A Scientologist’s Open Letter to the Village Voice and its Readers

Last week, after we revealed the beginning of our “Top 25 People Crippling Scientology” countdown, we received an e-mail from Mark Miglio, who for weeks has been providing some of the best pro-Scientology material in our comments section.

Mark has good-naturedly sparred with the many critics of the church who read and respond to our articles. But now he was reaching out to me directly with a lengthy appeal.

I responded by asking him to give me permission to publish his manifesto. Better to have it reach as many people as possible, I figured. He added to it and agreed to have me post it here.

And here’s the rather glaring disclaimer I have to put on it: I don’t know Miglio personally, and while I have evidence of a Mark Miglio’s involvement in Scientology (see below), I can’t know for sure that the person who sent me this message is that Miglio or that he’s not an elaborate troll. Still, I think there’s value in considering the words in this pro-Scientology appeal, and I look forward to the reception it gets from our readers. — Ed.

Tony, I think you are good guy, but your commentators feed you exaggerated or false “facts” that paint a horrible picture of my church.

It is my opinion that facts can be used to destroy truths. Any great man can probably be “wiped out” by the facts that repressive people use to discredit him. “Truth” does not properly represent real truths when it uses facts to paint false pictures.

When facts are used to create “black” propaganda, those facts become an enemy of society.

I feel that news publications must use their abilities to give ordinary people the information they need without giving the “bad guys” the power to destroy the “good guys”. In other words, media people must investigate all the rumors and controversial statements fed to them with an effort to see that those “facts” paint a true image of the subject. The ethical, moral, and fair thing to do is to reject facts, rumor, and controversial factoids, unless the image painted is in the public interest.

Probably all of us need to take more responsibility for this kind of carelessness. I know that, in the past, I too had a lot of fun passing along discrediting facts about people that I considered my enemies. Now as a Scientologist, I know that no one is actually an enemy; people do what they do because of the false data and the emotional “baggage” they carry.

I would ask you to please consider that Scientology is not your typical investigative situation. It requires a lot of work. May I say that you are in a well-admired position for reporting on an organization that is trying to handle the long-neglected negative emotional charges of many, many lifetimes — and that this will also explain why our major-service donations requests are costly as they are — not counting the free and low cost services. Our classroom training, our corrections and supervision, and international promotions are a big, complicated job that requires a lot of staff and receives no or little government, foundation, and academic contributions. The Scientology technology comprises of all new concepts and a new way of doing things that enrage today’s vast vested interests. Promoting our new ideas is difficult — nothing quite like this has ever been done. It is all very costly and time consuming. It is not like, something that is easy to do; as say, the relatively easy task of hitting a button of an automatic production machine.

There are many mental and emotional things to handle which span many lifetimes.

I wish we could handle everything with just the “Purification Program” (drug detoxification), the “Grades” (relatively low-level services) and the “Clearing Course” (high-level services) but all of our services, each one of them, are very needed and have their own unique benefits for which our people are very happy to make a donation.

A small number of students take advantage of our very unique, and unexpected, refund policy; which can be explained by certain students that are intellectually unable to — or have doubts about — ever becoming a good auditor. The “auditor” is the person that handles the pain of the subconscious mind, and the debilitating experiences of past lifetimes.

These emotional charges of many, many lifetimes also illuminate why people exaggerate, or lie, about their experiences in the church. The past-life spiritual events that have happened to people is not a joke — these events are HOT, painful, and very occluded. When we kick out the unrepentant liars from the church (or they leave before we can kick them out) all sorts of past-life painful emotional charges pop up, such as: “AN–INJUSTICE–HAS–BEEN–DONE–TO–ME !!! “.

It is because of the past life pain that a person needs to approach our auditing in what could be called “baby steps”, but actually all of these steps are of major significance. People sometimes say to me, “Why not just release the OT levels now?” (The OT levels are the premium advanced services.) But the things that happened before, in past lives, could happen again and could likely, greatly upset the person, and focus their attention on the distant past, rather than live their current life in present time and in a productive and happy way.

Other considerations:

Definition: CLEARS. Clears are people who no longer have the negative affects of their OWN subconscious mind.

Many Clears, and all OT’s (except to a very small degree) audit themselves. You have to be a good auditor. It’s a technical thing that requires skill. Your commentators can be seen by us to be BAD auditors, and then too, after auditing themselves badly, they do not do the honorable thing and admit that they have had hid their bad auditing from the “case supervisor” — the only person who could help them out of their self-inflicted mess.

