Once again, Patty Moher takes us into her time as a Scientology spy…
It's been a long time since I stole trash for the Church of Scientology's Office of Special Affairs (OSA).
In Scientology, stealing trash is called “the D line.” Both the Guardian's Office (GO) and the Office of Special Affairs (OSA) liked to use euphemisms to rename activities that tended to be shady or offensive to people outside of the shadowy world of Scientology. I worked for both.
I was a member of the Guardian's office from 1979 to 1982 and held the post of Director of Rehabilitation, Social Coordination Bureau, New England (Boston org). For this post I was responsible for running, controlling, and managing two Narconons, the two Applied Scholastics and the two LRH-tech schools that were in the New England area.
I was also a trusted OSA Invest (Intel) Volunteer for approximately 14 years. I performed many tasks for both the GO and OSA.
There was a written Guardian Order (policy for the Guardian's Office) about the use of euphemisms. Both the GO and OSA have a list of coded language that is used so that in case of a raid, or interception of written materials, the real meaning or real order is disguised. Only the most trusted and the ones who had the security clearance to work for OSA’s Department of Investigation knew that instead of calling it what it really was, “stealing trash,” they called it the D line.
If the D line was ordered on someone, then you knew this person was considered to be a serious problem to the Church of Scientology.
Just like everything else in Scientology, they have an exact tech on how to do this. I never read an LRH policy on how to steal trash, but I was “hatted” by one of the very best OSA ops (operatives), Mary Frances Newey, who at the time was the Invest Director of OSA Boston. She went by the nickname “MF.”
I'm not exactly sure when MF started working for OSA but I would guess it was around 1989 or 1990. Even though I am a Scientology Clear and OT III, I lack the perfect recall that goes with those levels. So unless I say so, I'm going to be estimating the dates.
I did all kinds of shady ops (operations) for the Church of Scientology on the request of both Mary Frances Newey and Tony Chrambanis, but for this article I will discuss stealing Steve Hassan’s trash.
Back in the 1990s Steve was absolutely hated by The Church of Scientology and they considered him one of the top SPs that must be “exposed.”
I had been doing volunteer work with OSA Invest Boston for 4 or 5 years and was very trusted because at that time, I was completely brainwashed with the Scientology indoctrination. I usually did what I was told without question. However, I did in fact question a few of the operations they wanted me to do, but more about that later.
I truly believed that the sneaky activities I was involved in for the Church were for the “greatest good” and that people like Steve Hassan were evil people and trying to stop the expansion of Scientology because of their horrific crimes against humanity. I completely justified my behavior in Scientology and while working with OSA because I felt I was one of the good guys, trying to expose one of the bad guys. I was a true believer that happily went along with any and all things sanctioned by the C of S or LRH. The brainwash ran deep and I was completely trusted.
Steve was a target of Scientology’s practice of Fair Game because he had the effrontery to write a book on cult mind control practices and included Scientology in his list of cults. He was also involved in “deprogramming” or “exit counseling” people who wanted to leave Scientology.
This completely freaked out the C of S and they wanted Steve Hassan’s crimes found and exposed. Scientologists firmly believe that anyone that attacks or speaks badly about the Church of Scientology, its Founder, L. Ron Hubbard, and especially of its current leader David Miscavige, or its members have hidden crimes that must be found and exposed. One way of finding these crimes is to steal their trash to find their “comm lines.”
When Scientology considers you to be an enemy and wants to find your “comm lines” they will do whatever it takes to find out who you are connected to and they want to know who you know so they can go to your friends, family or associates and find out if anyone is upset with you and willing to give them dirt on you. They also like to steal your trash because trash will have such things such as credit card information, banking records, phone records, bills, letters or correspondence from groups you might belong to. It’s endless. The idea is to steal your trash and use any information found to further harass you into silence.
I would estimate that I started stealing Steve’s trash in 1990 or ‘91 for a total of 10 times. When I wasn’t stealing trash with Mary Frances, she would do it on own or send a man named Fred Perkins to get it. I never stole trash alone but to steal trash “100 percent standardly” you really needed two people.
Steve lived in an apartment in Somerville, Mass. which was only a 10 or 15 minute drive from the Boston Org. It was one of those old six-family type apartments, three stories tall with two apartments on each floor. It was a nice working-class neighborhood, full of families with kids.
