[Picture]'All lies': Cruise is considering a lawsuit Star's fury over claims by Diana author Andrew Morton: • Daughter by Katie Holmes "conceived like Rosemary's Baby" • Nicole Kidman "feared blackmail" over sex tapes made with Scientologists • Scientologists "planted meadown of flowers for Tom and Nicole to run through" • Cruise's next mission is to recruit David Beckham Tom Cruise has become the de-facto second in command of the Church of Scientology, according to a new biography - which makes an ...

Sure, says Mayor Frank Hibbard. It can be a little unsettling sometimes — throngs of Scientologists wandering Clearwater's streets in their blue or khaki trousers and crisp dress shirts. Sometimes, it makes the neighbors a bit uneasy. "When you come to downtown, no one likes being a minority," Mr. Hibbard said. But mostly, folks in this picturesque Gulf Coast city have come to accept that Clearwater is to Scientologists what Salt Lake City is to Mormons, what Mecca is to Muslims. ...

Recently, the Church of Scientology announced that it was purchasing three buildings on East 125th Street for an estimated $10 million. Since 2003, the controversial religion had been running a mostly overlooked storefront on Third Avenue between 122nd and 123rd streets, but the new expansion marks a major move into Harlem. The buildings will be fully renovated and turned into not only a church, but a community center with the usual Scientology programs: job training, literacy and drug rehab. Media reports ...

(CBS) There was never a question who committed the murder of Elli Perkins on March 13, 2003. As correspondent Peter Van Sant reports, within hours, police had a confession. His jeans drenched in blood, 28-year-old Jeremy Perkins had just stabbed his mother 77 times. Weeks later, in a recorded interview, Jeremy told a psychiatrist what was going through his mind. "My mom, I thought she was out to get me," he said. "Like sometimes she’d be totally normal and then she’d ...

Religions have always penalized those who betray the cause. Catholics excommunicate, barring the wayward from church rites. The Amish, Jehovah's Witnesses and some orthodox Jewish sects shun their nonconformists. In the Tampa Bay area's burgeoning Scientology community, members abide by a policy considered by some religious experts extreme: Scientologists declare their outcasts "suppressive persons." Another Scientology policy — called "disconnection" — forbids Scientologists from interacting with a suppressive person. No calls, no letters, no contact. An SP is a pariah. Anyone ...

The faded little downtown area of Clearwater, Florida, has a beauty salon, a pizza parlor and one or two run-down bars, as well as a bunch of withered bungalows and some old storefronts that look as if they haven't seen customers in years. There are few cars and almost no pedestrians. There are, however, buses — a fleet of gleaming white and blue ones that slowly crawl through town, stopping at regular intervals to discharge a small army of tightly organized, ...

COOPER: Well, the other night, we told you about a vault in the New Mexico desert and some mysterious land markings nearby, markings that can only be seen from the sky. Both are part of a compound built by the Church of Scientology. And inside the vault are said to be writings by L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of the church. Many who live in New Mexico are simply unaware the vault even exists and don't – they have never seen ...

Secret Flying Saucer Base Found in New Mexico? Maybe. From the state that gave us Roswell, the epicenter of UFO lore since 1947, comes a report from an Albuquerque TV station about its discovery of strange landscape markings in the remote desert. They're etched in New Mexico's barren northern reaches, resemble crop circles and are recognizable only from a high altitude. Also, they are directly connected to the Church of Scientology. (Cue theremin music.) The church tried to persuade station KRQE ...

Tom cruise calls his religion "extraordinary," but 26-year-old Astra Woodcraft, who grew up in the Church's inner circle, has a different story to tell — about bizarre beliefs, pressured rules and how she finally broke tree to start her life over. On a chilly February evening in 1998, I strode quietly through Los Angeles International Airport, clutching a Virgin Atlantic ticket for London in one hand and a duffel bag stuffed with my clothes in the other. I was drenched, having ...

COOPER: It's no secret that Tom Cruise is a devoted, outspoken member of the Church of Scientology. That has not always been the case. There was a time when the subject of his religion was off limits to reporters and to interviewers. Not so now. Just ask Matt Lauer who got lectured by Cruise weeks ago on what the actors says are the evils of psychiatry. Now, while some are surprised by the chance in Cruise, former Scientologists insist it's really ...

