I just read the following on Tony “Backpages” Ortega’s blog in a story about alleged coercion with a secret dossier:
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Seymour: Scientology enforcer Marty Rathbun was known in the organization for his brutal and unforgiving manner. Rathbun was their bad lieutenant, charged with carrying out the orders of leader David Miscavige.
Rinder: Marty told me that he did. I didn’t know that at the time, but Marty told me subsequently that he had gone to see Pat. And like, had brought more of the, ‘this is what you are going to do’ approach.
Seymour: He’s a pretty intimidating guy, isn’t he? He can be pretty forceful.
Rinder: Well, he’s intense. He assumes that he is in the position of authority and you are just going to listen, shut up, and do what I tell you. And he’s very good at that.
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Mike Rinder was right about one thing – I was the only person who spoke with Pat Kingsley about Tom Cruise talking about Scientology. The rest is utter fiction.
First, there was no ‘dirt’ file on Pat Kingsley. Complete invention.
Second, my only conversation with Ms. Kingsley was civil and friendly.
Third, there was no agenda. There couldn’t have been, because the meeting was by complete happenstance – I happened to be randomly seated by her on an airplane flight.
Fourth, she was the one who originated Scientology to me.
She explained to me that she had somehow picked up the vibe from someone in Tom’s entourage (perhaps “secret source X?’) that she was anti-Scientology. She explained at some length her personal feelings on the subject which were not antagonistic at all.
The only report I ever made on the subject of the conversation to anyone was an accurate description of the above, and the observation that Pat seemed sincere and it was my view that a) she was not an antagonist, and b) her advice concerning the handling of Scientology questions had some merit.
End of story. I never heard of or from her again.
As to Rinder’s set up by slavishly agreeing (his only trick) with the ‘bad lieutenant’ description of me is a 180 degrees reversal of tomes of material he has written about me over the past ten years (since he ‘escaped’ from Scientology), as well as the testimony of other such ASC Bunker luminaries as Karen De La Carriere, Mark Headley, Jefferson Hawkins, et al… before they were authoritatively informed by Remini, Rinder, and Ortega that I was an enemy of their CULT.
Leah Remini, Part 4 – Remini and Tony Ortega, Blackmailers
Transcript:
Mark Rathbun:
Remini asks Rathbun to join the Anti Scientology Cult (ASC)
Talking about hypocrisy. After I rejected the producer role where I can write my own ticket with Leah Remini (see Leah Remini, Parts 1-3) several months later Leah gets a hold of me and literally wants me to make a commitment to be in the ASC (Anti Scientology Cult).
Rathbun tells Remini he doesn’t want to join a cult
And told her, “look, I am not a joiner. I’m not a sheep. I’m not a follower. If you haven’t figured that out in the two or three years you have observed me…” And Leah said, “no, no, no it’s if you are against them, we’re together.” And I said, “the problem is, you want me to join a group of people that have experience with who are demonstrably, obviously far more unethical, disloyal, criminal than any Scientologist I ever deal with in 27 years I was within it.”
Rathbun schools Remini projection
I told her, “And, yet as much as you rail about it, you want me to act in the very way you accuse Scientology of acting.” In other words, “forget about all that stuff, if you are against them, you are with us. It’s use vs them. And so if you are not with us, you are for them, basically.” I told her, “no.”
Remini does what she accuses the church of doing
Remember, the narrative that Remini and the troika has been capitalizing on for the past three years, central to the whole thing which they go on and on about, is ‘disconnection.’ In other words, because in Scientology, to the extent that someone acting anti-socially can’t be reformed or lived with people will disconnect from them. That that is such a ‘greivous crime’ to family and humanity that it justifies creating a cult to combat Scientology. So, when I won’t join her group, Leah Remini literally disconnects from me. And I mean in a way they don’t even accuse Scientology of doing. She told me “not only are not to be in communication with me again, you must destroy all my contact information, because I am destroying yours!”
