Berlet: Conspiracies, Demonization & Scapegoating

[nathan28]

Quite frankly, I'm beginning to wonder how deep Scientology is into pushing the bigger conspiracies.

Deep.

C2W, your knowledge of Scientology is worth picking into.

What do you think is the Co$ motivation for all this? Is it as simple as Lyndon LaRouche--i.e., just a cult with powerful indoctrination but bent on outward power in a way many cults aren't? Besides the obvious (i.e., the cash, of which they have very, very much). On one glance, it's a self-help scheme gone wrong. On another, it's clear that Elron's intentions, from the outset, were confused even to him. And that wouldn't be a surprise, because he was apeshit. But that on a deeper level, WTF is Prouty etc. doing getting tangled up with them? His intentions don't seem honest but what does a weird-ass programming cult have to do with that? Why do they have their fingers in so many pies? Why get tangled up in Korean War era "We coulda won" JFK theories?

[compared2what?]

Lane later wrote a book about the tragedy, The Strongest Poison. [29] Lane reported hearing automatic weapon fire, and presumes that U.S. forces killed Jonestown survivors.[30] While Lane blames Jones and Peoples Temple leadership for the deaths at Jonestown, he also claims that U.S. officials exacerbated the possibility of violence by employing agents provocateur.[30] For example, Lane claimed that Temple attorney (and later defector) Timothy Stoen, who Lane alleged had repeatedly prompted the Temple to take radical action before defecting, "had evidently led three lives", with one being a government informant or agent.[31] Lane's allegations joined those of other conspiracy theorists after the tragedy, including those of the Church of Scientology, John Judge, Jim Hougan[30], Jack Anderson [32] and a trio of Soviet authors.[33]

Thanks for this below. What's the source?

And you aren't seriously suggesting with your "Scientology" in bold that all those other names are as suspect as Scientology, are you? John Judge and Jim Hougan? C'mon.

If your answer to my previous question was "Yes," to what allegations made by Scientology do you think that sentence could possibly refer, if it doesn't refer to the allegations published by the CoS's Freedom, approvingly posted by you here?

Which you appear to have left up for twelve hours before bothering to identify them as as allegations made by Scientology, though not suspect ones, stating in part:

To bring it all full circle, my post above with info on Congressman Ryan's vigilance against CIA mind control is from FreedomMag.com <br>which is a...wait for it...Scientology website. Yup.<br><br>Talk about mind control, ay? <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>But the info is valid.</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--> Why?<br>Because that website is part of Scientology's efforts to take over anti-cult websites because Scientology is a cult itself which seems to now be used by the CIA.

Because as far as I'm aware, those are the only public allegations of government involvement in Jonestown made by Scientology that there are.

However, if you can tell me of any others, I not only defer to your expertise, I'd be nothing but grateful to you. Because any such allegations would be highly pertinent to several areas of very serious interest to me.

But if you can't, I'd say that Chig isn't exactly the RI poster who could most fairly be described as seriously suggesting that an organization as suspect as Scientology is in the same league as John Judge and Jim Hougan.

Crikey, that's what Chip CIA Berlet does!

[chiggerbit]

Hugh said on old thread that c2w linked:

Put "Jim Jones" plus "CIA" in a search engine and learn what this amazing movie documents without spelling it out in so many words, a social experiment with spook participation which was 'liquidated' when it was exposed by a Congressman.

Jim Jones Jr. and documentary film maker Stanley Nelson did question-and-answer after the horrifying but utterly compelling film opening in the SF Bay area

Hunh, wait, who is "film maker Stanley Nelson"?

[chiggerbit]

Hugh said earlier in this thread:

Have you seen the film footage of the temple people during Leo Ryan's visit?

I think this is what I saw, what the ABC camera crew filmed that survived the airport attack.

The film shows the people in high spirits, singing, hugging, whooping it up like Spring Break teenagers but without alcohol, etc.
You'd have to see it to believe it.

That's what is really both creepy and informative of what humans are capable of. Those people had been totally conditioned to suppress doubts and distrust of the situation, to 'privatize their negative feelings' so that nobody dared to break the illusion of contentment.

And when outsiders came, the show performance meant to prove their contentment and thus their right to be left alone from alleged oppressors that Jones said were out to get them...was ramped up to nearly manic joy. No kidding.

So I'm pretty certain this is probably more representative of what Mark Lane saw, nothing tragic and foreboding.
...

Re two different Jonestown documentaries, one by Stanley Nelson and his wife, "The Life and Death of Peoples Temple", and "Jonestown: Paradise Lost:" (not sure who did this one).


http://www.forum.exscn.net/archive/index.php/t-205.html

MONDAY, JANUARY 22, 2007

"Jonestown: Paradise Lost:" Antidote to Stanley Nelson's Cult Apologist Snake Bite

If you haven't seen it yet, be sure not to miss this Saturday's History Channel docudrama, "Jonestown: Paradise Lost," a gripping look at an abominable cult's final four days culminating in one of the most infamous mass murders on record.

Some suicides, yes—but the simple, ugly reality is that these men, women, and little children were brutally murdered, through mental and physical coercion. Consider the body discovered of the woman with nearly every joint in her body yanked apart in a desperate attempt to escape the grasp of cult thugs poisoning her.

