IN THE CIRCUIT COURT OF THE STATE OF OREGON
FOR THE COUNTY OF MULTNOMAH
| JULIE CHRISTOFFERSON TITCHBOURNE,
Plaintiff, vs. CHURCH OF SCIENTOLOGY, MISSION OF DAVIS, a non-profit California corporation, doing business in Oregon; CHURCH OF SCIENTOLOGY OF CALIFORNIA, a California corporation, doing business in Oregon; and L. RON HUBBARD, Defendants. |
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No. A7704-05184 |
EXCERPT OF PROCEEDINGS
Volume VII
Pages 4059 to 4163
Testimony of Gerald D. Armstrong
April 4, 1985
BILL ELLIS & ASSOCIATES
Court Reporters
1001 S. W. Fifth Ave.
Portland, Oregon
G. Armstrong – X – 4059
(Court reconvened on Thursday, April 4, 1985, beginning at the hour of 9:40 a.m. Following proceedings held out of the presence of the jury.)
THE COURT: Ready to go?
MR. WADE: Your Honor, we have brought copies of the time track of Mr. Armstrong and his B1 file. The first thing we would be discussing this morning is the B1 file materials.
THE COURT: Mr. Armstrong was going to testify about those specific items missing from his B1 file.
(Mr. Armstrong resumed the witness stand.)
THE COURT: You are still under oath.
MR. WADE: Your Honor, we have marked — had marked as Court Exhibit 253, the time track and also
an additional typewritten listing Mr. Armstrong prepared, showing other documents which are missing besides those circled in the time track. We would offer that as Court Exhibit 253 at this time.
THE COURT: Just one second. Somebody gave me a copy of a transcript of the deposition of Mr. Armstrong — I think you did, Mr. Runstein.
Number 253, is a Court Exhibit received for that
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purpose. Okay.
(Court Exhibit No. 253 received.)
VOIR DIRE EXAMINATION
BY MR. WADE:
Q. Mr. Armstrong, I’m going to hand you what has been produced as your B1 file. Before we go into the additional items which are on the first page of Court Exhibit 253, would you please go to your time track and tell the Judge what you have done to show which documents are missing from the time track from the B1 file and then explain how you know those documents are missing.
A. What I did, Your Honor, was circle on the left-hand side, all of the items which are missing. These items were used in the preparation of this time track and they should form part of this B1 file. All these things should have been filed in here, the various FCOs, Conditions Order, and the various reports, some of which are quoted from, but the report which has been quoted from is not in the file. Everything that I have circled here should be here and is missing from the file. This is several pages.
THE COURT: There is a great deal of material, if I’m looking at this correctly, that we are talking about.
THE WITNESS: That’s correct, Your Honor.
MR. MANION: Your Honor, I have an
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explanation for it.
THE COURT: Okay.
MR. MANION: Last night I spoke with our client and they told us about how B1 file was compiled. Again, they gave us their absolute assurance that the entirety of Mr. Armstrong’s file was produced.
A time track is compiled from a variety of sources and documents. They talk to people, they review Ethics files, they review Flag Orders, they review hundreds and hundreds of documents. Somebody sits down and makes a chronological summary of Mr. Armstrong’s activities while a member of the Church of Scientology. Those documents never become part of the B1 file. Flag Orders, Ethics Orders, Knowledge Reports, internal communications, they never find their way into the file, Your Honor.
The B1 file is just what we have produced. Those documents that we turned over to Mr. Wade. Now, for Mr. Armstrong, who has been out of the Church since 1982 and whose involvement with the Guardian’s Office and B1 is at best tangential and remote, to say that as a matter of practice, custom and business the B1 files contain such documents is incompetent and unsubstantiated.
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Under the order that this Court issued, Your Honor, Mr. Armstrong said as a part of his claim the
B1 file was missing documents, that documents even up to today were not included in it. Your order,
Your Honor, only required the production of documents through April 11, 1983. Our clients assure us, and I believe it’s the requirement and the obligation of a party responding to a request to produce, that everything contained in Mr. Armstrong’s B1 file was produced to him. That the documents and the categories of documents found in Mr. Armstrong’s B1 files are the kind of documents that you would find in anyone’s B1 file. For Mr. Armstrong to say because sources, Ethics Orders, Flag Condition Orders, bulletins, all kinds of documents were referred to or utilized in the preparation of a time track, doesn’t automatically put those documents in the B1 file. They may have been consulted, they might have been utilized. There is documents all over a world-wide organization. But they were never in the B1 file.
