Author Archives: Mark C. Rathbun

Going Clear Movie, Part 8 – Anti Scientology Advocacy

Posted on August 6, 2017 | 11 comments

Going Clear Movie Part 8,  Advocating for Headleys and IRS revocation

Transcript

Wright and Gibney Advocate (not report) on Headley case and IRS

Headley Lawsuit

Mark Rathbun:  So, then at 1:14:30 they have Wright segue way back to the FBI his accusations of human trafficking and the Headley case. And again, it is advocacy.  The Headleys (Marc and Clare) brought a lawsuit for human trafficking against Scientology. And the FBI was flanking it with an investigation. So, Wright says ‘well, the courts found that what the Headley’s alleged was constitutionally protected, and therefore the FBI  had dropped what they were doing.’

Wright and Gibney Advocate for tax exemption revocation

Therefore, if you are listening to this narrative you are thinking, (see Going Clear Movie, Part 7) “oh my God! All the more reason to revoke Scientology’s tax exemption; because obviously all the First Amendment protection is hinged on the IRS granting exemption. You see? The whole thing is advocacy. But problem with the advocacy is – the fact that people miss – if you read the Court of Appeals decision in the Headley case – year, there were First Amendment problems but they didn’t even need to get to the First Amendment problem because there were factual problems. There was no evidence of human trafficking or anything resembling human trafficking.  They found there was no evidence of imprisonment or anything resembling imprisonment. They found the Headleys on their free will had every opportunity to leave if they didn’t like what they were doing; they had fifteen years.  So, even though there were First Amendment elements in the decision, there were no facts. So he makes it look like the facts were all there and they proved false imprisonment and human trafficking. “But, the thorny First Amendment got in the way,” which he has already told us is only there because the IRS ‘made the decision that Scientology is a religion’, which they never made (see Going Clear Movie, Part 7). 

See, we’ve got a real big fiction being created here. But, that is why I call it propaganda because it is al geared towards communicating that ‘we need to get the IRS to put these guys into a big world of hurt financially by revoking their exemption. 

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Going Clear Movie, Part 7 – Propaganda re IRS and Scientology

Posted on August 5, 2017 | 17 comments

Going Clear Movie Part 7, Propaganda re IRS and Scientology

transcript

Mark Rathbun: 

Tony Ortega Propaganda on IRS and Scientology

At 1:05 they hit the IRS and they kick it off with Tony Ortega who says “there were 2,400 lawsuits, no only against the IRS but against individual IRS employees.” And so, the impression you get is that this was for harassment purposes because we’re doing this to hit the pocket books of individuals.  Wrong.  Federal law dictates the way you have to plead your lawsuit in the types of lawsuits dealt with. Freedom of Information Act, Privacy Act, etc.  Under certain statutes you must name the agents individually. That doesn’t mean the guy has to go off and defend the lawsuit. He is defended by the government lawyers.  But, he makes it sound in his tonality, like it is some important distinction (suing agents by name). No, it isn’t.  It is a distinction with no difference.  It is dictated by statute and it is meaningless.  It doesn’t create any further inconvenience or expense for the individual who gets named. 

