A former Scientologist says she lied to get a job with Ontario Provincial Police so she could steal secret documents for her church. Kathy Smith said she joined the Church of Scientology in 1972 and spent nine months in southern England learning church policy. Later, she was recruited by the Guardian's Office, an inner council of the church, to infiltrate the police force, court was told yesterday. Smith was testifying at the trial of five Scientologists and their church on charges ...

A man who left a Catholic seminary to eventually head the Church of Scientology in Canada said he knew church members were infiltrating police and government offices, and his wife was one of them. Emile Gilbert, 44, who now lives with his former wife and her new husband in Fonthill, Ont., testified he studied 5½ years for the priesthood then left to join the Church of Scientology in September, 1968. There he met his wife, Cathy Wilkins, who was infiltrating the ...

A former top Scientologist testified yesterday his intelligence office had copies of Ontario cabinet documents stored in a secret hideaway code-named "The Garden." Emile Gilbert, former executive director of the Church of Scientology of Toronto, told a jury yesterday "The Garden" contained 40 or 50 filing cabinets of intelligence files on Scientology's targets. "We had all kinds of files," Gilbert said, "some from Premier Bill Davis' cabinet meetings." Gilbert also said the agents had amassed so much material dealing with the ...

The jury in the Scientology trial yesterday heard the church's spy network extended far beyond the four government agencies they're charged with infiltrating. The Church of Scientology of Toronto and five Scientologists are standing trial on five counts of criminal breach of trust in connection with "agents" planted in the RCMP, the OPP, Metro Police and the Ontario attorney general's office during the mid-1970s. But yesterday, during his fifth day on the stand, a former top Scientologist admitted their "target list" ...

Church of Scientology intelligence officers in the 1970s were "complete zealots" prepared to use illegal means to attack critics, a former official has testified. "Within Scientology, we were completely indoctrinated and did believe that everything we did was 100 per cent right. Our minds were completely altered," Bryan Levman told an Ontario Court, general division, jury. Testifying in return for immunity from prosecution, Levman said he thought at the time it was justified in having "plants" infiltrate Metro police and other ...

In the summer of 1973, dedicated Scientologist Bryan Levman left the yacht of church founder L. Ron Hubbard with a new title and a mandate he believed allowed him to infiltrate police agencies and steal government files. For three years, Levman oversaw a series of covert intelligence operations as deputy guardian for Canada, aimed at attacking the "enemies" of Scientology, founded by Hubbard in the mid-1950s. Levman left the church in 1976 in some disillusionment — "it didn't deliver what it ...

The jury in the Scientology trial yesterday heard evidence about that group's infamous "Fair Game Law" which authorized attacks on their enemies. Testifying for his third day, Scientology's former Deputy Guardian for Canada, Bryan Levman, said the Fair Game Law and other policies were the basis for a world-wide campaign of spying and theft. The Church of Scientology and five members are on trial for criminal breach of trust in connection with a spy network that planted agents in the RCMP, ...

Church of Scientology "plants" infiltrated Metro police and the Ontario Provincial Police and succeeded in obtaining copies of investigators' files, a trial has been told. A church member also obtained a file from the attorney-general's office by telephoning a central registry, pretending to be a government lawyer and sending a phony secretary to pick it up, witness Bryan Levman testified. "It was considered a big win. Everybody was very happy," Levman testified yesterday. He added that a Scientology plant later obtained ...

The former head of Scientology's Canadian intelligence network has identified one of his underlings as being responsible for "running" agents the church had planted in several police and government agencies. Bryan Levman was testifying yesterday at the criminal trial of the Church of Scientology of Toronto and five Scientologists. Levman said defendant Jacqueline Matz "ran the agents" who got jobs in the mid-1970s with the RCMP, the OPP, Metro Police and the attorney-general's office in order to pass information back to ...

A bewildering array of jargo and termnology characterize the first day of testimony at the trial of the Church of Scientology's Toronto chapter and five of its members on breach of trust charges. The opening witness, Bryan Levrnan, left Mr. Justice James Southey of Ontario Court, general division, confused and frustrated as he tried to explain the organization's complicated management structure. Southey stopped the proceedings several times to ask the crown and the witness to slow down so he could complete ...

The Church of Scientology of Toronto and five adherents are on trial on charges they ran a spy network that infiltrated three police forces and the attorney-general's office. A jury yesterday heard Crown attorney James Stewart outline a spy network that saw members of the church spiriting files out of police and government buildings for copying. The five counts of criminal breach of trust faced by Scientology and the five co-accused stem from activities alleged to have occured from 1974 to ...

The Church of Scientology of Toronto Inc. and five members pleaded not guilty to criminal charges of breach of trust yesterday before a panel of 200 prospective jurors. The charges, Mr. Justice James Southey explained to the panel, arise from allegations Scientologists got jobs with the RCMP, the OPP, the attorney general's office and Metro Police so they "could act as a spy or a plant." These "spies", Southey said, are alleged to have "obtained information for the church and passed ...

Nine years, several sledgehammers and one battering ram later, it was time for a massive celebration at the Church of Scientology's Yonge St. headquarters. Hundreds of jubilant church members, clutching sparklers and blowing noisemakers, spilled on to the sidewalk and cheered yesterday as a rented truck pulled up with a delivery from Ontario Provincial Police headquarters. Inside the truck were more than 2 million church documents seized from Scientology's Toronto offices on March 3, 1983, in the largest police raid in ...

