Scientology Lit &#8211; The Underground Bunker

We first broke the news of the LAPD’s investigation of Scientology celebrity Danny Masterson on rape allegations in 2017, and we’ve been covering the story every step of the way since then. At this page we’ve collected our most important links as Danny faces a potential sentence of 45 years to life in prison. NOW WITH TRIAL INDEX.

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THE PODCAST: How many have you heard?

[1] Marc Headley [2] Claire Headley [3] Jeffrey Augustine [4] Bruce Hines [5] Sunny Pereira [6] Pete Griffiths [7] Geoff Levin [8] Patty Moher [9] Marc Headley [10] Jefferson Hawkins [11] Michelle ‘Emma’ Ryan [12] Paulette Cooper [13] Jesse Prince [14] Mark Bunker [15] Jon Atack [16] Mirriam Francis [17] Bruce Hines on MSH

— SPECIAL: The best TV show on Scientology you never got to see

[1] Phil Jones [2] Derek Bloch [3] Carol Nyburg [4] Katrina Reyes [5] Jamie DeWolf

— The first Danny Masterson trial and beyond

[18] Trial special with Chris Shelton [19] Trial week one [20] Marc Headley on the spy in the hallway [21] Trial week two [22] Trial week three [23] Trial week four [24] Leah Remini on LAPD Corruption [25] Mike Rinder 2022 Thanksgiving Special [26] Jane Doe 4 (Tricia Vessey), Part One [27] Jane Doe 4 (Tricia Vessey), Part Two [28] Claire Headley on the trial [29] Tory Christman [30] Bruce Hines on spying [31] Karen de la Carriere [32] Ron Miscavige on Shelly Miscavige [33] Karen de la Carriere on the L’s [34] Mark Bunker on Miscavige hiding [35] Mark Plummer [36] Mark Ebner [37] Karen Pressley [38] Steve Cannane [39] Fredrick Brennan [40] Clarissa Adams [41] Louise Shekter [42] John Sweeney [43] Tory Christman [44] Kate Bornstein [45] Christian Stolte [46] Mark Bunker [47] Jon Atack [48] Luke Y. Thompson [49] Mark Ebner [50] Bruce Hines [51] Spanky Taylor and Karen Pressley [51] Geoff and Robbie Levin [52] Sands Hall [53] Jonny Jacobsen [54] Sandy Holeman [55] Mark Bunker [56] Trish and Liz Conley [57] Trish Conley [58] Alex Barnes-Ross [59] Alex Barnes-Ross [60] Alex Barnes-Ross [61] Alex Barnes-Ross [62] Alex Barnes-Ross [63] Alex Barnes-Ross [64] Tory Christman [65] Tammy Synovec [66] Dennis Erlich [67] Alex Barnes-Ross [68] Valerie Ross [69] Kat in Austin [70] Mark Bunker [71] Phil Jones

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“It’s my belief that in a good society every child ought to be equipped with and taught to fire a sawed-off shotgun.” — L. Ron Hubbard, May 20, 1952

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“BIG LEAGUE: A lot of SO people do not realize that we play in the Big League. It’s not from choice. We are apparently considered a prime threat to those who run things from behind the scenes. A new estimate based on new data of the money spent to knock us out is at least 20 million pounds. Your concept of security and concept of snap and pop on operations and actions should be scaled upward to match the Big League. We are so tiny in numbers we have to make up for it in brilliance and efficiency. No other group on the planet gets the simultaneous international attention that we do. We cave in the pressure against us by highly effective operation of orgs and ships. And it is gradually giving ground. We will win in 3 years IF we play it with Security, brilliance and efficiency on all our parts.” — The Commodore, May 20, 1970

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“Scientology is, of course, a body of data. It gives theory and application so one can cause a betterment through auditing and other methods. Scientology is not the cognitions of PCs and OTs. While the wins of PCs and OTs may give a stat for the org, Scientology belongs to L. Ron Hubbard, and the cognitions belong to those who had them.”

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1995: “The Phil Donahue show aired a live broadcast on the cos on Monday. Heber Jentzsch ineptly fended off fairly soft questions from Phil. I think most posters to a.r.s rated it as unsatisfying due to the condition that Heber placed on the show: that no critics of the cos be present on stage. The only thing I learned was that Heber has a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Utah. The most absurd moments came when a woman claimed the Purif cleaned out her arteriosclerosis after doctors gave her two years to live.”

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“If you want some major lulz, google ‘David Icke forum Scientology’ and get ready to read the 12-foot shape-shifting reptilian fanboys make fun of the immortal super powered Thetans. it’s a hoot.”

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Full Court Press: What we’re watching at the Underground Bunker

Criminal prosecutions:
— Danny Masterson charged for raping three women: Found guilty on two counts on May 31, remanded to custody. Sentenced to 30 years to life on Sep 7.
— ‘Lafayette Ronald Hubbard’ (a/k/a Justin Craig), aggravated assault, plus drug charges: Grand jury indictments include charges from an assault while in custody. Next pretrial hearing May 31, 2024.
— David Gentile, GPB Capital, fraud.

Civil litigation:
— Leah Remini v. Scientology, alleging ‘Fair Game’ harassment and defamation: Some defamation claims were removed by Judge Hammock. Leah seeking to amend her complaint.
— Baxter, Baxter, and Paris v. Scientology, alleging labor trafficking: Forced to arbitration.
— Valerie Haney v. Scientology: Forced to ‘religious arbitration.’
— Chrissie Bixler et al. v. Scientology and Danny Masterson: motion to file new complaint, hearing on May 29.
— Jane Doe 1 v. Scientology, David Miscavige, and Gavin Potter: Case unsealed and second amended complaint filed. Scientology moves for religious arbitration, on hold until appeal over new judge heard.
— Chiropractors Steve Peyroux and Brent Detelich, stem cell fraud: Ordered to mediation.

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After the success of their double-Emmy-winning, three-season A&E series ‘Scientology and the Aftermath,’ Leah Remini and Mike Rinder continue the conversation on their podcast, ‘Scientology: Fair Game.’ We’ve created a landing page where you can hear all of the episodes so far.

An episode-by-episode guide to Leah Remini’s three-season, double-Emmy winning series that changed everything for Scientology watching. Originally aired from 2016 to 2019 on the A&E network, and now on Netflix.

Find your favorite Hubbardite celeb at this index page — or suggest someone to add to the list!

Other links: SCIENTOLOGY BLACK OPS: Tom Cruise and dirty tricks. Scientology’s Ideal Orgs, from one end of the planet to the other. Scientology’s sneaky front groups, spreading the good news about L. Ron Hubbard while pretending to benefit society. Scientology Lit: Books reviewed or excerpted in a weekly series. How many have you read?

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THE WHOLE TRACK

[ONE year ago] Here’s our story about Nancy Cartwright that Scientology doesn’t want you to see
[TWO years ago] VIDEO: This is peak Scientology, when its big donors were going to clear the planet
[THREE years ago] Day three of the Danny Masterson prelim: Jane Doe 3’s cross-examination continues
[FOUR years ago] Leah Remini to Jane Doe after dismissing suit against Scientology: ‘You let no one down’
[FIVE years ago] A paradox of apathy and zealotry: What props up Scientology, from within and without
[SIX years ago] Russia’s ineffective Scientology crackdown includes smearing foreign leaders
[SEVEN years ago] Scientology forks over phone numbers to federal judge, who puts his foot down again
[EIGHT years ago] Scientology gets judge disqualified in forced-abortion lawsuit and wants recent order voided
[NINE years ago] Scientology’s wealthy donors play royalty in Italy while Paulette Cooper takes San Diego
[TEN years ago] Marc Headley returns to Scientology and finds a whole new ballgame
[ELEVEN years ago] Your Hot Scientology Event in Los Angeles Tonight

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Scientology disconnection, a reminder

Bernie Headley (1952-2019) did not see his daughter Stephanie in his final 5,667 days.
Tammy Synovec has not seen her daughter Julia in 2,906 days.
Valerie Haney has not seen her mother Lynne in 3,401 days.
Katrina Reyes has not seen her mother Yelena in 3,916 days
Sylvia Wagner DeWall has not seen her brother Randy in 3,466 days.
Brian Sheen has not seen his grandson Leo in 2,456 days.
Geoff Levin has not seen his son Collin and daughter Savannah in 2,337 days.
Christie Collbran has not seen her mother Liz King in 5,641 days.
Clarissa Adams has not seen her parents Walter and Irmin Huber in 3,512 days.
Jamie Sorrentini Lugli has not seen her father Irving in 5,064 days.
Quailynn McDaniel has not seen her brother Sean in 4,405 days.
Dylan Gill has not seen his father Russell in 12,972 days.
Melissa Paris has not seen her father Jean-Francois in 8,891 days.
Valeska Paris has not seen her brother Raphael in 5,059 days.
Mirriam Francis has not seen her brother Ben in 4,640 days.
Claudio and Renata Lugli have not seen their son Flavio in 4,901 days.
Sara Goldberg has not seen her daughter Ashley in 3,937 days.
Lori Hodgson has not seen her son Jeremy and daughter Jessica in 3,653 days.
Marie Bilheimer has not seen her mother June in 3,217 days.
Julian Wain has not seen his brother Joseph or mother Susan in 1,532 days.
Charley Updegrove has not seen his son Toby in 2,707 days.
Joe Reaiche has not seen his daughter Alanna Masterson in 7,258 days
Derek Bloch has not seen his father Darren in 4,389 days.
Cindy Plahuta has not seen her daughter Kara in 4,727 days.
Roger Weller has not seen his daughter Alyssa in 9,580 days.
Claire Headley has not seen her mother Gen in 4,701 days.
Ramana Dienes-Browning has not seen her mother Jancis in 3,057 days.
Mike Rinder has not seen his son Benjamin and daughter Taryn in 7,360 days.
Brian Sheen has not seen his daughter Spring in 3,466 days.
Skip Young has not seen his daughters Megan and Alexis in 3,864 days.
Mary Kahn has not seen her son Sammy in 3,740 days.
Lois Reisdorf has not seen her son Craig in 3,305 days.
Phil and Willie Jones have not seen their son Mike and daughter Emily in 3,818 days.
Mary Jane Barry has not seen her daughter Samantha in 4,072 days.
Kate Bornstein has not seen her daughter Jessica in 15,180 days.

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Posted by Tony Ortega on May 20, 2024 at 07:00

E-mail tips to tonyo94 AT gmail DOT com or follow us on Twitter. We also post updates at our Facebook author page. After every new story we send out an alert to our e-mail list and our FB page.

Our new book with Paulette Cooper, Battlefield Scientology: Exposing L. Ron Hubbard’s dangerous ‘religion’ is now on sale at Amazon in paperback and Kindle formats. Our book about Paulette, The Unbreakable Miss Lovely: How the Church of Scientology tried to destroy Paulette Cooper, is on sale at Amazon in paperback, Kindle, and audiobook versions. We’ve posted photographs of Paulette and scenes from her life at a separate location. Reader Sookie put together a complete index. More information can also be found at the book’s dedicated page.

The Best of the Underground Bunker, 1995-2022 Just starting out here? We’ve picked out the most important stories we’ve covered here at the Underground Bunker (2012-2022), The Village Voice (2008-2012), New Times Los Angeles (1999-2002) and the Phoenix New Times (1995-1999)

Other links: BLOGGING DIANETICS: Reading Scientology’s founding text cover to cover | UP THE BRIDGE: Claire Headley and Bruce Hines train us as Scientologists | GETTING OUR ETHICS IN: Jefferson Hawkins explains Scientology’s system of justice | SCIENTOLOGY MYTHBUSTING: Historian Jon Atack discusses key Scientology concepts | Shelly Miscavige, 15 years gone | The Lisa McPherson story told in real time | The Cathriona White stories | The Leah Remini ‘Knowledge Reports’ | Hear audio of a Scientology excommunication | Scientology’s little day care of horrors | Whatever happened to Steve Fishman? | Felony charges for Scientology’s drug rehab scam | Why Scientology digs bomb-proof vaults in the desert | PZ Myers reads L. Ron Hubbard’s “A History of Man” | Scientology’s Master Spies | The mystery of the richest Scientologist and his wayward sons | Scientology’s shocking mistreatment of the mentally ill | The Underground Bunker’s Official Theme Song | The Underground Bunker FAQ

Watch our short videos that explain Scientology’s controversies in three minutes or less…

Check your whale level at our dedicated page for status updates, or join us at the Underground Bunker’s Facebook discussion group for more frivolity.

Our non-Scientology stories: Robert Burnham Jr., the man who inscribed the universe | Notorious alt-right inspiration Kevin MacDonald and his theories about Jewish DNA | The selling of the “Phoenix Lights” | Astronomer Harlow Shapley‘s FBI file | Sex, spies, and local TV news | Battling Babe-Hounds: Ross Jeffries v. R. Don Steele

Writers of the Future: Scientology sci-fi front puts on interminable awards show once again

Tony Ortega — Sat, 27 Apr 2024 11:00:16 +0000

TODAY AT SUBSTACK: If you’ve signed up for free emails at Substack, you will receive today’s feature story at your inbox: For years, we’ve reported on the Writers of the Future contest and how it’s a front for Scientology that has direct ties with some of the church’s abuses. But hey, they had an awards show this week, and we all want to know, which Scientology celebrities bothered to show up? [What is this Substack thing, anyway?]

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Technology Cocktail

“When a person is medically treated for an illness, it is best to back up the action with auditing. Sometimes the patient is too ill to be fully audited. It is difficult to audit someone who is running a temperature. In such a case, let the antibiotics bring the temperature down before auditing. But if the temperature does not come down, in the interest of the patient’s recovery, auditing should be done. It is usually too late when the patient is in a coma. But one can still reach a patient who is unconscious by touching the patient’s hand to parts of the bed with ‘Feel that (object).’ A patient will sometimes respond to commands even when ‘unconscious’ if you tell them to squeeze your hand to acknowledge they have done the command. Years ago the auditing of unconscious persons was worked out and successfully done. Needless to say, auditing any sick person requires the most exact, careful auditing, strictly by the Auditor’s Code.” — L. Ron Hubbard, 1969

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THE PODCAST: How many have you heard?

— SPECIAL: The best TV show on Scientology you never got to see

[1] Phil Jones [2] Derek Bloch [3] Carol Nyburg [4] Katrina Reyes [5] Jamie DeWolf

— The first Danny Masterson trial and beyond

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“A Clear apparently is the — oh, not apparently, it’s true — he’s the original electric eel, and so on, and apparently affects physical objects without half trying in that state. That is to say, you can warm something up or something. This isn’t phenomena that you would consider even very good phenomena; I mean, it isn’t very advanced, don’t you see? Now, you can see very easily that throwing a lightning bolt couldn’t be very much of a trick. It merely depends on practice in holding your position. If you could hold your position very accurately, why, you could throw a lightning bolt that would probably char the Empire State Building. But that’s beside the point. That’s just theoretical. What you’ve got here in actual fact is that by staring at things you can make them warm, and things like this, you know. You pick up a, here’s a glass with some ice in it, you know? You stare at it for a few minutes and you haven’t got a glass with ice in it. It’s the warmest Coca-Cola you have ever had anything to do with, don’t you see? This is very, very low-scale phenomena. It’s just monkey business.” — L. Ron Hubbard, April 27, 1965

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“I’ve just written an HCO Pol Ltr on ‘Death Wishes’ of interest to the ship.” — The Commodore, April 27, 1969

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“When I was just a static and nothing else, there was a bunch of us existing in a nothingness with nothing before us or anywhere, and we did nothing, absolutely nothing but observe — you guessed it — nothing. We were all 100 percent connected together and would have shared everything if there was anything to share (one mind, multiple viewpoints) but we never communicated or had anything to communicate, nor did we have any thoughts or emotions, or whatever, but it was better than tone 40 because we were above the dichotomies of serene beingness. I want to do that again.”

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2000: Rod Keller posted details of a secret Scientology plan to boost revenues for Battlefield Earth in a ticket refund scheme. “Scientologists are quietly being told when they go to the theater to see BE they are to buy extra tickets. They are then to return the unused tickets to a person who is designated in their area for a refund. Those who might seek the refund are to be asked if they would like to make that as a ‘donation,’ saving the refund costs. In some cases, some staff are being designated to go and buy a block of tickets, but not too many to be noticed, (say 6-8) and not even go but take them back to the org for the refund. This is to be done for several weeks. Scientologists are being told to do it as a ‘birthday present to Ron.’ Some already love the idea of making it #1. They are also being told they can give the tickets to friends to promote Hubbard, another idea they also like. ASI has set aside several million dollars for this that they will mark off in some ‘promotional’ manner. The heaviest is to be done in the first week as that is the first make/break point and then it will go into week #2. In fact, there is a whole BE-promo team that has been set up to coordinate this, to make sure the Scientologists go and that they buy the extra tickets. Some of the Deep Pocket boys who usually contribute large amounts are being hit up for this, to help cover costs. Some are doing it as ‘investment.’ Now it may be thought that a few million dollars is not enough to do it but that is just what they are prepared to pay back to the Scientologists. It is up to the team to see that the Scientologists ‘donate’ it. DM can’t leave it to promo and Travolta’s name to make it a hit and he knows there are not enough Scientologists in the US to make it a hit so he has to do the same routine he used back in the 80s to make the books into ‘best sellers.’ Word is out that heads will roll if BE is not the #1 hit movie in its opening week.”

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“The big difference between Scientology and the mafia is the mafia actually go to church on Sunday.”

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Full Court Press: What we’re watching at the Underground Bunker

Civil litigation:
— Leah Remini v. Scientology, alleging ‘Fair Game’ harassment and defamation: Some defamation claims were removed by Judge Hammock. Leah seeking to amend her complaint.
— Baxter, Baxter, and Paris v. Scientology, alleging labor trafficking: Forced to arbitration. Plaintiffs allowed interlocutory appeal to Eleventh Circuit.
— Valerie Haney v. Scientology: Forced to ‘religious arbitration.’
— Chrissie Bixler et al. v. Scientology and Danny Masterson: motion to file new complaint, hearing on May 29.
— Jane Doe 1 v. Scientology, David Miscavige, and Gavin Potter: Case unsealed and second amended complaint filed. Scientology moves for religious arbitration, hearing on April 16.
— Chiropractors Steve Peyroux and Brent Detelich, stem cell fraud: Ordered to mediation.

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Find your favorite Hubbardite celeb at this index page — or suggest someone to add to the list!

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THE WHOLE TRACK

[ONE year ago] Jane Doe 3: Scientology required a victim to get her attacker’s car washed
[TWO years ago] Scientology royalty: Why it makes sense for Tom Cruise to host the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee
[THREE years ago] Clearwater city manager unhappy about landing on our ‘Top 25 Enabling Scientology’ list
[FOUR years ago] Have Jane Doe’s attorneys figured out how to serve Scientology leader David Miscavige?
[FIVE years ago] Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard on family and sex: As enlightened as you’d imagine
[SIX years ago] Strange days for a woman accusing Danny Masterson of rape — and for her rocker husband
[SEVEN years ago] Scientology submits names of 500 members to federal court as ordered, but there’s a catch
[EIGHT years ago] LIVE IN L.A.: Hearing in Laura DeCrescenzo’s Scientology forced-abortion lawsuit
[NINE years ago] Should Louis Theroux be worried? What a Scientology ‘documentary’ actually looks like
[TEN years ago] Scientology Sunday Funnies: More scenes from the End of Days
[ELEVEN years ago] Scientology’s Notorious R2-45 Policy: Is There a Smoking Gun?