Tax Exemption and Question of Religion

Lawrence Wright says at 1:09:20 says “this all leads to the question, how do you define religion?”  It is a total non-sequitur because it is not even a question to be resolved in the tax exemption proceedings. That issue had already been dealt with for twenty years by the courts.  Lawrence Wright says this, “the only organization entitled to make those distinctions is the IRS.”  Lie. Any agency anywhere, state, federal, local has to make that distinction all the time.  It is not just taxation. There are labor laws, there are ordinances  in cities. It is common throughout the woof and warp of government from the lowest level to the highest federal level.  The IRS does not have some special mandate from Congress that says, ‘you are the determiner of religion.’  And that is what Larry said here, and it is just an invention. It is a lie.  He goes on, “its an agency very poorly equipped to do that. I mean, they are mainly accountants and lawyers.  They are not theologians.”  I just note an irony, nor is Larry Wright a theologian, right?  But, he can riff all he wants to and he can set the anti Scientology narrative and the accepted narrative in the public’s mind as to religion in America.  But, according to Wright, the IRS can’t and they are not equipped to make that determination.  But, he goes on, “but, it’s the only opinion that matters.”  He’s talking about the IRS.  Untrue, the IRS’ opinion has not mattered since 1967 when they lost in Federal Court in the Hawaii Church of Scientology tax case and there has been an accumulating number of court precedents from Federal District Courts to Federal Appellate Courts to the United States Supreme Court to Supreme Courts in many lands that have made that question moot. It has been decided.  They are like the regressives they want to roll this back to 1950.  That’s what he is trying to do here.  It is done. You can’t undo it. You can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube.  The IRS’ opinion is meaningless now (as in 1992/3) on whether Scientology is a religion or not.  It is meaningless. It is res judicata.  It has already been decided.  And then Wright goes on, “Once the IRS has decided that you are a religion, then you are protected by the vast protections of the First Amendment.”  False! And he’s sitting there like he’s taking the audience to school, because he is the expert and he knows it; yet everything he is saying here is just absolutely false.  And he knows it is false, because I spent hours going through this with him and showing him and citing to him the decisions that I am talking about here. 

Alex Gibney piles on like a three stooges skit

So, with that profundity, Alex Gibney piles on with, at 1:10:30 “the war ended (between the IRS and Scientology) because the IRS surrendered.”  Like they literally got in their bunkered and waved a white flag.  I went through this for days and gave Wright tomes of material, and specific facts, and the whole timeline to show that this was utter and complete horse shit.

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Going Clear Movie, Part 6 – Vicki Aznaran and other inventors

Posted on August 4, 2017 | 8 comments

Going Clear Movie Part 6, Vicki Aznaran and other Inventors

transcript

Mark Rathbun:  They pile on heavily at 52:30. I don’t know how this has survived all these years, since 1991 or 92.  Vicki Aznaran says (in a clip still being played 25 years late) “They had their houses broken into, people beaten up, slashed their tires, break their car windows.”  There are a lot of things that are said and there are a lot of things that are exaggerated.  And there are a lot of things that are sensationalized.  These things she talks about – they even said it in the film – I cut my teeth taking over that entire operation (Church external facing Department) and reforming it – this is invented. None of these things ever happened.  This was in the book. He know that I was there.  He never brought this up to me.  But, he put it in the book and put it in the movie.  It is garbage. 

Now, we’re on film with Alex Gibney, and they add on some other guy, “I was locked in a chicken wire cage.”  (an invention of another defector). It sounds like something out of some nightmare or something.  But, this is just fabricated and invented stuff. Performance.  And they say this all had to do with what Scientology allegedly does to critics. It had nothing to with this individual being a critic.  This was when the individual was in the church. And it had nothing to do with chicken wire or cages.  So, you get the impression that ‘hey, watch what you say, because if you say something critical they could kidnap you and lock you in a chicken wire cage.  It is invented. 

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Going Clear Movie, Part 5 Joel Sappel invented story

Posted on August 3, 2017 | 18 comments

Going Clear Movie Part 5, Inventions of Joel Sappel (LA Times)            

transcript

Mark Rathbun:  At 52:20 they have this Kim Masters, who I do not know from Adam. She says that a guy from the LA Times his dog was poisoned while working a story about Scientology. And I wouldn’t know what she was talking about except that year earlier I had been visited by a reporter from the LA Times who no longer works for the Times, named Joel Sappel. And I did not even know this, but Joel Sappel was telling me in 2012 that in 1990 or 89 allegedly his dog was poisoned while working on a Scientology story.  I spent an hour with this guy as a personal favor because I was blown away that this guy for twenty years would be fixated on this false idea.  Obviously, if anyone would have poisoned his dog would have had to been at my direction or I would have known about it, right?  But, Scientology doesn’t poison dogs.  It has been accused of it many times.  Never done it and not even ever done anything like it.  Never done anything to anybody critical of Scientology physically ever. Even in the darkest hours of the Guardian’s office long before our time.  I spent an hour with Joel Sappel – the reporter she’s making reference to – I was very sincere, because it didn’t mean anything to me being in opposition to the church at the time, so I as not trying to defend the church.  I am trying to give Sappel a reality check because it is blowing my, thinking what it must be like either perpetuating the lie for twenty years or actually believing so, being so tainted by the type of propaganda Gibney and Wright produced.

