Tag Archives: Alex Gibney

Propaganda Hit Man

Alex Gibney sets his sights on bringing down Elon Musk

Alex Gibney seems to be fond of rushing to comply with oligarchy-friendly deadlines. He is reported to be feverishly attempting to get a major smear on Elon Musk released before the November election. Musk is the last bastion of free speech and press in America and believes President Trump is particularly motivated to restore those rights. Musk’s support might be Trump’s strongest chance of success. Thus, the oligarchy has clear motivation for taking Musk out of the running. Gibney has a history of delivering October surprises against Trump in particular; populists being anathema to continued oligarchy rule. If Gibney doesn’t make the deadline you can count on him leading the First-Amendment-burning pack post election.

In October 2020 Gibney rushed out his hit piece on Trump’s handling of the COVID-19 Pandemic. After it helped serve the oligarchy’s purpose of defeating Trump, virtually all of its major premises were proven utterly false (see Whistleblower Character Assassin).  Gibney as much as admitted his motivations in a “progressive” love fest with MSNBC’s Chris Hayes: “It [Trump Pandemic hit]  was intended to come out just before the election of 2020 as a referendum on Trump’s handling of the COVID crisis.”

Gibney’s documentary series Enemies: The President, Justice and the FBI came out (November 2018) a few months before Special Prosecutor Muller’s report on the Russia Hoax (April 2019).  In context, Gibney’s work looks like a patent attempt to influence the outcome of the investigation. It is a four-episode series. Gibney had some lackies at his production company direct the first three episodes. Those segments view like an FBI recruitment film. They are thoroughly left-leaning propaganda pieces exalting the FBI as a democracy-saving institution time and again. Gibney has his boys position the FBI as superior to the office to which its charter makes it serve at the pleasure of: the Presidency. It is pure autocratic propaganda (in the East German and Soviet traditions) in that it elevates the bureaucracy (read politburo) over the will of the people. Even elected Presidents must bow at the altar of the unelected deep state. Gibney gives a new meaning to shallow in using the Watergate and Iran-Contra scandals to serve as narratives for his conclusion: FBI career men equal good, elected Republican Presidents equal evil. All the while he continually – almost by subliminal deception – associates Trump to the alleged sins of Nixon and Reagan (as if they are the same corrupt being occupying three separate bodies). By this technique Gibney murders history, turning scoundrels into saints and turning populists into satans. 

Once this us vs. them, cowboys vs. indians simplistic look at history is established, Gibney takes over the reins to personally direct the final segment: a no-holds-barred WWE-like attempted take down of President Trump.

Gibney ham-fistedly pounds on his designated enemy while genuflecting at the feet of his deep state benefactors. Perhaps even worse than former communist bloc propaganda, within months of its release the events it reports as inevitable turns of history prove to be 180 degree opposite to reality (some of the commie prop took decades to discredit). Eventually, virtually every major thesis of Gibney’s propaganda is found to be erroneous in one definitive, authoritative report (see REPORT ON MATTERS RELATED TO INTELLIGENCE ACTIVITIES AND INVESTIGATIONS ARISING OUT OF THE 2016 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGNS). This 100% discreditation of the foundation of the documentary is precisely what occurred with Gibney’s COVID-19 character assassination attempt, see Big Brother Storyteller II.

Enemies liberally uses a now well-worn propaganda technique that Gibney apparently stole from a couple of rookie filmmakers when going after Scientology.  See Gibney Propaganda Technique).  That is, Gibney’s cast consists of media people who narrate and comment, merrily mixing opinion and spin with ‘fact.’ Gibney compensates for the lack of evidence to support the official narrative by having his media hacks characterize the “evidence” he does submit. One recurring talking head is Garrett Graff known for many gigs as the smooth talking ‘expert’ on cheesy cable channel documentaries. Media analyst Howard Kurtz exposed how Graff wound up with that role, “Garrett Graff spent enough time as a campaign flack to learn the art of the politically adept reply.” That was precisely the skill Gibney called on, having Graff backfill evidentiary holes with slippery characterizations. 

