859 lines
48 KiB
Plaintext
859 lines
48 KiB
Plaintext
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
(word processor parameters LM=8, RM=75, TM=2, BM=2)
|
|
Taken from KeelyNet BBS (214) 324-3501
|
|
Sponsored by Vangard Sciences
|
|
PO BOX 1031
|
|
Mesquite, TX 75150
|
|
|
|
There are ABSOLUTELY NO RESTRICTIONS
|
|
on duplicating, publishing or distributing the
|
|
files on KeelyNet except where noted!
|
|
|
|
May 30, 1993
|
|
|
|
HUBBARD.ASC
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
This file shared with KeelyNet courtesy of Double Helix BBS.
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
From TIME Magazine, May 6, 1991:
|
|
|
|
THE THRIVING CULT OF GREED AND POWER
|
|
|
|
Ruined lives. Lost fortunes. Federal crimes.
|
|
Scientology poses as a religion but is really a ruthless
|
|
global scam - and aiming for the mainstream.
|
|
|
|
By Richard Behar
|
|
|
|
By all appearances, Noah Lottick of Kingston, Pa. had been a normal,
|
|
happy 24-year-old who was looking for his place in the world. On
|
|
the day last June when his parents drove to New York to claim his
|
|
body, they were nearly catatonic with grief. The young Russian-
|
|
studies scholar had jumped from a 10th-floor window of the Milford
|
|
Plaza Hotel and bounced off the hood of a stretch limosine.
|
|
|
|
When the police arrived, his fingers were still clutching $171 in
|
|
cash, virtually the only money he hadn't yet turned over to the
|
|
Church of Scientology, the self-help "philosophy" group he had
|
|
discovered just seven months earlier.
|
|
|
|
His death inspired his father Edward, a physician, to start his own
|
|
investigation of the church. "We thought Scientology was something
|
|
like Dale Carnegie," Lottick says. "I now believe it's a school for
|
|
psychopaths. Their so-called therapies are manipulations. They
|
|
take the best and brightest people and destroy them." The Lotticks
|
|
want to sue the church for contributing to their son's death, but
|
|
the prospect has them frightened. For nearly 40 years, the big
|
|
business of Scientology has shielded itself exquisitely behind the
|
|
First Amendment as well as a battery of high-priced criminal lawyers
|
|
and shady private detectives.
|
|
|
|
The Church of Scientology, started by science-fiction writer L. Ron
|
|
Hubbard to "clear" people of unhappiness, portrays itself as a
|
|
religion. In reality the church is a hugely profitable global
|
|
racket that survives by intimidating members and critics in a Mafia-
|
|
like manner. At times during the past decade, prosecutions against
|
|
Scientology seemed to be curbing its menace. Eleven top
|
|
Scientologists, including Hubbard's wife, were sent to prison in the
|
|
early 1980's for infiltrating, burglarizing, and wiretapping more
|
|
than 100 private and government agencies in attempts to block their
|
|
|
|
Page 1
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
investigations. In recent years hundreds of longtime Scientology
|
|
adherents - many charging that they were mentally or physically
|
|
abused - have quit the church and criticized it at their own risk.
|
|
Some have sued the church and won; others have settled for amounts
|
|
in excess of $500,000. In various cases judges have labeled the
|
|
church "schizophrenic and paranoid" and "corrupt, sinister and
|
|
dangerous."
|
|
|
|
Yet the outrage and litigation have failed to squelch Scientology.
|
|
The group, which boasts 700 centers in 65 countries, threatens to
|
|
become more insidious and persuasive than ever. Scientology is
|
|
trying to go mainstream, a strategy that has sparked a renewed law-
|
|
enforcement campaign against the church. Many of the group's
|
|
followers have been accused of committing financial scams, while the
|
|
church is busy attracting the unwary through a wide array of front
|
|
groups in such businesses as publishing, consulting, health care and
|
|
even remedial education.
|
|
|
|
In Hollywood, Scientology has assembled a star-studded roster of
|
|
followers by aggressively recruiting and regally pampering them at
|
|
the church's "Celebrity Centers," a chain of clubhouses that offers
|
|
expensive counseling and career guidance. Adherents include screen
|
|
idols Tom Cruise and John Travolta, actresses Kirstie Alley, Mimi
|
|
Rogers and Anne Archer, Palm Springs mayor and performer Sonny Bono,
|
|
jazzman Chick Corea and even Nancy Cartwright, the voice of cartoon
|
|
star Bart Simpson. Rank-and-file members, however, are dealt a less
|
|
glamorous Scientology.
|
|
|
|
According to the Cult Awareness Network, whose 23 chapters monitor
|
|
more than 200 "mind control" cults, no group prompts more telephone
|
|
please for help than does Scientology. Says Cynthia Kisser, the
|
|
network's Chicago-based executive director: "Scientology is quite
|
|
likely most ruthless, the most classically terroristic, the most
|
|
litigous and the most lucrative cult the country has ever seen. No
|
|
cult extracts more money from its members." Agrees Vicki Aznaran,
|
|
who was one of Scientology's six key leaders until she bolted from
|
|
the church in 1987: "This is a criminal organization, day in and
|
|
day out. It makes Jim and Tammy [Bakker] look like kindergarten."
|
|
|
|
To explore Scientology's reach, TIME conducted more than 150
|
|
interviews and reviewed hundreds of court records and internal
|
|
Scientology documents. Church officials refused to be interviewed.
