NBC "60 Minutes" segment

[Transcript of 28 December 1997

Here's a transcript of segment three of CBS' news program "60 Minutes"
which aired a piece on Scientology's takeover of the Cult Awareness
Network.  The segment was aired on Sun Dec 28 1997 starting at around
7:40pm EST.  I hope CBS won't sue me for copyright violation.

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


Lesley Stahl


LESLEY STAHL: There was a time, if you were worried about your son or
daughter being in a cult, you could get help from a small, nonprofit
organization called the Cult Awareness Network, or CAN, for twenty
years the nation's best-known resource for information and advice about
groups it considered dangerous.  Among them was Scientology, a church
not known for turning the other cheek.

But Church officials say Scientology is just another tax-exempt
religion that helps millions of people worldwide, including actors
John Travolta and Tom Cruise.  And while Scientology did attack its
enemies in the past, Church officials say they don't do that any more.
But recently, the Cult Awareness Network was forced into bankruptcy,
and its leaders blame the Church of Scientology.

Today, CAN is under new management.

ASHLEY: [answering a ringing phone] Hello, Cult Awareness Network.

STAHL: Now when you call looking for information about a cult, chances
are the person you're talking to is a Scientologist.  Ashley's one; so
is Bob.  Everyone we met in the office was a Scientologist.  Last
year, a member of the Church bought CAN's name, logo, and hotline
number in bankruptcy court for $20,000.

STACY YOUNG: This is a dream come true for Scientology...



Stacy Young's Sea Org membership card


STAHL: Stacy Young would know.  She was a member of the Church for 15
years, including its elite Sea Organization.  She also worked in the
Office of Special Affairs and was managing editor of its Freedom
magazine.  She left in 1989, and has been a paid consultant in
lawsuits against Scientology.




(Right) Stacy Young in Office of Special Affairs.


YOUNG: The Cult Awareness Network was the only organization in the
country where parents could call and say, you know, "I've lost my
child into this cult.  What do I do?"

STAHL: She says Scientology sets out to destroy anyone who criticizes
it.

YOUNG: Someone who speaks publically against Scientology is targeted
for a campaign of harassment, character assassination, financial
ruin...there's a policy that says specifically, "If possible, ruin
them utterly."




The Fair Game Law.


STAHL: She's talking about a Church directive -- this one, the "Fair
Game" law -- that says a person or group that publically criticizes
the Church is "Fair Game", and can be destroyed.  Stacy young and
others do not believe the Church when it says it no longer harasses
its enemies.  Now the Church says, Scientology, originally known as
Dianetics, is a benevolent religion, with antidrug programs and
literacy projects that helps [sic] its followers increase their
confidence.  A central doctrine goes like this: 75 million years ago,
a tyrant named Xenu transported people from outer space to Earth,
dropped them in volcanos, then exploded hydrogen bombs on them.  That
experience is the root of all human misery today.



Scientology offers to help people overcome that misery, charging as
much as $50,000 in a year.  It's one of the reasons why Time magazine
calls Scientology "The cult of greed".  One of Time's principal
sources was Cynthia Kisser, who was CAN's executive director.



(Right) Cynthia Kisser


You said, "Scientology is quite likely the most ruthless, the most
classically terroristic, the most litigious, and the most lucrative
cult the country has ever seen."  Whoa!  That was very powerful.  Do
you stand by that?

CYNTHIA KISSER: Oh, more than ever.  More than ever.  I mean,
everything they've done since then just proves that quote.

STAHL: Cynthia Kisser says a Fair Game attack on CAN started in the
1980s, and Stacy Young says she was part of it.

YOUNG: Some of the staff who were assigned to the Cult Awareness Network
would brief us about some of the --

STAHL: You mean there were people specifically assigned?

YOUNG: Oh yes, that was their whole job.  That was all they did.

STAHL: Was CAN?



Stacy Young


YOUNG: Was CAN, that's right.  And so, our whole orientation was,
well, what have you done this week to get rid of CAN?  And how well
have you done to discredit the leaders of CAN?  How much progress have
you made on disrupting this group?

STAHL: To do it, she says the Church used picketers at CAN's
conventions and waged smear campaigns.  Attorney Kendrick Moxon does
most of the Church's legal work, and he's a devout Scientologist.

We are told, Mr. Moxon --

KENDRICK MOXON: Yes.

STAHL: -- that a small army of private investigators was hired by your
law firm to go out and dig up dirt on members of CAN, Cynthia Kisser
specifically, and anything else they could find.  Is that true?

MOXON: I -- no, it's not true.

STAHL: Now, a lot of lawyers hire private eyes to dig up dirt on
people --

MOXON: No --

STAHL: -- I mean, now, we were even hearing --

MOXON: -- I don't know.  I know...I've heard that people do that, and
I know that the media does that, but I don't know that a lot of
lawyers do that.  I don't do that.

STAHL: He acknowledges using private detectives, but not for the
purpose of digging up dirt.  But former private eye Michael Shomers
says Moxon's law firm hired him to do just that.

MICHAEL SHOMERS: Find the sleaze, to find the hidden alcoholism, to
find the hidden drug abuse, if that was the case.

STAHL: The sex life.

SHOMERS: The sex lives.

STAHL: Bad debts.

SHOMERS: Correct.

STAHL: He says he got his marching orders during a meeting right in
the Scientology church in Washington, D.C.  He says a staffer briefed
him on CAN, and jotted down notes that Shomers kept.  He says he was
told to investigate CAN and its purported allies: IRS officials, and
congressman Henry Waxman of California.  And he was told to dig up
enough dirt on Cynthia Kisser to destroy her reputation and intimidate
her into silence.

It says, "Topless dancer at the Blue Note in Tucson Arizona, Cynthia
Kisser."

SHOMERS: That's correct.

STAHL: So did you investigate that?

SHOMERS: Yes I did.

STAHL: Was she a topless dancer?

SHOMERS: No.

STAHL: Did you tell the Church of Scientology --

SHOMERS: Yes I did.

STAHL: -- that these allegations were not true?

SHOMERS: That's correct.

MOXON: I don't know if she's a topless dancer or not.

STAHL: Did you tell our producer that you didn't believe that was
true?

MOXON: I told your producer that I thought, looking at Cynthia Kisser,
it seemed improbable that she could have been a topless dancer because
of the way she looks.

STAHL: Yet despite his own view and the evidence from Investigator
Shomers, Moxon, also a minister in the Church, persisted in bringing
it up.

MOXON: I mean, we've got a declaration already indicating that she had
been a topless dancer.

STAHL: I can't believe you're continuing to talk about her being a
topless dancer!

MOXON: Why?  That was one of the allegations --

STAHL: But you even said you don't even think she was one.  It's
character assassination.

MOXON: I don't -- that -- Lesley, there is a declaration from a woman
swearing that she was a topless dancer.

STAHL: Were you a topless dancer?



Cynthia Kisser


KISSER: No, and later the person that they claimed told them that
retracted it...issued a retraction saying that it wasn't true.

STAHL: Kisser says Scientology also used its publications to label CAN
a criminal outfit and then contacted police and members of Congress
with specific charges.  The president of the Church of Scientology,
Reverend Heber Jentzsch, repeated the accusations to us.



Heber Jentzsch


HEBER JENTZSCH: Kidnapping people, holding them against their will,
beating up on people, pistol-whipping, safehouses where they held
people against their will, rape of their victims, that sort of thing.

STAHL: Jentzsch accuses CAN of kidnapping people out of cults, and
then trying to deprogram them.  Defenders of the practice call these
"rescues" which are perfectly legal when they involve youngsters under
18.  But Scientology says CAN was involved in illegal deprogramming of
adults, and they sent us reams of documents they say are examples,
including the sworn declaration of a former deprogrammer named Mark
Blocksom.

MOXON: I've got it right here.

STAHL: Mm hmm.

MOXON: Mark Blocksom said he was involved in a number of kidnappings.
He says he was involved in one with Cynthia Kisser, where he actually
worked for CAN.  He got many referrals from CAN...he said most of his
referrals were from CAN.

STAHL: So we tracked down Mark Blocksom and asked him about it.

How would you describe that sworn declaration of yours?

MARK BLOCKSOM: It's embellished, to say the least.  It's not...it's not
true.

STAHL: You lied.

BLOCKSOM: Yes I did.

STAHL: Why did you lie?

BLOCKSOM: I saw it as a means to...maybe support my habit.

STAHL: He says he was a drug addict when he signed that declaration
five years ago after he was approached by one of Moxon's private
detectives.  Blocksom maintains there was an implied promise of money,
which never materialized, if he could implicate CAN and Kisser in
illegal deprogramming.  Clean and sober now, Blocksom wants to set the
record straight.

BLOCKSOM: Well, I spoke with Kendrick Moxon not long ago.

STAHL: Did you tell him you had lied?

BLOCKSOM: Yes.  And it irritates me that they persist in using this
statement as a propaganda tool to support their position about Cult
Awareness Network.

STAHL: But the Church accuses CAN of coercing Blocksom's change of
testimony.  For its part, CAN says that while it did permit
deprogrammers to attend its conventions, it was never involved in
illegal deprogramming, and in fact, CAN was never charged with a
crime.  Even Michael Shomers, the Church's own investigator, couldn't
find any evidence of one.

Did you ever find that they were deprogramming people, or involved
in that?

SHOMERS: Never heard of that...anybody, at any meeting, at any time.

STAHL: Ever mention deprogramming?

SHOMERS: No.

STAHL: So when you sent your reports in to the Church of Scientology,
were they disappointed with you?

SHOMERS: Yes they were.  They...just keep on going, there had to be
something.  They knew that there just had to be something.  But there
simply wasn't anything.

STAHL: Cynthia Kisser says the Church's final assault on CAN began
when hundreds of Scientologists from around the country wrote
virtually identical letters asking to become members of CAN.  Included
among them was this model letter with instructions: "To be put in your
own words."  Fearing, she says, the Church was out to take control of
CAN, Kisser denied their applications to join.  CAN was then hit with
a barrage of lawsuits by individual Scientologists claiming religious
descrimination.

KISSER: I got hit with twelve suits in one week!  I would open the
door, a process server would give me a suit.  They were suing us all
over the country, sometimes simultaneously.

STAHL: In all, CAN was hit with more than fifty lawsuits.  Even though
most of the suits were eventually dropped or won by CAN, she says the
cost of defending them, nearly two million dollars, drove CAN to the
brink of bankruptcy.

Would you concede, Reverend Jentzsch, that part of the motivation for
the lawsuits was to get CAN?  Was to silence them?

JENTZSCH: I would say that the individuals who were involved
definitely wanted to do something about CAN.  What are you going to do
when they're trying to destroy you?  Look, if you're a Jew --

STAHL: But you're saying nothing --

JENTZSCH: -- if you're, if you're, if you're a Jew, no Jew is going to
cry about the fact that the Nazi party is gone.  If you're an African
American, no one is going to cry that the KKK is gone.  I'm not crying
because CAN is gone, OK?  They were a vicious group --

STAHL: That's not my question --

JENTZSCH: -- they tried to destroy us.

STAHL: My question is, would you concede that at least part of what
happened with those lawsuits was a deliberate attempt to harass and
intimidate them into silence?

JENTZSCH: No, absolutely not --

STAHL: Well, you're not going to make us believe that there were these
thirty or fifty lawsuits that all sprang up, you know, just...
serendipitously.

MOXON: They didn't --

STAHL: They must have --

MOXON: They didn't spring up serendipitously.  A number of
Scientologists came to our firm and said, "I'm being discriminated
against by CAN."  We have these complaints --

STAHL: Well, wait --

MOXON: -- in the computer.

STAHL: -- who was telling them to try to join?

MOXON: I -- nob -- oh, who was telling them to try to join CAN in the
first place?

STAHL: Yeah.

MOXON: The -- I don't know.  It was a kind of a grassroots movement of
Scientologists that wanted to go to CAN and dialog with them.

YOUNG: Fifty people all across the country suddenly all decided in
unison, "We need to sue CAN."  I don't think so.  This is not the way
it works.



Stacy Young


STAHL: Stacy Young says she sat in on staff meetings where the
litigation campaign against CAN was discussed.

YOUNG: Once they put CAN in their sights with regard to litigation, it
was only a matter of time before they were going to find a case they
could use to put them out of business.



Jason Scott


STAHL: That case came in the person of Jason Scott, an 18-year-old
member not of Scientology, but of a fringe Pentacostal church in
Bellevue, Washington.  One of CAN's volunteers referred Jason's mother
to a deprogrammer who kidnapped Jason.  CAN was never charged in the
case, and the deprogrammer who was was acquitted.  Jason says a lawyer
in Moxon's firm then recommended that he file a civil suit.

JASON SCOTT: He's like, "This thing is worth millions.  Let's get 'em."

STAHL: Did they specifically say that you should sue CAN?

SCOTT: Mm hmm.  Oh yes, that was the kicker, is CAN.  "We gotta get
CAN involved."

STAHL: So Jason sued.  Kendrick Moxon was his lawyer, and despite
CAN's insistence that CAN had nothing to do with illegal
deprogramming, the jury disagreed.  So did the judge.  And the $1.8
million CAN was ordered to pay Jason forced in into bankruptcy.

ASHLEY: [answering a ringing phone] Hello, Cult Awareness Network?

STAHL: And that's why, when you visit CAN's new headquarters in
Hollywood, you can find out about all the good things the Church is
doing.

Since Stacy Young began speaking out, she believes the Church has
waged a Fair Game attack against her, including what she calls
attempts to sabotage her business, a small nonprofit animal sanctuary
in Seattle.  The Church denies it.  We, on the other hand, deny the
Church's accusation that we have a conflict of interest in this story,
because producer Richard Bonin has an aunt who's a lawyer involved in
litigation against the Church.  Though that's true, our producer's
aunt Leta had nothing to do with our story.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
--
James A. Cherry (http://www.doe.carleton.ca/~jac/)     "Pretty much..."