Part 92: Whistleblower Retaliation in Los Angeles – Or Why I Joined the Squirrel Squad

Published April 5, 2024.

Members of the Los Angeles Fire Department prepare to transport an unhoused man placed outside on a restaurant chair after entering La Poubelle Bistro & Bar by author (GoPro Hero 11 Black).

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By Zachary Ellison, Independent Journalist

I’ll be the first person to admit that not everyone wants to have a public life, or even be filmed in public, which is a constitutionally protected right. Whether the antics of the Squirrel Squad, an informally, disorganized assembly of YouTubers, TikTokers, ex-Scientologist and others such as myself, a whistleblower pushes the line is a matter of debate. LAPD recently alleged that the activity taking place at Church of Scientology locations in the Hollywood Area as well as most lately particularly the La Poubelle Bistro & Bar constitutes activity said to be done “upon confronting and baiting them [patrons] into physical altercations.” The three cases announced in this press release were all eventually dropped, but one from a prior incident remains.

To be clear, no one should be assaulting anyone else, but I’ve yet to see any of the protestors outright assault anyone, and clearly, the longer this has gone on the more lessons have been learned. Don’t go to La Poubelle on Friday night and get arrested, because if you do, they won’t let you out until the following Monday. I haven’t had that happen, but on Wednesday night finally I slipped up, getting caught parking on N. Catalina Street by a parking enforcement officer who had just finished writing up 6 cars in a single block, and 3 out of 4 in a row opposite the street next to Saffy’s Mediterranean-cuisine restaurant on one of the few restricted streets next to the Church of Scientology “Blue Building” complex. A $68 dollar ticket for violating, “LAMC 80.58L Preferential Parking.” I’m told the restaurant arrived after the parking was restricted.

So I finally snapped, having experienced nearly 16 months of whistleblower retaliation, I’ll be the first person to admit, I’m at my limits, and I’d just paid the state $182 for registration and another $50 for a smog check. I don’t feel bad for having yelled at the parking enforcement, as so many have done, but it’s yet another indignity in a city where frankly no one really cares. Los Angeles can be a cold heartless place, so I’ll be the first person to admit that I wasn’t all that surprised to see the manager at La Poubelle last night put out an unhoused man who had walked into the restaurant tent hunched over in a chair after reportedly giving him some water, but no baguette. After checking the man, and observing him, my YouTube chat was insistent, call 911 to get him some help. To me, he seemed simply exhausted, and malnourished, perhaps having other conditions but not evidently distressed.

“Who called?” the manager said to me, “I did,” I shot back! The Los Angeles Fire Department arrived, told me they had it handled, and soon the man was transported, before I returned La Poubelle’s chair to the restaurant patio where only 20 minutes before they had pulled down the secrecy flaps over the plastic windows on the blue tent that the night before had been empty over the public sidewalk, the security guards they had hired gone, and not a table in sight. Dashing through the tent with delight, I was able to quickly exit the other end to whoops of celebration in the hope that the months now of protests that have taken place at the restaurant where television actor Danny Masterson drugged women before sexually assaulting them up the street at his compound. Owner François Koster went to bat for Masterson, even harassing his victims in an attempt to protect their reputations, and that of the Church of Scientology.

Recently, using the California Public Records Act, I obtained 6 additional records from LAFD related to this location, as well as neighboring businesses where calls have been directed. Unlike the first three recordings obtained, two of which are lengthy, and all reflect the same caller, these seem to represent at least two individuals, one at the Church of Scientology Celebrity Centre who called LAFD to intimidate a single, minor protestor on a bike, while the others relate to the restaurant which the Celebrity Centre is opposite from at the intersection of Franklin Ave and Bronson Ave. “There's a big fire in the basement,” the caller goes again, who seems probably to be a security officer at the location where the ubiquitous camera feeds are constantly monitored. “It's an information center,” the man says before the dispatcher replies: “We should be there shortly. Okay. We're coming in lights and silence. Get everybody out of the building.”

To be clear, making a false emergency report is a crime, and clearly there was no “big fire” just as our elected officials have not responded to requests for comments about this organized swatting. The La Poubelle calls are even shorter, and seem heavily redacted, “Okay, can you just get it?” the man says about the request for emergency response, and on another “But when I'm there, nothing ever goes wrong.” Costs for this have been significant, and Church of Scientology spokeswoman Karin Pouw openly accused the protest of causing the waste of resources taking place telling Los Angeles Times journalist Noah Goldberg, that the protests are “costing hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayer money, denying important public services for real needs in our community, disturbing the peace and disturbing places of worship.”

