I'm going to start actually with a story that I think is an event that was very key in causing some of the things that have happened in in recent years especially in the last the last decade the last five years especially the last year and actually especially in the last week things are just happening at an accelerating pace in the Church of Scientology so first thing you need to know is that Scientology has a set of teachings that are available to the public and that it has a set of vote at what are called advanced teachings which are reserved to the privileged few who have have paid money and had the required prerequisite teachings those are known as the advanced teachings those advanced teachings are are only kept in a few advanced orgs they're called in Scientology those are located in Los Angeles California in Clearwater Florida in st. Hill UK and in Copenhagen Denmark which is the smallest of the advanced orgs and that's actually pictured here that's the the Copenhagen Denmark advanced Doric what happened in December of 1983 is that two Scientologists dressed in Sea Org uniforms looks like US Navy uniforms came into the org and said we demand to immediately see the head of the organization you are out ethics you have problems going on here we need to see your advanced teachings they were escorted to a conference room and no one no one really thought this was suspicious because it's a very common event in Scientology for to see org officers on a mission to show up on your org and tell you all the things that you're doing wrong so these these two Scientologists went into a conference room were presented with copies of the advanced materials they looked through them they put two copies into a briefcase and they walked out the door and you can probably guess the the punchline to the story of the two Scientologists walking into the advanced org but they were not associated with the Church of Scientology they were Scientologists who had left the church and were trying to set up their own competing breakaway organization and their what Scientology calls squirrels squirrels are people who are practicing Scientology without the proper authority of the Church of Scientology so this this event back in 1983 led to an attempt to set up some competing Scientology organizations the they were these individuals were also affiliated with l ron Hubbard's former auditor in Santa Barbara who had an organization called the advanced ability organization and Scientology's response was basically a couple these guys got thrown in jail for a little while but the the secrets that they they took were were not recovered but this was this was kind of the first loss of control over Scientology secret teachings that we'll see repeated again and again over time and it's interesting to compare the attempts to form breakaway organizations in the in the mid-80s we're not terribly successful they've been a lot more successful recently and I think part of the reason is is the same reason that protests against abuse by Catholic priests were somewhat ineffective in 1992 but then in 2002 The Survivors Network of those Abused by priests took off and had ended up with tens of thousands of members so to understand Scientology you need to understand that there at least three different kinds of experience in Scientology depending on your relationship to the church so first of all are what are called public Scientologists those are people who have a regular full-time job outside of the Church of Scientology they are people that are customers of the Church of Scientology that are taking courses but they they still have some kind of a life outside and Scientology sees them as a as a good source of income second is the celebrities Scientology has specifically solicited celebrity since 1955 and had special celebrity centres that give them their own very carefully presented version of Scientology and they get they get a very good experience with Scientology and on some occasions get cheap labor from the Church of Scientology and then finally staff people that are on staff in Scientology are the people who have all the horror stories of abuse inside the organization they're the ones that work long hours for either no pays volunteers or at very low rates of pay as full-time employees but then I want to go back to how this all got started because l ron hubbard who was born in Tilden abrasca in 1911 - he was the he's the son of a US naval officer and the the Church of Scientology says that well Hubbard himself claimed to be an explorer a military hero a mystic blood Brotherhood Blackfeet Indians a philosopher a nuclear physicist I'm an expert on human nature but he was actually none of those things that I just listed he was however an adventurer he was a pulp fiction writer who wrote a large amount of fiction and he was a teller of tall tales even from his early childhood one of things Scientology likes to claim about him is that he was the youngest Eagle Scout ever the Boy Scouts of America actually keeps no record of who was the youngest Eagle Scout but he was in fact an Eagle Scout at the age of 13 but he was also a college dropout he was a bigamist he was convicted of petty theft and fraud and he was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in a federal case that sent eleven Scientologists to prison and he built a religious empire worth hundreds of millions of dollars most likely over a billion dollars today and his writings are now etched in metal and buried in vaults in various places in the desert around the world so future generations even if there's a nuclear holocaust the writings of l ron Hubbard will will be preserved just a few examples to point out the flaws in his claim so for example exactly claimed to be a military hero this is an example of a yes an example of a review of of his conduct basically says that he acts without forethought as to probable results he is believed to has been sincere in his efforts to make a ship efficient and ready not considered qualified for command or promotion at this time recommend duty on a large vessel where he can be properly supervised so Hubbard Hubbard did it up with command of his own vessel during World War 2 briefly but he he didn't actually see any real action although he did file a report claiming that he had an encounter with a German u-boat and and shelled it he actually ended up shelling the Coronado Islands which belonged to Mexico which was neutral in world war two he claimed to be a nuclear physicist he did actually take a course in nuclear physics at George Washington University the document that it's probably too small for you to read but it basically says right here while Fiat Ronald Hubbard has never received any degree whatsoever from the George Washington University he spent a few semesters at George Washington University we have his report cards so he got it we know that he got a D average and flunked nuclear physics actually others there's his there's his effort this I really like this picture it's a little bit unclear but it's this is l ron Hubbard auditing a tomato plant yes this is this is a picture of l ron Hubbard auditing a tomato plant and III think this is I like this picture for a couple reasons one because it's it's funny but second because it illustrates Hubbard's methods of how he accumulated things from the popular culture and made them part of Scientology or Dianetics doctrine this is this is a story where I tried to trace it back a little bit further where did this idea of plants screaming with pain come from and the earliest thing that I found is a New Yorker story in 1949 by Roald Dahl the author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and James and the Giant Peach he wrote a story in The New Yorker called The Sound Machine in which the premise was that a scientist builds a machine and suddenly finds that trees scream out when they're being chopped down lawns shriek with pain when they get mowed and things like that actually recent 14 times actually traced it back even even further than that so where did Dianetics come in Dianetics was first published in astounding science fiction magazine in May 1950 the book Dianetics came out the same month and the Hubbard Dianetics foundation was actually founded the month before in April in Elizabeth New Jersey but Hubbard well it's the the principles of Dianetics and Dianetics basically means through the mind Hubbard claimed that Dianetics was the the new science of mental health that would be a replacement for other forms of psychological therapy and he he he initially gave credit to other people for aspects of of what he claimed and and there are all sorts of things that he pulled from popular culture so he took things from norman vincent peale power of positive thinking from Alfred Korzybski z-- 1933 book science and sanity and from Aleister Crowley and I'm not going to talk about it but I'll just make reference it's the fact that Hubbard briefly spent some time with Jack Parsons who is the founder of Jet Propulsion Laboratory and was also a follower of Aleister Crowley and they did some vocal rituals together and some of the some of the elements of Crowley's beliefs have been incorporated into Scientology but subsequently Hubbard claimed that he just that it all came to him from out of the blue and it was a wholly original creation but that that's true of almost nothing that that he actually did so Dianetics claims that all of our all of our problems are caused by bad experiences that we have that are encoded as engrams in our unconscious or reactive mind and the goal of Dianetics is to identify those engrams through a process of auditing which just you and a friend with a copy of the book Dianetics can do so by reliving some of these experiences and then eliminating the bad experiences you can eliminate the