I was told by MF that what we were doing was perfectly legal and that her bosses at OSA Int, had checked with an attorney to ensure that we were not breaking the law. Per MF, as long as the trash is on a public sidewalk and not on private property, we could take it. But if it was in trash cans or a dumpster on private property we could not take it.
Mary Frances had already contacted Somerville City Hall and found out what day trash was picked up on Steve’s street. The plan was to steal the trash at 2 or 3 in the morning when everyone was asleep.
MF explained to me that she kept green, black and white trash bags, all of different sizes, in the trunk of her car with several different color twisty ties. The “tech” was to drive by Steven’s house to make sure the trash was sitting in a barrel on the side walk and then to notice what size and color trash bags were being used and what color twisty tie was used or if it was just tied in a knot.
After sizing up Steve’s garbage, we would leave the area and go steal someone else's trash (not Steve’s) and throw it in the trunk of the car. This new anonymous trash was then bagged up in one of the many available trash bags in MF’s trunk with the correct color, size and accompanying twisty tie so as to duplicate Steve's trash. The idea was that if Steve left his house in the morning, prior to the trash being picked up by the city trucks, then he would see the same trash that he took out the night before and would not suspect we were stealing it.
So MF and I would do some work at the org, filing reports in the OSA files, until it was late enough to go do some trash stealing. MF would drive and I don’t remember if she did things like muddy up her license plate or possibly remove the bulb that showed her license plate but it seems she may have, and then we were off to Somerville for some well done trash stealing time.
We’d drive by, look at the trash, size it up, and go steal someone else’s trash, fix it up so it looked like Steve Hassan's trash and then return to make the switch.
First we would park a few house down from Steve’s and check that all the houses around him had their lights off and that the street was quiet and without any party goers or people walking around. This being a working class neighborhood and trash being picked up on a week day night, we never ran into any problems.
Sometimes MF would drive and sometimes I would drive and whoever was the passenger would get out to make the switch. We’d have to steal at least two or three bags because the trash barrel that Steve used was also used by others in the building and occasionally we would get the wrong trash.
When we were ready, MF would pull up in front of Steve’s house, and I would jump out and make the switch and throw the trash in the back seat of the car and then get the hell out of there.
We were not allowed to bring the trash back to the org as that would be “out-security” and could possibly put the org “at risk.” So we would go back to MF’s apartment at 304 Newbury Street in Boston and sort through the trash there.
We’d put on those big yellow latex gloves because picking through trash was so incredibly gross and we didn't want to touch the stuff.
We were looking for mail, notes, anything in writing. What mags he subscribed to, what kind of junk mail he got, any phone numbers written down, anything at all that would give us more “comm lines” that we could go after and harass him with.
Once it was completely gone through we would discard the trash that did not include any information on Steve by getting rid of it in someone else’s trash can and keep the stuff that may have information on it that would need further follow up.
Each piece of kept trash would have to be cleaned off, and sorted through and then labeled and indexed. The originals of the “usable” trash were of course not kept but anything good would be copied and sent with the index to OSA US/INT.
OSA US/INT would analyze the trash sent to them and if anything was found that could be used to further investigate and harass Steve, they would send down orders on what to do next.
Sometime back in 2006 I wrote to Steve and apologized, which he kindly accepted. Steve also attended one of my SP parties!
And once again I want to state for the record that I was never a rogue agent of Scientology. All the actions I took on their behalf were orders directly from the Office of Special Affairs.
If you are openly criticizing the cult, you might want to consider what goes in your trash. Scientology used to collect Mike Rinder’s trash by paying the trash pick up guys to hold it aside for them. They will go to great lengths to shut people up.
— Patty Moher
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Question Patty:
If an "SP" put writings with Xenu and body-thetans discussion in their trash, how would D Line OSA people deal with Xenu and body-thetans taboo words usage? would they copy and send that on to OSA Int/EUS? Or are there rules for NOT copying or editing out Xenu and body-thetans words?
Also, when OSA photographers take photos of SPs at protests, do the photographers later have to edit out the Xenu and body-thetans words from their photos?
Patty Moher is hilarious. I love the way she writes and very direct way of blaming OSA and the 'Guardians Office' puts lies to all of the obfuscation that the Clams put out when the FBI caught them. I love the idea of an SP party. It's like the democrats, but with much more mirth.