Going Clear, Part 21 – Headley case, FBI Sting Operation

Going Clear, Part 21 – Headley case, FBI Sting Operation

A key part of the anti-Scientology narrative, as partially authored by Lawrence Wright, continuously published by Tony Ortega, endlessly repeated by Rinder and the other outlets on the troll farms, is that “Dang! We had Scientology—the FBI was right on them—and they got saved by this thorny constitution as interpreted by limp-wristed liberal justices of the 9th Circuit.” Okay. That’s literally an invented narrative. On several levels.

The first level is this: If you read the opinion, you don’t need the Constitution, you don’t even need the constitutional analysis. First of all, the 9th Circuit statement of constitutional protections afforded religion is absolutely accurate. And that it was applied to Scientology is absolutely nothing new. It had been consistently applied for decades. Okay. So there’s no news there.

But, if you read the opinion, they didn’t even need the Constitution. They found it on a factual basis. If you literally broke down the facts, they wouldn’t even need constitutional protection. Because the facts didn’t support the accusations of the civil wrongs that they alleged. Okay. Now, we know that the FBI investigation was prompted by the Headleys. And really that was the core of their case, right. So Wright and these people say well, and he, once he pontificates that, they all bow down in asc and adopt that as Moses speaking from the Mount, right.

They said factually—the courts said factually—you don’t have a case. Okay? Now. We’re going to compound the problem. Because as early as April 2010, the only significant “defector” from high up in Scientology that ever said anything or spoke out after 2009 was John Brousseau. And I arranged for John Brousseau to speak with the FBI. And John Brousseau told the FBI, “I have seen no violence on behalf of David Miscavige or anybody else at the upper levels of Scientology. I have seen no evidence of anything resembling this thing they called “the hole”. For the several years that I’ve been there, since most of these people left. None of this stuff that was the advertised crux of the FBI investigation existed. The only percipient witness, the only person who was in a position to know, and a position to see, who was speaking on behalf of the complainants, said there’s no there there. And that, in effect, was the end of the FBI investigation.

The only conversations I had with the FBI after that point were about how to sting Scientology executives on a potential obstruction of justice rap. In other words, do what the FBI usually does to get somebody in a white-collar case. 88% of the time, or whatever, 90% of the time that they get someone on a white-collar case, they get them covering up. And I said, “You could troll them”. In FBI lingo that’s sting ’em. Right. Get them to do something stupid. And in fact, they engaged in it. And Scientology didn’t take the bait. Now it was doubly; now even the sting was over by 2010. So, this whole narrative about how the Constitution saved Scientology from the scrutiny of the FBI is completely invented.

Wright said, you know, he was going to cover it in his article because sometimes the Justice Department has a dismal record in dealing with “cults” and sometimes they need some incentive. So, it was clearly, he was going to try to give them a black eye to incentivize them to go after Scientology. Which was quite the motivation of an objective journalist, right?