Scientology: Fair Game?

hello everyone and welcome to this special conversation at the wheeler Center about Scientology my name is Steve Canaan and this is Tony Ortega thanks so much everyone for coming along I'd like to start by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land on which we are gathered the Kulin people and pay my respects to both elders both past and present Melbourne is the perfect place to be having a conversation about Scientology it has a fascinating history here it's the birthplace of Scientology in Australia the first Scientology franchise was set up here in June 1955 when the Hubbard Association of Scientologists international first registered in Victoria as a foreign company they set up shop in Spring Street across the road from Parliament House and l ron Hubbard actually visited Melbourne in 1959 and he gave a series of lectures in the bamboo room at the Chevron I don't know if anyone remembers the bamboo room I've certainly never been there but it sounds good and in 1963 the first-ever public inquiry into Scientology was held here in Victoria it was run by Kevin Anderson QC it went for over a year a very influential report right around the world led to other reports led to I believe changes in Scientology policy and led to Victoria becoming the first place in the world to ban Scientology now that band eventually got overturned but it was certainly the first place in the world it was an extraordinary story in itself because Hubbard himself had great plans for Scientology in Australia on his tour back in 1959 he said he thought Australia would become the world's first clear continent but Victorians when you turned on Hubbard Hubbard turned on you in 1967 in a document called kangaroo court published by the Hubbard College of Scientology I'm not sure if Hubbard wrote this or not but it has a few hallmarks of his his style it said the following this is a quote the foundation of Victoria consists of the riffraff of London slums robbers murderers prostitutes fences thieves the scourings of Newgate and bedlam in relation to the banning of select Scientology this document said only it's only a society founded by criminals organized by criminals and devoted to making people criminals could come to such a conclusion a criminal society would applaud brutality would regard Luke Luke Tata me la bata me and other major operations depriving a being of the use of his brain as necessary to relieve a desperate situation now today we are very fortunate to have with us the most well informed journalist writing about Scientology in the world he writes with accuracy authority and courage Tony Ortega has been writing about Scientology for over 20 years he breaks countless original stories on his website the underground bunker I recommend you all visit it and subscribe to it he recently featured in Alex Gibney's documentary going clear which won three Emmys and he's just released a book called the unbreakable miss lovely which is all about Paulette Cooper a journalist who wrote about Scientology in the 1970s and it documents what was done to Paulette Cooper Tony welcome to a society founded by criminal criminals organized by criminals and devoted to making people criminals thanks for coming here now Melbourne mattered l ron Hubbard didn't it sure did and I I hope you all are impressed by what Steve's been talking about because he's writing his own book about the history of Scientology in Australia and I think he just gave you a little taste of how good it's gonna be because it's gonna be very very good he also served in Brisbane during the war Hubbard and even though he told Australians that they should be grateful for the fact that he saved us from the Japanese he was sent home for insubordination his war record was a fictionalized account who wasn't it well I mean it's classic l ron hubbard l ron hubbard was a fascinating person who lived a fascinating life and if he had just described what actually happened to him i think he would have done a lot better than all the embellishing he did he had a very interesting war record he did have command of a couple of ships that is true one of them was a trawler in Boston Harbor and he was removed from command after one day his bosses didn't like him very much so then he went across but that was hey he was in the Atlantic theater for one day so then he went to the Pacific and he got command of another ship in Oregon and they right away went out and on their first cruise engaged in a 30 hour depth charge battle with two Japanese submarines which they sank but then the Navy brass later determined that he had spent 30 hours fighting a magnetic deposit on the sea floor but you know what's interesting is some of the people who were with him to this day and they're very old now are convinced that they really were fighting a submarine that there's still people trying to prove that l ron Hubbard had this epic battle and I think that's interesting because as Chris Owen points out he's a great historian of scientology we you know when the war was over we got a hold of Japan's records and they're not missing any submarines up there but they're still looking for them because some people still want to prove that Hubbard was correct about that battle but that wasn't the worst thing on that same ship he sailed down the coast and he got so bored because there weren't any Japanese in the area he opened fire on a Mexican island for target practice and it caused an international incident so he was removed from that command as well but I you know I'm sure there are many people in world war ii had various you know experiences the problem is that he claimed to have been machine gun here right and yeah in the jungles of java he said he was machine gun in the back by the japanese and and then what did he do - he claimed that he then got into a life raft and sailed in the life raft and I got the map out and worked out how far it was from Java to the coast of West Australia which would be 1,600 kilometers during the monsoon season in shark-infested waters right yeah which is I mean fishing trawlers trying to bring asylum seekers to the coast of West Australia find it difficult to make it yeah but how would a rubber raft do well this was the Great Satan but the the problem is that his what His Royal records say that he they don't the war records don't mention machine-gunning he was hospitalized for conjunctivitis arthritis hemorrhoids and hauser and that's a problem for Scientology because the story that Tommy Davis tried to sell the Lawrence Wright when when Larry was working on his New Yorker article was that because he was machine gun because he broke his back I think something like that he his life was virtually over he talked about that that he couldn't see his life going anywhere until he came up with the ideas that became the basis of Dianetics and he healed himself with those ideas and that's when he decided he had this world changing technology and Tommy Davis actually said to Larry right if this story's not true then Dianetics doesn't exist and Scientology's all wrong and Larry was right in this day look his fast is he good and it turns out that the war records that Scientology was trying to foist on The New Yorker were just fraudulent and I was right and Tommy Davis doesn't seem to be involved anymore disease that was Larry tells me that was in October 2010 and we're talking about an archers son Tommy Davis who from about 2006 2010 was a very visible spokesman for the church Scientology very colorful I still all the time get emails from people what happened to Tommy where's Tommy and Larry's article came out in February 2011 and it was you know devastating article in New Yorker and it was clear that Tommy Davis had just been you know overwhelmed by Larry right and what I found was in a March 2011 one month after Larry's article came out the Church of Scientology international registered to URLs who is Tommy Davis comm and who is Jessica Fishbach calm which is what they do to you when they kick you out is they then create anonymous smear websites