A Church of Scientology minister is suing the provincial government for the right to conduct marriage ceremonies. Andrew Sharman, who was ordained a minister in the Church of Scientology in 1987, says the Ontario government's refusal to authorize him to solemnize marriages is a denial of his religious rights under provincial and federal law. "I don't understand it, my parishioners don't understand it and my church doesn't understand it," Sharman, 42, said yesterday. "I am an ordained minister and under the ...

The director of public affairs for the Church of Scientology in Western Canada denied yesterday it misled about 60 Winnipeg teenagers, hired to raise funds for a drug rehabilitation program linked to the church. "I just think it's very much a tempest in a teapot. This (project) employed a lot of kids," Robbie Hepburn, who flew in to Winnipeg from British Columbia, said. "Yes, there's a connection, but it's not some kind of covert or bad connection." Just because Narconon uses ...

Winnipeggers should steer clear of the Church of Scientology and its many organizations, which include a drug rehabilitation program called Narconon, a U.S cult expert said yesterday. "There are far safer programs," Cynthia Kisser, executive director of the Cult Awareness Network, said in an interview from Chicago. "Narconon is more likely to do harm than good." The Sun reported Sunday about 60 Winnipeg teenagers have been hired to sell pepperoni and T-shirts door-to-door to raise money for Narconon. However, a Narconon ...

When Narconon comes to town, the Church of Scientology — and trouble — follows, residents of Newkirk, Okla. warned yesterday. Newkirk civic leaders were threatened and harassed by the controversial church and its private investigators after they opposed a Narconon treatment centre set up on Indian territory near the small, rural town in 1989, Mayor Gary Bilger said. "We had three investigators in our little town of 2,300 off and on for weeks," he said. "My little boy was 11 years ...

In what may be an unprecedented legal manoeuvre, the Church of Scientology of Toronto has offered to make substantial cash donations to community agencies working with the elderly and the poor if criminal charges against it are dropped. The offer was made yesterday in a letter written by the church’s lawyer, Clayton Ruby, and delivered to Ontario Attorney-General Ian Scott’s office. The church is charged with several counts of theft by church members of photocopies of confidential documents from Ontario Government ...

The Church of Scientology has lost the final round in its fight to quash search warrants that allowed some 250,000 documents to be seized in a 1983 raid on their Toronto headquarters. The Supreme Court of Canada yesterday rejected the church's application to challenge an Ontario Court of Appeal ruling that the warrants were legal under the Constitution. Yesterday's decision validated the lower court's finding that groups cannot escape criminal investigation simply by claiming organized religion status. But church president Earl ...

A controversial "purification" regime used by the Church of Scientology to advance members' spiritual enlightenment is also being used by Narconon, a drug and alcohol rehabilitation centre, and is being offered at a Toronto health clinic. The "Purification Rundown" used by Narconon and the Lafayette Health Centre uses large vitamin dosages, exercise and long hours in the sauna to "cleanse" the body of accumulated impurities, according to Narconon officials and the health centre's director. Costs of the treatment offered ...

Nearly three years after the largest police raid in Ontario history, the provincial Government has finally won a guilty plea from a member of the Church of Scientology of Toronto. Nanna Anderson, 39, a former church member, pleaded guilty in Provincial Court yesterday to possession of stolen goods, photocopies of material from the files of the Ontario Medical Association. Judge Lorenzo DiCecco granted Miss Anderson an absolute discharge, which means she will not have a criminal record. The charge carries a ...

The 19 people charged in connection with an investigation of the Church of Scientology of Toronto include employees of the Ontario Provincial Police, Metro Toronto Police, the RCMP and the Ministry of the Attorney-General, according to information the OPP has sworn before a justice of the peace. And the alleged stolen documents the church is charged with possessing include photocopies of files belonging to legal firms, the Canadian Mental Health Association, the Ontario Medical Association, the College of Physicians and Surgeons ...

The Church of Scientology of Toronto will petition the Supreme Court of Ontario Monday asking that a search warrant executed last year be quashed, although the Ontario Provincial Police have already used it to raid the sect's headquarters and seize 14 million documents. Investigators armed with the warrant raided the sect's Toronto headquarters in March 1983 and seized 904 boxes of papers and documents believed to substantiate suspected sect fraud, conspiracy, breaking and entering and theft, according to the warrant ...

The United States Treasury Department's Criminal Investigations Division has mounted an in-depth investigation into the activities of the Clearwater-based Church of Scientology, the Clearwater Sun has learned. In the past several weeks, Treasury agents have traveled across the United States interviewing a number of former Scientologists—including some who held positions of immense power and influence in the worldwide sect prior to their defection, sources said. Spokesmen for the Treasury Department and Internal Revenue Service in Tampa and Los Angeles, citing Department ...

How much evidence do area law enforcement agencies need before launching a full-scale investigation of the Church of Scientology? Apparently the agencies hereabouts are a lot less responsive than they are in Ontario, Canada. The same sworn statements alleging criminal activity on the part of the locally-headquartered sect given to authorities in the Tampa Bay area have prompted action by the Ontario Provincial Police and resulted in the dismissal in California of a civil suit against former Scientology archivist Gerald Armstrong. ...