Rathbun is the most visible member of an “independence movement” that is splitting Scientology apart. He has participated in or masterminded several of the biggest legal and media offensives against church leader David [...]]]>

Much of our coverage of Scientology in the past three years has focused on former church executive Marty Rathbun, and for good reason.

Rathbun is the most visible member of an “independence movement” that is splitting Scientology apart. He has participated in or masterminded several of the biggest legal and media offensives against church leader David Miscavige. And he has also been the target of some of the strangest and most outrageous retaliation in the history of Scientology’s well-earned reputation for vengeance.

But, as we’ve pointed out many times, there is an essential contradiction in Rathbun’s current role as the Church of Scientology’s biggest critic: Before he was the target of the church’s legendary retaliation machine, he was the man at its helm.

Perhaps no other piece has taken on that paradox like Joel Sappell’s masterful new story — his first on Scientology in some twenty years — which appears this morning in Los Angeles magazine.

We were given a sneak peek at the article, which went live this morning at the magazine’s website.

In “The Tip of the Spear,” Sappell tells the story behind the story, describing what he and his partner Robert Welkos went through as they spent five years investigating Scientology, culminating in a legendary 24-part 1990 series in the Los Angeles Times. For most people reading at the time, the Sappell and Welkos series was the first time they learned of Scientology’s secret upper-level teachings about “Xenu” the galactic overlord, or that the church was now being led by a young high school dropout named David Miscavige.

In response, Scientology pulled statements from the series that, out of context, sounded positive, and plastered them on billboards around L.A. It was a typically over-the-top (and expensive) reaction from the church.

In the years since, Sappell and Welkos have talked about some of the strange harassment they experienced during their investigation. Sappell found himself being questioned for a nonexistent assault by the police. Welkos was pulled over by the California Highway Patrol after an anonymous caller accused him of driving erratically. Welkos also found pamphlets at his home from a nearby funeral home with messages that he should plan for his funeral. Both men discovered that illegal inquiries into their credit histories had been made. But most famous of all, Sappell’s dog, a German Shepherd named Crystal, suddenly exhibited signs that she’d been poisoned before he had to put her down. (Sappell reveals that he received a call from Judge Ronald Swearinger, who had heard about Sappell’s dog and suspected that someone from the Church of Scientology had drowned his collie. Swearinger presided over one of the most famous lawsuits against the church, brought by former member Lawrence Wollersheim.)

Was it all being done by the shadowy forces of Scientology’s covert operations team, the Office of Special Affairs and its private detectives?

A few months ago, Sappell realized that he finally had a chance to answer that question now that Marty Rathbun, once the church’s top enforcer, was out of the church and had become its biggest enemy.

So in October, Sappell traveled to Rathbun’s home in Ingleside by the Bay, a small town near Corpus Christi in South Texas. (Rathbun and his wife Monique tired of the constant church surveillance they were under in their Ingleside home and recently moved to a more secluded house near San Antonio.)

Sappell captures perfectly what it’s like to meet and talk with Rathbun, and how different he seems today compared to the menacing church executive he was in the 1980s…

He looks like a regular guy — cargo shorts, sandals, a well-worn plaid shirt covering a middle-age paunch. The last time I saw Rathbun he was in his twenties. His athletic six-foot frame was clad in the strange spit-and-polish mock Navy uniform of Scientology staffers, members of the so-called Sea Organization, or Sea Org — and he was glaring at me. Today he reminds me of a high school gym teacher. His blue eyes have a friendly crinkle at the corners as he smiles at me for the first time, ever.

But if Rathbun has aged and mellowed, he’s not as forthcoming as Sappell was hoping.

Sure, Rathbun tells Sappell that he was followed by church spies…

This “patina of terror,” Rathbun tells me, was Scientology’s desired impact. “You were everywhere,” he recalls as we drink water out of jam jars. “And it was really pissing off Miscavige… ‘Fucking weasel Sappell. Fat fuck Welkos.’ This is the way the guy talked.” The message, Rathbun says, was clear: “Crush them.”

But if Rathbun confirms for Sappell what he’s wondered all these years — yes, there was an active and large-scale harassment campaign intended to unsettle the two reporters — the former enforcer proves maddeningly vague when Sappell tries to pin him down on specifics.

When I ask about the private investigators who dogged us, he quickly asserts, “I never hired an investigator to investigate you.” A moment later, however, he concedes that what he means to say is that he never personally hired an investigator. He says the “intel” guys under him took care of that job for him. “It goes through that machine, and I’m just getting reports,” he says so matter-of-factly that we could have been talking about the weather or holiday plans.