The amateur-hour like opening frames are instructive of Gibney’s motives and methods:

Faceless, unattributed voice from nowhere (whiningly and ominously):

“The idea that the President would fire an FBI Director in the middle of the Russian investigation is unthinkable!”

Garret Graff (dramatically and incredulously): 

“This was the target of an investigation trying to choose the person who is investigating him.”

Gibney himself (with pearl-clutching concern):

“And what kind of constitutional problem is that to him?”

Graff (literally chuckling and guffawing like a junior high school punk giving someone a wedgie):

“A HUGE one, hardy, har, har, har!”

Let’s break that passage down.

The film’s first premise is false. It was very “thinkable” that a president would fire an FBI director who was actively leaking privileged communications to corporate media in an attempt to smear and harm the President with false charges, which is precisely what proved to be the case.

The second premise of the film was false. The President was not the target of the investigation, and he was not being investigated according to public statements then-recently made by that very FBI director who was fired.

The third premise of the film was a complete invention by Alex Gibney; there was no constitutional issue whatsoever. The FBI director serves at the pleasure of the President. End of story.  But, Gibney goes on for another hour desperately trying to stick it to Trump.

And that is just the intro, before the opening credits are even through rolling across the screen.

The very first frames of the body of the film show that traitorous FBI director James Comey literally yucking it up a year later with Stephen Colbert while sipping wine on television. Gibney then spends an hour trashing Trump on the innuendo (no facts, pure smear by association and demonization) of a documented liar. The ‘victim’ of Gibney’s piece turned out to be perhaps the most infamous prima donna drama queen of the 21st Century. 

Gibney follows with a virtual dog and pony show of deep state hacks and corporate media shills dramatically laying down every lie of the greatest hoax of the 21st Century; that is the big Russia Scare (see, A Guide To Understanding the Hoax of the Century).  Perhaps the biggest and most important whopper of them all was the Big Lie that was repeated over and over again by Comey, a plethora of FBI lackies, and the corporate media: The Russians hacked the DNC and provided the info to the Trump campaign. That served as the foundation for the bigger lie of a broad, verified Russian infiltration campaign to control the 2016 election outcome.

Gibney went into propaganda overdrive on this one. He provided a heap of special effects cyberworld graphics to dramatize the hack, while his talking heads filled in the gaps to implant the lie visually in viewers’ minds. He presented as if this was the official hands-on work of his revered G men. Gibney then goes into a retrospective likening the matter to Watergate, but far worse because with Trump, it had the added sex appeal of a foreign-enemy actor: “The Russians Are Coming!”.  So unanimous and uncritical have the state sponsored corporate media become, they continued to hammer these themes home over the next several years. 

It turned out that the Federal government never even made that connection Gibney portrays it as making, despite the Department of Justice’s (including the FBI) all hands on deck attempt to smear Trump. Instead, it was the cybersecurity firm hired by the Democrat National Committee (DNC) itself, Crowdstrike. Despite several years of effort, the DNC prevented the FBI from examining the DNC servers – the only way to potentially determine the source of a hack. When Crowdstrike’s CEO Shawn Henry was finally put under oath in a non-public Congressional Oversight Committee meeting, he had to admit  that they had no evidence of a Russian connection to the hack, let alone a channel leading to the Trump campaign.  Despite this, Committee Chairman, representative Adam Schiff of California, kept this admission secret during his serial MSNBC and CNN appearances to infer there was in fact secret evidence before the committee linking Russia to the hack and Russia to Trump. Let that sink in for a moment. Schiff, the ranking Committee member misinformed the public continually for several years while keeping the contrary evidence, Crowdstrike CEO’s testimony, under Congressional seal.

By the time other congress members managed to unseal the Crowdstrike testimony – 2 years after Gibney’s documentary – the damage had been done.  And of course, the corporate media never bothered to correct the record. Nor did Muller. Nor did Comey. Nor did the Department of Justice. Nor did the FBI. And of course, nor did Gibney; he just sat like the grinning cat who ate the canary, while he continued collecting royalty checks. 

