As people know who have read Marty Rathbun’s Memoirs of a Scientology Warrior, he blames much of his and his fellow Scientologists’ antisocial and criminal actions against SPs over many years on FAMCO, Flynn Associates Management Corporation.
Michael Flynn was a Boston attorney standing up to and so far not crushed by the Scientologists’ legal and extralegal warfare. In Memoirs, Rathbun lies about FAMCO and its part in the people and groups he warred against while in the Scientology cult.
Rathbun double-curves Flynn in Memoirs, lying about him even though Rathbun had fair gamed Flynn for years and is now claiming publicly to have left the cult and be redressing his antisocial and criminal actions.
Rathbun claims that “the IRS […] was part and parcel of the FAMCO plan,” (p. 151) which is not only untrue but deranged. Hubbard and Scientology had been at war with the IRS for years before. The IRS had been around since 1862, and had the name “Internal Revenue Service” since 1918.
Rathbun talks about “the FAMCO litigation” and the idea of settling it. (pp. 152, 190) Yet he never mentions any FAMCO case or cases, because there were none.
Rathbun writes that the threat that FAMCO was had “its roots in long-term Department of Justice, AMA, and APA hatred of Hubbard.” (p. 199) There was no such institutional or DOJ hatred of Hubbard. The idea that FAMCO stretched back to 1950 when a few mental health professionals responsibly criticized Hubbard for his criminally fraudulent claims in Dianetics the Modern Science of Mental Health is patently false and absurd.
Writing about the 1983 DeWolf litigation in Riverside Superior Court, Rathbun says he warned Mary Sue Hubbard that if Hubbard showed up he “would be personally served with a couple dozen FAMCO lawsuits.” (p. 203) There were no FAMCO lawsuits to be served, FAMCO had never had a lawsuit, and FAMCO had ceased to operate at all two years earlier.
Rathbun claims that “the FAMCO group” was Hubbard’s “avowed nemesis,” and that except for Mary Sue, all of “Hubbard’s long-term close friends and allies who had been denigrated and depowered” by Scientology’s leaders “had joined or were drifting toward” the FAMCO group. (p. 203) Not Bill Franks, not Laurel Sullivan, not Homer Schomer, not Martin Samuels, not me, none of us joined or drifted toward FAMCO. Rathbun helped implant the false ideas in Hubbard’s mind to make him declare FAMCO his nemesis, and Rathbun is still falsely mocking up FAMCO as an actual evil enemy entity.
Rathbun writes that the people who had been denigrated and depowered by him and his cohorts, “the new regime,” would receive acknowledgment and comfort as victims” when they joined the FAMCO group. None of us joined, and none of us received acknowledge and comfort for any reason from the FAMCO group.
Rathbun writes about flying to Philadelphia to meet “a New York mafioso named Joey Deciccio who claimed to have the information and power to bring Flynn’s FAMCO scheme to a halt in an instant.” (p. 224) This meeting was apparently in 1984, years after the Scientologists knew FAMCO was not happening and was a non-issue, which they were manufacturing into an “issue.”
According to Rathbun Deciccio described what his “power” to end FAMCO was: the mafia “boys” would hold Flynn “by his feet and dangle his head in the sewer till the rats start gnawing on his face.” Rathbun says he asked, “What if that doesn’t work?” He says Deciccio told him they cut a finger off, and then if that didn’t work, “the rest of his fucking fingers.” According to Rathbun, Deciccio promised that these “Brooklyn rules” would “make the litigation go away.”
Rathbun says he told Deciccio he wouldn’t authorize the sewer rats and finger-chopping plan, because he and his fellow Scientologists “will not engage in or condone any illegal acts.” This is an ass-covering, sanctimonious lie, because Rathbun himself had already condoned, paid for and committed illegal acts, including against Flynn personally.
Rathbun writes that Hubbard’s antisocial “writings issued between 1981 and 1984,” including the “reinstatement” (actually the restatement) of disconnection, and the “‘ends justify the means’ approach” to the world, “were very likely a response to learning, through Special Project reports, that the dozens of lawsuits confronting Hubbard included a stable of FAMCO expert witness psychiatrists and psychologists, readying to testify to Scientology’s alleged deleterious mental effects upon the plaintiffs.” (p. 234) Rathbun was in Special Project, and was responsible for reports to Hubbard about lawsuits, witnesses, etc., and even FAMCO. So Rathbun’s lies about FAMCO drove Hubbard to make disconnection worse than it was and to introduce the “‘ends justify the means’ approach.”