|
|
The investigation paints a picture of a depraved yet thriving
|
|
enterprise. Most cults fail to outlast their founder, but
|
|
Scientology has prospered since Hubbard's death in 1986. In a court
|
|
filing, one of the cult's many entities - the Church of Spiritual
|
|
Technology - listed $503 million in income just for 1987. High-
|
|
level defectors say the parent organization has squirreled away an
|
|
estimated $400 million in bank accounts in Leichtenstein,
|
|
Switzerland and Cyprus. Scientology probably has about 50,000
|
|
members, far fewer than the 8 million the group claims. But in one
|
|
sense, that inflated figure rings true: Millions of people have
|
|
been affected in one way or another by Hubbard's bizarre creation.
|
|
|
|
Scientology is now run by David Miscavige, 31, a high school dropout
|
|
and second-generation church member. Defectors describe him as
|
|
cunning, ruthless and so paranoid about perceived enemies that he
|
|
kept plastic wrap over his glass of water. His obsession is to
|
|
attain credibility for Scientology in the 1990s. Among other
|
|
|
|
Page 2
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
tactics, the group:
|
|
|
|
* Retains public relations powerhouse Hill and Knowlton to help
|
|
shed the church's fringe-group image.
|
|
* Joined such household names as Sony and Pepsi as a main
|
|
sponsor of Ted Turner's Goodwill Games.
|
|
* Buys massive quantities of its own books from retail stores
|
|
to propel the titles onto best-seller lists.
|
|
* Runs full-page ads in such publications as NEWSWEEK and
|
|
BUSINESS WEEK that call Scientology a "philosophy," along
|
|
with a plethora a TV ads touting the group's books.
|
|
* Recruits wealthy and respectable professionals through a web
|
|
of consulting groups that typically hide their ties to
|
|
Scientology.
|
|
|
|
The founder of this enterprise was part storyteller, part flimflam
|
|
man. Born in Nebraska in 1911, Hubbard was a moderately successful
|
|
writer of pulp science fiction. Years later, church brochures
|
|
described him falsely as an "extensively decorated" World War II
|
|
hero who was crippled and blinded in action, twice pronounced dead
|
|
and miraculously cured through Scientology. Hubbard's "doctorate"
|
|
from "Sequoia University" was a fake mail-order degree. In a 1984
|
|
case in which the church sued a Hubbard biographical researcher, a
|
|
California judge concluded that its founder was a "pathological
|
|
liar."
|
|
|
|
Hubbard wrote one of Scientology's sacred texts, "Dianetics: The
|
|
Modern Science of Mental Health," in 1950. In it he introduced a
|
|
crude psychotherapeutic technique he called "auditing." He also
|
|
created a simplified lie detector (called an "E-meter") that was
|
|
designed to measure electrical charges in the skin while subjects
|
|
discussed intimate details of their past. Hubbard argued that
|
|
unhappiness sprang from mental aberrations (or "engrams") caused by
|
|
early traumas. Counseling sessions with the E-meter, he claimed,
|
|
could knock out the engrams, cure blindness and even improve a
|
|
person's intelligence and appearance.
|
|
|
|
Hubbard kept adding steps, each more costly, for his followers to
|
|
climb. In the 1960s the guru decreed that humans are made of
|
|
clusters of spirits (or "thetans") who were banished to earth some
|
|
75 million years ago by a cruel galactic ruler named Xenu.
|
|
Naturally, those thetans had to be audited.
|
|
|
|
An Internal Revenue Service ruling in 1967 stripped Scientology's
|
|
mother church of its tax-exempt status. A federal court ruled in
|
|
1971 that Hubbard's medical claims were bogus and that E-meter
|
|
auditing could no longer be called a scientific treatment. Hubbard
|
|
responded by going fully religious, seeking First Amendment
|
|
protection for Scientology's strange rites. His counselors started
|
|
sporting clerical collars. Chapels were built, franchises became
|
|
"missions" fees became "fixed donations," and Hubbard's comic-book
|
|
cosmology became "sacred scriptures."
|
|
|
|
During the early 1970's, the IRS conducted its own auditing session
|
|
and proved that Hubbard was skimming millions of dollars from the
|
|
church, laundering the money through dummy corporations in Panama
|
|
and stashing it in Swiss bank accounts. Moreover, church members
|
|
stole IRS documents, filed false tax returns and harassed the
|
|
agency's employees. By late 1985, with high-level defectors
|
|
|
|
Page 3
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
accusing Hubbard of having stolen as much as $200 million from the
|
|
church, the IRS was seeking an indictment of Hubbard for tax fraud.
|
|
Scientology members "worked day and night" shredding documents the
|
|
IRS sought, according to defector Aznaran, who took part in the
|
|
scheme. Hubbard, who had been in hiding for five years, died before
|
|
the criminal case could be prosecuted.
|
|
|
|
Today the church invents costly new services with all the zeal of
|
|
its founder. Scientology doctrine warns that even adherents who are
|
|
"cleared" of engrams face grave spiritual dangers unless they are
|
|
pushed to higher and more expensive sessions that cost as much as
|
|
$1,000 an hour, or $12,500 for a 12 1/2-hour "intensive."
