We’ve posted here a remarkable photograph of a man named John Coale, who was one of the few human beings in the stands at a notorious baseball game held recently in Baltimore, Maryland.
The game, played on April 28, was the first in Major League Baseball history that had no fans in attendance; ticket holders had been told not to come to the stadium while the city was still experiencing unrest during protests over the death of a man named Freddie Gray at the hands of Baltimore police. The Orioles jumped out to a 4-0 lead and eventually won the game 9-2. Journalists who covered it said it was one of the strangest events they’ve ever witnessed.
Why were we sending Coale a message? Well, for a number of reasons. Let us explain.
We were very interested when a profile of Coale appeared on April 12 in the Washington Post.
“A retired, once-flamboyant trial lawyer who made millions off the tobacco wars of the 1990s, Coale is using his private jet to ferry [former Maryland governor Martin] O’Malley around early nominating states as the still largely unknown Democrat weighs a long-shot presidential bid,” said the article. The piece also noted that Coale has favored both Republican and Democratic candidates with his support in the past, and that his friendship with O’Malley goes back many years.
Coale, in other words, is a well known attorney who likes to use his money to influence politics behind the scenes. He also happens to be married to Greta Van Susteren, the Fox News host. They are both longtime Scientologists.
We were disappointed that the Post ‘s otherwise very good piece left out a really interesting recent anecdote about Coale. On February 27, Washington Examiner reporter Eddie Scarry was covering the Conservative Political Action Conference, the annual confab that draws conservative political hopefuls and the press that covers them. In a series of tweets, Scarry said that while he was at CPAC he introduced himself to Coale, who then pulled Scarry “close to his face” and berated him for criticizing Scientology in print.
Greta Van Susteren's husband pulled me close to his face and said, "Nice bullshit article about Scientology. Get out of here." #CPAC2015
— Eddie Scarry (@eScarry) February 27, 2015
That surprised Scarry, who doesn’t write about Scientology. But he figured Coale must have been reacting to a tweet Scarry had put out. In the tweet, Scarry said something about New York Times columnist Joe Nocera writing about Alex Gibney’s film Going Clear and admitted that he, Scarry, was looking forward to seeing the film.
So for merely expressing that desire to see Gibney’s movie, Scarry got a face full of John Coale dressing him down at the CPAC gathering in February. We have a feeling that Coale in full intimidation mode is something to see.
That anecdote tended to cut against the Post ‘s profile, which played down Coale’s affiliation with Scientology: “Coale said that his religious beliefs don’t drive his politics and that O’Malley ‘didn’t seem to give a hell’ when he told him about them several years ago.”
The Post generally gave Coale’s Scientology involvement a pass, even though Coale’s Scientology history is actually pretty fascinating.
Back in 2009, Gawker’s John Cook wrote a great piece about Coale, who at that point was running Sarah Palin’s political action committee. Cook had dug up a 1986 Scientology document which showed that Coale had proposed a really clever and somewhat underhanded way for Scientology to increase its influence in Washington.
The language in the document indicated that Coale was well aware that Scientology, given its reputation, couldn’t be open about its aims, and needed to take a more subtle approach…
One of the main objectives which we have been working towards is to create a group which could be easily identified by Scientologists without involving any blatantly Scientology terms (such as “dianetics”), and which is general enough to allow for participation by non Scientologists as well.
The name for the group Coale came up with was pretty clever: Freedom, Liberty And Good Government Political Action Committee, or FLAGG PAC.
Non-Scientologists would see a patriotic name, but Scientologists would hear an echo of the organization’s headquarters in Clearwater, Florida, known as “Flag.”
See the genius of it? Scientologists could back politicians that forwarded their interests, and donations could be gathered from people who had no idea they were giving to a Scientology cause.
Alas, Coale told Cook that his proposal was a flop. Only a few people were apparently interested in donating any money, and so it never got off the ground. But the document is still a fascinating look into the way a determined Scientologist thinks. Coale isn’t the only one who has attempted to spread Scientology’s influence through carefully camouflaged front groups — the Citizens Commission on Human Rights, Narconon, the Foundation for a Drug-Free World, Youth for Human Rights and many more are all attempting to do just that with plenty of effort today.
And we know that Coale, at least at one time, tried to do a similar thing for Scientology in the political arena. But there’s so much more to know about John P. Coale and Scientology which outlets like the Post, for some reason, never get around to asking, and we just don’t understand why.
And that’s what our message to him was about.
The Maryland Stadium Authority confirmed for us that our message, asking about L. Ron Hubbard’s amazing drug technology, was delivered to Coale.
Sadly, we haven’t heard anything back from him. It turned out that the day after we messaged him, Coale went in for open heart surgery. But he’s doing better now, as you can see, and so we thought we had waited a suitable amount of time before going ahead with this story.
Coale is looking like he’s recovering nicely. But what we wanted to ask him about was another procedure he had done as a Scientologist. According to Scientology’s own Source magazine, issue 95, Coale completed an audited level called “New OT IV” in 1995.
Last year, with the help of Scientology tech experts Claire Headley and Bruce Hines, we described the wonders of New OT IV, which are spelled out in the writing of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard himself.
Although the previous level, “Operating Thetan Level Three,” or “OT III,” gets a lot more attention with its story about Xenu the galactic overlord made famous in a 2005 South Park episode, we think it’s a shame that OT IV doesn’t have its own notoriety.
