TOKYO — Four California activists are investigating charges of religious persecution against Aum Supreme Truth, the sect suspected in a poison gas attack against subway riders here in March. In an interview Friday, Los Angeles lawyer Barry Fisher said he and the others decided to visit after hearing that authorities had conducted mass arrests of Supreme Truth members, that sect children had been removed from their families and that officials were making allegations of mind control against the group. These actions, ...

Toronto — Allstate Insurance Co. of Canada appears to have flunked its free personality test last month after word got out that its U.S. parent put managers through training sessions based on doctrines of Scientology, the California-based church with a keen sense of cash flow. Question: Was such training done in Canada too? Allstate's answer: No. Correct answer: Yes. At least a little. Scientology is the brainchild of the late L. Ron Hubbard, a paperback novelist who in 1950 published a ...

Thousands of workers participated in seminars that taught them to disregard ethics in the quest for productivity Allstate Corp. acknowledged Wednesday that it hired a consultant who taught "unacceptable" Church of Scientology management principles to the insurance company's agents and supervisors between 1988 and 1992. The company denied allegations some workers were hounded, intimidated and wrongfully fired as a result of the training program. Scientology is a religious-scientific movement founded in the 1950s by the late author L. Ron Hubbard that ...

"We believe that all men have inalienable rights to think freely, to talk freely, to write freely their own opinions and to counter or utter or write upon the opinions of others." — From "The Creed of the Church of Scientology" IT WAS A GLORIOUS DAY FOR A PICNIC, WARM, CLEAR and bright. Even that old cynic, Sunset Boulevard, looked young and innocent under the sun's radiant benevolence. All around the parking lot of the Church of Scientology's, "Big Blue" headquarters, ...

SAN JOSE - A Glendale critic of the Church of Scientology lost a round in federal court Tuesday as a judge declined to lift an order barring him from transmitting copyrighted religious texts onto the Internet. The order remains in effect against Dennis L. Erlich, a former church member. But U. S. District Judge Ronald M. Whyte rejected arguments by church lawyers and lifted restraining orders against a North Hollywood computer bulletin board operator and a San Jose-based Internet access supplier, ...

Something happened recently on the Internet that no doubt sent chills down an awful lot of spines. A government used its power to breach anon.penet.fi. Before you write this off as another of the arcane tempests that generate so much ire among the get-a-life set, take heed. This one goes to the heart of what the electronic frontier is like, how it is changing and what the future holds for this new medium. Anon.penet.fi is basically a computer in Helsinki, Finland, ...

Glendale: Church representatives with court order remove files allegedly containing copyrighted texts from home of outspoken critic. BYLINE: ALAN ABRAHAMSON and NICHOLAS RICCARDI TIMES STAFF WRITERS GLENDALE – Led by a lawyer brandishing a federal court order and backed up by a pair of off-duty police officers, a handful of Church of Scientology representatives searched a Glendale house Monday and seized hundreds of computer disks and files allegedly containing copyrighted religious texts. In the latest twist to a fractious dispute that ...

It was a strange way to describe an aspect of a theology. But L. Ron Hubbard, the highly successful science-fiction writer who founded the Church of Scientology in the 1950s, had little tolerance for those who challenged his beliefs. And so it was, at one time, that Scientology scripture came to include an unusual litigation clause: "The only way to defend anything is to attack, and if you ever forget that, then you will lose every battle you are ever engaged ...

Courts: Staff members oust founder of Holocaust denial center. They are now entangled in lawsuits and poisonous prose. COSTA MESA — On the sunny autumn morning of the coup d'etat, Willis Carto could be found clinging to the glass doors of his cherished institute like a tough sea barnacle. Swiftly, the mutineers moved to oust Carto, 67, a stubborn and wiry man who had founded and shaped the obscure Institute for Historical Review into a revisionist think tank that critics call ...

[Picture / Caption: RESOLUTION — "I think the judge just wanted to bring an end to this case," says Graham E. Berry, right, with Gordon J. Calhoun.] For years, the Church of Scientology has been synonymous with bitter litigation battles. But the 40-year-old religious organization, long known for its aggressive legal tactics, threw in the towel recently on a federal lawsuit in Los Angeles that it had been waging against two critics. Besides serving as a legal setback, the action in ...