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Scientology disconnection, a reminder

Bernie Headley (1952-2019) did not see his daughter Stephanie in his final 5,667 days.
Tammy Synovec has not seen her daughter Julia in 2,883 days.
Valerie Haney has not seen her mother Lynne in 3,378 days.
Katrina Reyes has not seen her mother Yelena in 3,893 days
Sylvia Wagner DeWall has not seen her brother Randy in 3,443 days.
Brian Sheen has not seen his grandson Leo in 2,433 days.
Geoff Levin has not seen his son Collin and daughter Savannah in 2,314 days.
Christie Collbran has not seen her mother Liz King in 5,618 days.
Clarissa Adams has not seen her parents Walter and Irmin Huber in 3,489 days.
Jamie Sorrentini Lugli has not seen her father Irving in 5,041 days.
Quailynn McDaniel has not seen her brother Sean in 4,382 days.
Dylan Gill has not seen his father Russell in 12,949 days.
Melissa Paris has not seen her father Jean-Francois in 8,868 days.
Valeska Paris has not seen her brother Raphael in 5,036 days.
Mirriam Francis has not seen her brother Ben in 4,617 days.
Claudio and Renata Lugli have not seen their son Flavio in 4,878 days.
Sara Goldberg has not seen her daughter Ashley in 3,914 days.
Lori Hodgson has not seen her son Jeremy and daughter Jessica in 3,630 days.
Marie Bilheimer has not seen her mother June in 3,194 days.
Julian Wain has not seen his brother Joseph or mother Susan in 1,509 days.
Charley Updegrove has not seen his son Toby in 2,684 days.
Joe Reaiche has not seen his daughter Alanna Masterson in 7,235 days
Derek Bloch has not seen his father Darren in 4,366 days.
Cindy Plahuta has not seen her daughter Kara in 4,704 days.
Roger Weller has not seen his daughter Alyssa in 9,557 days.
Claire Headley has not seen her mother Gen in 4,678 days.
Ramana Dienes-Browning has not seen her mother Jancis in 3,034 days.
Mike Rinder has not seen his son Benjamin and daughter Taryn in 7,337 days.
Brian Sheen has not seen his daughter Spring in 3,443 days.
Skip Young has not seen his daughters Megan and Alexis in 3,841 days.
Mary Kahn has not seen her son Sammy in 3,717 days.
Lois Reisdorf has not seen her son Craig in 3,282 days.
Phil and Willie Jones have not seen their son Mike and daughter Emily in 3,795 days.
Mary Jane Barry has not seen her daughter Samantha in 4,049 days.
Kate Bornstein has not seen her daughter Jessica in 15,157 days.

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Posted by Tony Ortega on April 27, 2024 at 07:00

E-mail tips to tonyo94 AT gmail DOT com or follow us on Twitter. We also post updates at our Facebook author page. After every new story we send out an alert to our e-mail list and our FB page.

Watch our short videos that explain Scientology’s controversies in three minutes or less…

Check your whale level at our dedicated page for status updates, or join us at the Underground Bunker’s Facebook discussion group for more frivolity.

Getting the stink out of Scientology’s Saint Hill Manor: A special remembrance

Tony Ortega — Fri, 22 Dec 2023 12:00:15 +0000

In recent weeks, conditions at Scientology’s UK headquarters, known as Saint Hill Manor, and its relations with local elected leaders, has become an issue thanks to the hard work of Alex Barnes-Ross. Alex asked for accounts of what life in Saint Hill is really like, and today we have a real treat. Karen Pressley answered that call by adapting and augmenting some of the material in her 2017 book, Escaping Scientology, for this extended look at life there in the 1990s.

The sole reason I stood in the driveway before the looming Saint Hill Manor in East Grinstead, Sussex, England in Spring 1993 was because I had been sent on a mission from Scientology’s Int Management base by the Chairman of the Board RTC, Captain David Miscavige.

My orders were to design, manufacture, and implement new Sea Org uniforms for the UK crew — within a few months. Why now, and why such a rush? Because Saint Hill was to host the International Association of Scientologists conference that coming October.

As part of this challenge, Dave had personally told me to “get the stink out of the staff.” He wanted all the crew to be transformed from their “smelly, slovenly state” to sparkling examples of what Scientology technology could do for them and for the world.

Saint Hill had always been the land of wonder in Scientology, still holding the magic of the 1960s era when founder L. Ron Hubbard lived there, wrote hundreds of policy letters and bulletins that comprise the “technology” of Scientology, and built what became a “Saint Hill-size” organization, the model for all Scientology organizations.

I was about to discover various truths about Saint Hill that would belie any humanitarian motives of Scientology and the Sea Org, and would discover more truths about Dave.

While working at the Hollywood Celebrity Centre in the 1980s, where personal and professional image was everything, and then working on the CC INT uniform project under Miscavige in the early ‘90s, I had observed that the most important thing in Scientology to Dave was not human beings, but image — along with the money that good image would bring in. The Hubbard policies about “the public knows us by our MEST” and “image is income” was Dave’s life blood. He wanted the crew to look as good as the building, so he could get an increased return on the millions of dollars Scientology had spent to build the Saint Hill castle.

Before I had I left for the mission, I’ll never forget the conversation with Miscavige and Marc Yager when Dave had personally told me to “get the stink out of the staff.” Yager had feigned a choking gag as he described the body odor of the crew here, as well as at AOSHEU in Copenhagen, the European headquarters. Looking back on that conversation, I pictured them as two aristocrats, like 18th century French bourgeoisie who held hankies to their nostrils as they walked among the smelly commoners. To them, the Scientology empire was an exemplar of progress, and as senior executives who ran the empire, they were privy to a higher standard of sophisticated living that included daily luxuries, such as $300 custom-made uniform shirts, their uniforms dry cleaned or laundered for them, three meals a day cooked by a five-star chef and served to them by stewards at white-tableclothed dining tables, and weekly bonuses and commissions. They were so disassociated from the realities of Sea Org life in the lower ranks of outer orgs that their aristocratic views lived only within their aristocratic bubbles. The idyllic Scientology life that they sold to paying customers was utterly offset by the harsher realities that the working class of Sea Org minions experienced.

While Dave and Marc officed in the luxurious quarters of the Saint Hill Manor, and stayed at a nearby five-star hotel, the Saint Hill crew living at Bullards barely had enough hot water to bathe and wash their clothes. Were Dave and Marc oblivious, or just uncaring, that the expansion of Scientology and the reputation of Saint Hill and the entirety of the Sea Org came at the cost of back-breaking, family-breaking, soul-breaking labor?

Upon arrival, I eyed with reverence the old stone mansion where Hubbard had lived and the sprawling grounds that led to the castle. In the years before I arrived there as a missionaire, “Saint Hill” had been an omnipresence in my world as a Scientologist. Like every other Scientologist, I learned about Saint Hill from the voluminous photos of Hubbard there that Scientology used in its promotional and training materials, in his taped lectures, policies, training films, and stories from old-time Scientologists who had trained on the Saint Hill Special Briefing Course to become an auditor.

My friend Ron Miscavige, Dave’s father, had told me stories about how he moved his family to Saint Hill when Dave was a teen suffering from asthma, and Ron believed that Dave would solve his own medical problems by learning Scientology and becoming an auditor. Saint Hill was the model for all orgs playing the annual Birthday Game, where staff and public strived all year up to Hubbard’s birthday on March 13 to build up their org to the size of Old Saint Hill and beyond. In Scientology’s typical pretentious style, we had been told that Hubbard had bought the place from the Maharajah of Jaipur who had built it in the 1700s, as if that added to the importance of Hubbard’s life and Scientology. In my mind, Saint Hill was to Scientology what the Vatican was to the Roman Catholic Church.

This was my first experience as a First Class missionaire and leading a project of this magnitude. Here I was in another country, with no network of resources or familiar suppliers.

AOSH UK was supposed to finance the uniforms, to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars, and I had to push that through their weekly FPs (financial plannings and allocations). After seeing the poor condition of the execs and crew — from the admin and tech delivery areas to the many types of Estates workers and kitchen staff — I wondered what the hell Dave was thinking. How did he expect to hang beautiful new clothing on their bodies, when they barely showered or washed their hair or their uniforms once per week and only if there was enough hot water, and expect to have a transformed image? Where was the money supposed to come from out of an FP that wasn’t even covering repairs on the crumbling staff berthing buildings, better childcare conditions, and medical care for the crew who were clearly in need.

Evidently, Scientology had not been having the wondrous, sparkling effect in their lives as the marketing materials of Scientology promised, because they looked neglected and worn out. While I could be accused of having a “worker-oriented” attitude about this, I contend that when the Sea Org takes on members, who are told to be at cause over all aspects of life, they should also care for the well-being of the members and not just use them up until they finally drop and are discarded, as is the Sea Org way.

It would be easy to fail at this massive project that had so many moving parts. Deep down, I was incredulous that Dave and and his wife Shelly had entrusted me with this project, considering my recent history at the Int base that is a significant precursor to how I approached this opportunity to do the Saint Hill makeover:

Between 1990 and 1993, I had escaped from the Int Base in California twice, and returned twice. After first arriving at the Int Base in late ’89, I realized after it was too late that I had put myself on the wrong path, merging myself into an assemblage of 800 souls at a secret desert location surrounded by chain link fences topped with barbed wire. This group seemed more like a battleground of chaos in a pool of confusion than an elite group with the lofty quest to spearhead the clearing of the planet. For me, the quest became tortured, like avoiding land mines while having to climb steep, jagged mountain trails leading to treacherous cliffs where pitching myself over the edge would have been more pleasant than persisting through the prevailing madness.

My first escape in 1990 and my return two weeks later landed me in the Rehabilitation Project Force (RPF) at Happy Valley. I labored as an indentured slave with the rest of the RPFers for about six months, where I saw unthinkable acts of inhumanity, until the RPF was disbanded. I returned to my post in the Cine Art Department, where I had worked before my first escape, helping to create films to propagandize Scientology.

For the next 2.5 years, the Int Base was a war zone under siege from iron-fisted, heavy-handed leadership. I saw an epidemic of coerced abortions, and enforced divorces that broke up Sea Org marriages to prove loyalty to Dave. We endured the war that emerged after TIME magazine published Rick Behar’s 1991 cover story, “The Thriving Cult of Greed and Power,” which drove Dave nearly psychotic when he stepped up his physical abuse of staff. Leadership enforced Sea Org regimented drills, military-style marching, and an old yacht Apollo practice of “over boarding” by throwing Sea Org members into the lake who were committing mistakes. Sleep deprivation and working slave hours of 16-18 hour days with no time off became a norm that we were expected to endure, along with blatant psychological and physical abuse. I had lost all confidence in Captain Dave and Scientology and our Int Base team. The Int base showed no signs of standard application of Scientology, and we showed no signs that we were on our way to clearing the planet.

By 1993, I desperately tried to get my husband Peter to leave with me so we could return to the real world, get our careers back in the entertainment business, and get the hell away from this madhouse. But he wouldn’t leave, so I had escaped alone. Why did I come back after my first and second escapes? Peter. We didn’t want our marriage to end, and he insisted that we remain at the base. I could barely confront what I had realized about him: he had become blinded to Sea Org atrocities, and had lost his willingness to defend his own personal values. The second time, after two weeks away, I couldn’t take the separation, broke down and came back again.

They didn’t send me to the RPF this time. Instead, I was left to decay at the Old Gilman House working in the greenhouse behind chain link fences topped with barbed wire, with plenty of time to think. There were no handcuffs on me, but I knew I couldn’t get out. After three months of confinement, I broke. I knew I didn’t want to leave Peter, and I was defiant against Miscavige winning by splitting us up as he had done to many other Sea Org couples.

I concluded that there was no way to win in Miscavige’s Sea Org, other than to play the games of Int Base politics which meant, suck up to leaders and support command intention to avoid discipline, while working my way up the ranks into positions of more responsibility and control, where I was no longer at the bottom of the base hierarchy. Shit rolls downhill, and I was tired of living that way. I did my liability formula, got enough signatures to rejoin the group, and returned to living with Peter.

In a surprising turn of fate, I was not reposted back in Gold, where I had escaped from twice. Mark Ingber, then CO CMO INT, said that since Gold had been unable to “put in my ethics” and I had escaped twice, they shouldn’t get me back. So, that was the mindset for why I got posted in a higher org. I was assigned to be a proofreader in LRH Book Compilations (RComps), a division of the Senior Executive Strata. In a few months, I learned proofreading skills and became quite good at it. All day, every day, I read original LRH policies, looking for typos and other inaccuracies (which we did find and report.)

One miraculous, life-changing day, an RTC Messenger had come to see me in RComps, to tell me that COB (the moniker Dave goes by, for “Chairman of the Board”) needed my clothing design skills for an important project: I was to design new uniforms for the Sea Org crew at Saint Hill. I felt like I had a received a golden ticket.

Miscavige must have remembered that I had done good work for the CC INT uniform project with Italian designer Claudio Lugli, so he was trusting me again with this work. COB Assistant Shelly Miscavige briefed me on what was needed and wanted, and entrusted me to propose a solution for how to get everything manufactured in the UK in a short time. Before I could leave, I had to complete the First Class Missionaire training while getting my design plan approved by COB.

When I told Peter about the project, he was not happy about me going and didn’t want me to do it. But he didn’t have a say in the plan because this was a COB order. Peter and I had been married for 14 years by that time. I despised our Sea Org lifestyle, because we hardly ever saw each other. We worked 16-plus hours per day, and often had to stay late on “all-hands” projects. Peter’s musician post kept him up on frequent all-nighters producing music for the next event videos. In other words, next to no time for a real marriage.

This project was run from the Action Bureau in Commodore’s Messenger Org International, who sent me to CMO UK, who would give me an office and assign me an assistant there to help me get the project done.

Yes, of course I would accept the project. The irony of the Sea Org is that they make you feel like they are doing you a favor by giving you opportunities to sacrifice your life and well-being to achieve its causes, while they put you in oftentimes absurd and even life-challenging circumstances that you have to overcome, to achieve your purpose and avoid discipline for failing.

My mission kept me busy, totally focused on doing what I loved. I buried myself in the tasks of researching clothing manufacturers in London and all around the UK, including Ireland and Scotland, before I selected Burlington Uniforms to be our primary supplier. We immediately got the ball rolling to get all the manufacturing done within a few months. Burlington’s used manufacturing facilities in northern England where fine wool suits had traditionally been made. We selected a shirt manufacturing company in Northern Ireland and a sweater manufacturer in Glasgow, Scotland. I designed a gold and silver button with a Sea Org symbol that Burlington’s produced for us in Italy. I designed an embroidered jacket emblem, called a “crest” or a patch in England, for the AOSH jackets. The first prototype was made by a team of artists who stitched accessories for the Queen of England, and Burlington’s took our prototype to Pakistan to oversee quality control and production of them, since these patches (hundreds) were individually hand-stitched.

CMO UK arranged an assistant to help me, a young woman named Lyndell, who I found out had been on waiting lines for months to get out of the Sea Org. The day I met her, my heart sank. She was dangerously thin, with pasty-looking skin and straggly hair. Her teeth needed cleaning and repair, and her Sea Org uniform looked like she had worn it daily for years. Lyndell’s quality of life became a personal mission that became just as important as the uniform project to me. My first order of business was to find out what had led to her wanting to leave. Getting to know Lyndell and her family opened my eyes wider to the fact that Sea Org members outside of the U.S. lived in far worse conditions than the ones I had observed in PAC, CC, and LA, which were already pathetic. She was unhappy about the horrid Sea Org living conditions, but especially the sub-standards conditions in which her children were being raised and “educated,” while she and her husband dedicated their lives working at Saint Hill at least twelve hours per day.

They lived at Bullard’s, which provided insufficient heat to the already drafty stone building. The children’s “day care” facilities were substandard in cleanliness and supervision, hardly an image for a facility taking care of the organization’s elite corps Sea Org members. Hot running water was a scarcity rather than a normal provision, so cleanliness for herself and her children was not something she could count on. These seemed like impossible challenges for me to change on top of accomplishing my mission project in a short time.

Knowing that I had to get this project done no matter what, I had to exert some control over Lyndell’s choices and actions, but I chose compassion over heavy handedness. She didn’t like working on a project from Int Management, because she didn’t think highly of management that sucked so much money from Saint Hill, leaving them on a measly FP budget to supply staff ’s needs.

She didn’t want to help the organization that had led to the decline of her family; she only wanted out. I hoped working on her personal wellness would help change her mind about leaving the Sea Org. I felt somewhat guilty about that, considering I had escaped the Sea Org as well. I wanted to help salvage her as an individual who had gone into a personal spiral of decline. I never once told her that I had escaped the Sea Org myself, and couldn’t help but think of my own past personal issues and the desperate measures I had taken to resolve them. Even though I was a Sea Org member from the most senior org in the Scientology world, I honestly didn’t blame Lyndell for feeling the way she did.

I addressed her as a woman buried under a mass of conflicts and circumstances that she felt unable to control, with her dynamics wildly out of alignment (like many Sea Org members). I pushed through some expense money to buy her some new daily clothing (Uniform K, plain clothes) to wear when we traveled to London to do some of the project tasks. I also required AOSH to purchase some new Sea Org uniform parts, starting with new shoes and a Class A uniform that she could wear with pride. I also cut and styled her hair, and arranged for her to go to the dentist. Most importantly, I made sure she left on time at the end of the day, so that she could pick up her children on time, and get a decent night’s sleep. That’s something I also afforded myself while I was on this project. There was no need to work 16 to 18 hours daily and sabotage my personal wellness, as was the routine at the Int base.

During our project, Lyndell and her husband were able to move to better, more respectable living quarters. However, nothing changed with the sub-standard child care situation. This remained an ongoing, troublesome issue for her and the other Sea Org members at Saint Hill. But I’m certain that my empathy toward undesirable Sea Org conditions and my lack of judging her for her doubt in the Sea Org helped her to open up to me, and become more willing to help me.

I took it upon myself to do a personal makeover on nearly all the men and women at Saint Hill. This included hairstyling and cuts, and makeup and grooming instructions on more than one hundred staff. The most significant challenge to good hygiene had been less about personal negligence and more about lack of hot water due to bad plumbing in Bullards. I went to CMO UK execs and said that the plumbing problems in Bullards and the other berthing building had to be fixed immediately as part of this mission. We also had all the staff restudy the Sea Org issues about grooming and cleanliness, not from the perspective of reprimand, but to put an emphasis on wellness and the self-care that they deserved. The better solution would have been to move out of Bullard’s into modern living quarters, which didn’t happen at that time, but I know that did happen a few years later.

Lack of cleanliness was rampant at Saint Hill. I had been given a bunk in a dorm room of CMO girls who lived at the Stables. I’ll never forget when two of the girls in my room had head lice. It gave me the creeps knowing that the people sleeping above me and near to me had head lice. I could understand why this might have happened, since it was so difficult and inconvenient for them to shower frequently. When you have to walk down the hall and then wait in line, after working 16-hour days, and the water is not hot, sometimes it’s easier to just skip the shower. Plus, Sea Org members probably didn’t afford much shampoo and soap.

Since my project required so much research and finding sources to buy many other uniform accessories, we traveled all over London and parts of England to do this job. We’d take the train from East Grinstead to Victoria Station, where we’d get on the Tube or jump on the red double-decker buses. Burlington’s was just a few streets away from Savile Row, the historic center of hand-tailored suits in London. I’d frequent the shops on Savile Row, studying the tailoring details of fine clothiers, learning a set of standards that I gradually applied to my own design projects.

In seven months, I learned my way around London, and sometimes justified ways to combine my research with a little sightseeing, which contributed to my personal wellness. In Greenwich, I saw the lines of demarcation that have marked international time zones since the 1500s. Sights of Roman walls, the Tower of London, Westminster Abbey, Oxford University, all became part of my research trips. I studied coats of arms that I saw throughout England, which influenced my design for Saint Hill’s uniform emblem and the overall sense of style for this project.

We took a few excursions out of London to do quality control. We went to Edinburgh, Scotland and did a little sightseeing around the Edinburgh Castle before we picked up the train to Glasgow, where we’d go to inspect the production of our uniform sweaters. There, I caught a grievous error of our Sea Org buttons sewn onto the cardigan sweaters upside down. Doing quality control of my products proved to be the best investment of my time that guaranteed excellent results in the end.

On another excursion, we went to the northern tip of Ireland, overlooking the North Sea, where our uniform shirts were being made. The journey had been a great part of our adventure; we took the speed train up to Manchester and then took a flight to Belfast. There we got picked up by an Irish cabbie who drove us to the coast between Coleraine and Bushmills. I ate homemade shortbread hot out of the ovens of a tiny village bakery in Ayr. We had lunch in an inn overlooking the North Sea, where I devoured fresh caught whitefish and chips served with malt vinegar. We went out to Giant’s Causeway for a walk along Ireland’s legendary coast, which I believed should be added as an eighth wonder of the world.

Lyndall and I accomplished the incredible feat of getting all the uniform parts manufactured and delivered as planned and on time. She did an excellent job setting up the Saint Hill Chapel as the showroom and distribution center for the initial uniform release. Rows of tables held the many types of shoes and boots, socks and stockings, ties for men and women, sweaters, Sea Org insignia, and racks of suit jackets, skirts, pants and shirts, coats, gloves, scarves — everything a Sea Org member needed for the harsh English weather. Eager faces of staff waiting to get in beamed through the Chapel Door windows for an hour before the release. When we opened the Chapel doors, staff rushed in to fulfill their list of parts they were entitled to receive.

Everyone rushed through the aisles filling their arms as if on a frenetic shopping spree, like kids in a magical candy store. I recall the joy on Lyndell’s face, watching them receive all these wondrous things that transformed at least their outer image. For these Sea Org members who, before this, only had one pair of pants and one shirt that they washed every once in a while, this was beyond anything like the best Christmas they could imagine.

