Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath (2016) s03e10 Episode Script

Buying a Town (Part 2)

In 1975, Clearwater, Florida was chosen to be the international headquarters of Scientology.
The plan was to turn Clearwater into the first Scientology city.
Slowly, it's coming out, this town is being taken over.
They have chosen us to be their spiritual headquarters and they are going to buy up our town.
And anybody who spoke out against that was going to be neutralized.
And these orders, very clearly, stated, "Find out who your enemies are.
Destroy 'em".
The orders, in effect, were occupation orders.
What's really interesting is that it is the only city that actually had hearings.
The city of Clearwater was fighting back.
We can't deal with this mafia-like organization in our small town.
It was a continuing fraudulent enterprise.
It still is to this day, as far as I'm concerned.
You had people willing to stand up and fight and they were fighting.
The city then tried to enact an ordinance designed to get Scientology out of Clearwater.
Unfortunately, Clearwater lost.
We would start hearing about additional properties that they were buying, and they stated cherry-picking the areas so they could control, you know, the the entire area.
Today, Scientology has almost achieved its objective of complete subjugation of downtown Clearwater of taking over vast tracts of the city and turning it into the first Scientology city on Earth.
I am the writer of the textbooks of Scientology.
The aim and goal is to put man in a mental condition, where he, him, can solve his own problems.
Without any Scientology organization, things are not gonna change on this planet.
After years of slowly questioning Scientology Leah Remini and her very public break with Scientology Scientology, what they do.
Trying to destroy people, trying to destroy their families when they leave, they create a lot of people who are willing to fight against them.
Scientology takes tax-free dollars, and ruins people's lives.
This is not the life that I want to live.
I wanted to end my life.
Some people, it takes a year.
Some people, it takes ten years of just peeling that onion of how you were manipulated and made to think.
This season, we really needed to focus on the reason why Scientology is able to do the things that they do is because they have tax-exempt status.
The people who have bravely come on and told their stories have not told those stories in vain.
They are having an impact.
We're presenting our case to the world, to the FBI, to the IRS.
The most important thing that has to be done is the persistent telling of the truth, and that's what you're doing.
You have to continue to fight.
You have to continue to fight for what's right.
You've heard the history of how Scientology got to Clearwater but what's really interesting is that it is the only city that actually had hearings to deal with the problem of Scientology.
Then the city, unfortunately, overreached and lost To Scientology.
And that was kind of the end of this battle.
That all changed in 1995 with the death of Lisa McPherson.
We've always wanted to tell this story, Mark, 'cause I was just so always touched by what you and Bob Minton had started with the death of Lisa McPherson, and you know that I've been hounding you for years.
Like, how do we tell her story? I'm so emotional today.
Yeah.
Sorry.
I was crying on the way here.
- I know.
- Yeah, it's Yeah, yeah, you've shed a couple of tears too.
Yeah.
But I'm glad that we're finally telling it.
You know, originally we You know, we got so many messages on social media about covering Clearwater as a you know, "Hey they're taking over our town," and there's long history, but it's turned into something else which I'm very thankful for that we are able to kind of stop and tell Lisa's story.
Lisa McPherson was a devout Scientologist for 15 years.
She had been recently reconnecting with old friends and saying that she had doubts and she was thinking about coming back home, and shortly after that, she got into a minor fender bender in downtown Clearwater.
And by the time the police came and the ambulance, she had stripped off of all of her clothes and was walking down the street naked, and a paramedic came up to her and said, "Why are you doing this?" And she said, "Because I need somebody "to pay attention to me.
I need help".
So they took her over to the nearby Morton Plant Hospital and they checked her in there.
Within an hour, ten Scientologists came to the hospital and talked her into leaving and going back with them, against the doctor's wishes.
They had to release her and then Scientology took her back to the Fort Harrison Hotel in locked her in a room for 17 days.
On Scientology's introspection rundown, where if somebody's having a psychotic break, you don't talk to them, you don't respond if they're talking to you, there's all these rules.
