Archives for December 1992

David Miscavige and all other individuals who participate in the control of Scientology

C/O Laurie J. Bartilson, Esquire
Bowles & Moxon
6255 Sunset Blvd., Suite 2000
Los Angeles, CA 90028

Re: Nothling v. Scientology

Dear David and all others involved:

I am writing this to you, and the various copy recipients listed below, because there are certain things it is fair that you know. Although it is the trial in the Nothling case, which, I understand, is set for early February, that has moved me to write at this time, the idea of writing has made addressing a number of other subjects also timely.

You will recall that in June of 1991 when Malcolm Nothling called me and asked me to testify in his case in Johannesburg I wrote to the organization via Eric Lieberman to see if by initiating communication on the subject you might see that there was an answer to your litigation problems different from the one you and your erstwhile leader had been believing in and pursuing as long as any of us can remember.

Mr. Lieberman wrote back, essentially advising me you said stick it in my ear, and that more, not less litigation was going to be the same old solution; and to not expect communication other than the solidest of sorts. Copies of Mr. Lieberman’s and my letters are enclosed herewith.

I did travel to South Africa in 1991 to testify, as you know, but the trial was postponed on the organization’s motion. Now it’s set to happen again. Again Mr. Nothling has asked me to testify, again I have agreed, and again I am writing you to see if there is any sense in attempting to unfoment this litigation.

Your public attack line that Gerald Armstrong foments litigation against you is particularly hurtful because of what I have done and continue to do to unfoment litigation. Even my signing of your settlement agreement was, in the face of your intent to hurt me, which fact is settled by the agreement itself, an act only of unfomentation.

You all should take a good hard look at the hurt your practices, certainly your litigation practices, cause in the world. And you don’t have to desist in them because of anything I’ve said. You can knock off those bad practices for any reason you want, including because they don’t work and make no sense.

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All the decent people, believe me, in your organization want you to get out of the stupid attack-the-attacker business, and they’d salute you for getting the organization out of that silliness, but they’re too frightened. You shouldn’t frighten good people that way. It’s cruel. And any thinking soul knows that you guys are only acting out of fear, so you really are not fooling anyone with your blindness and bluster.

I realize you’ve put your faith in really bad things, like lies and PR, threats and bullying, and really mean people, like Gene Ingram. And I’m aware that having put your faith in badness for so long, and spent so many millions of dollars to have so many bad lawyers make so many bad decisions and add so much to their brethren’s bad name, it can seem impossible to quit. But you must. All it will take is the willingness to unfoment your litigation.

Eugene M. Ingram has done such nasty things to so many people in the service of your organization, you and he should be spanked. His terrible charge at the CAN convention that I have AIDS is heartbreaking, not because I have AIDS, which I don’t, but because your pet pit viper personalizes and focuses your organization’s institutionalized hatred.

By accusing me of having AIDS, you and Ingram attack not just me, you attack the many people whose lives have been touched by this disease, or for that matter touched by your organization, and you attack yourself. Your similar-veined attacks on other people of good will at the CAN conference, like Father Kent Burtner, has brought your organization to ignomy.

But the target of faith can be rechosen. And that is where I urge sense and unfomentation. Put your faith in what is real, what is true, what can always be depended on. Put your faith in what in people is true, unchanging and ceaselessly loving. Putting your faith in lies, PR, threats, bullying and bullies you will always betray yourself because you put your faith in nothing; and you and every being everywhere have a right to everything that nothing isn’t.

Likewise don’t put your faith in litigation or your use of the courts to harass. It is possible to be faithful to a higher ideal than wins in court. If you have put your faith in lies, leverage, advantage and bullying to secure a win, you have gained nothing. If you put your faith in truth, hope, charity, love, no matter the courtroom outcome you have everything; that’s religion.

Since the 1991 almost trial in the Nothling case the California Court of Appeal issued its opinion in the appeal you took from the Breckenridge decision in Armstrong I, the California Supreme Court denied review, and the Court of Appeal

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denied your motion to seal the appellate record. You brought and lost the motion to enforce the settlement agreement before Judge Geernaert in Armstrong I, and then you sued me to enforce it in Armstrong II.

In May Judge Sohigian issued his ruling refusing to enforce the agreement, although enjoining me from testifying unless pursuant to a subpoena. He also ruled that I did not have to not make myself amenable to service of process. I will supply a copy of the Breckenridge decision, the Armstrong opinion and the Sohigian injunction to any of the recipients of this letter upon request.

