Investigative Reporting in the Public Interest www.freedommag.

org
 WATCH
CNN AC360 | A HISTORY OF LIES

ANDERSON COOPER
A HISTORY OF LIES
Investigative Reporting in the Public Interest

SPECIAL REPORT

www.freedommag.org

Freedom Magazine presents this 360-degree view

of Anderson Cooper’s own brand of journalism.
It’s the story of how Anderson’s true agenda got in the way of fairness,
accuracy and the truth.
It’s a fast style of slipshod reporting that would turn
any self-respecting tabloid green with envy.
But how Anderson blurs the line between anchorman
and cyberterrorist apologist—that’s a story only Freedom can tell.

2 | FREEDOM
PICTURES DON’T LIE
Videos also available online at www.freedommag.org/videos
SPECIAL REPORT
ANDERSON COOPER: A HISTORY OF LIES

4 | Editorial: Anderson Furrows his Brow

6 | Cover Story: The Least Trusted Name in News
AC360: See Anderson Cooper Run for Ratings
10 | A Timeline of CNN’s “Investigation”
aka: Running Away from the Subject of Their Program
16 | Anderson Cooper: By the Numbers
17 | Tricks of the Trade
How Anderson Cooper Tries to Sound Learned
But Is Actually a Hack
20 | CooperSpeak: How Terrorists Become “Protesters”
22 | How Anderson Cooper Torpedoed an Interview
24 | The AC360 “Dead” Blog
26 | A Liar is a Coward; A Perjurer is a Criminal
38 | A Brief Chronology of Monumental Disasters
The Career of “Kingpin” Rathbun
44 | Marty Rathbun Public Announcement
46 | Heeeeere’s Marty!
48 | Postcards from the Edge or Marty Takes a Holiday
50 | Marty Rathbun: A History of Hidden Violence
53 | The “Kinky” Relationship, Rathbun & Rinder
55 | Marty Rathbun vs. Mike Rinder
56 | The Confessions of Marty Rathbun
as Told by His Alter Ego
58 | The Rathbun Family: Madness, Mayhem
and Mysterious Death
61 | Brother, Can You Spare Some Time?
62 | Mike Rinder: A Walking “Hate Crime”
67 | Rinder: The Lady-Killer
68 | Mike Rinder’s Live-in Media Puppet, Christie Collbran
70 | ZZZzzzZZZ… It’s Mike “Rip Van” Rinder
74 | Mike Rinder: Turning to the Dark Side
76 | We’re on the Free Highway to Hell
79 | Rinderama… Exposed
80 | Tom DeVocht: Consummate Con Man
82 | Amy Scobee: Sex, Lies and the Blogosphere
84 | Steve Hall: The Man Who Tells It
Straight From the Straitjacket
85 | Jeff Hawkins: Sympathy for the Devil
86 | Damned in Their Own Words
90 | Love/Hate
94 | LIVE from Anderson’s Dressing Room!
95 | Defrocked Apostates: The Road to Redemption
CNN AC360 | A HISTORY OF LIES
Anderson Furrows
His Brow
A
nderson Cooper: “Guys, I appreciate you talking again.
Thank you very much.”
Anti-Scientology apostates (more or less in unison):
“Thank you, Anderson. Thank you.”
Thus Anderson Cooper closed out his series on the Church
of Scientology, and thus his apostates bid him farewell. In
contrast to the anchorman’s steely-eyed interrogation of Church
officials, Cooper’s last exchange with this self-proclaimed posse
of tough guys is strangely intimate, almost touching. He wears
blue jeans. He listens to their woes with sympathetically
furrowed brow. He carefully prefaces every question with a first
name:
“Marty, why didn’t you...?” or “Jeff, why would...”
And they respond in kind: “You know, Anderson, you asked
about...”
There is even a gentle nod to an apostate heard in absentia
and he is simply “Mike.”
So, yes, Anderson has come to believe in his “guys” and they,
in turn, believe in Anderson.
But what’s absolutely unbelievable is that Cooper thinks he
can get away with this hogwash and pull off what even the
greatest hucksters in history failed to accomplish, i.e., fool all
the people all the time.
So in the immortal words of Cooper himself, let’s start
“keeping ‘em honest” by presenting his Posse of Apostates as
they truly are:
© 2010 Church of Scientology International. All Rights Reserved. Grateful acknowledgement is made to L. Ron Hubbard Library for permission to reproduce selections from the copyrighted works of
L. Ron Hubbard. FREEDOM, SCIENTOLOGY, DIANETICS, LRH, the SCIENTOLOGY SYMBOL and the OT SYMBOL are trademarks and service marks owned by Religious Technology Center and are
used with its permission. Scientologist is a collective membership mark indicating membership in a Church and the Church membership services of the affiliated Churches and Missions of Scientology.
4 | FREEDOM
Marty Rathbun, a former external affairs officer, removed
from authority within the Church seven years ago for gross
malfeasance and violent behavior. To be sure, he is a self-
proclaimed psychotic with a long history of violence. He
committed 50 separate acts of assault against co-workers. He is
also potentially homicidal and, in fact, nearly killed a man with
his fists. That he models himself after an ax-wielding lunatic
from a Stephen King horror story is likewise a matter of record,
and he is not joking when announcing his appearance with a
trademark “Heeeeere’s Marty!”
Mike Rinder, another erstwhile external affairs officer removed
from post for gross malfeasance and unstable behavior. But the
real clue to his character lies in the fact he was Rathbun’s pet
punching bag. Indeed, the two men worked together on
numerous occasions and their relationship was frequently
tinged with what can only be described as sadomasochistic
impulses. That Rinder now refers to Rathbun as his “best good
buddy” is yet another strange twist in this story.
Tom DeVocht, a former Church construction manager and
still another with a proclivity for violence. (He especially
enjoyed wrestling Rinder to the ground.) By his own admission,
he is also an unrepentant liar and, in fact, is proud of it. Indeed,
there is nothing wrong with lying for financial gain, he boasts,
so long as “you don’t get caught.”
Amy Scobee. She is another dismissed from any position
of authority within the Church years earlier—specifically for

sexual misconduct. When she failed to curb
her libidinous behavior, she was ultimately As you wish,
expelled.
Jeff Hawkins, a former Church copywriter Anderson…only
who claims to have left Scientology to avoid
an overseas transfer—possibly to Australia, this time it’s
possibly South Africa. In fact, however, the
transfer was a figment of his own imagination,
the full story and the
and he actually left when his own sordid
misconduct came to light. He is also a member
whole truth.
of a cyberterrorist organization known as
Anonymous that remains under federal investigation for hate
crimes against the Church of Scientology—with two of its
members already prosecuted, convicted and sentenced to prison
for said hate crimes.
Steve Hall, a former Church scriptwriter with a dismal
production record. He currently serves as “webmaster” for the
Posse and ekes out a living scooping doggie droppings from
suburban lawns. He is further known within the Posse for
apparently creating the universe (not necessarily in seven days)
and claims he was previously both Jesus and the Buddha (not
necessarily in that order).
Although not formally on the CNN payroll, all above-
mentioned names purportedly enjoyed free airfare, free lodging,
free meals and limousine service to and from Manhattan. After
all, the moment AC360 sat them in front of a camera, these
A FREEDOM SPECIAL REPORT
people were no longer merely violent,
delusional and deviant; they were suddenly
CNN sources.
They were by no means, however, media
stars and even their allotted 15 minutes of
fame proved ephemeral.
Viz: Between Cooper’s introduction of the
Posse on a Monday and his sweet adieu on
Friday, a full third of the AC360 audience had
already tuned out, and no wonder what with
critical reviews like this one:
“Honestly, this is getting tiresome...”
Followed by:
“Somebody please wake me up when this is over...”
After which it was:
“Anderson, you jackass!”
There was a lot more about the Posse itself—how Rathbun
looked like he was in “extreme turmoil,” how the rest of them
“sounded like a broken record” and how it felt “like an episode
of Judge Judy except without the judging bit.”
But let us now replay the record and scrutinize the evidence
in light of what Cooper himself kept exhorting through those
five dreary nights, i.e., that we must make up our own minds
and judge for ourselves.
To which we now reply: As you wish, Anderson...only this
time it’s the full story and the whole truth. n
www.freedommag.org |5
CNN AC360 | A HISTORY OF LIES

6 | FREEDOM
 A FREEDOM SPECIAL REPORT

THE LEAST
TRUSTED NAME
IN NEWS
AC360 >> SEE ANDERSON
COOPER RUN FOR RATINGS

I
f you would like to know why the
network that calls itself “the most
trusted name in news” is the least
trustworthy, Freedom Magazine brings
you, in living color, what Anderson
Cooper refused to show.
With the ratings for Anderson Cooper 360
in a free fall over the past year and rumors
rampant he is bailing out for another
network, CNN had one final act of
desperation up its sleeve.
CNN became the latest media outlet to
buy into the increasingly over-the-top,
bizarre tales spread by four admitted liars
leading a self-proclaimed “Posse” of
expelled former Church of Scientology
staffers. Their yearlong orchestrated
campaign exploits the media to run stories
which attack their former Church, attack
their former friends and even attack their
own families—parents, wives and
children. It’s all part of an effort
to aggrandize themselves and
make money by promoting
everything from their self-
published rants to their perverted
style of psychological counseling and
“deprogramming.”

www.freedommag.org |7
CNN AC360 | A HISTORY OF LIES
In doing so, the once-great network—
that nearly 20 years ago set the standard
for journalism during the Persian Gulf
War—broadcast five nights of so-called
reports on the Church of Scientology,
becoming the mouthpiece for a criminal
group of cyberterrorists. It used salacious,
false allegations to try to salvage a
program whose ratings have been so
anemic that at times only about a half-
million viewers tune in—roughly the
population of a mid-size city.
Far from conducting an actual
investigation, CNN was simply the latest
stop on the “Posse’s” anti-Scientology
media tour. There was literally no original
reporting—just a regurgitation of long
disproven allegations that sourced from
the Internet, and which dozens of
outraged Church officials refuted with
statements sworn under oath. This should
have raised the antenna of any seasoned
journalist, especially one who portrays
himself as a skeptic, as Anderson Cooper
does.
Yet in Cooper’s desperation to hold
together his already band-aid-laden
“investigation”—given one allegation
after the next was shredded by
documented evidence the Church
provided—he chose to stop even
informing the Church of the allegations.
Specifically, after demanding and
conducting an interview with a Church
spokesman in July 2009, Cooper
thereafter refused to ever again speak to
any Church official. He also refused to
provide any further specifics on
allegations made about the Church and
likewise refused to interview Church
officials on two occasions—in New York
and Los Angeles—including the so-called
“victims” of the allegations.
Only after Church officials traveled to
CNN headquarters in Atlanta and
convinced CNN Corporate to force
Cooper to interview them, did any such
interview occur. Yet still, Cooper refused
to provide specifics of allegations being
made, all to ensure there would be no
response to the lies Cooper admitted
could not be substantiated with any
proof.
8 | FREEDOM
Investigation?
Cooper never once
stepped foot in a
Church and the
sensational allegations
he presented were
taken from interviews
recorded almost a year
before broadcast.
And so we get:
• A blatantly disprovable allegation
more suited to a supermarket tabloid,
yet so sensational that Cooper aired it
no less than 14 times over five nights
of shows—all while he smugly told
his audience there was “no proof”
of the allegation. Although at the
same time, and out of the other side
of his mouth, he urged viewers to
“decide for themselves.” Had Cooper
ever told the Church the substance of
the allegation, he could have saved
himself the embarrassment he now so
rightfully deserves. Because there is
proof the allegations are lies—miles
of video footage—the exact sort of
“proof” Cooper would have wanted,
even demanded, if he were not merely
pretending to be a journalist.
(Watch the video: A “Beating Every
Day” While 10,000 Miles Away or at
www.freedommag.org.)
• Then again, Cooper refused repeated
invitations for open access to all
Church facilities. His refusal to see for
himself the specific Church facility at
the center of the allegations again
proves fatal in the post-broadcast
review. As in, “pictures don’t lie.” (Watch
the video: A Worker’s P   aradise “Slave
Camp” or at www.freedommag.org.)
• At the heart of it all is Cooper’s utter
lack of investigatory acumen. But
even that is being charitable. Because
while media have long been reporting
on Cooper’s incompetence—a debate
best left to his journalistic peers—
what is incontrovertible is that he is
positively dishonest. How else can
one explain that after a single rushed
interview in July 2009, nine months
prior to broadcast, Cooper refused
any further information from the
Church?
Then again, how else does one explain
that the show was so obviously
problematic to CNN its airing was put
on hold in November 2009? Or the
fact that it was suddenly pulled out of
mothballs in March 2010 without a
single communication to the Church
in all that time?
But most damning to any remaining
credibility Cooper may have had, is
when he told his audience he was
presenting the results of a “nine‑month
investigation.” Investigation? He never
once stepped foot in a Church and
the sensational allegations he
presented were taken from interviews
recorded almost a year before
broadcast. So Freedom presents what
actually happened in Scientology
during the nine-month period Cooper
claims to have spent “investigating.”
(Watch the video: Anderson Cooper’s
Definition of “An Investigation” or at
www.freedommag.org.)
All of this begs the question, Why did
CNN try to ambush the Church in a
headlong rush to air anything from
a highly discreditable group of sources?

It’s a well-known fact that CNN’s
Anderson Cooper and his AC360 are in
trouble. “Cooper’s Ratings Crash,” as
Media Bistro put it, while the Los Angeles
Times said Cooper “continued to struggle
big time.” The New York Times noted that
Cooper’s viewership is so weak he
sometimes loses to reruns on the lesser-
viewed HLN and MSNBC networks. But
possibly Business Insider answered it best:
“In a Race for Ratings, CNN’s Anderson
Cooper Goes After Scientologists.”
In fact, the only thing that seems to have
mattered was ratings, no doubt an even
more urgent priority after viewership for
AC360 hit an embarrassing new low. So,
in desperation, CNN dusted off the
unsupported and stale “investigation”
that had sat on a shelf since last year,
RICHARD DAVID
GRIFFITHS DOSS
aired the bitter rants of a handful
of disgruntled former staffers—and
promoted it as if it was a groundbreaking
Edward R. Murrow report. (See A Timeline
of CNN’s “Investigation,” p. 10.)
After hearing nothing from
AC360 since November 2009
(and conducting only one
interview with the Church’s
spokesperson, in July 2009),
in the last week of March
2010, the Church was hit
with an out-of-the-blue CNN
press release announcing the series would
air at the beginning of the week. A few
hours later, the Church’s spokesperson
received an obligatory “FYI, the show is
airing” e-mail from a low-level CNN
producer.
RICHARD DAVID
DAVIS VIGILANTE
A FREEDOM SPECIAL REPORT
The gist of the message: AC360 is
immediately moving from 0 mph to 100
mph on the story without so much as
making a phone call to find out if, in the
past nine months, any update is needed.
CNN’s suddenly aggressive
attitude can no doubt only be
explained if Cooper’s program
is in fact on shaky ground,
either because it is starved for
viewers or because the rumors
are true Cooper may jump to
CBS—that is, if they’ll even
have him anymore. For while CNN may
have caved in to Cooper’s hissy fit over
their refusal to air his investigation, when
it finally did air, the public tuned out in
droves and Cooper’s ratings continue
their descent to the center of the earth. n
ISMAEL
ESTRADA
www.freedommag.org |9
CNN AC360 | A HISTORY OF LIES
A TIMELINE OF CNN’S “INVESTIGATION”
aka >> RUNNING AWAY FROM
THE SUBJECT OF THEIR PROGRAM
K
eep in mind that the last time the
Church’s spokesperson talked with
anyone from CNN about the show,
Editorial Director Richard Griffiths
agreed a “hard reset” was in order.
Translation: Let’s start the relationship
over and see if we can make amends.
Now it is clear that was a disingenuous
discussion.
Here’s the back story: That conversation
came about after numerous frustrations
• However, upon arrival on July 29, the
the Church experienced with Cooper and
his producers during their “investigation.”
Here are just a few:
• AC360 contacted the Church in late
July 2009 demanding an interview to
answer allegations from disgruntled,
10 | FREEDOM
expelled anti-Scientologists for a show
airing within a week. Spokesman
Tommy Davis immediately agreed
to an interview on July 29—the date
CNN demanded. He then flew from
Los Angeles to New York along with
• Having been utterly inconvenienced,
half a dozen top Church staffers (who
had firsthand accounts to disprove
the allegations) to meet with Cooper
and be interviewed in CNN’s studios.
scheduled date of Davis’ interview,
CNN suddenly announced Cooper
wasn’t “ready,” claiming “no studio
availability.” (Of course, the reader
can decide for himself the credibility
of CNN New York having no studio
availability for their golden boy on
the day he scheduled an interview
and for which Church executives had
flown across the country from Los
Angeles.)
Davis suggested CNN take the added
day to meet with him and other
Church executives so the Church could
provide CNN with documentation
vital to their report. After all, if Cooper
intended to conduct a meaningful
interview, here was valuable
material he could be briefed on
prior to that interview—something
every real TV journalist demands of
his production staff. The answer
 A FREEDOM SPECIAL REPORT

Not only did CNN and

Cooper refuse to interview
these Church executives,
including the International
Executive Director,
but they weren’t even
welcome to drop by
CNN studios.

www.freedommag.org | 11
CNN AC360 | A HISTORY OF LIES
A C 3 6 0
Over five nights, AC360
aired 46 minutes and 19
seconds of interviews and
allegations from its anti-
Scientologist “sources.”
Over the same five nights,
AC360 aired just 17 minutes
and 52 seconds of Church
responses.
was, stunningly, “No.” As in, “No,”
CNN didn’t want the information
and, “No, they would not” accept
written materials delivered to CNN’s
offices.
• Davis once again queried whether
the interview was delayed because of
• Finally, frustrated, Davis informed
studio availability or Cooper’s
unavailability or another assignment.
CNN insisted, as incredible as it
sounds, that the lack of studio was
the only cause of delay. That being
the case, why wouldn’t Cooper want
to meet, since he had nothing else to
do that day? At a minimum, common
courtesy and good manners would
have been reason enough, given
Cooper and CNN had wasted the
time of more than half a dozen
Church executives who were now
cooling their heels 3,000 miles from
their busy offices.
• Continued back and forth e-mails
degenerated to a final simple request
to meet over coffee for 15 minutes in
12 | FREEDOM
23%
77%
Church responses 23%
Anti-Scientologist sources 77%
MONDAY
the CNN lobby café. After all, Davis
and Church executives weren’t just in
the “vicinity of” CNN studios, they
were in the hotel that literally
connected to CNN studios. Again,
CNN’s answer was: “No.”
CNN that in addition to him, the
half-dozen Church executives would
arrive to be interviewed by Cooper
the next day. CNN’s answer was
again “No.” Not only did CNN and
Cooper refuse to interview these
Church executives, including the
International Executive Director, but
they weren’t even welcome to drop
by CNN studios. (Cooper would
later claim on his broadcast that
Church executives refused to be
interviewed—a lie. In fact, he even
canceled interviews a second time
months later, after they had finally
been scheduled, with the CNN excuse
that Cooper had contracted an “inner
ear bug.”)
16%
84%
Church responses 16%
Anti-Scientologist sources 84%
TUESDAY
• The next day, July 30, Davis was
interviewed. Cooper couldn’t get out
of the studio fast enough after the
one-hour time allotment was up.
• However, before Cooper’s producers
could make their escape, Davis and
Church counsel personally handed
them a full box of documentary
evidence, including dozens of signed
affidavits disproving the stories fed
CNN by their “sources.” It was
something CNN would never forget
or forgive. Because despite Cooper’s
attempt to not receive any information,
so he and CNN could maintain
“plausible deniability” when he aired
scandalous, sensationalistic lies from
his sources, CNN was now in possession
of the truth disproving those lies.
• Next ensued a bizarre series of CNN
escapades in an attempt to recover
higher ground.
When Church executives repeatedly
insisted on being interviewed, CNN
refused to call them at their offices

36%
64%
Church responses 36%
Anti-Scientologist sources 64%
WEDNESDAY
but would only speak to them if the
executives were on a cell phone.
After Church officials denied that
ridiculous demand, CNN refused to
speak to them at all, never even
responding to numerous voicemail
messages.
Church executives then wrote to
CNN. Despite more than a dozen
letters, transmitted by both e-mail
and FedEx, CNN never answered or
acknowledged receipt of even one.
Next, CNN was contacted by Church
counsel, whereupon the network
begrudgingly agreed to interview
Church executives. But Cooper had a
precondition: The interview had to be
in a hotel room.
When that absurd precondition was
rejected, CNN finally agreed to
interview Church executives at the
Church of Scientology—located a
mere 723 yards from CNN studios.
But Cooper had another precondition:
He insisted the Church not be allowed
to record their own video of the
21%
79%
Church responses 21%
Anti-Scientologist sources 79%
THURSDAY
interviews and further insisted that
the Church not be provided with a
copy of interview footage shot with
CNN cameras. (Other media outlets
never give such prima donna
preconditions for their news anchors
when interviewing the Church.)
It didn’t matter. When the interview
date arrived, in October, Cooper
canceled due to that “inner ear bug.”
He never attempted to reschedule.
• Compounding their prima donna
stance, Cooper and company then
shot down any meetings with other
CNN shows or staff. When another
program was scheduled with another
far more prominent, competent
and well-known CNN journalist, CNN
Corporate had it torpedoed. Why?
Because this competing program, on
CNN, would have shown the inside of
a Church and, by comparison, shown
the AC360 “investigation” to be the
joke it was. (See How Anderson Cooper
Torpedoed an Interview, p. 22.)
A FREEDOM SPECIAL REPORT
33%
67%
Church responses 33%
Anti-Scientologist sources 67%
FRIDAY
• Caught out and checkmated by the fact
their two star journalists would present
entirely different pictures of
Scientology, and by the fact they
sabotaged the one that would have
included both an on-site inside look at
the Church as well as an interview with
the Church’s leader, CNN committed
to a “hard reset” of Cooper’s AC360
“investigation.” Meaning, AC360’s bias
had been exposed and CNN would
start over and do it right. That was
November 2009.
• March 2010: It was now five months
later and Cooper’s ratings continued
to plummet—a mere 50 percent
viewership compared to the year
before.
• Out of the blue, after refusing to take
one hour, let alone one minute, to
accept invitations inside any number
of Church facilities and so see
firsthand the religious institution he
claimed to be investigating—not in
the nine months since he first
www.freedommag.org | 13
CNN AC360 | A HISTORY OF LIES

RUNNING AWAY
contacted the Church, not in the five
months since CNN did a “hard reset”
—Anderson Cooper announced his

FROM THE TRUTH

program. It was laughingly portrayed
as a “nine‑month investigation.” (See
Anderson Cooper: By the Numbers, p. 16.)
For Cooper’s choice of salaciousness
over reality, watch the video Anderson
Cooper’s Definition of “An Investigation” or
at www.freedommag.org. For his taste Portland
in the tabloid sound bite, no matter anti-Scientologist
how outrageous, watch the video A
Worker’s Paradise “Slave Camp” or at
www.freedommag.org. And finally, in
full evidence of the journalistic maxim
that “pictures don’t lie” and proof of
Cooper’s willful avoidance of the truth,
watch the video A “Beating Every
Day” While 10,000 Miles Away or at
www.freedommag.org.
Sound outrageous?
Well, nothing is too outrageous for
AC360, because Cooper, his producers
and even CNN Corporate saw exploiting Church of
the popularity of Scientology as a quick Scientology HQ
fix to their ratings debacle. But it didn’t
even work. Throughout the five nights,
ratings continued their inexorable
Los Angeles
plummet. The public knows when Offices
they’ve been duped. Even the most casual
viewer couldn’t help but notice the same
outrageous, unsubstantiated sound bites
played over and over and over, while the
program CNN titled “Scientology” never
showed a single second of the Church.
So that’s all AC360 was about. An
attempted quick fix to their ratings
plunge. Too bad they didn’t accept the
LEGEND
Church’s offer to go inside. That would
• CNN either traveling or financing
have at least been news. But CNN is no
interviews with anti-Scientologists
longer the “most trusted name in news”;
it seems they’ve left the profession • Scientology senior executives
entirely. Their ship is sinking and can’t be traveling to meet with CNN
saved. Now it’s clear why. n

Watch the DVD or go to

www.freedommag.org

14 | FREEDOM
 A FREEDOM SPECIAL REPORT

Why did Anderson Cooper run away from 10 Scientology senior

executives who flew 85,000 miles to tell their stories—while AC360spent
stories—while AC360 spent
at least $20,000 in flights, hotels and meals for the apostate “Posse”?
“posse”?

Local Studios
Chicago New York City
CNN interviews with
anti-Scientologists

Atlanta
Church of HQ
Scientology
Dallas
Local

Local Houston
CNN interview with
anti-Scientologist Clearwater
CNN interview with
anti-Scientologist
Ingleside
CNN interview with
anti-Scientologist

www.freedommag.org | 15
CNN AC360 | A HISTORY OF LIES
ANDERSON COOPER:
BY THE
NUMBERS
7 23 y
ard
s

T
HROUGHOUT THEIR ENTIRE NINE-MONTH CHURCH OF • Pages of letters, affidavits and law
enforcement reports supplied to CNN
SCIENTOLOGY “investigation,” Anderson Cooper and his prior to broadcast and disproving all
producers refused to avail themselves of any information allegations that were ignored and never
concerning the religion to which they were devoting a week of quoted: 1,026
programming. Indeed, it seems Cooper and company could not spare • Pages of documents, police reports or
affidavits CNN possessed supporting
so much as an hour, which is especially curious given the following allegations made by its disgruntled
facts leading up to their broadcast: sources: 0
• Amount spent by CNN on travel and
hotel costs to interview disgruntled,
• Number of days between the time • Walking distance from Cooper’s studio ousted and excommunicated apostates
Anderson Cooper’s producer first called in New York to the nearest Scientology seeking to “get even”: $20,000
the Church and the initial broadcast: 247 Church: 1.3 miles • Number of times during the preparation
• Number of days during the preparation • Walking distance from CNN in Los of the program Anderson Cooper
of the story that Anderson Cooper was Angeles to the nearest Scientology co‑hosted Live with Regis and Kelly: 12
in a city where there is a Scientology Church: 723 yards • Number of fashion shows and galas
Church, Mission or affiliated group: 216 attended by Anderson Cooper during
• Number of countries Anderson Cooper • Hours of video footage provided to the preparation of the program: 6
visited during the preparation of the story AC360 that went unwatched or was
• Number of Oscar parties attended
where there are Scientology activities: 5 otherwise utterly ignored: 24 hours and
by Anderson Cooper during the
3 minutes
• Number of countries Anderson Cooper preparation of the program: 1
visited during the preparation of the • Photos detailing Church growth and • Amount of time Anderson Cooper spent
story where there are NO Scientology expansion provided to AC360 that were inside any Scientology Church during
activities: 0 likewise ignored: 462 his entire nine-month “investigation”: 0

Watch the DVD or go to

www.freedommag.org
16 | FREEDOM
 A FREEDOM SPECIAL REPORT

TRICKS OF THE TRADE

How Anderson Cooper Tries to Sound Learned
But Is Actually a Hack

A
ny illusionist will tell you his act
depends on gaining the audience’s
attention and keeping it focused
where he wants it. Before the eyes
of the astonished crowd, he can pull
off anything from the simplest of card
tricks to the disappearance of his lovely
assistant.
In a similar vein, the con man reels in
his victim, controlling his attention and
showing him just enough to tantalize—
think Newman and Redford duping
Robert Shaw in The Sting.
And so it is with Anderson Cooper,
who displayed enough tricks in his series
ostensibly on Scientology to make people
wonder whether he spent time as a flimflam
man or merely studied such methods.
One of his most adept maneuvers:
repeated references to documents received
from the Church—papers he smoothly
flashed and fanned before the camera
like a card dealer on the Poker Channel.
More than 1,000 pages, those documents
utterly destroyed the credibility of his
“sources.” Here’s how Cooper used them:
On March 29 he intoned, “Church of
Scientology officials have provided us
with affidavits, declarations and dozens
of e-mails and letters…”
Night after night, virtually the same
statement came from Cooper’s mouth.
The camera zooms in on the documents

www.freedommag.org | 17
 TRICK #1
Viewers cou
ld
that the nam see
address on e and
certai
had been blo n letters
They were al tted out.
m
addressed to ost surely
C
one of his p ooper or
roducers.
Why mark th
em out?
A subliminal
message
to viewers p
erhaps:
“We must
protect iden
tities.”

TRICK #3
And while
C
studiously ooper was
avoiding an
Scientolog y
y
those mon facilities all
ths, the Ch
provided A urch
C3
upon hours 60 with hours
o
quality vid f broadcast-
eo footage
new Sciento of
lo
[Church o gy Churches
Rome at le f Scientolog
ft] an y
activities. W d worldwide
h
viewers? O at played to
ld photogra
and old fo phs
ota
some decad ge [bottom]—
es
intended to old—clearly
cl
present-day oud the
imag
the Church e of
.

