"Narconon is the ONLY successful drug rehabilitation program on the planet." L. Ron Hubbard, Founder of Church of Scientology "Narconon was definitely a con. It was bullsh•t. Those guys were forcing guys into Scientology." Narconon graduate St. Cloud Prison, Minnesota [Picture of internal memo: "We are expanding the Scientology drug rehabilitation programs, primarily through NARCONON. During the coming months we plan to get NARCONON programs into many additional prisons, rehabilitation centers and the armed forces. We also have plans to open ...

On September 5, 1980, as U.S. District Court Judge Charles Richey was recuperating from two pulmonary embolisms and exhaustion, lawyers for the Church of Scientology and the Justice Department gathered before Judge Aubrey Robinson, Richey's successor in the two-year-old conspiracy case against 11 members of the Church of Scientology. Judge Richey had already convicted and sentenced nine of the original 11 defendants, but the remaining two, recently extradited from England, were about to go on trial. "Particularly from the standpoint of ...

The faithful inner core serve as thieves, decoys and spies. The shocking story behind one of the most dangerous “religious cults” operating today IN THE late 1940s, pulp writer L. Ron Hubbard declared, “Writing for a penny a word is ridiculous. If a man really wants to make a million, the best way would be to start his own religion.” Hubbard did start his own religion, calling it the “Church of Scientology,” and it has grown into an enterprise today grossing ...

The Church of Scientology is apparently pulling out all the stops in a worldwide effort to block publication of a forthcoming Reader's Digest article critical of the church. Fearful that such an article in an 18-million circulation magazine would be damaging to Scientology, church officials have: * Instituted legal action against Reader's Digest in South Africa and reportedly in West Germany in an effort to block distribution of the may issue in those countries. * Threatened to sue Reader's Digest offices ...

On Dec. 13, former Scientologist LaVenda Van Schaick filed a $200-million class-action lawsuit against the Church of Scientology in Federal Court in Boston, contending that the church falsely promises to improve the lives of its members. Since then, 10 other ex-Scientologists have filed affidavits in support of the suit, giving a glimpse of life within Scientology. The church has filed a motion to dismiss that case. It also sued Mrs. Van Schaick and others, contending that she is "motivated by malice." ...

AFFIDAVIT OF ANNE ROSENBLUM In December, 1972, after my first semester of college (in the state of Washington), I was introduced to Scientology when another Scientologist encouraged me to take a "Personality Test" at the Portland "Org". I was given a poor evaluation on the test. I later learned, however, that it is a customary practice of the "Church" to give one a poor evaluation on the test in order to induce the person into Scientology processing. The Scientologists also told ...

DAVID BERESFORD investigates the activities of Scientology's secret intelligence unit whose director is based in Britain IT WAS a familiar beginning to an American public scandal: soon after 7 pm on the night of June 11, 1976, two burglars were caught in the US Court House in Washington DC. In the Watergate tradition frantic attempts were made to localise responsibility. But the cover-up finally cracked and disclosures followed which were to lead, not to the top of the Republican Party, but ...

Freelance writer Paulette Cooper is a finely honed, long-haired accumulation of nervous energy. She was dressed with a New Yorker flair that seemed out of context in the small windowless room in the grey dignity of the U. S. District Court building in Washington.

Toronto ON — L. Ron Hubbard, the former science fiction writer who publicly resigned in 1966 from leadership of the Church of Scientology, continued to give orders to its leaders into 1977, a Washington court has been told. Evidence obtained in 1977 in raids on U. S. offices of the cult by the Federal Bureau of Investigation revealed there was a detailed program to cover up Mr. Hubbard's involvement in the leadership of Scientology. Called Operation Bulldozer Leak, it was part ...

Washington: Court documents show the Church of Scientology put together a scheme to blackmail the Internal Revenue Service into doing a favorable tax audit on the church. According to documents released Friday, the church stole secret IRS files on famous Americans and.planned to threaten to release them unless the audit was favorable. There was no indication any blackmail threat against any individual was made. The documents were among thousands of files seized from the church in 1977, and ordered released Friday ...

The Church of Scientology plotted to purchase or otherwise "control" the Clearwater Sun by attempting to cut the paper's advertising revenue, discredit reporters and editors and rally readers against it, according to sect documents released Friday.

WASHINGTON — Thousands of top-secret Church of Scientology documents now in the hands of the federal government will be used in widespread probes of the sect by the Internal Revenue Service, prosecutors in several states and grand juries In Tampa and New York, a top U.S. prosecutor said Wednesday. Scientology attorneys have filed four separate appeals requesting the return of the documents, which were the basis of recent conspiracy convictions of nine high-ranking church officials. Today, government attorneys are expected 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 ...

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 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 ...

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, 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 ...

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 — Pinellas Pasco State Atty. James T. Russell disclosed Tuesday that last month his office investigated an alleged plot to murder Clearwater Mayor Gabriel Cazares. Russell said his office received a report on June 10 of an alleged death threat against Cazares. Rut Russell refused to reveal details because he said the case has not been closed. "YOU'RE NOW talking about an investigation that my office is or was doing," Russell said. "It's an open file in our office . ...

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 ...