Why this incident is instructive

 But, that is an interesting and instructive moment right there.  Because if Joel Sappel really did believe that and hung onto it for twenty years; I can tell you, it just did not happen.  If something happened to his dog it had nothing to do with Scientology.  I was on that story (Sappel’s) from the day we heard it was happening, and they worked on it for years. I know exactly what happened. I know everything that happened investigation-wise, PR-wise, etc., from the day the situation arose. It arose two years earlier.  They started on it in 87 I think, and they never came out with it until 89 or 90.  Nothing like that (what Sappel alleged) ever happened.  It is instructive for this reason: If Joel Sappel truly believed that, and hung onto that all that time, that means he was poisoned by some kind of propaganda that he  had gotten as far back as the eighties.  I am telling you, this film (Going Clear) is far more misleading, vicious, and downright scary than anything that had been produced up to the time that Joel Sappel got the false and paranoid idea that someone (in Scientology) had messed with his dog. 

PS: Perhaps Gibney and Wright did not have Sappel in the movie was because Sappel’s visit with me settled his mind and they had to bring in a talking head to spread unattributed hearsay. 

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Going Clear Movie, Part 4 Hana Eltringham

Posted on August 2, 2017 | 10 comments

Going Clear Movie Part 4, Hana Eltringham.              

 transcript

Mark Rathbun:  Hana Eltringham is brought in at 27:30 into the movie.  Hana Eltringham has been a known drama queen on the subject of Scientology for many, many years.  The omissions are amazing. She is very dramatic. But there is no balance whatsoever. Number one, a lot of what she says is discredited by the fact of what she said in the book.  What was she trying to get out of Scientology? After all, that is what Lawrence Wright said this was all about.  The movie, the book the whole thing, “what allures you?”  What allures her was, she had some involvement with a crazy aunt who was a Rosicrucian that told her that Rosicrucian mythology said “later in the century there is going to be a redhead guru that appears, and he is going to be a vessel of God.” And, that is why she joined. Because L. Ron Hubbard had red hair; and she wanted to be at the feet of the Lord.  No wonder she didn’t understand anything she studied in Scientology. She wasn’t there for that. She wanted to be a supplicant to the chosen one.  Number two, she condemns the whole subject and says it’s a fraud. Just like Haggis, “I knew it was a fraud when I saw this stuff”, and yet, she is in it for another twenty years after she has “already determined it’s a fraud.”  Even after she left the church of Scientology, she was still trying to monopolize the technology of Scientology.  She brought suit for a billions dollars to try to destroy the church. It was booted out of court.  It was only then that she picked up this whole schtick of the dramatic damsel.  Just context. They use her and Paul Haggis, who were people who just either didn’t get the subject or didn’t want to get it, to talk about the core of Scientology. So, the bizarre that we’ve come to now (through twenty minutes of Gibney’s film) is just compounded through that.  Look, Larry Wright had me devote all manner of time to go through it with him so that he would understand Scientology…watch the film and see how much explaining of Scientology I’m doing.  Zero. They’ve literally taken some bites of where I had some criticism of the organization personally, and nothing about the substance of Scientology. It is based on the invention of Gibney and Wright, and then exacerbated by Eltringham and Haggis.    

