In 2003, Scientology ordained minister, Reed Slatkin, plead guilty to a fifteen count federal indictment that included charges of mail fraud, wire fraud, money laundering, and obstruction of justice. At the time it was the largest ever Ponzi scheme in U.S. history; a six hundred million dollar fraud. Much of the money came from celebrities and was funneled, by Slatkin and others, into the Church of Scientology and its related entities such as Narconon International, the Church of Scientology Celebrity Center International and the Church of Scientology Western United States, according to court records and media reports. Appropriately, Ponzi scheme, pyramid scheme and Amway like are words often used to describe the Church of Scientology which pays many members commissions for recruiting new members. In this way, some Scientologists, called Field Service Members, receive hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. What other church uses a “Hard Sell Pack” which demands that recruiting targets, called “raw meat,” be signed up immediately. “Hard sell means insistence that people buy,” states this Scientology publication.
On October 9, 2001, less than 30 days after the Al Qaeda attacks on the United States, the O.S.A. legal unit known as Moxon & Kobrin renewed the copyright of Scientology’s policy document called “Targets Defense.” In this church policy and practice document, certain “vital targets” are identified. “T[arget]1, Depopularizing the enemy [all those who oppose a global Scientology takeover] to a point of total obliteration; T[arget] 2, Taking over the control or allegiance of the heads or proprietors of all news media; T[arget] 3, Taking over the control or allegiance of key political figures; T[arget] 4, Taking over the control or allegiance of those who monitor international finance.”
In another Church document, Hubbard ordered the formation of a Scientology Department of Government Affairs and wrote that, “The goal of the Department is to bring the government and hostile philosophies or societies into a state of complete compliance with the goals of Scientology. Scientology documents also state that dissemination and recruiting should be done in secret without the recipient realizing what is being done. “The only way to control someone,” said Hubbard, “is to lie to them.” Hubbard also wrote, “All men shall be my slaves … all men shall grovel at my feet and not know why.”
With Hubbard’s “Manual on Brainwashing,” and his auditing processes and training drills, Scientology enslaves minds, and with Scientology’s promises to cure all ills and ailments, it unlawfully practices medicine; stealing people’s health, and sacrificing their lives for more and more auditing dollars, until it is too late for conventional medicine to work. You can read about some of the deaths on the Internet at WhyAreTheyDead.com. The list of victims, who are dead (often through mysterious and shockingly similar suicides) is long and covers decades. The list of people who have disappeared is also long and likewise covers decades.
Meanwhile, the Church of Scientology continues to insist that only Scientology and its auditing processes, and copyrighted procedures such as NOTS 34, can cure physical and mental conditions and diseases. The Church of Scientology is killing people by the unlawful practice of medicine as well as destroying lives and livelihoods with its Fair Game retaliation against those who impede its goals.
If this United States government protected and promoted racketeering and terror group was not called a “church” it would require medical and other licenses and the fully informed consent of the medical patient or commercial customer. In fact, instead of full and informed disclosure, the Scientology enterprise requires its parishioners to sign away all of their civil rights, to never testify against or sue a Scientologist or Scientology and to submit any legal dispute with the Church or other Scientologist to a Scientology court called a Committee of Evidence.
In 1995, a young Scientologist named Lisa McPherson expressed her desire to leave Scientology and return home to her mother before Christmas of that year. She never made it, because she knew too much about Scientology’s false fronts and commercial frauds. Scientology killed Lisa McPherson, holding her captive in a room for 17 days, denying her non-Scientology medical care, until she was dehydrated, covered with 110 cockroach bites and dead. Allow me to reiterate, DEAD; as part of a Scientology policy and procedure for handling a person having a psychotic break, or becoming unstable, while engaged in Scientology mental processing. A Florida coroner was extorted into changing the official cause of death and even the investigating police were harassed by Scientology operatives. What did this Church do after they had killed Lisa McPherson and paid over $50 million tax-exempt dollars to defeat the court claims of her family through international public corruption, litigation terrorism, international psycho-terrorism, blackmail and fraud? This so-called Church ordered its lawyers to draft, and its parishioners to sign, a new general release and waiver of all liability agreeing that the Church of Scientology is free of any liability for death, “injury or damage suffered in any way or connected with Scientology Religious Services or Spiritual Assistance.”
Why should the name “Church of Scientology” be enough to enable the Scientology enterprise to change and waive the laws, rules and consequences that apply to all other organizations and religions including The Roman Catholic Church? The Roman Catholic Church was liable for the sexual abuse perpetrated by its clergy. In fact, the Church of Scientology itself has repeatedly covered up staff sexual abuse and rape with the use of psycho-terror and gag agreements. Even more shockingly, Hubbard wrote that a Scientologist can get away with murder. Amazingly, the one racketeering enterprise in the United States that is now above the law is the Church of Scientology. Perhaps that is because of the 1993 Secret Tax Agreement between the IRS and Scientology which, in effect, makes Scientology the established state religion of America by giving it unique tax benefits, global promotion and protection from Interpol. These are unique privileges and government assistance that the I.R.S. and Scientology agreed by contract would be denied to all other religions.
