A three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals took under submission Monday arguments by the Church of Scientology of California that a July, 1977, search by 130 FBI agents of Scientology headquarters here was illegally conducted. An estimated 90,000 pages of documents were seized by the agents operating under a court-approved search warrant and much of the data was used to obtain criminal indictments against Scientology's top leaders in the United States and Great Britain earlier this year. ...

A former follower of the controversial Church of Scientology has filed suit claiming she was harassed and shamed into contributing more than $7,000 to the church. Saundra Haynes, in a fraud suit filed Thursday by attorney Hiram M. Martin, claimed that she went along with the urgings because she hoped the church's "auditing" procedures would enable her to "go clear," as the church calls it, and "rid her of her deep depressions and suicidal attempts." At one point, she claimed in ...

The U.S. Justice Department, at least for the next month, cannot disseminate to the public or other governmental agencies documents seized by the FBI from the Church of Scientology July 8, 1977, the U.S. 9th Circuit Circuit of Appeals has ruled. The appellate court said materials seized from the Scientology headquarters here can be presented to federal grand juries, but to no one else pending appeal of the court's order. A hearing on the merits of the Scientology suit seeking to ...

[...] 1 The Church of Scientology of California (California Church), a California corporation, appeals from a judgment dismissing its action for libel. The suit is against the Pulitzer Publishing Co., publisher of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch newspaper, and James E. Adams and Elaine Viets, principal authors of the newspaper articles in question.1 The district court dismissed the action against appellees for lack of personal jurisdiction and ruled, alternatively, that the complaint fails to state a claim upon which ...

U.S. Customs Service officials did not violate constitutional guarantees against prior restraint of speech when they detained and reviewed thousands of documents sent to Los Angeles by the Church of Scientology in England two years ago, a three-judge federal panel has ruled. The unanimous opinion written by U.S. Dist. Judge William P. Gray held that a federal statute prohibiting importation into the United States of written material advocating treason, forcible resistance to any federal law or threats to harm or kill ...

"Who would have dreamed that U.S. inteligence agencies would attempt to destroy a religious movement born in America?" By Jeff Dubron In 1950, the book "Dianetics: The Modem Science of Mental Health" by L Ron Hubbard was first published. It was an immediate bestseller. It was also the target of an intelligence campaign covertly carried out by many federal agencies such as the State Department, FBI, CIA, Air Force Intelligence and others. Perhaps we will never know the original reason for ...

The Church of Scientology Wednesday filed a $1 million lawsuit in Los Angeles federal court against Times Mirror and two Times reporters, alleging conspiracy to interfere with civil rights. The lawsuit stems from a series of articles dealing with the Church of Scientology written by reporters Robert Rawitch and Robert Gillette and published earlier this week in The Times. The lawsuit charged that the reporters acted in concert with representatives of the FBI and the Department of Justice to publish ...

The Church of Scientology contends that for more than 20 years it has been the target of a systematic campaign by the United States government, together with "vested-interest pressure groups" such as the medical professions, to "suppress the church's spiritual practice and expansion." The church advances this accusation as the fundamental rationale for its aggressive policies of defense-by-attack against individual critics, private groups and government agencies perceived as "harassing" Scientology. Church spokesmen, moreover, expand upon the allegation of systematic persecution to ...

On June 25, 1971, a young Colorado woman named Susan Meister died in an apparent suicide aboard the Apollo, the 3,280-ton flagship of the Church of Scientology and for nearly a decade the personal yacht of the church's founder, L. Ron Hubbard. In mid-July that year, according to State Department correspondence obtained by The Times, Miss Meister's father traveled from Colorado to the Moroccan port of Safi, 125 miles south of Casablanca, where the Apollo was then moored, to inquire into ...

"If anyone is getting industrious trying to enturbulate (sic) or stop Scientology or its activities, I can make Captain Bligh look like a Sunday-school teacher. There is probably no limit on what I would do to safeguard Man's only road to freedom against persons who . . . seek to stop Scientology or hurt Scientologists." — L. Ron Hubbard, Aug. 15, 1967 It was not the first time that private investigator Eual R. Harrow had interviewed jurors following a verdict, but ...

"The DEFENSE of anything is untenable. The only way to defend anything is to ATTACK, and if you ever forget that, then you will lose every battle you are engaged in, whether it is in terms of personal conversations, public debate, or a court of law." — L. Ron Hubbard For more than a decade, the worldwide Church of Scientology, one of the burgeoning new religions of the 1960s and '70s, has conducted sophisticated intelligence and propaganda operations on an international ...

[Picture / Caption: FOUNDER — L. Ron Hubbard bust in lobby of Scientology administrative building.] Like the Romanesque bronze busts of L. Ron Hubbard displayed in churches of Scientology, the official biographies of Scientology's founder seem larger than life. Born in Tilden, Neb., on March 13, 1911, to Navy Comdr. Harry Ross Hubbard and his wife, Dora May, he is said to have spent his early childhood on the Montana cattle ranch of his maternal grandfather, "where long days were spent ...

On May 14, 1951, Lafayette Ronald Hubbard wrote to the U.S. attorney general to plead for help in fending off a Communist conspiracy, dedicated, he averred, to destroying him. "When, when, when," he wrote, "will we have a roundup?" Rambling through seven single-spaced typewritten pages, the letter was, to all appearances, the heartfelt cry of a troubled man. A successful science fiction writer in the 1940s, L. Ron Hubbard, as he signed himself, had gone on to bigger things. ...

In the fall of 1971, author Paulette Cooper came out with a book called "The Scandal of Scientology" and, then, according to her lawyers, friends, family and lawyers, the following things happened to her: She received repeated telephone calls from anonymous people who threatened to kill her. Letters were posted on her neighbors' doors telling them she had venereal disease and should be evicted from her apartment. Her publisher was sued and harassed to the point that he withdrew the ...

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 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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

'I just don't believe' federal claims on files sought by church, jurist says Declaring "there is something fishy going on" and he can no longer believe the government, a Los Angeles federal judge Monday ordered three federal agencies to give him documents being withheld from the Church of Scientology. "I'm not going to accept anything the government tells me in this case, said U.S. Dist. Judge Warren J. Ferguson, "because it has gotten to the point I just don't believe them." ...

The first libel suit to come to trial over a 1971 book, "The Scandal of Scientology," was interrupted this week in Los Angeles Superior Court while Scientologists discussed the settlement of seven suits filed about the book [...]

LAS VEGAS (AP) — Mystery continued to shroud the death of Geoffrey Hubbard, the son of Church of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, as officials here asked Tuesday for a delay in the release of the cause of death. Dr. G. Sheldon Green, chief Clark County medical examiner, asked for the delay so he could consult with outside pathologists. Young Hubbard, 22, of Clearwater, Fla., was found unconscious in his car near McCarran International Airport on Oct. 28. Because he carried ...

The 22-year-old son of Church of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard was cremated in Las Vegas at the request of his family. Nevada officials said the remains would be brought to Los Angeles, where the church has its main headquarters. Geoffrey Hubbard of Clearwater, Fla., died Nov. 12 at Southern Nevada Memorial Hospital in Las Vegas. The cause of his death is still a mystery; he was found in a semicomatose condition in Las Vegas Oct. 28 and died before being ...