Luigi Corvaglia
A very powerful religious holding company
"The good news is that thanks to the intervention of the CIA, the department of the Greek secret service that deals with new religious movements has been closed and the staff dismissed!!!". So says one of the numerous documents found by Greek police in the mid-1990s when they stormed Scientology's headquarters in Athens and seized a variety of internal material from the cult some of which was made public. Some of the documents contain references to CIA support for Scientology's foreign branches.
Investigators also found thousands of pieces of information about the private lives of citizens and evidence of actual espionage activities. Scientology does indeed have its own highly efficient intelligence structure: the Office for Special Affairs (OSA). The former head of the local FBI office in Los Angeles said that Scientology has 'one of the most effective intelligence services, rivaling even the FBI'.
To better understand what we are talking about, an interlude is necessary to introduce the reader to the Scientology doctrine and its 'ethics'.
a) Scientology doctrine in a nutshell
Scientology was founded by Ron L. Hubbard a year and a half after the success of his 1950 book "Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health", which formed its basis. According to Hubbard, the mind is divided into three parts: the analytical mind, the reactive mind and the somatic mind and most physical and mental problems are nothing more than problems caused by traumatic events stored in the reactive mind and called engrams. It is possible to eliminate engrams, and thus eliminate the reactive mind, in order to reach the state of “clear”, a state in which the individual is able to realise their full potential. This is possible through a therapy described as auditing in which the pre-clear confronts the engrams of their reactive mind with the help of an auditor. The process is a one-to-one technique in which the auditor asks questions and the pre-clear searches their mind and provides answers. These levels of auditing, called "degrees”, are fee-based, like all Scientology courses and services.
The E-meter is an indispensable tool for auditing. This is an artefact that resembles a skin conductivity meter and records what Hubbard calls the "electronic structure of the reactive mind”. Fluctuations in the needle of the E-meter indicate the presence of a 'mental mass' that acts as a resistance to the flow of the E-meter's electrical energy, indicating the presence of engrams and the untruthfulness of the adept's confessions, which are obviously blocked by spiritual problems. Once the state of "clearness" is reached, one witnesses the disappearance of a multitude of diseases, an increase in intelligence and a decrease in accidents, 'for engrams predispose to accidents' (p. 122).
All this was already described in Dianetics in 1950. Hubbard further developed his doctrine on this basis and founded the Hubbard Association of Scientologists in 1952, from which Scientology emerged in 1954. Apart from the many 'technologies' for achieving incredible advantages, the doctrine is based on the Gnostic idea of an immortal soul that can free itself from the prison of matter through knowledge. Hubbard calls it thetan. In Scientology, thetans are believed to be reborn in new bodies from time to time through a process called 'assumption', a concept equivalent to reincarnation.
The expression Body thetan refers to a disembodied thetan that is stuck in, on or next to a human body. All human bodies are said to be infested with these disembodied thetans, or groups of them, known as 'clusters', which are formed in a hierarchy with a leader, a deputy leader and other members of the group. This has its origins in the story of Xenu. This mythical story deserves a description.
According to "Scientology's Advanced Technology", Xenu was the extraterrestrial ruler of a "Galactic Confederacy" who 75 million years ago brought billions of inhabitants of his overcrowded empire to Earth (then known as "Teegeeack") to kill them after rounding them up with the help of psychiatrists under the pretext of a tax audit (that's funny). Psychiatrists play the same role in the Scientology narrative as Jews do in anti-Semitic doctrines. Then he had them loaded into spaceships that resemble the Douglas Company's DC-8 aircraft in every way (that's funny too), had them brought to Earth and stacked around volcanoes, then killed with hydrogen bombs. The official Scientology writings claim that the thetans of these aliens were captured by Xenu's forces using an "electronic tape" and sucked into "vacuum zones" around the world. The hundreds of billions of captured thetans were taken to some kind of cinema (weird, huh?) where they were forced to watch a "super colossal 3D movie" for thirty-six days. This implanted what Hubbard called "various misleading data" (collectively referred to as the R6 implant) into the unfortunate thetans' memories, memories that "have to do with God, the devil, space enterprises, etc." These included all world religions; Hubbard attributed Roman Catholicism and the image of the crucifixion in particular to Xenu's influence. The two 'implantation stations' mentioned by Hubbard, i.e. 'cinemas', were allegedly located in Hawaii and Las Palmas in the Canary Islands. These disembodied thetans then infested the bodies of people on Earth, causing mental damage that can only be repaired by Scientology auditing. For a fee.
