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INTRODUCTION

As a lobbying firm concerned with the preservation and expansion of
democracy both at home and abroad, we are writing to draw your attention to
the activities of the Cult Awareness Network (CAN). The Cult Awareness
Network described itself as a "national non-profit organization founded to
educate the public about the harmful effects of mind control as used by
destructive cults." In fact, as the following evidence documents, CAN has
played a major role in propagating an atmosphere of intolerance and
violence against new, smaller, non-mainstream religions (as well as
psychological movements and political groups); moreover, it has functioned
as an indirect referral agency, facilitating "concerned" families getting
touch with individuals who can be hired to use coercion (including forcible
abductions) to remove individuals from groups of which CAN disapproves.

The influence of the Cult Awareness Network was made clear by the role it
played in influencing media coverage of the siege and subsequent massacre
of the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas earlier this year, and the role
CAN-associated "deprogrammers" played as advisors to the Bureau of Alcohol,
Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) and the FBI during the siege.

"DEPROGRAMMERS"

CAN, originally called the Citizens Freedom Foundation (CFF), was founded
in 1974 by Ted Patric, who, according to Gerald Arenberg, writing in `The
Chief of Police' magazine, already had a "career of kidnapping young adults
from young and little understood churches in exchange for handsome fees
from distraught or overbearing parents" (Arenberg, 1993). Information from
a number of sources indicates that over the past 19 years, persons within
the CAN network have been involved in thousands of abductions or other
coercive actions, which the perpetrators euphemistically call
"deprogrammings." "Deprogrammers" charge between $5,000 and $20,000 for a
kidnapping. The payment is usually made in cash, so there will be no record
of the transaction (Blocksom, 1992, p. 2). According to the organization's
own figures, reported at its national conference in Los Angeles last year,
  CAN-connected "deprogrammers" were involved in more than 1,800
"deprogrammings" in 1992 alone (Robertson, 1993, p. 3).  

On the record, CAN condemns forcible kidnappings and maintains that it
receives no financial benefits from referring families to kidnappers.
However, John Myles Sweeney, Jr., a former national director of CAN's
predecessor, the Citizens Freedom Foundation, in a declaration dated March
17, 1992 charged:

"Because of the large amount of money they make due to referrals
received from CFF members, deprogrammers usually kick back money
to the CFF member who gave the referral... The kickbacks would
either be in cash or would be hidden in the form of a
tax-deductible "donation" to the CFF" (Sweeney, 1992, p. 1).

Former "deprogrammer" Johnathon Lee Nordquist has charged that in the
mid-eighties CAN, through Mary Krone, then CAN's director of information
and referrals, paid for the living expenses of Nordquist and his partner.
"All that I had to do... was make infrequent speeches at Cult Awareness
Network affiliate meetings and receive phone call from people who wanted to
hear negative propaganda about the Hare Krishna religion" (Nordquist, 1991,
p. 24).

In addition, expense reports seized by the FBI and entered as evidence in a
court case reveal that at least one "deprogrammer," convicted kidnapper
Galen Kelly, was paid a regular retainer of $1,500 a week in 1992 by the
Cult Awareness Network (U.S. vs. Smith, Kelly, Point and Moore, 1992).

CAN operates its indirect referral system in a manner intended to avoid
incurring criminal or civil liability from the activities of the
"deprogrammers" in its network. Mark Blocksom, who worked as a
"deprogrammer" from 1979 to 1989, reports:

"The standard method by which I received referrals for
involuntary deprogrammings was via phone call the "good ole boy"
network (CFF, and later, CAN members or affiliates), who would
then refer the caller to a non-CFF/non-CAN person (usually a
family member of a prior successful case), who would then call me
and arrange the deprogramming. This "cut out" system was created
to insulate CFF/CAN from legal liabilities" (Blocksom, 1992, pp.
1-2).

Blocksom also reports that he often consulted with CAN officials (including
the current director, Cynthia Kisser) in the course of "deprogrammings" for
the purpose of "obtaining additional assistance, or with obtaining written
materials about a particular group" (Blocksom, 1992, p. 4). Former CFF
director Sweeney warns: "CAN still attempts to convince the public that it
is not now, nor has it ever been, connected with deprogrammers. This is an
absolute lie and should never be accepted as true" (Sweeney, 1992, p. 3).

A special report in `The Chief of Police,' the official publication of the
National Association of Chiefs of Police, notes that "During the 1970's and
`80's, mercenary deprogrammers like Patrick kidnapped hundreds of adults
from a wide spectrum of organizations including Catholic, Episcopal,
Evangelical Christian, Mormon, Amish, political and even karate classes.
While the deprogrammers celebrated their growing profits, for the victims,
it was a story of terror" (Arenberg, 1993, p. 60).

The terror includes not only the abduction itself, for the "deprogramming"
is not complete (and the victims are not released) until she or he agrees
to leave their religion or political organization. According to former
"deprogrammer" Mark Blocksom: "Some deprogrammers used techniques of sleep
and food deprivation, humiliation, ridicule, deprivation of privacy, and in
some cases, physical abuse and restraint to accomplish their goal of
altering a person' religious views" (Blocksom, 1992, p. 2).

A number of former "deprogrammers" and CAN officials have reported, in
sworn affidavits, that some of the CAN-affiliated "deprogrammers" have had
sex with individuals they held captive (Nordquist, 1991, p. 63; Sweeney,
1992, p. 2). Dr. Lowell Streiker, the former executive director of the
Freedom Counseling Center in Burlingame, California, reports that
"deprogrammer" Cliff Daniels "...said that he used the `sex thing' as a
testing board to see whether the girl was completely out of the cult. If
she consented, then he knew that she was completely out. If she did not
consent, then he knew that he had more work to do" (Streiker, 1992, p. 3).

