‘Yeah.’
‘It seems to me that you’re the one who’s gone a bit creepy.’
‘It’s a question. All right, so who followed us yesterday?’
‘I have no idea!’
‘When we arrived at L.A.?’
‘I have no idea.’
‘OK.’
‘I mean you’ve done pieces all over the world with all kinds of somewhat notorious people. Is it possible that somebody else maybe was following you? I don’t know. I don’t even know what you’re talking about or how you could characterise it as being followed.’
I challenged him to deny that the six people we thought had followed us so far in LA had nothing to do with Scientology. (The six were the first man at the hire car place who was unusually interested in our whereabouts, two men each in the Sidona and the Range Rover and the black guy in the cowboy hat.)
‘I don’t know who you’re talking about,’ said Tommy, all unblushing innocence.
‘There are no private eyes?’
‘I don’t know who you’re talking about.’
‘There are no Scientologists?’
‘I don’t know who you’re talking about, and I’m happy to look into it but standing right here I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘OK, all right,’ I said, with the maximum amount of ungraciousness.
‘It’s easy to be a bit paranoid.’
‘Nothing to do with you?’
‘Anyway…’
‘I understand.’
So did the Church of Scientology spy on the BBC?
Welcome to the strange world of Sci’gy-Leaks, an extraordinary cache of 25 pages of emails and BlackBerry messages which three years later fell into the wrong hands: mine. They appear to record in real-time a three-way conversation between Tommy Davis and Mike Rinder and the Leader’s Communicator, Lou Stuckenbrock, about handling BBC Panorama. Taken together, Sci’gy-Leaks paint an extraordinarily weird picture of the Church.
The Church of Scientology strongly deny that the Sci’gy-Leaks are genuine.
The previous day, the Saturday, we had spent with the husband and wife heretics, Donna Shannon and Mike Henderson, the evening concluding with Tommy and Mike waiting for us at our hotel at midnight. The first Sci’gy-Leaks message is from Tommy to Lou on Sunday, March 18th, 2007 and is headed ‘Hotel debrief’: ‘Last night Mike [Zombie Mike Rinder, the hollow-cheeked Australian Scientologist and Tommy’s deputy] and I went to Sweeney’s hotel around 10pm and called him and told him I was at his hotel and wanted to see him immediately. He hung up on me. I checked their rooms and found out that they were not at the hotel. We had Jesse Radstrom’ – the black-clad cameraman - ‘with us from Gold to shoot it. Sweeney, Mole and their camera man showed up around 12:30am.
‘He [Sweeney] said that he had never told me what hotel he was staying in and that means that we are spying on the BBC and that he thinks that is very weird. I said that is ridiculous and that this is a small town and Englishman with TV cameras stand out like mad and we saw them interviewing the Shannons and walking around flag with them so that is utterly nuts.
‘I then started tearing into him (not swearing as the cameras were rolling) and the hotel manager asked us to step outside. We continued out there.
‘I told him that I was shocked at the unprofessional and juvenile way in which he was conducting himself and this program… I then said that he had come all the way here to Clearwater and was offered a tour of our facilities, the largest most significant Church facilities in the world and yet declined an offer to see or tour those facilities and instead was spending his entire day with Donna Shannon and Mike Henderson, two ex-Scientologists with a clear axe to grind.
‘During the confrontation in front of Sweeney’s hotel Sweeney said to me that Donna had told him that she did hard labor together with me when she was in the Sea Org and that she witnessed me get my hair pulled, my ears pulled and my face ripped off. This did not faze me at all and I calmly told him that I have no idea what she is talking about and that it is a complete and total lie and I could easily produce multiple witnesses to attest to that fact. He seemed somewhat shocked at hearing this.’
I do remember being taken aback – shocked seems to be over-egging the pud somewhat – at the force of Tommy’s denial that his hair and ears had been pulled and his immediate upgrading of the stakes, that he could provide multiple witnesses for his version of events against Donna’s. The striking thing is that this is a fine detail I would not have recalled had I not seen Sci’gy-Leaks.