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Going Clear Movie, Part 3 – Tony Ortega, anti Scientology propagandist

Posted on July 27, 2017 | 43 comments

 

Going Clear Movie Part 3, Tony Ortega – Anti Scientology Propagandist, transcript:

Mark Rathbun:

At 25:30 of the film, Tony Ortega shows up.  I participated in a documentation that happened a year or two earlier that dealt a lot with my thoughts and perspectives about Scientology.  I was being relatively objective about it. The one thing that bothered me about it was they used this technique of interjecting Tony Ortega into it. The technique was they would press me on things – like the IRS, like there was something untoward about Scientology’s tax exemption, and I am not going to say that because it wasn’t true. I did say, “hey, we fought fire with fire, and we won, to get to the table; and then we were treated like a normal citizen. And we passed with flying colors.”  But they want me to say, no, no, you coerced it or you did it fraudulently.  And I won’t say it. So, they get me saying something about the rough stuff that was going on when we were going head to head with the IRS, in order to get too the table.  So then they bridge it with Tony Ortega just blithely saying, “Oh, yeah, they fraudulently got the exemption and – all this stuff that Marty is talking about, intimidated them into doing it (granting exemption).” So, he was used as bridge to get me to say all the false things I wouldn’t say throughout the movie. So, Alex Gibney, the great auteur – he is a lot like Mike Rinder, I don’t know if he has had an original thought in his entire life – because he used the exact same technique.  Tony Ortega’s name does not appear in Lawrence Wrights book and yet he is the most quoted people throughout the documentary. (Holds up book) He is not in this book!

Ortega will say whatever the anti Scientologist wishes

Tony Ortega comes in and makes any statement you need him to make in order to keep your false narrative flowing.  That they had to go to him, when he didn’t even appear in the book… I phoned Gibney after the fact and said to him, “you know what,  you are going to get all these accolades because it is very popular to jump on Scientology right now, but in the long run that was the biggest mistake you ever made, bringing this guy in.  And he didn’t deny it.  He just said, “well, I can’t throw him under the bus.”  And I said, “I’m not asking you to throw him under the bus. I am just telling you, I’m just informing you.”  And the context in which this came up was, Gibney wanted me to come to New York to the big international press day where they had this whole convention set up with every media under the sun, moon and stars. And I said, “ok, sure”, initially. And then I find out because Tony Ortega is all over it the he and Mike Rinder are going to be there.  And I told Gibney, “I don’t want to be an exhibit in a freak show. If somebody wants to talk to me, I want to have mature conversations about Scientology.  If you have something like that I’ll do it.”  So, I took Alex Gibney to school on Tony Ortega and why I wouldn’t want to associate or be involved with him.  Because it was a big juvenile delinquent style trolling game for Ortega.  And Mike Rinder was steadily becoming one of Ortega’s acolytes.  I told him “I don’t want to get into arguments and mess up your movie premiere; and I don’t want to have that type of juvenile discussion, game playing.”    And of course, I was right. 

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Going Clear Movie, Part 2 – Phony Haggis narrative, deceptive editing

Posted on July 21, 2017 | 80 comments

Going Clear Movie Part 2, Wright, Gibney Deception, transcript:

Mark Rathbun:  At 6:15 in the film Wright says “I’ve studied Jonestown, radical Islam”, go give his qualifications I guess and to give comparatives. I spoke to this guy for hours and days about religions and things he had written about “Methodists, Satanists, Atheists, Catholics”, everything but Jones town and radical Islam.  But, all the sudden, Larry Wright is an “expert” on Islam and Jonestown because they are going to implant this idea real early to give you…”we are going position Scientology right from the beginning with my new invention.”  Wright says right after that, “My goal was not simply to write an expose, it was to understand Scientology.”  Now, I’ve done a whole analysis of the book and just with my personal experience with Wright, that is most false he could possibly make.  I mean, I’ve gone through it chapter and verse; and it is a complete, utter lie.  His goal was clearly to write an expose from the beginning. Anything that had anything to do with bringing an understanding about Scientology – which he got in spades from me over days, weeks and months – none of it made it into his book. So, this is just a complete and utter lie.  So, he sort of create this aura of objectivity which is false.

