Scientology, the CIA and Their Crash of Symbols

Last December, I mentioned to Alexander Dvorkin an oddity I had noticed in the description of the US Intelligence Community Seal on the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s website. Dr. Dvorkin included this fact in an article in Russian entitled “Scientology & the CIA” he presented in January at St. Tikhon’s Orthodox University in Moscow.¹
Mark Hackard posted an English translation of the article on his “Espionage History Archive” website, which I found in February.²

In a sincere, and cheery, effort to get the Intelligence Community to do the conscienceful thing, I wrote the ODNI via Director James R. Clapper in March. ³

That was six weeks ago, and so far the ODNI has not changed its seal blurb nor signaled that things would be different in the IC regarding the Scientologists or their victims. The people and agencies responsible for security should go out of their way to make their system’s victims feel secure, but, sadly, such systems do not take such actions.

While our attention was on US-Scientology-Russia intelligence aspects, my wife Caroline came across something that made even more of a symbological connection than what there is between the Scientologists’ cloaked daggers and the Intelligence Community’s polestar in its seal. It’s so obvious that it’s a miracle I missed it before. It’s between the CIA’s symbology and the Scientologists’ symbology for their new “ideal org” in, of all places, Moscow!

The cloaked daggers ⁴ is one of the Scientologists’ key religious trademarked insignia: eight daggers cloaked by the Cross of Christ. I recently posted a separate note to help decloak all the daggers.⁵ Obviously people have been decloaking L. Ron Hubbard, Scientology and Scientologists for decades, but there is still a whole lot of cloaking going on.

Although I have seen no written policy regarding the Scientologists’ creation of new symbols or signage for their individual ideal orgs, they have not hidden what is their clear practice. For each org, the Scientologists tack their standard Scientology insignia — the cloaked daggers, the triangle of Dianetics, or the double triangle with the snaky “S” – onto a representation of a celebrated landmark or symbol of that city or part of the country. For Sydney, Australia, for example, they used the globally-recognized Sydney Opera House and Sydney Harbour Bridge.⁶

In Québec City, the capital of Québec Province in Canada, the Scientologists hitched their cloaked daggers and triangle symbols to a fleur-de-lis⁷, the stylized lily flower that has been used for centuries in Europe. Fleurs-de-lis are also on the Québec provincial flag, known as the Fleurdelisé⁸, and on the Arms of Canada.⁹

For Basel, Switzerland, the Scientologists mounted their symbols on a stylized middle section of the city’s Mittlere Brücke (Middle Bridge) over the Rhine.¹⁰ (Note, there appears to be a perspective wonkiness with the water and waves under their bridge.)¹¹

It is obvious that with all their ideal org symbology, the Scientologists are trying to establish “ARC” (“affinity, reality and communication”), which the Scientologists define as “good feeling, love or friendliness,” with the local people. This can also be observed in the speeches of Scientology head David Miscavige at the openings of these orgs, with his over-the-top gushing about the history, wonders and wonderful people of the area. The Scientologists use ARC to gain“PRAC” (“public relations area control”), which, according to Scientology scripture, is getting the public and officials in an area to do what the Scientologists want.

To simulate ARC and wangle PRAC in Milan, Italy, the Scientologists planted their symbols on colors and a design concept ripped off from the city’s famous football club A.C. Milan (Associazione Calcio Milan). ¹²

Hubbard wrote in cult scripture in which he laid out Scientologists’ battle tactics: “The only safe public opinion to head for is they love us and are in a frenzy of hate against the enemy.”¹³ Hubbard and Scientologists’ “enemy” are commonly the people who simply tell the truth they know about those tactics and their application and the persons who source, command, order or execute them. And pretty well all Milanese love the Rossaneri.

Weirdly, in their need to alter the logo or design enough to obscure their not-so-subtle rip-off of AC Milan, the Scientologists actually incorporated the Imperial Japanese war flag into their Milan ideal org sign.¹⁴

The Scientologists took a very different approach, however, with their Moscow ideal org sign. Nothing in it denotes or depicts Moscow or Russia – no St. Basil’s Cathedral, no Spasskaya Tower, no Tsar Bell, no St. George, no dragon, no double-headed eagle, no bear, not even a matryoshka.  No, what the Scientologists did was add eight more points or daggers to their cloaked daggers to contrive a 16-point array, which is the central element in the seal and flag of the US’s Central Intelligence Agency.

