Mark Bunker has uploaded to YouTube a 16-minute interview he did with former high-ranking Scientology executive Marty Rathbun for his movie Knowledge Report. It contains more details of the news that rocked Scientology this week: In attorney Ken Dandar’s federal lawsuit, Rathbun is alleging that the church spent $30 million fighting the criminal investigation of Lisa McPherson’s death, including an operation to improperly influence county medical examiner Joan Wood.
McPherson was a troubled church member who had a mental breakdown in 1995 and then was taken to be cared for at Scientology’s headquarters at the Fort Harrison Hotel in Clearwater, Florida. Seventeen days later, she was rushed to the hospital and died on the way. Scientology was then the subject of a criminal investigation which relied in part on the death certificate that Wood issued. Wood later changed the cause of McPherson’s death from “undetermined” to “accident” in 2000, which stopped the state’s criminal investigation of Scientology in its tracks. In Bunker’s interview, Rathbun talks about how the church applied pressure to convince Wood to make that change.
Last night, the St. Petersburg, Florida CBS affiliate, WTSP, broke news that Marty Rathbun has made blockbuster allegations in sworn testimony that the Church of Scientology spent millions in an attempt to influence Florida judges as it was fighting the criminal investigation and then civil litigation following the 1995 death of church member Lisa McPherson.
We’ve talked to Rathbun about his testimony, we have a copy of his deposition, and we’ve also asked our legal department — Manhattan attorney Scott Pilutik — to give us his thoughts about these stunning new allegations that Scientology spent freely to influence judges in Florida.
This Saturday, Scientologists in the Los Angeles area are being asked to come to a “confidential briefing” that is so secret, they will be asked to sign special bonds at the door.
At that briefing, they will be told for the first time about major changes coming to the Church of Scientology — changes that we first told you about in June.
What has been rumored for months is actually here: Scientology leader David Miscavige is taking one of the biggest risks of his life and is revealing the alterations he is making to L. Ron Hubbard’s “standard tech.”
But is the Church of Scientology actually ready for his “Golden Age of Tech 2”?
Given its rather unsavory reputation, the Church of Scientology usually has a hard time getting much love from politicians or other prominent personalities. For every glittering movie star that actually belongs to the wacky group, many, many more would never have anything to do with it.
But it’s those exceptions — big names that agree to shill for David Miscavige’s church — that tend to grab our attention.
In particular, the willingness of Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca to go to bat for Scientology has been something of a curiosity over the years. And just today, we were forwarded by one of our tipsters a rather surprising notice that Baca, this Sunday, will be helping out the church in an interesting way.
Big news for Scientology watchers: Alfred A. Knopf announced today that it will be releasing Lawrence Wright’s highly anticipated book about Scientology on January 17, which is a couple of months earlier than we had heard it would appear.
Jenna Miscavige Hill’s tell-all, meanwhile, appears to have been moved back to February, a month later than had previously been announced.
After the jump, we have the full press release from Knopf about Wright’s book.
Over at The Hairpin, on Monday “Stella Forstner” put up the second installment of her series on growing up in Scientology. This second chapter was about Scientology beliefs, and like the first, it’s very well written and smarter than your average church tell-all.
Forstner helps an outsider understand the appeal of auditing, and does her best to make the idea of tracking down traumas from your past lives in order to improve your current life sound like the most natural thing in the world.
But her real beef in this essay is that she wants the rest of us to lay off Xenu, already.
One of our tipsters forwarded to us an e-mail the Church of Scientology has sent out asking its members to consider sending their kids to a convention on the church’s private cruise ship, the Freewinds.
We immediately thought of the Freewinds experience of Ramana Dienes-Browning. Last year, we told her story of the hard sell she got as a 15-year-old when her mother took her for a visit to the ship. Ramana was hounded by Sea Org members until they broke down her objections and pressured her to sign the Sea Org’s billion-year contract.
On Sundays, we reveal the latest Scientology fundraising mailers that get sent to us during the week. And we have some good ones to show you this time. But first, we wondered if you had noticed, like we did, that Connor Cruise’s big action-movie debut is coming up!
Tom’s son appears in the remake of Red Dawn which opens on Thanksgiving. (Connor’s only other film credit was his appearance as Will Smith’s younger self in 2008’s Seven Pounds, which New York Times reviewer A.O. Scott called “Among the most transcendently…crazily awful motion pictures ever made.”) Take a gander at the Red Dawn trailer in all of its survivalist-porn goodness, and keep your eye out for Connor aiming a really big gun.
Gary Douglas has a bridge to total…something…to sell you
Our old Village Voice Media colleagues at the Houston Press asked us to help get the word out about their cover story this week, and we’re happy to oblige.
Press veteran Craig Malisow has a barnburner of a story about a 70-year-old man named Gary Douglas who is doing something of an L. Ron Hubbard impression while running “Access Consciousness,” which Malisow characterizes as a “Scientology knockoff.”
After reading Craig’s article, we had to agree that Access is pretty much a bizarre imitation of Hubbard. We also wondered why this doesn’t happen more often.
There’s a reason Scientology earned a reputation as one of the most litigious organizations on earth, and one that turns any court fight into a bruising slugfest.
People who have found themselves in litigation with the church often complain that Scientology plays dirty, and gets away with murder in America’s courts.
What’s unusual is not hearing that Scientology is up to its old tricks in a lawsuit currently going on in the Atlanta area that involves Scientology’s drug rehab program Narconon, but that the judge in that case has called out Scientologist executives in the case for reprehensible behavior.
Yes, that’s right: for once, a judge is calling a Scientologist’s lies what they are — lies.