These events are known in Scientology as "Incident II", and the traumatic associated memories as "The Wall of Fire"or, as mentioned, "R6 Implant".
The Church of Scientology normally only reveals the story of Xenu to members who have completed a long series of courses (which cost a lot of money). After reaching the 'state of Clear', the individual is supposed to be able to ascend through 8 further spiritual levels, called OT levels (Operating Thetan) , from OT I to OT VIII. Hubbard described Xenu's history in 1967 in Operating Thetan Level III (OT III) and warned that the "R6 implant" was designed to kill anyone who revealed it or "attempted to dislodge it". Despite this, much material about Xenu leaked to the public through court documents and copies of Hubbard's notes circulated over the internet, and it appears that no one died as a result.
A peculiarity of Scientology is therefore the concept of the 'misunderstood word'. Progress on the 'bridge to total freedom' (as Scientology defines itself) can come up against an obstacle if one encounters terms in the study that one does not understand. This, according to Hubbard, would lead to a dangerous process of introversion, abandonment of study and the commission of 'overts', i.e. those 'contrary' acts that prevent the release of true spiritual potential. Scientology has a so-called "Study Technology" to which it devotes a veritable religious/professional course and has invented no less than nine different methods of "clarifying words".
These are essentially the ideas that Scientology followers believe in. What they do has mainly to do with so-called Ethics. To uphold right action, the movement has an 'Ethics Section' to which the follower turns or is sent when sub-optimal situations arise in his personal life or in the group. The Section, headed by an 'Ethics Officer', develops special programmes (often for a fee) to bring their 'ethics' back 'in'. Situations that may involve the Ethics Section are: Homosexuality; family members who are critical of the follower's membership, but especially criticism of the organisation, its founder, the doctrine by suppressive persons that is, i.e. persons whom Scientology perceives as its enemies, whose "pernicious' actions are intended to suppress the progress of individual Scientologists or the Scientology movement.
The 'attack the attacker' policy was codified by Hubbard in the late mid-1960s in response to government investigations into Scientology. In 1966, Hubbard wrote down the correct procedure for attacking the enemies of Scientology:
(1) Spot who is attacking us.
(2) Start Investigating them promptly for FELONIES or worse using our own
professionals, not outside agencies.
(3) Double curve our reply by saying we welcome an investigation of them.
(4) Start feeding lurid, blood, sex, crime actual evidence on the
attackers to the press.
Don't ever tamely submit to an investigation of us. Make it rough, rough on attackers all the way.(…) Never wait. Never talk about us - only them. Use their blood, sex, crime to get
headlines. Don't use us .
I speak from 15 years of experience in this. There has never yet been an attacker who was not reeking with crime. All we had to do was look for it and murder would come out.
(from Attacks on Scientology, "Hubbard Communications Office Policy Letter," 25 February 1966).
The most important management tool for suppressive people is the Office for Special Affairs (OSA), Scientology's secret service.
Scientology and the CIA
Examples of state intervention in support of Scientology are certainly not limited to the above-mentioned protection provided by the CIA to the Church in Greece. Among the documents published on Wikileaks is a report that after the arrival of US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in Germany, German Scientologists were invited to a briefing at the US embassy. With the US Secretary of State!
Wikileaks has published cables showing that the American consulate in Hamburg received information about the German task force against Scientology and in particular the well-known church opponent Ursula Caberta from Christoph Ahlhaus, who later became mayor of the city.
When Gerry Armstrong, who is regarded as Scientology's greatest enemy, arrived in Russia, the authorities were informed of his arrival by the American embassy in Moscow so that they could take detention measures against him.
