Copyright 1996 Shelley Thomson; all rights reserved.

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**Biased Journalism** Volume 2, issue 18 September 25, 1996.

Subject: Contents: A Knock On The Door: The story of Alex and Ariane Jackson.

Introduction; Interview with Alex and Ariane; Visits by OSA and Alex's Conclusions; the Police Report; the Negotiation transcript; A Message to the Net.

Read at your own risk. This is **Biased Journalism**!

1. A Knock On The Door

In September on ars Ariane began her story this way:

"My name is Ariane Jackson and I intend to share some of the information I have concerning the cult known as Scientology. This information covers the experiences of myself and some of my friends and relatives during many years. Some of this information is supported by very complete, original documentation.

"I was involved in Scientology for 17 years and I attained the highest available level, called "New OT8, Truth Revealed". I was also trained as an "auditor" to "Class 6" and I have studied the "technology" of "Class 12". I was a staff member at Flag Service Organization, Inc. in Clearwater, Florida. My husband [Alex] was involved for 20 years, attained "Clear", was trained as an auditor and was also on staff. My ex-husband [Albert] was involved for 14 years, attained "OT7, Cause over Life", gave his fortune of several million dollars to Scientology and died at the age of 59, within days of being audited at Flag!

"In Dec, 1995 my husband and I approached the "church" of Scientology and requested that steps be taken to repair the damage we had experienced as a result of our involvement. We met with a representative from Flag and specified the damage as clearly as we could... [They received the cold shoulder. Brian Anderson, Church of Scientology, Flag Service Organization, replied accusing them of blackmail and an attempt to extort funds. Independently the church contacted the Procureur General of the State of Geneva requesting a police investigation for blackmail and extortion; this went to a hearing, and was denied; the church was required to pay the Jacksons' costs.]

"We received a third response during a live TV broadcast in Paris when I was interviewed and described some of my experiences in the cult. The Scientology representative stated that I had made an offer to withdraw from the show if they paid me 17 million dollars. This I had never done. I have filed a suit for defamation."

Ariane goes on to describe what she plans to reveal:

"1. The destructive effects on myself, on my personality, on my behaviour and on my life of receiving Scientology levels including OT8, auditor training, "ethics", and being subjected to the level of control exercised by Scientology staff on other staff and public.

"2. The various methods used to persuade my ex-husband to pay money. These included daylong interviews by groups of salesmen, "investment opportunities", donations to translate a book, donations to "protect Scientology", etc., etc. Two of the "investment opportunities" where he loaned almost half a million dollars in 1989 to a "patron" and a "patron meritorious" of the International Association of Scientologists"(IAS) turned out to be very bad "investments"....My ex-husband tried for MORE THAN FOUR YEARS to get them to pay what they owed but failed and actually died in the attempt. Their failure to repay him added to the fact he had given so much of his money to Scientology ruined him financially. The stress arising from his bad financial position aggravated a heart condition for which he could not afford proper medical care and which he had been persuaded Scientology would resolve. This illness killed him before he could recover the money owed to him.

"The "church" of Scientology was fully aware of this situation and was actually claiming to be administering "justice" in the affair, since my ex-husband was prohibited, by Scientology policy, from taking ANY legal action. At the time of his death Darling and Rhyner owed him around 650,000 dollars!! This is the "result" obtained by the cult's business and ethics "technology". Darling raised his status in the cult from "patron with honors" to patron meritorious shortly after my ex-husband "invested" in his company. This step is achieved by paying IAS around 150,000 dollars..."

"3. The effects of Scientology on my life as a wife and mother, including two divorces, a husband (to whom I was married before the ex-husband already mentioned) who was persuaded by auditing that he was Jesus Christ reincarnated and could perform miracles but could not keep a job to support our three young children. How I allowed my children to be taken from me.

"My husband and I, during the period of our involvement, had a total of 4 divorces and 5 marriages with 6 children involved. To prove this problem is not confined to just my husband and I, a review of the marital experiences of all my ex-husbands and his ex-wives gives totals as follows:- for 6 Scientologists, 9 divorces, 11 marriages and 13 children with broken homes. Of these 6 people only 3 are currently married; my husband and myself are two of them. Only two mariages have survived and one of them is mine. (I have just heard that my 16 year old daughter, who is at the cult's center in East Grinstead, England, is MARRIED!) This is the result of the cult's "technology" for resolving marital problems..."

Albert Jaquier ultimately wrote to both David Miscavige and Guillaume Lesevre [Executive Director International] pleading for assistance in collecting his money from the Scientologists who had borrowed it. He asked Lesevre for a refund of the money his major debtor had donated to the church to earn "Patron Meritorious" status. Nothing happened.

One of his many faxes to Scientologist Jody Darling was finally answered as follows by Robert Eakin:

"Mr Jaquier Quit being a victim. You will be paid when there is money available to pay you. Right now all monies are invested towards production that will result in funds to pay you-- no matter how much time and paper you waste this way it will not result in getting paid any earlier. Your entheta comm is not OK and you have been deadfiled (Scientologese meaning any communication received from Albert would be immediately filed away, not shown to anyone and not answered. It is from a policy used by Scientology orgs to deal with critical mail they receive).....I do not pass this comm on to Jody nor do I give him your repetitious.......(illegible)." (end of quote)

On March 2 1994 the Deputy Chaplain for Courts wrote admitting that Darling's loan had been arranged by an IAS salesman named Hans Peter Tschupp.

Ariane published the last series of entries from Albert's diary. It is a wrenchingly sad chronicle of his last struggle against poverty and illness. As his business failed, due to the unpaid loans, his health declined. He was unable to afford medical care for the illness which claimed his life, and which he had once believed that Scientology could cure.

After many difficulties with the church in Europe Alex and Ariane and Michael, Ariane's nine-year-old son by Albert, arrived in the United States. They were found by OSA with shocking swiftness.

2. Interview with ariane and Alex Johnson - 9/16/96

[We will talk with both Ariane and Alex Jackson. We begin with Ariane, who is AJ, below. Ariane speaks excellent English with a musical French accent. Alex, whom we shall meet later, has a Scottish burr.]

bj: I gather you've had some interaction with OSA. Did this happen because you posted your story to the internet?

AJ: Yes, I think it happened because I posted OT VIII to the internet.

[actually Ariane posted a description of OT VIII from her own memory, not the church document.]

Because they are very worried, they have a lot of attention on OT VIII because I think it was the first time the new OT VIII was made public.

bj: so you think it was the OT VIII and not the story of your ex-husband.

AJ: Yes, I think it was that too but they have a lot of attention on the confidential material.

I am sure the story of my ex-husband has a lot of importance too because I don't think they want that public, you know. It is not nice for the church.

bj: well, what makes you think this OT VIII is correct?

AJ: Because I did it. I did it in '88. So I know what I have written is right.

bj: what kind of results did you get?

AJ: Nothing really. Incredible disappointment. Because there is a lot of hype in the church around OT VIII. Like 'we have abilities, we have a lot of skill,' and I had nothing. I came back, I was sick, I was in bad shape, I had a headache, I had absolutely not what was promised to me.

bj: and did you tell anyone in the church that you were unhappy about your results?

AJ: No because if you tell that to somebody you have to back to do other action or to do ethics. And I had absolutely no desire to do anything else.

bj: did you leave the church at some point?

aj: I didn't [leave] until 1993. I did some courses, but no I didn't speak at all about my disappointment.

bj: what is causing you to speak out now?

AJ: In 1993 [my husband and I took a withdrawal] from the church and we began to think about that. We read the book of Corydon [Bare Faced Messiah] and A Piece of Blue Sky [by Jon Atack]. It [the church] was a lot of lie. The reality was totally different than what they showed to us. And I had a lot of [ethics actions] and duress with them. I couldn't see my son during seven months because they show my ex-husband that I was somebody ugly, or somebody dangerous for my son. I had a lot of problems with them in fact. I was under duress very often.

bj: what happened when you finally left the church, and what made you do that? And how did you leave? Did you tell them you were leaving, or were you declared, or what?

AJ: When I decided to leave the church I had my three older children who were working in the church. So I decided "I don't want to do anything, I don't want to speak about anything because I want to stay in a relationship with my children." And it was in November of 1995 I went to Switzerland to be a witness for my friend who was an ex-scientologist, and the fact [that] I go as a witness makes my decision public.

bj: in a court trial against the church?

AJ: Yes.

bj: did your friend want his money back, or what was the situation?

AJ: No, he doesn't want his money back but he had a lot of problems with the church. In fact he was very disappointed and he had the problem with his throat--he's a musician--and he said to let him go by a medical doctor. They do processes on him [instead] and it doesn't resolve his problem so he decides to leave the church. He was OT VII, he was very high. And I did a witness because I know him since a long time and I know him, he's a friend.

bj: how many years were you in the church?

AJ: Seventeen years. I began in '76 and left in '93.

bj: did it cost you a lot of money?

AJ: Yes. I did a calculation with my ex-husband. It was $47,000.

bj: often people pay more, or so I understand.

AJ: Yes. My ex-husband paid around five million dollars. But not just for courses and other things, but he gave a lot of donations. [and the bad loans -ed.]

bj: well, what caused you to put OT VIII on the internet?

AJ: Because I saw the old OT VIII which was on internet was not correct. And [I don't want for other people to go as far as this and not be aware of what the level is about]. It is really to make people aware of the lies.

bj: when you thought about posting it to the internet, was this a scary thought for you? What did you think the church would do?

AJ: yes, it was a scary thought. I know that I will receive harassment. Because I know the church doesn't want that known and believed, but for me, I have to inform other people that these charges, all that is wrong and is false. If someone goes in scientology and pay a lot of money, certainly at the end he will be disappointed. He will have debts or a lot of problems. This why I decided to post OT VIII.

bj: when you were sick after you finished OT VIII, what happened to you?

AJ: I had a very bad headache. I had fever, I had a cold. And I was so ashamed, you know, to be sick because when you finish OT VIII you should be able to undo any sickness. So I hide from other people from the church because for me I couldn't understand why I am sick. Even a little cold is not normal.

bj: [sympathetically] how long did this sickness last?

AJ: One week. But very often after I get headache, and cold or fever. Very bad headache. But I didn't say anything about it because I wanted no more heartache.

bj: do you usually have bad headaches, or was this the first time?

AJ: No I had these kind of very bad headache after some of my OT levels, like OT V, OT VII I was sick. After OT VIII I had this bad headache and bronchopneumonia. I will not say it is because of OT VIII, but for me I couldn't understand why I am sick when I have done this level.

bj: you felt ashamed.

aj: Exactly.

bj: so you posted OT VIII and then what happened? You waited for the roof to fall in?

AJ: Yes. Really I didn't think it will be as fast as that.

bj: what happened?

AJ: I think two days after we posted OT VIII they found us. They arrive and-

bj: how do you think you were found?

AJ: I have no idea. Because we just arrived from Switzerland three weeks ago. And nobody knew where we were living and our phone number. It is possible they followed me. I have no idea.

bj: So what happened on the day that you knew they had found you? How did you know?

AJ: because they arrived at the door.

bj: who?

AJ: Three people from OSA. It was around eleven o'clock [in the morning].

bj: a bright sunny day?

AJ: [amused] Yes, a bright sunny day. Like we have in Florida.

bj: and did see them coming?

AJ: No. I heard the knock at the door and I saw these two women and a man. And they said "we are with the church, don't close the door." And they were in civil [casual clothes].

bj: did they look well dressed?

AJ: Yes. The women had pants and the guy had pants with a shirt. But very nicely dressed. Very clean.

