"Never treat a war like a skirmish. Treat all skirmishes like wars." —L. Ron Hubbard The Church of Scientology does not turn the other cheek. Ministers mingle with private detectives. "Sacred scriptures" counsel the virtues of combativeness. Parishioners double as paralegals for litigious church attorneys. Consider the passage that a prominent Scientology minister selected from the religion's scriptures, authored by the late L. Ron Hubbard, to inspire the faithful during a gala church event. "People attack Scientology," the minister quoted Hubbard ...

A festering dispute between a nontraditional religion and an anti-cult group has escalated to the point where each camp is accusing the other of using Nazilike tactics. Chances of a truce between the Church of Scientology and the Cult Awareness Network appear slim. Each denies the other's allegations of employing techniques that fleece victims of money and inflict psychological damage. The two have been at odds for at least a decade. The faceoff heated up in a recent solicitation letter from ...

[This is a reprint of an article published on Dec. 22, 1988 in the St. Petersburg Times.]

A Pinellas judge presiding over a Scientology tax dispute has removed himself from the case because of a newspaper report that cited a real estate transaction between the judge and the Church of Scientology. The St. Petersburg Times reported in December that Circuit Judge Howard P. Rives, who was presiding over a lawsuit concerning taxes on Scientology properties, sold one of those properties to the church in 1979. Rives said in December that there was no conflict in his role because ...

NEWKIRK, OK – A proposed drug treatment and rehabilitation center which could be in operation on Indian land at the former Chilocco Indian School north of Newkirk by June 15th may be part of a notorious religious cult. Narconon was approved for a 75-bed facility by the State Health Planning Commission in January of this year as part of The Chilocco Development Authority. The projected cost is $400,000 for renovation and the five Indian tribes involved are projected to receive $16,000,000 ...

The year was 1976, one year after the Church of Scientology had secretly moved its spiritual headquarters to Clearwater, and Mayor Gabe Cazares was complaining too loudly for the church's comfort. So, as documents seized by the FBI would later show, the church's Clearwater office devised a scheme to "ruin Mayor Gabriel Cazares' political career by spreading scandal about his sex life." Church officials came up with ways to get Cazares' school records, birth records, anything — from checking with the ...

A Los Angles Superior Court judge Friday dismissed a $1-billion class-action lawsuit filed by former members of the Church of Scientology accusing its late founder of stealing money from the organization and threatening critics. Judge Barnet Cooperman ruled that the plaintiffs failed to successfully back up their allegations of fraud and breach of fiduciary responsibility. The suit was filed in January, 1987, by six former Scientologists and the organization Freedom for All in Religion, which claims to represent as many as ...

Seventy-four-year-old Catherine, recently widowed, joined a religious group at a neighbor's urging in the hope of learning how to prepare her soul for death. Over time, Catherine's daughter Susan noticed that her usually healthy mother was losing weight and was tired and withdrawn. After nine months, Catherine abruptly decided to move to the group's headquarters in a neighboring state. She liquidated all her assets, removed her daughter's name from their joint bank account and withdrew thousands of dollars of her life ...

Description of video is in italics. VO=VOICEOVER shot of Church of Scientology, Los Angeles; apparently group of ex-members VOICEOVER: The Church of Scientology, one of the largest and richest new religious movements, is being sued for a billion dollars by former members for fraud and breach of trust. They regard Scientology as a dangerous cult. group of Scientologists VO: Yet the church goes on expanding, making converts and claiming it is "The Road to Total Freedom". ''"Panorama" opening credits; while music ...

Former members of the Church of Scientology filed a $1-billion class-action lawsuit against the organization Wednesday, accusing its late founder, L. Ron Hubbard, and a cadre of his most trusted aides of plundering church coffers, intimidating critics and breaching the confidentiality of sacred confessional folders. The lawsuit was filed in Los Angeles Superior Court at a time when the church had hoped that its legal wars with its critics had been put largely to rest. Two weeks ago, the organization reached ...

LOS ANGELES (AP) — More than 400 current and former Scientologists filed a $1 billion suit against the church Wednesday, alleging efforts to compromise or pay off two Florida judges and siphon $100 million to foreign bank accounts. The class action filed by attorney Lawrence Levy contends Church officials or their representatives committed fraud and breached fiduciary duties. It says information obtained during purportedly confidential "auditing" sessions with a lie detector-like device is used "for purposes of blackmail and extortion." The ...

Four years ago, two men walked into a New York bank and tried to cash a $2 million check drawn on the Bank of New England account of L. Ron Hubbard, the head of the Church of Scientology. The bank refused to cash the check after it could not verify the signature. Since then, the church has been on the warpath to find out who forged their now-dead founder's check. It offered a $100,000 reward, bought full-page advertisements in the country's ...

Breach of Faith? One particular church policy has been partially at the root of the fear and anger: Scientology's alleged use of personal information in members' "confidential" Pre-Clear (PC) folders information confessed during auditing. There is substantial evidence that this information has been culled, perhaps to pressure members either into staying in the church or into not criticizing the church if they do leave. Although Hoden denies such practices ("In all my years here, I have never known of any such ...

