LA Times: Scientologists Take Offensive in Reich Land
Huge Cajones Remailer
fwd http://www.latimes.com/HOME/NEWS/COMMENT/t000022798.html
COLUMN LEFT / ALEXANDER COCKBURN
Scientologists Take Offensive in Reich Land
One doesn't have to be a Hubbard believer to
be troubled by Germans' intolerance.
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
Never get on the wrong side of the Scientologists, as I
often say to Heber Jentzsch, with whom I have spent many
interesting hours discussing the evils of the CIA,
brainwashers, shrinks, the pharmaceutical companies, Time
and other pet peeves we share. Jentzsch is president of the
Church of Scientology International and is now much
preoccupied with their great battle against German
politicians.
To people who remonstrate with me for having truck
with Scientologists, I always say that folks who hate the
organizations listed above can't be all bad, and that there's
probably more psychic oppression in every 10 seconds of
the life of the Roman Catholic Church (or--let's be
ecumenical--the Mormons, Lutherans, Baptists and
Methodists) than in the career of the Scientologists since L.
Ron Hubbard got them launched. Last time I heard, the
Vatican (which has to OK every deal) was settling sex
abuse cases against priests in the U.S. at about $1 million
per.
Anyway, the provincial German government got up
Jentzsch's nose by being beastly to German Scientologists.
They wouldn't even let jazz player and Scientologist Chick
Corea perform inside the country. In some German
provinces, they won't let the children of Scientologists into
kindergartens. This is because Germans are constantly
worried that unless vigilance is exercised, covert groups will
take over the state, suck out their brains and turn them into
zombies.
Jentzsch and his fellows have been fighting back, with
considerable success. They ran big newspaper ads saying
that the Third Reich is being revived. (The Nazis started
persecuting Seventh-day Adventists before pressing on to
the big task of killing all the Jews, gypsies and Communists.)
There have been letters from Scientology supporters and
adepts in Hollywood. There have been condemnations of
Germany by members of Congress and finally some stern
words about German abuses of Scientologists' human rights
from the State Department.
A particular bugaboo of Jentzsch's is one Norbert Blum,
German minister of labor. He's been the chief hound-dog
snapping at the Scientologists' heels, but he's soft on former
members of the Waffen SS. When he's not purging
kindergartens, he's sending out 50,000 pension checks a
month to SS vets living in a number of countries, including
the U.S., where there are 3,377, and Holland, where there
are 20,000. There are plenty in Canada, too, though the
Canadian government won't tell the Simon Wiesenthal
Center who they are.
In total, 600 million deutsche marks a year go to the SS
vets, which is 30% more than the German government pays
to victims of the Holocaust. In addition, there are 13,000
Jewish victims who have been vainly trying to get
reparations out of the Germans for years.
Aside from surfacing the SS pensions, Jentzsch and the
Scientologists have just put out an issue of their publication,
Freedom, revealing criminal conspiracies--misuse of money,
etc., etc.--inside the two major German political parties.
The special issue is being put out in a run of 500,000 in
English and German. As I said at the start, don't get on the
wrong side of the Scientologists. They don't give up.
Now, to save people the bother of writing to me about
the evils of Scientology, let's stipulate without delay that they
can be vindictive, tireless in trying to destroy those they
perceive to be their enemies, greedy for money or whatever
other charges might come to mind. My point is to try to
introduce some perspective. The German government,
which recently protested to Secretary of State Madeleine
Albright about her department's criticisms, is doling out
money to thousands of war criminals and protecting their
identities. These same war criminals were mostly Catholic
or Protestant. The Vatican helped smuggle many of them to
Latin America after the war.
It's the trick of ruling opinion to create a few symbolic
devils: a Moammar Kadafi abroad, a Louis Farrakhan at
home. It behooves us always to be on the lookout against
uncritical acceptance of these devil labels. Sunday's New
York Times spent thousands of words on the topic of how
the Church of Scientology won tax exempt status from the
IRS in 1993. The Scientologists have the devil label 'round
their necks and so the Times evidently thought it would be
worthwhile to run its piece, even though it didn't turn up
much of interest. In 1995, the Boeing Corp., huge and
profitable, paid no taxes and indeed got a refund of $34
million, but not having a devil label allowed Boeing to
escape any critical scrutiny on this matter.
The application of devil labels is, after all, what the
original employers of the SS vets made their prime order of
business in the Hitler years.
- - -
Alexander Cockburn Writes for the Nation and Other
Publications
Copyright Los Angeles Times
seaorg
In article <1997031400...@mailmasher.com>, nob...@huge.cajones.com
wrote...
>Alexander Cockburn Writes for the Nation and Other
>Publications
And is a longtime co$ propaganda mouthpiece. The equivalent to a
Scientology manure-spreader.
Eric Bohlman
Huge Cajones Remailer (nob...@huge.cajones.com) wrote:
: fwd http://www.latimes.com/HOME/NEWS/COMMENT/t000022798.html
: COLUMN LEFT / ALEXANDER COCKBURN
: Scientologists Take Offensive in Reich Land
: Anyway, the provincial German government got up
: Jentzsch's nose by being beastly to German Scientologists.
: They wouldn't even let jazz player and Scientologist Chick
: Corea perform inside the country. In some German
: provinces, they won't let the children of Scientologists into
: kindergartens. This is because Germans are constantly
Sigh. This has turned into a memetic virus and Mr. Cockburn is guilty of
negligently spreading it. Can't the ARSCC CBW team speed up work on
developing an antiviral drug for this?
For what's probably not going to be the last time:
1) A German state government refused to *subsidize* a Corea concert
because Corea stated that he was going to proselytize for Scientology
during the concert. The government made it clear (hehe) to him that he
could have the subsidy if he refrained from proselytizing, and he turned
it down. This is no different from a US state or local government
refulsing to subsidize an event that includes denominational prayer.
Corea has always been perfectly free to perform without subsidy.
2) Some private kindergartens run by Protestant churches have refused to
admit children of Scientologists, as is their right. No governmental
action at all here.
Steve A
On 13 Mar 1997 20:32:52 -0500, nob...@huge.cajones.com (Huge Cajones
Remailer) wrote:
>
> fwd http://www.latimes.com/HOME/NEWS/COMMENT/t000022798.html
>
> COLUMN LEFT / ALEXANDER COCKBURN
> Scientologists Take Offensive in Reich Land
>
> One doesn't have to be a Hubbard believer to
> be troubled by Germans' intolerance.
>
> By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
It is clear from this piece that the LA TImes, at least in this case,
is nothing more than a thinly-veiled PR mouthpiece for the cult.
This attack on Germany by the author is clearly an attempt to
legitimise the cult's obscene accusations against that country.
I'm disgusted.
--
Steve A, SP4, GGBC, KBM, Unsalvageable PTS/SP #12
So long, Arthur...
ObURLS: Beginners: http://www.tiac.net/users/modemac/cos.html
In-depth: http://www.cybercom.net/~rnewman/scientology/home.html
Suspicious Death: http://www.primenet.com/~cultxpt/lisa.htm
The Other Side: http://www.scientology.org
"...Your suppositions include an unwarranted accusation which
I do not consider myself called upon to address..."
- a nice line in diplomatic put-down from Swedish
A/G in response to letter of Warren McShane
Steve A
On Fri, 14 Mar 1997 13:59:25 GMT, gr...@nospam.tidepool.com (Grady
Ward) wrote:
I hate to waste bandwidth, but this is a rant worthy of the finest
SubGenius. I'm therefore X-Posting the thread across to alt.slack.
S'gotta be better than them Xtians that Dynasoar's eatin' up and
spittin' out like so many gobstoppers.
> >
> > Never get on the wrong side of the Scientologists,
>
> You say the criminal cult never gives up?
>
> It sure looks that way with Andreas Heldal-Lund's web site which is
> building new anal cult fistulas daily. With nary a whine from the
> coksucking Thomas R. Hogan or the Chief Fellator Helena K. Kobrin
>
> And how about the Swedish Parliament? Has the criminal cult been able
> to stop the free dissemination of the NOTs or Fishman or whatever else
> and random wog chooses to make a public common paper *forever*?
>
> I'd say "Rear" Admiral David Miscavige is finally relaxing and letting the
> bloody rings of muscle around his 'roids dilate. This is good both for what
> is left of his damaged rectal tissues and also easier for us wogs to
> continue to slide extremely foreign objects home.
>
> The only thing that would surprise me right now is if David Miscavige
> were still to be at cause over his own bowel movements. The criminal cult
> of scientology meets the net and the (1) the criminal cult drops millions
> of dollars in litigation to the result that (2) their formerly precious
> cult crap is spread over the entire world forever. Is this a win?
>
> Obviously the "bend over and spread your cheeks religion" of scientology is
> a cult of cowards and weaklings. And David Miscavige (*) is leading it.
>
> What does this telll you, Sea Orgers? You say *you* follow *him*?
>
> Then you prove your own debasement. You testify to your own
> degradation. All us wogs spit, urinate, and defecate on you, Miscavige,
> and L. Ron Hubbard. But of course being weaklings, there is nothing you can
> do about it, is there? Haha ahhahahha.
>
> Enjoy. More to come!
Tilman Hausherr
>By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
That says it all. Cockburn has supported scientology for years, I assume
he is fed by them. The rumor line is that Cockburn had a dispute with
Behar, and the scientologists have been feeding him since 1991.
Sherilyn
In article <332c6552...@news.castlsys.co.uk>, Steve A
<ste...@castlsys.demon.co.uk> writes
>>
>> COLUMN LEFT / ALEXANDER COCKBURN
>> Scientologists Take Offensive in Reich Land
>>
>> One doesn't have to be a Hubbard believer to
>> be troubled by Germans' intolerance.
>>
>> By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
>
>is nothing more than a thinly-veiled PR mouthpiece for the cult.
Not at all. From the running title "Column Left", I understand that
this is an op ed piece that is not required to reflect the editorial
view of the newspaper. British readers may be familiar with Stephen
Fry's anti-Tory pieces for Max Hastings' Daily Telegraph in the late
1980s or, on the other side of the spectrum and longer ago, Woodrow "the
voice of reason" Wyatt's column in the pre-Maxwell Daily Mirror.
The LA Times is well known for its exposees of the scientology cult.
The writer does not hide his friendship with "Heber Jentzsch, with whom
I have spent many interesting hours discussing the evils of the CIA,
brainwashers, shrinks, the pharmaceutical companies, Time and other pet
peeves we share."
=========
The guy makes no bones that he is a crank.
He's not doing himself any favors, either, by referring to Germany as
"Reich Land".
LA Times readers will no doubt have a hollow laugh at Cockburn's rant,
before turning to read Doonesbury or Peanuts.
--
Sherilyn
Keith Henson
Grady Ward (gr...@nospam.tidepool.com) wrote:
: >
: > Never get on the wrong side of the Scientologists,
: You say the criminal cult never gives up?
: It sure looks that way with Andreas Heldal-Lund's web site which is
: building new anal cult fistulas daily. With nary a whine from the
: coksucking Thomas R. Hogan or the Chief Fellator Helena K. Kobrin
[snip]
Man, this is a *keeper*. Keith Henson
Ceon Ramon
In article <332c6552...@news.castlsys.co.uk>,
Steve A <ste...@castlsys.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>On 13 Mar 1997 20:32:52 -0500, nob...@huge.cajones.com (Huge Cajones
>Remailer) wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> COLUMN LEFT / ALEXANDER COCKBURN
>> Scientologists Take Offensive in Reich Land
>>
>> One doesn't have to be a Hubbard believer to
>> be troubled by Germans' intolerance.
>>
>> By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
>
>is nothing more than a thinly-veiled PR mouthpiece for the cult.
>
>legitimise the cult's obscene accusations against that country.
>
>I'm disgusted.
Cockburn is a syndicated columnist, and the LA Times is only one of the
many national newspapers that subscribes to the agency that sells his
weekly column. The column appeared in the Seattle Times last night.
I'm disgusted, too, Steve, but not at the LA Times. Let's place the blame
fairly and squarely where it belongs: on Alexander Cockburn. I wonder if
Cockburn knows about the --what is it: one million dollar bail?--
outstanding in Spain against Jentzsch, whom Cockburn seems to regard as an
asshole buddy.
I'd love to see someone do an expose on the credulousness of nationally
syndicated columnists, such as Cockburn and Jack Anderson. Why do they
believe what they believe, how are they persuaded to write what they
write?
--Barbara
Mike O'Connor
In article <1997031400...@mailmasher.com>, nob...@huge.cajones.com
(Huge Cajones Remailer) wrote:
> fwd http://www.latimes.com/HOME/NEWS/COMMENT/t000022798.html
>
> COLUMN LEFT / ALEXANDER COCKBURN
> Scientologists Take Offensive in Reich Land
[...]
> the CIA,
> brainwashers,
> shrinks,
> the pharmaceutical companies,
> Time
[...]
> Scientologists, [...]
> who hate the organizations listed above [...]
Mr. Cockburn, who spends hours talking with president Heber, can say with
authority that the thriving cult of greed and power is a hate group. -Mike
Ceon Ramon
In article <33478b10...@news.snafu.de>,
Tilman Hausherr <til...@xenu.com> wrote:
>>By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
>
>That says it all. Cockburn has supported scientology for years,
Give me some evidence. I want to write a rebuttal to Cockburn's column as
it appeared in The Seattle Times.
I assume
>he is fed by them. The rumor line is that Cockburn had a dispute with
>Behar, and the scientologists have been feeding him since 1991.
Please give me some references, something I can use.
--Barbara
terrykr
nob...@huge.cajones.com (Huge Cajones Remailer) wrote:
>COLUMN LEFT / ALEXANDER COCKBURN
>Scientologists Take Offensive in Reich Land
>By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
...snip...
>there's probably more psychic oppression in every 10 seconds of
>the life of the Roman Catholic Church (or--let's be
>ecumenical--the Mormons, Lutherans, Baptists and
>Methodists) than in the career of the Scientologists since L.
>Ron Hubbard got them launched.
Maybe...but there are also more members. I've seen some wicked things
in churches. But I've also see some wicked ministers ousted too.
Therein lies the difference.
>In some German provinces, they won't let the children of Scientologists into
>kindergartens. This is because Germans are constantly
>worried that unless vigilance is exercised, covert groups will
>take over the state, suck out their brains and turn them into
>zombies.
Wrong. Might the problem be that scienos can't keep their mouths shut
about their religion. If my kid preached his "religion" in his
kindergarten class, he probably be ousted too. (Okay, well, maybe
he'd get a "red light" instead of a "green light," but still...)
I once had a friend (whose religion shall remain nameless) and she
went around the neighborhood telling us all we were going to hell.
You shoulda heard the noise.
> Jentzsch and his fellows have been fighting back, with
>considerable success. They ran big newspaper ads saying
>that the Third Reich is being revived. (The Nazis started
>persecuting Seventh-day Adventists before pressing on to
>the big task of killing all the Jews, gypsies and Communists.)
Oh, please.
>There have been letters from Scientology supporters and
>adepts in Hollywood.
"Adepts?" Ha. Ridiculous.
>There have been condemnations of Germany by members
> of Congress and finally some stern
>words about German abuses of Scientologists' human rights
>from the State Department.
Clueless people.
>It behooves us always to be on the lookout against
>uncritical acceptance of these devil labels. Sunday's New
>York Times spent thousands of words on the topic of how
>the Church of Scientology won tax exempt status from the
>IRS in 1993. The Scientologists have the devil label 'round
>their necks and so the Times evidently thought it would be
>worthwhile to run its piece, even though it didn't turn up
>much of interest.
It might have been to those who weren't in the "know." Knowledge is
power.
> In 1995, the Boeing Corp., huge and
>profitable, paid no taxes and indeed got a refund of $34
>million, but not having a devil label allowed Boeing to
>escape any critical scrutiny on this matter.
> The application of devil labels is, after all, what the
>original employers of the SS vets made their prime order of
>business in the Hitler years.
- - -
>Alexander Cockburn Writes for the Nation and Other
>Publications
>Copyright Los Angeles Times
>
Pardon me, but what if someone/thing deserves the devil label? And
correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't Boeing make it clear it's a for
profit organization, instead of hiding behind it's "tax exempt
status?"
-T-
Ron Newman
In article <33478b10...@news.snafu.de>,
Tilman Hausherr <til...@xenu.com> wrote:
>>By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
>
>he is fed by them. The rumor line is that Cockburn had a dispute with
>Behar, and the scientologists have been feeding him since 1991.
An old pro-Scientology column by Cockburn is on my web site at
http://www.cybercom.net/~rnewman/scientology/media/cockburn
It's entitled "Consider the Lilly" and is from the left-wing UK
magazine _New Statesman_, 27 November 1992.
(Thanks to Brian Wenger for posting it originally.)
