Going Clear Movie, Part 3 - Gibney/Ortega Propaganda Techniques

So, at 25:30, and this was kind of not and this is the first time I saw it. It was not shocking but it was surprising. Tony Ortega shows up. I participated in a documentary that happened a year or two earlier in the UK, right. The only type of documentary I wanted to be involved in which pretty much was about my story and my thoughts and perspectives about Scientology, being relatively objective about it, right. And the one thing that bothered me about it was that I didn’t know they were going to do was they used this technique of interjecting Tony – and I didn’t know that until I saw that movie – but interjecting Tony Ortega into it. And the technique was they would press me on things like the IRS for example and try to get me to say that it was, the exemption there was something untoward about Scientology, and I am not going to say that. I am going to say, hey we fought fire with fire and we won – to get to the table. And then we were treated like a normal citizen and we passed with flying colors. But they want me to say, no no, it was just you coerced it or you did it fraudulently, right. And I won’t say it, right. So, they get me saying some of the stuff about the rough stuff that was going on when we were going head to head with the IRS in order to be able to get to the table. And then they bridge it with Tony Ortega just blithely saying, Oh yeah they fraudulently go the exemption, and all this stuff that Marty is talking about is intimidated them into it. So, he was used as bridge to say all the things that they tried to get me to say that I wouldn’t say. And throughout the movie, ok? And so Alex Gibney, the great author, is much like Mike Rinder and that I don’t know if he ever had an original thought in his life, because he used the exact same technique. Tony Ortega’s name does not appear in Lawrence Wright’s book and yet he is one of the most quoted people throughout the documentary. He is not in this book.

Tony Ortega will just come in and he’ll just say whatever denigrating statement you need him to make in order to keep your false narrative flowing, ok. I mean that they had to go to him who didn’t even appear in the book, I told Gibney after the fact, I said, “you know what, in the long run, you are going to get all these accolades because it is very popular to jump on Scientology right now, but in the long run, that’s the biggest mistake you ever made was bringing this guy into the movie.” And he didn’t deny it. He said “well I cannot throw him under the bus,” and I said “I am not asking you to throw him under the bus, I am just telling you. I am just informing you.” This was after the fact, the movie was already done.

And the context in which this came up was Gibney was wanted me to come to New York to the big international press day where they had this convention set up with every media under the sun, moon and stars and I said well, ok, sure, initially. And then I find out because Tony Ortega is all over it. That he and Mike Rinder are going to there and I told Gibney, “I don’t really want to get, I don’t want to be an exhibit in a freak show. If somebody wants to talk to me, I want to have mature conversations about Scientology, I will, if you have something like that I’ll do it.” Right? And this was this whole thing about why wouldn’t you want to be Tony, so I was taking Gibney to school about Tony Ortega that I did not want to be associated or involved with him. Because it was all a big juvenile delinquent trolling game for him. And that Mike was steadily becoming one of his sort of acolytes. See what I’m sayin. And I don’t want to get into arguments and mess up your movie premiere. And I don’t want to have that type of juvenile discussion, game playing. And of course, I was right.