Radio Broadcast

Part Seven

Transcript:

JOHN: This is the John & Ken Show, welcome! How are you doing? You wanna e-mail us, it’s John-Ken@primenet.com, John-Ken@primenet.com. You’ve heard about the Church of Scientology, controversial church. A lot of celebrities belong, including John Travolta, Kirstie Alley, Lisa Marie Presley. And there are supposedly 9 million people in this church, and it’s based on--based on the writings and the thoughts of L. Ron Hubbard, a science-fiction writer. He founded it in 1954 in L.A. He wrote a book, "Dianetics", that was a big bestseller. Uh, that was the basis of his philosophy. Uh, and the philosophy starts out with the idea that traumatic memories and past lives could be cleared with church counseling.

KEN: Past lives?

JOHN: That’s what the Associated Press says here.

KEN: Right.

JOHN: I--the Church of Scientology has always been a kind of vague thing--kind of vague to me--

KEN: I don’t really know a lot, either--

JOHN: They’re--they’re always in the headlines because there’s people who hate it, who say it’s not a religion, that it’s a cult.

KEN: Aren’t the Germans really upset over the Church of Scientology?

JOHN: I believe the Germans have, have banned, uh, the church from Germany, uh, and it’s such an ugly battle that John Travolta appealed directly to the Clinton administration to try to use some diplomatic pressure to get the Germans to back off.

KEN: Hmm.

JOHN: And, and, and, and the IRS was at war with the Church of Scientology for years, claiming that it’s not really a church so it shouldn’t have a tax exemption; eventually it got the tax exemption. Uh, the latest, uh, incident that’s gotten--that’s gotten more press is--it actually happened in 1995, a woman named Lisa McPherson, who was a Scientologist that died in the Clearwater, Florida area. Um, she, she--critics say that she was forced to stay for 17 days at a Scientology hotel against her will. And the guy, uh, that we’re gonna talk to, Robert Minton, is very suspicious of the way Lisa McPherson died.

KEN: He’s been on a three-year campaign to what he calls expose the church. He’s actually used more than $2 million of his own money to support church enemies, and he has an offer of $360,000 as a reward for information that would revoke their tax-exempt status, and now he faces a trial.

JOHN: Oh, he’s conducted a war against the Church of Scientology, and it--and it’s gotten ugly because they, uh--Scientologists, they fight back, they hire private detectives to investigate you. They have passed out flyers denouncing him, rallying outside his home in New Hampshire. It got to the point where, uh, where Robert Minton fired shots into the air trying to disperse the protesters. Um, we’re gonna--

KEN: More recently he got into a scuffle outside of a church with a member of the Church of Scientology and it resulted in assault charges against Minton.

JOHN: So we’re gonna have him on here because I--we’re curious, why--why is a millionaire who has no direct connection to the church suddenly declared war on the church, uh, against people who are basically exercising their right to worship? It may--it may not be a conventional, uh, church along the lines of Catholicism or Judaism or Protestantism, but, you know, it’s their church, so, you know, what’s his beef here? Why is he getting involved? Robert Minton, welcome to the John & Ken Show.

BOB MINTON: John and Ken, it’s really nice to be here and you guys are really on top of this whole situation, it sounds like.

JOHN: Well, I’m basing, uh, what we said on, uh, newspaper reports that we have, and, um, my first question is just to rephrase what I just said--you’re a millionaire, you got your life, you’re successful, why are you taking on a war with the Church of Scientology? What do you care what they do?

BOB MINTON: Well, it’s--my, my beef with Scientology has always been a free speech issue. And that is that anybody has a right to criticize policies of the Church of Scientology and practices of Scientology. But Scientology labels everybody who, who criticizes them a criminal, and therefore, you or myself don’t have the right to speak out against the Church of Scientology’s policies. And I think that’s completely wrong--

JOHN: Oh, what’s--

BOB MINTON: --in a democratic society.

JOHN: All right, wait a second. So you criticize them, then they criticize you and call you a criminal. Isn’t that--that’s within their free speech, too, isn’t it?

BOB MINTON: Well, it is, but of course everybody who criticizes them is a criminal, whether you’ve got criminal background or not.

JOHN: Well, so they call you a criminal. How does that really impact you? Is that some sort of slander you can’t live with?

BOB MINTON: Well, no, I can live with it, but, um, I’m just talking about the paranoia of this organization. You know, when I was first interviewed a little over a year ago by the New York Times, the New York Times was told that I was an agent of the German government funneling money in the United States to destroy the Church of Scientology. I mean, this is the level of paranoia that these guys are operating--

JOHN: Well, you didn’t explain to me what ignited you. I mean, what exactly--

KEN: What started all this? Because you were not a member, ever, of the church.

BOB MINTON: I’ve never been a member, but back in, um, January of 1995, I was a member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation up in San Francisco, which is a sort of Internet advocacy free speech group, and they commented on the fact that the Church of Scientology tried to illegally cancel a newsgroup on the Internet. Now--

JOHN: And this newsgroup was critical of the church.

BOB MINTON: Well, this newsgroup was the first forum that was ever created for former Scientologists to get together and talk about the--the hell that they went through while they were inside the Church of Scientology.

JOHN: And, and how did the Scientologists try to shut down the newsgroup?

BOB MINTON: Well, they had--they had an attorney who works for them named Helena Kobrin issue an illegal message through the Internet to pretend to cancel this newsgroup as though she were some sort of Usenet administrator, which she wasn’t. It was just a, a, an illegal attempt and it was--my question at that time was, "What does this organization have to hide that is so bad that they’ve gotta curtail, try to curtail free speech on the Internet. And now, you know, Scientology has declared an all-out war on the Internet and Scientology is now sort of facing their own high-tech lynching on the Internet as a result of having declared this war.

JOHN: Okay, all right, so you and your group were upset that, uh, Scientology tried to--

BOB MINTON: There wasn’t any group here.

JOHN: Well, you said you represented--

KEN The organization you’re with represented free speech.

BOB MINTON: Oh, yes. Okay, fine--

JOHN: But you felt that they were interfering with Internet free speech. Beyond that issue, though, you have spent $2 million over the last three years fighting the Church of Scientology.

BOB MINTON: That’s right. Well, most of that money has been spent in the last two years.

JOHN: Okay. So how did it go from a dispute over, you know, free speech on this Internet newsgroup into this wide-ranging attack that you’ve launched against the church?

BOB MINTON: Well, in an attempt to find out more about Scientology, I started reading about the experiences of people who’d actually been in the organization and read plenty of the news media that was available, and I was absolutely appalled at the, the way this organization destroyed people’s lives.

JOHN: How, how--now, by the way, I ought to point out that we invited some people from the Church of Scientology to be on, and they backed out at the last minute, but they’re free to call in and reply to anything that they, you know, want to abut.

BOB MINTON: Right.

JOHN: I’m not taking any sides here because I don’t know too much about the church. I’m, I’m, you know, I’m interested in what got you so crazy about it. So you said, they, they--they did what to people?

BOB MINTON: Well, there is--I’ve traveled all over the United States and I’ve met a lot of former Scientologists, and, and it’s, it’s sort of like the--a trail of tears across the United States, people whose lives have been shattered, the result of having spent, you know, years and years in Scientology--

JOHN: How so?

BOB MINTON: Well, well, one of the key things, you--there’s a couple up in Seattle named Vaughn and Stacy Young who, whose whole life was basically under attack by Scientology. They, they tried to close down a, a cat rescue sanctuary that they had, um, by complaining to neighbors and essentially trying to destroy their life. And--

JOHN: Why?

BOB MINTON: --you know, they ended up in litigation with Scientology. Scientology has constantly tried to--

JOHN: Well, now, wait, what did these two former Scientologists do to upset the church?

BOB MINTON: They spoke out against Scientology--

JOHN: Okay. So when people speak out against Scientology, what is the largest objection they seem to voice?

KEN: How could you summarize it for us?

BOB MINTON: Well, basically, what a fraud Scientology is, and--

KEN: Fraud.

JOHN: Well, how is it a fraud? I mean, aren’t all religions you could attack as frauds?

BOB MINTON: Well--

JOHN: But you choose not to believe any more whatever their tenets or faith is or whatever their belief is--

BOB MINTON: Yes, well Scientology is a particularly, um, uh, bad fraud in the sense that you have to spend about $190,000 or $200,000 before you find out the central tenet of Scientology. And at this point, you know, you have been subjected to so much mind control techniques within the Church of Scientology that you would believe anything. And before you can hear--

JOHN: I guess, you know, I guess I’m not--I guess I’m not, I’m personally not sympathetic for people like that. If somebody wants to turn over that amount of money and allow their minds to be scrambled in that way, it’s like, well, if that’s what you want to do with your life, go right ahead.

