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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How Danny Masterson’s criminal judge has iced out Scientology leader David Miscavige

[Judge Charlaine Olmedo and David Miscavige]

After last year’s preliminary hearing in Danny Masterson’s rape case that was held in Los Angeles in May, we wrote a story about one particular and very odd thing that happened during []

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The new Impact magazine is here, and we get to see Scientology’s biggest donors celebrated!

 If you’ve been with us for very long, you know that we get very excited when Scientology puts out a new issue of its magazine “Impact,” which is the official organ of the International Association of Scientologists, the church’s membership []

Leah Remini podcast: Scientology’s atrocious ‘Fair Game’ campaign against Mike Rinder

 What starts out as an episode about the general background of Scientology’s “Fair Game” retaliation operations soon settles down into the specific ways that Mike Rinder was targeted after he left the Sea Org in 2007, and it’s a harrowing []

Scientology ripped apart his family, but this former member explains why he doesn’t fight it

[Dave Stokes and his family, before disconnection]

On January 4, Skip Young wrote for us an account of his attempt to reconnect with the grown daughters who have disconnected from him after he left Scientology. Last week we published one response we received after Skip’s piece, and that was Phil Jones writing about his own attempts []

RANDOM HOWDY: Your daily dose of the Captain

 Starting on October 6, 2019, we began a new daily feature here in the Bunker, quoting randomly from the amazing collection of wisdom from commenter Steve Cox, a/k/a “Captain Howdy,” who died in 2015 and whom our annual HowdyCon gathering is named after. Here’s the collection of Howdy’s utterances we’ve posted so far…

Oct 6: “Man, []

A Scientologist is running for lieutenant governor in Nevada — and it’s who you probably suspect

 Brent Jones is back, and this time he’s aiming []

Georgia police department closes its case on Arnie Lerma attempted murder-suicide

[The small apartment building on the right is where the March 16 tragedy took place]

 We spoke yesterday with Lt. Tony Taylor of the Sylvania Police Department in Georgia, which investigated the March 16 death of noted Scientology critic Arnie []

Leah Remini is still being stalked, and now Scientology has turned to an ex-NYPD detective

 In December, a retired NYPD detective was sitting in a silver minivan with Texas plates when our source, who we’re not going to name, got into a conversation with []

Ginger Sugerman is facing enormous challenges — and here’s how you can help

[Ginger Sugerman, left, and her longtime friend Penny Thomas]

Ginger Sugerman will be making multiple trips in the coming days to her local hospital — which is nearly two hours away by car. She lives in Sylvania, Georgia, a rural spot in the road about halfway between Augusta and Savannah. []

A look back at the month when all hell broke loose for Scientology and Danny Masterson

 We’re looking back at 2017’s most significant stories here at the Underground Bunker and today it’s a flashback to the month of March in our annual Scientology []