"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 ...

As a former member of this specious cult myself, I can well appreciate the laughable attempts of Henning Heldt to affect the role of persecuted martyr as he posed wistfully in his clerical collar and ersatz crucifix. (It's not a symbol of Christianity, folks, but an eight-pointed cross that Scientologists use in hopes of appearing legitimate.) Robert S. Napier Bremerton, Wash. —– I have been a Scientologist for five years now. I'm not a crook, I'm not crazy, and I'm ...

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 ...

WASHINGTON (UPI) — Nine members of the Church of Scientology, including the wife of founder L. Ron Hubbard, pleaded innocent today to charges they infiltrated federal agencies and stole government documents. U.S. District Judge George Hart made it clear during the hour-long arraignment that he would reject church attempts to turn their trial into a forum for alledging 28 years of government harassment. "The Church of Scientology is not on trial here and it's not going to be on trial," Hart ...

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, ...

"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. ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

LOS ANGELES, July 6 (AP) — The Government won a major victory in its battle with the Church of Scientology when a judge ruled yesterday that the Federal Bureau of Investigation's seizure of thousands of church documents was legal. Federal District Judge Malcom M. Lucas rejected allegations by church attorneys that the F.B.I. had exceeded the scope of a search warrant in the seizures last July 8. Federal attorneys said that the ruling, unless appealed, cleared the way for the documents ...

Having discovered that there is nothing quite like advertising for keeping an idea alive, the Churches of Scientology in 21 markets will begin on Monday a TV ad campaign for "Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health," a 28-year-old book written by the church's founder, L. Ron Hubbard. Collectively they will be spending about $650,000 during the remainder of the year, on the TV and on radio and magazine advertising, according to George Chelekis, public relations director of the New York ...

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 ...

RON L. Hubbard, the American born founder of the Church of Scientology, who turned Saint Hill Manor, East Grinstead, into the world headquarters of the movement, was sentenced in his absence to four years in prison and fined 35,000 Francs for fraud by the Paris Criminal Court last week.

Toronto ON — Toronto firemen were fighting a fire which broke out in the basement of the Church of Scientology at Avenue Road and Bernard Avenue early this morning. The fire, which firemen described as a two-alarm blaze was still out of control at 1 a.m., an hour after firemen were called. No injuries were reported. Ten fire trucks were sent to the scene. Southbound buses on Avenue Road were rerouted along Bedford Avenue. Mario Greco Jr., 21, the owner of ...

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 Church of Scientology attempts to reform individuals through its counseling and teaching techniques. It also has a large operation dedicated to reforming society. This comes under the heading of traditional religious activism, Scientologists say, but various government agencies say it goes far beyond. In this, the fourth and final segment of a series on Scientology, the Valley News explores the legal and political entanglements of the church. By BRIAN ALEXANDER The "applied religious philosophy" of Scientology has political as ...

Opinions about the Church of Scientology run from hot to cold, and from very hot to very cold. In the third segment of a four-part series on the church, the Valley News samples some of those opinions and tells the stories behind them. An accompanying story describes the experience of a young couple who left the church without bitterness despite some disturbing incidents. By BRIAN ALEXANDER The price is high, and the pressure to buy is heavy, but ...

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 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 ...