By AuxBeacon News Staff

[Editor’s Note: We received this submission three months ago.  The shared techniques are verified but if readers have any evidence of cultists actually operating and recruiting within Civil Air Patrol, please forward that here.]

Dear AuxBeacon,

Recent events have led my family to recognize that Civil Air Patrol uses many of the same techniques as the Cult of Scientology. As a result of increased media exposure on both organizations, high level members in both programs are now being ensnared by the very same games they used against others.   In other words,  people are turning on each other!   This similarity came to our attention after a CAP staff officer used the term “wog” and “SP” in a side conversation with one of his deputies during our summer encampment.

Our informal investigation found that in Scientology there is a practice called “Fair Game,” which states that an enemy of the program, also referred to as a suppressive person (SP), “may be deprived of property or injured by any means by any member without any discipline of that member. The SP may be tricked, sued or lied to or destroyed.”

Through your reports, we learned that Civil Air Patrol appears to have a similar unstated policy within its pilot community and Command-IG system. CAP’s investigating officers, instructor pilots and accredited teachers have suffered intimidation, setup-tricks, ouster and defamation of their character.  We see that this is done to either silence them or to discredit their findings.  The power to do this exists because of the thousands of naive, eager young members or older members who are “rebuilding” broken lives and working up a chain of command to earn decoration bling and increased standing in their community through positions of service and influence.

As your readers know, Civil Air Patrol’s stated policy is that Fraud, Waste and Abuse are a drain on CAP resources and it is the duty of members to report such actions through proper channels.  Often, a CAP member may be reported and found (“sustained”) as having been in violation of CAP or federal regulations. This guilty member, however, may be “well-placed” with important connections and key to fulfilling the objectives of a higher-ranking individual. He may even have more compromising information on others up his chain of command. As a result, the guilty asset is given a light punishment, referred to as “a slap on the wrist,” and the officer who reported the abuse is shunned or excommunicated and slandered as a trouble-maker.

With that understood, we are observing similar techniques being used by both Civil Air Patrol and different high profile cults.

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[Editor’s Note: CAP Members abused by corrupt volunteer CAP commanders may benefit from watching YouTube clips of the A&E docuseries Scientology and the Aftermath which began in November of 2016. Scientology’s Sea Org operates with a paramilitary structure as does CAP. Both use their IRS non-profit status to protect them.]

These [tactics] include:

– Misrepresentation of purpose
– Inflation of membership and activity numbers to keep Federal funding
– Recruiting celebrity or politically influential members
– Insulating celebrity members to keep them unaware of abuses
– Psychological pressure to conceal embarrassing info for “the good of the cadets”
– Threats & intimidation for revealing secrets
– Use of plants to gather discrediting information
– Turning friends and family against whistle-blowers
– Isolation of member by chain of command issuing communications cut-off on individuals
– Out of favor members assigned to dirty task to investigate and terminate others
– Games to pressure, overload, and confuse the Internal Revenue Service (IRS)

I am hoping that you will post this as an article on your blog so that we can gather more examples from former members. Seeing them all provided in a checklist could be helpful to parents and new members.   Also, please tell your readers to look for the generic checklists for Cult Identification that are available from different sources.

You may find the following similar characteristics:

– The group has a polarized us-versus-them mentality, which leads to periodic conflicts and isolation from the wider society.
– Questioning, doubt, and dissent are discouraged or even punished.
– The leadership induces feelings of shame and/or guilt in order to influence and/or control members.
– The group is preoccupied with bringing in new members.
– The group is preoccupied with making money.
– The group teaches or implies that its supposedly exalted ends justify whatever means it deems necessary.

All of these can lead members to behave in ways that they would have considered reprehensible or unethical before joining the group. Examples include lying to family or friends, covering-up for a commander who controls their future, or by collecting money for bogus charities.

My final comment is to advise all CAP members to not report serious malfeasance or corruption to the CAP Inspector General system. The reason is that they are not independent of the commander or the CAP legal officers. Just like with Scientology, the attorneys will attempt to intimidate members into silence through threats of disconnection and with non-disclosure agreements.

If you publish this, I will write a more detailed follow-up naming specific abusive commanders detailed in the IG weekly conference call.