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

Scientology posts the (nearly) full deposition of reclusive ‘Justice Chief’ Mike Ellis

Mike Ellis [Photo by Doug Owens]

Our fevered brain is still keeping us hunkered down in the Bunker. The cats are mixing up some nasty-smelling elixirs they swear will make us well. We think they just enjoy seeing us suffer.

Anyway, we only have energy for another short post today, and we apologize if it []

ADVERTISEMENT

‘Will Smith is not a Scientologist’ — we elaborate on our quote the press went wild for yesterday

Your proprietor has been laid low by a virus right in the middle of all this intense publicity for Alex Gibney’s film, Going Clear. This is what we get for leaving the confines of the Bunker and interacting with germy human beings.

So we’re going to keep things short today, and trust our commenters to fill []

Scenes from the ‘Going Clear’ publicity caravan in midtown Manhattan

Yesterday Mike Rinder and your proprietor were being interviewed about Alex Gibney’s film Going Clear for a well known national news organization when the interviewer asked, what is David Miscavige’s biggest skeleton in his closet?

We had already talked about the Scientology leader’s disappeared wife, Shelly Miscavige, and where we think she has been for the []

How’s this for a gift on L. Ron Hubbard’s birthday? ‘Going Clear’ in theaters March 13

Our commenters didn’t miss it yesterday when director Alex Gibney, in a talk at the New York Times building about his new documentary, Going Clear: Scientology & the Prison of Belief, dropped the news that his movie will open in theaters next week.

And what a date — Friday, March 13, on L. Ron Hubbard’s 104th []

NEW TODAY: Memoir with shocking claims by notorious Scientology spy, Merrell Vannier

There was a time when coming out with a book about Scientology meant almost certain litigation and harassment. From 1970 (George Malko, Scientology: The Now Religion) to 1990 (Jon Atack, A Piece of Blue Sky), and those in between — Paulette Cooper (1971), Cyril Vosper (1971), Robert Kaufman (1972), Roy Wallis (1976), Russell Miller (1987), []

Sunday Funnies: Scientology going all-in with fundraising and fire fighters

Hey, it’s nice to get to our weekly feature, Sunday Funnies, when we can sit back and watch our great commenters take apart the latest fundraising fliers put out by Scientology.

Our tipsters have another fun collection for us this week, and as always we’ll be looking for interesting patterns or wacky new theme-party ideas. []

LEAK: Scientology celebrities are stepping up their involvement behind the scenes

Our tipsters have sent us several emails and fliers lately that suggest to us that there’s something interesting going on with Scientology’s celebrities.

If you recall, we suggested in recent months that we had noticed a marked increase of activity from some of the most reliable Scientology actor types. Kirstie Alley, Kelly Preston, and Nancy Cartwright []

Gerry Armstrong’s full 1997 ‘Secret Lives’ interview about L. Ron Hubbard

We have a special treat for you today. It’s another full interview leaked for the first time from Channel 4’s excellent 1997 documentary, Secret Lives — L. Ron Hubbard, and this time with Gerry Armstrong, who is probably very well known to most readers of this website.

The documentary is one of the better ones made []

Can you help solve this odd Scientology financial mystery?

We’re calling on the super-sleuths who frequent the Underground Bunker to help us out in an intriguing little mystery.

It involves a large payment to one of Scientology’s key entities, and in a manner that seems to defy explanation.

Here’s the background. About a year and a half ago, a man named Jonathan Ramsay inquired with the []

Now it’s Scientology UK that opens its books, and we have the numbers

What a week of “dox” we have going on this week in the Underground Bunker. Scientology Australia had to open up its books because of changes in the law there, and on Monday we had the latest numbers and a rare peek inside Scientology finances. Yesterday, a release of government documents gave us our first []