H. Keith Henson
176 Henry St, #45, Brantford, ON N3S 5C8
hkhenson@rogers.com
519-770-0646 519-774-1620 (cell)
May 3, 2004
Albert N. Moskowitz, Chief, Criminal Section
U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division
950 Pennsylvania Ave., NW
Criminal Section, PHB
Washington, DC 20530
Dear Mr. Moskowitz:
This letter is based on the statement on the USDOJ Web page that "Trial attorneys in the Criminal Section frequently prosecute cases of national significance implicating violations of basic constitutional rights."
Three years ago (4/25/01) Nelson Hermilla, Chief FOIA/PA Branch in the Civil Rights Division in the Department of Justice turned down a FOIA request from an anti-Christian cult. “Church” of Scientology lawyer Neil Levin had asked for letters from Ida Camburn. He was turned down on the basis that there was "an ongoing Civil Rights Division investigation." Mr. Levin's letter and Mr. Hermilla's reply, from the electronic version, are Attachment A.
I talked to Mr. Hermilla on Feb 19, 2002 and again on April 9, 2004 because some of Mrs. Camburn's letters concerned violations of my constitutional rights both by Scientology agents directly and by legal system abuses in Riverside County, California.
If the investigation is still open, I request that this letter be forwarded to the appropriate person in the CRIMINAL SECTION of the U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division. If not, I request this complaint be used to open a new case.
My wife and I have been subjected to extortion by a Scientology shell corporation (the Religious Technology Center) over the past two months in my still pending bankruptcy (filed in 1998). Scientology is trying to force me to dismiss the bankruptcy and give them all the money in my bankruptcy estate. RTC is trying to cut out two credit card companies, two lawyers and the Internal Revenue Service. If I agree to this extortion, they will let my wife have some part of the $145,000 she is due from her half of the joint tenancy property. If not, they will continue legal actions until all the money held by the trustee is “administratively insolvent.” If I agree, I expect to be charged with fraud by the other creditors. Carol Wu, the US Trustee in San Jose, (408) 404-7039 and IRS-CID agent Amjad Qaqish (408-817-6910) are familiar with these issues.
This is not a legitimate use of the courts. This anti-Christian cult is using the courts as a weapon--as they have in many previous cases. The courts seem to be incapable of preventing themselves from being abused this way by those who are willing to spend millions using the courts as weapons against individuals.
In the Lisa McPherson wrongful death case against Scientology (www.lisamcpherson.org) certain settlement notes dated March 28, 2002 were mentioned in court testimony. Judge Schaeffer forced Scientology’s lawyers to file the notes as Exhibits 185 and 191. In the context of $35 million of expenses being charged to the now silenced Scientology critic Bob Minton, the notes by Mr. Rosen under my name are: “we’ve paid $1,050,000” and “will have to pay $350,000” (Attachment B). The full set of exhibits can be found here and here.
They were also introduced as exhibits R and S in Judge Whyte's court during hearings late in 2002. The document is located at: http://www.operatingthetan.com/nots56.htm. Given that this organization’s unique tax-exempt status, it would be most interesting for investigators or a Grand Jury to ask for an accounting of what a tax-exempt organization did to spend $1.4 million in non-charitable (legal?) expenses attacking an individual.
As can be seen from the above, Scientology is not primarily concerned with collecting a judgment through the bankruptcy court (spending many times any possible recovery is not a rational way to collect a debt.) Scientology opposed the sale of our house for a year in an attempt to get the mortgage foreclosed, meaning no money would go to them, my wife or me. After failing to block the sale in bankruptcy court, they then obtained a highly irregular last minute order after 6 pm from a Federal Judge blocking the sale, but this did not work because their lawyers failed to notify the escrow company. The relevant portion of the motion objecting to this trick is enclosed as Attachment C, and the full motion can be found here.
The rest of this complaint is background information to try to prevent the preceding factual information from sounding so much like a paranoid rant. There is extensive documentation for everything I say here and much more can be documented.
Scientology’s corrupt influence on the courts and legal system goes back decades. The most famous case was the one in which they framed Paulette Cooper, author of The Scandal of Scientology. The U.S. Attorney in New York was fooled into indicting her for bomb threats Scientology claimed to have received from Cooper. Scientology’s detailed records of this operation including the theft of Cooper’s stationery and fingerprints for fabricating the threat letters were uncovered when the FBI raided Scientology offices in 1977. Criminal charges against Scientology or Scientology agents for framing Ms Cooper were never filed though there is no question about the facts. A portion of Ms Cooper’s Harassment Diary, one that resonates with my own experience believing that telling the truth would exonerate me, is included as Attachment C. (The Cooper story details may be found here.)