--
Ron Newman rne...@cybercom.net
Web: http://www.cybercom.net/~rnewman/home.html
RACERXSS
>> fwd http://www.latimes.com/HOME/NEWS/COMMENT/t000022798.html
>>
>> COLUMN LEFT / ALEXANDER COCKBURN
>> Scientologists Take Offensive in Reich Land
>>
>> be troubled by Germans' intolerance.
>>
>> By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
Reading this piece made me retch. This so-called journalist is a disgrace
to the profession, sucking up to a prime mover in an organization which
promotes extreme suppression of information, misleads and spreads
disinformation at every turn and which requires absolute fealty on the
part of its members.
The man is on their payroll. It's as simple as that. Or, he's the biggest
damn idiot in the business. I favor the former.
Kevin S. Kirby
RACE...@aol.com
race...@iastate.edu
Professional Opinionated Jerk
Tilman Hausherr
(posted and mailed)
In <5gcg7v$1i...@nntp2.u.washington.edu>, ce...@u.washington.edu (Ceon
Ramon) wrote:
>>That says it all. Cockburn has supported scientology for years,
>
>Give me some evidence. I want to write a rebuttal to Cockburn's column as
>it appeared in The Seattle Times.
I will work on this this weekend - I have at least 10 articles by him,
but I have to extract them first from big files.
>I assume
>>he is fed by them. The rumor line is that Cockburn had a dispute with
>>Behar, and the scientologists have been feeding him since 1991.
>
>Please give me some references, something I can use.
Sorry, it's a rumor. Although it's most probably true, I can't prove it.
Tilman
Otmar Lendl
Sherilyn <sher...@sidaway.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>He's not doing himself any favors, either, by referring to Germany as
>"Reich Land".
>
It's linguistic nonsense, too.
I'm a native german speaker, but it took me some seconds to realize
what he means. It sounds much more like someone botched when trying
to write "Reiches Land" (= rich country).
otmar
--
/ Otmar Lendl (le...@cosy.sbg.ac.at) # http://www.cosy.sbg.ac.at/~lendl/ \
\ Killfiles generate SEP fields. Beware: the CE-Norm does not cover them. /
Tilman Hausherr
(posted and mailed)
In <5gcg7v$1i...@nntp2.u.washington.edu>, ce...@u.washington.edu (Ceon
Ramon) wrote:
>In article <33478b10...@news.snafu.de>,
>Tilman Hausherr <til...@xenu.com> wrote:
>>>By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
>>
>>That says it all. Cockburn has supported scientology for years,
>
>Give me some evidence. I want to write a rebuttal to Cockburn's column as
>it appeared in The Seattle Times.
Here the articles. His attacks on Behar and TIME are rather scurrilous
IMO.
When reading consider this:
1. Date in the article is not = date of publication
2. Cockburn's source renames itself from "National Enquirer" to
"National Journal" within just a week!
3. Note the convenient "..." in the DA pack at the end.
CHURCH OF SCIENTOLOGY SUES TIME MAGAZINE
PR Newswire
April 28, 1992, Tuesday
The Church of Scientology International issued the following:
The president of the Church of Scientology International, the
Rev. Heber C. Jentzsch, yesterday announced the filing of a $416
million libel lawsuit against Time-Warner Inc., TIME Inc. Magazine
Co., and reporter Richard Behar in Federal District Court for the
Southern District of New York. The church's suit alleges that TIME
intentionally assigned a biased reporter, Behar, to a story on the
church for the purpose of destroying the religion rather than
reporting on news. Jentzsch called TIME a "ruthless global
propaganda factory in need of an ethics overhaul."
Behar's article, according to the suit, was filled with
falsehoods, innuendo, and name-calling while completely disregarding
anything positive about the church or its commitment to positive
social reforms and the corresponding contributions of its
parishioners.
TIME writer Behar was in the news last week, when national
columnist Alexander Cockburn wrote in The Nation:
"Behar is certainly a terrible journalist. Last year he
published in TIME a violent attack on Scientology, relying heavily on
self-promoting and uncorroborated criminal informants and so filled
with error and prejudice that it aroused considerable sympathy for
the church."
Cockburn was himself a target of Behar's "terrible journalism"
when Cockburn was misidentified in a story Behar wrote for TIME
earlier this year.
Jentzsch stated that his church has not sued any media in the
United States for over 10 years. He pointed out that the final
decision to go ahead with the lawsuit was made "after numerous
attempts to get TIME to correct its demonstrable lies, which the
magazine arrogantly refused, leaving us no alternative but to seek
legal recourse."
Jentzsch went on to say, "TIME tries to play God. TIME attempts
to pass off bigoted propaganda designed to destroy news reporting.
Somebody must stand up to these journalistic terrorists."
The suit seeks damages of $100 for each one of the 4.16 million
copies of TIME that contained the defamatory article.
The lawsuit was prepared by one of the country's leading libel
experts, Jonathan W. Luball of the New York law firm, Morrison,
Cohen, Singer and Weinstein.
CONTACT: The Rev. Heber Jentzsch of the Church of
Scientology International, 213-960-3500
Time's attack on The Nation
Reporter Richard Behar's defense of Bill Clinton
The Nation
May 4, 1992
By Alexander Cockburn
Beneath the banner headline Anatomy of a Smear," Time took up the Mena
saga-subject of a number of columns in this space-last week. The Mena saga
concerns the trafficking of guns and drugs through western Arkansas, with the
involvement of the C.I.A. and the connivance in these illegalities of Ronald
Reagan's and George Bush's Justice Department. As readers of earlier columns
in this series will be aware, the Mena affair does touch upon the Governor of
Arkansas, now approaching nomination as the presidential candidate of the
Democratic Party. State agencies brokered loans to companies associated with
Mena. Political cronies of the Governor were similarly involved. Despite his
campaign denials, loyally echoed by Time, Clinton sat on federal money that
would have helped the investigation forward.
Time's reporter, Richard Behar, took a full page to suggest this was all
nonsense and Governor Bill Clinton was falsely maligned. He went on to attack
"some credulous journalists, including Andrew sic Cockburn, a columnist for the
Nation."
Leaving aside for a moment the matter of Behar's motives, Time's story was
ludicrous, claiming that all reports of contra resupply and C.I.A. activities in
western Arkansas stem from allegations by Terry Reed, a former pilot, trainer of
the contras and associate of George Bush's pal Felix Rodriguez see "Beat the
Devil," February 24 . Reed, according to Behar, says that the drugs and arms
"enterprise" i n Mena was " personally supervised" by Clinton and that Arkansas
had "received 10% of the profits from the operation."
Reed has never said that to anyone we have spoken to. In the extensive clip
file on Mena, including many stories in the Arkansas press dating back to
1987, no trace of any such claims can be found, even in the form of dismissals
of assertions too silly to be taken seriously.
Time's attack has already had one beneficial consequence: Russell Welch, the
prime investigator for the Arkansas State Police into illegal and covert
activities at Mena, has now for the first time confirmed to us that in the
mid-1980s, years before he even heard of Terry Reed, F.B.I. agents tried to warn
him off the investigation. "They came here when the C-130s started coming in,"
Welch told my colleague Bryce Hoffman this week. "These were agents who I'd
worked with and respected. They said that they had heard that the C.I.A. had an
operation at Mena and they didn't want us to screw it up. I took it that
somebody didn't want me to keep up on this."
Welch was reacting to Behar's claim, in a telephone conversation with Bryce,
that all stories about Mena stem from Reed. Welch states flatly that the probe
into drug smuggling and money laundering that he conducted with Bill Duncan,
then a senior I.R.S. investigator, began in 1983, four years before Reed
surfaced and seven years before Reed spoke of his role at Mena to journalists.
Duncan says that "Welch and I received many reports of C.I.A. and/or other
covert operations during our joint investigations during the mid-1980s" and that
the detailed information Reed later supplied fit with testimony and materials
already assembled. In the one conversation The Nation had with Reed, the
former contra pilot trainer was extremely circumspect and made no charges
regarding Clinton. Behar maintains that Reed told him, in the presence of his
lawyer, John Wesley Hall, that Clinton had discussed drug smuggling with him
while smoking marijuana in a van parked outside a busy Mexican restaurant in
Little Rock.
One has to wonder. Duncan tells us that Reed had mentioned speaking
informally to Governor Clinton once, at Juanita's, a place frequented by the
movers and shakers of Little Rock. There was no talk of vans or marijuana.
Reed's lawyer Hall says that his client made none of these wild claims during
the interview. Behar told Bryce that he had secretly recorded his interview,
that "John Hall is lying" but that he couldn't be sure whether these statements
were on the tape or in his notes.
Insight into Behar's reporting techniques is provided by Hall, who was
quoted in Time as saying, "I haven't been able to corroborate Reed's story ,
that's the problem." (The brackets are Behar's.) Hall says that what he told
Behar was, "I haven't been able to corroborate a few of the details of Reed's
story, but that has not been a problem, as everything in our complaint has been
verified." Further evidence of Behar's zeal to mangle reality to fit his thesis
is his preposterous claim in Time that Clinton was "a vocal critic of U.S. aid
to the contras." In the story's wake, Behar was still maintaining this to us.
Clinton, of course, was noted for the readiness with which he acceded to the
Reagan Administration's desire that the Arkansas National Guard be sent down for
training to Honduras. The Governor's staff would scarcely have issued honorary
certificates to the Calero brothers and to Gen. John Singlaub in 1988 if Clinton
had indeed been that figment of Behar's mind, the vocal critic."
What was Behar up to? It's not unknown for news organizations or individual
journalists to curry favor with a presidential contender, particularly if he is
a likely nominee. ABC's airing, as the first item on its nightly newscast, of
anonymous accusations of drug use at Jerry Brown's Los Angeles residence when he
was Governor was thought by some to be an effort to correct the impression that
the network had been down on Clinton. (Roone Arledge, ABC News boss, should be
careful about throwing stones, particularly with anonymous launchers, in this
area. Some years ago, though aware of the importing of cocaine by one of its
better-known employees, ABC made no report of the felony to the proper
authorities and merely prompted the person to move on to remunerative and
conspicuous employment elsewhere. Or so the anonymous sources say.)
This may have been the case with Time. It's certainly true that Behar feels
strongly about me, denouncing my work in harsh terms to Bryce when the latter
reached him in Israel to discuss the story. Without backing into some
biographical complexities, worthy of the Goldberg Variations or the entwined
figures in a Venetian tapestry, inflecting Behar's disposition toward The
Nation, I have to entertain the possibility that Behar's animus toward me, and
consequent eagerness to single me out as credulous," might have something to do
with his sense that I am, as it were, bad for the Jews. This is, at least, the
thought of someone familiar with Behar. Behar's hysteria and zeal for distortion
may be gauged from an eleven-page single-spaced letter he sent to the publisher
of Christopher Byrons's book Skin Tight (about the jean wars), attacking his
former colleague.
Behar is certainly a terrible journalist. Last year he published in Time a
violent attack on Scientology, relying heavily on self-promoting and
uncorroborated criminal informants and so filled with error and prejudice that
it aroused considerable sympathy for the church.
Let us leave the story for the time being with Bill Duncan, who is now in
the Arkansas Attorney General's office. He began working on the Mena affair in
1983. Powerful government forces tried to squelch his testimony to Congress in
1988. He was harassed and resigned from the I.R.S. when it became clear his
federal investigation was being shut down. As he says now, "The problem here is
that there is no formal investigation with subpoena power, which allows sworn
testimony and access to documentary evidence."
Such is the history of federal and state obstructionism, which is proceeding
even today in the offices of Governor Clinton, who since at least 1988 has done
nothing to push the investigation forward. Arkansas Congressman Bill Alexander,
who has been working to get Duncan and Welch back onto the case, himself
complained about the apparent cover-up of activities in Mena. At a Congressional
hearing back in 1989, Alexander said, "While I have the highest possible
clearance that the government can provide for secrecy-being cleared for secrets
that the President and no one else gets-I have still been denied access to
information in a criminal investigation in my state."
With Time's story, it is as if the magazine, back in 1972, had used an
interview with Nixon's Attorney General, John Mitchell, to denounce the
Watergate revelations as "a smear." But then, moments before the final
incriminating tape surfaced, in mid-summer 1974, prompting Nixon's resignation
in August, Time ran a cover story implying that maybe the press was going too
far in pursuing Nixon.
Consider the Lilly
Dispute between Eli Lilly and Co. and Church of Scientology
New Statesman & Society
November 27, 1992
By Alexander Cockburn
Alexander Cockburn reports on another drugs war - between a powerful
corporation with political clout and a despised religion
Eli Lilly and Company, one of America's biggest drug companies, maker of the
anti-depressant Prozac (and, earlier, heroin medicine and LSD), gazes
mournfully at the departing Bush-Quayle administration, offering us a vivid
paradigm of the intersections between government, the press and a powerful
corporation.
After he left the CIA and before he began to run for the 1980 Republican
nomination, Bush worked for Lilly. Later, he dropped the directorship from his
resume and failed to disclose his holding of Lilly stock. As vice-president, he
continued to lobby on behalf of Lilly, whose first Washington lobby office was
set up by Dan Quayle's uncle in 1959.
Lilly's headquarters is in Indianapolis, and synergy with the Indiana-based
Quayle clan was inevitable. The fusion between "public service" and toil for
Lilly has been most egregiously symbolised in the person of Mitch Daniels, who
shuttled between the Reagan and Bush White House and Lilly, as vice-president
for corporate affairs overseeing government lobbying. In November 1991, Daniels
co-chaired a fundraiser that collected US$ 600,000 for Bush-Quayle, including
US$ 12,500 from Lilly executives.
After the 1988 victory, Bush gave Quayle the Council on Competitiveness,
charged with taking calls from corporate chieftains and jumping to their
commands. Ultimately, the council asked Lilly to review the government's plan to
revamp the Food and Drug Administration's approval procedures. Lilly, which
had already won exemptions from the Clean Air Act, received its finest gift in
the FDA's expedited approval of new drugs. This, in effect, would lengthen the
time that a drug company can maintain product exclusivity (17 years from
granting of the patent), hence reap more profits, before competitors can bring a
generic version on to the market.
Lilly is heavily committed to biotech products, with a strategy of buying
rights to other companies' drugs, offering R&D capital and marketing clout.
Crucial here, as always, is the speed of FDA approval. Bush and Quayle singled
out biotech products as needing quicker certification by the FDA
Bush's rabid enthusiasm for biogenetic patenting (most famously evinced in
his refusal to sign the Biodiversity treaty in Rio since it was insufficiently
attentive to the US corporate agenda) reflects the Lilly agenda.
In line with this push toward exclusivity, Bush's FDA began a campaign to
ban sales of more than 400 over-the-counter medicines and ingredients, ranging
from camomile flowers, iodine and isopropyl alcohol, through a slew of holistic
nostrums to aspirin and codeine. Thus, in accord with the essential function of
corporate government - the privatisation of more or less everything - every
pill, every medicine would either be sold under a brand name or issued by
prescription. Finally, the FDA began ceding the testing and approval process
to outside scientists. As Ralph Nader's Public Citizens' Congress Watch put it:
"Not only do outside reviewers lack the training necessary to conduct thorough
safety reviews, but ... most nongovernmental scientists receive funding from the
same drug companies seeking approval for new products."
Here we come to Prozac, a product of immense importance in propping up
Lilly's bottom line - placed on the market in 1987, and by 1990 worth US$ 760
million in sales.
In May 1990, Lilly began warning doctors that problems associated with
Prozac included "suicidal ideation" (a muffled way of saying "wanting to kill
oneself'). Then on 17 July, Rhoda Hala of Long Island sued Lilly for US$ 150
million, charging that Prozac had impelled her to self-destructive acts.
Among the most formidable opponents of Prozac has been the Church of
Scientology, whose affiliate, the Citizens' Commission on Human Rights, was
assiduous in collecting evidence of its impact. The Scientologists have long
been hostile to "psychiatric drugs" like Prozac. By the end of July, the
Citizens' Commission was urging Congress to take Prozac out of circulation.
Between June and August, Lilly's stock dropped by 20 per cent, a US$ 5.8 billion
decrease in overall value.
Eight months later, the tables were turned. On 19 April 1991, The Wall
Street Journal published a violent front-page attack on the Church of
Scientology by Thomas Burton. It conflated the life of Scientology's
founder, L Ron Hubbard, its theology and its onslaught on Prozac in paragraphs
greeted with delight by Eli Lilly and the company's PR firm, Burson Marsteller
(among its former clients, the Argentine junta).
On 28 April came Time's cover story on the Church of Scientology by
Richard Behar, a discursive onslaught depicting the church as a predator on the
disturbed and the unknowing, devoid of virtue. The so-called expose was larded
with errors, including a misstatement of the church's income as US$ 503 million
instead of US$ 4 million. Lilly bought 250,000 extra copies of this edition of
Time and distributed them to doctors across the country. In May, Lilly offered
doctors indemnification against lawsuits if they would continue to prescribe
Prozac.