What is remarkable, given the large number of abductions that allegedly
have been carried out by CAN-associated "deprogrammers," is how few
prosecutions--and even fewer convictions--have resulted from their
activities. This virtual immunity from legal liability has resulted in a
high level of arrogance among "deprogrammers." U.S. Attorney Lawrence
Leiser, who successfully prosecuted Galen Kelly, told the Times Herald
Record in Middletown, New York: "Mr. Kelly thinks he has the right to go
out, because someone pays him, and kidnap someone. That's incredible, and
he'd been doing it for 10 or 15 years. He admitted on the stand that he has
abducted 30 to 40 people" (Hall, 1993).

This ability to get away with breaking the law has to do with the success
CAN has had in demonizing non-mainstream religions and political
organizations, as well as the policy employed by "deprogrammers" of
involving family members in the kidnapping process, which tends to inhibit
the victim's willingness to press charges. As former "deprogrammer"
Blocksom says:

I have been arrested at least five times for kidnapping-related charges. I
have never even gone to trial in even one of these cases, due largely to
the fact that it was my policy to get the family directly involved in the
actual kidnapping. This would make it much harder for the target to want to
pursue criminal prosecution, since it would mean they would also have to
prosecute a family member (Blocksom, 1992, p. 3).

Despite these precautions, the last year has seen a few cracks in the wall
of virtual immunity which has surrounded CAN-associated "deprogrammers." On
May 27, 1993 Galen Kelly--- chief of security at the CAN convention in
November 1990--was convicted for kidnapping a Washington, D.C. woman in May
1992 (he is still awaiting sentencing). Another well known "deprogrammer,"
Randall Burkey, was convicted on similar charges in Madison, Wisconsin
earlier this year. Other CAN-connected "deprogrammers" who have recently
faced criminal charges are Joseph Szimhart and Mary Alice Chrnalogar who
were charged with kidnapping a 39-year-old mother of four in Boise, Idaho
(Robertson, 1993, p. 3), while Rick Ross, who acted as an advisor to ATF in
Waco and has boasted of more than 200 "deprogrammings," was arrested at the
end of June on charges of kidnapping an illegal imprisonment of a Kirkland,
Washington teenager in 1991 (Holt, 1993).

PSYCHOLOGISTS AND PSYCHIATRISTS

A handful of psychologists, psychiatrists and sociologists, some of whom
serve on CAN's board of advisors, provide pseudo-scientific cover for these
activities. They give talks at CAN events, write articles, mostly in their
own publication, Cultic Studies Journal, and provide quotes to the media
when a "cult expert" is needed. Many of these individuals also earn money
testifying as "expert witnesses" in kidnapping cases, litigation in which
disaffected ex-members are suing their former group or group leaders, and
conservatorship cases in which parents are seeding legal and financial
control of grown children who have joined so-called "cults."

Among these individuals, the two most high-profile are psychiatrist Louis
Jolyon "Jolly" West, chairman of the Department of Psychiatry and
Biobehaviorial Sciences at UCLA's School of Medicine, and Margaret Singer,
a clinical psychologist with a private practice in Berkeley, California and
a former adjunct professor in the Department of Psychology at the
University of California at Berkeley.

West currently serves on the advisory board of CAN and a similar group
called the American Family Foundation. He has been a keynote speaker at CAN
conferences for more than 15 years. In a 1983 speech to a CFF convention,
West called for the development of a "medical model" for the elimination of
what he considered "fake" religions.

A good approach if you were interested in curing a cancer is to find a
chemical that kills the malignant cells and spares those that are healthy.
What would be the effect of a device or technique which, when applied by
society to any organization calling itself religious, would have no
untoward effect upon bona fide religions, but would be deadly to the fakes?
 ...Malignant cells or fake religions wouldn't survive it.  Healthy cells
or bona fide religions and altruistic organizations would not be harmed
(West, 1983).

While West today purports to be repulsed by the "mind control" and
"brainwashing" supposedly practiced by some of the new religions ("cults"),
in the 1950s and `60s he was involved, through the CIA-funded Geschickter
Fund for Medical Research, in experiments employing LSD as a means of mind
control. During these experiments the CIA used ethnic and racial minorities
as human guinea pigs. At the Lexington, Kentucky federal prison, for
example, African Americans were singled out and used as test subjects for
various mind control experiments (Citizens Commission on Human Rights,
1985).

Questioned about his relationship with CIA "mind control" expert Dr. Sydney
Gottlieb, in 1977 West told the New York Times: "As far as the Geschickter
Fund was concerned, what Dr. Gottlieb told me was that he was an employee
of the CIA and that they had an interest in this problem [the area of LSD
research], which I could see they did and possibly should have at that
time" (Horrock, 1977).

After the riots in Watts in 1965, West, then head of the Neuropsychiatric
Institute (NPI) at UCLA, was an outspoken proponent of the view that
violence was tied to genetic factors, and that those most prone to violence
were young Black urban males. West and his associates at NPI recommended
that some violent offenders could be treated by psychosurgery and chemical
castration through the use of cyproterone acetate (West, 1972).

West's advocacy of chemical castration--this time on prisoners and
"appropriate non-Institutionalized clinical subjects" (Restak,
1975)--surfaced again when he proposed the establishment of a Center for
the Study and Reduction of Violence; based on the premise that violence is
caused primarily by genetic or chemical factors, the Center would conduct
various chemical and biosurgical experiments. In may respects the Center
prefigured the Youth Violence Initiative recently proposed by the National
Institute of Mental Health.

