David Miscavige. Photo: Scientology Media (CC)

Guy Adams provides details on a senior Scientology member’s letter to 12,000 followers attacking their leader’s “obsession” with money, in the LA Times:

A simmering conflict at the Church of Scientology has been made spectacularly public after a former member of the organisation’s clergy circulated a letter raising severe criticisms of both the management style and financial policies of its current leader, David Miscavige.

Debbie Cook’s email, which was sent to 12,000 fellow Scientologists shortly after midnight on New Year’s Day, alleges that Mr Miscavige has adopted a dictatorial leadership style which is at odds with the doctrines laid down by the church’s founder, the science fiction author, L Ron Hubbard.

She further claims that, since succeeding Hubbard after his death in 1986, Mr Miscavige has become obsessed with fundraising. His regime is now “hoarding” a cash reserve of more than a billion dollars, she claims, and has spent tens of millions more on a portfolio of large, “posh” buildings which largely sit empty.

Ms Cook’s criticisms strike a chord with many disaffected recent defectors from the church. But her highly respected status within the usually secretive world of Scientology may also give them weight among more active members.

The email, headlined “Keep Scientology Working” and littered with jargon, argues that many of the policies pursued Mr Miscavige are in direct conflict to the principles laid down by Hubbard when he created the movement in the 1960s and 1970s. In particular, she claims that “extreme” fundraising activities are now being “driven from within the very highest echelons of the Scientology structure”, in a way that is at odds with the organisation’s founding scriptures.

Although many current members have donated vast portions of their net worth to the church, Ms Cook claims that Hubbard never endorsed individual donations of over $75 for lifetime membership. The church’s founder also “never authorised the purchase of opulent buildings” by the leadership, she argues. Instead, he believed that all money raised by the organisation should immediately be used to spread its message…

[continues in the LA Times]

Founding Church of Scientology in Washington DC. Photo: Ben Schumin (CC)

There once was a time when the media were scared to report on the madness that is the “Church” of Scientology for fear of costly litigation. No more. While there have been occasional reports over the years, last year ABC News went hard after Scientology leader David Miscavige. Now the New York Times runs a front page story suggesting that the “Church” is losing members fast and may have as few as 25,000 members in the United States, versus the millions claimed by the organization:

Raised as Scientologists, Christie King Collbran and her husband, Chris, were recruited as teenagers to work for the elite corps of staff members who keep the Church of Scientology running, known as the Sea Organization, or Sea Org.

They signed a contract for a billion years — in keeping with the church’s belief that Scientologists are immortal. They worked seven days a week, often on little sleep, for sporadic paychecks of $50 a week, at most.

But after 13 years and growing disillusionment, the Collbrans decided to leave the Sea Org, setting off on a Kafkaesque journey that they said required them to sign false confessions about their personal lives and their work, pay the church thousands of dollars it said they owed for courses and counseling, and accept the consequences as their parents, siblings and friends who are church members cut off all communication with them.

“Why did we work so hard for this organization,” Ms. Collbran said, “and why did it feel so wrong in the end? We just didn’t understand.”

They soon discovered others who felt the same. Searching for Web sites about Scientology that are not sponsored by the church (an activity prohibited when they were in the Sea Org), they discovered that hundreds of other Scientologists were also defecting — including high-ranking executives who had served for decades…

[continues in the New York Times]

The security at the red-brick and glass-walled horseshoe of the John Joseph Moakley courthouse on Boston’s waterfront was unusually tight. Anybody who was not a member of the city’s bar association was swept with a search wand. Photo IDs were checked. Mobile phones were taken from guests, who included the Hollywood star Tom Cruise.

The occasion was a memorial service for Scientology’s top legal adviser for a quarter of a century, Earle Cooley. The controversial head of Scientology worldwide, David Miscavige, delivered the eulogy, thanking his late friend for his contribution to the neo-religion during his career, much of which was spent pursuing journalists and former members who spoke out against it.

Miscavige may since have wondered privately what Cooley would have made of the events of last week. Scientology, founded in 1953 by the late science fiction pulp novelist, serial fantasist and inveterate self-publicist L Ron Hubbard, is under fire again across the globe, following years of struggle to be recognised – with some success – as a legitimate church.

