R-1-D-21
September 21, 1978
Talk with Daniel Sheehan – Teri Buford
– Highlights:
– Said that he would be careful in the retaining of Mark Lane for legal work for the following reasons
a) he said that Mark has gone too far out on the limb on this JFK thing and has lost his credibility with some. He said that he – Lenny Wienglass [Weinglass] and Leonard Boudin all feel that way and he said that Mark’s reputation among the left is to go too far.
b) he said that taking on the multimillion dollars suit against the Federal Government may well be what is needed however – if Mark is working on the case it could well be looked at as more of a publicity thing rather than the real thing. He feels that if Mark takes on the case that people might not give it proper consideration.
c) He praised Charles Garry to the hilt. He said that in anything that was done that Charles should of course be consulted as Charles had good insight into strategy in dealing with the government and is able to keep things in perspective while at the same time having a finesse as to how to deal with the press. He feels that Charles should be consulted on all matters. He said that he did not mean to be bad mouthing Mark but he felt that he should express his viewpoint before anyone took him on and then later had regrets.
d) In regards to the testimony of Joseph Mazur [Mazor] – he said that he didn’t know what to make of it – he suggested the new book SPOOKS which talks all about people like Mazor and would help to get a perspective as to what Mazor is really up to.
e) he said that the conference he is going to this weekend will consist of all the major groups in the US and their attorneys and movement attorneys in general that will be having a group analysis of the government harassment and spying problems. He thinks someone should be representative from here so that we can see how others are handling their harassment and get some new ideas as to approach and to make more contacts in that arena. He said that he will fill me in on what happened when he is out. He will be coming to SF sometime in October to get a deposition and will talk to us then also.
Analysis
Don’t really know what to make of it. He obviously has a set opinion for Charles and also one for Mark. It appears that many view Mark the same way that we are viewed – that is “paranoid” etc. So it is hard to say as Mark seems to be operating in his circles under the same stigma as we do. I think also that one should remember that Sheehan was the one who did not understand the position on John [Victor Stoen] so I would not take his word as the word of God. I think that his warnings should be looked at and we should probably accept the fact that both the left and the right don’t all respect Mark that much. Frankly – I prefer Mark’s approach – but then again I don’t know. Will keep running stuff off of Sheehan to get opinions and going to talk to Dennis Banks this weekend to see what he thinks in that he worked with Mark for a long time. Maybe he will have more insight.
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R-1-D-22
[Handwritten notation at top of page: “cc: Jim – as sort of a “status” report from Jean”]
9/23/78
Terri Buford: predicaments and other messes you will inherit
CHARLES GARRY AND PAT [Richartz]: Relations are at an all-time low. Pat has made it very clear to me twice that if Mark Lane gets involved, she will not have anything to do with our case. Charles threatened last week to throw all our files out of the office after Don Freed called Pat about the non-paying relationship to Mazor. There is no middle ground on this, and it will come to blows again as soon as the subject comes up. We have completely backed off and are waiting for you to carry on in whatever direction you know to do.
Pat is effectively working against us. She is causing, in my opinion, deliberate division. Not only in talking us down all the time, but intangible ways like lying to Don and me, trying to divide us or him from us. She says Lenny Weinglass, Jane Fonda, all attorneys and people of “principle” on the left will not have anything to do with Mark. I have had a steady relationship with her – calling every night etc. until this last blow-up last Monday. Marcie [Marceline Jones] talked to Garry and Pat and it settled things for the moment. Pat has not talked with me since.