The relative lengths of the daggers in the Scientologists’ design have been altered, and their shading is different, but the likeness to the CIA’s symbol is unmistakable and striking. The Scientologists, of course, cloak the Moscow org’s 16 daggers, and also cloak the likeness to the CIA’s symbol, with their standard cloaking device, the universally-appreciated religiousness and righteousness of the Christian Cross.

The CIA states on its website¹⁵:

Here’s how we interpret our seal:

• The American Eagle is the national bird and is a symbol of strength and alertness.
• The radiating spokes of the compass rose depict the convergence of intelligence data from all areas of the world to a central point.
• The shield is the standard symbol of defense and the intelligence we gather for policymakers.

The central point where intelligence data collected by the CIA, and the other entities in the Intelligence Community, converge from around the world is, of course, in the US. The same is true with the Scientology cult; the intelligence data the Scientologists collect around the world converges in a central point in the US. Geographically, the central point for the CIA’s data convergence could be wherever, for example, Director Clapper is. The Scientologists’ converge their intelligence data to wherever the current cult head, for now Miscavige, is operating.

The CIA calls their 16 points “spokes,” but this cannot be right. They doubtlessly call them spokes for the same reason that the Scientologists call their compelled interrogations “confessionals,” or call defrauding their customers “enlightenment.” Spokes sounds more benevolent than daggers, arrows or spikes. The shading, overlapping and foreshortening give the symbol three-dimensionality, which weaponizes it, and renders it useless as a compass.

Scientology’s structure and operation as a global intelligence entity has been widely known about at least since the 1970’s when the US Federal Bureau of Investigation raided the cult’s intelligence offices in Los Angeles, California and Washington, DC. I was posted in intelligence inside Scientology, and have been a target and victim of its intelligence apparatus since I left in 1981. Also since leaving, I have communicated publicly about the Scientologists’ intelligence policies and practices; for example in this talk “Scientology, the Cult of Total Espionage” from Novosibirsk, Russia in 2004:¹⁶

Because of the dominance and pervasiveness of intelligence activities inside the organization, and in relation to the outside world, it is accurate to call Scientology a cult, or “religion,” of total espionage.

Scientology has a network of Scientologist intelligence personnel, and hires outside private investigators and other professionals. The cult uses standard intelligence means and channels for obtaining information: legitimate research or purchase, and illegitimate activities such as infiltration, burglary, theft and extortion. Scientology has security and counter-espionage departments, and external departments and covert operatives. They seek intelligence on every stratum of society: on the highest political leaders, industrialists, entertainers, medical professionals, and on the very commonest of citizens.

[…]

In their early indoctrination into the cult, Scientologists are brought to accept that they will be reported on to organization intelligence seniors, and that they will themselves report on others – Scientologists and wogs everywhere. The amount of intelligence information that Scientology collects through its report system, and dozens of other intelligence channels is staggering.

In Scientology’s psychotherapy, called “auditing” — the processing that the cult claims makes people super powerful, super able and super smart —Scientologists divulge everything about themselves and their pasts. During this processing, they are monitored on an electronic meter, and what they say is written down, and audiotaped or videotaped. Scientologists divulge their whole sexual history, anything they’ve done for which they could be prosecuted, anything embarrassing, all their innermost secrets, and their families’ and associates’ secrets.

All of this material goes to Scientology’s leaders and to the core intelligence personnel to be used for intelligence purposes, including controlling the Scientologists who divulged their secrets.

[…]

Scientology is a peculiarly American malignancy. Orders come from the U.S. to Russia, and intelligence information flows from Russia to the U.S.

Last August, Russian law enforcement raided the Moscow ideal org and, it is reported, “seized audio and video recording equipment that, investigators believe, serves to record conversations and auditing sessions to later blackmail Scientology’s clients.”¹⁷Actually, although the Scientologists’ auditing recordings do serve for blackmail, they do much more. To intelligence personnel in an intelligence organization they contain intelligence data that could be used for every intelligence purpose imaginable.