In short, not only does Scientology seem to have more than cordial relations with the US government, but it even seems that the US authorities are doing everything they can to help the church get rid of its enemies.
Greg Mitchell, the founder of The Mitchell Company, is the Commissioner of the Church of Scientology in Washington D.C. and a member of the Church of Scientology himself. According to insiders, his job is to help the Church gain credibility with influential decision-makers. He has been at home in various US governments since the 1990s. According to disclosure reports from the US House of Representatives and Senate, the controversial religious group has paid more than 1 million dollars to Greg Mitchell since 2003 to carry out his lobbying work.
According to White House visitor logs, Gregory Mitchell participated in a 'Criminal Justice Working Group" with political advisor David Pope in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building of the White House on 28 September 2009.
The Church of Scientology is an informal member of the NGO International Religious Freedom Roundtable, which Mitchell chairs. According to the IRFR's official website, "the IRFR "works to engage the United States government and urge its leaders to make religious freedom a higher priority in foreign policy and national security'. This goal appears to have been absolutely achieved with the passage of the International Religious Freedom Act in 1998.
In 1989, the memoirs of Miles Copeland, an ex- CIA officer representing the 'libertarian' far-right (i.e. strong supporters of the free market), current associated with the magazine National Review, were published in London . A curiosity: he is the father of 'Police' drummer Stewert Copeland. In his book 'The Game Player', Copeland tells of a plan hatched by his colleague Bob Mandelstam in the first half of the 1950s. The operation was called 'Occultism in High Places'. The idea was simple: since some heads of state and government were in the habit of consulting astrologers and occultists, American intelligence officers were to 'co-operate' with these occultists in order to turn them into channels of influence for the agency.
The plan worked, for example, when a "clairvoyant" sent by the agents convinced the president of Ghana Kwame Nkrumah to make a visit to China, during which a CIA-inspired coup d'état overthrew the absent leader. According to Copeland, US intelligence also influenced Indonesian President Sukarno 'quite significantly' through 'psychics" and 'fortune tellers".
But the agency also allegedly utilised spiritual movements. This applies to the political-religious movement Moral Rearmament, founded by Lutheran pastor Frank Buchanan, which, according to Copeland, offered agents the opportunity to influence not only African and Asian politicians but also European leaders via secret channels. At one point Copeland mentions Scientology. Unsurprisingly, the church founded by Ron L. Hubbard was seen as an excellent means of influencing people who were themselves influential. In fact, Scientology's persuasion techniques are well known and are strikingly similar to those of the CIA. Copeland then reports an interesting fact:
Dianetics is, as I said, the registered trademark that describes the 'technology' developed by L. Ron Hubbard and the fundamental principles of mind and spirit on which Scientology is based. In other words, it is not clear whether the CIA was trying to infiltrate and influence Scientology or whether the opposite was the case. It probably went both ways. What is certain is that the process known in Scientology as auditing is very similar to the polygraph-based interrogation in the Kubark Counter-Interrogation Manual. Kubark is a code name used by the CIA to define itself. It was used at the 'School of the Americas', a US military training facility in Panama, among other places. The students included some of the most bloodthirsty personalities in Central and South America, including Manuel Noriega and Omar Torrijos (Panama), Leopoldo Galtieri and Roberto Eduardo Viola (Argentina), Hugo Banzer Suárez (Bolivia).
Scientology literature is full of code names and acronyms that correspond to the use of intelligence documents, and some of the Church's training routines appear to have been taken directly from the Kubark manual. Scientology's training routine, TR-1, is called "Dear Alice". In this routine, the trainee is asked to read random sentences from Lewis Carroll's book "Alice in Wonderland" without showing any reaction to the book's whimsicality. The Kubark manual describes an interrogation technique called 'Alice in Wonderland'. Hubbard quotes the Kubark manual almost verbatim when he says that
Detention in a controlled environment and perhaps for a lengthy period is frequently essential to a successful counterintelligence interro- gation of a recalcitrant source.
Of course, none of this is proof of an overlap between Scientology and the CIA, but it is certainly evident that L. Ron Hubbard was aware of these techniques and intended to use them for the same purpose that the CIA used them: to gain control and power over others.