Because you didn’t appeal from the Sohigian injunction, you have accepted it. I believe as well that for a valueless desire for a valueless win at any cost you also accepted his dicta; e.g. “involves abusing people who are weak,” “involves techniques of coercion,” “a very, very substantial deviation between [your] conduct and standards of ordinary, courteous conduct and standards of ordinary, honest behavior,” “be sure you cut the deck,” “make sure to count all the chips.”

As a result, I consider myself free to do anything anyone can, except testify absent a subpoena. Much of what I am permitted do I am going to do. I am going to write freely, speak freely, publish, talk to the media, associate freely, and continue, until you put your faith in something more religious than what is bad in jurisprudence, to confront the injustice you bring to court.

In the next month or so I expect to initiate speaking or media events to help pay the enormous costs of this litigation. And I expect to promote my legal position within the publishing industry, because my story and my writings on the subject are literarily and commercially worthy.

I will continue to associate with and befriend all those people I consider you attack unjustly and senselessly. I will make my knowledge and support available to the Cult Awareness Network, a group of people of good will you vilify, in all the litigation you have fomented against them. I will make my knowledge and support available to any Scientologist who is afraid to go anywhere else for understanding, and to the families of Scientologists your organization has estranged. I will even make my knowledge and support available to entities like Time and people like Rich Behar in their defenses from your attacks.

I will, nevertheless, remain available to do whatever I can to unfoment your litigation. I will meet with you, talk with you, help you to find a better solution to your problems. Because of your decision to not have anyone communicate with me, no one from your organization has. I get a little lawyer

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contact, lots of PI BS, an OSA hearing or deposition attender, enough psychic skirmishes for an army, but, for the life of me, no real people.

In 1991, fantastically, I was the only person in the world, other than Malcolm Nothling himself, who was willing to testify at his trial. And that was enough reason to go. In February 1993, although at this trial I probably won’t be the only person willing to testify, there will still be ample reasons to go, unless the case can be resolved.

I really would rather there was no trial and I really would rather not go. Lord knows this last period has been overwhelming and the litigation behemoth terrifying; and Lord knows I have my own calling, which has nothing to do with your legal problems. So I’m willing to do a lot to unfoment the Nothling litigation, and all the tangled legal webs you’ve woven. But I sure can’t do much if you continue to see legal warfare as the solution to your problems and continue to pay the millions your legal mercenaries say the warfare costs.

I am aware that with enough money to enough lawyers you, the leaders of your organization, can hide yourselves and make your roles in your trumped-up war seem very important. There is no doubt this is desirable, it just isn’t fair. The real purpose of your little war is to facilitate your doing something different from Scientology, while all those whom you control must go through the daily grind you say you’re above.

I don’t fault you for doing something different from Scientology, but I do not find acceptable your holding
Scientologists in bondage to your catastrophic cause, enforcing your lie that you have their best interests in mind, robbing their years of youth and vigor, and putting them at risk while you show up at the occasional ribbon cutting ceremony, lunch with lawyers and the like, sucker celebs, run PIs and intel ops, conspire, cheat, lie, steal, bully and destroy. I urge something more creative as a better idea.

Your hardworking staff members and people of good will around the world who have supported you financially and spiritually will not for much longer be fooled by your foolishness and will stop believing your lies. They will speak to each other, they will speak out against your suppression, and they will act to free themselves and their friends. You cannot much longer, as we move societally into the age of wisdom, cynically and sillily intimidate good people with threat and suppress good people with lies.

There is the matter of mitigation of damages which, because you insist your lawyers tell you what you pay them to say, you may not have heard or yet understood. In that by the Sohigian

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ruling I am permitted to speak freely, write freely, publish freely, associate freely, when, it could be argued, and you have, that prior to the ruling and pursuant to the settlement agreement I was not so permitted, I have, in your attempt to enforce the agreement, prevailed.

By not appealing the Sohigian ruling you have acquiesced thereto. I am therefore due costs and fees in Armstrong II plus the costs and fees you already owe in your earlier losing and unappealed effort in Armstrong I. But in addition to the fees and costs now owing, and increasing as you protract this already
lost litigation, there is the cumulative effect of your legal onslaught which, continuing after the case was lost, if not before, is in every minute malicious.

Gerald Armstrong and The Gerald Armstrong Corporation (TGAC) must also mitigate their damages. I have a duty, therefore, to end this litigation as quickly as possible. Thus I write to so many organizational recipients; thus I canvass to see if within the organization’s many parts, all put at risk by their leaders’ asininity and mean-spiritedness, there are people of good will who will see sense in what is in their best interest.