engrams eliminate your reactive mind entirely and become what's called clear the state of clear is someone whose mind is now just their rational analytic mind and their unconscious reactive mind has been been dissolved so the Hubbard Dianetics Research Foundation was found in April 1950 but Hubbard liked to spend money faster than he was bringing it in so by February of 1952 less than two years later the organization was bankrupt and the board of directors over Hubbard's objections filed for bankruptcy the assets of the organization were purchased by a member of the board dan Pradhan Purcell who was a real estate magnate in Wichita Kansas so in just two short years Hubbard had created Dianetics had a best-selling book about it and then lost lost the intellectual property to a former partner so in May of 1952 Hubbard moved to Phoenix Arizona and decided to start over again so he lived in this this house which is currently a museum owned by the Church of Scientology in near their new ideal org and so here in Phoenix Hubbard created Scientology which basically incorporated Dianetics but also took it a step further so Scientology takes you from the step of clear recognises that you are a spiritual being called a Satan and that but through through Scientology and things that Scientology courses do for you you can achieve states of operating thetan which present are operating thetan levels one through eight but he didn't stay in Phoenix for very long he moved on to Washington DC in July of 1955 where the founding Church of Scientology is just off Dupont on 19th Street it's called the founding Church of Scientology because it was the first actual building purchased it was actually the third corporation with the two prior corporations being the Church of Scientology of California and of Arizona in the picture here this is the Frazer mansion this is a little tent that was set up next to it a few years ago and basically says something can be done about it and these little flowers are being handed out that let's say if you're tired and your feet are hurting and so forth or something that can be done about it what it is what you don't see mentioned is Scientology but what they do if you take them up on it is what's called a touch assist which has some resemblance to therapeutic touch it basically involves a Scientologist taking their finger and pointing at you and saying various things that does it hurt here and so on and then that and then that's it and assist assist complete and and then you get better in 1959 Hubbard moved to England where he he bought the former home of the Maharaja of Jaipur Saint Hill Manor and East Sussex Hubbard sometimes claimed that he won the estate in a poker game with the Maharaja but that's not true but he lived lived there from 1959 to 1967 that's where he did his tomato plant auditing but in 1967 he had the itch to go out and do some exploring and adventuring so in 1967 he bought a boat called the enchanter and went off to the island of Las Palmas which turns out to be a key location in Scientology in a purchasing two more ships the Avon River and the Royal Scott Minh which was renamed the Apollo and on the ship there were some jazz musicians that he worked with and put out this album here called power of source by the Apollo Stars not a very happy looking crowd there one interesting point here that this woman here her name is Annie tid Minh later known as Annie Broker and she'll become important a little bit later this is actually a 1974 jazz album that was a port recorded in a movie theater in Portugal and it's widely regarded is absolutely awful I've I've not I've not tried listening to it but it is not it is available online so this is a piece of operating thetan three in Hubbard's own handwriting and this is this is an interesting document because this is something that Scientologists will regularly deny is part of Scientology this is this is really Scientology's cosmology and story of what what the upper levels in Scientology means why why you need to go beyond clear and do additional auditing and and basically the cause is it sounds like science fiction but says the head of the Galactic Confederation 76 planets around larger stars visible from here founded 95 million years ago very space opera solved their own proper population problem 250 billion or so people were planet by mass implanting he meaning the galactic Overlord Xenu caused people to be brought to tteok also known as earth and but an h-bomb on the principle volcanoes incident - so basically basically what this says is that solve the overpopulation program problem the evil galactic warlord Xenu put people on two space planes that looked exactly like dc-9s flew them to earth drop them in volcanoes in hawaii and los Palmas blew them up with h-bombs and the dead bodies of merged space aliens then sort of filtered over the surface of the earth and attached themselves to the other other thetan present and what you find out at ot level three is that you're auditing is not only to deal with your own engrams it's to deal with the engrams of the murdered space aliens that are attached to you known as body fate ins so for some reason Scientology doesn't want you to know this until you've already gone through all the steps to clear and ot one and two and paid lots of money and have sufficient cognitive dissonance that you can't admit that you were duped by such a thing yeah this is an example of denial the this is an interaction between Kurt Loder and Lisa Goodman who was the media PR person for the Church of Scientology in 1995 on a an MTV special on cults so lauder says I understand there's a galactic Overlord Xenu is our whole staff of characters or is that not true and responses basically I don't really know what you mean I don't know what you're talking about when john sweeney of the BBC did a seared it'd a show on panorama about called scientology in me in 2007 he got similar denials from Tommy Davis Kirstie Alley and Archer and Juliette Lewis they also they all said I have no idea what you're talking about never heard of Xenu but every person I just named with with the exception of Tommy Davis had already been through this so they knew they knew that this story was was true and it there seems to be ex Scientologists are much more willing to talk about it and admit that yes this is real but current Scientologists will almost universally deny it and say that that they just don't even want to talk about it part of the reason is that it's Scientology doctrine that if you are exposed to that story without the proper preparations which I assume is true of most of the people in the audience you can catch pneumonia and die and I am sorry to have exposed you after after a number of years at sea and going from port to port being kicked out of country after country Hubbard decided it was time to to go ashore again and he did that by having some shell companies purchase expensive pieces of property in Clearwater Florida downtown downtown Clearwater starting with the Fort Harrison Hotel which is pictured on the left these are a couple of people in Sea Org uniform uniforms walking around the building on the right here is across the street from the Fort Harrison hotel it's it's what's known as the super power building Scientology's has been building it for the better part of a decade it's still not open to the public they've spent at least twenty four million dollars on it so far and they've raised over a hundred and forty million dollars to build it and it's a place where Scientologists will be able to pay a thousand dollars an hour for experiences with strange contraptions like an oily oiliness table a smell wall and a pain table which doesn't sound like fun Scientology also acquired a number of properties in Los Angeles at about this time and actually a little bit earlier this is the celebrity center in in Hollywood former hotel built in the 1920s for celebrities and it's still for celebrities but now for Scientology celebrities and I have to give Scientology credit for actually saving this building this building was slated for demolition in in the late 60s early 70s Scientology bought it for 1.5 million in 1973 when it was slated for demolition worth 75 million dollars today this is a building known as big blue or PAC base it's a former former Cedars of Lebanon Hospital in Los Angeles also known as the complex many of the Sea Org staff live in this building it's also the home of Scientology's IT organization and this was the third of at least five or six large properties that Scientology is purchased in the in the Hollywood area and most of their most of these buildings are exempt or partially exempt from from property taxes just for reference the the sign here that's those letters are 16 feet hall 16 feet high with LEDs and it's just that sign itself cost half a million dollars a question often comes up about this this cross what's what's with the cross in in the 1960s Hubbard was having so having battles over tax exemption and sent out a policy letter that said we we need to just basically adopt some some trappings of religion including priests scholars and there must be a cross in every in every org this this cross is actually very similar to Aleister Crowley's Rosie cross it's like basically a cross with these with these little spikes on it and then this is another expensive piece of real estate this is the Church of Scientology in New York City just off of Times Square across the street from the Marriott Marquis Hotel they've had this since since the late 70s this is not a tax-exempt property and I'll despite multiple fights with with the state of New York over that so Scientology is well known for a number of abuses most most prominently being very litigious against people that criticize them but their troubles started at least way back