Why a Portland jury awarded $39 million in damages against one of the world's most profitable cults. ONE SUNNY AFTERNOON last week, an elderly man, who looked as though he had probably spent the past few nights sleeping under the stars, stood in the southeast corner of Lownsdale Square in downtown Portland gazing in bewilderment at the scene before him. Several hundred people, many wearing T-shirts proclaiming something about a crusade for religious freedom, gathered around a large stage in the ...

"Corrupt, sinister and dangerous" were the words used to describe the Church of Scientology in a judgment given by Mr Justice Latey this summer. He also referred to it as "immoral and socially obnoxious". But who controls the Church now? A major Sunday Times Magazine investigation into the activities of the cult in America and Britain has uncovered a disturbing and extraordinary story — the takeover of the organisation by a small band of youthful fanatics following the disappearance of the ...

Is it the beginning of the end for the Church of Scientology? In the past senior church officials have refused to discuss the inner workings of L. Ron Hubbard's empire, but according to a recent story in the New York Times, disillusionment with Hubbard and a power struggle within the organization have prompted several church officials to meet with police investigators and testify against Scientology in a number of court cases. At a trial that just ended in Los Angeles County ...

Several former high-ranking Church of Scientology officials have provided state, federal and municipal law enforcement investigators with detailed information regarding the Clearwater-based sect's alleged criminal activities in the Tampa Bay area, the Clearwater Sun has learned. Although the same testimony provided to investigators in Clearwater has furthered large-scale criminal investigations in Canada and resulted in court rulings against the sect in California, no similar action has been implemented in the Clearwater area, a seven-month Sun inquiry has determined. And Gerald Armstrong, ...

Charges by church defectors that Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard diverted more than $100 million in church funds to foreign bank accounts was described Wednesday as "garbage" by the sect's president. "I call it hyperspace junk writing," said Heber Jentzsch, president of the Church of Scientology International. The former senior church officials, who have testified about the church's inner workings in Los Angeles court, told the New York Times that Hubbard directed them to establish shell corporations to channel much of ...

Former officials of the Church of Scientology say they helped L. Ron Hubbard, the reclusive founder of the cult-like organization, to secretly divert more than $100 million from the church into foreign bank accounts he controlled. The organization, long a subject of investigations in this country, Britain, France, Australia, South Africa, Spain and elsewhere, has maintained that Mr. Hubbard cut his ties to it in the mid-1970's, that he has received only a token consulting fee of $35,000 annually since then ...

The Church of Scientology faces mounting legal pressure in courts worldwide to explain its actions, policies, beliefs and inner workings. In the United States, Canada and Europe, Scientology is under ever-increasing scrutiny by law enforcement agencies, courts and even governments. And a ruling handed down last week by it Los Angeles Superior Court judge may complicate the legal proceedings involving the Clearwater-based sect. Judge Paul G. Breckenridge stated in an intended ruling Thursday that Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard is the ...

"We told you so." That's the first reaction any longstanding anti-Scientologist will probably have when reading the brilliant and thundering decision announced Thursday by Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Paul G. Breckenridge. In terms that will surely widen the existing cracks in Scientology's foundations, Judge Breckenridge said, "The organization (Scientology) clearly is schizophrenic and paranoid, and this bizarre combination seems to be a reflection of its founder ...." Breckenridge ruled that a former sect archivist, Gerald Armstrong was justified in taking ...

Scientology has been in the limelight over the years: * ln 1979, nine church members — including founder L. Ron Hubbard's wife, Mary Sue — were convicted of bugging, burglarizing and infiltrating government agencies, including the Internal Revenue Service. In addition, church and FBI files show its members have executed, with mixed success, elaborate plots to entrap and discredit reporters and public officials. * Several documents came to light in the 1970s that revealed a church policy of attacking its "enemies." ...

Church says it's stronger now, while some ex-leaders say end is inevitable First of two parts A hot wind blows through the masts of the $565,000 clipper ship "docked" on a rocky plateau in the middle of a Southern California desert. Down the hill, a car nears a gate guarded by young men in brown shirts. As if with the snap of unseen fingers, members of the elite Sea Org pour from buildings around the ship with cameras in hand, furiously ...

The U.S. Attorney's Office in Tampa is investigating a suspected 1982 extortion plot by the Church of Scientology to entrap and compromise a Tampa federal judge who presided over a suit against the Clearwater-based sect, a Clearwater Sun investigation has revealed. The purported plot, which involved an attempt to lure U.S. District Judge Ben Krentzman aboard a boat off the Pinellas Suncoast where prostitutes and drugs were to be used to put the judge in a compromising position, was authorized personally ...

Robert Dardano and Warren Friske were trusted members of the Boston mission of the Church of Scientology in the mid-1970s when they say they were recruited to join a group of other church members intent on carrying out "dirty tricks" against critics and others deemed enemies of the church in this area. The activities of the group included break-ins, the theft of documents, harassment and misrepresentation, according to sworn testimony by Dardano in Florida last year and affidavits from him and ...