They said "we are from the church. Don't close the door."

And I was so surprised because I never thought it would be the church of scientology. They just said "the church." I thought maybe it is another church, like a Baptist church. So I said "I want to ask my husband," and I closed the door. I asked Alex to come, and he opened it, and they told him they were the church of scientology.

And Alex closed the door and they spoke through the door. They asked Alex to speak to them, because they had a few questions to ask him. [Ariane talks to Alex]

They said they wanted to speak with us because they just wanted to ask a few questions, it will be not long. And as they were speaking through the door we go to our bedroom and Alex opens the window. And we begin by speaking through the window.

They asked about the post we did on Internet about confidential work. And they said you know, it is trade secret and copyright. And things like that. And Alex said "tell us what you want. But we will not answer to any questions." So they begin by speaking about trade secret[s] and copyright[s]. They said they don't want to use a lawyer. They would like to do a normal speech with us to handle the situation. They don't want to use a lawyer if they don't have to use a lawyer. And they go on a little bit like that.

bj: yes, I see. It sounds like Alex is pretty much on top of the situation. What is his background?

AJ: Yes, he's on top because he speaks better English than me. And he has more strength. Me, I am more scared about them.

bj: Has Alex been in the church before?

AJ: Yes, for twenty years. He left at the same time as I did.

He began in Scotland. But he went less far in the upper levels. He went as clear, and I went way up.

[now Alex Jackson takes up the story. He is AL, below]

bj: The church people found you and you were talking with them through the bedroom window.

AL: I said "We are not answering any questions. We simply want you to say your piece and then go. So they spoke about how they had a legal responsibility to safeguard their trade secrets and they had to show their lawyers who were putting pressure on them to demonstrate to the lawyers that they were taking effective action to protect copyrighted trade secret material. They didn't want to resort to legal action because nobody won except the lawyers. It was expensive for them and expensive for us. And they described the gory details of how a lawsuit would basically destroy our lives.

bj: well, let's get to those gory details. What did she say?

AL: Well, she said at one point, "you want a life. You have children." She looked in Ariane's direction. You don't want to leave [them with nothing]. Use all your money" and she goes on and on. Because when you go in the court system you're on the conveyor belt and just, whoa, and do you know what it's like? And they said, 'it's like a war.' It's 'terrible, terrible, terrible.'

That's been the tack all the way through in all the meetings. With any pretext they'll start on stories about Dennis Erlich, about Grady Ward, Arnie Lerma, about what it's like for these people. They paint a picture that they don't have a life anymore because they decided to make a legal thing against the church of scientology, they just don't have a life anymore. It's finished for them.

I shut them up because they just kept going on about it.

bj: What did they want from you?

AL: They wanted an agreement that we wouldn't divulge any more confidential materials such as OT VIII and the Running Program, that we had divulged. And they didn't mention a release, they just kept saying that we have to ensure that nothing else, no more of our trade secrets are made public, go on the Internet.

bj: did they ever show you the document they wanted you to sign?

AL: Not the first day. The second day they produced it.

bj: So the first day, how long did the interaction last?

AL: An hour. It is difficult [to judge], we were so wrapped up. Ariane reckoned that it was more than an hour.

bj: at the end of that hour how did you feel?

AL: Ohhh. Stressed out. 'How did they find us? What are we going to do? Are we in legal trouble?' [and so on] 'What will we do? I think we handled it well, but I don't know. Maybe we said something [we shouldn't have], you know?'

The fact [is] that we didn't answer any questions, or, we certainly didn't give them any agreement. Toward the end they were pushing for an agreement, they said well,--I had the impression they had to go back with something-- they said, well, we need your assurances. Are you going to discuss this with us, or are you going to continue to post stuff, or can we resolve this, is it going to become a legal matter? And we just said, we're not making any agreement.

bj: Did they say they'd come back the next day?

AL: Well, they wanted to go wait in the car for a half hour, and then we give them a decision. They said 'well, how long is it going to take you to decide what you are going to do here?' I said "we're slow. We have a thing about decisions. We're not too fast on decisions." And they got angry. They wanted that decision, they wanted a promise, they wanted to take something back with them. They were unhappy.

At the end it was getting repetitive. They were trying to get something. And at the end I just said you are not getting any answers, you are not going to get any promises, you are not going to get any agreements from us. Do you have anything else to say that you have not previously said? If not, please go.

They realized they were not getting anything. So they left. They were unhappy.

bj: I see. Now what did you do after they left?

AL: We discussed it. How did they find us? We patted ourselves on the back. We obviously handled it good. What do we do now?

bj: do you think anyone stayed to watch your place? Were there any watchers outside that you saw?

AL: No.

bj: Did you worry about that?

AL: At the time I don't think so.

bj: Well, did they come back the next day?

AL: They came back the next day, yep. It was after lunch. The same three. I can give you two of their names. The woman who was the chief spokesman, her name is Jacqueline Kevenaar. She's from Holland. She said she was from CSI but later I said, "Are you OSA?" and she said "Yes." But then later she changed it back to CSI. So officially they claim to be CSI.

The guy, his name is Edward Parkin. The third, her name is Joan.

BJ: What were their faces like?

AL: Oh, full of warmth. And friendly and understanding. Very very nice. And when we started talking through the window they were saying 'oh, you've had bad handling. We would like you to know that we realize that this situation has not been handled well. Your concerns should have been addressed before. That was an error on our part." and blah, blah...

Because we had a meeting in Geneva with someone from Flag in December 1995. When we told them what we considered the damages that we received as a result of being involved. And after that we received a complaint in Geneva that we had attempted blackmail and extortion. We won it, but they appealed it twice. Eventually they had no more appeals to go. So I mentioned this to them the first day and the guy said "yes, but it was dropped!" as though this were a good thing for the church of scientology.

And I said "well, so we had your reply." And they said "well, that was done by the church in Zurich and it was actually done without our permission. And it shouldn't have been done. It was a bad thing, it was a bad idea. We didn't agree with that. They shouldn't have done it." blah, blah, blah...

The first time they were relieved they could speak to us and they were nice. [they said we had] bad handling. We could have said L. Ron Hubbard [untranslatable] and they would have said "you're so right, it's true". You know, that kind of thing?

bj: How old were these people?

AL: Fortyish, late thirties.

bj: Did the women wear any makeup?

AL: Yes, they were wearing makeup. Not a lot, a little bit. They [the women] both said they had been in scientology more than 20 years. The chief spokesman was a tall, slim blonde, kind of sandy blonde. The other woman was shorter, longer hair, less pleasant, more hard looking. They guy is a little bit, kind of, goofy. But I think it's an act.

There was another visit later the same day.

We were eating dinner. We heard the knock on the door. I didn't answer the door; I just went straight to the window. And she had the Jody Darling post. It's the second post we put on. It's about this guy Jody Darling. He's high up in the church, he's public. And he borrowed $200,000 from Ariane's ex-husband but he didn't pay it back.

She had a printout. She was outside the window waving this thing at me. And she was angry. She said "Look, this is the kind of thing that we can handle. I have the authority to do something about this. I could have handled this. This is what I want to handle. Right now you are eating" -I was chewing- "but we'll be back tomorrow and we'll discuss this. And we'll handle it." This was the blonde, Jacqueline.

bj: So on the second day they showed up after lunch.

AL: Right. The first thing, they started discussing the money thing with [Ariane's] ex-husband and Jody Darling. She [Jacqueline] wanted some more information about that because she said "we can assist you, we can resolve it with Jody Darling, by finding him, getting him to Clearwater. We'll take care of everything."

They were shouting about this money, and Ariane said "I don't like the way this discussion involves me." She noticed the way the neighbors were starting to look, so she said "why don't we go somewhere?" So we went to Denny's.

We arrived and it was very nice. It was relaxed, it was friendly. Jacqueline had a pad. She was very businesslike. She was asking questions about the estate of Albert, Ariane's ex-husband and what was happening. And she actually knew that it was stuck in probate here in Clearwater. She knew that, she was fishing to find out what we were doing. Because--the executor in charge of this estate--she wanted to know if we were working with him to do any recovery on these debts.

She was pretending. She said 'I need the information so we can work with you to do this, to solve this' but she was actually trying to get information, to find out if we were working with the executor, she wanted to know if I had a lawyer, etc.

When we were in Switzerland we had this guy representing us that they absolutely hated, and she wanted to know if we were still working with him. We're not, and I told her that. We probably told her more than we should have. We fell for the story that she wanted to help us with this estate thing, but later we thought that she was trying to find out what danger we would present legally, you know.

bj: How long did the conversation last?

AL: In Denny's? It was over an hour.

bj: You just had coffee? Or did you have food?

AL: It was right after lunch. We just had some coffee. They had a bagel and a muffin or something.

bj: Did she ask you to sign anything?

AL: That was when she produced the release.

bj: Oh, really. Did you keep a copy of it?

AL: They refused to give us a copy. I asked for a copy, they said "no, you can't get a copy."

bj: They wanted you to sign it and they wouldn't give you a copy?

AL: No.

bj: Well, what did it say?

AL: Well, the first paragraph, I didn't even read it because it was a list of people and churches and parts of the church that we were waiving any and all claims against, past, present, future, known, unknown, uh, whatever.

Ariane had a version in French which was actually different from my version. It was a totally different version. [In] my version, after waiving all claims, there was a little bit in the top paragraph that said, I don't know how it was worded, but it mentioned that we had violated their copyright and in exchange for them not taking action on that, we were signing this release. It waived all our claims. And then it said "I promise not to discuss or speak about anything I have experienced in scientology including experiences on staff and other information that is not widely known," and then went on to say anything confidential, anything blah, blah, unless I am subpoenaed. If I am subpoenaed I promise I will immediately notify them. At the end, I affirm that I am not under the effect of drugs, alcohol, bla, bla, bla.

bj: Did you sign it?

AL: (emphatically) No. It also said, 'for each and every infringement I promise to pay $10,000.

bj: Was there any type of time limit on this contract?

AL: No. I mean it was past, present, future. No limit.

Ariane's had some extra on it. She was not to speak to her family, her children. And they couldn't speak about it [scientology]. She could not divulge any of her experiences to them and they could not divulge any of her experiences to anyone else.

bj: So the woman showed you these things. And then what happened?

AL: I started shaking my head as I was reading it. And when I finished it I said "can I have a copy?" "No." So I just gave it back to her. "Do you have a problem with it?" she said. "Look, if there's a part--you don't like this one? Anything you have a problem with, we can take it off. If you want to write one yourself, you can write one yourself. We can work something out."

bj: Well, that sounds pretty reasonable. What did you say?

AL: [Laughing] I said "we're not signing anything."

bj: And she said?

AL: I think she went back on, "we have to protect our confidentiality. There has been a breach already, you have breached your agreement, you have violated our trade secrets and our lawyers are putting pressure on us, are demanding that we take action, that we get something equivalent to a court judgment, a restraint so that there will not be any further quoting or publishing of our secret church scriptures."

We just held our position. "We are not signing anything." And she said, well is there a point you have a problem with? And she actually scored one out, she took her pen and scored one out.

I didn't want to have a discussion with her. It sort of became a standoff. One of them said "you need to talk to your lawyer." Because she knew we didn't have a lawyer.

bj: Now were all three people present at this meeting, or just this one woman?

AL: All three.

bj: And you didn't want to sign anything without legal advice.

AL: Right.

bj: And what was their response?

AL: "Go talk to your lawyer. And we'll meet again tomorrow."

bj: And then?

AL: And then we left on good terms. It was very nice. Everyone was smiling at everyone. We felt we were making progress.