Guyana's Chief Medical Examiner, Dr. C. Leslie Mootoo, accompanied the teams that counted the dead hours after the massacre. He found fresh needle marks at the back of the left shoulder blades of 80-90 percent of the victims he examined.

Others had been shot or strangled.

Some of you may have this to compare with the images presented, or reported by some witless film critic, in Director Stanley Nelson's, "Jonestown: Life and Death of the People's Temple." This stark contrast of a film winds down, featuring some poignant music accompanying a narrative of "The Final Note," written by a doomed cult member—either Dick Tropp or Marceline Jones--on the day of the slaughter of these 913 Americans.

"A tiny kitten sits next to me," are some of the lines read, "Watching. A dog barks. The birds gather on the telephone wires. Let all the story of this Peoples Temple be told…." Of course, consistent with the rest of Nelson's revisionist opus, is Mrs. Nelson's (wife Marcia Smith, his script writer) impeccable editing OUT of some of the appalling cult ravings contained in that "Final Note," like the following:

"….We hope that the world will someday realize the ideals of brotherhood, justice and equality that Jim Jones has lived and died for. We have all chosen to die for this cause."

He (Tropp) or she (Mrs. Jones) was speaking on behalf of the 276 murdered children, we presume.

What's critical about "Jonestown: Paradise Lost,, besides being well-done, is its value as a partial antidote to the horrendous cult apologist propaganda of Nelson's film. No, it's not a perfect film. The most egregious error is the one made by just about everyone dealing with the subject, either out of sheer ignorance or inexcusable dishonesty....

[chiggerbit]

And Hugh, this deserves a special WhatTheFuck???

Mae cites Lane telling her in 1975 that she shouldn't bring up mind control and that 'she's crazy.'

A man who has no problem consorting with the likes of Jim Jones, a cult leader who used mind control techniques on his followers, had thought Mae Brussell was loopy for talking about mind control? Think about that for a minute. Remember that Vacaville prison MIND CONTROL experiments had been in the news since, what, the early 70's? And ironically, Congressman Ryan had investigated this. Doesn't that strike you as odd?

[compared2what?]

Quite frankly, I'm beginning to wonder how deep Scientology is into pushing the bigger conspiracies.

Deep.

C2W, your knowledge of Scientology is worth picking into.

What do you think is the Co$ motivation for all this? Is it as simple as Lyndon LaRouche--i.e., just a cult with powerful indoctrination but bent on outward power in a way many cults aren't? Besides the obvious (i.e., the cash, of which they have very, very much). On one glance, it's a self-help scheme gone wrong. On another, it's clear that Elron's intentions, from the outset, were confused even to him. And that wouldn't be a surprise, because he was apeshit. But that on a deeper level, WTF is Prouty etc. doing getting tangled up with them? His intentions don't seem honest but what does a weird-ass programming cult have to do with that? Why do they have their fingers in so many pies? Why get tangled up in Korean War era "We coulda won" JFK theories?

I have no idea why crazy people do the things they do, honey. "Because they're crazy" is the best answer I've ever been able to come up with. I mean wrt motivation in the kind of context your question suggests, obviously. In an individual mental-health-treatment-relevant context, I'd probably be able to do at least a little bit better. Or at least so I like to think, anyway.

Since I undertook the doing of a thorough and fair-minded consideration of Prouty, and I haven't made my way through all the material yet, I don't yet know what I think he was up to. Plus, it's only ever gonna be my opinion, even when I've arrived at it, assuming I ever form one that's significantly more evolved than what it's reasonable to infer in a very general way from the available record. Which is not at all something I'd bet much money on.

But what, theoretically, might a non-insane person want from a weird-ass programming cult? A lot of things. It's strictly my opinion, rather than something I know, that no matter who the non-insane person was, one of those things would be for it to continue to be perceived as a weird-ass programming cult. Rather than, say, an enormous international organization that owns or controls a number of national politicians, as well as entire towns and municipalities here and there, to say nothing of the popular and conventionally-non-weird-ass household-name corporations they've infiltrated or whose CEOs are followers. Or, say. as an entity subject to no financial oversight of any kind at all with global reach and -- just counting the loose change behind the sofa cushions -- access to a low estimate of easily seventy-five or a hundred million dollars that's doing nothing but waiting to go sloshing around the globe. Plus they've got a private worldwide intel network. And I imagine that they've got to be at least on friendly-acquaintance terms with a private militia somewhere, although I don't know that for a fact. I just can't think of a reason why they wouldn't be. It's kind of like the weird-ass programming cult is a front group for itself. As I see it.

And that's not unique to just the one by any means. There just happens to be one that's much, much more extensively documented online than the others. So let that be a lesson to weird-ass programming cults of the future wrt the unforeseen consequence of making being very, very litigious a part of your doctrine.

Or, if I might rephrase my answer more succinctly: I don't know. And I really, truly don't. I don't think anyone does. And that's not excluding David Miscavige. Which is a comforting thought, really, if you take the time to dwell on it for a moment or two. In its own bleak little way.