It is not just a command that you are not to communicate with me, it’s “we’re going to make it impossible for us to communicate again.” So, it could not have been a more explicit disconnection. And that was the response to me for refusing to say I will give love, devotion and surrender to this ASC cult of yours.
Worse than Scientology
Now, after Leah Remini disconnects from me after I refuse to join the cult…Here is where the parallels come in with the narrative “Scientology disconnects from you, and then if you keep defying they ruthlessly attack you.” So, I do a couple essays on my blog that are sort of time to time neutral on the subject of Scientology. I always felt it was important that you attained some sort of objectivity about your experience in Scientology. Even if you felt it was negative to have it continually reinforced on you that it is negative, you are going to get sicker and worse. Like Scientology, or virtually any self-help philosophy or like any religion, it is far more healthful to recognize that you are responsible for your own condition and move along and take the positive from your experience. So, I do a few posts and the troika (Remini, Rinder, and Ortega) goes crazy.
Tony Ortega Cult Hatchet Man Attempted Blackmail
Tony Ortega launches this smear campaign and he runs it for six months non-stop, about me and my family. They attempted to infiltrate my family. They attempted to drive wedges between my wife and me. When that failed, they took up a collection to hire a private investigator to spy on and harass us. And when that failed, they attempted to blackmail me. I literally received a blackmail threat. (and it was from the number one source of funding of Tony Ortega’s Underground Bunker operation). “If you keep talking about the ASC, if you keep talking about our side of the story or about our laundry, we are going to expose all the crimes that you failed to disclose about your scientology experience.” And I laughed at that because unlike them, I am the one person whose life has been an open book and there is nothing I ever held back. So, I said “go ahead.” My response was “make my day.”
Ortega makes good on the blackmail threat
I didn’t hear anything for several months until the very day before Leah Remini’s January 2017 ABC 20/20 Special. I hear from ABC 20/20 asking me, “do you know a guy named Sergio?” I said, “no, I’ve never known a Sergio in my life.” Simultaneously, I receive an email from Tony Ortega, saying “Sergio Lame (or whatever his name is) says that he got raped by an old male when he was a teenager inside Scientology and that you found out about it and covered it up.” So, I got what was going down. This was the payback on the blackmail threat. They literally made it up. So, I looked up this Sergio guy. He’d been going on for 3 or 4 months in the ASC troll farm. The guy was so incredible, he would say some stuff one day that three days later he would absolutely contradict. I mean his lack of credibility was so apparent just on the face of what he was saying without any refutation. It was that bad.
The Tony Ortega Slander Laundry
So, Tony Ortega as he’s waiting for my response, blogs “watch 20/20 tomorrow; there’s going to be explosive, and I mean, explosive stuff.” Then, it was clear to me it was going to be the Segio Lan “cover up.” So, I wrote back to 20/20 and said “I never heard of this guy in my life. But, now that I’ve heard from Tony Ortega I understand what is going on. He’s running the same op he is running all the time. Mike Rinder has explained it to me.” It goes like this, Tony will run anything because he has nothing to lose because he’s a nobody with a blog. Scientology and nobody else is going to waste their time suing a guy who can never make good on whatever damage he does in the first place; and can blog from a shopping cart in an alley as well as he can from whatever apartment he is living in now. So, he’s got immunity in that respect from libel. He’ll put out the sleaziest, most criminal innuendo with little grains of truth mixed in and keep repeating enough, with the intention that a tabloid at some point will start to pick it up. The intention is to keep feeding the tabloid with the intention that ultimately – in this degraded age of infotainment, click-bait news we live in – “legitimate media” will pick up on it. And that is the only reason the blackmail didn’t run, because I called ABC out on it.
Summary
They blackmailed me, I told them bring it, they had nothing to bring so they literally manufactured something. They literally manufactured accusations of criminal conduct that never happened. Accusations that were so unfounded that no media would run with it. But, they came within an inch from broadcasting it nationally.