Nearly all of the studies West had in mind for the Center involved women,
minority groups--of the two high schools he proposed for violence studies,
one was in a Black community and one in a Chicano area (West
1972)--prisoners or others who couldn't defend themselves, such as autistic
children and the mentally retarded. Examples of the treatments proposed by
West at this time included psychosurgery, "curing" hyperactive children
with unproven drugs, and implanting electronic monitoring or homing devices
into the brain (California State Senate Health and Welfare Committee
Transcript, 1973). Funding for the Center was opposed in a series of
protests in California in 1974; they succeeded not only in stopping the
Center, but in getting federal and state funds for the NPI reduced. In 1989
West resigned as director of the Neuropsychiatric Institute after the LA
Weekly published an expose of financial wrongdoings in relation to research
grants he and his staff had obtained from the National Institute of Mental
Health (Shae, 1988).

The principle psychologist identified with CAN is Margaret Singer. Unlike
West, who is a fixture of the academic psychology establishment, Singer has
never held a full-time, tenure-track position; in the words of her attorney
Michael Flomenhaft, she "derives a substantial portion of her income from
consultancies and work as an expert witness based on specialized knowledge
in the area of social influence" (Singer vs. APA, 1992).

Singer is suing the American Psychological Association for $125 million,
claiming that the Association's refusal to endorse her views on so-called
mind-control and "brainwashing" have caused "injury to her business and
professional reputation" and caused her "mental anguish and distress"
(Singer vs. APA, 1992).

The Singer suit (which she filed with Berkeley sociologist Richard Ofshe in
August of 1992) is instructive both in revealing where CAN-associated
psychologists and psychiatrists stand in relation to the psychological
mainstream, and in clarifying how sharply psychological professionals
differ over concepts such as "cults," "brainwashing" and "coercive
persuasion," which CAN uses to rationalize its activities.

Singer's suit was filed under provisions of the Racketeer Influenced and
Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO). In it she contends that the APA and
several of its leaders and members have engaged in a "pattern of
racketeering activity" designed to ruin her career as an "expert witness."
The only concrete evidence offered to prove the alleged harm to her career
is a ruling by a judge disqualifying Singer as an expert witness in a case
in which an ex-adherent of the International Society for Krishna
Consciousness was suing the organization for "false imprisonment" despite
the plaintiff's admission that she was never physically restrained,
confined or threatened by the Society for Krishna Consciousness and despite
further admission on the stand that she adopted Krishna Consciousness
following a genuine religious conversion.

In disqualifying Singer, who was called in to testify that the plaintiff
had been a victim of "brainwashing," Judge Jensen explained:

"Although the record before the Court is replete with
declarations, affidavits and letters from reputable psychologists
and sociologists who concur with the thought reform theories
propounded by Dr. Singer and Dr. Ofshe, the government has
submitted an equal number of declarations, affidavits and letters
from reputable psychologists and sociologists who disagree with
their theories...A more significant barometer of prevailing views
within the scientific community is provided by professional
organizations such as the American Psychological Association
("APA") and the American Sociological Association ("ASA").  The
evidence before the Court, which is detailed below, shows that
neither the APA nor the ASA has endorsed the views of Dr. Singer
and Dr. Ofshe on thought reform...At best, the evidence
establishes that psychiatrists, psychologists and sociologists
disagree as to whether or not there is agreement regarding the
Singer-Ofshe thesis. The Court therefore excludes defendants'
proffered testimony "(U.S. vs. Fishman, 1989).

While Singer's testimony had been accepted at numerous trials before and
since, the Jensen ruling has been used as a precedent in subsequent cases
in which Singer and other CAN allies were called in as expert witnesses.

The dispute between Singer and the APA leadership goes back at least seven
years. In 1986, at Singer's initiative, the APA's Board of Social And
Ethical Responsibility for Psychology (BSERP) set up a Task Force on
Deceptive and Indirect Methods of Persuasion and Control which was headed
up by Singer. The 69-page report produced by the Task Force openly
attempted to make CAN's definitions of "cults," "brainwashing," etc.
official APA usage. The APA's rejection of the report, dated May 1987, read
in part:

"BSERP...is unable to accept the report of the Task Force. In
general, the report lacks the scientific rigor and evenhanded
critical approach necessary for APA imprimatur. The report was
carefully reviewed by two external experts and two members of the
Board. They independently agreed on the significant deficiencies
in the report...The Board cautions the Task Force members against
using their past appointment to imply BSERP or APA support or
approval of the positions advocated in the report. BSERP requests
that Task Force members not distribute or publicize the report
without indicating that the report was unacceptable to the Board.
Finally, after much consideration, BSERP does not believe that we
have sufficient information available to guide us in taking a
position on this issue" (BSERP, 1987).

At dispute in the Task Force report--and within the psychological community
before and since--are the underlying concepts justifying CAN's activities.
The term "brainwashing," for example, was coined by Edward Hunter, a CIA
propagandist who worked under cover as a journalist (Marks, 1991). In the
early fifties Hunter used the term to explain communist influence over
American POWs in Korea and western civilian prisoners in Communist China
(Hunter, 1953). Hunter defines the result of "brainwashing" as changing "a
mind radically so that its owner becomes a living puppet--a human robot"
(Hunter, 1956, p. 309).