Exposing some of the unsavory claims that Tom Cruise, John Travolta and other celebrities would rather you didn't know about Scientology For nearly 20 years, Tom Cruise has been Hollywood's Golden Boy. The star of Top Gun," "Risky Business" and, most recently, "The War of the Worlds," Cruise has attributed his vast success to being a follower of Scientology, a self-help movement-turned-religion which claims the ability to "clear" its followers from all their problems. It seemed like the perfect match: the ...

Some of the things Chuck Beatty says he's done over the past 30 years sound like scenes from a science fiction movie. Signing over a billion years of his current and future lives to service. Hiding from German news helicopters flying over the California camp where he lived. Spending more than six years doing hard labor under constant monitoring by his peers. But Beatty, 53, now of Carnegie, says he was just one of the many faithful members of the Sea ...

Our summer of Tom Cruise's madness and Katie Holmes' creepy path toward zombie bridedom has been a useful reminder of how truly strange Scientology is. By now those interested in the Cruise-Holmes saga may be passingly familiar with the church's creation myth, in which an evil, intergalactic warlord named Xenu kidnaps billions of alien life forms, chains them near Earth's volcanoes, and blows them up with nuclear weapons. Strange as Scientology's pseudo-theology may be, though, it's not as entertaining as the ...

May 9, 1950: "Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health" by L. Ron Hubbard is published. June 7, 1951: Hubbard Dianetic Research Foundation established in Elizabeth, N.J. May 1952: The Wichita, Kan., Dianetics training center is moved to Phoenix. Hubbard publicly announces the formal establishment of the philosophy of Scientology and the formation of the Hubbard Association of Scientologists International. July 1952: "Scientology: A History of Man" published. February 1954: Church of Scientology founded in Los Angeles. 1956: The church is ...

Controversial organization uses any means to get "apostate" Karlsruhe. Gerry Armstrong has not lost hope. His will to survive has not given out on him either – amazing, with several lawsuits, imminent threats from the antagonistic lawyers at his throat, Gerry is impressed, but he has a clear message, "From Germany I will and must convince the authorities in my Canadian homeland and also in the USA, that Scientology is neither a religion nor even a church, and certainly not a ...

Greg Bashaw's father respected him and trusted him to make wise choices. Even after he chose to devote his life to Scientology. While the shock and grief of his son's suicide were still fresh, Bob Bashaw read back through their decades-long correspondence, looking in particular for references to Scientology. "I wanted to see what there was here I missed," he says. His son Greg had been a member of the Church of Scientology for more than 20 years. During that time ...

Scientology's largest facility in the world, still more than a year from completion, has altered the Clearwater skyline. CLEARWATER – From arched 31-foot windows to the 1,140-seat dining room, there is much that will be grand in the Church of Scientology's new downtown religious center. It will have 889 rooms, 447 windows, 42 bathrooms. A two-story lighted cross will perch atop the highest tower, 150 feet up. The building even has a hefty nickname, "Super Power." In recent weeks, the building's ...

We don't have to tell YOU about L.Ron Hubbard, his book Dianetics, and the religion it spawned—Scientology. In fact, until just recently, most media outlets WOULDN'T tell you about it given Scientology's well-deserved reputation for litigation. Instead, let us tell you about Tory Bezazian. In 1969 Tory hitchhiked from Chicago to L.A. to become a disciple of Dianetics. She invested untold tens of thousands of hours and dollars in it (the annual price tag for a membership in the International Association ...

Monday was supposed to be Day One of the long-delayed wrongful death trial against the Church of Scientology. Instead, it was Day 22 of a hearing to throw out the lawsuit that blames the church for the 1995 death of Scientologist Lisa McPherson. The hearing, which began May 2 and now boasts nearly 300 exhibits, is not nearly over. Judge Susan Schaeffer has set aside most of this week and next for the proceeding. The church is accusing attorney Ken Dandar, ...

Astra Woodcraft, apostate and defector, is the latest enemy of the Church of Scientology. Woodcraft, 22, never really joined this controversial psycho-spiritual movement, at least not as a free-thinking adult. Astra was born into it. Founded in the 1950s by L. Ron Hubbard, a prolific science fiction writer and freelance philosopher, Scientology describes itself as "the only major new religion established in the 20th century," as a bridge to increased awareness and spiritual freedom. Woodcraft, a third-generation Scientologist, paints a different ...