Sometime between Summer 1992 and about April 1994:

I was in charge of keeping the OSA Computer System running and updated. My office, and the server, were at the far end of the hall in what is now the north wing of ASHO, on the third floor. Across the hall from me was the office of Doug Jacobsen, who ran covert operations for OSA International.

One fine day, I was asked to come into Doug's office. Long-time Scientology private investigator Eugene Ingram was there. Doug briefed me that they had an agent employed at an enemy attorney's office. If I remember correctly, the attorney was Jerold Fagelbaum, the attorney who defended David Mayo and Church of the New Civilization against RTC's trademark infringement litigation. The agent was a woman. From the attorney's office, she spoke with Doug on the phone while I was present in Doug's office, although I did not hear her voice.

The attorney office had been renting a personal computer and was now returning it. The agent knew the rental company and enough details that we should be able to pick out the right computer and rent it again ourselves. I was brought in because I knew how to recover data from "deleted" files.

After Doug got all the data, we left for the computer rental store. Ingram was with us. Doug, and I think Angel Casillas, also went. We went in the store and asked for details like which computer had been returned when. None of them really fit the description, but finally we got down to one that was the closest possibility, and Ingram rented that one. We brought it back to OSA Int and into another Investigations office. Ingram stayed with me so he'd be able to testify as to "chain of possession," i.e., that nobody else had put the data on the computer after it was rented. I was looking for any data from Fagelbaum's office, but of course the real prize would be evidence of something illegal that could be used to nail (or blackmail?) Fagelbaum.

I searched the hard drive, including all the "deleted" files, but never came up with anything indicating it had ever been used by Fagelbaum's office. There were a lot of data fragments from Tutor-Saliba, a big construction firm in the LA area, but nothing of interest to the Church. Evidently, the computer we really wanted had either not been returned to the store, or had been rented out to someone else before we got there. We never found out.

Although nothing came of that "investigation," the fact remains that the "Church" of Scientology had a covert operative employed in a law firm against which the Church was litigating. This operative undoubtedly had access to attorney-client-privileged information. This is also somewhere around the time COS used Interpol to get David Mayo's home surrounded by police and searched, and himself taken at machine-gun point to a disgustingly unsanitary Dominican Republic jail, where he was held without food or water before being interrogated and eventually released. For details, go to http://www.freezone.org/reports/e_mayo02.htm

This was one "adventure" in one day of my life. There are people who do practically nothing else all day long, every day of the year: At OSA Int, in Continental OSA offices, and in Class V org DSA offices all over the planet.

Praise Ron -- or else!

Dan

P.S.: Wipe -- don't just delete -- your defunct computer files, and periodically wipe the free space on your hard drive. Shred or burn your paper trash. Use a cross-cut shredder, not a strip shredder. Use PGP for communications you wouldn't want Scientology to read. Encrypt information you want to keep but don't want Scientology to get -- even if your home is broken into or raided and your computer stolen or confiscated. Keep backups of everything important in a secure location. It's easy and cheap. OSA does it. You should too, especially if you are on the crime cult's radar.

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