Harold's Journal
Editorial Opinion By RWL - 08 March 1990

Premonitions...

Since last we visited on the subject, Narconon and it's progenitor, Scientology, have been staying out of our spotlight.

This week, however, they have resurfaced with predictions that they will be open in a couple of months.

So, to bring you up to date on what's been happening in the weird world of Operating Thetans, here are bits of a few of the tales we've uncovered recently:

• We have talked with several former Narconon employees who all tell of being required to study Elron's Organization Executive Course material... and when they elected not to, were somehow discredited and fired within a few weeks.

  The Organization Executive Course is a massive collection of "Official Policies of the Church of Scientology." It says so on every page.

• One individual tells of being ordered to set beer cans inside the living quarters of another employee whom they wished to find a reason to terminate. He was later terminated himself amid a flurry of police activity that resulted in lots of intimidation but no charges being filed because all of the allegations against him were so obviously phony. He was not drunk. There was no hostage. The gun was his .22 rifle that was unloaded in the gun rack in his vehicle where it had been since he went to work there months earlier. Police released him immediately, and within a half hour, he was trying to contact me to tell his harrowing story.

• Another former employee says he found himself on the way from his assigned living quarters at Chilocco to jail in Pawnee on what he says were trumped up charges... and they obviously were, because he is out free now with nothing filed and no court date. Just released. And told not to set foot on Chilocco again. I don't think they let you out that easy if you've really pulled a knife on someone and threatened their life, and that's what he tells me they were accusing him of.

• It appears that if you don't want to study the policies of the Church of Scientology, you won't have a job for long at Chilocco. Even subcontractors working out there have been encouraged to take their courses.

• On a broader scale, Scientology made news again in California in January, where police found a Scientologist who was "treating" his mentally ill wife according to the tenants of his "religion" by keeping her locked up in her bedroom with only a mattress on the floor. The windows were boarded up, according to the news report, and she was fed through a slot in the door. No charges filed. Police were studying the tenants of the "religion" at last report. The wife, however, was reported to be recovering nicely in a real hospital.

• Scientologists in Clearwater, Fla. who run a currency exchange and gold bullion business were busted by federal agents in the middle of December for allegedly operating a money laundering scheme. No word on whether they think Scientology is suspected of being directly involved or not. Hard to tell the bad apples from the bad apples, I guess.

• American Airlines received so many complaints that it announced in December that it would no longer carry Scientology ads in its monthly in-flight magazine, American Way. The ads were apparently part of a huge PR campaign by Scientology that is running in such magazines as House and Garden, Discover, Business Week, and Newsweek. Over $300,000.00 has been spent on Newsweek alone, according to published reports.

• The IRS suspects that the Church of Scientology of Clearwater, Fla. has violated it's tax-exempt status, and wants to study 47 categories of Scientology documents for the years 1985 thru 1987, according to a January report.

• About a week ago, a former Scientology lawyer, Joseph A. Yanny, who left the organization after allegedly being asked to perform illegal tasks for the cult, won a $154,000.00 judgement. A jury felt he had been a victim of Scientology's "Fair Game" policy which allows Scientologists to trick, sue, lie to, or destroy their enemies. The judgement was the largest the judge would allow. Scientology had sued Yanny for allegedly padding his bills to them while he was still in the cult, but the jury found no evidence of that whatsoever.

• On March 23 of this year, a former Scientologist named Lawrence Wollersheim will have his day before the Supreme Court of the United States. Wollersheim was also a victim of the "Fair Game" policy according to a jury which was so outraged that it awarded him a $30,000,000.00 verdict. That's $30 million. The award was reduced on appeal to $2,500,000.00, which is still a tremendous amount of money.

  Wollersheim contends that Scientology makes a mockery or counterfeit of religion by such tactics as the "Fair Game" policy, and should be once and for all exposed and the abuses ended. His appeal before the Supreme Court may accomplish that.

  Scientology doesn't want the case to go that far. They have offered, in writing, to pay him off with $4 million rather than go to the Supreme Court. When he refused that, they made him a verbal offer of $6 million to settle. Which he also refused.

  This man must have gone thru terrors unknown to turn down $6 million dollars just to take a chance on a court decision.

• In another pending case, a former very high level Scientologist is accusing the organization of ordering her to a "Rehabilitation Project Force" where she was forced to run around an orange telephone pole every day from 7 am until 9:30 pm for about 120 days, with minimal break periods. Her husband, during one period of his tenure with the "church", says he also fell into disfavor because his construction project was not proceeding fast enough, and was forced to work without pay from 9 am to 12 midnight without any days off, to sleep outdoors, and to eat only rice and beans.

These are premonitions of just some of the things to come if Narconon is allowed to open at Chilocco and Scientology is allowed to get a foothold in our state.

Send this column to Secretary of State Hannah D. Atkins, Room 101, State Capitol Building, Oklahoma City, Ok 73105, and ask her to see to it that there is a Public Hearing in Newkirk before Narconon is licensed to operate in Oklahoma.