I just received the full article. So this time Cockburn attempts to get
at the rescue of John Travolta, because Primary Colors is flopping at
the box office. Note that he says that the germans promote the
Travolta/Clinton deal idea. Wrong - it is John Travolta himself, in
"George".

====
Seattle Times, Opinion Page: April 2, 1998

ALEXANDER COCKBURN - Syndicated columnist

Germans lose their cool on the topic of Scientology

"Primary Colors" is now playing in all the movie houses, with John
Travolta in the role of President Groper. There's a theory, mooted in
the press, that a bargain was struck whereby Clinton would fight boldly
in the cause of Scientology and in return, John Travolta, a
Scientologist, would make Bill seem nice on screen. The prime
Scientological cause fitting this calendar of supposed events would be a
nudge from the White House, prompting the State Department to condemn
Germany for its treatment of Scientologists.
        Travolta - known in Scientology circles as J.T. - did meet
Clinton at the conference on excellence in Philadelphia last summer.
Bill greeted J.T. warmly, told him he knew all about the situation in
Germany and said that he would do his best to help out.
        The Germans have been particularly keen to promote the notion of
a secret Travolta/Clinton deal. This is because the German government is
- and indeed has been for many years - unhinged on the topic of
Scientology, which it seems to regard as some sort of Ebola virus likely
to bring down the nation. Heber Jentzsch, president of the International
Church of Scientology, told me with an air of quiet triumph a few days
ago that over the past 10 years, Scientologists in Germany have been the
target of no less than 160 criminal investigations, with the German
investigators coming up with nothing to justify all their time and
effort.
        The closest to triumph the investigators got was when they
discovered pills in a Scientologist's home, which they promptly
announced to be poison, presumably associated with hellish
Scientological rites.
        Jentzsch, a man with a sense of humor, told the German
investigators he would take 5,000 cubic centimeters of the pills and the
German probers could take 5,000 cubic centimeters of cyanide - and
they'd see who died first. The pills were vitamin C, no doubt associated
with the ancient rite of trying to live forever. The Germans didn't
think it was funny.
        The way the German federal and regional governments have treated
Scientologists isn't funny either. Scientologists have seen their
children kicked out of kindergartens. Unlike unreconstructed Waffen-SS
men, Scientologists can't join any major political party and are subject
to state-sanctioned wiretaps and other intrusions. The same,
incidentally, is true of Muslims. Jehovah's Witnesses also get harsh
treatment.
        Smarting at the adverse publicity, the German government is now
mounting a campaign whose ambitions are disclosed in a file of
confidential government memoranda leaked to Barry Fisher, a human-rights
attorney in Los Angeles, by an anonymous whistle-blower in the German
government.
        The German government's plan is to get the think tanks for the
two major political parties - the Christian Democrats' Adenauer
Foundation and the Socialists' Ebert Foundation - to lobby in Washington
and organize encounters with influential Americans, putting forth the
German view.
        The nature of this "German view" was debated ponderously in the
German Foreign Ministry in mid-November of last year in a top-level
session with high-ups from all the major ministries. The assembled
company concluded that the reason Americans can't understand why the
German government hates Scientologists is that "constitutional freedom"
in the United States means absolute freedom, whereas in Germany, the
freedom of citizens is limited by the desire of these citizens for the
government to protect them against the danger of such groups as the
Scientologists. (This same desire for protection on the part of the
citizens led Nazis, back in the 1930s, to ban the Seventh Day Adventists
and other religious groups and embark on the extermination of all Jews.
Once you start "protecting" the citizens, there is no telling where it
will end.
        While German professors are fanning across America to do battle
with Scientology and convince Americans of the true evil of J.T.'s
faith, the German government is limbering up its campaign on the home
front. Shortly after the November meeting, another secret memo
summarized the state of the German government's network to "combat the
so-called Sects and Psycho groups." In command is the Federal Ministry
for Family, Elderly, Women and linked closely with the Federal
Administration Office, which compiles data on "youth sects and Psycho
groups."
        The prime spies on behalf of the government bodies are the main
Protestant and Catholic churches, which, the memo says proudly, "have
set up a network of information and counseling offices, which cover
almost the entirety of the whole country."
        What emerges from this memo is a paradigm of how a government
can plan to intrude into matters of faith and conscience. The state
isolates an enemy (Scientologists in this instance). Under a law
authorizing such onslaughts against any outfit deemed to be a threat to
their Constitution, the enemy is wire-tapped, followed, harassed.
(Scientologists can't hold any civil-service post.) The major churches
enthusiastically join in the onslaught. Government funds are
(unconstitutionally, as is admitted in the memo) poured into another
network of private counselors and shrinks, who organize their own
brainwashing/surveillance strategies.
        As I often say, whatever the Scientologists may have done,
whatever foul evils they may have perpetrated, are but micropimples when
compared with the horrors done in the name of Catholicism,
Protestantism, Judaism and the other tolerated faiths.

(Copyright, 1998, Creators Syndicate, Inc.)