The US Federal courts are used by Scientology to abuse those they perceive as enemies. One case was described in an appeal ruling:
The facts are as follows: On January 20, 1993, the special master awarded attorneys fees, first under the Lanham Act finding the case exceptional because the plaintiffs "have abused the federal court system by using it, inter alia, to destroy their opponents, rather than to resolve an actual dispute over trademark law or any other legal matter."
A portion of the appeal ruling relating to the “Church’s” claim that its “scriptures” are trademarked is enclosed as Attachment D. Having been barred from claiming their “economically valuable” scriptures as trademarked, they proceeded to successfully sue me for copyright instead, thus bankrupting me for blowing the whistle on their dangerous and illegal instructions for medical practice.
Where Scientology is concerned, the Riverside courts, indeed much of the California legal system, is corruptly influenced. A few examples are Graham Berry experiences, the attempt to frame Tom Klemesrud for murder, and Deputy DA Tom Gage filing false court records in Hemet, California for Scientology.
Scientology’s abuses in the Berry cases were submitted to the Justice Department.
The Los Angeles Police Department did investigate Scientology’s lawyer’s suborning of perjury in cases against Mr. Berry and recommended prosecution. A portion of the deposition of Donald Wager, the attorney involved, is included as Attachment F (the whole deposition is here). An arrow indicated Mr. Wager’s recollection that “I think it was my money” with which he paid witness Apodaca. Note also the judge’s supposition “for purpose of argument that somebody wants to get someone and they go out suborning perjury . . . “ on page 11 of this portion.
After a nearly year long investigation, the Los Angeles district attorney declined prosecution, telling the investigators it was for “political reasons.” It would be interesting for the Justice Department to attempt to obtain a copy of the police recommendation for prosecution since Scientology is known world wide for stealing government records.
In 1995, the owner of a “hobby bulletin board system” operating out of his apartment in Hollywood received demands to cut off services to a subscriber, an ex-scientologist who was blowing the whistle on the “Church” by authenticating documents on the net. When Tom Klemesrud, the system operator, didn’t comply, agents of Scientology conducted a bizarre operation involving a woman Klemesrud referred to as “Miss Blood” because she spread blood in the bathroom and bedroom of his apartment. Klemesrud’s bewildered account of his experience is excerpted here as Attachment G. Note that the attorney who incriminated himself as suborning testimony in the Berry v Hurtado case is the same one who represented (“Miss Blood”) Linda Woolard, and the detective mentioned (Eugene Ingram) is the same.
In a posting in 2002, I attempted to resolve the convoluted tale into a more coherent account of an attempt to frame Klemesrud for murder. Subsequent to this article Mr. Klemesrud signed a declaration (Attachment H) that he is now sure he was dosed with chloral hydrate the night of the “blood attack.” Also subsequent to this summary article, Scientology insider Dan Garvin wrote a detailed account about the panic inside Scientology management when they thought their attempt to frame Mr. Klemesrud for murder might have been exposed. Garvin’s account is rife with the deliberately incomprehensible jargon invented by the cult’s science-fiction-writer founder, but is here.
From the initial and subsequent actions of the police, some LAPD officers probably knew what had happened in the Scientology agents’ attempt to frame Mr. Klemesrud, including knowing about dosing him with chloral hydrate--a Schedule 4 drug. This is a serious crime; sentencing guidelines provide for up to 40 years of prison time for dosing someone with a Schedule 4 drug in the course of committing another crime. Unless it was an accident, someone with police authority tried to hush up the story by deleting the Police 911 tape (the transcript was from the backup Fire Department tape). Others (or the same) LAPD officers subsequently acted for this dangerous cult by forcing email account information from the California Institute of Technology.
September 1, 2000 Deputy District Attorney Tom Gage (Riverside Country) filed an indictment against me with the County Court in Hemet, California, swearing in the act of filing that I had been served by mail. His statement is provably false (and a violation of Section 132 of the California Penal code) because the copy that should have been mailed was handed to me in court on September 15, 2000. It has never been folded for mailing.
There is convincing circumstantial evidence that withholding of the notice was an attempt to entrap me on “failure to appear” charges. The evidence is that Mr. Gage and “Church” of Scientology lawyers Kendrick Moxon and Ava Paquette conspired (a violation of Section 182 of the Penal Code) to contrive a situation that required me to be in a far-away videotaped deposition at the same time as the arraignment.