|
|
|
|
Psychiatrists say these sessions can produce a drugged-like, mind-
|
|
controlled euphoria that keeps customers coming back for more. To
|
|
pay their fees, newcomers can earn commissions by recruiting new
|
|
members, become auditors themselves (Miscavige did so at age 12), or
|
|
join the church staff and receive free counseling in exchange for
|
|
what their written contracts describe as a "billion years" of labor.
|
|
"Make sure that lots of bodies move through the shop," implored
|
|
Hubbard in one of his bulletins to officials. "Make money. Make
|
|
more money. Make others produce so as to make money...however you
|
|
get them in or why, just do it."
|
|
|
|
Harriet Baker learned the hard way about Scientology's business of
|
|
selling religion. When Baker, 73, lost her husband to cancer, a
|
|
Scientologist turned up at her Los Angeles home peddling a $1,300
|
|
auditing package to cure her grief. Some $15,000 later, the
|
|
Scientologists discovered that her home was debt free. They
|
|
arranged a $45,000 mortgage, which they pressured her to tape for
|
|
more auditing until Baker's children helped their mother snap out of
|
|
her daze. Last June, Baker demanded a $27,000 refund for unused
|
|
services, prompting two cult members to show up at her door
|
|
unannounced with an E-meter to interrogate her. Baker never got the
|
|
money and, financially strapped, was forced to sell her house in
|
|
September.
|
|
|
|
Before Noah Lattick killed himself, he had paid more than $5,000 for
|
|
church counseling. His behavior had also become strange. He once
|
|
remarked to his parents that his Scientology mentors could actually
|
|
read minds. When his father suffered a major heart attack, Noah
|
|
insisted that it was purely psychosomatic. Five days before he
|
|
jumped, Noah burst into his parents' home and demanded to know why
|
|
they were spreading "false rumors" about him - a delusion that
|
|
finally prompted his father to call a psychiatrist.
|
|
|
|
It was too late. "From Noah's friends at Dianetics" read the card
|
|
that accompanied a bouquet of flowers at Lottick's funeral. Yet no
|
|
Scientology staff member bothered to show up. A week earlier, local
|
|
church officials had given Lottick's parents a red-carpet tour of
|
|
their center. A cult leader told Noah's parents that their son had
|
|
been at the church just hours before he disappeared - but the church
|
|
denied this story as soon as the body was identified. True to form,
|
|
the cult even haggled with the Lotticks over $3,000 their son had
|
|
paid for services he never used, insisting that Noah had intended it
|
|
as a "donation."
|
|
|
|
The church has invented hundreds of goods and services for which
|
|
members are urged to give "donations." Are you having trouble
|
|
|
|
Page 4
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
"moving swiftly up the Bridge" - that is advancing up the stepladder
|
|
of enlightenment? Then you can have your case reviewed for a mere
|
|
$1,250 "donation." Want to know "why a thetan hangs on to the
|
|
physical universe?" Try 52 of Hubbard's tape-recorded speeches from
|
|
1952, titled "Ron's Philadelphia Doctorate Course Lectures," for
|
|
$2,525. Next: Nine other series of the same sort. For the
|
|
collector, gold-and-leather-bound editions of 22 of Hubbard's books
|
|
(and bookends) on subjects ranging from Scientology ethics to
|
|
radiation can be had for just $1,900.
|
|
|
|
To gain influence and lure richer, more sophisticated followers,
|
|
Scientology has lately resorted to a wide array of front groups and
|
|
financial scams. Among them:
|
|
|
|
CONSULTING. Sterling Management Systems, formed in 1983, has been
|
|
ranked in recent years by INC. magazine as one of America's fastest-
|
|
growing private companies (estimated 1988 revenues: $20 million).
|
|
Sterling regularly mails a free newsletter to more than 300,000
|
|
health-care professionals, mostly dentists, promising to increase
|
|
their incomes dramatically. The firm offers seminars and courses
|
|
that typically cost $10,000. But Sterling's true aim is to hook
|
|
customers for Scientology. "The church has a rotten product, so
|
|
they package it as something else," says Peter Georgiades, a
|
|
Pittsburgh attorney who represents Sterling victims. "It's a kind
|
|
of bait and switch." Sterling's founder, dentist Gregory Hughes, is
|
|
now under investigation by California's Board of Dental Examiners
|
|
for incompetence. Nine lawsuits are pending against him for
|
|
malpractice (seven others have been settled), mostly for orthodontic
|
|
work on children.
|
|
|
|
Many dentists who have unwittingly been drawn into the cult are
|
|
filing or threatening lawsuits as well. Dentist Robert Geary of
|
|
Medina, Ohio, who entered a Sterling seminar in 1988, endured "the
|
|
most extreme high-pressure sales tactics I have ever faced."
|
|
Sterling officials told Geary, 45, that their firm was not linked to
|
|
Scientology, he says. But Geary claims they eventually convinced
|
|
him that he and his wife had personal problems that required
|
|
auditing.
|
|
|
|
Over five months, the Gearys say, they spent $130,000 for services,
|
|
plus $50,000 for "gold-embossed, investment-grade" books signed by
|
|
Hubbard. Geary contends that Scientologists not only called his
|
|
bank to increase his credit-card limit but also forged his signature
|
|
on a $20,000 loan application. "It was insane," he recalls. "I
|
|
couldn't even get an accounting from them of what I was paying for."
|
|
At one point, the Gearys claim, Scientologists held Dorothy hostage
|
|
for two weeks in a mountain cabin, after which she was hospitalized
|
|
for a nervous breakdown.
