Tony Ortega | Scientology, NXIVM, & Jehovah’s Witnesses

00:00 Embrace yourself, because you're about to dive into another free first hour episode of the Higher Side Chats. And we just want to let you know that whether your looking for a companion through your paranoid insomnia, entertaining yourself through one of life's mundane activities or trying to ward off the internal screams from all those sad smothered souls around the office THC is here and you should know that every episode of the higher side chats has an entire second hour for plus members Sign up at thehiresitechatsplus.com and you'll get years of Plus Show archives, lifetime forum access, a special invite to Greg Carlwood's monthly joint sessions MP3s of THC music bonus episodes tour videos and 10% off t-shirts grinders and whatever else ends up in The HireSite Store It's $8 a month that you won't miss so become a plus member and treat yourself in these troubled times always action packed and commercial free

00:51 Which means you'll unfortunately never hear my voice again. 1930s President Franklin Delano Roosevelt addressed the nation through a series of radio broadcast known as the fireside chats His aim was to reassure the common man that our society would recover from its troubled times From 1930 and I deal with a different kind of fire For a new era of worldly frustration we offer a- I'm Greg Carlwood These are The Hireside Chats

01:30 All right people, here we go. Ready to roll from sunny San Diego! I'm Greg Carlwood and we have learned a lot of lessons over the years but one of the most important would be that you need to have a plan for yourself or someone else will because the world is full of charismatic cult leaders cunning psychopaths and shady organizations just dying to step in and derail your life for their own benefit And what's really scary about the realms of mind control, coercion, hypnotism, brainwashing, repetition and the power of suggestion is just how susceptible to it all we really are. We must be because so often see this same template playing out in many different manifestations

02:12 Attract the lost by claiming to have the answers, capture them with an inviting community image, isolate them from the outside world, subject them to humiliation and public shaming, cultivate a snitching culture with harsh punishment for any infraction, threaten them with the compromising material you've gathered. And when all else fails just fence them in with barbed wire It's a tale as old as time and it seems like if your fishing for humans your bound to hook a few So when we find these organizations, it's important to expose them for what they really are. Which is exactly what you'll find today's guest Tony Ortega doing quite often

02:50 If you're unfamiliar, Tony is a journalist and author with a long and successful career. He's been executive editor of The Raw Story, a journalist at New Times LA, and was even the editor-in-chief of The Village Voice before focusing on his own project, the underground bunker found at tonyortega.org where you'll see sections dedicated to the Church of Scientology Jehovah's Witnesses and NXIVM He's been writing about Scientology since 1995, and in 2015 he released his book about their most infamous campaign of terror to destroy author Paulette Cooper entitled The Unbreakable Miss Lovely. He later partnered with Paulette in the release of Battlefield Scientology Exposing L Ron Hubbard's Dangerous Religion which is a well curated collection of articles he has written about the group with added commentary from Paulette herself

03:44 When it comes to these groups he definitely knows his stuff so let's do the damn thing in the science college is lewis extraordinary and the journalist for justice from the underground bunker tell me my man welcome to the higher side. Well great that's quite an introduction thank you very much, you got a man you gotta try and thanks for doing this you really have made yourself expert in science college e and its organization we get to look at super closely on this show some glad your here I'm with you and that scientology is really fascinating and it's pretty wild what they've been able to get away with i know your sick of the whole is a cold is it religion question and also agree that thats just a label its not all important but to get the ball rolling here i guess i'd ask you how scientology would define itself and where he might differ in your own definition.

04:36 What is change and that's one of the interesting things about scientology is that when it started in nineteen fifty with something called dianetics by elrond hubbard, he call the science in fact to this day if you buy the book dianetics you'll notice the subtitle. Subheading is the modern science of mental health and so thats how we sold initially was he claimed to be a scientist that found a scientific approach to how the human mind actually works he was the first person in fifty thousand years to figure things out and people that initially reacted what you was doing really did believe that they were exploring this new science and it wasn't until we went through a lot of turmoil upheaval over the next couple years

05:27 And was really struggling that he realized that there were some real advantages in switching from calling it a science to calling in religion first and foremost what's the tax benefits but also they were getting a lot of heat from the government about health claims and so you can get away with more if you call yourself a church and religion then you would if you call yourself a science so nineteen fifty three just three years into this He wrote a letter to one of his followers and said that he wanted to look into the religion angle you literally called it that the religion angle so many of us think about really the whole idea of being a church in a religious, i was mostly expedient is basically a way of trying to deal with problems.

06:14 And you know many long time scientists will tell you that they never think of it as a church or religion, did they always consider that something for the lawyers and something i kind of cover story increasingly more these days. I find that scientist will talk about it as if we're really a church and there are some metaphysical concepts in scientology and you know everything about united states is what is the idea what is the church is so loose That i don't know how controversial it is that they call themselves a church but what i'm more concerned with this is what are the selling and how they sell it. Yes and devil is definitely in those details for sure and i think most people know little bit about the history and elrond hubbard one oh one i mean there's a lot of

07:04 archetypal stories in there that people repeat a lot but he also has just really fascinating history and there are some kind of untold chapters of course, one of the things we have talked about is him doing some weird sex magic stuff in the desert with jack parsons and then their speculation that maybe got the idea for scientology structure and levels from some of these orders was interested back in the day right. What else can you tell us about the early days of scientology and how ron hubbard got it from just this dianetics book to i guess where was when he left off right, what are you thinking about properties he did leave a fascinating adventurous life the problem we got into was that was never good enough he would always embellish and just outright lie

07:53 His own son mentioned that you know this is a guy that got to meet the president when he was teenager, he got to travel to asia. He was a glider pilot i mean very hubbard had alot of things that he could boast about but they were just never good enough for him and so he would he wasn't just an eagle scout he was the youngest eagle scout who ever lived it wasn't just a glider pilot he was the best glider pilot all time He wasn't just a lieutenant in the war. He fought in all World War II theaters and practically won the wars on his own, and so The Church of Scientology picked up all those stories and advanced them, and none of them were true, and that made the church very vulnerable later on. They're little more careful today but they still perpetuate a lot of myths about this guy but he was born in Nebraska 1911 and his family moved around a lot as father was Lieutenant in the Navy and so he ended

08:42 Montana for a while it was grandparents and stuff and then his mother took him out to guam to see his dad station in like nineteen twenty six or something i twenty seven is like sixteen years old so he got real taste of adventure very early on, add any weather depression was tough but his dad really wanted to be engineer. What is the college from it and so he then turned he knew yet how does a writer and so he turn to the pulps and back then you could make a living selling stories to magazines in the thirty's.

