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MIKE McCLAUGHRY: My name is Mike McClaughry. I'm a Scientologist. I got into Scientology in late 1968, and in early 1969 I went on staff at the San Francisco org. Um, the first three or four years I was on staff, I was an auditor and a Course Supervisor, basically Course Supervisor for the Academy Levels and every other course that Scientology delivered at that time. Um, I liked the tech then and I still like it today. And in mid 1973, I was approached to join the Guardian's Office at the San Francisco org. And at the time I did not want to get out of tech, and I declined their offer and said basically "No, I'm not interested", you know, "I want to stay working with the tech." So they re-approached me again a few weeks later--um, by the way, Kathy O'Gorman was the Assistant Guardian at the San Francisco org at the time; she was to become my senior. Uh, Doug Nopston was the Assistant Guardian for Information, which is a euphemism for Intelligence, and he was the one that was trying to recruit me. Um, anyway, I was approached a couple of weeks later again to join the Guardian's Office, and they made me an offer which was that I would get to go--I was at the time a Power Release, which is a Grade 5, and they made me an offer that I could go up to OT4 if I would join the Guardian's Office and so I bit on that and I said, "Okay", and I joined the Guardian's Office so that I could get some auditing.
Um, so I went down--I guess it was mid summer of '73--I went down to take my, uh, training at the United States Guardian's Office, which was in Los Angeles, and the person who was, um, the Deputy Guardian Intelligence United States, uh, at that time was Terry Milner. Um, Dick Weigand was, uh, one of his juniors; I'm not sure what post he was holding at the time. And Greg, uh, I don't remember his last name off the top of my head--Willardson--Greg Willardson was also working with him. And they were over the, uh, course students, overseeing the training of the course students.
It took me six months to finish my hatting in the Guardian's Office. Um, I read all the various materials that, um, for the Intelligence Bureau, that you might see on the Internet or appearing in court cases or Hat Packs since then, and I would have personal knowledge that the issues in those Hat Packs are correct and were the ones that were studied and were the ones that we used and applied in our daily work. Um, I'll talk about some of those in detail and give you some examples of what I did to apply those issues. Um, my understanding was that the issues were primarily from LRH. Some of the issues, um, had nobody's name on it but just by the way they were written, I assumed they were from LRH. Um, some of 'em were from Mary Sue Hubbard; some of them might have been from the Guardian who was Jane Kember, um, but some of them didn't have Jane Kember's name or Mary Sue Hubbard's name on them, um, and I think that LRH wrote them.
MIKE McCLAUGHRY: Um, the two specific ones that I'm talking about, they weren't under any kind of a normal issue like a Policy Letter or a Guardian Order or ED or anything, right? It was just typing on a piece of paper. Um, one was called "Intelligence: Its Role" and the other one was--I don't even know that it had a name; but it told us how to do, um, black intelligence operations, this particular piece of paper. And, like I said, there was no author of those two things; although my understanding, impression and so forth was that they were written by LRH, because of the style of them. You know, I've read a lot of his stuff, I know how he talks, I know how he writes, and I couldn't imagine anybody else to have written them except him because of the style of the--of how they were written
MIKE McCLAUGHRY: The basic idea was that Intelligence was supposed to collect information and form what was called an estimate of the situation. An estimate of the situation was not something that was cast in stone or something that you could necessarily prove in court, but based on as much information about the enemy as you could ascertain. Um, you were supposed to be able to determine whether there was a situation with the enemy that needed to be handled or whether there was no situation, and basically you were supposed to be able to form a prediction, uh, like in any war situation, you know; you infiltrate the enemy, uh, you determine his size, his strength, what his next move is gonna be, if he's gonna make one, you know, uh, that kind of a thing. And the whole idea of the estimate of the situation, which was a primary product of the Intelligence Unit, was to make a prediction: What's the enemy going to do, when, where, what strength and so on and so forth, right? And having made that prediction, then Intelligence was supposed to handle the situation before it ever happened. And any time an attack came on the organization that was unpredicted, it was considered to be an Intelligence failure. All somebody had to do was criticize Scientology and they would be considered an enemy. For instance, if they wrote a book that was negative on it in any form, if they got on a TV show or radio show--you didn't even have to go that far; if they were just talking to their neighbors and we heard of it! (laughter)
MIKE McCLAUGHRY: If an attack happens that Intelligence didn't predict, we didn't--we weren't out of the ball game, that didn't mean that, you know. Um, we kind of judged the severity of the attack and how bad it was by the different bureaus. The bureaus were laid out in a sequence. If Intelligence failed and, and an attack occurred, and Intelligence wasn't handling it, uh, then it went over to PR. Uh, PR--then we tried to PR our way out of the attack. Uh, if PR failed, then the next thing it would go over to, the next bureau, was the Legal Bureau and you tried to sue your way out of the attack. And if that failed, the last bureau was Finance and you'd buy your way out of the attack! (laughter).
