BOARD TECHNICAL BULLETIN
Remimeo 
HCO Sees I&R Hat Ethics Hat Tech CIS 
Qual Personnel 
30 JULY 1970 
REISSUED 6 MARCH 1977 
REINSTITUTES HCOB 30 JULY 1970 “THE TECH AND ETHICS OF CONFESSIONALS” AS A BTB
THE TECH AND ETHICS OF CONFESSIONALS (Compiled from a briefing 
to 3rd Mate and 4th Mate Flag given by L. Ron Hubbard.) 

HCO is primarily interested in JUSTICE. 
The method of justice practiced in the 17th and 18th Centuries was to catch· the offenders and hang them, thus keeping the countryside “quiet”. 
Although useful as a method of quietening things down, however, it doesn’t do people any good to be hung! You will find the remedy expressed in this rule: 
WHEN YOU GIVE A CONFESSIONAL TO A PERSON WITHOUT FINDING THE EARLIER BASIC, YOU HANG THEM. 
If you can’t chase back a Confessional to an FIN you are going to get continuous Ethics trouble from that person from then on until it is remedied. 
When you give a guy a Confessional and it doesn’t produce anything and the needle is clean you should indicate that the Confessional was unnecessary. You will probably get an FIN. 
HCO’s interest in someone is normally what is going on, what is he up to NOW. So one tends to omit to ask how come this guy has been committing overts for the past two-and-ahalf years - the same ones - and it is still going on? Back in that earlier zon;-is-Qne hell of an overt, continuous overts against Scientology or LRH. So what is it? You should trace it back and you could find a dilly! 
It’s the EARLIEST item available on that chain that will get the FIN. And remember that overts of Omission are always preceded by overts of COmission. So you snould ask yourself “How come all these overts of omission?” There’s an earlier overt of £2mission, you can be sure. 
This gives us another rule: 
IF YOU CANNOT FIN A CONFESSIONAL, yOU HAVEN’T GOT IT. 
Now it could be the buttons are out (invalidate, protest, action unnecessary). Did you know you can beef up a TA (send it up high) by doing an unnecessary action? It acts somewhat like forcing a wrong item on a pc. It puts 
him on a protest, a rejection and an effort to stop the action. That is where a lot of the unpopularity of Confessionals stems 
from. 

Of the rudiments ARC Break, problem, withhold, the Confessional specializes in overts and withholds. So the full panorama of Confessional buttons is Ruds plus False, Suppress, Invalidate, Evaluate, Protest, Unnecessary. These buttons are of more interest to Qual but are perfectly valid in an HCO Confes$ional. So if the TA goes up during a Confessional you would check ruds or buttons. 
IF YOU DON'T GET AN FIN ON A CONFESSIONAL YOU SHOULD HAVE A LINE TO QUAL THAT CLEANS IT UP WITHIN 2~ HOURS. 
Every time the Ethics Officer can't fly a Confessional it has got to be a 2~ hour urgent review. The Confessional repair list consists of the ruds and buttons. 
HCO's technical action should be "Why the hell doesn't this thing fly?" There is earlier stuff on that chain, or there is other stuff not yet found. That it flies (FINs) means he hasn't done that. 
It can of course be an ARC Break needle - people ARC Break with the physical universe, with fellow men, feel wronged in some way and have to take it out on somebody, and so commit the overt. But the so~ebody they attack is not the source of the upset. They mis-identify the source. If their think was straight they would be able to see what the score was and have no charge on it. 
An overt therefore is preceded by an ARC Break, and you will find an ARC Break is the result of a problem. 
So each time you don't take a Confessional to FIN you run up against this. This gives another way for them to get unpopular. But if it didn't FIN, you also know it was necessary to give the person a Confessional! 
If you give a person a Confessional and you see a trail of catastrophes in that person's wake afterwards you know it didn't fly. Similarly a person who makes huge overts-out of every little action, which is in essence self-invalidation, has behind that somewhere a huge overt - big enough to set the police of several galaxies after them! 
If it doesn't FIN you haven't got it! 
The FIN has never been integrated into Confessional technology up 'til now. There hasn't been anything issued that says run a Confessional to FIN and tells you what to do if it doesn't or won't FIN. 
THE E-METER AND THE CRIMINAL 
The joker in all this is that the E-Meter reads on Reality. So you can have a guy who reads on none of your questions, but you find out the next day he had done exactly what you asked him. Yet it didn't read! A real criminal just doesn't read on having killed his grandmother in cold blood five minutes before the Confessional. Even if he admits it it doesn't read~ But a real criminal won't clear and won't FIN. Occasionally they will RIS. 

