A woman I know worked as a volunteer at Ground Zero in Manhattan five days after the 9/11 disaster. Below are her personal observations about the unauthorized presence of Scientologists at the official command center, and how she managed to get them booted out. I'm withholding her name to protect her from Scientology harassment of the sort we're all too familiar with.

-- Dave Touretzky

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I thought you might appreciate my own personal recent (nightmare) experience with Scientologists -

Through my membership with an international children's charitable organization that coordinated with the Red Cross in response to the 9/11 disaster, I found myself working with a mental health/mass care group assigned to Ground Zero five days after the attack. (The fires were still burning and gaining the proper Federal ID, etc. required to access "The Pile" and interact with the rescue workers..police and fire units and medical volunteers...was lengthy even with Red Cross sponsorship.) In spite of the mind-numbing horror of the site itself, balanced by the amazing and countering displays of humanity among those on site, one of the largest jolts of emotion that I had was when I entered the official command center (federal and local agencies) housed in a school at the foot of the rubble. The lobby area was overrun by Scientology reps (a dozen or more?) offering their brand of 'bearing witness' in exchange for minor first aid (foot powder, bandaides, massages, cots). The displays of their pamphlets and books spread strategically throughout the area was marketing at its most agressive. They all donned brightly colored t-shirts and, striking me as eerily inappropriate at the time, seemed to be festive in their demeanor. A mental health volunteer and I immediately sought out the 'central command' of the relief effort and made a formal complaint.

Long story short, no one had apparently authorized their presence and in fact, Guilliani, wisely, had publicly and formally strictly forbidden religious groups from any visible presence.....after all, wasn't it this kind of fanaticism that inspired the insanity of the attacks?

No one knew how they had gotten access and they were routed out later that day. I had been moved to soul-depleting nausea when I glanced at some of the posters and flyers depicting space ships and aliens (with comic book style graphics) and considered that their ability to promote this view of 'reality' at a time when all of us where questioning our reality as being no different from Bin Laden's inspirations and applications. I still consider their presense as 'intellectual and spiritual terrorism' that was taking opportunistic advantage of people (police and firemen and I assume family members at the Pier site) who were still in the shock of having, for example, watched "15 of my friends who were rushing the building in formation to help get people out and seeing the building crush them ALL" (direct quote from one of the NYPD officers I spoke with.)

This is not to say that there weren't other religions represented by individuals (met one priest who was sensitive enough to remove his collar before dispensing psychological/spiritual comfort along with eyewash and footpads), but they operated as individual volunteers simply availing themselves to anyone who wanted to speak with them.

No religious tracts, bibles or other paraphanelia visible anywhere.

The Scientologist's were the only ones sucking the much needed air out of the site by promoting their agenda. They were Scientologists FIRST and human beings SECOND. Oh yeah, that's consistent isn't it?

(name withheld)

From: ptsc <ptsc AT nym DOT cryptofortress DOT com>
Subject: Re: ground zero volunteer horrified by Scientology vultures
Date: Sat, 02 Mar 2002 09:52:23 -0500
Organization: ARS: Perhaps the Most Malignant Newsgroup on Usenet
Message-ID: <dgo18uoabti04m9a0ehm0kuip175f5vu2b@4ax.com>
Cancel-Lock: sha1:f6nYAZHxRfq5rdhSRNi7wd08U4c=

On Sat, 2 Mar 2002 12:44:52 +0000 (UTC), dst@cs.cmu.edu (Dave Touretzky) wrote:

>A woman I know worked as a volunteer at Ground Zero in Manhattan five
>days after the 9/11 disaster. Below are her personal observations
>about the unauthorized presence of Scientologists at the official
>command center, and how she managed to get them booted out. I'm
>withholding her name to protect her from Scientology harassment of the
>sort we're all too familiar with.

>-- Dave Touretzky

>================================================================

[Anecdote of despicable cultists snipped.]

