Letters to Alex Gibney and Sheila Nevins regarding Going Clear: Scientology and the prison of belief

Alex Gibney of Jigsaw Productions, Lawrence Wright from the New Yorker and HBO spent more than two years producing the one-sided Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief. At no time was the Church of Scientology contacted until the very last minute when the film was for all intents and purposes finished. Gibney never even asked to visit or film inside a Church of Scientology or Church property. When the Church asked for a fair and reasonable opportunity to respond to any allegations, it was arrogantly dismissed. Instead, Gibney relied on lies and hate speech churned out by the usual collection of bitter individuals kicked out of the Church for malfeasance who now make a living spreading false information about the Church. Furthermore, Alex Gibney and HBO never once told the Church of Scientology any of the allegations they used to build their propaganda. See for yourself the barrage of letters asking for a fair opportunity to address allegations that were sent to Alex Gibney and documentary producer Sheila Nevins of HBO. The bias is eye opening.

Letters from the Church

March 12, 2015 You Make the Bed You Lie In Alex Gibney spent nearly two years working on his film in secret, never once providing the Church with a single allegation to which to respond. He never allowed the Church to provide him or HBO with relevant context and factual information and never even asked the Church any basic fact-checking questions. Would you not expect a documentarian to at least look into the very subject of his documentary? Not Alex Gibney—because he is a propagandist with no interest in the facts.

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January 23, 2015 Stop lying about avoiding the truth Read the Church response to the outrageous lie Alex Gibney told The Hollywood Reporter that he was “rebuffed” by the Church and asked to comply with unreasonable conditions. Wrote the Church, “This is a lie. We did not give any conditions, unreasonable or otherwise… We have only asked you repeatedly to give us allegations so we can have an opportunity to respond.”

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January 13, 2015 Your primary sources are admitted liars Read how HBO and Alex Gibney continue to arrogantly stonewall Church efforts to refute allegations in Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief. Outrageously, HBO and Gibney asked for eyewitnesses to alleged events but wouldn’t reveal what events were relevant. “Your primary sources have recently been deposed. They are admitted liars and you are going to see information which is irrefutable.” the Church wrote.

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January 7, 2015 Trying to excuse the inexcusable Read how HBO and Alex Gibney continued to try to justify their decision to hide from the Church. Noting that the Church never sought special treatment, only fair treatment, the Church offered to present facts refuting allegations in Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief and to present documentary evidence discrediting Gibney’s sources. Wrote the Church, “You continue to refuse to provide us the allegations contained in your documentary…. Failing to give us a chance to address allegations speaks to the integrity of the entire project.”

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December 24, 2014 The recipe for propaganda Read how the Church offered to meet with Alex Gibney and HBO to discuss allegations in the film, but were repeatedly turned down. Instead, Gibney was crafting a propaganda piece that relied on a handful of bitter apostates. “Make no mistake: HBO’s letter proves that HBO has been drinking the proverbial Kool-Aid of a handful of zealots led by Marty Rathbun, an admitted suborner of perjury. How could HBO not want to hear from the numerous people who have personal experience with him, his co-conspirator Mike Rinder, as well as the likes of Jason Beghe and Paul Haggis? If you don’t, then you are just doing this for propaganda.”

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December 24, 2014 Your silence is deafening See how Alex Gibney arrogantly refused to respond or even acknowledge numerous offers by the Church of materials, evidence and eyewitness accounts from individuals who dispute his sources for Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief. Even his own lawyers stated, “other persons who were eyewitnesses to the events these individuals describe are appropriate and would be valuable to the filmmaker.” The letter further notes that Gibney is playing a guessing game by withholding the names of individuals making allegations and what they are claiming.

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December 16, 2014 Bigoted propaganda in the making Read the Church’s warning to HBO documentary film chief Sheila Nevins that Alex Gibney’s Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief was shaping up to be bigoted propaganda. A Church spokesperson notes that Gibney had turned down offers of documentary, evidence, facts, judicial rulings and declarations. Instead, his t relies on Lawrence Wright’s book and “a handful of obsessed anti-Scientology zealots with an agenda to invent lies and harm the Church of Scientology as well as the millions of Scientologists around the world.”

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December 16, 2014 Another Rolling Stone/University of Virginia in the making Read the warning given Alex Gibney that Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief is a journalistic debacle in the making if he continues ignoring offers by the Church to provide facts and documents to answer allegations. “Relying only on a single point of view—in this case, anti-Scientologists, some of whom have been out of the Church for as long as 30 years—makes your film no more accurate than Rolling Stone’s University of Virginia debacle,” a Church spokesperson wrote.