18 | FREEDOM
 A FREEDOM SPECIAL REPORT

TRICK #2
With his “s
ources”
Cooper ap Similarly, Cooper implied that secrecy
relaxed and pears existed when it did not. In fact, CNN
in
open collar formal— had repeatedly and for months been
, strolling
in the par offered full access. Such statements by
And then in k.
presto chan a feat of Cooper could only have been intended
go, Cooper
reappears,
transformed
to manipulate viewers’ minds and spread
when interv , false ideas.
ie
Church exec wing And while Cooper was studiously
sitting stiffl utives—
y, formally, avoiding any Scientology facilities all
in a coat an
d tie. those months, the Church provided
AC360 with hours upon hours of
broadcast-quality video footage of new
Scientology Churches and worldwide
activities. What played to viewers? Old
photographs and old footage—some
in a bit of prestidigitation—a handy prop decades old—clearly intended to cloud
to conjure up the idea that objectivity the present-day image of the Church.
exists. If Cooper had presented even a few And a final ruse: With his “sources”
excerpts, some light would have pierced Cooper appears relaxed and informal—
the dark lies he conveyed. But he read not open collar, strolling in the park.
a single line. And then in a feat of presto chango,
Viewers could see that the name and Cooper reappears, transformed, when
address on certain letters had been blotted interviewing Church executives—sitting
out. They were almost surely addressed to stiffly, formally, in a coat and tie.
Cooper or one of his producers. Why mark Cooper promoted AC360’s “investigation”
them out? A subliminal message to viewers and “prolonged investigation” to instill
perhaps: “We must protect identities.” drama and pretend credibility. In fact, the
Another trick: Show a clip of a person, “investigation” was merely Cooper and a
followed immediately by someone else couple of producers interviewing people
who appears to contradict the first— whose stories had already been told—and
TRICK #4 even though they may have been talking completely disproved—in 2009. When
Another plo about entirely different subjects. This Church officials offered reams of evidence
y
emphasized ruse, used repeatedly, added to the air to utterly shred all allegations, plus
inflammato of confrontation Cooper created for the an open invitation to visit Scientology
ry
titillating w and
ords to series. facilities, the evidence was ignored, the
incite the in
tervie
as well as th wee Another ploy emphasized inflammatory invitation turned down. So much for the
viewers—w e and titillating words to incite the “investigation.”
ords such
as “allegatio interviewee as well as the viewers—words As Cooper and company well knew,
n
“shocking” s,” such as “allegations,” “shocking” and these are but a few examples of the tricks
and
“humiliatio “humiliation.” of the trade they pulled from their sleeves
n.”
Such words and phrases were reinforced and flew onto the air to dissemble to
through repetition. Cooper’s favorite: AC360 viewers about Scientology.
“Culture of violence,” used to open the Over a period of eight months, Cooper
show, when returning from commercial and CNN had been asked many times to
breaks, and to promote the series meet with Church staff and parishioners
throughout the week. This was to slyly and to tour Church facilities—to really
trick the viewer into thinking such a find out what they were reporting about.
“culture” existed, when it did not. It’s the Of course, no one at “the least trusted
Big Lie: The most outrageous statement, name in news” took the time to do that.
repeated time and time again, encourages The result: The “series” itself, the biggest
listeners to believe it. deception of all. n

www.freedommag.org | 19
CNN AC360 | A HISTORY OF LIES
HOW TERRORISTS BECOME
“PROTESTERS”
“The Church says [he] is lying and
is out to destroy the religion. He
supports a group called Anonymous
which promotes an anti-Scientology
movement.” —Anderson Cooper
B
ut what Cooper very well knew and
chose to ignore, much less inform his
viewers, is that Anonymous is neither
a “merry prankster” protest group
20 | FREEDOM
CooperSpeak:
nor anything that would remotely touch
the style of a peaceful civil disobedience
organization.
Moreover, by merely referencing
Anonymous and televising the group’s so-
called logo, Cooper and CNN were tacitly
endorsing a coordinated organization that
the U.S. Department of Justice has identified
as a terrorist group—with members engaged
in hate crimes and convicted of other
federal criminal offenses.
Church of Scientology letters and
documents sent to Jonathan Klein, president
of CNN/U.S., before the program aired,
established three salient facts:
1) The top CNN executive and his chief
legal counsel knew all about Anonymous’
violent perpetration of hate crimes well in
advance of the week-long broadcast.
2) Cooper himself was personally advised
as to the true nature of the organization
that he benignly called a “protest” group.

3) CNN brass knew that Cooper’s
principal sources, besides being in league
with each other, were allied with and,
indeed, some are members of Anonymous.
Point of fact, Cooper’s “Kingpin” source
is more than just connected to this mob;
he is actively furthering their hate-filled
agenda, stating in an on-line conversation
with Anonymous, “I have your back,” and
referring to members as “pals.”
Another one of Cooper’s sources has
personally participated in Anonymous
demonstrations in front of Churches of
Scientology and has publicly endorsed this
cyberterrorist hate group in the media and
on the Internet.
Any viewer who knew the true nature
of Anonymous would find it ironic—as
well as disturbing and dishonest—that in
the same programs where AC360 spewed
the false charges by his anti-Scientologist
sources who had joined this hate group,
Cooper also reported on the arrest of
an automatic weapons-armed Michigan
militia group that had been infiltrated by
an FBI agent. The group’s alleged aim: to
ambush and kill police officers.
Federal indictments and subsequent
convictions of members of Anonymous
speak volumes.
>> FIRST
How the U.S. Department of Justice
(DOJ) became aware of Anonymous.
It all began in January 2008 with
Anonymous attacks on Church websites,
followed by a statement of intent to
sabotage the Scientology presence on the
Internet.
Threats soon escalated with a video
posted on the web in February, in which
Anonymous threatened violence against
Scientology Churches and parishioners.
In the video, Anonymous members were
encouraged to read Mein Kampf to prepare
for their assault.
If a task force of federal
law enforcement
authorities is
conducting an ongoing
investigation into
this self-professed
hate group, officially
labeling it a terrorist
organization,
why,
by any measure of
rationality, would a
news organization
advance and, implicitly,
endorse such
a criminal group?
That assault included death threats against
Scientology leaders, glutting Church phones
and fax machines with threats of violence,
and engaging in hate speech designed to incite
others to violence. Again, documentation of
all this and more was provided to AC360
long before the broadcast.
>> SECOND
Results of a DOJ/FBI investigation.
Soon after the initial cyberattacks, federal
agencies began to bring Anonymous
members to justice.
In November 2009, 19-year-old
Anonymous member Dmitriy Guzner was
sentenced to a year and a day in federal
prison after pleading guilty to participating
A FREEDOM SPECIAL REPORT
in the attack against the Church’s websites.
He was further ordered to pay $37,500 in
restitution.
Then in May 2010, Brian Thomas
Mettenbrink, 20, received a 12-month
federal prison sentence and was ordered
to pay $20,000 restitution for his part.
During the sentencing, the U.S. District
Judge categorized the cyberassaults against
Scientology as a “hate crime.”
The gravity of the terrorist activities by
Anonymous is evidenced by the scope of
the federal investigation, which stands
in stark contrast to Cooper’s superficial
reference to the group as “protesters.” It
also pierces the veracity of information
provided by Cooper’s anti-Scientology
sources who are members of this hate-
mongering group.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office,
the Anonymous cases are “part of an
ongoing investigation by the U.S. Secret
Service Electronic Crimes Task Force in
Los Angeles. The agencies involved in the
investigation are the U.S. Secret Service,
the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the
Los Angeles Police Department and the Los
Angeles County District Attorney’s Office
Bureau of Investigation.”
So the obvious question in all of this:
If a task force of federal law enforcement
authorities is conducting an ongoing
investigation into this self-professed hate
group, officially labeling it a terrorist
organization, why, by any measure of
rationality, would a news organization
advance and, implicitly, endorse such a
criminal group? How could Anderson
Cooper posture himself an Anonymous
apologist?
The only logical explanation is that
Cooper’s intentions were to stir up more
hate-speak so that he might yet have a
follow-up story to counter his precipitous
fall in the ratings. And CNN’s corporate
hierarchy condoned it all. n
www.freedommag.org | 21
CNN AC360 | A HISTORY OF LIES
How Anderson Cooper
TORPEDOED AN INTERVIEW
“We’d love to have him
on the program…”
—Anderson Cooper in reference
to Chairman of the Board Religious
Technology Center and ecclesiastical
leader of the Scientology religion,
Mr. David Miscavige
I
n fact, however, Anderson Cooper
did not want David Miscavige on
his program...or at least not David
Miscavige face-to-face in anything
approaching a live interview that
AC360 couldn’t reduce to a 10-second
sound bite.
Consequently and inevitably, we
come to an AC360 subplot that reads as
follows:
When CNN originally approached the
Church for a response to accusations from
its posse of apostate anti-Scientologists,
the reply was curt and to the point: If
Anderson Cooper and company wanted
only mere denials to the innuendos, then
Church spokesman Tommy Davis would
appear. If, on the other hand, Cooper was
seeking a truly in-depth interview on the
place of Scientology in the world today,
its meteoric growth and any other subject
(even including those illusory accusations),
then Mr. David Miscavige himself might
well appear. (Read the biography of
Scientology’s ecclesiastical leader at
www.scientology.org/DavidMiscavige)
Needless to say, Anderson Cooper chose
the former—the pat, easily editable 10- or
20-second denial. In fact, both he and his
producers made clear, in unmistakable
terms, that they were not interested in full
open access to the Church or its leader.
22 | FREEDOM
That Cooper well knew Mr. Miscavige
would never consent to such a cut‑and‑paste
taped interview, on the order of what one
sees on the nightly news of a network
affiliate reporting on complaints from the
local Waste Management Union, is pretty
much a given. After all, what Cooper was
seeking was tantamount to suggesting
that a Pope respond, on camera, to
allegations from some corrupt Vatican Bank
official His Holiness had removed and
excommunicated for financial malfeasance.
Then, too, the only previous television
interview to which the Church leader
had consented was a 1992 appearance on
Nightline with host Ted Koppel. It is still
remembered in the annals of broadcast
journalism. For here was a show originally
scheduled for Koppel’s usual 30-minute
slot, but so compelling was the exchange,
so entirely unique in both the history of
Nightline and live interview journalism
as a whole, the segment was extended to
a full 90 minutes. Moreover, the last half
hour was entirely without break and all
paid commercials were canceled
(unheard of on network television).
That the show was also critically
acclaimed goes without saying;
it earned an Emmy, which is the
television equivalent of a Hollywood
Oscar.
So, no, Anderson Cooper well
knew the Scientology ecclesiastical
leader would not and could not
consent to a sound bite or two. And,
yes, Tommy Davis indeed supplied
AC360 with an interview that—true
to form—is sliced and diced to suit
Cooper’s needs. More to the point:
This was precisely the interview
AC360 wanted instead of the wide-
ranging one they could have had with
Mr. Miscavige.
But parallel to and actually predating
the above, another CNN luminary had
long sought an interview with Mr. David
Miscavige. Moreover, this one was never
intended as less than a serious interview,
for this one would be conducted by the
veritable face of CNN and the network’s
only respectable name: the venerable Larry
King. While just to cap it: The Scientology
leader had previously informed King he was
engaged in a longstanding Church project
and the moment said project was complete
he would indeed consent to a Larry King
interview...which, as of the end of 2009,
was exactly what happened.
In reply and in anticipation of that long-
awaited interview, King extends a dinner
invitation to the Scientology leader. The
invitation is promptly accepted and all is
preordained...or so it seems.
But now enter Anderson Cooper with
that furrowed brow and narrowed gaze—

the one he uses when expressing concern
for disaster victims. And in this case, he
unquestionably cares; because in this case
the looming disaster is his own scheduled
Scientology “investigation.”
To cite but a little of what concerned
Cooper at this juncture:
In the first place, and even CNN
Corporate couldn’t deny it, Larry King was
the only CNN host qualified to interview
the Scientology leader; while in contrast,
Cooper lacked the intellectual heft to carry
a one-on-one interview with any intelligent
subject for any substantive length of time.
As a matter of fact, a review of Cooper’s
CNN career reveals that his single-subject
interviews average out to about 10 minutes
or less with only two exceptions, each
20 minutes in length, one dating from
2006 and the other 2009. Consequently,
any King interview with the Scientology
leader would only accentuate Cooper’s
professional inadequacies.
Then again, and herein lay what really
furrowed Cooper’s brow, the Larry King
interview was positively guaranteed to
outshine anything AC360 could muster;
for this was to be an interview concerning
the whole Scientology panorama and would
actually take viewers inside the Church and
thus inside Scientology in total.
Included in the “access list”:
• Mr. Larry King and team are cordially
invited to attend the largest
international Scientology event of the
year—the 25th anniversary of the
International Association of
Scientologists, no less.
• The team is further invited to set up a
camera station in the event hall for
interview access with any Scientologist
in attendance.
• Finally, King and his production team
are afforded an invitation to the grand
opening of new Ideal Churches of
Scientology in Rome and Washington,
Larry King was the only
CNN host qualified to
interview the Scientology
leader; while in contrast,
Cooper lacked the
intellectual heft to
carry a one-on-one
interview with any
intelligent subject for any
substantive length
of time.
DC, plus entirely unfettered access to
the Church’s spiritual headquarters in
Clearwater, Florida.
• And were all that not enough to
give Cooper cause for grave concern,
Larry King is assured a “free-to-ask
anything” access in his live interview
with Mr. David Miscavige.
So even if only in terms of sheer audience
appeal, were the reigning King of American
talk shows to interview the Scientology
leader, it would all but blow Cooper right
out of the water—not to mention off the
screen.
And so it was that Cooper prevailed
on CNN Corporate and CNN Corporate
prevailed on all other Powers-That-Be until...
The Scientology leader was disinvited to
dinner with Larry King.
Or more precisely, CNN Corporate ordered
Larry King to “disinvite” Mr. Miscavige to
dinner. Embarrassment for the iconic Mr.
King be damned, the corporate position was
the rule of the day. But one wonders if he was
ever told the corporate dictate was prompted
by the demand of his so-called “co-worker”
Anderson Cooper.
Whereupon all other CNN shenanigans
become abundantly clear, including why
the lapse of nine months between AC360’s
first contact to the Church and the night
the broadcast finally aired. To wit: CNN
Corporate was concerned that an all-
access Larry King special report would
have revealed the sham of the AC360
investigation—all of which, in turn, would
A FREEDOM SPECIAL REPORT
leave Cooper looking all the more foolish.
But having now torpedoed the King
interview with Mr. Miscavige, CNN was
boxed in. Their bias—and particularly that
of Anderson Cooper—was too blatant to
just sweep under the carpet, or hide in the
closet. Result: CNN Editorial Director orders
a “hard reset” on the AC360 Scientology
program. Meaning, in unmistakable terms,
they would start over and do it right.
Apparently Cooper threw another fit. For the
fact is, and notwithstanding CNN Corporate
dictates to him, he never again contacted
the Church. Months rolled by—November,
December, January, February…not a single
word from AC360 or CNN. And all while
interviews had been previously scheduled,
Church tours arranged—all of it dropped
and replaced by deafening silence. CNN’s
activity—or rather, lack of activity—made
abundantly clear the program was dead.
Then came March and, totally out of
the blue, the Church is informed, via a
CNN press release, that Cooper’s program
was airing. Five months had passed since
the CNN “hard reset” without a single
communication in all that time, let alone
any attempt to conduct the interviews
Church executives had demanded and for
which Cooper had agreed.
What happened? Nothing but the passage
of time—five months—during which period
Anderson Cooper’s ratings are plummeting
down the St. Moritz death slide.
As for sabotaging Larry King’s interview:
Well, Anderson Cooper is nothing if not
self-serving.
Church executive to Anderson Cooper:
“Larry King was going to interview Mr.
Miscavige. It was all set up until you had
it cancelled, because you didn’t agree.”
Cooper had no meaningful response.
What a guy. Any reputation he’s earned
has been thanks to his maternal genealogical
line. And CNN Corporate had descended
to the level of acceding to the whims of
Anderson Cooper: AKA Mr. Vanderbilt. n
www.freedommag.org | 23
CNN AC360 | A HISTORY OF LIES
“We like criticism. We’re big fans of the First Amendment
—we use the free press every day.”
—From the “How to Win 360 Approval” instructions on the AC360 website
I
f the show, or the network, cared
about fairness, they would have
posted some of the many critical
messages submitted to the AC360
“live blog.”
The blog purports to interact with
viewers through dialogue by letting
them comment on programs as they
air. But for many people who wanted to
weigh in on the AC360 series, the “live
blog” was decidedly in the dead zone.
Despite sending their comments in
and following all the rules, AC360
blocked their postings, denying a whole
host of persons a chance to present their
views.
“Are all your stories this
poorly researched?”
—D.S.
While there are undoubtedly many
more of which we are unaware, such
a volume of would-be posters cared
enough to provide copies to Freedom
that we felt compelled, in the interest of
free speech, to share a small sampling:
24 | FREEDOM
• Anderson, what’s your agenda here?
Just trying to get your ratings back
up? —P.M.
• You showed reams of documents
provided by the Church—why not
go through them and describe in
some detail what they say?… Then
again, perhaps those documents
were a burden—it can be rough
when the truth gets in the way of a
good story. —D.A.
• The height of pretense with
[Cooper’s] “you decide” slogan, he
presents one-sided, skewed opinions
as fact, permits no rebuttal and steers
his viewers to make the faulty
conclusions he predetermines for
us. I can just hear my philosophy
professor scrawling a red “D” on
any essay I would present in the
Anderson Cooper style of logic.
The question is, why does
Cooper do this to his audience?
Does he really think we can’t see
through it? Or worse—has he
deluded himself into believing his
arguments himself? —L.W.
• The bad guys were removed from the
Church and are now accusing others
of what they were doing. That’s not
“news.” That’s not a “story.” Have
you never witnessed bad people
complaining about where they were
removed from, after they were
removed? —P.R.
• If you were looking for a bully in
your story about Scientology, you
have certainly found one.  Of course
I’m referring to Marty Rathbun.  After
viewing three evenings of your
investigative report, I suggest a
change in the title.  I know it is not
as sexy for your ratings push, but in
an effort to bring truth to your
promo a change is required.   The
new title...MARTY RATHBUN: A
HISTORY OF VIOLENCE. —J.P.
• I have met a significant number of
people who have worked directly
with David Miscavige over a period
of decades. I have known members
of his family and their circle of
friends. There has to be some means
in journalism of weighing the sheer
quantity of evidence and statements
so as not to be fooled by a few
people who were fired by the person.
This [broadcast] says nothing of the
tangible and obvious positive effects
Mr. Miscavige’s leadership has had

on the Church and individual
Scientologists at all levels. It is just
remarkable how far off the mark your
story is on this one—are all your
stories this poorly researched? —D.S.
• I am a 40-year veteran Scientologist
with lots of friends in the Sea Org…
Why aren’t you showing things which
can be proved, like their work helping
victims in Haiti, Katrina and at 9/11?
Why aren’t you showing their anti-
drug programs or their work fighting
for human rights? —R.P.
• I’ve been a Scientologist for more
than 30 years and have spent time in
and around numerous Churches of
Scientology at the local, national and
international levels… I know that the
truth is perhaps boring in sensational
TV entertainment terms. The many
Church executives I have known are
dedicated yet down-to-earth people
who manage to both invest their
considerable talents to help others
while at the same time remaining
grounded… The time, skills and
dedication that Church executives
and staff have invested in community-
oriented work is nothing short
of miraculous. The Church has
sponsored so many community-
oriented programs it is hard to keep
up with them. A small sampling
includes the front lines disaster relief
in Haiti and in the aftermath of
Katrina; it encompasses hundreds of
thousands of students served with
drug education lectures and a self-
funded international campaign to
“I’ll put my money on the Scientologists who
get people off drugs, help disaster victims, increase
literacy, and offer a workable road to sanity.”
—T.P.
champion the United Nations
Universal Declaration of Human
Rights. These are all testimonies to the
actual intentions and activities of the
Church and its management. —L.A.
• The AC360 story is so disjointed, and
repeats itself several times per episode.
I’m left with the feeling that CNN is
suffering from the same malady as the
ex-Scientologists, who only stir up
mud and splatter it around, all the
while claiming to be cleaning up the
kitchen. I’ll put my money on the
Scientologists who get people off
drugs, help disaster victims, increase
literacy, and offer a workable road to
sanity. —T.P.
• It’s virtually impossible to know
anything from your presentation, as
every time a Scientology executive
tried to answer your question you
cut him or her off. If you consider
this “investigative” or “reporting,” we
have greatly different definitions for
those terms and it does NOT include
inference, innuendo and supposition
in lieu of facts. —L.M.
• It would seem that yellow journalism
is alive and well in the 21st century at
CNN. According to ThinkQuest…
A FREEDOM SPECIAL REPORT
yellow journalism is “biased opinion
masquerading as objective fact.
Moreover, the practice of yellow
journalism involved sensationalism,
distorted stories, and misleading
images for the sole purpose of
boosting newspaper sales and exciting
public opinion.” —J.M.
Sound familiar?
And so Anderson Cooper, his AC360
staff and their bosses in CNN
Corporate rounded out their weeklong
“investigation” with yet one final act of
arrogance and hypocrisy. They censored
in their own forum a candid dialogue with
their viewers. In doing so, they expressly
violated the “We like criticism” and
“We’re big fans of the First Amendment”
the network flaunts as their blog credo.
It seems the only criticism AC360
and company like is their own toward
others…and that the First Amendment
applies to CNN alone. n
(See A Sampling of E-mails and Statements
Sent to AC360 From Those Who Were There
at www.freedommag.org/letters.)
www.freedommag.org | 25
CNN AC360 | A HISTORY OF LIES

26 | FREEDOM
 A FREEDOM SPECIAL REPORT

A LIAR IS A
COWARD
“Individuals with criminal minds tend
to band together since the presence
of other criminals about them tends
to prove their own distorted ideas of

A PERJURER
man in general.” —L. Ron Hubbard

IS A CRIMINAL
The Rathbun >> Rinder >> DeVocht Conspiracy
and how it led to their downfall

A
s is well known, liars are
cowards and cowards are
liars. In fact, it’s a specific
part of the Scientology
Scripture as contained
in its ethics and justice
codes. So it is that while lying is
despised in society as a whole, it’s
actually considered criminal within
the religion of Scientology.
However, there is a type of lie that
is considered criminal by everybody,
because it represents conduct that
tears at the very fabric of justice and
civilized society.
By definition, a lie is “a false
statement made with deliberate
intent to deceive.” When one lies,
it has consequences. When one is
known to be a liar, one soon finds
himself shunned by friends and
associates.
But perjury is much more serious.
It means “the willful giving of
false testimony under oath.” It’s a
criminal offense. And when one
is caught committing perjury, one
goes to jail. In fact the penalty is
intentionally harsh so as to serve as
a deterrent for those who may not
possess the moral integrity to be
honest or truthful. Those convicted
of perjury serve up to five years in
prison doing hard time.

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CNN AC360 | A HISTORY OF LIES
Here is the person
who not only
intimidates others
to lie, but who looks at
evidence of the truth and,
as if out of an old gangster
movie, tells his posse to
“lose ‘em”—that is,
get rid of it.
But actually, there is an even worse type
of criminal liar. That’s the person who
not only tells untruths to law enforcement
and the courts, but also gets others to do
so as well. It’s called suborning perjury and
it means “to induce a witness to give false
testimony.”
People who are suborners of perjury
are much rarer than the cowardly liar or
criminal perjurer. That’s because it takes
a great deal of persuasion to get another
to lie to authorities. One typically hears of
this sort of crime—suborning perjury—
perpetrated by thugs, since it’s always an
attempt to get others to lie to protect the
real criminal. That’s why it also carries a
sentence of five years in jail.
All of which begs the question: Is there
any greater form of dishonesty? Actually,
there is. It’s called obstruction of justice,
which means “an attempt to interfere
with the administration of the courts,
the judicial system or law enforcement
officers, including threatening witnesses,
hiding or destroying evidence.”
28 | FREEDOM
Here is the person who not only
intimidates others to lie, but who looks
at evidence of the truth and, as if out of
an old gangster movie, tells his posse to
“lose ‘em”—that is, get rid of it. Of course,
this too is a crime, yet another five years
in jail, but by now what does it matter to
the criminal who has long since passed
the point of any self-respect and considers
laws are written for “suckers.” Meaning,
honest people.
More to the point here: A person who
would commit perjury, who would suborn
perjury and who would obstruct justice is
a person with the ethics of a gutter rat—a
person who could tell a lie with a straight
face to his “friends” and feel no remorse
“unless I was caught,” a person who could
see others being falsely accused of what
he had done and keep silent while “lots of
people go down and remain in turmoil while I
go unrecognized as the source of it and survive.”
And if you’ve never seen this face of
evil and have no desire to do so in the
future, then be forewarned to avoid the
self-proclaimed “Posse”: Marty “Kingpin”
Rathbun, Mike “Corroborator” Rinder,
and Tom “Con Man” DeVocht. Because
all you’ve just read is their case history, the
statements in quotes are their exact words.
And here’s what they did:
• 1993: The Church is at peace, having
ended its 40-year conflict with the IRS,
been exonerated and recognized as a
fully tax-exempt religious institution.
With this and other external conflicts
ended, the Church turns its attention to
religious and humanitarian programs.
• One month later, while the Church and
its parishioners were still celebrating
victory, Rathbun has a mental
breakdown. It is assumed the years of
external battles took their toll on him
emotionally. He is given a two-year
sabbatical in the Caribbean, with no
work responsibilities whatsoever.
(Not for another decade, when he
had his second mental breakdown,
would he admit that the first breakdown

wasn’t owing to the “stresses of war” but,
rather, because the war was over when he
actually had no desire for peace. As he
himself phrased it, he only knew how to
fight and was a “fish out of water” when
it came to any constructive activity. But, as
noted, that Rathbun confession wouldn’t
come for another 10 years—in 2003.)
• 1995: The Church continues at peace
and has entered a new era of expansion.
But then, an accidental tragedy occurs.
All concerned witnesses are interviewed
by the police and the investigation
discovers no wrongdoing.
• 1997: It is discovered that the witnesses
interviewed by police were not truthful.
Specifically, they had failed to inform
authorities that the individual in question
was actually psychotic. Moreover, the
records detailing the psychosis were
either lost or destroyed.
• Longstanding policy by the religion’s
Founder expressly prohibits psychotics
from being allowed on Church premises.
Immediate internal investigations are
ordered to find out:
»» Who had allowed the psychotic on
Church premises.
»» Who had coordinated the witnesses
to lie, since they had all told the same
untruthful story.
»» And who had lost or destroyed the
missing evidence.
»» Marty Rathbun and Mike Rinder are
assigned to investigate, and report
their findings. Consequently:
»» More than a dozen staff members are
removed or dismissed, for allowing a
psychotic on Church premises.
»» Two senior executives are removed
and assigned janitorial duties for
allowing the psychotic onto Church
premises.
»» Two additional Church executives are
removed and dismissed for destroying
evidence.
»» Church Counsel representing the
witnesses is fired for supposedly
coaching those witnesses to lie.
(These findings are not what really
happened, nor were those removed
the actual perpetrators. Not for 10 years
would the real truth concerning the above
events be discovered.)
• 1997: New Church Counsel are hired
and all witnesses are reinterviewed by
law enforcement to provide truthful
testimony. They are granted immunity
from prosecution.
If you’ve never
seen this face of evil
and have no desire to
do so in the future, then
be forewarned to avoid
the self-proclaimed
“Posse”:
Marty “Kingpin”
Rathbun, Mike
“Corroborator” Rinder,
and Tom “Con Man”
DeVocht.
• 1997-98: The local newspaper, the
S.P. Times, has long held a vendetta
against the Scientology religion, and
waged a decades-long campaign to
not only drive the Church out of
town, but also destroy it entirely.
With the revelations that witnesses
had been untruthful, the S.P. Times
has a field day. All of this is made
possible for the fact that once one
tells a lie, nothing one says is believed.
And so ensued 129 articles and 15
editorials, totaling some 30 newspaper
pages and more than 4,000 column
inches, urging criminal charges against
the Church. The Times’ allegations
A FREEDOM SPECIAL REPORT
are bizarre in the extreme. All articles
are authored by reporter Tom Tobin
and his editor Joe Childs. The Church
spokesman responsible for answering
S.P. Times enquiries is Mike Rinder.
• 1998: The S.P. Times coverage reaches
a fever pitch. The Times makes a
mockery of Rinder’s responses.
Finally, the Times reaches out to
interview the ecclesiastical leader
of the Scientology religion, Mr. David
Miscavige. Rinder recommends
he not grant the interview, but
Mr. Miscavige nonetheless consents
anyway. Moreover, he offers the Times
complete and open access to the
Church in Clearwater, Los Angeles
and International Headquarters. It’s
his first interview in six years and
results in a fair and balanced Sunday
edition cover story profiling him.
Accordingly, after years of contentious
relationship, open channels with the
S.P. Times and Scientology are
established for the first time in history
if for no other reason (unbeknownst
to Mr. Miscavige at this time) that all
previous communications with the
S.P. Times by Rinder and Rathbun
were the opposite of “open” and
cordial.
• 1998: Notwithstanding the foregoing,
the one-year barrage of S.P. Times
editorializing has had its effect, and
the State brings criminal charges
against the Church itself. Such charges
are unprecedented and inexplicable.
Moreover, it sets off an international
wave of anti-Scientology press.
• 1998-2000: Due to the serious
ramifications of these charges to the
Church, Mr. Miscavige is forced to
relocate from Los Angeles to
Clearwater and personally handle the
matter. The tragedy is finally ruled an
accident and the State drops all charges
against the Church.
• 2000-2002: Notwithstanding dismis-
sal of criminal charges, a civil action
proceeds.
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CNN AC360 | A HISTORY OF LIES
In addition to the Church itself, an
attempt is made to make Rathbun,
Rinder and Mr. Miscavige defendants.
Mr. Miscavige is in Los Angeles attending to
preparations for the Church’s Millennium
(2000) New Year’s celebration. Rathbun
and Rinder are the legal affairs staff
responsible for handling the hearing.
They attend to court arguments,
whereupon they are dismissed from the
case, but Mr. Miscavige is not, becoming
a defendant.
• 2002: In a two-month hearing,
an anti-Scientologist testifies against
Mr. Miscavige. He accuses him of:
»» Personally destroying missing
evidence in the case.
»» Coaching the witness to lie.
»» Destroying evidence ordered
produced by the Court.
He points to a previous court ruling
in another case Rinder had defended,
ruling that Mr. Miscavige had destroyed
evidence. While that decision had
been overturned, the same charge of
destruction of that very evidence was
once again being made. Moreover,
this anti-Scientologist claimed that he
witnessed the destruction of evidence by
the ecclesiastical leader.
The anti-Scientologist argument was
simple. Since Mr. Miscavige had destroyed
evidence in another case, he would have
been the one to destroy it in this case.
The hearing drags on for months.
Mr. Miscavige repeatedly tells Rinder
and Rathbun that he knows nothing of
the missing evidence and certainly never
ordered it destroyed (even if somebody
else did).
Rinder and Rathbun are smug and do
nothing about it. Their excuse is that the
evidence is gone, no matter who did it,
and how could they possibly have a way
of responding to the charges?
Mr. Miscavige becomes convinced that
Rinder and Rathbun must have destroyed
the evidence. He orders an investigation
by others to get to the bottom of it.
30 | FREEDOM
As it turns out, Rinder and Rathbun had
not destroyed the evidence Mr. Miscavige
had long been accused of destroying. In
fact, all allegedly destroyed evidence—
seven feet of it—was found, within one
hour of the request, in pristine condition,
in Rinder’s storage in Los Angeles.
Rinder was in possession of the
evidence the whole time and had sat on
it to the point of court rulings holding
Mr. Miscavige responsible for ordering
the evidence destroyed when, in fact,
said evidence was sitting right in Rinder’s
office. Rinder’s only excuse: He “didn’t
know” the evidence was there. However,
it was also clear: He never even looked.
Rathbun was upset
because the final
remaining case was over
and there were no more
battles to fight. As he
stated, “I only know how
to fight. It’s all I’ve
ever done.”
• 2002: It’s the beginning of the end for
Rinder and Rathbun. Mr. Miscavige
orders further investigation for the
missing evidence in the current case.
He has all storage in Clearwater
searched, literally millions of linear
feet of paper. It’s not found. Rinder
and Rathbun quickly blame another
staff member. Who knows? At this
point nobody cares about their excuses.
• 2002: With the hearing concluded,
both Rinder and Rathbun are
removed, for incompetence. Mr.
Miscavige tells them he’s getting to
the bottom of this case one way or the
other—and their involvement in it.
More to the point, from 2002 onward,
neither was to ever serve in an
executive capacity again.
• 2003: With Mr. Miscavige opening
new Churches around the world,
Rinder, Rathbun and—mysteriously
at the time—DeVocht team up and
begin what is later described as a
“reign of terror” in Miscavige’s
absence.
Upon his return, Mr. Miscavige takes
immediate disciplinary action, dismissing
Rathbun entirely and posting him in a
lower-level Church.
• 2004: With Rinder and Rathbun now
posted in low-level positions, in
lower-level Churches, Mr. Miscavige
orders their peers to get to the bottom
of their conspiracy. As he points out,
both men had botched every legal case
they had handled and for some
reason had become so derelict of duty
they were too lazy to even look for
evidence. It made no sense.
• 2004: No sooner had Mr. Miscavige
departed again than Rathbun had a
complete breakdown, beating Rinder
to a pulp before five men rushed in to
stop Rathbun from killing Rinder.
• 2004: Rathbun promptly blows and
is next discovered drunk in a ditch.
Once again it is assumed (erroneously)
that external wars had caused his
mental breakdown.
He would finally admit that in both
1993 (his first blow) and now, he was
upset because the final remaining case
was over and there were no more battles
to fight. As he stated, “I only know how to
fight. It’s all I’ve ever done.”
Rathbun claims he’s a “warrior” and
that he’ll be back when the next war
starts. He’s informed there won’t be any
further wars.
He swears he’ll prove his competence
by helping people, whereupon he’s next
heard, literally, asking where his 9mm
gun is. He is written off as the psychotic
he is.
• 2005: Tom DeVocht, in charge of
Church construction projects, is
discovered to have signed millions of
dollars in unauthorized work orders.
 Rathbun had
a complete breakdown,
beating Rinder
to a pulp before five
men rushed in to
stop Rathbun
from killing
Rinder.