Rathbun says that Hubbard was “likely also influenced [to write policies directing disconnection, and the ends justifying the means] by reports [from Special Project Legal] of the tight lines of coordination that were discovered between FAMCO and the U.S. Department of Justice (including the FBI). (p. 234) There were no tight, or even loose, lines of coordination between FAMCO and any department or person in the US Government or any government. FAMCO possessed no coordination lines. Rathbun has shown no coordination lines. He is just alleging lines and their tightness.
If there wasn’t FAMCO, which there wasn’t, what was there? There were individuals in various capacities and standings, all over the world, who had been victimized by Hubbard and his Scientologists, or who stood up for the victims, despite themselves being victimized. Some of the individuals standing up for the Scientologists’ victims were necessarily attorneys in law firms, and to a necessary degree their firms stood behind their standing up against the Scientologists in the legal arena.
In seeking redress for the victims, and because Scientology is a criminal organization, US Federal Government Departments, particularly the Justice Department, should be contacted, and they should be urged to do what they can by law do to help the victims and curtail the victimization. There should be then lines of coordination between the Scientologists’ victims, the people standing up for them, and government departments that would be appropriate for all victimized citizens and their defenders.
Rathbun writes that in 1985, David Mayo, because “his back [was] against the wall, then joined ranks with FAMCO and the DOJ, and moved the court to order the church to produce Hubbard for deposition.” (p. 284) I am certain that Mayo never considered that he was joining ranks with FAMCO. FAMCO didn’t have ranks to join. Litigants and the government sued or subpoenaed Hubbard because he invented and managed Scientology and controlled and directed financial, legal and fair game matters. In the Mayo case, of course, Hubbard was a percipient witness concerning the creation of NOTS and Mayo’s activities over many years inside the cult. Rathbun even states in Memoirs that Hubbard had issued an order three years earlier to “terminatedly take out” Mayo, and “had ordered that the church ‘squash him like a bug.’”
Throughout his Memoirs, Rathbun acknowledges that he and other Scientologists, including Miscavige, could get communications to Hubbard, and they received orders from him. I knew such a communication line existed and provided my knowledge to wogs in legal proceedings beginning in 1982 and many times thereafter, the time period Rathbun is talking about. At the same time the Scientologists were denying in legal proceedings that they had any such communication line with Hubbard.
Rathbun and his fellow Scientologists ran a related fraud upon the court and upon their victims by falsely claiming that Hubbard was not the organization’s managing agent, that he was in no way responsible for policy, practice, programs or actions of anyone in the organization.
Managing agent. A person who is invested with general power, involving the exercise of judgment and discretion, as distinguished from an ordinary agent or employee, who acts in an inferior capacity, and under the direction and control of superior authority, both in regard to the extent of the work and the manner of executing the same. One who has exclusive supervision and control of some department of a corporation’s business, the management of which requires such person the exercise of independent judgment and discretion, and the exercise of such authority that it may be fairly said that service of summons upon him will result in notice to the corporation.
Black’s Law Dictionary
Hubbard was clearly the Scientology cult’s managing agent. Hubbard ordered and directed Rathbun’s actions. Rathbun did not order or direct Hubbard’s.
Rathbun writes:
Hubbard outlined our strategy for All Clear as follows. First, we were to get Hubbard extracted from the suits. We were to make a case, by affidavits and documentation, that Hubbard did not run the church and was by no means its managing agent. (p. 158)
Rathbun knew just by receipt of Hubbard’s “outline” that he was to follow, that Hubbard was the managing agent. The affidavits and documentation that could make the case that Hubbard directed be made could only be false. Any intention or effort to execute his “strategy” made him the managing agent.
Rathbun writes:
With Armstrong, Sullivan and Franks aboard, suddenly Flynn could paint a credible picture, through sworn declarations, that L. Ron Hubbard was actively engaged in tight control of the church of Scientology — something we had gone to great lengths to disprove over the past year and a half. (p. 194)
To “disprove,” of course, means to prove to be false. Rathbun, Miscavige, et al. did nothing to prove that Hubbard was not Scientology’s managing agent, which was the issue in the legal arena. What they went to great lengths to do was manufacture the lie that Hubbard was not the cult’s managing agent, and they did it as Hubbard directed, with false affidavits and documentation.
