Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath (2016) s03e03 Episode Script
Spies Like Us
So we all know that Scientology has a policy called Fair Game, which calls for the utter destruction of someone speaking out or simply doing a story on Scientology.
Under that banner of Fair Game is also this area of hiring private investigators to follow people who are speaking out against the abusive practices of Scientology.
I'm gonna have him turn off the camera.
You turn off the camera, and you and I'll talk.
You came to video people coming to a birthday party.
There are three men in a boat with a camera taking pictures of our backyard.
Scientology has tax-exempt status.
Therefore, they have millions of dollars to spend on simply silencing and bullying into silence those people who are speaking out.
That's insane.
I am the writer of the textbooks of Scientology.
The aim and goal is to put man in a mental condition, where he him can solve his own problems.
Without any Scientology organization, things are not gonna change on this planet.
After years of slowly questioning Scientology Leah Remini and her very public break with Scientology Scientology, what they do, trying to destroy people, trying to destroy their families when they leave, the create a lot of people who are willing to fight against them.
Scientology takes tax-free dollars and ruins people's lives.
This is not the life that I want to live.
I wanted to end my life.
Some people, it takes a year, some people, it takes ten years of just peeling that onion of how you were manipulated and made to think.
This season, we really needed to focus on the reason why Scientology is able to do the things that they do is because they have tax-exempt status.
The people who have bravely come on and told their stories have not told those stories in vain.
They are having an impact.
We're presenting our case to the world, to the FBI, to the IRS.
The most important thing that has to be done is the persistent telling of the truth.
And that's what you're doing.
You have to continue to fight.
You have to continue to fight for what's right.
In the 1950s, L.
Ron Hubbard laid out the operating policy of Scientology with respect to its enemies in a document called the "HCO Manual of Justice".
That document calls for the harassment, the investigation, the destruction of anyone deemed an enemy of Scientology.
How do the Scientologists find out what's happening in the enemy's camp? Through spies.
They've got more dossiers and more intelligence on top leaders than the FBI, CIA, Scotland Yard, and the Interpol put together.
They put a camera in my van.
They photograph me when I leave my house to pick up my newspaper.
What's the intention of getting all this footage, man? To document your behavior and the reporting on Scientology.
Is this how this church goes about its business? They put private eyes after us.
12 at one point.
Those three followed us to Australia, around the States, you name it.
Would you guys follow me 1,000 miles away? At least two guys would.
If you needed an example of, "Hmm, is Scientology really using its money to bully people?" take a journalist named Paulette Cooper, who was just doing a story on Scientology.
How do we know this happened? Because the FBI raided Scientology offices and found Scientology directives to destroy this woman.
Destroy this woman.
They took her stationery with her fingerprints on it and put a fake bomb threat that almost got her put in prison.
The lengths that Scientology went to to destroy this woman is crazy.
They have put detectives on me, they put spies on me.
A few months ago, they put an attempted spy on my mother to try to get information about me via her.
I had been saying that these types of things had been going on, and people kept saying, "Well, what is she talking about? This is a church".
And it was incredible vindication to look at these documents and see that everything I had said about Scientology since 1968 was true and that they had turned out to be worse than anything I said or had even imagined.
Then the IRS is next.
Scientology policy says you go after the individual, not the organization.
That's what Scientologists did.
They went after individual IRS agents.
IRS agents are not used to having PIs sitting outside of their house going through their financials, seeing if they have a problem with alcohol.
This is what they were doing.
This went on for years and years.
And how do we know that? Because David Miscavige himself went onstage in front of thousands of Scientologists and said, "That's exactly what we did".
Well, what is the IRS? It is a group.
And a group is composed of individuals.
We decided to play by their rules and make this personal.
First, we had "Freedom" magazine, and then the International Association of Scientologists sponsored more ads in "USA Today".
You have no idea how much the IRS hates publicity.
But to see their own faces, it was more than they could handle.
They go after former executives of Scientology, as they did with Pat Broeker.
They followed the man for 24 years, just going on with his life.
How do we know this? Because the private investigators spoke out.
Miscavige came directly to me.
He said, "Marty, you get on this guy, 'cause I want to know every move he makes".
He wanted to hear as many conversations as we could with Pat.
And we literally recorded all his conversations.
And then I developed a team initially started off with probably four or five, you know, group of teams.
Those guys worked full-time on him.
They were on him all the time he was in San Luis Obispo.
They followed him literally when he moved to Colorado, when he moved briefly to Wyoming, back to Colorado, and finally to Eastern Europe, believe it or not.
Literally in 2007, 19 years, 18 years after I began that thing, those two guys were still on Broeker.
Now that you're outside of the church, do you think you're being spied on, that you're being followed, that you're being harassed, that people are trying to push your buttons? Do I think? No, I know that.
I have been followed by Scientology across the United States, to England, to Ireland, to Australia To everywhere that I have traveled.
This is the PI committee for Mike Rinder and I.
My computers have been hacked.
I have been followed in cars.
I've had cameras placed outside my house.
I've had people live across the street from me.
You came and set up a video camera pointing at our house.
I've had my garbage taken.
I have had tracking devices put on my cars.
I have had my wife and children photographed and videoed.
I have had demonstrators show up when I arrived at airports.
- Hey, dude, don't touch him.
- Hey, don't touch me.
Take pictures of squirrels.
I've had private investigators waiting for me at baggage claim.
I'm here to investigate you and what you guys are up to and follow you.
There is almost no time since I began speaking out in 2009 that I have not been the subject of an intense and expensive campaign by Scientology.
I'm a little bit, like, not loving this, because we're going to talk to somebody who was a private eye hired by Scientology, allegedly.
I don't know how I'm gonna feel.
Like, of course, when you're a guest on this program, I don't want to ice you out.
But there's a piece of me that wants to.
Well, I gotta tell you, in some respects, this woman that we're going to see today is a long way above all these other people who go away, never say anything, and are silent.
At least she has the cojones to stand up and say, "Look, I was involved in this, and it was wrong, and I want to say what I was doing".
My name is Cierra Westerman.
I was a private investigator for the Church of Scientology from the years of 2008 to 2011.
We were talking about it in the car, and I was like, "I'm a little" I was feeling a little anxious about meeting somebody who was looking to destroy somebody's life.
I was never looking to destroy anybody.
It was a first job to come about when I was in college for private investigations.
So you were in college, and you were going to school to be a PI.
For private investigations, yes.
And how were you approached to do this kind of job? I was approached through Dwayne Powell, 'cause he was in college with me.
Dwayne is your boyfriend who was also in this school.
Yes.
Dwayne's the father of my child.
He was the one that really got me to do it.
If it wasn't for him, I probably would have never done it.
