L Ron Hubbard wrote many organizational policies describing how their intelligence and fair game network – the Office of Special Affairs – should operate. As a result, ex-Scientologists who leave and turn into critics are often targeted by OSA and shunned into silence, or had their lives destroyed for speaking out.
Scientology has gained a fearful predatory reputation among Scientology critics and never ins over the years which makes Exes and Never Ins ever-watchful for OSA Agents and their dupes.
Is it OSA? Or “OSA!OSA!OSA!”
Michael Shermer, the head of the Skeptics Society, gave a great TED Talk on a concept he called “patternicity” which most Scientology Watchers use to decide if an Ex-Scientologist is actually working under cover for OSA.
Here’s a quote from Shermer’s lecture:
So let’s do a thought experiment.
You are a hominid 3 million years ago walking on the plains of Africa. Your name is Lucy. Okay.
And you hear a rustle in the grass. Is it a dangerous predator? Or is it just the wind?
Your next decision could be the most important one of your life:
If you think that the rustle in the grass is a dangerous predator, and it turns out it’s just the wind, you’ve made an error in cognition, made a Type One error of a false positive, but no harm – you just move away. You’re more cautious, you’re more vigilant.
On the other hand, if you believe that the rustle in the grass is just the wind, and it turns out it’s a dangerous predator, you’re lunch.
You’ve just won a Darwin Award. You’ve been taken out of the gene pool.
So people are rightfully vigilant in watching out for people who appear to be Ex-Scientologists or Never-In critics of Scientology, but who are actually working for OSA.
The problem is that OSA knows this, and uses it in their disinformation campaigns to confuse, and to control you. Accusing a critic of being OSA is one of their time-tested techniques to take out a critic they want discredited and marginalized from his friends and resources.
“OSA!OSA!OSA!” versus the Real Life Operations of the Office of Special Affairs
I have been a target of the Office of Special Affairs since around the year 2000 when I left and started exposing them on the alt.religion.scientology newsgroup as “Poopsy Charmicheal”.
For almost 25 years, on and off, they have sent in private investigators to follow me, have called members of my family to get them to disconnect from me, have sent in people to befriend me, women to be my “girlfriends”, have infiltrated my relationships with clients to libel me and try to destroy my business relationships, and done whatever they could to shudder me into silence.
I have a lot of experience with the real OSA. When I chase away a private investigator sitting outside my house, I don’t write about it. When I catch someone videoing me in my grocery store parking lot, and see anonymous comments appearing on the blog I’m commenting on about what I bought in the store and the clothes I was wearing, I haven’t written about it.
When a client of mine tells me that he has been contacted by a “Jennifer Wilson” and a “David Stein” and a Jeffrey Augustine – all in the same day – and that client sends me the report they emailed him listing out every job I’ve ever held, every client I’ve ever had, every address I’ve lived in – including the address and phone numbers of all my neighbors – I haven’t written about it.
But I will.
And they know it.
That’s why they keep it up. They follow me wherever I go on the internet, and they do whatever they can to try to break up relationships I might create, and to tell everyone I am an “OSA Agent”.
Because they know I’ll never quit.
My Own Mistakes In Thinking “OSA!OSA!OSA!”
I went through a period about 15 years ago, thinking that any one who disagreed with me, anyone who opposed me, anyone who criticized me, was OSA. That’s the first most basic mistake. Everyone has a right to be criticized by others, and to have people disagree with them.
The second most basic mistake is believing that anyone who criticizes critics like Leah Remini, Mike Rinder, and Aaron Smith Levin must be OSA. No. That is actually a carefully crafted OSA campaign that is used to discredit anyone who criticizes other critics.
So How Can You Tell If It’s Really a Tiger in the Grass, Instead of Just the Wind?
An undercover DEA agent will deal drugs, do drugs, steal from people, and murder people. He’ll do whatever a drug dealer does. His pattern of speech, dress and behavior is exactly the same as any drug dealer.
And just like an Undercover DEA Agent behaves, an OSA Agent will say anything and do anything a critic of Scientology will do – including say “XENU”, talk about “body thetans”, criticize David Miscavige, etc.
A concept that Zero Dark Tony learned from Mike McClaughery is “the Protect Button”. Mike taught Tony that the target of any real OSA Operation always includes going after what the critic is trying to protect – his family, his job, his business, his personal secrets.
Scientology’s Protect Button goes both ways
The Church of Scientology is trying to protect 3 things:
- David Miscavige, Mike Rinder, Marty Rathbun and every other senior officer of the Church of Scientology, and keeping them from criminal indictments. That will get them all flipping on each other in a heartbeat, and then the whole house of cards collapses
- Their Tax Exempt Status in the US.
- Their Global Real Estate Empire.
So how can you tell if someone’s NOT an OSA Agent?
He goes after those three things, and does his best to get others to, too.
You can still get it wrong. Scientology’s controlled opposition make it appear they expose illegal acts by David Miscavige and other senior officers of the Church of Scientology. But when you examine what they say and do, you find that someone else exposed it way before they did, or they talk about something that is legally null (like the Lisa McPherson case) or they go after low-level Scientologists which will never threaten the three items they are protecting above.
For instance, they will have an episode on Leah Remini’s Scientology and the Aftermath which appears to go after Scientology’s tax exemption, but is actually the thinnest weak sauce ever – especially considering Mike Rinder was one of the principal architects of Scientology’s tax exemption – and NOTHING NEW WAS EXPOSED during that episode – or ever has been exposed about Scientology’s tax exemption by Mike Rinder.
These fake whistleblowers will complain about all the legal aspects of Scientology’s real estate scam, but never reveal any illegalities that would ever bring it down.
There is a strong and constant disinformation campaign continually run on Scientology-Watchers on the Internet.
I don’t envy a Scientology critic or Never-In who is new to this, and who doesn’t know who is who.
There is no substitute for critical thinking, continually questioning one’s own assumptions, and never adopting a pet hypothesis for what you are being shown on the Internet about Scientology.
You have to learn as much history as you can, trust the facts you’ve gathered, and correct yourself when you’re wrong.
Lots of people are working very hard to make sure you are wrong.
After all, they need to keep David Miscavige out of jail, protect their continual source of tax exempt income, and hold onto the billions of dollars they have amassed in real estate all over the world.
What do you think they will do to protect it?
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