in 1963 when the FDA raided and seized their a meters for because of Scientology making medical claims about those so a label was put on all a meters as part of the settlement with the FDA the first sentence of the label on the meter says something to the effect of this device by itself does nothing and it's essentially it's a electronically is essentially a Wheatstone bridge it's basically measuring it's like a skin galvanometers basically but it's a key component of auditing although Dianetics was originally intended to allow any two people with a copy of the book to do all the auditing they needed hubbard professionalized it and created certifications for auditing and created emitters that you need to buy to do your auditing with another thing that happened was in in 1966 in order to combat critics the Church of Scientology created something called the Guardian office also known as division 20 in Scientology's org chart that organization was basically responsible for all these operations that are listed listed here so people who were in the guardian office said they were basically playing spy a lot and digging up dirt on critics running running these operations against critics these these first two operations are actually the Xia the first operated operation Daniel and operation dynamite in 1972 were against the author Paulette Cooper Paulette Cooper was a travel writer who wrote first wrote an article for a UK magazine in 1969 about Scientology and then she turned it into a book called the scandal of Scientology which was published in 1972 or 71 that book by today's standards is actually pretty mild in its criticism and and it seems like she's tries to bend over backwards to say positive things about Scientology she actually went through low-level courses to experience it for herself and reported on on what her experiences were but Scientology pulled out all the stops and those two projects involved trying to expose her dig up dirt on her psyche life and expose it to the public they put her name and phone number on walls to try to get obscene phone calls made to her and then operation dynamite took things up up the level they got they stole stationery from her home by having someone pose as a solicitor for United Farm Workers and they forged bomb threats against the New York City org of Scientology in her name she was arrested she was thrown in jail eventually the charges were dropped but it kind of hung over her for years and it wasn't until 1977 that the FBI discovered that Scientology had actually been behind the whole thing during that period of time when she was fighting the the criminal charges she was befriend her she had a relationship that broke up and she was prevented by a guy named Jerry Levin and Jerry 11 ended up becoming a platonic roommate and she lit she found out in 1977 or subsequently that he was actually a Scientologist who was reporting back everything that she was thinking and saying on a daily basis let's the operation freak out I'll mention was also against Paulette Cooper that the intent of that operation which was not actually carried out was to get her either committed to a mental institution or thrown in prison for felony and again they went with the forging bomb threats route but this time rather than having Scientology as the target they decided that middle eastern embassies should be the target so they had someone who was going to impersonate her voice and make threatening phone calls as well as do the bomb threats on paper again as well the reason it didn't happen is because this here operation Snow White which lasted at least from 1973 to 1976 went what went bad for them operation Snow White was intended to infiltrate US government offices find out what they were collecting about Scientology and correct the record or destroy the record so a couple of guys got actually more than more than two people but several people got jobs low-level jobs in government offices two guys in particular Gerald Wolfe and Michael Meisner got clerk typist jobs with the IRS and and then they were infiltrating other offices including the Coast Guard intelligence agency the DEA in the DOJ Wolfen Meisner got caught in a DOJ Attorney's Office in 1975 or 1976 and the connection of Scientology wasn't discovered until about 30 days later but that that kicked off an FBI investigation which led to raids on the DC org and the Los Angeles org in 1977 that ultimately led to 11 Scientologists being sent to prison including Mary Sue Hubbard l ron Hubbard's wife who spent two years in jail Hubbard himself along with attorney Kendrick Moxon were named as unindicted co-conspirators who were not actually prosecuted as part of the settlement but when this all went down Hubbard basically went into hiding and stayed in hiding for the rest of his life a couple more on whoops sorry a couple more on here operation Speedy Gonzales was directed at the mayor of Clearwater Florida an attempt to set him up with a staged hit and run accident which didn't work and then operation humanistic humiliation I include that one because that was actually targeted at the committee for the scientific investigation of claims of the paranormal now known as the committee for skeptical inquiry the purpose of that operation which I don't know if anything was actually done but the purpose was to try to make people believe that psy cop was a CIA front group and then ultimately after after the legal case and top 11 Scientologists being sent to prison the Guardian office was closed in 1983 and the official story by Scientology is that we we got rid of all those bad people we reformed the organization and and we don't do that stuff anymore we're a very highly ethical organization but when the Guardian office was closed down something else was created called the Office of Special Affairs and you recall I told you that the Guardian office was also known as division 20 the Office of Special Affairs is division 20 so there's just a whole bunch of policies in Scientology that are associated with claims of abuse lawsuits of course the fair game policy I'll talk about more shortly dead agent in which is the idea that you discredit your critics by collecting a dirt on them and publishing it and make them into a dead agent disconnection which is a very common cult practice to require that people no longer have associations with people outside of the organization who are our problems baby watch which I'll tell you more about shortly that's basically a treatment for people that have psychotic breaks while undergoing Scientology treatment the idea that homosexuality is low-toned Scientology has something called the tone scale and the higher you are on the tone scale the better so being being happy and satisfied are things at the top being angry and upset are low and also down low is being homosexual knowledge reports which Scientologists are encouraged to file knowledge reports on other people that are that are causing problems pressure for abortion especially in the Sea Org people report that they've been pressured to have abortions the rehabilitation project force which is if you do something wrong in Scientology and get assigned a a bad Beds status you can get put on the rehabilitation project force where you're forced to wear overalls I have a dirty rag tied around your your arm so that everyone knows that you're in the RPF you're not allowed to speak to anyone else you have to run from one place to another you do hard physical labor and and then ultimately you improve your statistics and are able to get off of the RPF oops press the Run button the whole I'll say more about later touch assist I've already mentioned the purification rundown is part of their drug treatment program which involves niacin injections and sitting in a sauna Scientology has a program called Narconon which I won't talk about but I can ask to answer questions about it Xenu already mentioned and the doctrine of exchange I mentioned because it's one that most Scientologists don't know about themselves and that's because the doctrine of exchange is a doctrine that was important for Scientology's legal case with the IRS the idea is that the reason the reason that people have to make donations to the Church of Scientology in response to the services they receive is because of this doctrine of exchange that you can't you can't accept a gift or a give a gift without there being some kind of compensating exchange in the other direction and this is an example of a section some sections from Hubbard communication office policy letters Hubbard wrote tons of these policy letters which were printed in either red or green ink and published in volumes that were bound in the same colors and basically gave you all the doctrines that staff need to comply with as well as Scientologists so the defense of anything is untenable the only way to defend anything is to attack and if you ever forget that you'll lose every battle you are ever engaged in whether it is in terms of personal conversation public debate or a court of law never be interested in charges do yourself much more charging and you and you see this tactic used all the time rather than rather than defend against an actual charge there's always a new charge against the person who's making the attack even if it's a and ex-scientologists who was the number two person in the organization for a thirty-year period it's it's the same response the purpose of the lawsuit is to harass and discourage rather than to win the law can be used very easily to harass and enough harassment on somebody is simply on the thin edge anyway I will be generally sufficient to cause as a professional deceased if possible of course ruin him utterly and then enemy SP or suppressive person order fair game may be deprived of property or injured by any means by any Scientologist