He too, with this discovery, promptly
blows. The only person he speaks to
before leaving is Rinder, who later tells
colleagues that he shook DeVocht’s
hand as a parting message. Shook his
hand? Leaving staff and the Church’s
religious order is not only despised by
all Scientologists, it’s cause for
automatic expulsion from the religion.
Why would Rinder shake DeVocht’s
hand? Rinder provided no answer.
But it remained a mystery nobody
forgot, repeatedly probing to get to
the bottom of it.
• 2006-07: With the Church once again
at peace, and all external legal battles
having long since been terminated,
investigations have dead-ended as to
how the last case concerning the
accidental tragedy could have even
occurred. That’s when another legal
staffer involved in defending the case
confesses something he must get off
his chest. Namely, that every time
Mr. Miscavige would ask Rathbun and
Rinder to investigate why witnesses
had lied, and why evidence had gone
missing, Rinder and Rathbun would
wink at each other as soon as
Mr. Miscavige left the room. Rathbun
has long since been gone, but Rinder
is confronted with the report.
He finally admits that both he and
Rathbun knew the entire time what
happened to the evidence discovered
in Los Angeles. In fact, he and Rathbun
were the ones who put it there—and said
nothing about it while Mr. Miscavige was
being accused of having destroyed it.
Rinder makes another stunning
admission: that it was Rathbun himself
who had violated Church policy and
ordered the psychotic onto Church
premises, overriding all other staff who
had refused to do so, since it was an obvious
violation of the Church Founder’s policy.
Finally Rinder admits that he had
conspired with Rathbun to point the finger
at others who, once dismissed for their
supposed misconduct, would no longer be
around to expose Rathbun as the culprit.
Rinder and Rathbun had let dozens go
down or be dismissed—ordering their
dismissal—to cover up that they, Rinder
and Rathbun, were the actual perpetrators.

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CNN AC360 | A HISTORY OF LIES
(As for the real reason they covered
up who had allowed a psychotic on
Church premises, it was because both
Rinder and Rathbun knew they would be
dismissed from the Church for violating
the Founder’s policy on psychotics not
being allowed on Church premises. And
that was all in addition to a possible
10 years in jail for destroying evidence
and suborning perjury, in forcing every
witness to not be truthful. As for why
Rathbun would allow a psychotic on
Church premises, in contravention of
the Founder’s specific policies, that
would only be discovered years later.
Specifically, it was Rathbun’s familial
history of insanity—never revealed by
him, although required on his application
for Church staff—which prompted him
to act irrationally in allowing a psychotic
on Church premises in a misguided effort
to attempt more than was done during
his upbringing when his mother and both
brothers were institutionalized.)
This was all Rinder admitted to in
2007—although, two years later, both he
and Rathbun would finally confess to
something even more startling.
Nevertheless, Rinder’s fate was sealed
and he knew it. He would never again
hold an executive position in any
capacity and should he not complete an
ecclesiastic ethics program, he would be
transferred to a local Church parish to
service parishioners and regain a sense of
the Church’s religious mission.
• 2007: Rinder is in England, serving in
an assistant capacity to Church
spokespersons. Having completed a
particular media assignment, he
requests approval to return to the
Church’s International Headquarters.
He is told to remain in England for
the time being and is reminded his
“services” are not needed and maybe
he can do something in England that
would demonstrate his value should
he be allowed to return. He says he
will do so. Whereupon, he blows
without so much as a word.
For here was a man who lived for the
glory of walking in the shadow of power,
32 | FREEDOM
and his fall in disgrace was more than he
could tolerate. Over the preceding five years,
he’d been given dozens of opportunities to
reform and always thought he’d be given
another. Finally realizing he’d have to earn
his own way back up, he instead left his
colleagues, his wife of 35 years, his children.
For Rinder was
a man who lived for
the glory of walking in
the shadow of power,
and his fall in disgrace
was more than he
could tolerate.
>> A LAST MOMENT
OF CLARITY
B ut the story, tragically, doesn’t end
there. For here are three criminals
—Rathbun, Rinder and DeVocht—and
since liars are cowards, it was self-evident
they still had a dark secret. After all, every
one of them had blown which, according
to the Church’s Founder, only occurs
when one has overts and withholds
(transgressions). In this instance, it’s
the textbook example virtually proving
Mr. Hubbard’s discovery.
In a rare moment of lucidity and
partial honesty, just before his departure,
Rathbun attempted to come clean.
He admitted to the false façade he’d
presented to others. Namely, because he
had so badly mishandled external affairs,
Mr. Miscavige was forced to intervene.
That had an added benefit to Rathbun
as he would then be seen by others in
the presence of Mr. Miscavige (who was
forced onto the front lines to handle
Rathbun’s responsibilities). To wit:
“My continuous actions over the
past two decades have suppressed
Scientology dissemination… It has been
carefully masked by a façade of being
important or working on important
things. It is all the more insidious
because that ‘importance’ has been by
association with COB (Mr. Miscavige).”
As he further confessed, his modus
operandi included:
“The creation of ‘threats’ to justify my
own existence and suppressive operating
basis. This suppressive operating basis
was employed to try to maintain the
false impression that I have some
other production record externally that
warrants me maintaining a high position.
In fact, this is a fraud I have perpetrated.”
As for the damage he caused, and again
in his own words:
“This has resulted in some very
expensive situations becoming much
bigger than they were and winding
up on COB’s plate to terminatedly
handle. Each and every time on major
situations, COB has had to intervene
to clean up wars I had exacerbated.
For example, left to my own devices
in handling IRS litigation, the end
result would undoubtedly have been
no exemption, a billion-dollar tax bill,
and possible shutting down of the
Church. I have developed a slick false
PR technique of positioning myself as
having been integral in handling threats
during and after the fact, when they are
actually terminatedly handled by COB.
By calculation I have lost the Church 43
million dollars on losses and expenses
that could have been avoided.”
Proof of his words: Since the
discovery and removal of Rathbun and
Rinder, the seemingly endless series of
“unexplainable” external battles and legal
cases has “magically” ended. Indeed, the
Church has emerged victorious in country
after country with religious recognitions
as well as precedent-setting decisions in
the European Court of Human Rights
(the highest court on international
human rights issues for the 47 countries
that comprise the Council of Europe).
But Rathbun knew something else.
Unlike himself, whose only duties were
concerned with external legal affairs,
Mr. Miscavige was responsible for the
leadership of the entire religion:

“By perpetuating these operations
internally and externally, the worst
suppression has been visited upon
COB RTC. It is the worst suppression
because COB RTC is the person who has
single-handedly salvaged Scientology
from potential external ruin, and
single-handedly salvaged Scientology
itself by holding the line technically,
administratively, and on dissemination.
Had he not been here and done what
he has, Scientology would have been
lost. There is no slightest doubt about
that. The cumulative amount of COB’s
time I have cost in terms of dropping
balls, creating situations internally
and externally, is on the order of eight
years.”
Although he confessed to the ramifi-
cations of his actions, the magnitude of
his damage is a bitter pill to swallow.
Specifically, while he well knew how much
his incompetence and created disasters
had cost in terms of Mr. Miscavige’s time,
the resultant Church expansion—with
Rathbun off the lines and Mr. Miscavige
free to dedicate himself to the Church’s
religious mission—serves to illustrate just
how destructive Rathbun was.
Case in point: With the Church’s
resources now dedicated to the religion
itself, in the five years Rathbun has been
gone the size of the Church has doubled
what it had achieved in its first 55 years
of existence. Moreover, Mr. Miscavige
was finally free to complete a 25-year
project to restore all Mr. Hubbard’s
written and spoken words and so
make available the full Scripture of the
Scientology religion. (Read the biography
of the Scientology ecclesiastical leader at
www.scientology.org/DavidMiscavige)
But that’s still not the end of the story,
because Rathbun did not act alone in
suppressing the religion. As he further
admitted:
“I recognize my actions have been
unfounded and ignorant and destructive
in the extreme. There is no conspiracy
connected with this pattern of
suppression, except a portion of it. That
is Mike Rinder who has gone into tacit
agreement with me on making nothing
of situations, false reporting on them,
and allowing them to expand until they
explode on COB’s plate to handle.”
Yes, Mike Rinder, who would later admit
he was a “clone” of Rathbun—doing and
saying whatever Rathbun ordered him to
do or say.
But for all that, Rathbun’s most telling
statement, the one that would prophesize his
irreversible meltdown to this day, was this:
“The motivations for these acts are
a psychotic computation for self-
preservation.”
>> BUSTED, BITTER, BROKE…
AND PSYCHOTIC
A ctually, it’s no surprise that shortly
after confessing, Rathbun suddenly
departed. After all, the threatening
external battles had ended and the Church
was able to dedicate all its resources to
constructive activity—which is precisely
what a psychotic cannot stand. In the
Founder’s words describing those afflicted
with psychosis:
“They stay on as long as it can be made
bad or there is hope it can be destroyed. Then
when attention is given to improvement,
they blow.”
Although Rathbun
confessed to the
ramifications of his
actions, the magnitude
of his damage is a bitter
pill to swallow.
Such was the case with Rathbun, Rinder
and DeVocht (not mentioned so far if only
because his involvement was so insidiously
hidden). Yet there was something else: A
matter of self‑importance. All of them left
with the hope the Church would come
“begging” them to return to “save the day.”
• Rathbun, in his own words, was
awaiting the next “war,” which, thanks
to his departure, never appeared.
A FREEDOM SPECIAL REPORT
• Rinder, similarly in his own words,
awaited the next PR flap or legal case
which, thanks to his departure, never
materialized.
• DeVocht, also in his own words, awaited
the request for his “construction skills”
which, thanks to his departure, were
never less needed as new Churches
began arising on every continent now
that construction projects were not
being mismanaged by him.
Then there was the fact that each of them
intended on “proving” how competent
they were by becoming “world shakers” in
the private sector. Rathbun said he’d create
global learning programs in five years.
Rinder would be a PR genius. And DeVocht
one supposes imagined himself as the next
mega-industrialist.
Instead:
• Rathbun burnt through his several‑
hundred-thousand-dollar inheritance
(with debts—credit cards or otherwise—
amounting to $0.00 on his departure)
and another hundred thousand dollars
of assets in less than five years. Afterwards,
he was next reported to be selling beer in
a park. He was then reportedly pushing a
broom—while “trying” his hand at
“writing screenplays” for Hollywood.
• Rinder was selling used cars. When that
proved too taxing for him, since it
required he show up for work, he
turned to telemarketing. Whereupon
the firm he joined fell apart within
months.
• DeVocht became a repo man, selling
goods from repossessed storage
lockers on eBay—a far cry from his
previous life where his well-to-do
wife (whom he abandoned) provided
him with Armani suits and a steady
allowance. His career as a 21st-century
“Donald Trump” was next reflected in
his career as a refurbisher of used
furniture. He lost that job too.
In summary and substance, then, they
were all busted, broke and bitter. And
since it was now clear they’d never again
enjoy the life they had and threw away
through misconduct, they’d “get even.”
www.freedommag.org | 33
CNN AC360 | A HISTORY OF LIES
And they’d do so by resuscitating their
career of crime which had been their
undoing. Namely, lying and suborning
perjury.
>> ENTER THE PRESS
(AND AN APOSTATE “MEA CULPA”)
• 2009: It was hard to imagine what
they might have to sell even though,
date-coincident with media contact,
neither Rathbun, Rinder nor DeVocht
have any visible employment or
means of support. Yet they now spend
their days blogging on the Internet or
glued to flat-screen TVs—while not
even pretending to be so much as
attempting to gain employment or
engage in any work. Be that as it is,
and no matter further rumors of the
press “compensating” them, paying
“down payments” on their condos,
and a purported $250,000 media
payment to Rinder for an “exclusive,”
the fact is they did have a story to sell.
And it was a bombshell.
Indeed, it would finally, after 14 years,
clear up the mystery as to what had
happened back in 1995 and who had been
responsible for the perjury and obstruction
of justice that resulted in the since-
dismissed criminal charges—and the false
accusations against the Church’s leader.
And who better to hear that story
than the very same press, the S.P. Times,
who had so wished for it to result in
the destruction of the Church? In fact,
the very same press—indeed, the same
reporter—who had repeatedly taken
spokesman Rinder to task for the lies told
to law enforcement?
So what was the answer and who had
done it?
It was a story the S.P. Times had no need
to fact check. Because their suddenly
“star” sources for a scandalous story about
the Church and its leader confessed that
it was themselves—the “Posse”—who had
committed the crime.
For the first time ever it was revealed:
• Rathbun, in his own words, told how
it was he who had ordered evidence
destroyed: “I said, ‘lose ’em’ and
34 | FREEDOM
walked out of the room,” adding that
the decision to destroy the records was
his own: “Nobody told me to do it and
I did it.”
• Rathbun further admitted he was the
one who suborned perjury, forcing
witnesses to lie.
• Rathbun further justified his acts by
claiming it was “the hand I was dealt.”
Specifically, that by the time he arrived
on the scene, DeVocht, secretly, had
already forced the first witnesses to lie.
Whereupon Rathbun and DeVocht
conspired to force all other witnesses to
do the same—a secret they would keep
until their revelation to the S.P. Times,
in 2009, 14 years after the crime.
Childs and Tobin
destroyed any appearance
of objectivity.
And once it was done,
even the S.P. Times
editorial staff wanted to
spit in their face.
• Finally, there was the answer to why
Rinder shook DeVocht’s hand upon
DeVocht’s cowardly departure those
many years earlier, and Rinder’s bizarre
friendship with Rathbun, even after
Rathbun almost killed him: Rinder was
in on it the whole time—directing the
entire thing.
Tobin and Childs were in paroxysms
of glee over the Rathbun, Rinder and
DeVocht confession. But it came at a
price. Namely the death of any remaining
integrity or ethics they had as journalists.
Even though they had finally discovered
who had committed the greatest lie of all,
suborning perjury, they were now to give
those perjurers a platform to vent about
the very person who—discovering only
a fraction of what they’d done and now
confessed—had removed them.
The fact that Rathbun admitted that
he, Rinder and DeVocht had suborned
perjury and obstructed justice—after the
statute of limitations had expired, thus
precluding criminal prosecution and jail
time—apparently did not matter. After
all, Tobin and Childs had in previous
years printed enough anti-Scientology
vitriol to fill a book.
Besides, Tobin and Childs felt
confident in another regard. They knew
Mr. Miscavige rarely gave interviews and
would likely decline their request to do
so—at which point they could print the
latest self-corroborated lies by the self-
admitted perjurers with a tacked-on,
“Mr. Miscavige refused to comment.”
So the betrayal wasn’t merely those
who were busted—Rathbun, Rinder and
DeVocht. It also included S.P. Times
reporters Tobin and Childs. They well
knew, from his 1998 interview, that
Mr. Miscavige was the only person ever
truthful to them. They further knew they
hated Rinder prior to the Miscavige open-
access interview. As for Rathbun, they
would have never met him were it not for
Mr. Miscavige (who the Times now knew
was unaware of Rathbun’s crime at the
time Rathbun was introduced to them).
And DeVocht? Yes—Mr. Miscavige’s
introduction too. Nobody in the Church,
not even the corrupt trio, ever considered
Tobin and Childs to be ethical or honest.
They merely knew Mr. Miscavige was—
and so even the likes of Tobin, Childs
had no choice but to be impressed. After
all—he was no Rinder—a man they,
again, despised.
Childs and Tobin destroyed any
appearance of objectivity. And once it
was done, even the S.P. Times editorial
staff wanted to spit in their face.
Because as it turned out, however, just
as in 1998, Mr. Miscavige did indeed
agree to be interviewed. Moreover, he
told Childs and Tobin, in writing, that he
would “provide information annihilating
the credibility of your sources.”

The Times was caught out. They knew
what it meant to interview Mr. Miscavige.
They knew it would be fact, fact, fact,
truth, truth, truth. So what did they do?
They cancelled the interview and went to
press the very next day.
What had served for anti-Scientology
fodder in literally hundreds of articles and
editorials, between 1997 and 2004, was
now brushed aside as a “tsk-tsk” because
the perjurers were now suddenly on the
Times anti-Scientology team.
>> TABLOID JOURNALISM
H ow do they get away with it? More
importantly, how can dishonest
journalists live with themselves?
The answer is simple. They aren’t looking
for the “truth,” they are only interested in
a “story.” And in the 21st‑century Internet
age—where any blogger can post anything
he wants, anonymously no less—the so-
called mainstream media is more and more
pressed to make a buck. And more times
than not, today’s talking heads themselves
cut their teeth on the Internet fringe.
Case in point:
Anderson Cooper.
He called one month after the S.P. Times
trash had run, in an attempt to circle
the journalistic wagon for his Florida
colleagues whose “exposé” was already
being eviscerated—including by other real
journalists who were up in arms that any
respectable newspaper would “profile”
a man they’d refused to interview. (And
those real journalists included staff of the
S.P. Times itself.)
But, like the Times, Cooper also
possessed a hatred for Scientology and,
in particular, then-spokesman Rinder
(when he was in the Church). But
now, Rinder had jumped on the anti-
Scientology bandwagon and was calling
Cooper to pimp his co-conspirator and
fellow perjurer Rathbun. Rinder had
reportedly already made a commitment
for cash ($250,000 is what’s rumored on
the Internet) to another media outlet and
his lies were reserved as an “exclusive” to
them.
Rathbun further
admitted he was
the one who
suborned perjury,
forcing witnesses
to lie.
Cooper had a plan to cover his tracks:
• Refuse to provide any specifics of
allegations made against the Church.
In this way, he thought, he could
prevent any meaningful response,
since the Church would have no
details to respond to. Even more, by
refusing to give specifics, the
subsequent lack of a Church response
to the lies he would broadcast could
be excused by Cooper with a simple
“I wasn’t aware of that information.”
• Refuse to accept open access to the
Church. That way he could, he
thought, get away with presenting an
entirely distorted picture of the
Church as told by the defrocked
apostates who were now his sources.
• Refuse to accept any information from
the Church. That way, again, he’d
have “plausible deniability” when he
broadcast his anti-Scientology
propaganda.
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CNN AC360 | A HISTORY OF LIES

Of course, it all backfired on him. His
show was a bust; his ratings continued
their plummet. And when the Church
was finally informed of the specific lies
now being made by Cooper’s “Posse”
of perjurers—for the first time on the
broadcast itself—the Church had miles
of video footage to prove they were liars.
But Cooper did something else far
more telling—and damning—of media
ethics today. For while public distrust of
the media is now at an all-time high, that
same public doesn’t necessarily know
how the media misleads them. All they
know is that they are being lied to, if for
no other reason than most people are

Finally, there was the answer

to why Rinder shook DeVocht’s
hand upon DeVocht’s cowardly
departure those many years earlier,
and Rinder’s bizarre
friendship with Rathbun, even
after Rathbun almost killed him:
Rinder was in on it the whole time—
DIRECTING THE ENTIRE THING.

36 | FREEDOM

honest and can tell when a story has the
stench of a sewer.
So how does Anderson Cooper do it?
And what’s in his bag of smoke-and-
mirror tricks?
It’s simple. It’s not what he shows on
his broadcast; it’s what he doesn’t show:
• Cooper was read Rathbun’s confession
wherein Rathbun admitted to the
criminal misconduct which led to his
removal. It was all recorded on
videotape by Cooper as he conducted
his interview of Church officials. Not
one sentence of that confessional was
included in the AC360 broadcast.
• Cooper was provided the Rathbun
admission of criminal perjury and
obstruction of justice by himself,
Rinder and DeVocht. Again, his
broadcast made no mention of it.
• Cooper was provided DeVocht’s
confession, wherein DeVocht admits
he is a compulsive liar. No mention
of it is made in Cooper’s broadcast.
• Cooper was made aware that his
sources had been removed for their
misconduct—a fact even those
sources admitted was true. As noted,
such misconduct included Rathbun’s
admission of wasted Church funds
during his tenure in external affairs;
the same again for Rinder; and the
same for DeVocht in mismanaged
construction projects. The point:
These people were removed for a
reason; their misconduct was
criminal; and the damage was very
expensive. Cooper made no mention
of it whatsoever.
• Cooper was aware that Rinder had
“sold” his story to another media
outlet. Again, no mention of it.
• Moreover, Cooper interviewed Rinder
in proxy, through his current live-in
lover, the age of Rinder’s daughter,
but presented her tales (as given to
her by Rinder) without any mention
of her relationship to Rinder. The
incestuous connection was apparently
“irrelevant” to Cooper. (Why not at
least tell the truth and, as Cooper
says, let the viewer decide?)
• Finally, every statement made by
Church officials concerning the affairs
of the Church, its growth and its
leadership, since the removal and
dismissal of Cooper’s sources six years
earlier—all of them were omitted
from the broadcast.
Fortunately, the Church has the
resources to expose the media mani-
pulation Cooper engages in.
But what does it say for a news
organization that becomes an apologist
for criminals? Perjurers, suborners of
perjury, obstructors of justice—criminals?
And that’s the real
story of Rathbun,
Rinder and DeVocht.
They don’t belong
in front of cameras,
unless it’s for
a mug shot.
Then again, what does it say about media
blithely broadcasting what they are
informed is a pack of lies, and doing so
even despite the fact those telling the lies
are self-admitted criminal perjurers and
suborners of perjury? In other words, these
are people who had conspired to coerce
dozens to corroborate each other’s lies to
police—all of which meant Cooper was
mere putty in their hands by comparison.
And Cooper knew it.
Actually, maybe it doesn’t say much.
After all, it is Anderson Cooper and
nobody ever said he was a real journalist.
A FREEDOM SPECIAL REPORT
>> WHAT’S THE REAL STORY?
A nybody can see it for themselves. Just
log on to www.scientology.org and
what one will see is a dynamic, expanding
new religion working to do good, with
global humanitarian programs under the
banner of Universal Human Rights, Drug
Education and Rehabilitation, Global
Literacy Programs and a Volunteer
Minister relief force, front and center,
helping wherever needed.
Now contrast that with a handful
of bitter, disgruntled apostates who
through dishonesty, malfeasance and
hard‑core‑go-to-jail criminality are no
longer allowed to be a part of it.
In a world where press headlines take
religions to task when they don’t clean
house, the media should applaud a
church that does remove miscreant thugs.
That they lie about the leader of the
religion (the man who removed them)
is no surprise. After all, they had engaged
in felonious conduct, for which they
should have served jail time. And when
that crime was exposed, they allowed the
leader of the Church to be targeted for
the acts they had committed—all while
knowing and keeping it a secret from him
that it was they who had committed the
crime. That they could then sit there
pretending to defend the leader, while
professing they’d “take a bullet” for
him—well, they were indeed taking a
bullet…and shooting it right in his back.
So they were well trained for their latest
“self-corroborating” media tour. After
all, the easiest lie to level against him,
and corroborate among themselves, were
the very crimes they had committed in
teaming up together to physically abuse
staff when the investigation was closing
in on their secret. Just change the name
and go to town. Lying…it was the only
thing remaining they knew how to do.
And that’s the real story of Rathbun,
Rinder and DeVocht. They don’t belong
in front of cameras, unless it’s for a mug
shot. n
www.freedommag.org | 37
A BRIEF
CHRONOLOGY
OF MONUMENTAL
DISASTERS
THE CAREER OF
“KINGPIN” RATHBUN
“I have proven a proclivity for creating
some of the greatest catastrophes in
Church history when allowed to have
some leash.”
—Marty Rathbun

C
ontrary to his public utterances to an
uninformed media who know nothing
about the Scientology religion or
Church (and aren’t expected to
know, since they are the media and not
part of the religion), Rathbun never
served in an ecclesiastical management
capacity. Rather, his entire Church career
was in external affairs, responsible for
legal matters. Here follows a sampling
of his malfeasance, covered up for years.

38 | FREEDOM
A FREEDOM SPECIAL REPORT

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CNN AC360 | A HISTORY OF LIES
1) 1986: The Church’s Founder had
passed away in January. As with any
Church, the transitive years from a living
Founder are the most critical to the
religion determining its future survival.
As part of this transition, all past legal
disputes against the Church were directed
to be amicably settled. Unfortunately,
however, a civil trial in one case had
already been scheduled. Nevertheless and
even after the plaintiff had presented his
case, a court-supervised nuisance-value
settlement had been agreed to.
However, after the check was delivered
to the court, by Rathbun, he returned and
reported it “fell through.” Consequently,
due to the religious prejudice of what was
then a new religion, the trial ended in a
staggering $30 million judgment. On
appeal, the courts reduced this figure to
less than a tenth, but still far greater than
the agreed-upon nuisance settlement. For
more than 15 years, Rathbun blamed
the botched settlement on an attorney
who had suddenly passed away from a
diabetic seizure. Meaning, this attorney
was not there to defend himself. Either
way, Rathbun next refused to pay the
greatly reduced judgment following
appeal and by the time all was said and
done, between legal fees and interest, the
matter cost the Church more than 100
times the original settlement.
It was not until 2003 that Rathbun
admitted he had torpedoed the 1986
settlement as he felt the Church should
only engage in wars and he could not
imagine a cessation of fighting battles. In
his own words:
“On external lines my operation is the
same—it consists of the [suppressive]
characteristic of only restimulating and
never destimulating.” —Marty Rathbun
Attached to that confession he listed the
monetary costs:
Judgment $8 million.
40 | FREEDOM
Legal fees $7.5 million.
That’s $15.5 million. In fact, his math
is conservative, but for the sake of his
amends, the $15.5 million of losses
caused by him will be accepted. That
he never came clean for 15 years, and
the mental anguish this mystery caused
others, is noted as incalculable damage.
2) 1988: Pursuant to his “fight, no
matter what” mentality, he next launched
a legal war against Church counsel. He
was upset over a disputed $50,000 in
legal fees—a paltry sum in terms of legal
expenses for a global organization. In his
own words:
“…when there is a threatening situation
or suit, I get the [external affairs] staff and
attorneys wound up toward ‘destroying
the threat.’” —Marty Rathbun
Why he felt the Church’s own attorney
was an “enemy” can only be explained
by him. What is not in question is that
the civil case he insisted on bringing to
recover these fees was lost. Instead, he
wasted $3 million in attempting to recover
the disputed $50,000 and was further
ordered to pay the party $199,000 in
additional fees.
In total, $3,199,000 of wasted
parishioner funds because Rathbun was
upset over a disputed $50,000 that he
wanted returned.
3) 1988: The Church had successfully
prosecuted a case to prevent a violation of
the Church’s intellectual property rights.
Having already been granted a federal
injunction against the offending party,
Rathbun was not satisfied, as said party
had not screamed “Uncle!” Whereupon,
he snatched defeat from the jaws of
victory by:
• Refusing to provide documents the
court requested so that the judge
could calculate the amount of
monetary damages the offending
party owed to the Church.