about you and that's the formula for the URL they never did anything with those URLs but they've got them ready in case Tommy ever turns so but what happened was Tommy went to Texas and he we he was tested he was deposed and when he craftmens lawsuit and he said that he's on leave from the Sea Org but he's still a member of the Church of Scientology I have a really really good source very close to him and Tommy knows that it it just irritates him that this person talks to me but they tell me that Tommy is actually very critical of the church in private so I think he's all the way out let's move on to talk about your book Tony your book on Paula Cooper's is a great read she was a victim of something called fair game what's fair game well um I think maybe this is part of your book but as a direct result of what happened here in Australia Hubbard started to get much more paranoid and clamped down on things and in 1965 he came up with this system of ethics it's such a wonderful Orwellian term by ethics he means obedience and and discipline and there were severe rules for people who broke that obedience and discipline and anybody that was either cast out of Scientology or had criticized Scientology would then be subject of fair game which was their term for trying to destroy somebody that was saying something negative about Scientology and Scientology today will tell you that that that policies been cancelled but it's not it hasn't people are going through fair game today but I was interested in Paulette because I had you know anybody that works on Scientology you learned pretty quickly about the story of Paulette Cooper right nobody had been through a worse fair game program than Paulette so I was I was aware of that and I stumbled into Scientology I was a new reporter in Phoenix Arizona I had found this interesting story about a local guy named Rick Ross who's an internationally known cult expert and Scientology was just one of the groups that he was tangling with and I I did a story on that and I was fortunate I worked for the kind of publication that allowed me to follow up on stories develop sources and so one story led to another and I then moved back to Los Angeles one from which it was really great to be there because then that's one of the world headquarters for Scientologists for Scientology and so I got to do stories on people like Tory Chrisman and Graham berry and I started to get emails from somebody that was just very encouraging saying how your stories are good keep going keep at it kid you know good job and the name on the email was Paulette I thought that couldn't be but it was it was Paula Cooper and I I knew that she had kind of gone quiet after her lawsuits were settled but this showed me that she was still interested in the field she was she was watching to see what people were doing and I it was just a very inspirational for me to get that kind of encouragement from her and then years later I like the company I worked for moved me around a lot I ended up in New York I was editor in chief for the Village Voice and everything changed because of this not very tall actor named Tom Cruise this video leaked to the internet in January 2008 featuring him in a turtleneck you've probably all seen it talking about how great it is to be a Scientologist and only Scientologist can help with the scene of a car accident which nobody understands what he's talking about and that got leaked in January 2008 and Scientology characteristically tried to suppress it and the internet struck back in the form of anonymous well for somebody that had been writing about Scientology for a long time this was so exciting to me and because I had I had stories that I'd never published that now I knew there was an audience for the audience's were just ravenous for anything about Scientology so over the next couple of years I started to start to write about Scientology again and there were some really uh interesting other things going on Jason Beghe made his video he was a character actor who'd been a he was the first scientology celebrity to come out and talk about it in a negative way so i told he relies on its celebrities and this was an interesting turn of events and then some of the top executives were starting to leave Scientology and talk cluding a man named marty rathbun so I was watching all this and doing a few stories and then in May 2011 it's when somebody reached out to me and said that Paula Cooper was very angry that Tom Cruise was gonna get a humanitarian of the Year award from the Simon Wiesenthal Center and Paulette's Jewish and so she was not happy about this and I said and they asked me would you be interested in publishing a statement she's gonna make about that I said sure so this kind of reconnect the design and I was you know I remind her do you member ten years ago you sent me emails and encouraging me oh sure so I I put together a story about her statement and it was the most read thing I've ever written it just exploded on the internet and and Steve I was so excited it had 300 comments that was a lot back then wasn't it I'd never had something with 300 comments now today if I wrote something and it only had 300 comments I'd be really bummed out but back then that was a lot of comments so that God is talking again the two of us and later that year I thought I just like to do a basic story about what she went through and remind people who she was she had written a book about Scientology in 1971 called the scandal of Scientology Scientology had then put her through multiple operations trying to destroy her she was actually facing prison at one time for a frantic a crime they framed her for and this is when I started to realize that although all of us seem to know this story the details were really murky and there was a lot of bad information online at that time Wikipedia said that Paulette Cooper was born in the Auschwitz death camp which was not true and in fact after this I did a basic story about her harassment and then she came to New York we met for the first time in December 2011 we were we were having breakfast and she mentioned she was in town visiting her sister Susie she has an older sister Susie and I asked what they've been talking about and she said well you know what where we were talking about the fact that we're still not sure how we survived the Holocaust I thought wow so I included that just as a line in a little story I wrote for about that meeting and the nice thing about the reach of The Village Voice is within a week it was front page news in Belgium and the Netherlands that she couldn't remember they she was born in Belgium not anxious and and so she started to get emails from people over there including a man named Peter de haut who said listen on my father knew your father I know how you survived the Holocaust and she put him in touch with me and it was a fascinating story and he had the documents to prove that what he was saying so what I found out was that Paulette was born to Khayyam and Roux club Buchholz who emigrated from Poland in the late 20s to Antwerp and Belgium fell to the Nazis in 1940 now in the first parts of the war the first couple years if you were a Jew and you were arrested on the street if you could prove that you were Belgian they would leave you alone but if you were a Polish Jew or a German Jew and you would emigrated there you were taken to the concentration camp that's the early part of the war later all the Jews were pulled away but at least in that first part her parents were in danger because they weren't Belgian and we're very very fortunate because the Nazis were incredible bureaucrats they kept records of everything and so I was able to find that crime Buckholtz was arrested I was pulled off a train on July 22nd 1942 and as soon as I saw that date my heart's on because I knew that Paulette was born on July 26 1942 and so I had to break it to her and she learned for the first time that her father had never actually laid eyes on her he was sent to a concentration camp and then he was moved to a transit camp he was one of the