Another excellent piece of investigative journalism from Tracey McManus in the Tampa Bay Times yesterday: Email detailed plans to obscure Scientologists role in Clearwater project No wonder scientology spends so much time and effort trying to smear her -- accusing her of being a bigot and a hater. It's all they've got. Her stories are carefully researched and documented, and in this case she has a smoking gun email. Her story details the land grab ongoing just north of downtown Clearwater, spearheaded by an Arizona real estate developer named Rodney Riley. He is a newcomer on … [Read more...]
Scientology: the Child Friendly Religion
From the recent FBI release, a letter sent to the St Petersburg Times in 2010. This may have been put on the SP Times website back then, and may not be something new, but I had not seen it before. It's a doozie. It is a compilation of lies, nestled in the usual "other religions have practices like ours" and repeated "anyone who tells you something different than what we say is a liar." The numerous, heartbreaking, independent yet similar stories of Sea Org members being coerced/forced to have abortions is addressed with the flimsiest response "we don't advocate abortion" and anyone … [Read more...]
Did Scientology Lie? Of Course…
Another of the documents from the recent FBI docs release. In September 2009, not long after the investigation began, scientology made an FOIA request to get all docs concerning any investigation of scientology. Though the originator of the request has been redacted from the letter, you can see in the accompanying fax cover sheet that this is a request from scientology. This is not a "routine" request that is filed every month. It is a request because scientology became aware of the FBI investigation. Yet, despite this, in 2013 they denied any such investigation took place … [Read more...]
The RPF Insider Part 2
This is the next installment of the RPF Insider documents contained in the FBI files release. See Part 1. Our old friend Chuck Beatty added some helpful information in a comment on the first post which I include below: I’m not sure if RPF Insider ever was outed. I was in phone contact with him as he posted his series back when it posted. Telling the details in his postings is excellent. The framework, him being not actually in the RPF, but was out, and was posting like he was in it, just to goad Miscavige, was his call. (Theoretically he could have been, example, before I was gone … [Read more...]
The RPF Insider Part 1
In the recent FBI Docs release, there are copies of these documents from the "RPF Insider." I had not seen them before, but they can be found on xenu.net. There are a dozen of them, and they make for interesting reading. This enormously detailed (and accurate) information about the RPF Prison Camp in Los Angeles documents the abuse dished out to members of the Sea Org as a routine. He (or she) asks that health and safety inspections be done, describes how all their ID and personal documents are confiscated, locks put on fire doors so they can't escape, lack of health care and on and on. … [Read more...]
The 2009/2010 FBI Scientology Investigation: New Details
More documents from the 2010 FBI investigation have become available through an FOIA request made many years ago. While there is a great deal of redacted information and many documents withheld in their entirety, there is a lot of information contained in this disclosure that I had not been previously aware of. The full documents can be found here. There were a lot of documents released by the FBI back in 2017 which Tony O covered on his blog. Those docs (many of them witness interviews) are included in this new release -- though the redactions are very different. This is common with … [Read more...]