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Paul Haggis

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A letter to Mike Rinder: Your victim speaks up (Part 5)

Remini and you recently published a joint statement in the Paul Haggis sexual assault matter stating: “the fear of consequences for speaking our truth has not held us back in the past and isn’t about to start now.”1

If you mean by “our truth,” what you learned in Scientology was “the truth” — “the exact time, place, form and event” — then you are lying. You have not spoken the truth, and you serve the Scientology conspirators’ purposes by not speaking the truth. Whether Remini actually believes you have been speaking the truth, I do not know, but it sounds incredible. You could be conning her just as you conned her when you both were admittedly in the Scientology sect. You could be using her just as you have used so many people over so many years. Or Remini could be jointly lying with you. Regardless of what she knows, however, you know you are lying when you say, or convey the message, that you are speaking the truth.

The day after you published your joint statement in the Haggis matter, you also posted about the Scientologists’ response, and mentioned the Scientologists’ semantic trickery and dishonesty.

As with everything in scientology’s PR denial closet, you have to read it closely and parse its terminology carefully. Scientology mastered the technique of “depends upon what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is” long before Bill Clinton came along.2

I have observed, parsed and dealt with Scientologists and their high-priced collaborators’ willful, drilled semantic slippery, spin doctoring, obfuscating, out-pointing and outright lying, including yours, ever since I left Scientology. Here, you and Remini are not clear what “our truth” means. Using Scientology religious communication “tech,” “our truth,” truly, can mean a lie, or a stream of lies, or a mix of lies and truth, or whatever is true for us. The truth is, whether or not fear of consequences held you back, you have never spoken the truth about important matters where truth from you would right wrongs and do good.

In your joint statement, you and Remini say:

We have supported victims of sexual abuse who have reached out to us and have worked with them and law enforcement to ensure justice is done for both victims and the accused.3

Presumably you and Remini were not the sexual abusers whose victims reached out to you and you supported. You, Mike, are, however, the person who abused me. You conspired to deprive me of my basic human rights. You had the job for more than twenty years of criminally silencing or destroying me. I have reached out to you, and you know I have reached out to you. I have wanted you to tell the truth to correct ongoing injustices, and ensure justice is done. You have cruelly refused. You brag about helping other people’s victims, and you won’t help your own.

You write in answer to the Scientologists’ response:

The problem is that scientology has a documented history of engaging in frame-ups of its enemies, and a doctrine that dictates they continue to do so as the gospel according to L. Ron Hubbard. It’s hard to ignore that once you know. Scientology tries to pretend it doesn’t exist for that very reason.

We want ALL the facts to be known.2

You framed me, Mike. Because you refuse to tell the truth about it, you continue the frame-up. You framed me and testified falsely about me in court cases, to law enforcement, to the IRS, and into the tops of governments. You cannot honestly claim, and have not claimed that I have seen, that you are now still driven by Hubbard’s scriptures or dictates, or Miscavige’s dictates. Your refusal to tell the truth, while pretending you are telling it, while malicious, I believe is a product of cowardice. It is possible you really want ALL the facts to be known, and your cowardice prevents you from making known the facts you have. Or you are just lying about wanting ALL the facts known, and cowardice keeps you from telling the truth that you do not want the relevant facts known, and you really do fear the consequences for speaking the truth.

Among your other promotional actions, you and Remini used psychologist Steve Hassan on your Aftermath series to publicly position and extol you as a model for people who have left Scientology, indeed “modeling for ex-members of thousands of other cults.” Hassan distinguishes himself as “one of the foremost authorities on undue influence (mind control) and destructive, authoritarian people and cults,” and I believe he is. Before the Hassan interview, you include a title page identifying him as a “Cult Expert” and “Licensed Mental Health Counselor,” and I am sure that is accurate.