• Throwing a fit in a courtroom and
verbally abusing the federal judge
until he had to be escorted from the
courtroom.
Result? Court-ordered sanctions against
the Church of $2.9 million in a case in
which the Church had been victorious.
And $600,000 in legal fees wasted
on his post-victory “crush the enemy
mercilessly” strategy AFTER the Church
had won.
4) 1992: A person who had served on
staff for years, but was now employed
in the private sector, approached the
Church for charity—having fallen on
hard times and now indigent. A severance
of $50,000 was ordered by Rathbun’s
superiors, which the indigent would have
gratefully accepted. Rathbun, in his “I
hate everybody and nobody should be
shown compassion or charity” mode,
covertly torpedoed the payment. This
individual descended into the economic
status of welfare case. As this person
would later state—he couldn’t pay his
grocery bills and so turned to what he
never imagined. Specifically, selling
stories to the tabloids and personal
injury attorneys, whereupon he was
next accusing the religion’s ecclesiastical
leader of killing the religion’s Founder,
killing his mother‑in-law… Well, why go
on. All allegations were, of course, untrue,
scandalous and promptly dismissed by
the courts. But the mere cost of doing
so reached millions of dollars. Rathbun
only admitted a decade after the fact his
role in torpedoing the charity payment.
5) 1984-1995: The Church had been
viciously attacked and wrongly accused by
the government of Canada—accusations
for which the Church was vindicated
in the courts. However, before the
vindication, Rathbun insisted on Church
lawyers making a statement, on the
courthouse steps, accusing Canadian
officials of complicity in obstruction of
justice for which Rathbun assured Church
lawyers he had evidence. Factually, he
later discovered he had the wrong identity
and accused the wrong individual. Rather
than retracting the statement, he covered
up his discovery (that he had the wrong
identity) and had counsel continue to
defend a libel case brought against the
Church. That case was ultimately lost
after 10 years of litigation at a cost of $10
Throwing a fit in a
courtroom and verbally
abusing the federal
judge until Rathbun had
to be escorted from the
courtroom.
million in legal fees and court-ordered
judgment. He did not confess to his
cover-up for another eight years (after
the lost judgment), which was in fact 19
years since he had become aware of his
blunder in accusing the wrong party.
6) 1993: Notwithstanding Rathbun’s
irrational and psychotic desire to fight,
fight and fight some more—preferably
until the end of eternity—the leader of the
religion managed to bring to an end a
40-year conflict with the IRS, resulting in
the recognition of the Church and all its
related social betterment organizations as
fully tax-exempt. So protracted had been
this battle that its genesis preceded the birth
of most Scientologists. Consequently, it
A FREEDOM SPECIAL REPORT
was no overstatement when the victory
was announced as “The War is Over!”
live before 10,000 Scientologists at the
Los Angeles Sports Arena, with satellite
replays to congregations in hundreds of
cities world over.
While Scientologists celebrated this
monumental accomplishment as the
history-making event it was, to be
looked back upon by generations of
Scientologists to come, Rathbun blew
in the middle of the night—without so
much as a word to his colleagues, friends
or even his wife. When he contacted the
Church a week later, it was assumed the
pressures of the external battles had taken
their toll on him and he was granted a
two-year sabbatical. Meanwhile, his
superiors had to clean up the remaining
legal skirmishes he had created and left
behind. (Rathbun would not confess for
another decade that his departure was
not due to external pressures but, rather,
because the war was over and he was
prevented from realizing his desire—to
start a new one.)
7) 1995-2004: Having completed
his sabbatical but a few weeks earlier,
Rathbun was placed on a training program
in Florida. Church staff and executives at
these facilities were unaware that he had
lost all authority, since his blow had not
been broadly publicized. This was done
as an act of kindness so as to not utterly
destroy any reputation he had. As it turns
out, failure to make known his mental
breakdown was an epic mistake. Because
no sooner was he once again provided a
work position than he set in motion a new
disaster to give him the legal battles he so
desired. In contravention of longstanding
policy by the religion’s Founder, he
allowed a psychotic individual on Church
premises—overriding objections of all
then Church staffers. When investigations
were ordered by Rathbun’s superiors to see
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CNN AC360 | A HISTORY OF LIES
who had allowed this to occur, he was the
person charged with investigating. Rather
than admitting his guilt, he named more
than a dozen innocent parties—all of
whom were then subsequently removed
or dismissed. Also undisclosed at the time
was his participation in suborning perjury
to law enforcement. In a misguided
attempt to “defend the Church” and
the reputation of the psychotic against
a biased police force (who were, in fact,
biased), he ordered staff to not disclose
the circumstances of the individual’s
psychosis (even though the psychotic was
violent and physically harmed the staff
attempting to care for her). The real reason
for Rathbun’s cover-up was the knowledge
that he himself would be dismissed from
the Church for violating Church policy on
allowing psychotics on Church premises.
All this quite in addition to the matter of
a potential 10 years in jail—the length
of two five-year sentences for suborning
perjury and obstruction of justice. (See A
Liar is a Coward; A Perjurer is a Criminal,
p. 26.)
It was not for another decade plus
that the Church would finally discover
his familial history of insanity—never
revealed by him although required on
his application for Church staff—which
caused him to act irrationally in allowing
psychotics on Church premises. In
particular, he was acting in a misguided
effort to attempt more than was done
to help his institutionalized mother and
two brothers.
The consequences of his actions
resulted in criminal charges. While the
Church was ultimately vindicated, it was
not before Rathbun’s criminal conduct
spun out of control and the ecclesiastical
leader was accused of the very conduct
Rathbun had engaged in. Of course,
the religion’s leader was unaware of
Rathbun’s involvement, as Rathbun had
42 | FREEDOM
manipulated himself into the position
of “defending” the leader against these
“scurrilous allegations,” and never
once mentioned or confessed that the
charges would have been true had they
been leveled against Rathbun himself.
He kept this secret for eight years. It was
only once all charges had been dropped
and internal investigations to find the
It’s a well-known mental
phenomenon, mostly
seen in institutions for
the criminally insane
or maximum-security
prisons.
actual perpetrators narrowed in on him
that he blew. He still was not to confess
to his suborning perjury and obstructing
justice for five more years—a full 14 years
after he’d committed the crime. By then,
the legal ramifications to the Church
had long since been settled. But not
before expending millions in legal fees
defending itself.
“The motivations for these acts are
a psychotic computation for self-
preservation: keep enough chaos and
threat stirred up in the environment,
make myself appear to be a solution
to it instead of the instigator of it, and
lots of people go down and remain
in turmoil while I go unrecognized as
the source of it and survive.” —Marty
Rathbun
8) Summary: By Rathbun’s own
calculation on September 29, 2003,
the total amount of harm visited upon
Scientology due to his “reign of war” and
secret misconduct was $43,799,000.
He was being very conservative and the
damage is far higher. For by engaging
in his own psychotically motivated war,
he also distracted Church leaders who
ultimately had to clean up his mess.
Then, too, he diverted Church funds
from humanitarian programs to help
Mankind, not to mention the creation
of new Church facilities to service the
greater community of Scientologists and
the communities in which they work.
Since the discovery and removal
of Rathbun, the endless series of
“unexplainable” external battles and legal
cases has “magically” ended. Indeed, the
Church has emerged victorious in country
after country with religious recognitions
as well as precedent‑setting decisions in
the European Court of Human Rights.
Moreover, with the Church’s resources
now dedicated to the religion itself,
in five years the size of the Church has
doubled what it had achieved in its first 55
years of existence.
A
ll of which answers the question as to
how Rathbun could lose all touch with
reality in the full‑blown psychotic
break that is now his daily existence. The
answer is simple. Sometimes one can
easily make amends for misconduct.
By way of example, a low-level staff
member or executive could be responsible
for foul‑ups that cost the organization
thousands of dollars and hundreds
of hours of work to undo the damage
caused. However, what does one do when
the damage caused is so great that it’s in
the tens of millions and required hundreds
of thousands of hours of combined work by
others to undo the destruction? For the

individual who wishes to atone for such
misconduct, it’s a long road back. One
either travels that road to redemption or,
instead, one of delusion.
It’s a well-known mental phenomenon,
mostly seen in institutions for the
criminally insane or maximum-security
prisons. That is, unable to come to grips
with the depths of evil one has engaged
in, one instead has an “epiphany.” One
“realizes” one day that “None of it was
my fault! Those were the cards I was dealt
and I was just a victim of fate!” At which
point one has a euphoric resurgence,
They blame
their failures on
somebody else
(No Responsibility
For Anything)
and when they look in the
mirror they see a “warm
and fuzzy guy,” while the
rest of the world sees
someone in need of
an exorcism.
losing touch with all reality of one’s past,
and reinvents oneself as what they wish
they were. They blame their failures on
somebody else (No Responsibility For
Anything) and when they look in the
mirror they see a “warm and fuzzy guy,”
A FREEDOM SPECIAL REPORT
while the rest of the world sees someone
in need of an exorcism.
That’s Marty Rathbun. Because while
he paints himself as a lovey-dovey,
pop‑psychology guru to the indigent, his
actions belie his self-proclaimed façade.
Worse, he seems utterly unaware of the
turmoil that is his life. He could have
kept fishing from his used trawler like the
Old Man and the Sea. But all he sees is an
endless battle to be picked and imaginary
war to be fought.
The Church is at peace. Indeed, the only
battles today are the rantings of Rathbun
and his “Posse.” No longer able to create
and then fight wars for the Church at
Church expense, he now attacks the
Church itself for no other reason than
its refusal to let him continue to fight his
psychotic war against what he imagines
are the enemy—the entire world and
anybody who doesn’t see it his way.
As L. Ron Hubbard discovered in
researching psychosis and describing the
insane:
“They are involved in warfare, with conflicts
around them which are invisible to others.
One wonders how they can be so involved
or get so involved in so much hostility.”
—L. Ron Hubbard
NOTE: This above listing only includes
external affairs misconduct. His technical
crimes in the malpractice of Scientology
auditing are kept in confidence, pursuant
to priest-penitent privilege, and will only
be provided Rathbun for atonement once
he has made amends for the cost of the
above misconduct and has demonstrated
he can be trusted by anybody in any way.
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CNN AC360 | A HISTORY OF LIES

This document was self-originated and self-authored by Marty Rathbun. It is a description

of his misconduct, failings and ecclesiastic crimes—in his own words.
This document was provided directly to Anderson Cooper.

28 September 2003

Public Announcement
I am writing this public announcement to
inform executives and staff that I have come
to my senses and I am no longer committing
present time overts and have ceased all
attacks and suppressions on Scientology. I am
applying Steps A-E of HCO PL Suppressive
Acts Suppression of Scientology and
Scientologists because my continuous actions
over the past two decades have suppressed
Scientology dissemination and the purposes
of this base. It has been carefully masked by a
façade of being important or working on
important things. It is all the more insidious
because that “importance” has been by
association with COB.
… The end result is unmocked org form,
I instigated a pattern of operation that is
180 degrees opposite to the purpose of orgs,
this base, and ethics and justice. By enforcing
parts of this pattern on others by order or
example, I have driven in the following pattern.
Hear of a bugged production area. Bypass
all seniors and base HCOs, and find a
target… Interrogate the individual for personal
out ethics and bad intentions. Write up a
report…that contains lurid details, making the
target out to be an incorrigible threat.
Write it in such a way that some senior or
[personnel officer] feels compelled to take the
target off post or tell the person myself he is
busted.
Write the report in such a way to justify my
existence by proving the base is dangerous
and requires my “services.”
Do nothing to get the target replaced. Do
nothing to get out the product that the target
was not getting produced.
…
overworked and enturbulated executives and
staff, bad news about the intentions and
activities of staff members, lowering
production and morale and the creation of
“threats” to justify my own existence and
suppressive operating basis.
This suppressive operating basis was
employed to try to maintain the false
impression that I have some other production
record externally that warrants me maintaining

44 | FREEDOM

a high position. In fact, this is a fraud I have
perpetrated. On external lines my operation
is the same—it consists of the [suppressive]
characteristic of only restimulating and never
destimulating. That is, when there is a
threatening situation or suit, I get the [external
affairs] staff and attorneys wound up toward
“destroying the threat.” This has resulted in
some very expensive situations becoming
much bigger than they were (specifically the
Wollersheim case and RICO cases) and
winding up on COB’s plate to terminatedly
handle. Each and every time on major
situations, COB has had to intervene to clean
up wars I had exacerbated. For example, left
to my own devices in handling IRS litigation,
the end result would undoubtedly have been
no exemption, a billion-dollar tax bill, and
possible shutting down of the Church. I have
developed a slick false PR technique of
positioning myself as having been integral in
handling threats during and after the fact,
when they are actually terminatedly handled
by COB. By calculation I have lost the Church
43 million dollars on losses and expenses that
could have been avoided.
By perpetuating these operations internally
and externally, the worst suppression has
been visited upon COB RTC. It is the worst
suppression because COB RTC is the person
who has single-handedly salvaged Scientology
from potential external ruin, and single-
handedly salvaged Scientology itself by
holding the line technically, administratively,
and on dissemination. Had he not been here
and done what he has, Scientology would
(signed by Marty Rathbun)
____________________________________________________________
A FREEDOM SPECIAL REPORT
have been lost. There is no slightest doubt
about that. The cumulative amount of COB’s
time I have cost in terms of dropping balls,
creating situations internally and externally,
is on the order of eight years. If that time
were recouped, there is no doubt we would
have at least double to triple the amount
of orgs,…we’d have thousands of missions…
and we would be very well on the way to
a clear planet.
The motivations for these acts are a
psychotic computation for self-preservation:
keep enough chaos and threat stirred up in
the environment, make myself appear to be a
solution to it instead of the instigator of it, and
lots of people go down and remain in turmoil
while I go unrecognized as the source of it
and survive.
I recognize my actions have been
unfounded and ignorant and destructive in
the extreme. There is no conspiracy
connected with this pattern of suppression,
except a portion of it. That is Mike Rinder
who has gone into tacit agreement with me
on making nothing of situations, false
reporting on them, and allowing them to
expand until they explode on COB’s plate
to handle. The rest of the operation
described in this announcement is an
individuated and psychotic activity. I know
of no one who agrees with it or condones
it, or who participated in some part of it
except by having been sufficiently
electrified or intimidated by me to act
reactively or to think it was somehow
pro-survival for the group.
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CNN AC360 | A HISTORY OF LIES

M
arty Rathbun’s descent into the
abyss of insanity was by no
means a sudden, over-the-edge
plunge. Rather, his was a slow
and inexorable slide into the depths of
irreversible irrationality.
For years Rathbun managed to keep the
madness hidden. Even when the verbal
tirades metastasized into violence, the
outward signs were subtle. For by then
his cleverness had grown all but demonic
and what he unleashed was kept isolated
and behind closed doors.

HEEEEERE’S
But by winter of 2004, the year of his
desertion from the Church, he could
no longer keep his malady veiled. The
cunning was gone, the rage unchecked,

and so it was that a whole host of
co‑workers finally bore witness to what
Rathbun had become. That was the
evening when all of them shockingly saw,
and then promptly stopped, his attempt
to kill Mike Rinder with his bare hands.
(See The “Kinky” Relationship, p. 53.)
It was the beginning of the end for both
of them and would finally spawn another
kind of madness altogether; for here were
two former external affairs officers who
had worked the same cases and walked
the same beat. Now removed—and
seemingly mortal enemies—they formed
an unholy alliance.
Why?
And what makes them “best good buddies”
today?
At the heart of it all lies the answer
to that most haunting question: What
possessed Marty Rathbun?
By way of a strangely relevant clue—
because he is a very strange man—consider
his two favorite films: The Shining (1980)
and Scarface (1983). Both are dark, violent
and laced with sadistic scenes.
The first, based on a chilling Stephen
King novel, chronicles the slow-burn
insanity of a writer (Jack Nicholson) in
MARTY!
BY THOSE WHO
KNEW HIM WELL
a snowbound resort hotel. As the writer
spirals into lunacy, he wields an ax to kill
his wife and young son. It’s a now-classic
scene wherein Nicholson immortalized
that pop culture refrain, HEEEEERE’S
JOHNNY!
While in macabre imitation, Rathbun
was forever announcing his arrival to
fellow staff members with a chilling
“HEEEEERE’S MARTY!”
Rathbun’s second favorite film, Scarface,
is likewise immortalized in American
pop culture. It tells of a Cuban petty
criminal (Al Pacino) who lands in Miami
as part of Castro’s infamous Mariel
boatlift. The young thug builds a cocaine
kingdom to rule a drug-addled world.
But when a Colombian drug deal goes
sour, the Cuban castaway is all alone
on his baronial balcony to face a horde
of hit men with a grenade-launching
assault weapon. Out of his mind on
cocaine, he cries, “Say hello to my little
friend,” before unloading his last clip
and collapsing in a hail of bullets. It was
another of Rathbun’s favorite lines.
Yet beyond a glimpse into the mind
of Marty Rathbun, both films stand as
a harbinger of real-life things to come;
for just as madness gripped the fictional
characters he so emulated, so he himself
was soon gripped.

46 | FREEDOM

It was 1993 when Rathbun suffered his
first mental breakdown. Then a senior
executive in legal affairs, his collapse
came after a turbulent 15 years of federal
and state investigations, lawsuits and
civil actions from miscreants who had
crawled out of the woodwork. For the
rest of Scientology, it was a celebratory
time. After all, that was the year the IRS
had finally—under the guiding hand of
ecclesiastical leader David Miscavige—
cut through its own bureaucracy and fully
recognized the Church of Scientology
and all its related social betterment
organizations as fully tax-exempt.
In October 1993, more than 10,000
Scientologists gathered in the Los Angeles
Sports Arena to celebrate the victory. But
in the world of Marty Rathbun, any such
celebration was hollow; for this was the
moment when he slowly came to realize
the fighting would soon be finished and
that he was forever doomed to become an
aimless soldier without a war, perpetually
peering around corridors for invisible
enemies.
What then followed is almost as
chilling as any sequence in the horror
films he loved. There had been signs:
moments of volcanic rage triggered for
no reason anyone could fathom. But he
allowed nothing to forewarn his wife and
fellow staff members when he skulked
away one morning in November of 1993,
just weeks removed from the Church’s
greatest victory. Rathbun eventually
reappeared, and was granted a two-year
sabbatical. (See Postcards from the Edge or
Marty Takes a Holiday, p. 48.)
On his return to staff in 1995, Rathbun
held junior positions in a trainee capacity
at the Church’s spiritual headquarters
in Clearwater, Florida, then worked his
way back into the external affairs arena.
But unbeknownst to those around him,
that small voice within continued calling
The result was all
too predictable:
a spiral toward insanity
like a headlong descent
into a dark place that
had always been waiting
for his arrival.
out, Heeeeere’s Marty! Indeed, within
weeks of his arrival to Clearwater, he
had committed a crime that would not
be discovered for 15 years and which
would cause him to have a total mental
meltdown. (See A Liar is a Coward; A
Perjurer is a Criminal, p. 26.)
By 2002, Rathbun’s mental state
was steadily eroding by the day. His
incompetence and malfeasance in
external affairs were likewise back in full
force. Accordingly, he was removed from
any position of executive authority—that
authority he was so practiced at worming
his way into. In the wake of that removal,
and in a rare moment of lucidity, he
wrote of the fact he indeed possessed
a “proclivity for creating some of the
greatest catastrophes in Church history
when allowed to have some leash.” (See
A Brief Chronology of Monumental Disasters;
The Career of “Kingpin” Rathbun, p. 38.)
Then, too, by the end of 2003, and albeit
only in isolated incidents, he was starting
to betray that proclivity for madness.
In one instance, he flew into a frenzied
rage and flung a telephone into a wall.
With no more external battles to fight, he
soon found a new battleground—within
the Church… And so the violence he
A FREEDOM SPECIAL REPORT
unleashed against fellow staff became the
final straw. In consequence, and although
already stripped of all authority, he was
formally dismissed from the Church
organization he had served.
Thus his fate was sealed, for never again
would he rise to any executive position
or insert himself into the decision-
making process. The result was all too
predictable: a spiral toward insanity like
a headlong descent into a dark place that
had always been waiting for his arrival.
There was another key admission at
this juncture. It is related by a Church
executive as told to CNN and describes
Rathbun as of 2003:
“Marty confided in me and told me
that with all of the expansion now
unfolding, he was a ‘fish out of water’
and didn’t know how to do anything
related to Church expansion… Marty
cried as he was telling me this and
said all he could do is fight battles and
that’s what he wanted to continue to
do somehow, even though there were
none… He was an extremely disturbed
individual and further said in tears
of grief that he had no creative or
constructive capacity to hold due to his
lack of competence and experience.”
There was more, because also relayed
to CNN was his confession to another
Church executive—a confession wherein
he admitted that he obviously had lost his
sanity if only for the fact he could not stop
bouncing his knee up and down.
But in the end, and even in the face of
testimony from Rathbun’s former wife, a
woman who so pointedly told Cooper:
“Anybody in CNN who has met this
person must have noticed the guy is a
psychopath”...the anchorman kept to his
own agenda.
That was when Cooper finally presented
Rathbun with a gleeful HEEEEERE’S
MARTY! n
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CNN AC360 | A HISTORY OF LIES

POSTCARDS FROM THE EDGE

or Marty Takes a Holiday

S
“Recent (investigation) revealed the source of special treatment being o Marty Rathbun begins his own
given to SPs (Suppressive Persons). It started with Marty Rathbun blowing story—and in third person no less.
the Sea Org on November, 1993. Marty took advantage of a number of false So this story begins with his
reports he had put in place over years giving a false picture as to his role in departure in 1993. As the world of
handling external attacks and the IRS in particular. It was against that false Scientology celebrates its greatest victory in
picture of contribution that Marty covertly negotiated a deal to keep his history, the end of the 40-year battle with
blow quiet... The web of lies that allowed that arrangement to stay in place the IRS, Rathbun slinks off in the shadows.
is so complex it would take pages to recount.” —Marty Rathbun Specifically, he takes off on a cross-country

48 | FREEDOM

trip to nowhere without even telling his
wife. The trip, due to frequent stops in bars,
lasts only a few days. At which point he
phones his wife and, tearfully, asks for help.
It’s assumed that this self-described
external affairs warrior is battle fatigued
and so he is afforded a sabbatical in the
Caribbean aboard the Church’s religious
retreat at sea, the Freewinds. Rathbun spends
two years aboard the ship.
Two Church staff accompany him.
One, a counselor, is assigned to attend
to Rathbun’s mental and spiritual needs.
The counselor spends a year caring for a
psychotic Rathbun.
The second staff member is aboard the
vessel with Rathbun for the full two years.
He attends to Rathbun’s every need, ensuring
he gets plenty of sleep, exercise, nutrition,
vitamins and everything in between.
Including strolls on the powdery white
sand beaches of Aruba and dining with him
under the stars, portside in Curaçao.
A seemingly restored and rejuvenated
Rathbun returns to staff duties, eventually
working his way back to external affairs. But
it is just a matter of time before Rathbun
again embroils himself and the Church in a
tangle of disasters. (See A Brief Chronology of
Monumental Disasters; The Career of “Kingpin”
Rathbun, p. 38.)
The upshot: Rathbun is relieved of any
authority for gross misconduct, malfeasance
—and for psychotic behavior. Ever the
stand-up guy, ready to take responsibility for
the calamities he’s left in his wake, Rathbun
mounts his motorcycle and blows again.
In evidence of his mental state at the time,
one story is telling, if not downright bizarre.
Rathbun parks the motorcycle and tosses
the keys to a nine-year-old boy, telling
the father: “I know this doesn’t make any
sense but this is my bike and I don’t need
it no more. And your kid loves it, so take
the bike.”
What kind of man
hands a 500cc motorcycle
to a kid who can hardly see
over the handlebars, much
less mount the thing?
One who next rents a car
and drives north with
a bottle of Jose Cuervo
tequila as his traveling
companion. The next
morning, he awakens
behind the wheel of the car
he has drunkenly plowed
into a ditch.
What kind of man hands a 500cc
motorcycle to a kid who can hardly see over
the handlebars, much less mount the thing?
One who next rents a car and drives north
with a bottle of Jose Cuervo tequila as his
traveling companion. The next morning, he
awakens behind the wheel of the car he has
drunkenly plowed into a ditch.
Rathbun again telephones his wife,
again in tears, and makes his way to the
Scientology retreat in Clearwater, Florida.
There, he is provided a three-bedroom,
two-bath apartment he shares with a pet
Chihuahua.
Rathbun is additionally provided upwards
of $85,000 in medical care to treat a
shopping list of lingering medical issues.
Rathbun is then further given unlimited
access to a private exercise facility, placed on
A FREEDOM SPECIAL REPORT
a medically supervised nutritional regime,
and given part-time vocational training in a
Church carpentry mill. It’s a job he expressly
requests.
This time his sabbatical lasts 10 months.
His recovery begins to unravel one day in
2004 when Rathbun picks up the newspaper
and reads that a protracted civil case involving
the Church has reached a settlement. (When
the Rathbun web is eventually unspun, it
would be discovered that Rathbun himself
began the entire affair. Moreover, a decade
later he would coolly confess to coercing
others to lie, destruction of evidence and
obstruction of justice. [See A Liar is a Coward;
a Perjurer is a Criminal, p. 26.])
The descent continues when he’s further
informed he no longer qualifies for any
future executive position, in accordance
with the Founder’s policies regarding
Church executives.
In response, Rathbun once again turns
violent, this time directing his fury and fist
to the literal face of his wife.
Whereupon, he once more skulks away
to yet another bar. After getting drunk, he
remembers spending the night in a park
sharing a pizza with a homeless man.
His descent was complete and irreversible.
Today he rails about the very people who
tried to save him from his own madness.
Over the course of 10 years, Rathbun
was afforded no less than three years of
distraction-free vacation—with no work
responsibilities whatsoever and all medical
and mental care provided.
How could any individual repay such
kindness with such rancor? Describing it as
being “ungrateful” is a gross understatement
and even “criminal” doesn’t do it justice.
Rather, the answer lies in the very
characteristics of the insane:
“They have a deep but carefully masked
hatred of anyone who seeks to help them.”
—L. Ron Hubbard
www.freedommag.org | 49
CNN AC360 | A HISTORY OF LIES

MARTY RATHBUN:
A HISTORY OF HIDDEN
VIOLENCE

“The criminal accuses others of things

which he himself is doing.”
—L. Ron Hubbard

Cooper: For the record:
did you ever punch somebody?
Rathbun: Yes.
Did you ever lie?
Did you ever steal?
Did you ever nearly beat a man to
death?
That Marty Rathbun can unequivocally
answer “Yes” to all of these questions
is only half his story. The other half
concerns the fact Anderson Cooper knew
full well who and what Rathbun was and
he chose to both ignore it and keep silent.
All began one year earlier when Rathbun
unloaded to the S.P. Times, pointing a
stubby finger and leveling a “Do you still
beat your wife” accusation. Although he
thought it would go unchallenged, he
was wrong and every person named as
a target in a so-called tale of “abuse in
high places” not only stepped forward to
tell the true story, they also swore under
oath that none of what Rathbun alleged
ever even happened. More chillingly,
they identified the true perpetrator of
violence…it was Rathbun himself.
There was more. When the S.P.
Times reporters were themselves asked
if Rathbun had ever mentioned his
“rap sheet” of violence, they got that
“journalist caught in the headlights” look
on their faces, because he hadn’t said a
word about the 46 separate incidents he
had perpetrated.
Whereupon Rathbun’s tall tale turned
into a tell all wherein he had no choice but
to confess he was the one with the abusive
and violent past. But that didn’t mean his
story lost its allure and it’s traction. Because
with his co-conspirators Mike Rinder
and Tom DeVocht corroborating and
embroidering (they had first hooked up to
suborn perjury in a police investigation in
Florida and had proven themselves expert
at telling the same lie), Rathbun took on
a new persona as “bad guy come clean.”
And so it was that when Anderson
Cooper sat himself in a CNN taping
studio but two feet away from Rathbun,
it was a veritable case in point of a
pandering, agenda-driven ploy to try
to snatch a TV ratings uptick from their
rapidly diminishing audience. Because
once again, and with all good blessings
from CNN, Marty Rathbun was lying
through his teeth.
To reiterate a few salient facts:
The so-called investigation that CNN
had kept on the shelf for as long as nine
months utterly ignored the Church’s side
of the story and, for CNN, it was for good
reason. If Cooper had introduced any of
the documented evidence that had long