without any discipline of the Scientologist may be tricked sued or lied to or destroyed and this is that that for some reason has given Scientology a bad rap so in response that if you ask a Scientologist today what's with the fair game policy isn't that kind of an unethical thing for a religious organization to do their responsibly will be that the fair game policy order was cancelled there is indeed a Hubbard policy letter that is titled the cancellation of fair game within that policy it says this policy letter does not cancel any policy on the treatment or handling of an SP so really it's another case of let's let's change the name and just forget forget that existed but policies still still in effect so Hubbard was in hiding mostly in California and he died in an RV on this this ranch in Creston California I would still still a church property today this logo here is the logo of a corporation called the Church of spiritual technology and that's the corporation that's tasked with preserving the works of l ron Hubbard for eternity and so there are various places on the earth where you see this this symbol and there are vaults underneath where where works are buried so before before Hubbard died he he used something that he'd actually created in the Sea Org as a layer of protection between himself and the church organizations and back when he was on the ship he created something called the Commodores messenger organization which was mostly young adolescent girls who would speak on behalf of l ron Hubbard to deliver his orders to various people on the ship get responses and bring them back and they they would actually do things like imitating his manner of speaking and and try to make sure that they repeated his words exactly so they they ended up in effect exercising hub power on behalf of Hubbard and many of them enjoyed that and several of them ended up as as continuing to be this layer of insulation between Hubbard and the operation of the church the main three people were Pat and Annie broker who are a married couple it was Annie Annie Kidman that was in the the Apollo stars album cover and her husband Pat and this gentleman here David Miscavige who is the current head of the Church of Scientology now when when Mary Sue Hubbard went to prison miss Miscavige essentially pushed her out at that point or actually before she went to jail and he slowly was accumulating power within the organization really going back at least to 1979 when he created something called the watchdog committee which was a response to the arrests and the criminal cases the watchdog committee was supposed to be a reformed organization to clean up Scientology get rid of those Guardians office people and take control and this guy Miscavige really was the key player in the watchdog committee in in 1982 there was an event actually let me look about in a moment so patent any broker where are spending their time with Hubbard so they were they were really taking care of Hubbard and they had all of Hubbard's documents when he died Miscavige was taking care of the organization on the organization side and was was making making preparations for seizing power but after Hubbard died there was a big event where all Scientologists were invited to come to the Hollywood Palladium and Miscavige was the master of ceremonies and at that event he announced that l ron Hubbard has dropped the body to pursue his next set of studies in a more unrestrained environment with his Satan Satan flying free and at that event patent any broker were elevated to the position called loyal officer which the implication to most people there was a patent an e broker are the successors for control of the Scientology organisation but Miscavige had other plans and he ended up basically taking control of the organization and hosting them and the way that he got control of Hubbard's papers was that he set up a meeting with the brokers in Washington DC they flew out he had 20 people that were back at the ranch in California and they phoned the ranch caretaker and said the FBI is going to be raiding the ranch within two hours if we don't get Hubbard's documents out now they may be lost forever and so the the caretaker said okay take them and mess Miscavige got control of the documents we know now that starting in 1988 patent an e broker were followed full-time by private investigators hired by the Church of Scientology there were only two people in the Church of Scientology who knew about it David Miscavige and the number two Marty Rathbun but these private investigator being paid half a million dollars a year by Scientology to keep tabs on the brokers and make sure they didn't do anything to try to interfere with with Scientology the main reason we know about the those payments is because Scientology stopped making those payments in the summer of last year and the Private Investigators filed a breach of contract lawsuit in in Texas against Scientology alright so another important thing is that in in in Scientology there are orgs which are sort of the corporate stores and missions which are the franchises missions can deliver lower level courses and orgs if their dance orgs can deliver the high level courses some of these missions were incredibly successful including the Santa Barbara mission that that I mentioned earlier that was David Mayo as organization in 1982 Miscavige saw how much money they were making and he unilaterally imposed a new contract on the mission holders that said you're going to have to start delivering a higher percentage of your revenue to the Church of Scientology if you want to continue delivering your teachings so that prompted a number of people to say well screw you we're going to go off and create our own thing independently of the church which ultimately became what's called the free zone so a number of Scientologists in Germany and other locations created something called the free zone which was delivering Scientology teachings quietly in the background the ones who were more visible like the advanced ability center of David Mayo ended up getting getting harassed and sued into into oblivion oblivion and shutdown this is actually a Google Maps picture of Gillman Hot Springs California which is Scientology's international headquarters also known as gold base and this is where the whole is that I mentioned earlier this is where videotapes tapes DVDs and so forth are produced it's where the senior officers in the Sea Org live it's where David Miscavige lives and there are some very interesting stories that have come out about people who have escaped from here it is although it's a public highway that runs down the middle there are fences with razor wire on both sides there are there are guard stations with armed guards and things are fairly well controlled and you need to get a pass to to get out the hole is a location where a number of senior executives in the church have said that they were kept in this this office building actually next picture this is the hole it's a it was a set of offices it's really sort of two double-wide trailers bars bars were put on the doors and windows at one point briefly but some executives report being kept there as long as as five years on a 24/7 basis mike rinder who is another number two out of the office of special Affairs estimates that he spent two years in this building between 2006 and 2007 there was an expose on what was going on here in the Tampa Bay Times in 2009 after which apparently conditions were were improved and known was no one was forced to stay overnight there any longer 1991 probably marks the in hindsight probably marks the peak of Scientology's size and power and this this article came out in May of 1991 by Richard Behar Scientology the cult of greed which led to a decade-long lawsuit by the Church of Scientology against Time magazine Time magazine was ultimately entirely successful and on all on all counts but this this was the this was a second big hit in two years the the prior one in 1990 was a five-part or a five year investigation by two investigative reporters for the Los Angeles Times Joel s'appelle and Robert well Coase called the Scientology story that was published over a six-day period in 1990 this 1991 story one of the interesting things about it is that the Scientology secrets showed up in in a case that's related to the magazine's story so there's next Scientologist by the name of Steve Fishman not a particularly reliable source but he had a lawsuit against Scientology or he's being sued by the scientology by scientology and one things he did to defend himself was he took these scientology secrets and entered them into evidence in his case what Scientology did to keep those court Dawkins from being made public is they had a Scientologist show up at the court building every morning be the be the person first in line to check those documents out keep them checked out from the from the court all day long and then check them back and at the end of the day and that was successful for almost two years until the Washington Post got a hold of them and published some excerpts in 1995 at which time the court agreed to seal the remaining documents but another thing that happened in 1991 was a news group on Usenet was created called alt religion Scientology the alt the alts news groups were were all means alternative there were sort of mainstream news groups that were often controlled and moderated and then there were these alt news groups which were kind of a free-for-all and the first three created were called alto sax all drugs and all truck and roll with all table religion Scientology following a few years later it was actually created as a joke by a graduate student named Scott Goering and he actually forged the name of David Miscavige on the on the news of group creation message so the