Tony Ortega has an amazing article at the Village Voice in which he details how the FBI’s investigation of human trafficking in Scientology went off the rails. It’s very discouraging but not surprising to see the government shy away from taking on Scientology. That cloak of religiosity Hubbard sought so eagerly back in the 50′s still is their strongest defense. When the going gets tough, the weak can just say, “It’s a religion” and let them off the hook. In effect, Scientology has a God given right to abuse. It’s up to us to stop it when the officials won’t.
Last week, I was in Clearwater, Florida for a couple of days interviewing Mike Rinder, who until 2007 was the top spokesman in the church and also was the executive director of Scientology’s intelligence wing, the Office of Special Affairs.
Over those two days, Rinder and I talked about a lot of subjects for several future stories. Near the end of those sessions, I asked Rinder what many of our readers have asked over the past year — what happened with the FBI?
What he said inspired me to call up several other former high-ranking Scientologists who had all been interviewed by the FBI in 2009 and 2010. Piecing together what they told me, I’ve been able to come up with an outline which describes how seriously the US government considered raiding the International Base — and how long ago the FBI suddenly changed its mind.
“I saw them in November 2009. I had to give them a history lesson. They had no clue,” Marty Rathbun tells me, describing his first meeting with FBI agents. “I told them they were no match for the Church of Scientology.”
Until 2004, Rathbun was the second-highest ranking official in the church, answering only to Miscavige in his role as Inspector General-Ethics of the Religious Technology Center, Scientology’s controlling entity. After he left, Rathbun laid low for several years until, in 2009, he started up a blog and began harshly criticizing Miscavige and the way the church is being run. And it was also that year that he began talking to the FBI, whose investigation was being led by Tricia Whitehill and later Valerie Venegas, agents who each specialize in human trafficking cases, which can include allegations of slave labor.
”I told them everything. Everything I’ve said publicly and then some,” he tells me. But Rathbun, who helped oversee Scientology’s “fair game” campaigns against enemies that used complex methods of surveillance and control, was disappointed by how little the federal agents seemed to know of that history.
“They were goodhearted, but so unsophisticated,” he says. “They told me the church didn’t know about the investigation. Are you kidding me? I said. I already know all of the people you’ve talked to. You think the church doesn’t know that too?”I asked Rathbun what the agents seemed to be interested in, and what he told them over days of talks.
“How Miscavige lords over Scientology from the minute he gets up in the morning and until he goes to bed at night. That his number one priority is, ‘Who’s blown?’ And he had his inspector general — that was me — on it. It’s his number one priority. He micromanages every security measure. And every unlawful measure to track people and get them back to the reservation and keep them quiet,” he says, using Scientology jargon — “blown” — for escape. “I went through it chapter and verse, and had it corroborated by Mike Rinder and other people.”
More than a dozen ex-Scientologists participated in the investigation; each was given a confidential informant number and a code name. They were told that under no circumstances could they tell anyone that they were cooperating with the agents. For months, Whitehill and Venegas gathered information, and learned the ropes of Scientology’s complex ways.
By June 22, 2010, when Tiziano Lugli met with them at the federal building in Los Angeles, the agents seemed to have learned a great deal.
“They knew Miscavige, Int Base, auditing, all the lingo. They were at the same level as Larry Wright or Janet Reitman, someone who had really done their homework,” says Lugli, an Italian musician and music producer who was excommunicated — declared a “suppressive person” — by Scientology two years ago.
“I had to drop my PIs before I went there,” he says, laughing about how at the time, up to ten private investigators hired by the church were trailing him, and he had to shake them before meeting with the FBI.
“I was there for three hours. They couldn’t tell me anything about what would happen, but they said trust us, justice will be done,” he says.
By that time, June 2010, the investigation seemed to have benefited from a key break. Rathbun and Rinder and others had given detailed information about church executives being held against their will at the Int Base, which is about 90 miles east of Los Angeles, near the town of Hemet. The executives were held in a place Miscavige called “the Hole” — an office-prison made up of two double-wide trailers where fallen officials were kept day and night, sleeping on the floor and being forced to take part in mass confessions. But there was a problem — it had been two or more years since Rathbun and Rinder had left the base. Without fresher information, it would be difficult for the FBI to act, they were told. But then, in April 2010, a worker named John Brousseau escaped from the base, and he managed to bring with him damning evidence of Sea Org members toiling for the benefit of Miscavige and Tom Cruise.
With Brousseau’s fresh information, the FBI seemed to have what it needed, and the investigation reached a fever pitch.
To find out how the investigation unraveled, read Tony’s full article.