He was the head honcho for all that.
And a lot of these investigators that was out there came a lot from Dwayne.
He would meet females, you know, going out to eat or at Walmart or, you know, things like that, and he would just socialize and get them mesmerized with him To pretty much do as he asks.
'Cause he's, like, a ladies' man? - Yeah.
- Okay.
And they needed investigators when the Anonymous group really started coming about.
They asked for help for more eyes out there on the as the church call it, the raids.
Anonymous was a group of people on the Internet who objected to Scientology's heavy-handed attempts to censor people on the Internet.
They decided that they were gonna conduct pickets around the world and organized these pickets and wore masks on the theory that if they were not able to be identified, Scientology could not harass them.
Hello, leaders of Scientology.
We are Anonymous.
We have been watching you, your campaigns of misinformation, your suppression of dissent, your litigious nature.
Anonymous has therefore decided that your organization should be destroyed.
I was the one that had to infiltrate the group Anonymous.
Religion is free! Scientology is not! Religion is free! Scientology is not! I walked around all of Clearwater with them with their chanting against the Church of Scientology.
And I was recording them with my own camera and videotaping everything that they were saying, 'cause that's what the church wanted.
They said, "We want to have reports on anything that you hear".
So they wanted you to find out who they were personally so that they could then harass them.
Here's Anonymous, who was exercising their right to free speech.
They are exercising their right to freedom of assembly.
And Scientology, of course, can't have that.
After I was done infiltrating Anonymous, Dwayne Powell asked me to help him with more investigations and spying on the ex-members that were getting out.
So many more members were leaving the church, and they need more and more eyes out there.
And since I already had my license and my investigation and I kept up with it, he had me and several other people come out and move out there with them.
- To Clearwater.
- Yes, ma'am.
I wasn't aware of Cierra Westerman when she was living in the house that was catty-corner to the house that we lived in at the time with a direct line of sight.
I only became aware of her a couple of years ago.
I lived in one of the other houses that they rented out.
They rented I can't even tell you how many houses they had.
Dwayne had one, I had one, and then there were several others that I found out about afterwards.
Of houses that Scientology was renting - for PIs.
- Yeah.
You were told that Mike was what? That he was a threat towards the church, with all of his knowledge.
I had to go through all their trash.
We had to find receipts that were in there, any kind of paperwork that had any kind of writing on it, or if they had any kind of bottles, alcoholic or anything anything that could tell us what they liked, what they would like to do, where they shop, what they buy.
Hey, who are you getting that for? That's my garbage.
- It ain't your garbage.
- Yeah, it is.
- Who are you? - Mike Rinder.
Just came from my house at 808 Bentwood.
I don't think so.
Oh, I sure so.
I videoed it.
What I would do is, I would get it all, I would take it, get it copied tape it to paper, copy it all, and then fax it all over in emails to Dwayne Powell.
So, now, what did you do? You would pay off the garbageman? Yeah, each garbageperson got $20.
That alone was $160 a week just for me buying trash.
Taking my trash was really a big waste of time and money.
I didn't put anything in the trash.
In fact, I put things in the trash that were deliberate misdirectors.
I wrote notes about certain people and like, whales of Scientology and said, "Call Matt Feshbach".
And I'd wrap stuff up in dog poop so that someone had to go pick through this stuff and try and figure out what was the paper that was immersed in the dog poop.
It was it was a complete waste of time.
But this is what is the standard way you conduct a noisy investigation, so they paid for that to be done for years.
When you saw a car pull up or park in front of our house, did you go out there to check on the car? Yeah, my son and I he was my cover, usually, for all of that.
I would put him into his little car stroller and just stroll around and just pretend like I had was texting somebody and just taking pictures instead.
Pictures of? The vehicles that were in front of your house with so I could get their license plate numbers.
Whose cars do you know had Tracking devices.
Tracking devices placed on them? I know y'all did.
Pretty much any ex-member that got out got one.
Or anybody that was more of the threats, I should say, to the church would get one put onto their car.
- They all had they all - How do you know that? Dwayne would tell me when he had to go do 'em or change 'em over because the batteries were dying.
That part was the most unethical part of it all.
Because in Florida, you have to have consent from those people that the tracking devices are on.
But they wanted tracking devices so that if we ended up losing them as we were following, we at least had 'em and know where they were at.
I knew how the operations worked within the control room, which was hidden within a warehouse.
It had its two big monitor screens.
It had its own laptop and its own cell phone.
And eyes watch all the cameras that investigators had put up on all the ex-members.
And if one of the investigators lost their subject, I would have to go onto the tracking device website and tell them where they were at.
You've got this list here.
These are your notes, I think, and it has this list of people.
Haydn and Lucy James and Kat and Mareka, well, you know they were there at the house.
Jack Airey.
Tom DeVocht.
You know Tom DeVocht? I know of him from another investigator, Val Graeve.
She was to befriend Tom and ended up moving with him in with him as a roommate and everything else.
I was also asked to befriend Cathy Greenbaum.
She's an ex-member as well that got out, but her husband was still in it.
She was trying to stay sober, off of the alcohol and everything else, and I learned which AA meetings she would go to, and that's how I met her.
So did Cathy end up ever knowing that you were not her like, she thought you were her friend or Yes.
I could tell she was a really sweet woman, and she had a lot of issues that she really needed help on.
I didn't realize how badly they were sabotaging people and and hurting families.
So all these executives that she has on her list you know, Mike, Marty, Tom, Haydn, Lucy like, these are executives former big executives of Scientology.
So okay, we understand because you know that they know.
So you don't want them talking.
I get that.
I get that.
But then it just continues.
It always continues.
Now we need Cathy Greenbaum, just a mom and an ex-wife of a rich Scientologist.
And so let's go after her too.
Why? Because we can.
Why not? "I'm the Church of Scientology "with tax-exempt status.
Destroy 'em all".
In 2013, Dwayne Powell was arrested in West Allis, Wisconsin, after police received a call about a suspicious man walking around a neighborhood.
According to police documents, Powell said he was hired through an intermediary firm and had been following Ronald Miscavige for 11/2 years.
He said he and his son were paid about $10,000 a week to search his garbage and follow and photograph him wherever he went.
Officers found numerous weapons in his car, but Powell said they were just for sport shooting.
He thought he was gonna go to prison for the rest of his life, but the church had his back.
And as we can see, he's a free man till this day.
He got about $360,000 to keep quiet and not to speak of anything.
Thank you so much for taking the time to do this today.
We really appreciate it.
Dwayne has always warned me, you know, "If you speak out, you know, you're gonna have to watch your back forever".
Always be public about anything that goes on with you, because that's your best protection.
I invited Leah to meet Robert Almblad.