Issues outstanding with GARRY:
a. Discuss the promissory note (ask June) which was discussed overseas – to protect the Ranch property.
b.Settle the relationship with Mazor, whether paying or not-paying. He said he would talk to Mazor about this – Monday he agreed that we should not be unprotected by attorney-client privilege
c. Mazor gave us some inaccurate information on the Mertle case, said it had been dismissed. Garry asked us to check the recorder, and no dismissal papers were filed. Only a change of attorneys. (They are now handling the case in pro per [without a lawyer].) Garry called Mazor and said no dismissal had been filed. Mazor assured Garry he would bring in the papers to prove his information about dismissal was correct. Has not done so yet. There is likely nothing – we think it meant the attorney was dismissed and Joe was wrong. Garry wants to find out, because this inaccurate report of Mazor’s disturbed him greatly.
d.He was to have Brotsky argue for change of venue Friday in Mendocino County. Bonnie [Beck] and I did affidavits.
e. He had already filed a demurr on the Cobb case came over the radio, but what you have to say on the subject may still be worked in some way. [Handwritten, starred annotation: “see attached to report folder”]
f. Serena Hunt – Garry is worried about it but doesn’t know what to do. Still waiting for the schedule which the nurses here reportedly kept on the private duty nursing care they gave her in exchange for payment from her estate. I have not been able to find the schedules anywhere in June’s files. Chris Kice visited Serena, should be constantly reminded to continue visiting weekly because she will forget. This mess is a tunnel with no light at the end.
g. Garry does not know about the boat. Nothing official has been given us as to how to handle announcing it here.
h. He told me and then Marcie again yesterday not to file anything about the “contract” on MC by Rodney– Said she should just call Suzanne [Jones Cartmell] and maybe even Mike [Cartmell] to get it straightened out.
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i.Re. Mark Rosenbaum, Charles “does not want to be fucked around by any the ACLU attorney.” He is just a staff attorney there and he said he never told Don and Mark he would take the man with him when he talked to Ramirez. As a matter of fact, you will have to press him to meet with Ramirez at all. He said before he left that he would talk to Ramirez with Rosenbaum; now he seems hostile about it.
j. Charles wants permission to have you or Marceline discuss matters with him and not have to resort to the radio for decisions. He wants to be able to work with someone who can make decisions with him here. He said he could not continue with such a mechanical procedure any more. He said that Nancy told him when she talked to [Tim] Stoen about putting the date for the Cobb response back a few days, Stoen said “Whatever Charles says or advises the Temple is known over the air.”
k. The film project – he doesn’t want to get involved.
l. Said Mazor’s tests showed that both Vincent [Lopez] and Joe Wilson’s tests showed that they were telling the truth about Grace [Stoen].
m. Fechheimer will be dropped from the Katsaris suit as investigator because he has not produced. Garry is pissed at him.
n. We never gave the emotional messages because as soon as Marcie was back he acted like nothing had happened – he just came across with this frustration at our mechanical way of doing things.
o. He asked that we send [Lionel] Luckhoo a tape recorder, which we are doing, and a copy of his book to Harold Bollers, which went with Duncan’s to Georgetown.
p. Mack [Jim McElvane] took him the original Swinney deed to look at and they took affidavits that Mazor had seen it first hand. Said our position against Stoen on this matter is weakened by the information Tish [Leroy] gave.
q. Claire [Janaro] still has not returned the signed affidavits from her mom (Muchnick) and Mrs. Janaro. These are for Charles.
r. You have to keep on top of the lawsuits, obviously, because he has forgotten some deadlines and not even bothered with others until the last minute. June should make up a schedule so we can remind our illustrious attorney of his work.
MARK AND DON: We have held off asking them to do anything because of the Garry conflict and not knowing which way to turn. These are some of the outstanding things we should have decisions on:
a. Don wants to have a town hall meeting, announce major revelations in the King, Kennedy and PT conspiracies, bring in the media here in SF when Mark returns.
b. Don sent mailgrams at Mark’s request putting N.E. [National Enquirer] and N.W. [New West] on notice. I do not believe he has talked to them further nor about offering to do stories for them, if that is still requested.
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DON AND MARK (CONTINUED)
c. Don said he is still pushing the movie, said it looks like it is going the documentary direction.
d. Don suggested we wait until Mark returns to invite Dick G. [Gregory] and Mohammed Ali the Jonestown. Said Mark can ask Dick to invite Ali.