In truth, Copeland claims that a pact was also made between the CIA and Scientology, but without providing evidence or revealing the contents. However, we are certain that there was another agreement, in 1993. This is a story that needs to be reconstructed.
Operation Snow White
Relations between Scientology and the American government were not always cordial. In the 1970s, Scientology carried out an infiltration and espionage of American institutions, known as Operation Snow White, which ended with an FBI raid on the organisation's headquarters. In this operation, Scientology's intelligence service (then the Guardian's Office, now the Office for Special Affairs - OSA) illegally gained access to 136 government agencies, foreign embassies and consulates, and private organisations critical of Scientology in order to obtain information and delete compromising documents. This was the largest infiltration in US history. At the same time, a bitter 25-year war began between the Church and the Internal Revenue Service, the famous IRS. We are talking about the government agency that managed to put Al Capone in jail for tax evasion, while it failed to do so for murder and drug trafficking. for 25 years, Scientology claimed tax exemption as a religious corporation. More than 50 lawsuits were filed by the organisation against the IRS. In 1993, the IRS unexpectedly capitulated and granted the exemption.
Four years later, the New York Times revealed some interesting background to the affair. A private investigator told reporters that he and several other colleagues had been hired by Scientology to gather information on IRS officials, particularly about misconduct at work, alcohol and drug use, and extramarital affairs. Irregolarly, the tax exemption came about at the express request of the IRS director, so the normal approval process was skipped.
It was after this agreement, that the US State Department began to lobby internationally to defend Scientology's interests in all countries of the world. For example, when the German government became involved against Scientology (a 1998 report emphasised the destructive aspects of this 'commercial enterprise disguised as a religion' and a 2007 report by the Ministry of the Interior described the organisation as 'incompatible with the Constitution'), a series of firm statements by the US government in defence of the cult followed. For the US, Scientology is a religion and must be protected in the name of 'religious freedom'. Other measures include a document by the Beareau for Democracy, Human Rights and Labour (BDHRL), an agency of the US State Department, in which Germany is listed alongside countries such as China as one of the countries that violate religious freedom.
The Clinton administration has been very friendly towards Scientology. In November 1996, the President himself wrote an 'exclusive' article on 'what we can do about drugs' for the Scientology magazine 'Freedom', which was later translated into several languages.
His wife Hillary Clinton received members of the Scientology front office ‘Hands of Hope’ in the White House and received a quilt with a quote from L. Ron Hubbard as a gift [here] . This event was later aptly labeled in the media as Clearwatergate (a cross between Watergate, which engulfed Nixon, and Clearwater, the headquarters of the Church of Scientology).
In 1997, Clinton's National Security Advisor Sandy Berger met with actor John Travolta, a believer in the Church, and other Scientologists to discuss the German government's stance on Scientology (TIME 22September 1997). According to "George" magazine in March 1998, President Clinton met personally with John Travolta. Clinton praised the 'educational' materials of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. According to the 'George' report, he said: 'Your programme sounds great' and added: “I would like to help you with your problem in Germany with Scientology”.
On March 21 1997, the Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service reported that President Clinton had complied with the requests of Scientologist Tom Cruise by instructing his newly confirmed Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to arrange talks with German Foreign Minister Kinkel about Scientology's claims of religious persecution in Germany (Berliner Morgenpost, 23 November 1998).
In a letter of 'warm greetings' dated December 22 1999, Clinton thanked Scientologists for 'all your efforts to promote and build just communities united in understanding, compassion and mutual respect".
The official reason given for the Clintons' interest in Scientology was that the President had a Scientology sympathiser as a roommate when he was a student.
The US government's interference in Scientology outside US territory has been even more serious. At the end of 1998, for example, the US State Department sponsored a concert by jazz pianist and Scientology loyalist Chick Corea in Berlin because he was allegedly not allowed to perform in Germany due to 'religious discrimination'.