BOB MINTON: Well, the--the thing about it, though, is that Scientology portrays itself as being this wonderful, uh, religion that rescues people and frees people’s spirits so that they can become, you know, a higher level of spiritual being, where in fact--

JOHN: Well, some peop--some public people are happy about it. I mean, Travolta, Kirstie Alley, Lisa Marie Presley, they’re--

BOB MINTON: Well--

JOHN: --they’re publicly campaigning for it. And you think they’re brainwashed?

BOB MINTON: Travolta is a--is totally, uh, hooked on this. Kirstie Alley, you know, you might have seen her on "20/20" the other night; the woman is, you know, using the typical Scientology line that their, uh, detective agency within Scientology uses, that if anybody goes after you or criticizes you, they’re a criminal, you’ve gotta--you’ve gotta find their crimes, you’ve gotta go after them, you’ve gotta--

JOHN: All right--

BOB MINTON: --destroy them--

JOHN: So this is the big difference between, uh, somebody who’s a crackpot Christian and a crackpot Scientologist is that the Scientologists, you say, fight back and try to destroy their critics.

BOB MINTON: They--they not only fight back and try to destroy their critics, they, they completely try to subvert the will of those within Scientology so that they become basically automatons who--or ondroids, as they’re called--in Scientology--

JOHN: Well, no, I--that’s why I want to get just specific because, you know, everybody who has a strong belief in any church is brainwashed to a certain extent, usually by their parents when they’re growing up. You know, most people--

KEN: Well, religion is indoctrination--

JOHN: Yeah, most people--

KEN: --more thoroughly.

JOHN: --most people are the religion that they grew up with--

BOB MINTON: Yeah--

JOHN: --you know, every Catholic out there would have been a Jew if they grew up Jewish and vice versa. So everybody’s brainwashed from childhood to some extent.

BOB MINTON: Yes.

JOHN: So that’s why I’m wondering what the difference between the, the brainwashing of a Scientologist compared to the brainwashing of anybody else. We’re with Mr. Robert Minton. We’ll be back with more. He’s had a three-year battle going with the Church of Scientology in which he spent $2 million of his own money to support church enemies who he said are just harassed and bothered when they speak out against the church. When we come back, we’ll talk specifically about the Lisa McPherson case.

[COMMERCIAL BREAK]

JOHN: This is "The John & Ken Show" with Robert Minton, who has spent three years and $2 million fighting the Church of Scientology, claiming that he can’t criticize the church before they come slashing back at you, making your life miserable and, uh, some colorful stories we gotta get into. We’re also gonna have somebody from the Church of Scientology on at the bottom of the hour. Robert, let me tell--you’re, you’re really into this Lisa McPherson case. Let me read, uh, to everybody what we got from the Associated Press.

BOB MINTON: Okay--

JOHN: She’s a Scientologist who died near Clearwater, Florida in 1995 after a 17-day stay at a Scientology hotel allegedly against her will. McPherson died of a blood clot caused by dehydration and bed rest according to the medical examiner’s report, and last month the Church of Scientology was charged with abuse or neglect of a disabled adult, unauthorized practice of medicine. They had pleaded innocent, no trial has been, uh, set, and you’re quoted in the AP story as saying that Lisa’s incarceration was part of a punishment procedure designed to correct someone’s mental instability.

BOB MINTON: That’s absolutely correct. I mean, this happens all the time in the Church of Scientology now, when people start to question their, their belief in Scientology, Scientology thinks they’re mentally aberrated, as they call it. And they get--they get into this situation where they have to be isolated in order to, uh, correct this mental aberration that, that Scientology thinks has occurred in their mind because they’re rejecting Scientology.

JOHN: Well, Robert, nobody has ever left the Church of Scientology and not been stalked, bothered, never happens?

BOB MINTON: Uh, any--nobody who’s ever spoken out against the practices inside Scientology has been left alone. And--

JOHN: Well, you don’t know that for sure--

BOB MINTON: --as a result,--

JOHN: How do you, how do you--you don’t know that for sure, either.

BOB MINTON: Well, I don’t, you know--100% for sure, no, I can’t say that. But anybody who criticizes Scientology is attacked.

JOHN: All right, what have--what have they done to you? I mean, you ended up firing shots into the air to disperse Scientology protesters. What was that story about?

BOB MINTON: Well, let me--let me just mention a couple of things. You know, Scientology--when I was a, when I was a teenager, I was put into a mental institution after my father and mother broke up and I had a lot of problems with my father, you know, for four days. The Scientologists believe that during that four-day stay in a mental institution, that I was implanted with a command, a secret command by the American Psychiatric Association [starts laughing] to destroy Scientology. They think this is what this is all about now--

JOHN: And--who did they tell this to?

BOB MINTON: I--[chuckling] I’ve got it on videotape from this incident in front of the Church of Scientology. You know, they’re saying, "He’s a PDH case"--PDH is an internal Scientology phrase for this.

JOHN: All right, all right, but when you--you come out with a gun and you start firing shots over their head, that plays into [starts chuckling]

BOB MINTON: You’re right, well--

JOHN: --some of those--

BOB MINTON: Look, you’ve gotta understand, these guys were on my property, they trespassed, I told them to get off and they did. What they do, they went down the road, got their car and came back and drove onto my property then, 200 feet away up in the field next to my barn. I wasn’t kidding when I told them to get off. You gotta understand, this is an organization who says that their enemies should be destroyed. I have been declared their public enemy number one. You know, I wanted them to know that I wasn’t fooling around--

JOHN: All right--

BOB MINTON: --I want them off my property.

JOHN: Well, I--all right. Since they apply so much pressure,--

BOB MINTON: Yeah--

JOHN: Why, why not back off and go away? I mean, if, if--you know, people want to get into Scientology and it turns out badly for them, isn’t it their--isn’t that their business?

BOB MINTON: It, it is their business, but, you know, I mean at the end of the day, I mean, somebody has a responsibility to try to do something about this. I, fortunately, was blessed with enough money by doing some pretty good in business to have the funds to help people fight these guys.

JOHN: You--is it true you were in a mental institution yourself?

BOB MINTON: Well, as I said, for those four days, when I was a teenager, um, you know, my father, he--he just didn’t know how to deal with me after we got into, uh, an argument one night and--

JOHN: And he--and put you in the institution.

BOB MINTON: Yeah.

JOHN: My parents threatened to do that to me once, I can, I can understand that. [Ken starts chuckling]

BOB MINTON: Well, it wasn’t a very pleasant thing.

JOHN: Well, we have 30 seconds. Briefly, what--what do you think they did to Lisa McPherson in Clearwater?

BOB MINTON: They held her against her will based on their own logs. You know, they had people watch her 24 hours a day who would not--who were ordered not to talk to her. Those people decided not to trust their own judgment. They saw this woman--

JOHN: And she died of a blood clot. I mean--

BOB MINTON: But this woman lost 40 some-odd pounds over the 17 days. They had to force-feed her. They put her on medication to make her sleep all the time. And yet the--she would fight back against them. She wanted to get out of that place and they wouldn’t let her. And--

JOHN: All right, hang on--

KEN: We’re gonna have somebody from the Church of Scientology coming up next when we return.

JOHN: And more of Robert Minton, who has declared war on that church. This is "The John & Ken Show".

[COMMERCIAL BREAK]

JOHN: This is "The John & Ken Show". Uh, we’ve been talking with Robert Minton, who has, uh, is a millionaire, and he has spent $2 million over the last three years fighting the Church of Scientology claiming that no one is ever allowed to criticize the church without having their lives invaded and, uh, and being attacked, uh, harassed, and he’s defending, I guess, the First, uh, Amendment freedom of speech rights that people should have to criticize the church. And he claims that the Church of Scientology conducts vicious campaigns against ex-members and critics.

KEN: The particular case he talks about and we talked about was Lisa McPherson, who died in 1995 after a 17-day stay at a Scientology hotel. Her death is apparently from a blood clot caused by dehydration and bed rest, and he felt that she was incarcerated by Scientologists.

JOHN: Well, uh, well, we got the Church of Scientology with a representative here on the line, Reverend John Carmichael of New York. Welcome to "The John & Ken Show".

JOHN CARMICHAEL: All right, thank you very much. Listen, lin--let me just start right off. I’ve heard Robert Minton’s rap a number of times. Um, this guy seems to think that just because he can get on a, a radio show and he’s got millions of dollars, he can say whatever he’d like. For instance, the Church of Scientology, um, has its own history and it’s a history of defending, uh, the rights of people. Um, we defended the rights of blacks in South Africa at a time when it was a dangerous thing to do. Uh, we published--

JOHN: Oh, that’s--

JOHN CARMICHAEL: --informational material and so forth--

JOHN: --that’s getting off--that’s getting off the track--

JOHN CARMICHAEL: --and he has no such--he has no such history at all.

