John P. Coale: The Curious Incident of the Scientologist in the Boardroom

This is a repost of an article I wrote for Counterknowledge, John P. Coale: The Curious Incident of the Scientologist in the Boardroom. It should be read in conjunction with For Great Justice's interview with Michael Pattinson.

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The Washington Times recently reported the curious appointment by Governor Martin O’Malley of John P. Coale to the Board of Directors of UMMS (University of Maryland Medical System). Coale is a high-ranking Scientologist and trial lawyer who got rich from the “tobacco wars” and has particpated in Scientology’s assault on Ritalin, taking on not only its manufacturer, Novartis, but the American Psychiatric Association (APA) and patient advocacy group CHADD (Children and Adults with Attention Defict Disorder).

Coale is a member of Scientology’s glitterati, married to Scientologist Greta Van Susteren of Fox News. Along with Tom Cruise and other celebrities, he helps to fund Scientology’s campaign for the “Global Obliteration” of Psychiatry so memorably reported on by head of the Church David Miscavige in 2007:

By way of a recap, the campaign was expressly, maybe even “diabolically,” engineered to ignite both government action and media blizzard. It’s also got an internal kicker: our Mental Health Budget Adjustment Kit, which essentially works like a “smart bomb” in that it “sniffs” out psych fuel lines and blows the funding mechanism. And in that way—to put it bluntly—we booby-trap the whole psychiatric ecosystem.

Miscavige has stated, flat-out, that Scientology’s goals for the millennium are the global obliteration of psychiatry and placing Scientology at the absolute center of society. It looks like Coale is a “twofer”.

L. Ron Hubbard’s worldview demands that not only psychiatry, but also psychology and all forms of medicine and religious counselling using psychology, be utterly extirpated. To save the human race, they must all be replaced - by “Hubbard Tech”. To that end, Hubbard constructed large-scale plans to infiltrate psychiatric and medical organizations in “Scientology’s War on Psychiatry”.

Coale is a man of some social and political influence. A longtime supporter of the Democratic Party, Coale lent Governor O’Malley’s campaign $500,000 to clear its debts. A supporter of Hillary Clinton, Coale also - perhaps strangely - backed John McCain’s presidential bid, and enjoyed palling around with Sarah Palin. Now that Barack Obama is to be president, one wonders where Coale’s largesse will flow next.

Did Governor O’Malley’s vetting team do any research at all on this appointment? Did they investigate what’s wrong with Scientology? Did they know and inform the Catholic governnor that David Miscavige enforces a policy of coerced abortion for female middle and upper managment and that the Church’s Volunteer Ministers blocked health care professionals and clergypeople from ministering to the traumatized at Ground Zero after 9/11? Did it occur to them that Coale’s appointment might be construed as Scientology “booby-trapping the psychiatric eco-system”?

What is O’Malley’s embarassment is psychology’s knife in the back for the professors and staff of the University of Maryland Medical School and the network of hospitals of UMMS, the second largest employer in the state. One of the directors O’Malley replaced to make room for Coale was sailing hero Gary Jobson, who was healed of non-Hodgkins lymphoma by Dr. Aaron Rappaport at the Greenebaum Cancer Center. After being ousted Jobson said:

I wanted to continue,” he said. “I felt that my personal mission at the hospital was long from finished. I wouldn’t have lived if it wasn’t for the work of the doctors at the hospital. … I’m on a mission to make sure that patient quality and care is at an absolute.

Easy to dismiss as merely potty, Scientology’s medical and psycho-therapeutic malpractice has resulted in numerous suicides and deaths. In his new book The Complex, former Scientologist John Duignan writes of twenty people he knew personally who became insane or committed suicide. Scientology is blocking Amazon and other book sellers from distributing the book, perhaps with the aid of deployable celebrity agent Tom Cruise.

Counterknowledge, December 8, 2008