Dear friend of The Stelle Group,

 

It has been a year since three members of TSG, calling themselves the Com­mittee for Truth, made unauthorized use of our mailing list to send out their view of the situation between Richard Kieninger and the trustees. At the time I was angered by the way they went about it, and the things they stated seemed off the wall. Now, after a year of my probing into the details, and seeing where our president, Malcolm Carnahan, and the other trustees are leading the group, I have come to the conclusion that the Committee for Truth was 100% on target in their facts and logic. I tried hard to refute what they wrote then, and their stated intention was to bring to the attention of outside supporters information that was being covered up in the group’s published propaganda. It was the committee’s position that people who fund the group’s activities from the outside are entitled to know what’s really going on as much as the members who are here dealing with the issues on a day-to-day basis. When my anger at having our internal problems exposed to outsiders abated, the result was that I began to look around more critically rather than blindly believing everything the trustees put out as “truth.” I was shocked to discover that the trustees were lying to us members as well as to the outside supporters; and after much soul searching, I feel it is my duty to disclose to you how TSG is being led astray since you are probably as much dedicated to seeing the Brotherhoods’ Great Plan fulfilled as much as anyone here. Because the three women who sent out their information last December were open as to their identity, they were quickly expelled from TSG. I don’t intend to have the same thing happen to me; so this writer will remain anonymous for now.

Those three women are being sued for return of the mailing labels they copied and were placed under a temporary court injunction to prevent them from communicating with anyone on that list until the lawsuit can be tried. Richard was later added to the lawsuit in order to place him under the same injunction and silence him even though he had no part in taking the mailing list or using it. He has no control over the trustees’ demand for return of the list: yet as long as the trustees delay the trial, he cannot get out from under the in­junction. The trustees have already spent more than $20,000 on legal fees to fight the Constitutional First Amendment flights of the three women.

The trustees, meanwhile, are having a field day accusing the three women of everything that has gone wrong in TSG since their move to force the resignation of Richard from all his offices. They claim that the letters sent out by the three women caused the demise of TSG’s school in Dallas, but weeks before their first letter it was known that only four children would be going to the school the next term and that it was not practical to continue the school here. Knowing this, the trustees still sent out fund-raising letters touting the school as if it were an ongoing operation. The trustees also claim that donations to TSG have fallen off because of the three women, even though the trustees estimated that the effect of publishing Richard’s departure from TSG would result in up to a 20% reduction in overall income. As it turned out, the loss has been 34% as of the first half of 1987. I have heard many former donors express in effect. “Kieninger wrote a book that impressed me so deeply that it changed my life, and I sent money to TSG to help him carry out his work. When the newsletter last year announced he was fired by the board. I didn’t see any point in sending him any more donations. I don’t know who any of these other persons are who took over,”

The trustees like to say Richard resigned of his own free will, but the quote from the newsletter, “We discussed the choices with Richard and all of us agreed that a resignation was appropriate under the circumstances,” is read pretty universally as ‘We got rid of him.’ In that same newsletter, the phrase. “I am confident that the torch is being passed into many capable hands,” was fed to Richard to be quoted as coming from his mouth. An hour-long farewell interview with Richard that was taped by Heather Norris and was supposed to be printed in the newsletter was boiled down by trustees Robert Machiz and Malcolm Carnahan to only that ‘pass the torch’ phrase. The same two trustees also revised Richard’s statements on the tape to make him appear to say that there is not an island to be purchased in the Pacific Ocean, thereby claiming Richard perpetrated a fraud in asking for donations to the Philadelphia Fund. In reality, Richard has never said that there is no island to be purchased, and he is still planning to buy it. In order to prevent Richard from rebutting their false statements, the trustees keep trying to destroy his credibility in hope that no one will listen to him.

They tried to force him to leave Texas for three years while they consoli­dated their takeover. They have pictured him as a liar, fraud, lecher, and in need of psychiatric therapy; but when one tries to pin down the trustees to detail, they say they can’t reveal the acts so as to protect innocent others. In general meetings we members have been told, “His actions were so terrible, you don’t want to know!” The Trustees have never brought charges against Richard lest, in their words. “it disrupt the group to have hearings.” Well, some of us have quietly investigated these matters, and their actions against Richard are unfounded, It has become obvious that a power play on the part of Malcolm and his flock is behind Richard’s ouster.