[compared2what?]

c2w, is Russell Miller's "Bare-Faced Messiah" only about Hubbard's navy career? What other books about Hubbard or Scientology's roots do you know of?

No, it's a full bio. Click around on the link I posted. IIRC, it has "next chapter" and "previous chapter" tabs at the top.

There are really a whole lot of resources on the CoS. It would be pretty off-topic to start posting them, though. There's a CoS-dedicated thread in the topics forum, though, isn't there?

[wordspeak2]

> There's a CoS-dedicated thread in the topics forum, though, isn't there?

Cool, I'll head over there for that sub-conversation then.

[JackRiddler]

.

LaRouche resources a plenty here:

http://truthaction.org/forum/viewtopic. ... fcc89e93b0

Selective index of topics touched on in the thread:
- Bunk, Kenne-port
- Tavistock, Beatles were invented at
- Tarpley, long-term association and status as LaRouche's "Trostsky" of
- Jones, Alex
- Operation Mop-up, 1973 physical attacks by Larouchites on leftists
- Nick Rockefeller, more whacked-up bullshit about feminists being a plot of
- LaRouche Youth
- Sept. 11, bizarre live-radio conversation in which LaRouche indicated possible foreknowledge of the attacks on the morning of (see bottom of first page on that thread for transcript)
- Berlet, John Foster
- LaRouche tables, omnipresence of

etc.

They haven't yet got into Starwars, 1983 meeting with Reagan on.

.

[Hugh Manatee Wins]

All well said, wordspeak2. You should do more posting, less lurking.
(Except I think you meant you usually "lurk," as in, just read. Not "troll" which means to inject hostile friction to derail a discussion.)

You wrote:

I usually just troll [sic] here, but I think this is one of the more important threads in a long time, and I have a few cents to contribute.

This is interesting, especially for someone of the younger generation (me), who wasn't around for these events, to witness the back-and-forths about Prouty and Mark Lane and Larouche, etc. However, it's a bit frustrated for me to see that HMW seems to be the only one really worked up about, and perhaps understanding the significance of, the original point, which is that Chip Berlet is a CIA agent who has successfully infiltrated left-of-center discourse for the past forty years. There was a big RI kiss about the conclusion that Berlet's article was disengenuous and slanderous, but do we take that any further? Like, use it to understand and illustrate how the guardians of the fascist system we live under operate in terms of neutralizing trends and movements that threaten the "establishment's" existence?

I've paid attention to Berlet since he appeared as the leading anti-9/11-truth hack in 2002, eventually appearing on "Democracy Now!" Now, I don't think your IQ has to be all that high to recognize that what Berlet is doing in articles such as the one posted is meticulous disengenuity. And what is disengenuity but crafty lying? I'm sure Berlet does his best to not outright lie at all, or to minimize it (as does the New York Times), but he juxtaposes concepts, terms, half-truths and facts, to lead the reader to a conclusion and lead a lasting impression ("Those conspiracy people are runing our legitimate movement for peace and justice!")

I certainly dispute c2w's point that Berlet has any less blood on his hands for not having personally murdered any Afghanis. On the contrary, I think he's nearly as important a figure to "the Empire" at large as Henry Kissinger or George H. W. Bush. I think *controlling oppositional social movements* is the agenda item above all others in the so-called intelligence community. It's imperative to understand how they have done it and continue to do it with such success. Thus, a study of Chip Berlet and the myriad other very obvious (imo) infiltrators of the alternative discourse is imperative.

I've actually met Chip Berlet on a few occassions, as my 9/11 propaganda and lit table happened to be right next to his in alphabetical order at an annual social justice conference. Actually, it's a conference called "From Abortion Rights to Social Justice" held every year and heavily funded by the Ford Foundation, another entity worth studying in terms of its modus operandi in neutralizng and dissipating potentially threatening political movement. I've also attended Berlet's workshop at the conference, and I've read many of his articles over the years- not that I seek them out, but Berlet is a stealthily ubiquitous character. Berlet is a... I'm seeking the right adjectives... I would say "flaming," if not for the gay connotation... well, an extremely egotistical individual, surely entertained by the fact that he's existed as a barely covert (he's like one of those quasi-undercover cop cars) CIA agent within the self-described political Left since the sixties. (Btw, hi, Chip!) He talks loudly and garrulously to anyone who will listen, and brags about his collection of business cards and of being a "spy" on the internet. And what does he say to those who listen? Well, mostly the same things, over and over.

His meta agenda is:
A. Attack the stories that would expose the CIA and entrenched national security state for what it is, such as the Kennedy assassination and 9/11 truth movement, while avoiding actual factual discussion as much as possible. Claim that movements that seek to expose these psychological operations are harmful to the humanist left-wing that is trying to, you know, do good things.
B. Prop up non-economic-based "wedge issue" movements such as gay rights and abortion rights, while ignoring revolutionary poor people-led movements, things like drug legalization, or militant unionism.
C. Re-define "the Left" and "the Right" in his own terms, specifically along the social issue divide line. Do not give fodder to the traditional notion of the Left as taxing the rich, providing social services to the poor, etc. Avoid any talk of revolutionary movements in Latin America.