We had a meeting the next day.

bj: Where did you meet?

AL: Well, the next day I had received some advice. [someone] suggested not meeting with them or else taping the meeting.

[Alex and Ariane discussed how to tape the meeting. They decided against surreptitious taping as being underhanded and 'playing their game.' "We decided to open the door and shove the microphone in their faces," Alex said. And that is what they did.]

I opened the door and I said "do you mind if we tape it?" They went white, and they said "No, sure, go right ahead." And I said "we can't go to Denny's, I'm connected to the stereo. One of you can come in. You can come in [to the blonde] but we don't want three of you in here."

She said "well, can Ed come? Because he knows about legal things."

I said, "no, you come yourself and we tape it, or nothing." So she was in agreement, she wanted to tape it because I was taping it. But his tape recorder wouldn't work.

bj: So he had a tape recorder with him?

AL: Oh, yeah.

bj: Do you think he had used it before, maybe to tape things you said?

AL: No, because it was like one of these tiny ones. And it was in his briefcase, which was probably too far away to pick up [sounds].

bj: Ok. So he was just using it right then only it wouldn't work then.

AL: Right. I don't know if he just said that or not. But then he went off to get batteries for his tape recorder and he came back about ten minutes later. At that point she didn't want to come in alone.

Al: "Well, why don't you stay on the doorstep? We'll have a meeting on the doorstep." But she didn't want to do that because of the neighbors. So I had a discussion with Ariane and we decided to allow the two of them in. So the two of them came in.

They produced a general release again. And they were pushing, pushing, pushing, and pushing. And then there were the horror stories about Arnie, about Grady Ward, about what it's like to engage them in litigation.

[On the tape we hear Alex opening the door and saying hello, do you mind if we tape it? Not at all, the scientologists reply, sounding nervous. Alex calmly presents his demands. He has described Jacqueline as upbeat, but she has a hard voice. The emotional subtext of this meeting is tense and unfriendly.]

[Alex begins with the date, September 13, 1996 and his address. He asks the scientologists to identify themselves. Jacqueline gives her name and states that she represents the Church of Scientology International. Edward gives his name and states that he also represents the c of s Int. "I am not a lawyer. We are civilians. We represent our church, and we would like to speak to you and your wife to amicably resolve what, based on our conversation today and yesterday, is some kind of a problem."

bj: So how long did the meeting last?

AL: Almost an hour and a half.

bj: What ended it?

Al: Well, they spoke about the release and they wanted it signed. I said this is a general guide, this is a shut-up about all of our experiences. She said no, no, you don't understand. It's just for your experiences on staff and the confidential materials. So I actually read to her one of the paragraphs that specifically said "I promise not to say anything about my experiences in scientology including staff." And I read this to her two or three times, and she kept saying 'well, you interpret it means anything but it's really just on staff.'

It was becoming silly. I looked at the guy and he was smiling. And I said "he can't keep a straight face." He was nodding and saying "this is general, this is general" so I dropped it.

They did the confidential, all that stuff. And then she was ready to leave, and they stand up to leave, and I said "wait a minute. Whoa, whoa. What about the state of our [concerns]? What about over a million dollars that is owed to this estate by a scientologist?" Between the two meetings we had [posted] the diary of Albert. Now with interest [the debt] is over a million dollars.

bj: You are talking about the scientologists who owe money?

AL: Yes. And I'm talking about Darling who borrowed the money from Albert, and shortly after he paid the $150,000 to IAS.

bJ: Is that all on the tape?

AL: Yes.

bj: Well, let's move out to how that meeting ended.

AL: It was friendly. There was laughing and joking. Just before the end the guy said something strange. He said "it is difficult to get people to do something that is requested by two people who are guilty of suppressive acts, who by church tenets are guilty of suppressive acts, which are the absolute worst--(Alex can't remember the exact words) actions anyone could do against the church." I didn't realize he was referring to *us* as the people who were doing the worst possible acts against the church.

That was just before the end. And it kind of became heavy. But the meeting finished. They wanted to come by the next day, which would be Saturday, but we said that we have a friend all weekend. There will not be a school. We will not discuss this in front of him [Michael]; we don't have anybody to take care of him.

They said "oh, we can come and Joan can take him to the pool and play with him, [!] maybe we can all go to the pool.

No, it will be Monday before we can have another meeting, [Alex said]. They said "well, we'll come back tomorrow. We'll just check. And if we can, we can ask you some questions or have a re-discussion." We said ok, fine. And on Saturday we took off at lunchtime for the beach to make sure we weren't there. They came back Saturday evening around 8. I answered the door. It was her and the guy.

She said "I just have some questions about Albert's estate." And I said "no, I refuse to discuss this in front of the child."

I think they are using that [the estate] as a hook because they think that is the thing we want to talk about. They think we want money from them, and so 'if we talk about that they'll talk to us'. She said "just a couple of questions." I said no, it will have to be Monday, sorry, goodnight.

We decided Saturday that we are finished with the meetings. We have the tape, and there is nothing more we have to gain.

bj: What do you want to do now?

Al: Put the ball in their court. We don't think they have a valid legal action. Although that's never stopped them before. I mean, they can start harassing us with legal suits that have no validity. But they have a problem because they run the risk of OT VIII, if they want to do a suit against us they have to prove that Ariane infringed their trade secrets or their copyrights. They run the risk of it being discussed in the court. So I think that they are in a sticky position.

Their first attempt was, 'maybe we will get these suckers to sign something. Scare them, and get them to sign something.' If that doesn't work they'll probably get together with their lawyer 'what can we do?'

bj: Have you noticed anything else? People lurking outside the house, or being followed or anything?

Al: Nope. Yesterday Ariane's car, the little door for the fuel cap was open. I felt 'aw, they put sugar in the gas,' so I drained some gas off to check. We are sort of paranoid, you know? [He describes some other precautions he takes to preserve their privacy.]

Last week when they were here every day--Wednesday, Thursday, Friday--we were just wrapped up in it. That's all we talked about. That's all we thought about. We couldn't sleep. We were just stressed out.

bj: What would you like to have happen right now?

Al: A normal life. We came here to try and have a normal life. We felt that we had to do something, that we couldn't just go off and drop scientology, go into a new life without saying something. It wasn't revenge. Because we've had three years of going through the original suicidal depression.

I don't know if you know about that, but I think it's common [when people leave the church]. Because you're hyped up on all this hope. You know that every problem in your life will be resolved by scientology. That is a promise. Then you read a book and a month later all that hope is gone. You have a life that has been stopped for twenty years or something. And your development and normal maturity hasn't occurred for twenty years. And you're confronted by, you're middle aged, you are confronted by a life that is destroyed, and no money. All these wierd ideas about people and how they're all wogs and stupid, and filled with BTs and clusters, and crazy, And you now have to confront this without the scientology crutch.

And you also have this idea that 'a body is just a body. It is something that you use sixty years and discard. And this is turning around in your head and you're saying 'this life is basically finished.' I'm talking personally. I just had the idea that I should just scrap this and go be a baby again, you know? I mean, you look at your life and- it's like coming off of drugs, I imagine. I don't know, I've never experienced that, but I imagine it is like that. In alcoholism, everything is ugly and you've got to confront that. And you don't want to. And you don't have anything to use to confront it with.

bj: Well, what do you want to do with your life now?

Al: Get some kind of professional qualification, get some kind of way to make money other than driving a truck, which is what I've been doing.

bj: Do you need help with that? Do you have any type of support?

Al: Actually we managed to borrow some money when we were in Switzerland from different people. So that was why we came here. To study, and to do some stuff. We'd like to be able to continue that without fear and harassment and legal actions, and having to spend all the money on a lawyer. Depends on what they do. If they give us notice of a legal action we need a lawyer, they need a retainer, and then... we just didn't think about this before we made the posts.

We didn't feel that we could just go and drop it and forget it.

bj: How do you feel now? Are you worried about the church doing other things?

AL: Yes. Our viewpoint is, they have to do something. They can't allow us to be- we have some very damaging information on the money, Ariane's ex-husband, some of Ariane's experiences with her children and friends and acquaintances that were blown, OT VIIIs that were sick, problem... so we would like to be able to expose all this shit. But I don't think that they can allow that to happen.

bj: They can sue you for copyright infringement, but I don't think they can stop you in any legal way from publishing your experiences.

AL: Ariane's ex-husband kept incredible files on all this financial craziness. Fraud, loans...ah, it's a mess. It's terrible, what they do to you to get money from you. And the money always ends up in the same place. It always ends up in the church. You have these guys doing all this craziness and getting their cuts and their commissions, but they have to be putting it in the church.

The rich guys that come to Clearwater, and these vultures sitting waiting--it's ugly. And they come in and take these guys, they offer these "investments" but they're not investments. They're called investments, but the money is actually going to the church of scientology.

bj: Is there anything you would like to say to the people on the internet who are reading this?

Al: [thinks for a minute] Yes. My personal opinion is that scientology has within it the seeds of its own destruction. I don't know when it will happen, but it will happen. Because Hubbard, when he was alive, he changed it. He had to change it to get new gimmicks and new stuff all the time. And he had to explain why it didn't work, make a discovery about why it didn't work. And since he died they keep changing it, they keep discovering his notes that someone had stolen and blah, blah.. So they keep having to change it to say well, the reason it didn't work was because, and then they'll fix that. A year or two later, 'well, we've made another discovery,' and so despite that they cannot change what he wrote, and he wrote some crazy stuff, it will come back on them.

Twenty, thirty years after the guy's dead they cannot still be finding his notes!

They are going to be stuck in the trap of what he wrote. And this is what he wrote. His purification rundown cannot be changed as medical knowledge progresses. In twenty years it will be so obvious that the purification rundown is just nonsense. And then they will do research on the E-meter and they will find that it doesn't work, Etc, etc. Science will cut something out. It will just become antiquated because they can't change. It's not science. It's supposed to be science. It isn't science. It's faith. It's lies and it's going to stagnate.

bj: how long have you and Ariane been together?

Al: Since 1990.

bj: Do you have any children?

Al: No. Well, we have Michael. [son of Ariane and Albert] He's nine years old now.

bj: How's Michael holding up under this?

Al: Very well. He's, his story is a crazy story. Because when Albert and Ariane separated in 1990 she was told by the ethics officer to give custody of Michael to Albert. Then a few months later Albert was persuaded that she was suppressive and bad, and so he would not allow her any contact with Michael for seven months. Which made Michael crazy. And then four years later he lost Albert. You see, he had lost the stability of Ariane and he became stuck to Albert. And then he lost Albert. The guy didn't know what was up for a while.

bj: Terribly hard.

Al: Nightmares, hyperactive, and scared, you know. If he doesn't know where Ariane is he freaks.

He asks what's happening and we try to explain it to him in a way that doesn't scare him, that doesn't just feed him a line and treat him like a child. Because he resents that.

He found his dad when his dad died. By the time his dad died he stayed with his dad through the week and he came with us on the weekend. And his dad died Saturday night in the night. We took Michael back on the Sunday evening. Michael went into the apartment and his dad was laying on the bed. Michael went over to him and his dad was cold. That was when he realized there was something wrong.

--------------------------

3. OSA on Candid Camera: notes by the Jacksons

FIRST VISIT.

We received our first visit from the cult's representatives on Wed Sep 11. Ariane answered and, when she saw who it was, shut the door in their faces. They stood outside the door, three of them, for about 10 minutes, pleading with us to speak to them. I took their photos; they smiled. They refused to go away.

