Transcribed by Xenubat (Sue M.)
http://members.cox.net/batchild1/transcript/mike1.htm

MIKE McCLAUGHRY: Uh, things I did on the Snow White program, that was to get all government files on the subject of Scientology so that PR could go in and, uh, do false report corrections on those files. Uh, the methods used to obtain files-- I know one of my juniors got a suitable guise that he had made where he was able to obtain some government files legally, because a suitable guise is legal; it's their problem if they give it to you, right? He got some Justice Department files with a suitable guise that he was doing an anti-Scientology movie. And some people did turn over their files to him. Um, however, not everybody fell for that particular suitable guise and a lot of government agencies says, uh, "Well, get out of here with your movie, we're not-- we're not interested!" (laughs), you know, when they-- so they didn't give 'em their files. Um, one of the people who, uh, wouldn't turn over their files was the Yolo County District Attorney's office, uh, the Justice Department, um, in the Attorney General's office in Sacramento, uh, CI&I files-- that's Criminal Intelligence & Investigation, um, people like that, you know. They just wouldn't let-- give, turn over their files. So we had to resort to some other methods to obtain those files. Uh, in the case of the Yolo County DA-- uh, his name was Roger Brown-- at the time, the way we got into his files was, um, at night-- well, actually, I, I took my right-hand man with me, uh, had him go inside the office while they were still open, go into the ladies' bathroom and, um, hide in there. So everybody left that day at 5, as usual, locked up their doors and windows and so forth, um, but my guy was in the bathroom. So, um, after we knew they were all gone, he opened the lady-- the back window to the ladies' bathroom. I crawled through. Um, we had lock picks, we got into their locked file cabinets, got out the Scientology files and copied them all on their copier--

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Wow--

MIKE McCLAUGHRY: -- and, uh, crawled out the window and left! (laughs) That was how we got those files. Um, in the case of the, uh, the, um, Attorney General's office for the state of California, uh, that was-- we just went in there, uh, after hours. Uh, we got in, um-- I think that was another case that we, that we just hid in the building until everybody left. Uh, the janitors came in, that made it kind of an exciting moment; um, we were trying to hide from the janitors! (laughter)

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Oh, my God!

MIKE McCLAUGHRY: But that was another case of lock picks, was how we got 'em. Um, you know, got into their file cabinets and copied their files. Um, I did another one where they sent me to get the files of the World Federation for Mental Health. Um, the headquarters for the World Federation of Mental Health was in the Caribbean at the time, um, I think it was Grenada or some-- one of those countries down there. Um, I was sent down there under the instructions that I was to obtain those files and do not come back without them, you know. And I thought that that meant that I would be expelled if I did come back without them. They said, "Use whatever means you have to. We don't care if you have to break and enter, we don't care if you have to use a sledgehammer. Uh, whatever you gotta do, bring those files back here." Well, we always tried suitable guises first, you know. We only resorted to, um, breaking and entering if those didn't work. I had another missionnaire with me who had a suitable guise of being a Time magazine reporter. We had built a complete identity for him that, uh, he was in fact a Time magazine reporter. So we go down there; I was the back-up and I was to do the B & E or whatever it took to get 'em if he failed to get 'em.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: B & E?

MIKE McCLAUGHRY: Breaking and entering, illegal method of entering a building (laughs). Um, so we went down to the Caribbean. Um, he used a suitable guise on, uh, whoever was there-- I was not with him; I was waiting outside. Um, the place was incredibly fortified, um-- guards walking around, armed guards with police dogs and that kind of a thing (laughs). And I'm going, "Yeah, and I gotta come back with these or else, right?" (laughs)

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: -- what you're supposed to do.

(still laughing)

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Then what did you do?