JOHN: Well, that’s getting off the track. Um, it, um--what we’re talking about, he’s claiming that--uh, I’ve seen these charges before. He’s not the first or the only guy to say this, that if an ex-member speaks again--speaks out against the church, their lives become a living hell, and that there’s something called--what’s the phrase that he used?--the Fair Game rule you guys have.

JOHN CARMICHAEL: You know, he has--he has the, uh, uh--he can say these things, um, but factually, people leave the church when they want to. And the people that he’s talking about, uh, the people that he’s paid money to, the people whose work he support aren’t people who have their free speech threatened. Their free speech wasn’t threatened at all. These are people who are on the Internet who are violating church copyrights. And when these people took their case to court, the Church of Scientology said, "Hey! We didn’t threaten their free speech!" And a judge said, "You know, you’re right." And one of them, Keith Henson, ended up paying $75,000--

JOHN: What is the chur--

JOHN CARMICHAEL: --for what he’d done--

JOHN: What is the church--

JOHN CARMICHAEL: I was talking about the court. The court defines this question. These people made their plea in front of the court--

JOHN: All right--

JOHN CARMICHAEL: --and they’ve accepted it--

JOHN: What is the church about? What is the--because Ken and I don’t know a whole lot about the church. You guys have a God that you believe in? Is it set up, uh, like, uh, the regular Christian churches at all?

JOHN CARMICHAEL: Um, let me--let me explain about that. Um, Scientology is an applied religious philosophy, that is to say the philosophy people use. And there are literally millions of people around the world who have used the philosophy of L. Ron Hubbard, who founded Dianetics and Scientology, to improve their lives, to become happier, um, to regain their basic self-respect, to succeed in the things they’re trying to succeed in.

JOHN: So it’s not a belief in a deity.

JOHN CARMICHAEL: No, not per se. So that a person of any religion--a Christian, a Jew, a Muslim--can also be part of Scientology and use Scientology’s techniques to come to a spiritual awareness--

JOHN: So you can develop--

JOHN CARMICHAEL: --and to help--and to help their families, help the people around them, succeed in what they--as I say, in the things--

JOHN: So you can go to a--you can go to a Catholic church or Episcopal church on Sunday and you can still be a Scientologist and, and, uh, go through the process of absorbing the philosophy.

JOHN CARMICHAEL: Exactly. Because Scientology is about what you--it’s about techniques that people can use--

JOHN: Well, why--

JOHN CARMICHAEL: --for themselves to apply.

JOHN: Why, why is your organization always seems to be under attack from somebody or other. And it’s always the same--

KEN: --an entire German government--

JOHN: I mean, the German--they, they call you a cult, that you use, you know, psychological practices--

JOHN CARMICHAEL: Well, let me answer--

JOHN: --to gain mind control on people. Why, why does this keep coming up?

JOHN: Uh, you know, I think it’s a matter of cultural lag. The fact is that Scientology, um, is--is maybe ahead of its time, you know? When L. Ron Hubbard talked about Dianetics and Scien--Dianetics in his first book, Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, he was talking to people who were, um, undergoing--in 1950, things were pretty regimented. And he was here saying that you can become something more, that you can take control of your own life, that you don’t need psychiatry, that you don’t need drugs, that you don’t need everybody to tell you what to do. Scientology doesn’t try to tell people, "Here is your problem, here is what you should do, here’s what’s wrong with you." Scientology and Dianetics help people become more able--

JOHN: Okay, what--

JOHN CARMICHAEL: --to solve their own problems.

JOHN: All right, what can you tell us about Lisa McPherson, the woman who died in 1995?

JOHN CARMICHAEL: Well, you know, I’m not gonna comment too much because it’s in the courts, but I’ll tell you this--Bob Minton never knew this girl. Bob Minton, if he had seen this woman when she was alive, would have said sort of--the same sort of obscene things that he does to Scientologists when he demonstrates outside the church, as a regular thing. You know, that’s--the thing that really steams me about Minton is his hypocrisy. You know, he comes on, he--and he starts talking about, um, what a family man, what a crusade he’s on and so forth. The fact is, here--here’s a guy who’s basically unstable, who’s been violent, who beat up his former wife, who shot a shotgun at two Scientologists peacefully, um, um--

JOHN: All right, let me ask--let me ask you something. Hold on. I don’t understand, why, uh, why do you have protesters around his house? He criticizes the church, and then there’s Scientologists around his house, and then he takes a gun out and starts firing shots to, to get ‘em away. How, what, what, what--I mean, all churches have their critics; why not let’s--let him say whatever he wants to say and, you know, why, why hire protest groups?

JOHN CARMICHAEL: Well, this is what I’m talking about hypocrisy. He talks about, if he talks about, he’s been telling you criticism. This is a man who’s tried to physically force his way into the church, who has, uh, intimidated and pushed on, uh--

JOHN: Well, what--

JOHN CARMICHAEL: --Scientology staff members--

JOHN: Well, the question was, why do you have protesters around his house?

JOHN CARMICHAEL: We went up there to say, "Let’s talk". And he shot a--fired a shotgun at us. At least--

JOHN: How come you don’t want to be on the air with him now to debate him? You requested to be on separately.

JOHN CARMICHAEL: Uh, no, I didn’t request to be on separately, I requested to get our say. Because he’s been for half an hour saying whatever he wants to say because he’s got a million dollars. Well, that’s cool--

JOHN: So, all right--

JOHN CARMICHAEL: --but I--but isn’t it, isn’t it time--and you guys chose, and quite wisely, to get the opposite point of view.

JOHN: All right, now--

JOHN CARMICHAEL: --so I want--

JOHN: --now are there no--are there no ex-Scientologists who have criticized the church and have been harassed by other members of the church for airing their criticisms? Doesn’t exist?

JOHN CARMICHAEL: Scientologists--no, now look. Let’s be--let’s be real, real specific about this. Anybody can leave the Church of Scientology. People do, they--

JOHN: All right. And if they criticize--all right. Let me, let me pose hypothetically here. Somebody leaves the Church of Scientology, then, uh, starts--goes on TV and says, "Oh, my God, they’re a bunch of nuts, they have--they do mind control, it’s a cult, it’s weird, people are intimidated". If they went and said that, they wouldn’t be harassed and their lives wouldn’t be torn apart?

JOHN CARMICHAEL: No, their lives wouldn’t be torn apart. We would be interested. We might check it, we might be interested in why they were saying these things, because, you know, those things aren’t true. And I’m not just saying that. There are millions of Scientologists around the world who say that--

JOHN: Obviously there’s--all right, obviously there’s millions of Scientologists who are happy--

JOHN CARMICHAEL: Yeah, but--

JOHN: --But there’s also a small number who are unhappy, and I guess the basic charge here that Minton and other critics have, have, have levied is that you’re not allowed to say anything negative about the Church of Scientology, ex-member or non-member--they’ll come and get you if you air your criticisms publicly.

JOHN CARMICHAEL: [chuckling] No, there’s no matter of coming to get anybody, and we haven’t come to get anybody at all. We have looked into people and said, "Hey, why--why are people doing these things?" We--you talk about free speech. People went up in front of Bob Minton’s house, they were exercising their right of free speech, peacefully.

JOHN: Did you hire private detectives--

JOHN CARMICHAEL: --and Scientologists respond, too, when people, um, um, lie about them. And I--

JOHN: --did you hire private detectives to investigate ‘em?

JOHN CARMICHAEL: I’m sorry?

JOHN: Do you hire--did you hire private investigators to investigate--

JOHN CARMICHAEL: We wanted to know what was going on. I didn’t personally hire any private investigators, so I’m hardly the one to speak about that. But if we did, I think that would be entirely sensible. What is this--what is the man’s game? What is he involved with? You know, for instance, here’s a man who beats his--

JOHN: All right, that’s [crosstalk]. I asked him that and he said that he’s standing up for people to express their freedom of speech, that he’s trying to defend ex-members who get psychologically brutalized by you guys when they criticize the church.

JOHN CARMICHAEL: Well, let’s talk specifics. I mean, he can say generalities--

JOHN: Well, can--can I get him on the air and have him air his specifics?

JOHN CARMICHAEL: Well, I--you want--

JOHN: Do you want--

JOHN CARMICHAEL: I can tell you who he’s--who he’s supported--

JOHN: He’s got a cou--he’s got a couple in Washington who ran, ran some sort of cat shelter, he said, whose lives--

JOHN CARMICHAEL: Oh, yeah--

JOHN: Should we, should we talk--should I, should I put him on the air and we talk about this?

