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July , 1987 Dear participant of The
Stelle Group, In
January of this year, TSG mailed a newsletter to thousands of readers of my
book, The Ultimate Frontier. That
newsletter included many untrue and distorted statements about me. Since the
U.S. Supreme Court made its decision in New York vs. Sullivan that a public
figure has no legal recourse from public slander, ridicule, or false
allegations, they were safe
in printing whatever would put me in a bad light—such as hints of my having
been mentally ill, immoral, and a misappropriator
of donated funds. Not only have I not been provided an opportunity to give my
side of the story to the thousands who received the newsletter, but I have
been barred by a temporary court injunction, obtained by TSG Trustees, from
corresponding on my own with readers of my books. In the interim, I have
helped start the Builders of the Nation lodges and have been investigating
the behind-the-scenes activities of the Trustees in getting me out of the
picture and their efforts to silence any opposition I might present to their
attempts to take over my work. I am taking this opportunity to respond with
my perception of the truth to the scandal, largely manufactured against me by
the Trustees, and others. In 1982 I requested of the Trustees that they
divest The Stelle Group of its control over the community of Stelle,
Illinois, and allow the residents and home owners there to undertake their
own self-government rather than TSG governing the community. In response to
suggestions from my Teacher, John, I asked that the Trustees concentrate
instead on the tasks of education and development of technology in accordance
with the corporate charter of TSG instead of diverting almost all their
energy into governing the residents of Stelle. This divestiture was
accomplished that same year, and TSG headquarters was moved to Dallas in
preparation for moving it to Adelphi. New bylaws were drawn up by Robert
Machiz and approved by the other Trustees which, if voted in by the members,
provided for the disenfranchisement of all the members except Trustees and
would make the Trustees a self-perpetuating board. The members were persuaded
that this is what I wanted, whereas I only asked that the bylaws be revised
to prevent the membership from voting out any parts of the Lemurian
Philosophy when some tenet seemed too hard to live with. One of the selling
points used to convince the members to accept the revised bylaws was that I was
to be made a Trustee and become titular head of the board as chairman so that
I could advise the board what actions the Brotherhoods wanted to institute
and which then the other Trustees would carry out. I was not alarmed by the
proposed changes in TSG bylaws when I was apprised of them because I believed
no one would ever vote for them. To my amazement, they were passed. It
is an interesting fact the new bylaws were setup so that any three Trustees
could remove me from being a Trustee and the chairman at any time. It is
obvious from reading the bylaws that I was a captive figurehead under
constant threat of summary expulsion if I stepped out of line. Until 1983,
when the Trustees moved to Dallas, one of the more rankling aspects about the
ruling clique which the residents and 7
former residents of the community of Stelle frequently reported to me
was the subtle techniques used by Joanna Carnahan and Cindy Foreman to drive
out people of whom they did not approve, regardless of the decisions of the
Membership Committee. Many of the residents found it intolerable to be
pointedly kept out of the social circle of the elite clique presided over by
the Carnahans. Mrs. Foreman and a select coterie of
their lady friends. In a small town like Stelle, it was very painful to be
excluded and have it made obvious that you didn’t measure up to the insiders’
standards and thus be unwelcome in a community that is supposed to lead its
participants to spiritual advancement and the benefits of brotherly love. As
head of the office of Membership, I would officially accept Resident
Associates, and then the ruling clique would freeze out some of them
unofficially with cruel effectiveness. I was often told as much by those who
packed up and left, but I could not combat the secret gossip mill, since
especially since I myself was not accepted
into the elite, ruling clique. Of course, some of the young single men were
oblivious as to when they were being ostracized, and many of them couldn’t have cared less if
they were accepted into the inner circle, but the women were very sensitive
to it. When
Malcolm Carnahan, the president, moved to Dallas, he said he wanted to earn a larger salary than he had
been receiving as president of TSG, and so he took a job as a commodities
broker, saying that he could easily run TSG in his spare times since his
subordinates required little supervision—which is apparently true. I
continued to
take care of the day-to-day administration of TSG, as I had been doing before
we moved, and the Board of Trustees made the executive decisions in its
weekly meetings. All the other Trustees obtained highly-paid jobs outside TSG
when they moved to Dallas. Since so little time was required to supervise the
office personnel in carrying out our programs. I received no salary from TSG
and didn’t ask for one. After Malcolm had been a broker about six months, he
lost his job as the result of a change in federal law requiring licensure. He
was then in immediate need of an income and the other Trustees elected to
return Malcolm to a salaried position starting at over $30,000 per year to do
what I had been doing on a volunteer basis. At that Trustee meeting, I
objected to any Trustee or officer being paid a salary to work for TSG,
especially since the group was only just beginning to come out of the
financial slump it had been in for the past year and more. My objection was
overruled, and I was further told that I was to stay out of all
administrative work since it would interfere with the chain of command.