MIKE McCLAUGHRY: Um, as it turned out, um, he goes in with a suitable guise. Uh, he finds out that they are just in the process of moving the headquarters from there to Canada, and that the files weren't there. And so he told me that and I went, "Oh, wow, I'm glad they're not here!" (laughter) I guess you don't need in some foreign country, right? In jail. Or some dog gnawing my ankle off, you know, trying to get those files! (laughs) So, uh, so we reported that back and said they've moved the headquarters, uh, to Canada; the files are up there. They said, "Okay, you're on your way to Canada", which we did. We went to Canada, um, it was Christmastime and nobody was there. There was nobody to do a suitable guise on; everybody was on Christmas vacation. It was a hospital, a mental hospital. Um, so we tried to talk the receptionist of the building into letting us into the, um, the office where the World Federation for Mental Health headquarters was. Um, and we actually succeeded at that. The plan that we devised was that, um, we were going to leave a Christmas present for the, um, president of the Federation. Um, since he wasn't available, uh, for us to hand-deliver it, um, we said, "Can you let us in his office? We'll put the present on his table and then we'll leave." Okay, well, she agreed to that. Um, we-- my partner went in and he put the present on the table. While she's going in and letting him do that, I got a piece of tape behind me, right? And I tape the door, you know, so that when you shut the door the, the, uh, latch doesn't close, right?

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Watergate.

MIKE McCLAUGHRY: Watergate, right. (laughs) So that's how we got in that office.

As it turned out in that case, the files were in route between the two; they actually weren't there. So we took some other stuff, you know, about how they were electroshocking people or-- oh, there was something about a report on Russian electric shock, blah-blah-blah. We got whatever they had, um, got back and said, uh, told 'em, you know, that, uh, as it turned out, you know, the files were in transit, they weren't at either location at this point in time. We didn't get in any trouble for it, you know, I guess they'd hire another mission later to do it.

The way we got the files out of the, um, Health Department files on Scientology was, uh, we went in the building, um, after hours. Um, we had to work around the cleaning people every day in that particular situation. Um, we posed as employees of the Health Department in that situation and we'd sit at desks and pretend like we were working while they did their cleaning (laughter).

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: How did you get in?

MIKE McCLAUGHRY: Uh, at the time the security was pretty poor, we didn't have to use a lock pick or anything. We went in when the building was open, right? They would, uh-- oh, I had a, uh, an agent in there; not that I recruited her and sent her in-- she was already working there. She was a Scientologist who had a job there already, and I found out about that. So it wasn't a matter of "How do we get in?", it was "How do we get out?" (laughs) in that case. So we would get in while they were still open. They would lock the doors, we were locked inside. But when we were done with our nightly dirty work, right, I would call her on the phone-- "Come down here and unlock the door for us." And that's how we got out, okay? (laughs)

One night I went to, um-- me and my partner were upstairs copying files. I went to go down out of the building for some reason. Um, and there was a trap, uh, you know, they had done something. I guess we had taken a break for a month or so or something, went back and get some more. And, uh, they had done something. They built a double-door system, right? To exit the building. Um, it's one of these glass cage things, you know, where I walk through the first door and that closed behind me and locked, right? And I couldn't get out the next door, which was also locked, so I'm locked inside this cubicle--

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Right, right--

MIKE McCLAUGHRY: Okay--

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Got you.

MIKE McCLAUGHRY: And a camera is on me and the guy is talking to me and so, "What are you doing in the building?", right? (laughter)

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Take that--

MIKE McCLAUGHRY: Yeah--

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Think on your feet.

MIKE McCLAUGHRY: I had to totally think on my feet because I wasn't planning for this event, right? And so I said, "Well, um, my girlfriend works here and, uh, I was sitting in the lobby over there waiting for her to get off work. I thought she was working overtime. Uh, you know, I just came to the conclusion I guess she must have left and I didn't see her, and so now I'm just trying to get out of the damn building!" Right? And he bought it; he buzzed me out. He says, "Okay", he buzzed me out, right?

