A LAST MOMENT OF CLARITY

But the story, tragically, doesn't end there. For here are three criminals—Rathbun, Rinder and DeVocht—and since liars are cowards, it was self-evident they still had a dark secret. After all, every one of them had blown which, according to the Church’s Founder, only occurs when one has overts and withholds (transgressions). In this instance, it’s the textbook example virtually proving Mr. Hubbard’s discovery.

In a rare moment of lucidity and partial honesty, just before his departure, Rathbun attempted to come clean.

Although Rathbun confessed to the ramifications of his actions, the magnitude of his damage is a bitter pill to swallow. He admitted to the false façade he’d presented to others. Namely, because he had so badly mishandled external affairs, Mr. Miscavige was forced to intervene. That had an added benefit to Rathbun as he would then be seen by others in the presence of Mr. Miscavige (who was forced onto the front lines to handle Rathbun’s responsibilities). To wit:

“My continuous actions over the past two decades have suppressed Scientology dissemination… It has been carefully masked by a façade of being important or working on important things. It is all the more insidious because that ‘importance’ has been by association with COB (Mr. Miscavige).”

As he further confessed, his modus operandi included:

“The creation of ‘threats’ to justify my own existence and suppressive operating basis. This suppressive operating basis was employed to try to maintain the false impression that I have some other production record externally that warrants me maintaining a high position. In fact, this is a fraud I have perpetrated.”

As for the damage he caused, and again in his own words:

“This has resulted in some very expensive situations becoming much bigger than they were and winding up on COB’s plate to terminatedly handle. Each and every time on major situations, COB has had to intervene to clean up wars I had exacerbated. For example, left to my own devices in handling IRS litigation, the end result would undoubtedly have been no exemption, a billion-dollar tax bill, and possible shutting down of the Church. I have developed a slick false PR technique of positioning myself as having been integral in handling threats during and after the fact, when they are actually terminatedly handled by COB. By calculation I have lost the Church 43 million dollars on losses and expenses that could have been avoided.”

Proof of his words: Since the discovery and removal of Rathbun and Rinder, the seemingly endless series of “unexplainable” external battles and legal cases has “magically” ended. Indeed, the Church has emerged victorious in country after country with religious recognitions as well as precedent-setting decisions in the European Court of Human Rights (the highest court on international human rights issues for the 47 countries that comprise the Council of Europe).

But Rathbun knew something else. Unlike himself, whose only duties were concerned with external legal affairs, Mr. Miscavige was responsible for the leadership of the entire religion:

“By perpetuating these operations internally and externally, the worst suppression has been visited upon COB RTC. It is the worst suppression because COB RTC is the person who has single-handedly salvaged Scientology from potential external ruin, and single-handedly salvaged Scientology itself by holding the line technically, administratively, and on dissemination. Had he not been here and done what he has, Scientology would have been lost. There is no slightest doubt about that. The cumulative amount of COB’s time I have cost in terms of dropping balls, creating situations internally and externally, is on the order of eight years.”

Although he confessed to the ramifications of his actions, the magnitude of his damage is a bitter pill to swallow. Specifically, while he well knew how much his incompetence and created disasters had cost in terms of Mr. Miscavige’s time, the resultant Church expansion—with Rathbun off the lines and Mr. Miscavige free to dedicate himself to the Church’s religious mission—serves to illustrate just how destructive Rathbun was.

Case in point: With the Church’s resources now dedicated to the religion itself, since Rathbun has been gone the size of the Church has doubled what it had achieved in its first 55 years of existence. Moreover, Mr. Miscavige was finally free to complete a 25-year project to restore all Mr. Hubbard’s written and spoken words and so make available the full Scripture of the Scientology religion. (Read the biography of Scientology's ecclesiastical leader at www.scientology.org/DavidMiscavige) But that’s still not the end of the story, because Rathbun did not act alone in suppressing the religion. As he further admitted:

“I recognize my actions have been unfounded and ignorant and destructive in the extreme. There is no conspiracy connected with this pattern of suppression, except a portion of it. That is Mike Rinder who has gone into tacit agreement with me on making nothing of situations, false reporting on them, and allowing them to expand until they explode on COB’s plate to handle.”

Yes, Mike Rinder, who would later admit he was a “clone” of Rathbun—doing and saying whatever Rathbun ordered him to do or say.

But for all that, Rathbun’s most telling statement, the one that would prophesize his irreversible meltdown to this day, was this:

“The motivations for these acts are a psychotic computation for self-preservation.”