May 11, 2009
Open Letter to Joseph K. Grieboski
Institute on Religion and Public Policy
Joseph K. Grieboski
Institute on Religion and Public Policy
1620 I Street, NW, Suite LL10
Washington, DC 20006
USA
Dear Mr. Grieboski:
Not long after I wrote you my October 25, 2004 letter, Daniel Chapman called and we spoke about you, and specifically your relationship with Scientology.
http://www.gerryarmstrong.org/50grand/writings/armstrong-ltr-grieboski-2004-10-25.html
Mr. Chapman said that he had known you before you started your organization, then had worked with you there, and that Scientology had had you on its payroll for $96,000 per year, or $8,000 a month.
I see that a Daniel Chapman was indeed with your organization.
http://www.religionandpolicy.org/news-archivepress/2000-08.htm
http://www.religionandpolicy.org/news-archivepress/2000-10.htm
He said he had an ethical problem with you being, as he said it, in Scientology’s pocket. You know from my 2004 letter that I was aware that you were supporting the cult, and that I too had a problem with your ethics in doing so.
At the time I wrote you, of course, I hadn’t been told about your receiving $8,000 a month from Scientology, but I did mention your shilling and collaboration; so being in the cult’s pocket that deep was understandable. Why you didn’t respond to my communication and evidence, or speak up in defense of Scientology’s victims in its religious war on Suppressive Persons, is also understandable.
Mr. Chapman asked that I not say anything right away because he wanted to confront you with the fact that you were on Scientology’s payroll and how unethical that was. He said he was going to meet you at a reunion that was a couple of months away, and I agreed to not make public what he’d told me until he got back from the reunion.
We spoke a second time and he confirmed the $96,000 a year or $8,000 a month figure from Scientology. I didn’t ask him for much more additional information, because he was obviously reluctant to talk and also obviously troubled by the matter. I therefore don’t know exactly what Scientology-related entity or person paid you or did any of the things necessary to cause such payment to be made. The cult, as you can imagine, is able to make or arrange such payments covertly and very easily through all sorts of front groups and agents, paid or otherwise.
The one person who would order and/or approve such a deal, as you can’t help but know, is David Miscavige. I’ve read on your site about you meeting with religious leaders, and, of course, Mr. Miscavige is the sole leader of the Scientology religion. Given your financial and organizational relationship with him, with so many Scientology connections, some of which I noted in my 2004 letter, he has to be one those religious leaders you’ve met. He’s right there in the U.S., and can drop in any time he wants on the head of the I.R.S., so maybe he’s dropped in on you and your organization right there in Washington, DC.
I have, over the years since, attempted to reach Mr. Chapman at the number I have for him, and I have left messages for him, but he has not returned my calls. For some time I considered that his contacting me with the information about you being in Scientology’s pocket might be an intelligence op. Perhaps it was a scheme to get me to make a false claim and have you to sue me, or at least “prove” I’m wrong about something. Scientology’s leaders would do almost anything to “prove” me wrong about something, or to somehow destroy me. But I believe, after this time, and after reading more information on line, that Mr. Chapman was sincere and truthful.
On your About Us page, you say:
Having received two nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize, the Institute on Religion and Public Policy is one of the world’s most effective and well-respected advocates for freedom of religion and belief.
An international, inter-religious non-profit organization, the Institute is dedicated to ensuring freedom of religion as the foundation for security, stability, and democracy. Founded in 1999 and headquartered in Washington, DC, the Institute recognizes that religious freedom is more than just a church-state issue. As such, the Institute engages every segment of society to protect humankind’s most basic fundamental right: freedom of religion and belief. The Institute’s programs reflect this multi-faceted approach, in national security, corporate social responsibility, interfaith dialogue and media engagement.
Religious discrimination and persecution are not new issues. They have been around as long as humanity. But combating them does require new ideas and innovative solutions. The Institute has developed creative and exciting methods of advancing fundamental rights, energizing new advocates and rolling back religious discrimination, persecution and tyranny.
