![]() ![]() Former high-ranking Scientologists and experts on the group describe an approach that relies on the threat of legal action and implied negative consequences to dissuade reporters and entertainers from using the church as a subject. Less extreme examples of Scientology’s reported pressure tactics abound. Internal Scientology documents (revealed in later court documents) described the church’s plan for Cooper, a child of parents killed in Auschwitz during the Holocaust, which was to have her “incarcerated in a mental institution or jail, or at least to hit her so hard she drops her attacks.” When’s her book The Scandal of Scientology came out in 1971, it drew the church’s attention. In 1970, Paulette Cooper, a Harvard graduate in comparative religion with a master’s degree in psychology, began publishing work about Scientology. “The history of Scientology’s attempts to scuttle critical stories goes back decades,” said Stephen Kent, a sociology professor at the University of Alberta who has studied and written about the church. Their accounts seem to show the church losing its grip on the public narrative it once aggressively controlled. The new voices in the Scientology debate have both testified to the church’s efforts to silence its critics and, by speaking out, shown the limits of that approach. That point has been amply made in recent years by top church officials turned whistleblowers, a high-profile book by Lawrence Wright of The New Yorker, and now a lacerating new HBO documentary based on Wright’s exposé. But it’s been tough holding on to that model in the 21st century, a notoriously bad era for powerful institutions in the secret-keeping business. According to Ortega, the church "began a five-month siege of Texas house and even had him arrested.For most of its existence the Church of Scientology grew and prospered by protecting its secrets. Rathbun has been harassed by a "goon squad" that allegedly showed him an image of his head on top of squirrel's body inside of a red circle with a diagonal line through it - a "squirrel" is Scientology slang for someone who has left and perverted the church. He's used his blog to publicly criticize church leader David Miscavige since 2009. Since leaving the church, Rathbun has "made it his mission to expose the inner workings of Scientology," says Nordyke. Is Rathbun incurring the church's wrath now? ![]() But beyond that, "whether Scientology was ever successful at digging up dirt on the filmmaking duo or their friends is something we'll be trying to find out," says Ortega. The document reveals that the OSA kept careful watch over Parker and Stone's workplace, discovering what catering service they used for lunch, where the duo's parking spaces were, and the makes, models, and license plate numbers of their cars. How much information was allegedly gathered? It's unclear whether this plan ever panned out. The group hoped the film student would be able get a job either as an intern at South Park or as a writer there. "They can find out a lot about you through your trash."įrustrated that these methods weren't producing "any vulnerabilities to exploit," says Ortega, the OSA allegedly attempted to employ a film student as a mole to "get intelligence" about Parker and Stone directly from the studio where they worked. They'll figure out your diet," says Rathbun. "They'll read stuff into the kind of alcohol you're drinking and how much. These people were then the targets of "covert information gathering" that included searching through their trash, purchasing their phone records, hacking their airline reservations, going through their bank records, and reading their personal letters. In order to find a "direct line" to Parker and Stone, the OSA allegedly identified close friends of Parker and Stone, including formerly married actors John Stamos and Rebecca Romijn, "in an effort to find some weakness," says Kimberly Nordyke at The Hollywood Reporter. How did they conduct this alleged investigation? According to Rathbun, the OSA uses methods comparable to Cold War-era CIA and KGB "intelligence and propaganda techniques," such as investigation, threats, and infiltration. Former Scientology executive Marty Rathbun, who left the church in 2005, released an internal Scientology document on his blog detailing the investigation by the religion's Office of Special Affairs (OSA) - which he calls "the harassment and terror network of Corporate Scientology." The probe of Parker and Stone was apparently direct "retaliation for the South Park episode that exposed the religion's bizarre upper-level teachings," says Tony Ortega at The Village Voice. ![]()
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