[Item bracketed] e. Don is willing to help on Cheryl Baker, already asked Pat to help. I have not asked him to go thru with it because of the Garry rift again. He said re. the finding out peoples’ backgrounds (Don D., David S., Katie B., Mertles, Coleman, ERA, Coral, Cheryl B., and S.A.K. [Steven Katsaris])… he said wait until we get our investigative team together, including Bob Levering [marginal note: “The Bob Levering?”], a reporter named Kelch, Mark and himself and maybe a few others, to start to work on that counter-intelligence move.
f. He is willing to talk on Julia Hare, John Maher, other radio and TV shows. Marcie said Lynn Hodges asked to have him on his show.
g. It was also said on the radio to have him talk to Maria’s brother [Anthony Katsaris] and Kathy Hunter.
JOE MAZOR: He called here yesterday and told Tom [Adams] about his plans and wish not to be employed by Garry’s office. Same as he called to [Temple HAM radio station] 8R1, I suppose. See attached report from Tom. We are waiting to know how to proceed with the following:
a. Press conference – said he talked to KGO yesterday.
b. Relationship with PT and CG [Charles Garry], of course. Get that established.
c. Issue with the inaccurate information on the dismissal of the Mertle case – he is to report to Charles on that.
d. Tom told him the message about the movie, supporting the idea and saying Mark Lane was supportive of his role in it.
e. No answers on the notary and property issue concerning Swinneys.
f. He expects some letters to be brought to him from overseas.
g. He wants to talk to Hue [Fortson] when he is back in SF about security for Marcie and Jim.
h. No contact with him yet about the tape for Guyana which was requested – something about extradition of George to Guyana?? That Guyana would like to hear of his plans for George and the message that Hughes did not like the maneuvers Stoen ran on him in Guyana, does not want to work with him anymore.
i. Not sure how he plays into the Serena Hunt thing. He had some insight into it, according to Paula [Adams].
JIM HERNDON: He has been working on the Vincent Lopez case. Ask June. He went to court for [Eugene] Chaikin on the 20th and said that Chaikin was allowed by the judge to withdraw from the case. Said the judge wanted an address for Walter Jones to citation him (probate court was looking for Walter Jones’ address) and require Smitty [Walter Jones] to appear and show an accounting for his conservatee Vincent’s care. Sounds good to me, like we won a round. When Vincent reaches 18, he will be able to declare himself emancipated according to Herndon.
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JAMES MACELVANE AND THE PROPERTY: It is NOT moving. I do not know what Mac is doing. We have had calls here from Melvin Dean and Mabel Johnson (who bought Pugh’s property) – most of whom want to pay off what they owe to the Temple. I know there are certain problems in all this, there have been too many calls too many times here from people looking for Mac to indicate he is not doing all he can. He has not moved any property or seconds in months. I don’t know what he does with his time.
I have explained a problem to Marcie which I only became cognizant of about two months ago. That is, that in LA they keep all the money from offerings, rents, their communal salaries in a bank account signed on by Mac and Florida [Johnson]. Mac told me, when I did not have enough to pay the fire insurance on all our properties here ($8000) that he had enough in LA. It turns out he had as much as $15,000 in that account. He paid the insurance bill, which was $8000; then I asked him to pay $2000 cash to Freed, which he did. Then he gave Hugh [Hue] Fortson $3000 to buy material for the stuffed animal project in Guyana. That totals $13,000. Marcie said she would talk to him about this – that from here on out there will be procedures instated to bring the $ here to SF and an accounting made.
Outstanding property transactions to be followed up on are in June’s files. She knows them.
Other things he has been assigned to do include: affidavit from Jimmie Nelson (he asked for a phone patch from Kay [Nelson] first); contact with Mrs. Alexander and a letter to DA and FCC from her; write up Nell’s [Nell Smart] comments re conversations with National Enquirer; affidavit from Nell re. Enquirer; talk to D’Oliviera in LA; keep in touch with Hanoman (he will be here tomorrow to see the property); keep in touch with Pets Unlimited.