Gibney assisted deep state spooks like James Clapper, James Comey, Bob Muller, and the state-controlled corporate media to smear Trump solely on the basis of Crowdstrike’s (DNC’s) Shawn Henry’s slippery, evasive innuendo. Gibney did this by not making it clear that Comey’s FBI and Muller never inspected the DNC servers; making it appear that Comey and Muller were Johnnies on the spot saving the republic with their own elbow grease. And of course Gibney abetted the obstruction of justice by burying the incestuous relationships that enabled the fraudulent narrative to hold water. In particular, Shawn Henry’s pre-Crowdstrike gig was this:  Executive Assistant to the Director of the FBI (Robert Muller).  Henry was hired by DNC lawyers Perkins Coie, the same firm that hired the author of the phony ‘British Intelligence’ dossier, Chistopher Steele; which served as justification to wiretap the Trump campaign and smear him with invented lies pre and post-election. (See REPORT ON MATTERS RELATED TO INTELLIGENCE ACTIVITIES AND INVESTIGATIONS ARISING OUT OF THE 2016 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGNS)

It doesn’t get any more incestuous than this. Yet, Gibney actively suppresses the real sources and their relationships for his unadulterated smear piece. He covers for the inbreeders with this type of icon worshipping: “Bob Muller was the symbol of a non-partisan individual who keeps his head down, follows the facts wherever they lead and doesn’t care about making a name for himself.”

If you doubt any of the counter evidence presented, do your mind a favor and take a few minutes to study up on the matter here, NO PROOF OF RUSSIAN HACK, and here, Durham Report.

Even though the revered Muller struck out as far as making any significant connection between the Trump campaign and Russia, let alone Russian hacking, Gibney’s blatant attempt to pressure Muller seems to have had the intended result. Muller did what Muller always does. In the face of no evidence and no indictment, he still managed to smear his target (Trump) with a plethora of subjunctive hearsay (would, could, might have, probably, etc.); a dis-barrable offense were he not the darling of the deep state and its lapdog corporate media. Once again the Scientology canary-in-the-coalmine connection arises. Muller did the very same thing to the Scientologists in the late eighties and in the 2000’s: pursued them noisily and at great taxpayer expense, only to wind up smearing them with no indictment to show for it. Award winning journalist Peter Lance wrote a series of books exposing the negligent and corrupt nature of the Department of Justice in its mishandling of the war on terror from the early nineties leading all the way up to 9/11. Lance pulls the Wizard-of-Oz curtain on Muller demonstrating the 2010s corporate media worship of him was as phony as a three-dollar bill.  (see Peter Lance)

Just as he did in his hatchet job on Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning, Gibney could not resist accusing Trump of sex crimes by highlighting the never confirmed, since thoroughly debunked, DNC-purchased accusations:

“Unusual sexual activities with prostitutes in Russia…filmed by Russian intelligence for possible use as blackmail.”

Once again (see Whistleblower Character Assassin) Gibney betrays his sociopathic characteristic of “projection”; accusing others of his own intentions. His alter-ego Weiner says “Trump is the kind of guy who likes to make his own reality”, while Gibney weaves a literally created deep state narrative about Trump.

Ironically, the one minor critique mentioned by a talking head about Comey is an indictment against Gibney’s documentary itself:  “There is something really horrible about having a senior law enforcement official evaluating the conduct of somebody in public whom he is not going to charge; and I have a sort of civil liberties anxiety about that.”  (in reference to Comey’s 2016 press conference about not filing charges against Hillary Clinton)

News alert!  That is the entire basis and subject of Gibney’s documentary against Trump.  Simple and plain.  But it is worse. In Clinton’s case there was a boatload of evidence warranting prosecution. Comey’s justification for not indicting was that a jury might acquit her. As covered, in Trump’s case there was zero evidence.

Ultimately, the entire foundation of the Russia Hoax and Gibney’s film was found to be without merit.  In November 2019, after Muller struck out, the Department of Justice appointed a new Special Prosecutor, Robert Durham, to investigate what all the ‘Russians are Coming’ alarms were about.  Durham found that not only was collusion never proven, there was not even a legal basis for beginning the Russia Hoax investigation in the first instance:

“Indeed, based on the evidence gathered in the multiple exhaustive and costly federal investigations of these matters, including the instant investigation, neither U.S. law enforcement nor the Intelligence Community appears to have possessed any actual evidence of collusion in their holdings at the commencement of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.”