Unfortunately, Scientology's rules also don't include having anybody trained to deal with someone in Lisa's state.
They literally grabbed anybody that could be spared.
They had no training, they had no idea whatsoever what they were doing and had no ability to effectively deal with someone in her state.
Every day, the caretakers would take logs and you can see in the logs that her condition is getting worse and worse and worse every day.
The last three days of her life, those records were destroyed by Scientology.
Marty Rathbun confessed to that.
He ordered them destroyed.
Well, hang on.
David Miscavige ordered those documents to be destroyed through Marty Rathbun who, in fact, admitted to destroying them.
Yes.
You ordered those days of logs to be destroyed.
- Right.
- All right, could you explain, you know, why you did that? To protect the organization.
One of them was talking about the witness in the case pleading with the doctor, who was on staff, to get Lisa to a doctor.
That was like a smoking gun incriminating in terms of people knowing that she was in a deteriorated physical condition.
As a Scientologist at the time, I never even heard of Lisa McPherson or her death.
Scientology is so genius at having parishioners not look at the news, not read newspapers.
This was a huge story.
And then when they came down with the actual charges, when our medical examiner Joan Wood, came up and and found out that the cause of death was was not natural, it was not an accident, but it was criminal in nature, then Scientology once again showed its power, showed its capabilities so to speak, and they went after Joan Wood.
The fact that Scientology was charged with criminal neglect in the death of Lisa McPherson was of enormous concern to David Miscavige because it was the biggest threat to the tax-exempt status of Scientology.
You cannot be engaged in illegal activities.
Miscavige spared no expense to challenge the findings of Joan Wood.
We, Scientology Hired the foremost criminal pathologist in the world, three of them who came and lived in Clearwater I mean, these were the guys that had just finished the O.
J.
Simpson trial To find credible explanations that would place the findings of Joan Wood in doubt.
And they went after Joan Wood and with a vengeance And and took her down, and ultimately she changed the autopsy to cause of death as being an accident and that gutted the state attorneys' - The prosecution? - Yeah, the prosecution, state attorneys' case and they had to drop the charges.
It was money to hire people who have great influence.
It was David Miscavige personally contacting Joan Wood's lawyer to persuade Joan Wood that she had no choice but to change her testimony based on the information that was coming forward from these medical examiners.
This was a major catastrophe in the Scientology world.
It threatened to expose Miscavige's involvement in Lisa McPherson's life.
Scientology literally spent millions and millions.
No expense was to be spared because David Miscavige's ass was on the line.
There was also a civil case that was funded by soon-to-become my boss, Bob Minton, who was a retired international investment banker, and he started looking back into this in 1995, and the more Bob started looking into it, meeting former members, he decided he wanted to help.
And one of the things he did was, in 2000, he opened up an office right next to Scientology's Office of Special Affairs in the bank building, and he gathered a few of us to stand up to Scientology because the city wasn't.
They had made peace with them.
The Lisa McPherson Trust was both an insult and a threat in the mind of David Miscavige and in my mind and everybody else who was in the Office of Special Affairs.
That this avowed financier of anti-Scientology activities had moved into town and set up an office right next door to Scientology? This was seen as a A massive failure that he had been able to do that.
This space now belongs to the Lisa McPherson Trust and we are going to change the face of Scientology and Clearwater forever.
Scientology doesn't respond to slaps in the face by turning the other cheek.
The full force of L.
Ron Hubbard's philosophy of attack the attacker and destroy your enemies was brought to bear on Bob Minton and the Lisa McPherson Trust, and I know because I did it.
So Scientology has been harassing and attempting to silence people for decades and now the Lisa McPherson Trust comes into town.
People were saying, "An injustice is happening.
We're gonna stand up for Lisa McPherson".
And, of course, Scientology says, "That's not okay.
Attack".
And that's exactly what they did.
Here's this wonderful man, Bob Minton, creates a trust, gets good people like you, and you guys are just doing this 'cause it's the right thing to do.
- Right.
