologists and worked on staff, but felt that organization leaders were criminals. Having no allegiance to these leaders, Sherman’s friends would occasionally tell him about conditions inside and their desire to end the organization’s criminal activities. They said the conditions inside were oppressive and chaotic and they were at risk even talking to him because sec checks2 were rampant.

4. During the 1984 trial of the organization’s case against me, Church of Scientology of California and Mary Sue Hubbard v. Gerald Armstrong, Los Angles Superior Court no. C 420153 (“Armstrong I“), Sherman told me that one of these friends, whom he called “Joey,” had told him that there was an

2

actual group inside the organization who were dedicated to reforming it because management had become suppressive. They called themselves the “Loyalists,” claiming to be ” loyal” to the preservation of the ideals of Scientology, “what worked.” They also recognized that its leaders were criminal, crazy, dangerous, and not dedicated to those ideals but were acting to destroy them. The “Loyalists” wanted to take control in a well-planned, effective and peaceful action before some tragedy happened. They claimed to know of criminal activities and a key part of their plan was the documenting of these activities.

5. Sherman said they were 35 in number, or at least there were 35 who knew they were “Loyalists,” all smart, reasonable and not fanatics. Some of them were his old friends from B-1. Such persons tended to be smart, reasonable and often were not fanatics. The people whom I knew to be, including Hubbard, the organization leaders, prided themselves on their recognition of unreasonableness as a virtue, and maintained an abiding fanaticism to justify their abuses and keep their positions of power. Sherman was smart and gave every appearance of being reasonable and unfanatical. He said the Loyalists knew he was in communication with me and wanted to talk with me but were afraid for their lives. This was not surprising to me because I knew from my own experiences that the organization had a brutal side and its leaders were dangerous, armed and desperate. Thus the first communications with the Loyalists were a few messages relayed by Sherman. They said that I had a proven record against

3

the organization, that my integrity had been unshakable and they wanted my help.

6. A few days after the Armstrong I trial ended, Joey, who, I later learned, was actually one David Kluge, made the first direct contact with me, a phone call to my home in Costa Mesa, California. He said the Loyalists knew I wanted my pc folders,3 was the head of the Guardian Office for years and among other things, authored the infamous order ‘GO 121669’ which directed culling of supposedly confidential P.C. files/folders for the purposes of internal security.” “The practice of culling supposedly confidential ‘P.C. folders or files’ to obtain information for purposes of intimidation and/or harassment is repugnant and outrageous. The Guardian’s Office, which plaintiff [Mary Sue Hubbard] headed, was no respector of anyone’s civil rights, particularly that of privacy.”]4 that my folders were being moved on a certain day and that I could get them if I wanted. I told Kluge that even though the folders were mine the organization would claim, if it was discovered I had them, that I was accepting stolen property, so I had to decline his offer. I was also already booked, on the same day the Loyalists said they would get me my pc folders, to fly to London to testify in a child custody case5 involving

4

Scientology, and I told Kluge that I couldn’t change my plans.

7. When I returned from the UK, where, incidentally, I had been harassed by a pack of English private investigators working for the organization, Kluge reestablished contact, and I communicated with him or Sherman several times over the next few months. I was happy to be in communication with them, because I’m happy to be in communication with anyone, and my relationship with the Loyalists, who were admitted Scientologists, seemed a spark of hope in the seemingly hopeless and threatening Scientology situation.

8. I have believed and stated that when Scientologists have the freedom to communicate to the people their leaders label “enemies,” Scientology will cease to have enemies. The organization’s leaders prohibit their minions from communicating with me, thus I am their enemy. This prohibition is enforced with severe “ethics” punishment, which could easily include “declaring” the person who dared to communicate with me a “suppressive” person, thus making him the target of the organization’s philosophy and practice of opportunistic hatred Hubbard called “fair game.”