|
|
|
|
Last October, Sterling broke some bad news to another dentist,
|
|
Glover Rowe of Gadsden, Ala., and his wife Dee. Tests showed that
|
|
unless they signed up for auditing, Glover's practice would fail,
|
|
and Dee would someday abuse their child. The next month the Rowes
|
|
flew to Glendale, Calif., where they shuttled daily from a local
|
|
hotel to a Dianetics center. "We thought they were brilliant people
|
|
because they seemed to know so much about us," recalls Dee. "Then
|
|
we realize our hotel room must have been bugged." After bolting
|
|
from the center, $23,000 poorer, the Rowes say, they were chased
|
|
repeatedly by Scientologists on foot and in cars. Dentists aren't
|
|
|
|
Page 5
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
the only ones at risk. Scientology also makes pitches to
|
|
chiropractors, podiatrists and veterinarians.
|
|
|
|
PUBLIC INFLUENCE. One front, the Way to Happiness Foundation, has
|
|
distributed to children in thousands of the nation's public schools
|
|
more than 3.5 million copies of a booklet Hubbard wrote on morality.
|
|
The church calls the scheme "the largest dissemination project in
|
|
Scientology history." Applied Scholastics is the name of still
|
|
another front, which is attempting to install a Hubbard tutorial
|
|
program in public schools, primarily those populated by minorities.
|
|
The group also plans a 1,000-acre campus, where it will train
|
|
educators to teach various Hubbard methods. The disingenuously
|
|
named Citizens Commission on Human Rights is a Scientology group at
|
|
war with psychiatry, its primary competitor. The commission
|
|
typically issues reports aimed at discrediting particular
|
|
psychiatrics and the field in general. The CCHR is also behind an
|
|
all-out war against Eli Lilly, the maker of Prozac, the nation's
|
|
top-selling antidepression drug. Despite scant evidence, the
|
|
group's members - who are calling themselves "psychbusters" - claim
|
|
that Prozac drives people to murder or suicide. Through mass
|
|
mailings, appearances on talk shows and heavy lobbying, CCHR has
|
|
hurt drug sales and helped spark dozens of lawsuits against Lilly.
|
|
|
|
Another Scientology-linked group, the Concerned Businessmen's
|
|
Association of America, holds antidrug contests and awards $5,000
|
|
grants to schools as a way to recruit students and curry favor with
|
|
education officials. West Virginia Senator John D. Rockefeller IV
|
|
unwittingly commended the CBAA in 1987 on the Senate floor. Last
|
|
August author Alex Haley was the keynote speaker at its annual
|
|
awards banquet in Los Angeles. Says Haley: "I didn't know much
|
|
about that group going in. I'm a Methodist." Ignorance about
|
|
Scientology can be embarassing: two months ago, Illinois Governor
|
|
Jim Edgar, noting that Scientology's founder "has solved the
|
|
aberrations of the human mind," proclaimed March 13 "L. Ron Hubbard
|
|
Day." He rescinded the proclamation in late March, once he learned
|
|
who Hubbard really was.
|
|
|
|
HEALTH CARE. HealthMed, a chain of clinics run by Scientologists,
|
|
promotes a grueling and excessive system of saunas, exercise and
|
|
vitamins designed by Hubbard to purify the body. Experts denounce
|
|
the regime as quackery and potentially harmful, yet HealthMed
|
|
solicits unions and public agencies for contracts. The chain is
|
|
plugged heavily in a new book, "Diet for a Poisoned Planet," by
|
|
journalist David Steinman, who concludes that scores of common foods
|
|
(among them: peanuts, bluefish, peaches and cottage cheese) are
|
|
dangerous. Former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop labeled the book
|
|
"Trash," and the Food and Drug Administration issued a paper in
|
|
October that claims Steinman distorts his facts. "HealthMed is a
|
|
gateway to Scientology, and Steinman's book is a sorting mechanism,"
|
|
says physician William Jarvis, who is head of the National Council
|
|
Against Health Fraud. Steinman, who describes Hubbard favorably as
|
|
a "researcher," denies any ties to the church and contends,
|
|
"HealthMed has no affiliation that I know of with Scientology."
|
|
|
|
DRUG TREATMENT. Hubbard's purification treatments are the mainstay
|
|
of Narconon, a Scientology-run chain of 33 alcohol and drug
|
|
rehabilitation centers - some in prisons under the name "Criminon" -
|
|
in 12 countries. Narconon, a classic vehicle for drawing addicts
|
|
into the cult, now plans to open what it calls the world's largest
|
|
|
|
Page 6
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
treatment center, a 1,400-bed facility on an Indian reservation near
|
|
Newkirk, Okla. (Pop. 2,400). At a 1989 ceremony in Newkirk, the
|
|
Association for Better Living and Education presented Narconon with
|
|
a check for $200,000 and a study praising its work. The association
|
|
turned out to be part of Scientology itself. Today the town is
|
|
battling to keep out the cult, which has fought back through such
|
|
tactics as sending private detectives to snoop on the mayor and the
|
|
local newspaper publisher.
|
|
|
|
FINANCIAL SCAMS. Three Florida Scientologists, including Robert
|
|
Bernstein, a big contributor to the church's international "war
|
|
chest," pleaded guilty in March to using their rare-coin dealership
|
|
as a money laundry. Other notorious activities by Scientologists
|
|
include making the shady Vancouver stock exchange even shadier (see
|
|
accompanying article) and plotting to plant operatives in the World
|
|
Bank, International Monetary Fund and Export-Import Bank of the U.S.