first Jews moved there it's called the mechelen transit camp in that it ended up sending most of Belgium's Jews to their deaths and again we have these records we have his train number that he was sent to the Auschwitz death camp three months later but Rooke 'la was arrested and she ended up at the Mechelen transit camp and again we have her passenger number for the train that took her to Auschwitz the two little girls were then kept hidden by other family members but eventually in July 1943 they were sent to the mecklen transit camp and we again we have the train and the passenger numbers for these two little girls that were going to be sent to Auschwitz but it didn't happen and so we asked Peter what happened and so he explained that and this was a matter of record that the commandant of that transit camp was a notoriously sadistic but also corrupt Nazi guard named Philip Schmidt he was so corrupt he'd already been disciplined by the Nazis and was scheduled to be transferred but he was still there when Peters father and two other friends raised a lot of cash and black-market goods and bribed Philip Schmidt so we have the record of the girls going to Auschwitz but then a month later we have the record of them in an orphanage so the bribe had worked and that's how the two girls and that's how close two girls came to being sent to their deaths it's an incredible story of course Paulette was adopted by American parents she moved to the US she ends up growing up in the u.s. moves to New York City starts as a journalist how did she write start writing about Scientology you know she she wanted she was an ambitious gal you know she really wanted to write magazine articles and books that got a lot of attention and she got noticed she was just to remind people that's what Paulette looked like in was a 1970 in New York City very attractive young woman she'd been in advertising she was getting into magazines she wanted to be noticed and I mean just to give you an idea one of the articles she worked on her father adoptive father was in the diamond business and so they would go to Antwerp every year on cruise ships and so she got very used to what life was like on cruise ships in the 60s and so she she what she noticed was that she was on a cruise ship and a man a young man was arrested for hiding on the ship as a stowaway and she was telling her friends she said you ever noticed that there's all the stowaways in history or all men and that this guy's problem was that he was hiding if you wanted to be a stowaway you need to walk around in public and act like you own the place then everyone will assume you have a ticket and so in January 1970 Paulette Cooper became the first woman in history to stow away a modern cruise liner she went on the Leonardo de croo uh the Leonardo da Vinci as it sailed down to the Caribbean and back for a week without a ticket and she ended up writing that story for The Washington Post and for the London Sunday Times which gave her a 6,000 word article with a two-page spread of her in a bikini which in 1970 was not you know not everybody who were bikini yet so she was I mean she fit the whole image of a glamorous Manhattan freelance writer and that's the kind of thing she wanted to do she wanted to write something that would really impact people and so one day she ran into a friend of hers who had been doing some Scientology and he mentioned her that you know in Scientology you go into your past lives to find out what you were doing thousands and millions of years ago and so this process had allowed him to remember that he had been Jesus Christ and so she knew that another person that the two of them used to work together that he had also gotten into Scientology so she called him up and this is what actually surprised her the most was she called this other guy very smart guy advertising executive and and described what this guy had said and that he said he was Jesus Christ can he learned through Scientology and you were in Scientology what do you think of that and and she couldn't believe it he said well maybe he is and that's when she was like I gotta figure out what this Scientology thing is so she took a class she signed up for the communications course at the New York org which in those days was at the hotel Martinique about a block from the Empire State Building and you know in 1960 this was 68 it was thriving then you know I mean you talked to old-timers and the big ballroom was just full people bull-baiting right all day and and all under this giant black-and-white picture of l ron Hubbard on the wall and so she got a real impression of it and started working and she found out that her first piece on Scientology was published in a UK magazine when she started to get certain types of phone calls yeah she so she finished her story and gave it to her agent this was back when magazine writers had agents and he tried to place it for her and it was already obvious to news into magazines that this Scientology thing was very litigious and not everybody wanted to do a story so they're having a hard time and one of the magazines they submitted it to was called Queen it was in London it was near the end of its existence but it was a real swinging hot magazine at the time and they said no thank you but they they liked what they saw and they said what Paulette should submit some work to us that we'll consider to give her assignments in the future so being cheeky she sent them the scientology thing again as her sample and this time they decided to publish it so she all she knew was that it was gonna be coming out in Queens she didn't know when but then suddenly one day and in late 1969 she got death threats from two different men on the same day and they said if you you will be killed if you write about Scientology again and she called up her agents at what's going on he said oh yeah your magazine article came out today and it's that's when it started and she she had by that time she'd already decided to turn that material into a book and she tried very hard to get it to Random House and they were fairly interested but ultimately she settled for Tower which was a paperback publisher but that was good because they printed a lot of copies and it came out on June 1st 1971 the scandal of Scientology but already by then she was she was under surveillance she was being harassed it just was non-stop and just to give you a little insight into what an Australian angle to Paulette's book she got her hands on a copy of the Anderson report based in Melbourne courtesy of a may have been a US State Department official who basically said there's a document on this table here I'm leaving the room if when I leave the room that documents no longer there that's okay by me so she got a copy of it and she knows that that copy spread right around the u.s. because she had a certain style of notation in the margins and underlining words and alike and she would see photocopies of this report circling her and that story is in your TV report about her but unfortunately it's not in my book because I have a London publisher and he's got really he's very brave but there were a couple of little things we decided not to put in the book and that story unfortunately didn't make the cut I was bummed out lay out the operations that she was subjected to she went they tried multiple things Scientology had a spy wing and I don't know how many churches here in Australia have spy wings but Scientology at that time had something called the Guardians office today it's called the Office of Special Affairs and they assumed that most people would just go away with some minimal harassment so when they first started to harass her they did things like spread rumors about her sex life around town wrote things about her on bathroom walls and bars around the city just inundated her with obscene phone calls they signed her up for pornographic magazines and that you know that might spoop some people but Paulette didn't just come out of that book she would go on television she would go on radio at the time and she was recruiting