Helping at Ground Zero

We all know about the fall of the Twin Towers in New York on 11th September 2001. It was the first public appearance for a new CoS group, the Volunteer Ministers. For more on this, see
http://www.lisamcpherson.org/cos-wtc.htm
http://solitarytrees.net/cowen/misc/ground0.htm

The first item here is a circulated E-mail. It is full of scienobabble, a few words and phrases need translating:

Sea Org   The elite corps of the CoS.
Assist   What Christians would call 'laying on of hands' - miracle working.
hat   to provide training in
MEST   Matter, Energy, Space, Time: the physical universe.
chaos merchants   anyone saying things the CoS doesn't like.
bullbait   to shout and rave at a person in order to distract him and cause him to lose his temper.
restimulate   to cause people to remember traumatic events in an uncontrolled and damaging way.
PT   Present Time. Not being in it is bad, trapping people in bad memories.

Mention is made of the Dianetics 1-800 (freephone) number. This was broadcast on a TV network in error, ironically along with a (genuine) number to call to report any scams.

FROM: "Karen Scott" <karen2comm@mediaone.net>
TO: <Undisclosed-Recipient:;>
DATE: Fri, 14 Sep 2001 <time stamp deleted>
RE: READ THIS - Sea Org & Volunteer Ministers in NY

Pls dissem widely to Scientologists.

To: Scientologists <-- From: CO I HELP Canada

Dear All,

For the last two days I have been in New York Org running, with several other Sea Org members, the deployment of Volunteer Ministers into the disaster zone.

We have experienced considerable success making ourselves stable terminals in the disaster zone giving assists and supplying food to the police and fire fighters. We are "the guys in the yellow shirts" and that alone now gets us past the road blocks into southern Manhattan. The Dianetics 1-800 number was placed on the TV as a number to call if you wanted to help. With our higher confront and work ethic we have established ourselves to such a degree that we now have the Red Cross referring social workers and psychologists to us at the org for training transport into the disaster zone. We hat them on assists put a shirt on them and send them in. Our people have been in the area since Tuesday afternoon.

With Scientologists and non-Scientologists combined we have sent out close to 150 Volunteer Ministers so far. At the highest peak so far we have had close to 40 people working the zone at one time.

Tonight, just a short time ago, I took a tour of the disaster zone. I had up to this point not personally gone in.

I'm going to attempt to convey in a few short sentences using our terms what the scene is:

It is highly unlikely you have ever scene anything to compare to the sheer MEST damage here. Unless you have been in a bombed out city before. Nothing you have ever seen in any movie comes close to this, nothing. For miles the streets are gray ash and paper mush and the trees are hung with rags of paper from the Trade Towers. Everything as far as you can see is covered with white dust. The number of crushed ambulances and foreignness piled on top each other or lying torn apart in the streets from the second blast and collapse is undesirable I have seen the mountains of bent steel and cement rubble which is all that is left of these buildings. Text cannot convey this reality to you. If you watch the TV footage of ground zero, this is what it looks like.

And there are thousands and thousands of people down there working. Police and fire and national guard and other workers. The sheer magnitude of the operation is difficult to grasp.

You will see the chaos merchants on television gleefully embellishing the misemotion. The truth is the people are working and working and working until they have to rest. They are not misemotional for the most part. They are fittingly sad and angry and tired and stunned but they are carrying on.

What we are aiming to handle is provide adequate support for these people. You will hear the media running a line that "We don't need any more volunteers." What they are neglecting is the old datum that behind any army are 5 people to every soldier acting as support staff to keep him fed and supplied and in shape. This is where we come in and I can tell you now: this area could absorb the efforts of a thousand Scientologists for weeks right now.

Additionally we are trying to move in and knock the psychs out of counseling to the grieving families and that could take another 100 plus people right now. Due to some brilliant maneuvering by some simply genius Sea Org Members we tied up the majority of the psychs who were attempting to get to families yesterday in Q&A, bullbait and wrangling. They have a hard time completing cycles of action and are pretty easy to disperse. But today they are out in full force and circling like vultures over these people and all of our resources are tied up in the support efforts in the disaster zone at present.

