Case of Werner Erhard

Case of Werner Erhard
 (AKA: John Paul Rosenberg)

Founder EST (Erhard Seminars Training, Inc.) and Landmark Forum

Accused of incest (which were later recanted) and cult like practices.

Werner Erhard was born September 5, 1935, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Founder, Erhard Seminars Training (EST). Born John Paul "Jack" Rosenberg. His self-esteem enhancement programs are considered a cult by some. Launched EST in 1971.
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Table of Contents: 

1980

1. Primer for the Psyche  (10/26/1980)

1982

1. EST: Is it Boon or Hoax?  (08/15/1982)

1984

1. Goodbye to est As far as  (12/16/1984)

1988

1. IDEAS AND TRENDS: Selling Preactical Elightenment; EST Leaders Recharge the Batteries of a New Clientele   (03/13/1988) 
2. Training Course Sparks U.S. Suit By Market Workers  (12/08/1988)

1989

1. Workplace: Employers' 'New Age' Training Programs Lead to Lawsuits Over Workers' Rights  (01/09/1988)

1991 

1. Chronicle   (02/13/1991)
2. Founder of est sells assets afteer abuse is alleged  (02/13/1991)
3. The Sorrows of Werner: For the founder of est, a fresh round of charges  (02/18/1991)
4. 60 Minutes - Werner Erhard   (03/03/1991)
5. Guru ERHARD Accused of trying to hide assests (03/27/1991)

1998 

1. The Best of EST   (03/16/1998)

2009

1. "60 Minutes" broadcast about Werner Erhard  (08/26/2009)
2. Suppressed CBS News 60 Minutes on Landmark cult leader Werner Erhard, 3 Mar 1991  (08/27/2009)

2012

1.  The following e-mail was sent to The Awareness Center by GuruTruth (12/01/212)
   

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Primer for the Psyche
New York Times - October 26, 1989; pg. A.31Behavior Modification is an is an umbrella term for various processes aimed at changing various behaviors. Examples are: systematic desensitization to conquer phobias; biofeedback to teach control of bodily functions such as heartbeat and respiratory rate, and aversive conditioning to tie undesirable actions to unpleasant stimuli and thereby break habits. Behavioral therapy can sometimes be completed in as few as three sessions of about an hour's duration. Longer treatments may last months. Individual sessions range from $20 to $120. Groups cost about $25 or $30 per person.

Cognitive Therapy is a relatively short-term, problem-oriented treatment devloped by Dr. Aaron T. Beck of the University of Pennsylvania. It is based on the premise that a person's thought processes go a long way toward determining psychological disturbances. By identifying and modifying specific, habitual errors in thinking, the cognitive therapist helps the patient to a more realistic world view through the use of reason and logic. Sessions are 45 minutes long and cost from $15 to $40 at the university's Center for Cognitive Therapy. A course of cognitive therapy may last from six weeks to three months.

Dynamically Oriented Brief Psychotherapy is based on Freud's principles of unconscious conflict, but can be accomplished in a fraction of the time usually devoted to traditional psychoanalysis. The brief therapies, such as Short-Term Anxiety-Provoking Therapy, usually entail eight or nine 45-minute sessions and are offered in the outpatient clinics of large hospitals or university health services, where per-session costs average from $30 to $50. est (Erhard Seminars Training) is a program for self-realization offered to groups of about 250 individuals at a time, who spend $350 each to meet in a hotel ballroom for two consecutive weekends and three evening seminars. Designed by Werner Erhard, a former management consultant, the 60 hours consist of various forms of enforced physical discomfort and the constant repetition of the est message: ''If you are willing to acknowledge that you are the cause of your own experience, then you can run your own lives instead of being run by them.''
Family Therapy refers to several behavioral and psychoanalytical, crisis-oriented treatment approaches that are applied to the family as a unit. It has its most obvious application in problems involving marriages and child rearing, but requires the willing participation of all concerned parties. On the average, fees range from $40 to $120 for sessions that usually last 50 minutes. In most cases, the course of treatment tends to be briefer than in individual therapy.

Gestalt Therapy was developed by Frederick (Fritz) Perls (1894-1970) of Esalen Institute fame to make the individual fully aware of his moment-to-moment experiences, thoughts and feelings, and thus promote personal growth. The word ''Gestalt'' means an integrated unit, and Gestalt therapy treats the whole human being in the context of his environment, including his culture and social experiences. Private sessions of 45 minutes to an hour cost between $25 and $65 (or as little as $12 from therapists in training at a clinic). Group participation costs from $15 to $30 for meetings that last up to three hours.

Hypnosis is used to promote behavior change and in psychoanalytical treatments to help patients uncover repressed memories or dreams. The therapist induces a trance state, or altered condition of awareness, in the patient by guiding him through several stages of relaxation and concentration. Some patients can be taught self-hypnosis. In an outpatient clinic where hypnosis is used for specific aims such as to help people quit smoking, four or five sessions at $10 to $40 are the norm.

Jungian Therapy. Originally a pupil of Freud's, Carl Jung (1875-1961) grew to disagree with his mentor and thought he could enhance psychoanalysis by engaging the patient's ''active imagination.'' Patients in Jungian analysis are frequently asked to draw or paint an image - or dance or act out a fantasy conversation - because Jung believed that this process, like a dream, was a road to the unconscious. Duration and cost are comparable to psychoanalysis, below.

Pharmacotherapy is the use of drugs to treat psychiatric symptoms. The neuroleptics, introduced about 25 years ago, are widely used to control the hallucinations of schizophrenia, although patients often complain that the drugs carry side effects ranging from extreme drowsiness to disfiguring facial contortions; maintenance may cost an individual $50 per month. Many antidepressants and tranquilizers are routinely dispensed not only by psychiatrists but by general practitioners. Although most psychotropic drugs are intended as interim measures or as an adjunct to psychotherapy, lithium is administered as a lifelong stabilization for manic depressives, costing about $8 to $12 for the medicine, plus $12 to $30 every three months for the necessary blood tests and approximately $150 per year for four half-hour visits to a psychiatrist.

Psychoanalysis, originated by Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), is a technique for curing neuroses with talk. Sessions are three to five times a week for anywhere from two to 15 years. During these sessions, the analysand reports dreams, fantasies and early memories, struggling to interpret their significance and transferring the deep emotions in this material onto the analyst, who remains nonjudgmental and noncommittal. One 50-minute hour of psychoanalysis costs between $40 and $125, depending on the analyst and the city in which he practices.

Rolfing, or Structural Integration, was developed in 1940 by Ida P. Rolf (1896-1979) as ''an approach to the personality through the components of the physical body.'' All the individual's bodily motions are carefully observed by the Rolfer, then manipulated with the participation and cooperation of the client, who can expect increased energy, Rolfers claim, as a result of the process. Treatment consists of 10 sessions of 60 to 90 minutes, costing $50 to $60 each. - D.S. Copyright 1980, The New York Times

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EST: IS IT BOON OR HOAX?
New York Times - August 15, 1982

EDISON THE message of EST - Erhard Seminars Training, the self-improvement movement developed by a former automobile salesman from California - is being heard in New Jersey.

At well-attended ''guest'' seminars held regularly at hotels and convention centers throughout the state, EST ''graduates'' persuade the uninitiated - usually friends they have invited to come along - to sign up.

The series of two marathon weekend sessions and two weekday refresher meetings costs $400, which does not include food or lodging. The price and other discomforts -such as being kept up until 2 or 3 A.M. by shouting ''trainers'' are what executives of the organization's Edison-area center say make it work.

According to EST executives and most EST graduates interviewed, it is only this kind of discomfort that can pierce someone's outer defenses and enable him to ''get his act together.''

Critics of the method, many of whom are psychologists and psychiatrists, contend that EST's concentration on maintaining total control over what participants say and do during these sessions results in the creation of robots whose main function is to pull others into the program.

EST graduates hotly deny this. New Jersey graduates maintain that, if anything, the experience and its effects cannot be adequately described.

''It's like trying to explain what lemon meringue pie tastes like to someone who has never tasted it,'' said Sheldon M. Simon, a Morris Plains lawyer who took the training in New York in 1975 and has since then continued to enroll in ''postgraduate'' programs.

''EST just is,'' Mr. Simon said. ''It's like when you learn to walk. You struggled to walk, and then suddenly you walked.'' Like most EST graduates, Mr. Simon was reluctant to go into details of what takes place during a weekend. But all asserted that while the experience could not be precisely explained, it had had immediate positive effects for them.

Robert Coultis, owner of a printing company in Morristown, said that he went through the training last May and that after it he found himself acting differently.

''I used to have a wonderful temper,'' he said. ''I would really shout and scream when I got mad, but now I don't get as mad at people.

''Now I try to make reality fit the picture I want to see.'' According to Douglas Platt, a former engineer and now director of the EST area center in Edison, 12,000 people in the state have taken the training since the center opened in 1980.

''Actually, there is no organization called EST,'' he said when asked where its headquarters was. EST people are fond of saying that no one owns EST, that it is a spontaneous response to the experience. But its critics point to a labyrinthine, secretive internal structure.

Mr. Platt did admit that his paychecks came from Werner Erhard and Associates in San Francisco (EST was named for Mr. Erhard, who developed the system).

When the question comes up - and it invariably does - of how EST money is used, its adherents speak of the Hunger Project. The project is a vaguely defined effort, ostensibly separate from EST, whose stated purpose is to raise world consciousness about hunger. But it is difficult to verify how much money EST actually donates to the project.

According to Mr. Simon, the project is recognized by the United Nations, but officials there said that it simply had been placed on a list of organizations with permission to distribute United Nations materials.

The project, a United Nations spokesman said, has not made any report of its activities to date, although it was placed on the list two years ago. If it does not submit a report by the end of 1983, it will be dropped, the spokesman declared.

Some EST graduates have emerged with less than the complete faith that so many others exude. Daniel Drench, president of Artisan Electronics in Parsippany, is an atypical graduate. He explained that he went into the training with few expectations and came out with none of them realized.

