One hundred ministers, priests and rabbis in the San Diego area Monday presented a petition to a San Diego newspaper, declaring that "spying or deceitfully obtaining membership in a religious organization is unethical" and violates religious freedom. The petition, launched by the Church of Scientology of San Diego, was prompted by a two-part series on Scientology last month in the San Diego Union by reporter Leigh Fenly. Two Scientologists filed a $10,000 invasion-of-privacy suit in San Diego Superior Court Aug. 9, ...

The Church of Scientology attempts to reform individuals through its counseling and teaching techniques. It also has a large operation dedicated to reforming society. This comes under the heading of traditional religious activism, Scientologists say, but various government agencies say it goes far beyond. In this, the fourth and final segment of a series on Scientology, the Valley News explores the legal and political entanglements of the church. By BRIAN ALEXANDER The "applied religious philosophy" of Scientology has political as ...

Opinions about the Church of Scientology run from hot to cold, and from very hot to very cold. In the third segment of a four-part series on the church, the Valley News samples some of those opinions and tells the stories behind them. An accompanying story describes the experience of a young couple who left the church without bitterness despite some disturbing incidents. By BRIAN ALEXANDER The price is high, and the pressure to buy is heavy, but ...

The Church of Scientology offers a free personality evaluation to persons interested in its counseling services. Valley News staff writer Brian Alexander took the test at the Sherman Oaks Scientology center, posing as a college student and using an assumed name. As the second segment of a four-part series on the church, he tells what happened. —– The Church of Scientology's free personality test is like a warm handshake, but the grip is too tight. The counselor who evaluates ...

The Church of Scientology offers a free personality evaluation to persons interested in its counseling services. Valley News staff writer Brian Alexander took the test at the Sherman Oaks Scientology center, posing as a college student and using an assumed name. As the second segment of a four-part series on the church, he tells what happened. —– The Church of Scientology's free personality test is like a warm handshake, but the grip is too tight. The counselor who evaluates ...

The controversial Church of Scientology has planted an unspecified number of its members within the FBI in an effort to leak information to the church, Justice Department attorneys charged in Los Angeles federal court Thursday. Asst. U.S. Atty. Richard Stilz said the FBI learned of the alleged infiltration by church members while reviewing some of the more than 23,000 documents seized in raids on two church locations in Los Angeles July 8. A federal judge in Washington, D.C., ruled that a ...

A small army of FBI agents played another game of gangbusters last month with the Church of Scientology. By apparent actual count, 134 agents burst into three church offices in Washington and California. They hauled away tons of stuff. Now church leaders are fighting back. Speaking simply as a tax-payer, I would say hooray for these scrappy reverends. They have sued the FBI, and they have just published a large book of documents having to do with the government's long campaign ...

SAN DIEGO — Two Church of Scientology members Thursday sued the San Diego Union for more than $10,000, alleging two articles that have not yet been published were an invasion of privacy. Union Acting Editor Peter Kaye described the lawsuit as "harassment aimed at preventing the paper from printing the stories." He said church leaders had offered to try to stop the lawsuit if the newspaper would kill the articles. The civil suit was filed in San Diego Superior Court by ...

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The federal government won a major victory in its battle with the Church of Scientology when a judge ruled the FBI's seizure of thousands of church documents was legal. U.S. District Judge Malcolm M. Lucas rejected claims by church attorneys that the FBI exceeded the scope of a search warrant during the seizures last July 8. Federal attorneys said Wednesday's ruling, unless appealed, cleared the way for the documents to be presented to a federal grand jury ...

Ruled against by the Supreme Court, thousands of local members of the Church of Scientology took to the streets in protest and confronted agents of the federal government in an attempt to "educate the public" about alleged harassment of the church. Last week's events were triggered by the Supreme Court's decision to uphold a Washington, D.C. appellate court decision that the search warrant used by the FBI in last July's raids on Washington and Hollywood church offices was valid. The court's ...

The Church of Scientology won a major victory Wednesday when a Washington, D.C., federal judge ruled that an FBI raid July 8 on the church's headquarters there was based on an illegally broad search warrant. U.S. Dist. Judge William B. Bryant ordered the FBI to return all those documents seized in the Washington raid, but then stayed his order for 10 days to give the Justice Department an opportunity to appeal his ruling. In previous hearings and again Wednesday, Bryant expressed ...

The Church of Scientology, founded 23 years ago by a science-fiction writer, does not believe in turning the other cheek. In a key church exercise called ''auditing," members are taught, for a handsome fee, to confront long-forgotten traumas—sometimes even from previous incarnations—and then to scourge these so-called "engrams" that have been troubling their subconscious. The church is equally assertive toward outside critics. Scientologists have filed scores of lawsuits against skeptical journalists, dissident former members and Government agencies, which have long suspected ...