We decided to let them say their piece, so they could go away since we knew they are not allowed to return without a "product". We spoke to them through a window, and asked them what they wanted to say. They were unbelievably NICE, full of "ARC", warm. The chief spokesman was a blond who identified herself as Jaqueline Kevenaar, from OSA (she also said she was from CSI), the other woman did not give her name (she was later identified as Joan), she was dark-haired, and the third was a man who gave his name as Edward. They sympathized with us, said our situation had been handled very badly by previous "church" members, etc., etc.

It's a drill. We were not impressed. Whatever we said (we did not say much) they were in total agreement, nodding vehemently, as if it was the very thought they had. We got bored with this and pushed them to get to the point. They said, still very nicely, that our posts on OT8 (they admitted it was OT8) and the Running Program (more confirmation) were in violation of the agreements we had signed when we were given access to the data. They were referring to "non-discosure bonds" which are supposed to be signed before someone is allowed to see anything "confidential", and [which] state that he/she promises to pay $100,000 (or $1,000,000, or another amount depending on how "hot" the data is) if he/she divulges or discusses any of the data. Not only is the legal validity of these bonds questionable but they get lost and they forget to make people sign them sometimes.

Meanwhile, back at the window, which we had now opened so they did not have to shout, they said they wanted to resolve the conflict between us and the cult without resorting to lawyers, because "nobody benefits but the lawyers", and it would be much better for everybody concerned if we could discuss it.....(bla, bla, bla). They spent a great deal of time describing how gruesome it would be for us if we refused to talk to them and forced them to resort to legal action. Jaqueline said to Ariane, " I am a mom too. You have children, you want to get on with your life, you don't want to......"etc.

Jacqueline assured us that she has the power to totally resolve our situation, because she is from CSI and not Flag. She said their only concern was that we had "violated" our signed agreements and divulged their "sacred church scriptures" and that was against the law and they had an obligation to protect their religion. She said they had no desire to prevent us from speaking about our experiences and if we wanted to say "I worked 48 hrs straight in the galley" we can say that. All they wanted was to ensure that no more confidential data appeared on the Net.

They pushed for something from us, an agreement, a promise, anything, and it became repetitive. We said we had to think about it; they said "for how long? we'll wait in the car a half hour". I said "we are slow, we have a thing about decisions, it comes from our ethics experiences". The dark-haired one got angry, said "why don't we just acknowledge the past and handle what is here right now".

We reiterated that we were not answering any questions or making any agreements or promises. They continued to push and try to find some way to make us more amenable to being manipulated by them. They referred to Ariane's statement about being uncertain that it was the correct decision to post OT8, and tried to work on her uncertainty. Didn't work. They tried to make us more relaxed using a technique described by Hubbard where the exact reason for someone's anger or annoyance or upset is supposedly located and then indicated to the person. Didn't work. Of course, no matter how nice they are, we know they think we are Suppressive Persons and Scientology won't work on us for that reason.

An interesting point came up when Jaquelin was assuring us how familiar she was with our situation. I joked that she had probably read our pc folders (folders containing all the supposedly "confidential", intimate details of our lives that we had revealed in auditing). She admitted that she had but in a later visit denied that she had but admitted that Joan had. SO OSA IS STILL GOING THROUGH PC FOLDERS. Under the circumstances, there is no pretext for them going through our pc folders, we are SP's and ineligible for auditing. The only possible reason would be to find data they can use to manipulate, embarass or intimidate us.

Eventually we had to tell them to go away because it was obvious they would stay until we did so. They left their phone number which is the # for OSA Legal, (813) 461 3052.

SECOND VISIT.

The second visit was very brief and Joan was not there. Jaquelin waved a printout of our post on Jody Darling and Ariane's ex-husband, Albert Jaquier. She appeared to be angry, and was red-eyed. She said that it (the situation with Darling) was something she could resolve, she had the authority to resolve, etc. She said she did not have time but would return the next day. Edward did not say much, if anything, but nodded in confirmation of whatever she said. They left without being told to.

THIRD VISIT.

By the time they arrived, all three, for the third visit, around 2pm, Thursday Sept 12, we had posted Albert's diary. They still managed to paste smiles on. They used the hook of Albert's estate to persuade us to talk to them. When they started shouting details through the window we suggested we adjourn to a nearby Denny's and they were more than happy.

At Denny's, Jaqueline was all business with pen and notepad ready. Under the pretext of ascertaining what the situation was with the estate so they could "help", they pumped us to find out what we had done and were doing to recover the money owed by Scientologists to the estate (around $1,200,000). Who was the executor? Who was representing us? Etc., etc.

When we had told them all they wanted to know and they had given us the impression they were sincere about "helping" us get the money owed by Scientologists to Albert's estate and therefore to Ariane's son, they brought up the subject of our posting OT8 and the Running Program. They produced copies of a document titled "General Release", copies of which they refused to give us. Ariane's copy was in French and was also differently worded.

This release began with our waiving any and all claims, past, present and future, known and unknown, against all these individuals and entities that seemed to cover everyone connected with Scientology. It also made us promise never to speak about "anything" related to our experiences or knowledge of Scientology. We also had to promise to notify them if we were subpoenaed and had to speak. It also included that we would pay them $10,000 for each and every infringement of it. Ariane's also stopped her speaking to her family members and them speaking to others.

We refused to sign, at which point Jaqueline said that they could take off anything we did not like and she began drawing lines through the parts she thought we did not like. We reiterated that we would not sign. They continued to push and tried to interpret it for us and persuade us that it did not say what it obviously said. It was not well done on their part, and was almost pathetically inept.

During this meeting we also had a kind of theological discussion, if that is actually possible with a Scientology fanatic. Edward asked us what we were thinking when we posted the confidential materials, and why we did it. I tried to explain that I felt I had been deceived by Hubbard concerning his "research" and his claimed life accomplishments and I did not want others to have similar experiences and lose many years of their lives before discovering the truth about Scientology and Hubbard. I mentioned that the data from Gerry Armstrong's trial had shown me the truth about Hubbard.

The women obviously did not know what I was talking about. Edward jumped in and said first that Armstrong had stolen Hubbard's papers and altered them, then he said he didn't alter them, then he forgot what he was trying to say and Jaqueline had to jump in and rescue Edward. Both of the women asserted that they had been in Scientology over 20 years and they had heard everything negative there was to hear and not once had anyone ever been able to get them to question Scientology. They were proud of that.

I thought about pointing out that that statement told me more about their inability to question than it told me about Scientology, but I had the impression they would not understand. Joan was going on at length about how many people had benefitted from Scientology and, just because we had not, we should not try to spoil it for them. She said she personally was very happy and had been lucky enough to benefit greatly from Scientology and had not had negative experiences.

I argued that it was not Hubbard's view that she had benefitted because of luck, it was his view that if someone had bad experiences, or was "unlucky", it was because that person had done bad things in this or an earlier lifetime. I even referenced the issues covering it, but she did not know what I was talking about. The discussion just petered out.

I mentioned the spamming of ARS, and had to explain what that was. They looked at each other and said, "Who is doing that?" They said they did not get to see ARS but someone gave them copies of posts that they needed to have.

At the end of the meeting, it was jovial, everyone was smiling. We were going to check on some points on the estate of Albert. They were apparently happy with the progress they had made, they had got us out of our appartment, into Denny's, relaxed about talking to them, they had introduced the release and started to handle our disagreements. We separated "on good terms".

THIRD VISIT.

The third visit took place on Sept 13, between 3 and 4:30pm, in our apartment. The participants were Jaquelin, Edward and ourselves. [The session was taped. A transcript made by **Biased Journalism** follows this account.]

At the end of the third visit we told them we would not be able to meet with them again until the following Monday. They were unwilling to accept that and said they would come by and "just check" to see if they could talk to us.

We made sure we were not at home all afternoon Saturday.

FOURTH VISIT.

The fourth visit was also very brief. Jaquelin and Edward came around 8:30pm Sat 14 Sept and she said she wanted to ask some questions about Albert's estate. I told them to come back on Monday, but they persisted and I had to close the door in their faces. They left.

FIFTH VISIT.

On Wed 18 Sept we sent a fax to Brian Anderson, OSA Flag telling him we did not want any more visits or any harassment from representatives of any of the cult's organizations. We also mailed a copy of the fax the same day.

That same afternoon, around 5:30, Jaquelin and Edward came back and told me they had a very good offer to make to Michael, Ariane's son who has a claim on the $1.2 million owed to his father's estate by Scientologists. They wanted a meeting and I agreed to have one the following day because if I hadn't they would have stayed until I did. They left. We made sure we were not at home at the agreed time for the meeting the next day.

SIXTH VISIT.

On the evening of Thursday Sept 19 around 8:30 Edward came alone and said he had come alone and wanted to discuss it. I told him to put it in writing; he persisted with the same line, and I closed the door in his face. He left: Jaqueline was driving the car.

Ten minutes later he returned with a note written on Fort Harrison memo paper that said

Thursday 7:45pm

We invite you at Denny's in 30 minutes from now.

It was unsigned. Needless to say we did not go to Denny's.

SEVENTH VISIT.

On Friday morning, Sep 20, we were returning to our apartment after jogging and they were waiting outside. Ariane was so scared she went and hid in the laundry room and did not enter the apartment. When they saw me coming towards the appartment, they came and followed me the last 50 yards or so and were yelling at me such things as "Where are you getting your advice, Alex? From Armstrong, is it Armstrong? Or Vaughn Young who just spent 2 days in deposition. Or Dennis Erlich? You are getting bad advice. You are making a bad decision. What are you scared of, Alex, what is it, why are you so frightened? We just want to discuss it.."etc., etc.

They were still doing this when Ariane appeared from the laundry room and they started on her with the same kind of verbal attacks and harassment. She was really scared. We got into the apartment and locked the door and immediately called 911 and told them what was happening and gave them the details. When I was on the phone I could here them yelling at us outside the door. The 911 dispatcher said a deputy was on his way and asked for the tag # of their vehicle but I could not see it through the window, because they never park directly in front of the appartment.

When I hung up, I went out with pen and paper to get the tag # and they followed me from the door of the appartment to their car yelling at me that I was not scaring them, they were not scared and I could not scare them. I ignored them and went back into the apartment.

They loitered ouside the appartment and continued to yell through the door at us.

The deputy arrived shortly after and spoke to them briefly then came to see us. I showed him a copy of the letter I had sent telling them to stay away. He asked if we had been involved in the cult and were we no longer involved. We said yes. He explained to me that he could have me give them a warning in front of him telling them to stay away and, if they came back after that, they can be arrested.

I went with him and he told them he did not know what was going on between them and us but I did not want them visiting. Jaqueline tried to be smart and snapped that it was "civil", so he told her the place for it was in court. He explained to them the "trespass warning" he had explained to me and had me tell them to stay away.

As I did that, they all looked at me and the silly smiles and "ARC" were totally wiped off their faces. They looked at me like I was something Xenu had vomited up. They tried to interrupt me and the deputy shut them up.

I returned to the appartment and, as I left, I heard him demand to see their ID's. Another deputy had arrived by this time and the deputies took down their names etc.

Later, the deputies came to see us and got our names etc., and told us to phone immediately if they returned.

That was the last visit.

CONCLUSION.

The most useful conclusion I can come to after observing, and experiencing, this activity is that these individuals are _infantile_. Their behaviour is similar to that of children. This is supported by traits such as their earnestness about trivia, selfishness, naivete, devotion to a cult, lack of realism, lack of critical ability, and behaviour more appropriate to a children's TV show than real life. When they collide with reality which does not subscribe to their science fiction delusion, you can see their obvious inadequacies and their inability to deal with something that has been described to them in a distorted way.

