Inside Scientology Part 27

* In 2002, the Church of Scientology finally agreed to pay Larry Wollersheim $8.6 million, most of which Wollersheim said went to cover his legal fees.

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* Scientology's attorneys were not always wholly independent. One Los Angeles-based lawyer for the church, cited as "outside counsel," was Kendrick Moxon, a Scientologist and former Guardian's Office legal officer who, like L. Ron Hubbard, was named an unindicted co-conspirator in Operation Snow White.

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* According to Marty Rathbun, anyone suspected of blocking Miscavige's quest for tax exemption was perceived as an enemy, including the onetime church executive Terri Gamboa, a former Messenger to L. Ron Hubbard aboard the Apollo, who'd left Scientology with her husband in 1989. Gamboa had been the executive director of Author Services when it was the main financial organ of the church, and thus knew a great deal about financial irregularities concerning Hubbard, Miscavige, and the Church of Scientology overall. That she left was "a seven-alert fire," said Rathbun, which Miscavige dealt with by dispatching a team of officials, including Rathbun, to confront Gamboa while she was on a trip with her husband and simultaneously break into a briefcase kept in her car, which Miscavige feared contained doc.u.ments pertaining to L. Ron Hubbard's estate. "As it turns out the briefcase had nothing of use in it and it was returned to Terri's car," said Rathbun. Gamboa never uttered a word publicly about church finances.

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* In 1998, the agency was ordered by a district court to release internal doc.u.ments relating to the negotiations. At about the same time, the settlement doc.u.ment was leaked to the press.

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* Scientologists are allowed to deduct only 80 percent of the cost of auditing as charitable contributions.

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Equating a religious education like that received at a yeshiva with Scientology auditing is in some ways a bad a.n.a.logy. Far better would be to equate the education Scientologist children receive at Applied Scholasticssponsored schools, which reinforce Hubbard's principles. These schools were given tax exemption under the 1993 agreement, and parents may deduct the cost of these schools from their income taxes-as well as deduct any donations they might make directly to ABLE, the a.s.sociation for Better Living, a nonprofit organization set up by the Church of Scientology to administer its social betterment programs, including the Applied Scholastics program.

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* This comment, like many remarks Lisa made about her early life, were later recorded in various church-ordered confessionals, including the "life history" that Lisa was required to write as part of her indoctrination into Scientology.

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* Doctors have questioned the effectiveness of the Purification Rundown, which has never been scientifically proven as effective and might in fact be dangerous. Its central component, niacin, is administered in extremely high doses. The recommended daily allowance of niacin is fifteen milligrams; the Purification Rundown calls for it to be administered in c.o.c.ktails containing one hundred to five thousand milligrams, gradually increasing in potency over time. Such high doses produce a flush on the skin, which Hubbard interpreted as a sign that the body was expelling impurities. Dosages of this size can also cause liver damage. Nonetheless, the Purification Rundown is required of every new member with a history of drug use, which Lisa McPherson had.

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* Though not in vogue when Hubbard first adopted it, the concept of "learning styles," meaning that different approaches to presenting material-visual, auditory, kinesthetic, and so on-suit different students, is now accepted and informs educational practice in many U.S. schools.

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* A pseudonym.

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* The pressure to sign up for these services can be intense. Owners of a small business in Florida, Mercer and her husband routinely found Scientology salespeople sitting outside their house. "They would call you maybe the day before to feel you out and see how much cash was available. Then the pressure would begin to build until they'd come sit at your doorstep. I had registrars circling my house, waiting for us to get home, and they would sit all around the house, knocking on the doors and windows to get money out of us."

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* Indeed, as the St. Petersburg Times later reported (in its issue of March 25, 1976), on December 1, 1975, the day the sale was finalized, the United Churches sold the Fort Harrison to the Church of Scientology for $10.

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* The first service Lisa did at Flag was an expensive auditing process called the L-11 Rundown, which is offered only in Clearwater. In 1995, the Flag Service Organization listed the price of the L-11 rundown as $10,000 per intensive. A minimum of two intensives, or twenty-five hours of auditing, are required to complete this process, raising the cost to at least $20,000.

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* According to L. Ron Hubbard, "Level IV Search and Discovery," HCO Bulletin, November 24, 1965, all PTS cla.s.sifications connect to the doctrine of suppression. An SP (Suppressive Person) is actually present in the life of a Type One individual; a Type Two believes himself or herself to be presently connected to an SP, when in fact, the "actual" SP can be traced back well into the past; a Type Three has become suppressive himself or herself, and thus is "entirely psychotic."

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* Scientology's Bridge is divided into two tracks: the auditing track, by which members advance through the various levels of enlightenment, and the training track, by which members learn to audit others. Hubbard envisioned Scientologists progressing on both tracks, often simultaneously, and all Scientologists are required to learn how to audit in order to advance to the upper levels. Only a select group of Scientologists, however, become true technical experts in the subject of auditing, and these "professional auditors," as they are known, are responsible for most of Scientology's counseling. The most elite of these professionals, who are also Sea Org members, work at Flag and are held in particularly high esteem by other church members.