Meanwhile, the Lilly White House was doing its bit. In its new policy of
letting the fox into the barnyard, the FDA had mustered an advisory committee to
study Prozac; five of its eight members had serious conflicts of interest
including substantial financial backing from Lilly. The 20 September hearing on
Prozac was favourable to Lilly.
The Church of Scientology did not get too much sympathy for the press
assaults against it. The church is reckoned to be a "cult", and, in most
journalism, cults - as opposed to "religions" - are fair game. By contrast,
Bush, Quayle and many officers of Eli Lilly and indeed of the Dow Jones Company,
which publishes the Journal, are adherents of the Christ cult, about which
journalists are uniformly deferential.
The Church of Scientology has made many cogent points about the campaign
mounted by Lilly and its publicists to defend Prozac. There is the matter of
tie-ins, translating into the many tentacles of the Lilly cult. Mitch Daniels
worked for Lilly, Reagan and Bush. Richard Wood, who is Lilly's chairman of the
board, president and chief executive officer, serves on the board of Dow Jones.
We also have the two Nicholas brothers, one of whom - Nicholas J - was, until
this year, chief executive officer of Time Warner, and the other - Peter M - a
senior executive at Eli Lilly, married to Ruth Virginia Lilly.
Then there is the matter of the PR firms. In the wake of the Time attack,
Lilly and other pharmaceutical companies forced the PR firm of Hill and Knowlton
to drop its valuable Church of Scientology account, believing (erroneously)
that Hill and Knowlton was responsible for the church's effective anti-Prozac
campaign. Hill and Knowlton is a subsidiary of the London-based WPP Group, run
by Martin Sorrell. In their vigorous and amusing counter-attack on Time, run
in paid space in USA Today, the Scientologists pointed out that WPP faced a
financial abyss. shortly after WPP aquired J Walter Thompson, the latter lost
the Burger King, Goodyear and Los Angeles Times accounts. Lilly is a JWT client.
After months of menacing talk - detailed in the National Enquirer - about
cancelling its account, Lilly received Sorrell in Indianapolis. He assured them
that Hill and Knowlton would drop the Church of Scientology.
There are other tie-ins. Behar's article in hand, Time went prize grubbing.
Such prizes enhance corporate status and also help credibility when a libel suit
is in the offing (the church finally sued Time in the spring of this year). On 2
May 1992, Behar got a Conscience in Media Award from the American Society of
Journalists and Authors. That same month, Behar picked up the US$ 10,000 Worth
Bingham Prize, given for "public interest" journalism.
Also in May, Behar received a Gerald Loeb Award for Distinguished Business
and Financial Journalism, worth US$ 1,000. The chairman of the Gerald Loeb
Foundation is J Clayburn LaForce, who is also a director of Eli Lilly. Behar
himself has friendly ties with a Scientology foe, the Cult Awareness Network,
a bunch of brainwashers and kidnappers whose conference this year had on its
honorary committee none other than the Loeb Foundation chairman and Lilly
director, J Clayburn LaForce.
I hope the Church of Scientology takes Time to the cleaners. Right now,
Bush is probably shovelling Prozac down his throat along with the regular
Halcion dosage. He'd better watch out for "suicidal ideation".
Eli Lilly and Co.
The Nation
December 7, 1992
By Alexander Cockburn
Paradigms of Power: The Case of Eli Lilly
Eli Lilly and Company, maker of Prozac (and earlier in its career, heroin
medicine and LSD), gazes mournfully at the departing Bush-Quayle Administration,
offering us a vivid paradigm of the intersections between government, the press
and a powerful corporation. I take as point of departure a fine article on
Lilly by Jim Hogshire in The Bloomington Voice for September 30 of this year,
supplemented with researches by my colleague Billy Treger.
After he left the C.I.A. and before he began to run for the 1980 Republican
nomination, Bush worked for Lilly. Later, he dropped the Lilly directorship from
his resume and failed to disclose his holding of Lilly stock. As Vice President,
Bush continued to lobby on behalf of Lilly, whose first Washington lobbying
office was set up by Dan Quayle's uncle, back in 1959.
Lilly's headquarters is in Indianapolis, and synergy with the Indiana-based
Quayle clan was inevitable. The fusion between "public service" and toil for
Lilly has been most egregiously symbolized in the person of Mitch Daniels, who
shuttled between the Reagan and Bush White House and Lilly as vice president for
corporate affairs, overseeing government lobbying. In November of 1991, Daniels
co-chaired a fundraiser that collected $ 600,000 for Bush-Quayle, including $
12,500 from Lilly executives.
After the 1988 victory Bush gave Quayle the Council on Competitiveness,
charged with taking calls from corporate chieftains and their lobbyists and
jumping to their commands. Ultimately the council asked Lilly to review the
government's plan to revamp the F.D.A.'s approval procedures. Lilly, which had
already won exemptions from the Clean Air Act, received its finest gift in the
F.D.A.'s expedited approval of new drugs. This, in effect, would lengthen the
time that a drug company can maintain product exclusivity, hence reap more
profits, before competitors can bring a generic version on the market.
Lilly is heavily committed to biotech products, with a strategy of buying
rights to other companies' biotech drugs, offering R&D capital and marketing
clout. Crucial here, as always, is the speed of F.D.A. approval. Bush and Quayle
singled out biotech products as needing quicker certification by the F.D.A.
Bush's rabid enthusiasm for biogenetic patenting (most famously evinced in
his refusal to sign the Biodiversity Treaty in Rio, since it was insufficiently
attentive to the U.S. corporate agenda in this area) reflects the Lilly agenda.
In line with this push toward exclusivity, Bush's F.D.A. began a campaign to
ban sales of more than 400 over-the-counter medicines and ingredients, ranging
from chamomile flowers, iodine and isopropyl alcohol, through a slew of holistic
nostrums, to aspirin and codeine. Thus, in accord with the essential function of
corporate government--the privatization of more or less everything--every pill,
every medicine would either be sold under a brand name or issued by
prescription. Under the F.D.A.'s proposed rules, Macbeth's witches would have
been gazing at an empty caldron.
Finally, the F.D.A. began ceding the testing and approval process to outside
scientists. As Ralph Nader's Public Citizen's Congress Watch put it, "Not only
do outside reviewers lack the training necessary to conduct thorough safety
reviews, but ... most nongovernmental scientists receive funding from the same
drug companies seeking approval for new products."
Here we come to the antidepressant drug Prozac, a product of immense
importance in propping up Lilly's bottom line--placed on the market in 1987, and
by 1990 doing $ 760 million in sales.
Enter Prozac
In July of 1990, Lilly faced a Prozac crisis. Already in May the company had
been warning doctors that problems associated with Prozac included "suicidal
ideation" (a muffled way of saying "wanting to kill oneself"), and on July 17,
Rhoda Hala of Long Island sued Lilly for $ 150 million in damages, charging that
Prozac had impelled her to self-destructive acts.
Among the most formidable opponents of Prozac has been the Church of
Scientology, whose affiliate the Citizens Commission on Human Rights was
assiduous in collecting evidence of Prozac's impact. The Scientologists have
long been hostile to "psychiatric drugs" like Prozac or Ritalin, a Ciba-Geigy
product against which the church has carried out a prolonged and admirable
campaign. By the end of July the Citizens Commission was urging Congress to take
Prozac out of circulation. Between June and August, Lilly's stock dropped by 20
percent, a $ 5.8 billion decrease in overall value.
Eight months later the tables were turned. On April 19, 1991, after a series
of matter-of-fact articles about the Prozac furor, The Wall Street Journal
published a violent front-page attack on the Church of Scientology by Thomas
Burton. It conflated the life of Scientology's founder, L. Ron Hubbard, its
theology and its onslaught on Prozac in paragraphs greeted with delight in the
public affairs department of Eli Lilly and the company's P.R. firm, Burson
Marsteller (among its former clients, the Argentine junta), which is where a
cynical reader of the Journal might have supposed Burton's article to have been
inspired.
On April 28 came release of Time's cover story on the Church of
Scientology by Richard Behar, a discursive onslaught depicting the church as a
predator on the disturbed and the unknowing, devoid of virtue. The so-called
expose was larded with errors--not unusual for Behar--including a misstatement
of the church's 1987 income as $ 503 million instead of $ 4 million, a blunder
with which Time has said it is "comfortable." Lilly bought an extra print order
of 250,000 copies of this edition of Time and distributed them to doctors
across the country. In May, Lilly offered doctors indemnification against
lawsuits if they would continue to prescribe Prozac.
Meanwhile, the Lilly White House was doing its bit. In its new policy of
letting the fox into the barnyard, the F.D.A. had mustered an advisory committee
to study Prozac; five of its eight members had serious conflicts of interest,
including substantial financial backing from Lilly. The September 20 hearing on
Prozac was favorable to Lilly.
Cults Ancient and Modern
The Church of Scientology did not get too much sympathy for the press
assaults against it. The church is reckoned to be a "cult," and in most
journalism, mainstream or underground, cults--as opposed to "religions" -- are
fair game. In his Journal piece, Burton had rich sport with Hubbard's
quasi-Gnostic constructs of "thetans" and "engrams."
By contrast, Bush, Quayle and many officers of Eli Lilly and indeed of the
Dow Jones Company, which publishes the Journal, are adherents of the Christ
cult, about which journalists are uniformly deferential. (The Christ cult
anchors its belief system to the claims of a carpenter's wife nearly 2,000 years
ago that she had been possessed by God, producing therafter a child who
demanded recognition as the "Son of God," claiming to have been sent to Earth to
"save mankind." Celebrants of the Christ cult periodically eat a biscuit,
claiming that it is the flesh of the cult's founder. Many cult members have been
convicted of sexual crimes and have killed in the name of their god.)
The Church of Scientology has made many cogent points about the campaign
mounted by Lilly and its publicists to defend Prozac. There is the matter of
tie-ins, translating into the many tentacles of the Lilly cult. Mitch Daniels
worked for Lilly, Reagan and Bush. Richard Wood, who is Lilly's chairman of the
board, president and chief executive officer, serves on the board of Dow Jones.
We also have the two Nicholas brothers, one of whom--Nicholas J.--was until this
year C.E.O. of Time Warner, and the other of whom--Peter M.--was a senior
executive at Eli Lilly, married to Ruth Virginia Lilly.
Then there is the matter of the P.R. firms. In the wake of the Time attack,
Lilly and other pharmaceutical companies forced the P.R. firm of Hill and
Knowlton to drop its valuable Church of Scientology account, believing
(erroneously) that Hill and Knowlton was responsible for the church's effective
anti-Prozac campaign. Hill and Knowlton is a subsidiary of the London-based WPP
Group, run by Martin Sorrell. In their vigorous and amusing counterattack on
Time, run in paid space in USA Today, the Scientologists point out that WPP,
after a series of highly leveraged buyouts of such conglomerates as J. Walter
Thompson and Ogilvy and Mather, faced a financial abyss. Soon after WPP acquired
J. Walter Thompson, the latter lost the Burger King, Goodyear and Los Angeles
Times accounts. Lilly is a J.W.T. client.
After months of menacing talk--detailed in the National Journal--about
canceling its account, Lilly received Sorrell in Indianapolis. Sorrell assured
the company that Hill and Knowlton would drop the Church of Scientology, a
promise he instantly made good on. On computations by the church, in the spring
of 1991 some 15 percent of Time's total advertising volume--$ 57
million--originated with WPP-controlled advertising and marketing companies. So
WPP was not entirely without means to pressure Time Warner, thus satisfying its
own threatening client in Indianapolis.
There are other tie-ins. Behar's article in hand, Time went prize grubbing.
Such prizes enhance corporate status and also help credibility when a libel suit
is probably in the offing (the church finally sued Time in the spring of this
year). On May 2, 1992, after a Time submission, Behar got a Conscience in Media
Award from the American Society of Journalists and Authors. (The A.S.J.A.
professes to oppose those using advertising to influence editorial content. In
this context we might note that at the November 22, 1991, banquet of the New
York Financial Writers Association, Behar was a guest at one of the three Burson
Marsteller tables.) That same month Behar picked up the $ 10,000 Worth Bingham
Prize, given for "public interest" journalism.
Also in May, Behar received a Gerald Loeb Award for Distinguished Business
and Financial Journalism, worth $ 1,000. The chairman of the Gerald R. Loeb
Foundation, also dean of the John E. Anderson School of Management at U.C.L.A.,
also chairman of the panel making the choice for the Loeb Award, is J. Clayburn
LaForce, who is also a director of Eli Lilly. Fran Speers, president of the Loeb
Foundation, disclosed that LaForce, anticipating charges of conflict of
interest, had taken himself off the judging panel, an act that has the same
moral force as Vernon Jordan announcing that his $ 50,000 annual fee from
RJR-Nabisco will in no way affect his judgment in helping to nominate the
Secretary of Health and Human Services in the Clinton Administration.
Behar himself has friendly ties with a Scientology foe, the Cult Awareness
Network, a bunch of brainwashers and kidnappers, whose conference this year had
on its honorary committee none other than the Loeb Foundation chairman and Lilly
director, J. Clayburn LaForce, and which conferred upon Behar the Leo J. Ryan
Award.
I hope the church takes Time to the cleaners. Right now Bush is probably
shoveling Prozac down his throat along with the regular Halcion dosage. He'd
better watch out for "suicidal ideation."
Soap Opera Digest: 'The Clintons'
Bill becomes President. Hillary plans for their new home in Washington but
is troubled by a call from an old friend from law school who asks if he will
pass along his resume. He hints that he might release intimate letters unless
she helps his career. Tipper worries about Al's apparent indifference and
coldness. She wonders whether to confide in Al's close friend Marty Peretz but
does not fully trust him. Al and Hillary meet privately to discuss transition
strategies and are overheard by Derek, who tells Brooke, who tells Cody, who
tells Tipper, who is hurt and angry and vows to shun the inauguration.
* Clintons executive producer, Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, denies rumors of
fierce set feuds between Clintons veteran Mickey Kantor and the soap's
publicist, George Stephanopoulos. She says ratings have been strong, laughingly
denies Globe & Mail cover story alleging Clintons lead star replaced by alien.
Socks/cat food promotional tie-ins "surpassing all expectations," according to
Colgate-Palmolive officials. The company owns Science Diet.
Prozac days, Halcion nights: profits and pills
Editorial
The Nation
January 4, 1993
By William Styron
In the spring of 19911 was invited to give the keynote address at a
symposium to be held in Washington, D.C., for the purpose of discussing
depression and the ways to cope with the disease. The gathering, I was told, was
to be made up of what might loosely be called semiprofessionals, that is, people
who, though not psychiatrists or therapists, had an interest in knowing more
about depressive illnesses; they would include social and welfare workers,
hospital administrators, public health and police officials, paramedics and the
like. As a result of my book Darkness Visible, in which I describe my successful
struggle with severe clinical depression, I have received a lot of such
invitations, and accepted a few (perhaps more than I should have) out of some
missionary urge; many people who finally vanquish melancholia's unspeakable
demons have the charitable impulse to tell others similarly afflicted not to
give up hope, that they can get well. Such support is of critical importance to
someone felled by depression. Since countless people don't think they can make
it, and play seriously with the idea of suicide, the recovered victim is walking
testimony to the radiant fact that most sufferers, despite their nearly
unbearable ordeal, do indeed get well; the very presence of the survivor and his
words of encouragement can be lifesaving.
This message of hope was central to my little book; its upbeat nature, not
falsely optimistic but rooted in the simple reality that treatment is available
and usually effective, would make the foundation for the opening speech I had
been asked to give. But I began to have second thoughts. While I still felt the
note of cheer was important, and resolved to begin in that spirit, it seemed to
me that this might be an opportune moment to sound a warning. And the warning
should be one especially meaningful to the participants in the symposium, who I
felt had to be put on their guard about a matter that I continue to feel is
neglected or consciously shunted aside in most forums on the treatment of
depression, and that is the misuse of medications, primarily tranquilizers.
Tranquilizers should not be confused with antidepressants, although they are
often prescribed to sedate people with depression. I wanted to point out that my
own bleak experience had convinced me that virtually all the commonly prescribed
minor tranquilizers (also known as benzodiazepines) are of questionable value
even for healthy people; for those suffering from depression they should be
shunned like cyanide, and of them all the most indisputably monstrous is a tiny
gray-green oval called triazolam, better known by the brand name Halcion.
Halcion has become a kind of famous national gargoyle, part nightmare, part
joke. People who haven't heard of Listerine know the name Halcion. Wasn't
Halcion the sleeping medicine George Bush was on when he barred in the lap of
the Prime Minister of Japan? TV comics have made sport of it. But Halcion is not
a very funny pill, as I discovered through personal experience. I took this
tranquilizer as a remedy for the insomnia that so often accompanies depression.
Although the depression I describe in my book was not directly caused by
Halcion, and I said as much, I've become convinced that the pill greatly
exaggerated my disorder, intensified my suicidal feelings and finally forced me
to be hospitalized. I was not aware of this cause-and-effect relationship at the
time, for when my illness occurred, in 1985, Halcion had yet to be implicated as
the origin of such dire mischief, and I made no connection myself.