The datum is that Intelligence is supposed to predict and handle all attacks. Uh, even if it wasn't predicted, Intelligence was supposed to handle it. No other bureau was supposed to be on, doing a damn thing, okay? If Intelligence is doing its job. They should all be sitting around with their feet on their desks with nothing to do, okay? Intelligence is supposed to handle it all, all by itself. Um, when Intelligence was having difficulty with a particular attacker and they weren't getting the person handled, then other bureaus would enter the picture and they'd try to PR their way out of it, sue their way out of it or buy their way out of it. But, uh, that was all considered to be an Intelligence failure.
MIKE McCLAUGHRY: Intelligence also had internal security to deal with. Part of our training was a book called "The Spy & His Masters". This book taught you how to be a Case Officer. That's what--that's the "master" part of the title, "The Spy & His Masters" and the Case Officer is the master of the spy. Um, this--the technique used would be to determine the spy's motivation. Um, money was considered to be the lowest motivation. You don't wanna recruit spies who, uh, are money-motivated because they'll turn on you in a second; if the other side offers them another 10 bucks more, they're on their side! (laughter) So, uh, you try and avoid--you would have to determine what is this person's motivation as being a spy for us, try to avoid people doing it for money, try to avoid people--the next one up was people who, uh, were maybe ambit--you know, they had some ambition to get promoted within the organization, something like that, was why they were doing it for you; try to avoid those as well. Um, I think the next one up was, uh, people who had some political reason for doing it. Um, (clears throat) you know, in our case we weren't in the politics, but what that meant to me was like they had some kind of allegiance to the organization, uh, they agreed with what you were doing and that kind of a thing. The top motivation was duty; the person was doing it out of a sense of responsibility. And those were the kind of spies we tried to recruit because they were the safest, um, most unlikely to turn, uh, that, that kind of a thing.
Uh, when I say "spy", I'm talking about somebody who lives their cover. I'm not talking about somebody who does a 10 minute, um--well, we called them "suitable guises"; there's other words for 'em like "pretext interviews", that kind of thing. A pretext interview or a suitable guise would be something that was a short-lived, um, you know, you got throwaway type cover for a temporary situation. Um--geez, I can hardly think of one. Uh, let's say I just wanted to know your telephone number, okay? And so I call up--I don't, I don't know your telephone number or maybe I can't find you, I don't know where you live. But I know where your mother lives, okay? So I call up your mother and say I'm your friend and I'm looking for you, can you tell me your phone number, and I get it, okay? That's a--that's a suitable guise or a pretext interview, okay? That's a throwaway thing, you know, you just use it once, it's--it's there for a few minutes and it's gone, you know. Uh, you got the information you wanted. Those were commonly used, but I'm not talk--when I say "spy", I don't mean that. I mean somebody who is just like in the normal intelligence community, um, the government's--their kind of spies that they use on each other. These--you know, those people live their cover. They have false identities in a lot of cases, and we did know how to make false identities for people.
MIKE McCLAUGHRY: You basically go out and you look for an infant death in the newspaper around the age period of the person who's gonna be the spy, okay? Um, an infant death, you know, there's a birth certificate on record there, but there's nobody who ever lived that life. So you get their birth certificate and you go out and you get yourself a driver's license, uh, a Social Security card and every other kind of ID you want, and assume that person's name. That's how you do it--
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: How do you get a birth certificate?
MIKE McCLAUGHRY: Well, back then--you know, I think laws have changed a little bit. Back then, I mean, you just walk in; it's public record, you know? I want a copy of it, they didn't ask any questions.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Hmm.