It was also reported that official Scientology spokesperson Karin Pouw responded to the Moscow raid: “Church officials learned about the discovery of the hidden devices only from media reports.” It is, of course, irrelevant whether the Scientologists’ executive echelon (Miscavige, et al.) in the US learned about the Russian police’s discovery of hidden devices from the media or from the Scientologists’ own personnel in Moscow. Russian media might have been right on top of this newsworthy incident. What is relevant is the certainty that the executive echelon directed that the devices be installed, hidden, and undoubtedly made difficult to discover. The top echelon or cabal of Scientologists who directed the installation of the spy equipment in the Moscow org are also the persons who direct the use of the information in the recordings made with that equipment, and who most personally benefit from that use.

The Scientologists’ practice of covertly and overtly using people’s statements against them, which were made in a therapeutic or confessional setting and in violation of promised trust, has been in effect since Hubbard started processing people. The Scientologists falsely deny this is their practice, but it has long since been proven beyond rational argument. In the 1984 judgment in the first of six cases in which the Scientologists sued me, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Paul G. Breckenridge, Jr. stated:

LRH’s wife, Mary Sue Hubbard is also plaintiff herein. On the one hand she certainly appeared to be a pathetic individual. She was forced from her post as Controller, convicted and imprisoned as a felon, and deserted by her husband. On the other hand her credibility leaves much to be desired. She struck the familiar pose of not seeing, hearing, or knowing any evil. Yet she was the head of the Guardian Office for years and among other things, authored the infamous order “GO 121669” which directed culling of supposedly confidential P.C. files/folders for purposes of internal security

The judge also stated about the people who testified at trial for my defense:

As indicated by its factual findings, the court finds the Testimony of Gerald and Jocelyn Armstrong, Laurel Sullivan, Nancy Dincalcis, Edward Walters, Omar Garrison, Kima Douglas, and Howard Schomer to be credible, extremely persuasive, and the defense of privilege or justification established and corroborated by this evidence. Obviously, there are some discrepancies or variations in recollections, but these are the normal problems which arise from lapse of time, or from different people viewing matters or events from different perspectives. In all critical and important matters, their testimony was precise, accurate, and rang true. The picture painted by these former dedicated Scientologists, all of whom were intimately involved with LRH, or Mary Jane Hubbard, or of the Scientology Organization, is on the one hand pathetic, and on the other, outrageous. Each of these persons literally gave years of his or her respective life in support of a man, LRH, and his ideas. Each has manifested a waste and loss or frustration which is incapable of description. Each has broken with the movement for a variety of reasons, but at the same time, each is, still bound by the knowledge that the Church has in its possession his or her most inner thoughts and confessions, all recorded in “pre-clear (P.C.) folders” or other security files of the organization, and that the Church or its minions is fully capable of intimidation or other physical or psychological abuse if it suits their ends. The record is replete with evidence of such abuse. ¹⁸

The US Intelligence Community has known about the Scientologists’ use of supposedly confidential confessions for irreligious or criminal purposes against the US’s own citizens at least since the FBI’s raids on the Scientologists’ intelligence offices in the US in 1977. The IC knew this in addition to knowing that the Scientologists were operating as an intelligence organization that in the US in a very few years had infiltrated or burglarized over one hundred Federal and State agencies or offices.

Relevant IC officials were fully aware of the judgment and evidence in my case and the ruling condemning the Scientologists’ use and abuse of citizens’ confessions. Indeed, the Scientologists claimed, in their 1992 submission to the US Internal Revenue Service, which the IRS used to grant them tax exemption as a religion, that from 1984, the IRS had, while refusing exemption, “continuously thrust the Armstrong case at [the Scientologists], demanding an explanation.”¹⁹

With the IRS’s grant of tax exemption to the Scientologists, the US Federal Government also sanctified and enabled their continuing violations of public policy – fraud, extortion, false imprisonment, civil rights crimes, etc. — against Americans, Russians, Canadians, everyone. The Government also greenlighted the Scientologists to continue their intelligence activities, except, apparently, for targeting Federal Government entities or officials.

The question Dr. Dvorkin was attempting to answer in his “Scientology and the CIA” article, and made considerable progress in doing so, is whether the CIA somehow supports the Scientologists; that is, supports the executive Scientologists and their collaborators who operate the organization’s various networks, including its intelligence networks. More specifically, Dr. Dvorkin asked, and others have asked, is there a smoking gun, is there irrefutable evidence of such support?