50 | FREEDOM

been supplied by Scientology executives
to set the record straight, Rathbun’s
credibility would have been extinguished
forever.
And Cooper—well aware of this and
choosing to ignore it all—knew that the
man sitting just across from him was
a deranged, physically abusive lunatic
who engaged in the very reprehensible
behavior of which he sought to now
blame others.
That is, when Rathbun originally
appeared on Cooper’s doorstep, he was
peddling a tale of how Mike Rinder had
been abused. In fact, however, the only
abuse Rinder ever suffered was at the
hands of Rathbun himself—and/or Tom
DeVocht.
The point: Between Rathbun, Rinder,
and Tom DeVocht something terrible
had happened—something violent and
twisted—and all three of them repackaged
it as a so-called “tale of abuse” for
Anderson Cooper’s consumption.
And even more than that, Cooper both
knew it and willfully ignored that as well.
So here’s what else Cooper knew and
chose to ignore:
Marty Rathbun had served in external
legal affairs for several years when in
1993 he experienced his first meltdown.
After a two-year sabbatical in which he
was given every assistance to put his life
together, he again made his way back
into legal affairs. This time, after creating
a new series of legal catastrophes, he
was removed and stripped of all power
and position. (See A Liar is a Coward; A
Perjurer is a Criminal, p. 26.)
When removed from the external
battleground, this man who only
knew how to fight, swiftly turned the
internal playing field into his personal
battleground—and worse, his colleagues
were the enemies. What followed was
a series of isolated and unseen acts of
violence.
Between Rathbun,
Rinder, and Tom DeVocht
something terrible had
happened—something
violent and twisted.
Indeed, Cooper and company were
provided with no less than 24 declarations
and affidavits detailing 46 acts of physical
violence against 18 current and former
Church staff. Moreover, every violent act
was perpetrated and initiated by Rathbun.
Despite all such documented evidence,
however, Cooper never responded to
the victims of Rathbun’s rage. In fact, he
didn’t even want to hear from them.
Thus, what follows here is still more
of what Cooper willfully ignored. As an
overriding modus operandi, Rathbun
would typically isolate victims of his
physical abuse behind closed doors.
Consequently, none of those who gave
their side of the story ever knew others
suffered the same fate. In that respect,
all that follows is independent and
fact-driven. It is also drawn from sworn
testimony under penalty of perjury. The
victims’ names have been deleted, but the
substance of the abuse is here in full:
>> INCIDENT 1
A Scientology course room.
“He abruptly reached over the desk
and grabbed me by my shirt and pulled
me out of my chair across the desk and
dragged me down the table knocking
over books, demo [demonstration]
kits and everything on the tables. I was
shocked beyond measure as I did not
even know who he was.”
A FREEDOM SPECIAL REPORT
>> INCIDENT 2
In a staff member’s office.
“Out of the blue, and with no
expressed reason, walked up to me,
grabbed me and pulled me out of my
chair, shoved me into a wall and then
walked out.”
>> INCIDENT 3
Another office behind closed doors.
“He grabbed me by the shirt, shoved
me against the wall and then kicked me
in the backside.”
>> INCIDENT 4
After Rathbun was stripped of
authority, the attacks grew even
more egregious.
“Rathbun’s punches were so hard that
the blows knocked me back against a
counter and my head smashed against a
bookshelf and severely hurt me.”
>> INCIDENTS 5, 6 and 7
All of which occurred behind closed
doors and far from witnesses.
“Rathbun came at me with both fists
flying and punched me in the chest and
ribs several times. I was hurting for
several hours.”
“On at least one occasion during this
series of incidents, the force of his attack
caused my chair to topple over so that
I landed on the floor.”
“I remember distinctly that during one
of those assaults, he kicked violently at
the side of my body and hurt me while
I was on the ground.”
>> INCIDENT 8
Yet another both unprovoked
and unseen.
“Marty reached out and shoved my
body back against a solid wall directly
behind where I was standing, resulting
in making very painful contact with the
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CNN AC360 | A HISTORY OF LIES
solid wall, including the slinging back
of my head and slammed into the solid
surface, making my vision dizzy and
losing my balance.”
>> INCIDENTS 9, 10, 11 and 12
And all with the same
modus operandi.
“Without any warning, Rathbun
suddenly punched me in the stomach
with full force.”
“Rathbun walked into my office. He
appeared upset with me, closed the door
behind him and suddenly punched me
in the stomach with full force, throwing
me across the room, where I collapsed
against my desk, and he walked out.”
“A few days later, Rathbun walked once
again into my office, closed the door...
and again suddenly threw me against the
wall of my office using his full force.”
“Rathbun again walked in and without
warning Rathbun pulled me by one of
my ears and dragged me out of that
office and all the way back to my own
office…roughly a distance of 90 feet.”
>> INCIDENT 13
“Exemplifying the degree of anger he
would develop is that one day he kicked
a hole into the door leading to the
area where my office was located. On
another occasion he smashed the door
open so hard, it drove into the closet
behind it and the whole door handle
smashed through the closet door. On
yet another occasion, he threw a typist
chair across the office and smashed it
into the furniture.
“The penetration through the wall was
such that I feared the wall was going to
come down on me while sitting at my
desk. The ceiling tiles shook and the
dust came flying down it was that hard.”
>> INCIDENT 14
This one actually witnessed
by another.
“He had punched a staff member in the
face and gave him a black eye. I later saw
him walking around with a black eye.”
52 | FREEDOM
If Rathbun is left
unchecked in his violence,
it’s all headed to a tragic
conclusion.
>> INCIDENT 15
Self-explanatory.
“As I was leaving an office and
stepping onto the sidewalk, Rathbun
walked up to me. I thought he was
coming up to say something to me,
and I paused in front of him. Without
any preamble or warning, he punched
me in the jaw with his fist. I fell back
against the screen door of the building
and stumbled sideways. I was not only
in pain but in shock from the surprise
of it. He then turned and walked away
without saying a word. I thought he
must have gone completely psychotic.”
All of which brings us to Rathbun’s
meltdown:
>> WITNESS 1
“Rathbun’s bizarre behavior was
often manifested in meetings where he
would suddenly start breaking pencils
and grinding his teeth. He did this at
least forty times during the time period
between 2001 and 2003.”
>> WITNESS 2
“Marty Rathbun was known to be
a psychopath. He was irrational and
violent. In 2003, prior to his final
departure he told me that he was certain
he was crazy.”
>> WITNESS 3
“Rathbun was now a wild animal that,
unprovoked, was violent.”
>> THE VERDICT
The misery, humiliation and pain that so
many had to suffer through—in a state of
abject fear—finally came to an end when
“wild animal” Rathbun was brought to
account for his actions, and transferred to
a lower-level Church and position.
In light of all the above, the only
“challenge” Cooper put to Rathbun:
“In sworn affidavits, a number of Church
members make specific allegations
against Marty Rathbun, including more
than a dozen instances of physical
violence.”
To which Rathbun replied to Cooper:
“I did some [physical abuse] and I
didn’t come in here ever telling you
I was Little Lord Fauntleroy and never
did anything wrong. I’m no angel.”
No kidding. He’s a holy terror and a
ticking time bomb ready to blow at the
slightest provocation.
But in fact, however, there had been
a time when Rathbun claimed he was
indeed a Little Lord Fauntleroy who
would nary harm a soul. Because that’s
precisely how Rathbun positioned himself
when he began his media-for-hire tour
at the S.P. Times. The transformation
to not being Little Lord Fauntleroy only
occurred when he was exposed by others
for the thug he is.
But the story doesn’t end there and, if
Rathbun is left unchecked in his violence,
it’s all headed to a tragic conclusion.
Because if the rap sheet above is enough
to electrify anybody but a San Quentin
inmate, it was all before he was stopped
from nearly killing a man with his bare
fists. That man was Mike Rinder who,
today, Rathbun claims is his “best good
buddy.” In fact, notwithstanding the fact
that Rinder would be dead at the hands of
Rathbun if others hadn’t intervened, Rinder
now serves as full-time “corroborator” and
“fact-checker” for Rathbun’s revisionist
history of his life and career.
And if it all sounds creepy enough
so far, all the more so when you know
the rest. (See The “Kinky” Relationship,
Rathbun & Rinder, next page.) n
 THE ”KINKY”
RELATIONSHIP
Rathbun & Rinder
T
he one inescapable fact that
annihilates any semblance of
journalistic integrity for Anderson
Cooper is best phrased as a question.
How can anti-Scientologist Mike Rinder
claim to have left the Church in protest of
abuse and now be “best good buddies” with
fellow anti-Scientologist Marty Rathbun,
who nearly beat him to death?
The only question more ludicrous is
why Cooper—in possession of all facts
from a multitude of eyewitnesses—did
not press Rathbun on that very incident.
The answer is simple: Any presentation
of the real facts would have destroyed
the credibility of Cooper’s “star witness”
and what the AC360 anchor touted as an
“investigation.”
Nonetheless, provided to Cooper and
his bosses:
• Nine sworn declarations that vividly
described the near-fatal assault.
• Personal letters from three Church
executives that described Rathbun’s
brutal attack of Rinder.
• Four letters to CNN (two from the
Church spokesperson and two from
Church lawyers) described the incident
in relationship to the broadcast.
• Thirteen senior Church executives met
with executives at CNN headquarters
in Atlanta and detailed the assault.
• Three Church executives (including
Rinder’s ex-wife) recounted the vicious
attack directly to Cooper in five
separate interviews in approximately
a one-hour time span on March 29,
2010, during a taping with Cooper.
Despite all this documentary evidence,
CNN top management on behalf of their
water-carrier, Cooper, might as well have
turned it into confetti and thrown it out
the window from their perch overlooking
downtown Atlanta.
The untold story came in the form
of sworn declarations—straight from
the senior Church executives and staff
who were there and who witnessed and
stopped Rathbun’s rampage.
In one declaration, a Church executive
sets the stage and bears witness to the
start of the savage beating that, if gone
unchecked, would have undoubtedly
resulted in the death of Rinder.
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CNN AC360 | A HISTORY OF LIES
As he told CNN: “During a discussion
involving several other executives
and staff members of the Church of
Scientology International, Rathbun
was present and up to that point had
remained mostly silent. Suddenly and
completely out of the blue, he jumped at
Mike Rinder and tackled him violently
to the floor while screaming at him
with mostly incomprehensible words.
Rathbun straddled Rinder, pinning
him down with all his weight, while
strangling him with both his hands and
squeezing his neck.”
Another Church official’s account shed
light on the hate‑fueled brute force of
Rathbun’s assault: “I witnessed Rathbun
punching and choking Rinder, requiring
more than five men to pull Rathbun off
Rinder.”
And, as one staffer conveyed in her
affidavit, if it hadn’t been for those five
men Rinder’s body would now be in a
cemetery: “…choking him on the floor
until he turned purple. I was scared.”
Another Church executive saw not
only the choking, but what Rathbun
was insanely and simultaneously doing
to Rinder: “…violently tackle him to
the floor… Rathbun kept on choking
Rinder, while also pounding his head
against the floor repeatedly.”
Yet another described to CNN the
ambush-style nature of the sneak attack:
“He jumped Rinder, threw him to the
ground and started strangling him. It
stunned and shocked everyone.”
“Several big men had to drag him off
Rinder who was going blue in the face”
was offered as an eyewitness testimony to
Rathbun’s psychotic assault.
One of the other men who stepped in
to prevent Rinder’s death said: “I, along
with others, pulled Rathbun off of
Rinder. He speaks of violence, there’s
your violence.”
Another declaration alerted CNN to
the fact that Rathbun’s rage was so out of
control that, initially, after it had taken
five grown men to pull him off Rinder
and try to calm the situation down, the
54 | FREEDOM
Perhaps it’s something
akin to “battered spouse
syndrome,” where a
husband or wife, no matter
the number of beatings
they’ve endured, keeps
returning to their abuser.
attack would only resume again, with
even more ferocity:
“He grabbed Rinder by the arm, put
his other arm around his back and
started leading Rinder towards a side
exit door. I followed them outside…the
minute he got Rinder outside and the
door closed, Rathbun started seriously
beating Rinder up.
“He was punching him in the head
and upper body and threw Rinder to the
ground across a low stone wall. I grabbed
Rathbun from behind and pulled him
off of Rinder and he stopped hitting
him. Rinder got up; he was shaken and
trying to regain his composure.
“I then saw Rathbun make a fist and
pull back to punch Rinder in the side.
I knew where he was aiming he might
rupture Rinder’s kidney. So I threw my
arms around Rinder just as Rathbun
was starting to punch and Rathbun’s
fist hit my watch so hard that it broke
the titanium band and put a deep cut
in my wrist.
“At that point I screamed at Rathbun
to knock it off, grabbed Rinder and led
him around to the front of the building.
I took Rinder inside to another room.
Rinder was distraught and crying. He
had contusions on his neck and face
and his ear was bleeding.”
Following the incident, a bruised, bleeding
and struggling-to-breathe Rinder could
only say this about his mad attacker and
now—perversely—his running buddy:
“Rathbun is a psychopath, he is a real
nut case. He is a mental case on the
loose.”
Nine individual eyewitness reports
of Rathbun’s rabid violence point to
the insanity of the assault and how
only intervention by others prevented
something even worse from happening:
• Rinder was turning blue…
even purple in the face.
• The attack was totally out
of the blue.
• It took five big men to tear
Rathbun off.
Nevertheless and through a journalistic
sleight of hand, Cooper conveniently
and criminally allows Rathbun to try
and accuse someone else of beating up
Rinder—despite the fact that Cooper held
all of the aforementioned evidence in his
hands, evidence sworn under oath.
But amongst all that evidence, there was
one witness to the Rathbun assault who
knew the truth better than anyone else—
Cathy Bernardini, Mike Rinder’s wife. As
she told Anderson Cooper, “In over three
decades with Mike, the only person I
ever saw beat Mike and, in fact, almost
kill him, was Marty Rathbun… I also
did see the aftermath of Marty’s beating,
choking and punching on Mike, so I
know what it’s like.  Mike’s face was cut
and swollen, his neck had contusions,
his ears were cut, his lip was swollen
and bruised and his chest was bruised.”
True to his agenda, Anderson didn’t
air the details, apparently relegating the
words “almost kill[ed] him” to be of
little concern.
Yet, instead, there was Anderson seated
with Rathbun who was claiming on behalf
of an absent Mike Rinder that Rinder was
severely beaten by another. That Rathbun
was lying is hardly surprising. He wasn’t
hiring himself out to the media to air
the story of his life. Nobody knows who
Rathbun is and his 15 minutes of fame
could only be purchased by having him
weave stories about others who did have
a name.

But one fact cannot be denied: Cooper
was irresponsible and derelict and willfully
abandoned any notion of journalistic fairness
by not even asking Rathbun, point-blank,
about the night he almost killed Rinder
because it’s a cold, hard fact that before even
embarking on his so-called investigation,
Cooper knew Rathbun had beaten up Rinder.
To be sure, it was previously reported in the
very same newspaper Cooper had originally
latched onto for his broadcast.
The one remaining mystery in this all-
too-pathetic saga may never be solved, nor
even comprehended: Rathbun, after nearly
killing Rinder, is now, as he says, “best good
buddies” with his former victim.
It begs the question: What is the true
nature of their relationship?
Perhaps it’s something akin to “battered
spouse syndrome,” where a husband or wife,
no matter the number of beatings they’ve
endured, keeps returning to their abuser.
Or perhaps it’s something else.
Whatever the case, it’s clear from the CNN
broadcast the two are figuratively in bed
with each other on their media-for-hire tour.
In that regard, it’s the self-fulfilling
prophecy of Rinder himself, describing the
cause of his downfall into the black pit of
oblivion:
“I emulated Marty…I thought he was the
person I should act like—and I did. I became
a clone of him but totally subservient to
him in all respects—I never disagreed with
him on anything and had tacit agreements
with him that anything he did or said was
OK.” —Mike Rinder
Postscript: Rinder was recently asked by a
Scientologist how he could be in bed with
Rathbun, who beat him to a pulp.
His answer? “It was just once.”
Of course, that’s a complete lie. Rathbun
himself has admitted to numerous assaults
on Rinder. But either way, this last infamous
beat down would have been the last had five
of his then-colleagues not intervened—the
five colleagues he now attacks in the media.
All of which, if nothing else, tells you the
kind of man Rinder is. One would have
expected, at the very least, a “thank you” for
saving his life. n
“The problem
with you is that “Marty
you are arrogant. Rathbun
Let’s face facts—you belongs
come across that in a mental
way and you institution.
communicate In fact,
that way.” he belongs
—Rathbun in an electric
on Rinder
chair,
full on.”
—Rinder
on Rathbun
Marty Rathbun
vs.
Mike Rinder
F
or anyone familiar with the personal interplay between Marty
Rathbun and Mike Rinder since they left the Church, you would
think the two cohorts were the best of pals. Flying to each other’s
homes, wooing media outlets and staging outrageous stunts in an
attempt to harass Scientologists—the duo seems all but inseparable.
But it wasn’t always that way, leaving you to wonder whether Marty and
Mike subscribe to that gem of dark wisdom from The Godfather, Part II:
“Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.” Because here’s what
they thought of each other while still in the Church:
Marty Rathbun on Mike Rinder Mike Rinder on Marty Rathbun
• “The problem with you is that • “Marty Rathbun belongs in a
you are arrogant. Let’s face facts— mental institution. In fact, he
you come across that way and belongs in an electric chair, full
you communicate that way. You on.”
communicate and write as if • “Rathbun is a psychopath. He’s a
your viewpoint means something real nut case. He’s a mental case
special above the viewpoints of on the loose.”
all else on planet Earth. Frankly,
you really do turn me off by your n
tone and tenor and come across
arrogant. You won’t convince And as one further reflection of
anybody of anything.“ their mutual hatred:
• “The problem is you…are just Rathbun to Rinder: “Are you ever
apparently allergic to work.” going to get off your fat ass, or just be
• “You haven’t done your homework, a c***?”
you are lazy. You are going to get Rinder’s defiant answer: “I guess I’m
the Church in deep s**t if you just a c***.”
don’t change your ways.”
www.freedommag.org | 55
CNN AC360 | A HISTORY OF LIES

THE
CONFESSIONS
OFMARTY
RATHBUN
AS TOLD
BY HIS
ALTER
EGO
56 | FREEDOM
“Oddly enough one of the best ways to detect a Suppressive
Person (SP) is that he or she stamps on up statistics and
condones or rewards down statistics. It makes an SP very
happy…for the good worker to be shattered and the bad
worker patted on the back.” —L. Ron Hubbard
O
ddly enough Marty Rathbun
freely admits to exactly that:
covertly shattering good people,
systematically rewarding the bad
and otherwise wreaking havoc. That he
writes in the third person makes this
confession all the more chilling and all
the more pathetic; for here is someone
who could only cast a fleeting glance in
the mirror and even then he couldn’t
stand looking for very long. Then, too,
here is a psychotic forever wondering
which one of them knows, which one of
them might find out...which one of them is
watching from the other side of the mirror.
In short, here is evil and here is madness.
>> MARTY RATHBUN ON HIMSELF
“Good, fair Sea Org discipline, and LRH
justice policies have been undermined
by a counter-policy. That counter policy
is negotiating with and keeping SPs
cooled off instead of dealing with them
in accordance with HCO PLs and thus
awarding SPs for suppressive acts and
protecting them in positions from where
they can wreak havoc.
“Recent [investigation] revealed the
source of special treatment being given
to SPs. It started with Marty Rathbun
blowing the Sea Org on November,
1993. Marty took advantage of a number
of false reports he had put in place over
years giving a false picture as to his role in
handling external attacks and the IRS in
particular. It was against that false picture
of contribution that Marty covertly
negotiated a deal to keep his blow quiet
and avoid the RPF [Rehabilitation Project
Force] in returning to the Sea Org. The
web of lies that allowed that arrangement
to stay in place is so complex it would
take pages to recount. Suffice it to say
refer to a passage from Science of Survival:
“‘At 1.1 truth receives her severest drubbing.
For here, truth is confused, upset, used and
twisted, hidden for fear somebody may make
retaliation, until one understands that data
from this level of the Tone Scale has only
two purposes: to wreak the most harm upon
others and secure the greatest safety for self.
Here we have lies used to hide lies amid the
most frantic protestations of honesty and a
noisy advertising campaign about the ethics
of the speaker. Beneath the façade of honor,
honesty, ethics and “one’s sacred word,” one
is apt to find a writhing cesspool of vicious
and malicious lies calculated to do the
greatest possible harm.’
“Marty then engaged in a campaign to
covertly and systematically take out and
undermine any executive or staff who
might expose him. He did this through
abusing his privilege to act as a security
checker in a trainee capacity. He began
the out-tech practice of sec checking
people with no formal session set up, and
browbeating hair-raising confessions out
of them. This resulted in the undermine of
at least the following executives, [name],
[name], [name] and Amy [Scobee].*
“Marty concurrently subjected the base
to widespread suppression by means of
giving special treatment to SPs who were
under his charge to handle. This has put
cross orderers and enturbulative sources
into positions from which they wreaked
havoc, and it also undermined discipline
and policy.
“Marty authorized [name] to destroy
several auditors and enturbulate numerous
staff in the year 1997. [She] blew after
chopping up her fourth auditor. Marty
brought her back. He allowed her into
the RPF knowing she was not really up
to going on the same terms as everyone.
He briefed RPF I/C to be careful with her
which lead to her being let off the hook
when enturbulating others for engaging in
destructive programming and correction.
This lead to disintegration of discipline
on the RPF, lowering of ethics and
technical standards, and a failure of the
program to graduate volume products.
“Marty then
engaged in a
campaign to
covertly and
systematically
take out and
undermine any
executive or
staff who might
expose him.”
—Marty
Rathbun
Marty then vouched for her reform and
that she was a full product of the RPF,
and had her posted as [an executive]. The
destructivity of that action has been well
chronicled since.
“Marty took over handling of [name]
in August 2000. It was evident [he] was
enturbulating everyone in sight and
defying any and all authority on the
base. Marty cross ordered tech and policy
and decided to ‘audit out the aberration’
rather than allowing group justice to take
its course. [He] was subsequently allowed
to chew up auditors and staff members.
Marty covertly allowed [name] back on
the base without authorization—giving
the impression he was authorized at the
highest levels. [He] then spent another six
weeks systematically enturbulating base
staff members. With Marty away from
the base, and no longer there to protect
[him], [he] blew the Sea Org for good.” n
Signed,
Marty Rathbun
*As it is also characteristic of Suppressive
Persons to habitually target the wrong
people, it seems Rathbun at least got it
inadvertently right when undermining
Amy Scobee. A “bad worker” if ever there
was one, Scobee was continually on the
lookout for that “pat on the back” (if not
elsewhere). Although she’s lost some of
her vigor, she still serves as the unofficial
Gossip Queen of Rathbun’s Posse.
www.freedommag.org | 57
CNN AC360 | A HISTORY OF LIES

O
ne man is key to the media coverage
ignited against the Church of
Scientology last year: Mark “Marty”
Rathbun. But who is this man,

THE RATHBUN
really, who is making these allegations?
Who is the man who has made so many
allegations against the Church, and if he’s
lying, as so many Church members say
he is, then what in his background would
FAMILY:
MADNESS,
make him do so?
Rathbun was born in 1957. His father,
33-year-old Sherrill “Slade” Rathbun,
Jr., was a Naval Academy graduate and

MAYHEM AND
former Navy officer, and his mother,
30-year-old Patricia Lois Rathbun, was
the daughter of the man known for
creating a famous advertisement picture
of Santa Claus holding a Coke bottle.

MYSTERIOUS
From the time he was born, Rathbun’s
family life was filled with mental
illness, alcoholism and other tragedy,
and, ironically, it was his family history

of mental illness that brought him to
Scientology.
His mother suffered a series of nervous
breakdowns before and throughout his
early childhood, and his father would
later describe her to authorities as “a very
disturbed person.”
Slade Rathbun told a family friend that
when his wife was pregnant with Marty she
received Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT),
also known as electroshock, according
to a written statement provided by the
family friend. The controversial treatment
includes electrically inducing seizures.
The father also told the family friend
that his late wife had extramarital affairs,
including with one of his co-workers, and
that she took his youngest son Marty with
her to meet men. On one such occasion,
one of his ex-wife’s lovers took her to a
cottage, where he slapped both Marty
and his mother, Slade Rathbun told the
family friend.
During the summer of 1962, when
Marty Rathbun was five, Patricia Rathbun
DEATH
was hospitalized, and she was released in
late summer that year.
Two to three weeks after her release, on
September 13, 1962, his home life grew
even more traumatic.
About 7 a.m. that morning, his father
kissed his mother goodbye as she still lay
in bed at the family home in Mill Valley,
California, just north of San Francisco.
When his father came home from work
that day about 5 p.m., he couldn’t find
Marty’s mother and so reported her
missing.
Her car was later found on the Golden
Gate Bridge. Her body was spotted
floating in the water by fishermen.
She was wearing her husband’s Naval
Academy ring and her wedding band on
the same hand. There was no note. Her
belongings found with the body included
an Alcoholics Anonymous book.
According to what Slade Rathbun told
the family friend, Marty’s childhood was
“rough.” He didn’t get along well with his
father or either of his two brothers, who
he fought with regularly. Slade Rathbun
described Marty as “antagonizing” his
older brothers and that the relationship
with Bruce Rathbun, the youngest of
the two older brothers, was particularly
“volatile.” According to Sherrill, “they
fought each other and Marty hated Bruce.”

58 | FREEDOM

Rathbun’s battle with family mental
illness didn’t end with his mother.
Both of his two older brothers also
suffered from mental illness, and while
Marty Rathbun was in high school, one
brother was committed to a veteran’s
hospital.
“My brother was in and out of trouble,”
Rathbun said during a taped interview
posted anonymously on the Internet.
“When I was in high school I had to bail
him out when he got committed in the
VA hospital.”
Rathbun graduated from Laguna
Beach High School in 1975, and for
the next two years attended college in
Santa Barbara and Santa Cruz, but later
quit. In 1977, he worked as a waiter in
Portland, Oregon, and that same year, he
told a Scientologist there a story about
his brother’s mental illness and how his
illness was being treated.
A short time later, Marty Rathbun joined
the Church at the age of 19, partly as a
way to get help for his brother, he later
told a newspaper.
“I was actually seeking some help
and answers on how I might help my
brother who was currently locked up at
Dammasch State Hospital in Oregon...
He was heavily sedated. And I had spoke
with the psychiatrists there, and they
A FREEDOM SPECIAL REPORT
really weren’t talking about any type of
cure,” Rathbun stated during a video
interview. “They were talking about
keeping him under control, and I was
kind of afraid he was going to wind up
living the rest of his life in the back ward.
“My brother was very close and dear
to me, and he had some schizophrenic
problems where he’d rapidly rollercoaster
as a person. And he’d have trouble with
alcohol and he’d wind up getting in a
lot of barroom brawls and not being
subdued by the cops.
“He’d wind up in the mental ward.
But what I found when I went to go see
him was that he was literally on at the
time the Stelazine and the Thorazine
which are the real heavy duty psychiatric
drugs which they even refer internally as
the chemical straitjackets. And he was
literally in a catatonic state.” (See Brother,
Can You Spare Some Time? p. 61.)
As his family life was filled with tragedy
and death, so were Rathbun’s early years
with the Church.
In 1979, only months after he joined,
Rathbun was in a vehicle with a woman.
He was escorting her and protecting her
from her estranged husband, who had
allegedly attacked and threatened her.
The husband somehow intercepted the
vehicle Rathbun was driving and broke
out a window with a pistol, prompting
Rathbun to attack him. During the
struggle, the pistol went off. As more
shots went off, one or more bullets struck
the woman in the chest, and her husband
pointed the pistol at Rathbun’s head. He
pulled the trigger, but for some reason,
the gun didn’t fire. As he struggled with
Rathbun, he fired the gun again at his
estranged wife. She eventually died of her
wounds. The husband drove to a hotel
room and killed himself, apparently with
an overdose of poison.
Rathbun’s father Slade Rathbun told
the family friend that the last time Marty
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CNN AC360 | A HISTORY OF LIES
visited him for any length of time was for
a couple of weeks in December 1980, but
Rathbun spent most of his time out of the
house at bars and took a trip to Mexico.
His father said that Marty went drinking
once with his older brother Bruce but
Marty wouldn’t discuss whether they had
made up their differences as kids. Slade
said he “always wondered what happened
back in December of 1980 between Marty
and Bruce,” according to the friend.
Six months later, in 1981, while he was
still dealing with the effects of his other
brother’s mental illness, tragedy struck
Rathbun again.
At about 9 p.m. on July 1 of that year,
two joggers in Garden Grove, California,
became alarmed when their dog sniffed
at a pile of concrete near railroad tracks
in the 7700 block of Garden Grove
Boulevard, some 25 miles from the
Rathbun family home. The joggers pulled
away a few chunks of concrete and found
the decomposing body of an adult male
dressed in brown shorts and hiking shoes.
Authorities identified the man as Bruce
Grenville Rathbun, Marty Rathbun’s
other brother. At the time, police
suspected the body had been there up to
a year, but they now suspect the length
of time the body was there was shorter.
Authorities continue to refuse to release
further details, calling it a cold case which
was recently reopened by a Garden Grove
Police Detective.
Meanwhile, Marty Rathbun, who was
working as a mail clerk in the Church, was
assigned as an administrative assistant to
a special unit assigned to take control over
litigation matters affecting the Church at
the time. From there he gradually took
over more and more authority in legal
affairs and ultimately rose to an executive
position over external matters. Although
the position sounded all encompassing,
his actual functions in the late 1980’s
entailed overseeing the handling of legal
matters being handled within a branch of
the Church assigned to external affairs.
But his career fell just as fast as it rose.
60 | FREEDOM
Medical doctors have
long observed that mental
instability can run in
families and have found
statistically that the chance
of being labeled with
specific psychotic disorders
increases from around
1 percent to 10 percent in
families with a history of
such disorders.
The woman who worked as Rathbun’s
secretary from 1987 to 1993 said in a
declaration that she witnessed Rathbun
become violent and abusive on several
occasions.
“He would go into violent outbreaks
and rages,” she said. “In one particular
instance when he did not like the answer
he received, he…went into a rage, ripped
the phone out of the wall and threw it
across the conference room table so it hit
the shelf and only barely missed the staff
member.”
By 1993, Church officials said, Rathbun
had become obsessed with his work,
reveling in the confrontations that came
with litigating civil cases against the
Church.
That same year Rathbun’s stepmother
died of a prescription drug overdose, and
his father was battling cancer, when the
family house burned down.
After the end of the war with the IRS,
Rathbun was ordered to settle rather
than litigate all other outstanding legal
cases. Rathbun’s supervisor at the time
said Rathbun became irate. Instead of
using the legal momentum the Church
gained to mark a new era for the religion,
Rathbun got on his motorcycle and drove
away, leaving behind his job and his wife.
Four days later, he telephoned from
New Orleans. Subsequently, Rathbun
was removed from his staff position, but
provided with a two-year sabbatical in
the Caribbean during which time keepers
saw to his every need. (See Postcards from
the Edge or Marty Takes a Holiday, p. 48.)
Following this sabbatical, Rathbun held
various positions at both the Church in
Clearwater, Florida, and at Church offices
in California, working his way back into
dealing with legal affairs.
But complaints about his behavior
continued.
Co-workers said Rathbun would yell
at subordinates for no apparent reason.
“He’d just go crazy,” said one former
subordinate. An internal investigation
leading to his ultimate removal revealed a
series of incidents that included physical
attacks on staff members.
More significantly, it was also discovered
that he had withheld vital information
on legal matters—of such a serious
nature that his actions caused the very
situations he claimed he was handling—
in particular a criminal and civil case in
Florida. (See A Liar is a Coward; a Perjurer
is a Criminal, p. 26.)
In January 2004, after Rathbun had been
demoted to a lower Church and relieved
of any remaining vestiges of authority, he
began to display what Church officials
called “psychotic behavior.” Witnesses
told of how Rathbun tackled co-worker
Mike Rinder, and violently beat him.
It took five men to pull Rathbun off
Rinder, officials said. (See The “Kinky”
Relationship: Rathbun & Rinder, p. 53.)
The following month, Rathbun left
Church management headquarters
without notice, drove up the California
coast in a rented car, a bottle of tequila
on the passenger seat. He eventually ran
off the road and awoke the next morning
in a ditch. Whereupon, he called his wife.