MIKE McCLAUGHRY: You know, give you a copy of it and down you go to the DMV with it--"This is me, give me a driver's license" and do the whole bit, right? You build a whole false identity (laughs), and there you go. So that's how that was done. That--that would be a deep cover type of spy. Now, this person is--when I say they're living this false identity, uh, that's what I mean. They're going by this false name, they have false--you know, everything's false. One of the nice things about that is this person could do every kind of thing you ever heard of and never get blamed for it as his real identity, you know what I'm saying? (laughs) Um, it just wouldn't track back to him. Um, we didn't do a lot of that. Mostly people would use their own real names, but they were still deep cover spies because they were living their cover every day. Um, in some--a lot of cases they had false names, uh, without going through the process of actually, you know, building a total false identity for 'em. They would just--say that we sent 'em in to infiltrate the anti-cult movement, for instance, which is something I specifically did. Um, what I did was I took a Scientologist--we wanted to infiltrate the anti-cult movement. Um, I expelled this Scientologist so on paper it looked like they were expelled, you know. We wrote out the Ethics Orders, the whole bit, um, false Comm Ev, everything like that, and then this person was kicked out of the church. Um, in everybody's mind in the church this person was expelled Scientologist. Uh, the only people who knew that they weren't was, you know, the guys in the Intelligence Bureau. And that's a deep cover spy. So this person would go out and, uh, they were using their actual name, uh, but their cover was, it was that they were, uh, no longer in Scientology, no longer agreed with it, agreed with the anti-cult people, you know, and wanted to do--you know, they were mad at Scientology, they wanted to help the anti-cult movement expose it and stuff like that. And then, so of course they were opened with welcome arms by the anti-cult people and now here we go and now there's my deep cover spy in the anti-cult movement. So predict, predict, predict--"Oh, they're gonna deprogram so-and-so tomorrow. Oh, I see." See what I mean?
This group right here is a target for getting a spy, and they ain't gonna sleep at night till they do it! (laughs)
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: I'm afraid that's true.
MIKE McCLAUGHRY: Okay.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Hope it's not you.
MIKE McCLAUGHRY: Well, I'll tell you something about that that will help you find out who it might be. Because Intelligence is also charged with finding spies in the organization.
Now that person I'm talking about that I sent in on the anti-cult movement--there is a limit to what I would let that person do. Okay? You know, they could criticize, they could help, they could complain, they could natter all they wanted to about Scientology; I really didn't care. But I would not let 'em go to a newspaper and say it.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Hmm.
MIKE McCLAUGHRY: I would not let 'em testify in a court case against Scientology.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Um-hmm.
MIKE McCLAUGHRY: That's going too damn far, you're causing more destruction than you're worth! (laughs) Okay, you know what I'm saying?
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Um-hmm
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Um-hmm.
(laughs)
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: You'd test the person.
MIKE McCLAUGHRY: Yeah.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Um-hmm.
MIKE McCLAUGHRY: That's what I'm telling you.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Um-hmm.
MIKE McCLAUGHRY: What I'm doing right here--no way, Jose, you ain't making no tape like that! You know what I'm saying? (laughter) The Case Officer is gonna put us--you know, no, you ain't doing that. Okay. (laughs)
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Right.
MIKE McCLAUGHRY: So (laughs) that's one way to tell.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Yeah.
MIKE McCLAUGHRY: In the case of this spy that I had in the anti-cult movement, um, we were predicting attacks all over the country with that person. Um, I think maybe I was the only one who had successfully infiltrated the anti-cult movement because of what my seniors at USGO were saying. They were always calling me going, "Who's getting deprogrammed next?" and I was "Well, isn't there anybody else out there working besides me? Don't you have any other spies out there (laughs) to tell you?" Because they wanted to know what was happening in New York and Florida and everywhere else, right? And asking me. And I was up in San Francisco. We predicted deprogrammings in other, uh, considered cults--Moonie deprogrammings, you name it, you know. We predicted those as well and prevented a lot of them from happening. We considered them allies, you know, and so if a Moonie was gonna be deprogrammed, um, we would predict that and we would, uh, let them know and they would go hide the person or whatever they had to do, you know, to stop that from happening. That happened because of our spies. Um, mostly, I mean our primary interest, of course, was Scientologists. We predicted those and prevented those from happening.