To date, the Los Angeles Times hasn’t conducted any follow-up investigation, even as I’ve moved to secure 9 recordings in total that show the use of first responders isn’t evidently related to the protestors. Recently, LAPD in responding to yet another swatting incident against the streamer “Defender of Ants” told him to ask his viewers to stop making the calls. This doesn’t seem to be the case though, in fact, strangely enough on Easter Sunday at the Church of Scientology event on L. Ron Hubbard Way, one of the few streets in Los Angeles with no parking permitted, almost unusually so, there wasn’t a single swatting incident at all even as protestors spent almost the entire day at the location. Former Scientologist Lara Anderson, better known as Lara FM, who is a musician wasn’t surprised at all, “it’s one of Scientology’s biggest events of the year, kind of telling,” she told me plaintively.

Anderson had been skeptical only a few nights before that it would ever be remotely provable that the Church of Scientology isn’t behind the swatting. I didn’t just become a “Squirrel” as the Church terms its critics, and has been used in leaked emails from inside discussing the aggressive response to the protest. Tapes don’t lie though, nor does timing. Why would it just stop on Easter Sunday? Well-known former Scientologist Tory Christman was there, now aged, she told me with bemusement after crossing LAPD’s indicated line of no go, that she “wants her million dollars back” from the so-called cult group, known for its viciousness and secrecy. Watching Magoo, I knew what I had to do, back her-up and so I walked ahead of the other protestors and listened after a Scientology security guard snarled at me: “You’re trespassing.”

I didn’t just become a Squirrel though to write about it, and stream, I did it because frankly so few others in Los Angeles have been willing to even listen to my own story of whistleblower retaliation, and so the community that you find in the streets while being in nominal association with others, as a “crew” as some might say can actually be quite rewarding, even as I try my best to remain objective. For every prospective employer that has denied me opportunities, usually after asking me, “what happened at USC?” before becoming immediately skeptical that I might just be telling the truth about Rick Caruso and the cover-up of George Tyndall, refusal to seriously change institutional behavior (semi-documented), as well as the leak of the infamous LA Fed Tapes, which has Caruso’s name mentioned numerous times, has me more than miffed.

Sadly, our society accepts retaliation, in fact, it so often even endorses it. In my search for legal representation, which seems stalled at me having signed an arbitration agreement with USC, you learn a few things about what lawyers are looking for, and what people are willing to endure in the pursuit of justice. The LA Fed Tapes case nominally against Santos Leon and Karla Vasquez if LAPD remained has been with the District Attorney’s Office for over a month now having been sent for “review” immediately before the retirement of former LAPD Chief Michel Moore on February 28, 2024. I’m not sure what George Gascón is going to do, but I have nothing to suggest that I just woke up and imagined a political audio leak was going to happen in August 2022 before it occurred in September 2022 with the goal of influencing the November 2022 elections as well as government in an October Surprise.

One thing for sure though, things are getting spicy to say the least with the Church of Scientology and prosecutor Reinhold Mueller, who finished off a more than 5 year legal saga during which countless women were denied justice for having been used by Tyndall, the now deceased, former USC gynecologist. I’d last seen Muller at the Courthouse in February at the final Tyndall hearing, and now his name is in the Los Angeles Times again because apparently the Church of Scientology was so desperate to keep Masterson from getting a 30-year to life sentence for drugging and raping three women, Jane Doe’s, that they are alleged to have broken a window at a Calabasas home in addition to stalking two LAPD detectives. Times journalist James Queally notes that the Church denies the claim, calling it “false,” but just who do these people think they are really? Above and beyond the law?

“That prosecutor’s home and car windows were broken, the prosecutor’s home electronics were tampered with, and Defendants’ agents surveilled the prosecutor,” the filing from Mueller’s attorney reads. According to Queally’s report, “Mueller said he was ‘run off the road’” and that his home was vandalized, according to the video.” Moreover, “He also said that cellular and internet service had been inexplicably knocked out at his residence,” which would be quite a feat of intimidation. Recently, a man believed to be associated with the Church through La Poubelle also attempted to run a protestor off the road. I can only hope that my colleagues at the so-called paper of record in Los Angeles will take the time to listen to the recordings that I’ve secured and wonder why they’re being redacted instead of referred for prosecution.

Los Angeles is corrupt. You might not be able to get away with murder, but you sure can get away with a lot of things. Recently, I was honored to get a telephone interview with legendary journalist David Cay Johnston, who for a brief period in time covered LAPD, including in relation to the Church of Scientology, before moving on to probing Donald Trump’s taxes. Whether or not there’s a cover-up ongoing in relation to the LA Fed Tapes leak remains unknown even if interesting from the outside, but one thing is for sure as Johnson noted, “the classic move is to elongate the investigation.” The LAPD of old, of the Daryl Gates era when Johnston once wrote about a Scientology-related sex-trafficking ring in relation to LAPD officers, clearly hasn’t died entirely, nor is it clear that Michel Moore was its representative even as Moore retired under a cloud of suspicion related to allegations he corrupted investigations for political purposes.