Phony Haggis Narrative

Gibney does a good job, as Wright did, of shifting the timeline back and forth. So, he is kinda of telling a narrative, but he is real liberal moving things around and not dating them so that, like I said before, you end like it is all in present time.  So, at 7 minutes into they skip back to Paul Haggis and was what was he trying to resolve by getting into Scientology.  And Haggis says, “I’m in love.”  You go back to the book and he’s asked the same question and he answers that he had bad grades and he was going nowhere.  They have just created a second, new script.  Then Haggis said he told his wife “it could save our relationship.”  Nowhere in the book does he talk about their relationship being a problem, let alone a reason for joining Scientology.  Not in the book, not in the film, nowhere else.  It is all of the sudden a new, invented scenario. 

More Phony Haggis re religion

So, at 7:45 into the movie Paul Haggis said he was troubled when he found out Scientology was a religion.  Of course, because he is such a deeply intellectual person it was troubling.  Except that in the book, his first encounter was on the street, and it was not about somebody telling him about a cult in New York (yet another tale Haggis wove), it was a guy handing him a copy of the book Dianetics which Haggis flipped open and it said “Church of Scientology of London, Ontario.”  And Haggis’ response to “Church of Scientology of London, Ontario” was “take me there!”   But now we’re doing the movie, and we’re really going to influence the Hollywood people and really marginalize Scientology, so we just rewrite the script. Now all the sudden, Paul “the intellectual”, was troubled when he found out it was a religion. 

Deceptive editing

At 9:10 Spanky Taylor comes in – and, I don’t know Spanky Taylor from Adam – but I do know that the whole way that they have edited this film, she all the sudden says from nowhere she signed a billion year Sea Org (Scientology Fraternal Order) contract.  There is no possible way – and I was in the Sea Org for twenty-seven years and another ten years afterwards with a lot of interaction with Sea Org members – and there is not a single one of them who doesn’t have some sort of life-changing, life-altering sort of miraculous experience through Scientology before signing a billion year contract.  And they just dramatize you know, she says “they just couldn’t hold me back!”  Right? Well, what was it that you experienced that put you in the state that you couldn’t held back?  But Gibney is like, “we’re not going to put that in here.”  So, it is really sleazy editing. 

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Going Clear Movie, Part 1 Overview, Hysteria Creation

Posted on July 16, 2017 | 22 comments

 

Going Clear Movie Part 1 Overview, Hysteria Creation, transcript:

Mark Rathbun:  After my experience with Harry Smith (NBC Rock Center)  trying to get me to discredit the legitimacy of Scientology’s tax exemption on behalf of Lawrence Wright (see Going Clear, Part 19 – IRS and NBC’s Attempted Ambush),  I never heard from Larry Wright. For a year and half I had been fielding continuous phone calls with Wright with him clarifying things we had discussed.  I had written my review of the book and posted it, which wasn’t too kind.  In late 2012 Mike Rinder said “hey, I’m working with Alex Gibney on this movie about Wright’s book.  That was real odd. I had been disengaging for some time from the whole Anti-Scientology business.  Rinder wanted to know whether Gibney could call me. I said “sure, he can call me.”  So Gibney called late in the year to set a time for an interview.  This is my take on the movie, now seeing his final product.  First of all, I refer to it as McDocumentary and I refer to Gibney as a sort of McDocumentarian. I did look at two previous documentaries he’d done  which I knew something about the facts of. One was Enron, The Smartest Guy in the Room. I had read the book. And the other one I was familiar with was the pedophile priests scandal. I thought Gibney’s movies on they were some of the most  lazy, boring things I had scene. So I wasn’t really impressed.  So when I saw Going Clear, I was kind of taken aback by how emotional he made the whole thing.  I mean, he couldn’t have made the Catholic pedophile priest scandal more mundane, banal and boring. And yet you had tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of children being violated and continuing to be violated.  So, I was kind of shock to see in the Scientology movie to really make the story  – which by then to me, I’ve gone through the book with you – Gibney makes it this super melodramatic, emotional thing.  And that is why at event on the movie that I spoke in Austin I referred to Gibney as an auteur.  To me, it was like he dramatized the whole thing.  He wound up dramatizing Wright’s work which supposed to be a work of non-fiction.  After the movie came about, because the only things in it that hadn’t already been published before were uttered by me – and that was a very small body of stuff – I was the only one the media wanted to talk to.  So, they are up at the Sundance Film Festival (where it was initially released).  I hadn’t heard from these guys in forever. All of the sudden I’m getting all these text messages from Mike Rinder and Gibney’s people. Now they are all frantic, because they are all up there taking bows on the stage and nobody wants to talk to Rinder, they don’t want to talk to Marc Headley, they don’t want to talk to Tony Ortega.  And all these guys are up there at Sundance, trying to jump into the spotlight. So, I got sort of thrust into this thing. I did a little media at the outset.  Because my face was out there connected with the movie. And I started getting emails because this was an unprecedented amount of exposure for an anti Scientology piece.  And I started getting emails from all over the place from people connected with Scientology.  I found myself having to defend Scientology because these people were just hysterical.  That was the effect that the movie had.  Like I’d get this stuff about children because Spanky Taylor says in the movie that something happened; and they have no idea that she was talking about 1978. I mean, put aside whether it is exaggerated, put aside whether it is true.  The one thing I do know is that it happened in 1978. The people who watched the movie had no idea.  They think that whatever she is griping about is happening right now.  So, I’m having to calm people down, “now, wait a second, that particular thing that has got you so tied up, that happened in 1978. Scientology has not even had child care facilities since the mid-eighties. Ok, that’s thirty years ago.”   I mean, these are the types of responses I’m having to give people.  “Calm down”, right?  I mean, paranoid things. A lot of them were former members who were like completely convinced that phones were being monitored. And I’d look at the circumstances of the person, I’d say, “Look man, first off they aren’t doing any of that stuff, but second of all, you are the last person on earth they would be interested in.” I mean this is like he just created this hysteria. Because there hasn’t fresh accusations about Scientology in the past ten years, the Anti Scientology people are just rehashing stuff.  And they are rallying around this idea about ‘disconnection’; saying it is the most horrendous thing, this policy of disconnection, which is basically shunning.  A lot of messages and calls had to do with that.  So there business connections and family members who had connections with Scientology who were all in an hysteria about “I’ve have to resort to something radical to either get the person out of Scientology, or disconnect so they can’t hypnotize me in some way.” It really was shocking to me.  I’d been out for a long time and I have sort of involved in the anti Scientology area, and I’d never seen such hysteria before.  So, I just handle every inquiry, the person in front of me, one by one.  So, I literally found myself having to put things in context for people.  The impression created to people at large was, they cherry picked the most sensational accusations from 50 years – because they indicted L. Ron Hubbard from the age of 12 – or from 40 from the inception of Dianetics itself, all the way up to present time and communicated it such a way as to say “this is all happening now and it is a clear and present danger to you.”  And if you go down the roster of the people who are creating the most hysteria, they are 35 years before, 50 years before, and 65 years before the present respectively. And they are people talking about things that happened that many years ago. So, accuracy be damned, or accountability for hype and exaggeration be damned, all that stuff is  highlighted then thrust on you. It created an impression. I know from first hand because I was sort of becoming the point person for those so effected. And literally to a one I found myself trying to get people to calm down, “hey, that’s not happening.”  Whether it did or didn’t happen before, it was mainly about putting things in time sequence.  I ultimately came to the conclusion that Gibney is a fantastic propagandist.  Because he created this emotional and deep guttural fear and terror of something that does not exist. 

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Leah Remini and her Troublemakers, Part 17

Posted on July 12, 2017 | 34 comments

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Leah Remini and her Troublemakers, Part 16

Posted on July 8, 2017 | 63 comments

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