Robert is a friend of mine who I met after I left Scientology.
He is an inventor and is a brilliant inventor.
As a result of me working with him, he became the target of Scientology and subjected to intense noisy investigations and harassment of himself, of his friends, of his family, of his business, of every aspect of his life.
My name is Robert Almblad, and I was a Scientologist for 45 years.
We're focused on, this season, really exposing misuse of power, of funds, of Scientology using its resources because it has tax-exempt status to harass and destroy people's lives.
So thank you for wanting to do this, knowing what you've already been through and what you're probably gonna continue to go through for just doing this.
I would suspect that would be the case.
Anyway, I have a long history with Scientology.
And I've done pretty much every course that you can do.
I started in Scientology in the early '70s.
I immediately went to "Apollo".
So I worked on "Apollo".
I worked for LRH.
I was in the Sea Org for about five years after that.
I left the Sea Org.
I paid my freeloader bill.
I paid my wife's freeloader bill.
I went on to do different businesses, starting up companies, but mainly doing new products some you might have recognized or seen before.
One of them is a automated key-cutting machine that you'd find at any Walmart or Home Depot or stores like that.
And that was how I first came to meet you, when you were working here in Tarpon Springs on developing a clean ice machine.
My best friend and partner introduced me to Mike, and he said, "Look, this is a guy you can trust.
This is a good man".
And I met Mike at my house, and I talked to him for a while to find out what was going on.
And it was obvious that he was somebody that needed, more than anything, a job.
We sort of hit it off, and then I started working with you on trying to develop and then ultimately market that incredible invention that you had made.
And that was the start of the downhill trajectory in the life of Robert Almblad, who had, up until that time, been nothing but a roaring success and now became associated with me.
Scientology goes after Robert because Robert is being human.
He's not being a Scientologist.
He's not following Scientology policy, which says you are not allowed to speak to somebody who's publicly talking about the abuses of Scientology.
Not only is he disregarding that, but he's being a human being and giving Mike a lifeline.
He's willing to put his life literally and his livelihood on the line to do the decent thing.
About three days after it is that I hired him, Dave Lubow was the first person to come to my house and said that I needed to fire Mike Rinder.
And I said, "No, I'm not going to do that.
"This is America.
You have a right to a job.
You have a right to work".
Well, who do you guys work for anyway? I work for Elliot Davidson.
And who does he work for? Well, he's got a client that's the Church of Scientology.
Okay, good.
Is there any reason for taking videos of us for breakfast? Well, you'd have to speak with him about that.
I'd like to ask you guys not to do this anymore.
It's harassment.
Okay? Sometimes they came in a van and there were two people in it.
I never kept track of how many, but there was a fair number that came to my house trying to get me to to fire Mike.
I told you yesterday, this is harassment.
I also told you that I've got a specific question - that I want to ask you about - Yeah.
I understand, but you can't be up here soliciting people and asking 'em questions.
That began my I don't know whether it's an illustrious career or whatever it is of being trampled by the church and their operatives.
Now, you were prior, you were on the ship with L.
Ron Hubbard.
And you've been a longtime Scientologist.
Were you familiar with the Fair Game policies and the Suppressive Acts policy that Scientology has? Yes, I'm very familiar with them, but it was never like this.
Certainly, I never knew anything about what they were doing in and this would be 2011.
I never believed they would do such things as contacting my business associates that had nothing to do with Scientology and nothing to do with Mike Rinder and nothing to do with anything.
You know, SPs like, people like us that are referred to as SPs are, like, also referred to as merchants of chaos, merchants of fear.
So we have this idea of a suppressive person is a person who is doing heinous acts - towards mankind.
- Yes.
And I did believe that anyone who was declared was either working on getting undeclared, or they really were declared because they were like Hitler or Mussolini or some other historical figure that was totally destructive to humanity.
And you couldn't save 'em anyway, so you'd stick 'em over in the corner, right? Good, that sounds like a good thing to do.
And I never got to see who they were doing anything to, because guess what.
I cannot talk to a SP.
I cannot talk to somebody who's not in good standing.
I was surprised that anyone in the church would have gone to the extent that they did with me for, frankly, no good reason except for employing Mike Rinder.
I never uttered a disparaging word about Scientology or L.
Ron Hubbard, ever not in private and not in public and they attacked me like I was Hitler.
In addition to going after me personally, they also went against my girlfriend.
They called up her elderly parents, her friends, her ex-husband, every person that they could find, and did the same thing about being private investigators and reporters and they're investigating Robert Almblad for any crimes that he maybe had committed.
They did the same thing to every neighbor I had.
I lived in a neighborhood on an island with 14 houses on the island, and they went around to all my neighbors, every one of them, knocked on the door with a bodyguard, with a camera, with a reporter, and knocked on the door and said, "You know the guy here on that house, Robert Almblad? Have you seen him committing any crimes?" When I first hired Mike, before I hired him, he said, "Listen.
"Before you do anything, I want you to know that you could get into severe trouble for even talking to me".
And I said, "Yes, I understand".
I said, "I'm willing to stand up to the situation "because I know it's not right.
"And so I understand.
"I'm gonna get shit on.
"I'm gonna get stepped on.
I'm gonna get these things done".
Truthfully, I didn't know the magnitude that it was going to be.
Robert and his girlfriend would go to a restaurant, and they'd show up in the restaurant.
And do what? With the damn camera.
This weird guy, Jim Lynch, was out at Central Casting old-time, old-school reporter with his bodyguard and his cameraman, sometimes two bodyguards.
- They were out of the WWE.
- Right.
- I mean, these guys are like - Yeah.
And they would show up.
So they'd be sitting in a restaurant, and they'd be standing outside waiting.
And as soon as they walked out of the restaurant: "Mr.
Almblad, Mr.
Almblad, let me ask you" Like, making a spectacle out of it everywhere they went to the supermarket, to the doctor's, to the dog park, to the vet, Wherever they went, these idiots were there.
One of the tactics of Scientology is to hire a "reporter" and have this person show up with a camera and a microphone and go, "Hey, we're doing a story.
What say you about your mortgage fraud?" Or, "Hey what about Are you still beating your wife?" I mean, these words are purposeful.
And this whole charade this is all for show.
What it's supposed to do is that people around you, if you're coming out of church or you're coming out of work or coming out of a restaurant, that your friends or employees or possible business partners hear these allegations.
And they they're supposed to think, "Oh, my God, this person "These are real journalists asking these questions.
Something must be go" Like, that's the purpose of this insanity.
Mr.
X.
I'm just wondering how you - Hey, Jim.
- And Mr.
Almblad got the mortgage I'm going to file a police report.
If you don't leave me alone, I'm calling the police.