Kendrick Moxon had been set to depose me the same time in the Hurtado case despite the fact that I had no knowledge of it. Moxon has a history of “ . . . criminal activity, attempted cover-ups and obstruction of justice. The US government subsequently prosecuted 11 top officials of Scientology and named Moxon as an unindicted co-conspirator,” according to former scientologist Vicki Aznaran, formerly a top official in the “Church.” The part of her declaration in Church of Scientology International, Plaintiff, vs. Steven Fishman and Uwe Geertz Defendants is Attachment J.
Using the key words “Tom Gage” “Section 132” Secor (name of a deputy in the Sheriff’s department) in the Google search engine will provide details about my failed attempts to get this corruption investigated. There is, according to Riverside county law enforcement officials, no mechanism to report such crimes.
There also does not seem to be a mechanism to report assaults in Hemet, California, even with videotape and witness declarations of a car being driven by a “Church” of Scientology staff member right at me in a parking lot. (My wife witnessed this attack.) An unsigned copy of my declaration is Attachment I, but all three declarations are reproduced here. (Our identification of the attacker as a former LAPD officer appears to have been the result of a deliberate misidentification by his partner in harassment, Edwin Richardson. No attempt has been made by the police to discover the driver’s real identity.)
I was convicted in April 2001 of "interfering with a religion" (Cal Penal Code 422.6.) This law provides a specific exemption for constitutionally protected speech in Section (c) that was ignored by Judge Wallersheim. (It had been a major concern for Judge Walker whom Riverside Deputy DA Deputy DA Robert K. Schwarz forced to recuse himself because he knew a prosecution witness.) The substance of the testimony at trial was about protected speech, picketing and posting on the Internet.
From the judge’s subsequent actions of falsifying and unofficial sealing of important parts of the record, and his admission at the end of the trial of knowing Scientology lawyer Eliot Abelson (a former Gambino family lawyer) I now believe the court was corrupt. [redacted], the court reporter--909-955-xxxx--has indicated to me her desire to speak to law enforcement about her observations of what was done to the record during and after the trial.
I was forbidden by motions in limine to testify or to have witnesses say anything of substance in my defense in the trial. I flew a witness in from Florida to testify on my behalf in Hemet, but a motion in limine excluded his testimony, and his damning exhibits which where admitted were subsequently “lost” by the Court from the appeal record. There is a complete online record about the motions made at the time. Many attempts to bring these matters to the attention of the California Attorney General failed. This may be why:
After I was convicted, my parole officer, Garry Davis, told me that my sentence was to be harsh (a year in the local jail with no possibility of bail during appeal) because of the cult’s local political influence in the county.
Given a dawning realization of just how much influence the “Church” of Scientology had over the local courts, the district attorney’s office, law enforcement, and--most likely--the local jail, I considered it possible that I would be killed while in custody, as had been previously threatened. (Because of my medical problems it would not be hard to do.) I decided to find out if I could seek refugee status in Canada.
After I had made that decision, Scientology agent “Gwen Summerfield” intimated in a public Internet statement May 17, 2001 that the cult had indeed intended for me to be killed in the Riverside jail. This was in a public posting here:
I am not the only person who holds such opinions about the “Church” of Scientology; and the problem goes well beyond the civil rights abuses in my situation. Former scientologist Lawrence Wollersheim, who collected $8.7 million from the “Church” after 22 years of litigation, wrote:
“Scientology is considered one of most brutal and worst abusers of the legal system and the legal process when individuals dare to speak against its use of coercive psychological systems or its other abuses by filing lawsuits or initiating investigations.
“Joe Yanni [correct spelling Yanny] was a key attorney working for Scientology until 1987. He defected from the Scientology's legal team when he says he was asked to help church officials steal medical records to blackmail Charlie O'Rielly, the plaintiff's attorney in Wollersheim v. Scientology.
“From his previous working experience inside Scientology, Joe Yanni now believes the church ‘has so subverted the justice and judicial system that it should be barred from seeking equity in any court.’
“Since Yanni quit representing the church, he has been the target of death threats, burglaries, lawsuits and other harassment.
“Scientology's legal policies are designed to overwhelm its government and nongovernment adversaries in onerous costs, impossible workloads and deliberately created confusion.” (Excerpt from http://www.factnet.org/Scientology/colsec.htm?FACTNet.)
