Wikileaks Airs Scientology Black Ops

An anonymous reader alerts us to new material up on Wikileaks: 208 scanned pages (in one PDF) relating to the Church of Scientology and its former "Office of Special Affairs" employee (and subsequent apostate) Frank Oliver. "The documents are dated between 1986 and 1992 inclusive, when, according to the file, Frank Oliver was declared a 'suppressive person' and excommunicated. Frank Oliver should be able to verify the material and has appeared in the media before on subjects relating to the church. Starting on page 107, the document shows that at the time of writing the Church of Scientology was still actively engaged in black propaganda (especially concerning psychiatry), 'fair game' and infiltration."

Comments

Get 'em while they're hot

[Carnildo]

Make sure you get your copy before the Scientologists take the site down.

Re:Get 'em while they're hot

[aarggh]

The official course of action for COS in cases like these is set down by elron himself, basically sue, sue, harass, and then sue some more regardless of winning or losing. And unfortunately they have so much sway that sending multiple C&D's to sites/ISP's will cause most sites to drop any links or references anyway as they are too intimidated by the COS. Note that by "COS" I am of course referring to the "Cult of Scientology", as no-one could ever confuse this group with any modern day religion!

Re:Get 'em while they're hot

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if they'll care if they do. They're set up in many different countries with mirrors across the world for a reason - because they *expect* every organization they mention to try to shut them down. Won't work. The cult might bring down a server or two, but they'll just pop back up as quickly as they can and in the mean time alternate servers will take the burden.

I know the cult is sue-happy and has successes under its belt, but wikileaks is set up *specifically* for this. The documents are out, they're on servers worldwide already, and a dozen bit torrents as well. There is no way to suppress this even if they were to somehow take down all of wikileaks.

Re:Get 'em while they're hot

[aarggh]

Without starting a flame war on who has the best imaginary friend, and while there are many valid points raised as to the validity of reilgion with regards to suicide bombings, hangings, etc, I should have generalized more along the lines of "modern day, somewhat civilized" religions. In other words religions that over the millennium have evolved from the original (somewhat fairly hideous and violent) sect beginnings to what most western based religions are now, which for all their faults generally try to be a positive source of strength and support in todays society. Unlike specifically the money making machine that is the COS built on a Sci-Fi story as part of a bet, that routinely victimises and harasses any form of opposition, sometimes to their deaths. Thanks to living in democracies, people can voice their opinion that the COS is being picked on, or question how is it different to any modern day religion, and so on, but I would not expect that the vast majority of people in the western world would even remotely consider suicide bombings, hangings, persecution, etc, to be the norm in religion. And for that same reason, I don't think it unreasonable to consider the "documented and recorded" behaviour and practices of the COS falls most certainly more into the organised cult area than a western based church. Especially given that people have no excuse to not know more about COS with the release of large amounts of information legally and illegaly. Sometimes people confuse playing Devil's Advocate with being pedantic.

Re:Get 'em while they're hot

[jonaskoelker]

All we need is for there to be a Chinese-Scientology link and we'll have the most commented-on story ever. I for one (captcha: wisely) welcome our new Chinese DRM-loving Scientologist lawyer-wielding terrorism-inclined Vista-running meme-loving robot overlords. Netcraft says they're not eligible for being confirmed dead, as no robot was ever alive.

Now that's what I call a good story.

Re:Get 'em while they're hot

[FooAtWFU]

• It's a cult if its founder is still alive, or is recently dead.
• It's a religion if the founder has been dead so long that his adherents have had time to rewrite his character.
• (In no case is any of it rational, practical, or efficient. Religion is for those who are insufficiently honest to build their own philosophy.)

A cult, in other words, has elements of personality-worship in it. Religions are old enough to claim that the founder's personality could not have unduly influenced their membership.

The Cult Information Centre describes it as such:

• It uses psychological coercion to recruit, indoctrinate and retain its members
• It forms an elitist totalitarian society.
• Its founder leader is self-appointed, dogmatic, messianic, not accountable and has charisma.
• It believes 'the end justifies the means' in order to solicit funds recruit people.
• Its wealth does not benefit its members or society.

(Project Clambake, likewise, quotes this list.)