We give you our representation of counsel that the question was asked specifically to the client. The client was instructed as to the Court’s order. I went over in detail the Court’s order,
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what it encompassed with the client, and I assure the Court that every document contained in the B1
file was produced to Mr. Armstrong.
Now, if Your Honor wants me to go through the eight item that Mr. Armstrong has identified on page
one of Exhibit 253, and say were these reports ever contained in the B1 file? Did you have any
knowledge they were pulled out of the B1 file? I would be happy to do that. But I’m telling you,
Your Honor, these are the B1 files, notwithstanding this witness’ assertion that other things should
have been in it.
THE COURT: Let me understand this. This addendum, additional documents, of eight items, is that in addition to the circled numbers that are contained —
MR. WADE: Yes, Your Honor. We would request that we be provided the name with the person Mr.
Manion spoke to who gave him that information.
MR. MANION: I have no problem with that. It was Mr. Gutfeld. And he’s here.
MR. WADE: I would like to ask Mr. Armstrong some more questions, if Mr. Manion is finished.
MR. MANION: Sure.
THE COURT: I’m in a difficult position
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because I am in a position of not knowing what goes in a B1 file.
MR. MANION: Your Honor, their request to produce, we understand our obligation to press on the client and explain to him, in very understandable language, what they are required to produce, and we did that. They have said this is what is the B1 file. We are in the same position you are, other than we give you our assurance that we as counsel have discharged our obligation and are satisfied with it.
BY MR. WADE: (Continuing)
Q. Mr. Armstrong, with respect to the listing from the time track, how did you become familiar with the kinds of documents that are in the B1 files?
A. Well, I have seen other B1 files in the organization. I saw a B1 file which was Nibs Hubbard’s B1 file. It was over a whole file cabinet in size. And for every entry on the time track, there was a document in the file.
Q. With respect to the listing and — which is the first page of Exhibit 253, would you explain to the Court what items are missing and what leads you to believe that such items would have been in the B1 file.
A. We are talking about the cover note on the front?
Q. Yes.
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A. First of all, there is a note here saying: ” No. 4. I note the organization has B1 one files for this” — should be “the rest of my family members.” That’s not really an item which is omitted from my file. However, the rest of them, there are various references in here from which I can determine that these reports were consulted or that they should have been there. The first one is a major event. I
was locked up in B1 by the Deputy Guardian for Intelligence, in June of 1976, in the Fiefield Manor. And there would be a mass of reports from that period, all of which would have gone into my Bl file. It’s ludicrous to say they were when it was such a major event for B1 itself.
There’s a document in here called the Jerry Armstrong Project, which involves a number of targets to be done regarding me. There should have been all the reports which arose from that. All the, actions which were taken by B1, because it was a B1 operation. There are a number of references in the B1 time track of material which was taken from my PC files. All of the cullings which were done of my PC files should have been in there.
There’s a document which begins, number three, that — this is number five on my list here, “Data on how” — it continues on for half a page, at least page one of that document is missing.
There is a page of Intelligence Report regarding the
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Curacao Consulate, United States Consulate in Curacao in the Netherlands Antilles. There are no other Intelligence Reports for operations I was involved in in the Guardian’s Office, on the ship or later.
There’s a document there having to do with a dead agenting of Jerry Armstrong’s, dated September 30, 1982. It references a number of things about me, known out securities, some phone calls I allegedly made, a mission which I was supposed to have done to Charleston, communications to and from George Kelly. It references a Madrid incident, an incident when I was detained at the Madrid airport for a
number of hours. This also — this is in itself, the DA of Jerry Armstrong, is a Black Propaganda Campaign orchestrated by the organization and there should be a mass of documents to do with that.
There’s a reference regarding an order from the Special Unit, PAC, Pacific area, stating I was not to be harassed. This is referenced, but it is not in the file.
Those are what I was able to, at a glance, see last night.
Q. So what you find are actually parts of documents or incomplete documents, and in addition to that, you find documents which reference other documents which are not in the file?
A. That’s correct. Every time my name would be
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mentioned, that document would go into my file. There is massive cross filing within the Guardian’s Office in B1.
Q. Mr. Armstrong, are there any other documents which are not contained in your B1 file besides those you have already mentioned?