Robert Lifton, in Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism (1961), one
of the pioneering scholarly works in the field, writes:

Behind this web of semantic (and more than semantic) confusion
lies an image if "brainwashing" as a n all-powerful,
irresistible, unfathomable, and magical method of achieving total
control over the human mind.  It is of course none of these
things and this loose usage makes the word a rallying point for
fear, resentment, urges toward submission, justification for
failure, irresponsible accusation, and for a wide gamut of
emotional extremism. One may justly conclude that the term has a
far from precise meaning and a questionable usefulness (Lifton,
1961, p.4)

Singer maintains that the theory of "brainwashing" upon which her "expert
witness" career depends is based on studies conducted on repatriated
prisoners after the Korean War, as well as the Russian purge trials of the
1930s and the "revolutionary universities" of the People's Republic of
China.

However, examination of the facts by mainstream scholars contradict her
arguments. A total of 7,190 American servicemen were captured during the
Korean War. Of that number only 21 declined to return to the United States.
Of those who returned only 14 were ever court-martialed on the grounds of
"going-over" to the enemy and only 11 convictions were obtained. Thus
Singer's contention that communist "brainwashing" succeeded on a large
scale just doesn't hold up (Secretary of Defense's Advisory Committee on
Prisoners of War, 1955, pp. 78-81).

Furthermore, of the POWs who did make pro-communist statements during the
war, most had not changed their ideological framework, i.e., "converted" to
communism at all; they were speaking in the shadow of incarceration and
physical maltreatment, rather than as the result of any sort of exotic
psychotechnology. Thus Lunde and Wilson conclude in "Brainwashing as a
Defense to Criminal Liability: Patty Hearst Revisited:

"[T]he much-ballyhooed Communist program of `brainwashing' was
really more an intensive indoctrination program in combination
with very heavy-handed techniques of undermining the social
structure of the prisoner group, thereby eliciting collaboration
that in most cases was not based on ideological change of any
sort "(Lunde and Wilson, 1977, p. 348).

Finally, the handful of Americans who actually did go over to the communist
side during the Korean War have been shown to have already been predisposed
to communist politics when they were drafted (Schein, 1961, pp. 104-110;
Lifton, 1961, pp. 117-132, 207-222).

Unlike Singer and other CAN "expert witnesses," the overwhelming majority
of scholars have rejected the attempt to extend the experiences of Korean
POWs to the practices of new religious movements. ("absurd to compare this
[recruiting practice of new religions] to the fear of death in prisoners
held by the Chinese and North Koreans" (James, 1986, pp. 241, 254); the
comparison "cannot be taken seriously" (Barker, 1984, p. 134); the "model
of the Chinese prisoner of war camp...is highly deficient since members of
the religious movements are not abducted or physically detained" (Saliba,
1987); a "far-fetched comparison" (Anthony and Robbins, 1990, p. 263).)

Although the term "brainwashing" has never been accepted within the
scientific community, it has become commonplace in the media and is the
basis of a number of other concepts of significance to CAN. For example the
term "deprogramming" clearly implies that human minds can be "programmed"
like computers (or robots) in the first place--an assumption questioned in
much research (James, 1986; Saliba, 1987; Anthony and Robbins, 1990; Reich,
1976).

Moreover, the very existence of "cults" defined (vaguely) by Singer and
other CAN supporters as groups which organize through "deception" and which
practice "brainwashing" and "mind control" on their members, is disputed by
the majority of scholars, many of whom point out that the "coercive
processes" that Singer and others attribute to "cult" organizations could
be applied equally to college fraternities, Catholic orders, self-help
organizations such as Alcoholics Anonymous, the armed services,
psychoanalytic training institutions, mental hospitals and conventional
childrearing practices (Lifton, 1961, pp. 141, 435-436, 451; Schein, 1961,
pp. 202, 260-261, 270-276, 281-283).

What Singer's arguments come down to is that the only conceivable way that
a sane person might choose to believe in or adhere to religious and/or
political views outside the perimeters of the mainstream is if they are
"deceived." And from this it follows that deceived or "brainwashed" people
are incapable of making sane, responsible judgments and should therefore
have their civil and Constitutional rights revoked.

But "deception" is a hopelessly subjective term. Perception and deception
are two sides of the same coin. As Judge T.S. Ellis III declared on
December 31, 1992 in regard to an unsuccessful kidnapping prosecution
brought against CAN-associated "deprogrammer" Galen Kelly, "One man's cult
is another man's community, however wacky you or I may think that is" (U.S.
vs. Smith, Kelly, Point and Moore, 1992).  Who among us in a democratic
society would dare to impose his or her perception as the only true one?"

THE POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS

The threat to religious freedom inherent in the pseudo- scientific theories
and language of West, Singer and other CAN-associated psychologists,
psychiatrists and sociologists is evident. That they have been used to
rationalize criminal activity is equally evident. As early as 1974 the
National council of churches warned of CFF's danger to religious liberty:

[R]eligious liberty is one of the most precious rights of humankind,
which is grossly violated by forcible abduction and protracted efforts
to change a person's religious commitments by duress. Kidnapping for
ransom is a heinous crime indeed, but kidnapping to compel religious
deconversion is equally criminal (Arenberg, 1993, p. 60).

And if the dangerous implications of applying CAN's credo to the political
arena were not already obvious, CAN's executive director, Cynthia Kisser,
made them explicit in an article entitled "Nation needs to address cults'
ever- present evils," written originally for the Los Angeles Daily News and
reprinted in a number of papers around the country during the Waco siege.
In it Kisser warned: "Cults also hurt society when their members undermine
the democratic process by voting in solid blocks [sic] or by providing free
volunteer labor to campaigns in return for favors from candidates" (Kisser,
1993). To most people this would serve as a model description of healthy
participation by an interest group or party in a representative democracy.
But apparently to CAN only groups of which it approves should be allowed to
vote in "blocks" and volunteer for political campaigns. When groups CAN
doesn't like ("cults") participate in electoral politics, it "undermines
the democratic process."