At times during their conversation, Rathbun admits to things like getting copies of Sappell’s phone records — but only second- or third-hand, through the actions of operatives he had no involvement with. At other times, he says he would never have approved operations like the CHP stop of Welkos, but that it could have been done by underlings he had no control over. Rathbun seems to alternate between taking the blame for years of heinous activity, and wanting to be seen as blameless for it.

“Sometimes he seems to be having a dialogue between the new Marty and the old,” Sappell writes.

There was no question, Rathbun told him, that Miscavige had a special hatred for Sappell and Welkos, and held brainstorming sessions to come up with ways to derail their series.

But Sappell keeps pushing for more specific answers.

Like, did Scientology poison his dog or not?

Rathbun tells him that pets were off limits and there was no way that he would have had anything to do with harming Swearinger’s dog or Sappell’s. But once again, he hedges, saying that it could have been “third parties” that wanted the church to look bad — maybe even agents of the IRS.

Sappell finds that doubtful. And then Rathbun admits that he keeps a close watch on his own dog Chiquita with so much Scientology surveillance going on. “I don’t put it past the sons of bitches, you know what I mean?” Rathbun tells him.

If Sappell didn’t find all of the answers he was looking for when he went to Texas, he writes that he did find it exhilarating — and somewhat terrifying — to get back into a subject he thought he’d left behind years ago.

As he explains, when you investigate Scientology at this level, you aren’t putting only yourself at risk. Before he was sure he would take on this piece, he talked to his family, his old partner Bob Welkos, even his ex-wife, all of whom he knew might come under a new round of “noisy investigations” and harassment.

It was his ex-wife Linda who had helped him care for their dog when it suddenly took ill, and that’s what they talk about when he calls.

I begin to tear up. I tell her I’ve always felt guilty that my job may have brought harm to the dog we both loved. I thank her for taking such good care of Crystal. Tacitly I’m also thanking her for putting up with my obsessive pursuit of a story, for her patience, for talking to me now. Before saying good-bye, I make her promise she’ll call if she gets any uninvited visitors.

We got the feeling, reading the concluding paragraphs, that Sappell is still unsure of his decision, and wonders if some will see his new investigation, all these years later, as a waste of time.

We can only assure Sappell that we are grateful that he decided to return to the fray.

As for Rathbun, this isn’t the first time he has been taken to task for not saying as much as he might about the church’s covert operations under his guidance. (Some of our commenters relentlessly hammer him for not saying more, for example.)

But Rathbun has defended himself in the past by pointing out that he was very forthcoming with the FBI three years ago, and that it wasn’t his fault that the agency dropped its investigation of the church. And when, for the first time, Rathbun was put under oath recently, he spilled his guts about a years-long conspiracy by the church to corrupt Florida’s state courts system.

Is he still holding back more than he should? If so, is he protecting himself or playing some kind of elaborate poker game and holding his chips for when they might be most effective to gamble? Or was he, as he tells Sappell, a high level report-taker who didn’t always know the reprehensible things that were being done in the name of the church?

Whatever the truth, Marty Rathbun is a fascinating character who may have done more in the last three years to cripple the Church of Scientology’s seemingly indestructible vengeance apparatus than the press and other critics have managed in decades.

And for that, he is worth the kind of attention that he’s getting from journalists in the UK and Australia. And perhaps Joel Sappell will begin to make a larger American audience realize that something very odd and intriguing is happening down in Texas.

We’ve [...]]]>

Last night, the St. Petersburg, Florida CBS affiliate, WTSP, broke news that Marty Rathbun has made blockbuster allegations in sworn testimony that the Church of Scientology spent millions in an attempt to influence Florida judges as it was fighting the criminal investigation and then civil litigation following the 1995 death of church member Lisa McPherson.

We’ve talked to Rathbun about his testimony, we have a copy of his deposition, and we’ve also asked our legal department — Manhattan attorney Scott Pilutik — to give us his thoughts about these stunning new allegations that Scientology spent freely to influence judges in Florida.

First, some background: on October 31, Florida attorney Ken Dandar, who represented McPherson’s family in the wrongful death civil litigation, filed a federal lawsuit against the Church of Scientology and two of its attorneys, alleging that his civil rights were being trampled by Scientology through its manipulation of the state court system. Dandar claims that in a closed hearing scheduled for November 26, a Florida state judge will saddle Dandar with $1 million in court fees the church is asking for. In his federal lawsuit, Dandar is asking for a court injunction to stop the November 26 closed hearing.