JOHN CARMICHAEL: Well, yes, but I can tell you exactly what we’re talking about--

JOHN: Oh, okay, all right. Well, let me put him on the air as long as it’s okay with you. I don’t want to, you know, blindside anybody. Robert, why don’t you tell your story about the couple you mentioned up in Washington.

JOHN CARMICHAEL: Yes, let’s talk about Stacy.

BOB MINTON: Let’s talk two, two points first. There are not millions of members in the Church of Scientology.

JOHN CARMICHAEL: Wait a minute--

BOB MINTON: Scientologists--

JOHN: Let’s just talk--

JOHN CARMICHAEL: --let’s talk about Stacy--

JOHN: --Wait a second, I want to talk about--

KEN: You’re talking about this--

JOHN CARMICHAEL: --I wanna talk [?????] wife--

JOHN: I want a specific--

BOB MINTON: Okay.

JOHN: I want the audience to understand a specific case and make their judgments based on whatever you guys say.

BOB MINTON: Okay.

JOHN: Robert--

BOB MINTON: Here’s a couple--here’s a couple up in Seattle--

JOHN CARMICHAEL: Let’s talk about Stacy, shall we?

BOB MINTON: Here’s a couple--

JOHN CARMICHAEL: --he doesn’t mention about--

BOB MINTON: --up in Seattle, Washington, here’s--I’m trying to say this--here’s a couple up in Seattle, Washington who, whose lives was made miserable because they decided they were the, the highest ranking members of Scientology to leave for many years. They started giving evidence in court cases against Scientology. Scientology sent detectives out. They beat up their dog, they tried to--

JOHN CARMICHAEL: Oh, baloney!--

BOB MINTON: --get their cat shelter closed. You know, I mean, I’m telling you, these people--

JOHN CARMICHAEL: --that’s baloney--

BOB MINTON: --these Scientologists are insane and will do anything--

JOHN: Now, did any of this stuff make courts? Is there documentation for these charges?

BOB MINTON: There is.

JOHN: Is it in court? Is it a court case?

BOB MINTON: It is not a court case.

JOHN: Why not?

JOHN CARMICHAEL: Beat up his dog--come on! Where’s the documentation? You send in the documentation.

JOHN: Well, why isn’t it a court case?

BOB MINTON: Well, [laughing] you know, it’s--

JOHN CARMICHAEL: Yeah, because you--

BOB MINTON: You got a guy--you got a detective working for the Church of Scientology named David Lee who goes up to--who has a team of detectives, who goes up to west Seattle and goes around and starts talking to all the neighbors. The Scientologists then get their own people in the church to start moving into the neighborhood to complain to the local animal control shelter and an animal control unit in Seattle that these people are harboring too many cats in their shelter. The Church of Scientology--

JOHN CARMICHAEL: What? We have people moving--

JOHN: You--wait, you’re saying the church moved in--

BOB MINTON: The church--

JOHN: --its members into the neighborhood so they, they could complain that the--these two ex-Scientologists were running a bad shelter and were harming animals.

BOB MINTON: Some of their members and some of the detectives rented houses there, who were working for Scientology. They did this--they did this to try to get these people kicked out of the neighborhood, to get their cat shelter shut down--

JOHN: Okay--

BOB MINTON: I bought ‘em a house on an island in Puget Sound so they could have their cat shelter in peace.

JOHN: Okay. Uh, Reverend John Carmichael, what’s your response?

JOHN CARMICHAEL: Can I respond to that? Yes.

JOHN: Yes.

JOHN CARMICHAEL: Well, um, Bob was talking about this on TV a couple of times, you know, telling them about what a nice thing he’s doing for Stacy Young, um, who was the female part of this pair. As it turns out, he was having an affair with Stacy Young and went on to have an affair with Stacy Young, and Stacy is regularly on the picket line with Bob instead of his wife or his two daughters who don’t know about this thing going on. And yet he’s very public about this--

JOHN: All right, all right--

JOHN CARMICHAEL: --that’s what I really like about--

JOHN: Well, we’ll get to the--

KEN: We need a time out--

JOHN: --we’ll get to the affair in a minute. Hang on a second, okay? I want to find out about the charges. Uh, we got Robert Minton, who’s carrying on a $2 million, three-year war against the Church of Scientology. We’ve got the Reverend John Carmichael defending the Church of Scientology from New York City. The main charge is that anybody who criticizes the church, uh, has their lives torn apart by detectives--

KEN: Investigated, stalked, protested, et cetera. Uh, we’ll talk more when we come back.

JOHN: This is "The John & Ken Show".

[COMMERCIAL BREAK]

JOHN: This is "The John & Ken Show". We continue with Robert Minton and the Reverend John Carmichael. Um, the Reverend Carmichael is from the Church of Scientology. Robert Minton is a fierce critic of the church; he’s carried on a three-year, $2 million campaign claiming that ex-members and outside critics have their lives torn apart and turned upside down by, um, private investigators and detectives who wreak havoc on their lives. Minton said nobody is allowed to criticize the church in this country without the Church of Scientology coming back and making your life miserable. Uh, we were talking about a specific couple up in the Wa--in the Seattle area who were ex-Scientologist members, they publicly criticized the church, and Minton said their--their, uh, what is it, sort of like kind of a humane shelter that they ran?

BOB MINTON: Animal shelter.

JOHN: Animal shelter that they ran. Uh, detectives moved into the neighborhood, rented houses, started claiming--

KEN: People from the church everywhere--

JOHN: Yeah--well, all right now, now Minton--all right, let’s, let’s--Carmichael, Mr., Reverend Carmichael, let’s address this. He says that members of the church and, and detectives invaded the neighborhood, rented out houses, made these people’s lives a hell, tried to close down their, their animal shelter. What do you know of this story?

JOHN CARMICHAEL: I think--I, I will tell you this; that I’ve known Stacy and Vaughn Young a lot longer than Bob Minton has. They left the church on perfectly good terms. Only when they couldn’t make any money doing something outside that they turned to lying about the church. The real--the, the thing that all of his story is a smokescreen for the fact that the people that he is bankrolling--

JOHN: Well, is the story true or not?

JOHN CARMICHAEL: No.

JOHN: The story--

JOHN CARMICHAEL: So I can say, so I--listen, it’s so nutty, it’s so nutty that I’ve gotta ask whether, whether Minton has, um, uh, is on psychiatric medication.

JOHN: So it’s an entirely false story, made up, made up by the two people in Seattle and Robert Minton here.

JOHN CARMICHAEL: The whole thing--listen, the whole thing--and I’m, I want to make this really clear--he has spent a lot of money supporting people who lose in court. And he’s been told the story in court and they, they lose, because when a judge and a jury, jury hears this stuff--

JOHN: Well, was this case in court?--

JOHN CARMICHAEL: --they say it’s ridiculous.

JOHN: Was this case in court?

JOHN CARMICHAEL: The--I’m sorry?

JOHN: Was this case in court?

JOHN CARMICHAEL: No! No, of course it’s not in court. There’s nothing to be--nothing to go to court. The fact is that, um, he has bank--

JOHN: Well--

JOHN CARMICHAEL: --he bankrolled a guy named, um, Arnie Lerma--

JOHN: And, and--

JOHN CARMICHAEL: --and he lost in court. He lost--Keith Henson lost in court--

JOHN: Robert--

JOHN CARMICHAEL: He--

JOHN: Robert, have you won any court cases financing these ex-Scientology members?

BOB MINTON: Uh, well first of all, I’m not out to win court cases, but, yes, I have won many victories in court cases, and, and the one that I will win the biggest in, in terms of getting the truth out about Scientology, is the Lisa McPherson case. I am bankrolling the family of Lisa McPherson, and from the time I started doing that, the Church of Scientology said that is the thing that angers them the most. They are going to lose so much in that case in terms of their credibility that, you know, that they are--this is why they’re so anxious about every thing--

JOHN: Well--

BOB MINTON: --say. They don’t rea--you know, people don’t interview the Church of Scientology. People interview [chuckling] critics of the Church of Scientology and the Church of Scientology reacts because they are a reactionary group, they are a totalitarian group. You know, John Carmichael knows nothing about what goes on in Scientology. He is a low-level Scientologist who administers the only sacrament the Church of Scientology has, and that’s lying.

JOHN CARMICHAEL: Whoa! Bob Minton, for somebody who’s never been in a Church of Scientology, you certainly talk big. Let’s be--

BOB MINTON: I’ve never been a Nazi either--

JOHN: All right, I am running--

JOHN CARMICHAEL: --let’s be very specific about this--

JOHN: I am running out of time right here--

JOHN CARMICHAEL: Bob, Bob, let’s be very specific about this--

JOHN: Okay, hold on, hold on [crosstalk] Just hang on right here, okay? Just hold on. We gotta--

KEN: Robert Minton and the Reverend John Carmichael from the Church of Scientology in the big Scientology debate.

