Indeed, it claims to be from a high-ranking defector and is quite detailed.
I thought maybe that's a cut and paste from another page but by searching samples through Google I could not find another page or post forum containing the words.
I just do not know what to think of it, so if anybody has an idea, speak out.
Why it was posted as a comment to my blog and not on some open forum I don't know. I still suspect it to be pasted from somewhere else, even though the first paragraph directly addresses the post I made.
I guess this kind of things would be posted on OCMB, but it's virtually impossible for new people to post there as they'll have to wait for month before receiving news (if ever) of their registration.
Update - I did find the same text on another page, but it seems to have been posted around the same time as the comment was posted here. What is more, the same page carries a prior text dated Aug 2008, which is almost for sure from the same author.
Update 2 - A quick look through the net comes up with three names of high-ranking defectors speaking out and who maybe could have written this text. The text is either from one of them, or from someone else. This someone else either is already known as a defector or not. The three name I came up with are Jeff Hawkins, Marc Headley, and Larry Brennan. As I said, there may be more that are already known. If not, then it's somebody new.
You will find the comment here.
And here are a few excerpts I picked up from the text:
There definitely is a Scientology 1 and 2. Scientology, like all things, is neither all good, nor all bad. It is a blend of very, very good and very, very bad. The bad needs to be weeded out and ended. And the good, preserved. [...]
I speak from personal experience, having worked shoulder to shoulder with Scientology’s top executives as a high-ranking member of International Management.
I spent 25 years on staff, including a span of approximately 20 years in Scientology's secret headquarters in Gilman Hot Springs.
Recently, I decided to route out. The last straw came when David Miscavige physically assaulted and violently battered 3 individuals in my presence: Mark Yager, Guillaume Leserve and Mike Rinder (three of the highest ranking Scientologists on earth). I was not only in the same room, in one case I was standing right next to the victim when Miscavige attacked. All this transpired within a few weeks. I had endured incredible suppression in the hopes it might get better, but when Miscavige sweetened the deal by meting out potential concussions, I finally said enough. [...]
Many of us stayed on for years hoping it would get better under the delusion that “it couldn’t get worse.” We were wrong. Scientology’s Int Management has been decimated. It literally doesn’t exist. It went from some 1,400 staff in 1988, down to about 300 people today -- and true enough, all those with any kind of spine or spark of independence are long gone. [...]
And where are those staff now? All over the world, uniformly doing well, but having to rebuild their lives from scratch. Those of us who routed out standardly from Int Management were given $500 and a declare order which which to start over. Many of us have spent our whole adult lives in the Church. Which means when you leave, you also leave behind any family and every friend you know. Those of us who started with the Church at an early age, had no college degree. So just imagine starting over in your 40s or 50s, with $500, no friends, no place to live, no car, no credit, nothing. It keeps one busy for a few years.
But besides the challenge of starting over, those of us now on the outside all share something else, an abiding hatred for this total failure named David Miscavige. And one by one, we are starting to do something about it. [...]
All the leaders of the Church of Scientology are officially declared (suppressives) and have been for years. Like Mark Yager. And Ray Mithoff. And dozens more. Guillaume Leserve (Executive Director International, Janet Light (President of the IAS), top staff from OSA -- they’re all in the “SP Hall” -- two office trailers which once housed CMO Int. (“SP” means suppressive person or “anti-social”).
Even the term “International Management” is an oxymoron (“international mob” is more truthful since they have lacked any org board for years. There is no WDC, no Exec Strata, no CMO Int, and not even any RTC anymore. It’s all been dismantled by David Miscavige). There is only “COB’s Office.” Even Miscavige’s own wife, Shelley, a person whom he wiped his feet on constantly is, last I heard, “under watch” in New Mexico -- at the secret Archives location -- the Church of Spiritual Technology -- because apparently she suggested Miscavige was having an affair with his assistant.
When you send a report to Tech Reports Off RTC, there is no one there to read it.
Of course there’s much more. Did you know how Miscavige got IRS Commissioner Fred Goldberg to grant tax exempt status to the Church of Scientology? Miscavige personally collared the IRS Commissioner Fred Goldberg in the hallway outside his IRS office and threatened to expose him. Miscavige had his people in OSA (Office of Special Affairs) hire private investigators to trail and video Fred and they had caught him in some unethical activity. Miscavige told Fred if he didn’t cooperate, he’d immediately expose him in full-page ads in USA Today. That is what Miscavige told us at Int Management one night in 1993. He bragged about it.
