Suicide Note

I’ve been thinking about harm done by the actions of the Scientologists and their colluders, and Dr. Harry Bailey comes to mind. His suicide note shows the ultimate level of emotional distress the Scientologists and their colluders — with their intelligence, PR and lawfare tentacles and operations — can generate in their victims. “Let it be known that the Scientologists and the forces of madness have won.”

According to reports, Dr. Bailey suicided on September 8, 1985. This is the same year the Scientologists brought me to the edge of suicide. I’ve written and spoken about this before, e.g., this video of a 2011 talk in Berlin, Germany at around 37:40:

In April 1985, I was testifying at trial for the plaintiff in the case of Julie Christofferson v. Scientology and L. Ron Hubbard in Portland, Oregon. During my cross-examination, cult attorney Earle Cooley revealed that the Scientologists had videos of me meeting with their covert agents. Cooley claimed the videos showed me planning and doing horrible and criminal things. Relevantly at this time, one of the Scientology agents was Mike Rinder, who now presents as a cult critic and reformer, but still serves the Scientologists’ malign purposes toward his victims.

In June 1984, following a lengthy trial in Los Angeles Superior Court, I had prevailed in the first lawsuit the Scientologists brought against me. Judge Paul G. Breckenridge, Jr. issued an important judgment that besides exonerating me, declared Scientology head Hubbard virtually a pathological liar, condemned the Scientologists’ practice of “culling” auditing folders, and confronted and articulated the functioning of the Suppressive Person doctrine and its criminal application, which Hubbard euphemized as “fair game.”¹

At the same time, Dan Sherman, an “old friend” from my Sea Org days, a writer, contacted me and said he was in touch with a group of “reformers” inside the cult, and communicated they wanted my help. He said they respected my “integrity” and what I had done, considered that Hubbard and his regime had somehow been usurped, and the usurping Scientologists were criminals. Sherman said the “reformers,” who called themselves “Loyalists,” wanted to get usurper head David Miscavige prosecuted, and intended to make the organization honest and decent.

I met with four Loyalist-connected persons perhaps a dozen times over a four month period, including twice with Rinder, whom I had known at that time for more than ten years. He was presented to me as the person in charge of the “Loyalists’” legal affairs. He pretended to be friendly and on my side against the Scientology “criminals,” and looked to me for a lawful way to take control and stop the criminal behavior. My lawyer drafted a “bare bones” complaint on behalf of the “Loyalists” to have the court put the organization into receivership.

Rinder and the rest of the claimed reform-seeking Loyalists were actually being directed by Miscavige, and were scheming and acting to set me up and destroy me. The Loyalists even took me to a lawyer Thomas Janeway who pretended to be on my side against Scientology, but was actually working for the Scientologists. ²

During my cross-examination in the Christofferson trial, when Cooley announced he had two videos of me meeting with the people I thought were reformers, the judge stopped the proceeding, dismissed the jurors, sent the gallery home, ordered the videos produced, and ordered attorneys for both sides into his chambers to watch them. For some reason, I was left in the witness box, alone in the empty courtroom.

I was in tremendous psychological turmoil. I tried to remember what I had said in these videoed meetings. I knew I had cursed, and made an obscene comment. I was humiliated and I knew the videos would be used to embarrass me even more. Knowing what I did of Scientology policy, and from my own experience, I anticipated the Scientologists would manufacture the calumny that I had betrayed the people who supported me, the people the Scientologists had victimized, and the people who stood up against them.

As I sat alone in the box, my mind turned to suicide and I came up with the best, least messy way I could think of: rent a plane and pilot and jump out over open ocean. While brooding over this solution, one of the Scientology attorneys Harry Manion came out of chambers, saw me, demanded to know what I was doing still in the courtroom, and made a scene about my being there. The judge came out of chambers and told me to go out to the hall and wait there for the plaintiff’s attorneys. ³

The courtroom was on, I believe, the third floor of the Multnomah County Courthouse. http://media.oregonlive.com/portland_impact/photo/ct1jpg-11878e538fefdac0.jpg I waited alone for a bit on a bench, in even deeper despair, and then got the idea of jumping down to the ground floor to kill myself.

 

The stairs are, or were anyway, bifurcated ninety degree turn stairs, marble I think, around a pair of top-floor-to-ground-floor shafts or wells.

The ground floor was marble or perhaps a stone composite, but in any case rock hard, and I thought I could just jump from the third floor railing and achieve sure death.

I went over to the closest well, looked over the railing, waited a few seconds, and a person walked across the ground floor directly below me. I think there was a coke machine out of my view and people would pass across the floor at the bottom of the well to get to the machine. I thought it could be my misfortune to land on and kill some innocent person who just wanted a soda.

I went over to the railing above the other well, looked down, and another person walked across three floors below me. I think this time it was a row of ground floor courthouse pay phones that took people across my jump target. And again it would be my luck to survive and kill someone who just wanted to make a call.