A. If we are only taking a cutoff date of April 1983, then all the documents concerning the month and a half of harassment by private investigators hired by the organization should all be in there.
Q. Would there be anything else in there?
A. I don’t know. Thereafter, there’s a mass of documentation which ought to be there.
Q. What would that mass of documentation concern?
A. It would concern all operations by the organization against me, operations in which people from the organization were sent out to contact me for various things, Terri Gamboa, Mark Rathbun. There was an operation in which I was harassed in London, England; that also would be in the B1 file or be in
the Intelligence files in the organization, whatever those Intelligence files currently are. They renamed the Intelligence — the Guardian’s Office, the Office of Special Affairs at some point.
There would be information regarding photographs that were taken of me by the organization in November 1984. There would be references to and hopefully all the documents which
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were stolen from the trunk of my car, in November 1984.
There’s a mass of documentation which the organization has assembled on me which they have in their
possession, and they may have renamed the files from B1 to some other name, but they’ve got this information.
Q. Are you then aware of operations against you in the last year or two?
A. Yes.
MR. WADE: Your Honor, I think it’s clear from Mr. Armstrong’s testimony, if the Court would like to review, we’ve brought this B1 file. I think of particular interest is the fact that certain of these documents mention other documents of the same sort, yet those documents are not in the file.
The B1 file of Nibs Hubbard, which Mr. Armstrong has testified about, was produced for us. I can provide to the Court the copies we have from that file which show that when these excerpts are taken, the other documents are contained in the same — it was then the B1 file. The difference may be that in Nib’s file, it was things that — the documents which they produced were unfavorable to L. Ron Hubbard, Jr., whereas in this case, the documents not being produced would be favorable to Mr. Armstrong.
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We request that there be sanctions against the defendants if they do not forthwith produce the entire B1 file of Mr. Armstrong, and those documents which would be contained in that file. What has happened is, they have produced documents which are incomplete in many instances, documents which have
been removed in many instances, and the entire file should be produced.
MR. MANION: Your Honor, Mr. Armstrong has no familiarity with what his file contained before he
left the organization, so he can’t tell us what has been taken out of the file. He says a lot should
have been, should have been, ought have been. He’s been out of the organization since December of ’81.
THE COURT: Mr. Manion, where are all these documents?
MR. MANION: All the documents referenced in the time track? They are collected throughout the organization in Ethics files, in Knowledge Reports, in Flag Orders. The man was in the organization,
according to his own testimony, for eleven years.
Hundreds and hundreds of documents and other sources, talking to people, were used to compile the
time track. For him to say that L. Ron Hubbard’s son’s time track is different to him —
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THE COURT: I don’t care about that. I want to know where these documents are in the organization.
MR. MANION: They are in the organization.
THE COURT: Let’s have them.
MR. MANION: All right. We’ll get on it.
THE COURT: In view of what we decided last night of what cross-examination is going to consist of, I want all documents with reference to Mr. Armstrong, everything listed here, everything circled, everything on this addendum list, produced.
MR. WADE: Your Honor, we would request documents to date since the allegations concern things which would have taken place after May of 1983.
THE COURT: I was expecting that question.
Are we going to get into an area after the date he left?
MR. COOLEY: Yes, sir.
THE COURT: Then we need those documents as well.
MR. COOLEY; All right, Your Honor.
MR. WADE: Thank you, Your Honor.
THE COURT: Now the question is, when?
MR. COOLEY: We will put our people to work
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on it as soon as business concludes today.
THE COURT: Mr. Gutfeld is sitting there.
MR. COOLEY: May I consult with him, Your Honor?
THE COURT: Sure.
(Mr. Cooley and Mr. Manion consulted off the record with Mr. Gutfeld.)
MR. COOLEY: We believe we can do it by Monday, Your Honor.
THE COURT: That will work; in view of what our timetable is, I think that will work.
MR. COOLEY: I think it will, too, Your Honor.
THE COURT: All right, that satisfies that requirement, Mr. Wade.
MR. WADE: Thank you, Your Honor.
THE COURT: We have this document; I’ll hold on to it and let’s work again.
Bring the jury back.
(Following proceedings held in the presence of the jury.)
THE COURT: Good morning.
Mr. Cooley.
MR. COOLEY: Thank you, Your Honor.
CONTINUED CROSS-EXAMINATION