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 ...

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, ...

Those not-so-saintly Scientologists are in the news again. This time, it appears, our money-making missionaries have been up to their cassocks in — of all things — spying and as a result 11 members of the pay-as-you-learn church have been indicted in Washington on charges of stealing government documents and bugging government offices. Some of the things the reverie reverends are accused of include planting scientology "agents" in the government to find out about its investigations into the church; and of ...

The author of a book critical of Scientologists has filed a $20-million damage suit against the Church of Scientology of New York, Inc., charging it with calculated and reckless plan of harassment during the past five and [?] years. The suit was filed August [?] State Supreme Court in New York by Paulette Cooper, author of "The Scandal of Scientology," published [?] Tower in 1971. According to published reports, Scientologists caused the publisher [?] withdraw the book from circulation. While ...

A group of concerned Calgarians ex-Scientologists and parents of youngsters of the various mind-warping, brainwashing cults such as Hare Krishna and the Unification Church (Moonies), have got together and formed an organization. Its main functions will be to combat such cults, to help parents cope with and understand the situation when their children fall prey to them and, where possible, to rescue the victims and help them get their heads back together. They held their first meeting recently, with 17 people ...

The Church of Scientology is an organization that fervidly shuns investigations. When probed, it attacks the investigators. When criticized, it makes the critics pay. Church attempts to stifle investigations and criticism include lawsuits, harassment, frameups and attempts to have critics jailed, or at least enjoined from talking about Scientology. If there is "a long-term threat" to Scientology, founder L. Ron Hubbard wrote in a confidential memorandum to his staff, "you are to immediately evaluate and originate a black PR campaign to ...

Since its founding by a science fiction writer named L. Ron Hubbard in 1954, Scientology has been among the growth stocks on the self-help market: a quasireligious, quasiscientific cult that has attracted three million U.S. followers (some highly touted celebrities among them) and estimated annual revenues in the hundreds of millions, much of it tax-exempt. Until recently Scientology's only certifiable vice was eccentricity, but within a week a federal grand jury in Washington is expected to hand down a bulging sheaf ...

The church of Scientology held an unusual press reception yesterday to introduce two of its top officials who the church says will be indicted for alleged crimes against the government. Standing around fruit punch, soft drinks, cookies and open-faced sandwiches, church lawyer Philip J. Hirschkop told assembled reporters that the predicted indictments are part of a government effort "to break the back" of the church. Hirschkop said that a total of 12 church members - including Mary Sue Hubbard, wife of ...

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 ...

CLEARWATER — The Church of Scientology has given Pinellas County their records showing how the church spends its money, but those records are being kept confidential under a court protective order. The records were turned over to county attorneys Monday in preparation for a civil trial that begins today to determine whether the church's Clearwater property should be tax-exempt. he property in question in the lawsuit — which deals specifically with 1976 taxes — is the former Fort Harrison Hotel and ...

A long-time member of the Church of Scientology says she was driven out of her job with the Defense Communications Agency (DCA) because of membership in the controversial church. Emylee Lynne Miller in an affidavit prepared for the church, said U.S. Attorney Paul Figley and DCA counsel Richard Whalen "intimidated" her and Interrogated her "under considerable pressure . . ." The Miller case arose after the DCA denied the church access to information in its files The Church of Scientology has ...

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, ...

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 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 (AP) — Michael Meisner, disillusioned and frightened by the religion he once embraced, holds the key to FBI allegations that the Church of Scientology carried out a secret spy plot against the government. Meisner, who remains in protective custody under an assumed name, is being guarded around the clock because he and federal officials fear for his safety. Based largely on Meisner's statements to federal investigators, the FBI obtained a search warrant and raided Scientology church offices in Washington and ...

The Church of Scientology has an effective way of dealing with those who "seek to destroy" it. In this, the third of a series Bob McKee examines some of its methods. There have been dissensions in every church that ever existed but few, if any, have resorted to as drastic a method in dealing with its heretics, as has the Church of Scientology. Not since the Inquisition has a church pursued so severe and uncompromising a stand in rooting out all ...

'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." ...

Telling it briefly Interpol, which claims to be merely a clearing-house for information passed among police agencies in various countries, has been accused of releasing false information about Americans to foreign governments. A bill has been introduced in the state legislature to ban police cooperation with Interpol. AUSTIN - Interpol, that international police force whose crime-fighting exploits usually happen only in detective novels, has been getting a black eye. Although self-described as a private agency only to channel information among ...