09:18 but it was not very lucrative i mean they were paying about a penny word and the way that hubbard was able to make up living out of it what just you there are two different things you can do you need to become very famous so you got paid more per word or you just wrote more words he chose the second of those options he just wrote like crazy he was known for how fast you could type and how many stories he put out, and he put them out under many different names so we could get... His son once said he picked up a magazine one time and realized every single story in it was by his father because he recognized all the pen names. So that's how Hubbard really started to make a living in the 30s was he just wrote so much And its pretty boilerplate I mean if you read this stuff A lot of it is just direct, I mean It's adventure stories, westerns romance stories

10:09 And some science fiction i mean i know he's known for science fiction but he himself didn't really like science fiction that much he hated what you call the gadget stories. He did have some well-known science fiction stories and it was becoming very a favorite with particular editor at outstanding magazine, So all this is going fairly well for him and he had built a following. And then World War II came, and for him this is the guy that lived for adventure he was really you know this like this is it become this great war hero any have this really disappointing war experience he did get the command of a ship in Boston Harbor and at last that command lasted a day. He was deemed incompetent and he was removed from that eventually he was in Oregon where I took over another ship

10:57 They went off the coast there and spent thirty five hours or something depth charging what they thought was a japanese submarine in the navy concluded that it was really just a magnetic deposit on the sea floor you then sell that ship down the coast of california down to bahar, and then use the mexican island for shooting practice, any cause international incident any lost that command. And there's some you know the thing about how did you mention it were always looking for more information and there's been some new revelations the real expert on hubbard is warriors is chris owen is a fantastic story in real meticulous researcher he found some new other was also australia early in the war

11:40 Add chris owen has discovered that elrond hubbard's bad planning resulted in the death of several sailors on a ship that was encountered by the japanese. and how did they sent them the wrong way around australia to get some place that put them in harms way so you know more ignominious from this war but but those scientists, do this day think that he was a great warrior oh and then he had been injured claimed it was machine gunned. And you never was in combat once He did end up in a hospital at the end of the war records are clear he was there for hemorrhoids and pink guy but you know to call bird, he claimed that his eyes have been blinded through some flash of machine gun or something even shot in the back of some crazy stuff and then he claim. Buy studying other patients in this hospital

12:37 that he was able to come up with a new way of curing ailments simply through some discoveries made in the human mind and this is what became Dianetics. And just a few years ago one of the spokesmen for Scientology told The New Yorker magazine, look if Hubbard was not injured in the war and if he did not heal himself through Dianetic then our church is built on a lie And i will be good believe you said that because the new yorker then very astutely show that the hospital record so they never was in comedy never was injured so, date that guy lost his job by the way that particular spokesman for saying that he did come out of that experience claiming that he had made these discoveries.

13:19 And then the next few years producing this book that came in nineteen fifty another thing is important to keep in mind and it's besides fiction writer. Navy commander failed navy commander and he did have a man hemorrhoids and pink guy was also that he had real psychological problems and in 1947, two years after the war. He actually wrote a letter to the VA begging for psychiatric care and as far as we know never got it And then just three years later, just three years after he wrote a letter begging for psychiatric help because of such bad shape Three years later he writes this book claiming to be world's expert on human mind

14:06 Lawrence wright i think captured a perfectly when he said that this book was full of psychology it was just here the dream dot this idea that the mind has these two halves and we store all our traumatic incidents in one particular part called the reactive mind add that if you could just erase those memories or lessen their impact We could get rid of the reactive mind and then we would just become these superhuman high IQ total recall, you know, superhumans. And that's what he promised right off the bat with Dianetics Add people pose that the way to get at those negative traumatic experiences the best way was to go back to the very beginning and he believed. The most important traumatic experience is that you had occurred to you while you were still in your mother's womb when you are a fetus and if you could just remember those awful incidents where did they come from

15:03 I'm i'm not making this up numerous times and dianetics he uses the example of mom and dad having rough sex hello and dad pounding away at pregnant mom knocking the fetus unconscious add And then whatever dad then yells at that point, the fetus stores in the reactive mind and 30-40 years later somebody says something similar and it causes all kinds of problems for you. This is a bizarre theory he had. And so for about six months in the summer of 1950, fall of 1950

15:40 this created a craze and there were clubs all around the country where people were literally getting together to try to help each other remember what happened while they were still in the womb, and then to re-experience birth. Hubbard's timing was perfect it was post war people were ready to experiment with new ideas like i said for short time it was hugely popular he sold alot of books became very wealthy very quickly And then within six months after that, it all blew up. His marriage fell apart he was accused of attacking his wife He actually absconded with their daughter, their one-year old daughter and flew to Cuba in hiding The foundations that he had already created around Dianetics all went bust He was bankrupt, he actually lost the use of the word Dianetic

16:33 and nineteen fifty one was an absolute nightmare year for our on hover but he had by that time you already brought no attracted a few important followers what who, was the wealthy oil man in kansas and that guy helped him get back he got he took care of bankruptcy for hubbard began to rebuild things add. One of the things that happened, and this is what the subject of The Movie The Master is. I don't know if you've seen that Paul Thomas Anderson movie with Philip Seymour Hoffman? He's experimenting with what happened in that period when Hubbard was going from Dianetics to this new thing and by then a lot of followers had really dug Dianetics and thought it was great they weren't satisfied with only going back to the womb They wanted to go back farther into prior lifetimes

17:24 And so when hubbard rebounded and regroup you did it which taught can't but then primarily phoenix arizona nineteen fifty two ninety fifty three, he reinvent this whole thing all over again he couldn't use the word dynamics because i was still caught up in court to invent a new word called scientology. and in scientology you're not just trying to go back to what happened to you as a fetus, you try to go back to previous lives to find out what had traumatic things that happened so i've talked to scientists Who will just outright tell me that yeah I learned it five million years ago i was killed in a war on another planet and that's why i have problems today, i mean this is what the essence of scientology is. That you are trying to find these terrible things that happened to millions of years ago on other planets now because that sounds so ridiculous thats the last thing scientology will ever tell you and thats the real issue i have with them i don't have a problem

18:23 if somebody wants to believe that they live millions of years ago and suffered some trauma that today gives them back pain or give me an ability to speak in front of a crowd whatever if you want to believe that your some kind of warrior five million years ago on the planet it's affecting you today that's fine, the problem is scientology won't admit people that what they do they give this whole song and dance about how its up a self help group help you with your communications they try to make it sound like some sort of business seminar and they don't start to clue people into that past life stuff until you've been in for quite a while so those are some other things that i feel scientology needs to be held accountable for.

