Lyndelle asked this question on 5/7/2000:

How does a crime family define a "protect button?" I read this in a novel this morning, but it was not defined.

Thank you.

1uglyhombre gave this response on 5/7/2000:

It is used to disuade prosecution by attacking law enforcement individuals personally by finding what it is they care most about and attacking it. The idea is to keep police, judges, etc., so busy or so demoralized so that prosecution is delayed or even terminated. I did a WWW search and came up with:

Mike McClaughry interview, 2/05/2000 http://www.xenutv.com/trust/mike6.rm http://www.primenet.com/~xenubat/transcript/Mike1.html

THE PROTECT BUTTON

The next button that is used is called the "Protect Button". And the way you design Black Operations off of the Protect Button is you find out what the enemy or critic is, um-- what he's trying to protect, basically. So let's say he's, um, trying to protect his marriage. Um, you know, you would do, design a Black Operation to cost him his marriage. Let's say you would have a prostitute, uh, call up his wife and go, you know, and say that "I've slept with your husband". So the idea there would be that now that this marriage has been threatened, uh, he backs off and stops attacking Scientology in order to prevent his marriage from being destroyed. Um, I'll give you a real one that I did using the Protect Button. Um, Ida Camburn was one. I got a spy in on Ida Camburn and she had been living in the L.A. area. Her son was in Scientology. She didn't like it, she was part of the anti-cult movement. Um, she moved up into the Bay area, which was my area. Um, I got a message from USGO saying that she had done this and, you know, that she was an enemy. So I was supposed to handle her. So I got a spy in on her, Ida Camburn. Um, the girl found out--I mean, it took, you know, two to three months to find out what we wanted to know but we found out that Ida Camburn was trying to protect her marriage. She had no job, she had no career, she was totally dependent upon her husband for a living and, you know, if anything happened to that marriage, she was cooked; had no way to support herself. So that's what she was trying to protect. Uh, her husband's Protect Button was his job. He had told Ida that, "Um, I don't care if you're part of the anti-cult movement, but, uh, I never want to have anything happen to me at work because you're involved in this. If I ever get embarrassed at work, we are going to get a divorce." Right? "You either get out of that or we get a divorce." Now, knowing both of those things, I sent some picketers down to where, uh, her husband worked one day, and they made a big scene out in front of his work, you know, uh, "Religious discrimination" signs, that kind of thing, just protested, embarrassed him at work. He came home that night, said, "Ida, you either get out of this anti-cult thing or we get a divorce." Of course, Ida couldn't afford a divorce, so she quit the anti-cult movement that day. She was done.

The average rating for this answer is 5.

Lyndelle rated this answer a 5.

Ok that fits with the novel. i'll look over the site. ".rm" stands for a audio clip i assume.

thank you very much for the info. i'll go there now.