To support his lawsuit, Dandar deposed Rathbun, who was once the second-highest ranking official in the church, and who oversaw the church’s fight against the criminal investigation into the McPherson death and then the wrongful death litigation. In other words, it was Rathbun’s job to strategize against the state investigators and Dandar. But now, Rathbun has provided startling testimony that tends to bolster Dandar’s position.

McPherson was a troubled church member who had a mental breakdown in 1995 in Clearwater, Florida and then was taken by Scientology officials to its spiritual mecca, the Fort Harrison Hotel, where she died 17 days later. Pinellas-Pasco medical examiner Joan Wood initially found the cause of McPherson’s death to be “undetermined.” But later, under intense media scrutiny and pressure by the church, she changed the finding to “accidental,” and the state dropped its criminal investigation. (Wood died in July 2011.)

Rathbun now alleges that the church influenced Wood through her attorney, Jeffrey Goodis, who was plied with Super Bowl tickets and other gifts by Scientology operatives. WTSP reported that Goodis denied Rathbun’s allegations.

Rathbun also testified that former state prosecutor Lee Fugate was hired by Scientology in order to hold “ex parte” meetings with judges — meetings, in other words, that were held outside the presence of Dandar and, Rathbun says, were intended to paint Dandar and his clients in the worst possible light for judges. (Fugate told WTSP that he cannot comment on a federal lawsuit.)

“Well, Fugate was, you know…he was convincing [Judge Robert] Beach this case had nothing to do with justice. It had nothing to do with recompense. It had to do with a bunch of money-hungry relatives who didn’t care about McPherson, with an ambulance-chasing attorney, and they’re going to tie up the courts, and this thing’s going to — you know, he got Beach on board to — to consider this case something that just ought to be settled because it’s all about the money,” Rathbun testified.

Rathbun also talked about stories we’ve covered before — that local Republican party operative Mary Repper was hired by the church to influence local pols by hosting parties that featured Scientology celebrities. And that Rathbun had said on camera that he destroyed evidence in the McPherson case while being supervised by church attorney Elliot Abelson. In all, Rathbun says, the church spent between $28 million and $30 million to fight the criminal and civil litigation.

WTSP reported that the church filed a “lawsuit” yesterday — we’re assuming they meant a motion — asking for Rathbun’s testimony to be stricken. An emergency hearing is scheduled in federal court for Monday.

We talked to Rathbun last night, asking him about making allegations about sitting and retired Florida judges and high-profile attorneys supposedly being in the pocket of Scientology. Was he concerned at all about the consequences?

“I’m trembling in my boots,” he said sarcastically. “I told Dandar they’re going to have to think long and hard what to do about me. I’m best when people are questioning me. If they cross-examine me, it’s going to get five times as bad.”

Twice previously this year, Rathbun has been involved in Scientology lawsuits — he was prepared to testify on former church executive Debbie Cook’s behalf in a suit brought against her by the church, and he was a party in a suit brought against the church by two of its former private investigators. In both cases, the prospect of Rathbun testifying against his former employer loomed as Scientology settled its case against Cook and is still negotiating an end to the suit brought by the private eyes.

“I think they’re ultimately going to have to back out of this thing too,” Rathbun says. “They’ll at least drop the damages against Dandar.”

That’s still to be seen. But Rathbun’s testimony certainly has raised the profile of a lawsuit that was not garnering much attention until last night.

We asked attorney Scott Pilutik to read Rathbun’s testimony and give us his thoughts…

To start with, let me disclaim that Ken Dandar is a friend and that I worked for Ken in a relatively minor capacity on the Lisa McPherson case. Not that I’m commenting on this to advocate for him, but for credibility reasons I need to put my bias on the table.

You probably don’t need a legal expert to tell you that these are serious allegations, ranging from the outright criminal to serious ethical violations, by lawyers, judges, and whatever manner of political creature Mary Repper can be said to be.

Some of this we’ve heard before, such as Elliot Abelson ordering the destruction of evidence.

But this is the first time we’ve heard of Joan Wood’s lawyer Jeffrey Goodis accepting what would appear to be outright bribes in exchange for what I’m guessing was his agreement to exert pressure on his client Wood to change her cause of death determination. Too bad Wood isn’t around to answer whether Goodis disclosed to her the thousands of dollars in perks he was receiving.