I did read one of the policies where it said we weren't supposed to do anything illegal. Um, I became aware in the course of my training that, um, things were being done that were illegal. Uh, I went to the Deputy Guardian for Intelligence US--um, by the way, we didn't call it the Information Bureau, we called it Intelligence, what it was. Calling it the Information Bureau was the, the only time we referred to it that way was when we were talking to somebody who wasn't in the GO. And that was kind of our cover, you know, that we were Information; we never told them we were Intelligence. But amongst ourselves, we didn't call ourselves Information; we were Intelligence. Um, so anyway, I read, you know, "Don't do anything illegal". Um, I went to the Deputy Guardian at Intelligence US who was Terry Milner. I said, uh, "Some people aren't following this policy. They're doing things that are illegal." And, uh, he knew about it; that's what I found out. He says, "Yeah, I know about that." (laughs) And I says, "Well, they're violating policy", you know, "What's the story here?", you know, "Do we break the law?" And, uh (laughs)--and he says, "Well, we don't actually break the law, we just bend it a little bit!" (laughs) And he says, you know--he drew a line on his desk--this guy was kind of a crazy guy, anyway, and, uh, (laughs).
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: He was crazy.
MIKE McCLAUGHRY: And he says, "There's the law," you know, and he says, "We kind of cross over that line and then we, for a little bit, and then we scurry back and try to get back and stay within the law." And so, well, the conclusion I came to was: 1) he knew about it; 2) he was condoning it. And I, out of fear, did not take it any higher than that; I just dropped it. Because I figured if he knew about it, then Worldwide knew about it and I figured Mary Sue knew about it, and I couldn't imagine her withholding anything from Ron; I figured he must know about it, too. So if I make any waves uplines about it to try to, um, get that activity stopped, uh, you know, then I would be dog meat, you know, so I just dropped it. (laughs)
As far as Intelligence Bureau's handling of people, there's an issue--um, I don't think it has a title, uh, nobody signed it, it's not any kind of a formal issue; it's just typing on a piece of paper. Um, my impression was that LRH had written it because I can't imagine anybody else in the organization writing this and getting away with it; they would have been pounded, you know, to dirt for having written it! (laughter) And, you know, unless it was him. That's the way I looked at it, plus the way it was written and just like "Intel: Its Role", it seemed to me that was his writing style. But he--you know, basically, what this issue said was the way that the Intelligence Bureau handles things, um, was that you perform something that I'll say, what I call 'em is a Black Intelligence operation, and I'm not the only one who called 'em that; they're called Black Ops.
MIKE McCLAUGHRY: One of the datums that we were taught is that anybody that attacks Scientology has crimes. Um, you know, that doesn't just mean crimes against Scientology; it means crimes in general in the normal society definition and idea of what a crime is. Uh, we were supposed to investigate the background of anybody who attacked and find out what their crimes were. Um, and then prosecute them for it; that was the basic idea. Um, if we couldn't--and the first thing that would have happened with anybody who attacked us--there's two types of data collection; one is called "overt data collection", which we call ODC. Uh, the other type of data collection to be done was "covert data collection" which was called CDC. Um, we did both on any given attacker. We always did ODCs on them and we always did CDCs on them. Um, the overt data collection was just stuff that was publicly available through public records--telephone books, library information, court documents, traffic tickets, you name it, you know. We checked every possible source--voter registration records, you know, just everything you could think of, um, and gathered as much information about that person's background as we could obtain. Um, then we had a general picture of the person. We knew who his relatives were and who he was connected to, where he worked, all that kind of stuff. That came from overt data collection. Then we go into covert data collection, which was essentially, um, you know, probably getting a spy in on the person and trying to find out what kind of, um, misdeeds the guy was up to, you know. Um, what are this guy's crimes? You know, what is doing? Is he cheating on his wife? Is he, uh, you know, taking drugs? Is he doing anything else that broke any kind of a law whatsoever? You know, that's what we were looking for in our covert data collection. Um, if we found crimes, we tried to get the person prosecuted and put in jail. That was the product that we wanted, that was the ideal scene, get this guy behind bars, you know, for criticizing Scientology (laughs), basically. Um, (laughs) that's where you wanted 'em; you wanted 'em in jail. That was the, uh, ideal product to be obtained. Now, a lot of times we could not find, uh, this person committing crimes to put 'em in jail for, maybe because he didn't have any and maybe because we just couldn't find them; either way. Um, and I believe in a lot of case it was just because the guy didn't really have any; the datum wasn't true, that just because they attacked, they had crimes. I didn't find that to be a one-for-one situation anyway. So now, what do you do, you can't find any actual crimes, so that's what this particular hatting thing was about was you perform Black Operations on the person. Um, the first, uh, type of Black Operation would be to, uh,--okay, if the guy doesn't have any actual crimes, well, let's make him guilty of some crime then! (laughs)
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: You manufacture some.
