Mike Rinder

Rinder was born in Adelaide, Australia, to Ian and Barbara Rinder in 1955.[8] When he was 5 years old his parents became interested in Scientology and the family began attending the Church of Scientology International center in Australia.[9]

In a 2006 interview with Rolling Stone, Rinder said he had experienced discrimination in Australia during the period when the state of Victoria had banned Scientology: "You couldn't own Scientology books ... If you did, you had to hide them because if the police came and found them, they'd take them away."[10]

After finishing high school, at age 18 Rinder joined the Sea Org on the ship Apollo, then headquarters for Sea Org and for Scientology. Rinder became an early member of the Commodore's Messenger Organization and rapidly rose in rank to head of the Office of Special Affairs.[11]

As executive director of the Office of Special Affairs, he served as the chief spokesperson and representative of Scientology to the media for 25 years[12] until replaced by Tommy Davis in 2005 under orders from David Miscavige.[13] This office is responsible for overseeing public relations and legal issues for the church, as well as handling "internal investigations into members' behavior."[12]

According to a 2016 Rolling Stone recap of the second episode of Leah Remini's documentary series "Scientology and the Aftermath",[11] Rinder said of his position:

If the Church decided someone was an enemy and needed to be silenced or destroyed, it was my job and I did it ... Everything from following them 24 hours a day to having people camped outside their door, to being vilified on the internet, to following them wherever they traveled, I was the guy [that did it].

— Mike Rinder, "5 Things We Learned From 'Scientology and the Aftermath,' Episode 2", RollingStone December 7, 2016

Rinder cited specific examples of this duty, saying that he personally traveled to London to prevent journalist John Sweeney, who is responsible for Scientology and Me, from attending a movie premiere and to attempt to "discredit Sweeney in any way that he could".[11]

According to Rinder, Scientology's two principal weapons against critics within the organization are Auditing and Disconnection. Initially, auditing was meant to be a form of counseling (for which members pay over $500 per hour) to obtain the spiritual benefits of Scientology but by the time of his departure, he stated the practice had degenerated into a tool for interrogation and mind control. Non-compliant parishioners are labelled "suppressive persons" and disconnected from by other members of the church, including family members.

The device used during auditing, called an E-meter, has a disclaimer on it that says "it does nothing by itself" but members are told that it functions like a lie detector. Mike Rinder, Mark Rathbun, Marc and Claire Headley state that auditing sessions are secretly recorded, including ones with secrets about Tom Cruise[20][21] and initially were forms of spiritual counseling. That changed due to the reaction by many early Scientologists to the Xenu origin of man story found in OT III. They balked at it and began leaving the church and encouraging others to do so as well. According to Rinder, this is where the term "suppressive person" originated from.[18] Rinder also stated that the prophecy of Hubbard's messiah like return after death to prevent an apocalyptic alien invasion in OT VIII (released in 1988, two years after his death) garnered a similar response, prompting many high-ranking Scientologists – including Pat Broeker – to leave the organization as a result. According to Rinder, virtually all of the executives, himself included, had rejected both of the above-mentioned Scientological tenets, however they nevertheless continued to train parishioners to accept them as true.[18]

Rinder's moment of clarity after the confrontation with Sweeney came when he realized that it was the auditing sessions that led him to deny Sweeney's allegations that he knew were true. He later discovered the training he received during those sessions was developed from a book written by Hubbard in 1955 called Brain-Washing.[22]

According to Rinder, for decades enrollment has been declining, but departures were more concerning. Without new Scientologists entering the organization, the church became increasingly dependent on retaining the followers they already had. The church's disconnection policy is primarily how the church discourages Scientologists from departing and is a mechanism of emotional blackmail.[14] All communication with any Scientologist that "blows", or has an unauthorized departure as Rinder did, is immediately ceased. Since Scientologists are not permitted to have social relationships with non-Scientologists, they essentially lose contact with all their social contacts when they leave. Sea Org members are even more vulnerable when they leave because they are financially dependent on the church. Any Scientologist that doesn't disconnect from someone that leaves will be declared a suppressive person and expelled as well.[23] This policy led to what Rinder stated are "captive" Scientologists – church members who stay not because they are faithful to the tenets but because they fear disconnection – and cites Leah Remini's mother as an example of this because she stated she wanted to leave Scientology prior to Leah's departure but delayed doing so because she didn't want to be disconnected from the rest of her family.[11]

Rinder stated that the policy of "routing out", or authorized departure, is a sham. The church claims that anyone can voluntarily leave, or route out, and not be declared by paying a fee for leaving but in reality everyone that leaves gets declared by policy because they will have access to the internet after leaving and any parishioner who remains in contact with them will also have unauthorized access as well.[14]

After leaving Scientology in 2007, Rinder and his first wife, Cathy, divorced after 35 years, and he has had no contact with her or his two adult children from his first marriage because of disconnection. In April 2010, Rinder, who lived in Clearwater, Florida, attempted to meet his son, who also lives in Clearwater, after learning he was diagnosed with cancer, but his son refused to see him. The church also refused to let him on the property and had him cited for trespassing by the Clearwater Police.[1] Rinder stated his biggest regrets in life is having two children that were born into Scientology and having enforced the disconnection policy (to which he is now being subjected) when he was director of the OSA.[14]