Now, take my experience and you get a better idea of how the ASC and troika (Remini, Rinder and Ortega) works vis a vis Scientology – they run the same gig as above day in and day out over a seven year period.
So, once I gotten taken to school on the subject of reality TV by Leah Remini.
This was during her AWOL period, where I would call her out on something and then suddenly she couldn’t be found for several months. I texted her after I had watched her reality show. They had this therapist come in and they had this group therapy session with her family.
Family Therapy Session
I texted her that I was really impressed that you guys had the courage to do that and share that with people. She called and let her know, “I mean, that is pretty personal”, I told her “I got one problem with it, though. I think it was really terrible how you just dumped it on your mother and made it look like she was the villain of the piece; and somehow unintelligent and stupid and culpable for getting the whole family involved in Scientology.” I said, “I could literally see it on her, she looks terrible.”
Leah discloses it is all scripted and acted
Leah let’s the first part go, and just addresses the second part, because she is a narcissist. If you say anything that is perceived as anything other than worship for her, Leah’s going to jump on that. “Oh, no, no, no”, she says, “you didn’t get it at all. This wasn’t an actual therapy session. This whole thing was planned and scripted.” I said, “you literally acted?” And she said, “Yeah, we literally acted.” She said, “listen, that’s how it works honey. Doll, that’s how you do it. It’s not reality, I plan out all these episodes and we figure them out all beforehand who is going to do what and who is going to say what. What do you think, I’m just going to put a camera on myself?” I mean, that’s uneducated I am about reality TV, I don’t watch reality TV. I just assumed they put a camera in there and captured how people live their lives. But, she instructed me that that is not what it is all about. It is not reality, it is unreality. It is fake reality.
Leah admits it is all to poke a stick in Scientologists eyes
In fact, in the course of telling me this she told that they had planned and scripted it for purposes of having maximum ‘poke in the eye’ on David Miscavige and Scientology.
Rinder explained to me that they had literally had it worked out that – they, the three of them, the troika (Rinder, Remini and Ortega) – an operation, where Leah’s departure from Scientology would be orchestrated and be reported in a way that they would manipulate people into reporting it. It was an act. In other words, this is an active troll job. Leah would act as if she were being persecuted by Scientology for disagreeing with it and having all this “scandalous” information about it. All the while, she was having her agents create the story of her leaving. And it was done in such a way as to try to create a reaction on the part of Scientology. It was a string operation to try to get Scientology to reach out to try to salvage her, to get Scientology to have people disconnect from her. All it would be part of an ongoing story. It was all going to be a roll out to increase her profile and create this mystery and create this figure – this ‘warrior princess’, his innocent warrior princess. She’d be this innocent princess who was turned into a warrior because she was hunted down and persecuted by Scientology. That was the story.
As it rolled out Scientology never played its part. And they just acted like it did. She never did get persecuted, she never did get hunted down, she never did get people begging her to come back. None of that stuff happened. But, Rinder and Ortega just keep spinning the ball giving the impression that it did. The reason I refer to Rinder, Remini and Ortega as a ‘troika’ – this cluster at the top of this thing (the Anti Scientology Cult, ASC) – is they have this penchant for having one of them act like ‘Mickey the Dunce’ when something happens. That is how they rolled out Leah Remini in the first place. Tony Ortega literally reported as if he were onto a hot tip from a “tipster.” The ‘tipster’ was Leah Remini. Ortega made it look like someone else, like an insider who was leaking. And Ortega literally quoted Leah’s husband – he reported that he called Leah’s husband and said “hey, we heard your having a big break up with the church of Scientology,” and her husband was reported as saying, “oh, no, not at all, we get along just peachy keen. And if we ever did, we would resolve it with the church.” And Ortega goes as far as writing, “and we thanked him for being so candid.”