When Hassan said you were modeling for people, for ex-members of thousands of cults, he had to be referring to your words and actions since leaving the corporate cult, not your spiffy attire. Words and actions, it can be seen, are governed by character. Since you are actually modeling cowardice, and faking courage, as shown by your actual post-Sea Org words and actions, it was professionally improper of Hassan to commend and recommend you for modeling. You are still victimizing, as I have shown, the very people you victimized for your conspiracy you profess to have left. We are also the very people Hassan says he is an authority about, and claims he is helping. I will copy this to him in the hope he would correct his message that you are, or were at the time he said it, a model for people; or, since we all model for people, that you are a desirable or endorsable model for people.

You and Remini used Hassan’s modeling statement about you, knowing it was false, to help you and your collaborators like Remini manufacture the false impression that you have told the truth, that you have reached out to your victims, that you have done what you could to help us, and that therefore you are the model of courage for the millions of ex-members of myriad cults. In your case, the truth and real help, where such is sought and could benefit so many people, has to be what would merit recognition as modeling. An Exscientologist who criminally conspired to silence or destroy many people over many years, who then publicly left the conspiracy and claimed to be regenerate, to be telling the truth about his victimizing, and to be helping his victims, and who refused in fact to tell such truth or help such victims, is not modeling for people. He is conning people. And he is continuing to persecute his victims, which is more anti-modeling.

It is easy to determine that you have not told the truth about your persecution of the SP class or about your conspiracy’s actions against citizens, simply because you have not done so and there is no record of you doing so. Unquestionably, I have not remained silent concerning my observation of your continuing refusal to tell the truth about your conspiracy against the SP class, your continuing persecution of SPs like me, and your continuing, — in important matters — to serve the Miscavige sect’s antisocial purposes. My criticism of these actions and inactions is well known, and I certainly would have provided what relevant facts I had if Hassan had contacted me. I have made my own legal cases and my own facts and documented history with you easily publicly available, and presented these as constituting a categorical example of where the truth and help you willfully withhold would make a pro-survival difference.

My legal cases, history and documents comprise a dividing enterprise or challenge you can meet with either cowardice or courage. You cannot courageously sidestep or ignore it. You can cowardly ignore it, as so far you have, forever. You can fake courage, as you have been doing, also forever. You and your collaborators can get others to support your cowardice, and even to attack your victims for pointing it out or for asking you to have courage and tell the truth. Acquiring such courage might be as simple for you as asking for it.

Criticizing you for mismodeling, when people almost everywhere mismodel their heads off, is called for because of the numbers and natures of the persons and groups for whom, as Hassan says, you are modeling; or mismodeling. Telling the truth about what makes your words and actions mismodeling is especially important because there is such an obvious agenda to portray you as a model – for character, or virtue, but certainly courage – when you are not such a model. The legal issues that link you and me are not me seeing things, as you say, but profound and far-reaching: conspiracy against rights, deprivation of rights under color of law, religious freedom, the IRS villainy, as examples. For avoiding me and these issues, from what has been reported, there is no excuse but cowardice, and cowardice is no excuse at all.

Notes

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Letter to Alex Gibney on the IRS deal, public policy, and calling out Rathbun and Rinder

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 things

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

Also, 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.php

A 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

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Response to Rinder re Disconnection

Timestalks.com
March 2, 2015 1

19:32 Moderator Logan Hill: And disconnection, by the way is the process where members— well maybe Mike. You might be a good person to describe the disconnection process.

19:41 MR: Ah, yeah.

The theory of it is a little different than the practice. The theory is a relatively simple theory.

It is that— and this is why, another part of the sort of trap.

The belief is, “Look if there is someone that you’re dealing, you’re working with or have a relationship with, or something, that’s a sociopath, then go, remove yourself from that relationship and environment because it’s harmful to you.

PH: Someone who is overly negative, someone that’s always at you, they’re not to have in your life. Simple.

MR: And that’s not a very unusual concept.

However, what happens, and what happens in Scientology is that that becomes institutionalized as a control mechanism to control people in the church.

And how that is done is that certain people are denominated as “You must disconnect from these people.”

And they are called “suppressive persons.”