other journalists to write about Scientology and the nine was in the phonebook and she was a person who people would ring who was struggling to leave Scientology as well wasn't she for years people would call her up my son or my daughter's involved and so she became this hub of information so the that initial thing didn't work so then they started spreading around these flyers about around about her and letters vile lies about her sex life tell us what they did with her apartment block well she she had moved to this luxurious 34th storey building on 40th Street that she wanted to move into for a long time and in December 72 might be January 23 this letter just showed up in the building and everybody in the building got the letter calling her a prostitute saying that she'd molested a two-year-old girl all this just vile lies and again most people would get the message and just you know stop but she wouldn't stop why wouldn't she back down you know she's talked to me about how it had something to do with her parents that she felt that if more people had spoken up in Europe in the 30s maybe things might have turned out differently and she saw in Scientology an organization with totalitarian tendencies and felt that you know she really needed to get the word out about this organization and then I think the more they went after her the more it motivated her to keep doing what she was doing and and then you can see in the I'm very fortunate the FBI years later rated Scientology and we have all these records and you can see in their records that it's exasperating them they just they can't understand why they they haven't been able to shut her up yet and finally in 1972 one of the spies and the Guardians office literally writes it's time to get her committed and what they did was they got her fingerprint on a piece of paper act up a bomb threat to themselves mailed it to themselves and then called the FBI and the FBI took it seriously and in May 1973 she was indicted and faced 15 years in federal prison and a fifteen thousand dollar fine for sending bomb threats and lying about it her trial was scheduled for her Halloween October 31st 1973 and through that summer was the worst period of her life and it wasn't enough for Scientology to get her frame for a felony she didn't commit they wanted to see how badly she was suffering so they they would send spies to the building to try to befriend her and she she was a very trusting person somehow and she became very good friends with a woman that moved in to the building and then she brought her around her buddy Jerry and then when she was having a hard time just getting anything done that summer they said hey maybe Jerry could move in with you and help you out and so from May to September 1973 this man named Jerry Levin lived with Paulette Cooper and each night he would go up to the roof where there was a pay phone and call the Church of Scientology and tell them everything she had done that day how did they get the fingerprints on a piece of spectra stationery well we're fortunate because eventually that that prosecution didn't happen and she was exonerated when the FBI found documents you know showing the planning of that but they did it again in 1976 after that prosecution didn't happen they planned a whole new operation against her in April 1978 it's called Operation freakout I think the full name was Operation PC freaked out was for Paulette Cooper and it was they they it was a similar kind of operation to make it look like Paulette was becoming psychotic and one of the there were six channels to it and one of them involved getting her fingerprint and this time they really spelled out how you do it and what you do is you give somebody something to read on a clipboard with and they don't know that there's a piece of paper taped to the other side so you grab the clipboard in December 72 it was a petition she signed in 1976 it was a joke for her to read but each time see her finger touches the piece of paper she doesn't see and then it explains now when you take that back from her you immediately put a piece of paper over that so your fingerprints don't get on it see and they actually then they actually step-by-step explained now how to take that off fold it together keep the fingerprint inside I mean it's really explicit and they did they did try it they did that part the fingerprint on the joke and then they also developed somebody to sound like her and make phone calls but the rest of Operation freakout never came off but they ran other operations against her into the 80s and we found she didn't realize this they were keeping tabs on her until at least 2010 tell us about the person she lunched with yeah and the way I found out about that was um I was in Florida she lives in Florida now and I went down there to interview her and we were just taking a break it was hard for her to talk about 1973 it's it's she's still very angry about all of that she came this close to killing herself that summer because she didn't want to go through the trial and so we were taking a break and she was till we were talked about in New York and she said yeah you know 20 whenever I whenever I come to New York I always get together with my friend whose name I'm not gonna say right now and we talk about various things and we always tell you always asked me about Scientology and what I've heard what's going on and she saw my jaw drop open she's a Tony what is it I said you didn't know he's been outed as a Scientology spy and sure enough this was a staff writer for Vanity Fair and to top former Scientology executives that year in 2010 revealed that he'd been on the payroll for years and what he would do is he would call other journalists to ask them what they were working on and then deliver that news to Scientology and nobody ever noticed that the guy never wrote a story about Scientology at all you mentioned that Paulet nearly took her own life it took a terrible toll on her even to the extent if you think about it she's a young single woman in New York City she can't even go on a date with someone without thinking is his person a spy well I mean there was Jerry Levin that was in her own apartment living with her and then several years later she went to work for a guy that turned out to be a Scientology spy yeah it was very difficult for her date to date guys and trust people the nice thing was in 1987 she was invited by a friend to a party and bumped into a guy that she had dated in 68 and so she thought okay now this guy is okay he I knew him before the Scientology thing and she and Paul know Noble were married in 1988 and they're very happy today he's a great great guy as Mike Rinder once said if you're having a party you need to invite Paul Noble okay in about ten minutes time we're gonna take some questions and I know that some people I just want to declare that this is being filmed so if you're concerned about being filmed maybe best not ask a question but we'd love to get some questions in about ten minutes time Tony tell us I'll wait to respond to this and the Church of Scientology on it when I ran the story about you and Paul there they said that that was a rogue unit those days are gone that kind of thing doesn't happen anymore yeah and that's what they've always said about the Guardians office the guard either so the FBI rated Scientology 1977 and 1979 there was a trial and 11 top Scientologists went to prison including Mary Sue Hubbard the wife of the founder and Hubbard himself was named an unindicted co-conspirator they then disbanded the Guardians office and replace it with something called the Office of Special Affairs they claimed the Guardians unit was this rogue unit but it's very clear that Mary Sue and LRH l ron hubbard were in charge of what was going on this was not a unit off doing its own thing and then the question becomes okay the Office of Special Affairs today clearly spies on people but are you know have they really reformed and they don't do illegal things well I this book came out it hit Amazon on May 14th this year ten days later on May 