The church has just been denounced in the strongest possible terms in the Australian parliament. Prime minister Kevin Rudd has expressed his concern over allegations of “a worldwide pattern of abuse and criminality” and is contemplating a parliamentary inquiry. The organisation is under police investigation and yesterday angry ex-Scientologists, spurred on by the claims, converged on its Australian headquarters calling for its tax-exempt status to be revoked.

And it is not only in Australia that Scientology is facing problems. A new book in America – Blown for Good: Behind the Iron Curtain of the Church of Scientology – by Marc Headley, an employee of the church’s Los Angeles headquarters for 15 years, details – as others have – allegations of systematic abuse and bizarre episodes, such as the three weeks Headley claims he spent under instruction from Cruise in how to move bottles and other objects by concentrating on them…

[continues in the Guardian]

Over the last several months, The St. Petersburg Times published a series of scathing articles on the Church of Scientology under the rubric “The Truth Rundown.” In 1980, the newspaper won a Pulitzer Prize for an investigation of the church’s inner workings.

Coverage of Scientology has long been an important story for The St. Petersburg Times, given that the organization’s headquarters is located in nearby Clearwater, Fla.

So it came as a bit of a shock when, on Friday, the newspaper’s management announced that it would sell one of its sibling publications to a California media company whose top management are Scientologists, The New York Times’s Tim Arango writes.

Governing magazine, which is based in Washington and for 23 years has covered the workings of local and state governments across the country, will be sold to e.Republic, whose founder and other top executives are Scientologists. The sale is expected to close after Thanksgiving.

The evening before the announcement, Governing’s staff gathered at the Willard InterContinental Washington hotel for its annual awards dinner, honoring its picks for the best government officials. On Friday, the staff learned of the magazine’s sale, which had long been in the works. And at a staff gathering, the question of Scientology was raised, given the paper’s aggressive coverage of the church…

[continues in the the New York Times]

When Paul Haggis, the writer of “Million Dollar Baby” and “Crash,” kicked his faith to the curb after 35 years, he did so as only an Oscar-winning scribe could: with a badass screed. His resignation letter, dated Aug. 19, emerged on ex-Scientologist Mark Rathburn’s blog yesterday and promptly went viral.

In his letter, Haggis explains, “for ten months now I have been writing to ask you to make a public statement denouncing the actions of the Church of Scientology of San Diego. Their public sponsorship of Proposition 8, a hate-filled legislation that succeeded in taking away the civil rights of gay and lesbian citizens of California — rights that were granted them by the Supreme Court of our state — shames us.” Though the Church claims not to dictate personal sexual practices and has several openly gay members, it’s perhaps no coincidence that Scientology also has a reputation as Hollywood’s biggest closet, with gay rumors persistently dogging famous members like Tom Cruise and John Travolta.

Even before Haggis’ resignation came to light, it had not been a good week for the Church’s public relations. On Friday, ABC’s “Nightline” aired a scathing investigation of celebrity Scientology by gotcha journalist nonpareil Martin Bashir (of the infamous Michael Jackson interview). The Church’s high-profile membership, its secrecy and unusual practices — which Salon explored extensively back in 2005 — have long made it a subject of fascination and disdain.

But the real corker of the recent “Nightline” story came when Bashir brought up founder L. Ron Hubbard’s most confidential — and controversial — doctrines.  Many organized religions sound like so much sci-fi gobbledygook to outside ears, but Scientologists aren’t known for their generous senses of humor on the subject. And so, when Bashir asked Church spokesman Tommy Davis the age-old question, “Do you believe that the galactic emperor called Xenu brought his people to earth 75 million years ago and buried them in volcanoes?” Davis immediately became defensive. “I am not going to discuss the disgusting perversions of Scientology’s beliefs … things that are so fundamentally offensive for Scientologists to discuss.” When Bashir gently tried another tactic, asking about L. Ron Hubbard’s personal beliefs in Xenu, Davis unclipped his microphone and stalked off…

[continues at Salon.com]

Perhaps the wind has changed, however, with an in depth investigation by ABC News’ well-respected show Nightline, which has a variety of reports about Scientology here, as well as a lengthy ‘Inside Scientology’ video report from Martin Bashir (click that link to go to the full ABC News video site; the YouTube clips below are partial):