Last February, in Sklar v. Internal Revenue Service, where Jewish parents were seeking the same religious education deductions exclusively allowed to Scientologists, a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals judge said that “…the view of the I.R.S. that it can unconstitutionally violate the Constitution by treating [Scientology] more favorably than other religions in terms of what is allowed as deductions … does intrude into the Establishment Clause.” How did this constitutional outrage happen when Scientology’s history of crime, abuse and fraud is so well documented within the U.S. government? The I.R.S. lamely claims that in 1991, it did a sudden 180 degree turn, granted Scientology tax-free status and urged all foreign governments to do the same, because the Church of Scientology informed the I.R.S. that it no longer engages in the sort of conduct I am describing here today. Repeatedly, similar decisions are expressly made upon false Scientology claims that, since the death of L. Ron Hubbard in 1986, it no longer engages in criminal and other anti-social conduct.
Three decades ago Scientology agents broke into and infiltrated 135 government departments and embassies in Washington, D.C., as part of “Operation Snow White,” which is still an ongoing Scientology project. Scientology’s Operation Snow White was part of Scientology’s self-described “War against the I.R.S.” Scientology even bugged internal high- level I.R.S. meetings. It was the largest ever domestic spy case in U.S. history and the largest ever known criminal infiltration of the United States government. Eleven of Scientology’s top executives were convicted. Hubbard’s own wife went to federal prison. L. Ron Hubbard was classified as an unindicted co-conspirator and went into hiding for rest of his life.
By 1980, the I.R.S. was arguing that Scientology should continue to be denied tax-exempt status because of conspiracies to obstruct the I.R.S. and the judicial process, the abuse of religious confidences, the infliction of psychological harm, blackmail and the “disconnection” of family, friends and other relationships, false imprisonment, immigration frauds, removal of large amounts of money from the United States, drastic punishments of staff and members, and fraudulent statements to the I.R.S. These objections are as valid now as they were several decades ago.
In 1990, the Los Angeles Times published a devastating six-part series exposing Church of Scientology crime and abuse. On May 6, 1991, Time Magazine published its largest selling edition the cover story of which was, “Scientology, The Thriving Cult of Greed and Power.” The article won numerous journalism awards and is widely available on the Internet. The Church of Scientology unsuccessfully sued Time Magazine for defamation.
However, at the very same time as the Church of Scientology was unsuccessfully suing Time Magazine for defamation, the Church of Scientology leaders were successfully pressuring, allegedly even blackmailing, the United States I.R.S. Commissioner into reversing thirty years of federal government opposition to Church of Scientology tax-exempt status and ignoring a recent United States Supreme Court decision upholding the I.R.S. opposition.
The Church of Scientology had lost its U.S. tax-exempt status in 1967, and it had spent the next thirty plus years fighting to recover it. During this time, Scientology blithely refused to pay any taxes to the government and got away with it. In 1989, in the Hernandez case, the United States Supreme Court upheld the position of the I.R.S. that, among other things, the payments of “fixed donations” for Scientology auditing sessions on the Hubbard E-Meter were not charitable donations within the meaning of the U.S. tax code.
In late 1993, relatively soon after the United States Supreme Court decision in Hernandez, the I.R.S. Commissioner shocked the rest of the government and many citizens by suddenly reversing and granting the Church of Scientology its long-denied tax-exempt status. This is one of the great uninvestigated scandals involving the government of the United States. A settlement agreement between the I.R.S. and the Church of Scientology was classified as secret upon national security grounds, but it was later leaked to the press. In 1997, The New York Times, and later The Wall Street Journal, published investigative articles revealing a multitude of matters for a congressional investigation that no politician has had the courage to request. Four former I.R.S. Commissioners expressed their misgivings about the sudden I.R.S. reversal of over 30 years of U.S. government tax policy and Supreme Court decisions. Department of Justice prosecutors expressed their rage and disgust at the reversal without warning. There was world wide public and media condemnation of the I.R.S. decision to grant Scientology tax-exempt status in the United States.
The Church of Scientology and its affiliates had filed over 2,500 law suits against the I.R.S., dozens of individual I.R.S. agents and their families had been psycho-terrorized, and two I.R.S. agents had allegedly died under very suspicious circumstances. The New York Times reported that Scientology attorney, Kendrick L. Moxon, Esq., who was also an unindicted co-conspirator in the United States v. Hubbard prosecution, had paid over one million dollars to private investigators to “dig up the dirt” on I.R.S. officials. There are persistent allegations that Scientology agents set up either the I.R.S. Commissioner or his son in a statutory rape sting and then used that to blackmail the I.R.S. into waiving over a billion dollars of past-dues taxes, interest and penalties against the Scientology enterprise and its leader David Miscavige.