News is created
Well, the whole thing was scripted by Leah Remini, her husband, and Mike Rinder and Tony Ortega. So he literally made up this ‘news.’ That is how the whole thing rolled out and started. They continue that who op until today where one of them does something and the other one says “I don’t know anything about that.” Example. In the last episode of Remini’s first year of her series on Scientology, they spent the entire episode over Scientology accusing Leah of disaffecting and inspiring this kid Brandon Reisdorf to commit a hate crime by throwing a brick through a window of a Church of Scientology. She was like, “hah, can you believe they have accused me?” She is literally next to Mike Rinder as she says it. Rinder did in fact orchestrate the kid’s disaffection and inspired him into hating David Miscavige and Scientology so much that he was willing to maim somebody. And Remini spent the entire episode railing about how she was falsely accused and yet her partner Mike Rinder is sitting right next to her; the guy who executed the whole thing. And I know first-hand that he did.
So, I refer to them as a troika, cluster for a reason. If you do not consider them as an inseparable group, it is like a chimera, you don’t know where anything is coming from. Because it is planned and executed that way.
Ethics of the Anti Scientology Cult
Another example. They rail about ethics. “Scientology has this utilitarian ethics system, us v. them, good v. evil.” The funny thing is that literally is the ASC (Anti Scientology Cult) system of ethics. It literally consists of ‘if it harms scientology, it is good. If it helps scientology, it is evil.” Period! Mike Rinder literally said on a podcast that Scientology is ‘fair game’ and you can literally can say and do anything you want against Scientology and get away with it. Literally promoting that idea.
Rank Propaganda
Ortega puts it in many ways, day after day, on his blog. One incident really encapsulates what happens here. A woman took her car and rammed it through the front door of the Austin, Texas Church of Scientology, sped through the lobby and crashed into the Church’s nursery where there were toddlers. When the police arrived the woman said she was disappointed when she was told she hadn’t hit anybody; that she had failed to kill anybody. And that was her only regret, that she didn’t. It subsequently came out that she was primarily inspired to do this by Leah Remini. She had been reading her book or watching her show or listening to her ramblings or her productions. And of course, Leah Remini just never says anything about it. Instead, Tony Ortega comes in and Tony Ortega flanks for her by trying to euphemize the whole thing. He literally characterized the admitted attempted murder as delinquency. Ortega’s got about a couple hundred people in his sheep farm (troll farm) and they generate thousands of comments a day because that is all they do all day, sit there and comment. Just as an exercise went through the comment section that day. Out of two thousand comments, not a single person objected to his characterization or called him out on it. And they are all just frothing these attempted memes of hatred against Scientology, based on a woman attempting to kill somebody with her car.
Denialism is part and parcel with the whole ASC (Anti Scientology Cult) narrative. They have to any possible benefit and 55 million written and spoken words in lectures that constitute Scientology philosophy. They have to deny that it exists in its entirety. So their narrative can be summed real simply as, “Scientology is a group of people who have no substance; there is no substance that they are trying to protect. And yet they do two things. If somebody breaks ranks and vociferously disagrees with the group they are ostracized and are disconnected from. And if the person then escalates that disagreement and turns it into an attack, then Scientology ruthlessly dispenses with the attacker.” And that in essence is the narrative gone over and over. It is the basis of Going Clear (book and movie); it is the basis of their blogs (the troll farms). What I learned through 5 years of interacting with ASC – these people who are the authors of the bible of the ASC, and the center of the hierarchy (the Troika cluster, literally is that that narrative that they tell is precisely a description of themselves.
There is literally no philosophy, it is literally an anarchy of ideas. There is no solution. There is no interconnecting philosophy or way of looking at things. There is only ostracizing, marginalizing and attacking Scientologists. It is ‘use vs them’ and that is the only basis upon which the group exists.