group appeared to have been created by a person named David Miscavige and nothing exciting really happened on that news group for a while except that in the in the in the early 90s some of the people from the free zones started discovered and using it to talk amongst themselves and then Scientology discovered it in 1994 and another case where printed a little bit too small but this email was actually posted on that news group the news groups were cut were kind of a distributed bulletin board system so there were lots of servers worldwide where the same sets of messages were circulated throughout but this this memo is a briefing to all Scientologists on the Internet and it basically says as you know there's been quite a bit of false and derogatory information going out over the internet by a few detractors and squirrels etc churches fired up a project to collect all this information and we've been calm with some of you already we have a plan of action that we're taking to out create the in theater and theta is basically bad stuff about Scientology on these news groups all religion Scientology and all clearing technology that that news group was another free zone news group and get positive information to the general public basically as a group we will no longer put up with our religion being criticized harassed and integrated on the internet if you can imagine forty to fifty Scientologists opposing posting on the internet every few days we'll just run the ESPYs write off the system it will be quite simple actually and it the internet doesn't work that way in fact this this was leaked I think within about two months this was leaked and posted but Scientology started sending people out to visit some of the more prominent critics who were ex-scientologists and basically warning them that they were in in legal danger and they needed to get get right with Scientology they also as part of their plans they distributed some kits to Scientologists in good standing for for use with the Internet and these kits were designed to help the Scientologists create Pro Scientology web pages to counteract anti-scientology web pages but they also included a filtering piece of filtering software which was a version of Net Nanny I believe but that that filtering software was designed to block access to anything critical of Scientology and one of the things that I'm most proud of in my life is that my name was on the list of things that Scientologists weren't allowed to access on the internet and actually this was shortly before this is when I first started getting into this stuff and it was more out of a civil liberties that's let's defend the internet was was really my primary motivator here so Scientology actually took steps to try to delete the news group to try to delete postings by by critics but then the Scientology secrets started getting posted anonymously to to the news group and a couple of X Scientologists started commenting on those secrets to explain what what all this stuff meant and that led to a Scientology raiding the homes first of Dennis Erlich who was a next Scientologist ot8 out of Glendale California they raided his home basically using the copyright copyright and trade secret statutes so essentially the same kind of thing that would be used in a an anti-piracy raid on a pirate video operation but they came in they took his computers his hard drives his floppy drives physical documents that mentioned Scientology and so forth subsequently the same thing happened to Arnie lerma in Virginia just outside of DC the lawsuits in both cases named the individuals they named the ISPs and in the case of Lara's case also named the Washington or the Washington Post and to reporters so we picketing began so because of Scientology was trying to can't suppress criticism on the internet people started picketing their local churches of Scientology and it was on a relatively small scale but we did get get some press here and there that's that's me back a long time ago and I don't know if you can read the sign bits stop the cancel poodle which in hindsight was probably not the best way to get the general public excited about this but the other side I think had something a little bit more more generic but we did get some press in the Scottsdale Scottsdale Tribune and we also got some private investigators coming after us so this guy was the Church of Scientology's main private investigator he was an ex LAPD detective named gene Ingram he got kicked off the force for activity having to do with tipping off drug drug dealers and running a prostitution ring for which he was never never prosecuted for either of those things but when he when he came to Phoenix we found that he had warrants out for his arrest in Washington state and Tampa Florida both for some form of impersonation the Tampa ones for impersonating a police officer Washington was was criminal impersonation he also had a concealed weapon violation in Oklahoma but the result of the result of finding those warrants was that he his private investigator license expired in Arizona and he was unable to renew it so other other PI's had to be hired so these guys I think came out of LA they showed up and were taking pictures of the people that were picketing as well as pictures of license plates of cars in the parking lot so we took their pictures and put them up on a web page didn't actually identify them this guy Bruce petty crew was a member of the humanist Society of Greater Phoenix and was one of the more long-term picketers and the reason has a piece of tape over his mouth there is because they they did use a legal process against him they got a temporary restraining order against him by claiming that he had been shouting and disrupting Sunday services and I was at the hearing and due to the way the hearing went he wasn't able to rebut their claim that they have Sunday services well the judge was clearly under the impression that oh there's a congregation in pews on Sunday morning that that are being disrupted well first of all he wasn't wasn't shouting and second of all there are no Sunday services to be disrupted Scientology is really a one-on-one auditing relationship more like going in for therapy this woman here this is can't really seen the picture but this is a woman is the head of the Office of Special Affairs for this Mesa Arizona org and she's pointing at me saying don't stop or you'll be sued okay ot7 it became a badge of honor for people on the internet to get a lawsuit threat from the Church of Scientology and the easiest way to do that was to post these two lines which many people put into their signatures of every post so it says find some plants trees etc and communicate to them individually until you know they have received your communication so first half's easy second half's a little more difficult go to a zoo or a place with many types of life and communicate with each of them until you know the communication is received and if possible returned so a little little dr. Dolittle action there yeah so this this was amusing it was a quick way to get 50 points on the on the scale for lawsuit threats and the lawsuit threats would come an email either from a lawyer named Halina Kobrin which were known as Coburn grams or from an attorney known known as ava Poquette and those were known as ava grams so getting a Coburn gram or an Ava gram was was a badge of honor but before the end of 1995 the judge in our Neil Irma's case had basically come to a decision on the case the the case against Washington Post was was tossed out of court the trade secret claims were tossed out of court the ruling was basically if your if your trade secrets are posted all over the internet they are no longer secrets but the copyrights were upheld so taking large amounts of information from the Church of Scientology and reposting it verbatim is a copyright in so Arne Lerma was was found liable and ordered to pay damages of $2,500 for five instances of non willful infringement which is getting getting off with with a slap on the wrist compared to what what happens with the RIAA and the MPAA so things kind of died down for a while until the Lisa McPherson case became public which happened in in 97 now you see she died in the care of Scientology in at the end of 1995 but no one made the connection between her death and Scientology until almost two years later and the main person who discovered that and made it public was my co-author for my earlier article in skeptic magazine Jeff Jacobson and he he heard about it from a detective with with the Tampa Police and then started asking questions about it online which led to a series of stories in in the newspapers which which started digging up the details and the details behind the scenes didn't come out until just a couple of years ago about the best account of that is in Janet Wright men's book inside Scientology which reports on what what exactly happened happened to her essentially she died in their care while under the baby watch which is the treatment for psychotic break and was found to have bug bites all over our body and be dehydrated she was taken to and declared dead on arrival she was taken to a hospital that was not the closest or the second closest go to the third closest hospital to the Fort Harrison hotel it was the fourth closest hospital and the reason she was taken there was because there was a Scientologist as an MD on not the ER staff at that hospital but this led to criminal charges against the Church of Scientology in in Clearwater and it led to a civil suit from her family the criminal charges ended up being dropped when the medical examiner changed her report from saying undetermined to accidental death and then the civil suit that kind of took the wind out of the sails of the civil suit but it was it was settled with the terms