|
|
The alleged purpose of this scheme: to gain inside information on
|
|
which countries are going to be denied credit so that Scientology-
|
|
linked traders can make illicit profits by taking "short" positions
|
|
in those countries' currencies.
|
|
|
|
In the stock market the practice of "shorting" involved borrowing
|
|
shares of publicly traded companies in the hope that the price will
|
|
go down before the stocks must be brought on the market and returned
|
|
to the lender. The Feshbach brothers of Palo Alto, Calif. - Kurt,
|
|
Joseph and Matthew - have become the leading short sellers in the
|
|
U.S., with more than $500 million under management. The Feshbachs
|
|
command a staff of about 60 employees and claim to have earned
|
|
better returns than the Dow Jones industrial average for most of the
|
|
1980's. And, they say, they owe it all to the teachings of
|
|
Scientology, whose "war chest" has received more than $1 million
|
|
from the family.
|
|
|
|
The Feshbachs also embrace the church's tactics; the brothers are
|
|
the terrors of the stock exchanges. In congressional hearings in
|
|
1989, the heads of several companies claimed that Feshbach
|
|
operatives have spread false information to to government agencies
|
|
and posed in various guises - such as a Securities and Exchange
|
|
Commission official - in an effort to discredit the companies and
|
|
drive the stocks down. Michael Russell, who ran a chain of business
|
|
journals, testified that a Feshbach employee called his bankers and
|
|
interfered with his loans.
|
|
|
|
Sometimes the Feshbachs send private detectives to dig up dirt on
|
|
firms, which is then shared with business reporters, brokers and
|
|
fund managers.
|
|
|
|
The Feshbachs, who wear jackets bearing the slogan "stock busters,"
|
|
insist they run a clean shop. but as part of a possible probe into
|
|
insider stock trading, federal officials are reportedly
|
|
investigating whether the Feshbachs received confidential
|
|
information from FDA employees. The brothers seem aligned with
|
|
Scientology's war on psychiatry and medicine: many of their targets
|
|
are health and biotechnology firms. "Legitimate short selling
|
|
performs a public service by deflating hyped stocks," says Robert
|
|
Flaherty, the editor of EQUITIES magazine and a harsh critic of the
|
|
brothers. "But the Feshbachs have damaged scores of good start-
|
|
ups."
|
|
|
|
|
|
Page 7
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Occasionally a Scientologist's business antics land him in jail.
|
|
Last August a former devotee named Steven Fishman began serving a
|
|
five-year prison term in Florida. His crime: stealing blank stock-
|
|
confirmation slips from his employer, a major brokerage house, to
|
|
use as proof that he owned stock entitling him to join dozens of
|
|
successful class-action lawsuits. Fishman made roughly $1 million
|
|
this way from 1983 to 1986 and spent as much as 30% of the loot on
|
|
Scientology books and tapes.
|
|
|
|
Scientology denies any tie to the Fishman scam, a claim strongly
|
|
disputed by both Fishman and his longtime psychiatrist, Uwe Geertz,
|
|
a prominent Florida hypnotist. Both men claim that when arrested,
|
|
Fishman was ordered by the church to kill Geertz and then do an
|
|
"EOC," or end of cycle, which is church jargon for suicide.
|
|
|
|
BOOK PUBLISHING. Scientology mischiefmaking has even moved to the
|
|
book industry. Since 1985 at least a dozen Hubbard books, printed
|
|
by a church company, have made best-seller lists. They range from a
|
|
5,000-page sci-fi decalogy ("Black Genesis," "The Enemy Within," "An
|
|
Alien Affair") to the 40-year-old "Dianetics." In 1988 the trade
|
|
publication PUBLISHERS WEEKLY awarded the dead author a plaque
|
|
commemorating the appearance of "Dianetics" on its best-seller list
|
|
for 100 consecutive weeks.
|
|
|
|
Critics pan most of Hubbard's books as unreadable, while defectors
|
|
claim that church insiders are sometimes the real authors. Even so,
|
|
Scientology has sent out armies of its followers to buy the group's
|
|
books at such major chains as B. Dalton's and Waldenbooks to sustain
|
|
the illusion of a best-selling author. A former Dalton's manager
|
|
says some books arrived in his store with the chain's price stickers
|
|
already on them, suggesting that copies are being recycled.
|
|
|
|
Scientology claims that sales of Hubbard's books now top 90 million
|
|
worldwide. The sceme, set up to gain converts and credibility, is
|
|
coupled with a radio and TV advertising campaign virtually
|
|
unparalleled in the book industry.
|
|
|
|
Scientology devotes vast resources to squelching its critics. Since
|
|
1986 Hubbard and his church have been the subject of four unfriendly
|
|
books, all published by small yet courageous publishers. In each
|
|
case, the writers have been badgered and heavily sued. One of
|
|
Hubbard's policies was that all perceived enemies are "fair game"
|
|
and subject to being "tricked, lied to or destroyed." those who
|
|
criticize the church - journalists, doctors, lawyers and even judges
|
|
- often find themselves engulfed in litigation, stalked by private
|
|
eyes, framed for fictional crimes, beaten up or threatened with
|
|
death. Psychologist Margaret Singer, 69, an outspoken Scientology
|
|
critic and professor at the University of California, Berkeley, now
|
|
travels regularly under an assumed name to avoid harassment.