24th I was notified by the US Attorney's Office that they were about to sentence a private investigator in New York to prison and they were notifying the people he had victimized with illegal hacking I was one and it turned out so was Mike Rinder the former top spokesman the Church of Scientology Mike and I had little doubt who was paying this guy but eventually the New York Times reported that yes this guy who just went to prison was working for the Church of Scientology so 10 days after I came out with a book about the illegal techniques used by the Church of Scientology to try to harm Paula Cooper I found out about the illegal techniques they were using to try to harm me so I would say Scientology's not themselves have made a pretty good case that they really haven't changed at all so they admit it was a rogue unit so they seem to be distancing themselves from the activities against Paulette but have they ever apologize every and she's bitter about that and one of the things we set out to do was to try to find some of these people who had run some of these operations against her and I did talk to several of them and I have a wide variety of reactions I mean I met one person came forward and apologized to her he told her how bad he felt years later that he had been involved in some of these operations others were willing to talk to me but they wanted to make it clear that they still hated her guts 40 years later and others just wouldn't talk to me and told me to ask myself that kind of thing so it was interesting so right okay so why won't they apologize we've seen the Catholic Church we've seen the Pope abuse for the way the Catholic Church he apologized for the way the Catholic Church is dealt with abuse a great question why haven't there why won't I apologize there's no reconciliation there is no there is no apology in Scientology I mean I mean one thing to keep why not is there something in the in their doctrine is there something in there in their history what is it keep in mind that what Scientology is really all about is these people believe they have the answer to the existence of mankind and the secrets of the universe and the rest of us are pathetic dopes that don't understand anything why if you consider yourself a superior brand of human being would you ever apologize to the rest of us since we know nothing because we're all human and we all make mistakes and with flawed why don't we why don't I apologize Scientologists do not make mistakes they either follow l ron Hubbard's technology standard ly and correctly or they don't and that's all the answer to all the problems in your life see Scientologist you know even I know some people leave Scientology especially these days to say that it's david miscavige that's the current leader is really behind all the problems and things were great under l ron Hubbard but really it was Hubbard's paranoia it was Hubbard's attitudes about you know Scientology superior nature that's baked into Scientology and you just don't apologize if you're Scientologists how much does the Church of Scientology spend on surveillance oh my goodness Marty Rathbun estimates that the money they spent just in the Lisa McPherson case to try to bribe judges of affect the state prosecution of that case that that case alone cost them thirty million dollars and recently two private investigators were arrested in Wisconsin who David Miscavige was paying ten thousand dollars a week to follow his father who recently left Scientology money's no object for Scientology they will spend whatever it takes to follow people to try to win litigation and you know again they can't change Steve because this is what's really this is one of the things that I find most fascinating about Scientology l ron Hubbard is called source he is the source of all knowledge Scientology and it has the answers for everything in life and he died in 1986 they can't change it so you kind of have a Reformation you can't have a Reformation you can't change anything he wrote now some will tell you that David Miscavige is squirreling the tech but he is making some changes but the OP but the PlayBook they're operating from as far as critics go journalists ex-members comes right out of what Hubbard wrote in the 60s Patton Annie Barca how much money was spent on spying on them yeah when Hubbard died in 1986 he appeared to have anointed a man named pat broker and his wife Annie to succeed him it's a little unclear but he he promoted them in an interesting way then he died busca this young man named David Miscavige pushed the brokers out of the way and became the leader but he was very paranoid about what pat broker might say or do and so they hired two ex cops to follow Pat broker and not they can't be so they couldn't be seen there there's a you know to journalists they tend to do noisy investigations where they we know they're following us but you know this Pat broker was not supposed to known he was being followed these two ex cops followed him 24 hours a day for 24 years the operation cost 12 million dollars and then they finally lost their jobs two years ago and they claimed they had been told they had jobs for life so they sued Scientology and for one day they talked and I flew to Texas just to meet them and I had them to myself for a day and then the Tampa Bay Times guys had them for a few hours the next day and I had so much fun because they were proud of the work they did oh yeah we would get up next to him at Applebee's and look over his shoulder at his emails and I mean because they couldn't be discovered that was the number one thing and the same thing with these guys in Wisconsin they knew that that $10,000 a week ends if they were ever discovered and for them the real crisis moment came when they were following Ranma scabbit senior David's dad and one day Ron was walking across a Walmart parking lot and I'm told that you don't have Walmart here but you might have K Mart's right okay so a big parking lot and he's walking across and he does this now what was happening was Ron's smartphone was falling out of his pocket and he was clutching at it but he was a 77 year old man clutching his chest and bending over so these two now this is a real crisis for these guys because remember they're getting paid $10,000 a week not to be discovered now do we run over and help this guy or not so they so what they did was being the humanitarians they were they called their handlers in Florida and they told the police that within a minute David Miscavige picked up the fall the phone and he told them if he dies he dies don't do anything and that is now gonna be the title of Ron's memoir coming out next year if he dies he dies Tony should a judge get tax-free status if they're spending millions of dollars a year on surveillance and intimidating critics well look I mean there are some people who feel that church asserting any tradition get any tax up status but but the point with Scientology as they signed an agreement they signed an agreement with the IRS in 1993 and it's very explicit about the conditions under which that tax incentives can be revoked and they are in violation of it every single day I personally would love to see the IRS ask david miscavige to explain how spending ten thousand dollars a week to have two men follow his father is a religious purpose would that be an interesting conversation I'd like to see him justify that alex gibney the director of going clear the Academy award-winning documentary maker Emmy award-winning documentary maker from going clear he's very keen on something happen about this IRS status is that likely to move in the US where they lose their tax-free status I I think the IRS has some interest in revisiting it but it's it would be such a mountain to over to move I mean just this week the Netherlands decided that Scientology should not get taxes and status and Alex then tweeted if they can do it in the Netherlands why can't we do in the United States Mike Rinder the former top spokesman for Scientology told me that one thing to keep in mind is if you're an agency if