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November 14, 2014 If you get specific we will refute your allegations Read how Alex Gibney avoided the Church for more than two years in making his film rather than be up front by giving it a fair opportunity to respond to his allegations. “As we understand it, you have been working on it for approximately two years, which is why it is inexcusable to only now contact the Church with a disingenuous request to respond to unspecified allegations from anonymous sources,” wrote a Church spokesperson.

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November 11, 2014 Stop ducking the truth See how Alex Gibney ignored numerous efforts by the Church to respond to allegations he planned to make in Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief. Wrote a Church spokesperson, “I urge you to send me by email any and all statements made about the Church, as well as the identification of those who made these statements, and give us the opportunity to respond to ensure you have the facts. If you are identifying sources in your documentary we see no basis for not sharing their identity with us. It will help us give you a full and comprehensive response.”

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November 6, 2014 The difference between Wright and wrong Read the Church’s letter informing Alex Gibney that the Lawrence Wright book Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood and the Prison of Belief contains hundreds of errors and misstatements, is a “compendium of lies from anti-Scientologists,” and that publishers in the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia refused to publish it. States the letter, “Mr. Wright’s book is demonstrably biased. We are confident the evidence will show that prior to writing either the New Yorker article or his book, Mr. Wright had a preordained view of Scientology and set out from the beginning to make both a self-fulfilling prophecy and the treatise of a bigot.”

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Letters from Counsel

March 19, 2015 Going Clear author Lawrence Wright’s “willful blindness and bigoted perspective” Read the letter from noted First Amendment and constitutional rights attorney Eric M. Lieberman, who has represented the Church for four decades, detailing that the premise held by director Alex Gibney and Lawrence Wright toward Scientology as a religion in HBO’s Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief is based on numerous falsehoods unsupported by the law that shows their transparent bias. Mr. Lieberman states, “[that] premise, upon which both Mr. Wright and Mr. Gibney rely, is both factually wrong and demonstrates a fundamental failure to understand the central concepts of religious liberty in the United States and, increasingly, the world. Indeed, its very statement discloses the closed mind, willful blindness and bigoted perspective of its author.”

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March 18, 2015 Church counsel notes Going Clear director Alex Gibney keeps lying about religion’s exemption Read the letter written to director Alex Gibney’s attorney by Monique E. Yingling, Church counsel for more than 25 years, detailing the string of falsehoods he has been telling about religion’s tax exemption in appearances promoting the HBO film Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief. Ms. Yingling notes that there is substantial information in the public record contradicting Gibney’s claims as well as the myths created by disgruntled excommunicated individuals he relied upon as sources, noting to Gibney’s attorney that she has offered to walk his client through the materials so he would understand the issue. “Instead, he has chosen not to reply to me but to continue to repeat the lies of others and now to invent his own,” she stated.

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March 16, 2015 Church human rights counsel on Going Clear as “pure propaganda” Read Church human rights counsel William Walsh’s letter to counsel for HBO and director Alex Gibney noting that Lawrence Wright’s book used as a source material for Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief is so steeped in falsehoods and bias that it is “not worth the paper it is printed on.” Likewise, Mr. Walsh states, Gibney’s film is “based upon the same fatal flaws that infected Wright’s book, present a false, biased picture of Scientology that amounts to nothing more than pure propaganda.”

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February 27, 2015 Alex Gibney comments re IRS are a “vicious distortion” Read the letter written to director Alex Gibney’s attorney by Monique E. Yingling, Church counsel for more than 25 years, detailing false and malicious allegations the director has posted on the Internet and spread about the Church and the IRS to promote HBO’s Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief. Ms. Yingling says Gibney’s film is “replete with false and misleading statements and assertions about the relations between the IRS and the Church of Scientology and is nothing short of a vicious distortion of what actually occurred when the IRS recognized Scientology as a tax-exempt religious and charitable organization.” She notes that Gibney’s film conveniently fails to credit the Church for its significant role in the passage of the Taxpayer Bill of Rights. “For that matter, much of the leading case law under the Freedom of Information Act arose from the Church’s use of that legislation in litigation with the IRS and other federal agencies, to the benefit of all citizens. These decisions have helped a generation of Americans, including writers, journalists and, yes, documentarians, to exercise greater scrutiny over the actions of the government.”