Five years later, however, when I was writing Darkness Visible, I was able
retrospectively to perceive the connection, greatly helped by the amount of
information that was suddenly being made public concerning Halcion's malign
effects. When the book was published I was stunned by the volume of mail I
received, but nothing impressed me more than the large number of
correspondents--l would estimate perhaps as many as 15 or 20 percent--who spoke
of their own Halcion-induced horrors, homicidal fantasies, near-suicides and
other psychic convulsions. This outpouring has given me a rare perspective on
all aspects of depression, including the effect (or non-effect) of medications.
Other pills were mentioned, notably Prozac, the antidepressant, which appears to
be beneficial for many people; the spontaneous testimonials in favor of that
medication convince me that, if my thick archive of correspondence is a
revealing cross section, Eli Lilly's bonanza drug cannot be lightly dismissed.
But Prozac, scarcely an all-purpose miracle medicine, is merely an improvement
on an old formula. What is distressing is the fact that a significant number of
people do have very bad reactions to Prozac, chiefly suicidal impulses (the
letters to me reflect this), and it is Lilly's concerted efforts to minimize
such sinister side-effects that remain even now indefensible.
In a recent Nation column "Beat the Devil" December 7 , Alexander Cockburn
describes how Lilly, annoyed by evidence that its remedy might cause such
harmful reactions (while already suffering a $ 150 million lawsuit based on
this proposition), and further distressed by attacks on their product by the
Church of Scientology, turned matters around by enlisting the press in a
campaign that resulted in lurid onslaughts against the church in The Wail Street
Journal and in Time, where the church was the subject of a cover story. There
were other craftily orchestrated ER. tie-ins, but this was basically the old
chronicle of overpowering corporate muscle and deafening propaganda,
successfully applied. Meanwhile, the advisory committee of the Food and Drug
Administration that was organized to study Prozac--five of whose eight members,
according to Cockburn, had financial backing from Lilly--gave the medication its
O.K.
I'm afraid my esteem for the Church of Scientology, unlike that of
Cockburn, is lower even than my esteem for Time. The church's indiscriminate
attacks on virtually all psychiatric medicines is nothing but medieval zealotry,
and one would wish that the adversarial voice raised against Lilly were backed
by credentials sounder than those deriving from L. Ron Hubbard's loony theology.
While Cockburn's attempt to incriminate Lilly for its sorry excesses is a worthy
one, he never addresses the nature of Prozac, which for many people is a very
effective antidepressant. It is not a wonder drug but it is by no means without
value, and, as 1 say, my correspondence has reflected this fact. Lilly's wrong
springs not so much from its product as from a huckersterism that admits to no
deficiencies.
But no one who wrote to me had anything but ghastly tales to tell about
Halcion, and in my Washington talk it seemed necessary to focus on my own
devastating experiences with this pill, made by The Upjohn Company. Many years
ago the phrase "ethical drug manufacturers" came into being as a result of the
industry's justifiable desire to differentiate its members from the
patent-medicine makers, ostensibly ethical cretins, who peddled Lydia Pinkham's
Compound, snake oil, Dr. Moog's Love Balm, magic crystal beads, Spanish fly,
Peruna and other shady nostrums. But even the noblest ethics suffer attrition,
and it is plain that various corporations have become less ethical than others,
some to the point of knavery. If there are the Tiffanys of the trade--I've heard
people in the know about such topics murmur Merck with reverence-there are also
those at the bottom end, and there Upjohn is clearly the Crazy Eddie of the
industry. Not long ago The Nation ran a piece describing the disgraceful hype
Upjohn brought to bear in. advertising its potent and (like all benzodiazepines)
potentially hazardous anti-anxiety drug Xanax, another multimillion-dollar
winner, attempting to make it appear as free of the need for precaution as
Gatorade see Cynthia Cotts, "The Pushers in the Suites," August 31/ September 7
. Even closer to its snake-oil origins is Upjohn's recent campaign for liquid
Rogaine, an only marginally effective treatment for baldness whose capacities,
according to Consumer Reports, the company has attempted to inflate by putting
it into a totally ineffective shampoo called Progaine.
But beyond this relatively commonplace sleaze lies Upjohn's refusal to face
Up to the Frankenstein's monster its Kalamazoo laboratories let loose in the
shape of Halcion. Public awareness of the dangers of the pill dates back to
1979, when a Dutch psychiatrist, Dr. C. van der Kroef, disquieted by the
psychotic symptoms reported by many patients taking Halcion, carried out an
in-depth investigation and sounded the alarm; the pill was soon categorically
banned in the Netherlands. Shamefully, Upjohn's own awareness of the serious
risk inherent in its medication goes back to the early 1970s, when the company's
experiments with a volunteer group of inmates at the Jackson State Prison in
Michigan came up with disturbing-or what should have been disturbing--results.
The human guinea pigs developed all sorts of aberrant reactions-- memory loss,
paranoid feelings--that were not consonant with the safe, readily tolerated
hypnotic that Halcion was intended by its makers to be.
About a year ago, both in a 60 Minutes program and a BBC documentary (in
which I had a cameo role as a damaged but recovered victim), evidence that can
only be described as revolting revealed that Upjohn had had full knowledge of
the injurious nature of its product but put it on the market anyway. After that,
sales of Halcion, which had been a top earner for years, were mercifully slowed
by the adverse publicity it received; the pill has been implicated in numerous
suicides and acts of violence, including several murders, the most recent of
which, in Dallas County, Texas, resulted in a jury deciding that the drug was
partly responsible for the killing.
Halcion has now been banned in Britain and four other countries. Despite
this and its appalling record, and the obvious fact that other readily available
tranquilizers don't produce such calamitous side-effects, Halcion last spring
was once more approved by the ever-supine Food and Drug Administration, which
insisted only that Upjohn strengthen its warning about dosage. In fairness, it
should be pointed out that it is frequently an inadvertent overdose--though more
often than not an extremely small one, amounting to a fraction of a
milligram--that produces these evil reactions. Even so, the normally prescribed
dosage has many times precipitated disastrous behavior. In any case, viewing the
ED.A.'s - cavalier decision, one wonders how long aspirin would remain on the
market if a small overdose of one more than the commonly recommended two tablets
caused some people to lapse into paranoia and violence.
At the beginning of his new novel, Operation Shylock, which I've read in
manuscript and which will be published this year, Philip Roth has a brilliant
and harrowing description of Halcion-induced madness, based on his own
experience in 1988, when he had been innocently taking the pill for sleep after
minor knee surgery. "I thought about killing myself all the time. Usually I
thought of drowning: in the little pond across the road from the house... if I
weren't so horrified of the water snakes there nibbling at my corpse
afterward; in the picturesque big lake only a few miles away... if I weren't so
frightened of driving out there alone. When we came to New York that May... I
opened the window of our fourteenth-floor hotel room... and, leaning as far out
over the interior courtyard as I could while still holding tight to the sill, I
told myself, 'Do it. No snakes to stop you now.'"
Withdrawal from Halcion invariably results in a disappearance of the
symptoms, and Roth of course survived, as did I. But the ordeal verges on being
beyond description in its nearly unalleviated anguish. Like Roth, I thought
about drowning. And like Roth's, my own trial began with a surgical problem: A
long-ago injury to my neck, received when I was a Marine in the Korean War, had
caused a nerve compression that resulted in my losing much strength in my fight
arm. An operation in Boston was imperative but was delayed, and during the
two-week wait I had time to brood and was ravaged by anxiety. The anxiety began
to hinder sleep, and to conquer the sleeplessness I commenced taking Halcion,
still serenely unaware of the pill's involvement in my breakdown four years
before, which was described in Darkness Visible. I had gone to California,
fulfilling an obligation to teach at Claremont College. There, in that sunny
landscape, I was all but totally consumed by thoughts of suicide that were like
a form of lust. Somehow I managed to get through my classroom duties, but my
mind was never free of exquisite pain, a pain that had but one
solution--self-extinction. One night, visiting at my daughter's house in Santa
Monica, I stayed awake for hours thinking only of walking out into the ocean and
being engulfed by the waves. At Claremont, I kept constant schemes in mind to
have my wife lured away so I could secrete myself in a closet and end it all
with a plastic bag.
I held on to my sanity long enough to fly back to Boston for the operation.
Although the procedure was a complete success, the raging depression hung on
during the postoperative convalescence. Many times I contemplated sneaking out
of the hospital and leaping into the Charles River from the bridge I could see
from my window. Then suddenly a curious intervention occurred. I was consulting
with a staff psychiatrist, and he asked about my sleeping habits. I told him
that I was sleeping poorly but that what sleep I did get was courtesy of
Halcion. The eyes of the doctor, a man plainly privy to the latest
pharmaceutical alarms, sharpened interestingly, and it required no more than a
few seconds for him to tell me that he was switching me immediately to a new
drug. A day or two later, peering into my shaving mirror, I realized the bizarre
configuration around my lips was a smile. Thus began my education about Upjohn's
baneful remedy, and my shaky and haunted but eventually full recovery...
This was the chronicle I related to the audience in Washington, not the
gladdening sermon that had been expected of me, perhaps, but a cautionary tale
that I felt very much needed telling. But I must back up for a moment. Just a
few days before my appearance the lecture agent who had arranged my visit called
me with some stimulating but hardly surprising news. The fee I was receiving for
my lecture, he said, would be paid by Eli Lilly and Company, makers of Prozac,
which was underwriting the symposium. Did I have any qualms about the
pharmaceutical tie-in? Not really, I said, though it might depend on the
company; I'd never take a penny from Upjohn. Drug companies often financed
psychiatric conferences. It was not a practice I was enthusiastic about and if I
were in the profession I might feel embarrassed; as a layperson, however, I
would feel compromised only if an attempt was made to censor or fiddle around
with what I had to say. I told the lecture agent that I planned to make a
vigorous attack on Halcion. I heard the agent catch his breath, saying he was
happy the pill wasn't made by Lilly.
The word of my coming animadversions must have been leaked in advance.
Minutes before the lecture I was confronted by a gentleman who identified
himself as the acting director of the National Institute of Mental Health.
Although friendly enough, he appeared a little distracted and nervous. After my
talk, which was in a hotel ballroom, there was a press meeting billed as "A
Conference With William Styron." At the conference, where there was a microphone
and podium, I faced twenty-five or thirty journalists, most of them reporters
from medical and other scientific publications. They seemed generous in spirit
and attentive as I approached the podium, and I felt they had reacted with
considerable interest to my talk. I sensed the acting director hovering near.
The first question was, "Mr. Styron, that was quite a story about Halcion. Now,
what is your opinion concerning Prozac?" I replied that I had very mixed
feelings about Prozac. Although I had never used it myself, I had gained
contradictory evidence that it was quite beneficial for many people, while for
some others it had no effect at all; for a significant few it produced sinister
reactions, primarily suicidal fantasies. The many letters I had received, I
continued.
But I got no further. Courteously, the acting director of the National
Institute of Mental Health edged me away from the microphone. Every medication
has unpredictable side-effects, he said, in an I'm-taking-charge voice, but it
has been clearly determined that Prozac is virtually free of the serious
reactions that have plagued antidepressants in the past. No safer and more
reliable treatment for depression has ever been available to therapists and
physicians--a truly remarkable development in psychopharmacology. Any more
questions?
There were, indeed, quite a few more questions, but none were--or could
be--addressed to me, since the microphone had been, as far as I could tell,
unbudgeably pre-empted. As the minutes ticked past I found myself sidling ever
more lonesomely off to the side of the podium. The gathering had become a
conference with the acting director of the National Institute of Mental Health.
There was no more talk of Halcion but a great deal of talk about Prozac, most of
it from the acting director, all of it fulsome and rich with commendation. After
fifteen minutes the acting director briskly declared the meeting closed. As I
wandered out I felt so ludicrously discomfited that I barely heard the canny,
sympathetic Deep South voice of one of the journalists: "Boy, the guv'ment did
shut you up, didn't they?"
COLUMN LEFT/ ALEXANDER COCKBURN
FROM SALEM TO WACO, BY WAY OF THE NAZIS
THE DAVIDIANS WERE A 'CULT,' AND THUS EXEMPTED FROM JUSTICE AND NORMAL RULES OF
EVIDENCE.
Los Angeles Times
April 27, 1993, Tuesday, Home Edition
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN, Alexander Cockburn writes for the Nation and
other publications.
Rodney King's beating captured the nation's attention for more than a year.
The extermination of more than 80 Americans during an armed attack by federal
agents outside Waco is already slipping off the front pages.
But then, King is a black man whose maltreatment came to symbolize police
violence against the poor. The Davidians were "a cult," and thus exempted from
justice and compassion. Atty. Gen. Janet Reno and her boss have thrown in
allegations of child abuse against David Koresh, the Davidians' leader. To call
someone a child abuser these days is like calling someone a communist in the
1950s or a witch in the 17th Century. Normal standards of evidence or reason
don't apply.
There was compelling evidence, claimed President Clinton's spokesman George
Stephanopoulos, that the children were being abused, even to instruction on how
to "clamp down" on cyanide pills. In fact, the FBI has conceded that there's no
evidence for these chilling claims. But child abuse is a headline-grabber and
conscience-absolver, as Reno knows well from her days as a prosecutor in Dade
County.
Locked in a fierce reelection battle for that office in 1984, Reno seized the
initiative with the highly publicized prosecution of a Latino couple running a
baby-sitting service. After psychiatric manipulation straight out of Stalin's
treason trials, the wife was induced to testify against husband, alleging ritual
abuse of her and her children. Reno had great personal involvement in this
process, even holding the wife's hand during her depositions.
Reno had less success in another "satanic abuse" case that she launched in
1989 against a 14-year Dutch boy, whom she managed to hold in the Dade Juvenile
Detention Center, often in solitary, for 20 months before a jury found him
innocent.
After that trial, a child psychiatrist named Stephen Ceci who testified for
the boy said of Reno, that "given the concern over child-abuse issues, she
(Reno) may be trumpeted as a kind of hero, a woman who will go the extra mile to
make sure our children are safe."
Outside Waco, Reno again went that extra mile, rejecting mediation offered by
prominent religious groups. Instead, for six hours the FBI pumped CS2 into a
compound containing children too small to wear the gas masks allegedly
stockpiled by the Davidians. It now seems likely that the M-60 tank knocked over
kerosene for the compound's lamps (which the Feds knew about) and almost
everyone burned alive.
This appalling event took place on April 19, 1943, the 50th anniversary of
the Nazi assault on the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw. The Nazis too regarded "cults"
as ripe candidates for persecution. On July 20, 1937, the SS Reichsfuehrer
Reinhard Heydrich ordered the banning and persecution of small religious sects,
including the Seventh-day Adventists.
Today, in the United States, similar intolerance is being sedulously fanned,
not only by such bodies as the Cult Awareness Network, but by powerful
publications such as Time magazine, which illustrated its 1990 cover story
attack on the Church of Scientology with a graphic of an octopus, the
identical graphic used by the Nazis in their persecution of the sects.
The role in Waco of the Cult Awareness Network, whose members are
respectfully cited in the press as "experts," may well have been crucial. The
network's president, Patricia Ryan, was quoted by the Houston Post on April 9 as
saying that the FBI should use any means necessary to arrest Koresh, including
lethal force. Soon after the initial Feb. 28 federal raid, another
"deprogrammer" named Rick Ross, long associated with the network, said on
television that he had "consulted" with the ATF before the raid. The network's
former executive director, Priscilla Coates, raised allegations of child abuse.
The Cult Awareness Network has a long record of persecution of members of
what it deems to be cults. It promoted the infamous and illegal raid on the
Island Pond commune in Vermont in 1984. Some of its members either face
kidnaping charges or have already been convicted in other cases.
Outside Waco, the counsels of such experts assisted in what should be
regarded as the Bay of Pigs of the Clinton Administration, an event that will
forever mark his term. And as a final horrible irony in this saga of Nazi-like
affront to religious tolerance, the deprogrammers are demanding that they be
allowed to exercise their dark arts on the burned Davidian survivors so that
they testify correctly and desist from maintaining -- as they have -- that no
mass suicide was under way. The FBI says "this is worth considering," but the
decision is up to the U.S. attorney.
Onward to Salem: gas, fire and brainwashing, courtesy of the Justice
Department.
100 days of Clinton; includes related information on Army's domestic
spy network and its investigations of African American leaders since 1917
New Statesman & Society
April 30, 1993
By Alexander Cockburn
Ahoy there, Clinton-lovers, the first 100 days are just about up, and what
does the record show about President William Jefferson Clinton in this formative
phase?
To start in the foothills of foreign policy: he sold out the Haitian
refugees (US press very cooperative in this regard, suppressing any mention of a
recent statement from the Organization of American States, which called on the
US to review its policy of turning back refugees on the high seas, thus
breaching international law); he let a Bush appointee, Herman Cohen, run Africa
policy, essentially giving a green light to Jonas Savimbi to butcher thousands
in Angola; he put Israel's lobbyists in charge of Middle East policy and went
along with the mass expulsions organised by Yitzhak Rabin; he offered unstinting
support to Boris Yeltsin in his attempt to abrogate the Russian constitution.
