Due to the extreme urgency of our mission I have worked to remove some of the fundamental barriers from our progress.

The chief stumbling block, huge above all others, is the upset we have with POTENTIAL TROUBLE SOURCES and their relationship to Suppressive Persons or Groups.

A POTENTIAL TROUBLE SOURCE is defined as a person who while active in Scientology or a pc yet remains connected to a person or group that is a Suppressive Person or Group.

A SUPPRESSIVE PERSON or GROUP is one that actively seeks to suppress or damage Scientology or a Scientologist by Suppressive Acts.

SUPPRESSIVE ACTS are acts calculated to impede or destroy Scientology or a Scientologist and which are listed at length in this policy letter.

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A Suppressive Person or Group becomes “fair game”.

By FAIR GAME is meant, may not be further protected by the codes and disciplines of Scientology or the rights of a Scientologist.

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Suppressive Acts are defined as actions or omissions undertaken to knowingly suppress, reduce or impede Scientology or Scientologists.

Such Suppressive Acts include public disavowal of Scientology or Scientologists in good standing with Scientology Organizations; public statements against Scientology or Scientologists but not to Committees of Evidence duly convened; proposing, advising or voting for legislation or ordinances, rules or laws directed toward the Suppression of Scientology; pronouncing Scientologists guilty of the practice of standard Scientology; testifying hostilely before state or public inquiries into Scientology to suppress it; reporting or threatening to report Scientology or Scientologists to civil authorities in an effort to suppress Scientology or Scientologists from practising or receiving standard Scientology; bringing civil suit against any Scientology organization or Scientologist including the non-payment of bills or failure to refund without first calling the matter to the attention of the Chairman at Saint Hill and receiving a reply; demanding the return of any or all fees paid for standard training or processing actually received or received in part and still available but undelivered only because of departure of the person demanding (the fees must be refunded but this Policy Letter applies); writing anti-Scientology letters to the press or giving anti-Scientology or anti-Scientologist evidence to the press; testifying as a hostile witness against Scientology in public; continued membership in a divergent group; continued adherence to a person or group pronounced a Suppressive Person or Group by HCO; failure to handle or disavow and disconnect from a person demonstrably guilty of Suppressive Acts; being at the hire of anti-Scientology groups or persons; organizing a splinter group to use Scientology data or any part of it to distract people from standard Scientology; organizing splinter groups to diverge from Scientology practices, still calling it Scientology or calling it something else; calling meetings of staffs or field auditors or the public to deliver Scientology into the hands of unauthorized persons or who will suppress it or alter it or who have no reputation for following standard lines and procedures; infiltrating a Scientology group or organization or staff to stir up discontent or protest at the instigation of hostile forces; 1st degree murder, arson, disintegration of persons or belongings; mutiny; seeking to splinter off an area of Scientology and deny it properly constituted authority for personal profit, personal power or “to save the organization from the higher officers of Scientology”; engaging in malicious ‘rumour-mongering to destroy the authority or repute of higher officers or the leading names of Scientology or to “safeguard” a position; delivering up the person of a Scientologist without defense or protest to the demands of civil or criminal law; falsifying records that then imperil the liberty or safety of a Scientologist; knowingly giving false testimony to imperil a Scientologist; receiving money, favours or encouragement to suppress Scientology or Scientologists; sexual or sexually perverted conduct contrary to the well being or good state of mind of a Scientologist in good standing or under the charge of Scientology such as a student, a preclear, a ward or a patient; blackmail on Scientologists or Scientology organizations threatened or accomplished—in which case the crime being used for blackmail purposes becomes fully outside the reach of Ethics and is absolved the fact of blackmail unless repeated.

Suppressive Acts are clearly those covert or overt acts knowingly calculated to reduce or destroy the influence or activities of Scientology or prevent case gains or continued Scientology success and activity on the part of a Scientologist. As persons or groups that would do such a thing act out of self interest only to the detriment of all others, they cannot be granted the rights and beingness ordinarily accorded rational beings and so place themselves beyond any consideration for their feelings or well being.

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Any Potential Trouble Source owing money to any Scientology organization is handled the same as any other Scientologist. Failure to discharge a financial obligation becomes a civil Ethics matter after normal, within-org avenues of collection have been exhausted.

Any PTS who fails to either handle or disconnect from the SP who is making him or her a PTS is, by failing to do so, guilty of a Suppressive Act.

Civil Court action against SPs to effect collection of monies owed may be resorted to, as they are Fair Game.

Until a Suppressive Person or Group is absolved, but not during the period when the person requests and has a Committee of Evidence, or an amnesty occurs, no Scientology Ethics other than this HCO Policy Letter applies to such persons, no Committee of Evidence may be called to punish any Scientologist or person for any offenses of any kind against the Suppressive Person except to establish in cases of real dispute whether or not the person was suppressing either Scientology or the Scicntologist.

The homes, property, places and abodes of persons who have been active in attempting to suppress Scientology or Scientologists are all beyond any protection of Scientology Ethics, unless absolved by later Ethics or an amnesty.

Such persons are in the same category as those whose certificates have been cancelled, and persons whose certificates, classifications and awards have been cancelled are also in this category.

The imagination must not be stretched to place this iabel on a person. Errors, misdemeanors and crimes do not label a person as a Suppressive Person or Group. Only High Crimes do so.

A Committee of Evidence may be called by any Convening Authority who wishes more concrete evidence of efforts to suppress Scientology or Scientologists but if such a Committee’s findings, passed on, establish beyond reasonable doubt Suppressive Acts, this Policy Letter applies and the person is fair game.

Outright or covert acts knowingly designed to impede or destroy Scientology or Scientologists is what is meant by Acts Suppressive of Scientology or Scientologists. The greatest good for the greatest number of dynamics requires that actions destructive of the advance of the many, by Scientology means, overtly or covertly undertaken with the direct target of destroying Scientology as a whole? or a Scientologist in particular, be summarily handled due to the character of the reactive mind and the consequent impulses of the insane or near insane to ruin every chance of Mankind via Scientology.


A Scientologist connected by familial or other ties to a person who is guilty of Suppressive Acts is known as a Potential Trouble Source or Trouble Source. The history of Dianetics and Scientology is strewn with these. Confused by emotional ties, dogged in refusing to give up Scientology, yet invalidated by a Suppressive Person at every turn they cannot, having a PTP, make case gains. If they would act with determination one way or the other— reform the Suppressive Person or disconnect, they could then make gains and recover their potential. If they make no determined move, they eventually succumb.

Therefore this Policy Letter extends to suppressive non-Scientology wives and husbands and parents, or other family members or hostile groups or even close friends. So long as a wife or husband, father or mother or other family connection, who is attempting to suppress the Scientology spouse or child, or hostile group remains continuingly acknowledged or in communication with the Scientology spouse or child or member, then that Scientologist or preclear comes under the family or adherent clause and may not be processed or further trained until he or she has taken appropriate action to cease to be a Potential Trouble Source.

The validity of this policy is borne out by the fact that the US government raids and other troubles were instigated by wives, husbands or parents who were actively suppressing a Scientologist, or Scientology. The suppressed Scientologist did not act in good time to avert the trouble by handling the antagonistic family member as a suppressive source or disconnect fully.

Disconnection from a family member or cessation of adherence to a Suppressive Person or Group is done by the Potential Trouble Source publicly publishing the fact, as in the legal notices of “The Auditor” and public announcements and taking any required civil action such as disavowal, separation or divorce and thereafter cutting all further communication and disassociating from the person or group.

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Before publicly disconnecting, the Scientologist would be well advised to fully inform the person he or she accuses of Suppressive Acts of the substance of this policy letter and seek a reform of the person, disconnecting only when honest efforts to reform the person have not been co-operated with or have failed. And only then disconnecting publicly. Such efforts should not be unduly long as any processing of the Potential Trouble Source is denied or illegal while the connection exists and a person not actively seeking to settle the matter may be subjected to a Committee of Evidence if processed meanwhile.

The real motives of Suppressive Persons have been traced to quite sordid hidden desires—in one case the wife wanted her husband’s death so she could get his money, and fought Scientology because it was making the husband well. Without handling the wife or the connection with the woman the Scientologist, as family, drifted on with the situation and the wife was able to cause a near destruction of Scientology in that area by false testimony to the police and government and press. Therefore this is a serious thing—to tolerate or remain connected to a source of active suppression of a Scientologist or Scientology without legally disconnecting the relationship or acting to expose the true motives behind the hostility and reform the person. No money particularly may be accepted as fee or loan from a person who is “family” to a Suppressive Person and therefore a Potential Trouble Source. There is no source of trouble in Scientology’s history greater than this one for frequency and lack of attention.

Anyone absolved of Suppressive Acts by an amnesty or a Committee of Evidence ceases to be fair game. Anyone found guilty of Suppressive Acts by a Committee of Evidence and its Convening Authorities remains fair game unless saved by an amnesty.

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A truly Suppressive Person or Group has no rights of any kind as Scientologists and actions taken against them are not punishable under Scientology Ethics Codes.

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If matters concerning Suppressive Acts are given good and alert attention, properly enforced, they will greatly accelerate the growth of Scientology and bring a new calmness to its people and organizations and-far better case gains where they have not heretofore been easy to achieve.

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