- I'm asking for you - Leave me alone.
You flew 4,000 miles to stalk me.
- Who said it was 4,000? - Leave! And it wasn't just the following.
I mean, there were, like, three cars out at a time.
And we would be sitting in the office up there in Tarpon Springs, and they cut down the oak trees in front of the office so that they could get a better view.
And they were taking the garbage, and they were sitting overtly waiting to take down the license plates.
They were doing just everything that you can do according to the policy of L.
Ron Hubbard of how you noisily investigate someone.
It got so bad that Robert and I went to a trade show in Miami to show this ice machine and you know, to all the people that come around.
And these guys came in, they got false IDs to come in and start harassing us.
Okay, let's see your badge, Ed.
Let's see your badge.
Here's another one.
You like to trespass.
One of the policies that demand the utter destruction of someone is in Counter Attacks.
And in Counter Attacks, it says something like, "Find out the thing that the person is seeking to protect, and go after that".
This is what they're spending time doing, getting a warehouse, spending money on PIs, chopping down this guy's trees, going to all of his neighbors and saying, "We're doing an investigation," again, part of the policy, doing a noisy investigation.
And all of that collectively is supposed to destroy this man on many levels.
It's supposed to make his neighbors think, "Is he under investigation? Is he What? There's reporters here.
"Oh, my God, wait, there's people walking into my busi "Wait, my Wait.
"They're spying on me.
They have whoa.
"They're gonna catch me doing something and take it out of context, walking into my office".
Like, this is all that energy is simply because he gave Mike Rinder a job.
I have these people constantly calling the board of directors for the companies I was working with.
All of them are public companies.
They're all more than $1 billion in sales or value.
And they can't afford to deal with the Church of Scientology.
They just said to me, "You cannot do this to us.
"We like working with you.
"We've worked with you for years.
"We're doing over $100 million in sales of your inventions.
But we will not work with you if you bring this church here".
Robert went off to have a separate meeting with one of these companies at a hotel conference room, and these people literally burst into the room with cameras and threw stuff on the table and telling these people that Robert was talking to, "Here, read this".
And it's, you know, "Robert Almblad: Financier of Hate Crimes".
I had to physically take them by this, and I threw them out the door.
And you can't imagine the looks on someone's face, someone who's, like, getting paid more than $1 million a year to run a public company, and they have this nuttiness coming in.
I mean, I was already nutty enough because I'm an inventor of new stuff, right? So they always have to look at me very carefully.
So now you know what else I brought in.
I brought in these nuts from the Church of Scientology.
And it scared the bejesus out of them.
One of the principles laid out in the Hubbard writings about how you deal with enemies of Scientology is, you cost them their job.
Well, they couldn't persuade Robert Almblad to fire me, so they figured they'd put him out of business and then I wouldn't have a job.
So they conducted a campaign not just against him personally but to try and destroy his business.
Even though that business was something that would benefit and potentially save lives, that didn't matter.
I'm sure, in their mind, that if they could cut off any source of revenue that I had that they could come back to me and offer some sort of a deal and say, "Here, we'll help you out.
Take a bunch of money and shut up".
Oh, I never thought of that.
I never thought of that, that they hoped to have you bleeding on the floor and that your only avenue now is to accept the hush money from Scientology.
I was collateral damage.
This technology was collateral damage.
They were just a bull in a china shop, gonna tear apart Mike Rinder.
This is the work of a so-called church not only preventing inventions like this, - right - Right.
That you have created and worked your whole life and put millions of dollars in but the lives you could have affected.
I think the hardest thing for me has been that I know that I have donated money to the church, and I just cannot believe they were able to use that money, this tax-free money and beating up a technology not me but beating up a technology that the world needs.
Having that technology, which I had close to $1 million into now, that's my own money, my savings, my life savings and then to get it stopped, it was heartbreaking.
And so yeah, it was devastating for me, absolutely devastating to see that I didn't I just didn't get it there.
But I will.
I will say, to Robert's everlasting credit and his unbelievable friendship to me, that he never, ever wavered.
And he basically lost in order to protect me and had incredible pressure put on him not just by Scientology, but they went after his loved ones, they went after his girlfriend, they went after everybody around him to try and get them to put pressure on him to abandon us.
He has never wavered the entire time, ever.
Mike, I can say the same thing for you.
You've never wavered on me in all of these years that we've had.
Been difficult times for both of us to have both our worlds pulled out from underneath us.
And at some point early on when we met each other, you let me know you wouldn't give up.
'Cause I asked you.
You said, "No.
"I'm not gonna get bought off.
I'll never be bought off".
And I said, "Good.
I'll never be bought off either".
It's your direction that gave me the "never be bought off".
I'm very happy that I never was.
I mean, never I never caved to these guys.
Because somebody has to stand up.
It has to be Scientologists that stand up.
It has to be the ones that have been there for 45 years.
I understand Scientology, and I understand that organization.
I never understood the underbelly that takes tax-free dollars and ruins people's lives for no one's benefit but their own, period.
And Leah, I want you to know that the only reason why it is that I'm allowed to tell my story is because of you and Mike.
It's only because of you that it's allowed me to speak my voice.
And hopefully someday, some other inventor, some other scientist, some other researcher will not be stopped by this church using tax-free dollars to wipe it out.
Robert, to know that you have stood up for something and stood up for Mike to such a colossal destruction to your own life says so much about you.
I wish there were more people like you.
I wish the companies that you deal with, these public companies who don't give a shit about the average person who they make their millions and billions from, they did care about.
My hope is that one of those people will see this program and go, "He deserves our support and he deserves us to stand by him".
And we need more Goliaths to stand up to the Goliaths.
And thank you for being such a good friend to Mike.
Really, really.
And I just wish all good things to you.
Thank you.
Don't cry again, 'cause you're gonna make me cry.
Nope.
God.
God.
Stop it.
Can I give you a hug? Okay.
- Thank you.
- Thank you so much.
We all have, just different ways same thing, though.
- Thank you.
- Yeah.
Mike, stop crying.
Oh, my God.
I can't.
I'm trying, really.
I'm trying.
If you go to one of Scientology's, hate websites, you will see it ranges from ex-members like me who were just parishioners to ex high-ranking Sea Org members like Mike Rinder, Claire and Marc Headley, Tom DeVocht, Jeffrey Hawkins, Amy Scobee to journalists like Anderson Cooper, Pulitzer Prize winners like Lawrence Wright, Oscar-winning documentarians like Alex Gibney to a mom in Clearwater, Florida, Mary Kahn.
Every one of these people that have a hate website on them, you bet that they also have PIs on them.
And you take into consideration that this policy of following people and harassing them into silence has been ongoing since 1950 and is going on today, you could do the math.
