The Truth About Scientology

WISE's Information Letter on Reed Slatkin

TAS : Knowledge Reports : WISE's Information Letter on Reed Slatkin
from a post to the alt.religion.scientology newsgroup:
From: Kristi Wachter 
Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology
Subject: the WISE spin on Reed Slatkin - are you with us or against us?
Date: 14 Jan 2004 23:43:03 -0500
Organization: http://www.scientology-lies.com
Message-ID: <40061a57$1@news2.lightlink.com>


One of my kind sources sent me a fascinating WISE Information Letter. It's 
WISE Info Letter 36, entitled "The WISE Membership - Are You With Us?" 
It's dated December 21, 2003, and marked for distribution to "All WISE 
Members."

It's three pages, 32 paragraphs.

It appears to be intended to spin the Slatkin debacle into a tool to 
pressure WISE members into maintaining their WISE membership.

Paragraph 3 says,

"However, the primary reason WISE was established was to see to it that 
Scientology organizations, their staff and their public, are kept safe 
from individuals involved in unethical business practices."

This strikes me as, at the very least, a shift in focus. WISE has 
historically emphasized the goal of promulgating Hubbard's administrative 
policies as its primary purpose.

International Scientology News Issue 35 says:

"WISE has the purpose of disseminating and getting LRH's administrative 
technology broadly in use in every business, organization, and government 
on the planet."

The 1996 WISE Membership Agreement says:

"A. WISE is a nonprofit religious fellowship organization formed for the 
purpose of uniting all businesses and professional individuals and 
organizations of whatever kind that use the technology of L. Ron Hubbard 
("LRH") for administrative, business and improvement purposes, to promote 
and foster the religious teachings of LRH in society. This includes 
encouragement of adherence to the goals, tenets, doctrines, codes, Creed, 
policies and practices set forth in the Scientology Scriptures and other 
writings of LRH ("the Hubbard Writings") in secular business activities, 
and protocting its members, whether individual or corporate, from 
unethical practices and unfair competition."

Paragraphs 6-8 of the Info Letter appear to describe Reed Slatkin, and 
this section begins a series of implications:

* Most importantly, if you're not with us, you're against us - if you're 
not a WISE member, it indicates unethical business practices.

* As a WISE member, you have a duty to find out whether others you do 
business with are members of WISE.

* WISE will inform members about individuals who are have demonstrated 
being "out-ethics" by failing to be WISE members.

Given that choosing not to join WISE is described as a "clear indicator" 
about one's business ethics, the implication is that if you don't join 
WISE, you're unethical, and WISE will make sure that others know about it.

Here are paragraphs 6-8:

"One individual offered his financial management services to his 'friends' 
as a favor to 'help' them with the management of their hard-earned 
savings. Offering high returns for investment ventures, always ensuring 
that those he was 'assisting' knew he was being generous by allowing them 
to partake in such great opportunities, this person was not participating 
as a real group member and was instead using these lines only to procure 
more 'business.'

"It was later found that this person's activities were fraudulent, with 
the result that his victims have lost huge amounts of money and some are 
being sued to return money they received. This person has since been 
declared a Suppressive Person by the Church of Scientology, in which he 
had been pretending to be a participant, and been subjected to criminal 
justice - which means serving a prison sentence. While this group and 
society in general are now safe from his covert and destructive ways, 
those who placed trust in him and mistakenly viewed him as a friend and 
fellow group member have learned a hard lesson.

"While it is one thing to now know that some individuals who were deceived 
by this criminal saw outpoints and failed to report them to WISE, what was 
worse is that those who dealt with him did not demand to know if he was a 
member of WISE who subscribed to the Code of a WISE Member. Had they 
asked, they would have found that this person refused to be a member of 
WISE."

Paragraphs 9 and 10 note that some of his clients weren't WISE members, 
which shows that those client had false data and "an omitted or altered 
(lower) importance" because they didn't recognize the obvious benefits of 
joining WISE.