MIKE McCLAUGHRY: You manufacture some crimes, right? Set 'em up, sting operation type stuff. Um, oh, I know some that were actually done, I don't have to give examples. Um, there was a guy in Sacramento named Jim Esterbrook, um, I got one of my agents to go get some, um, drugs, you know, purchase some illegal drugs, marijuana or whatever it was, plant 'em in the guy's car and then call the cops on him and try to get him arrested for possession of illegal drugs. Um, geez, just let your imagine run wild because, uh, we were allowed to do that, you know. It's like anything you could think of was basically okay.
MIKE McCLAUGHRY: Fair Game was a policy letter written by LRH, I guess in the mid '60, I think. Um, and it was a fundamental GO policy. Um, Fair Game meant that a Scientologist could do anything to an enemy of Scientology, um, didn't matter what it was. You could actually physically harm the person. You could lie to them, ch--sue 'em to poverty, uh, you know, uh, destroy the person's reputation or physical--destroy them physically if you wanted to, with no repercussion on the Scientologist for having done it. That's what Fair Game means. Um, yeah, I mean, that's what--that's what we were doing; that was our daily job, was to apply that policy. That was our total job, if you ask me. You're attacking Scientology, you're Fair Game, you know, whatever we do to you doesn't really matter, okay? As far as Scientology was concerned, you were no trouble.
I don't know the details on it, but, uh, it was causing a public relations flap when people were labeled Fair Game. So the issue came out that said, "Stop labeling people Fair Game." Which was done--okay, we stopped calling people Fair Game. But the action of treating 'em like Fair Game never stopped, okay? We, they could--that policy was still in effect. I mean, my God, it was the very heart and soul of what we were doing, okay? We would have been out of a job if we stopped doing Fair Game! (laughter)
MIKE McCLAUGHRY: Another type of Black Operation was to get the guy fired from his job. The theory on that was, is that people use their job, their position, uh, what they have to have at work is a kind of a position to attack Scientology from. Um, in a lot of cases that was true; maybe the guy was a government official, he was using his, uh, job as a government official to attack Scientology. So the idea was, let's cost him his job, get him the heck out of there and then he won't have that position to attack Scientology from any more. Short of that, it didn't have to be that he was using his job to attack Scientology from; but in all cases it was at least his support, right? And if you cost him his job, he doesn't have money and he's got a major problem to deal with in his life in not having any work and income to support himself. So costing the guy his job was always a good thing to do.
That was also a standard thing to do, was we would always try to cost the guy his job. We would always try to get him in jail and we would always try to cost him his job. Lots of people's businesses have been destroyed because of this. Um--
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: How did you do it?
MIKE McCLAUGHRY: Huh?
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: How did you destroy their business?
MIKE McCLAUGHRY: Oh, gosh, you know, there's lots of ways, um, you know, this is not a real example, but let's say that a guy is emplo--has his own, um, work, right? He has his own company. He of course has clients, right? That buy from him and that kind of a thing. Uh, let's say that the guy is, um, he makes--he's an artist and he paints pictures and he's got certain art studios that normally buy his pictures and sell 'em for him. They would go to those art studios and, um, just badmouth the guy in any kind of a way, and make the people who buy from him normally decide that they don't, for whatever reason they have, they don't like him and they're not gonna buy from him any more, and he ends up with no business, you know, he goes broke. That would be an example.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Uh-huh.
MIKE McCLAUGHRY: Um, basically, to cost the guy the job--now, I'm getting back to this issue I'm talking about that teaches you how to do this, this is what it said, right? You fi--you, um, survey the love and the hate buttons of the boss. So this guy has a boss, he's employed by this person, this company. What are--what does the boss love and what does the boss hate? You were supposed to find that out with your spy. Or you could have found that out with a pretext interview, you know, a suitable guise. (clears throat) Then you, uh, create situations which are always imaginary situations where the boss--you try to line this employee up with whatever the boss hates, okay? So if the guy--uh, you find out the boss hates homosexuals, now you want to get the boss to think that this guy who is attacking Scientology is a homosexual, you know. And because he is a homosexual, now the boss not liking that type of person he's gonna look for some way to get rid of this guy. He'll probably find some--you know, you can't say that's the reason he's getting rid of 'em but that's the reason he's getting rid of 'em, you know. He'll find some fault with this guy's work and get rid of 'em.
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