His foundation-funded cover group, "Political Research Associates," does very little research; it functions as a propaganda arm of Berlet. It publishes fancy-looking pamphlets about gay rights and abortion rights and a lot of online material attacking the notion of "conspiracy" in a very broad, psychological sense, always dumbing down the discourse. Like a good advertising company, he identifies terms, "memes," and injects them into the discourse in a very specific, tendentious, manner. Terms like "conspiracy." He's extremely psychologically manipulative in his writing style, and he's blatant about it. Note how the concept of 9/11 being anything-but-what-we're-told is ridiculed in Chip's piece, but in his attack on the Christic Institute note his implication that the essence of the Iran-Contra scandal- illegal money-for-guns funding of a right paramilitary group to fight off a democratic movement- is not implied to be such. It was only the CI's derailing into certain areas going back to the Kenendy assassination, i.e. **conspiracy** that sabatoged its otherwise worthy effort, asserts Chip. As folks have noted, this actually has a lot of truth to it, but look at *how Chip says it.*

His one paragraph narrative of the 9/11 truth movement is truly classic. First, someone came up with the story that 4,000 Israelis escaped from the Twin Towers. Reporters found this story to be false, but not until it had flown around the internet like a game of telephone. A few weeks later a chorus of prominent lefties started saying the government was guilty for 9/11. With absolutely no legitimate evidence, and flying against the common sense of normal people like you and I, this falsity has spread around the globe and done vast, vast harm to the legitimate you and Left, of which you and I, dear reader, are both members.
That's the essence of it; that's Chip for you. He's been extremely effective at turning liberals against the 9/11 truth meme; he's done it as if it's his job.

I read on oilempire that Berlet- real name John Foster Berlet, is the son of a high-level military-intelligence officer. They do like to keep it in the family.

I'd like to talk more about the way that Berlet re-defines "the Left" and "the Christian Right" in his workshops and has helped mold what was once a threatening left-wing movement into a culturally-based useless mess, but the library I'm in is closing. Berlet's false-dialectical decades-long dual with Lyndon Larouche is a trickier topic, and should be the subject of a PhD thesis or some such! Certainly, Berlet loves every minute of it.

Hey, and if we come to a deeper consensus on this topic, we can move on to how Noam Chomsky is a CIA agent, and the even vaster implications of that! Remember, disengenuity equals lying.
Gotta go.

[compared2what?]

All well said, wordspeak2. You should do more posting, less lurking.[...]

Hugh, I edited for length and added some of my own emphasis in bold where the large type is. Catch you after the rest of the quote.

You wrote:[...]

the original point, which is that Chip Berlet is a CIA agent who has successfully infiltrated left-of-center discourse for the past forty years. There was a big RI kiss about the conclusion that Berlet's article was disengenuous and slanderous, but do we take that any further? Like, use it to understand and illustrate how the guardians of the fascist system we live under operate in terms of neutralizing trends and movements that threaten the "establishment's" existence?[...]

I certainly dispute c2w's point that Berlet has any less blood on his hands for not having personally murdered any Afghanis.

Let the record reflect that this was not my point, which has now been clarified to -- AFAIK -- the satisfaction of all parties.

On the contrary, I think he's nearly as important a figure to "the Empire" at large as Henry Kissinger or George H. W. Bush. I think *controlling oppositional social movements* is the agenda item above all others in the so-called intelligence community. It's imperative to understand how they have done it and continue to do it with such success. Thus, a study of Chip Berlet and the myriad other very obvious (imo) infiltrators of the alternative discourse is imperative.


I've actually met Chip Berlet[...]His meta agenda is:
A. Attack the stories that would expose the CIA and entrenched national security state for what it is, such as the Kennedy assassination and 9/11 truth movement, while avoiding actual factual discussion as much as possible. Claim that movements that seek to expose these psychological operations are harmful to the humanist left-wing that is trying to, you know, do good things.
B. Prop up non-economic-based "wedge issue" movements such as gay rights and abortion rights, while ignoring revolutionary poor people-led movements, things like drug legalization, or militant unionism.
C. Re-define "the Left" and "the Right" in his own terms, specifically along the social issue divide line. Do not give fodder to the traditional notion of the Left as taxing the rich, providing social services to the poor, etc. Avoid any talk of revolutionary movements in Latin America.

His foundation-funded cover group, "Political Research Associates," does very little research; it functions as a propaganda arm of Berlet. It publishes fancy-looking pamphlets about gay rights and abortion rights and a lot of online material attacking the notion of "conspiracy" in a very broad, psychological sense, always dumbing down the discourse. Like a good advertising company, he identifies terms, "memes," and injects them into the discourse in a very specific, tendentious, manner. Terms like "conspiracy." He's extremely psychologically manipulative in his writing style, and he's blatant about it.[...] Note how the concept of 9/11 being anything-but-what-we're-told is ridiculed in Chip's piece, but in his attack on the Christic Institute note his implication that the essence of the Iran-Contra scandal- illegal money-for-guns funding of a right paramilitary group to fight off a democratic movement- is not implied to be such. It was only the CI's derailing into certain areas going back to the Kenendy assassination, i.e. **conspiracy** that sabatoged its otherwise worthy effort, asserts Chip. As folks have noted, this actually has a lot of truth to it, but look at *how Chip says it.*

His one paragraph narrative of the 9/11 truth movement is truly classic. First, someone came up with the story that 4,000 Israelis escaped from the Twin Towers. Reporters found this story to be false, but not until it had flown around the internet like a game of telephone. A few weeks later a chorus of prominent lefties started saying the government was guilty for 9/11. With absolutely no legitimate evidence, and flying against the common sense of normal people like you and I, this falsity has spread around the globe and done vast, vast harm to the legitimate you and Left, of which you and I, dear reader, are both members.
That's the essence of it; that's Chip for you. He's been extremely effective at turning liberals against the 9/11 truth meme; he's done it as if it's his job.

I read on oilempire that Berlet- real name John Foster Berlet, is the son of a high-level military-intelligence officer. They do like to keep it in the family.

I'd like to talk more about the way that Berlet re-defines "the Left" and "the Christian Right" in his workshops and has helped mold what was once a threatening left-wing movement into a culturally-based useless mess, but the library I'm in is closing. Berlet's false-dialectical decades-long dual with Lyndon Larouche is a trickier topic, and should be
Hey, and if we come to a deeper consensus on this topic, we can move on to how Noam Chomsky is a CIA agent, and the even vaster implications of that! Remember, disengenuity equals lying.

Lying also equals lying, oddly enough.

So does submitting affidavits in which you, for example, attest as a paid expert witness to the valorous covert deeds an officer of the Navy undertook in order to win medals that do not, in fact, exist.

Or, for another example, asserting that the documents you're testimony concerns are signed by people who didn't sign them.

Or, for another example, telling 60 Minutes that it's quite obvious that the valorous covert deeds included running corvettes in Australia, when:

"Unfortunately this falls foul of a quite fundamental point: the US Navy did not deploy corvettes to Australia or, indeed, anywhere in the Pacific. It had obtained 38 corvettes from Britain and Canada but all were deployed in the North Atlantic, where they were most needed to counter the German U-Boat threat. The Japanese submarine fleet was a far lesser threat and confined its operations mostly to the western Pacific. Additionally, corvettes - designed for the North Atlantic - were completely unsuited to tropical conditions and were unbearably hot in southern climates. So there is quite simply no way that Hubbard could have had anything to do with American corvettes while in Australia - those vessels were on the other side of the planet."

Hugh. This stuff is verifiable. For full disclosure's sake: The reporting is a model of transparency, and the reporter is being as fair as he can be. Which is a little fairer than he needs to be, frankly. But since that's how I like to see it done, I have no problem with it, personally.

On the downside: There's a little bit of mild anti-conspiratorial snark at one point. Also, following several pages of scrupulously fair, transparent and original reporting, he makes an error in judgment by adding an utterly superfluous link to a dubious source none of whose work he's used but who also holds Prouty in low esteem.

But nobody's perfect, and his subject is Hubbard, not conspiracy-believers versus counter-intelligence. So I don't think you can reasonably argue that he's part of some plot or utterly discredited by bias or anything like that. And here's a link.

Finally...From the bottom of my heart, Hugh, I am sincerely and humbly begging you to find a way to reconcile yourself to the fallibility of Fletcher Prouty. Because this is not as bad as it gets, honey. And I don't want to hurt you. But even more than that...I don't know. Paradoxical as it might sound, even more than that:

There's just no way I'm going to stand by and watch someone as low as Fletcher Prouty add to his sins from beyond the grave by making you, my RI pal, HMW, pay for them here. Not if there's anything I can do to prevent it. Because it really wouldn't be the least of his sins if he did, from my point of view.

And at the end of the day, I don't really give a fuck about him for any other reason than that one, in some form. I mean, he was bad, but now he's dead. So if he'd just stop fucking with my friends and/or people like my friends, he wouldn't be a whole lot more than a pile of dust to me. I'd be more than happy to let him rest in peace.

Anyway. I hope the link is useful to you.

[Hugh Manatee Wins]

Not only have Mark Lane and L. Fletcher Prouty been called into doubt by c2w and chiggerbit, so has my own judgement regarding those men.
I'll try to focus on Lane and Prouty information...which should exonerate me, too.

What I'm saying, Hugh, is that Lane has dirtied himself at Jonestown, and should be considered with some skepticism, his facts double-checked, even when he's in credible company.

Obviously everyone should be "considered with some skepticism" and fact checked.

But what is really important, and this is what I think you're missing, is getting past the 'where there's smoke there has to be fire' mindset and determining as best we can someone's INTENT in CONTEXT of the time of their actions. This 'C'-word, context, is the hardest to determine and almost always the root of misunderstanding.

There's a huge moral and intellectual difference if someone is:

1) making a brave moral choice based on high principle (excellent!!)
2) taking actions which are not too difficult but extremely helpful (good!)
3) making an understandable mistake that comes with the tricky context (ok)
4) making a 'how could you' stupid mistake (darn)
5) making intentionally deceptive plays for the dark forces of social control and exploitation (damn you!)

Note that the first 4 intention formulas are entirely forgivable and only number 5 is grounds for the distrust and condemnation being evoked by c2w and chiggerbit for Lane and Prouty.

I had already read a few years ago what has been dragged out against Lane and Prouty by the likes of Chip Berlet and read enough to determine which of those characterizations applied.

I've already determined that both Lane and Prouty's alleged impure actions - some activity related to the Liberty Lobby's Spotlight and Scientology - are definitely of the first three choices, not evil number 5 which belongs to Chip CIA Berlet, a villain we can agree on.

Prouty and Scientology

I don't know what year this association began or who marketed CoS to Prouty. The 1992 'What is Scientology?' 835-page glossy-photo behemoth I found at Borders for around $4.00 a few years ago has many pages of testimonials including Prouty's on page 517. Stunning psyops on every page.

Surely you've read this thing to research Scientology, right? Right?
If you don't look at the shiny side of Scientology marketing, you won't understand how it got so much cultural traction and still does.
Every social work and anti-corruption marketing angle combined with a churchy aroma is exploited to net both rationalist therapist-types and mystics.

Acquiring Prouty's approval was a real windfall as a cred prop regarding Scientology's anti-government and spook-victim identity, something that cults can really use.

Hollywood celebrities get a special sell and we have no way of knowing what sell was used on Prouty or what he knew.

Scientology used to make much of being anti-spook.
I suspect Prouty was sold on the CoS angle that included Narconon which got used in lots of state prison systems. There's also a heavy law-and-order plus group loyalty element to CoS principles and codes with a touch of nationalism, a perfect combination for an old retired military man.

From page 433 and the '21 Moral Precepts of Happiness'-

.....
#9 Don't Do Anything Illegal

#10 Support a Government Designed and Run for All the People
.....

Here are some of the 'What is Scientology?' anti-CIA comments:

Page 325-

"It is also an error to process a third category of individual, which includes members of organizations who by their conduct show themselves to be hostile to the best interests of mankind. This includes members of police spy organizations, government spy organizations such as the CIA or FBI, or other such federal agencies in the country."

Page 529-

"Mind Control Exposed
.....
Eventually, of course, these and other revelations of Central Intelligence Agency criminality would entirely reshape public perceptions of this group of spies from a patriotic and somewhat glamorous image to that of a rogue agency of dirty tricksters, with its own citizens as victims."

Page 531-

"Behind the Worldwide Campaign

The previous pages might lead one to believe that the forty-year assault against Scientology has assumed large proportions, but the source must be remembered-that small influential circle of psychiatrists. Nor have the means changed over the years: false allegations selectively planted in the media, then seeded into federal files as background "fact."
It is a method, with small adjustments, that has also served to cause trouble overseas. The international pipeline leaves the US, primarily the FBI and CIA links, and discharges among the voluminous dossiers of Interpol, a private organization which worked closely with the Nazis during World War II, and had as its president an ex-SS officer as late as 1972-as the Church was the first to expose."

On pages 390-391 is a photo spread of Freedom Magazine covers that have headlines we'd expect to find on Covert Action Quarterly-
"Jim Garrison: The Killing of John Kennedy"
"William Casey, the CIA, and ABC"
"Interpol Linked to Drug Trafficking, Torture"
"Racism Rampant in IRS"
"What the Government is not Telling You About Radiation"
"New Documents Confirm CIA Link to..."
...lots of headlines about psychiatry, violence, and drugs...

On page 530 under "Media-Government Collusion" there's even a nasty swipe at 'journalist' James Phelan who deserves it for his JFK cover-up work. Seems Phelan went after the 'Hubbard E-meter' working for the FDA. heh.

Consider also how CoS was selling itself to state government officials who were trying to deal with the crack wars resulting from the CIA's cocaine smuggling in the late-70s and the 80s.

Page 411 photo with caption- "Film and television actress, Kirstie Alley, is Narconon's international spokesperson."

This is all by way of explaining "how could he?"

Here's that 1992 (?) Prouty testimonial quote on page 517 among lots of others from government officials and clerics-

..."I have traveled far and wide throughout my professional life and see the people of the Earth as incredibly diverse in character as well as needs. Oftentimes our efforts to understand and help them have been too narrow.
In the many years I have worked with Scientology the one thing which has impressed me the most and which will characterize the Church far into the future centuries is its ability to deal with humankind as a whole.
...At the heart of Scientology's activities is the betterment of all people no matter what creed, what race, what socioeconomic status to develop themselves spiritually and mentally so that each individual can improve his own life. Scientology's far-reaching goals are designed to tend to each individual uniquely with compassionate concern and commitment. These rare attributes are essential in these times of trouble and uncertainty and most assuredly provide the Church with a platform for growth and strength in the years to come."
- L. Fletcher Prouty
Col. US Air Force (Ret.)

Prouty and the letter about LRHubbard's military record

That letter to a publisher sounds like an old covert insider being smug and pompous about his entirely correct warning that files should not be taken at face value. I consider the information about false records to valuable.
We can probably never know what LRH was really up to. Writers like him were used by ONI for various projects, to shape opinion within the military and civilians. See 'The Arnheiter Affair.' He was an ONI writer who got badjacketed after he'd written an assigened psyops book to cover for the eventuality of John Glenn's space capsule sinking in the ocean.

So LRH may have been useful for a while and then got cut loose as his secular cult took off to became maybe a nuclear-age social experiment to find ways for people to cope with the new existential stress of a potential military apocalypse. Eventually, I'm sure CIA moved into Scientology despite the anti-CIA views expressed in that 1992 book. Too valuable a source for personal confessions and emotional hooks.

Prouty and the Liberty Lobby

An audience for an old soldier who in retirement took on the identity of insider, sage, and hero. Prouty didn't bullshit or deceive. He found a receptive niche at a time when his information was highly valued.

Mark Lane and the Liberty Lobby

Mark Lane took on three very important Liberty Lobby lawsuits related to free speech and exposing the CIA's crimes, not as a promoter of Liberty Lobby.
That's what civil rights lawyers do. See 'ACLU.'
I'd rate that as #1 on my above list.

Mark Lane and Jonestown

Next, the blanket statement that "Lane has dirtied himself at Jonestown" is, I think, highly inaccurate and your following statements below confirm what I think is your being stuck at 'suspicious' and not moving on to establishing his intent with more context.

The assertion that 'he should have known just what Jonestown was' is directly contradicted by the fact that almost everyone didn't know 'what Jonestown really was' in October 1978 when people had to read dead tree pages to know things, not push an internet button. Even the victimized people at Jonestown were confused and giving deceptive signals to each other and especially outsiders.

And this was a time when cults vs alarmed families of cult members was a new and complicated legal area without precedent.
The issue of free association vs coercion is still tricky ground.

Muddying the issue, especially for Mark Lane, was the fact that Jonestown was allegedly a liberal black-oriented church being harassed by the USG...and right after the FBI"s COINTELPRO had been revealed as the USG attacking black groups.

Additionally for Lane, this victimization theme would perfectly match what he was in the middle of - exposing the USG's murder of a black church leader named Martin Luther King while defending the patsy, James Earl Ray. And this would be the second USG assassination he exposed in just a few years of intense legal action and writing which put him at the center of a public circus, something which may have affected his reaction to Mae Brussell.

So Lane's actions reflecting his incorrect understanding of what Jonestown really was would still come under both #1 and #3 on my list above.

Mark Lane, Mae Brussell, and mind control

I already lineated the difference between specific-crime court room professional attorney Mark Lane and wide-net-re-un-covered-history amateur Mae Brussell.

We know almost nothing about what was said between those two. And Mae's mention is almost sub-anecdotal. It sounds almost petty.

We have Mae's bitter and glib 1978 characterization that in 1975 Lane blew her off as "crazy" and he didn't want to go into mind control with her. For her to say she "hated" a man who did what he did for the JFK case is school yard stuff and not worthy of either of those two people. Ego crap one would expect on a discussion board.

Regarding mind control, it wasn't until August 1977 that there were very brief MKUltra hearings in Congress and not until 1979 that John Marks published 'The Search for the Manchurian Candidate.'
Yes, some stuff about drug testing came out in the Church Committee hearings in 1975 and that's the year of the alleged Lane dismissal of Mae. Drug testing is not the same as mind control.
And without an actual date and a time-stamped video of what Lane was reading everyday that year, this is not an issue worth dismissing anyone over. Not everyone was on the same page at the same time. Not a big deal.

But opportunists also often find themselves in company with uncredible sources. Just as with Berlet, some of what Lane writes may be quite lucid and pertinent and insightful. But some of it is also twisted to fit an agenda. Six of one, half a dozen of the other. Two sides of the same coin.

"Opportunists?" N.A.
What is it that Lane wrote that was "twisted to fit an agenda?"

What Lane did at Jonestown can in no way be compared to what Ryan was doing, and I'm actually rather surprised that you can compare the two.

Wrong.
You wrote that Lane pushed them over the edge and for this he should feel guilty.
I wrote that this was as ridiculous as suggesting Ryan was responsible for the deaths due to going down to inspect.

Not that I'm saying that Ryan wasn't being opportunistic in his own way. For Christ's sake, taking a tv crew with him? Quite opportunistic.

You've really got this backwards. Perhaps this is all new to you.

Ryan was a hero going out of his way to see if people were ok when nobody else would. He listened to Deborah Layton and tried to get others in Congress to listen to her.

He had for years been dogging the CIA with legislation to cap their covert ops.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hughes-Ryan_Act

They hated him for this. Taking a camera crew was smart move meant to document what he found and perhaps protect him so he'd be able to do something about it. It didn't protect him. He became a martyr trying to help others. That's not "an opportunist."

But what I'm talking about looks to me like Lane's actions were intentional instigation.

Not one single indication of this bizarre assertion.
This is just blind accusation that conflicts with everything about Lane and the events discussed.

This man is an attorney, and should be quite adept at reading people, more so than even the average person, and even the average person should have been able to read the spookiness that was going on there if they had been there more than a day or two.

See above. Not that simple.

Are you sure he isn't CIA?