This is not money that's being used to benefit the public, which is why you have tax-exempt status.
These activities service Scientology.
Under that banner of Fair Game is also this area of hiring private investigators to follow people who are speaking out against the abusive practices of Scientology.
I'm gonna have him turn off the camera.
You turn off the camera, and you and I'll talk.
You came to video people coming to a birthday party.
There are three men in a boat with a camera taking pictures of our backyard.
Scientology has tax-exempt status.
Therefore, they have millions of dollars to spend on simply silencing and bullying into silence those people who are speaking out.
That's insane.
I am the writer of the textbooks of Scientology.
The aim and goal is to put man in a mental condition, where he him can solve his own problems.
Without any Scientology organization, things are not gonna change on this planet.
After years of slowly questioning Scientology Leah Remini and her very public break with Scientology Scientology, what they do, trying to destroy people, trying to destroy their families when they leave, the create a lot of people who are willing to fight against them.
Scientology takes tax-free dollars and ruins people's lives.
This is not the life that I want to live.
I wanted to end my life.
Some people, it takes a year, some people, it takes ten years of just peeling that onion of how you were manipulated and made to think.
This season, we really needed to focus on the reason why Scientology is able to do the things that they do is because they have tax-exempt status.
The people who have bravely come on and told their stories have not told those stories in vain.
They are having an impact.
We're presenting our case to the world, to the FBI, to the IRS.
The most important thing that has to be done is the persistent telling of the truth.
And that's what you're doing.
You have to continue to fight.
You have to continue to fight for what's right.
In the 1950s, L.
Ron Hubbard laid out the operating policy of Scientology with respect to its enemies in a document called the "HCO Manual of Justice".
That document calls for the harassment, the investigation, the destruction of anyone deemed an enemy of Scientology.
How do the Scientologists find out what's happening in the enemy's camp? Through spies.
They've got more dossiers and more intelligence on top leaders than the FBI, CIA, Scotland Yard, and the Interpol put together.
They put a camera in my van.
They photograph me when I leave my house to pick up my newspaper.
What's the intention of getting all this footage, man? To document your behavior and the reporting on Scientology.
Is this how this church goes about its business? They put private eyes after us.
12 at one point.
Those three followed us to Australia, around the States, you name it.
Would you guys follow me 1,000 miles away? At least two guys would.
If you needed an example of, "Hmm, is Scientology really using its money to bully people?" take a journalist named Paulette Cooper, who was just doing a story on Scientology.
How do we know this happened? Because the FBI raided Scientology offices and found Scientology directives to destroy this woman.
Destroy this woman.
They took her stationery with her fingerprints on it and put a fake bomb threat that almost got her put in prison.
The lengths that Scientology went to to destroy this woman is crazy.
They have put detectives on me, they put spies on me.
A few months ago, they put an attempted spy on my mother to try to get information about me via her.
I had been saying that these types of things had been going on, and people kept saying, "Well, what is she talking about? This is a church".
And it was incredible vindication to look at these documents and see that everything I had said about Scientology since 1968 was true and that they had turned out to be worse than anything I said or had even imagined.
Then the IRS is next.
Scientology policy says you go after the individual, not the organization.
That's what Scientologists did.
They went after individual IRS agents.
IRS agents are not used to having PIs sitting outside of their house going through their financials, seeing if they have a problem with alcohol.
This is what they were doing.
This went on for years and years.
And how do we know that? Because David Miscavige himself went onstage in front of thousands of Scientologists and said, "That's exactly what we did".
Well, what is the IRS? It is a group.
And a group is composed of individuals.
We decided to play by their rules and make this personal.
First, we had "Freedom" magazine, and then the International Association of Scientologists sponsored more ads in "USA Today".
You have no idea how much the IRS hates publicity.
But to see their own faces, it was more than they could handle.
They go after former executives of Scientology, as they did with Pat Broeker.
They followed the man for 24 years, just going on with his life.
How do we know this? Because the private investigators spoke out.
Miscavige came directly to me.
He said, "Marty, you get on this guy, 'cause I want to know every move he makes".
He wanted to hear as many conversations as we could with Pat.
And we literally recorded all his conversations.
And then I developed a team initially started off with probably four or five, you know, group of teams.
Those guys worked full-time on him.
They were on him all the time he was in San Luis Obispo.
They followed him literally when he moved to Colorado, when he moved briefly to Wyoming, back to Colorado, and finally to Eastern Europe, believe it or not.
Literally in 2007, 19 years, 18 years after I began that thing, those two guys were still on Broeker.
Now that you're outside of the church, do you think you're being spied on, that you're being followed, that you're being harassed, that people are trying to push your buttons? Do I think? No, I know that.
I have been followed by Scientology across the United States, to England, to Ireland, to Australia To everywhere that I have traveled.
This is the PI committee for Mike Rinder and I.
My computers have been hacked.
I have been followed in cars.
I've had cameras placed outside my house.
I've had people live across the street from me.
You came and set up a video camera pointing at our house.
I've had my garbage taken.
I have had tracking devices put on my cars.
I have had my wife and children photographed and videoed.
I have had demonstrators show up when I arrived at airports.
- Hey, dude, don't touch him.
- Hey, don't touch me.
Take pictures of squirrels.
I've had private investigators waiting for me at baggage claim.
I'm here to investigate you and what you guys are up to and follow you.
There is almost no time since I began speaking out in 2009 that I have not been the subject of an intense and expensive campaign by Scientology.
I'm a little bit, like, not loving this, because we're going to talk to somebody who was a private eye hired by Scientology, allegedly.
I don't know how I'm gonna feel.
Like, of course, when you're a guest on this program, I don't want to ice you out.
But there's a piece of me that wants to.
Well, I gotta tell you, in some respects, this woman that we're going to see today is a long way above all these other people who go away, never say anything, and are silent.
At least she has the cojones to stand up and say, "Look, I was involved in this, and it was wrong, and I want to say what I was doing".
My name is Cierra Westerman.
I was a private investigator for the Church of Scientology from the years of 2008 to 2011.
We were talking about it in the car, and I was like, "I'm a little" I was feeling a little anxious about meeting somebody who was looking to destroy somebody's life.
I was never looking to destroy anybody.
It was a first job to come about when I was in college for private investigations.
So you were in college, and you were going to school to be a PI.
For private investigations, yes.
And how were you approached to do this kind of job? I was approached through Dwayne Powell, 'cause he was in college with me.
Dwayne is your boyfriend who was also in this school.
Yes.
Dwayne's the father of my child.
He was the one that really got me to do it.
If it wasn't for him, I probably would have never done it.
He was the head honcho for all that.
And a lot of these investigators that was out there came a lot from Dwayne.
