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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]
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