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February 20, 2015 Church Counsel informs attorneys Going Clear relied on failed lawsuit Read First Amendment and constitutional rights attorney Eric M. Lieberman’s letter to counsel for HBO and director Alex Gibney noting that the case serving as the lynchpin for false allegations about confinement and child labor in Alex Gibney’s HBO film Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief, as well as the Lawrence Wright’s book it was based upon, stem from a thoroughly debunked lawsuit tossed out of court on its lack of merit. Mr. Lieberman, who served as co-counsel on that case, states, “It is beyond imagination that a journalist and a film maker would produce works that repeat the allegations of disaffected former members as if they were true, without even mentioning that the federal courts clearly and unambiguously found those allegations to be without basis in fact.”

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Letters re: documentary sources

March 12, 2015 Domestic Violence by Mike Rinder Sheila Nevins, the head of HBO documentaries, exhibits her “domestic violence double standard” by righteously condemning domestic abuse on the one hand, when it makes for good PR for her and HBO, but then glorifying a notorious wife and woman abuser, à la Mike Rinder, and granting him five-star luxury while parading him around to promote Gibney’s film. Hypocrisy should be exposéd.

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March 3, 2015 False Allegations from Mike Rinder On March 3, 2015, the Church wrote to Sheila Nevins to further illuminate the deceitfulness of Alex Gibney’s HBO film on the Church of Scientology. Predictably, one of the linchpins of the movie is Mike Rinder, a rabid anti-Scientologist removed from his Church position in disgrace more than a decade earlier for criminal acts, malfeasance and, most importantly, for repeatedly lying to the leader of the religion. However with this letter the Church was armed with further evidence from a legal deposition Rinder had recently been subject to. He had testified under oath to lying—which is exactly what the Church had said all along.

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February 25, 2015 False Allegations from Tom DeVocht On February 25, 2015, the Church wrote to Sheila Nevins to illustrate to her the falsity of tales told in Alex Gibney’s film by a handful of spiteful malcontents like Tom DeVocht. The Church also provided her with extensive information on DeVocht’s history of lying, deceit and malfeasance, showing what little interest Nevins had in inconvenient facts that would undermine the movie’s bigoted agenda.

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February 24, 2015 False Allegations from Marc Headley and his wife Claire On February 24, 2015, the Church wrote again to Sheila Nevins, this time to explain to her that the false underlying premise of both Wright’s book, and Gibney’s documentary based on it, was to promote the absurd “human trafficking” and “exploitation of labor” allegations against the Church, which had been utterly debunked by nothing less than the federal court system years earlier. Because their case was thrown out, the Headleys were ordered to pay the Church over $40,000 in court costs. Enclosed also is a white paper which totally undermines the credibility of Marc Headley and his wife: his thefts, violence, selling stories to the tabloids and their support of the cyber hate group Anonymous.

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February 20, 2015 False Allegations from Marty Rathbun On February 20, 2015, the Church was yet again forced to correspond with Sheila Nevins, this time on account of a new lie dreamed up by star source Marty Rathbun—that the Church had illegally “wiretapped” a celebrity. Wow! Normally, this would have been one giant red flag to any journalist as it should have been for HBO and Alex Gibney. By the numbers, Rathbun failed to mention this bogus allegation in no less than 1,300 vitriolic and dishonest blog posts, interviews with some 50 media outlets, in three self-published books, and in extensive interviews with film producer Lawrence Wright. Of course, Rathbun didn’t “forget” to mention it, because he made it up for Gibney—as a new titillating fact to drum up interest for his factless film.

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February 19, 2015 False Allegations from Sylvia Yvonne “Spanky” Taylor As HBO refused to meet with persons intimately familiar with facts concerning presumed allegations in Alex Gibney’s propaganda film, the Church was forced on February 19, 2015, to again write to Sheila Nevins to sort out facts. This time about one “Spanky” Taylor, an apostate who had left the Church 30 years earlier who had been removed from her position in the Church as long ago as 1978. She had later broken up her family with an affair. She had become involved in a now defunct deprogramming network and more.

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February 18, 2015 False Allegations from Sara Goldberg Necessitated by HBO and Alex Gibney’s refusal to meet in person, the Church was also forced to provide yet another detailed letter to Ms. Nevins to elucidate factual content about another noncredible source unearthed from iniquity—Sara Goldberg. This is the woman who sold her soul in favor of her deadbeat, drunk and drug-addicted son and against her upstanding daughter with an 8-year-old special needs child. Then again, she had experience with lying to the authorities, having lied in the 1970s to the FBI that was investigating her. The letter and its attached white paper provide full details.