19:05 Yes i think that's a great breakdown and let me ask you about the rise of david miscavige because, what is scientology always hardcore as it is today in prison people harassing critics child labor or did something change when david took the reins. That's a good question some scientists will tell you that was much different organization under hubbard i think though that while miscarriages particularly harsh he still basically advancing the policies that hubbard said in place i mean from the very beginning hubbard was really paranoid about other people using his ideas so, scientology comes along nineteen fifty two after dianetics and kind of stumbled and then by nineteen fifty three like i said you can decide to be called the church of scientology

19:52 And but you know he had called the science and what is the nature of a science nature of science is that it's not old by anybody any other investigator should be able to make the same kind of experiments, add in have similar results or falsify them right so. Just because Isaac Newton figured out something about gravity doesn't mean he owns that concept and nobody else can study it. You see what I'm saying? So if L Ron Hubbard really did discover something scientific about the human mind, then other researchers should be able to replicate those results and then study it on their own

20:30 But he went crazy when people did that. When people would get into dianetics for a little while or Scientology, they'd drop out and then they say I'm going to take some of these ideas and develop them on my own. He just went crazy. One cynical view is just that he knew he was losing out on that income if somebody else was doing it. And so very early on he started setting up these elaborate policies in order to police Scientology, in order crack down on splinter groups. And by the mid-fifties he's writing these incredibly paranoid harsh justice manuals and in the sixties he sets up something with Orwellian name ethics they call it ethics what they really mean is obedience and this just really harsh rules because Hubbard wants to keep this under wraps and under his control

21:22 And so a lot of these things that we see today where families are ripped apart, where people are pursued and sued and destroyed. They all come from Hubbard! One of the most important things to understand about Scientology Is that there is only one source and that is a hubbard and they literally call him he is so whenever there's a question you have to go back to his documents policies books and cite a particular rule or whatever it is in order to do anything in Scientology, anything at all. And there is no other authority. Well Hubbard died in 86 and he can't change those things now so Miscavige took over was very young guy at the time I think about 26 years old and for the most part is simply following those hubbards policies. It was Hubbard

22:19 Who described how to use dirty tricks to try and destroy journalists and how do you just destroy x members can have a new sports to paralyze people at hubbard literally wrote it all down. And so today, Miscavige is simply following those instructions. Now is Hubbard...is Miscavige a little more harsh on the disconnection that rips apart families? I think you could make that argument. Is Miscavige...? One of the key differences is, is that Hubbard as scary as he could be, as paranoid, as dictatorial, He also had a side where he could just sort of put his hand on somebody's shoulder and give them a little encouragement and believe me some of these Sea Org members people that are most hardcore

23:02 A little pat on the back would keep them going for years. Hubbard knew how to do that, Hubbard knew when it let up a little bit say something nice and then that person would be just happy forever. Miscavige has a real hard time doing that he's just harsh and tough taskmaster and the Sea Org members themselves reinforce that they feel like they're not getting screamed at if they're not getting you know run around that there you know then they are going soft and they enforce it on each other. It's a paramilitary organization, its very strict and harsh and expect to live in very difficult conditions so let me tell you about the Sea Org. So by 1966

23:49 how did left united states in nineteen fifty nine twenty nine kingdom yet a lot of success in england but where were you when the course the government was start looking into things and they are concerned about it so by nineteen sixty seven things were heating up for him in england, add heaters decided to go somewhere else he literally move scientology to the sea they purchased some ships. add the one that he made his flagship was originally the royal scotland and then became the apollo, any other little yet so our motto of three ships that sail around the mediterranean atlantic and you know i told you is all around the world by then he was running it from these ships. Any had about two or three hundred something young crew members with him daddy called the sea organization because they were all at sea

24:38 They became the most hardcore inner elite of Scientology and they were with him on the Atlantic, in the Mediterranean for seven years from 1967 to 1970. Well almost eight years 1975. They had gone to the Caribbean by then and then finally I think he was sick a bit and they moved onto land in Florida. He chose a town called Clearwater and they essentially, they used subterfuge to basically get a foothold in it. They bought some buildings and ever since then they've made that one of their main headquarters there in downtown Clearwater A real source of friction with the locals because I think a lot people aren't happy that Scientology basically took over and killed the downtown there at Clearwater But anyway so thats still...to this day The most hardcore inner elite of Scientology is called The Sea Organization or The Sea Org

25:30 And the people who join it, and they typically join when they're 13 or 14 years old. They sign billion year contracts promising to come back lifetime after lifetime Yes i heard about that detail i'm glad you got there is probably the most. Mind blowing detail of all the new sign a billion year contract even as a kid and one of those fascinating aspects to me, is the intelligence gathering that they do the practice of collecting dirt on people and making these files on them obviously The jeffrey epstein case has been in the news as well as next and collecting compromising material is a big part of all these stories but it's really a cornerstone of scientology. I guess describe the process of sex check for us or any of these auditor sessions that person would go through cuz they are quite common and quite fundamental right, great i mean there's a real seduction to scientology for newcomers because

26:33 When you're joining the Church of Scientology, well if you join a Protestant church or Catholic church or Jewish synagogue or whatever what do you expect? You expect that you're going to learn their traditions. Right? You are going to read the Bible and you are going to read the Koran and you know whatever it is that you will be learning about The tradition of the faith you're joining and whether it's something that happened in the near east two thousand years ago or whatever but you know, you need to learn the stories and history and all that.