He's waffled so far on Bosnia, which is all to the good, but contrary to what he
promised.
Launching America into its post-cold war era: he bolstered the arms industry
with a budget in which projected spending for 1993 is higher in real terms than
average annual spending during the cold war from 1950 onwards; he wants to
increase secret intelligence spending; he's maintained full funding for the War
on Drugs (a total failure), and proposes to put 100,000 more police on the
streets, which is an increase in the total national force of close on 20 per
cent. Clinton is appalling on crime, full of such crowd-pleasers as "tougher
sentences for criminals with guns", as if criminals are now getting off lightly
with the Armed Criminal Career Act, which imposes 25 years without parole for
possession (not use) of a firearm by a felon.
In the economic area: Clinton put Wall Street in charge of national strategy
and managed to go down to defeat on the extraordinarily modest jobs programme
that was meant to partner deficit reduction (the Senate Republicans filibustered
the $ 6 billion-odd jobs appropriation to death); he surrendered to western
senators on raised fees for grazing and mineral leasing rights on public lands,
and looks flaccid on forest conservation; he's pushing forward with the North
American Free Trade Agreement as negotiated by his predecessor with Mexico and
Canada; and last week OK'd the neutering of the side agreements that he proposed
during the campaign as protections for workers and the environment - a big
sell-out, that one. And, with Mrs Hillary Rodham Clinton at the wheel, he
ignores the desire of about 60 per cent of Americans for single-payer national
health insurance, opting instead for a version of "managed competition" that
leaves the insurance companies in charge of the show.
I know. Clinton's no friend of the unborn and unwanted, and that's enough to
keep most liberals happy. However, having been told that they can enlist in the
catering corps or be behind-the-lines hairdressers, gays are less sanguine than
they were about Mr C; and environmentalists have been shaken by an apparent
thumbs-up being given to the East Liverpool incinerator in Ohio, but still have
hopes.
Labour is staking all on some hopes of labour law reform, which would
optimally end the legal use by employers of permanent replacements during and
after a strike. Clinton and his labour secretary, Robert Reich, are using polite
rhetoric on this one, but the real aim of the Clinton team is to nullify that
portion of the 1936 Wagner Act that bans company unions. The intent is to allow
worker/management cooperative negotiating units at the plant level.
Some labour academics like Richard Freeman of Harvard or Joel Rogers of
Wisconsin have endorsed this approach, presumably swayed by the thought that
about 84 per cent of American workers are outside unions and that the
negotiating units would at least open the door to organisation. But a more
realistic assessment is that these units undercut unions and, after three or
four years, become another bureaucratic filter to dissipate labour militancy.
But, of course, with their notions of partnership, and "win-win" paradigms, the
Clintonites love the idea.
Bottom line: Clinton has been OK on anything irrelevant to the stability of
power and wealth. He has played to the centre-right, ditched his liberal base
and has gone down to defeat at the hands of Senate minority leader, Bob Dole.
Hence, prospects for reform in the Clinton administration are now pretty much
nil, and thus military intervention in Bosnia a likely option.
Now to Clinton's Bay of Pigs, the Waco killings, sponsored by the US Justice
Department. Rodney King's beating by Los Angeles cops captured the nation's
attention for over a year. The extermination of more than 80 American and
British subjects during an armed attack by federal agents outside Waco is
already slipping off the front pages.
But then, Rodney King is a black man whose maltreatment came to symbolise
police violence against the poor. The Davidians were "a cult", and thus exempted
both from justice and compassion. Just to be on the safe side, Attorney-General
Janet Reno and her boss have now thrown in allegations of child abuse against
David Koresh, the Davidians' leader. To call someone a child abuser these days
is like calling someone a communist in the 1950s, or a witch back in the 17th
century. Normal standards of evidence or even reason cease to apply. There was
compelling evidence, claimed President Clinton's spokesman George
Stephanopoulos, that the children in the compound were being abused, even to the
level of instruction on how to "clamp down" on cyanide pills.
In fact, the FBI has conceded that there's absolutely no evidence for these
chilling claims. But "child abuse" is a headline-grabber and
conscience-absolver, as Janet Reno knows well from her days as prosecutor in
Dade County (see NSS, 19 March 1993).
Locked in a fierce re-election battle for that office back in 1984, she
seized the initiative with the highly publicised prosecution of an Hispanic
couple running a baby-sitting service. After psychiatric manipulation straight
out of one of Stalin's treason trials, the wife was induced to testify against
her husband, alleging ritual abuse of her and the children. Reno had great
personal involvement in this confessional process, even holding the wife, Ileana
Fuster's hand, during the depositions.
The Fusters were convicted. Reno had less success in another "Satanic abuse"
case she launched in 1989 against a 14-year-old Dutch boy named Bobby Fijnje,
whom she managed to hold in the Dade Juvenile Detention Centre, often in
solitary, for 20 months, before a jury found him innocent.
After that trial, a child psychiatrist named Stephen Ceci who testified for
Fijnje said of Reno that: "Given the concern over child-abuse issues, she Reno
may be trumpeted as a kind of hero, a woman who will go the extra mile to make
sure our children are safe."
So, outside Waco, Reno duly went that extra mile. For six hours, the FBI
pumped CS2 gas into a compound containing children too small even to wear the
gas masks allegedly stockpiled by the Davidians. There are still suggestions
that the M-60 tank knocked over the propane or kerosene for the compound's
lamps (which the Feds also knew about), which resulted in almost everyone being
burnt alive.
This appalling and entirely avoidable event took place on exactly the 50th
anniversary of the Nazi assault, 19 April 1943, on the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw,
whose tank commanders and flame dispensers were perhaps also astonished (as were
the Feds) that the ghetto mothers did not seize their children and rush them
towards the attackers in search of safety.
The Nazis too regarded "cults" as ripe candidates for persecution. On 20
July 1937, the SS Reichsfuhrer Reinhard Heydrich ordered the banning and
persecution of small religious sects, including the Bahais, theosophical groups,
and the Seventh Day Adventists. The Gestapo claimed such action was required
because of the sects' menace to society.
Today, in the US, similar intolerance is being sedulously fanned, not only
by such bodies as the Cult Awareness Network, but by powerful publications such
as Time magazine, which illustrated its 1990 cover story attack on the Church of
Scientology with an octopus, the identical graphic used by the Nazis in their
persecution of the sects.
The role in Waco of the Cult Awareness Network, whose members are
respectfully cited in the press as "experts", may well have been crucial. The
network's president, Patricia Ryan, was quoted by the Houston Post on 9 April as
saying that whatever means necessary would be used to arrest Koresh, including
lethal force. Soon after the initial 28 February federal raid, another
"deprogrammer" named Rick Ross, long associated with the network, said on
national television that he had "consulted" with the ATF prior to the raid. The
network's former executive director, Priscilla Coates, raised allegations of
child abuse.
The Cult Awareness Network has, a long record of persecution of members of
what it deems to be cults. It promoted the infamous and illegal raid on the
Island Pond commune in Vermont some years ago. The network's chief of security,
Galen Kelly, was prominent in that affair and is currently facing charges in
Virginia of kidnapping a woman (whom he planned to "deprogram") who turned out
to be the wrong person. Other network members either face kidnapping charges or
have already been convicted.
Also cited as an expert on cults, and as endorsing FBI tactics is UCLA
psychiatrist Louis Jolyon West, who came to prominence back in the early 1970s
when he suggested that the problem of urban violence be solved by injecting
black males with cyproterone acetate, a sterilising agent originally
manufactured in East Germany. Dr West also consulted with the CIA on
mind-altering substances such as LSD.
Outside Waco, the counsels of such experts assisted in the event that will
forever mark Clinton's term. And, as a final horrible irony in this saga of
Nazi-like affront to religious tolerance, the deprogrammers are demanding that
they exercise their dark arts on the Davidian survivors so that they testify
correctly and stop insisting - as they now are - that there was no mass suicide
plan. And the FBI has said that this is "worth considering".
Only papers in the south have made much of the recent disclosure of a spy
network beginning in 1917 and functioning on a vast scale, vaster by far than
the ADL's operation. On 21 March, The Commercial Appeal, hometown newspaper of
Memphis, published Stephen Tompkins' extremely impressive story. For 16 months,
Tompkins had been investigating domestic intelligence operations by the US
military, what he calls the "largest domestic spy network ever assembled in a
free country". It all began in 1917 when Lieut-Col Ralph van Deman created an
Army intelligence network targeting four prime foes: the Industrial Workers of
the World, opponents of the draft, socialists and "Negro unrest". Fear that
Germans could foment black grievances was great. Van Deman was much preoccupied
with black churches as centres of sedition.
By the end of 1917, the War Department's Military Intelligence Division had
opened a file on Martin Luther King's maternal grandfather, the Reverend A D
Williams, pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church and first president of the Atlanta
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. King's father,
Martin Sr, Williams' successor at the Ebenezer church, also entered the Army
files. Martin Jr first shows up in these files (kept at Fort McPherson in
Atlanta) in 1947. He was attending Dorothy Lilley's Intercollegiate School, and
the Army suspected Ms Lilley of having communist ties.
The fact that three generations of the King family were spied on by Army
intelligence is not surprising when one reads Tompkins' description of how wide
the net was cast.
By 1918, the Army had a spy chain across the south. It included Robert
Moton, Booker T Washington's successor at the Tuskegee Institute, and no less a
notable than Joel Spingarn, white chairman of the NAACP board. Van Deman made
Spingarn a major in military intelligence, and the latter - a man in whose name
the NAACP gives an annual award - helped operate a small unit of undercover
agents. Van Deman considered the organisation to be communist-inspired.
Army intelligence officers became convinced of King's communist ties when he
spoke in 1960 at the 25th anniversary of the integrated Highlander Folk School
in Monteagle, Tennessee. Ten years earlier, an Army intelligence officer had
reported to his superiors that the Highlander school was teaching "a course of
instruction to develop Negro organisers in the southern cotton states".
With the upsurges of the 1960s, the Army's network accelerated. By 1963,
Tompkins reports, U2 planes were photographing disturbances in Birmingham,
Alabama, capping a multi-layered spy system that by 1968 included 304
intelligence offices across the country, "subversive national security dossiers"
on 80,731 Americans, plus 19 million personnel dossiers held at the Defence
Department's Central Index of Investigations.
A more sinister thread in Tompkins' narrative derives from the anger and
fear with which the Army high command greeted King's denunciation of the Vietnam
war at Riverside Church in 1967. Army spies recorded Stokely Carmichael telling
King: "The Man don't care you call ghettos concentration camps, but when you
tell him his war machine is nothing but hired killers you got trouble."
After the 1967 Detroit riots, 496 black men under arrest were interviewed by
agents of the Army's Psychological Operations Group, dressed as civilians. It
turned out King was by far the most popular black leader. That same year,
Major-General William Yarborough, assistant chief of staff for intelligence,
observing the great anti-war march on Washington from the roof of the
Pentagon, concluded that "the empire was coming apart at the seams". There were,
reckoned Yarborough and his men, too few reliable troops to fight in Vietnam and
hold the line at home.
The Army increased surveillance on King. Green Berets and other veterans
from Vietnam began making street maps and identifying landing zones and
potential sniper sites in major US cities. The Ku Klux Klan was recruited by the
20th Special Forces Group, headquartered in Alabama as a subsidiary intelligence
network. The Army began offering 30.06 sniper rifles to police departments,
including that of Memphis.
Tompkins details the increasing hysteria of Army intelligence chiefs over
the threat they considered King to be posing to national stability. King was
dogged by spy units through early 1967. A Green Beret special unit was operating
in Memphis on the day he was shot. He died from a bullet from a 30.06 rifle
purchased in a Memphis store, in a murder for which James Earl Roy is serving 99
years.
Tompkins says carefully that he "uncovered no hard evidence that Army
intelligence played any role in King's assassination". A terrified state is
capable of anything.
Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign
The Nation
July 12, 1993
By Alexander Cockburn
A La Recherche du Temps Perdu: Or, How Time Saved Clinton's Ass
By the second week in April 1992, Bill Clinton had the presidential
nomination within his grasp. On April 7 New York voters had given him a strong
win over his last remaining serious challenger, Jerry Brown. The sex scandals
were fading in memory, discounted by the genteel press. Doubts about Clinton's
versions of how he had avoided the draft had similarly been allayed.
But there was still one potentially explosive issue that was only just
beginning to seize the attention of mainstream reporters: the role of Clinton's
Arkansas in international drug and covert military operations, and the possible
trails that might lead from such operations into the lush undergrowth of
Arkansas state finances. Readers may recall the name Mena, a town and airport in
western Arkansas supposed to be the nexus for these activities.
Beginning in 1983 investigators from the I.R.S. and the Arkansas State
Police followed the trails leading through Mena. They established that Barry
Seal, a drug dealer working for the Medellin cartel as well as the C.I.A. and
the D.E.A.-- and an admitted contact in Oliver North's contra supply
network--had had his planes retrofitted at Mena for drug drops and laundered his
profits through financial institutions in Arkansas. Seal was assassinated while
in a witness protection program in Baton Rouge, but he had told investigators
enough that, combined with their own researches, they were able to supply
information leading to a twenty-nine-count draft indictment on money laundering.
The grand jury in this case was ultimately dissolved, under shady circumstances;
there followed years of petitions to Clinton from citizens and Arkansas
officials, urging him to convene a state grand jury and fund a continued state
investigation. Clinton did nothing--even after one of his deputy prosecutors
told him he feared the Mena case had fallen victim to a federal cover-up--and
when asked for an explanation of such inaction, his campaign lied, in effect
promoting a cover-up of a cover-up.
What did Clinton have to lose? This has never been fully determined, but the
names that wove in and out of the Mena story were suggestive. Seal and Terry
Reed, a onetime Air America pilot, were entwined in the contra operation. The
plane that carried Eugene Hasenfus and was shot down by Nicaraguans, fueling the
Iran/contra scandal, had once been owned by Seal and had been serviced at Mena.
Reed trained pilots at Mena and later set up a front company in Guadalajara,
Mexico--at the behest, he says, of C.I.A. agent Felix Rodriguez--that became an
exchange center for drugs and guns. (Reed asserted he never knew about the drugs
until an abrupt discovery of same, which prompted him to sever relations with
Rodriguez and the entire operation.)
Clinton, who eagerly lent the Arkansas National Guard for contra training in
Honduras, may simply have been making amends for his antiwar youth in allowing
such use of his state. But too many things needed explanation--such as why
Clinton's chief of Security and a former Arkansas State Police officer went
after Reed following his return from Mexico.
And too many familiar names cropped up. Larry Nichols, who gave the Gennifer
Flowers story to the press, had been a propagandist for the contras before he
was hired as the marketing director of the Arkansas Development Finance
Authority, an outfit under Clinton's sole control that offered companies
long-term loans financed through the sale of tax-exempt bonds. Reed has charged
that large sums of drug money connected with Mena were being laundered through
leading Arkansas bond brokers.
One firm involved with a number of ADFA bond issues was the now-defunct
Lasater and Co., whose president, Dan Lasater, friend to Bill and Roger Clinton,
was busted for cocaine and later pardoned by Bill. The very first loan ADFA
made, in 1985, was to a company called Park on Meter, or POM. Web Hubbell, now
the number-three man at the Justice Department and a former law partner of
Hillary Clinton, represented POM in that $ 2.75 million loan deal. He had also
been the company's secretary in the early 1980s and is father-in-law to the
current president, Seth Ward. POM is a parking meter manufacturer, but,
according to Ward, it also had classified military contracts.
Damage Control
The Clinton camp was highly apprehensive about a sudden media churning amid
this rich loam. Reed was preparing a civil suit against Raymond (Buddy) Young,
Clinton's chief of security, and former Arkansas police officer Tommy Baker for
their role in a setup that had landed Reed in criminal court (see "Beat the
Devil," February 24, 1992). This week Terry Reed told The Nation through his
present lawyer, Robert Meloni, that in early March of 1992 Ron Brown, chairman
of the Democratic National Committee, phoned Reed's lawyer at the time, John
Wesley Hall of Little Rock. Reed says that on March 12 Hall called him, excited,
saying that Brown had asked how damaging the suit would be to Clinton. Hall,
according to Reed, said very damaging, then informed Reed that "a settlement
offer is in the making" and asked him to figure out an acceptable dollar amount.
The next day Reed's wife and co-plaintiff, Janis, wrote to Hall saying they
wanted no part of a settlement. Two months later Hall quit the case. Brown is
now Secretary of Commerce. His spokesman, Jim Desler, told The Nation that Brown
has no recollection of talking to anyone involved in the case. Hall tells us
that "I never had the pleasure of talking to Ron Brown" and that "I might have
got a letter from them saying they didn't want to settle, but I never told them
that a settlement was forthcoming."