That after the Sohigian ruling you sued TGAC (pronounce that Tee-Gee-Ack) is silly and self-destructive. The only thing in the world Gerald Armstrong, individual, is prohibited from doing by the “injunction,” is testifying about his Scientology history and knowledge without first accepting the perfunctory subpoena.
TGAC only came into existence in 1987, six years after Gerald Armstrong’s organization experiences ended, and a year after the Armstrong I litigation “settled.”

TGAC cannot testify, with or without subpoena, about any Scientology experiences, because it has had, aside from those which have flowed from your lawsuit, none. Since no one, including TGAC, is prohibited by Sohigian from doing any of the things TGAC actually is capable of doing, it is free to do everything anyone or any other corporation can; and by not appealing the injunction you have so agreed. Thus, having no conceivably legitimate claim against TGAC, you depend on one manufactured from madness, and you must therefore dismiss the mess you’ve made.

There is also, as mentioned above, the fact that in order to defend myself from your attacks and to fund the defense of the litigation you have fomented I must speak and must publish. I’m sure you understand that I remain completely confident that no court, other than the odd one your mercenaries are able to compromise with bucks, babes or bull, will order me to not defend myself.

I realize you will probably claim to be offended by

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everything I’ve written in this letter. I can’t do much about that because you seem to take offense no matter what I say or write, or don’t. For, inter alia, that reason I haven’t said or written it differently. I really don’t blame you for being offended and I don’t expect you not to be offended; nor will I be offended if you are. I think my position is obvious and I think peace is worth doing something about, even if the fomenters of
war are offended. I’ve used the words I’ve used because to me they make sense and they’re a facet of my craft.

This letter is not really, however you may take it, a complaint nor an attack. It is an effort to unfoment your
litigation, into which I have been, albeit for some God-given purpose, drawn. So, neither forgetting nor ignoring Judge Sohigian’s admonition not to settle Armstrong II, but still hoping, with my heart crossed, here is my proposal:

1. Settle the Nothling case;

2. Settle with Ed Roberts;

3. Dismiss your complaint against TGAC and Gerald
Armstrong;

4. Remove all your bar complaints against Ford
Greene;

5. Pay my attorney fees and costs;

6. We will dismiss the cross-complaint and appeal;

7. Cancel the agreement;

8. Return all materials you’ve stolen from me at any
time;

9. Pay me whatever you want, including, but not limited to, nothing.

1. Malcolm Nothling has a claim and he has survived a lot to get to trial. His costs, not much by US litigation standards, must be recognized, and he must be made whole financially, ethically and publicly. I am convinced that his daughter, but for your control of her mother and her life, would enjoy a healthy, loving relationship with her father. Therefore you must do whatever is within your power to reunite them.

2. You know about the Ed Roberts case because Ms. Bartilson interrogated me about my providing assistance to Mr. Roberts in my last series of depositions in Armstrong II, and one of your lawyers, Marcello Di Mauro, in earlier times communicated about him with Ford Greene. Ed Roberts is a friend of mine who

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was sucked dry and flat out robbed by your registrars on the way to an up- or downstat week of no consequence to anyone as it turns out, and always does, but Ed.

I have found myself in the silly position of being the only person in the world willing to help Mr. Roberts against your organization. Again, I have no desire to have Mr. Roberts engage you in litigation. In fact his situation can be resolved without your fomenting not only more litigation, but more ill will and silliness. For you it is merely an accounting matter. You ripped Mr. Roberts off; now pay him what is needed to make him
whole again.

Mr. Roberts’ case of Scientology lies, threats, treachery and thievery, his own money then used to pay your pittiless pettifoggers to prevent him from anything resembling redress, is being played and replayed every day of the year in your orgs. I would think that the three or so million you wasted on your inane USA Today ads to counter Richard Behar’s few good pages could have taken care of three hundred Mr. Roberts and done a heap of good.

All your ads did was a heap of bad: more lies, more hate, more embarrassment for Scientologists everywhere, another dead forest, and an uncharitable little delay to your victims before they are made whole. The Ed Roberts case is, in my opinion, the proof of Time’s theme: that you are – all of you at the top of
your organization – a cult of greed. But worse, you squander your plunder, as witness Toronto, starve the good and fatten your PIs and proctors and their proctologists. And all with the fatuous excuse of a right to defend wrongness and attack rightness because your “religion’s” stupidity is, in our courts of law, beyond question.

Anyway I want to have Ed’s needs taken care of toot sweet. He probably wouldn’t think less of you if you didn’t apologize, but I think it’s a good idea and sure couldn’t hurt.

3. I don’t care what order everything is done in. I think whatever is most practical, sensible and ergonomically sound is the way to approach this particular program, which, I’m sure can be wrapped up in a couple of days.

