Germany’s Office for the Protection of the Constitution as an Instrument for Character Assassination
OPC agents have demanded names and details of Church members, the number of parishioners, any political aims and their finances. Often they have told easily disproven lies about Scientology in an apparent attempt to disaffect the Scientologist from his Church.
The taxpayer pays the salaries of the OPC officers who do this work. Yet the agency, after more than two years of surveillance, has found not a scrap of evidence that the Church of Scientology engages in political actions or does anything illegal.
This fact is of course not easily conceded by the protectors of the constitution. Rolf-Peter Minnier, head of the state Office for the Protection of the Constitution of Lower Saxony, mastered this hurdle with rhetorical skill in an interview on March 18, 1999. He argued that the execution of the allegedly anti-constitutional goals of the Church of Scientology has been “realized only in a very restrained manner in the Federal Republic of Germany.” But he did admit that, “Those who join Scientology and do their courses certainly do not have the goal of annulling the Federal Republic of Germany.” That undoubtedly accurate observation has so far brought no practical consequences, however.