Like Alex Gibney is one. Lawrence Wright is one. I’m one. He’s one.

The idea that Suppressive Persons are sociopaths is false and malignant. I explained this idea’s falseness and malignancy in response to Mark Rathbun still demonizing the SP class as sociopaths in his 2013 book Memoirs of a Scientology Warrior.

The Suppressive Person Doctrine On Trial: Opening Statement by Gerry Armstrong 2

Rinder edited Rathbun’s book. Neither Rathbun nor Rinder has changed his false and malignant statements about SPs.

Rinder’s assertion that “disconnection,” which is one application of the SP doctrine, is merely a relatively simple theory, and, as he says on his blog, “is based on common sense,” is also false and malignant. His claim on his blog that when disconnection “is used for the benefit of the individual, it can be a helpful practice” is a lie to cloak an evil and indefensible practice.3

The other, even more evil, application of the SP doctrine is the “fair game” policy. Rathbun and Rinder have not told the truth about fair game, and have in fact continued to fair game and support the fair gaming of the wogs they most egregiously fair gamed while working directly for the Scientology cult. While disconnection is antisocial, it is arguably lawfully permissible, but fair game constitutes a criminal conspiracy against rights and is judicially punishable.

The Suppressive Person doctrine, the undeniably religious doctrine of an undeniable religion and its undeniable religionists, creates the religious class of SPs. L. Ron Hubbard, the undeniable founder, source and leader of the Scientology religion, in policy scripture, March 1, 1965 “Suppressive Acts, Suppression of Scientology and Scientologists – the Fair Game Law,” identified SPs as persons “that actively seeks to suppress or damage Scientology or a Scientologist by Suppressive Acts.”4

Hubbard stated in the same policy that “Suppressive Acts” “are acts calculated to impede or destroy Scientology or a Scientologist and which are listed at length in this policy letter.” He further identifies Suppressive acts as clearly those covert or overt acts knowingly calculated to reduce or destroy the influence or activities of Scientology or prevent case gains or continued Scientology success and activity on the part of a Scientologist.”5

Sociopaths are identified by wog, secular, psychological and behavioral criteria in scientific, secular studies. SPs are identified by scientological, religious criteria in religious scripture. There is no relationship between sociopaths and SPs, except in Scientology scripture, and in Scientologists’ actions and communications based on the SP doctrine. An extremely close parallel exists, however, between Hubbard and his Scientologists’ SP doctrine, and Hitler and his Nazis’ Jewish doctrine.

As anyone with a conscience knows, although the Nazis’ Jewish doctrine is simple, it is not based on common sense, and is not a helpful practice, even if it benefits some individuals, such as the Nazis who got a big kick out of disconnecting, persecuting and murdering Jews. The Jewish doctrine is false and malignant. The SP doctrine is false and malignant.6 Neither doctrine is defensible. Rinder and Paul Haggis attempt to defend the doctrine and disconnection by misstating what they are, which is no defense at all.

Just substitute the “Jewish doctrine” for the “Suppressive Person doctrine” and “Jews” for “SPs” in the TimesTalk discussion, and the meaning and evil of the Scientologists’ doctrine and actions against the SP class becomes clear.

You would have Rinder, who had been one of L. Ron Hitler’s top henchmen, saying:

The theory is a relatively simple theory. “Look if there is a Jew that you’re dealing, you’re working with or have a relationship with, or something, that’s a sociopath, then go, remove yourself from that relationship and environment because it’s harmful to you.” That’s not a very unusual concept.

You would have Haggis saying:

A Jew is someone who is overly negative, someone that’s always at you, they’re not to have in your life. Simple.

And you would have Rinder conclude:

However, what happens, and what happens in Nazism is that that becomes institutionalized as a control mechanism to control people in the Party.

And how that is done is that certain people are denominated as “You must disconnect from these people.”

And they are called “Jews.”

