|
|
 We’ve just got our hands on the Church of Scientology’s response to the federal fraud lawsuit filed by Luis and Rocio Garcia.
As we expected, Scientology is asking federal judge James Whittemore to compel the Garcias to accept Scientology’s own internal arbitration system to resolve this dispute, and throw it out of federal court. As in previous cases, Scientology will be trying to convince Whittemore that the Garcias signed various agreements that they would resolve matters through Scentology’s own “ethics” system. And any attempt for a civil court to intervene would be a violation of the church’s First Amendment rights. After the jump, we have the 25-page document. Continue reading Scientology Response to Federal Lawsuit: Force The Garcias to Use Church Arbitration
 One of the things we do at the Underground Bunker is monitor information coming in from our worldwide tipster network, trying to get our best sense of what’s happening in the Church of Scientology in real time.
One result of that is our Sunday Funnies, our weekly feature which shows the latest fliers and mailers going out to church members. Over time, those fliers give us some sense of how things are going with Scientology’s constant fundraising. (And when the church is reduced to begging $75 to sponsor a doorknob or asking members to cash in their gold and silver, things are not looking good.) Scientology is in a deep crisis right now, with non-celebrity, non-wealthy members nearly tapped out from the various money-sucking programs run by church leader David Miscavige. Continue reading Scientology's New Strategy: Attack of the Clones!
 We’re starting a new feature today, and we’re really excited that Claire Headley has agreed to help us out! Claire is well known among Scientology watchers for the way that she and her husband Marc escaped from the International Base after many years as “Sea Org” workers. She spent years working with Scientology’s “tech,” and was trusted to oversee the auditing of Tom Cruise. And now she’s going to help us as we take a trip up L. Ron Hubbard’s famous “Bridge to Total Freedom.” That’s right — we’re all going to train to be Scientologists, and tally up the costs along the way!
Claire, we don’t know if this was always the case, but at least in recent decades, for most people their first encounter with Scientology is the “Oxford Capacity Analysis.” When we see signs that advertise a “free personality test,” they’re talking about the OCA, right? But when they say “free stress test,” is that something else? Continue reading Today, You Begin Your Training as a Scientologist
 The Underground Bunker has obtained thousands of new internal Scientology documents which detail, among many other things, how the Sea Organization interrogates its workers about their sexual histories.
In October, we published a current version of the lengthy application that Sea Org hopefuls fill out as they sign their billion-year contracts to join the most fanatical of the church’s employees. But even after being accepted, workers are required to produce even more detailed dossiers about themselves called “life histories.” We now have actual examples of those histories which are only a couple of years old. They demonstrate in disturbing detail the invasive interest Scientology has in the sex lives of its workers. (And we mean that. Please be forewarned that there is extremely distasteful material ahead.) Continue reading Document Leak: Scientology Sexual Histories
 On Sundays, we love to reveal the latest Scientology mailers and fliers that have been going out to members, encouraging them to give, give, give until it hurts.
This week, we have a particularly special item to begin this week’s collection. You might remember, last summer, when Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes split, reporters were asking whether Suri was really old enough yet to get indoctrination in her father’s church. She was six years old (and now almost seven), and we all wondered if kids that young were really subject to Scientology training. Well, wonder no more. Continue reading Sunday Funnies: Get Your Infant Audited!
 In 1990, author Jon Atack published what is still one of the very best books on L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology, A Piece of Blue Sky. Atack now has a new edition of the book out, and it reminded us what an encyclopedic resource he is. So join us as we rely on Jon’s expertise to 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.
Jon, we’ve been hearing from readers who have been seeing a TV ad from Scientology that presents a lot of aggrandizing claims about L. Ron Hubbard. We were hoping you could go through the ad’s script and sift out what’s true and what’s not so true. Continue reading Scientology Mythbusting with Jon Atack: That L. Ron Hubbard TV Ad!
 On Sunday February 17, a man named Damian Kevitt, 36, was nearly killed in a gruesome hit-and-run incident that left him with what one doctor called the worst non-fatal injuries he’s ever seen.
Kevitt was riding a bicycle near LA’s Griffith Park when a person driving a van hit him, then dragged him onto the middle of a freeway. Conscientious drivers stopped to protect Damian from getting run over by other cars, but his injuries were terrible: he’s already lost one leg and may lose another. Both of his arms are broken, a shoulder needs replacing, and he was so scraped up, an infection might come at any time that could kill him. And without health insurance, the costs for his care are going into the millions, his uncle tells us. His uncle also confirmed for us that his nephew is the Damian Kevitt who is listed as a Scientology Sea Org worker in a 2005 document online. We have asked the church for a comment, but we don’t expect a reply. So we’re asking our correspondents to help us find out: Was Damian Kevitt still a Sea Org worker when he was injured, and is that why he has no health insurance when he needs it most? Continue reading Is The L.A. Cyclist Who Was Nearly Killed in Hit-and-Run a Scientology "Sea Org" Worker?
[Illustration by Ellis Rosen]
Our readers were so stunned in January by the publicity surrounding the publication of books about Scientology by John Sweeney and Lawrence Wright, they renamed the month “BLAMuary.” And then came FLAPuary, when Jenna Miscavige Hill’s book only made things bumpier.
How could March possibly keep up? With brackets, of course! After the jump, check out the seedings as we begin a tournament that asks you to determine the ultimate arch-enemy of the Church of Scientology! Continue reading SMERSH Madness: Sowing the Seeds of World Domination!
 Welcome to our ongoing project, where we blog a 1950 first edition of Scientology’s bible, Dianetics, with the help of ex-Scientologist, Bay Area lawyer, blogger, and author Vance Woodward. Go here for the first post in the series.
Vance, we thought the demons chapter was something. This next one, on “Psycho-Somatic Illness,” is really over the top. Apparently feeling confident that he’s sold the “reactive mind” as a great discovery, and that the biggest threat to human beings are the engrams stored up in their cells, Hubbard now goes for broke on just what those engrams are capable of and — even more importantly — what miracles his therapy can achieve by removing them. Continue reading Blogging Dianetics, Part 9: Hubbard and Perversion!
 Lori Hodgson, with Jessica and Jeremy In January, in the wake of the Atlantic magazine disaster — when Scientology’s paid “advertorial” extolling the virtues of leader David Miscavige was met with such public derision, the magazine yanked it down — the church tried another way to derail the overwhelming response to Lawrence Wright’s book Going Clear by asking publications to run denunciations of the book by its spokeswoman, Karin Pouw. Michael Calderone at the Huffington Post revealed that it was a Los Angeles crisis management specialist, Michael Sitrick, who was helping the church distribute these rebuttals to Wright’s book, and that Sitrick had been hired by Scientology 3.5 years ago to help with its image. By now, Sitrick must know what he got himself into. But just to be sure, Lori Hodgson sent him a remarkable letter recently to make sure he understands who it is he’s working for. Continue reading Lori Hodgson Appeals to Scientology’s “Spin Doctor,” Michael Sitrick
|
We’ve just got our hands on the Church of Scientology’s response to the federal fraud lawsuit filed by Luis and Rocio Garcia.