''It seemed to me that the EST people took a lot of time to do what they had to do,'' he said. ''There was a lot of duplication and a lot of commercialization.

''They spent a lot of time touting their postgraduate programs. I wouldn't recommend it with any enthusiasm. I do not think it's worth the time and effort.''

As for what the local psychiatric community thinks of EST, Dr. Harvey Hammer, chairman of the department of psychiatry at Morristown Memorial Hospital, said:

''Generally, I think most psychiatrists don't have a favorable opinion of the EST program. Some effects are in evidence for a very short time, but this is dependent on the rest of the world being supportive and understanding, which is not reality.

''Once people leave the EST fold, they are back where they were before.'' Judith Hoopes qm
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Goodbye to est As far as
New York Times - December 16, 1984; pg. A8

Werner Erhard is concerned, est isn't where it's at any more. Mr. Erhard, who in 1971 founded Erhard Seminar Training (est) and through it peddled his brand of personal transformation to an estimated half million people, said last week he was ending the program and replacing it with something called ''The Forum.'' A spokesman said the decision had nothing to do with a recent decline in est enrollment or the fact that Mr. Erhard's wife is divorcing him and demanding a piece of the est action.

Rather, Mr. Erhard said in a statement, the change was in response to ''a much different mood among people today.'' Interest no longer centers on ''getting it together,'' he said, but on ''making it happen.'' A spokesman elaborated, more or less, ''The nature of the breakthrough involves what it means to be something.''


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IDEAS AND TRENDS: Selling Preactical Elightenment; EST Leaders Recharge the Batteries of a New Clientele
By Mark Landler

New York Times - March 13, 1988

WHEN Woody Allen complained in the film ''Manhattan'' that his neurotic wife had left him to join EST, he could hardly have chosen a more evocative symbol for the self-help movement of the 1970's. Known for grueling sessions in which hundreds of people paid hundreds of dollars each to subject themselves to hour upon hour of verbal abuse, tedium and other means of ''personal transformation,'' EST became one of the most notorious - and least understood - examples of a loose-knit industry offering transcendence for sale.

A decade later, EST is defunct, but its founder, Werner Erhard, and other leaders of what has come to be called the human potential movement, have retooled their programs to offer a more practical kind of enlightenment. Last month, Mr. Erhard completed an eight-city swing through the United States, promoting the Forum, an outgrowth of EST that he started in 1985 to appeal to business managers and entrepreneurs.

EST, or Erhard Seminar Training, was based on the notion that, with the help of a ''trainer,'' people could be pushed to challenge much of what they take for granted about the way the world works. Thus they could be sprung from their prisons of common assumptions to lead freer, more satisfying lives. ''Getting it,'' the catch phrase of the training, meant seeing the world without one's old misperceptions obstructing the view.

Unlike people in EST, participants in the Forum are not confined to their chairs for hours at a time, discouraged from taking bathroom breaks or subjected to profanity. ''EST was the boot camp approach,'' said Michael C. Ray, a Stanford Business School professor who teaches a course called Creativity in Business. ''They've become much more mellow.''

''American business has always been practical,'' said Mr. Ray. ''They see the old structures are not working very well, so they're willing to try anything.''

As American companies struggle to remain competitive, human potential programs make a powerful claim: that they can teach employees how to release untapped energies. Werner Erhard & Associates says it enrolls more than 20,000 people a week in sessions ranging from basic courses to advanced seminars. Mr. Erhard has also spun off a consulting business, Transformational Technologies, which franchises a program based on the Forum to more than 45 independent consulting firms. Two other groups, Lifespring and Insight, both based in Santa Monica, Calif., sponsor courses in more than a dozen cities in the United States and abroad. Insight Consulting Group, a division of Insight, has offered seminars at Chemical Bank, Lockheed and other companies. The founder of Lifespring, John P. Hanley, was a colleague of Mr. Erhard's in Mind Dynamics, which pioneered human potential training in the early 1970's. Applied Philosophy

Carl A. Rashke, a professor of religion at the University of Denver, who has studied the human potential movement for a decade, said the waning of the Reagan era and the specter of economic decline have created an ''atmosphere of uncertainty'' in which self-help programs like the Forum thrive. A similar thing happened in the 1970's with EST. ''Galloping inflation and the oil embargo gave the sense that things were coming apart,'' he said. ''As the American dream shattered, the dream was changed to dabbling with otherworldly things.''

The popularity of these programs is also part of a more sweeping phenomenon, the New Age movement, which draws on a range of esoteric beliefs including eastern mysticism and medieval occultism to provide followers with a spiritualism for the '80's. According to the New Age gospel, there are energies - unmeasurable with any of the tools of physics - that are powering a worldwide spiritual revolution. Crystals, Tarot cards, pyramids and other occult merchandise supposedly can be used to tap the source and join in the transformation.

Mr. Rashke classifies human potential programs as the less mystical side of the New Age. Spokesmen for Mr. Erhard describe him as a self-taught philosopher, and indeed, EST and the Forum draw on beliefs that include Zen Buddhism, the existentialism of Martin Heidegger and the linguistic theories of Jacques Derrida. What these theories have in common is the notion that reality is something people create - by their actions, their decisions, even by what they say. In this context, yelling at people and provoking emotional outbursts - the verbal pyrotechnics that made EST famous - can be seen as a philosophical device.

This subjective (some would say self-centered) world view seems to appeal as readily to the entrepreneurial followers of the Forum as it did to EST's introspective devotees.

As in the 1970's some critics, many of them fundamentalist Christians, maintain that the human potential movement subverts traditional moral and religious values by imposing an elitist and egocentric outlook.

They accuse the programs of eroding family relationships and causing psychological trauma. The Cult Awareness Network, a Chicago-based group whose founders include former cult members, believes that the Forum and Lifespring brainwash participants into signing up for ever more advanced courses.

Leaders of the organizations deny that they are doing anything nefarious - people simply like the classes, they say. According to surveys by Werner Erhard & Associates, 80 percent of participants regard the Forum as a ''valuable experience.'' Noting that 25 percent of participants in the Forum have professional degrees, a spokesman said, ''How they think you can take highly educated people and in two weekends turn them into brainwashed idiots, I don't know.''

Mr. Rashke believes these programs threaten society because of their ''incredibly narcissistic and self-inflating perspective.'' Mr. Erhard belongs to ''a long line of positive thought evangelists,'' he said. Viewed in that light, the growth of the programs might simply indicate that happy customers make great missionaries.
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Training Course Sparks U.S. Suit By Market Workers
By Martha Brannigan
Wall Street Journal - December 8, 1988

ATLANTA -- Eight former employees sued a local farmers market, alleging it violated their civil rights by coercing them to attend the Forum human development training sessions developed by Werner Erhard.

The suit filed in U.S. District Court here yesterday seeks to enjoin the DeKalb Farmers Market Inc. and its owner, Robert Blazer, from forcing workers to participate in the so-called New Age programs. It also seeks back pay and compensatory and punitive damages for the ex-workers who complained they were humiliated and harassed, and suffered psychological trauma.

Forum is a human potential program operated by Werner Erhard & Associates. Mr. Erhard also created Erhard Seminars Training, or EST, which he then dropped in 1984.

Edward D. Buckley III, an attorney for the market and its owner, said he hadn't seen the complaint and couldn't comment.

One worker said he was kept inside a training session and prevented from going to the bathroom. Some said they were urged to abandon their lifelong beliefs and values, to disclose intimate details about their private lives, and to embrace the Forum concepts or face discharge.

Attorneys for the American Civil Liberties Union, representing the workers, said at a time when employee training sessions are burgeoning at corporations, the case could be significant in defining how far employers can impinge on individuals' freedom to require participation.

Carl Raschke, a professor of religious studies at the University of Denver, said the case highlights an increasingly significant workplace issue. "Many of these training programs, particularly at large corporations, claim to be purely psychological, aimed at improving productivity and morale and loyalty. But in fact they are religious," said Mr. Raschke, who may be a potential witness for the workers.

The federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which reviews employment discrimination complaints, said it has increasingly been receiving complaints about New Age programs in the workplace -- including a complaint filed last year by the farmers market workers -- and expects to issue a ruling on one case shortly. In September, the agency issued a policy guidance notice, saying if an employee objects on religious grounds to such programs, employers must provide "reasonable accommodation" unless it creates "an undue hardship" on the business.

Also named in the farmers market suit are Consulting Technologies Inc., an affiliate of Transformational Technologies Inc., Greenbrae, Calif.; Consulting Technologies' owner, Mike Smith, and Marty Yura, who was an employee of Consulting Technologies, and Nancy Loewnau, a supervisor at the DeKalb Farmers Market.

Transformational Technologies, founded by Mr. Erhard, isn't named in the suit and declined to comment. Consulting Technologies officials couldn't be reached for comment.

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Workplace: Employers' 'New Age' Training Programs Lead to Lawsuits Over Workers' Rights
by Martha Brannigan

Wall Street Journal - January 9, 1989

ATLANTA -- When co-workers told Franklin Marsengill that, because of religious reasons, they didn't want to participate in a training program urged by their employer, the DeKalb Farmers Market Inc., he said he wasn't going -- and that they didn't have to either.

"I told them, 'Don't join. This is America, and if you don't want to, you don't have to,'" recalls Mr. Marsengill, who was the market's security director. "I didn't go. Look where it got me."

Where it got Mr. Marsengill was out on the street, he says. In a suit filed in federal court here in December, he and seven other former employees of the local farmers market say they were fired or pressured to quit after objecting to the Forum human-potential sessions developed by Werner Erhard & Associates.

The former employees say the Forum sessions, held outside of work, as well as separate programs introduced at the market by Consulting Technologies Inc., a consulting firm, clashed with their religious beliefs, which range from Christianity to Hinduism. They are asking the court to enjoin the market from forcing workers to attend the sessions, which their attorneys describe as "New Age." The suit seeks back pay as well as damages for psychological trauma the workers say they suffered.