|
|
|
|
After the Los Angeles TIMES published a negative series on the
|
|
church last summer, Scientologists spent an estimated $1 million to
|
|
plaster the reporters' names on hundreds of billboards and bus
|
|
placards across the city. Above their names were quotations taken
|
|
out of context to portray the church in a positive light.
|
|
|
|
The church's most fearsome advocates are its lawyers. Hubbard
|
|
warned his followers in writing to "beware of attorneys tell you not
|
|
to sue...the purpose of the suit is to harass and discourage rather
|
|
|
|
Page 8
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
than to win." Result: Scientology has brought hundreds of suits
|
|
against its perceived enemies and today pays an estimated $20
|
|
million annually to more than 100 lawyers.
|
|
|
|
One legal goal of Scientology is to bankrupt the opposition or bury
|
|
it under paper. The church has 71 active lawsuits against the IRS
|
|
alone. One of them, "Miscavige vs. IRS," has required the U.S. to
|
|
produce an index of 52,000 pages of documents. Boston attorney
|
|
Michael Flynn, who helped Scientology victims from 1979 to 1987,
|
|
p\personally endured 14 frivolous lawsuits, all of them dismissed.
|
|
Another laywer, Joseph Yanny, believes the church "has so subverted
|
|
justice and the judicial system that it should be barred from
|
|
seeking equity in any court." He should know: Yanny represented
|
|
the cult until 1987, when, he says, he was asked to help church
|
|
officials steal medical records to blackmail an opposing attorney
|
|
(who was allegedly beaten up instead). Since Yanny quit
|
|
representing the church, he has been the target of death threats,
|
|
burglaries, lawsuits and other harassment.
|
|
|
|
Scientology's critics contend that the U.S. needs to crack down on
|
|
the church in a major, organized way. "I want to know, Where is our
|
|
government?" demands Toby Plevin, a Los Angeles attorney who handles
|
|
victims. "It shouldn't be left to private litigators, because God
|
|
knows most of us are afraid to get involved." But law-enforcement
|
|
agents are also wary. "Every investigator is very cautious, walking
|
|
on eggshells when it comes to the church," says a Florida police
|
|
detective who has tracked the cult since 1988. "It will take a
|
|
federal effort with lots of money and manpower."
|
|
|
|
So far the agency giving Scientology the most grief is the IRS,
|
|
whose officials have implied that Hubbard's successors may be
|
|
looting the church's coffers. Since 1988, when the U.S. Supreme
|
|
Court upheld the revocation of the cult's tax-exempt status, a
|
|
massive IRS probe of church centers across the country has been
|
|
under way. An IRS agent, Marcus Owens, has estimated that thousands
|
|
of IRS employees have been involved. Another agent, in an internal
|
|
memorandum, spoke hopefully of the "ultimate disintegration" of the
|
|
church. A small but helpful beacon shone last June when a federal
|
|
appeals court ruled that two cassette tapes featuring conversations
|
|
between church officials and their lawyers are evidence of a plan to
|
|
commit "future frauds" against the IRS.
|
|
|
|
Foreign governments have been moving even more vigorously against
|
|
the organization. In Canada the church and nine of its members will
|
|
be tried in June on charges of stealing government documents (many
|
|
of them retrieved in an enormous police raid of the church's Toronto
|
|
headquarters). Scientology proposed to give $1 million to the needy
|
|
if the case was dropped, but Canada spurned the offer. Since 1986
|
|
authorities in France, Spain and Italy have raided more than 50
|
|
Scientology centers. Pending charges against more than 100 of its
|
|
overseas church members include fraud, extortion, capital flight,
|
|
coercion, illegally practicing medicine and taking advantage of
|
|
medically incapacitated people. In Germany last month, leading
|
|
politicians accused the cult of trying to infiltrate a major party
|
|
as well as launching an immense recruitment drive in the east.
|
|
|
|
Sometimes even the church's biggest zealots can use a little
|
|
protection. Screen star Travolta, 37, has long served as an
|
|
unofficial Scientology spokesman, even though he told a magazine in
|
|
|
|
Page 9
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
1983 that he was opposed to the church's management. High-level
|
|
defectors claim that Travolta has long feared that if he defected,
|
|
details of his sexual life would be made public. "He felt pretty
|
|
intimidated about this getting out and he told me so," recalls
|
|
William Franks, the church's former chairman of the board. "There
|
|
were no outright threats made, but it was implicit. If you leave,
|
|
they immediately start digging up everything." Franks was driven
|
|
out in 1981 after attempting to reform the church.
|
|
|
|
The church's former head of security, Richard Aznaran, recalls
|
|
Scientology leader Miscavige repeatedly joking to staffers about
|
|
Travolta's allegedly promiscuous homosexual behavior. At this point
|
|
any threat to expose Travolta seems superfluous: last May a male
|
|
porn star collected $100,000 from a tabloid for an account of his
|
|
alleged two-year liaison with the celebrity. Travolta refuses to
|
|
comment, and in December his lawyer dismissed questions about the
|
|
subject as "bizarre." Two weeks later, Travolta announced that he
|
|
was getting married to actress Kelly Preston, a fellow
|
|
Scientologist.
