It started a little like Watergate. Late one night two years ago, two men made their way to the third floor of the U.S. courthouse in Washington. With stolen keys, they opened the office of assistant U.S. attorney Nathan Dodell and photocopied sheaves of government documents rifled from his files. They repeated the caper a few nights later, but when they showed up at the building again, a suspicious guard called the FBI. The two men, Gerald Wolfe and Michael Meisner, ...

"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 ...

The Church of Scientology, the invention of science fiction writer Ron Hubbard which has caused an unholy uproar around the world in the past, will hold a Canberra inaugural service at Red Hill tomorrow. The Church, established in 1953 by Mr Hubbard after his book 'Dienetics', published in 1950, attracted world-wide interest in the principles of Scientology. More than five million people in 54 countries are understood to have gone through the Scientology processing, a full course of which can cost ...

Eleven high officials and agents of the Church of Scientology, including the wife of founder L. Ron Hubbard, were charged here yesterday in an allegedly widespread conspiracy to plant spies in government agencies, break into government offices, steal official documents and bug government meetings. Much of the evidence outlined against the church's officials in the 28-count criminal indictment appears to be based on the church's own internal memorandums and other documents. The memorandums directed church operatives to "use any method" in ...

The Church of Scientology, in its efforts to investigate and attack its "enemies," kept files on five Washington federal judges, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, other congressmen, Jacqueline Onassis, the Better Business Bureau and the American Medical Association, according to Scientology documents in the possession of federal investigators. The Scientologists' files, summarized in a 525-page inventory filed in court by the federal government, were in many cases marked "Eyes Only," "Top Secret," "Enemy Names" and "Battle Plans." Their contents were coded with ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

'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 controversial Church of Scientology's failure to gain tax-exempt status for $3-million worth of Pinellas County properties is only the latest chapter in a stormy history of legal battles over taxes. And the latest battle, which opened in the county courthouse last week, appears far from over. Scientology spokesmen vow to take their Pinellas tax case to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary. Pinellas officials, for their part, are just as determined to defend their denial of tax-exempt status for the ...

"What is true for you is what you have observed yourself. And when you lose that you have lost everything. Nothing in Dianetics and Scientology is true for you unless you have observed it and it is true according to your observation. That is all. Our aims are a civilization without insanity, without criminals and without war, where the able can prosper and honest beings can have rights and where Man is free to rise to greater heights." L. Ron Hubbard ...

Government intelligence agencies have created and distributed false reports on the Church of Scientology for more than two decades, according to a 20-month study by an investigative panel within the religious group. Citing a documented, 380 page submission to the Church's Board of Directors, the Special Task Force on Religious Defense has charged the government with "malicious interference in the Church's affairs and with violations of its First Amendment rights," according to Kathleen Heard. The materials studied by the task force ...

The mystery began to unfold last fall in sleepy, sun-drenched Clearwater, Fla. The Southern Land Development and Leasing Corp. decided to buy the 270-room Fort Harrison Hotel, a downtown landmark, and a nearby bank building. Southern Land stated that the hotel would stay open, but another spokesman announced that it would become a center for the United Churches of Florida, a new ecumenical outfit that soon won endorsement from twelve local clergymen. When 200 tight-lipped strangers moved into the hotel, rumors ...

A COUPLE OF WEEKS AGO WHEN I landed at Heathrow Airport in London, I wasn't quite sure what was going to take place. I had read some pretty wild tales about the Scientologists, but only a couple of weeks before that I had read some even wilder tales about the British Immigration people and their attitude and actions toward the Scientologists in Omar Garrison's new book titled "The Hidden Story of Scientology." I didn't know for sure that I would be ...

A Superior Court jury Friday awarded $300,000 to L. Gene Allard, 33, a Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., artist, who claimed the Church of Scientology made him a victim of its "fair game" policy. Allard, the church's former bookkeeper in Los Angeles, sued for malicious prosecution after the Scientologists had him arrested in 1969 for allegedly stealing $27,713.90 in Swiss franc notes and its records. The criminal charges against Allard were dismissed Dec. 29, 1969, for lack of evidence. He denied ever ...

The Church of Scientology of Missouri, a branch of a controversial organization promising total spiritual freedom for all followers, opened in 1969 with a six member staff at a small Brentwood office. Today, the church has a staff of 150 and is in the process of moving from rented, two-story quarters at 4225 Lindell Boulevard to an even larger building of its own at 3730 Lindell. For fees that can total $5700, the staff conducts personal enlightenment and improvement courses for ...