The TROIKA of ASC
The Troika (Remini, Rinder and Ortega) of ASC considered that they had a well defined, hardbound hierarchy. The only problem with it is that all three members think that they are in charge. The three members, Tony Ortega who runs a daily blog serving as their PR meme guy, Mike Rinder who runs a daily blog and Leah Remini who runs reality TV and spin offs on Scientology. Every meme, every idea that emanates from the ASC emanates from those three. It may be that someone has an idea and brings it in, but clears one of those three before it gets put out there. And they continue to churn this stuff out and they only do it because it is profitable.
When I said they consider they have a hierarchy, I have had discussions with these people. Tony Ortega snickers about what fools Mike Rinder and Leah Remini are and how easy it is to sucker them into making Ortega the only “scoop guy” so he gets all the “scoops.” Mike Rinder says that Leah Remini is just a ditzy, hair brained, privileged person, who has a greatly bloated image of herself and that he has to guide her every step of the way and hold her hand. Leah Remini says Mike Rinder and Tony Ortega are hallucinating if they don’t realize that they are her bitches. And she is just using them. That’s why I say it is like a cluster; they think they have a hierarchy but each part of thinks their in charge.
It is all about money
It always comes back to money. And Leah Remini explained it to me one day. She asked me if I had been paid for participating in Going Clear. I told her, “no, I never got paid for participating in any media or documentary. And that I never would out of principle.” Remini said, “I don’t get that. I don’t understand your thinking. I didn’t participate because they wouldn’t pay me. I don’t do anything unless I’m paid. Nothing.”
Remini Scores Unlimited Funding to Attack Scientology
So at one point Leah Remini told me that after two years of careful work through her publicist, and Rinder and Ortega, had successfully come up unlimited financial backing to go after Scientology. And that she was going to create a production to do so. Leah told me that she was so well back that I could “write my own ticket” on this to participate as a producer. So, I asked her “what are you looking at producing?” And she told me essentially it was going to be a regurgitation of everything publicized about Scientology over the past seven years, about things that have happened over the past 40 years allegedly. And that she would resurrect the players who were saying things about Scientology for the past seven years as somehow new and current. My reaction was, “I have no interest whatsoever.” I’d had this conversation over two years, “if you want to do something that is educational, that is somewhat objective, that could lead to people getting on in life better, that gave some new perspective”, that was the only basis I told her I ever would participate in her stuff. And I said, “and still stands. But, what you are proposing is essentially a cheap, tabloidesque pile on that I’m not interested in.”
And I thought that would be the last I ever hear of her. Because, I mean that was the end of the conversation. I mean, she was like a long tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. It was like Ralph Kramden, “humada, humada, humada.” At the end of the conversation, she had nothing to say. So, I did think that would be the end of it after I told her what my position was. But, it wasn’t. But I’ll get back to that and for now stick to the subject of financial motivation.
Mike Rinder in it for the money
Remini’s partner, Mike Rinder, since he has left the church of Scientology (2007) never had a job, was never employed, never lifted a finger to do anything that wasn’t related to Scientology work that was paid for by people who were interested in seeing Scientology’s ox get gored. I know that because for his first three or four engagements he had specifically asked me to help him get into a position where he could have such backers and I put him in that position. So, since 2009 it has been a series of sugar daddies, one right after the others. A venture capitalist, former trader, actually there are a number of these people in that type of business. An old woman with a ton of money who is just obsessed on the subject. It has just been one after the other, and now Leah Remini. In essence, he has followed the same philosophy as Leah Remini who – when I rejected her offer – went straight to Mike Rinder who took her up happily.