undisclosed and then something called the Lisa McPherson trust was set up in 1999 in Clearwater by a multi-millionaire who learned about all this stuff online and decided to become actors that lasted for about two years and was basically taking things to the streets in in Clearwater where Scientology is very active but that multi-millionaire kind of found himself in an awkward position with Scientology and ended up having to shut everything down and then things really did quiet down online from about 2003 2004 up until 2008 and I kind of characterized the the part that came before in the earth starting in the early 90s was Scientology's war on the Internet in 2008 it was the internet's war on Scientology I mean what happened was that there was a video that Tom Cruise made for an event Scientology event that ended up getting posted to the internet years years later in 2008 and Scientology started going after the people who are posting the video Gawker Media got a hold of it and put it up on their website Scientology said take it down or I'll sue you and Gawker said go right ahead we're not taking it down and anonymous which is I'm not going to go into the history of anonymous but I can give you pointers to getting that history if you want it but anonymous declared war on Scientology created something called project chanology and started organizing protests and where were the picketing that we did in the mid-90s I think at its peak we had maybe a couple hundred people worldwide picketing churches of Scientology the February 10th 2008 protests by anonymous had more than 7,000 people worldwide picketing their local churches of Scientology wearing box masks and subsequently there have been accelerating defections this woman Tori Christman was a an active public Scientologist who also did some volunteer work for the project to combat critics on the Internet she made the mistake of actually interacting with critics one on one and her interactions with Andres haldol lund who's a critic in Norway who runs Xenu net she decided that he seemed like a nice guy and he had some valid points and that there really were free speech implications of what was going on and she ended up deciding that she she had to leave the Church of Scientology in 2005 South Park episode trapped in the closet aired and basically had a little animated story of Xenu with little caption this is what Scientologists actually believed similar to their takedown of the Mormon religion we now know as of the end of 2011 that Scientology was very unhappy about this hired private investigators to go after Trey Parker and Matt Stone go after their friend find out who their friends are try to dig up any dirt they could on them but nothing nothing actually ever came of that I mean they did they did find out who their friends were and tried to dig up dirt but they really couldn't find anything to use in 2006 Janet Wright men's rolling stone article inside Scientology came out this is notable because it's one of the it's one of the most prominent critiques of Scientology and a major publication that didn't lead to a lawsuit and then ultimately she turned this into a book that came out of in 2010 it's it's by far the best introduction to history of Scientology that kind of brings things up to date as of 2010 although a huge amount has happened since then this guy is Marty Rathbun he was the number two in Scientology under david miscavige up until 2005 when he left he his title was Inspector General of the religious Technology Center he he was Tom Cruise's auditor when Tom Cruise was drifting away from Scientology while he was married to Nicole Kidman it was his job to get Tom Cruise back in the fold and he's also a source of information on the the private investigators that I mentioned earlier and he has he's been speaking out since 2009 he came out with this book just late last year called the scientology reformation he kind of thinks of himself as the the martin luther of scientology so he he still believes in scientology doctrines and thinks thinks that Hubbard is great but it doesn't like the organization a Joel s'appelle one of the authors of the 1990 Los Angeles Times stories just did a story last month in Los Angeles magazine looking back at what happened when he was investigating his piece and the kind of harassment that he was subject to back then and kind of the cornerstone of this retrospective was that he had the chance to go interview Marty Rathbun who was the guy on the other side back then and he he referred to Rathbun as a as a reluctant whistleblower and it's a very fascinating story you can you can really see the cognitive dissonance in there as Rathbun doesn't want to take responsibility for some of the bad stuff that happened and outright denies that some of the some of the bad things happened so there are a number of cases of people back in the in the late 70s early 80s where critics had their their pets died a judge in a Scientology case his dog was drowned and Joel sip Elle's dog just suddenly started having seizures and had apparently been been poisoned and had to be put down he's always suspected Scientology but has never been able to prove it and when he pressed Rathbun on it Rathbun said just denied it outright that Scientology would do anything like that but then later on he said things well made I wouldn't put it past him to do stuff like that so very very kind of mixed mixed message from from Rathbun on that one some other people who have departed recently Jeff Hawkins was a seorak executive in charge of marketing for the Church of Scientology it was his campaign in the 1980s with the exploding volcano television commercials that actually put Dianetics back on the bestseller lists and he's also been of he wrote a story of his time in Scientology called counterfeit dreams which he originally published as a series of blog posts so you can read the you can read the whole story on his blog it's very well written it's one of the better books by a by next Scientologist that tells her story he's also a good source of information about how big is the Church of Scientology really how big was it when you were in charge of marketing amy Scobie was worked in leadership at the celebrity center she were reported directly to David Miscavige and also worked at that int base she joined Scientology back in when she was 14 years old and left in 2005 she's also noteworthy because she's the niece of dick Scobee who was killed in the 1986 Challenger explosion and she she was actually unable to attend her uncle's funeral because of because of Scientology and then this guy Mike Rinder during the time that all the online stuff was going on in the mid 90s he was he was chief bad guy he was head of the Office of Special Affairs and he was also prominent in the media up until actually you could see him in the 2007 panorama BBC segment Scientology and me by John Sweeney and he looks kind of thin on that when he appears in that program and what he says now is now that he's out is he had been in the hole before that time and living on a diet of beans and rice and running around and so forth so he had become very thin as a result of that looks looks a little healthier now and he has been speaking out since 2009 and he like Rathbun is an advocate of independent Scientology practicing Scientology outside of the authority of the church now we're getting some more interesting ones Jenna Miscavige Hill who's the niece of David Miscavige her parents got out back in 2000 and then she just got out in 2005 she co-founded an organization called ex Scientology kids org that has a website and online forum to help kids get out of Scientology and she has a book that is coming out on February 7th called beyond belief my secret life inside Scientology and my harrowing escape the next one john Brousseau was at one time David Miscavige's brother-in-law and he spent 32 years in the Sea Org just started speaking out last year he did a lot of work for celebrity Scientologists he was a kind of a both a handyman and able to do things like car customization so he did a custom SUV for for Tom Cruise Ron Miscavige senior David Miscavige's father just left in in the summer of 2012 and then l ron Hubbard's granddaughter also left last year some celebrities have a departed Jason Beghe who was in for for many years left very unhappy in 2007 and in a noisy manner started making YouTube videos about about his experience and trying to get other celebrities to get out he's probably best known for being in GI Jane with Demi Moore and he is a recurring guest role on Californication with David Duchovny this guy here is a Paul Haggis oscar-winning director of crash he left after 35 years in because apparently he he never came across the anti-homosexuality aspects of Scientology I don't know how that's possible but the thing that really upset him was Scientologists support of Proposition 8 in California and his story was told in a 2011 New Yorker story called the apostate by Lawrence Wright Lawrence Wright started turning that into a book initially about Paul Haggis that ended up being a lot more about Tom Cruise and the other issues in in the church that book just came out two days ago called going clear and I'll say a little bit more about what Scientology's under response to that but the other woman here her name is Nazanin Boniadi and she's a Scientology ot8 who also just got out and has not been speaking out publicly but her story was just told in the September issue of Vanity Fair last year she was the person who was selected by Scientology to be the next mrs. Tom Cruise prior to Katie Holmes and she spent three months living with him but she did not get along with David Miscavige which is a essential requirement for mrs. Tom Cruise and so she was let go she was the Scientology actually broke up on Tom