you're an agency head in the United States and whether it's the IRS or the FBI or whatever and you decide okay we're gonna we're gonna look into this Scientology thing and make some decisions he said you have to make a calculation you have to decide whether you're ready for that to be the rest of your career because it will be they will throw waves of attorneys at you and you know I think there is some interest at the at the IRS I hear some things but I think it would take a really a lot of public interest and you know maybe go the movie-going clear is starting to get as part of the way there on the issue of going clear the members of the Academy are getting some interesting letters at the moment on Scientology they so going clear one I'm very fortunate that I'm in it it's really Alex in Larry's movie and I'm very fortunate they included me yeah but it's a great credit to your work Tony that they asked you to be a part of that well Larry's book if you've read it as a magnificent book but it stops in 2010 and then I've done a lot of reporting few years I think you know they they like that and and they had me talking about Tom Cruise that was fun so but when you win so this is an HBO which I think is something like Fox still write up a kind of yeah people here know what HBO is right people know what ice cream is yeah so so what they did was it debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah January then they opened it in theaters in March to make it eligible for Oscars then they showed it on HBO in March which made it eligible for Emmys so it was nominated for seven Emmys it one two three big ones best documentary best direction best writing and some people I remember reading the real experts in Hollywood this is not my beat that winning an Emmy can actually hurt your Oscar chances because then the Oscar voters think of your movie as a TV movie but in this case I personally think there's a lot of people in Hollywood that have a have have not enjoyed the fact that Scientology has thrown its weight around town for so long and would be anxious to vote for this so let's see how it does well Scientology is also concerned about that so they've been having they had a reporter for their their propaganda magazine freedom call up key Oscar members in the documentary division to try to poison it pretend he was interviewing them about the film but did you know there are controversies about this film do you know that there's stuff in here that's not true just try to plant that seed with the Oscar committee but it backfired on them because the they knew what was going on and and now if anything all it's done is given Alex give me a whole new round of free publicity for the you know I mean the church just its churches off on its own worst enemy with those kind of things okay we're gonna take some questions from the floor so if you've got a question put your hand up and there's one down here and there's a couple down the front and we will get a microphone to you and ask away first question this is actually pretty much for both of you but given that Scientology has shown itself to actually be criminal in addition to all the other things I can kind of understand that the United States can be a bit squeamish about religion and constitution and you mentioned that the head of the IRS would have a personal battle I'm really interested to know why it's been allowed to be a criminal organization and not be investigated from the point of view of tax and the second half is to Steve Australians are squeamish you know we don't bloody care so why is the Australian Government beings so light-fingered about dealing with Scientology are you talking about tax-free status or okay well the tax-free if I take that one first there was a 1983 High Court judgement and it it's a very complicated case and how it started that went through the the local Victorian courts and it was about payroll tax and the like and it end up going to the High Court and the decision was basically and I actually think the decision was right that the state should not dictate what you what people can and can't believe in you know there are all kinds of crazy beliefs that religions are based around and we all have a right to believe or not believe and I I don't actually have a problem with that judgment I think there's a question mark though about tax-free status on religions and if you can show that that religion causes harm or spends money on placing critics under surveillance then I think you can bring in what's called and Nick Xenophon has talked about this a public interest test and you can weigh up whether that that institution that religious institution deserves to have tax-free status or not but I don't think you should be banning religions and I think it was wrong for Victoria to ban Scientology but I think that is is what you could do you could follow that measure that Nick Xenophon was very keen to get up but it's maguet up and i think one of the reasons is is that there's a lot of religious people in parliament and they'd be concerned that that would apply to their institutionalized religions like the Catholic Church given the revelations of abuse last decade but perhaps that could backfire on them as well so I don't think that's ever going to go get up is there another aspect that you think they should be investigated about or are you just talking about well as far as the criminality is concerned the number one problem that law enforcement has is that it can often take so long for Scientologists to even realize they've been victimized they come out and because it takes so many years to get off of that indoctrination there's a really fascinating case going on right now in Los Angeles a young woman who's suing Scientology she she signed the C orgs billion-year contract at 12 years old and was immediately put on a schedule over 98 hours of work a week for pennies an hour and the next year when she turned 13 they moved up to one hundred and twelve hours a week again for pennies an hour and she was she was disciplined at one point when she was 12 because she dared to write down in a note that she missed her mother okay and not only were they violating labor laws with the way they treat children but she ended up at 6 to 17 she got a pregnant now it's against the C organization's rules to have children and in her story as she was forced to have an abortion like so many other women who have come forward and said the same thing so she went through things that were horrific in her mind but it took her five years after she left to realize hey wait a minute that was wrong for them to treat me that way I need to sue them and so for the last six years most of her lawsuit has simply been about did she wait too long or not and I talked to law enforcement people some time and they always tell me that's the number one thing is people will come forward to them with allegations of sexual abuse of covering up of sexual abuse of families being ripped apart and the first question they ask is how long ago wasn't and often it's like five six seven years before somebody will say anything just the other day a man came forward to me he couldn't wait to tell me a story about Scientology let me tell you about the horrible things that happened to me in Los Angeles and they were all things I'd heard before but it's not interesting this sounds like a good story when was this the year 2000 it took him 15 years to be ready to tell the story that's the number one thing law enforcement and certainly prosecutors also say that it's high it's much harder to prove things the further away it is and evidence becomes more unreliable it's very difficult we should probably move on to another question we'll go to our second question thanks you've already answered the first part of my question which was about the tax-free status but the other question for Steve is what how many was there membership like in Australia now what sort of um how active are they okay well Tommy Davis said on four corners when he was still in the Church of Scientology in 2009 there was tens if not