JOHN: We’re out of time right now. This is "The John & Ken Show".

[COMMERCIAL BREAK]

JOHN: This is "The John & Ken Show". Welcome to the program. If you want to e-mail us, it’s john-ken@primenet.com, john-ken@primenet.com.

KEN: We have a couple of guests here, and it’s all about the Church of Scientology--

JOHN: If you’re just--

KEN: --particularly what they do to people that have left the church and criticized what is going on.

JOHN: So if you’re just checking in with us, we’re gonna, uh, briefly summarize what’s going on here. We have Robert Minton. He is a millionaire from New Hampshire who has spent $2 million of his own money and the last three years, uh, attacking the church. Also on this show is the Reverend John Carmichael representing the Church of Scientology; he’s from New York City. Minton’s claims are that any ex-member of the Church or outside critic has their lives turned upside down from intimidating tactics, private detectives and investigators get into your life, protests around your house, uh, you’re--you’re just made miserable until you shut up and promise never to speak out again.

KEN: Now the Church of Scientology claim that we’re hearing from Reverend John Carmichael is that Minton has a lot of money that is getting him some publicity but he really is crazy and certainly on the wrong track and hasn’t had any real court cases that he’s won, while Minton claims otherwise.

JOHN: Now--

KEN: A big case that we’re discussing is the death of a woman in Florida.

JOHN: Lisa McPherson, Scientologist, she died near Clearwater in 1995 after a 17-day stay at a Scientology hotel, allegedly against her will. Minton told the Associated Press that McPherson’s incarceration was part of a punishment procedure designed to correct someone’s mental instability; had she had the opportunity to see not only a medical doctor but also a psychiatrist, she might be alive today. McPherson, according to the AP, died from a blood clot caused by dehydration and bed rest. They quoted the medical examiner’s report. Last month the Church of Scientology in--entered an innocent plea to charges of abuse or neglect of a disabled adult and unauthorized practice of medicine; no trial yet. Um, now, specifically the Scientologists have defended itself against Minton by hiring private detectives to investigate his life, passing out flyers denouncing him, rallying outside his home in New Hampshire. At one demonstration in July, Minton fired shots into the air after asking protesters to leave his property; no charges were filed--

KEN: However, he does face charges at a separate incident in which they claimed he assaulted and beat a church member.

JOHN: Uh--

KEN: So this thing is really--

JOHN CARMICHAEL: In fact, the police looked at the videotape of that, and so have I seen the videotape, and it’s pretty clear that he slammed Frank Ofman over the head with the--with a stick.

JOHN: This is the Reverend John Carmichael--

KEN: Well, Robert Minton’s saying the charges have been dropped?

BOB MINTON: That’s correct.

JOHN CARMICHAEL: That’s right, they were definitely dropped in exchange for the judge got his promise that if he should decide to come out in front of the church, that he would let us know beforehand, warn us, and write in writing--and put in writing the fact that his protest was going to be picket--his picket was going to be peaceful protest. Because frankly, frankly Mr. Minton’s history is not one of peaceful protest.

JOHN: All right, all right--

JOHN CARMICHAEL: Now if you want to put--

BOB MINTON: The reason for the notice is to--

JOHN CARMICHAEL: --you want to put, handle the critics--

BOB MINTON: --allow the Church of Scientology to get a restraining order--

JOHN CARMICHAEL: --you want to put critics--

JOHN: All right, all right, wait, hold on. First of all, we can’t have you guys talking over each other because then nobody understands it. Let me ask Robert Minton. You, you admit the firing shots, you know, over the heads of the protesters, and apparently it’s clear that you, uh, you started beating a guy--

BOB MINTON: I hit the guy with a stick after I had been slapped in the face by the guy--

JOHN: Oh, okay--

BOB MINTON: --in order--for self-defense.

JOHN: All right, what, what I--what I’m saying is, it, it’s--you know, you’re calling these people nuts and it sounds like you’ve--

BOB MINTON: I’m not saying--

JOHN: --got a streak in this too, you’re nuts, too, here!

BOB MINTON: I--I’m totally nuts, you know, because nobody who gets involved in this against the Church of Scientology [chuckles] has got it all there! I mean--

JOHN: I mean, now, if--

BOB MINTON: --you’d have to be nuts to go after these guys.

JOHN: Yeah, but--

JOHN CARMICHAEL: But not--people--people don’t threaten Scientologists with an ax and throw rocks at their cars.

[somebody laughs]

KEN: When did this--

BOB MINTON: --throw rocks--

JOHN CARMICHAEL: They don’t push--

BOB MINTON: --where did this come in?

JOHN CARMICHAEL: --they don’t push women Scientologists around. That’s--that’s not what people do if they’re--

JOHN: Were you doing that, Robert?--

JOHN CARMICHAEL: --if they have some criticism.

JOHN: You went after them with, with an ax and threw rocks at ‘em?

BOB MINTON: No--

JOHN CARMICHAEL: And a sledgehammer, yes.

BOB MINTON: The guy in front of the Boston Church of Scientology was hit with a balsa wood stick that weighs--

JOHN CARMICHAEL: No, no, no, no, no, no, we’re talking about axes and sledgehammers! Come on, talk about it, Bob.

[somebody chuckles]

BOB MINTON: I mean, this man, John Carmichael, is totally certifiable--

JOHN: All right, all right, all right, look--

BOB MINTON: There is nothing--

JOHN: Ah, look, okay--all right, I have an idea, I have an idea. Let’s get off that for a minute because I have no idea who’s telling the truth, all right? What I--

BOB MINTON: --the police report--

JOHN: --what I wanted to do--now, hold on, please, because I want you guys to get your say, but one person has to talk at a time--

BOB MINTON: Okay--

JOHN: --because there’s--nobody’s going to be able to listen to this.

BOB MINTON: Okay.

JOHN: We were talking before about a Seattle couple--

BOB MINTON: Right.

JOHN: --who were ex-Scientologists, criticized the church, and Robert Minton, you say that their lives were invaded by these private detectors, detectives, that these investigators rented homes to harass this couple--

KEN: And their animal shelter business--

JOHN: --and their animal shelter was--they tried to destroy it by reporting the animal shelter to, to authorities.

BOB MINTON: For all kinds of code violations--

KEN: Okay, basically harassing.

JOHN: Now, I kind of got off the track before, but the Reverend Carmichael says that this is completely untrue, that you’re a mental patient and made all this up. Is there any proof of this? Can you--can you get this couple on the air with us to explain?

BOB MINTON: Uh, well, I could, actually, if you--I don’t, I don’t know whether I can get the couple. I had--I had to--

JOHN CARMICHAEL: [chuckling]Because you’re sleeping with the, with the hu--with the wife and the husband is somewhere else!

KEN: Now, this has come up, Robert. Is that true?

BOB MINTON: It--what did he say? I didn’t hear--

KEN: He says you’re sleeping with the wife of this Seattle couple.

BOB MINTON: Well, let me--let me [starts laughing], you know, there, there’s a little bit of truth to--

JOHN: Well, all right, now--

KEN: There’s a little bit of truth--

JOHN CARMICHAEL: Ah-hah!--

JOHN: --now here’s--here’s my problem here. Every time I ask whether, whether Minton’s charges are true, you say Minton is sleeping with Stacy, the woman in this story.

BOB MINTON: Yeah.

JOHN: But that, that may or that--all right, that’s true, too, but that’s really got nothing to do with whether the Scientologists hired private investigators to invade the neighborhood. Is that true, Reverend Carmichael?

JOHN CARMICHAEL: Let me make it real clear. We did not invade the neighborhood. We have had private investigators look into Mr. Minton, and also into the Youngs. There’s a good reason for that. Because these are people who left the church in good standing and then at some time in the--in, after some years, after they didn’t--couldn’t make any money any other way decided that they were gonna try to make it by lying about the church--

JOHN: Okay, what--

JOHN CARMICHAEL: --we just wanted to know why.

JOHN: Now, what’s their name, Stacy--

BOB MINTON: May I have a word--

JOHN: Wait, wait--hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on--

KEN: Stacy Young--

JOHN: --I want to direct this. Stacy Young and the husband’s name is what?

BOB MINTON: Vaughn--

KEN: Vaughn--

JOHN: Vaughn. Okay. Stacy and Vaughn Young say horrible things about the Church of Scientology. What sort of horrible things did they say, Reverend, that caused the church to hire investigators?

JOHN CARMICHAEL: Well, roughly the sort of things that Minton is saying, you know, he’s already said it, it’s the same stuff that rolls around. They were willing to say just about anything as long as they were being paid--

JOHN: Well--well, what, specifically--

JOHN CARMICHAEL: --and that’s the problem--

JOHN: --is their charge? What is their charge here now?

