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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VIDEO: Watch this, and you will run to Scientology’s ‘spiritual mecca’

 Sunday, we talked about how Scientology leader David Miscavige has reacted to the recent court cases in New York and Los Angeles that put Scientology under intense scrutiny from the nation’s media.

He isn’t taking it well was our []

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SOURCE: Kirstie Alley will be memorialized at Scientology’s ‘spiritual mecca’

 The readers of the Underground Bunker know that when Scientologists die, even fairly well known ones, they sometimes get more of a memorial here than they do from Scientology []

Death of a ‘whale’: Scientology loses a major donor and Mark Bunker critic

[Steve Anderson]

This is the last thing Scientology leader David Miscavige needs right now. What with so much going on, including Scientology getting a drubbing in trials on two coasts, Mike Rinder still on his media rounds for his excellent new book ‘A Billion Years,’ and the two mayoral candidates in Los Angeles trying to outdo []

PODCAST: Jon Atack has some things to say about Mike Rinder’s new book on Scientology

 The big news this week of course is that former Scientology spokesman and Leah Remini’s costar Mike Rinder has released his really terrific book about his experience in the church, A Billion Years: My Escape from a Life in the Highest Ranks of []

Now with no restrictions: Our podcast series on the Scientology docuseries that never aired

 In June, we started our experiment with Substack and asked readers to sign up for free emails so our stories would come right to your inboxes. Less than three months later, we now have more than triple the subscriber base we did previously, and you’ve all helped us reach a much larger []

PODCAST: Paulette Cooper has been exposing Scientology’s abuses for more than 50 years

[Paulette Cooper in 1967, before all the trouble started]

This week at the podcast, we’re coming back around to why we created the Underground Bunker to begin with. In 2012, we began working on a book that eventually gained the title The Unbreakable Miss Lovely, and we created our website in order to make sure the []

Pete Goes to Hollywood: The grim reality of Scientology servitude in La-La-Land

 It is September 1987 and I have just spent the past few months at Saint Hill Manor near East Grinstead in West Sussex, former home of noted conman L. Ron Hubbard, studying his Organization Executive []

Rizza Islam’s sisters plead no contest, leaving him last facing trial in Medi-Cal fraud case

[Rizza got a boost from ABC last year]

Nearly seven years ago — seven years! — we broke the news that several members of Scientologist Hanan Islam’s family had been charged with felonies. California state investigators alleged that the Islams had been ripping off the Medi-Cal program with the use of a jackleg Scientology Narconon drug []

How I know your Scientology files weren’t confidential: It was my job to dig through them

[Sunny at the Hollywood Celebrity Centre]

I was called to the Bosun’s office with no explanation. It wasn’t the first time, and certainly wouldn’t be the last time []

A Scientology celebrity emailed us the other day. And it started an exchange.

 We received an email from a non-American Scientology celebrity recently, and it started a brief exchange, which we have edited here only very lightly for clarity. We are not identifying this person other than to point out their foreign origin and that they have had international success in a field of []