Arnold Lerma, a former scientology official who considers himself “under house arrest” in Washington, D.C., because Judge Brinkema will not allow the “Church” to falsely prosecute him there, has Webbed Yanny’s declaration in its entirety at: http://www.lermanet.com/cos/yanny.html.
Further information about Wollersheim’s case is at http://www.holysmoke.org/cos/docs/ms-word-doc----lawrence-wollersheim-kakita.doc, Wollersheim’s “Reply to Scientology's Complaint to Set Aside Judgment and for Equitable Relief.” An excerpt from this 1993 document that still applies today to the “Church’s” abuse of the justice system is included as Attachment K. All the tactics mentioned in this excerpt--and more--have been used against me in the 8 years the cult has targeted me as an “enemy.”
I believe it is in the interest of the post 9/11 Justice Department to forcefully deal with this fanatical cult and its corrupting influences on government agencies from local district attorneys to the IRS. It is obvious to anyone looking into the matter that the “Church” used coercive tactics to obtain their illegal “chosen people” status (according to the St. Petersburg Times)with the IRS.
"It sets a dangerous precedent because you have a particular religion [Scientology] being favored by the IRS," Michael Sklar (plaintiff in a Scientology related discrimination case against the IRS). (And it cost the US Taxpayers over a billion dollars.)
The Los Angeles Daily News covered the story at Attachment L.
It would be in the government’s interest to join this suit against the IRS, or file the one suggested by Judge Silverman: “If the IRS does, in fact, give preferential treatment to members of the Church of Scientology -- allowing them a special right to claim deductions that are contrary to law and rightly disallowed to everybody else -- then the proper course of action is a lawsuit to put a stop to that policy.”
Sklar’s appeal ruling is reproduced in its entirety here.
This ugly situation laid out above is due in part to the unwillingness of law enforcement to investigate “a religion.” As one police officer put it, “nobody wants to lift the tail of a skunk.” In the rare case where complaint is made, such as when Scientology lawyers suborned perjury in Los Angeles, police recommendations for prosecution are not accepted for “political reasons.” If that does not succeed, the cult will use every measure: overwhelming litigation, blackmail, false prosecution on drug charges, drugs, and harassment of families (to give a short list) to derail both civil and criminal cases against them.
As an example, [Redacted] discovered that the “Church” was running a name-changing scheme through a single lawyer to keep foreign scientologists in the US beyond the expiration of their visas. He provided what he had found (127 name-change documents copied from court records) to the INS. (The INS agents told him that someone doing a legal name change was effectively lost to the INS.) After an initial investigation nothing happened for about a year. When [Redacted] asked about it and mentioned taking the story to the press if they were not going to do anything, he was threatened with “obstruction of justice” charges if he made his knowledge public. It has now been over three years since his initial report to the INS.
Successful prosecution against Scientology will have to start with a court order to put all of their assets in the hands of a court appointed receiver. That is the only way to prevent the Scientology from spending millions of dollars harassing investigators and influencing the judge’s social contacts using private investigators.
Along these lines, interviews of Jesse Prince, a former top Scientology official by Wollersheim are enlightening. The interviews are reproduced at here, and the excerpt in Attachment M refers to the fact that the cult’s initial lawsuit against me was most likely fraudulent, since the copyright they claimed is not owned by them.
Cults from the “Church” of Scientology to Jim Jones’ Peoples Temple to Usama Bin Laden’s Al Qaida are a serious challenge for governments. This is because intense involvement and social rewards reorient the members’ primary allegiance to the cult. It is also because few governments will undertake the necessary action--as Greece and Germany have--to outlaw a “religious” cult or limit its activities. Nevertheless, the “Church” of Scientology is not recognized as a religious organization in most parts of the world.
The failure of the US government to deal with Scientology (and other cults) damages the reputation of the US legal system and by extension the federal government at a bad time in history. This will only get worse, because the Internet remembers failures virtually forever. There are only 40,000 to 50,000 Scientologists in the US and active members have declined by perhaps a third since 1995, yet their corrupting political influence remains undiminished.
To repeat my request, I am asking the Civil Rights Criminal Section of the Justice Department to open an investigation of the current and past civil rights violations against me as outlined in this letter if there is not such an investigation already open.
I don’t believe there is anything in this complaint that is not already public. However, I will hold off ten days from mailing the complaint before making it public. If you wish me to hold off making this letter public for a longer time, please let me know.
Respectfully submitted,
H. Keith Henson
cc Electronic linked version (no attachments) to [redacted] by email