100% sure.
Read his books and his legal record.
He's been a nightmare for CIA since 1963.

[lightningBugout]

hugh -- triple cough cough -- PM. uh - huh.

[Hugh Manatee Wins]

.....
But nobody's perfect, and his subject is Hubbard, not conspiracy-believers versus counter-intelligence. So I don't think you can reasonably argue that he's part of some plot or utterly discredited by bias or anything like that. And here's a link.

Hunh? Did you even look at the 'Oswald dunnit' disinformation source you just used to damn Prouty while patronizing me? Chris Owen.

Your link above-
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Cowen/warher ... tion.htm#2

It's just some debate between Scientology and CIA-CBS about LRHubbard's military experience where Prouty cautioned that records are faked and suggested LRH used the term 'Corvette' as a figure of speech. BFD.

But Chris Owen directs us to the biggest CIA disinformationist regarding JFK on the internet, John McAdams.
And McAdams cites...Chip Berlet! Woo hoo!

See "L. Fletcher Prouty -- All Purpose Kennedy Assassation [sic] Expert?", http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/prouty.htm.

This ignorant (?) 'Oswald dunnit' guy can't even get the year of JFK's murder right-

[Prouty] is perhaps best known for his claims about the 1965 Kennedy assassination...

This ignorant (?) guy pretends that maybe Prouty wasn't even in the military and couldn't know anything about covert operations-

As for Col Prouty's credentials, he claims to have been an officer of the US Army and Air Force from 1941 through 1964, during which time he served both as a pilot and a Pentagon desk officer in a variety of operational, administrative and intelligence posts. He has never claimed to have been a member of US Naval Intelligence or the US Navy itself.

Ahem. Prouty was only the Pentagon's liason with CIA for years.
That's a serious position with a top-view few have of compartmentalized operations.

This ignorant (?) Owens guy even tries to sow doubt that there is such thing as fake files for covert operatives. What a steaming pile-

Prouty's Claims

Col Prouty's basic claim is that Hubbard's records have been falsified (or, in his picturesque term, "sheepdipped") to provide cover for his work as an agent of US Naval Intelligence. Prouty claims to have produced such files himself during his own military service and to have thereby gained familiarity with the procedure 3. This assertion rests on Prouty's belief that Hubbard's records, which he had reviewed, "are so uncharacteristic that they may be termed contrived". Prouty offers no documentary evidence that such a practice even existed, though in fairness such evidence is not very likely to have been released by the US military.

Thanks a lot, c2w. No more mud for me, thanks.
None of the unfortunate Prouty-on-Scientology material of the 1980s has any bearing on the history Prouty wrote up regarding the formation of the National Security State from 1945-1963 and what happened to JFK.

[quote='"c2w"]There's just no way I'm going to stand by and watch someone as low as Fletcher Prouty...[/quote]

Oh, brother. I'm smelling something now.

And at the end of the day, I don't really give a fuck about him for any other reason than that one, in some form. I mean, he was bad, but now he's dead. So if he'd just stop fucking with my friends and/or people like my friends, he wouldn't be a whole lot more than a pile of dust to me. I'd be more than happy to let him rest in peace.

"Fucking with your friends?" You are kidding, right?
Nope, I don't think you are.

Anyway. I hope the link is useful to you.

An ally of CIA-McAdams? Oh, very useful to me. I learned a lot.

[compared2what?]

Dude, he was a far-right spook. He uses stone-obvious NLP tricks on every page of his book. You cannot explain how he fell for Scientology so hard that he fucking testified to medals, actions and facts that don't exist. As part of his intro to the Pentagon Papers material he describes Daniel Ellsberg as "a hippie" who few people knew actually worked for the government, which is simply a flat-out fucking invention. There are right-wing dog-whistles on every page of that book, practically. (All that "men such as GREAT AND GLORIOUS SOLDIERS LISTED HERE" stuff ought to send a signal of that nature to anyone who isn't fucking tone-deaf right off the bat.

There was more incriminating information about the CIA in the public record in mainstream academic books (for example, Abuse of Power, Theodore Draper, 1967) than there is in The Secret Team long, long before it had to be "suppressed." Which I really do not find at all credible. Furthermore, if he fell for CoS -- and it's not like the rumors about them were hard to come by -- what makes you feel so certain he's correct about all the stuff he asks his readers to take solely at his word? Which is, incidentally, everything of any interest he has to say, none of which is checkable through third-party sources. Because Only He Knew. And yes, that would be the man who was so tuned in he hung out with Scientology for twenty years and whose book was last reprinted by Holocaust deniers. Obviously, he's very astute.

And the reason I'm spouting all of this "room-for-argument" stuff, although in my view, there is none, is that I'm never going to be able to pull the trigger on him for real, although there is harder data out there, is because the collateral damage would take you down too. And that would be too fucking painful for me. For me. So I can't even pretend I'm doing you a favor.

I hope readers here with any sense understand that Prouty's word is fucking poison. If you can't check what he says with two sources who are NOT in his little circle of strangely-unaware-of-what-cults-and-white-supremacists-do buddies, don't trust it. Unless you're a far-right dominionist type. In which case, he's totally for you.

Bye, Hugh.