BOB MINTON: Let me give you a charge.

JOHN: Give me a charge--

BOB MINTON: Vaughn Young just gave testimony in a, in a court case in Colorado with FACTNet, a company that--or a corporation that’s a non-profit that I am a board of director member of, where the whole Scientology copyrights are called into question. Vaughn Young and another fellow named Jesse Prince together had been involved in meetings within the Church of Scientology where they acknowledge that their copyrights had--

JOHN CARMICHAEL: Jesse Prince--

BOB MINTON: --expired. And they--and--

JOHN: All right, copyrights don’t--all right, a copyright dispute is really not all that interesting here. What I’m talking about, it--Reverend Carmichael, did the Youngs say that, you know, the church is fill--that the church is a cult, that you practice mind control on everybody, that people are emotionally and psychologically abused inside the cult? Is it those kind of charges?

JOHN CARMICHAEL: Well, for instance, they tried to claim that--claimed on the TV the other day that they had to flee from the church. They walked out of the church. People shook their hands and said goodbye--

JOHN: Now, now, I’m--

KEN: Now, you’re--Reverend Carmichael, you claim they’re doing this because their animal shelter business is not doing well and they’re looking for money from you? Well, well, well why would they turn against the church then?

JOHN CARMICHAEL: Oh, they turned against the church before that, because they weren’t making any money at anything.

KEN: You’re--

JOHN CARMICHAEL: The animal shelter thing, see--

KEN: But how did they make money--

JOHN CARMICHAEL: The animal shelter thing is a complete red herring.

BOB MINTON: It’s, it’s--

KEN: They’re looking to make--

JOHN CARMICHAEL: --as far as I can tell--

KEN: You mean the rescue--

JOHN CARMICHAEL: --this has to do with the fact that Minton wanted the guy’s wife.

KEN: So you think that also Minton was going to bankroll them, they’d get money from him? Would that help their financial problems? I’m trying to figure out where their money trail goes--

JOHN: Here’s what I don’t understand. I--I’ve done a lot of shows on religion. I--I’m an ex-Catholic and I talk about how, how much animosity I have towards the Catholic church.

KEN: Hmm!

JOHN: The Catholic church never sent investigators to my house.

JOHN CARMICHAEL: All right--

JOHN: Well, I--you know, there’s a lot of--

BOB MINTON: Let me, let me answer the question--

JOHN: --people who criticize religions. What I don’t understand, Reverend Carmichael, is whatever these ex-Scientologists say about your church, why not let it roll off? All the other churches let it roll off. Other churches are condemned in America every day by their ex-members, and--and the leaders of the church shrug and say, "Well, they’re wrong, but we can live with the criticism." Why do the Scientologists get into the private investigator stuff?

JOHN CARMICHAEL: Could I answer that question?

JOHN: Yes.

JOHN CARMICHAEL: Really?

JOHN: Go ahead.

JOHN CARMICHAEL: Here’s the answer: People criticize the Church of Scientology and there is no problem. The people that he’s talking about criticize the Church of Scientology and nobody gave them any trouble at all. The people that he bankrolled had whatever their free--they had their First Amendment rights, they carried on in obscene detail about how they didn’t like the church. It was only--

JOHN: Well, what sort of--

JOHN CARMICHAEL: --when they started violating the law--

JOHN: What sort of obscene detail?--

JOHN CARMICHAEL: Please let me finish--

JOHN: What sort of--you said--

JOHN CARMICHAEL: You asked me a question and I’m trying to answer it--

JOHN: --used the word "obscene".

BOB MINTON: Give us the details, John--

JOHN: What’s the obscene detail, John? I want to hear the story, I really do. Give us the obscene detail.

JOHN CARMICHAEL: I can’t--literally things that cannot be said on the air. And, and--

JOHN: Try it; I’ve got a delete button here.

JOHN CARMICHAEL: Heh-heh-heh. Well, I’ll give you an example--

JOHN: That’s what I’m looking for--

KEN: Yeah--

JOHN CARMICHAEL: Here’s an--here’s an example of Bob Minton with his demonstration with his high-brow intellectual demonstration in front of the Church of Scientology: "I’m eff-ing your mama! I’m eff-ing your mama and that is why your hair is so curly, boy!"

KEN: That’s part of his demonstration.

JOHN CARMICHAEL: That’s part of his demonstration--

BOB MINTON: No, it’s not--

JOHN CARMICHAEL: --that’s his--

BOB MINTON: --he’s a liar--

JOHN CARMICHAEL: --his criticism of the Church of Scientology. I’ve got it on videotape, Bob--

JOHN: I, I--now, I’m completely lost here. [Ken starts laughing] I am completely lost. All right, let me try another tactic. Would you guys be willing to take calls from the people on the phone and pro and con your positions?

JOHN CARMICHAEL: Yeah, sure, let’s go--

BOB MINTON: If you let me--

JOHN: All right, hang on--

BOB MINTON: If you let me answer his last charges.

JOHN: All right, I’ll give you 30 seconds--

KEN: All right, "eff-ing your mama", are you saying that stuff outside of their--

BOB MINTON: Uh, no, no. [Ken starts chuckling] But let me tell you, this church uses--if you’re a Catholic, you go in and you confess your sins to a priest. They do that in Scientology; they write it down in a folder. The folder is used against you when you leave the Church of Scientology. Every--everything you ever--

JOHN CARMICHAEL: You have no proof of that--

BOB MINTON: --felt in your mind--

JOHN CARMICHAEL: --it is not true.

BOB MINTON: That is totally true. That is one of the biggest--

JOHN: Okay. We have--we have critics and supporters all lined up on the phone, and we’ll get some fresh material in here because I think I’ve hit the end of the line on this stuff. Uh, Robert Minton, he is the big critic against the Scientologists, he has spent $2 million and three years fighting them. The Reverend John Carmichael has been deputized by the Church of Scientology to defend the church here on the air--

KEN: He says Minton is just plain nuts.

JOHN: Um, we’re gonna take calls from you guys as soon as we come back. This is "The John & Ken Show".

[COMMERCIAL BREAK]

JOHN: This is "The John & Ken Show", with Robert Minton. He is a millionaire who’s angry with the Church of Scientology and he’s spending millions attacking it over the last three years. Also, Reverend John Carmichael defending the Church of Scientology. This is a church that has a lot of celebrities attached to it like John Travolta, Kirstie Alley and Lisa Marie Presley and some critics say it’s a--it’s a weird cult that practices mind control, and Minton is claiming that any critics who leave the church are, uh, severely harassed by private investigators, uh, for, for airing their views. Uh, and, of course, the Reverend Carmichael says that’s nonsense. Let’s get some calls in. Paul, you’re on "The John & Ken Show".

PAUL (caller #1): Hi, John. Um, I’m just gonna tell you my story so I don’t sound like I’m for or against the church. I was in New York a few years ago with a friend and we’re coming out of a club at about midnight. We passed by this store and it said "Free Personality Test". So I said, "Oh, let’s go in!", you know, just for fun. So we go in; we answered about a few hundred questions, and the guy told me I had suicidal tendencies [starts chuckling]. And I thought that was very funny and, uh, so he goes telling me all this stuff, so I grabbed the papers that he was reading off, and I took off. Right? So I took off and I started reading this stuff, and basically what they’re doing is, they have everything written down like a script, and they just read off. Like at one part, it said, "Now customer or client is hanging on ropes; assure him that everything will be okay and suggest", you know, "like say, ‘Oh, I can’t help you with that, but if you go over there where they sell the books, they can help you with that’." I mean, it--it was just nuts--

JOHN: Did--did they say up front they were Scientologists?

PAUL (caller #1): Oh, yeah, it was a church--it was the Church of Scientology thing, I just didn’t know anything about Scientology then.

JOHN: Uh, Reverend Carmichael, what’s that about?

JOHN CARMICHAEL: Uh, we offer a Free Personality Test, and people take the test and, um, there is an--an analysis is done right there of where you’re doing well and where you’re not doing well--

JOHN: Well, a guy comes in off the street and you tell him he’s suicidal?

JOHN CARMICHAEL: Well, I’m pleased to know that he didn’t commit suicide!

JOHN: What?! [somebody, I think Ken, starts laughing]

JOHN CARMICHAEL: That pleases me! But let--let me say one thing, and I wanna really say this to the audience. You know, I didn’t come on this show to argue with Bob Minton. Uh, I came on the show because--to tell people that if you want to know about Scientology, you’re not gonna find the answer on talk shows. Come in, find out about it for yourself--

JOHN: Well, you know, we’ve had you on for a while now. What is it about exactly? I mean, explain it to me like I was interested in joining. What would you tell me?