For example, there is no word in Scientology for a critic of Scientology who is a "good guy", so they cannot have that concept. Now they have to come and talk to Ariane and me and we are not frothing at the mouth, and we are not ugly, and we appear to be sincere. But they "know" that cannot be true so they have to conclude that we are pretending, and we actually are evil. As a result they are trying to deal with situations different from the actual situations, and are suffering from delusion to that degree.

Yes, they are dangerous in the same way that juvenile delinquents are dangerous, and they are used and manipulated by others and they can be very, very cruel. They are, in fact, very cold emotionally.

I think the most effective,and true, statement that can be made TO these people would be "GROW UP AND GO GET A REAL JOB!"

Alex Jackson. Sept 1996.

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4. The Police Report

**Biased Journalism** obtained a copy of the police report. It is dated 9/20/96. The report was made at 11:35; the unit was dispatched at 11:36 and had completed the call by 12:03. The description is listed as TRESPASS WARNING.

Alex Jackson is listed as the Complainant. Subject 2 (Suspect) is Edward W. Parkin, a 37 year old white male. Subj 3 (Suspect) is Jacquelin Kevenarr, [note: this spelling is different than the one obtained by Alex, which was Jacqueline Kevenaar.] a 46 year old white female. Subject 4 (Suspect) is Joan Ellen, a 45 year old white female. All three Suspects gave the same address and telephone number: 6331 Hollywood Blvd., Suite 1200, Los Angeles, CA 90028; (213) 960-3500. We called the number and determined that this is the Church of Scientology International.

The Sheriff wrote: "I arrived at the complainant's residence. I made contact with Alex. ALex stated he resigned from the Church of Scientology earlier in the month. Alex stated that three members from the church came to his door and started harassing him. Alex stated he asked them to leave, but to no avail."

"In my presence, Alex told the three members of the church he did not want them back on his property. I explained to the church members that they have a Trespass Warning against them. They understood if they came back they could be subject to arrest. The church members then left the property."

------------------------

5. Negotiating with OSA

OSA interview tape September 13, 1996 Alex & Ariane

Alex: Hi, guys. Do you mind if I tape the conversation?

J,Ed: Not at all. Do you mind if we do?

Alex: Sure. Are you all ready?

Ed: no

[Alex: we can't go to Dennys, obviously. We don't want to discuss it on the balcony. We also don't want all three of you in our apartment. So we'd be willing to discuss it with you (to Jacqueline) alone and on tape. Do you agree with that?

J: Can Ed be there was well? Because he knows a lot about legal and stuff.

Alex: No.

J: ok.

[Ed gets out his tape recorder but it doesn't work. While he fiddles with it:] Jacqueline: is there a reason why you don't want all of us in here?

Alex: It's just our preference.

[Jacqueline explains that Ed's tape recorder is dead and asks where they could find batteries. Alex describes a hardware store, and they leave to get batteries. Tape resumes after their return:]

Alex: this is September 13, 1996 [gives his address] and I am Alex Jackson. Do you want to identify yourself?

J: Jacqueline Kevinaar.

Alex: representing?

J: I am representing the Church of Scientology International.

Ed: My name is Edward Parkin and I also represent the Church of Scientology International. I am not a lawyer and neither is anyone-unless you are- none of us are. We are civilians. We represent our church and we would like to speak to you and your wife to amicably resolve what I think, based on our conversation yesterday, the day before, is some kind of a problem.

Alex: I would also like to record that my wife, Ariane Jackson, is present.

J: So, I thought we met yesterday, we went over the whole [indistinct].

Alex: So you don't want to come in alone.

J: I'd feel better about the full cycle because this is a meeting where we want to settle things. We want to sort things out. We want to come to an agreement. We want to resolve the problem created by you guys putting confidential church sacred scriptures on the internet. You are bound by confidentiality agreements not to do so. Does [?] till your death. So we have the church's concern, which is, the official position is, that we have the obligation, we are obliged by law to sue in order to protect our rights to this material. If we don't take any action whatsoever, we sit by and we don't do anything, then we might lose our rights because we don't protect it. We're not diligently protecting our rights to the upper level materials. Which we have to do. That is our trust. That is the law. This is what the law requires of the owner of upper level or sacred materials or trade secrets.

Ok. So we are obliged to sue. However we have come here in total peace. That is something that must be believed because that is the truth. We come in all fairness to see if we can work out an agreement where you agree not to breach those upper level, trade secrets on the Internet and in that case, that will be equal to a judgment to us, just laying out the position here, it would be equal to a judgment to us, so we are protected as the owner of the materials. And that is really the bottom line on that.

Now, if we go ahead and sue and do all of these things we also wanted to tell you, in all fairness because I think you should be aware of that, and because of our obligation we have to sue, it will be expensive, obviously. There will be lawyers involved. There will be all sorts of things. The financial hardship on ourselves in order to have to do this and on you is I think worse than if we can sit down and simply agree that you won't breach the agreements you signed. That is why I have come. Within that parameter I think it's only fair that the two of us can talk to the two of you. I'd feel better about it and I'm sure you don't want me to feel bad. I don't want you to feel bad. I'd feel better about it. I think it's only fair.

Ed: You put us at a disadvantage. It ceases to become an even playing field at that point. If that's the way you want to do it, you're putting us at a disadvantage and then I think you're going to be creating problems for yourself. Because we have requested that it is both of these representatives of the Church of Scientology Interational who are here to, as it were, represent our interests. And you and your wife together to represent your interests.

If you're putting one of these representatives at a disadvantage by not having the other, then it's not an even playing field and whatever may or may not get worked out or agreed to at that point, it then becomes inequitable.

[Ed and Jacqueline are skilled negotiators. A good negotiator haggles over everything: the room, who is present, whether they sit or stand, etc. The objective is to get the other party involved in the process.]

Al: in that case we'll conduct a meeting here. [Alex means the doorstep]

[They natter about it, but the scientologists don't want to talk on the doorstep. They'd rather go to Denny's, but Alex's tape recorder is in his stereo. He can't move it. Ed offers to make a tape and give Alex a copy, but Alex dismisses the idea.]

Al: right now we have an event playing field. We don't have particularly perfect conditions.

Ed: no we have very bad conditions

J: Just because of the neighbors

Ed: One of your neighbors tried to follow us when we left. The one in a Lincoln, gray, a gray Lincoln Continental.

[Alex and Ariane close the door to discuss the matter.]

Alex: come on in.

[nattering about arrangements]

J: I'm just curious. Did anything happen?

Alex: No, we just discussed it.

J: I thought maybe you got upset about something.

Alex: No.

J: [refers to yesterday's shouting match about money] We basically explained what the whole purpose of the whole thing is. Obviously a lot of cycles have to be sorted out and we are more than prepared to do that. However-

Alex: Could you be specific?

J: Specifically like the thing we went over for instance yesterday with Albert's estate. There are real problems. I'm sure we can assist sorting that out.

Al: Are you referring to Jody Darling, a debtor to Albert's estate and a Scientologist, Hans Gaspar Rhymer [J's beeper goes on] another Scientology debtor to Albert's estate, and other-

J: Like the document you gave me? You gave me a document which listed out the names of debtors.

Alex: Scientologists owing a total of just under one million dollars [?] eight and a half years ago.

Ed: I don't remember the exact figure and I'm not sure I have the document here, but that's what we went over.

J: We are prepared and we are willing to sort that out. To do whatever the church can do to sort that out. And basically continued. Many actions the church has already done to sort this matter out, but didn't complete the cycle. That's all I wanted to say.

Ed: Right. Exactly. Now the things is, a communication was not delivered yesterday. And the bottom line as we see it is that there are two ways that this can go. The two ways are, we either work it out and resolve it or we go the other route, which is in the law courts.

J: And this is really, what you have to understand about this-

Alex: We have several different matters to resolve here. It would be to everyone's advantage and for the record I want to have it clarified that we specify whether we're talking about -

Ed: I thought I did when we introduced ourselves and I put a little preamble, I stated -

Alex: The confidential materials. We also, we will be discussing something that is our concern, which is the money owed to Ariane's son by Scientology that we have discussed.

Ed: w-w-w-w Ariane's son did not loan Scientologists any money. Albert Jaquier loaned Scientologists, as I understand, the documents that you presented and so forth, you know, money to individual Scientologists.

Alex: The money was not repaid and is currently owed to the estate of Albert Jaquier and Ariane's son is an inheritor in that estate.

J: That's what we went over already. You gave us the documentation. That is a known fact. I don't think that's in question. So we have two matters now. One matter is our claim for our protection in terms of confidentiality, the other claim is Albert's estate. And I think those are the two things we want to sort out.

Now, I think, and that's our position, that the matter of posting confidential materials and coming to an agreement not to do that or not to breach any further agreements or whatever is something that we have an extraordinary amount of attention on. As you can understand. So far anybody who breached our right in terms of doing that, we either went to see him, some of them we went to see just like we did with you, to give him the opportunity to settle and have an agreement with us that they won't do that, knowing well that based on earlier signed agreements it is not ok to do it, in fact it is a breach of the contract. Others didn't want to do that, so we saw them in court. And we litigated because, and this is something I want to make completely and totally clear, so it is fully understood. It's not like we want, we're desperate for a court case. No, we have to. We are obliged to do this. Because we have to protect the right to something which we hold confidential. If we said, well, this part of what we studied cannot be revealed then we also have the obligation to make sure that doesn't happen. When it happens we have to come to judgments that enjoin people from doing that. Like injunctions, for instance.

Like somebody like Dennis Erlich has an injunction. He cannot do that. If he does it he is contempt of court and that's a jail sentence in this country. Do you know what I mean?

Alex: [irked] We understand your legal obligation to diligently take action to protect your copyrights and trade secrets.

J: The other thing I think we should inform, which is only fair, just in my view, so we could file a suit and litigate. I'll let you guys cope with that. I tell you, that is not a nice situation to be in.

Alex: We know, because we've just had a suit from your church. And we know how that is.

Ed: The only thing is, one, it was in Switzerland, it's a completely different thing mainly because the holders of the trade secrets and copyrights are based here in the U.S. and those actions that have been brought on the basis of the copyright ownership and the trade secrets are brought by the churches housed in the U.S. and there are numerous precedents. Numerous precedents. You are going from the early 1980's until the present time. I don't know if you are aware of them, but we have Grady Ward, for example, the Internet character. There is a preliminary injunction on him that prohibits any type of activity, or Keith Henson is another. I have - this is why I wanted to meet you because I am aware of these [?] I am intimately aware of them. And I also know the effects that it [litigation] creates on people when for whatever reason they have violated our trade secrets and they wound up in a situation where the suit was filed and it basically goes on a conveyor belt in a law court. Hugely costly.

J: I mean, we could tell you this one guy, what was his name, Arnie Lerma- it's just that you need to know these things. You're not American citizens-

[She is wrong. Both Ariane and Alex are American citizens.]

Ed: But our lawyers say, 'you'd better come back with something, otherwise we have to.'

Al: Ok. I would like to just make a fact on record that since your initial visit to us two days ago we have not posted anything, I think you will agree, we have not posted any of your confidential scriptures.

Ed: To our knowledge nothing has been posted that has violated confidentiality. Absolutely.

J: That's correct, and I acknowledge that.

Alex: So we are not dealing with a situation where we are insistent upon or continuing to post materials subsequent to being apprized of your position.

J: [insistently] But if you would tell us-

Ed: If say this [negotiation] broke down now, and tonight you decided ok, well we're going to stick OT VII-

Alex: I understand your responsibility.