Malcolm has been jealous of the Kieningers for eighteen years, and in the early years of TSG he prided himself on being the nucleus for rallying the malcontents into a “loyal” opposition, in the early years of TSG. He was the guiding force in bringing legal action against Jim Howery and Gail Kieninger in order to oust them in the 1975 rebellion, and for this he became the hero who had saved the group from Gail’s outrageous arbitrary moves against indiv­idual members after she had seized Richard’s positions. He was elected presi­dent at TSG, a position he still holds, and became, in effect, the mayor of Stelle, Illinois. Malcolm is a puritanical Minister graduated from Disciples of Christ seminary, and a suave and oily speaker. He has been trained in bureaucratic administration by his years of employment in H.U.D., but he does not exert himself or do any real work, as attested by all who have worked in our offices. His primary activity has been to arrange the sale and mortgaging of TSG assets as contrasted with Richard’s former administration of implement­ing innovations, creating profitable projects, and amassing assets for use by the group. Richard and Malcolm are virtually opposites.

During Malcolm’s regime, while Richard was in Texas building Adelphi, the community of Stelle failed to grow. Stelle Industries went deep into debt, and the whole Stelle project was kept afloat from 1975 to 1982 by mortgaging the assets. The trustees decided that allowing Richard to return to Stelle and have a say in directing the project again might bring some life back into TSC. But just at that time, Richard’s Teacher, John, recommended that the headquar­ters of TSG move to Adelphi and get out of the business of governing the Stelle community and, instead, concentrate on its job of educating the public and developing schools. In response, the trustees drew up bylaws for a community co-operative under which the Stelle residents would govern themselves, and the trustees revised the bylaws of TSC to remove the members’ rights of voting and protection from expulsion. I remember that we were so enthused about getting rid of the trustees as our rulers that we were too careless about our rights in TSC since the trustees were moving away to Texas. We were told by trustees that Richard would become both a trustee and (he Chairman of the Board of TSG under the revised bylaws, and we were led to believe that Richard would be in a position to govern the direction of TSG; so we felt safe again.

We had many meetings to discuss the changes and voted section by section on the proposals. We then voted to accept the bylaws of the new co-op and TSG, but the trustees slipped in a new item in the TSG bylaws after the dis­cussion meetings, and this item gave the trustees the power to remove Richard at any time. With this club over his head, Richard was reduced to being Malcolm’s puppet. Now the trustees are a self-perpetuating board and are the only people with a vote in TSG, and they have freed themselves of Richard’s input. They cleverly forced Richard to resign: so they can say that they didn’t vote to remove hint but that he quit of his own free will.

This started with Robert Machiz’s threat to resign as a trustee in April, 1956, because he felt he was not being supported. Richard recommended that the board accept Robert’s resignation since the man had a negative attitude and was performing poorly. Robert is cynical and has an abrasive personality, but he has been Malcolm’s right hand man for years. Malcolm hand picked him to be the president of Stelle Industries, where he so antagonized the managers of the various divisions by his autocratic and sarcastic manner, that they all quit one by one. Since Robert’s skills are coordinating finances and sales, he didn’t know the nuts and bolts of the divisions and couldn’t run them. The corporation folded as a result of his dismantling actions. Malcolm requested of the board of trustees that they bring Robert to Dallas, and put him on staff to tide him over financially until he could find a job elsewhere. At that time the corporate secretary quit, and Robert was appointed to the job. By agree­ment of the board, Robert was to be responsible for fund raising and carrying out a project that Richard had been trying to get the trustees to get rolling. This project, a fraternal lodge to be called Builders of the Nation, was an idea suggested to Richard by his Teachers three years earlier in order for people interested in the Lemurian Philosophy to start and operate local lodges where they live instead of having to move to Stelle or Adelphi. But after ten months. Robert didn’t accomplish either task. The work Robert was doing on the staff didn’t warrant the high salary be was being paid, and since Malcolm only had about five hours of TSG work to do per week, he certainly didn’t need same one to help him. Richard had stated that he didn’t believe trustees or top officers should be paid for their duties since those duties were so light. At first when Malcolm moved to Dallas he agreed and told Richard he could carry out his responsibilities as president in a few hours a week while he made some good money as a commodities broker. Richard ran the day-to-day affairs of TSG office on a volunteer basis in early 1983 and brought the financial condition into the black alter years of its loosing ground. In six months the group was current in paying its bills and was putting money into savings. Then, because Malcolm lost his job on the outside, he persuaded the trustees to have TSG hire him full time at a high salary for such a small non-profit organization. Over Richard’s objections, he was paid more than all the donations received from all the members and resident associates. Richard was ordered thereafter to stay out of all administrative activities and to deal with TSG only through Malcolm. Richard was also president of The Adelphi Organization on a volunteer basis at that time, and he was asked by Malcolm to resign from that position as well. By the beginning of 1987, three trustees who were officers had voted themselves salary packages totaling $104,000 a year.