JOHN CARMICHAEL: Scientology is a, a philosophy that you use in your life to improve it. If you have some area of you life whether it’s better learning that you want to be able to do, whether it’s relationships you want to improve, whether you have a problem with confidence, uh, you feel you’ve lost your integrity, what the problem is, you can take some part of Scientology and apply it to that and improve that part of your life.

KEN: What is this core philosophy about past lives?

JOHN CARMICHAEL: We believe that man is a spiritual being, an immortal spiritual being that has lived before and will live again. And in thinking that, we share a spiritual view that most people around the world do. Nobody is, in Scientology, required to believe that, but people do as they become more aware of who they really are. They become aware of where they’ve been--

JOHN: All right, that’s good--

JOHN CARMICHAEL: --and get a better idea of where they’re going, what their real nature is--

BOB MINTON: Can I illustrate what Scientology is for you?

JOHN: Yeah, sure.

BOB MINTON: Okay--[????] you have over 20 people who were watching Lisa McPherson 24 hours a day while she was held for the 17 days in captivity.

JOHN CARMICHAEL: Oh, that’s preposterous.

BOB MINTON: That is not preposterous, it’s in their own handwriting--

JOHN CARMICHAEL: If that were preposterous--

BOB MINTON: --in the court records in Florida, my dear John.

JOHN CARMICHAEL: That is not what is in the court records in Florida.

BOB MINTON: Can I finish, can I finish now?

JOHN CARMICHAEL: Yeah, go ahead.

BOB MINTON: Uh, the--the people who were watching Lisa McPherson, saw her waste away in front of their eyes, they did nothing to help her because they were taught not to trust their own judgment. That is the core of Scientology. You--you trust L. Ron Hubbard’s judgment. Everything he says is correct, you do exactly what he says. He’s dead. You know, these people watched this woman die. They were taught not to think for themselves. That is what Scientology is--

JOHN: And this is the woman who was locked up in a Scientology hotel., you said, for 17 days until she died--

KEN: We--we will--

JOHN: --of a blood clot.

KEN: --be able to talk more about that when we come back.

JOHN: Robert Minton and the Reverend John Carmichael debating Scientology here. We’ll take more calls. This is "The John & Ken Show".

[COMMERCIAL BREAK]

JOHN: This is "The John & Ken Show". You can e-mail us at john-ken@primenet.com, john-ken@primenet.com. Final segment here with Robert Minton, who is a fierce critic of the Church of Scientology. He’s spent millions of dollars over the last three years attacking it. He’s claiming that ex-members who criticize the church publicly have their lives, uh, upended, destroyed, they’re severely harassed by private investigators. Uh, Reverend John Carmichael is from the Church of Scientology.

KEN: And they think a lot of these people that are complaining are just put up to it by Minton and his money.

JOHN CARMICHAEL: That’s--you know, that’s part of it. And the other thing is, you should know it, I--I even have friends now who, uh, who are with me in Scientology early. I have one in particular who works at a--is a partner at an accounting firm, and he didn’t continue with Scientology and that’s fine. It’s when people go out and they decide they’re gonna make lawsuits and they’re gonna try and make a million bucks off the Church of Scientology--

JOHN: Now, can, can an ex--

JOHN CARMICHAEL: --that the church pays attention to that.

JOHN: Can an ex-member go out and say, "You know, I think this church is a cult and they practice mind control and they’re deceiving people and they’re manipulating people", is somebody allowed to say that? Because other churches allow their ex-members to say that without recriminations.

JOHN CARMICHAEL: You know, we don’t have any problem with people saying anything. Free speech of this--it’s a total red herring, that’s not the point. For instance, Bob was talking about--

JOHN: So you don’t investigate people--you don’t investigate people who say those kinds of things.

BOB MINTON: That’s a lie--

JOHN CARMICHAEL: That--that would keep us pretty busy. You just said that sort of thing. That’s not--that’s not the point. When people--when people get into lawsuits and they start suing--

BOB MINTON: The Boston Herald?

JOHN CARMICHAEL: --when they start lying in public against the Church of Scientology and they try to make millions off the church, then our lawyers hire private detectives--yes, that happens. Not to do anything unreasonable, but to find out what’s going on. Because we do find out what’s going on with--

BOB MINTON: Motivation--

JOHN CARMICHAEL: --what’s going on, what’s behind them.

BOB MINTON: Motivation, John, that’s what you’re looking for, right? Because these people who attack you are [chuckling] totally insane. That’s your own policy. L. Ron Hubbard, who was a woman hater, a wife beab--beater, a kidnapper--

JOHN CARMICHAEL: Oh, you’re the one--

BOB MINTON: --convicted felon--

JOHN CARMICHAEL: You--

JOHN: We got a--

BOB MINTON: --Saturn and went to the Van Allen belt. This is a nut--

JOHN CARMICHAEL: --you, you’re the documented one who has--whose wife had to talk--say on public television that you beat her up. You’re the one who attacked Scientologists with, uh,--

JOHN: Robert, you’re a wife beater?

JOHN CARMICHAEL: --sledgehammers and axes--

BOB MINTON: No, that’s not correct and--

JOHN CARMICHAEL: --and beat up a--

BOB MINTON: --and John Carmichael is a liar. But Ron Hubbard has--

JOHN: [starts laughing] This is--

BOB MINTON: --stated publicly that he traveled to Saturn, that he traveled to Venus. He--if you read Dianetics you will see that he was a woman hater--

JOHN: All right, hold on a second--

BOB MINTON: --he was a well-known wife beater--

JOHN: --let me get some other callers on. Let me get some callers on here, ‘cuz this--this is not getting anywhere. Kim, you’re on "The John & Ken Show".

KIM (caller #2): Hey, John and Ken, thanks for taking my call.

JOHN: Sure.

KIM (caller #2): Um, first of all, I’d love to say that I’d like to applaud Mr. Minton for speaking out. I think that, uh, this is a really frightening organization.

JOHN: Why?

KIM (caller #2): And--well, because, um, 20 years ago my brother got involved in Scientology. Um, he was just out of high school, didn’t have a lot of money, and when he didn’t have money to pay for courses, they sent him home to my parents to ask them for money, and when my parents refused, they sent him home with a contract asking my parents to sign it saying they would not interfere in my brother’s life, which they refused to do. And, fortunately for my brother and my family, he got out of it. But, um, they’re just not beyond doing all kinds of things--

JOHN: Why--why would you have a kid sign a contract, or have a kid have his parents sign a contract?

JOHN CARMICHAEL: You know, I don’t know the--

BOB MINTON: I’ll tell you why--

JOHN CARMICHAEL: --but it doesn’t sound like anything--

BOB MINTON: --because you either--you either--

JOHN: Now, one at a time, one, one--one at a time--

KEN: --let John Carmichael talk.

BOB MINTON: Okay.

KEN: Yeah. Go ahead, John Carmichael.

JOHN CARMICHAEL: Okay. Um, nobody has to--that doesn’t even make any sense. The church wouldn’t do anything like that because it doesn’t make any sense. But I want to comment on something that, uh, Minton said earlier, because, uh--

BOB MINTON: Let’s talk to the point the lady said--

JOHN CARMICHAEL: you want to know--if you want to know--

JOHN: Wait a second, wait a second, hold on, hold on. The woman called up and said her brother was asked to spend money for courses and the parents were asked to spend money for courses, and then her brother brought a sheet of paper home from the church that the parents were supposed to sign promising not to interfere in the relationship between the brother and the church. I don’t know of any church who does that sort of thing. Wh--

JOHN CARMICHAEL: You know--

JOHN: --can you explain--

BOB MINTON: I can explain it for you--

JOHN CARMICHAEL: --the person’s name, but I’m not going to ask, so I can’t tell you what goes on. But I’ll tell you this--if, if an individual is under age, he cannot participate in church services without his parents’ permission.

KEN: Why?

JOHN CARMICHAEL: Well, because we don’t, uh, [chuckles] because the child has to be of age to be a member of the Church of Scientology. It’s part of our--our doctrine--

BOB MINTON: You don’t wanna get hit--you don’t wanna get hit for slavery charges, right. That’s--let me explain, let me explain--

JOHN: All right, Robert--

JOHN CARMICHAEL: Excuse me, sir--

JOHN: --let Robert Minton explain now. I gave you a chance, Reverend--

BOB MINTON: Okay--

JOHN: --let Robert Minton give his speech.

BOB MINTON: It’s very clear. You either have money and you can pay for your courses in Scientology, or Scientology asks you to join the Sea Org and sign a billion-year contract to work for free or $50 a week for the rest of your life for the Church of Scientology. That’s what it boils down to. It’s all about money--

JOHN: So if you don’t have money, you have to work off the, the cost of the teaching.