Whatever its merits, the case marks a growing trend. The burgeoning use of so-called New Age training programs on the job is spawning legal challenges by employees with religious and philosophical objections -- and raising new questions about the rights of employers and workers.

Training programs described as New Age vary widely and draw on a myriad of sources, from Eastern mysticism to positive thinking. Some include traditional management training methods in communicating and cooperation. Others use meditation and hypnosis.

Dong Shik Kim, a Korean-born Christian who was a supervisor at the DeKalb market, claims in the suit that he went to the Forum sessions at his boss's behest only to encounter "emotional confessions, psychological conditioning and programming" designed to produce a breakthrough "equivalent to being 'born again.'" Mr. Kim says he was urged to shed his beliefs and see the world through new eyes. In the suit, he says that Robert Blazer, the market's owner, urged him to recruit subordinates and, when he balked, made work conditions so difficult he had to quit.

Ranjana Sampat, a bookkeeper and member of the Hindu faith, says in the suit that in another program at the market she was asked to confess intimate details of her life, including sexual relations.

The market denies the allegations. Edward D. Buckley III, an attorney for the market and Mr. Blazer, says workers were encouraged, not coerced, to go to the Forum sessions, which were held outside of work. He adds that ideas introduced at the market by Consulting Technologies weren't religious or philosophical and didn't impinge on employees' personal beliefs.

Jan Smith, co-owner of Consulting Technologies, based in North Miami Beach, Fla., declines to discuss the suit. She says, however, that the company is a "typical management consulting company," and "not at all New Age." The Forum, which wasn't named in the suit, says it would never sanction coercing people to participate in its programs.

The training programs now in vogue at some companies are raising new legal questions because of their scope, says Herbert Rosedale, a New York attorney and president of the American Family Foundation, which monitors groups that use coercive persuasion and in 1987 sponsored a seminar on New Age training in business. He says the training sometimes goes beyond improved job performance and aims to alter employees' fundamental beliefs.

"The issue is what is permitted interference by an employer into an employee's life," Mr. Rosedale says. "Suppose an employer says you should attend a New Age program and sit under a pyramid?"

Most consulting firms, especially those catering to Fortune 500 companies, eschew the New Age label, which they say conjures up notions of cultism and the bizarre. They assert that their programs aren't religious or manipulative and don't intrude on personal beliefs.

But many critics, such as Kevin Garvey, a Hamden, Conn., consultant on psychological training, say problems arise when the programs include controversial psychological techniques dealing with theology. Employees should be informed of the techniques beforehand, Mr. Garvey says, and allowed to choose whether to attend. "Otherwise it constitutes a forced religious conversion," says Mr. Garvey.

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which protects workers from discrimination based on religion as well as race, sex, age or national origin, requires an employer to "reasonably accommodate" a worker's religious beliefs unless it creates "undue hardship." Until recently, though, most cases of religious freedom on the job involved issues such as allowing a worker to have the day off on the Sabbath.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission says it increasingly is seeing complaints about training programs that employees say infringe on their religious rights. In September, the agency issued a policy-guidance notice saying that New Age training programs can be handled under traditional Title VII guidelines. If a worker challenges a training session on religious grounds, the EEOC says, employers must provide a "reasonable accommodation" unless it creates an "undue hardship" on the business.

In a suit filed in 1987 and set for trial next December in state court in Pierce County, Wash., Steven Hiatt sued Walker Chevrolet, a Tacoma car dealership, claiming he was fired as a sales manager after objecting that a program called "New Age Thinking to Increase Dealership Profitability" conflicted with his religion. In the suit, Mr. Hiatt says he and his wife were sent to a five-day session offered by the Pacific Institute but left after deciding it was un-Christian.

Jack Maichel, an attorney for Walker Chevrolet, says Mr. Hiatt was fired because of his job performance, not objections to the program. Jack Fitterer, president of the Pacific Institute, a Seattle firm that provides cognitive-psychology training, says the sessions "in no way touch on personal belief systems or religion."

William Gleaton, one of the first workers to complain about New Age training, sued Firestone Tire & Rubber Co., in federal court in Albany, Ga., in 1985, alleging, among other things, that he was fired as human-resources manager at the company's Albany plant after refusing to permit a training program.

The case was settled out of court on undisclosed terms, but Mr. Gleaton says he sometimes regrets giving up the battle.

"I just didn't have the money to fight it," says Mr. Gleaton, who felt the program went against his religious beliefs as a Christian. "But there are constitutional issues to be raised here. Individuals may want to be loyal to a company but have a personal conflict."

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Chronicle
New York Times - Feburary 13, 1991; pg. B 13
By Susan Heller Anderston

WERNER ERHARD, the founder of the Erhard Seminars Training, better known as EST, has sold his empire to a group of 180 employees for an undisclosed sum, he announced yesterday.

Werner Erhard & Associates , based in San Francisco, reported revenues in the United States of $45 million in 1989. The sale includes and an 18-year licensing agreement, as well as real estate in California and New York.

In 1971 in San Francisco, Mr. Erhard began seminars on assertiveness training. EST was in the vanguard of the human potential movement and gained considerable notoriety with its emphasis on "me-ness" and control, taught in workshops by Mr. Erhard and his followers.

EST was replaced in 1984 by workshops called the Forum. Bill Barnes, Mr. Erhard's spokesman, characterized them yesterday by their "more relaxed attitude" and as "a way to maximize personal effectiveness."

Mr. Erhard, 54 years old, plans to do just that: write a book and train executives in the Soviet Union, among other projects.

The company formed by the employees, the Transnational Education Corporation, will operate Forum programs in 21 cities in the United States, and 10 other countries.

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Founder of est sells assets afteer abuse is alleged
Baltimore Sun - February 13, 1991

SAN FRANCISCO -- Stung by a series of damaging allegations by family members and business associates, est founder Werner Erhard is selling off the assets of his human potential movement empire.

Mr. Erhard, whose much-lampooned weekend workshops became synonymous with the "Me Decade" of the 1970s, is selling the assets of Werner Erhard and Associates to a group of employees.

Spokesman Bill Barnes said the holdings include real estate in California and New York, computers, furniture and an 18-year licensing agreement for the "technology and intellectual property" used in the weekend workshops.

Werner Erhard and Associates reported U.S. revenues of $45 million in 1989.

Mr. Erhard's problems began early last year after the San Francisco Chronicle reported allegations by former employees of the pop psychology guru. The employees said they were forced to obey Mr. Erhard in a manner "akin to God" and to submit themselves to "numerous instances of verbally and physically abusive behavior."

Those allegations, contained in affidavits filed in San Francisco Superior Court, were followed by statements from two of Mr. Erhard's daughters, (Name Removed), 26, and (Name Removed), 28, who told of family "meetings" at which est staff members kicked and choked their mother and Mr. Erhard's former wife, (Name Removed).

This week's Newsweek contains a full-page article headlined "The Sorrows of Werner," and the CBS television show "60 Minutes" is expected to air its version of the story in the next few weeks.

Mr. Erhard could not be reached for comment.

(Top)


CHRONICLE
By SUSAN HELLER ANDERSON

New York Times - February 13, 1991

WERNER ERHARD, the founder of the Erhard Seminars Training, better known as EST, has sold his empire to a group of 180 employees for an undisclosed sum, he announced yesterday.

Werner Erhard & Associates , based in San Francisco, reported revenues in the United States of $45 million in 1989. The sale includes and an 18-year licensing agreement, as well as real estate in California and New York.

In 1971 in San Francisco, Mr. Erhard began seminars on assertiveness training. EST was in the vanguard of the human potential movement and gained considerable notoriety with its emphasis on "me-ness" and control, taught in workshops by Mr. Erhard and his followers.

EST was replaced in 1984 by workshops called the Forum. Bill Barnes, Mr. Erhard's spokesman, characterized them yesterday by their "more relaxed attitude" and as "a way to maximize personal effectiveness."

Mr. Erhard, 54 years old, plans to do just that: write a book and train executives in the Soviet Union, among other projects.

The company formed by the employees, the Transnational Education Corporation, will operate Forum programs in 21 cities in the United States, and 10 other countries.

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The Sorrows of Werner: For the founder of est, a fresh round of charges
By David Gelman with Pamel Abramson in San Francisco and Elizabeth Ann Leonard in New York
Newsweek - February 18, 1991
SECTION: Life/Style; Mind; Pg. 72

In the 1970s, when war-weary Americans began turning to thoughts of self-improvement, along came just the vehicle they seemed to be looking for: the human-potential movement. The movement's smashing success story was something called est (Erhard Seminars Training), run by a former used-car salesman named Werner Erhard. For a few hundred dollars plus a lot of verbal abuse and physical deprivation, est offered a "transforming experience," designed to "get rid of old baggage" and provide a fresh slant on things. "Your life doesn't work," a trainer might bellow for openers at one of est's marathon encounter sessions. "Wipe that stupid smile off your face, you a-hole." It was heady stuff, and most of the estimated 700,000 paying customers who signed u p (at $ 250 to $ 625 a head) for est or its Yuppified 1980s version, The Forum, agreed they'd been transformed -- or something. Most, but not all. Over the last 10 years, Erhard has found himself under an increasing barrage of allegations that he was running not so much an enlightenment program as an authoritarian cult. Former disciples have come forward with stories of violence and intimidation by Erhard and his staff. Last year, after a longtime member of Erhard's inner circle sued for wrongful discharge, several people filed supporting declarations, charging Erhard with using abusive tactics to enforce obedience. This year alone, three lawsuits -- involving allegations of wrongful discharge, wrongful death and fraud -- are expected to go to t rial. Now, two of Erhard's daughters, (Name Removed), 26, and (Name Removed), 28, have spilled their own harrowing tale of alleged physical and emotional abuse inflicted, they say, on them and their mother, (Name Removed).

