Source: http://media.pravmir.ru/mp3/armst.mp3
Download audio file: http://www.2shared.com/audio/_Bl7IOBi/Gerry_Armstrong_2011-05-18_Ful.html
Duration: 2 hours 11 min. 57 sec.
File size: 123.72 MB
Translation and transcript
Alexander Dvorkin (AD): I’ll translate from here.
[Read more…] about Lecture at St. Tikhon’s University, Moscow (audio and transcript) 18 May 2011
Translation of a Russian article posted on May 19, 2011 on the Russian Orthodox website pravoslavie.ru: http://www.pravoslavie.ru/jurnal/46602.htm
“Scientologists collect the most intimate information about people to turn them into obedient slaves”
Meeting with a former personal secretary to the founder of Scientology
by Antonina Maga
May 19, 2011The activities of destructive sects are one of the most dangerous phenomena of present times, but not many are aware of this danger, because they consider sects as numerically insignificant groups of fanatics with an intense gaze handing out flyers on the streets. This subject has become less popular today, though for a time the media overfed us with stories about various frauds, charlatans, and even sorcerers, and all sorts of pseudoscientists have traditionally enjoyed the respect of multitudes.
The word “spirituality” for us today has lost a vivid practical sense, so everyone can assign their own meaning to it. To the man in the street, sect members appear “religious” in the same way as those who represent traditional religions.
A meeting with Gerry Armstrong at St. Tikhon’s Orthodox University provided an opportunity to learn about the real dangers of one of the most powerful sects in the world, a sect that has over the past 20 years made inroads even in Russia. Armstrong was a former personal secretary to the founder of the Scientology sect, L. Ron Hubbard. He became a defector after, having earned the trust of the sect’s creator and gained access to key documents of the organization, he began to understand what he had fallen into.
The meeting was chaired by the president of the St. Irenaeus of Lyon Center of Religious Studies and head of sectarian studies at St. Tikhon’s Orthodox University, Alexander Dvorkin, who helped translate Armstrong’s words from English to Russian.
The former sect member related the story of his life. Today as he travels the world bringing the truth about Scientology to the people of various countries, he is actively tracked, as he has been for the past 30 years already, by the organization’s adherents because, for them, he is now a “suppressive person” and “fair game”. This is what people who think differently are called in Scientology. They are people who prevent Scientology from achieving “world domination” and their destruction is allowed and encouraged with the promise of impunity by Scientology doctrine.
“Any Scientologist fighting a suppressive person may lie to him, sue him, deprive him of property and physically destroy him. Hubbard developed a special technique to destroy a person’s good name, wreck a person’s family and take away property through black PR. There have been repeated attempts on my life. Six lawsuits were launched against me and, as a result, I was bankrupted. The art of waging war by black PR is one of the cult’s fundamental teachings,” says Gerry Armstrong.
According to a U.S. court ruling, Armstrong is prohibited from uttering the word “Scientology”; for each use of this term, he must pay a fine of 50 thousand dollars. People who communicate with Armstrong likewise have to pay the same amount.
The mere fact that, in America, whose highly organized and developed legal system is an example for many countries, such an unprecedented and absurd court decision was handed down is testimony to the might of the Scientologists.
“In Hubbard’s teaching, I was very attracted by the fact that he presented himself as a civil engineer and physicist, and all of Scientology as built on scientific rather than religious principles. But the more I became acquainted with the doctrine, the more I found that these ideas are occult in nature and have no relation to science.
“I was told that my IQ would increase by one point after each hour of auditing – special training similar to confession. I had over a thousand hours of auditing. This evidently means I must now be very smart. Of course, I’m kidding – my IQ did not rise one iota. However, I did have enough sense to run away from there.
“Each auditing session is recorded and the persons who conduct the training are not required to respect the secrecy of the ‘confession’. On the contrary, they collect the most intimate information about people to turn them into obedient slaves,” says Gerry Armstrong.
However, America is not the only place where the sect’s followers have ample opportunities. Not very long ago, in the 1990s, their activity spread throughout Russia.
One only has to recall that, at every turn, there are research institutes bearing “Dianetics” signs and that the Faculty of Journalism library at Moscow State University pompously opened a reading room named after L. Ron Hubbard, touting him as a prominent science fiction writer and nuclear physicist.