You have to handle it on a gradient of reality. "Why wasn't that an overt?" is one way you could try. He would at first be very surprised at the very thought of it being an overt. But you could get a stream of justifications off. Another way is to magnify the overt. You can use that on a "no - overt" case. 
The tech of it belongs more in the field of auditing. 
However, HCO should make an attempt to fly it. It doesn't matter how good or bad. If there is any question on the FIN or if you can't take it to FIN send it over to Qual to find the reason why. 
Any time a Confessional is done, some notification of the fact must ~o into the pc folder otherwise the CIS can make an error 1n CISing because of the omitted data. In fact unless there is criminal data in the Confessional the whole thing should be slid into the folder. 
HCO AND CASE GAIN 
(See HCO PL 20 July 10, Cases & Morale of Staff) 
The percentile of people who have case gain will be proportional to the level of morale in your org. So it is of interest to HCO to ask the CIS how many no-ease-gain cases he has (Pile 4), trace them down and isolate them. The names of those not doing well (Piles 2 and 3) should also be known and the numbers so you can make sure the greater percentage is getting good case gain. 
HCO can get trouble stemming from lack of staff case progress. For instance you find an Exec giving excuses for not doing his job. It can be due to a no-ease-gain under him enturbulating seniors and associates. They in turn, not recognizing him as the source of the enturbulation, buy the stops and the "can't be dones" and find some other excuse as to why not to do their job. Recognize that when someone dumps his hat on you he has overts, man! 
An executive instead of reporting that people don't want to work in his division should be asking "How come they don't want to work in the division?" 
Things will get better to the degree that such cases producing stops and "can'ts" have a line for them to be handled on. 
HCO should turn over to the CIS a list of those who have received Confessionals. The files of the Confessional are turned over and on those that did not FIN, using the repair list, Qual gets it cleaned up or otherwise. 
Begin a campaign to get all these cases winning. 
If there is any query as to which of the four categories of case folders (per HCO PL 20 July 70) a person belongs on, it goes on the one lower. For instance a category (Pile 2) queried as to status immediately becomes Pile Three. 
Pile 4 cases go to HCO and are given Confessionals. If he gets an FIN, okay. If he doesn't, then it is purely a Div I disciplinary action - Non Enturbulation order or whatever. 

Put up a notice where it can be seen to the effect that "Anyone who feels bad after a Confessional or who feels they have been falsely given a Confessional should turn in their names to the Qual Examiner." 
The Ethics Officer can "hot-up" his Confessional by putting in some test buttons - overts, withholds, missed withholds. You could even do a pre-assessment for the Confessional. It's all in what you are looking for. 
STATISTICS
HCO has its neck out to the degree that it does not have Stats. Make sure there is someone in Dept 3 who can handle stats, collect them, graph them and post them up. A person with bad or low stats on post will always trage back to having committed an overt of some kind or another. 
AMNESTIES
In order to take advantage of an amnesty, the person accepting it should make a written statement of the Crimes on which he is accepting the Amnesty. 
STATUS OF REPAIR ACTION 
A Confessional repair action is not classed as an auditing session in that the data revealed in it is actionable and is turned over to HCO. So before turning over to Qual a Confessional that didn't FIN, tell the person "You have told me all you wish to. You recognize that any further discoveries in this line will be actionable." 
Written into published form by 
4th Mate Flag 
for 
L. RON HUBBARD FOUNDER 
Reissued as a BTB by 
Training & Services Bureau 
Authorized by AVU 
for the 
BOARDS OF DIRECTORS of the 
CHURCHES OF SCIENTOLOGY 
BDCS:LRH:AH:RT:RL:rr:lf Copyright (c) 1970, 1977 by L. Ron Hubbard 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED