Arnaldo Lerma, the Arlington man who took on the Church of Scientology by putting its texts on the Internet, won a partial victory yesterday when a federal judge in Alexandria ordered that the church return 58 computer disks that it seized from him. U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema also verbally slapped Scientology lawyers, saying their handling of Lerma's files went far beyond what she had authorized as part of a suit alleging copyright and trade secrecy violations. "This case is ...

It was 9:30 and Arnie Lerma was lounging in his living room in Arlington, drinking his Saturday morning coffee, hanging. Suddenly, a knock at the door — who could it be at this hour? — and boom, before he could force anything out of his mouth, they were pouring into his house: federal marshals, lawyers, computer technicians, cameramen. They stayed for three hours last Saturday. They inventoried and confiscated everything Lerma cherished: his computer, every disk in the place, his client ...

Perturbations, pleasures and predicaments on the information superhighway: The controversial Church of Scientology is not making any new friends on the Internet. In recent weeks, attorneys for the church have threatened legal action against people who they say post church documents in the alt.religion.scientology discussion group. Now the church wants to shut down the alt.religion.scientology newsgroup entirely, claiming its top-secret "scriptures" are being revealed, and its copyrights and trade secrets violated. "We are trying to deal with an anarchy created by ...

Why did Lisa Marie Presley and Michael Jackson get married? Love, if you believe her press release, the one pledging to "dedicate my life to being his wife." Or, goes the speculation from Hollywood, Jackson is rehabbing his image and simultaneously consummating the ultimate entertainment empire merger. But another possibility is circulating among the conspiracy-minded former members of the Church of Scientology. It's an astounding theory – that the church itself helped arrange the Presley-Jackson union – but these defectors say ...

It is not so unusual to buy silence. It's what you have to pay that is sometimes unusual. Sometimes, it is simply a threat of harm. Sometimes, it is money. And, sometimes, it is both. In 1981, when Marjery Wakefield was working as a waitress in Madison, three people showed up at her apartment to dissuade her from filing a lawsuit against the Church of Scientology. They stayed for three days and gave her $16,000, which she used to pay back ...

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled Monday that taxpayers can't deduct the cost of Church of Scientology courses and counseling. In Clearwater, where the church has its headquarters and is locked in legal battles with the city and the Pinellas County Property Appraiser, local officials were encouraged by the ruling. The 5-2 ruling written by Justice Thurgood Marshall said that money paid to the church by Scientologists for training and a form of counseling called "auditing" are more like fees for ...

Eldridge Broussard Jr.'s face screwed into a grimace of such anger and pain that the unflappable Oprah Winfrey seemed unnerved. It hurts to be branded "the new Jimmy Jones" by a society eager to condemn what it doesn't understand, the founder of the Ecclesia Athletic Assn. lamented on TV just a few days after his 8-year-old daughter had been beaten to death, apparently by Ecclesia members. At issue were complex questions of whether the group he had formed to instill discipline ...

* Fixed fees paid by member of Church of Scientology for auditing and training rituals are deductible as charitable contributions. (CA 2; Miner, J.; Foley v. Commissioner, No. 86-4026, 4/19/88; Newman, J., dissents) Facts: As members of the Church of Scientology, the taxpayers participate in the rituals of auditing and training, which are the central religious experiences of Scientology. Auditing is a one-to-one encounter between the participant and a church staff member, called an auditor, designed to raise the spiritual awareness ...

A History of Controversy As anyone who follows the news knows, Scientology has been involved in a series of controversial cases, many of them involving vengeful church actions against its critics. (More on this below.) Although the church always paints itself as the victim, its critics suggest that Scientology hasn't been persecuted from the outside, but rather is the victim of warped and misplaced priorities inside the church. The critics — and there are more than the church is willing to ...

The Government's War Against SCIENTOLOGY Scientologists say the church is engaged in "a war for the human spirit" against a global conspiracy, involving psychiatrists, the Rockefeller family, the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol) and the U.S. government (including the FBI, CIA and IRS). According to Ken Hoden, Scientologists feel that although each of these diverse entities have different reasons for attacking the church, their enemies have banded together as one to achieve a common end — "destroying the Church of Scientology." ...

Although Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard is credited with patenting the sect's E-meter, it is arguable whether the renowned author and adventurer actually invented the electronic device. Over the past 34 years, Scientology literature has referred to the E-meter as the "Hubbard Professional Electrometer," and many people have assumed the 73-year-old science-fiction writer actually invented it. However, Hubbard's estranged son—his father's disciple until a family falling out in 1953—recalls that a man named Volney G. Mathison actually invented the elaborate galvonometer ...

The basic premise of the Church of Scientology is that humans can realize their full potential only if they clear away negative memories. The means of doing so were presented by science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard in the best-selling book "Dianencs," which he wrote in 1950. Hubbard argued that by a process of counseling ("auditing"), negative memories ("engrams") could be erased. Auditing involves the use of an E-meter, a sort of lie detector on which, the subject holds two tin ...

Two youngsters were expelled from a private school in Bellevue last week because of a continuing dispute about the real wishes of a 72-year-old man who hasn't been seen in years. The youngsters, brothers Garrett and Allen Dean, aged 6 and 9, must wonder what happened. Despite their good grades and conduct, the boys were kicked out of The Learning Place School, a private institution that follows the educational philosophy of L. Ron Hubbard but invites students of all faiths. Hubbard, ...

The D.C. Police Department is conducting an internal investigation to determine how members of the Church of Scientology, a controversial religious group that has been investigated by law enforcement agencies, were able to set up a course for recruits at the D.C. Police Training Academy, police officials said. The course, taught by church members, was set up without the approval of Chief Maurice T. Turner Jr. and is contrary to the department's procedures regarding outsiders teaching police academy courses, according to ...

Three years ago, somewhere near this dusty little town of watermelon fields and senior citizen trailer parks, a pudgy, prolific science fiction writer named L. Ron Hubbard climbed into a black van and reportedly disappeared from sight. Nobody in Hemet, 80 miles east of Los Angeles, or anywhere else might have cared about the fate of a 71-year-old eccentric with a lust for privacy, except that Hubbard was the founder of one of the word's wealthiest and most controversial new religions. ...

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 ...

Two high-ranking members of the Church of Scientology, in a last minute legal maneuver before their July 7 criminal trial, have asked U.S. District Court Judge Charles R. Richey to remove himself from the case, charging that he is biased against them. One of the defendants, Morrison J. Budlong, said in a sworn statement that he had reviewed tape recorded statements from a deputy U.S. marshal and from Richey's former court reporter, that the church contends, supports their claim that Richey ...

WASHINGTON — Prosecutors said Monday the Church of Scientology's campaign against its enemies included infiltrating law firms and newspapers, including the Washington Post. Federal prosecutors disclosed a number of the church's activities in a 70-page memorandum in which they urged a judge to give eight Scientologists the maximum sentence for their roles in a conspiracy to steal government documents. U.S. District Judge Charles Richey is scheduled to impose sentences Thursday on nine leading church members whom he found guilty last month ...

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 ...

"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 ...

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. ...