The campaign by Rathbun, Rinder and others to make the problem with Hubbard’s SP doctrine its misapplication by Scientology head David Miscavige is also malignant. It is as malignant as a campaign to make the problem with Hitler’s Jewish doctrine its misapplication by Heydrich, or its misuse to control fellow Nazis. Both the Scientologists’ SP doctrine and the Nazis’ Jewish doctrine are evil. Neither doctrine can logically be justified by the irrelevant assertion they are based on a relatively simple theory; or by claims that the application of these doctrines can be helpful if used for the benefit of the individual Scientologists or Nazis.

With simple word substitutions, and just to show how evil and indefensible the Suppressive Person doctrine is, I have turned the Scientologists’ Policy Directive on dealing with SPs into a Nazi Policy Directive on dealing with Jews.

N A Z I    P O L I C Y    D I R E C T I V E

NAZI POLICY DIRECTIVE 28

BPI
ALL STAFF
ALL PUBLIC

 13 August 1933

 

JEWISH ACT
DEALING WITH A DECLARED JEW

 

REF:  HCO PL 16 May 33 II ETHICS
JEWISH ACTS
JEWING OF NAZISM
AND NAZIS

 

“A JEW or JEWISH GROUP is one that actively seeks, by action or statement, to Jew or damage Nazism or a Nazi by Jewish Acts.

“JEWISH ACTS are acts calculated to impede or destroy Nazism or a Nazi in his studies or counselling, or to affect adversely his well-being.” (Hitler Communications Office Policy Letter 16 May 33 II)

It is a JEWISH ACT to deal with a Declared Jew unless you are the named terminal to deal with the Jew (i.e. SS MAA). Per the above referenced PL, “continued adherence to a person or group accurately pronounced a Jew or Jewish Group by HCO” is a Jewish Act.

To maintain a line with, offer support to, or in any way grant credence to such a person indicates nothing more than agreement with that person’s destructive intentions and acts.

Such dealings in fact act as a covert or overt attempt to undermine and negate the ethics and justice strengths of our ministerial structure.

Standard on-policy lines exist should a Declared Jew seek to set things right and make up for damage caused.

So labeled and declared, a person claiming injustice has the right to request a trial via their nearest HCO.

However, unless you are the named authorized terminal to deal with the Jew, to deal with one constitutes no less than a Jewish Act. Such an act is cause to have levied against you the same per policy Nazi justice procedures afforded any Jew. Full ethics penalties will be applied.

Where the matter concerns family relations or where a Nazi is in the position of being closely associated to a person found to be Jew the materials covering Potential Trouble Sources apply. There is no practice of “disconnection” allowed in Nazism and these materials cover completely how one may use proper lines and procedures to handle a PTS condition.

One does not however use a false excuse of “handling my PTS condition” to covertly maintain a line of supportful dealings and agreements with a Jew. If you wish to maintain such a line, do so outside of current and future membership in the Party.

To deal with a Jew is a Jewish Act.

The above is unequivocal Party Policy.

 

HITLER’S DOG COMMITTEEfor the

NATIONAL SOCIALISM PARTY

 

Yesterday, in the Canadian Parliament during a hearing on anti-terror legislation, the Minister of Public Safety Steven Blaney stated, “The Holocaust did not begin in the gas chambers. It began with words.” 7The Scientologists’ words about Suppressive Persons, a religious class, are just as false and malignant as the Nazis’ words about Jews.8

Or, come on out Rathbun, Rinder and the rest of you SP doctrine defenders, defend your doctrine.

Notes

  1. Source video:http://new.livestream.com/accounts/43597/events/3843118 ↩
  2. See transcript ↩
  3. From  http://www.mikerindersblog.org/scientology-disconnection-policy-exposed/ ↩
  4. See HCOPL: Suppressive Acts Suppression of Scientology and Scientologists –The Fair Game Law. The distribution shows how universally within Scientology Hubbard wanted this policy studied and enforced. It was also on GO 1314 Confidential Intelligence Course. ↩
  5. Definition: Suppressive Acts. Hubbard, L. R., (1975). Dianetics and Scientology Technical Dictionary. Los Angeles: Church of Scientology of California Publications Organization. ↩
  6. See Key Documents: Suppressive Person Doctrine. ↩
  7. National Post: http://news.nationalpost.com/2015/03/10/holocaust-did-not-begin-in-the-gas-chamber-it-began-with-words-minister-in-defence-of-new-anti-terrorism-bill/ ↩
  8. Definition: Suppressive Person. Key Documents: Suppressive Person Doctrine. ↩