There is nowhere on Earth right now that hurts like this place. These are brave people and they are the able and they don't know it but they need the Scientologists with LRH's tech to be here right now. The fire-fighter company down the street from the org lost 14 members on Tuesday. No one can do anything for them or the rest but Scientologists. The other religions here with their ministers have shown their true colors and are working hand in hand with the psychs to give these people as much false data and restimulation as they can. They HAVE NO TECH and they're not even trying to hide it anymore. They've crossed over and abandoned anything spiritual and to hell with them.

The Red Cross has told us when we went to help at their shelters and found no one there, "the people say they are doing fine so we send them back out". Thats because the Red Cross' confront is sooo low they can't even see when people are suffering right in front of them. They are blind. I have stood in Times Square at 7:00pm with people all around and I swear I could have communicated in whispers and been heard at 20 feet, such a hush lies over this place. It hurts. Big time. Nobody is in PT. They are stuck in the incident.

So I'm sending this out to you. It is a direct request for your presence here now. We are uptone. We are making it go right. We need help now. And what this place needs now more than anything else in the whole wide world is more Scientologists here right now.

Thank you.

Lt. Simon Hare CO I HELP Canada (in NY)

Next, a post to the newsgroup alt.religion.scientology.

Subject: ground zero volunteer horrified by Scientology vultures
From: dst@cs.cmu.edu (Dave Touretzky)
Date: Sat, 2 Mar 2002 12:44:52 +0000 (UTC)
Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology

A woman I know worked as a volunteer at Ground Zero in Manhattan five days after the 9/11 disaster. Below are her personal observations about the unauthorized presence of Scientologists at the official command center, and how she managed to get them booted out. I'm withholding her name to protect her from Scientology harassment of the sort we're all too familiar with.

-- Dave Touretzky

================================================================

I thought you might appreciate my own personal recent (nightmare) experience with Scientologists -

Through my membership with an international children's charitable organization that coordinated with the Red Cross in response to the 9/11 disaster, I found myself working with a mental health/mass care group assigned to Ground Zero five days after the attack. (The fires were still burning and gaining the proper Federal ID, etc. required to access "The Pile" and interact with the rescue workers..police and fire units and medical volunteers...was lengthy even with Red Cross sponsorship.) In spite of the mind-numbing horror of the site itself, balanced by the amazing and countering displays of humanity among those on site, one of the largest jolts of emotion that I had was when I entered the official command center (federal and local agencies) housed in a school at the foot of the rubble. The lobby area was overrun by Scientology reps (a dozen or more?) offering their brand of 'bearing witness' in exchange for minor first aid (foot powder, bandaides, massages, cots). The displays of their pamphlets and books spread strategically throughout the area was marketing at its most agressive. They all donned brightly colored t-shirts and, striking me as eerily inappropriate at the time, seemed to be festive in their demeanor. A mental health volunteer and I immediately sought out the 'central command' of the relief effort and made a formal complaint. Long story short, no one had apparently authorized their presence and in fact, Guilliani, wisely, had publicly and formally strictly forbidden religious groups from any visible presence.....after all, wasn't it this kind of fanaticism that inspired the insanity of the attacks?

No one knew how they had gotten access and they were routed out later that day. I had been moved to soul-depleting nausea when I glanced at some of the posters and flyers depicting space ships and aliens (with comic book style graphics) and considered that their ability to promote this view of 'reality' at a time when all of us where questioning our reality as being no different from Bin Laden's inspirations and applications. I still consider their presense as 'intellectual and spiritual terrorism' that was taking opportunistic advantage of people (police and firemen and I assume family members at the Pier site) who were still in the shock of having, for example, watched "15 of my friends who were rushing the building in formation to help get people out and seeing the building crush them ALL" (direct quote from one of the NYPD officers I spoke with.)

This is not to say that there weren't other religions represented by individuals (met one priest who was sensitive enough to remove his collar before dispensing psychological/spiritual comfort along with eyewash and footpads), but they operated as individual volunteers simply availing themselves to anyone who wanted to speak with them. No religious tracts, bibles or other paraphanelia visible anywhere. The Scientologist's were the only ones sucking the much needed air out of the site by promoting their agenda. They were Scientologists FIRST and human beings SECOND. Oh yeah, that's consistent isn't it?

(name withheld)