Answering a question from the pravoslavie.ru correspondent about how much Scientology has expanded in Russia today, Armstrong replies that, unlike Americans, people in our country are less attracted to such “pseudoscientific” theory, but cult members are actively developing different ways of recruiting members in accordance with the mentality of the people with whom they work. Armstrong says, “In Russia, there are enough educated people who won’t fall for the promise to raise their IQ and won’t consider that all the evil in the world is due to suppressive persons against whom a war has to be waged. But in third world countries today, Scientology has a great number of followers, and this is a very dangerous trend. Our opposition to Scientology can be described as a state of balance: the cultists have not won, but they have not lost. The danger is that, at any time, this balance can be broken.”
“Scientologists themselves consider that there are about 500,000 followers in Russia today and 125,000 in Moscow. I think this is a lie, just self-PR, the cult’s favorite technology,” he adds.
But the essence of Scientology’s teachings is very close to the modern world view. They offer an applied art of making money, instead of answering the eternal questions. Sect members insist they make people rich and happy. No need to think about the distant afterlife; everything is here and now.
The work of Scientologists is likened to the operations of intelligence services. Their penetration is aimed at enterprises in the military-industrial complex and at secure facilities. For “religious dissemination”, the cult has always chosen strategically important targets. “Scientology itself is an intelligence agency. I think that, in 1993, when the U.S. government stopped prosecuting adherents of the sect, government agencies in the U.S. may have reached an agreement with them to use espionage information gathered by Scientologists,” says Armstrong. “One of the main goals of Scientology is to collect and store a large volume of information so that it can be used to discredit anyone and gain control: from the rank and file sect member who strays from the fold to the high and mighty over whom control opens up unlimited possibilities,” asserts Armstrong.
In the late 1990s, Russian authorities waged war on Scientology: offices were scrutinized by intelligence agents and the tax police. The State Duma declared Scientology a totalitarian sect and called for a ban on its activities in Russia. This ended when the European Court of Human Rights decided to register Scientology as a religious organization. Today, the 1997 law “On Freedom of Conscience” is in force and Scientology cannot be registered as a religion, so Scientologists are not entitled to receive tax benefits from the state (as, for example, they managed to do in America). However, the law allowed them to register as a non-profit partnership, which can freely exercise its activities in Russia, like any other non-profit organization.
Translation of a Russian article posted on May 19, 2011 on the website of St. Tikhon’s Orthodox University: http://pstgu.ru/news/tech_notice/2011/05/24/29993/
Gerry Armstrong: “A U.S. court has authorized the Scientology cult to forcibly retain its recalcitrant members”
by Stanislav Kolotvin
Photos by Alisa Merkulova
May 19, 2011
Gerry Armstrong is in Russia for what is already the fourth time. He has previously traveled to cities such as Yekaterinburg, Novosibirsk and Nizhny Novgorod. Each of his visits has, like the past 30 years of his life, been devoted to exposing the true nature of the Scientology sect, a task for which Mr. Armstrong uses the documents he has preserved concerning the activities of L. Ron Hubbard.
The central theme of Mr. Armstrong’s lecture, which was translated by his longtime friend, Professor Alexander Dvorkin, head of sectarian studies at Saint Tikhon’s Orthodox University, was Scientology’s doctrine regarding “suppressive persons” – the evildoers and psychopaths who are to blame for all the troubles on earth. However, among the people that Scientologists have put on this list, there are no criminals or even mentally ill persons. All “suppressive persons” are critics of Scientology, such as Mr. Armstrong. According to the teachings of L. Ron
Hubbard, whose word, for Scientologists, is sacred and requires compliance, “suppressive persons” are subject to the doctrine of “Fair Game”, according to which any suppressive person becomes a “legitimate prey” for Scientologists. It is incumbent on followers of the sect to strive to seize the person’s property and, if necessary, to physically destroy an opponent. The “suppressive person” doctrine is highly reminiscent of the Nazi theory regarding “subhumans”.
After he left the sect, Gerry Armstrong was declared a “suppressive person” and there have been six attempts on his life in the U.S. and in Germany. In addition, a campaign of “black PR” has been waged against him for many years on the internet, and Scientologists brought lawsuits against him in the U.S. and complained about him to the FBI and even to courts in Yekaterinburg. Five million dollars were spent over 30 years for the services of lawyers around the world whose sole concern was to send Mr. Armstrong to jail on fabricated charges!