By the end of April the Mena story was dead. Investigative teams folded
their tripods, closed their notebooks and headed home from Little Rock. Larry
King aborted plans for a program on the subject. One 20/20 segment nearing
completion was shut down. Although some journalists did promising work about
ADFA and the shoals and eddies of the Arkansas state bond business, the Mena
ooze lapping at Clinton's ankles abruptly receded.
The story that wreathed the Clinton campaign in happy smiles appeared in the
issue of Time dated April 20. On April 21 Clinton, questioned by reporters about
Reed and covert C.I.A. missions in Arkansas, promptly replied, "That's bull
....Time magazine just debunked that fairy tale."
Time's story, "Anatomy of a Smear" by Richard Behar, was indeed a violent
attack on Reed and his "wild stories" and "some credulous journalists" (among
whom Behar included the present writer, though he got my name wrong) who used
him as a source. Those familiar with Behar's work recognized the spoor:
relentless defamation, exclusion of material inconvenient to the narrative.
There were glaring inaccuracies, such as the assertion that Clinton had been "a
vocal critic of U.S. aid to the contras." But as a hit job it worked. The shadow
of Reed, or of Mens, never again fell across Clinton's path to the presidency.
The FATs (Friends at Time)
On April 8 of this year Terry Reed, now represented by New York-based
Meloni, sued Time and Behar for libel.
Reed's complaint, lodged in federal court in New York, has some highly
charged allegations about the politics within Time. In March 1992, according to
the complaint, Time contacted John Wesley Hall about an interview with Reed.
Behar had previously been introduced to Reed by one of the magazine's chief
investigative reporters, Jonathan Beaty, who knew Reed from the earlier criminal
case. Behar had said he wanted to talk about the civil suit and money laundering
in the state of Arkansas, with reference to ADFA and other state agencies.
Behar duly met with Reed and Hall in Nevada and California, where he
secretly recorded his interviews. (He later conceded to my colleague Bryce
Hoffman that certain statements might have been in his notes rather than on
tape, a contingency that proved unfortunate for Janet Malcolm in the Masson New
Yorker trial.) As we shall see, Behar indulges in covert taping regardless of
relevant state laws. In California, for example, both parties must consent to
the taping.
According to the complaint, Behar later phoned Reed, told him his "role in
the story had 'changed,' and that unless Reed told him everything he knew about
Reed's informal meeting with Governor Clinton, and what Reed and Clinton had
discussed, that Behar would smear Reed in his proposed article."
The complaint then avers that John Stacks, Time's chief of correspondents,
"asked to have absolutely nothing to do with Behar's draft story , refusing to
'sign off' on it or to approve that it be published." The complaint also alleges
a role played by Strobe Talbott, an old friend of Bill Clinton's whose wife,
Brooke, was working on the campaign. Talbott was later made U.S. Ambassador at
Large to countries in the former Soviet Union. Brooke joined the White House
staff. Time's chief political correspondent, Michael Kramer, advanced the name
of his wife, Judge Kimba Wood, as Attorney General nominee in the wake of the
Zoe Baird debacle. To round out the supportive Clinton cast, the late Steve
Ross, then the head of Time Warner, contributed on October 19, 1992, fifteen
days before the election, $ 90,000 to the Democratic National Committee.
The issue of Time in which Behar's story appeared featured a cover story on
the front-running candidate: "Why Voters Don't Trust Clinton." At the time it
infuriated the Clinton crew. But from the point of view of Clinton's well-being,
the important story was the one by Behar, proposing that untrust-worthiness lay
with Clinton's detractors. Time has responded to the complaint with denials and
a motion to dismiss.
Tapeworm
These are not the only charges of libel that Behar faces. For some months
now he's been deposed by lawyers for the International Church of Scientology
concerning his Time cover story, discussed here on December 7, 1992.
Behar's habit of taping may have landed him and Time's lawyers in some
problems. According to Earle Cooley, an attorney for the church, Behar admitted
to having taped Cooley without the latter's knowledge in a telephone
conversation while Behar was in California and Cooley in Massachusetts, both
states that require two-party consent for taping. Time's editorial guidelines
expressly forbid taping that infracts state laws, and Stacks confirmed to my
colleague Miles Seligman that exceptions are not permitted.
One set of Behar tapes remitted to the church's lawyers has significant
portions blank. Last fall Judge Peter Leisure in the U.S. Court for the Southern
District of New York agreed, over the objections of Time's lawyers, that
investigation should go forward on the gaps in the tapes.
I should note here that subsequent to my column on the pharmaceutical
company Eli Lilly, its drug Prozac and Time's role in Lilly's campaign to
discredit the Scientologists, Behar sent a letter to The Nation. It contained
not a single substantive refutation of my story, saying rather that "if Cockburn
wasn't so plainly reacting to Time's (and my) justified criticism of his work
earlier this year, I might think he was off the rails."
In fact, Behar has a lot more explaining to do. He is an advocate of the
Cult Awareness Network, an organization that has been associated with the
exponents of "deprogramming," whereby victims are seized, deprived of food,
denied all contact with the outside world and brainwashed. Galen Kelly, who
received more than $ 10,000 from the network between January and September of
1992 for services as a security guard, consultant and investigator, has just
been convicted of kidnapping (the wrong woman as it turned out). The network was
also involved in the Waco disaster, urging the feds to use lethal force if
necessary against David Koresh.
I have been reproached by some readers for discussing the Church of
Scientology without giving pro forma abuse of Scientologists and all their
works. It's important to resist the urgings of the dominant political culture to
anathematize groups that fall outside the mainstream. Waco surely reminded us of
that, with adults and children roasted alive because the Branch Davidians and
Koresh had been demonized as cultists William Styron even wrote in The Nation
that he'd choose Time over the Church of Scientology. Why? Time has wrought
infinite injury on American society across the term of its existence. No one
wants to surround headquarters on Sixth Avenue in Manhattan and burn those Time
cultists to death, yet if the feds surrounded a Scientology building and
fixed to murder those within, most in the press would probably clap their hands.
Karl Popper and the march of science
The Nation
January 31, 1994
By Alexander Cockburn
"For forty years," Dr. Milton Greenblatt told a meeting of the American
Psychiatric Association in Miami in 1976, "the therapeutic value of convulsive
therapy has been recognized. My personal recollections go back to 1939 shortly
after the introduction of Metrazol when, as a medical student, I was allowed to
inject Metrazol into chronically ill patients at Worcester State
Hospital-against their terrified and frightened resistance, which, I might
add, was overpowered by several burly attendants. In those days we required only
the approval of next of kin for this procedure, and had few qualms about
proceeding against the patient's physical resistance."
The 1950s found the mature Dr. Greenblatt overseeing LSD research in a
program funded by the C.I.A. As described in a January 5, 1994, story in The
Boston Globe, one woman at Boston Psychopathic (later renamed the Massachusetts
Mental Health Center) committed suicide within hours of taking LSD, hanging
herself in a bathroom. She was about to be discharged when she was given the
drug. According to the Globe, one of Dr. Greenblatt's subordinates, the late Dr.
Max Rinkel, threatened another psychotic to whom he had administered LSD,
brandishing a knife at her to see how she would react while on acid.
In his famous, frenzied anticommunist tract The Poverty of historicism, Karl
Popper argued that "science and, more especially, scientific progress, are the
results ... of ... the free competition of thought" and that ultimately such
scientific progress "depends very largely on political factors; on political
institutions that safeguard the freedom of thought; on democracy."
Yet while Prof Popper was composing those complacent sentiments in the
mid-1950s, scientists like those conducting the LSD experiments, or injecting
radioactive material into patients, or indulging in any of the other myriad
programs funded and overseen by the Pentagon and C.I.A., were enacting the very
antithesis of democracy.
Among other secret scientific experiments perpetrated by scientists retained
by the U.S. government:
* Release by the C.I.A. of whooping cough virus in 1955 in Palmetto,
Florida. Hundreds of children were affected, and there were a dozen known
deaths. (The C.I.A. destroyed its chemical and biological test files in 1973.)
* 7,000 military volunteers plus 1,074 civilians given mind-disabling
drugs at Edgewood Arsenal, Maryland, in the 1950s and early 1960s. There were no
follow-up studies on long-term effects.
* Guinea-pig patients, black, given LSD at the National Institute of
Mental Health Addiction Research Center from 1953 to 1958. Dr. Harris Isbell,
who ran the experiment, wrote, "The degree of rapport attained so far is not as
great as we expect with white subjects. In all probability this type of behavior
is to be expected with patients of this type. Perhaps the drug will break down
some of the barriers."
* By 1960 Fort Detrick, Maryland, was capable of producing 130 million
mosquitoes a month. They were released by the Army Chemical Corps in Savannah,
Georgia, and Avon Park, Florida. The corps was trying to find out if the
mosquitoes could be used as carriers to spread yellow fever and dengue fever.
Carver Village, which was exclusively black, was the target for these
experiments. Residents at the time reported fevers, bronchitis, typhoid,
encephalitis, stillbirths, also mysterious deaths.
* Deliberate, secret contamination of Norfolk Naval Supply Center and
one ship with infectious bacteria by the U.S. Army in 1951. One of the bacteria
types was chosen because blacks were more susceptible to it than whites.
Details of all these experiments were pieced together by the Church of
Scientology from partial responses to F.O.I.A. requests and reported, credited
to the church, in major newspapers at the end of the 1970s. These days the press
steers clear of anything other than utterly conventional sources.
Popper saw "the human factor, ultimately uncertain and wayward," as the
mainspring of evolution and progress. His fear was that communist brainwashers
and genetic engineers would try to mold this "human nature." "No doubt," Popper
wrote, "biology and psychology can solve, or will soon be able to solve, the
problem of transforming man: Yet those who attempt to do this are bound to
destroy the objectivity of science, and so science itself, since these are both
based upon free competition of thought; that is, upon freedom."
Poor Popper. Here in the United States the genetic investigators and
engineers are hard at work. In 1992 the National Institute of Mental Health
launched its National Violence Initiative, to locate--and no doubt
eliminate--the genetic causes of violence and social unrest. The present head of
the N.I.M.H. is psychiatrist Dr. Frederick Goodwin, who caused a furor in 1992
by associating inhabitants of "high impact inner city areas," which he also
called "jungles," with the behavior of "hyperaggressive" and "hypersexual"
monkeys.
The corruptions of a society and the corruptions of its sciences march hand
in hand.
Waco, a year later
The Nation
May 9, 1994
By Alexander Cockburn
It's a year since the F.B.I. killed at least seventy-five people - men, women
and plenty of children - in the Mount Carmel compound of the Branch Davidians
outside Waco. As Wesley Pruden wrote in a fine, angry column in The Washington
Times the next day, "Anytime you start the day by gassing women and children,
you have to expect it to end badly."
The weekend before the anniversary I got a call from Balenda Ganem, mother of
a man who'd been in the compound that day. Ganem lives part of the year in
Bangor, Maine, and part on the Greek island of Andros, where she co-owns a
taverna. Here's what she said.
"My son David Thibodeau was one survivor of the fire. He was married to David
Koresh's sister-in-law, Michelle. They were married a year prior to the fire.
She had three children already when she met my son. Serenity was 4 at the time
of the fire and the little twin girls were 16 months. Michelle and her three
daughters died.
"They were in what the F.B.I. called a bunker. It wasn't a bunker. It was a
storage area where they were eventually going to put big restaurant-style
refrigerators. A good many of the mothers and children were in that area too.
"My son was 24 at the time of the fire. He was in the chapel, which is why he
was able to escape. I myself was in Waco that morning. I'd received a phone
call from a CBS producer; he said, 'Turn on the TV.' I saw the tanks
bombarding the building. This was on the 19th. On April 11, I'd got a phone
call from a minister of one of the churches telling me the F.B.I. was bringing
new people from around the country, and big tanks, and that the people were
going to be gassed and that I should go to the press.
"Like an idiot, I didn't go to the press. I went to Janet Reno. I sent her a
registered letter, begging her not to gas them. I said there were children,
pregnant women, elderly people. I said she hadn't used the families of these
people properly. She hadn't used the expertise of those who had lived in
charismatic groups, who understood the language, the passion, the devotion to
their ideology.
"I had come from Maine on March 1, which was two days after the first A.T.F.
raid. I'd established phone contact with an F.B.I. agent, and I kept calling
him. Finally he said to me, 'We have no protocol for family intervention, but
perhaps in the future well put it on the table: Those were his exact words.
That's when I lost it. I told him, 'My son may have no future if left in your
hands. I'm on my way to Waco.' The next morning my brother and I--- were on a
plane.
"I got a job in the Brittney Hotel, because they'd opened their doors to the
families of people in Mount Carmel. They charged us $12 a night. I ended up
working for them in return for room and board.
"Already in Bangor I'd been in touch with Rick Ross, who was acting as an
independent cult deprogrammer' and informant to the A.T.F. and F.B.I. When I
got to know him in Waco, I understood that he was instigating the most
negative aspect of the situation because he wished violence toward David
Koresh. He never said he wanted him to be helped out. He wanted him to be
wiped out. This is what he told me. He looked forward to David Koresh being in
jail, where he would be tortured and raped, like he had done to the others in
Mount Carmel. That's when I understood that this man was not working for the
greater good. He had a personal vendetta. He wanted a cult leader; God, it was
his passion.
[Reached for a comment by my colleague Steven Dudley, Rick Ross called Ganem a
"pathological liar" and said, "I was constantly trying to get the F.B.I. to
change; I tried to encourage them to work with families ... to avoid a violent
end." In commentary on the F.B.I.'s handling of the siege, Professor Nancy
Ammerman who reviewed the government files, stated that the bureau had relied
excessively on advice from Ross (see "Beat the Devil," October 18, 1993).]
"I went around Waco trying to find out about the Davidians. They were supposed
to be cut off and isolated. But I learned that they had a whole community
outside Mount Carmel that liked them, that played music with them and so on. I
got to know the families, who saw the Davidians as an idealistic group. Their
loved ones were not estranged from them. But the F.B.I. picture of them as
freaks was accepted.
"What's really important is that people understand that 400 canisters of CS
gas [along with more than 1,000 charges of liquid gas] were lobbed into the
Mount Carmel community in a three-and-a-half-hour period; that those people
were submitted to enough gas to kill everyone in that community. CS is a
riot-control chemical. The handbook created to insure its proper use says it
is not to be used in an indoor environment. CS was to be used outdoors.
Indoors it is lethal. That community was gassed to death.
"The young mothers, with their arms full of kids - my daughter-in-law had
three, my friend Julie had five children - these women were inundated, the
children were overwhelmed; how was a mother supposed to maneuver her children
through the debris?"
So fifty years after the Nazis' attack on the Warsaw ghetto, the F.B.I. gassed
a religious community on national television, with the near total support of
the press. Once you are officially designated a "cult," the cops can burn you
alive or drill you with machine-gun fire without much public demur. They could
have fried the Scientologists or the Family and it would have been hats in the
air from the liberals. You have to go to the far left (maybe) and the far
right (more likely) to get some respect for citizens' rights in these
situations.
TESTIMONY July 19, 1995 HERBERT ROSEDALE & WILLIAM REHLING PRESIDENT
AMERICAN FAMILY FOUNDATION & CULT AWARENESS NETWORK HOUSE JUDICIARY CRIME
FEDERAL ACTIONS AT WACO, TEXAS
Federal Document Clearing House Congressional Testimony
July 19, 1995, Wednesday
JOINT STATEMENT OF HERBERT L. ROSEDALE, PRESIDENT, AMERICAN FAMILY
FOUNDATION(AFF),
AND
WILLIAM REHLING, PRESIDENT, CULT AWARENESS NETWORK (CAN)
U. S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
OVERSIGHT HEARINGS ON FEDERAL LAW ENFORCEMENT ACTIONS
RELATED TO THE BRANCH DAVIDIAN COMPOUND IN WACO, TEXAS
July 19-29, 1995, before the Subcommittees on
National Security, International Affairs, and Criminal Justice (of the
Committee on Government Reform & Oversight) Crime (of the Committee on the
Judiciary)
Chairmen Zeliff and McCollum, Members of the Subcommittees:
We appreciate the opportunity to submit this written statement for the
record of your Joint Congressional Oversight Hearings on the tragic incidents in
February and April 1993 involving agents Of two federal law enforcement forces,
the followers of David Koresh and Mr. Koresh himself. There are important
lessons to be learned. We feel confident that you will provide information and
insights for law enforcement agencies, Congress and the public.
AFF and CAN
Both CAN and AFF are non-profit, independent, national public interest
organizations recognized by the Internal Revenue Service under Section 501(c)(3)
of the Internal Revenue Code. Both favor widespread study and understanding of
destructive cult practices. Neither promotes any sectarian or theological
position. Both respect the vital importance of freedoms speech, assembly and of
due process of law.
AFF works through committees of volunteer professionals and academicians in
various fields, including education, law, law enforcement, medicine, mental
health and religion. It publishes the Cultic Studies Journal.