Frighteningly, the FBI appears to share this way of thinking. In 1988 and
again in 1991 the Bureau launched investigations of the New Alliance Party
(NAP), a left-wing electoral party, rationalizing this harassment by
labeling NAP a "political/cult organization" (New Alliance Party vs.
Federal Bureau of Investigation, 1993).

Founded in 1979 and based primarily in communities of color in our
country's inner cities, over the last 14 years NAP has run candidates for
local, state and federal office in every state and received millions of
votes. In 1988 NAP's presidential candidate, Dr. Lenora Fulani, became the
first woman and the first African American presidential candidate in U.S.
history to be on the ballot in 40 states. In both campaigns Fulani
qualified for and received federal primary matching funds.

The 1988 investigation , sparked by a Phoenix, Arizona "informant of
unknown reliability," included at least 24 field offices and the national
headquarters, all of which devoted federal resources to compiling dossiers
on NAP. The investigation generated numerous communications from the FBI to
law enforcement officials around the country warning them, without cause,
that NAP members--who at the time were actively campaigning in the 1988
presidential campaign-- should be considered "armed and dangerous" (New
Alliance Party vs. Federal Bureau of Investigation, 1993).

The 1991 investigation was launched solely on the basis of protected First
Amendment activities and despite the fact that the FBI itself had concluded
that NAP had broken no laws. As with the earlier investigation, it was
buttressed with propaganda from a private organization with its own
political agenda, in this case the Anti-Defamation League of the B'nai
B'rith. The 1991 FBI files on NAP contain an ADL "report" attacking NAP and
labeling the independent party "part Marxist sect, part therapy cult" (FBI
Airtel, July 24, 1991).

In addition, since the distribution of PRA's cult-baiting pamphlet in 1987,
publications hostile to NAP's politics-- including the Village Voice, the
Boston Phoenix, the New York Post, and various publications of the
Communist Party of the United States--have published articles which
explicitly or implicitly apply the "cult" label to NAP. In turn, some of
these articles, or references to them, have been incorporated into the FBI
files (FBI Airtel, May 1, 1988).

On June 24, 1993 Representative Don Edwards (D-CA), chairman of the
Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights of the House Judiciary
Committee set a letter to William Sessions protesting the FBI
investigations of NAP:

I am writing about the FBI's interest in the New Alliance Party (NAP).
This is the second time that the FBI's handling of a NAP matter has
raised questions about the focus and management your terrorist
program. The FBI's treatment of NAP in recent years evidences a lack
of perspective on world and national events and a continuing focus on
First Amendment activities instead of criminal conduct...The NAP
documents raise something more troubling [than wasteful carelessness]
and that is that the FBI continues to treat ideology as an indicator
of a predisposition to crime...I must request that the Bureau cease
basing investigative action on this type of predicate (Edwards, 1993).

Responding to an investigation of the ADL by the San Francisco district
attorney--which indicates that the ADL's "fact-finding" division was part
of an information-trading operation which included local police
departments, the FBI and foreign governments (most notably, the apartheid
regime in South Africa)--Edwards told the San Francisco Examiner that he
planned to investigate "whether the FBI was using private surrogates to
collect the information it cannot collect directly" (Opatrny and Winokur,
1993).

Within a month of the Waco massacre, NAP, Fulani and two members of the NAP
National Committee (Dr. Fred Newman and Dr. Rafael Mendez) filed suit in
federal court against the FBI, then-FBI director William Sessions, James
Fox, the acting director of the Bureau's New York Division, and Attorney
General Janet Reno. The lawsuit charges that the FBI's description of a
political organization as a "cult"-- or the use of such a description to
justify investigative activities, the use of force, criminal prosecution or
governmental regulation--violates the First, Fourth and Fifth Amendments of
the U.S. Constitution, which respectively guarantee the right to freedom of
speech and association, freedom of assembly and due process (New Alliance
Party vs. Federal Bureau of Investigation, 1993).

Pointing out that the term "cult" does "not appear in any federal statute
or regulation, or in the Federal Rules of Evidence, as a predicate for
declaring a person legally incompetent, depriving a person of parental
rights, or subjecting a person to psychological warfare and the use of
deadly force by federal law enforcement authorities," the suit challenges
the appropriateness of the FBI's use of the label as a rational for
investigation (New Alliance Party vs. Federal Bureau of Investigation,
1993, p. 12).

Furthermore, the suit points out:

The actions taken by the defendants [the FBI, et al] against the
Branch Davidian group in Waco, Texas in February-April 1993, and the
defendants' explanations, justifications, and internal investigation
and analyses of their actions, demonstrate that [they] have created
and are further evolving a modus operandi of practices under which the
defendants do not give full recognition and respect to the
constitutional and civil rights of individuals whom defendants label
as being associated with "cults." Classifying NAP as a "political
cult" rather than acknowledging NAP as a political party, is a means
of evading the high degree of constitutional scrutiny to which
governmental interference with political activity must be subjected
(New Alliance Party vs. Federal Bureau of Investigation, 1993, p. 2).

The suit ... scheduled to be heard before Judge Constance Baker Motley in
September 1993 in U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York,
point[ed] to the chilling effect that the increasing use of the "cult"
label can have on the development of new and minority political parties and
organizations:

In the current climate, which defendants have helped to create, giving
a group the status of "cult" has a stigmatizing an injurious effect on
the group... in the same was as government labeling of groups as
"subversive," "totalitarian," "radical," "Black nationalist,"
"communist sympathizing" has impaired constitutionally protected
speech and association. By giving United States Government imprimatur
to an alleged status--"cult"--the defendants are facilitating actions
both by private persons and by government officials that impair the
exercise of constitutional rights (New Alliance Party vs. Federal
Bureau of Investigation, 1993, pp. 14-15).