Cruise's behalf with her another celebrity who has clearly left although hasn't really spoken out publicly aside from writing a song about it is Lisa Marie Presley her latest album has a song with some lyrics that are pretty clearly criticizing the Church of Scientology and starts it's even too unclear for me to read but it's it's it's lines on the long on the lines of Fairweather friends and counterfeit religion and things like that this woman has probably been more damaging than anyone else in the last slightly more than a year Debbie cook she was the face of the flag service organization for the Sea Org so her her she was in a lot of our recruiting videos for the Sea Org that were used internally in Scientology she's been out for a while but or she's been out of the Sea Org for a while but was still a Scientologist in good standing when she sent an email on December 31st of 2011 to 12,000 Scientologists that are still in the in the church which might be almost all of them as I'll point out shortly and Scientology's response was to sue her 27 days later for violating a confidentiality agreement since she had been a former CE org employee that that's the fastest end up being one of the fastest settlements of velociter I've ever seen with Scientology usually they like the cases to drag on for for a long time and be very painful she was sued on January 27th that was settled in April shortly after she gave testimony in open court in in Texas in which she basically talked about physical abuse talked about what was going on the whole and then then it was going to be Scientology's turn to to testify and they they apparently decided they did not want to do so so her letter her letter was really aimed at Scientologists that are inside that believed in Scientology so she she was basically quoting chapter and verse from Hubbard policy letters about how current Scientology practices for collecting funds are contrary to policy this guy was head of the or was head of the mission in Haifa Israel it's the largest largest mission in Israel he took the entire mission and said where we're leaving the Church of Scientology and we're going independent all right so as I wrap up there's counter evidence to all these departures and Scientology have been opening ideal orgs what they call ideal orgs which is a basically paying cash for a piece of property in prime real estate in in major cities across the United States they've opened 34 of them since 2003 and they say they've got 60 more that are in process and just a few days ago you may have seen the Atlantic had an advertorial from Scientology about how Scientology is growing and opening all these ideal orgs and they have a dozen of them that they showed the pictures including this one that just opened in July in in Phoenix and that advertorial they paid $50,000 to the Atlantic for that huge backlash against the Atlantic they they pulled the pulled the advertising it's it's another case of Scientology kind of doing something that totally backfires on them but the timing suggests that they were trying to distract from two things that also happened in the last week one was Nancy Manni as an ex Scientologist who used to be with the Guardian office who worked as a spy for Scientology and also ran the Celebrity Centre she had she wrote a tell-all book that came out a few years ago which was just turned into an hour-long documentary on the investigation Discovery Channel which just aired on Thursday night and then Lawrence Wright's book going clear which which just came out two days ago so but if you looked at the Atlantic advertorial the link the first link on the upper-right was actually a short review of Lars Wright's book so it was a good move so these are ideal orgasm it opening and they are paying cash for them they are nice properties I compared this is the new facility and the old facility I thought maybe because the old facility is a three-story in the new ones two-story maybe maybe they downsized a little bit no they didn't the square footage of the new facility is about twice the square footage of the old one the old the old building was a 1.9 million dollar building the new new buildings of five point eight million dollar set of buildings and basically what they're doing is they're getting Scientologists in the local areas to contribute cash so they can they can buy these with cash and they say we need we need more than the purchase price because we also have to be able to maintain it once the building is bought then they don't open it for a while they say oh well now we need more money for refurbishing it it's kind of like the what they're doing with the super power building on a smaller but more distributed scale so the super power building has been sitting there or close to a decade without opening and they keep collecting more money even though they've they've raised at least 140 million some say over 200 million for that building they're basically just using it as a as a way to to generate cash and so they're really collecting a lot more money than they need for each of these ideal orgs and they're they're getting some pretty nice building so this is a st. Louis it's a former Masonic Temple they also bought a former Masonic Temple in Santa Ana California but once they buy these buildings the title goes to the Church of Scientology International and the local Oregon has to pay rent to Scientology for for the facility and a lot of the critics are saying that the facilities are really unnecessary for the number of Scientologists that they have so they've they've started calling them instead of calling them ideal orgs they're calling them idle morgues so what evidence do we have about Scientology membership well they've claimed for many years that there are 8 million Scientologists that that number has been essentially unchanged for a long time but at one point the guy who's president of Church of Scientology the National Heber gent admitted that that number counts everyone who has ever bought a book by LR on harboured includes anyone who has ever taken a free personality test at a church of scientology it includes anyone who has ever asked for information about scientology and by the way once you get on the mailing list you do not get off the mailing list so be warned about that some other evidence that we do have is they used to report how many courses were completed by Scientologists so in 1989 there were 11,000 by 97 it had dropped to slightly more than half that and they they don't report that in room or they used to report how many new people became clear per year in the 1980s it was in the thousands it ranged between twenty seven hundred and fifty six hundred in the 90s it ranged from zero to thirty five hundred and the last time they reported them was in 1996 and there were only two hundred for in that year and then the American religious identification survey which is a poll of religious self-identification in the United States in 2001 the count for Scientologists of 55,000 in 2008 it was down to 25,000 although you have to take that with a grain of salt because the margin of error is so high that that almost swamped that that difference between them Jeff Hawkins the marketing guy that I mentioned earlier he he estimates that the peak number of Scientologists was in 1991 and was somewhere between 40 and 50,000 worldwide I've seen some estimates I'm not sure how much credence to give them but current estimates ranged from 12,000 to 20,000 worldwide with possibly under 10,000 in the US one estimate says about 6,000 people on staff globally and about 3,000 non staff outside the US and 3,000 inside the US it's notable that the major Los Angeles events are held at the Shrine Auditorium which has capacity of 6,000 they haven't needed a larger facility in Clearwater Florida they use Ruth Eckerd Hall which has a capacity of 1200 they haven't needed a larger hall so there's there's some indirect evidence those are the two largest locations for Scientologists and then the the last item here there's a wiki page from why we protest of X Scientologists who are not just X Scientologists but are X Scientologists who are speaking out publicly that that list just went over 2,000 names at the end of October of this year so that's a pretty pretty high percentage of of the peak total so in conclusion I think that there's there's been a clear decline in science in the Church of Scientology both in terms of the the things that we can measure and some of some of the more qualitative things like how how actively they go after their critics and what happens to them and I think independent Scientology has really been a key factor in the decline so they were the source of exposing the secrets the rise of the Internet has allowed these ex members to get in touch with each other and to allow people that are still inside to recognize that there are other other people that have problems and what those problems are and now there's a critical mass of people who are still Scientologists but are outside the church so that there's kind of a you don't have to worry about complete disconnection and abandoning everything you kind of have a weigh station or a halfway house that you can try out on your way out and I think probably most people who do make it halfway out do end up subsequently going all the way out but ironically it may be that Scientology inability to control information about itself as a result of both the internet and independent Scientology may actually make it more persistent in the long run because now now can it can adapt and and it may be the the closest closest competition to Scientology may end up be being what survives but Scientology does have a long way to go before it's going to collapse they're rumors that their cash reserves are in excess of a billion dollars which which will last