The reason for which Scientologists have no scruples about the means they use to fight against Gerry Armstrong becomes clear when one considers his biography. Mr. Armstrong became involved with the sect in 1969 and he began working in a low-paid post as a dishwasher. However, he quickly rose through Scientology’s ranks of Scientology and he was soon accepted into the “Sea Organization”, which united the members of the sect who were close to Hubbard. In 1972, he became head of legal services, and, in 1974, he was the head of Scientology’s own intelligence service. Throughout this time, Armstrong was on Hubbard’s personal ship, the “Apollo”, as the sect’s founder sailed along the European coast (with the exception of 1973, when Hubbard was convicted of fraud in France). Armstrong was soon entrusted with a mission to go to Los Angeles and establish a central Scientology base there, but he got into an argument with the secretary of Hubbard’s third wife and was sent to the so-called “Rehabilitation Project Force” (RPF), a kind of Scientology gulag.
The RPF is designed to break a person’s will. Offending Scientologists are assigned the dirtiest and heaviest labor, and they are forbidden to speak to
other sect members, except to answer questions. He literally had to eat the food left in plates by others after their meals. He did not have the right to walk normally; he could only run. His already low Scientology wages were reduced and, during his 17 months in the RPF, Mr. Armstrong received 4 U.S. dollars and 30 cents a week. For the slightest offense, RPF inmates were forced to run to exhaustion up and down stairs. The duration of stay in the RPF was not specified at all, but only depended on the mood of the sect’s leaders.
At the end of his first assignment to the RPF, Armstrong was entrusted with organizing the shooting of films about Hubbard, but the sect’s founder soon thought that Armstrong was allowing himself to refer jokingly to these films, so Hubbard again ordered the offender to the RPF. After 8 months of confinement, Armstrong oversaw the creation of Scientology’s current headquarters in California.
During searches in 1977, American police uncovered documents that resulted in jail sentences for 11
high-ranking Scientologists, led by Hubbard’s third wife. When it became known in 1979 that a new search was imminent, Armstrong was ordered to destroy all documents that compromised L. Ron Hubbard. He faithfully executed the order, until he found about 20 boxes of various old documents, including Hubbard’s personal diaries. He did not destroy them because he felt they had historical value, and he requested that he be assigned to the drafting of a new autobiography of the sect’s founder. It is at this point that the total deception on which Scientology is built was unveiled to Armstrong.
He had previously admired Hubbard as a nuclear physicist, as a recipient of 27 senior military awards that he supposedly earned at the sacrifice of his health (including his eyesight, which was miraculously restored), as the author of numerous scientific studies, as an exemplary family man. Now he had before him evidence that Hubbard sat out the war on the home front, was expelled from his second year of university, and abducted his own children from different marriages. Armstrong realized that he had wasted 12 years of his life, that after a thousand hours of Scientology “auditing” procedures, his IQ had not increased at the promised rate of 1 point per hour, and that he had not received the promised super-powers.
Armstrong thought about everything and he fled from the sect in 1982. He immediately became the target of lawsuits. Scientology lost the first case, but then came a series of absurd court rulings, o
ne of which allows Mr. Armstrong to be fined fifty thousand dollars for each utterance of the word “Scientology” or for mentioning any of the members of the sect or any organization that cooperates with Scientology. The same fine, according to the court order, applies to all individuals and organizations that cooperate and are in agreement with Mr. Armstrong, for example the Russian Orthodox Church and the police of the Federal Republic of Germany.
Mr. Armstrong explained why the U.S. federal government, which had previously opposed Scientology, decided in 1993 to make it an ally. One reason was the activities of the Scientologists to undermine the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and its upper management. After 1993, the IRS began providing help to Scientologists, a complete reversal. But the main reason for U.S. cooperation with Scientology is the sect’s mode of operation. During the “auditing” procedure (for which each session costs a considerable amount of money), all members of the sect have to give an account of themselves to their seniors and to disclose the most secret and embarrassing aspects of their lives and of the lives of their relatives and friends. Their revelations are recorded on audio and in writing and then transferred to the sect’s headquarters in California. Scientologists thus possess intelligence from around the world. Since Scientologists primarily try to attract influential persons – intelligence specialists, famous actors, business people and politicians – it becomes clear why the U.S. government has so zealously been trying to aid the spread of Scientology.
However, by working with Scientologists, the United States is betraying its own citizens. In 2010, a U.S. court handed down a ruling according to which Scientologists may legally hold recalcitrant members of their sect in custody and forcibly take them back if they escape! In addition, U.S. authorities support a number of committees established by Scientologists which supposedly fight for human rights and even help … victims of Scientology!