In my opinion, a lot of it is a matter of a qualitative differences in what they do. There's a number of things. Some people in certain religions will try to bring you back if you leave. Cults, on the other hand, may blackmail, harass or threaten people who try to depart. Many religions ask for money; Scientology asks for money, and spends it on lawsuits against its critics. Many religions have people who approach you on the street and tell you that you need to convert or $badstuff (with varying degrees of pushiness). Scientology sets up a table with a "Free Stress Test" (presumably designed to be rather Scientific-looking) first to attract passerbys, then when you test positive for stress they try to sell you various courses, then ease into the dogma later.

Re:Get 'em while they're hot

[modecx]

I'm curious; why wouldn't you confuse it with a religion?

1) All real religions will gladly tell you what they're about before hand. 2) No real religion will brainwash you into mortgaging your house. 3) No real religion protects their materials by copyright, so they can do #2, and use the law to squelch leaks and critics. 4) No real religion will make you disconnect from your friends and family, so you will have nobody to instill some sense into you--and stop you from doing #2. 5) All real religions on this planet are inclusive, instead of exclusive.

I could go on and on (and on and on), but I really don't want fingertip blisters pointing out stuff that's obvious to the un-brainwashed masses after they've completed about 10 minutes of research (2 of which might be clicking on google links).

What is a 'modern day' religion?

I'm guessing he means any religion that is widely practiced, and has evolved enough to be generally accepted as (at least) "mostly not evil" by most people (especially by most who don't practice that particular religion). For instance, there's plenty of passages from the old testament, and all of the Abrahamic traditions, which are not generally acknowledged as being things which apply to the modern world; and extremists who believe these things are generally shunned from the mainstream of their own religion. Islam is probably the one exception to the last part, because Islamic extremists are often heroes within their communities. So, whatever.

That scientology eventually teaches the idea that some Xenu character planted frosty dead people and hydrogen bombs in the Worlds' volcanoes, and that they have these ghosts stuck to them doesn't particularly enrage most of the scientology critics I know; it's their abuses and covertly hostile nature that disturbs them, and me. Fact is, that part isn't all that much different from other equally silly stories religions teach.

Still, the fact that it was dreamed up by some twice divorced sea-faring, drugged up satanic NAMBLA perv, is a lot less noble than the supposed origins of the other religions... And scientology makes it out that LRH was a 7' tall descendant of European nobility, who shot rainbows and unicorns out of his ass. So, because of that, add this to my list: 6) It's easily demonstrable that a) the people who run scientology are either purely malevolent because of the lies and contradictions in their teachings, or b) they're incredibly incompetent nincompoops who couldn't find their asses with both hands.

Re:Get 'em while they're hot

[geekboy642]

Anybody that shoots up a school is a person who has severe mental issues.

People with severe mental issues are frequently prescribed drugs to try to alleviate those issues.

Correlation DOES NOT EQUAL causation. In fact the most recent school shooting I can remember occurred when the shooter stopped taking his drugs and regressed to a much worse state. Clearly the drugs were at least holding his psychosis in check while he was taking them. To put your statement in a clearer light, "the 9-11 hijackers took aspirin when they had head-aches! Ban aspirin, it causes hijackers!"

Re:Get 'em while they're hot

[The Only Druid]

Your grandmother referred to what is known as "Pascal's Wager": if you believe in God and are wrong, you pay no price, whereas if you do not believe in God and are wrong, you pay the price of Eternal Damnation.

The wager is uniformly understood by anyone with a passing understanding of logic to be facially invalid and incorrect.

The reason is simple: the wager makes the blatantly false assumption that believing in God while alive has no cost. Moreover, it fails to account for the fact that the 'value' of a cost paid over time is intrinsically linked to the duration of your existence (i.e. your 'life' plus any 'afterlife' you may have). If God doesn't exist, and you believe in God while alive, you pay the maximal price of wasting all that time and energy (along with all the missed opportunities this entails) during the entirety of your existence. It is difficult, if not impossible, to believe that this cost is not greater than living an actual life of happiness without a deity followed by an afterlife of 'hell'.

Moreover, belief out of fear of the results of being wrong is no belief at all: it is a shallow, deceitful pretense of belief. It is an insult to the very God you would claim to believe in, by virtue of saying that the only reason you believe is that you think it would be too costly not to believe. This is like a person who abstains from murder not out of respect for life, but rather out of avoidance of the prison-sentence. That person is a monstrous imitation of morality, not a moral man.