MIKE McCLAUGHRY: So I got out but my partner is trapped up there. But fortunately we had this girl that was a Scientologist that worked there. I called her up and I said, "My partner's stuck up there, come get him out of there!" (laughs) Which she did; she had the proper ID, she walked in. The guy that was the guard-- "Here's my ID"-- lets her in the building. She escorts the guy out. And that's how we got out that night.

MIKE McCLAUGHRY: You could have told people who were in Scientology or people in the world that what the GO was doing-- let's say the GO had a defector and one of those guys like me walked out and said, "Um, this is what we're doing"-- nobody would have believed it. Okay? Same holds true for today. You try to go tell people who are other Scientologists or people in the normal society, "This is what RTC is doing today", and they don't-- they won't believe it. Okay? So, um-- but the GO raid happened, right? And the person who would have been saying that back at the time would have been totally vindicated that he was telling the truth by the fact that the FBI raid, walking out of there with box loads of evidence that this was the daily work of these people, okay?

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Um-hmm.

MIKE McCLAUGHRY: The person who, uh, decided to, um, you know, be brave enough to come out and tell everybody what was going on in there all of a sudden becomes believable because of the box loads of evidence that the FBI walked out with. At that point it was undeniable. There was no way for those people to get out of it. They had all the evidence they needed for conviction. Um, the same situation exists today. Uh, they've got a few individuals that are coming out of RTC, OSA area, saying, "This is what's going on." I highly recommend you believe what they're telling you. Even if they don't have documented proof in their hand. Maybe we ought to have another raid and you'll have plenty of documented proof. (laughs)

When that raid happened I was working in San Francisco. Uh, we got news that the FBI was raiding down there. Um, prior to that raid happening, we just wrote reports because we were autonomous, nobody could come into the Guardian's Office and look at what we were doing, and we just wrote it the way it was, you know? It was, like, "Hi, this is Mike. Today I did 16 Black Ops, uh, spied on this, lock picked that", you know, we just said it however it was. There was no effort to encode anything or anything; it's just, you know, reported it straight the way it happened. Uh, so what the FBI got was, um, you know, just the most damaging evidence you could imagine.

We knew the cat was out of the bag and there was really no hope. This phone call I got was that they were raiding the files down there and I knew what that meant was that, you know. And there was a potential for a raid on every Guardian's Office around the world at the time, and so I was told to get the heck out of there.

What we did was went out and got a-- rented a U-Haul type truck, Ryder type truck, a huge one. We took all of our, um, intelligence files out, put 'em in the back of that truck and left, you know, drove across-- drove a couple states away or something like that. We operate out of the back of that thing, um, for a while.

After the raid, we got instructions to, uh, go through all of our files, one by one, every page, and just take a razor blade and hack out of there anything that was incriminating. Um--

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Now what particularly were you told to hack out?

MIKE McCLAUGHRY: Down in L.A. I think they were told to, uh, get rid of any documents that showed that Ron was--

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Right--

MIKE McCLAUGHRY: -- running Scientology in any fashion. We didn't have that problem in San Francisco so that wasn't one of our orders. Ron didn't issue any orders to us directly.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Hmm.

MIKE McCLAUGHRY: You know what I mean? Um, we got all of our orders from USGO. Even if they came from him, they came to us via USGO--

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Yeah. Yes.

MIKE McCLAUGHRY: And they didn't say they were his orders. Um, so, you know, we just spent a while, you know, just cutting out, you know, all this criminal stuff, and in some cases it was the whole damn file-- the whole damn file is criminal, so just throw that whole file out of here! (laughter)

You know, they did their grand jury things, you know. They, they indicted the people they wanted to and-- I didn't happen to be one of them; I could have been one of them, but I, you know-- the majority of us, for whatever reason-- I still don't know to this day-- they let us off the hook.

Anyway, I didn't complain about that, I was happy (laughter). And on the day the statute of limitations ran out, you know, I had a little party! (laughter)