During Mr. Armstrong’s conference at St. Tikhon’s Orthodox University, the lecture hall was full and people were standing in the aisles. The main part of his talk ended with a long round of applause and the speaker was then bombarded with questions. Responding to one question, for example, Mr. Armstrong explained how Scientology is dangerous to sect members themselves – it is dangerous for their mental health, it destroys their families, their financial savings disappear with the ever-growing number of costly hypnotic procedures, and cult members mobilize to fight against “suppressive persons”.
When asked about the number of people fleeing the sect, the lecturer said that the scale is difficult to evaluate because Scientologists have many levers to force these people to remain silent: the compromising information collected during their time in the sect, death threats, restricting contact with relatives who remain in the sect. News of senior members leaving the sect resonates more loudly. Books have recently been published by four persons who not very long ago belonged to Scientology’s elite. True information about Scientology is the best way to prevent its spread in Europe and Russia, but Scientologists are now directing their efforts toward third world countries where knowledge of the cult’s sad reputation has not yet gotten through.
The university’s guest also mentioned that, during this visit, he will meet with officials of Russia’s Ministry of Justice to offer advice in connection with complaints against Russia filed at the Strasbourg court by Scientologists.
Summing up the evening, the Vice-Rector of St. Tikhon’s Orthodox University, Archpriest Georgiy Orekhanov, said that all those assembled are, of course, Mr. Armstrong’s friends, with all the judicial consequences this entails, and that the university’s administration would be glad to have him as a guest whenever he decides to come back to Russia.
Translation of a Russian article posted on May 20, 2011 on the Russian Orthodox website pravmir.ru: http://www.pravmir.ru/pravda-dzherri-armstronga-o-saentologii/
Gerry Armstrong’s Truth about Scientology
by Alexander FilippovMay 20, 2011
Gerry Armstrong, former personal secretary to L. Ron Hubbard, founder of the Church of Scientology, spoke on May 18 at St. Tikhon’s Orthodox University. The meeting was attended by clergy, professors, university staff and many guests.
The university lecture room was completely filled with people and those for whom there weren’t enough seats stood in the aisle. The meeting lasted over two hours and translation was provided by Alexander Dvorkin, a scholar at St. Tikhon’s Orthodox University who specializes in nontraditional religious movements and sects.
The Scientology sect has spread throughout the world and the organization collects information about its members which it uses to totally control all aspects of their lives, leaving them no possibility of privacy.
Mr. Armstrong’s testimony and analysis are very important for gaining a true understanding of the Scientology organization, its development, its doctrine, its crimes, the scale of its expansion and the ways to combat it because, having been secretary to Hubbard for many years, he possesses full and accurate information.
Gerry Armstrong spoke about the doctrine and the history of the “Church of Scientology”, one of the most dangerous cults in the world today, about the threat the sect poses for private individuals and for society as a whole, and about his work in this organization, his personal impressions of his encounters with Hubbard, the contents of Hubbard’s personal documents, his escape from the totalitarian organization, and the fight that ensued.
Biography of Mr. Armstrong, former personal secretary to L. Ron Hubbard
“I got into the Scientology cult in 1969 and, in 1971, I joined the “Sea Organization” (which runs the sect around the world). I was sent to the ship which Hubbard was on and there I became a dishwasher, then a storesman, and the ship’s driver for a little car we had on board. In 1972, I became the legal officer. Then I became responsible for public relations and for the organization’s intelligence department.
“But sometime later I was locked up in a secret prison and ‘sentenced’ to confinement in the ‘Rehabilitation Project Force’ (RPF), which is like a reeducation camp (the very existence of the RPF should be grounds for citizens of all countries to recognize the threat the cult poses to human rights). When the punishment was over, I was again working with Hubbard”, said Armstrong.
The cult’s reeducation camps
Hubbard created Scientology’s reeducation camps in 1974. People could be sent there if he thought they weren’t working hard enough, if someone looked the wrong way or laughed at him, or for a simple movement of the needle on an electropsychometer (E-meter). The electro-psychometer was “invented” by Hubbard and is a primitive lie detector; it has a display with a needle and two tin can electrodes through which a current passes.