Just how far the US government's administrative support of cults can go is shown by the advice of the US State Department spokesman, who recommended that Germans watch the film 'Mission Impossible' starring Tom Cruise. The Hollywood star is Scientology's ambassador in Europe. In a letter to the State Department, he spoke seriously and openly about his lobbying work for Scientology:
... I appreciate the valuable assistance the State Department has given to members of my Church in protecting their rights, especially in Europe.
It is even known an intervention by the US Consulate General in Hamburg about the building permit issued by the city's technical authority for the establishment of the new Scientology Centre in the city, which concerned, among other things, the number of toilets and showers.
Many influential politicians in the United States have been recruited by Scientology. Some of them can be shown to be dependent on Scientology campaign contributions. An outdated list can be found on the Internet.
The agreement between the government and Scientology was accompanied by a secret protocol that has not yet been made public. What could be the content? Surely we can guess the potential of a planetary organisation like Scientology, whose main objectives include collecting and storing a large amount of information so that it can blackmail and compromise anyone, from the ordinary member who has gone astray to the powerful of Earth. To name one example: Arseny Yatsenyuk, the Prime Minister of Ukraine, who probably attended several courses in Scientology many years ago as director of the Aval Bank of Kiev, is an example of a man whose personal information would be extremely interesting not only to Scientology but also to the American intelligence services.
Certainly, the weight of the Church founded by L. Ron Hubbard seems to have grown disproportionately in the political sphere since the mid-1990s, when a powerful lobbying effort was initiated that has been meticulously described by Stephen A. Kent of the University of Alberta. The church funded politics and its celebrities (Tom Cruise, John Travolta and others) personally financed election campaigns. According to Bruno Foucherau, Scientology paid $725,000 to a political lobbying firm in 1997 and $420,000 the following year. Greg Jensen, one of the church's most respected leaders, allegedly sponsored the campaign of Senator Benjamin A. Gillman, who would later become chairman of the OSCE's Commission on Religious Freedom, an organisation that nearly led to a diplomatic incident over its attacks on France's anti-cult policies at the OSCE meeting (in the section moderated by Introvigne, director of CESNUR).
Emblematic of Scientology's closeness to the US government is the affair surrounding the dismissal of Arnaud Palisson, who headed the "Sects and Cults" department of the French secret service for ten years when Sarkozy was in government, who received Tom Cruise at the Elysée Palace and was very accommodating towards the Church. Asked about the affair, Palisson, who now lives in Canada, replied: "Sarkozy is the American. He does not want to do anything that displeases him'. Operation Snow White is now just a memory.
Scientology and the network of 'cult apologists'
The Cult Awareness Network (CAN) was the most important organisation to emerge from the anti-cult movement in America. In 1991, Time magazine quoted the then director of CAN, Cynthia Kisser, in the article 'The Thriving Cult of Greed and Power'. Kisser stated that: " Scientology is quite likely the most ruthless, the most classically terroristic, the most litigious and the most lucrative cult the country has ever seen. No cult extracts more money from its members”. These comments and other forms of criticism from CAN caught the attention of the Church of Scientology and ‘Landmark Education’, which separately took legal action against the organisation. in 1996, Scientology sued "deprogrammer" Rick Ross and CAN for violating the civil rights of Jason Scott, a member of a Pentecostal church who was abducted by Ross and two other associates to undergo "deprogramming" at the behest of his parents.
CAN was involved because a contact person in the organisation had referred Scott's mother to Rick Ross. In the trial, Jason Scott was represented by Kendrick Moxon, a prominent Scientologist lawyer. Ross and CAN lost the case, which drove CAN into bankruptcy.
The puzzling thing is that the association's phone numbers, name, logo and real estate were acquired by Mr Hayes - a member of the Church of Scientology - who gave them away for free to a Californian group whose board includes several Scientology members (see here). In other words: Scientology has formed an anti-cult organisation on its own! Basically, it's like the Mafia founding an anti-Mafia organisation. The new CAN is, as one might suspect, much softer on alternative groups. The new CAN's list of experts includes Gordon Melton and Massimo Introvigne. The latter is the director and founder of the Centro Studi Nuove Religioni (CESNUR), the former is the director of the American section of the same CESNUR.
In an academic article, Phil Lordof McGill University, even speculated that "it is very likely that Scientology may fund CESNUR".