The Saint Hill staff transformation was ultimately gratifying. I walked around the Saint Hill base, observing our result on the crew doing their jobs. From the auditors and supervisors in the technical division, to the servers in the mess hall, the executive staff, and the estates crew, their faces beamed. I couldn’t help but notice that some staff even carried themselves differently. I was humbled when they sometimes gushed with appreciation, saying “Thank you sir.” I wondered if this project would have had the same results if it had only been a uniform manufacturing mission. And I couldn’t help but think that caring about the well being of Sea Org members had been such missing element in Sea Org life.

Before we completed the project, Lyndell decided to remain in the Sea Org. She was posted as the Uniform In-Charge for the Saint Hill base. My work would be finished when I had documented the lines for taking care of the uniform parts, and knew that Lyndell would maintain the uniforms, organize the storage of parts, maintain good relationships with our vendors, and handle the orders for replenishment through the supply lines we had established in the UK. We had overcome every challenge to finish our project in time for the IAS event that October. Gold crew who came over to Saint Hill to produce the event raved about how great the staff looked.

One day, David Miscavige and Marc Yager also showed up, telling me they came to Saint Hill to preview the setups for the upcoming IAS event. They were (and I’m not exaggerating) spilling over with compliments describing the improvement in crew appearance, not something I had ever seen them do.

One day in LRH’s Manor, Miscavige and Yager told me that I was doing an incredible job. They just couldn’t get over the fact that there was no more “staff stink.” They had no idea that I had envisioned them as bourgeoisie aristocrats with hankies covering their nostrils. I realized that this achievement put a notch in my belt for a job well done, inspected personally by COB. This had to be worth an upgrade in my rank, and hopefully my post. Would I go back to being a proofreader after this when I got back?

Sure enough, Miscavige told me, “I have plans for a new post for you when you get back, Karen.” My imagination ran wild, hoping that he would create a post for me to take care of Sea Org staff image. “You’ll work in the events unit in the Int Management PR office, as Cindy Rainer’s art and design assistant. And you’ll get to see Peter for Christmas.”

Great about seeing Peter, but damn about the post. How did my successful mission at Saint Hill translate into working for the events unit? Another “doesn’t make sense” plan from management. Incidents like this further confused me about Miscavige’s mindset, and even his humanity, making him even more of an enigma. Over the years, I had grown from fearing him to despising the way he treated staff when he was unhappy, to appreciating him for bothering to see some of my good qualities, to thanking him for utilizing my skills and enabling me to do something I loved. I had to feign enthusiasm while my heart sank about the post news and privately revolted against the idea of working in the IMPR events unit.

Seeing Peter for Christmas would be great, but being back at the Int base for Christmas meant working over that holiday and, at best, having maybe one-half day off together with little time to actually have a Christmas with Peter. At Saint Hill, I didn’t like the idea of being alone or celebrating my favorite holiday without Peter, but at least I could go into London to enjoy a few hours of holiday celebration and have a white Christmas. After all this, I had come to the conclusion that the Sea Org would say I had other fish to fry, when in my world, I felt I deserved to enjoy certain pleasures in life.

I could have kicked myself for what came out of my mouth next to Miscavige. “Oh, but Sir, I can’t go home yet because I’m not done with this project.” Oops. That was backflash! How stupid could I be?

Miscavige’s fading smile and furrowed eyebrows showed me that was the wrong thing to say. Yager raised his eyebrows with a crooked smile. But then I think COB took my comment as coming from a person very dedicated to my work here. That was, in fact, true but certainly not the total story. I recovered quickly.

“Sir, what I mean is, I want to make sure that my assistant who is taking over the uniform project here is set up to be successful. I have to document everything and make sure she can run the program without me. But otherwise, I can’t wait to get back. Thank you so much.”

“Well done, Karen.”

I had lived in England for seven months at Saint Hill, and never got a single phone call or letter from my husband. I phoned Peter from time to time, defying policy set by the Int base: Phone calls from lower organizations (AOSH) were not allowed to be made to higher organizations (Int base). Red tape also said that higher organizations could not call into lower organizations. We didn’t have cell phones, so the only way he could have called me would have been to drive to a pay phone in Hemet after post late at night, and we were about 6 or 8 hours in different time zones. Either way, I violated Hubbard’s policy by calling Peter from time to time, and that was our only communication for seven months.

The “Saint Hill makeover of 1993” had become far more than a successful image transformation of a Sea Org base. I enjoyed musing over the fact that while I was away at Saint Hill for seven months on a Sea Org mission, I had been able to accomplish and exceed the mission purpose and complete all the targets, while I also slept eight hours every night, took some time off now ago maintain my own wellness and enjoy London, its culture and history. I knew I had helped improve the quality of life for many crew, and to help at least one human being restore control over her life, and I had done it on my own terms, not as a requirement of Sea Org orders.

This experience had also helped me to come to terms with my life, what I had been tolerating as a Sea Org member, and who I really am. I had learned that in order to survive at the Int base within conditions of abuse, violence, and chaos, I would find a way to survive within the omnipresence of their control over my personal world. I could create a version of myself that complied with Sea Org rigors, while in my mind, I would be imaginative and do creative work that represented the best version of myself, without requiring orders. I’d find a way to walk between the molecules without getting blown up by seniors and flaps. A sort of hunger-games circumstance.

After completing this project at Saint Hill, I melded back into the pool of 800 souls at the Int base, and accepted my new role as the Assistant Art Director for Events in the Int Management PR Office. Interestingly, COB and COB Assistant continued to tap me for uniform projects around the Scientology world. I was sent to AOSH EU in Copenhagen to “get the stink out of the staff” and do the same thing there that I had done at Saint Hill. Then, spent about six months at the Flag Land Base designing and implementing new uniforms as part of the public relations handling following the tragic death of Lisa McPherson, to help improve public opinion and acceptance of Scientology in Clearwater by eliminating Flag’s militaristic Sea Org image that had been so objectionable there for years.

And on it went for the next five years. I received a promotion to officer rank, and was finally posted as the International Uniform In-Charge for Sea Org image in the Int Landlord’s office of the International Finance Network. I kept to myself, and lived in my own world of designing and manufacturing clothing for the IAS, the Freewinds, RTC, Gold, and more.

It wasn’t until after I finally escaped in 1998, that I realized why I couldn’t continue to do this work for Scientology, even though I loved the design work. I had been propagandizing Scientology, making it look good around the world, whether while working in Cine to make training propaganda films, while working in the Events Unit to design grandiose staging with huge sets and banners for the senior execs where they would lie about Scientology’s accomplishments, or making Sea Org members look beautiful. There were too many similarities between these actions, and how the infamous Nazi propagandist, Leni Riefenstahl, whom L. Ron Hubbard deeply admired and befriended in London, had used her design and cinematography talents to propagandize the Nazi rallies for Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich. We had adapted some of her techniques, and Hubbard’s admiration for it, without even being aware of it.

In July 1998, I would compromise my personal values no more, left Peter, and made my third and final escape.

— Karen Pressley

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Continuing our year in review: The stories of February 2023

After Valerie Haney had nominated Elisabeth Moss and Tom Cruise to be arbitrators, Judge Gail Killefer said she was giving Valerie one more chance to submit names or risk having her lawsuit thrown out.

Brent and Aimee Jones filed bankruptcy after their Real Water fiasco had been shut down by the FDA and they were facing dozens of ruinous lawsuits.

How embarrassing: A Scientology South African org gets its water shut off for not paying its bill. What’s up with that, Dave?

Scientology unveils another Super Bowl ad, this one titled “Live Again.”

This month’s big story was that a federal court in Tampa determined that David Miscavige was purposely evading service in the trafficking lawsuit there, and named him an official defendant against his objections.

Another unique item this month was the transcript of a recorded conversation that a young Underground Bunker reader had with a veteran OT Scientologist, who was trying to sell them on Dianetics and Scientology. Very revealing!

We marked the passing of Richard Belzer, who had been our friend when we edited the Village Voice, and who got us into a wild roast of Matt Lauer at the Friar’s Club back in the day.

We will also miss Simi Valley, a longtime Underground Bunker reader and former Scientologist, who had passed away late in 2022.

Angry about being named a defendant in the labor trafficking case, David Miscavige asked for more time to respond to the court about it, insisting that he was not properly served.

Valerie Haney submits a new list of 15 names for arbitrator, which includes Jenna Elfman and Giovanni Ribisi, but also some less-well-known figures, one of which Scientology will end up accepting.

A LOOK BACK AT FEBRUARY 2022: Louise Shekter began sending us well-written pieces about her time in Scientology. At a February 8 hearing in Danny’s criminal case, one of Scientology’s attorneys showed up, carping about Judge Olmedo. We noted the passing of Ned McCrink. Scientology’s Super Bowl ad was titled “We Are Giants.” Bruce Hines moved us with a piece about the death of his sister. And we noted the passing of former Narconon International president and longtime Scientology figure Clark Carr at 75.

A LOOK BACK AT FEBRUARY 2021: Investigative proof that Balance of Nature has a tight relationship with Scientology. New York investor and Scientologist David Gentile charged for running $1.8 billion Ponzi scheme. Scientology’s Narconon drug rehab network down to only 5 clinics in the US. The world lost jazz great and Scientology celeb Chick Corea. Exposing a Scientology dirty tricks operator, Russ Andrews. And another OT suicide.

A LOOK BACK AT FEBRUARY 2020: Forced to arbitration, Valerie Haney considered her options. An OT dentist in Maryland was unmasked as a sadistic medical disaster. Bobette Riales blamed Scientology for the near-fatal poisoning of her dog Jet. Scientology’s celebrity Narconon in Ojai got the drone treatment. An L. Ron Hubbard racist lecture in South Africa was unearthed. Last Ideal Org opened before the pandemic in Ventura, and we got the drone flyover.

A LOOK BACK AT FEBRUARY 2019: NFL great Marshall Faulk used another Super Bowl to shill for Scientology’s anti-drug front group. Chief Slaughter denied that Clearwater PD genuflects to David Miscavige. USC revealed that a letter from a prominent faculty member endorsing Scientology was a fake. The National Enquirer falsely claimed that Shelly Miscavige had been spotted on a cruise ship.

A LOOK BACK AT FEBRUARY 2018: David Mayo died, and we revealed that we’d been talking to him over the years. Scientology’s new Super Bowl ad, ‘Curious?’ was a hoot. Chris Owen dived into the notorious ‘brainwashing’ manual. And Sands Hall published her delightful memoir, ‘Flunk. Start.’

A LOOK BACK AT FEBRUARY 2017: The new Super Bowl ad was another mystery sandwich. Phil and Willie Jones put up another ‘Call Me’ billboard, this time right on Sunset Boulevard. Clay Irwin toured Tom Cruise’s penthouse. We profiled the ‘celebrity whisperer,’ Quailynn McDaniel.

A LOOK BACK AT FEBRUARY 2016: News broke that Monique Rathbun had fired her entire legal team. Ross and Carrie began their trip inside the church. Defector Paul Burkhart estimated fewer than 20,000 active members left in the church worldwide. And a 1940 L. Ron Hubbard short story turned out to have a lot of precursor ideas for Scientology.

A LOOK BACK AT FEBRUARY 2015: The horrifying story of a mentally ill woman held in an Arkansas basement by a Scientologist, Mark Ebner found that Narconon International ditched its offices, we fact-checked Danny Masterson, and R.M. Seibert dug up L. Ron Hubbard’s high school record.

A LOOK BACK AT FEBRUARY 2014: The Master actor Philip Seymour Hoffman died in New York, we wrote an essay complaining about the way the media talks about Scientology and celebrities, and we provided some context to the first official Scientology wedding in England.

A LOOK BACK AT FEBRUARY 2013: Jenna Miscavige Hill’s memoir, Beyond Belief, was published. Harlan Ellison helped us document a Hubbard legend. And former Narconon executive Eric Tenorio cam forward.

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Technology Cocktail

“‘Coffee Shop Auditing’ isn’t really an assist as it is usually done over coffee too casually to be dignified by the name of auditing. The pc is never informed at all of the existence of a session. The pc, in an assist, is however informed of the fact and the assist is begun by ‘Start of Assist’ and ‘End of Assist,’ so an assist, like a session, has a beginning and an end. The Auditor’s Code is observed in giving an assist and the Auditing Comm Cycle is used. As an Auditor one sets out in an assist to accomplish a specific thing for the pc like relieve the snivels or make the ache in the leg better. So an Assist also has a very finite purpose.” — L. Ron Hubbard, 1964

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THE PODCAST: How many have you heard?

— SPECIAL: The best TV show on Scientology you never got to see

[1] Phil Jones [2] Derek Bloch [3] Carol Nyburg [4] Katrina Reyes [5] Jamie DeWolf

— The first Danny Masterson trial and beyond

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“Why do you think it is that simply looking at something will make it vanish as far as a thetan is concerned? We know that this will take place. All right, that’s because he goes into communication with it and it is a mismanaged communication. To be an it, to be a something, we must have had a mismanaged communication of one kind or another. That’s why we say ‘God built this universe.’ Now that is a mismanaged communication, per se, it is right there. God did not build this universe. And so that is mismanaged so there is the wrong point of origin, see, some point of origin is mocked-up, and so on.” — L. Ron Hubbard, December 22, 1954

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“Peter Church, FEBC student and Sharon West were married at sea by Captain W.B. Robertson at 2151 hours 21 Dec 1970. The marriage will be recorded at the nearest consul under Maritime Law and the Laws of Panama. The entry has been duly recorded in the ship’s log. Peter Church is from Delta Meters, Los Angeles. They will have a brief honeymoon in the nextport. They have the good wishes of the officers and crew of the Apollo and my own.” — The Commodore, December 22, 1970

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“I think there is different levels of beingness and as you advance up you always look at the people below you and think that they are insane, but you think you’re sane, then you progress and then you think about how you used to be and you think you were insane, so it’s all a gradient scale, and earthlings on average are not advanced so therefore we are all insane.”

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1999: The St. Petersburg Times reported that two organizations are forming in Clearwater under the name of Lisa McPherson, who died in Scientology’s care in 1995. “Vowing to speak out against ‘the propaganda of hate,’ a new organization of local Scientologists is gearing up to counter the efforts of Robert S. Minton, the New England millionaire who is setting up shop in downtown Clearwater to oppose the Church of Scientology. The new organization is called the Lisa McPherson Foundation, named for the veteran Scientologist whose 1995 death while in the care of church members has saddled Scientology with a lawsuit, a criminal prosecution and increased pressure from its critics. And, in an added twist that local Scientologists find appalling, the case has resulted in McPherson’s name being used against the church they say she loved. Although McPherson had been a practicing Scientologist for 13 years, the church’s critics consider her a martyr for their cause. The name of Minton’s group, for example, is the Lisa McPherson Trust, which plans to present a dark picture of Scientology to locals and provide ‘exit counseling’ for those who want to leave the church. In contrast, the Lisa McPherson Foundation seeks to pull McPherson’s name back into the Scientology camp by opposing Minton at every turn and by ‘standing up for religious tolerance,’ said Bennetta Slaughter, the foundation’s leader. Slaughter, a prominent Scientologist in Clearwater, was McPherson’s longtime friend and employer at AMC Publishing Co. ‘I will, in fact, counter any hate that will come from them and I will handle that,’ Slaughter said of Minton and his group in an interview last week. ‘They are not going to poison this town.’ The foundation has about 300 members, Slaughter said. Minton responded, saying he primarily is opposed to Scientology’s strict
‘ethics’ system, which he called harmful. He cited records that came to light after McPherson’s death indicating she was struggling under a Scientology ethics program being administered at Slaughter’s company. In a wrongful death lawsuit filed by McPherson’s family and financed by Minton, that ethics program is alleged to have caused the severe mental breakdown that played a key role in her death. ‘Bennetta Slaughter is herself part and parcel of the Scientology abuse process,’ Minton said.”

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“Dude, we don’t get ‘in comm’ with people around here, we talk to them.”

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Full Court Press: What we’re watching at the Underground Bunker

Criminal prosecutions:
— Danny Masterson charged for raping three women: Found guilty on two counts on May 31, remanded to custody. Sentenced to 30 years to life on Sep 7.
— ‘Lafayette Ronald Hubbard’ (a/k/a Justin Craig), aggravated assault, plus drug charges: Grand jury indictments include charges from an assault while in custody. Next pretrial hearing January 29, 2024.
— David Gentile, GPB Capital, fraud.

Civil litigation:
— Leah Remini v. Scientology, alleging ‘Fair Game’ harassment and defamation: Complaint filed August 2, motion to strike/anti-SLAPP motions by Scientology to be heard January 9, 2024.
— Baxter, Baxter, and Paris v. Scientology, alleging labor trafficking: Forced to arbitration. Plaintiffs allowed interlocutory appeal to Eleventh Circuit.
— Valerie Haney v. Scientology: Forced to ‘religious arbitration.’
— Chrissie Bixler et al. v. Scientology and Danny Masterson: Discovery phase.
— Jane Doe 1 v. Scientology, David Miscavige, and Gavin Potter: Case unsealed and second amended complaint filed. Scientology moves for religious arbitration.
— Chiropractors Steve Peyroux and Brent Detelich, stem cell fraud: Ordered to mediation.

——————–

Find your favorite Hubbardite celeb at this index page — or suggest someone to add to the list!

——————–
THE WHOLE TRACK

[ONE year ago] Judge sets Jan 20 hearing for motion to serve Scientology leader in trafficking case
[TWO years ago] Scientology’s 2021 was a leaky one, including new data about its dirty tricks
[THREE years ago] ‘Tears of joy’: Scientology boasts that leader David Miscavige attended Clearwater event
[FOUR years ago] Scientology Santa: The church built on Jesus as a hoax once again co-opts Christmas
[FIVE years ago] Checking in on a Scientology ‘ideal’ Christmas as we continue our year in review
[SIX years ago] Scientology donor Joy Villa aiming for Ileana Ros-Lehtinen’s Miami congressional district
[SEVEN years ago] February made us shiver, but it was another Astounding month here in the Bunker
[EIGHT years ago] The Scientologist who sold a hot dinosaur skull to Nicolas Cage
[NINE years ago] Scientology’s 2014 in review: In chilly February, Hambo began his onslaught
[TEN years ago] Sunday Funnies: Scientology sends us a letter!
[ELEVEN years ago] Scientology’s 2012 In Review: Debbie Cook Starts January Off With a BANG!

——————–

Scientology disconnection, a reminder

Bernie Headley (1952-2019) did not see his daughter Stephanie in his final 5,667 days.
Valerie Haney has not seen her mother Lynne in 3,251 days.
Katrina Reyes has not seen her mother Yelena in 3,766 days
Sylvia Wagner DeWall has not seen her brother Randy in 3,316 days.
Brian Sheen has not seen his grandson Leo in 2,306 days.
Geoff Levin has not seen his son Collin and daughter Savannah in 2,187 days.
Christie Collbran has not seen her mother Liz King in 5,491 days.
Clarissa Adams has not seen her parents Walter and Irmin Huber in 3,362 days.
Jamie Sorrentini Lugli has not seen her father Irving in 4,914 days.
Quailynn McDaniel has not seen her brother Sean in 4,256 days.
Dylan Gill has not seen his father Russell in 12,822 days.
Melissa Paris has not seen her father Jean-Francois in 8,741 days.
Valeska Paris has not seen her brother Raphael in 4,909 days.
Mirriam Francis has not seen her brother Ben in 4,490 days.
Claudio and Renata Lugli have not seen their son Flavio in 4,751 days.
Sara Goldberg has not seen her daughter Ashley in 3,787 days.
Lori Hodgson has not seen her son Jeremy and daughter Jessica in 3,503 days.
Marie Bilheimer has not seen her mother June in 3,067 days.
Julian Wain has not seen his brother Joseph or mother Susan in 1,382 days.
Charley Updegrove has not seen his son Toby in 2,557 days.
Joe Reaiche has not seen his daughter Alanna Masterson in 7,108 days
Derek Bloch has not seen his father Darren in 4,239 days.
Cindy Plahuta has not seen her daughter Kara in 4,577 days.
Roger Weller has not seen his daughter Alyssa in 9,432 days.
Claire Headley has not seen her mother Gen in 4,551 days.
Ramana Dienes-Browning has not seen her mother Jancis in 2,907 days.
Mike Rinder has not seen his son Benjamin and daughter Taryn in 7,210 days.
Brian Sheen has not seen his daughter Spring in 3,316 days.
Skip Young has not seen his daughters Megan and Alexis in 3,714 days.
Mary Kahn has not seen her son Sammy in 3,590 days.
Lois Reisdorf has not seen her son Craig in 3,155 days.
Phil and Willie Jones have not seen their son Mike and daughter Emily in 3,668 days.
Mary Jane Barry has not seen her daughter Samantha in 3,922 days.
Kate Bornstein has not seen her daughter Jessica in 15,031 days.