Persons subjected to punishment were not allowed to speak, except to answer questions. They wore a special black outfit. For any “crime”, they had to run up and down stairs or perform other physical punishment. They were fed leftovers from the plates of Sea Organization members. The purpose of the camp was to break the will of the inmate. A person who objected to anything during the punishment would be kept under surveillance 24 hours a day. Victims were generally forbidden to speak and the duration of confinement was not specified at all.
“When Hubbard thought I was joking about how he made films, I was again sent to the RPF. This time I spent 8 months there. Then I started working at the Scientology headquarters in California.”
During searches, U.S. police found documents that resulted in jail sentences for certain Scientologists, so when it became known in 1979 that a new search was imminent, Armstrong was ordered to destroy all of L. Ron Hubbard’s documents.
At that time, all members of the sect were afraid the FBI would search the headquarters. Hubbard gave orders to destroy all personal documents that incriminated him. Armstrong and his subordinates faithfully searched for documents and destroyed them, until one of his juniors found about 20 boxes of various documents relating to Hubbard’s youth, including personal diaries. Armstrong said the documents were very valuable and should not be destroyed. He petitioned Hubbard to authorize the preparation of a new biography.
Ironically, Hubbard approved the petition, and Mr. Armstrong spent two years collecting documents. During this work, Armstrong said, “I actually deprogrammed myself, realizing that the leader’s every word was a lie.” It turned out that he was not a hero, he spent the entire war on the home front, evading military service, he was not a nuclear physicist, he was not injured and he did not receive 27 medals for bravery.
- L. Ron Hubbard
The truth about L. Ron Hubbard
Gerry Armstrong described his impressions about working with L. Ron Hubbard and the reasons for which he decided to escape from the sect. “When I realized that Hubbard was a pathological liar,” said Armstrong, “Scientology fell apart for me.””The diaries I had with me after escaping and which I used in the courts against the cult show the connection between Hubbard and occultism. There were also documents called ‘affirmations’ that Hubbard used to program himself with a certain emotional momentum, for example, by reciting the phrase: ‘All people are my slaves.’
“The diaries also document his connection with Parsons and describe his sexual perversions. In addition, Hubbard was a drug addict and he pumped himself up with testosterone, which further increased his aggressiveness. All this is laid out in the documents. He gave the impression of a man strung out on hormones,” confided Armstrong.
According to Armstrong, Hubbard was a narcissist and a sociopath: “He certainly had a certain charm, when he wanted to, but he constantly kept everyone under pressure and, if something wasn’t to his liking, he would throw a terrible tantrum. Hubbard was ruthless with anyone who said anything contrary to his opinion. He was a pathological liar on a gargantuan scale, a classic sociopath.”
What influenced Hubbard more: delusions or Satanism? In response to this question, Armstrong said that Hubbard wrote a lot of fiction; he was not connected with the Masons. The real source of Scientology is a direct relationship with occultism and Satanism, which he picked up from Parsons, a devotee of European Satanist Aleister Crowley.
From the sect to Christianity
Having decided to act against the terrifying Scientology machine, Armstrong realized that all the anger of this aggressive organization would be unleashed against him. “Because I knew too much, I would have been locked up again and I would not have come out alive. I thought of escaping and I managed to escape,” said Mr. Armstrong.
As expected, the organization began its fight against the escapee. The first lawsuit was initiated in 1984 and, since then, the organization has considered Gerry Armstrong its number one enemy. There have been six attempts on his life in the U.S. and in Germany. A campaign of “black PR” is being waged against him on the internet.
Armstrong said that, after he left the sect, he became a Christian and found the truth: “God is truth. I thank God for this experience, which allowed me to appreciate the value of freedom. My task is to do my utmost so that other people do not lose this freedom.”
Mr. Armstrong described how the cult prosecuted him in America. A U.S. court handed down an absurd decision that stipulates Mr. Armstrong has no right to even utter the word “Scientology”, and that whenever he pronounces the word “Scientology”, he has to pay a fifty thousand dollar fine. “So our meeting today is very valuable,” joked Armstrong. This decision also applies to individuals and legal entities “who act in concert with Mr. Armstrong”, for example, said Armstrong: St. Tikhon’s Orthodox University, which invited him to Russia, the St. Irenaeus of Lyon Center and the entire Russian Orthodox Church. While he is not allowed to speak, the cult is allowed to say whatever it wishes about Mr. Armstrong.
Father Georgiy Orekhanov asked how American democracy could produce such a wild court decision.