Belief, if you value it at all, must spring from an honest embrace of some purported truth. It cannot spring from a callow desire to avoid consequences.

Re:Get 'em while they're hot

[Cro Magnon]

3. As for "I see god in my children": hey, nice for you. That doesn't even rise to the level of an argument (which one would have hoped you could recognize, since you're all old and mature and wise and stuff). There's no difference between this magical thinking and the "I don't understand it so it must be magic" that children engage in when they observe magicians. (Apologies, of course, if you merely meant that the sex was so good that you "saw god"--you know, like Cheech and Chong did when they got high and played Sabbath on 78.)

I don't know about about the OP's children, but my GF's nieces made me a believer. After all, if God exists, so does Satan.

Remember what happened last time

[sgtron]

Do a google search for slashdot deleted posts scientology, and see what comes up.

Re:Remember what happened last time

[pete-classic]

Would it kill you to provide a link?

-Peter

Re:Remember what happened last time

[Abeydoun]

Maybe...

My condolences to your family, good sir.

slashdotted

[EmbeddedJanitor]

I bet this is a Scientology plot to overload wikileaks.

Re:slashdotted

[fishbowl]

>They survived the aftermath of Operation "Snow White" with no long-term consequences.

Several people were tried, convicted, and served lengthy prison sentences, putting the church in
the public eye and simultaneously making it a laughingstock. One long-term consequence was that
the media exposure about the church reached the attention of one Ivan Stang, inspiring him to start
a competing scam religious cult company.

Re:slashdotted

[Detritus]

Considering what they were doing, I think they got off very lightly. 5 years is not a lengthy sentence for espionage and subversion, not to mention the huge conspiracy.

Re:PDF Link Broke

[kiwi_jackal]

get it by torrent - http://thepiratebay.org/tor/4059049/New_scientology_dox__The_Computer_Frank_Oliver_Dox

Re:PDF Link Broke

[ecavalli]

Fasten the tinfoil hats boys and girls. This one is gonna get messy.

Would anyone like to wager how long it will be before we see a headline announcing the mysterious disappearance of Wikileaks' founders, their families and pets and anyone they've ever spoken to?

Anonymous marches March 15.

[Anonymous Coward]

Anonymous marches on March 15, the "March of Ides".

Are you going to be there? Find the closest church and be there!

It is your civic duty. I hope to march alongside you.

On a completely unrelated note...

[Anonymous Coward]

My friends and I walked into the London scientology building while drunk and demanded a stress test. We were turned away. Truly the lowpoint in my life when not even Scientology wants me :

Re:Should make a torrent

[psychodelicacy]

I think this is it. (Originally mentioned in another comment above.)

This is hilarious

[Anonymous Coward]

Check out how the contract begins:

I FRANK OLIVER DO HEREBY AGREE to enter into employment with the SEA ORGANIZATION and, being of sound mind, do fully realize and agree to abide by its purpose which is to get ETHICS IN on this PLANET AND THE UNIVERSE and, fully and without reservation, subscribe to the discipline, mores and conditions of this group and pledge to abide by them.

THEREFORE, I CONTRACT MYSELF TO THE SEA ORGANIZATION FOR THE NEXT BILLION YEARS.

being of sound mind...CONTRACT MYSELF FOR THE NEXT NEXT BILLION YEARS... :)

Re:PDF Link Broke

[ecavalli]

Xenu, I believe.

Re:PDF Link Broke

[Anonymous Coward]

In addition to this Chuck Beatty, who was a member of the Sea Org for 27 years has a toll free number, 866-XSEAORG for any current Scientology staff members to call if you need someone to talk to . He can also be reached at 412-260-1170 and by email at chuckbeatty77@aol.com You know, i hate living in a world where i see something like this and the first thing i think is "i wonder if the scientologists are actually creating anti-scientology fronts to discover who is leaking information or considering defecting with proofs."

As the original submitter...