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Russell Miller and me

DamOTclese2 commented on Tony O’s blog:

 Of primary importance — for me, any way — is what Gerry thinks about all this. We all have opinions about wrongs that Scientology people have committed against others, and I would love to hear Gerry comment on the re-release of BFM as well as what he thinks about Marty apologizing and underscoring his efforts in committing rights violations against people who spoke the truth about what Scientology is and what Scientology does.

I have tremendous respect for Gerry, I greatly value his insights and opinions and I would love to hear from him.

Thanks for asking, and for your kind thoughts.

Well. BFM and Russell Miller and I go back to March 1986, in Boston as he says. I was working for Mike Flynn, and I spent several hours over a couple of days with Russell. I doubtlessly copied documents for him that Mike or I had and Russell was interested in.

The Scientologists later claimed these documents were “Armstrong documents,” which had been ordered delivered to the LA Superior Court in 1982, and had been the subject of the Scientology v. Armstrong trial in 1984. Whatever I gave Russell were not “Armstrong documents,” and I have never possessed “Armstrong documents” since they were delivered to the Court.

I have one letter from Russell dated April 15, 1986. We might have communicated a couple of times, and I might have chased up some documents or references for him in the next few months. The settlement of the Flynn clients’ cases was December 1986, and I moved to California in January 1987.

I think the next thing I heard about BFM was when the Scientologists filed the CSC v.Miller and Penguin Books case in London. Mike Flynn relayed a threat from cult attorney Earle Cooley, which I described in a March 15, 1990 declaration I filed in the California Court of Appeal in the Scientologists’ appeal from the 1984 Breckenridge Decision.

20. On October 7, 1987 I received a call from Michael Flynn who relayed to me a message from Earle C. Cooley, one of the organization’s principal attorneys, concerning the then proceeding trial in London, England of a lawsuit the organization had brought against a writer, Russell Miller. Mr. Miller had interviewed me in Boston, Massachusetts in 1986, some months before the December settlement, for a biography of L. Ron Hubbard. According to Mr. Flynn, Mr. Cooley stated that it had been disclosed during the trial that Mr. Miller possessed documents in violation of sealing orders in Armstrong and he threatened that if I talked to any of the attorneys or parties involved in the trial the organization would view it as a breach of the settlement agreement.1

I remember someone, an attorney I think, on Russell’s side did call and told me that the Scientologists were accusing me in court of violating sealing orders, of theft, and other things. I remember being totally choked up, and incapable momentarily of even speaking. I finally said something about how I felt but that nevertheless I wouldn’t say anything about those matters.

I’d already been bummed out for months by what I knew of the Scientologists’ post-settlement black propaganda. At the same time, I knew that the contractual conditions prohibiting me from communicating my Scientology-related experiences or knowledge were lawfully judicially unenforceable. This is what Mike Flynn said when getting me to sign the Scientologists’ contract. It was true then, and truer now with twenty-seven years of effects of the subject conditions for analysis. The repeated psychic shock of confronting the depravity of what the Scientologists intend and what they would do to obtain what they intend is paralyzing and painful, which they intend it to be.

In CSC v. Miller, the Scientologists revealed their intention to use their contract to obstruct justice and perpetrate a fraud upon the court by threatening the witness who knew the truth around the lies they were telling in court. They were using the contract to suppress the truth about Hubbard, the source of their cruelty, and to punish a writer and publisher who really did act in concert with me, publishing a few of my words about my experiences and knowledge.