‘I kept at him about how disingenuous and disgusting this all was…’
Tommy referred back to our meetings in England and the dispute over whether they had set three conditions or not: ‘I told him that is not what I said and that he is again twisting what occurred in the meeting and that I would be happy to provide him with a transcript of what occurred as he may recall we recorded all of it. This seemed to shut him up.’
Neither Tommy nor the Church of Scientology ever did provide a transcript of the meetings in England. I remain un-shut up.
‘At this point a CW [Clearwater] Police car showed up having been called by the hotel manager (she overreacted to our dueling cameras and heated discussion).’
The hotel manager was doing her job.
‘The cop asked who we were. Sweeney said he was from the BBC and we never got a chance to say who we were… The officer came back out and said that the hotel would prefer that we disperse and not continue. I thanked him and said that is not a problem and that we work and live around here and certainly don’t want to disturb anyone. I turned to Sweeney and said “we are done” and walked away. He called after me repeating out loud the demands that he has mocked up we made of him “that we won’t refer to you as a cult”, “that we won’t interview critics” and that was all.
‘We continued surveilling them and saw that they did not leave for Vegas this morning.’
On the face of it, Tommy’s repeated denials of the Church of Scientology spying on the BBC were not true. He was lying.
‘However it was so down to the wire with so limited flights that we did not want to take the chance of them flying out later in the day and getting to Vegas ahead of us. For this reason Mike [Rinder] and Kevin Caetano went ahead to Vegas and will be landing there in the next few hours. Kirsten and I are still here in CW and are actually now at Plant City where the new Test Center in opening. Sweeney is here.’
The second message of the day comes from Mike Rinder: ‘To: Lou, Dear Sir…’
All of the messages from the Leader’s Office come from Lou, the Communicator, but in an extremely masculine tone that suggests they are the direct word of the Leader. The Communicator is always addressed as ‘Sir’ but this is standard policy, set down by Hubbard, in Scientology, that all higher ranks are addressed as ‘Sir’ even if they are female.
Mike continues: ‘I am now on Blackberry and saw the cc you sent. They are going to SFO [San Francisco] not LV [Las Vegas]. TD [Tommy Davis] is enroute now to SFO and I am going at 10pm and will know where they go. I am getting the debriefs put together and overall planning done in coordination with Bob and OSAI [Office of Special Affairs International]. Ml Mike.’
The boss and/or his Communicator, Lou, is not a happy bunny: ‘Why is Tommy going to SFO? Areb’t they going to say you are following them. Are you this fing nuts (beyond just sp)? Please clarify. Please tell me he’s not on their plane!’
Fing nuts is short for fucking nuts – as the messages spool out abuse from the top becomes common. At no time do Tommy and Mike return the abuse. SP means Suppressive Person, a baddie.
Why does the Church’s leader have his own personal Communicator, Lou Stuckenbrock? Why can’t he communicate himself? In 1977 the FBI raided the Church of Scientology and the investigation got very close to Mr Hubbard. His wife, Mary Sue Hubbard, ended up going to jail, so ex-members of the Church say that the role of the Communicator is a deliberately constructed cut-out
. Sci’gy-Leaks read as if Miscavige says something, his word is recorded and transcribed and put into the third person, so there is always a measure of deniability. This use of a private office cut-out so that politicians, for example, can have plausible deniability is common practice in Westminster and Washington DC.
It’s conceivable that the Sci’gy-Leaks cache could be fake, an elaborate fraud. They are written, pitch-perfect, in Scientology-ese, which only someone immersed in the Church for decades could write. There are, of course, ex-members of the Church who could do that. What seems to me much more difficult to fake is the seemingly real-time reaction to events and actions that we took part in. Reality is imperfect, so it strikes me as evidence pointing to Sci’gy-Leaks being genuine that the BlackBerry machines are on different time settings and time zones, that the spelling is often grotesquely askew, and that real life panics and cock-ups do occur which strike me as beyond the imagination of even the cleverest fraudster. Still, both possibilities should be born in mind by the reader: that Sci’gy-Leaks are genuine; that they are fake.
The Church deny that they are genuine.