27:10 In Scientology it's so different because you come in there and they want to ask you what the truth is, right? It's all about you. What do you remember when you were born? What do you remember earlier than that? And they have rules that they cannot invalidate you. I think you know for hundred years ago i was a pirate they can't say no we don't think so i mean that they cannot invalidate you that's what you think you were you that's what you work and so it's really kind of intoxicating that all this is about exploring. This inner story of yourself people get excited about,

27:50 And also i was gonna point this out what's on the hubbard background everything you think he brought to a besides pulp fiction writer and failed navy commander, what he was also he had been trained as a stage hypnotist it was very skillful hypnotists corning does friends at time. And in Dianetics, which I've read very carefully he talks about what he calls a reverie. Now Scientologists will howl and say Ortega doesn't know what he's talking about there is no hypnotism in Scientology In fact it's the opposite. Hubbard would always say hypnotism puts you to sleep, Scientology wakes you up But if you look at what they're doing

28:27 they're putting you through these auditing sessions to get you remember what happened to you previous lifetimes, they just put you through these repetitious questioning session. Hundreds of questions over and over and it's designed to put you in a trance state And so suddenly you start remembering who yeah i was running a prison planet in another galaxy no so it's the thing is exciting for people because they think these are memories of real there holding the sensors that this email that operators is telling them

29:03 backing up what they're saying and then of course Scientology can never tell you you're wrong. And so this is part of the seduction, part of the allure is that rather than sitting and listening to some story about something that happened in a desert 2000 years ago they are asking you what happened to you two thousand years ago? So as your giving up these stories What you don't realize is there pumping you full of this indoctrination about not only is it working to help you remember those things but scientology is the only thing that works. This is how people can sign your contract this is how people can basically give away their children is that they become convinced, that scientology is the only thing that works out what hubbard is the only real genius all of the other face are all fit our fake or there a figment so the imagination and.

29:57 add you know scientology has the only answers that are gonna save this planet from destruction so what's your buy into that which can take some time it's kind of a seduction but once you buy into that it's very powerful idea. I mean once you decide that all these guys know the truth of what's going on in this world and i need to keep going up the bridge to learn the secrets that they know, This is why people spend so much money so many years It's incredibly expensive i mean the upper levels of auditing cost you several hundred dollars an hour and they can take weeks to astounding study of how the human mind. Can really be taken over by entirely different way of thinking and it becomes so difficult to get out of that i talk to scientists who left and they can't make me take ten or twelve years

30:54 Before they feel like they finally thrown off this way that scientology had rewired the way their mind worked. I'm sure that it plays a role that they've done all these confessions over years and years and years from the beginning, and now there are kind of afraid of how that information could be used against them so they don't speak out. Right so thats i'm sorry that's the question you're asking about sex checks and stuff so okay so your giving this you doing this order to get kinda being seduced by the idea that you discover yourself for the first time in all that Well, what they're also doing is asking you incredibly invasive questions about your private life.

31:36 And they have these excuses for it that you know, you really have to tell us everything or we're not going to be able to help you. So right from the beginning they want to know everything and then deeper you get into it more invasive questions get all kinds of questions about sex and if your gonna join the C-ORG... I actually have these forums at my website If you wanna join the C-ORG You have to fill out a form about everybody you've ever had any kind of sexual contact with in your entire life And they want to know details, they wanna know what you did and see on the one hand it's amazing that anybody fills it out because why would a church need that information. Second of all you can see how their big they wanna know everyone you've ever slept with so there building an identities of those people so they're building up a database of all this information and

32:24 Yeah you bet people are terrified to leave later because they know it's like having a site already has incredibly voluminous files on everything you've ever said about yourself and we have the list of questions i mean there, where disgusting back if you saw the way remedies series wrapped up. She had some guests who are young you have been young people in scientology just thirteen or fourteen years old and it was their job to ask people these horrible questions about their masturbation fantasies. Meanwhile is writing everything down a particular the most aggressive interrogations are called security checks or sex checks

33:04 they wanna know are you connected with any reporters, are you connected with the government? Are you really here just to get a story. Do you have any debts I mean just all kinds of questions too do they claim to make sure that it's for their own there for Scientology protection but you know you can't move up the bridge unless you do multiple interrogations like that and and the consequences People often ask me, you know about like the internet for example. There's a there's kind of a myth that Scientologists don't use the Internet No That's not the case Scientologists use the Internet they use the apps They use social media like like the rest of this but they're incredibly good at policing themselves and Don't look at material about the church The reason why they're so good at policing themselves is they know if? They take a listen to this program for example at all

33:58 and somebody finds out they will get hold in front interrogation, and it'll last three weeks long the last of what you listen that program was something else who are you a child attached to who are you talking to have you called reporters i mean justice i mean like like a criminal would get like this really invasive interrogation and then get a bill for So I talked to a woman who, I guess somebody told Scientology that she had actually been watching Leah Remedy on television. They hauled her down it was a three week interrogation and she ended up paying like $4000 for it This is why Scientologists are so good at ignoring the press about Scientology and not watching Leah Remedy It's because they know if they aren't vigilant they'll get hauled down to questioning And it will cost them a lot of money

34:48 Yes man that is so wild and some of the boldest claims about scientology are around false imprisonment it seems hard to imagine an organization could get away with this with keeping people in the group at these compounds against their will but this is the testimony of a lot of people who leave and then speak out isn't. Yeah it sure is and you know particular there was a sink of the rpf the rehabilitation project for us started in nineteen seventy four while they were still on the ship at sea. And it became a kind of prison program and you know you get thrown into for few months until you had your head straight back out within a few years, are pf getting worse and worse to talk to people that were in the rpf ten years

35:38 And I mean they were separated from the rest of the scientology population, they were held out at some ranch somewhere. They were unable to talk to anybody in their family. They were essentially prisoners in America! It's just stunning that they get away with this and then of course probably most famous of those incidents is 2004 David Miscavige created a special prison situation for his top lieutenants And so the people that worked closest to him he was really paranoid about their loyalty and so we locked up several dozen of them ultimately i think more than a hundred people in something that became known as the whole. What the whole was it was basically like an office and you know virtually everyone who's listening is gonna hear this probably work at an office some point,

36:32 There's nothing wrong with working in an office and enjoying the people you work with but imagine if the boss lock the door, i wouldn't let you leave for several years okay that's what the whole was it was a stance of the office. What these people were locked in there day and night then sleep on the floor they will be let out for shower in the morning they were literally fed food from a bucket add no that started two thousand four It was really awful to two thousand nine at that point the press heard about it but have a time first broke the news about it and miscarriage then had to improve conditions what i think they were worried about the FBI doing something about it, but there's still a whole today is still we have reliable reports of people that have left that base. Very recently saying yeah this group that segregated don't get to eat with the rest of us they don't get you know they're held on their own add