Although the investigation of the New Alliance Party is, at this point, the
best know case of CAN language and concepts being applied to a political
organization, the emergence of this new psychological/political category
has implications that go well beyond the specifics of the NAP case to
fundamental constitutional issues of free association.

CAN's ability to influence, if only indirectly, the policies and thinking
of a federal agency is hinted at in the NAP investigations. Its ability to
influence government policy and media coverage is made all the more clear
in the events surrounding the siege and massacre at Waco.

WACO

A key link in the chain of events which led to the FBI massacre of nearly
90 people--including 24 children, 17 of them under the age of 10--outside
Waco, Texas on April 19, 1993 began over a year earlier when Rick Ross, a
CAN- affiliated "deprogrammer," allegedly began targeting the Branch
Davidian sect for potential kidnappings, to be paid for by relatives of
members of the group (Robertson, 1993, p. 1).

Ross has boasted of committing more than 200 "deprogrammings" and has a
criminal record stretching back to 1975, when he was convicted of robbing
diamonds estimated at $500,000 from a Phoenix, Arizona jewelry store (The
State of Arizona vs. Ricky Alan Ross, 1975). Ross has been praised by CAN
executive director Cynthia Kisser as being "among the half dozen best
deprogrammers in the country" (Kisser, Ross promotional material).

David Block, a Branch Davidian for five years, was, according to a sworn
affidavit by Samuel Russell (an earlier CAN target), "deprogrammed" by
Ross, Adeline Bova and CAN national spokesperson Priscilla Coates in
Coates' home in Glendale, California in the summer of 1992. During the
"deprogramming" Block "furnished Ross with information about the Branch
Davidian sect, including details of their stored weapons" (Russell, 1993).
Ross himself bragged on "Up to the Minute" on public television that long
before the raid he had "consulted with ATF agents on the Waco sect and told
them about the guns in the compound" (Robertson, 1993, p. 2). Attorney
Linda Thompson of the American Justice Foundation, who represents some of
the survivors of the massacre, maintains that "a CAN advisor to the BATF
[presumably Ross] was providing disinformation for 30 days before the
assault" (Thompson, 1993, p. 1). In the affidavits submitted to obtain a
search warrant, ATF agents used language associated with CAN, calling the
residents of the Mt. Carmel Center "a religious cult commune" (Aguilera,
1993).

On February 27, 1993, the day before the initial ATF assault on Mt. Carmel,
the Waco Tribune-Herald began a seven-part series on the Branch Davidians
entitled "The Sinful Messiah." According to its authors, Mark England and
Darlene McCormick, the piece was the result of an eight- month
investigation and interviews with "more than ten" former members of the
group. At least some of these sources were supplied by CAN. English and
McCormick quote a man "deprogrammed" by Ross "who had been with Howell
[Koresh] for at least five years"--most likely David Block. The fourth
installment in the series, published the day after the shootout, included a
sidebar entitled "Experts: Branch Davidians dangerous, destructive cult."
It quotes Ross as declaring, "The group is without doubt, without any doubt
whatsoever, a highly destructive, manipulative cult...I would liken the
group to Jim Jones." Coates calls the Branch Davidians "unsafe or
destructive." And both say that they believe David Koresh practices "mind
control."

It is clear from the article, which was written before the ATF staged its
raid, that Ross had been agitating for the government to move against the
group. England and McCormick report in the sidebar to part four:

Ross said he believes Howell [Koresh] is prone to violence...Speaking
out and exposing Howell might bring in the authorities or in some way
help those "being held in that compound through a kind of
psychological, emotional slavery and servitude," he said.Ross said
authorities need to understand that Howell is fully capable of
violence. "You could say that it is a very dangerous group," Ross said
(England and McCormick, 1993).

Dr. James Wood, a professor of religion at Baylor University in Waco and a
resident of the city since 1955, told a reporter from the National Alliance
Newsweekly, "Before February I had never heard of them [the Branch
Davidians] being referred to as a cult." A check by the Tribune- Herald's
librarian confirmed that before the English- McCormick series, the Branch
Davidian sect--which had been in Waco since the mid-1930s--had previously
been referred to in the Tribune-Herald as a "religious group," not as a
"cult."

On "Nightline" with Ted Koppel, broadcast on April 19 (the day of the
massacre), Balenda Ganem, the mother of a Davidian survivor, put forward
the claim that CAN was making "proposals" to the FBI throughout the siege:

These proposals came from Cult Awareness professionals all over the
country. They came in the form of faxes to the White House, to Janet
Reno, to William Sessions. They came in the form of registered
letters. They came in the form of live television interviews, books
being distributed from the Cult Awareness Network, from Cult Awareness
professionals, a team of them ("Nightline" transcript, April 19,
1993).

During the House Judiciary Committee hearing on "Events Surrounding the
Branch Davidian Cult Standoff in Waco, Texas" held on April 28 of this year
[1993], both Attorney General Janet Reno and FBI Director William Sessions
said in their prepared statements that the FBI had consulted "cult experts"
in the course of the siege (Reno, 1993; Sessions, 1993). When questioned by
Representative William Hughes about whether the Bureau had consulted with
the Cult Awareness Network, neither official responded directly. When asked
the same question by a reporter from the National Alliance, however, an FBI
spokesperson answered in the affirmative.