I know the smoking gun, and where to put my hands on it. I’ll do that later. Here I’m only commenting on some of these two intelligence organization’s respective and shared symbology. For me it is not terribly important to prove that the CIA supports the Scientologists, because there are other entities in the US Intelligence Community that have been proven, with ample evidence, to support the Scientologists in strategic and specific ways. There is also no actual evidence that I have seen of any entity or person in the IC not being aligned with the other entities in their relationships with the Scientologists, and with me. To think otherwise – to think that there is a remnant in the IC, or in the whole Federal Government, who will act to end the relationships with the Scientologists and their victims – is foolishness.

The IC entities who support the Scientologists usually express it as support for the Scientologists’ religious freedom, their freedom to practice their religious activities around the world. These entities would include Department of Justice, Department of State and Department of the Treasury. The Scientologists’ “religious activities” include fraud, extortion, assault and human rights violations. The IC officials and entities supporting the Scientologists know all this. The persons controlling and directing the religion – the Miscavige, et al. executive echelon — comprise a criminal conspiracy against citizens. IC officials and entities are very aware of this.

There is one more observation that should be made about the Scientologists’ ideal org symbology that relates to its support – sponsorship or approval — by the IC. For the opening of their ideal org in Washington, DC, the Scientologists surmounted scultptures of their Dianetics Triangle and Scientology Triangles insignia with a likeness of the Great Seal of the United States. ²⁰

In at least one of their videos promoting the DC org, the Scientologists also edited an image of the Great Seal above their cloaked daggers symbol. And they included an image of the Flag of the President of the United States, which contains the Great Seal surrounded by fifty stars, forming the seal of the President. ²¹

Regarding the Scientologists’ use of the Great Seal, see 18 U.S. Code § 713 – Use of likenesses of the great seal of the United States, the seals of the President and Vice President, the seal of the United States Senate,…United States House of Representatives, and the seal of the United States Congress.²²

(a) Whoever knowingly displays any printed or other likeness of the great seal of the United States, or of the seals of the President or the Vice President of the United States, or the seal of the United States Senate, or the seal of the United States House of Representatives, or the seal of the United States Congress, or any facsimile thereof, in, or in connection with, any advertisement, poster, circular, book, pamphlet, or other publication, public meeting, play, motion picture, telecast, or other production, or on any building, monument, or stationery, for the purpose of conveying, or in a manner reasonably calculated to convey, a false impression of sponsorship or approval by the Government of the United States or by any department, agency, or instrumentality thereof, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than six months, or both.

(b) Whoever, except as authorized under regulations promulgated by the President and published in the Federal Register, knowingly manufactures, reproduces, sells, or purchases for resale, either separately or appended to any article manufactured or sold, any likeness of the seals of the President or Vice President, or any substantial part thereof, except for manufacture or sale of the article for the official use of the Government of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than six months, or both.

The Scientologists knew they were displaying the US’s Great Seal, and the President’s Seal. The display was in connection with their building, its “opening,” and publications advertising the building and the grand opening ceremony. The display unquestionably conveys an impression of sponsorship or approval by the Government of the United States and its departments, agencies or instrumentalities, which includes its IC Community.

There is no evidence I have seen that the impression of sponsorship or approval is false or that the US has fined, imprisoned or prosecuted any Scientologist conveyers of such false impression. The US acts publicly as if the Scientologists do have the sponsorship or approval they convey with their display of the US’s Great Seal joined to the Scientologists’ own trademarked religious symbols.  In fact, US Congressman Brad Sherman stood and spoke at the org opening right beside the Scientologists’ sculptured insignia with the Great Seal crests.

This means, it can be seen, that the Scientologists have US, IC, CIA sponsorship or approval, to carry on intelligence actions against other countries, and citizens everywhere, and even to insert the CIA’s intelligence daggers in the heart of Moscow. All of them know what they are doing. They play games, and, for improper interests, they share adversaries, or victims, with the Scientologists, who are insatiable and dishonorable game players, and super sore losers. The Government of the US or any of its departments, agencies or instrumentalities sharing adversaries with the Scientologists is a crime against humanity.

A final note. My letter to National Intelligence Director Clapper concerns the easily dispensable issue of the number of stars on the circumference of the IC’s seal. There are sixteen. They say fifteen. Now add up the stars on the circumference of the devices the Scientologists devised with Great Seal crests for their DC ideal org. Fifteen.

Notes