My view of Bob Minton, 3/6/11

I first met Bob Minton at the first Clearwater protest in March of 1996. He took Jeff Lee and I to dinner, which we thought was very nice. He introduced himself as a retired banker. He seemed like a nice guy. I don't remember much interaction with him.

Bob also came to the 1998 protest in Los Angeles, where a CBS crew (I think it was) was following him around for some reason. Again I didn't have much interaction with him. He also came to a few of the other annual Clearwater protests.

I went to the Lisa McPherson Trust in perhaps March of 2000 to volunteer with sorting files of material I think from Gabe Cazares' archives. Before I left Bob and Stacy asked if I'd like to work at the Lis McPherson Trust that they had started. I said yes, and moved there in May 2000. I worked there as the librarian/archivist/researcher until October 2001.

Even while working at the Trust I never had much interaction with Bob. He showed me how to use some software, and of course I was present at most of the Trust meetings, but we never talked one-on-one much.

Bob was one of the few rich people who actually invested his own wealth into his cause, which was exposing Scientology. He apparently gave money freely to several ex-Scientologists who were down on their luck. He gave over $1 million to a movie project that was supposed to expose Scientology but instead sits in a locker someplace. He also gave over $1 million to help fund the civil lawsuit against Scientology brought by Lisa McPherson's family over her death. And he mostly funded the Lisa McPherson Trust. I have no idea how much Bob was worth in total, but I heard it was $50 million. So, I'm going to guess he spent at least $4 million against Scientology, or perhaps 8% of his fortune.

I was always leery of Bob. He seemed to have quite a temper on IRC chats, making derrogatory remarks against people who would criticize anything he was doing. One of the items of contention was his use of the Nazi swastika on his picket sign. People thought that was just a distraction, but Bob insisted it was a good idea. Bob got into at least 3 physical altercations with Scientologists, one of which I witnessed. Neal J. O'Reily (aka Joe Neal) was across the street from us in front of the Ft. Harrison Hotel when about 6 of us were heading there to protest. Bob went across first, while the rest of us held back for the street light. I think Neal pushed Bob, so Bob pushed him back, and they actually got into a wrestling match which landed them both on the ground. I had videotaped a part of this but then accidentally overtaped it on the way back to the LMT later. Another time Bob hit or poked a Scientologist with his sign, and this guy dropped like he had been shot. That went to court, where Bob was found not guilty of assault.

I have always preached Gandhi Tech at protests. We should be the reasonable, peaceful people, in contrast to the Scientologists. If we act uncivilly and hit back, then we do not look any different than the people we are protesting. When I saw Bob go after Neal, the next day I called my family for advice on whether I should quit working at the LMT. Eventually I decided rather to just never protest with Bob again. So here was a person who was hurting the reputation of us protesters who had for several protests never had any physical confrontation from our side, and now Bob had had 3 physical altercations in his time of protesting. These actions bothered me a lot.

At the LMT I was severely distressed by the management style. Stacy Brooks, Bob's girlfriend (even though Bob was married), was the manager, although she had little such background. Her style was to jump from one supposed crisis to another. One day we would have one project that was the most important thing that we needed to finish, and the next day that project was scrapped for some other even more important project. This routine happened over and over again. This is not management. Bob set up the Trust for him to manage, I believe, through Stacy, rather than to hire a real experienced manager.

The financial escapades of the LMT were another sore point for me. At one point Stacy simply announced that we would all be contractors now instead of employees. I was stunned that she hadn't warned us ahead of time or asked for our input, because this change is immense as far as income taxes and the like. I went upstairs and printed out some information about those types of consequences and gave a copy to everybody, just so they knew what would be happening. I don't think anybody quit over that.

There were many strange financial dealings besides us switching to being contractors. There was money that came in from the outside, allegedly, that was to be used to run the LMT. Instead, it was used to pay back Bob for some of the funds he had already given the Trust. At one time this even caused a delay in us getting paid because Bob got paid first. There were strange funds coming from anonymous sources in Europe that seemed quite fishy to me. I still don't know the whole story on that stuff but it also bothered me.

Another time at a meeting Stacy said "the most important goal here is to keep Bob safe." Scientology was harassing him in almost every way imaginable, so I saw why she said that. But I was not working at the LMT for Bob. I was working there to expose Scientology. Bob had his millions and I assumed quite a bit of business experience, so I couldn't see why us employees (or contractors) needed to be bound up in his defense more than doing our jobs. But more and more it seemed to me the Trust was bogged down with this ultimate goal rather than the goal I signed on for.

I left the LMT in October 2001. It was essentially disbanding. A few months after this, Bob and Stacy switched from supporting the Lisa McPherson civil suit to accusing Ken Dandar, Lisa's attorney, of lying to the court and being a scammer. This, I believe, was the ultimate action in the Save Bob campaign that Stacy brought us into. Scientology's best skill is applying personal pressure on its critics, and at the time Bob was critic number one. They were going after his family, his finances, his relationships, and just generally harassing the daylights out of him. A lot of the ammunition, I believe, was of Bob's own doing. At any rate, Bob and Stacy chose to lie for Scientology in exchange for them leaving Bob alone. That didn't quite work out that way, but that was the goal.

I can think of many people through history who had much more pressure on them than Bob had. Martin Luther King for one. I can also think of people who had much more pressure applied to them in the anti-Scientology world. Dennis Erlich for one. Dennis was essentially flat broke when his home was raided by Scientology. I can't imagine being under any more pressure than that. Yet Dennis never caved in like Bob and Stacy did. Dennis didn't have millions of dollars to protect himself, to hire attorneys, and to eat and pay his bills. Yet somehow he maintained his integrity while Bob and Stacy did not.

So all in all, I have never had much regard for Bob. He gets praise from many quarters for his great contributions to the cause and for his selfless giving. But I see a boorish man willing to jab people both verbally and physically. I see a man who gave a small percentage of his wealth to the cause, while others have given everything. I see a man who in the end lied in court in order to save his own skin. I do not revere this man.

Jeff Jacobsen