He would meet females, you know, going out to eat or at Walmart or, you know, things like that, and he would just socialize and get them mesmerized with him To pretty much do as he asks.
'Cause he's, like, a ladies' man? - Yeah.
- Okay.
And they needed investigators when the Anonymous group really started coming about.
They asked for help for more eyes out there on the as the church call it, the raids.
Anonymous was a group of people on the Internet who objected to Scientology's heavy-handed attempts to censor people on the Internet.
They decided that they were gonna conduct pickets around the world and organized these pickets and wore masks on the theory that if they were not able to be identified, Scientology could not harass them.
Hello, leaders of Scientology.
We are Anonymous.
We have been watching you, your campaigns of misinformation, your suppression of dissent, your litigious nature.
Anonymous has therefore decided that your organization should be destroyed.
I was the one that had to infiltrate the group Anonymous.
Religion is free! Scientology is not! Religion is free! Scientology is not! I walked around all of Clearwater with them with their chanting against the Church of Scientology.
And I was recording them with my own camera and videotaping everything that they were saying, 'cause that's what the church wanted.
They said, "We want to have reports on anything that you hear".
So they wanted you to find out who they were personally so that they could then harass them.
Here's Anonymous, who was exercising their right to free speech.
They are exercising their right to freedom of assembly.
And Scientology, of course, can't have that.
After I was done infiltrating Anonymous, Dwayne Powell asked me to help him with more investigations and spying on the ex-members that were getting out.
So many more members were leaving the church, and they need more and more eyes out there.
And since I already had my license and my investigation and I kept up with it, he had me and several other people come out and move out there with them.
- To Clearwater.
- Yes, ma'am.
I wasn't aware of Cierra Westerman when she was living in the house that was catty-corner to the house that we lived in at the time with a direct line of sight.
I only became aware of her a couple of years ago.
I lived in one of the other houses that they rented out.
They rented I can't even tell you how many houses they had.
Dwayne had one, I had one, and then there were several others that I found out about afterwards.
Of houses that Scientology was renting - for PIs.
- Yeah.
You were told that Mike was what? That he was a threat towards the church, with all of his knowledge.
I had to go through all their trash.
We had to find receipts that were in there, any kind of paperwork that had any kind of writing on it, or if they had any kind of bottles, alcoholic or anything anything that could tell us what they liked, what they would like to do, where they shop, what they buy.
Hey, who are you getting that for? That's my garbage.
- It ain't your garbage.
- Yeah, it is.
- Who are you? - Mike Rinder.
Just came from my house at 808 Bentwood.
I don't think so.
Oh, I sure so.
I videoed it.
What I would do is, I would get it all, I would take it, get it copied tape it to paper, copy it all, and then fax it all over in emails to Dwayne Powell.
So, now, what did you do? You would pay off the garbageman? Yeah, each garbageperson got $20.
That alone was $160 a week just for me buying trash.
Taking my trash was really a big waste of time and money.
I didn't put anything in the trash.
In fact, I put things in the trash that were deliberate misdirectors.
I wrote notes about certain people and like, whales of Scientology and said, "Call Matt Feshbach".
And I'd wrap stuff up in dog poop so that someone had to go pick through this stuff and try and figure out what was the paper that was immersed in the dog poop.
It was it was a complete waste of time.
But this is what is the standard way you conduct a noisy investigation, so they paid for that to be done for years.
When you saw a car pull up or park in front of our house, did you go out there to check on the car? Yeah, my son and I he was my cover, usually, for all of that.
I would put him into his little car stroller and just stroll around and just pretend like I had was texting somebody and just taking pictures instead.
Pictures of? The vehicles that were in front of your house with so I could get their license plate numbers.
Whose cars do you know had Tracking devices.
Tracking devices placed on them? I know y'all did.
Pretty much any ex-member that got out got one.
Or anybody that was more of the threats, I should say, to the church would get one put onto their car.
- They all had they all - How do you know that? Dwayne would tell me when he had to go do 'em or change 'em over because the batteries were dying.
That part was the most unethical part of it all.
Because in Florida, you have to have consent from those people that the tracking devices are on.
But they wanted tracking devices so that if we ended up losing them as we were following, we at least had 'em and know where they were at.
I knew how the operations worked within the control room, which was hidden within a warehouse.
It had its two big monitor screens.
It had its own laptop and its own cell phone.
And eyes watch all the cameras that investigators had put up on all the ex-members.
And if one of the investigators lost their subject, I would have to go onto the tracking device website and tell them where they were at.
You've got this list here.
These are your notes, I think, and it has this list of people.
Haydn and Lucy James and Kat and Mareka, well, you know they were there at the house.
Jack Airey.
Tom DeVocht.
You know Tom DeVocht? I know of him from another investigator, Val Graeve.
She was to befriend Tom and ended up moving with him in with him as a roommate and everything else.
I was also asked to befriend Cathy Greenbaum.
She's an ex-member as well that got out, but her husband was still in it.
She was trying to stay sober, off of the alcohol and everything else, and I learned which AA meetings she would go to, and that's how I met her.
So did Cathy end up ever knowing that you were not her like, she thought you were her friend or Yes.
I could tell she was a really sweet woman, and she had a lot of issues that she really needed help on.
I didn't realize how badly they were sabotaging people and and hurting families.
So all these executives that she has on her list you know, Mike, Marty, Tom, Haydn, Lucy like, these are executives former big executives of Scientology.
So okay, we understand because you know that they know.
So you don't want them talking.
I get that.
I get that.
But then it just continues.
It always continues.
Now we need Cathy Greenbaum, just a mom and an ex-wife of a rich Scientologist.
And so let's go after her too.
Why? Because we can.
Why not? "I'm the Church of Scientology "with tax-exempt status.
Destroy 'em all".
In 2013, Dwayne Powell was arrested in West Allis, Wisconsin, after police received a call about a suspicious man walking around a neighborhood.
According to police documents, Powell said he was hired through an intermediary firm and had been following Ronald Miscavige for 11/2 years.
He said he and his son were paid about $10,000 a week to search his garbage and follow and photograph him wherever he went.
Officers found numerous weapons in his car, but Powell said they were just for sport shooting.
He thought he was gonna go to prison for the rest of his life, but the church had his back.
And as we can see, he's a free man till this day.
He got about $360,000 to keep quiet and not to speak of anything.
Thank you so much for taking the time to do this today.
We really appreciate it.
Dwayne has always warned me, you know, "If you speak out, you know, you're gonna have to watch your back forever".
Always be public about anything that goes on with you, because that's your best protection.
I invited Leah to meet Robert Almblad.
Robert is a friend of mine who I met after I left Scientology.
He is an inventor and is a brilliant inventor.