Many religious freedom advocacy groups do an important service by highlighting individual cases of persecution, discrimination, imprisonment and abuse. The Institute, however, has a more overarching goal: To create and strengthen legal, business, academic, media and other systems within countries-and internationally-to protect religious freedom so such abuses do not occur.
The Institute on Religion and Public Policy does not accept funding of any type from religions, religious institutions, or government agencies of any kind, unless government funds are specifically earmarked solely for the Interparliamentary Conference on Human Rights and Religious Freedom.
http://religionandpolicy.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=71&Itemid=118
You know that Joseph Stalin also received two nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize. That doesn’t mean that having received two nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize, Stalin was one of the world’s most effective and well-respected advocates for freedom of religion and belief. Your organization’s nomination did mean, however, that someone qualified to nominate nominees nominated you. I don’t know such a qualified person personally, and I’m sure Scientology was very helpful in putting you and your nominator together.
My wife Caroline and I were aware of your two claimed Nobel Peace Prize nominations. I had no real way of confirming if you actually were nominated, but pretty well accepted your word on that point. As I’m sure you know, the Norwegian Nobel Committee doesn’t publish nominees’ names for fifty years. I’d be one hundred twelve before I really found out if you were nominated or not, or before even you really found out if you were nominated or not.
In 2008, Caroline posted a couple of messages relating to your Nobel Prize nominations to the Operation Clambake Message Board. I’m sure your people or Scientology’s people passed these messages on to you, especially because of your monetary relationship, but I’ll include them here so other readers of this open letter can see.
PostPosted: Sun Jun 22, 2008 11:25 pm
Post subject: Scientology’s ignoble Nobel Prize campaignRef. Trial testimony re: Purification RD and Nobel Prize
Scientology may have given up on its campaign to get Hubbard a Nobel Prize, but there’s an active campaign to get one for the Institute on Religion and Public Policy run by Scientology shill Joseph K. Grieboski.
http://religionandpolicy.org/show.php?p=3.1.1&PHPSESSID=0823cc8ec92bc2a6b727f5a86ac50d17
Grieboski’s address to the 2008 Graduating Class of Marywood University: [ ]
You see, I founded the Institute on Religion and Public Policy when I was more or less your age. With a lot of chutzpah and maybe not as much foresight, I undertook my Great Pilgrimage. I had no start-up money, no staff, no non-profit management background, and not a lot of support from folks in Washington. I was too young, too inexperienced, too “ambitious” as one high-ranking cleric once stated. But nine years later, I stand before you as your commencement speaker with two Nobel Peace Prize nominations under our belt. We still don’t have overflowing coffers, we are still understaffed, but by force of personality, faith, the love and support of friends, and remaining clear and committed to the pilgrimage I began, we have been able to turn the tide of violence, oppression, persecution and discrimination in Sudan, Eritrea, China, India, Russia, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere.
Joseph K. Grieboski is the Founder and President of the Institute on Religion and Public Policy. Since its founding in 1999, Mr. Grieboski has transformed the Institute into a well-respected global authority on the role of religious freedom in society and politics, culminating in its 2007 and 2008 nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize.
See also Gerry’s October 2004 open letter to Grieboski
http://grieboskireport.blogspot.com/2008/05/prepared-text-of-institute-president.html
Cult opponents in the Washington, D.C. area should check this place out:
Institute on Religion and Public Policy
1620 I Street, NW, Suite LL10
Washington, D.C. 20006
Phone: (202) 835-8760
Fax: (202) 835-8764
irpp@religionandpolicy.orgAnd everybody should work on and expose Grieboski’s connections to the Scientology cult and derail his Nobel Prize scam.
