When Tom Cruise was one of Scientology’s biggest donors: A look back

Karen de la Carriere and Jeffrey Augustine shared a fun piece of history with us, and we thought you might be interested in seeing it. It’s a page from a 2005 copy of Impact magazine, the publication Scientology uses to name and congratulate its biggest donors.

Continue reading When Tom Cruise was one of Scientology’s biggest donors: A look back

Jon Atack: The ‘Getting Clear’ conference and L. Ron Hubbard’s lies about his life

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.

We’re getting pretty excited about the weeklong seminar Jon is putting on in Toronto later this month. He decided to give us an idea of some of the material that’s going to be covered on the first day…

Continue reading Jon Atack: The ‘Getting Clear’ conference and L. Ron Hubbard’s lies about his life

If the Sea Org doesn’t legally exist, how does it run Scientology?

Last week, Underground Bunker contributor Jeffrey Augustine began explaining to us the essential structure of the fiction known as “the Church of Scientology.” This week, he dives even deeper, examining how the Sea Org really runs things even though it doesn’t exist, legally. Confused? That’s exactly the point. Scientology’s byzantine internal structure was intended to make it difficult to follow lines of responsibility as a defense against lawsuits or government investigations. But sense can be made of things, and we’re fortunate that Jeffrey has this stuff down cold…

Continue reading If the Sea Org doesn’t legally exist, how does it run Scientology?

Scientology’s plan to take over the planet: All Ideal Orgs ‘Saint Hill size’ by 2016!

We have another segment for you from a secretly-recorded audiotape which captures a briefing inside a Scientology church.

This is our fifth portion of the recent briefing given by Andres Rodriguez, a senior executive in the organization, and they just keep getting better. Rodriguez has really become a star here at the Underground Bunker, but he’s also notable because he was married at one time to Jessica Feshbach, who became notorious as the pushy “handler” of actress Katie Holmes during her first years married to Tom Cruise. Jessica is now married to former Scientology spokesman Tommy Davis, and they are no longer in Scientology’s elite Sea Org.

Continue reading Scientology’s plan to take over the planet: All Ideal Orgs ‘Saint Hill size’ by 2016!

Scientology routed: What the national press hasn’t figured out about the Trout Run defeat

[Councilman Jerry Donald, explaining why Trout Run is not really unique at all.]

Last week, a prominent local citizen of Frederick County, Maryland, assured one of our best sources that a majority on the county council had been convinced to vote no to putting a property known as Trout Run on the county’s list of historic places, which would have allowed the property’s owner, the Church of Scientology, to put a drug rehab clinic on it.

Continue reading Scientology routed: What the national press hasn’t figured out about the Trout Run defeat

Scientology, six degrees of separation, and Miss Lovely — author Paulette Cooper

[Paulette Cooper aboard the Leonardo da Vinci in 1970.]

We are continuing to make use of material we learned as we researched the amazing life of author Paulette Cooper, but which, for one reason or another, we were not able to use in our book about her, The Unbreakable Miss Lovely, which was published last month. In this case, we have a parable of time and space.

Continue reading Scientology, six degrees of separation, and Miss Lovely — author Paulette Cooper

Listen to Jim Jones root for Scientology against Paulette Cooper in a 1978 Jonestown address

Now that we’re into a new month and our book, The Unbreakable Miss Lovely, is taking us on tours around the country (and soon across the pond), we’re going to begin posting material here that supplements our story about Paulette Cooper.

Miss Lovely is a book that looks at Paulette’s entire life, from her survival of the Holocaust as a small child to her more recent years as an author in Florida. But she’s most well known, of course, for her 1971 book, The Scandal of Scientology, which resulted in the most legendary campaign of retaliation and ruination in the history of Scientology’s spy wing, the Guardian’s Office. That campaign even included a plot to frame Paulette for a felony which resulted in her being indicted in 1973 and facing 15 years in federal prison.

Continue reading Listen to Jim Jones root for Scientology against Paulette Cooper in a 1978 Jonestown address

What happened when an actual scientist of the mind checked out L. Ron Hubbard in 1950

Marvin Minsky is a major figure in artificial intelligence — he founded MIT’s AI laboratory, and in 1951 he built the first neural network simulator. Which means that he was doing actual science of the mind when a certain pulp fiction writer was pretending that he’d made a discovery about the human mind that was “a milestone for Man comparable to his discovery of fire.”

Continue reading What happened when an actual scientist of the mind checked out L. Ron Hubbard in 1950

Jon Atack: Auditing and recovered memory — why do Scientologists accept it as fact?

Jon surprised us with yet another piece, and once again we are so glad he did. One of the things about Scientology that’s rarely discussed (because Scientologists are under strict instructions not to talk about it) are their “memories” of past life events.

Continue reading Jon Atack: Auditing and recovered memory — why do Scientologists accept it as fact?

20 questions about Scientology — with answers that get to the center of a dying movement

Contributor Jeffrey Augustine has put together another list for us, and this one gets to the heart of the matter — what, legally, is the Church of Scientology, and how is it still a thing?

We think you’ll enjoy this exegesis as Jeff takes us step by step through this examination of how the church exists, on paper at least, as it goes through one of its most difficult periods.

Continue reading 20 questions about Scientology — with answers that get to the center of a dying movement

Search