——————–

Posted by Tony Ortega on December 22, 2023 at 07:00

E-mail tips to tonyo94 AT gmail DOT com or follow us on Twitter. We also post updates at our Facebook author page. After every new story we send out an alert to our e-mail list and our FB page.

Watch our short videos that explain Scientology’s controversies in three minutes or less…

Check your whale level at our dedicated page for status updates, or join us at the Underground Bunker’s Facebook discussion group for more frivolity.

For decades he made Scientology look good. Now he’s out and telling the ugly truth.

Tony Ortega — Fri, 24 Nov 2023 12:00:37 +0000

Over the years, we’ve become very accustomed to Scientology’s “look.” You probably know what we’re referring to. The style and dressing of Scientology videos, the pacing and extravagance of Scientology events, and lavish attention to detail at Scientology facilities.

In some ways, it can be very impressive, but it’s also usually strained and over the top as it tends to reflect the ambitions of Scientology leader David Miscavige.

Often over the years, whether we were looking at Super Bowl ads, or new Ideal Org grand openings, we couldn’t help wondering who was helping Dave design and articulate Scientology’s vision.

Recently, we got an eye-opening answer to that question when a man named Mitch Brisker defected from the church and claimed to be responsible for Scientology’s look and feel.

Brisker first showed up at the YouTube channel of Janis Gillham Grady and Mark Fisher, but we’d been talking to him for quite a while before that, trying to help him as he attempted to re-adjust to life outside of Scientology.

We knew right away that he was a remarkable figure to have left Scientology, maybe the most notable person to leave since the exodus of executives like Mike Rinder and the Headleys in the mid-2000s.

And now, Brisker has published a book about his adventure as the man who gave Scientology its public appearance, and we can tell you that it’s a ride worth the price of admission.

But before he takes us into his church years in Scientology, The Big Lie: How I made an evil cult look good, available today, he first wants us to know about his upbringing as a kid in Hollywood who watched the Sixties happen on his front porch.

But if young Brisker found himself seeing Dylan at a club on Sunset Boulevard, and experienced being in the first class at the new Cal Arts as he pursued a life in film, his early plans were all subsumed in a serious heroin addiction.

A friend recommended Scientology, and Brisker found that not only were the Scientologists at the Celebrity Centre eager to help him with his habit, but they also seemed to genuinely care about him.

As a result, although he was becoming a skilled filmmaker, he also felt an obligation to Scientology, and one that would put him in one of the most unique positions in the organization.

Brisker gained access to some of the most sensitive locations and projects in Scientology working closely with its leader, David Miscavige, but Brisker’s position as film director and not a “Sea Org” member meant that he was still, on some level, separate from the dedicated troops he was tasked with turning into film crews.

This gave him access that few have been able to talk about, not only seeing Scientology’s projects put into action, but also being witness to how they were planned at the highest level.

Much of the time, Brisker explains, this meant that he was pulled into one impossible situation after another and was expected to “make it go right” on insane schedules. But the result was that familiar landmarks we associate with Scientology in Hollywood today, such as the L. Ron Hubbard Life Exhibition on Hollywood Boulevard, or CCHR’s museum, “Psychiatry, an Industry of Death” on Sunset, were projects that he brought to fruition.

And along the way, Brisker worked closely with David Miscavige and now brings us one of the most informative and nuanced portraits of the diminutive man who runs Scientology. Brisker portrays a man who was a ruthless micro-manager, as others have. But Brisker’s Miscavige could also be supportive, clever, and even fun to be around.

Eventually, though he had felt some obligation to Scientology for helping him with his addiction decades earlier, Mitch begins to wonder about his dedication to the organization and how it had affected his life and his career. But getting out is not so easy, as so many have found out.

We know from our own interactions with Mitch that starting over after 70 has been a tough task for him. But if this fascinating and well-written book is any indication, he’s making the most of his new life.

——————–

Technology Cocktail

“Exactly where are we technically, personally and organizationally? It may be of some surprise to you that we have just about arrived. We’ve been so long on the road that some fainter hearts have begun to despair and less high case levels have begun to gloom. Since last October I have been cracking through trying to get there before we were got. It now is obvious that we have made it and even if we were hard hit socially or politically we would still make it. For we have the data.” — L. Ron Hubbard, 1963

——————–

——————–

THE PODCAST: How many have you heard?

— SPECIAL: The best TV show on Scientology you never got to see

[1] Phil Jones [2] Derek Bloch [3] Carol Nyburg [4] Katrina Reyes [5] Jamie DeWolf

— The first Danny Masterson trial and beyond

——————–

“Nobody ever objects to anybody in India being found dead. So they’re dead. They’re dead. They get married when they’re 12 or 14, kick the bucket when they’re 21, 28 — real quick. The only trouble with the people is, it’s too hot there and they key in all the prenatals they’ve got. It is about 90. Any time you get a climate which is approaching 98.6, you can get the whole prenatal bank keyed in almost perpetually, because that’s the temperature in the prenatal bank, 98.6. That’s why hot countries turn feminine, so forth, so it’s not a hardy country. But way up north, those boys live with kind of wild abandon, too. They always have.” — L. Ron Hubbard, November 24, 1953

——————–

“COMMENDABLE: CS-1 Cmdr Hana Eltringham is commended for getting out and duplicated the CLO org bd and MOs for getting it into action at CLOs in UK, DK and US. A very nice, rapid production requiring no further correction. All who helped her are also thanked.” — The Commodore, November 24, 1970

——————–

“Scientology is the Science of Certainty. You gain certainty in your ability to audit by auditing. I know most of you have given up on the idea of being able to clear the planet. But with thousands of idle OTs (‘do nothing OTs’) to help us if they would just do something, we might still have a chance.”

——————–

1999: LA Weekly published an article this week on a campaign to have newspapers and magazines carry quotations from L. Ron Hubbard. “‘Affection could no more spoil a child than the sun could be put out by a bucket of gasoline.’ Don’t go looking for this maxim in your Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations – but you just might find it in your local newspaper, courtesy of Scientology. The IRS-designated religion has been mailing out this and other pearls from the lips of founder L. Ron Hubbard to newspaper ‘Quote of the Week’ sections. The Hubbardisms address Morals (‘The criminal accuses others of things which he himself is doing’), Problems (‘Any problem, to be a problem, must contain a lie’) and, in a masterpiece of mixed metaphor, Marriage (‘Communication is the root of marital success from which a strong union can grow, and noncommunication is the rock on which the ship will bash out her keel’). They run above the tagline ‘L. Ron Hubbard, one of the most acclaimed and widely read authors of all time.’ (Hubbard was a science-fiction writer.)”

——————–

“My take on it is that Hubbard created Dianetics as a ‘short con’ and when it took off on a level he didn’t expect and when everyone by the early 60’s had reached ‘Clear’ and the gravy train started to slow down he created the ‘long con’ of the OT levels. The $64,000 question is whether due to mental illness and perhaps drug use did he start to believe in his own bullshit? When he says at the end of OTVIII ‘now that you know what you aren’t are you ready to find out what you really are?’ I see this as phase 2 of the long con. Hubbard is saying ‘Hey, guess what kids, I took a detour and I was on the wrong road but now I’m on the right one, so lets go.’ The bottom line and perhaps unanswerable question is how much was calculated and how much was crazy.”

——————–

Full Court Press: What we’re watching at the Underground Bunker

Civil litigation:
— Leah Remini v. Scientology, alleging ‘Fair Game’ harassment and defamation: Complaint filed August 2, Scientology submitting anti-SLAPP response Oct 26.
— Baxter, Baxter, and Paris v. Scientology, alleging labor trafficking: Forced to arbitration. Plaintiffs allowed interlocutory appeal to Eleventh Circuit.
— Valerie Haney v. Scientology: Forced to ‘religious arbitration.’
— Chrissie Bixler et al. v. Scientology and Danny Masterson: Discovery phase.
— Jane Doe 1 v. Scientology, David Miscavige, and Gavin Potter: Case unsealed and second amended complaint filed. Scientology moves for religious arbitration.
— Chiropractors Steve Peyroux and Brent Detelich, stem cell fraud: Ordered to mediation.

——————–

Find your favorite Hubbardite celeb at this index page — or suggest someone to add to the list!

——————–
THE WHOLE TRACK

[ONE year ago] Special Thanksgiving Podcast: ‘A Billion Years’ author Mike Rinder on Scientology’s epic fails
[TWO years ago] Check out the US government’s new whales: Feshbachs go Diamond Meritorious for the IRS!
[THREE years ago] Scientology predictably trashes Valerie Haney’s request for state supreme court review
[FOUR years ago] Scientologists use faith healing to convince fire victims they’re actually helping
[FIVE years ago] Xenu’s first public outing: Robert Kaufman’s stunning 1972 testament, ‘Inside Scientology’
[SIX years ago] KID CORPS: When a disease outbreak brought Scientology unwanted attention
[SEVEN years ago] Leah Remini’s Scientology series opens with a gut-wrenching story of ‘disconnection’
[EIGHT years ago] Strange scenes from the Moscow hearing that banned Scientology yesterday
[NINE years ago] Jon Atack: At the heart of Scientology is L. Ron Hubbard’s paralyzing use of contradiction
[TEN years ago] Jenna Miscavige Hill on Scientology’s New Dawn: “I Can’t Believe People Still Buy This BS”
[ELEVEN years ago] Scientology Leader David Miscavige Added as Defendant in Ken Dandar’s Federal Lawsuit

——————–

Scientology disconnection, a reminder

Bernie Headley (1952-2019) did not see his daughter Stephanie in his final 5,667 days.
Valerie Haney has not seen her mother Lynne in 3,223 days.
Katrina Reyes has not seen her mother Yelena in 3,738 days
Sylvia Wagner DeWall has not seen her brother Randy in 3,288 days.
Brian Sheen has not seen his grandson Leo in 2,278 days.
Geoff Levin has not seen his son Collin and daughter Savannah in 2,159 days.
Christie Collbran has not seen her mother Liz King in 5,463 days.
Clarissa Adams has not seen her parents Walter and Irmin Huber in 3,334 days.
Doug Kramer has not seen his parents Linda and Norm in 2,439 days.
Jamie Sorrentini Lugli has not seen her father Irving in 4,886 days.
Quailynn McDaniel has not seen her brother Sean in 4,228 days.
Dylan Gill has not seen his father Russell in 12,794 days.
Melissa Paris has not seen her father Jean-Francois in 8,713 days.
Valeska Paris has not seen her brother Raphael in 4,880 days.
Mirriam Francis has not seen her brother Ben in 4,462 days.
Claudio and Renata Lugli have not seen their son Flavio in 4,723 days.
Sara Goldberg has not seen her daughter Ashley in 3,759 days.
Lori Hodgson has not seen her son Jeremy and daughter Jessica in 3,475 days.
Marie Bilheimer has not seen her mother June in 3,039 days.
Julian Wain has not seen his brother Joseph or mother Susan in 1,354 days.
Charley Updegrove has not seen his son Toby in 2,529 days.
Joe Reaiche has not seen his daughter Alanna Masterson in 7,080 days
Derek Bloch has not seen his father Darren in 4,211 days.
Cindy Plahuta has not seen her daughter Kara in 4,549 days.
Roger Weller has not seen his daughter Alyssa in 9,404 days.
Claire Headley has not seen her mother Gen in 4,523 days.
Ramana Dienes-Browning has not seen her mother Jancis in 2,879 days.
Mike Rinder has not seen his son Benjamin and daughter Taryn in 7,182 days.
Brian Sheen has not seen his daughter Spring in 3,288 days.
Skip Young has not seen his daughters Megan and Alexis in 3,686 days.
Mary Kahn has not seen her son Sammy in 3,562 days.
Lois Reisdorf has not seen her son Craig in 3,127 days.
Phil and Willie Jones have not seen their son Mike and daughter Emily in 3,640 days.
Mary Jane Barry has not seen her daughter Samantha in 3,894 days.
Kate Bornstein has not seen her daughter Jessica in 15,003 days.

——————–

Posted by Tony Ortega on November 24, 2023 at 07:00

E-mail tips to tonyo94 AT gmail DOT com or follow us on Twitter. We also post updates at our Facebook author page. After every new story we send out an alert to our e-mail list and our FB page.

Watch our short videos that explain Scientology’s controversies in three minutes or less…

Check your whale level at our dedicated page for status updates, or join us at the Underground Bunker’s Facebook discussion group for more frivolity.

Liz Gale: How she grew up in Scientology, and then smartly traded it for being a pothead

Tony Ortega — Thu, 31 Aug 2023 11:00:29 +0000

In 2016, our old friend Mark Ebner had a suggestion for us.

More than a decade earlier, Ebner had written a terrific story for New Times Los Angeles (where we worked from 1999-2002) about the suicide of Philip Gale, a math prodigy who had grown up in Scientology and threw himself from a building at MIT on the night of L. Ron Hubbard’s birthday, March 13, 1998. (The story was later republished by Gawker, and you can see it here.)

Ebner’s suggestion to us was to interview Philip Gale’s sister Liz Gale, who had also grown up in Scientology, had left it behind, and had interesting things to say about it. We are indebted to Mark for suggesting it, because the result was a story we were particularly proud of that began to capture what a special force of nature Liz Gale is.

Liz was then invited to appear on Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath for a memorable episode of the show’s second season. And since then, Liz has continued to talk about what a unique perspective she has as a former third-generation Scientologist whose family has been through so much.

And now, she’s really outdone herself, coming out with a book with the startling title, “Confessions of an Ex-Scientologist Pothead.” (It’s available now at Amazon.)

She’s been generous enough to send us a description of the book and a short excerpt, and she has also invited us to participate this morning in a live discussion on YouTube during which she says she is going to quiz us about Scientology. That sounds dangerous! But we’re looking forward to it.

Here’s her description…

From her first breath, Liz is destined for life within the mysterious world of Scientology. Indoctrination lurks behind every corner as she shuffles between an elite boarding school, eccentric churches and a family of true believers.
When her teenage brother’s sudden death sparks a national controversy, Liz begins to ask dangerous questions about her family’s seventy-year involvement with the organization.
The true cost of freedom becomes clear when she starts a family of her own and is faced with a gut-wrenching choice. Will she sacrifice everything to protect her children?
You bet your ass she will.

And here’s the excerpt, from chapter 9, “Confession #9: My brother told me Scientology secrets before he died”

There is no guidebook to your son committing suicide. I think my mother did the best she could, considering the circumstances. I cannot blame her for what she said when she was grieving.

The internet, however, remembers forever.

Thank goodness for this electronic memory, which I stumbled upon almost a decade after it was originally posted. It was a piece of the puzzle that I never had before, and no one I knew in Scientology was going to tell me about it.

Soon after my brother died, our mother posted on a popular anti-Scientology message board. She was livid at the discussion of her son, and felt that the critic and journalists had pushed him into a breakdown.

“I know he was contacted by the Boston Herald for their article because he called me and we talked about it,” she wrote. “The interview was upsetting to him. That was the last time I talked to my son.

“In the BEST case scenario, it was upsetting to him. At worst, it could have actively contributed to his decision to take his own life. How would you feel to be 19 years old and have your school, your work experience, and your parents’ beliefs pulled apart and attacked? I have trouble ignoring the fact that his decision to end his life apparently came within a few days of the Boston Herald article[s].”

Of all of Scientology’s 1990s scandals, The Boston Herald series Scientology Unmasked: Inside Scientology was one of the most damaging. Five consecutive articles by investigative journalist Joseph Mallia ran throughout the week of March 1-6, 1998. Mallia’s articles were about different aspects of Scientology and were extremely critical in nature**. Titles included:

— Powerful Church Targets Fortunes, Souls of Recruits
— Church Keys Programs to Recruit Blacks
— Scientology Reaches into Schools through Narconon
— Church, Enemies Wage War on Internet Battlefield – Sacred Teachings Not Secret Anymore
— Scientology Group Reaches Kids Through PBS Videos

After publication, Scientology hired private investigators to look into Mallia’s life, and to uncover what “sinister motive” he had and what “vested interest” he was working for.

At the time, The Rev. Richard L. Dowhower, a Lutheran minister and an adviser on cult activity at the University of Maryland, College Park, said, “I’ve been in the cult-watching business since the early ’70s and I don’t know of any other group, other than Scientology, that targets journalists.”

Though he was not mentioned by name in the post, Mallia was the journalist that my brother had spoken to. Within a week of publication, my brother committed suicide.

I wanted to understand what had happened to my brother. Did he feel bad about what he’d shared with the reporter? Did he think he would get into trouble?

I reached out to the author, Mallia, a few years ago. I spent hours trying to track him down, finally finding him through a colleague in an old photo.

The journalist refused to speak with me. “It’s too painful,” I was relayed.

Yeah, tell me about it, buddy.

——————–

Technology Cocktail

“The largest majority of Scientologists should, I feel, consider themselves as ‘doctors’ on the third and fourth dynamics. And if we work well at this, we will have answered all our various needs and brought it off on the third and fourth as well.” — L. Ron Hubbard, 1960

——————–

——————–

THE PODCAST: How many have you heard?

— SPECIAL: The best TV show on Scientology you never got to see

[1] Phil Jones [2] Derek Bloch [3] Carol Nyburg [4] Katrina Reyes [5] Jamie DeWolf

— The first Danny Masterson trial and beyond

——————–

“Let’s return to the earliest moment that we can contact on the sperm sequence. The earliest moment. The earliest moment you can contact there. The first phrase that you get there will flash into your mind when I count from one to five. One-two-three-four-five. You are doing just fine, by the way. What was the phrase you got? No phrase? All right. Is there somebody there who says ‘Shut up’ or ‘hush’ or something? All right. Let’s shift over on the ovum sequence. Let’s contact the first phrase we get in the ovum sequence, the first phrase. When I count from one to five, it will flash into your mind. One-two-three-four-five. All right. Let’s contact now the earliest moment of pain or unconsciousness that you can reach, either sperm, ovum, preconception, wherever it is, the earliest phrase that we can reach. When I count from one to five, it will flash into your mind. One-twothree-four-five.” — L. Ron Hubbard, August 31, 1950

——————–

“Hey PAC recruited 15 SO members in the last 2 weeks! So Pers SO is working. And Action Bu is just a blur of fast moving missions. We’re having to catch up with all the dropped balls and sloth of the last year or two. So that’s what I’m into. When balls get dropped I have to pick them up fast.” — The Commodore, August 31, 1970

——————–

“Clearing this planet is going to take thousands of years and many lifetimes. There is no instant solution involving paying tens of thousands of dollars for ridiculously overpriced auditing from an egotistical self-styled guru or an organization composed of slave cultists. Anyone who really wants to make it will wade their way through the thousands of hours of study needed to understand the tech.”

——————–

1998: Jesse Prince reported on his recent deposition with Scientology in the Factnet case. “Scientology was deposing me, supposedly concerning the declaration I had filed in the FACTNet case, but in fact I had been asked very few questions that related in any way to the FACTNet copyright case. Most of the deposition had concerned my personal history, much of which had been culled from my pc folders. It was obvious to me that they were using the deposition to gather intelligence information about me, which they would then use to discredit me. The issues before the magistrate were twofold. One was a letter which Lawrence Wollersheim’s attorney Dan Leipold had sent to Scientology attorney Samuel Rosen, in which Dan promised to turn the entire transcript of my deposition over to Ken Dandar, the attorney for Lisa McPherson’s estate, if Rosen dared to bring up any information from my confidential pc folders. The other issue was the length of time Scientology would be allowed to keep me in deposition. Dan and my attorney Ford Greene wanted to limit the amount of time they could keep me; Scientology wanted unlimited access to me. I hear Samuel Rosen say: ‘Your honor, the witness they are bringing into this case, Jesse Prince, was second in command of the Church of Scientology. He signed a confidential non-discolosure agreement not to divulge any information he obtained as a result of his being second in command of Scientology.’ Rosen continued to do his best to persuade the magistrate not to allow Dan to send the deposition transcript to the McPherson case (the outcome was that the magistrate told Dan not to send the transcripts without getting his OK first, and, by the way, we convinced the magistrate not to allow them to depose me past noon of the following day). But I sat there stunned that I had just heard Scientology admit, on the record, that I was second in command of Scientology.”

——————–

“The reason I started watching Game of Thrones is because I thought it was going to be the Deadwood of medieval shows and show how dirty and brutal the times actually were like Deadwood did and there wouldn’t be a whole lot of Lord of the Rings type shit. Which aside from the white walkers and the dragons there really wasn’t. But I’m starting to notice more plausibility gaps and irrational character motivation.”

