Scientology Studies | The Underground Bunker

If you want the IRS to re-examine Scientology’s tax exempt status, it’s time to get real

Over the weekend, filmmaker Alex Gibney wrote an op-ed for the Los Angeles Times arguing that the Church of Scientology deserves to have its tax exempt status taken away. And after the March 29 airing of his documentary about Scientology, Going Clear, a growing number of people seem to agree with him.

“It seems to me […]

L. Ron Hubbard’s Navy record: Chris Owen critiques the ‘Business Insider’ story

One of the great results of Lawrence Wright’s New Yorker article on Paul Haggis and Scientology, which grew into his book Going Clear, was that he got the Church of Scientology to turn over a huge amount of documentation of L. Ron Hubbard’s life.

In that trove turned out to be a number of records concerning […]

25 of the biggest lies told by L. Ron Hubbard and the Church of Scientology

One of the Bunker’s great contributors, Jeffrey Augustine, has put together for us a list of the biggest whoppers told by Scientology’s founder, L. Ron Hubbard, and a couple of canards thrown around by the church itself. We think you’re going to enjoy the collection Jeffrey put together for […]

‘Going Clear’ fallout: Imagining the fate of Scientology and David Miscavige

Maria Bustillos contacted us recently, telling us that she was working on a review of Alex Gibney’s film Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief, and she wanted to ask us a question, which turned out to be quite good.

We were familiar with Maria’s work because of a story she did at The Awl […]

Mareka Brousseau on the degradations of Scientology’s Sea Org life

Jeffrey Augustine is back with another podcast, this time his second interview with Mareka Brousseau.

Mareka, the daughter of Haydn and Lucy James, gives us more glimpses of the hardships of Sea Org life in Scientology. Her eyewitness testimony is hard-hitting, as […]

Scenes from a ‘Going Clear’ screening — Alex Gibney at the True/False Festival

Back in 2003-2005, your proprietor was the managing editor of a newspaper in Kansas City known as The Pitch. They were two of our happiest years, and we still have a great love for that underrated city that has a state line snaking down the middle of it. Writing film reviews for the Pitch these […]

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

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

Can you help solve this odd Scientology financial mystery?

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

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

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

When Scientology was pouring on the ‘religious’ angle very thick: A video mystery

Jonny Jacobsen, our man in Paris, sent over a fun item today. We’ll let him explain what it is.

I stumbled across this 20-minute reportage on Scientology, shot mainly at their Saint Hill base and broadcast in January 1972 on French television.

This two-minute extract introduces you to a number of people occupying important positions at the […]

An L. Ron Hubbard island fantasy: The Scientology daydream you haven’t heard

On Tuesday, we told you about new FDA documents which helped us fill in some gaps in Scientology history. The documents took us back to late 1957, when L. Ron Hubbard hatched a scheme to force the country’s psychiatrists and psychologists to take a “loyalty oath” he’d dreamed up, with hopes of rooting out disloyal […]

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