Paragraph 13 says that WISE signs up anyone (implying everyone), 
Scientologist and non-Scientologist alike, who uses Hubbard tech "for 
commercial and improvement purposes." It goes on to imply that people who 
don't join choose not to because they don't subscribe to the Code of a 
WISE Member or agree with the conditions of the membership agreement.

Paragraph 14 says that anyone who SAYS they want to "be connected" to 
others who are using Hubbard tech "yet refuses membership in WISE, is in 
actual fact contradicting the wishes of LRH" and quotes HCO PL 10 Sept 90 
III, point 33, describing an ideal scene:

"Businessmen who are public on lines are being put in contact with the 
World Institute of Scientology Enterprises and signed up as members."

Paragraph 17 reads, "One could ask such an individual, 'What other LRH 
policies are you choosing to neglect?'"

Paragraph 19 says that WISE members "safeguard the purity and standard use 
of LRH technology" and improve the ethics of the business world, and 
implies that anyone who wouldn't choose to be part of that must be 
unethical: "For those who choose not to be part of that group, it is a 
clear indicator."

Paragraph 20 reads, "Where individuals with other agendas and counter- or 
other-intentions refuse to come up the scale or who choose not to 
subscribe to such aims, it is important that the true members of this 
elite group are aware of their actions." In other words, if you don't 
join, or if someone at WISE decides you're out-ethics, WISE will tell 
other WISE members that you can't be trusted.

Indeed, Paragraph 21 spells it out: "Therefore, one of the duties of WISE 
is to make known any who choose not to subscribe to the Code of a WISE 
Member or who do not agree to the stipulations as laid out in the WISE 
membership agreement or WISE License."

Ooh, but here's where it gets really interesting, from a completely 
different perspective: "Another duty and fuction of WISE is to rapidly and 
terminatedly handle any business person or business activity found to be 
adversely affecting a Scientology organization. This is done by getting 
the offending persons familiar with the policy regarding such activities, 
getting their agreement to cease any destructive activities, and then 
getting them signed up as a WISE member. Where the individual chooses not 
to cooperate, cease their destructive activities and sign up as a member 
of WISE, WISE will similarly make known such terminals, giving applicable 
factual specifics so as to not create a mystery."

So, while OSA was going after Bob Minton with all their ops and dirty 
tricks, WISE was simultaneously supposed to be introducing him to LRH 
admin tech and regging him to join WISE? I mean, Bob was (and probably 
still is) a "business person" and was definitely adversely affecting 
Scientology organizations.

Back to Reed, though, at what point was WISE supposed to tell everybody to 
stop doing business with Reed? Surely THEY knew at what point Reed stopped 
being a member of WISE - CoS spokesman Aron Mason said Reed left WISE in 
1998. So why didn't WISE notify its members to avoid Reed?

Paragraphs 23-26 describes Non-Member Issues as a form of ethics order 
recording an individual's violation of the WISE membership agreement.

Paragraphs 27-31 basically recap the Info Letter, stating that WISE uses 
Non-Member Issues to tell WISE members about people who have "not agreed 
... to abide by the Code of a WISE Member."

Paragraph 32 is four words long:

"Are you with us?"


My impression of the point of this newsletter is to subtly threaten WISE 
members with a loss of business if they choose not to renew their 
memberships (and whap them with a sense of amorphous guilt for whatever 
counter-intentions must be interfering with their continued association 
with such an ethical group). Nevertheless, I can't help but be amused at 
the blanket nature of WISE's role: "one of the duties of WISE is to make 
known any who choose not to subscribe to the Code of a WISE Member." I 
mean, I certainly don't subscribe to the Code of a WISE Member, as I have 
no intention of applying Hubbard admin tech nor of availing myself of 
Hubbard ethics and justice tech (points 1 and 2 of the WISE Code of 
Ethics). Does that mean WISE is going to tell all their members that I 
refuse to subscribe to the code?


Sheesh.


Many, many thanks to the fabulous person who sent this to me - and thanks 
to that person for pointing out the most interesting bits, making my job 
that much easier.


Wisely,


Kristi
This page was last updated on April 2, 2004 by Kristi Wachter.