As a result of me working with him, he became the target of Scientology and subjected to intense noisy investigations and harassment of himself, of his friends, of his family, of his business, of every aspect of his life.
My name is Robert Almblad, and I was a Scientologist for 45 years.
We're focused on, this season, really exposing misuse of power, of funds, of Scientology using its resources because it has tax-exempt status to harass and destroy people's lives.
So thank you for wanting to do this, knowing what you've already been through and what you're probably gonna continue to go through for just doing this.
I would suspect that would be the case.
Anyway, I have a long history with Scientology.
And I've done pretty much every course that you can do.
I started in Scientology in the early '70s.
I immediately went to "Apollo".
So I worked on "Apollo".
I worked for LRH.
I was in the Sea Org for about five years after that.
I left the Sea Org.
I paid my freeloader bill.
I paid my wife's freeloader bill.
I went on to do different businesses, starting up companies, but mainly doing new products some you might have recognized or seen before.
One of them is a automated key-cutting machine that you'd find at any Walmart or Home Depot or stores like that.
And that was how I first came to meet you, when you were working here in Tarpon Springs on developing a clean ice machine.
My best friend and partner introduced me to Mike, and he said, "Look, this is a guy you can trust.
This is a good man".
And I met Mike at my house, and I talked to him for a while to find out what was going on.
And it was obvious that he was somebody that needed, more than anything, a job.
We sort of hit it off, and then I started working with you on trying to develop and then ultimately market that incredible invention that you had made.
And that was the start of the downhill trajectory in the life of Robert Almblad, who had, up until that time, been nothing but a roaring success and now became associated with me.
Scientology goes after Robert because Robert is being human.
He's not being a Scientologist.
He's not following Scientology policy, which says you are not allowed to speak to somebody who's publicly talking about the abuses of Scientology.
Not only is he disregarding that, but he's being a human being and giving Mike a lifeline.
He's willing to put his life literally and his livelihood on the line to do the decent thing.
About three days after it is that I hired him, Dave Lubow was the first person to come to my house and said that I needed to fire Mike Rinder.
And I said, "No, I'm not going to do that.
"This is America.
You have a right to a job.
You have a right to work".
Well, who do you guys work for anyway? I work for Elliot Davidson.
And who does he work for? Well, he's got a client that's the Church of Scientology.
Okay, good.
Is there any reason for taking videos of us for breakfast? Well, you'd have to speak with him about that.
I'd like to ask you guys not to do this anymore.
It's harassment.
Okay? Sometimes they came in a van and there were two people in it.
I never kept track of how many, but there was a fair number that came to my house trying to get me to to fire Mike.
I told you yesterday, this is harassment.
I also told you that I've got a specific question - that I want to ask you about - Yeah.
I understand, but you can't be up here soliciting people and asking 'em questions.
That began my I don't know whether it's an illustrious career or whatever it is of being trampled by the church and their operatives.
Now, you were prior, you were on the ship with L.
Ron Hubbard.
And you've been a longtime Scientologist.
Were you familiar with the Fair Game policies and the Suppressive Acts policy that Scientology has? Yes, I'm very familiar with them, but it was never like this.
Certainly, I never knew anything about what they were doing in and this would be 2011.
I never believed they would do such things as contacting my business associates that had nothing to do with Scientology and nothing to do with Mike Rinder and nothing to do with anything.
You know, SPs like, people like us that are referred to as SPs are, like, also referred to as merchants of chaos, merchants of fear.
So we have this idea of a suppressive person is a person who is doing heinous acts - towards mankind.
- Yes.
And I did believe that anyone who was declared was either working on getting undeclared, or they really were declared because they were like Hitler or Mussolini or some other historical figure that was totally destructive to humanity.
And you couldn't save 'em anyway, so you'd stick 'em over in the corner, right? Good, that sounds like a good thing to do.
And I never got to see who they were doing anything to, because guess what.
I cannot talk to a SP.
I cannot talk to somebody who's not in good standing.
I was surprised that anyone in the church would have gone to the extent that they did with me for, frankly, no good reason except for employing Mike Rinder.
I never uttered a disparaging word about Scientology or L.
Ron Hubbard, ever not in private and not in public and they attacked me like I was Hitler.
In addition to going after me personally, they also went against my girlfriend.
They called up her elderly parents, her friends, her ex-husband, every person that they could find, and did the same thing about being private investigators and reporters and they're investigating Robert Almblad for any crimes that he maybe had committed.
They did the same thing to every neighbor I had.
I lived in a neighborhood on an island with 14 houses on the island, and they went around to all my neighbors, every one of them, knocked on the door with a bodyguard, with a camera, with a reporter, and knocked on the door and said, "You know the guy here on that house, Robert Almblad? Have you seen him committing any crimes?" When I first hired Mike, before I hired him, he said, "Listen.
"Before you do anything, I want you to know that you could get into severe trouble for even talking to me".
And I said, "Yes, I understand".
I said, "I'm willing to stand up to the situation "because I know it's not right.
"And so I understand.
"I'm gonna get shit on.
"I'm gonna get stepped on.
I'm gonna get these things done".
Truthfully, I didn't know the magnitude that it was going to be.
Robert and his girlfriend would go to a restaurant, and they'd show up in the restaurant.
And do what? With the damn camera.
This weird guy, Jim Lynch, was out at Central Casting old-time, old-school reporter with his bodyguard and his cameraman, sometimes two bodyguards.
- They were out of the WWE.
- Right.
- I mean, these guys are like - Yeah.
And they would show up.
So they'd be sitting in a restaurant, and they'd be standing outside waiting.
And as soon as they walked out of the restaurant: "Mr.
Almblad, Mr.
Almblad, let me ask you" Like, making a spectacle out of it everywhere they went to the supermarket, to the doctor's, to the dog park, to the vet, Wherever they went, these idiots were there.
One of the tactics of Scientology is to hire a "reporter" and have this person show up with a camera and a microphone and go, "Hey, we're doing a story.
What say you about your mortgage fraud?" Or, "Hey what about Are you still beating your wife?" I mean, these words are purposeful.
And this whole charade this is all for show.
What it's supposed to do is that people around you, if you're coming out of church or you're coming out of work or coming out of a restaurant, that your friends or employees or possible business partners hear these allegations.
And they they're supposed to think, "Oh, my God, this person "These are real journalists asking these questions.
Something must be go" Like, that's the purpose of this insanity.
Mr.
X.
I'm just wondering how you - Hey, Jim.
- And Mr.
Almblad got the mortgage I'm going to file a police report.
If you don't leave me alone, I'm calling the police.
- I'm asking for you - Leave me alone.
You flew 4,000 miles to stalk me.