The problem about life with father, the daughters told the Marin Independent Journal last month, was that he tended to bring his work home with him. Instead of family get-togethers, he held monthly "meetings," complete with agendas and time sheets. S ometimes he forgot their names, they said, and often he threatened them. At one family meeting, the women told the paper, staff members kicked and choked (Ex-Wife Name Removed) after Erhard accused her of infidelity. Then, they say, he put her on a rehabilitation regime n that required her to scrub floors. "We were petrified of him," (Daughter's Name Removed) told the paper. "He was," added (Daughter's Name Removed), "a total control monster."

Erhard acknowledged, in a deposition for their divorce proceedings, slapping his wife once and said that at another time, he shook her and pushed her. He had pushed her, he said, to shake her out of what he called "an hysteria of lying." In response t o his daughters' charges, Erhard issued a statement to NEWSWEEK, saying: "The only adequate response is healing, which is my intention. To say anything more would only further exploit my family." (Ex-wifes Name Removed) Erhard has declined comment on the story because of a 1988 divorce agreement to remain silent about her ex-husband.

Erhard's drill-sergeant tactics have been controversial almost from the beginning. Amid the shocks of Vietnam and Watergate, est was an idea ripe for the times. It enjoyed a huge vogue in the '70s, enrolling well-known names like Diana Ross, Yoko Ono and John Denver. Even some psychiatrists had good things to say about it. As est's luster dimmed, Erhard updated it with The Forum. Six years ago, he formed a management-consulting firm called Transformational Technologies that brought his ideas to corporate America as well as the Soviet Union -- earning him the title "Guru to the Gulag." But just when his enterprise seemed poised to go global, a memo leaked last year claiming Werner Erhard and Associates (WE&A) was in serious financial trouble, l osing up to $ 100,000 a week. The memo, written by a senior executive in one of Erhard's companies, recommended that he consider financial reorganization.

Court date: It was in 1988 that Charlene Afremow, one of Erhard's closest associates, filed a $ 2 million wrongful-discharge suit against Erhard and WE&A, claiming she was fired when she opposed such policies as making employees work in excess of 12 hours per day and six days a week. Because trainers were overworked, she said, some of their clients suffered psychotic episodes. Erhard has called the suit "frivolous and malicious." In sworn testimony on behalf of Afremow, Michael Breard, a former Erhard aide, claimed part of his job was to massage his boss's feet every morning. He said Erhard screamed obscenities at him if he didn't perform his tasks to Erhard's liking. Afremow's suit is set for trial this year.

Two other suits are also headed for court, one by the family of a client, claiming he suffered a fatal heart attack during a training session, the other by a man who claims he suffered a manic episode after taking an advanced est course. In both cases, the defendants deny responsibility.

Once lionized, Erhard now finds himself embattled on all sides. This week, it was announced that major parts of his empire had been sold to a group of former employees, who chose the interim name Transnational Education Corporation. According to spok esperson Ann Overton, they will continue to run The Forum and other programs that had been run by WE&A.

Whether that means the end of the Erhard era isn't clear. "It's all so sad," says writer George Leonard, perhaps the grand-daddy of the consciousness movement and a former est participant. "If half the things they're saying are true, it's disillusioning for everyone."


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60 Minutes - Werner Erhard 

60 Minutes - March 3, 1991
Season 23, Episode 25
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1355734/

Stars: Morley Safer, Mike Wallace, Ed Bradley, Harry Reasoner, Steve Kroft, Meredith Vieira

CBS/March 3, 1991

Produced by David Gelber

Introduction
WERNER ERHARD (lecture clip)
I didn't arrive at the opportunity to make the world work for everyone by figuring out how to do it!


WENDY DRUCKER
We were told to surrender to him as "source". I think that's idolatry.

DR. BOB LARZELERE
"I'm god."

ED BRADLEY
I beg your pardon?

DR. BOB LARZELERE
"I am god." He could, he did say sometimes in staff meetings.

DAWN DAMAS
And he beats his wife, and he beats his children, and rapes a daughter – and then he goes and tells people how to have marvelous relationships. I'm sorry, that's what I have against Werner Erhard.

60 MINUTES LOGO.
I'm Morley Safer. I'm Harry Reasoner. I'm Ed Bradley. I'm Steve Kroft. I'm Meredith Vieira. I'm Mike Wallace.

MIKE WALLACE
Those stories and Andy Rooney tonight on "60 Minutes." First a brief update on today's meeting in the Gulf. General Norman Schwarzkopf and his coalition colleagues sat down in a tent in Southern Iraq today, and laid down the terms for a cease-fire to his opposite members from the Iraqi military. Word from the meeting has it that faced with the facts in the field, the Iraqis agreed to all of the coalition's conditions. First of all a swift exchange of prisoners of war on both sides. And according to the Iraqi ambassador to the U.N., ten allied P.O.W.s, six of them American including an American woman, have already been released. Meantime four of our CBS News colleagues were freed by the Iraqis yesterday, and we'll hear from them in a minute.

60 MINUTES LOGO.
WERNER ERHARD – PRODUCED BY DAVID GELBER

ED BRADLEY
Since the 1970s some seven-hundred-thousand people have signed up for a self-improvement called "est", or as it's now called "The Forum." Est was the brainchild of a former used-car salesman named Jack Rosenberg. Back in the sixties, Rosenberg deserted his wife and four children in Philadelphia, changed his name to Werner Hans Erhard, and moved to California where he started another family, and, came up with the idea for est. In a nutshell, Erhard's message was this: If you are in a rut, the problem isn't your parents, your boss or the system, it's you. Take responsibility, Erhard said, and you can transform your life overnight. Who was the role model, the living example of what the est Training could do? Who else but Werner Erhard, a man some of his employees say, thought of himself, as god.

WERNER ERHARD (lecture clip)
I didn't arrive at the opportunity to make the world work for everyone by figuring out how to do it! Don't you get that nothing transformational occurs that way!

ED BRADLEY
Of course there were skeptics who wondered how a salesman with a checkered past and no formal education past high-school could transform people's lives. But thousands believed they did benefit from Erhard's message. One of them was emmy-winning actress, Valerie Harper.

VALERIE HARPER (Emmy acceptance speech)
Thank you for loving Rhoda. And personal, um, personal thanks, a very private ones, to someone who has profoundly influenced my life, uh Werner Erhard. Thank you, and good night.

ED BRADLEY
Erhard was so popular in Hollywood that someone once suggested a studio be renamed: "Werner Brothers." Erhard's empire grew to include a high-powered corporate consulting business that charges some of the biggest companies in America forty-thousand dollars a year, for each executive it trains.

WERNER ERHARD (clip lecturing to executives)
Organizations don't work because people don't know, that the job, in an organization, is ninety-nine bull-(bleeped).

ED BRADLEY, VOICE-OVER
Within his own organization, Erhard attracted an inner circle of people who were devoted to him. Wendy Drucker was a top manager who worked closely with Erhard for nine years.

ED BRADLEY
Did it feel like a cult to you?

WENDY DRUCKER
I would never have believed that I, could be a person who would wind up in a cult. I thought that those were the people down at the airport, you know with the tambourines. And yet, certainly mind control was involved. And if that's what cults do, and they set up a leader to be bigger than anybody else, a god-like figure, I would say yes, that was true in the organization.

ED BRADLEY
Did he encourage you folks to think of him as something – more than an ordinary man?

WENDY DRUCKER
Absolutely. Absolutely. We were told to surrender to him as "source." I think that's idolatry.

ED BRADLEY
Did he ever say things like that to you, "I am the source." ?

DR. BOB LARZELERE
Oh yes, to the whole staff. At staff meetings, sure. "I am the source."

ED BRADLEY, VOICE-OVER
Dr. Bob Larzelere was the head of Erhard's counseling staff for seven years during the 1970s.

DR. BOB LARZELERE
Now you could interpret that as "I am the source of est.", which he of course he was, he also made it clear that it was a little more than that from time to time.

ED BRADLEY
How so?

DR. BOB LARZELERE
"I am god."

ED BRADLEY
I beg your pardon?

DR. BOB LARZELERE
"I am god." He could, he had, he did say sometimes in staff meetings. I can't document this, and you know I took this, I said I would do this interview so long as this wasn't about punishing Werner and I'm not about punishing Werner – what I'm trying to point out is – my willingness, my absolute willingness to become his soldier, the person who would do whatever he asked for his approval, for his love. That's how desperate I was. And didn't really know it then.

ED BRADLEY
But you say he actually said: "I am god." ? He didn't say: "I'm like god.", or "I'm god-like."?

DR. BOB LARZELERE
I would not sign a statement saying that he said exactly that – it was the implication: "I am source.", and you know, he mentioned, the message was: "I am god."

WENDY DRUCKER
This was not like, being an employee. This was like being, a servant, or a devotee.

ED BRADLEY, VOICE-OVER
Was Erhard worthy of devotion? After all, he freely admitted he'd once deserted his wife and children. But then, the story went, by practicing what he preached, he turned his life around. He reconciled with his first family after thirteen years, and brought them to San Francisco. In est publications, Erhard appeared to be a caring father for all of his children. One brochure featured a loving portrait of Erhard with his second wife, Ellen. One of the selling points for est and The Forum has been: If Erhard's could turn his own life around, then The Forum could turn yours around too.

LARRY KING (clip from Larry King Live)
What, is "The Forum" ?

WERNER ERHARD
It's a program of inquiry into the things that concern people on a very everyday basis. Like – breaking through the ordinary barriers that just go along with children and your relationship with your children at certain ages.

ED BRADLEY
And what about his relationship with his own children?

CELESTE ERHARD
I have been afraid, deeply afraid of my father my whole life. My whole life.

ED BRADLEY, VOICE-OVER
Celeste Erhard is Werner Erhard's oldest daughter from his second marriage.

CELESTE ERHARD (crying)
It's funny because – you almost feel stupid, that you're afraid of him, but – he's a terrifying man, he can be very terrifying.

