Tony Ortega is a journalist who was formerly the editor of The Village Voice. He's written about Scientology since 1995, and in May 2015 released a book about Scientology's harassment of Paulette Cooper titled 'The Unbreakable Miss Lovely.' He continues to monitor breaking developments in the Scientology world from an undisclosed location in an underground bunker he shares with four cats and one of them wrinkly Shar Pei dogs. Despite his super-secret security protections, you can still reach him pretty easily by sending him a message at tonyo94 AT gmail.com (Drop him a line if you'd like to get an e-mail whenever a new story is posted.) [Header image courtesy John Rickard]
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The Top 25 People Enabling Scientology, No. 6: The Riverside County Sheriff’s Department

 There have been many startling disclosures about what actually happens inside Scientology over the years. But one of the results of several former top Sea Org officials coming forward around the year 2009 — people like Mike Rinder, Marc and Claire Headley, and Tom Devocht, for example — was the greater appreciation we all gained []

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The Top 25 People Enabling Scientology, No. 14: The Los Angeles Times

 What happened to the Los Angeles Times?

That’s a question we’ve asked ourselves often in recent years as we’ve watched what was once one of the best investigators of Scientology’s controversies become almost completely incurious about stories unfolding right in the newspaper’s own []

Valerie Haney’s suit against Scientology back to square one after court setback

 Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Richard Burdge denied Valerie Haney’s attempt at a do-over in her lawsuit against the Church of Scientology yesterday, leaving her back where she was in January with a couple of bad choices to []

‘Rona blues: Court delays, Shelly on the menu, and more Scientology nonsense

[Danny delayed, Shelly ordered]

As we expected, court dates in the lawsuit filed by Danny Masterson’s accusers have been moved back because of the pandemic. []

Mike Rinder: What the Church of Scientology has coming in 2020

 [Don’t miss the announcement we made at midnight about this year’s HowdyCon!]

Like in previous years, we’re curious to hear from Scientology’s top former spokesman and Leah Remini’s ‘Aftermath’ co-star Mike Rinder about his thoughts on the state of Scientology as we enter a new []

Scientology’s 2019: Another year is in the books at the Underground Bunker!

Here we are just a few hours away from a new decade, and this Scientology thing is still messing up lives and running rings around courts and law enforcement.

What. The. []

BEST OF THE DECADE: Scientology watching’s biggest 2010s hits at the Underground Bunker

[Leah Remini and Laura D]

Tomorrow we’re going to finish up our look back at the wild year that was 2019, but it’s not every day that you’re staring down the barrel of a new decade, and so we thought we ought to say something about the 2010s and what these years have meant for Scientology []

Scientology leader David Miscavige threatens to out Jane Does suing Danny Masterson

[David Miscavige, dapper ecclesiastical pontiff]

Over the last couple of days, we’ve been telling you that David Miscavige is challenging a lawsuit that names him as a defendant. It’s the lawsuit that four women have filed against Scientologist actor Danny Masterson over allegations of violent rape, and also allegations that Miscavige and Scientology retaliated against them []

Scientology banned his book and trashed him as an apostate. Here’s his full-throated reply!

 Last Saturday, we had fun posting a 1995 Scientology bulletin that banned Scientologists from reading the 1989 ancient aliens book The Gods of Eden and warned against interacting with its author, former church member William Bramley. In our comments section, Bramley reached out to us and said he was interested in answering Scientology’s criticisms of []

The new leaders of ‘Scientology’ tell us about their fight to free the world

[Meet the new owners of the Sea Org, Christopher (Left) and Matthew Brady]

We want to thank the reader who stumbled upon something strange in the state of Florida’s files, and thought we’d be interested in it. []