37:31 It is incredible to think in the united states twenty four century there is this group that imprisons people that keeps children from their parents, that you know will do what they want to isolate people they consider problematic and no people ask me why did the FBI rush in there save those people with a problem for law enforcement. Is that if they did go into it base it's called your hemat california where the hole is And throw open the door to the whole and say that people inside your free come on out they may not want to know i mean there's so indoctrinated, i asked you know what was a prisoner of the hole for couple years. Can we have a long conversation about it i asked him about that part of any said no as horrible is the place why is always assume i had done something that i deserve to be in there for

38:24 And I asked him, what was it? What did you do that caught me? He said, i could never remember what it was but I just always assumed. I must be the lowest of the low if they stuck me in here so that's a thing is the real prison bars are inside your head and Scientology and so it can be very difficult to sort of quote rescue somebody from that situation yes yeah people get stuck at those for years and then there's a couple of well-known stories or a couple young women who had attempted suicide get out of their cheese Man yeah this kind of mental prison that you mentioned comes up in the r kelly story to i watch that series and it's pretty heartbreaking to see a couple these specific girls parents on tv being like. This is not right he told my daughter mind control this and that, and then he prays them out for interview and they're like no i wanna be there i want to be chained up in a separate room in a mansion only allow

39:22 i'm allowed to go to the bathroom when he lets me and it is a scary thing but people can get sucked in and its fine line when the government has to say no this, this is stockholm syndrome i mean who's gonna make those determinations we have free will do a point if you want to surrender that to an organization like scientology i guess. That is alright but Man and you mentioned leah remedies show i watched a few episodes in preparation for this night watch one where she reviews a guy and girl both seem to be in their thirties now but they were inside when there are kids, any word little bit rebellious never sent to a couple of basically labor camps that ones called the mace kingsley ranch school n.

40:06 This guy describes the time when he was stripped naked while all the other kids boys and girls were told to stand around watch me was blasted with a hose and scrubbed with a metal wire brush in front of everyone for his quote unquote shower pretty brutal stuff. Yeah basically branches particular notorious, It was started by a couple of Scientologists, the church has always claimed that it didn't run at the Scientologist did but clearly it was a place for Scientologists because parents could send their kids. You know what one thing to keep in mind is that i have a diet and then he got into scientology got more of a cosmic sort of vision for what you was doing how much did dream about this idea that we are each other's immortal beings, call the state it's actually trillions of years old and live lifetime after lifetime after lifetime we just happen to be having this particular body on the slide time but its just that's a blink of an eye compared to the age of your actual fate. Add so

41:07 In hubbard's cosmology at the end of your particular lifetime you leave the body you go to either venus and mars to be programmed, add that they send you back to earth can u go to a maternity ward and jump into a new baby so if your just eight sort of soul disembodied soul fate and you're jumping into a body of an infant Did you really don't have any physical connection to the mother and father who produce that baby do you see what i'm saying yeah so, sign taller talk early on that the family unit is an illusion.

41:50 And that this particular person might be your mother and this particular persons your father in this lifetime but five or six lifetimes you might have been there for other, you don't see it because you're jumping around bodies so the whole idea of families and mothers fathers is really downplay extremely inside allogy i'm not saying they are some. Close families inside all the there are but this idea is reinforced time again that you're a fake you're not a body and so. This is why i think some parents find it possible to just drop their kids off,

42:27 Add you have the church raise their kids or take you send them out to this horrible ranch basically ranch was a new mexico then it would originally i think it was in california and it's gone now but we have so many other examples of parents. Basically just give your kids up to the church add i think it comes from this idea that is like all of your family illusion Yeah and it also helps with that kind of model without kinda cosmology it helps to justify the abuses of children child labor and having these thirteen year olds interrogate people about their masturbation habits because, your core being is a internal soul so you're not really a kid you should be treated like an adult then that is how they get away with a lot of that stuff.

43:20 Exactly that's exactly right hubbard hubbard saw children as ancient beings in a small package man and. So I did kinda wanna segue over to Jehovah's Witnesses just for a few minutes if we could because it's not like you have sections on your blog for every cult and abusive organization that existed. You keep it very tight, Scientology, NXIVM those two make sense but Jehovah's Witnesses kind of surprised me. I really didn't know they were much different from Mormons or Baptists but I guess they are Yeah, and I have to give Leah Remini credit because she and Mike Rinder were hearing so much from Jehovah's Witnesses that said everything you're saying about Scientology reminds us of what we're going through. And so they decided to put together a special episode which was really great and made me more aware of people like Lloyd Evans and Jerry Minor who are these ex-Jehovah's Witnesses who are trying to raise awareness about the same kind of abusive practices that Scientology has. So I got to know those guys

44:24 Add i decided to want a branch out of little bit and still working on that it's you know, i basically triple my workload for no more money so maybe what the most brilliant business decision but i am still at the activity i'm doing mostly now is that i am working with jerry minor podcast. We're doing a podcast and Jerry Miner is talking about Jehovah's Witnesses, I'm talking about Scientology. And we're trying to sort of trade information and understand these different groups But yes, Jehovah's Witnesses is very problematic It has got some of the same control mechanisms in the same ways of indoctrinating people One thing that I find really troubling about Jehovah's Witnesses Is how much they try to scare children

45:09 So much of Jehovah's Witnesses is about frightening the heck out of kids, about this coming Armageddon and about everybody getting killed. It just seems so unnecessary That's something that troubles me and of course the blood rule There are just a lot of similar ways in which things with rules are enforced And then there's some really interesting differences. Instead of David Miscavige running Scientology, Jehovah's Witnesses has a governing body of eight men and it's interesting to see how they deal with some of the controversies. The other big difference is that Scientology claims to have millions but it never has—it probably only got 20 thousand people right now—but Jehovah's Witnesses legitimately does have 8 million people around the world! It's just a gigantic organization

45:58 And that's one of the questions i had for lloyd evans was what do you expect to happen because i think with scientology it's small enough and sort of Outrageous enough in its behavior it was already the subject of a major prosecution in the seventies I could see that happening again and scientology would be big trouble but with an organization of eight million people you know, I'm curious as to what they would like to happen with Jehovah's Witnesses. And the answer is just that they want some reforms at least You know, the blood rule is just ridiculous. Why are people dying? It doesn't make any sense! It's a complete misinterpretation of the Bible. And the blood rule is not allowing for transfusions right? Right so there are a few verses they point to in the Bible that are very clearly Jewish dietary laws of the Old Testament talking about that you shouldn't eat blood and some

46:54 Rules out of the old testament are clearly common sense rules i mean especially at a time when there was refrigeration and modern medicine you know maybe it makes sense not to mix different kinds of foods things like that they find these culture loss and what other things don't consume blood. Add another thing that was really surprising for me to learn about this was it wasn't till the fifties I think it was actually i'm sorry baby like forty five ninety forty five ninety forty seven that you hope is even came up with this idea in fact you can find publications from like the twenties and thirties were they said good things about transfusion but then suddenly overnight in nineteen forty-five there was a rule saying all consuming blood also refers to blood transfusions.

