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We’re nearing another big anniversary — 30 years since the Great Thetan, L. Ron Hubbard, dropped his material body — and so we’ve been looking through our files for material about the man that isn’t already picked over. We have something pretty nice and never posted online for the anniversary itself. But along the way we also found some items we thought you’d like to see. Continue reading When the feds tracked down L. Ron Hubbard’s boast about getting rich by creating a religion
With the hundreds of former Scientologist employees and Sea Org members who have come out and told their stories in recent years, you might think there was no one left who has ditched the organization and is still holding onto crucial information. There are, in fact, quite a few, and we keep an eye on them, hoping that they’ll get around to spilling their secrets. But these days, with social media, it’s getting hard for them to keep quiet, at least about their day to day activities. Continue reading Stalked in New Orleans cemetery: Scientology’s secretive defectors getting more open
Recently, we wrote about a police chief in a small Minnesota town who found himself being flown to Washington DC to be feted by the Church of Scientology and one of its celebrities, actress Erika Christensen. Why did he deserve this treatment? He was being celebrated because he had purchased anti-drug pamphlets from a Scientology front group, the Foundation for a Drug-Free World. After we wrote a couple of stories about how the police chief was being used in Scientology public relations, he had a change of heart and is no longer teaching the Foundation’s classes in his town. Now, contributor Jeffrey Augustine looks a little more closely at how Scientology uses the Foundation to lure in unsuspecting public officials. Continue reading How Scientology hooks public officials on its addictive anti-drug front
 Jon Atack is the author of A Piece of Blue Sky, one of the very best books on L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology. He has a new edition of the book for sale, and for more than a year on Saturdays he helped us sift through the legends, myths, and contested facts about Scientology that tend to get hashed and rehashed in books, articles, and especially on the Internet. He was kind enough to send us a new post.
Continue reading Atack: What I meant when I said Scientologists suffer from arrogance when they leave
[Judge William R. Nicklas Jr., photo source]We were out on the road all day yesterday and so missed some of the drama happening down in Frederick County, Maryland. Our regular readers know that we’ve been following the action as Scientology struggles to put in a new drug rehab “Narconon” center there with a cute maneuver involving an aging fish camp and some complex local zoning rules. Continue reading Explain your vote, judge tells Maryland county that denied Scientology rehab
A day after Alex Gibney learned that he’d been nominated for an award by the Director’s Guild of America for his documentary Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief, his movie was left out of the nominations for Documentary Feature which were announced this morning for the 88th Academy Awards, to be presented in Los Angeles on February 28. Continue reading Oscar snubs Alex Gibney’s Scientology documentary ‘Going Clear’ despite buzz
In 2009, researcher Jeff Jacobsen wrote about Scientology’s documented problems bringing foreigners to the United States to work in its “Sea Organization.” Anecdotally, ex-Scientologists say that the church relies heavily on foreigners to accept jobs under the bizarre working conditions of the Sea Org, which requires signing a billion-year contract and working 16-hour days, seven days a week, often at menial labor jobs, and for just pennies an hour. Continue reading DOX: Government disclosure shows extent of Scientology’s reliance on cheap foreign labor
[Chief Chad Loewen]We’ve been really busy with an investigative story that we hope to uncork tomorrow. But in the meantime, we want to thank reader QBird, who took it upon herself to follow up on one of our recent stories. Continue reading A great peek into how Scientology uses fronts to love-bomb a public official
“We used to call him Garson The Parson in the Spiders, poor love, when he was into Scientology. But it did cause us one or two problems. I was thinking about having him back in the band and the thing that really clinched it was hearing that he was no longer a Scientologist.” — David Bowie, in Q Magazine, 1997 Continue reading David Bowie, 1947-2016
[Blue states contain active Scientology orgs.]Jeffrey Augustine is back, this time with a new look at Scientology’s current strength in the United States. We think he’s got a unique perspective in this piece. Continue reading A business executive looks at Scientology as a (poorly run) business
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