Just posted Ms. Cohee's letter to a.b.s. This is my response.

Caroline --paste letter-- Caroline Letkeman
104-9275 Mary Street
Chilliwack, B. C.
Canada V2P 4H5
carolinel@telus.net January 14, 2002
Lise Cohee
Legal Affairs Director
IAS Administrations
On Behalf of the IAS
C/O Saint Hill Manor
East Grinstead
Sussex, England RH19 4JY Re: Demand for Refund
Caroline Letkeman, Founding Member 12452 032 7147
Dear Ms. Cohee:

I am in receipt of your letter dated December 4, 2001, which was postmarked in St. Petersburg, Florida on 11 December 2001. In that letter you refused to honor a demand for refund of monies paid to IAS, based upon "membership rules" and a statement you say exists on the IAS membership application form. Please immediately send me copies of my signed membership application as well as a copy of whatever "membership rules" you claim were in effect at the time I paid the $2000 (USD) membership fee. The IAS recognizes that my lifetime membership became effective on April 12, 1986.

Please also immediately send me a copy of HCO PL August 1,1996 Issue II, to which you referred in your December 4 2001 letter. (I have the other HCO PL you referenced.) At the same time, please send me a copy of all other records, financial or otherwise, you have relating to me in any IAS files.

I stated in my initial letter, which was addressed to David Miscavige and copied to IAS, I recognize that the IAS membership is not a "service;" nevertheless, I believe a refund of the full amount I paid for such "Lifetime Membership" is warranted as well. The act of demanding a refund will cause all Scientology organizations to refuse to train or process me at any time in the future. (Ref. HCO PL 23 October 1963 REFUND POLICY © 1963 L. Ron Hubbard) Thus my "Lifetime Membership" will not be a membership at all, and in that I am completely dissatisfied.

As I am completely dissatisfied with all my services, and as I am confident that this dissatisfaction is permanent and will remain in effect up to and including the end of this lifetime, I will also never be able to receive any of the discounts I paid for and am promised as an IAS member. This too is completely dissatisfying to me.

Since I wrote the above letter, I discovered in your Impact Issue 96 that:

"IAS Administrations is a non-profit foundation contracted to provide services to the members of the IAS."

I am obviously completely dissatisfied with whatever services the IAS Administrations provided me as a member. Let me add that my dissatisfaction with all my services includes the new understanding and realization that Hubbard was a mentally deranged confidence man who dreamt up the religion angle as a moneymaking scheme. His "legacy," Scientology, is a dangerous pseudo-psychological fraud that tries to pass itself off as a religion for its self-serving ends.

With me, Scientology has failed utterly in its effort.

As the legal representative of the International Association of Scientologists, you are clearly aware of the gargantuan volume of evidence, documents and legal judgments against Hubbard and Scientology, and irrefutable proof of criminal and dangerous policies and practices and organization-wide lying to try to cover up these policies and practices. Yet I heard not one word from you, or from any other knowledgeable person in the Scientology hierarchy, of any of this. The IAS had a duty to me as a "member" of the association, as did every Scientology executive, to tell me the truth about the nature and activities of the people and the entity you "unite, advance, support and protect."

You and each person operating the IAS have a duty to disclose to every person from whom you ever took one penny that Scientology, the technology, does not work, that there is no science nor scientific research whatsoever supporting Scientology's claims, even basic claims of clear and OT, and that it has been a fraud from Book One. You and each person operating the IAS have a duty to disclose to every person that the entity you "unite, advance, support and protect" was and is more antisocial, in fact criminal, than the "suppressive persons" you fair gamed. You and all Scientology executives had a duty to disclose this judgment, and every judgment, against your organization:

"In addition to violating and abusing its own members civil rights, the organization over the years with its "Fair Game" doctrine has harassed and abused those persons not in the Church whom it perceives as enemies. The organization clearly is schizophrenic and paranoid, and the bizarre combination seems to be a reflection of its founder LRH. The evidence portrays a man who has been virtually a pathological liar when it comes to his history, background, and achievements. The writings and documents in evidence additionally reflect his egoism, greed, avarice, lust for power, and vindictiveness and aggressiveness against persons perceived by him to be disloyal or hostile."

-Decision of June 20, 1984 in Church of Scientology v. Gerald Armstrong, Los Angeles Superior Court Case No. C420153, affirmed on appeal July 29, 1991, Scientology v. Armstrong, 232 Cal. App.3d 1060, 283 Cal. Rptr. 917 The IAS failed to inform me of this decision, just as the IAS has failed to protect its membership from the fraud that Scientology continuously perpetrates, in part by propagation of unconscionable lies about Hubbard, his biography, and his credentials. As a legal representative of the IAS you know or have a duty to know of these lies and of the fraud which critics of Scientology protest. You know of the veracity of the critics' arguments or you have a duty to do an honest survey of Hubbard's history on your own.

In Impact Issue 96, Miscavige states you are accomplishing your objectives. And you are doing this in alignment with a quote from Hubbard:

"Without a broadly informed population who are capable of understanding motives and aberrations, no sane government of Earth is possible."

Your actions and the actions of Scientology executives prevent "a broadly informed population" and create an insane organization insanely governed.