Even a short passage in the film that shows Congressman Devin Nunes rightfully challenging Comey’s hole-filled narrative, is met with a former Obama apparatchik condemning any consideration of absence of guilt (in a case investigated for many years rending zero evidence of guilt):

“If you think about the antics of Devin Nunes there is some deep, deep worries that there are people in Congress who don’t care about the law, who don’t care about the Constitution.”

In Gibney’s Orwellian deep state, a defense is categorized as a thought crime.

Over dramatic music and a slew of Nixon and Reagan shots subliminally blaming their alleged crimes on Trump, Gibney winds up the film with voice overs warning of the dissolution of the Republic if Trump is not taken out. In this macabre denouement Gibney’s alter-ego reveals his motivation and purposes. Weiner closes with “If we are going to make it (as a Republic)…we have to get through this in a way that our institutions and our rule of law are strengthened.”

And so, the Empire’s storyteller continues the attack on the will of the electorate and the Constitution with the authority of the politburo and its partisan dispensation of injustice on anyone who dares not to think in lockstep with it.

Whistleblower Character Assassin

Filmmaker Alex Gibney

When asked about Alex Gibney’s in-progress documentary on himself, Elon Musk replied, “It’s a hit piece.”  Gibney’s reaction to that was, “How would you know?”

The answer is more than apparent on this blog.  Musk has done more than any other person to date to dismantle the burgeoning Censorship/Propaganda Industrial Complex. The very industry Gibney sucks the hind tit of for a living. Look no further than what Gibney did to Julian Assange and Wikileaks when they were at the forefront of restoring transparency and accountability to Big Brother.

When Wikileaks founder Assange exposed the sinister side of American empire in 2010, the national security state came unglued. Perhaps no one more accurately represented the security state (also known as IC “intelligence community”) at that time than Michael Hayden. Between 1998 and 2009 he had served on the three top spy positions on the planet, the head of the National Security Agency (NSA), the Director of the CIA and as the 1st Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence. Under his guidance the national security state was formed, including the passage of the Patriot Act and its systematic stripping of our civil rights. Incidentally, he remains atop the Big Brother console to this day as head of the Atlantic Council’s Censorship/Propaganda Industrial Complex. 

Who did Hayden and company call upon when Assange and Wikileaks were awakening the world to the atrocities of the unbridled security state/IC? The documentarian who would give the head of the security state the platform from which to justify the horrendous conduct revealed by Wikileaks, while also viciously assassinating the character of Assange. The same guy who did principal Big Brother propaganda work for the COVID-19 roll out: Alex Gibney. 

Nothing more graphically represented the importance of the 2010 Wikileaks disclosures than the following video. It captures US military personnel gunning down several innocent civilians, including a Reuter’s news agency employee a rescue worker and his two children. See,

The nation was shocked. And Gibney gave it his all to get the masses to cool their jets with his documentary “We Steal Secrets.”  He featured Michael Hayden himself to tell us how to view this very leaked film. Haydn said he could understand how such abuses of imperial power bothers some people but not someone in the know like himself: “You’ve got this scene, some are evidently troubled by the scene – frankly, I’m not.”  Gibney then invites Hayden to explain how Assange put so many more lives at risk than were wiped out in the video, that there really is nothing to see here folks. Clearly, Gibney wholeheartedly agrees with his master as he fails to even once push back on the single person most responsible for the conduct Wikileaks exposed. 

And as is Gibney’s wont (see Big Brother Storyteller), he is so anxious to be the first to get the deep state’s spin released he doesn’t bother to examine any harm that Hayden alleges Assange’s releases will certainly do. In the final analysis, no one ever produced a single sliver of evidence that a single hair on a single head was harmed as a result of Wikileaks’ exposes. To the contrary one could easily imagine tens of thousands of lives being saved by the disclosures, by having its intended reform effect on the offenders. 

Thus self-blinded, Gibney sets out to destroy the reputation of Assange. He strings together a chorus of clips from his favorite politicians toeing the CIA/NSA/Hayden line literally calling for Assange to be hung to death or assassinated. 

