ENTER THE PRESS
(AND AN APOSTATE “MEA CULPA”)

• 2009: It was hard to imagine what they might have to sell even though, date-coincident with media contact, neither Rathbun, Rinder nor DeVocht have any visible employment or means of support. Yet they now spend their days blogging on the Internet or glued to flat-screen TVs—while not even pretending to be so much as attempting to gain employment or engage in any work. Be that as it is, and no matter further rumors of the press “compensating” them, paying “down payments” on their condos, and a purported $250,000 media payment to Rinder for an “exclusive,” the fact is they did have a story to sell. And it was a bombshell.

• Indeed, it would finally, after 14 years, clear up the mystery as to what had happened back in 1995 and who had been responsible for the perjury and obstruction of justice that resulted in the, since dismissed, criminal charges—and the false accusations against the Church’s leader.

And who better to hear that story than the very same local newspaper that had so wished for it to result in the destruction of the Church? In fact, the very same press—indeed, the same reporter—who had repeatedly taken spokesman Rinder to task for the lies told to law enforcement?

So what was the answer and who had done it?

It was a story the newspaper had no need to fact check. Because their suddenly “star” sources for a scandalous story about the Church and its leader confessed that it was themselves—the “Posse”—who had committed the crime.

For the first time ever it was revealed:

• Rathbun, in his own words, told how it was he who had ordered evidence destroyed: “I said, ‘lose ’em’ and walked out of the room,” adding that the decision to destroy the records was his own: “Nobody told me to do it and I did it.”

• Rathbun further admitted he was the one who suborned perjury, forcing witnesses to lie.

• Rathbun further justified his acts by claiming it was “the hand I was dealt.” Specifically, that by the time he arrived on the scene, DeVocht, secretly, had already forced the first witnesses to lie. Whereupon Rathbun and DeVocht conspired to force all other witnesses to do the same—a secret they would keep until their revelation to a newspaper reporter, in 2009, 14 years after the crime.

• Finally, there was the answer to why Rinder shook DeVocht’s hand upon DeVocht’s cowardly departure those many years earlier, and Rinder’s bizarre friendship with Rathbun, even after Rathbun almost killed him: Rinder was in on it the whole time—directing the entire thing.

The newspaper
reporter and editor
destroyed any
appearance of
objectivity. And
once it was done,
even their own
editorial staff
wanted to spit
in their face.


The newspaper's reporter and editor were in paroxysms of glee over the Rathbun, Rinder and DeVocht confession. But it came at a price. Namely the death of any remaining integrity or ethics they had as journalists.

Even though they had finally discovered who had committed the greatest lie of all, suborning perjury, they were now to give those perjurers a platform to vent about the very person who—discovering only a fraction of what they’d done and now confessed—had removed them.

The fact that Rathbun admitted that he, Rinder and DeVocht had suborned perjury and obstructed justice—after the statute of limitations had expired, thus precluding criminal prosecution and jail time—apparently did not matter. After all, the reporter and editor had in previous years printed enough anti-Scientology vitriol to fill a book.

Besides, the reporter and editor felt confident in another regard. They knew Mr. Miscavige rarely gave interviews and would likely decline their request to do so—at which point they could print the latest self-corroborated lies by the self-admitted perjurers with a tacked-on, “Mr. Miscavige refused to comment.” So the betrayal wasn’t merely those who were busted—Rathbun, Rinder and DeVocht. It also included the local newspaper's reporter and editor. They well knew, from his 1998 interview, that Mr. Miscavige was the only person ever truthful to them. They further knew they hated Rinder prior to the Miscavige open-access interview. As for Rathbun, they would have never met him were it not for Mr. Miscavige (who the newspaper now knew was unaware of Rathbun’s crime at the time Rathbun was introduced to them). And DeVocht? Yes—Mr. Miscavige’s introduction too. Nobody in the Church, not even the corrupt trio, ever considered the reporter and editor to be ethical or honest. They merely knew Mr. Miscavige was—and so even the likes of these journalists had no choice but to be impressed. After all—he was no Rinder—a man they, again, despised. The reporter and editor destroyed any appearance of objectivity. And once it was done, even their own editorial staff wanted to spit in their face.

Because as it turned out, however, just as in 1998, Mr. Miscavige did indeed agree to be interviewed. Moreover, he told the reporter and editor, in writing, that he would “provide information annihilating the credibility of your sources.”

The newspaper was caught out. They knew what it meant to interview Mr. Miscavige. They knew it would be fact, fact, fact, truth, truth, truth. So what did they do? They cancelled the interview and went to press the very next day.

What had served for anti-Scientology fodder in literally hundreds of articles and editorials, between 1997 and 2004, was now brushed aside as a “tsk-tsk” because the perjurers were now suddenly on the local newspaper's anti-Scientology team.