A friend of mine who used to work in RTC told me that when she started, she received a Christmas bonus of $9,000. She felt guilty about it since regular Sea Org members only make $2,300 a year if they are lucky. When she tried to return it, she was told it had to be that big or else Miscavige’s bonus would look "out of proportion to the IRS." She was told, if you don't want to do it for yourself, do it for Miscavige. [...]
He himself built a gigantic building “for RTC” costing millions that today stands empty in Gilman Hot Springs.
Financial crimes are old hand to Miscavige. In the early 1980s when L. Ron Hubbard was still alive, Miscavige secretly took over the management of LRH assets and promptly lost $30,000,000 on bad investments in the oil industry. LRH never knew. Miscavige’s solution was to invent a series of “collectible prints” -- paintings by Frank Frazetta, etc., of semi-nude women with huge breasts -- and he had Author Services Inc. (ASI) sell these to Scientologists.[...]
When LRH was around, the Church sold services to generate money. Now it simply demands donations from Scientologists. In other words, there’s no exchange any more. It’s just outright extortion.
It’s time for Scientologists to open their eyes and confront. [...]
From the start his only real skill was intimidation. He developed it to a high art, as did others of his kind: Al Capone for example.
2 comments:
This report is consistent with what other recent defectors have reported and with this account from someone who was in for 35 years and recently left:
http://counterfeitdreams.blogspot.com/
The comment was indeed from someone new (me) and I chose your blog because, of all the many excellent websites and blogs I've seen on the subject of Scientology and its criticism, yours is the best in my opinion. My comment on your Scientology 1 & 2 blog was my first. I put the comment on two websites simultaneously.
As you essentially pointed out, nothing on this earth is ALL good or ALL bad. Scientology is a blend of both. The bad needs to be abolished. That’s all.
I’m not saying Scientology is a religion. I’m not insisting on anything but common sense. Personally, I don’t see why Scientology needs to be classified as a religion, since in doing so the organization in a single stroke creates an incredible amount of instant hostility and alienates about 50% of the western world. Hubbard himself referred to Scientology as a science in all his early books on the subject, no offense to any scientists or science buffs.
Critics of Scientology continually ask, “If it’s so bad, why do people stay in it?” The answer is because Scientology also contains some powerfully good things that really can help people.
There’s an old phrase, “There’s good even in the worst of us” and it’s true. There’s also evil in the best of us. Any action has fallout. To feed a starving child you have to kill an animal or plant and deal with the waste so it doesn’t pollute the environment. My point isn’t to make excuses for Scientology, it is just to point out that only condemning things is illogical. That’s what Miscavige does! And it is equally illogical for Scientologists to cover up unethical activities.
Doing so does not expand Scientology. It corrupts the entire movement.
My own intention isn’t to “get” anyone. It is to bring order.
Your position, as I understand it in this blog, is that both the critics who deny all rightness, and Scientologists who deny all wrongness, are alike both members of the same cult. That cult is: “I will only see what I want to see!”
Staff members of the Church’s Office of Special Affairs who read this must realize that Miscavige physically attacked Mike Rinder, who at the time was WDC OSA and holding CO OSA Int from above. Mike was later declared and banished into the “SP Hall” along with other OSA staff you know. For those who don’t know, “WDC” stands for “Watch Dog Committee” a select group of executives whom LRH assigned to watch over Scientology and make sure no dictator ever took control of the subject. There are no WDC members today. One by one they were wiped out by Miscavige.
Remember the poem about Nazi Germany? "They came first for the Communists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist; And then they came for the trade unionists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist; And then they came for the Jews, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew; And then . . . they came for me . . . And by that time there was no one left to speak up."
Your own personal fate as a Sea Org Member is already written in the lines of that poem. If you go up to Int, you will be subjected to the most intense suppression, and stand a good chance of being declared and confined to “SP Hall” -- a place that is hard to escape since it is guarded 24/7 by a band of plucky and very, very, very out-ethics security guards.
By the way, the nearly all the stories of abuse exposed by ex-Sea Org Members such as Jeff Hawkins and “Blown for Good” are truthful. The incidents are factual. There are still many more to be revealed.
I’m not a member of Anonymous. I’m not a member of the Church. Yet I have life-long friends on both sides.
My attack is not even upon the Church; it is upon criminality.
The mission of a Sea Org Member is “to get ethics in" so tech can go in. Well, after a long study, I found the primary “out ethics” (Scientology lingo for unethical practices) blocking Scientology's expansion is internal. Most of it traces back to David Miscavige. Some of it traces back to LRH.
