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From: snipe@starburst.cbl.cees.edu (Mark W. Heaney)
Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology
Subject: Daily Affidavit [3/?] - Gerry Armstrong
Date: 17 Oct 1995 22:52:08 GMT
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Gerry Armstrong testifies about the religous <NOT> nature of the 
"Church" of Scientology:


UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS

LA VENDA VAN SCHAICK,   
Plaintiff               
                                                CIVIL ACTION
vs.                                             NO. 79-2491-G

CHURCH OF SCIENTOLOGY OF CALIFORNIA, et al,     
Defendants

AFFIDAVIT OF GERRY ARMSTONG

I, Gerry Armstrong, hereby swear under the pains and penalties of 
perjury as follows:

1)  I have personal knowledge of the following facts:

2) I was a member of the Sea Organization of Scientology from February 
1971 to December 1981, during which time I held many positions and was 
in many locations where I directly observed L. Ron Hubbard and other 
Scientology executives. At no time did I ever get the impression that 
Mr. Hubbard or any other senior executive considered that Scientology is 
a religion. My own understanding, held throughout all the time I spent 
in Scientology, and the policy expressed to me by other Sea Org members 
was that Scientology operated totally as a business, and its efforts to 
be recognized as a "religion" were only to evade taxation and government 
regulations.

3) In January 1980, I was assigned to a project to collect materials about 
L. Ron Rubbard for the purpose of providing documentation for a biography 
to be written by Omar V. Garrison. During the following two years I read 
several thousand pages of documentation, much of it written by Mr. Hubbard 
himself. Never before had anyone within Scientlogy ever had all this 
information assembled in one place or had the opportunity to view and 
assimilate the whole truth about L. Ron Hubbard. From these documents and 
other sources I learned that Mr. Hubbard had continually misrepesented 
himself and had lied about his past, his accomplishments and credentials. 
I learned also from the documents I collected that Mr. Hubbard had lied 
about how and why Scientology had been established as a "religion". In a 
despatch he wrote in early 1980 to the people in charge of the projects 
he had ordered to remedy his legal problems with the IRS and various damage 
claim cases, he stated that the creation of Scientology as a "religion" was 
not his idea but had come about when the membership of Scientology in the 
early 1950's, unbeknownst to him, had voted to form a "church". I 
personally saw and read that despatch. Mr. Hubbard's statement is a lie. 
In a letter to the head of Scientology in the US in early 1953, Mr. 
Hubbard stated:

        "We don't want a clinic. We want one in operation but not in 
        name. Perhaps we could call it a Spiritual Guidance Center. 
        Think up its name, will you. And we could put in nice desks 
        and our boys in neat blue with diplomas on the walls and 
        
        1. knock psychotherapy into history and 
        
        2. make enough money to shine up my operating scope and 
        
        3. keep the HAS solvent. It is a problem in practical business.

        "I await your reaction on the religion angle. In my opinion, we 
        couldn't get worse public opinion than we have had or have less 
        customers with what we've got to sell. A religious charter would 
        be necessary in Pennsylvania or NJ to make it stick. But I sure 
        could make it stick. We're treating the present time beingness, 
        psychotherapy treats the past and the brain. And brother, that's 
        religion, not mental science." 
        
I found a great deal of similar evidence in the materials I assembled 
before I left Scientology. Mr. Hubbard's life has been a continuing 
pattern, since the early 1940's, of fraudulent business practices, tax 
evasion, flight from creditors and those seeking recompense, and then 
going into hiding, outside the reach of wronged individuals and legal 
jurisdictions. In short, it is the life of a con man.

4) In early 1980 I was also assigned to a mission, the purpose of which 
was to work out legal strategies, and get them implemented, which would 
allow Mr. Rubbard to still control all of Scientology via his Commodore's 
Messenger Organization while being shielded from any lawsuits or legal 
invlvements and responsibilities. One of the main problems which had to 
be resolved by this mission, and one of the arguments .used in various 
court cases as proof that Scientology was not a religion, was the fact 
that Scientlogy was set up so that funds inured to the benefit of L. 
Ron Hubbard. For years Mr. Hubbard had had his legal representatives 
claim that he was not paid by Scientology, other than a $35,000.00 
annual consultant's fee, and royalties from sales of his books. Another 
claim was that he did not control Scientology monies. The fact is he had 
absolute control of all Scientology accounts. As late as 1980 I saw a 
despatch from him in which he ordered that unlimited Scientology funds 
were approved for a project to get him a Nobel Prize. Another fact is 
that he received millions of Scientology dollars directly from a foreign 
corporation called Religious Research Foundation. Payments for auditing 
or courses at Flag by non-US Scientologists went into RRF accounts which 
Mr. Hubbard controlled absolutely and used totally for his own purposes.

5) I learned through my study of the documentation I assembled, and from 
more than ten years of observation of Mr. Hubbard and the Scientology 
movement, that Mr. Hubbard has cruelly deceived his followers to the 
point where they will themselves lie and attempt to deceive others about 
the truth cncerning him and Scientology. Scientology spokesmen and 
witnesses have stated that Mr. Hubbard doesn't control the organizations. 
The fact is he has absolute control, including financial control, and 
Scientologists know it. Between 1978 and 1980 I participated, along with 
at least 250 other Scientologists, in several massive operations to 
destroy or hide the evidences of Mr. Hubbard's control. Scientology 
spokesmen and witnesses have claimed that throughout 1980 and 1981 Mr. 
Hubbard could not be reached through the organization, or that 
organization executives did not know where he was. The fact is, the most 
senior executives were in continual communication with him throughout 
this period. Scientology spokesmen and witnesses have gone to great 
lengths to "prove" that Scientology is a valid religion, while knowing 
that it was simply a behavior therapy masquerading as a "church", and 
making a mockery of actual honest religious practices. In 1980, Watchdog 
Committee, the senior CMO body, responsible only to Mr. Hubbard and 
senior to every Scientology organization, ordered that every Sea Org 
member had to complete the Minister's Course in two weeks or they would 
be assigned to the RPF. The reason given was to make every Sea Org 
member a "minister of the church of Scientology" and so avoid the US 
Selective Service draft then pending. What most Scientologists, and 
especially Sea Org members, don't know is that Mr. Hubbard had duped 
them. My knowledge based on documentation and observation, is that the 
major reason for Mr Hubbard's calling Scientology a "religion" in 
addition to tax evasion, is to hide behind Constitutional guarantees 
for religions and so carry out his scheme of mind control to keep his 
followers duped. He has systematically and knowingly lied to and 
defrauded his followers, kept them from finding out the truth or becoming 
free with cruel and bizarre treatment, as for example with the RPF, and 
kept them economically and mentally suppressed,.while he made millions of 
dollars from their labor.

6) I am personally aware that Mr. Hubbard's policy of Fair Game is still 
a practice of Scientology. Since I left the organization with my wife in 
December 1981, I have been declared an enemy, and I believe my life and 
my wife's life, are in danger.

Signed under the pains and penalties of perjury this

22 July, 1982.

GERRY ARMSTRONG



Mark
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