|
|
|
|
Shortly after Hubbard's death the church retained Trout & Reis, a
|
|
respected, Connecticut-based firm of marketing consultants, to help
|
|
boost its public image. "We were brutally honest," says Jack Trout.
|
|
"We advised them to clean up their act, stop with the controversy
|
|
and even to stop being a church. They didn't want to hear that."
|
|
Instead, Scientology hired one of the country's largest p.r.
|
|
outfits, Hill and Knowlton, whose executives refuse to discuss the
|
|
lucrative relationship. "Hill and Knowlton must feel that these
|
|
guys are not totally off the wall," says Trout. "Unless it's just
|
|
for the money."
|
|
|
|
One of Scientology's main strategies it to keep advancing the tired
|
|
argument that the church is being "persecuted" by anti-religionists.
|
|
It is supported in that position by the American Civil Liberties
|
|
Union and the National Council of Churches. But in the end, money
|
|
is what Scientology is all about. As long as the organization's
|
|
opponents and victims are successfully squelched, Scientology's
|
|
managers and lawyers will keep pocketing millions of dollars by
|
|
helping it achieve its ends.
|
|
|
|
MINING MONEY IN VANCOUVER
|
|
|
|
One source of funds for the Los Angeles-based church is the
|
|
notorious, self-regulated stock exchange in Vancouver, British
|
|
Columbia, often called the scam capital of the world. The
|
|
exchange's 2,300 penny-stock listings account for $4 billion in
|
|
annual trading. Local journalists and insiders claim the vast
|
|
majority range from total washouts to outright frauds.
|
|
|
|
Two Scientologists who operate there are Kenneth Gerbino and Michael
|
|
Baybak, 20-year church veterans from Beverly Hills who are major
|
|
donators to the cult. Gerbino, 45, is a money manager, marketer,
|
|
and publisher of a national financial newsletter. He has boasted in
|
|
Scientology journals that he owes all his stock-picking success to
|
|
L. Ron Hubbard. That's not saying much: Gerbino's newsletter picks
|
|
since 1985 have cumulatively returned 24%, while the Dow Jones
|
|
industrial average has more than doubled. Nevertheless Gerbino's
|
|
short-term gains can be stupendous. A survey last October found
|
|
Gerbino to be the only manager who made money in the third quarter
|
|
|
|
Page 10
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
of 1990, thanks to gold and other resource stocks. For the first
|
|
quarter of 1991, Gerbino was dead last. Baybak, 49, who runs a
|
|
public relations company staffed with Scientologists, apparently has
|
|
no ethics problem with engineering a hostile takeover of a firm he
|
|
is hired to promote.
|
|
|
|
Neither man agreed to be interviewed for this story, yet both
|
|
threatened legal action through attorneys. "What these guys do is
|
|
take over companies, hype the stock, sell their shares, and then
|
|
there's nothing left," says John Campbell, a former securities
|
|
lawyer who was director of mining company Athena Gold until Baybak
|
|
and Gerbino took it over.
|
|
|
|
The pattern has become familiar. The pair promoted a mining venture
|
|
called Skylark Resources, whose stock traded at nearly $4 a share in
|
|
1987. The outfit soon crashed, and the stock is around 2 cents.
|
|
NETI Technologies, a software company, was trumpeted in the press as
|
|
"the next Xerox" and in 1984 rose to a market value of $120 million
|
|
with Baybak's help. The company, which later collapsed, was
|
|
delisted two months ago by the Vancouver exchange.
|
|
|
|
Baybak appeared in 1989 at the helm of Wall Street Ventures, a
|
|
start-up that announced it owned 35 tons of rare Middle Eastern
|
|
postage stamps - worth $100 million - and was buying the world's
|
|
largest collection of southern Arabian stamps (worth $350 million).
|
|
Steven C. Rockefeller Jr. of the oil family and former hockey star
|
|
Dennis Potvin joined the company in top posts, but both say they
|
|
quit when they realized the stamps were virtually worthless. "The
|
|
stamps were created by sand-dune nations to exploit collectors,"
|
|
says Michael Laurence, editor of LINN'S STAMP NEWS, America's
|
|
largest stamp journal. After the stock topped $6, it began a steady
|
|
descent, with Baybak unloading his shares along the way. Today it
|
|
trades at 18 cents.
|
|
|
|
Athena Gold, the current object of Baybak and Gerbino's attentions,
|
|
was founded by entrepreneur William Jordan. He turned to an
|
|
established Vancouver broker in 1987 to help finance the company, a
|
|
4,500-acre mining property near Reno. The broker promised to raise
|
|
more than $3 million and soon brought Baybak and Gerbino into the
|
|
deal. Jordan never got most of the money, but the cult members
|
|
ended up with a good deal of cheap stock and options. Next time
|
|
they elected directors who were friendly to them and set in motion a
|
|
series of complex maneuvers to block Jordan from voting stock he
|
|
controlled and to run him out of the company. "I've been an honest
|
|
policeman all my life and I've seen the worst kinds of crimes, and
|
|
this ranks high," says former Athena shareholder Thomas Clark, a 20-
|
|
year veteran of Reno's police force who has teamed up with Jordan to
|
|
try to get the gold mine back. "They stole this man's property."