9. I had lost my law office job because of the Armstrong I trial, which really ran from April into June, 1984, and I did not get another job for some months, so had considerable time on my

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hands in the fall of 1984 to meet with Sherman and the Loyalists and do some of the things they wanted. I had begun to draw and write seriously during this period, and some of my writings concerned the Scientology battle and the Loyalists. My situation with the organization and the Loyalists was bizarre and psychologically traumatic, and this is reflected in my writings of the period. Thanks to, I believe, my growing faith in God I was given the gift of a healthy sense of humor and that too is a facet of my communications and writings during the period.

10. In late July, 1984 the organization fed to the media the story, and filed papers in various court cases, including Armstrong I, charging, that Michael Flynn, who had fought the organization’s fair game tactics for five years, who had been my friend and attorney for two years and had just successfully defended me in the Armstrong I trial, was behind a plot to cash a forged check for $2,000,000.00 on one of Hubbard’s accounts at the Bank of New England. Sherman and Kluge communicated that the Loyalists knew Flynn was not involved, and that the organization leaders knew Flynn was uninvolved but were framing him with the forgery. The Loyalists said that they were working inside the organization to acquire the proof of the frame-up, and that when they proved Flynn’s innocence they would be in a position to effectuate the reforms they sought. This was fine with me, because I fully believed that Flynn was innocent, and that the organization was framing him just to be able to attack him to eliminate the threat he represented to its antisocial practices

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and nature.

11. Over the next few months Sherman and Kluge communicated with me regularly about the Loyalists’ progress in documenting the truth about the Flynn frame-up. They claimed that all staff were searched before they could leave OSA or management offices, so it was hard to get any documents out. Nevertheless, on a couple of occasions Sherman and Joey gave me a page or two that had been smuggled out. I learned that a US Attorney in Boston had become involved in the investigation of the frame-up, and I passed whatever I got from the Loyalists to him through Flynn.

12. One of the ideas which developed with the Loyalists in the early fall of 1984 was the possible filing of a lawsuit to take control of the organization from the “criminals.” I saw this as an idea with merit, and could be the effective action the Loyalists said they were looking for to avert a major organization tragedy. I told Flynn what they wanted and he drafted a “bare bones” complaint which I passed to them. Sherman, Kluge and I discussed the lawsuit concept on several occasions, both of them asking me for my ideas and I helped as I could within the limits of my knowledge, ability and imagination.

13. The Loyalists then began discussing with me finding a financial “backer” for their lawsuit, basing this need on the likelihood that the bringing of the suit would freeze organization accounts, and the Loyalists would need operating capital. They claimed that the leaders had lots of money they had skimmed from the organization and squirreled away in their

7

own bank accounts, and the Loyalists were all staff members and thus broke. I couldn’t help them with money, and knew of no one who might finance whatever they did, so they said that, because I understood the situation so well, and had a proven record, they wanted me to talk to and encourage some prospective backers with whom they were in touch. One day I got a call from Kluge, asking me to fly to Las Vegas to meet with such a person, a “rich Scientologist” who had been mistreated by the organization and was aligned with the Loyalists on their goal of reformation.

Although on Kluge’s instructions I purchased a plane ticket, I called off the trip before leaving because my lawyers warned me that I could be walking into a trap.

14. There were many times during this period when I considered the possibility that I was walking into a trap. The thought arose in all my meetings with Kluge, and later with Mike Rinder, the second Loyalist I would meet. Their communications often didn’t jibe with what they or Sherman had said on earlier occasions, and sometimes they said things which were downright stupid. I had no way of originating a communication to them, had no telephone numbers, no locations, no names, and no idea what any of them did. They had my address, phone number, knew exactly what I did, and could call me any time they wanted. They told me almost nothing, and wanted to know everything I knew. They claimed I had to be kept in the dark because of their fear for their lives, and for that reason I went along with their, even to me, strange behavior.