Twelve minutes later, Mike replies to the Communicator: ‘Dear Sir He is definitely not on the same flight. He is going via Chicago to Oakland as the only available flight. There is no plan to do anything with them but to be available there in case (there may be internet chat on who they see) or they may try to go to one of the orgs there as we showed them SFO, SNC and Gatos. If not, then it is easy to get down to LA. ML Mike.’
The next message is a terse thank you. That Monday we arrive in San Francisco. The Communicator demands of Mike at half past midnight: ‘Well. Anything?’
Mike replies: ‘Dear Sir Nothing yet. My plane just landed in SFO. They arrive at 0130. TD arrives at 0900. Wont know anything other than where theyre staying until morning. Ml mike.’
Tailing people is a sleep-killer. It was past midnight and Mike was at the airport, waiting for us.
A few minutes later the Communicator snaps back: ‘What are you going to do? Act like you “guessed” they were there? Or, if you understand TD acronyms, BT?’
TD stands for ‘Technical Dictionary’, Hubbard’s very own version of SciSpeak; BT means, according to the Xenu-directory.com glossary: ‘Body Thetan. Usually plural. Evil spirits which need to be exorcized, as in: “OT5 consists entirely of running out BTs; what a bore.”’ These are well known terms inside Scientology. The tone of this message is bullying.
At one am, Mike replies: ‘Dear Sir. I am not planning to BT. Someone is speaking to them to find out their plans and whoever they plan on talking to is likely to say something on the internet thst wld become public knowledge. And of course if they show up at an org this will be known. No plan to contact them untll we have overt data. Will have moe data when they arrive. Ml mike’
The phrase ‘overt data’ is a give-away: we were the subject of a covert investigation. The Communicator pings back at 0117am: ‘Thank you. You realize this hasd gone totally out of control and you and Tommy have created the usual out of control sit - right down to Tommy wanting to ignore everything the boss said and just say “what’s happening” (the ballroom). [The ballroom? I have no idea that this means.] ‘The boss view is that he spent 20 years doing this so others could get tech and orgs show on the rails and they did zero. And you thought the battles were the game, giving it all to him. He’s not going to do it anymore as nobody will go free and there will be no orgs. Your contribution to LrHs birthday (a5 tommys) was to enturbulate. Period. He had a month to work on videos and refused it. He is you.’
He is you? What on earth does the Communicator mean?
Five and a bit hours later – no-one seems to get much sleep in the Church – Mike replies: ‘Dear Sir - I totally realize this and intend to deal with this so it doesnt create further enturbulation. I know we did nothing on March 13 [we met Mike and Tommy on that day] and that this is the continuing treason. The people arrived sfo and drove to Berkeley and are in on on hotel.’
This is a spying operation on a grand scale, conducted across 2,000 miles of the continental United States. Mike’s admission of a continuing treason seems to be comically over-the-top and self-denigrating. But he knew roughly what we were planning to do in the morning: ‘to interview two people tomorrow but we dont know their names yet though suspect one is the woman who stirred uo the SFO Chronicle earlier about NN [Narconon] in thhe schools as she lives nearby and was on on student of Margaret Singer. We have the DAs on her and Singer.’
‘DA’ means ‘Dead Agent’, to spread malicious lies and rumours about an anti-Scientologist person or organization in an attempt to discredit them. LRH’s policy on “dead agenting” appeared in a 1974 bulletin: ‘The technique of proving utterances false is called “DEAD AGENTING”. It’s in the first book of Chinese espionage. When the enemy agent gives false data, those who believed him but now find it false kill him - or at least cease to believe him. So the PR slang for it is ‘Dead Agenting.’”
Singer is a reference to Margaret Singer, a feisty academic who took on all manner of cults including the Moonies, Falun Gong, Hare Krishna and Heaven’s Gate and wrote Cults In Our Midst. She suffered hate-mail, had live rats released into her house and travelled under an assumed name. She never backed down. Her view on cults was straightforward and unapologetic: cults ‘prey on the most lonely, vulnerable people they can find, cage you with your own mind through guilt and fear, cut you off from everyone…they don’t need armed guards to keep you. Liars, tricksters, it’s been the same ever since Eve got the apple, and I doubt it will ever change. They’re all basically, really the same, con men.’