4. This is easy. These Ingram-generated efforts have only served to shine a light on your invidiously scheming enterprise. All your similarly baseless bar complaints against my other lawyer, Michael Flynn, came to nothing. You should learn from the earthworms. Filing no spurious bar complaints whatsoever
they demonstrate their superior philosophy.

5. Although they’re in the range of, I don’t think fees and costs are over $500,000. Clearly nothing is going to happen

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unless you cover my attorneys’ fees and costs. To leave me with that indebtedness is unfair and unworkable. You will recall that I made a proposal in 1984, being then scared and weak: pay my lawyers’ fees and costs of, I guessed, $150,000, and I’ll quit. You, and in those days, Hubbard, said no way. I, less scared and much stronger, urge you to choose again.

6. Dismissal of the cross-complaint is easy. I’ll take care of it.

7. You have to cancel the settlement agreement in order to demonstrate to yourselves that it was the wrong thing in which to put your faith. You will notice that when you cancel the agreement nothing will happen. Yet you will have freed me. And that is what you should make Scientology’s only business: freeing people. You will also observe that when you free me you free yourselves; in fact you cannot yourselves be free unless you free me.

Regarding my relationship with you after you cancel the agreement, that is where you must reassert your faith. Have the faith that I will neither say nor write worse things about you if you free me to do so. As you know I can say some pretty pointed things about you now just because you won’t cancel that degrading
document. Put faith in what occurs in silence. Put faith in the inevitable.

8. I’m aware this may for a long time remain a pettiness you’d rather not confront. But I can guarantee that if you return my materials – the Hubbard letters manuscript, the Cones, all the other materials you and your PIs have stolen from me over the years, I will not bring criminal charges, and I won’t even bring the subject up again.

9. You decide. If you think I did a lousy job unfomenting your litigation, pay me zippo. Even if it all works for everyone, timing inspired and ideas a Godsend, you don’t have to pay me anything. I generally don’t refuse what’s offered. You know how much I’m worth.

I haven’t forgotten Wollersheim, Yanny I & II, the Aznarans, the CAN litigation, claimants all over the place, your government lawsuits, the rest of the settlement signatories, your taxes, nor your image and media distress, and I think it’s appropriate to say that I can help you unfoment those problems as well. I would, of course, need half a chance.

If you look deep in your hearts I believe you’ll find you really do not want Scientology’s legacy to be one of suppression; suppression of the Constitution, human dignity, truth, religion, justice, even suppression of your own good selves. Wouldn’t it be better to be known as the people who ended the madness in

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peace and style; a radical recognition of the transcendence of quantum scientology. LRH was Newtonian in his physics and relativistic epistemologically. I like to call one aspect of my philosophy, inter alia non-mutual exclusivity.

I believe that everyone will become a person of good will, that everyone already is, has been and will forever be, that there is progress and perfection, hope and reason, that to know who we are we must accept the truth of our relationship to our Creator, that all about us that we made is illusion, that we have reason to be grateful that is so, that our Creator, God, our Father Loves us in the same Love by which He created us and holds us always safe and always loved in that Love, that we, His children, are one and One with Him, that the means by which He is remembered, and hence our relationship, and hence who we are, and hence what we know, is forgiveness, that forgiveness is the recognizing of illusion for what it is, that creation is our
nature, and that everything is all there is.

With a wish for peace in 1993, I remain hopeful and,
yours sincerely,

Gerald Armstrong
715 Sir Francis Drake Blvd.
San Anselmo, CA 949650
(415)456-8450

:ga

cc: Malcolm Nothling
Ed Roberts
Lawrence Wollersheim
Richard & Vicki Aznaran
Richard Behar
Ford Greene, Esquire
Paul Morantz, Esquire
Joseph A. Yanny, Esquire
Toby L. Plevin, Esquire
Graham E. Berry, Esquire
Stuart Cutler, Esquire
Anthony Laing, Esquire
John C. Elstead, Esquire
Michael J. Flynn, Esquire
Fr. Kent Burtner

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Margaret Singer, PhD.
Cult Awareness Network
Daniel A. Leipold, Esquire
Church of Scientology International
Church of Scientology of California
Religious Technology Center
Church of Spiritual Technology
Church of Scientology ASHO
Church of Scientology AOLA
Founding Church of Scientology of Washington, D.C.
Church of Scientology Flag Service Organization
Church of Scientology of Arizona
Church of Scientology of Los Angeles
Church of Scientology of Stevens Creek
Church of Scientology of Sacramento
Church of Scientology of San Francisco
Church of Scientology of Washington State
Church of Scientology of Boston
Church of Scientology of Portland
Church of Scientology of New York

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