“He said, ‘I’m a warrior. I’m a mercenary.
I’m a fighter,’” she told CNN. “I was a
bit concerned about his statements of
a warrior and mercenary because he’s
got a bit of a [history] of insanity, in
his family.”
Concerned about his mental state, the
Church subsequently provided Rathbun
with another sabbatical, including tens
of thousands of dollars in medical care,
for varicose veins, calcium deposits in
his neck and other ailments. He was also
given unlimited access to a private exercise
facility. He was placed on a medically
supervised nutritional regimen and
granted his request for part-time vocational
training in a Church carpentry mill.
Nine months later, Rathbun’s wife
moved out of the apartment she shared
with him after he shoved his fist in her
face and threatened her. Rathbun then
left the Church for good on December
12, 2004.
The incident, Rathbun’s ex-wife told
CNN, “really, really scared me.”
“And actually at that moment I moved
[out of the] apartment and locked my
door. Because the one thing I had seen
him do, was once on a phone call I saw
him get so mad that he put his fist right
through a computer screen, and I was
stunned.
“...Marty Rathbun is accusing others
of what he himself was doing. It’s Marty
Rathbun that is a violent psychopath,
OK? He’s a psychopath.”
Medical doctors have long observed that
mental instability can run in families and
have found statistically that the chance
of being labeled with specific psychotic
disorders increases from around 1 percent
to 10 percent in families with a history of
such disorders.
The phenomenon is perhaps better
described by Scientology Founder L. Ron
Hubbard as “contagion of aberration,”
in which the lasting effects of traumatic
incidents experienced in early life are
passed on to other family members
through the dramatization of insanity. n
A FREEDOM SPECIAL REPORT
Brother, Can You Spare
Some Time?
Marty Rathbun postures about “family values”
and calls his relationship with his only surviving
brother, who is mentally challenged, “very close”
—yet Marty hasn’t visited his brother in decades,
not even when their father died.
M
arty Rathbun and his anti-Scientology cronies portrayed
themselves to Anderson Cooper as guardians of family
values.
Rathbun’s only living sibling knows what it’s like to live with
Marty Rathbun’s “family values”—a brother who wants no part of him.
The last time Hadden Scott Rathbun heard from his brother Marty was in
1994 when their father died. But Marty never bothered to attend the funeral,
although his then-wife did. Scott thinks that Marty still works for the Church,
even though Marty abruptly left the Church and his wife in 2004.
Today, Marty’s brother is middle-aged, paunchy, with grey hair and a beard.
His “home” for the last five years has been an assisted
living facility in California. A kind, simple-minded
man, he lives a solitary existence in one room with his
parrot, which he tenderly cares for during the day.
Previously, he was in another home for the mentally
challenged, which he says was “much better,” but since
moving he has adapted and is content. He has made
some friends.
But he is sad that his brother ignores him. Marty
“must not love me” he recently told a friend. That’s the
same Marty who makes himself available to Anderson
Cooper on a moment’s notice, while spurning his
brother’s efforts to reach out to him.
Marty has not forgotten about his brother, but he has
The last time intentionally chosen to ignore him. Marty’s brother is,
Hadden Scott in fact, part of the Marty media campaign to appear as
Rathbun heard from an individual with a soul, singing songs of false love
his brother Marty and care about his brother:
was in 1994 when “My brother was very close... [H]e had some
schizophrenic problems where he’d rapidly rollercoaster
their father died.
as a person. And he’d have trouble with alcohol… He’d
But Marty never wind up in the mental ward,” said Marty. In the same
bothered to attend statement to a reporter he described his brother as being
the funeral… “literally in a catatonic state.”
The brother’s experience reveals how disingenuous
Rathbun is when he sheds crocodile tears over phony stories of family
separation he promotes to smear the Church.
Rathbun has been as close as a 30-minute drive from his brother at least three
times just this year. Yet he can’t spare a minute of his time to contact the man?
That’s how little he really cares. n
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MIKE RINDER
A WALKING
“HATE CRIME”
“I am afraid of my potential for destruction.”
—Mike Rinder

A
nd so he should have been afraid. For so intense
and vicious is Rinder’s hatred for anyone
associated with Scientology that it ultimately
destroyed every meaningful relationship he ever
had…beginning with the family he abandoned for the
fact they remain Scientologists.
Here’s the unvarnished story on that most unforgiving
and reprehensible aspect of Rinder’s hate-driven
character, with a few pointed highlights for starters:
• Once a spokesperson for the Church (before he was
removed for incompetence and mega-misconduct),
now obsessively lying to the media about the religion
he previously defended, Rinder has no regard for the
feelings of the longtime Scientologists within his
family. To be sure, Rinder couldn’t care less about
any—and all—members of his family.
• Along with fellow Scientology-haters, attempts to
wreak havoc wherever he goes with video camera
and recording devices, all under the pretense of
“documenting” that he cares about his family.
• Cut all contact with his elderly mother in Australia,
despite repeated letters from her, and just as ruthlessly
cut contact with his brother and sister.
• Abandoned his wife of more than 30 years and their
two children.
62 | FREEDOM
For so intense and vicious is Rinder’s hatred
for anyone associated with Scientology
that it ultimately destroyed every
meaningful relationship he ever had…

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CNN AC360 | A HISTORY OF LIES

When an officer finally

speaks with Rinder’s
son, the young man
categorically states that he does not wish to see his
father—paternally born again or otherwise.

Rinder, 55, was born in Australia.
His parents became Scientologists in
1960 and were recognized as Founding
Scientologists in the land Down Under
in the late ‘60s. His mother, brother
and sister remain active, engaged and
committed Scientologists.
In 1973, after attending high schools
in Australia and England, Rinder worked
for his now-deceased father in the
wholesale grocery business. That same
year, he joined the Church’s religious
order, the Sea Organization, in Australia.
Three years later, in 1976, he married
20-year-old Cathy Bernardini, another Sea
Organization member.
In 2007, after severing all ties with his
Church, Rinder abruptly and callously
abandoned his wife of more than 30 years
and their children, one of whom would
subsequently wage an excruciating war
against cancer. As his wife Cathy Bernardini
tells it in a sworn affidavit to CNN:
“In April 2009, I went to see Mike in
Denver, but he didn’t want to see me.
I tried to get in communication so he
could be informed of family matters
such as [our son’s] illness, but he
adamantly did not want to talk to me or
see me, so I flew back to L.A.”
At this point, one might reasonably
ask: What kind of father would do such
a thing? And how could he live with
himself?
For Rinder, however, it was just another
dismal act in a well-practiced melodrama
of his so-called life.
The story of his family in Australia
is especially ironic, inasmuch as many
years ago what amounted to a Mike
Rinder “prototype” precipitated a short-
lived prejudicial and unconstitutional
ban on practicing Scientology in the
Australian state of Victoria. Accordingly,
the Rinder family lore includes many a
story of secreting L. Ron Hubbard books
beneath floorboards lest authorities raid
the home, and the family triumphantly
fighting to overturn the illegal ban.
Even more to the point, a Policy
Letter by L. Ron Hubbard enumerating
suppressive acts against Scientology and
Scientologists was originally issued in
the wake of that ban. And, indeed, that
Policy Letter cites the very same acts Mike
Rinder is perpetrating today, including:
“Being at the hire of anti-Scientology
groups or persons.”
“Receiving money, favors or encouragement
to suppress Scientology or Scientologists.”
And, “Seeking to splinter off an area of
Scientology and deny it to properly constituted
authority for personal profit, personal power
or ‘to save the organization from the higher
officers of Scientology.’”
It was certainly not for nothing, then,
that 79-year-old Barbara Rinder penned
this to her son Mike in a painstaking hand
that betrays her age and maternal wisdom:
“Michael, you are destroying everything
that I am and I have been trying to achieve
for the personal freedom for all family
members since 1961. I need a promise
from you to desist from these actions.
“It is important for me to know that
this situation is handled promptly,
because there is not a lot of mileage
left in this body. I feel I must get it

64 | FREEDOM

totally understood that I will not
tolerate your enemy actions, and I must
insist you stop.”
Beyond that, the letter contains nothing
even vaguely antagonizing and closes
with a simple “Your mother, Barbara.”
Rinder never bothered to respond.
For all intents and purposes, however,
he has indeed betrayed everything his
mother is and all she worked to achieve.
While if only to cap it with the height of
bad taste, he soon took up with another
rancorous anti-Scientologist, Christie
Collbran, a woman young enough to
be his daughter and someone else who
shattered the hearts of her parents. (See
Mike Rinder’s Live-in Media Puppet, Christie
Collbran, p. 68.)
All came to an ugly head on April 14,
2010, when Rinder and three cohorts
appeared at the front door of the Fort
Harrison, the Church’s religious retreat in
Clearwater. They came lugging video and
sound recording equipment, akin to an
ad hoc news crew.
Their ostensible purpose? Rinder
claims he finally wanted to speak with his
27-year-old son, a Sea Org member who
had just recovered from a three-year fight
against a life-threatening form of cancer.
Rinder had known of his son’s illness
for a full year. Not from his wife, of
course, since he refused to speak with her,
but through a subsequent conversation
with a newspaper editor to whom he had
been dishing out one or another version
of his story.
That the eventual recovery of the young
man was only made possible because
the Church and its leader enlisted the
world’s foremost specialist in malignant
melanoma makes this chapter of Rinder’s
life even uglier—not to mention ironic.
While if only to cap that one with yet
another lesson in bad taste: For months
Rinder had lived but a 25-minute drive
from his son and yet never once bothered
to inquire about his health, let alone
attempt to see him.
All of this, in addition to having
ignored the boy for more than 20 years,
Rinder wasn’t even
remotely bothered that his
son refused to see him,
owing to the hatred he
elicits for the Church to
which his son and entire
family are dedicated.
But, of course, for Rinder
it was never about his son;
it was about the media,
always the media.
was irrelevant to Rinder. He now wished
to play the conscientious father, albeit
one who is chauffeured by a girlfriend
(Collbran) not much older than his son,
and one who brings along a “bodyguard”
(Rathbun). To top it off, he planned to
videotape the whole “tearful” reunion
and flog it to some other tabloid.
Predictably, if disappointingly for
the now “Born Again Dad,” Rinder’s
performance is a dismal flop. He is met
by Church officials and police officers, the
latter none too pleased that Rinder and
Rathbun are begging for a fight. Moreover,
when an officer finally speaks with Rinder’s
son, the young man categorically states
that he does not wish to see his father—
paternally born again or otherwise.
Rinder, in turn, takes the news with
all the emotional response one would
naturally expect from a “loving father”
when his son denies him: He turns to the
camera and exclaims:
“You can stop saying I don’t want to
see my kid, because now I’ve proven you
won’t let me see my kid!” (While adding
that it’s “all documented” on video “for
the BBC”—for whom it is reported Rinder
has negotiated a six-figure deal to tell the
“truth” about his former Church, friends,
and, obviously, his family.)
All present—save for Rathbun—are
entirely nonplussed that anyone, even
Rinder, would so bluntly and blatantly
A FREEDOM SPECIAL REPORT
lie about the Church “preventing” him
from seeing his son. Moreover, Rinder
wasn’t even remotely bothered that his
son refused to see him, owing to the hatred
he elicits for the Church to which his son
and entire family are dedicated. But, of
course, for Rinder it was never about his
son; it was about the media, always the
media. (For the record, when Rinder and
gang are finally cited for loitering and
prowling, they all knowingly provided
the police with false home addresses.)
There is substantially more and it all
but puts the final nail in the coffin of
Rinder’s unhinged mental state and
hastens his Kafkaesque metamorphosis
into oblivion.
Shortly after the Rinder/Rathbun/
Collbran attempted ambush of Rinder’s
son, wherein Rinder claimed the Church
wouldn’t “allow” him to “see his family,”
Rinder’s Scientologist brother Andrew
flew from Melbourne, Australia, a journey
of more than 10,000 miles, to do just
that—see his brother. On landing in
Florida, he meets up with Rinder’s wife,
Cathy Bernardini, and Rinder’s own
daughter, who have traveled from Los
Angeles. The family members eventually
find Rinder outside a doctor’s office in
Clearwater where he has taken Collbran
for acupuncture treatment. He is standing
on the sidewalk, merrily chatting on
his mobile phone. When he sees his
brother, wife and daughter approaching,
he instantly goes into shock. In point of
fact—and this after not seeing his brother,
wife and daughter in years—he tells his
family that it’s the press on the other end
of his phone, and that he’s talking to the
press about them.
After which, and shockingly so, he
hangs up and then speed-dials the local
police to make a complaint that his family
is “trying to see him.”
At which point the encounter devolves
into a genuinely violent confrontation, as
Rinder grabs hold of his wife’s arms in a
vice-like grip—causing lacerations which
bled so much that paramedics were
called to come and give her first aid.
www.freedommag.org | 65
CNN AC360 | A HISTORY OF LIES

April 2010

paramedics that his own finger was nearly

broken by his brother in the attack.
Needless to say, the “loving” father who
had tried to ambush his son days earlier,
now contemptuously rejects his own
daughter when she does try to talk to him.
After the incident, Andrew Rinder
boards a return plane to Australia, which
leaves him another 24 hours of flight time
back to the other side of the world to
ponder why his brother is “behaving
eccentrically and violently and refusing to
communicate with us.”
Similarly, after receiving further medical
care, Rinder’s wife and daughter return
to Los Angeles battered and emotionally
bruised.
Meanwhile, Mike Rinder couldn’t care
less. Except to make his next call wherein
he spins a wild version of the episode to
the local tabloid. The theme, as always,
makes him the “victim.” And his wife?
Somehow, she “got injured.” Calls to the
paper inquiring whether Rinder was paid
for his story have not been returned.
Bernardini was no match for her beefy
husband, whose hands, she says, are “twice
as big as mine.” Weeks after the incident,
her left forearm still showed blotchy red
May 2010 abrasions turning black and blue, and her
right forearm, heavily bandaged, showed
“Mike’s hands were gripping my arms so tightly red-clawed flesh that a specialist said
would take several months to heal.
I could feel his fingers actually digging into my Today, Mike Rinder’s metamorphosis is
complete: from mental instability to full-
bones.” After he finally let her go, she tried to show blown lunacy and physical violence. And
him the damage he had done. His response was it’s now directed at all Scientologists—
even his own family.
characteristically Rinder, the anti-family man: As for Rinder’s denial to law enforcement
and the press that the harm to his wife,
“I don’t care, you f***ing bitch!” Cathy, had been caused by him—
corroboration came from an independent
source. For it seems that forcefully grabbing
She said of that day in Clearwater, damage he had done. His response was the arms of women is a standard part of
“Mike’s hands were gripping my arms characteristically Rinder, the anti-family his behavior. Then again, lying about it,
so tightly I could feel his fingers actually man: “I don’t care, you f***ing bitch!” and coaching others to corroborate his
digging into my bones.” After he finally For whatever reason, perhaps humility, lies, is another daily routine. (See Rinder:
let her go, she tried to show him the Andrew Rinder did not mention to the The Lady-Killer, p. 67.) n

66 | FREEDOM
 A FREEDOM SPECIAL REPORT

RINDER: THE LADY KILLER

Why bother attacking a guy
when you can slap women around?
“Mike then came directly over to me, from Amy Scobee—then a Church staffer,
grabbed me by both arms and shoved me now part of the apostate “posse” Rinder
which nearly knocked me down.” rides with. She is also one of Anderson
While Scobee appeared on AC360 to
“corroborate” tales of Rinder being the
target of abuse, she neglected—willfully—

T
he above is exceedingly telling.
Because it doesn’t come from Rinder’s
wife, Cathy, whom he recently
abused in exactly the above-stated
manner. (See Mike Rinder: A Walking “Hate
Crime,” p. 62.) No, it came years earlier,
Cooper’s hand-picked sources—one of
those who corroborate each other’s stories.
Then again, it’s even more telling in light
of the fact that brutally grabbing women
by the arms (which Rinder had done to his
wife and then lied about to the police and
press) is a standard Rinder M.O.
to tell Cooper that she, herself, had been
attacked by none other than Rinder. While
if only to compound lie upon lie, Cooper
was provided with all pertinent details, but
he too neglected—willfully—to ask about it.
Nonetheless, following stories in the
S.P. Times, when Mike Rinder’s physical

www.freedommag.org | 67
CNN AC360 | A HISTORY OF LIES
attacks became public knowledge,
a veil was lifted on a well-hidden
history of violence directed at women.
Consequently, those who had suffered
his abuse in the past suddenly came
forward to tell their stories. Here are
but a few.
>> FEMALE VICTIM 1
“I knew he was going to hit me,
so I put my hands over my face. He
grabbed me by the shoulders in a
very strong, tight and painful grip
(squeezing my shoulders very hard)
and began shaking me violently,
toward him and away from him,
back and forth rapidly... He kept
on shoving me back and forth and
then, on a back shove, threw me
against the wall hard enough that
it hurt my rib cage, knocked the
breath out of me and I bounced off
the wall.”
>> FEMALE VICTIM 2
Some years later, and well away
from witnesses, another incident
occurred:
“He placed both his hands on an
8-by-11-inch wooden clipboard he
was carrying, did a half turn, swung
and hit me on the side of my face
with the clipboard, using the full
force of his body… I developed a
severe toothache. The pain became
quite excruciating. The dentist…
found that it had been cracked and
had to be removed.”
>> FEMALE VICTIM 3
Then there was the case of a woman
who inexplicably left the Sea Org
some years ago, much to the dismay
and surprise of those with whom
she worked. Today, her reason is
abundantly clear, as the following
was submitted to the Church after
she had read of Rinder’s other
transgressions:
“I needed financial approval to
purchase something, but I was
worried as I had been told in the
68 | FREEDOM
past that Mike Rinder would not
approve this type of purchase.
I mentioned my concern to a
colleague as to whether or not
Rinder would approve the request,
but I was advised to make the
request and turn it in to Rinder
anyway, which I did...
“He came out into the hallway,
walked right up to me and
physically slammed me against the
wall. He used his right forearm up
against my chest and moved toward
my throat in a choking position,
my head was pinned against the
wall and I was desperately trying
to get him to move his arm down
When Mike Rinder’s
physical attacks became
public knowledge,
a veil was lifted
on a well-hidden history
of violence
directed at women.
by pulling down on his forearm
with my two hands… Rinder never
apologized for that incident, for
slamming me against the wall, for
upsetting me or anything. That was
the beginning of my thinking about
leaving...”
Rubbing salt into the wound, when
asked by a tabloid reporter from
the S.P. Times to comment on the
aforementioned abuse, the newspaper
nonchalantly published his non-denial
which consisted of Rinder simply
stating he didn’t “recall” the incident.
What would one expect from
Rinder? It takes a man to admit when
he’s done something wrong. n
Mike
Rinder’s
LIVE-IN
MEDIA
PUPPET
Christie
Collbran
W
hen originally introducing Christie
Collbran (with whom he so
casually strolled through Central
Park), Anderson Cooper assures
AC360 viewers that she doesn’t really want to
destroy the Church of Scientology. She just
wants to tell her story.
Fair enough, except she didn’t tell it all…
Born into a family of Scientologists, Collbran,
now 33, was raised in a loving home by her
parents, Ed and Liz King. The family lived—
as the Kings still do—in a suburb outside
Los Angeles. Her parents remain dedicated
Scientologists.
In 1993, when she was 16, Christie joined
the Sea Organization, where she remained for
13 years. She worked at Church organizations
in Los Angeles and New York. She married
Chris Collbran in 1999, when she was 22 and
he 18. It was her second marriage.
In 2000, the couple transferred to the
Church’s South African Continental Office in
Johannesburg, and over the next several years

their relationship with each other—
and with the Church—headed
south.
Christie’s job performance became
increasingly erratic; she was
continually lying to cover poor and
inadequate production. She was also
continually violating ecclesiastical
procedures, all of which inevitably
led to her demotion.
Meanwhile, husband Chris grew as
unstable as the couple’s relationship.
He made a “suicide” attempt—more
or less—trying to “slice his wrists”
with an electric razor and then a
toenail clipper—literally.
Then, in 2006, even while their
fractured marriage was nearing its
end, Christie got pregnant. When a
Sea Org member is with child, the
couple is granted a leave of absence
from the religious order until the
child comes of age. So it was with
the Collbrans.
But not long after the couple left the
Sea Org, Christie turns up on Marty
Rathbun’s doorstep. Her marriage
on the rocks, she’s severed all ties with her
family, breaking her parents’ hearts, and
now she knows not where to turn.
Rathbun, after conducting his own
twisted brand of counseling, provides the
only logical solution: He turns her into
Mike Rinder’s bedmate.
So while her ex Chris turned to drugs
and women (both of which he had secretly
pursued while in the Sea Org) Christie
took that prominent place in the bed of
Rinder—the original family heartbreaker.
Shortly thereafter, Rinder dispatches her
to New York and Anderson Cooper where
she rambles incoherently on why none of
it was really her fault—not that she broke
her parents’ hearts, not that she’s turned
against her religion.
Cooper couldn’t
even bring himself to at
least mention that
his ingénue interviewee
was the absentee Rinder’s
current live-in lover.
But there were a few pertinent details
that went unmentioned on her ambling
interview with Cooper. She had, indeed,
earlier told two news outlets that she had
gotten pregnant for one reason—and one
reason only—to expedite her departure
A FREEDOM SPECIAL REPORT
from the Sea Organization, since she
knew the Church would want her to
begin prenatal care at once.
What does that say about her
character, her sense of maternal
responsibility? To become pregnant
to avoid standard procedures in
leaving a religious order? To save a
few weeks? And to then tell the press
where it will permanently remain
available for retrieval on the Internet
in perpetuity? One can only begin to
imagine the emotional devastation
that awaits her three-year-old when
he grows old enough to learn how he
really came into the world.
That Cooper himself knew every
sordid detail of Christie Collbran’s
story and never whispered a word
of it to AC360 viewers is yet another
wrinkle in her soap opera.
In fact, Cooper couldn’t even
bring himself to at least mention
that his ingénue interviewee was
the absentee Rinder’s current live-in
lover—certainly a germane fact for
viewers to assess her credibility.
Cooper’s response as to why he didn’t
let his viewers know would no doubt be
his favorite catchphrase: “I didn’t think it
was relevant.”
Although on the other hand, what’s a
poor Anchor Boy to do?
He had already paid her airfare from
Florida, so he too really had no choice
but to pass her off as a credible source and
take her for a stroll in New York’s Central
Park…
Soon after, naturally, Collbran’s strings
were yanked—not pulled—back to
Rinder’s bed in Florida.
And so the couple continues their sorry
affair, having alienated their families and
saddled with a child born out of deception.
Well, at least they have each other. n
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CNN AC360 | A HISTORY OF LIES

IT’S MIKE
“RIP VAN” RINDER

ZZZ Z ZZZZZ…
.

70 | FREEDOM
 A FREEDOM SPECIAL REPORT

“I fell asleep at my desk many times. This was when working on events—virtually
every one I’ve done in the last 5 years. I was not confronting the writing of speeches.
In fact, I was not wanting to confront what I was doing at the time—being
irresponsible... I am now known for falling asleep. This has happened 50 times
in the last 5 years and probably 20 times at my desk in the last 2 years.”
—Mike Rinder

N
eedless to say, Rinder was
awake when he made the
above confession. But waking
consciousness was not his
preferred state. Because, after all, to sleep
is not only to dream, it’s also to shirk
responsibility so that others become
overworked and lose sleep.
Then again, what better way to silently
wreak havoc than sleeping on time-
sensitive jobs and crucial projects?
Whereupon colleagues and co-workers
can’t possibly sleep for sheer panic.
What follows here is but a sampling of
incidents in testament to those immortal
words: “I am now known for falling asleep.”
That even after confessing, Rinder
continued to sleep at the most inopportune
times makes this list all the more damning.
For the fact is, he did not sleep because
he worked late into the night. He did not
sleep because he believed the work was
beneath him, irrelevant or boring. He slept
because he didn’t care how little others
slept when picking up the pieces of his
so‑called professional life. In totality, he
slept because he didn’t care about anyone
or anything.
>> ONE: Through the course of meeting
with a reporter from a national entertain-
ment magazine, Rinder invites his guest to
watch a Scientology informational video.
The video is only a few minutes in length,
but Rinder nonetheless manages to fall
fast asleep before it ends and snores like
a sailor. Needless to say, the reporter is
embarrassed for him and leaves with the
worst imaginable impression.
>> TWO: Through the course of a legal
deposition and amidst both Church and
opposition counsel, Rinder falls asleep
at a conference table. It does not go
unnoticed by anyone and the deponent
subsequently files an Internet notice
derisively describing Rinder as “dozing
in the corner.”
>> THREE: During preparation of
legal documents for a case critical to the
Church’s well-being, Rinder again falls
asleep, oblivious to the fact colleagues
and attorneys are laser-like focused in
the same office. As a fellow staff member
There is also the telltale later reports, this one was exceedingly
photograph of “best good embarrassing owing to outside attorneys
and senior Church executives working so
buddy” Marty Rathbun diligently in contrast.
By way of added commentary there is
playing “self-righteous also the telltale photograph of “best good
buddy” Marty Rathbun playing “self-
sleep police” to Rinder’s righteous sleep police” to Rinder’s “Rip
Van.” The only appropriate caption: “Tsk,
“Rip Van.” The only tsk, tsk.”
appropriate caption: >> FOUR: A frivolous suit is morphed
into a serious matter, with an opposition
“Tsk, tsk, tsk.” attorney attempting to drag senior Church
executives into a contentious legal battle
they knew nothing about. Rinder is tasked

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CNN AC360 | A HISTORY OF LIES
with prepping legal documents
for presentation to the court.
Instead, he does nothing but
sleep through proceedings.
>> FIVE: Through one of the
most protracted and serious battles
the Church ever faces, Rinder again
sleeps his way at every critical turn.
The winning caption here:
“While the very survival of Scientology
hangs in the balance, Rinder remains
in suspended animation.”
>> SIX: Rinder showcases
his productivity yet again. In
this instance, he is supposed to
rehearse a speech for an annual
international convocation. He has
previously managed to sleep while
the speech was written, but now he must
prove himself capable of snoozing on the
floor of the rehearsal studio. After all, why
be well prepared when you can be super
rested!
There’s many another as reported to
senior executives and the Church Ethics
Section, which is to say that when Rinder
proffered his confession, it was not news
to anyone. Nevertheless, only in light of
international convocation.
this can one appreciate just how regularly
he slept when others would never have
He has previously managed
dreamed of it (and a very partial list
it is)...
to sleep while the speech
July 7, 2002: In the words of yet
another fellow staff member, Rinder “had
the nerve” to fall asleep while urgent legal
preps were in progress.
April 11, 2003: While fellow staff
members burn the midnight oil prepping
for an annual celebration, Rinder slips
the floor of the rehearsal
into unconsciousness while watching late
night television in an adjoining office.
April 24, 2003: Exactly 19 minutes into
yet another planning session, Rinder is
glimpsed dozing at a conference table.
Two minutes later, he is fast asleep.
72 | FREEDOM
May 25, 2003: At 9:50 in the
evening, Rinder is again doping
off at a conference table. A brief
addendum to the report reads:
“His falling asleep happens
continuously.”
June 24, 2003: While three
divisions of Church management
work on financial matters affecting
Scientology Organizations world
over, Rinder sleeps to ensure he
has nothing to do with it.
June 24, 2003: Asleep yet again
in the conference room, feet up
on the table.
July 20, 2003: Asleep at the very
head of the table.
July 29, 2003: Left leg sprawled
Rinder showcases his across a chair, mouth agape.
November 7, 2003: Asleep at desk
productivity yet again. with one hand supporting chin and
In this instance, he is elbow propping up the rest, all while the
speech he will deliver at a New Year’s
supposed to rehearse celebration is written by someone else.
(He later admits he had figured out how
a speech for an annual to turn his arms into a “tripod” to rest
his head and allow sleep, and had even
figured out the exact angle to place his
body in front of the computer—back to
the room—so one and all would think
he was typing.)
November 13-17, 2003: The same staff
was written, but now member counts him dozing off on three
occasions.
he must prove himself December 24, 2003: Scientology New
Year’s celebrations traditionally feature
capable of snoozing on story videos focusing on adventures in
one or another sector of Scientology. Also
a tradition as of the new millennium,
Rinder snoozes in the editing bays while
studio. After all, why be his seniors do the work.
well prepared when you February 19, 2004: A physiological
breakthrough! Rinder is now able to
can be super rested! sleep standing up!
May 9, 2004: This year’s celebration
is paralleled by another cause célèbre.