|
|
|
|
With Baybak as chairman, the two Scientologists and their staffs are
|
|
promoting Athena, not always accurately. A letter to shareholders
|
|
with the 1990 annual report claims Placer Dome, one of America's
|
|
largest gold-mining firms, has committed at least $25.5 million to
|
|
develop the mine. That's news to Placer Dome. "There is no pre-
|
|
commitment," says Placer executive Cole McFarland. "We're not going
|
|
to spend that money unless survey results justify the expenditure."
|
|
|
|
Baybak's firm represented Western Resource Technologies, a Houston
|
|
oil-and-gas company, but got the boot in October. Laughs Steven
|
|
|
|
Page 11
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
McGuire, president of Western Resource: "His is a p.r. firm in need
|
|
of a p.r. firm." But McGuire cannot laugh too freely. Baybak and
|
|
other Scientologists, including the estate of L. Ron Hubbard, still
|
|
control huge blocks of his company's stock.
|
|
|
|
THE SCIENTOLOGISTS AND ME
|
|
|
|
Strange things seem to happen to people who write about Scientology,
|
|
Journalist Paulette Cooper wrote a critical book about the cult in
|
|
1971. This led to a Scientology plot (called Operation Freak-Out)
|
|
whose goal, according to church documents, was "to get P.C.
|
|
incarcerated in a mental institution or jail." It almost worked:
|
|
By impersonating Cooper, Scientologists got her indicted in 1973 for
|
|
threatening to bomb the church. Cooper, who also endured 19
|
|
lawsuits by the church, was finally exonerated in 1977 after FBI
|
|
raids on the church offices in Los Angeles and Washington uncovered
|
|
documents from the bomb scheme. No Scientologists were ever tried
|
|
in the matter.
|
|
|
|
For the TIME story, at least 10 attorneys and six private detectives
|
|
were unleashed by Scientology and its followers in an effort to
|
|
threaten, harass, and discredit me. Last Oct. 12, not long after I
|
|
began this assignment, I planned to lunch with Eugene Ingram, the
|
|
church's leading private eye and a former cop. Ingram, who was
|
|
tossed off the Los Angeles police force in 1981 for alleged ties to
|
|
prostitutes and drug dealers, has told me that he might be able to
|
|
arrange a meeting with church boss David Miscavige. Just hours
|
|
before the lunch, the church's "national trial counsel," Earle
|
|
Cooley, called to inform me that I would be eating alone.
|
|
|
|
Alone, perhaps, but not forgotten. By day's end, I later learned, a
|
|
copy of my personal credit report - with detailed information about
|
|
my bank accounts, home mortgage, credit-card payments, home address
|
|
and Social Security number - had been illegally retrieved from a
|
|
national credit bureau called Trans Union. The sham company that
|
|
received it, "Educational Funding Services" of Los Angeles, gave as
|
|
its address a mail drop a few blocks from Scientology's
|
|
headquarters.
|
|
|
|
The owner of the mail drop is a private eye named Fred Wolfson, who
|
|
admits that an Ingram associate retained him to retrieve credit
|
|
reports on several individuals. Wolfson says he was told that
|
|
Scientology's attorneys "had judgments against these people and were
|
|
trying to collect on them." He says now, "They are vicious people.
|
|
They are vipers." Ingram, though a lawyer, denies any involvement
|
|
in the scam.
|
|
|
|
During the past five months, private investigators have been
|
|
contacting acquaintances of mine, ranging from neighbors to a former
|
|
colleague, to inquire about subjects such as my health (like my
|
|
credit rating, it's excellent) and whether I've ever had trouble
|
|
with the IRS (unlike Scientology, I haven't). One neighbor was
|
|
greeted at dawn outside my Manhattan apartment building by two men
|
|
who wanted to know whether I lived there. I finally called Cooley
|
|
to demand that Scientology stop the nonsense. He promised to look
|
|
into it.
|
|
|
|
After that, however, an attorney subpoenaed me, while another
|
|
falsely suggested that I might own shares in a company I was
|
|
|
|
Page 12
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
reporting about that had been taken over by Scientologists (he also
|
|
threatened to call the Securities and Exchange Commission). A close
|
|
friend in Los Angeles received a disturbing telephone call from a
|
|
Scientology staff member seeking data about me - an indication that
|
|
the cult may have illegally obtained my personal phone records. Two
|
|
detectives contacted me, posing as a friend and a relative of a so-
|
|
called cult victim, to elicit negative statements from me about
|
|
Scientology. Some of my conversations with them were taped,
|
|
transcribed and presented by the church in affidavits to TIME's
|
|
lawyers as "proof" of my bias against Scientology.
|
|
|
|
Among the comments I made to one of the detectives, who represented
|
|
himself as "Harry Baxter," a friend of the victim's family, was that
|
|
"the church trains people to lie." Baxter and his colleagues are
|
|
hardly in a position to dispute that observation. His real name is
|
|
Barry Silvers, and he is a former investigator for the Justice
|
|
Department's Organized Crime Strike Force.
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
If you have comments or other information relating to such topics
|
|
as this paper covers, please upload to KeelyNet or send to the
|
|
Vangard Sciences address as listed on the first page.
|
|
Thank you for your consideration, interest and support.
|
|
|
|
Jerry W. Decker.........Ron Barker...........Chuck Henderson
|
|
Vangard Sciences/KeelyNet
|
|
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
If we can be of service, you may contact
|
|
Jerry at (214) 324-8741 or Ron at (214) 242-9346
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Page 13
|
|
|
|
|