The two-story brick building at N. Ballenger Hwy. and Sloan St. looks as if it should house an insurance agency or doctor's office. It is a well-built, well-kept structure. Inside, quality furniture and a quiet, professional greeting welcome the visitor. But this building houses a center related to a church that is under fire from federal agencies. Early this month, the FBI used crowbars and sledgehammers to enter offices of the Church of Scientology in Hollywood and Washington, D.C. Agents were ...

CLEARWATER — Pinellas Pasco State Atty. James T. Russell disclosed Tuesday that last month his office investigated an alleged plot to murder Clearwater Mayor Gabriel Cazares. Russell said his office received a report on June 10 of an alleged death threat against Cazares. Rut Russell refused to reveal details because he said the case has not been closed. "YOU'RE NOW talking about an investigation that my office is or was doing," Russell said. "It's an open file in our office . ...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal officials say some parts of the government are remarkably easy targets for outside spies such as the Scientologists allegedly planted in government jobs to steal confidential files. "If they're qualified for a job and there's no arrest record, they can sort of swoop right in," said Justice Department personnel officer. Take the case of Gerald Wolfe. According to the FBI, the Church of Scientology planted Wolfe in a clerical job at the Internal Revenue Service so he ...

Church of Scientology offices in Hollywood and Washington, D.C., were raided Friday by scores of FBI agents searching for more than 150 documents stolen from the U.S. Courthouse in Washington in a series of burglaries last year. The dawn raids at three locations in the two cities netted an unknown quantity of the allegedly stolen documents, informed sources said. Using power saws, crowbars and boltcutters to knock down doors and cut open cabinets, FBI agents executed search warrants based primarily on ...

WASHINGTON — An obscure church group which had tax problems with the federal government successfully infiltrated and bugged the Internal Revenue Service, stealing hundreds of confidential documents, the Justice Department admitted yesterday. FBI agents uncovered the documents in simultaneous raids on Church of Scientology offices in Los Angeles and Washington after obtaining a search warrant. The affidavit for the warrant contended that the church, established in the early 1950s by L. Ron Hubbard, launched an "all out attack" on the IRS ...

FBI agents raided Church of Scientology headquarters in Hollywood and Washington at dawn yesterday. They seized some of the 150 documents allegedly stolen from the U.S. Courthouse in Washington in a series of burglaries last year. The simultaneous raids were conducted on the basis of information provided to the FBI by a onetime high-level official of the church who has admitted taking part in the burglaries in May and June, 1976. An FBI affidavit accompanying the search warrants states that the ...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Michael Meisner, disillusioned and frightened by the religion he once embraced, holds the key to FBI allegations that the Church of Scientology carried out a secret spy plot against the government. Meisner, who remains in protective custody under an assumed name, is being guarded around the clock because he and federal officials fear for his safety. Based largely on Meisner's statements to federal investigators, the FBI obtained a search warrant and raided Scientology church offices in Washington and ...

In the last of a series on the Church of Scientology Bob McKee examines the aims and future [?] of the Church. "Gungho groups are the first Scientology attempts to build a world government. They are a foothold in the community by which to get eventually to govern. What is done in the Gungho Group is going to influence what the community thinks about Scientology." These were the opening remarks made by a former Scientologist called Ron McCann in a talk ...

Thirteen years after the Victorian Government banned Scientology - branding its founder Lafayette Ron Hubbard a "fraud" - the Church of Scientology is planning a special "commemoration." Melbourne has been chosen for the 1978 international conference on Scientology - the first held in Australia. Mr. David Gaiman, world spokesman for the movement, said the choice was "fitting." He said: "There's a certain dramatic licence in holding the conference in Melbourne. It would mark the end of a cycle." Scientologists, whose annual ...

The Church of Scientology has an effective way of dealing with those who "seek to destroy" it. In this, the third of a series Bob McKee examines some of its methods. There have been dissensions in every church that ever existed but few, if any, have resorted to as drastic a method in dealing with its heretics, as has the Church of Scientology. Not since the Inquisition has a church pursued so severe and uncompromising a stand in rooting out all ...

A Congressional Subcommittee has been given the names of South American Interpol officials who are using their position to traffic in cocaine and been asked to curtail U.S. relations with the private, French-based police association. The information that Interpol officials have been Involved in drug trafficking came as the result of a 7 month, 7 nation investigation by Vaughn Young, Research Director of the Church of Scientology's National Commission on Law Enforcement and Social Justice (NCLE). Young stated in his letter ...