- And you set up shop in Scientology territory, which also takes some balls, and they are sending Scientologists there to harass you guys.
That footage is so creepy, Mark, that I saw.
We quickly recognized what a problem the Lisa McPherson Trust was.
Miscavige believed that the Lisa McPherson Trust were there to be in his face, so he wanted Scientologists to be back in their face and make their life uncomfortable.
It got kind of got ratcheted up when Bob Minton came and And then decided to have an organized protest.
Go in front of the Fort Harrison, on the sidewalk, hold the signs like you see, and what happened next was chaos in a way.
Somebody came up to him and stuck their camera right in his face, and Bob pushed it away.
It had hit the guy in the head and, of course, with great dramatic flair, he went to the ground and Scientologists all went around him and stood there in silence and the police were called and Bob was arrested.
- For assault? - He was arrested for battery on this on this On this fella.
We went to court over it and explained why he was set up and to do that, we had to explain Scientology, fair game, and what it was, and that became discussed in the trial.
When the case was over, he was acquitted.
It's just remarkable the lengths that Scientology will go to.
You talk about the chaos.
There was one night that was really bad, which we called The Mad Picket.
If you look at the full video, which I've put out raw and unedited on YouTube, you can see it starts off quietly outside the Fort Harrison Hotel and after about five minutes of that, down the street comes the O.
T.
committee.
Loser! McDonald's workers! You guys are losers! That was sad and pathetic.
You should go back to your Nazi friends.
Move along, move along, move along.
Cult member.
- Chop chop! Chop chop! - Move.
Come on, Mark! So, we're there quietly protesting and then Scientology comes to get in our face, literally, trying to provoke us and they had orders to do this.
I caught them on tape.
Like, one guy shoved Bob Minton, I believe it was.
Watch out! Hey, hey.
hey! - Hold - Who's that? And another Scientologist came up to him and said, "Let them come to you".
So they wanted to provoke us so that so that we would do something against them and have us arrested.
- Sure, sure.
- That's their whole goal.
The problems that we're having with the pro protesting got so out of hand that the the police and the politicians and all that said, "This has got to stop".
And so there was an injunction filed by the church against the people that were protesting and we had long hearings in in front of a a A circuit court judge in Clearwater where he took testimony about what they were doing, whether they were violent, and so on and so forth.
And the judge ultimately issued the injunction.
And unfortunately, my my comrade here is named in one of the injunctions to stay away from anybody that's I think it says that's a Scientologist.
- Yeah.
- And you live in Clearwater! Well, wait a minute, how do you know you're a They don't go around with a T-shirt - Right, right.
- Saying "I'm a Scientologist".
But he supposedly has to be clairvoyant and find out that he has to stay a certain number of feet not only away from Scientologists, but away from any buildings that were named in the injunction.
It was a one-sided debacle that was really a sad a sad time for Clearwater.
We hit upon the idea of hiring off-duty Clearwater police department officers to guard the building to protect against the Lisa McPherson Trust.
This had the effect of turning many Clearwater police officers into de facto employees of Scientology.
They were schmoozed in order to make them more favorable toward us and less favorable towards the Lisa McPherson Trust, who were positioned always as troublemakers who had been imported from out of town to come and cause trouble in beautiful downtown Clearwater.
Today, many in the Clearwater Police Department work for Scientology on their days off, and they're supposed to report of Mike Rinder, the head of the Office of Special Affairs.
The Clearwater Police watch as the O.
S.
A.
agents videotape our every move.
Scientology PIs follow us everywhere.
The police had just stood by while these protestors have been assaulted by Scientologists.
The police had been absolutely unwilling to do anything to protect the protestors.
The day that injunction was put into effect by the judge, he was out on the street using it trying to get us arrested.
I've got tape of the police officer You saying to the officer, "Look, they're named here! They're named!" That was another life.
Leave him alone.
Well, Mike Mike is fully aware that we're going to find that stuff and we're going to air it.
Sorry, Mike.
- Oh, Mike! - We're gonna find that stuff.