Right in the middle of the 1990s, when anti-cult campaigns were being activated in Europe and religious freedom control institutes were proliferating in the US, Scientology seemed to become the rallying point for many other minority cults, forming more or less formal and more or less open alliances supported by America's Christian fundamentalist organisations and, by osmosis, by their political credentials. Organisations like the Institute on Religion and Public Policy are an interesting hodgepodge of diverse people, from ultra-conservative senators to Moonies (the followers of Reverend Moon's Unification Church) and the followers of Guru Sri Chimmoy. However, this does not prevent the Institute from describing itself as 'fundamentalist Catholic'. The founder and president was Joseph K. Griebosky. In 2004, a former employee of Griebosky's, Daniel Chapman, contacted the well-known activist Gerry Armostrong to inform him that Griebosky received $8,000 per month from Scientology when he founded the IRPP in 1999. It is possible that Scientology itself paid for the founding of the IRPP. In December 2011, Mark ("Marty") Rathbun, a former high-ranking Scientologist, published on his blog a Scientology document titled "Grieboski Programme" dated 29 January 2007, which described "goals" or actions that church leaders believed Grieboski had to take to solve Scientology's problems in Europe and facilitate its entry into Muslim countries.
The Institute on Religion and Public Policy opens up the phenomenon of incongruent aggregations and paradoxical ecumenism. This will become particularly evident in the coming years with the explosion of associations and federations whose declared aim is to lobby national and supranational political bodies to oppose the actions of organisations protecting the victims of cults. The action is best known in Europe, a continent where the anti-cult policies of some countries, notably France, but also Germany, which has imposed significant restrictions on Scientology, pose a threat to those who consider it useful to defend 'religious freedom". The most important organisations of the so-called 'cult apologists' are the Belgian Human Rights WIthout Frontiers (HRWF), the French Coordination des associations et des particuliers pour la liberté de conscience (CAP LC) and the Italian European Federation for Freedom of Belief (FOB). Then, of course, there is the Centro Studi Nuove Religioni (CESNUR), a scientific think tank that supports the demands of the above-mentioned associations with the supposed authority of academic knowledge. Let us briefly examine them.
The president of the HRWF is Willy Fautrè, a regular visitor to the US embassy in Brussels and a long-time correspondent for News Network International, an evangelical US publishing group that is fiercely anti-communist (communism meaning anything that deviates from right wing views) and extremely conservative (against abortion, against recognising same-sex couples, etc.). He was also a member of the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights (IHF), an organisation that apparently had links with Scientology. Indeed, the Greek correspondent of the Federation contributed to publications of the church founded by Ron Hubbard and the Moscow delegation published a book in collaboration with Scientology.
The French CAP LC has Thierry Valle as its president, who is pictured in the photos below (Fig. 29) together with Françoise Morel, a leading Scientology figure, in front of the headquarters of the Citizens' Commission for Human Rights (CCHR), a front office of the Church of Scientology. The photos were taken by a group of French 'ethical hackers' who were active against Scientology in 2015.
The Italian European Federation for Freedom of Belief (FOB) describes itself on its website as 'an interest-led non-governmental organisation registered in the official register of lobbies at the EU Parliament and the Commission in Brussels and Strasbourg, representing six nations'. The current president is Alessandro Amicarelli, who accused me of collaborating with the Chinese Communist Party on organ harvesting (see the prologue to this dossier). Incidentally, one of the founding members was Fabrizio d'Agostini, who is still a member of the scientific committee. His form of presentation is missing a basic piece of information that is, however, easy to find in Scientology publications: he is a high-ranking Scientologist. It would even be OT VIII.
One of the founding organisations is Soteria International, an emanation of Atman Yoga (formerly MYSA Yoga) by Gregorian Bivolaru, the 'sex guru' who is currently in prison in France after being on the run for many years. He is facing charges of sexual abuse, human trafficking and more. Rosita Šorytė, the wife of CESNUR director Massimo Introvigne, sits on the FOB's scientific committee.
