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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SCIENTOLOGY BLACK OPS: Tom Cruise and dirty tricks, the series axed by Seven News

[Tom Cruise and his former publicist, Pat Kingsley]

In July 2020, the Australian Seven News network cancelled at the last minute a ten-part nightly news in-depth investigation of the Church of Scientology and its history of dirty tricks operations.

The series had been painstakingly put together by Seven News journalist Bryan Seymour, who has spent years exposing []

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SCIENTOLOGY BLACK OPS, Episode 4: Tom Cruise’s dirty plot against publicist Pat Kingsley

 ‘The Star,’ the fourth episode of ‘Scientology Black Ops,’ a special 7NEWS Australia investigation that was cancelled by the network in July, has been leaked to the []

EXCLUSIVE: The real Tom Cruise — Leah Remini exposes Scientology’s biggest asset

 News of Leah Remini’s departure from the Church of Scientology, which she had grown up in since she was a child of 5, was made public by the Underground Bunker in July 2013. Over the next two years, she worked on a memoir that was published in October 2015 with the title, “Troublemaker: Surviving Hollywood []

Leah Remini blames Tom Cruise for the spiking of Aussie Scientology investigation

 On July 2, Australia’s 7News teased an upcoming ten-part news investigation about the Church of Scientology that would feature specific allegations about actor Tom Cruise and his personal connections to the church’s well-known penchant for bullying, spying, and []

Tom Cruise at 58: Scientology’s biggest asset continues to avoid the tough questions

 We have yet to see a reporter with access to Tom Cruise ask him about this: Sixteen years ago, in September 2004, Cruise dazzled the Scientologists assembled at an “Ideal Org” grand opening in Madrid by delivering a short speech in Spanish. When he was finished, he came off stage and shook hands with his []

Tom Cruise in orbit: Why it makes sense for NASA to launch Scientology’s space cadet

 What a welcome distraction it was yesterday as news spread that NASA, Elon Musk, and Tom Cruise were in talks to launch the Mission Impossible actor to the International Space Station in order to film scenes for an as yet unplotted []

Tom Cruise on InTouch cover: Another completely oversold Scientology clip job

 For years we’ve pointed out the dishonest tabloid formula that gets used again and again in stories about Scientology: The publication promises a huge bombshell on the cover but when you turn to the story inside, it’s almost always just another clip job with breathless expressions of amazement about how incredible it would be if []

Tom Cruise’s sister Cass the real superhero in the family, now with Scientology SUPER POWER

[Tom Cruise and his sister Cass Capazorio, with her husband, Freedom Medal winner Greg]

What’s the appeal of Scientology? That’s a question we get asked frequently by people trying to understand why anyone would want to go near the ideas of founder L. Ron Hubbard and his bizarre space opera cabal. []

Add ‘The Last Samurai’ to Tom Cruise movies Scientology uses for themed fundraising

[Brisbane ‘Last Samurai’ Ideal Org event]

How do you get Scientologists to come to fundraising parties when they know they’re going to be hounded for donations for new building projects? Themed costume parties continue to be a popular strategy, and we’ve seen them use everything from gangster and vampire films to Star Wars and yes, the []

Tom Cruise at the IAS gala with his kids Connor and Isabella? We think it’s likely.

Is this our best evidence that Tom Cruise, was, in fact, at Saturday night’s Scientology Patron’s Ball at Saint Hill Manor in East Grinstead, []