Rinder falls asleep no less than 10 times
before the curtain falls.
October 19, 2004: Rinder makes yet
another breakthrough! While appearing
to read a lengthy dispatch—paper at
correct distance and angle, head properly
inclined—he sleeps sound as ever. (Only
the fact that he never turns a page betrays
him.)
December 30, 2004: Rinder celebrates
another Scientology New Year’s by
sleeping through speeches and story
videos—ones he was supposed to present,
but for which he was replaced because
he was found sleeping while supposedly
preparing.
February 8, 2005: Rinder also manages
to fall asleep in a Scientology
course room—no mean feat when
surrounded by students.
March 23, 2005: Rinder discovers
that speechwriting is especially
conducive to dozing, for who’s to
know that he’s not simply searching
for that especially inspiring and
evocative phrase. Consequently,
and yet again, the speech must be
ghostwritten on his behalf.
August 7, 2005: It’s an encore
performance on the eve of another
Scientology event as Mike Rinder
dreams of writing a speech that will
materially advance the forward
thrust of Scientology. Once again,
his speech is ghostwritten by his
senior.
October 6, 2005: A new technical
refinement! If one is seated at just
the right angle and the book is
held just so, no one can see that
your eyes are shut and you never
turn a page. Well, almost no one.
November 5, 2005: Same as
above, but this time Rinder’s “prop”
is the transcript of a meeting he
likewise invariably slept through.
A FREEDOM SPECIAL REPORT
December 18, 2005: Another first!
June 2007 and beyond: Rinder manages to sleep through
an emotionally wrenching video on
Rinder is finally free to psychiatric brutality that will open the
eyes of millions and so save the lives of
sleep whenever he wishes. thousands.
December 30, 2005: Rinder discovers
But nonetheless, he must that the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles,
California, is an altogether fine place to
rouse himself now and nap, especially as 6,000 Scientologists
again lest some shameless assemble yet again for their annual New
Year’s celebration.
tabloid journalist calls That he earlier snoozed while the
speech he was supposed to deliver that
to buy a story he’s just evening was ghostwritten by his senior,
then assigned to another to deliver
dreamed up. (because he fell asleep in his dressing
room when he was supposed to
rehearse), in no way disturbs his
slumber. Indeed, Rinder has now
proven he can sleep no matter
who does his job.
March 12, 2006: After failing to
produce a story video that would
even vaguely wake the dead,
Rinder slinks off to once more
try his hand at speechwriting
without falling asleep. Alas, he
doesn’t quite make it.
May 2, 2006: Undaunted, Rinder
prepares to write another speech,
this one describing Scientology
drug prevention programs. While
millions the world over are
benefiting from these programs,
this doesn’t seem to excite Rinder.
He dopes off—before managing
to type a single word on the page.
June 2007 and beyond: Rinder
is finally free to sleep whenever
he wishes. But nonetheless, he
must rouse himself now and
again lest some shameless tabloid
journalist calls to buy a story he’s
just dreamed up. n
www.freedommag.org | 73
 The real story on
Mike Rinder—and
Cooper knew every
last detail of it well
in advance of his
“investigation.”
PERSONALLY INVOLVED IN OBSTRUCTING JUSTICE IN LEGAL CASE

Turning to
THE DARK
74 | FREEDOM
SIDE

“I was an arrogant
‘big shot.’”
—Mike Rinder, July 26, 2004
M
oreover, everyone who crossed
his path knew it... particularly
inquiring reporters whom he
treated with a slick insincerity
that all but the dumbest immediately
recognized.
Consequently and invariably, Rinder’s
track record as an external affairs officer
charged with press relations looks like
this...
He spends four days needling a magazine
reporter—challenging the man, goading
him, providing only perfunctory answers
to questions. The resultant article does
both the Church and magazine a disfavor.
(A reporter from yet another publication
describes the piece as: “written in classic
conspiracy-theory fashion, full of vague,
threat-filled innuendo.”)
A German TV crew lands in Los
Angeles to film Church activities for a
broadcast segment. Of course, German
reporters tend to toe a party line as
drawn by anti‑religionists in general
and anti‑Scientologists in particular. But
Rinder treats it like the Battle of the Bulge,
replete with hostile confrontations, a
car chase and even a fender bender. The
resultant segment is not what one might
call “balanced.”
Rinder teams up with none other than
Marty Rathbun to facilitate a national
network interview with a senior Church
official. The duo proceeds to do what
A FREEDOM SPECIAL REPORT
they do best: badger, bully and coerce
all concerned. The resultant interview is
barely coherent and even an otherwise
obliging network host exclaims: “What
the heck was that all about?”
Rinder receives queries from an Eastern
European publication. But inasmuch as
he regards everything east of the Danube
as beneath him, he doesn’t give them
the time of day. Reporters sense it and
respond accordingly—say no more.
A major metropolitan newspaper tele-
phones relevant to a major story on the
A major metropolitan Church of Scientology. Rinder, however,
is majorly out to lunch and takes three
newspaper telephones months to return the telephone call.
In the end, however, he does come
relevant to a major to recognize the error of his ways, and
proceeds to majorly suck up to reporters.
story on the Church of Indeed, so conscientiously does he suck
up that he misses a call from a national
Scientology. Rinder, magazine…and that one he doesn’t return
for five months!
however, is majorly If the above spotlights Rinder at his
best in making matters worse, how about
out to lunch and takes Rinder at his worst making matters best
for himself?
three months to return No longer does a newspaper call go
unheeded for months at a time. On the
the telephone call. contrary, when a media outlet is on the
line, Rinder now answers on the first ring
In the end, however, he and he’s prepped and ready to go.
Because having opened his bulging
does come to recognize Rolodex of media contacts, he’s now
spreading a campaign of hatred to the
the error of his ways, very same people he so contemptuously
dismissed and evaded while working
and proceeds to majorly for the Church. And, yes, he’s quick to
answer the call when reporters come
suck up to reporters. snooping around.
While as for CNN and the S. P. Times—
he’s got them on speed-dial. n
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CNN AC360 | A HISTORY OF LIES

fr e WE’RE
e ON THE
HIGHWAY TO HELL
“The criminal, the SP (same thing) is TRYING TO GET EVEN
WITH PEOPLE. That’s his common denominator.”
—L. Ron Hubbard

I
n the last two years, Marty Rathbun
and Mike Rinder went from living like
penniless hoboes to jet-setting, TV
talking heads—and all with no visible
means of financial support.
So here’s their fraudulent, wasteful and
slothful odyssey into 15 minutes of fame
and fleeting fortune...albeit, in the end,
with a hefty price tag.
When Rathbun skulked away from
the Church in 2004, he had no debts,
more than $100,000 in assets and
about $178,000 cash from a family
inheritance—a reasonable sum to tide
someone over, but not when you’re an
irresponsible spendthrift.
Within months, he had burned through
$40,000 and maxed out all credit cards.
Within a few years, he was dead broke.
The lesson herein: Rathbun’s spending
habits perfectly mirrored his wastage of
Church funds. But now, on the outside,
when the spigot turned dry it stayed dry.
Accordingly, he lived in obscurity, eking
out a transient living and moving from job
to job because he just couldn’t hold on
to one. Included in his resumé: pushing

76 | FREEDOM

a broom in a convenience store
(while telling anyone who would
listen he was writing a screenplay),
hawking beers in a ball park,
working lowly jobs in small
newspapers—the kind that barely
make good on their own rent.
For all intents and purposes, then,
Rathbun was a drifter (although at
least he kept to himself).
But by the spring of 2008, and by now
an avowed anti-Scientologist, he began
contacting others of his ilk—principally
via the Internet where he fashioned
himself as a hocus-pocus psych-counselor
offering paid services to the unwary...
At which point his first transformation
was complete; Rathbun had turned from
drifter to grifter.
True, business was at best spotty,
but he soon had other schemes in
mind. And so it was Rathbun was
soon en route to Denver to see his
old punching bag, and now best
buddy, Mike Rinder.
They were two of a kind.
Rinder, having crept away from
the Church years earlier, took a
more direct route to become a
hate mongering anti‑Scientologist.
This was largely due to his innate
laziness, a character trait he had
honed to perfection through
most of his adult life. In point
of fact: He was all but allergic to
work and avoided jobs at all cost.
Nevertheless, and even if briefly, he
went through the motions at a couple
of car dealerships in Denver. The daily
“grind” of having to actually show up for
work was too much. He next, also briefly,
threw in his lot with an Internet marketing
scheme—the brainchild of another anti-
Scientologist (and a man whom Rathbun
had previously bilked for cash to start his
squirrelly counseling practice).
A FREEDOM SPECIAL REPORT
What exactly Rinder brought to
the scam is unclear. But not long
into the venture, he accompanies
his boss and colleagues to a hair
salon, whereupon he’s overheard
muttering:
“The faggots are getting their
hair cut, but for $1,000 a week, I
guess we’ll hang out with them.”
And so it was Rathbun was So much for job loyalty; so
much for work ethic; so much for
soon en route to Denver Mike Rinder. Case in point: The entire
company folded, shortly after—and date-
to see his old punching bag, coincident with—Rinder’s employment.
and now best buddy, But what with Rathbun on the scene,
there was at least a plan—and a damn
Mike Rinder. good one to Rinder’s lights, if only
because it really didn’t require any work.
And so it was that a drifting
Rinder likewise became a grifter;
and more than that he had a
story to peddle. That said story
was an unabashed lie from start
to finish was simply what grifters
do; it’s called working a con and
it went like this: Turn festering
hatred for Scientologists into
lurid allegations that would gain
traction at circulation-challenged
newspapers and ratings-starved
cable stations, then peddle said
allegations to editors/producers
whom they themselves knew,
and generally infuriated, while
With Rathbun on the working in the Church.
Flat broke and with no hope for an
scene, there was at least honest buck on any horizon, they needed
a home run from the first pitch. So they
a plan—and a damn good took their tales to the S.P. Times—a
tabloid with which they’d had a lot of
one to Rinder’s lights, track as external affairs officers while in
if only because it really the Church. Moreover, and as they well
knew, it was a paper with a long history
didn’t require any work. of playing fast and loose with any morsel
of information provided by an anti-
Scientologist, truth be damned. (Point
www.freedommag.org | 77
CNN AC360 | A HISTORY OF LIES
in fact, the S.P. Times had no qualms
editorializing about their desire to
destroy the Church. Which explains why
it’s not only the most detested newspaper
by Scientologists everywhere; it was also
the publication most despised by the
Church’s Founder.)
Sure enough, the S.P. Times welcomed
them with open arms as they always have
for any anti-Scientologist. Then what
with Internet postings spinning the lies
hither and thither, the boys were at last
in business.
Now, of course, what cash they received
is not quite so obvious. After all, even
in halcyon days of tabloids, American
editors are loath to leave paper trails when
it comes to paying for “news.” There are,
however, other ways to conduct this sort
of business, including free airfare, free
meals, free entertainment and a “little
something” from corporate slush funds.
Cable TV networks play it much the same
way. They, too, don’t like cutting checks to
sources, but they’ll still pay hefty sums for
footage and photographs, not to mention
first-class flights, luxury lodgings, lavish
meals and, of course, entertainment.
The overriding lesson: There is always
a big budget for a ratings coup or a
circulation spike.
Across the pond, British media were
easy prey for Rathbun and Rinder. Again,
they knew all the key players from their
days with the Church, so it was really just
a matter of rolling the Rolodex the other
way—meaning: instead of setting British
tabloids straight as regards Scientology,
they would sell them a twisted tale of
their invention and thereby cater to the
basest tabloid instincts.
Moreover, and even more to the point
of the Rathbun-Rinder agenda: British
media has always flat-out paid for
information and always will.
But what made this particular UK hustle
all the more reprehensible was the fact
78 | FREEDOM
As for Rathbun and
Rinder, having long lost
any shred of humanity,
they couldn’t care less
about the collateral
damage they leave
behind, whether on
former wives, children or
the few people who ever
called them friend.
Rinder and Rathbun were being paid to
help salvage the career of a tabloid BBC
TV journalist who’d fallen from grace
specifically for unethical reporting on the
Church of Scientology. As a matter of fact,
the man is now virtually synonymous
with “egg in the face journalism” and the
veritable laughing stock of Fleet Street.
When all the dotted
lines are signed,
Marty Rathbun and Mike
Rinder have sold their
very souls.
While to bring this little story full circle,
when the tabloid journalist melted down
in a screaming fit, it was Rinder himself,
then a junior Church spokesman, who
placed it on YouTube—making the
journalist a viral YouTube star as millions
viewed his meltdown and so ending his
career as an “objective journalist.”
Jackpot wise, it all came together in
England, when the two received an all
expense paid vacation, courtesy of the
media. Actually it was a foursome, with
Rathbun’s new wife and one of Rinder’s
two girlfriends. And so they enjoyed
London on the arm of a media outlet
gone slumming. After virtually hugging
and kissing (literally) the now disgraced
anti‑Scientologist journalist, the couples
were wined and dined in style with the
media outlet even pitching in something
extra for sightseeing and obligatory
shopping.
And so it went: Rinder pitching Rathbun
to the editors and talk show hosts he had
so enraged when serving the Church, and
Rathbun playing the “grizzled insider.”
Of course, they make sure they have their
stories straight—that’s what the paid
dinners were all about. And when they
ran out of lies, they spun a few more—
often on the spur of the moment—then
dredged up their other pals from the anti-
Scientology underworld to “corroborate”
and embellish.
As for Rathbun and Rinder, having long
lost any shred of humanity, they couldn’t
care less about the collateral damage they
leave behind, whether on former wives,
children or the few people who ever
called them friend.
While as for that aforementioned price
to pay, needless to say it was a Faustian
bargain from the start and their money
train is a one-way express...
Because when all the dotted lines are
signed, Marty Rathbun and Mike Rinder
have sold their very souls. n

B B C
Rinderama
d
...
expose
W
as Mike Rinder lying then, or is
he lying now—regarding the anti-
Scientology drivel he now funnels
to the tabloid media?
You be the judge after reading the
following verbatim quotes from Rinder
when he served the Church as spokesperson.
“...Look, there is a string of these
people…that goes back 25 years. Most of
them you will never see again. They have
their moment of glory where they make
their wild allegations. They get coverage
in the media. And then, they disappear.
Their claims are proven to be untrue, and
they’re gone.”
—Mike Rinder to BBC Panorama in 2007
n
“People make up outrageous, outlandish
allegations. There is a reason that they
make them up. The reason is because they
attract attention of people like you [tabloid
media]. Because they’re sensational.
Because they sound very sexy. They sound
very interesting.”
“The sheer volume of despicable
allegations made about [the leader of the
religion] are intended to create a false
impression that where there is smoke
there is fire. These ‘witnesses’ know only
too well from their experience in the
Church that the tactic of telling bigger
and bolder lies has been a strategy
employed against the Church in litigation
for years. Tell enough lies, and make
enough allegations, and an impression
will be created which accomplishes the
end of destroying a reputation no matter
how untrue the allegations are. Public
figures are especially susceptible to this
fraud as any study of history shows. Jesus
Christ was crucified based on the false
accusations of Judas Iscariot and the
prejudice of the Romans.”
n
“There isn’t a person in the world who
disagrees with our [Scientologists’] stance
on human rights, our stance on education,
our stance on drugs except the drug
A FREEDOM SPECIAL REPORT
“RUBBISH!”
“RUBBISH!”
“RUBBISH!”
—Mike Rinder
to BBC Panorama
in 2007
dealers, our stance on and the positions
that we take with respect to things and the
work we do in the world.
“We end up getting crapped on by
the media because those things aren’t
controversial, so the 99 percent of what
we do, nobody talks about because it’s
not controversial, the 1 percent, that gets
talked about.”
n
In a 2007 letter to the BBC, Rinder again
set the record straight:
“[W]e repeatedly requested the name
of any source alleging ‘bullying’ and
‘beating.’ The only individual you name
is (B.H.). You must find it at least a little
strange that [he] has appeared in various
media in the United States, France and the
UK over the last two years and has never
made this allegation before. In each case
he has told stories that the media at the
time wanted to hear. You are just the latest,
and obviously this is what you wanted to
hear from him, so he manufactured a tale.”
And finally, when Rinder was interviewed
on ABC 20/20 he was asked to explain why
the statements of hostile Scientologists all
sounded so similar. His response explains
precisely his own statements and those of
the “Posse” today:
“They sat in a room, they figured out
what they were going to say, they wrote
their bits, they passed them around, they
made sure they were consistent.”
Enough said. n
www.freedommag.org | 79
CNN AC360 | A HISTORY OF LIES

Tom
DeVocht
CONSUMMATE
CON MAN
T
om DeVocht to Anderson Cooper:
“Put me on a lie detector test. I
would do that in a heartbeat.”
And why not? When you’re a
genuine pathological liar, a polygraph
will hardly register anything more than a
flat line.
So let us review the life of Tom DeVocht
in this light:
A charter member of the Rathbun
“Posse,” DeVocht formerly served as a
Church construction manager in which
capacity:
He enlisted a convicted felon to broker
a Church property acquisition. Sure, it
cost the Church about a million in cash,
but what the heck? At least the ex-con was
good enough to pass DeVocht a few perks
under the table, including absolutely
primo tickets to a ballgame.
He ordered construction of an
unauthorized energy plant, then even co-
signed a loan for installation and materials.
Just because the company promptly
defaulted on said loan didn’t mean the

TOM DEVOCHT
deal hadn’t looked good on paper.
He scrambled instructions on 224 work
orders, without a word to his superiors.
Okay, so there were cost overruns, blown
budgets and inordinate project delays.
But Rome wasn’t built in a day either.
He failed to follow Church policy and

thereby establish and run a cost-effective
construction unit. The unit was supposed
to organize major contracts with reputable
global firms to benefit from consolidated
design, construction and purchasing
power available to the Church as a major
client. In other words, it’s exactly what
the Church now utilizes to build Ideal
Churches of Scientology at a fraction of
the cost DeVocht would have imagined
impossible. Instead, DeVocht ignored
these explicit instructions, did nothing to
locate such firms and squandered Church
funds—all of which is why he was finally
dismissed. But, hey, he never said he was
trustworthy.
From an AC360 perspective, however,
DeVocht possessed just that right touch
of “simple innocence”...which is to say,
he looked too stupid to lie.
But apparently in DeVocht’s case, even
looks can be deceiving, because he did,
indeed, lie while Cooper’s cameras rolled.
When the anchor politely inquired about
whether the “Posse” had colluded to get
their stories straight, Tom pipes in with,
“Yeah. Let me dispel that right now.”
Only trouble is, Amy Scobee subsequently
admitted under oath that she had spoken
to Rathbun, Hall and DeVocht prior to
their AC360 interviews. Oops!
So Cooper wheels him out to
corroborate the tales of Marty Rathbun. In
particular, DeVocht claims he was one of
those whom Rathbun alleges was abused
within Church management circles.
The claim is all the more sensational
inasmuch as DeVocht had previously
boasted to bullying/beating others in a
kind of tag-team assault with Rathbun.
Also like Rathbun, DeVocht especially
enjoyed wrestling Mike Rinder to the
ground.
But for DeVocht to suddenly claim he
himself was abused—this was a whole
new wrinkle.
It’s nothing the man ever previously so
much as mentioned—either within the
Church, outside the Church, or to his
former wife. But be that as it was, it led to
among the few memorable exchanges in
“Lying was not wrong
unless I was caught
out and couldn’t lie my
way out of it—the actual
wrongdoing wasn’t
wrong if I could
get away with it.”
—Tom DeVocht
Cooper’s whole boring exercise of media
manipulation:
DeVocht’s former wife, Jenny Linson:
“I slept with Tom DeVocht for almost
20 years. I knew every inch of him. I never
saw one scratch. I never saw one bruise. I
never saw one black eye, nothing.”
DeVocht:
“I never claimed to have bruises or scars
or anything like that to begin with so it’s
sort of irrelevant.”
But in fact it’s not irrelevant at all.
Merely, DeVocht was so slow on the
uptake he missed the logic train, i.e., that
he claimed to have bruises or scars was not
the point of his wife’s refutation; it was
that someone who was actually beaten
would have obviously exhibited bruises
and scars.
Or to phrase it in terms of his own
skewed thinking: It doesn’t matter
A FREEDOM SPECIAL REPORT
whether physical evidence “sort of” exists
to prove what he’s saying because he
never claimed there was physical evidence
in the first place. But, of course, if there is
no physical evidence, doesn’t that mean
his allegations are “sort of” false, which
in turn means DeVocht is “sort of” lying?
His former wife, of course, would more
than “sort of” agree.
To cite but a fraction of what Tom
brought to their marriage...
He stole several hundred dollars from
the purse of his wife’s grandmother on
their wedding day.
He squandered $100,000 of his wife’s
inheritance behind her back.
He sold her vehicles, likewise in her
absence, then left her after 19 years
without so much as a note.
After a brief stint selling used cars (a
gig almost too cliché for a serial liar),
DeVocht went on to repossess furniture
from storage rooms and hawk the stuff
on eBay. That business soon failed.
But, of course, DeVocht’s primary
métier, the one he’s followed through the
whole of his adult life—that he has never
lost sight of, never questioned, never
abandoned.
To wit:
“I would never even consider I was
doing wrong unless I was caught out
and then my only sorrow was for being
caught...lying was not wrong unless I
was caught out and couldn’t lie my way
out of it—the actual wrongdoing wasn’t
wrong if I could get away with it.”
In the end, what does it really matter?
Liar, pathological liar, whatever. He is
what he is—except, of course, in the eyes
of Cooper.
And that’s the Tom DeVocht Anderson
Cooper introduced to CNN viewers as an
unimpeachable source to corroborate the
lies of Marty Rathbun.
PS: Breaking News! (Just like CNN does
it.) Tom DeVocht now works a kiosk in a
Florida shopping mall selling Zany Bands
(multicolored rubber bands that form the
shapes of animals when not on the wrists
of their little-kid purchasers). n
www.freedommag.org | 81
 AMY SCOBEE

Amy Scobee
SEX, LIES AND
THE BLOGOSPHERE
“Amy Scobee, a Scientologist for Amy Scobee never played a significant To cite just a little of the substance
27 years, helped run the Celebrity role in running anything and was actually therein:
Centre in Los Angeles.” expelled from the Church for gross Among other items in her autobiography,
—Anderson Cooper when introducing incompetence in 2005. she claimed that: “I used to have horses,”
Hence, her altogether more appropriate when in fact, “I’ve never had a horse.”
Amy Scobee to AC360 viewers

N
eedless to say, it was a convenient
tagline and gave Cooper the license
to drop the names of certain highly
notable Scientologists. But in truth,
tagline:
“I’ve falsely been representing myself
for quite sometime now in order to
appear competent so people would count
on me or consider I was on their team.”
Then again: “I’ve said a number of times
I used to sing with a band. This isn’t true.”
While even more to the point here:
Although she did indeed briefly serve the
Church of Scientology Celebrity Centre in

82 | FREEDOM

Los Angeles, she generally—and this, too,
in her own words: “sat in the office for
hours talking about this or that—diets,
hair, all sorts of non-productive things.”
She is also dimly remembered for
running with a certifiable con man who
feigned an interest in Scientology to gain
an “in” to luminaries attending services
at Celebrity Centre. Scobee liked the
man’s gifts, the nights about town,
the lavish dinners and limousines.
Hence, she used what influence she
could muster to impede/divert an
investigation of the man. Nonetheless,
he was finally undone, expelled and
banned from entering any Church of
Scientology.
So, no, Amy Scobee was hardly
what Anderson Cooper suggested.
Indeed, by the time Cooper tried to
fob her off as some sort of “celebrity
queen,” the woman hadn’t actually
stepped foot in the Centre for more
than 15 years.
She did, however, leave one little smudge
in Celebrity Centre history: Having
accomplished nothing of substance,
she attempted to maintain her position
by embarking on a potholed path of
“establishing” new Celebrity Centres.
The result was a “Centre” in Nashville,
Tennessee, that was not only grossly
inadequate, it was a downright hovel.
With Scobee long since removed,
the hovel she cobbled together is also
gone—replaced with a gleaming new
Ideal Church of Scientology & Celebrity
Centre Nashville to serve all those who
call Music City, USA, their home. While
just for good measure, on May 11 of
this year, the Church’s Celebrity Centre
Nashville won a prestigious award from
Nashville’s Metro Historic Commission
for the preservation of historic integrity
at the Commission’s 35th annual historic
preservation ceremony.
“My intentions and
objectives have been to
flirt, not be faithful...
To keep a ‘not too tight
marriage’ in case you
might ever ‘need’ to step
out of it.”
—Amy Scobee
Then again, and also for good measure,
the similarly shabby Las Vegas center
from Scobee’s watch has likewise been
supplanted with a new Ideal Church—
this one just a mile from the Las Vegas
Strip. Its opening was likewise celebrated
with coverage on all local news stations
and Nevada’s largest newspaper.
But it’s Scobee’s history of extramarital
affairs that finally proved her undoing. As
she so delicately phrased it:
“My intentions and objectives have
been to flirt, not be faithful... To keep a
‘not too tight marriage’ in case you might
ever ‘need’ to step out of it.”
And step out of it she did—with the
zeal of a marathon runner.
According to sworn affidavits presented
to AC360, a then-married Scobee raced
in pursuit of extramarital affairs on at
least five occasions. Through the process,
and bearing in mind she was then still a
Sea Org member, she further committed
one of the gravest offenses of Church
ecclesiastical law.
That is, and again in her own delicate
phraseology:
“I committed a severe violation of
Church scriptures and engaged in an
affair; in fact with the person whom I
was supposedly helping… I was also this
person’s auditor, and my actions were a
A FREEDOM SPECIAL REPORT
serious violation of the Auditor’s Code,
a sacred ethics code that governs the
conduct of auditors.”
To which one might add, she violated
said ethics code for the conduct of
auditors in an auditing room, with her
preclear, while “in session.”
All of which brings us to the real bottom
line of Scobee’s appearance on AC360.
In a word, it was Amy’s appointed role
to corroborate a Marty Rathbun tale
concerning the alleged abuse of Mike
Rinder...
And, oh, how she played the part!
But what she did not bring to the
AC360 stage was anything approximating
the truth...
Which is to say: Amy Scobee knew a
story involving Mike Rinder and abuse,
all right. But he was abuser and she the
victim.
To wit—and at last we come to a
statement wherein she does not mince
words:
“As I was sitting in my office, I heard
Mike tell his junior that he was just a c**k
sucker and continue to call him names.
“Then I heard a big crash and ran into
the office. Mike was holding [a male
person] against the wall when I got there.
I told Mike to let go of him in a calm
voice. Mike then came directly over to
me, grabbed me by both arms and shoved
me, which nearly knocked me down.”
Today, Scobee spends her days posting
salacious drivel to cyberterrorists on the
lunatic fringe of the Internet. Although
she has thus far escaped hate-crime
scrutiny, she remains among the nastiest
snipers and her snippets are filled with
sexual tittle-tattle.
So, yes, while Scobee may have never
been a “celebrity queen,” she at least now
qualifies as a gossip maven...in which
capacity she met a welcome companion
in Anderson Cooper. n
www.freedommag.org | 83

CNN AC360 | A HISTORY OF LIES
STEVE HALL
“Steve Hall was a writer for the Church
who left in 2004.”
—Anderson Cooper when introducing Steve
A
Hall to AC360 viewers
lso by way of an introduction—
although not, of course, mentioned
by Cooper—Steve Hall is both
Marty Rathbun’s “Web Master” and
“Internet Guru.”
But for the truly incisive character sketch,
the one that explains why Cooper’s own
introduction was kept to an absolute
minimum, Steve Hall himself would like us
to know he was previously:
A) Gautama Siddhartha
B) Jesus Christ
C) The Italian Renaissance painter,
Tintoretto
D) And prior to all the above,
he additionally co-created the
universe with God.
All of which further explains why Cooper
assured Church spokesman Tommy Davis
that he saw nothing of interest in what
Hall had to say and thus asked Davis no
questions regarding Hall...
All of which, in turn, meant the Church
never had an opportunity to present Steve
Hall to CNN viewers in terms of what he
really represented...
Namely: A new low in tabloid journalism
for the fact that AC360 was so hard up
to find anyone who would corroborate
Rathbun’s tall tales, Cooper brought on
someone known to one and all who worked
with him as a “complete nutcase.”
So Anderson Cooper to the contrary,
here’s the real Steve Hall:
In addition to aforementioned claims
that he was Jesus, Buddha and co-creator
of the Universe, Hall maintains he was the
“scriptwriter” for the ecclesiastic leader of
the religion.
84 | FREEDOM
Steve Hall
THE MAN WHO TELLS IT
STRAIGHT FROM THE
STRAITJACKET
It’s a statement former co-workers
describe as “patently false” and in the words
of a senior Church official:
“By that definition, a person peeling
potatoes in the army is “The President’s
Potato Peeler.”
Then there was Steve Hall as “He Who
Communes with the Dearly Departed.”
When the wife of a co-worker passed away
in 1998, Hall presents the still grieving
widower with a letter he supposedly
“channeled” from beyond the veil. It’s
maudlin beyond description and filled with
statements intended to convince the man
his late wife had elected Hall as the family’s
new protector. As a matter of fact, the only
distinction between Hall’s letter and a
classic graveside con is that Hall actually
believes he can speak to the dead.
When apprised of the letter, Cooper drips
crocodile tears and tells Davis:
“Oh my God, that’s terrible. I can’t believe
that anybody would do that.”
While just for good measure, the widower
himself writes to Cooper:
Steve Hall himself
would like us to know
he was previously:
A) Gautama Siddhartha
B) Jesus Christ
C) The Italian Renaissance
painter, Tintoretto
D) And prior to all the
above, he additionally
co-created the universe
with God.
“[Hall’s message] was no more a
communication from my wife of 11 years
than had Steve handed me the Poughkeepsie,
New York, phone book. There is not one turn
of phrase or sentiment that even remotely
rings of anything she would have said, or
represents the relationship I had with her.”
To which he adds with emphasis:
“I am outraged that any journalist, particularly
one from a respected outlet such as CNN, would
consider [Hall] a credible source in any way—
much less entertain anything he had to say.”
True to form, Cooper never even responds
to the widower’s letter. Moreover, when
Davis presses the point, a CNN producer
informs him that just because Hall maintains
a hotline to the dead didn’t mean he couldn’t
stand in as a believable CNN source.
But, of course, there’s another way to
interpret all such messages from beyond the
bounds of any credibility.
That is, if Steve Hall was the best Cooper
and company could dredge up through
the course of nine months, then just how
desperate was AC360 to find someone
who could corroborate the stories of Marty
Rathbun?
And when it came to the actual broadcast
—hammering home the point that Hall was
there for corroboration and corroboration
only—his sole action was to parrot the
allegations of the others with a mandatory
tale of abuse from November 2003.
Only problem: In November 2003, the
alleged assailant was 10,000 miles away.
And whatever else Hall told Cooper in his
incoherent ramblings—that ended up on
the CNN cutting room floor.
So that’s how CNN corroborated their
sources—through the words of a man
who both painted Jesus and was Jesus,
depending on which incarnation you’re
talking about. n