BOB MINTON: That is correct--

JOHN CARMICHAEL: That isn’t--in the Church of Scientology, yes, people receive something of value [Bob Minton starts laughing] they want to give something of value. So people, uh, help out one way or another. People can get counseling but they have to learn to give counseling, for instance. It goes back and forth. And we think that makes a lot of sense. If you want to--if somebody wants to know what Scientology is, they don’t have to listen to, to Mr. Minton. They don’t have to listen to me. They can read the book What Is Scientology?, which is on bookstands everywhere. They can read Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, and believe me, it won’t take very many pages for one of those books or much experience, if they walk into a Church of Scientology, to know that Mr. Minton is lying--

JOHN: Okay, I’ve a guy--

JOHN CARMICHAEL: --to evaluate the rest of what he has to say.

JOHN: Okay, I’ve got a guy who claims to be a lawyer for the church, a guy named Peter Frank, who wants to defend the church. You’re on "The John & Ken Show", Peter--

BOB MINTON: Oh, Peter Frank is a--is a private detective--

PETER FRANK: Hello? Hello?

BOB MINTON: He’s a private detective from England.

JOHN: Peter Frank?

PETER FRANK: This is Peter.

JOHN: Are you a lawyer or a private detective or both?

PETER FRANK: No, I’m a--I’m a detective. I work for the law firm that, uh, has been, um, asked to look into Mr. Minton in London--

BOB MINTON: This guy is calling from England. He has tried to intimidate my business partners and everybody else who’s ever had anything to do with me for the last 30 years--

JOHN: Peter, is this a fact?

BOB MINTON: He is the scum of the earth--

PETER FRANK: Hello? I--

JOHN: Peter--Peter, where are you calling from?

PETER FRANK: Uh, I’m visiting some friends and family here in Ventura and I happened to hear Mr. Minton about an hour and a half ago, be announced on the radio. I called your screener and told her who I was--

JOHN: Okay--

PETER FRANK: --and that I’ve been on hold ever since--

JOHN: Okay, go ahead--

PETER FRANK: --and, uh, I’d like to talk to you--

JOHN: --tell us, tell, tell us what you have to say about all this.

PETER FRANK: Uh, well, I’ve been investigating Mr. Minton for the past year. I can tell you just about anything you want. I had lunch with him back in November in London when he and Jesse Prince and--

BOB MINTON: You didn’t have lunch with me--

PETER FRANK: --went to the Sports Café. I sat right next to him and heard just about every word--

JOHN: Um--

PETER FRANK: --he talked about, and it was quite revealing about what his real plans are for this.

JOHN: What, what do you think Minton’s motivation is here for criticizing the church and spending so much money against it?

PETER FRANK: Well--now, I’m an investigator. My job is to look in and find facts and data and turn them over to the law firms and lawyers so they can advise their clients. And I have found a wealth of information about Mr. Minton that points to his violence with his second wife. I interviewed his second wife, Cynthia Wharton, who told me about the beating that she took from him, um--

JOHN: Okay, but what does that have to do with his criticisms of the church?

PETER FRANK: Well, I’m not, my job is not--

KEN: They’re trying to discredit him--

PETER FRANK: My job is not to investigate his criticisms of the church. My job is to find out about the man, what motivates him, why he’s doing this and--

JOHN: All right, what motivates him, Peter?

PETER FRANK: I think he is a media hound. I think he’s an egomaniac, and I think that he’s made so much money throughout his life and he has so many unfulfilled, um, unfulfilled, uh--God, I don’t know what, unfulfilled dreams in his life that he’s finally found a cause that he could think that he’s the white knight, he comes tromping in, and I think he, uh, throws his money around to, uh, get attention and to--

JOHN: This is a very, very--

BOB MINTON: Can I tell you what Peter Frank does?--

JOHN: --this is so odd--

BOB MINTON: --can I tell you what Peter Frank does--

JOHN: --I mean all of this is odd--

KEN: What a knock, huh?--

JOHN: Why is--

PETER FRANK: I’m sorry, I can’t hear you.

JOHN: Robert Minton, go ahead.

BOB MINTON: Yeah, let me tell you what Peter Frank has done. Peter Frank has gone to my former business partner in London and my former business partner in South Africa and said that "if you don’t"--

PETER FRANK: Yes I have, and I’ve shown them--

BOB MINTON: --and said that "if you don’t stop sup

PETER FRANK: --a tape of Mr. Minton--

BOB MINTON: --if you don’t stop supporting--

PETER FRANK: --saying that phrase that was--

JOHN: Let him--let him finish--

BOB MINTON: Can I answer? Can I answer?

JOHN: --Robert Minton--let Robert Minton finish.

PETER FRANK: Oh, I’m sorry--

BOB MINTON: He’s saying that "if you don’t stop supporting this man, Bob Minton, we are going to destroy you!". And they picketed my partner in South Africa. They picket the partner in London, they tried to destroy his family life in London. They tried to--

JOHN CARMICHAEL: Huh?!

BOB MINTON: --destroy the family life of my former partner in South Africa. Because they are friends of mine and because they know all the stuff about me that Peter Frank wants to know and will not tell them.

PETER FRANK: Hello?

BOB MINTON: Hello?

JOHN: Um, um--

PETER FRANK: Hello?

JOHN: Peter, you got a response to this?

KEN: This is stupid--

PETER FRANK: I absolutely do. I can tell you that I have, uh, never--I’ve spoken to Selwyn Lewis many times. I have spoken to Jeffrey Schmidt--

BOB MINTON: He’s the partner from South Africa.

PETER FRANK: I have on tape, if you would like to hear it, what Jeffrey Schmidt and--

JOHN: Huh--

PETER FRANK: --Selwyn Lewis really say about Mr. Minton--

JOHN: I--you know what, you know what? I wanted to talk about the Church of Scientology. The--the personal dirt of all your lives is irrelevant to me--

BOB MINTON: No, but Mr. Frank--

JOHN: --and it’s irrelevant to anybody--

BOB MINTON: --is part of the Church of Scientology--

JOHN: --I mean, I mean--

BOB MINTON: --he works for them--

JOHN: --this is what I don’t get. This is what I don’t understand. How come it all goes to something that Minton did in his past and--and the answers are not to what is the Church of Scientology doing to the people criticizing.

PETER FRANK: Okay, John, can I tell--can I say something for 20 seconds and I think I can elaborate on that?

JOHN: Is this Peter Frank?

PETER FRANK: This is Peter Frank.

JOHN: Go ahead, Peter--

PETER FRANK: Let me tell you--

JOHN: --‘cuz we’re running to the--to the end of time here--

PETER FRANK: --investigated for quite a while. And let me tell you, when somebody like Mr. Minton comes out and makes all these outrageous allegations, my only job is to go out and investigate facts and data and find out about this person. Is he a liar? Does he tell the truth? Is he faithful to his wife? Is he a good businessman? I have spoken to Mr. Minton’s business partners. They’re--

JOHN: I don’t what it has to do with the charges about the church, though--

KEN: That’s not what he was brought in to do--

JOHN: --but I appreciate the call. Yeah, I understand that. Um, um, we’re running out of time. Um, Reverend Carmichael.

JOHN CARMICHAEL: Yes.

JOHN: Um, if, if we ever found--if Minton gave us any Scientologists who criticize the church and felt that they paid a price for it from the Scientologists investigators, if we had them on the air, would you come on and, and talk to them about their charges?

JOHN CARMICHAEL: You know, I have no doubt he already has a bunch of people, uh, and they’re all part of one group, and he named it earlier; and it’s a group that says that if the church pays them millions of dollars, they’ll stop talking about the church--

BOB MINTON: That’s not true--

JOHN CARMICHAEL: It is, uh, Jesse Prince and Vaughn Young and yourself and Stacy are part of a group called FACTNet. And that’s exactly what they do. They’re looking for millions of dollars. And that is the motivation for the other people. What your motivation is, it doesn’t make any sense to me--

BOB MINTON: Let me--let me--

JOHN CARMICHAEL: --it just doesn’t make any sense--

BOB MINTON: --let me tell you why a millionaire does this. Messed over--messed over by the Church of Scientology. They have--they have--

JOHN CARMICHAEL: Your life has been messed over with what you’re doing with your personal life and what--

JOHN: All right. All right. We’re running out of--

BOB MINTON: I’m sorry--I’m sorry--

JOHN: --we’re out of time here. Robert Minton, thank you for coming on. Reverend John Carmichael, thank you for coming on.

BOB MINTON: My pleasure.

JOHN: All right, thanks very much.

KEN: Wow! I have a headache!

JOHN: That is bizarre as I’ve ever heard.

KEN: There’s moments where it’s fascinating and then they really get into their inter squabbles and I can’t follow all the names and people, so--

JOHN: All right. Well, in and out. We gotta take a break here.

KEN: Yeah.

JOHN: This is "The John & Ken Show".

[END]