47:42 Add the guy died in nineteen forty seven because he would take a blood transfusion they probably made it a saint and that was it there was no blood transfusions and again why how does that you know just how can all these other. Christian faith be wrong and justice what I interpreted correctly so is this a shame because somebody children Children have died for what was the blood transfusion because of their parents convictions and it just seems so unfair to those children in the past,

48:17 The Jehovah's Witnesses organization would really put out one publication where they were showing pictures of these kids like they're martyrs. It is just sick, it is just so sick and twisted. So I have become interested in that and I've really enjoyed talking with Lloyd Evans and Marco Donald and Jerry Minor, Chad Rowland about their situation because it does seem so similar. Yeah and obviously the Majority of your work is scientology and we do see this template blueprint kind of applied to a lot of different totalitarian little groups and i guess maybe jehovah's witnesses one of them the only other thing i want ask about them.

49:02 That a lot of your articles on there and rightfully so are about child abuse allegations in the church and this organization watchtower which seems to be kinda like. There, i want to say p r front group but they're definitely seem to be the ones who are attacking this problem head on and not even in the court system what is that, the state it's really hard with an organization of eight million people to say something as systemic or foundational but. These child abuse allegations and the court cases that seem to be out there right now mean this is no small thing for them right

49:40 Well, this is a particular interesting time because Mark O'Donnell was key working with I think the Atlantic magazine had fantastic story recently where they figured out that Jehovah's Witness organization Watchtower is another name for it. Yeah, Watchtower Bible Society I think is the name of the governing corporation They knew they had a problem The Catholic Church knew that they have a problem that it had a problem. But the Jehovah's Witnesses, some time ago I want to say in like 95 or 96 they wanted to know just how big this problem was because the reason why these organizations run into this problem...I don't think anybody encourages child abuse and child molestation but the problem that these organizations run into is they do not want it to get outside of the group

50:27 When they figure out that somebody is molesting children, they think they can take care of it themselves rather than trusting law enforcement. That's where they get into trouble and so they move the guy to a different area and don't tell those people and then he does it again. So in 1996 I think Jehovah's Witnesses wanted to figure out okay just how bad this problem was? And they literally put out a questionnaire They said to all the kingdom halls and said listen, to their elders. Fill this out let us know about how many problematic people you have and what they're... They created a database of molesters with like 10 thousand names on it! And then tried to keep it quiet. This is why there's so much trouble right now because that fact became public

51:19 And so now you know litigation is going to know you gotta you gotta turn over that list you got up to which people you do were molesters it's a really bad situation for job as witnesses and groups like this is barcy hamilton said on the remedy finale she said. These organizations will not change on their own. You have to get them into court and force them to make changes, and I think with Jehovah's Witnesses with this molester database—I think that's going to have really big implications for them so that's something we're going to keep an eye on Yes yes definitely do and just a touch on that one other section of next obviously it's got some structural similarities to scientology some of that same blueprint is this just another organization that uses similar tactics or dc any real connective tissue between them i think he was fascinated with scientology and you basically borrowed some ideas i don't really think there was anything going on between them

52:24 Next year i'm in rainieri was pretty self-contained up and update new york and he had you know yet his own interest in creating sex slaves so early on he had some people get into scientology materials any basically just plagiarized it. So they use words like postulate that's not all just use of the same ideas add no i think hubbard himself was Somebody stole ideas from plenty of other people i don't think there's that much different but i think. There is some i see some odd claims being made on the internet about that there's something connection between next human scientology and next in being prosecuted it is gonna lead to scientology i just really think rainier was a very unique individual kind of leader who stole my idea for scientology add reason why he's going to be going to prison for so long,

53:22 Like like with psychology other groups he was able to get away with a lot without the authorities doing anything for so many years, for years and years people went to the authorities official saying listen this next group there abusing people yeah i can never get anything done but. I think it's twenty sixteen or something there been some exposes in the press Add you would think if you know your rational person you would take well listen there's been some heat on us and there's been some exposes in the law for people i don't know a little bit more about maybe we should like sort of like cool things down.

54:00 And sort of go underground but no instead he ramps it up and start branding women. He starts having these women brand themselves in their pubic region with his initials add what's that got out that was the you know the law enforcement, It's sad to say, but you can rip families apart and extort money from people. But as soon as you have something that sexual then it is like oh that is over the line." And so they finally did arrest him and prosecute him and that when I became more interested in... The reason why I really wanted to cover Nexium at that point on my website—and I had a wonderful correspondent Diane Lipman who went down to court every day and reported for us which was really fascinating—

54:46 I wanted to see what it was like when one of these groups gets prosecuted. Because, you know we've been waiting for so long for the government to do something about Scientology's abuses never happens and now here is a similar group going through an actual federal prosecution. So I was fascinated! And so we kept an eye on that really closely on the trial Diane did a fantastic job just doing very objective report every day about what she saw which she heard and he was convicted and it was interesting kind of case because His attorney announced pretty early on that they weren't going to put out any kind of a case at all. The only thing he was going to try and do is cross-examine the prosecution's witnesses, hope that was enough to create doubt in jury's mind but it wasn't. They came back with us a verdict so fast!