The film largely consists of Gibney belittling and condemning Assange as a sociopath who might well be entitled to such treatment. In doing so, he also does a number on Chelsea (aka Bradley) Manning who was the military whistleblower who forwarded the leaked material to Wikileaks for publication. Gibney is a proud woke mind virus carrier. Nonetheless, he hypocritically devotes a great deal of time trying to smear Manning with his struggle over gender identity. Gibney ruthlessly paints Manning – a genuine American hero on the order of Daniel Ellsberg – as a psychotic sexual deviant. Gibney does so in order to create the invented picture that Assange took advantage of Manning and set him up to take the rap for the leak while hogging all the glory to himself.  In doing so, Gibney kills two Ellsbergs with one stone.

Through outright sleaze and cheesy propaganda techniques Gibney invents the narrative that Assange baited Manning into releasing the material to Wikileaks. In reality, the New York Times and the Washington Post (the “liberal” fronts for Empire fuckery) turned down approaches from Manning before he turned to Wikileaks. Yet, Gibney’s expert use of the dark arts makes it appear as though if not for Assange’s fraudulent preying upon a weak, perverted mind, Manning never would be in the deep trouble he was by then in (in solitary confinement awaiting trial for Treason and worse before a US military tribunal).  

The same techniques used to assassinate Manning’s character are applied by Gibney in pursuing Assange as prey.  He ruthlessly explores Assange’s private sex life and goes to great length to indict and convict him for the alleged crime of intentionally breaking his condom during sex with more than willing partners (perhaps even sexual predators pursuing Assange). If you are wondering how that might constitute a prosecutable crime, Gibney’s invents the speculation that it would be a crime if Assange happened to knowingly be carrying around the AIDS virus. While the entire premise of Gibney’s prosecution (justification for the Swedish government pursuing Assange) hinged on that one invented possibility, Gibney (and no one else in the 14 years since) never presented a scintilla of evidence such was the actual case. Yet, through master use of the dark arts of cinematographic deception Gibney presents the picture of an AIDs ravaged madman travelling the world seeking to kill through sex.  

With those false premises established, Gibney then virtually lobbies for the criminal punishment of Julian Assange.  He accuses Assange of paranoia for suggesting that the U.S. government has Assange in its sights for the same treatment they were meting out to Chelsea Manning.  Gibney appears to want Assange to take the punishment Manning is taking; all the while calling Assange paranoid for sensing that is exactly the intent of Gibney and his deep state sponsors. 

The utter falsity of Gibney’s “paranoia” claims were more than proven over the next several years as the US ruthlessly pursued Assange through extradition (while its CIA director called for Assange’s assassination).  Completely contrary to the entire premise of Gibney’s invented outrage, Assange would wind up spending more time in confinement than Manning did (without ever being convicted of a single crime). Of course, Gibney helped accomplish this feat by virtue of other state-controlled media parroting Gibney’s deep-state smear for years. 

There is a pattern of Gibney’s over-anxious, impatient attack-dog work on behalf of the deep state.  He did the very same thing concerning the COVID-19 pandemic panic (see Big Brother Storyteller).  A rush to release the definitive government/big pharma COVID 19 narrative, followed by several years of the truth unfolding proving all his major premises to be wrong. He did the same with the Scientologists, tirelessly using his ‘documentary’ on them to lobby for removal of their IRS tax exemption, only for time to tell his invented premises for such draconian measures were fabrications. I have described before the fraud perpetuated and promoted by Larry Wright and Alex Gibney on that subject. (see blog posts between June 6 2017 through June 19 2017 and from July 16 2017 and August 8 2017).

As we shall later see, Gibney did the same with the Russia Hoax. The technique is, when chaos hits be the first to create a “documentary” to “prove” the deep state’s propaganda lines. Make the big lies look like truth through overboard dramatization in the guise of documentary film making. Use the ‘fact’ of the documentary to take designated targets down hard. While the facts begin to arise demonstrating the falsity of your work, dive into the next deep state crisis and rinse and repeat.