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*s In her exhaustive "overt/withhold write-up" of Halloween 1995, Lisa specifically noted that during her breakdown in the summer of 1995, Scientology's international management had become involved "to sort me out," which, she noted guiltily, "took time away from their expansion or helping someone who wasn't as able as I was."

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* One possible reason for Lisa's bruising was the numerous times she had been restrained by her caretakers and security guards so that the Flag dentist, Dr. David Houghton, could administer a concoction of Benadryl, aspirin, and orange juice, which he and other officials believed might help calm her. Houghton, who, like Janis Johnson, was not licensed to practice medicine in the state of Florida, administered this potion with a turkey baster-like syringe on several occasions between November 25 and November 28, 1995, each time with others holding Lisa down. When Judy Goldsberry-Weber found out about this, she was incensed. Johnson, as Goldsberry-Weber later said, told her to "b.u.t.t out."

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* Anderson later admitted he'd put the handwritten notes in his shred basket. "To me [the notes were] a duplication of what was in this summary," he said.

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* Dr. Minkoff, prior to getting the results of Lisa's blood tests, theorized that she might have contracted, and died of, meningitis.

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* Miscavige, to this day, has denied having anything to do with Lisa McPherson's auditing or her isolation treatment, and church officials insist that Rathbun, De Vocht, and Don Jason, all of whom have left Scientology, are lying when they claim that Miscavige was involved. In 1997, when the police subpoenaed Lisa's auditing folders, the contents, which were incomplete, contained no indication that Miscavige had anything to do with Lisa McPherson or her counseling.

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* Gloria Cruz later told the Florida state attorney that Lisa's furniture had been in the apartment when the women showed up and added that she had "no idea" where any of her personal effects, such as her jewelry, went.

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* How the police report found its way into the box was one of many questions the police never answered conclusively, though it is a.s.sumed that either Slaughter or Cruz took the report from Lisa's car and put it in the box.

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* The church did ultimately make Arrunada available; in March 1996, she'd returned to her native Mexico but went back to Florida in 1997 to be interviewed by Strope, Andrews, and the a.s.sistant state attorney. Schnurrenberger, whom Strope managed to find in Switzerland, refused to be interviewed.

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* Jason Knapmeyer was transferred to a new job at the Int Base soon after McPherson's death and was never called to testify.

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* Rathbun admitted to ordering the destruction of evidence during a 2009 interview with the St. Petersburg Times, several years after breaking with the church and aware that he'd committed a crime. However, there is a three-year statute of limitations for destruction of evidence. The state prosecutor, Bernie McCabe, has said he would not pursue other charges against Rathbun.

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Baden nonetheless said that due to Simpson's dwindling financial resources, he'd accepted a fee of $1,500 a day. He never commented on what the Church of Scientology paid him.

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* Davis, who, according to Crow's report, had suffered from psychological problems, may have been under significant duress from the church. However, he refused to implicate Scientology as the reason for his abrupt change of heart. (Letter from Douglas Crow to Bernie McCabe re Review of Evidence in State v. Church of Scientology Flag Service Organization, Inc., June 9, 2000.) [back]

* In an article about Bashaw that appeared in the Chicago Reader in August 2002, church officials denied they'd had anything to do with Bashaw's decline. "[He] left the church to go sort out his life," said one spokeswoman, Mary Anne Ahmad, who knew Bashaw. Ahmad blamed "family troubles" for Bashaw's problems and said that he'd declined "help" when it had been offered by the church, opting to go with psychiatry, upon his family's advice. "Frankly," she said, "no Scientologist would ever seek psychiatry as a solution to problems."

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* According to one report, Crosby also sent a list of Narconon's celebrity sponsors to the House Select Committee on Narcotics Abuse and Control to ill.u.s.trate how many celebrities were opposed to drugs. When the Scientology scheme was exposed-by theNational Enquirer, in a report that was never refuted-stars like Rob Reiner and Henry Winkler, feeling duped, demanded that their names be taken off the list. See David McCrindell, "Bizarre Brainwashing Cult Cons Top Stars into Backing Its Drug Program," National Enquirer, April 21, 1981.

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* Travolta, according to several former officials, proved to be an effective recruiter, introducing stars like Priscilla Presley, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Patrick Swayze, Tom Berenger, and Forest Whitaker to Scientology. None but Presley, who remains a Scientologist, stayed for long.

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* When I interviewed Alley in 2005, she made no mention of Narconon in relation to her own prior history of drug use but told me that she'd kicked a cocaine habit thanks to a single Scientology auditing session. "It was highly dramatic," she said. "I did one Scientology session and I never wanted to do drugs again."

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* When asked about it several months later on Meet the Press (February 15, 1998), Berger said he'd met with the celebrities "to indicate that we would continue to discuss with the German government our belief that one should not be discriminated against on the basis purely of belief," adding that the only ulterior motive he had for the meeting was to get an autograph for one of his children.

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* Those who knew of it believed it to be Scientology's production facility.

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* Though Miscavige hadn't audited anyone personally for decades, he routinely spoke of his teenage years when he audited officials at Saint Hill.

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