In 1988, I think Jon Atack sent me copies of some of the materials concerning me the Scientologists had filed in the CSC v. Miller case. There were five October 1987 affidavits of Ken Long, some exhibits or parts, and an affidavit of Sheila Chaleff.2

In the March 15, 1990 declaration that I filed in the California Court of Appeal1, I countered the charges against me in the Long and Chaleff affidavits. In response, the Scientologists filed a declaration dated March 26 from Ken Long. 4

I filed a declaration in the Court of Appeal dated December 25, 1990 further dealing with the Scientologists’ charges against me in CSC v. Miller.5

Sometime, I didn’t note when, I received the October 10, 1987 Vinelott Judgment, which dismissed the Scientologists’ attempt to enjoin the publication of BFM, and excoriated them to boot for their use of the law to suppress. 6

And the final words in his 16-page judgment:

I do not propose to go into this aspect of the case, save only to observe that one statement of policy to be found in the writings of the Church is in substance that litigation may be resorted to in order to stifle criticism. This litigation to my mind precisely answers the description of oppressive litigation, that is, litigation (which the authors equally clearly had in mind) which is not bona fide launched to protect any legitimate interest of the church in preserving confidentiality in information contained in Mr Miller’s biography.

For these reasons I have reached the conclusion that this application is both mischievous and misconceived and must be dismissed and in my judgment dismissed with costs to be taxed and paid forthwith.7

The Scientologists appealed from the Vinelott Judgment and on October 22, 1987 the Court of Appeal dismissed their appeal.8

Fortunately Mr. Justice Vinelott got the judgment right, and who had the excoriation coming. And fortunately too the Court of Appeal rightly affirmed his judgment. But neither Justice Vinelott or the Court of Appeal got the facts right about the Armstrong documents, the Breckenridge decision, or what documents I’d given Russell Miller.

The Justices were denied the facts because the Scientologists were threatening me into silence, or I suppose torturing me into silence, while they filed their sworn version of the facts, unrebutted. Miscavige, Rathbun, Long, Chaleff, their attorneys, et al. pulled a jurisprudential fast-one right out of a true-crime story. Penguin Books would have flown me to London in a flash. I could have clarified the Scientologists’ mud for very smart old Justice Vinelott. And the Scientologists might not have been so emboldened to keep telling the same lies all the years since.

In 1992, when I was working with Ford Greene in San Anselmo, California, Mishcon de Reya, defendants’ solicitors in CSC v. Miller & Penguin, sent me nice copies of the Long and Chaleff affidavits with very pretty Supreme Court Chancery Chambers stamps. 9

Russell contacted me sometime in the new millennium because he was writing a sort of update to BFM, what had happened since publication, and I think it was for the Telegraph.  An editorial person at the publication wanted to know my legal situation with the Scientologists, and I explained it to him and sent him links for key documents. I didn’t ever see anything published, and I don’t know what happened with the piece Russell was working on. I think the Scientology v. Armstrong war has many times boggled legal and media people with its enormity and complexity, the time needed to understand it, and the beast waiting if it is understood.

Russell next came into my life when The New Yorker published Lawrence Wright’s profile of Paul Haggis in February 2011. Wright falsely accused Russell, Jon Atack and Bent Corydon of all relying on stolen materials for their Hubbard biographies. Wright also falsely accused me of being a former Scientology archivist who cop­ied, without permission, many of the cult’s files on Hubbard. The implication in Wright’s article, which he confirmed, was that the stolen materials that the 3 writers relied on came from me; that is, that I had stolen them. I communicated with Jon and Bent about Wright’s stolen materials charge, but didn’t have Russell’s contact data. Jon might have informed Russell what was going on with The New Yorker, but I don’t know. I thought that the way The New Yorker dealt with me was stunning; that is, it stunned me, and still does. I don’t know if the three musketographers were similarly stunned, or how else they might have felt.

