March 6, 2015
Alex Gibney
Chelsea Pictures
33 Bond Street
Unit 1
New York, NY 10012
By e-mail:
Re: Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief
Dear Mr. Gibney:
In the recent televised interviews or discussions about Going Clear, you and Lawrence Wright called out Scientologist celebrities Tom Cruise and John Travolta to get Scientology head David Miscavige to answer his accusers for his actions. From the TimesTalks discussion:
LW: And the reason we’re calling out Cruise and Travolta is that they have the capacity–
AG: –they have the power
LW: — to change it. You know, there are only two ways that you can address the abuses that are going on inside Scientology:
One is to re-examine the tax exemption. And the IRS was so thoroughly whipped in 1993 by the Church of Scientology that it may not have the nerve to go back and do that again.
But ah, some of those celebrity megaphones, if they were turned around in the other direction, they can make a difference. And they should make a difference.
Logan Hill: What do you think that they could do? What would you like to specifically hear them say?
LW: I’d like to hear Tom Cruise stand up and say it’s time for David Miscavige to answer his accusers.
Calling out Cruise and Travolta to stand up and say it’s time for Miscavige to answer his accusers is logical because Cruise and Travolta are celebs, and they have contact and influence with him. Now I am urging you, and Wright and Paul Haggis, to call out Mark Rathbun and Mike Rinder to answer their accuser, me. What I am accusing them of includes, most crucially, crimes and torts they committed against me personally to unlawfully obtain the IRS tax exemption, which is clearly a focus of your film.
Rathbun and Rinder, under L. Ron Hubbard and Miscavige, fair gamed me more than they fair gamed any other person during their time as fair gamers for Scientology. If they fair gamed someone else more than me, they have never said, and I have never heard of that person. The one person they fair gamed somewhat equivalently was my attorney Michael Flynn. See, e.g., http://www.gerryarmstrong.org/50grand/cult/
Since Rathbun and Rinder have apparently left the Scientology cult, and portray themselves as exposers of the Scientologists’ abuses and crimes, I have many times asked them to come forward and tell the truth about fair gaming me. I have asked them many times to come forward and tell the truth about what they did to me to obtain their cult’s unmerited tax exemption. 1. See, e.g., this 2009 letter to Rathbun regarding black propaganda to the IRS. http://gerryarmstrong.ca/letter-to-mark-rathbun-re-black-pr-to-the-irs/
Yet neither of them has answered me, their accuser, other than with contempt and further fair gaming.
You, Wright and Haggis are celebrities. You used Rathbun and Rinder for your film. You three celebs have contact and influence with them. You have the power and the capacity to make a difference, and you should, and not just to make these victimizers media stars. I would like to hear you, Wright and Haggis stand up and say it’s time for Rathbun and Rinder to answer their accuser, the person they most victimized, Gerry Armstrong.
My wife Caroline and I have assembled a lot material about the Scientologists’ deal with the IRS on our site called the “The Armstrong Op.” The op is a decades-long covert campaign against me, which reached to the top of the US Government and foreign governments, and underlies the IRS’s grant of tax exemption in 1993. http://armstrong-op.gerryarmstrong.ca/documents/irs
The op continues to this day, and Rathbun and Rinder have been operating to keep it working. They black PRed me in Rathbun’s book Memoirs of a Scientology Warrior, which Rinder edited, and continued the criminal frame-ups of Flynn and me, which are key to the “negotiations” with the IRS.
Please read my introduction to the Armstrong op, which goes into these negotiations, and touches on the “public policy” issue, which is essential to understanding the IRS deal, and remedying it. http://armstrong-op.gerryarmstrong.ca/about
Also please read this article I wrote recently on public policy as it applies in the Scientologists’ obtaining of tax exemption. http://gerryarmstrong.ca/public-policy
From what you and others have said about your film being based on Wright’s book, and from what is in the book about the IRS deal, I assume that you do not address the public policy issue in the film. (I have not seen it, and because of the Scientologists’ actions I cannot safely enter the US at this time.) Wright does not address the issue in the book. He writes that “Rathbun and Miscavige commuted to Washington nearly every week, toting banker’s boxes stuffed with responses to the government’s queries.” (p. 231) Wright does not, however, say anything about what the responses were. He does not mention Flynn in the book, or anything about the Scientologists ever fair gaming me, or the connection between the Scientology v. Armstrong litigations and the IRS deal.
Public policy violations comprised one of two principal reasons for the IRS’s refusal of tax exemption until the 1993 deal, the other reason being inurement. The Scientologists “cured” their public policy problem with the IRS by, among other things, framing me and then lying about me, and other similarly placed Scientology victims. Lying to the US has to be against public policy, but it is what the IRS negotiated with the Scientologists. The IRS never gave me an opportunity to answer my Scientologist accusers, or victimizers. Tax exemption, religion status, and the new ally relationship with the US Government then enabled the Scientologists to commit public policy violations against more citizens with relative immunity.