[Anonymous Coward]

As the original submitter of the article, I'd like to mention that it is the now the second Wikileaks held set of documents for Scientology. Though I must apologize for the badly written rushed body of the firehose article, it's the linked content that is important :

Citizens Commission on Human Rights" (CCHR) exposed as an illegal Scientology front. exposes their LEAF (Letter to the Editor ATTACK Force) campaign, and illegal govt lobbying.

Many apologize to the Wikileaks admins for the /. effect, but this news HAD to be made public.

To the $clilos - Disclaimer - I did not personally leak these documents, nor did Slashdot, I'm merely posting legal links.

The peaceful protests of Anonymous against the CoS are also legal. Anonymous is ONLY protesting the CoS organization, no other religion and not religious beliefs themselves. There is a campaign of fabricating/doctoring Anonymous protest images and footage to try to frame Anonymous for anti-religious protests (they started by attempting to attack the Vatican): take a guess at who might want to be doing that!

Rather worrying, a similar anti Anonymous "ad hominem" attack force is trying to re-define the cake meme from the game Portal into one about underage pornography.

PS. Everything I post is posted via strings of proxies and most importantly Tor !
(wish it was faster, and didn't have so many problems with slashdot, lol)

Send them to Venus

[SlashWombat]

Easily fixed. First we modify all the old DC3's we can get our hands on by adding shuttle solid fuel boosters. Then we dress up as Aliens ...
We then encourage all the COS members to migrate to Venus to separate them from the unclean non-believers.
IMHO, COS members are all "B Ark" material anyway!

Re:So,

[Cctoide]

And then the Illuminati!

Hold on, there's someone at my do--

I wonder why...

[deesine]

your very first comment on /. is to ask why /. hates CoS?

-

Re:Slashdot vs. Scientology?

[Anonymous Coward]

(Hello, Article submitter here again)

users first post , check (not always the case but very common)
'witch hunt' comment, check
'bigotry' comment, check

*CoS countermeasures 101 detected.*

'cyber terrorists' comment expected soon
'ad hominem' attacks, coming 'real soon now'.

Slashdot posts what people submit, it gets front paged if enough people care about the story and vote it up.

With Scientology stories it takes a hell of a lot more people voting it up than normal as OSA and the LEAF campaign try to force such things down.

So the story only makes it if people REALLY care, are interested, and strongly think the story has merit.

Don't you wonder MAYBE such stories might at least have SOME truth in them if THAT many people are so interested in them even OSA can't keep them down?

Now you've pondered that for a pico-second enjoy your invasive security 'sec check'.

Re:After reading this PDF...

[zakeria]

Start by boycotting Tom's films! support him in anyway supports the Church.

This is quite scary

[Monsuco]

In the case of a bad article which is signed, use the following procedures

1. Tell them by letter to restract the statement at once.

2. Hire a private investigator of the national type to investigate the writer not the magazine and get any criminal or communist background the man has. ...

3. Have your lawyers or solicitors write the magazines threatening suit. (Hardly ever permit a real suit - there more of a nuisance than their worth.)

4. Use the data you got off the detective at long last to write the author a very tantalizing letter. Don't give him your data on him. Just tell him we know something very interesting about him and wouldn't he like to come in and talk about it. (If he comes ask him to sign a confession of collusion and slander - people at that level often will just to commit suicide - and publish it as a paid ad in the paper if you get it.) Chances are he won't arrive but he's sure to shudder in silence.

5. Give the data you got from your detective to your lawyers to use against the magazine.

6. Don't let the matter upset you, take much time, or disrupt the central organization.

This is on page 100. Page 101 talks about "punishment". Pg. 116 explains a conspiracy theory about why government attacks religion.It appears there is a long list of conspiracies that Scientology has about the government. They talk about the constant need to deal with enemies, they seem more paranoid than Nixon, and with a longer enemies list. Pg. 148 has information about the need to attack. Pg. 149 rants about how Scientology is victimized by a conspiracy of public opinion, government, and media. I mentioned an enemy list, pg 165-206 is just that. Pg. 208 discusses Oliver's "crimes".

This is scarier than any horror film ever could be. Thank god Wikileaks. Kudos to Frank Oliver.