Malcolm told many committee members and staff personnel to not ask me
questions or communicate directly with me on policy or philosophy but to work
through him. The Trustees also told me to limit myself to supplying
philosophical advice to the board since Malcolm was henceforth in charge of
TSG, and he board did not consider itself advisors to me but rather that I
was subordinate to the Board. I was also told that henceforth all votes taken
by the Board would be unanimous, the penalty for my dissent being implied. I
had worked to get decent salaries for the full-time hourly-employees and
teachers of TSG, but so little time was required to supervise them, since
they were competent and conscientious, that it took Malcolm about 5 hours per week to do his job Volunteer
workers in the office reported that they almost never saw Malcolm have any
work at his desk or do anything other than practice Vivaxis, read financial
newsletters and books, talk long-distance about commodities deals, and shoot
the breeze. Yet the Trustees have voted him a wage package now costing TSG
more than $42,000 a year. Between Carnahan, Machiz and Wilhelm—all of whom
are Trustees—they have voted themselves wage packages that cost TSG some
$104,000 a year. This is an unconscionable amount for a non-profit organization
that currently receives donations of only about $170,000 per year. Carnahan
and Machiz are virtually parasitical considering the lack of productive work
they contribute to TSG and their lack of creativity or leadership. Most of
their efforts these days seem to be devoted to lawsuits they have instituted to
muzzle me. I personally brought in many tens of thousands of dollars in
donations to aid the work of TSG, and I complained that almost all of it was
going to salaries instead of to programs for members and students. Without my
asking for it or wanting it, Malcolm insisted that I receive a salary of
$24,000 so that I build a house at Adelphi and buy some new clothes and a
decent used car. Malcolm argued that no one would be willing to move to the Adelphi
site until lived there and there may have been some validity to that. Malcolm
also thought that the founder and Chairman of TSG should appear more
prosperous so as not to give the impression to the public that I didn’t have
the prosperity consciousness about which we teach. The
situation between me and the other Trustees and me and the rest of the ruling
clique, has been an uneasy truce for the last four years. Things came to a
head in April 1986 when Robert Machiz, who became a new Trustee and a staff
employee ten months earlier, threatened to resign because he didn’t feel
supported. I was concerned in the first place by Malcolm hiring Robert, as a
charity, because he had been fired by Federal Chicago from Stelle Industries.
He certainly wasn’t needed to help Malcolm with his five-hour a week work
load, but I believe Malcolm wanted Robert to keep him company during the day.
It was promised to the board that Robert would devote full time to raising
large sums of money and developing my new program assigned to me by the
Brotherhoods called Builders of the Nation. By last April Robert had done
virtually nothing on either project, and, in fact, was so depressed for the
first six months that he accomplished very little. When Robert threatened to
resign, I told Malcolm that I intended to accept the resignation. One week
later, at a special meeting arranged to discuss Robert’s problem, the
trustees accused me of sexual misconduct with a 27 year-old divorcee, Leslie
Olson, who had become a Resident Associate 17 months earlier and now,
according to the Trustees, was planning to sue me and The Stelle Group for a
million dollars under federal sexual harassment laws unless I was kept from
ever getting involved with a female participant as I had with her. The
Trustees adopted the posture that I should step down from all my positions in
TSG and TAO in order to save TSG from a lawsuit which would destroy the
group. At that meeting, the Trustees abolished, on the spot, my position as
Chairman of Office of Membership, and shortly after that I transferred my powers as the
Chairman of the Board to Malcolm; thereby, I could no longer have any
possible way to terminate Robert’s employment and salary. Miss
Olson, as it turned out, didn’t have a case against TSG or me under the
harassment laws, but she was certainly angry with me after being undoubtedly
shocked and horrified by the impression she received from Don Morrow,
Malcolm’s Vivaxis partner, that she had probably been hypnotized by me and
thus seduced. Don
Morrow’s Vivaxis session with Miss Olson took place, according to witnesses,
at Malcolm’s suggestion after a Vivaxis class in his home just days before I
was accused. Malcolm suggested to Leslie that she bring a complaint against
me to the Membership Committee. Malcolm claimed publicly, however, that he
had no prior knowledge of the matter! Yet this knowledge was at the very core
of the strategy to prevent me from being able to accept Robert’s threat of
resignation. Encouraging Leslie to bring a complaint might seem like Malcolm
was aiding her in bringing suit against TSG, but he already knew that she
didn’t want to cause trouble for the group. Furthermore, Robert contacted a
lawyer to learn that she couldn’t sue under the law which the Trustees told
rue was being threatened against us. Unfortunately, I trusted what they told
me and signed agreements they presented to me. From
that date onward, the Trustees had to come up with more and more excuses to
justify their case against me in order to convince the other members of TSG
and TAO. But in my analysis of their stories, they don’t hold water. The
Trustees have resorted to initiating lawsuits against me and the three women
who formed the Committee for Truth. The Trustees are intent upon keeping
donors from being able to contact me or hear my side, and they are afraid of
an open hearing on these matters. It appears that the Trustees have so far
spent several tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees to try to isolate me
and thus preserve their easy jobs and their “truth.” They are mortgaging TSG
property and spending donated funds to keep from losing their salaries.