So it appears as if they've called the Clearwater police to complain of the prior peaceful picketing activity.
I'm concerned that Mike Rinder wants to stop peaceful picketing under the guise of legal process.
Mike Rinder is the chief of their dirty tricks department and there is nothing he wouldn't do or say to try to keep this criminal at the helm of Scientology, David Miscavige, in power because Mike Rinder's power comes from David Miscavige.
Have you been served with one of these injunctions - as an agent of his? - No.
You were in court, Stacy, when that was issued.
You were test You were sitting right there.
Because you're saying that you're you're not on notice.
Or you're trying to say you're not on notice.
This was just a tactic to try to stop protests.
You're not allowed to protest? Well, that's the entire injunction.
That injunction, issued in 1999, even though the Lisa McPherson Trust ceased to exist in 2001, Scientology still drags this thing out at every opportunity.
They put a red cover on it, they make it look all official, they hand it to the cops and they say, "Here, we got an injunction against this guy.
He's just a troublemaker!" In 1999, like 20 years ago? It's absurd, but the theater of the absurd is the theater of Scientology.
Scientology realized, like, "Oh, Mark can't be within ten feet of us".
So then they started staging Scientologists every ten feet so that you couldn't even walk down the street.
Yeah, I I went to one event across from the Ford Harrison Hotel.
- Yeah.
- And there's a woman talking with a police officer and they were talking toward me and she saw me coming and she shouted, "Ten feet!" And I had to stop and the police told me that I could not walk down the street as long as she was there.
I said, "Well, can I walk out around the cars in the street?" "No, that'd be breaking the law".
- Wow! - That's crazy, that's insane.
The next event where David Miscavige was speaking downtown at a opening ceremony for one of their new buildings, I arrived and they stationed Scientologists every ten feet around two blocks around the event.
Precisely ten feet, and she was waiting as I approached with two police officers.
They tried to get Mark kicked out of his condo because his next door neighbor was a Scientologist.
I got a knock on the door from my neighbor.
Very excited to meet me and very chipper and happy and "Hi, come on in" "come on over to my place! "You need some furniture? You want a chair? "How 'bout a table," you know? And we sat and talked for about 15, 20 minutes and she was very up and very positive and then I noticed she had a big bookcase full of L.
Ron Hubbard Scientology stuff.
She would, again, was trying to force furniture on me and I said, "Well, that's That's very kind of you" "but I think you should know that I am an SP "and I've been making a documentary "about the Church of Scientology and "I just wanted to be upfront about that and I hope we can still be friends".
How'd that go? Her face just went to a glower.
"In that case, I'm going to have to ask you to leave".
I said, "Well, I I I think still think we can talk" "Leave now".
And then the next day, the condo association were getting threatening letters from Scientology attorneys saying I had to be evicted because I was ten feet away from this Scientologist and breaking the injunction.
And the condo association thankfully said, "No, we ran a check on this guy.
He's fine".
- Wow.
- And they didn't like Scientology trying to pressure them, - so they they - They stood up for you.
You know, they stood with me.
So it it's it's just nuts.
Nuts.
Talking about the The injunctions and all of the hoo-ha around the Lisa McPherson Trust, the real issue is what got done, ultimately, to destroy it.
Which was not the injunctions and not the people in their faces and that sort of stuff, but the investigation and the harassment that was conducted against Bob Minton.
And I am extremely familiar with this because I ran it.
If ever there was a critic of Scientology, it was Bob Minton and, I promise you, no expense was spared when it came to hiring private investigators, hiring people around the world to investigate Bob and his finances in particular.
It was his money that we were interested in.
We knew that Minton had made a considerable amount of money selling Nigerian bonds.
So Dave Lubow went to London and managed to persuade the Nigerian government that Bob Minton and the people he had worked with had scammed them out of tens of millions of dollars.
And the Nigerian government officially requested a prosecutor in Switzerland to open an investigation and to freeze Bob Minton's funds in his Swiss bank accounts.
And he had no money.
He didn't have any money to pay his bills, and that was the real pressure that was put on him.
Now why are you getting emotional? 'Cause you're making me emotional.
Bob was my hero.
He was a flawed man but he was a good man.
- Yeah.
- And he really cared and was really trying to make a difference.
Yeah.
And he helped a lot of people.
It was not a a pretty ending.
I saw the pressure on him.
Every day I would I would walk into his house and wonder, is this the day that Bob's gonna shoot himself? And it was horrific, and Stacy went through that too.
They were trying to get Bob out of this and one of the things they did was try to sit down with Scientology and work out some sort of ceasefire.
I believe they were you at those meetings? - Absolutely.
- Yeah.
And and from my understanding Thank you.
From my understanding, Bob and Stacy wanted to go in there and just say, "Okay, we'll we'll stop all the lawsuits.
We just wanna get out of this because it's too hard".
And at the first meeting, my understanding is you said, "Not only are are you not getting out of this" but here's a $10 million lawsuit".
And, I was told, a detailed $30 million RICO case that you were preparing against Bob and they came home from that just shell-shocked.
Bob called me and asked me if I would be willing to meet with he and Stacy alone.
I said yes.
Miscavige insisted that Monique Yingling go with me and we met at the Johnson Pope law offices.
He eventually just went, "I want out.
If you can get my money freed up, I'm out of here".
And that was sort of the sad end of Bob as a crusader against Scientology.
He was effectively terminated as an attacker, which is the objective of the Office of Special Affairs.
- He was neutralized.
- Neutralized.
It is something that haunted me for a long, long time.
Stacy and Bob called me when he was in Zurich going to get his money and he was suicidal and he was threatening to jump out the window of his hotel room and Stacy called me to help, to get me to talk to Bob and I ended up talking to him for, like, two hours on the phone and and talking him out of committing suicide.
And I was still in the Office of Special Affairs - at that time.
- Right.
And I ultimately had a lot of conversations with him and Stacy and I was going to go visit them in Ireland when he moved to Ireland, but he was still so scared, he said, "Please don't come".
"I'm afraid that if you come, the PIs are all gonna come again," and he couldn't take it.
And then he died.
And I never got to see him, to have the the real personal one-on-one conversation.
What I directed to be done against Bob Minton and what I did to Bob Minton has haunted me for a long time, and I am sorry for what I did to destroy him or to seek to destroy him.
This story of Lisa McPherson really touched him and it's what motivated him.
He was not motivated by money.
He wasn't even motivated by a hatred of Scientology, and you know the way that I know that? He was willing to have me as a friend even when I was still in Scientology.
But you got to finally say you were sorry to him? Oh, absolutely, and to Stacy.
I mean, to this day, Stacy is I consider a good friend.
- Yeah.
- And the only reason - that she is not on this show - Yeah.
Because she desperately wants to be Is because of the settlement agreement that I did with her that prevents her from talking.
Non-disclosure.
One thing I didn't realize was that he had no connection at all to Scientology or Clearwater or no relatives.
He just came down to make our city better.
That's what's so insane, is that they talk about freedom of speech and freedom of religion, but they attack and destroy those who are - Exercising? - Speaking.
Yeah, exercising freedom of speech.
Exercising that right.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
I hope that the the memory of Bob is as it should be.
That people understand that he was doing something that was selfless and I, you know, I genuinely have great, great sorrow about what happened.
The only the only mitigating factor is the fact that I was able to to speak with him and Stacy afterwards and kind of make peace with them, but that's not made peace with the world, so I hope that to some extent this will accomplish that.
Yeah.
- Sorry.
- It's okay.
This is going to mean the world to her.
Thank you.
Mark Bunker, when he walks down the street, suddenly, the Clearwater Police Department appear in force because Scientology calls them and says, "We have an injunction! We've got a trespasser," and they are there in a flash even though that injunction is 20 years old.
So tell me the history of this park.
It was built for the purpose of what? - This used to be - I mean, it's lovely.
I'm not I'm not I'm not begrudging them.
This for the longest time was a drive-through Checkers Drive-through.
Oh, that's right.
And Miscavige His office used to be up in that corner.
And he hated this being here.
- It attracted people to - His area.
- His environment.
- I And this was his little zone over here.
So like they bought this park.
They bought that one.
That parking lot, this parking lot.
Then when this became available, they bought this and they didn't have anything to do here with it, so they just made it a park.
It gets used one time a year now for Winter Wonderland.
There's nowhere that you can go to even take a photo of someone.
Right.
These cops don't know what to do.
They brought them the injunction.
Of course.
And does the injunction say that he can't be at a park? Nope, nope.
Here's another one.
Here you go, Scientology using the resources They've called the Sergeant in.
- Somebody in the car.
- Yeah.
That's probably the O.
S.
A.
people.
Sorry, they just took pictures of us.
Oh, here's another one.
Now there's four now.
Yup, there you go.
This is a big crime.
I don't really get this shit, Mike.
Am I overreacting to this? Not at all.
This is why we're doing a show about Clearwater.
When it comes to Scientology, this is insanity HQ.
Well, I'm sitting my ass here until these cops leave.
So it's gonna be a long night.
Thank you! Thank you! What are you what What's up? We're sitting here.
We're sitting here at a park.
Okay.
We're sitting here talking and Scientology, of course, doesn't want us sitting here talking.
So.
What are what shall you report back? Hi, O.
S.
A.
! You you know that injunction isn't applicable to him here.
I'll I'll explain it to you.
They're the complainant, you guys are the subjects, we're just here to get this whole thing sorted out.
That injunction was gotten actually by me when I was in the Church against him and 13 other people that used to work for the Lisa McPherson Trust, and it requires that he and those other people not protest in front of the Fort Harrison or the flag building and a few other places.
That's what that injunction says.
This isn't any of those locations and he's not, as far as we know - Hi! - Hi.
- Oh, my gosh.
Yeah.
- We appreciate it.
- Thank you.
- Hold on.
Juno, come on! As we're standing there with the Clearwater Police Department, we have people who are filming us from Scientology, but also we have people who are screaming, "We love you, Leah and Mike! "Keep going!" You know, "Can we take pictures with you?" Like and it's just a such a weird dicho It's just so weird.
It's like, what world are we living in? So this is my normal life here.
Mark, you poor baby.
I didn't do anything.
Okay, here comes the boss.
Hi folks, I'm Corporal Wassmer.
- How are you? - Good, how are you? Hey, man.
No one has.
This is their private property right here? - Yeah, the park and - So we can use the benches? We're gonna stand there.
Is that okay? Let's see if they if they have a problem with us standing here.
I am.
I don't think this is part of the injunction though.
They didn't even own this building when this injunction was done.
That why we all just There's nothing wrong with us being here.
Well, and that's why we wanted to document it too.
Okay.
- Bring 'em on, bring 'em on.
- Please do.
We will stand on this public street.
We will wait here for - For her happily.
- We would really love it.
It's ostensibly a public park, and they even have a big sign which lays out that everybody is welcome to come in here.
It has a little line at the end that says and we reserve the right to remove anybody should they be harassing people or something like that.
The truth of the matter is that this is Scientology property and if they don't like you, they will call the police to get you thrown out.
This injunction is almost 20 years old.
They will never give up.
A whole ruckus is being caused because Mark Bunker is sitting in an empty park.
Still going on today Using the Clearwater Police Department for these criminals sitting in a park.
This is what the IRS should be looking at.
These fake buildings that have nobody in them.
- Right.
- What is this? - This was the L.
M.
T.
- This is it.
- Oh, this was it! - This is where the L.
M.
T.
was.
My office was in the back half of that space there.
It's been heartbreaking to walk through this adorable community and see nothing but empty Scientology buildings.
What a waste of a cute town.
If you look at the big view of Clearwater, it is the perfect microcosm of whether Scientology, in fact, provides a public benefit or not.

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