Additionally, some small number of people don’t get good results because they are unable to “open up” to the auditor — one cannot make any spiritual progress by being withdrawn from the very person that one has been asked to help them.

Or they have they “blindness effect” (my words) — they do not see anything about themselves that they feel really needs to improve or change significantly.

Or they are repressive people, or what we call “suppressive” people, who “KNOW” that other ordinary people — especially Scientologists — are sure to harm them eventually and in one way or another; and along with that, they think that anyone would be a fool to leave oneself open to harm by revealing anything of much significance to any auditor.

Sure, Scientologists make mistakes and not all Clears and OT’s have equal abilities, skills, desires, aims, and purposes, but when we are examined carefully you will discover us to be marvelous in one way or another.

I was in the Sea Org and I was at even at “Int.” (the international executive center) and I NEVER saw anyone abused. Thank God, I never had to work for Marty Rathbun, or Mike Rinder, (high-level Scientology traitors who physically abused senior Scientology staff members). Also, I was in the RPF (a voluntary program to make amends) — I was not abused — I liked the RPF. I will return to the SO as soon as I handle certain family matters.

STATISTICS: We are already expanding in holdings, wealth, and yes, members, too; and these stats include people associated with us but do not call themselves Scientologists — they go by the name of other religions.

Sure, we have the understandable difficulties of social and environmental factors, like the hidden identities of the Anonymous Anti-Scientology haters, but we are winning the admiration of the world for what we have done for 61 years. I have no desire or need to exaggerate or lie — like I said we are doing well.

I have learned, conclusively, that liars always suffer within a fair amount of time. Only fools lie. There are solutions for doing things without lying — always. It is dumb and not ethical. The end does not justify the means.

I met DM (our senior exec). I like him, and I see the good things that he has done.
— Mark Miglio

Thank you, Mark. As I mentioned above, there is a record of a Mark Miglio being involved in Scientology as early as 1989 — see this completions record at the excellent “The Truth About Scientology” website. I will repeat that I have no confirmation that the person who sent me this manifesto is the Miglio reflected in those records or is someone who actually is in the church at all. As usual, my recent calls for official statements from Scientology have not been returned. — T.O.

@VoiceTonyO | Facebook: Tony Ortega

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Tony Ortega is the editor-in-chief of The Village Voice. Since 1995, he’s been writing about Scientology at several publications. Among his other stories about L. Ron Hubbard’s organization:

The Larry Wollersheim Saga — Scientology Finally Pays For Its Fraud
The Tory Bezazian (Christman) Story — How the Internet Saved A Scientologist From Herself
The Jason Beghe Defection — A Scientology Celebrity Goes Rogue
The Paul Haggis Ultimatum — The ‘Crash’ Director Tells Scientology to Shove It
The Marc Headley Escape — ‘Tom Cruise Told Me to Talk to a Bottle’
The Jefferson Hawkins Stipulation — Scientology’s former PR genius comes clean
The Daniel Montalvo Double-Cross — Scientology lures a young defector into a trap
A Church Myth Debunked — Scientology and Proposition 8
Daniel Montalvo Strikes Back — Scientology Hit with Stunning Child-Labor Lawsuits
When Scientologists Attack — The Marty Rathbun Intimidation
A Scientologist Excommunicated — The Michael Fairman SP Declaration
The Richard Leiby Operation — Investigating a reporter’s divorce to shut him up
The Hugh Urban Investigation — An academic takes a harsh look at Scientology’s past
Giovanni Ribisi as David Koresh — A precedent for a Scientology-Branch Davidian link
Janet Reitman’s Inside Scientology — A masterful telling of Scientology’s history
The Western Spy Network Revealed? — Marty Rathbun ups the ante on David Miscavige
Scientology’s Enemies List — Are You On It?
Inside Inside Scientology — An interview with author Janet Reitman
Scientology and the Nation of Islam — Holy Doctrinal Mashup, Batman!
Scientologists — How Many of Them Are There, Anyway?
Roger Weller’s Wild Ride — Scientology When it was Hip
The Marc Headley Infiltration — A Scientology Spying Operation Revealed
Placido Domingo Jr: Scientology’s Retaliation is “Scary and Pathetic”
An Interview with Nancy Many, Former Scientology Spy
The Paulien Lombard Confession — A Scientology Spy Comes Clean
The Deputy Benjamin Ring Hard Sell — Scientology wants your 401K
The Top 25 People Crippling Scientology
The Squirrel Busters Busted — Unmasking the Scientology PI in Charge