Notice: Fredric Rice may have removed segments of the replies given to questions if they contained copyrighted materials. After a very short while, Scientology "experts" refused to answer questions and started cut-and-pasting copyrighted cult propaganda. Additionally I removed URLs in some of the replies, and left them in others. And it's also important to note that eventually the unfortunate "Greg Churilov" cultist was ejected from askme.com for his typical Scientological behavior.

FredricRice asked this question on 5/9/2000:

Item number 22 of the Auditor's Code reads "I promise never to use the secrets of a preclear divulged in session for punishment or personal gain."

In light of the audio tape recordings of scientologists doing just that, and the many court transcripts available on the Internet that cover the violation of this item, does anyone know whether this item has been repealed? And if not, would the violation of this item usually result in a Condition of Ethics? And if so, do you happen to know which Condition?

There's no date on the court document that I've read this Item from, by the way.

Phobos1 gave this response on 5/10/2000:

It has not been repealed so far as I know, although the last Scientologist who cited Item 22 from the code only mentioned personal gain; there was no mention of punishment.

Even so, some of the Scientology policy letters I've read seem to speak of punishment as a bad thing in general, that it doesn't work and shouldn't be used and so forth. Granted, this doesn't seem to be entirely consistent with statements like "We're not a turn-the-other-cheek kind of religion", but I think a distinction can be made between punishment (a sort of hardship imposed in the name of justice to redeem or instruct a wrongdoer) and ordinary harm done to someone for other reasons. On the field of battle, for example, one doesn't shoot enemy soldiers with the purpose of punishing them for their naughtiness, but as an instrumental means to winning the war. Punishment doesn't enter into it, nor even personal gain.

So, with this sort of semantic distinction, I think the people who are divulging PC folder secrets may be adhering to the auditor's code after all. They're not doing it for personal gain, and they aren't EXACTLY doing it for punishment either; they're doing it as part of a campaign to defeat criticism by destroying the credibility of former members who dare to speak out.

Of course, what this means is that item 22 in the auditor's code is practically worthless from a moral and practical point of view, because it boils down to this: "Scientology promises to respect the secrecy of your PC folder so long as it is in Scientology's interests to do so."

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Interesting. So Auditor's Code Items 22 and 27 are likely considered incomplete to the Scientologists who apply them for reasons of blackmail and extortion.

In fact it looks to me that auditors actually do believe in holding these ideals but that their management and the GO/OSA usethem as Hubbard intended.

Thanks. It looks like they've not been removed from the Code. It's just that the bad guys don't follow them. (And I still have my suspicions that auditors _do_ try to follow them.)

Further facts about this criminal empire may be found at Operation Clambake and FACTNet.

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