hundreds of thousands of Scientologists in Australia all I can go by is the last census which said 2107 now I am assuming if if you if you're a Scientologist you want your stats up don't you Tony so everybody would be told I would think to make sure you put down in the census that you are a Scientologist and that's very that's very consistent with what you see in the rest of the world England census said two thousand three hundred and sort of informal census taken United States at twenty five thousand I think there's maybe something like forty thousand active Scientologists around the world and the top former executives who edit who had access to actual enrollment documents tell me that the largest Scientology ever was was about the year 1990 when there were about a hundred thousand Scientologists there have never been the millions that they claim I've seen I mean in 1969 they told a reporter in New York that they had 15 million people and Kirstie Alley has said 20 million but I mean you know it they're just it's just not there's no hard evidence that there are those kinds of nominee one of the things I find fascinating about is it is a very astute istic striven institution and an easy each Thursday you meant to improve your statistics so it's almost like they have to say that they are are the fastest-growing religion in the world that things are improving all the time yeah okay third question hi I don't need to stand up doing so I almost hesitate to raise a question because I may be the only Scientologist in the room so I'm here on earth I'm here to listen and to well thank you for coming it's yeah thanks for letting me in so I just wanted to I mean you and I have spoken before yeah that's right I want to just like put it to you maybe you just pause a hypothetical question what if everything you talked about and everything you're trying to do what if he was listened to and what if the church did change in some way let's say just some aspects would you as a journalist as a professional journalist would you be able to write about that or have you already gone too far down the road of being a critic I'm always waiting for the changes to come I'd love to report them I mean for me the most basic thing that Scientology could do is simply talk about itself why can't Scientology describe itself publicly Scientologists are trained to say only buy a book and find out for yourself why can't Scientologist talk about auditing why do you have to be several years in and several hundred thousand dollars in before you find out that on the upper levels you're gonna be spending eight hundred dollars an hour to rid yourself a body things this is the ultimate aim of Scientology that you will be spending money to rid yourself of invisible alien beings that were left from 75 million years ago genocide that is what Scientology is why can't Scientologist describe that because otherwise it's a big bait and switch the day Scientology does that I will celebrate it I would be happy to say Scientology has made the correct step forward but they don't do that they follow the same playbook from 1965 and the kind of reforms your two being you're describing those are happening on the outside some independents are trying to make some of those changes and I think they're interesting but until the organization itself does it's really you know it's really frustrating and on a personal note that time I had a conversation with you I personally found you the most open-minded Scientologists that I had had spoken to and we're willing to to think and answer questions that I had had dealings with I have real problems talking to to the the people at the top of the hierarchy of the Church of Scientology in Australia granted me an interview since I think it was 2010 despite repeated requests I'm writing a book at the moment I asked them to to line up interviews I've asked they just won't play ball so I consider myself very open-minded I'm trained as a journalist to be fair to to try and get all sides of the story but you know what happens when I do reporting on Scientology they don't put people up for interview but what they often do is hand me a whole bunch of affidavits where somebody says this never happened signed so-and-so and then when I ring them up and this is predominantly in the u.s. I ring them up and say can I speak to that person who signed that affidavit I'd like to test their claim they never make them available the exei intelligence I speak to always make themselves available for me to test their claims and I will test their claims I will say well what about this what about that you know how do I know you're not lying you've you've got a you know show me some evidence here and they'll often find corroborating evidence so I am very open-minded to hearing other sides of the argument it's I personally find it very difficult to get access to that if well and let me clear up a misconception Scientology will tell you that we're not I mean we are not talking to the official channels in Scientology but it's a myth that we don't talk to Scientologists I've been doing this for 20 years I have sources inside the Church of Scientology yeah and these are people who are very frustrated with how things are going otherwise they wouldn't be talking to me right so I talked to Scientologists all the time Scientologists in the organization people who have left the organization but still consider themselves Scientologists which is really an interesting phenomena I imagine you know a Catholic decides to leave the local parish but still wants to call themselves a Catholic can you imagine the church saying no they're not a Catholic that's illegal to call yourself a Catholic you that but that's what Scientology does so I talked to a lot of Scientologists in the organization and out we just don't get to talk to the top donors yeah and we don't we can't talk to them on the record because it would be their internal justice system punishes speaking out against Scientology so we would then imperil them if we quoted them on the record there's another question down the front here what is it about Scientology that attracts people to it well you know Scientology has always only appealed to a small percentage of people but I think the thing that is most appealing about it is they're selling certainty they they go to people who particularly people have had some kind of problems in their lives and they say we have a program to make your life better all you need to do is take our courses fill out these check sheets and you will become a better human being now that doesn't work with me I just I know life doesn't work like that life is difficult we all have setbacks and you do the best you can there's no magic formula in a check sheet in a lecture by some guy from 1950 but there are a certain small number of people who like that that I pay my check I get the course materials I fill it out and now suddenly my life I'm a superhuman and that's always appeal to a certain small number of people and even today I know Scientology has a harder time today because of the internet it's not able to recruit people the way it used to because Scientology is all about information control but there are still some people that find that intriguing that this group claims that they can solve virtually any problem cure virtually any disease and all you have to do is take their courses listen to their lectures and fill out their check sheets that is attractive to some people but it's never been a large you know group but the but and pay the money not too much at first but again you get to those upper levels and you're paying eight or nine hundred dollars an hour I was taught we did an event in Sydney the other night and a question was asked what's what's in common about people who are recruited to Scientology and our consensus on the panel was that's somebody with a vulnerability and Hubbard used to say find their ruin so when you recruit somebody you find their ruin their ruin what what is what is wrong with them and Joe rish who I've interviewed was a first-grade rugby league