The Public Investigation Section is formed in Division l, Dept 3, as Section 5.
The purpose of this section is:
“TO HELP LRH INVESTIGATE PUBLIC MATTERS AND INDIVIDUALS WHICH SEEM TO IMPEDE HUMAN LIBERTY SO THAT SUCH MATTERS MAY BE EXPOSED AND TO FURNISH INTELLIGENCE REQUIRED IN GUIDING THE PROGRESS OF SCIENTOLOGY.”
When an organization has 150 on staff this section must be formed. Until that time it should be formed in Continental organizations responsible for the general good of Scientology on that continent.
It is composed wholly of professional investigators. Agencies may not be used.
Personnel for this section is advertised for in classified columns, giving only our phone number, and are called in for personnel review by Dept 1 and Dept 14.
Great care must be taken in selecting such personnel as to past experience and an E-Meter check that is completely valid must be passed by the applicant regarding his purposes. A high or low tone arm or an undesirable needle reaction flunks the applicant. The question regarding the applicant being sent there by some other hostile agency must be passed without any question or doubt.
The applicant is given nominal pay and expenses on actual receipts only until he or she has a proven statistic at which time better pay may be given.
The investigator is detailed only to specific projects as laid down by Worldwide and these must always concern broad public matters that are reacting on Scientology and strictly in accordance with the purpose of this section. In this way investigation serves as processing at public level.
The section may never be used on Ethics Section matters but may work with Ethics when an ex-Scientologist is involved.
The section has nothing to do with dispersed investigation of isolated cases. It may only work on matters relating to groups and individuals who are part of those groups.
The statistic of the section is dual consisting of the number of cases successfully investigated on specific projects and the number of derogatory news stories appearing that week related to enemies of Scientology related to a specific project. The statistic of each individual investigator is the number of cases personally investigated to a completed useful report. These are reported to the HCO Advisory Committee and graphed each week. Production of the section is the number of cases in a project processed.
It will be seen that the section has all the useful functions of an intelligence and propaganda agency. It finds the data and sees that it gets action.
The determination of what a project is is simple - what agency or group is attacking Scientology? As Scientology stands for freedom, those who don't want freedom tend to attack it. The Section investigates the attacking group's individual members and sees that the results of the investigation get adequate legal action and publicity.
The mechanism employed is very straightforward. We never use the data to threaten to expose. We simply collect it and expose.
Experience with the section will show that very sordid motives lie behind such attacks and that individuals of the attacking groups have a very great deal to hide. Thus the section always has a huge quantity of matters to be discovered and is not likely to run out of cases to investigate, providing only that it does not depart from this formula:
If there is no variation in the above formula and if serious departures or private vendettas do not enter in, and if all evidence continues to be honest and none of it framed, the section and Scientology will prosper.
All investigators, once they have passed their rigorous screening and have been employed, may look over the organization, its papers and files and satisfy themselves that we ourselves are not trying to hide anything and are exactly what we say we are and do exactly what we say we do.
Operating from this platform of confidence, the investigator can be much more effective.
Successfully experiencing Scientology processing can heighten the confidence even further.
Standard intelligence procedures are used.
The section has a file for each project and files by names of individuals within that project. The names are cross indexed, etc.
Public solicitation for cases of injury to the rights or liberty concerned with that project can obtain leads.
Every project should be the subject of a case form made up to contain details necessary for filing and follow up.
Anyone writing in a complaint is then sent a copy of the form to fill in so that the vital data can be weeded out and the importance of that complaint seen at a glance. The pattern of the form is based on the data needful to get a conviction.
Such a form is always sent back with a covering letter stating it is all in confidence, etc, making the plaintiff feel safer in answering.
However lists of names of plaintiffs are procured, each becomes the subject of a filled form.
The more fruitful of such forms are followed up by individual investigators. These obtain the data necessary for a conviction of the individual complained about who is a member of the attacking group.
Only copies are ever given state agencies or the police. Originals are always held.
The usual precautions against libel, slander and false arrest are taken.
Projects must be studied for legal liabilities by the Legal Section before being commenced upon. But no project may be stopped by the Legal Section - their whole function is to find how to make it safe.
No act which will make an investigator liable to criminal prosecution may be ordered.
The section should note that press and the public are interested in murder, assault, destruction, violence, sex and dishonesty in that order. Investigations which can uncover these factors in the activities of individuals of a group attacking Scientology are valuable in the degree that they contain a number of these factors. The more factors a case contains the more important the case is. The idea is that the press feeds on these factors and we feed them someone else's. It will be found that our own Scientology groups contain so few of these they have to be invented about us. We need never invent them in the attacking group. They will be found to be there.
Associating the attacking group's activities with reprehensible groups in the past by using similar descriptive words will be found very effective. For example, if the word “white” has been made hateful to the public by some past criminal group we use “white’ in our descriptive terminology concerning the group that is attacking us and whom we are investigating. “Psychiatric blood sports” is an example, blood sports being lately very much derogated.
The work of the section is usually tied to committees in human rights or such committees as organized by the International Executive Division.
The action of the section is more than Scientology self-protection. As one holds up an image of freedom to the public the more suppressive groups and individuals in the society attack it. Hitler, for instance, would have attacked any group just because it was free. In that way we then get rid of suppressive groups by investigation and disclosure.
Section investigators would do well to study the technology on suppressive persons.
Such attacking groups with which the section will deal derive their power from pretense and secrecy. It will be seen the power vanishes under calm investigation, particularly when it is well known to them that we are investigating.