When Robert threatened to resign, and he sensed Richard was going to push for accepting it, interesting things happened that week. There was a young divorcee, Leslie, who had joined the group a year and a half earlier who became Richard’s girl friend, but after about six months she also got involved with a younger man, Dave. In January of 1986, she opted to live with Dave and ended her relationship with Richard. Malcolm is a teacher of an occult prac­tice called Vivaxis in order to add to his income. Dave was assistant teacher. Dave brought Leslie to Malcolm who told her she still had a psychic link with Richard (we call this an ethnic corporation). But they worded this in such a way to make Leslie believe that Richard had hypnotized her to seduce her. She was outraged, and Malcolm persuaded her to submit charges against Richard with our Membership Committee. Richard was confronted by the Trustees who told him that Leslie planned to sue him and TSG for a million dollars unless he met her demand to give up all his offices in TSG and submit to psychological testing, agreeing to abide by the psychiatrist’s recommendations. In order to save TSG, Richard agreed. As it turned out, Leslie had never threatened to sue and only said she didn’t want Richard to be in a position to hypnotize anyone and told the Membership Committee that she had gone into the relationship with her eyes open and didn’t really feel hurt by Richard. Later information showed that the trustees knew that the Sexual Harassment Law didn’t apply, but by then they already had Richard’s signature on a letter they prepared where he agreed to their terms, and Robert kept his job. Robert’s friend who is a psychiatrist interviewed Richard and recommended that Richard leave Texas for up to three years to get away tram pressures of the trustees. The trustees offered to pay for maintaining Richard during his absence, but Richard refused to leave, saying that he would not expose himself to the propaganda that could be exploited by such an arrangement.

When Richard discovered he had been tricked, the Trustees began their cam­paign to discredit him so no one would ever listen to him again lest someone accept what had really happened. Those who have rubbed Malcolm the wrong way have learned that be is ruthlessly vindictive under his suave exterior. He has destroyed other people in the group by making them scapegoats for his own unethical acts. But no one outside of his party has a vote to counter him. Malcolm has taken over everything that Richard has built, and be controls all the books and tapes Richard has produced, as well as a million dollars in TSG assets for his own personal use. The TSG members who came from Stelle to the Dallas area now are the majority party in The Adelphi Organization, which is still run democratically. They have squeezed Richard out of his positions in The Adelphi Organization as well, and have stated in our business meetings that they intend to take control of the group away from the original members who built the community of Adelphi, Texas. Malcolm even threatened lawsuits to take over an organization started by Richard after he was ousted from TSG and TAO to carry on his work for The Brotherhoods. Two men who were cofounders of Builders of the Nation in Garland, Texas, were summarily expelled from TSG. Fortunately, Builders of the Nation is thriving and growing. Richard counseled with an eminent local psychiatrist for half a year at his own expense. At the conclusion of these sessions, the psychiatrist sent TSG a letter declaring Richard’s mental health and recommending he be reinstated in TSG. Malcolm has discounted the letter as something Richard bribed the doctor to write.

Meanwhile, in our TSG information-sharing meetings, we have listened to the trustees and top managers disparage The Ultimate Frontier and try to decide how to profit from its continued sale as a valuable asset while also discrediting it as a basis for TSG philosophy. They have argued how they can change future printings so as to explain away any importance of Mr. Kieninger. They have decided to play down things like the Brotherhoods’ Great Plan and any role TSG might have been expected to play in that plan. They have tried to get the membership to accept a “New” Stelle Group which instead will be a new-age, personal development school. No longer will members be required to fulfill high qualifications for membership and undergo training before being accepted: instead, various degrees of membership will be bought on a year-to-year basis according to how much people are willing to pay. TSG publishes a brochure which promises self-development programs and philosophy courses. yet here such programs have died on the vine; and what had been a thriving group in Dallas under Richard has no attendance from the local public any longer.

We have known that since Richard’s ouster, the Brotherhoods have taken a wait-and-see position toward The Stelle Group and have put no energy toward the group. We have just been informed that because TSG has turned away from its intended part in the Great Plan and because Malcolm practices sorcery under the name of Vivaxis and has communicated with spirits using those tech­niques, The Stelle Group has now been dissociated from the Brotherhoods. We expected this might happen, and it is a terrible blow to those of us who still care about the Great Plan. These events are devastating to those who have worked for decades trying to build a beautiful and practical dream.

 

 

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