Re:This is quite scary

[kestasjk]

Page 99:

None of us like to judge or punish. Yet we may be the only people on Earth with a right to punish

Guilt is established by a person's actions and statements, by witnesses and written evidence and by an expertly run E-meter Page 100:

If he comes, ask him to sign a confession of collusion and slander - people at that level often will, just to commit suicide - and publish it in a paid ad in a paper if you get it

Tell the detective "We don't care if they know you're investigating them for us. In fact, the louder the better."

When to Sue
Never if you can help it. It consumes time, means little but trouble for you. Suits are basically best as threats. Page 101:

At this instance there are men hiding in terror on Earth because they found out what they were attacking. There are men dead because they attacked us - for instance Dr. Joe Winter. He simply realized what he did and died. There are men bankrupt because they attacked us

But if you do put the wrong head on a pike, be sure to put it back on the body again as soon as the need for its being on a pike is over Page 102:

It is mercy to put the padlock on such a person's activities. Every word he says or writes against us, every plot he enters into, alike punish him further and further down
How bad can it get? We have evidence in a book Dr. Winder wrote. He knew it consisted of stolen ideas and enthete lies. Every code it sold killed him a little more. And one day he died Page 103:

It's a relief for a bad case to be punished. Sometimes they choose us for their executioners - worse luck Page 107:

2. By having high-toned investigators who have no possibility of being blackmailed, we can make up in effectiveness what we at this time lack in numbers.

L. Ron Hubbard Wow.. I started out by cherry picking the juicy parts, but once Hubbard's memos start appearing it's pretty much all juicy.. Black propaganda--Hubbard, The genus of insane governments--Hubbard, Why governments attack religion--Hubbard

Look at the situation. Every time the enemy offers an attack, you defend against it and that is all you do. Any castle, to hold out, has got to sortie. The proper strategy for any battle is to find a weak point in the enemy lines and attack it.

The reason the United States is losing against communism is simply on these same mathematics. That they are losing is patent. All they are doing is defending the points attacked. We are lucky Hubbard was a sci-fi writer and didn't go on to become a politician.. I would have like to see his handling of the Cuba missile crisis going by the above logic..

I can see the parallels of religion to CoS, but I have to say this goes way beyond any religion. Nothing other than a cult would write such aggressive, practical advice on silencing critics as this. With Immams declaring fatwahs at least that's not actually an officially sanctioned part of Islam, with Scientology it is.

I think all the media attention will eventually kill scientology. Hearing about "Xenu" has been worse for Scientology than hearing about even the worst silencing of critics, blackmail, and manslaughter.

Daughters of Scientology's top brass speaking out

[Anonymous Coward]

Three girls who are ex-scientology kids have come forward and started a website about the issues with Scientology. (Not bad looking either). One is Jenna Miscavige Hill (niece of David Miscavige, the current head of Scientology). Another is Kendra Wiseman, who is the daughter of the current head of CCHR (Scilon front group).

http://www.exscientologykids.com/admins.html

The stories of all three are quite fascinating in terms of getting a look on the inside.

The story from the beginning

[symbolset]

At the dining room table, two couples playing bridge:

LRH: My books aren't selling. Who makes the most popular books?

RAH: The Boy Scouts. After that the Q'uran and the Bible.

LRH: Religion sure sells a lot of books.

RAH: Yeah, I thought about writing out some book for that a while back. I turned it into a short story "Gulf".

LRH: I don't think you could do it with a short story. All the big religions have high word counts. I would think a trilogy at least.

RAH: I could do it in one book.

LRH: I bet a dollar I could do it better than you.

RAH: Done and done. Now shuffle the cards.

... Three years later ...

LRH: Can you believe it? I've got groupies! They worship me!

RAH: You can have mine too if you want them. They're camped on the lawn. They're scaring Ginny. Here's your buck. The bet's over.

LRH: Win!

RAH: Whatever. Shuffle the cards.

This shows Germany was 100% right to ban them

[golodh]

I have heard a lot of (fairly uninformed) criticism of Germany's decision to outlaw the Scientology sect.

However, with the Fishman affidavit, the whole case concerning Karin Spaink (see http://www.xs4all.nl/~kspaink/fishman/home.html), and now this I feel strengthened in my support for the decision of the German government to outlaw this sect.

Regrettably it doesn't work like that in the US. We gave them the tax-exempt status of "church" instead.

Re:Scientologists deserve a medal

[Grimbleton]

Scientologist spotted.