player in Sydney he had a torn groin muscle that would not heal and this is pre-modern sports medicine Scientology said we can solve that problem you'll John a tech who wrote a piece of blue sky a very intelligent man he got involved in Scientology because he had a relationship breakup Bruce Heinz is a supersized was a physicist Bruce Heinz should have known that everything Hubbard says about the universe is complete poppycock he is a physicist he knows how the universe works but he told me he had been through a bad breakup I mean if they find people who have a certain vulnerability and again you know we can help you with that we can solve that and at first they're not talking about superhuman powers they're just talking about we're gonna help you communicate better take control of your life and that sounds attractive right but then as Paul I thought Paul Haggis did a really good job in the movie going clear explaining how those initial levels can really make you feel more confident and you feel like it's working but then the later levels get stranger and stranger I mean on ot3 you learn that you have these invisible alien souls attached to you that you need to drive away with auditing with the e meter and then on ot4 you find out you have a whole nother set of invisible alien souls and they're junkies and you did clean you needed to put them through rehab that's another $10,000 you know how many people would join if they were upfront about that but I think in other point is that people there are people who join because they believe it and it works for them I also think that and when I had this conversation I I did a documentary series for the ODC a few years ago on the teenage brain and what I learned was that and before the age of 25 the frontal lobes your brain are not fully developed now they're the parts of your brain where rational behavior sets and if those parts of the brain are not fully developed you rely on the amygdala which is back towards the middle of the brain which is about your emotions and that is based on if it feels good you do it so the three people who asked me about this I said what ages did you join Scientology 20 21 22 it's the same ages that the frontline soldiers in World War one were it's the same age that people recruit suicide bombers it's the same age that when we're young and ideal is to get University and open to all kinds of different ideas so I think there's a there's a vulnerability to in that age group because Scientology appeals to people who idealistic and want to make the world a better place probably got time for another question up there in going clear and many other things there's not much written or spoken about the origins of Scientology in the sense that hover does a fairly successful science fiction writer quite a good one said john campbell editor of Astarte magazine who published some of his stories and nothing I ain't there no twas there saying the only way we can get rich is to invent a religion and astounding published the first article which became in Dianetics a bit later on that doesn't seem to get as much coverage which I would have thought murder despite as some people from joining you about it actually that was covered pretty well in going clear i yeah i was gonna be talked about that that he was successful he was a successful science fiction writer who you know published the article about Dianetics in us two astounding science fiction came out the same month as the book itself and he did have champions among other science fiction writers as you said a even vote but steve and votes have a fascinating example because van vote really liked the idea of Dianetics and in Dianetics you go back to your memories in the womb about what traumatic things happen and i I've read Dianetics cover-to-cover I am seriously doubtful that most Scientologists have because it's the most disgusting book about women it just it's the most misogynistic obsession with abortion to you know it's all about how your dad had rough sex with your mom and and knocked you out with his penis during rough sex and that's why you have these traumatic memories that forty years later make it tough for you to get up in front of a crowd and give a speech and so in Dianetics your job is to go back to the womb and remember all the terrible things dad did to mom and the multiple abortion attempts your mom must have made and remember that and our van vote thought that was cool all right but to but then he went bankrupt a year later had to start over again Hubbard had lost the use of the name Dianetics he so he had to start it up with something new and he called it Scientology that he came up with in Phoenix 1952 by then some of his more creative followers weren't satisfied with only going back to the womb they wanted to go farther so when Scientology Hubbard came up with counseling to bring up your past lives thousands millions billions of years ago now van Vogt was like wait a minute this was a science that steps this crap you're talking about and for the rest of his life av van Vogt remained a dedicated diyanet assist and wouldn't go near Scientology there are a few people that were like that that thought Hubbard was on to science in Dianetics but this Scientology thing's crazy and just on that point you rise about the science fiction writers who said that Hubbard used to say the best way to make a million dollars was to start your own religion there's at least three people on the record who've said that oh there's no question I actually doubted it myself it just sounded too good to be true and I wondered about that but then I went and researched it he told several different people in 48 and 49 variations of that line that if you really want to make a million dollars start your own religion variations on that theme and there were much of Scientology says George Orwell's and they recorded it at the time somebody remember in 20 years it doesn't matter it doesn't mean the other people to write George Orwell did say something similar in the 30s but that doesn't mean Hubbard said it right that did happen I think we can squeeze in one more yeah one more last one down the front hi I'm wondering if either of you can explain the technicality that saw Jay and Eastgate escape prosecution and why she wasn't recharged okay I can explain that because I did the story for Lateline that originally exposed that and I will point out that when our Jenny Scott would not talk to me on the record she would not talk to me on the phone all she did was email me and said the claims were egregiously false I'll also point out that I was never sued for that story even though in that story it said that the allegation was that she had coached a young woman to lie to police and community services about her sexual abuse by her Scientologist stepfather now the DPP in New South Wales did charge her with I think it was something like pervert the course of justice but one of the problems was was that that law did not exist back in nine in 85 so there was a mistake made in the DPP and in fact it was conspiracy to pervert the course of justice was the law at the time which is a higher bar to proof we're also once again going back to what we said before about evidence going back a long way we're talking 30 years so it is the DPP for whatever reason decided that they didn't think that that that charge would get up in a court of law so they withdrew it but it relates to them charging with her with a law that didn't exist at the time and and evidence so tell me so at people who don't know Janis Kate is the International president of the citizens Commission for Human Rights which is Scientology's anti-psychiatry organization so thanks very much for coming along and thanks very much for your questions

Channel: WheelerCentre

Views: 145,101

Rating: 4.6706281 out of 5

Keywords: Ideas, Melbourne, Australia, Conversation, The Wheeler Centre, Victoria, Writing, Scientology (Religion), Fair Game, Religion (TV Genre)

Id: jBmwZ_OmTdI

Length: 66min 0sec (3960 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 25 2015