CAN is a membership organization, principally of family and friends of
people recruited into cults. It has 16 affiliates located in metropolitan
regions around the country.
Cults and Law Enforcement Problems
The American public recognizes that cults can present serious community and
law enforcement problems. Millions of Americans recognize a cult when they see
one and are disturbed by what they see. It is high time that government also
recognizes that specific, identifiable characteristics of certain groups can
lead to violations of the human rights of the group's members, their families,
and others, and foster a climate of lawlessness that requires attention.
America concentrates on cult problems every time we are dismayed by some
terrible result here Joint AFF and CAN Statement July 1995 for U.S. House of
Representatives or abroad. However we also need attention to prevention: what
may be done in the future.
Some of these disturbing issues require law enforcement attention by federal
agencies (as well as state and local law enforcement agencies).
Dealing with suspects who are cultists requires cult-specific expertise.
Law enforcement agents, who risk their lives to protect public security, should
have the best understanding possible and the best experts available to assist
them.
Waco suggests some opportunities to improve law enforcement as regards
suspects who are cultists. These hearings should help strengthen law
enforcement when it must confront future situations like Waco.
Cults Have Harmed Many Americans
Americans share concerns about cults because cults have hurt so many people.
Freedom-loving, law-abiding Americans who have been hit by cult phenomena, both
the estimated two to five million former members of cultic groups and their
millions of family, neighbors, co- workers and friends, have every right to
expect Congress to look hard and carefully at this phenomenon as it affects law
enforcement and other aspects of our national life.
CAN and AFF Had No Role at Waco
Cult apologists have contended that the "anti-cult movement" somehow
"prepared" our FBI "for this moment" at Waco. 1 That is preposterous.
Neither CAN nor AFF was consulted by the ATF or the FBI during or prior to
any of their actions at the Mt. Carmel complex outside Waco. Neither CAN nor
AFF recommended the tactics used. Actually, in a statement issued the day after
the FBI raid, AFF questioned FBI psychological warfare and sleep deprivation
tactics. 2
Well-financed organizations widely regarded as cults, as well as cult
apologists, have circulated lies ascribing federal law enforcement tactics to
CAN and/or AFF. 3 These falsehoods fool some and endanger innocent people.
AFF and CAN do not promulgate a false view of cult behavior, manipulation
and destructiveness. Cult leaders do deceive, manipulate and destroy. Some
cult leaders have chosen murder and suicide and other unlawful conduct. Take,
for example, the leaders of the Solar Temple in Switzerland and Quebec just a
few months ago. Or take Jim Jones's Peoples Temple in Guyana in 1978 where
Congressman Leo J. Ryan was murdered and more than 900 followers of Jones's and
their children were murdered or committed suicide. See "Children of Jonestown"
in Singer, CULTS IN OUR MIDST (Jossey-Bass 1995), pages 249-51 (reproduced with
permission and attached to this statement). There are good reasons, therefore,
to keep an eye on a group such as the Aum Supreme Truth organization in our
country, given the allegations that it used poison gas to kill and terrorize in
Japan.
Criminal Activity by Cults Is Nothing New
Waco was not some new, out of the blue phenomenon. Criminal activity
repeatedly crops up among totalist groups commonly identified as cults.
Examples of pre-Waco violent crimes include:
* California murders in 1969 by the Charles Manson "family";
* Michigan conviction in 1983 of Black Hebrew House of Judah leader for
enslaving children and causing death of 13-year-old John Yarbrough;
* Oregon conspiracies by Rajneesh followers to poison town water supply of
The Dalles in mid-1980s;
* Nebraska conviction in 1986 of a white supremacist leader of first degree
murder for torture-killing of James Thimm, who doubted the leader's divine
messages; and
* Ohio sentence to death of Jeffrey Lundgren in 1990 for killing a family of
five, bound and gagged, because they were about to defect; Lundgren's
follower-accomplices were imprisoned.
There are serious cult-related crimes every year.
Is there any wonder? Cult leaders who demand total obedience, who instill
the belief that they are above the law, who pressure the followers to perform,
but not to think for themselves, are liable to drive their followers to break
the law, violently or otherwise.
What We Mean by "Cult"
By "cult" we refer to psychologically manipulative groups that may be
religious or non-religious (e.g., psychotherapy, political, or commercial).
More specifically, a cult can be defined as a group or movement that, to a
significant degree,
(a) exhibits great or excessive devotion or dedication to some leadership,
idea, or thing, (b) uses a thought reform program to persuade, control, and
socialize members, (c) systematically induces states of psychological dependency
in members, (d) exploits members to advance the leadership's goals, and (e)
causes psychological harm to members, their families and the community. 4
Cults need not be religious. The elements of deception, manipulation and
blind devotion to the leader can attach to other groups as well, such as certain
self-improvement trainings or, even, magazine-selling scams.
Cults can change. They may start benignly as community or religious or
group therapy organizations. Then, gradually, a leader may take advantage of
followers, make them dependent and take control of their lives.
Psychological techniques that turn free people into cultists can work very
quickly. At a vulnerable point in his or her life, many a well-brought-up,
law-abiding citizen can be turned into a cultic follower whose capacity for
critical thinking is greatly reduced. If the subcommittees review the evolution
of the Branch Davidians at Waco, you may identify these elements in the group
and the relationships which David Koresh took over, shaped, controlled and
directed.
Law Enforcement Aspects of Cult Concerns
Cult characteristics have significant implications for law enforcement work.
Cultists may behave differently from terrorists, hostage takers, con artists or
other personalities that police are trained to recognize.
Cults cover a fairly wide spectrum of abusiveness and disrespect for the
law. Members of groups most likely to pose law enforcement problems are likely
to be self-righteous idealists under excessive psychological influence. They
will believe that their leadership's commands override the law and that the
unenlightened -- non-members -- are inferior beings, perhaps even enemies, who
need not be treated as totally human.
* Such cultists therefore may lie and deceive.
* They may disregard apparent self-interest, even self- preservation (not
only their own, but their children's as well).
* Such cultists may suppress human feelings towards outsiders.
* Cultists think about and express some key concepts in loaded language,
with secret meanings that outsiders (including law enforcement personnel and
assorted academics) do not initially understand -- usages which may confuse
attempts at communications.
* Ex-cultists may be reluctant to cooperate and testify. Embarrassed and
fearing public stigma, they may wish to hide past cult involvement.
Furthermore, they may fear cult retribution based on threats or examples made of
others. They may ascribe great an frightening powers, even magical powers, to a
leader who may punish them in terrible ways. Cults have used emotional and
social blackmail to discourage cooperation with law enforcement, and have used
information obtained confidentially from cult followers as a lever against them
in order to prevent their disclosure of information harmful to the cult.
Some cults bankroll themselves by means of illegal activities, including
burglaries and gun running, immigration law violations and fraudulent sales.
Such cults have plenty to hide and may become quite adept at cover up and
disguise.
Crippling Lack of Research, Need for More Training
For more than 15 years, federal research has avoided cult-related issues,
apparently because of concerns that such research might interfere with religious
freedom. Dr. Frederick K. Goodwin, Director of the National Institute of Mental
Health, informed Congress in 1994 that NIMH has not supported or sponsored
research or other activities on "cults" or "totalist groups" since 1978-1979. 5
Following the Jonestown, Guyana, tragedy, the NIMH began, but abruptly
terminated, plans for a research program. NIMH formed its plans in response to
the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, which "recommended that a concentrated
program of research and training for mental health professionals be developed
under the auspices of the NIMH." Dr. Goodwin explained that NIMH had planned a
series of meetings with three purposes: (1) to delineate and evaluate existing
research in the field; (2) to identify areas of non-existent or inadequate
research knowledge; and (3) to assess mental health implications, if any,
associated with membership in various "cults" or "totalistic groups."
However, "strong controversies" led to "abrupt termination" of NIMH's
initiative in June 1979, "at the request of the Office of the Secretary, HEW."
Even though the focus of the meetings "specifically eschewed addressing issues
of religion or belief," Dr. Goodwin reported that controversies focused on the
appropriate role of Government regarding research on "minority religions." As a
result, NIMH funded no research or other efforts over the entire 15 years from
Jonestown to Waco. More recently, NIMH has stated a readiness to entertain
research grant applications, but no commitment of effort by NlNH's own staff. 6
Lack of research means that both the civilian public and law enforcement
lack the valuable tools that increased understanding might bring. Training is
less advanced than one might hope.
Even the medical profession is woefully unequipped. A recent survey of
Pennsylvania doctors by the Medical Society of that State revealed that over 20
per cent of the profession had encountered the cult phenomenon (19 per cent in
their practices; 2 per cent in their own families), but two thirds found
themselves ill prepared to help. 7 The schools that train health care providers
and their in- service training programs rarely prepare those practitioners.
Do the police and other law enforcement academies and in-service training
programs do better?
We know of only a handful of in-service training programs to alert local
police in the United States and Canada to law enforcement implications of
destructive cults. Sporadic training is not enough. A more comprehensive
approach, with federal participation, seems in order.
The FBI Academy at Quantico, Virginia, may have developed a state of the art
capability as regards cult and cult-like situations in its Behavioral Sciences
Department. We hope that Academy staff and consultants have done so. However,
our information about the Academy's present capabilities is limited. It is
unclear what expertise the FBI has within. The FBI's outside consultants during
the seige at Waco do not have a reputation as experts on behavior of cultists. 8
So we are not certain and hope that these hearings will shed light on existing
capabilities and possibilities for improving and strengthening them.
A Question of Law Enforcement Focus and Coordination
We also hope these hearings and their aftermath will make clear where the
focus of federal law enforcement responsibility lies and how it ties into a
national capability in which federal, state and local law enforcement agencies
can support and learn from one another.
Moreover, we ask that you identify and evaluate the links (if any exist as
regards law violations by cultists) among federal law enforcement agencies and
other parts of the national government. Do they interact (a) during a law
enforcement crisis and (b) on planning, prevention, deterrence, and
rehabilitation? Coordination interactions might include law enforcement agencies
and U.S. Attorneys, U.S. Attorneys and the Criminal Division at Department
Headquarters, law enforcement agencies among themselves and with prisons, mental
health and behavioral sciences research agencies, and education and training
agencies. Eventually, there may also be reason to review, more broadly than
these hearings contemplate, other aspects of national policy with respect to
totalist cults.
Attorney General Reno's Unfulfilled Commitment to Seek Expert Advice
During Congressional hearings on April 28, 1993, the Attorney General
committed herself, in colloquy after colloquy, to seek the views of all possible
experts in order to shed light on cultist be- haviors that might have law
enforcement implications and promised, in her opening statement, to have experts
inside and outside Government examine:
how should Federal law enforcement agencies marshal resources in various
disciplines, including psychology and psychiatry, in situations involving
cults and other groups using barricades and holding innocent people? 9
When it came time to appoint outside experts for advice, however, the
Department of Justice included no one in its roster who had any professional or
academic experience in dealing with or studying the behavior of cults and
cultists. And it changed the terms of reference to omit even the word "cult",
generalizing, instead, to "Dealing with persons whose motivations and thought,
processes are unconventional" -- thereby throwing together into one pool
psychotics, terrorists, cultists, extremists, and all manner of other
unconventional people. 10 As a result, the Justice Department failed even to
consider the possibility that cultists might pose distinctive and pertinent law
enforcement problems.
None of the four experts appointed to address that "unconventionality" issue
had dealt with cults and cultists. None even set forth the case -- based on the
literature or experience of others -- that cultists might possibly pose
distinctive and pertinent law enforcement problems. 11
Why did the Department of Justice exclude expertise about cults? What
became of the Attorney General's commitments to consult all the experts she
could find?
Recommendations as to Law Enforcement
The law enforcement community needs a cult information resource available to
federal agencies, state and local police and appropriate coordination. Before
the next crisis, America should have a team, housed within law enforcement,
* adequate to do a job of preparation, training and planning,
* with appropriate access to the tactical and supervisory levels, and
* drawing upon studies and research.
The job includes the following:
Resource bank. Find out who claims expertise as to cult phenomena. Identify
recommended experts both within and outside law enforcement. Critically appraise
everyone. (That includes both experts that AFF or CAN might recommend and their
critics, among others.) Develop internal assessments as to which experts seem
most reliable and for what purposes.
Strategic Planning capability. (1) Plan how law enforcement, when confronted
with a particular cult situation, can best learn from former members, family
or friends of present members, clinicians and others who have dealt with the
group (as well as any other kinds of sources the team concludes could help). (2)
Review previous experiences of serious law violations involving cults and learn
how leaders and followers reacted, what worked, what failed. Invite outside
viewpoints, as part of such review, and conduct a vigorous internal debate.
Training. Train law enforcement authorities who are most likely to have to
deal with cults or cult-like groups on psychological dynamics of cults.
Periodically update training to incorporate improved state of knowledge.
Also necessary are:
Access and attention. When a crisis breaks out, or seems to be impending,
the responsible law enforcement agency can determine which of its agents has
developed tactical readiness. The agency should be able to turn to the national
resource team to provide strategic input and guidance, as well as to any other
such teams in particular agencies, states or regions. The on-site tactical team
and its supervisors at all levels should accept and use strategic input and
guidance although ultimate responsibility will have to remain on-site and in the
chain of command.
Research. Congress should insist upon, and the national research team should
draw upon, a strong research program for both law enforcement and civilian
purposes. Such research should in no way compromise our national commitment to
freedom of religion, speech and assembly and to due process.
End Notes
1. Melton and Criner, "What the Hearings May Tell Us / Did the Federal
Authorities Heed the Wrong 'Experts'?", The Washington Post, Outlook Section,
July 2, 1995, p.C3.
2. AFF explicitly conceded that the outcome might have been just as bad
even if the FBI's tactics had been oriented to the cult mindset throughout.
Rosedale and Langone, "How Many Jonestowns Will It Take?" (20 April 1993).
Earlier, on March 30, 1993, AFF and CAN said in a statement to Congress:
The unfortunate situation concerning the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas
underscores certain important facts about cults that should not be overlooked.
First, the leader's psychological control over the group members can be so
powerful that the group essentially becomes a projection of the leader's psyche.
The future of David Koresh's followers depends upon how rational Mr. Koresh is
with regard to the question of remaining alive. If he decides he does not want
to live, the probability is that his followers will die with him. The dependency
that cult leaders induce in their followers has grave consequences -- after
leaving the cult as well as while in it.
The second fact highlighted by the Waco situation is the risk cults often
pose to the health, and sometimes even the lives, of children. Four features of
cults tend to increase the risk to children: (1) Cults frequently live by an
absolutist ideology that dictates harsh physical discipline and the rejection of
professional medical care. (2) Cults' hierarchical structure and their setting
themselves up as "family" frequently turn parents into "middle management" with
regard to their own children, a subservient role that can become especially
dangerous when the leader measures the parents' dedication by their willingness
to abuse their children at his or her request. (3) Cults often are closed,
physically isolated societies that resist any investigation of possible child
abuse. (4) Cults that are religious in nature (some cults form around
psychotherapists or political leaders) can further resist official scrutiny by
invoking the First Amendment.
Hearings on Health Care Reform before the Subcommittee on Health, Committee
on Ways and Means, House of Representatives, 103rd Congress, First Sess., Serial
103-14, pp. 753-54.
3. A notoriously deceptive and defamatory video expos , put out by
Indianapolis attorney Linda Thompson, baldly asserted CAN instigation and
involvement at Waco. The Church of Scientology promoted and showed Thompson's
video. Emory University sociology professor Nancy Ammerman presented the story
in a report requested by the Departments of Justice and the Treasury which these
Departments distributed widely. (She later retracted part of her accusations and
narrowed the scope of others, but they are still being quoted.) Journalists Alex
Cockburn in The Nation and Lawrence Criner in The Washington Times echoed these
erroneous charges (which the latter found it could not corroborate). The
Unification Church, publishing denials of any child abuse at Mt. Carmel,
baselessly claimed that "the real answers point directly to CAN" as the source
of all the allegations about Koresh, that CAN-exploited "its own blunder in
Waco" and that CAN is "leveling similar charges against local churches across
the country" to "destroy religious freedom in America." The Lyndon LaRouche
movement falsely claimed that CAN officials "were central to the plans drafted
by the ATF." Two publicists who are active with the New Alliance Party
circulated to Congress and the media a report, "What is the Cult Awareness
Network and What Role Did It Play in Waco?" Their report relied on Linda
Thompson, organizations created or funded by the Church of Scientology and the
Unification Church, long-time cult apologist Dean Kelley, and others who would
minimize public concern about destructive cult phenomena. The Washington Post
picked up the Big Lie on July 2, 1995, (see note 1.), and National Public
Radio repeated it on July 9, 1995.