At the age of 80, she frightened off a stalker – not from the Church of Scientology – who had been leaving menacing notes in her mailbox: ‘I’ve got a 12-gauge shotgun up here, sonny, and you’d better get off my porch, or you’ll be sorry!’ she hollered out the window. ‘And tell your handlers not to send you back!’ By the time we landed in San Francisco, Singer had been dead for two years. Only the Church of Scientology would seek to ‘Dead Agent’ the dead.
Mike continued: ‘We will ensure the orgs are briefed on them possibly trying to come in. TD arrives at 11am and will then have the full plan in coordination with Bob [Fireman Bob, who, it seems, can do no wrong] who is moving forward in UK. Ml’
The Communicator replied nine hours after his previous message, presumably after a good night’s sleep: ‘Thanks. Still means nothing and I don’t know why TD would take until 11 to get across country and why you are in sfo except if they try to ambush org (but org could have been briefed and told to chuck them) if they showed up. But that’s my dub in as you and TD just are dangerous environ and REFUSE to give specifics (like maybe there is a reason you are there?)’
Mike replied: ‘Dear Sir. There were no other available flights and they had a 6hr wait In chicago. The original reason for going to sfo was to be there if we needed to confront them if needed. We did not know what their plans were. We now know they are planning to do two interviews today and catch a flight to la tomorrow morning.’
How they knew our schedule, we do not know. We would have been wary about communicating our plans with anyone outside the team, and I trust everyone in the team, absolutely.
‘They have been meeting with bruce hines this morning.’
More evidence, if it were needed, that they were spying on us.
‘We are leaving people here to track their activities. The org DSAs have been briefed as well and are ready to handle them if they show up. we are going to la to prepare for them and get our complaint to the bbc prepared and coordinated with walsh’ [Bill Walsh, the American lawyer we met at Saint Hill] and uk counsel as they are way out of line. We have a 2:45 flight. Ml Mike’
The Communicator replied: ‘Tks. I hope they have all the dope on Hines. What’s so bad is none of these people know anything happening anywhere in PT in the church.’
PT stands for Present Time, the here and now. The Xenu di
rectory gives a useful example: ‘SPs are stuck in an incident in the past; they need to be brought up to PT.’
Mike replied: ‘Dear Sir, we have the da [Dead Agent file] on hines and will get this to sweeney as he took him in front of sfo org to shoot shots of him so hines involvement is now overtly [as opposed to covertly] known. Clearly they are only interested in people who have allegations to make and no actual data and this is part of his gross bias.’
Mike continued: ‘We are in LA and now going through the transcripts of the statements made by js [John Sweeney] when he was confronted by tommy at the plant city opening and when he was interviewing shawn Lonsdale. I have never seen so many overtly bigoted and biased statements made by a reporter… We are going to lay out exactly how to further mess up his plans on wednesday as he expects us to refuse to show him anything. But we can force him to shoot our facilities. We can also line up interviews that he will likely refuse (on principal he is saying that anything we give him is just our propaganda) and we will use that against him. If he does interview them them they will da [Dead Agent] his lines.’
And lo, exactly that came to pass: they bombarded us with interviewees. It seemed wrong to us to say no, so we interviewed all of the people they put in front of our cameras but the cumulative effect was boring telly and mind-shattering.
‘We are putting this together at osai’ – the Church’s version of CIA HQ, Langley - ‘and will send a complete report at the end of the nite as I know you hve only been getting bits and pieces on blackberry. This is ok ML Mike’
The Communicator asks for the number where the two men are working. Then Tommy joins the conversation, messaging Lou: ‘Dear Sir, I apologize for the generality.’
Generality means waffle.
‘We are back in LA now and at OSA Int and going through everything - the transcripts from the UK, the BBC broadcasting guidelines, the legal data we have inn the invest results.’
The Church of Fear: Inside The Weird World of Scientology Page 12