PostPosted: Mon Jun 23, 2008 1:11 am
Post subject: Scientology’s Ignoble Nobel Prize Campaign
From Grieboski’s blog, about the Institute on Religion and Public Policy’s 2007 Nobel nomination:http://blogs.georgetown.edu/?id=27653
Monday, September 24, 2007
The Nobel Peace Prize, Joseph Grieboski, and the Institute on Religion and Public PolicyThe Institute on Religion and Public Policy has done some very important work in an effort to promote one of the most basic human rights– freedom of religion. As the group notes on its website, the Institute is a “is an international, inter-religious non-profit organization dedicated to ensuring freedom of religion as the foundation for security, stability, and democracy.” Today’s Scranton Times has a very nice article on the Institute’s founder, Joseph Grieboski and his organization’s nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize. Josh McAuliffe writes in the Times:
These are very good days for the institute. In February, the group was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize by Ousseni Tamboura, a parliament member from the West African nation of Burkina Faso, a regular participant in the institute’s annual Interparliamentary Conference on Human Rights and Religious Freedom.
“The Interparliamentary Conference on Human Rights and Religious Freedom is constantly in the process of resolving issues of rising tension – religious and others – and moving the world in such a collaborative, parliamentary means to peace,” Mr. Tamboura wrote in his nominating letter to the Nobel Prize committee.
http://religion-and-policy.blogspot.com/2007/09/nobel-peace-prize-joseph-grieboski-and.html
http://blogs.georgetown.edu/?id=27653On Ousseni Tamboura, start at http://www.afdevinfo.com/htmlreports/uv12.html
Here he is on a Scientology cult “human rights” page: http://www.theta.com/religious-freedom/20061123_rf_1.phpGrieboski is actually a big helper in Scientology’s global suppression and destruction of human rights — particularly freedom of religion. Giving his institute a Nobel Prize for promoting religious freedom would be like giving the Khmer Rouge a Nobel for promoting intellectualism.
We haven’t yet found who nominated Grieboski’s operation for the 2008 Nobel Peace Prize.
Funnily, in 1980, before I escaped from Scientology, I worked on Hubbard’s campaign to get him the Nobel Peace Prize. A target in the plan at that time to was to identify nominators. And he really did win an Ig Nobel Prize in 1994, but in Literature, for Dianetics the Modern Science of Mental Health.
If you accepted funding of any type from Scientology you would be in violation of your policy to not accept funding of any type from religions or religious institutions. Mr. Miscavige could, of course, have had a non-religion or non-religious entity, or any number of individuals, pay you, if that was really a policy that was important to you. I think, however, that the policy is unimportant, and actually irrelevant, and that it doesn’t matter if Mr. Miscavige had a religion, a religious institution, a non-religion, a non-religious institution, an individual, or any other classification pay you.
More important than who is paying you is your complete silence about Scientology’s willful, continuing lies, abuses, criminality and sociopathy that victimize so many people, in fact your fellow citizens. From my 2004 letter, you cannot but know what Scientology has been doing to pervert and crush the basic human right to freedom of conscience and religion. Your relationship with Scientology and your anti-relationship with its victims make your claim of combating and rolling back religious discrimination, persecution and tyranny fraudulent. You can change that simply by being courageous and taking a stand in defense of Scientology’s victims, regardless of what you’ve been paid to do otherwise.
I called Mr. Chapman’s number May 7 around 5:30 P.M. PST, and I was pleasantly surprised that he answered. He said he certainly remembered me, and I told him that I was going to go public with what he’d told me about Scientology paying you $8,000 a month and wanted to give him the opportunity to talk to me before I do so. He said he was at work and asked if I’d call him back an hour earlier the following day, and I agreed. I did call the next day, but Mr. Chapman didn’t answer, so I left a message. He hasn’t called back, so, in my own defense of Scientology’s victims, I’m posting this letter.
Please feel free to contact me at any time.
Yours hopefully,
Gerry Armstrong
#2-46298 Yale Road
Chilliwack, BC V2P 2P6
Canada
604-703-1373
gerry@gerryarmstrong.org