At the press conference, Mayor Karen Bass held with Moore she smiled behind him even as Moore had denied the claim, it seemed unclear what would happen next, particularly in relation to the two LAPD Internal Affairs who had turned whistleblower. To date, now with Moore gone, not much new information has emerged, nor do I suspect that it will even as the Office of the Inspector General reportedly investigates the complaints. What happens with that investigation, much less the alleged harassment against Reinhold Mueller remains unclear. For what it’s worth Pouw, the Church’s spokeswoman, who allegedly  hasn’t been seen in-person in years, told James Queally at the LA Times that an “‘anti-Scientology bias’ was on display throughout the trial….[accusing] a judge of making an ‘unconstitutional’ interpretation of church doctrine and also alleged Mueller is ‘biased’ against the church.” Mueller wasn’t biased against the Church in the Masterson case, even if there are valid concerns that Masterson got two trials in the timespan the Tyndall victims didn’t even manage to get a date scheduled.

The strange nexus of power, secrecy and corruption in LA is getting harder to ignore. It’s not so much that we need every backroom conversation recorded and leaked, but that when that selectively happens it forces a question, just what is our democracy worth? And who gets to break the laws without repercussion? So I’ve decided to not only become a whistleblower, but to become a Squirrel, and to most importantly make other whistleblowers even as I move to investigate the bigger questions of just how we got to this place of uncertainty. If we could, though, the first recording I’d want to hear is Michel Moore’s unrecorded, unlisted meeting with “Scientology’s “head of security” and Vicki Podberesky, the attorney who accidentally emailed…protected files to Mueller.” Podberesky must be some kind of lawyer, having also represented former USC Dean Marilyn Flynn in the Mark Ridley-Thomas federal corruption trial that grounded the meeting heard in the LA Fed Tapes as well as the Michel Moore-IA allegations.

You really can’t make this sort of stuff up! So even as I write on Substack now having taken a buyout after the Times laid off over a hundred of his colleagues, with the former head of the union at the LA Times, Matt Pearce whose enterprise coverage of the leak along with colleagues would win Pulitzer Prizes. I know a few simple facts, as Pearce quoted: “On the recordings, former LA Fed President Ron Herrera ‘That should [bring] fear in people,’ Herrera said in a private conversation that was recorded and leaked to the public. ‘If you f— us, we’ll campaign against you.’” Pearce wrote, “Political power,” he added. “That’s what this is all about.” But is that what Los Angeles is about? And will people continue demanding justice and accountability, or will they simply grow tired and in despair give-up, or will they snap like I did over a parking ticket. In his bio, Pearce quotes the following: “May the forces of evil become confused on the way to your house.”

Clearly, that doesn’t seem to have happened with Reinhold Muller, so we’ll see, can Scientology really get away with having messed with a prosecutor? One thing is for sure though, that when those forces of evil come it’s no simple matter, so what will you do? Just how much skin are you prepared to put in the game? To be honest, just about everyone seems terrified at the idea of openly opposing an institution such as Scientology, whose critics have repeatedly alleged violent, dangerous harassment, but Scientology isn’t just some street gang, a mafia, it’s a religion if you believe its claim, and so society may ask is this really religion? For what it’s worth, “Squirrel Squad” member Jessica Palmadessa has been going in-person to the offices of local members of Congress to deliver a petition with 8,916 signatures against the Church demanding that its tax-exempt status be revoked, and that takes courage. 

Link: Three Arrested at Scene of Protest NR24067ti

Link: ‘There’s a war going on’: L.A. anti-Scientology protests bring arrests, attack allegations

Link: Church of Scientology 911 Call Recordings

Link: Scientology tried to ‘derail’ star’s rape trial by harassing prosecutor, suit says; church calls claim ‘false’

Link: Part 75: A Lack of Justice in Los Angeles – The End of the George Tyndall Criminal Case

Link: Detectives claim LAPD chief sought investigation of Mayor Bass over USC scholarship

Link: Labor federation says leaked audio is ‘illegal,’ vows to investigate, seek prosecution

Link: Inside the L.A. County Fed: Humbled by racist leak, fearful more tapes might be out there

Link: Matt Pearce Substack

Link: Demand Accountability: Investigate Church of Scientology's Abuses of Tax Exemption

Please support my work with your subscription or for direct aid use Venmo

Zachary Ellison is an Independent Journalist and Whistleblower in the Los Angeles area. Zach was most recently employed by the University of Southern California, Office of the Provost from October 2015 to August 2022 as an Executive Secretary and Administrative Assistant supporting the Vice Provost for Academic Operations and the Vice Provost and Senior Advisor to the Provost among others. Zach holds a Master’s in Public Administration and a Graduate Certificate in Sustainable Policy and Planning from the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy. While a student at USC, he worked for the USC Good Neighbors Campaign including on their newsletter distributed university-wide. Zach completed his B.A. in History at Reed College, in Portland, Oregon and was a writer, editor, and photographer for the Pasadena High School Chronicle. He was Barack Obama’s one-millionth online campaign contributor in 2008. Zach is a former AmeriCorps intern for Hawaii State Parks and worked for the City of Manhattan Beach Parks and Recreation. He is a trained civil process server, and enjoys weekends in the great outdoors.