55:30 You could tell, I think they were pissed off. The things he was doing to these women was just outrageous. Yeah he's gonna be sentenced pretty soon and i don't know, I think he is looking at decades in prison. Well that what I was going to say is I learned most of what I know about the actual court proceedings and the accountability from your website and it seems like he's going to be sentenced in September along with Allison Mack and another individual who was pretty high up Does it seem to be the end of it you there's other people who have had charges but their sentencing was delayed does this is there a reason why you think that can happen or more charges coming. What would you got so much out of our coverage i was really proud of diana thought we did a good job but let me tell you where were just one of many people covered that,

56:18 add there are some real experts that know so much about next year and so much more than i do it, they you know the best of all this frank parlato his blog is fantastic i think frank believes that there are other nexium members who are gonna try to carry things on even with all these top level people going to prison. I think it's going to be difficult for a group like that to stay cohesive when so notorious now. But we'll see, that is an interesting question about whether this organization continues in some other form This one was so tightly focused around Ranieri, i think it'd be hard time to carry on but see thats the thing about Scientology Hubbard you know the FBI raided 1977 11 top Scientologists went to prison and Hubbard himself was named unidentifiable conspirator

57:10 He is some of these people with the prison early eighties he died eighty six between the prosecution and harbor dying you would think that a group so based around what personality would have a hard time continuing on, What i mean that's one thing you do have to give david miscavige credit for he picked up the baton and kept going and in fact, site all reached its greatest extent probably most influence in the early nineties after hubbard had died. You know it's drunk a lot since then it doesn't have nearly as much influence now today yeah i mean it's tough to survive the death of the founder. It will see if next year can survive the imprisoning of founders is open question

57:53 Yes it is i'm right there with you that's the most fascinating thing about next him is that something was done no accountability image it is just so rare, and you know fingers crossed i'll be diving in much deeper than that with frank a couple of weeks here. What to get back the scientology i have heard you say that for the last few years they really seem to be in bunker mode they are really doing a lot of recruitment pr or their numbers are definitely hurting not doing the damage control that maybe once did, what would you say is the state of your organization today is there anything hopeful there that there on the decline. What's up told me been big trouble for quite awhile and they

58:35 They were like party on secrecy that like i said earlier that there what you really gonna end up doing in scientology is spending hundreds of dollars an hour to remove, you know your a state but they're all kinds of invisible other extra things called body things attached to. Add you gonna spend hundreds of dollars an hour moving those four years that's really what scientology is but they rely on the secrecy and not knowing that it so committed you put in so much money, that does no going back well that secret become harder to age the internet add. So more people know just stay away from scientology and its made their recruitment much more difficult

59:19 Also i think governments and media have gotten a little more of the clue about what they're dealing with the site all units front groups but you know there's still like i said they have a playbook that i want to write down what is supposed to do and they follow it man they just never give up so. You know probably the biggest effort made recently to keep up with his vision of taking over the world, is actually started out their own television network i told you tv is on direct tv and it's also various streaming apps stuff like that i want to do it i just go on the site all of your dot t.v. It's a watchable just propaganda twenty four hours day but they have had a few things out there that i found interesting that they were real something about themselves and i was surprised at the dead,

1:00:11 But it's just very slick and they're clearly spending a ton of money. So, they will always continue with their efforts to try to recruit people, try to improve their image but it's just harder for them because you know the word is out. And as we start wrapping up we know scientology can be quite aggressive and quite litigious and we know they go after the critics, why hard have you had problems with this am i gonna have problems with this. You probably won't but they are constantly smear me online by garbage is not a true nonsense and they've gone after my family that got after my wife if they don elaborate operations to try to get my wife fired from her job

1:00:58 They've done some stuff really creepy that i had to report to the police because it was very very over the line and they harass me all of them people i know all over at the world not exaggerating i mean a. They intimidated somebody i know in the say europe general and then a few days later another person i knew an asia. Ok so this is this is the kind of money they're willing to spend to fly people all over the world, try intimidate me and scare me and scare my family that it's just constant online they just spread all this untrue garbage about me

1:01:35 Which I just ignore for the most part because I think most people realize, oh that's Scientology. They're always lying about Ortega and for the most case that's true and it's just...I don't...I'm not gonna let them scare me out of what I do because what i'm doing is is important. There are so many people being harmed by Scientology and I want to tell their stories, and there have been many great journalists who have written about Scientology that did a great job. I think the thing that I bring that's different is it's the daily drumbeat. A series will come out in Los Angeles Times or a series will come out in Tampa Bay Times they're fantastic they're award-winning but then a month later people aren't talking about anymore

1:02:18 And Scientology can go back, right back to doing what they were doing. So I decided that what there needed to be was a beat reporter watching Scientology every day. I gave myself that job and I enjoy it and there's something to say about Scientology every single day. And I think its the kind of subject that deserves that kinda scrutiny and hopefully someday the government will decide that they also need to take a harder look Wow well cheers to that the best jobs are definitely the ones we give ourselves and We do what we can to shine a light on the darkness And I really commend you for the work. You're doing The website is great Tony Ortega org lots of really deep content on this stuff a full breakdown of Dion

1:03:04 kinetics a chronology of the course levels with the up the bridge series really great stuff anything else We should tell that people about before we go new projects in the works or anything No I just hope people come by one of the best things about the underground bunker Tony Ortega org is is the community that people though The commenters are amazing. There's some wonderful longtime Scientologists, they were very Very important organization they know so much and bring some much everyday to the conversation it's really a conversation is one of the, you live with your friend leader places on the internet and it's one of things that characterizes so well so i hope you join us in take a look at what we offer maybe

1:03:46 pick up our book about Paulette Cooper called The Unbreakable Miss Lovely. Mm-hmm, right on man well thanks again noble work it's been a real pleasure keep fighting the good fight! Thanks Greg I really enjoyed it Well sweet baby Jesus there is a deep dive into an organization we all know and love with Tony Ortega I mean, honestly you hear these things and it's pretty mind-blowing that such an organization even exists still. I'm sure many people out there don't really know all the details but the general queasy feeling around Scientology stretches pretty far and wide And i actually know people who live in Hemet It's really small There is not much there... ...and I've driven past this compound that was mentioned several times myself

1:04:43 But to hear that this is where people were locked up by miscavige against their will, that's pretty surreal. It's also a weird place to build the facility obviously it's secluded and the land is probably pretty cheap as far as California goes well I guess so maybe it's really not that weird given what the goals are? I guess if you're trying to lock people up against their will... If that's a possibility you might want to be a little off the beaten path You're not going to find something like this on the Brea in the middle of LA. But I was a little nervous about this one, i feel that it is quite bold hopefully since we just went through a ton of website issues we won't face more because this group is obviously very aggressive with its critics but hey! I just asked the questions right? Don't shoot The Messenger