>This is not to say that there weren't other religions represented by
>individuals (met one priest who was sensitive enough to remove his
>collar before dispensing psychological/spiritual comfort along with
>eyewash and footpads), but they operated as individual volunteers
>simply availing themselves to anyone who wanted to speak with them.
>No religious tracts, bibles or other paraphanelia visible anywhere.
>The Scientologist's were the only ones sucking the much needed air out
>of the site by promoting their agenda. They were Scientologists FIRST
>and human beings SECOND. Oh yeah, that's consistent isn't it?

>(name withheld)

Interestingly, this is what the cultists were writing about the other aid workers in their internal mail.

"The Red Cross has told us when we went to help at their shelters and found no one there, "the people say they are doing fine so we send them back out". Thats because the Red Cross' confront is sooo low they can't even see when people are suffering right in front of them. They are blind. I have stood in Times Square at 7:00pm with people all around and I swear I could have communicated in whispers and been heard at 20 feet, such a hush lies over this place. It hurts.

Big time. Nobody is in PT. They are stuck in the incident."

"Lt." Simon Hare CO I HELP Canada (in NY), 14 Sep 2001

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The cultist then want on to trash the representatives of real religions that were there helping, instead of jumping in front of every camera they could find.

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"The other religions here with their ministers have shown their true colors and are working hand in hand with the psychs to give these people as much false data and restimulation as they can.

They HAVE NO TECH and they're not even trying to hide it anymore.

They've crossed over and abandoned anything spiritual and to hell with them. "

"Lt." Simon Hare CO I HELP Canada (in NY), 14 Sep 2001

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The cultist also boasted about disrupting relief operations by real relief workers, describing the cult's attempts to prevent victims from receiving aid as "genius."

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Additionally we are trying to move in and knock the psychs out of counseling to the grieving families and that could take another 100 plus people right now. Due to some brilliant maneuvering by some simply genius Sea Org Members we tied up the majority of the psychs who were attempting to get to families yesterday in Q&A, bullbait and wrangling. They have a hard time completing cycles of action and are pretty easy to disperse. But today they are out in full force and circling like vultures over these people and all of our resources are tied up in the support efforts in the disaster zone at present.

"Lt." Simon Hare CO I HELP Canada (in NY), 14 Sep 2001

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Another cultist had similar boasts.

---

"At the relief station at a nearby high school, some psychs had a table set up. They were not doing anything; one of them just sat there staring into space. Since the table wasn't in use, the VMs started putting drinks and snacks on it. The chief of security for the location came by and suggested that the VMs just take down their counseling sign and put up one for drinks and snacks, so they did.

The VMs reported that the drink table got a lot more business after that!"

--VOLUNTEER MINISTER BRIEFING
September 19, 2001, from
Eric Anderson
Class VI OT IV
VM Activation volunteer
I HELP West U.S.

(The rest of this "briefing" was mostly gloating about how many journalists they talked to and who filmed them.)

---

Another crime cultist gloated about how many "wins" they had.

---

"Due to the incredible acknowledgement our VMs are getting in NY, I think we have produced some major wins for ourselves out of this crisis. With the President and our Congress and military focused on taking out the planetary SPs, WE can move in with the tech and really make some headway! Just think of all the new people already on the Bridge!! That is going to multiply geometrically into HUGE proportions. I don't know about the rest of you, but I, for one, am JAZZED!!! Scientology and Scientologists ROCK!!!!!"

Quoted from From: Noumenon<noumenon@freedom.net>
Subject: More commentary on WTC & volunteer ministers
Message-ID: <kOMq7.81$ev2.385@www.newsranger.com>

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Another cultist lied insanely about how the cultists were put in charge of the whole thing--the cultist neglects to mention them being booted out.

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"And what happened with the psychs who had been "In-Charge"? Since we jumped in so quickly, confronted what was needed and then started providing it, even the psychiatrics viewed us as the leaders. So, they started asking us what they should do.

We found some good MEST work for them to do, which they did, and they came up tone as they were now contributing."

ML, PO3 Peter McCuen, Supercargo ASHOF, before 4 Oct 2001

---

This is what these delusional nutcases were doing while others tried to help.

ptsc

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