Wright had to have known about the public policy issue and the content of the Scientologists responses to the IRS. In 2010, while he was working on his New Yorker article, I sent him an email, which stated:
When we talked yesterday, I mentioned the black PR on me in Scientology’s submissions to the IRS on which its 1993 tax exemption was granted. http://www.gerryarmstrong.org/50grand/cult/irs/index.html
This email is pasted below for your reference.
During his researching and writing the article, I sent Wright a great amount of information and documents and spoke to him and New Yorker fact checkers several times. I made myself and my information available, and withheld nothing in any areas they asked about. Despite this, he treated me dishonestly in the article, and forwarded the Scientologists’ black PR and lies on me. He and The New Yorker would not correct the published untrue statements about me, but handed me and my request for correction off to the magazine’s attorney, who also dealt with me dishonestly. Obviously I do not have the resources to take on Condé Nast legally, and they knew it. It was heart-breaking. I have no doubt that his unfriendly attitude toward me continued through his book, and into his participation in your film.
More than a year ago, Spanky Taylor told me that you would be contacting me about the film. This made sense because of my long, intense relationship with Hubbard and the Scientologists, all their litigation with me, their fair gaming, the way my situation and legal cases fit in the Scientologists’ human rights issues, my victimization and present standing in the IRS deal, and the quantity of my material Wright used in his book. I expect that you too have been influenced against me by black propaganda, not because I wasn’t contacted about the film, but because of the apparent omission of the public policy violations issue in your treatment of the IRS deal, which, of course concerns my victimization. I have never seen the black PR on me that the Scientologists provided to Wright, which I am sure he provided to you. You are also obviously close to Rathbun and Rinder who had a hand in this black PR, and who still hate me and are protecting the IRS deal by not telling the truth about the public policy issue and their victimizing me.
If you, Wright and Haggis really want to get the US Government to re-examine the Scientologists’ tax exemption, get Rathbun and Rinder to tell the truth. I will know when they tell it because they have to tell it about me. The Scientologists did not make the IRS’s knees buckle. The IRS was not thoroughly whipped in 1993. The IRS and the involved Justice Department officials collaborated with the Scientologists, and they did so with full knowledge that they were victimizing the Scientologists’ victims, which cannot but be a grotesque violation of public policy.
Paul Haggis has stated in a number of places that he fights for the underdog, doesn’t like bullies, “The bigger the bully, the more I want to take them down.” The bullies here are the Scientologists, their lawyers, PIs, etc., and the US Government, and Rathbun and Rinder and their supporters. That is about as big a bunch of bullies as you can find. Against them, my wife and I are virtually alone, the most marginalized underdogs imaginable.
I hope he will take this to heart, and you, Wright and he will stand up to these bullies. Please study the materials relating to the IRS deal and the public policy issues that I have made available, and use your power, capacity and megaphones so Rathbun and Rinder know it’s time to answer their accusers, including, most immediately, me.
Sincerely,
Gerry Armstrong
[address and phone number]
cc: Lawrence Wright
cc: Paul Haggis
cc: Mark Rathbun
cc: Mike Rinder
*****
From: Gerry Armstrong
Sent: Tuesday, November 09, 2010 10:58 AM
To: ‘Lawrence Wright’
Cc: ‘Jennifer Stahl’
Subject: A few other thingsWhen we talked yesterday, I mentioned the black PR on me in Scientology’s submissions to the IRS on which its 1993 tax exemption was granted.
http://www.gerryarmstrong.org/50grand/cult/irs/index.htmlAlso, if you have questions about my legal cases and status, here’s my archive: http://www.gerryarmstrong.org/archives/category/legal
I mentioned this injunction: http://www.gerryarmstrong.org/50k/legal/a4/2623.php
and the Breckenridge decision: http://www.gerryarmstrong.org/50k/legal/a1/283.php
which was affirmed on appeal: http://www.gerryarmstrong.org/50k/legal/a1/3112.phpA sample communication to Scientologists providing my position regarding their contract and injunction against me: http://www.gerryarmstrong.org/archives/14
*****
And this is interesting. An “independent,” who appears to copy posts and party line from Rathbun’s blog, just quoted a 1996 post to that contained Prouty’s 1987 letter to Michael Joseph, publishers of Bare-Faced Messiah. http://mylrh.wordpress.com/2010/11/06/lrh-military-info/I mentioned that Prouty hadn’t been used in some years. But Tommy Davis I guess brings him up with you, and a Scientologist posts this on his blog.
Curiously, I had the same post on my site in the black PR section: http://www.gerryarmstrong.org/50grand/cult/usenet/ars-milne-1996-03-19.html
This 1999 post to a.r.s. is a Prouty oddity: http://www.gerryarmstrong.org/50grand/legal/a7/breaches-exhibit30.html That is one of 201 “breaches” of Scientology’s contract for which the cult sought $50,000 each in a 2002 lawsuit.
And a Freedom article from Fletch on me: http://www.gerryarmstrong.org/50grand/cult/freedom-1985-04-2.html
I hope all of this is making sense to you. I’m assuming that you know a lot about what’s happening in Scientologyland.
Gerry