——————–

Full Court Press: What we’re watching at the Underground Bunker

Criminal prosecutions:
— Danny Masterson charged for raping three women: Found guilty on two counts on May 31, remanded to custody. Sentencing on Sep 7.
— ‘Lafayette Ronald Hubbard’ (a/k/a Justin Craig), aggravated assault, plus drug charges: Grand jury indictments include charges from an assault while in custody. Trial scheduled for August 15.

— David Gentile, GPB Capital, fraud.

Civil litigation:
— Leah Remini v. Scientology, alleging ‘Fair Game’ harassment and defamation: Complaint filed August 2, first hearing set for Dec 4.
— Baxter, Baxter, and Paris v. Scientology, alleging labor trafficking: Forced to arbitration. Plaintiffs allowed interlocutory appeal to Eleventh Circuit.
— Valerie Haney v. Scientology: Forced to ‘religious arbitration.’
— Chrissie Bixler et al. v. Scientology and Danny Masterson: Appellate court removes requirement of arbitration on January 19, case remanded back to Superior Court. Stay in place at least through sentencing of Masterson on Sep 7. Next hearing set for Sept 26.
— Jane Doe 1 v. Scientology, David Miscavige, and Gavin Potter: Case unsealed and second amended complaint filed. Next hearing Nov 6.
— Chiropractors Steve Peyroux and Brent Detelich, stem cell fraud: Ordered to mediation.

——————–

Find your favorite Hubbardite celeb at this index page — or suggest someone to add to the list!

——————–
THE WHOLE TRACK

[ONE year ago] The best TV show on Scientology you never got to see, Episode 4: Katrina Reyes
[TWO years ago] Tom Cruise’s Scientology superpowers, No. 3: Resisting between-life amnesia
[THREE years ago] LEAKED: ‘SCIENTOLOGY BLACK OPS’ EPISODE THAT WAS SPIKED BY AUSSIE NETWORK
[FOUR years ago] Scientology ecstasy: ‘I have no idea where I would be right now without NED’
[FIVE years ago] Sheriff’s Office report spells out tragic details of Scientology ‘Clear’ who took her own life
[SIX years ago] As Leah Remini’s second season hammers away, Scientology is losing its mind
[SEVEN years ago] Vance Woodward’s appeal fails as Scientology has the L.A. attorney on the hook for $90,000
[EIGHT years ago] Home, sweet ‘Freewinds’! We get a rare look inside a Scientology promotional seminar
[NINE years ago] Sunday Funnies: Oops, Scientology reveals a key fact about the size of its membership
[TEN years ago] The History of Scientology’s Weird Vaults — The Bizarre Battlefield Earth Connection!
[ELEVEN years ago] The Secret to Eternal Youth! Now Available on the Cruise Ship Freewinds!
[TWELVE years ago] The Top 25 People Crippling Scientology, No. 14: Tory Christman

——————–

Scientology disconnection, a reminder

Bernie Headley (1952-2019) did not see his daughter Stephanie in his final 5,667 days.
Valerie Haney has not seen her mother Lynne in 3,138 days.
Katrina Reyes has not seen her mother Yelena in 3,653 days
Sylvia Wagner DeWall has not seen her brother Randy in 3,203 days.
Brian Sheen has not seen his grandson Leo in 2,193 days.
Geoff Levin has not seen his son Collin and daughter Savannah in 2,074 days.
Christie Collbran has not seen her mother Liz King in 5,378 days.
Clarissa Adams has not seen her parents Walter and Irmin Huber in 3,249 days.
Doug Kramer has not seen his parents Linda and Norm in 2,354 days.
Jamie Sorrentini Lugli has not seen her father Irving in 4,801 days.
Quailynn McDaniel has not seen her brother Sean in 4,143 days.
Dylan Gill has not seen his father Russell in 12,709 days.
Melissa Paris has not seen her father Jean-Francois in 8,628 days.
Valeska Paris has not seen her brother Raphael in 4,795 days.
Mirriam Francis has not seen her brother Ben in 4,377 days.
Claudio and Renata Lugli have not seen their son Flavio in 4,638 days.
Sara Goldberg has not seen her daughter Ashley in 3,674 days.
Lori Hodgson has not seen her son Jeremy and daughter Jessica in 3,390 days.
Marie Bilheimer has not seen her mother June in 2,954 days.
Julian Wain has not seen his brother Joseph or mother Susan in 1,269 days.
Charley Updegrove has not seen his son Toby in 2,444 days.
Joe Reaiche has not seen his daughter Alanna Masterson in 6,995 days
Derek Bloch has not seen his father Darren in 4,126 days.
Cindy Plahuta has not seen her daughter Kara in 4,464 days.
Roger Weller has not seen his daughter Alyssa in 9,319 days.
Claire Headley has not seen her mother Gen in 4,438 days.
Ramana Dienes-Browning has not seen her mother Jancis in 2,794 days.
Mike Rinder has not seen his son Benjamin and daughter Taryn in 7,097 days.
Brian Sheen has not seen his daughter Spring in 3,203 days.
Skip Young has not seen his daughters Megan and Alexis in 3,601 days.
Mary Kahn has not seen her son Sammy in 3,477 days.
Lois Reisdorf has not seen her son Craig in 3,042 days.
Phil and Willie Jones have not seen their son Mike and daughter Emily in 3,555 days.
Mary Jane Barry has not seen her daughter Samantha in 3,809 days.
Kate Bornstein has not seen her daughter Jessica in 14,918 days.

——————–

Posted by Tony Ortega on August 31, 2023 at 07:00

E-mail tips to tonyo94 AT gmail DOT com or follow us on Twitter. We also post updates at our Facebook author page. After every new story we send out an alert to our e-mail list and our FB page.

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Steve Cannane’s statement as publisher settles ‘Deep Sleep’ lawsuit over his book ‘Fair Game’

Tony Ortega — Wed, 05 Jul 2023 11:00:08 +0000

We were stunned to see the news in the Guardian that Steve Cannane’s publisher, HarperCollins, had not only settled the six-year lawsuit over his book Fair Game, but that it was issuing an apology, and according to the Guardian, Cannane himself would be required not to say anything.

Say what?

If you remember, Cannane’s book was one of the very best about Scientology, and specifically about founder L. Ron Hubbard’s outlandish activities in Australia. In chapter after chapter, Cannane detailed Scientology’s outrageous controversies and abuses with high relief.

However, in one chapter Steve threw the church a bone, pointing out that Scientology’s virulent anti-psychiatry hatred had led it to help uncover a house of horrors, the things going on at Chelmsford Hospital and a misguided “deep sleep” drug therapy that resulted in the deaths of numerous patients.

The whole thing had been exposed in a Royal Commission, which Cannane cited, and included the names of several doctors and administrators who were responsible for the horrific experimentations.

Well, it was two of those named figures who sued the book for defamation, something that wouldn’t have gone anywhere in the US, because a journalist who cites official government investigative conclusions is protected by our First Amendment.

Australia doesn’t have a First Amendment, and in that country’s crazy legal setup, Cannane and his publisher were forced to prove the allegations against these two all over again more than 30 years later, despite what the Royal Commission had found.

They gamely did so, putting on experts who testified that what happened at Chelmsford was as horrific as the government had reported decades ago.

In her 2020 ruling dismissing the defamation claims, Justice Jayne Jagot wrote, “The applicants…relied on their own evidence which was found to be dishonest. In these circumstances, the idea that Mr. Cannane was obliged to give the applicants another opportunity to present their dishonest and self-serving version of events, which had been so comprehensively rejected in the Royal Commission report, is untenable….it was simply unnecessary to give the applicants any further opportunity to attempt to rewrite history.”

Despite that drubbing, however, the two appealed, and a higher court found, incredibly, that it was unfair that the original finders of fact in the Chelmsford inquiry (who are now generally dead) could not be cross-examined. The court remanded the case for retrial.

But with the case already costing HarperCollins millions, the publisher decided to settle. OK, that’s not hard to understand. But it was shameful to see HarperCollins apologizing to these two horrific experimenters (one of whom died during the litigation) and saying it was withdrawing certain ‘allegations.’

Allegations? These were established facts.

Cannane has always stood by what’s in his book, and he has never apologized for it.

And as far his not being able to say anything, that part thankfully turned out not to be the case. We checked with him, and we got the feeling that he’d like to say a lot about what’s going on, but he’s restricted in what he can say. He did send us this statement for publication…

I wrote this book to expose the truth about abuses inside the Church of Scientology. Little did I know that it would end in a lengthy legal battle with someone who was not a Scientologist and was mentioned by name only once in my book.
I wanted to fight this case all the way to the end.
However, I cannot expect HarperCollins to provide a limitless supply of funds to defend my book in a case that has already dragged on for six years and has cost millions of dollars. Even if we won at retrial, it could have been appealed again.
I understand why HarperCollins felt the need to settle and I sincerely want to thank them, and all the lawyers involved, who defended my book and fought for so long.
Advertisement
In my book, when writing about Chelmsford hospital I relied primarily on the findings of the Royal Commission that looked into deep sleep therapy.
I agree with Justice Jagot, now of the High Court of Australia, when she initially dismissed the defamation claim in the Federal Court.
On appeal, the Full Federal Court found that the book was defamatory, overturned Justice Jagot’s judgment and ordered a retrial. I am very disappointed I won’t have the opportunity to defend the book in a retrial.
I strongly believe defamation law and the way it is interpreted by some judges in Australia not only undermines freedom of speech, but also makes public interest journalism far more difficult than it should be. This is not healthy for our democracy and limits our ability to hold powerful people to account.
I believe that in the US, the UK or any EU nation, this case would have been thrown out at the first hurdle.

There’s no doubt he’s right about that. Here in the US, you can’t sue a reporter for citing official government documents.

It’s just a shame Australia can’t get its act together and get some real legal protection for journalists, especially those willing to expose the corrupt and the powerful.

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Technology Cocktail

“Authoritarianism is little more than a form of hypnotism. Learning is forced under threat of some form of punishment. A student is stuffed with data which has not been individually evaluated just as a taxidermist would stuff a snake. Such a student will be well-informed and well-educated according to present-day standards, but unfortunately he will not be very successful in his chosen profession.” — L. Ron Hubbard, 1959

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——————–

THE PODCAST: How many have you heard?

— SPECIAL: The best TV show on Scientology you never got to see

[1] Phil Jones [2] Derek Bloch [3] Carol Nyburg [4] Katrina Reyes [5] Jamie DeWolf

— The first Danny Masterson trial and beyond

——————–

“It’s very funny, you know: bodies have machinery laid into them from other times. It’s quite interesting. You’ll find some preclear wallowing around one time or another: ‘Well, look what I have done to this body. Look at the horrible machinery and things I have set up.’ Then he wonders why it runs much faster and gets much more solid. Well, some thetan that had the thing on the genetic line way back when has already installed a tremendous number of items. You didn’t install everything that’s wrong with your body.” — L. Ron Hubbard, July 5, 1957

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“MOVIES AND BOOKS: I have a movie to rewrite and some book work to do. I wish all hands would get the orgs off my desk. One blessing: I am not having to stir the crew’s soup. Thank you Service Div FSO. I think you’re great! The FAO has no top brass yet. That would help.” — The Commodore, July 5, 1971

——————–

“From December 3, 1995, to January 7, 1996, I recovered the memories of several in-between lives incidents. I was a free being. I spent most of my time just being a free being without being in a body at all. There were times, however, when I was temporarily placed in a body at implant stations. In these cases I would eventually get free of the body and continue on my merry way as a free being. As you will see, the difference here on Earth is that there is a SYSTEM to create amnesia and keep a being trapped in a seemingly endless, revolving door CYCLE of re-embodiments. Free beings are invisible to the naked eye. However, they can create and project a visible form or energy, which can be seen by the naked eye. This sometimes occurs in the ‘ghost’ phenomenon. It is not difficult to locate the position of a ‘ghost’ (i.e., a being without a body) in a room, and one can even communicate with it. I have personally experienced this phenomenon. Cats — as you may already have observed — are very good at spotting beings.”

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1997: Another German TV show is being prepared on Scientology. The crew have been the subject of intense private investigator attention this week. “A German TV crew has been in the US preparing a program on the scientology cult. They were followed and harassed all the way from Florida to Chicago by 5 cars of scientology agents. A number of top scientology criminals have been in Chicago having to testify in the Cynthia Kisser trial and the German group wanted to catch some of that. This TV crew has been followed everywhere day and night. One incident brought the police and the subsequent police report yielded two names of two of these agents in one of the cars. They are: Angel Adrian Casillas Jr. and William Thierry Dechanac (not sure of this spelling). They claim to be employed by Talon Executive Services of 1981 Brookhurst, Suite D-429, Huntington Beach, Calif. 714-434-7476” Gerry Armstrong provided some background on the investigators. “I believe that Angel Casillas was a guy who was staking out/stalking Jerry and Hana Whitfield in LA a few years back. They called the LAPD and Casillas was detained. He brought a bogus lawsuit for false imprisonment against the Whitfields who were represented by LA attorney Toby Plevin. I believe the lawsuit went nowhere and was dismissed.”

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“It’s 10:30 and I’m enjoying a fine bottle of rot gut vodka so I’m in no mood for deciphering new Scientology acronyms.”

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Full Court Press: What we’re watching at the Underground Bunker

Criminal prosecutions:
— Danny Masterson charged for raping three women: Found guilty on two counts on May 31, remanded to custody. Sentencing on Aug 4.
— ‘Lafayette Ronald Hubbard’ (a/k/a Justin Craig), aggravated assault, plus drug charges: Grand jury indictments include charges from an assault while in custody. Trial scheduled for August 15.
— David Gentile, GPB Capital, fraud.

Civil litigation:
— Baxter, Baxter, and Paris v. Scientology, alleging labor trafficking: Forced to arbitration. Plaintiffs allowed interlocutory appeal to Eleventh Circuit.
— Valerie Haney v. Scientology: Forced to ‘religious arbitration.’
— Chrissie Bixler et al. v. Scientology and Danny Masterson: Appellate court removes requirement of arbitration on January 19, case remanded back to Superior Court. Stay in place at least through sentencing of Masterson on Aug 4.
— Jane Doe 1 v. Scientology, David Miscavige, and Gavin Potter: Case unsealed and second amended complaint filed. Next hearing August 1.
— Author Steve Cannane defamation trial: New trial ordered after appeals court overturned prior ruling.
— Chiropractors Steve Peyroux and Brent Detelich, stem cell fraud: Lawsuit filed by the FTC and state of Georgia in August, now in discovery phase.

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Find your favorite Hubbardite celeb at this index page — or suggest someone to add to the list!

——————–
THE WHOLE TRACK

[ONE year ago] Of course Scientology works — it has graphs and charts and stuff!
[TWO years ago] Take Scientology’s quiz to see if you qualify for the Sea Org and its billion-year contract!
[THREE years ago] ‘Scientology is dead’ says the ex-con claiming he’s the reincarnated L. Ron Hubbard
[FOUR years ago] More rich donors propping up Scientology are revealed in a church magazine
[FIVE years ago] Shocking molestation claims inside Scientology leaking out before ‘Aftermath’ episode
[SIX years ago] Scientology’s all-hands-on-deck gathering in the Valley caught in pics
[SEVEN years ago] Battle for a Scientology soul: Kazakh 20-year-old ‘prisoner’ is back home, but will she stay?
[EIGHT years ago] LIVE REPORTS: Scientology leader David Miscavige opens “Ideal Org” in Colombia today
[NINE years ago] John Joseph, 1955-2014: A Scientologist, and a friend to the Underground Bunker
[TEN years ago] Has Leah Remini Left the Church of Scientology?
[ELEVEN years ago] Scientology Leader David Miscavige’s Disappeared Wife Shelly: What We Know
[TWELVE years ago] When Scientology Was Hip: E-Meters in the Village

——————–

Scientology disconnection, a reminder

Bernie Headley (1952-2019) did not see his daughter Stephanie in his final 5,667 days.
Valerie Haney has not seen her mother Lynne in 3,081 days.
Katrina Reyes has not seen her mother Yelena in 3,596 days
Sylvia Wagner DeWall has not seen her brother Randy in 3,146 days.
Brian Sheen has not seen his grandson Leo in 2,136 days.
Geoff Levin has not seen his son Collin and daughter Savannah in 2,017 days.
Christie Collbran has not seen her mother Liz King in 5,321 days.
Clarissa Adams has not seen her parents Walter and Irmin Huber in 3,192 days.
Doug Kramer has not seen his parents Linda and Norm in 2,297 days.
Jamie Sorrentini Lugli has not seen her father Irving in 4,744 days.
Quailynn McDaniel has not seen her brother Sean in 4,086 days.
Dylan Gill has not seen his father Russell in 12,652 days.
Melissa Paris has not seen her father Jean-Francois in 8,571 days.
Valeska Paris has not seen her brother Raphael in 4,738 days.
Mirriam Francis has not seen her brother Ben in 4,320 days.
Claudio and Renata Lugli have not seen their son Flavio in 4,581 days.
Sara Goldberg has not seen her daughter Ashley in 3,617 days.
Lori Hodgson has not seen her son Jeremy and daughter Jessica in 3,333 days.
Marie Bilheimer has not seen her mother June in 2,897 days.
Julian Wain has not seen his brother Joseph or mother Susan in 1,212 days.
Charley Updegrove has not seen his son Toby in 2,387 days.
Joe Reaiche has not seen his daughter Alanna Masterson in 6,938 days
Derek Bloch has not seen his father Darren in 4,069 days.
Cindy Plahuta has not seen her daughter Kara in 4,407 days.
Roger Weller has not seen his daughter Alyssa in 9,262 days.
Claire Headley has not seen her mother Gen in 4,381 days.
Ramana Dienes-Browning has not seen her mother Jancis in 2,737 days.
Mike Rinder has not seen his son Benjamin and daughter Taryn in 7,040 days.
Brian Sheen has not seen his daughter Spring in 3,146 days.
Skip Young has not seen his daughters Megan and Alexis in 3,544 days.
Mary Kahn has not seen her son Sammy in 3,420 days.
Lois Reisdorf has not seen her son Craig in 3,003 days.
Phil and Willie Jones have not seen their son Mike and daughter Emily in 3,498 days.
Mary Jane Barry has not seen her daughter Samantha in 3,752 days.
Kate Bornstein has not seen her daughter Jessica in 14,861 days.

——————–

Posted by Tony Ortega on July 5, 2023 at 07:00

E-mail tips to tonyo94 AT gmail DOT com or follow us on Twitter. We also post updates at our Facebook author page. After every new story we send out an alert to our e-mail list and our FB page.

Watch our short videos that explain Scientology’s controversies in three minutes or less…

Check your whale level at our dedicated page for status updates, or join us at the Underground Bunker’s Facebook discussion group for more frivolity.

Pick up your copy of The Bad Cadet at Amazon.

The Bad Cadet: New book looks at Scientology in a coming-of-age story

Tony Ortega — Fri, 14 Apr 2023 11:00:29 +0000

We first heard from Katherine Spallino several years ago, and we’re happy to see that the book she’s been working on, The Bad Cadet: Growing Up in the Church of Scientology’s Sea Organization, is now available for you to buy at Amazon.

She’s generously provided us with an excerpt for you to see today, and from it we think you’ll get the idea that Katherine’s book is less like other memoirs coming out about Scientology’s Sea Org as she tells a coming-of-age story.

We found the writing charming, and we think you will too. Here’s the part of the book she wanted us to share…

Excerpt:

The Bad Cadet: Growing Up in the Church of Scientology’s Sea Organization
By: Katherine Spallino

WHO IS LISA MCPHERSON?

Suppressive People were coming to PAC Base today, and I was determined to find out why. I didn’t care that at muster earlier the EPF I/C had warned us to keep out of sight. I wanted to know what all the fuss was about.

I had been on the EPF a few weeks now, and I was enjoying it. This was not because I liked restudying the courses, but because there were hot guys to flirt with. I woke up each morning excited for the day. I was aware that my intentions were wrong, but I couldn’t help myself. I should be focusing on becoming an ideal Sea Org member, but all I could think about was boys, boys, boys.

On top of that, there were not many girls on the EPF. It was as if I had arrived at the perfect time. The other girls in our dorm were younger than me, with the youngest being twelve. They had parents who were parishioners of the church and had gone to private schools called Renaissance Academy and Delphi Academy that used L. Ron Hubbard’s study technology. They were shy, quiet, and obedient. Everything the Sea Org could ask for to be molded into top-performing Sea Org members. Being around them helped me be in-ethics. I followed the rules, I was less likely to be loud, and I was more “in valence,” or at least in the valence of what the Sea Org expected of me. But now, I could feel myself reverting to the old me. I wanted to know what was going on with those SPs, and I didn’t care if it was against the rules.