THIS man is working for the Church of Scientology. But you won't find him hovering on a street corner with a smile and a clipboard. He is an American private detective. Ex-Los Angeles police officer Eugene Ingram was sent to Britain to investigate the alleged theft of confidential documents from Saint Hill in East Grinstead, the national headquarters of the cult. Relatives of one leading anti-Scientology campaigner in Sussex have found Mr Ingram on their doorstep. Clergymen who have attacked the ...

A new six-story training and counseling center is planned for Clearwater. WASHINGTON — Hoping to expand to "every city on earth," the Church of Scientology plans to spend $185-million during the next five years to renovate and acquire properties, plus another $112-million on a campaign to spread its message around the world. The Scientologists' spiritual headquarters in Clearwater would get the biggest chunk of construction money over the next few years, the Church of Scientology said in documents filed with the ...

When the IRS granted tax exemptions to the church, it did so mainly on the basis of what Scientology did with its money. WASHINGTON — It might be easier for a camel to walk through the eye of a needle than for the IRS to judge the merits of a religion. So when it comes to considering tax exemptions, the agency sticks to what it knows: money. For the Church of Scientology, which won a series of tax exemptions earlier this ...

No one would ever accuse the Church of Scientology of not being vigilant about its press coverage, especially when it comes to its famous Hollywood members. One of the latest cases in point was the 2,000-word response in Premiere magazine after a recent story about Scientology's ties to the entertainment industry. This was followed by the publication of a 16-page booklet dubbed "Premiere Propaganda." "Premiere's reporter was not interested in writing a fair story on the church. Instead he went out ...

WASHINGTON, Oct. 13 — The Government said today that it had agreed to grant a tax exemption to the Church of Scientology and more than 150 of its related corporations, ending one of the longest-running tax disputes in American history. "This puts an end to what has been an historic war," said Marty Rathbun, president of a Scientology organization that received a tax exemption. "It's like the Palestinians and the Israelis shaking hands." Officials at the Internal Revenue Service and the ...

After decades of feuding, the Internal Revenue Service has granted the Church of Scientology and more than 150 of its corporate entities tax-exempt status, ruling that they are charitable, religious organizations entitled to be free from federal income taxes. Marty Rathbun, president of one of the Scientology organizations that received the tax exemptions, said the government sent 30 exemption letters to Scientology groups earlier this month. All told, the exemptions apply to 153 corporate entities, said Rathbun, who is the president ...

After we ran a 250-word article about the introduction of the Church of Scientology into Russia ("L. Ron's Russia," March/April), our office was inundated by letters, the majority coming from within a ninety-mile radius of our San Francisco offices. Following is a sample of the thoughts expressed in the letters: —– Mother Jones reached its journalistic bottom with "L. Ron's Russia." It appears that you are using propaganda from either Interpol or Eli Lilly as your news. To spread this ...

[Transcription of the meaningful parts of the 1023 form as submitted by the Church of Spiritual Technology to the IRS. For the complete document, see PDFs] [...] Church of Spiritual Technology 419 Larchmont, Suite 162 Los Angeles, CA 90004-3013 Form 1023 [...] [b]Part I, Question 8 – Previous Exemption Application[/b] Church of Spiritual Technology ("CST") filed an application for recognition of its tax exemption under section 501(c)(3) on August 24, 1983. That application was denied by an adverse ruling dated July ...

Your July 26 "Counterpoint" gave space to L.S. Hight, international media coordinator for the "Church" of Scientology, who criticized an excellent Bruin article by Nancy Hsu ("Church Members File Suit Against Professor," May 17) in characteristic Scientology fashion: with a vicious personal attack upon me. Hight's diatribe was filled with lies and misrepresentations from beginning to end. My track record on human rights is far superior to that of Hight, L. Ron Hubbard or any other Scientology official past ...

By Linda Hight Your article "Church Members File Suit Against Professor," May 17, quotes psychiatrist, Louis Jolyon West, at length but is less generous with the quotations from reporter Nancy Hsu's interview with me. West seems to think that free speech means that he is free to break laws and misuse state funds to conduct his personal vendettas. He is wrong. West is a victim of his own prejudices and misconceptions. Substitute "Jews" or "blacks" for "Scientologists" in West's remarks and ...