8

15. Because of their fear for their lives they depended on secrecy, duplicity and intelligence procedures and goals. Although I had been in intelligence in the organization and had the essential quality for the field; i.e., native intelligence, I had, after leaving the organization, come to the conclusion that Scientology’s brand of intelligence; i.e., the secret world of data, duplicity, stealth, hidden intentions and hidden identities, was ineffective, unhealthy, unholy, and not my choice for how I would make my way through life and deal with my problems. Even inside the organization, which is an intelligence-based group, I had urged those who were in positions to do something about it to open up, stop lying, disclose its leaders, divulge its secrets; because I felt that its lies, secrets, and secret orders from its secret leaders would only bring upon it more problems. After leaving the organization, a factor in my life which led to my faith in openness and freedom as opposed to secrecy and leverage, was all the testifying I did, in trial in Armstrong I and in B & G Wards, and in many days of depositions in several more Scientology-related cases. Also I knew that the organization’s leaders, who had an undeniable determination to harm me, possessed my pc folders which contained every embarrassing incident or thought in my life, and my lives back umpteen impossibillion years. These facts had resulted in a tendency in me at times during this period to not care what happened to me and to act a little wild and silly.

16. Sometime during 1984 it came to me that what I was

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following, and what was a far superior technology and faith than intelligence, or perhaps perfect intelligence, was guidance. I had been given, before and after my asking, a desire to know my Creator, and I believe I received during this period some of His communications to me. Hubbard in his writings put no faith in his Creator, but put it in something of his own making, an intelligence apparatus in which he was the secret leader with secret bank accounts, secret communication lines, secret codes, secret intentions, and secret lawyers to keep them all secret. I had come to know God a little, and understood that no matter how scary things got I was in hands in which I was in no real danger. I could be shot, my body could be destroyed, I could be defamed and ruined, and I would still be in no real danger. And things did get scary for me in my dealings with Sherman and the Loyalists during this period. I picked up surveillance on a number of occasions, and there was the nagging strangeness of the Loyalists’ communications and the movie-like quality of this play in which I was being played with. I still retained my intellect and acted with good sense most of the time, but a shift was occurring in my mind and soul. I began to walk deliberately into danger, but I was also new at this approach to life, and as yet a little foolhardy and undisciplined, and these facts too are reflected in my writings and actions of the period.

17. Sherman’s and Kluge’s interest was intelligence and they didn’t want to hear much of my philosophy of guidance, courage and openness, so I turned my mind to the intelligence

10

game, and as always happens when I turn my mind to any subject, I had ideas. Some of these ideas I communicated to the Loyalists, some I wrote down, some were only funny. Our meetings had a secretive, spy story feel to them, partly because of the danger the Loyalists said they were in and the danger I was in anyone would say, partly because of the subject matter we discussed, and partly because of the settings in which we met. Sherman insisted that I couldn’t come to his home, so we met on many occasions in the bird sanctuary in Griffith Park. My first meeting with Kluge was in a cemetery in Glendale. I met him two more times in early November at different locations in Griffith Park, and then met with Rinder two times in late November at two more locations in the park.

18. Sherman told me around October, 1984 that the Loyalists had found a potential backer, a woman named Rene, another “rich Scientologist,” who he said had been horribly hurt by the organization. He said he knew her personally and considered her a good and trusted friend. He said that she owned a publishing company which printed calendars, that he had told her about my artwork and writing, and that she wanted to see some of my materials for possible publication. Following our first meeting in Griffith Park Kluge took me to the Sheraton Grand Hotel in downtown Los Angeles to meet her. I took along a file of some of my work and left it with her. In my meeting with her she wanted to know my perspective on the lawsuit idea and my thoughts on removing the organization’s criminal leadership.