For example, most Scientologists have heard of “Old Saint Hill.” It was the last organization personally run by LRH as Executive Director and it was big and busy. But what of its staff who helped make Saint Hill what it was? Well, all but two are currently declared suppressive. That alone tells you there is something very suppressive with the practice of declaring people “suppressive.”
Scientology criticism is useful and needed. It is part and parcel of freedom of speech and freedom of religion. Our nation is founded on those principles.
Some of LRH’s ideas are really bad. An example is the Golden Era Productions “Team Share System” a policy authored by LRH but ignored until Miscavige personally forced it into place. This is a special policy just for Golden Era Productions whereby each person is issued a series of 5 cards. Each card represents your “share” in the team. Go figure. This is just bonkers, ding-ding here comes the crazy wagon...
One card makes you “eligible” for housing. One card makes you eligible for food. One card makes you eligible for basic pay ($46 a week). One card makes you eligible for social activities (getting a day off, which almost never happens). And the final card makes you eligible for a bonus.
Across some 20 years at Int, I never received a bonus except a paltry sum at Christmas (like $200 if we were lucky). So the bonus card was insane.
I got about two days off in a dozen years. So the social card was a joke.
And you guessed it. For any infraction, real or imagined, you lose a card! That included low production on a weekly basis. Or talking back to a superior. I remember two suffering fools with the job of writing scripts. None of their scripts counted until they were approved. So they would work for weeks and weeks writing their scripts as Miscavige insisted, finally sending them up to Miscavige for approval, who would then sit on them for 6-8 months without looking at them, then finally send them back as “stale” or “rejected.” And all the while the writer’s official production level was “zero.” So of course they lost all their “Team Share Cards” and so went for literally months and years without basic necessities. Meaning their pay was forfeited, they had to sleep in their office or in some nasty bunk reserved for the dregs. They had no food cards, so they were allowed to eat only rice and beans.
That is an example of an LRH policy that should be abolished. The writers were secretly both friends of mine. One night the older one went to find a place to sleep about 4 am. He laid down on the bunk he found in a dark, stinking, hot trailer reserved for the human dregs. In the dark he could not see the bed was crawling with ants.
The other fellow, a very funny and friendly chap, was also forced to live on beans and rice. He was quite skinny to start with, however and he couldn’t assimilate them. After he lost 20 pounds in a couple of months, he realized he was suffering from malnutrition. At the highest level of the Church of Scientology he was literally being starved to death. Writing for David Miscavige, he was starving. In America. Working for David Miscavige.
To save himself, he finally faked a suicide by scratching his wrists with a pocket knife. He didn’t cut himself, he just scratched himself. But knowing the rules, that got him automatically kicked off staff. And he saved his health.
Throughout it all, Miscavige struts and prates in his speeches about his programs to “uphold human rights around the world.” Actually, the Church does do a lot of good. But as long as Scientology harbors profound abuse within its ranks, the net gain in terms of public perception is negative. And that’s putting it nicely.
One thing about us human beings, we hate organizations that injure people with one hand and hold up a halo with the other. What’s missing is integrity: a word Miscavige, being a high-school drop out, has never known the meaning of.
If a group wants to be a religion, they have to not just talk the talk, they have to walk the walk. And Scientology never really has.
(Getting back to the “Team Share Cards”)... So when I say, some of LRH’s policies are wrong and need to be abolished, there are specific examples supporting the conclusion.
Other parts of Scientology amount to some of the most valuable discoveries this world has to offer. I use Scientology today in every part of my life. I use the good parts of Scientology. The parts that work. Just like I can back up the conclusion that some parts of Scientology are bad, I can back up the conclusion that some parts are incredibly good. To see those parts lost would be in my opinion the greatest tragedy the world has ever known.
Knowing and using Scientology enabled me to stand up to Miscavige. It enables me to do so now. I used Scientology to escape my horrendous situation at the International Base. Scientology has enabled me to rebuild my life from complete and utter scratch in just a few years. I’m using Scientology now to attack rampant criminality within the Church.
I condemn the destructive practices of Scientology as pure idiocy.
So, for all the pros and cons, Scientology in its current state is a diamond in the rough. I have lots more to say on the subject. And in the coming months, I intend to reveal more. Good and bad. I intend to bring insight to both sides.
