Gerry Armstrong--Declaration of Richard Aznaran 01-15-1989

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DECLARATION OF RICHARD N. AZNARAN

I, Richard N. Aznaran, hereby declare and state:

1. I am over 18 years of age and a resident of the State of

Texas. I have personal knowledge of the facts set forth herein

and, if called as a witness, I could and would competently

testify thereto.

2. There are many factors surrounding the releases attached

to defendants Motion for Summary Judgement, attached as Exhibits

A & B which are false and/or misleading.

A. The first point is that I do not believe these are the

papers which we signed when we left the cult in 1987. We were

forced to sign quite a few different papers before being allowed

to leave. At the time, we had asked for copies of all of the

papers we had signed but were not allowed to have copies of the

releases.

B. One of the conditions of being allowed to leave without

being declared "fair game"¹ was that we report to Mark Rathbun

_____________________
¹When the cult declares a person a Suppressive Person he
automatically becomes Fair Game. Per the cult's founder and
existing policy when a person is Fair Game he may be lied to,
cheated, stolen from and destroyed with no protection from the
cults ethics codes. If the person is considered a threat in the
eyes of the cult, then scientologists and their agents are

on a regular basis. We did do this for a while and repeatedly

asked for copies of these releases. We were put off with

various excuses on each occasion. We never did obtain a copy of

the releases. It is clear to my now that this was so that the

cult's "dirty tricks unit" could change the releases to fit

their claims and then supply them as "evidence" if and when they

felt they needed them. They didn't dare supply us with doctored

copies which we did not sign as they knew that this alienate us

and they didn't want to supply us with actual copies as this

would preclude them from making changes later.

3. At the time that these releases were signed both my wife

and myself had been receiving intensive "security checking".

This "security checking" was conducted by Ray Mithoff. Ray

Mithoff was at that time (and still is to the best of my

knowledge) the highest trained and most senior security checker

in all of scientology. He is so senior in fact that normally

all he ever does is oversee others doing it. There were two

reasons why he was used. The first was obviously because of the

intimidation factor he would have and the second is not so

obvious.

A. Part of our security checking was so that we could be

interrogated on how much we knew and so that the potential

________________

encouraged or even paid to do so. This has been documented on
many occasions and I am personally familiar with it.

threat of our leaving could be analyzed by David Miscavige.

Miscavige trusts few people and lives in constant fear that his

crimes will become public and land him in jail as it has the

cult's earlier leaders. Mithoff is the only security checker

Miscavige was willing to trust. This was the second reason

Mithoff was used.²

B. In retrospect, it is easy to see that this security

checking was done to soften us up and remind us of what powers

the cult could bring to bear on us should we refuse to cooperate

fully. Their tactics obviously worked because at the time,

we were in terrible fear that we would not be allowed to leave.

4. We were not allowed to seek legal counsel at the time

that we signed these releases. Two of the cults' attorneys were

brought out to further intimidate us. We were told that we

could ask them questions if we had any. It was made clear that

________________

²
Mithoff was normally used in such cases as he is trusted and
considered a loyal minion by David Miscavige. David Miscavige is
the senior most of the founders "messengers" and took control upon
Hubbard's demise. It was Mithoff under the alias of "George
Jones" who personally oversaw Michael Meisner's security checking
after the cult had kidnapped him. Meisner was the cult's agent
who had infiltrated various government agencies and stolen
documents under the direct control of Hubbard, Hubbard's wife and
the rest of the cult's management. It was Meisner (having again
escaped from the cult and sought protection from the Justice
Department) whose evidence lead to the 1977 raids on the cults Los
Angeles and D.C. offices by the FBI. I know of Mithoff's
involvement because he spoke to me personally about it displaying
great pride in his activities.

we could definitely not seek other counsel.

5. It had been my understanding through earlier contacts

with scientology's dirty tricks unit known as the Guardian's

Office and later the Office of Special Affairs that these

releases had no legal binding whatsoever. In my early years as

a staff member I had seen the various policies issued by the

Guardian's Office concerning releases. Releases were to be

signed by every public person and staff before and after every

single service they received. The idea being that the person

was to be convinced that he had no recourse for lousy service

and false promises. Guardian's Office personnel had told me

repeatedly that they did not hold water and were merely a

deterrent. This was later confirmed by cult attorney John

Peterson.

6. To me the intention behind the releases themselves

appeared unlawful. Although not trained in law, it was obvious

to me that the intent included the obstruction of justice. Part

of our security checking was to ensure that we had no plans to

go to any government agencies to give them evidence of crimes

being committed by cultists or their agents. It was stressed at

the time of the signing of the releases that if we spoke to

government agents about any "confidential information" we had

concerning the cult that we would be in violation of our

agreements and that we would be sued. Additionally we were to

withhold information and avoid testimony in any civil litigation

where the truth may be harmful to the cult or aid someone else

seeking justice. With the purpose of the releases including the

withholding of information from lawful authorities I certainly

did not feel that they could possibly be legal or binding.

7. The conditions surrounding the sale of our horse and the

loan from the cult need to be made perfectly clear. Defense

attorneys constantly try to twist this into some evidence of

philanthropy on the cult's part. This just isn't the case at

all.

A. David Miscavige came to visit us in our motel room a few

days before we were allowed to leave. Miscavige asked us what

our plans were. We told Miscavige that we didn't have any

specific plans but that since I knew some people in the area

(southern California) I would probably work something out.

