Letter
to the Editor, St. Petersburg Times
Tuesday, December 16, 1997
"Scientology's tactics"
Re: Spreading pure innuendo,
Dec. 11, 1997
When reading the letter from
Scientology spokesman Mike Rinder, it is important to
keep a crucial fact in mind. Rinder's department, the
Office of Special Affairs (OSA), is part public relations
machine and part covert intelligence agency.
OSA is the successor to Scientology's
Guardian's Office (GO), which was supposedly
"disbanded" after its leaders were convicted of
conspiracy against the U.S. government for executing
"Operation Snow White". The GO also ran a
number of operations, including "Goldmine",
"Normandy", "China Shop" and
"Tricycle", among others, against the city of
Clearwater and its citizens, in an effort to seize
political and economic control of the area.
Church officials have claimed that the
infamous activities of the GO were the work of misguided
individuals rather than a coordinated effort, but the
directives of Scientology's founder, L. Ron Hubbard,
clearly mandate a terroristic strategy of harassment,
misinformation and spurious litigation.
In the "Fair Game" policy
letter, Hubbard wrote that opponents "may be
tricked, sued or lied to or destroyed." In "A
Manual on the Dissemination of Material", he wrote,
"the defense of anything is untenable. The only way
to defend anything is to attack." And when
Scientology's Department of Government Affairs was
created, he wrote, "Only attacks resolve threats...
if attacked on some vulnerable point by anyone... always
find or manufacture enough threat against them to cause
them to sue for peace."
Given all that, it is a simple matter
to deconstruct Rinder's schizophrenic diatribe, but space
restrictions dictate that this be left as an exercise for
the reader. For those who want to find more information
on the cult and its secret service, the best source is
the Internet, including the newsgroup
alt.religion.scientology, and the websites http://www.entheta.net and http://www.xenu.net,
among many others.
Several points should be briefly
addressed here, though. First of all, for Rinder to
accuse the St. Petersburg Times of bigotry and hypocrisy
is, in itself, the sheerest gall. The Times has more
credibility and journalistic integrity than the Church of
Scientology and its propaganda rag "Freedom"
could ever hope to attain.
Second, the demonstrations Dec. 5 and 6
were not organized or directed by Bob Minton, and he did
not pay for anyone to protest in Clearwater. Some of the
activists were Tampa Bay residents, such as myself, and
the others covered their own travel expenses.
If there was any doubt that Scientology
is still a dangerous and deceitful organization, last
week's events have erased it. The cult's baseless attacks
on the protesters, police department, and press have
shown that yes, Clearwater is still in a war of
information with the cult of Hubbard.
Mark Dallara, mdallara@kcii.com
Tampa
|