I’m not a “critic” of Scientology. I’m a Scientologist doing what a real Scientologist should do: having the personal integrity and courage to say what I have observed. Period. If I am guilty of anything, I am guilty of following LRH’s own words (which would qualify in your analogy as “Scientology 1”):
“What is true for you is what you have observed yourself. And when you lose that you have lost everything. What is personal integrity? Personal integrity is knowing what you know – what you know is what you know – and to have the courage to know and say what you have observed. And that is integrity. And there is no other integrity. Of course we can talk about honor, truth, all these things, these esoteric terms. But I think they’d all be covered very well if what we really observed was what we observed. That we took care to observe what we were observing. That we always observed to observe. And not necessarily maintaining a skeptical attitude, a critical attitude, or an open mind. But certainly maintaining sufficient personal integrity and sufficient personal belief and confidence in self and courage that we can observe what we observe and say what we have observed. Nothing in Dianetics and Scientology is true for you unless you have observed it. And it is true according to your observation. That is all.”
This particular blog strikes me as the best example of not necessarily maintaining a skeptical attitude, a critical attitude, or an open mind. You, Bernie, seem to have maintained sufficient personal integrity and sufficient personal belief and confidence in yourself and courage to observe and say what you see.
That’s what being a human being is really all about. Personal integrity.
For me, maintaining my personal integrity has meant giving up my marriage -- since my (now “ex”) spouse is still inside the Church; giving up my Bridge, since anyone who routes out from Int Management is automatically declared “suppressive” and barred from services; giving up my many friends since Scientologists are required to disconnect from anyone who has been so declared.
That was a high cost. I was married for the better part of two decades. Being forced to divorce my spouse while still in love because of suppressive policies (Scientology 2) was difficult. Like a baptism by fire, internal suppression within Scientology stripped me of everything I owned but two things: My observations and my personal integrity.
And so, I have “everything” whereas those without have already “lost everything.”
I’m not afraid of Miscavige. The man is a robber and a parasite. He deals exclusively in lies and generalities. He has every trait of a real suppressive person. His only “power” is the power to corrupt.
To allow Miscavige to go on destroying the Church of Scientology is to turn my back on everything I stand for as a human being and as a Scientologist. He has single-handedly done more to poison the environment for Scientology than anyone or any agency in history.
Destructive policies from David Miscavige and LRH himself have created a hostile environment for Scientology. Miscavige needs to be put behind bars, and destructive policies abolished.
Yet it is expressly impossible to accomplish that from inside the Church, since Miscavige is Type III.
As an example, in about 2001, he brought everyone together from the Int Base for a message. One of his staff read a note to us stating that the recorded message we were about to hear should be regarded as a personal communication from him to each one of us separately. The taped message was “Can We Ever Be Friends,” a sappy maudlin plea intended to dissuade suppressive people from attacking Scientology. In other words, Miscavige, in his delusory state, is so surrounded by "suppressives" that he sees ALL of the most dedicated Scientologists on earth, people who have devoted their entire lives to the movement, as hostile enemies.
They say you can’t help a rabid dog because it will bite. So what do you do when the leader of Scientology bites every top Scientologist in the world? He’s a mad dog.
To put it in perspective, here is a man who has a small army of selfless volunteers with no ulterior motives or hidden agendas, who have dedicated their entire lives to forwarding this movement, who are willing to work day and night without rest, for $0.40 an hour, and Miscavige can’t get along with them? Even with all the tools of Scientology at his disposal and the power to command anything he wants?
He can’t get along to the degree that he dismantled Exec Strata that LRH established, he dismantled RTC, he dismantled CMO Int, he dismantled all of marketing and it just goes on and on. Don’t forget, this is the guy who kicked Mary Sue Hubbard (LRH’s wife) out of the Church... and got away with it.
And for that matter, Diana Hubbard, Ron’s eldest daughter, despises David Miscavige with all her soul. She is a virtual prisoner. There are no cell phones, no outside lines, no internet access. As far as I know, you can’t even call 911. She writes scripts and speeches for events.
Any rational person asks how does something like this happen?
You have to remember that Scientology is a product of the cold war. It was born 6 years after atomic bombs obliterated two entire cities burning their populations to a crisp. It was born less than 6 years following the extermination of 13 million Jews, each of whom had friends and lovers and dreams as rich as yours. Scientology was born in desperate times by a good man. He was not a perfect man. He was just a man, with as many flaws as you.
Scientology was a desperate measure itself. The idea was to expand man’s understanding of man as fast as possible.
Hubbard ran into problems when people tried to alter Scientology, since it doesn’t work if altered. In 1965, in a knee-jerk reaction, Hubbard froze everything with a policy letter called, “Keeping Scientology Working.” That policy made it unlawful (in Scientology) to change anything or to even to criticize Scientology.