You see, on OT III you might learn that you are not just one being but actually a collection of many, perhaps thousands, of unseen souls clustered together after being marooned on Earth in a genocidal act 75 million years ago, but on OT IV, you learn that there’s even more work than simply chasing away these “body thetans” or “BTs.” It turns out that your unseen body thetans also have drug histories, and it’s your job to get them all to go through some kind of rehab to dry out.
Now, before you scoff, we want to point out that this is not some religious ritual that we’re dishing on. We know some folks out there get uncomfortable with the idea that we’d describe the intimate details of a “religion” that is no more nutty than the others. (Or so someone always claims, without fail.)
But you’d be wrong about that. This is not religion we’re describing. This is inerrant scientific fact, and any honest Scientologist will tell you as much. When you are auditing New OT IV, you are not supposed to be praying or trancing or otherwise having a transcendent spiritual experience. L. Ron Hubbard described an actual state of reality — you have invisible ancient alien entities inside and hovering around you, and they have drug histories, and, at about $10,000 for the level, it is your task to determine those drug histories and dry out the junkies you have for space cooties.
Again, we will say to the doubters, this is scientific fact presented by Hubbard, and Scientology’s own publication demonstrates that John P. Coale completed this procedure on his way up the Bridge to Total Freedom, and at around the same time he was handling what he called the “mother of all lawsuits” against America’s tobacco companies. (How many of his body thetans were smokers, we have to wonder.)
And Hubbard is ready for your objection that you may not have used any drugs in this lifetime: “Maybe the guy has never taken LSD or Pheno-barbitol in his lifetime and doesn’t have any of that drug actually in his body. But the BT or cluster freewheeling through an incident containing the drug mocks up the apparency of the drug in the body, making the guy feel that he is on that drug.”
Hubbard’s jargon is a bit thick, but you get the idea — your current life is going to be affected by your unseen spirits re-experiencing their drug binges from millions or billions of years ago until you take care of it.
And, he spells out, your body thetans may be carrying around drug residues that we haven’t even invented in this solar system, so be prepared to restimulate the mother of all flashbacks.
Why, we have to wonder, is it not OK to ask John P. Coale, legal champion, stadium executive, jet travel supplier to presidential candidates, about his work putting his invisible space entities through drug rehab? Shouldn’t he have amazing stories to tell about it?
Come to think about it, isn’t treating billion-year-old invisible entities for drug abuse the kind of thing that ought to get some ratings on Fox News?
And we know just the host to put it on. According to Source magazine, Greta Van Susteren completed New OT IV in 1992. Her body thetans have been clean and sober for more than 20 years now. Isn’t that Emmy material?
At the least doesn’t she, and her husband, have the obligation, since they’ve completed Hubbard’s miracle cure, to warn the rest of us that what’s holding us down or harming our potential are the hits of super-outer-space blue meth our invisible E.T. passengers are still hopped up on, millions of millennia after doing them?
Come to think of it, doesn’t that explain Hannity?
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Lori Hodgson on the airwaves
Lori Hodgson will be talking about the way Scientology ripped apart her family today at 5:00 pm Eastern on WPIC-AM 790 in Pennsylvania.
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BOOK NOTES
NEW: Check out the interactive map to our ongoing tour.
We didn’t get a chance to include photos in our book, The Unbreakable Miss Lovely, so we’re posting them at the Underground Bunker. We’ve created a dedicated page for them, and we hope you go through them all, then come back here and tell us your thoughts!
Copies of the paperback version of ‘The Unbreakable Miss Lovely’ are on sale at Amazon. The Kindle edition is also available, and shipping instantly. Isn’t technology cool.
Our appearances…
June 11: New York City (with Paulette Cooper) We’re keeping the venue on the down-low at this point. If you’re interested in coming to this unique event — Paulette in New York talking about Scientology where her story began — drop us a line so we get an idea how many are coming.
June 20: Chicago (with Christian Stolte) The Annoyance Theater, 5pm: This event is SOLD OUT.
June 22: Toronto (with Paulette Cooper) Toronto Public Library, 40 Orchard View Blvd, 7:30 pm, sponsored by the Centre for Inquiry-Canada
June 23: Toronto (with Paulette Cooper) The “Getting Clear” conference
June 28: Clearwater, Florida (with Paulette Cooper) Clearwater Public Library, 2 pm
July 12: Washington DC, Center for Inquiry
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Posted by Tony Ortega on May 27, 2015 at 07:00
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Learn about Scientology with our numerous series with experts…
BLOGGING DIANETICS: We read Scientology’s founding text cover to cover with the help of LA attorney and former church member Vance Woodward
UP THE BRIDGE: Claire Headley and Bruce Hines train us as Scientologists
GETTING OUR ETHICS IN: Jefferson Hawkins explains Scientology’s system of justice
SCIENTOLOGY MYTHBUSTING: Historian Jon Atack discusses key Scientology concepts
PZ Myers reads L. Ron Hubbard’s “A History of Man” | Scientology’s Master Spies | Scientology’s Private Dancer
The mystery of the richest Scientologist and his wayward sons | Scientology’s shocking mistreatment of the mentally ill
The Underground Bunker’s Official Theme Song | The Underground Bunker FAQ
Our Guide to Alex Gibney’s film ‘Going Clear,’ and our pages about its principal figures…
Jason Beghe | Tom DeVocht | Sara Goldberg | Paul Haggis | Mark “Marty” Rathbun | Mike Rinder | Spanky Taylor | Hana Whitfield