quite a while but they've been reaching out to new markets as well so one thing that's happened is they've really been reaching out to African Americans and have been teaming up with the Nation of Islam which is another kind of UFO cult organization they found they found that they have some commonality and there were in 2010 Louis Farrakhan had a bunch of his nation of members of the Nation of Islam come to headquarters for training and Dianetics and he encouraged all of them to obtain auditor certification in 2010 some more recent things have been happening with Scientology in the Nation of Islam working hand-in-hand including with a they sort of took over a charter school in done it in Florida and drained it of cash and has filed for bankruptcy and there's been some stories on that lately so then finally I just wanted to point out a few of Scientology's organizations on the left side are the things that are officially Scientology organizations so the religious Technology Center controls their copyrights the Church of Scientology in corpore International is the the main delivery organization author services manages Hubbard's copyrights on is a non scientology material church of spiritual technology is preserving his works bridge publications is a publishing arm golden era productions does their videos and but then on this side our scientology front groups that are not so outspoken about the scientology connection so it's good to know about these citizen citizens Commission on Human Rights is an organization designed to combat abuses by psychiatry they operate a Museum in Los Angeles that's a it's just a bunch of attacks on psychiatry that organization has offices throughout the country the office in Arizona got some legislators in the Arizona Legislature to sponsor a bill on their behalf ended up dying but it was interesting the the attempt was certainly interesting the Association for better living in education is has a number of some serious subsidiary groups applied scholastics trying to get hubbard technology into public schools criminal a prison ministry Narconon the drug treatment program which has been having some serious problems in Oklahoma with some people dying there the way to happiness foundation the world literacy crusade was really how the Nation of Islam got pulled in the world literacy crusade was run by a former Baptist minister named Al Freddy Johnson and he ended up befriending Lou Farrakhan and pulling those guys in the volunteer ministers Association these are guys that wear little yellow jackets and go to disaster scenes to help people by doing touch assists they showed up at at Ground Zero in New York City the drug-free Marshalls is kind of Scientology's version of the dare program and then citizens for an alternative tax system kind of a fair tax kind of organization so they're trying to reach out into some political areas as well and just some resources online the best way to stay up to date with what's going on like right now is Tony Ortega's blog Tony Ortega org former editor of The Village Voice who's now working on a book on Scientology he's he's probably done more than anyone to report on a day to day basis what's what's happening inside Scientology Xenu net is a great source of Scientology's secrets if you want to know more details Dave turetsky secrets of Scientology page he's a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon who has a good page on on that and if you want more information on anonymous and Scientology Jeff Jacobson has an article called we are legion online that is a good recounting of that and then book wise Janet Wright men's book I can't recommend that highly enough inside Scientology Jeff Hawkins book I already mentioned John a textbook before write men's book was the best introduction to Scientology from a critical point of view and then Russell Miller's barefaced Messiah is the best biography of Avella ron Hubbard I haven't put Lawrence Wright's going clear up there yet because I aren't ready yet but I'm sure it will get on that list from whatever brought it here it's very very good and bring brings things up for the last two years so at that point I will take any questions Watson gentle in the front from top to bottom in the organization given whatever amount of knowledge people have about the discipline how much do they actually believe and how much of it is scamming how much of it is for personal finance for power for whatever or just the feeling of a cult and being in it versus actually belief in the discipline and how do they get past telling people about Xenu and faint ins and not having them having their heads explode and run out the door well that apparently happens but I my opinion based on this idle Scientologist I've interacted with and the ex-scientologists I've interacted with is that far and away most of them are sincere believers I haven't met one yet that I think was a scammer or that gave the opinion that they that was being run by scammers they do think that Miscavige is kind of twisting the word of Hubbard and and using it for personal gain and and certainly some of the some of the things that he's done are pretty beyond the pale so like the works of l ron hubbard keep getting reissued every so often with Corrections and all Scientologists are expected to buy the buy the full set of works again all over again but and then how do how do people get in that really varies the front groups will all try to get people in so drug rehabilitation is a one common way the celebrity centers are have actually helped up-and-comers in Hollywood make connections and and become successful in their careers so and I think it's unquestionable that most of the people who are involved with Scientology and stay with it feel like they've gotten some kind of benefit out of it whether that's with the early courses are things like the communications course how to communicate effectively with other people so it's kind of a little more common sensical kind of stuff and you don't they're definitely a lot of Scientologists who get to clear and and don't even get to the OT level so they they never see ot3 and that and as I mentioned before they you have to put a lot of time and money into it before you before you get to that level whatwhat about living in your direct encounter during direct encounters with Scientology I I worked in on in the security organization of a national ISP when a lot of the stuff I talked about early on was going on and some of the people who got sued ended up becoming customers of the ISP that I worked for and we did receive a few Digital Millennium Copyright Act notices from the Church of Scientology i picketed as I mentioned which was mainly I mean it was just personal on a sip for civil liberties reasons and as a result of that the worst thing that Scientology has ever done to me I've never been harassed but I did get invited to lunch with the head of the Office of Special Affairs in Mesa Arizona I went to lunch she bought we had a good conversation although it was it was the conversation with something like this what can we do to get you to stop picketing the Church of Scientology my answer was something to the effect of stop trying to suppress criticism on the Internet and she I kept picketing and she was no longer in that position shortly thereafter then it became the woman who's pointing at me saying that we're going to sue you so they went with a more of a hard-ass approach but in some of the picketing I got a chance to interact with scientists sometimes I intelligence would come out of the orgs and talk to us if they were sufficiently high enough level so I've talked to some over T sevens and ot eights and I've talked to a lot of more X's than people that are actively in the last time I gave this talk in Phoenix a gentleman showed up who just left last summer after more than 30 years in Scientology he was with Hubbard on the ships in the 60s he was a CR executive for 17 years and God he was a friend of David Miscavige's father and got out at the same time he did so it's it's very interesting the level of people that are that are leaving these days and willing to talk about it I'm just trying which you talk about a lot of events where people have sort of fought back in different ways or kind of exposed organization in different ways what do you think it's had the biggest impact in making either kind of bring down Scientology somewhat or making it look less appealing to the public I think I think it's really two things and it's the two things that were in my conclusion so one is the Internet and the fact that when the critics in the mid 90s who are who are all engaging in online criticism they basically assemble all these things into webpages and preserve this information so that essentially what happened was all the stuff got put together by people who are now the the older folks online and the new kids in starting in 2008 rediscovered all that same old material and put the same material to to new use I think that's that's one key aspect the certainly the investigative reporting by by the Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post and others Time magazine have done a lot to expose things and get them into broadcast media television has definitely been been very effective there's been a lot more on television in the last five years than than previously and I think there's a lot less know there's a lot less fear by by journalists and by the media of the Church of Scientology so that and and the fact that there's this kind of critical mass of independent Scientologists that are that are on the outside now and they're there they're they seem more like a you expect a religion to behave rather than a cult you
The Rise and Fall of L. Ron Hubbard and the Spiders from Xenu
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