To demonstrate the 100% love, devotion and surrender nature of the deep state suck up, consider these facts. If the Manning/Assange leak were as expansive and potentially destructive as Gibney’s film claims, and Gibney is the flag-waving patriot he purports to be, then why did Gibney not investigate how two allegedly mentally ill, sex deviants managed to put the entire free world at risk all on their little lonesomes? That is, how could such alleged supermen as Michael Hayden be capable of such incompetent, treasonous insecurity?  That, Gibney does not investigate. Instead, he only covers deep-state ass. Again, he turns to his master Hayden to explain away the pesky matter of how on earth such a massive breach could occur. Hayden blames reforms imposed in response to the deep state’s colossal incompetence (at best) demonstrated during the events leading to 911. 

Hayden:

“After 9/11 we were accused of not being willing to share information rapidly and facilely enough and we’ve pushed that very far forward. In terms of our focus the default option in a practical sense has been to share it, rather than caging in information and making it more difficult to flow.”

In other words, “any attempt to point out an error on the Intelligence Community will be met with glue meeting rubber. That is, your catching us out on a mistake will result in you being guilty of our next crime.”

Remarkably, not only does Gibney not push back on such haughty arrogance, he lets Hayden shore up alleged CIA infallibility with this:

“When they catch us making a mistake, we admit it. When they have a valid point—even when it’s buried deep below a heap of not-so-valid points—we try to pull it out, brush it off, and address it.”

With that Gibney enters the Orwellian ranks, “war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength.”

State-controlled media would of course cloyingly go along for the ride as per usual.

And that of course buried any dissent to Gibney’s propaganda work.  But, at the time of its release many credible sources expressed outrage at Gibney’s servile cowardice. 

The Nation had the following to say of “We Steal Secrets”:

“Unfortunately, just as today’s debate is already being diluted by focusing on Snowden’s psychology and motives, We Steal Secrets gets sidetracked by character issues… The debate that the film has stirred up consists mainly of an exchange of invective between Gibney and Assange, in which Gibney and his allies compare the WikiLeaks creator to a cult leader, while Assange and his allies accuse the director of mounting a smear campaign that benefits the US government. The upshot is that we have gotten neither the film nor the debate we need.”

Award winning researcher and journalist Alexa O’Brien wrote:

“What was Gibney relying on for his costly ‘string of pearls’ reportage, beyond his hackneyed entourage of unexamined glory-boats, bearing witness on the silver screen to their privileged punditry—that is, talking about themselves amongst themselves for their own benefit– certainly not the public’s—or future generations?”

“Gibney’s exercise discovers nothing, and reveals nothing. His tabloid motion graphic is a regurgitation of stock footage, unsubstantiated innuendo, and unexamined allegation.”

“What Gibney has done here is not art; it is a cheap trick.”

And veteran war correspondent Chris Hedges wrote the following:

“Alex Gibney’s new film, “We Steal Secrets,” is about WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange. It dutifully peddles the state’s contention that WikiLeaks is not a legitimate publisher and that Bradley Manning, who allegedly passed half a million classified Pentagon and State Department documents to WikiLeaks, is not a legitimate whistle-blower. It interprets acts of conscience and heroism by Assange and Manning as misguided or criminal. It holds up the powerful—who are responsible for the plethora of war crimes Manning and Assange exposed–as, by comparison, trustworthy and reasonable.”

“The film at many points is a trashy exercise in tabloid journalism. Gibney panders to popular culture’s taste for cheap pop psychology and obsession with sex, salacious gossip and trivia.”

Finally, Hedges recognizes the illness underlying the propaganda techniques employed:

“The vast structural sin Assange and Manning fought is ignored. The primacy of personal piety over justice is the inversion of morality. It is the sickness of our age.”

Remarkably, on this rare occasion when Gibney was held to account for his demonstration of the sickness of our age he petulantly defended his tabloid appetites. Unfortunately for him he protested too much and as much as admitted to the truth of what the Nation, O’Brien and Hedges pointed out:

“Just because someone tries to right a wrong or just because somebody tries to hold powerful people to account, it doesn’t mean that person is above the law.” – Alex Gibney

Under that ‘rationale’, Gibney is free to pursue whistleblowers into their prison cells and beyond.  