11

19. While claiming that the Loyalists wanted to take legal action to bring about a safe transfer of power, both Sherman and Kluge also claimed that they didn’t know anything about legal matters, nor any of the organization’s litigations, and that there were other people higher up in the Loyalist network who were trained in legal, stayed abreast of the organization’s litigation battles, and had an understanding of the Loyalists’ legal options and an overview of their plan which Sherman and Kluge didn’t have. Coupled with their claimed need to keep me in the dark for fear of their lives, their assertions of ignorance of legal matters caused considerable frustration in me and in our communications. As a result, I requested in a number of communications to speak to their “best legal mind.”

20. Finally the Loyalists said that their legal expert would meet me and a rendezvous was set up, again in Griffith Park. The “legal expert” turned out to be Mike Rinder, a person I had known in the organization, who had held various lower level administrative posts. Rinder, it turned out, also professed ignorance of legal concepts, and my meetings and communications with him were even more frustrating.

21. Some time after my last meeting with Rinder, which occurred November 30, 1984, I received a phone call from Kluge, advising me that the Loyalists did not trust me and would not be communicating with me again. I then wrote them my final communication, a copy of which is appended hereto as Exhibit A6, and gave it to Sherman to give to them.

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22. During my cross-examination7 in the spring, 1985 trial of Julie Christofferson v. Scientology, Circuit Court of the State of Oregon, Multnomah County, No. A7704-05184, the organization broke the fact that Sherman, Kluge and Rinder had been covert operatives, the Loyalists were invented, and that my meetings with Kluge and Rinder had been videotaped.8 The organization called the whole more than two year affair the “Armstrong Operation.” Organization lawyers, Earle Cooley and John Peterson, claimed the Armstrong operation had been authorized by the Los Angeles Police Department, and they produced a letter dated November 7, 1984, a copy of which is appended hereto as Exhibit B 9, signed by an officer Phillip Rodriguez, directing organization private investigator Eugene M. Ingram to electronically eavesdrop on me and Michael Flynn.

23. On April 23, 1985, Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl F. Gates issued a public statement, a copy of which is appended hereto as Exhibit C10, denying that the Rodriguez letter was a correspondence from the Los Angeles Police Department, denying that the Los Angeles Police Department had cooperated with Ingram, and stating emphatically that all purported authorizations directed to Ingram by any member of the Los Angeles Police Department are invalid and unauthorized. On information and belief, the officer, Phillip Rodriguez, who signed Ingram’s letter was paid $10,000.00 for his signature. Also on information and belief, following a Los Angeles Police Department Internal Affairs Division investigation and a Police

13

Department Board of Rights, Officer Rodriguez was suspended from the Los Angeles Police Force. Eugene Ingram had himself some years before been drummed out of the Los Angeles Police Department. He is reputed to have been busted for pandering and taking payoffs from drug dealers. He is a liar and a bully who has been involved in organization intelligence operations against its perceived enemies for many years. During the period I was involved with the Loyalists Ingram called me at my home and threatened to put a bullet between my eyes.

24. Initially the presiding judge in the Christofferson trial Donald F. Londer refused to admit the tapes because they had been obtained illegally. Then he viewed them in chambers and when he returned to the bench stated that “the tapes are devastating, very devastating to the church.” Then he admitted them into evidence.

25. Despite Judge Londer’s ruling and comments, and despite Chief Gates’ repudiation of the Rodriguez “authorization,” the organization has continued in press and courts around the world to claim that the videotape operation was “police-sanctioned.”

The organization has continued to claim that I originated the “plot to overthrow ” church” management” and that I initiated the contact with the organization members, who merely played along with my plan while remaining “loyal” to the organization. It also has continued to claim that the videotapes show me plotting to forge documents and seed them in organization files to be found in a raid, show me creating “sham lawsuits,” show me urging

14

the Loyalists to not prove anything but “just allege it,” and show me seeking to take control of the organization. The videotapes show none of those things. The tapes show that in the fall of 1984, during the reign of the organization’s present supreme leader David Miscavige (DM), the fair game doctrine was alive and as unfair as ever. The tapes show a mean-spirited, mendacious and malevolent organization using well-drilled operatives and electronic gadgetry to attempt, unsuccessfully, to set up an unwitting, funny, sometimes silly, clearly helpful, at times foul-mouthed, but otherwise ordinary human male.

26. The organization’s refusal to stop telling these lies is not surprising, however, because its leaders have put so many of their eggs in their dirty tricks basket. These leaders are unbalanced and in a very precarious situation. Having lied about the Armstrong Operation in so many courts and publications and to so many people, including their own followers, these leaders risk their positions of power, and in their minds their very lives, if they ever admit the breadth of those lies. Yet it is in the acknowledgement of the truth behind those lies where ultimately their safety will be found.

27. It has not ceased to be embarrassing to me whenever the organization trots out the Armstrong videotapes, because I do say some silly and raunchy things. But the organization has never been able to embarrass me into silence and it won’t now.

28. The Scientology legal war has almost run its course. The organization’s leaders can never rewrite all history.

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Scientologists of good will everywhere can be free.

I declare under the penalty of perjury under the laws of the State of California that the foregoing is true and correct.

Executed at San Anselmo, California, on February 20, 1994. 11
[signed]
GERALD ARMSTRONG

Copyright © 1994 Gerry Armstrong

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Notes

  1. The Guardian’s Office (“GO”), headed from 1966 to 1981 by Mary Sue Hubbard, who reported to and was controlled by L. Ron Hubbard, consisted of five bureaus: Intelligence, Public Relations, Legal, Finance and Social Coordination (front groups). The GO was responsible for hiding its money and its actual command lines, defending the organization against attacks and for eliminating all opposition to its progress. Hubbard patterned its intelligence bureau, B-1, and the organization’s total espionage mentality on the work of Reinhard Gehlen, Hitler’s spy master. On Hubbard’s orders, after the conviction of 11 top GO intelligence personnel, including Mary Sue, for criminal activities against the US Government, Scientology’s second major arm of power, the Sea Organization, in a 1981 putsch took control of the GO’s functions and subsequently renamed the GO arm the Office of Special Affairs, “OSA.” ↩
  2. Sec checks are accusatory interrogations using Hubbard’s electropsychometer or E-Meter as a lie detector. Sec checks could be brutal, could go on for many hours or days, could involve several people asking questions, threatening and badgering, and could have disastrous results for the interrogee. ↩
  3. Pc folders, also called preclear or auditing files or folders, contain the record of processes run and questions asked by the auditor (psycho- therapist), E-Meter reads, and answers given and statements made by the preclear (or patient) during Scientology auditing (or psychotherapy) sessions. It was well known that I had opposed and exposed the organ- ization’s misuse of information divulged by the organization’s “preclears” (what were essentially psychotherapist-patient confidences) in auditing. I had been attempting to get the organization to deliver to me my pc folders throughout the Armstrong I litigation, and the misuse of auditing information was an issue in the Armstrong I trial. Judge Paul G. Breckenridge, Jr. stated in his decision following the 30-day Armstrong I trial: “[Mary Sue Hubbard ↩
  4. See The Breckenridge Decision, filed June 22, 1984. ↩
  5. This Royal Courts of Justice case, known as Re: B and G Wards resulted in a Judgment on July 23, 1984 issued by Justice Latey in favor of the non-Scientologist parent. The Judgment, which was upheld on appeal, contained a scathing condemnation of organization policies and practices. ↩
  6. Exhibit A: Letter to the Loyalists ↩
  7. See Excerpts of Proceedings in Christofferson ↩
  8. See Illegal Videos ↩
  9. Exhibit B: Illegal authorization November 7, 1984 ↩
  10. Exhibit C: Public Announcement by LAPD Police Chief Daryl Gates ↩
  11. Also see related Declaration of Gerry Armstrong (February 22, 1994). ↩

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