JEFF HAWKINS
“This is astonishing. He is a liar
to the core.”
—Former wife of Jeff Hawkins to Anderson
Cooper after learning that Hawkins was
A
appearing on AC360
lso for the record: Hawkins holds
the dubious distinction of not only
lying to his wife and colleagues, he
also lied point-blank to Scientology
Founder L. Ron Hubbard... Which, when he
finally copped to it, is how he came to lose
his job as a Church copywriter.
Whereupon, he pretty much wrote himself
out of the Church entirely and scurried
away in 2005. It was also at this juncture
he wrote himself out of his marriage with a
(dirty) laundry list of moral transgressions.
Such is the back-story to a backroom drama
that played out at CNN headquarters when
word got around that Hawkins was about to
serve as one of Rathbun’s corroborators.
In protest, all the spirits of Hawkins’ sorry
past stepped forth: his former senior, his
ultimate senior and the senior officer of
the Church organization where he served
approached Cooper.
Moreover, all bore sworn affidavits and all
requested airtime on AC360. In predictable
reply, Cooper ignored them and, in fact,
even left the most senior amongst them
languishing in a Green Room waiting for
a chance in front of the camera that never
came. (That Hawkins’ former wife managed
a place on the show can be chalked up to
sheer tenacity; the woman simply forced
Cooper into letting her speak.)
As for his own performance, Hawkins
portrays himself as a lonely Scientologist
abandoned and forsaken after leaving the
Church.
It is not entirely true. For within no time at
all he had joined a small cadre of kindred
souls who call themselves Anonymous.
Jeff Hawkins
SYMPATHY
FOR THE DEVIL
What sort of sympathy
could he possibly elicit
were we to know he was
running with an honest
to goodness terrorist
organization?
Cooper himself makes passing mention
of it, and “innocently” describes them as an
“anti-Scientology” protest group—which,
in a sense, is correct.
Although for “protest” read: bomb threats
leveled at Churches of Scientology, death
threats leveled at prominent Scientologists,
threats of anthrax attacks leveled at the
congregation in general and cyberattacks
leveled at Scientology computer networks.
Accordingly, Anonymous is presently under
United States federal investigation for
hate crimes against the Church while two
members were recently convicted and
sentenced. (See CooperSpeak: How Terrorists
Become “Protesters,” p. 20.)
So, no, Hawkins was not exactly forsaken
after leaving the Church.
But good gracious! What sort of sympathy
could he possibly elicit were we to know he
was running with an honest to goodness
terrorist organization?
While as for Cooper (and our sympathies
are with you, Anderson), one can hardly
blame him for failing to mention those
pesky particulars concerning Hawkins and
Anonymous.
After all, the whole premise of his show
was that one couldn’t possibly know who
was lying and who was not and viewers had
to decide for themselves.
But of course now how could anyone
decide for themselves given the likes of this?
Cooper:
You didn’t want to leave Scientology?
Hawkins:
I didn’t want to leave Scientology.
I didn’t want to leave my wife.
So I wasn’t ready to cut the cord at that
point?
Translation: Hawkins pretended on-air he
was still a Scientologist—despite his status as
a placard-carrying member of Anonymous.
So it just wouldn’t have been cricket if
Cooper spoiled the game by revealing the
real Jeff Hawkins. (If nothing else, what on
earth would his former wife think?)
There is, however, one niggling little
anomaly to the Hawkins story even Cooper
couldn’t ignore.
It seems that immediately after the
broadcast, it was only too obvious that
Rathbun was ever so peeved at poor Hawkins.
Why? One might ask. Hadn’t Hawkins
dutifully corroborated every lie in Rathbun’s
quiver?
Of course he had.
But it just so happens that from Rathbun’s
perspective, Hawkins is an anti-Scientologist
whereas he and Rinder still delusively
think of themselves as squirrel Scientologists.
(They were just trying to ”get even” with
the Church’s leader for kicking them out
and for applying the Founder’s policy
mandating their ouster.)
Oh, the complexities of betraying one’s
family, friends and religion!
And, oh, the sacrifices one must make in
the name of getting even!
But to cozy up with a Hawkins—someone
who not only left his Church, but fully (not
just partially) renounced both the religion
and its Founder!
It’s enough to make a poor boy like
Rathbun begin to think he’s just like Jeff
Hawkins. n
www.freedommag.org | 85
 Damned in Their
Own Words
“Many antisocial persons will freely confess to the
most alarming crimes when forced to do so, but will
have no faintest sense of responsibility for them.”
—L. Ron Hubbard

T
hrough the pages of this publication, Marty Rathbun,
Mike Rinder and Tom DeVocht have been laid bare—
their crimes revealed, their malfeasance disclosed and
their stories exposed for the lies that they are.
In that regard, the liar’s game is over and all that remains is a
shabby little story that begins like this...
Several years ago, Rathbun, Rinder and Tom DeVocht were
removed for flagrant criminality, gross misconduct and financial
waste. When they were finally caught out, they teamed up and
secretly descended on others in violence. And when caught out
again, they spun their tales to the merchants of chaos.
Today they are bitter, broke and busted, motivated by only
two things: getting paid and getting even.
Although that story has now been chronicled in full, one final
word is due—their own words in their own voice.
Accordingly, what you are about to read might well be
described as a last truthful look at themselves before plunging
off the cliff into obsession.

>> MARTY ON MARTY:

• “I spread the practice of ‘getting the goods’ being the EP [end
phenomena] of ethics investigations. Why: Criminal mind
let loose, training in on others to go for nasty evil purposes,
“I instituted instant punishment
to the exclusion of whys, because he [Marty Rathbun]
considers everyone as evil and f***ed up as himself.”
and made an unsafe and
• “I know my TRs suck in life—that is my continuous missed destabilized environment.”
withhold of committing more overts on post per hour than
I can produce to counteract them.” —Marty
• “My statistics are horrendous, including contributing to
several of the largest legal losses in Church history and some • “I know I cannot be trusted to have a position of any
of its worst PR flaps.” authority from where I can throw others for a loop as I have
• “The central out ethics intention has been to attempt to go been doing… If told to go iron out some line at some org, I
it alone and prove personal worth to the detriment of the would be hesitant and unconfident. The more I try the more
group—disestablishing the group, misdirecting the group, harm I do. The biggest source of cross-orders and chaos and
the precise opposite of the purposes of this group.” counter policy is from me.”

86 | FREEDOM

• “I’ve come to realize, with no more assert to the contrary,
that I am a Suppressive as an administrator. I understand I
need to be replaced. Where I went under for good, and never
recovered from, was the night everyone read the [Policies on
Production and Exchange], they all finished and I was up the
entire night and finished around noon the following day... It
wasn’t just that incident—all study went the same and that
was the breaking point. I knew from that point squarely—I
was so far behind everyone else as an administrator, and
was involved in so much full time ‘emergencies’ I’d never
catch up as an administrator. For whatever reason I spend
so much time clearing words, I don’t ever complete the
assignments—I am way behind everybody else.”
• “I created an operating climate of fear. I put on a tough-guy
beingness, unfriendly, suspicious and menacing virtually
everywhere I went on the base. I was snappy with people in
general. I went around with a scowl like I was ready to knock
anybody’s block off who made a wrong move. It created a
hate atmosphere.”
• “I instituted instant punishment and made an unsafe and
destabilized environment.”
• “I inverted Ethics technology to the point where it was
used to protect SPs and freed them to make a dangerous
environment for others. I grooved people in to heavy
ethics—which amounted to punishment with no condition
application, itself contributing to black PR of ethics, in
that having no purpose to it, no one under my direction
could get a result with it. Underlying all this was my own
suppressive characteristics of using org position to defend
self, rather than increase survival across the dynamics.”
• “My operating basis has been to bring SPs onto the line of
the most productive staff member in Scientology and make
the environment unsafe by making each SP or external threat
the all-important, consuming matter. I wind up reporting
‘what I am doing.’ Because I don’t apply Ethics, Tech or
Policy, ‘what I am doing’ is finding out nasty entheta and
putting it directly on staff lines. It is a suppressive activity.”
• “I have acted as an avowed enemy over the past several years
by continually reporting on how bad people are…while
not producing a single product myself… This conduct is
suppressive and insane.”
• “On 7 occasions I boxed [name] ears or wrestled him to the
ground. Once I hurt one of his ears pretty severely where I
could tell it hurt him throughout the rest of the day.”
A FREEDOM SPECIAL REPORT
• “I roughed up [name] on three occasions. I threw him up
against a wall… I then grabbed him and forcibly led him
outside into private for a tongue lashing... I chased him
and tackled him down the stairs and shoved his head into
the corner holding his jaw for several seconds... I grabbed
[name] by the shirt and lifted him into a wall.”
• “I just got more forceful with [name] to the point where
I shoved him against walls and shook him on about 7
occasions.”
• “I interrogated [name] with Rinder and [name]. I slammed
him against the wall hard, and pinned his head against the
wall with a firm grip on his jaw while I cursed at him loudly.”
• “Counter policies I have been operating on and have spread:
»» If someone will continually flub and not duplicate
orders, then blow them away to knock them out of their
dramatization… To the exclusion of all Debug Tech,
Cramming Tech, and Ethics Tech.
»» Harass people into compliance.
»» Spend most of my time enforcing prohibitions—and
don’t spend any time enforcing those doingnesses that
are required to get products out.
»» Whack a guy a few times to get him into present time. If
he continues to act not with it, then give up and go find
another cycle to handle or hope something changes.”
• “I have been operating on pretense. I grooved in my
operating basis of not getting involved in any production. In
short, covering up and false reporting on a routine basis, and
disestablishing command channels by randomly busting
people off of them.”
• “The intentions and objectives of Chairman of the Board are
to Keep Scientology Working in all aspects—100% standard
tech and admin through 100% standard high-quality
organizations continually expanding at an accelerating rate
through upgraded dissemination, tech and management
units… The intentions and objectives of the group I have
become part of are evil, arrogant intentions…while making
the rest of the planet wrong.”
• “My actions were squirrel and you won’t find any justification
for them in Standard Tech.”
www.freedommag.org | 87
>> MIKE ON MIKE:
• “Bottom line is that I have had a totally criminal moral code
and operated with a totally criminal mind attitude that I
have not fully confronted (even down to lying about lying
and doing illegal things).”
• “With all the justifications I have had in place, telling the
truth under certain circumstances was in my universe no
different than telling a lie or withholding.”
“I destroyed [name] confidence
and made her life miserable.
I saw her through my own eyes and
black heart and accused her of what
I had done many times to others.”
—Mike
• “I was very lazy and did everything based on the ‘seat of
my pants.’ From the outset I have been off purpose and out
ethics.”
• “I wanted to be important and maintain my status and I put
that well before the well being of the organization. I have
been anti-organization. I have had to lessen the importance
of the organization and group in order to continue to live
with the overts [transgressions] I committed.”
• “I avoided responsibility by deliberately remaining ignorant
of situations, hoping that a junior would handle them. This
‘it’s got nothing to do with me’ attitude in flying my hats right
up the Org Board. This was motivated by a cowardly desire
to have someone other than me to blame if the situation
88 | FREEDOM
blows up. It ignored the actual consequences, because when
these situations explode, it has always been Chairman of the
Board who handled them… I have done this many times
throughout the years—from legal cases to media situations
and government attacks.”
• “The cost to the Church through my neglect of situations
has been huge, because these situations have blown up
and turned into hugely expensive matters in terms of both
money and distraction.”
• “My statistics suck—I don’t get anything really done because
everything is off purpose. The accomplishments I have had
have always been related to things COB was doing, and I’ve
totally lost sight of that and deluded myself that I have done
more than I am really capable of doing.”
• “I have a great deal to do to make up for the disasters I have
created that have truly turned me into an enemy of LRH,
COB and Scientology. The higher the level of responsibility
and trust that is placed in one, the greater the overts are
when these are violated and I have done so continuously,
while asserting I have been ‘on the team’ and ‘with it’ when
I have not been.”
• “Over the years, as I committed more and more overts and
created bigger and bigger disasters in my wake—I would
‘not-is’ and ‘negate’ things and hope they go away, and then
when that doesn’t happen they have to be made less of in
order to justify why nothing has been done about them.
This operating basis created catastrophes, situations that
have actually kept COB off his post handling the disasters
for years on end… I see now how suppressive, off Source
and psychotic my actions and attitudes have been.”
• “I have been engaged in my own game of trying to prove my
own rightness—and that has been the senior thing in my
universe, and this is suppressive to the whole of Scientology,
because I have been off purpose and operating on a personal
motive, know-best and squirrel.”
• “I have committed Suppressive Acts over an extended period
of time. I have admitted it and said so. But, I have been
unwilling to be fully responsible for it.”
• “My motivations for a long time have been First Dynamic
oriented—attempting to protect my reputation and position
as a senior datum to the expansion and well being of
Scientology. I constantly convince myself otherwise, but
that is the bottom line truth.”
• “Callousness and disdain for staff became my habit. I lessened
the overts against staff by making them unimportant. I have
been callous and arrogant towards staff, insensitive to their
feelings, making less of them looking down on them and
treating them as unimportant (i.e. not as ‘important’ as me).”
• “I got very upset with [name] and pushed him against the
wall in my office and then pushed him out of my office.
There were other staff present. This was not ok as physical
abuse is uncalled for and resolves nothing.”

• “I punched [name]. It was a wild animal reaction and
uncalled for. He pointed his finger at me and I punched him
in my office.”
• “I destroyed [name] confidence and made her life miserable.
I saw her through my own eyes and black heart and accused
her of what I had done many times to others.”
• “[Name] was called over by Marty and attacked by Marty for
not doing something. Marty beat him up and he was very
shaken up. I didn’t have the courage to counter Marty.”
• “The consequences of my actions are terrible. I had mired
myself so deep that I could no longer see anything except
motivators.”
• “I have really examined the actions that I have taken that
have made me an enemy of Scientology… I have nullified
the importance of the Sea Org and thereby undermined
it, yet this is the LRH handling for salvaging this planet…
The enemy actions I was engaged in were destructive to all
of Scientology and ultimately every person on Earth. The
magnitude of the overts is almost incomprehensible.”
• “In truth, I have not been being a Scientologist, let alone a
Sea Org member. I had less insistence on applying the tech
to myself than regular Scientologists.”
>> TOM ON TOM:
“The solution then became to start
false reporting and lie. All I was doing
was trying to cover my tracks of false
reports... I caused chaos as a result.”
—Tom
A FREEDOM SPECIAL REPORT
• “I’ve had a tendency to lie.”
• “I began to false report and give false assurances. The more
I handled it in my own way the more trouble and chaos
I caused. Had I not been on the lines it would have been
better. I didn’t increase stats but actually decreased them. I
didn’t support the flow or power. I drained it and didn’t use
it to move things forward.”
• “I have been an avowed and knowing enemy specifically
toward organizations as a subject; to rules, laws, policy,
agreements and the like and have operated solely on the
basis of how many of these could I break. Not unknowingly,
but outright, purposely and with forethought violating what
I could. If there were something for me to do I would look
up getting it done in violation of every rule. If it meant
being part of a group, I worked to individuate myself from
it. If it meant not doing something, I would do it. If it meant
keeping in organizational patterns I broke them in spite. If it
meant being honest I would lie.”
• “I have pretended to be loyal. I have operated to make
myself right and others wrong and prove it by stopping such
projects and have been insane and suppressive.”
• “I was being destructive. By pretending to be an executive
what I was actually doing was camouflaging the real scene
and hiding the fact I didn’t have any control at all.”
• “I limited my responsibilities. I then began to fall further
and further behind. The solution then became to start false
reporting and lie. All I was doing was trying to cover my
tracks of false reports... I caused chaos as a result.”
• “I operated insanely spending money with no responsibility
for what I was now doing and no concept of the destructive
consequences across the dynamics.”
• “I made a deal (illegally) and ended up losing the Church
$1,000,000.”
• “I want to make back every penny that I blew through my
financial irregularities. I worked out that I am responsible
for close to $10,000,000 in this way.”
• “Specifically and in short...I committed financial crimes by
signing work orders and committing expenses without any
authority… I withheld these facts from COB completely.”
• “I drove fear into people with my physical handling of
people. I was very close with Marty and we worked together.
I looked at Marty as an OL [opinion leader] and we got
along very well. I would lead the charge and Marty would
follow behind me. If needed Marty would force or threat
of force was used to get what we wanted. Marty and I beat
up some people [name], [name], Mike Rinder and others.
I knew I was enturbulating the group. I was out of control
and could see how it affected others. Marty helped me. We
worked together. We were withholding it from COB.” n
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 LOVE/HATE
“Love to hate,
the bridge is betrayal.”
—L. Ron Hubbard
M
arty Rathbun, Mike Rinder and Tom DeVocht, all
having been demoted and expelled in disgrace
from their former religion, now rail against the
man who removed them.
But what did they say about him before they transformed into
embittered apostates?
First, though he now uses them as mouthpieces for his vitriol,
this is what Rathbun once told a pair of local reporters about
the leader of the Church:
“He is different than me. He’s in a different
league… He’s got enough self-certainty and So, yes,
confidence that he doesn’t concern himself
with somebody not approving of him… He we might well ask
doesn’t get all hung up and worried about Marty Rathbun,
that. I just don’t see it in him and I never did
really. I guess that drove a lot of people crazy Mike Rinder and
who were anti-Scientology, which is another
reason why he’s been a lightning rod.”
Tom DeVocht:
Rathbun went on to tell them more about What in heaven’s
the character of the religious leader:
“You see, people describe him as one of
name possessed
the most honest people they have ever met, you?
the most direct and that sort of thing, and he
is. Because he just doesn’t care whether it’s
popular or unpopular or whatever, he calls it like he sees it and,
frankly, that is how he has been able to accomplish what he
has accomplished. That is why people go to him in a crunch.”
And so he continued, this time with his characterization of
the Church leader’s role in the restoration of the Founder’s
Scriptural recording:
“He spearheaded this whole thing. There are LRH
lectures going back to 1950 on the subject of Dianetics and
Scientology. There’s now 2,000 that have been fully restored,
mastered and released with the rest of them being done. But
he saw to it that the whole technology for doing that was
done… Now we are getting tapes that were completely wiped
90 | FREEDOM
out from the ‘50s, that sound just as if we recorded them
yesterday. That’s the level of quality that’s been established
on that line. These things to a Scientologist are extremely
important.”
And finally, there’s the Rathbun declaration sworn under oath
and filed with the Superior Court of the State of California for
the County of Los Angeles:
“Over the years, I have witnessed innumerable personal
attacks upon Mr. Miscavige, his family, his
character, his integrity and his leadership
by apostates and other opponents… Until
recently, I have considered the individuals
who have attacked Mr. Miscavige as merely
embittered, spite-driven anti-Scientologists.
However, as described in more detail
below, it has recently become clear to me
that these individuals are seeking more
than merely the removal of Mr. Miscavige or
any purported ‘reform’ of the Church. Their
ultimate goal is to take over the Church of
Scientology… They violently disagree with
Scientology as practiced by millions across
the world, and seek to alter its beliefs and
practices to suit their own ends. It is because
Mr. Miscavige stands in their way that he has been targeted
by them…”
Then there are the words of apostate Rinder. He likewise
wrote of the religious leader in a declaration he made to the
U.S. District Court of the Central District of California, a matter
of public record:
“I know David Miscavige personally. As such I know him
to be completely honest, and sincerely dedicated to helping
people. For what he has done to expand our religion, he has
the respect and admiration of millions of Scientologists. And
for this same reason, he has earned the enmity and particular
scorn of those with a vendetta against Scientology.

“In the last decade, he has
personally done more to ensure
Scientology is standardly
applied and made more widely
known and available than any
other single individual. After
L. Ron Hubbard, the Founder
of Scientology, passed away in
1986, the religion entered a new
phase. While there will never be another
L. Ron Hubbard, his death marked a time of Did you want
potential disruption and upheaval, and Mr.
Miscavige shouldered the responsibility
the power for
for not only keeping the Scriptures pure, yourselves?
but for guiding our religion into a time of
great stability and rapid growth. He never Did you imagine you
sought personal power or aggrandizement;
he was thrust into the position he currently
were above the law
holds precisely because he is so dedicated and that somehow
to helping others through our religion.
It is because he has demonstrated time he would let you off
and time again his integrity and selfless the hook?
willingness to serve for the good of others
that he enjoys the support of the staff and parishioners of the
Scientology religion.”
Then there is Rinder to a television reporter about the leader
of the religion:
“David Miscavige’s goal is very simple—to do things the way
that L. Ron Hubbard would want them done and everything
that he does is done with the orientation of ‘this is how
L. Ron Hubbard laid it out and this is how he would want
the Church of Scientology to be led, where he would want
the Church of Scientology to be going.’ And that’s why I say
that Scientologists feel a great sense of security and a great
sense of pride in that because that’s what they want too. And
it’s very clear what Scientology is attempting to accomplish
A FREEDOM SPECIAL REPORT
and where the Church should
be going because it’s all laid
out in the policies that were
written by Mr. Hubbard.”
There is this from Rinder
speaking to the care Mr.
Miscavige extends to others:
”On many occasions I have
seen David go out of his way to
help others. I well recall two times where
I took ill and it was David who called
the doctor and personally ensured that
everything possible was done to help me
recover. He contacted the doctor (both
occasions were late at night and required
tracking down doctors in the middle of
the night) and ensured I was properly
treated. It would have been easy for him
to let someone else take care of me, but he
did so personally, and would not leave or
rest until the matter was resolved. These
are things I will never forget.
“I have seen him act in a similar fashion
with many others. As I work with him often, and know many
of the people that know him, I am aware of the high regard
in which he is held by Scientologists and those he comes in
contact with. I have never heard a negative statement made
about him by anyone other than those who seek to extort
money from the Church. It really is that simple.”
And finally, Rinder on Mr. Miscavige and Church staff:
“I have observed through the years David Miscavige’s
dedication to helping his fellow staff in the Church. It is he
who raised the standards and conditions for staff members
by insisting on constantly upgraded living quarters, dining
areas and other staff facilities. It is he who insisted on staff
enhancement programs, the recreational facilities being
www.freedommag.org | 91
CNN AC360 | A HISTORY OF LIES

provided for the staff of the Church. Absurd allegations of Berlin, Harlem and more on the way. Social Betterment
slave labor being employed by the Church turn my stomach. entities put on the map with real headquarters, the same for
I know the truth. They are lies and those who utter them CCHR and Human Rights.”
know them to be lies.” And lastly, there is Tom DeVocht. The following are his words
Then again, Rinder offered his personal view of the Church about the Scientology Church leader:
leader’s accomplishments: “LRH and COB. These are the only two one could actually
“The statistics [of Mr. Miscavige] are incredible, one say never give up, never go reasonable or agree with the
major accomplishment after another. Tax stops and always, no matter what, get the
exemption from the IRS. Flag built to 20X Did you think job done.”
what it ever was. Shortly before he was forever relieved
“The Golden Age of Tech which has ended his compassion of his Church duties, DeVocht wrote the
squirrel auditing and made possible case
gain and bridge progress for everyone in all
was a weakness following when summarizing the religious
leader’s accomplishments and the world of
orgs, removal of arbitraries which has flowed and that you Scientology:
public up the bridge in record numbers.
“New orgs—starting in DC, but now with
could get away “The statistics are good—also broad—in
terms of where the Church has gotten. Major
Tampa, Joburg, Buffalo, SFO, Gatos, MV, with murder? victories and wins have been achieved.
NY, Madrid and new buildings for London, “The quality of delivery (Golden Age of

92 | FREEDOM

Tech) technically and administratively have been vastly
improved and standardized across the boards. Facilities
across the boards are better set up, functional and represent
the Church and its activities around the world.
“New social betterment groups are opening up everywhere
and are also more and more well known and used.
“The whole Church is in a new era of potential expansion
and boom beyond anything we’ve ever dreamt of to date.
“This is because of broad, strategic and overall activities
of the Chairman of the Board and activities that he leads.”
S
ince authoring the above statements, Marty Rathbun,
Mike Rinder and Tom DeVocht have become
unrecognizable. It is a phenomenon that has been
pondered since time immemorial and virtually every religious
tradition tells of it—how those close to greatness will
occasionally betray it for reasons known only to themselves.
So, yes, we might well ask Marty Rathbun, Mike Rinder and
A FREEDOM SPECIAL REPORT
Tom DeVocht: What in heaven’s name possessed you?
Did you want the power for yourselves?
Did you imagine you were above the law and that somehow
he would let you off the hook?
Did you think his compassion was a weakness and that you
could get away with murder?
Of course, we do not expect answers to these questions and,
in fact, you cannot really know the answers, at least not yet.
For that is the supreme irony of greatness betrayed—even the
traitors know not why they did it.
So for the moment, the best you can do is to listen for that
small voice, that inevitable voice, the one that keeps asking:
What have we done?
And while you’re at it, you might also ponder this in a
moment of clarity:
“There is nothing very glamorous about the criminal, the breaker of
his pledge, the betrayer of his friend or group. Such people are simply
psychotic.” —L. Ron Hubbard
www.freedommag.org | 93
CNN AC360 | A HISTORY OF LIES

LIVE
from Anderson’s Dressing Room!

1 3

A
nderson is about to conduct some very important interviews, but he needs a little help
to “look the part.” Will you give Anderson some fashion advice? All you need is a pair
of scissors to cut out just the right duds!

>> This is what Anderson wears when interviewing psychotic apostates. It’s a look he
1 came up with himself and it’s called “Anchorman Casual.” But say, don’t those jeans have
his mother’s name stitched on the pocket?
>> This is what Anderson wears when interviewing “tough guy” apostates, the kind who
2 wear “wife beater” tank tops and turn their baseball caps the wrong way around. Anderson
wants to fit right in, so he wears this motorcycle jacket with a silver chain.
>> This is what Anderson wears when he wants to be “snooty” to people who are trying
3 to totally wreck his show by insisting he present the full story and all the facts. He calls this
look, “I’m a Serious Journalist—Seriously!”

Hurry now and collect Anderson’s entire wardrobe before he’s off the air.

94 | FREEDOM
 Defrocked Apostates:
THE ROAD TO REDEMPTION
A
n integral technology of and followed the exact procedures
the Scientology religion laid down by the Founder, they
is the Ethics and Justice are prohibited any entry into any
system designed by Scientology Church.
Church Founder L. Ron Hubbard. Of course, this also raises
Unlike criminal court systems, the question of whether the
where one is represented by Scientology Justice system includes
counsel and where the guilty any mechanism for one to atone
can stand behind a creative for criminal misconduct when it is
defense, Scientology’s Justice of such biblical proportions. The
codes are premised on the answer is yes. Each one of these
individual’s honesty in admitting transgressions. apostates was a member of the Scientology religious order, the Sea
Similarly, rehabilitation is premised on the individual taking Organization. Sea Organization members commit themselves to the
responsibility for the harm one has caused by making amends for religion for the next billion years, reflecting an eternal commitment.
the magnitude of harm caused. As can be seen in their own words, When the misconduct of “the Posse” was discovered, each was
the Scientology apostates who call themselves “the Posse” know removed from their positions. But, consistent with the saint-like
full well that the magnitude of their misconduct and crimes—as compassion the Founder’s Justice system demands, all were given an
well as the amends required by them in exact accordance with the opportunity to work in low-level positions so they might have the
Founder’s writings—is immense. opportunity to once again be members in good standing. That they
The lies they spread to the media have been disproved with would remain in low-level positions for several, possibly scores of
documentary evidence in this publication lifetimes, was only a reflection of the magnitude
and elsewhere. That their bitter, delusional Does the Scientology of their damage and the number of lifetimes
rantings receive any media attention can only depending on their dedication in making full
be attributed to the fact that the Scientology Justice system include amends for their misconduct.
religion is well-known and good “ratings” for any mechanism for one So what is their gripe? It’s quite simple. When
the press, who live on stirring up controversy. their misconduct was discovered, when their
Moreover, if these apostates had any valid to atone for criminal conspiracy was discovered, they requested all
complaints about the Church, they would take misconduct when it is of of the Founder’s Justice policies be ignored,
those complaints to the Church—again, as due to the personal embarrassment they
mandated by the Founder’s Justice system. The such biblical proportions? would face when Scientologists became aware
reason they haven’t done so is because they The answer is yes. of their crimes against the religion and its
know, unlike the media, that no Scientologist parishioners—an inevitability as they would
would sympathize with them for the very reason they are liars and be seen performing very low-level functions in the present and the
that Scientology teachings even include the reason people lie in future.
covering up their own misconduct. But as every religion teaches, humility is the first step to
Far beyond the dishonesty of their sensationalistic tabloid-like redemption.
allegations that have since been entirely discredited, there remains Could we suggest they look in the mirror each morning? The
the BIG LIE. Namely, that they won’t return to their previous steadily deteriorating state they see, the horrible mental state they
Church and that they won’t do so as a matter of their personal choice. feel and which is the inevitable result of a life now motivated by
Actually, they aren’t allowed to return to their Church until they hatred—it could all go away.
have made sufficient amends, and their misconduct even precludes They only need to face up to what they’ve done and take
them from claiming to be a member of the religion or saying they responsibility. For if one can’t be honest with oneself, then there
are a “Scientologist.” is truly no hope.
Indeed, according to the Church Founder’s policy, they may only Then they may begin the next step, should they choose, to make
call themselves an “anti-Scientologist,” an “apostate” or a “squirrel.” amends. It’s a long road, no doubt. But at least they are fortunate
As given here, their cumulative harm to the religion for which in knowing they will live many lifetimes again and so will have the
they owe amends is immense. And until they have made amends centuries necessary to atone for their sins. n

www.freedommag.org | 95
 Freedom Magazine
presents:

ANDERSON COOPER
THE SHOCKING TRUTH!
Investigative Reporting in the Public Interest

SPECIAL REPORT

www.freedommag.org

How he manipulates public perception.

How he twists the facts to suit his “story.”
How he transformed himself from a talking head
into a tabloid huckster.

ANDERSON COOPER’S MOST SENSATIONAL

STORY IS THE ONE ABOUT HIMSELF!
A full 30 minutes of AC360—exposed!
DVD Enclosed