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Letters from families

February 12, 2015 Ashley Epstein letter to Sheila Nevins On February 12, 2015, Ashley Epstein, daughter of Gibney source Sara Goldberg, wrote to Sheila Nevins, head of HBO documentaries, to find out why she had made unauthorized use of her own and her daughter's faces in violation of their rights. Ashley stated that HBO did not have their permission to publicly use and profit from any of their images and names for the purpose of forwarding the lies in their film.

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February 12, 2015 Letter from Ashley Epstein to Richard Plepler On February 12, 2015, Ashley Epstein, daughter of Gibney source Sara Goldberg, wrote to Chairman and Chief Executive Officer HBO, Richard Plepler, to exposé the callous insensitivity of HBO—for the unauthorized use of her own and her daughter's faces in Alex Gibney’s Going Clear documentary. Ashley explains that HBO did not have their permission to publicly use and profit from any of their images and names for the purpose of forwarding the lies in their film.

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February 12, 2015 Gale Lister letter to Sheila Nevins On February 12, 2015, Gale Lister, father of Ashley Epstein and ex-husband of Gibney source Sara Goldberg, sent a letter to HBO notifying them that no-one has ever contacted him, his daughter or her husband to get their permission to use photographs of his granddaughter. He further explained that his daughter was made terribly upset that HBO would even think of taking advantage of an 8-year-old girl.

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February 12, 2015 Gary Epstein letter to Sheila Nevins On February 12, 2015, Gary Epstein, father-in-law of Ashley Epstein and paternal grandfather of Ashley Epstein’s daughter, demanded that any photographs or video footage of his 8-year-old granddaughter be removed from Gibney’s film. Like numerous others, Gary came to New York City with personal knowledge about the people suspected to be featured in Gibney’s film. Yet they were all refused a single audience with Gibney and HBO.

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February 16, 2015 Norman Taylor letter to Sheila Nevins On February 16, 2015, California lawyer Mr. Norman Taylor wrote to Sheila Nevins, head of documentaries for HBO, to shed light on the lies told by one of Gibney’s sources, “Spanky” Taylor. Interestingly, as Spanky’s husband at the time, he would have direct personal knowledge of all of the “facts” in question. This letter provides the facts. Unfortunately personal knowledge was not something Gibney sought, so Mr. Taylor, like so many other eye witnesses, were left standing in the cold when they came to New York to tell their story to Ms. Nevins and Mr. Gibney.

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February 20, 2015 Anne Joasem counsel’s letter to HBO counsel Counsel for Anne Joasem, the ex-wife of leading propaganda source for Alex Gibney’s documentary, Marty Rathbun, wrote to HBO concerning the materially false information about Ms. Joasem, which is presented in the documentary as true. Mr. Gibney’s inferences that Ms. Joasem was held against her will and that Ms. Joasem's comments on a national TV news program were “scripted” are disgustingly false. Anne Joasem is a highly-trained minister of the Church, and has been a senior Church executive since 1987 and a Scientologist since 1971. Unlike her ex-husband, whom she tried desperately to help when he suffered two psychotic breaks, she remained true to her faith. She also flew to New York to present HBO with direct, personal knowledge about a primary Gibney source, but was rebuffed.

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February 23, 2015 Cathy Bernardini’s counsel’s letter to HBO counsel Renowned litigator, John C. Hueston, wrote to HBO, on behalf of Ms. Bernardini, Mike Rinder’s wife of 36 years, as HBO and Gibney had refused audience to Ms. Bernardini and her daughter, when they both travelled at great expense to New York to provide personal testimony. Their statements were about Rinder’s physical violence toward her, from which she has still not regained the full use of her shoulder and suffers regular pain, his callous disregard for family, including his son who was afflicted with life threatening melanoma, a virulent form of cancer, and his abandonment of friends, family and faith.

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February 23, 2015 Jennifer Linson’s counsel’s letter to HBO counsel Expert Los Angeles litigator, Mr. Bert Deixler, representing Church executive Ms. Jennifer Linson, wrote to counsel for HBO, as Alex Gibney refused to meet with the Church when Ms. Linson flew to New York to attempt to meet with him and provide substantial information regarding the unreliability of his sources, most especially her former husband Tom DeVocht. HBO of course knew that Ms. Linson was in Mr. Gibney's film, so to show disinterest in the truth is all the more disingenuous and shoddy journalism.

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