Whatever advisory role CAN played with the ATF (and perhaps the FBI), there
is no question that CAN spokespersons (usually referred to as "national
cult experts") were given ready access to the media throughout the siege.
Marcia R. Rudlin, director of the International Cult Education Program of
the CAN-allied American Family Foundation, gave 130 interviews between
March 10 and May 13, 1993, and as the AFF's publication, The Cult Observer,
notes: "The listing [of interviews] could be multiplied many times to
account for the hundreds of interviews given by AFF-associated
professionals during the same period" (American Family Foundation, 1993).

Kisser, in her March 13 article "Nation needs to address cults'
ever-present evil," called on the government to spend money on fighting the
cults. "If we can educate about the dangers of drugs, AIDS and gangs," she
wrote, "we can provide important information about cults...[C]ults violate
constitutional rights, destroy the family and exploit the weak" (Kisser,
1993). O

n April 8, 11 days before the fatal attack, CAN president Patricia Ryan
told the Houston Chronicle that "Officials should use whatever means
necessary to arrest Koresh, including lethal force." In that same article
Kisser warned that talking with Koresh was similar to talking to an insane
person. "People who are in a closed system, the cult leaders, think
differently than you and I" (Keeton and Pinkerton, 1993).

This is not the first time that CAN-associated "deprogrammers" have
apparently instigated violent law enforcement moves against a small
religious group. In 1982 Priscilla Coates, then the director of CFF, and
"deprogrammer" Galen Kelly helped set the stage for a similar raid on the
Northeast Kingdom Community at Island Pond in northern Vermont (UPI,
November 28, 1982). The supposed intent of that raid--authorized by
Vermont's attorney general and later called an illegal "fishing expedition"
by a state judge--was to rescue nearly 100 children, most of them African
American, from the compound of the small Christian commune whose adult
members were allegedly committing child abuse. In the days that followed,
the state determined that the only abuse to have occurred was the raid
itself. All the children were subsequently returned (Robertson, 1993, pp.
2-3).

As is well known, things did not work out as well for the children of the
Branch Davidians. The gas which the FBI pumped into the buildings at Mt.
Carmel for six hours before the compound erupted into flame was O-
chlorobenzalmalononitrile (CS), the manufacture, production, possession,
and use of which were banned during the Chemical Weapons Convention in
Paris in January of this year [1993]. More than 100 nations, including the
United States, endorsed the ban, which is awaiting ratification.

Benjamin C. Garrett, executive director of the Chemical and Biological Arms
Control Institute in Alexandria, Virginia, describes what effect it had on
the Branch Davidians trapped inside the building. "It would have panicked
the children. Their eyes would have involuntarily shut. Their skin would
have been burning. They would have been gasping for air and coughing
wildly...Eventually, they would have been overcome with vomiting in a final
hell. It would not have been pretty" (Seper, 1993).

Ironically, the justification given by Attorney General Janet Reno for
approving the pumping of CS gas into the compound was the charge of child
abuse first supplied by Rick Ross' victims. On the afternoon of the fire
Reno said, "We had information...that babies were being beaten." That
evening she told talk show host Larry King, "We were concerned for the
children because there had been reports of sexual abuse of the children."
The next day President Bill Clinton echoed this rationale, saying the
group's children "were being abused significantly, as well as being forced
to live in unsanitary and unsafe conditions." (The president failed to
mention the fact that the unsanitary and unsafe conditions were a result of
the ATF/FBI siege, nor did he explain how killing the children was the best
way to end their alleged abuse.)

At the same time that Reno and Clinton were echoing CAN allegations of
child abuse, FBI director William Sessions said his agency had "no
contemporaneous evidence of child abuse in the compound." After a nine-week
study of the 21 children released from the compound in the early stages of
the 51-day siege, the Texas Department of Protective and Regulatory
Services concluded, "None of the allegations [of child abuse] could be
verified. The children denied being abused in any way by any adults in the
compound...Examinations of the children produced no indication of current
or previous injuries." In response to this announcement by Texas officials,
CAN spokesperson Priscilla Coates told the Washington Post, "I know how
these types of groups work and children are always abused" (Niebuhr and
Thomas, 1993). Within a week or so after the massacre references to child
abuse by the Branch Davidians had all but disappeared from the press.

Before the ashes of Mt. Carmel had settled, CAN was busy putting its spin
on the massacre. The night of April 19 Louis "Jolly" West was a guest on
PBS's "MacNeil/Lehrer Hour," where he said of the FBI: "They knew they were
dealing with a psychopath. Nobody is more dangerous or unpredictable than a
psychopath in a trap" (West, 1993). That same night Kisser was the "expert"
guest on an ABC News special hosted by Peter Jennings, during which she
alleged that there are over 2,000 "cults" in America and warned of more
violence to come.

A similar "warning" came three days later when William Goldberg, a
CAN-affiliated psychiatric social worker in private practice in River Edge,
New Jersey, was the guest on "Informed Sources" on WNET-TV, New York City's
PBS affiliate. Over footage of surviving Branch Davidians, host Maria
Hinojosa spoke of "several hundred destructive cults here in our own
metropolitan area," but only specified one such "cult"--the New Alliance
Party. Later in the show, after Goldberg identified NAP as a "political
cult," Hinojosa claimed to have information that NAP members had been
engaged in weapons training and asked, "Could something like what happened
in Waco happen here in New York?" (Friedman, 1993). I

n the Glendale [California] News-Press, Priscilla Coates warned Americans
against "second guessing" the FBI's actions, explaining, "As a society I
don't know that we've had that much contact with sociopaths, and sociopaths
are unpredictable" (Yarborough, 1993).

