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.
Moving On Up a Little Higher 