Flim-Flam! Psychics, ESP, Unicorns, and Other Delusions - James Randi [137]
Another angle of Order 1074 was to convince the leaders of major religions that the CSICOP was out to get them too. This was to be done by circulating bogus letters on CIA letterheads. Although the whole fairy tale seems to have failed to get off the ground, several fake letters were sent out on duplicated CSICOP letterheads, but they were pretty obvious forgeries that fooled no one.
Exposure of the many zany "programmers" described in the seized files of the group wiped out the whole James Bond operation, and the Scientologists stood exposed for just what they are.
It will take some time, but I think that Paulette Cooper will see the Scientology colossus topple. In Paris, in 1978, Hubbard was convicted in absentia of illegally soliciting funds, heavily fined, and sentenced to a prison term. In England, a group of Scientologists was denied entry into the country to hold a convention because according to British laws their cult did not qualify as a religion. Michael Meisner, at one time the fifth highest official among Scientologists in the United States, reported that the church put him under house arrest, gagged and handcuffed him, and tried its version of brainwashing on him—they call it "auditing." His defection, of course, now makes him "fair game" under Scientology rules. Nice bunch of folks.
In late 1978 the world was shocked by a horror that as a fictional plot would have been rejected by the most charitable editor of fantasy fiction as too preposterous to be considered. Who would believe that nearly a thousand adult human beings would stand by while others murdered their children and close friends and then would voluntarily drink grape-flavored Kool-Aid that they knew had been mixed with cyanide? Yet on the instructions of an egomaniac who called himself both a minister and a god—and was believed—the inhabitants of a failed utopia called Jonestown in Guyana, South America, did just that. The question Why? has been echoing about ever since.
"Reverend" Jim Jones was as charismatic a leader as any who ever swayed reason. Despite his farcical philosophy, he managed to convince a considerable number of California's populace that he had a direct pipeline to the gods and to salvation. With the kind of sleight of hand and sleight of mind that characterizes such charlatans, he "proved" that he could raise the dead—he performed the "miracle" forty-seven times in his church—and showed his followers that he was able to cure cancer and other afflictions by removing masses of organic junk from their bodies. After his death, cult members came forward to testify that, after threats from Jones, they had agreed to fake death and then stage instant resurrections. The surgery was even simpler than that still being performed by the "psychic surgeons" of Brazil and the Philippines. Jones merely reached beneath the clothes of the intimidated faithful and pulled out chicken gizzards and other material, according to witnesses. Those who did not see through the tricks were convinced; those among his loyal followers who did recognize a trick when they saw one forgave this good man for the small deception because it was necessary to sell his point.
Because the effects of Jones's ministry seemed so beneficial, and because he used his ministry politically, prominent public figures sent him letters and affidavits of approval and appointed him to important positions. The "miracles" he performed were a bit of fun, after all; who would be hurt by a few conjuring tricks in the name of charity? The abattoir of Jonestown was a grim answer to that naïveté.
Consider, for