The Life [And Tragic Death] Of Lisa McPherson

Lisa McPherson, A Beautiful Woman Whose Life Was Destroyed By Scientology.

BACKGROUND:

Lisa McPherson was born on February 10th, 1959 and lived a normal life in Dallas, Texas. When she was 18, she became a Scientologist, and in 1994, she moved to Clearwater, Florida with her employer, AMC Publishing, which was operated mostly by Scientologists. In June 1995 she was place in what is called an Introspectoin Rundown for percieved mental instability. An Introspection Rundown is where you are placed in isolation until you are “out of [your] psychosis”. She completed the Rundown, and became Clear in September of that year [The state of Clear is where you are not influenced by past traumas].

EVENTS PRECEDING HER DEATH:

On November 18th, 1995, Lisa was involved in a minor car accident. Paramedics initially left her alone because she had suffered no injuries, but she began to remove her clothes, so the paramedics took her to the hospital. Lisa said she had taken off her clothes in an effort to “recieve counseling”. Hospital staff wanted to keep her overnight for counseling, but after intervention by Scientologists, she refused psychiatric care and checked herself out of the hospital, even though she was clearly mentally ill. She was brought to the Fort Harrison hotel, a building owned by the Church of Scientology for “rest and relaxation”, though sworn statements reveal she was taken there for another Introspection Rundown. Mark McGarry, an attorney working for the State Attorney, said that Lisa’s stay was an “isolation watch”.

LISA MCPHERSON’S DEATH:

Lisa was kept in a cabana and kept a 24-hour watch on her. Detailed logs were kept on her day-to-day care. These “logs” narrate the last 17 days of her life: She was voilent and incoherent, her nails were cut so she couldn’t scratch herself or staff, and she bruised her feet and fists while hitting the wall. She had trouble sleeping and was given a supplement to help. She also developed sores on her face that “looked like measles or chicken pox”. On many occasions she refused food and water. Staff attempted to force feed her, but she spat the food out. Any Scientologists that questioned how she was handled were told to “butt out”. Scientologist doctor David Minkoff prescribed Valium and a sleep aid without seeing her. Her caretakers asked him to prescribe an antibiotic, but he refused and said that he needed to see her at his hospital in order to prescribe anything. The caretakers refused, saying that she could be subjected to psychiatric care while in the hospital [Scientologists are opposed to psychiatry]. En route to the hospital, Lisa experienced labored breathing. The Scientologists passed 4 hospitals before arriving at Minkoff’s hospital. She arrived without vital signs. They tried to resuscitate her with CPR, but she was declared dead 20 minutes after arrival.

CORONER’S REPORT:

Lisa’s autopsy was started on December 5th, 1995 by assistant medical examiner Robert Davis, and was completed by supervisor medical examiner Joan Wood. The report said that Lisa died of a Thrombo-embolism on the left pulmonary artery caused by “bed rest and severe dehydration”. The manner of death was “undetermined”. The report also said there were multiple bruises, an abrasion on the nose, and insect/animal bites on her right arm. On January 21st, 1997, Wood went public on the TV show Inside Edition, and stated that Lisa had deteriorated slowly, going without fluids for 5-10 days and was underweight. She lost 20-40 pounds before her death.

AFTERMATH:

The Church of Scientology was indicted on 2 felony charge “abuse and/or neglect of a disabled adult” and “practicing medicine without a license”. These charges were dropped later. A civil suit brought by her family against the Church was settled on May 24th, 2004.

If you would like to see Lisa’s autopsy photos, click here. You will be sent to a page with a list of Lisa’s autopsy photos, but be warned! The links that you click may be disturbing to some.

Judicial Statements on Scientology

Here are what some Judges think about the Church of Scientology:

“Scientology is evil; its techniques are evil; its practice is a serious threat to the community, medically, morally, and socially; and its adherents are sadly deluded and often mentally ill… (Scientology is) the world’s largest organization of unqualified persons engaged in the practice of dangerous techniques which masquerade as mental therapy.”
–Justice Anderson, Supreme Court of Victoria, Australia

“Scientology is both immoral and socially obnoxious…It is corrupt sinister and dangerous. It is corrupt because it is based on lies and deceit and has its real objective money and power for Mr. Hubbard… It is sinister because it indulges in infamous practices both to its adherents who do not toe the line unquestionly and to those who criticize it or oppose it. It is dangerous because it is out to capture people and to indoctrinate and brainwash them so they become the unquestioning captives and tools of the cult, withdrawn from ordinary thought, living, and relationships with others.”
–Justice Latey, ruling in the High Court of London

“[The court record is] replete with evidence [that Scientology] is nothing in reality but a vast enterprise to extract the maximum amount of money from its adepts by pseudo scientific theories… and to exercise a kind of blackmail against persons who do not wish to continue with their sect…. The organization clearly is schizophrenic and paranoid, and this bizarre combination seems to be a reflection of its founder, L.Ron Hubbard.”
–Judge Breckenridge, Los Angeles Superior Court

“When a person is subjected to coercive persuasion [as in Scientology] without his knowledge or consent …[he may] develop serious and sometimes irreversible physical and psychiatric disorders, up to and including schizophrenia, self-mutilation, and suicide.”
–California Supreme Court, United States v. Lee

BBC Panorama: “Scientology and Me”

The BBC aired a special about Scientology on its Panorama show entitled “Scientology and Me”. In this show, BBC reporter John Sweeney overviews the history of Scientology, explains the Church’s “disconnection” policy [full post on that later], interviews Church critics, and has Fair Game practiced against him. The show in its entirety is below and I highly recommend that you see it in order to get a better understanding of the Church of Scientology.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

The Office of Special Affairs

Did you know the Church of Scientology has it’s own intelligence agency?

OVERVIEW:

The Office of Special Affairs [formerly the Guardian's Office] is responsible for legal affairs, pursuing investigations, and public relations. It was established in 1966, with the initial interest of protecting the interests of Scientology, monitoring Scientologists inside the Church, and gathering information on perceived enemies of the Church. The organization acting as an intelligence bureau, and planted agents in key positions in government agencies to obtain confidential material about the Church as part of Operation Snow White. The Guardian’s Office was disbanded in 1983 and most of its duties were relegated to the newly created Office of Special Affairs. Mike Rinder, former head of the OSA, left the Church for reasons unknown.

OSA OPERATIONS:

In a court case in 1993, former OSA operative Garry Scarff “was directed, one, to go to Chicago, Illinois and to murder Cynthia Kisser, Cynthia Kisser being the Executive Director of the Cult Awareness Network, by a staged car accident.” The murder never took place because Scarff “could not bring [himself] to harm or kill anybody.”

Tory Christman, a former volunteer for OSA has stated that the organization hired private investigators, fabricated criminal charges and harassed their targets, including at their place of employment, as well as their family members.

Former OSA operative Mike McClaughry revealed that other OSA operatives attempted to put LSD on the toothbrush of a psychiatrist in San Francisco as part of a Fair Game operation. The psychiatrist was supposed to go on a “drug trip” while giving his speech. It turns out that the OSA operatives put the LSD in both the psychiatrist’s toothpaste and his PREGNANT WIFE’s toothpaste.

OSA METHODS:

The OSA uses many Fair Game tactics against the Church’s many critics, including picketing homes, forged bomb threats, lawsuits, and false criminal charges. The OSA also constantly monitors/follows/stalks the Church’s critics in order to make the critic too paranoid to continue. Many Church critics and former Scientologists report surveillance vans outside their homes all day and night.

Operation Snow White

Did you know that the Church of Scientology is responsible for the largest infiltration of United States government in history?

THE OPERATION:

In the 1970s L. Ron Hubbard wrote up a program codenamed Operation Snow White as an attempt to reduce or eliminate unfavorable reports on Scientology, the Church of Scientology, and Hubbard himself. Under this program, over 5,000 covert Scientologist agents committed crimes like infiltration, wiretapping, and theft of government documents in 136 government agencies, consulates, and foreign embassies in over 30 countries. Other planned elements of the operation included petitioning governments and the UN to charge government critics of the Church of Scientology with genocide.

GOVERNMENT DISCOVERY OF THE OPERATION:

The FBI raided Scientology offices in 1977 when they discovered Operation Snow White and found documentation of the Church of Scientology’s illegal operations against the US government, along with other illegal activities carried out by the Church against perceived enemies of Scientology, including Operation Freakout and a conspiracy to frame Gabe Cazares, the mayor of Clearwater, Florida, on false hit-and-run charges. Documents also showed that Sir John Foster and Lord Balniel, creators of the UK’s government inquiry into the Church, were also targets, along with the National Association for Mental Health and the World Federation for Mental Health.

ARRESTS FOR OPERATION SNOW WHITE:

Several people were convicted for Operation Snow White. Mary Sue Hubbard [L. Ron Hubbard's wife], Cindy Raymond, Gerald Bennett Wolfe, Henning Heldt, Duke Snider, Gregory Willardson, Richard Weigand, Mitchell Herman, Sharon Thomas, Jane Kember, and Mo Budlong, all high-ranking Scientologists, were convicted and sent to prison for five years. Kendrick Moxon was listed as an “unindicted co-conspirator” after giving false handwriting samples to the FBI. L. Ron Hubbard was also listed as an unindicted co-conspirator.

Operation Freakout

Operation Freakout was a noteworthy case of Fair Game against a critic of the Church, Paulette Cooper. This is a post about the escalating harassment against Mrs. Cooper, eventually leading to a full-scale operation against her.

EVENTS PRECEDING OPERATION FREAKOUT:

Paulette Cooper was a freelance journalist who wrote an article about the Church in the magazine Queen [now Harper's Bazaar]. She later upgraded that article into a full-length book, The Scandal of Scientology: A Chilling Examination of the Nature, Beliefs, and Practices of the “Now Religion”. The Church sued Cooper for $300,000 in December 1971.

ESCALATING HARASSMENT:

Church officials designated her as a high priority target and had a plan to use Fair Game tactics on her and “attack her as many ways as possible”, along with “wide-scale exposure of PC’s sex life” [PC being Paulette Cooper]. Cooper counter-sued for $15.4 million in damages for ongoing harassment. The Church stepped up the harassment, including making graffiti in her name, subscribing her to pornographic mailing lists, and receiving death threats. Her neighbors also received letters that she had an STD.

In December 1972, a woman “soliciting funds for United Farm Workers” stole a quantity of stationery from Cooper’s home. A few days later, the New York Church “received” 2 anonymous bomb threats. The following May, Cooper was indicted for making bomb threats and arraigned for a Federal Grand Jury. The threats were written on her stationery and had her fingerprints on them. The trial was discontinued by the US Attorney’s office, and it was not until 1977 that the FBI found out that the Church had forged the bomb threat.

The second forged bomb threat against the Church.

According to one source the Church itself importing Cooper’s books into countries with stricter libel laws for the express purpose of suing her. She was sued in the US, the UK, and Australia.

OPERATION FREAKOUT:

In the spring of 1976, the Church decided to initate an operation with the aim “To get P.C. incarcerated in a mental institution or jail, or at least to hit her so hard that she drops her attacks.” This operation was codenamed Operation Freakout. There were 6 different plans, in no particular order:

1. A woman was to imitate Paulette Cooper’s voice and phone threats to Arab consulates in New York.
2. A threatening letter was to be mailed to an Arab consulate in New York in such a fashion that it would appear to have been done by Paulette Cooper.
3. A Scientologist was to impersonate Paulette Cooper at a laundrette and make death threats against the President and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. A second Scientologist was to inform the FBI of the threat

Two additional plans were added April 13, 1976:

1. Gather info from Paulette Cooper in order to execute the above 3 plans.
2. A Scientologist was to inform an Arab consulate in New York that Paulette Cooper was planning to bomb it.

A sixth plan was added later:

1. A rerun of the bomb threat plot, in which a threat against Henry Kissinger was to be mailed on paper with Cooper’s fingerprints on them

AFTERMATH:

On July 8th, 1977, the FBI raided Scientology offices in Washington DC and Los Angeles and seized over 48,000 documents. The documents revealed “criminal campaigns of villification, burglaries and thefts … against private and public individuals and organizations”, as the US Government prosecutor put it.

In the end, no one was put to justice for the harassment of Paulette Cooper. Cooper stopped her legal action against the Church in 1985 after the Church gave her $400,000 in an out of court settlement.

The “Fair Game” Policy

In 1965, Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard wrote what’s known as the “Fair Game” policy on how to deal with people who were perceived as enemies of Scientology [An enemy of Scientology is also known as an SP, or a "Suppressive Person"]. These enemies are considered “Fair Game” for retaliation by Scientologists, and the Scientologist will not be punished by the Church for their treatment of an SP. Hubbard goes o to say “never defend” the Church, but “always attack”, and that the goal of suing a person or organization is not to win, but to discredit and harass them.

The official statement by L. Ron Hubbard is:
“ENEMY - SP order. Fair Game. May be deprived of property or injured by any Scientologist without any discipline of the Scientologist. may be tricked, sued or lied to, or DESTROYED.”

THE ACTUAL DOCUMENT:

L. Ron Hubbard’s Fair Game Policy

CANCELLATION OF THE TERM “FAIR GAME”:

Later L. Ron Hubbard canceled the term “Fair Game” because it caused “bad public relations”. The statement did not “cancel any policy on the treatment or handling of an SP”.

THE FAIR GAME POLICY IN COURT CASES:

In 1981, during the case Jakob Anderson vs. The Church of Scientology of Denmark, an ex-Scientologist named Vibeke Dammon testified that the Church did in fact still practice Fair Game and did so to try and commit Anderson to a psychiatric hospital.

In 1980, Lawrence Wollershiem, an ex-Scientologist, alleged that he had been harassed and his business nearly destroyed as a result of the Fair Game policy. The Church claimed Fair Game was a core practice of Scientology and should be protected by the 1st Amendment right of religious freedom. It was denied in appellate court in 1989. After 20 years, Wollershiem was paid $8,674,643 by the Church of Scientology.

In 1980, a Scientologist named Gerald Armstrong was assigned to organize documents to help Omar Garrison, a non-Scientologist sympathetic to the religion, write a biography of L. Ron Hubbard. They realized that the papers reflected on Hubbard unfavorably. Some of Hubbard’s “accomplishments” were outright fabrications or exaggerations. Garrison stopped working on the project, and Armstrong and his wife left the Church, keeping the revealing documents as insurance against harassment by the Church. The Church sued Armstrong in 1982 for theft of private documents. The Fair Game policy became an issue in court, and Armstrong won the case partly because Judge Paul Breckenridge ruled that Armstrong, as a former Scientologist, knew that Fair Game was practiced, and had good reason to be that the documents would help depend himself from the Church’s harassment. Judge Breckenridge said:

“In addition to violating and abusing its own members civil-rights, the organization over the years with its “Fair Game” doctrine has harassed and abused those persons not in the Church whom it perceives as enemies. The organization clearly is schizophrenic and paranoid, and the bizarre combination seems to be a reflection of its founder LRH. The evidence portrays a man who has been virtually a pathological liar when it comes to his history, background, and achievements … In determining whether the defendant unreasonably invaded Mrs. Hubbard’s privacy, the court is satisfied the invasion was slight, and the reasons and justification for the defendant’s conduct manifest. Defendant was told by Scientology to get an attorney. He was declared an enemy by the Church. He believed, reasonably, that he was subject to ‘fair game.’”
(Judge Paul Breckenridge, Los Angeles Superior Court, June 20, 1984)

THE FAIR GAME POLICY TODAY:

Today many critics of the Church of Scientology are victims of the Fair Game policy. Mark Bunker, a famous Church critic and owner of www.XenuTv.com, has had his house picketed, has been wrongfully arrested, and has been assaulted verbally and physically [including having a hammer swung at him by a Scientologist].