Tony Ortega is a journalist who was formerly the editor of The Village Voice. He's written about Scientology since 1995, and in May 2015 released a book about Scientology's harassment of Paulette Cooper titled 'The Unbreakable Miss Lovely.' He continues to monitor breaking developments in the Scientology world from an undisclosed location in an underground bunker he shares with four cats and one of them wrinkly Shar Pei dogs. Despite his super-secret security protections, you can still reach him pretty easily by sending him a message at tonyo94 AT gmail.com (Drop him a line if you'd like to get an e-mail whenever a new story is posted.) [Header image courtesy John Rickard]
FOLLOW ME ON
Daily Notifications
Sign up for free emails to receive the feature story every morning in your inbox at tonyortega.substack.com

Categories

Monthly Archives

More signs that things are really going totally great for the Church of Scientology right now

 Between the quarantine of the MV Measlesthelioma in the Caribbean, and a couple of court developments that came out of nowhere — a jury verdict in California and a guilty plea in New York — we’ve had quite a week of dealing with breaking news here in the Bunker, and so we’ve neglected some of []

ADVERTISEMENT

Filmmaker breaks down describing Nxivm’s duplicitous ideas and evil intent

[Mark Vicente]

VillageDianne is out from the courthouse overflow room again with another report from the Nxivm trial. Today, the prosecution is getting testimony from filmmaker Mark Vicente. []

Death in the Timor Sea: The darkest war secret of Scientology’s founder, L. Ron Hubbard

[Lt. L. Ron Hubbard and the ill-fated Don Isidro]

Chris Owen’s book ‘Ron the War Hero’ is now for sale, and he’s giving us a look today at one of the best things in it — absolutely stunning material, previously unpublished, about the most ignominious of L. Ron Hubbard’s blunders during a disastrous World War II []

Keith Raniere’s attorney begins cross-examination of first Nxivm ‘slave’ witness

[Keith Raniere and his attorney, Marc Agnifilo]

VillageDianne called us again from the overflow room at the Brooklyn courthouse, where she had watched about an hour of Marc Agnifilo’s cross-examination of the government’s first witness in the Nxivm []

New York Scientologist chiropractor pleads guilty in $80 million Medicare scam

[Jay Spina]

Chiropractor James “Jay” Spina of Middletown, New York entered a guilty plea last week in an $80 million Medicare scam we told you about in September. []

JURY AWARDS $11 MILLION OVER DEATH OF SCIENTOLOGY REHAB PATIENT

[Attorney Gavin Long]

We talked earlier today with Newport Beach attorney H. Gavin Long, who was understandably chuffed about beating Scientology’s drug rehab network, Narconon, after a 12-day trial in Santa Cruz, California.

“It was great. It felt great for 12 days. From beginning to end it was just a beating,” he []

Opening statements in the NXIVM trial: One crystal clear, the other ‘surreal’

[Tanya Hajjar and Marc Agnifilo]

Our correspondent VillageDianne just got out of the Brooklyn courtroom where she heard opening statements in the Nxivm trial, where Keith Raniere is now the sole defendant, facing racketeering and sex trafficking charges. Here’s the rundown she gave []

Scientology’s cruise ship and kids: Raped on the Freewinds at 12

[Joey Chait as a teenager on a Freewinds excursion]

When Joey Chait saw the news about Scientology’s cruise ship the Freewinds blow up, he knew it was time to come forward with something he’s never told anyone before, not even his own []

Scientology and Nation of Islam figure picks worst week to rail against measles vaccine

 Rizza Islam picked the worst possible time to go on tour spreading misinformation about vaccines used to prevent the spread of []

Report: Post-Danny Masterson, Netflix series ‘The Ranch’ will end with 4th season

[Ashton Kutcher’s friend T.J. Jefferson, right, announced the news]

In January, Sam Elliott seemed to indicate that the fourth season of the Netflix series The Ranch would be its last, but then he walked it back a bit.

Now, T.J. Jefferson, longtime personal assistant to actor Ashton Kutcher, has posted evidence confirming that season four’s final episode []