Miscavige made it clear that he did not want us to stay in

southern California but wanted us to go to Texas. He did not

want us connecting up with any of our friends in southern

California be they current or former scientologists. We told

him that we had limited funds and would have to stay in

California long enough to sell our horse and make a little money

so that we could travel. Miscavige reiterated his objection to

us staying in California and stated that we would have to work

it out to go back to Texas.

B. The next day Mark Rathbun suggested that the cult buy

the horse from us and that they loan us some money so that we

could leave right away and go to Texas. Rathbun stated that

this had been Miscavige's idea.

C. This loan and purchase of the horse had nothing to do

with the releases.

8. There had been a fire at one of the ranches I had worked

at and all of the belongings of four people had been destroyed

in the fire. I was one of them. A claim was being negotiated

with the insurance company. Rather than have me wait for the

insurance claim to settle I was given $1,040.90 which was the

value of the goods destroyed in the fire. This is money which I

understood was going to be later reimbursed by the insurance

company.

9. I received the pay due to me according to their rules

but this was just for the previous pay period. I never received

any compensation or wages for many hundreds of hours of work I

had performed and been forbidden to include on my time card

during the previous thirteen months or so while I worked for the

Norman Starkey, Trustee of the Estate of L. Ron Hubbard. This

was not religious work and the estate was not a non-profit

entity. I was supposed to be receiving minimum wage.

10. The cult purports that my wife Vicki had overall

responsibility for RTC's legal matters and litigation and such.

This is only partly true. David Miscavige, the Chairman of the

Board at Author's Services, Inc.³ had final say over what did or

did not occur and constantly issued streams of orders concerning

everything from personnel transfers to finances. Miscavige

either directly or indirectly oversaw all major decisions and

even minor ones if it were his whim.

11. While it is true that Vicki (and even myself on

occasion) did assign others to the Rehabilitation Project Force,

it is not mentioned that there is a basic tenet in scientology's

ethics policies which state that if you fail to assign someone

to the RPF and your boss feels you should have then you can be

assigned to the RPF with them. In other words it is enforced

from the top down. Miscavige as the senior person often

assigned people for no other reason that whim. I saw him do

this to others and he threatened me on several occasions. He

considered such activities his "management style".

________________

³Author Services, Inc (ASI) was a corporation set up by
Miscavige, Starkey and Lyman Spurlock. It's purpose was to manage
Hubbard's money and oversee the cults's finances and ensure that
Hubbard was getting his "cut". I was briefed on this by Miscavige
himself when ASI was first being set up.

12. It is stated that after Vicki escaped from the desert

camp where she was being held that she was able to travel freely

on her own. This is not true. We were under constant

surveillance by the cults' security personnel and all of our

belongings were being held to ensure our cooperation. We

feigned cooperation to prevent being declared suppressive

persons and opening ourselves up to "fair game".

13. It is stated that the cult paid three hundred dollars

more for our horse than I had paid for it. This is false and in

fact they paid three hundred dollars less than I had paid for

it.

14. While I am not a psychologist nor am I a psychiatrist,

it is clear to me now that both Vicki and I had previously been

brainwashed by the scientology cult. This process began in

1972, continued through 1973 when we were forced to give all of

our worldly possessions to the cult leaders and has only

recently ended since we were able to escape their influence. At

the time we left in 1987 we were heavily under their influence

and even to this day my wife has nightmares where she is still

being held captive by the cult.

A. It was only once we started to become "unbrainwashed"

that we began to realize the extent of suffering, misery, fear

and intimidation that we were put through.

15. Claims are being made to the effect that due to the

cult's philanthropic efforts on our behalf we left as happy

little cultists. Nothing could be farther from the truth. At

the time of my wife's escape from Happy Valley I was called in

by Miscavige and Mithoff and interrogated until four o'clock in

the morning in an attempt to get me to break up with her. When

this failed I was called upon to try to get her back. I

pretended to do this and even went so far as to encourage Jesse

Prince and David Bush (the two men who escaped with Vicki) to go

back. But during this whole time we planned to go along with

whatever the cultists wanted in order to be allowed to leave

without being declared "fair game". We lived in constant

apprehension and fear, not daring to believe that we could pull

it off but praying against hope that we could. By the time we

had successfully made it through our security interrogations we

would have signed anything to be allowed to leave.

16. Scientology purports itself to be a religion. In the

early 1970's when I first became involved with scientology, the

cultists were quite open about the fact that they called

themselves a religion only for tax purposes. It was only later,

in the mid 70's that the Guardians Office forced the "churches"

and franchises to conform to "religious image programs". These

programs covered everything from hanging up crosses to having

staff "ordained" and having get togethers on Sundays and calling

them Sunday services. It would never stay in though because it

was obviously bogus. Finally the threats became great enough to

force it in. Hubbard himself, in earlier unedited versions of

his taped lecture called "The Road to Truth" stated that there

was no god but not to let the "wogs" (non-scientologists) know

or they would never join. When scientology was being set up in

Mexico it was decided not to make the claims of being a religion

due to the fact that it would effect their ability to make

money. The same thing goes for a couple of other countries.

When the decision was whether to be a religion or make money,

make money won out. I know of all of these points from my own

personal experience.

17. I have been informed by my former attorney that

although we have made discovery requests, Defendants have failed

and refused to comply with even the simplest requests. During

this time they have barraged us with burdensome and costly

demands exceeding all reason. Additional evidence is currently

in the hands of Defendants but withheld from Plaintiffs. This

evidence is favorable to Plaintiffs' opposition to Defendants

Motion for Summary Judgement.

I declare under the penalties of perjury under the laws of

the United States of America that the foregoing is true and

correct.

Executed this 15th day of January 1989, at Dallas, TX.

[Signed]

Richard N. Aznaran

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