Memoirs communicates a brazen admission of obstruction of justice for Hubbard, as if all those years of lying and getting others to lie under oath were moral or laudable. Rathbun communicates no care for the people organization personnel victimized when Hubbard was its managing agent. Rathbun seeks to justify his obstruction and other fair game actions against the Scientologists’ significant victims back then by further lying about them thirty or so years later. He tells a set of lies to make us victims members of an “illicit scheme” called FAMCO (p. 160) that we were not members of and, as far as we were concerned, didn’t exist.
In April 1985, after Bill Franks became involved in the Scientology opposition, he wrote this declaration that mentions his knowledge as the Executive Director of Scientology in 1981 that the Scientologists knew that the allegations they were making about FAMCO were false, and nothing was ever done with the corporation.
6. In 1980 and 1981, I have personal knowledge of many orders issued by L. Ron Hubbard concerning attacks against Michael Flynn. Hubbard considered Flynn to be a “whore” and Hubbard ordered him to be totally ruined. We were ordered to do a complete investigation of Flynn, find or “manufacture ” crimes he had committed, expose his “crimes” to his clients and to law enforcement officials, ruin his law practice, have him disbarred and file numerous law suits or bar complaints against him without regard to whether the complaints were meritorious or not. L. Ron Hubbard personally ordered all these activities and I saw many of the orders.
[…]
12. In 1981, we obtained from the trash, a copy of a draft prospectus for a corporation named Flynn Associates Management Corporation (FAMCO). This prospectus made it look like Flynn was attempting to finance the Scientology litigation by selling shares in the litigation. From the trash documents and other investigations of Flynn’s finances, we already thought that he would not have enough money to finance the litigation. In fact, Hubbard ordered us to find out who was paying Flynn. This prospectus seemed to provide the answer, and it was sent to Hubbard. In fact, we later received information that shares in FAMCO were never sold or even offered.
13. After seeing the FAMCO prospectus, Hubbard issued an order stating that this proved that Flynn was syndicating litigation. We were ordered to have him disbarred on the basis of the FAMCO documents. FAMCO was viewed as the best method of ruining Flynn’s reputation in the legal community because he had engaged in unethical conduct. Hubbard further ordered that Flynn’s clients be contacted and informed about FAMCO and that Flynn would be shortly disbarred and sent to jail. An attorney in Boston, Harvey Silverglate, was specially hired to make sure that Flynn was disbarred. He was instructed to file bar complaints and make sure that Flynn was unable to practice law. At that same time, we were filing bar complaints and trying to ruin Flynn’s reputation, we had received information that FAMCO shares had never been sold and nothing was ever done with this corporation. In other words, we knew our allegations about Flynn and his involvement with FAMCO were false. Nonetheless, pursuant to Hubbard’s instructions to ruin Flynn, we still made the allegations and attempted to have Flynn disbarred.
http://www.gerryarmstrong.org/50k/legal/related/4092.php
Very recently, I obtained a copy of a declaration containing the cult’s black propaganda line against FAMCO and Mike Flynn that Heber Jentzsch apparently executed in late 1983.http://www.gerryarmstrong.org/50k/legal/related/5140.php
I obtained at the same time a copy of a declaration Flynn wrote in response to Jentzsch and executed April 4, 1984. http://www.gerryarmstrong.org/50k/legal/related/5143.php
Rathbun was responsible for the legal and black PR attack on Flynn and FAMCO, so would have had this written for Jentzsch. In fact, both in style, content and spin, it sounds as if the same person could have written Memoirs and Jentzsch’s declaration.
Because of all the evidence, because of all the evidence he manufactured, because of the actual absence of evidence, and by reason, Rathbun knew, by the time Franks knew, that what he was saying and having others say about FAMCO was false. Rathbun knows that he is still lying about FAMCO in his Memoirs.
I don’t know what cases these declarations were filed in. The Jentzsch declaration was created and Flynn wrote his declaration just before the Scientology v. Armstrong trial was to start in LA Superior Court. Rathbun was also already deep into the operation to frame Flynn with forging a $2 million check on one of Hubbard’s bank accounts.
The Jentzsch declaration evidences much madness and malice.
“The Church of Scientology has a long history of creating freedom of thought.”
“As a religion, Scientology has brought reason into philosophy.”
“psychiatry seeks to destroy worship, to create evil, to create hate and to destroy religious freedom.”
The Flynn declaration is an important look into what he contended with on a number of attack lines including FAMCO. The declaration also provides some insight into the man, why he stood up to the Scientologists and their professional collaborators them, and why he succeeded.