Despite your assertion regarding internal policy that precludes the honoring of refund demands, the International Association of Scientologists has within recent times given refunds to many former members. A cursory search of alt.religion.scientology (a.r.s.)

reveals that the following dissatisfied former members were given a refund of their IAS membership payments: Tory (formerly Bezazian) Christman, Tom Padgett, Greg and Debra Barnes, an anonymous poster to a.r.s. "abcd@none.net", Ed Hattaway and Virginia McClaughry. Since very few ex-Scientologists participate on a.r.s., it can be assumed that many other people than those listed here have successfully received refunds. Am I being singled out and treated with a special degree of cruelty because I am particularly "suppressive?" Do I have a new level of fair game to look forward to because you or some Scientology executives especially hate me? Is it because I am connected to Gerry Armstrong?

I notice that Ms. McClaughry, whom you refunded, stated in her demand that she was withdrawing her membership "due to fraudulent misrepresentation of LRH written works, that are not factually written by LRH." I withdrew my membership due to fraudulent representations by Hubbard himself, which make all of Scientology itself a fraud.

Whether or not the squirreling by Scientology stops is no concern of mine, because it will never affect my decision to have nothing to do with any Scientology organization or application. My last Scientology service was the Sunday Service in Vancouver on November 11, 2001, a fact I already communicated in my demand letter. Therefore, unlike Ms. McClaughry who might presumably become a Scientologist-in-good-standing if the people running the organization stopped squirreling Hubbard, I will never, as long as Hubbard is source, become a Scientologist, -in-good-standing or otherwise, and you therefore have no justification whatsoever to not refund every cent I ever paid IAS. It is precisely the duplicitous way in which you and Mr. Miscavige are handling me that is Scientology to me, and is why I oppose it. You personify Scientology when you have on these other occasions paid this money back to these people and yet you lie to me to attempt to keep my paltry $2000.00 within your multi-million dollar war chest. You people run a criminal scam.

I also notice that Ms. McClaughry sent copies of her demand for refund to the Lisa McPherson Trust, the IRS Assistant Commissioner Employee Plans and Exempt Organizations, the United States Justice Department, the ACLU and Lowell Bergman -Investigative Reporter. Perhaps that is why you refunded her money and refuse to refund mine, but I will wait a reasonable amount of time to hear back from you before I involve all these other organizations or government agencies. I am, naturally, posting a copy of this letter to a.r.s., which acts to keep the Scientology organization's ethics in. If it weren't for the wogs ® on a.r.s. keeping Scientology's ethics in, you could just dispense with me quietly and without sorrow. But with a.r.s., there are thousands of people watching your next move.

It is outrageous that the money Scientologists donate to the IAS is used against them in the event of their departure from Scientology.

Just like other "donations" made to Scientology, the IAS donation that I made was nothing but an advance payment for their standard fair game tech against me. This is a material fact, which was withheld from me by IAS and all other components of the Scientology enterprise. I would never have become a member of an organization that would either intend or withhold such a fact.

It is also outrageous that you are, as you claim in Impact Issue 96, "eradicating suppression," and that by the simple fact I have publicly spoken out in criticism of Scientology, Hubbard dictated that you and the rest of Scientology treat me as part of the suppression to be eradicated. New IAS Patron Vladimir Sidorenko stated in Impact Issue 96, "I understand that Scientology is the only hope for mankind, but that there are those who do not want man to be happy and go free.

Therefore I felt it was necessary to do what I could to help protect him from this suppression."

I spent most of my adult life, like Vladimir, convinced utterly that Scientology is the only hope for mankind. But Scientology is not only not the only hope for mankind; it is no hope at all for mankind.

Rather, the organization and its so-called technology is a serious menace to every life that it touches.

As I began to look for critical information about Scientology, I was shocked at the extent of the fraud that Scientology perpetrates, how it spreads through and infects the environment by way of members' "duplication" and application of Hubbardian scriptures. In terms of damage done, it does not matter whether the members are witting or unwitting perpetrators-the success of the fraud depends only upon the mirroring of Hubbard's method.

At the core, however, is the trust that Hubbard stole and that you now steal from your members. He stole it with his lies about his own professional qualifications and credentials. And he stole it with lies about the sources from which he wrenched and twisted a hopelessly flawed and paranoid pseudo-psychological intelligence system. No matter what cosmetic modifications are made to Hubbard's writings to make them more palatable, as long as any part of Hubbard's underlying philosophy remains intact, and as long as any part of Hubbard's phony science remains a part of the practice of Scientology, the product of Scientology will be fraud and will carry a serious psychological risk.

Scientology blatantly and willfully violated my rights. In all circumstances, the actions were dictated by or in any case excused by Hubbard's policy, the same policy that as the Legal Affairs Director, you are forwarding when you "unite, advance, support and protect" the Scientology scam. I would never have knowingly paid one cent to an organization such as yours to violate my rights. After all these years of Scientology training to make me as Hubbard says "capable of understanding motives and aberrations," that I paid your organization to violate my rights and the rights of my family is gruesome proof of your fraud.

Please immediately refund my IAS membership of $2000.00 USD, and send it to the address above.

Sincerely, <signed>
Caroline Letkeman Copies to:

David Miscavige
Religious Technology Center
1710 Ivar Avenue, Suite 1100
Los Angeles, California 90028
E-Mail: info@scientology.net International Association of Scientologists
Saint Hill Manor
East Grinstead, West Sussex
England RH19 4JY
E-Mail: info@scientology.net US IAS Members Trust
1311 N. New Hampshire Avenue
Los Angeles, California 90027
E-Mail: info@scientology.net Usenet: alt.religion.scientology --end paste--
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decoding scientology propaganda
http://www.entheta.ca/caroline/
caroline letkeman *antivirus*
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