- Father Georgiy Orekhanov
The guest speaker replied: “Due to corruption and pressure on the court, with the help of embarrassing material gathered by the cult’s intelligence agents.”
How is Scientology a threat to individuals and to the world?
Speaking about the dangers of Scientology, Armstrong said that Scientology destroys the morals and the psyche of an individual, replacing human principles by Hubbard’s system of values. It destroys families and can ruin businesses. It is a threat to the societies and to the countries in which it operates. The cult’s methods violate laws and human rights at all levels: from total espionage to direct crimes such as kidnapping people, holding them in Scientology prisons, and even murder.
“Scientology continues to be incredibly dangerous, but we – those who fight the cult – are not going away. However, it would be wrong to think that our victory is near. They have not yet won, but they haven’t lost,” warned Armstrong.
The organization is in a state of war with the entire world: “The first thing a new Scientologist learns is that Scientology is at war.”
One of the elements of Scientology doctrine is the policy concerning “suppressive persons” – people who are supposedly to blame for all the troubles on earth. Scientologists are supposed to subject them to “Fair Game”, whereby cult members must strive to inflict maximum damage to “suppressive persons”, to seize their property and, if necessary, to kill them. The list of people that Scientologists believe are the cause of all misfortunes includes, for example, critics of Scientology such as Gerry Armstrong and Alexander Dvorkin.
Answering a question from the pravmir.ru correspondent about how Scientology obtained its tax exemption from the U.S. government, Armstrong cited four factors.
First factor. Scientologists filed more than two thousand lawsuits against the U.S. government. For each of these claims, the U.S. Department of Justice had to appoint a lawyer. These lawsuits were costing the government a great deal of money. When tax-exempt status was granted, Scientology withdrew the lawsuits.
Second factor. Scientologists researched the biographies of all high officials of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), they hired former IRS personnel and they paid for any information that could undermine the IRS, hiring private investigators to follow the officials. “I have no information concerning exactly what they learned about the officials, but they probably found compromising evidence.”
Third factor. In Armstrong’s opinion, the decision was influenced by America’s intelligence agencies (FBI and CIA), who considered that the information the sect could provide the government might be useful. This would not be a historical first. It is possible for the government to make agreements with dictators and even with socially dangerous organizations.
Fourth factor. On paper, the decision was made by the director of the IRS. However, it is known that then U.S. President Bill Clinton had friendly relations with the cult and that his Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was actively defending its interests. The decision to cooperate with the Scientology cult was so important that it would be absolutely unbelievable to assume that the President, the Secretary of State, and the heads of the intelligence agencies did not know about it. We must assume that they knew about it and agreed with it.
Scientologists hire experts in the field of internet technologies and they use the personal data that trusting account holders share in social networks such as Facebook or vkontakte.ru: “I don’t think they operate their own social networks, but they use all the available ones.”
In 2010, a court handed down a ruling which said that Scientologists have the right to forcibly hold people and, if they escape, to pursue and capture them. The basis for this decision is that this “is a matter of religious doctrine”.
“It is clear why Scientology chooses to be called a religion. In America, this allows it to bully people and violate human rights, if it is written in religious scripture,” explained Armstrong. “I will also speak about this with the Ministry of Justice of Russia,” said Gerry Armstrong, elaborating on the plans for his visit to Russia.
Russia and Scientology – Who will win?
Despite all the power of this totalitarian sect, the Scientology “church” can be defeated. Gerry Armstrong sees the proof of this in what he has witnessed during his lifetime: “More and more people today know the truth about this organization.” Armstrong came to Russia to help prevent the spread of Scientology in our country.
Link to a complete audio recording of Gerry Armstrong’s May 18, 2011 conference at St. Tikhon’s Orthodox University:
http://media.pravmir.ru/mp3/armst.mp3
Duration: 2 hours 11 min. 57 sec.
Source: http://pstgu.ru/news/university/2011/05/11/29777/
Gerry Armstrong, former personal secretary to Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, at St. Tikhon’s Orthodox University
On May 18, St. Tikhon’s Orthodox University will host a meeting with Gerry Armstrong, former personal secretary to Ron Hubbard, founder of an American totalitarian sect, the “Church of Scientology”. Since leaving the sect, he has devoted his life to aiding the victims of this destructive cult.
After entering the sect, Gerry Armstrong rose to the elite circle that completely controls the lives of ordinary members. He received a special assignment to compile the official biography of cult founder Ron Hubbard. As he gained familiarity with authentic documents while working on the biography, Gerald became convinced that the entire Scientology empire is based on lies and exists solely for the sake of money and world domination.