ED BRADLEY, VOICE-OVER
Just how terrifying? Dawn Damas was the family's governess and is still a close friend. She says she saw Erhard assault his son St. John, or "sinjin" as he's called, when the boy was only twelve.

DAWN DAMAS
He started to ask St. John about school and started to notice St. John's grades, and got livid, and went over to Sinjin and started to slap him and hit him, and picked him up and threw him on the ground and started to kick him – in front of everybody and nobody moved, everyone was paralyzed. Um, and then said to St. John: "If you ever get grades like this again, I'll break both of your legs with a baseball bat."

ED BRADLEY
And no one said a word? No one made a move to stop him?

DAWN DAMAS
No. Which is um, hard for me to believe except that I was there and I didn't either.

ED BRADLEY, VOICE-OVER
Werner Erhard declined to talk to "60 Minutes", but he did speak to reporter John Hubner of the San Jose Mercury News, for an article in WEST, the paper's Sunday magazine. In the audio-taped interview, Erhard flatly denied he ever hit Sinjin.

WERNER ERHARD (audio-taped interview)
I hit Sinjin?

JOHN HUBNER
Not ever around in a family meeting?

WERNER ERHARD
Never, ever ever! It is not one … never. Never, ever struck one of my children, not any one of them, ever.

ED BRADLEY, VOICE-OVER
But Erhard's daughter Adair says, she saw it.

ADAIR ERHARD
My dad took, he freaked out, he pushed him back on the chair, he fell over. At this point you know my brother was so petrified he actually peed in his pants. Um, you know he's down on the floor, he's kicking him, he's hitting him.

ED BRADLEY
Your father is kicking and hitting him?

ADAIR ERHARD
Mm, hm. You know, for a bad grade.

ED BRADLEY, VOICE-OVER
Sinjin, who is now twenty-three, didn't want to speak on camera, but he told us the beating did take place, and – that he wasn't the only family member to be a victim of Werner's abuse. His mother was too. Erhard didn't live with his family. But once a month or so he would summon his wife and children to come here to his San Francisco headquarters for a meeting attended by his inner circle. Erhard's daughter Adair recalls a time about thirteen years ago, when, at one of those meetings, he launched into a jealous rage toward his wife.

ADAIR ERHARD
He accused her of having an affair with this man, which was totally untrue. At one point someone picked up a statue and hit her over the head. Um, you know my dad constantly saying: "What aren't you saying, what aren't you saying?".

ED BRADLEY
And you saw your mom physically attacked, by your father and others?

ADAIR ERHARD
Mm, hmm. Yeah, he himself also got up and, while she was on the floor, and kicked her a number of times.

ED BRADLEY, VOICE-OVER
The assault on Ellen Erhard, her daughters say, went on for two nights.

ED BRADLEY
Did you try to stop them?

CELESTE ERHARD
At one point, on the second night, I did stand up and say: "Please, you're killing her, you're killing her." I mean, my mother was blue, her face was blue, she had, like drool coming out of the side of her mouth. She was dying. She was, you know, suffocating. And all he said to me was: "Sit down, or you'll get more of the same." And that is a direct quote, I remember every word. And that's all he said. And I sat down.

ADAIR ERHARD
She was strangled literally. She turned blue, there was spit running out of the side of her mouth, um –

ED BRADLEY
Strangled, choked her?

ADAIR ERHARD
Mmm, hmm.

ED BRADLEY
Who?

ADAIR ERHARD
This consultant, was the man who was doing the actual choking.

ED BRADLEY
And he worked for your father?

ADAIR ERHARD
Yes.

ED BRADLEY, VOICE-OVER
Bob Larzelere is the one who choked Ellen Erhard.

DR. BOB LARZELERE
And finally he said: "Somebody's got to volunteer, to hurt Ellen, to punish her, and make her talk, and make her confess." And nobody did, until I thought, oh my god, this is an opportunity for me, finally, to get Werner's total approval. Now I can be a real soldier for him, now I can make him, proud of me, now I can get him to smile at me. Now I won't have to be afraid of him anymore. So I volunteered.

ED BRADLEY
Why did you choke her?

DR. BOB LARZELERE
To scare her into confessing. It's like, you know why do people torture other people, to get the truth.

ED BRADLEY
What did he say? Did he say: "Bob, you're going too far." ?

DR. BOB LARZELERE
No. No, he didn't. See he didn't stop. No. No, I was doing what he wanted me to do. He didn't try to stop. He didn't try to stop me I mean, at all.

ED BRADLEY
Today, what would you say to her?

DR. BOB LARZELERE
That it was a despicable thing to do. And it took me days to realize it. Afterward. When I began to let myself feel again. It was, my god, it was like a nightmare. That I could have, gone that far, with wanting to please, wanting to get approval from, wanting to get love from another human being, to do that.

ED BRADLEY, VOICE-OVER
According to several witnesses, that ordeal didn't end Ellen's punishment. Her daughters say Erhard wouldn't allow her to live with them for two years. And that's not all.

ADAIR ERHARD
She had to come into our house. And, and, be like the maid, scrub the floors. And we had to watch this, and my dad made her do these things.

ED BRADLEY
She didn't live with you for two years?

ADAIR ERHARD
Well, you know, she didn't live with us for two years, but I saw her, like when she came in to clean the house, but we weren't allowed to speak with her.

ED BRADLEY
So she moves out of your house, per your father's instructions –

ADAIR ERHARD
Mm, hmm.

ED BRADLEY
But she comes back to clean?

ADAIR ERHARD
Mm, hmm. You know, he, whatever he said, that she should do, she had to do. And that was part of the instructions. Yeah, you have to be a maid for your house.

ED BRADLEY
And what would you do then?

ADAIR ERHARD
(Sigh). I don't even remember, I just – It's like I wanted to – say something so bad, or just do something about it, and there's, it's just so petrified all the time and there's just no way I could be okay with myself to, to tell anybody or to do anything about what was going on.

ED BRADLEY, VOICE-OVER
At about the same time this was going on, Erhard was busy teaching thousands how to improve their relationships. As for his daughters' accusations of how he treated his wife back then, Erhard says, it never happened.

WERNER ERHARD (audio-taped interview)
Essentially nonsense. Ellen was never a maid. Ellen was my wife, and I always treated her like my wife.

ED BRADLEY, VOICE-OVER
Ellen Erhard divorced her husband two years ago. As part of the divorce settlement, she's agreed not to talk publicly about their marriage.

ED BRADLEY
Does your mother know that you're talking to us?

ADAIR ERHARD
Yeah, um. Before we left tonight I talked to her, and she's just, you know, she said: "I can't thank you enough for doing this. For saying these things that need to be said." And I know that she wishes she could do the same.

ED BRADLEY, VOICE-OVER
Deborah Rosenberg is one of Erhard's daughters, from his first marriage. She's never spoken publicly about her father before, but she told us that her father sexually abused her.

DEBORAH ROSENBERG
I don't have a problem saying that it happened. I don't like describing, it. Um, but I don't have a problem admitting that he molested me.

ED BRADLEY
How old were you?

DEBORAH ROSENBERG
I was sixteen.

ED BRADLEY
Has your father ever sexually abused any of your siblings?

DEBORAH ROSENBERG
Yes. And it runs from, I don't know, maybe you want to call it pornography all the way to rape.

ED BRADLEY
Rape?

DEBORAH ROSENBERG
Yes.

ED BRADLEY
What happened?

DEBORAH ROSENBERG
Um, I wasn't there. But I believe my sister when she says that my father raped her.

ED BRADLEY
She told you what happened?

DEBORAH ROSENBERG
Yes.

ED BRADLEY
And what did she say happened?

DEBORAH ROSENBERG
She says that they were on a trip together, and um, they had come back after dinner and he had a very large suite and um, they were reading a magazine together and – you know I'd rather not go specifically into, you know the details, but, um, he forcibly had sexual intercourse with her.

ED BRADLEY
This is incest, you're –

DEBORAH ROSENBERG
Yes, I know that.

ED BRADLEY, VOICE-OVER
Deborah says her sister about eleven years ago while she was in her early twenties. In his taped interview, Erhard brought up the rape issue, and said it never happened.

WERNER ERHARD (audio-taped interview, Ed Bradley playing section of audio-tape in front of Deborah Rosenberg) 

Just plain not true. Just plain not true. And anybody who would say something it has got to be sick. Uh.

DEBORAH ROSENBERG
Um, that sounds like a typical response. Um. What he did say when I confronted him about it was that there had been sexual intercourse, and that it had been a nurturing experience for my sister.

ED BRADLEY
He admitted it?

DEBORAH ROSENBERG
He admitted that there was sexual intercourse, and that it was a nurturing experience. He said that "I did not rape her."

ED BRADLEY
You're very clear on this?

DEBORAH ROSENBERG
Yes.

ED BRADLEY
So he's saying that she consented?

DEBORAH ROSENBERG
Yes.

ED BRADLEY
Have you talked with her about this?

DEBORAH ROSENBERG
Oh, yeah. Extensively.

ED BRADLEY
And –

DEBORAH ROSENBERG
It was not a nurturing experience for her. And she's had to have a lot of therapy about that.

ED BRADLEY
She didn't consent?

DEBORAH ROSENBERG
No she didn't.

ED BRADLEY
They said some pretty terrible things about their father.

DAWN DAMAS
They said some true things about their father that are terrible.

ED BRADLEY
What do you have against this man?

DAWN DAMAS
There's something about the fact that he is still out there doing all this and people still believe in him. This man still gets people sitting in an audience looking up at him, believing, that what he says is just so wonderful. 

WERNER ERHARD (clip, lecturing to audience)
I can see for myself, that the world can work for everyone. 

DAWN DAMAS
And this man does relationships on seminars, and he beats his wife and beats his children and rapes a daughter, and then he goes and tells people how to have marvelous relationships. 

ED BRADLEY
Why are you going against him now, in such a public forum? 