These organisations work through coordinated lobbying of supranational bodies (UN, OSCE, Council of Europe, ECHR), just as envisaged in the manifesto written by Introvigne in response to the French law against cults. We will come back to this.
In 2019, the Scientology front group Fundación para la Mejora de la Vida, la Cultura y la Sociedad was granted Special Consultative Status by the United Nations. The foundation is headed by Ivan Arjona Pelado , a high-ranking member of the Church's secret service, the Office for Special Affairs (OSA). This status will enhance Scientology's ability to speak to the United Nations and will also enable it to organise conferences under the UN umbrella and thus gain new political allies from around the world.
The previous year, Ivan Pelado, Greg Mitchell and Eric Roux, a top Scientology figure in Europe and head of the OSA, took part in a summit on religious freedom in Brussels organised by ACRE, the Alliance of Conservatives and Reformists in Europe. This is a Eurosceptic political group in the European Parliament. The most renowned participants were Ahmed Shaheed, Special Rapporteur on Human Rights at the UN Human Rights Council, and Sam Brownback, former Governor of Kansas and, until Biden's election, US Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom. Brownback's office published the State Department's annual report on international religious freedom. Brownback's selection as Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom in 2018 was made by USCIRF. USCIRF is the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, the commission that advised the US President in 2020 to obstruct the work of the anti-cult federation FECRIS at the OSCE (see the prologue to this report).
Other speakers included the aforementioned Willy Fautrè, President of Human Rights Without Frontiers (HRWF), and Patricia Duval, a French lawyer who is rarely absent from Scientology panels. She is a member of the scientific committee of the Italian European Federation for Freedom of Belief (FOB) and is one of the authors of the CESNUR magazine on religious freedom Bitter Winter and the Journal of CESNUR.
Also present was Bashy Quraishy from EMISCO, an association that fights against anti-Islamic prejudice but, strangely enough, fights against the anti-cult movement.
This is just one example of the diverse lobbying activities of the network of “cult apologists” at the level of transnational politics.
The actions of Scientology organisations and the cult apologists at European level are facilitated by the benevolence of various French-speaking personalities. For example, the French far-right MEP Maxette Pirbakas (2019-2024) and the Moroccan businessman Lahcen Hammouch, CEO of Brussels Media, the holding company that publishes the European Times. The former is the organiser of the conference on religious freedom, whose speakers are pictured in Figure 22 (see below), with the MEP third from the left. Lahcen Hammouch (second from left in the picture) is an entrepreneur who is committed to the cause of the Moroccan Sahara. He is running for mayor of Brussels for the ‘Les Engages’ party, which, according to the newspaper 'Blast', emerged from an ufological cult.
Two photos taken at the OSCE Human Rights Meeting in Warsaw in different years give an idea of how coordinated this action is. The first (fig. 32) shows in the front row, from the left, the Scientology delegate Ivan Arjona Pelado, next to him Massimo Introvigne, the director of CESNUR and Bitter Winter, then Willy Fautrè from Human Rights Without Frontiers and finally Alessandro Amicarelli from the European Federation for Freedom of Belief (FOB). In the second row, behind the Scientology representative, Christine Mirre, Vice-President of the Coordination des Associations et des Particuliers pour la Liberté de Conscience (CAP LC). The first thing the viewer notices is that, apart from the Scientology representative who had not noticed, everyone is smiling at the same camera, even the CAP LC representative in the second row. Like a school group on a field trip, they are one group.
This photo is proudly displayed on the banner of the website of the European Federation for Religious Freedom (FOB). It shows, among other things, the arrival of Bashy Quraishy, the man with the black beret on his head and a colourful scarf, who is just taking his place. Practically all the members of the Brussels Committee for Religious Freedom mentioned a few lines above.
The second photo (Fig. 33) is even more telling and shows a briefing with high-ranking representatives of Scientology meeting with representatives of organisations defending "religious freedom". So we are not talking here about a simple 'conflict of interest', but about blatant complicity. It is evident that this is a coordinated and planned action by some Scientology executives (including those of the OSA) and the leaders of the NGOs in defence of religious freedom. The photo was taken shortly before the start of the session in which I would have attended.
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