The sect’s leadership first tried applying to him to the standard practice of “re-education”, depriving him of contact with people and assigning him to hard physical labor in the company of other “offending” members of the sect. When Mr. Armstrong decided to finally break with the sect, he was subjected to every aspect of Scientology’s “fair game” doctrine, which is directed against the sect’s critics. To this day, he is unable to return home to the U.S.A., where Scientologists, using their lobbies in the country’s political and judicial system, had Gerry Armstrong sentenced to multimillion-dollar fines and imprisonment. Armstrong was forced into exile in Germany.
Despite repeated attempts on his life, Gerry Armstrong continues to reveal the true nature of Scientology, as attested by the documents he has preserved.
Location: Rector’s Building, St. Tikhon’s Orthodox University (Bakhrushin Street 2/ 5), 1st floor, room 101
Time: May 18, 2011, beginning at 6 P.M.
Admission is free. Bring personal identification.
Some of the details about me are inaccurate, but understandable and forgiveable because of translations into Russian from the English language documents on my site, and common editorial errors. I will have the opportunity to correct the record during my talk at St. Tikhon’s University and during the rest of my trip to Russia.
I was Hubbard’s Biography Researcher and Archivist in his Personal Office, not his personal secretary.
Hubbard twice assigned me to Scientology’s re-education camps, the RPF, but this was before I became his Researcher and Archivist. I would have been locked up, and I believed killed, if the cult’s leadership had discovered I was planning to blow while on the biography project, but I successfully escaped.
I’m a Canadian citizen, and my home is in Canada. In 1997, I left the US, where my home then was, because of threats from Scientology, and returned to Canada.
Because of Scientology’s actions and threats while I was in Canada, in early May 2002, Caroline and I traveled to Germany, where we had greater security and where we built my web site to defend against the cult’s legal and extralegal fair game. We stayed there until the end of January 2004, and had to return to Canada in order to defend against Scientology’s lawsuit (Armstrong VII) that was served on me in Germany. http://www.gerryarmstrong.org/50k/legal/a7/3388.php
Although Scientology sought $10,050,000 in liquidated damages against me in that case, the cult obtained a judgment in April 2004 for $500,000, which is just as unconscionable and unlawful as the multimillions the cult was seeking. The fines Scientology obtained against me are in addition to the liquidated damages judgment.
Scientology obtained orders sentencing me to jail in California, and those are still pending. If I ever showed up in California, and possibly anywhere in the US, I could be jailed, and because of my hundreds of thousands of violations of the cult’s unlawful injunction, potentially I could be jailed for the rest of my life.
There haven’t been any attempts on my life that I know of, although Scientologists or the cult’s hired agents have physically assaulted me six times, threatened to assassinate me, terrorized me very dangerously on highways, and certainly Miscavige and his cohorts want me dead. As the pressures increase on Miscavige, et al., and they don’t sue for peace, the likelihood of an attempt on my life will predictably also increase.
Translation of a journal entry posted in Russian on May 19, 2011on the blog of Archpriest Father Konstantin Ivanchenko:
http://okonstantin.livejournal.com/17269.html
Meeting with former Hubbard archivist and biographer Gerry Armstrong
by Father Konstantin Ivanchenko
May 19, 2011 2:32 A.M.Alexander Dvorkin invited Father Alexei Volkov and us to a meeting with Gerry Armstrong at St. Tikhon’s Orthodox University, where we are studying.
Gerry Armstrong is the former archivist of Ron Hubbard, the founder of the American totalitarian sect, the “Church of Scientology”. At the end of 1981, he left the sect and devoted his life to aiding those who suffer from this organization.
The meeting was interesting, even though Alexander Dvorkin long ago described the key biographical details in his book “Sectarian Studies” and in his publications. I won’t summarize the talk or the questions and answers here because this will probably be posted on the website of the St. Irenaeus of Lyons Centre, which also announced the meeting. If a report doesn’t appear there in the coming week, I will try to write one.
[Omitted: 2 paragraphs in which the author says that, after the meeting, he found photos of the Moscow Scientology Centre and of John Travolta.]
On Sunday, we should have another meeting with Gerry Armstrong.
Gerry Armstrong speaking. Alexander Dvorkin provided translation.
The lecture hall was packed with people.