He alleges Wally Pope, Ed Armstrong, and especially Lee Fugate having countless ex parte communications with judges presiding over cases involving Dandar and Scientology. An ex parte communication is when one party to a lawsuit speaks with the judge out of earshot of the opposing party, about the case. The trickiness here is that Marty doesn’t quite allege that an ex parte communication took place about the case because everyone involved was sophisticated enough to recognize that that just isn’t done.

What Marty’s alleging, rather, is a conspiracy to engage in ex parte communications not actually concerning particular cases but nevertheless purposed on influencing those cases’ outcomes. Actually, he alleges that Fugate deliberately communicated with Beach about the case Beach was about to preside over. The response will be, I’m guessing, that these allegations are smoke, that lawyers and judges talk about lots of things, including other lawyers, and that Marty’s allegations need to be far more specific. Oh, and they’ll obviously go into full-metal Marty character assassination mode as well.

Marty implies that Judge Beach actively sought, on Scientology’s behalf, to get assigned to the McPherson case so that Scientology might have better luck than they were having with Judge Schaeffer (which, allegations aside, is precisely what happened). This may be the most serious allegation here.

Marty’s testimony is somewhat scattered and difficult to pin down since he’s mostly on the fringes of the allegations, not often a direct witness to it. He’d be more helpful to Dandar if he discusses particular ways in which he himself conspired and carried out actions to scuttle Dandar’s cases. But the testimony does ring true, at least to anyone who watched it go down at the time or who cares to look now.

The good news for Dandar is that Marty’s testimony supports his civil rights violation complaint, whereas before this Dandar’s complaint was mostly a recitation of the litigation history from the McPherson to Brennan cases. But for the purposes of a motion to dismiss, surely forthcoming, Marty’s testimony must be taken as true, and to the extent that testimony suggests all manner of impropriety and illegality willfully committed by both lawyers and judges in pursuit shutting down cases brought by Dandar-represented plaintiffs, Dandar could, and should survive that motion to dismiss.

Whether Marty’s testimony stands up is another question, but one we’ll hopefully hear answered. Perhaps too Dandar will serve up Rinder’s testimony next? This could certainly use bolstering.

 
We asked Rathbun about that: Would Dandar be deposing Mike Rinder, Scientology’s former executive who ran its legal affairs wing?

“I think he already has,” Rathbun responded, and he pointed to the confident way that Dandar spoke in the WTSP report.

“I think he just set them up,” Rathbun added, referring to Scientology asking to strike his testimony. “Dandar has Rinder’s deposition, corroborating me, in his back pocket.”

We’ll be checking on that as soon as we get a chance. In the meantime, take a look at Rathbun’s testimony and give us your thoughts…

Marty Rathbun Deposition (Dandar lawsuit)

On September 30, Poore became the latest veteran church member to declare his defection at the website of former high-ranking Scientology executive Marty Rathbun. Since 2009, Rathbun’s blog has become the place where more and more Scientologists are [...]]]>

We talked this week with yet another longtime Scientologist who is quitting the church, 35-year member Steve Poore.

On September 30, Poore became the latest veteran church member to declare his defection at the website of former high-ranking Scientology executive Marty Rathbun. Since 2009, Rathbun’s blog has become the place where more and more Scientologists are publicly declaring that they’re fed up with church leader David Miscavige and are going “independent” — still adhering to the philosophies of L. Ron Hubbard, but ditching the official, corporate church.

One of the first to use Rathbun’s site for that purpose was a British man named Martin Padfield, who in 2009 declared, “I recognise that there is every likelihood contents of my ethics or PC folders will be used to nullify and denigrate me now, and I will take that risk.”

Three years later, Padfield was profiled by the London Evening Standard yesterday as ex-Scientologists in England were preparing to protest the church’s big annual International Association of Scientologists (IAS) gala in that country.

Like many other Scientologists who have defected in recent years, Padfield’s experiences are shocking: he was a member of the Sea Org (Scientology’s hardcore elite who sign billion-year contracts) and was punished in the Rehabilitation Project Force, the Sea Org’s prison detail.

But in some ways, the more recent exit of Steve Poore should have Scientology leader David Miscavige even more worried.

Unlike Padfield, or Rathbun, or other former Sea Org members and executives who were either imprisoned or punished in degrading ways, Poore reflects a very different kind of Scientology experience. And for someone like him to give up on Miscavige in what he calls a “tidal wave” of dissent seems especially ominous.