- Who said it was 4,000? - Leave! And it wasn't just the following.
I mean, there were, like, three cars out at a time.
And we would be sitting in the office up there in Tarpon Springs, and they cut down the oak trees in front of the office so that they could get a better view.
And they were taking the garbage, and they were sitting overtly waiting to take down the license plates.
They were doing just everything that you can do according to the policy of L.
Ron Hubbard of how you noisily investigate someone.
It got so bad that Robert and I went to a trade show in Miami to show this ice machine and you know, to all the people that come around.
And these guys came in, they got false IDs to come in and start harassing us.
Okay, let's see your badge, Ed.
Let's see your badge.
Here's another one.
You like to trespass.
One of the policies that demand the utter destruction of someone is in Counter Attacks.
And in Counter Attacks, it says something like, "Find out the thing that the person is seeking to protect, and go after that".
This is what they're spending time doing, getting a warehouse, spending money on PIs, chopping down this guy's trees, going to all of his neighbors and saying, "We're doing an investigation," again, part of the policy, doing a noisy investigation.
And all of that collectively is supposed to destroy this man on many levels.
It's supposed to make his neighbors think, "Is he under investigation? Is he What? There's reporters here.
"Oh, my God, wait, there's people walking into my busi "Wait, my Wait.
"They're spying on me.
They have whoa.
"They're gonna catch me doing something and take it out of context, walking into my office".
Like, this is all that energy is simply because he gave Mike Rinder a job.
I have these people constantly calling the board of directors for the companies I was working with.
All of them are public companies.
They're all more than $1 billion in sales or value.
And they can't afford to deal with the Church of Scientology.
They just said to me, "You cannot do this to us.
"We like working with you.
"We've worked with you for years.
"We're doing over $100 million in sales of your inventions.
But we will not work with you if you bring this church here".
Robert went off to have a separate meeting with one of these companies at a hotel conference room, and these people literally burst into the room with cameras and threw stuff on the table and telling these people that Robert was talking to, "Here, read this".
And it's, you know, "Robert Almblad: Financier of Hate Crimes".
I had to physically take them by this, and I threw them out the door.
And you can't imagine the looks on someone's face, someone who's, like, getting paid more than $1 million a year to run a public company, and they have this nuttiness coming in.
I mean, I was already nutty enough because I'm an inventor of new stuff, right? So they always have to look at me very carefully.
So now you know what else I brought in.
I brought in these nuts from the Church of Scientology.
And it scared the bejesus out of them.
One of the principles laid out in the Hubbard writings about how you deal with enemies of Scientology is, you cost them their job.
Well, they couldn't persuade Robert Almblad to fire me, so they figured they'd put him out of business and then I wouldn't have a job.
So they conducted a campaign not just against him personally but to try and destroy his business.
Even though that business was something that would benefit and potentially save lives, that didn't matter.
I'm sure, in their mind, that if they could cut off any source of revenue that I had that they could come back to me and offer some sort of a deal and say, "Here, we'll help you out.
Take a bunch of money and shut up".
Oh, I never thought of that.
I never thought of that, that they hoped to have you bleeding on the floor and that your only avenue now is to accept the hush money from Scientology.
I was collateral damage.
This technology was collateral damage.
They were just a bull in a china shop, gonna tear apart Mike Rinder.
This is the work of a so-called church not only preventing inventions like this, - right - Right.
That you have created and worked your whole life and put millions of dollars in but the lives you could have affected.
I think the hardest thing for me has been that I know that I have donated money to the church, and I just cannot believe they were able to use that money, this tax-free money and beating up a technology not me but beating up a technology that the world needs.
Having that technology, which I had close to $1 million into now, that's my own money, my savings, my life savings and then to get it stopped, it was heartbreaking.
And so yeah, it was devastating for me, absolutely devastating to see that I didn't I just didn't get it there.
But I will.
I will say, to Robert's everlasting credit and his unbelievable friendship to me, that he never, ever wavered.
And he basically lost in order to protect me and had incredible pressure put on him not just by Scientology, but they went after his loved ones, they went after his girlfriend, they went after everybody around him to try and get them to put pressure on him to abandon us.
He has never wavered the entire time, ever.
Mike, I can say the same thing for you.
You've never wavered on me in all of these years that we've had.
Been difficult times for both of us to have both our worlds pulled out from underneath us.
And at some point early on when we met each other, you let me know you wouldn't give up.
'Cause I asked you.
You said, "No.
"I'm not gonna get bought off.
I'll never be bought off".
And I said, "Good.
I'll never be bought off either".
It's your direction that gave me the "never be bought off".
I'm very happy that I never was.
I mean, never I never caved to these guys.
Because somebody has to stand up.
It has to be Scientologists that stand up.
It has to be the ones that have been there for 45 years.
I understand Scientology, and I understand that organization.
I never understood the underbelly that takes tax-free dollars and ruins people's lives for no one's benefit but their own, period.
And Leah, I want you to know that the only reason why it is that I'm allowed to tell my story is because of you and Mike.
It's only because of you that it's allowed me to speak my voice.
And hopefully someday, some other inventor, some other scientist, some other researcher will not be stopped by this church using tax-free dollars to wipe it out.
Robert, to know that you have stood up for something and stood up for Mike to such a colossal destruction to your own life says so much about you.
I wish there were more people like you.
I wish the companies that you deal with, these public companies who don't give a shit about the average person who they make their millions and billions from, they did care about.
My hope is that one of those people will see this program and go, "He deserves our support and he deserves us to stand by him".
And we need more Goliaths to stand up to the Goliaths.
And thank you for being such a good friend to Mike.
Really, really.
And I just wish all good things to you.
Thank you.
Don't cry again, 'cause you're gonna make me cry.
Nope.
God.
God.
Stop it.
Can I give you a hug? Okay.
- Thank you.
- Thank you so much.
We all have, just different ways same thing, though.
- Thank you.
- Yeah.
Mike, stop crying.
Oh, my God.
I can't.
I'm trying, really.
I'm trying.
If you go to one of Scientology's, hate websites, you will see it ranges from ex-members like me who were just parishioners to ex high-ranking Sea Org members like Mike Rinder, Claire and Marc Headley, Tom DeVocht, Jeffrey Hawkins, Amy Scobee to journalists like Anderson Cooper, Pulitzer Prize winners like Lawrence Wright, Oscar-winning documentarians like Alex Gibney to a mom in Clearwater, Florida, Mary Kahn.
Every one of these people that have a hate website on them, you bet that they also have PIs on them.
And you take into consideration that this policy of following people and harassing them into silence has been ongoing since 1950 and is going on today, you could do the math.
This is not money that's being used to benefit the public, which is why you have tax-exempt status.
These activities service Scientology.