J: [brightly insistent] And since there was already a breach, obviously we just say 'well we talked to these people, and they look honest, and I don't think they will do it.' Our lawyers are going to say "well, you're nuts. How do you know?" Just face it, that's reality. You have to have it in writing, you have to have something that is equal to a judgment. In fact moreso because there was already an earlier breach. So the respect for contracts was at that moment in time, no matter what the considerations, what the circumstances were, was not there in order to restrain the posting from happening. So what will make this restrain the posting from happening? You know what I mean? Sure, there's always an element of risk there. Of course. And our interests, in the church interest, you want to make that as small as possible. That's the bottom line.

That is the situation we need to resolve first. First and foremost. Because that risk is there. There is another thing you have to know, there is a certain time period in which you act. When the infringement - takes place, there's a clock that starts ticking and the sooner you act the better it is for the plaintiff, obviously. Now we're in negotiations. We are. There is a reason you can say that clock will slow down a bit because we're talking. We're trying to solve this without having to go to court. But that clock still ticks. And there is a point in time where we, you know, have to make a decision. I'm telling you the straight dope. I'm here to PR or anything. Or make it all nicer or, well 'there won't be any problem'. Because I think there will be. And I think you should be informed of that.

Alex: So within a certain time period we sign or you go legal?

J: No, there isn't, like, 'ok we give you ten days.' And if you don't sign in ten days- it doesn't work like that. It works that from the moment of the infringement you have to diligently pursue making the infringement either invalid, or stop it, or prevent it from happening again. You have to show that you have diligently done this and pursued your rights. If you sit back, let the time go forward, ...that is not diligently pursuing your rights. So that's why we come here, we talk to you, and so on and so forth...

So that's basically I think the first thing that we should resolve.

Alex: Ok. Yesterday you asked us both to sign general releases which were not confined to confidential material but included experiences that we had in scientology outside of what was even on confidential or involved in confidential, taking or receiving confidential material. It was a general release concerning experiences of any kind.

Ed: No. No.

J: Not quite.

Alex: Do you have a copy?

Ed: "not generally known." I remember the paragraph well. 5b, I think it was. Anyway, "not generally known."

Alex: The point I'm making is that it was not confined to our experiences of confidential activities or the release of confidential material in public places.

Ed: Right.

J: "in a public place," obviously.

Alex: Why?

Ed: Because we would like to contain-

J: I'll tell you why this is. Because this is while on church staff. It says "I will never post or publish or attempt to post or publish anything relating to my experience with, knowledge of or information concerning the scientology religion or any of the releasees which are the parties in this contract, including any information which I obtained while on church staff and which is not widely known."

In other words, by joining staff and signing your covenant you agreed that you can be talked to and you can engage in activities which are not normally accessible to anybody outside. 'I am a staff member. I am privy to things the church is doing, the inner workings, the administration, the what-have you, organization inside.' Which of course a public getting a service would not be free to do. If I go and bank with the Bank of America I'm not sitting in their board meetings [fweet! interesting choice of metaphor!], you know what I mean?

Alex: May I check this? [papers rustle]

J: [brightly determined] And those are matters that are basically covered in the covenant, that you promised not to divulge any information which you received as a staff member, which you otherwise wouldn't have gotten if you were doing the Comm course.

Alwx: Can I retain a copy of this?

Ed: [flatly] No. Unless you sign it. In which case, obviously.

Aj: -because mine is different. [Ariane's agreement, written in French, has different provisions than the one offered to Alex.]

J: Because each of you have to make that decision for yourself.

[the Jacksons read. Nobody says anything for a minute.]

Alex: This states "I will never post, publish or attempt to post or publish anything relating to my experiences with, knowledge of or information concerning the scientology religion or any of the releasees including any information which I obtained while on church staff and which is not widely known." So therefore 5b is not limited in any way to just experiences on church staff. It includes experiences on church staff that are not widely known, but specifically says "anything relating to my experiences with, knowledge of or information concerning the scientology religion."

J: So how to you interpret that? What do you read in that?

Alex: Well, the two key words are "anything" and "including." Because "anything" means "anything". It means "anything relating to my experiences with, knowledge of or concerning the scientology religion or any of the releasees _including_ any information which I obtained while on staff and which is not widely known." So this "anything" includes this. But it's not limited to this.

J: Ok, I get it. So that's how you interpret that clause. Now I have another question. Is there anything else in this release that you have a problem with.

Alex: Yes. I-

J: Any other clauses

Alex: I don't see the necessity of your requesting, or suggesting, or asking us to sign a general release when your stated sole concern is the matter of confidential materials. Which you claimed you already have a signed written agreement on our part--do you have copies of those, by the way? Can you share them with us? Do you have them with you?

J: No.

Alex: Can you get them for us?

J: [vaguely] I guess so.

Alex: Because we'd like to, we don't remember if we did sign, what we signed.

Ed: [not sounding friendly] You remember, when you signed, when you joined, you were both staff, right? You remember signing a-?

Alex: I actually don't remember what I signed. I certainly don't remember the details. And I certainly don't even know if what I signed was legally valid. So-

Ed: Well, that puts it all into the validity, and this, that and the other- we don't want to go that way. We don't want to go that way.

J: That's where you go into court-

[scientologists are both talking at once]

Alex: We also don't want to be scared or frightened into doing something. Like this general release. It is unnecessary. It is extremely, it is a total gag on our free speech concerning the subject that we were involved in for more than half of our lives.

J: Ok, well, just to correct one [?] of things. Just let me get that straight. Which is that you say 'well, why do I have to sign this if you already have it.' Because we're not dealing with the original situation of you having signed the agreements and nothing happened. You have breached the contracts. So we need to settle the breach. It is a different situation, a different circumstance. There has been a breach, so you settle the breach. We're not settling the earlier contracts. Those are fine.

Ed: Many settlement agreements, where there was a contract originally, and there was some dispute over it, and a subsequent settlement which resolves that. That's very common.

J: You resolve the new circumstance. Ok. Now if we look at this though, it says "general release."

Alex: Let me ask your minimum requirement on this matter of confidentiality? This is your minimum requirement? What is your minimum requirement?

J: Something that is equal to a judgment, that will protect our rights completely and fully. That is what our minimal requirement will be. Something that we could get in court. However we think we can do it without all the court, and the cost, and the lawyers and so on, because we don't want to put you up to a lot of expenses. We really realize it's very expensive.

Arnie Lerma, just up to summary judgment, is the first step in the case, paid $950,000. I mean that's a horrendous amount. It's just the lawyer fees. And then, now he sits with a summary judgment where he has to pay us damages. Now what position is that to be in?

Ed: He was a staff member and so on, and he came in and out and so on and so on, many many times, and he did some confidential level, violated his agreements, we sued him-- because we had to--and the court case, it was a fast track in Virginia, and we filed a summary judgment motion. It was upheld and granted. And we have a judgment in our favor. We have damages awarded us for each of his infringements and he has to pay our lawyers' fees. I know, I was sitting there when the Judge ruled.

J: You know if we go that route it will be so bloody useless, because even if you would get Albert's one point two million dollars, you don't want to pay that to attorneys. It's the last thing you'd want to do.

Ed: Any money that you have now or would have in the future gets totally blown down the drain.

J: It's expensive for us.

Alex: We have no claim on Albert Jaquier's [estate]. Ariane's son has a claim on the estate.

[Ed has to change his tape]

Alex: I just wanted to clarify. It is Ariane's son who has a claim on Albert's estate.

Ed: Understood.

Alex: We are not claiming against Albert's estate.

J: Ok. All right. So that is really the things we want to lay out. And then if you get this thing going, if you, like, suspend part b here, because you have a problem with that. As far as I see it, and understand this thing, it tells you to do a few things- [Alex breaks out laughing, but she plods determinedly on]

You cannot breach anything that you know is confidential, maintaining the confidentiality [Alex is still laughing.]

Alex: I cannot listen to you and keep a straight face.

Ed: I understand. I know what you are laughing at.

Alex: You can't keep a straight face [yourself]!

Ed: Don't interpret what I'm doing! I understand what you're laughing at.

J: So, what it says is-

Alex: Jacqueline, we're not signing it and we're not discussing it. We're not going to hack it to pieces and then- you understand?

J: Uh huh.

Alex: I understand your position and your obligation. [his Scottish burr got the best of us here, but we gather he said something to the effect of, we are at an impasse, there is no reason to take this topic any further.]

Ed: Good. Let me clarify something to make sure I fully understand. Now let us say, this release was directed solely to confidential materials.

[Fweet! It looks like they are suggesting that Alex sign a legal contract, enforceable in a court of law, making all the the confidentiality agreements he may have signed in the past enforceable!]

Alex: Well, we'd have to consider it. I'm not saying anything.

Ed: I'm not asking you to promise me one thing or the other. I just said I can think with the cycle. If it was restricted solely to the upper level materials and that basically-

J: [She sees where Ed is going] But there was a breach, and in settlement of the breach we enter into an agreement between you and the church that you will not breach on confidential, upper level materials; confidential information. Which you know is confidential because you signed agreements to that effect. That's it.

Alex: That would be acceptable to you?

Ed: [very controlled: this is the big moment] I'm asking if it would be acceptable to you.

Alex: I'm not saying. But would that be acceptable to you?

J: I don't know either.

Alex: We're going to have to have it checked. We're not signing anything without having it checked.

Ed: It would make our job a lot easier.

Alex: If we didn't? I'm sure. But-

Ed: [wants Alex to believe that the proposed idea is innocuous, so he makes himself a victim] You don't know the pressure that comes to bear with the lawyers pounding on the table saying 'you are giving away your rights, what the hell are you playing at!' 'Give them away, fine: we were led to believe that you considered your sacred scripture sacred and yet, you're letting them-'

Alex: I understand your problem.

J: The obligation is there.

Ed: And we are here to resolve it.

J: But it's not just, Alex, it's not just our problem. You're involved in that problem. You realize that. Our problem goes to the extent that we have to go to the motions, get the machine rolling, instruct our lawyers, go to the court, get the witnesses, the testimony, this, that and the other; and you've watched L.A. Law [!!], you know how court cases go.

Alex: [laughing] There is a difference between our situation and the situation of Dennis Erlich or Arnie Lerma in that right now we are not posting. Right now we are not actively posting any confidential materials. And we have not for two days. We have not subsequent to your first visit. That is the difference. That is something that you can tell your lawyer.

J: I am not sure if that would hold up in a court of law.

Ed: Lerma posted to ars. In fact he only posted once but it was sent out two times.

J: Because a breach is a breach. If you breach once, it's a breach. The difference between a hundred breaches and one breach is very small. A hundred breaches may show a continuous, you know- and despite this talking you might go back to your computer and post again. And we talk again, you go back to your computer and post again. That of course makes matters worse.

Alex: Why? You said we could post anything we wanted-

J: I'm talking about upper levels-

Alex: Okay. You are talking about a hypothetical case. I thought you were talking about Jody Darling and the diary.

J: So that would make matters worse if you were doing that. Obviously you're not doing it. You say you're not doing it. I don't know. I have to believe you.

[Scamizdat? OSA thinks the Jacksons are Scamizdat?]

Alex: [indistinct]

J: Yeah, but what appears on the Internet doesn't always show up right away. It can take days to show up. It's not like an instant-it's not email. So I have to take your word. Which I'm ready to do. I mean, I don't think you are sitting here lying to me. You know what I mean. So. But you have to realize a breach is a breach and to something which is a trade secret or a confidential thing it's sort of, because of the litigation that has occurred, factually we'd probably have been the first ones that ever litigated on these. These are laws that we in fact almost wrote the book on. Because the precedents and the jurisprudence--you know what that word means?--exists now on the cases that we have ongoing or have had.