My chance came later that day as I was mopping the tiled hallway leading into the Complex elevator. A unit paused near me as they were passing through. Their unit I/C, Hannah, had stopped to chat with my unit I/C. I swished my mop back and forth, but my ears perked up when I heard words float to me. “. . . protesters . . . outside . . . not allowed . . .”

I spotted my friend Grant in the other unit. I wondered if he knew what was going on. I waved my arm at him to get his attention and he jogged over, his eyes shining with excitement.

“Are they here?” I asked.

“Yeah. They’re in front of AOLA right now.”

“What’s on their signs?” I asked quietly. It was common knowledge that it was frowned upon to discuss what the protestors were there for. But my whole life I had never been given a clear answer for why these people hated Scientology so much. I was just told they were Suppressive People. I wanted to know what made them Suppressive. I knew I could trust Grant to not write me up. He was new to Scientology and had only joined the EPF a couple of weeks ago. He had already had the temerity to question LRH policy a few times.

Grant grabbed the mop bucket and pushed it so it looked like we were a team working together in case anyone looked over.

“I don’t know,” Grant said. “I tried to get Hannah to go closer when we were outside, but she said we needed to stay out of their sight.”

Grant’s unit was gesturing for him to join up with them, but he pretended like he didn’t see.

“How often are protesters here?” he asked. I moved the mop back and forth as I thought about it.

“Well, since I was a kid there have always been random people trying to film us at the Ranch. That happened like once or twice a year. And then sometimes I’ve seen protesters here on L. Ron Hubbard Way, but it wasn’t all the time.” I frowned. “I feel like it’s more often now.”

As I said that I realized that it was true. This year there had already been several occurrences of protestors compared to the year before, when I only knew of two instances.

“I wonder why there’s more?” I said.

“Grant,” Hannah called. “Let’s go!”

“Shit,” Grant said, looking over at his unit. “I better go. Let me know if you find out anything.” He turned and jogged over to his unit.

I continued mopping the floor as I thought about the protestors. Why were they here? Why were they coming more often? I knew that I shouldn’t even be wondering, but I couldn’t help it. I wanted to know what the SPs were so mad about. I finished mopping my area and joined up with the rest of the unit. My I/C, Shauna, was telling them that we could go report to the EPF office now for a ten-minute break before muster.

“I’ll put away the mops,” I volunteered.

Shauna thanked me, and the rest of them headed off. As I pushed the two mop buckets down the hallway, I decided that, instead of coming back through the ground floor hallway, I would cut through ASHO and walk back to the EPF office on L. Ron Hubbard Way so I could try to catch a glimpse of the signs. I put the mops away, then slunk out the front door of ASHO reception and headed out to the street.

It was a lovely sunny day. I felt the warmth beat down on me as I stood on the stairs leading down to L. Ron Hubbard Way. I looked over toward AOLA, using my hand to shield my eyes against the bright sunlight. I could see a small crowd of people standing in front of the building with signs. Most of them were in regular T-shirts and shorts. They didn’t look at all as menacing as they were made out to be, but I guess Suppressive People didn’t dress any differently than us. Some of the Sea Org security guards were on their bikes nearby watching them. I trotted down the stairs and started down L. Ron Hubbard Way, squinting my eyes to try to read the signs.

One of the security guards guarding “the protesters peeled off and came biking over to me.

Crap.

I pretended like I didn’t know he was coming and continued my stroll.

“Hey,” he said as he pulled up next to me.

“Oh, hey,” I said. “What’s going on over there?” I asked.

“Just some SP’s. But you need to go back inside. You don’t need to see this bullshit.”

“Okay, yeah, I’m going in. I was planning on going in through the canteen area because that’s closest to the EPF office,” I lied.

“No, go through the Lebanon Hall entrance,” he said, pointing to the entrance nearby.

“Fine,” I said nonchalantly, as if he hadn’t just ruined my investigative plans. He biked off as I turned to head into Lebanon Hall.

Should I look?

I wanted to see the signs, but I was worried there would be OT information on them. OT meant you were an Operating Thetan and you were at the highest levels of spiritual enlightenment. Since I was a young girl, I had been told not to look at protestors’ signs because they could have OT III data. It could ruin your chance to go up the Bridge and potentially cause physical harm and even death. I didn’t understand how that could be possible, but it frightened me. Despite all this, I wanted to see what was written on them.

I turned my head and looked. Words jumped out at me. There didn’t seem to be any OT information, so that was good, although how would I know, since the OT data was secret? But these signs just seemed to be talking about “Lisa McPherson.”

I had no idea who that was. Maybe she was sending people to protest for her. Was Lisa McPherson another SP like David Mayo? David Mayo was a name I had heard since childhood. I knew he was the worst SP in the world, although I didn’t know what for. No one ever talked about David Mayo anymore. It was like he was Voldemort, a.k.a. He Who Must Not Be Named.

“Hurry up!”

I startled and looked over. The security guard was still there waiting. He gestured for me to get inside.

I nodded and opened the door to the building. I made my way down the stairs to the ground floor and headed to the EPF office. I picked up my pace. I was excited to find Grant and tell him what I saw. Maybe since he had just been out in the wog world before coming here, he would know who this Lisa McPherson was.

EPFers were sitting at the tables chatting as they waited for muster to be called when I walked in. Grant looked up and gestured at me. I hurried over and sat next to him. Two other EPFers were sitting at his table too, but they were my friends, so I knew they would like to hear what I had to say. Hopefully they could be trusted not to write me up.

I sat down and whispered to Grant everything that I had seen.

“Who’s Lisa McPherson?” he interrupted.

“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “I was hoping maybe you had heard of her.

“The sign said ‘something’ for Lisa McPherson. I couldn’t see what the ‘something’ said—”

Grant made a face warning me to shut up when a hand grabbed my arm. I was wrenched up and out my chair.

“What the fu—” I said, turning to yell at whoever just grabbed me, thinking it was another EPFer getting overexcited about something. But before I could finish my sentence, I saw it was Mr. Johnson, the Commanding Officer for PAC Base. She gripped my arm and yanked me toward the EPF I/C’s office, pushing me inside and slamming the door shut. Mr. Cromwell, the new EPF MAA, looked up from her desk, startled.

“Did you hear what this SP is doing?” Mr. Johnson shouted . . .”

Katherine Spallino grew up on a secluded ranch within the Cadet Org, the Church of Scientology’s Sea Org school for children. She is no longer a Scientologist and is a stay-at-home mom happily raising three rambunctious boys (two of whom are twins) in Minneapolis with her husband. Katherine is working on her second novel, The Bad Scientologist. Follow her on Instagram @thebadcadet and twitter @badcadet to receive updates and news.

>
——————–

Technology Cocktail

“This threat to havingness is that which most prevents the preclear from having things. It is that which stands in his way to having and is thus a problem to him which he hasn’t under control.” — L. Ron Hubbard, 1958

——————–

——————–

THE PODCAST: How many have you heard?

— SPECIAL: The best TV show on Scientology you never got to see

[1] Phil Jones [2] Derek Bloch [3] Carol Nyburg [4] Katrina Reyes [5] Jamie DeWolf

— The first Danny Masterson trial and beyond

——————–

“In the Western world there’s not even a Tradition of philosophy. There’s no Tradition of — what equivalent Western word is there for a guru? There isn’t, and yet an Indian wouldn’t know how to go through his day without knowing this word, guru, somehow or another. You get the idea, see? We did a survey in Washington, DC about 1955 which was a very intriguing survey. Because I wanted to know, I thought these birds would realize that the psychiatrists were — let’s put it in a more elegant sense than it deserves — that the psychiatrists were cutting into their racket. So we got ahold of all the ministers in Washington, DC on the idea that they might have some sensibility with regard to all this and asked them if they thought this was the case. No, No. Any time one of their congregation showed the least signs of becoming nervous, they instantly rushed him to the electric shock machine. Seventeen hundred and eight ministers out of seventeen hundred and ten were wildly in favor of the mental hospital and the electric shock machine as soon as possible. Why, the poor dopes! They didn’t realize that that religious ecstasy was the only thing which kept them whizzing. If anybody had suddenly stood up in their congregation and said, ‘I embrace the Lord,’ or something like that, they would have said, ‘Dr. Sparks, would you please send a wagon over right away, quick.’ See? In other words, the whole field of religion had been eaten up in this particular direction which I thought was rather amazing.” — L. Ron Hubbard, April 14, 1964

——————–

“Several people are nominated to the Never-be-a-smuggler Club. Turning on bright lights, flashing flashlights toward the beach, opening up unnecessarily on the radio all disqualify one from being an Expert Smuggler. Such club members wind up in calabogos (jail) on suspicion. Pausing off the port as we did is not very good practise. Thanks to the guys who opened the cattledoor. They should however use lifelines when working so. And please can’t we oil all these reluctant hinges some calm day? Anyway our telex traffic was all good news. You can get off mail you see.” — The Commodore, April 14, 1969

——————–

“Just a couple of days before I completed New OT V, I was amazed on how I reacted on a person who decided to totally invalidate and degrade me in a status meeting. I was totally exterior, not being affected at all and actually seeing that the other members weren’t even really listening to him. I just gave him an acknowledgement and he sat down. And the meeting continued as if nothing happened. Normally this would have been dramatic and I wouldn’t sleep for days wondering what the others thought. Now, as a New OT V, I can attest that that event actually never happened; it just died and faded away. It is not part of any universe or any track. It is erased.”

——————–

1999: From Jens Tingleff, a protest at Birmingham: “Lots and lots of clams at the org (20-30 students). During their breaks they would come out and listen to us (huddling in the doorway as they grabbed a smoke out of the rain). John did his usual unassisted shouting and Dave kept up a running commentary and sing-along on the sound system. We played the tape of Hubbard’s rantings again and again. The students came over to banter. They seemed frankly surprised at the ‘space alien’ thing. ‘Why *dead* space Aliens??’ they asked, sweetly. I said the banner wasn’t completely correct, in that it was actually the *ghosts* of space aliens, but this still didn’t sound reasonable to them. They asked where we had seen that, and we told them (truthfully) that we had seen the OTIII texts in Hubbard’s own handwriting. ‘You *yourself* saw this??’ – ‘Yep!’ The leaflet handed out by the clams was actually a counter-picket leaflet. Anyway, the front page says ‘Luckily not everyone listens to the cautionary, carping criticism of those who fear competition.’ The inside is mainly a plug for some book by the Fat Fraud titled ‘Scientology : The Fundamentals of Thought’. It has what we hope is *not* a unique selling point: ‘It contains the basics of Scientology. Real answers that you can use right now. No mumbo jumbo, no human sacrifice, no initiation. Just pure truth about the basic laws of life.'”

——————–

“Brand new account created just for this idiotic hit and run. These people couldn’t troll if their lives depended on it.”

——————–

Full Court Press: What we’re watching at the Underground Bunker

Criminal prosecutions:
— Danny Masterson charged for raping three women: Mistrial declared November 30. Retrial scheduled, jury selection begins March 29. Next pretrial hearing: Feb 16.
— ‘Lafayette Ronald Hubbard’ (a/k/a Justin Craig), aggravated assault, plus drug charges: Grand jury indictments include charges from an assault while in custody. Next pretrial hearing Feb 13.
— Rizza Islam, Medi-Cal fraud: Trial scheduled for March 1 in Los Angeles
— David Gentile, GPB Capital, fraud: Next status conference Feb 13.

Civil litigation:
— Baxter, Baxter, and Paris v. Scientology, alleging labor trafficking: Complaint filed April 28 in Tampa federal court, Scientology moving to compel arbitration. Plaintiffs filed amended complaint on August 2. Hearing November 17 to argue the arbitration motions, awaiting ruling.
— Valerie Haney v. Scientology: Forced to ‘religious arbitration.’ Selection of arbitrators underway. Next court hearing: March 15, 2023.
— Chrissie Bixler et al. v. Scientology and Danny Masterson: Appellate court removes requirement of arbitration on January 19, case remanded back to Superior Court. Stay in place at least through February 7.
— Author Steve Cannane defamation trial: New trial ordered after appeals court overturned prior ruling.
— Chiropractors Steve Peyroux and Brent Detelich, stem cell fraud: Lawsuit filed by the FTC and state of Georgia in August, now in discovery phase.

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Find your favorite Hubbardite celeb at this index page — or suggest someone to add to the list!

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THE WHOLE TRACK

[ONE year ago] Scientology propaganda masterpiece: Grant Cardone’s COO coughs up $1.1 million
[TWO years ago] Scientology’s founder said Mars was inhabited, & now a Scientologist helps run Perseverance!
[THREE years ago] Scientology logic: Blame the media for fake virus news while promising superhuman powers
[FOUR years ago] L. Ron Hubbard defines religion for you skeptical non-Xenu believers
[FIVE years ago] Another Scientologist runs for office in Nevada — but her campaign says she’s not a member
[SIX years ago] Scientology invited local business owners to its Clearwater celeb party. Well, except one.
[SEVEN years ago] GARCIAS BACK IN COURT AFTER SCIENTOLOGY MAKES ARBITRATION IMPOSSIBLE, THEY SAY
[EIGHT years ago] Announcing a new video series — The stories of young Scientologists not told in ‘Going Clear’
[NINE years ago] Scientology litigation always has surprises: A new wrinkle from Narconon’s attorneys
[TEN years ago] Writers of the Future Live-Blogging! Black Tie Not Required

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Scientology disconnection, a reminder

Bernie Headley (1952-2019) did not see his daughter Stephanie in his final 5,667 days.
Valerie Haney has not seen her mother Lynne in 2,999 days.
Katrina Reyes has not seen her mother Yelena in 3,504 days
Sylvia Wagner DeWall has not seen her brother Randy in 3,054 days.
Brian Sheen has not seen his grandson Leo in 2,044 days.
Geoff Levin has not seen his son Collin and daughter Savannah in 1,935 days.
Christie Collbran has not seen her mother Liz King in 5,239 days.
Clarissa Adams has not seen her parents Walter and Irmin Huber in 3,110 days.
Doug Kramer has not seen his parents Linda and Norm in 2,215 days.
Jamie Sorrentini Lugli has not seen her father Irving in 4,692 days.
Quailynn McDaniel has not seen her brother Sean in 4,004 days.
Dylan Gill has not seen his father Russell in 12,570 days.
Melissa Paris has not seen her father Jean-Francois in 8,489 days.
Valeska Paris has not seen her brother Raphael in 4,657 days.
Mirriam Francis has not seen her brother Ben in 4,238 days.
Claudio and Renata Lugli have not seen their son Flavio in 4,499 days.
Sara Goldberg has not seen her daughter Ashley in 3,535 days.
Lori Hodgson has not seen her son Jeremy and daughter Jessica in 3,251 days.
Marie Bilheimer has not seen her mother June in 2,815 days.
Julian Wain has not seen his brother Joseph or mother Susan in 1,130 days.
Charley Updegrove has not seen his son Toby in 2,305 days.
Joe Reaiche has not seen his daughter Alanna Masterson in 6,856 days
Derek Bloch has not seen his father Darren in 3,987 days.
Cindy Plahuta has not seen her daughter Kara in 4,325 days.
Roger Weller has not seen his daughter Alyssa in 9,180 days.
Claire Headley has not seen her mother Gen in 4,299 days.
Ramana Dienes-Browning has not seen her mother Jancis in 2,655 days.
Mike Rinder has not seen his son Benjamin and daughter Taryn in 6,958 days.
Brian Sheen has not seen his daughter Spring in 3,064 days.
Skip Young has not seen his daughters Megan and Alexis in 3,462 days.
Mary Kahn has not seen her son Sammy in 3,338 days.
Lois Reisdorf has not seen her son Craig in 2,921 days.
Phil and Willie Jones have not seen their son Mike and daughter Emily in 3,416 days.
Mary Jane Barry has not seen her daughter Samantha in 3,670 days.
Kate Bornstein has not seen her daughter Jessica in 14,779 days.

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Posted by Tony Ortega on April 14, 2023 at 07:00

E-mail tips to tonyo94 AT gmail DOT com or follow us on Twitter. We also post updates at our Facebook author page. After every new story we send out an alert to our e-mail list and our FB page.

Watch our short videos that explain Scientology’s controversies in three minutes or less…

Check your whale level at our dedicated page for status updates, or join us at the Underground Bunker’s Facebook discussion group for more frivolity.

Here’s the link for tonight’s conversation.

Tonight: Our conversation with Mike Rinder on ‘A Billion Years’ for Mark Twain House

Tony Ortega — Thu, 19 Jan 2023 12:00:04 +0000

Our first trip to the Mark Twain House in Hartford was with our friend Dan Perkins, the man behind Tom Tomorrow and the This Modern World comic strip. We got a special tour, and at one point found ourselves in Twain’s upstairs billiards room where his writing desk was tucked away in a corner. It shook us to stand there, by that desk, and think about what the man had created there during the years 1874 to 1891.

On the wall nearby, there was a very curious artifact. Our guide, Jacques Lamarre, explained that it was a rare panel, about a foot on each side, made from thinnest bone, so that some light could come through from the outside, and it had some symbols carved in it. It was otherworldly.

After that experience, we knew we wanted to have a book event there in 2015 for The Unbreakable Miss Lovely, and Dan was good enough again to take part, asking questions.

So now we get to return the favor, and we’ll be asking questions of Mike Rinder about his excellent book A Billion Years: My Escape from a Life in the Highest Ranks of Scientology.

You can see our full-length review of the book here, which we posted the day after the book came out in September. And hey, we’d like your suggestions about what we should ask Mike about the book. Leave us a suggestion in the comments section here or at the dot org site.

While you wait for tonight’s event. Here’s a little something that Neil Clark spotted.

In 2016, a person calling themselves “Angry Thetan” approached us with some killer drone footage of Scientology’s secretive properties, including Int Base in Southern California and the smaller mountain compound where we believe Scientology is keeping Shelly Miscavige.

Well, someone has taken Angry Thetan’s lengthy drone flyover of Int Base, sped it up, and added helpful titles to identify various locations at the base.

The result is a fast and thorough inventory of the place, and we found it to be a very worthwhile updating of Angry Thetan’s work.

As you fly over the place, keep in mind that David Miscavige has apparently abandoned this compound for Florida, and that a much smaller crew lives here now than in years past.

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Technology Cocktail

“IS SCIENTOLOGY VALID? Tens of thousands of case histories (reports on patients, individual records), all sworn to (attested before public officials), are in the possession of the organizations of Scientology. No other subject on earth except physics and chemistry has had such grueling testing (proofs, exact findings). Scientology in the hands of an expert (Auditor) can cure some 70% of Man’s illnesses (sicknesses). Scientology is used by some of the largest companies (business organizations) on earth. It is valid. It has been tested.” — L. Ron Hubbard, 1956

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THE PODCAST: How many have you heard?

— The Underground Bunker Podcast

— SPECIAL: The best TV show on Scientology you never got to see

[1] Phil Jones [2] Derek Bloch [3] Carol Nyburg [4] Katrina Reyes [5] Jamie DeWolf

— SPECIAL: Your Proprietor’s updates on the Danny Masterson trial

[1] Sep 21 [2] Sep 28 [3] Oct 4 [4] Oct 10 [5] Oct 11: Day One [6] Oct 12: Day Two [7] Oct 13: Day Three [8] Oct 17: Day Four [9] Oct 18: Day Five [10] Oct 19: Day Six [11] Special interview with Chris Shelton, Oct 19 [12] Oct 20: Day Seven [13] Oct 21: Day Eight [14] First week in review, with Jeffrey Augustine [15] Oct 24: Day Nine [16] Oct 25: Day Ten [17] Oct 27: Day Eleven [18] Oct 28: Day Twelve [19] Second week in review, with Jeffrey Augustine [20] Halloween special [21] Nov 2: Day Thirteen [22] Nov 3: Day Fourteen [23] Nov 4: Day Fifteen [24] Third week in review [25] Nov 5, Saturday special [26] Nov 6, Sunday special [27] Nov 7, Day Sixteen [28] Lisa Marie Presley breaking news [29] Nov 8, Day Seventeen [30] Nov 9, Day Eighteen [31] Nov 10, Day Nineteen

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“You find many a girl — various stresses in the war you notice this: Some girl who was very much in love with some young man, and he got knocked off, something like that, and right away she becomes a lawyer — begins to talk in a rather husky voice. If you watch her a while longer, the next thing you know, she’s liable to start smoking cigars. You know? And in order to exteriorize her, you’d have to exteriorize her out of the body of a young man before you could exteriorize her out of the body she’s in. Now she doesn’t want to be in the body she’s in, so she’s not really in the body she’s in, and you just don’t have a dog’s chance of exteriorizing her out of that body. You say, ‘Be three feet back of your head.’ She’s not in it. So the whole command misses. You see that?” — L. Ron Hubbard, January 19, 1956

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“1969 was the year of Out-Ethics. In 1970 I trust all SO members will wear their ethics hats. Every SO member has one. Every time we ease up or drop Ethics we get horrible problems and stats. It can be plotted on the Int GI. Fact is Ethics is madly out on the planet. Definition of some Earth wog leaders — somebody who is trying to get even with everybody else. Definition of psychiatry: the government’s method of getting even with the insane.” — The Commodore, January 19, 1970

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“When you interweave your spiritual essence with too many other thetans, you are establishing too many anchor points on that Dynamic. When one does this, it makes it more difficult to once again find and re-unite with one’s true ‘soul-mate’ lifetime after lifetime. If ‘soul-mates’ mutually refrain from promiscuity prior to re-uniting, they find each other again and again, lifetime to lifetime. The indicator is this, trust your own knowingness as to whether you have a long term relationship with the person or not – and if not, do not get involved with them, especially sexually.”