Given how Gibney approached whistleblowers Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange, what are the odds he’ll take a deep dive into Elon Musk’s sex life?  One thing is certain, Gibney will make the gullible afraid of Mr. Musk, very afraid. 

I have seen up close and personal how deftly Gibney wields the art of cinematography to create realities that do no exist, and to dramatize them to the point of creating revulsion and terror in viewers. For a short lesson on Gibney’s trickery, see what he did to the Scientologists; creating a “guttural, deep emotional fear and terror of something that does not exist”, Going Clear Movie.

Leah Remini and her Troublemakers, Part 19

 

Leah Remini and her Troublemakers, Part 18

 

Going Clear Movie, Part 10 – Tony “Back Page” Ortega – three time loser

 

Going Clear Movie Part 10, Tony ‘Back Page’ Ortega – three time loser

Transcript

Mark Rathbun:

Gibney rips off film student’s techniques with Ortega

Tony Ortega got his foot in the door with me during a previous documentary that mainly involved me, Scientologists at War which came out in 2013.  They way they used Ortega was, they interspersed him.  They would show interviews with me on a subject and then occasionally they would have Ortega come in to interpret what I was saying; and thereby, come to conclusions that they could not get me to come to.  And that is how he was used throughout that.  He was taking what I was saying and turning it into something that it wasn’t. That is what they pretty skillfully did.  And that was their technique.   So, then Going Clear comes along. What blows me away is that Alex Gibney gets all these accolades. It is just this cult of celebrity culture we live in.  It is like, once you are recognized by somebody you are somebody go be lionized.  Gibney wasn’t original in the slightest. He used the exactly same thing in Going Clear that those fellows had done in Scientologists at War.  And those guys, by the way, were novice filmmakers.  The guys from the UK, they worked for a guy who was a producer who had won Oscars.  But this was part of a program where he was taking promising young directors and saying ‘here, here’s all this stuff; go make a documentary.”  So Gibney actually ripped off from these cinematography students this technique and basically used the same thing. I mean, if you get the book Going Clear, and go to the index and look for “Tony Ortega”.  He’s not there.  Zero pages.  He is not even in it. Now, we go to the movie which is, according to Gibney, a recreation of the book, and now Tony Ortega is suddenly the critical link to everything.  The reason I say, he’s the critical link to everything, is not because he has more air time, but it is more critical, crucial air time, because Gibney uses Ortega exactly the same way the folks did in Scientologists at War.  And that is, he bridges.  He’ll be putting together this salacious segment and it just doesn’t quite add up.  And then, all the sudden there is Tony Ortega with a convenient soundbite that sort of leads you to this conclusion.  And it is interspersed throughout the film.  I told Gibney, it may even be in writing, I told him “in posterity, that is dumbest thing you ever did. This guy (Ortega) is a troll, he’s an avowed anti Scientologist, he has no personal experience, and you putting into this movie cheapens it and turns it into a propaganda piece.  And it does. He has no personal experience. 

Tony Ortega and the Village Voice

The CEO and one of the directors of the Village Voice (where Ortega ran a lot of his earlier anti Scientology campaigning) ultimately got indicted and arrested for running prostitution, human trafficking of minors. That was the main source of income for the Village Voice publication at the time.  And so, they got to get rid of Ortega because – according to Ortega –  Ortega told me, “it turns out the church’s accusations and investigations into the Voice were more true than anyone believed.”  Essentially the Village Voice was bought and paid for through the human trafficking Back Page ads.  As a solution they wanted to get out from under the scrutiny of the church; and of course Tony Ortega was doing nothing at the Village Voice other than by becoming what he became, a full time Anti Scientologist. And so, he wasn’t helping general circulation with his editing work.  He was harming it. And all he was doing was bringing the scrutiny of the church upon them.  So, what they decided to do was to give Ortega a sweet honey package to go off and do what he wanted to do, which was to write a book about Scientology.  And it was a pretty sweet package because he was at it for two years.  He got to go shopping it for the next two years, doing nothing else but shopping. 