And if you look at a big access provider like Netcom, that is one of the biggest in the world, they adopted rules where they will screen for any copyright violations and trademark violations. That's unique. Before our cases Netcom would never have thought about doing that. In fact it wasn't the practice at all. It was 'well, you folks, it's your responsibility.' But it isn't, really.

They wrote the whole- [Ed breaks in here. He wants to get back to the topic.]

So these are not minor matters. We're creating all the law and definitely jurisprudence on the whole subject. So-

Ed: Add to that our own lawyer. Our lawyer is _the_ trade secret lawyer in the whole country. [presumably he is talking about Roger Milgrim]

J: He wrote the book on the subject. But besides that-

Ed: It's not just us here, it really is something. Do you appreciate that?

J: Since 1950 there's been people that didn't agree with the church of scientology. 1954, the first church started. But even before that. And they had their say. And they had their things to say about it. And it may not have been good. I've seen, in my 22 years [in the church] I've seen stuff, you know, obviously there have been people that weren't happy and they've tried all sorts of things. Look at people like David Mayo. That was a battle and a half.

It's like they weren't happy with what they got out of it. Okay. There's one thing otherwise, there's another thing I just wanted to tell you just apart from anything else. Which is that just saying 'okay, it's all the church's fault that I am in this position' is factually not honest and not true. Because it really isn't the church's fault, you know, like whose fault? Who was in the church? What has happened? What was applied or wasn't applied?

There are numerous circumstances- Just like, for instance, you cannot hold the Pope in the Vatican responsible for what his millions of followers do.

Alex: We understand that.

J: So you can talk about bad experiences but even then there is enough to say about that too. Understand, there is enough to say about it. Your side of the story. There's other sides to that type of story. Other people had their own experiences with the same situation as what occurred. And they have lots of things to say too. It's a game in other words, that okay, my viewpoint, your viewpoint, Joe's, Bill's, Fred's, Peter's viewpoint; we have all these viewpoints. What do we achieve with it? I don't think we achieve much. The church is still there. You know, but we are being thrown to our fates as over the years is a lot but we're still there.

If we would have done one percent of what we are accused of, we wouldn't be there. Not a soul would want to come into the church.

Alex: Okay. That's all right. That's all right. [wants to move on]

J: Yeah, we can go over that a little -

Alex: We need to go get proper legal advice before we enter into an agreement. We understand your position, your requirements, your minimum requirement.

Ed: I just wanted to make sure that we are tracking.

Alex: This would be your minimum requirement: a promise on our part to not divulge specifically upper level confidential materials past XEW [?] - through OT VIII.

J: Yeah. Or matters such as the Running Program. That is not something that you can read in HCOB's or you can buy in any bookstore.

Alex: Confidential.

J: Yes. That's not stuff you can buy anywhere. You know it's not "Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health." That you can talk about to your heart's content. It's publicly available.

Alex: So that would be acceptable? You have to have a verification on that, right?

J: Yeah. We-

Alex: For you that would resolve your problem, would be a promise-

Ed: [edge in his voice] An immediate promise.

J: [unwittingly sabotages Ed] Well, you see we have to go back about that. You have to go back about that. I cannot guarantee here or now that that would be the end of all our problems. I cannot guarantee that. Because I don't know.

Ed: I'd like you to [garble] totally your own way. If you want to think about some[thing] you can. It's totally up to you.

Alex: That will be our discussion of experiences outside of confidential material, that you are to discuss. But the matter of your problem that you have discussed concerning the upper level material would be possibly resolved to your satisfaction when a promise on our part that we would not divulge in the future any of the specified materials which are primarily technical materials-

Ed: Yes.

Alex: Okay. So that is something. Because we can't have a copy.

J: Well, if you will not agree to this then it is useless to even talk about it. But if we can set parameters like you just did then I think we can come to an agreement.

Ed: Because that gets the legal stuff out of here. Then we can start-

J: Then we have something concrete to go with.

Alex: Okay. Why don't you guys drop something [tape switch].

[chatter about Michael]

J: [brightly] Well, I think we're basically done, right? I mean we do this-

Alex: Your problem, Jacqueline. But one of our concerns yesterday was that our concern was basically blown off, and most of the time was spent discussing your concern. Our concerns have not, to our view, been adequately discussed.

J: I get it.

Alex: --Or resolved. Or even a resultion instituted. Because- let me finish- this, situation with debts owed to the estate of Albert, which is currently stuck in probate, from - J: Is he okay? [she is talking about Michael. Ariane has been on the telephone.]

Alex: So the situation with regards to the estate of Albert. Albert, it's obvious from what Albert wrote and communicated to various individuals in different parts of the church that he considered that the money that he had thought he invested in the company of Jody Darling was, or was maybe not directly but enabled Jody Darling to pay $150,000 to the International Association of Scientologists shortly after; and then subsequent to that Jody Darling became delinquent on that debt and when Jody Darling was arranging that debt, that loan, he was sending faxes from the office of the International Association of Scientologists in Clearwater.

Now, Jody Darling currently owes the estate of Albert over $300,000. Do you contest that?

J: No. I've seen at least the - [indistinct]

Alex: Okay. This is our concern. You have your concern: this is our concern. Now, yesterday we discussed probate laws and it is possible if not probable that Jody Darling doesn't have the money to repay this debt. Right? Either he doesn't have it or he doesn't want to pay it. He hasn't paid it. He has been delinquent for about four years. He was refusing to communicate when he was delinquent. So what your suggested solution has been to get Jody Darling in Clearwater and to attempt to make Jody Darling good upon his debt. That has to go to the estate and that has to be probated, etc., etc. Now it is true that Michael won't actually need it or get it until he is eighteen. But if Jody Darling doesn't have it and he's [claiming] bankrupt, then- what I am trying to say is that the International Association of Scientologists received $150,000 from-

J: You don't know that.

Alex: Yes! His photograph's in Impact [magazine]!

Ed: I understand that. I understand that. I also know that Jody Darling borrowed vast quantities of money from innumerable, many different people. I don't know it was Albert's-

Alex: I- that is- you can't follow dollar bills through a bank. You see what I'm saying. But he's a Patron Meritorious and listed as such. Therefore he paid IAS $250,000. When he borrowed the money he was a Patron With Honors. That's $100,000. He paid $150,000 shortly after the- you understand?

J: What's the significance there in terms of what he did with the money?

Alex: [trying not to lose his temper] IAS received money from him. He received money from Albert. He didn't-

Ed: So you are trying to show a chain of title of the money?

Alex: He got $200 [thousand] from Albert and at the same time he paid $150 [thousand] to IAS. He arranged it from the IAS office!

J: Just one thing you have to explain. What's the significance of where that money went for you? For you, or for Michael, or for the estate? That's my only question here.

Alex: Okay. Let me mention a similar situation. Edwin Baer also borrowed money from Albert. Edwin Baer got a refund from IAS. We have evidence that he got a refund. That's how he repaid Albert.

Ed: [derisively] Huhn.

J: That money went to Albert?

[everyone talks at once]

Alex: We can read it because it's in French and then we can translate it for the record. Edwin Baer's letter to Albert, stating that he had arranged the refund from IAS- just translate it [to Ariane]

Ariane: Okay. It says "I-

Alex: This is from Edwin Baer in Switzerland.

Ari: It says "I work

Alex: Give the date. To Albert Jaquier:

Ari: 5 October 94. "I worked during the [?] week with the DED IASA to find a solution for the money which is owed to me, that I did not receive yet. I had to do a CSW asking a part of the money I had loaned to an [?] to ask that it be reimbursed by IAS. And he said that it is an irregular cycle.

J: So basically what you are saying is that if Jody is not able to pay the money back out of his own pocket IAS should be doing that for him. Is that what you're explaining to me? Or, there is a possiblity for IAS to do that?

Alex: Yes.

J: I get it.

Alex: Yes, since they were a beneficiary, not necessarily directly, but they benefitted in the time period. You understand?

J: Yeah, I do.

Alex: And we can say well, if Darling had not paid IAS, he would have been in a much much better position to have repaid the debt to Albert. I haven't, since by church policy Albert was prohibited from taking legal action against Jody Darling and his other debtors. This was by church policy [and] resulted in Albert being unable to, and before he died, then since he was prohibited from taking legal action and the church at that time, and we have evidence of this, claimed to be administering justice in the affair, and failed to force or ensure that justice was done in time, as evidenced by the fact that the money was not repaid and Albert died. So that he couldn't go to a lawyer. He went to his church. And I think the evidence demonstrates that his church failed him. And handling --you told me the first day that December 94, Jody Darling was denied services at the church of scientology. At that time Albert was dead.

This situation had been brought to the attention of the church. This is chronologically laid out in the post. It had been brought to the attention of the church several years earlier when Albert was still alive. The church failed. They prevented him from seeking legal action. And they failed to provide any substitute justice that was effective in time. Because if Jody Darling had paid when he said he would pay, Albert could have paid for and received the medical attention he desperately needed to stay alive.

And we cannot definitely state, but it is a possiblity that right now you would be talking to Albert, not us [if Darling had paid].

J: I understand what you're saying. I understand what you're saying.

Alex: I am not finished. Michael Jaquier was seven years old when his father died. He lost his father. Now you may consider that all he needs is a rud session, but he lost his father. He loved his father. Several years before that he had lost his mother through the policy of disconnection, for a period of seven months. Michael's story has not yet been [indecipherable]. Albert was his stable parent after he was disconnected from his mother. With Albert's death he was disconnected from his father. You understand?

J: I do. I hear what you're saying. I hear what you're saying.

Alex: And my impression is, I still see Michael sitting sometimes and he will be reminded of his father and you can see, he looks off a little distance and his eyes mist over and he doesn't speak of anything or say anything, but you know what is happening with the guy. You understand?

J: I hear.

Alex: Yes, he's recovering. Yes. Yes. The nightmares he has, they're not as bad. You understand?

J: I hear you.

Alex: Your church is involved in that, Jacqueline. Specifically by preventing Albert from what was available to non-scientologists, which was the courts of law and civil action. He was prohibited from doing that. He would have been declared or susceptible to declaration as an sp if he had done that. So he couldn't do that.

J: Can I ask a question?

Alex: Sure.

J: Because those are like, heavy accusations. And I don't have necessarily a counter-view on that because one of the things we are doing is still going through all of the data. As I said, a week ago I didn't know you, a week ago I'd never heard of Albert Jaquier. So we're still going through everything. And we're talking to people and getting _all_ the data. We have your story, which you posted. We have what you _claim- is Albert's diary, which is in the post. I don't know if that is a literal representation of it. But we have files and we're going through this. So we still have to, and you have to grant us a bit of time to sort this thing out. For you this is a cycle that has been taking years and years and years. You are intimately familiar with the things that went down. For us-

Alex: Your church was first informed in 1991 when Jody Darling was initially delinquent. And so-

J: [very reasonable] I've seen in the files, I've seen justice actions, I've seen board of investigations, I've seen Chaplain's Courts and about this much correspondence about the cycle. It isn't like, you know, nothing happened because I tell you, these files are _thick_. On the whole cycle, on whatever went down on that, you know?

Ed: Albert. A lot of letters.

J: In Albert's case, he sent-

[all three talk at once]

Ed: Did he ever do a CSW to file a civil action with IJC? You know, the policy that says, do a CSW-IJC if you don't hear back within a certain amount of time?