PR DEPARTMENT: Andy [Silver] and Vera head this, still, and keep up with a wide assortment of community events and street fairs where we can have booths and make money. I think, all in all, we attend a lot of events and demonstrations a [and] community organizing meetings, enough so the community still knows we are here. Reports continue to be an impossible area. Andy and Phyllis Houston report regularly on their PR contacts when they attend events and phone calls. Others do not. There is no systematic approach to regular calls still, nor reports. I have mentioned the regular, systematic approach to Vera, and it has been put to her over the radio. I have given up on it, and just accept what reports come in. This area needs lots of organization.
LAURIE EFREIN: She maintains. It is a hardship getting a large number of letters out via the congregation, first because numbers are down and second because if we write every service people get resentful. Laurie has learned to work pretty well with Guya and Leona [Collier] on letters during service. What we have failed to do to get numbers of letters up is mobilize the tutor method. This needs doing. Tom does Taylor letters, but not in the quantity that should be done.
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R-1-D-16
VINCENT HALINAN [HALLINAN] REGARDING MARK LANE 9/23/78
After having reports from a number of people regarding Mark, Marcie called up Vincent and asked him off the record for his opinion. He said that Mark Lane is a nice guy but he tends to go off of the deep end and that we shouldn’t be putting stock in what he says. Just reporting this so that you have all the facts before we get into the conference.
SCIENTOLOGY REGARDING MARK LANE Teri 9/23/78
I talked to Paul Elkins about things going on in Guyana and mentioned the very successful press conference that Mark had in Georgetown as a feeler to see how he responded. M Paul – said to please be careful in the accepting of assistance with Mark Lane as we may well discredit ourselves in the process. He said “I don’t mean to be negative but there is talk around here that Mark is the ultimate of the double agent”. He went on to explain that he had been carefully watching the Mark Lane television things and also the hearing in DC and all and he said that the problem is that Mark did not check out his information and has done more to discredit the conspiracy that has the government in their attempts. He said that is one theory to cover it up around Scientology circles that Mark may be working in the capacity of discreting [discrediting] the conspiracy by continually overshooting his case and thereby convincing the people more of the government perspective. Another thing he said that makes dubious about Mark is that Mark plays up the CIA into such a monster that it virtually immobilizes people in feeling that they can take on the CIA – for that reason also he feels that Mark may be an agent. On the other hand – he said if Mark isn’t an agent the government is going to enormous extremes to make Mark look like a fool and right now in the public eye Mark has made a complete ass out of himself. He said that even if Mark is not an agent – his actions are helping the government and not the people who he considers to be his friends. We talked about a number of things also – and he told me that he would get in touch with Vaughn Young and get his opinion and that he would also have Jeff Quiros call me who is the guy that I usually keep in contact with. He talked about Synanon for a second and other things relating to the 11 enditments [indictments] in his organization. Said he would get back later. Jeff will call later today.
LOSNESS [Looseness] WITH MONEY IN REGARDS TO LONG DISTANCE CALLS
One thing that MarciePointed out that is very noticeable here is that where before we used to do all long distance calls either by FC or after 111 [11] now they are happening a lot – anytime of day or night – we are going to try to crack down on that – but some of the problems consists of people from LA calling whenever they see fit and the like.
NEWSPAPER CLEARACE [Clearance]
Mark looked over the paper briefly on the way to Georgetown but said that he felt that some things in it were libelous – he wanted to check it over more closely later – so I think that we had better hold on pronting [printing] it till it gets that final approval.
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SERENA HUNT
The situation with Serena Hunt is that she was moved out of Post Street into another place (according to Jean [Brown]) where she is being paid for by the state and is getting good care. According to Jean – [Charles] Garry said that it should be left alone however he would like to see some of the nurses[‘] notes previously so that he can better our case for having seen to responsible care. It will not help us if we in some way took her money in the past by paying for her now and it even looks more irregular because we are assuming this from the state – No one has checked with that Fresno DA to see if there is any investigation pending about us and if so in what regard. In that today is Sunday – I will call Pat [Richartz] tomorrow and see if she will call Fresno as an investigator and see if she can really determine what (if anything) is going on in Fresno. [Marginal note: “SF told to assign someone to visit her on regular basis.”]