CELESTE ERHARD
I kept thinking – that he would be a father, I kept thinking that when he got older, he'd want children, and he'd want his daughters. I just, I, I really thought that. You know that maybe he'd get wiser with age and he'd regret what he'd done, but um, he didn't. 

ED BRADLEY
This week, Erhard's lawyers sent us affidavits from Erhard's sister and brother and from a few of his close associates disputing some of the stories we heard from his children and denying that Erhard ever abused his wife. And we also heard from Erhard. He sent us a statement, which said simply: "There is only one appropriate response to these allegations, to heal and restore my family. And that is what I will do. To respond to the accusations at this time, would only further publicly exploit my family, and there has already been enough of that." He has also presumably had enough of his seventy-million dollar a year business. A few weeks ago he sold it to a group of his employees.

___________________________________________________________________________________

Guru ERHARD Accused of trying to hide assets
Los Angeles Times - March 27, 1991

By Martha Groves

Werner Erhard, the pop psychology guru who in the 1970s parlayed his est human-potential program into a multimillion-dollar enterprise, has been accused of attempting to thwart creditors by transferring valuable assets to close associates under the guise of a sale.

In a suit filed in Marin County Superior Court, Charlene Afremow, a former Erhard associate, said Erhard arranged a phony deal to shift the assets of Werner Erhard & Associates to Transnational Education Corp., which is controlled by Erhard's brother , Harry Rosenberg, and several longtime Erhard associates.

The complaint also alleged that Erhard established a trust and set aside funds to be used to pay attorneys' fees in a variety of cases in which Erhard is a defendant.

Among other things, the suit contended, Erhard conducted a sale of personal property, including valuable wine, art and clothing, to raise cash. According to the documents, the actions were part of a plan by Erhard to transfer assets to "persons acting under his control (and) to liquidate for cash" considerable amounts of property, with an eye toward putting the assets out of the reach of creditors.

"Erhard has both removed and concealed assets," claimed the suit, which was filed Friday. "The circumstances strongly suggest that Erhard made the transfers with the actual intent to defraud, delay and hinder his creditors."

The papers allege that Erhard is to receive half the profits on the sale of any real estate assets, 25% of Transnational Education's profits and a portion of the revenues from the sale of courses and programs that he originated. No cash changed hands in the "sale," the suit alleged.

Superior Court Judge Richard Breiner on Friday ordered Erhard and Transnational officials to temporarily refrain from transferring additional funds.

Afremow -- a longtime Erhard associate who led seminars in est (Erhard Seminars Training) and its 1980s successor, the Forum -- is also suing Erhard and two other officials of Werner Erhard & Associates for $2 million in San Francisco Superior Court, alleging wrongful firing, age and sex discrimination, intentional infliction of emotional distress and defamation.

Various other claims for personal injury and emotional distress, arising out of the seminar business, have also been filed recently against Erhard, a former used car salesman from Philadelphia, and Werner Erhard & Associates. Several individuals have alleged that they suffered psychological traumas after taking the courses, which were characterized by drill-sergeant-like trainers and infrequent bathroom breaks.

Afremow, 56, claimed that she was fired after criticizing such policies as making employees work 12 to 16 hours a day and six days a week, with burdensome travel schedules. In her suit, she claimed that employees were ordered to consider Erhard as "Source" -- in other words, the "source" of everything in their lives -- and were expected to emulate him.San Francisco Superior Court Judge John Dearman on Monday assigned the Afremow case to Judge Alex Saldamando. Jury selection is expected to begin April 8.Dearman on Friday had rejected a request by John Keker, Erhard's attorney, to postpone the trial for six months because of adverse publicity arising from a "60 Minutes" program, on which one of Erhard's daughters accused him of incest. Andrew H. Wilson , Afremow's attorney, told Dearman that Erhard has liquidated his assets and fled the United States for the Soviet Union, where he apparently is teaching human-potential and management courses.

A key issue in the San Francisco case is whether the judge will order Erhard to appear, as Wilson has requested. Keker has accused Wilson of attempting to turn the trial into a "media circus" by insisting on Erhard's presence, despite the brouhaha of publicity.

Last week, Erhard attorney Susan Harriman, a colleague of Keker, described the "60 Minutes" segment as a "hatchet job" that "succeeded in portraying Erhard as a depraved monster." According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Harriman's court filings include the results of a lie detector test in which Erhard denied ever sexually molesting, raping or abusing any of his children.

Keker, who led the prosecution of Oliver North in the Iran-Contra case, had no immediate comment on the Marin County complaint, except to say that it was "unusual and, in my view, outrageous when you have a pending lawsuit . . . to go file in another county" without telling the opposing side.

"It's sort of a cheap lawyer's trick," he added.

Transnational Education Corp. has declined to comment, although a statement from the company in February noted that Erhard "will have neither an ownership nor management role in the new company."


___________________________________________________________________________________

The Best of EST
Werner Erhard's legacy lives on in a kinder, gentler and lucrative version of his self-help seminars
By Charlotte Faltermayer
Time Magazine - March 16, 1998
http://www.rickross.com/reference/landmark/landmark1.htmlWhen Werner Erhard (born John Paul Rosenberg) founded Erhard Seminars Training, Inc. in 1971, the former used-car salesman from Philadelphia had a hook. Born of the theater-of-the-absurd atmosphere of the late 1960s, est (Latin for "it is") promised to help people get "it," whatever "it" was. Erhard's 60-hour seminars were strenuous ordeals, complete with "body catchers" and barf bags for the weak of mind and stomach. Trainers applauded bladder control and cursed those who didn't get it. Still, Erhard and his message proved popular, even winning celebrity advocates. Then, after two decades and two divorces, the self-help messiah vanished amid reports of tax fraud (which proved false and won him $200,000 from the IRS) and allegations of incest (which were later recanted).

Unlike Erhard, est is still around – sort of. In 1991, before he left the U.S., Erhard sold the "technology" behind his seminars to his employees, who formed a new company called the Landmark Education Corp., with Erhard's brother Harry Rosenberg at the helm. Rosenberg admits that Erhard was in Toronto briefly last June for a family reunion, but will not elaborate: "I'm not my brother's keeper. I'm not his spokesman."

But he has proved to be an able keeper of his brother's legacy. Landmark appears to be thriving. At its core is a four-part "Curriculum for Living," which starts with a 3 1/2-day seminar called the Forum and proceeds to courses that expand upon its brand of enlightenment. Since 1991, approximately 300,000 mostly professional and well-educated seekers have taken the introductory Forum (an estimated 700,000 took Erhard-era seminars). Revenues, which had been averaging $34 million annually, hit $48 million in 1997, with profits approaching 4%. Landmark is becoming a global brand name, with 42 offices in 11 countries, including a well-appointed San Francisco headquarters. Says Rosenberg: "If we were doing a bad job, we wouldn't have the growth that we have."

The secret of its success? Landmark lacks est's showcase celebrity following, but its programs are not as costly (tuition is down some 50% from Erhard days); they are not as lengthy (the basic course was originally spread over two weekends); and – most important – they are less in-your-face, nearly devoid of the shouting and door monitoring imposed by est's stern trainers. Says a former estie who attended a 1997 Forum: "est was much more militant. You had to have a doctor's note just to go to the bathroom. People humiliated themselves for it. est tried to break you. Landmark doesn't do that."

At a recent Forum weekend in a nondescript room on Manhattan's East Side, 52 men and 47 women gathered for a variety of reasons. The meek sought a voice; the proud, humbling; the lonely, companionship. All had signed a form stating that they are mentally and physically well. It is important that attendees be healthy. The Forum, which costs $350, still requires endurance. It consists of three 12- to 16-hour days – with time out for meals – and (after a one-day breather) a one-evening wrap-up.

The Forum started promptly at 9 on a Friday morning, when a svelte, spiky-haired woman named Beth Handel walked in and introduced herself as the Forum leader. The Forum, she said, is a game called transformation. Like every other game, it calls for good sportsmanship. One should be "coachable," or open-minded about the Forum's concepts, and committed to "forwarding the action." The name of the game is participation or, more specifically, "sharing," which was to take place at three microphones. The weekend, Handel warned, will be "an emotional roller-coaster ride."

First, though, Handel took a few preliminary questions. "What is Werner Erhard's role?" someone asked. Handel simply described him as the man who developed and sold the technology behind Landmark. "What if I doze off?" "Then you doze off," Handel replied with a shrug. A visibly nervous woman stepped up to the mike. "You said this was going to be a roller-coaster. But I'm afraid of roller-coasters. I never get on them." "You will learn how to stop letting fear hold you back," Handel reassured her.

Handel, 39, then drew diagrams on a blackboard as she held forth on a series of concepts: facts have no meaning; it is the stories we concoct out of those facts that give them meaning. She explained that "our rackets," that is, ongoing complaints, are "killing our lives." And "our winning formulas" are really losing formulas. She cautioned that Landmark's ideas ("Be for each other like that" and "People 'is' to death") aren't meant to fit together: "The Forum is holographic. It's not linear."

But outreach was clearly part of the agenda. Pupils were assigned to call or write people with whom they "want to make a breakthrough," thereby introducing others to Landmark. On graduation night participants were encouraged to bring guests, who were then led away to learn more and sign on. From Day 1, attendants were told that for a limited time, the Forum's tuition included a $95 follow-up, "The Forum in Action." The crowd was also repeatedly invited to sign up for the $700 "Advanced Course." Act now and get a $100 discount.

Some Forum grads weren't sold. Rabbi Yisroel Persky, 24, who chose to get his money's worth and take "The Forum in Action," today remains "unfazed" by what he calls the Forum's common-sense concepts cloaked in esoteric packaging. For Richard Giordanella, 49, a software executive, the Forum was enough: "I'm still high on the Forum's main message, that my life is in my control. But I can do without the narcotic effect of their reinforcement."