Ortega Channels Miserable Old Lady

So, Ortega gets his package and what does he do?  He goes and get this woman who settled all her differences with the church 35 years ago and gets her to unsettle.  Paulette Cooper.  Because she’s got this story of going after the church, and the church going after her, that’s a very salacious story that had been told in the seventies.  And then she had subsequent litigation and then she settled in 1981. 35 years later he is going resurrect her in the hopes that maybe he can become her.  I think the guy is unbelievable disappointed that Scientology didn’t take the bait and come after him.  I mean, he’s been trolling so hard. Here’s this guy and talks with all this air of authority and he’s done “this, this, this, this, this, and this” and all he can talk about in terms of harassment is what happened to the woman who he wrote a book about, that happened forty years ago, not to him, but the woman he wrote a book about. 

Ortega and the ASC (Anti Scientology Cult) sum up

This is this whole ASC (Anti Scientology Cult) culture of “your narrative is my narrative”. “we’re all one great big narrative”,  just this big cluster. “You suffered that and therefore I suffered that and therefore everybody ought to be in fear of suffering that.”  And, that is Tony Ortega.    

Going Clear Movie, Part 9 – Paul Haggis Phony Narrative

Going Clear Movie Part 9,  Paul Haggis Phony Narrative

Transcript

Mark Rathbun:

Paul Haggis, Wright and Gibney lied about Scientology’s position Homosexuality

They have Alex Gibney saying that “Paul Haggis’ daughters were openly harassed by church members for being gay.”  I’ve been through the book three times now – there is no evidence of that and I never even heard any evidence of that from Paul Haggis.  They suffered a couple of slights from peers is what the accusation was.  But now they are being “openly harassed.”  Because, now this is a movie, “and we’re going to make this more dramatic,’ I guess. And Gibney says “Investigating further, Haggis discovered church doctrine which characterized homosexuality as “a disease” that only Hubbard’s teachings can cure.”  It is never categorized as a disease.  Unlike the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the APA (American Psychiatric Association) who until the mid seventies had homosexuality listed as a mental disorder.  It was not a disease.  I’ve been through this before. It is a single characteristic to take into consideration in a series of 48 characteristics – in that you must have a majority of those characteristics, in ordered to be considered to at a particular emotional tone.  And that is written in 1951.  And there is a subsequent body of written statements by L. Ron Hubbard that he didn’t give a rat’s ass about somebody’s sexuality.  And it was firm church policy that one wouldn’t be concerned with one’s sexual preference.  That now is branded “a disease” according to Alex Gibney. And by the way, again it is “all in present time”, taking a statement from 1950, twenty five years before the APA and mental health in general decided it wasn’t a disease. 

Paul Haggis lies about timing of his resignation

At 143:30, Paul Haggis says “I can’t support an organization that supports human rights for everyone, so I wrote a letter resigning.”  No, he did not.  He wrote a letter resigning a year and half after this dispute he had regarding a particular stance one church of scientology took on an issue.  He had aired all his disagreements on that and a year and half later for intervening reasons we have discuss – which had to do with embarrassment about things that were said in the press – he only then wrote a letter. 

Paul Haggis acts out a fiction on how he left the church

At 144:00 Haggis said, “his friends in Scientology said ‘we need you to resign quietly’,” and Haggis said, “I don’t do that.  I don’t do quiet.”  Like he is John Wayne again, right?  Mr. Macho. Except, it is exactly what he did. And he went through a lot of different machinations to make it appear that he was doing it quietly.  In fact, he included me in it, plotted with Jason Beghe about ways he could use my media contacts to leak to them so that Haggis would appear to have no causative involvement. In other words, he was taking extreme measures over several months to try to snipe from the weeds.  He wanted to make it look like he wasn’t involved whatsoever (in loud publication of his resignation), and cause damage through the ‘leaking’ of his letter.  So, first of all Paul Haggis never told his scientology friends “I don’t do that, I don’t do quiet.”  He gave them the impression that he would do it quietly. So, that is a lie. And then his subsequent behavior, which is documented, that he did it as quietly as he could while creating the maximum possible media impact against the church. 

Going Clear Movie, Part 8 – Anti Scientology Advocacy

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. 

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

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.

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

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. 

Going Clear Movie, Part 5 Joel Sappel invented story

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.