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1998: Skeptic Magazine published a letter from Scientology president Heber Jentzsch, in reply to an earlier letter from comedian Steve Allen. “You make several different claims of harassment and telephone threats and ‘similar offenses’ that are continuing to be perpetuated by individual Scientologists. If you have any such instances which are documented, then send them to me. And speaking of harassment, Cynthia Kisser attempted to silence me & the church regarding her perpetration of violent deprogrammings. The fact that she deprogrammed her own sister and then went on to conduct other assaults has been proved to be true by the Federal Court in Chicago, Illinois, supported by the verdict of a jury. I have admired your humor and your humanitarian goals since I first came here to California 35 years ago. I would hope that you would continue your wit and your talents to the enhancement of freedom of choice, not to be drawn into the melee of anti-religious bigotry by those who claim no religion is qualified or sacred.”

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“OT 7 is just sitting in a room talking to yourself and seeing if the needle reacts. You’d think after a couple of years of doing that they would just say ‘fuck it!’ and tell the case supervisor ‘The belfry is bat-free’.”

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Full Court Press: What we’re watching at the Underground Bunker

Criminal prosecutions:
— Danny Masterson charged for raping three women: Mistrial declared November 30. Status conference scheduled January 10, retrial scheduled March 27.
— ‘Lafayette Ronald Hubbard’ (a/k/a Justin Craig), aggravated assault, plus drug charges: Grand jury indictments include charges from an assault while in custody. Plea deadline scheduled for December 16.
— Jay and Jeff Spina, Medicare fraud: Jay sentenced to 9 years in prison. Jeff scheduled to time served with three years supervised release, restitution of $9.7 million.
— Rizza Islam, Medi-Cal fraud: Trial scheduled for March 1 in Los Angeles
— David Gentile, GPB Capital, fraud: Next pretrial hearing December 9.
— Yanti Mike Greene, Scientology private eye accused of contempt of court: Found guilty of criminal and civil contempt.

Civil litigation:
— Baxter, Baxter, and Paris v. Scientology, alleging labor trafficking: Complaint filed April 28 in Tampa federal court, Scientology moving to compel arbitration. Plaintiffs filed amended complaint on August 2. Hearing November 17 to argue the arbitration motions, awaiting ruling.
— Valerie Haney v. Scientology: Forced to ‘religious arbitration.’ Selection of arbitrators underway. Next court hearing: February 2, 2023.
— Chrissie Bixler et al. v. Scientology and Danny Masterson: Appellate court removes requirement of arbitration on January 19, case remanded back to Superior Court. Stay in place at least through February 7.
— Brian Statler Sr v. City of Inglewood: Case settled ahead of scheduled Dec 6 trial.
— Author Steve Cannane defamation trial: New trial ordered after appeals court overturned prior ruling.
— Chiropractors Steve Peyroux and Brent Detelich, stem cell fraud: Lawsuit filed by the FTC and state of Georgia in August, now in discovery phase.

——————–

Find your favorite Hubbardite celeb at this index page — or suggest someone to add to the list!

——————–
THE WHOLE TRACK

[ONE year ago] SCIENTOLOGY ARBITRATION DENIED: Appeals court revives lawsuit by Masterson accusers
[TWO years ago] Danny Masterson accusers want emergency halt on ‘religious arbitration’ to protect rape case
[THREE years ago] Georgia puts legislator who promotes Scientology anti-psych efforts on mental health panel
[FOUR years ago] New Sea Org escapee says that Scientology still forcing abortions, decade after practice exposed
[FIVE years ago] More Scientology news is here: You won’t believe how fast this planet is being cleared!
[SIX years ago] Scientology in hot water again for cutting down trees without permission
[SEVEN years ago] When the feds tracked down L. Ron Hubbard’s boast about getting rich by creating a religion
[EIGHT years ago] Earache my eye: A Scientology official’s excuses why he can’t fly for deposition in fraud suit
[NINE years ago] Sunday Funnies: For the second year in a row, Scientology will have an ad in the Super Bowl
[TEN years ago] We Told You Jamie DeWolf Would Blow Up!
[ELEVEN years ago] Scientology Spokeswoman Who Disconnected From Her Father Criticizes Scientology Victim Who Didn’t

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Scientology disconnection, a reminder

Bernie Headley (1952-2019) did not see his daughter Stephanie in his final 5,667 days.
Valerie Haney has not seen her mother Lynne in 2,914 days.
Katrina Reyes has not seen her mother Yelena in 3,419 days
Sylvia Wagner DeWall has not seen her brother Randy in 2,969 days.
Brian Sheen has not seen his grandson Leo in 1,959 days.
Geoff Levin has not seen his son Collin and daughter Savannah in 1,850 days.
Christie Collbran has not seen her mother Liz King in 5,155 days.
Clarissa Adams has not seen her parents Walter and Irmin Huber in 3,025 days.
Doug Kramer has not seen his parents Linda and Norm in 2,130 days.
Jamie Sorrentini Lugli has not seen her father Irving in 4,603 days.
Quailynn McDaniel has not seen her brother Sean in 3,919 days.
Dylan Gill has not seen his father Russell in 12,485 days.
Melissa Paris has not seen her father Jean-Francois in 8,404 days.
Valeska Paris has not seen her brother Raphael in 4,572 days.
Mirriam Francis has not seen her brother Ben in 4,153 days.
Claudio and Renata Lugli have not seen their son Flavio in 4,414 days.
Sara Goldberg has not seen her daughter Ashley in 3,451 days.
Lori Hodgson has not seen her son Jeremy and daughter Jessica in 3,166 days.
Marie Bilheimer has not seen her mother June in 2,730 days.
Julian Wain has not seen his brother Joseph or mother Susan in 1,045 days.
Charley Updegrove has not seen his son Toby in 2,220 days.
Joe Reaiche has not seen his daughter Alanna Masterson in 6,771 days
Derek Bloch has not seen his father Darren in 3,902 days.
Cindy Plahuta has not seen her daughter Kara in 4,240 days.
Roger Weller has not seen his daughter Alyssa in 9,095 days.
Claire Headley has not seen her mother Gen in 4,214 days.
Ramana Dienes-Browning has not seen her mother Jancis in 2,570 days.
Mike Rinder has not seen his son Benjamin and daughter Taryn in 6,873 days.
Brian Sheen has not seen his daughter Spring in 2,979 days.
Skip Young has not seen his daughters Megan and Alexis in 3,377 days.
Mary Kahn has not seen her son Sammy in 3,253 days.
Lois Reisdorf has not seen her son Craig in 2,836 days.
Phil and Willie Jones have not seen their son Mike and daughter Emily in 3,331 days.
Mary Jane Barry has not seen her daughter Samantha in 3,585 days.
Kate Bornstein has not seen her daughter Jessica in 14,694 days.

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Posted by Tony Ortega on January 19, 2023 at 07:00

E-mail tips to tonyo94 AT gmail DOT com or follow us on Twitter. We also post updates at our Facebook author page. After every new story we send out an alert to our e-mail list and our FB page.

The Best of the Underground Bunker, 1995-2021 Just starting out here? We’ve picked out the most important stories we’ve covered here at the Underground Bunker (2012-2021), The Village Voice (2008-2012), New Times Los Angeles (1999-2002) and the Phoenix New Times (1995-1999)

Watch our short videos that explain Scientology’s controversies in three minutes or less…

Check your whale level at our dedicated page for status updates, or join us at the Underground Bunker’s Facebook discussion group for more frivolity.

Mike Rinder’s ‘A Billion Years’: A gripping takedown of Scientology and its leader

Tony Ortega — Wed, 28 Sep 2022 11:00:36 +0000

There are many books about Scientology now, including some put out by major publishers. If you wanted a robust history of where Scientology has been over many decades, you could turn to Lawrence Wright’s Going Clear, or the earlier, deeply researched investigations by Russell Miller (Bare-Faced Messiah) or Jon Atack (A Piece of Blue Sky).

If you wanted to know what it was like to work in the rarefied heights of Scientology’s Sea Org, you could pick up titles by Amy Scobee (Abuse at the Top) or Marc Headley (Blown for Good) or Janis Gillham Grady (Commodore’s Messenger) or Jefferson Hawkins (Counterfeit Dreams). And if you wanted to understand what it was like to go from one of Scientology’s most useful supporters to one of its biggest critics, you could read the personal stories of Leah Remini (Troublemaker) or Ron Miscavige Sr (Ruthless).

So where does the new book from former Scientology spokesman Mike Rinder — A Billion Years: My Escape from a Life in the Highest Ranks of Scientology, released yesterday from Simon & Schuster — fall in that cluttered landscape of histories, tell-alls, and escape narratives?

We’d argue that not only is it a terrific and enlightening book, but it also inhabits a somewhat unique position in the literature that has come before it: Perhaps no other book has managed to put together all of those perspectives in a single volume.

A fast read and yet incredibly comprehensive, Rinder’s book covers a vast amount of material as he grew up in Australia in a family that were among the earliest adopters of L. Ron Hubbard’s snake oil, Dianetics. He then personally witnessed virtually every important development in the Church of Scientology from the mid-1960s onward.

And Rinder was not only a witness. Few people have been in a better position to observe current leader David Miscavige take over Scientology after Hubbard’s 1986 death and then mold it into his own merciless and totalitarian force, for the simple reason that, as Rinder explains in some detail, he was often the person carrying out those merciless plans for his diminutive boss.

But first, he had to negotiate growing up in a town, Adelaide, where Scientologists were not only rare but also seen with suspicion. When his family made the pilgrimage to Hubbard’s headquarters in the UK in 1967, Rinder blended in easily, getting to know Hubbard’s own children, who were about his age. In ensuing years, he continued his Zelig-like rise in the organization, being the right guy at the right time, joining Hubbard’s navy then sailing the Mediterranean and Atlantic.

On a trip we made to Florida a decade ago, Rinder told us in an interview about the infamous “rock concert” incident in Madeira, when the locals took Hubbard and his strange ship for a CIA operation and tossed rocks at them until they sailed away for safety. In the book, Rinder gives a vivid rendition of the incident, which stranded him on the island and nearly made him the target of an angry mob.

And so it went for the young Sea Org operative as he rose in the ranks: Rinder repeatedly found himself in a position where he was fending off the attacks of the outside world, while doing his best to justify and resolve himself to the madness and contradictions in Scientology itself. Rinder knows that, while he describes one insane situation after another, and as he and other dedicated Sea Org soldiers were put through humiliating punishments and endless deprivations, the reader will repeatedly wonder, what kept you in? Why did you put up with it? Why didn’t you run away? And Rinder, maybe better than anyone before him, spends considerable time not only explaining what he did in Scientology, but what was going through his mind that kept him a loyal Miscavige foot soldier for so many years.

And it didn’t come without enormous personal cost. Rinder frames his book by placing it in the context of losing his adult children Taryn and Benjamin to the organization, and never tries to excuse the way he had been an absent parent in the Sea Org way. Since his defection from the organization in 2007, Scientology has viciously attacked him using his own children, primarily Taryn, who keeps up a bogus campaign blaming Rinder for supposedly causing her mother a horrible arm injury that seems to get worse every year.

Rinder has taken pains to explain the bizarre ambush by his former wife and other Sea Org officials that took place in the parking lot of a doctor’s office while Rinder was on the phone with BBC reporter John Sweeney. (We even published the audio from that encounter here at the Bunker back in 2014.) There’s simply no question that the slight injury his ex-wife received was judged “incidental contact” by the local sheriff’s office, and that Scientology is merely following the L. Ron Hubbard playbook by calling Rinder a “wife beater.”

Rinder opens the book with a letter to his two estranged children, and that device creates a tension that hangs over the entire book. While we’re drawn through this fast-paced adventure and look forward to learning how Rinder finally escaped from the madness in Scientology, we know from the start that it’s not going to have a happy ending.

Along the way, for this longtime Scientology watcher, Rinder recites a history that we already had some familiarity with, but with new details that we found absolutely fascinating. From the reorganization of Scientology following the 1977 FBI raid which was the agency’s largest in its history at that time, to Hubbard’s final years in hiding and who was with him, to Miscavige’s moves to take over as undisputed strong man, to the years of effort to wrestle the IRS to its knees in 1993, Rinder has brilliant new personal insights that help complete the picture of this evolution.

And yes, Rinder was also a personal witness to Miscavige’s obsession with celebrities and Tom Cruise in particular. You may have seen the excerpt published last week at the Daily Beast, which contained such morsels as Rinder’s experience showing Michael Jackson around the Hubbard Life Exhibition in Hollywood, or showing Barbara Walters around the New York org as a prerequisite to her getting an interview with Cruise. Rinder also saw John Travolta kiss his male massage therapist on the mouth, and he says that a soccer field was built at Int Base in California in an attempt to lure David Beckham into the church. You’ll be hearing plenty about those things from the tabloids. But even Rinder himself, at his website, acknowledged that the celebrity stuff was not the point of his book.

More interesting to us, for example, was Rinder’s description of the operations run by the organization he oversaw, the Office of Special Affairs, Scientology’s secret police and PR wing, which went after enemies and pursued scorched-earth litigation with an army of lawyers.

When Scientology was in a particularly bad spot after the 1995 death of a parishioner named Lisa McPherson, Rinder was dispatched to Clearwater, Florida to run the lawyers who were defending the church in criminal and civil cases stemming from her demise. He then had to deal with an upstart New England businessman, Bob Minton, who had decided to spend a large part of his personal fortune leading a protest effort over McPherson’s death by opening a storefront just down the block from Scientology’s holiest spot, the Fort Harrison Hotel.

When Rinder’s efforts were successful and Minton finally cried uncle and agreed to a settlement with Scientology, Rinder says that Miscavige was upset that his wife Shelly, who was in charge of the operation, didn’t manage to get a personal payment of a half million dollars to Miscavige out of Minton, something the lawyers advised was a terrible idea. Rinder wonders if Shelly’s inability to get her husband this kickback may have helped motivate him to banish her a few years later, in 2005. (In general, however, Rinder still agrees with us that Shelly is, to this day, being held at the Church of Spiritual Technology headquarters in a small mountain compound near Lake Arrowhead, California, and his book doesn’t offer any new revelations about that.)

Despite his handling of Minton and many other matters for the church, Rinder repeatedly found that his loyalty was rewarded with increasingly harrowing punishments from Miscavige, who was always looking for ways to prove that he was top dog. This led to the creation of “The Hole” at Scientology’s secretive Int Base in early 2004, as an increasingly paranoid Miscavige created a bizarre office-as-prison for his top lieutenants, including longtime colleagues who had been among his best friends. Rinder himself ended up in The Hole, and so he can personally describe its depravations.

But he was pulled out again when Miscavige needed him for a special operation: Handling the BBC’s John Sweeney, who was proving to be too much for the young new international church spokesman, Tommy Davis, son of Oscar-nominated actress and longtime Scientologist Anne Archer. Miscavige then personally directed Rinder and Davis to harass and surveil Sweeney as he was filming his 2007 special about the church. And we know this not only because Rinder says so (and the church, of course, will put out numerous denials as this book comes out), but he has long had proof of it: Actual texts from Miscavige that were on Rinder’s Blackberry when he made his escape later that year. Those texts have been entered as evidence in court, and Scientology did not dispute their authenticity.

That’s important, because it backs up Rinder’s assertion that Miscavige is not only a ruthless micromanager and sadistic meddler in the lives of the people under him, but also that far from the “ecclesiastical leader” image the church tries to put out, Miscavige is a foul-mouthed thug. It’s right there in his texts.

When Rinder finally got out of the Sea Org and then began finding a way to make a living in a modern world he had never really been a part of before (and that in itself is a fascinating story, the details of which we had never really heard before), he gradually began coming around to the idea that he must dedicate himself to exposing Miscavige and the insane cruelty of Scientology, and he begins talking to journalists and the FBI.

It’s at that point, however, that Scientology then begins targeting him with the same cruel vindictiveness that he’s seen it aim at others, and it goes immediately for the jugular: His relationship with his mother, still a Scientologist in Australia, as well as what little connection he still has with his children.

Like it would be for so many other former Scientologists, Rinder would now have his lifelong loyalty to the idea that Scientology was based on the betterment of mankind pitted against the reality that this bullying, ruthless organization was now spending vast resources to destroy him.

We remember interviewing Rinder a few years later, and we can personally attest that at that time (March 2012), he was still somewhat protective of Hubbard and the subject of Scientology itself. In that interview, for example, he didn’t hesitate telling us his “OT” level and that he was still doing Scientology, but outside the church. Later, at his blog, Rinder obviously went through a period of rethinking Hubbard and the subject of Scientology (which, tellingly, he now insists on not capitalizing). Now, we learn that it was reading Miller’s Bare-Faced Messiah, the first, and still the best, full biography of Hubbard, that finally convinced Rinder that the founder was always selling deceptive nonsense.

This also became clear as he and Leah Remini took on the subject in their groundbreaking and Emmy-winning series for A&E, Scientology and the Aftermath. If a bit slowly at first, after the first season the duo eviscerated Hubbard and the subject of his “technology” in multiple episodes.

So, where does that leave Rinder today? Still in pain over the loss of his adult children, but grateful to have met another former Sea Org worker, Christie Collbran and her young son Shane, which resulted in a marriage that has given Shane a younger brother, Jack. With his new family, the promise of his partnership with Remini, and his new book, Rinder has found a way to turn all of the pain and insanity of his years in Sea Org, and the loss of his first family, into a fulfilling journey dedicated to exposing Miscavige and his toxic organization that deserves to be investigated by the federal government. In this, Rinder’s book succeeds brilliantly.

As much as we found this to be an enormously satisfying book with a lot of great new information, we know that there will be some readers who see it differently. While Rinder goes into rich detail about the way he and Christie were harassed and surveilled in the years after Rinder first began talking to the media in 2009, former targets of the Office of Special Affairs under Rinder may be left wondering whether there might have been a similar amount of detail in his book about their operations from OSA’s former director.

We expect that such OSA targets as Gerry Armstrong and Dennis Erlich and Jesse Prince, who are all mentioned in the book, will be left wanting more information about the specific ways that OSA made their lives miserable literally for years as they were targeted for destruction by Scientology. Yes, Rinder covers an incredible amount of information in this book and we’re fortunate that he touches on so many fascinating chapters from Scientology’s history. But expect to hear complaints from OSA’s past victims that its former boss still hasn’t come through with enough detail about the spying, the illegal tactics, and the skullduggery done against them in the name of L. Ron Hubbard and David Miscavige.

As it is, however, the general reader should not come away with anything but astonishment that such a vicious, vengeful, and dishonest organization is still doing business in the United States. And perhaps Rinder’s well written book will help convince someone in a position of authority to finally do something about it.

We can only hope.

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We’re celebrating a little anniversary in the Bunker this morning. Yes, it’s been ten years since we started up this website, and we can hardly believe it’s been a decade already.

We’ve had so much fun over that time, live-blogging court cases, for example, in California, Texas, Florida, and New York. Those days are always milestones. But we’re especially fortunate to have such a great commenting community. It’s what keeps us going.

So we’d like to hear what your highlights have been over the last decade. A HowdyCon? A court day? Some wild conversation in the comments section? Let us know.

We’re starting out our eleventh year preparing to cover perhaps the biggest court case we’ve ever watched, the Danny Masterson prosecution in Los Angeles, and we are so looking forward to having you along.