At the same time CAN worked to position itself as the best defense against
the "cult" threat. In an interview with the Houston Post a few days after
the attack, Patricia Ryan urged the federal government to make more use of
CAN's "expertise," arguing that Washington has failed to study "cults,"
educate citizens about their danger or coordinate law enforcement strategy
to prosecute their crimes (Witham, 1993).

Meanwhile, CAN was attempting to move in on the lucrative business of
"deprogramming" Branch Davidian survivors. On April 23 Brett Bates, and
"exit counselor" for the Texas chapter of the Cult Awareness Network, began
meeting with the families of survivors, seeking contracts to "deprogram"
them. he was quoted in the New York Daily News: "Before they become
productive members of the prosecution, they have to realize they were
victims of mind control. They have to realize that this is not David
Koresh, the Messiah. This was someone who led a cultic group and burned
down a building with women and children." Bates told the Daily News that he
thought the Branch Davidians, locked in jail and mourning the deaths of
their husbands, wives, children and friends would be a "unique challenge"
(Hackett and Sennott, 1993).

The day after the debacle President Clinton, denying all responsibility for
the deaths and echoing CAN's line on "cults," said, "There is,
unfortunately, a rise in this sort of fanaticism all across the world, and
we may have to confront it again...I hope very much that others who will be
tempted to join cults and to become involved with people like David Koresh
will be deterred by [these] horrible scenes" (Witham, 1993).

The response from the religious and civil libertarian communities to the
government violence at Waco was swift, but sorely undercovered in the
media.

In a letter to Jack Brooks, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee,
dated April 27, 1993, Laura Murphy Lee, director of the Washington, D.C.
office of the American Civil Liberties Union, cautioned against any "new
government authority to investigate unpopular or unusual religious groups,
without reasonable suspicion that criminal laws have been violated, in
violation of the Constitutional guarantee of the free exercise of
religion." The confrontation in Waco, she warned, "raises the specter of
unconstitutional surveillance of religious or political groups that was
widespread during the COINTELPRO-type investigations which occurred through
the mid-1970's" (Lee, 1993).

During a hearing on the events at Waco held by the House Judiciary
Committee on April 28, 1993, Rep. John Conyers (D- MI) told Attorney
General Reno:

The root cause of this problem was it was considered a military
operation and it wasn't. This is a profound disgrace to law
enforcement in the U.S.A. and you did the right thing by offering to
resign...I would like you to know that there is at least one member of
Congress that is not going to rationalize the death of two dozen
children...that decision that was jointly made by these agencies bears
extreme criticism (Conyers, 1993).

On April 20 Joseph Bettis, a Methodist minister an professor of religious
studies at Western Washington University, wrote to Attorney General Reno:

From the beginning, members of the Cult Awareness Network have been
involved in this tragedy. This organization is widely known for its
use of fear to foster religious bigotry. The reliance of federal
agents on information supplied by these people, as well as the whole
record of federal activity deserves your careful investigation and
public disclosure...As long as the home and church of the Branch
Davidians is not protected from invasion by the government, none of
our homes, churches, synagogues, mosques, temples, or shrines is
safe..."Cult bashing" must end, and you must take the lead (Bettis,
1993).

On April 23 Larry Shinn, vice president for academic affairs at Bucknell
University, wrote to Congressman Don Edwards, chairman of the Subcommittee
on Civil and Constitutional Rights of the House Judiciary Committee:
"[M]edia, legal institutions, and law-makers too often rely on the word of
self-styled cult experts like C.A.N. (Cult Awareness Network) whose overly
negative agenda often slides into a purely anti-religious attack" (Shinn,
1993).

Dean M. Kelley, counselor on religious liberty to the National Council of
Churches, issued a statement which concluded, in part:

[W]e are confronted with the prospect of a vast military assault
worthy of the Keystone Kops directed against a relatively small and
thus far unaggressive religious band whose chief offense appears to
have been acting like a "cult," whatever that is (beyond a religious
outfit that we don't understand and don't approve of). The anti-cult
harpies have suggested an ingenious rational for this intervention: it
was designed to "rescue" the "hostages" held "captive" by Koresh
through..."mind control" (Kelley, 1993).

The association of World Academics for Religious Education issued a
statement which argued: "Had the ATF and the FBI consulted and followed the
advice of mainstream academic experts, the Waco tragedy could have been
avoided" (AWARE, 1993).

In early May a broad range of mainstream religious and civil libertarian
organizations issued a statement which read in part:

We are shocked and saddened by the recent events in Waco...Under the
religious liberty provisions of the First Amendment, the government
has no business declaring what is orthodox or heretical, or what is a
true or false religion. It should steer clear of inflammatory and
misleading labels. History teaches that today's "cults" may be
tomorrow's mainstream religions.

The statement was signed by American Baptist Churches in the U.S.A.;
American Civil Liberties Union, Washington Office; American Conference on
Religious Movements; Americans United for Separation of Church and State;
Association of Christian Schools; International Baptist Joint Committee on
Public Affairs; Church of Scientology International; Churches' Center for
Theology and Public Policy; Episcopal Church; First Liberty Institute;
General Conference of Seventh-Day Adventists; Greater Grace World Outreach;
National Association of Evangelicals; National Council of Churches of
Christ; Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Washington Office; and the Union of
American Hebrew Congregations.

CONCLUSION

We urge you to inform yourselves, your constituents and your readers of the
activities and influence of the Cult Awareness Network. Attached you will
find a bibliography, and a list of experts on the constitutional, legal,
psychological, and religious implications of the activities of the Cult
Awareness Network.

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