Brian, My only direct observations of Gregg during the picket was that he has a loud voice, uses it to say what he thinks, and is careful to abide by the law. As for the rest of what you have to say about him, I can't really respond--because I have no first hand knowledge. I guess it's up to Gregg to respond if he so chooses.

However, criticising Gregg does not excuse Scientology for it's behavior. The idea that one can right the wrongs one has done by discrediting the people who point them out is a peculiar form of logic known only to L. Ron Hubbard. It doesn't work. Because each and every day, some event occurs in Scientology which is so strange, so insane that NO ETHICAL PERSON CAN STAND BY WITHOUT POINTING OUT THE MADNESS.

For example, the other evening, I had dinner with a young lady and her family.

She had been a cadet in the Sea Org. She told me about another cadet I knew named Miles Borland. Miles was the son of my former auditor Hank, and my ex-wife and I used to invite him over to stay at our house in Clearwater every weekend.

There was no more upstat kid than Miles.

At thirteen, he started training to be a Class VIII Auditor. My own kids constantly marveled at how bright and mature Miles was, and how he had a both a great work ethic and a great personality.

I understand that as of this time last year, Miles had been on the RPF for eighteen months.

His crime, apparently, was to show his fiance (I guess he got engaged at fifteen) a little too much affection--nothing heavy--just a little too much affection by some lunatic standard.

And for this he was put on the RPF for eighteen months. Now Brian, if you knew this kid, you would be outraged by this stupidity. First, the idiocy of trying to control people's sex lives, which the Sea Org does on a daily basis, and second the particular application of this policy to a stellar upstat.

Completely insane.

Now Miles Borland is just one story, one of many, many stories...but each story is so wacko, so strange that it boggles the mind. Given the thousands and thousands of these stories, from Miles to the PI going through our music composer's trash, is it any wonder why Gregg Hagglund and others are upset with Scientology?

In fact, when I tell people a few of these stories--insanity, greed, criminality--they look at me dully and say, "Well, if all that is true, why doesn't someone do something about it?" The answer is: because Scientology is a tiny, steadily decreasing group, and nobody really gives a damn...except the occasional free speech advocate like Gregg, or a few ex-members like me who happen to have some guts.

It's true, we critics are not perfect--in fact some of us are--as I said to you the day of the picket--"rather colorful personalities."

But, unlike Scientology, we don't claim to have the technology to free mankind, to bring him up to a super human state, to 'clear' the planet. Any group that makes those claims must stand above the rest of society as an example.

I'm afraid Scientology doesn't measure up to even the lowest groups in society.
I've known gangs of thugs (from when I was a kid) who I trusted more, and who had more personal integrity, than the people who run Scientology today. And I'm afraid that L. Ron himself wasn't much better.

So rather than just follow Hubbard-think and try to discredit your critics, if you care about Scientology, you need to get to work and clean it up.

Sincerely, Peter N. Alexander

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