J: Fine, it says you have to notify IJC. It doesn't say you can't sue. You have to notify IJC.

Ed: That's what I think. I haven't read the-

J: Maybe this is something you can read. We'll bring the policy tomorrow. You can read it. It's available.

Ed: Okay. I haven't seen it in the file, but he may well have-

J: It's not, you know, you cannot sue, you cannot sue, you cannot sue. You say the church prohibited him from suing. I only know what the policy says. This is where they talk about that. I bring that tomorrow and show it to you.

Because that is not something that I saw in the files particularly.

Alex: Are you suggesting Albert should have initiated a civil action?

J: No, I was just asking-

Ed: If he felt that it was the only thing he could do then he should have applied that policy letter. If that was the only thing that he felt he could do. Maybe he did. I don't know. We have-

J: Did he ever file a complaint?

Alex: You mean, outside the church?

Ed: Yes. That is exactly what I meant.

Alex: I would have to check.

Ed: Yeah, I'm not sure either.

J: So that's the whole, again as I said, this is a cycle that you're emotional about. And I hear you. I understand that. On the other hand, it is for us a fairly new thing that I haven't had on my lines for you know, up until a week ago, literally. So I will familiarize myself with a couple of things. Because I know, if I have all the information I know it can be resolved. If I don't have the information there's nothing I can do. You know what I mean? That is literally where I come from.

Alex: Okay. Okay.

J: I know this is a concern of yours. I know that you have, your viewpoint, you know what happened, you have your data, there's also, hopefully there's a lot of other data, a lot of other people wrote a bunch of things about this. Albert's estate is something that I know for sure was discussed by a lot of people. So. We'll just have to look at it.

Ed: Yeah, you don't know what was done to get Edwin Baer to pay. I just found out some of the stuff this morning. Yeah, I mean a lot of things. You know, to make the guy take responsibility for, I know because our area of CSI, took a lot of cleanup of the guy, make the guy confront it, and so on and so on.

Ah, the thing that I was thinking of is, us doing anything while we have this confidentiality thing hanging out there is a problem. It really is a problem. And the other thing is, ah,

Alex: You're saying you don't want to discuss it? Until you get-

Ed: No.

J: No.

Alex: Well, you're jumping back on the confidentiality and -

[pause while Ed changes a tape]

J: Well, let's say this. We came to talk to you because of your posting. That was the reason why we came. The posting of confidential stuff. In the course of dealing with the cycle, you know, we find out about the whole Albert cycle. I personally was not aware of all that. And I just have to see. And we find that this is a point where you have a lot of attention. Obviously.

Alex: Uh, huh.

J: Good. So we came here to do a). You come back to us so we find out there's also a b).

Alex: Yep.

J: Okay. Now what we want to do, and I think this, in all fairness, we want to resolve this confidentiality thing. Because that is definitely a direct immediate risk for the church. Where we have to know. I'm not excluding, we won't talk about Albert's estate. Absolutely not. I said, you have to give us some time to go through all the facts. Which we're doing every day. And that, you know, familiarizing ourselves but also talking to people. You know I told you yesterday, Jody will come to Clearwater. I want to talk to him. I want to know from his mouth what happened. And I have the right to do so, you know what I mean? Certainly when there are these large sums involved, I want to know. So we'll have to work with this.

Alex: [unbelieving chuckle] I laugh because Albert heard that. In fact Albert heard that more times than-

J: I know. But I also said something else to you yesterday. Surely you remember that. We have come here with full bargaining [power] to sort out [the situation]. And I can personally do that. So. That's it.

Ed: You've got to give us a little bit of trust.

Alex: Okay. We have voiced our concern and you have voiced your concern. We have to discuss it, we have to think about it. [to Ariane] Your draft, may I see it?

J: --work out what is the minimal requirement, we'll look at it. And we'll come back, we'll have the same setting if you don't mind. Is it an acceptable setting for you? Then we'll just take it from there. I mean, really this is a thing that I don't think will be resolved in ten minutes.

Ari: No.

Alex: Well, it hasn't been ten minutes.

Ed: And a resolution is a resolution.

J: That's another thing that we want, when we walk out of here, when we part, it is a completely handled situation. A handled cycle.

Alex: Yeah, but there are two different definitons of handled.

J: Look, if you were not happy it would not be handled. If you would go up and say, ok-

Ed: Because you would say something on the Internet tomorrow and it would be the same thing-

J: -'fuck you, go out of my live,' you know if you would say that it ain't handled.

Alex: Ok, let me make a suggestion before we- this general release, to try to get us to sign this general release is unrealistic. It's nowhere near a handling. He knows. You know. Get Real. Get real. Do you understand? [He is still polite, but the edge is unmistakable.]

Ed: I do understand.

Alex: We're not whining victims. And we're not, you know, 'you did everything, and look at everything that you did,' you understand?

J: Yep, we do.

Alex: So, get real. Because we're real.

J: Uh, huh. [reflexively] Good.

Alex: [laughing]

Ed: By the same token, uh, I, you know, we have to force people to do things. Trying to force somebody to do something on behalf of somebody who by church tenets, or two people who by church tenets, have committed suppressive acts of the worst actions conceivable in scientology-

Alex: Huh? [puzzled. He doesn't realize that Ed is referring to him and Ariane]

J: [quickly] What he probably is saying--I, I'll translate it for you. You asked me to get real and I will, I am. Also there is the other reality of your situation. You see, the knife cuts both ways. There is the reality of, if you choose litigation, if you choose to go that route, be real, because, know what you're sticking your foot into.

Alex: I know.

J: You know? So that's what I'm saying. I don't mind being told to be real. But on the same hand, I want to tell you that, do the same thing. Apply your own words of wisdom to yourself, to look at what's there at the end of that road. Because it ain't anything pleasurable for any of us. And that is the reality I'm dealing with and I come from. You understand?

Alex: Yeah.

J: And as long as we have those realities I'm sure we can sort it out.

Alex: [laughing helplessly]

Ed: What? What?

Alex: uh, when I said get real I wasn't being a smart ass. If you know, then when you see we're not going to go off happy.

J: No, I don't-

Alex: the general release- you see what I'm saying? Don't waste our time, and don't let's start editing it, and stuff like that. Do you see what I'm saying?

Ed: [silky] You won't see that document again.

Alex: All right. You know, different words with the same sense, you know-?

Ed: I know. You can read. You understand what you read. You understand legal sufficient to know what the significance of those legal terms are.

Alex: Right. Anything that is worth anything, that means anything. Don't tell me [it isn't a general release when it is].

J: That's how I understand it, you don't understand it that way. Fine. So. That is the reality of that.

Alex: You still think it means just staff?

J: I don't think that it says you cannot talk about any of your experiences.

Ed: This is true.

J: We do _all the time_ on the Internet. So how, you know- if it would say that you cannot talk about anything concerning scientology, then what are our five or six or seven or thirty-seven web sites for?

Alex: [laughing again]

J [plowing right on] --all the experiences with people, but the difference is, they are good and they are happy. So it would be sort of stupid to say, well you can't post about scientology anymore. I mean, that really, I mean it's like, there can never be such a thing.

If you want to talk about scientology you talk about scientology. We expect you to say the truth though, because otherwise you enter a whole other realm of stuff, which is libel and slander, which is a whole different ball game, or inciting to hatred. If you say "I think that church is so bad that I think every one of you should now go and bomb the church or something," you can incite hatred. In Florida there happens to be a statute that says, a law, if you utter words or publish, say something with the intention to stir up hatred against somebody else, a group or an organization or whatever, that's illegal and you're going to jail. It's a criminal offense. It's called a "hate statute." A hate crime. You cannot, and that's because of, well we're in the United States. You have multicolored people, the Ku Klux Klan. They're burning churches. Right now there's a whole flap going on where six hundred churches in the South of this country, you know, black churches, have been burned to the ground. So, the whole subject of hate crime right now is a much discussed thing. It was on Newsweek this week; it's all in there. You cannot say something that will incite an emotion of hatred toward the subject you're talking about. So that's what I'm saying, you know. Within the parameters of free speech there's also the criminal code of the United States. If I say "I'm going to kill the President of the United States" just saying it will lock me up. Not even, I don't even have to prove that I intended it, didn't intend it or what. Just uttering these words. And there's no FBI agent that will grant you your free speech for saying that. You know what I mean? So, there is a criminal code. That's all I'm saying. There is laws. And within those laws you're completely fine. Overstep the laws and you go to jail. And particularly in this country that's a very black and white type of affair.

So that's what I'm saying. If you want to post your experiences and it isn't libel, it isn't slander and it isn't a hate crime, go ahead and do so.

Ed: I've got a question. So we're doing this document, we're modifying this thing, right?

J: Yeah.

Alex: You are going to modify that one?

Ed: Allow me correct and amend what I earlier said. Yes, we are rewriting from scratch. What are you guys doing? It's almost like a summary or recap.

Alex: We are discussing it. We are getting advice.

Ed: From whomever you want to get advice from. Good.

J: Okay good. So, we meet tomorrow? Same time, same setting?

Ed: A bit earlier?

[discussion about Michael]

Alex: Well, he'll be here over the weekend. Monday. We're going to have him all weekend. [He accidentally calls Jacqueline Jody.]

J: [joking] Don't be snide on me. I'm not snide on you.

Alex: [Laughs]

Ed: Can we give you a call?

[Alex declines to give the number. Jacqueline pushes for a meeting the next day.]

J: We can work to resolve the situation. We want to be diligent about this.

[discussion about Michael. Alex does not want the meeting held in his presence.]

I don't know. Can he play in the pool? And maybe Joan can be with him? She likes a dip in the pool.

Alex: No. If we can arrange something before Monday we'll call you.

J: Well, let me ask you this. What we can do is, why don't we come by tomorrow, say about 2 o'clock and we take it from there. Like, if you can do it, fine. If you can't, you can't. I may not be in the office. We're out and about too. So I don't want to miss your call or have somebody near the phone or whatever.

Ed: We'll be involved, we have to interview people-

J: We'll be here two o'clock tomorrow.

Ed: If you can't say we'll respect you.

J: And then you can tell us. If it's this weather he's playing outside. You know, it wouldn't be a problem if he's in the house or watching tv or whatever. We can take it from there. Okay? Let's do that.

Ed: Very good.

Alex: End of meeting. Four thirty. Or close to.

------------------

6. A Statement by Ariane

OSA CANNOT LEAVE US ALONE. THEY HAVE ONLY 4 OPTIONS

1. SWEET TALK /TRICK/INTIMIDATE US INTO SIGNING A GAG.

2. LEGAL ACTION.

3. ILLEGAL HARASSMENT.

4. PAYING US TO SHUT UP.

OUR GOING PUBLIC REMOVES #1 FOR THEM. THEY WILL THEN CONCENTRATE ON 2 AND 3. 4 IS RESORTED TO WHEN NOTHING ELSE WILL WORK, AND ONLY IN EXCHANGE FOR TOTAL SILENCE. WE ARE PREPARED TO HAVE NO LIVES FOR AN INDEFINITE PERIOD FOLLOWING THE PUBLICATION OF THE DETAILS OF THE HARASSMENT.

THANKS FOR OFFERING TO REPORT OUR STORY.

THE SUPPORT AND ADVICE WE RECEIVED FROM MANY PEOPLE, AS THE RESULT OF OUR POSTS AND OUR SITUATION, WAS INVALUABLE AND ACTUALLY PULLED US OUT OF OSA'S CLUTCHES.

ARIANE

------------------ The End ---------------------------------------

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