Meanwhile, they are forcing me, who has no income, to hire lawyers, as
required by the courts, to respond to my being hauled into court every month
or so by the Trustees. It
seems to be their strategy to win by outspending me. They have more than a
million dollars in TSG assets to spend in order to break me, and they have
nobody to answer to; whereas I have to pay out of my own pocket, which is
hard since they have withheld paying me my book royalties since last year.
Meanwhile, programs that 1 had been set up to serve the public and our
children have been virtually closed down. The plans we members had been long
told were the desire of the Brotherhoods f or us to accomplish have
languished because practically all our income goes to high salaries for executives
who aren’t and weren’t needed. When they got rid of me by making it clear
that I was never going to be able to accomplish anything through TSG, they
also got rid of TSG’s connection to the Brotherhoods. Malcolm
has a close-knit following of about twenty members in TSG, and I suspect this
fostered his believing that the supporters on the outside also were his
followers rather than their being attracted to my writings and tasks. The
thirty or so followers in Malcolm’s flock give him a slight majority also in
The Adelphi Organization, and there he proposed a resolution that anyone who
does not agree with the majority should be asked to resign or be expelled.
TAO still is a democratic organization with statutory protections against
being expelled, as I originally set it up. The wife of one of the trustees
stated openly that the Adelphi members who came here from Stelle intend to
take the assets and control of TAO away from the original Texas members who
invested in it and built it now that Malcolm’s party has the majority.
Malcolm requested and got the majority of TAO members to vote for diversion
of TAO building funds to TSG to cover some of TSG’s cash shortfall. This is
the kind of personal power that Malcolm has displayed to us. Malcolm’s
desire to achieve psychic powers is also revealed in his teaching and
practice of Vivaxis—part of which is a means of mentally invading other
people’s thoughts and physical well-being through psychic means equivalent to
what can best be described as sorcery. He has also admitted to his
communicating with a spirit entity by means of Vivaxis. Although he says this
was only a temporary connection, it is apparent to anyone who is clairvoyant
that the spirit entity has become his spirit control and infests his
environment. It now seems bent on destroying him and The Stelle Group and
everything that we have built by dissipating the corporation’s assets and undermining
the group’s reputation by attacks on my name. The obnoxious fund-raising
letters that have been sent to former donors is indicative of the Trustees’
conscious or unconscious intent to scuttle TSG’s part in the Great Plan of
the Brotherhoods by offending potential donors, reminiscent of Robert’s
presiding over the dismantling of Stelle Industries’ managerial staff. The
Trustees control the contents of the Stelle Group newsletter and have TSG
money to send it out to 8,000 people on their mailing list in order to
present only their side of things. Vague and unsubstantiated accusations of
mental problems, sexual aberration, and mishandling of funds have been
printed against me, while glowing statements of the Trustees’ supposed
accomplishments have been mailed to people to induce donations from them. The
June 10, 1987 letter to contributors included the 1985 and 1986 unaudited financial statements in hopes of having the
reader infer that TSG is still conducting the same programs to serve the
public today in 1987. This was a snow job. Nothing new has been started
since I left, no new technology is being developed, and the children’s school
in Dallas no longer conducts regular classes. In the meantime, I hold monthly
Public Meetings in Dallas and run Builders of the Nation. TSG Trustees are
now trying to find some legal tricks to take over BOTN in order to profit
from it like they have managed to do with everything else I have ever built
and written. |
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