Others, though, are hooked. Anthony, 32, a stockbroker, came to the Forum because he didn't know whether he wanted to be married anymore. He owned up to stashing $50,000 in cash for a clean getaway. During the Forum, he said, "I had been pointing the finger at my wife. But I've got to work on me." Now Anthony has completed the "Advanced Course," and is taking the final course in the curriculum, "Self-Expression and Leadership." He says he feels like a newlywed. His wife agrees. "It's a miracle," she says. And the woman afraid of roller-coasters? Mildred Rodriguez, 33, has signed up to be a Landmark volunteer. Says she: "I'm glad I got on for the ride."

Critics say Landmark is an elaborate marketing game that relies heavily on volunteers. Says Tom Johnson, an "exit counselor" often summoned by concerned parents to tend to alumni: "They tire your brain; they make you vulnerable." Says critic Liz Sumerlin: "The participants end up becoming recruiters. That's the whole purpose." Psychiatrists who speak on Landmark's behalf dispute these claims. But Sumerlin says a 1993 Forum turned her fiance (now her ex) into a robot. She organized an anti-Landmark hot line and publications clearinghouse. Landmark officials made sounds to sue her.

Landmark alumnus Walter Plywaski, a Colorado electronics engineer who took on the company after his daughter ran up a $3,000 tab on courses, thinks Erhard is still pulling the strings. Says he: "Erhard is like the Cheshire Cat. He has gone away, but the smile is there, hanging over everything." Rosenberg says his brother is not and never has been involved in Landmark. Steven Pressman, author of a scathing 1993 biography of Erhard, calls that slick corporate maneuvering: "They've gotten out of the yoke of Werner because he became their worst p.r. man. But it's one of the greatest success stories in mass marketing."

Indeed, the transformation has been such a success that it was the subject of a recent case study by the Harvard Business School. According to the study's co-author, Karen Wruck, the product that Landmark sells is "an abrupt or jarring change, like an 'aha'" – a "peculiar" one, certainly, but patently marketable. But Landmark, the study notes, has challenges ahead. It will have to gauge the effectiveness of its volunteers in expanding the business and weigh the need to raise outside capital. Perhaps, Wruck says, it will need to go public.

– With Reporting by Richard Woodbury /San Francisco


___________________________________________________________________________________
   
"60 Minutes" broadcast about Werner Erhard
A News Summary/August 26, 2009
By Rick Ross

Background
Beginning in the 1970s a company named "est" (Erhard Seminar Training) sold courses, which are now often called "large group awareness training" and/or "mass marathon training" for "self-improvement." This included an introductory course known as "The Forum."

Jack Rosenberg, a former used-car salesman, created Est with no formal education past high school.

In the 1960s Rosenberg left his wife and four children in Philadelphia, changed his name to "Werner Hans Erhard," moved to California and started another family.

Erhard was reportedly "the role model, the living example of what the est Training could do."

But CBS News reported allegations of incest, rape and spousal abuse made against Werner Erhard by his daughters and former employees.

Not long after the airing of this program Erhard sold his company reportedly to his employees and went into prolonged seclusion.

The for profit privately owned company, which still sells the Forum and other training courses, is now known as "Landmark Education" and headed by Werner Erhard's brother and sister.

What follows is a news summary that includes statements made by Erhard family members and insiders, which was broadcast by CBS "60 Minutes" March 3, 1991.

"I am god"

Dr. Bob Larzelere was the head of Erhard's counseling staff for seven years during the 1970s.

"I am god...he did say sometimes in staff meetings," Larzelere told CBS News.

Wendy Drucker was a top manager who worked closely with Erhard for nine years.

Drucker told CBS, "I would never have believed that I, could be a person who would wind up in a cult...And yet, certainly mind control was involved. And if that's what cults do, and they set up a leader to be bigger than anybody else, a god-like figure, I would say yes, that was true in the organization."

"We were told to surrender to him as 'source.' I think that's idolatry...This was not like, being an employee. This was like being, a servant, or a devotee," Drucker said.

Ms. Drucker confirmed Larzelere's statement and said that Erhard told "...the whole staff. At staff meetings...'I am the source...I am god."

"Terrifying man"

An est brochure once featured a loving portrait of Erhard with his second wife, Ellen. The implication was that if Erhard could turn his life around, the Forum could turn your life around too.

In an interview with Larry King on CNN Erhard explained, "[Est is] a program of inquiry into the things that concern people on a very everyday basis. Like - breaking through the ordinary barriers that just go along with children and your relationship with your children at certain ages."

But did that program work for Werner Erhard?

Celeste Erhard, the est founder's eldest daughter from his second marriage didn't seem to think it did.

"I have been afraid, deeply afraid of my father my whole life. My whole life....he's a terrifying man, he can be very terrifying," she told CBS News anchor Ben Bradley.

Dawn Damas was the family's governess and is still a close friend. She told CBS News that she witnessed Erhard assault his son St. John, or "Sinjin" when the boy was twelve.

"He...went over to Sinjin and started to slap him and hit him, and picked him up and threw him on the ground and started to kick him - in front of everybody and nobody moved, everyone was paralyzed. Um, and then said to St. John: 'If you ever get grades like this again, I'll break both of your legs with a baseball bat.'"

Werner Erhard declined to talk to "60 Minutes," but he did speak to reporter John Hubner of the San Jose Mercury News, for an article in WEST, the paper's Sunday magazine. In an audiotaped interview, Erhard denied that he ever hit his son Sinjin.

"Never, ever, ever...Never, ever struck one of my children, not any one of them, ever," he said.

But Adair Erhard directly contradicted her father.

"My dad...freaked out, he pushed him back on the chair, he fell over. At this point you know my brother was so petrified he actually peed in his pants. Um, you know he's down on the floor, he's kicking him, he's hitting him."

CBS anchor Ben Bradley reported, "Sinjin, who is now twenty-three, didn't want to speak on camera, but he told us the beating did take place..."
Ellen Erhard "strangled"

Erhard's daughters also recounted how he and/or his est associates abused their mother.

"At one point someone picked up a statue and hit her over the head. Um, you know my dad constantly saying: "What aren't you saying, what aren't you saying?...he himself also got up and, while she was on the floor, and kicked her a number of times," Adair Erhard told CBS.

Erhard's daughters claimed that the assault on their mother Ellen Erhard continued for two nights.

Celeste Erhard said, "At one point, on the second night, I did stand up and say: 'Please, you're killing her, you're killing her.' I mean, my mother was blue, her face was blue, she had, like drool coming out of the side of her mouth. She was dying. She was, you know, suffocating. And all he said to me was: 'Sit down, or you'll get more of the same.' And that is a direct quote, I remember every word. And that's all he said. And I sat down."

Adair Erhard agreed with her sister's account, "She was strangled literally. She turned blue, there was spit running out of the side of her mouth..."

A consultant that worked for Erhard did the actual choking, according to Adair Erhard.

And Dr. Bob Larzelere admitted to CBS that he was that consultant.

Larzelere said,, "'Somebody's got to volunteer, to hurt Ellen, to punish her, and make her talk, and make her confess.' And nobody did, until I thought, oh my god, this is an opportunity for me, finally, to get Werner's total approval. Now I can be a real soldier for him, now I can make him, proud of me, now I can get him to smile at me. Now I won't have to be afraid of him anymore. So I volunteered."

He did it "to scare her into confessing" about alleged infidelities.

Lazelere said that Erhard "didn't try to stop [him]...at all."

Lazelere lamented, "It was a despicable thing to do. And it took me days to realize it. Afterward. When I began to let myself feel again. It was, my god, it was like a nightmare. That I could have, gone that far, with wanting to please, wanting to get approval from, wanting to get love from another human being, to do that."

Erhard's daughters also told CBS that their father wouldn't allow their mother to live with them for two years. Adair Erhard said that periodically Ellen Erhard was allowed to come into the house, but "like a maid" to "scrub the floors." And the daughters "had to watch this," but "weren't allowed to speak with her."

Adair Erhard explained, "You know, he, whatever he said, that she should do, she had to do. And that was part of the instructions. Yeah, you have to be a maid for your house...I wanted to - say something so bad, or just do something about it, and there's, it's just so petrified all the time and there's just no way I could be okay with myself to, to tell anybody or to do anything about what was going on."

In an audiotaped interview Erhard dismissed these accounts about his marital relationship.

"Essentially nonsense. Ellen was never a maid. Ellen was my wife, and I always treated her like my wife," he said.

Ellen Erhard divorced her husband and reportedly as part of the divorce settlement she cannot talk publicly about their marriage.

Adair Erhard told CBS that her mother was grateful though that she chose to speak out about her father's behavior and wished she could do the same.

"Rape"

Deborah Rosenberg is one of Erhard's daughters, from his first marriage. Ms. Rosenberg told CBS that her father "molested" her when she was sixteen. She also claimed that Erhard had abused her siblings with "pornography all the way to rape."

She told Ben Bradley, "I wasn't there. But I believe my sister when she says that my father raped her...forcibly had sexual intercourse with her."

Erhard said that the rape never happened in an audiotaped interview.

But Deborah Rosenberg told CBS that when she confronted her father about this claim he admitted, "There had been sexual intercourse, and that it had been a nurturing experience for my sister. He said that 'I did not rape her.'"

When Deborah Rosenberg repeated what her father said to her sister she said that her response to his explanation was that "it was not a nurturing experience for her. And she's had to have a lot of therapy about that" and it was not consensual.

Governess Dawn Damas told "60 Minutes" that Erhard's daughters told CBS "true things about their father that are terrible...he beats his wife, and he beats his children, and rapes a daughter - and then he goes and tells people how to have marvelous relationships. I'm sorry, that's what I have against Werner Erhard."

Celeste Erhard commented about her relationship with her father as an adult.

"I kept thinking - that he would be a father, I kept thinking that when he got older, he'd want children, and he'd want his daughters. I just, I, I really thought that. You know that maybe he'd get wiser with age and he'd regret what he'd done, but um, he didn't," she said.
Erhard's response

Erhard's lawyers sent CBS affidavits from his sister and brother and from a few of his close associates disputing some of the stories from his children and denying that Erhard ever abused his wife.

