I first learned about the "Church" of Scientology in 1995, when, in an effort to silence its critics, it committed a number of assaults against free speech. A lawyer working for Scientology attempted to delete a Usenet newsgroup where the secrets of Scientology were being discussed. Four critics of the "church" had their houses raided and their computers and other property confiscated for the crime of quoting Scientology texts on the Internet. Numerous other critics have been sued or threatened with lawsuits, some for posting a mere six lines of "secret" Scientology scriptures.

The more I learned about Scientology, the less I liked it. From my reading of Scientology's own publications, witnessing their actions both on and off the Internet, and from my own experiences with Scientology's lawyers and members of its Office of Special Affairs, it is my opinion that the Church of ScientoloThe gy is a dangerous cult which attracts adherents through fraudulent promises, abuses the court system as a bludgeon against its critics, and has committed numerous human rights violations against its own members.

In these Web pages, I hope to present the reasons for that opinion.

But here is the important part: the reactive mind is a concept of Dianetics and Scientology. Preclears are told that they have a reactive mind, and taught how to begin getting rid of it. They only begin "mocking it up" after they learn of its purported existence, often spending thousands of dollars to get rid of a nonexistent thing which they had no reason to believe even existed until they encountered Dianetics and Scientology.

And that is the sad punchline of Scientology: that Scientologists spend years, and often quite a great deal of money, to rid themselves of something which they never had until they joined Scientology.

After only four installments, someone forged a message so that it apparently originated from Keith, casting aspersions on his sexual habits (an action known in Scientology parlance as a dead agent attack). This forged message was posted from the Clearwater point of presence of the largest ISP in Florida. (Perhaps it is only a coincidence that the largest "advanced org" of the Church of Scientology, the Flag Service Org, is located in Clearwater.)

That was enough to convince me that what Keith was doing was a Good Thing; his actions had disturbed people so much that they were willing to undertake illegal activity in order to destroy his credibility.

Compiled from records of the Clearwater Courthouse, files seized from Scientology by the FBI, and archives of the St. Petersburg Times, the Tampa Tribune and the now-defunct Clearwater Sun.

In 1977, FBI agents raided Scientology properties (Fifield Manor and the Cedars Complex in Los Angeles, California) and seized a number of documents. Among these were several pertaining to the Scientology infiltration of Clearwater, Florida, currently the site of one of two Advanced Orgs in the United States (there are only six worldwide) and the planned site for the only location where Scientology's Super Power Processes will be delivered to members.

These Web pages contain transcriptions of some of those documents. Unfortunately, many of them are fragmentary, consisting of only one page of a multipage document. I have attempted to retain, as closely as possible, the formatting and typographical errors in the original documents. Handwritten additions to the originals are indicated by the use of italics.

On March 13th, 1998, Scientology unveiled its plans to flood the World Wide Web (and, more importantly, the search engines which index the Web) with pro-Scientology pages. (A RealAudio recording of the announcement may be found here.)

Yet the "Scientology Web Kit" CD-ROM, which contains the programs to automate the creation of the nearly-identical Scientologists' homepages, contains another program, which users must agree to use. The wording in the contract seems fairly innocuous; users must:

(6) agree to use the specific Internet Filter Program that CSI has provided to you which allows you freedom to view other sites on Dianetics, Scientology or its principals without threat of accessing sites deemed to be using the Marks or Works in an unauthorized fashion or deemed to be improper or discreditable to the Scientology religion;

The filter, however, does more than it claims to. Certainly, it does filter out sites hosted by splinter groups which have broken off from the Church of Scientology and use Scientology materials "in an unauthorized fashion", such as freezone.org. It also blocks sites which are critical of Scientology, such as www.xenu.net. [...]