To Hubbard, you, Rathbun, Miscavige and the rest of you conspirators, persecuting your targets, silencing or destroying us, ruining us utterly is a game. You are “high-toned,” and enjoy creating that game, even if it is by wog standards evil and by wog law criminal. Through all your years persecuting us, committing crimes against us, you had to display good indicators (“GIs”). You had to be GIs. You had to be uptone, “winning on post,” cheerfully lying, enthusiastically tormenting us, aesthetically plotting our demise, exhilarated as you silenced us, in action destroying us, serenely driving us crazy. You could never have exhibited bad indicators (“BIs”) – a shred of sincere sympathy for your victims, a scintilla of unfaked credence granted us, real regret, a hint of conscience, an inkling of unhappiness about what you were doing — or you would not have lasted twenty years as CO of your conspiracy’s SP persecution department.
In 1994, just before you tried to extort me with the in-my-face threat that you and your coconspirators were going to keep on black PRing me until I stopped telling the truth, you executed and filed a declaration in the Scientology v. Steven Fishman and Uwe Geertz case in US District Court in Los Angeles falsely accusing me of, among other things, perjury and extortion. Dramatizing the beingness Hubbard assigned in his scriptures to criminals, as Scientologists standardly do, you were accusing me, and other individuals in the SP class, of what you yourself were doing.1
The Scientologists have continued to use your declaration as truth and continued to use you as a truthful witness of the experiences and knowledge you falsely swear to. The Scientologists use your declaration for the same purpose you had when you signed and filed it in 1994: to smear your conspiracy’s SP truth-telling victims. I have never seen where you actually recant the lies in this declaration or any other sworn statement you executed for your conspiracy.2
You know a lot about recanting, Mike, which means, per Merriam-Webster:
to withdraw or repudiate (a statement or belief) formally and publicly; to take back or disavow an opinion, declaration, or course of action; make an open confession of error
What you called recanting, however, was forcing your victims, the people you tried your nastiest to silence or destroy, to sign affidavits retracting what they knew to be true. You got them to lie in affidavits, and attack other victims of yours with lies, and you called that recanting. But you know what the truth is. You knew what the truth was every time you lied. And you have never recanted your lies.
Recently, as you know, the Scientologists used a paragraph from this declaration in a black PR smear of Hana Whitfield, who had contributed to the Aftermath series.
In 1994, when Whitfield was at the peak of her “deprogramming” activity, Remini’s co-host Mike Rinder wrote a declaration under penalty of perjury describing the anti-Scientologists she was part of (and that he has since joined). What he wrote then perfectly describes Rinder today, Remini and the parade of guests like Whitfield they trot out each week for her reality TV show:
“These people have gathered around them a few others who are bitter and harbor an unabiding[sic] resentment of Scientology and what it stands for and for their own failures in the Church. They view the Church as their ‘lottery ticket’ and pursue their jackpot with lies and threats at the expense of the millions of happy and satisfied members who support the Church with their time and donations. The Aznarans and Youngs are joined in that pursuit by the likes of Hana Whitfield, Andre and Mary Tabayoyon, Larry Wollersheim, Steve Fishman and Gerry Armstrong. Though they either do not know David Miscavige, or had some remote contact with him many years ago, they are willing to make vindictive allegations, not based on personal knowledge or the truth, and defame him personally and as the leader of the religion. The tactic is as transparent as it is unconscionable—spread venom in the hope that the victims of the hate campaign will eventually be forced to buy their silence so the Church can get on with its real purpose of expanding the Scientology religion and helping more people.”3
You swear in your declaration, which, as the Scientologists point out, is under penalty of perjury, that you have personal knowledge of the facts you set forth, including details about Jesus Christ, specifically the causes of his crucifixion and the actions of Judas Iscariot, Pontius Pilate, other Romans in Judea, and the coeval Christians. You equate Scientology head David Miscavige with Jesus, and present yourself as an apostle, proclaiming Miscavige’s Christ-like qualities.
You adduce for the court, and announce to the world, the “good news” that you know Miscavige’s “compassion from personal experience;” that Miscavige twice personally took care of your healing from illness; that Miscavige is “completely honest, and sincerely dedicated to helping people;” that he “never sought personal power or aggrandizement;” that he constantly demonstrated “integrity and selfless willingness to serve for the good of others;” that “he works … without respite for only one reason–his sincere dedication to bettering the lives of others;” that in response to “a virtually unending history of personal attacks against him… [he] didn’t change;” that he “took no credit” for his enormous accomplishments when “the credit he so graciously gave to others, in fact, belonged to him;” that he “made the tax exemption by the IRS possible;” that he “is very approachable and friendly;” that he even “eats with the rest of the staff in the communal dining room.”
You equate the testimony of Exscientologists, including me, about Miscavige with “the false accusations” and “the lies,” which, you say, incited Jesus’ crucifiers to crucify him. You declare, knowingly falsely, that we “targeted Mr. Miscavige with … spite and malevolence;” that we “harbored” “blind hatred;” that we “are willing to make vindictive allegations, not based on personal knowledge or the truth, and defame him personally;” that we “rail against Mr. Miscavige and unleash the foulest lies about him [our] imaginations can concoct;” that “none of the accusations made about him were true;” that we “spread venom in the hope that the victims of the hate campaign will eventually be forced to buy [our] silence;” that we are being used “as a threat to extort funds;” and that we are “paid witnesses, “mercenary witnesses” in Scientology’s case against Fishman and Geertz.
Although some of the Exscientologists you name in your declaration were paid for their expert testimony and expert participation in the case, and although some of my evidence and certain of my sworn statements were used in the case, I was not paid anything. As for any hopes or efforts of mine, which you say have been to force whomever or whatever to buy my silence, I think it is evident that I have worked uncompromisingly to demonstrate that my silence is unbuyable, and what I might say could be as valuable as God’s Own Words.
Your declaration still sits in the US Federal Court files, available to everyone. The Scientology conspirators still use your declaration, testimony and other OSA work product to vilify the individuals you vilify in it, and to incite hatred and violence against us. You have never corrected the gross lies you told in it. Both your false witnessing when you were officially in the SO, and your refusal to correct your lies and perjury from that period, unquestionably still serve your conspiracy’s malign purposes. Whatever pretext you used for your lies and perjury, and whatever pretext you use now for not correcting your false witnessing, your basic motivation that underlies your excuses, I conclude, is cowardice.
In your declaration, you present yourself as a Bible expositor, qualified to instruct the US Federal Court on Christian scripture and thought. You present as qualified to assert a holy equivalence between Miscavige and Jesus Christ, and an unholy equivalence between Miscavige’s critics and Jesus’ crucifers. In a 2013 documentary Scientologists at War, Rathbun corroborated your equating Miscavige with Jesus Christ:
- Ron Hubbard [after his death in January 1986] is now God, and [Miscavige is] appointed Jesus. And so he’s Jesus Christ to Scientologists.4
In providing your credentials, Mike, that qualify you to testify as you did, you state that you are a “Director of the Church of Scientology International (CSI).” More importantly, but not in your declaration, you were at that date the Commanding Officer OSA International. The Court and other readers of your declaration would probably be predisposed to understand that a director of an international church would possess deep knowledge of scripture. I mention your discourse on these bogus biblical parallels because it permits, in fact evokes, a comment on Hubbard, Miscavige, Rathbun, you and your coconspirators’ actual biblical roles.
Notes
- http://armstrong-op.gerryarmstrong.ca/declaration-of-michael-rinder-april-11-1994/ ↩
- See, e.g., Deposition of Michael Rinder (January 6, 2015). ↩
- http://www.leahreminiaftermath.com/articles/leah-remini-digs-up-hana-whitfield-after-three-decades.html# ↩
- https://www.journeyman.tv/film_documents/5895/transcript/ ↩