Erhard stated, "There is only one appropriate response to these allegations, to heal and restore my family. And that is what I will do. To respond to the accusations at this time, would only further publicly exploit my family, and there has already been enough of that."

___________________________________________________________________________________    
Suppressed CBS News 60 Minutes on Landmark cult leader Werner Erhard, 3 Mar 1991

Wikileaks - August 27, 2009

Summary

The ZIP archive presents the video and transcript of an investigative report into "est" (Erhard Seminars Training) guru Werner Erhard by CBS News, originally broadcast on the program 60 Minutes on March 3, 1991. 

Both, video and transcript, have been published at various points in time, but are not publically available anymore due to legal threats against publishers from Werner Erhard. 

The material contains interviews with friends, business associates and family of Werner Erhard making serious claims against him. Erhard is accused by family members of beating his wife and children, and raping a daughter, while still giving seminars on how to have relationships that work. The story also includes interviews with two former staff members of Werner Erhard: Wendy Drucker (a senior manager) and Dr. Bob Larzelere (head of Erhard's counseling staff). 

The current incarnation of the est training is now known as Landmark Education, with its course the Landmark Forum. Landmark Education is run by CEO Harry Rosenberg, who is Werner Erhard's brother, and General Counsel and Chairman of the Board of Directors Art Schreiber, who has acted as Werner Erhard's lawyer. Werner Erhard's sister Joan Rosenberg also sits on the Board of Directors of Landmark Education. 

The likely audience for this material includes researchers of the "est" and Landmark Education / Landmark Forum movement - including psychotherapists, psychologists, and psychiatrists, as well as those researching the controversial life of Werner Erhard. The audience also includes potential clients/customers of the company Landmark Education - whose course the Landmark Forum was originally developed by Werner Erhard as the "est training". 

The material can be verified as the original CBS broadcast on 60 Minutes of March 3, 1991. The episode of 60 Minutes is Program # 2325. 

Additionally, Cult expert Rick Ross of The Ross Institute Internet Archives for the Study of Destructive Cults, Controversial Groups and Movements maintains a large database on Landmark Education[1], est[2], and The Forum[3], and his attorneys are also quite educated as to the organization's methods[4]. 

See also: US Department of Labor investigation into Landmark Education, 2006



 
___________________________________________________________________________________
 
 The following e-mail was sent to The Awareness Center by GuruTruth

    From:      gurutruth 
    Subject: Ongoing Censorship of 60 Minutes causes Chilling Effects
    Date:     December 1, 2012 5:47:16 PM CSTHi there, I’m emailing you to see what can be done about attempts at suppression of freedom of speech on the Internet causing “Chilling Effects” by agents of Werner Erhard to censor an investigation of him by the CBS News program 60 Minutes (http://www.chillingeffects.org/notice.cgi?sID=18211).

Landmark Education, the company which promotes Erhard’s self-help works, has aggressively abused the judicial system to their own ends.  On March 3, 1991, CBS published a 60-minutes report on Erhard (see http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1355734/), interviewing members of his family. The segment contained statements which were extremely unbecoming for Erhard, so he threatened CBS with legal action.

CBS never re-broadcasted the segment, and the clip faded into obscurity, until Wikileaks made the clip available in 2009 on their website (http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Suppressed_CBS_News_60_Minutes_on_Landmark_cult_leader_Werner_Erhard,_3_Mar_1991). CBS News (probably under pressure by Werner Erhard’s lawyers) threatened Wikileaks with legal action several times, but Wikileaks stood their ground.

The program included interviews with some of Werner Erhard's daughters, and they alleged claims of sexual abuse, physical abuse, incest, rape, and other controversial acts by Werner Erhard. Werner Erhard's representatives often tell the media that all of these claims were "retracted", but this is false, they were not all "retracted", only those by one of the three daughters, Celeste Erhard.

This isn’t the first time that CBS has kowtowed under the threat of legal action. You may remember The Insider (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0140352/), an amazing tale of a whistleblower who dared to go up against the tobacco lobby. The only difference now is that the Streisand Effect usually prevents this type of chicanery from prevailing.

In this case, Werner Erhard sued CBS a year after the original broadcast of the television program in 1992, only to pay each of the defendants in his own lawsuit the $100 filing fee, after which he dismissed his own lawsuit!

Other than Wikileaks, there is no other website which has withstood the pervasive chilling effect induced by Erhard and his cohorts (in this case, using CBS as a proxy via the judicial system). It appears Werner Erhard and his associates/lawyers have been successful at suppressing freedom of speech such that the video of the 60 Minutes broadcast is, to this day, not available on any streaming video websites such as YouTube.

In the face of this blatant attempt at censorship, what can be done? Will the internet route around this flagrant abuse, or will yet another company successfully maneuver its way into suppressing the unflattering truth?


TIMELINE OF WERNER ERHARD LEGAL ACTIONS

March 3, 1991
Investigative journalism program titled "Werner Erhard" airs on "60
Minutes" on CBS News (see
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1355734/ 
Transcript: http://web.archive.org/web/20071018041340/http://www.rickross.com/reference/est/est20.html


March 3, 1992
Werner Erhard decides to sue twenty (20) defendants, including CBS News, about the claims from the "60 Minutes" broadcast and other claims about him.

April 7, 1992
 "Est Founder suescritics: suit names Mercury News writer". San Jose
Mercury News: p. 8B.  
http://www.skepticfiles.org/rumor/law-suit.htm

March 4, 1992
 "EST guru sues CBS, Enquirer, Hustler". United Press International: p. Domestic News. His lawsuit had claims of libel, defamation, slander, and invasion of
privacy, as well as conspiracy.

May 20, 1992
 Erhard filed for dismissal of his own case and sent checks for $100 to each of the defendants, covering their filing fees in the case.  Werner Erhard vs. Columbia Broadcasting System, (Filed: March 3, 1992) Case Number: 1992-L-002687. Division: Law Division. District: First Municipal. Cook County Circuit Court, Chicago, Illinois. (Docket of court case 
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Werner_Erhard_vs._Columbia_Broadcasting_System)

October 2007 
The website about cultic groups, www.rickross.com, had the full transcript on their site:  http://web.archive.org/web/20071018041340/http://www.rickross.com/reference/est/est20.html

August 26, 2009 
www.rickross.com website received a legal threat from CBS, so they put up a "news summary" version, instead:http://www.rickross.com/reference/est/est20.html

August 27, 2009 
Wikileaks published access to the full transcript, and video file of the program in FLV format, on August 27, 2009, under the title "Suppressed CBS News 60 Minutes on Landmark cult leader Werner Erhard,
 
3 Mar 1991":
http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Suppressed_CBS_News_60_Minutes_on_Landmark_cult_leader_Werner_Erhard,_3_Mar_1991
 
August 31, 2009
 Xeni Jardin at BoingBoing.net reported on the Wikileaks publication of the Werner Erhard expose leak, but they were contacted by a lawyer representing Werner Erhard:  http://boingboing.net/2009/08/31/suppressed-60-minute.html

September 24, 2009Xeni Jardin at BoingBoing.net decides to keep the post about the Wikileaks publication of the Werner Erhard expose up, but changes the title of it from "suppressed" (see the html link location) to "re-publishes", per the legal letter from Werner Erhard's lawyer. Jardin also publishes publicly the letter from the Werner Erhard lawyer.
http://boingboing.net/2009/08/31/suppressed-60-minute.html

NOTE: Multiple statements by this lawyer for Werner Erhard, Terry M. Giles, are factually inaccurate. Giles offers no proof to back up his claims that CBS determined anything in the 60 Minutes broadcast was anything less than true. Only one daughter of Werner Erhard, Celeste Erhard, stated something different publicly about her interview. Celeste sued John Hubner, a journalist whose research was used in the 60 Minutes broadcast; but a judge dismissed her lawsuit in a court of law. No other daughters apart from this action by Celeste “recanted” anything publicly from the 60 Minutes interview. Dawn Damas never
“recanted” anything publicly from the 60 Minutes interview, neither did Dr. Robert Larzelere nor Wendy Drucker.

December 18, 2009
http://www.chillingeffects.org/notice.cgi?sID=18211
CBS Program DMCA (Copyright) Complaint to GoogleApparently the Werner Erhard censorship campaign has literally had a "Chilling Effect", per the website www.chillingeffects.org -- this seems to lead to the conclusion that agents on behalf of Werner Erhard and his lawyers troll the internet for any mention of search terms "Werner Erhard" and "60 Minutes", and then threaten CBS News and tell them to threaten Google and likely other websites as well.

November 2012
 A copy of the 60 Minutes program appears on the website www.general-files.com at links:

• http://www.general-files.com/download/gs553385aah32i0/cbs-news-60mins-werner-erhard.flv.html 
• http://www.general-files.com/download/gs4a10ac6eh32i0/cbs-news-60mins-werner-erhard.zip.html

November 10, 2012 and November 17, 2012 - Both these files were deleted from www.general-files.com, presumably after legal threats from agents of Werner Erhard through CBS

ADDITIONAL BACKGROUND
Werner Erhard and his various associated companies are quite litigious and have used legal threats in the past, often with the same lawyer names, to harass people who wish to speak out critically against his organizations. Werner Erhard and  his successor company to "EST" known as Landmark Education, have used legal threats to try to suppress freedom of speech on the Internet.

Landmark Education litigation archive   
 http://rickross.com/reference/landmark/landmark193.html

Landmark Education LLC v. Rick Ross
 http://www.citmedialaw.org/threats/landmark-education-llc-v-ross

Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) on Landmark Education aggressive litigation https://www.eff.org/cases/landmark-and-internet-archive

Landmark Education
http://rickross.com/groups/landmark.html

EST
http://rickross.com/groups/est.html

The Forum
 http://rickross.com/groups/forum.html


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