I survived without jumping anywhere, and I haven’t been driven to that level of despair or desperation ever since; even though the Scientologists and their colluders have continued to try with all sorts of black propaganda and legal and extralegal threats to drive me there. I also gained a pretty good understanding of the psychological injury these people intend to inflict and do inflict.

Rinder has been and remains a key participant in the fair game on me. At the time of the 1984 videotape operation and the 1985 Christofferson trial, Rinder was the head of the US division of Scientology’s Office of Special Affairs (OSA), the successor to the Guardian’s Office (GO). From at least 1987 until 2007, he was posted as Commanding Officer OSA International, responsible, under cult head Miscavige, for Scientology investigations and intelligence operations against enemies or victims like me, for all Scientology black propaganda, and for all of Scientology’s lawfare around the world.

Very importantly, in the last few years, while again claiming to be reformed and a reformer, Rinder has refused to come forward and tell the truth about the fair game actions he took to victimize people during his years officially in or running OSA. He has refused to help in ongoing injustices he perpetrated, or concerning the undeserved IRS tax exemption by which the Scientologists get away with so much around the world. He played a key, indeed criminal role in the Scientologists obtaining their religious IRS tax exemption.

In the recent A&E series Scientology and the Aftermath, which Rinder co-produced, this quote from a Scientology policy appears:

Confidential

28 March 1972

COUNTER ATTACK TACTICS

CS-G Hat

GOWW Hat

D/G Hats

A/G Hats

Bu of Info

PRINCIPLE: When PR and Legal find themselves engaged in handling attacks, Intelligence has failed.

SITUATION: Those who attack Scientology as proven by Oxford Capacity Analysis graphs, criminal or shady record, personal lives etc., are provenly suppressive. When such people, as is currently common, ascend into the heights of governments or public or private organizations, or the press, they are able to exert the fullest dramatization against anything which might benefit others and usually do.

Being suppressive (a kind word for insane) their aims are destructive.

This is not limited to their fancied enemies. They are destructive to themselves and their own government or institution….

1. These persons can always lose their jobs. These jobs, permitting them power to destroy, are valuable to them. This is a POINT OF VULNERABILITY.

2. If the person’s job is also not valuable to him or if he cannot be made to lose his job, something can be found which he is seeking to protect and it can be threatened.Aftermath Season 1, Episode 7

Immediately following this text, Rinder states:

They (the Scientologists tasked with hating, silencing or destroying attackers) believe if they can get away with that sort of shit, that it puts you in the mindset of “My God, they’ll do anything!”

Rinder says this without ever identifying what he and his seniors and juniors did to implant in their victims the mindset that the Scientologists, and their colluders, of course, will do anything. It is as if he is bragging about putting his victims in that mindset. That “mindset” is psychological injury. It is a desire and product of terrorists.

In common law it is the tort of intentional infliction of emotional distress, caused by the tort-feasors behaving in an “extreme and outrageous” way toward their victims. The Scientologists’ hatred and black propaganda are extreme. Their lying, especially under oath, is extreme. Their goals of silencing or destroying people is extreme.

It is extremely extreme and outrageous that the Scientologists and their colluders knew what psychologically they were doing to their victims and desired that injury. This tort and crime had to have been successful for the Scientologists and their colluders or they would not have kept pouring millions of dollars and millions of hours into perpetrating it over decades.

The Scientologists exacerbate the injury by black PRing their victims as “paranoid.” This is an example of the Scientology policy and practice Hubbard called “double curve,” which is facet of fair game.

Fair game is the treatment or handling of “Suppressive Persons.” Suppressive Persons are a religious class who commonly tell the truth, about their experiences and knowledge of Hubbard, Scientology, the Scientologists and their colluders, specifically concerning what the Scientologists and their colluders have done and are doing to silence or destroy people or put their victims in the mindset of “My God, they’ll do anything!”

Despite getting away with what so far they’ve gotten away with in terrorizing their victims, the Scientologists are aware of their own terrible reputations. So they work assiduously to get people or entities who are supposedly uncorrupted and not ill-reputed to collude with them and do some of the Scientologists’ dirty work attacking their victims.

I know very well that the Scientologists and their colluders will do anything, will say anything, will commit any crime to get away with what they’ve gotten away with. This certainty is what the Scientologists and their colluders wanted to be my “mindset” and they got their product. Mike Rinder got his product. They have, however, failed miserably to silence me or destroy me, and I hope to have them fail to silence or destroy anyone else. I hope the Scientologists and their colluders fail in their evil effort to terrorize people into this terrible mindset.

The Scientologists and their colluders have also failed to drive me to suicide. If I had written a suicide note, it would have been close to Dr. Bailey’s: “The Scientologists and the forces of madness have won.” But I was saved, and I hope the Scientologists and their colluders fail to drive anyone else anywhere close to suicide, and everyone is saved.

Notes