Daily Archives: June 18, 2017

Going Clear, Part 19 transcript:

Mark Rathbun: The only media that I was asked to participate in when the book Going Clear came out in January 2013 was when Larry Wright asked me if I would be willing to go to New York to interview with NBC’s Rock Center. Wright said “you are a central person in this whole thing; so, could you do that and talk about the book?”  I said, “sure.”  And I don’t even know if I had read the book by that point.  I flew to New York. I spent an entire half a day with Harry Smith (NBC New). It was this elaborate set up.  It was in the Waldorf Astoria in this old, historic room – it was like a library.  We were there for an entire morning and into the afternoon. In the entire time we were in there, Smith did what Larry Wright had done with me a year or two earlier.  He tried to get this generalized statement that Scientology’s tax exemption was fraudulently or illegitimately obtained.  And he tried angle after angle on me. It was like Larry Wright redux.  Larry Wright had gone through the same thing with me.  And I went through chapter and verse and detail about how you don’t get it. ‘Yeah, there was some hardball, but you don’t get it, when the IRS is coming after you have to play hardball back or you meet your demise. You are getting all caught up in these tactics, and the bottom line is, the thing they just want to write out of history, is: All the hardball tactics did was get us to the table.  And at that point they (the IRS) held the cards and every anti-Scientology voice, every person who had been there (the IRS) for twenty years and had this deep institutional bias – every one of them was fully heard. And we had to answer to every one of them; and this went on for two years.  And Harry Smith is looking at me, like he is pissed. He can’t believe that there is all of this information coming out. All he wants is to get to ‘cut and print’ on ‘the whole thing was a sham.’  And so, it went on for three hours.  It got to the point where, like it had with Wright a year and half earlier, of sort of this testiness and disappointment. We finally finished. I couldn’t wait to get out of there and get back home.  So, unsurprisingly, I guess, two weeks later the show plays and I’m not in it.  Very clearly, what is what Larry Wright sent me to New York for and what Harry Smith was briefed on to get.  And, they didn’t get it.  So, they just cut it out.