——————–

“The faults I find with Scientologists is they very often will see somebody fall on his head, get run over by a truck, and do some kind of a light touch assist and say ‘That’s that.’ And then wonder why the guy is limping. And then they sort of say, ‘Scientology doesn’t work.’ Man, I’ve got a word for you. That auditor is afraid of work. Do you see?” — L. Ron Hubbard, September 28, 1968

——————–

“ETHICS: The following are Fair Game for the current week for No Report of their stats. John Wiley, Kristina Brorson, Vicky Alpe, Janice Tidman, Geary Titus, Wayne Alkire, Robert Williamson, Ron Straus, Dekki Le.” — Lt. Jeff Walker, Ship Stats, September 28, 1970

——————–

“I was always aghast at many Scientologists’ willingness to accept verbal tech and policy or the staff’s willingness to follow illegal orders. Most ‘Scientologists’ including many ‘OTs’ are untrained morons and thus are vacuums for verbal tech and policy and false data. Most staff these days haven’t even completed Staff Status II, never mind any actual hatting. Then of course there is what they call ‘Instant Hatting’ which was supposed to be a temporary solution but has become an excuse for verbal policy and tech. Worse there is false tech and policy included like GAT and such things as ‘Message to Garcia’ and so called ‘SRAs’ and what are called ‘Seances’ which are straight out of Communist China’s Cultural Revolution and what was called Brain Washing.”

——————–

1996: The Conan O’Brian show ran a sketch introducing Johnson, the Scientology Chicken. A portion of the transcript: “Conan: I’d like to introduce a new character to the show. I’ve never met him but he’s sure to be a favorite of kids everywhere. Please welcome folks, our cartoon friend, Johnson the Chicken! Johnson: Hi Conan. Yeah, I hope you’re having a cluckarific day! Every day can be a cluckarific day if you follow the path set down by my hero, L. Ron Hubbard. Conan: What? Johnson: L. Ron Hubbard, the visionary genius who wrote Dianetics. Conan: Yeah, I know, the Scientology guy. Johnson: The CHURCH of Scientology Conan! Conan: Look Johnson, let’s change the subject all right? You’re a cartoon happy guy. Tell the kids just how are you. Johnson: Well, kids, I was depressed, ineffective at work and only using 20% of my brain capacity. But then, I took a personality test in a storefront church and read DIANETICS! Conan: Look, don’t you have a story for the kids? C’mon! Johnson: Can it be about – SCIENTOLOGY? Conan: No! It cant’ be about Scientology! C’mon! Let’s make this fun! C’mon!”

——————–

“Human rights education brought to you by slave labor and the church of ironictology.”

——————–

Full Court Press: What we’re watching at the Underground Bunker

Criminal prosecutions:
— Danny Masterson charged for raping three women: Trial scheduled for October 11.
— ‘Lafayette Ronald Hubbard’ (a/k/a Justin Craig), aggravated assault, plus drug charges: Grand jury indictments include charges from an assault while in custody. Arraigned on August 29.
— Jay and Jeff Spina, Medicare fraud: Jay sentenced to 9 years in prison. Jeff scheduled to be sentenced on Oct 28.
— Rizza Islam, Medi-Cal fraud: Trial scheduled for October 24 in Los Angeles
— David Gentile, GPB Capital, fraud: Next pretrial conference set for September 19.
— Yanti Mike Greene, Scientology private eye accused of contempt of court: Found guilty of criminal and civil contempt.

Civil litigation:
— Baxter, Baxter, and Paris v. Scientology, alleging labor trafficking: Complaint filed April 28 in Tampa federal court, Scientology moving to compel arbitration. Plaintiffs filed amended complaint on August 2.
— Valerie Haney v. Scientology: Forced to ‘religious arbitration.’ Selection of arbitrators underway. Next court hearing: February 2, 2023.
— Chrissie Bixler et al. v. Scientology and Danny Masterson: Appellate court removes requirement of arbitration on January 19, case remanded back to Superior Court. Stay in place, next status hearing October 25. Scientology petitioning US Supreme Court over appellate ruling.
— Brian Statler Sr v. City of Inglewood: Third amended complaint filed, trial set for December 6.
— Author Steve Cannane defamation trial: New trial ordered after appeals court overturned prior ruling.
— Chiropractors Steve Peyroux and Brent Detelich, stem cell fraud: Lawsuit filed by the FTC and state of Georgia in August, now in discovery phase.

——————–

We first broke the news of the LAPD’s investigation of Scientology celebrity Danny Masterson on rape allegations in 2017, and we’ve been covering the story every step of the way since then. At this page we’ve collected our most important links, including our four days in Los Angeles covering the preliminary hearing and its ruling, which has Danny facing trial and the potential sentence of 45 years to life in prison.

Find your favorite Hubbardite celeb at this index page — or suggest someone to add to the list!

——————–
THE WHOLE TRACK

[ONE year ago] Scientology’s personality test is a hit on TikTok: Can David Miscavige capitalize on it?
[TWO years ago] Hip, hip hooray! Scientology success stories you weren’t meant to see
[THREE years ago] Answering Scientology’s smears with truth: Phil Jones takes a STAND
[FOUR years ago] US Government ‘adopts’ Russian Scientologist in religious rights protest
[FIVE years ago] ‘Aftermath’ fan gets into party at Scientology’s ‘Int Base,’ brings Karen Pressley’s book along
[SIX years ago] DRONE FLYOVER: First images of Scientology’s Gold Rush mine in California
[SEVEN years ago] If it’s Monday, it must be Seattle: Let’s talk Scientology!
[EIGHT years ago] Celebrating two years in the Bunker: Jonny Jacobsen on Russia, and Sunday Funnies!
[NINE years ago] Blood Relation, Blood Ritual: A Hubbard Family Occult Mystery
[TEN years ago] Talking About The Master on Public Radio
[ELEVEN years ago] The Top 25 People Crippling Scientology, No. 1: L. Ron Hubbard

——————–

Scientology disconnection, a reminder

Bernie Headley (1952-2019) did not see his daughter Stephanie in his final 5,667 days.
Valerie Haney has not seen her mother Lynne in 2,801 days.
Katrina Reyes has not seen her mother Yelena in 3,306 days
Sylvia Wagner DeWall has not seen her brother Randy in 2,856 days.
Brian Sheen has not seen his grandson Leo in 1,846 days.
Geoff Levin has not seen his son Collin and daughter Savannah in 1,737 days.
Christie Collbran has not seen her mother Liz King in 5,042 days.
Clarissa Adams has not seen her parents Walter and Irmin Huber in 2,912 days.
Doug Kramer has not seen his parents Linda and Norm in 2,017 days.
Jamie Sorrentini Lugli has not seen her father Irving in 4,490 days.
Quailynn McDaniel has not seen her brother Sean in 3,806 days.
Dylan Gill has not seen his father Russell in 12,372 days.
Melissa Paris has not seen her father Jean-Francois in 8,291 days.
Valeska Paris has not seen her brother Raphael in 4,459 days.
Mirriam Francis has not seen her brother Ben in 4,039 days.
Claudio and Renata Lugli have not seen their son Flavio in 4,301 days.
Sara Goldberg has not seen her daughter Ashley in 3,337 days.
Lori Hodgson has not seen her son Jeremy and daughter Jessica in 3,052 days.
Marie Bilheimer has not seen her mother June in 2,617 days.
Julian Wain has not seen his brother Joseph or mother Susan in 932 days.
Charley Updegrove has not seen his son Toby in 2,107 days.
Joe Reaiche has not seen his daughter Alanna Masterson in 6,658 days
Derek Bloch has not seen his father Darren in 3,789 days.
Cindy Plahuta has not seen her daughter Kara in 4,127 days.
Roger Weller has not seen his daughter Alyssa in 8,982 days.
Claire Headley has not seen her mother Gen in 4,101 days.
Ramana Dienes-Browning has not seen her mother Jancis in 2,457 days.
Mike Rinder has not seen his son Benjamin and daughter Taryn in 6,760 days.
Brian Sheen has not seen his daughter Spring in 2,866 days.
Skip Young has not seen his daughters Megan and Alexis in 3,264 days.
Mary Kahn has not seen her son Sammy in 3,140 days.
Lois Reisdorf has not seen her son Craig in 2,723 days.
Phil and Willie Jones have not seen their son Mike and daughter Emily in 3,218 days.
Mary Jane Barry has not seen her daughter Samantha in 3,472 days.
Kate Bornstein has not seen her daughter Jessica in 14,581 days.

——————–

Posted by Tony Ortega on September 28, 2022 at 07:00

E-mail tips to tonyo94 AT gmail DOT com or follow us on Twitter. We also post updates at our Facebook author page. After every new story we send out an alert to our e-mail list and our FB page.

Watch our short videos that explain Scientology’s controversies in three minutes or less…

Check your whale level at our dedicated page for status updates, or join us at the Underground Bunker’s Facebook discussion group for more frivolity.

When L. Ron Hubbard assigns you to the deep: A slice of Scientology in new book

Tony Ortega — Fri, 22 Apr 2022 11:00:57 +0000

Debbie Norwitz reached out to us last year with some questions about Paulette Cooper and Scientology’s Snow White caper, telling us that she was working on putting together a memoir.

That self-published book has just been released now, and we gave it a look. Debbie was involved in Scientology from 1963 to 1973, and her experiences in it are just a small portion of her memoir, which dives into her upbringing in New York to immigrant parents from Lithuania and Ukraine, her summers in the Catskills, and then moving to Los Angeles and then Las Vegas to work in a casino.

She eventually got into Scientology in 1963 after she had returned to New York and was starting a relationship with a man named Allan who would become her second husband. She still has warm memories about her first experiences in the church (as so many do who later leave), and by 1964 she and Allan and her 2 and a half year old son, Michael, had moved to England to become dedicated Scientology students at Saint Hill Manor.

After being declared Clear, Debbie and Allan were then sent to the ship Apollo to take the legendary Class VIII training course with Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, and Debbie even got the infamous punishment of being tossed overboard in the harbor at Corfu, Greece.

At 4-foot-8, Debbie remembers her oversized uniform pulling her underwater, and she may have drowned if two other students in the water hadn’t pulled her to the surface.

But rather than be discouraged, Debbie admits that graduating from Class VIII only made her and her husband feel “arrogant” about their status, and when they were then sent to Miami to help run the organization there, she gladly turned a hose on people as punishment in the local version of “overboarding.”

“It wasn’t unusual for me to order an auditor to the back of the building and hose them down as a corrective measure for their auditing errors… My goodness, I was only following L. Ron Hubbard’s methods. Of course, I didn’t have an ocean to throw anybody overboard, but I did have a garden hose. God, I was a horrible person!”

She and Allan were so dedicated and wanted to defend Scientology against external attacks, they applied for and were accepted to work for the Guardian’s Office, Scientology’s shadowy spy wing that would several years later carry out the Snow White Program, infiltrating government offices and resulting in a massive FBI raid.

Debbie was assigned to go to Chicago, she remembers, to harass Paulette Cooper. This is what she had asked us about last year. She said she was told to go to Paulette’s office in Chicago to cause her trouble. But Paulette never lived in Chicago and she never had an office — she lived in Manhattan and was a freelancer, working from her own apartment.

“I flew to Illinois and made my way to Chicago. I wasn’t supposed to confront Cooper personally, but I was told to make trouble for her at her place of work. I made an anonymous phone call from a telephone booth to Paulette Cooper’s office. I related some nasty gossip about her to someone in her office. I wish I remembered what I said, but I don’t. I then left Chicago and returned to Miami.”

Paulette wasn’t in Chicago, but she did receive many nasty phone calls in this period (1970-1972) at her apartment, and so did her publisher, so Debbie may have been instructed to call those places.

After her short time with the Guardian’s Office expired, she was separated from Allan for a year as he worked for the Guardian’s Office in Buffalo. When it became plain the church was going to keep them apart even longer, they rebelled and ditched Scientology, moving to Arizona and becoming involved in local politics.

Scientology ended up being only a brief part of a fascinating life of relationships, travel, and exploration. (Debbie is 84 now.) But we appreciated that glimpse of what it was like to get tossed overboard by the Old Man himself.

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Sign up for a daily email when we post a new story on Scientology.

Did you know you can get an email every morning when we post our daily Scientology story? We know some of the folks who come to the Underground Bunker aren’t here to talk about the politics of the day, and that’s why we created a daily politics feature over at our other blog, The Lowdown, and we ask readers to take their political discussions over there. And if you drop us a line at tonyo94 AT gmail, we’ll put you on the list so you get a morning reminder that a new Scientology story has been posted — and only for our Scientology stories.

——————–

“We find our people, as we process them, further and further along on this curve of create, through survive, to destroy. And when we get well past survive, we get to an individual who can think in no terms but suicide. He tries to kill himself and those around him. He would not even dream of getting, you might say, out of the body. All he can think of is being in the body and destroying things. He has bought the physical universe. Well, we try to process this individual. We normally find him in sanitariums, and so forth, because he’s no longer able to promote the biological line; and we find his anxiety on the subject of sex very, very great, but it’s very destructive. It’s not the type of sexual activity that would lead to an unending stream of protoplasm. Quite on the contrary, it would be a type of sexual activity which said ‘The unending stream of protoplasm must now end,’ which is to say homosexuality, other misconducts. And we’d find him over on the physical universe side of the ledger over here. And he would be very involved with rocks and solid masses of various things. He’s really left the biological line.” — L. Ron Hubbard, April 22, 1954

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“The VIP Party was a huge success, Governor, Lord Mayor and all. Div VI must receive full cooperation on set ups and drills, however. We are at our best in Billing and Drilling. It’s been an awful long time since I heard the rush and pound of feet getting a drill drilled. Guest drill is just another drill. The Supercargo is reponsible for having a well drilled ship. The smartest ships ever were the heavily drilled Enchanter, Avon River and the pre-Melilla RSM! So WE DRILL 1700 to 1800 DAILY HEREAFTER, at sea or in port Supercargo and Ship LRH Comm Take note please.” — The Commodore, April 22, 1970

——————–

“Over the last 10 years I have been on a structured, methodical, examination of my past. I do positive work as well to stay well and fully in PT, but discovering and understanding my experiences has been the bulk of my activity. With over 10,000 hours of looking, I have built up a fair understanding of my timeline with a pretty good knowledge of the key eras of our existence. These major eras seem to have the greatest affect on who we have become, with additional various incidents acting as locks, solidifying the primary postulates, decisions. For example, most recently the rise of large, common universes and how we were drawn into, then locked into this system of existence.”

——————–

1999: Keith Henson reported revenge flyers posted near his home. “Yesterday a friend of mine pointed me to some bright yellow flyers put up on community announcement boards about two blocks from my house. They are the usual DA business (with a nearly black picture of me) but at the bottom they do admit (in small type) to be associated with scientology. But get this: They misspelled their own URL!”

——————–

“At least two thirds of the people who showed up on the top five anti-Scientology vids on YouTube from 2008-2010 representing themselves as Scientologists were in fact FAKE. And I was usually the person who busted them.”

——————–

Full Court Press: What we’re watching at the Underground Bunker

Criminal prosecutions:
— Danny Masterson charged for raping three women: Next pretrial conference May 31. Trial scheduled for August 29.
— ‘Lafayette Ronald Hubbard’ (a/k/a Justin Craig), aggravated assault, plus drug charges: Last hearing was on January 18, referred to grand jury. Additional charges also referred to grand jury after January 5 assault while in jail.

— Jay and Jeff Spina, Medicare fraud: Jay sentenced to 9 years in prison. Jeff’s sentencing to be scheduled.
— Rizza Islam and other family members, Medi-Cal fraud: Pretrial conference May 20 in Los Angeles
— David Gentile, GPB Capital, fraud: Next pretrial conference set for May 5.
— Joseph ‘Ben’ Barton, Medicare fraud: Pleaded guilty, awaiting sentencing.
— Yanti Mike Greene, Scientology private eye accused of contempt of court: Found guilty of criminal and civil contempt.

Civil litigation:
— Luis and Rocio Garcia v. Scientology: Eleventh Circuit affirmed ruling granting Scientology’s motion for arbitration. Garcias considering next move.
— Valerie Haney v. Scientology: Forced to ‘religious arbitration.’ Valerie’s motion for reconsideration denied on March 15.
— Chrissie Bixler et al. v. Scientology and Danny Masterson: Appellate court removes requirement of arbitration on January 19, case remanded back to Superior Court. Next hearing scheduled for June 29.
— Brian Statler Sr v. City of Inglewood: Third amended complaint filed, trial set for June 28.
— Author Steve Cannane defamation trial: Trial concluded, Cannane victorious, awarded court costs. Appeal hearing held Aug 23-27. Awaiting a ruling.
— Chiropractors Steve Peyroux and Brent Detelich, stem cell fraud: Lawsuit filed by the FTC and state of Georgia in August, now in discovery phase.

——————–

We first broke the news of the LAPD’s investigation of Scientology celebrity Danny Masterson on rape allegations in 2017, and we’ve been covering the story every step of the way since then. At this page we’ve collected our most important links, including our four days in Los Angeles covering the preliminary hearing and its ruling, which has Danny facing trial and the potential sentence of 45 years to life in prison.

Find your favorite Hubbardite celeb at this index page — or suggest someone to add to the list!

——————–
THE WHOLE TRACK

[ONE year ago] Why Danny Masterson’s attacks on Leah Remini aren’t helping him in court
[TWO years ago] Even a pandemic can’t stop Scientology from tracking you down, apostate!
[THREE years ago] Where is Scientology dying most Ideally? Could it be our neighbor to the north?
[FOUR years ago] Everything — even Scientology — is up to date in Kansas City, and here’s who’s responsible!
[FIVE years ago] Scientology denied twice in wrongful death lawsuit as parents grieve for Tabatha Fauteux
[SIX years ago] Another depressing piece of evidence that Scientology advocates splitting apart families
[SEVEN years ago] Scientology: Making fools of your local elected lunkheads since 1952
[EIGHT years ago] The Garcias take one more shot at Scientology before their fraud suit will live or die
[NINE years ago] GARCIAS RESPOND TO SCIENTOLOGY: YOU’RE A BIG RIPOFF
[TEN years ago] Scientology Sunday Funnies: Jake and Elwood Want Your Cash!

——————–

Scientology disconnection, a reminder

Bernie Headley (1952-2019) did not see his daughter Stephanie in his final 5,667 days.
Valerie Haney has not seen her mother Lynne in 2,642 days.
Katrina Reyes has not seen her mother Yelena in 3,147 days
Sylvia Wagner DeWall has not seen her brother Randy in 2,667 days.
Brian Sheen has not seen his grandson Leo in 1,687 days.
Geoff Levin has not seen his son Collin and daughter Savannah in 1,578 days.
Christie Collbran has not seen her mother Liz King in 4,885 days.
Clarissa Adams has not seen her parents Walter and Irmin Huber in 2,753 days.
Carol Nyburg has not seen her daughter Nancy in 3,527 days.
Doug Kramer has not seen his parents Linda and Norm in 1,858 days.
Jamie Sorrentini Lugli has not seen her father Irving in 4,331 days.
Quailynn McDaniel has not seen her brother Sean in 3,647 days.
Dylan Gill has not seen his father Russell in 12,213 days.
Melissa Paris has not seen her father Jean-Francois in 8,132 days.
Valeska Paris has not seen her brother Raphael in 4,300 days.
Mirriam Francis has not seen her brother Ben in 3,880 days.
Claudio and Renata Lugli have not seen their son Flavio in 4,142 days.
Sara Goldberg has not seen her daughter Ashley in 3,178 days.
Lori Hodgson has not seen her son Jeremy and daughter Jessica in 2,893 days.
Marie Bilheimer has not seen her mother June in 2,418 days.
Julian Wain has not seen his brother Joseph or mother Susan in 773 days.
Charley Updegrove has not seen his son Toby in 1,948 days.
Joe Reaiche has not seen his daughter Alanna Masterson in 6,499 days
Derek Bloch has not seen his father Darren in 3,648 days.
Cindy Plahuta has not seen her daughter Kara in 3,968 days.
Roger Weller has not seen his daughter Alyssa in 8,823 days.
Claire Headley has not seen her mother Gen in 3,942 days.
Ramana Dienes-Browning has not seen her mother Jancis in 2,298 days.
Mike Rinder has not seen his son Benjamin and daughter Taryn in 6,601 days.
Brian Sheen has not seen his daughter Spring in 2,707 days.
Skip Young has not seen his daughters Megan and Alexis in 3,105 days.
Mary Kahn has not seen her son Sammy in 2,981 days.
Lois Reisdorf has not seen her son Craig in 2,564 days.
Phil and Willie Jones have not seen their son Mike and daughter Emily in 3,059 days.
Mary Jane Barry has not seen her daughter Samantha in 3,313 days.
Kate Bornstein has not seen her daughter Jessica in 14,422 days.

——————–

Posted by Tony Ortega on April 22, 2022 at 07:00

E-mail tips to tonyo94 AT gmail DOT com or follow us on Twitter. We also post updates at our Facebook author page. After every new story we send out an alert to our e-mail list and our FB page.

Watch our short videos that explain Scientology’s controversies in three minutes or less…

Check your whale level at our dedicated page for status updates, or join us at the Underground Bunker’s Facebook discussion group for more frivolity.