When he took over, Miscavige made it 1,000 times worse, broadening the range of the policy to include virtually anything Hubbard ever wrote as inviolate. Even including things like the asinine “Team Share System.”
And so, as the culture itself actually progressed and improved, Scientology froze in a cold-war condition that no longer exists.
In the 1950s, our culture was considerably more barbaric. A Christian cult called the KKK could still get away with real murder. There were no laws to protect women from sexual harassment. Gay rights didn’t exist. Teachers had free reign to spank or slap any child. Sexual predators roamed about freely in the guise of camp counselors and priests. There was no agency to rescue victims of child abuse. The CIA experimented freely on people with germs and mind control. Psychiatrists were drugging people, lobotomizing them and electro shocking them. Senator Joseph McCarthy used innuendo to blacklist people. We tend to forget how bad things really were.
While the culture progressed, Scientology not only froze in time, starting in 1986, it began to go in reverse.
It is incredibly ironic that the philosophy that revealed what Eckhart Tolle later described as the “power of now” has itself become profoundly stuck in the past.
The FBI needs to investigate Miscavige for his crimes. Believe me, they are there. Like personally blackmailing Fred Goldberg, commissioner of the IRS. Like creating such a dangerous environment at the Int Base that people actually lost their lives. Breaking up marriages, forced abortions, corporate fraud, perjury... he’s thick with crimes.
Then we need someone sensible, to sort out the good from the bad. If Scientology is to be a church, then it has to BE a church. That means knock off the secret wars and the hostilities. It means cease dolling out $400,000 a month to degraded lawyers and private investigators hired as attack dogs. It means stop declaring as suppressive decent people who left Int Management because they did not want to receive a concussion from David Miscavige on top of all the other physical, mental and spiritual abuse. It means let Sea Org members have their wives and husbands back. Let them have their children and their parents. Stop requiring Sea Org women to have abortions. Let them have families. Knock off the incessant illegal “international events” and let orgs get on with the business of making free people uninterrupted as LRH intended.
Stop billing staff as “freeloaders” when, after putting in 15, 25 and 35 years on staff, they quit with good cause. My own freeloader debt was arbitrarily set at $80,000 after I left, yet California law forbids any organization to bill it’s employees for training they received during the term of their employment.
Duh... lemme see... huh, I give 25 years of dedicated service, working 110 to 120 hours a week, 7 days a week, with two vacations in 20 years... wait a second... one was for a funeral not a vacation. One vacation in 20 years. While on staff I personally generated millions for the Church, meanwhile I earned approximately 35 cents a hour the entire time thinking the money was being spent wisely (it wasn’t), I was not allowed to call my parents without Gerald Duncan listening in, my spouse was stolen from me, my personal belongings were stolen by the Golden Era Production security guards when I was leaving, I endured every kind of abuse and at the end Chris Guider, hands me a freeloader bill for $80,000...
Oh, by the way, the entire time I was a member of Int Management, I didn’t advance one step on the Bridge we Scientologists care so much about.
Meanwhile, now I see old Chris “Do I look brainwashed?” Guider has not only left Int Management 2 years ago, why, he’s the darling of Hollywood and has accomplished some amazing accomplishments! Let see... he rode in a famous producer’s Porsche on an 8-lane freeway and attended a baseball game in “a private box with an all-you-can-eat delicious banquet.” Ooh-wee. Woo-hoo!! I’m shaking, so excited and envious. Just see for yourself. Check this link: http://www.leaguehq.com.au/news/news/scientologys-little-big-man-keen-to-assist-dragons/2008/12/19/1229189885302.html?page=2
But wait, THAT’S NOT ALL, little big man went jogging once with John Travolta and played basketball with with Tom Cruise. That is truly keen.
But he left out something... he was not “a full-time staffer at Scientology’s centre on Sunset Boulevard.” For more than 15 years, he was IG MAA RTC (Inspector General Master at Arms) at Scientology’s Int Base headquarters in Gilman Hot Springs, 90 miles east on Highway 60. Chris Guider was Miscavige’s main pit bull.
He was instrumental in forcing my spouse and I to get divorced. He wrote the issue officially declaring me and dozens of others “anti-social” people; spinning, spinning, spinning phony justifications on goldenrod paper like a little spider with beady eyes. Now he’s back in Australia but still quite the tool for Miscavige, voicing the party line about Ideal Orgs -- the latest program to cheat millions from Scientologists. He’s one of the ones who redefines the phrase, “how low can you go?” Then again, maybe he’s just another Miscavige victim. I don’t know. Miscavige is the correct target.
Time to reform and now.
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