4. Langone, M.D. (1933). RECOVERY FROM CULTS HELP FOR VICTIMS OF
PSYCHOLOGICAL AND SPIRITUAL ABUSE. W.W. Norton & Company. Page 5. See report
Cultism: A Conference for Scholars and Policy Makers, sponsored by AFF, The
Neuropsychiatric Institute of the University of California at Los Angeles and
The Johnson Foundation, convened at Wingspread, Racine, Wisconsin, September
9-11, 1985.
5. Letter dated June 23, 1993, from the Director, National Institute of
Mental Health to the Chairman of the Subcommittee on Health and the Environment
of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Despite NIMH inaction, Dr. Goodwin
wrote that some clinical and research activity had proceeded independent of
NIMH. He cited The Cultic Studies Journal, published by the AFF, "which provides
a forum for researchers," and the American Psychiatric Association's 1989
report, Cults and New Religious Movements. Dr. Goodwin believed, however, that
serious questions remain "that are amenable to research for which the NIMH would
be an appropriate focus." He concluded that questions regarding the state of
research and the mental health implications of involvement in "totalistic"
groups "remain as relevant today as they were in 1978." The Congressional
inquiry to the NIMH stressed that the "inquiry concerns only conduct, in the
nature of (or stimulating) physical or mental abuse, and not beliefs,
religious or otherwise."
6. Letter April 21, 1994, from NIMH Director Goodwin to Washington counsel
for AFF and CAN, David J. Bardin.
7. Lottick, "Survey Reveals Physicians' Experiences with Cults"
Pennsylvania Medicine (February 1993), vol. 96, pp.26-28.
8. Hearings before the Committee on the Judiciary, U.S. House of
Representatives, 103rd Cong., 1st Sess., Serial No. 95, "Events Surrounding the
Branch Davidian Cult Standoff in Waco, Texas" (U.S. Government Printing Office
1995), p. 123.
9. Hearings before the Committee on the Judiciary, U.S. House of
Representatives, 103rd Cong., 1st Sess., Serial No. 95, "Events Surrounding the
Branch Davidian Cult Standoff in Waco, Texas" (U.S. Government Printing Office
1995), pp. 17 (opening statement), 32-33 (to Mr. Hughes: I am "doing everything
I can to make sure we determine all available experts that can advise us in
terms of how we address these problems in the future, what do we do now to
address the cults that exist, what actions should be taken, if any."), 42 (to
Mrs. Schroeder: I want to "see if we can perhaps develop a cadre of real
experts who have information on how to deal with cults ... I don't want to be
back here when somebody asks me, 'Don't you remember the lessons of Waco?"'), 65
(to Mr. Reed: we may "have to develop a cadre of different types of applied
human science"), 68-69 (to Mr. Becerra: "I want to ... try to talk to every
expert we can").
Those hearings already indicate the Attorney General's awareness of relevant
but unconsulted cult experts, as shown by the dialogue with respect to the AFF
at page 32, referring to the article cited in note 2 and including:
CONGRESSMAN HUGHES: "Did you ever talk to any of the folks from the American
Family Foundation that has developed quite a bit of expertise or the Cult
Awareness Network possibly during this time?"
ATTORNEY GENERAL RENO: "I have not talked to them."
10. Recommendations of Experts for Improvements in Federal Law Enforcement
After Waco (released October 8, 1993): Mandate to the Experts.
11. To the contrary, one of the four, Professor Ammerman, confidently
parroted the ignorant assertion of some sociologists of religion and academic
cult apologists that "cult brainwashing ... is a thoroughly discredited concept"
and laced the front page of her report with gratuitous slurs against CAN and
the "anti-cult community." (See note 3.) A second, Professor Cancro, discussed
"many groups such as the Branch Davidians which do not accept certain of our
laws as valid or worthy of obedience" and said at the outset that these groups
are "frequently mislabeled as cults". A third, Professor Sullivan, merely
concentrated on recommending more attention to insights he believed students of
religion could contribute to law enforcement. The fourth, Professor Stone,
addressed some important issues (including questions outside his narrow
mandate), but not cult behavior. As noted, none of these four scholars claim to
have studied cult behavior issues.
========
Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology
Subject: Hate groups just don't get it
From: kor...@jovanet.com (Cory Brennan)
Date: 9 Jan 1996 19:52:08 GMT
Someone asked for me to expand on my earlier comments on Waco. They though
I was comparing Scientology to the Branch Davidians. But I was actually
comparing certain critics' actions on ARS with the actions of Cult
Awareness Network members as illustrated in the below article.
Cory Brennan
* The following is an article reprinted with permission from a special
edition of "FREEDOM" magazine, published by the Church of Scientology.
What is especially revealing to me in this article is the evidence of CAN
deprogrammer Rick Ross' intense hatred toward and desire to harm David
Koresh. Rick Ross was an advisor to the government in this affair. A
similar analogy might be Karadzic advising the US government on the
disposition of a Muslim enclave. Or Saddam Hussain advising on what to do
with the Kurds (by the way, a judge in Oklahoma used a similar analogy to
describe a CAN expert, Jolly West's attempt to close down Narconon
Chilocco).
"Cult Awareness Network at Waco"
"A Danger to Religious Liberty"
"Anytime you start the day by gassing women and
children, you have to expect it to end badly." These ironic
words were penned by Wesley Pruden of the {Washington Times}
the day after the fiery tragedy at the Mount Carmel religious
retreat in Waco, Texas.
And it was a very bad day indeed, one that ended in a
tragic conflagration which consumed the lives of more than 80
members of the Branch Davidian religious commune. How could
this have happened? After all, they had been living in Waco
and enjoying peaceful relations with the community since the
1930s.
Tracing the individuals involved in the early stages of
the Sunday morning raid in February 1993 on Mount Carmel by
the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF), one comes
across a former Davidian named David Block. He was
instrumental in making charges against David Koresh,
including charges of illicit sex by Koresh with young
girls of the sect, and allegations of the stockpiling of illegal
weapons by the Davidians generally.
Block was the victim of a "deprogramming" by the Cult
Awareness Network. The deprogramming, or as religious
scholars would hold, the {programming} of David Block took
place in the Glendale, California, home of Priscilla Coates,
the head of the Southern California chapter of CAN. Also
present were Rick Ross, who carried out the deprogramming,
and Adeline Bova, another CAN member.
Ross was to become one of the primary instigators in
Waco. Ross advised the BATF and later the Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI) regarding what should be done to "handle"
the Branch Davidians. He appeared on numerous television
shows claiming that the Davidians would probably not come out
willingly and that measures would have to be taken to force
them out.
What the reader probably does not know is that Ross and
CAN, according to eminent religious scholar Dr. Nancy T.
Ammerman of Princeton University, "seem to have been major
sources for the series of stories run by the Waco newspaper,
starting February 27. It seems clear that people within the
'anti-cult' community had targeted the Branch Davidians for
attention."
Those news stories started a wave of anti-cult hysteria
in which the Branch Davidians were dehumanized and made
expendable as "cultists."
In {The Nation}, Alexander Cockburn reported these
words of Balenda Ganem, the mother of Davidian survivor David
Thibodeau:
"I'd been in touch with Rick Ross, who was acting as an
independent cult 'deprogrammer' and informant to the ATF and
FBI. When I got to know him in Waco, I understood that he
was instigating the most negative aspect of the situation
because he wished violence toward David Koresh. He never
said he wanted him to be helped out. He wanted him to be
wiped out. That is what he told me. He looked forward to
David Koresh being in jail, where he would be tortured and
raped.... That's when I understood that this man was not
working for the greater good. He had a personal vendetta.
He wanted a cult leader; God, it was his passion."
Dr. Ammerman was equally succinct. She stated that
"The Network (CAN) and Mr. Ross have a direct ideological
(and financial) interest in arousing suspicion and antagonism
against what they call 'cults.'"
"Although these people often call themselves 'cult
experts,' they are certainly not recognized as such by the
academic community. The activities of CAN are seen by the
National Council of Churches (among others) as a danger to
religious liberty, and deprogramming tactics have been
increasingly found to fall outside the law."
Dr. Ammerman has put her finger on the pulse of the
"cult" problem. Former members who have been "deprogrammed"
turn on their former religions; {or} anti-cult "experts" with
a financial axe to grind make unfounded allegations,
typically including child abuse. Studies conducted by Dr.
Stuart Wright of Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas, show
that leaving a religion with which one has had a close
association and commitment is much like leaving a marriage.
Would any divorced person qualify in a court of law as an
expert witness against their former spouse?
Kindled by David Block, fanned into flame by Rick Ross
and fueled by the excesses of a sensationalizing media the
"cult" of the Branch Davidians never had a chance. True
religious scholars were ignored in favor of a "cult expert"
who had a criminal and psychiatric record of instability and
irresponsibility. (See "Fanning the Fires at Waco," page
**.)
The Branch Davidians paid with their lives for this
error.
- END -
Copyright 1995 Church of Scientology International. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
The FREEDOM Magazine logo is a trademark owned by the Church of
Scientology International. SCIENTOLOGY is a trademark and service mark
owned by Religious Technology Center and is used with its permission.
Requests for permission to reprint the article should be directed to
Editor, FREEDOM Magazine, 6331 Hollywood Blvd., Suite 1200, Los Angeles,
CA 90028-6329. (213) 960-3500.
Sherilyn
In article <5gcqb5$p...@shell1.cybercom.net>, Ron Newman
<rne...@shell1.cybercom.net> writes
>In article <33478b10...@news.snafu.de>,
>Tilman Hausherr <til...@xenu.com> wrote:
>>>By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
>>
>>he is fed by them. The rumor line is that Cockburn had a dispute with
>>Behar, and the scientologists have been feeding him since 1991.
>
>
> http://www.cybercom.net/~rnewman/scientology/media/cockburn
>
>It's entitled "Consider the Lilly" and is from the left-wing UK
>magazine _New Statesman_, 27 November 1992.
>
>(Thanks to Brian Wenger for posting it originally.)
I looked at it. It discloses Bush and Quayle's links to Lilly, but then
gets bogged down in some rabid anti-Time conspiracy theory.
It ends:
"I hope the Church of Scientology takes Time to the cleaners. Right
now, Bush is probably shovelling Prozac down his throat along with the
regular Halcion dosage. He'd better watch out for 'suicidal ideation'."
Cockburn didn't get his wish. Time won the case, which was one of a
number of recent major court failures for the cult corporation.
In Europe we view the cult and State Department posturing with some
amusement. The State Department is most likely embarrassed over its
attempts to implement the redoubled embargo on Cuba by proxy, and is
casting around for a bargaining chip. The European states and people
universally recognise the cult for what it is.
--
Sherilyn
Dave Bird---St Hippo of Augustine
In article <19970315060...@ladder01.news.aol.com>,
>>> By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
>
>Reading this piece made me retch. This so-called journalist is a disgrace
>to the profession, sucking up to a prime mover in an organization which
>promotes extreme suppression of information, misleads and spreads
>disinformation at every turn and which requires absolute fealty on the
>part of its members.
>
>The man is on their payroll. It's as simple as that. Or, he's the biggest
>damn idiot in the business. I favor the former.
Actually I suspect the latter i.e. he is simply a complete fucking idiot
|~/ |~/
~~|;'^';-._.-;'^';-._.-;'^';-._.-;'^';-._.-;||';-._.-;'^';||_.-;'^'0-|~~
P | Woof Woof, Glug Glug ||____________|| 0 | P
O | Who Drowned the Judge's Dog? | . . . . . . . '----. 0 | O
O | answers on alt.religion.scientology *---|_______________ @__o0 | O
L |___&_http://www.xemu.demon.co.uk_________________________|/_______| L
_________/clam/faq/woofglug.html
Felix Tilley
Alexander Cockburn (pronounced Coburn) is a left-wing Englishman who writes
for left-wing publications in the US. I think he somehow got naturalized
as a US citizen a few years ago. He is a compleat idiot. I regard him him
as a weird joke. Pay no attention to him. His newspaper columns are very
predictable. Everything originated by Americans or other freemen is evil.
Anything originated by slaves is good. And the lower the condition of the
slaves, the better their originations.
He has a brother, whose name I do not recall. He is also a leftwinger.
But he makes sense. He wrote a book about 15 years ago about the
capabilities of the Soviet Army. He had a low opinion of it (the Soviet
Army).
Felix
In article <1997031400...@mailmasher.com>, nob...@huge.cajones.com
Jon-Anders Grannes
On 13 Mar 1997 20:32:52 -0500, nob...@huge.cajones.com (Huge Cajones
Remailer) wrote:
*
*
Give me a break Sir
Is this the present quality of the journalists at the LAT???
I live in Norway, not so far from Germany, and I really have problems
recognizing your description of the same country.
For your info this type of propaganda only leads to one thing in
Europe.
An increased worry that things are not as they should be in the U.S.A
(Letting shit float up to the surface)
Jon
Diane Richardson
ce...@u.washington.edu (Ceon Ramon) wrote:
>In article <332c6552...@news.castlsys.co.uk>,
>Steve A <ste...@castlsys.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>>On 13 Mar 1997 20:32:52 -0500, nob...@huge.cajones.com (Huge Cajones
>>Remailer) wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> fwd http://www.latimes.com/HOME/NEWS/COMMENT/t000022798.html
>>>
>>> COLUMN LEFT / ALEXANDER COCKBURN
>>> Scientologists Take Offensive in Reich Land
>>>
>>> One doesn't have to be a Hubbard believer to
>>> be troubled by Germans' intolerance.
>>>
>>> By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
>>
>>It is clear from this piece that the LA TImes, at least in this case,
>>is nothing more than a thinly-veiled PR mouthpiece for the cult.
>>
>>This attack on Germany by the author is clearly an attempt to
>>legitimise the cult's obscene accusations against that country.
>>
>>I'm disgusted.
>Cockburn is a syndicated columnist, and the LA Times is only one of the
>many national newspapers that subscribes to the agency that sells his
>weekly column. The column appeared in the Seattle Times last night.
>I'm disgusted, too, Steve, but not at the LA Times. Let's place the blame
>fairly and squarely where it belongs: on Alexander Cockburn. I wonder if
>Cockburn knows about the --what is it: one million dollar bail?--
>outstanding in Spain against Jentzsch, whom Cockburn seems to regard as an
>asshole buddy.
Cockburn has written a number of columns defending and justifying the
CoS position on just about everything. He was a major player in the
effort to place the blame for Waco on CAN.
He probably knows all about Heber's arrest in Spain, and could
probably just as easily with column inches on that topic as with any
other.
>I'd love to see someone do an expose on the credulousness of nationally
>syndicated columnists, such as Cockburn and Jack Anderson. Why do they
>believe what they believe, how are they persuaded to write what they
>write?
Whatever his reason, at least Cockburn doesn't try hiding behind any
claim of "objective reporting" -- at least not any more. That in
itself is a major concession.
Diane Richardson
ref...@bway.net
Gregg Hagglund
In article <5gcfob$f...@nntp2.u.washington.edu>, ce...@u.washington.edu
(Ceon Ramon) wrote:
>I'd love to see someone do an expose on the credulousness of nationally
>syndicated columnists, such as Cockburn and Jack Anderson. Why do they
>believe what they believe, how are they persuaded to write what they
>write?
>
>--Barbara
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
Gregg
--
"Ronnie knew he wasn't going to make bubkis in SF with his piss-poor
writing skills, so he redefined his audience from Science and Fiction to
Suckers and Fools. He said he wanted to make a gazillion dollars by
inventing a religion and he did"
- Attributed to Harlan Ellison at LA World Con
Geoff Burling
>fwd http://www.latimes.com/HOME/NEWS/COMMENT/t000022798.html
>COLUMN LEFT / ALEXANDER COCKBURN
>Scientologists Take Offensive in Reich Land
> One doesn't have to be a Hubbard believer to
>be troubled by Germans' intolerance.
>By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
[lots of barely-disguised CoS propaganda snipped]
And to think that I once had respect for Cockburn.
Geoff
Note: my return address has been modified to foil spambots.
Remove 2 words, & it will work.
Ron Newman
In article <5ghfsp$a...@lois.zippo.com>,
Diane Richardson <ref...@bway.net> wrote:
>Whatever his reason, at least Cockburn doesn't try hiding behind any
>claim of "objective reporting" -- at least not any more. That in
>itself is a major concession.
I don't think Cockburn has ever claimed to be objective. He's always
been a partisan of the Left -- and someone who I used to like, until
I saw how thoroughly the CoS has pulled the wool over his eyes.
Ron Newman
>> fwd http://www.latimes.com/HOME/NEWS/COMMENT/t000022798.html
>>
>> COLUMN LEFT / ALEXANDER COCKBURN
>> Scientologists Take Offensive in Reich Land
>>
>> One doesn't have to be a Hubbard believer to
>> be troubled by Germans' intolerance.
>>
>> By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
>
>It is clear from this piece that the LA TImes, at least in this case,
>is nothing more than a thinly-veiled PR mouthpiece for the cult.
No. This is just an Op/Ed (opinion) column. The LA Times runs
a "Column Left / Column Right" pair of articles each week. They are
not the opinion of the paper, just of the writers.