1:05:36 I'm sure when some people saw this title they might have got the special tingle because this show and the last episode with whitney webb are a really powerful one to punch of podcasts if you ask me. Ross ben too i think he really hit that sweet spot as well although the most common feedback that i hear lately like, what i've talked to a lot of listeners in person at the as above event in portland is an appreciation for the health shows so i feel better about peppering them in from time to time. I love today show i hope you did too tony really knows his stuff his website is very much on point and they deliver some really high level material if your at all interested in digging deeper into any of the three organizations that we talked about today

1:06:28 Also something that tony talks about in a lot of his interviews of course is the book he wrote about paulette cooper's case the unbreakable miss lovely. We kind of glossed over that case didn't spend any time on it really at all because i wanted to make sure we could put nexium and jovis witnesses in there and not first hour but check out his book or listen him talk about that story cuz they really put pallet through the ringer, Apparently they framed her for bomb threats that were made from her own typewriter. It's a pretty crazy story and that's really just the beginning of it, but we understand how they work A lot of it is shocking But at the same time if you're cynical as I am not really that surprising? But it's a very important book and Paulette Cooper is a very brave woman

1:07:23 Do remember if you want to follow up with Tony, his website is tonyortega.org. Tonyortega.com is something else entirely So if you want to get the latest scoops on organizations of abuse at The Underground Bunker, tonyortega.org And the fact that his website is called The Underground Bunker I think some of you guys already know what song I'm going to use to end this show because it's just too good a fit The NXIVM and Jehovah's Witness material is obviously not the primary focus, but organizational abuses, the culty culture of these groups. You can see a lot of overlap in how they operate and the techniques they use. And that's another reason I think it all fits so well with Whitney's coverage of the Epstein Network because the compromising material and blackmail aspects are just huge across the board

1:08:19 And then think about how the digital age has just thrown an insane amount of fuel on that. So cover your webcams, be careful what you share, hide your kids hide your wife! Unfortunately for me I am happily married and live a pretty boring life of just drinking smoking in straight west coastin'. I've never been dishonest about my past in fact you can follow my facebook right back to college when the whole damn thing started. It's not pretty i don't recommend it, i was a very dumb kid who wanted to push the limits for comedic effect and also think we all used facebook differently in the beginning and didn't realize that would ever be like an official online profile for a person that jobs checked and shit? That came way later

1:09:08 All I'm saying, guys is keep your game lock tight and be careful who you do drugs with or get crazy around etc. You want to be more like the girl in the labyrinth so that you can tell David Bowie The Goblin King that ya have no power over me! In THC news, the next joint session is going to be on the 25th 7pm Pacific. You can see that now on the front page of the highersidechats.com where we have a joint session section And the link will be updated the day of the event. So you can just click there to join it, really simple and easy that's what we want right? Some people have wondered or complained about why they're not finding the most recent joint session on the site and the primary reason is the overwhelming emails related all these issues we've been having this past month I really wanted to get them straightened out first

1:10:05 i can say now everything's definitely gonna and the developers of work super hard to straighten everything out, what are the two biggest issues on dealing with this people who are pulling up a cash version of the site and not clearing out the browser cache to get served at the latest updated version something that i'm sure tech people understand. But also for plus people, the RSS feed works. But if you don't completely back out in whatever app you use clear it out entirely get that THC data out of there restart the app and come in fresh If you do not do that credentials will no longer be accepted So thats a subtle little thing I have to tell everyone almost individually one by one

1:10:50 So it's been a lot of hours put into just email replies at this point. The cool thing is that I've actually talked to a lot more plus people one on one, and I think they appreciate that despite the frustration over the last month. I get it and eventually I might get a customer service email an teach someone the common issues and how the system works And then I can free up that time a bit But from day one till today it's really just been me answering those emails. It's getting kinda too big to handle now, though maybe not when everything is running smoothly this month has just had a heavy flow if you know what I mean

1:11:38 I'm also gonna clear out all the comments that you'll find on the site that are about tech issues. It was fine before we had the contact form working, but comments are not the best way to handle tech issues comment should be about the episode itself right some thoughts or opinions that matter two months down the line when someone revisits that episode Just because four people couldn't load their feeds or see the player a week ago, that doesn't need to be there forever. Does it? What was I saying... Yes the last joint session The other big reason it's not up is I want to reorganize the bonus content To be a bit more clear Right now its a little muddled yes they ported all over from the plus site but I wanna make it nicer

1:12:29 I also need to do some work on the show archive. I found a few episodes that play the wrong show if you go back far enough, but i'm just gonna have to work through that too! Long story short, I just want to make a nice joint sessions page and then I'll get them all on there and add the latest one then. Hopefully everyone's okay with that? It's been so go-go lately that I kind of need a break from looking at screens...and typing i thought going to portland for the as above event would be a break but i want a little hard there too and travel tends to take a lot out of me, cry me a river right you don't wanna hear the conspiracy podcast king san diego's complaints i get it. What solid show today fingers crossed they leave me alone a little listener mental projection intention protection wouldn't be the end of the world either you know just saying

1:13:27 But I felt this one needed to be done and i think Tony is the guy we need keeping an eye on things. Give him a big thanks if you can, and a big thanks to YOU for listening guys! You have made all my wildest dreams come true. You're the collective Pedro in my life so to speak... And I'm gonna keep trying to bring the heat as best I can So that's all from me. Take care of each other, I've done my part, your move organizations of abuse mind control cults and charismatic blackmailing bastards! Your fucking move. I won't take it No i refuse If its alright Ill keep my refuge Ive been schemin' Of bigger things And have to leave My old life behind Gotta transfer To the inner earth I built a box Built a hole

1:14:21 Going under and now you'll find me in the bunker Yeah, the laughing Ely classes while the scheming on the masses who do you think the fancy suit innocent

1:15:06 Tell you the basics, they print your money Got the Fed in your head, currency Now they're smiling and you're caged meat How this happened? How you don't see? Plunder! Plunder is a plunder A village of plunder, plunder Plans are simple. The best protection of all is the special shelter built according to specifications of your local civil defense organization The basement of any house or building will become a good improvised shelter if you block the windows with sandbags If you don't have sandbags just what can you do? Bunk up Take it under

1:16:06 You'll find me in the bunker, bunker, bunker Take it under You'll find me in the bunker Bunker Take it under Find me in the bunker, bunker Plunder is a plunder Rape, pillage and plunder Plunder is a plunder Rape, pillage and plunder Plunder Plunder Plunder Plunder