Originally from Iowa, Poore ran away from home at 16 to live in California. In 1973, he says, he picked up a copy of L. Ron Hubbard’s Dianetics and thought parts of it seemed particularly useful. But it wasn’t until 1977, after he’d moved back to Iowa, that he started taking a Scientology communication course in Omaha, Nebraska.

He then jumped in with enthusiasm, and by 1981 had rocketed up “the Bridge” to Operating Thetan Level Five. In 1982 and 1983, Poore had only a short experience — just three months — in the Sea Org, working for the church. And although he never went above OT VI, for years he was an “OT Ambassador” for the church. (According to a leaked 2009 description of OT Ambassador duties, these highly visible members “help others up to the level of OT.” The highest state that a Scientologist can achieve is OT VIII.) Poore was a particularly valuable OT Ambassador because he was out in the business community, promoting Hubbard’s ideas even to companies that had nothing to do with Scientology.

A business consultant in Burbank, Poore operated under the WISE umbrella (World Institute of Scientology Enterprises) and paid a percentage of his income to the church front group.

Between his courses, donations to the IAS, and WISE royalties, Poore estimates that over his 35-year career he paid the church more than half a million dollars.

Loyal. Productive. An OT Ambassador. A “public” Scientologist in every sense of the word. But today, this is how Steve Poore talks when we asked him if church members are aware of the media firestorm consuming Scientology this year…

“I’m used to the media criticism of Scientology. That’s fine. But when you have corruption at the top of the organization, spearheaded by David Miscavige, who is psychotic and has hijacked the management of the church and assigned himself sole dictator — with Hubbard sidelined — then this stuff is becoming more and more obvious,” he says.

The current crisis of faith has led other very visible members to leave — people like Debbie Cook, Karen de la Carriere, and Mark Shreffler who, like Poore, put out long, scathing messages for their fellow church members to read.

“When you see people like me, a staunch supporter for 35 years, suddenly announce that they no longer support the church — you just didn’t see that even five years ago,” he says.

The exodus has been startling. But it’s been happening for several years, and we had to ask: why doesn’t Miscavige do something about it? Why does he seem to keep pushing his pet projects — the IAS, “Ideal Orgs,” and fundraising for the Super Power Building — which are pushing so many loyal church members away?

“Miscavige, being a suppressive psychotic, cannot afford the luxury of self-inspection,” Poore says.

The Scientology leader instead continues to tell his flock that church expansion is growing faster than ever.

But Poore, like others who have left recently, says he doesn’t believe Miscavige’s pronouncements about church growth.

“The only thing that’s straight up and vertical is the number of enemies he creates every single day,” he says. “Then the enemy eventually becomes everybody.”

But Poore adds that Miscavige is quite aware of the direction things are going in.

“Miscavige is living a nightmare. He is scared to his core. He’s really someone to be pitied,” he says.

An observation from here in the bunker: Poore’s strong words make us realize that not only are more people leaving Scientology, but they’re coming out ready to talk publicly almost right away. In the past, it could take years of “decompression” before a former church member was ready to take the risk to speak with the media or make themselves a target for Scientology’s legendary retaliation machine.

We asked Poore if he was vulnerable to “fair game” attacks.

“I don’t have problems with the disconnection stuff. But I certainly have empathy for my friends that do,” he says, explaining that he has no family members still in the church, so Scientology’s policy of forcing members to “disconnect” from defectors won’t really have much effect on him. Also, he points out, his clients are not Scientology businesses. (When Debbie Cook announced her problems with Miscavige’s leadership on New Year’s Eve, she suddenly lost about half of her business as her Scientologist clients quickly disconnected from her.)

Not only is Poore not fearing reprisals, he’s already thinking ahead to making legal moves of his own to get back some of the money he put on account for services and now can’t use (about $15,000 of the half million he gave the church).

“I feel betrayed,” he says, complaining that money he had donated over the years went to Miscavige’s pet projects rather than to the good of the church.

He also had this to say about government inaction over the many controversies surrounding the church:

“The government doesn’t need to stop the Church of Scientology. Miscavige is doing that.”

We sent a request for a statement about Steve Poore’s defection to Karin Pouw, Scientology’s spokeswoman. As usual, she didn’t respond. So we’ve put together her statement for her, since it’s always the same anyway…

“Mr. [Poore] is a member of a small group of bitter apostates who are anti-Scientologists that seek to spread false information.”