When I read John Sweeney’s book Church of Fear, in January 2013, I contacted Silvertail Books to complain about what he had written about me, and weirdly without contacting me. I think Humfrey Hunter, the editor and publisher, agreed to change the complained-about facts and text at the next opportunity, which should have been any day now. In explaining to Mr. Hunter the provenance of an error in CoF, I mentioned Russell and BFM:

It is true that Russell Miller’s Hubbard biography stated:

Ron did not bother to mention how Mary Sue was making out at the Federal Correctional Institution in Kentucky, neither did he comment on the time-bomb ticking away under the church in the slight form of his disenchanted archivist and biographer Gerry Armstrong, who had taken thousands of documents with him when he left Scientology – documents that proved the founder of Scientology was a charlatan and a liar.

Miller definitely possessed the Breckenridge decision. He quoted from it in Bare-Faced Messiah. I met with him two days in Boston, Massachusetts in 1986, and I am sure I spoke with him freely about my Scientology experiences and knowledge, the Hubbard biography project, and the 1984 trial. Obviously oddly, Miller does not mention Omar Garrison in all of BFM.

Miller quite honestly describes moments and periods in my life, and the quotes he attributes to me throughout BFM sound reasonably accurate. The book, however, does contain some fact errors about me. In the excerpt above, for example, my form was slight, and I was Hubbard’s disenchanted archivist, but not his biographer. That was Omar Garrison.

I had not taken thousands of documents with me when I left Scientology. I left Scientology in December 1981 and went to Canada, with no documents; that is, with none of the documents that became the subject of the Scientologists’ lawsuit, which was filed in August 1982. Those documents I obtained from Garrison, and sent them to my attorneys, with his permission, in June or July of 1982.

The Scientologists have always been running up against God’s ironies.

When Miller’s book was published, and I first obtained a copy, the Scientologists were threatening me with enforcement of their December 1986 silence contract. They had threatened me specifically in the Church of Scientology of California v. Russell Miller & Penguin Books case if I communicated to anyone on the defendants’ side. From a declaration I filed in March 1990 in the appeal the Scientologists had maintained from the 1984 Breckenridge judgment. (Quoted above.)

(This March 1990 declaration was actually my first public statement following the December 1986 settlement, and after the California Court of Appeal granted my petition to respond in the Scientologists’ appeal from Breckenridge.)

With me silenced, the Scientologists filed a bunch of affidavits in CSC v. Miller falsely accusing me of various violations, and repeating the false claim, disproven in my 1984 trial, that I did not have permission to provide Hubbard’s biographical papers to Garrison. E.g.:

25. Mr. Miller, by his own admission, is fully aware that the Church issued legal proceedings against Mr. Armstrong for removal of Mr. Hubbard’s confidential documents from the Church while Mr. Armstrong was employed by the Church.

[…]

31. The Church has spent thousands of man hours and millions of dollars since 1982 in order to uphold the duty it owed to Mr. Hubbard as the bailee for his materials when they were taken by Mr. Armstrong.10

5. It was the theft by Mr. Armstrong of those documents, which included the boyhood diaries and journals of Mr. L. Ron Hubbard, letters between Mr. Hubbard and his family, correspondence between Mr. Hubbard and his friends and associates spanning over forty years, Mr. Hubbard’s military records, and so forth, which formed the basis for the Church’s action against Mr. Armstrong on August 2, 1982.11

I do not know where Miller got the wrong idea that I had taken thousands of documents with me when I left Scientology. Most likely it was the Scientologists relentless repetition of their lie, even under oath, when I was being threatened into not responding to correct the history they were fabricating.

Then last December I read that Silvertail was going to republish BFM, so I contacted Mr. Hunter again, to congratulate Russell and him, and get the couple of easy-to-correct facts corrected. We worked it out, and Mr. Hunter I think even said he’d send me a book, which I asked Russell to sign.

I got the Kindle version and the agreed-on corrections about me have been made. I read Tony Ortega’s interview with Russell and am grateful for the kind thoughts.

So the re-release of BFM is excellent. I’ll perhaps comment on Marty’s apologizing separately. My life with Russell has been a cracking good book.

Notes