Tony Ortega profits on misery of others
And then there is Tony Ortega, who is the third part of the troika. Tony Ortega at one point was really sucking up to me because I was getting a lot of media attention and he wanted to get his media cred. And he flew all the way down to South Texas to my home. He had just got fired from the Village Voice which he had converted into this anti-Scientology platform for two years. In rare moment when he had a moment to be somewhat candid, he told me circumstances under which he left the Village Voice. And the circumstances he said – “you know, this can’t go anywhere,” but what happened was that the Village Voice had been accused, and in fact had been investigated by law enforcement, of human trafficking, and supporting the child sex slave industry, by way of its Back Pages ads. And Ortega told me that Scientology had been exposing that and the problem is that Scientology was more accurate than anybody thought; and that, in fact, the Village Voice was almost exclusively by that human trafficking operation and that there were profits beyond that. And so the owners, now that Scientology was exposing it and now that law enforcement was investigating it, decided they had to get rid of Tony Ortega because he was just obsessed with Scientology and that was keeping them focused on him and their operation. So, they needed to get rid of him. So, in order to do that, and to extract his cooperation in keeping quiet about what he knew…which is interesting because Ortega is the first guy to accuse anyone who does go after Scientology of being bought off…Ortega literally agree to cover it up and obstruct justice for a payout of essentially a two-year buy-out deal. They paid him enough to where he could literally do nothing for two years but go out and write a book about Scientology so he could begin with some foundation of credibility upon which to continue his career which had had turned into trashing Scientology.
Sum up
So with all three of the troika I have had personal experience with which tells me the primary motivation is money.
Mark Rathbun: A key part of the anti-Scientology narrative as partially authored by Lawrence Wright, continuously published by Tony Ortega, endlessly repeated by Mike Rinder and other outlets on the troll farms, is: ‘Dang, we had Scientology – the FBI was right on them yet they got saved by this thorny Constitution interpreted by limp-wristed liberal justices of the Ninth Circuit.’ That literally is an invented narrative on several levels. The first level is this, if you read the opinion you don’t need the Constitution, you don’t even need a constitutional analysis. First of all, the Ninth Circuit’s statement of the constitutional protections afford to religion is absolutely accurate. That it was applied to Scientology is absolutely nothing new. It has been consistently applied by courts for decades. So, there is no news there. But, if you read the opinion, the court did not even need the Constitution. It found on a factual basis, if you literally broke down the facts, it didn’t even need the Constitution, because they found facts didn’t support the civil wrongs that were alleged. Now, we know that the FBI investigation was prompted by the Headleys and really that was the core of their case. The court said ‘factually’ they don’t have a case. Factually. Now, the problem is compounded. As early as April 2010 the only significant ‘defector’ from high up in Scientology who said anything after 2090 was John Brouseau. And I arranged for John Brouseau to speak with the FBI. And John Brouseau told the FBI, “I have seen no violence on behalf of David Miscavige or anybody else at the upper levels of Scientology. I have seen no evidence of anything they call the ‘hole’ for the several years that I have been there – since most of these people (who had already spoke to the FBI) left the church.” None of the stuff that was the advertised crux of the FBI investigation existed. The only percipient witness, the only person who was in a position to know and a position to see – who was speaking to the FBI on behalf of the complainants (the Headleys), said ‘there’s no there there.’ And that in effect was the end of the FBI investigation. The only conversations that I had with the FBI after that point (when Brouseau had testified) were about how to sting Scientology executives on a potential obstruction of justice rap. In other words, do that the FBI usually does to somebody in a white collar case. 88% or 90% of the time, when they are going after somebody in a white collar case, they get them covering up. I told them, ‘you can troll them.’ In FBI lingo, that is ‘sting them.’ Get them to do something stupid. And in fact the FBI engaged in it. And Scientology didn’t take the bait. And now even the sting was over by 2010. So, this whole narrative about how the Constitution saved Scientology from scrutiny by the FBI was entirely invented. Lawrence Wright said he was going to cover it in his (New Yorker) article because the FBI has a dismal record when it comes to dealing with “cults.” Wright said, “sometimes they need incentive.” So, clearly Wright was trying to give them a black eye to incentivize them to go after Scientology. It is quite the motivation of an unbiased journalist, right?
Moving On Up a Little Higher 