RANCH QUESTION:
Do you really think that it is wise to mortgage the ranch under Garry for some 200,000 or whatever – in view of the fact that we don’t know what Garry’s state of mind is going to be after this thing with Lane this week. My opinion would be to hold off on the ranch until such time as we know how Garry is going to stand with us because at this point we don’t know that he won’t drop us with Lane. [Marginal note: “NEEDS TO BE DISCUSSED”]
[The following paragraph scribbled out, with notation, “She moved across the street – probably not relevant”]
CAROLYN WASHINGTON:
Phyllis Houston reported to me that Caroline Washington drove past the church here about 7:30 AM this morning slowly. (Sunday) 9/24/78
RADIO
Tom [Adams] says that he is able to handle all of our traffic by Morse code now and I definitely think that this is what we should do. It will take longer and we will have to write things out ahead of time however – I think that it is the only way to a) save money b) have confidentiality c) save our license before it is too late. I think that Morse code should be demanded for all things except for patches that are for family people and also for all traffic in general. Then if there is some need for verbal contact and that should be done through an outsiders patch. [Marginal notation: “Done”]
Also: Bonnie Beck is studying for her licenses.
JOHN FROLICH
John talked to Marcie today and she got his on the QT impression of Mark Lane and he said “well intended but he is just a kid” “Doesn’t have experience if you know what I mean”.
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R-1-D-17
QUESTIONS AND CRITICISM ON PEOPLES FORUM
Teri Buford
QUESTIONS:
1. Do you think that it is wise to put in the Angela Davis Quoate in the paper that was put in there or should we reconsider on that one.
2. Did whoever put the Jane Fonda qoute in the paper realized that the quote that was put in was not anything that she had ever seen or written but rather a letter that we wrote for her that she never signed (I took it out)
3. On the article about the history of the temple here are my questions:
a) do we really want to include the passage about using the church as a vehicle.
b) as a matter of policy we never mention Indianapolis or Indiana by name yet we do here – is this a change in policy or has JJ cleared this.
c) do you want to mention Mayor Boswell by Name – will he back up what we are saying.
d) do you really want to mention the number of people that came from Indiana – we usually don’t go around mentioning numbers – can you double check on this before we go to press.
e) do we want to be so strong in this article to say “this is not only a regional problem but a national disease” – do we want to indite [indict] the whole US as racist – if this is cleared fine otherwise we usually talk about the minority of people etc. – please find out before we go to press and make a big mistake.
f) you talk about JJ’s hearoes [heroes] – can you check with him that these really were his heroes – I noticed you had some yet left out [Eugene V.] Debs who was a real hero – can you check with JJ on that because there have been other articles printed that may contradict what you are saying.
4. The article on Jonestown that comes in 4 sections – I was not overly impressed with the quality of it – this doesn’t look like Dick’s [Tropp] writing – do you really want to mention psycic [psychic] healing in the middle of an article about a farming community… The articles appear to be in drastic need of revamping and consolidation. May be others will have a different opinion but I think the whole article needs to be cleaned up and tightened up. Can we do this here or someone there should do it – but I do think it needs some consideration.
5. The article called Peoples of Jonestown is outstanding in my opinion. If one of your guys could ask JJ if we could serious[ly] consider doing a book on those articles that we have and lead off with this article called Peoples of Jonestown – I think that it would be a very effective introduction for the book. Frankly – I think that that work is publishable and I think that there may be a way of getting [Don] Freed or [Mark] Lane to pull one of their strings to get a person to sponsor such a publication for free so please finalize what you have – and ask JJ if we can use that one article as the intro for the book and send me the final copy and I will check into getting it published for free.
Enough – I am sending the paper in Xerox form back to you all for a final review – please get back to me as soon as possible with answers as this issue needs to get on the streets very soon as our press conference is next week.
Last question: do you think that we should wait until the press conference
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to finalize our lead article for reason that something may be said of a dynamic nature about us at the conference. Or do you think that we should push ahead of that time. The press conference is tentatively set to have the 3rd of October. What is your feeling on this.