He stated the rise of social media in the late 2000s has allowed ex-Scientologists to connect with each other and form support groups for members who have left or want to leave. He credits the disconnection policy for the consistently negative media portrayal of Scientology. The reports of Scientology extracting large fees and their space opera beliefs were controversial, but their portrayal didn't become consistently negative until ex-Scientologists started sharing their stories through social media about families intentionally being broken up by disconnection because a family member decided to leave (or wasn't a member of) the church of Scientology.[14]

Rinder stated that his primary role as Director of the Office of Special Affairs was defending the church against critics by employing Scientology's fair game tactics which essentially are to "intimidate, defame, harass, discredit, and effectively silence any criticism of Scientology". He and fellow defector Marty Rathbun, former head of the Religious Technology Center, revealed through these interviews how this was done. For instance, Rinder told the Times that Scientology critic Bob Minton ceased his criticism of Scientology after Rinder discovered "things that, really, he was worried about and had caused problems for him in the investigation that we had done" and that they had reached a private settlement. Rinder regrets his role in that investigation and has stated he considered Minton a friend at the time of Minton's death in January 2010.[24] Both have said the policy was backfiring because victims, such as John Sweeney, reported their experiences with fair game and this led to more negative publicity and thus produced more critics than they were silencing. Rinder's own decision to speak out against Scientology is an example of this as well because he decided to speak out against the church after being victimized by fair game despite not criticizing the church after leaving.[16] Rinder has been victimized by fair game numerous times and recalled an incident where he was sitting in his car at a doctor's office parking lot during a phone interview with BBC journalist John Sweeney when "five senior members of [Scientology's] California-based international management team – surrounded and screamed at him". The screaming was so loud, Sweeney was able to record the episode and later aired the recording on The Secrets of Scientology broadcast by the BBC's Panorama program.[1][19]

The policy was becoming increasingly ineffective starting the 1980s as it was unable to stop publication of A Piece of Blue Sky by ex-Scientologist Jon Atack or the documentary Scientology and Me which ultimately led to Rinder's departure.[22][11] The internet made it even less effective because information can be uploaded anonymously and then viewed by anyone with internet access.[24]

Rinder said Fair Game's most significant failure came with the discovery of Operation Snow White by the FBI. The Church organized an illegal infiltration of 136 government agencies because of the IRS' refusal to reinstate the church's tax exempt status. The FBI raid that ensued led to the discovery of hundreds of documents detailing criminal activity by the Church, and dozens of high-ranking church officials were prosecuted. But according to Rinder, David Miscavige's claim that Fair Game succeeded in regaining Scientology's tax-exempt status in 1993 is untrue. It was reinstated, he said, because Scientology abandoned its Fair Game practices against the IRS after Hubbard's death, and instead followed the IRS policy for obtaining tax-exempt status.[24][25]

According to Rinder, the Church never recovered from the FBI raid, because it provided documentary evidence to support critics' claims. This was also the primary source of information used in the article, The Thriving Cult of Greed and Power published by Time magazine in 1991.[26]

After the FBI raid, Rinder said that Fair Game tactics had to be changed. Intimidation tactics were still used, but took the form of vexatious litigation. Rinder stated this was effective at silencing organizations from disseminating information critical of Scientology, and kept the public relatively unaware of information seized during the FBI raid. However, the 1991 Time magazine article, "The Thriving Cult of Greed and Power," and the litigation that followed it ended this secrecy. The year before Scientology sued Time magazine for defamation, the Church was successful at shutting down the Cult Awareness Network (CAN) by suing the group. However, unlike CAN, the Time Warner Corporation had the resources to defend itself, as well as the documents obtained from the earlier FBI raid. Time Warner was able to successfully prove that Scientology's lawsuit was vexatious in nature, and that it was meant to financially drain critics into submission rather than to resolve any actual dispute. Additionally, the discovery process allowed for the subpoena of Church documents, which exposed the Church's litigation policies. As a result, the Church lost its lawsuit against Time Warner. In the aftermath of the Time Warner lawsuit, courts were less receptive to litigation brought by the Church, because its abuse of the legal system was well documented.[27] The Church spent approximately seven million dollars in an attempt to discredit Time's article, which ultimately had the effect of drawing more attention to Scientology and public criticism of its practices.[28][29][30][31][32] According to Rinder, the Time Warner lawsuit was ultimately responsible for "shattering the cone of silence" around Scientology.

In the decade that followed, criticism of the Church became bolder, more public and consistently negative.[33] In the early 1990s, when the Internet was in its infancy, internet startups could be intimidated by the threat of litigation by the Church. But a decade later, those same companies were now large corporations with the resources to defend themselves. They also lobbied for legislation that shielded them from "loser pays" laws that would indemnify the Church if it lost a lawsuit, and anti-SLAPP laws that prohibited the Church from using lawsuits to financially drain a critic into submission. Although Scientology continued to sue individual critics, defendants began using discovery to introduce secret church documents into evidence, making them part of the public record, and thus viewable by anyone. An example of this was the 1993 case Church of Scientology International v. Fishman and Geertz.[27]